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I would
like to start with a quotation by Amira Hass, a very courageous Israeli
journalist who lives in Ramallah. She writes for the most respected though
by no means left-wing daily "Ha'aretz" (Il Ard in Arabic, one of many
examples of the great similarity of the Arabic and Hebrew languages; both
derived from an ancient form of Aramaic). Although threatened several
times with sacking, as well as with numerous death threats, she carries
on.
Hass ends one of her recent articles with this question: is transfer
(expelling as many Palestinians Arabs as possible from whats left of
their land) an inseparable part of the founding ideology of the state of
Israel, or a twisted mutation, which should not be allowed to rise up
against its creator?
Whereas the increasing number of refusenicks and Israeli peace activists
believes the latter (and I respect their sentiments), I, like Hass, do not
share them; my belief is that the state of Israel was bound to end up with
what we have today.
In order to understand the circumstances that led to the birth of Zionism
I shall sketch an outline of the history of Judaism and the Jews.
Even in biblical times there was a great deal of ethnic and even religious
mixing in ancient Judea and Israel, which never constituted an entirely
ethnic/religious entity. A cursory reading of the Old Testament reveals
that practically all the biblical prophets were perpetually railing
against this mixing, particularly in religious terms and intermarriage.
Moreover, even during that time, there were Jewish communities established
in Arab lands, in Persia, as well as in East and North Africa. With the
destruction of the Temple and the final fall of their autonomous Roman
colony of Judea in 70 AD, the important families such as the High priests
(Cohanim/Cohens), priests (Levyim/Levys), members of the Sanhedrin, the
Judaic internal court that handed Jesus over to the Roman authority, and
others, felt insecure. There had been a number of revolts and uprisings
against their hegemony and their collaboration with Rome, Jesus being one
non-violent example, and so they decided to leave when the Romans pulled
out. Most of the indigenous subsistence farmers, craftsmen and small-time
traders stayed put and continued their lives as before. Some of these
inhabitants were early Christians and form the ancestors of many of
today's Palestinian Christians, others remained vaguely Jewish. Modern
research shows that when Islam arrived in the area in 638 AD many of these
Jews converted and that their descendants form a considerable part of
today's Palestinians. Numerous surnames, such as Moussa, Dini, Mansoor and
Canaan inter alias are even nowadays shared by Arab Jews, Muslims and
Christians. (Incidentally, people with the surnames Da Souza and Sassoon
were originally from the Jewish community in Suza, the ancient capital of
Persia). Those who left with the Romans later dispersed to other parts of
Europe and even central Asia, where there were some trading outposts. A
considerable part of European Jews, however, consisted of Khazars,
inhabitants of an important kingdom in the early middle ages, roughly
between the Caspian and the Black Seas. One of their Khans or kings
converted to Judaism around 740 AD and made Judaism the state religion. In
the 9th century Khazaria finally fell to the Viking hordes and its
inhabitants dispersed throughout much of Europe. Thus the idea of a
"return" of European Jews to their roots is something of an absurd myth.
The various Jewish communities in Asia (including what is termed the
Middle East) and North Africa were on the whole well integrated into their
respective societies and apart from some isolated incidents did not
experience the persecutions that later became so prevalent in Europe. In
Palestine, for instance, Muslims repeatedly protected their Jewish
neighbours from marauding crusaders; in one instance at least, Jews fought
alongside Muslims to try and prevent crusaders from landing at Haifa's
port, and Salah ad-Din Al-Ayoubi (Saladin), after re-conquering Jerusalem,
invited the Jews back into the city.
The
Jews in Moorish rule in the Iberian Peninsula flourished and experienced a
renaissance mirroring that of the great Islamic civilisation and culture
at the time. As Christianity spread from the north of Spain, Jews were
again protected by Muslim rulers until the fall of Granada-the last
Moorish kingdom to pass into Christian hands-when both Jews and Muslims
were expelled at the end of the 15th century (Jews in 1492 and Muslims
some 10 years later). Most of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula settled
in North Africa and the lands under Ottoman rule, including Palestine, and
continued their peaceful co-existence with Muslims in those countries. It
is interesting to note that some of these displaced Jews who had settled
in Safad (Palestine) wrote laments about their expulsion from their
promised Land, which for them had been Spain.
The
bulk of Portuguese "converted" Jews (these were forced conversions and
such Jews from Spain and Portugal were called Marranos, i.e. swine, by the
Christian Authorities, who suspected them of still practicing their old
religion in secret) settled in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, presumably
because they had long established trading connectionsto that city. They
reverted to their original religion and in 1655 were invited hence to
Britain by Oliver Cromwell. Many of them were glad to resettle since at
the time the Netherlands had just freed itself from the Spanish yoke in
1648 and the shadow of the dreaded inquisition was still uncomfortably
close.
The fate of Jewry in European countries, mainly in Eastern Europe, was
very different: persecutions, killings and burnings were widespread and
Jews were forced to live in closed ghettos, particularly in the Russian
Empire, where they were confined to the "Pale of Jewish settlement, an
area which consisted of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Byelarus or White
Russia. Anyone who wished to move outside these borders needed special
permission, although there were large communities in the western and
south-eastern part of what had been Poland, but became part of Prussia and
Austria respectively By the mid-19th century some of the more progressive
Jewish communities had established themselves in the big cities of St.
Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev.
In central and western Europe religious tolerance, followed by the
granting of full citizens' rights and emancipation came relatively early,
in the wake of general liberalisation. However, Russian rulers remained
opposed to any liberalisation, including religious tolerance and
emancipation, and as late as 1881, Tsar Alexander the third initiated a
series of particularly vicious pogroms to divert unrest amongst the
population, at a time when Britain, for instance, boasted a Jewish prime
minister.
Total segregation was not always imposed from outside, however, but was
frequently enforced from within by highly authoritarian rabbis who
exercised absolute power over their congregations, often including the
right to life and the imposition of the death penalty (via denunciation).
Thus it was a major decision for anyone to leave these congregations and
to look for a broader education (known as "enlightenment"). In Eastern
Europe "enlightenment" was a relatively late phenomenon and it found
expression initially in the early-19th century, in a revival of Hebrew
language and literature and in the modern idea of Jews seeing themselves
as a people.
This distinction between a people and a religion was of course anathema to
Orthodox Jews, who still today regard Hebrew as a sacred language to be
used solely for prayers and religious studies and the Jewish people and
religion as indivisible. The concept of the Jews as people closely
mirrored the relatively new European idea of a homogeneous nation state.
An exception to this was the socialist "Bund" organisation whose members
rejected nationalism and later Zionism.
Some of these early proto-Zionists, calling themselves "Hovevei Zion"
(Lovers of Zion), started the first settlements in Palestine in the 1840's
with the help of Jewish philanthropists such as the Rothschilds and the
Montefiores who themselves were not Zionists, and a larger number of
immigrants followed after the Russian pogroms of 1881-82. These settlers
distinguished themselves by their deliberate segregation from the
indigenous population and their contempt for local customs and traditions.
This naturally aroused suspicion and hostility in the locals. (There were
long established religious Greek and German colonies, mostly in the midst
of Palestinian towns, to which the locals showed no objection). This
exclusivity was largely based on a sense of superiority common to
Europeans of the time, who believed they were the only advanced and truly
civilised society and in true colonial fashion looked down on "natives" or
ignored them altogether.
However, beyond that there was also a particular sense of superiority of
Jews towards all non-Jews. This belief in innate Jewish superiority had a
long tradition in rabbinical religious Jewish thinking, central to which
was the notion of the Jews as God's chosen people. Moshe Ben Maimon
(Maimonides) had been an exponent of this theory and quite often thinkers
with a more humanist outlook, e.g. Spinoza, were excommunicated. The
accepted thinking in religious communities was that Jews must on no
account mix in any way with gentiles for fear of being contaminated and
corrupted by them. This notion was so deeply ingrained that it quite
possibly still affected, albeit subconsciously, those Jews who had left
the townships and had become educated and enlightened. Thus the early
settlers from Eastern Europe transferred the "Stettl" (townlet) mentality
of segregation to Palestine, with the added belief in the nobility of
manual labour and in particular soil cultivation. In this they had been
influenced by Tolstoy and his writings.
The "father" of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl (1860-1904), came from a
totally different perspective. Dr. Herzl was a Viennese, emancipated,
secular journalist and author who was sent by his editor to Paris in 1894
to cover the Dreyfuss affair. Dreyfuss had been a captain in the French
Army who was falsely accused and convicted of treason, although he was
acquitted and completely cleared some years later. The case brought to
light the remainder of a strong streak of anti-Semitism prevalent in the
upper echelons of the French Army and in the French press, with profound
repercussions in emancipated Jewish circles. Herzl himself despaired of
the whole idea of emancipation and integration and felt that the only
solution to anti-Semitism lay in a Jewish Homeland. To that end he
approached various diplomats and notables, including the Ottoman Sultan,
but mainly European rulers, the great colonial powers of the time, and was
rewarded for his effort by being offered Argentina or Uganda by the
British as possible Jewish Homelands.
Herzl would have been quite happy with either of these countries, but when
the first Zionist Congress was convened in Basle in 1897 (it was to have
been in Augsburg but had to be transferred at the last moment because of
local rabbinical protests), he came up against Eastern European Jewry, by
far the greatest majority of participants, who, although broadly
emancipated and "enlightened" (orthodox Jews at that time completely
rejected any Jewish political movement and did not attend the congress),
would not accept any homeland other than the land of Zion. Not only had
some of them already settled in Palestine, there were strong remnants of
the religious/sentimental notion of a pilgrimage and possibly burial in
the Holy Land. The last toast in the Passover ceremony is "Next year in
Jerusalem" although this was a religious/sentimental rather than a
national aspiration, and it was common amongst the orthodox communities to
purchase a handful of soil purporting to come from the Holy Land to be
placed under the deceased's head.
Herzl was quick to realise that unless he accepted the "Land of Zion",
i.e. Palestinian option, he would have hardly any adherents. Even so this
solution was only definitely accepted after his death, during the 5th
Zionist Congress. Thus the Zionist movement started with a small section
of mainly eastern European Jews who saw the solution to anti-Semitism in
what they termed as a return to their "roots" and in a renewal of a Jewish
people in the land of their ancestors. Herzl wrote his book "Der
Judenstaat" (The State of the Jews) in which he wrote, inter alias, that
the Jews and their state will constitute "a rampart of Europe against
Asia, of civilisation against barbarism", and again regarding the local
population, "We shall endeavour to encourage the poverty-stricken
population to cross the border by securing work for it in the countries it
passes through, while denying it work in our own country. The process of
expropriation and displacement must be carried out prudently and
discreetly. Let (the landowners) sell us their land at exorbitant prices.
We shall sell nothing back to them."
Some early Zionists, such as Max Nordau, a French Zionist who visited
Palestine, were horrified; Nordau burst out in front of Herzl: "But we are
committing a grave injustice!" Some years later, in 1913, a prominent
Zionist thinker and writer, Ahad Ha'am (one of the people), wrote: "What
are our brothers doing? They were slaves in the land of their exile.
Suddenly they found themselves faced with boundless freedom ... and they
behave in a hostile and cruel manner towards the Arabs, trampling on their
rights without the least justification ... even bragging about this
behaviour."
But these early Zionists' dismay at the injustices to, and total lack of
recognition of, the indigenous population was silenced and indeed edited
out of Jewish history and other books, as was some of Herzl's writing. The
widely perceived Zionist truism of "a land without people for a people
without land" prevailed and within a matter of a few years the immigrants
were perceived as "sons of the land" (Bnei Ha'aretz or Ibna El-Ard)
whereas the inhabitants were seen as the aliens.
The Arab population of Palestine was well aware of the Zionist danger; as
early as 1896 a math teacher in Jerusalem wrote in the newspaper
"Philisteen": "I have no problems with Jews; it's the Zionists that I am
most concerned about." In 1916, after there had been an agreement with the
British Government that after the fall of the Ottoman Empire Palestine,
Lebanon and Syria (the fertile triangle) would gain independence, leaders
of the Arab communities called upon every Arab Muslim, Christian and Jew
to rise against the Ottomans. Many did so.
Following renewed efforts and lobbying after Herzl's death, the Balfour
Declaration in 1917-shortly after Palestine was conquered by Britain-that
granted Zionists a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, set the official seal of
approval on their aspirations. Protests and representations by local Arab
leaders were brushed aside. Lord Balfour wrote in 1919: "In Palestine, we
do not even propose to consult the inhabitants of the country and
(Zionism's) immediate needs and hopes for the future are much more
important than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who
presently inhabit Palestine". This idea was closely mirrored by an early
Zionist, Israel Zangwill, who wrote in 1920: There should be an Arab
exodus based on race distribution..a trek like that of the Boers from
Capetown.
Settlements grew slowly for a long time, but the systematic occupying
village lands that had not been officially documented since the respective
inhabitants had known for centuries what acreage belonged to each family,
as well as the frequent buying up of lands from absentee landlords, which
left tenant farmers homeless, contributed to the first Palestinian
uprising in 1921-22 and other outbursts of hostilities, including a
massacre of some 65 Jews in Hebron in 1929, after orthodox Jews from
Eastern Europe had founded a "Yeshiva" (a religious study centre) in the
town and had aroused the suspicions and hostility of the indigenous
population who prior to this had lived in peace and harmony for hundreds
of years with their non European Jewish neighbours. (A small number of the
original, non- European community, still lived in Hebron until recently
and repeatedly petitioned successive Israeli governments to evict the new
rightwing religious settlers who cause endless trouble to the Palestinian
population).
Another
contributing factor to growing Arab hostility was the policy of neither
employing Arabs nor buying their produce. This was termed "Hebrew work for
Hebrew workers". Zeev Jabotinsky the revisionist rightwing Zionist, wrote
in 1939:We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East.the Islamic
soul must be broomed out of Eretz Yisrael (One wonders how this sounded
to the many Arab and Eastern Jews in Palestine and elsewhere). The slogan
of Hebrew work for Hebrew workers was very much in force when I came to
Palestine in 1937. It was, however, not entirely and strictly enforced and
there were various examples of co-operation and good neighbourly
relations. This was particularly evident in Haifa, where our next-door
neighbours were Arabs and where large sections of the downtown area were
mixed. This lasted until the "liberation" of Haifa, when the most of the
Arab population of the city were expelled and only a small, run down area
(Wadi Nisnas) remained in what became effectively a ghetto. There were
other such examples in Jerusalem and other places.
For many years Zionism remained a minority movement of mainly Eastern
European Jews, excluding the whole religious establishment and most
central and western European Jews. My family's views on Zionism were
fairly typical of western European Jews who regarded this ideology as a
help line to those Jews, mainly eastern European ones, who had trouble
making ends meet). Last but not least, Zionism was quite meaningless to
non-European communities, who unbeknown to Herzl and his contemporaries,
form the majority of us. These communities were ignored by early Zionists
and indeed the latter had little interest in their aspirations till the
establishment of the state of Israel and after the "independence" war of
1948-49. After this the new state unleashed a massive propaganda campaign
to induce the Sephardi (of Spanish origin) and Oriental Jews to "ascend"
to the land of their ancestors, mainly to for demographic reasons- in 1948
only about one third of the population and about 10% of the land were Jews
or in Jewish hands-but also as cannon fodder. The same happened in the
1980s with the Jews of Ethiopia. However, upon arrival these non-European
newcomers were treated very much as inferior second- class citizens. They
were sprayed with DDT at their point of entry and within less than a
fortnight the men were drafted into the army, while their families were
usually accommodated in inferior reception camps or abandoned Arab houses.
This European dominance is still prevalent in modern Israel where for
example the national anthem even nowadays speaks about Jewish longing for
the East towards Zion, whereas for many of the non-European communities
Palestine lies to the West. Sadly, this has led to some groups of Sephardi
and Oriental Jews becoming extreme right-wing chauvinists, so as to
prove" their credentials.
Immigration ("Aliyah" = "ascent" in Zionist parlance) took off in
seriously large numbers with the rise of Hitler, who initially declared
himself quite sympathetic to Zionism, as had other right-wing anti-Semites
before him. New Jewish settlements mushroomed by leaps and bounds, leading
to a bitter and prolonged Palestinian uprising from 1936 till 1939, when
it was crushed by the British mandatory powers. But it was not until the
end of WW2 that the demographic issue came openly to the fore. Numerous
delegates from the Jewish Hagana (Defence underground movement) in
Palestine arrived at the displaced refugee centres in Europe in order to
prevent survivors from immigrating to any countries other than Palestine,
occasionally by force. Illegal ships packed with survivors tried
repeatedly to land in Palestine. On at least one occasion the occupants of
the ship Exodus, setting out from Germany, after being prevented from
landing by the British authorities, were offered asylum by France and
Denmark, but the then leader of the Jewish Yishuv (settlement), David Ben
Gurion, forbade this solution, deliberately forcing the hapless survivors
to land back in Germany, purely for propaganda porposes. Ben Gurion also
stated repeatedly that had there been a possibility prior to WWII to save
one million Jewish children by sending them to Britain or only half that
number by sending them to Britain, he would have always opted for the
latter.
With
the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 Zionism started to win the
hearts and minds of the majority of Jewish society. After the six day war
in 1967 the vast majority of Euro/American Jews became fervent supporters
of the Israeli state and since that time we have witnessed an increasing
and deliberate confluence of Judaism and Zionism, to the extent that today
it is widely regarded as treason and self- hate for a Jew to criticise the
state, let alone Zionism. In my view, this development was almost
inevitable given the preconception of an exclusive Jewish state. If it is
not a religious state, i.e. a theocracy, what is a Jewish state and what
purpose does it serve? It is certainly not an ethnic entity; one only has
to walk through Israeli streets to realize that we are as diverse as the
countries we have originated from. As for the argument that Israel
provides a bolthole, a safe haven from anti-Semitic attacks, this is
hardly sustainable because firstly, Israel today is extremely powerful
with huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons and secondly, at present it is
probably the most unsafe country for Jews to reside in. Moreover, the
claim that nothing like the holocaust should ever happen again is true,
but only insofar as it applies to the whole world. We are not seeking
homogenous ethnic states all over the world to rid us of the threat of
genocide, and Israel is no exception to this. In a post-colonial world the
notion of a homogenous nation state based on demography is completely
unacceptable and ridiculous. How then, can Israel and the majority of its
citizens justify their claim and indeed be convinced that theirs is a
modern, democratic society? (I shall demonstrate later that Israel was
never a democracy to its Arab citizens and is no longer a democracy to its
own people.) The last resort, when all logical justifications fail, is
that God has promised the land to his people, namely us. (This rather begs
the question of where it leaves a non-believing Jew). I have found over
the years, and particularly in the last 30 or so years, that the numbers
of young people wearing the skullcap and generally observing at least some
of the religious laws has increased dramatically and I believe this is no
coincidence.
The religious establishment has gone along with the general flow and has,
indeed, profited from it. Since the late 50's there has also been a
notable and frightening change in the orthodox community, which led to the
establishment in 1974 of the "Gush Emunim" (the block of the faithful),
initiated by Rabbi Tsvi Yehuda Kook the younger in the USA. This is the
fundamentalist movement which believes in accepting the state of Israel
and striving to make it entirely and exclusively Jewish in all areas that
the Torah mentioned as God's promise to his people. (They do not appear to
have noticed that nowhere in the Old Testament does God say that the Jews
will take the land from its inhabitants). Gush Emunim also form the
backbone of continuing and expanding settlements inside the Occupied
Territories. Prior to this time orthodox Jewry played no important role in
politics except in pressurising successive governments to introduce more
Jewish religious regulations into state law. The ultra-orthodox group
"Neturei Karta" has never recognised the state of Israel and is exempt
from army service.
Although Gush Emunim is small in numbers, they wield disproportionate
influence and power since successive Israeli governments covertly (and
nowadays overtly) endorsed their aspirations. Their followers have been
allocated special army units so as to enable them to observe Jewish
religious laws and rituals in every detail (although even in the regular
army only Kosher food is served and the Sabbath is observed as far as
possible). These units have a reputation as dedicated crack-troops. What
is less well known but silently condoned is their refusal to give medical
aid or even drive wounded persons to hospital on the Sabbath unless they
are Jews. But in my view this is an extremely shortsighted and dangerous
road, leading in the end to a fundamentalist theocracy much like that of
the Taliban in Afghanistan. The fundamentalists' belief is that the
Messianic age is already upon us and that any obstacles to a total
elimination of any non-Jews in the promised land, i.e. the whole of what
was Palestine including the Holy Mount, is God's punishment for sinful
Jews, namely all those who are westernised and secular. This fully
exonerates, and indeed sanctifies, a man like Baruch Goldstein who
murdered 29 Palestinians praying in the Ibrahimi mosque, as well as the
assassination of PM. Yitzhak Rabin. Like the Hamas movement, which was
initially encouraged by Israel's secret services, this is another genie
that, having been let out of the bottle, can no longer be controlled.
This
version of a Jewish theocracy is not accepted by secular Israelis who form
the bulk of the population but most of whom still cling to their belief
that Israel is a modern democracy. It was never a democracy to its Arab
population, starting from birth, when Israeli nationals receive Jewish,
Arab or Druze nationality rather than Israeli one, and continuing with the
Histadruts (the most powerful trade union) continued policy of promoting
the rights of Hebrew workers and Hebrew culture. Arab citizens cannot
serve in the army, which in turn deprives them of further/higher education
grants and other help available to those who have completed their three
years compulsory service. The budget for Arab-Israeli towns and villages
is approximately one third of that of their Jewish counterparts. Land is
still continuously expropriated from Arab and Beduin villages and
settlements, while according to recent statistics by Human Rights Watch
some 250,000 persons, descendants of those who managed to hide or flee to
nearby hills when the Israeli army destroyed their villages in 1948, can
never reclaim their lands even though their former village have been razed
to the ground and are uninhabited and despite many of them still holding
the title deeds. Moreover, no Israeli land can be sold to Arabs.
Only a
month ago the government tried to oust Arab MKs from the Knesset
(parliament) when they expressed support for their fellow Palestinians in
the Occupied Territories. Fortunately on this occasion the High Court
overturned this ruling.
Democratic rights of Jewish Israelis are also increasingly being eroded.
The number of refuseniks, young people refusing to enlist in the Israeli
Army, is growing despite the personal cost to themselves. Israel refuses
to recognise conscientious objectors and imprisons them repeatedly, so
that some of them have now served a prison sentences for a total of almost
two years. In addition they forfeit the various benefits that veterans
receive such as grants for higher education/apprenticeships, help with
employment and housing. Academics are nowadays far from secure in their
academic freedom: one of them, Ilan Pappe of Haifa University, was about
to be expelled and only an international protest forced the Universitys
authority to suspend the expulsion. Likewise, a MA student at the same
university who wrote his dissertation on yet another massacre he unearthed
(in Al-Tanturah), was initially awarded a distinction for his paper;
however, a year later his degree was withdrawn altogether and he was
expelled from Haifa University.
The
Israeli Peace Bloc (Gush Shalom) has likewise come under fire. Some months
ago they wrote an open letter to all officers serving in the Occupied
Territories which warned them that by ordering their troops to execute
actions in breach of the Geneva Convention of human rights they could be
liable to be brought before the international court of Human Rights at a
later date. PM Sharon was incensed and claimed that the activists were
betraying Israel to our enemies (sic). He wanted them tried for treason
but at the time there was no Israeli law to try them under. This was
speedily amended by a sweeping new law, now in place, which makes the
provision of any information of whatever kind that might harm Israeli
security a treasonable crime.
It
seems a bitter irony that a movement that initially saw itself as
progressive, liberal and secular should find itself in an alliance with,
and held to ransom by, the most reactionary forces, but in my view this
was inevitable from its inception although the founders, and most of us
(including people like myself, growing up in Palestine in the thirties)
did not foresee this and certainly would not have wished it.
Nowadays the deliberate blurring of the distinction between Zionism and
Judaism, which includes a rewriting of ancient as well as modern history,
is exploited to stifle any criticism of Israel's policies and actions,
however extreme and inhuman they may be. This, incidentally also plays
directly into anti-Semitic prejudices by equating Israeli arrogance,
brutality and complete denial of basic human rights to non-Jews with
general Jewish characteristics.
Growing
up in Israel makes it quite difficult to see all the historical
falsifications and myths that underpin Zionist ideology except for
academics, and some of them have indeed researched and publicised the
truth, often at great cost to themselves.
Zionism
has now assumed the all-embracing mantle of righteousness; it claims to
represent and to speak for all Jews and has adopted the slogan of "my
country right or wrong," with the West tolerating Israel's continuous
breaches of human rights that it would not tolerate if perpetrated by any
other country. Few Western states and not many Jews dare take a stand
against Israel, particularly as many of the former still feel a sense of
unease and guilt about the holocaust which Zionists Jews inside and
outside Israel have exploited in what to me seems an almost obscene
manner.
In the USA, the Jewish Zionist lobby is still strong enough to keep
successive governments on board. Moreover, the USA regards Israel as an
important strategic ally in its fight against Middle Eastern "rogue"
states that have supplanted the Soviet Union as the great satanic enemy of
the free world. The latest phenomenon is that of American Christian
Fundamentalists who advocate the return of all Jews to their God-given
land. I fear that unless and until Israel is judged by the same criteria
as other modern states, this is unlikely to change. It is the duty of
everyone, and particularly of Jews with a conscience and a sense of
justice to speak out against the falsifications of history by the Zionist
lobby, and the dangerous misconceptions it has led the West to accept.
It is
also high time to build a boycott campaign similar to the anti-apartheid
one against Israel. (Called for by Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu
among others).
Hanna Braun, London, September 2001 (updated February 2006).
Bibliography:
Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Prof. Israel Shahak (died 2nd July
2001)
Fundamental Judaism in Israel, Prof. Israel Shahak
A
History of the Jews, Ancient and Modern, Ilan Halevi
Western
Scholarship and the History of Palestine, Rev. Dr. Michael Prior (ed.)
Arab
Nationalism and the Palestinians 1850-1939; Abdelaziz A. Ayyad
Image
and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict; Dr. Norman Finkelstein
The
Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict; Prof. Ilan Pappe
Israels Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood; Idith Zertal
The
Myths of Zionism; John Rose
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