Zionism or Colonialism
By Ben Dror Yemini
Ma'ariv, April 1, 2005
It seems that every attempt to determine how much the "occupation" has cost us is doomed to fail. While the cost has no doubt been heavy, it is doubtful that it can be measured in numbers. First of all, since what is called the "occupation" - a term that is accepted particularly by the left wing - is a situation that was imposed on us. We didn't ask for it. We didn't initiate the six-day war. We didn't announce that we wanted to throw the Arabs into the sea. We didn't establish an organization for the liberation of the land of Israel from Arabs. We didn't announce that we would never recognize the Arab entities surrounding us. We didn't establish terror organizations to for attacking Jews, just for being Jews. We didn't spread inciteful propaganda preaching annihilation. But that is precisely what was done to us. And the occupation, above all, is the result of Arab hostility in a war that had one goal: the destruction of Israel.
Millions of Arabs and Muslims have been killed, murdered or exiled by Arabs or Muslims over the past 60 years. But only Israel is blamed for the continuing backwardness of the Muslim and Arab world. Israel did not even cause one percent of the damage that the Arabs and Muslims caused for themselves. But the big lie is cultivated with the massive and incredible help of Jews and Israelis, in the west and from within Israel.
***
This doesn't mean that we didn't make mistakes. The settlement movement, for instance, is the greatest mistake of the Zionist enterprise. The great power of the Zionist movement is based on the fact that it did not come to dispossess, to evict, or to destroy, but to find a national home for the persecuted Jews. "Hebrew labor" is the opposite of the colonialist ethos. Even right-wing Zionism - remember Jabotinsky - treated the Arabs as human beings with rights. We did indeed perpetrate an injustice against the Arabs by coming here, by our return. But the Zionist movement succeeded because it did not try to magnify the injustice, but to limit it. The Zionist movement did not even demand population exchanges - even though in the thirties and forties, when this was the international norm for resolving conflicts, this was discussed here as well. And those discussions, under totally different circumstances, do not justify similar ideas today.
In any case, the idea of partitioning the land into two national states - Jewish and Arab - serves many purposes: to reduce the injustice to the Arabs, to win the support of the international community, for demographic reasons, and for pragmatic ones. The war of independence led to the flight and expulsion of the Arabs. That was the case in all of the big wars that took place in the last century. The only difference is that just the Palestinian refugees, from among tens of millions of other refugees, remained refugees. And later came the Six-Day War, which imposed the occupation on us, but not so that Zionism would become a colonialist or apartheid movement, but so that we would have in our hands a deposit to use at the right moment. That moment has been long in coming.
The rest is well known. A minority from our ranks imposed on us a movement for undermining the righteousness of Zionism: The settler movement, a colonialist movement based on apartheid. It is not Zionism. It is a mutation, a disfigured Zionism. It is a mutation that is liable to bring the end of Zionism.
And on this matter, as with many things, the voices of the oblivious right and the oblivious left are united. Both think that Zionism, from the start, was a movement of dispossession; that there is no difference between the settlement of Tel Aviv and the settlement of Netzarim [one of the main settlements in the Gaza Strip slated for evacuation]. Neither one wants separation, or two countries for two peoples, or a green line. Both want one big state, from the sea to the Jordan River.
This perversion has a price. Israel has become the victim of the settler enterprise in almost every conceivable way. A new book - The Price of Arrogance by Shlomo Svirsky - tells the story of the settlements in facts and figures. It is worth reading and absorbing. It is not simply a matter of spending tens of billions. It is also a matter of internal apartheid. They get more - in education, health, and infrastructure. And that is even before defense spending is taken into account.
Thus Israel is faced with two options: a return to the path of Zionism, or descending down the path of colonialist ruin. The anti-Zionists, from left and right, will continue to struggle to bring about Israel's destruction. They do not want a state that is Jewish and democratic in the spirit of the Zionist vision. Every act of malice against the Arabs is a blow to Zionism. Every bypass road, for Jews only, is a road that bypasses Zionism and leads to apartheid. One must admit that over the last few years the victories have been mostly theirs: the radical right in its actions, and the radical left in its treachery. We have lost.
But something happened this week. For the first time the Zionist camp has won a victory in paving the way to disengagement. This is just the first step. The Zionist vision still faces a mortal threat. We are still a long way from returning to the path of Zionism.
About the author, Ben-Dror Yemini:
Born the day before Passover, and therefore named Ben-Dror (son of freedom). In his youth he was kicked out of various educational institutions, published the book "Political Boxing," was editor of the militant social newspaper "The Hammer," and hosted a radio show. Journalist and jurist. Loves jahnoun and hilbe (two Yemenite delicacies).