(en) France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie (OCL) - Gaza 2014 or any anti-Zionism? by Sophie Bessis historian Franco-Tunisian (fr)

 [machine translation]

Since Israel "evacuated" Gaza in 2005, the IDF invaded the enclave regularly pretext to 
neutralize the destructive capacity of Hamas. The "protective Border" operation today 
launches its tanks in order to eliminate the rocket launcher, the price of the deaths of 
hundreds of civilians and military parlance called "collateral damage" . As usual, the 
sponsors of the two sides will eventually reach a cease-fire. Until the next explosion. 
Until when? ---- More than ever, this tragic repetition and the inability of Palestinians 
to live as a free people on earth which is forcing them to put the question of 
anti-Zionism. Given the unacceptability of the Israeli occupation, it is easy to place 
themselves under his banner. But it is necessary, in this case, define Zionism the 
individual claims.

Nationalism, not to be confused with national liberation, recognize each other in their 
systematic mythologizing of history.

Is no exception to this rule, the construction of Israel's national novel based on a 
fiction and a sham. The Zionist movement has always affirmed the inalienable right of the 
Jewish people to recover "his" land by maintaining the illusion that "a land without 
people" expected "return" home to a people without land. This lie has long made 
Palestinians invisible to the world. The imposture, she has been to transform the 
immemorial messianic promise of the return of Jews to the Holy Land in exclusive ownership 
of a territory to which the Bible evolved from a holy book than a history textbook, is 
supposed serve cadastre. But Zionism is an ideology born in Europe in the second half of 
the nineteenth century who invented the nation state, and legitimized by the proliferation 
of anti-Jewish persecutions, which had their heyday with monstrous extermination of 
European Jews in the Nazi death camps.

For decades, moreover, theologians and rabbis refused to endorse. They felt that the time 
of return could be determined only by the Lord and saw the sign for the election of the 
Jewish people in the fact that he received the Law from God, rather than the earth, given 
it under conditions. Modern historical construction, Zionism can not therefore be opened 
by itself no legitimacy to the nation-state of Israel that he built at the cost of 
exploitation of religion and a colonial enterprise never meant his name , that is to say, 
the conquest, ethnic cleansing and the denial of rights to those it expelled or subject.

Politically, like any other nationalism, Zionism is on a mission to rule over a community 
of which he declared himself the sole representative. Like any other nationalism, for it 
defines a "living space" which should be banned all who violate its purity. Never Zionist 
leaders before and after the creation of Israel, wanted to appoint clear their state 
borders, convinced that it must encompass the whole of a mythical "Eretz Israel" with 
undefined limits. At best, most realistic agreed that it would one day let something as 
little as possible to achieve peace. But the realists were swept by the same ideology that 
was theirs. On the illegal occupation brutal repression of Palestinian aspirations for 
self-determination, Israel has given the endless war on the horizon.

Finally, centuries of oppression of Jews were being Zionist leaders have taken a kind of 
"right" to impunity for persecution committed in the name of compensation for pain and 
suffering. This posture is not admissible. Therefore Ethics requires Zionism for at least 
two reasons: the Palestinians have the right to live free in their country, and the 
persecution, whatever its initial momentum, does not in any way to become persecutor, it 
frees respect for the right person.

For three reasons, historical, political, ethical, that give meaning to Zionism. The 
continuing deterioration of the situation since the failure of Oslo rallied to him those 
who believed sincerely that Zionism could solve positively the "Jewish question" and who 
now find abuses. This is the case of the Israeli left pacifist who looks terrified his 
company to be seduced by the most radical right. Anti-Zionists and post-Zionists can 
therefore join in a common struggle. A condition was said to know what we are talking about.

Throughout the twentieth century, all nationalisms - worn by an inevitable internal 
dynamics at the point of incandescence, that is to say a term or other of fascism, 
regardless of the name that he give - have led to the death, destruction, religious or 
ethnic cleansing. Each time, men and women stood up to fight identity assignments, racial 
hatred, stigmatization of minorities, and to open other avenues to human adventures. In 
the name of these principles to be anti-Zionist. Not in the name of a competitor 
nationalism. However, the majority of Arab elites and opinions they fight Zionism format 
it by using the same software. They, too, inhabited by the fantasy of purity, which 
generates the exclusion of the other territory, memory, culture. Arab nationalism and the 
process for over a half century in a series of ethno-religious cleansing that excluded 
national communities all that was not Arab-Muslim. This does not exonerate Zionism of his 
misdeeds. This gives neither means nor legitimacy to combat it. For secular parts of Arab 
opinion, Palestine is an Arab country to recover. For their religious segments, a Muslim 
land that must return to the Ummah. Each other and lead a battle against Israel identity, 
in which the interests of actual Palestinians do not weigh much, history has more than 
once shown. The current demonization of every Jew in Zionist archetype has also led the 
majority of Arabs in an intolerable denial of history through the denial of the reality of 
the Nazi genocide and a convenient blindness to the ravages of their own nationalism. 
Besides their unbearable, these postures have helped strengthen the Zionist rhetoric that 
has continued to play on anti-Semitic threat to weld around her Israeli society.

What to do to break the deadlock? On one hand, the Israeli right in power do not want a 
Palestinian, however modest it may be powerless and state. For her, Israel is destined to 
extend from the sea to the Jordan. But the Palestinians never resign themselves to live in 
servitude. On the other, an Israeli company exists, if debatable that are the basis on 
which rested its creation. Finally, the systematic colonization of the West Bank, where 
now lives 10% of the Israeli Jewish population away every day the possibility of the 
partition of historic Palestine into two states. The occupation has produced the paradox 
of establishing apartheid through an inextricable mixture. To the extent that neither the 
Palestinians nor the Israelis are Jews leave the land that is theirs or who has become, so 
this is another form of coexistence that we now consider. So that the dream of an 
egalitarian coexistence might develop into feasible horizon, the Arabs must renounce 
sterile denial of existence of Israeli society. Only a common struggle between the Israeli 
anti-Arab and freed left of the old tribal reflex could help break the cycle. The 
liberating Zionism may be, on both sides, a antinationalism.

Sophie Bessis
historian Franco-Tunisia