Countercurrents / June 20, 2020
Medium has just introduced Momentum, a Medium blog about the fight against anti-Black racism. Medium’s announcement says,
Momentum is a blog that captures and reflects the moment we find ourselves in, one where rampant anti-Black racism is leading to violence, trauma, protest, reflection, sorrow, and more. This blog is a source for news about policies, activism, and personal perspectives in the fight against systemic racism from across Medium and beyond.
I have no quarrel with the idea of such a blog, and, indeed, applaud it. But, as a Palestinian with a Medium blog of my own called Palestinian and Righteously Angry, where I mostly post about the iniquities of Zionism, I have a question for the editors of Medium:
Do you consider Zionism a form of “racism and racial discrimination”, as adopted by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 on 10 November 1975?
If so, and given that Palestinians are also in a historic moment currently — what with Israel’s plan of annexing parts of the West Bank — when will the time come for Medium editors to introduce a blog in support of the fight against the systemic apartheid of Zionism?
If not, if you do not consider Zionism a form of racism and racial discrimination, would you kindly explain to me why not?
Is it because the 1975 UNGA resolution in that regard was revoked at the end of 1991 as a result of pressure from the US and its allies, who continue to consider the supremacist Jewish national movement as a noble endeavour?
If so, I beg you to read Ben Norton’s article of 2015 titled “US and Israel rewrite history of UN resolution that declared Zionism is racism.” In it he concludes, “while UN GA Res. 3379 was repealed, the truth cannot be revoked. Zionism was and remains an unequivocally racist movement — just like any other hyper-nationalist and ethnocratic movement.”
Norton goes on:
None other than the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, recognized this elementary fact. In a 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes — a diamond magnate and white supremacist British colonialist with oceans of African blood on his hands — Herzl, writing of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” requested help colonizing historic Palestine.
“It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial,” Herzl wrote. “I want you to… put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan.”
Two kindred spirits — the white supremacist colonialist and the Jewish supremacist colonialist, the latter already obliterating Palestine and referring to her indiscriminately as “a piece of Asia Minor”.
Cecil Rhodes’ statue at Oxford University will reportedly fall: “We have seen and felt the legacy of Rhodes’s crimes,” said postdoctoral researcher Sizwe Mpofu Walsh, who campaigned to remove the statue.
When will the statue of Theodor Herzl fall — in Israel and at Medium? It is time to amplify Palestinian voices, not censor them as Facebook is doing. It is time to stand against Zionism and help the world to learn how to advance justice in Palestine. Zionism is racism.
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa; she is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank
