Whatever! GUEST BLOG: Leslie Bravery – Zionism rules in Israel/Palestine – no matter who wins

Regardless of the result of the 2015 Israeli election, the winner was always going to be Zionism, the founding ideology of Eretz Israel. The signatories to Israel’s 14 May 1948 Declaration of Independence identified themselves thus:

“. . . We members of the People’s Council, representatives of the Jewish Community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist movement . . .”

Above all else, Israel is dedicated to the Zionist enterprise. Founded by Theodor Herzl in the late nineteenth century, Zionism holds that hostility to Jews is natural and inevitable and that Jews can only be secure through the creation of a Jewish state. The movement shared the outlook of European colonialism and most people would be astonished to learn of revisionist (as it became) Zionism’s affinity with the fascist movements of the early twentieth century and its betrayal even of non-Zionist Jews (Righteous Victims, p.162).

Zionist racism and terrorism
The state of Israel denies the United Nations-recognised right of return to their homes of ethnically-cleansed and dispossessed Palestinians on the grounds that they are not Jewish. A clear denial of the Palestinian people’s identity and, therefore, of their humanity, was made by one of the founders of the State of Israel, the Polish-born former Prime Minister Golda Meir, when she said:

“It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”

The denial of the very existence of Palestinians as a people enables Zionists to convince themselves further that Palestinians (most often referred to simply as Arabs) are inferior to Jews. Golda Meir was not alone, or even a rare example of racist Zionism. Even before Menachem Begin became prime minister of Israel in 1977 his political philosophy had, in 1948, prompted the following in a warning letter to The New York Times signed by, among others, Albert Einstein:

“Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority.”

The letter went on to describe just one of many Zionist attacks on Palestinian villages, the massacre in Deir Yassin carried out by the Zionist terrorist organisation the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang:

“. . . terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants – 240 men, women, and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed . . . the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicised it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.”

Fifty-three orphaned children were dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by a Miss Hind Husseini and brought to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage. Deir Yassin had been targeted for occupation under the Zionist Plan Dalet. As was stated in the letter quoted above that Albert Einstein had signed:

“Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed . . . .”

Indeed, and while Zionism arrogates to itself the right to speak and act on behalf of all Jews, the corporate news media hardly ever report the voices of those Jews, many of whom are well known celebrities, who say to Zionism, “not in my name”.

In any other context the authors of such behaviour would be regarded as war criminals. Zionists point to the Balfour Declaration as the political justification for the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. Commenting on the Declaration in a letter to David Lloyd George in February 1919, Balfour admitted:

“The weak point of our position is of course that in the case of Palestine we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination”.

It should be remembered that the people of Palestine sided with the allies in the First World War with the promise of self-determination should an allied victory be achieved. If it were to be introduced today, the principles embodied in the imperialist Balfour Declaration would be regarded as abhorrent. The ideological intentions behind it have led inevitably and predictably to Zionist domination over the whole of historic Palestine and beyond. Today the extreme racism practised by Israel’s occupation settlers is mirrored in the behaviour of the Israeli Army of Occupation.

The purpose of military occupation
The Netanyahu administration’s Zionism is most clearly evidenced in Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s psychopathic racism and, leading up to the election, Netanyahu’s revelation that the purpose of settlements is to cut off and prevent Palestinian access and growth. Every aspect of the occupation is employed towards realising the goal of driving Palestinians off their land and to make it appear that they left of their own free will. Meanwhile, the misleading pretence that endless attempts at direct ‘negotiations’ are the only way to bring peace buys time for Israel to achieve its ultimate purpose. The Zionist enterprise certainly has no interest in the so-called two-state ‘solution’. As far back as 1937, the founder and first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, wrote to his son:

“No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning …. Our possession is important not only for itself … through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state … will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country.” (Righteous Victims, p.138).

Again in October 1938, Ben-Gurion wrote this explanation to his children:

“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a means toward that aim.”

Israeli terrorism
In 1948, Zionist Irgun, Haganah and Stern Gang terrorism became the foundation for the newly-created Zionist state’s armed forces and, while Israel continues to benefit from the unconditional support of the Western alliance, the Zionist military machine is being subsidised by United States taxpayers to the tune of almost three billion dollars annually. By contrast, the defence of Palestinian life, limb, liberty and property (Palestinians constitute the largest group of refugees in the world) is contemptuously ignored by Israel’s allies. It is Zionist ideology that lies behind the creation of the world’s only military court for juveniles. While no Jewish Israeli child would ever be brought before an Israeli military court, Palestinian children face that ordeal every day. A UNICEF report dated February 2013 documents Israel’s inhuman and discriminatory abuse of non-Jewish children. Political debate inside Israel, as well as Western news media commentary, all avoid the question of Zionism – the last of the state-sponsored, racist ideologies.

The Israeli author, Miko Peled, reveals in his book The General’s Son (described as a Jewish Israeli’s journey of discovery in Palestine) the influence of Zionism in Israeli military thinking. Miko Peled sees rejection of the ideology as an essential step towards bringing an end to the injustice, violence and instability in order to pave the way for the establishment of a single bi-national state with equal rights and status for all citizens in Israel/Palestine, regardless of ethnicity or religion. As a matter of interest, the single state in Palestine is not a new concept but, sadly, the hope for it was dashed at the time by the defeat of a 1939 British Parliamentary White Paper that called for a united bi-national Palestinian state by no later than 1949 (Shabtai Teveth, p.196).

Responsibility
The charade requiring the defenceless Palestinians to negotiate on their knees directly, and alone, with their mightily armed oppressor has enabled the Western alliance to go on tacitly supporting Israel instead of shouldering its responsibility towards the grievously wronged Palestinian people. The whole world, but particularly those nations that identify themselves as members of the Western alliance, should remember their humanity and witness for truth. If that means having the integrity and courage to break ranks and defy the more powerful and influential great powers, then so be it. Let’s leave the last words to:

Saeb Erekat, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator: “The Israeli elections show the success of a campaign platform based on settlements, racism, apartheid and the denial of the fundamental human rights of the Palestinian people. Such a result would not have been possible had the international community held Israel to account for its systematic violations of international law.”

Jewish Voice for Peace: “The only way to end Israel’s endless settlement expansion and separate and deeply unequal apartheid system is through external pressure.” – Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director.
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Life under Israeli military occupation (4)
Every area of Israeli-Occupied Palestinian territory experiences arbitrary restrictions of movement imposed by the Israeli Army. The lack of freedom of movement is the frustrating and humiliating background to daily life for the Palestinian people, whose suffering includes a variety of human rights abuses, from night home invasions to wanton acts of agricultural and economic sabotage. The Israeli Occupation Army enforces a permit system for the benefit of settlers that determines where Palestinians may live in their own land.

The Gaza fishing industry
The Gaza fishing industry is being crippled by the enforcement of a draconian fishing limit. The Israel Navy forces Palestinian fishing boats to remain within a three-nautical-mile, over-fished zone, sometimes at the cost to crews of life, limb and property. Gaza City’s ruined international airport is permanently closed. Palestinians needing to enter or leave Palestine can do so only with Israeli permission. In addition to Israel’s occasional massive bombing raids, Gaza residents are forced to live with the constant fear of overflying drones and the traumatising effects of sonic booms created by Israeli war-planes. The effects on the children of Gaza are particularly distressing.

Leslie Bravery is a Londoner with vivid World War Two memories of the Nazi blitz on his home town. In 1947/1948 His father explained to him what was happening to the Palestinians thus: “Any ideology or political movement that creates refugees in the process of realising its ambitions must be inhuman and should be opposed and condemned as unacceptable.” What followed confirmed this assessment of the Zionist entity a hundredfold. Now a retired flamenco guitarist, with a lifelong interest in the tragedy of what happened to the Palestinian people, he tries to publicise their plight. Because the daily injustices they suffer barely get a mention in the mainstream news media, Leslie edits/compiles a daily newsletter, In Occupied Palestine, for the Palestine Human Rights Campaign. These days, to preserve his sanity, he enjoys taking part in a drama group whenever possible!