Noam Chomsky tweeted on May 25, 2021, “The tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story – hard to understand and even harder to solve.” In an interview, he exhorted, “As long as the United States supports Israel, nothing is going to happen. The US government will support it as long as the US population tolerates it.”
I, for one, do not believe that a state should take a religious identity. In all religions, an impartial rule of law can comply with individual dictates of conscience. Universal values and principles uphold freedom and dignity for all people. Regardless of a region’s religious identity, a state can establish universal principles that uphold freedom and dignity for all people.
There are more than fifty Muslim-majority countries. Many of these countries have taken a religious identity, but in reality they are often controlled through small groups of people who ruthlessly came to power. They often stay in power by taking advantage of popular sentiments and misconceptions, such as religious idiosyncrasies. None of these countries are solid examples of good governance. Most of them are corrupt and dysfunctional, and most of them violate all fundamental principles of the Quran.
Similarly, cult personalities like Narendra Modi of India and Donald Trump of the United States invoke dark forces in the human mind. They vilify and hate the ‘other,’ polarizing societies to extreme degrees in order to keep their parties in power. As we can see, dysfunction occurs in Muslim and non-Muslim societies alike.
Dysfunction also occurs in states with other religious identities, such as Christian or Jewish identities. In 1953, Alfred Lilienthal – a Jewish American thinker himself – warned the world about the risks that Zionism posed to the American public. He foresaw that Israel would exert a tremendous disservice on Jews and Judaism – not to mention the United States, the main global power that nurtured Israel from decade to decade. In his 1982 book, What Price Peace?, Lilienthal agonizingly declared that Israelis had violated nearly all fundamental teachings of the Jewish religion.
Zionists fabricated justification for a Jewish state in Palestine, exploiting the persecution of Jews that existed from the late nineteenth century all the way to the Holocaust under Nazi rule,. Even as early as 1896, it was stated in Zionist circles that ‘Palestine must be evacuated for the Jews.’ In order to create this state, Palestinians would need to be expelled from their homes. Words were carefully calibrated, using phrases such as ‘removal’ or ‘transfer’ to put a prettier face on Palestine’s ethnic cleansing.
Great Britain, at the time a mighty colonial power, needed assistance with financing the First World War. In return for their assistance, Zionist elites received the Belfour Declaration, a letter from the British foreign secretary that effectively created a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Under the banner of a settler colonial agenda, Zionists demanded a land that had been home to indigenous Palestinians for centuries.
Subsequently, Zionists demanded attrition of the native population. A marathon scheme insidiously drove Palestinians out of the job market. Many immigrant Jews were initially reluctant to participate in unethical actions, as they had received benevolence and cooperation from Arab Palestinians when they first arrived from Europe. Arabs showed them how to farm the land, and they often shared their businesses and workplaces. But Zionist leaders threatened and punished Jews who refused to cooperate in their agenda. In 1920 the Zionist Haganah militia group was created, terrorizing Arabs. After the British Mandate occurred in the 1920s, violence only increased as a heavy flow of immigrants poured into Palestine.
In 1928, Palestinian leaders accepted equal representation with Jews in a democratic secular state. Jews at that time represented only 16% of the total population. Palestinians expected more Jewish immigrants from Europe under full protection of the British Mandate, and they thought that a power-sharing arrangement would help to resolve conflicts and establish peace. However, this proposal was rejected by Zionist leadership, even though it was enormously favorable to Jews. This betrayal revealed their true intentions to colonize Palestine. Palestinians soon realized what was at stake. Rebellion broke out, leading to a violent clash between Arab Palestinians and Zionist militia groups in 1929.
Using this incident, Zionists began a relentless propaganda campaign in the West that Palestinian Arabs were fundamentally belligerent, uncouth, and anti-democratic, with inherent hatred towards Jews. This propaganda is still regularly employed in our present time to justify actions against Palestine. For those who don’t buy into the propaganda, much is at stake. Anti-semitism charges are regualrly brought against politicians who oppose traditional Zionist talking points. Character and career assassination regularly affects the lives of Western academics and thinkers who dare to challenge Israel.
Since Partition Resolution 181 in 1947, Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ has transpired as planned. Much of original Palestine has been demolished. Immediately after the resolution, half of the Palestinian population – 750,000 people – were driven out to become refugees in neighboring countries. Most still live as refugees today. Through strategically planned conflict, Israel since the 1967 War has now grown to occupy the near-entirety of Palestin. Today, horrifying conditions exist in the Gaza Strip, a tiny 25 mile x 4.5 mile region where 2.1 million UN-declared refugees live under brutal blockade.
Israel seems to take every opportunity to provoke conflict, mercilessly and indiscriminately bombing one of the most populated places on earth. Children are killed, hospitals and schools are bombed, and vital infrastructure such as electricity or sewage systems remain perpetually inoperative. 97% of water is contaminated and unusable. As Bernie Sanders recently testified in the Senate, cities like Gaza are simply ‘unlivable.’ The senator, however, should know that Israel’s state planners have planned this for a long time.
Almost all experts – Jewish or non-Jewish – believe that a two-state solution is dead and gone. One state is the only option. Currently, Israel wants one state with a repressive apartheid system for Palestinians. The civilized world wants one democratic state with equal rights for all. Author Ilan Pappe succinctly explains that the proper solution is to ‘decolonize’ the Israel-Palestine state. Until Israel is decolonized, the world will remain directly and indirectly affected by Zionism’s legacy.
If peace and reconciliation could take place in places like South Africa, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and post-Nazi Germany, then it can take place in Israel-Palestine. It will be difficult, but it is certainly achievable. As time goes on, Israel will carry out more and more ruthless actions which will lead to blowback around the world. So we must keep up the collective will for change around the world – especially in America, given Israel’s grip on the United States government. As articulated by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, the hope lies on groups such as the American public – because the Israeli public currently remains hopeless.
