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CounterPunch
November
9, 2002
Political Geography
Zionist Theses
and Anti-Theses
by M. SHAHID ALAM
A Martian political delegation to our planet arriving
in 1948 remarked how lucky they were to have come at a time when
Earth's political geography was undergoing a sea change.
They observed that the two major wars
in the three previous decades were behind some of this ferment.
Britain and France, the two great colonial powers, were being
pushed aside by two new ones, United States and the Soviet Union.
They observed the beginnings of another historic process. Taking
advantage of the capitalist wars, the colonized peoples of Asia,
Africa and the Caribbean were ratcheting their own independence
movements. The age of colonial empires and settler colonies was
coming to a close. Or so it seemed.
In addition to these broad-brush changes,
the Martians noted some anomalous details. They wrote of events
in the Levant-in Palestine to be precise-that ran contrary to
the global trends away from colonial empires and settler-colonization.
In particular, they reported the creation in May 1948 of Israel,
a Jewish state, in Palestine; it was the culmination of a colonial-settler
movement launched at Basle in 1897 by the powerful but despised
Jews of Europe. This new state had expelled, both before and
after its creation, some 800,000 Palestinians from their homes.
One of the Martian observers, in a dissenting
note to the delegation's re-port, observed that the creation
of Israel did not bode well for Earthlings. In a language that
appeared to be taken from Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State
written in 1895, he wrote that "the existence of this rampart
of Europe against Asia, this outpost of Western civilization,
could only be guaranteed by Europe." He predicted that since
this new state had been created abnormally, in opposition to
the new trends in global morality, it would face the greatest
difficulty in securing the moral support of the publics in United
States and Europe.
On this last point, our Martian observer
was in error. He seemed to lack a clear understanding of the
forces that had chaperoned this new state into existence. First,
there was the longstanding desire of many Westerners to be rid
of the Jews from their midst. [1] Second, most Westerners nursed
an even stronger antipathy towards the Ishmaelites-variously
known as Saracens, Hagarites, Mahometans and Arabs-the other
branch of the Semitic family. Third, there was the guilt many
Westerners felt over the Holocaust. Ironically, all these forces
contributed to the founding of Israel. In creating Israel, the
West could reduce its own Jewish population, assuage its guilt
over the Holocaust, and oppose the Israelites against the Ishmaelites.
The creation of Israel was one project on which the Jews and
Western anti-Semites could cooperate heartily.
Our Martian observer also had little
notion of the resources commanded by the Jews. Already, by the
sixteenth century, the Jews had established themselves as Europe's
leading bankers, since the Church banned Christians from usurious
activities. In turn, the European Enlightenment brought equal
rights for all citizens, allowing Jews to move out of the ghettoes,
and rise to distinction in various professions. Far from being
an "inferior race"-as the Goyims claimed-the Jews demonstrated
that they had enormous gifts. In his book, The Jewish State
(London: H. Pordes, 1967, 16), Theodor Herzl, explains that this
was the result of "Jew-baiting" which had "merely
stripped off our weaklings; the strong among us were invariably
true to their race when persecution broke out against them."
The moral case for Israel succeeded like
a Spielberg blockbuster, a success produced by Jewish power and
ingenuity, working to take advantage of Islamophobia, Holocaust
guilt, and anti-Semitism. In hundreds of movies, television serials,
books, magazines, and newspapers, the Zionists constructed a
narrative of Jewish rights to Israel, Israel's distinctiveness,
Israeli achievements, the victimization of Israel by its barbaric
Arab neighbors, and an Islamic hatred of all things Western (chiefly
Israel). Those who remained skeptical of this narrative were
neutralized by more direct methods, including denial of tenure,
defeat at the ballot, smear campaigns, and, occasionally, worse.
[2] For too long, these campaigns of persuasion and coercion
have represented Israel as a small, beleaguered but heroic country,
defending Western values against the onslaught of Islamic vandals.
Next to the creation of Israel, the launching of this narrative
has been the greatest triumph of the Zionist movement.
Is it then foolhardy to oppose this political
juggernaut? One might answer with Noam Chomsky (Milan Rai, Chomsky's
Politics, 1995, 50) who was speaking about the media in United
States, that "Any system that's based on lying and deceit
is inherently unstable." The Zionist narrative about Israel
too is unstable. It is unstable because it is founded on egregious
lies that strain our credulity; it is unstable because the Palestinians
have refused to make a quiet exit; it is unstable because Israeli
repression escalates as it contends with Palestinian resistance;
it is unstable because Israel contains the dynamics that pushes
the world towards a clash of civilizations. It is all too obvious
that as the Palestinian resistance rises, Israel has been seeking
to draw United States directly into its war with the Arabs.
It is scarcely surprising then if the
hegemonic Zionist narrative has begun to fray at the edges even
in these United States. One visible sign of this is the movement
to divest from Israel, which began some two years ago at UC Berkeley,
and has already spread to more than forty campuses nationwide.
In addition, there are indications that the growing anti-war
movement is linking its opposition to the war on Iraq to justice
for Palestinians. In Western Europe, the Zionist narrative has
fared worse. A survey of recent opinion polls indicates that
there has already occurred a quite significant shift in European
sympathies towards the Palestinians. [3] A survey of Britain's
leading writers, conducted by the Independent in October
2002, found that about half of the thirty-five writers see greater
justice on the Palestinian side, only three on the Israeli side,
and several of the uncommitted writers expressed strong sympathy
for the Palestinians in their comments. [4]
All of this suggests that the time is
ripe for examining again, case by case, some of the leading Zionist
theses of the past century. More than ever before, American audiences
are perplexed by the dominant narratives about Israel, the sources
of 9-11, and the inevitable clash of civilizations. We are at
a turning point of history, for better or worse. If we can unravel
the fabric of lies woven over the past century, we can perhaps
nudge this historical turning point just a little bit towards
better outcomes.
Promised by
God
According to this thesis, the Jews have
a legal right to Palestine because God, in the Torah, promised
it to Abraham and his descendents some four thousand years ago.
There is one slight problem with this
thesis. It has never been established in any system of laws that
a religious document, purporting to record statements made by
God, could form the basis of legally enforceable claims to property
in this world. Imagine what would happen if courts began
to accept individual or collective claims to land, buildings,
rivers, and mountains that were backed by divine promises. Saddam
Hussein might claim that he had a dream in his youth, which he
had never revealed before, in which God had chosen the Iraqis
to inherit the entire United States.
Apart from the legal questions, it would
be a little hard proving that European Jews, those who demanded
the right to emigrate to Palestine, were in fact descended from
Abraham. Even the world's leading geneticists would feel challenged,
trying to establish a connection between a present population
and a putative ancestor whose existence has never been established
historically. What if this connection was tenuous, or a stronger
connection was discovered between Abraham and the Arabs?
A Historical
Connection
More secular Zionists pressed their claims
on the basis of a historical connection to Palestine. The historical
connection is valid, but it will not support Zionist claims.
It is worth pointing out that the historical
connection ended some two thousand years ago, when the overwhelming
majority of Jews left Pales-tine for other destinations, mostly
in the Mediterranean world. In addition, even during the few
centuries when Jews had political dominion over Palestine, they
were not its only inhabitants. But these are only minor problems.
The real problem with this thesis is
that claims of a historical connection, quite ancient in this
case, cannot be used to justify present claims to territory.
If this is accepted as a valid principle for appropriating territory,
we should all start by vacating United States, since the Indians
have a historical connection to this land that is quite a bit
weightier than any Jewish connection to Palestine. The Indians
had a connection to United States that was exclusive until the
1600s, and spanned some twenty thousand years.
A Distinct
People
The Jews are a 'distinct' people, and,
hence, they must have a state of their own. In this case, it
does not matter where; it could be in Argentina, Uganda, or Palestine.
This claim is fraught with difficulties.
The Jews were a distinct people some two thousand years
ago when they inhabited a single territory, shared the same faith,
spoke a common language, and shared the same traditions. But
since their dispersal, the Jews have been divided into many distinct
Jewish communities living amongst gentiles, blending with their
hosts through marriages, and creating new Jewish communities
through conversions. Over centuries, these Jewish communities
grew apart from each other, racially, culturally, and even in
terms of their religious life. How much was there in common between
the Jews of Russia, Morocco, Iran and Ethiopia, that could define
them as a 'distinct' people?
Another difficulty with this thesis lies
in its unstated second premise. It assumes that all distinct
peoples have a state of their own. This is patently incorrect.
There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of distinct peoples-with
distinct languages, cultures, religions, and lineages-through
out the world who do not have a state of their own. In addition,
most of these distinct peoples have a much stronger claim to
statehood than the Jews since they constitute a majority in the
areas they inhabit.
One encounters the greatest difficulty
in this argument when the demand for a state arises from a 'people,'
as in the case of the Jews, who do not constitute a majority
in any of the areas they inhabit. In the event, such a people
can establish their own state only by conquering another people
and/or expelling them. Indeed, that is how the Jews established
the state of Israel in Palestine, by invading it under the cover
of the British mandate, and, then, expelling the great majority
of the Palestinians.
Many Arab States
The Arabs already have several states
of their own. If they were not motivated by anti-Semitism, they
would not object to the creation of the only Jewish state. Instead,
they would welcome and resettle the Palestinians displaced by
the creation of Israel.
This is a racist argument. It assumes
that the Jewish need for a state has moral precedence over the
rights of Palestinians to their own homes, their history, their
ancestral lands, their towns and villages. It blames the Arabs
for not showing proper deference towards the desire of the Jews
for their own state, a state that would be established solely
at the cost of the Arab peoples.
The Europeans too have many states-in
fact many more than the Ar-abs-but would they agree to give up
one of their states to create a state for some truly distinct
people living in the Middle East-say, the Kurds-who are without
a state of their own?
Israel Attacked
in 1948
In order to paint Israel as the victim,
the Zionist narrative claims that Arab armies from Egypt, Syria
and Jordan attacked Israel the day after it was created on May
14, 1948.
Were the Arabs attacking an established
state with a moral, legal and historical right to Palestine,
or were they merely defending themselves-their lands, their homes,
their historical rights-against a foreign occupation supported
successively by two imperialist powers, Britain and United States?
The Zionist aggression against the Arabs
had been set in motion well be-fore 1948. At the First Zionist
Congress, convened at Basle in 1897, the Zionists openly declared
that their aim "is to create for the Jewish people a home
in Palestine secured by public law." By "public law"
they meant the consent and support of Britain, the leading imperialist
power at the time. In his diary, the same year, Theodor Herzl
(The Jewish State, 4-5) wrote: "At Basle I founded
the Jewish State." In 1917, exactly twenty years later,
the British gave the Zionists the imperialist support they needed.
Later, the same year, once the British forces had occupied Palestine,
the Zionist agencies began setting up the civilian, security,
and military infrastructure for the emergence of a Jewish state
in Palestine. And most ominously, Palestine was opened up to
Jewish immigration. The Zionist invasion of the Arab heartland
had begun.
When the British wavered in their commitment
to the Zionist enterprise, especially during the Second World
War, they were replaced by United States, the new hegemonic power.
United States threw its weight behind the Zionist project, and
pushed the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution calling for
the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state.
Although the Jews in 1948 were still only a third of the population
and owned only 6 percent of the land, the UN partition plan gave
the new state 55 percent of the land, which included the best
agricultural lands, most of the coastline, and access to the
Gulf of Aqaba. Thanks to United States, the Jewish invasion of
Palestine now carried the imprimatur of international law.
Should the Arabs, including the Palestinians,
have acquiesced to an inva-sion of their lands merely because
it had been sanctified by United States? One might well ask,
what would the Americans have done if the UN-in a world in which
Japan had won the Second World War-had first allowed unlimited
immigration of Jews into Massachusetts, and then authorized its
partition to create a Jewish state of Israel in 55 percent of
Massachusetts? In 1948, the Arabs had done what I have no doubt
the Americans would have done: they defended themselves against
an alien invasion.
Only Democracy
The Zionists repeat ad nauseum
that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. This happens
every time the discussion turns to some egregious Israeli violation
of human rights.
This mantra serves several useful purposes.
Its objective is to remind Western audiences of their affinity
to Israel. 'Democracy' is a code word for Western. In claiming
that Israel is a democracy-and not any of the Arab countries-the
Zionists are affirming that Israel is a Western country, it is
one of us, it belongs to the Western family of nations. Therefore,
go easy on us, because we are fighting your battles against those
Arab barbarians. There is also the sense that if Israel is a
democracy then it can do no wrong. As a democracy, Israel represents
a higher civilization, which cannot engage in gratuitous violence
against Palestinians. Finally, this seeks to convey the impression
of Israel as a solitary democracy, beleaguered by, and heroically
doing battle against those brutal Arab dictatorships.
But is Israel really a democracy? This
depends on what are the boundaries of Israel. Israel is the only
country in the world that has never declared or demarcated its
borders. And for thirty-five years now, since the 1967 war, its
undeclared borders have included the West Bank and Gaza together
with their three million Palestinian inhabitants. Israel has
been building illegal settlements in these territories since
1967, which did not stop even after the 1993 Oslo Accord. The
expanding, armed Jewish settlements are proof positive that Israel
never planned to give up these territories. In other words, the
true borders of Israel encompass three million Palestinians who
have no political and very few civil rights within these de
facto borders. Is Israel then a democracy? Reverend Desmond
Tutu, a leading opponent of South African apartheid, prefers
to describe it as an apartheid society similar to the one that
existed in his own country for more than forty years.
A Beleaguered
State
The Zionists deflect criticism from Israel
by portraying it as a small country-a lamb amongst lions-whose
very existence is threatened by hostile Arab armies. This image
is hardly supportable.
Israel is a small country that packs
a lot of military strength. Just consider the wars this country
has waged against its neighbors. In the 1948-49 war, Israel fielded
an army that was stronger and better equipped than all the Arab
armies on the war front. As a result, Israel expanded its territory
to 78 percent of historical Palestine, well beyond the 55 percent
awarded by the UN Partition Plan. On October 29 1956, Israel
invaded Egypt, in concert with Britain and France, and occupied
all of Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Intense American pressure forced
their withdrawal in March 1957. In June 1967, Israel launched
a 'pre-emptive' war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and in less
than six days occupied Sinai, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and
West Bank. Only Sinai has been vacated so far. In March 1978,
Israel invaded Lebanon, penetrating as far as ten miles into
Lebanese territory, but withdrew in June of the same year. In
June 1981, Israel launched an attack against Iraq to destroy
a nuclear reactor under construction near Baghdad. Israel invaded
Lebanon again in June 1982, advancing up to Beirut, and remained
in occupation of parts of Southern Lebanon till May 2000. Is
this the record of a small country, beleaguered, threatened by
its neighbors?
How does one explain this paradox-a small
country with such awesome offen-sive capability? Israel was conceived
by its founding father, Theodor Herzl (The Jewish State,
30), as a "rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of
civilization against barbarism." It was clear from the outset
that Israel would be a praetorian state, an armed encampment,
with weapons supplied by Europe and United States. According
to a conservative estimate, Israel has received to date some
95 billion dollars of American economic assistance. [5] It has
used this largesse mostly to buy military hardware, the latest
in the American arsenal, occasionally even before it is available
to the American military. Israel has drawn, and continues to
draw, upon the world's most sophisticated pool of manpower-the
Jewry of United States, Europe, and Russia. As if all this were
not enough, this lamb amongst lions has the power to bring doom
upon its Arab neighbors. It is the only country in the region
with an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
How could the Arabs, backward, still
reeling under the impact of colonialism, divided, their strength
sapped, their development blocked by archaic monarchies, match
the power of a messianic but modern state, wielding the power
of the most advanced segment of core capital?
Coda
A Martian political delegation returning
to Earth in 2002 would observe how an anomalous detail from 1948
had now grown to threaten world peace. They might well credit
a prescient ancestor who had foreseen all this at the very beginning.
That anomalous detail was the creation
of Israel, an alien state implanted, with help from two successive
imperialist powers, in the Islamic heartland. This was not a
normal state. It was an imperialist creation, a colonial-settler
enterprise launched in the twentieth century. Like all such enterprises
before, it could only be implemented through ethnic cleansing,
or it would have to construct an apartheid state-with the indigenous
Palestinians tolerated as a class of disenfranchised workers.
The ethnic cleansing was enforced during Israel's creation, and
later, in 1967, when Israel expanded to include another three
million Palestinians, it turned into an apartheid, more brutal
than the one dismantled in South Africa.
After the Oslo Accord of 1993, it appeared
that the Israeli apartheid was going to work. The PLO recognized
the state of Israel within 1967 borders, thereby conceding the
right of Israel to 78 percent of historic Palestine. In a delusional
state of mind, Yaser Arafat, the PLO chairman, had convinced
himself that he could have the remaining 22 percent, and run
it, not as a Bantustan, but as a state. The Israelis had different
plans. This was clear to all but the purblind from Israel's ongoing-and
accelerated-settlement building activity, in violation of the
Oslo Accord itself. But this did not disturb Arafat's delusion;
he was getting quite comfortable with the policing authority
over his Bantustans. This delusion would not last. If Arafat
was to retain leadership of the Palestinian movement, he would
have to show more grit, which he did at Camp David by rejecting
the Israeli offer of Bantustans. And that led to the second,
bloodier Intifada.
Many Israelis-perhaps a majority-are
now looking at their second preferred option. They are openly
talking about a third, more massive round of ethnic cleansing
that will get rid of all Palestinians, even those within Israel's
1967 borders. This will be the final solution of Israel's demographic
problem. In the global conditions created by 9-11, when the Bush
cabal openly embrace Israel's extremist agenda, this solution
is gaining credibility. This cleansing will be launched in the
fog of the war against Iraq. Two destinations for the cleansed
Palestinians-at least, those who survive the cleansing-are being
proposed. One is Jordan, whose King would be 'transferred' to
another kingdom carved out of Saudi Arabia. The second favored
site is the deserts of Iraq. The C-130 Transports are ready.
I am sure that even as these plans for
ethnic cleansing are being developed, and their logistics worked
out, there are others-in the scholarly branch of the Zionist
enterprise-who are developing new theses to explain, justify,
and morally validate this new demographic adjustment in the Middle
East as another victory for Western civilization and, of course,
world peace. I can imagine a conclave, consisting of Bernard
Lewis, Thomas Friedman and Daniel Pipes-assisted by many lesser
lights-vigorously debating the merits of the new Zionist theses
that will sustain Israel through another millennium of hegemony
over the Arab world.
Footnotes:
[1] Ironically, Sir James Balfour, one
of the leading architects of the new state, in an earlier incarnation--as
British prime minister-had introduced a bill to limit Jewish
immigration into Britain. Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner,
Arab-Israeli Conflict NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1998): 40.
[2] Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak
Out (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1985).
[3] Richard Curtiss, "Support
for Palestinians Growing," The Palestine Chronicle,
July 26, 2002.
[4] The Independent, October 9, 2002.
[5] http://www.wrmea.com/html/usaidtoisrael0001.htm.
M. Shahid Alam
teaches economics at Northeastern University, Boston. His re-cent
book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published
by Palgrave (2000). The author may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
Copyright: M. Shahid Alam
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