The current scorched earth Israeli assault on Gaza, and the global crisis it is producing, didn’t come out of thin air. In this post I share some quotes and excerpts from “Lihish’tah’weel,” my 2006 analysis of the history and dynamics of the conflict.
We’ll start with Zionist leader Rabbi Judah L. Magnes. He spoke for many in the movement that opposed the racist faction that would come to control it, favoring a program of peaceful immigration and a democratic, multi-cultural Palestine. In 1929 he declared:
“We must once and for all give up the idea of a “Jewish Palestine” in the sense that a Jewish Palestine is to exclude and do away with an Arab Palestine… The fact is that nothing there is possible unless Jews and Arabs work together in peace for the benefit of their common Holy Land. It must be our endeavor first to convince ourselves and then to convince others that Jews and Arabs, Moslems and Christians have each as much right there, no more and no less, that the other: equal rights and equal privileges and equal duties. That is practically quite sufficient for all purposes of the Jewish religion, and it is the sole ethical basis for our claims there. Judaism did not begin with Zionism, and if Zionism is not in accord with Judaism, so much the worse for Zionism.”
Rabbi Magnes, in his letter to nationalist leader Chaim Weizmann, contrasted his vision to that of the movement’s leaders. “The one policy may be termed that of militarist, imperialist, political Zionism; the other that of pacific, international, spiritual Zionism.” “Moreover,” he added. “A Jewish Home in Palestine built of bayonets and oppression is not worth having, even though it succeed.”
Two decades later, in December, 1948, a group of 28 U.S. Jewish intellectuals, including philosopher Hannah Arendt and physicist Albert Einstein, published a letter in the New York Times protesting the visit of ultra-nationalist leader (later Prime Minister) Menachem Begin to the US.
“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of the of out time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party,” a political party closely akin in it’s organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine. The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party.”
After decrying the massacre in the village of Der Yassin, carried out by Begin’s group, they describe the rightists unsavory path to power. “During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL (Irgun) and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestinian Jewish community. Teachers were beaten for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and widespread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and extracted a heavy tribute.”
I’ll end with a 2002 quote from Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describing the distorted mirror through which Israeli understands itself:
“If you look at Israeli textbooks, curricula, media, and political discourse you see how this chapter in Jewish history – the chapter of expulsion, colonization, massacre, rape, and the burning of villages – is totally absent. It is not there. It is replaced by a chapter of heroism, glorious campaigns and amazing stories of moral courage and superiority unheard of in any other histories of people’s liberation in the twentieth century.”
Categories: history, Justice, Politics, racism, Social Justice, Uncategorized, War and Peace
Ricardo Levins Morales
Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio 