Benny Katz
As a global justice activist who grew up idolizing Che Guevara, Herbert Marcuse and Noam Chomsky, many longtime comrades have been astounded by my recent advocacy on behalf of what is generally considered to be the Israeli Right. On a superficial level, it may appear that I have abandoned the values of justice and forfeited my radical activist credentials. But the reality remains that I still adhere to the very same principles that have impelled me to participate in so many fair trade campaigns, anti-war demonstrations and Latin America solidarity actions over the years. Despite the dubious picture of the Middle East that the corporate media presents, I view my conversion to Zionism as not a rejection but actually an embrace of the values I have stood for all of my life. My Zionism is a revolutionary Zionism based on human rights, social justice, anti-imperialism and collective responsibility.
Unlike their portrayal in the mainstream media, the advocates of “Greater Israel” are by and large not religious fanatics seeking to aggravate an already difficult political situation but actually resistance activists struggling to prevent their homeland from being stolen by the tools of foreign imperialism in the Middle East. While the Western (and also the Israeli) media generally presents the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority as a moderate liberation movement seeking to establish a state in their own country, the truth is actually a lot more complex.
For starters, the PA is a vassal entity for imperialist interests in the Middle East, something that can easily be discerned just by closely examining who its leaders are, where its money comes from and who arms and trains its security forces.
Salaam Fayad, the PA’s unelected prime minister, worked as an economist for both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund before being tapped by George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice to serve as PA premier. Fayad is not only an agent of American imperialism but also represents the interests of those forces responsible for the concentration of global media, hyper-commercialism, compulsive consumerism and international wars.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, locally known as Abu Mazan, has had absolutely no legitimacy to hold office since his term expired in early 2009. Even the few instances in which domestic opposition to his authoritarian rule has forced him to announce intentions to resign from his post, Washington has persuaded him to reconsider and continue as their unelected puppet despot in Ramallah.
Despite the low popularity they enjoy among their people, Fayad and Abbas have their leadership bolstered by a Fatah militia armed to the teeth by the United States and trained by US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton. This militia has brutalized, extorted, arrested, tortured and even murdered opponents of the Fayad-Abbas regime, prompting the Western-backed PA to earn the local moniker of “Dayton’s Republic.”
But even if the PA really is an abusive, corrupt and unelected autocratic regime serving the interests of Western imperialism in the Middle East, none of this should take away from the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination on land currently occupied by Israel. In other words, the quality of the PA and the justness of its policies should have absolutely no bearing on the rights of Palestinians to an independent state.
This brings us to the question of justice, which in any situation needs to be grounded on historical facts. While nearly the entire world has accepted the notion that Palestinians deserve a state in at least part of the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, the truth remains that prior to 1948, the last indigenous population to enjoy self-governance in Palestine were Jews.
From the time the Jewish kingdom was destroyed by ancient Rome until Zionist guerrillas succeeded in driving out the British Empire, Palestine had been the property of a series of foreign imperialist powers and never once belonged to any indigenous population. Any way we cut it, Jews were the last native people to possess self-rule in Palestine.
Some may argue that Jews were largely absent from Palestine for thousands of years and that another people lived in the country during that time, therefore earning a claim to self-determination and sovereignty over all or part of the territory in question.
But this is problematic for two basic reasons; for starters, the long Jewish absence from Palestine was a direct result of an historic injustice perpetrated by the Roman Empire that involved military occupation, slavery, ethnic cleansing, forced conversions and mass murder. And, perhaps more to the point, if it were true that living somewhere grants a people national rights over territory, Jews would have a strong claim to land all over the world. One glaringly obvious example is that prior to their violent expulsion from Iraq in 1948, the Jews of Baghdad were the city’s most ancient inhabitants, residing in the city for over 3,000 years and predating the arrival of Iraq’s Arab population.
But Jews have no national rights to Baghdad, Alexandria, Warsaw or Odessa. Even in neighborhoods of Brooklyn New York where Jews make up an overwhelming majority of the population, they still have no rights to police streets or collect taxes. Even if the majority population, the Jewish people has no national right to ownership of Brooklyn and therefore no legitimate claim to exercise sovereignty.
The bottom line is that as the last native population to enjoy self-governance in Palestine, the Jewish people has a legitimate legal, moral and historic right to renew that self-governance and defend it against anyone seeking to challenge or threaten it.
All this isn’t to say that I blindly support Israeli government policies or believe non-Jews should be relegated to second class status. I don’t. Nor do I necessarily believe I have an ideal solution for peace in the Middle East. But not having a solution doesn’t prevent me from battling injustice. And just as I naturally oppose checkpoints, walls and restrictions on movement, I equally oppose attempts by the international community to rob the Jewish people of its inalienable right to self-determination in the country Jews have struggled to return to since the moment they were exiled.
Contrary to some of the accusations lobbed against me, I don’t see any ideological difference between myself and my comrades on the Left who attack the State of Israel and question its legitimacy. The only real divide is our perceptions of history and Jewish national identity. My reading of history identifies the Jewish people as not only a distinct nation but also an indigenous Middle Eastern nation that has time and again fallen victim to Western imperialism in its homeland. And from this position it is only natural to view Zionism as the Jewish people’s national liberation movement and a rectification of a great historic injustice.
Standing on moral principle means fighting for what is right and not merely for what is temporarily in vogue.
“We have neither taken foreign land nor seized foreign property. We have returned to the inheritance of our forefathers, from which we had been unjustly banished by our enemies.” – Shimon the Maccabee