Mondoweiss:
The Never-Ending Crisis of Zionism by Philip Weiss
There are so many things wrong with the above article, I don’t know where to start.
Now, kudos to Philip Weiss’ sympathy for Palestinians. In US politics, Sympathy for Palestinians is virtually forbidden. No mainstream politician dares to express any sympathy for the plight of a people who are now in their 50th year of Occupation(and never mind Nakba, the mass campaign of pogroms that wiped Palestine off the map to make way for the creation of Israel). Virtually all US politicians(at federal, state, and local level) are into Israel First, Israel First, Israel First. Same goes for the mainstream 'right-wing' media and mainstream 'left-wing' media. They never utter the term Nakba, and most Americans never heard of it even though the US played the most instrumental role in the mass pogroms against Palestinians.
Though Weiss is often right in his diagnosis of symptoms, his proposed cure will only make compound the problem. (It's like Marx was a better appraiser of modern economics than its solver.) Indeed, Weiss' proposed solutions are not unlike the mindsets and fateful decisions that led to the current mess. Weiss fails to understand that he's a universalist-imperialist who, in condemning nationalism, unwittingly serves as yet another puppet of globalist-imperialist open-borders. He fails to realize and acknowledge that violation of nationalism has been the true curse of the 20th century.
The current mess with Palestinians began with and under imperialism. Much of the Middle East failed to develop into a viable political entities under the Ottoman Empire. And then, the British Empire allowed Zionists to ‘immigrate’ into Palestine and gradually, the dramatically, take over from Arabs. That was the origins of the disaster. It was made possible by imperialist suppression of local autonomy and independence. And of course, Israel is now backed by the US, itself no longer a sovereign national entity but a war-mongering(culturally or militarily) hegemon that invades other nations financially & militarily and is, in turn, invaded by other nations demographically.
Weiss says the current plight of Palestinians is like what Jews suffered 100 yrs ago, but that’s a complete misconception.
For one thing, Palestinians are in their own lands, from which they’ve been evicted or on which they are occupied. Jews in Europe, in contrast, were living in other people’s lands. The violent reactions against Jews in Europe were, in some respects, like Palestinian intifada against Zionists. This was made all the worse due to imperialism. After all, why did the worst outbreaks against Jews happen in Imperial Nations? Because so many ethnic groups felt occupied under Imperialist rule and came to regard Jews as collaborator agents of the empire. Any non-Austrian gentile who resented Austrian rule came to distrust Jews as the agents and middlemen serving the empire. Or, it could be the other way around. The ruling ethnic group could come to regard Jews as radical agitators riling up the other groups against the imperial status quo.
Despite certain degree of ambivalence and even hostility toward Jews, sovereign nation-states, in general, treated Jews much better: UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and etc. France was known for ‘notorious antisemitism’, but it didn’t have regular outbreaks of pogroms like in Eastern Europe where aspiring nationalism were suppressed by the empire, be it Germanic or Slavic. Granted, sometimes, Jews found the Imperial Order to their benefit. Diversity, as in Austro-Hungarian Empire, made it near-impossible for all gentiles to unite against Jews, as later were to happen in National Socialist Germany. The various gentile groups were too busy squabbling with each other to unite their forces against the Jews. But on the other hand, because so many groups felt so disenfranchised, occupied, and denied national sovereignty, they grew ever more bitter and came to scapegoat Jews as the source of problems. Imperialist Diversity weakens national unity among goyim, but it also intensifies their rage and bitterness, and that can provide dry wood for massive conflagration. And even though National Socialism was a severe case of nationalist antisemitism, the origins of Hitler’s rage were imperial(and he became most dangerous to Jews when he pivoted from German nationalism to German Imperialism). He grew up in the Austro-Hungarian Empire where ethnic tensions were intensifying due to Slavic and other hostilities. If he’d grown up in a secure Germanic nation, he might have regarded Jews as just a minority that should be tolerated. But he got radicalized in the Austro-Hungarian Empire where politics was hostile along ethnic lines because non-Austrians felt oppressed by Austro-Hungarian elite power. And since this bitterness was directed at ALL Austrians, even an ordinary civilian like Hitler could become ultra-ethnic in hostility. And WWI was the result of clash of empires, not of nations. Germans put pan-Germanicism above all else, and Russia pandered to Pan-Slavicism. And UK joined with France and Russia because it saw the rise of Germany as a threat to British Imperial Hegemony.
Hitler had a chance of making National Socialism work, but because he grew up under Imperial Mentality, his ambitions spilled across German borders and targeted Czech nation, then Poland, and then even USSR. That was his undoing. He wasn’t satisfied with German Nationalism. National Socialism turned into Imperial Racial Socialism for the ‘Aryans’.
But Jewish reaction to antisemitism also made the problem worse. It was right for powerful and influential Jews to do SOMETHING to help out their less fortunate brethren around the world. But what did Jacob Schiff’s support of ‘Russian’ Revolution lead to? A totalitarian terror state where millions of people were sent to Gulag and where 100,000s were summarily executed by secret police. Pogroms were terrible, but the casualties were in the thousands. In contrast, the Soviet Revolution, disproportionately led by Jews, killed millions and destroyed tens of thousands of churches. It even killed every member of Tsar’s family, kids included. This blooy radical behavior on the part of Jews led many European conservatives to side with Fascists and National Socialists as the lesser to two evils. And prior to WWII, that would have been the sane assessment because most of the mass horrors til then had been carried out by communists, many of whom were Jewish.
Weiss writes:
"The most brilliant Jew in the world, Franz Kafka came out of his office in Prague to see Jews being beaten and he went to Zionist meetings."
Here, Weiss sort of hints at how today’s problems are rooted in past reactions. Kafka obviously wasn’t the only Jew who reacted to events by showing interest in Zionism. Zionism was a strange hybrid. It was a reaction against both Imperialism and Nationalism. In some ways, Jews were jumping on the Nationalist Bandwagon. With each ethnic group demanding their own nation-state and sovereignty — further emboldened by Woodrow Wilson’s idea of national self-determination following WWI — , Jews figured they should demand their own nation too. But there was one problem. While Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Poles, and etc could look at the soil beneath their feet and claim it as their ancestral homeland, Jews could make no such claim in Europe. So, they had to look elsewhere, and the most significant piece of real estate was the Holy Land from which the Jewish people and culture originated.
But even as Jews caught the spirit of gentile groups calling for their own homelands, they were also reacting against gentile nationalism. Had the Imperial system continued, Jews could have carried on as a nomadic or mercurial group serving as middlemen among various folks. But with the rise of nationalism, such ambiguous identity was becoming untenable. Gentile national identities could become hostile to Jewishness, and even this hostility had a duality. It loathed Jews as a stubborn ancient identity that refused to assimilate with gentiles and convert to Christianity, but it also loathed Jews as a mercurial hyper-modern zelig-like chameleons who could adapt to any place and time.
Anyway, because European Jews couldn’t claim any land in Europe as their own, they couldn’t just oppose imperialism. If Poles wanted Poland, all they had to do was oppose Russian and German imperialism. Once Russians and Germans were gone from Poland, it was Poland for the Polish.
In contrast, even with the fall of empires, Jews were still without a nation of their own in Europe. They had to claim their homeland elsewhere, and it turned out to be the Holy Land. And since Palestine was dominated by non-Jews, Jews needed the support of Imperialism to gain access to the land. Jews had trickled in during Ottoman times, but it was under British Imperialist rule that Jews began to enter in much bigger numbers. Jews were looking to create a nationalist state but with the help of imperialism. Thus, Israel was created in the most paradoxical manner. It was to establish Jewish national sovereignty, but it could only be done by using an imperialist power to deny national sovereignty to the natives.
This was all the more complicated because European Jews were both the most powerful and the least powerful people. They were least powerful because they were minorities in all territories and had no land to claim as their own. Serbs and Slovaks were far less successful than Jews financially and culturally, but they still could claim the soil under their feet as their homeland. They were rooted whereas Jews were rootless. This rootless was a huge disadvantage to Jews, but it was also why they’d grown so powerful. Unable to stake their wealth on rootedness to soil, Jewish wealth developed via networks. It was ‘cloud-wealth’, like Google offers cloud-computing. So, even if Jews got kicked out of a certain nation, they might still have wealth stored in international networks. Even if they lost their homes and personal properties, their bank accounts could be forwarded to London or Paris. In contrast, if a ‘dumb Polack’ lost his home and property, he really had nothing left. Jews had Cloud Wealth wheres gentile simpletons had Earth Wealth. To be sure, not all Jews had Cloud Wealth, and many in Eastern Europe were dirt-poor. But because the Jewish Network existed, even the poorer Eastern European cousins soon learned to take advantage of it.
This duality of Jews as the most powerful people(with financial stake in just about every European nation and kingdom) and least powerful people(as a folks without homeland) made things all the more complicated in relation to Zionism. On the one hand, it was weak Jews pleading for a homeland of their own. They were unfortunate unlike other European folks who could claim the land under their feet as theirs.
On the other hand, it was a case of powerful Jews manipulating and bribing the Great European Empires to do their bidding… like what God did for the Hebrews in their departure from Egypt. Open up the seas and let Jews enter the Promised Land. It was a replay of Exodus — and even called such by Leon Uris the novelist — because the ancient story itself is paradoxical. On the one hand, Hebrews are a weak people in flight from the powerful Egyptian Military. On the other hand, Jews have all-powerful God on their side, and the Egyptians have no chance.
Anyway, if Weiss’ point is that today’s Jews must act on behalf of Palestinians like past Jews did for Jews-suffering-pogroms in Eastern Europe, he should think again because those efforts 100 yrs ago backfired horribly. It led to the rise of communism and death of millions, and then the counter-reaction of rise of National Socialism that led to WWII. Looking back, Jews should have been more sober in their assessments and courses of action. Jews overreacted and falsely blamed the Russian Tsar for the pogroms. This led to worldwide Jewish support for communism, the horror unleashed by which was many times worse than pogroms. And didn’t Zionism(yet another scheme to help suffering Jews), which eventually reclaimed the Holy Land by humiliating Arabs and Muslims, lead to the current state of affairs? If Jews really wanted a land of their own, rich and powerful Jews should have pooled their resources together to buy some land in some empty part of the world. A land the size of Israel in Australia, Canada, or some other part willing to bargain with Judea. With the power of the Rothchilds in the UK, I’m sure something along those lines could have been arranged. But Jews wanted the Holy Land. And this entailed war and ethnic cleansing. Worse, it led to occupation and Zionist imperialism on Muslim nations. Zionist nationalists asked for the white horse than took the cuddly pig. It’s like the scene in VIVA ZAPATA where Brando’s character offers a Mex kid a piglet but the kid insists on Zapata's great white horse.
Jews could have asked for a nation in some inhabited part of the world, and then it would have been a peaceful piggy-wiggy nation. But they wanted the War Horse of the Holy Land, and they’ve been riding that horse and trampling all over international norms.
That said, what is done is done and can’t be reversed. Israel is here to stay. Still, Jews failed to do it right. Jews could have done two things. Call for peaceful co-existence with Arabs, but then this would have entailed NO MORE JEWISH IMMIGRATION. Arabs could have accepted a Jewish-Arab-inhabited Holy Land IF Jews would agree to end of immigration. But Jews wanted endless Right of Return to all Jews around the world to Palestine, and that was something Arabs could not accept.
So, the inevitable result was war. But Jews didn’t do this right. If a people are going to ethnically cleanse a people, they need to go all out. Kick them all out, like what Andrew Jackson did with the Indians. Instead, Jews expelled most but kept enough to cause lots of trouble. The Rule of History is, “If you are gonna do it(even if morally dubious), do it ‘right’ and go all the way, but if you feel it’s wrong or not worth doing, don’t do it at all.” It’s like US military involvement since end of WWII. It’s been confused, with US getting embroiled in a serious way but not enough to really finish the job. Look at the mess in Iraq. And before that, it was Vietnam. Kennedy was wise about Cuba. Once he decided against intervention following Bay of Pigs, he stuck to his guns and let Cuba be. It’s like Chechnya. Russians had two choices: Just let it go OR go in big and utterly crush the rebellion. Neither would have been ideal, politically or morally, but there are times in history when half-heartedness leads to more and bigger problems.
At any rate, if the purpose of Zionism was Jewish nationalism, Jews shot themselves in the foot by letting too many Arabs remain in Israel and then occupying West Bank. The ONLY sensible rationale for Israel’s conquest of West Bank in 1967 would have been to push the remaining Arabs in Israel into it. Instead, Jews colonized the land, and now Jews got Diversity Hell in both Israel and West Bank. Diversity leads to trouble.
Weiss writes:
"Peace Now urges separation: 'the occupation corrodes Israel and its image, and will continue until Israel extricates itself from the Palestinians.' Jewish separation from Palestinians is a delusion. It is like whites separating from blacks in the U.S. Israel is 20 percent non-Jewish; and it rules territories containing 5 million Palestinians; and though the world has resolved to 'extricate' the Jews from the Arabs for 70 years now, the communities are intertwined more than ever, as Israeli Jews flood the West Bank and build more and more Jewish-only colonies."
If separation is a delusion, how were Jews able to carry out Nakba in 1948 when Jews were the minority and far less powerful than they are today? The real delusion is that Peace can be arrived via Diversity. Weiss has a good heart about Palestinians but he’s being naive. Justifiably or not, Arabs are PISSED. If Jews were to go for one-state-solution and allow Arabs equal rights, it will be the end for Israel. Palestinians who outnumber Jews in West Bank will rise up and commit horrible acts of violence once Apartheid regimen is lifted. And if Arabs have equal rights in Israel, then it will mean Arabs should be allowed to immigrate to Israel as well. The Right of Return for Palestinian Diaspora will spell doom for Israel as a Jewish state.
If you want lasting peace, Peace Now is somewhat correct. Its only problem is it doesn’t go far enough. All Arabs in Israel should be pushed to West Bank and all Jews in West Bank should be repatriated to Israel. It may be politically impossible, but such is the ONLY lasting solution. It’s like the only sensible solution for South Africa was separation. Let whites be HERE and let blacks be THERE. Instead, the 'rainbow nation' turned into bloody nation. Palestinians have a right to be spitting mad at the Jews, and for that reason, any notion of long-lasting peace under Diversity is a delusion. Weiss’ is being willfully naive and hopeful to stoke his ego as the Good Jew denouncing Bad Jews. There can be no ‘good Jews’ or ‘bad Jews’ in the current situation. It’s between sensible Jews and delusional Jews, and Weiss is also delusional.
Weiss mentions blacks in America and says it’s delusional to call for separation between whites and blacks. Weiss may be right about that: Whites may be stuck with blacks. But then, how did this become the case? Because of Diversity created by Imperialism. The US could be black-free IF whites had not practiced the Atlantic Slave Trade under the auspices of European imperialism. (Granted, later British imperialism did some good things by banning the slave trade of the Spanish empire.)
Anyway, the biggest problem of the US — the ghastly blacks — is the result of imperialism.
Diversity complicates matters, usually negatively, down the road if not here-and-now.
Whites understood this about Indians, which is why Indians were expelled as whites expanded territories. Whites knew it’d be problematic to integrate with red savages getting drunk, scalping skulls, and hurling tomahawks. Also, Indians had a legit claim to this land since their forefathers had hunted bison and gophers on it. So, for there to be peace, whites had to drive out the Indians and create a white nation. Even Emma Lazarus understood this, which is why she supported Manifest Destiny. She wanted more whites and Jews to come to America and turn red savages into wretched huddled refuse in Reservations. “Better you than me.”
But if whites got rid of white-red diversity, they recklessly increased white-black diversity? Why? Because if whites confronted reds as warrior savages wielding tomahawks, whites brought blacks as slaves in chains. So, whites figured they’d always have power over the Negroids. With blacks, it was white masters ruling over black slaves or servants. But whites didn’t consider the future where blacks might be freed and then use their stronger muscles and bigger dongs to destroy white manhood and colonize white wombs. It goes to show Diversity ends in disaster one way or the other.
Anyway, even if Weiss is correct that Jews in Israel and whites in the US must make do with Diversity since we can’t turn back the clock, he(and others like him) is still foolish because he wants to INCREASE Diversity.
It’s one thing to argue that some nations became diverse due to certain accidents or events in history, and therefore, people in such nations must try to make the best of it. Okay, fair enough.
But why should any nation willfully INCREASE DIVERSITY when history shows time and time again that such conditions lead to more tensions, more divisions, more distrust, more corruption, more hostilities, more confusion, and etc?
After all, look at the US and EU. It’s not about ‘racism’ vs ‘anti-racism’ but about Paleo-racism vs Neo-racism. Conservatives are Paleo-racists who want white nations and white-majority nations to emphasize white identity, heritage, and power. Progressive Neo-racists, contrary to being for racial equality, are for the supremacism of Jews and blacks over other races and for whites to be attacked and blamed for everything. Look at the phenom of ACOWW or Afro-Colonization-of-White-Wombs being pushed by PC. It’s not about racial equality. It means that white women should reject white males as pathetic dorky cucks and surrender their wombs to the superior dongs and seeds of Negroids. Why does BBC series on the Fall of Troy feature Zeus and Achilles as blacks? Why are Christmas commercials showing white women going with Negroids? It’s not about racial equality but about how white women should go with black men as superior to white males. PC is just neo-racism with new configuration of superior races and inferior races.
Most people are either Paleo-racists or Neo-racists. Only a few are Tru-racists or Race-ists. The thing about Paleo-Racists and Neo-Racists is they deny their own racial biases and accuse OTHERS of ‘racism’ whereas Tru-Racists or Race-ists admit that everyone is consciously or subconsciously race-ist since it’s impossible not to see race and racial differences and their effects on society.
Even Weissism is a form of Neo-Racism because even if Weissism were to be implemented 100% in Israel-West-Bank, the result will be Jewish domination. Why? DNA. Ashkenazi Jews are much smarter than Arabs or People of Sand. Just consider. The US has tons of smart and capable Anglos and Germanics. But Jews beat them all. So, how are the Arab Sand People supposed to compete with Jews? Even if Israel were totally meritocratic and treated everyone in colorblind manner, Jews will totally dominate. It’s like blacks totally dominate sports cuz genetics in sports biologically discriminates against slower/weaker races. Israel would just go from Paleo-Racism that officially favors Jews over Palestinians to Neo-Racism where biology favors Jews over Palestinians.
For Palestinians to live in a nation of Arab dominance, it can’t have lots of smarter Jews. In a Weissian future Israel, the ONLY hope for Arabs would be the power of numbers and demography. Currently, Israel bans Muslim immigration, welcomes Jewish immigration, and pays special money to horny rabbinical students to have lots of babies. But under Weissism, there can’t be special Jewish privileges on immigration. And special money for Jewish breeders would go against the spirit of equal treatment under law. I mean, if horny Jewish rabbinical students should be funded to breed, why not for horny Islamic students?
In the end, Weissism is hardly different from Neo-conservatism. Weiss is a globalist-imperialist who ridicules national identities, national sovereignty, and national borders. He is for Europe being flooded by masses of Africans and Muslims, oblivious to the fact that the fate of Europeans will be like that of Palestinians who were flooded and destroyed by Jewish mass immigration.
Where Weissism is different from Neo-conservatism and most forms of Liberal Zionism is that he calls for the destruction of ALL nations, Israel included. I must admit there’s a refreshing aspect to such moral consistency in contrast to Neocons and Liberal Zionists who denounce identity and nationalism among goyim(in the name of spreading ‘liberal values’) but demand that goyim serve and support Israel as a Jewish state.
While moral consistency is better than moral hypocrisy, the core of Weissism is globalism, and that means no national rights, no national security, no national sovereignty for any people. Weiss seems to think that his values will lead to some Lennonite Imagined World, but it will have the opposite effect. It will turn all the world into the hellhole that is West Bank and Gaza.
Utopianism is imperialism of the mind. It is over-ambitious and deluded. What is real and realistic are peoples, cultures, heritages, and national borders. We need more of that.
