Outlaw Zionism and respect human rights

A call to outlaw Zionism does not mean the denial of free speech to its supporters and believers. On the contrary, their propaganda and refusal to acknowledge Israel’s crimes against humanity clearly reveal the racism that drives the ideology. But Zionism does not endanger Palestinians alone – it endangers us all. With disregard for the Fourth Geneva Convention and the overwhelmingly positive votes for human rights at the United Nations General Assembly, the immensely powerful and influential USA repeatedly uses its veto at the Security Council to protect Israel from what should be the consequences of its violations of international law and human rights. Allies of the US and Israel, such as the UK, have only to abstain from voting to provide further guarantees for the desired outcome. Support for Zionism undermines the purpose and objectives of the United Nations and destroys any hope of international peace and mutual respect.

Zionism‘s self-isolating cause could soon have failed had it not been for the support of powers whose highly selective approach to democracy enabled it to get its way. Take just one facet of Zionist criminality – Israeli Occupation settlements. Their illegality is universally recognised by, among many others, the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. From the outset, Zionism’s narrow racist obsession had been made abundantly clear. The Zionist Organisation (ZO), created in 1897 and re-naming itself in 1960 as the World Zionist Organisation (WZO), launched its first bank, the Jewish Colonial Trust in 1899. The name of the Trust itself clearly reveals the nature and aim of Zionism.

Zionist denial of Palestinian identity

Since the 5th Century BC, the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River has been associated with the ethnonational group, known in Arabic as Al-Filasṭīniyyūn. The origin of the Arabic word Filasṭīn can be found in the work of the Greek historian Herodotus as Παλαιστίνη (Palaistínē). The now culturally and linguistically-Arab Palestinans, are descendants of the people who have inhabited the region for millennia. They have a universally-recognised right to self-determination and respect.

From the outset, the Zionists understood very well the position of the native Palestinians. In 1908, the ZO and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) appointed the JNF member, German-born lawyer and sociologist, Arthur Ruppin, to direct measures required to gain land in Palestine. A letter from Ruppin in May 1930 admitted: “The aim is to bring the Jews as second nation into a country which already is settled as a nation.” According to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Ruppin believed that the Zionist enterprise demanded “racial purity”. Since then, of course, Zionists take great care to draw attention away from such acknowledgments. In 1969, the then-Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, told a Sunday Times interviewer: “There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. 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 from them. They did not exist.”

Zionism represents only itself, and opposition to it continues to grow. Hundreds of young Israelis have joined with the RSN (Refuser Solidarity Network) in opposing the Israeli military Occupation and domination of the Palestinian people. Recently, on 3 March, the RSN published the views of a member of the Israeli military, combat medic Niron Mizrahi, saying: “I can no longer stand idly by and see how my country sends young people like me to commit war crimes in the name of Zionism, the flag and religion, and in the name of a divine promise – imagined or not – to take part in the expropriation of land, the destruction of culture, and in one of the remaining colonialisms in modern times.”

It takes courage to stand up against a military so entrenched in the service of Zionism. With such far-reaching global understanding and condemnation of the racist Zionist enterprise, there can be no excuse for ignoring or excusing it. Yet, tragically, powerful world leaders and their allies steadfastly continue to cover for Israel. Aided by timid, self-serving politicians as well as mainstream news media, the Zionist state actually gets away with murder. The world cannot afford to allow universal respect for human rights to be taken away. We need each other, to defend and urgently demand justice!