Standing with a placard bearing the words “JEWS SAY CEASEFIRE NOW”, a Jewish woman protesting the genocide in Gaza is verbally assaulted by two other Jewish women, counter-protesting in support of Israel.
Pro-Israel protesters to a Jewish pro-Palestine activist: “I wish they’ll rape you alive”
The verbal assault is difficult to watch, feeling almost as if the woman with the placard is actually undergoing a physical attack. She not only stands her ground with immense dignity, but also clearly states the truths that the two women attacking her either do not know or have chosen to deny.
As the very disturbing verbal abuse is hurled at her, the woman protesting for Palestinian rights responds by listing the crimes and human rights violations committed by Israel, saying at one point that “Israel controls whether they have water”, before being cut off by one of the pro-Israel supporters who shouts, “we generously give them water.” To this, the woman suffering the abuse simply answers, “It’s their land that was taken from them”, going on to state that 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed in the 1948 Nakba.
If there is anything that shows that Palestinians should not despair and lose hope, it is this woman and the many, many other Jews doing the same, at times with great risk to themselves. Jews who not only know the truth, but speak it, fearlessly and steadfastly. Without the Jewish voice, Zionism cannot be exposed and defeated for the racist, supremacist ideology it is. And if Zionism is not defeated and consigned to the shameful litany of 20th century ethnoviolent ideologies, there will be neither liberation for Palestinians nor peace for all between the river and the sea.
Palestinians need to recognize that their struggle is not simply about liberation and human rights – not even, not at this late stage; it is about defeating Zionism, which is enemy to both them and Jews. Those two pitiful women hurling unrepeatable abuse are indeed not to be hated, and instead should be seen, as no doubt the courageous woman and target of their abuse sees them, as victim-products of Zionism. Palestinians must recognise their struggle is neither complete nor assured of success unless it unites with that of Jews, such that the two are indistinguishable.
And just as Jews fight for Palestinians rights, Palestinians must fight with Jews against antisemitism.
In an article titled “BEN-GURION’S NOTORIOUS QUOTES: THEIR POLEMICAL USES & ABUSES” (here), Ralph Seliger, a writer on Israel and Jewish cultural and political issues, attempts to grapple with David Ben-Gurion’s candidness regarding the practices and goals of Zionism, as well as his supremacist, messianic attitude towards the Palestinians whose homeland he had stolen – his own word – to establish a Jewish state.
Seliger’s attempt at defence and justification of Ben-Gurion’s remarks appears in an email exchange between himself and a number of anti-Zionist Jews. The quotes Seliger addresses in his justificatory analysis are not only considered highly controversial, distasteful, and disturbing for their racist and anti-humanist content (explaining why Seliger feels the need to defend them); they have in actual fact proven catastrophic and deadly to the Palestinian people, who have lost their homeland and continue to be slaughtered and ethnically cleansed by Israel, Ben-Gurion’s apartheid creation.
Whilst I have reproduced the selected sof Ben-Gurion here below (What did David Ben-Gurion say?), I shall only reproduce the 6 points Seliger makes as part of his attempt to justify, what he himself admits, is Ben-Gurion “clearly advocating ethnic cleansing against the Arabs” (entire text evailable here):
To sum up my reaction [writes Seliger]:
1. The Jews were engaged in a life or death struggle with the Arabs of Palestine, mostly because of the choice of the latter. 2. Selected quotes of one leader are not representative of an entire spectrum of parties and factions that equally saw themselves as “Zionist.” (They might not even be so representative of his movement or even of him; they were uttered in times of extreme pressure.) 3. When is the bigotry, intolerance, ignorance and violence of the Arab world going to become PC for the left to examine honestly and completely? 4. How many countries in the world were not born of historical “sin” of some sort or other? 5. When are we going to stop talking ancient history? 6. When are we going to stop talking about “Zionism” and start relating to this conflict in human terms? Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians have to see each other as fellow human beings entitled to equal respect, rights and protections.
Taking Seliger’s attempts at justification of the Ben-Gurion quotes on ethnic cleansing one by one, let us critically examine them from the perspective of universally recognised human rights and ethical norms:
1. The Jews were engaged in a life or death struggle with the Arabs of Palestine, mostly because of the choice of the latter.
First, from a human rights perspective, the context of conflict does not justify policies promoting ethnic cleansing or the disregard for the rights and well-being of the Palestinian Arab population. Human rights principles emphasize the protection of all individuals, regardless of the historical or political context. Resorting to extreme measures, such as forced displacement, cannot be morally justified by the intensity of the conflict.
Second, Seliger, without irony it seems, attempts to portray the resistance of Palestinians to their proposed ethnic cleansing as actual justification for carrying it out. That is, Seliger says, Jews were forced into ethnic cleansing mostly because of the choice of Palestinians to resist the taking of their homeland by Zionists. By this, Seliger denies Palestinians the right to resist what would rob them of their homeland, accusing them of pushing Jews into a life and death struggle simply by virtue of their resistance to their own dispossession. The arrogance of this view is second only to the quotes Seliger is attempting to justify, and were we to adopt it as an ethical guide could adequately justify occupying our neighbour’s garden simply because he resisted our attempt to do so. It was because he resisted, and threatened us,” says Seliger to the judge, “that we evicted him, your honour.”
2. Selected quotes of one leader are not representative of an entire spectrum of parties and factions that equally saw themselves as “Zionist.”
While it’s true that not all Zionists may have shared Ben-Gurion’s views advocating human rights violations and discriminatory attitudes towards Palestinians, we should remember that only Ben-Gurion is under examination here. Proper evaluation of the moral implications of actions and statements specificaly by Ben-Gurion must be conducted irrespective of the diversity of opinions within Zionism. Dismissing these quotes as unrepresentative does not address the ethical questions they pose. This can be seen as an attempt by Seliger to deflect attention from Ben-Gurion’s advocacy of ethnic cleansing, made all the more poignent by the fact that Ben-Gurion was not just a Zionist, but a leading Zionist who later became the first Prime Minister of Israel.
3. When is the bigotry, intolerance, ignorance and violence of the Arab world going to become PC for the left to examine honestly and completely?
Pointing out the shortcomings of others does not negate the need for accountability. Examining human rights violations in one context should not preclude addressing issues in another. Ethical norms demand a consistent approach to evaluating violations, regardless of the parties involved. Focusing on the actions of others should not divert attention from addressing one’s own responsibilities and moral obligations.
4. How many countries in the world were not born of historical “sin” of some sort or other?
Interesting that Seliger uses the word sin, even in quotation marks. He should note, however, that acknowledging historical wrongs does not diminish the importance of ongoing human rights violations, particularly when accused of them oneself. While many nations have sinful histories, it does not absolve any country or leader from accountability for human rights abuses.
5. When are we going to stop talking ancient history?
Human rights violations, regardless of when they occurred, demand acknowledgment and redress. Seliger’s attempt to cast Ben-Gurion’s quotes as “ancient history” is perhaps the most disingenuous of his justifications. The problem with Seliger’s apologetics is that Ben-Gurion is not ancient history. His version of Zionism is very much alive in Israel today, both in theory and practice, particularly in light of the recent comments made by the far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Amichai Eliyahu, among others. Speaking in the Knesset, Smotrich threatened Israel’s Palestinian citizens with ethnic cleansing, cautioning them they “Are here by mistake, because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job.” In an interview, Eliyahu suggested wiping out Palestinians in Gaza with a nuclear bomb.
Historical injustices and the intention to commit them often have lasting consequences, and Ben-Gurion’s are a text book case. Dismissing as ancient history the comments and actions of the Zionists of yester-year unfortunately doesn’t work, because the Zionists of today are still calling for them. Ben-Gurion’s words and spirit live on in Zionists such as Smotrich, Eliyahu and Ben Gver, all of whom cannot be seen as anything other than Israel’s version of the Nazis.
6. When are we going to stop talking about “Zionism” and start relating to this conflict in human terms?
One doesn’t really know what to respond to this. How can we stop talking about Zionism when it is still on the rampage and becoming increasingly more vicious? (See response 5, above).
In summary, Seliger applies a series of bad-faith arguments in an attempt to negate the intention and execution of human rights violations advocated by Ben-Gurion, as stated in the selected quotes. He attempts to draw out a supposed irrelevance and redundancy of the quotes over time, uses false equivalences and ad hominem attacks, and finally, for good measure, displays wilful blindness to the continuing realities of Zionism precisely as advocated by such extreme, and one might say, entirely heartless figures as Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion may have been the father of Israel, but, by his own words, he had to advocate the rape of Palestine to give it birth.
The sacrifice of Palestinians to obtain Israel was not the only sacrifice Ben-Gurion was prepared to make. By his own words, he was also prepared to sacrifice Jews to this end, in particular Jewish children (quote 6 below). Through Ben-Gurion alone, a significant voice, Zionism is exposed for the heartless and morally bankrupt ideology that it is. It is not the saviour of all Jews (and this, through sacrifice of Palestinians), but as Ben-Gurion himself tells us, only of some Jews, should that ever fit Zionism’s goals. (On this topic see What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7 by Jonathan Cook, a Nazareth-based journalist.)
To Palestinians, Zionism is Nazism, an ideology intent on their elimination one way or another. No amount of apologetic analysis can deny it, nor rehabilitate figures such as Ben-Gurion. Although, there may be some hope for Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich and all the rest of those yearning to “finish what Ben-Gurion started”. That is, if only they would listen to Seliger, and “stop talking about Zionism and start relating to this conflict in human terms”.
What did David Ben-Gurion say?
“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” — David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.” — David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
“We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.” — David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar’s Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
Ben Gurion also warned in 1948: Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes: “The old will die and the young will forget.”
“We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.” — David Ben-Gurion May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.” — Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).
“It’s not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion.” –Ben Gurion
“Every school child knows that there is no such thing in history as a final arrangement — not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, and not with regard to international agreements.” — Ben Gurion, War Diaries, 12/03/1947 following Israel’s “acceptance” of the U.N. Partition of 11/29/1947 (Simha Flapan, “Birth of Israel,” p.13)
“We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population? ‘Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘ Drive them out! ‘ “ — Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.
Partition: “after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine “ — Ben Gurion, p.22 “The Birth of Israel, 1987” Simha Flapan.
“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan. One does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today — but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concerns of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.” — P. 53, “The Birth of Israel, 1987” Simha Flapan
October, 1936, during the Jewish Agency Executive meeting Ben-Gurion arguing in favor of transfer as a policy, he said “We are not a state and Britain will not do it for us…” although “there is nothing wrong in the idea.”
“If it was permissible to move an Arab from the Galilee to Judea, why it is impossible to move an Arab from Hebron to Transjordan, which is much closer? There are vast expanses of land there and we are over crowded….Even the High Commission agrees to a transfer to Transjordan if we equip the peasants with land and money. If the Peel Commission and the London Government accept, we’ll remove the land problem from the agenda.”
The Arabs, Ben-Gurion claimed, would not become landless as a result of Zionist land acquisition; they would be transferred to Transjordan.
October 29, 1936 the 21 member of the Jewish Agency Executive endorsed the proposal of a transfer of displaced Arab farmers to Transjordan. Only two of the four non-Zionist members opted to dissent. — Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, citing protocols of the Executive meeting, p. 261
12 July 1937, Ben-Gurion entered in his diary: “The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own feet during the days of the First and Second Temple” – a Galilee free from Arab population.
Ben-Gurion went so far to write: “We must prepare ourselves to carry out” the transfer [emphasis in original]
27 July 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We have never wanted to dispossess the Arabs [but] because Britain is giving them part of the country which had been promised to us, it is fair that the Arabs in our state be transferred to the Arab portion”
5 October 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.”
“It is very possible that the Arabs of the neighboring countries will come to their aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped, but because behind us there stands a still larger force, superior in quantity and quality …the whole younger generation of Jews from Europe and America.” Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, p.297-299, p. 330-331. See also Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p. 182-189
Ben-Gurion in an address to the central committee of the Histadrut on 30 December 1947: “In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about a million, including almost 40 percent non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority…. There can be no stable and strong Jewish State so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent.”
On the 6th of February 1948, during a Mapai Party Council, Ben-Gurion responded to a remark from a member of the audience that “we have no land there” [in the hills and mountains west of Jerusalem] by saying: “The war will give us the land. The concepts of “ours” and “not ours” are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning” (Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 6 February 1948. p.211)
Addressing the Mapai Council the following day, Ben-Gurion declared: “From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema… there are no Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been so Jewish. In many Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single Arab. I do not assume that this will change… What had happened in Jerusalem… is likely to happen in many parts of the country …in the six, eight or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country.” (Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 7 February 1948. p. 210-211)
And two months later, Ben-Gurion speaking to the Zionist Actions Committee on 6 April, Ben-Gurion declared: “We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area….I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of the Arab population.” [Ben-Gurion, Behilahem Yisrael, Tel Aviv, Mapai Press, 1952, pp. 86-87]
Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary on 12 July 1937: “the compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the projected Jewish State…. We have to stick to this conclusion the same way we grabbed the Balfour Declaration, more than that, the same way we grabbed at Zionism itself.” (Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, p. 299)
In summary, Ben-Gurion’s statements are as abhorrent and indefensible as the subsequent crimes against humanity resulting from them, and which have been committed by Ben-Gurion, his fellow Zionists of the time, and all Zionists since to the present-day and ongoing massacre by Israel of Palestinians in Gaza.
Hypothetical news reporter Ifit Wereso reports on the statement issued by the IPRM in wake of the collapse of the Zionist led coalition government in Israel.
Marwan Barouki, the leader of the Israel-Palestine Liberation Movement (IPRM), which is in alliance with the Jewish led Palestine-Israel Liberation Movement (PIRM) headed by Stefania Goldberg, today addressed Jews all over the world in a brief statement.
“Had you come as Jews, you would have met with no resistance from us. But that now is the past. We understand why and do not condemn you, and ask that you understand why we resisted you and do not condemn us. Let Zionism and nationalism fall away, let us stand together as one people in one land, so that we may begin the process of healing and building a new society, one based on equality, empathy, selflessness and the shared gaols of happiness, prosperity and peace.”
PIRM will shortly be releasing a statement that is widely expected to echo Barouki’s words. It is thought the two statements were drafted jointly by both organizations. It is also expected that the unification of the two parties will also be announced at a not too distant date, forming one body in the struggle against Zionism, the last remaining settler-colonial ideology. In the wake of the collapse of the Zionist led coalition government in Israel, questions are being asked whether Zionism is not now a relic from the past, with many Jews having deserted the Zionist parties and many more renouncing Zionism altogether, seeing it as a hindrance to peace and the root cause of the 127-year conflict.
In his book Because We Say So, the renowned American Jewish intellectual Noam Chomsky recounts his one time experiences in Gaza:
“An old man in Gaza held a placard that read: ‘You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.’”
Exploring how Jewish dissent against Zionism aligns with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, arguing that unity in a shared struggle against Zionism offers a quicker path to peace than narrow nationalist liberation.
There is quite a remarkable phenomenon, which though it is in plain sight, goes almost unnoticed. It may occasionally receive a little airtime if the event is big enough and the times momentous, as they are at present. Most of the time, however, to the vast majority of people, and in particular those who can effect change, this phenomenon is either invisible or ignored. I am referring, of course, to Jewish support of Palestinians, as well as Jewish resistance to Zionism and to Israel in its current guise as Zionist creation.
Moreover, even in times when this phenomenon of Jewish resistance to Zionist supremacism in support of Palestinians receives attention, it is as a fleeting curiosity to the point of dismissiveness. While the big media networks such as the BBC and CCN give generous airtime to Israeli politicians and army spokespersons, as well as those who defend a Zionist, apartheid Israel, other than a brief clip of Jews occupying the Washington Capitol or Grand Central Station, little to no air time is given to anti-Zionist Jews in interviews and analysis to meaningfully present their stance.
Gabor Maté: one of many esteemed Jewish Israeli voices speaking on Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is a question by itself as to why anti-Zionist Jews – that is, Jews who stand against the destructive and divisive ideology of Zionism – are side-lined in the general debate. Though it is not a difficult question to answer as it happens. Suffice to say that it is because anti-Zionist Jews, by their mere existence, expose the falsity that Zionism is synonymous with Judaism and with being Jewish, and that it stands for all Jews everywhere, in defence of Jewish identity and for their protection as a people.
That brings us to another question: why are there anti-Zionist Jews to begin with? This too is not difficult to answer. First, Jews have a long history of countering injustice wherever it may manifest. Second, Jews who stand against Zionism recognise that Zionism is their enemy also. These points are profoundly addressed by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and it is worthwhile quoting their stance to get a full appreciation:
“Jewish Voice for Peace is guided by a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people. We unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter to those ideals.
We know that opposing Zionism, or even discussing it, can be painful, can strike at the deepest trauma and greatest fears of many of us. Zionism is a nineteenth-century political ideology that emerged in a moment where Jews were defined as irrevocably outside of a Christian Europe. European antisemitism threatened and ended millions of Jewish lives — in pogroms, in exile, and in the Holocaust.
Through study and action, through deep relationship with Palestinians fighting for their own liberation, and through our own understanding of Jewish safety and self-determination, we have come to see that Zionism was a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of our ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe.
While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others. Our own history teaches us how dangerous this can be.
Palestinian dispossession and occupation are by design. Zionism has meant profound trauma for generations, systematically separating Palestinians from their homes, land, and each other. Zionism, in practice, has resulted in massacres of Palestinian people, ancient villages and olive groves destroyed, families who live just a mile away from each other separated by checkpoints and walls, and children holding onto the keys of the homes from which their grandparents were forcibly exiled.
Because the founding of the state of Israel was based on the idea of a “land without people,” Palestinian existence itself is resistance. We are all the more humbled by the vibrance, resilience, and steadfastness of Palestinian life, culture, and organizing, as it is a deep refusal of a political ideology founded on erasure.
In sharing our stories with one another, we see the ways Zionism has also harmed Jewish people. Many of us have learned from Zionism to treat our neighbors with suspicion, to forget the ways Jews built home and community wherever we found ourselves to be. Jewish people have had long and integrated histories in the Arab world and North Africa, living among and sharing community, language and custom with Muslims and Christians for thousands of years.
By creating a racist hierarchy with European Jews at the top, Zionism erased those histories and destroyed those communities and relationships. In Israel, Jewish people of color – from the Arab world, North Africa, and East Africa – have long been subjected to systemic discrimination and violence by the Israeli government. That hierarchy also creates Jewish spaces where Jews of color are marginalized, our identities and commitments questioned & interrogated, and our experiences invalidated. It prevents us from seeing each other — fellow Jews and other fellow human beings — in our full humanity.
Zionist interpretations of history taught us that Jewish people are alone, that to remedy the harms of antisemitism we must think of ourselves as always under attack and that we cannot trust others. It teaches us fear, and that the best response to fear is a bigger gun, a taller wall, a more humiliating checkpoint.
Rather than accept the inevitability of occupation and dispossession, we choose a different path. We learn from the anti-Zionist Jews who came before us, and know that as long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish dissent to it. Especially as we face the violent antisemitism fueled by white nationalism in the United States today, we choose solidarity. We choose collective liberation. We choose a future where everyone, including Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, can live their lives freely in vibrant, safe, equitable communities, with basic human needs fulfilled.”
Though it will sound very strange to some ears, the really salient note here is “collective liberation”. Currently, the Palestinian struggle is seen worldwide as a struggle solely for liberation of Palestinians, their land and their rights. However, this narrow view is not only a hindrance to justice, it is also mistaken, because it excludes the other party to the injustices of Zionism. As anti-Zionist Jews have recognised for over a century, aside from the injustice wrought on Palestinians, Jews have also been robbed by Zionism of a greater and richer existence in the region, more than anything the supremacism of Zionism can ever offer Jews. To quote again from the JVP: “Jewish people have had long and integrated histories in the Arab world and North Africa, living among and sharing community, language and custom with Muslims and Christians for thousands of years.”
Jewish Israeli scholar Avi Shlaim speaking on the forgotten history of Arab Jews
Zionism has destroyed that world, and in its place created a country and imposed itself on a region in which Jews, rather than feeling safe and at home, must always live in fear, where they must perpetually live by the principle “that the best response to fear is a bigger gun, a taller wall, a more humiliating checkpoint”. It is small wonder that Jews who know the historical truth about themselves as a people so strongly resist Zionism.
But there is not only the loss to Jews of a rich heritage in the wider region, there is also the moral compromise forced upon Jews who do not reject Zionism. Zionism is un-Jewish, and indeed it is anti-Jewish in the most virulent sense. To quote the great Jewish sage Hillel, when asked to teach the Torah to a potential convert whilst he stood on one foot, Hillel replied: “Do not do to others that which is hateful to you. That is Judaism. All the rest is commentary.” And, we might add, that is humanism.
Jews who do not reject Zionism are no different to Muslims who do not reject Islamism, or white people who do not reject White Supremacists who claim to be standing in their name. All supremacist ideologies and systems, whether Slavery, Fascism, Nazism, White Supremacism, Islamism or Zionism, require the violation of humanist principles to achieve their goals, and in turn morally compromise not only those who actively perpetuate these ideologies, but also those who fail to reject them whilst accepting the benefits. As a supremacist ideology like any other, Zionism’s violation of humanist principles through its possession of the land for one group via the erasure of another, has not only harmed Palestinians, it also inflicts a deep moral wound on all Jews who fail to denounce it.
A great Jewish sage of our time foresaw the moral injury Zionism would inflict on Jews. Speaking in the 1930s, Albert Einstein warned of the “inner damage to Judaism from the creation of a Jewish state with boarders and an army”.[1] And in 1956, eight years after Israel’s imposition in Palestine, and observing how Israel’s policies towards the Arabs were already developing, Einstein wrote to the Jewish Agency warning that “…the attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people.”
Einstein understood that Zionism would force Jews to go against Judaism’s deepest held precept as stated so clearly by Hillel. Zionism’s violation of this ethical core of Judaism, which is a universal to the whole of humanity, injures everyone who sees themselves as a Jew, indeed more broadly as a humanist, yet does not stand against Zionism and all forms of supremacism.
Keeping the discussion focused on Palestine, it is inescapable that those Jews who do not reject Zionism currently do not live as humanists but as oppressors. They do not live as Hillel exhorts the potential convert to Judaism to live. There is no way round this conclusion, and cannot be said in any other way. Jews who do not reject Zionism cannot be exempted from the same criticism that Muslims or Christians are rightly subject to when they fail to stand against the prejudices and supremacisms of their creed, whether it is homophobia, misogyny, religious hatred and so on. In every sense, failure to denounce is tantamount to support.
Liberating Palestine Is Not Enough
It is important to note that the inner damage inflicted on Jews as a collective by Zionism will not be healed with the liberation of Palestinians alone. To fully heal that spiritual wound and recover those moral standards, which Einstein foresaw would be sacrificed on the alter of Zionism, Jews must be part of the liberation process, both as liberators and as those to be liberated. Because, and though it will surprise and perhaps even shock many, the majority of Jews are as much victims of Zionism as Palestinians.
This all now raises a third question: is it time to unify the struggle in recognition that there is more than one party who is victim to Zionism? To unify and redefine the struggle from being solely a liberation of Palestinians to being a struggle to defeat Zionism and consign it to history? Because it is clear that as long as Zionism continues to claim it speaks for all Jews, Jews as a collective can neither regain the former moral high ground of centuries of humanist existence nor be effective in liberating Palestinians. It is not enough to restore Palestine. Zionism must end.
It is surely in realisation of a joint struggle that peace and justice for all have their best and possibly only chance of being realised. We need to advancing beyond a struggle with the solitary goal of liberation of Palestine, to one of a joint struggle against the divisive ideology of Zionism and its harm to all of us. A struggle that advocates not only for a restoration of Palestine, but, as JVP and other Jewish and Palestinian groups advocate, for the creation of the state that should have at one time been created for both Jews and Palestinians, not simply as equals but as one people, as they were in the Palestine of the early 20th century. One people of Muslims, Christians and Jews in a secular democratic state. It does not matter which constituted the majority back then. The important point is that the identities of each is inextricably and indelibly linked to the land. Without the diversity of the people who inhabited the land before Zionism wrought its destruction, the land is incomplete and likely never see peace.
Neither the UN nor any external party, whether diplomatic or military, can bring about lasting peace in the region without the support of the majority of Jews. Lasting peace and the eventual restoration of one harmonious people of Jews, Christians and Muslims cannot be achieved without Jewish struggle. Profound recognition is owed to those Jews who, working within Jewish communities that have yet to acknowledge the truth about this supremacist and now fully genocidal ideology, have courageously opposed Zionism from its inception to the present day.
That is what it will take. If Palestinians are to be free, and there is to be peace and prosperity for all, Jews must be free of Zionism first.
There are several final points to note.
First, whilst Hamas’s killings on October 7 of unarmed Israelis can be explained in the context of the same being done to unarmed Palestinains during a 75 year settler-colonial project, they cannot be ethically justified. However, it is important to note that this necessarily falls short of condemnation of Hamas itself and its struggle, because we cannot condemn Hamas in isolation. If we are to condemn Hamas we must also condemn Israel for murderously existing for 75 years in a land where there is another people. That said, it is better to refrain from condemning either, acknowledge both as being locked in a lawless eye-for-an-eye world, and demand that both step back from violence. Such a move can be realised by establishing an international peace keeping force in the region, a move Palestinians agree to, but Israel currently rejects. Lives will be saved, and a space created in which level-headed engagement can take place.
Second, just as there needs to be a shift within the wider Jewish consciousness rejecting Zionism and re-embracing humanist principles, there also needs to be a shift in Arab consciousness. Contrary to misconceptions promoted by Zionists, Arabs do not irrationally hate Jews, despite what Israel has wrought on them in the region. They understand the enemy are not Jews (nor even Israel, were it to be freed from the stranglehold of Zionism). Palestinians and Arabs in general know very well it is Zionism that has brought misery on them. However, this is not enough. Palestinians and other Arabs need to remind and reaffirm to themselves who the Jews are as a group. In other words, Arabs need to re-visit the past and remember that the near entirety of their history was as one people of Jews, Christians and Muslims, prosperously at peace and living together in Palestine and the wider Arab world.
Perhaps it is not too outrageous to even envisage a day when Jews will immigrate to Arab countries to live, where they will once again contribute richly to society and culture, and feel at home there again.
Finally, Palestinians should actively fight against antisemitism just as many Jews actively fight against Zionism and for Palestine. This is not only the correct ethical thing to do, it is also a practical step that will help re-unite Palestinians and Jews.
[1] “Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State, with borders, an army and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain — especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish State.” JTA
To those who call Hamas animals and seek to extract a condemnation of their actions as inhuman and barbaric, consider this:
As inhuman as Hamas’s actions may be, they are matched and exceeded by the inhumanity Zionists have wrought on Palestinians for nearly eight decades. It is further inhuman to deny and ignore this historical, and still ongoing, inhumanity by Zionists towards Palestinians.
For examples of ongoing Zionist atrocities and crimes against humanity, visit the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, who state on their website that “Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations”. Also view this recent threat by Zionist Jewish supremacists to attack, kill and ethnically cleanse all Palestinians in the West Bank, as reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz: ‘Wait for the Great Nakba’: Palestinians Find Threatening Leaflets on Cars in West Bank
The starting point for an honest investigation of a history of inhumanity in the region is the Nakba of 1948. The first point to note is that Zionists set the precedent for civilian massacre, including many women and children, on 8 April 1948 in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. Around 150 villagers were shot or butchered in that village alone, as part of the strategy to raise panic among Palestinians and cause them to flee. This and other atrocities were successful, and around 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from Palestine by the end of the 12948 war. There were also strong allegations of sexual violence by Zionist militias at Deir Yassin, most notably from Assistant Inspector-General Richard Catling of the British Palestine Police Force of the time (Wikipedia).
Deir Yassin still stands today, now housing an Israeli psychiatric hospital. Perhaps this is a statement on the insanity of considering only Hamas and not Zionists as having a particular and unique claim to civilian massacre.
Hypothetical news reporter Ifit Wereso reports on the recent announcement by the global peace movement PRMAZ on how it will refer to Israel in future commentary and dialogue.
Since the October 7 flare up in the decades long war between Israel and Hamas, the BBC has found itself compelled to mention that Hamas is designated by many western governments as terrorist.
Speaking yesterday in an interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, a spokesperson for the Peace and Reconciliation Movement Against Zionism (PRMAZ), consisting of Jews, Palestinians and their supporters, said the organisation will in future refer to Israel as “Israel, designated by human rights organisation as practising apartheid and persecution against Palestinians”.
What drives the Palestinians to confront such overwhelming might? Is it insanity, evil, or is there a reason we all can identify with as humans who seek fairness and justice for ourselves?
“Israel is a rich country with supposedly a strong military, highly advanced technologies, the most modern fighting platforms, self-proclaimed state-of-the-art intelligence, superior cyberwarfare capabilities, precise munitions, a huge defence budget and a $3.8 billion annual U.S. military grant.”
And in the recent war of October 2023 between Israel and Hamas, the article notes that:
“An American president, a Zionist by his own admission, is coming to Israel,” and that this follows sending of “the Carrier Strike Force USS Gerald R. Ford, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, a 2,000-strong U.S. Marines rapid response force, and airlifting munitions.”
How is it even conceivable that the Palestinians should go up against such a force? Why? How? What could possibly drive a people, who possess only guns and meagre, makeshift rockets, to confront such massive and sophisticated power as that of Israel, and behind it an even more massive power in the form of the United States?
We must opt for one of several conclusions:
Palestinians:
are insane
evil
are in a righteous struggle for survival against oppression. They have no option but either to fight or be pushed out of their land, to be replaced.
If we opt for either of the first two, or perhaps a happy combination of both (evil and insane), then we must explain why it is that the Palestinians are so? What makes them that way? What makes them fight for no reason that would bring them gain and only destruction? It would seem they are fighting without an objective other than to… fight… because… they are evil and insane. Even the most obstinately illogical among us would struggle to convince themselves that this is why Palestinians fight Israel.
Given that Israel is on record as violating human rights, and of illegally occupying territory recognised by the United Nations and every country in the world as Palestinian territory, it seems the Palestinians are fighting not because they are mad and bad, but for a reason.
As to the tactics employed in the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and oppression, this is a different matter and of course open to debate. We may disagree and indeed condemn some of the actions, in particular the attack by Hamas on October 7. However, this neither compromises nor detracts from the central issue, this being legitimate resistance to the decades-long violation of human rights by Israel, as well as Israel’s own by now well documented barbarity and war crimes against Palestinians. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has now clearly stated of the October 7 attacks, they “did not happen in a vacuum”. After unequivocally condemning the attacks by Hamas, Guterres acknowledges that
“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
To claim that the attacks happened unprovoked would require us to believe that Palestinians indeed fight for no reason other than they are mad or bad. This idea is absurd, so absurd in fact, that if the Secretary General of the United Nations had not stated that the attacks must be seen in the wider context of Israeli aggression, he himself would look quite absurd and without credit.
Therefore, as the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has said, we should not be interested in extracting condemnations of Hamas’s actions as being atrocities, but in an investigation into the reason for why they occurred, and into why all the killing – now, and for the past 120 years – has occurred, and how it can be stopped. If that inquiry leads to a judgement of right and wrong, and of who is right or wrong, then that is another matter.
At this stage we should not be interested in that. We should only be concerned with understanding how those young men ended up doing something as depraved as killing other young people at a rave, instead of joining them in their celebrations. What marks them out as being so nefariously, specially, evil?
Jews were once, and still are by anti-Semites, vilified as being particularly evil above and beyond the norm for humanity. Their evil lay beyond that which can be explained in normal human terms, it lay within them, as part of their unique nature as Jews. That is anti-Semitism, in a rather ugly nutshell.
And so if we reject any human, socio-geo-political based explanation of how come these young men became so depraved and barbaric, then we must accept they are somehow particularly evil above and beyond the norm for humanity. If in plain sight of the overwhelming evidence we claim that there is nothing in their lives that could possibly drive them to such barbarity, then we must accept Palestinians as somehow genetically hard wired for evil. That it lies within them as part of their irredeemable nature. That is the only conclusion if we refuse to believe what our eyes and the evidence shows. Is anyone prepared to declare them as such?
If not, then we need to acknowledge what Mr Guterres has said and begin to ask questions.
Let us for a moment put aside our sympathies with what happened to Israelis and is happening to Palestinians after the start of the October War of 2023. Let us just marvel at it.
What is now happening before our eyes to Palestinians as they are dehumanised, massacred and, if Israel were to fully have its way, also ethnically cleansed, is fascinating. Yet again, in our modern generations and self-proclaimed democracies, we get an idea of what it meant to be a German under the Nazi Regime of 1933 to 1945.
Like the Germans of the Nazi Era, throughout the Western World many do not just see, they permit. They did so for Iraq and Afghanistan, now they do so for Palestine. And like the Germans of the Nazi Era, many do so because they have been led to believe it is right.
A day must come when those who permit and condone will realise the horror of where they are. They have been ensnared, tangled in a web of lies, misinformation, and in many cases openly expressed hatred and dehumanisation, yet made to see themselves as free, compassionate, moral, and upright.
But waiting for this realization will not do. We must act. We must engage in conversations that challenge beliefs, whilst also seeking understanding and empathy even in the face of deeply rooted conflicts. Support organizations promoting peace, dialogue, and humanitarian aid in the region. Educate others about the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fostering awareness and empathy.
Support media outlets that provide balanced perspectives, encouraging informed discussions. Embrace diversity and reject stereotypes, fostering an environment where dialogue can thrive.
People can break from the web of disinformation, and only then can they truly be the champions of freedom and justice they believe themselves to be.
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