Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>From: Timothy Jacob Wise <tjwise at mindspring.com>
>Subject: [BRC-NEWS] Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew
>Sender: worker-brc-news at lists.tao.ca
>To: brc-news at lists.tao.ca
>Date: Wed,  5 Sep 2001 07:37:57 -0400 (EDT)
>
>http://zmag.org/zsustainers/zdaily/2001-09/05wise.htm
>
>ZNet Commentary
>
>September 5, 2001
>
>Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew
>
>By Tim Wise <tjwise at mindspring.com>
>
>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 The U.S. has withdrawn from the World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 at mindspring.com>.
>
>Copyright (c) 2001 Tim Wise. All Rights Reserved.
>
>
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