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Making peace with genocidal Zionism

By John Passant - posted Wednesday, 29 September 2010


The logic of Zionism is inexorable. It is the logic of genocide - to destroy all vestiges of the Palestinians as a people under the guise of peace and a home for all Jews.

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Zionism is not interested in peace with the Palestinians. It has only one goal - the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Palestine. It wants nothing less than the destruction of the Palestinians as part of the ultimate goal of Zionism - an expansionist Jewish state across the region without Palestinians or their memory.

The genocide of the Palestinians has been going on since the establishment of the racist state of Israel in 1948. Zionism drove off 750,000 Palestinians from their land to establish the beach head for further expansion into Palestine.

Israel is an apartheid state. Zionism is an  exclusivist and racist ideology in its vision and practice. In this world view Palestinians are lesser humans. They have no rights to their land.

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The 20 percent of the Israeli population who are Palestinian are second class citizens. They sit at the back of the bus. They are poorer, less well educated, have less spent on their health care and education and have higher rates of unemployment.

Israel has deliberately made the Palestinian areas under its control into bantustans. Its aim is to expel all Palestinians from ‘their’ country, a country which has no fixed boundaries. To date they have been stunningly successful in this dispossession - a process of genocide. This map shows that reality. 

Like apartheid South Africa, Israel is a limited democracy. It is a democracy built on the imprisonment of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and the wider region and the second class status of Palestinian Israelis. It is a democracy built on the exclusion of Palestinians.

The apartheid Israeli regime depends for its existence on US imperialism. Without the $3 billion in non-military aid it provides Israel, the Jewish state could not exist.

Israel is the armed wing of US terrorism and imperialism in the region. It destabilises the Middle East through its presence and actions. It helps prop us US supported dictatorships in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Israel is part of the patchwork of dictatorships in the most important strategic region for the US. This importance stems directly from oil, and the need and the ability of the US to control its distribution, especially to China.

It is not only Zionism which is the creature of US imperialism. Elements of Palestinian society have also capitulated to the invading forces and their American master. These are especially the Palestinian bourgeoisie and upper middle classes, and their political expression the PLO.

Fatah, the dominant PLO faction, has become a Quisling Government and accepts the genocide being committed against its people. But this capitulation has yielded nothing for the Palestinians other than blood and tears.

Let’s correct that. The process has yielded some benefits, not for the Palestinian people, but for the corrupt top echelons of the PLO, and has enabled the Quislings to stay in power in the West Bank despite the victory of Hamas in the last democratic elections.

Now there are reports that Fatah and Hamas have begun peace talks and are close to an agreement that would paper over their differences. The two have much in common in terms of their social base. Until now they have been divided over how to respond to the genocide that is Zionism.

But the lesson for Hamas and Fatah in these negotiations should be clear.  The situation is now much worse for Palestinians than in 1993 when the two sides reached an agreement called the Oslo Accords in which the PLO enshrined its acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. This just means accepting the ongoing genocide of their own people.

The logic of Zionism is the genocide of the Palestinians. No matter what capitulation, what grovelling, what compromise the Quislings make, the long term goal of the Zionists is the extermination of the Palestinians as a people with any future in Palestine. 

For Zionism every peace negotiation, every invasion, every settlement is a small step towards that genocidal goal.

The apartheid state of Israel has no right to exist. Only a one state solution in which all who want to can live in peace offers any solution.

That won’t happen through the negotiating table or by siding with US imperialism. It won’t happen through suicide bombings or lobbing a few home made rockets into Israel. It won’t happen by aligning with the dictators in the region.

It won’t happen through Palestinian industrial action since the social weight of the Palestinian working class in Israel is small, and in Palestine threatens no-one at this stage.

But there is a working class solution. It lies in the Arab working class overthrowing the US backed dictatorships. Recently mass strikes shook the Mubarak regime in Egypt. 

Even the non-class conscious but democratic overthrow of Mubarak or his son will be a massive boost for the Palestinian struggle. 

A revolution that is based on and led by the Egyptian working class and peasantry can transform the whole Middle East and challenge the very existence of the racist apartheid regime of Israel.

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About the Author

John Passant is a Canberra writer (www.enpassant.com.au) and member of Socialist Alternative.

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