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CounterPunch
October
15, 2002
Israel and White
Supremacy
by AARON MICHAEL LOVE
In 1945 Jan Smuts, then prime minister of South
Africa appealed to the UN for an article on human rights to be
included in the United Nations Charter. This incident, cited
in W.E.B Du Bois's remarkable book The World and Africa, is
a powerful reminder of the contradiction in the European conception
of freedom. Freedom only applies absolutely to the white man,
temporarily excluding the complications of class and of course,
gender. Du Bois argued that the Atlantic slave trade produced
this schism materially and culturally, although its origins no
doubt go much farther back in European history. He concludes,
"nothing so vividly illustrates the twisted contradiction
of thought in the minds of white men."
Much ink has been spilled bemoaning the
Zionist lobby in the United States. The success of this lobby
in the Washington and media establishment, in terms of its limited
objectives, is no doubt spectacular. However, it is a strange
success, which has made strange bedfellows when considering the
history of anti-Jewish racism in the U.S. After all, how could
such a lobby hold sway over the Christian Right, Waspish conservative
think tanks and a Congress filled with southern gentlemen?
The answer is the Zionist organizations
do not hold sway over anyone and to imply otherwise, as some
do, has the unintended consequence of flirting on the margins
of a major Fascist conceit. Instead, the answer can be found
in the history of white supremacy and imperialism within the
United States and Europe themselves. In other words, Zionist
Apartheid is seen as an old fashioned war on people of color
and, as such is perfectly attune to the historical psyche of
white America. Rather than trying to "liberate" American
foreign policy from Zionist influence, I think it would be much
more fruitful to ask why Americans, particularly the political,
business class, and certain sectors of the white middle class,
love Israel so much.
In an indispensable article, "Antisemitism:
Real and Imagined", Tim Wise writes, "Zionism is a
form of white supremacy". There are few places where Zionism
is placed firmly within the operation of whiteness, though it
has been indirectly touched on many times before, most notably
in discussions of the relationship between Ashkenazi and Sephardim
and Mizrahim Jews in Israel. Indeed, as one Israeli Black Panther
put it in 1972, "We must reach a situation in which we shall
fight together with the Arabs against the establishment. We are
the only ones who can constitute a bridge of peace with the Arabs
in the context of a struggle against the establishment."
Zionism, like white supremacy, albeit in different keys, is a
war against savage Arabs and only a less savage Arab and African
Jew.
My experience as a divestment and solidarity
organizer over the last couple of years has brought me first
hand knowledge of the Zionist paradox in the Jewish community.
More than once, young Jews approached us, confessing they struggle
to maintain a Jewish identity outside of whiteness, revealing
young minds trying to grasp with the irony of an alliance between
Jews and White Supremacy. Micah Bazant has spoken of "the
Jewish establishment" giving "tremendous lip-service
to the concern of Jewish assimilation" but instead contributes
"to assimilation of the worst kind." He explains, "they
claim to value real Jewish traditions of social justice and tikkun
olam, but in fact they have sold out and assimilated to U.S.
values of capitalism, racism and imperialism."
Zionism developed in a time of reinvigorated
white supremacy in the latter part of the nineteenth century
when European states were busily dividing up the land of Africa
and Asia. In the confrontation with the indigenous people of
Palestine, its ideology belongs within the history of European
racial theories and, like the Afrikaner ideology of Jan Smuts,
has little problem with seeing itself in the forefront of democracy
and civilization in the Middle East while at the same time implementing
and justifying the complete and utter subjugation of one its
most prominent people.
However, to understand Israel/Palestine
as defined systematically by racial oppression has yet
to be elaborated on its own. This is odd, given that the racial
oppression of the Palestinian people is at the heart of the matter;
all other things--land laws, religion, pass laws, racially designated
roads and neighborhoods, etc.--are symptoms. This should not
come as any surprise: the racial definition of the Zionist project
existed from the very beginning. Theodor Herzel in his 1896 pamphlet
"The Jewish State" wrote it would "form a part
of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization
against barbarism." This is the same Herzel who stated that
Zionist colonization would be "representatives of Western
civilization," bringing "cleanliness, order and the
well-established customs of the Occident to this plague-ridden,
blighted corner of the Orient." Recall Chomsky memorably
quoting Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, as saying
of Palestine, "there are several hundred thousand negroes
there but that this matter has no significance."
How little has changed. With the African
liberation movements abroad and the civil rights struggle at
home, the white supremacist war on African people has entered
a new stage, but the war on the Arab has found its triumphant
moment. In that story we hear about the Arab resistance to modernity
in the infamous "Arab street", mitigated, of course,
by friendly but nervous ruling classes. In the stirring street,
like in the Intifada, we are told you find the irrational and
the superstitious, not a working toward self-determination and
freedom. And who holds the key to holding back this self-evident
preternatural violence of the Palestinian and the Arab? Whether
it is Bernard Lewis, the New York Times, the Heritage Foundation,
Al Gore, the ADL or American Jewish Council Ads on Fox News,
the answer is the Zionist State. Counterpoised to the Arab and
the Palestinian in particular there is democracy, technology,
Judeo-Christian values, the opera and shopping malls. Apartheid
Palestine/Israel is necessary exactly because the Palestinian
rejects all of these things. They hate "us". Unfortunately,
the more honest imperialists say, this is a world of civilization
and barbarism: Israel the white European nation in a sea of dark
savagery.
That Israel should be in the vanguard
of whiteness is actually a credit to the more than five decade
old Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian struggle is on the
fault-line of freedom and oppression and, as such, is in the
forefront of the struggle against white supremacy and imperialism
in the world today. Is it any wonder that the white supremacist
imperialists holler the most when Palestine/Israel is brought
up? It is exactly here that their "twisted contradiction"
is most likely to be exposed. Apartheid Israel/Palestine is just
another solution to the "problem of the color line."
It is a solution that did not begin in 1948 but some 400 years
ago and is still with us very much today.
Indeed, we have the rulers of the "western"
world as proof. The idea of a Zionist lobby duping State Department
officials, ignorant Congress people, the EU or UN bureaucrats,
ignores the role of white supremacy. This complicates the popular
Leftist view that America and Europe's largely unconditional
support of the Zionist state is like a functional balance sheet:
tallying the price between keeping a bully on the Middle East
block, "a strategic asset", and bad relations with
the wider Arab public. We should recall what Du Bois was trying
to tell the Left in his day: race and class are not separable
categories in modern world history.
But the implications go beyond the exigencies
of Leftist anti-imperialism to the heart of the Palestinian struggle
and solidarity itself. Typically, Palestine/Israel is argued
in terms of an abstract discourse of "human rights",
"UN resolutions", and "international law".
This is problematic on several grounds. First, on a psychological
level, the basic effrontery of Apartheid to human dignity is
lost. On a more practical level, most Americans do not connect
immediately to the Palestinian struggle because the direct connections
to their historical experience are not revealed or emphasized.
Further, rights, laws and resolutions bring a kind of equivalence
to the Palestinian and Jewish experience in Israel/Palestine.
The Zionist state can cite almost as many rights, laws and resolutions
as their opponents. Even worse the application of these things,
like the UN itself, is dominated by the United States. What is
missing is a sense of right and wrong, of abnormality, and a
lack of understanding the deep connections of the Palestinian
struggle with the operation of the American historical psyche.
The importance of understanding white
supremacy could also be important for the Palestinian struggle
in Palestine/Israel. Israel Shahak wrote in his brilliant article
"Analysis of Israeli policies: the priority of the ideological
factor," that eventually, "the Palestinians are bound
to perceive themselves first and foremost as victims of Israeli
legal discrimination, applied against them by virtue of their
being non-Jews. When this occurs, Israel's domestic and international
position can be expected to become highly unstable." Oppression-political,
economic, legal, cultural-on the basis of race is what most intimately
connects all Palestinians, at a most basic level, living
throughout Palestine/Israel. If Shahak's observation is politically
formulated and used in a struggle to trump the Zionist, white
supremacist vision and enforcement of separation and expropriation,
meanwhile coupled with an effective solidarity campaign to politically
and economically isolate Israel, the Zionist state will eventually
"become highly unstable" indeed.
I do not think this can be overstated
at this time. Like the U.S. commitment to Israel, the Zionist
commitment to the West Bank and Gaza exists over and above balance
sheet considerations. Returning to Shahak's article, a particular
passage is worth quoting in full:
"In other words, empirical evidence (valid as anything in
politics can be valid) shows that Israeli policies are primarily
ideologically motivated and that the ideology by which they are
motivated is totalitarian in nature. This ideology can be easily
known since it is enshrined in the writings of the founders of
Labor Zionism, and it can be easily inferred from Israeli laws,
regulations and pursued policies. Those who, like Arafat, his
henchmen and most Palestinian intellectuals, have through all
these years failed to make an intellectual effort to seriously
study this ideology, have only themselves to blame for being
stunned by all the developments of the 20 months after Oslo."
As I have tried to briefly lay out, the
Zionist Apartheid project finds its force and appeal through
its own conception of whiteness, not because Zionist organizations
find better ways to get the ear of the white man. It is fully
assimilated into this framework and all of its self-justification
refers back to the matrix of white supremacy and empire. One
cannot battle Zionism without battling white supremacy and the
U.S. establishment--they are intimately linked. Seeking the ear
of the establishment without speaking the truth about their racism
underestimates their psychological and historical relationship
with Apartheid. This means a solidarity built on an alliance
with those who have been in the forefront of fighting white supremacy.
The brilliance of Du Bois's book is to
show exactly how the "West" can be for human rights
and for an unrelenting war on Arabs and, in particular, Palestinians.
It explains how Jan Smuts in Du Bois's day or Shimon Peres in
ours can lecture us on "human rights" and get away
with it. Perhaps, most importantly, white supremacy reframes
the Palestinian struggle in a historical continuum that better
explains the reflexive support among a broad swathe of the American
and European public for the Zionist adventure. It equally reframes
it within a tradition that has deep reserves for overcoming the
contradictions of race, freedom and oppression in European and
American history with universal ideas of equality, democracy
and fraternity, previously only thought available to the white
man.
Aaron Michael Love can be reached at: aml307@nyu.edu
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