Whilst I agree that lots of states based on similar identity politics exist, I'd argue that in the other examples you mention these had a degree of historical precedent which Zionism lacks. Serbian and Albanian nationalism especially come in the context of majority ethnic populations historically rooted in certain areas who had little or no experience of self-determination in their recent history, either due to being part of foreign empires (Austro-Hungary/Ottoman) or the Soviet Bloc. In that context the formation of a state was tantamount to emancipation. Zionism wasn't a movement for Jewish self-determination in their own lands, it was the belief that the Jewish people had a divine right to rule a land which, outside of scripture, the vast majority of Jews had no tangible connection to, and that their status as God's chosen invalidated any Earthly claims lesser peoples might have to that same land. It was effectively the belief that the Jewish people had the right to take what wasn't theirs based solely on the fact that they were Jewish and the Arabs weren't.
It's interesting you are ready to offer historical context as an explanation for the nature of, for example, Serbian nationalism, while at the same time appearing indifferent to the impact of such a context on the development of Zionism, instead preferring a religious explanation. The 'divine right'/'chosen people' element to Zionism is an aspect to it that would have interested early secular Zionists little beyond proving their historical connection to the land, and although more zealously-minded Zionists might indeed hold such views, they're not an integral aspect of how the movement was conceived. Consider the words of the national anthem:
As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,
With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,
Then our hope - the two-thousand-year-old hope - will not be lost:
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
'Self-determination' and 'emancipation' is exactly how Zionists viewed their project - there's no mention of divine rights, no mention of the Palestinian Arabs, just an emotional connection based on a long history. It's actually far less religiously inspired and militant than the Serbian national anthem for example.
It's enough to recognize that Palestine became the focus for the Zionist project due to a) the history of the Jewish people and the inevitable result of their adoption of 19th century European nationalism with its use of historical symbols and myths to mobilize the movement, and b) because they could get away with it, i.e. they lived in a world in which colonization by Europeans of 'less-developed' peoples' lands was not considered a bad thing.
My point was that in terms of how it conceives its relation to minority groups, Zionism need be no less liberal than the other nationalist models around which it evolved, although obviously the ebb and flow of history has produced less liberal strands of Zionist thought as it tends to do in all such movements. I've already acknowledged in the
context part of my original post above that one difference between Zionism and other national movements around it was that the Jews had no obvious territory in Europe to claim as their own. But the movement still sprang from the same origins, and the model the early Zionists had in mind was not related to the bible, but was based on the European conception of the classic nation-state, in which one group dominates by fact of their clear majority within recognized frontiers. Consider the words of Jabotinsky (you'll find an interesting pdf here -
http://en.idi.org.il/media/2384931/Jabotinsky-IDI-2013.pdf):
"If we were to have a Jewish majority in Eretz Israel, then first of all, we would create here a situation of total, absolute, and complete equal rights, with no exceptions: whether Jew, Arab, Armenian, or German, there is no difference before the law; all paths are open before him. . . . Complete equal rights would be granted not only to citizens as individuals but also to languages and nations."
"All of us, all Jews and Zionists of all schools of thought, want the best for the Arabs of Eretz Israel. We do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. We envision the regime of Jewish Palestine [Eretz Israel ha-Ivri] as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled."
"[Even] after the formation of a Jewish majority, a considerable Arab population will always remain in Palestine. If things fare badly for this group of inhabitants then things will fare badly for the entire country. The political, economic and cultural welfare of the Arabs will thus always remain one of the main conditions for the well-being of the Land of Israel."
None of this is to argue that the morality of the Zionist project outweighed the wishes of the Palestinian Arabs (as Jabotinsky believed). I've already argued otherwise above. Rather, I'm saying that there is nothing unique in Zionism's 'original sin' which makes Israel stand out amongst a host of other examples of states founded on similar ideologies and often in the midst of worse crimes.
Question - How do you measure the (universal accepted?) value of a land claim???
(This reminds me a bit of first past the post vrs PR)
A) The demographic majority overall
B) The demographic majority per city
C) The longest racial presence in both the above, regardless of numbers.
The Zionists would have accepted (A), which is why they were determined to produce a Jewish majority in Palestine through migration. They never argued for (B), which would have left them with maybe Jerusalem and one or two other urban centers in Palestine. As for (C), 'racial presence' in the biological sense is something unverifiable over such a long period. In fact I object to the labeling of either Jews or Arabs as a 'race'. The idea that all Jews are biologically connected to the Jews of Palestine is as ridiculous as the idea that Palestinian Arabs are all biologically connected to the Arab invaders of the 7th century.
