The international community is concerned, and rightly so, about the suffering of so many people in the world. But for the idealists, young and old, who call themselves progressives it is the plight of the Palestinians that is especially important.
Barry Werner – The Left, The West and the Occupation
Part I
The international community is concerned, and rightly so, about the suffering of so many people in the world. But for the idealists, young and old, who call themselves progressives it is the plight of the Palestinians that is especially important. However, their idealism is amazingly misdirected and their efforts counter productive because they believe exaggerated inflammatory claims about Israel. They have been led to believe that Israel is a colonial and racist entity that oppresses the innocent, defenseless Arabs. The progressives focus their righteous indignation on Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and partial embargo of Gaza almost to the exclusion of all the horrors going on elsewhere in the Middle East. This essay is an attempt to explain to the progressives, and to the leaders of the Western governments whose actions are influenced by the progressives, that the exaggerated claims they believe about Israel are false.
Let’s start with the very origins of Israel, the supposed original sin of Zionism, the migration of Jews to Palestine who were escaping persecution in European and Arab countries during the Ottoman, British Mandate, and post-British Mandate periods. The Zionists were not colonialists. The colonialists were the Christian Europeans, who pressured the Ottoman Empire to open the Holy Land to Christian settlement in the Mid-19th Century, and they referred to many of their settlements as colonies, but the Jews merely came through the door opened by the Christians. Neither the Ottomans nor the British Mandate rulers of Palestine would have countenanced unfair Jewish domination over the Arabs. In the early years of Zionism, the Jews came into Palestine slowly in what can best be referred to as a peaceful migration.
The very early Zionists didn’t intend to take land that belonged to someone else, there was no Palestinian state at the time. Rather, they thought of Zionism as the Jewish People’s return to their homeland with the understanding that there was plenty of room for Jews and Arabs to live side by side peacefully. They imagined the Arabs would be grateful to the Jews for bringing the benefits of European civilization to them. The right of the Jews to a homeland in Palestine was internationally recognized when the League of Nations established the British Mandate (it was written into the mandate) and when the UN accepted the State of Israel as a member state. The claim that Zionism is an example of Western colonial domination is merely a cynical attempt by rejectionist Arabs to evoke sympathy in the minds of gullible Westerners. The truly amazing thing is that so many well-meaning people believe it.
Zionism was controversial among the Arabs during the Ottoman era, some prominent Arabs welcomed the Jewish immigration because it would bring greater prosperity (the region was becoming prosperous due to the influx of Christian and Jewish Europeans), others objected to the cultural changes the Europeans were introducing. But later, during the British Mandate era the rejectionists prevailed.
There were two different groups of rejectionists, Islamists, who became the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an exclusively Muslim organization, and Arab nationalists, who had both Christian and Muslim Arabs in leadership roles. The Muslim Brotherhood developed mainly in Egypt. Hamas was established as the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Today, Islamism is the dominant ideology among the rejectionists.
Nationalism was the prevailing liberal idea in the Western world at that time and was adopted by many Muslim Arabs as well. Western Protestant missionaries promoted Arab nationalism to raise the status of Arab Christians. The PLO was established as an Arab nationalist organization. Many of the children of the Protestant missionaries, with intimate knowledge of the Arab countries they grew up in, became the “Arabists” who dominated the Middle East, or Near East, sections of foreign ministries of Western countries, and introduced a pro-Arab bias that is still there. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was the most notable proponent of Arab nationalism, but when his attempt to destroy Israel failed disgracefully, the lure of Arab nationalism paled and hope that Islamism would restore Arab honor rose in its place. Matters of honor and dishonor are of major importance in Arab culture.
TO BE CONTINUED
Bio:
I was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, NY and attended an Orthodox yeshiva, but I am a secular Jew today and still have a high regard for Judaism. I enjoy learning about Judaism, Jewish history and history in general.
In yeshiva I learned what it is like to be religious and how to be religious without being a fanatic. I recognize the power and importance of religion in people’s lives and the need to restrain religious fanaticism.
I was born in 1944, when the Nazi Holocaust was in full operation. I grew up when the world was just beginning to comprehend what had happened. When I read about the willing participants to the Holocaust from other European countries, I realized that the Holocaust was not an aberration restricted to Germans, but it represents the depravity that humanity in general is capable of.
I wanted to understand the world as science understands it (which is a rather religious thing to do) so I earned a PhD in Physics at Brandeis University. My PhD thesis was in Astrophysics and my professional career was in Medical Physics. For many years I did research in the fundamentals of Medical Physics and taught Medical Physics in universities.
I made aliyah in 2009.
I am very interested in the Arab/Israeli conflict and especially in the phenomenon of anti-Zionism. I enjoy discussing Israel with left-wingers, right-wingers, Arabs, Europeans, and anyone who is interested in the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Barry Werner – The Left, The West and the Occupation
