The words “Zionism” and “Zionist” recur frequently in the Arab media, from mainstream press and TV outlets to marginal websites. And most of the time, they are presented as synonyms for conspiracy, manipulation, aggression and so forth.

An item on uruknet - one of the nastier sites on the net, purporting to deliver news from “occupied Iraq” but, really, little more than a fanzine for the now dead tyrant, Saddam Hussein - pushes the conspiracy theme with both energy and anger. Layla Anwar rants - there’s really no other word - about the “Zionist-Kurdish” connection, leaving the impression that if it wasn’t for the Zionists putting ideas into their heads, these pesky Kurds would have stoically accepted their inferior status in an Arab state.

After all, why wouldn’t they? According to uruknet, there was really nothing for the Kurds to complain about. Genocide? Pah! Helpfully, uruknet provides links which demonstrate how the use of poison gas in Halabja in 1988 was a fabrication (rather like those Serb sites which do the same concerning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia). Must be those Zionists again, up to their tricks in order to divert sympathy from the one nation - the only nation - which deserves it: the Palestinians.

On the website of the satellite news channel Al Arabiya, Asad Abdul Rahman writes about Zionist manipulation of Jewish communities outside Israel, concluding that they are not very good at it. Israel, says Abdul Rahman, is facing a demographic crisis which stems from the failure of Zionist emissaries to persuade Jews living in wealthy western countries to move there.

All this is, of course, well known. What’s significant here is Abdual Rahman’s implication that Israel is less of a society and more of a project. If the project - the ingathering of all Jews in one place - goes under, then, one presumes, so will the country. Or, as Abdul Rahman insinuates, Israel will engage in a bit more “ethnic cleansing”:

Some studies have even proved that Israeli society cannot maintain equilibrium and continuity without launching aggression and getting rid of the ’surplus’ Palestinian citizens on the one hand, and the internal tension and security obsession which haunts most of Israel’s social classes and leaders on the other hand.

Here, perhaps, is one reason why there is pessimism among so many Jews and Israelis about the prospects for peace (although there are radically different views about what should be done as a consequence). In both the pieces I’ve mentioned, Israel comes across as a foreign body, an instrument of power called “Zionism” which has no place in the region and which aims to divide and suppress the Arabs, whether by supporting Kurds or expelling Palestinians. Some writers, like Anwar, express themselves crudely; others, like Abdul Rahman, have a bit more subtlety and panache; but the underlying ideas are the same.