Joseph Massad Columbia University, USA

situations THE ENDS OF ZIONISM Racism and the Palestinian Struggle

Zionism as a colonial movement is constituted the following will illustrate, by a religio-racial in ideology and practice by a religio-racial epistemology of supremacy over the Palestin- epistemology through which it apprehends ian Arabs, not unlike that used by European itself and the world around it. This religio- colonialism with its ideology of white suprem- racial grid informs and is informed by its acy over the natives. More recent debates colonial-settler venture. The colonial model about a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli remains the best model through which ‘conﬂict’ rarely, if ever, discuss the question of Zionism should be analyzed, but it is impor- racial supremacy. As I have discussed Zion- tant also to analyze the racial dimension of ism’s colonial pedigree elsewhere (Massad Zionism in its current manifestation, which is 2000a), in this article I will focus on this su- often elided. While Zionism in its early history premacist grid, an analysis of which, I believe, presented itself unashamedly as a colonial- is a prerequisite of the victory of the Palestin- settler movement, it later insisted that it was ian struggle. nothing less than a Jewish national liberation It is no longer contested, even among many movement which could even be viewed as Israelis, that the impact of Zionism on the ‘anticolonial’. What Zionism remained un- Palestinian people in the last one hundred ashamed about throughout its history, however, years includes: the expulsion of a majority of was its commitment to building a demo- Palestinians from their lands and homes, the graphically exclusive Jewish state modeled prevention of their return, and the subsequent after Christian Europe – a notion pervaded, as conﬁscation of their property for the exclusive

THE ENDS OF ZIONISM 441 Joseph Massad use of Jews; the military apartheid system Pragmatism or racialism? imposed on those Palestinians who remained in Israel from 1948 until 1966, which since Is the return of the Palestinian refugees not then has been relaxed to a civilian Jewish pragmatic because Israel is too small geo- supremacist system of discrimination; and the graphically? This does not seem to be the case military occupation and apartheid system as Israel continues to market itself as a final imposed on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip destination for millions of diaspora Jews in the and their population for the last thirty-five Americas and in Russia whose interest in years, as well as continued colonization of moving there, despite valiant Zionist efforts, is these occupied territories. Can there be a less than enthusiastic (those who moved from solution to the conflict that Zionism brought Russia between 1990 and 2000 – many of from Europe and imposed on a mostly peasant whom turned out not to be Jewish at all – are population? excepted). In November 2001, as Israel’s Ever since the Oslo ‘peace process’ began in military continued to kill, strafe, and assassi- 1993, most debates among official Israelis, nate the resisting Palestinians of the occupied Americans, and Palestinians about how to territories, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed ‘end’ the conflict between Zionism and the to bring one million more Jews to Israel. Since Palestinians stress the question of pragmatism the Russian Jewish well has almost dried up, as opposed to idealism. The logic runs as it is said that Sharon may opt to encourage the follows: it is not pragmatic to give the refugees half-million Argentine Jews to come and the right of return; it is not pragmatic to give colonially settle in the Jewish state (Brockes them back their property; it is not pragmatic and MacAskill 2001). American Jews have to dismantle the colonial settlements in the overwhelmingly opted not to be ‘redeemed’ in occupied territories; it is not pragmatic to Israel, making it up to Israeli Jews through the return all the territories to Palestinian control; financial and political support that they give it is not pragmatic to end all aspects of the to the Jewish supremacist state while remain- occupation. Moreover, although Israel’s ing in their American ‘exile’. Jewish character was never part of the negoti- Surely, if Israel can accommodate more ations, it has always been made explicit that millions of Jews in its small territory, it could transforming Israel into a non-Jewish (read conceivably do the same for the Palestinian non-racist) state is not pragmatic. refugees whom it expelled and whose land it On the pragmatic side, the arguments run as invites these Jews to colonize. Yet all solutions follows: it is pragmatic for Palestinians to give that have been advanced by official and non- up the right of return; it is pragmatic for official Palestinians and Israeli Jews to resolve Palestinians to accept to live in a Jewish the refugee ‘problem’ seem to agree on the supremacist state as third-class citizens; it is non-pragmatism of the return of the refugees pragmatic for Palestinians to live in Israeli- to their lands. Recent examples of such pro- controlled and -besieged bantustans rather posals include Donna Arzt’s book Refugees than opt for independence; and it is pragmatic Into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the for Israel to remain a Jewish supremacist state. Arab-Israeli Conflict (1997), and the proposal Identifying the criteria by which these solutions advanced by Harvard University’s Program on are judged as pragmatic or non-pragmatic is International Conflict Analysis and Resolution then the question that poses itself insistently. which was debated by a group of Palestinians

interventions – 5:3 442 and Israelis and written by Khalil Shikaki and right of return of Palestinian refugees, a right Joseph Alpher (1998).1 What is at stake for the guaranteed under international law and authors of these proposals, and of many United Nations Resolution 194, must be others, is Israel’s maintenance of its Jewish implemented in a way that takes into account supremacist character (dubbed its ‘Jewish such concerns’ (Arafat 2002). He proceeded to character’). Indeed, in November 2001 even state that he is looking to negotiate with Israel Yasser Arafat, in his continued attempts to on ‘creative solutions to the plight of the maintain power at the expense of his people’s refugees while respecting Israel’s demographic lives and rights, delegated one of his lieuten- concerns’ – i.e., ‘respecting’ its Jewish ants, Sari Nusaybah, who is the Palestinian supremacist concerns. However, what makes Authority representative in East Jerusalem, to the return of Palestinian refugees whom Israel concede the Palestinian refugees’ right of expelled and whose land it stole and steals return. Nusaybah also asserted to a group of non-pragmatic is not some geographic or Knesset members, representing the leftist ‘demographic’ consideration, not some Meretz party, that ‘if Palestinians want a environmental or logistical obstacle; what solution, we must take Israel’s refusal [of makes their return non-pragmatic is that they allowing the Palestinians to return] into are not Jews.2 consideration’ – a concession immediately It is further argued that Israel cannot become welcomed by the Knesset members, who a state of its citizens because to do so means thought it worthy of ‘study’ (Talhami 2001). that it would no longer remain a Jewish state Indeed the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz but would become an Israeli state of all its welcomed the concession immediately as did citizens. Indeed, racist views about the demo- one of its leading journalists, Danny Rubin- graphic ‘threat’ that the Palestinians constitute stein (usually seen as sympathetic to the for a Jewish supremacist Israel are not confined Palestinians), who praised Nusaybah’s con- to Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Jewish right cession but lamented that the latter did not wing (which is anyway a majority in Jewish represent the majority opinion among Pales- Israel), but are also voiced by liberal and leftist tinians (ibid.). Nothing came of this, however, Israeli Jews. In December 2000, the Institute of at the official level. Concerned that Israel may Policy and Strategy at the Herzlia Interdiscipli- not take Nusaybah’s concession seriously, nary Center in Israel held its first of a projected Arafat himself frankly expressed his ‘under- series of annual conferences dealing with the standing’ and ‘respect’ of the Israeli need to strength and security of Israel, especially with maintain Jewish supremacy in an editorial he regards to maintaining its Jewish supremacist published in the New York Times. He shame- character. One of the ‘Main Points’ identified lessly asserted: ‘We understand Israel’s demo- in the 52-page conference report is the concern graphic concerns and understand that the over the numbers needed to maintain the Jewish supremacy of Israel: 1 Of the Palestinian group, which, in addition to Shikaki, included other Palestinian pragmatists, namely Ghassan Khatib, Ibrahim Dakkak, Yezid Sayigh, Nadim Rouhana, and The high birthrate [of Israeli Arabs] brings into Nabeel Kassis, only Kassis did not partake of the final drafting question the future of Israel as a Jewish state . . . of the report (see Alpher and Shikaki 1998: x). Israeli and US Jewish participants included Joseph Alpher, Gabriel Ben-Dor, Yossi Katz, Moshe Ma’oz, Ze’ev Schiff, Shimon Shamir, and 2 For a detailed discussion of all proposed solutions to the Herbert Kelman. refugee problem, see Massad (2001).

THE ENDS OF ZIONISM 443 Joseph Massad

The present demographic trends, should they ethno-racial supremacy through demographic continue, challenge the future of Israel as a supremacy. He soberly states: Jewish state. Israel has two alternative strate- gies: adaptation or containment. The latter An infiltration [of Jews] is bound to end badly. requires a long-term energetic Zionist demo- It continues till the inevitable moment when the graphic policy whose political, economic, and native population feels itself threatened, and educational effects would guarantee the Jewish forces the government to stop further influx of character of Israel. (Herzlia Conference 2001) Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such The report adds affirmatively that ‘those immigration. (Herzl 1988: 95) who support the preservation of Israel’s character as . . . a Jewish state for the Jewish nation To achieve this, the Jewish settlers would ... constitute a majority among the Jewish ‘gently’ expropriate the natives’ property and population in Israel’. The conference was not a lonely effort. None other than Israel’s Presi- try to spirit the penniless population across the dent Moshe Katsav welcomed the attendees. border by procuring employment for it in the Reflecting the predominant Jewish suprema- transit countries, while denying it any employ- cist views among Israeli and American Jews, ment in our own country . . . The property- the conference was co-sponsored by the owners will come over to our side. Both the American Jewish Committee, the Israel Center process of expropriation and the removal of the for Social and Economic Progress, the Israeli poor must be carried out discreetly and circum- Defense Ministry, the Jewish Agency, the spectly . . . Let the owners of immovable World Zionist Organization, the National property believe that they are cheating us, Security Center at Haifa University, and the selling us things for more than they are worth. Israeli National Security Council of the Prime But we are not going to sell them anything back. Minister’s Office. The conference featured fifty (Herzl 1960: 88) speakers: senior government and military officials – including ex- and future prime Before the natives are removed, however, they ministers – university professors, business and will be needed for some important tasks: media personalities, as well as American Jewish academics and operatives of the US If we move into a region where there are wild Zionist lobby. animals to which the Jews are not accustomed The conference’s findings and commitments – big snakes, etc. – I shall use the natives, prior are hardly a new phenomenon in Zionist to giving them employment in the transit coun- thought. Jewish demographic supremacy, tries, for the extermination of these animals. which has always been the ideological corner- High premiums for snake skins, etc., as well as stone for imposing ethno-racial Jewish their spawn [will be offered by the Jews]. (ibid.: supremacy in Palestine (however the Jewish 98) ‘race’ or Jewish ‘ethnicity’ may be defined), is as old as the Zionist movement itself. It was The Jewish supremacist plan that the Zionists the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, had in mind for their state-to-be was not who, in his Zionist musings, understood that carried out as discreetly and circumspectly as European Jews would have to establish their Herzl had hoped. Indeed, part of their

interventions – 5:3 444

‘conquest of labor’, wherein only Jews were of Israel be expelled altogether (Al-Hayah supposed to work ‘Jewish’ land, manifested in 2002). a celebrated incident. When, in 1908, Zionist In addition to the Palestinian population, colonists found out that the saplings of a forest who understood Zionism for what it was and that was founded in Ben Shemen near Lydda resisted it from its inception in the late nine- in memory of Theodor Herzl had been planted teenth century,3 many of the Jewish detractors by Arabs, they uprooted and replanted them of Zionism opposed the movement, not only (Hirst 1984: 25). because they disagreed with its plans for Jews Indeed the concern about maintaining but also because of its plans for Palestinians. Jewish supremacy in Israel is so widespread As early as 1919, Julius Kahn, a Jewish con- that in January 2002 the leading Israeli- gressman from San Francisco delivered to Russian daily Novosti published an article by President Wilson a statement endorsed by 299 one of its leading journalists, Marian Belenki, Jews, both rabbis and laymen. The document, called ‘How to force them to leave’. It sug- which denounced the Zionists for attempting gested that the Israeli government use the to segregate Jews and to reverse the historical threat of castration to encourage the Arabs to trend toward emancipation, objected to the leave the country. The author, according to the creation of a distinctly Jewish state in Palestine Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz, also proposed as contrary ‘to the principles of democracy’ (New York Times 1919: 7; cited in Kolsky that the Chinese method for lowering birth rates 1990: 31). Indeed, many prominent American be implemented in Israel for the Arab popula- Jews continued to be horrified by the Zionist tion in order to lower their birth rates. Accord- plan through the 1940s. James N. Rosenberg ing to this method, people who have more than of the American Jewish Committee denounced one child are deprived of various benefits, lose the Zionist plans to set up an exclusively their jobs, and are under threat of exile. Cash Jewish state as undemocratic. In a major prizes for young men who voluntarily agree to article that later appeared in the American the castration will also be provided, according press rebutting Zionist arguments, he objected to the proposed method. (Galili 2002) to the cancellation of the rights of non-Jews as a result of the establishment of a Jewish The newspaper editor subsequently said that supremacist state (Kolsky 1990: 41). Due to publishing the article was ‘a grave mistake’ Zionist tactics of silencing any Jewish criti- and suspended the editor responsible for its cisms within US Jewish organizations, and publication for three months. However, their threats to their opponents at the con- Ha’Aretz found it surprising that the news- vention of the Central Conference of paper ‘did not receive any responses from American Rabbis in June 1943, Reform Rabbi readers or public representatives of the Louis Wolsey, a fierce anti-Zionist, feared that Russian community’ (ibid.). Indeed, what is the prominent American Zionist Rabbi surprising is that Ha’Aretz was surprised at Stephen Wise had ‘revealed by his tyranny all. On 1 February 2002, Tourism Minister over the non-conformist what the Zionists Benny Elon (of the Moledet Party), who had would do to the Arabs’ (ibid.: 73). American recently replaced the assassinated Israeli minister Rehbeam Ze’evi, proposed, like his 3 On Palestinian resistance, see Khalidi (1997) and Hirst predecessor, that the entire Arab population (1984).

THE ENDS OF ZIONISM 445 Joseph Massad

Jewish anti-Zionists continued to oppose born and conceived every night (Hirst 1984: Zionism’s Jewish supremacist plans until 1948 242–3). when most of the support they had received It is further argued that Israel cannot end its over the decades dwindled against the reality occupation of the West Bank and Gaza of the holocaust and the establishment of the because it needs to protect Jewish colonial Jewish supremacist state. settlers there, to maintain complete control of Israeli Jewish society in Israel, as well as the Palestinian water for Jewish use, and to guar- Israeli leadership, continues to uphold Jewish antee the security of Israel from threats to it as supremacy as sacrosanct and non-negotiable. a Jewish state that might arise from an inde- This manifests in its continued commitment to pendent West Bank and Gaza state. This the laws that safeguard Jewish supremacy in rhetoric was foundational to the Madrid- Israel, including the Law of Return (1950), the launched ‘peace process’ in 1991 which culmi- Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of nated in the Oslo Process in 1993 – the oppres- the State’s Property (1951), the Law of Citi- sive results of which the Palestinians have been zenship (1952), the Status Law (1952), the encountering for the last ten years of ‘peace’ Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the negotiations, and particularly in the last two Construction and Building Law (1965), and a years during which they have been subjected myriad others. Such commitment extends to to systematic massacres by the Israeli occu- the maintenance of the exclusive Jewish sym- pation army.5 bolism that Israel deploys, ranging from its Jewish flag and national anthem (which only speaks of Jews) to its ceremonial national days Zionism and anti-Semitism and the practices of institutionalized discrimination against its Arab non-Jewish citizens in Since its inception, Zionism’s Jewish suprem- every facet of life.4 Shimon Peres, the dove of acy borrowed much from anti-Semitic rheto- official Israel, worried recently about the ric. Not only did Herzl agree with anti-Semites Palestinian demographic ‘danger’ as the Green that it was Jews who ‘caused’ anti-Semitism – Line, which separates Israel from the West ‘Where [anti-Semitism] does not exist, it is Bank, is beginning to ‘disappear . . . which carried by Jews in the course of their migra- may lead to the linking of the futures of West tions . . . The unfortunate Jews are now Bank Palestinians with Israeli Arabs.’ He carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into hoped that the arrival of 100,000 Jews in England, they have already introduced it into Israel would postpone this demographic America’ (Herzl 1988: 75) – but also with the ‘danger’ for ten more years, as ultimately, he anti-Semitic conclusion that the end of anti- stressed, ‘demography will defeat geography’ Semitism could only be brought about by the (Al-Hayah 2001). Indeed, there is very little to removal of Jews from gentile societies. Hence distinguish the attitudes of Peres and Sharon Herzl’s expectation that anti-Semites would on Jewish supremacy from the attitude of immediately rally to the support of the Golda Meir who could not sleep in the early Zionists proved correct, as many among them, 1970s, horrified at the number of Palestinians including the Nazis, did (ibid.: 93). Like

4 On Israel’s racist laws and treatment of its Palestinian Arab 5 On the rhetoric of ‘pragmatism’, which even Palestinian citizens, see Jiryis (1976) and Lustick (1980). intellectuals adopted after Oslo, see Massad (1997).

interventions – 5:3 446

European anti-Semites, Zionism believes that Party, the article explains that ‘there are also European Jews, unlike European Christians, many warm Jews heading for the top positions are not Europeans but foreigners who need to in the Republican Party’. The article quoted a leave Europe to its ‘real’ people and be ‘repat- Washington DC-based rabbi asserting that riated’ to their own state in Palestine. Today’s Israeli Jewish supremacists are reviving anti- for the first time in American history . . . we no Semitic ideas of the turn of the century that longer feel that we live in the diaspora. The US had accused Jews of seeking to control the no longer has a government of Goyim, but an world. From the infamous czarist Protocols of administration in which the Jews are full the Elders of Zion to genocidal Nazi propa- partners in the decision-making at all levels. (Bar- ganda, Jews as a ‘power-hungry’ people was a Yosef 1994: 148–51) notion that was part and parcel of the anti- Semitic lexicon. Today’s Israeli Jewish The Israeli Jewish journalist was particularly supremacists seem to agree with the anti- impressed with how ‘Jewish’ the American Semites that, if Jews do not control the world, government had become when he phoned the they at least control America. In September State Department with regards to the then 1994, during the Clinton administration, the Haiti crisis, requesting a briefing from the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv published an person in charge of that area: exposé on ‘The Jews who run Clinton’s cabinet’. The newspaper noted the increasing They referred me to Yehuda Mirsky. I intro- ‘Jewish power’ in the US government since the duced myself to his secretary. Suddenly Reagan years. While American Jews had had someone picked up the receiver and then I heard key positions regarding US policy on the a voice saying in perfect Israeli Hebrew: ‘Good Middle East before Clinton, the newspaper morning, how can I help you?’ For a moment I asserted, under his administration ‘Jewish thought that I had mistakenly dialed the Israeli power’ expanded measurably. Aside from Foreign Ministry. (ibid.) Deputy National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and National Security Advisor to the This major ideological convergence between Vice-President Leon Perth, ‘[i]n the National anti-Semites and Jewish supremacists in Israel Security Council, 7 out of 11 top staffers are is hardly surprising if one understands Jews. Clinton had especially placed them in Zionism’s project as nothing short of turning the most sensitive junctions in the US security the Jew into the anti-Semite.6 Certainly, no and foreign administrations.’ The article American Jewish leader and no respectable proudly proclaims how American Jews staff American newspaper, Jewish or gentile, would top positions in charge of US policy not only have published an anti-Semitic article of the on the Middle East but also on Africa, South caliber published by Ma’ariv. The only excep- Asia, Western Europe, and Latin America. tion would be anti-Semitic rags. This is not to Indeed, the newspaper article provided its say, however, that the leaders of the US pro- readers with the biographies of many of these Israel lobby do not regularly brag about their so-called ‘warm Jews’ – meaning Jews who identify with Jewish interests defined as Israeli 6 On Zionism’s complicity with anti-Semitism and its use of interests. Lest we think that this alleged anti-Semites as a model, see Selzer (1967) and Massad ‘Jewish power’ is limited to the Democratic (2000a).

THE ENDS OF ZIONISM 447 Joseph Massad crucial influence on US policy in Congress and Jewish supremacist Weltanschauung, and in in the White House. That they have done line with anti-Semitic rhetoric, not only will regularly since the late 1970s.7 What these Jews be supremacists over the native Palestin- anti-Semitic notions miss, however, is that the ians whom they conquered and must continue ‘Jewish lobby’ is only powerful in the United to conquer; they are also said to be supreme States because its major claims are about on a global scale. The complicity between advancing US interests, and that their support Zionism and anti-Semitism has become com- for Israel is contextualized in their support for plete. the overall US strategy in the Middle East. As As for the Zionist project of turning Jews such, the ‘Jewish lobby’ plays the same role into anti-Semites, it was in evidence early on that the China lobby played in the 1950s and when Jewish Haskala thinkers, or Maskilim the Cuba lobby still plays to this day. The fact (like Smolenskin, among others), who had that it is more powerful than any other lobby much influence on Zionist thinkers, accepted on Capitol Hill testifies to the importance of anti-Semitic characterizations of Jews as Israel in US strategy and not to some alleged ‘dirty’, ‘medieval’, ‘superstitious’, and ‘effem- Jewish ‘power’ independent of and extraneous inate’. Herzl himself described French Jews in to the US ‘national interest’. his diaries in the following way: ‘I took a look By accepting the preposterous anti-Semitic at the Paris Jews and saw a family likeness in characterizations of Jews as ‘in control of their faces: bold, misshapen noses; furtive and America’, Israel’s Jewish supremacists fail to cunning eyes’ (Herzl 1960: 11). To transform see that the extent to which American Jews are Jews from the ‘effeminate schlemiels’ that anti- represented in the US government is the extent Semitism and Zionism thought they were into to which they have become assimilated into a manly men modeled after anti-Semites, turn- generic American whiteness, and how much of-the-century Zionist ideologue Max Nordau their Jewishness, warm or cold, has been inte- set up gymnastic clubs for Jewish men grated into Americanness.8 American Jews (Nordau 1980: 434–5).9 Nordau’s ‘Bar who serve in government are no more pro- Kochba clubs’ were engineered to physically Israel than their Christian counterparts, and ‘restore’ male Jews physically to the condition when they happen to be more pro-Israel this is of their alleged Hebrew forefathers who were more a function of believing that support for athletic fighters like the Greeks, as he believed Israel is in America’s best interests (as well as his contemporary male Jews to be as ‘effemi- in the best interests of American Jews, whose nate’ as anti-Semitic claims had made them interests are seen as the same as general out to be. Indeed, this project has been so American interests). The real danger of these successful that Israeli soldiers, engaged in anti-Semitic/Jewish supremacist views is the putting down the second Palestinian uprising effect they would have on the lives and liveli- against Israeli military occupation, found hoods of American Jews (whether suprema- inspiration in an anti-Semitic precedent, cists or not) if taken up by American anti- namely the Nazi assault on the Warsaw Semites and their friends. According to this Ghetto during the Second World War. Accord- ing to the Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz:

7 On the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, see Findley (1985) and Tivnan (1988). 9 For an overview of Nordau’s political thought, see Mosse 8 In this regard, see Brodkin (1998). (1993: 161–175) and Breines (1991).

interventions – 5:3 448

In order to prepare properly for the next cam- were genetically distinct from other people in paign, one of the Israeli officers in the territories the region. In doing so, the team’s research said not long ago, ‘it’s justified and in fact essen- challenges claims that Jews are a special, chosen tial to learn from every possible source. If the people and that Judaism can only be inherited. mission will be to seize a densely populated (McKie 2001) refugee camp, or take over the casbah in Nablus, and if the commander’s obligation is to Due to major protests, and the threat of mass try to execute the mission without casualties on resignations from the editorial board, the jour- either side, then he must first analyze and inter- nal’s editor responded swiftly: ‘Academics nalize the lessons of earlier battles – even, who had already received copies of Human however shocking it may sound, even how the Immunology have been urged to rip out the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto.’ offending pages and throw them away.’ The The officer indeed succeeded in shocking article’s lead author, Spanish geneticist Pro- others, not least because he is not alone in fessor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena was ‘stunned’. taking this approach. Many of his comrades The Observer adds: agree that in order to save Israelis now, it is right to make use of knowledge that originated The journal’s editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of in that terrible war, whose victims were their Columbia University, New York, claims the kin. (Oren 2002) article provoked such a welter of complaints over its extreme political writing that she was forced The more recent practice of writing numbers to repudiate it. The article has been removed on the arms of thousands of Palestinians who from Human Immunology’s website, while have been crammed in Israeli detention camps letters have been written to libraries and univer- since February 2002 through the present sities throughout the world asking them to further demonstrates the Nazi system as a ignore or ‘preferably to physically remove the model for the Israeli army. relevant pages’. Arnaiz-Villena has been sacked As for Jewish racial supremacy over the from the journal’s editorial board. Dolly Tyan, Palestinians, it has become part and parcel of president of the American Society of Histocom- an international discourse on Jewish racialism patibility and Immunogenetics, which runs the that has even infiltrated academia. It is in this journal, told subscribers that the society is context that a recent keynote research paper ‘offended and embarrassed’. (ibid.) showing that Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical was pulled from a leading scientific journal, Human Immunol- Practical solutions? ogy. The paper, titled ‘The origin of Palestini- ans and their genetic relatedness with other Israel’s continued refusal to change its Jewish Mediterranean populations’, involved studying supremacist character or its racist policies genetic variations in immune system genes toward the Palestinian people is portrayed in among people in the Middle East. According the international press and by official Israeli to the London Observer: rhetoric as a defense of its ‘democratic’ principles and in defense of a Jewish people whose In common with earlier studies, the team found historic persecution came to a halt only no data to support the idea that Jewish people because of Zionism’s intervention. However,

THE ENDS OF ZIONISM 449 Joseph Massad the only way these arguments acquire any committed to Jewish supremacy. Israel will purchase is in the context of an international, become an Israeli state that treats all its read western, commitment to Jewish suprem- citizens equally and does not hold that Jews acy, wherein Jews are seen as white Europeans should have a supremacist status. Israel will defending white European values and civiliza- allow the Palestinian refugees to return to it, tion against the primitive Arab hordes.10 The as they will not constitute a demographic cornerstone of Jewish supremacist thought is threat to Jewish supremacy. Israel will no the commitment to establishing a Jewish state, longer have to occupy the Palestinian West where Jews (whether as a ‘chosen people’, as Bank and Gaza Strip because it will no longer Europeans with a mission civilisatrice,11 or as be committed to Jewish colonization of Pales- a historically persecuted group who must be tinian land or to the theft of their water or to liberated at whatever cost)12 would have the military occupation of the territories, as it rights qua Jews over non-Jews, and all the will no longer fear for its security. The basis accoutrements that follow from such a racially on which Palestinians constitute a threat to supremacist system. It is Jewish supremacy Israeli security – namely, Israel’s maintenance that makes the question of Israel as a Jewish of Jewish supremacy, which translates into the rather than an Israeli state sacrosanct, whose oppression of the Palestinians – will no longer change would be non-pragmatic. It is a com- exist and neither will the ‘threat’. The Pales- mitment to Jewish supremacy that makes the tinians can then either have a Palestinian state return of the Palestinian refugees a ‘demo- in the West Bank and Gaza or, along with the graphic threat’ to the Jewish majority of Israel Israelis, opt for a bi-national state in all of (which became a fact precisely because the Mandatory Palestine. Palestinians now seeking to return to their How can this be brought about? Institu- lands and homes were expelled from them in tionalized white supremacy in the United the first place). It is a commitment to Jewish States and South Africa ended when the costs supremacy that continues to legitimize the of maintaining it became too high to bear by treatment of Israeli Palestinian citizens as white supremacists in both countries. It was third-class citizens. It is a commitment to only after the costs became high that people Jewish supremacy that legitimizes the con- and rulers in both countries opted to end the tinuation of the occupation as a safeguard institutionalized basis of white supremacy. against threats to a Jewish supremacist Israel. Today, one would find only a small minority If we subtract the commitment to Jewish of people in the United States or South Africa supremacy, then a solution to the Zionist- who would comfortably avow publicly that imposed conflict on the Palestinians would be they ever supported white supremacy, when more easily found. Let us imagine a world they had done so very comfortably a few where the majority of Israeli and diaspora years ago. The Jewish supremacists in Israel, Jews and their gentile supporters are no longer both rulers and population, have not paid much for the maintenance of Jewish suprem- 10 On how Palestinians and European Jews are related to whiteness, see Massad (1993). acy. They have not only maintained the land 11 Herzl spoke of the future Jewish state as forming ‘the they conquered but constantly expanded it. portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of They have not only been able to eke out a civilization as opposed to barbarism’. See Herzl (1988: 96). 12 On Zionism’s use of Jewish persecution, including the living but also prospered economically, holocaust, to justify its crimes, see Massad (2000b). socially, and culturally.

interventions – 5:3 450

It is the Palestinians who have had to pay earlier versions of this article as lectures at the the price for the maintenance of Jewish University of Oxford, Columbia University, supremacy until now. It is only by making the the University of Chicago, and the Social costs of Jewish supremacy too high that Israeli Science Research Council in Washington, DC. Jews will give it up. This can be done by the I would like to thank all those who invited me continuing resistance of Palestinians in Israel to give these lectures. and the occupied territories to all the civil and military institutions that uphold Jewish supremacy. It can also be done by applying References international pressure including divestment from Israel, imposing an international Al-Hayah (2001) ‘Biriz yuhadhdhir min “al-khatar al- economic blockade on the country, cultural dimughrafi” al-filastini wa yashunnu hujuman haddan ‘ala al-nuwwab al-‘arab fi al-kinisit’ (‘Peres and tourism boycotts, and instituting an inter- warns of Palestinian “demographic danger” and national diplomatic isolation of the country. launches a sharp attack against Arab members of This will hit Israeli Jewish supremacists the Knesset’), 24 August. —— (2002) ‘Khalifat Zi’ifi yad’u li-tarhil al- economically, in the comfort of their daily Filastiniyin’ (‘Zeevi’s successor calls for the eviction lives. It is then and only then that the majority of Palestinians’), 2 February. of Israeli Jews will be convinced that the costs Alpher, Joseph and Shikaki, Khalil (1998) The of Jewish supremacy are too high to bear and Palestinian Refugee Problem and the Right of Return, Working Paper Series 98(7), Weatherhead will become much more comfortable in Center for International Affairs, Harvard publicly disavowing Jewish supremacy and in University, May. claiming, like many of their white counter- Arafat, Yasser (2002) ‘The Palestinian vision of peace’, New York Times, 3 February. parts in South Africa and the United States, Arzt, Donna E. (1997) Refugees into Citizens: that they had never supported it in the first Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israeli place. While this solution may seem non-prag- Conflict, New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Bar-Yosef, Avinoam (1994) ‘The Jews who run matic in the contemporary international polit- Clinton’s cabinet’, Ma’ariv, 2 September. ical context, it is no less pragmatic than the Reproduced in the Journal of Palestine Studies 94 faltering ‘peace process’ that continues to be (Winter 1995): 148–51. sold to the world and to the Palestinian people Breines, Paul (1991) Tough Jews, Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry, New as pragmatic. All solutions that ignore the York: Basic Books. maintenance of Jewish supremacy in Israel Brockes, Emma and MacAskill, Ewen (2001) ‘Sharon will fail. Unless the elimination of Jewish wants 1m new Jews for Israel’, Guardian, 7 November. supremacy becomes the major goal of a real Brodkin, Karen (1998) How Jews Became White Folks ‘peace process’, all other solutions will simply & What That Says about Race in America, New perpetuate the conflict. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Findley, Paul (1985) They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, New York: Lawrence Hill. Acknowledgement Galili, Lily (2002) Ha’Aretz, 28 January. Herzl, Theodor (1960) The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. I, ed. Raphael Patai, trans. In this article, I borrow much of my analysis Harry Zohn, New York: Herzl Press and Thomas from an earlier and shorter article entitled ‘On Yoseloff. Zionism and Jewish supremacy’, published in —— (1988) The Jewish State, New York: Dover Publications. New Politics, Winter 2002. I have delivered ‘Herzlia Conference on the Balance of National THE ENDS OF ZIONISM 451 Joseph Massad

Strength and Security in Israel’ (2001) Selections recognition or submission’, Journal of Palestine reproduced in the Journal of Palestine Studies 121 Studies 117 (Fall): 52–67. (Autumn): 50–61. —— (2001) ‘Return or permanent exile’, in Naseer Hirst, David (1984) The Gun and the Olive Branch: Aruri (ed.) Palestinian Refugees and the Right of The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, London: Return, London: Pluto Press. Faber & Faber. Mosse, George (1993) Confronting the Nation: Jewish Jiryis, Sabri (1976) The Arabs in Israel, New York: and Western Nationalism, Hanover, NH: Brandeis Monthly Review Press. University Press. Khalidi, Rashid (1997) Palestinian Identity: The New York Times (1919) ‘Protest to Wilson against Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Zionist state’, 5 March: 7. New York: Columbia University Press. Nordau, Max (1980) ‘Jewry of muscle’, in Paul Kolsky, Thomas (1990) Jews Against Zionism: The Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz (eds) The Jew American Council For Judaism, 1942–1948, in the Modern World: A Documentary History, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 434–5. Lustick, Ian (1980) Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Translation of Nordau (1903) ‘Muskeljudentum’, Control of a National Minority, Austin, TX: in Juedische Turnzeitung, June. University of Texas Press. Oren, Amir (2002) ‘At the gates of Yassergrad’, McKie, Robin (2001) ‘Journal axes gene research Ha’Aretz, 25 January. on Jews and Palestinians’, Observer, 25 Sadeh, Sharon (2002) ‘Palestinians charge ahead in November. British propaganda war’, Ha’Aretz, 17 March. Massad, Joseph (1993) ‘Palestinians and the limits of Selzer, Michael (1967) The Aryanization of the Jewish racialized discourse’, Social Text 34 (Spring): State, New York: Black Star. 94–114. Talhami, As’ad (2001) ‘Filastiniyun yattahimun al- —— (1997) ‘Political realists or comprador sultah bi-itlaq balun ikhtibar bi-sha’n qadiyyat al- intelligentsia: Palestinian intellectuals and the laji’in wa isra’iliyyun yurahhibun bi-“al- national struggle’, Critique Fall: 21–35. waqi’iyyah”’ (‘Palestinians accuse the Authority of —— (2000a) ‘The “post-colonial” colony, time, space testing the waters regarding the refugee question, and bodies in Palestine/Israel’, in Fawzia Afzal- and Israelis welcome “pragmatism”’), Al-Hayah, Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks (eds) The Pre- 16 November: 8. Occupation of Post-Colonial Studies, Durham, NC: Tivnan, Edward (1988) The Lobby: Jewish Political Duke University Press, pp. 311–46. Power and American Foreign Policy, New York: —— (2000b) ‘Palestinians and Jewish history: Touchstone Books.