Zionism: the root of the problem
Political Zionism is, and has always been, committed to the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in the country of Palestine that guarantees, both in law and practice, a demographic majority of ethnic Jews in the territories under its control.
Zionism is a colonial-settler enterprise based on the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, the usurpation of their properties, and maintenance of a Jewish majority.
Political Zionism believes that problem of anti-Semitism is intractable, and that the only solution is the creation of a separate Jewish state, with a Jewish majority. The transformation of Palestine, and all that entails, into the "Jewish Land of Israel" is the manifestation of that belief.
It is claimed that Zionism, and hence Israel, is the "legitimate national liberation movement of the Jewish people." National liberation movements can best be characterized as the struggle of a colonized or occupied population for political independence; exactly what the Palestinian people are attempting to accomplish.
In 1895, Zionism's founder, Theodore Herzl, wrote in his diary:
"We must expropriate gently the private property on the state
assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population
across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit
countries, while denying employment in our country...the
process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must
be carried out discretely and circumspectly."
The Zionist Project
Zionism had two goals, both irrespective of the indigenous population: to attain a Jewish majority in Palestine and to acquire statehood.
Dispossession and expulsion of the majority of Palestinians were the intended result of Zionist policies. Denial of the political and national rights of the Palestinian people was essential to Zionist policy.
The Zionist movement sought to achieve a Jewish majority and to establish a Jewish state on as much of the land as possible. The methods included promoting mass Jewish immigration, acquiring tracts of land that would become the inalienable property of the "Jewish people," and expulsion of the indigenous population.
The avowed purpose of the Zionist movement was not merely to exploit the Palestinian people, but to dispossess and to replace the indigenous population with a new settler community; to eradicate the farmers, artisans and town-dwellers of Palestine and substitute a new workforce composed of the Jewish settler population.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote that the Jewish community could be: "part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism."
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