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Pro-Zionism: Defending the Indefensible
by Stephen Lendman This article responds to a March 15 Los Angeles Times Judea Pearl one headlined: "Is anti-Zionism hate?" Pearl teaches computer science at UCLA, is the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. It was "formed....to continue Danny's mission and to address the root causes of this tragedy in the spirit" of the man it represents, including "uncompromised objectivity and integrity....and respect for people of all cultures...." Some of its honorary board member belie this purpose: -- former president Bill Clinton, an unindicted war criminal and backer of neoliberal plunder; -- Elie Wiesel, a shameless self-promoter, "Holocaust" exploiter, and apologist for the most outrageous Israeli crimes; -- Jordan's Queen Noor, wife of King Abdullah II, who, like his father Hussein, rules with dictatorial police state powers; and -- Christiane Amanpour and Ted Koppel, two notables in the corporate media who never let facts conflict with their views and support for the powerful. In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel explained how it fosters "imperialist expansion and militarism (with) signs of the fascist malignancy;" that it turned Israel "into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses" led by terrorists posing as democrats. Kovel's book and his work got him fired from the Bard College faculty effective July 1 when his current contract expires - for daring to criticize Israel, its Zionist ideology, state-sponsored terror, and decades of lawlessness and egregious behavior. Kovel expressed outrage that institutions like Bard aren't bothered; that they grant Israel impunity, suppress dissent, then marginalize, punish, and remove the "heretics," ones like Kovel who honorably and courageously write truths. Pearl railed about a UCLA Center for Near East Studies symposium invitation to "four longtime Israel bashers" so they could attack Zionism's legitimacy and "its vision of a two-state solution...." - a scheme to consign Palestinians to isolated cantons and steal their most valuable land. He equates legitimate Israeli criticism and anti-Zionism with "criminaliz(ing) Israel's existence, distort(ing) its motives and malign(ing) its character, its birth, even its conception." He cites "Jewish leaders (condemning) this hate-fest as a dangerous invitation to anti-Semitic hysteria" even though one has nothing to do with the other and conflating them masks the real issue - Zionism's corrosive effects and the myths on which it's based. Ones Pearl ignores in stating "Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation - a collective bonded by a common history - and, accordingly denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel, (what it) 'grants' to other historically bonded collectives (e.g. French, Spanish, Palestinians), the right to nationhood...." Pearl can't accept the hard facts that Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Zand documented in his important 2008 book: "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" It exposes biblical nonsense comprising core Zionist beliefs about Jews: -- that ancient Romans expelled them; -- their exodus from Egypt, then left to wander the earth rootless; -- enslaved, oppressed, and tormented for centuries; and -- the myth that God bestowed a "Greater Israel" for Jews alone - "A land without people for a people without land." -- there never was a Jewish people, just a Jewish religion; -- there was no exile, therefore no return, and much of the Jewish Diaspora was voluntary; and -- the story was a Zionist invention, a conspiracy to justify a future Jewish state, and now vilify Palestinian self-determination as a plot to destroy it. "Are Jews a nation," asks Pearl? "Some philosophers would argue Jews are a nation first and religion second." He cites the usual mythology: -- the Exodus and return to the "promised land before they received the Torah at Mt. Sinai;" -- "the unshaken conviction in their eventual repatriation to (their) birthplace (since) the Roman expulsion;" and -- their "shared history, not religion (as) the primary uniting force behind the secular, multiethnic society of Israel" - favoring Jews alone in a quasi secular/religious state where practicing another one is dangerous. -- the state of Israel" despite its illegitimate birth and mythological roots; -- "its struggle for survival" in spite of being the world's fourth most powerful military, nuclear-armed; with no enemies except the ones it makes; and having a history of aggressive wars; violence over conciliation; confrontation, not diplomacy; and claiming self-defense as justification when there is none; -- "its cultural and scientific achievements," much of the latter involving militarism and hard line security; and -- "its relentless drive for peace."
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