http://www.wrmea.com/archives/november01/0111026.html
"If It Walks Like a Duck ... ": The Racism of Zionism
By Donald Neff
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 11/26/2001
You don't need to see racism to recognize it. Unlike porngraphy, which
often is in the eye of the beholder, racism in nations is
self-evident. It comes in the form of a constitution, the laws that a
nation adopts and the behavior of its citizens toward minorites. Yet
the United States failed to recognize racism when the American
delegation walked out of the recent U.N. World Conference Against
Racism in sympathy with Israel. Significantly, it was the only country
in the world to do so.
What is it that the rest of the world sees when it looks at Israel
that Washington doesn't? Other nations note that Israel has no
constitution. But it has a body of what are called "Basic Laws" that
serve the purpose of a constitution. Among these laws are a number of
statutes that enshrine exclusive rights for Jews above all other
religions and peoples living in the state.
One such law is the Right of Return, granting any Jew-but no one
else-automatic Israeli citizenship. It was passed in 1950 by the
Knesset, Israel's parliament, in which there are few non-Jews beyond
token members of minor minorities.
In the words of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion: "This
is not only a Jewish state, where the majority of the inhabitants are
Jews, but a state for all Jews, wherever they are, and for every Jew
who wants to be here....This right is inherent in being a Jew."1
Another of the Basic Laws is one defining Israel citizenship, passed
by the Knesset in 1952. It is the Law of Citizenship, sometimes called
the Nationality Law. It set citizenship rules so stringently against
non-Jews that many Palestinian residents of Israel (stuck there when
Israel captured their land in 1948) were denied citizenship even
though their families had lived in Palestine for many generations.
In fact, the law was so restrictive against granting citizenship to
goyim-a Hebrew term to define all non-Jews-that it caused concern
among some Jewish communities outside of Israel. Irving M. Engel,
president of the American Jewish Committee, later met with Ben-Gurion
and urged him to have the law changed. Engel said he was embarrassed
by the restrictive nature of the law, since his organization had
crusaded throughout the world for equal treatment of Jews. Now, he
added, when Jews got their own their country they were discriminating
against non-Jews. Ben-Gurion rejected any changes to the Nationality
Law.2
In the same year, 1952, the Knesset passed the World Zionist
Organization-Jewish Agency (Status) Law, which legalized special
economic, political and social benefits for Israeli Jews. It gave
exclusive rights not to all citizens of Israel but to Israelis of
"Jewish nationality," including the right to purchase land. Jewish
institutions such as the Jewish National Fund were prohibited by law
to sell the land they owned in Israel-some 97 percent-to non-Jews and
were enjoined to hold all land "for the whole Jewish people."
Israel is a democracy for Jews only.
Racism has many other manifestations in Israel beyond official
statutes. Most notable of these prejudicial practices is the ban
against Palestinians serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Even though
Palestinians make up nearly 20 percent of Israel's population-a larger
minority than blacks in America-they are left in the paradoxical
position of being denied the basic duty of protecting what is
supposedly their country.
Palestinians never gain entry to the higher levels of the Israeli
government. There has never been a Palestinian cabinet minister, much
less a prime minister or a minister of foreign affairs. Their cities
and towns receive nowhere near the financial aid from the central
government that their Jewish counterparts receive, nor do their
educational and health systems. Needless to say, the quality of life
of the average Palestinian citizen of Israel is far lower than that of
Jewish "nationals."
By any definition of racism, Israel qualifies. Its laws and practices
define it as exclusionary and for Jews only. While Israel most
certainly is a democracy, it is a democracy for Jews only. Goyim are
not welcome or accepted as equals.
Palestinians are at best second-class citizens, casualties of a bloody
history that left them stranded inside what became Israel. In fact,
all non-Jews, whether Palestinians or American Christians, are
discouraged from living in Israel. Marriage between a Jew and a
non-Jew cannot be performed there. Nor is religious tolerance exactly
a hallmark of Israel's democracy. From time to time Israel's Knesset
has passed laws against proselytizing by Christians, decreeing prison
terms for both the converted and the conveter.
Given this reality, it was hypocritical in the extreme for the U.S. to
thumb its nose at the World Conference Against Racism. Surely this
country, as one of the world's few true democracies, has a duty to
stand up against racism wherever it sees it. Instead it brusquely quit
the conference in September as a show of solidarity with Israel's
walkout.
Israeli Apartheid
Secretary of State Colin Powell specifically cited as one of the
reasons for the U.S. action the charge by some non-Jewish delegates
that "apartheid exists in Israel."3 How could they say otherwise?
Anyone who has ever visited Israel knows that apartheid is alive and
well in the Jewish state. What else is the cruel Israeli military
occupation and isolation of three million Palestinians-complete with
travel permits, checkpoints, "whites-only" neighborhoods and other
former trademarks of South Africa?
Powell also complained that delegates regarded "Zionism as racism."4
But, by its own definition, Zionism is racist. How could it be
otherwise? Zionism is specifically for Jews, excluding all others, so
by its very nature it is racist. What else could it mean when Jews
proudly proclaim Israel is a Jewish state? They mean goyim are not
wanted.
What could Secretary of State Powell have been thinking when he
uttered these absurd justifications for leaving the conference? Surely
it wasn't reality. His charge that Israel was being unfairly
discriminated against lost any trace of credibility when not one of
the other 163 nations in the world followed Washington's lead, not
even such traditional allies as Britain or France.
In fact, after the United States and Israel quit the conference the
remaining delegates-i.e., the rest of the world-went on formally to
express their concern about the "plight of the Palestinians under
foreign occupation." Israel and the United States were left standing
alone, in shame.
In the end Powell and his boss, President George W. Bush, sacrificed
an important international conference to pander to Zionists and their
powerful American political lobby. In the process they besmirched
their own reputations and that of their nation.
Footnotes:
1- Sachar, Howard, A History of Israel, p. 383.
2- New York Times, 6/24/57.
3- Colin Powell, State Department release, 9/3/01.
4- Ibid.
Donald Neff is the author of the Warriors trilogy and 50 Years of
Israel, available from the AET Book Club, and of Fallen Pillars.
