Zionism is Racism: President Ahmadinejad's speech too much for closet racists
Part 1:
The subject of racism is a very touchy one for both its current and former practitioners. It was thus expected that some western countries with nasty past records of racism would boycott the UN racism conference in Geneva, scheduled for April 20, 2009. A couple of days before the event, the USA announced that it would sit out the Geneva forum. Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands soon followed suit. Through their boycotting the session they have sent a blatant message endorsing racism.
President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was the first government official to take the floor. As soon as he started reciting the Muslim prayer of invocation to begin his speech two pro-Israel Jewish saboteurs, dressed in clown costumes, tossed soft red objects. One may recall that for years before the collapse of the Apartheid regime of South Africa, Israel has been its best ally. Thus, such a rowdy behavior from Zionist hoodlums trying to disrupt the conference was not all that unexpected.
After a brief pause, President Ahmadinejad restarted his talk by accusing that the United States and Europe had helped establish Israel after World War II and victimize Palestinians. He said, "The victorious powers [of the world wars] call themselves the conquerors of the world, while ignoring or down-treading the rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements...Following World War Two, they resorted to making an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish suffering. They sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine. In compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive, racist regime in Palestine."
This was too much for other former racist countries like France and the UK to swallow, whose diplomats accompanied by some other Europeans walked out of the conference room.
President Ahmadinejad accused the western governments and the United States of defending Israel, calling the Zionist state the “racist perpetrator of genocide.” Does such an accusation sound hollow or untrue? Not really if you have been following the trail of murder of unarmed civilians in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. It was not too long ago that the rogue nation had killed some thousand innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, which can only be termed a cold-blooded orgy of murder, aggression and savagery, demonstrating Israel’s long standing racism against the Palestinian people. And yet, none of those western governments and the USA, each with its own blood-stained history of lynching and racism, had the moral fortitude to demand a stop of such wanton murder.
The formula for Israel from day one has been nothing but crass racism that distorts history and uses and abuses religion to sanctify her hatred of the “other” people – the Arab Palestinians. It was, therefore, all kosher that on Nov. 10, 1975, General Assembly of the UN – when it was a functioning world body and not relegated to its deplorable current status as a body to sanction crimes of powerful western nations -- equated Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. The Resolution 3379 was approved by a vote of 72 to 35 (opposition coming mostly from former colonial and racist regimes like the USA, UK, FRG, Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and some client states and of course, Israel).
It took another 16 years when the UN General Assembly by a vote of 111 to 25 (with 13 abstentions and 15 absentees) revoked the Resolution 3379. This time the opposition came only from the Muslim states and Sri Lanka. India and the USSR, like most other countries, voted in favor of revocation, while China, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Bahrain and ten other nations were absent from voting. By that time, President Sadat of Egypt had already signed the peace treaty with the Zionist state, which triggered Muslim disunity and weakened Palestinian leadership. Israel made revocation central to her demand for participation in the Madrid Peace Conference, which was co-sponsored by the USA and Spain in 1991. Under pressure from the U.S. administration of President George H.W. Bush, the UN passed the resolution of revocation.
In his speech to the UN General Assembly, introducing the motion to revoke Resolution 3379, President Bush said, “And now, for the first time, we have a real chance to fulfill the U.N. Charter's ambition of working "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and nations large and small to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…. To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations. This body cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel's right to exist. By repealing this resolution unconditionally, the United Nations will enhance its credibility and serve the cause of peace.”
As later events have demonstrated over the last 18 years, the U.N. revocation was a serious mistake. It has only emboldened the pariah state to become more belligerent, ruthless and racist, more savage, militaristic and uncompromising. The UN itself has become the lapdog of the veto wielding powers within the Security Council. It has rewarded culprits more often than redressing cries and concerns of the victims of naked aggression, human rights abuse and torture. Not only has the credibility of the UN suffered irreparably, peace appears a far cry, almost like a mirage, today than ever before in our life time.
So, it is important that we understand why the UN in 1975 equated Zionism with racism. Merriam-Webster defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Racism is a symbol of ignorance, rejection or denial about the root of human existence.
The characteristics of Israeli racism have been: (1) claims that the Jews are superior to all other races; (2) grants exclusive right of Jews around the world to Israeli citizenship while denying the non-Jews the same privilege; (3) attributes an inferior social, economic and political status to the non-Jewish population of Israel; (4) encourages immigration of Jews into Israeli and emigration and deportation of non-Jews from Israel; (5) does not allow immigration of non-Jews, not even those who crossed the front line to the Arab side in 1948, i.e., Israel denies the right of return of Palestinians, while she issues citizenship to any Jew (even an atheist) that had no historical connection whatsoever, neither now nor before, with Israel.
Zionism is racism because it rejects unity of mankind by depicting Palestinians as inherently inferior, like “worms”, having “genetic defects.”
Zionism is racism because it follows Cecil Rhodes’ formula for settlement and colonization to the letter and spirit. If racism was wrong for South Africa and Rhodesia it cannot be right for the Zionist state of Israel today.
Zionism is racism because it is based on lies and a disingenuous slogan “a land without a people for a people without land”, knowing too well that Palestine was inhabited by the people who today are victims of Israel’s ethnic-cleansing campaigns.
Zionism is racism because it fails to acknowledge the Palestinians’ unbroken ties to their homeland. As human rights activist Rabee’ Sahyoun has noted elsewhere, Zionism is racism because it is revisionist in its approach to deny the mere fact that the minority indigenous Jewish community in Palestine, that lived there for the last two thousand years, was an undistinguishable people from its Christian and Muslim Palestinian brethren, and that the leader of the Jewish community of the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem, Rabbi Lamram Blau, stood on the side of his Palestinian brothers and sisters being exiled in 1948.
Zionism is racism because through its criminal activities of expulsion of indigenous Palestinians it is forcibly severing a relationship these people had to the land for over four millennia uninterrupted, since before Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim alayhis salam) [Gen. 12:6, 13:7, 21:34].
Zionism is racism because while it pretends to be a democratic movement its very actions show that it is not for plurality or inclusion of non-Jews in the political system of the government. Democracy cannot be just for one race -- the Jews, while it denies the same right to Palestinian Arabs.
Zionism is racism because while it encourages higher child-birth rate amongst the Jews it considers “Israeli Arabs” as “demographic” “time bombs.”
Zionism is racism because it twists history and misuses religion to justify its crimes of stealing and further annexation and occupation of land from its original inhabitants. It is no accident that a 2003 opinion poll in Israel conducted by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies found that 31% of the Israeli Jews supported the expulsion of the Arab minority, and 46% supported clearance of the territories.
Israel’s activities in recent years have also shown that it is not for peaceful coexistence with Palestinians, let alone a two-state solution. It is for complete annexation of the entire territory by demolition of Arab homes and eviction of Arab population, making the entire territory exclusively for its Jewish population.
Part 2: Zionism needs to be redefined as pure racism and nothing else
Israel’s inherent racism has been vividly clear to anyone, from peace activist Rachel Corrie (cold-bloodedly murdered by Israel) to President Jimmy Carter, who had visited the Occupied Territories. As was noted in 2003 by The Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington-based institution that has been tracking Israeli settlement-building for decades, Israel's relentless increase in territorial control had “compromised not only the prospect for genuine Palestinian independence but also, in ways not seen in Israel’s 36-year occupation, the very sustainability of everyday Palestinian life.” The situation today is worse than it was back then in 2003. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs reported that the Israeli assault in last December and January killed more than 1,300 Gazans, including 300 children. Israeli missiles leveled the parliament building, mosques, the central courthouse, the Ministry of Justice, the main U.N. food storage warehouse, and the Red Crescent Society hospital. The science lab at Islamic University’s highly regarded medical school was destroyed. The Israeli attack was on a defenseless population that had no bomb shelters, no warning sirens, and no adequate means of caring for the victims. In each case Israel’s target was not an opposing army but a civilian society, to destroy Gaza as a functioning community. Truly, Israel’s genocidal campaign succeeded in killing everything except the will of the people.
John Ging, head of the U.N. relief operations in Gaza, reported that by the time the bombing eased off, 400,000 Gazans had been without running water for three weeks, 20,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and 100,000 people were homeless. In the town of Beit Hanoun alone 30,000 tons of sewage flowed in the streets every hour. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli army of using white phosphorous – a banned substance for use against civilians -- that burns human flesh to the bone. Israel also stopped delivery of humanitarian aid. On Feb. 5 the Israeli navy stopped a Lebanese ship from carrying relief supplies and diverted it to Israel in what the Arab League called “an act of piracy.”
And yet to a jaundice-eyed West, such war crimes of the Zionist state are nothing but a show of its right of self-defense!
The 2008 annual report of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) entitled “The State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories” noted that “Arab Israelis are disadvantaged, persecuted, endangered, and live under third-world conditions.”
Israel’s political and military leaders are neither shy about their determination for Eretz Israel nor about clarifying that the non-Jews have no future there. It was in 2002, Israel's ex-education minister, Limor Livnat, spelled out in defense of Zionism that Israel is not “just another state like all the other states.” She said, “We are not just a state of all its citizens.”
Parties like the ruling Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and National Union consider settling Jews in the entire Palestine as an expression of fulfillment of Zionism. The 1999 Likud Charter, e.g., emphasized the right of settlement in “Judea (and) Samaria”, more commonly known as the “West Bank and Gaza.” Similarly, their claims of the Jordan River as the permanent eastern border to Israel and Jerusalem as “the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel,” do the same. The ‘Peace & Security’ chapter of the 1999 Likud Party platform “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” The chapter continued: “The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state.” Yet, Israel’s western patrons never ask about ratifying such a Charter!
In a thoroughly researched article “Zionism as a racist ideology” (Counter Punch, Nov. 8/9, 2003) Bill and Kathleen Christison (former high ranking officials with the CIA) rightly observed, “Indeed, the most pernicious aspect of a political philosophy like Zionism that masquerades as democratic is that it requires an enemy in order to survive and, where an enemy does not already exist, it requires that one be created. In order to justify racist repression and dispossession, particularly in a system purporting to be democratic, those being repressed and displaced must be portrayed as murderous and predatory. And in order to keep its own population in line, to prevent a humane people from objecting to their own government’s repressive policies, it requires that fear be instilled in the population: fear of "the other," fear of the terrorist, fear of the Jew-hater. The Jews of Israel must always be made to believe that they are the preyed-upon.”
And this is exactly what the Zionist state has been doing against the original inhabitants of Israel -- the Palestinians. Like a gifted artist, it has painted them as inherently hostile who want to “destroy Israel” and “throw the Jews into the seas.” This justifies eviction of Palestinians, destruction of their homes, discriminating against them and denying democratic rights to them. Situation is created so hopelessly unlivable for this “other” people that they are pushed into violence. And once this happens, they are relegated to the status of “terrorists” with whom no negotiation can be made. Forgotten then are all those conciliatory gestures including the PLO’s decision in 1988 to recognize Israel’s existence, relinquish Palestinian claims to the three-quarters of Palestine residing inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, and even recognize Israel’s “right” to exist there.
Even when negotiations take place, these are conducted hypocritically as part of face-saving measures (to show that Israel is for peaceful solution to hide her intent), and more as a bargaining tactic not only to extract favorable concessions from the weaker party but also from the sponsor (usually the USA). So those negotiations are a necessary and prudent way to weaken the Palestinian position while further enriching and strengthening the Zionist state. These schemes have not changed; they only get reinvigorated with time.
While all the great nations have valued inclusion or plurality, the Zionist state stands for exclusion, racism and xenophobia. In 2006, Israeli cabinet minister Avidgor Lieberman said that Israel had no alternative but to move toward “exchanges of populations and territory, in order to create the most homogenously Jewish state.” He also said, “Minorities are the biggest problem in the world.” On May 12 2002, Netanyahu dubbed a Palestinian state, in a crude, racist slur, as “Arafat-istan”. When it comes to the subject of Israeli Arabs, it’s hard to tell where Netanyahu ends and Lieberman begins.
And compare such Zionist views with the inauguration speech of President Obama, who said: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”
It is no-brainer to notice that Zionist leaders like Lieberman and Netanyahu (whose cabinet Avidgor had joined as a minister) are opposed to the values President Obama and America espouse. And yet criticism of Zionist leaders remains a taboo!
In 1923, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of today’s Zionism and the founder of the Jewish Legion, wrote: “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important … to speak Hebrew, but unfortunately it is even more important to be able to shoot — or else I am through with playing colonization.” [The Iron Wall]
No one personifies the colonial expansionist policy of Jabotinsky and the Zionist Israel with ruthless cool-headedness better than Benjamin Netanyahu. The crowning moment for him was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a pro-Likud Jewish zealot Yigal Amir in 1995, during peace negotiations between the Israeli state and the PLO. As a beneficiary of that murder, Likud came to power in 1996 and peace talks came to a halt. The same conglomeration of social forces that blocked any prospect of even a shadow of an independent Palestinian state is now in power under Netanyahu’s watch. Netanyahu and Lieberman, as spokesmen of the settler movement, are physical embodiments of anti-Palestine, anti-Arab racism. As has been noted by Steven Lamini, there is no possibility to reconcile states based on ethnic, racial or religious exclusivism with the existence of democracy. Apartheid South Africa is testimony to this fact.
The civilized people living in vast territories of Asia, Africa and Latin America must take a hard look at today’s Zionism and analyze what this evil is doing to the affected people of the region. When they do, like open-minded curious surgeons, they will find nothing pleasant about this cancerous entity called Zionism. It is not accident that a great Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum had said, “Zionism is the greatest form of spiritual impurity. They have polluted the Jewish people with their heresy."
A colonial settler movement like Zionism that uproots indigenous people is an anti-thesis of national liberation movement. Like Myanmarism, it remains one of the last relics of racism that needs to be torn down for greater good of humanity.
Israel’s current leader Binyamin Netanyahu should be ranked with Jean Le Pen, Jorge Haider, Radovan Karadzic, Narendra Modi and the rest of the world’s racist demagogues. But the sad reality is Zionists like him won't be, because anti-Arab racism in Israel is either supported or ignored by the mainstream of the Jewish world and almost taken for granted by much of the non-Muslim world.
As has been noted by many experts Arab “terrorism” arises not because of “hatred of western liberties or way of life,” but from hatred of racist, repressive policies of Israel and its patrons. Supporting the oppression of Palestinians that arises from Israel’s racism only encourages terrorism. Thus, if our civilization is serious about stopping Arab terrorism it must root out its main cause - Zionism.
It is high time to openly express outrage and revulsion at today’s Zionism, which is nothing but a racist policy that aims ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people from their ancestral home. The world body needs to reinstate the U.N. Resolution 3379, because Zionism is uglier today than it was back in 1991 when it was revoked.
President Ahmadinejad’s speech on Zionism’s culpability to fostering unbridled racism would sound offensive, inflammatory and unacceptable only to those who have no problem sanctioning war crimes of Israel against unarmed Palestinians. Those individuals are closet racists themselves. Shame on them for sustaining the scourge of Zionism!
Suggested links:
http://www.nkusa.org/HISTORICAL_DOCUMENTS/tenquestions.cfm
http://www.savethemales.ca/091202.html
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2002/0401-NetureiKarta.html
The subject of racism is a very touchy one for both its current and former practitioners. It was thus expected that some western countries with nasty past records of racism would boycott the UN racism conference in Geneva, scheduled for April 20, 2009. A couple of days before the event, the USA announced that it would sit out the Geneva forum. Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands soon followed suit. Through their boycotting the session they have sent a blatant message endorsing racism.
President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was the first government official to take the floor. As soon as he started reciting the Muslim prayer of invocation to begin his speech two pro-Israel Jewish saboteurs, dressed in clown costumes, tossed soft red objects. One may recall that for years before the collapse of the Apartheid regime of South Africa, Israel has been its best ally. Thus, such a rowdy behavior from Zionist hoodlums trying to disrupt the conference was not all that unexpected.
After a brief pause, President Ahmadinejad restarted his talk by accusing that the United States and Europe had helped establish Israel after World War II and victimize Palestinians. He said, "The victorious powers [of the world wars] call themselves the conquerors of the world, while ignoring or down-treading the rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements...Following World War Two, they resorted to making an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish suffering. They sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine. In compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive, racist regime in Palestine."
This was too much for other former racist countries like France and the UK to swallow, whose diplomats accompanied by some other Europeans walked out of the conference room.
President Ahmadinejad accused the western governments and the United States of defending Israel, calling the Zionist state the “racist perpetrator of genocide.” Does such an accusation sound hollow or untrue? Not really if you have been following the trail of murder of unarmed civilians in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. It was not too long ago that the rogue nation had killed some thousand innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, which can only be termed a cold-blooded orgy of murder, aggression and savagery, demonstrating Israel’s long standing racism against the Palestinian people. And yet, none of those western governments and the USA, each with its own blood-stained history of lynching and racism, had the moral fortitude to demand a stop of such wanton murder.
The formula for Israel from day one has been nothing but crass racism that distorts history and uses and abuses religion to sanctify her hatred of the “other” people – the Arab Palestinians. It was, therefore, all kosher that on Nov. 10, 1975, General Assembly of the UN – when it was a functioning world body and not relegated to its deplorable current status as a body to sanction crimes of powerful western nations -- equated Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. The Resolution 3379 was approved by a vote of 72 to 35 (opposition coming mostly from former colonial and racist regimes like the USA, UK, FRG, Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and some client states and of course, Israel).
It took another 16 years when the UN General Assembly by a vote of 111 to 25 (with 13 abstentions and 15 absentees) revoked the Resolution 3379. This time the opposition came only from the Muslim states and Sri Lanka. India and the USSR, like most other countries, voted in favor of revocation, while China, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Bahrain and ten other nations were absent from voting. By that time, President Sadat of Egypt had already signed the peace treaty with the Zionist state, which triggered Muslim disunity and weakened Palestinian leadership. Israel made revocation central to her demand for participation in the Madrid Peace Conference, which was co-sponsored by the USA and Spain in 1991. Under pressure from the U.S. administration of President George H.W. Bush, the UN passed the resolution of revocation.
In his speech to the UN General Assembly, introducing the motion to revoke Resolution 3379, President Bush said, “And now, for the first time, we have a real chance to fulfill the U.N. Charter's ambition of working "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and nations large and small to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…. To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations. This body cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel's right to exist. By repealing this resolution unconditionally, the United Nations will enhance its credibility and serve the cause of peace.”
As later events have demonstrated over the last 18 years, the U.N. revocation was a serious mistake. It has only emboldened the pariah state to become more belligerent, ruthless and racist, more savage, militaristic and uncompromising. The UN itself has become the lapdog of the veto wielding powers within the Security Council. It has rewarded culprits more often than redressing cries and concerns of the victims of naked aggression, human rights abuse and torture. Not only has the credibility of the UN suffered irreparably, peace appears a far cry, almost like a mirage, today than ever before in our life time.
So, it is important that we understand why the UN in 1975 equated Zionism with racism. Merriam-Webster defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Racism is a symbol of ignorance, rejection or denial about the root of human existence.
The characteristics of Israeli racism have been: (1) claims that the Jews are superior to all other races; (2) grants exclusive right of Jews around the world to Israeli citizenship while denying the non-Jews the same privilege; (3) attributes an inferior social, economic and political status to the non-Jewish population of Israel; (4) encourages immigration of Jews into Israeli and emigration and deportation of non-Jews from Israel; (5) does not allow immigration of non-Jews, not even those who crossed the front line to the Arab side in 1948, i.e., Israel denies the right of return of Palestinians, while she issues citizenship to any Jew (even an atheist) that had no historical connection whatsoever, neither now nor before, with Israel.
Zionism is racism because it rejects unity of mankind by depicting Palestinians as inherently inferior, like “worms”, having “genetic defects.”
Zionism is racism because it follows Cecil Rhodes’ formula for settlement and colonization to the letter and spirit. If racism was wrong for South Africa and Rhodesia it cannot be right for the Zionist state of Israel today.
Zionism is racism because it is based on lies and a disingenuous slogan “a land without a people for a people without land”, knowing too well that Palestine was inhabited by the people who today are victims of Israel’s ethnic-cleansing campaigns.
Zionism is racism because it fails to acknowledge the Palestinians’ unbroken ties to their homeland. As human rights activist Rabee’ Sahyoun has noted elsewhere, Zionism is racism because it is revisionist in its approach to deny the mere fact that the minority indigenous Jewish community in Palestine, that lived there for the last two thousand years, was an undistinguishable people from its Christian and Muslim Palestinian brethren, and that the leader of the Jewish community of the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem, Rabbi Lamram Blau, stood on the side of his Palestinian brothers and sisters being exiled in 1948.
Zionism is racism because through its criminal activities of expulsion of indigenous Palestinians it is forcibly severing a relationship these people had to the land for over four millennia uninterrupted, since before Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim alayhis salam) [Gen. 12:6, 13:7, 21:34].
Zionism is racism because while it pretends to be a democratic movement its very actions show that it is not for plurality or inclusion of non-Jews in the political system of the government. Democracy cannot be just for one race -- the Jews, while it denies the same right to Palestinian Arabs.
Zionism is racism because while it encourages higher child-birth rate amongst the Jews it considers “Israeli Arabs” as “demographic” “time bombs.”
Zionism is racism because it twists history and misuses religion to justify its crimes of stealing and further annexation and occupation of land from its original inhabitants. It is no accident that a 2003 opinion poll in Israel conducted by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies found that 31% of the Israeli Jews supported the expulsion of the Arab minority, and 46% supported clearance of the territories.
Israel’s activities in recent years have also shown that it is not for peaceful coexistence with Palestinians, let alone a two-state solution. It is for complete annexation of the entire territory by demolition of Arab homes and eviction of Arab population, making the entire territory exclusively for its Jewish population.
Part 2: Zionism needs to be redefined as pure racism and nothing else
Israel’s inherent racism has been vividly clear to anyone, from peace activist Rachel Corrie (cold-bloodedly murdered by Israel) to President Jimmy Carter, who had visited the Occupied Territories. As was noted in 2003 by The Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington-based institution that has been tracking Israeli settlement-building for decades, Israel's relentless increase in territorial control had “compromised not only the prospect for genuine Palestinian independence but also, in ways not seen in Israel’s 36-year occupation, the very sustainability of everyday Palestinian life.” The situation today is worse than it was back then in 2003. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs reported that the Israeli assault in last December and January killed more than 1,300 Gazans, including 300 children. Israeli missiles leveled the parliament building, mosques, the central courthouse, the Ministry of Justice, the main U.N. food storage warehouse, and the Red Crescent Society hospital. The science lab at Islamic University’s highly regarded medical school was destroyed. The Israeli attack was on a defenseless population that had no bomb shelters, no warning sirens, and no adequate means of caring for the victims. In each case Israel’s target was not an opposing army but a civilian society, to destroy Gaza as a functioning community. Truly, Israel’s genocidal campaign succeeded in killing everything except the will of the people.
John Ging, head of the U.N. relief operations in Gaza, reported that by the time the bombing eased off, 400,000 Gazans had been without running water for three weeks, 20,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and 100,000 people were homeless. In the town of Beit Hanoun alone 30,000 tons of sewage flowed in the streets every hour. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli army of using white phosphorous – a banned substance for use against civilians -- that burns human flesh to the bone. Israel also stopped delivery of humanitarian aid. On Feb. 5 the Israeli navy stopped a Lebanese ship from carrying relief supplies and diverted it to Israel in what the Arab League called “an act of piracy.”
And yet to a jaundice-eyed West, such war crimes of the Zionist state are nothing but a show of its right of self-defense!
The 2008 annual report of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) entitled “The State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories” noted that “Arab Israelis are disadvantaged, persecuted, endangered, and live under third-world conditions.”
Israel’s political and military leaders are neither shy about their determination for Eretz Israel nor about clarifying that the non-Jews have no future there. It was in 2002, Israel's ex-education minister, Limor Livnat, spelled out in defense of Zionism that Israel is not “just another state like all the other states.” She said, “We are not just a state of all its citizens.”
Parties like the ruling Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and National Union consider settling Jews in the entire Palestine as an expression of fulfillment of Zionism. The 1999 Likud Charter, e.g., emphasized the right of settlement in “Judea (and) Samaria”, more commonly known as the “West Bank and Gaza.” Similarly, their claims of the Jordan River as the permanent eastern border to Israel and Jerusalem as “the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel,” do the same. The ‘Peace & Security’ chapter of the 1999 Likud Party platform “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” The chapter continued: “The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state.” Yet, Israel’s western patrons never ask about ratifying such a Charter!
In a thoroughly researched article “Zionism as a racist ideology” (Counter Punch, Nov. 8/9, 2003) Bill and Kathleen Christison (former high ranking officials with the CIA) rightly observed, “Indeed, the most pernicious aspect of a political philosophy like Zionism that masquerades as democratic is that it requires an enemy in order to survive and, where an enemy does not already exist, it requires that one be created. In order to justify racist repression and dispossession, particularly in a system purporting to be democratic, those being repressed and displaced must be portrayed as murderous and predatory. And in order to keep its own population in line, to prevent a humane people from objecting to their own government’s repressive policies, it requires that fear be instilled in the population: fear of "the other," fear of the terrorist, fear of the Jew-hater. The Jews of Israel must always be made to believe that they are the preyed-upon.”
And this is exactly what the Zionist state has been doing against the original inhabitants of Israel -- the Palestinians. Like a gifted artist, it has painted them as inherently hostile who want to “destroy Israel” and “throw the Jews into the seas.” This justifies eviction of Palestinians, destruction of their homes, discriminating against them and denying democratic rights to them. Situation is created so hopelessly unlivable for this “other” people that they are pushed into violence. And once this happens, they are relegated to the status of “terrorists” with whom no negotiation can be made. Forgotten then are all those conciliatory gestures including the PLO’s decision in 1988 to recognize Israel’s existence, relinquish Palestinian claims to the three-quarters of Palestine residing inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, and even recognize Israel’s “right” to exist there.
Even when negotiations take place, these are conducted hypocritically as part of face-saving measures (to show that Israel is for peaceful solution to hide her intent), and more as a bargaining tactic not only to extract favorable concessions from the weaker party but also from the sponsor (usually the USA). So those negotiations are a necessary and prudent way to weaken the Palestinian position while further enriching and strengthening the Zionist state. These schemes have not changed; they only get reinvigorated with time.
While all the great nations have valued inclusion or plurality, the Zionist state stands for exclusion, racism and xenophobia. In 2006, Israeli cabinet minister Avidgor Lieberman said that Israel had no alternative but to move toward “exchanges of populations and territory, in order to create the most homogenously Jewish state.” He also said, “Minorities are the biggest problem in the world.” On May 12 2002, Netanyahu dubbed a Palestinian state, in a crude, racist slur, as “Arafat-istan”. When it comes to the subject of Israeli Arabs, it’s hard to tell where Netanyahu ends and Lieberman begins.
And compare such Zionist views with the inauguration speech of President Obama, who said: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”
It is no-brainer to notice that Zionist leaders like Lieberman and Netanyahu (whose cabinet Avidgor had joined as a minister) are opposed to the values President Obama and America espouse. And yet criticism of Zionist leaders remains a taboo!
In 1923, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of today’s Zionism and the founder of the Jewish Legion, wrote: “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important … to speak Hebrew, but unfortunately it is even more important to be able to shoot — or else I am through with playing colonization.” [The Iron Wall]
No one personifies the colonial expansionist policy of Jabotinsky and the Zionist Israel with ruthless cool-headedness better than Benjamin Netanyahu. The crowning moment for him was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a pro-Likud Jewish zealot Yigal Amir in 1995, during peace negotiations between the Israeli state and the PLO. As a beneficiary of that murder, Likud came to power in 1996 and peace talks came to a halt. The same conglomeration of social forces that blocked any prospect of even a shadow of an independent Palestinian state is now in power under Netanyahu’s watch. Netanyahu and Lieberman, as spokesmen of the settler movement, are physical embodiments of anti-Palestine, anti-Arab racism. As has been noted by Steven Lamini, there is no possibility to reconcile states based on ethnic, racial or religious exclusivism with the existence of democracy. Apartheid South Africa is testimony to this fact.
The civilized people living in vast territories of Asia, Africa and Latin America must take a hard look at today’s Zionism and analyze what this evil is doing to the affected people of the region. When they do, like open-minded curious surgeons, they will find nothing pleasant about this cancerous entity called Zionism. It is not accident that a great Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum had said, “Zionism is the greatest form of spiritual impurity. They have polluted the Jewish people with their heresy."
A colonial settler movement like Zionism that uproots indigenous people is an anti-thesis of national liberation movement. Like Myanmarism, it remains one of the last relics of racism that needs to be torn down for greater good of humanity.
Israel’s current leader Binyamin Netanyahu should be ranked with Jean Le Pen, Jorge Haider, Radovan Karadzic, Narendra Modi and the rest of the world’s racist demagogues. But the sad reality is Zionists like him won't be, because anti-Arab racism in Israel is either supported or ignored by the mainstream of the Jewish world and almost taken for granted by much of the non-Muslim world.
As has been noted by many experts Arab “terrorism” arises not because of “hatred of western liberties or way of life,” but from hatred of racist, repressive policies of Israel and its patrons. Supporting the oppression of Palestinians that arises from Israel’s racism only encourages terrorism. Thus, if our civilization is serious about stopping Arab terrorism it must root out its main cause - Zionism.
It is high time to openly express outrage and revulsion at today’s Zionism, which is nothing but a racist policy that aims ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people from their ancestral home. The world body needs to reinstate the U.N. Resolution 3379, because Zionism is uglier today than it was back in 1991 when it was revoked.
President Ahmadinejad’s speech on Zionism’s culpability to fostering unbridled racism would sound offensive, inflammatory and unacceptable only to those who have no problem sanctioning war crimes of Israel against unarmed Palestinians. Those individuals are closet racists themselves. Shame on them for sustaining the scourge of Zionism!
Suggested links:
http://www.nkusa.org/HISTORICAL_DOCUMENTS/tenquestions.cfm
http://www.savethemales.ca/091202.html
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2002/0401-NetureiKarta.html
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