On September 16, 1947, three members of the Jewish Agency in
Palestine, Aubrey (Abba) Eban, Jon Kimche, and David Horowitz, met in London
with ‘Azzam Pasha, who was the first Secretary General of the Arab League
(1945-1952). That was prior to the
partition of Palestine and the intention of the Zionist activists was to try to
find an accommodation between Jews and Arabs on the issue of Palestine. On that
occasion ‘Azzam Pasha said: “The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. (…) We
shall try to defeat you. I’m not sure we’ll succeed, but we’ll try. We were
able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and
Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it’s too late to talk of
peaceful solutions.” It defined well the Arab position, but one that was not
too easy to sell to the West. Better than accuse the Jews of being infidels, it
was to brand them as colonialists. Different sectors of guilt-ridden Europe
couldn’t find something better. They behaved horrible against the Jews in the
Nazi era, but look, those Jews aren't saints either. True, the Europeans committed the
sins of colonialism, but who didn’t, just look at the Jews in the Middle East.
Of course this accusation is rubbish. Zionism, contrary to
the European colonial model, lack a mother country, a metropolis like the pillars
of colonialism Britain, Portugal or France in its time, it has a clear national
character of its own, and basically was not interested in the capitalist
exploitation of the poorer peasants. Eastern European Jews didn’t come to the land
of Israel, a poor corner, vastly underdeveloped and unoccupied of the Ottoman
Empire, as agents of European powers like the Czarism, but precisely escaping
from its humiliations and persecutions.
Still there are those who still insist that the Zionist
themselves have described their own enterprise as one of colonization. Indeed
that is true, but colonization is not always colonialism, as well as the
colonialist enterprise has not always implied colonization. The Belgian in
Congo, the British in Sudan or the French in Morocco, established colonial
control in those countries without creating settlements of their European
nationals. And there are cases like the Ukrainians in Canada or the Dutch in
South Africa, were there was colonization but no support of a colonial
government. In the case of Zionism there was colonization without colonialism.
There was British colonialism, but Zionism had to confront it, and it displaced
it with military means.
Finally, and in spite of all, there are still those who
insist that the Zionist enterprise should be framed in the vast European
expansion of the XIX and XX centuries, and therefore, even without metropolis
or exploitation of cheap indigenous labor, they sustain the accusation of
colonialism. This is very wrong. After the end of the Second World War, was the
desire of the European Jews survivors of the displaced persons camps at
Zeilsheim, St. Ottilien, Landsberg, Schauenstein, Feldafing, Dachau, Foehrnwald,
and others, to immigrate to the land of Israel, a colonial aspiration? And it
must be remembered that more than half of the immigrants to the newly founded
state of Israel, were Jews who took refuge from Arab countries.
Zionism is not a colonial enterprise, but the national
liberation movement of the Jews, through which they retake their destiny into
their own hands and manage by themselves their future. In any case, Zionism is
the astonishing story of a successful de-colonization revolutionary movement,
which broke the chains of the Galut (the Jewish Diaspora), allowed the Jews to
return to their roots and language, and brought them freedom.
