Zionism Is Racism

The recent dust up between Israel and Gaza reminds us that Israel is a racist state.  Although it allows some role for non-Jews in Israeli politics, for all practical purposes it is a Jewish state that discriminates against non-Jews, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in huge ways.  Israel may argue that its isolation of Gaza, for example, is necessary for security reasons, but the origin of the security problem is racism. 

Israel is justified in protecting itself from attack by Palestinians and other Arabs, but it should work seriously to reduce the oppression that produces those attacks.  The problem is that the Palestinian Arabs were in Palestine first.  After World War II, the British protectorate ended and the United Nations turned Palestine over to the Jews despite fierce opposition from those living there, mostly Arab Muslims. 

In some respects, it is not unlike what the United States did to the Indians when Europeans came to North America.  However, North America was mostly empty land, occupied by a relatively small population of Indians.  Palestine, on the other hand, was pretty much completely occupied by Arabs, who had to be displaced by the Jews to Jordan, the West Bank, and other neighboring countries.  The Jews have shown zero interest in granting the Palestinians land of their own, while the Palestinians, mainly from force of superior Israeli arms, have largely acquiesced in Israel's occupation of the majority of historical Palestine, although Jews were largely absent from Palestine for 2,000 years.  The Jews lost Palestine shortly after Jesus's time, apparently moving mainly to Europe in the diaspora, although the virtual absence of non-European Jews in Israel makes one wonder whether there is not a form of Israeli racism against non-Europeans.  Palestine was not a Jewish homeland in the 500s, the 1000s or the 1700s.  Jews did begin to return in the 1800s, but before the UN's creation of the state of Israel, they were a relatively small part of the population. 

A Huffington Post article discusses the racism in Israel directed by the European Ashkenazi Jews against the Middle Easrern Sephartic Jews.  It says that for many years Middle Eastern Jews Have lived as stigmatized citizens of Israel.   Although the populations of the two groups are about equal in Israel, the Ashkenazi rule the country.  Furthermore, many Sephartic Jews also come from Europe, but from Spain and Portugal, rather than Germany or Poland.

So, Palestinians have deep-seated, legitimate grievances that Israel refuses to acknowledge, and thanks to the enormous wealth and political influence of US Jews, the US has similarly refused to acknowledge the plight of the Palestinians.  It sometimes pays lip service to Palestinian claims, but meanwhile supplies Israel with hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid with which to kill Arabs.