Seth Rogen was right to say there there were people in Palestine before 1948 (Pic: Palestine Solidarity Project/Flickr)

All it took was one comment from actor Seth Rogen for one of Israels leading politicians to spring into action.

Rogen said on a podcast that as a Jewish person I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel. Referring to the Israeli states founding in 1948, he added, They never tell you that, Oh by the way, there were people there.

Shortly afterwards Isaac Herzog tweeted that Rogen had apologised for his commentsa claim the actor denies.

Herzog is an Israeli Labour politician and chairperson of the Jewish Agency, set up in 1929 to promote Zionism among Jewish people and colonisation in Palestine.

This fragility in the face of criticism shows the Israeli state is worried about the worldwide outcry against its oppression of the Palestinians.

In the US, in particular, Israel is facing a crisis of support among left wingers and liberals, including many younger Jewish people.

Annexation

There is opposition to Binyamin Netanyahus right wing government, such as its annexation of Palestinian land and embrace of Donald Trump and Europes far right.

But it also includes a questioning of Israels founding ideology of Zionism.

This response to antisemitism in Europe argues for an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine, and justifies Palestinian dispossession and oppression.

One poll in San Franciscos Bay Area found that only40 percent of Jews aged 18 to 34 were comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state.

Rogen is by no means an anti-Zionist.

But what he said questioned one of Zionisms main mythsthe claim that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land. Israels was built on the ethnic cleansing of more than 800,000 Palestinians, a process known as the Nakba or catastrophe.

Paramilitary forces that went on to become the Israeli army drove Palestinians from villages and towns through massacres and terror.

Since its foundation, Israel has grabbed more Palestinian land and brought more Palestinians under its rule.

In 1948 Israeli forces conquered land beyond what was stipulated in the UN partition plan for the Britishruled Mandate of Palestine. Then in 1967 Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But Israeli politicians are obsessed with maintaining a demographic majority. Israels first prime minister David Ben-Gurion said, Only a state with at least 80 percent Jews is a viable and stable state.

So what happens to the Palestinians under its rule?

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, US and Israeli leaders have talked of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. But throughout this time Israel further cemented its control in the Occupied Territories.

Today more than 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, their vast settlements connected to Israel with exclusive roads.

And some 3 million Palestinians live as Israeli subjects while the Palestinian Authority acts as a subcontractor for the occupation.

Solution

The idea that the USwhich supports Israel to safeguard its interests in the Middle Eastwould deliver a twostate solution was always a sham.

But Donald Trumps peace deal has further exposed this.

It would make formal the apartheid that Palestinians already live under.

This situation isnt just down to the policies of the Netanyahu government. Occupation and apartheid flow from the logic of the settler colonial project.

One state is inevitable. The question is whether it will be the Israeli apartheid state or a democratic state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews.

Herzogs reaction shows how concerned the Israeli government is about the sense of unease about its foundations and actions.

As more people question Israeli occupation, its time for the left to stand up and make the argument.

Winning liberation means supporting the Palestinian struggle against colonialism and apartheid.

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Israeli state is worried about questioning of its history - Socialist Worker