There is no more dangerous a myth than the idea that Zionism arose because of Jewish rather than Imperialist designs or that Zionism is a specific Jewish ideology or movement. On the contrary it was colonialism and imperialism that sought to establish a Jewish State in Palestine and until the Nazi holocaust it was Jews who overwhelmingly opposed the movement.
Zionism originated in Christian Zionism, itself a product of Reformation and Enlightenment thinking that saw a Jewish state in the Middle East as being a precondition for the second coming of Christ. Christian Zionism provided the religious justification for imperialism to establish a settler colonial state in the Middle East.
The genocide taking place in Gaza has only occurred because the major imperialist powers, in particular the United States, Britain and Germany, not only approve of what it is doing but are providing the arms and funding to carry out the killing and destruction. Jews provide imperialism with a useful moral alibi for the genocide.
The idea that what Israel does is as a result of Jewish influence or Jewish lobbies is a narrative both of the Zionists and imperialism. Israel is and always has been the attack dog of imperialism.
We therefore reject the idea that Zionism is a ‘Jewish’ ideology or that Zionism controls US imperialism or that the ‘tail wags the dog’. Nor do we accept the idea that a Jewish subset of the ruling class, a ‘pan-national (Jewish) bourgeoisie’ has imposed their views on the non-Jewish bourgeoisie. In the words of Joe Biden, ‘if Israel didn’t exist it would have to be invented’.
Zionism was the adopted policy of the non-Jewish bourgeoisie long before the Jewish bourgeoisie became Zionist. It took the Zionist movement in Britain 22 years after the Balfour Declaration before it captured the Board of Deputies.
We therefore reject the assertion by David Miller that ‘there are no ‘Israeli’ anti-Zionists’ or that ‘It is doubtful whether there are more than a handful of Jewish anti-Zionists anywhere.’ To try and divide the Palestine solidarity and anti-Zionist movement between those who are Jewish and non-Jewish is both reprehensible and divisive and plays into the hands of the Zionists.
Nor do we accept the argument that Jewish groups have no right to express an opinion when they see anti-Semitic arguments being made or when those who proclaim that they are anti-Zionist appear on far-right and neo-Nazi platforms.
Proposed: Tony Greenstein
Seconded: Graham Bash
Background
Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli who dabbled in holocaust denial wrote in his essay Not in my Name that Jewish anti-Zionists are a fifth column
‘who will convert (to Zionism) in the next anti-Semitic wave… who makes Zionism into an eternal struggle for ‘Jewish salvation’….
if we regard Jewish identity as a national definition then … by doing so we accept the notion of Jewish nationalism.‘
In other words, we become devoted Zionists.
These ideas were echoed by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis in his attack on Ken Livingstone when he wrote that ‘One can no more separate it [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’ Mirvis and Atzmon are wrong however.
A lead article in The Times of 17 August 1840, called for a plan ‘to plant the Jewish people in the land of their fathers’ claiming that it was under ‘serious political consideration’ and commending the efforts of Lord Shaftesbury. When Palmerston approached the Board of Deputies in August 1840 to inquire about co-operation in Jewish settlement projects, he got a very frosty response. The only ones who didn’t want to ‘return’ were the Jews themselves! In a resolution passed on 7 November 1842 the Board of Deputies resolved that it
‘is precluded from originating any measure for carrying out the benevolent views of Colonel Churchill respecting the Jews of Syria’.
It was the British ruling class not Jews who welcomed the early Zionist movement. The Balfour Declaration was named after the anti-Semitic Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister, who proposed the Aliens Act 1905, whose purpose was to keep out of Britain Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia.
As Anita Shapira, the ‘Princess of Zionist’ admitted in her book Israel A History:
‘[T]he idea of the Jews returning to their ancient homeland as the first step to world redemption seems to have originated among a specific group of evangelical English Protestants that flourished in England in the 1840s; they passed this notion on to Jewish circles.’
