When the Bombing Stops, Part 2

In my last article I wrote about the importance of prioritizing calls for a ceasefire and end to the Israeli blockade to stop the horrific suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. At the same time I called attention to the historical fact that once the bombing stops, the Western world is going to turn away from what is happening in Palestine. It is just a fact of life that when the news and social media stop flooding us with content about a subject it falls from our radar.???

With that in mind, when the bombing does finally stop an historical analysis of the conflict is absolutely critical and must be done in earnest. In particular an analysis of the ideological root of the conflict, Zionism, and the incredibly powerful and pervasive systems that support and promote Zionism in the Western countries, especially in the United States.?

The new documentary film “Israelism ” brilliantly conveys the extent to which Zionist organizations spend tremendous energy and resources ensuring that young American Jews are indoctrinated with a desire to support Israel and especially the Israeli military, while depriving them of any knowledge about the plight of the Palestinian people.?

Despite what you may have heard or read, modern Zionism is not a culture or a religion. It is not Jewishness or Judaism. It is an ethno-nationalist, borderline theocratic political ideology, the roots of which are both religious (for some) and nationalistic.?

"[The term ‘Zionism’] was coined by Nathan Birnbaum in his journal Selbstemanzipation (April 1, 1890). Birnbaum himself explained the term (in a letter of Nov. 6, 1891) as the ‘establishment of an organization of the national-political Zionist party in juxtaposition to the practically oriented party that existed until now.’"*

When people say “Israel has a right to exist”, they are defending a state built in the nationalistic mold of modern Zionism. Yet in the same breath they will claim that Israel is the only “liberal democracy” in the Middle East. My objective in this article is not to prove that Israel is not in fact a liberal democracy. I think it is obvious that it is not. My point here is to emphasize that this myth is not just incorrect, but incredibly dangerous to all the people of the region, Arab and Jewish alike.???

There is an excerpt from an essay that has been going around on social media these past few weeks in which a prominent Jewish scholar predicted that the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank would eventually prove catastrophic. In 1968, just after the “Six-Day War”, prolific Jewish iconoclast Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote:?

Rule over the occupied territories would have social repercussions. [...] The administration would have to suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings [collaborators] on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Force, which has been until now a people's army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.**

I have seen variations of that excerpt all over online, so I checked out the book from the Internet Archive to read the original quote in context. The rest of the essay is well worth reading too. A few pages later I came across another essay from 1976 called Occupation and Terror, in which the same author argues:?

In our times of worldwide decolonization, a colonial regime necessarily gives birth to terrorism. [...] In a world from which colonialism has been eliminated, Israel, since 1967, is endeavoring to impose colonial rule on the territory of a foreign people.?

These dire predictions might have seemed preposterous in the late 20th century, but in light of current events and with respect to investigative reporting such as Who Is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors and At The Hague, Israel Mounted A Defense Based In An Alternate Reality , it becomes much less difficult to see that Leibowitz was frighteningly prescient.

The nuances of Zionist ideology might not seem like an issue Americans need to be overly concerned about, especially those of us who aren’t Jewish or Palestinian, political scientists, historians, or pundits. It is important, though, because there are very powerful Zionist lobbies in the US which have an inordinate amount of influence in our political system.

There are organizations that are trying to change the narrative on Zionism and Palestinians in the United States such as “Breaking the Silence ”, “IfNotNow ”, “Jewish Voice for Peace ”, and one I am directly involved with, “Tech For Palestine ”. The first three are featured in the aforementioned documentary “Israelism ”, and the latter is only one month old, a new project started by co-founder and former CircleCI board member Paul Biggar aimed squarely at shifting the opinions of the most powerful players in the technology industry.

The work all these people and more are doing make it possible for people to speak up against Zionism and in defense of the Palestinian people without costly repercussions. ?It is incumbent on us to take advantage of the cracks in the narrative boundaries these organizations provide, and raise our voices.

Please continue to speak up for the Palestinian people in your daily life and on social media. Not just now over the deadly din of bombardment, but over the even deadlier silence when the bombing stops.

*Kressel, Getzel. "The Word And Its Meaning", Zionism, Israel Pocket Library, 1973

**Leibowitz, Yeshayahu. "The Territories." Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State , edited by Eliezer Goldman, Harvard University Press, 1992

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