Yassin al-Haj Saleh
New Lines Magazine / October 4, 2024
The complex challenge of Zionism demands an intellectual effort to comprehend it, which can begin with the separation of three historical issues.
While conflict with Israel has been part of the collective consciousness of the Arab world for generations, the character of the Israeli state and its ideological underpinnings have rarely been the subject of serious reflection outside of certain Palestinian circles. In some neighbouring countries like Syria and Lebanon, the existence of Israel has been used by rulers as a pretext to justify imposing unjust policies at home. For others farther afield, Israel has been viewed as merely an apolitical force of evil and object of hatred or, conversely, an overwhelming fate that justifies inaction, if not acquiescence.
The reality is more complex. Since its emergence, Israel has created a mixture of psychological distress, political difficulties and intellectual dilemmas for the peoples of the Arab world. It is a challenge that has consumed many lives, and whose toxic effects will likely persist for years to come.
At its core, the Israeli issue is an Arab issue, and the liberation and empowerment of the Arab people depends on organizing and clarifying Arab perceptions of this formidable force, which, in any case, views them as a unified whole. Understanding Israel requires recognizing that it is a state with three major facets: a colonial one, a Jewish one and a sacrificial one. Each of these pillars upon which the State of Israel rests deserves to be analysed on its own terms, in order to begin the process of knowing this power that has now shaped the entire Middle East for generations.
Israel is, first and foremost, a colonial power. As a state, it is an extension of the phenomenon of colonialism that most Arab countries experienced during the 19th and 20th centuries. Israel also embodies a unique form of colonialism known as settler colonialism, a political project that only Algeria encountered among other Arab nations. In Palestinian literature, the term “replacer” is sometimes added to “settler,” emphasizing the idea of uprooting the indigenous population and replacing them with foreigners.
Settler colonialism often has a high capacity for genocide, as evidenced by historical examples in the United States, Canada and Australia. This genocidal potential can also manifest in the eradication of a targeted people as a political entity, or “politicide,” a term discussed by Israeli-Canadian sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in a book of the same name. Kimmerling, however, assigned the responsibility for this form of erasure in Israel-Palestine solely to the actions of hawkish former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, rather than to the broader Zionist settler colonial project.
Politicide can also manifest as a combination of settler colonialism and racial segregation or apartheid, as described by Amnesty International in a report released in early February 2022, and by the Palestinian intellectual Azmi Bishara in his paper Settler Colonialism or Apartheid: Do We Have To Choose? published in the fall of 2021. Finally, politicide can take the form of large-scale genocidal killing of a group, indiscriminately targeting civilians and combatants alike, not only with weapons, but also through siege, starvation and severely controlling or blocking access to humanitarian aid, as Israel has done to the people of the Gaza Strip during the current war.
One of the original ideological justifications for settler colonialism in Palestine was the claim that it was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” This was how, for instance, the British Zionist Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) once justified it. This denial of the existence of a Palestinian people parallels some of the justifications used for the ethnic cleansing seen in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, and the dismissal of Palestinian peoplehood is precisely what occurred during the Nakba in 1948, when three-quarters of the population, or around 750,000 Palestinians, were expelled through massacres, threats and various forms of violence.
As for the Palestinians who remained on their land, they lived under military rule until 1966. For a long time, they were reduced to living as vulnerable, oppressed people in a “state of exception.” This concept, developed by the contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, describes a condition where individuals exist outside the protection of the law. Agamben’s model of “homo sacer” — someone who may not be sacrificed, but can be killed with impunity — employed a concept from Roman law and was based on the experience of Nazi concentration camp inmates. But it also applies to subjects of colonial rule, who, according to Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, are governed by administrative directives rather than legal norms.
Arendt took Lord Cromer, the British colonial ruler of Egypt for about 30 years, as an example of this. However, the condition of Palestinians is far worse than that of Egyptians under Cromer. Palestinians are treated as strangers in their homeland, with thousands continually detained in Israeli prisons under military court rulings — more than 10,000 today — and subjected to relentless pressure to leave. This state of permissible violence has become even more pronounced during the current war in Gaza.
The idea of Israel’s colonial origins gains force from the fact that it emerged as a product of British-administered Mandatory Palestine. In The Palestine Problem and the One-State/Two-States Solution, the Palestinian academic Raef Zreik explains that the British Mandate for Palestine, whose principles were first established at the San Remo conference in April 1920 and which was officially adopted by the League of Nations in July 1922, incorporated the Balfour Declaration into its mandate. The second paragraph of its preamble refers to this declaration, noting its adoption by the allied countries. The mandate represented the form European colonialism took in some of our countries — including Syria and Lebanon, which were controlled by the French. In this way, the British mandate acted as the “mother” of the Israeli entity, nurturing it for 30 years. In 1938, the British officer Ord Wingate remarked, “We are here to create the Zionist army,” a statement cited by the Israeli writer Ari Shavit in his book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.
The colonial project of Zionism did not begin in Palestine or the Middle East, but in Europe, as a result of the convergence of three European phenomena: the rise of aggressive nationalism, the expansion of European imperialism, and the growth of antisemitism, or anti-Jewish sentiment, as a distinct form of racism. Imperialism, which allowed for European domination over large parts of the world, created the conditions for the Zionist project to take shape.
In his book The Invention of the Land of Israel, the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, was a “colonialist,” believing that acquiring a homeland outside Europe, as an extension of the civilized bourgeois world, required no additional justification.
Before any historical or theoretical discussions, the Palestinian people and Arab elites experienced the creation of Israel as a form of colonialism imposed through military violence, which has persisted from its establishment to the present. This subjective account of Israeli colonialism is crucial, as it reflects how those affected perceive Israel’s continued presence as an unprovoked attack on their very existence. In response to this aggression, various forms of resistance emerged. In the 1960s and 1970s, this resistance was more often built on liberal foundations than in recent decades, although it faltered due to the unique nature of the enemy it faced — an enemy that enjoyed overwhelming military support from its Western allies — as well as the decline of emancipatory values in Arab domestic and foreign policies since the 1970s.
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, is credited with saying, “What cannot be achieved by force can be achieved by more force.” His statement reflects a colonial mindset that not only acknowledges Palestinian rejection of the Israeli project but also anticipates Israel’s continual readiness for war and violent subjugation.
More importantly, it implies that superiority in arms and the availability of “more force” is always guaranteed. Ben-Gurion’s words have proven prophetic in some regards. Since the 1970s, the guarantee of Israeli military superiority has taken the form of an American pledge that Israel will maintain qualitative military superiority over all Arab countries combined. The absence of this pledge in recent public discourse does not suggest that it has been abandoned. On the contrary, it was enshrined in U.S. law in 2008, when a bill was passed prohibiting the sale of weapons to any Arab country that would threaten Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” That decision demonstrated that it is the U.S., and not Israel alone, that views Arabs as a unified whole.
Israel’s identity, however, is not limited to being a settler colonial entity. It also has two other aspects it would be a grave mistake to overlook. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is its Jewish character. Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. This Jewish identity does not necessarily mean it is a religious state, but it does signify a deep connection to a sacred biblical history and geography centered on Palestine, or “Eretz Israel,” with Jerusalem at its heart.
The biblical narrative remains a key source of legitimacy for many Zionist thinkers and critics. In his book Zionist Thought in the Labyrinth of Renewal and Regeneration, the Palestinian researcher Amal Jamal quotes Uri Elitzur, whom he describes as “one of the most eloquent representatives of neo-Zionist thought,” stating that “without the Bible, we [Israelis] are nothing more than a European colonial settlement in the Middle East.”
Even though Israel initially had a secular and somewhat socialist character, its history since the 1967 war has been marked by the rise of religious and right-wing movements. This shift was solidified with the Likud party’s victory in the 1977 elections, the first such victory since the state’s establishment. Israel bears an inherent contradiction between its religious and secular political aspects, and this contradiction is increasingly being resolved in favour of the religious side.
The Jewish component plays a significant role in defining Israel, and is also one of the pillars guaranteeing continued Western support for the state. This support goes beyond its colonial nature, or its role as a “fortress of the West,” as described by Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany after the Nazi era. Revealingly, Adenauer said this after the Suez war in 1956, when Israel joined the U.K. and France in attacking Egypt following Nasser’s nationalization of the canal. However, supporting Israel by no means exonerates the West from practicing a sort of disguised antisemitism. Supporting a Jewish political entity has become easier now that it is in Palestine, and no longer in Europe.
In his book The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy, Gil Anidjar argues that Europeans have historically viewed Jews as an internal theological enemy, while Muslims were seen as an external political enemy. The implication is that having these two enemies occupied with each other is beneficial. This sentiment is echoed in certain antisemitic right-wing circles in Europe and the West, where today, instead of targeting Jews, they incite against Muslims, immigrants and minorities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government finds itself aligned with these fascist or semi-fascist groups in a perceived religious and civilizational war against Arabs and Muslims, reflecting a shift to the right in Israel’s Western support.
The third key facet of Israel’s national character relates to the Holocaust, a catastrophic historical event that is often regarded as unique. The Holocaust saw 6 million Jews killed at the hands of Nazi Germany. After the fall of Hitler’s regime in 1945 and the occupation of Germany by the Soviet Union, the U.S., Britain and France, there was no one left to defend Nazism. Instead, its victims, particularly the Jews, gained immense sympathy due to the horror of what they had endured and because, unlike the Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Czechs, Slovaks and French, they had no state or political entity to protect them.
Zionism, which had been active in Europe for over half a century by then, capitalized on this sympathy by framing the Holocaust as proof of the necessity of a Jewish state, to ensure that such atrocities would never happen again. This is the essence of the phrase “never again,” which carries an exclusive meaning — namely, that such an event should never be repeated against the Jews, overshadowing the broader interpretation that it should not happen to anyone.
This aspect of Israel connects the country to a monumental sacrifice, one that is so profound it could serve as the foundation for a religion — and, in a way, it has. The Holocaust has become a kind of religion, not only in Israel, which has succeeded in politically and morally appropriating this immensely tragic event, but also in the West as a whole. This “religion” is further strengthened by the fact that those who were sacrificed were members of a religious group, and following the feelings of guilt and repentance that the Holocaust evoked, Jews came to be seen as a foundational partner of Western civilization.
In this new “religion,” the exterminated Jews have, in a sense, replaced the crucified Jesus, becoming the symbolic “Son of God.” The Holocaust survivor Charlotte Delbo, in her book Auschwitz and After, writes: “You wept for two thousand years for those who were tormented for three days and three nights. I wonder what tears you have left to cry for those who were tortured for more than three hundred days and three hundred nights. How intense will your weeping be for those who endured countless torments?”
Delbo is, of course, referring to the horrific suffering of Jews at the hands of the Nazis. It is an immense tragedy, and it deserves more recognition and contemplation in the Arab world, particularly in the context of describing and analysing the suffering in our own region, including in Palestine.
The repeated failure of Arab confrontations with Israel, alongside Israel’s success in those conflicts, compels us to question our understanding of the Zionist project, which has devastated the lives of generations — tens of millions of us — far exceeding the total global Jewish population, estimated at around 15 to 16 million.
The late Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous said in a documentary made by the late Omar Amiralay that Israel “stole his life” — a sentiment born from the humiliation and loss of dignity that poisoned his existence between 1941 and 1997. Wannous attempted suicide after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977. Although he survived, he remained silent for years afterward, in a form of symbolic suicide. Such examples are more common in the Arab world than they appear, though they don’t always take dramatic forms. Yassin al-Hafez, a Syrian intellectual who passed away in 1978 at the age of 48, wrote that he had contemplated suicide after the defeat of 1967, but was deterred by “remnants of metaphysical confidence in the Arab people’s capabilities.” The Lebanese poet Khalil Hawi (1919-1982) committed suicide when Israel occupied Beirut in the summer of 1982. These examples, which represent only the tip of the iceberg, highlight that we have psychological as well as political, military, legal and moral reasons to address Israel as a serious question that demands an answer.
The creation of Israel has meant the birth of a chronic problem for the people of the Arab world. This issue of Israel causes intellectuals to consider suicide, spreads feelings of humiliation among millions, poisons the lives of many, and erupts every few years into hostility and hatred; it has fuelled nihilistic conflicts among many Arabs over the past two generations.
Effectively grappling with the issue of Israel going forward will require significant thought, vision and political judgment. It is a major challenge for the soul, a test of will and a dilemma for the mind, requiring serious intellectual effort to understand and ultimately control. We cannot become effective historical actors unless we transform our mixed emotions into a concrete program that we can work to achieve.
The failure to establish an effective course of action is perhaps most evident in the ideology of “mumanaa”, which roughly means efforts to prevent the enemy from achieving full domination, but has always been associated with dictatorship, corruption and sectarianism in the Levant. Equally auto-destructive is “reverse mumanaa”, a position that accepts the radical claims of Israel under the guise of moderation.
While mumanaa seeks to perpetuate the struggle for political control, reverse mumanaa is embodied by groups that collaborate with or accept Israel’s aggressive, supremacist and racist reality without question. However, as the Levantine saying goes, “No matter how much we accommodate them, they are never satisfied” — and the outcomes of the Oslo Accords over the past 30 years are clear evidence of this.
It is perplexing that some nations accept such a massive imbalance of power in favour of a neighbouring state, especially one that was founded through ethnic cleansing and refuses to offer even minimal justice to its victims or equality with its neighbours. European nations were frequently at war for a century and a half before World War II because of imbalances of power. Why should the Arabs be expected to feel and act differently?
Those who advocate normalization with Israel are shortsighted if they believe it is possible to integrate Israel into normal relations with the rest of the region. Israel is not a normal state, and it does not see itself as a political entity like others — subject to criticism, boycotts, resistance, and condemnation, making treaties and peace, and earning trust. Israel does not accept its Arab neighbours as equals.
Understanding the three facets of the Israeli state helps to suggest new ways to respond to its challenge to the Arab world. Regarding its Jewish aspect, it is important to acknowledge that the Jewish presence in Palestine and the Arab world was not problematic before the rise of Zionism.
Therefore, the presence of Jews in the Arab world should be recognized and welcomed. This includes not only Arab Jews — those who lived in our countries and spoke Arabic — but also Jews from outside the region. The Middle East, as the cradle of the Abrahamic religions, was Arabized after Islam, but historically the region has been religiously diverse. This diversity has declined in the past two centuries, due to the influence of the modern West and, more significantly, the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of Israel.
Furthermore, modern Arab intellectual and political structures, both nationalist and Islamic, have rejected elements of their societies instead of embracing diversity. Openness to a Jewish presence does not threaten the Arab character of the region any more than the presence of Muslims in Europe threatens the existence of those countries, despite what right-wing fascists in the West claim.
Regarding the Holocaust and its sacrificial aspect, on that basis the state of Israel arguably has a right to exist in a European country like Germany, or perhaps Poland and the Czech Republic. However, Palestinians and Arabs have been called to show full respect for the immense sacrifice of the Holocaust, even as its weight has been unfairly shifted onto their shoulders.
As for Israel’s colonial aspect, which resulted in the displacement of three-quarters of the Palestinian population through massacres and intimidation — an aspect that has persisted and worsened for more than 76 years — Israel as presently constructed has no legitimate right to exist, just as no form of colonialism or apartheid has any right to exist.
However, we must acknowledge that Israel, as it exists, is a combination of those three aspects. Its Jewish identity gives it a mythical historical depth and a narrative of an “eternal mission” tied to the land. Its sacrificial aspect provides a sense of justice and legitimacy, no matter what actions are taken. And its colonial aspect grants it genocidal power, capable of targeting all Arabs, not just Palestinians.
This Israel, as Shlomo Sand describes it, comprises “a society, a culture, and a people” that have existed for only three generations. Many of its Jewish residents know no other homeland.
Is there a way to conceptualize the Israeli issue that might one day lead to a comprehensive solution to this enormous problem? The Palestinian intellectual Edward Said consistently rejected the idea of displacing any population groups from what is now, and was in his time, the land of Israel and Palestine, but he strongly advocated for the removal of Israel’s colonial and racist aspects.
Understanding the Israeli issue in its three facets opens the door to thinking about complex solutions that address all of them. For example, one could combine an insistence on international law regarding Israel’s withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 with the return of Palestinian refugees or just compensation, using German reparations to Israel as a precedent. This could serve as a cornerstone in addressing the colonial dimension.
The chances of success increase when efforts are also made to address the other two aspects: fostering openness to the Jewish presence in Palestine and the Arab world, including restoring the properties of Arab Jews who return to their homes, in exchange for similar compensation for Palestinians. Additionally, there should be a greater focus on the Holocaust as a model of genocide and human capacity for evil. For instance, translating key writings on the Holocaust, as well as organizing conferences and seminars on this and other genocides, could foster a deeper understanding. This approach is not a concession to Israel, Zionism or even the Jewish people, but rather an opportunity for Arabs to take part in defending the oppressed worldwide.
Arabs have experienced a deep emotional crisis as a result of one of the greatest injustices of modern times occurring at their expense, through no fault of their own, and seeing the oppressed of the past becoming today’s oppressors — arrogant and always self-justified, supported by the world’s most powerful nations. Addressing the Israeli issue could be a step toward resolving this existential crisis, and repairing the deeper malaises that have emerged since the fateful confrontation between Zionism and the Arab world began over a century ago.
In this sense, the Israeli question becomes an Arab question — a challenge and an issue for the Arabs. It is unlikely they will achieve true freedom without making progress in addressing it.
Saying that the Israeli question is an Arab one means that progress in resolving it is tied to addressing other problems that the Arabs have made for themselves and others. This deserves its own discussion, but suffice it to say that contemporary Arabs are among the least free people in the world, due to their struggle with a threefold tyranny. The first aspect of this is the fact that all Arab regimes, without exception, practice politicide. The second is the colonial presence, both Western and non-Western, of which Israel is the most prominent but by no means the only expression. Finally, there is the rise of nihilistic religious fundamentalism with fascist tendencies.
Understanding the Israeli issue is a call for reason, political action and generosity. It is also a call to revive the pluralistic and ecumenical traditions that once thrived in the Arab and Islamic worlds before the colonial period and the rise of modern nation-states.
The Palestinians and Arabs have unjustly been made to bear the burden of resolving the Jewish question — a European problem. The Arabs had no role in the Holocaust, except in the minds of people like Netanyahu, who claimed that the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, inspired Hitler, a statement that sparked objections from many Jews and Germans even before those from Arabs.
The Arabs had no part in the historical development of the Jewish diaspora. They took Palestine from the Byzantines, not from any Jewish entity. The Jews had no political entity in the region for six centuries before the Arab conquest, and at no time did the Arabs displace Jews from Palestine or its neighbouring lands. As for colonialism, the Palestinians and Arabs are among its victims, alongside Africans, Indians and others, while Israel has benefited from colonialism both before and since its establishment. This historical injustice is the responsibility of the Western-Zionist alliance. Germany paid reparations to Israel for Nazi crimes against the Jews, but neither Germany nor any other Western or international entity has paid compensation to the Palestinians for the theft of their homeland or the injustice they endured due to colonialism.
When we reflect on the matter, we may realize that what prevents us from developing a nuanced understanding of the Israeli issue lies not on the Israeli side, but on the Arab side. Who is the Arab self that seeks to formulate a vision and policy toward Israel? Does this self-question itself and think in terms of history? At present, there is no Arab entity that does so. This is what keeps the perception of the Israeli issue confined within a subjective, sub-political and sub-historical framework.
What is the possible time frame for resolving the Israeli question? Talking about a question implies discussing a solution, and a solution involves controlling the reality that the issue represents — taking control and transforming from a passive subject into an active one.
By its nature, this question is long-term, spanning not years but decades and generations. The concept of the “Jewish question” was already circulating when Marx wrote an article bearing the same title in 1843. In the more than a century between the book and the establishment of Israel, we saw the rise of antisemitism rooted in nationalism, rather than traditional Christian foundations. We also witnessed the emergence of Nazism and the Holocaust, where the Nazis attempted a “final solution” to the Jewish question. Israel is, in many ways, the final solution to that final solution — an agreement reached by the influential Ashkenazi elites in the West, the “Yishuv” (Jewish immigrants to Palestine) and the Western colonial powers following World War II and the Holocaust.
The Eastern Question emerged in the latter half of the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire began to be referred to as “the sick man of Europe,” as Russian Tsar Nicholas I famously said. From the outset, the Eastern Question was a Western concern, as Arnold Toynbee would later note. It was “resolved” at the end of World War I with the collapse and division of the Ottoman Empire. However, from the perspective of those directly affected, particularly the Arabs, the issue has transformed but not been resolved. It was never properly understood or addressed by those concerned, either intellectually or politically. The Eastern Question became an Arab issue, compounded by the Israeli issue. The fragmentation we see in the Arab world today is the result of the failure to address both the Arab and Israeli issues. This fragmentation also means the collapse or disintegration of a self-capable of solving these issues, and perhaps, even before that, of fully understanding them. Attempting to conceptualize the Israeli issue is, in fact, an effort to resist this disintegration.
However, discussing a time frame that spans decades and generations may not satisfy some. There will always be those quick to accuse people who take this approach of surrender, normalization or worse. But the fear of such accusations has contributed to our current condition of auto-destruction and catastrophe. Among these voices — those of mumanaa and those of reverse mumanaa, and those who bid for crumbs — there must be some of us willing to speak what we believe without fear or self-censorship. Framing Israel as a three-pronged challenge with a long historical range is a step in that direction.
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a contributing writer at New Lines Magazine, is a Syrian author and former political prisoner
