Contrary to what a majority of commentators and politicians in the West
appear (or pretend) to believe, the utter devastation raining on Gaza is
not only an overreaction to what the author perceives to have been the
reckless Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023. It must be seen as a
continuation of the decades-long (indeed century-long) course in which
Zionist and, since 1948, Israeli politics, policies and military
strategies have inexorably shifted to the right.
This book underlines Gilbert Achcar’s outstanding reputation as a
forensic analyst of Middle East Politics and of the Israel-Palestine
conflict. It is a collection of essays which is polemic, stripping away
the euphemisms, the diplomatic theatre and the moral fog which surrounds
what the author convincingly argues has been, from the Balfour
Declaration, a settler-colonial project supported by Western Powers,
countries noted for their claim to uphold human rights.
Gilbert Achcar believes this sorry tale is worse than a tragedy: “it
is a crime”. He excels at deconstructing the ideological scaffolding and
geopolitical architecture of the region over the past century, as he
did to perfection in his 2011 book about the Arab Israeli conflict, The Arabs and the Holocaust.
He unsparingly digs up evidence of Zionist leaders’ real intent vis a
vis the Palestinians without shying away from criticising what he sees
as the “irrational” strategy of Hamas – it makes little sense “ to
assault one’s enemy on the very terrain on which they hold
insurmountable superiority”. He condemns Hamas’ reliance on armed
struggle as counterproductive: “there is no possible vindication for
what has been the most catastrophic miscalculation ever in the history
of the anticolonial struggle.”
Another interesting feature of his book is his interrogation of
“Europe’s manipulation of Holocaust memory. Far from preventing future
atrocity, the Holocaust has been politically instrumentalised to
sanctify the state of Israel and silence criticism of Zionism because a
project of ‘whitening’ (helps to align) the Jewish-settler colony with
the Western civilisation.” The Judeo-Christian set of values was a
concept invented after 1945 and promoted by the religious conservatives
in the US. Such an _expression_ would have made no sense in Europe in the
1930s.
The author sharply criticises “the moral equivalence peddled by
Western media and political leaders: the idea that Hamas’ 7 October 2023
attack and Israel’s military campaign which followed are ‘equivalent’
acts of violence…deny the fundamental asymmetry between coloniser and
colonised.” The same type of comparison was frequently made by many in
France during Algeria’s bitter struggle for independence (1954-1962).
Comparisons between what is going on in Palestine and what went on in
Algeria are not valid if only because the latter was ruled by a minority
colonial entity whereas the “Zionist settler-colonialism uprooted the
indigenous population, thus cancelling the natives’ overwhelming
majority.”
The author, an excellent historian who grasps the facts like few of
his peers, traces historical strains to illustrate the rise of the far
right in Israel. Israeli leaders have been preoccupied with the
expulsion of Palestinians, particularly after the Six Day War in 1967.
He charts in detail how the far-right made the transition to mainstream
politics, largely because of its preoccupation with maintaining a Jewish
demography.
Last but not least he writes that “Singling out the Holocaust as
irreducible to an instance of generic racism and genocide allowed
another operation to take place: the identification of the state of
Israel with the Jewish condition.” This has encouraged a new definition
of antisemitism, which includes criticism of Israel. This shift would
not have been possible were it not for European racism, Holocaust guilt
and Zionist colonisation.
The great virtue of this collection of essays and interviews is that
it helps to put the 7 October attack into what the historian of the
Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel, called “le temps long.”
Reading this book also, a contrario, underlines the extent
to which many Western media are woefully ignorant of history or, less
charitably, willing to be manipulated. The formerly-antisemitic far
right now defends Israel. History reminds us that Zionist leaders
understood fully that European politicians who disliked Jews and wanted
to rid their country of such people (and this is true of the British
prime minister Arthur Balfour) were the best allies of early Zionist
leaders such as Jabotinsky. How will this “Karitha” (كارثة), a stronger
Arabic word for catastrophe befalling the Palestinian people than the
one used in 1948, the “Nakba” play out? Achcar thinks there are two
possible scenarios, a more final Nakba or a new style Oslo agreement
which at best will contain the situation.
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