Conference on Racism: Jewish Caucus Statement

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

If one did not know the actual history here, one might think from Matthew's 
account that Zionists just waited around until the end of WWII and the 
beginning of the period of national independence and decolonization to get 
in on the fun of starting a colonial settler state. Something took place in 
the decade leading up to 1945 which impacted particularly upon Jews, and 
that something is related to bringing Zionism from the margins to the 
center of the Jewish Diaspora, and to the founding of the state of Israel. 
But since the European crescendo of genocide against its Jews did not 
climax until this decade, we should exempt all of the earlier European 
settler states from Matthew's strictures, and yet include Israel??? Only 
the one "settler" nation-state founded by victims of European genocide must 
be dissolved??? This logic is a form of posthumous revenge for the 
architects of the Holocaust.

And while we are on the subject of European colonial settler states, it 
might be well pointed out that what truly distinguishes Israel from 
European settler states from Kenya and Zimbabwe to Canada and the US, from 
Chile and Argentina to the New Zealand and Australia is: (1) that Jews had 
historically originated in Palestine, and many still lived there; and (2) 
Jewish settlers came not only from Europe, but from across the Middle East, 
where they were expelled in the tens of thousands by the same Arab states 
that now chant "Zionism is racism," and from Africa. These are the dirty 
little details that are hidden under the sweeping generalizations of a 
"mostly" European settler state...


>Re Leo's post:
>
>What makes 1945 important is that while the rest of the world was moving 
>toward political independence for those nations colonized as part of a 
>most horrible and regrettable European colonialist capitalist history, one 
>small area moved in exactly the opposite direction. Actually, Kenya was 
>colonized formally after 1900, and one could cite South African formal 
>apartheid era as after that time as well (though how different formal 
>apartheid was from what was going on in South Africa prior could be 
>debated). But Kenya achieved political independence in the early 1960s and 
>the apartheid regime fell in 1990. But at least we are in agreement that 
>Israel, like Rhodesia, South Africa, Kenya, and as you cite, the U.S., 
>Canada, Asutralia, New Zealand, etc., is a settler colonialist state.

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272
212-98-6869

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 --

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