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by M.
Shahid Alam
It is tempting to
celebrate the creation of Israel
as a great triumph, perhaps the greatest in Jewish history. Indeed, the history
of Israel
has often been read as the heroic saga of a people marked for extinction, who
emerged from Nazi death camps – from Auschwitz,
Belzec and Treblinka – to establish their own state in 1948, a Jewish haven and
a democracy that has prospered even as it has defended itself valiantly against
unceasing Arab threats and aggression. Without taking away anything from the
sufferings of European Jews, I will insist that this way of thinking about Israel – apart
from its mythologizing – has merit only as a partisan narrative. It seeks to
insulate Israel
against the charge of a devastating colonization by falsifying history, by
camouflaging the imperialist dynamics that brought it into existence, and
denying the perilous future with which it now confronts the Jews, the West and
the Islamic world.
When
we examine the consequences that have flowed from the creation of Israel, when we
contemplate the greater horrors that may yet flow from the logic of Zionism, Israel
triumphs appear in a different light. We are forced to examine these triumphs
with growing dread and incredulity. Israel’s early triumphs, though real from a
narrow Zionist standpoint, have slowly mutated by a fateful process into
ever-widening circles of conflict that now threaten to escalate into major wars
between the West and Islam. Although this conflict has its source in colonial
ambitions, the dialectics of this conflict have slowly endowed it with the
force and rhetoric of a civilizational war: and perhaps worse, a religious war.
This is the tragedy of Israel.
It is not a fortuitous tragedy. Driven by history, chance and cunning, the
Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and
Islam, and by harnessing the strength of the first against the second, it has
produced the conditions of a conflict that has grown deeper over time.
Zionist
historiography describes the emergence of Israel as a triumph over Europe’s centuries-old anti-Semitism, in particular over
its twentieth-century manifestation, the demonic, industrial plan of the Nazis
to stamp out the existence of the Jewish people. But this is a tendentious reading
of Zionist history: it obscures the historic offer Zionism made to the West –
the offer to rid the West of its Jews, to lead them out of Christendom into
Islamic Palestine. In offering to ‘cleanse’ the West of the ‘hated Jews,’ the
Zionists were working with the anti-Semites, not against them.
Theodore Herzl,
the founding father of Zionism, had a clear understanding of this
complementarity between Zionism and anti-Semitism; and he was convinced
that Zionism
would prevail only if anti-Semitic Europe could
be persuaded to work for its success. It is true that Jews and
anti-Semites
have been historical adversaries, that Jews have been the victims of
Europe’s religious vendetta since Rome first embraced Christianity.
However,
Zionism would enter into a new relationship with anti-Semitism that
would work
to the advantage of Jews. The insertion of the Zionist idea in the
Western
discourse would work a profound change in the relationship between
Western Jews
and Gentiles. In order to succeed, the Zionists would have to create a
new
adversary, common to the West and the Jews. In choosing to locate their
colonial-settler
state in Palestine
– and not in Uganda
or Argentina
– the Zionists had also chosen an adversary that would deepen their
partnership
with the West. The Islamic world was a great deal more likely to
energize the
West’s imperialist ambitions and evangelical zeal than Africa
or Latin America.
Israel was the product of
a partnership that seems unlikely at first blush, between Western Jews and the
Western world. It is the powerful alchemy of the Zionist idea that created this
partnership. The Zionist project to create a Jewish state in Palestine possessed the unique power to
convert two historical antagonists, Jews and Gentiles, into allies united in a
common imperialist enterprise against the Islamic world. The Zionists harnessed
the negative energies of the Western world – its imperialism, its
anti-Semitism, its Crusading nostalgia, its anti-Islamic bigotry, and its deep
racism – and focused them on a new imperialist project, the creation of a
Western surrogate state in the Islamic heartland.
To the West’s imperialist
ambitions, this new colonial project offered a variety of strategic advantages.
Israel
would be located in the heart of the Islamic world; it would sit astride the
junction of Asia, Africa
and Europe; it would guard Europe’s
gateway to the Indian Ocean; and it could
monitor developments in the Persian Gulf with
its vast reserves of oil. For the West as well as Europe’s
Jews, this was a creative moment: indeed, it was a historical opportunity. For
European Jews, it was a stroke of brilliance. Zionism was going to leverage
Western power in their cause. As the Zionist plan would unfold, inflicting pain
on the Islamic world, evoking Islamic anger against the West and Jews, the
complementarities between the two would deepen. In time, new complementarities
would be discovered – or created – between the two antagonist strains of
Western history. In the United
States, the Zionist movement would give encouragement
to evangelical Protestants – who looked upon the birth of Israel as the
fulfillment of end-time prophecies – and convert them into fanatic partisans of
Zionism. In addition, Western civilization, which had hitherto traced its
central ideas and institutions to Rome
and Athens,
would be repackaged as a Judeo-Christian civilization. This reframing not only
underscores the Jewish roots of the Western world, it also makes a point of
emphasizing that Islam is the outsider, the adversary.
Zionism
owes its success solely to this unlikely partnership. On their own, the
Zionists
could not have gone anywhere. They could not have created Israel by
bribing or coercing the Ottomans into granting them a charter to
colonize Palestine. Despite his
offers of loans, investments, technology and diplomatic expertise,
Theodore
Herzl was repeatedly rebuffed by the Ottoman Sultan. It is even less
likely
that the Zionists could at any time have mobilized a Jewish army in
Europe to invade and occupy Palestine, against Ottoman and Arab
opposition
to the creation of a Jewish state on Islamic lands. The Zionist
partnership
with the West was indispensable for the creation of a Jewish state.
This partnership
was also fateful. It produced a powerful new dialectic, which has
encouraged Israel, both as
the political center of the Jewish Diaspora and the chief outpost of
the West
in the heart of the Islamic world, to become more daring in its designs
against
the Islamic world and beyond. In turn, a wounded and humiliated Islamic
world,
more resentful and determined after every defeat, has been driven to
embrace
increasingly radical ideas and methods to recover its dignity and power
– and
to attain this recovery on the strength of Islamic ideas. This
destabilizing
dialectic has now brought the West itself into a direct confrontation
against
the Islamic world. We are now staring
into the precipice. Yet do we possess the will to pull back from it?
M. Shahid Alam is professor of
economics at a university in Boston, and author of Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on America’s ‘War
Against Islam’ (IPI Publications: 2006). He may be reached at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. © M. Shahid Alam
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written by Art James, November 26, 2006
written by Noga, November 27, 2006
The Zionist project began in the last decades of the Nineteenth century, when the geographical region known as Palestine, (encompassing parts of Lebanon, Syria and the entire Eastern part of the Jordan river, unlike the map presented by Mr. Alam) was under Ottoman Domination.
He also completely ignores (understandably) the creation of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, long before the state of Israel was finally established, according to the UN patition plan (on three small cantons on the Western part of the Jordan river, a fraction of what had originally been promised to the Jews by her Majesty's government). Looks like by the time Jordan was created, the value of Arab Middle East became a great deal more precious for the "the West" than whatever benefits a Jewish democracy might reap for them. They made a clear choice, to support Arab nationalism, at the cost of the Jewish homeland that they were supposed to help create. Hence the several "White papers" imposing immigration bans on Jews-only into the geographical region known as Palestine.
Unlike the grand conspiracy that Mr. Alam's mind brewed, the creation of Israel amounted to a shrug of indifference and helplessness in the face of historical compulsions by the West. Immediately followed by the systematic non-stop attacks on its legitimacy, vialibility and security by its Arab neighbours, assisted by the great propaganda and military machines of the Soviet Union and its allies. Once the Soviets were exctinct, their anti-Israel cause was picked up naturally and easily by the dark forces of the European Left, the Left that I call Indecent, in its betrayal of the high ideals of Sartre and Camus.
Mr. Alam's is a monstrification of Zionist history, one that has very little authenticity or validity in any reliable accounts. A nice little post-colonislist fairy tale, with the West as the evil witch and the Arabs as poor, helplessly manipulated Cinderela. Give me a break. Can't you people read any account with any quantity of salt?
written by Rob Proctor, November 30, 2006
written by Noga, November 30, 2006
written by Noga, December 03, 2006
Iranian president Ahmadinejad to Hamas kindred-spirit PM Ismail Haniyeh : "As everybody knows, the Zionist regime was created to establish dominion of arrogant states over the region and to enable the enemy to penetrate the heart Muslim land."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881801325&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
It appears that both the Proffessor and Ahmadinjad are making the same claim. Could they have been both brought up at the same school of thought? But how so, if the Prof is a teacher at a (presumably) liberal university in Boston, and Ahmadinjad is a product of the mind-shrinking hyper-religious madrassas in the oppressive theocracy of Iran? How come they are both making the same a-historical claims about Zionism? How come the not-so-secret Iranian desires for regional domination express themselves in exactly the same kind of logic of the "enlightened" Rococo Left?
Maybe Ahmadinjad is not really a fanatic megalomaniac ideologue but really a Chomskyan intellectual, speaking "truth" to power?
written by Rob Proctor, December 07, 2006
written by Noga, December 11, 2006
I suspect you just don't like the idea that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. Would you like it better if it defined itself as a Hebrew state? That would minimize the religious aspect in its national identity, and emphasize the shared history, culture, and language of the majority of its inhabitants. Like the French state, or the Norwegian state. Where the national religion and culture is Christian but where other minorities can live with their rights intact.qxnma
written by Edda, December 11, 2006
Alam neglected to detail another aspect of the Zionist State, and that is the lack of commitment on the part of its citizens. Too many have dual citizenship, too many hop a plane and leave when war clouds are on the horizon, too many are there for the economic free ride they receive, and too many are in a hold-over mode waiting to go to someplace better. A people who are committed will love and contribute to their homeland and are willing to die for it. They do not look, as Israel does, for others to do their fighting.
The fact that calls-to-prayer and church bells are ringing in some parts of the Jewish State doesn't offset the fact that thousands of Palestinian prisoners are imprisoned in Israel's concentration camps. I'm sure the nazis didn't turn off the church bells either.
written by Noga, December 11, 2006
For Edda's information, there was always a very sizable Jewish population in pre-Israel Palestine ever since Roman times. In the main cities, like Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem and Zafet, Jews always outnumbered the other Ottoman subjects by a ratio of 5:1, at least. Since the Zionist project began, Jewish residence swelled to 600,000 at least, over a period of over half a century.
Her claim that Jews are not historically, spiritually and culturally rooted in Palestine stinks of historical revisionism, at which point any further engagement with her will be like grinding water. Her solution, as can be sniffed from her knee-jerk reference to the Nazis, is clear. She appears to have learned something about Nazi methods of hate-mondering and genocidal propaganda while depicting themselves as the poor victims of the Jews.
Her frustrations remind me of something I read today:
"Can you please explain to me what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to do with these problems?
-The Palestinian cause is central for Arab thinking.
In the end, is it a matter of feelings of self-esteem?
-Exactly. It's because we always lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West's problem is that it does not understand this."
http://www.worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=395
Unfortunately, as long as people like Edda and the Editor-in-chief continue to believe in their hallucinated mythologies and feed their hatreds, eschewing their own responsibility for their future, no understanding can ever be hoped for between the two peoples. Which is, I suspect, exactly what these two are aiming for.
written by Edda, December 12, 2006
written by Noga, December 12, 2006
Isn't your memory, either short or selective or both, really instrumental in maintaining your hatreds and positions? Are you scared of facts?
"... what you saw here is a very perfect example ..."
how true!