IN 1975 the United Nations General Assembly 'resolved' that Zionism was a form of racism. But the equation of Zionism with racism requires that the terms be defined Zionism is a political movement working for the solution of the Jewish problem by bringing the Jews to the land of Israel and the establishment there of a sovereign jewish society:
Racism: According to Even Shoshan's authoritative dictionary of the Hebrew language, racism is "The point of view that the nations of the world are divided into inferior and superior races.
On the face of it then Zionism has no racist dimension at all; at most it is a utopia, more suited to the 19th century than to present-day reality. Zionism does not state that the Jewish people is a superior race or that the Arab nation And indeed this definition is the basis for the claims of all those who denied the validity of the UN resolution: the Jewish people is not a race, and Zionism doc not speak about intenor or supe Therefore Zionism is not Yet there is another definition Tacist, closer to is meaning in collo quial language. Racism is the discrimination arainst human beines on the basis of their national, racial, religious or ethnic origin.
In this sense Zionism as an ideology is not racist, but the Zionist enterprise and the Zionist state of Israel is very, very racist.
Discrimination
Discrimination between Jews and Arabs is inscribed in the identity card and in the genetic code of the state of Israel and has had a vital part in defining the nature of the existing regime and its laws, its national priorities and its dominant culture.
First an aside: the United* Nations which in 1975 condemned Zionism as a / 16, 1992 No. 21 form of racism, bears no small responsibility for the existence of the racist regime in the state of Isracl. In 1947 a UN resolution established two states in Palestine, one almost entirely Arab, and the other with a majority of Jews.
One way or another, by defining the Jewish character of the original Isracli state, the UN granted international le gitimacy to Israel's racist character and perhaps to its expulsion of the Arab population.
Jewish
The statement in the Isracli Declaration of Independence proclaiming israel to be the state of the entire Jewish people, expresses the essence of the existing regime, and defines the collectivity of the state of Isracl This collectivity is not of all the state's citizens, but of the entire Jewish nation, over and above Jews who are citizens of the state, and excluding citizens of the state who were neither born to a Jewish mother nor converted to judaism according to Jewish law.
In other words not only does a Jewish mafioso from Paris have the ability (via Zionist institutions) to help determine the state's priorities, but the few Palestinians who managed to obtain citizenship have neither the right not the ability to be part of the sovereign collective.
A blatant example of this can be found in the land Arab citizens to buy 'national land' or state land', while jews living outside Israel who are not its citizens, have that right.
Another example is the Law of Re tum. Every Jewish person has the right of residency in Israel; by contrast there is no absolute right of residency even for an Arab citizen of Isracl. It is always provisional and on sufferance.
The pretentious liberalism of Israel's -and the need to keep the United Nations quiet - made it hard for them to legislate open apartheid laws. But since the existing regime was based on an apartheid system they were com pelled to search for so phisticated ways o institute this racial d The primary form this has taken is security and the state of war, the Law of Present Absentees, the Military Government of Arab areas until 1966, and the non-repeal of the mandatory Emergency regulations. These are just a few examples of the way in which a system of double standards was created under he pretext of a state of emergenc The initial Zionist approach to th country's inhabitants can be described as 'ecological racism'; the Arabs are part of the landscape, sometimes an interesng bit of folklore, mostly a nuisance his way of relating continued afte the establishment of the state as well: the Arabs 'disappeared'. Including from memory.
The minority who remained in Pales. tine were placed in 'reserves' in the hope that they too would disappear (the Kafr Osem massacre, and the plan of which this was a part, took place only five years after the mass expulsion of Arabs, which went on until 1951).
The Arabs who remained were accorded the status of provisional citizens and given the vote.
Third class citizens
That the Arabs would be third class citizens went without saying; the state of war with the Arab world, and the relatively small size of the remnant left after the mass expulsions, made their expulsion from the collectivity easier, even for the most liberal Israel Jews.
he state and society were not only Jewish in theory but also in practice; and dr that ame une contadicaon perween a Jewish state and a democratic state was It was therefore possible to put in Placea poncy or alscrimina son without apparent hatred, without problems of concence, without moral anguish, Is raeli society in the 1950s and 60s could itself or anv association of with openly racist ideologies.
In the 1960s a combination of factors brought about a revolution in the relation of Israeli society towards the Pales tinians in the state. The internal economic and political needs of Israeli society, which led to the end of the period of military government, and to greater integration of the Palestinian minority into society; the addition of one and a half million more Palestinians to the area under Israeli rule after the 1967 war; and the foundation of the Palestinian national movement and its suc cesses after 1967.
Racist
These three factors prevented the continuation of a policy of ignoring the non-Jew within Jewish society, exposed the racist character of the current regime, and granted legitimacy to various forms of racist behaviour and openly racist ideology.
In 1967 the Palestinians became a problem' and the 'problem' activated the potential racism inherent in the existence of an exclusivist Jewish society.
For peoples as for individuals, dealing with reality as it is, including its past, is an essential condition for being able to overcome existential problems.
Denial of reality is a much shrewder enemy than open hatred. the existence of the Palestinians is indeed a problem for the advocates of a Jewish state, and especially for those Zionists who honestly champion democraticand humanistic values.
The problem is not that there are Palestinian Arabs who claim to belong in Palestine and demand their rights over land, but in the contradiction between a democratic approach and one which claims exclusivism in a place where there are other human beings.
The price of Israel being an exclusivist state is that it is being turned into a mixture of South Afnca. Northem Ire land and the Wild West. In simpler terms, the choice is between either a democratic state or Massada.
*Michael Warschatoski is a leading memberof the Revolutionary Communist league, Israeli section of the Fourth hernoona
Letters/Home News