Talking Zionism

Uri Avnery writes,

...the term Zionism has been elevated to the status of a state ideology, if not state religion.

...my position is that Zionism was a historical movement with its glorious achievements as well as its darker side. One can admire or condemn it, but either way Zionism has come to its logical end with the creation of the State of Israel. Zionism was the scaffolding that made the building of the state possible, but once the house is built, the scaffolding becomes a hindrance and must be removed.

TODAY, ZIONISM is firmly in the hands of the extreme Right, a mixture of nationalists, religious fanatics and the settlers, supported by very rich Jews in Israel and outside.

They govern the news, both directly (they own all the TV networks and the newspapers) and metaphorically. Every day, the news contains many items figuring “Zionism”.

For Zionism’s sake, Bedouin in Israel-proper are forcibly displaced from the large stretches of land they have occupied for centuries. For Zionism’s sake, a settler’s college deep in the occupied territories is accorded the status of “university” (by the military governor!), giving new impetus to the international academic boycott on Israel. Hundreds of new buildings in the settlements are being built on private Palestinian land in the name of Zionism. In Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian authority, Israeli troops hunt for Africans without an Israeli immigration permit. Indeed, our Interior Minister, whose only passion seems to be hunting African job-seekers, uses the word Zionism in almost every sentence.

In the name of Zionism, our fanatically right-wing Minister of Education is sending Israeli school children on indoctrination trips to “holy places” in the occupied territory, so as to instill in their consciousness from early on that all the country belongs to them. To strengthen their Zionist convictions they are also sent to Auschwitz.

The settlers claim – not without some justification – that they are the only real Zionists, the rightful heirs of 130 years of Zionist settlement and expansion. This gives them the right to receive huge piles of state funds for their activities, while new taxes are being levied on even the poorest of the poor in Israel, such as another one-percent raise of VAT.

The Jewish Agency, an offshoot of the World Zionist Organization, is devoting almost all its resources to the settlements.

There is no faction in the Knesset (except the two small Arab factions and the predominantly Arab communist faction) that does not loudly proclaim its total devotion to Zionism. Indeed, the Zionist Left claims to be truer Zionists than the Right.

WHERE IS all this leading? Ah, there is the rub.

The current staunchly Zionist policy of the State of Israel contains an inherent paradox. It leads to self-destruction.

The policy of our government is based on maintaining the status quo. All of historical Eretz Israel/Palestine under Israeli rule, the West Bank in a state of occupation, its Palestinian inhabitants without national or civil rights.

If, at some point in the future, a right-wing government decides to annex the West Bank and the Gaza Strip “officially” (as Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights were annexed long ago – unrecognized by the rest of the world – it will not make any real difference. Most Palestinians are already confined to enclaves resembling the South African Bantustans of bygone days.

In this Greater Israel, Palestinian Arabs will constitute a minority of at least 40%, growing rapidly to 50% and more, making it less and less convincing to call it a “Jewish State”. The “Jewish and Democratic State” will be a thing of the past.

Of course, practically nobody in Israel would dream of according the Arab inhabitants of Greater Israel citizenship and democratic rights. If, perhaps by divine intervention, this were to come about, it would no longer be a “Jewish State”. It would be an “Arab Palestinian state”.

The only way out would be ethnic cleansing on a huge scale. Some of this is already happening discretely in remote areas. For some time now, in the most remote area of the West Bank, on the edge of the desert south of Hebron, the occupation authorities have been trying to remove the entire Arab population. This week, the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, declared the area a “military firing zone” that must be immediately evacuated. People who remain there risk being shot. Agriculturists may return and work on their land, but only on Shabbat and Jewish holidays, when the army is on leave. Zionism in action.

Currently, some five million Palestinians and six million Jews live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The ethnic cleansing of the country is highly improbable, to say the least. Far more likely is the reality of an apartheid state, in which Jews will soon be a minority. That is not a reality envisioned by the Zionist founding fathers.

The only alternative is peace – Palestine and Israel, side by side. But that is called “post-Zionism”, God forbid.

Our leaders escape this reality by a simple device: they don’t think about it. They don’t talk about it. They prefer to “talk Zionism” – a string of empty phrases.

But sometime in the future the contradictions of Zionism will have to be faced.

Via: "CounterPunch"