IS IT TIME FOR NEO-ZIONISM?
By: Mohamed Elmasry,
President CIC
July 3, 2002
There is good news and bad news for Palestinians. The good news is that their
struggle for freedom will end with the creation of an independent Palestinian
state. The bad news is that this will likely not happen for a very long time.
However, this good and bad news for Palestinians is the same for Israelis --
in that death, destruction and misery will continue to
plague both peoples for the foreseeable future.
The fact that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza must end sooner or
later is based on reading and understanding human history. Every
occupation of one nation by another is destined to end -- some after only a
few years, others after centuries of oppression. But end it must.
During every occupation, one group of people is overpowered by the military
might of another. Oppression of the conquered by the conquerors follows, often
causing prolonged loss of life, cultural destruction and pervasive misery. But
history was, and still is, on the side of those who struggle against great
odds to end unjust occupations. Among others, we have the examples of the
Irish versus the British, Greeks versus the Turks, Algerians versus the
French, French versus the Germans, and so on.
But the Palestinian struggle for independence is being obstructed because
neither of the two powers that hold the keys to its resolution -- Israel and
the United States -- are ready to end the occupation. Yet both governments
have demonstrated in the past that they have the power to change things and
could use it. For example, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon after some 20
years of occupation. And in 1956 America demanded that Israeli forces withdraw
from the Sinai soon after Israel, Britain and France invaded Egypt.
Today, however, the American and the Israeli governments are not ready to end
the occupation of Palestinian land. And this is really bad news for both
Palestinians and Israelis.
President Bush's plan is that the Palestinian National Authority must enact a
sweeping process of internal reform -- including the elimination of
corruption, the establishment of a democratic free-market economy, a separate
judiciary, and an autonomous legislature -- before even thinking of reopening
serious negotiations. But for what? To gain only a provisional, second-class
statehood?
If a Political Science 101 student were to submit the latest Bush plan as an
assignment on how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he or she would
deserve a failing grade. Even a superficial analysis reveals that this plan is
built on little more than chopped logic and an appalling ignorance of
history. A failing grade would certainly be in order for asking Palestinians
to create the ideal institutions of a
highly developed country before they even have a state -- an achievement
Bush's America cannot begin to claim.
Worse still, the U.S. president insists -- without naming him -- that
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must go. "It may be refreshing to hear a U.S.
president come clean in his conviction that he has the right to pick other
nations' leaders, but this demand exposes fully the vacuousness of Bush's
thinking," said a recent British commentator.
More diligent research and attentive reading of history would suggest a
totally different plan to achieve peace with justice, not only for
Palestinians and Israelis, but for all people of the Middle East and beyond.
A crucial beginning would be Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza
back to its June 4, 1967 borders.
But that's not all: this should be achieved within the context of a
Neo-Zionism -- a new political ideology fit for the 21st century, not
the 19th. This new ideology would replace "let us work for what is right for
the Jews" with "let us work for what is right."
Today, Judaism is the only major world religion totally programmed by a
political ideology, Zionism. In fact, Zionism itself has become the religion
of many Jews. Only a century ago, Zionists made up just three percent of the
Jewish population. Now, it is non-Zionist Jews who make up the minority three
percent among Jews.
The history of Zionism goes back to 1882 and developed as a result of
anti-Jewish violence in Russia. An organization called "The Lovers of Zion"
came into being then, with its first headquarters in Odessa. It raised little
interest at first among European and British Jews, who were content and
well-integrated into society.
The first Zionist congress was held at Basle, in Switzerland, on August 29,
1897 and resulted in the declaration of two key objectives. Firstly, Zionists
would promote Jewish "colonization" in Palestine. Secondly, they would work to
unite Jews worldwide so as to foster Jewish national sentiment and
consciousness. The first objective received far more publicity than the
second.
It is essential to remember that Zionism was conceived during an age of
imperialism, when all of Europe thought along these lines. Ethnically, Jews
were largely European, and Zionists made their plans in complete disregard of
the "natives" then living in Palestine. Unfortunately, Zionism still retains
its colonialist mentality today.
Zionists consider every Jew in the world to be automatically a citizen of
Israel. But if most of the world's Jews suddenly decided to live
there, they would also have to overrun all of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan,
liquidating their current inhabitants, just to provide enough room for the
exploding population.
In Israel, it may be argued, Zionism has simply planned a larger and better
European ghetto, where Jews can remain isolated, segregated from the rest of
Palestine, Asia and the Middle East. This is reflected in a study earlier this
year by the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, which found that some 46
percent of Israel's Jewish citizens favor transferring Palestinians out of the
occupied territories, while 31 percent favor transferring Israeli Arabs right
out of the country.
Drawn as they are from all over the world, Israelis -- particularly the
majority Zionists -- do not see themselves as Asian, Oriental, or even Middle
Eastern, so full ethnic integration is not a high priority. But the Zionists
do not want this either.
[Mohamed Elmasry, a University of Waterloo professor,
is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.
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