The Zionist stratagem

Photo: AFP

The Zionists proposed to liberate Jews from European persecution by arranging for their exodus from Europe. This had always been the dream of European anti-Semites: to cleanse their landscape of Jewish presence.
ANTI-Semitism has grown and continues to grow, and so do I."
--Theodore Herzl
As a self-defined movement for the national "liberation" of European Jews, Zionism had an anomalous relationship with its perennial Other, the Gentile nations, from whom it wanted the Jews to secede and become a distinct nation under a Jewish state.
The Zionists did not define Europe's Gentile nations as the adversary they would have to oppose, and against whom they would struggle, to secure the rights of Jews to emerge as a distinct nation.
On the contrary, the Zionists would harness the strength of their perennial Other -- their adversary -- to gain their nationalist objective. Unlike nationalists, who secede from a state or empire by drawing new borders, the Zionists did not demand any European territory; they planned to establish their Jewish state outside the borders of Europe.
In other words, the Zionists were offering to execute what any state facing secessionist demands would have embraced quite avidly: the Jewish "secessionists" would sail away from Europe and establish their state in the Middle East, well-removed from Europe. This was a novel approach to national liberation.
As a first step, the Zionists proposed to liberate Jews from European persecution by arranging for their exodus from Europe. This had always been the dream of European anti-Semites: to cleanse their landscape of Jewish presence. Over the past thousand years, different states in Europe had periodically attempted this voiding of Jews through forced conversions, pogroms, expulsions, and segregation of Jews from Gentiles.
The Zionists were now proposing to purge Europe of its Jews on a scale never attempted before, and without the inconvenience of disturbing the peace. It was a contract that Europe's anti-Semites would have difficulty turning down. Indeed, the Zionists fully expected the anti-Semites to give them whatever help they needed to effect the Jewish exodus.
The Zionists were counting on this help; it was indispensable for the completion of their project. The second step in the Zionist plan was to seize control of Palestine, open it up to Jewish colonisation, and, when the Jewish colons had gained sufficient demographic mass in Palestine, they would convert it into a Jewish state, preferably without the natives. The Zionists could not undertake this step without the help of European powers. This was a clever stratagem: quite original to Zionism.
The Zionists sought to convert an impossible nationalism -- with little prospect of ever achieving its goal inside Europe -- into a settler-colonial project. In addition, they would convert the Jews' erstwhile adversaries into strategic partners. The Zionists expected to persuade at least one European power to play the part of "mother country" to the Jewish colons in Palestine.
It appeared that the Zionists were going to outperform Moses of Jewish tradition. Moses too had chosen to liberate the Hebrews of ancient Egypt by marching them out of Egypt into Canaan, where they would establish their own state. There were important differences, however, between the two plans.
The Zionists did not seek divine help, but they would receive help from the anti-Semites. Moses had divine help but his plan was opposed by the Egyptians. The Egyptians could not have agreed to Moses' long march because he was running away with their property -- their Hebrew slaves. In Europe, on the other hand, the Jews owned considerable property -- banks, bank accounts, factories, houses, lands -- that they would leave behind.
Clearly, the Zionists were offering the Europeans an attractive deal. Help us create a Jewish settler-state in Palestine: and we will solve your Jewish problem, free you from Jewish competition, free you of the Jewish presence, and you can have all the property we leave behind. This Jewish property was another gift the Zionists offered to Europe's anti-Semites.
To Europe's anti-Semites, the deal was irresistible. In fact, some of them would think they could kill two birds with the Zionist stone. They would get rid of the Jews, and renew the Crusades against the Muslims.

M. Shahid Alam is Professor of economicsat Northeastern University. He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism (2007). Send comments toalqalam0276@ahoo. com.Visit his website at: http: // aslama.org.