The Zionist Project Doomed Itself by Rejecting Peace Advocates

You wouldn’t know it now by observing the Israeli government and hearing the genocidal comments by high-ranking officials and politicians, but the Zionist project since its formation had a wing that advocated for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian people and their Arab neighbors.

Unfortunately, as Jeremy Kuzmarov writes in Covert Action Magazine, they were pushed aside and blacklisted by the militaristic wing of Zionism, inevitably leading to the very situation the peace advocates warned about.

“There were a lot of good people in that movement who said that the Zionist movement would only be successful if they coexisted with the Palestinian populations who lived there, whereas others tried to promote this myth of an empty land and had no regard at all for the Palestinians and just wanted to drive them out. And that was the strain of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Kuzmarov told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour.

In 1967, in the wake of the Six-Day War, during which Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, a socialist organization headed by a coalition of Arabs and Jews pleaded for Israel to stop cementing itself as an occupying force.

“Holding onto the territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims. Let us leave the Occupied territories now,” their letter, published in the Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz read.

But the push for a Zionist movement based on peace goes back further than that, nearly to its founding, Kuzmarov explained.

“Ahad Ha'am, who actually helped revive the Hebrew language,” was one such leader. “He wrote a scathing report called 'The Truth About Palestine,' in the late 19th century. Already then, he was saying that the Jews were being cruel toward the Palestinians and that this was not right, and this would destroy the Zionist project, which should be rooted in humanity,” Kuzmarov explained, adding that Ha’am advocated for a binational state, also known as the one-state solution.

Kuzmarov also writes about Martin Buber, a philosopher who advocated that Israel’s main objective should be peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt as three other prominent “humanist Zionists” that have no living heirs with the possible exception of Noam Chomsky.

“I think they would say that Netanyahu is not a real Zionist. He's a barbarian and he's compromised the integrity of the Zionist project. And he threatens the security of the Jewish people. This is something a lot of these humanists, including Chomsky, warned about, that if Israel started attacking the Palestinians and disrespected them, they would face violence, in turn, from the Palestinians. And, I think that's what we're seeing now, a vicious cycle of violence. And, these brutal Israeli policies could invite revenge in the future.”

That revenge could come as soon as the United States feels that Israel has outlived its usefulness or has become too much of a burden to support.

“The US uses Israel for its own agenda, but if they lose their strategic [importance] and cut ties and move somewhere else, then the Israelis will be in big trouble because their horrific policies have caused anger among their neighbors and the Arab people and they may one day take revenge on them. That’s what Ahad Ha’am and many others warned about, including Chomsky, who advocated for coexistence and either a binational state or some kind of peace arrangement.”