If SOAS Cares For Its Reputation It Should Send Racist Professor Hezser, Head of the Jewish Studies Centre, on an Unpaid Vacation to learn what Zionism means for the Palestinians

According to Hezser’s article in the Jewish Chronicle she is bewildered where the ‘erroneous and simplistic equation’ between Zionism & Colonialism comes from

According to the Head of SOAS’s Jewish Studies Centre, Junk Professor Hezser, Israel’s military rule and occupation of the West Bank is merely a ‘continuation of a forcefully interrupted 3,000-year old Jewish history in the Middle East.’

Let us leave aside the fact, as Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Sand has shown in The Myth of the Jewish Nation that there never was a Jewish exile from Palestine. The idea that rights deriving from where one’s ancestors lived 3,000 years ago trumping those who live there today is a product of Western Colonialism and Orientalism. The same myths of a 1,000 year Reich justified Hitler’s colonisation of  Eastern Europe and the expulsion of its inhabitants.

Catherine Hezser's racist article in the Jewish Chronicle - she purports to be surprised that students see Israel as a product of European colonialism

But in reality not even this is true. Jews from Europe and America had no physical connection whatsoever with Palestine or Israel.  Their only claim is that they profess a religion whose centre is Jerusalem. That does not confer any material rights over those living there.

The Jews who left Judea and Palestine over 2,000 years ago did so because the land would not support them. Palestine saw many peoples, among whom were the Hebrews, wander over the area. The idea that this gives people who are Jewish and living in London the right to displace the indigenous population is a fascist idea.  SOAS should not be in the business of propagating racial myths.

2,000 years ago a million Jews were living in Alexandria alone as well as other Hellenised cities such as Antioch and Seleucia. According to Jewish historian Salo Baron there was an explosion of Jews in the Middle East at the time owing to massive proselytising. He suggests there were 8 million Jews living in the Middle East. Sand suggests half that number. The Jews, like the Phoenicians before them, became a trading people.

David Feldman, based at Birkbeck College next door to SOAS, is Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism

The pastoralist Jews who remained in Palestine after the destruction of the second temple either converted to Christianity or remained speaking Aramaic. With the Arab invasion they largely converted to Islam whilst continuing to speak Aramaic, a biblical form of Hebrew.

The irony, as Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and its second President Yitzhak ben Zvi accepted, is that the Palestinians, not the Jewish settlers, are the descendants of the ancient Hebrews. [see e.g. Dov Ivri’s Most Palestinians Are Descendants Of Jews]. Ben Gurion even sent Moshe Dayan with a rabbi to convert the Bedouin!

Smiling on an occupation that imprisons and tortures children, keeps Palestinians short of water and steals their land - all in the name of 3,000 years of 'Jewish history'

In Jewish-Roots Arabs in Israel in the far-Right settler news agency Arutz Sheva, Tzvi MiSinai claimed that ‘Up to 85 percent of Arabs in greater Israel stem from Jewish ancestors, it is estimated’. The article describes how

‘One Arab says his father told him the secret of his family’s Jewishness on his deathbed, while another one, on the backdrop of a photo of the saintly Cabalistic sage Rabbi Abuchatzeira on his wall, says their roots have been known in his family for generations. Wrapping what apparently used to be kosher tefillin on his arm, he says, “My father used to do this, and he taught us to do it whenever someone was sick or in trouble.”

The myth of a Jewish ‘exile’ from Palestine and the idea of their ‘return’ is a Christian racial myth born of colonialism’s desire to establish a friendly settler state adjacent to the Suez Canal. That is why the first western Zionists were Evangelical Christians like Lord Palmerstone and Shaftesbury and also why the vast majority of western Jews were hostile to Zionism when it began.  Because if Jews belonged in Palestine they didn’t belong in England.

SOAS - founded to train colonial administrators has never shaken off racists such as Catherine Hezser

Yet according to Hezser, the right of Brooklyn bible basher to ‘return’ and steal the land is superior to that of indigenous Palestinians who have lived in Palestine for hundreds of years. The ‘right of return’ of Jews who’ve never  lived or even been to Israel trumps that of the indigenous population according to Hezser.

SOAS’s Jewish Studies Centre is nothing of the sort.  It is an Israeli propaganda institute. It is clear looking at its luminaries that there is no place for the third of Anglo-Jewry who don’t call themselves Zionists. It is equally clear that Hezser is unconcerned about the rich tapestry of Jewish life in the Diaspora. Racial myths of Jewish kingdoms only trump the rights of those who are suffering under Israeli apartheid in the minds of racist academics like Catherine Hezser.

SOAS was founded in 1916, a year before the Balfour Declaration, to train a generation of colonial administrators in the skills necessary to administer the British Empire.  Although it is now known as one of Britain’s more radical universities there are still some who look longingly at its former role.

I have written before about the Zionist attempt to control the narrative in higher education institutions.  At Sussex University a Propaganda Chair in Israel Studies was set up in 2012, named after Yossi Harel. It was funded by George Weidenfeld, the right-wing Zionist publisher who admitted that his motive was the fight against anti-Zionism and ‘antisemitism.’ As Electronic Intifada asked at the time

What is the real agenda behind the teaching of Israel studies in Western universities? While its leading advocates profess a commitment to “rigorous academic scholarship,” the subject cannot be considered politically neutral. The idea for these studies was conceived because of a perception among Israel’s supporters that some US-based professors were too sympathetic towards Palestinians.

In Nazi Germany there were Chairs in Racial Anthropology, a wholly bogus science. Today there are departments in Israel Studies, often masquerading as Jewish Studies, whose purpose is entirely political.

Whilst Catherine Hezser works in a Jewish not Israel Studies Department the suspicion must be that this department is flying under false colours. It clearly treats being Jewish as synonymous with being a Zionist which is itself a form of anti-Semitism. What is obvious is that Hezser doesn’t understand the difference. She is unsuited to running a car boot sale let alone an academic department.

Yale Pulled the Plug on Bogus 'Antisemitism' Institute

In 2011 Yale University closed the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism because it lacked academic rigour. Despite the outcry even Robert Wistrich, the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University agreed with the decision. However America’s Zionists jumped up and down.

Denying the Undeniable – The Link Between Zionism and Colonialism

I must confess that I had to rub my eyes when I first read Hezser’s article, where she wrote:

In their essays, students often associate Zionism with European colonialism, presenting the State of Israel as the outcome of a European colonial takeover of Palestinian territory. I always wonder where this erroneous and simplistic equation comes from.

If Hezser seriously believes that there is no association between Zionism and European colonialism then she is clearly unfit to be head of department.

The history of Zionism is quite clear. The Zionist movement sought the sponsorship of an imperialist partner from its very beginning in the late 19^th century. The whole of the life of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, was devoted to such a search. He journeyed to Czarist Russia, 3 months after the notorious Kishinev pogroms of  April 1903 to seek an audience with von Plehve, the Interior Minister who organised and financed the Black Hundreds pogromists responsible for the death of thousands of Jews. Herzl begged him:

‘Help me to reach land sooner and the revolt will end. And so will the defection to the Socialists.’

This can be found in the Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 1,526.  It would appear that Hezser is unaware of this obvious primary source of information on the beginnings of Zionism.

Herzl was excoriated for his behaviour towards Plehve. The pogroms drove two and a half million Jews from Russia to the shores of America and Britain. Herzl’s servile behaviour towards the Czarist regime, in which he pledged that the Zionist movement would offer no criticism of the Czarist regime (he kept his word) prefigured similar behaviour towards the Nazi state.

Herzl visited the leaders of Europe, from the Pope to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Italian King Victor Emmanuel and the Ottoman Sultan seeking an imperial sponsor. Herzl wrote in his Diaries (p.118) that the Grand Duke of Baden, the Kaiser’s uncle

‘took my project for building a state with the utmost earnestness. His chief misgiving was that if he supported the cause, people might accuse him of anti-Semitism’

When Zionism first arose its fiercest opponents were Jews. The anti-Semites were telling Jews to get out and the Zionists were saying ‘we agree’. As Professor Francis Nicosia, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University wrote

‘whereas today non-Jewish criticism of Zionism or the State of Israel are often dismissed as motivated by a deeper anti-Semitism, in Herzl’s day an opposite non-Jewish reaction, one of support for the Zionist idea, might have resulted in a similar reaction. [Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (p.7)

Although Nicosia is a Zionist he is also an honest, well respected academic. Hezser isn’t so much an academic as a cheap ideologically driven propagandist.

Historically the main supporters of Zionism have been anti-Semites. Zionism was a means of being rid of their Jews. Even today anti-Semites like Donald Trump, Steve Bannon or Tommy Robinson are gushing in their support of Israel and Zionism.

For example William Stanley Shaw, President of the British Brothers League, a proto-fascist anti-Semitic group formed in London’s East End in 1901 to oppose the immigration of Russian Jews to Britain, wrote in a letter to the Jewish Chronicle : (8.11.01)

I am a firm believer in the Zionist movement, which the British Brothers League will do much incidentally to foster. The return of the Jews to Palestine is one of the most striking signs of the times…. All students of prophecy are watching the manifold signs of the times with almost breathless interest

Other anti-Semitic supporters of Zionism in its early years included the leader of the anti-Dreyfussards in France, Edouard Drumont. One of the principal supporters of Zionism in Britain was Arthur J Balfour. In 1905 Balfour as Prime Minister introduced into the House of Commons the Aliens Act designed to keep Jewish refugees out of Britain. Balfour didn’t much like Jews but he loved Zionism.

Balfour was known as ‘Bloody Balfour’ after the death of 3 people when Police opened fire on a political protest in Mitchelstown, County Cork. In a debate in Parliament in 1906 Balfour defended refusing to give the vote to Black people in South Africa.

‘We have to face the facts, Men are not born equal, the white and black races are not born with equal capacities: they are born with different capacities which education cannot and will not change.

Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President described a conversation he had with Balfour on 12 December 1914. Balfour told him of a conversation he once had with Cosima Wagner, the anti-Semitic widow of Richard Wagner. Balfour explained that ‘he shared many of her anti-Semitic postulates.’ Instead of protesting Weizmann

‘pointed out that we, too… had drawn attention to the fact that Germans of the Mosaic persuasion were an undesirable and demoralizing phenomenon…’ [Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration p.154].

Contrary to Hezser’s belief that there is a 3,000 year racial link between Jews and the Hebrew tribesman wandering around the land of Canaan, the reception for Political Zionism among Jews was anything but warm. The only member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet to oppose the Balfour Declaration was its sole Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu, who wrote a memo to fellow members ‘on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government’.

It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation https://tinyurl.com/yxpopr9b

The same sentiments were expressed by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in the Pittsburgh Declaration of 1885.

“We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine... nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”  [Alan Taylor, Zionism and Jewish History, Journal of Palestinian Studies, Winter 1972,  p.41]

All of this is well known yet Hezser in her article complaints that ‘Judaism is reduced to a religion and often referred to as a “faith” by students.’ She calls this a ‘Christianising approach to Judaism (which) contributes to the Eurocentric view of Zionism as a form of European colonialism.’

Zionism formed an alliance with British imperialism in 1917 and the Palestine Mandate was created in 1920 (formally in 1922). To deny such obvious facts demonstrates that Hezser does not belong in an academic institution.

Herzl wrote to Cecil (above) asking for support because Zionism is 'something colonial'

At almost the same time as Britain’s Palestine Mandate began (1922) there occurred the Partition of Ireland (1921). The criminals and thugs of the Black and Tans, who had fought against Irish Republicans, were then transplanted to Palestine. None of this is relevant in Hefzer’s blinkered and racist myopia.

Quoting Aidan Beatty Hezser speaks of the “long and oddly intertwined history” of Irish nationalism and the Zionist movement. Total nonsense. There was a certain admiration for physical force Republicanism by Lehi, a Zionist terror group which proposed an alliance with the Nazis against the British (something that today’s Zionists keep quiet about) but Irish Republicanism was a movement of the left not right. What Beatty, in a very poor article, refers to as the attempted seduction of De Valera, was an approach by some Zionist stalwarts to the leader of the Free State in Dublin. By this time De Valera did not represent the Republican movement but was an opponent of it.

I am not faulting Hezser for knowing as little about Irish history as she does about Zionism and Jewish history. But it is well known that Irish Republicanism, as Beatty points out, since The Troubles began in 1969, have supported the Palestinians.  As Britain’s first Military Governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storres wrote the Zionist project was ‘a ‘little loyal Ulster in a sea of hostile pan Arabism.’ (Orientations)

If there is any doubt that Zionism saw itself as a colonial movement then we can go to Herzl’s Diaries again.

The founder of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in his letter to Cecil Rhodes had no doubt that Zionism was 'something colonial'

No one doubts that Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890-1896 after whom Rhodesia was named was a colonialist.  On January 11^th Herzl wrote him a begging letter in which he said:

“You are being invited to help make history...it doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial… I want you ... to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain…."

If Ms Hezser seriously wonders where the association between Zionism and colonialism comes from she should not be teaching at SOAS. Given her doctrinaire view of history, based on racial myth not serious study, she should not be an academic.

Extract from Ben Gurion's Rebirth & Destiny speaks about colonisation

There is no doubt that Zionists saw Zionism as a colonial project. David Ben Gurion’s Rebirth & Destiny refers repeatedly to ‘colonization’ and ‘colonies’. This of course was before the era of national liberation movements when colonialism became a dirty word.

Jabotinsky, the founder of Netanyahu's Revisionist Zionism had no doubts that Zionism was the same as colonialism

There is also the famous essay of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the inspiration for Likud, The Iron Wall, which appeared in Razsviet:

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent. The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage.

For the benefit of Hezser, the text of The Iron Wall can be found on the website of the Jewish Virtual Library.

I don’t intend to devote much time to Hezser’s worthless article in the Jewish Chronicle. Suffice to say, she:

i.                   Fails to understand the difference between the ancient Roman, Byzantine and Greek empires and the modern European empires.  Just let us say that the mode of production, feudalism rather than capitalism, meant that there was no comparison with the extraction of surplus value and resources.  Ancient empires were not settler colonial empires they were intended for plunder not the export of capital. The colonists merged with the natives over time rather than setting up apartheid structures.

ii.                 Hezser’s talk of a ‘forcefully interrupted 3,000-year old Jewish history in the Middle East.’ is a projecting back into history of Zionist fables and her own fantasies. European Jews had nothing to do with Palestine. When 2.5 million Russian Jews fled the pogroms just 1% went to Palestine, the other 99% went to the United States and Britain. Jews no more thought of Palestine as their home than Kenya.

iii.              The Jewish religion was centred on Jerusalem but that was a religious/spiritual orientation. It had no political significance. That was why when the Zionists first colonised Palestine they did it in opposition to the Jews living there. Since Hezser has such difficulty finding sources I suggest that she reads Weizmann’s Trial and Error which speaks of the Old Yishuv, which was anti-Zionist.

iv.              Hezser speaks of the ‘liberation of Palestine from the British’. This is ahistorical nonsense.  Zionism formed an alliance with British imperialism from 1917 onwards. Its settler formation grew under the protection of British bayonets. It fought alongside and was armed by the British when they fought the Arab Uprising from 1936-39 in just the same as the Ulster Protestants were armed and trained by the British.

v.                 It is true that the Zionist militias came into conflict with the British and fought them from 1945 onwards but how is this different from the two Boer wars that the Afrikaaners fought against the British? There always comes a time when the settlers rebel against the mother country but this was not a war of liberation, at least not in the eyes of South Africa’s Black people.

vi.              Hezser speaks of a history that includes Jewish communities in Syria, Egypt, and Persia. There were Jewish communities all over the Middle East but it they never saw a need to uproot and go to Palestine. The oldest Jewish community in the world was in Iraq, some 2,500 years old.  The Babylonian Talmud is more authoritative than the Jerusalem version.

Extracts from Ben Gurion's Rebirth & Destiny Speak About Colonisation not National Liberation

vii.            The Zionist movement sought to destroy and uproot the Arab Jewish communities and transplant them to Israel as a substitute working class for the Palestinians whom they’d just expelled.  Their methods included planting bombs in Baghdad to simulate anti-Semitism.

viii.         From the start of the Zionist project the Ashkenazi Jews saw Yemenite Jews as inferior and a source of physical labour. There was and is the ongoing scandal in Israel of the theft at birth of thousands of mainly Yemenite babies by white Europe Jewish settlers.

ix.              The Zionist attitude to the Yemenite Jews was as racist as the Whites in South Africa. Arthur Ruppin, the most important figure in pre-state Zionist history, believed that racial differences within the Jewish people was crucial. The main body of Jewish settlers in Palestine had to come from the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe since the Oriental and Sephardic Jews ‘were not suitable since they carried Semitic dysgenic elements.’ Hezser’s belief that European Jews are semitic was also true of Wilhelm Marr, the anti-Semite who first coined the term ‘anti-Semitism’ in 1879! 

x.                 Yemenite Jews were imported as cheap labour to Palestine. They experienced such extreme suffering that the death toll between 1912 and 1918 approached 50%. They were paid far less than Ashkenazi Jews, starvation wages. They received next to no medical attention and Bloom described Ruppin’s attitude to the Yemenites as one of ‘pathological stereotyping.’  Hezser can read this in the essay by Etan Bloom What the Father had in mind. (p. 340)

Hezser might also want to read Etan Bloom’s Ph. D thesis for Tel Aviv University ‘Arthur Ruppin and the Production of the Modern Hebrew Culture’ but I am conscious of having already given her more than enough reading material for the time being.

We should leave the rewriting of history to the anti-Semites that Zionism has so much in common with.  It might be helpful if SOAS were to give Hezser a long sabbatical in order that she can catch up with some long overdue reading!

SOAS recently made swingeing cuts of £17 million in its budget. There were fears that Hezser’s post might go but the Zionists ran a campaign to save her job. Whilst I’m not in favour of cuts in the case of this racist academic I am baffled as to why she wasn’t told to dispense her wisdom elsewhere.

Tony Greenstein

The Colonial Essence of Zionism

This is a good and comprehensive analysis of Zionism and its colonial base.  Well worth reading.

Tony Greenstein 

The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict and the Zionist Solution

Yisrael Puterman(i)  05 Jan 2013

Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organisation and fellow Zionists

Arthur J Balfour whose Declaration set the seal on the sponsorship of Zionism by British colonialism.  Balfour was a Christian Restorationist.  He was a typical example of an anti-Semite and Zionist.  In 1905, as Prime Minister, he introduced the Aliens Act designed to keep Jewish refugees from the pogroms out of Britain.

It is becoming increasingly evident that governance of the Occupied Territories is assuming permanent form. Israel’s regime is becoming established as apartheid: one legal system for Israeli citizens, based on the ‘Jewish and democratic’ version of Knesset legislation (incorporating discriminatory laws applied to Arab citizens, land expropriation, dispossession, restrictive measures such as delays in approving construction plans, deprivation in resource allocation, etc.); and another legal system –military rule – for the Palestinian population in the OTs, without any pretence of democratic rule.  For a little while after the occupation of 1967 it could have been thought that the Israeli occupation was indeed temporary, and the settlements were a sort of whim, an impulse of groups of the old ‘pioneering’ Zionist left and the new nationalist-religious right, trying to fulfil an outdated dream. But the subsequent intensive construction in the OTs, building of roads and other infrastructure, transfer of large Israeli-Jewish population into these territories, which required enormous multi-billion government expenditure – all this indicates clearly that Israel aims at permanent colonization of the OTs and creating there an irreversible state of affairs that will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and will preclude any solution other than continued Israeli rule.

Viscount Herbert Samuel - first British High Commissioner and an ardent Zionist, who appointed as Mufti, Haj al Amin Husseini, despite him coming 4th in the election to the post

The establishment of Ma‘ale Adumim, the disengagement from the Gaza Strip instigated by Sharon, as well as the construction of the Separation Barrier – all these are clues to the solution that Sharon and others have intended for the Palestinian population: concentration in autonomous Bantustan-style pockets. This setup has actually been implemented in Gaza, with well-known results.

Israel is not the only player in the arena. Resistance of the Palestinians to any solution that would not satisfy their minimal demands cannot be ignored. However, the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas regarding conditions for ending the conflict. Fatah, a movement representing the Palestinian bourgeoisie, seeks to resolve the conflict by establishing an independent Palestinian national state supported by the US and integrated in its regional order. A pre-condition for this is recognition of Israel, which Fatah (the leading movement of the PLO) has therefore accepted.

By contrast, Hamas, whose supporters are among the Palestinian proletariat and mainly the refugees, opposes a solution that would not resolve their problem. For them the problem is Zionist dispossession. Hence their demand is the restoration of their rights in the whole of Palestine, to be achieved by struggle.

But even the minimal moderate demands of Fatah – a state based on the pre-1967 borders including east Jerusalem and some kind of solution the problem of refugees (sufficient to mitigate their resistance) – are inacceptable to Israel, which shows its real intention by persisting with its policy of dispossession and construction in the OTs. The rhetoric of the ‘peace process’ can deceive no one, not even Abu-Mazen.

The US supports in general terms this solution (which, as mentioned above, implies integration of the Palestinian state in the regional imperialist order), but dare not impose it on Israel, so as not to antagonize and destabilize its main protégé. On the other hand, the Netanyahu government not only rejects this minimum solution but keeps raising the ante by demanding fresh conditions that make it impossible even to start negotiations. It must be said that should a left-Zionist led government be formed – which is in any case an unrealistic prospect in the foreseeable future – it would be unable, and most probably unwilling, to implement such a solution because of the reality that has been created on the ground, and mainly because of the massive opposition of the settlers, whose political muscle is greater than their electoral weight.

The fulfillment of the Zionist  dream - a permanent occupation of Palestinian territories

The resulting political deadlock, and the adherence to it of the Netanyahu government, appears to be leading to a bi-national state or an apartheid state. According to warnings issued by persons belonging to various shades within the left-Zionist camp, that would be the end of the Zionist dream. On the face of it, they seem to have a valid point: the Zionist right is leading Israel to an impasse. But this view – as though all Israeli governments have for years been investing billions in a pointless project and, with eyes wide open, leading Israel into a dead end – is one of denial and refusal to face the facts. Whoever is prepared to examine the system thoroughly will discover that there is method in this madness.

The colonial essence of Zionism

The terms ‘colonialism’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ are not deemed to be politically correct in the Israeli-Zionist discourse. There is a weighty reason for this: the need to repress and ignore the fact that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is essentially one between colonizing settlers and an indigenous people, that the Zionist project is fundamentally colonial, implemented via dispossession and ethnic cleansing. One of the thinkers who spoke about this openly and bluntly was Israel Zangwill, a Zionist leader admired by Benzion Netanyahu, the prime minister’s father, who quotes him approvingly in his Hebrew book The Road to Independence. This is how Zangwill put it:

“There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants.... So we must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us.”(ii)

Zangwill was by no means the only Zionist leader to see that the implementation of Zionism must involve ethnic cleansing. Most of the Zionist leadership, from Herzl to Ben-Gurion, supported population transfer; but for the most part they understood that openly advocating it would be politically harmful to the Zionist project and tarnish its image, so they took care to speak and write about it off the public record. Quotations from their speeches and writings on the subject, as well as a wealth of information about the implementation of transfer in various places and the war crimes that it involved, can be found in the literature.(iii)

It should be pointed out that the aim of Zionist colonization was not to exploit the cheap labour power of the natives but to displace them, as was done by the settlers in North America and Australia, and replace them by Jewish immigrants.

Most of the leading circles of Palestine’s Arabs had no illusions about what the Zionist project meant for them. As far as they were concerned the danger became especially real following the Balfour Declaration, which meant that the British empire – the country’s new ruling power – supported the Zionist plan. As was to be expected, the Arabs’ reaction was implacable opposition.

As in the aforementioned colonies, the settlers in this country formed a new, Israeli-Jewish, nation. But unlike what happened in those countries, where the indigenous people were exterminated or overpowered and marginalized, the indigenous population here, part of the Arab nation, became a people possessing Palestinian national consciousness, whose specific identity was formed in the struggle against the Israeli-Jewish settler nation. This is why the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has the appearance of a national conflict over a piece of territory, to be resolved by territorial compromise.
The following two excerpts, taken from a Matzpen editorial of 10 December 1966, describe the essence of Israel’s regime; they are as topical today as they were then:

“The policy of Israel’s regime is a consistent extension of that of the Zionist movement since its beginnings: it consists in creating new facts and entrenching them by all available means, while planning and seeking to create new facts.”

“Since the existing Zionist regime of Israel cannot impose itself on the Arab World by persuasion, it needs to resort to violence. But as its own force falls short of subjugating the Arab World, it must seek the support of the power or powers that it regards as dominating this region.”

The ultimate solution: ethnic cleansing

The dispossession of Arab tenant fellaheen started right from the early days of Zionist activity in Palestine: land was bought from absentee landowners residing in Beirut or Damascus, and the tenants, whose families had worked the land for generations, were evicted by the British police. This is what happened in the Valley of Jezreel (Marj Ibn ‘Amer), in Hefer Valley (Wadi Hawarith), and wherever land inhabited by tenant fellaheen was purchased. The accumulated Arab indignation, caused by British-supported Zionist activity, resulted in the 1936–39 Arab uprising against the British authorities and the Jewish immigrants. The uprising was suppressed by the British forces, using tanks and aircraft. As a result, the Palestinians’ military, organizational and political backbone was broken and demoralization spread in their ranks. The leader of the Palestinian uprising, Hajj Amin al-Huseini, fled the country. (As is well known, he later collaborated with the Nazis against the British and the Jews.)

The momentous ethnic cleansing, the Palestinian nakba, took place during the 1948 war. Sporadic terrorist actions by both sides turned into a war following the November 1947 UN partition resolution, and subsequently escalated. It must be emphasised that for the most part the Palestinian population had little interest or involvement in the clash, and wished only to be left alone.

Nevertheless, although the Zionist leadership was aware of the Palestinians’ powerlessness, it spread fear in the Jewish yishuv, as though it was in danger of extermination. This made it possible to expel the Palestinians from villages and mixed-population towns, which were conquered more or less rapidly, without the slightest protest even on the part of those Zionists who had supported a bi-national solution and were supposedly against ethnic cleansing.

The Zionist leadership was indeed surprised by the feebleness of Palestinian resistance and the hasty escape of the population, but it knew how to exploit the situation in two ways. On the one hand it claimed that the the flight was ordered by the Palestinian leadership, wishing to prepare a clear operational arena for the Arab armies; on the other hand it intensified expulsions, especially from the areas conquered in the south following the Egyptian invasion. About 400,000 Arabs were expelled before the invasion of the Arab states’ armies, and about another 350,000 after it.

It is important to understand that process of flight and expulsion in order to infer what may happen in future. Spokespersons of the Israeli authorities and establishment historians claim, first, that the Arabs fled and were not expelled; and, second (in support of the first claim), that there had not existed a plan for expulsion, so that the flight of the Arabs must have been spontaneous or a response to an instruction/recommendation of the Arab leadership.

As for the first point: indeed the Arabs generally fled, because they realized right from the start of the hostilities that Palestinian resistance was weak and unable to withstand the Zionist military organizations and their attacks on centres of defenceless civilian population. In those few places where there was resistance, or where the Zionist forces wished to accelerate the flight, massacres were perpetrated.

The second point is of special importance for our present consideration: a detailed and comprehensive plan for expelling the Arabs and destroying their villages did not exist, nor was it needed. Transfer was an integral part inherent in Zionist ideology and practice. Every commander understood what was required of him; and if he was not sure, a small gesture of the hand was sufficient to make matters clear to him.

The same pattern was repeated in the 1967 war: immediately following the conquest of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, a ‘spontaneous’ process of transfer and destruction of villages was put in motion. By the time this move was stopped under American pressure, about 250,000 inhabitants had been expelled (‘fled’) from the West Bank and about 100,000 from the Golan Heights.

The facts that have been established on the ground and the political deadlock designed to allow continued settlement construction in the OTs have created a void into which may be drawn the classical ultimate Zionist solution – ethnic cleansing. Groups of settlers, motivated by an open ideology of transfer, are already creating provocations in the OTs, designed to ignite a major flare-up that would allow transfer to take place. The fact that the ‘security forces’ refrain from stopping them is a pointer to where this is leading. The Netanyahu government is aware that a confrontation, however great, confined to the OTs might attract international and internal opposition capable of preventing the implementation of the scheme. For this purpose what is needed is a regional large-scale conflagration lasting sufficiently long.

The scenario of the nakba may be repeated: a rocket attack may panic the Israeli public into supporting, or at least accepting, any action justified by ‘security needs’. It must be noted that the Zionist left and right do not differ regarding the Zionist aim: a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state over the largest possible territory with as few Palestinians as possible. The Zionist left supports territorial compromise when conditions do not allow this aim to be implemented in the entire area; but if that would become possible, some of them would give it their blessing, and others would perhaps accept it with regretful ‘understanding’, shedding crocodile tears. Of course, this scenario depends on the occurrence of a suitable international conjuncture, and on the acquiescence of the ‘international community’ (the states obedient to the US). In such circumstances the Palestinians would not stand a chance. 

Israel’s role in the service of imperialism, and the international situation

The idea of establishing a state for Jews in Palestine was mooted in the British government as early as the mid-19th century,(iv) in the heyday of British colonialism, decades before Herzl and the Zionist movement. At that time Britain had no foothold in the Arab east. The idea was that a Jewish state, alien to the Arab peoples, would be totally dependent on it British sponsor and serve its interests. This idea, proposed to Moses Montefiore, found little support among Jews at that time.

When favourable conditions materialized and the idea started to be implemented in Palestine, it didn’t quite work out as planned: support for Zionism created difficulties for relations between the British empire (and later the US) and the Palestinians, as well as the Arab states that coveted the territory and wished to annex it. (These states themselves were created through the division of the region according to the imperialist interests of Britain and France, following their conquest of the Ottoman empire.) Also, the prospective creation of an alien Zionist state and the dispossession of the indigenous Arabs caused internal unrest within the Arab countries, which destabilized their regimes and unsettled their relations with the British empire.

This ambiguous situation continued after the British domination of the region was replaced by that of the US and lasted until the June 1967 war. Since that war, the clear preference of the US was to support Israel as the principal and most stable mainstay of American hegemony in the region. The turning point was Israel’s decisive victory over Nasser’s Egypt, Syria and Jordan. This crushing victory also led to the downfall of Nasserism, which had posed the most significant threat to US domination of the region, and eventually to the collapse of Soviet influence in the Arab east. Thus the US achieved almost effortlessly an unprecedented gain during the cold war. Since then, the alliance with Israel has been a firm and unassailable feature of US policy in the region, granting the Israeli regime virtually absolute military, economic and political support. For its part, dependence on the US has become for Israel an existential necessity, so that continued US domination of the region is a vital Israeli interest.

At the same time it must be noted that, notwithstanding all the fine talk of shared values, democracy etc., and the influence of the Jewish lobby, US support for Israel is conditional on the latter’s role as watchdog of the imperialist order as well as on its meshing with US regional policy. This premise is now being put to the test, which threatens Israel’s strategic regional position.

The global crisis of capitalism has created shock waves around the world. Among the first to be hit were the corrupt regimes of the Arab world. The Arab Spring, the popular uprising that has spread almost everywhere in the region is undermining ‘stability’, that is to say the regional imperialist order and US hegemony.

We cannot go here into an analysis of the various events in the countries in which the Arab Spring manifested itself, so far with diverse outcomes. What is clear is that the opposition, generally led by the parties of political Islam, that has managed to achieve power, has no solution for the social problems of the masses, which had mainly caused the unrest in the first place. Therefore the insurgency has not had its last say, and stability has not been restored. It is also clear that the US has no intention of endangering the huge profits of the oil corporations, which depend on its strategic domination of the region.

Obama’s re-election, the ebbing of internal American support for the strong-arm policy initiated by G W Bush in Afghanistan and Iran, as well as the capitalist crisis and the Arab spring, have created a new situation, inviting reassessment of US policy in the region. Unlike his predecessor, Obama is reluctant to apply American military force directly (although he has not hesitated to do so by proxy: using NATO in Libya, Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in Syria). He is attempting to apply softer force and more conciliatory policy wherever possible, so long as this does not threaten basic US interests, particularly in relation to the biggest and most important countries of the region, Egypt and Iran. In Egypt the change in the style of US policy was illustrated by its acquiescence in the overthrow of Mubarak and acceptance of the Muslim Brethren opposition. Regarding Iran, it is illustrated by readiness to negotiate with the regime and accept some accommodation with the latter’s interests.

These changes in the policy of the Obama administration’s policy may reduce to some extent Israel’s strategic importance, and increase the importance of Palestinian demands, as part of the new stability that Obama is attempting to promote in the region.
The Netanyahu government, alarmed by these prospects, took unprecedented steps in an attempt to reshuffle the cards and lead back to the old strong-arm policy: it announced its intention to attack Iran without a US green light (an idea that was blocked at the eleventh hour), and made a hare-brained attempt at intervening in the US presidential election campaign, based on the assumption that a Republican administration would oppose Obama’s conciliatory policy and revert to the old policy that secures the position of Israel.
Obama’s policy has no better than even chance of working out. He has been revealed as a weak president, whose hesitancy may lead him to draw back from his plan. On the other hand, the uprising in the Arab world may continue, because the peoples’ hardship cannot be truly resolved by this or that imperialist settlement. In this situation, the entire region may be plunged into chaos and war. In such a scenario, in which Israel is supposed to play a major role, it could be rewarded by its pound of flesh: a large-scale expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and possibly also from Israel. This would spell calamity for both peoples.

Conclusions

The realization of Zionism depends on three main elements, which have been addressed in the present article: first, colonialism; second, ethnic cleansing; third, association with a foreign power that dominates the region. Without any one of these, Zionism is but an insubstantial idea. Therefore, irrespective of which ideological current is leading a Zionist Israel, these three elements will perennially determine the reality created by Zionism and its consequences. This is the essence of the problem; but Israeli politics, the Zionist parties and the media, do not address it but are engaged in debates about sorting out its symptoms.

This forecast of the outcome of the process just described is not a prophecy; it is inferred from the whole history of Zionist practice in Palestine. The fact that Israel prefers political deadlock and continued colonization to any solution, albeit partial, that would dampen the flames of the conflict; the extremely asymmetric balance of power between Israel and the Palestinians as well as between imperialism and the ‘international community’ and the peoples of the Arab east – all these suggest a process that may lead to an apocalypse. True, this is not the only possible outcome, and unforeseen circumstances may well arise, forcing all forecasts to be altered. But it would be wrong to bury one’s head in the sand and ignore the dangers.

In any case, it is clear that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict will not be resolved within the narrow framework of Israel-Palestine: it is inseparably bound up with the geopolitical situation in the entire region. Neither the existing imperialist order, nor nationalist or theocratic regimes, can genuinely solve the problems of the peoples of the region, which are basically social.

The Arab Spring – a popular uprising that will re-emerge so long as the problems that engendered it have not been resolved – is a struggle against all the ills of imperialism and its partners, the reactionary Arab regimes and Zionism; it renews the relevance of internationalist socialism as the solution to the region’s social problems and conflicts. Far off as it may seem to be, it has no real substitute.

Socialism (not modelled on the discredited Soviet regime) can also attract the impoverished Israeli working class, as well as the white-collar workers who are forced down into the ranks of the proletariat together with other disadvantaged strata, all those who came out in the social protest of 2011, to renounce Zionism, capitalism and dependence on imperialism, which shackle the Israeli people to endless wars, isolate it from the peoples of the region, and endanger its existence in confrontation with the Arab world.

I.  Hebrew text posted 27 December 2012 on Hagada Hasmalit This translation by Moshé Machover
II.  “Zionism and England’s Offer”, The Maccabaean (American Jewish journal), December 1904. Quoted in
III.  See, for example, Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London: One world, 2006).
IV.   See British Support for Jewish Restoration.

Gilad Atzmon - Rejecting any Rehabilitation

Blake Alcott’s Cut & Paste Defence of the Indefensible

Alcott's article in defence of Atzmon

Despite the fact that this blog was originally set up to combat the influence of Gilad Atzmon, his racism and anti-Semitism, I have ignored him in recent months.  After the issuing of a statement by Ali Abunimah and many other Palestinians and Arabs, and similar statements by activists, it is fair to say that Atzmon’s bubble burst.  The film that had been made of him bombed.  Activists were turned off by his attacks on BDS (very similar to those of the Israeli government which outlawed support for Boycott).

The imagine on the Redress site.  Note the 'subtle' alignment of Ali Abunimah, a key Palestinian activist, with Alan Dershowitz, a virulent Zionist zealot.

Nonetheless there are times when it is useful to go back over some of the arguments.  My attention was brought to a 20 page long apologia for Atzmon by one Blake Alcott, who describes himself as an ‘economical ecologist’ in his article in the anti-Semitic Counterpunch magazine, whose founder Alex Cockburn ended his life as a supporter of the French fascist leader Marine Le Pen.  One thing is certain and that is that Alcott was certainly being economical with the truth.  Just  how ecological it was I shall leave to others to judge.

Atzmon blows his own trumpet

Blake Alcott’s is one more attempt to put a leftist face on Atzmon and to try and provide a rationale for his repeatedly racist statements and assumptions.  It isn’t a question of words, or out of context quotes as Alcott believes.  Atzmon has himself demonstrated that he considers Zionism and Israel to be ‘Jewish’ phenomenon, arising out of a Jewish supremacist ideology, ‘Jewishness’. 

The fact that this article is carried on Counterpunch, which provides space for out and out holocaust deniers such as Israel Shamir speakes volumes.  When Mary Rizzo denounced Jews Against Zionism and myself in particular, Counterpunch not only refused to carry a response but it refused even to acknowledge the response of Roland Rance and myself.  But what does one expect from a web site that a sympathiser with the French National Front and Marine Le Pen, Alex Cockburn, ran?

When an essay begins with a lie then it is pretty clear that it’s going to be all downhill from thereon.  Alcott states that ‘I ignore denunciations of Atzmon by Alan Dershowitz, Tony Greenstein and Jeffrey Goldberg because they consist of associative thinking and are based on often-unreferenced quotations out of context.’

This is a demonstrable lie since anyone who takes the time and trouble to read my Guide to Atzmon’s sayings  will know that everything is sourced back to what Atzmon himself has written.  If Alcott finds that ‘associative thinking’ (I assume that associating Atzmon with his own writings is not unfair) is a problem then that demonstrates the limits of his own analysis.  Neither Goldberg nor Dershowitz are capable of any analysis worthy of the name because both are Zionists who defend Israel and Zionism without question.  I do not.  Hence the intellectual contortions of Alcott as he tries to make a case for Atzmon:

Colonialism

 Alcott tries to square the circle by saying that ‘Atzmon is basically asserting that the settler-colonialist paradigm is not sufficient to explain Zionism:’

That is one way of putting it.  However it is not the way that Atzmon puts it.  Atzmon is a somewhat better guide to Atzmon than Alcott Through Atzmon’s Looking Glass (with a tint of pseudo-left sophistry).  Alcott quotes argues that Atzmon doesn't reject the idea that Israel is a settler colonial entity.  He merely states that it is not the entire explanation.  However in order to sustain this thesis, Alcott only cites the quotation in bold in Atzmon's book.  He deliberately excises all that follows.  Let me remind him of what Atzmon wrote in toto:

‘Zionism is not a colonial movement with an interest in Palestine, as some scholars suggest. Zionism is actually a global movement that is fuelled by a unique tribal solidarity of third category members. To be a Zionist means to accept that, more than anything else, one is primarily a Jew.’ p.15, Wandering Who?.

A global movement fuelled by a ‘unique tribal solidarity’.  Clearly it is not a settler-colonial movement, it is part of a wider conspiracy.  And Atzmon continues in relation to the Organismus that

‘It is more than likely that ‘Jews’ do not have a centre or headquarters. It is more than likely that they aren’t aware of their particular role within the entire system, the way an organ is not aware of its role within the complexity of the organism…. This is probably the Zionist movement’s greatest strength. It transformed the Jewish tribal mode into a collective functioning system.
 
Looking at Zionism as an organismus would lead to a major shift in our perspective of current world affairs. The Palestinians, for instance, aren’t just the victims of the Israeli occupation, they are actually the victims of a unique global political identity, namely the third category people who transformed the Holy Land into a Jewish bunker.’ p.17.

In fact Atzmon rejects the settler colonial paradigm in its entirety, whilst paying lip-service to it rhetorically. 

‘These events [Mava Marmari & others] have nothing to do with the colonialist nature of the Jewish state as some Marxist ideologists insist. They may have something to do with the racist, supremacist, chauvinist ideology that fuels Zionism.’  Indeed Atzmon agrees with Alan Dershowitz that Israel cannot be a colonial state because it has no mother country. ‘Fair enough, I say, he may be right. I myself do not regard Zionism as a colonial adventure.’

An absurd formulation since Britain was the initial mother country.  It is what settlers do that counts.  The American settlers continued to colonise America after breaking with the British mother country.  Why not Zionism with the sponsorship of Britain.  So Alcott, having accused me of taking quotes out of context, does exactly the same and worse.  He selectively cuts his quote and thus distorts the meaning in order to bolster his case.

When Atzmon draws a straight line from Moses to Netanyahu he is in practice asserting a unique racial continuum, from.  Atzmoncites Moses oration to his people thus:

‘The Judaic God, as portrayed by Moses in the above passage, is an evil deity, who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft. Yet there are many ways to deal with this negative image of the Almighty…. For more than sixty years, the Biblical call for theft has been put into legal praxis.’ 
What we have here is a Jewish race, a group of people who retain their characteristics, including their inclination to plunder and despoil, over the millenia.   I know that Atzmon denies he ever makes so much as a mention of biological race, but since race is a political construct, it can be based on biology, culture, ideology or a mixture thereof.  It is interesting that in his book (p.16) he writes that

‘In his book, Ostrovsky refers to it as racial solidarity; I call it third category brotherhood and Weizmann calls it Zionism. But it all means the same thing.’ 
Indeed it does all mean the same.  When we penetrate beneath Atzmon’s surface justification we see that he does indeed mean Jewish race and he ascribes to that race, bound together by a supremacist ideology (Jewishness) all that has happened in Palestine.  It is also the only way of justifying his comparison between the anti-Semitism experienced by the Jews of Europe and the dislike of Zionists (Jews to Atzmon) in Israel.  Both made themselves unpopular because of what they did.  The Bundists, who wished to confiscate the wealth of the capitalists [Atzmon singling out ‘Jewish socialism’ and the Bund is itself anti-Semitic – were all other socialists in favour of private property?  We should be told!). 

As for ‘Jewishness’.  How can there be one Jewish ideology?  Is there just one Christian ideology?  Clearly there is more to Jewishness than meets the eye.  It is the ideology of all those who consider themselves Jewish and it is only those who believe in race who succumb to the idea of a homogenous Jewry.  Atzmon ignores simple facts such as the rejection of Zionism from Herzl until 1945 by Jews themselves.  Atzmon has no explanation because for him to be Jewish is to be a Zionist.  [see ‘Not in my name’ for an expansion on this].

Let us be generous.  Alcott has never read my Guide to Atzmon so he is unaware of the passage which was omitted from his book.  Yet Atzmon made his views very clear and demonstrated that he was quite prepared to get into the sewer with the far-right. 

We even have the fascist canard that ‘Throughout the centuries, some Jewish bankers have gathered the reputation of backers and financers of wars’ and even one communist revolution. Though some rich Jews have been happily financing wars using their own assets, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, found a far more sophisticated way to facilitate or at least divert the attention from the wars perpetrated by Libby, Wolfowitz and PNAC.’ p.20 

This combines the traditional far-right thesis of the Jews financing the communist revolution with them controlling capitalism.  Alan Greenspan was apparently acting at the beck and call of Aipac in destabilising the American economy, presumably at the Jews behest.  It is what is commonly known as the World Jewish Conspiracy Theory, beloved of fascists and Atzmon.  Presumably the ‘leftist’ ecologist Alcott also has no problems with it either.

Holocaust Denial

In ‘Truth, History & Integrity’  Atzmon writes that:

‘I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?’

I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start asking questions… We should strip the Holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place. The Holocaust, like every other historical narrative, must be analysed properly… Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history? If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early Zionists claimed, why did they fail? (pp 175-176)

Atzmon conveniently misses out the first paragraph of the essay in the chapter of his book of the same name.  Alcott also doesn’t mention it.  Perhaps he is unaware of it or more likely it didn't fit his thesis.  He clearly decided that it would be impossible to maintain the pretence that Atzmon doesn’t deny or query the factual aspect of the holocaust, i.e. that millions of Jews (& others too of course) were deliberately exterminated.  I can now understand Alcott’s objection to associative thinking.  Far better to stick with Atzmon’s denials and ignore the substance of his argument.

Instead Alcott cites with approval Atzmon’s trite and ludicrous observation that

‘People who place such questions out of bounds “are doomed to think that anti-Semitism is an ‘irrational social phenomenon that ‘erupts out of nowhere’. Accordingly they must believe that the Goyim are potentially mad.” (p 182) Alcott comments that ‘It is a matter of simple logic that to ask why Jews were hated in Europe is not to presuppose that there were good reasons.’ 

It is also a matter of simple logic to ask whether Atzmon’s statement is true or not.  This is, however, something Alcott is incapable of.  In fact it is quite possible to offer a rationale explanation for anti-Semitism which doesn’t assume that they were hated by everyone.  Anti-Semitism was for example a means by which aspiring and indebted rulers could scapegoat Jews for the ills that the peasants faced.  This however runs counter to Atzmon’s conspiracy theory of a straight line from Moses to present-day Israel.  In fact it is Atzmon’s explanation which is irrational.  Someone with a bit more intellectual depth would have asked who did the hating, why did they hate, what was the context in which they hated, always assuming they did hate.

And then one gets a far more nuanced understanding.  Incidentally the rolling up of ‘anti-Semitism’ as one long unchanging constant is itself an acceptance of a Zionist/Atzmon thesis.  In Germany the irony is that when Hitler came to power anti-Semitism was waning.  In many countries non-Jews did their best to protect Jews.  We all know that Ann Frank was hidden with her family by non-Jews, but this was not exceptional.  In Italy, the fact that 85% of Jews survived was on account of people, not least the much reviled Catholic Church, being willing to shelter them.

Alcott’s superficial apologia leads him to accept Atzmon’s nonsense.  Denmark’s whole Jewish community was rescued and taken by fishermen to Sweden.  There were large protest movements in Bulgaria, led by those wicked communists, which prevented the government deporting even one Jew (apart from the annex territories of Thrace and Macedonia).  In Amsterdam there was a general strike against the attacks on the Jewish community.  Atzmon speaks about the need to research the ‘historical narrative’ whilst pronouncing on something he has no knowledge.  He himself has made no attempt to acquaint himself with any research.  Instead he flatters the historical revisionists with their ‘research’ activities.  Alcott is his apologist.  The fact that the openly anti-Semitic Redress site, which Atzmon has a large influence over, has posted Alcott's article suggests that Alcott is nothing more than Atzmon's willing foot servant.

Other Observations

Alcott seeks to acquit Atzmon of the charge of racism by comparing him with Benny Morris, whose statements today are those of an overt Jewish racist, with Nazi overtones.  Morris defends his sweeping assertions about Arab culture by saying he is speaking of a dominant political culture.  So dominant that he regrets not expelling every single Palestinian in 1948.  Sorry Mr Alcott but comparing Atzmon to Benny Morris doesn’t excuse him.  If anything it compounds the case I and others have made.

Alcott says ‘Abunimah’s position is of course untenable’ referring to the blaming of Jewish ‘culture’ for Zionism.  Of course Alcott is unable to say why it is untenable.  Abunimah’s logic, that it is like blaming Afrikaaner ‘culture’ for Apartheid or British ‘culture’ for the crimes of British imperialism is meaningless is anything but untenable.

Alcott also confuses (or maybe doesn’t understand) Omar Barghouti’s position.  It is perfectly acceptable to cite, as Israel Shahak did, aspects of the Talmud which provide justification for the most barbaric practices of the religious Zionists.  The Talmud (compilation of Oral Law – there are 2 versions but the Iraqi version is more authoritative) is indeed as a form of legitimation but it is not the cause of Zionism.  It is only because Atzmon not only ignores Jewish opposition to Zionism but positively attacks Jewish anti-Zionists today, that he can maintain his thesis.

Alcott betrays his own motivation and beliefs when he talks of Atzmon’s ‘Exhibit A’ which is the ‘relatively large number of Jews in the UK Parliament (all hard or soft Zionists).’  Alcott writes pompously that ‘To declare out of bounds the subject of Jewish, as opposed to merely Zionist, influence in politics, finance and media is to claim that support for Zionism by many powerful people has nothing at all to do with the fact that they are Jewish, or rather, that they politically identify as Jews.’ 

Of course most Jews identify as Zionists.  That is the main basis of their being Jewish today.  There is no other socio-economic reason.  It is a trite observation.  But I am interested in the description of Jews in the UK Parliament as ‘hard or soft Zionists’ whatever that means.  Until the last general election the Jewish MP Harry Cohen identified himself as anti-Zionist.  The MP who made the most powerful speech denouncing Operation Cast Lead was none other than someone who is hated today by Zionism – regardless of whether he still calls himself a Zionist.  I refer to Gerald Kaufmann, who stated that his grandmother hadn’t died at the hands of Nazi butchers in order that Israeli butchers could murder Palestinian grandmothers.  No doubt this was a great aid to Olmert and Livni.

Alcott says that ‘Wandering does not demonstrate to my satisfaction that Jewish-ness is supremacist.’  Again he accepts the assumption that there is such a thing as ‘Jewishness’.  As such he goes down the road with Atzmon despite his protestations.  Alcott refers to the British Jewish Socialists.  Presumably he means the Jewish Socialists Group.

Alcott believes that ‘Atzmon is here too severe in his critique’ when he attacks Jewish anti-Zionists for merely trying to rehabilitate the idea of being Jewish.  If that were true then the next question would be so what?  Isn’t that another way of saying that there are some people who wish to assert a secular Jewish identity apart from Zionism.  Is that wrong?  In fact those of us who are Jewish and anti-Zionist face the most bitter attacks of the Zionists, as ‘traitors’ as Rabbi Shochet tried to do on BBC1’s Big Questions today when I disagreed with him.  The reason for their vitriol is that we are the living proof that there is nothing ‘Jewish’ about what Israel does.  Further that supporting the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.  The fact that Atzmon reserves most of his bile, not for Dershowitz but us shows where he is really coming from.

Alcott realises how difficult it is to defend Atzmon when he says of these attacks on Jewish anti-Zionists that he ‘overstates his case. It also seems merely polemical to claim that “when it comes to ‘action’ against the so-called ‘enemies of the Jewish people’, Zionists and ‘Jewish anti-Zionists’ act as one people – because they are one people.” (p 102)

It is not Jewish anti-Zionists who proclaim their opposition to BDS as a Jewish-organised campaign to take the heat off any focus on Jewish racial solidarity.  It is Atzmon who opposes BDS!  Unfortunately, in eschewing my very-well researched essay on Atzmon’s writings, Alcott is left scrabbling around reconciling opposites.  Take BDS, which let us not forget was a call from Palestinians and is universally accepted now by Palestine solidarity groups as the way ahead.  Atzmon does his best to pour scorn on it.  He has not a word to say in its favour.  To me has been explicit privately.  It is a Jewish con.

In his interview with Silvia Cattori  he says explicitly that ‘If anything, it has led to further intensified radicalisation within the right in Israel.’  Precisely the argument of apartheid supporters and apologists, like Thatcher.  It would only strengthen the Right.  Leaving aside that Atzmon believes there is a ‘right-wing’ Zionism as opposed to a ‘left’ – which in the past he has associated with the Israeli Labour Party) why is Atzmon opposed to describing Zionism and its fruit, the State of Israel, as colonial? Because it ‘locates Zionism nicely within their ideology… we first equate Israel with South Africa, and then we implement a counter-colonial strategy, such as the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions).’  Far better to concentrate on Jews as Jews with useful idiots, to use August Bebel’s famous phrase, seeking to pretend that Atzmon is just a bit confused and clear.  In fact, despite the attempts of Alcott to raise a smokescreen, Atzmon’s statements are very explicit and clear.

Alcott finds it impossible to defend the singling out by Atzmon of Alan Greenspan, who has not identified (to the best of my knowledge) as a Zionist, certainly is not prominent in so doing, but apparently was wrecking the US economy on behalf of Jewish interests.  If this is not an example of what Atzmon’s real motivation is then words are useless.  Yet Alcott  merely says that ‘Atzmon’s digression on Greenspan is harmful or at least pointless in the battle for justice for Palestinians.’  In fact all his digressions are harmful.  This is but one of many.  His singling out of Wolfowitz, as if all the neo-cons were Jewish is another example. 

Alcott’s essay is an exercise in exorcising the demons created by the Palestinians who signed the ‘Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon’.  The reason why he therefore ignores what Atzmon actually says and writes, and why the work which I’ve done is disparaged by association to Dershowitz, is that it is impossible to reconcile the anti-Semitism of his writings with his professed support for the Palestinians. 

Although I have vowed not to spend much time any longer on Atzmon, because his whole intention, to divide the Palestine solidarity movement, is ultimately aided by focussing on him, it is sometimes necessary to rebut those who try to pretend that Atzmon is a jolly anti-racist type.

The primary fault of both Atzmon and Alcott is that they operate ideologically within the parameters set by Zionism.  Alcott cites, presumably with approval, Atzmon’s own citation of Chaim Weizmann to the effect that there are no British or French Jews, merely Jews who are French.  Atzmon’s whole argument is based on an acceptance is this quite crucial aspect of Zionist argument.  However it is one which any self-respecting anti-Zionist would reject.  Jews living in Britain are British, unlike what the most inveterate anti-Semites, Atzmon and presumably Alcott argue.  It’s not a good idea to take one’s cue from the Zionist’s politically but that is Atzmon’s cardinal mistake, from which all the others – including his anti-Semitism follow.

Tony Greenstein