The Justifications Of Zionism

Written by Voltaire

The justifications for the existence of the Jewish State fall into several categories: the theological, the historical and the political. All the justifications are unsustainable; many of them are mutually contradictory.

First, let us examine the theological claims. It is asserted that because the ancient Jews occupied a small portion of Palestine in ancient times that this entitles the Jews to a modern state in Palestine today. The first point to note is that the Jews were only one of many ancient peoples occupying the land; they had no exclusive claim to Palestine; then or now.

This point constantly escapes those simpletons who read their history through the lens of the Bible. The Caanites, Phoenicians and Greeks were in Palestine as long, or longer, than the Jews and occupied more of the land. None of them are asserting equal rights to a recreated state.

Theologically, the Zionist claim to Palestine is a repudiation of Catholic/Greek Orthodox Christianity. Both branches of Christianity taught that God turned his back on the Jews when they rejected and crucified Jesus. By rejecting Jesus as the Messiah the Jews voided all the prophecies of the Old Testament.

When Lord Balfour issued his famous declaration of November 2, 1917 sponsoring British support for a Jewish "national homeland" in Palestine, the Vatican refused to recognize the impending Jewish state. Indeed, the Papacy wrote many newspaper articles denouncing the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine-and warning of the impending danger to Christianity and the Arabs of Palestine. The Jerry Falwells, the Pat Robertsons and others who claim that Israel is the fulfillment of God's will are simply hucksters exploiting the simple minded.

The historical claim to Palestine is equally absurd. If the Jews are entitled to Palestine because Jews once occupied a portion of the land in ancient times, then Denmark is entitled to rule England because a Danish king once ruled there in medieval times, the claims of the English kings to the duchies of France in Joan of Arc's time should be revived in a new Hundred Years War and Mussolini's pretensions to a recreated Roman Empire should be humbly honored.

Ancient titles in a modern world are simply nonsense. If a certain school of historiography is correct, then the Zionist pretensions to Palestine are even more absurd. It is a documented fact that a very numerous and powerful nomadic empire called Khazaria converted en masse to Talmudic Judaism in the ninth century A.D. If Eastern European Jewry, which constitutes the driving force behind Zionism, is even partially descended from this Mongol-Turkic empire this further undermines any Biblical pretensions to a Jewish State in Palestine.

The political claims to a Zionist entity in the Holy Land all revolve around the persecution myth. Because Jews have supposedly been uniquely persecuted over the centuries they need a place of refuge, a state of their own. To deny it to them would be a grave injustice. The claim is deficient on many grounds. Even assuming that Jews have been uniquely persecuted there is no evidence that most Jews have, or ever did have, any desire to go to Palestine. Most of them seem perfectly content where they are. Moreover, creating a Jewish State in Palestine constitutes a distinct injustice to the Arab residents of the land who never wanted a Jewish State imposed on them.

Zionist apologists will sometimes attempt to confuse the issue by saying that Palestine never had a separate political existence. This is true but irrelevant. The Arabs were the long time residents of the land. In fact, they had been farming and tilling the land at least since the Arab conquest in the early seventh century A.D. and had thus been in complete control of Palestine far longer than the Jews in the time of Solomon.

To argue that because Palestine was at all times a political subdivision of either Egypt, Syria or the Ottoman Empire that therefore there were no Palestinians in a place called Palestine, is like arguing that because Poland was wiped off the map of Europe from 1770-1916 that therefore there was no Polish nation and no Polish people during the intervening 150 years. Any student of Zionism knows that the basic premise behind it was segregation or apartheid. Because Jews were presumed to be inherently incompatible with non-Jews they should segregate themselves into a nation of their own to avoid conflict with the non-Jewish world.

Zionism arose out of the tremendous anti-Semitism and ethnic conflicts of Russia and Central Europe in the mid to late 19th century when the process of Jewish assimilation out of the ghetto was only about a century old. These tensions and their attempted solutions did not arise out of the prophecies of the Old Testament.

The Arabs of Palestine have always been the neglected party in Zionism. Those Jews who wanted to solve the "Jewish problem" by creating a Jewish State never allowed themselves to be deterred by the fact that the land they coveted was already occupied by someone else. Neither Theodore Herzl nor any other prophet of Zionism ever gave a moments consideration to the Arabs who would have to be expelled from the land to create the state of Israel.

"The Holocaust", the purported extermination of six million Jews in purported "gas chamber' has always been the ultimate argument on behalf of Zionism. However, as this essay has shown, the extermination hoax merely gave the Zionists the excuse to carry out a policy which they had already conceived for entirely different reasons. Even were the story true, the Arabs of Palestine should not have to pay for a crime committed by the Germans of Europe. Thus, all the justifications for the creation of a Jewish State in Arab Palestine fail.

It would be idle to belabor the thesis by pointing out that when the Zionist idea was in its gestation that many Jews opposed it because they felt it would taint the Jews with the charge of dual loyalty. As anyone can see from the behavior of the "neo-conservatives" there are indeed large numbers of Jews who do indeed put loyalty to Israel above loyalty to the United States. That is why they want to use American troops to fight Israel's war in Iraq-and soon Iran. Israel is a state based on false premises.

It was an utopian idea from inception-and one which ignored the realities of the world. It is time to dismantle Israel. It is a state which, in its embryonic stages, led the old British Empire to disaster. It is a state which, in its mature stages, is leading the United States to disaster. It is a state which no longer protects the Jews who are secure everywhere in the world. It is a state which threatens the stability of the Middle East. It is a state which brutalizes the Arabs of Palestine on a daily basis. It is a ticking time bomb of disaster.