understanding zionism, part 1...

Now for the tricky bit: To address the controversial subject of Zionism. A good understanding of Zionism is essential if one is to understand what's happening in the Middle East. Also, one needs to really look hard at the mountain of evidence which suggests that the US is virtually a puppet of Israel. To avoid any charges of anti-semitism, all of the following references feature quotes by Jewish writers and academics.

Alfred Lilienthal: In his book, What Price Israel, Lilienthal writes: “ Zionism has often been innocently defined as a movement to provide a homeland and refuge for Jews in need of safety in the land where their ancestors lived in ancient times. That definition only sounds good until we realize that almost a million Palestinian Arabs already living there had to be displaced and made homeless in the process. Incredibly, even today so many years later, many Americans and others worldwide still believe that it was 'a land without a people for a people without a land.' It was not! Any real chance for Middle East peace—as well as defusing the reasons behind our present American-led 'war on terror'—must be based on fact and not on intentional or unintentional distortions of past events.”

Israel Shahak: "After 1967, when I ceased being just a scientist and became a political being, my first reason was that after 1967 the Israeli aim was to dominate is the Middle East, which every rational human being knows is impossible. My second reason was that there must be a Palestinian state. It can come into being with a minimum of bloodshed, or a maximum of bloodshed. Even if the intifada were defeated, it would only cause a delay."

To give us a bit of an insight into Zionist thinking, Professor Shahak quotes from the soldier's handbook issued by the Israeli Army Central Regional Command: "When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that these civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakkah [legal system of classical Judaism] they may and even should be killed. Under no circumstance should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes the impression of being civilized. In war when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed, and even enjoined by the Halakkah, to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good."
Shahak pointed out that in the religious schools in Israel the supremacy of the Jew as contrasted with other races is emphasized, and children are taught that even the Jewish embryo is different from embryos of non-Jews.
Professor Shahak said this teaching affects Jewish attitudes at all levels of contact between Jews and their neighbors, and even relates to the dead. In his book he notes: "Jews have a tremendous reverence towards Jewish corpses and Jewish cemeteries, but have no respect towards non-Jewish corpses and cemeteries. Thus hundreds of Muslim cemeteries have been utterly destroyed in Israel...but there was great outcry when one Jewish cemetery...was damaged under Jordanian rule."

And this, from Lance Selfa: In 1965, he (Shahak) recalled, "I had personally witnessed an ultra-religious Jew refuse to allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath in order to call an ambulance for a non-Jew who happened to collapse in his Jerusalem neighborhood." Shahak called a meeting with members of the Rabbinical Court of Jerusalem to ask the state-appointed rabbis if the man’s refusal to help violated Jewish religious law. The rabbis ruled that the man had acted properly.

Further reading: Norman G. Finkelstein, Avi Shlaim