Ralph Schoenman
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/ch01.htm#top
Chapter 1
The Four Myths
Preface: The Uprising | 2. Zionist Objectives
It is not accidental that when anyone attempts to examine the nature
of Zionism – its origins, history and dynamics – they meet with
people who terrorize or threaten them. Quite recently, after
mentioning a meeting on the plight of the Palestinian people during
an interview on KPFK, a Los Angeles radio station, the organizers of
the public meeting were deluged with bomb threats from anonymous
callers.
Nor is it easy in the United States or Western Europe to disseminate
information about the nature of Zionism or to analyze the specific
events which denote Zionism as a political movement. Even the
announcement on university campuses of authorized forums or meetings
on the subject invariably engenders a campaign designed to close off
discussion. Posters are torn down as fast as they are put up.
Meetings are packed by flying squads of Zionist youth who seek to
break them up. Literature tables are vandalized and leaflets and
articles appear accusing the speaker of anti-Semitism or, in the case
of those of Jewish origin, of self-hatred.
Vindictiveness and slander are so universally meted out to anti-
Zionists because the disparity between the official fiction about
Zionism and the Israeli state, on the one hand, and the barbarous
practice of this colonial ideology and coercive apparatus, on the
other, is so vast. People are in shock when they have an opportunity
to hear or read about the century of persecution suffered by the
Palestinians, and, thus, the apologists for Zionism are relentless in
seeking to prevent coherent, dispassionate examination of the
virulent and chauvinist record of the Zionist movement and of the
state which embodies its values.
The irony of this is that when we study what the Zionists have
written and said – particularly when addressing themselves – no doubt
remains about what they have done or of their place in the political
spectrum, dating from the last quarter of the 19th century to the
present day.
Four overriding myths have shaped the consciousness of most people in
our society about Zionism.
The first is that of "A land without a people for a people without a
land." This myth was sedulously cultivated by early Zionists to
promote the fiction that Palestine was a remote, desolate place ready
for the taking. This claim was quickly followed by denial of
Palestinian identity, nationhood or legitimate entitlement to the
land in which the Palestinian people have lived throughout their
recorded history.
The second is the myth of Israeli democracy. Innumerable newspaper
stories or television references to the Israeli state are followed by
the assertion that it is the only "real" democracy in the Middle
East. In fact, Israel is as democratic as the apartheid state of
South Africa. Civil liberty, due process and the most basic human
rights are by law denied those who do not meet racial, religious
criteria.
The third myth is that of "security" as the motor force of Israeli
foreign policy. Zionists maintain that their state must be the fourth
largest military power in the world because Israel has been forced to
defend itself against imminent menace from primitive, hate-consumed
Arab masses only recently dropped from the trees.
The fourth myth is that of Zionism as the moral legatee of the
victims of the Holocaust. This is at once the most pervasive and
insidious of the myths about Zionism. Ideologues for the Zionist
movement have wrapped themselves in the collective shroud of the six
million Jews who fell victim to Nazi mass murder. The bitter and
cruel irony of this false claim is that the Zionist movement itself
actively colluded with Nazism from its inception.
To most people it appears anomalous that the Zionist movement, which
forever invokes the horror of the Holocaust, should have collaborated
actively with the most vicious enemy ever faced by the Jews. The
record, however, reveals not merely common interests but a deep
ideological affinity rooted in the extreme chauvinism which they
share.
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