ZGram - 8/9/2001 - "What is Zionism if not racism?" - Conclusion

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

August 9, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I am repeating the brief introduction I sketched yesterday for the
conclusion of the annotated essay below which appeared in the following
Newsgroups:

talk.politics.mideast,
soc.culture.mideast,
soc.culture.palestine,
soc.culture.israel,
soc.culture.usa

Here we continue with one of the most thoughtful, highly condensed,
critically honest looks at Israel's midwives, founders and present leaders
as well as Israeli policies and society in general.  Unfortunately, the
author regurgitates the standard, one-dimensional Hollywood version of
National Socialist (German) policies and aims, but this is not the place
for an ABC on National Socialism, and the rest of the essay is ruthlessly
frank.  It bears careful study and deserves wide distribution.

The essay is titled:  What is Zionism if not racism?  - Conclusion

[START]

 * Recently, a number of Israeli intellectuals and supporters around the
world have  expressed horror over the prospect of the Palestinian refugees
"right of return."  Israeli doves like Amos Oz and David Grossman express
grave reservations about  this potentiality. Israeli political analyst and
journalist, Julian Schvindlerman,  argues that the Palestinians "right of
return" is "but a euphemism for the  destruction of Israel." (9)

Others, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, have invoked  the expression
"national suicide." And it is not limited to Israeli political  thinkers.
=46or example, in his New York Times Op-Ed^ (10), Elie Wiesel complained tha=
t
Israels absorption of four million Palestinians would be tantamount to
committing  "national suicide."

These transparent racists assume that all four million  Palestinians will
return to their homeland, a highly unlikely prospect. However,  let us
grant them their fear that if all four million Palestinian exiles were
permitted to return, they would. The Israeli objection to their return is
not  based on the matter of absorbing four million people, an
extraordinarily difficult  demographical and logistical nightmare for
countries far larger than Israel. No,  their fear of a massive Palestinian
immigration wave is based solely on preserving  "the Jewish character of
the Jewish State."

If for example, four million Jews from  around the world decided to migrate
en masse to Israel, the Jewish State would be  compelled to take in each
and every one of them. The Law of Return imposes just  such a policy. Any
Jew, regardless of origins, has a legal right to automatic  citizenship
upon "return," and that right takes precedence over Palestinian  Muslims
and Christians who wish to return to the land of their birth. An
interesting note: How a Jew who was not born in Israel/Palestine can
"return" is  beyond comprehension.

 * All inhabitants of Israel are required to carry with them at all times
an ID card.  Israel Shahak informs us that the "ID cards can list the
official nationality of a  person, which can be Jewish, Arab, Druze, and
the like, with the significant  exception of Israeli." (11) Even when a
number of left-wing Israelis applied for ID  cards that identified them as
"Israeli" or "Israeli-Jew", the Ministry of Interior  rejected their
requests. (12)

One is hard pressed to find a "democracy" that requires  of its citizens ID
cards that stipulate their ethno-religious identity without  ever
mentioning nationality. ID cards were common in the Soviet Union, and today
can be found in such bastions of democracy like Saudi Arabia (the Saudi
"eqama"  designates both national and religious identity), Iraq, Singapore,
China, North  Korea, and Cuba.

 * Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan
Heights,  and the Gaza Strip, is the linchpin of an expansionist policy
that harkens back to  its founding. Israels settlement policy is no
different than Lord Protector Oliver  Cromwells "Plantation of Ulster"
nearly 345 years ago in Ireland. Cromwell settled  thousands of Scottish
Protestants in the hope of rendering Ulster free of  indigenous Irish
Catholics. Ideally, Israel would love the "holy land" to be
"Palestinenser-Frei" in the way that National Socialists wished for a
"Juden-Frei  Europa." Expulsion may not be so far off.

However, Israeli settlement policy has  made one fact abundantly clear: it
is not the Palestinians whom Israel desires to  control, it is their land.
Now the "only democracy" in the Middle East touts the  virtues of
segregation, of ethno-religious separation. Such odious policies formed
the backbone of the Kibbutzim system, and apply to modern-day settlements.
Settlements marked by Jewish-only housing supported by a network of
Jewish-only  bypass roads, laughingly called "security roads" that secure
nothing but the  permanent "Bantustanization" of formerly integral
Palestinian lands.

Again, try  locating a single democracy that continues with ethnic and
racial segregationist  housing polices. Find a democracy that espouses the
virtues of separation. An  Israeli apologist might point out the plight of
Native Americans. Their plight  remains a national disgrace, however, no
reasonable person can argue that Israeli  Arabs and occupied Palestinians
have equal or more rights than Americas indigenous  people.

 * Israeli Arabs continue to exist as second-class citizens of Israel.
Their  housing, education, social services, and employment opportunities
resemble the  second-rate conditions offered African-Americans less than a
generation ago.  Israels Ashkenazi elites discriminated against the
Sephardim for decades; it does  not require a Ph.D. to imagine the
treatment meted out to non-Jews, given the  history of racial hostility
experienced by the Sephardim.

Evidence mounts that  Israel is a pariah State. The Israeli Army (13)
openly admits that soldiers routinely  circumvent rules against random use
of lethal force. The recent murder of thirteen  Israeli Arabs during some
of the worst rioting in Israel-proper only adds more  evidence to the
charge that Israel is a pariah nation. (14 )

 * Democracies do not routinely fire upon their citizens, and when such
tragedies  occur, the offending nation is traumatized. For example, on May
4, 1970, the Ohio  National Guard killed four students at Kent State. That
tragedy traumatized  America for an entire generation. The police
departments' excessive use of lethal  force to suppress Americas urban
riots in the late 1960s led to a number of  reforms.

Another example occurred in South Korea. Throughout most of the 1980s,
pro-democracy South Korean students and workers violently clashed with
security  forces and police. The protesters often threw Molotov cocktails,
iron bolts,  hammers, rocks, lead-packed bottles, yet the South Korean
police forces never  resorted to lethal force. (15)

But the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) apparently has  never heard of water
cannons, smoke and tear gas grenades, and the use of  anti-riot forces in
large formations. True, the last option may no longer be  feasible, since
Palestinian gunmen occasionally commit the crime of retaliatory
return-fire. However, had Israel used just such methods during the first
Intifada (1987-1992), perhaps the current lethal crossfire between opposing
forces would occur with less frequency.

Instead, Israel sends a tiny number of soldiers in lightly armored vehicles
to man checkpoints that fall under a barrage of stones. There is an old
adage: "Soldiers make bad policemen." Heavily armed young soldiers, with
weapons at the ready, are going to use whatever is immediately available.
Israels policy of sending small patrols of soldiers into situations that
demand the use of a large number of riot-trained police indicates a total
disregard for the safety of both these soldiers and the Palestinians. The
net effect of such "policing" methods is hundreds of dead and thousands of
wounded Palestinians. Today, in Israel, the news of yet another Palestinian
teenager shot dead is treated with blas=E9.

Israel. A "democracy" that does not offer its citizens civil marriage and
divorce. A "democracy" that requires ID cards that do not designate
nationality but rather race and ethnicity.

Israel. A "democracy" that has placed a major part of her civil society in
the hands of the Rabbinate, a medieval theocratic body that once refused
DNA evidence in a case involving an Israeli who tried to prove his children
were "Jewish."

Israel. A "democracy" that openly boasts of segregation as in a June 1999
Barak campaign billboard near Jaffa that stated: "Peace Through Separation:
Us Here - Them Over There." (16) A "democracy" that implements the "Law of
Return" patterned on the National Socialists Nuremberg Laws.

Israel. A "democracy" that establishes exclusionary housing, bypass roads,
and shopping centers in illegally occupied territory.

Israel. A "democracy" on the verge of electing a longtime, well-known war
criminal as Prime Minister, a man who has promised to implement a national
political agenda that resembles Italy and Germany several decades ago.

Israel. A "democracy" of assassinations (17), blockades, checkpoints,
curfews, torture, administrative detention, collective punishment,
segregated housing, theocratic rule over marriage and divorce, home
demolition, arbitrarily administered "entry passes" to Jerusalem, open
defiance of international laws and conventions (Hague, Geneva, UN
Resolutions 242, 338, 181, 194), and noncompliance with nuclear
nonproliferation. A "democracy" in possession of a NATO-caliber Army, Tank
Corps, and Air Force, not to mention over two hundred nuclear warheads (18)
that in turn makes her the Sparta of the Middle East and Mediterranean
region.

 Israel could have established herself as a secular, pluralistic, liberal
democracy - an Israeli Nation as opposed to an exclusivist Jewish State.
What makes this so tragic and reprehensible is the fact that Israel remains
the last European colonizer of non-Europeans. And worse, this occurred in
1948, after the calamities of two World Wars dispelled the legitimacy of
colonialism. True, France, Great Britain, and even the United States
dabbled in colonial adventures in Indochina, North Africa, Asia, and the
Caribbean shortly after World War Two. However, a combination of Third
World resistance and morally outraged citizenries in the respective
countries put an end to those misadventures.

The prospects for a similar moral awakening in Israel are dim. Until such a
movement emerges in the "Jewish State" there will be no fulfillment of any
democratic promise for all the inhabitants of Israel-Palestine.

We return to the wisdom of the ancient Chinese. Let us call Israels
political system by its proper name: Israel is not a democracy; it is an
Apartheid Garrison-State, a modern-day Sparta.

 Notes:

 1 Recall the prolific amount of anti-Semitism in the South, indeed in the
general   culture. Hollywood tackled such bigotry in a 1950s classic,
Gentlemen's Agreement, starring Gregory Peck. Even the Defense and State
Departments, respectively, discriminated against American Jews, withholding
high-level   positions solely on the anti-Semitic charge of "dual loyalty."

 2 Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of The Israel-Palestine
Conflict, (London:   Verso, 1997), 7.

 3 Ibid., 8. Finkelstein cites Hans Kohn, whom he calls the "most eminent
authority on   modern nationalism."

 4 Ibid., 8.

 5 Ibid., 9.

 6 See Boas Evron. Jewish State or Israeli Nation? Indianapolis: Indiana
University   Press, 1995.

 7 Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three
Thousand Years,   (London: Pluto Press, 1994), 7.

 8 Ibid., 7.

 9 Julian Schvindlerman, "The Right To Destroy Israel," The Miami Herald,
January 4,   2001, 7B.

 10 Elie Wiesel, "Jerusalem In My Heart, " The New York Times, January 24,
2001. See   NYT Internet address of Wiesel Op-Ed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/24/opinion/24WIES.html

 11 Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, 6.

 12 Ibid., 6.

 * See Nomi Morris, "Possible Election Boycott By Israeli Arabs Could
Benefit Sharon,"   The Miami Herald, January 26, 2001, 5A.

 13 See Independent Media Center, Israeli Army admits to unprovoked
shootings of   Palestinians.Tuesday 23 Jan 2001, Israel
http://www.indymedia.org.il / Author:   AFP Newswire Service.

 14Ori Nir, "We Accuse," Haaretz, January 22, 2001. See also, "Israel Must
End The   Hatred Now," The Observer, October 15, 2000.

 15 The controversy over the Kwanju [sic] Massacre still lingers; South
Korean   dissidents claim the ROK Army, supported by the US military, shot
down over   2,000 student protesters in 1980. The ROK and police
demonstrated reform was   possible from 1981 onwards. Only one South Korean
student died in   confrontations with police; he fell and hit his head
against a sidewalk curb   during a scuffle.

 16 This was mentioned on National Public Radios Weekend Edition, Sunday,
October 29,   2000, in a commentary by Allegra Pacheco. Ms. Pacheco is a
human rights   attorney who represents Palestinians. Hear her commentary:

http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/wesun/20001029.wesun.09.ram.

 17 Keith B Richburg, "Israelis Confirm Wider Policy of Assassinations:
Palestinian   Peace Activist Among Targeted Victims," The Washington Post,
January 8, 2001.

 18 See Israel Shahak. Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies.
London:   Pluto Press, 1997.

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Thought for the Day:

"The child's sob in the silence curses deeper than the strong man in his
wrath."

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)