Democratic Palestine : 23 (ص 26)
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- Democratic Palestine : 23 (ص 26)
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taken as an exaggerated gesture made
by an overzealous religious fanatic.
Closer examination of the petition
reveals that it was signed by 400 of the
most prominent US citizens of that time
- names that could veritably comprise a
19th century Who’s Who. It had the
signatures of chief editors of major US
publications, members of Congress,
conservatives, business representatives
and major US capitalists like John
Pierpont Morgan, John Rockefeller,
William Rockefeller, magistrates, and
judges, including the chief justice of the
US Supreme Court, Melville Weston
Fuller. Far from being an overzealous
effort of a fanatic, this document in-
dicated which way the wind was blow-
ing in US politics.
The US media rushed to expound the
‘moral importance’ of this appeal, as
well as the political benefits which the
US stood to gain in supporting such a
project. Thus, six years before the
convening of the first Zionist Congress
in Basel, the idea of establishing a
Jewish Palestine had been woven into
the fabric of American culture.
It is important to note that at the end
of the 19th century, Zionism was still in
did not enjoy widespread support
among Jews. Jews were still engrossed
in the process of assimilating in the
European and American societies. Even
in 1917, when debate on the Balfour
Declaration was at its height, Lord
Edwin Samuel Montague, the
representative of the Jewish community
in England, rejected absolutely the
Zionist idea of a distinct Jewish state.
He also condemned Zionism as being a
miserable political belief and a form of
anti-semitism.
Comprehending non-Jewish Zionism
and its history provides a deeper
understanding of western support for
the Zionist entity in Palestine. It also
serves to dispel the widely accepted
view that western support for ‘Israel’ is
largely due to the influence of the
Jewish minorities within the western
political systems, especially in the US.
Neither the weight of the Jewish vote
nor the pressure of the Zionist lobby
are the real reason for the support to
non-Jewish Zionism. The latter had
enjoyed a well-established status in the
western world long before the broad
campaign for recruiting Jewish support
to Zionism was launched in the wake of
On the other hand, the overwhelming
majority of westerners do not consider
Zionism as a racist ideology, but as a
‘moral strength’. This ‘moral strength’,
deeply rooted in the history of western
civilization, first arose as a religious
belief. The implicit hypotheses of
Zionism were first conceived and con-
veyed by non-Jews under various
religious, social, economic and strategic
guises.
If one scrutinizes the current conflict,
one finds that non-Jewish Zionism is a
main element in the process of foreign
policy decision-making in the US and
Western Europe. Moreover, the only
constant factor in US Middle East
policy is unswerving support for the
Zionist entity. Given the overall effec-
tive political factors in US _ policy-
making, there is no logical way to
change this policy. The strong partiality
reserved for ‘Israel’ by its western allies
is directly proportional to the animosi-
ty reserved for the Arab _ nation.
Therefore, non-Jewish Zionism not
only paved the way for the colonization
of Palestine, it brought with it a firmly
established hatred towards the original
Arab inhabitants of Palestine.
its infancy as a political movement, and _ the second world war. ]
‘International Terrorism’
and the West
This essay was sent to Democratic Palestine by Raafat Georgy, a
graduate student at the University of Berkeley. In his own words, it
was written «to negate the mythological perspective which the
American media presents» of the Middle East in particular. We
greatly appreciate the main trend of thought expressed in the essay.
However, we do have points of disagreement which we explain in a
box below.
According to the West, international
«terrorism» is threatening the founda-
tions of «civilized» society and,
therefore, all «freedom loving» nations
must come together to combat this evil
of «barbarism.» This Manichean view
of the world depicts the West and its
allies as «civilized,» and those who
oppose Western encroachment or ex-
press their inalienable right of self-
determination as «barbarians» benf on
26
the destruction of all things Western.
Upon analysis we shall see that it is this
self-righteous West who, primarily
through indirect means, is the architect
of terror.
No single issue has been more
distor‘ed by the West than the Arab-
Israe'i conflict and no single people
more maligned than the Arabs. This
distortion has been largely shaped by
the systematic «pro-Israel» bent of the
dramatized and reported without any
historical juxtaposition, political con-
text, or any explanation that mirrors
reality. Arab violence is portrayed in
such a way that it conforms to the
«barbarian» model; hence, this
ethnocentric construction of the West
vis-a-vis the Arabs precludes critical
discussion of the problem and only
allows blind condemnation. In con-
tradistinction to this pejorative depic-
tion of the Arabs, the state of Israel,
from its inception, has received over-
whelming support from the West. This
support, which has been and continues
to be at all levels, political, economic
(primarily the U.S.) and social, enables
the Zionist state to commit numerous
acts of «terrorism» without any com-
mensurable treatment from the media.
Israeli «terrorism» is euphemistically
termed retaliation and, according to - هو جزء من
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