While the mayhem of Israel and Hamas in Gaza continues, the Zionist movement that underlies it is on its death bed. HERZL SEES DREYFUSS Clyde’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The movement has old and deep roots but came particularly alive in Paris in 1894-96 as the rich, non-religious, Jewish- Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl watched the trial in Paris (1894-1906) of the Jewish- French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfuss on grounds of treason for having turned over to Germany some French military secrets. The obvious unfairness of the trial transformed Herzl from a cosmopolitan European journalist into the founder of what became the Zionist movement aimed at transferring European Jews to the region of biblical Palestine ( then ruled from Byzantium by the Turkish empire) for the purpose of creating a new Jewish state in the heart of the ancient, biblical Jewish state centered on Jerusalem. As it eventually turned out, Dreyfuss was found innocent, pardoned and returned to duty to serve against Germany in WWI. But that only occurred after he was twice convicted and sentenced to prison in Devil’s Island. The case was so outrageously unfair and obviously based on prejudice against Jews, that renowned author Emile Zola was moved to write a public article entitled “J’accuse” (I accuse) in which he accused leading French officials of fixing the case against Dreyfuss. Herzl, who had gone to Paris to cover the case for the Austrian press, was so appalled by what he perceived as prejudice directed at the Jewish Dreyfuss that he turned from trying to make European Jews more cosmopolitan to trying to convince them to return after nearly 2,000 years to Zion - the site of ancient Israel and Jerusalem. His 1896 book, Der Judenstadt (the Jewish State) triggered the conception and formation of the Zionist Organization that strove over the next fifty two years to bring Jews from Europe to Palestine (long under Turkish and then British rule) and eventually to establish the state of Israel (Zion) in 1948. In both his writing and early proselytizing, Herzl seemed oblivious to the fact that while Palestine might once 2000 years ago have been a Jewish homeland it was now overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim. Statistics for 1890 show about 43, 000 Jews, 57,000 Christians, and 432,000 Muslim Arab/Palestinians. When he traveled to Palestine in 1896, Herzl impressed those around him with the sense that he seemed blind to the demographic numbers. One commentator remarked that Herzl seemed to have prevented his eyes from seeing non-Jews. In fact, what Herzl was looking for was a way to realize in the present or near future, the words of God to Abraham in Genesis 12:7 - “To your offspring (or seed) will I grant this land.” Not being at all religious, Herzl may not have been aware that Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, (by Sarah’s (Abraham’s wife) handmaid Hagar) became the father of what today we call Arabs while it was the second son, Isaac (by Sarah) who became the father of the Jews. Unfortunately for posterity, God did not indicate a preference for a particular son. In any case, Herzl and his disciples were convinced that this land was meant for the Jews. And, certainly, it had been Jews of the likes of Moses, King David, and Jesus Christ who had put this area on the historical map. Now Herzl and his new Zionist Organization sought not merely to move European Jews to a safe haven in a Palestine then ruled by the Islamic Ottoman Turks. Their intent was far more ambitious. It was eventually to gain control of the area and to create a state that would be the champion of the world’s Jews. Since, in their view, the rest of the world had for long not been particularly friendly to the Jews, it should not perhaps be surprising that the Zionists aimed to get control of a region that would be fully theirs. Supporting the Zionist claim was the much repeated slogan of “a land without people for a people without land.” Unfortunately, it most demonstrably was not a land without people and that the people there being overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim were unlikely to welcome a seizure of what they considered their land by long absent ( two thousand years) Jews should not have been surprising. It must also be noted that world Jewry at the time was far from united on the Zionist objective. Orthodox and religious Jews were of the view that God would return Jews to the Promised Land on his own schedule rather than on that of a group of mostly agnostic and even atheistic Jews which Herzl and most of his key followers were. FRIENDS OR FOES In considering how to move Jews from Europe to Palestine, essentially two concepts were put forward. One concept was that of Herzl and the Zionist Organization. It was to obtain funding from rich European Jews and other wealthy parties to buy land in Palestine for cultivation and other use by immigrant European Jews whose passage and initial living expenses in Palestine would be covered by the Zionist Organization. Although not spelled out at the time, this concept was understood to mean and inevitably did mean that land would be bought from wealthy absentee landlords and then turned over for cultivation or other use to the new Jewish immigrants from Europe as the long resident Arab Palestinian workers would be dismissed to find whatever work they could in some other way or location. In effect, this meant replacing Arab/Palestinians with European Jews without compensation to the vast majority of the Palestinians Ahad Ha’am, a Russian Jew also looked longingly at Palestine but with a very different concept in mind. It was to bring European Jews to Palestine to study and to work at their own trades WITHOUT DISPLACING Palestinian workers, and gradually to INTEGRATE with the local population and society without necessarily dominating and making it a club dominated by Jews. Unfortunately, Ha’am was plagued by sickness and lack of funds and was never able to build his group into a major player in the Palestine arena. Thus, the Zionist Organization proceeded with the displacement strategy that was bound to create resentment and tension between the long resident Palestinian Arabs and the newcomer European Jews. Interestingly, key Zionist leader and eventual first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion , seemed to understand this. In 1919, he commented that “there is no solution to this question. There is an abyss between us (Jews and Arab Palestinians) and nothing can fill that abyss.” It could at best be managed, but not resolved, he lamented. THE ROCKY ROAD Herzl and his Zionist Organization began paying for the passage of European Jews to Palestine at the turn of the 20th century. They obtained substantial funds from the likes of rich Jewish families such as the Rothschilds, Lamberts, and Von Witgensteins. These were used to pay for transportation and living expenses of the immigrants, for land on which the immigrants would be employed, and initially for wages for the immigrant Jews as the Palestinian workers were dismissed without compensation. There was an obviously easier alternative. From about 1870 to 1924 (54 years), Jewish emigration from Europe (especially eastern Europe) to the United States topped two million souls without significant need of something like the Zionist Organization or of Rothschilds money. The United States was thriving, creating far more jobs than its high birthrate could fill, and thus throwing its immigration doors were wide open. America wanted immigrants. No Americans were dismissed from jobs because of Jewish immigration, and Jews did not need subsidized wages because they could quickly obtain decently paying jobs. By contrast, over the same period, a total of only about 90,000 European Jews entered Palestine despite the efforts of the Zionist Organization, the Rothschilds et al, and one must add the British government because of the Balfour Declaration. World War I was not going well for the British in 1917. They were desperate to assure that the Russians (then entering the Bolshevik revolution) would stay allied with Britain in the war and that the Americans would finally enter enter quickly. They knew that the Russians had no affection for and would not mind the exodus of its Jews, and they had the impression that America’s Jews were strongly influential in Washington and could help hasten the dispatch of U.S. troops to the Western Front. To stimulate these actions they dreamed up what has become known as the Balfour Declaration named for Arthur James Balfour who was then the British Foreign Minister and sent to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron of Rothschild who was a major Zionist leader as well as a very wealthy and powerful Jewish Englishman. Carefully crafted by the British Cabinet at the time, the letter called for the establishment in Palestine of “ a home for the Jewish people.” This wording was critical because early drafts of the statement called for the establishment of a “Jewish State”. Ultimately the drafters had to back away from that because at the time the number of Arab Palestinians living in Palestine was three or four times that of the Jews, and the British had already encouraged the Arab leaders in the region to rebel against the Turks (remember Lawrence of Arabia) by offering to recognize them as the rightful rulers of a new Arab state that would include Palestine. So the Balfour Declaration was ever so carefully edited. The Zionists had hoped for a “state”, but they got a “home” whatever that meant. In the aftermath of the war, the new League of Nations granted Britain a Mandate for Palestine, meaning that Britain would govern the territory and prepare it for complete independence at some future time. This came at the expense of the Arab Sheiks who had rallied to Britain under Lawrence and helped it defeat the Ottomans. But it initially seemed to be good for the Zionists as Britain opened the immigration gates wide for the Zionist oriented Jews. From 1918 to 1922, the Jewish population rose from 56,000 to 88,000 out of a total population of 750,000. By 1939 there were 455,000 Jews in a population of 1.5 million. ( It is significant to note that it was in 1924 that the U.S. slammed the door on immigration of Jews from Europe.) While this may look like a success for the Zionists, in fact, it led to increasing restrictions by the British on immigration by Jews. Constant conflicts between immigrant Jews and Arab Palestinians who were losing livelihoods and political control of increasingly extensive areas led to several rounds of riots and uprisings which in turn led to increasing British restrictions on Jewish immigration. At one point, the British seriously discussed dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors that could eventually become independent states. This idea did not go forward, but the White Paper of 1939 stated that Palestine would become a bi-national state with an Arab Palestinian majority. It also limited Jewish immigration from 1940-44 to 75,000 and left decisions on further immigration to the newly proposed state that would have an Arab Palestinian majority IRGUN, HAGANAH, STERN GANG (LEHI) It is important clearly to understand that the bulk of the land was still owned by Palestinians and that the vast bulk of the population was still Palestinian. These were, of course, Arab Semites. It is also clear that the intent and drive of the immigrant European Jewish Semites was to wrest the land away from the Palestinian Semites in order to create a special new state of Israel for Jewish Semites. This became crystal clear when Zionist para military groups such as the Haganah, Lehi, and Irgun were created and aimed not only at the Arab Palestinian uprising but also at the British military units enforcing the new limitations on Jewish immigrants. This became even more pronounced after the end of the war when the Irgun, led by future Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin blew up the British military headquarters in the Kind David Hotel in Jerusalem. The aim was to drive the British out as the prelude to creation of a Zionist state. DISASTER AND RECOVERY OF THE DREAM. World War II and its accompanying Holocaust for Jews were, of course, ultra traumatic events that wiped out at least a third of the World’s Jewish population at the time and more than half of the Jewish population of Europe. They also provided an enormous incentive for surviving Jews to leave Europe in search of safety and peace. The Zionist Organization seized on these circumstances to recruit the Jews remaining in Europe and also now those in North Africa and the Middle East. Between 1945 and 1948, more newcomers arrived in Palestine than had come in all the years between 1896 and the end of WWII. But that was not a huge number, meaning that by mid-1948, the Jewish population of Palestine amounted to only about 700,000 persons. A key set of numbers that explains a lot about not only the population of Israel and Palestine but also about the relationship between Jews and Arab Palestinians is the population counts of Jews, and Palestinian Arabs in the territory that became Israel in May, 1948. The statistical charts show that in 1947 there were about 600,000 Jews and 1,300,000 non-Jews. At the end of 1948, the charts show 700,000 Jews and 150,000 Arab Palestinians, Christians, and others. In other words, a bit over a million Arab Palestinians seem to have disappeared according to the population charts. Why did the non-Jews leave and where did they go? THE NAKBA The answer is clear and undeniable and is at the heart of the huge tension in Gaza and the Middle East today. The Mandate for ruling Palestine had been granted to the UK by the League of Nations after WWI and was set to expire on May 15, 1948. In the lead up to this date, the newly created United Nations had established a commission (UNSCOP - United Nations Special Commission on Palestine) in 1947 to determine under what conditions the Mandate would be ended and how the region would be ruled henceforth. Arab states refused to cooperate with the Commission on the grounds that the Arab Palestinian population of Palestine outnumbered the Jewish population by more than two to one, that a large number of the Jews were recent arrivals brought to the area by a Jewish agency based in Europe, funded with European -Jewish money, and encouraged by a colonialist-minded British state which itself was trying to withdraw from the area, and that pressure to bring more Jews to Palestine was being brought to bear by European states where millions of Jews had been slaughtered and by the United States which had more than enough capacity to absorb Jewish refugees from Europe but was not doing so. In effect, the Arabs were saying that the Europeans and Americans were trying to resolve their Jewish problem at the expense of the middle eastern Arabs and for the benefit of the European Zionist Organization. There was much truth in what the Arabs were saying, but they had no significant global influence at the time and the UN, dominated by the United States and Europe, was not in the mood to pay attention. The Commission developed a proposed division of Palestine into two states with Jerusalem as a third entity to be called an International City that presumably would be open to and governed by all sides. The proposed Arab state would have a population of 735,000 of which all but 10,000 would be Arab Palestinians. It would constitute about 44 percent of the total land. The Jewish state would have a population of 905,000 of which 55 percent would be Jewish. The International City of Jerusalem would constitute about 2 percent of the land area and include about 205,000 people of whom 49 percent would be Jewish and 51 percent Arab Palestinian. Had a vote of the population of Palestine at the time been taken, it would almost certainly have been in favor of an independent, bi-ethnic state governed by whatever mix of leaders the citizens happened to elect - probably more Palestinian Arab than Jewish, at least to start. But, of course, no vote by those actually living in Palestine was in the cards. Certainly the Jewish (Zionist) Agency did not want that. Indeed, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion had written to his son that the objective must be to get an independent Zionist state that could be expanded over time. Now Ben-Gurion and his fellow Zionist leaders made every effort to have the UNSCOP proposals ratified and made into international law by the UN. The key players in this drama were the United States, Britain, the major European countries, the Jewish (Zionist) Agency, and the Arab states. The absence of a strong representative of the Palestinians as the rest of the world debated their future was glaringly apparent. The results of WWII and especially of the Holocaust weighed heavily on the debates and the decisions. The UK, where the Zionist movement had always been strong, just wanted out of Palestine after lo these many years of grief. The rest of Europe, in which so much of the Holocaust had taken place and where the bulk of the homeless and battered survivors were searching for a new life was anxious to get this chapter behind it. The American position at the time is fascinating. Jewish Americans had become often rich and politically powerful, especially in New York state which was likely going to have a decisive influence on the upcoming U.S. Presidential election of 1948. In all these locations, there was great guilt and sympathy for the plight of European Jews and hence sympathy with the Zionist drive to get those Jews and others from around the world to the site of ancient Israel. That doing so might be at the expense of the majority of the people then living there was not a consideration. Especially in the United States, many Christians saw the movement of Jews to the Holy Land as a sign of the coming fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of the second coming of Christ. This coincided with the rise of Jewish political influence in the United States and the combination of these trends put enormous pressure on then President Harry Truman to endorse the creation of a Jewish state to be called Israel in the region of Palestine where Jews were in a clear minority and where the majority Palestinians clearly did not want a Jewish state. The decision by the UN to create two states in Palestine came with a vote on November 29, 1947. The British mandate would expire on May 15, 1948, and the UN called for preparations to be made for a smooth transition. The nature of the vote, however, should have served as a strong warning of rough waves ahead. The vote was initially scheduled for November 26, but it seemed clear on the evening of November 25 that it was going to fail (meaning that there would be no agreement on the creation of an Israeli state) the next day. Filibustering the next day by the Zionist delegation resulted in a postponement of the vote and intense lobbying before the newly scheduled vote on November 29. The lobbying included steps such as what then President Harry Truman called a “constant barrage of the White House” by influential Jewish-American groups complete with threats of political opposition in the Presidential election in the fall if Truman did not toe the line for a new Zionist state in Palestine. The Ambassador of the Philippines initially stood against the proposed division, but a call to Manila from the White House resulted in his recall and a new Ambassador who voted for it. A $5 million payment from the U.S. to Haiti assured that Haiti would vote the “right way.” Bernard Baruch, a rich New York Jewish Democratic Party leader, and major backer of the irregular Zionist Irgun military organization was dispatched to France to explain to French leaders how harmful a possible delay of U.S. loans (was that a threat?) could be to the then shaky French economy. The list of these kinds of interventions goes on. Suffice it to say, that it all “worked” and that the UNSCOP proposals for division into two states and an international city in Jerusalem was adopted by the UN by a vote of 33 to 13 with ten abstentions That, of course, did not mean that it was adopted by all the major players - certainly not by the Arab countries neighboring Palestine. And not really by the Zionists. The UN had no way to enforce its vote, and many of the Zionists did not like the fact that the UN plan would leave almost as many Arab Palestinians in the Jewish state as Jews. Under David Ben-Gurion’s leadership, the Zionists extended their planning. The British mandate would be finished at mid-night on May 15, 1948. Despite the opposition to a division of Palestine by the Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab states, the Zionists determined to move ahead and planned to declare the independent statehood of Israel at the stroke of mid-night. The almost equal number of Arab Palestinians to Jews in the area designated to be the Jewish state made the Zionists uncomfortable. How could they claim to be a democracy without granting to the Arab Palestinians the same rights as those granted to Jews? But how could they be fully Zionist with so many Palestinians in the way? The answer was simple. Get rid of the Palestinians. “Get rid of” meant driving out, scaring to death, killing, and destroying the houses of the Palestinians. Ben-Gurion was clear eyed. In his diary, he wrote that he had discussed all this with his Zionist comrades and that they must be honest among themselves at least about what they were doing - using terror to get rid of unwanted Arab Palestinians. That was the Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic) perpetrated by Ben-Gurion and his ardent Zionists in the months between November 1947 and May 15, 1948 when Israel declared its independence In that period they drove out of what was to be the new Israel over 750,000 Arab Palestinians and seized their land and businesses. Many were killed. This was an open but unannounced declaration of war by the Zionists on the Arab Palestinians. The Zionists gave no hint of wanting to be democratic beyond the Jewish world while doing their utmost to extend that world at the expense of the Palestinians. For many years, the Zionists denied that they had done anything to cause the Palestinians to flee. But recent research by Jewish Israeli historians such as Illan Pape has demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Zionist militarized units did indeed drive out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. For his truth telling trouble, Pape has effectively been exiled from Israel and teaches at the University of Exeter in the UK. WHAT WERE THE AMERICANS THINKING AND DOING The thinking and actions of President Harry Truman, the American Jewish community, and the rest of the American public at the time demonstrate another dimension of the issue of Zionism. Immediately after Ben-Gurion declared Israeli independence, he received a phone call from Truman congratulating him on his new country and nationality and on freedom and independence for Jews in the Holy Land after millennia in exile. ‘Why did Truman do that? Why did he care? The U.S. did not really have a dog in the fight. He cared because he was running for President in November and badly needed to win New York to win the election. Who were very important donors and voters in New York elections at the time? Bingo, you got it. The American Jewish community with its strong attachment such as that of Wall Street tycoon Bernard Baruch to Zionism and the Zionist movement was politically very powerful in New York and significantly powerful in other critical parts of the United States. Truman was a Zionist not because he cared so much about what happened in Palestine. He was a Zionist because he really, really cared about who would be President of the United States and to assure that he became such, it would help a lot if he could get lots of American Jewish money and votes, especially in critical locations like New York. Even more ardent in this regard were leading American Jews such as Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter along with many Jewish-American business and finance leaders like Bernard Baruch were instrumental in putting the United States in the Zionist corner backing the creation of Israel. Jewish Eddie Jacobson, once Truman’s partner in a haberdashery in Missouri became a major conduit for top Zionist leaders and their supporters to meet with the President. Jewish-American bankers, lawyers, industrialists and teachers like Golda Meir flocked to back the new Israel and to push Truman and his successors to do the same. Two final elements formed the positive attitude of the United States and much of the western world toward the new Zionist Israel. One was the plight of the European Jews under the Nazis and the moral need somehow to find a way to make amends for the unthinkable barbarity that had assailed them. The average American or European knew nothing of the conflict between immigrant Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Palestine or of the British mandate or any other of the complexities. Their sense of moral guilt disposed them to be sympathetic to the surviving Jews and the new Zionist state of Israel because of the indescribable torture of so many European Jews during the war. However, neither Truman nor any other key post WWII leaders were sympathetic enough to open the doors of their own countries to the desolated Jews of post-war Europe. Rather, they were quite satisfied to shuttle them to Palestine where the Arab Palestinian majority which had had no role in World War II or in the desolation of the European Jews would bear the cost of their restoration. The second was the combination of the extraordinary success of Jewish immigrants in the United States who became wealthy and politically and intellectually powerful while maintaining the extraordinarily strong ethnic bond that tends to link Jewish people into their own state whether or not it is a physical one and the absence and ignorance in America of Palestinians, Arabs, and the Middle East. The American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) became perhaps the most powerful lobby group in America by contributing the most money to political candidates. President Biden is rumored to be the all time champion recipient. America’s leading news outlets have traditionally been quite supportive of Israel and have extensively reported on it while largely ignoring the Arab Palestinian world. Indeed, some leading U.S. commentators maintain residences in Israel and their children have joined the Israeli army. Finally, the absence from the United States of substantial numbers of immigrants from the middle east, and Muslim countries generally has inevitably resulted in American views that have skewed toward the Zionist Israeli perspective rather than that of the Palestinians. THE BIG SHIFT That era is past. Over the last twenty odd years, Middle Eastern people of a variety of origins have migrated to America. There are now significant numbers of people of Palestinian origin living in Michigan, for example, where they are changing the politics of the state. There are now Muslim American political leaders and university students and members of Congress. Al Jazeera can now be viewed in America and the contrast between its reports and those of the New York Times, CNN, and Fox is striking. In short, the imbalance of knowledge and representation of the Middle East in the U.S. is rapidly being righted to reveal a much more nuanced and increasingly less Israel- centric picture. Very significant is the fact that the charge of “anti- Semitism” is losing its sting, partly because it is being increasingly understood that Arabs are Semites as well as Jews and partly because there is increasing recognition that the charge is more often a political weapon than a serious accusation. Wealthy Jewish -American donors to elite U.S. universities who demand that the schools follow a strictly pro-Israel line in what they teach and whom they invite to campus are only calling attention to the anti-democratic flaws of Zionism and undermining their own credibility. The greater diversity of the University student body and of the information available to the students makes unquestioning adherence to the Zionist line untenable. And, of course, this goes far beyond universities. Perhaps most revealing of Zionism’s flaws is the story of the creation and nurturing of Hamas. Today, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu swears he will destroy Hamas, but, ironically, he has long been a promoter and supporter of Hamas to the extent even of helping it obtain funding from rich, neighboring Arab countries. Netanyahu and Israel have long sought to prevent the original Palestinian governing body, the Palestine Authority (PA) from governing both the West Bank and Gaza as one, united Palestinian entity. The reason, of course, is to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state a la Israel itself. Netanyahu long believed that he and his Zionists could weaken the Palestinian drive for its own statehood by dividing the governance of the Palestinians in the regions of Palestine under joint Israeli/Palestinian authority between the official Palestinian Authority and Hamas (who more or less detest each other) and playing them off against each other. Blinded by their own sense of superiority, Netanyahu and his Zionists overlooked a key element. While Hamas might be extremely hostile to Israel, it is honest and incorruptible in its dealings with its Palestinian constituency in contrast to the PA which governs the West Bank. In elections in Gaza, Hamas consistently defeats the PA. A major reason is that it governs honestly and without special deals with the Israeli government. Of course, today, Israelis see Hamas as the essence of evil, but that is not how the Palestinians of Gaza see the picture. Even more importantly, Hamas leader Sinwar is far smarter and deeper than the Israeli Zionists and the empty headed, confused Biden administration. Netanyahu and his Israel Defense Force (IDF) can win every battle, raze every small town in Gaza, and kill thirty thousand more Gaza Palestinians and all this will only make the Israeli loss worse and more damning. The fundamental issue is not territory. Rather, it is legitimacy. The de facto genocide to which Israel is dedicated not only undermines its own legitimacy but that of its closest ally, the United States, as well. It makes crystal clear that the Zionists and the United States never seriously considered any solution other than one by Zionist Israel, for Zionist Israel, and of Zionist Israel and that there are really no grounds for discussion or debate. In this context, the more bombs Israel and America drop and the more Gazan Palestinians they kill, the more they glorify Sinwar and discredit themselves and their Zionist doctrine.
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