The roots of Zionism

The following are excerpts from a March 20, 2003, article, “Why Palestine must be defended,” by Workers World managing editor, Leslie Feinberg.

It is the claim by Zionism and its imperial patrons that Israel is a Jewish homeland that has won sympathy from those who, after the horrors of the holocaust, felt the Jewish people deserved a safe haven.

In reality, the establishment of the state of Israel is a crime of monstrous proportions against the Palestinian people. Carrying out this state terrorism in the name of all Jewish people compounds that crime.

Since the end of World War II, when the U.S. emerged as the dominant force in the oil-rich Middle East, the goal of Washing ton has not been peace in the region, but pacification. Today the oil giants, banking institutions and military-industrial complex are releasing their war hawks to ensure all-out military aggression against any national liberation movement or indepen dent country that resists re-colonization.

Quelling opposition means trying to crush the Palestinian movement, the heart beat of regional resistance to the empire.

The Israeli settler state is, by the admission of its own early ideologues, a bulwark for imperialist economic, political and military ambitions in the region.

More than half a century ago, former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion explained, “Strengthening Israel helps the Western powers to maintain equilibrium and stability in the Middle East. Israel is to become the watchdog. There is no fear that Israel will undertake any aggressive policy towards the Arab states when this would explicitly contradict the wishes of the U.S. and Britain. But if for any reason the Western powers should sometimes prefer to close their eyes, Israel could be relied upon to punish one or several neighboring states whose discourtesy towards the West went beyond the bounds of the permissible.” (Ha’Aretz, Sept. 30, 1951)

When progressive movements made it difficult for Washington to directly prop up right-wing regimes, the Zionists stepped up to bat.

After World War II, the ruling circles in the U.S. and Britain infested themselves with anti-Semitism and racism, and cynically manipulated desperation to divert the Jewish exodus from Europe to Palestine.

Zionist commandos drove Palestinians from their homes, villages and towns with mass lynchings and terror campaigns, while claiming Israel was “a land without a people for a people without a land.”

It was a racist lie. And the promise of a “safe homeland” was a lie, too.

In the more than 50 years since what the Palestinians call Al-Nakba—the Catas tro phe—there has been no peace. The U.S. continues to fund a perpetual state of war, pitting Jews against Arab liberation.

This tiny state, with a population of only 5.5 million people, is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world. Because of its relationship with Washington, it has a nuclear capability, F-16 fighter jets, helicopter gunships, sophisticated tanks, and limitless weapons for combat against Palestinian communities.

Tel Aviv has used these weapons not only to try to quash Palestinian resistance, but to invade and steal territory from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, and to pummel Lebanon.

When Washington and Tel Aviv talk about peace, they really mean that the Palestinians must accept the loss of their homeland and stop resisting. But half a century of occupation, forced Diaspora, mass murders, beatings, imprisonment, torture, squalid living conditions and economic deprivation have not forced the Palestinian people to surrender.

Is fighting against the crimes of Israel and for Palestinian self-determination con sistent with battling anti-Semitism? It is not only consistent, it is absolutely essential