Summary
In Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project, the dominant current of Zionist ideology that emerges from Labor Zionism and provides the Zionist project with the veneer of enlightened, Western civilization and democratic, progressive politics, while holding the settler-colonial conquest of Palestine in 1948 to have been righteous, legitimate, valid and fully justifiable (Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project, lines 141-145, 185).
Details
- Its function, in Ayyash’s account, is specific and critical: because of it, the Israeli regime is rarely described in mainstream Western circles as “a settler-colonial state that practices apartheid”, and Western politicians and media instead describe Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East”, a rhetoric used to justify unbridled diplomatic, economic and military support for the colonization of Palestine (lines 141-143).
- Its genealogy: it emerges from Labor Zionism, appeared after 1948 in the policies of successive left-wing governments and in the missions of NGOs, lobby groups, political parties and scholarly networks and institutions promoting Israel as a liberal Jewish state, and enjoyed ideological hegemony for many decades following 1948 (lines 145, 171).
- It is best defined through the experiences of its victims, the Palestinians, and from that perspective “can only be understood as settler-colonial, root and stem, as it is directly responsible for the 1948 Nakba” (line 173).
- Its four central beliefs, as Ayyash lists them: the establishment of the Israeli state is the only method of securing Jewish safety and resolving Jewish exile; Jews have inherent, biblical and sovereign claims to the land of Palestine; the Zionist project is a heroic and miraculous endeavour that carried modernization and civilization to the so-called land of Israel; and the 1948 “War of Independence” was necessary, its outcomes — the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of Palestine — natural and to be accepted (lines 177-183). Not all proponents hold each belief in the same language (line 185).
- It critiques the 1967 occupation while avoiding 1948, and paints Palestinian decolonial critiques of 1948 as antisemitic through the notion of “the new antisemitism”, which Ayyash dates to Abba Eban in the early 1970s (line 187).
- Its support for a two-state solution along 1967 borders rests on fear of a one-state reality in which official Israeli sovereignty over the whole of colonized Palestine would leave a significant Palestinian population threatening Israel’s status as a Jewish state; it cannot reconcile an ethnocratic Jewish state with true democracy (lines 147-149, 209-211).
- It is part and parcel of Colonial modernity: it separates the civilization of the West from what the West does, and so justifies, legitimizes and naturalizes the Zionist settler-colonial project (lines 195-197).
- Its US case study is J Street (lines 213-225), and its annexation limit is set by fear of exposing its settler-colonial foundations, a fear embodied in its opposition to the Palestinian Right of Return (lines 227-233).
- Ayyash’s verdict: it “is an ideology that provides cover for and advances the settler-colonial conquest of Palestine in the name of rationality, progress, equality, tolerance, democracy, and even anti-racism”, and must be rejected as a “partner in peace” in favour of Palestinian decolonial liberation and De-Zionization (lines 151, 239-255).
Related pages
Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project, Labor Zionism, Zionism, Settler Colonialism, Apartheid, Colonial modernity, De-Zionization, J Street, Yehuda Kurtzer, Michael Walzer