WHAT IS ZIONISM? Is it a National Liberation Movement or an Ideology & Movement of Jewish Supremacism & Settler Colonialism?

Is Zionism a Manifestation of Jewish Identity and if so What Does That Say About Being Jewish Today?

This is Zionism - Destroying Palestinian Water Wells with Concrete and making them Water Poor

Introduction

Everyone knew that Apartheid in South Africa was a system of racial domination by the White minority over the Black population. Likewise everyone knew that Unionism in Northern Ireland meant Protestant supremacy over the Catholic population, although in both cases apologists for Apartheid and Unionism suggested that it was not so much about racism as much as questions of identity and culture. [see for example Graham Walker’s Old History: Protestant Ulster in Lee's "Ireland", The Irish Review, No. 12 (Spring - Summer, 1992]

Supporters of Zionism, both the ideology and the movement, have long denied that there is any comparison between Israel and Apartheid South Africa. However the reality on the ground suggests otherwise. Every human rights group of note – Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch - has produced detailed reports describing how the mechanisms of Jewish supremacy work in Israel.

The IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism, whose sole purpose was to conflate criticism of Zionism and Israel with anti-Semitism, says that to even call the establishment of a Jewish state racist is anti-Semitic. Since Israel is clearly a racist state, what the IHRA is really saying is that something can be true and still be anti-Semitic.

So what is Zionism? Is it a synonym for being Jewish? Is it a form of cultural or personal identity? And furthermore who should get to define it? Is it the Zionists or their victims?

The Chakrabarti Report

In her Report of 30 June 2016 into racism and ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party Shami Chakrabarti wrote that:

it is for all people to self-define their political beliefs and I cannot hope to do justice to the rich range of self-descriptions of both Jewishness or Zionism, even within the Labour Party, that I have heard. What I will say is that some words have been used and abused by accident and design so much as to blur, change or mutate their meaning. My advice to critics of the Israeli State and/or Government is to use the term "Zionist" advisedly, carefully and never euphemistically or as part of personal abuse.

This was a good example of the meaningless verbiage that advocates of the diversity agenda and identity politics indulge in. Should we accept without question people’s self-definition of their political beliefs? Do we accept neo-liberal assertions that they are believers in economic and political freedom rather than blood sucking vampires feeding off the NHS at the expense of health budgets?

If self definition is the end of the matter then there is no way of distinguishing between the bogus and fraudulent and the truthful. Evidence is irrelevant. Every exploiter becomes the exploited. Everything is subjective and metaphysical. As David Feldman pointed out this leads to “conceptual chaos”.

Should we accept that the Nazis were merely German patriots who were led astray? That is certainly the view of those ardent supporters of Zionism, Germany’s Alternative for Germany which is currently at 20% in the polls.

Members of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, including party leader and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir as well as Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf hold a party meeting at the illegal West Bank settlement outpost of Evyatar, February 27, 2023. (Courtesy: Otzma Yehudit)

According to Chakrabarti’s vacuous wittering every political charlatan can hide their corruption under the badge of cultural and personal self-identity. Chakrabarti is right that anyone can self-define, but no one has the right to expect someone else to accept that self-definition.

People defining themselves as Zionists in the belief that they are merely expressing their ethnic and cultural identity are no different from someone defining themselves as a Jeddi, which thousands do. Except that the latter are harmless whereas Zionists are anything but.

Horatio Bottomley

A good example of this method was Horatio Bottomley, who hid his frauds under the badge of patriotism. The Editor of John Bull, in 1922 he was gaoled for defrauding his electors and expelled from parliament.

Chakrabarti didn’t have a clue about Zionism and saw it as a form of personal identity, part of a ‘rich range of self-descriptions.’ One wonders whether other racist ideologies could be so described? And isn’t the definition of Zionism best left to the Palestinians who have experienced it at the sharp end? Unfortunately Chakrabarti did not possess the intellectual equipment to interrogate her Zionist witnesses as to what Zionism meant in practice.

Why should some dim-witted middle class kid from Golders Green or a Jewish American Princess, who believes she is suffering holocaust trauma, be endowed with an insight into Zionism that the villagers of Masafer Yatta are denied? Who has the greater experience of Zionism in practice? The spoilt Jewish brat or the bereaved relatives of the children murdered in Jenin?

Yet illusions in Zionism persist. Neil Caplan in an article Talking Zionism, Doing Zionism, Studying Zionism, wrote that

Zionism is also a multi-faceted ideology that evolved into the modern State of Israel and has also produced a voluminous historiography.

This is historic nonsense. Zionism did not ‘evolve’. The State of Israel came about as a result of the the planned ethnic cleansing of three-quarters of a million Palestinians. Nor was there anything multi-faceted about it. All wings of Zionism, ‘left’ and ‘right’, agreed that the goal was a Jewish State which inevitably meant the expulsion of the Palestinians. Yet thousands of people believed this nonsense.

Nor is it simply bourgeois ideologues who believe that Zionism is a movement with a left and a right. Many otherwise good socialists also do so. Gilbert Achcar, who leads what remains of the Fourth International in Britain, criticised the equation of Zionism and racism for its

totalizing nature. There is Zionism and there is “Zionism”... we can hardly treat all Zionists ... as birds of the same racist feather. [The Arabs and the Holocaust (p.274)].

According to Jonathan Shamir in Zionism: the history of a contested word:

Anti-Zionism is a negative ideology, and is therefore contingent on the definition of its positive counterpart. The word Zionism, however, is so ambiguous and varied in its meaning and so imbued with emotion, so firmly tied to identity, that invoking it stifles any productive conversation.

Could you expect a Holocaust survivor who found succour in Israel to disavow Zionism entirely? Could you expect a Palestinian expelled from their home and prevented from ever entering it again to be anything but an anti-Zionist?

To move forward, we need to abandon these terms when it comes to discussing Israel-Palestine.

What this verbal flatulence means is that Palestinians should abandon their opposition to Zionism in order to satisfy the tender consciences of liberal Zionists like Shamir.

So the question persists. What is Zionism? I hope that I can at least provide the outlines of an answer and explain why Zionism is irredeemably racist and colonist.

What is Zionism?

Zionism began as a reaction of Jewish intellectuals and the petit-bourgeoisie to anti-Semitism and in particular the Odessa pogroms of 1881 after the assassination of Czar Alexander II. A section of Jewish society despaired of ever achieving equality with non-Jews and yet they feared the working class. 

Zionism was a reaction which accepted the framework of debate that the anti-Semites set, namely that Jews did not belong in non-Jewish society. This led to the setting up of the first Zionist organisation, The Lovers of Zion in 1882.

Why did Zionism believe that Jews did not belong in non-Jewish society?

Firstly they held that anti-Semitism was inherent in the non-Jew. Anti-Semitism could not be fought and if it couldn’t be fought then the only option left was escape. Leon Pinsker of Hovvei Zion (Lovers of Zion) expressed this best:

Judeophobia is then a mental disease, and as a mental disease it is hereditary, and having been inherited for 2,000 years, it is incurable. 

 Theodor Herzl

Why fight something which was incurable? Fifteen years later, during the battle to exonerate Captain Dreyfus, Herzl expressed similar ideas:

In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.

Secondly, because Jews were ‘exiled’ 2,000 years ago from their homeland, they lacked an attachment to the soil of the country they lived in. As a result they had developed anti-social qualities. It was only by re-establishing a Jewish state that Jews could take their proper place in the world.

Intrinsic to the Zionist idea was that Jews, wherever they lived, formed a single Jewish nation. In essence this was a belief in a Jewish race. How could Jews who lived across the globe and who spoke a variety of difference languages, be members of the same nation? As Moses Hess, an early Zionist, wrote:

The Germans hate the religion of the Jews less than their race…  The Jewish race is a primary race which… accommodates itself to all conditions and retains its integrity. The Jewish type has always remained indelibly the same throughout the centuries.

 

According to David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and the pivotal figure in post-Herzlian Zionism, ‘exile’ (Galut) had been ‘a prolonged interlude in the history of Israel’. The diaspora represented a historical void.

Ben Gurion and the Zionist movement held that until Emancipation in the 19^th century, Jews knew that the countries where they lived were only a temporary exile, and it did not even occur to them that they were a part of the peoples among whom they lived. That this is patent nonsense is borne out by the fact that it took a long fight by the Jewish bourgeoisie before they achieved emancipation in the UK and elsewhere.

The Zionist left, Poale Zion, which called itself Marxist, subscribed to the idea that Jewish diaspora society could never be ‘normal’ until a Jewish Palestine was created. Its founder Ber Borochov, had been expelled from the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1901 for his Zionism.

Borochov had a theory that the social structure of the Jews in the West resembled an inverted pyramid. There were too many rich Jews at the top and too few Jewish workers at the bottom.

The creation of a Jewish State, which was what marked out Zionism, would rectify this problem. In order to form such a state the Zionist movement sought an alliance with an imperialist power. Without an alliance with Britain or another power, Zionism would have been just one more harmless messianic movement.

Everything else is post-hoc justification. The myth has grown up that Zionism sought to create a Jewish state as a refuge for Jews living under persecution. That their goal was in essence humanitarian, even if their methods were not.

It needs emphasising that the original Labour Zionist pioneers saw themselves as an elite and held the diaspora in contempt. They were creating a new society and dispensing with the old.

Zionism realised from the start that without anti-Semitism there was no Zionism. The Zionism movement needed the ‘push’ of anti-Semitism. As Herzl wrote in his Diaries,

The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the antisemitic countries our allies.

David Ben-Gurion

Zionism was not simply an escape from an anti-Semitism that couldn’t be fought. The Zionist pioneers saw themselves as elitists, the ‘new Jew’. Arthur Ruppin, the most important figure in Palestinian Zionism after Ben Gurion, was an ardent believer in the racial sciences and eugenics. This is not surprising since the claims of Zionism to Palestine are at root a form of biological racism. Zionism believes that European Jews were descended from the Hebrews tribes.

Chaim Weizmann, the President of the Zionist Organisation, said in 1919 that ‘Alas, Zionism can’t provide a solution for catastrophes.’ The ZO ensured that Palestine was closed to thousands of survivors of the Ukrainian pogroms. Professor Gur Alroey described how

‘Weizmann preferred productive immigrants over needy refugees and thought the Land of Israel needed strong, healthy immigrants, not refugees weak in body and spirit.’ [Ha’aretz 3.12.21]

Ben Gurion, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, the pre-state government-in-waiting, explained that the purpose of Zionism was first and foremost to establish a state that would perpetuate the Jewish nation/race. Saving Jews as individuals was secondary.

The Kindertransport of children 1938-1940

When, after Kristallnacht, the British government agreed to allow 10,000 Jewish children into Britain, (Kindertransport) the Zionists were furious. Ben Gurion, in a speech to Mapai’s Central Committee on 9 December 1938 explained why:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel. Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist policy and the Fate of European Jewry,’ Yad Vashem Studies (1939-42) p. 199.

People are horrified by the desire of Ben Gurion to save half the children as long as they went to Palestine, in preference to saving all of them in the diaspora. The final sentence, counterposing the life of the children to the history of the Jews, is often ignored. Ben Gurion’s reason for opposing the emigration of Jews to anywhere but Palestine was his view of the ‘history of the People’. Jewish history meant, above all, a Jewish state.

Redemption of the land

Zionism sought to ‘redeem’ the land of Palestine. Zionist propagandists argue that ‘redemption’ of the land simply meant bringing back land into productive use. Another Zionist myth. Most land in Palestine was already in use. In Zionist mythology they were ‘making the desert bloom.’ Ahad Ha'am, the principal figure in Cultural Zionism wrote in Truth from Eretz Yisrael in 1891, at the time of the First Aliyah (wave of emigration) that:

From abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert and that anyone wishing to buy land there can come and buy all he wants. But in truth this is not so. In the entire land it is it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled. Only sandy fields or stony hills, suitable at best for planting trees or vines and even that after considerable work in clearing and preparing them – only these remain unworked, because the Arabs don’t like to exert themselves today for a distant future. [Alan Dowty, Much ado about Little – Ahad Ha’am’s “Truth from Eretz Yisrael,” Zionism and the Arabs, Israel Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall, 2000)

So what did Zionist redemption of the land really mean? Israeli historian Jacob Talmon referred to

‘extremely nationalistic and certain religious persons… who state that the Holocaust was a necessary stage in the Jewish historical drama, as a type of suffering prior to redemption. The price of  redemption’

The Zionist leaders conceived the destruction of European Jewry as a ‘final apocalyptic vindication of Zionism.’ [Yechiam Weitz, Jewish Refugees and Zionist Policy during the Holocaust, p. 351]

This messianism resembled the Evangelical belief that Jews must die in order to achieve salvation through Rapture. Zionism was a form of political Messianism, hence its description of its colonisatory project as one of ‘Jewish Redemption’. [Days of Redemption, Allan Arkush, Jewish Review of Books, Spring 2022],

Arkush quoted Nahum Sokolow, President of the Zionist Organisation as explaining that

“Zionism is the direct heir to the biblical promise and to Jewish messianic expectations.”

Ben Gurion wrote that one of the three principal tasks of Zionism was

Deepening the attachment to the Messianic vision of redemption that is the vision of Jewish and human redemption held by prophets of Israel.

Redemption was not merely a religious or messianic idea but a practical programme of colonisation. Ben Gurion, at a meeting of Yishuv’s Vad Leumi, 5 May 1936. argued that:

If we want Hebrew redemption 100%, then we must have a 100% Hebrew settlement, a 100% Hebrew farm, and a 100% Hebrew port.

David Hacohen, a leader of Mapai and a member of the Knesset from 1949 till 1969, with a break of two years, recalled in Ha’aretz, 15 November, 1962, what the doctrine of “Hebrew Labor” meant:

I remember being one of the first of our comrades [of Ahdut Ha’avodah] to go to London after the First World War…. There I became a socialist….[in Palestine] I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they not buy at Arab stores; to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there…. To pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash the Arab eggs they had bought; to praise to the skies the Kereen Kayemet [Jewish National Fund] that sent Hankin to Beirut to buy land from absentee effendi [landlords] and to throw the fellahin [peasants] off the land — to buy dozens of dunams — from an Arab is permitted, but to sell, God forbid, one Jewish dunam to an Arab is prohibited. (my emphasis)

The 1930 Hope-Simpson Report, set up in the wake of the 1929 riots found that:

Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mortmain and inalienable. It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted.

Zionism today doesn’t refer to itself as a colonising movement. It purports to be a national movement of the Jews, even a national liberation movement but its founders were very clear that it was a colonizing movement. On January 11 1902 Herzl wrote to Cecil Rhodes after whom Rhodesia was named, asking:

“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…’

Baron Maurice de Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonisation Authority [ICA] in 1891 to settle European Jews in Argentina. After his death in 1896 the ICA began funding colonisation in Palestine. In 1923 it changed its name to Palestine Jewish Colonisation Authority. [PICA] Because it didn’t subscribe to a policy of Jewish Labour, which meant a Boycott of Arab Labour, it came under continual attack from the Labour Zionists and Histadrut.

The Zionist idea of redemption of the land meant redeeming it from the Palestinian Arabs. The Jewish National Fund, founded, in 1901, had a policy laid down in its constitution that land once purchased could never be sold back or let to Arabs. Its leases stipulated that Arabs could not even be employed on the land.

There are those who believed that Zionism was a form of scaffolding that would be abandoned once a Jewish State was established. One such is Avraham Burg, a former Chair of the Jewish Agency and knesset member of the Israeli Labor Party, who saw Zionism as

a kind of scaffolding that was supposed to enable the Jewish people to move from [exile]to sovereignty." In the past 150 years, that mission was accomplished, he says. Now it's about time to remove the scaffolding. [The man who would tear down 'scaffolding' of Zionism, 9.12.08]

Zionism is not about to change its spots. The Israeli state was never going to be normalised after the ethnic cleansing of 1948. Once it set out down along that road it would continue, until we reach the present Israeli government, with their open desire to transfer all Palestinians in the West Bank into Jordan.

Jewish Settlement

Clause7 of the Jewish Nation State Law of 2018 stipulates that

The State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.

This is a basic, quasi-constitutional law. Clause 1(c) states that:

The realization of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People

Jewish Settlement means Jewish only settlement. So Be’er Sheva Magistrate’s Court accepted the Israel Land Authority’s claims requiring the residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Ras Jrabah to evacuate by March 2024. Why? In order that Israel could build a new Jewish neighbourhood for the city of Dimona. [Ha’aretz, July 28, 2023] There has never been an eviction of an illegal Jewish settlement for the reason that no Jewish settlement is illegal whereas half of the Arab villages in Israel are ‘unrecognised’.

When people think of Israeli settler-colonialism they think in terms of the West Bank but there has also been a continual process of internal colonisation within the borders of pre-1967 Israel. It goes by the name ‘Judaisation’, which is the ‘thinning out’ of the Arab populations of the Galilee, Negev and East Jerusalem. It is no different in principle to the Nazis’ Aryanisation of German towns. These plans went under the name of the Prawer Plan and the Koenig Memorandum.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's Jewish Nazi Police & Security Minister

Judaisation did not originate with the Judeo-Nazi Ben-Gvir. It was the brain child of Mapai and it came in the form of the Koenig Memorandum. The Koenig Memorandum first became public in September 1976 when it was printed in Al Hamishmar, paper of the then leftist Zionist party, Mapam.

Israel Koenig, the Report’s author was a senior member of Mapai and District Commissioner for Northern Israel in charge of Israel’s Arab citizens who, for the first 18 years lived under military rule.

A month ago the Knesset approved an amendment to the Admissions Committee Law 2011. The original law gave the right of Jewish communities of up to 400 families to set up admissions committees which could exclude people based on their perceived ‘social suitability’. In practice this meant that no Palestinian Israeli could be accepted. The amendment increases the number of families to 700.

The amendment passed the Knesset by 42-11 with a number of the ‘Opposition’ voting for it. Just 2 members of the Israeli Labor Party voted against it. The original law was passed in 2011 in order to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling in 2000 (Kadan) that prevented the Israeli Lands Authority from selling to Jews only.

The Medal the Nazis Struck to Commemorate the visit of the Head of the Gestapo Jewish Desk, Baron von Mildenstein, to the Kibbutzim of the Labour Zionists in 1933 

Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu and ‘Zionist Values’

Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu set the cat amongst the Zionist pigeons when they proposed a resolution in the Knesset advocating that ‘Zionist values’ must inform Government policy.

One indication of what these values are is Ben-Gvir’s statement that:

“We are losing the Negev and the Galilee. This resolution will enable [us] to prioritize values to Judaize the Galilee with settlement, and IDF soldiers and the security forces,”

What you might wonder is happening in the Negev and Galilee that they are in imminent danger of being lost? Are they about to float away in the Mediterranean? Not at all. I am reliably informed that they remain in the same position that they’ve always been in!

Yitzhak Wasserlauf - Israeli Government Minister

What Gvir means by lost is that they are ‘lost’ to the Jewish people. In other words there are too many Arabs living there. According to the Times of Israel Yitzhak Wasserlauf, the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister, and Otzma Yehudit wants to Judaise the Negev and Galilee because of ‘the large Arab populations in those regions’.

Imagine that the British government decided, in the light of the fact that ethnic minorities make up the majority of Londoners, that they were going to adopt a British First policy increasing the number of White Britons in London. Racist? How could anyone doubt this yet in Israel ‘Judaisation’ is normal consensual Zionist politics.

The Times of Israel reported that in April ‘during a tour of illegal Bedouin villages in the Negev’ Ben-Gvir stated that one of his goals as minister was “activities to increase Jewish settlement and its foundations in the Negev and Galilee.”

This state of affairs exists in no other western country. Because Israel is a state of the fictional ‘Jewish People’ this racial engineering is not commented on. In the words of Netanyahu

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.”

This was in response to criticism by Israeli actor, Rotem Sela, who protested against the racist incitement of Culture Minister Miri Regev who, in the election campaign, had accused other Zionist parties of being willing to form a government with Arab parties. Sela wrote:

“When the hell will someone in this government convey to the public that Israel is a state of all its citizens and that all people were created equal? Even the Arabs – believe it or not – are human beings,”

Netanyahu was right. Israel is not a state of all of its citizens. It is a state of its Jewish citizens only. Within Israel only Jews have the right of self-determination. Arabs have no such rights because they aren’t nationals of the state they live in. They live in Israel on sufferance. I, who have never lived in Israel, have more rights as a diaspora Jew than a Palestinian born there even if they possess Israeli citizenship.

In February Wasserlauf, lamented that just 14 percent of the population of the Galilee was Jewish and even worse “an extra 135,000 Bedouin and Arabs” had been added to the region’s population over the last decade, compared to “just 1,200 Jews.” In a state based on race, it is important that the dominant or master race is in a majority everywhere. It is a racist counting of heads.

The explanatory text of Wasserlauf’s resolution states that considerations used by the government and its various branches sometimes “ignore basic Zionist values,” including “in [the field of] settlement, security, culture, and immigration.” The resolution states:

“We determine… that the values of Zionism, as they are expressed in the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, will be guiding and decisive values in the formulation of public administrative policy, internal and foreign policy, legislation and government activity and all its units and agencies… first and foremost in the fields of settlement and in giving benefits to those who served in the army and the security services, or civilian service, with priority for those who performed combat duty,” 

The Zionist ‘opposition’ rushed to oppose the latest proposals, even though they agree with them. War criminal Tzipi Livni declared:

 “This is not Zionism, this is the continuation of the nationalistic insanity and another spit [in the face] for the values of equality in the Declaration of Independence, which states that ‘The State of Israel will strive towards the development of the land for all its inhabitants,’”

Yair Lapid, the last Prime Minister, argued that the resolution was discriminatory against the Druze, who alone amongst Israeli Arabs, serve in the Israeli army. Lapid said that ‘rather than the decision representing Zionism, it represented racism.’ But Zionism is a form of racism. This is the same Lapid who said

“My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.”

The Israeli Labor Party has always declared that it wishes to see a separation between the Palestinians and Jews which was its reason for supporting a Palestinian ‘state’ (in reality a Bantustan) in the West Bank. It did not want a Palestinian majority in a ‘Jewish’ state. Apartheid too was defined by its authors as ‘separate development.’

When Netanyahu, Wasserlauf and Ben-Gvir talk about Zionist values they are talking about the values of the Labour Zionist movement and successive ILP governments. They are the values of ethnic cleansing, land confiscation, discriminatory treatment, wars of expansion and colonisation. It used to be called Jewish Labour, Land and Produce. What the ILP started Ben-Gvir is finishing.

Tony Greenstein

When the Government of the Israeli Labour Party Actively Supported the Military Junta in Greece

It was during the fiercest repression of  the Greek people that Zionism formed an alliance with their fascist oppressors

The Greek Junta (1967-1974), whose coming to power was backed by the United States and Henry Kissinger, set the scene for the coming to power of similar pro-American military juntas, like that of Pinochet in Chile. Israel at the time was ruled by an Israeli Labour government coalition, not Likud, not Religious Zionism not the right-wing of the Zionist movement. It included Mapam, the so-called left Zionist party which in 1969 formally joined what became the Israeli Labour Alignment.

As Eitay Mack shows in The suppressed history of Israel’s support for the brutal Greek junta the Israeli government’s had extremely friendly relations with the Junta and this

 ‘relationship blossomed during the dark days of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 and 1974 — a period marked by the brutal repression, imprisonment, torture, and murder of opponents of the regime, and a period that was deliberately omitted from the celebratory narrative Israel promotes.’

Despite knowledge of the torture, murder and disappearance of its political opponents, the Israeli government had a closer relationship with the Junta than with previous civilian governments. The Israeli government was concerned with winning the support of the Junta for Israel in the United Nations and international forums.

From October 1968 onwards close military and economic ties developed between Israel and the Greek Junta. Israel’s only concern was with the fact that their budding relationship might receive undue publicity.

The head of the office of the Director General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Hanan Bar-On, asked the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “try as much as possible to be modest in publicizing the progress of our practical relations with Greece, be they in commerce or in other areas.”  When members of the Junta’s air force delegation later visited Israel for negotiations on the renovation and maintenance of aircrafts, they arrived in civilian clothes.

Mack reports that the Junta was becoming ever more oppressive inside its borders. On November 17, 1973, in response to a student strike, an attack was made by the military on the National Technical University of Athens with tanks, killing dozens of civilians. Although news of the atrocity was reported all over the world, including in Israeli newspapers, ‘the State of Israel did not waver in its support of the junta or take a step back in its economic relationship.’

Israel’s response was to double down on its support for the Junta and its military and economic trading relationships. As Mack notes:

The story of Israel’s support for the military junta in Greece offers insight into the nature and logic of Israel’s relations with dozens of dictatorships around the world during the 1960s and ’70s. Israel was not interested in the fate of the opposition and left-wing activists who were tortured and murdered by the security forces, nor did it seem to care that its diplomacy, military, and economy were directly aiding in the oppression of millions. This history suggests that the State of Israel was not merely a passive player, following only the will of the great powers; it was and remains a powerful and autonomous promoter of its own interests first and foremost, willing to compromise on values like democracy and human rights in order to gain international support in its own oppression of the Palestinian people.

Nowhere was this more evident in Israel’s relationship with the Argentinian Military Junta (1976-83) which tortured and ‘disappeared’ up to 3,000 Argentine Jews. Once again Israel’s own interest in supplying the Junta with weapons and military training trumped any concern for Argentine’s Jews.  So much so that in the case of Argentina Israel actually denied visas to Jews who were deemed subversive of the Junta.  See Jews targeted in Argentina's dirty war

The suppressed history of Israel’s support for the brutal Greek junta

Declassified files reveal the extent of Israel’s ties with the regime known for torturing and murdering thousands of its citizens in the 1960s-70s.

By Eitay Mack April 28, 2023

 

The leaders of the 1967 Greek coup d'état: Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos and Colonel Nikolaos Makarezos. (Unknown/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Greece is one of the few countries in Europe today that openly embraces the Israeli army, holding joint military exercises with Israel and acting as an enthusiastic partner for Israeli arms and surveillance companies. Against the background of Israel’s current constitutional and political crisis, Greece has also reportedly been trying to attract more Israeli hi-tech companies, many of which build military or dual-use products, by offering them extremely generous incentives. 

This close relationship has also had a major impact on Greek domestic politics. Last year, for example, it was revealed that an Israeli former intelligence general named Tal Dilian, who runs a spyware company from an office in Athens, was involved in a political and legal scandal over the spyware’s use against Greek politicians and journalists; both the head of intelligence and the adviser to the prime minister of Greece were forced to resign.

George Papadopoloous

How did this unique relationship form? Publicly, Israel and Greece trace their strong ties back only to 1990, when full diplomatic relations were established and an Israeli embassy opened in Athens. On May 21, 2015, the 25th anniversary of that milestone, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a celebratory statement explaining its narrative of Greek-Israeli diplomacy, according to which the period between 1952 and 1990 saw only low-level relations between the two countries.

In recent years, the statement continues,

“a strategic partnership has developed between the two countries … based on democratic values and common interests shared by the two countries, which face challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean region … The two countries, Greece and Israel, are modern and democratic scions of ancient nations … The bilateral cooperation between the two countries promotes common values, progress and stability in the region. Both countries strive to continue to promote peaceful and good neighborly relations with peoples and nations in the region.”

This account of the military relations between Israel and Greece is, however, untrue. Telegrams in the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Israel State Archives, which were opened to the public between 2019-2020, show that the two countries’ special relationship was in fact born much earlier than 1990, and had nothing to do with the “democratic values” of either Greece or Israel. The relationship blossomed during the dark days of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 and 1974 — a period marked by the brutal repression, imprisonment, torture, and murder of opponents of the regime, and a period that was deliberately omitted from the celebratory narrative Israel promotes. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, January 31, 2023. (Marc Israel Sellem/POOL)

Before the junta came to power, Greece’s relations with Israel were cold: it preferred to build diplomatic and economic ties with Arab countries, and even voted against the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Then, under the pretext of dealing with the “communist threat,” a group of generals staged a military coup in Greece in April 1967. Immediately upon seizing power, the military junta began a campaign to eliminate its real and imagined opponents, an effort embraced or tacitly supported by most Western European countries and the United States. 

Although there is disagreement regarding the exact number of victims of the junta, several thousand activists, students, artists, writers, actors, journalists, and even World War II veterans were arrested, subjected to severe torture, and murdered. Some were held in detention and torture camps for many years, with little food and water and no medical treatment. The torture practices included whipping the feet with sticks and plastic tubes, inserting a tube into the detainee’s body and pouring water inside, banging the head against the wall or the floor, the torturers jumping on the detainee’s stomach, pulling out nails, causing burns and extinguishing cigarettes on the body, electrocution, and even sexual torture.

Although most of the files and documents of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs remain classified, the telegrams in the archives that have been made available to the public reveal that Israel was well aware of these human rights violations and nevertheless continued its close military and political ties with the military junta and even considered it more friendly to Israel than the civilian regimes that preceded it. And yet, cognizant of diplomatic optics, Israel sought to hide the nature of its relations with Greece — a practice that continues to this day.  

Establishing the relationship

A telegram sent by the head of the Israeli mission in Athens, Yehoshua Nissim Shai, only two months after the coup, demonstrates Israel’s awareness of the political repression in Greece at the time. In June 1967, Shai complained that it was not possible to carry out Israeli PR activities in Greece because the locals were afraid to engage in any political matters:

“It is … absolutely forbidden for an individual to engage in political matters in the severe military regime that prevails in this country … It is enough for a person to express any political opinion without the approval of the authorities for him to find himself arrested the next day.”

Despite Shai’s awareness of these political crimes and apparent personal discomfort with them, a series of communications and meetings that took place in the immediate aftermath of the junta’s coup are indicative of the quickly warming relations between the two countries. 

 

A military tank seen on the street during the coup that brought the Greek junta to power, 21 April 1967. (CC BY 2.0)

Less than one month after sending the telegram, Shai reported in another telegram on his meeting with the junta’s foreign minister and his effort to motivate the junta to take a more sympathetic and understanding stance toward Israel. The foreign minister responded that the junta, and even he personally, had a very positive attitude toward Israel and “is happy about the glorious victory of the IDF” in the 1967 war, which had ended just a few weeks earlier. According to the minister, because of the junta’s diplomatic interests in the Arab world, he could not take a public pro-Israel line as he wanted, but he promised to do everything possible to soften the position of the Greek representative at the UN toward Israel. 

In another telegram describing a subsequent meeting with General Nikolaos Makarezos, one of the leaders of the coup, Shai reported:

“The conversation revolved around his visit to Israel at the beginning of this year. The minister mentioned his contacts with Mossad personnel and spoke highly of Israel’s achievements.”

On Sept. 17, the relationship developed further. The deputy speaker of the Knesset at the time, Yitzhak Navon, visited Greece and met with Constantine Kollias, the prime minister appointed by the military junta. According to the summary of the meeting, Navon tried to convince Kollias to vote with Israel in international forums such as the United Nations. Kollias expressed appreciation and admiration for the State of Israel, saying that he saw Greece and Israel as fighting “against the common enemy — communism” and added that “your hopes [are] our hopes.” Kollias later explained that he was upset with “attacks … in the press by Jews on the Greek government and police.” 

Instead of calling out Kollias’s complaint for being tinged with the antisemitic trope that Jews control the media, Navon tacitly validated his concern and said,

“The government of Israel has no control over the press in the world, not even in Israel itself. But it is possible to ‘soften’ this attitude in certain cases. Greece’s support for Israel may bring it sympathy in the free world.”

A market for modern and cheap weapons

A year later, the nascent diplomatic ties between Greece and Israel crossed over into military cooperation. In October 1968, Yaakov Ben-Sher, Israel’s commercial attaché in Greece, wrote that he met with Makarezos to discuss a visit by a delegation of Greek military officers to Israeli Military Industries, the state-owned weapons manufacturer, at Israel’s invitation. It was agreed that the delegation would not arrive in uniform and that the visit would not be publicized. The next month, Ben-Sher wrote that among the goals of the visit were “establishing a maintenance plant for aircraft in Greece, Israel Aerospace Industries, [and] the presentation of weapons and military equipment produced in Israel.”

 

Workers at an IMI factory manufacturing gun barrels in 1955. (GPO)

The junta’s air force delegation visited Israel between Nov. 25 and Dec. 3, 1968. A report prepared by the Greek delegation after the trip outlined their activities in Israel: the group visited Israeli Military Industries’ factory; was interested in Uzi submachine guns, lighting bombs, and smoke grenades; and discussed the possibility of Israel maintaining the junta’s air force aircrafts, and even Israeli assistance in the establishment of an arms manufacturing industry in Greece. 

The Greek military delegation wrote that

“due to the constant development of the Greek army and due to the reduction of the U.S. military aid program, Greece is dependent on the international arms markets, since the supply of the necessary equipment and weapons would not be immediately resolved by establishing a national arms industry. From this perspective, Israel is a market for modern and cheap weapons and is a site for extensive commercial exchanges and close economic cooperation for the benefit of both sides.”

On Jan. 30, 1969, Ben-Sher reported that he met again with the junta’s minister of coordination, Makarezos, and talked with him about the purchase of Gabriel missiles, land army communication equipment from Tadiran (an Israeli company), and even Israeli assistance in building a nuclear reactor in Greece. According to a telegram from June 5, 1969, sent by the Israeli mission in Athens, the chairman of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission visited Israel during the previous month, but it is not clear from Israeli Foreign Ministry documents disclosed to the public if and how Israel aided Greece’s nuclear development.

‘The rulers of today will also be the rulers of tomorrow’

As diplomatic relations between the State of Israel and the junta tightened, so did their economic ties. On Feb. 8, 1969, a new commercial agreement was signed, revealing the inextricable link between each country’s military and economy. In a telling symbol of the increasingly close ties, Yaakov Cruz, the former deputy head of the Mossad, was appointed to the position of head of the Israeli mission in Athens in early 1968. 

During May 1969, preparations began for a visit to Greece by an Israeli economic delegation, including representatives of the arms manufacturers. For reasons of political sensitivity, Israel decided to downgrade the level of participants in, and the visibility of, the delegation. In response, Cruz sent a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which he tried to reverse the decision to downgrade. “Our relations with the current government have improved a lot compared to our relations with its predecessors,” wrote Cruz. 

 

Protest against the junta by Greek political exiles in Germany, April 30, 1967. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-F0503-0204-005/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

“Many of the Greek exiles were our most prominent opponents when they were in power, led by Andreas Papandreou,” he continued. “All Western countries, without exception, make great efforts, and often without limits, to succeed in as many economic transactions as possible with Greece, including the supply of military equipment.” Cruz concluded his telegram by writing that, in his opinion, Israel should not be ashamed of its relations with the junta, since it was equally clear to all Western countries, and in particular to the USA, that the “the rulers of today will also be the rulers of tomorrow.” 

On May 16, 1969, Cruz reported on a meeting he and the CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries, Al Schwimmer, held with the head of the military junta in order to “present the possibilities and proposals of Israel Aerospace Industries.” Cruz wrote that he reviewed with the head of the junta the progress that had taken place since his last visit: “Three agreements have been signed between us, two military delegations have already visited, and a third will leave next week to Israel. A goodwill delegation to promote economic ties is about to come to Greece at the beginning of June, and the visit of the CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries is also part of the effort to develop these ties.” The head of the junta thanked Cruz for the explanations he received and emphasized the need for cooperation between the two countries.

Keeping it a secret

At the beginning of June 1969, another Israeli economic delegation visited Greece. In several telegrams around that time, Cruz wrote that the members of the Israeli delegation received important proposals such as “establishing a maintenance plant for aircrafts, overhauling aircrafts’ engines and selling weapons”; that the delegation met with the Greek military’s chief of staff, the junta’s officers, and other senior officials; and that the Israeli company Tadiran had signed a deal with the regime worth $2 million. 

In a telegram sent by economic attaché Ben-Sher on Oct. 30 of the same year, he wrote that

“the Greek army ordered communication equipment from Tadiran in the amount of $2,316,500. The order was finally approved by the Israeli prime minister and the minister of defense. The contract will be signed within a week to 10 days. The contract is to be executed in 1970.” 

The close relations with a military junta that had become infamous for its human rights violations raised some concerns, however. “In my conversations with various people, they expressed their regret at the publicizing of the strengthening of our ties with Greece during this particular period,” the deputy head of the Israeli delegation in Brussels wrote to the director of the European division at the foreign ministry in 1969. “Last night, two friends told me that they understand the need for realpolitik in the special situation that Israel is in, and especially in what concerns our economic relations, but they wondered if it is not possible to prevent, or at least to moderate, the publicizing of this matter.” 

 

Demonstration against the Greek military junta in front of the White House, April 21, 1974. (Reading/Simpson/CC BY-NC 2.0)

In a telegram sent by the head of the office of the director general of the Foreign Ministry, Hanan Bar-On, to the leadership of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs a short time later, he asked to “try as much as possible to be modest in publicizing the progress of our practical relations with Greece, be they in commerce or in other areas.” In accordance with this request, the members of the junta’s air force delegation, who visited Israel for negotiations on the renovation and maintenance of aircrafts, arrived in civilian clothes.

According to a report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1972, Israel sold parachutes worth approximately $250,000 to the Greek military, and they conducted negotiations regarding the sale of searchlights to the Air Force and the Armored Corps. But the junta wanted more. “The Greek army is interested in buying other military equipment in Israel, but we do not have political approval for this,” Dr. Yitzhak Azouri, an Israeli diplomat stationed in Greece, wrote in 1972, “for example, rockets.”

The following year, Israel went so far as to assist Greece in one of the most sensitive areas of Israeli international relations. On Jan. 17, 1973, Azouri reported that an agreement was signed with the junta to transport crude oil from the Persian Gulf through the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline, and from there on to Piraeus, Greece. “A transport of about 250,000 tons (in the amount of about $1.5 million) has already been carried out,” Azouri reported. “It was agreed in principle to transport around 1.5 million tons, that is, in the amount of about $9 million.” 

Azouri was reprimanded for his reports on a sensitive issue like oil. “In your review of Israel-Greece economic relations, you mentioned the matter of the oil pipeline, which is considered a top secret issue,” he was told in a telegram sent by the economic department of the Foreign Ministry on April 6 of that year. “Please inform the recipients about the secret classification of the telegram.”

Undeterred by escalating brutality

As its relations with Israel grew increasingly warm, Greece was becoming ever more oppressive inside its borders. On Nov. 17, 1973, in response to a student strike, junta forces raided the premises of the National Technical University of Athens with tanks, killing dozens of civilians. Although news of the atrocity was reported all over the world, including in Israeli newspapers, the State of Israel did not waver in its support of the junta or take a step back in its economic relationship. 

 

Thousands march outside the Athens Polytechnic against the military junta, November 1973. (Unknown/CC BY-SA 4.0)

On March 12, 1974, Azouri reported that “according to the estimate, the payments of Greece for transporting crude oil from the Persian Gulf through the oil pipeline will amount to about $8 million.” According to the same report, two Greek military delegations visited Israel in 1973, with the junta’s air force signing an arms deal with Israel Aerospace Industries for hundreds of weapons and other military technology, including 466 units of Uzi submachine guns, worth well over $1 million, with other deals in the works worth millions more.

Azouri also noted that after a visit to Israel by the Greek Air Force delegation, the Greeks decided to purchase bombs from Israel, subject to budgetary approval. Israel won a tender worth approximately $750,000 for the supply of 81 mm mortars, submitted proposals for the supply of hand grenades and the establishment of a factory for the production of hand grenades in Greece, and Tadiran signed an agreement for the supply of communications equipment worth $300,000. 

Azouri did not raise the possibility of canceling or freezing these deals in light of the massacre in Athens and other human rights violations. It seems, in fact, that Israel doubled down on its military relations with Greece: Azouri, alongside another Israeli diplomat named Yael Vered, negotiated a deal in which the junta’s air force decided to purchase bombs and aircraft armament accessories worth $4–5 million dollars. It was also agreed that within a month bomb models would be transferred to the junta for testing in their planes, pending budgetary approval.

At the time these deals were being negotiated, the junta was involved in the violent destabilization of Cyprus and supported the Greek nationalists who wanted the island to be annexed to Greece –– in opposition to the wishes of the elected government in Cyprus and the Turkish minority on the island. According to documents from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Israel was aware that the junta was transferring military equipment to the forces it had stationed illegally on Cypriot soil. For example, in discussing one of the recent arms deals between Greece and Israel, Azouri said: “The problem is more political, as some of the mortars are intended for the Greek army in Cyprus.” 

His solution to the bad optics was to propose handing over the mortars without marking, and he added that the Foreign Ministry “has no objection to the Greek army in Cyprus receiving the mortars, and over time this can be brought to the attention of [Cypriot President and Archbishop] Makarios III, who has an interest in the Greek army’s activities on the island.”  

 

President Makarios of Cyprus in Bonn during a state visit to West Germany, May 22, 1962. (Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F012969-0006/Patzek, Renate/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Learning the wrong lessons

It was the junta’s intervention in Cyprus — supporting a military coup that took place on July 15, 1974 — that ultimately led to its downfall. The leaders of the coup deposed Makarios, and announced their intention to annex the island to Greece. Five days later, Turkey invaded the island in the name of protecting its Turkish minority and occupied the northeast. Two hundred thousand Greek Cypriots living in this area were deported or fled from the Turks, leading the island to be divided along ethnic lines, which has lasted to this day. 

Israel was well aware of the junta’s involvement in what was happening. According to a situation assessment prepared by the Israeli ambassador in Nicosia on July 18, three days after the military coup on the island:

“There is no dispute that the coup was carried out by the Greek officers of the Cypriot National Guard, in accordance with instructions from Athens. The assessment is that the ruling sect in Athens acted out of a lack of understanding of international affairs and from a provincial perspective.”

On July 22, a week after the coup, the exiled president of Cyprus, Makarios, asked Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for assistance in preserving the island’s independence. Instead of providing aid, however, the Rabin government simply decided to send Makarios a nonchalant greeting from the former Israeli ambassador to the island, Rachamim Timur, in which he hoped for his well-being, wishing him health and all the best. Rage at the military junta’s intervention in Cyprus led to its collapse, and Greece began the process of becoming a democracy once again. 

Yael Vered, the Israeli diplomat, prepared a summary of the lessons to be learned from the recent Cyprus crisis. “Israeli conclusions: a. A minority of 18 percent can win full political rights if it has military and political support fighting on its behalf; b. 200,000 people can become refugees without the world being shocked; c. The nullity of the guarantees of ‘world powers’ has been proven … d. The impotence of the UN in finding an actual solution to crises has been proven once again (if indeed this even needs to be proven).” In another telegram, Vered wrote that “the Cyprus affair has so far demonstrated the impotence of the UN and its inability to solve complex problems such as the Cyprus problem (or, in the past, Vietnam, the Israeli-Arab conflict, Kashmir, etc).”

Apparently, Israel did not learn to be wary of future cooperation with other oppressive military regimes, did not learn that using excessive force can cause a regime’s downfall, and did not learn that upholding violent military rule is perhaps not worth the devastation it inflicted on innumerable citizens. Israel did, however, learn that refugees can be easily deported and that the UN is powerless — though Israel likely knew this already.