Its been a long while since I last read or discussed Zionism or the history of Zionism. It is fine when I am discussing the topic with someone who is unbiased towards a particular subject, as a person should be when history is being debated, but then again very few are, sometimes I can't help myself when looking at history and not trying to justify it with reasoning that seems logical and to an extent 'right'. But this is not the subject. The subject of this post is Howard Jacobson's commentary on the independent titled "A letter to an Anti-Semite who isn't".
" because Zionism itself has turned the screws. And certainly there are cruelties committed in its name."
The history of Zionism is a cruelty in itself. What has Zionism brought other than destruction, disparate, violence, racism and hate? Since the late 1800's leaders of the Zionist movement have been feeding on the misfortunes of European Jews, misguiding them to believe that they Must go to Palestine, that they must go back to the promised land in order to escape the persecution they faced in Europe. It is worth noting that it was only until the second world war and the holocaust incident did the Jews of Europe decided that it was their time to leave, before that the number of Jews that believed the lies of the Zionists were minimal.
"Anyone who has read the history of Zionism will be aware that its aim was to dispossess the Arabs," a critic of Israel has recently written. To which both the long and the short answer is that anyone who has read the history of Zionism will be aware of no such thing. "
Mr Jacobson, in a very juvenile way goes on to say:
"For Zionism was never a single movement, and whatever isn't a single movement cannot be said to have a single aim. A complex of ideologies, Utopian, messianic, visionary, practical, communistical, sometimes dreamily idealistic – Jews and Arabs working the land side by side – sometimes just plain desperate, came together (and indeed didn't always do that) to form that which we call Zionism."
Jacobson assumes here that all Jews are Zionists, and that the Zionist movement is an entirely Jewish ideology. Lets point out that although the leaders of Zionism did have differing beliefs other than Judaism (Herzel and Nardou were Atheists), Zionisms' ultimate aim is one, and that was ending the Jewish diaspora. Even though Jews at that time knew that they were only meant to return to the 'homeland' through divine intervention, hence the relatively small number of Jews that believed the Zionist ideology and accepted the aims of Zionism.
In addition, Zionism was not only an ideology which is explicit to Jews, in fact Christian Zionism existed way before the Zionism that Zionists today believe in, the Herzel Zionism. The gathering of Jews was seen by Christians in Britain and America as an act that needs to be done in order for the second coming of the messiah.
"Living with Arabs, not dispossessing them, was to be a way of achieving this."
If that is so, then why did the Jews that came under the Zionist banner live in Kibbutz's and isolated themselves from all Arabs, grew their own food, built their own homes and created their own independent communities and militias that later on massacred and killed and ethnically cleansed many Palestinian Arabs in different villages and towns across Palestine? It is unbelievable how people like Jacobson pretend as if that is what they want, they want "Arabs and Jews to live with each other" yet go on and try to justify the criminality of the Zionist state for the past 60 years. The Jewish people did suffer but that doesn't give them the right to claim a land that they probably have never seen before (talking about Jews 70 years ago) and steal it claiming its their land because their ancestors were there. Really? Your ancestors? Were they also blond, blue eyed and white?
Jacobson who pretends to be a fair person and plays that game of "I sympathize with the Palestinians but we the Jews are always right because of the HOLOCAUST", then goes on to explain to us how the word Zionist and Jewish are interchangeable words, that both mean the same thing as he criticized Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN earlier last month. Zionism a political ideology is the same as Judaism, a 5000 year old religious belief?
"Holocaust denial is the fulfillment of Primo Levi's greatest dread – that those who suffered would never be believed."
Let me just state right now that I will deny the holocaust not because I don't believe it happened, and even if it did happen then why should I be so saddened by the thought of the Holocaust, why should I put my head down in respect of those who died in a terrible genocide, why can't I discuss it in a critical way, when much worse crimes were committed in the same acts of hate and racism in different parts of the World? 20 million native Americans were slaughtered by European Immigrants, hundreds of thousands Aboriginal were massacred, the 60 million killed during World War II many of which were innocent civilians and so on and so forth. Why can I discuss these events, research them and write papers about them, yet as soon as anyone utters the word holocaust followed by 'I don't...' a person has to stand up and shout "Holocaust Denier!!" and "Anti-Semite!". I will tell you why people are not allowed to talk about the holocaust, simply because someone doesn't want people to know the truth. They don't want people to even put that thought into other peoples' heads to such an extent that they have made laws that criminalize those who deny the holocaust, yet homosexuality is a matter of freedom of choice and slandering Islam is a freedom of speech and opinion. Not only that but they even built museums and placed the topic in their school's educational curriculum just to make sure that no one thinks otherwise. What is so special about the genocide of Jews (and Gypsies and french resistance fighters caught in the war, By the way!) that it has a special title "Holocaust" what makes it so different from other genocides, why is there no special name for the genocides in Rwanda for example? Isn't that just a little bit racist?...?
Let me end this by saying to Mr. Jacobson that the only thing that is wrong is you. And I say it with full confidence.
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