Some early Zionists, such as Max Nordau, a French Zionist who visited
Palestine, were horrified; Nordau burst out in front of Herzl: "But we
are committing a grave injustice!" Some years later, in 1913, a
prominent Zionist thinker and writer, Ahad Ha'am (one of the people),
wrote: "What are our brothers doing? They were slaves in the land of
their exile. Suddenly they found themselves faced with boundless
freedom ... and they behave in a hostile and cruel manner towards the
Arabs, trampling on their rights without the least justification ...
even bragging about this behaviour."
But these early Zionists' dismay at the injustices to, and total lack
of recognition of, the indigenous population was silenced and indeed
edited out of Jewish history and other books, as was some of Herzl's
writing. The widely perceived Zionist truism of "a land without people
for a people without land" prevailed and within a matter of a few
years the immigrants became "sons of the land" (Bnei Ha'aretzor Ibna
El-Ard) whereas the inhabitants became the aliens and foreigners.
.
Courtesy of the Feral Scholar www.stangoff.com
A Basic History of Zionism and its Relation to Judaism
[4001 words]
I would like to start with a quotation by Amira Hass, a very courageous
Israeli journalist who lives in Ramallah and writes for the most
respected though by no means left-wing daily "Ha'aretz" (Il Ard in
Arabic, one of many examples of the great similarity of the Arabic and
Hebrew languages; both developed from an ancient form of Aramaic).
Although threatened several times with sacking, as well as numerous
death threats, she carries on.
Hass ends one of her recent articles with this question: is transfer an
inseparable part of the founding ideology of the state of Israel, or a
twisted mutation, which should not be allowed to rise up against its
creator?
Whereas she, as well as the increasing number of refusniks and Israeli
peace activists believe the latter (and I respect their sentiments), I
do not share them; my belief is that the state of Israel was bound to
end up with what we have today.
In order to understand the circumstances that led to the birth of
Zionism I shall sketch an outline of the history of Judaism and the Jews.
http://www.robincmiller.com/articles/hanna1.htm
