This post has now moved to my new blog, The Immortal Science. Any revisions to this post will be made there, so what you read below is likely outdated.

1. Israel ethnically cleansed Palestinians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus

May 14th, 1948: The state of Israel is declared. 700,000 Palestinians are forced to flee their homes

http://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html

“Usually, the cleansing (“Nikayon,” a word used frequently in Israeli military communications at the time) was initiated by massacres. Plan Dalet was started to conquer the area between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and it commenced in earnest following the massacre of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. This was followed by several other massacres, which terrorized the Palestinians into leaving. Palestinians were terrorized by 33 massacres in total: Al Abbasiyya (4 May ‘48), Abu Shusha (14 May ‘48), Ayn az Zaytun (2 May ‘48), Balad ash Sheikh (25 April ‘48), Bayt Daras (11 May ‘48), Beer Sheba (21 Oct ‘48), Burayr (12 May ‘48), Al Dawayima (29 Oct ‘48), Deir Yassin (9 April ‘48), Eilaboun (29 Oct ‘48), Haifa (21 April ‘48), Hawsha (15 April ‘48), Husayniyya (21 April ‘48), Ijzim (24 July ‘48), Isdud (28 Oct ‘48), Jish (29 Oct ‘48), Al Kabri (21 May ‘48), Al Khisas (18 Dec ‘48), Khubbayza (12 May ‘48), Lydda (10 July ‘48), Majd al Kurum (29 October ‘48), Mannsurat al Khayt (18 Jan ‘48), Khirbet, Nasir ad Din (12 April ‘48), Qazaza (9 July ‘48), Qisarya (15 Feb ‘48), Sa’sa (30 Oct ‘48), Safsaf (29 Oct ‘48), Saliha (30 Oct ‘48), Arab al Samniyya (30 Oct ‘48), Al Tantoura (21 May ‘48), Al Tira (16 July ‘48), Al Wa’ra al-Sawda (18 April ‘48), Wadi ‘Ara (27 Feb ‘48).”

(…)

“Here is a testimony of an Israeli soldier who participated in the massacre at al Duwayima Village, on October 29, 1948:

[They] killed between 80 to 100 Arabs, women and children. To kill the children they fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one house without corpses. The men and women of the villages were pushed into houses without food or water. Then the saboteurs came to dynamite the houses. One commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a house he was about to blow up… Another soldier prided himself upon having raped an Arab woman before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman with her newborn baby was made to clean the place for a couple of days, and then they shot her and the baby. Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered ‘good guys’…became base murderers, and this not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer the Arabs who remained, the better.”

2. There is no “left” Zionism. Zionism was always about settling on Palestinian land and expelling the indigenous population; it is a racist, settler-colonial ideology

https://youtu.be/VD1terYXUwQ?t=61

“The idea of ‘transfer,’ ‘expulsion,’ it was in-built[sic] in the Zionist idea. It wasn’t ‘right-wing Zionist’ vs. ‘labor Zionist’ (…) On the fundamental issue, they didn’t really disagree. You want to create a Jewish state in an area that’s overwhelmingly non-Jewish, the only way you can do it is by getting rid of the native population, that’s, you know, that’s why it was, as Morris said, ‘inevitable and in-built’ in the Zionist idea.”

http://www.marxists.de/middleast/rose/4-origin.htm

“Hence he set about seeking assistance from the great imperialists of his day. He wrote to Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) whom he thought of as a “visionary”. Rhodes had become identified with the mass white settlements in central Africa after countless bloody battles with the African population. Herzl wrote to Rhodes:

‘You are being invited to help make history. This cannot frighten you … it does not involve Africa but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews … I turn to you … because it is something colonial …'”

(…)

“From the start, the leaders of the Jewish community set out to exclude Palestinians from as many areas of life as possible. The leaders of “Labour Zionism” founded the exclusively Jewish trade union, the Histadrut, in 1920. It rapidly became the spearhead of anti-Palestinian activity.

The Histadrut called its programme “socialist”. It said that the Jewish state had to be built by the toil of Jewish workers. In lofty statements, the Histadrut insisted that Jews should not exploit native Palestinians by hiring them to work in fields or factories. Histadrut leaders coined three slogans to guide the Jewish colony: “Jewish Land, Jewish Labour, Jewish Produce”. Following these slogans, Zionist agencies leased land only to Jews; Jewish agricultural settlements and industries hired only Jews; and Jews boycotted fruits and vegetables from non-Jewish farms. Thus Palestinians were excluded from the Jewish sector of the economy.”

3. As an officially Jewish state, Israel is an officially racist state

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/ips.html

“There is rarely any doubt about where power resides in a Jewish state. Both the Palestinian marchers and the Jewish nationalists are Israeli citizens, and each ostensibly enjoys the same rights. But the authorities had already favored the Jewish group in the allocation of a rallying point; now they showed even more demonstratively where their sympathies lay. Armed police lined the road separating the two groups, their backs to the Jewish demonstrators as they faced off menacingly with our march.”

(…)

“Live among Israel’s Palestinian minority for even a short time and one is forced to abandon the widely accepted notion of Israel as a liberal democracy.

Consider the airport. Israel revels in its image as a state that takes the security of its citizens seriously. But which citizens? The country’s Jews usually pass through the departure and arrival procedures without interference. Foreign visitors, from business people to sports stars, can be seen being politely questioned and their bags searched. Palestinian citizens, however, fare far worse than the foreigners. The Israeli media have barely scratched the surface of the indignities the minority are systematically subjected to when traveling, not only if they catch a plane in Israel but also when they try to return from abroad.”

(…)

“As I approach the security officer before the check-in, she (and it is always a she) asks me where I am from. Given Israel’s strict enforcement of communal segregation based on ethnicity, this is a fairly accurate way of determining which side of the ethnic divide I belong to. My reply of “Nazareth”—given its international importance, my “Western-ness” and the fact that there is a Jewish city of almost the same name built on its confiscated land—does not provide the decisive evidence she needs. The questioning therefore intensifies in a coded format that needs deciphering for those untutored in Israel’s version of racial profiling.

Why are you living in Nazareth? I work there. Did you make aliyah? [“Aliyah” literally means “ascension,” the right of all Jews to come to Israel and automatically receive citizenship. It is an indirect way of asking if I am a Jew.] No. I am married to an Israeli. [If I claim a right to live in Israel based on marriage, it means I am not Jewish. My answer, however, leaves open the question of my wife’s ethnicity.] What’s your wife called? [Names invariably give away whether a citizen is Jewish or Palestinian.] Sally Cook. [My mother-in-law was pregnant when she befriended a British couple on holiday and decided to name my wife after their daughter. My answer has not settled the matter of my wife’s ethnicity. Her maiden name, “Azzam,” would be a giveaway but I am not going to be that helpful.] What’s her father’s name? He died many years ago, but was called Edmond. [My wife’s family are Maronite Christians, a group that for historic reasons prefers European names. Still no clue for the security officer, as my wife’s family could have been Jewish immigrants who never Hebraicized their names.] What about her mother? Her name’s Diana? [To test the security officer’s racist intentions, I pronounce the name in as Anglicized form as I can, as in “Princess Diana,” even though in Arabic it is pronounced distinctively “Dee-ana”] Does she have any brothers or sisters? [The official is sounding exasperated at the lengths she must go to extract the information she needs.] Yes, a brother called Ghassan. [Bingo, she knows I am married to a Palestinian citizen.]

Now the questions are over. She is scrawling coded numbers on stickers to be placed on every surface of my bags. I am sent to a separate queue where apparently a stronger X-ray machine will peer deeper into my suitcases. Then my bags are searched by hand for the best part of an hour. Depending on the circumstances, items may be confiscated or I may be told I am not allowed any hand luggage. “I hope you understand that these security precautions are necessary because we are concerned that someone may have placed something in your bags without your knowledge.” I might just believe the “without your knowledge” excuse, except that next they want to take me off to a cubicle for an intimate body search. With practiced indignation, I respond: “So you think that someone hid something in my body without my noticing?””

4. Zionism has a history of collaboration with anti-semitism

http://www.marxists.de/middleast/rose/4-origin.htm

“But others drew very different conclusions. Some – like the principal architect of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl – came to the conclusion that anti-semitism was inevitable and that the Jews should withdraw from Europe altogether and find their “own” homeland.

Herzl was an Austrian Jewish journalist who covered the famous Dreyfus trial in France in 1895. The trial provoked an outburst of anti-semitism in France. Shortly afterwards Herzl began to formulate his theories. His argument seemed to concede the anti-semitic case. In an infamous passage, he wrote:

“In Paris … I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-semitism, which I began to understand historically and pardon. Above all, I recognised the emptiness and futility of trying to combat anti-semitism.” [2]

This bleak and pessimistic perspective would effectively provide a justification for not only “pardoning” anti-semitism but even collaborating with it, since anti-semites would themselves later prove willing cynically to promote the Zionist cause.

Herzl was not particularly religious – in fact he was not particularly concerned at first even to make Palestine the target area for the new Jewish “homeland”. He considered Argentina at one stage. However it soon became obvious that the Jewish Biblical myths were a potent source of inspiration for developing an exclusivist and highly nationalistic Jewish identity.

And again, while Herzl was not the first person in this period to formulate the “Zionist solution” to anti-semitism, he was the first to link it deliberately to European imperialism, of which he was a great admirer, as the only means of withdrawing the Jews from Europe.”

5. What’s the solution?

Someone more knowledgeable than I would be better suited to give a practical answer to this question. But I think the just solution is clear: a single, socialist state, called Palestine, with a right to return for the millions of displaced Palestinians who have been forced to flee their homeland.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Reposted from my tumblr at http://therealmovement.tumblr.com/