What is Zionism

It is NOT Self-Determination for Jews

Theodore’s The Jewish State was a colonialist project which would displace the existing population to allow a Jewish State to exist.

This post began as a response to a rather petulant reply in a to-and-fro about Zionism. As I began to compose my rejoinder I realised that it would be valuable to post it as a main article.

Zionism is the belief that the jews have a right to self determination (i would add in their indigenous land, but there is a split). Islamism is the belief that the Muslim religion must be imposed worldwide via the state.

The actual response is much longer, but this is the part worth responding to.

The definition of Zionism provided above is given by, I assume, a Zionist.

Zionism; belief; jews; right; self-determination; indigenous; split – these are the key words.

The Zionism our antagonist is referring to is not a belief, but rather a nationalist movement. The movement was, supposedly, a reaction to the virulent antisemitism that existed in Europe, but also a very European way to rid its land of the jews they hated.

Zionism as a belief, however, is a Christian concept that predates the Zionist nationalist movement by at least a hundred years. The belief is that, returning the jews back to the Holy Land would hasten the return of Christ – when the jews, save for a few hundred that recognise the Messiah, will be delivered to Hell, there to burn for eternity. So much for the Christian Zionists who claim to be “friends of Israel”. And so much for the nationalist Zionists who see Christian Zionists as allies.

The nationalist form of Zionism – I refuse to call it Jewish Zionism, as that would be an oxymoron – is simply an extension of European colonialism. The early Zionists recognised that they were colonists, continuing the tradition of settler colonialism begun by Europeans.

Theodore Herzl, the founder of nationalist Zionism, wrote:

We should there [Palestine] form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.

It is ironic that Herzl started his project of a Jewish state as a reaction to European antisemitism, but identified so completely with the Europeans that his Jewish state would be a rampart of Europe. The racist supremacism of Europe was internalised so completely that his jewish state would be a European outpost in a “barbaric” hinterland.

In 1899 Herzl established a financial trust in London to raise funds for the Zionist movement. He was under no illusions about the nature of the Zionist project, naming the trust The Jewish Colonial Trust. Israel was going to be a colonial project, and by settling European jews in Palestine, it was going to be a settler-colonialist project which would displace, ethnically cleanse, and ultimately genocide the indigenous Palestinians.

The Zionists understood that theirs was a settler colonialist project, requiring the displacement of the Palestinians already living there

Zionism is racism. Not just racist, it is antisemitic.

Theodore Herzl displayed his loathing for religious Jews in his essay Mauschel. The title is a play on words; as well as being a derogatory reference to Jews, the word sounds like the German word for mice – vermin. Herzl writes:

Mauschel is an anti-Zionist. We have known him for a long time, and we have always been disgusted when we looked at him, when life brought us close to him or even into contact with him. But the disgust we felt for him was always accompanied by pity; we looked for mild, historical explanations for the fact that he was such a distorted, deformed and shabby fellow.

Another important Zionist is Zeev Jabotinsky whose name adorns more Israeli streets than anyone else, Herzl and Moses included. Clearly a much-loved man in Israel, although he had little love for the religious Jews.

"I have no doubt that I am a Zionist because the Jewish people is a very nasty people, and their neighbours hate them, and they are right (to hate them)”.

Uri Zvi Greenberg, an early Zionist poet, journalist and politician, wrote:

"Those loathsome Jews are vomited out by any healthy collective and states, not because they are Jews, but because of their Jewish repulsiveness."

And the father of Israel, David Ben Gurion, confessed:

"If I could save all the children of Germany by bringing them to England and only half to Israel, I would choose the second."

These are antisemitic sentiments; atheists who despised their religious brethren. Jabotinsky saw the “yid” as weak and cowardly, and wanted to erase them, to be replaced by the “Hebrew” who would be the very opposite of the “distorted, deformed and shabby” yid.

So, what is a jew?

To the Zionist, a jew is from a particular race, separated from the faith; in fact the atheistic jew is to be preferred to the “distorted, deformed and shabby” religious jew. There are no covenants, other than the one, signal covenant in which God gifts the Holy Land to the jews. By the non-existent God that the nationalist Zionists would otherwise mock as a childish myth.

To the religious Jew, Jews are they who fulfil the covenant with God – and that covenant is not settling in the Holy Land, but to observe the 613 mitzvot, or commandments. Simply put, a Jew is someone who observes the Torah. A person may be a Cohen, but if they identify as an atheist, then they are not a Jew. But to the nationalist Zionist, this Cohen is every bit a jew as Maimonides, no matter how much the atheist will protest.

Zionists define humanity by race categories – as did the Nazis.

Religious Jews define themselves by their adherence to the Torah.

Now, what about the “right to self-determination”? If that right comes at the expense of another people, then that is not a right. Can Kurds simply take north-east Iraq in the name of self-determination? Can the indigenous Americans take Oregon in the name of self-determination? Can the Aborigines take the whole of Australia? Do they have a right to self-determination?

There are about 200 nation states, but around 5,000 ethnicities – do all nations have a right to self-determination?

This “right to self-determination” is a pseudo-right; entirely made up. Its absurdity is shown by atheist Zionists claiming that their right to the land is recorded in the Bible.

The Zionist will often ask “does Israel have a right to exist?”, as though it were a compelling argument. Did Rhodesia have a right to exist?

And what is meant by “indigenous” land? Are Palestinians not indigenous to that land? David Ben Gurion admitted that the Arabs in Palestine had more jewish blood in their veins than the Ashkenazi coming from Europe.

Zionism is the belief that the jews have a right to self determination (i would add in their indigenous land, but there is a split). Islamism is the belief that the Muslim religion must be imposed worldwide via the state.

This is a completely nonsensical statement – it’s a word salad, which is wrong about Zionism, wrong about jews, wrong about a “right to self-determination”, wrong about an indigenous land but right about the split – Zionism makes no sense.

I will deal with the sentence about “Islamism” in a separate post.

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