Jonathan Freedland is surely right that the Israeli political parties opposed to Benjamin Netanyahu should make common cause with their Palestinian fellow citizens ( This is the hard lesson from Israel’s election: to stop nationalist populists, you can’t play by gentlemen’s rules, 30 October ).

He is also right to be pessimistic, recognising that “Israel’s Jewish-led parties have long shunned the mainly Arab parties because the latter identify as anti- or non-Zionist, meaning they reject Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state”.

Yet Freedland also points to the very reason why this is unlikely to change: “it demands a reshaping of Israeli society, breaking a pattern of systemic discrimination and inequality within the country that has existed since the founding of the state”.

Freedland’s clarity on these matters surely invites a further question: might Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state – in other words, Zionism – lie at the very heart of the discrimination and inequality that have persisted…