Knoxville News-Sentinel · Knoxville, Tennessee · 19 November 1975

CP-1975-003

Palestinians Called Victims of Zionism

Jim Harb, 2301 Laurel Ave

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Transcribed from the clipping

“EDITOR, The News-Sentinel: The editorial ‘The UN Against Israel’ printed Nov. 12 in which you refer to ‘the vicious and unfair move by the United Nations General Assembly in calling Zionism a form of racism,’ while emotionally strong in its thrust, was rationally weak in its analysis of the situation.

Zionism is an international political movement intended to ingather the Jews of the world into Palestine to create a national home for the Jewish people. It is differentiated from Judaism, a monotheistic religion of universalist values.

Since there are Jews who are not Zionists and Zionists who are not Jews, it is essential to keep in mind the distinction between Zionism and Judaism.

The aim of the Zionist movement, as formulated by the First Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897, was stated thusly: ‘Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.’

The congress went on to state that Zionism would be achieved by ‘the promotion on suitable lines of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers’ (‘Zionism,’ Leonard Stein, p. 62).

At this time, when plans were being formulated for colonization of Palestine by world Jewry, the Jewish population of Palestine was less than 2 per cent of the total population of Palestine, while the Christian and Moslem population constituted the remaining 97 per cent of the population.

It is then that Theodore Herzl, known as the father of modern Zionism and the first president of the World Zionist Organization, wrote ‘The Jewish State.’ This book, first published in 1896, was an important foundation of the Zionist movement.

Herzl went on to write about the Palestinian population: ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country’ (Complete Diaries, Vol. I, p. 88).

In 1948, the Zionists proclaimed the State of Israel, and it was forceably defended in the war of 1948-1949. At this time over 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees. They were not allowed to return to their homes and villages.

During this war, Yigal Allon, then commander of the Palmach, the underground Zionist army, and later to become Israeli foreign minister, talked about the Palestinians in the Galilee area of Palestine.

Said Allen, ‘We saw a need to cleanse the Inner Galilee and to create a Jewish territorial succession in the entire area of the upper Galilee’ (‘Palestine Is The Issue,’ Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1975). During the war of 1948-1949, a well-known incident occurred at the Palestinian village of Deir Yasin.

As reported by the International Red Cross, 254 Palestinian men, women and children were killed by members of the Irgun and the Stern Group, two Zionist military units.

Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, commented on the incident: ‘The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yasin’ (‘The Revolt: Story of the Irgun,’ Menachem Begin, 1951).

After the State of Israel had been created and after the 1967 war, which saw more Palestinian land occupied and more Palestinians made refugees, Moshe Dayan, defense minister of Israel, said that the Palestinian refugees created by the 1967 war could be taken back by Israel, but that Israel would not do so because Israel would become ‘either a binational or poly Arab/Jewish state and we want to have a Jewish state.

We can absorb them, but then it won’t be the same country’ (‘New York Review of Books,’ Aug. 3, 1967, p. 3, I. F. Stone).

And commenting on the fact that the Palestinians had lived in Palestine long before the Zionists/Israelis, Moshe Dayan later told a group of students at the Haifa Technion that ‘there is not a single Jewish village in this country that has not been built on the site of an old Arab village. The village of Nahalal took the place of the Arab village of Mahloul. . . .

Gifat took the place of Jifta. . .’ (‘The Guardian,’ Nov. 14, 1973, p. 16). These examples reflect Zionism and the goals and objectives that Zionists have historically pursued, particularly as those goals and objectives related to the Palestinians.

But even more revealing is a quote by Golda Meir, then prime minister of Israel, which reflects the Zionist mentality toward the Palestinians as a people. Mrs. Meir said ‘There was no such thing as Palestinians . . .

It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist’ (Sunday Times, London, June 15, 1969).

Obviously the Zionists would not consider themselves racists, for if the Palestinians as a people do not exist, then there is no one to be racist toward. The world, however, knows different. We know the Palestinians exist. We know that they have lived in the land of Palestine for centuries, held together by a strong and lasting culture.

What we must now decide is whether this political movement of Zionism is in fact racist in nature toward the Palestinian people. Herzl’s fundamental proposition was that the only security for the Jews, and the only cure to anti-Jewishness, was to ingather all Jews into the Jewish state. That is why the Zionists want an exclusively Jewish state.

That is why Israel will not let the Palestinians return to their homeland. That is Zionism. What is wonderful about the Zionists of Israel is that they fought back against tyranny and oppression and anti-Jewishness throughout the world. They seized their own destiny and became masters of their own fate.

What is terrible about the Zionists is that the creation of the State of Israel occurred at the expense of the Palestinian people.”

Context added by this archive

A reader answering the paper’s editorial, at the length of a column, with a page citation after every quotation. The paper printed it whole.

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