Israel, Colonial States and Racism
October 2, 2009 - One cannot speak about, or try to analyze, Zionism and its product, the State of Israel, while evading the core of their essence: colonialism. Independent of its motivations (resolving the Jewish question in Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century), Zionism is a colonialist movement that has created a colonialist state. In fact, Israel is one of the youngest colonial states still existing in the twenty-first century... Israel is a colonial state not only in its origin but also in its modus operandi. Its laws and practices are shaped with the goal of building, assessing and strengthening its Jewish character...
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Israel, Colonial States and Racism
Michael Warschawski
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On 14 May 1948, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved a proclamation declaring the establishment of the State of Israel.
AIC - October 2, 2009
One cannot speak about, or try to analyze, Zionism and its product, the State of Israel, while evading the core of their essence: colonialism. Independent of its motivations (resolving the Jewish question in Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century), Zionism is a colonialist movement that has created a colonialist state. In fact, Israel is one of the youngest colonial states still existing in the twenty-first century. Zionism is colonialist in its goal and means: a Western project aimed at "civilizing" part of the un-civilized Orient, bringing modernity, progress and, much later, democracy.
Zionism is a colonialism of a specific nature, unlike most Northern or sub-Saharan African colonial projects, but similar to Australia or North America it is a settler's colonial enterprise. As such, it aimed at replacing (and not essentially exploiting) the indigenous population with the new settlers through gradual expulsion.
Israel is a colonial state not only in its origin but also in its modus operandi. Its laws and practices are shaped with the goal of building, assessing and strengthening its Jewish character. "Judaization" and "Jewish State" are not cultural concepts, but a demographic project; they aim at the de-Arabization of Palestine and reducing as much as possible the number of non-Jews in the Jewish State. "Liberation of the Land," "Jewish Labor" and "Jewish products" were the main slogans of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, and they all reflect the overall attempt to erase the Arab nature of Palestine.
The policy of Judaization continued long after the establishment of the State of Israel and marks colonialist practices today. The structural discrimination of the Palestinian minority that succeeded to stay in the borders of the Jewish State and the continuation of the policy of land expropriation are living evidences that there has been no "normalization" of Israel, and that its aggressive colonial nature is part and parcel of its very essence. Being a Jewish State implies being at permanent war with everything demographically non-Jewish in Israel. It is a permanent ethnic war.
Zionist racism is a necessary by-product of the colonial character of Israel. Racism is not necessarily a "racial" philosophy, assuming superiority of a human community on another one, as was for example Nazi racism. Modern racism is often an attitude of "ignoring the other." "A Land without people for a people without land," "the country was empty" were central slogans of early Zionism. It is a typical, one can even say banal, colonialist attitude to the indigenous who are no more than an environmental problem, like the mosquitoes, swamps or rocks; something to be eradicated in order to allow civilization to develop. The Arabs of Palestine were transparent as a human community, and, in that sense, Zionism is a racism of denial of humanity to the indigenous community. Zionist racism is the banal western racism towards what is not European.
The resolution of the United Nation General Assembly in 1975 defining Zionism as a form of racism only pointed at that elementary truth: a colonial state is, by its very nature and behavior, racist.
The role of a political resolution should not be to define realities, but to make decisions about actions to be taken. This should remain the task of scientific experts and a permanent and never-closed scientific debate, not of a vote. Colonialism is racism, whether a majority of states accept it or not. Proof that the vote was a mistake came sixteen years later, in 1991, when the same United Nations General Assembly reversed its vote and decided that Zionist colonialism was not racist! Such behavior is a fantastic reversion to Middle Ages, when an Assembly of Cardinals would decide, by vote, if Jews have a soul or if the Earth is a flat square.
Obviously, neither of these votes could change reality. The role of political institutions is to decide about actions to be taken, not to legislate the nature of reality.
Ideally, the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council would at present adopt a resolution based on the international campaign for BDS—Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions—and sanction the State of Israel for its innumerable violations of international law and United Nation resolutions.
The need to impose sanctions on the State of Israel is threefold: first, to provide justice to the Palestinian people, who have made, under pressure from the International Community, many painful compromises, in exchange for more oppression, more denial and more humiliations; second, as a matter of international hygiene, for if we want to live in a world regulated by law, Israel should not be treated with impunity, and its crimes should be sanctioned; and third, for the very sake of the Israeli society.
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:: Article nr. 58510 sent on 03-oct-2009 01:21 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=58510
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