[The URL of this letter is https://www.pdrboston.org/dear-anti-zionist ; please share it]
[Also please see my "Listen Anti-Zionist!"]
[See my other articles about Palestine/Israel]
Dear Fellow Anti-Zionist,
[Note: This was written before October 7, 2023, but it is still to the point.]
I am saddened by the fact that the anti-Zionism movement in the United States (and other Western nations) is failing to win over the great majority of the general public to its side the way the movement against South African apartheid did so successfully. Let me explain.
As you know, Zionism oppresses Palestinians no less, and no less violently and unjustly, than the South African government oppressed black South Africans during apartheid.
And as you may also know, the movement in the United States against U.S. support of South African apartheid was wildly successful; it gained the support of the great majority of the U.S. general public and thereby forced the U.S. government to do a 180 degree turn, from supporting South African apartheid to invoking sanctions against it. The anti-apartheid movement outside of South Africa, combined with the movement inside South Africa, forced South Africa's president deKlerk to decide that apartheid needed to be abolished.
And as you also surely know, the anti-Zionism movement in the United States is not succeeding the way the anti-South Africa apartheid movement did, despite the fact that the anti-Zionism cause is just as just and just as important as the former cause. The great majority of the American public still supports Israel. Support for Palestinians is creeping up extremely slowly and as of March 2022, according to Gallup polling, it was only 26% of Americans who say they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israel: see poll results here and here and here. As of May, 2022, when asked by the Pew Research Center poll what the best possible outcome is between Israel and the Palestinians, only 16% of Americans chose the answer, "All land is one country governed jointly by Israelis and Palestinians"; the remainder selecting either all land being one country with an Israeli government (10%) or with a Palestinian government (2%); also 35% selected the land split into two countries with one governed by an Israeli and the other a Palestinian government (35%) and 37% just answering 'not sure.' (As anti-Zionists know full well, the 'two state solution' is essentially a pro-Zionism plan because it permanently cements the exclusion of the Palestinian refugees from the very great bulk of Palestine (that is now called Israel) and thus denies them their Right of Return, the denial of which is the Palestinians' chief grievance, and the lot of the Palestinians would end up being essentially the same as that of the Palestinians today in the outdoor prison called Gaza, which is theoretically (ha ha!) independent of Israel.)
Thus despite all of the evidence increasingly appearing in the U.S. mass media of Israel's horrendous violence against Palestinians (such as seen here and here and here and here) and Israel's obvious apartheid nature (such as seen here and here and here and here) the anti-Zionism movement has garnered support from at most 26% (and arguably only 16%) of the general public.
What explains the success of the earlier U.S. movement against apartheid in South Africa, but the failure of the current anti-Zionism movement against apartheid in Palestine?
The explanation is this. South African apartheid had no persuasive defense, so as soon as its existence was exposed, it lost support from the general public. In contrast, Zionist apartheid (ethnic cleansing) and the violence and oppression it uses to enforce it does have a persuasive defense, namely the assertion that Israeli violence against, and oppression of, Palestinians is for the purpose of making Jews safe. This is a false assertion, as I prove here (you really need to read this key article!) where I show that the actual purpose of Zionist oppression of Palestinians is to make them be a bogeyman enemy of Jews that the billionaire ruling class of Israel uses to control and severely economically oppress the Israeli Jewish working class.
So far--unfortunately and tragically!--the anti-Zionism movement is not refuting* this Zionist false assertion that says the purpose of Zionism and Israeli government violence against Palestinians is to make Jews safe. I call this Zionist assertion the Zionist Big Lie. Based on this Big Lie premise, Zionists are able to very logically (and hence persuasively) assert that anti-Zionism is thus antisemitic in effect (because it opposes that which is needed to make Jews safe), if not intent (i.e., Zionists say, "So what if anti-Zionists have Jewish friends or even if they are themselves Jewish?").
Since most people, to their great credit, do not want to support anything they believe is antisemitic (even if only in effect if not intent), this Zionist argument persuades most people to support Zionism despite its otherwise difficult-to-defend violence against Palestinians. This is why the anti-Zionism movement is failing to win over the great majority of the general public while, in contrast, the anti-South-Africa-apartheid movement totally succeeded in winning over the great majority of that SAME general public.
My articles (especially this one) that prove with overwhelming evidence that the Zionist Big Lie is totally false and that discuss the enormous importance and also possibility of successfully refuting it among the general public--including pro-Israel Jews!--are the articles whose titles are in red in this website page that has links to all of my articles about Palestine/Israel. Please go to it and read the red articles. Thank you.
When--but not until when!--the anti-Zionist movement decides to refute the Zionist Big Lie, it will win the way the anti-South-Africa-apartheid movement did. Let's do it!
John Spritzler
April 12, 2022
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* I don't mean that too few anti-Zionists refute the Zionist Big Lie; I mean that there is not, so far as I can see (and believe, me, I have looked hard) a single anti-Zionist organization, and not a single anti-Zionist publication, that clearly refutes the Zionist Big Lie by showing (as I prove to be the case in my article, "Israel's Government Attacks Ordinary Jews As Well As Palestinians") that the purpose of Zionist violence against Palestinians is not to make Jews safe but on the contrary to enable the billionaire ruling class of Israel to control and oppress working class Israeli Jews and, by making these Jews suffer, to thereby enrich the Israeli upper class. If you know of one such organization or publication please let me know so I can work with them!
What is the explanation for this abject failure of anti-Zionists to do the most obvious thing that is required to defeat Zionism--refute its Big Lie that enables it to maintain the support of the majority of the general public?
I can only speculate. Do anti-Zionists fear that, by properly framing the conflict as a class conflict rather than, as they now do, as an ethnic/race conflict ("the Jews versus the Palestinians"), they would be implicitly declaring the upper class everywhere to be the enemy? (Yes, they would indeed be doing so because the upper class everywhere today oppresses the have-nots.) Do they fear attacking the upper class where they live outside of Israel because they think it is only safe to attack the Israeli government as long as they don't also attack their own upper class-controlled government? Do they fear attacking the upper class that employs them and that decides whether or not to fire them or promote them? Do they fear attacking the upper class that funds their organization?
Whatever the explanation is, until this problem is solved, Zionism will continue to prevail. And all of the current anti-Zionism will remain mere pretend anti-Zionism with no actual expectation of winning.
If anti-Zionists fear waging the class war, then they need to learn how to overcome that fear. A good start would be to do things to discover that in wanting to win the class war, i.e., to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, they are surrounded by the vast majority of the general public who also want to win the class war this way, as I show here.
As long as the anti-Zionism movement refuses to wage the class war against Zionism, which is the only way to defeat Zionism, then the anti-Zionism movement really deserves to be called a pretend 'anti-Zionism' movement.
WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT MOST ISRAELI WORKING CLASS JEWS ARE PRO-ZIONIST? THIS IS NOT A VALID REASON FOR NOT REFUTING THE ZIONIST BIG LIE.
It is simply illogical to use the fact that most Israeli working class Jews are today pro-Zionist as an excuse for not refuting the Zionist Big Lie. Anti-Zionists outside of Israel can only win over the great majority of the general public to oppose Zionism by refuting the Zionist Big Lie. Does it make even an iota of logical sense to refuse to build a very large anti-Zionism movement outside of Israel simply because the Zionists have until now succeeded in using their Big Lie to win over the support (based on fear of a bogeyman Palestinian enemy, by the way) of most Israeli working class Jews? Such so-called 'logic' is the logic of Israel's Mossad and of pretend anti-Zionism, not true anti-Zionism.