In a rejoinder to an analysis by Shany Mor at the Mosaic web site, Cole S. Aronson and Avi Bell counter the various arguments made against “right-wing religious settler Zionism,” a sub-group that Mor insists has “captured” the State of Israel.
They point out, among the four main themes he deals with, that Mor’s personal outlook on the issue of Israel’s administration of Judea and Samaria is not supportive. He is among those who are convinced that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are “a moral stain and a burden, and a main source of Israel’s insecurity and delegitimization.”
While the many points they raise contra Mor are valid and convincing, as are the others contributed by Evelyn Gordon, Gadi Taub, Rafi DeMogge, and Amnon Lord, the disinformation and propaganda campaigns Israel and Zionism face currently are less dependent on Mor’s analyses than on various ideologies that accuse Zionism of colonialism, racism, and theocratic genocidal desires.
As we have witnessed these past two or three decades, they have simply corrupted not only facts but the language of the conflict. They have refashioned reality and the terms of discourse just to confront Zionism. Human rights aren’t human rights. Legal rights aren’t legal rights. History isn’t history.
There is a need to deal with the politics of pro-Palestine propaganda in a more basic and fundamental manner.
In 1922, 50 nations affirmed Great Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the resolutions of the 1920 San Remo Conference of Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, which charged the Allied parties with establishing a “Mandatory [that] will be responsible for putting into effect the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
The League of Nations decision recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and that it was not to colonize an Arab state or entity but rather for “reconstituting their national home in that country.”
The Mandate for Palestine – which, incidentally, never specifically mentioned Arabs – charged Britain to guarantee the “encouraging of close settlement by Jews on the land.” Furthermore, a second major responsibility was to “facilitate Jewish immigration.” With the creation of a new country, Transjordan, in the territory intended to be “Palestine,” Jewish rights of immigration and settlement were restricted then to all the territory west of the Jordan River.
Despite offers of territorial compromise and the partitioning of the land over several decades, from 1935 to 2005, the Arabs never agreed to any recognition of Jewish national identity and continued to pursue their goal of Israel’s eradication. Nothing less would suffice.
THE JEWS currently residing in Judea and Samaria, and those who will be doing so in the future are, as Bell and Aronson phrase it, “part of the great indigenous restoration project known as Zionism.” They have returned. They are engaged in resettling their national homeland.
They join the Jewish founding fathers and mothers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel. They join those buried in Hebron, in Shechem and Jerusalem. They continue doing what the Jews of the tribal federation, First Temple and Second Temple periods did. They uphold the legacy and heritage of the Jews of the Kingdoms of Judea and Israel and of the Hasmonean Commonwealth.
These residents are the progeny of an indigenous people who after the loss of political independence, thrice, returned. They trekked back to their promised land from Egypt and then from Babylon. Moreover, throughout a long exilic existence amid over 70 nations, the few – and sometimes the many – returned in every century to live in the Land of Israel, the Jewish national territory.
Where we became a nation
That Land of Israel is where Jews were fashioned as a nation, and where their religion and culture were created. It is the land of Jewish literature and customs. No amount of anti-Zionism, presumed anti-colonialism, or plain outright identity theft can negate our heritage.
The story is not whether or not we are occupiers, or that we are categorized as colonialists, or are racialists seeking the genocide of a certain people who changed their identity as Southern Syrians to that of Palestinians. To confront their challenge, we must change our story to one of repatriation, reconstitution, and restoration. Not a response but a principled declaration of historical truth backed by scientific, literary, and legal proof.
Yousef Munayyer, who Peter Beinart hosted regularly at his former Open Zion site – which shut down in 2013 as Beinart became closed to the prospect of any kind of Zion and whose X/Twitter profile includes that he “laughs at hasbara” – derisively posted on October 30 that “Zionism is based on the idea that the Jewish people’s right to come to Palestine didn’t expire after 2,000 years.”
Quite simply, how could it expire if Jews constantly lived in the country despite foreign oppressive rule and continued to come to reside there for more than 1,800 years, in a constant ongoing fashion? Zionism is not a 19th-century invention. Zionism structured itself on the actions and beliefs of Jews for over 2,000 years, their prayers and their poetry and their insistence to return from the corners of the earth.
If there is an element of invention involved, it occurred during the early 1920s when the people known until then as Southern Syrians recreated themselves to identify as “Palestinians.” Today, that inventionism continues in the false charges of “apartheid,” “genocide,” “starvation,” and of a “second Nakba” (catastrophe day) included in the address that Haaretz owner and publisher Amos Schocken gave at his paper’s conference in London on October 27.
There is no historical, cultural, and legal narrative more just, more genuine, and more deserved than that of Zionism – the repatriation of Jews to their national home, its restoration, and the reconstitution of their political sovereignty.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and opinion commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.