Fwd: Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew (fwd)

An interesting essay pertinent to the current debates going on in
Durban...

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>
>Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew
>
>Tim Wise
>
>September 3, 2001
>
>So it's official. The U.S. has withdrawn from the World Conference on
>Racism, being held in Durban, South Africa. And though the cynical and
>historically observant might suspect that this decision was merely in
>keeping with our longstanding unwillingness to deal with the legacy of
>racism on a global scale, the official reason is more circumscribed.
>Namely, the mid-conference pullout was intended to register displeasure at
>various delegates who are pushing resolutions condemning Israeli treatment
>of Palestinians, and Zionism itself: the ideology of Jewish nationalism
>that led to the founding of Israel in 1948. As the conference speeds
>towards a no doubt controversial conclusion, perhaps it would be worthwhile
>to ask just what all the fuss is about?
>
>Although one can argue with the claim made by some that Zionism and racism
>are synonymous--especially given the amorphous definition of "race" which
>makes such a position forever and always a matter of semantics--it is
>difficult to deny that Zionism, in practice if not theory, amounts to
>ethnic chauvinism, colonial ethnocentrism, and national oppression.
>
>For saying this, I can expect to be called everything but a child of God by
>many in the Jewish community. "Self-hating" will be the term of choice for
>most, I suspect: the typical Pavlovian response to one who is Jewish, as I
>am, and yet dares to criticize Israel or the ideology underlying its
>national existence.  "Anti-Semite" will be the other label offered me,
>despite the fact that Zionism has led to the oppression of Semitic
>peoples--namely the mostly Semitic Palestinians--and is also rooted in a
>deep antipathy even for Jews. Though Zionism proclaims itself a movement of
>a strong and proud people, in fact it is an ideology that has been brimming
>with self-hatred from the beginning. Indeed, early Zionists believed, as a
>key premise of the movement, that Jews were responsible for the oppression
>we had faced over the years, and that such oppression was inevitable and
>impossible to overcome, thus, the need for our own country.
>
>Having never read the words of Theodore Herzl--the founder of modern
>Zionism--or other Zionist leaders, most will find this claim hard to
>believe. But before attacking me, perhaps they should ask who it was that
>said anti-Semitism, "is an understandable reaction to Jewish defects," or
>that, "each country can only absorb a limited number of Jews, if she
>doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany has already too many Jews."
>While one might be inclined to attribute either or both statements to
>Adolph Hitler, as they are surely worthy of his venomous pen, they are
>actually comments made by Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, eventual president of
>Israel, and--at the time he made the second statement--head of the World
>Zionist Organization. So in the pantheon of self-hating Jews, it appears
>criticism, for Zionists, should perhaps begin at home.
>
>Going back to my days in Hebrew school, I never understood the
>dialysis-machine-like bond that most of my peers felt for Israel. On the
>one hand, we were told God had given that land to our people, as part of
>His covenant with Abraham. This we knew because Scripture told us so. But
>this never carried much weight with me. After all, many Christians--with
>whom I had more than a passing acquaintance growing up in the South--were
>all-too-willing to point out that the Scriptures also said (in their
>opinions) that I was going to hell, Abraham
>notwithstanding.
>
>As such, accepting Zionism because of what God did or didn't say seemed
>dicey from the get-go. What's more, this was the same God who ostensibly
>told the ancient Hebrews never to wear clothes woven with two different
>fabrics, and who insisted we burn the entrails of animals we consume on an
>alter to create a pleasing smell. Having been known to sport a wrinkle-free
>poly-cotton blend, and having not the fortitude to disembowel my supper and
>incinerate its lower intestines, I had long since resolved to withhold
>judgment on what God did and didn't want, until such time as the Almighty
>decided to whisper said desires in my
>ear personally. The Rabbi's word wasn't going to cut it.
>
>On the other hand, we were told we needed a homeland so as to prevent
>another Holocaust. Only a strong, independent Jewish state could provide
>the kind of unity and protection required of a people who had suffered so
>much, and had lost six million souls to the Nazi terror.
>
>Yet this too seemed suspect to me. After all, one could argue that getting
>all the Jews together in one place--especially a piece of real estate as
>small as Palestine--would be a Jew-hater's dream come true. It would make
>finishing the job Hitler started that much easier. Better, it seemed then
>and still does, to have vibrant Jewish communities throughout the world,
>than to put all our dreidels in one basket, by pulling up stakes and
>heading to a place where others already lived, hoping they wouldn't mind
>too terribly if we kicked them out of their homes.
>
>In the final analysis, accepting Israel as a Jewish state for Biblical
>reasons made no more sense to me than to accept a self-identified Christian
>or Islamic nation: two configurations that understandably raise fears of
>theocracy in the heart of any Jew. And to in-gather the Jews to Israel for
>the sake of safety made no sense whatsoever. The only logic to Zionism
>then, seemed to be the "logic" of raw power: that of the settler, or
>colonizer. We wanted the land, and getting it would
>provide an ally for European and American foreign and economic policy. So
>with pressure applied and force unleashed, it became ours.
>
>Nearly 800,000 Palestinians would be displaced so as to allow for the
>creation of Israel: around 600,000 of whom, according to internal documents
>of the Israeli Defense Force, were expelled forcibly from their homes. At
>the time, these Palestinians, most of whose families had been living on the
>land for centuries, constituted two-thirds of the population and owned 90%
>of the land. Though some Zionists claim Palestine was a largely uninhabited
>wilderness prior to Jewish arrival, early settlers were far more honest. As
>Ahad Ha'am acknowledged in 1891:
>
>"We...are used to believing that Israel is almost totally desolate.
>But...this is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find
>fields that are not sowed."
>
>Indeed, the large presence of Palestinians led many Zionists to openly
>advocate their removal. The head of the Jewish Agency's colonization
>department stated: "there is no room for both peoples together in this
>country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to
>neighboring countries, to transfer all of them: not one village, not one
>tribe, should be left." Herzl himself conceded that Zionism was "something
>colonial," indicating again that we were not discovering or founding
>anything. We were taking it, and for reasons we would never accept from
>others. As Shimon Peres--seen as one of the most peace-loving Israeli
>leaders in
>memory--said in 1985: "The Bible is the decisive document in determining
>the fate of our land." Such is the stuff of fanaticism, and we would say as
>much were a fundamentalist Christian to make the same statement about the
>fate of the U.S., or anywhere else for that matter.
>
>That most Jews have never examined the founding principles of this ideology
>to which they cleave is unfortunate. For if they were to do so, they might
>be shocked at how anti-Jewish Zionism really is. Time and again, Zionists
>have even collaborated with open Jew-haters for the sake of political
>power. Consider Herzl: a man who believed Jews were to blame for
>anti-Semitism, and thus, only by fleeing for Palestine could we be safe. In
>The Jewish State, he wrote:
>
>"Every nation in whose midst Jews live is, either covertly or openly,
>anti-Semitic...its immediate cause is our excessive production of mediocre
>intellects, who cannot find an outlet downwards or upwards. When we sink,
>we become a revolutionary proletariat. When we rise, there also rises our
>terrible power of the purse."
>
>He went on to say, "The Jews are carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into
>England; they have already introduced it into America." Were a non-Jew to
>suggest that Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism, our community would be
>rightly outraged. But the same words from the father of Zionism pass
>without comment.
>
>Worse still, early in Hitler's reign the Zionist Federation of Germany
>wrote the new Chancellor, noting their willingness to "adapt our community
>to these new structures" (namely, the Nuremberg Laws that limited Jewish
>freedom), as they "give the Jewish minority...its own cultural life, its
>own national life." Far from resisting Nazi genocide, some Zionists
>collaborated with it. When the British devised a plan to allow thousands of
>German Jewish children to enter the U.K. and be saved from the Holocaust,
>David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first Prime Minister balked,
>explaining:
>
>"If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by
>bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them
>to (Israel) then I would opt for the second alternative."
>
>Later, Israeli Zionists would again make alliances with anti-Jewish
>extremists. In the 1970's, Israel hosted South African Prime Minister John
>Vorster, and cultivated economic and military ties with the apartheid
>state, even though Vorster had been locked up as a Nazi collaborator during
>World War II. And Israel supplied military aid to the Galtieri regime in
>Argentina, even while the Generals were known to harbor ex-Nazis in the
>country, and had targeted Argentine Jews for torture and death.
>
>Indeed, the argument that Zionism is racism finds some support in
>statements of Zionists themselves, many of whom have long concurred with
>the Hitlerian doctrine that Judaism is a racial identity as much as a
>religious and cultural one. In 1934, German Zionist Joachim Prinz, who
>would later head the American Jewish Congress, noted:
>
>"We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of
>belonging to the Jewish nation and Jewish race. A state built upon the
>principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honored and
>respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind."
>
>Years later, David Ben-Gurion acknowledged that Israeli leader Menachem
>Begin could be branded racist, but that doing so would require one to "put
>on trial the entire Zionist movement, which is founded on the principle of
>a purely Jewish entity in Palestine."
>
>Laws granting special privileges to Jewish immigrants from anywhere in the
>world, over Palestinians whose families had been on the land for
>generations, and measures that set aside most land for exclusive Jewish
>ownership and use, are but two examples of discriminatory legislation
>underlying the Zionist experiment. As the International Convention on the
>Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination makes clear, racial
>discrimination is:
>
>"any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race,
>color, descent, or national and ethnic origin which has the purpose or
>effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise,
>on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the
>political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life."
>
>Given this internationally recognized definition, we ought not be surprised
>that at a World Conference on Racism, some might suggest that the policies
>of our people in the land of Palestine had earned a place on the agenda. As
>such, we should take this opportunity to begin an honest dialogue, not only
>with Palestinians, but also with ourselves. Neither the chauvinism so
>integral to Zionism, nor the ironic
>self-hatred that has gone along with it are becoming of a strong and vital
>people. Just as a dialysis machine is no substitute for a healthy and
>functioning kidney, neither is Zionism an adequate substitute for a healthy
>and vibrant Judaism. Surely it is not for this ignoble end, that six
>million died.
>
>Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, writer and lecturer. He can be reached
>at tjwise@mindspring.com
>