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David Silon

Zionism revisited

Many people have read my articles on this blog and have commented to me personally, not usually on the articles themselves, but on my bio at the bottom which states that I am anti-Zionist and pro-Israel – and they don’t get it. I could understand their confusion given everything that has happened on October 7th and since. If I were them, I’d probably feel the same way.

Nowadays, I’m finding that things are getting so intense, that I think it necessary that I explain myself, something that I’ve actually been trying to do for many years. Firstly, what’s important to know is that, as a devout secularist, my anti-Zionism is not like “their” anti-Zionism. Many moons ago, I wrote an op-ed on this subject for another news site, and I’ve decided to copy and paste it here. I wrote from personal experience based on my own Jewish education when I was a kid and up until the expulsion from Gaza in 2005. And I think it’s still relevant today. ————

The many expulsions of Jews from various parts of Israel taking place today since the “disengagement” and Amona are probably the most Zionist things done in Israel’s history, and this is why.

From the secular Zionist point of view, the new Jewish settlers living in occupied hostile territory acted as a defensive shield against attacks on the major cities in the area. Now that “the settlers” have outlived their usefulness, they didn’t need to be there any more. From the religious Zionist point of view, they were acting on orders from god.

The main difference between these two premises is that one is tremendously insulting to the Land (normal people simply don’t think in such terms about their homeland) and the other is perceived to be tinged with racist overtones; i.e., the American Manifest Destiny of the westward movement of White Americans resulted in stealing land from the non-White native peoples because god told them to.

The secular Zionists also pointed to the demographics, the immorality of ruling over another people, and the extreme difficulty in protecting the “settlements,” especially the isolated ones. But what they refused to emphasize was that, since the Oslo Accords, “Palestinians” have been ruled by “Palestinians.” That is a fact regardless of the demographics. And if Israel were to give up the rest of Judea and Samaria, Israel would still be ruling over another people (like any other nation does) – Arabs are almost 50% of the Galilee and a substantial proportion in the Negev. More Israelis were killed defending the Galilee settlements, whether isolated or not, since 1967, than in all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza combined.

Under the Sharon government before and during the “disengagement,” we saw that Israel could easily turn into a dictatorship: anti-disengagement activists were summarily arrested; demonstrations were banned, especially in certain areas; freedom of movement and assembly were limited; and anything that was orange was banned from public places. Many of these limitations on freedom continue even now. In addition, the riot police and the General Security Services (GSS) and many more such organizations are quintessentially Zionist – and racist not against Arabs – who were always treated as equals (or better) – but against Jews. Why?

The average Zionist (and this also included the Jews of Gaza) refused to recognize the fact that the Jews are the indigenous inhabitants of Gaza (as well as the rest of Israel), with roots going back almost 4,000 years – at least 2,000 years longer than the Arab history of occupation, constant civil wars, persecutions and expulsions. According to the Zionists, the Jews haven’t had any roots in the country for 2,000 years; therefore, they could easily be moved around like chess pieces.

The fact is that modern Zionism refuses to acknowledge the Palestinian Jewish population, some of whom (the mustarabim) never left Israel during the mythical “2,000 years of exile”. A story is told of David Ben-Gurion, who was called upon to answer questions posed by the Peel Commission in Palestine to investigate the Arab riots of 1936. He was asked (and I’m paraphrasing all this, but this is, basically, what transpired): ‘Mr. Ben-Gurion, we’ve questioned Palestinian Arabs such as members from the Husseini, Nashashibi, Khalidi, families, etc. They were all born and raised in Palestine, families who have lived in Palestine for generations, while the Jews have just arrived from Russia and Poland. So how can you say you have more rights to Palestine than they do?’ To which the Zionist Ben Gurion replied: ‘The Bible is our right, written in our language, on our land, thousands of years ago.’

Now, if you were part of the investigating team, what would you think? A normal person would have responded this way: ‘All right. I come from Poland. But you want to talk about families who have lived in Palestine for generations? Did you ask anyone from the Jewish Castel family, or Meyouchas, or Eliashar, or Azulai, etc. Did you ask any of the mustarabim? Did you speak to any of the thousands of Arab immigrants who came to Palestine since the start of the Zionist era and who are coming now as we speak, and which you people refuse to acknowledge? No? Then when you decide to do so, then we can talk.’

During the Arab bloodbaths of the 1920s and 1930s and the War of Independence, many Palestinian Jews became refugees. Although they were eventually resettled into new homes, their emotional plight was completely ignored by the Zionists. It still is today, by secular and religious alike, especially during Arab-Israeli negotiations, when the Zionists consider Palestinian Arab suffering more important than Palestinian Jewish suffering.

Of course, a major part of the blame should go to the Zionist education system. Zionist history has often taught (if at all) that pre-Zionist Jews in Palestine were backward, ignorant, did nothing but pray all day and the like. Religious Zionism has taught that god gave the Jews the land of Israel. Is it any wonder, therefore, that today, the majority of the descendants of these pre-Zionist Palestinian Jews, being bombarded with this kind of information, day after day and year after year, now hate their own families so much that they end up joining such groups as Kadima or Meretz or Peace Now?

If today’s maltreatment of Jews, especially in Judea and Samaria, is to stop, then all Jews, religious and secular, must acknowledge their thousands-years heritage and roots in their homeland – like normal people do with their homelands.

About the Author
David currently lives in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles pursuing many interests. He is a pro-Israel blogger who also blogs about the histories of the other Arab-occupied indigenous peoples of the Middle East and North Africa (see IndMiddleEast.blogspot.com). His booklet, The Occupied Territories [by David Marc], about these indigenous peoples, is currently sold on Amazon.