JOHN JESUS | Artist, Author, Coach | BEST FOR ALL

Is Zionism racism? To answer this question requires a proper understanding of Zionism in both theory and practice. Zionism is essentially a synonym for Jewish nationalism. It is the belief that Jews constitute a distinct people and nation, and on this basis require the establishment of a nation-state of their own to achieve their natural rights and collective potential. In putting forth such views, the late-nineteenth-century founders of the Zionist movement were first and foremost adopting and reflecting the nationalist milieu and principles dominant in Europe, the environment in which they were formed and in which they operated. Yet, from the very outset Zionism was different than other European nationalism. Unlike for example the Greeks, Serbs, Poles, or Italians, Zionism’s intended constituents – the Jews of Europe – did not have an ancient homeland on the European continent in which they remained a majority. The Zionist movement was unwilling as well as unable to challenge an existing European state to carve out an independent state in which Jews, like other European peoples, would enjoy uncontested demographic, territorial, and political supremacy. Its leaders instead sought to acquire the cooperation and sponsorship of a European power to colonize and establish a state in territory outside Europe. Palestine was not the only non-European territory proposed for this venture. Various others in Africa, the Americas, Australia, as well as Cyprus were also considered, several quite seriously. In each of these cases the Zionist movement was proceeding from another principle dominant in Europe at the time. None of these territories were uninhabited, yet their inhabitants did not possess inalienable rights, and could be freely subordinated, dispossessed, and even exterminated in the service of European power. The Zionist movement ultimately settled on Palestine for its nation-state project. Enabled by what the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi termed “the British shield”, its project met with success in 1948 with the establishment of the Israeli state. Israel could not have been established as a Jewish state without the mass dispossession and expulsion of the Arabs of Palestine, and the wholesale usurpation of their lands and properties. Israel could not have developed as a Zionist state without the systematic application of structural racism against its non-Jewish citizens and the enforcement of apartheid regimes against Arab populations beyond its initial boundaries that would come under its control in subsequent decades. Crucially, the exact same pattern would have been implemented, by design, if the Zionist movement had opted for Uganda, Libya, or any other territory under its consideration instead of Palestine. It is this which distinguishes Zionism from most (but not all) other nationalisms. In other words, the British Green Party, like the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 3379 of 1975, got it exactly right.