The “De-Zionization” of Israel: Drying up Ideological Wellsprings of Arab – Israeli Conflict

Gradually, awareness that de-Zionization of the US and European foreign policy as well as the internal policies of the State of Israel has become a prerequisite for peace in the Middle East is steadily taking roots in Israeli and world public opinion and consciousness.

However this awareness has yet to wait for drying up the Zionist ideological wellsprings of the Arab – Israeli conflict and translating it into real politics by de-Zionization of Israel and disengaging western foreign policy from its ideological attachment to Zionism.
In his article published by Foreign Policy on last October 25, James Traub quoted US President Barak Obama in a speech last May, “announcing a re-formulation of the war on terror,” as saying: “We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root;” the only alternative to “perpetual war” is a sustained effort to reduce “the wellsprings of extremism.”
The “wellsprings” of “perpetual wars” and “extremism” in the Middle East during most of the past twentieth century until now could easily be detected in the unholy combination of real politics and the “radical ideology” of the secular – turned – religious Zionism.
This combination made it possible and seemingly ethical for Americans and Europeans to accept and justify the unethical displacement of the indigenous Arab people of Palestine to be replaced by a multi-national artificial gathering of Jews who suffered oppression, anti – Semitism, pogroms and holocaust in their western home countries.
US and European continued attachment to the Zionist ideology lies at the heart of their treatment of Israel, the offspring of this ideology, as one of their top “vital interests” in the Middle East, which is an attachment that in turn lies at the heart of anti-Americanism and other forms of Arab conflicts with the “west.”
The safe haven of the “new world” in America was a timely and practical solution for Europeans to get rid of and solve their “Jewish Question;” it now absorbs more Jews than Israel does.
The communists offered their own solution; it materialized in the Jewish autonomous “Oblast” first ever republic in the Russian Birobidzhan, close to the border of the former Soviet Union with China, which was home to some three million Jews before some one third of them immigrated to Israel following the collapse of the communist empire.
The nation states basing citizenship on the rule of law is now the rule of the day in Europe , where Jews enjoy full constitutional religious, civil, political and all the other rights enjoyed by their compatriots.
There is no more a “Jewish Question” in Europe in particular or in the west in general. If such a question still persists there it is one related to the disproportionate influence of Jewish citizens on the decision makers in the political, financial and media arenas.
Nonetheless, the Zionist propaganda in Israel and abroad is still fervently inciting that Jews are an endangered species outside Israel , soliciting Jewish immigration, encouraging dual citizenship and binational loyalty among them and considering all Jews outside Israel as “refugees.”
Writing in the http://www.huffingtonpost.com on September 6 last year, Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian leader and elected parliamentarian, quoted Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist from Iraq , as saying, “I don’t regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists” and quoted Former Knesset member Ran Cohen, who immigrated from Iraq , as saying: “I have to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism.”
Consequently, the “Jewish Question” moved ironically to the very Arab safe haven to which the oppressed European Jews fled with their lives to survive the culture of inquisition in Medieval Europe. The largest Jewish minority among Arabs in Morocco nowadays tells the story.
This Arab safe haven was turned by the Zionist ideology into a hell of wars, instability, ongoing conflict and home of a revived “Jewish Question” since Israel was artificially created 65 years ago in the heart of the Arab world, where Jews used previously to be a prosperous minority in every one of the capitals of the 22 Arab states except Jordan.
Zionism justifies the creation of Israel in Palestine by two basic controversial arguments: That God promised the land to Jews no matter what would happen to its Arab inhabitants who was there long before Joshua and his army crossed River Jordan to destroy Jericho and kill every man, woman, child and animal by “God’s command.”
On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary then, Lord Balfour, acted as the self – appointed messenger of God’s will to issue a modern God’s promise to Jews to have a “homeland” in Palestine .
The modern justification of the Holocaust does not care that another people, namely Arab Palestinians, pay the price for a crime they did not commit.
Ironic but informative as well is the fact that Zionism was not originally a Jewish product.
According to the author of “Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?” (InterVarsity Press, 2004) Revd. Dr. Stephen Sizer, writing in the Middle East Monitor on last August 1, “The origins of the movement can be traced to the early 19th century when a group of eccentric British Christian leaders began to lobby for Jewish restoration to Palestine as a necessary precondition for the return of Christ… Christian Zionism therefore preceded Jewish Zionism by more than 50 years. Some of Theodore Herzl’s strongest advocates were Christian clergy.” Dr. Sizer headlined his article, “Christian Zionism: The Heresy that Undermines Middle East Peace.”
He, together with the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem: The Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad of the Syrian Orthodox, the Episcopal Church Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal and the Evangelical Lutheran Church Bishop Munib Younan issued in 2006 and signed the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, which concluded: “We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.”
The Zionist narrative was challenged by Israel ’s “New Historians.” Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe’, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Hillel Cohen, Baruch Kimmerling and others have already reconsidered and created a post – Zionists’ awareness. Pappe’ concluded that the Zionist leaders planned and executed “ethnic cleansing” to displace most of the Arab Palestinians.
Shlomo Sand’s trilogy – - “The Invention of the Jewish People,” “The Invention of the Land of Israel ” and his upcoming third volume “The Invention of the Secular Jew” – - hits hard at the very foundations of Zionism.
The fact that the secular Zionism was not popular among the world religious Jewry in the early stages of the movement and that it is an ideology still opposed by a strong Jewish minority is a fact Zionists are keen to smokescreen.
“The UN avenue” in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was renamed “The Zionism avenue” in response to the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) of Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975, which determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination;” it was revoked by the UNGA resolution 46/86 in 1991; the ongoing Israeli Zionist ideology and practices render its repeal a premature step that should be reconsidered to reinstate it.
The world community as represented by the United Nations, by adopting resolution 181 of 1947 dividing Palestine between its indigenous Arab Palestinians and the invading aliens of the Zionist settlers played in the hands of Christian and Jewish Zionism to commit an historical mistake that doomed peace in the Middle East as an elusive humanitarian hope for a long time to come.
Jews were an integral part of the region’s history and social fabric until Zionism cut this fact short. Only the prerequisite of de-Zionization of Israel and world politics will make peace a dream that would come true in the region and restore history to its normal course in it. The Crusaders’ interruption of the regional history is an informative precedent from which all those concerned could draw lessons.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com