By Paula Zalaquett

Israel: “A land with no people for a people with no land…”

This phrase grounds Jewish people who believe they need the refuge of their own state for Jewish people only. This is the essence of Zionism and the current Israeli state. If someone criticizes Zionism for denying the existence of a native population while asserting that no one existed on the land (in other words that Palestinians were nobody or did not count as persons) that person is accused of antisemitism. Zionists would state that it was the Jewish land for 2000 years to avoid the reality of colonization; I imagine that many Israelis may prefer to deny this reality to avoid the guilt of racism. Being honest about the conditions which led to Israel’s existence, is considered a threat to that existence and, by extension, it is considered antisemitism. If the reality of colonization is recognized: Is it that there is no room for reparation? Is it possible that Israel could exist and at the same time repair? Choosing to live in the denial of a reality does not allow any reparation because in the Israeli experience, harm was never done to the Palestinians. What we are currently witnessing is likely a repetition of violence and trauma by Israel whose Jewish people experienced the horror of the Holocaust and more recently the attack by Hamas. Since its inception, Israel exclusively considers itself as a victim, always denying its own aggression. What we see in the Israeli response to Hamas attack has been the confirmation of a pre-existing denial, the denial of the harm that Israel has done during the occupation of Palestine, the denial that a “legitimate defense” does not apply in the same way with an occupied territory, the denial that this is not a war between States and less so a war against all Palestinians, unless there was a desire to consider all the Palestinians as terrorists. The rationale that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as shields is not enough to avoid protecting them, the end doesn’t justify the means. In psychology if one victim of extreme trauma asserts that they have the “license to kill their aggressor, the family of the aggressor, and their people,” we would understand that the pain of the received violence, even if extreme, does not exonerate a person of the responsibility of their violent response: the identification with the aggressor is a well known defense mechanism and it does not surprise us. We cannot even judge the hatred that such an aggression may produce, yet, despite that, if a person as an adult has reached the necessary ethical development, they are accountable for their actions. The “legitimate defense” cannot overturn the laws, if it does it is a felony. 

The state of Israel has strived to not differentiate between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The confusion of these terms exploits the trauma and the fear of the Jewish people, because any critique of Israel is experienced as an attack against Jewish identity. Israel’s policies cannot be criticized by Jewish and non-Jewish people, much less Arabs who presumably land more “conservatively” politically speaking than a “democratic and developed” State of Israel. Those who have strived to differentiate between anti-Zionism and antisemitism are those who strive to make clear that criticism of a state is not a stand against its people. Can you imagine that when we criticized the military State and the dictatorship in Chile we were regarded as anti-Chileans; that if we now criticize Russia we were anti-Russians, or if we criticize Iran we could be regarded as anti-Iranian, or if we criticize Saudi Arabia we would be regarded as Anti-saudis. What freedom of speech would remain with the argument that criticizing the politics of a State is being racist? The current surge of antisemitism and islamophobia, raises appropriate concern and an urgent need to address the prejudice and hatred against Jewish and Muslim people. It is partly because of this reason that differentiating anti-Zionism and antisemitism is imperative to confront the alarming and rising hostility against Jews. Is it that Israel could not possibly exist without being Zionist? Can it have laws that do not discriminate between its citizens, ending the occupation of Palestine and continuing to exist? Is it that Israel is threatened to exist or is it the existence of Palestine the one which has not been recognized? For some reason the two-state solution has been reconsidered by Western leaders. It is not tenable to cover the sun with one finger. The pro-Palestine protests are embedded in this context and any attempt to censor them is perpetuating the avoidance of reality. 

Edward Said (1979) argues that criticizing Zionism is fundamentally criticizing a wall of denials, he insists that the fight between Palestinians and Zionism has to be understood as a fight between a presence and an interpretation. The State of Israel has established itself to the extent that it has denied Palestine and Palestinians. This reminds us of Golda Meir in 1969 asserting that the Palestinians did not exist. Said cites Hannah Arendt: “… after the [Second World] war it turned out that the Jewish question… was indeed solved by means of a colonized and then conquered territory… [it] merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs…” (1979, p. 45). 

Illustrating Zionist tactics, Said cites Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism, who in 1895 wrote in his diaries: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly” (Said, 1979, p. 125). He adds that the Zionist idea consists in claiming a territory promised by God to the Jewish people in the Old Testament, which is equivalent to elevating an ethnocentric ideal to the category of universal. Through this argument, it is justified that Israel has a kind of soberany over the land and the people like no other state. 

Furthermore, Chaim Wiezmann, the first president of the State of Israel, changed the 1917 Balfour declaration replacing “the establishment” of a Jewish national home in Palestine, by the “reestablishment” of a Jewish national home. This  marked the installation of a denial, it is undone and the history is rewritten since Israel did not destroy an indigenous population nor replace it, but rather it was the Palestinians who broke the sovereignty of the Jewish people lost for two millenniums, something that, Said asserts, was a reality that Palestinians had difficulty perceiving. In this way, the de-arabization of the Palestine territory is proposed as fundamental to its israelization. 

In Israel the treatment towards Palestinians is expressed through police states, the lack of freedom of speech and the violations of human rights are justified as “national security.” The Zionist Apartheid consists not only in regarding the Arabs as degraded and fearsome, irrational and brutal, but also in the quest for replacing the natives for new ones. The “democracy” in Israel implies that a Zionism exists and that there is an Israel for the Jewish, and another for the non-Jewish, with a legal system that divides the two: the Arabs are governed by a government with different forms of citizenship lacking equality between Jewish and non-Jewish peoples; The law of return allows a Jew the immediate entrance into Israel and, at the same time, Israel forbids a Palestinian to return to their home. The Israeli raids have killed thousands of civilians with the excuse of fighting terrorism, however, as Said states, the real argument is that as a race the Palestinian has turned into a terrorist.  

Despite these widely known facts, the situation of Palestinians had prevailed at the time of Hamas attack. The point of not justifying the aggression of Hamas even if considering the historical context from which this action stemmed is correct. In other words, the attack on civilians by Hamas cannot be understood as legitimate actions of resistance against the occupation of Palestine. But condemning and not justifying the aggression does not mean further invisibilizing the situation that Palestinians have endured for decades and up to this date. Israel is accused of apartheid by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Are these organizations also antisemitic? It does not make sense. Wouldn’t it be good for Jewish people if Israel was a real democracy with no apartheid regime? Can democracy and apartheid coexist? 

To the above questions, we can add other issues that lead to a much more devastating scenario. If Zionists consider that the only way to avoid reexperiencing the violence of the Holocaust is building a militarized state to guarantee longstanding “national security,” and through this, the Zionists justify the permanent illegal aggression and the nonrecognition of Palestinians, this could lead to persecutory nightmares and generate the very thing the Zionists attempt to avoid: lack of safety. The aggression aimed at avoiding being victimized once again only allows movement within the polarized spectrum of identification with the aggressor, perpetually producing more victims while attempting to move further away from the cycle of violence.

In conclusion, it is my belief that the accusation of antisemitism is likely being used as a means to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, to keep the entire territory and complete the Zionist project. I do not think this is the case of many Jews, but I profoundly doubt the intentions of the Israeli government. As a precedent, the map of Israel, titled “New Middle East,” that Netanyahu showed at the UN while attempting to sign treaties with Saudi Arabia this past September, cannot be overlooked. 

*This piece was originally written in Spanish and translated by The Activist co-editors.

*Image credit: Camel of Hardship (جمل المحامل), Sliman Mansour, oil on canvas, 1973. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=347916597750649&set=a.177084561500521

Reference

Said E (1979). La cuestión de Palestina. Barcelona: Ed.Penguin Random House, 2013.