From: wmuhanna@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Waleed A Muhanna)
Subject: Zionism (was Re: All Arabs...)
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 19:00:44 GMT

In article <1ic8u7INNbh4@early-bird.think.com> shaig@Think.COM (Shai Guday) writes:
>In article <1483500314@igc.apc.org>, cpr@igc.apc.org (Center for Policy Research) writes:
>|> 
>|> But as the subject is the question of the relation Zionism-racism, I
>|> will only provide one criterion which for me encampsulates more than
>|> anything else the affirmation that Zionism is indeed a racist ideology.
>
>First of all, if zionism is a racist ideology, then how do you explain
>the case of the Ethiopian jews who are not caucasion? or the Morrocan,
>Syrian, or Yemenite jews as well?  If Zionism were a racist ideaology
>then these peoples would not have been allowed to enter Israel.

Since you want to stick to the narrow biological definition of `race'
and `racism', then I am sure you would also insist that anti-Semitism
is not a form of racism.  Right?  Just to be consistent, you know.

The fact is that any ideology/state that discriminates against a portion of 
its population on the basis of race, religion, color, or _ethnic heritage_
can be judged `racist' in the _common_ usage of the term.

Zionism is not merely a "belief," it is a political movement with a history
combined with an ideology, and today the Zionist state, Israel, defines
Zionism in practice, which is the most important way to experience Zionism
and understand its colonial and racist nature.

	``Given the initial aims of the movement, it could not have been
	  otherwise.  Once the premise were laid down, the inexorable
	  logic of history determined the consequences.  Wanting to
	  create a purely Jewish, or predominantly Jewish, state in Arab
	  Palestine in the twentieth century could not but lead to a
	  colonial type situation and to the development (completely
	  normal, sociologically speaking) of a racist state of mind,
	  and in the final analysis to a military confrontation between
	  the two ethnic groups.''
		Maxime Rodinson, _Israel: a colonial-settler state?_
		Monad Press, 1973.

If you believe that it is justified to create and to continue to _maintain_
a Jewish exclusivist state in Arab Palestine--which is common to virtually
all known strains of Zionism--then your views are inherently colonial even 
if you don't acknowledge it.  Such views can also be judged racist since those
goals could not be achieved without dispossessing the native population of 
Palestine (the Palestinian people) and denying them their inalienable rights
in their homeland.

	``The principle setting up the Israeli case of settler
	colonialism is that in a certain territory (as yet not
	well-defined, since various Zionist parties claim different
	borders for the territory) members of the group known in
	Israel law as the `Jewish people' have superior and exclusive
	political rights as opposed to all others, including natives of
	the same territory.''
		Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, _Original Sins: Reflections on
		the History of Zionism and Israel_, Pluto Press, 1992,
		p. 80.

If one subscribes to that principle, then his/her views (or "version" of
zionism) are racist, even if he/she does not consciously or unconsciously
practice racism in other behavior.