Zionism in Israel - No longer just colonialism and apartheid

The Jewish colonisation of Palestine under the Zionist slogan "the land without people to the people without a land" started almost a hundred years ago and reached its first climax with the proclamation of The Jewish State of Israel in 1948. A second climax is now in the offing through the ongoing colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza.

A Jewish state needs a substantial majority of Jews in the population. This has been insured by means of immigration, terror and expulsion of the native Palestine population. Jewish hegemony in Israel today is secured through a system of apartheid inherent in all aspects of Society, be it law, administration or religion. Israel lacks a constitution and fixed boarders, which is fully consistent with Zionism's call for continual expansion.

There is a law in Israel, passed in 1985, which forbids political parties to openly oppose the principle of a Jewish state. Neither are they allowed to work for a change of this principle through democratic means. A party so doing will be banned from elections to the Knesset. Democracy is thus denied to those citizens - even Jews - who wish to work within the parliamentary system towards replacing the Jewish state with a secular state which represents all its citizens' equal rights regardless of religion or ethnic origin. This law alone prevents Israel from being seen as a liberal democracy of Western type.

All Jews living outside Israel are entitled by law to immigrate and become citizens immediately, while the Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their homes are prohibited from returning. This is a violation of international law. Israel is the only country in the world that defines its land as belonging to just one group of its citizens, namely Jews. This law works as a fundamental national apartheid law and turns all Jews into potential enemies of the Palestinians.

Other laws and administrative regulations emphasize Israel as a Jewish apartheid state. Israeli ID cards indicate whether the holder is Jewish or not and Jews in Israel may not marry non-Jews. Non-Jewish Israelis cannot purchase government-owned land. Many Arab villages in Israel are not zoned as residential areas, as a result of which they have no access to public services such as electricity and water. The disqualification of most Arab Israelis from military service reinforces discrimination as regards social benefits, education and the like.

In Israel/Palestine today, there are three apartheid classes of people.

1. Jews are fully qualified citizens of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and the whole world.

2. Non-Jews in Israel, mainly Palestinians (20 percent) are second class citizens

3. Palestinians are stateless non-citizens on the West Bank, in Gaza or in refugee camps in neighbouring countries.

Israel continues to violate international law and commit crimes against humanity. They have conducted genocide against the Palestinians for a hundred years. When Israel became a member of the UN in 1949 an objection was raised regarding a previous UN demand that the refugees be allowed to return home at the earliest possible date and that they should receive full compensation for property, according to international law and practice. For 55 years, Israel has completely ignored this demand. On these grounds alone Israel could be expelled from the UN. No other state, saving Israel, has so completely ignored so many UN resolutions. Israel is a military superpower with nuclear weapons and took active part in the US and England's war against Iraq. Without any provocation, Israel recently bombed targets in Syria and armed its fleet with nuclear weapons. Previously they attacked Egypt and Lebanon amongst others.

How could this evolve? What is the ideology behind this very special project of colonialism, the only one that has survived two turns of a century? What sort of ideology is Zionism?

Colonising Palestine continues today on the West Bank and in Gaza according to the practical plan presented by Theodor Herzl in his book "The Jewish State"(1896) The book is mainly about how the project could be financed and how land in Palestine could be transferred to Jewish ownership. The plan was affirmed by the first Zionist Congress 1897. Herzl had some important starting points for the Zionist Project.

• Antisemitism cannot be remedied by the assimilation of Jews.
• Jews are a race of people with a right to their own state.
• Palestine (or Zion) is the home of the Jewish State
• The goal is a socialist Utopia - a model state

The term Zionism was, however, conceived by Nathan Birnbaum in 1885. Together with Herzl he made up the leadership of the Zionist World Organisation. Later on he became a spokesman for Judaism in the Diaspora - outside Israel/Palestine.

Moses Hess - the Communist Rabbi

The fundamental ideology of Zionism however evolved much earlier with Moses Hess. He was one of Germany's earliest renowned Socialists. He was a Utopian, a Hegelian and a good friend of Karl Marx. Hess also wrote a contribution to The Communist Manifesto (1848) on the question of Religion as opium to the masses. He is considered by Zionists as the first Zionist. As he grew older he dissociated himself from Marx and "returned" to his People, that is to say Judaism. Marx shunned Hess' chauvinistic ideas. "Communist Rabbi Moses" as he was also called, wrote Zionism's Magnum Opus which Herzl later referred to as the book which says everything there is worth saying about Zionism. This book, "Rome and Jerusalem" was published by Hess in 1862. He was inspired, amongst others, by Spinoza. He defines the Jewish Nation by the following components:

• The Jewish race - superior and chosen
• Palestine - the homeland of the Jewish people
• The Jewish religion - the best guarantee for Jewish nationality.

The importance of Blood in defining racial purity was common at that time and was also part of Hess' conception. He saw the German race as antagonistic to the Jewish race. He worried about the antisemitism apparent in Germany at that time and this was his main reason for "returning" to Judaism. For him, Socialism, apart from developing equality of the classes must also develop a moral dimension. The Jewish State should have the makings of a Socialist State. Hess predicted both the foundation of the State of Israel and the Holocaust 80 -85 years in advance of these occurrences. Hess considered France to be the foremost ally of the Jews. This was before the Dreyfus trail in France which came to be the one event that convinced Theodor Herzl that Zionism was the only solution to anti-Semitism.