The Peace FAQ:

Expansionism, Colonialism, Imperialism

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Is colonialism a characteristic of Zionism? Did the Jews colonize and rob an existing country called Palestine?
• Doesn't Israel prevent Arabs from building, but encourages Jews, and in so doing, impedes the Peace Process?
• The Arabs have conquered half the world, so why do we hear that Israel, a country the size of the smallest US state, is expansionist?
• Why is the 'Expansionist' epithet so often made from the safety of Australia, the USA or Britain?

Is colonialism a characteristic of Zionism? Did the Jews colonize and rob an existing country called Palestine?

• Colonialism means living by exploiting others, but what could be further from colonialism than the idealism of city-dwelling Jews who strive to become farmers and laborers and to live by their own work?

  - Yehoshofat Harkabi, Palestinians And Israel, 1974

• "Those who malign modern Zionists with the charge of empire building might notice that in almost four thousand years, while Assyria, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, Turkey, Britain, and Russia won or lost vast empires, while Alexander penetrated to the banks of the Ganges, while Islam waved its sword over the Danube and Napoleon waved the tricolor on the Nile, while the United States Navy landed in the Philippines, Israel yearned for no land beyond a narrow strip on a corner of the Mediterranean."

  - Avi Erlich, in his book "Ancient Zionism"

• "...it is incomprehensible to say that we came to colonize the land. Colonization meant the robbery of the colonized country, while we returned to a devastated and forsaken land. We returned to bring to it thousand times more than one could have expected to extract from it. We left the 'fleshpots' of Europe to settle in the sands and to drain the swamps."

  - Amos Oz

• "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement... We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home... We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East, and our two movements complement one another. The movement is national and not imperialistic. There is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be successful without the other."

  - Emir Feisal to Felix Frankfurter, March 3 1919

Doesn't Israel prevent Arabs from building, but encourages Jews, and in so doing, impedes the Peace Process?

• Arabs Build, World Looks Away
  Sidney Zion
  NY Daily News
  Monday, October 6, 1997
  

  "Next year in Jerusalem," the ancient Hebrew prayer thought to have been a redundancy since the Six-Day War, is on the verge of becoming an Arab reality.

  Massive building in eastern Jerusalem by Palestinians is the order of the day, plus major purchases of real estate through funding by the Arab world. This has been happening for many months, if not years. It is illegal when the Palestinians build without necessary permits.

  The Israelis bulldoze a hill in the Holy City, and the world goes crazy. The Palestinians build and buy, and nothing is said, nobody knows nuthin'.

  Don't blame yourself if this is the first you've heard of it. The Clinton administration has turned a blind eye, and the American media, in happy lockstep, drop the curtain of self-censorship.

  The numbers are out there, delivered by the Palestinians with great pride. Millions have been spent, and hundreds of millions more are on the way from the Saudis and Moroccans to create facts on the ground, an Arab Jerusalem.

  For example, Abdul-Majid Shuman, chairman of the Jerusalem Development and Investment Co., announced recently that he would invite the Arab Gulf states to raise $1 billion to "stop the Judaization of Jerusalem."

  But reporters don't need account books or statements by Palestinian leaders. They need only tell us what they see with their eyes. All over eastern Jerusalem, not to mention the West Bank, Palestinian construction crews are working overtime to build housing, from individual homes to entire neighborhoods. The only time we know anything about this is when Israel demolishes a building put up without a permit.

  But all we hear from the media and Madeleine Albright is a demand for a "time out"on construction by Israel. Our secretary of state never calls for a timeout by Palestinians...

  What are we to make of this? How come Albright goes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for being a refusenik while giving a pass to Chairman Yasser Arafat? The answer is that the Clinton administration wants peace uber alles . Truth is the enemy of peace in the Middle East. Expose the fact that the Arabs are attempting to turn Jerusalem into the Palestinian capital, and the "peace process"is dead.

  Where is Bibi Netanyahu? The best you can say for him is that he's conflicted. The worst is that he's collaborating in President Clinton's desire to arrange a land-for-peace deal.

  The left wing in Israel and America (e.g. Peace Now) considers Bibi a fascist who wants only to undermine Oslo. The right wing believes that he's the Manchurian Candidate, the man who will deliver the land of Israel to its enemies.

  If everybody thinks you're wrong, you must be right, goes the Jewish proverb. All I can say is that Bibi talks like Menachem Begin and acts like Shimon Peres. He announces the breaking of ground for Jewish settlements, which brings forth the ire of America and the world. Then nothing happens but photo ops for CNN. The result is that Israel gets killed in the media and denounced as the "obstacle to peace" by everybody, including its friends.

  Is that what Bibi desires? Does he want America to attack him so he can tell his supporters he can't do what they want done? There's a substantial body of opinion in Israel that believes this. There is also half of Israel that thinks the opposite, that believes Netanyahu is after killing off the peace process.

  If the truth lies somewhere between, the truth dies when Palestinian buildings are ignored while a handful of Jewish students moving into a building on the Mount of Olives is considered an outrage to peace. Next year in Jerusalem. Whose prayer is it, anyway?

The Arabs have conquered half the world, so why do we hear that Israel, a country the size of the smallest US state, is expansionist?

• Why indeed.

Why is the 'Expansionist' epithet so often made from the safety of Australia, the USA or Britain?

• As long as one is pointing the finger at the Jewish microstate, one is freed from thinking about ones own expansionist and imperialist past.

• RELATED SECTIONS:

  Israel, Arabs, Islam, Zionism, Demographics, Jewish Settlements, The Occupied Territories, The Golan Heights, Har Homa, India

• WWW RESOURCES:

• BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
  • Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923, by Efraim Karsh, Inari Karsh [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Islamic Imperialism: A History, by Efraim Karsh [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Revolt, by Menachem Begin [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Muslim Discovery of Europe, by Bernard Lewis [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, by V.S. Naipaul [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Aftershock, by David Matas [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, by Joan Peters [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israel Conflict, Second Edition, by Mitchell Geoffrey Bard [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Let My People Go: The trials and tribulations of the people of Israel, and the heroes who helped in their independence from British colonization, by Jerry A Grunor [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Tears of Blood: A Cry for Tibet, by Mary Craig [VIEW BOOK HERE]