also, please take up my suggestion to look at Alex La Guma's novel TIME OF THE BUTCHERBIRD. Boer ideology was also 'zionist'--shall we compare that with Marcus Mosiah Garvey as well?? The Boer religious mythology had them as God's chosen people, giving them the land, the whole nine yards. And to my mind, Ashkenazi Jews had the same 'right' to Palestine that the Boer had to South Africa--none.
We all know that African Americans used the old testament symbolism to understand and communicate their situation. Is it asking too much imagination to consider that it acxtually applies more accurately to Diasporan Africans than to modern Jews?
(Again, spiritual zionism is a different story,as the most courageous Jewish commentators have emphasized--Menuhin, Shahak, etc.)
-----Original Message----- From: LeoCasey at aol.com [mailto:LeoCasey at aol.com] Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 11:29 AM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Anti-Zionism Is Racism
Marcus Garvey, the great African-American nationalist who hailed from Jamaica, once wrote a text entitled "Black Zionism." As many a commentator has noted, and as was recently noted in an LBO discussion, the parallels
between Jewish Zionism and Garvey's African-American Zionism/nationalism are remarkable.
I draw attention to this striking parallel because they point out that Zionism is simply one more species of nationalism, the national liberation ideology of the Jewish people. It has all of the political strengths and
political weaknesses of every nationalist ideology.
That is why I found completely suspect the continual singling out of it by some here on LBO-Talk, as if its failings are somehow unique, with no parallels in African-American nationalism, in Irish nationalism, in South African nationalism, in Chinese nationalism, in Russian nationalism, in French nationalism, in Basque nationalism, in Quebecois nationalism and in Palestinian nationalism. If Zionism is racism, so is every nationalism. The singling out of Zionism alone as racist is the singling out of the nationalism of Jews, and a fairly transparent cover for anti-Semitism and racism, in the humble opinion of this goy.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --