It is not antisemitic to be anti-zionist, any more than it was anti-German to be anti-Nazis. Zionism does not have to be a right-wing politique, but it has become one. Zionism is not in itself Jewish; there are plenty of Christians, Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox who are also Zionists; there are also plenty of Muslims who are as well. Critiquing the politics of Zionism is not critiquing Jewish people or Jewish history or Jewish philosophy or traditions, their culture and civilization. It is not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist today, as Zionism in its American and Israeli versions plays out on the stage of world politics and international diplomacy. Let’s not engage in the rhetorical or media ping-pong Americans are so in love with. Let’s not be one of those who miss the point or can’t get the point of this website’s critique of Zionism now as an extension of the traditions of Colonialism, whether British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Roman, Greek, Ottoman, Byzantine, Persian, Babylonian, et cetera, et cetera. Whatever have we in the ways of examining our past, imperialism is imperialism as it has remained so over the millennia; colonialism is colonialism; reactionary politics everywhere will always share some commonality with fascist or Nazis politics. Ottoman imperialism and colonialism in the Mediterranean and Middle East can be examined in adjunct to the fore mentioned colonialism. The current Arab states in the Middle East and the Arabs as an ethnic identity embracing all tribal affiliations, wins its favor, its support, its acceptance and manifestation we see approximately in these nations, during the struggles against Turkish Imperialism. Israel seems as it has seemed bent on replacing the British and French colonialist designs in the middle east; it also seems intent on replacing the old Ottoman impositions on Arab States. (Could this be the unspoken or unconscious reason behind the alliance Israel shares with Turkey.)
Zionism is a political agenda today working within the perimeters and parameters of traditional European Colonialism. We must understand and assert up front, at the risk of repetition after repetition, that Zionism is not in itself Jewish. There are many American Zionists who are not Jewish. There are Zionists, or those whose political sympathies are aligned with Zionism and its agenda in the Middle East, who are Arab and Muslim. Obama, for example, is America’s chief Reactionary Zionist. His escalation of the Afghan war will have serious consequences for the USA and Britain, while destabilizing our security at home and further radicalizing militant Islamic groups, and putting nuclear weapons in the hands of such extremists. Obama opposes UN resolution after resolution of the Security Council when it comes to Israel’s colonialist agenda in Gaza, all because Zionism and its neo-fascist agenda in the Middle East is entrenched in the American political mind. This is another extension of European Colonialism, this tradition of colonialism being the historical current that carried Nazism to the fore of European and world politics; it was not traditional Anti-Semitism that gave rise to Nazism, but the political energy of European Colonialism. This must be understood; and those who learned their lessons from the Nazis, either as victims of the Nazis or by opposing the Nazis, have become the most like them.
Politics now cannot ignore the depth and breadth of Zionist control of information in America. . . like Nazis Volksbund in America in the 30s, Zionists in their reactionary agenda use propaganda and the hypothesis of world confrontation against their allegedly benign designs as a means to further their influence and establish themselves as a viable political alternative in a democracy which they actually despise. Unlike the Nazis in America, Zionists have a stranglehold on media conduits. They pretend well to be the protectors of freedom, vilifying anyone who threatens to oppose their hegemony in the international political arena. Anyone who seriously critiques the US/Israeli government sponsored colonialism in Palestine, Manifest Destiny revisited, is attacked and vilified as an Anti-Semite, i.e., neo-Nazis. If the critique is from someone Jewish, then he or she is attacked as a self-loathing Jew who has suffered an identity crisis due to centuries of anti-Semitism. The only acceptable way to be Jewish today is to be Zionist, and the only acceptable Zionism in America is a reactionary proto-fascist version. And we wonder how our rights continue to evaporate. It’s no wonder under this right-wing heat wave we suffer.
To imagine, though, that Zionism is not a nationalism, thus an inheritor of all the potential good and evil of nationalist agendas, nationalist pride, nationalist policies and politics is naive. But then all forms of national identity fall under the rubric of nationalism, which is why we must always take care how we become patriotic. If I say I am an American or a citizen of the United States, I am acting in a minor and perhaps benign way, nationalistically. Love of country and its culture is nationalistic, and in turn could be called patriotic. If I had to name someone for whom the word Patriot was applicable, I’d probably have to say The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, which may surprise some, on either side of accepting this, if there are in fact two diametrically opposed sides to this, but seeing as how much we love to flip coins intellectually in America, let’s leave it at that. Patriotism does not equal malignant nationalism, but it can. I’m not as opposed to flag waving as most of my liberal colleagues are, myself probably being more radical than most of them in their mainstream reflexes are. I understand it, and its place even, in a liberal democracy. Looking back on Flag Day when I was a boy, I do not see the Nazis Rally at Nuremburg, but I do see Soviet- and Nazis-like tendencies in the actions of good American citizens of both liberal or conservative political leanings, in the workplace, in my building, in the opinions expressed over coffee at the luncheonette, in the ways policies are enacted by bureaucrats and administrators and supervisors, all of whom are like the low-level authorities from which the Nazis and Soviets garnered their strength and control. It can happen here because it is happening here, and Zionism as it rears an ugly neo-con head in America is as much a terror and an evil as any totalitarianism or fanatical Islamists like ISIS. I do not like the ping-pong we are asked to play in America, rhetorically, politically, socially . . . no. Rational intelligence demands more than the knee jerk responses of left or right or Zionist or Islamic fanatic or one or another fascist.
The Falling Leaf Review 