The Myths of Zionism

John Rose

Description

Ancient, medieval and modern, this book is a critical account of the historical, political and cultural roots of Zionism.



Scrutinising the roots of the myths of Zionism and mobilising recent scholarship, John Rose shows how many of these stories, as with other mythologies, have no basis in fact. However, because Zionism is a living political force and these myths have been used to justify very real and political ends - namely, the expulsion and continuing persecution of the Palestinians. John Rose separates fact from fiction presenting a detailed analysis of their origins and development. This includes a challenge to Zionism's biblical claims using very recent and very startling Israeli archaeological conclusions.



This book shows clearly how Zionism makes many false claims on Jewish religion and history.
Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. ‘The Bible is our Mandate’

2. ‘The Distinguishing Characteristic of the Jews has been their Exile’

3. ‘…Eighteen Centuries of Jewish Suffering’

4. ‘Us’ Jews ‘Them’ Arabs: A Message from a Cairo synagogue, a thousand years ago

5. ‘A land without people ...

6. …for a people without land’

7. Plucky Little Israel or Great Power Protégé?: Britain & the Zionist colony in Palestine

8. ‘The Nazi Holocaust proved the urgency for a Jewish State’

9. Plucky Little Israel or Great Power Protégé?: How Israel Became a Strategic Asset for the United States

10. ‘Us Jews Them Arabs’: The Lost Jewish Arab symbiosis - in search of the ‘spark of hope in the past’

Conclusion ‘Out of the Ashes’

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Middle Est
• Holocaust
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Jaim Weizmann
• David Ben-Gurión
• Ariel Sharón
• Yasir Arafat
• Balfour Declaration
• The Holocaust
• History of the Jews in Iraq
• Arab Jews
• History of the Middle East
• Jewish diaspora
• General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia
• Geopolitics
• General officer
• Ideology
• David Ben-Gurion
• Anti-Arabism
• Zionism
• Middle East
• Josephus
• Imperialism
• Bolshevik
• Noam Chomsky
• Impérialisme (jeu vidéo)
• General
• Adolf Hitler
• Deir Yassin
• Chaim Weizmann
• Edward Said
• Theodor Herzl
• Ariel Sharon
• Flavius Josèphe
• Holocauste
• Yasser Arafat

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781783714087
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Myths of Zionism
The Myths of Zionism
John Rose
First published 2004 by Pluto Press
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Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
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Copyright © John Rose 2004
The right of John Rose to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780745320564Hardback ISBN 9780745320557Paperback ISBN 9781849641951PDF eBook ISBN 9781783714094Kindle eBook ISBN 9781783714087EPUB eBook
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In memory of Tony Cliff, Revolutionary socialist, Palestinian Jew
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1
‘The Bible is our Mandate’
2
‘The Distinguishing Characteristic of the Jews has been their Exile’
3
‘… Eighteen Centuries of Jewish Suffering’
4
‘Us’ Jews, ‘Them’ Arabs I: A Message from a Cairo Synagogue, a Thousand Years Ago
5
‘A Land without People …’
6
‘… for a People without Land’
7
Plucky Little Israel or Great Power Protégé? I: Britain and the Zionist Colony in Palestine
8
‘The Nazi Holocaust Proved the Urgency for a Jewish State’
9
Plucky Little Israel or Great Power Protégé? II: How Israel became the Strategic Asset for the United States
10
‘Us’ Jews, ‘Them’ Arabs II: The Lost Jewish–Arab Symbiosis – In Search of the ‘Spark of Hope in the Past’
Conclusion: Out of the Ashes
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Many people have helped me with this book. First and foremost, my partner Elaheh Rostami Povey, who not only read each chapter as soon as it was written, making critical, but always encouraging, comments, but also had to put up with alternating moods of overindulged enthusiasm and doubt.
My good friend Michael Rosen also read the book chapter by chapter. A sort of unofficial editor, his email and telephone messages, always thoughtful, sometimes infuriating, usually hilarious, helped steady my nerves.
My brother Peter and my Palestinian friend Ayham Zekra, as well as other friends, Sabby Sagall, Phil Marfleet and Anne Alexander, read specific chapters. I am very grateful for all their comments.
The Jewish Studies Department at Southampton University, where I completed an MA in 2000, also helped. Some of the ideas which appear in this book were first tested in their seminars and essays (though the idea for the book came later). The Department was never short of encouragement and good humour, but also, perhaps, was a little bewildered at this ageing, Trotsky-supporting, anti-Zionist veteran from the 1968 student revolution. Needless to say, they are not responsible for any aspect of the book.
Mark Levene joined the Department after I had left. Mark is an expert on the Balfour Declaration and very kindly read my chapter on Britain’s sponsorship of the Zionist colony in Palestine. I think it is fair to say that we agreed to disagree, but the chapter is certainly all the stronger for our sharp and polemical email exchanges.
Professor Antony Polonsky, Head of Eastern European Jewish history at the University of Brandeis, USA, read a draft of Chapter 3 , on the Jewish economic role in medieval Europe, and I was delighted by his comments.
Sami Zubaida, Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birbeck College, London University, and a recognised scholar of the Arab and Islamic world, read my last chapter on Arab–Jewish reconciliation. He wrote to me saying how much he enjoyed it, finding it ‘well researched, lucid and absorbing’. Professor Tareq Ismael at the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary, Alberta, and author of many books on modern Arab history, also read it. His encouraging remarks were greatly appreciated.
A discussion with Jonathan Tubb, at the Department of Ancient Near East at the British Museum, about the crisis facing Israeli archaeology and its failure to find ‘biblical Israel’, proved invaluable. I greatly appreciated Jonathan reading my chapter on this fascinating question.
Professor Moshé Machover, Israeli socialist and veteran anti-Zionist dissident, was always ready to respond to my email queries, however difficult or, for that matter, trivial. In addition, his forensic analysis of the final manuscript was absolutely invaluable. A particular thanks to Moshé Machover for that.
Georges Paizis, Mortaza Sahibzada and Roland Rance also helped with ideas and suggestions. Roland’s many talents, including his encyclopaedic knowledge of relevant websites, proved to be an indispensable asset.
Finally, I particularly want to thank Sabby Sagall, Afif Safieh, the Palestinian Delegate-General to the UK and Professors Alex Callinicos, Moshé Machover and İlan Pappe for reading and commenting on the final manuscript.
J OHN R OSE
September 2003
THE FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION OF THE PAPERBACK EDITION
A most fabulous archaeological discovery of late-Jewish antiquity. The mosaic floor of the ancient fourth-century (CE) synagogue near Tiberias in the Galilee – a veritable antique jewel simultaneously celebrating the imageless God and the Sun God, testimonies to Jewish–non-Jewish co-existence. The mosaic occupying the central aisle of the synagogue is divided into three panels. The front cover shows an illustration of two of these panels. The first is the representation of the Torah shrine flanked by two menorahs with burning candles. Then, remarkably, there is a circular representation of the twelve signs of the zodiac, centring on the picture of the chariot of the sun with Helios personified. See the concluding pages of Chapter 2 .
Paul Foot died two months before the publication of my book. He was very much looking forward to it. I just hope it lives up to his expectations.
Introduction
The idea for this book first took root in the summer of 2002 following brazenly racist remarks by the former Israeli Labour prime minister, Ehud Barak, when he claimed that ‘lying’ was an intrinsic part of Arab culture (Aruri 2003: 173). This extraordinary outburst reflected very badly on Barak – perhaps suggesting something akin to the psychological process called ‘projection’. Was he not projecting onto his foe a revelation about his own political ideas and beliefs buried deep in his mind-set? Certainly, the Palestinians experience Zionism as an edifice of lies.
Take a simple example. When Barak was prime minister, the number of illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank increased, despite his supposed commitment to the ‘peace process’. Zionist politicians like Barak cloak their claims to the West Bank in religious myth, invoking biblical tales about the ancient ‘land of Israel’. For Palestinians, however, whose families have lived on and farmed the land of Palestine for generations, this myth is seen as a huge lie, justifying the stealing of their land.
What distinguishes a lie from a myth? According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary a lie is ‘an intentionally false statement’, a ‘deliberate deception’, whereas a myth is a ‘widely held but false notion’, without necessarily deceptive intent. But if a group of people experience injustice and oppression as a result of a myth, a falsehood, surely it hardly matters to them whether the falsehood was, or was not, deliberately deceptive in its origin.
The argument in this book is that Zionism is held together by a series of myths. A package of false notions which undermine its claims on the Jewish religion and Jewish history, its rationale as a response to Europe’s anti-Semitism, and above all its justification for its aggressive and very dangerous political posturing in the land of Palestine.
The chapters that follow deal directly with the myths by responding either to specific claims made by Zionist ideologues or to widely held beliefs that have become part of Zionist folklore.
Zionism’s greatest myth-maker, David Ben-Gurion, inadvertently helped shape the book’s first and last chapters. This fixer of facts was Israel’s first prime minister and Zionism’s most successful leader in the twentieth century. Ben-Gurion once boasted that a myth can become a fact if people believe in it strongly enough. He deftly used this intellectual sleight-of-hand to manipulate the Bible stories to make them fit Zionism’s political claims on Palestinian land.
Chapter 1 challenges Ben-Gurion’s most outrageous use of religious myth, namely that the Bible gave him a ‘mandate’ to declare a Jewish state in Palestine. The chapter goes on to illustrate how Israeli archaeology is now undermining Zionism’s claims about ‘ancient Israel’.
Chapter 10 shows how Ben-Gurion destroyed any prospects of Arab–Jewish reconciliation. He sabotaged secret talks with Egypt’s President Nasser, arguably the single most important Arab national leader in the twentieth century, who was seeking an honourable peace with Israel. The ‘Free [Army] Officers’, including Nasser, who led Egypt’s national revolution in 1952, had gone to considerable lengths to build bridges to the country’s Jewish community.
Ben-Gurion’s behaviour here points to the book’s most important conclusion that Zionism is the source of Ara