- This article responds to a March 15 Los Angeles Times
Judea Pearl one headlined: "Is anti-Zionism hate?" Pearl teaches
computer science at UCLA, is the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl,
and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. It was "formed....to
continue Danny's mission and to address the root causes of this tragedy
in the spirit" of the man it represents, including "uncompromised
objectivity and integrity....and respect for people of all cultures...."
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- Some of its honorary board member belie this purpose:
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- -- former president Bill Clinton, an unindicted war criminal
and backer of neoliberal plunder;
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- -- Elie Wiesel, a shameless self-promoter, "Holocaust"
exploiter, and apologist for the most outrageous Israeli crimes;
- -- Jordan's Queen Noor, wife of King Abdullah II, who,
like his father Hussein, rules with dictatorial police state powers; and
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- -- Christiane Amanpour and Ted Koppel, two notables in
the corporate media who never let facts conflict with their views and support
for the powerful.
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- Pearl calls anti-Zionism "hate more dangerous than
anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East." Zionism
is precisely the opposite as numerous Jewish writers, including this one,
have addressed.
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- In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel
explained how it fosters "imperialist expansion and militarism (with)
signs of the fascist malignancy;" that it turned Israel "into
a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses" led by terrorists
posing as democrats. Kovel's book and his work got him fired from the Bard
College faculty effective July 1 when his current contract expires - for
daring to criticize Israel, its Zionist ideology, state-sponsored terror,
and decades of lawlessness and egregious behavior.
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- Kovel expressed outrage that institutions like Bard aren't
bothered; that they grant Israel impunity, suppress dissent, then marginalize,
punish, and remove the "heretics," ones like Kovel who honorably
and courageously write truths.
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- Pearl railed about a UCLA Center for Near East Studies
symposium invitation to "four longtime Israel bashers" so they
could attack Zionism's legitimacy and "its vision of a two-state solution...."
- a scheme to consign Palestinians to isolated cantons and steal their
most valuable land.
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- He equates legitimate Israeli criticism and anti-Zionism
with "criminaliz(ing) Israel's existence, distort(ing) its motives
and malign(ing) its character, its birth, even its conception." He
cites "Jewish leaders (condemning) this hate-fest as a dangerous invitation
to anti-Semitic hysteria" even though one has nothing to do with the
other and conflating them masks the real issue - Zionism's corrosive effects
and the myths on which it's based.
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- Ones Pearl ignores in stating "Anti-Zionism rejects
the very notion that Jews are a nation - a collective bonded by a common
history - and, accordingly denies Jews the right to self-determination
in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish
nation-state: Israel, (what it) 'grants' to other historically bonded collectives
(e.g. French, Spanish, Palestinians), the right to nationhood...."
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- Pearl can't accept the hard facts that Tel Aviv University
Professor Shlomo Zand documented in his important 2008 book: "When
and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" It exposes biblical nonsense
comprising core Zionist beliefs about Jews:
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- -- that ancient Romans expelled them;
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- -- their exodus from Egypt, then left to wander the earth
rootless;
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- -- enslaved, oppressed, and tormented for centuries;
and
- -- the myth that God bestowed a "Greater Israel"
for Jews alone - "A land without people for a people without land."
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- According to Israeli journalist Tom Segev and others:
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- -- there never was a Jewish people, just a Jewish religion;
- -- there was no exile, therefore no return, and much
of the Jewish Diaspora was voluntary; and
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- -- the story was a Zionist invention, a conspiracy to
justify a future Jewish state, and now vilify Palestinian self-determination
as a plot to destroy it.
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- With regard to other "bonded collectives,"
France, Spain, America and other states are nationalities, not religions.
Israel is a Jewish state with rights for Jews alone. They matter. Others
don't, and therein lies the difference. Palestinians, in contrast, are
occupied, impoverished, oppressed, driven from their land, vilified for
being Muslims, and victimized by slow-motion genocide to destroy them and
any hope for self-determination.
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- "Are Jews a nation," asks Pearl? "Some
philosophers would argue Jews are a nation first and religion second."
He cites the usual mythology:
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- -- the Exodus and return to the "promised land before
they received the Torah at Mt. Sinai;"
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- -- "the unshaken conviction in their eventual repatriation
to (their) birthplace (since) the Roman expulsion;" and
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- -- their "shared history, not religion (as) the
primary uniting force behind the secular, multiethnic society of Israel"
- favoring Jews alone in a quasi secular/religious state where practicing
another one is dangerous.
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- The "Jewish identity today feed(s) on Jewish history
(more precisely folklore and myths) and its natural derivatives -
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- -- the state of Israel" despite its illegitimate
birth and mythological roots;
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- -- "its struggle for survival" in spite of
being the world's fourth most powerful military, nuclear-armed; with no
enemies except the ones it makes; and having a history of aggressive wars;
violence over conciliation; confrontation, not diplomacy; and claiming
self-defense as justification when there is none;
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- -- "its cultural and scientific achievements,"
much of the latter involving militarism and hard line security; and
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- -- "its relentless drive for peace."
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- Pearl like most others can't accept the fact that Israel
disdains peace, thrives on violence, and needs it as justification. The
very notion of peace and conflict resolution terrifies it. What prime minister
Yitzhak Shamir once admitted about Israel's 1982 Lebanon war - that there
was "terrible danger....not so much a military one as a political
one" so a pretext was invented to attack when no threat or justification
existed.
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- It took 18,000 lives and left South Lebanon occupied
until Israel Defense Forces withdrew in May 2000, except for the 25 square
km Shebaa Farms area illegally retained to this day.
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- Yet Pearl insists that "anti-Zionism targets the
most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the Jewish population
of Israel, whose physical safety and personal dignity depend crucially
on maintaining Israel's sovereignty. Put bluntly, the anti-Zionist 'plan'
to do away with Israel condemns 5.5 million human beings, mostly refugees
or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal
designs are not uncommon."
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- He adds that "anti-Zionist rhetoric (shows) academic
sophistication and social acceptance in certain extreme yet vocal circles.
(It's also) a stab in the back to the Israeli peace camp (and) gives credence
(to) the hidden agenda of every Palestinian (for) the eventual elimination
of Israel."
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- Now some facts misrepresented, distorted, or unstated
by Pearl and other like-minded apologists:
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- -- There never was nor is there now an "Israeli
peace camp," as explained above.
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- -- Israel's sovereignty isn't the issue. It exists, is
accepted, and anti-Zionists don't dispute it. Further, since at least the
late 1980s, Palestinian leaders (including Arafat and Hamas) have been
willing to extend recognition. But Israel rejects all peace and reconciliation
overtures, yet the dominant media and Zionists won't mention it.
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- -- Palestinians and other Arabs don't target Israel and
haven't since the 1973 war. However, they justifiably defend themselves
when attacked as international law allows.
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- -- Anti-Zionists, like this writer, have no plan or desire
to destroy Israel, harm its people, or render them defenseless. Demanded,
however, is that Israel behave, act civilized, practice the democracy it
preaches, observe international and its own laws, and be held fully accountable
when it doesn't, including its leaders for their crimes of war and against
humanity to deter future ones from committing similar violations.
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- -- Israel alone menaces Palestinians and other regional
states, including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Those nations, nor any others,
threaten Israel, yet again media and Zionist propaganda say otherwise.
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- -- Zionist ideology is extremist, undemocratic, and hateful.
It claims Jewish supremacy, specialness, and uniqueness - God's "chosen
people." It harms Jews and non-Jews alike. Former Israeli scholar,
critic, and life-long human rights activist, Israel Shahak (1933 - 2001),
explained the dangers of Jewish chauvinism, religious fanaticism, and its
influence on America's polity.
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- He called the notion of self-hating Jews "nonsensical"
and explained the definition of a Jew:
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- ...."if either their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother
(or) great-great-grandmother were Jewesses by religion; or if the person
(converted) to Judaism in a way satisfactory to the Israeli authorities,
and on condition that the person has not converted from Judaism to another
religion." According to the Talmud and post-Talmudic rabbinic law,
"conversion (must be) performed by authorized rabbis in a proper manner."
For females, it entails an outlandish ritual - "their inspection by
three rabbis while naked in a 'bath of purification' " to confirm
it.
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- Shahak wrote extensively on how Israel discriminates
in favor of Jews in most every aspect of life, including the three he called
most important - "residency rights, the right to work (and to have)
equality before the law."
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- Zionist ideology demeans non-Jews and denies them equal
rights in Israel. A body of law enforces it - to legally discriminate against
non-Jewish Israeli citizens (for their religion) and Palestinians in the
Territories, something unimaginable in all developed states and most others
on every continent.
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- Shahak stated: "The obvious intention of such discriminatory
measures is to decrease the number of non-Jewish citizens of Israel (to
affirm its existence as a) 'Jewish' state" quite hostile to and demeaning
of other religious faiths.
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- This is the Zionist message and why growing numbers of
Jews and many others oppose it. Supporting Zionism is repugnant, indefensible,
and equivalent to defending cancer, a malignancy relentlessly destroying
its host. It must be exposed, denounced, and once and for all expunged
from the body politic. A CIA study suggested the alternative - that beyond
20 years, Israel won't survive in its present form.
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- The Agency predicts "an inexorable movement away
from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based
on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter
of colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and
1967 (Palestinian) refugees. The latter (is) the precondition for sustainable
peace in the region."
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- According to international lawyer Franklin Lamb, "the
handwriting....is on the wall....history will reject the colonial enterprise
sooner or later."
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- The report also predicts the return of all Palestinian
refugees to their homeland and the exodus of two million Israeli Jews to
America in the next 15 years. They're fed up and want to leave. Omitted
from the report, or at least unrevealed, is that short of an equitable
resolution to the long-standing Palestinian conflict, Israel eventually
will destroy itself. Nations that live by the sword, die by it, and Israel
is no exception.
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- The alternative is peace and reconciliation, something
Israel flatly rejects. Unless that changes, its very existence is at stake,
what history teaches but Israel has yet to learn.
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- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
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