WHY AREN'T ANTI-ZIONISTS REFUTING ZIONIST PROPAGANDA?
June 14, 2021
Here is the Zionist propaganda in a nutshell, point by point:
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#1. All non-Jews (gentiles) are innately, even if not overtly, antisemitic. Their antisemitism can break out at any time and cause another Holocaust.
#2. Therefore, Jews need a state of their own to protect them from a world of antisemites.
#3. Israel is a state of the Jewish people that exists to protect Jews from harm.
#4. In order for Israel to be, and remain, truly a state of the Jewish people it must have a solid majority Jewish population (Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said it needed to be at least 80% Jewish.)
#5. In order for Israel to be guaranteed a permanent solid Jewish majority population, needed to do what was necessary to remove most of the non-Jews from the 78% of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 and it needs, today, to prevent the Palestinian refugees from returning to the part of Palestine that is now Israel.
#6. In order to prevent the Palestinian refugees from returning to the part of Palestine that is now Israel, the Israeli government must use a substantial amount of force--often including lethal violence--because very many Palestinians would otherwise exercise what they call their "Right of Return" and enter Israel, thereby ending the Jewish majority of Israel and hence destroying Israel as a Jewish state, and thus ending the protection of a Jewish state that Jews require to be safe in a world of antisemites.
#7. As much we hate--truly hate!--having to use violence against Palestinians, we nonetheless do it because it is required for the safety and well-being of the Jewish people.
#8. When we do what is required to protect Jews from antisemitic hatred, the Palestinians attack us violently, with all the means that they can muster, from suicide bombers and knives and stones to rockets. We use violence in self-defense. The fact that we are able to bring to bear greater violence in self-defense than the Palestinians are able to bring to bear in attacking Jews does not take away from the fact that our violence is in self-defense and their violence is not.
#9. We will do whatever it takes to defend the right of the Jewish state--Israel--to exist and to defend it against its enemies because its existence is required to protect Jews from harm; whoever criticizes us for this, whether they are intentionally antisemitic or not, is thus antisemitic in effect because they are helping antisemites endanger Jews.
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Every one of these Zionist propaganda points is either factually false or, due to the falseness of a prior supporting point, morally repugnant.
For example, point #3 is false. The government of Israel no more protects ordinary Israeli Jews from harm than the United States government protects ordinary US citizens from harm: both governments are dictatorships of a billionaire ruling plutocracy that oppresses "its own" people with obscene economic inequality and consequent suffering, as I describe in detail in "ISRAEL'S GOVERNMENT ATTACKS ORDINARY JEWS AS WELL AS PALESTINIANS" where I show that Zionist leaders from the days of the Holocaust (when they sabotaged efforts to rescue Jews from the Nazis if the rescue plan did not send the Jews to Palestine) until today have nothing but utter contempt for working class Jews and don't give a damn about their welfare.
Or take point #1, that all gentiles are innately, if not presently overtly, antisemitic. I refute this in "Zionists Are Wrong in Claiming Gentiles (non-Jews) Are All Innately Anti-Semitic."
But instead of directly refuting the Zionist propaganda, anti-Zionists just ignore it. Look at point #9, about why it is antisemitic IN EFFECT, if not intent, to criticize Israel's right to exist or what it does to defend itself. Unless one knows why the earlier Zionist propaganda points are false (and most people don't know this), point #9 is extremely persuasive. This is why Zionism maintains sufficient support in the general public to prevail, despite the growing unease of many people due to Israeli violence against people in Gaza. This is why, when anti-Zionists sincerely (yes, it is sincere!) declare that they are not antisemitic most people nonetheless still think they are antisemitic IN EFFECT if not intent.
Why don't anti-Zionists refute point #9? Good question!!! But because anti-Zionists don't refute it, because they just ignore it, the Zionists maintain sufficient support in the general public to prevail.
Most people do not understand that Zionism is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians FOR THE PURPOSE of creating a bogeyman enemy that the billionaire Israeli ruling class uses to frighten working class Jews into obedience to that ruling class-a ruling class that oppresses working class Jews as well as Palestinians. When ordinary people--Jews and non-Jews both--understand this then they stop supporting Zionism because they understand that Zionism is NOT about protecting ordinary Jews from harm. But until they understand this they think it is antisemitic in effect if not intent NOT to support Zionism.
Sure, growing numbers of people are expressing anger at the most extreme Israeli violence against Palestinians. But most such people don't understand what is fundamentally wrong with Zionism, and so they are easily persuaded (by people such as Bernie Sanders) to support the "two state solution" that is terrible because it entails making the ethnic cleansing permanent, as I discuss in "It Is Morally Wrong to Support the "Two State Solution" for Israel/Palestine."
So, the question is this. Do anti-Zionists want to WIN, or just keep losing but feeling morally righteous in defeat? In order to win, we must frame the conflict as a class conflict, not a conflict between "the Jews" versus "the Palestinians." Read about why this is so in "ANTI-ZIONISTS: DO YOU WANT TO WIN A CLASS, OR LOSE A RACE, WAR?"
If you know an anti-Zionist, please send them my article, "Listen Anti-Zionist!" about how to prevent the Zionists from persuading people that it is antisemitic to oppose Zionism.
PLEASE SHARE THIS POST WIDELY (the URL is https://www.pdrboston.org/why-s-nobody-refuting-key-zionist-lies )
THANK YOU.