Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies was on Russian television today speaking of her disappointment in Obama and Mitchell. The talks are a "photo-op," she said, because the Palestinian refugees and the Palestinians in Gaza are not represented. And the terms have been set by Israel. "The U.S. has not brought real pressure to bear" on a simple legal matter, ending the settlements. "Until you stop, we are cutting off aid. That sentence was never spoken."
I always wonder why voices like this are not more prominent in our media. Bennis tells me that she sent a letter to the New York Times the other day in response to Gadi Taub's op-ed on the importance of saving the Zionist state by getting the settlers out of the West Bank. The Times apparently chose not to run it, so Bennis said we could. (This version is slightly longer than her original).
Gadi Taub is right that Israel’s settlements in the occupied territory are a huge problem. But he is wrong when he says that somehow "settlements and continued occupation” will undermine the vision of Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism. In fact occupation was central to Herzl's plans. Taub claims that Herzl’s Zionism was part of the “tradition of democratic national liberation movements.” But the truth is quite the opposite. Herzl’s Zionism was old-fashioned turn-of-the-century colonialism.
His diary includes the text of a letter Herzl wrote to Cecil Rhodes, shortly after the infamous Briton had colonized the land of the Shona people in Africa – whose land he claimed and renamed Rhodesia. “You are being invited to help make history,” Herzl wrote to Rhodes. “[I]t 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... [Y]ou, Mr. Rhodes, are a visionary politician or a practical visionary... 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...."
Good grief, of course they’re not going to publish that. Pointing out that Zionism was just a variety of European colonialism is utter blasphemy in liberal US circles. Giving an actual piece of evidence–it’s utterly beyond the pale. Heads would explode up and down the Hudson.
Dear Donald,
You certainly have faith in the Word. But if Israeli’s have been able to bomb an open-air prison with little condemnation, continue to steal and occupy land in the WB, surely they can mount an attack and overcome the notion that Herzl was a colonist at heart (and mind). The Times choked (knowing full well that the article would appear somewhere else).
Rhodesia ended well!
ALSO – Waging Peace from Afar: U.S. Movement Uses BDS Against Israeli Occupation ~ by Phyllis Bennis, yesmagazine.org, 08/30/10
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to yesmagazine.org
Witty, meet Mister Herzl. You like the original recipe for self-governance in your haven? Comes from the same cookbook.
Phil,
You said that you read Herzl at some length last year. Is that honestly how you would characterize his work?
Knowing the reality of the time.
“Knowing the reality of the time.”
Knowing the reality of the time is precisely what makes it so plausible. What sort of true believer could imagine that Zionism was somehow different from all the other examples of Europeans who felt they had the right to take over a piece of already-inhabited real estate? For the good of the natives too, of course.
You speak in terms of protecting the oppressed and you speak this way of the condition of Jews in Europe in the 1890′s and after?
Have you read any Herzl?
“you speak this way of the condition of Jews in Europe in the 1890’s and after?”
Your typical misreading. I know Jews were oppressed in Europe (especially Czarist Russia). And then there was the Dreyfus Affair. There’s nothing in what I just wrote that gives you any reason to start hyperventilating, but I suppose it was fun for you.
It’s obvious the early Zionists shared the common European attitude towards non-Europeans. It’s condescending at best (we’ll help them by taking over and raising them up and they will thank us for it). There’s the attitude that Palestinian Arabs have less right to the land they live in than the incoming Jews, who will make it their own.
You see the same attitudes in American history towards Native Americans (though as I recall, you trivialize the history of oppression there as well).
You don’t do nuance very well, Richard, though you obviously think you do. There’s a tragic irony here, a common one, where the victims of prejudice in one area become the victimizers in another. No one should be surprised by this.
“What sort of true believer could imagine that Zionism was somehow different from all the other examples of Europeans who felt they had the right to take over a piece of already-inhabited real estate? For the good of the natives too, of course. ”
Don’t lecture me on nuance.
Your comment was functionally that Zionism from root was SOLELY a greedy land grab for no other purpose, you know “colonialism”.
The current conditions are an irony, much worse than an irony, but to use pejorative language like “colonialism” is to misrepresent the condition and the history.
Have you read any Herzl?
god but you’re condescending. i have read a fair bit by and about herzl and his attitude toward the ‘natives’ can only be characterized as european colonialism. many contemporary critics of the herzl plan considered it a potential disaster for european jews because regular contact with the orientals would inevitably debase the jews. herzl’s response was typical of ‘enlightened’ europeans of the time: the european presence, and through european guidance, the orientals would evolve from their unenlightened state. not that they asked to be ‘evolved’. (modernized japan was an example of the possibility of such evolution.)
and with all due respect to hannah arendt and the gravity of the ‘dreyfuss affair’, it hardly can be used as evidence of the destiny of european jews. the affair was as much about the clash of catholic conservatism and secular liberalism in france, as it was about anti-semitism.
“Don’t lecture me on nuance.”
No one would waste their time, because nuace without honestry is simply sleazy prpaganda.
“Your comment was functionally that Zionism from root was SOLELY a greedy land grab for no other purpose, you know “colonialism”.”
It was in Hertzl’s own words. Herzl rejected the most progressive ideals of the l9th century-democracy, socialism, republicanism-and embraced the most reactionary-monarchy, nationalism, chauvinism, and racism. Zionism identified with the imperialist powers who carved up the globe, and accepted racist ideas about the “civilizing” virtues of colonization and “the white man’s burden” that made up the ideology of the capitalist class. In The State of the Jews, Hertzl wrote,
“civilization. We shall not revert to a lower stage, we shall rise to a higher one. We shall not dwell in mud huts; we shall build new, and more beautiful, more modern houses, and possess them in safety…. We should there form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism…. [Europe] would have to guarantee our existence.”
“Don’t lecture me on nuance.’
Why not? You need it, for one thing, and you constantly lecture people here as though you were some sort of moral paragon, when you’re not.
And boy, do you need a lecture on nuance. It’s possible for people to be both persecuted in one area and persecutor in another. Happens all the time. The 17th century Massachusetts settlers are one example. Or an ethnic group could be persecuted by outsiders and have less than liberal attitudes towards gays within its own culture. Think about Gaza, for instance.
But of course this can’t apply to the early Zionists. They were perfect in every way.
Donald – hear! hear!
altneuland is his colonial blueprint in literary form. benevolent, civilizing colonialism, but colonialism nonetheless. what else could it be?
“colonial blueprint”.
I’ve stated this story before here. Forgive me for referring to my own personal experience.
I live in a hippie commune in Oregon in 1973-74. The commune was in an area where there were 7-8 other communes and we intentionally shared resources, worked together, partied together, meditated together (and also argued with each other).
Some of the locals regarded our intentional “colonization” as a threat, and periodically organized intentional “hunting expeditions” on our properties. Noone was killed. I had shots hit my cabin though, so clearly I and others could have been hurt.
We really did want to establish an alternative nation there, not control the land, but live on it.
Eventually, the communes were accepted, and the junior KKK (or maybe not so junior) faded.
Colonialism to want a place to live by your own values? I call that self-determination.
That’s a great analogy, Richard. So the early Zionists were just hippies, and the Arabs were the KKK.
Say, did you guys have any plans to transfer the locals, maybe with the help of government? Kept it secret, eh. Clever. Might have ruined the pacifist hippy image if it got out. Did you get the President of the US to issue a Witty Declaration making Oregon the site of a hippy state? I don’t recall reading about that, but it must have happened if this analogy is going to work.
Lord, you are clueless! What you are describing as your personal story is not “colonialism”. Are you really that ignorant that you think it is?
i don’t mind a personal narrative but what you describe is not colonialism. you weren’t there to displace the ‘natives’ nor impose your views. nevertheless their response is instructive. native populations rarely welcome interlopers as herzl and other zionists well anticipated.
>> Some of the locals regarded our intentional “colonization” as a threat …
How much of the locals’ land did you take by force and occupy? What percentage of the natural resources did you seize control of? How many of the locals’ homes, fields, aquifers, crops and livestock did you destroy? Did your injury/kill ratio resemble that of Israel (100 locals for every one of your commune-ists injured/killed)?
What a joke(r)!
Comparable to the percentage of land that Jews held in Palestinian mandate before 1930, when the first mass murders and expulsions of Jews from land they had lived in for millenia occurred, indicating the intent of the radical movement to racially exclude Jewish settlement, immigration.
Maybe 5%.
The point is the counter the “unfairness” of Jews seeking to settle and reside there.
I agree that the massacres of Jews in the 20′s were inexcusable. The Arab side is not innocent in the way they reacted.
It’s also true that the Zionist movement was about expropriation and seizing control with the help of the imperial power in charge, which was Britain at the time. That’s what the Balfour Declaration was about. And Arabs knew this full well, as did the leading Zionists. Ahad Ha’am was criticizing the arrogance and violence and contempt Zionists displayed towards Arabs as early as 1891.
Try being honest about this, Richard. Of course you might find your position crumbling underneath you if you do, but then you’ll just have to work out a truly nuanced position for yourself, somehow, if you’re up to it.
>> The point is the counter the “unfairness” of Jews seeking to settle and reside there.
Given that there are no similarities between your experience and Israel’s violent and oppressive colonialism, your point is very poorly made.
Here’s a very strange website I just stumbled on. At first I thought it was anti-Zionist and in fact it contains numerous essays about how early Zionists favored the transfer of the Palestinian population–in one of them he even compares the long coverup of this to Stalinist alterations to encyclopedias. That’s how I found it–I was googling transfer and Herzl, I think. But there are also links where he seems very sympathetic to Baruch Goldstein. Weird.
Link
My link in the post above seems broken, so here it is again.
link
And that proves what point?
You mean the information on the role of transferist thinking in early Zionism? It shows that racism was part of the thinking of early Zionists right from the beginning.
Your question was vague, but I guess that’s what you meant. You just couldn’t bring yourself to ask it in a straightforward way.
“Your question was vague, but I guess that’s what you meant. You just couldn’t bring yourself to ask it in a straightforward way.”
Which explains Witty top to bottom and why witty’s posts are so incoherent. He can rarely say what he really means because if he were to be hoonest, it would sound like what it is – racism and ethnocetric supremacism.
It explains that there were some that felt that they needed sovereignty and coherent land mass to be viable.
You are aware that there were years of overtures by Zionist officials in the 20′s to define protocols to co-exist, and that periodically Arab leaders even invited and in a couple rare cases funded Jewish settlement in the region.
And, I’m sure that you are aware that the reaction of the Arab community to the residence of largely communist, socialist, immodest youth was not always kind.
Witty, the people who founded Israel started arming themselves and driving Arabs out of their homes from early on — since at least the 1920′s.
If you aren’t willing to ever confess that Zionists originated much (if not most) of the violence in Palestine, then you’re going to make yourself out to be nothing more than a sympathizer to terrorism that was rewarded by granting these European colonists a police state to rule.
DONALD- the link you provided to Dr. Rabbi Chaim Simons was scary. He questions whether Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Arabs, or whether this was really a pre-emptive strike to prevent the massacre of Jews! One of the books that I am currently reading is THE JEWISH ENEMY about Nazi propaganda prior to and during the Holocaust. Seems that the Nazis always depicted events as self-defense against a powerful international Jewish conspiracy which intended to annihilate the German people. In other words, even though the individual victims are powerless, they are ideologically depicted as part of a powerful conspiracy out to destroy the group, hence, murder is seen as legitimate defense. It appears that the Nazi leadership actually believed their own propaganda just as Rabbi Simons believes in an eternal Gentile threat to the Jews. Rabbi Simons also sees secular Jews as traitors. The parallels between Zionist fundamentalism and Nazi fundamentalism are strong and deep. I might add in passing that American anti-communism came close, and induced Islamophobia is headed in that direction.
My guess about the rabbi is that he’s trying to find justification for his own monstrous beliefs by showing that the early Zionists had similar ones, but I’d have to read more of his articles to be sure that’s where he is going. It’s hard to imagine what else he might be trying to demonstrate.
Donald, a very interesting find, a treasure trove of historical documentation. I can see how you first misinterpreted the viewpoint of the Rabbi.
I’ve only looked through this a little, but it immediately reminded me of Meir Kahane. In retrospect, I think Kahane was far more honest than his “liberal” opponents. In effect, he said simply, I’m a racist and Israel needs to be unabashedly racist like me. Repellent, but honest.
This rabbi clearly favors forced transfer of Palestinians from the lands God promised the Jews. To defend that proposition, he has undertaken historical research to show that transfer has always been an integral part of the Zionist plan from the very beginning, as if to show that his present position in the 21st century is authorized by these giants of history. His target audience, of course, is not people like us but highly committed Israeli Zionists who might be a little squeamish about transfer. Come on, he says, we’ve always advocated this. Don’t get cold feet. At least that’s my interpretation.
For us, however, it vividly shows how today’s Israeli Zionist attitudes, even among those who oppose transfer, are built upon a historical foundation of outright racism and colonialism that today should seem as anachronistic and loathsome as human slavery. It’s like a historical researcher who assembles innumerable 19th century quotes about biblical approval to hold slaves and the inherent inferiority of the darker races, and concludes that it should be perfectly fine to restore the institution of slavery today.
Thanks for the link. I look forward to reading through this, and will keep it handy for some of the choice quotes I’m bound to find. I can’t wait to get to the chapter entitled “Heter Mechirah or Imported Vegetables – Which should one choose?” It’s a question I grapple with almost on a daily basis.
” Come on, he says, we’ve always advocated this. Don’t get cold feet. At least that’s my interpretation.”
I think that’s probably it, but like you, I’ve only read a small portion of what he’s written. But it’s the only interpretation I can think of that makes sense.
That was a good interview. They also had The Norman on today and he was his usual fantastic self. The Jewish Congress guy he was…’educating’ (I’d call it a debate if there was a chance in hell of the other guy gaining a single point) brought up the League of Nations and said something like “the Palestinians had their chance for a state in 1947 and they blew it!” Good times.
As I’ve mentioned before, the irony of Israelis taking offense to BDS is that there’s already a default boycott working in their favor when it comes to media coverage. RT is (I believe) funded by the Russian government so they don’t need to worry about losing sponsors when they have the Finkelsteins and Bennises of the world on a show to discuss the sane version of things. How many advertisers would run screaming from the NYT or Hardball or Meet the Press if they had one of them as a guest of any kind?
Even discounting the biases those businesses have (not to say state-run media is bias free by any stretch), they know the bias of their benefactors would result in boycott and divestment if they failed to play the game.
Gadi Taub is a mediocre (if less) academic, who has nothing to do with his time than write pseudo-academic works, that he uses to close unfinished business with people in the celebrity branch. His Zionist babblings can be found at his blog, here’s my personal favorite:
link to gaditaub.com