Jews internationally have been involved in various struggles against racism. Many Jews in South Africa played a prominent and courageous role in the struggle against apartheid. Activists like Joe Slovo and Ruth First not only criticised apartheid: they sided with the oppressed black population and joined the ANC. Today anti-racist Jews must struggle against the violent apartheid system which defines the state of Israel.

To describe Israel in these terms is not hyperbole. The apartheid wall in the West Bank is so named because it imprisons the Palestinians in small, disconnected parcels of land that can never be the basis of a viable state. In South Africa, these "homelands" were called Bantustans. Gaza is another such Bantustan.

Jews historically have had to struggle against violent oppression. The holocaust, in which 6 million were murdered, was the culmination of the long tradition of anti-Semitism that was fostered by Europe's rulers for generations. Our history is not merely one of suffering, but also resistance. Heroically, the Jewish Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto held out against the Nazis for longer than the entire Polish Army.

Today, Israel terrorises the Palestinians. In Gaza, schools, ambulances and mosques were deliberately targeted. It is a perversion of our history that a state which claims to act for Jews would attack a civilian population with white phosphorous bombs that burn people's bodies long after they are dead. Jews today have a responsibility to proclaim our solidarity with the Palestinian people. After all, our own history should make us uniquely sympathetic to those who suffer and who resist oppression.

We know what it is like to be deemed the "wrong kind of people"; to be denied entry to a country because of our ethnicity. Masses of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis were turned back because countries like Britain did not want too many people of our heritage. Today, Israel considers the Palestinians to be an undesirable people. Israel seeks to be a Jewish state with a solid Jewish majority. That is why nearly one million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1948 when Israel was established. That is why the millions of Palestinian refugees who mostly still languish in camps in the region will never be granted a right of return, while any Jew can move to Israel and is encouraged to do so. And it is why the sizeable and growing Palestinian Arab minority within Israel are treated as a "demographic timebomb". Only the wilfully blind could deny that the Israeli state is inherently racist.

Zionism - that is, support for a specifically Jewish state in historical Palestine - is a political doctrine. It has never been a necessary or automatic component of Jewish identity. It does not make you a traitor to Jews to oppose the idea of a Jewish state that discriminates against other races and religions. There is nothing anti-Semitic in calling for a secular, democratic state in all of historical Palestine, with equal rights for Jews and non-Jews.

Undoubtedly many anti-racist Jews are uneasy about what Israel does. Yet too few of us actually take a stand against Israel. The fence-sitting and prevarication does nothing to build resistance to Israeli atrocities. Anti-racist Jews can play an important role in the struggle against Israel's atrocities, by undermining the ludicrous notion that championing the rights of the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.

Israel is also a weapon of American imperialism, which seeks to dominate the oil-rich, strategically important Middle East. Hence the US provides more aid to Israel than any other country, ensuring that Israel has easily the region's strongest military capability. In the words of one former US General, America's investment in Israel provides it with an "unsinkable aircraft carrier", and is "worth five CIAs".

This why there is no pressure, either internal or external, that will alter what Israel is - a racist state built on stolen land, and an attack dog for the US. The US aid Israel relies upon is provided so that Israel can demonstrate its strength by instigating terror against Arabs. Even in the unlikely scenario that Israel let the Palestinians call their Bantustans a state, this would not stop Israel from attacking or re-invading as it has done repeatedly to Lebanon.

There has always been radical internationalism among Jews embodied in people like the revolutionary Marxists Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, who rejected Zionism because it was an imperialist project. And also Marek Edelman, who fought the Nazis in Warsaw. Edelman wrote an open letter in 2002 condemning the jailing of a prominent Palestinian leader. The Israeli establishment were infuriated that the letter was addressed to the "commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisations". Edelman consciously used the terms that described the structures of the resistance movement in Warsaw. As Edelman suggests, the legacy of the Warsaw resistance is today embodied in the Palestinian groups who resist occupation.