Zionism Is Racism (this headline is Haaretz’s…)
JVL Introduction
In this opinion piece published by Haaretz Zvi Bar’el pulls no punches.
Revisiting the 1975 UN debate and resolution that Zionism was racism he explains the grounds on which President Hertzog could claim to reject the contention: the pluralistic, egalitarian nature of Israeli society in which freedom of speech, of movement, of thought, of expression were guaranteed…
Never mind if he is, shall we say, a bit starry-eyed about what Zionism had already become by 1975; his view now is clear.
Racists like Ben-Gvir will hold key cabinet portfolios in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and shape the country’s character:
- “They are the founding fathers of the new Zionism, which is racist, primitive and sees democratic values as a historical mistake unsuited to a true Jewish state.”
- “They have Judaized antisemitic claims and race theory and are using them to build a pure country – one that is avowedly and by law Jewish, Zionist and racist.”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Tue 27 Dec 2022. Read the original here.
Zionism Is Racism
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JVL’s introduction states “Never mind if he is, shall we say, a bit starry-eyed about what Zionism had already become by 1975; his view now is clear.”
I disagree with the casual dismissal of his 1975 view and I would suggest his view now is clear only because he is part of the liberal Zionists who are terrified of what years of tolerating and excusing oppression and occupation has unleashed in full frontal view for all the world to see. How will even the most efficient PR machine in the world cope with justifying this bunch of criminal thugs? His answer and the dilemma, is encapsulated in his own words in the last sentence of the article.
Can you name a single Zionist on the planet who does not support the ethnic cleansing of 85 percent of the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948 ? They must do so because they know that if there was ever to be a Palestinian Right of Return to Israel a predominately Jewish State of Israel would cease to exist and Zionism would have failed.
Can we agree that Ethnic Cleansing is Racism ? If so I think it follows that Zionism is a racist ideology.
You could of course argue that a “home for the Jewish People” doesn’t require them to be a majority but this is surely fanciful. Just as fanciful as the idea that a two state solution will ever come into being.
It was a lie then and it is a lie now. Except that today it is clear to all except the wilfully blind that Zionism is racist.
The Nakba had already taken place, the refugees had already been refused a right of return, Israeli Palestinians were kept under military rule until 1966. All the ingredients were there but the Labour Zionists were cleverer at hiding it.
Ben Gvir and Smotrich don’t care who knows. Indeed they want people to know that there is no room in a ‘Jewish’ State for non-Jews.
I never thought that it was quite correct simply to say that Zionism is racism. If this were the case it would be impossible to be a Zionist without being a racist but there are people who regard themselves as Zionists, and are generally accepted as such, who are not racists.
What can be said is, first, that Zionism and racism are entirely compatible and, second, that there are many people (including most if not all of the current Israeli government and a fair number of their British supporters) who are both Zionists and racists and for whom, in their own minds, these are not two separate things but two aspects of the same thing.
This is important but at the same time no big deal. The PR needed to sell the ‘new’ Israeli Government would be impossible to construct in the USA and even difficult here in the UK, where the media has gotton away completely with the lazy view that any criticism of Israel is automatically antisemitic. But I expect to see now a move by notables in the pro-Israel community to begin to talk about the ‘New’ Zionism as a perversion of everything the ‘nice’ ‘Old’ Zionists stood for. A Zionism that sees Jews as more important than any other group of people is racist regardless of whether or not it is ‘new’ or ‘old’. Let’s see how the pro-Israel lobby deals with this. How do they criticise the new Government when (for instance) it decides to attack Iran? It won’t be easy to say ‘we support the IDEA of Israel, but not THIS particular Israel’. Of course, the Starmers and Sunaks of this world won’t have ANY problem at all. They have a completely different agenda.
I thought the treatment of the Palestinians couldn’t get much worse but the Government under Netanyahu reminds you of Hitler, who surrounded himself with like minded people and we all know what happened after that. If all the Countries of the World, minus the United States and the United Kingdom, came together they could put in place BDS and cripple its economy.
Thank goodness there is still a newspaper in Israel ‘critical’ of what is happening there, apparently read by 70,000-100,000 people
Colonial Zionism is ethnic cleansing. Say so!
I am prepared to concede that the treatment of Palestinians by the Zionist state may resemble the acts of WWII fascism but for semantic reasons may not be liable to be called fascism. Hover, to call the actions racist seems too tame as the persecution and killing of those deemed inferior, namely the Palestinians, does in some respects look remarkably like fascism to me.
Time to get the IHRA misdefinition exposed as a spurious imposition and a threat to free speech and democracy.