Refuting Zionism

know who you are trying to convince

I often get into exchanges with true believers in various things. I long ago learned that there is no point in trying to convince such people. If there is an audience who are seem open to seeing it in a different way, give it a try. If it is merely you and the fanatic, do not waste your time and energy.

The key to refuting such people is to have a well worked out alternative narrative. Sell that narrative to the audience. Never engage the fanatic directly.

There is little that is dumber that trying to “refute” the fanatic point by point. Especially so, when you do not know the subject well and are just trying to point out inconsistencies. You will always lose and likely gain converts for the fanatic.

The number one topic these days is the Gaza holocaust. I have had some exchanges with some people thoroughly inculcated with the Zionists “Hasbara”. Always, when they see I know how to beat them, they cut me off or cut themselves out, depending on whether it is they controlling the platform.

The saddest of these exchanges has caused me to break up with an old friend, this time permanently. The old saying goes, never discuss politics or religion with family and friends. I had an argument with her some years ago about Zionism. We agree about most things, but on that we have since then avoided the topic. Until now.

She is now getting pretty old. I do not think she gets out much. I have not met her face to face in some years. But she publishes a quarterly e-zine.

She has generally avoided big P politics in it, especially Zionism. This made me think she had at least partly gotten my point. She is not Jewish or christian fundamentalist, so I do not understand her attachment to the Zionist cause.

Then in her latest e-zine, she came out with an article reciting very antiquated talk points supporting Israel. She avoided mentioning the Gaza crisis. I do not think it made much of an impression on anyone.

I decided to demand equal time. I wrote up a good short piece, which presented a superior narrative to what she was trying to sell. I cross cut her main point, as I like to do. It was the same word count as her piece.

She declined this in a snarky reply. It was not much like her; usually even when she is angry she is very polite. So I informed her that supporting Israel in any way will be outside the pale, and if she intends to do this any further I do not want her zine.

Big Sigh.

So now I have a really good short piece debunking Zionism. It is too good to waste and I have two blogs which need to be fed regularly. My concern is, for it to fully make sense, I need to publish what I am responding to, along with it.

The problem with this, as always, is that it gives a platform to a load of nonsense. Many people will have the idea that since it is held up so as to be argued against, it must have equal validity with the counterargument.

But there is no way around this. I am reproducing it below only to provide the frame for my discussion of the issue, which will be below that. Lastly, I will make some further observations of a few points in it.

The result will, I hope, give people a good example of the right way to argue against the Zionist’s particular type of “hasbara” propaganda.

For how long the hatred?

On April 4, 1920, Arabs rioted in Jerusalem in protest against Jewish immigration. Six Jews were killed and 200 were injured. This began a long period of anti-Jewish attacks in Palestine— over a century. Two weeks later, on April 19, the wartime Allies gave Britain a mandate over Palestine, which included the land we now call Jordan.

The Jewish immigrants bought the land they occupied, sometimes at exorbitant prices. They did not steal it. Still, some Arab factions worried about a growing Jewish population

in Palestine, and they reacted with violence. An Arab leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, organized suicide squads to attack Jews. His aim was to drive Jews out of Palestine. Today we might say he meant to carry out ethnic cleansing, even genocide.

Al-Husseini went on to stir up the Arab world against the Jews. He connected with the Nazis in Germany after they took power under Hitler. Later, he went to Germany and built up excellent relations with Nazi leaders. Al-Husseini broadcast to the Arab world using a special radio transmitting centre in Germany provided by the Nazi regime. He urged a rising up against the British and the Jews and vehemently opposed any idea of more Jews emigrating to Palestine. In fact, he called for the annihilation of the Jews.

In January of 1942 the notorious Wannsee Conference took place outside Berlin. This conference produced the resolution for the ‘final solution’, which led to the mass murder of millions of Jews in Nazi death camps. This ’solution’ presumably met with approval from al-Husseini and his wish that Jews be annihilated. Recent events show that Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah and other groups are following in Al-Husseini's footsteps.

As we contemplate the terrible events in and around Israel today, it might be useful for us to remember the long period of hatred, unrest and violence that plagued that region long before the current hostilities. This hatred and violence has gone on now for over a century.

When, might we ask, is enough, enough? Unless efforts are made to deal with the deeper causes of violence in and around Israel, more wars become inevitable. For peace to prevail, all parties must truly want peace. Lingering elements of hostility or thoughts of revenge need to be put aside. In particular, the repeated Arab call to destroy Israel and eliminate the Jews must end.

Given the depth of feelings involved and the century-long record of turmoil and bloodshed, that’s a tall order. In essence, the world needs to decide for how long it can tolerate a situation of simmering hatred and violence against Israel. Israel and Egypt have managed to maintain more or less peaceful relations for some years now. Israel and Saudi Arabia were close to some sort of peaceful deal before the vicious Hamas attack of October 7, and Israel and Jordan have managed a fairly peaceful relationship for a long time.

These realities seem to show that peace in the region is not an impossible dream. Might a major conclave of nations, including the major powers, take place to hammer out a deal for peace? This deal would have to involve realistic measures, which would include once and for all recognition of the right for Jews to live in the Middle East and for Israel to exist.

If the world cannot resolve the Arab Israeli dispute in the next few years, more wars become inevitable, and they would carry with them the threat of igniting the whole of the Middle East in a bloody turmoil of vicious hatreds which could too easily spill over into other regions of the world. We should all be interested in avoiding such a calamitous and deadly outcome.

Not Much Longer;

A response to “For How Long the Hatred.”

I have been receiving Robyn’s “Saywell” newsletter for a long time. It is not too bad. Fortunately she has not used it much to promote the ideas she has about Israel and Zionism.

I have a low tolerance for those promoting Zionist Hasbara. I have closely studied the modern history of the near east. The hundred year calamity visited upon the people of the Levant is at the nexus of the world’s troubles over the past century.

I am always ready to refute people pushing the standard Hasbara, the false reality generated by the massive Zionist propaganda machine. Zionists are very good propagandists. They know how to create almost uncrackable emotional buy ins to the narrative of the Hollywood film “Exodus”.

Students of propaganda methods know that it is almost impossible to get people who have bought deeply into a false narrative, to look at the evidence and think again. In the case of Zionist supporters, I think most of them will have to die out. The coming collapse of the Israeli state and the Zionist project will be most traumatizing for these people.

As per the great Palestinian darkly comic film “The Time that Remains”, the time has run out for the Israeli state.  The factors are in place for its dissolution. There is nothing the huge network of Zionist supporters in the golden billion countries, backed by the Christian dominionist plutocratic fanatics, will be able to do to prevent this.

This golden billion, the Atlantisphere, the western nations, the heartland of imperialism, has forced the Israeli state into being as one of it’s special projects. Now both are rapidly going down. As it tries to preserve its hegemony, it is tied up in so many conflicts it is becoming unable to arm and finance Israel.

The Israeli society is now seen as the product of a “Hundred Years of Solitude”. It has been cut off from most social progress in the rest of the world. It has been dominated by progressively more extreme zionist fanatics who have imposed their ideas on it. This society has become enormously corrupt, degenerate, and deluded.

Most Israelis claim to believe they are winning the war with the resistance front. They want their army to use even more violence against the resistance. But they are increasingly reluctant to serve in this army or make any sacrifices to support the war.

The Israelis brag that they have a “start up” economy. Their economy is as hollow and unstable as that implies, unable to produce basic goods. It is now collapsing. People are now fleeing Israel in great numbers.

Generations of Palestinians largely bought into a pacifist approach to dealing with the Zionist aggression. International institutions were expected to eventually produce justice. The present generation has realized the need for serious armed resistance. The extreme factions among Zionists have staged massacres of Palestinians at every opportunity, with no consequences, until now.

The world outside the Atlantisphere, and the younger generation within it, now see Zionism and Imperialism as it is. Israel is now almost totally isolated.

So the hate will end with this generation of Israelis. They will learn that when they hate, they are hated back. When they wage endless, unjust war on others, they eventually lose.

The “Jews only “ state of Israel will be replaced by the multiethnic state of Palestine. There will be civil rights for all between the river and the sea. Those who cannot live at peace with other nations will live elsewhere.

My Zionist (ex)friend makes a lot of the character of the Grand Mufti Husayn. He seems to be some evil demon to Zionists. He made the Arabs hate Jews forever and then went to Germany to convince Hitler to do this gas chambers thing.

Few Palestinians of the present generation have any idea who he even was. No Palestinian today calls for the outright annihilation of Jews. That is remarkable restraint, given the level of provocation.

It does not seem that Husayn ever called for that, either. He seems to have mostly been an opportunist, but also a very enigmatic character.

As one great middle eastern corespondent put it;

“(M)erely to discuss his life is to be caught up in the Arab–Israeli propaganda war. To make an impartial assessment of the man's career—or, for that matter, an unbiased history of the Arab–Israeli dispute—is like trying to ride two bicycles at the same time.”

Pp. 441 Fisk, Robert (2006). The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. HarperPerennial. ISBN 978-1-84115-008-6.

Regarding Husayn, here is the bicycle I will ride. The position of Grand Mufti was created by the British in 1918, as a tool for controlling the moslem population. They appointed Husayn in 2021.

His incitements to violence against the Zionist settlers was typical of the old British “divide and rule” games. They removed him in 1938 after he started taking the job and himself too seriously.

Since the British mandate, Grand Muftis have been appointed by whoever is in control of Jerusalem; the king of Jordan, the Israeli government, the “Palestine Authority”. They are always toadies, preaching whatever the official line is.

Husayn went to Germany. He seemed to have been a factor in changing the Nazi policy of deporting Jews to Palestine and eventually to sending them to camps in eastern Europe. The Nazis had decided they needed the support of the Arabs.

By the way, and as I will keep saying no matter what names are thrown at me; the Jewish Genocide story is stupid. If the Nazis wanted to exterminate Europe’s Jews, they would have done it in weeks with minimal resources. They and their friends in the Lehi organization had a different agenda for the Jews.

The problem was they discovered they could not provision the camps, or control their own underlings. Many Jews died of starvation and disease. More were killed by fascist mobs after the war when they tried to go home.

After the war, Husayn insisted he was still the Grand Mufti and must lead the war against the Zionists. The army he created was more focussed on attacking those who refused to obey him, than on the Zionist militias. This, more than anything, enabled the Zionist forces to win.

For some time after the Nakba, there were two Grand Muftis; Husayn and the one appointed by the King of Jordan.

There is one final interesting point to be made, about the early Zionist settlers buying land in Palestine at exorbitant prices. Yes, they could pay exorbitant prices because they had a lot of money behind them. This served to drive up land prices, with obvious effects on ordinary Palestinians.

Since the 1948 Nakba, no Israeli buys real estate from a Palestinian. They take it at gunpoint.

But why, oh why, is there all this hatred against the Zionist settlers to the middle east? Oh, when will it end?

Check my previous posts related to Gaza.

https://www.competentsincharge.ca/tag/zionism/