The recent murders of five people in a synagogue, and the subsequent shooting deaths of the two Palestinian perpetrators, has caused some to bemoan the emergence of a “holy war” in Palestine. To them, things suddenly seem worse – more darkly impressive – now that Jews have been killed in a synagogue. Their new line is that a “political” grievance can be resolved through “negotiation” but that a religious conflict cannot. Religious conflicts, it is implied, are zero-sum propositions. They are annihilationist undertakings. Kill, Kill, Kill or be killed.
People – anyone with an internet connection and an interest in the news – may be confused. They may ask, Who are these individuals who forecast new rigidness and zealotry in an old conflict? Who can possibly be arguing that the Palestine-Israel conflict will suddenly be transformed into… a zero-sum game? Can it be the ethnically cleansed, or the isolated and savagely put down? Is it the living members of the mostly dead families in Gaza? Or perhaps it is the incarcerated or newly homeless, the impoverished and racially agonized.
The people who grieve loudly about the emergence of a holy war in Palestine are the people who understand the place least. When it is liberal Zionists, it is because they understand themselves and their history least. The cultish adherents to Jewish exceptionalism cannot be expected to reflect seriously on the true content of their dogma and its clearly articulated goal of elimination and marginalization. When it is members of the Palestinian Authority, it is because they misunderstand their role and place in Palestinian history. They view their superficial secularism as a political qualification – while failing to understand that their interlocutors’ Messianism (Ben Gurion or the Messiah?) precludes politics.
In a very real way, the war waged on Palestinian lives and livelihoods has always been a holy war, irrespective of whether Palestinians drink whiskey or sahlab. Zionism is a religion that draws power through collectivism and idolatry. The religion’s purgatory, totalitarian logic moves believers to act – ruthlessly and single-mindedly. The war to purge Palestine and vanquish the Palestinians has always been a holy war. And the fight to abolish Zionism is an absolute one; equal rights is an absolute position.
So why is anyone talking about a “holy war?”
In Israel, the discussion of a conflict infused with Judaica’s symbols unfolding on a Jewish landscape is a real one. There is a religious war developing there, but it’s an internecine one. Like other fundamentalisms before it, Zionism has turned inward, schismatically, even as it continues to devour the Palestinians. In the broadest terms, it’s the 1948 Zionists – those who believe in ethnic cleansing and hope to see more of it – versus the 1967 Zionists – or those who believe in ethnic cleansing, but choose to pretend it was a mistake, or necessary, or something.
Is the new war important? Is it meaningful? From the Palestinian perspective it’s hard to care. The rape analogy has come to be a favorite one among liberal Zionists. They obliquely acknowledge the Nakba when they say: Even a child born of rape deserves to live.
But no one ever wonders whether the rapist wept during the act, particularly when it’s been ongoing. For about seventy years at this point.
Liberal Progressive Zionism has made 2 ideas both moral and plausible for humanity in the next few decades
1. Ethno-religious self determination (Israel the Jewish State)
2. Ethno conflict resolution through separation ( the two state solution )
3. Rejection of the One State Multicultural model ( eg Zimbawe and South Africa, disasters for both parties to the conflict );
Interestingly these are exactly the lessons being learned, and now advocated, by white nationalists post Ferguson. Its been referred to as the multi-zion model, or zionism for all peoples., or simply White Zionism.
“Richard Spencer, for example, has his eyes fixed on the far future (“It would be a state for the 21st century—or 22nd …”) and seeks only to plant the idea of a white ethnostate, taking 19th-century Zionism as his model. This century’s absurdity may be the next century’s popular cause,”
No Exit by John Derbyshire
http://takimag.com/article/no_exit_john_derbyshire/print#ixzz3KlFDV4Q5
“For us “immigration” is a proxy for race. In that way, immigration can be good or bad: it can be a conquest (as it seems now) . . . or a European in-gathering, something like White Zionism.”
Facing the Future as a Minority Richard Spencer
http://www.npiamerica.org/the-national-policy-institute/blog/facing-the-future-as-a-minority
With all due respect, there is nothing “holy” about Occupation and ritual massacres of the Occupied indigenous people of Palestine. Netanyahu and his band of brothers/sisters made this manufactured “holy war”, just as they tried to liken Hamas to ISIS. Any fool can see that ISIS is more akin to JSIL.
Nothing holy at all.
Former President Shimon Peres has said that the law would “destroy Israel’s democratic status at home and abroad.” Netanyahu has insisted that he merely wants to require all Israel schools “to teach the history, culture, and customs of the Jewish people.” In fact, he clearly sees a conflict between democratic standards and Jewish national privileges, which, in his view, needs to be resolved in favor of the latter. The judiciary—governed by democratic standards, and unconstrained by a legally binding national purpose—is his real target. His unstated argument is that the courts advance an abstract concept of citizenship, which, unchecked, will erode the concept of Jewish national self-determination. “The judiciary, which recognizes Israel’s democratic side, will also have to recognize that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people,” he said, in a statement about the bill, at a recent cabinet meeting.
If this law were, as Netanyahu mostly seems to want the public to believe, only about collective rights, it would be superfluous, irritating to the Arab minority, perhaps, but not inconsistent with democratic norms—and not even preëmptive of confederal relations with a future Palestine. Democracies everywhere protect their distinct national cultures and languages. The point is, however, that this new law is not really about conserving collective cultural rights, but rather about confirming individual legal privileges. Israel’s democratic freedoms are real, to be sure, but they coëxist with legalized inequalities between Jews and Arabs……..this bill is about writing into the law old Zionist provisions that have morphed into racist and theocratic practices. It will make judicial correctives nearly impossible.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/netanyahus-nation-state?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook
ahmed moor says
” Zionism is a religion that draws power through collectivism and idolatry. ”
please explain the “idolatry” part ……………….
One misconception in the article is that while it is true that coming back to Zion had Judaic motives the hope of many then was to avoid a war with the people already living there – about half a million Palestinian Arabs. So “the war” part of it was not intended – the Crusaders style – and it only became that when things went wrong violence erupted because of the refusal of the locals to accept the newcomers as fellow residents due to suspicions and instigation by extremists. That also makes “the rape” analog inappropriate – losing does not automatically qualifies you to that status – the party in the wrong can lose too.