Zionism is Antisemitism (Part 2/3)
Part 2 of 3 deconstructing Western myths and vapid whatabouts meant to muddy the water of the unspeakable injustice that has been done to the Palestinian people. Shame on all of us who remain silent.
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Part 1 ended with a question, what about Zionism in application? This is Part 2 of 3.
First, we must recognize that the application didn’t begin with the establishment of Israel in 1948. That was the international point of formalization. The UN Partition Plan for Palestine was Western powers enacting violence in the name of diplomacy, but the plan had been set in motion long before as referenced earlier by the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
We live in a world where imperialist powers make decisions for those around the globe, regardless of how local populations feel about it. This is the bedrock of the injustice we see across the world.
The Balfour Declaration became the policy of the British Empire in the midst of WW1, a statement of colonial intent regarding land they did not hold… but was instead under control of another empire that they were at war with in the Ottomans.
In a letter to Lord Rothschild, Arthur Balfour wrote the following.
“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
A duplicitous lie simultaneously offering Jewish people a new home atop the land of Palestinians while stating that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the Palestinians that lived there. A clear contradiction, actions have always spoken louder than words… a reality indigenous populations know all too well in their interactions with cruel western powers.
WW1 was the inevitable end result of an era of western colonization, expanding empires with a limitless greed that had reached all corners of the world. The only other option was to turn toward one another with increasing hostility and thus a war of empires flexing their might emerged as their vicious pursuit of capital interests clashed.
Before the end of WW1 and the ultimate dissolution of the Ottoman Empire by 1922, Palestine had been under Ottoman control for a little over 400 years and during that time Jewish people made up approximately 3% of the total population in the area known as Palestine. Native Arabs constituted over 90% of the total population.
By 1922, the Jewish population reached 9% and by 1935 it had reached 27% and The British Mandate had been established post WW1. Meaning the British Empire had been placed in control of Palestine by the League of Nations in the aftermath of WW1.
Thus began a decades long process of settler colonialism with Arabs being forced off their land so that Jewish migrants could settle in Palestine. It was a two pronged economic and military assault on the Palestinian people.
Zionist organizations like the Jewish National Fund and the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association would find loopholes to buy the land, often bypassing Arab landowners in the process. Zionists also promoted a concept known as “Avoda Ivrit”, meaning that only Jewish workers could be on Jewish owned land, thus removing any Arabs from said land.
The Zionist militia known as Haganah was established in 1920. They were the largest and most organized of the Zionist militias eventually forming the core of the initial Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in 1948. They were created in order to protect Jewish settlements and collaborated with Britain until around 1940.
Irgun was another infamous militia group that splintered from Haganah and was formed in 1931. They were even more aggressive with a focus on assassinations and bombing. Even some Zionists considered them to be terrorists given their extreme conduct and aggression. They would merge and help form the IDF as well in 1948.
From 1936 through 1939, there was an attempted Arab resistance that attempted to end British colonial rule as well as Zionist settler colonialism as protected by the British. Ultimately, the revolt was unsuccessful and Britain used it as further justification of its support for pre-state Zionist militias like Haganah.
Another pre-state Zionist militia group known as Lehi would split from Irgun and form in 1940. At one point, the group even had communication with Nazis in their early years. They too believed in terrorism and openly attacked both Arabs and the British targeting many officials from both groups for assassination. Like Irgun, they would eventually merge back with Haganah establishing what we now know as the IDF.
By the early 1940s, it was clear the British were losing control of the region. After the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936-1939, pre-state Zionist militias began to focus attention not just to native Arabs, but the British themselves culminating in the King David Hotel Bombing in 1946. A terrorist attack perpetrated by Irgun that killed 91 people including British officials and civilians.
All of this violence and settler colonialism would set the stage for the Nakba of 1947-1949.
In those two years, 750,000 plus Palestinians were forcibly displaced cementing the Palestinian as refugees violently removed from their homeland. Over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed. At least 70 villages experienced massacre, mass rapes, torture, and public executions such as those that occurred in Lydda, Tantura, Dawayima, Ein al-Zeitun and many more.
This was not random violence but a calculated plot known as “Plan Dalet”. The plot called for the destruction of villages, violent expulsion of civilians, and the seizure of their lands to then be allocated to Jewish settlers and what would become a Jewish state.
The UN Partition Plan gave over half of Palestine to the newly Jewish state despite protests from the native Arabs ignoring the fact that just decades prior… and for the centuries preceding that, Jewish people had only been 3% of the population in Palestine.
In the aftermath, UN Resolution 194 (passed in December 1948) stated that Palestinian refugees had a right of return, but Israel has refused to acknowledge or implement this since its establishment. To add insult to this grave injustice, any Jewish person from anywhere in the world can claim Israeli citizenship under the “Law of Return”. The native population was given violent displacement, settlers an offer of divine colonization. For the Palestinian people, the Nakba is not an isolated moment of history. It was the culmination of decades of settler colonialism that unmasked itself as an ethnic cleansing that has continued on through to the genocide we are witnessing today.
Tomorrow’s piece will be Part 3 of 3 that will address the situation today and the common false equivalence of those who default to, “what about Hamas” or push the idea that “Israel has a right defend itself”.
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Thank you as always for reading… remember to Mute the Media.