(Continued from here.)
It Is No Favor to Jews to Support Israel
When, in earlier times, Albert Einstein and Judah Magnes opposed the idea of a Jewish state, they were absolutely right. But their views did not have the backing of wealthy and powerful people who saw the Zionist project of a Jewish state and heightened Jewish nationalism as valuable instruments of social control in the oil-rich Middle East. It was Zionist leaders who were welcomed at the White House in the United States, it was Zionist leaders who were "successful" at fund raising from America's wealthiest people, it was Zionist leaders who wrote the articles about Israel that mass circulation magazines and newspapers selectively published, and with these kinds of connections and backing it was, not surprisingly, Zionist leaders who secured the most influential positions in organized Jewry -- the large charity organizations and the synagogues -- where they equated Judaism with Zionism; and these Zionist leaders did not care how many innocent Jewish and non-Jewish lives would be sacrificed or ruined in the ensuing decades of an ethnic war in Israel/Palestine that they were so intent on fomenting. Jewish leaders like Einstein and Magnes, who had the welfare of ordinary Jews as their concern and who believed in the universal values of equality among all human beings, were marginalized. That the Zionist project is bad for Jews as well as for non-Jews is an idea which, for many decades, has been suppressed. It is time good people -- of all faiths -- rediscovered it.
Except for the small number of Jews who want to protect their status as an exceptionally powerful elite in a "state of their own," most Jews in Israel and elsewhere who support a Jewish state and who think a Jewish majority needs to be preserved no matter what the cost to non-Jews, do so because of a combination of racism and fear, which of course feed each other, and are deliberately promoted by Zionist leaders' manipulation of events and racist interpretations of them.
Americans, exposed only to the Zionist framework in virtually all of their newspapers, radio and TV stations and even magazines from "left" to "right," have been convinced that it is anti-Semitic to oppose a Jewish state. They need to understand that a Jewish state not only violates the most fundamental human rights of its non-Jewish victims, it also is not good for Jews -- no matter what many Jews may think. A Jewish state makes ordinary Jews the pawns in a game for power played by American, Israeli and Arab elites. A Jewish state is making life for most Jews in Israel a living nightmare, one in which they never know when they'll be blown up on a bus or in a restaurant. A Jewish state must mimic ancient Sparta, forcing its citizens to live in a militarized society requiring almost all Jews to be soldiers and to view non-Jews as an enemy just because they are not Jewish. A Jewish state is one which tries to turn its young men and women into people like Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Captain "R," who -- after listening to his watchtower guard radio him about "a girl of about 10, she's behind the embankment, scared to death" running away from IDF soldiers towards her refugee camp in Gaza -- emptied his gun's magazine into her body and then declared, "Anything moving in the zone, even a three-year-old, needs to be killed." A Jewish state produces a Major General Dan Harel, the officer responsible for the Gaza Strip, who concluded that the captain had "not acted unethically." [23] Americans who support their government's pro-Israel foreign policy are not doing Jews a favor, not at all, even if Jews who sincerely believe the pro-Zionist framework defend Israel passionately.
Zionist leaders will never offer Jewish people the possibility of peace and friendship with their non-Jewish neighbors or (to be realistic about the world we live in) the possibility of joining with like-minded non-Jews to fight the elites among all racial and ethnic groups who use Zionism and other ethnic nationalisms to control the good and decent people by pitting them against one another for the purpose of securing wealth and power and privilege. But the Zionists do offer many Jewish people a bribe: Israeli Jews enjoy a middle class standard of living while the Arabs live in relative poverty; Jewish settlers get water for their lawns and swimming pools while the Arabs go without; and Jews in the United States who are loyal to Israel receive praise and admiration from America's rulers who love their remarkably useful Israeli ally which, behind-the-scenes, does much of the U.S. dirty work, like selling arms to Iran during President Reagan's administration, and providing arms and counter-insurgency technology to anti-democratic regimes in Central and South America as well as apartheid South Africa before its fall. Surely, however, Americans who understand what is really going on will not consider it a favor to Jews to support those who bribe them for such cynical ends.
Americans have been led to believe that the choice is a Jewish state or seeing Jews "driven into the sea." This is nonsense. When the apartheid state of South Africa was abolished no whites were driven into the sea. In fact, most white South Africans are relieved that apartheid is no more, and while opponents of apartheid during its reign were routinely accused of being "anti-Christian," today very few whites admit to ever having supported the noxious institution. Just as there should be no apartheid state of South Africa, there should be no Jewish state in Palestine. What there should be instead is for the Palestinian people to decide.
But I will say here what my opinion on the question is. Albert Einstein was right in opposing a Jewish state, but he should also have opposed the Jewish colonization of Palestine, which he did not. The Zionist project was the last European colonization of other lands. Europeans have displaced and subjugated natives of the New World, Africa, the Middle East and Asia and there is a sense in which justice would say they should go back to where they came from. It would not be unreasonable if Palestinians adopted this point of view, because the invasion and colonization of their land by European Jews was an unjustified attack on them which aimed to destroy their physical connection to the land and entirely remove traces of their culture in it. The descendants of the original Jewish settlers, however, having been born in Israel, consider it to be their home no less than Americans of European descent consider the United States their home. Some readers of this article would say that you cannot tell people who are living where they were born that they must leave that place and "go back to where they came from." But if an extra-terrestrial alien species began colonizing the earth and displacing human beings in a manner analogous to the way Jews colonized Palestine, I think those same readers would find plenty of solid reasons for telling the aliens and their offspring to leave.
Other readers, however, might respond to the aliens by saying, "Look, you can stay, but only if you live with us as equals and not as our superiors, and only if you respect our culture. Furthermore, only those of you can stay who stand with us against the others who insist on being our superiors and on having an Alien state where humans are second class citizens." Would it be fair to dismiss these latter readers as hopelessly naive and kindhearted to a fault? Perhaps. But if so, then it is equally fair to dismiss the great majority of Palestinians as hopelessly naive and kindhearted to a fault, because they offer just this invitation to Jews now living in Palestine/Israel. I think it is an offer that Israelis should gladly accept, and thank their lucky stars it is offered. It may not be the only way justice can be formulated, but it is one way that can create a future of peace instead of war between Jews and Palestinians, and that counts for a lot in my opinion.
Justice along these lines means that there should be a single democratic state of Palestine with equal citizenship rights for everybody who lives in the territory of the original Mandate (pre-Israel) Palestine or who fled Palestine because of Zionist actions or who is a descendant of such persons. Religion or ethnicity should have no bearing on people's rights nor limit where they can live. Those who lost property without proper compensation because of the Zionist project should regain their property or be compensated fairly for it. Equality, solidarity and democracy should shape society in Palestine, not elite rule and inequality. Jews who will not abide by these principles or who embrace the racism of Zionism by word or deed should leave of their own accord; if they do not, then they must be defeated and stripped of all their power. The time for states built upon racial discrimination and obnoxious negative stereotypes (like the one about Gentiles being innately anti-Semitic) is past. The self-serving elites who presently depend upon such things to stay in power must be thoroughly rejected and dismissed as not worthy of our respect or support. It is time to say, "Enough is enough!"
References
1. Albert Einstein, in Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, New York, 1954, p. 190
2. Alfred M. Lilienthal, What Price Israel?, 50th Anniversary edition, 2003, pg. 130
3. Lilienthal, pg. 131
4. cited in The Jewish State, by Israeli historian Yoram Hazony, Basic Books, NYC, 2000, p. 248
5. Flapan, Simha, Zionism and the Palestinians, London, Croom Helm, 1979, p. 141, cited by Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001, Vintage Books, New York, 2001, p. 676
6. Yosef Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2004, p. 208
7. Dr Weizmann’s Political Address – 20th Zionist Congress, New Judaea (London, August 1937), p.215., cited by Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of Dictators (Chapter 13) at http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch13.htm#n22
8. 1989 Israeli Supreme Court ruling reported in the 1991 Israel Law Review, Vol. 25, p. 219, published by the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
9. http://www.ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/opinion20031118.html
10. http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2004/p13a.html
11. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1988, pg. 34
12. ibid, p. 11
13. ibid. pp. 90-1
14. cited by Israel Shahak, Washington Report, August/September 1991, Page 23
15. Lilienthal, p. 148
16. Grodzinsky, pp. 193-4
17. Grodzinsky, pp. 199-200
18. cited by Lilienthal, p. 29
19. cited by Lilienthal, p. 148
20. The Nation, January 10/17, 2005
21. Baruch Kimmerling, review of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II, by Yosef Grodzinsky, in The Nation, January 10/17, 2005. and Ben Hecht, Perfidy, Milah Press (Jerusalem, New London); ISBN: 0964688638; (April 1997)
22. http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/kasztner_intro.htm http://www.israelversusjudaism.org/holocaust/chapter-2.cfm http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/onlinebooks/Holocaust_Victims_Accuse.pdf pp. 26-8 and also Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel, Zed Books, New York, 2003, pp. 14-15
23. http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/onlinebooks/Holocaust_Victims_Accuse.pdf pp. 26
24. Chris McGreal in Jerusalem, Wednesday November 24, 2004, The Guardian
25. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001, Vintage Books, 2001, New York, pp. 676-7
26. Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, Henry Holt & Co., New York, First Owl Books Edition 2000, p. 28