Israeli People's Most Common Mistakes

By Gilad Atzmon

The most common mistakes made by Israelis are as follows:

1. To fail to realize that there is no essential difference between Tel Aviv and a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

2. To believe that the creation of the state of Israel was an outcome of the Holocaust.

3. To regard themselves as innocent people and thus as victims of the Israeli­Palestinian conflict.

4. To believe that they live in a democracy and therefore that their atrocities are legitimate.

5. To be convinced that they live in an open society which enjoys political and ideological diversity.

6. To believe that the ghetto is behind them.

7. To be convinced that the 'Jewish state' is a legitimate concept.

8. To think that Israel is a shelter for the entire Jewish people and the best answer to anti-Semitism.

9. To regard themselves as humanists.

10. To be sure that Israel is immortal.

Throughout the relatively short history of Jewish nationalism many Jews have
managed to find flaws within Zionist philosophy. Many have detached
themselves from Zionism. Since the declaration of the Israeli state,
numerous Israelis have left Israel and more than a few Jews around the world
have joined forces with the Palestinian liberation movement. Israelis, on
the other hand, are those who still fail to realize that the ten beliefs
above are grave, indeed fatal, mistakes.

One could probably ask whether these essential mistakes are made by Zionists
in particular rather than all Israelis. In response I would argue that
Israeli people are Zionists even though they may only have a very little
knowledge of what Zionism is. Most Israelis were born into a colonial and
racist reality. They are educated to maintain Zionism rather than to
question it. This blind acceptance of one of the most radically chauvinist
worldviews turns the Israelis into an impossible candidate for any form of
peaceful negotiation.

The mistakes in detail

1. To fail to realize that there is no essential difference between Tel
Aviv and a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

Most Israeli people regard the Jewish settlements in the 'occupied
territories' and the settlers as obstacles on the road to peace. Israelis in
general and the so-called 'left' Zionists in particular, from within their
self-centered universe, are utterly convinced that a withdrawal of Israeli
forces to pre-1967 lines would guarantee them peace. The only intelligible
explanation for this common misconception relates to the fact that it was
only after 1967 that Israelis came face to face with the Palestinians who
had been ethnically cleansed in 1948 (who 'suddenly' appeared within the new
expanded occupied territories). Israelis want to believe that what they don
't see doesn't exist. They still refuse to acknowledge that the 'Palestinian
cause' is based on the justified demand to return to one's homeland.

Last week PA Minister Nabil Sha'ath made the following statement concerning
the 'right of return':

"The U.S.-sponsored road map for Middle East peace guarantees the right of
Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel or to lands
conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War." (haaretz.com, 16.8.03)

Let's review some comments made by major Israeli political figures:

"Refugees will never be allowed to return to Israel." (Israeli government
spokesman Avi Pazner, haaretz.com, 17.8.03)

"Any advances in the road map should be dependent on Palestinians giving up
the right of return to lands within Israel." (Israeli Health Minister Dan
Naveh, haaretz.com, 17.8.03)

"[Palestinians] again addressing an issue they will never attain." (Labor
Party Chairman Shimon Peres, haaretz.com, 17.8.03)

"All political parties in Israel are united against a Palestinian right of
return to Israel." (Labor MK Matan Vilnai, haaretz.com, 17.8.03)

"Israel and the Palestinian Authority have a joint interest in finding
solutions for the refugee problem within the borders of a Palestinian state,
and not in Israel." (Meretz MK Ran Cohen, haaretz.com, 17.8.03)

As we can see Israeli politicians have yet to acknowledge what the
Palestinian cause is all about. They still expect Palestinians to give up
their fully legitimate legal rights. In practice they expect the Palestinian
to give up being Palestinian. Wishful thinking I would say ­ the
Palestinians will never give up their right of return. They will never give
up the resistance against Zionist colonialism. Definitely not now, not when
they are winning growing world support. Every Palestinian knows that Zionism
aims to turn the whole of Palestine into a Jewish land. In that sense Tel
Aviv, which is partially located over confiscated Palestinian lands (Yafo,
Abu Kabir, Sheikh Munis etc.), and Elon More, a settlement in the West Bank,
are very much the same. They are Jewish colonies on Palestinian land.

2. To believe that the creation of the state of Israel was an outcome of the
Holocaust.

First, some enlightening quotes:

"A Jew brought up among Germans may assume German custom, German words. He
may be wholly imbued with that German fluid but the nucleus of his spiritual
structure will always remain Jewish, because his blood, his body, his
physical­racial type are Jewish." (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 'A Letter on
Autonomy', 1904. Jabotinsky is the ideological mentor of the Israeli right
wing.)

"I too, like Hitler, believe in the power of the blood idea." (Chaim
Nachman Bialik, The Present Hour, 1934. Bialik is the official Israeli
national poet.)

"Had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist." (Adolf Eichmann,
1955, published in Life magazine in 1960. Eichmann, an SS officer in charge
of the 'Jewish problem', made this remark in reference to his visit to
Palestine in 1937.

Along the years, Israeli people have adopted a bizarre view of their own
Zionist historical narrative. Somehow they have decided that their militant
and nationalistic colonial venture is actually a post-Shoah 'peace-seeking
movement'. In the early days of Israel this manipulative notion was found to
be very effective in generating western support, probably as a result of
feelings of guilt among western people. Since the Lebanese war in 1982
opinion in the west has shifted. More and more people acknowledge that it is
the Palestinians who are actually 'Hitler's last victims'. While the western
world is slowly but surely waking up to the ongoing inhuman Israeli crimes,
Israelis still believe in their fabricated self-image. Israelis are
convinced that the Jewish state was created after the Holocaust to secure a
safe haven for Jews in case of repeated disaster. This misconception is the
direct consequence of the misreading of crucial historical events. Israel is
the fruit of Zionism and the Zionist ideology was well established before
Hitler was born.

Moreover, there is good reason to believe that Hitler developed some of his
anti-Semitic arguments after reading early Zionist texts. From Ber Borochov
he could learn how socially abnormal the Jews were ('The socio-economic
structure of the Jewish people differs radically from that of other nations.
Ours is an anomalous, abnormal structure' Ber Borochov, 1897, published in
Moshe Cohen (ed.), Nationalism and the Class Struggle: A Marxian Approach to
the Jewish Problem, 1937). From Jabotinsky he could learn how crucial blood
purity was. The quotes cited above suggest that Zionism and Nazism are very
similar in spirit (both are nationalistic movements inspired by concepts of
racial purity). One thing, however, is clear: Zionism pre-dates Nazism.

On the other hand, if we decide to go along with the Israeli self-deception
which regards Israel as the outcome of the Holocaust, we should address the
fact that Zionists have always been more than enthusiastic about
anti-Semitism. In Zionist eyes it is anti-Semitism that will push Jews to
their 'homeland'. Accordingly, the Zionists realized from the very beginning
that Nazi Germany presented a great opportunity for Zionism. While before
the war Zionist organizations collaborated with the Nazis transferring
German Jewish wealth to Palestine, during the war, when the scale of the
disaster had already been revealed, very little was done by Zionists around
the world to help their brothers and sisters in Europe. One particular
incident should be mentioned here. Towards the end of World War II Adolf
Eichmann (on behalf of Heinrich Himmler) offered Rezso Kasztner, a Zionist
Hungarian leader, the freedom of up to one million Jews in return for 10,000
trucks. Surprisingly enough, this offer was ignored by the Zionist
organizations that had realized by then that the annihilation of European
Jewry would help generate enough support among the nations for the future
establishment of the Jewish state. Apparently, the Nazi offer was reduced to
a single train and just 600 devoted Zionist Hungarian Jews. Clearly, the
Zionists were interested in saving neither assimilated nor Orthodox Jews.

Sadly enough, we must admit that, at least tactically, the Zionists were
proved right: the liquidation of European Jewry indeed generated great
support for the Zionist cause that led eventually to the establishment of
the Jewish state. Nonetheless, if we do adopt this line of thinking, we must
regard the Zionist leaders as partly responsible for the liquidation of
European Jewry.

3. To regard themselves as innocent people and thus as victims of the
Israeli­Palestinian conflict.

It is hard to believe but Israeli people do regard themselves as innocent
beings. Even those very Israeli people who ethnically cleansed the
Palestinians and terrorized them for decades (such as Peres and Sharon) have
the chutzpah to regard themselves as victims. Even the clear fact that for
more than half a century the Israeli people have been voting in favor of
denying the Palestinians the most basic human rights has never brought
Zionist minds towards some skeptical contemplations. To date there isn't a
single Jewish political body in the Israeli parliament that acknowledges the
Palestinian right of return.

Considering the fact that world Jewry led by the Israeli government is
pretty efficient at raising demands concerning pre-World War II Jewish
interests (in relation to bank accounts or properties in eastern Europe), it
is rather bizarre that Israelis are so successfully ignoring very similar
Palestinian rights. How does it happen that Jews who are so enthusiastic
about Swiss banking injustices are found to be completely deaf and blind to
their own continuous robbery of Palestinian land, assets and dignity? I
have two possible answers to suggest:

a. Israelis and Zionists aren't genuinely concerned about the injustices
done against their people in the past; they are simply motivated by greed,
by political enthusiasm or both.

b. Israelis and Zionists are very unusual creatures that do not follow any
recognized human pattern of empathy, therefore we shouldn't expect them to
feel any sensation of compassion or guilt regarding their own crimes against
gentiles in general and Palestinian people in particular.

It is widely known that thousands of young Israelis travel to Poland every
year to visit different 'Shoah' tourist attractions. These journeys are
sponsored by the Israeli government and many other Jewish organizations. One
would expect that when those cheerful youngsters go on to join the Israeli
army they would apply the moral lesson and feel some genuine compassion
towards their Palestinian neighbors. However, though it becomes clear that
they have learnt a lesson, it is unfortunately the wrong one: when in the
occupied territories they behave very much like the vermacht. No wonder
Israelis invest so much money in these 'educational trips'.

4. To believe that they live in a democracy and therefore that their
atrocities are legitimate.

In spite of the fact that more than half of the population living within
Israeli borders is denied the right to vote, Israelis still regard
themselves as democratic people. Moreover, Israeli people (very much like
many Americans) believe that their 'freedom' of political choice gives them
a mandate to decide the fate of other people. Israelis are sure that their
murderous acts are fully legitimate only because they are 'the only
democracy in the Middle East'. This can be explained with reference to the
Israeli interpretation of the Jewish concept of 'chosen-ness'. While
Orthodox Jews regard being chosen as an ethical and spiritual burden,
Israelis regard their 'chosen-ness' as a form of cosmic gift: a condition
you are born into which makes you superhuman. In a very short time, Israeli
people have developed a system of 'chosen people democracy' which allows
them, the chosen people to dictate their worldview to those who are too weak
(for the time being) to fight back. It is important to mention that Israel
is not alone in having a 'chosen people democracy'. American democracy
follows very much the same line of thinking. Since World War II, American
people have decided for the rest of the world how the latter should
participate in supporting American wealth. No wonder those two 'chosen
people democracies' are so enthusiastic about each other.

5. To be convinced that they live in an open society which enjoys
political and ideological diversity.

"The problem with the [Israeli] left is that they think that being for
peace is a matter of singing a song. I say, if you want to sing a song,
become a singer." (Shimon Peres, the Independent, 4.8.03)

Israeli people tend to believe that they enjoy a politically diverse
society with a real left­right debate. Traditionally, left-wing thinking is
identified with a struggle towards social and legal equality while
right-wing politics is classed as the endeavors of the strong. Funnily
enough, when it comes to Israel such a distinction is not applicable.
Zionism is all about being strong and Jewish. Palestinians (and cheap
foreign labor) are somehow out of the game. The Israeli left doesn't try to
make them equal players and right-wing Zionists don't even allow them in the
pit. In practice, both the Israeli right and left have adopted Jabotinsky's
right-wing 'Iron Wall' philosophy which aims to build a power that 'the
native population cannot break through' (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 'The Iron Wall
', 1923).

I assume the reason that Israelis fail to see that their society lacks any
real debate between right and left is because they fail to differentiate
between an ideological debate and a political one. While in practice there
is no ideological difference between the Likud party and Israeli Labor,
Israeli people still regard their political clash as an ideological debate.
In the UK, by contrast, most people now understand that Tony Blair is a Tory
leader in Labor disguise. British people are far more advanced than the
Israelis in realizing the ideological context of their own political game.
In Israel, only very few people grasp that differences between Peres and
Sharon are nothing but marginal. If this were not enough, even the left-wing
Israeli organizations such as Peace Now, Women in Black and Gush Shalom, who
fight courageously for Palestinian rights, support the unacceptable 'two
states solution'. Thinking about those 'Israeli left' movements in
categorical terms reveals the devastating fact that their political agenda
is not at all ideologically far from Sharon's. As sad as it is to admit,
there is no such thing as an 'Israeli left'.

6. To believe that the ghetto is behind them.

Nationalistic Jewish aspirations started to appear in the late nineteenth
century following the emancipation of European Jews. Zionist ideologists
followed the growing wave of European nationalism. Early Zionists regarded
the possibility of Jewish assimilation as a grave threat to Jewish
existence. Many of those thinkers also agreed that Jewish people suffered
from severe social malfunctioning, referring to traditional Jewish
occupations as non-productive. The Zionist assumption at the time was that
this form of unhealthy social condition was a result of living in a ghetto
in a foreign land for too long. Zionism was regarded as a remedy for the
many different 'traditional Jewish sicknesses'. It aimed to create a new
Jew: a secular, civilized and productive man that lives and cultivates his
own land while communicating in his own language (Hebrew), very much the
opposite of the eastern European ghetto character. This experiment proved to
be very short-lived. In practice, that 'new Jew' has never been created.
Zionism has never been a secular movement. While secularity is an
alternative philosophy to religion, when it comes to Zionism and Jewish
secularity, Zionism rejects some Jewish rituals only to then adopt new ones.
>From the very beginning Zionism adopted many biblical and mystical heroic
Jewish symbols, mostly suicidal ones (the stories of Massada, a tale of
collective kamikaze, and Samson, the first Jewish suicide bomber, are
typical examples). Moreover, the decision to resurrect the Jewish state in
Palestine related directly to the biblical promise. Although in the
beginning it looked as if a real effort to establish a Hebraic civilization
was being made, every visitor to Israel nowadays would agree that most
Hebraic cultural aspects are vanishing from the collapsing Israeli culture.
Even the Hebrew is getting minced by the day. Needless to say, soon after
their arrival, the Zionists found that it was far easier to use Palestinian
labor than to get burned themselves in the open Mediterranean fields. In
retrospect, it would be hard to point out any major cultural Hebraic rebirth
except of some barbarian habits that naturally developed during many decades
of sadistic oppression. A consideration of the wide and impressive
contribution made by Jewish people to world culture will reveal that very
little has ever come from the Jewish state. This is not particularly
surprising. As we know, very little cultural contribution came out of the
Jewish ghetto. When we think of great Jewish thinkers and artists we find
that all of them are emancipated Jews who preferred assimilation to Zionism
or Orthodoxy. Sharon's remarkable 'Defense Wall' is there to explain why
Israel has never been culturally productive. In practice, the Zionists have
never left the ghetto; they just moved it from eastern Europe to Palestine.
The concept of segregation is probably inherent to Zionist existence.

7. To be convinced that the 'Jewish state' is a legitimate concept.

This mistake results from misreading the twentieth-century cultural shift.
When Zionism was born it was more than a legitimate ideological philosophy.
It was part of the nineteenth-century European nationalistic movement and
developed at a time when hatred of the Other was more than common within
European intellectual and political discourse. Revisionist Zionists led by
Vladimir Jabotinsky openly praised Italian fascism and regarded Mussolini as
their ideological mentor. Further, Jabotinsky adopted the idea of racial
purity many years before Hitler even mentioned it. At the time, Zionism wasn
't the only philosophy to push for a nationalistic state based on racial
purity. After World War II and the fall of Nazism, however, things changed.
The idea of a state based on racial purity was no longer legitimate. Even
the new American form of fascism is multiracial. As a matter of fact Israel
is the only remaining example of a nationalistic state based on racial
purity. The Jewish state isn't a legitimate concept anymore.

8. To think that Israel is a shelter for the entire Jewish people and the
best answer to anti-Semitism.

It was recently revealed by Mrs Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Minister of
Immigration, that Jewish immigration to Israel has stopped completely. In
other words, she admitted that Israel is not the most attractive place for
Jewish people to come to live in. Not long ago I heard a presentation by a
Palestinian spokesman here in the UK. The spokesman was asked whether he
could justify Palestinian suicidal acts against Israeli civilians. Saving
himself from the over complicated moral aspects of this much repeated
question, the spokesman restricted himself to the pragmatic aspects of the
different forms of Palestinian struggle. His argument was very simple: 'If
Israel is the state of the Jewish people, it is Palestinian terror that
should make this state into a very unattractive place for Jewish people to
live in.' There is no doubt that suicidal attacks are found to be very
effective in achieving such an aim. Tzipi Livni's words confirmed that
Palestinian terror is defeating the Zionist venture. But the failure of
Zionism is far more dramatic. Not only has Israel not stopped anti-Semitism,
if anything, the devastating inhuman crimes that are daily committed by
Israel 'in the name of the Jewish people' make anti-Semitism into a
legitimate philosophy. No doubt the next Jewish disaster is going to be a
reaction to Zionism.

(It is important to note again that Zionism is consciously enthusiastic
about anti-Semitism. Here we face a vicious circle initiated by the
Zionists: Israel deliberately commits inhuman crimes in order to initiate
anti-Semitic acts that will supposedly lead Jews towards the realization
that Zionism is the one and only solution for the 'Jewish problem'.)

9. To regard themselves as humanists.

No, this isn't a joke. In spite of the pain that they inflict on their
neighbors, Israeli people still regard themselves as humanists. Moreover, it
seems as if the humanist image is very important to the Israeli people. You
will find Israeli rescue teams and medical emergency crews in every disaster
location around the globe. For some reason, however, you never find those
Israeli humanist knights in Gaza or Jenin.

I would assume that the Israeli humanist disguise has something to do with
the universal Marxist legacy partially adopted by the early 'left' Zionists.
That said, we must remember that there is nothing in the Zionist philosophy
to echo any universal moral code of behavior. Zionism is all about Jews. It
was invented by Jews and can only be applied to Jews. The call for the
unification of world proletarianism that appeared for years on some left
Zionist papers was a pretentious call with very little behind it. Furthermor
e, the left-wing parties that were calling for international cosmopolitanism
were in practice very active in the robbery of the indigenous Palestinians.
The vast majority of Israeli Kibbutzim are located on confiscated
Palestinian lands. The robbing of the Palestinian lands stands at the very
core of all Zionist philosophies. I believe that the denial of the most
basic human rights by the Israeli people can be explained by their
self-perception as a chosen race. Why should Palestine belong to the Jews
who left it two millennia ago and not to the Palestinians who have been
living there since time begun? Probably because Jews are chosen and their
biblical text is superior to any other text (including legal documents).
How can you be chosen and a humanist at the same time? This is a major
question that should be addressed to Israelis. It would appear that in the
new Jewmerica dominated world, you are entitled to regard yourself as a
humanist as long as you have enough nuclear weapons at your disposal to
support your self-image.

10. To be sure that Israel is immortal.

As a matter of fact, Israel is pretty much a dead entity already. It is
going through a rapid process of disintegration into isolated sectors that
share no common collective aim. Sooner rather than later the currently
rejected Israeli sectors will understand that they have far more in common
with the Palestinian people than with the Zionist zealots. The so-called
'left' Zionists will realize that they have more in common with Nabil Sha'
ath and Saib Arikat than with any Likud Party members. The Orthodox Jews
will realize that they have far more in common with Islamic fundamentalism
than with the so-called Israeli secular liberal front. The new Russian
immigrants haven't even tried to integrate into the Hebraic society which
they regard as inferior. The Ethiopian Jews, who are not even allowed to
donate blood, and the many oppressed foreign cheap laborers will soon
realize that Zionist supremacy is their biggest enemy. The days of the
Zionists are numbered. There is no need for a war. Let them destroy
themselves in 'peace'. Within the new self-imposed ghetto walls they
surround themselves with they do not have any other option.

Where does this leave us?

It seems as if any form of communication with Israelis is pretty much
impossible unless one decides to engage with Israeli self-deception. Since
it is clear that the Israelis are pretty good at self-destruction, we need
only help them by serving as a catalyst. A gradual scheme of bans and
boycotts would do the job. We must start with cultural boycotts and market
boycotts. We must make sure that Zionist and Israeli war criminals are
arrested as soon as they land on the free world's soil (assuming of course
that there is such a thing). If these don't provide the goods we must move
forwards and ban Israelis from traveling to Europe unless they state their
complete rejection of Zionism. Those many enlightened states who are brave
enough to ban anti-Semitism, neo-Nazi propaganda and any other form of
racist activity should immediately consider adding Zionist activity to their
list of prohibited activities.

It won't take too long. Facing a moment of truth, many Israelis will be
happy to leave Zionism behind and rejoin the human family.