The Palestinians didn't seem to mind when the Hashemites came in and established ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY over the area of Jordan, now did they??
Do you think the occupants of the region minded when the Ottoman Turks ruled the area for 400 years??
Do you think whoever was living in Palestine (combination of peoples) minded when the Arabs originally occupied the area?
You’re missing the point. Imagine yourself as a Palestinian peasant. Not political, just living your life. Rulers come and go, you don’t even notice; they are far away and life doesn’t change. Estates are bought and sold, no big deal; the tenants pay their rents to a new landlord.
Then the estate next door gets sold, and the tenants don’t pay rent any more. They’re evicted. Nowhere to go except the city, maybe find work, but what work is there in the city for a farmer? Rumours come around that the owner of the land you live on, who you’ve never seen, might sell too. Then your neighbor who can read comes by with one of the pamphlets the new folks on the estate next door are reading, and tells you that the newcomers plan to turn the whole place into a Jewish State. You think about that, and you don’t have to think long before realizing that you’re not Jewish.
You’re in trouble. You may not reach for a gun, but when somebody comes along preaching resistance, you probably listen…..
Zionism, as you define it, was representative of the period in which it appeared.
Yes, and that’s a large part of the problem. Zionist ideology grew from, and was inevitably shaped by, an age in which imperialism and racism were the accepted beliefs of the day. The early Zionists were racists and imperialists. They could hardly have been anything else: you could have gone over late 19th century Europe with a fine-toothed comb and not found anyone who wasn’t. The bleeding heart liberals of the day were racists and imperialists; they just thought the lesser peoples should be cultivated, not exploited.
Unfortunately, the political manifestation of Zionism emerged in an age in which racism and imperialism were rapidly achieving the status of obscenity, and things didn’t go quite the way they were planned.
I think it’s important to look at why things developed the way they did. I also think it’s important to understand causation without invoking blame, but that’s never going to happen on a large scale. |
