Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Were Zionism’s “means” intrinsic to its “ends” from 1930s til today? And are they justified today? |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2013-11-30
Since the goal of Zionism was to create a super-majority-Jewish State in Palestine, necessarily at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people, it makes sense to ask the usual question in such cases: did the “ends” of the project justify the “means” employed? Of course, the answer from a Zionist perspecitive is “Yes!”, but I try to look at the question from an international, or human rights, perspective. Did the means of Zionism become part of its ends? Max Blumenthal’s recent book ”Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” is fiercely, unremittingly, and single-mindedly critical of Israel for its blatant racism and especially for its oppression of the (indigenous) Palestinian people. If one is considering, as I do here, the ends and the means of Zionism, then “Goliath” stands as a text-book regarding Zionism’s (mostly current) means. The fierceness and single-mindedness of “Goliath” have brought on criticism of the book, usually from committed Zionists but even from a few people in the non-Zionist or anti-Zionist camps. One criticism is that in “Goliath”, Blumenthal blames Zionism for its crimes (its means) without giving it credit for its goal or ends (frequently described as humanitarian—or if not as humanitarian then at least as proper), the goal of creating a Jewish State as a refuge for the persecuted Jewish People. Let us consider the Zionist project from the angle of means and ends. It is often said that people’s ends (goals) either do or do not justify the means they adopt to achieve those ends. How is it with Zionism? I also raise here a different question: if the means adopted to achieve a project’s ends are woven inextricably into those ends and thus made a part of them, then the means are (in that sense) adopted for the purpose of achieving themselves. On this reading, a crime is committed (if the means are criminal) in order to achieve the crime itself. In such a case, one seems asked to judge whether the crime justifies the crime. So, we may ask whether the means adopted by Zionism (racism, oppression, expulsion [racial cleansing], apartheid) to achieve its Jewish State were themselves folded into the ends and made inseparable from it. When the Jewish state was established in 1948, did the racism, oppression, expulsion, and apartheid which helped create Israel terminate? Did Zionism say, “A good job done, we may now retire our fierceness?” “Goliath” (among other books) tells us that Zionism did no such thing. The observed means of Zionism were the oppression of the Palestinians people, the usurpation of the private and public lands of the Palestinian people, and the expulsion of most of the Palestinian people from their homeland in the Middle East. Very early, a system of de facto apartheid developed within post-1948 Israel. The remnant of the Palestinian people within Israel soon came to live under a system of apartheid and remain in such a system today. It has not ended within Israel but has spread to post-1967 Greater Israel: The Israeli public’s choice is a different matter. The spokesmen of the dovish camp tell us horror stories about a future binational state. But the binational state is already here. It has a rigid apartheid legal system, as the High Court of Justice fades away. The Zionist ends were achieved by the creation of Israel in 1948, but the means continue to be used, destructively of Palestinians both inside Israel and outside it in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. To review. The stated ends of Zionism were the rescue of “the Jewish People” after years of murderous antisemitism far away from Palestine—in Europe and Russia—culminating in the holocaust wherein Nazi Germany murdered six million European Jews.[1] Zionism’s means were settler-colonialism and worse. Its ends were to wrest their country from the Palestinian people many of the families of which had lived in Palestine for hundreds if not thousands of years. The false and manipulative old slogan of the early Zionists, “a land without a people for a people without a land” was by the artifice of war and terrorism made to become somewhat true when, in 1947-49, Israeli terrorist[2] and military forces expelled 83% of the Palestinian people from the land which became Israel in 1948, beginning the never-ending Nakba (catastrophe) of the Palestinian people.[3] Again, this raises the issues of whether the ends justify the means and whether the means have been folded into the ends and kept as goals of the continuing Zionist project. A vigorous criticism of “Goliath” occurs in Preaching to the choir: reflections on Max Blumenthal’s ‘Goliath’, an essay by Jerome Slater excerpted at the invaluable website Mondoweiss.net. Slater wrote: It is beyond the purview of this review essay to go into detail, but at least at the level of motivation (consequences are a different matter), anyone describing Israel in terms of colonialism must also acknowledge that the driving force behind early Zionism was the felt urgent necessity (I would say, objective urgent necessity) to create a haven from murderous anti-Semitism. That must be distinguished from the obvious motives and complete lack of objective necessity that drove Western colonialism– power for its own sake.What Slater is saying is that we must consider ends and means rather than only considering means. Israel’s settler-colonialism is not, he says, the same as other settler-colonizers’. Perhaps so. But so what? Is Zionism still justified by its original stated justification? For one thing, Zionism was originally justified by the claim that there must be a Jewish majority State (not merely a Middle Eastern state with a lot of Jewish citizens) as a refuge for Jews fleeing European oppression. But there is some evidence that Jews need no longer fear oppression in Europe. And if Jews need no longer fear oppression, then where is the continuing justification for Israel as a specifically Jewish state? Or even Jewish majority state? Where is the justification for the continuation of the exclusion of the Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948? Where is the continuing justification for the oppression of the Palestinians living within Greater Israel (Israel with the occupied Palestinian territories)? And if Jews need no longer fear oppression, why not replace Israel as it is with a non-discriminatory multi-ethnic state with near equal numbers of Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens, the so-called “one-state solution”? But do Jews no longer need to fear oppression? Many Israelis are now moving to Germany, to the USA, etc. This means that [1] they are free to go places outside Israel, [2] they want to go places outside Israel, [3] they do not regard these parts of the world as a dangerous place for Jews, [4] they prefer other places to Israel. It appears that the stated reasons supposedly justifying Zionism—even if true in the 1930s and 40s—are no longer true today. But Zionism continues its means even after its ends (however justified or unjustified they may have been or now are) have long since been achieved. And, of course, many other Jews have preferred to live outside Israel without ever considering moving there (or imagining other than theoretically any reason to move there). Their suitcases are not packed. They are happy where they live, like most people in the countries in which they live. Jews live happily in the USA, in Iran, and elsewhere. Given the exodus of Israeli-Jews from Israel, why are Israel’s ends and means still unchanged — or perhaps intensified—years after the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine? Years after the professed goal or end of Zionism—creation of a Jewish state in Palestine—was accomplished? If there is less and less justification for the existence of Israel at all, is not the continuing and increasing oppression of Palestinians, the apartheid, the continued expulsion of the refugees from 1948—the retention of the original means— even less justified? Is settler-colonial Zionism, after all, a process that can never finish? And are Palestinians (as well as Israelis) caught in a perpetual merry-go-round? Must the oppressed Palestinians be ever oppressed and the oppressing Israelis always persuaded that their task is incomplete? Clearly, in the opinion of those Israeli-Jews who are emigrating, there is no need for a “haven” from the world’s antisemitism, no need for Israel to exist at all. And of course, the huge population of Jews in the USA are not only not moving to Israel but are, in fact, in the younger generations especially, growing quite ignorant of and unconcerned with Israel. In short, it looks as if the horrors of European antisemitism have diminished or ended as matters of importance in the lives of Jews, but the horrors of Israeli oppression of Palestinians is never-ending. Indeed, increasing. How are the ends originally stated for Zionism of relevance for the means (ever-expansive settler-colonialism and oppression) of the current Israeli project? If the horrific means of the Zionist act of self-creation of 1948—expulsion of people, seizure of land, general oppression of Palestinians, creation of an apartheid system—was intended from the outset to be permanent, then it is part and parcel of Zionism, not something forced on Israel as a temporary result of war which was to be corrected later. Even a complete withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories would not correct the horror of the effects of Zionism on the Palestinian people originally within pre-1967 Israel. If, however, these means were merely a temporary expedient regrettably necessitated to achieve Zionism’s original goal, then why does it all continue, as described in “Goliath”, 65 years after 1948 when the the State of Israel was established on 78% of the land of Palestine—that is, 65 years after the achievement of the goal of the creation of the “Jewish State”?[4] But since the oppression et al. does still continue, perhaps the means (oppression, etc.) were intrinsic in the ends of Zionism, which might explain why the means of Zionism were neither regretted nor abandoned by the Zionists—the Israeli-Jews and their supporters elsewhere. Perhaps it was an original purpose of Zionism to create and maintain forever an oppressive relationship with the original people of Palestine. An end and not merely a means. And, yes, I believe the means that Zionists have used were “illicit”. If you don’t, read “Goliath” and see if you don’t change your mind. People often ask whether particular ends justify particular (illicit) means. Zionists are heard to say, “To make an omelet it is necessary to break eggs” meaning, in this case, that you cannot steal another people’s country and dispossess them without injuring them. But that begs the question of whether the ends (creating a super-majority-Jewish State in most or all of Palestine) justified the means (expulsion, oppression, apartheid, etc.) adopted to achieve the Zionist ends. After all, every crime has a goal, and “breaking eggs” is typical of all crimes. Was the Zionist project merely a crime, or was it a bit better, or altogether better? And whatever it may have been in 1948, crime or better, what is it now? There is much evidence that the people who managed the Zionist surge (1930s through 1950, especially 1945-48) well understood that the Palestinian Jews would need to grab a lot of land not already owned by them and expel a lot of people (Palestinian Arabs). They knew these things and planned for them. The need to do this was not a surprise to the leadership. It was part of their plan. They desired to create “a land without people” to fill with Jewish immigrants. Expulsion (ethnic cleansing) was a goal of Zionism, an “end”. And also a means for creating a Jewish State. So, the Zionist surge — while it had ends in mind — had means also clearly in mind. And the fact that today’s Zionism continues to usurp Palestinian-owned land and to oppress (and even expatriate) Palestinian Arab people shows that the means were not ever rejected, not ever regarded as temporary. The means—including land confiscation, expulsion of people, and apartheid for those Palestinians remaining—were intrinsic parts of the Zionist project. Israel has never said to the Palestinian people that it is sorry. Israel has never offered to give back any of the land so far seized, never offered to allow the expelled people to return to their homeland or homes. Indeed, the expropriation of Palestinian land continues apace today, in the Negev/Naqab with the expropriation of Bedouin lands, and in the Jordan Valley of the occupied West Bank. The oppression seems never-ending, an intrinsic part of Zionism rather than a temporary means adopted to achieve a more limited “end”. Do Ends Justify Means Here’s an analogy: A fellow wants to found an orphanage for poor orphan children. But this would cost a lot of money, which he doesn’t have. So his business plan — from the outset — is to rob the local bank, stealing the money and property of all the local people who deposited these things in the local bank. Slater’s demand that we look at Zionism’s ends (rather than only at its means) is particularly hard for me to credit given that in the USA, which I take to be Slater’s location, Israel and Zionism are so overwhelmingly described as philanthropic (as rescuing the victims of the holocaust, etc.) and so very, very rarely described as relentlessly oppressive (criminal). America, in particular, does not need another defence of Zionism or of Israel. It has plenty of those. It needs an accurate description of Israel and of its current and past doings. How many people feel the need to “be fair” when they describe an essentially criminal business? “Goliath” sets out to provide a fact-book for establishing some of what I call the “criminal” part of the means/ends dichotomy. How, one wonders, are Americans to learn the means part of Israel’s ends and means if no-one publishes them? And what is to be gained if in doing so one also recites the tired old excuses for the settler-colonial project? ----------- [1] Of course, Zionism actually began in 1894 after the Dreyfus Affair in France revealed antisemitism in France and pogroms against Jews began to appear in Russia. The holocaust—often given as a principal justification for Zionism—was yet 37 or more years in the future. ----------- [2] Read about the pre-Israel massacre of the villagers of Deir Yassin by Zionist terrorists.. ----------- [3] In 1947, about 900,000 Palestinians lived in the land which became Israel in 1948. About 750,000 of them became refugees outside Israel as a result of the military and terrorist creation of the state of Israel. Hence the percentage of Palestinians expelled from the land which became Israel was about 83%. There are many good reasons to refuse to consider Israel to be a democratic state. One of the reasons that I refuse to agree that Israel is democratic is that approximately 1/2 of the people who should have been citizens of Israel in 1948 were expelled in 1947-50, and thus 1/2 the potential voters were excluded from the voting rolls. Democracy is about more than voting, to be sure, but this exclusion of 1/2 the voters is too much for me. ----------- [4] The UNGA Res 181 which proposed the partition of Palestine in 1947 suggested 55% of Palestine for the Jewish state, but the war of 1948 resulted in an Israel on 78% of the land. |
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