Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume 1 (2 page)

Sometimes it is necessary to exaggerate to make a point, so (deep breath!) here goes.

The problem, dear Americans, is that many of you are too uninformed to make your democracy work for the purpose of giving expression and substance to your idealism. And many of you are uninformed about conflict in the Middle East not because you don’t want to know, but because you have been misinformed by the corporate-controlled mainstream media, which has been described as the “Israeli-occupied” media.
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(During Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip—in my view an awesome and shocking display of Israeli state terrorism—the mainstream American media’s reporting was for the most part indistinguishable from Zionist propaganda, big lies as well as little ones). On my visits to America over the years many, many Americans said to me, “We know we’re not getting the truth from our own mainstream media.” That being so, my question is—Why then do so many of you continue to let your views be shaped by the mainstream media’s take on what is happening in the Middle East?

After 9/11 most if not all Americans asked, “Why do they hate us?” For very many Americans, “they” were more or less all Arabs and Muslims everywhere. What would Americans have learned if, instead of rushing to declare his war on global terrorism, President Bush had caused that question to be addressed seriously?

The short answer—the long one is in this book—begins with the statement that the overwhelming majority of all Arabs and Muslims everywhere do not hate America or Americans. (A truth is that for decades very many Arabs and other Muslims would, if they could, have migrated to America to enjoy a better life there. Today, however, the number of Arabs and other Muslims who would opt for American residence and citizenship if they could is greatly reduced because of the fact, sad but true, that the monster of Islamophobia is on the prowl across the Land of the Free and licking its lips). What almost all Arabs and Muslims everywhere do hate is American foreign policy—its double-standards in general and, in particular, its unconditional support for Israel, which ignores UN resolutions, demonstrates its contempt for international law and human rights conventions (continued occupation, torture, targeted assassinations and collective punishment are part of this package), and resorts to state terrorism.

To put “anti-Americanism” into its true Arab perspective, I offer this thought. If it had been possible for an American President to wave a magic wand and have Israel back behind more or less its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, with a Palestinian state in existence on the Arab land from which Israel had withdrawn as required by UN Security Council Resolution 242, and with Jerusalem the capital of two states, the U.S. would have had, overnight, with one wave of that magic wand, the respect, friendship and support of not less than 95 per cent of all Arabs (and very probably that of almost all Muslims everywhere). And if the President had also pressed the Arab regimes to be serious about democratizing their countries, the U.S. would have become their champion, truly admired, as it was when President Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.

As professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt argued in their groundbreaking book
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
, unconditional support for Israel is not in America’s own best interests. In fact it’s not in anybody’s best interests including those of the Jews of the world.

My only quarrel with the Mearsheimer and Walt book is its title. For reasons this book makes clear, the phenomenon of their title is not an Israel lobby. It’s the Zionist lobby, and I’ll get to why it should be called by its proper name in a moment.

Mearsheimer and Walt’s work improved to some extent the prospects for informed and honest debate about who must do what and why for justice and peace in the Middle East, but an actual resolution of the conflict in and over Palestine needs the citizens of America to be better informed than they are about much more than the Zionist lobby’s influence on American policy for the Middle East.

Above all Americans—American Jews especially—need to know that almost everything they’ve been conditioned to believe about the making and sustaining of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not true They need to know, for example, that Israel and the Palestinian refugee problem were created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing. And they need to know, again for example, that Israel’s existence has never—ever—been in danger from any combination of Arab military force. Zionism’s assertion that Israel’s Jews have lived in constant danger of being “driven into the sea” was the propaganda cover that allowed Israel (a Zionist, not a Jewish, state) to get away where it mattered most, in Europe and America, with presenting its aggression as self-defence and itself as the victim when, actually, it was and remains the oppressor.

The problem with the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine is that it’s pregnant with extreme danger because it could provoke anti-Semitism
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throughout the mainly Gentile nations of the Judeo-Christian or Western world, which is where most Jews live. There is, however, a way to exorcise this extreme danger. It is by giving the truth its necessary global context, not only to show that consequences have causes, but also to explain, among other things, the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Knowledge of the difference is the key to complete understanding of the conflict and who must do what and why for justice and peace.

Judaism is the religion of Jews, not “the” Jews because not all Jews are religious. Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has at its core a set of moral values and ethical principles. As holocaust survivor Dr. Hajo Meyer states in his book,
An Ethical Tradition Betrayed
:
The End of Judaism,
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these values and principles put Jews “at the forefront of humanitarian and socially constructive endeavors” throughout much of history. (In his book my dear friend Hajo expresses his dismay at what he sees as the “moral collapse of contemporary Israeli society and the worldwide Jewish community as a whole.” He compares Israel’s current policies with the early stages of the Nazi persecution of Germany’s Jews. He stresses that he is not seeking to draw a parallel between Israel’s current policies and the Nazis’ “endgame”— the slaughter of six million European Jews. He is merely trying to point out, he says, “the slippery slope” that eventually led to this catastrophe, and the necessity of “foreseeing the possible consequences” of a policy that oppresses and marginalizes the Palestinians in their own homeland).

Even the shortest definition of Zionism must begin by recognising that there is what might be called “spiritual Zionism” and “political Zionism”. In the sense that they look to Jerusalem as their spiritual capital or center, all Jews who are religious could regard themselves as spiritual Zionists. The Zionism of this book’s main title and substance is political Zionism.

It is Jewish nationalism in the form of a sectarian, colonial enterprise which, in the process of creating in the Arab heartland a state for some Jews—mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing as noted above—made a mockery of, and demonstrated contempt for, Judaism’s moral values and ethical principles. (Judaism insists that the return of Jews to the land of the ancient Hebrews must await the Second Coming of the Messiah. Zionism said, in effect: “We can’t wait for Him. Zionism is the Messiah.”) As this book makes clear, prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, political Zionism was of no interest to more than a minority of the Jews of the world and was opposed by many.

Supporters of Israel right or wrong conflate Judaism and Zionism because the assertion that Judaism and Zionism are one and the same enables them to claim that criticism of the Zionist state of Israel is a manifestation of anti-Semitism. Often, almost always these days, the accusation that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic is a form of blackmail intended to silence criticism of, and suppress informed and honest debate about, the Zionist state and its policies. The reality is that Judaism and political Zionism are total opposites, and knowledge of the difference is the key to understanding two things:

 


1. 1. Why it is possible, with good reason on the basis of all the facts, to be passionately anti-Zionist—opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise—without being, in any way, shape or form, anti-Semitic.
   

 


2. 2. Why it is wrong to blame all Jews everywhere for the crimes of the hardest core Zionist few in Palestine that became little Israel, and then Greater Israel.
   

It’s worth noting that virtually all Arabs and other Muslims have always known the difference between Judaism and Zionism. And it can be said without fear of contradiction that throughout much of their history, Arabs and other Muslims were the best protectors of Jews in need of sanctuary. It was Zionism’s colonial enterprise that poisoned the relationship, though not—perhaps I should say not yet—to the point at which most Arabs and other Muslims blame all Jews for Zionism’s crimes.

Jews, all Jews, also need to know the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Am I suggesting that many don’t know it? Yes. A truth of today, or so it seems to me from conversations with Jews, is that very many if not most of them have no idea of what Zionism actually is, both in ideological principle and in practise in Palestine from the early years of the 20th century to the present. And there are two main reasons for this apparent lack of awareness. One can be explained by the awesome success in propaganda terms of Zionism’s
Nakba
denial.
Nakba
is the Arab word for catastrophe and shorthand in Arab terminology for Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Zionism denies the ethnic cleansing. The other main reason is that many Jews of the world don’t want to know the truth of history as it relates to the creation of the Zionist state of Israel and the Palestinian refugee problem (in much the same way, some might say, as Americans, some or many, don’t want to know what really happened to the native Indians of America). In the Prologue to this book,
Waiting for the Apocalpyse,
I seek to explain, empathetically, why to date many Jews have not wanted to know the truth of history.

So why do I assert that all Jews need to know the difference between Judaism and Zionism?

The sleeping giant of ant-Semitism is being re-awakened in many of the nations of the Western world in which most Jews live, and a prime cause of this re-awakening is the behaviour of the Zionist state of Israel and its extraordinary (some would say insufferable) self-righteousness. As we shall see, prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust many of the best Jewish minds of the time feared that Zionism, if it was allowed to have its way, would at some point provoke anti-Semitism. These fears were given a fresh public airing by a most remarkable Israeli, Yehoshafat Harkabi, in 1986. He was the longest serving Director of Israeli Military Intelligence and was universally respected. In the Prologue I quote from his book,
Israel’s Fateful Hour
. He warned of the danger of Israel becoming “a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism”.

It’s my view that after the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant of anti-Semitism most likely would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep—IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers, first Britain, then America, to have its way, as Balfour put it, “right or wrong”.

What, really, is the basis for believing that anti-Semitism is on the rise?

The increase in the desecration of synagogues and graves and other Jewish symbols, verbal abuse and assaults on Jews are indicators. But what may be far more sinister is the growing number of Europeans and North Americans who are now beginning to speak negatively about Jews at dinner parties and behind other closed doors. The more it becomes apparent that the Zionist state of Israel is the obstacle to peace on any terms most Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims could accept, the more this antipathy will grow, with the real danger that it will break out and manifest itself as violent anti-Semitism. It’s my view, which I know is shared in private by some eminent Jews in Europe and America, that if the monster of anti-Semitism does go on the rampage again, it might well start its journey in America.

But what actually happens in the future will depend a great deal on whether or not the vast majority of Jews who live in the nations of the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world are prepared to come to grips with the fact that Zionism is, as the title of this book asserts and its substance demonstrates, their real enemy. If they can and do, and are then prepared to end their silence on the matter of Israel’s behaviour, they will, by distancing themselves from Zionism, best protect themselves from a charge of complicity (if only by default) in Zionism’s crimes. Silence is not the way to refute and demolish such a charge.

I am aware that many Americans, including American Jews, might honestly believe they are serving the best interests of the Jews by refusing to address the foundational Zionist myths, but I say they are wrong, dangerously wrong. All, including the corporate-controlled mainstream media, who refuse to come to grips with the truth of history and, in particular, the difference between Judaism and Zionism and thus why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, are helping to set up all Jews to be blamed for the crimes of the relative few.

As surely as day follows night, the Zionist lobby and other supporters of Israel right or wrong will make an awesome effort to limit distribution of this book in America, and to cause the informed and honest debate it was written to promote to be suppressed. The less this attempt is allowed to succeed, the more all citizens of America will be empowered to give substance to their idealism, to make their democracy work for justice and peace in the Middle East. Success in that endeavour would effectively drive a stake into the heart of the monster of anti-Semitism and kill it for all of time.