Resident calls Israel a racist, exclusive state

To the Editors:

Zionism is the colonialist ideology that brought the state of Israel into existence by expropriating the land of the indigenous Arab population as its own. Zionism has become a form of Jewish nationalism that preaches Jewish superiority, excludes non-Jews and is responsible for today’s political, racial and economic apartheid of Israelis and Palestinians. As many Rabbis and Jews attest to, Zionism has no more of a place in Judaism, than does the Taliban’s ideology in Islam, David Duke’s vision of Christianity or the exclusivist claims of RSS and Hindutva in Hindu sacred texts or history. Zionism’s impact upon the Jewish elite in America has been so vociferous and influential, however, that anyone who criticizes Israeli policy (which is in contravention of international law and has been condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Btslem, Peace Now and others) or Zionism is accused of anti-Semitism, a charge often thrown about to ward off critics of Israel’s apartheid-like policies towards Palestinians.
The truth is, Zionism did at first emerge in response to anti-Semitism in Europe in the late 19th century, as a politically secular movement whose goal was the liberation of Jews from persecution. However, Zionist ideology has also implied the separation and expulsion of the Arabs and has been almost universally hijacked by those that would ideologically support a sign I saw recently in New York City at a “Women in Black” protest: “No Arabs = No Terror.”
Israel today is a religiously exclusive and racist state.
Israel’s Law of Return is a clear example of racism. By it, the state must accommodate any Jews from anywhere in the world that might, at any time, migrate to Israel. If four-million Jews suddenly emigrate to Israel/Palestine, the Israeli government will accommodate them. In contrast, four-million Palestinians that were dispossessed of their land and forced into exile when Israel was formed have no right of return because - in Ehud Barak’s words, “[it would be] national suicide”.
National suicide when the returnees are Palestinians wanting to return to the land of their birth but not when the immigrants are foreign Jews? This is racism.
Another example of Zionism’s racism is that Israeli inhabitants are required to carry identity cards; these must list the official nationality of a person - Jewish, Arab, Druze ... - but not Israeli. When left-wing Israelis applied for identity cards identifying them as Israeli or Israeli-Jew, the Interior Ministry rejected their requests. A “democracy” that requires citizens’ identity cards stipulating ethno-religious identity without mentioning nationality? This is racism.
In addition, the Palestinians of the occupied territories, who, under the pretext of security and as legitimized by the Peace Process (a farce that had initially long excluded Palestinians) are locked into disconnected and crowded bantustans on their own land (from which the vast majority of its natural resources, such as water, has been given to Israel under the Oslo Accords) and provide Israel with its cheap slave-like labor. All this accurately fits the description of an apartheid state. The examples go on and on.
Despite the atrocities committed under Zionism, the US “ liberal” elite are not willing to concede that Zionism is, at root, a conscious war of extermination and expropriation against a native civilian population, and that the ideology is racist at its core. Those within the “liberal” American elite who energetically condemn enemies of Zionism (while at the same time not bringing to light the state sponsored atrocity of genocide forced onto the Palestinian people) are racist at best and defiantly cowards - hiding behind privilege and deep seeded, pathetic, American guilt.

—Bobby Bergeron
Town Resident