December 10, 2009
Zionism is an ideology, a political movement and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Jewish religion. The dispossession and expulsion of a majority of Palestinians were the result of The Zionist Movement and its policies planned as early as 1905.
Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, stated before the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919, that he expected 70,000 to 80,000 Jewish immigrants to arrive each year in Palestine. When they became the majority, they would form an independent government and Palestine would become: "as Jewish as England is English". Weizmann proposed that the boundaries should be the Mediterranean Sea on the west; Sidon, the Litani River, and Mount Hermon on the north; all of Transjordan west of the Hijaz railway on the east; and a line across Sinai from Aqaba to al-Arish on the south.
Weizmann argued that: "...the boundaries above outlined are what we consider essential for the economic foundation of the country. Palestine must have its natural outlet to the sea and control of its rivers and their headwaters. The boundaries are sketched with the general economic needs and historic traditions of the country in mind."
The aims of the movement are based on certain fundamental doctrine:
- The movement was seen not only as inherently righteous but also as meeting an overwhelming need among European Jews.
- European culture was superior to indigenous Arab culture; the Zionist could help civilize the East.
- External support was needed from a major power; relations with the Arab world were a secondary matter.
- Arab nationalism was a legitimate political movement but Palestinian nationalism was either illegitimate of non-existent.
- If the Palestinians would not reconcile themselves to Zionism, force majeure, not compromise, was the only feasible response.
There is an excellent article on Zionism And Its Impact if you are interested to get more insight and understand better what it is all about.
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April 25, 2007
The Zionist philosophizes that the Palestinian is not a human (Israel was a land without a people). The Anti-Zionist argues that the Palestinian is a human being. So what is the moderate viewpoint? The Palestinian is a quasi-human? Is this the American Progressive Jewish position?
I have dedicated my life to the study of our people's repressed racism. For this reason, I found the website www.realisticdove.org very interesting. Usually when confronted, we just get indignant and refuse to speak to you for a few months. I always wondered how a person could think that Israel has a "right" to "security" and shrug off this amazing assumption with the accusation that anyone who has questions about his definitions is accusing him of being an evil murderer. Why would any sane person think that he has the right to live un-harassed on someone else's stolen property? Even the cute kids waving Israeli flags are participating in a criminally insane political ideology.
Progressive Jews want to make the bottom line "Jews are nice people." But that is not the bottom line. As Hillel mentioned, the bottom line is that you don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you. What would we expect if our neighbor, with or without warning, bulldozed our house?
First, we would call the police. If the man with the bulldozer failed to stop bulldozing the house, the police officer would have the duty to disable the vehicle and he might even shoot him. I'm talking about American law. The bulldozer man would be stopped. He would be considered a criminal. He would be put on trial. He would go to prison. If he had killed people in the process of bulldozing the house, he might even be executed. The owner of the house that was bulldozed would be entitled to damages plus extra for pain and suffering. The law requires that his property be restored to the original state that it was in. That includes replanting the trees and fixing the pavement around the house.
The emotional defensiveness of Jews is actually quite amusing, where they want to argue that the bulldozer man was not evil, he was not a murderer. The family that moved into the stolen property are just innocent idealists. They may be misguided, or mistaken, but for some reason Jews want to argue that they are not evil. What they are really saying is that they don't want Jews to be held legally accountable for their actions. They want to enjoy the privilege of being "protected" from the laws that apply to other people.
A law does not cover the "evilness" of a criminal. It covers actions and consequences.
If international law were followed, the Israeli "government' would never have kicked out any Palestinians. The entire existence of Israel is based on the condition made by the UN that Palestinians would remain in their homes and receive equal citizenship in the new nation state. That condition was not followed. Therefore, there is no legal basis for any assumption that Israel has a right to exist according to the UN. In fact, Israel does not really exist. It is a figment of imagination, the defensive mechanism of the neurotic Jewish collective consciousness. I agree that we need to stop arguing about isms but the next step is to solve the problems. Don't wait for the world community to force Israel to do it. Why don't we, as Jews, just do it? Why are Progressive Jews wasting their time feeling emotionally threatened by a one state solution? The real problem is that we are feeling emotionally threatened by any solution. Because a solution means that Jews need to be prosecuted.
The refugees must be given back their property with extra for damages. Even if they fled their homes because Arab leaders told them to get out of the fighting zone in 1948, they have the legal right to return to their homes as soon as the fighting stops. Small wonder why Israel continues to attack people day after day. The refugees must be given full civil rights. Full water rights, full road rights, and the full right to prosecute as part of an organized crime network. Especially if both the Palestinian and the Jewish persons are American citizens. For example one friend of mine, after her family was forced off their land by gunpoint, New York Jews bought the land, bulldozed everything, and planted orange trees. She knows where they live. She knows their names. Anyone who buys or sells stolen property is a criminal who needs to be prosecuted. Any Jew who owns Palestinian property in the Holy Land should have his property seized, including their US assets, just like we did to the rum smugglers who funded Jewish terrorism in the 1920s, and Progressive Jews should insist on it instead of doing these mental "I'm not evil" gymnastics.
The Jews need to give back what they stole. I am not sure why that is so confusing to people. There needs to be a world tribunal like the Nuremburg trials to determine what was done and who was responsible, and to put an end to this nonsense. But failing that, the US legal system could solve the problem within a year if we just prosecuted this obnoxious real estate mafia. Why are Progressive Jews not lobbying for criminal penalties on Jews who invest in property that was cleared of its original owners by force in the Holy Land? There is enough room in Bush's new prisons for all these shady real estate agents. This is a simple matter of holding people legally accountable for the harm they cause others and for undermining the security of the United States in the process. It is exactly the same issue with dispute over the Roxbury Mosque in Boston. Some shady white (Jewish) real estate dealers were furious that the black community benefited from this piece of land next to the subway station that they wanted to develop, so now they are engaging in extra-legal trickery and character assassination to try to get that piece of real estate away from the people who own it. Once the Palestinians get their land back and all the Zionist organizations' assets are confiscated to repair the damage they have done, then we can talk about whether or not "the Jewish People" have the right to "self-determination" in the form of an ethnocentric nation state.
I learned when I was a kid that the way to get self-determination - i.e., the ability to do what you want when you want how you want - is to behave yourself. The Jews are not behaving themselves, and there is nothing okay about it. When a Progressive Jew avoids discussion by whining, "You think I'm evil!!" he or she breaks the heart of the human being who is trying to have peace with this person. It ends all rational discussion. It ends all hope for peace.
Sometimes Palestinians find it easier to deal with right wing Zionists than left wing because at least they are honest. A Palestinian can say to a right wing Jew, "You stole my property." The right wing Jew will say, "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it? My religion says I can steal your property." Then the Muslim can with dignity say, "Well my religion says that God curses the man who puts another man out of his home, and that I have the right to fight you." That actually can be done in the context of a polite dialogue. A peace plan is even potentially possible. Because then the Jew can say, "Well, I don't want you to kill me and I can see why you would think that I deserved it, because if you did the same thing to me I would certainly kill you. So let's make a deal. I'll let you live in the garage." This is still insulting behavior, but it's in the process of becoming less sadistic.
On the other hand, if a Palestinian says to a Progressive Jew, "You stole my property!" the Progressive Jew will usually shut down entirely. I have seen a fifty year old man start crying and insisting he's not evil. This is the behavior of someone who is guilty as sin. Like when you accuse your husband of adultery and he starts guilt-tripping you about how you don't believe in him (hypothetical but common scenario).
The other reaction is to get maliciously angry and start doing character assassination via gossip so that none of the other Progressive Jews will greet that person who brought up the "touchy" subject. They will be told that this person is an "enemy of peace" - so that it will be politically correct to shun them the same way that we avoid eye contact with skinheads and Bible thumpers. Progressive Jews are the most amazingly idealistic people on the planet. They want to be able to continue to sit on someone else's stolen property (or at least vacation on it) and not only do they think they have a "right" to travel around unharmed, ride the buses, shop and eat pizza while the people they made homeless have no water or food - but they want their victims to LIKE them. The Jews are the only conquerors in the history of the planet that expected the conquered people to LIKE them! If they don't like us, we feel offended and outraged. And what Jews consider as "liking behavior" is never mentioning the property they stole.
I've discussed some of this with Avigail Abarbanel, an ex-Israeli psychiatrist in Australia. She views Zionism as a mental illness that can be treated. But Zionism is just a symptom of a deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have "rights" which do not exist. Like a kid thinking he has the right to hit his sister. It's a failure to apply the Golden Rule to one's personal sense of responsibility in certain situations. The inner conflict that arises from these "situational ethics" certainly does create a clinically diagnosable mental inability to process certain types of information that trigger the neurotic or sometimes even psychotic defensive reaction.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel, Jews are defensive in the sense that they cannot process the type of information that is necessary to create peaceful behaviors. For example, if a Jew and Palestinian live next door to each other in New Jersey, the Jew being the "owner" of a condo built on the Palestinian person's property, don't you think the Jew should offer to give it back, if he expects the other's friendship? If the Palestinian, as is normal, invites the Jew over for tea and politely doesn't bring up the subject, does the Jew feel that this means it's OK what he did? That he can forgive himself? That is what Jews want after all. We want to be forgiven without apology for everything we have done AND everything we are about to do.
Is this a rational approach to peace? Is it working?
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