The intellectual foundation of Zionist racism against Jews and Arabs (3/4)
3- Arab Marginalization:
The
previous process of abstraction aims to marginalize the Arab so that he does
not occupy the center of events regarding Palestine. The marginalized Arab is a
fundamental pattern in the Zionist perception of Arabs. The Zionists deny the
existence of any political identity for Arabs in general, and Palestinians in
particular, or any national feelings on their part. The Zionists, in their
perception of the Arab revolutions against them, deny their national and
political nature and assert to themselves and their comrades that the
motivation behind them is not love for the land or homeland or attachment to
heritage, but rather religious fanaticism. The Zionists sometimes blamed Arab
Christians, considering them the real enemies of their settlement project, portraying
Muslims as the nice side with whom they could communicate. At other times, they
assumed the opposite, affirming that Muslims are the real enemy, and that
Christians are the side showing a great willingness to cooperate. For them, the
Palestinian masses were merely a mob manipulated by feudal instigators and not
driven by national motives. Samih C. Falah believes that Weizmann firmly
believed that the revolt of these masses was not a genuine expression of a
creative national movement, but rather dictated by narrow feudal and tribal
considerations.
In
addition to this, the Zionists viewed the Palestinian or Arab as an animal or a
purely economic being driven by immediate economic motivations. Thus, the Arab
problem (according to this perception) can be solved within an economic
framework that is not necessarily political. One of the earliest examples of
this cognitive strategy is Rashid Bey, this Arab who was created according to
Zionist specifications in Herzl's novel "Old New Land." He affirms
that the Zionist presence has greatly benefited the Arabs: exports of oranges
have increased tenfold, and Jewish immigration has been a blessing, especially
for landowners as they sold their land at significant profits. A number of
Zionists firmly believed that they could overcome Palestinian opposition by
clarifying the immense economic advantages that Zionist settlement would bring
and by urging them to migrate to Arab countries after providing them with
appropriate economic compensation for their homeland. One of Weizmann's
cognitive convictions was that the development of Palestine would lead Arabs to
lose interest in political opposition.
Walter
Laqueur and other historians affirm that the official policy of Zionism in the
1920s (and we can add: thereafter) was to avoid political discussions with the
Arabs in any case, limiting any negotiations to economic cooperation alone, and
not addressing the nature of the political system. It is noted that the
cognitive strategy here aims to undermine the national nature of the Arab
response; if it is classified as a national movement, then the logic of that
classification leads to the necessity of recognizing the Arabs as a national
group with a national land, national heritage, national domain, and a set of
national rights that undermine Zionist claims regarding the eternal national
priority of the Jew in the land of Palestine.
Read
also: The Evasive Zionist Discourse (Part 1 of 4)
The
second cognitive strategy is to confront Arab nationalism as a reality that
imposes itself, leading to its recognition as a full nationality while reducing
its effective scope so that it does not include Palestinians. One historian of
the Zionist movement states that Weizmann's main contribution to the Zionist
view of Arabs is his distinction between Arabs and Palestinians, as he saw the
possibility of reaching an agreement with Arab nationalism, even bargaining
with it, in exchange for Arabs giving up their demands in Palestine. According
to Flapan's book, he also held the theory that Palestine is an unimportant part
of the greater Arab homeland. Arlosoroff agreed to cooperate with Arabs but was
pessimistic about cooperating with Palestinians. We can see the Weizmann/Feisal
negotiations and most of the Zionists' communications with Arabs within this
framework. In fact, the Zionists proposed in 1930 a plan put forward by Moshe
Pinkas, the deputy editor of Davar, which received cautious support from Ben Gurion,
and it is essentially an expression of this strategy. The plan called for the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine that would become part of a
federal union encompassing all of Arab East. Palestinians were supposed to form
a minority within the open state, but it was itself a minority within the union
of Arab nations.
These
cognitive strategies are perhaps the smartest strategies ever and the most
unique and clever, expressing the specificity of Zionism as a replacement
settlement movement that does not aim to conquer and exclude the world (in the
manner of Nazism) but rather to seize the Palestinian land alone without its
inhabitants. The process of marginalization here becomes confined to the direct
victim, namely the Palestinian, without the need to provoke hostility from
others, whether in the East or the West. The attempt to marginalize Arabs
remains a fundamental pattern in the Israeli perception of the Arab.
4- The absent Arab:
The
mention of Arabs, even in the context of disparaging them, is an implicit
acknowledgment of their existence. However, the Zionists attempt to obscure
Arabs by placing them within the abstract notion of "the others."
This trend reaches its peak in what can be termed the "absent Arab"
concept. Instead of a partial obscuring behind an abstract notion, the attempt
to hide reaches the level of complete neglect, as sometimes the Zionists do not
mention Arabs at all, whether in a good or bad light, and they remain silent
regarding the victims, showing a total lack of concern for them (this is one of
the characteristics of Zionist discourse).
In
fact, the saying "the absent Arab" is embedded in the saying
"the pure Jew." As the rates of organic solutionism increase and
holiness concentrates in the Jews, the circle widens, and the exclusion of the
other gradually intensifies until they completely disappear and become absent
when the pure Jew becomes the absolute Jew with absolute, eternal rights that
are unaffected by the existence or absence of others. Thus, the theory of
absolute rights signifies the total absence of any other rights.
Some
thinkers interpret the phenomenon of the absent Arab as an attempt to evade a
solid reality where all Zionist hopes shatter. Israeli political scientist
Shlomo Avineri states: "The early Zionist pioneers could not confront the
reality that the price of Zionism is the displacement of Arabs, and thus the
mechanisms of self-defense took the form of ignoring the emergence of the Arab
problem. Adhering to the Zionist vision was not possible without unconsciously
resorting to self-deception." Liebovitz argues that the early Zionists did
not want (for clear psychological reasons) to see the truth and did not realize
that they were misleading themselves and their companions. Regardless of the
motivations, it is clear that the Zionists wanted the land of Palestine without
Palestinians (a land without a people), and thus the Arabs had to disappear and
be eliminated.
____________________________________
Source:
The Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism – Volume Three: Racism and
Zionist Terrorism.
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