Article Image

IPFS News Link • Israel - Palestine

The Dark Inevitability of Zionism

• https://consortiumnews.com, By Lawrence Davidson

We know where Zionism has taken Israel. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 led the way. In that imperial and colonial document, the British promised the World Zionist Organization a "Jewish National Home" in Palestine. They did so, as Edward Said put it, in "flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority residents in that territory."

Right from the start the Zionists understood "national home" to mean an eventual Jewish state. Actualizing that assumption has had enormous implications not only for the Palestinians but also for the Jews. And, as it turns out, for the rest of us as well.

You cannot introduce one people, in this case a large number of Europeans who happen to be Jewish, into a territory populated by hundreds of thousands of non-Europeans, without negative consequences. And, if the incoming Europeans have the goal of creating a state exclusively for their group alone, those consequences are going to be dire indeed. Surrounded by "the other," the only way you can achieve your exclusive state is through discriminatory practices and laws ultimately producing an apartheid nation. And that is what happened.


AzureStandard