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For
Palestinians, Zionism Only Means One Thing
By Ramzy Baroud
December 22,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- The British government of Theresa May officially
adopted on December 12 a new definition of anti-Semitism
that includes legitimate criticism of Israel.
The definition was adopted earlier in the
year by a pro-Israeli group
IHRA, although it was considered but abandoned by the
European anti-racism agency in 2005.
It is also a
rather dangerous move which will most likely lead to an
expanding chasm between British civil society and
Britain’s political elite.
Israeli and
pro-Israeli groups in the West have always been keen on
conflating genuine racism and genuine criticism of the
state of Israel, which stands accused of violating
scores of United Nations resolutions and of war crimes
in the occupied territories, especially Gaza.
Adopting the
new definition comes on the heels of a
manufactured crisis in British politics, in which
the Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn was falsely accused
of being "soft" on anti-Semitism among its members. This
"crisis" was engineered by pro-Israeli groups to detract
from genuine campaigning among Labor supporters, in
order to bind Israel to its international obligations,
and end the siege and occupation of Gaza, the West Bank
and East Jerusalem.
Last October,
a cross-party group issued a report that contributed
to the confusion of ideas, condemning the use of the
word "Zionist" as pejorative, and claiming that such a
use “has no place in civil society."
While efforts
to protect Israel from freedom of speech in Britain are
still gathering steam, the debate in the United States
has been stifled long ago. There is little room for any
criticism of Israel in mainstream American media or
"polite" society. Effectively, this means that US policy
in the Middle East remains beholden only to Israeli
interests, the diktats of its powerful pressure and
lobby groups.
Following suit,
the UK is now adopting that same self-defeating
position, an issue which is hardly new. In fact, Friday
of last week was an anniversary of great relevance to
this very issue.
On December 16,
1991, the United Nations General Assembly passed
Resolution 46/86, a single,
reticent statement: “The General Assembly
decides to revoke the determination contained in its
resolution 3379 (XXX) of 10 November 1975.”
This was a
reversal of an earlier resolution that equated Israel’s
political ideology, Zionism and racism.
The longer
text of the initial resolution, 3379 of 1975
was based on a clear set of principles, including
UN resolution 2106 of 1965 that defined
racial discrimination as “any distinction, exclusion,
restriction, or preference based on race, color, descent
or national or ethnic origin.”
The reversal of
that resolution was the outcome of
vigorous US lobbying and pressures that lasted for
years. In 1991, Israel had insisted that it would not
join the US-sponsored Madrid peace talks without the
disavowal of 3379 first. With the UN being one of the
Madrid Talks’ sponsors, the US pressure paid its
dividends at last, and UN members were obliged to
overturn their early verdicts.
However,
equating Zionism with racism is not the only comparison
that is often conjured by Israel’s critics.
Recently,
Ecuadorian envoy to the United Nations, Horacio Sevilla
was adamant in his comments before a UN session,
marking November 29 as the International Day of
Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
After he
repudiated “with all our strength the persecution and
genocide” unleashed by “Nazism against the Hebrew
people,” he added, "but I cannot remember anything more
similar in our contemporary history than the eviction,
persecution and genocide that today imperialism and
Zionism do against the Palestinian people."
The tirade of
condemnations that followed was expected, as Israeli
officials seized yet another opportunity to hurl
anti-Semitic accusations against the United Nations for
persistently targeting Israel, while,
supposedly, excluding others from censure.
As far as
Israel is concerned, any criticism of the state and its
political ideology is anti-Semitic as are any demands
for accountability from Israel regarding its military
conducts during war.
But why is
Israel so concerned with definitions?
At the heart of
Israel’s very existence lurks a sense of vulnerability
which all the
nuclear warheads and firepower cannot redeem.
Outlawing the
use of the term Zionism is ludicrous and impractical, if
not altogether impossible.
For Israelis
who embrace the term, Zionism is many things, while for
Palestinians, who learned to loathe it, it is,
ultimately a single ideology.
In an
article published in 2012, Israeli author, Uri
Avnery, acknowledged the many shades of Zionism – early
socialist Zionism (obsessed with the color red, and
mobilizing around Jewish-only unions and Kibbutzim);
religious Zionism which sees itself as the "forerunner
of the Messiah"; right-wing Zionism which demands a
“Jewish state in all of historical Palestine”, and
secular, liberal Zionism as envisioned by its founder,
Theodor Herzl.
For a
Palestinian whose land was illegally confiscated, home
demolished and life endangered by these very "Zionist"
forces, Avnery’s itemization is insignificant. For them
the term "Zionist" is essentially pejorative, and is
anyone who advocates, participates in or justifies
Israeli aggressive actions based on his/her support and
sympathy for political Zionism.
In his article,
"Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims", the late
Palestinian
Professor Edward Said elaborates: “It is not
unreasonable to find that the entire Palestinian-Arab
experience seems unanimous about the view that Zionism
visited upon the Arabs a singular injustice,” and that
even before the British handed Palestine over to Zionist
settlers upon which to establish a state formally in
1948, Palestinians universally opposed and variously
tried to resist Zionist colonialism.”
Many countries
share the Palestinian perception of Zionism as a form of
colonialism, and that prevailing perception is a
historical fact, not a product of collective
anti-Semitic illusion.
The reason why
the question and debate of Zionism must not waver to any
intimidation is that the essence of Zionism never
matured, evolved or changed from its early, colonial
version.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe agrees.
"The Zionist ideology and strategy has not changed from
its very beginning," he wrote. "The idea was ‘We want to
create a Jewish state in Palestine but also a Jewish
democracy". So the Zionists needed to have a Jewish
majority all the time .. Therefore, ethnic cleansing was
the only real solution from the Zionist perspective .."
This remains
the main driving force behind Israeli policy towards
Palestinians, and Israel’s refusal to break away from a
19th century colonial enterprise into a
modern, democratic state for all its citizens.
To do so, would
be to sacrifice the core of its Zionist ideology,
constructed on an amalgam of ethno-religious identities,
and to embrace a universal form of democracy in a state
where Jews and Arabs are treated as equals.
Dr. Ramzy
Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over
20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist,
a media consultant, an author of several books and the
founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include
“Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and
his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s
Untold Story”. His website is
www.ramzybaroud.net.
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The views
expressed in this article are the author's own and do
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