Tuesday 30 April 2024

THE FUTURE OF ISRAEL

30 April 2024

               Zionism has lost its raison d'être

There was a really appalling episode a few days ago on Columbia University campus where a professor, a female professor, was thrown to the ground and zip tied by the police.

That shocked most ordinary people everywhere.  That is regarded as the American authorities betraying the First Amendment. Zionists are doing the same kind of thing in Israel today. 

We all, I mean all peoples, have a wellspring of fundamental beliefs and values that guide our actions and establish what's good and what's evil. 

The Jewish have theirs - found in the Tanakh, the Talmud etc, Christians defer to The Bible. People of the Jewish faith argue that the establishment of a Jewish state should only occur with the coming of the Messiah and that human-led efforts are presumptuous or even blasphemous. The Jewish people are in a spiritual exile, they argue, and must await the coming of the messiah for a divine rather than human-led restoration. 

Then in the 19C, along came Zionism in response to Russian and European pogroms (Why these pogroms? That's a sensitive subject!!) - pogroms are the original acts of  anti-semitism.

Zionism was largely a secular movement, motivated more by nationalist and pragmatic considerations than by religious. The Zionists wanted to create a safe and sovereign state for Jews, practising or not. And Balfour, the British, supported this, but with a clear proviso:

"it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine"

It's just not possible in the modern world, especially not in the West, to have a state where some groups receive second class treatment. It's not possible in Israel and it's not possible in Ukraine either. The law is applied to everyone equally and we cannot have discrimination on grounds of race, creed etc etc  

Yet Zionism is about self-determination for a religious group. You just cannot have one group within a nation state dominating other groups : all members expect equality of treatment under the law and in a democracy one person one vote should be the guarantee of that - that's obvious to every free-thinking person.

The only way in practice for one group to obtain dominance is through an apartheid regime, or ethnic cleansing which can be mass murder or genocide if you prefer, or through mass deportation. It goes without saying that these days all these practices are forbidden under international law.

But this is what's happening now in Gaza and the West Bank, which are provinces within the nation state of Israel.

There's a compromise attempt to resolve this called the Two State Solution. Historically, this was the British answer - the Mandate proposed three states: one Jewish, one other, and Jerusalem as accessible to both, rather like the Vatican.

Neither side has been able to accept a two-state solution however, for reasons we've discussed elsewhere - it's about ownership of land; it's about self-determination and power-sharing*; it's also, thirdly, strategic because two governments would be weak governments and open to invasion or dependence or loss of sovereignty.

(* Here again, the British have more or less succeeded over time with power-sharing in Northern Ireland and more generally in the United Kingdom.)

But let's ask one that important question: is there really any need for Zionism today? Surely the threat to the Jews has dissipated? Isn't it much the same with NATO? Where is the threat to Europe? Surely the only threat to Europe comes from America seeking to divide and rule Europe and prevent the rise of a regional hegemon (based on cheap Russian Energy and resources incidentally) which might grow to threaten it?

CONCLUSION

Zionism is a political movement - the Zionists want a  democratic homeland where their religious base, the Jews, can find safety and "cultural continuation".

Zionism to a religious Jew is a false idol, not God-given.

Zionism to a modern person is a form of democratic national socialism that priviledges one religious group over other groups, and is considered to be an ideology favours the practises of apartheid, aggressive expansionism and genocide.

No group is going to roll over and extinguish their self-respect. While the Jews get massive support and enjoy massive power and priviledge, no-one outside that religious group can accept a Zionist political ideology. This is impossible in today's world. And to repeat anti-Zionism Is not at all anti-Semitism.

So either the Israeli government accepts the principle of power-sharing, ie abandons Zionism and apartheid, or else all the Jews who support that govt - which is 80% and more, recent surveys show - will eventually be forced to leave Israel.

Under what circumstances might this happen? Well it can only happen when Israel loses American support. We have seen since October 7th that Congress appears to be dominated by representatives of the American people who are prepared to support Israel unequivocably. If this is so then Israel will be destroyed when the American "empire" collapses. Seems to me that there'll be much bloodshed and destruction before we get to that point as the Americans are a very ruthless people.

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