Zionism and racism allegations

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The term Zionism was first connected to the movement founded by the Viennese Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl, who argued in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) that the best way of avoiding anti-Semitism in Europe was to create an independent Jewish state or national homeland in the Palestine region of the Middle East. Zionism was named after Mount Zion in Jerusalem which has served as a symbol of the Jewish homeland since the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC. In 1948, the Zionist movement culminated in the birth of the State of Israel. Since then, the term "Zionism" properly refers to supporters of the Israeli state.

The term racism refers to discriminatory beliefs and practices that presume inherent and significant differences exist between the genetics of human races; that assume these traits can be measured on a scale of "superior" to "inferior"; and that result in the social, political and economic advantage of one group in relation to others.

The Jewish people have historically understood themselves to be part of an ethnicity and/or a nation, distinct from non-Jewish nations. Like most nations, offspring of members are also considered members. However, neither common ancestry nor race is required and new converts to Judaism are accepted based upon prescribed criteria. None of the criteria include race: for example, many Ethiopian Jews and Yemeni Jews live in Israel, but so do Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim and secular ethnic Jews. Further, non-Jews can become Israeli citizens.

Judaism and Jewish Law hold that any person may choose to become a Jew and enjoy all the benefits and responsibilities of membership. Zionism is therefore, by definition, non-racial. One of the benefits of membership, according to the Zionists, is the right to live freely without fear of persecution, as a Jew, in the national homeland.

Defenders of Zionism disagree with the identification of Zionism with racism on a number of grounds:

  • The charge is too vague, as the views of Zionist groups differ widely from each other
  • Both Palestinians and Jews are not racially distinct from each other and both claim mixed ancestry (see The ancestry of the Palestinians, Jewish ethnic divisions). Israeli Jews are racially mixed (nearly half of Israel's Jews come from Arab countries, and there are also almost 100,000 black Jews from Ethiopia)
  • Even if the State of Israel discriminates against Arabs, such discrimination cannot accurately be termed "racist", but rather ethnic, cultural and/or religious discrimination. Further such discrimination cannot be connected to the Zionist movement, but rather may occur through political processes and dispersed among individuals and small groups that cannot be proven to be the majority view of Zionism. Furthermore, even if one was to refer to this hypothetical discrimination as "racism", Zionists say, it would be insignificant in comparison to the discrimination against Jews that is carried out by governments of Arab states.

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[edit] History

The Land of Israel, known until 1948 as the region of Palestine, is where ancient Jewish kingdoms existed between roughly 1300 BC and 135 AD, until most of the Jews were expelled by the Romans. The Jewish diaspora and those who stayed continued to see the area as their homeland and as the Promised Land. By the time the modern Zionist movement emerged in the mid-19th century, however, this area had a longstanding Muslim majority, though some towns had Jewish majorities. For example, the 1922 census reported Jewish majorities in the towns of Jerusalem, Tiberias and Tel Aviv with Muslims comprising only 21%, 30% and less than 1%, respectively, of each town’s population. By 1944 Jewish majorities were also reported for the towns of Petah Tiqvah, Rishon-le-Zion, Rehovoth, Nathanya, Haifa, Hedera and Affula, [1] while the Jewish plurality in Jerusalem dates back to at least 1844. In order to establish the desired Jewish state, Zionists successfully made efforts to change the demographic balance. Critics of Zionism see the changes in demographic balance in order to create a Jewish state in the area, which culminated in hundreds of thousands of Arabs being made refugees, and the methods used to cause this, as an inevitable consequence of Zionism. Critics also point to current inequities between Jews and Arabs in Israel, similarly viewing them as attributable to Zionist beliefs and ideologies. Alternatively, supporters of Zionism suggest that persecution of Jews in Europe and Arab lands has transpired for thousands of years. Accordingly, the migration of millions of Jews from Arab nations in the mid-20th century to Israel is justified by their pursuit of a safe and democratic society. Further, people of any descent can become Israeli citizens, although by a different process than what is proscribed for Jews.

Both the 1922 League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the 1947 UN Partition Plan supported the aim of Zionism, but in November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 declared that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." In December 1991, the General Assembly rescinded this resolution through Resolution 4686. At the time, the Soviet Union, a major sponsor of the "Zionism is racism" doctrine (see Zionology), had completed its rapid collapse. Israel made revocation of resolution 3379 a condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference.

[edit] The demographic change

Despite the history of violence against the Jews, there is no evidence of any interruption in the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel for more than three millennia. In addition to traditional religious Jewish communities known as the old yishuv, the second half of the 19th century saw a new kind of Jewish immigrant, the generally left-wing socialist who aimed to reclaim their land by working on it. Mikveh Israel was founded in 1870 by Alliance Israelite Universelle, followed by Petah Tikva (1878), Rishon LeZion (1882), and other agricultural communities founded by the members of Bilu and Hovevei Zion. In 1897, the First Zionist Congress proclaimed the decision to restore ancient Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael. At that time, Palestine was a political subdivision of the multi-continental Ottoman Empire. This decision made Zionism different from most other nationalisms, as its proponents claimed territory as a safe haven for an ethnicity, that had dispersed throughout the globe over time. Two millennia earlier, under the Kingdom of Judah and Kingdom of Israel, the same land had a Jewish majority, and Jews had never ceased to yearn for it (see Importance of Jerusalem in Judaism.)

In the Balfour Declaration, 1917, Britain "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," and put this into practice after capturing Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Jewish immigration increased substantially, despite later widespread opposition from the existing inhabitants, profoundly changing the demographic balance of the area: over two decades; the Jewish population went from 11% in 1922 to 31% in 1945. However, Britain later imposed a series of impediments to Jewish immigration during the decades leading up to World War II.

By 1947, as the British were preparing to leave, the 1947 UN Partition Plan proposed a division of the area between Jewish and Arab states, granting 55% of the land (most of it Negev desert) to a Jewish state which would have had a 60% Jewish population. The Jewish Agency accepted the plan; however, the Arabs rejected it as unjust, and heated fighting between Zionist and Arab guerrillas broke out. (See 1948 Arab-Israeli War.) On May 14, 1948, the British Mandate of Palestine expired and Israel declared independence. The next day, six Arab states attacked, substantially augmenting the Palestinian guerrillas' forces, with the ambition of destroying Israel at its inception. To survive, the Jewish side launched the Plan Dalet, which according to some Palestinian sources had as a purpose to conquer as much of Palestine as possible.

Since Palestinian Arabs constituted a majority of the population of the British Mandate of Palestine at the time, many have seen Israel's declaration of independence as denying the right of self-determination to the Palestinians; they note also that it had been made possible by the Balfour Declaration, an explicit contravention of the idea of self-determination insofar as it was decided entirely without Palestinian consent. Detractors of this argument note that by 1947 the Jews had come to constitute a majority in the areas designated to the Jewish state by the UN partition they accepted, and view the Arab leadership's refusal to negotiate, as well as their rejection of any partition as attempts to deny the Jews their right of self-determination. Some also claim that "Palestinians" as a unified people or culture did not exist until very recently, and that the term "Palestinian" was geographical in nature. [1] Others claim that since Jordan's Palestinian population outnumber by a "wide margin" the Hashemite "East Bankers", this establishes Jordan a de facto Palestinian state. [2]

After the declaration of Israel and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the vast majority of the Palestinians who had lived in what became Israel fled and had their property and land redistributed to Jewish immigrants. In his September 1, 2004 interview [3] with the Ha'aretz daily, Benny Morris said:

In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah (the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF) were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages.

According to Christopher Hitchens, the radio broadcasts, monitored by the British and American governments, contain orders by Arab leaders for Palestinians to stay put and keep their claim to the territory. (Source: Christopher Hitchens: "Broadcasts" in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, New York: Verso, 1988, pp. 73-83)

Arabs who remained who remained gained Israeli citizenship with equal rights to voting, and in many cases kept their land.

[edit] Zionism and Israel

Though the modern incarnation of the Zionist ideology is the state of Israel, this itself is a source of debate among some Zionists about the nature of the Jewish state. Some Zionist intellectuals still make a careful distinction between advocacy for a Jewish ethnic homeland and a Jewish state, which is perhaps similar to the difference between patriotism and nationalism.

[edit] Discrimination

Israel is a state with a predominantly Jewish majority; the Arab minority constitutes about 20% of its population. Although the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence [4] guarantees equality of political and social rights for all its citizens, irrespective of their race, religion or sex, the Declaration also contains multiple references to the Jewish nature of the state, resulting in some laws treating Jews and non-Jews differently. [5] In particular, the jus sanguinis law of the right of return which, despite Israel's otherwise restrictive immigration policies, grant every Jew in the world the right to settle in Israel. This is especially agitating for the many Palestinian refugees, who (or whose ancestors) used to live in the territory that is modern Israel, but are denied their wish to return, which they deem a right. Supporters of the law maintain that allowing a hostile majority that were adversaries in a war for Israel's independence to return would be tantamount to the political, demographic destruction of the Jewish character of Israel, and would endanger the Jewish population living there. [6] The Article 11 of the UNGA Resolution 194, upon which the Palestinian refugees usually base their claim of a "right of return," "[r]esolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property..." without naming Israel and specifying either Palestinian or Jewish refugees.

Many opponents of Zionism declare that Zionism is racist, and compare its continuation to the reform of Germany's former 'Blood Laws', which had allowed ethnic Germans to claim citizenship, even if they were nationals of another country. The defenders of the Law of Return point out that it is designed to serve as a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution, and as a guarantor against possible genocide. They refer to violent history of anti-Semitism and the abundance of anti-Semitic propaganda in the Arab media as an indicator of plausibility of such scenario. They also note that many modern states implement immigration policies favoring certain groups.

According to the 2004 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the occupied territories, the Israeli government "did little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens."[7] It based this finding on studies by Haifa University, reports from Human Rights Watch, Israeli government reports to the UN, and rulings of the Supreme Court of Israel, among other sources. See Israeli Arabs for details.

[edit] Viewed as anti-Semitism

According to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Jews were considered by God the "Chosen People"; in Judaism, this is still believed to be the case. Some have argued that this moniker implies that Jews believe themselves superior to all other peoples, and thus that Judaism as a religion is racist. This belief is one facet of a variety of competing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories believed by varying numbers of Europeans since the 1700s and 1800s and modern Arabs, according to which Jews have the power and desire to control the world.

According to mainstream Judaism[8], Jews were chosen to act in a responsible and caring way to other people, whether Jews or Gentiles, and to follow the rules set down in the Torah. Therefore the chosenness is for a series of responsibilities.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), describes the assertion that "Zionism is racism" as "discredited," saying that "This divisive, offensive equation is based on hatred and misunderstanding" and is "anti-Jewish." An American long active in issues of race relations, Pennsylvania State Rep. Mark B. Cohen, said:

"Racism claims superiority, while Zionism merely claims difference. Racism seeks the persecution of long powerless groups, while Zionism seeks to protect the members of a group long persecuted. Racism seeks to degrade its victims, while Zionism seeks to protect those who have been victims. The U.N. was right to repeal its discredited resolution."

Jews, Judaism, Jewish Law, and Jewish Zionists hold that any person may choose to become a Jew, after meeting the necessary requirements, and enjoy all the benefits and responsibilities of membership. Since anyone can (i.e., regardless of race, ethnicity or nationality) both join the Jewish people and equally enjoy the benefits of membership, Zionists conclude that Zionism is anti-Racist. One of the benefits of membership, according to the Zionists, is the right to live freely without fear of persecution, as a Jew, in the national homeland.

The association of Zionism with racism is seen by critics as a modern form of antisemitism, as another case of accusing the Jews the most despicable evil at the time, after deicide, poisoning the wells in medieval Europe, blood libels, racism, colonialism, imperialism or genocide and using this as a pretext to deny Jews the rights that all nations seek to enjoy.

[edit] Soviet influence

Main article: Soviet Union and the Arab-Israeli conflict

The Soviet Union officially opposed nationalism and movements promoting ethnic identity. At the same time, it opposed racism and ethnic discrimination, including anti-Semitism. The early Bolsheviks defined their stance as one of support for the Jewish people (many leading Bolsheviks were Jewish themselves), but they favored the assimilation of Jews into a greater Soviet culture and were adamantly opposed to Zionism. As early as 1918, Yevsektsiya was established to promote Bolshevik ideas among the Jewish working class in Russia. Political Zionism was officially considered a form of bourgeois nationalism and this was pushed through Zionology sponsored by the Department of propaganda of the Communist Party and by the KGB.

Without changing its official anti-Zionist stance, the Soviet Union briefly supported the establishment of Israel in 1947 and 1948, expecting it to become a Soviet ally in the Cold War. Before voting for the 1947 partition, Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister Andrei Gromyko stated:

"As we know, the aspirations of a considerable part of the Jewish people are linked with the problem of Palestine and of its future administration. This fact scarcely requires proof... The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference, since this would be incompatible with the high principles proclaimed in its Charter..."

By the end of 1948, however, the Soviet Union realized that Israel had chosen the "Western option" (alliance with the West), and withdrew its support. For the rest of the Cold War, the Soviet Union decided to support Arab regimes against Israel. Soviet propaganda featured a number of criticisms of Zionism that frequently bordered on anti-Semitism, recycling old conspiracy theories. By the end of 1940s, the official position of the Soviet Union and its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism". The meaning of the term Zionism (which originally had strong ties to the socialist movement) was misrepresented to conform to Soviet aims in the Cold War: "the main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism,... overt and covert fight against freedom movements and the USSR" (БСЭ, The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1970s Ed).

See also: History of the Jews in Russia and Soviet Union, rootless cosmopolitan, Prague Trials, Doctors' plot, Zionology, Anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public.

[edit] UN resolutions

Main articles: United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 and UN General Assembly Resolution 4686

The Soviet Union initiated the "Zionism is racism" campaign in the United Nations (see Zionology for context) in response to United States proposals for UN resolutions against discrimination that criticised the Soviet Union.

On November 10, 1975 the United Nations General Assembly adopted, by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), Resolution 3379, which stated that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."

Resolution 3379 was rescinded by Resolution 4686 on 16 December 1991 with a vote of 111 to 25 (with 13 abstentions).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ A Survey of Palestine, Prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Reprinted in full by Institute for Palestine Studies, Washingtom, D.C., 1991, Vol. 1, Pg 148-151.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

  • Arie Dayan: The Debate over Zionism and Racism: An Israeli View; Haaretz, 27 December 1991; translated in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3. (Spring, 1993), pp. 96-105.
  • Michael Adams: Israel's Treatment of the Arabs in the Occupied Territories; Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2. (Winter, 1977), pp. 19-40.
  • Janice J. Terry: Zionist Attitudes toward Arabs; Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Autumn, 1976), pp. 67-78.
  • Michael Suleiman: National Stereotypes As Weapons in the Arab-Israeli Conflict; Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3. (Spring, 1974), pp. 109-121.
  • Roselle Tekiner: Race and the Issue of National Identity in Israel; International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1. (Feb., 1991), pp. 39-55.
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