Well let's look at the facts: they forced people off their land and out of their homes, they've disregarded almost every single agreement made with the international community including the ceasation of the expansion of settlements, they make regular incursions into the West Bank and Gaza (and let's not forget Lebanon) killing civilians in the process, and are totally closed-minded about accepting any kind of deal that the whole world sees as fair, like the latest one presented by the Arab League. So you still want to tell me that it's the rest of the world that doesn't want peace?
I complelty disagree. Most of the land was purchased by Jews, and the land that was stolen should be returned of course, just like the land that Arabs atacked Jews and stole as well.
What did the Zionists do to build a country during the Mandate Period?
Inspired by the Zionist ideal, supported by Zionist funds, operating under conditions made possible by Zionist political effort, thousands of Jews migrated from Europe to Palestine and there set about incarnating the ancient dream of return to Israel. They were not encouraged by fellow Jews or anyone else. The were assured that Palestine was an arid, backward country where Jews could not survive, let alone be creative; and that in any case it could absorb no more than a handful of settlers. Discouraged from all sides, grappling with heartbreaking difficulties, these Jews accomplished the impossible.
In one generation Zionists purchased underdeveloped, underutilized land and built a community of almost 600,000 persons, free and self-reliant. European Jews who had lost all rapport with soil and workshop came to Palestine to become farmers, mechanics, sailors, and fishermen. They caused the desert to blossom and turned villages into cities. They introduced modernity and democracy into the slumbering Near East.
In February 1919, the Zionist Organization presented a "Statement on Palestine" to the Paris Peace Conference. It included material showing the substantial Zionist investment in Palestine and the dramatic progress to date, for example:
- Jewish activities, particularly during the last thirty years, have been directed to Palestine within the measure that the Turkish administrative system allowed. Some millions of pounds sterling have been spent in the country, particularly in the foundation of agricultural settlements. These settlements have been, for the most part, highly successful. With enterprise and skill the Jews have adopted modern scientific methods and have shown themselves to be capable agriculturalists. Hebrew has been revived as a living language; it is the medium of instruction in the schools and the tongue is in daily use among the rising generation. The foundations of a Jewish University have been laid at Jerusalem and considerable funds have been contributed for the creation of its building and for its endowment. Since the British occupation the Zionist Organization has expended in Palestine approximately BP50,000 a month upon relief, education and sanitation. To promote the future development of the country, great sums will be needed for drainage, irrigation, roads, railways, harbors and public works of all kinds, as well as for land settlement and house building.
Winston Churchill was British Colonial Secretary when he visited the Middle East in the winter of 1920-1921. Anti-Semitic elements in the British government tried to assert that the Jews were not needed to develop Palestine. Churchill replied:
- "Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell—a handful of philosophic people—in wasted sun-drenched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea."
Additional material on the impact of the Zionists on the land of Palestine is
available here.
Development of education at all levels was a priority for the Zionists. Three of the seven institutions of higher learning were founded before the State of Israel: the Technion in Haifa (founded in 1924), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1925), and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (1934). Today, there are about one million Jewish children in thousands of schools, with close to 100,000 teachers, in Israel. The state education system has a general stream (non-religious) with about 70% of the children, a religious stream (23%), and schools run by the ultra-religious (including a few in Yiddish). There are now seven institutions of higher learning including the above and Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan (1955), Tel Aviv University (1956), Haifa University (1963), and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva (1969). There is also an open university and more than 200 yeshivot.
In expressions of culture, the Zionists were active as well. In the 1920's Tel Aviv had only about two-thousand inhabitants, but in January 1922 the "Hebrew Opera in Eretz Israel" performed in the city with soloists and a choir, and only a few months later, the opera Faust was performed, completely staged, though only accompanied by piano. The Palestine Orchestra, now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, was founded in 1936.
And the Zionists developed the organizational infrastructure of a country that prepared for a modern state to come into being in 1948. Political parties, labor organizations, and national institutions long pre-dated the State of Israel. To this day, the modern Labor party is an extension of the Histadrut, founded by Ben-Gurion in the 1920s, whereas the modern Likud party is an extension of the Revisionists, formed by Jabotinsky in the same time frame. By 1939 the Jewish authorities in Palestine governed their own people. In contrast, the Arab leaders never considered nation-building. Their entire program was negative: to prevent the Jews from establishing themselves in Palestine under any circumstances.
Were the Zionists the same as colonialists?
Michael Anbar Ph.D.
Edited by palestinefacts.org
It is often claimed that the settlement of Jews in the Land of Israel is actually colonialism. This is heard from Arab sources, from European socialists, from some American academicians, and even from some "liberal" Jewish circles in the US and academic "neo-historians" in Israel.
The term "Colonialism" has a strong negative connotation, e.g., British colonialism in India and South Africa, French colonialism in North and West Africa; these followed Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese and Spanish colonialism all over the globe. Colonialism has been disgracefully associated with brutal oppression and exploitation of native populations. The recent economic globalization, spearheaded by the USA has been defined by some liberals as "neocolonialism", to make it despicable. But there is nothing in common between historic colonialism or even "neocolonialism" and the resettlement of the Land of Israel by Jews following the Zionist ideology.
The Britannica defines colonialism as follows:
- A political-economic phenomenon beginning about the year 1500 whereby various European nations discovered, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. ["Colonialism," Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition]
This definition excludes ancient Phoenician and Greek colonialism, which aimed to establish bridgeheads for commerce, and Roman classical colonialism that set up strategic defensive outposts by settlements of military veterans.
There are five characteristic elements in European colonialism:
- All colonial powers were motivated and driven by material profits to the mother country. Material gain could be achieved either by plundering the local treasures or by exploitation of local natural resources (including labor) and transferring them to the mother country, or by opening captive markets for products of the colonizing country.
- Conquest of colonies by military force; this was typical of traditional European colonialism ("gunboat diplomacy").
- Maintaining the rule of the colonizing power over the local population by garrisons (i.e., revolving military units) generally under the command of colonial military governors.
- Imposing the culture of the colonizing power (i.e., language, religion, legal system, etc.) on the local native population, generally by force.
- Export of surplus or undesirable populations of the colonizing power to certain colonial territories (e.g., Libya, Algeria, Australia).
The
Zionist ideology advocates the return of Jews to the land of their ancestors from which they were exiled by brutal military conquests. There were two such major exiles in Jewish history - in 586 BCE and six hundred fifty-eight years later, in 72 AD. Both exiles were associated with the total destruction of Jerusalem, the ancient Jewish capital, and the demolition of its temple. The eastern hill of Jerusalem where the citadel captured by King David once stood, south of the Temple Mound, has been called Mount Zion. This name became synonymous with Jerusalem; hence Zionism.
Quoting the Britannica again:
- Although Zionism originated in eastern and central Europe in the late 19th century, it is in many ways a continuation of the ancient and deep-felt nationalist attachment of the Jews and of the Jewish religion to Palestine, the promised land where one of the hills of ancient Jerusalem was called Zion. This attachment to Zion continued to inspire the Jews throughout the Middle Ages and found its expression in many important parts of their liturgy. ["Zionism," Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition]
Zionism has emerged even earlier than cited in the Britannica. Psalm 137:
- Besides the streams of Babylon we sat and wept at the memory of Zion … Jerusalem, if I forget you, may my right hand wither, may I never speak again, if I forget you!
The Psalm is a twenty-five hundred years old Zionist expression. Nehemiah, who came to Jerusalem about 440 BCE, giving up a high position in the Persian court, was a Zionist and so was Hillel who emigrated from Mesopotamia four hundred years later. So was Judah Halevi, the philosopher poet who wrote:
- Better a day in the land of God than a thousand on foreign soil, the ruins on the Holy mount than coronation halls...
Halevi immigrated to Israel in 1141. So were hundreds of Jewish Rabbis who immigrated to Israel in 1211, followed by Nahmanides is 1267. And so were hundreds of other Jewish spiritual leaders and scholars and thousands of their followers who came to the Land of Israel over hundreds of years, way before the modern political Zionist movement was even born.
As a result of the perpetual yearning of the Jewish people for the Land of Israel,
Jewish communities existed there continuously since the destruction of the Second Temple to date, notwithstanding its destroyed or occupied capital. Obviously, there were Jewish communities in that land since the emergence of the Judaic nation with its unique culture, about thirteen hundred years earlier. The presence of Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Christian Crusaders and Muslim Ottomans in their homeland, did not prevent Jews from maintaining their presence there. It definitely did not reduce the aspiration to regain possession of their land and to rebuild their ancient capital.
In the twentieth Century, those aspirations evolved from spiritual to political. The immigration of thousands of individual Jews, who followed the modern Zionist ideology, to the Land of Israel since the eighties of the 19th Century, led to the
establishment of a politically independent Jewish state in 1948 and to the
liberation of Jerusalem in 1967.
Now where is the analogy with colonialism? The Jews who immigrated to the Land of Israel over the millennia never represented an alien colonizing power. French Jews who immigrated to the Land of Israel did not do this for the sake of France, Russian Jews did not represent the colonial ambitions of Russia, German Jews did not have the economic welfare of Germany in mind, and so on. The only remote analogy of the establishment of peaceful settlements in another country by a persecuted minority is that of the Pilgrims in 1620; but even they had no historical claims to the land they made their new home.
Moreover,
Jewish immigrants throughout the centuries did not grab land by force; they purchased it. Only the brutal War of Survival of 1948, which was initiated by the Arabs, changed this trend forcing the Israelis to confiscate Arab land to maintain their survival in a hostile region. Jews obviously did not plunder their own land for the benefit of any foreign colonial power. They did not impose Judaism on the local Arab population. The current practice of the Hebrew language by many Arabs is a matter of convenience for those who wish to maintain ties with the technologically advanced Israeli economy. Even in terms of globalization, the State of Israel is not a domineering force, definitely not when it comes to the local Arabs.
So where in the world did Israeli Jews practice colonialism in any sense? This is a myth disseminated by the same Palestinian Arabs who claim that the existence of the Jewish temple in their ancient capital is a Zionist myth. My only remaining question is why do some Americans and even some Jews buy these incredible Arab claims?
