The Logic of Zionism

Many years ago, I wrote about what I called the "Logic of Occupation." When you occupy someone else's country and view the inhabitants as your enemies, you inexorably follow certain policies which lead to arbitrary arrests, torture, execution of civilians, land and property seizure, etc. These are not particular to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza but are characteristic of all such occupations: think of the American/European occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Israeli case, where they settle their civilians on occupied land (in violation of the 1949 Geneva accords which outlawed that practice, so common by the Nazis), there are additional measures taken.

In the case of Israel, however, that way of viewing what is going on needs to be modified and extended. I have been reading what I consider to be the best by far book on this subject, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Pappe focuses on what happened in 1947 and 1948 using all available sources, and his book towers over other such efforts, such as that of Benny Morris, who used only Israeli military sources. What Pappe documents is that David Ben-Gurion and his cohorts came to the conclusion that they could only get the state they wanted if they drove most Palestinians out of it. They kept that decision fairly secret, even from most of their own followers and they made many public statements which contradicted it, but in their internal discussions and in the orders they gave to their military forces, they followed it. They used military terror, mass executions primarily of men but sometimes of women and children, too, systematic rape of women, looting, physical destruction of villages, and many more practices detailed by Pappe. Rarely was anyone punished for these acts. When they were, the punishment was very mild and, more often, those who committed atrocities advanced to high positions in the Israeli army and state.

Is that just the sordid history of the creation of Israel or is it relevant to today's policies? Pappe contends, and I agree, that the logic of Zionism continues today along pretty much the same lines as in the late 1940s. Israeli leaders are still pursuing every possible avenue to remove Palestinians from Palestine and to extend the areas they own and control.

What does this fact tell us about the possible solution? It clearly means that the so-called two-state solution is a mirage. So long as the Israeli state pursues this logic, there will be no peace and security for the Palestinians and thus for the rest of us in the world. Israel must not only be stopped from expansion; its expansion must be reversed and the nature of its state must be fundamentally changed. It has to abandon the logic of Zionism. The forests which cover destroyed Palestinian villages must be bulldozed, and the descendants of those who lived in those villages need to be allowed to return and rebuild if they wish to do so. Israel must become the state of its inhabitants, i.e., a secular, democratic state, and there would be no reason why such a state could not merge into a larger state of Palestine.

Will it be easy to achieve such a solution? No, of course it won't. But it is the only solution which can work. The key to achieving it is to remove the billions of dollars per year that the USA gives to Israel. The other key, though, is to understand that this is the solution, the only way to go.