Anti-Zionist Learning Circle #4: History of Zionism

Learning Materials

• The Dangerous Exceptionalism of Christian Zionism:
  • Christian Zionism supports the Zionist project (establishment of the Israeli state + encouraging Jewish settlement in Palestine) as a tenet (principle) of Christian faith. Believing that Jewish control of Palestine is a prerequisite for Jesus’s return, and they believe Christians should “bless” Jews to facilitate this. There’s also a belief in personal financial gain for those who support Israel.
  • This support is tied to the Church’s salvation, not to the well-being of Jews. They believe that upon Jesus’ return, Jews and other non-Christians will face destruction.
  • Christian Zionist views can be characterized by antisemitism. They view Jews as a singular, globally connected population, akin to European antisemitism.
  • Although Jewish Zionist leaders are aware of the cynical nature of the alliance with Christian Zionists, they welcome their support because it promotes the Israeli government’s political objectives and shields it from criticism.
  • Christian Zionism in the US:
    • There is support from white evangelical Christians, notably Christian Zionists, for Trump.
    • Christian Zionists are a more significant political force than the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
    • Some statistics:
      • Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is the largest pro-Israel advocacy group in the U.S. with over 10 million members.
      • Evangelical Christians make up around 14% of the U.S. population (approximately 46 million people).
      • 80% of them believe the establishment of Israel and the “regathering of millions of Jewish people to Israel” fulfill biblical prophecy.
    • Christian evangelicals are known to propagate anti-Muslim sentiments in the U.S.
    • Influence on U.S. Policy:
      • Began with the annual Zionist conference of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, starting in 1980.
      • The Moral Majority, established in 1979, was a major social movement and the largest voting bloc within the Republican Party, with direct links to the Israeli government.
      • The National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI) led a successful campaign to repeal UN Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism.
      • In June 2003, the Christian Zionist organization, the Apostolic Congress, sent over 50,000 postcards to the White House in opposition to a roadmap aiming to establish a Palestinian state. This delayed action until after the 2004 elections.
      • The Maccabee Task Force, funded by CUFI, opposes the BDS movement.
      • This resulted in an administration with far-right, Zionists, and white supremacists, supporting settlements, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, pushing for normalization between Israel and the Gulf, and the “deal of the century.”
  • Christian Zionism in Britain:
    • Christian Zionism considered Jews in the diaspora as both a problematic and biblically crucial population to influence on the path toward the Church’s destiny of salvation.
  • White Supremacy and Christian Zionism
    • Arthur Balfour’s 1917 declaration was a form of white supremacy
    • White supremacists want Jews to leave “white societies” for Israel. “The desire for a white ethnostate is steeped in Christianity through a call for their fellow whites to be conscious not only of their white identity but also of their shared Christian heritage”
    • The scholar Robert O. Smith stated that support for Israel is “predicated…by a combination of religious traditionalism, belief in American exceptionalism, and whiteness.”
    • The notion of exceptionalism links these ideologies. Exceptionalists inhabit binary, exclusionary worlds: The idea that one group is superior to another and deserves certain rights at the expense of “outsider” groups. Christian versus Jewish, Black, Muslim, and otherwise in the case of the Richard Spencers in the US, white and Jewish versus Palestinian in the case of Christian Zionism
  • Evangelical Opportunities
    • Not all evangelicals are Christian Zionists.
    • There are individuals and institutions that work against the ideology.
    • non-white evangelicals tend to be less biased.
    • Support for Israel among younger evangelicals is decreasing.
    • Current evangelicals interested in social justice may not have Palestine “at the top of their list”
  • Taking Action:
    • The task for activists for Palestinian rights will be to educate and bring social justice-oriented evangelicals together to work against Israeli settler colonialism, theocracy, and apartheid.
      
• Rashid Khalidi – CounterPunch.org Zionism, Colonialism, and Imperial Power (podcast, interview, minutes 2-27)
  • This is a podcast interview of Dr. Rashid Khalidi, by Counterpunch Radio. Dr Khalidi is a historian and author of the book  The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917-2017.
  • The topics Khalidi talks about in the first 27 minutes are Palestinian awareness about the problems of the zionist project in its early stages, the importance of correctly framing the war on Palestine, deception of the zionists to cover up their colonial intentions, assimilation of the minority jewish people in israel and settler colonial tactics of erasing and the extermination of indigenous people.
  • (1) Palestinian awareness about the zionist project at its early stages and its problems: Rashed Khalidi talks about how his ancestors and other Palestinians opposed the zionist project. One of his ancestors named Yusuf Dia  el-Khalidi, was a mayor of Jerusalem and a part of the first Ottoman parliament. He had known about the zionist project in its early stages and had written a letter that reached (originally for French head rabbi, Zadok Kahn, a friend of Herzl),Theodor Herzl (who is considered the father of modern political Zionism) a year after the zionist congress warning him about the problems of the zionist project. Khalidis uncle was also exiled by the British in the 1930s for his opposition to the zionist project and the British colonial project. 
  • (2) Framing the war on Palestine: Framing the history of war on Palestine as just Palestinians versus zionists doesn’t give the full picture. There was external intervention from France, Britain and the US that made the creation of israel possible. Especially in the 1940’s when the Palestinians were fighting the British empire with their 100 000 British troops and the royal airforce.
  • (3) Deception of the zionists to cover up their colonial intentions: The zionists were discussing the zionist project in a different way in english and in french. But the local people understood their project was settler colonialism, and that the zionists weren’t interested in living alongside the Palestinian majority but to make Palestine a jewish majority state. There was no intention for co-existance. (Colonisation wasn’t seen as negatively as in modern times compared to the 19th century.  And the great powers colonized lands all over the world such as Algeria, South Africa, Rhodesia, Australia, the US.)
  • (4) Assimilation of the minority jewish people in israel: Dominant ethnic group were European jewish people. There was a white supremacist mindset, where locals were seen as inferior.  There were and still is assimilation of Middle Eastern and African jewish people due to the discrimination by the dominant culture (for example the hebrew accent, traditions). 
  • (5) Settler colonial tactics of erasing and the extermination of indigenous people: Israel uses cultural and social ways to appropriate the Palestinian culture in order to erase it. These include for example: changing location names such as cities as monuments, claiming Palestinian food as Israeli food such as hummus. Passing off Palestinian embroidery as Israeli embroidery. The aim of the social and cultural appropriation is to replace the indigenous population. Another colonial tactic is erasing  the history of Palestinian people. Due to this erasure teaching and learning about Palestine and the history of Palestine is seen as hostile and antisemitic. 
• Turku with Palestine: Innocent Journalism? The Union of Journalists in Finland, Haaretz and liberal Zionism (type: activist journalistic text)
  • Noa Landau, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Israeli newspaper Haaretz was invited as the only foreign journalist to the Journalist Day seminar organized by the Union of Journalists in Finland 
  • With this comes the topic of liberal Zionism, as Haaretz is painted as “progressive Israeli media outlet” that is critical of Netanyahu’s far-right government. 
  • The Union of Journalists in Finland offering this platform to Landau goes in hand with the anti-Palestinian racism within the Finnish news media that actively has reproduced colonial media narratives. 
  • The Union of Journalists in Finland for example shared Landau’s biography, which involved her project that aimed to hire Palestinian journalists with Israeli citizenship to the media outlet, thus contributing again to the liberal image of Zionism. 
  • Moreover, the political embodiment of the Zionist settler state of Israel is characterized by racism, an addiction to violence and terrorism, and territorial expansion (Sayegh 1965). These are foundational to Zionism and the claim of exclusive Jewish sovereignty of the land and people. (Ayyash 2022). – Liberal Zionism does not question the legitimacy of the formation of the Israeli state in 1948 via settling, occupation and expulsion. Settler colonialism is not challenged, but only masked and beautified. 
  • Haaretz was founded in 1918 and was originally sponsored by the British military government – thus it being a Zionist project from the very beginning.  
  • As said by Yoav Litvin that “Haaretz and its editorial board claim to advocate for “left-wing” and “liberal” agendas, though in fact they promote civil liberties for the privileged class (Zionists) and refuse to address the core white supremacist nature of Zionism, which has terrorised Indigenous Palestinians for over seven decades.” 
  • In the words of Muhannad Ayyash, “liberal Zionism is a pillar of the settler colonial project, in that it fulls the specific and critical function of providing the Zionist project with the veneer of enlightened, Western civilization and democratic, progressive politics”. 
  • Uncritical acceptance of liberal Zionism by mainstream Western media results in an incapacity to represent Israel as “a settler colonial state that practices apartheid.” This feeds colonial narratives of Israel being “the only democracy in the Middle East”, which justify Western diplomatic, economic and military support for Israel. 
  • As liberal Zionism “deceitfully presents Zionism as compatible with human rights” by “[sanitizing] and [revising] the movement’s reactionary, settler-colonialist, and white supremacist nature”, its role is to give it credibility among Western states. 
  • In the Journalist Day panel, Landau presented “how the work of journalists in Palestine and Israel is being disrupted and what everyday life is like for journalists in these war-torn countries” – The framing of this completely erasing the ongoing genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel and the overall power dynamics of the occupier and occupied.  
  • And this being an understatement that the work of journalists in Palestine is being “disrupted”, when in reality alongside Palestinian intellectuals, academics and writers, they are directly targeted and murdered by the Israeli military.   
  • The Union of Journalists in Finland donated 5000 euros to the Danish NGO International Media Support that supports Gazan journalists with work equipment, safety vests and helmets, as well as psychosocial support. In their statement with the donation, they condemned the killing of journalists and demanded “Israel to do everything so that journalists and other civilians wouldn’t die” – requesting that a genocide perpetrator ensures the “safety” of civilians – Thinking charity sweeps this sort of “neutrality” under a rug. 
  • 1. How can an Israeli journalist that doesn’t question the legitimacy of the Israeli settler colonial project provide reliable information on the everyday reality of Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the occupied West Bank? 
  • 2. Why are Palestinian journalists, editors, and media not viewed as legitimate sources to discuss the work of journalists in violent contexts, when it is Palestinian journalists who are targeted and killed by the Israeli military?
• Chris Bambery: The man in whose shadow Netanyahu walks.
  • 1) Ze’ev Jabotinsky:
    • 1880–1940
    • Russian-born
    • Founder of the revisionist zionism movement
    • Was zionist organiser in Russian Empire and later zionist military organizer in Palestine. Founded Irgun (The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel) which did terrorist attacks in Mandate Palestine against both the British and the Palestinians.
    • One of the most famous works is the “Iron Wall” essay written in 1923​​​​​​​
    • “The ‘Iron Wall’, which Netanyahu invokes, was a 1923 essay by Jabotinsky in which he argued a Jewish state could only be created from a position of overwhelming military strength, by proving in arms to the Palestinians and the Arab states, that Zionism could not be defeated.”
  • 2) Revisionist Zionism
    • Later in revisionist zionism there was this thought that Britain would not grant zionist a jewish state in Palestine, but Jewish state and army should be organised independently. Planned revolt against British rule in 1939 which never happened. Also negotiations with the native Palestinian population were out of question because “Jabotinsky believed the Arabs were implacably hostile to the creation of a Jewish state”. (force)
    • He wanted all of European Jewry to migrate to Palestine and the extension of the Jewish state to both banks of the River Jordan. (territorial expansion)
    • ‘Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.’ (The Iron Wall).
  • What is the connection between Netanyahu and Jabotinsky?
    • On personal level:
      • “Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, was an activist in Jabotinsky’s Revisionist movement, editor of its publications a private secretary to the leader”
      • Netanyahu has openly cited and admired Jabotinsky.
    • Ideological level:
      • Netanyahus book A Place among the Nations: Israel and the World is based on revisionist zionism and argues for one jewish state from the river to the sea.
      • Netanyahu was also against two state solution in the 90’s when there where ongoing Oslo peace negations.
  • Peace negations with party person and party who is supporting this militaristic and expansionist ideology are atleast very difficult.