A Call to Action to Anti-Zionist Jews: We must do the work to defeat Jewish Zionist institutions

The genocide in Gaza is being committed in our name as Jews. Thus have a duty to organize as Jews against the Jewish Zionist institutions aiding and perpetuating the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

BY JEWS AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY 

NOVEMBER 22, 2023 

ISRAELI TANKS CARVE A STAR OF DAVID INTO A FIELD IN GAZA DURING ISRAEL’S ONGOING GROUND INVASION OF GAZA. THIS PHOTO WAS SHARED BY DANIEL HAGARI ON THE @IDFSPOKESPERSON X/TWITTER ACCOUNT ON NOVEMBER 17, 2023.


At a time when the Israeli settler state has murdered over 12,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, with thousands more missing, and millions displaced, it cannot be stated enough the importance of how we orient ourselves in organizing against the Zionist settler colonial genocide.

We must be explicitly, unabashedly anti-Zionist, and make clear that our organizing does not stop after a ceasefire, it does not stop at the end of the siege on Gaza, it must not stop until Palestine is free from the river to the sea.

It is imperative that Jews understand that while Zionism and Judaism are different, this is a genocide that is being actively committed in our name as Jews, just as the entire Zionist settler colonial project has been committed in our name. While Jewish voices absolutely must not be made the priority, Jews have a duty to organize against Zionism.

The Good Shepherd Collective and writer Em Cohen recently released a Guide for Jewish Anti- Zionist Allyship where they specifically made it a point to mention that Zionism’s international infrastructure is made up of “many Jewish communal organizations and institutions. From organizations that host propaganda trips or directly fund zionist settlement to organizations that spread zionist propaganda, the Jewish organizations that structurally support zionism are many. This is a form of direct zionist harm that exists around us that anti-zionist Jews can and should struggle against.”

For decades, Palestinians have been demanding that Jewish anti-Zionists organize around fighting Zionism within their own communities, and the Jewish left has not made it a priority.

This has been made especially clear with how in this moment the ways that the Jewish left has failed completely in giving support and solidarity to the Palestinian people.

There has still not been a reckoning with how so many among us acted in the wake of October 7th, centering Jewish or Israeli grief, and actively condemning an act of anticolonial resistance in Operation Al Aqsa Flood against the Zionist settler entity which has systematically massacred, displaced, and dehumanized Palestinians for over 75 years. Organizations which claimed to support the Palestinian struggle completely abandoned them when they dared to resist colonial oppression.

This is reflected in the messaging and action of so many “liberal Zionist” and non-Zionist organizations like IfNotNow in the United States, Independent Jewish Voices in Canada, and Na’amod in the United Kingdom, and even organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace which call themselves anti-Zionist, but who have refused to identify as such in any of their messaging as of late.

All of these organizations actively cater to and enable Zionists within their spaces. There is a steadfast refusal to call for the end of the Zionist settler colonial project, the very root of the genocide in Palestine. There is also a failure to support the Palestinian resistance by any means necessary.

This is a genocide that is actively being facilitated by a high majority of the Jewish institutions which claim to represent us, ones which are actively Zionist and have aided and perpetuated this settler colonial genocide.

From our very start Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS) was founded on the notion that we must be explicitly anti-Zionist and approach anti-Zionism from an anti-colonial perspective, we must support Palestinian resistance by any means necessary, and it is imperative that we organize as Jews against the Jewish Zionist institutions that have been aiding and perpetuating atrocities and now an annihilation of the Palestinian people.

When mainstream Jewish leaders, leaders of Jewish Zionist organizations and institutions, and rabbis, have been openly calling for genocide and the annihilation of Palestinian people, there is no greater evidence that we must organise as Jews to defeat Jewish Zionist institutions.

While we absolutely give organizers within INN and JVP credit for putting their bodies on the line and getting arrested, we reject the liberal framework of the crux of their organizing. Direct action is needed not just against Jewish Zionist institutions but also secular Zionist institutions, especially arms manufacturers.

Ultimately, JAWS believes Palestinians must always be in the forefront of anti-Zionist organizing, and their voices prioritized. We as Jews however, not only have a duty to speak out and be overt in our anti-Zionism, but we have a responsibility to do the work within our own communities to fight to abolish Jewish Zionist institutions. This fight is a global fight and JAWS is uniting anti-Zionist Jews around the world to get involved in the anti-Zionist solidarity struggle and challenge the Zionist institutions in our own communities.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!!!

“Jews Against White Supremacy” invites all individuals who share our values and commitment to fighting for a more just world to join us in organizing as revolutionary socialist anti-Zionists to fight Jewish Zionist institutions. Together we can fight against settler-colonialism and the institutions which perpetuate it, and for a revolutionary transformation of Jewish community life.

JAWS currently has branches in Philadelphia, the Bay Area, Brazil, the Philippines, New York City and UC Santa Cruz with many more to come.

For more information about “Jews Against White Supremacy” and how you can get involved please visit our website (jewsagainstwhitesupremacy.org) and follow us on social media

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For further inquiries, please reach out to jewsagainstwhitesupremacy2023@gmail.com

Jews Against White Supremacy

Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS) is a newly established anti-Zionist Jewish organization that aims to challenge and abolish Zionist Jewish institutions through mobilizing anti-Zionist Jews, direct action, educational campaigns, and building community. Committed to internationalism, equality, and liberation, JAWS seeks to educate and radically transform Jewish communities around the world, while challenging settler colonialism and fighting for a free Palestine. To learn more and support our mission, please visit (jewsagainstwhitesupremacy.org)

Israeli protests seek to uphold the settler colonial status quo, Palestinian resistance is the means of liberation


Tara Alami
06 Apr, 2023

The New Arab

The anti-government Israeli protests that have taken place over the last months highlight an unravelling of contradictions within the Zionist project. But ultimately, they seek to continue flying the colonial flag, writes Tara Alami.

The self-serving rallies by Israeli settlers remain nothing but a trivial backdrop to decades of genocide and dispossession committed by the state whose colonial flag they uphold and love, writes Tara Alami. [GETTY]

During the past several years, Zionist settlers have periodically organised protests against their colonial government’s tendency towards “extremism.” While so-called progressive settlers fill the streets of the territories occupied in 1948, built on the rubbles of raided Palestinian villages and unmarked mass graves, “Israel” is declared the 4th happiest country in the world. A desperate attempt to curate the image of the Zionist state as a pleasant, democratic, queer haven where citizens manage to thrive despite being surrounded by Palestinian and Arab “terrorism”.

This will inevitably fail as soon as settlers who would quietly endorse the theft of Palestinian land and life, are displeased with state repression directed towards themselves. Like when an elected finance minister calls himself a “fascist homophobe,” undermining years of Zionist pinkwashing efforts.

It’s difficult to hide genocide, dispossession, and occupation behind a translucent veil of civil rights.

''Zionist settlers’ attempts to maintain democracy within a nation-state built on violence and destruction while not only separating themselves from that material reality, but also refusing to accept that such a state can and will have a monopoly on violence towards its own citizens as well, is a sign of a crumbling propaganda machine.''

Like the 2011 protests, settlers in “Israel” are rallying behind basic demands, like a democratic government and social justice issues. Surrounded by hundreds of Israeli flags, some even advocate for an “end to the occupation” and to stop building “illegal settlements" in the West Bank, as if the Zionist state within the borders formed in 1948 is not a settlement in and of itself.

But behind this thin veneer of ostensibly “progressive” slogans and posters is, perhaps at best, a fundamental refusal to reckon with the implications of the existence of the Zionist state on stolen Palestinian land. Or most likely, an endorsement with recommendations for cosmetic changes that preserve individual liberties for colonisers coddled by a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate.

It’s the freedom to colonise comfortably that matters to settlers, not progressive reforms or lack thereof.

Zionism being witnessed in its clearest form – extremist – is an uncomfortable development for settlers and those bankrolling the Zionist project. In an angsty response to Biden lightly scolding Netanyahu for his proposed judicial overhaul, Ben Gvir contended that the Zionist state is “not another star on the American flag.” And yet, the same “progressive” settlers condemning Netanyahu are rallying behind banners of the intertwined flags of two settler colonies, the Zionist state and the US. Additionally, Zionist cops are using quintessentially American police violence to dispel protestors.

Britain's colonial legacy is still felt in Palestine today
Perspectives
Gabriel Polley

On 2 April, one of the most notorious state-sponsored hasbara propagandists, the ‘Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism,’ was fired by the Zionist government after publicly criticising Netanyahu. But even settlers who vaguely criticise “Israel” or their politicians from within, insist on obfuscating reality. In a typical response by Zionist “critics,” former Attorney General Ben Yair, says that the state practices apartheid, whilst also consciously refusing to acknowledge that apartheid is a tool secondary to Zionist settler-colonialism. This is because doing so would implicate them in more than 75 years of ethnic cleansing and land theft — an admission too damning for the illusion of the Zionist regime’s potential as the only progressive, democratic state in the region.

Zionist settlers’ attempts to maintain democracy within a nation-state built on violence and destruction while not only separating themselves from that material reality, but also refusing to accept that such a state can and will have a monopoly on violence towards its own citizens as well, is a sign of a crumbling propaganda machine.

In reality, the accelerated unravelling of contradictions within Zionist society and politics by settlers’ infuriation with a modicum of state repression as they proudly rally behind a colonial flag, is an imminent consequence for a colonial nation threatened by ongoing, steadfast Palestinian resistance to decades of genocide and dispossession.

The so-called progressive house of cards within which the colonial, genocidal face of Zionism which was loosely hidden over the past several decades, is bound to fall when Zionist settlers themselves cannot reconcile the contradictions underlying their livelihood and existence on stolen land.

Palestinians – whether in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Gaza, the territories stolen and occupied in 1948, or in exile – are seeking and struggling for liberation from a settler-colonial enterprise and imperialist proxy. The clear display of contradictions within Zionist society certainly does not amount to liberation, but signs of a faltering nation struggling with itself are a progressive move towards the unavoidable end of the Zionist project.

Palestinian martyr, intellectual, and revolutionary Basel Al-Araj insists we engage with the Zionist enemy, certainly not in what Kanafani calls “a conversation between the sword and the neck,” but rather in an attempt to understand and properly respond to the weakness of its foundation, to signs of its deterioration, and ultimately to its forthcoming ruin from within.

As a banner at one of the rallies which read: “Save Our Startup Nation” highlighted all too well, the purpose of such callous spectacles is to preserve the status quo — a settler-colonial nation bankrolled by the imperial core, a neoliberal colony founded and upheld by genocide and land theft, but with aesthetically pleasing, digestible individual liberties.

Like they do every year during Ramadan, Israeli Occupation Forces stormed and raided Al-Aqsa during prayer just days ago. At least 400 Palestinian worshippers were reportedly detained, women were beaten and tortured and rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades were used by Zionist soldiers, and more than 500 Palestinians were injured. The self-serving rallies by Israeli settlers remain nothing but a trivial backdrop to decades of genocide and dispossession committed by the state whose colonial flag they uphold and love.

The ultimate goal is to save the ostensible liberty to invest in a security and surveillance tech startup, the liberty to be queer, to wear vegan boots and build national parks, to have five elections within four years, and most importantly, the liberty to also colonise, pillage, and murder — but quietly.



Tara Alami is a Palestinian writer and organiser from occupied Jerusalem and occupied Yafa. She is based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal).
Follow her on Twitter: @taraxrh

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

Jonathan Freedland Rewrites History To Hide An Ugly Truth About Israel

By Jonathan Cook

August 29, 2024

Source: Jonathan Cook's Blog





The Guardian columnist has to twist the story of the first Jew to escape Auschwitz because a true biography of Rudolf Vrba would expose the Zionist movement’s collusion with the Nazis

Tony Greenstein offers an excoriating account of how Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland distorted the historical record in his biography of Rudolf Vrba, the first Jew to escape Auschwitz.

One might wonder why Vrba’s incredible story has been buried for decades, given how keen Hollywood is to make Holocaust movies.

Greenstein explains. Vrba’s efforts in early 1944 to warn other Jews of their coming fate in the Nazi death camps were betrayed by European leaders of the Zionist movement, who silenced him.

That movement was prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Jews in return for the Nazis escorting the Zionist elite out of danger in Europe to Palestine. There the Zionist movement was already well-advanced in its preparations to expel the native Palestinians and build a self-declared Jewish state on the ruins of their homeland.

The Zionists’ attitude reflected that of the movement’s founding father, Theodor Herzl: “The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.”

Vrba was hugely critical of the Zionist movement for collaborating with the Nazis, and had no love for the Jewish state it spawned.

In 1961, the Daily Herald published an extract from Vrba’s memoir, cited by Greenstein, in which he wrote:


“I am a Jew. In spite of that, indeed because of that, I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence … I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks’ notice that [Adolf] Eichmann [key architect of the Holocaust] planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers … [Rezso] Kasztner [leader of Hungary’s Zionist movement] went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’”

Kasztner’s betrayal of those Jews, dooming them to the Nazi gas chambers, was later justified by Israel’s attorney general, Haim Cohen, in the following terms:


“He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millions… That was his duty … It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine… Are we to be called traitors?”

It is on that basis that Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem has effectively excised Vrba’s astonishing story from its halls, and why Israeli schoolchildren learn nothing of Vrba. It’s also presumably why Hollywood has never picked up the most Hollywood story to come out of the Holocaust.

The anti-Zionist Vrba’s story exposes the ideological foundations of Israel to be fully in sympathy with ugly European ethic nationalisms that culminated in Nazism. His story explains how Israel was always capable of, and is now committing, a genocide in Gaza.

When ideology becomes more important than human life, people – even those you see as your own – become expendable. They come to be treated as a pawns in a savage game of power politics. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father, gave voice to precisely this sentiment in December 1938, as Nazi pogroms against Jews in Germany raged:


“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”

Freedland’s task in his book The Escape Artist was to appropriate Vrba’s story, strip out its anti-Zionist message, and incorporate it into the now-dominant Zionist narrative carefully crafted after the Second World War.

That is why the biography has received awards and endless gushing praise from the usual suspects. Vrba’s life story is doubtless now ready for a Hollywood makeover – one that, should it happen, will greatly enrich Freedland.

Thanks to his efforts, the threat posed by the true story of Vrba has been neutralised. That accords with the wider fate of anti-Zionist Jews – their existence is either ignored or sanitised to accord with a self-serving Zionist interpretation of history.

That process continues to this day:

The many anti-Zionist Jews who supported Jeremy Corbyn were either ignored or driven out of the Labour party because they undermined the bogus antisemitism narrative Freedland and many others promoted to get rid of a leader who genuinely supported the Palestinian people’s right to statehood.

And the many anti-Zionist Jews who attend the marches to protest the genocide in Gaza have been disappeared because they give the lie to the establishment media’s efforts to paint those marches as antisemitic.

Note that Israeli leaders like prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have made close alliances, just as Herzl recommended, with openly antisemitic states like Viktor Orban’s Hungary. They have continued in the tradition begun by Kasztner, who saved himself and his Zionist friends by sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews.

Note too that for decades Israeli governments have been moving relentlessly rightwards, to the point now that senior government ministers like Bezalel Smotrich openly declare themselves to be “Jewish fascists”.

Nonetheless, their Zionist ideology is little different from their supposedly “moderate” predecessors. The chief difference is that they are unapologetic in their Jewish supremacism and loud-mouthed in their contempt for Palestinian life. Zionism is simply coming out of a closet it was partially forced into by the rhetorical need to claim a moral basis for its actions and by concerns about placating western publics.

It is not the self-declared fascist Smotrich committing a genocide in Gaza. It is Israel’s establishment generals and its citizen army.

Greenstein recently published an important book, Zionism During the Holocaust, that deals extensively with the collusion of those who helped to found Israel with the Nazis. I recommend everyone seek it out.



Jonathan Cook
British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His books are Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto, 2006); Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto, 2008); and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed, 2008).

 

Hamas fires long-range missile at Ramon Airport (+VIDEOS)

TEHRAN, May 13 (MNA) – The spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades said the armed wing has for the first time fired a rocket towards Ramon Airport south of the country.

“The Ayyash 250 missile, with a range greater than 250km has been launched at Ramon Airport, about 220km from Gaza,” Abu Obeida said.

The rocket is named after Yahya Ayyash, one of Hamas’s leading operatives before he was assassinated by Israel regime in 1996.

Abu Obeida called the rocket launching part of the Al-Qassam Brigades’ response to the killing of its senior commanders.

Sirens go off warning of rocket attacks at Tel Aviv

The Zionist media reported sirens went off warning of rocket attacks following a large-scale rocket attack by Resistance forces on Tel Aviv. 

Al-Qassam Brigades said it had targeted Tel Aviv, Beersheba and Netivot, as well as Tel Nof and Nevatim airbases.

Israeli TV Channel 12 reports that in the new round of attacks by the Palestinian Resistance, more than 100 rockets were fired at the occupied territories.

It also reported that three people were injured in the town of Kiryat Gat.

Our weapons are for sake of our land, to defend our people: Hamas

The spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, warned Israel there are “no red lines if al-Aqsa is violated”.

Abu Obeida said the decision to bomb Dimona, Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities “is easier for us than drinking water”.

“We reassure our people that we have more rockets in our inventory, and our missile strikes have revealed the enemy’s fragility,” he said.

Abu Obedia said the Israeli army will sorely regret carrying out a ground invasion.

“Our weapons are for our land, for the defense of our people and victory for our sanctities,” the military spokesman said,

“What distinguishes this battle is the solidarity of the Palestinians across the country and their unanimous support for resistance.”

Gaza martyrs rise to 83 as Israeli air raids intensify

The number of Palestinians martyred in the Gaza Strip has now risen to 83, including 17 children, the local health ministry has said. 

Israeli fighters jet bomb high-rise buildings and other targets in Gaza while violence also spreads within the occupied territories, Al-Jazeera reported.

Since the Israeli offensive began late on Monday, Gaza’s health ministry says at least 83 people, including 17 children, have been martyred. More than 480 others have been wounded.

Israeli army vehicle hit by rocket

Palestinian news sources reported that a Kornet anti-tank missile hit a military vehicle of the Israeli army in southern Gaza.

Sources say several Zionist forces appear to have been killed in the attack. The exact number of casualties in this attack has not been reported yet.

Yesterday, the Resistance forces fired two Kornet missiles at the Israeli military vehicles, in which four Zionist forces were seriously wounded and one was killed.

Israeli army wounds 35 in occupied West Bank

At least 35 Palestinians were wounded in confrontations with the Israeli army in various locations in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reported.

According to Al-Jazeera's correspondent, the majority of people were hit by live ammunition and that most injuries occurred in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

“It was an exceptionally high number of injuries by live fire which shows us that the situation could be escalating rapidly,” the correspondent added.

Zionists bomb high-rise buildings as Gaza marks Eid al-Fitr

Israeli fighter jets have attacked high-rise buildings and other targets in the Gaza Strip as Palestinians in the besieged enclave woke up on Thursday to mark Eid al-Fitr under relentless aerial bombardment.

At least six Zionists have also been killed. The Israeli army said hundreds of rockets have been fired from Gaza towards various locations in Israel and they have added reinforcements near the enclave’s eastern lands.

There have also been more violent confrontations between Israelis and Palestinian citizens in several cities inside the occupied lands.

Zionist regime shuts Ben Gurion Airport to incoming flights

The Zionist regime's air officials said Thursday that incoming passenger flights would be diverted from Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv to Ramon Airport outside Eilat in the south.

Following Palestinian Resistance rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, the Zionist regime shut Ben Gurion Airport to incoming flights and diverted them from Ben Gurion Airport to Ramon Airport outside Eilat in the south.

It said guidelines were in place for passenger planes to land at Ramon Airport near the southern resort city of Eilat from early on Thursday.

Israeli army says attacked 600 targets in Gaza in 3 days

The Israeli army says it has attacked more than 600 targets in Gaza since the start of the recent fighting against the Palestinians.

According to Al-Jazeera, the Israeli army claimed that 13 missiles were fired from Gaza at Israel from 9 pm last night until this morning, with the Iron Dome intercepting several missiles; But the regime did not release information on the number of missiles that hit the target.

On the other hand, the Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian Resistance Groups announced that on the second day of the clashes with the Zionist enemy, it fired 300 missiles and rockets towards the occupied territories.

Zionist attack on Gaza leaves 72 martyred, incl. 17 children

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that the number of martyrs in the Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip increased to 72.

The Ministry of Health announced on Thursday morning that the number of martyrs in the brutal Zionist attacks on the Gaza Strip had reached 72, including 17 children and 6 women.

The number of injured has also increased to 390, including 115 children and 50 women.

Palestinian Resistance fires 1,500 rockets at occupied lands

The Israeli army estimates that the number of rockets and missiles fired by resistance groups from the Gaza Strip in the last three days has reached 1,500.

A statement issued by the Israeli army claimed that the regime's fighter jets, helicopters and artillery had targeted more than 600 positions in the Gaza Strip over the past three days.

The Zionist regime claims that these targets belonged to the Islamic Jihad Movements and the Palestinian Islamic Resistance (Hamas).

According to the Times of Israel, the regime's army acknowledged that more than 1,500 rockets and missiles had been fired from the Gaza Strip towards the occupied territories, adding that at least five Zionists had been killed and more than 100 injured.

Zionist regime intensifies attacks on various areas of Gaza

Stating that the Zionist regime's attacks are focused on important infrastructure and roads in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian media reported the regime intensified its attack of various areas of Gaza.

News sources in the Gaza Strip say that the Zionist regime has been carrying out heavy airstrikes and artillery attacks in the north, center and south of the Gaza Strip since the early hours of Thursday morning.

The Palestinian Shehab News Agency reported that the building of the Islamic National Bank and other financial institutions in the Gaza Strip have been targeted by Zionist attacks.

"Israeli enemy planes are targeting various areas in the Gaza Strip, including Jabalia and Sheikh Zayed," Shehab correspondent reported from the Gaza Strip.

"Israeli planes are targeting the main roads connecting the provinces of the Gaza Strip," the news agency said, adding that the Sheikh Zayed region alone has been targeted by Zionists more than 30 times in recent minutes.

The Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas had set a deadline for the Zionist military to leave Al-Aqsa Mosque by 6 o'clock local time Monday and free the Palestinians who have been arrested.

Clashes between the Palestinian resistance and the Zionist regime began on Monday after the deadline expired.

ZZ/FNA14000223000027

News Code 173391

العربية

Under the Pretext of “Antisemitism”, the Suppression of the Palestinian People is Accompanied by an Attempt to Suppress the Defense of their Cause


The intensity of reactions from pro-Israel circles against that movement is only a confirmation of the importance of this development, which it would not be exaggerated to describe as historic.

The global movement denouncing the Zionist war of genocide going on in the Gaza Strip (and in the West Bank, at a lower intensity) – and in the context of that movement, most particularly, the youth movement that has developed in U.S. universities and is spreading from there to other countries – is the only glimmer of hope in the bleak and horrific scene of the destruction of Gaza. The intensity of reactions from pro-Israel circles against that movement is only a confirmation of the importance of this development, which it would not be exaggerated to describe as historic.

Indeed, the emergence of a mass movement sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in Western countries, especially in the home of the superpower without which the Zionist state would not be able to fight the current genocidal war, constitutes a very disturbing development in the eyes of the pro-Israel lobby. It threatens to establish among the new generation a rejection of Zionist barbarism that rivals the rejection of U.S. imperial barbarism more than half a century ago, which was one of the major factors leading Washington to stop its aggression against the Vietnamese people and withdraw its forces from their country in 1973.

This historical precedent is strongly present in the minds of Israel’s supporters in all Western countries, as the anti-Vietnam War movement included them all and even played a prominent role in the wave of leftist political radicalization among the student movement on a global scale at the end of the sixties. The alarm bell has hence rung in Zionist circles and their supporters, prompting them to launch a violent campaign against the movement standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine, seeking to silence it in various repressive ways, from ideological violence to police violence accompanied by legal violence.

These oppressive efforts are not new, of course, but are part of an ideological war that started from the beginning of the Zionist project and intensified as it moved into implementation in Palestine under the auspices of British colonialism. The battle reached its peak in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when the United Nations, which was newly established at the time under the hegemony of countries of the Global North, considered the issue of partitioning Palestine and granting the Zionist movement the right to establish its state there. At that stage, the Zionist effort in the “war of narratives” focused on portraying the Palestinians’ refusal of the establishment of a Zionist state on most of their homeland’s territory as if it were inspired by “antisemitism” of a sort akin to the Nazis’ hatred for the Jews and constituting a continuation of it. They portrayed the Zionist seizure of most of the land of Palestine in 1948, coupled with the uprooting of most of its indigenous people, as the last battle against Nazism, thus distorting and disguising the reality of that usurpation, which was in fact the last episode of settler colonialism (*).

Over time, Zionist propaganda became more fervent in its resort to labelling anyone hostile to the Zionist project as a Jew hater and a contin6uator of the Nazis. Two examples, among others, are Gamal Abdel Nasser, and after him Yasser Arafat, both depicted by that propaganda as counterparts of Adolf Hitler. This equation reached the height of absurdity and grotesque in the response of Menachem Begin, leader of the Likud Party whose fascist roots are well known, and Israeli Prime Minister when the Zionist army invaded Lebanon in 1982, to Ronald Reagan, then President of the United States who, in a letter to Begin, had expressed his concern about the fate of the civilian population in besieged Beirut. In his response, Begin wrote: “I feel as a Prime Minister empowered to instruct a valiant army facing ‘Berlin’, where, amongst innocent civilians, Hitler and his henchmen hide in a bunker deep beneath the surface.”

The zeal of Zionist propaganda increased in its resort to accusations of anti-Semitism and comparisons to Nazism, as the image of the Zionist state became more degraded in international public opinion, and Western public opinion in particular. The fact is that this image has steadily deteriorated as the State of Israel has moved from the myth of a state redeeming the Nazi extermination of the Jews and run by pioneers of a socialist dream led by a “workers’ party”, to the reality of an expansionist militaristic state, led by the far right. This image transformation accelerated with the Israeli occupation of Lebanese territories (1982-2000) and the suppression of the first intifada in the occupied territories in 1967, which reached its peak in 1988, and later with the repeated bloody and destructive attacks on the Gaza Strip, starting with the “Gaza massacre” in 2009.

As the image of the Zionist state declined, its supporters’ propaganda focused on rejecting any radical criticism of it by accusing it of antisemitism. In 2005, some pro-Israel circles formulated a definition of antisemitism that included “examples” such as “comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” (meaning that the comparison by the Zionists between several of their Arab enemies and Nazism is acceptable, just as the comparison between any state and Nazism is, except for the Zionist state, whose comparison with Nazism constitutes a form of antisemitism simply because it is “Jewish”) and “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” (in other words, describing any project that aims to create a state on the basis of racial or religious discrimination as racist is acceptable, except for the “Jewish State” project, for which that label is taboo).

In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) adopted that definition, prior to a campaign it launched in various Western countries, calling on them to officially adopt it to stifle criticism of Zionism. The campaign succeeded in getting the parliaments of countries such as Germany and France to adopt the definition. It culminated in an attempt to get the UN General Assembly to adopt the same definition. This attempt failed, however, especially after the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism advised in October 2022 against adopting the IHRA definition. Of course, the fervour among the supporters of the Zionist state has returned and reached frenzied forms in the face of the current escalation of global condemnation of the genocidal war that the Zionist state has been waging in Gaza for seven months.

Since the United States itself is a major theatre for this condemnation, especially among the student youth as emphasised at the beginning of this article, the House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress adopted on the 1st of May a bill, submitted by a Republican representative in October of last year, calling for the adoption of the IHRA definition as a basis for “the enforcement of Federal antidiscrimination laws concerning education programs or activities, and for other purposes”. 320 representatives voted in favour of this bill, compared to 91 who voted against it. 133 Democratic Party representatives joined the Republicans in voting in favour of the bill, while 70 Democratic Representatives and 21 Republican Representatives voted against it (with 18 abstaining from voting). While it was normal for representatives of the Democratic Left to vote against the pro-Israel bill, it was very odd to see representatives of the Republican far right reject it too, including the frenetic reactionary Representative Marjory Taylor Greene, the most extreme of Donald Trump’s supporters – so much so that the latter almost appears moderate in comparison to her.

Do not, dear reader, think that the rabid Republican rightists objected to the effort aimed at suppressing the movement denouncing Israeli barbarism because of attachment to the freedom of speech. They are the most enthusiastic devotees of the Zionist state, especially since the latter’s government has been including people who, like them, belong to the far right. They are also in favour of suppressing freedom of speech whenever it concerns opinions that they hate, and they frantically call for an escalation of repression against the students who oppose Israel’s genocidal war. The reason for their opposition to the bill lies simply in their loyalty to traditional antisemitism, which has long inspired a major section of Zionism’s supporters. These antisemites agree with Zionism in the view that the State of Israel is the Jews’ sole homeland, while hating the presence of Jews in their countries (just as they hate the presence of Muslims).

Whereas one of the traditional antisemitic arguments for hostility towards the Jews was to hold them collectively responsible for “the killing of Christ” on the pretext that the Gospels blamed a Jewish crowd for sentencing Christ to death, and since the examples of antisemitism given by the IHRA definition included “claims of Jews killing Jesus”, the Republicans who voted against the bill justified their position not by the fact that it would prevent criticism of Zionism and its state, which they of course welcome, but by their fear that it would prohibit traditional antisemitic positions, if turned into law. That is why the most enthusiastic supporters of the “Jewish” state objected to restricting the freedom of true Jew haters. Should one laugh or cry?

* My book The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010) is dedicated to refuting attempts to portray the Arab stance as if it were inspired by Nazism. I also refuted the same effort regarding the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation in my recent article “Gaza: October 7th in Historical Perspective”.

• العربية (Arabic)

Gilbert Achcar

Lebanese Academic and Writer

Lebanon

Published on 06.05.2024

A CASE IN POINT 

Penny Mordaunt launches the Conspiracies Guide for MPs for candidates alongside Lucy Powell

New conspiracy theory guide for MPs and candidates warns of threat to UK democracy

New guide was commissioned by the Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt MP and put together by the Antisemitism Policy Trust and other experts including Tell MAMA

By LEE HARPIN May 8, 2024, 

A new guide has been launched aimed at preventing MPs and parliamentary candidates from being drawn into conspiracy theories with a warning that they pose a threat to democracy.

Commissioned by the Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt MP and launched alongside the shadow Leader of the House, Lucy Powell MP, the  guide provides examples of eight conspiracies including those emerging from the QAnon movement, anti-vaccine narratives and climate change denial.

The guide was put together by expert groups including the Antisemitism Policy Trust and Tell MAMA, the charity working to combat anti-Muslim hate.

Research has identified a key connection between antisemitism and conspiracy theories. 

A recent study conducted by researchers from King’s College London, found that antisemitism is more likely to occur among those who believe in conspiracy theories, whether their views are right or left-wing. Antisemitism is a present thread across all the case studies presented in this guide.

Launch in parliament of the Conspiracies Guide

Penny Mordaunt MP, Leader of the House of Commons said:“The Proliferation of conspiracy theories across the UK is deeply disturbing. They are deliberate campaigns to spread disinformation and fear. If they go unchallenged we risk the public being conned and their wellbeing potentially damaged. These campaigns are also a threat to the health of our democracy.

“It is essential that we give the public and their representatives the tools they need to combat this phenomenon.

“I strongly support this guide, spearheaded by the Antisemitism Policy Trust, as it will help equip us all to combat misinformation and ensure the British people have the knowhow they need to think critically. This guide bolsters the efforts I am leading in the House of Commons and my colleagues in Government to protect the public from the damaging effects of misinformation and safeguard the integrity of our democratic process.”

Lucy Powell MP, shadow leader of the house said: “The rise in conspiracy theories should worry us all. Whilst their existence is nothing new, the proliferation of social media and online channels has multiplied their reach, their risk, and the repercussions they have on individuals, our society, our politics and democracy.

“This guide is a must-read for MPs and candidates, who have an important role in leading their communities, speaking on the national stage with clarity and truth, and against mis and dis information which can harm communities and our country.”

Danny Stone MBE, chief Executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust said:”One doesn’t have to fall particularly far down any conspiracy theory rabbit hole before finding antisemitic themes, tropes, or ideas.

“We were delighted to work with the Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt MP, whose initiative this was, and so many other organisations on this guide. It is imperative that parliamentarians and parliamentary candidates can spot, and certainly avoid promoting and amplifying conspiracy myths. We hope this guide will help them in that endeavour.”

WHY THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS DEAD

Ejaz Haider explains why this idea was always a red herring in the face of recalcitrant Zionism, violent apartheid and engineered Palestinian bantustans and why the improbable — a single, just state — may be Palestine’s only future

Ejaz Haider 

Published August 24, 2025

EOS/DAWN

“As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.” — Caliban, Act III, Sc II, The Tempest by William Shakespeare

As the Zionist genocide in Gaza and the West Bank continues apace, the cadaver of a two-state solution is again being revived, with chants of “cumi [arise]” by the very colonial powers that are responsible for and complicit in the murderous violence that has raged in Palestine for almost a century.

That is bad enough. What’s worse is that the Arab countries are in cahoots with them in this project.

On July 29, British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, spoke at the UN Two-State Solution conference on Gaza and the recognition of a Palestinian State. The irony of what he said is only surpassed by the perversity of the Balfour Declaration, which he invoked to press for a two-state solution:

“One hundred and eight years ago, my predecessor as British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, signed the declaration that bears his name. It helped lay the foundations for a homeland for the Jewish people. And Britain can be proud of that. Our support for Israel, its right to exist and the security of its people is steadfast. However, the Balfour declaration came with the solemn promise ‘that nothing shall be done, nothing which may prejudice the civil and religious rights’ of the Palestinian people as well.”

My purpose here is simple, though its treatment can be anything but undemanding: the seeds of violence sowed by Britain and its allies in Palestine during World War I, and which Lammy, himself of colonial heritage from British Guiana (now Guyana), is proud of, demands a rejection of what happened, not an endorsement of it.

The two-state solution, a red-herring at the best of times, cannot atone for the original sin, which demands not just saying peccavi but overturning Britain’s “proud” moment 108 years ago — though it must be said that Britain was not the only culprit. (Space does not allow detailing how another, now forgotten, Zionist, Nahum Sokolow, was assigned by English aristocrat and politician Mark Sykes, to get an undertaking from the French on changes to the Sykes-Picot Pact and support for the establishment of a Zionist entity. Sokolow got what is now called the Jules Cambon letter, which didn’t even mention the existing communities like the Balfour letter does.)

As the Zionist genocide in occupied Palestine rages on, complicit Western and Arab powers have resurrected the idea of the two-state solution, suggesting recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Ejaz Haider explains why this idea was always a red herring in the face of recalcitrant Zionism, violent apartheid and engineered Palestinian bantustans and why the improbable — a single, just state — may be Palestine’s only future

To this end, I propose to give the reader a glimpse of how a new world was imposed on Palestinians and why a two-state solution, even when presented with sincerity, ignores or is unaware of the fact that the Zionist “control system” of Palestine has already turned that land into a single, apartheid state. There’s no space in that hegemonic control for two states. But let’s begin at the beginning.

THE TRAVESTY OF 67 WORDS

On November 2, 1917, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, wrote a letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a Zionist figurehead of the British Jewish community. “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of the object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country [emphasis added].”

Despite Balfour’s caveat about “existing non-Jewish communities”, Britain, along with other colonial powers, had already engineered a mandate in favour of Jewish colonisation of Palestine. In Palestinian academic Edward Said’s words, it was a promise “made by a European power… about a non-European territory… in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory.

The Zionists knew this. In his infamous essay, ‘The Iron Wall’, Vladimir Jabotinsky, father of the hardline Revisionist Zionist Movement, wrote that there was not a single instance in history “of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.”

His political foe, David Ben-Gurion, leader of the so-called Zionist Left, agreed: “There is no solution to the question of relations between Arabs and Jews… And we must recognise this situation… We as a nation want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.”

The only way the improbable could work is for the international community to reject Zionism and its privileges, for the colonial powers to confess to the original sin and for a state grounded in the “[nullification of] all Jewish racial and colonial privileges”, a process that “decolonises the country in order to grant equal rights to all.”

In other words, the clash was structurally set-up and for that reason was inevitable. Citing the body of literature would take up the entire space here but let me make two points: neither Jabotinsky nor Ben-Gurion or Chaim Weizman — president of the Zionist Organisation since 1920 — refer, even in passing, to the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside the Zionist entity.

Israeli historian Benny Morris notes that Ben-Gurion saw the Partition plan as a stepping stone to Palestinian expulsion: “With compulsory transfer, we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]. I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.” Weizmann, the Zionist entity’s first president, likened the Palestinians to “the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.”

At the root of it was terra nullius [nobody’s land], a concept controversially applied by colonial powers to occupy other peoples’ lands. But since no land was actually unoccupied, the native needed to be disappeared from the narrative.

In an article for the Yale Journal of International Law, titled ‘The Colonial Order Prevails in Palestine: The Right to Self-Determination from a Third World Approach to International Law’, Tina Al-khersan and Azadeh Shahshahani write: “To support colonial projects across the world, legal frameworks emerged to justify colonisers’ violent land acquisition. One foundational principle of these frameworks was terra nullius… As terra nullius positioned lands as empty, the first person to use the land became its owner. In practice, however, the definition of terra nullius was adopted and expanded upon by the Europeans to justify colonisation.”

The late English historian Patrick Wolfe argued in his 2006 essay ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of Native’, that the “logic of elimination” is central to the settler-colonial project and has “typically [required employing] the organising grammar of race.” The process, according to Al-khersan and Shahshahani, “aims to destroy indigenous societies while simultaneously establishing the colonial society on the acquired land.”

In such a universe, the power of who lords over others is absolute. Robinson Crusoe’s island becomes a metaphor for terra nullius and Crusoe’s story, of the boy from York, becomes that of resilience, tilling the soil and surviving with determination and ingenuity. But we realise that the island is not entirely uninhabited, or he would not have saved the native, whom he names Friday, from the cannibals, the uncivilised eaters of humans.

When Crusoe is rescued by a passing ship, he returns to England, having amassed a lot of wealth from his Brazilian plantation and slave trade. Friday returns with him, his man Friday, loyal and obedient, having been civilised, much like Lammy, but also without his own language and identity.

It is in this vein that Europe set out to civilise the natives, occupy their lands, divide them and, to our present purpose, solve Europe’s “Jewish Question.” Balfour’s proviso that the Jewish state must not violate the rights of existing non-Jewish communities was contradictory to the very idea of creating a Jewish state without the consent of Palestinians.

Imagine the German foreign minister Richard von Kühlmann deciding in November 1917 that, after exterminating thousands of Nama and Herero peoples in the previous decade [in present-day Namibia], Germany would settle them in England on the condition that the rights of the existing non-Nama-Herero in England would not be violated.

Now imagine that, after 108 years of violence and genocide of the white English by Nama-Herero, the current German foreign minister Johann Wadephul were to stand behind a podium at the UN and invoke Germany’s letter as the basis for a two-state solution. I doubt the English, including Lammy, would be amused by such an assertion.



Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, stands under a portrait of Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, as he reads Israel’s declaration of independence in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948: Ben-Gurion saw the Partition plan as a stepping stone to Palestinian expulsion | Reuters

THE TWO-STATE CHIMERA

There are three categories of two-state solutionists. The first involves states mouthing this mantra since Oslo I (1993) and Oslo II (1995). These states, notably the United States and its Western European allies, while talking about a two-state solution have done everything to bury it effectively. They have armed the Zionist state-entity, branded Palestinian resistance as terrorism, supported or ignored illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Israel’s policy of sabotaging a two-state solution and vetoed any attempt by other UN member states to recognise Palestine as a state

The second category comprise peace activists within Israel who, while firmly grounded in their Zionism, believe that Palestinians should have a state in order for the Zionist entity to live in peace. There are shades of opinion within this broader category which can’t be detailed here. Briefly, they believe that the Zionist entity must exist with a separation wall (physical and metaphorical) and maintain its military and economic supremacy. Such a deal could be guaranteed by the Arab states normalising with the Zionist entity and helping the nominal Palestinian administrative state to survive.

The third camp comprises of millions around the world, honest folks, who think that the Zionist entity should be forced to live peacefully with the Palestinians because such an outcome is the only practical solution. They empathise with the Palestinians and want the genocidal violence to end.

The common denominator in these categories, intentions aside, is the acceptance of the existence of the Zionist entity. It’s like King Lear telling Kent that “The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft” — the deed has been done and cannot be undone. This acceptance of imperial fait accompli is the central impediment to a solution, which must begin by rejecting Zionism.

Several scholars, including Jewish-Israeli ones, have noted the ground reality of Zionist control. Writing in the October 23, 2003 issue of The New York Review, the late Professor Tony Judt begins thus: “The Middle East peace process is finished. It did not die: it was killed.” Judt, like most scholars, is not particularly concerned about the idea of a “Jewish” state itself but argued that it is “a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project” foisted on a different world. Israel is an anachronism. If Judt were alive today, he would have seen how alive 19th century anachronism is, expressed through the 21st century tools of violence, a genocide unfolding on cameras and in real time.

Haim Hanegbi, a Palestinian Jewish journalist and co-founder of Matzpen, a dissident, anti-Zionist organisation, in an interview to Haaretz, a somewhat progressive newspaper in the Zionist entity, said, “Everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear has to understand that only a binational partnership can save us.”

Daniel Gavron, in his 2004 book The Other Side of Despair, has two chapters important to our discussion here: ‘The Impossible Solution’ and ‘The Improbable Solution.’ The first details how intricately the current Zionist entity is tied up with the West Bank. Among other details, he quotes Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, and architect Eyal Weizman to show how impossible the two-state solution is.

Even under the Oslo Agreements, “Israel retains control of the water under the ground of the West Bank and the air above it”. And Eyal Weizman notes, that “the system of bypass roads, bridges and tunnels linking the Jewish settlements to each other and to Israel, makes it almost impossible to detach the West Bank from Israel.”

Gavron then moves to “the improbable solution” with a quote from Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” According to Gavron, “Having reached the conclusion that the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River must be shared but cannot be sensibly partitioned, we are left with only one alternative: Israeli-Palestinian coexistence in one nation.”

American political scientist Virginia Tilley has studied the problem in great detail and presented the case in her 2005 book, The One State Solution. She lays out, systematically, the intricate problems that attend the two-state solution and presents her argument through elimination.

On the settlement grid, Tilley shows, as others have done too, that the grid’s very design, “in terms of its density and territorial dispersion”, is meant “to make the occupation irreversible, by fragmenting the territory of the potential Palestinian state and making the removal of the settlements impossible.” She was writing in 2005. In the past two decades, settlements have not only mushroomed, they have become even more intricate.

More recently, in his 2019 book Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality, political scientist Ian Lustick has made a detailed case against the two-state solution. In doing that, he has listed the many initiatives and formulae that have sought to create a viable Palestinian state, none of which has worked, and most of which were shot down by the Zionist entity.

As I have noted in this space before, the Oslo Agreements, on which the entire idea of a two-state solution rests, never envisaged a sovereign Palestinian state. This was the crux of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin’s speech at the Knesset, 29 days before he was assassinated. Today, the Zionist entity’s forces operate openly and arbitrarily even in Area A which, under the Oslo Agreements, is the sole administrative domain of the so-called Palestinian Authority and constitutes merely 18 per cent of the West Bank.

Most illegal settlements are in Area C, which comprises 60 per cent of the West Bank and is under the full civil and military control of the Zionist entity. It was to be transferred, hypothetically, to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Agreements, but that transfer has never happened. Why? Because it was never meant to happen.

Settlements were and are part of the Zionist entity’s politico-military policy. According to the American Jewish Israel Policy Forum (IPF), “In allowing and encouraging the establishment of Jewish communities in the West Bank, a disputed territory over which Israel does not exercise [legal] sovereignty, the Israeli government’s initial priority was security. By placing Israeli civilians in certain areas to solidify Israel’s control, Israel sought to ensure that the territory’s political future would be consistent with the country’s perceived security needs.”

The situation has since changed. The IPF says: “Over time, messianic Religious Zionist ideology developed as a significant driver of the settlement movement, based on the notion of a religious imperative for Jews to settle the entire Land of Israel. Settlements established as part of this religious movement were often placed in regions with a large Palestinian population, in order to secure Jewish dominance over the territory, prevent a Palestinian state, and secure the entire West Bank for Israel [emphasis added].”

The reality is that settler activity did not become messianic “over time.” It was messianic from the get go. Rabbi Avraham Kook saw the 1967 War as a sign of messianic redemption. Religious Zionists still refer to his speech, which mesmerised them. The 2016 documentary The Settlers by Shimon Dotan unpacks the history of the settler movement and how the settlers consider it their sacred duty to purge the land of Palestinians and occupy Eretz Yisrael [Greater Israel].

Just last week, Bezalel Smotrich, a far right minister of the Zionist entity, showed a map and spoke of a plan to build a settlement that would effectively cut off the West Bank from East Jerusalem. He told the media that it would thwart the idea of a Palestinian state, “because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise.”

Smotrich is not alone in rejecting the idea of a Palestinian state. On August 12, the Zionist entity’s right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal against whom the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants, spoke to i24, a tv channel in the Zionist entity, and told the interviewer that he is “very attached” to the vision of a “Greater Israel.” The map depicting that entity includes all of Lebanon and Jordan, parts of Syria and even Saudi Arabia. The interview prompted the Saudi Foreign Ministry to issue a statement of condemnation.

Let me now come to Edward Said. Initially a proponent of a two-state solution, Said came round to the reality on the ground. In his book The End of the Peace Process, he wrote: “No negotiations are better than endless concessions that simply prolong the Israeli occupation… with Palestinian consent.”

In two essays, ‘Israel-Palestine: The Third Way’ (1998) and ‘The Only Alternative’ (2001), Said laid down his paradigm for a one-state solution: a secular, democratic state, grounded in the idea of citizenship, not nationalisms. His second essay refers to South Africa, then under the African National Congress (ANC), struggling “to complete the task of bringing equality and social justice to this still-divided and economically troubled country.” He called the end of apartheid the greatest human achievement in recorded history.

Said also spurned armed resistance. He thought, despite his great intellect and insight, that Zionists could be turned around by appealing to justice and the notion of right and wrong. In that he was misplaced.

Armed resistance is an imperative his student, Joseph Massad, Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, understands clearly. On October 8, a day after Hamas’ military attack on the Zionist entity’s outposts, he wrote: “[A]s the ongoing war between the Israeli colonial army and the indigenous Palestinian resistance has only just begun, the days to come will surely be crucial in determining if this is the start of the Palestinian War of Liberation or yet another battle in the interminable struggle between the coloniser and the colonised.”

Dozens of displaced Palestinians walk along a road in Jabalia, Gaza on January 18, 2025: settlements were and are part of the Zionist entity’s politico-military policy | AFP



FROM THE IMPOSSIBLE TO THE IMPROBABLE

So, if the two-state solution is impossible, what does the improbable look like, especially if the right wing Religious Zionists also want one state by exterminating and expelling the internal refugees and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, two of the three categories of Palestinians that live outside the Zionist entity?

Massad has a clear perspective on it. In an essay for the Middle East Eye on July 29, 2020, titled ‘Israel Prefers a One-state Solution that Protects its Colonial Privileges’, he argues that there are three different arrangements for the one-state solution: the white supremacist state; the post-apartheid, South-African-style one-state solution; and Zionists’ one-state solution.

Supporters of Israel, argues Massad, fear all three one-state arrangements. The supremacist state will be difficult to justify and could open the Zionist entity to international sanctions. “Algeria-Kenya-Zimbabwe solution,” says Massad, “most of all because it would lose the Jewish colonists all their colonial and racial privileges by making them equal to the natives.” The post-apartheid South African-style, one-state solution is their compromise, “as it seems to be the only one of the three that can safeguard Jewish supremacist privilege without international sanctions.”

The only way the improbable could work is for the international community to reject Zionism and its privileges, for the colonial powers to confess to the original sin and for a state grounded in the “[nullification of] all Jewish racial and colonial privileges”, a process that “decolonises the country in order to grant equal rights to all.”

Is the improbable possible? Yes and no. Yes, if the Zionist entity’s isolation is complete, an entity left marooned; no, because that doesn’t seem possible, both because the colonial mindset persists in the West and the colonised subjugation remains the defining feature of Palestine’s Arab neighbours. Their riches notwithstanding, they remain beholden to the very states that put the dog in the Middle East well.

Elham Fakhro’s 2024 book The Abraham Accords discusses in detail the perspective of the new generation of leaders in the Gulf states and why they remain so eager to normalise with the Zionist entity, despite the limits of that normalisation.

EPILOGUE

Ariella Aisha Azouley is an Algerian Arab Jew and professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. In one chapter of her book The Jewellers of the Ummah: A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World, she writes a letter to Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani after reading his novella Returning to Haifa.

Azouley creates Tama [‘pure’ in Hebrew and the equivalent of Saffiya in Kanafani’s story]. Tama is the daughter of Dov, Said and Saffiya’s renamed son Khuldun, who was left behind during the Nakba and was taken in by Miriam and her husband, the Jewish couple who didn’t want the child killed. When Said and Saffiya return to their apartment in Haifa, they meet Dov, serving in the Zionist army. Even though Dov knows he is Palestinian, he prefers to exercise the arrogant confidence of Zionists and refuses to recognise Saffiya and Said as his parents.

But Azoulay’s central theme is Miriam, not the Khuldun/Dov contrapuntal. Miriam is like Azouley, who names Dov’s daughter Tama so one day Tama/Saffiya would own Saffiya. This, Azouley believes, would break the vicious cycle: “We had been deprived of the memory of women like her [Miriam]; the Zionist state needed us bereft of our histories so that we could be raised as the children of colonisers and mature into colonisers themselves.”

Azoulay tells Kanafani, assassinated by the Mossad in Beirut in 1972 along with his 17-year-old niece, that the return has already begun with Tama/Saffiya, “breaking the Zionist spell over my body, over the land…”

Has it? I doubt Kanafani would agree. As he wrote in Returning to Haifa:

“I mean your presence here, in this house, our house, Saffiya’s and my house, is another matter. We only came to take a look at things, our things. Maybe you can understand that.”
She said quickly: “I understand, but…”
Then he lost his composure. “Yes, but! This terrible, deadly, enduring ‘but’…’”
At the heart of this darkness is this “but”. Unless this “but” is addressed, Palestine, like Caliban, will remain subjugated and locked in violence. The island’s problem is Prospero.

The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies.
X: @ejazhaider

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 24th, 2025