Whether you believe the American rabbi and historian Arthur Hertzberg’s assessment of the Zionist idea as “unprecedented … an essential dialogue between the Jew and the nations of the earth”, rather than a matter between Jews and God, or you believe the assessment of Ass’adRazzouk, researcher and contributor to the PLO Research Center’s 1970 Arabic translation of Hertzberg’s book, that Zionism, at its heart, emerged naturally from Jewish religious sources and is thoroughly influenced and motivated by traditional Jewish religious ideas, both conscious and unconscious, the fact remains that there exists a complex picture of the relationship between Judaism and Zionism.

To Palestinians, the intersection between Judaism and Zionism has always been considered the most dangerous aspect of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state in Palestine today.

The focus today among the international activist community advocating for Palestine is on Zionism’s modern European political and ideological roots, a focus that represents Zionism as no different from any other form of European colonialism, as a settler-colonial movement foreign to the Middle East.

This “narrative”, if you will, has made great inroads in concentrating international attention, especially through the human rights formulations of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. But I believe, by itself, such a theoretical framework for the Palestinian decades-long struggle for justice and liberation is insufficient to effect change, not only because of the ongoing complicity of Western powers in the Nakba, but also because, by itself, this narrative cannot sufficiently move the hearts and minds of Israelis and Jews worldwide.
Only a resurgence of the progressive and developed principles of Reform Judaism, as expressed in a series of rabbinical conferences in German lands in the 1840s and in the U.S. in the second half of the 19th century, will have the necessary ideological power to defeat Zionism.

Upon the partitioning of Palestine and the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, Herzl’s expectation that rabbis would devote their energies in the service of Zionism came to fruition; Zionism has long gained the great masses of religious Jews around the world and “redirected their love of Zion from its spiritual and longing sense and its traditional supplicatory character” to political Zionism, as Ass’adRazzoukexpressed it in his book al-Dawlawa-l-Din (Religion and the State).

The Reform Judaism movement, a modern historical development of Judaism, arose early in the 19th century, in reaction to changing conditions in Europe that overthrew oppressive medieval laws against Jews. The movement, among whose requirements was the repudiation or disavowal of Jewish nationalist aspirations, aimed to accommodate the beliefs and religious practices of Judaism to the new liberal and enlightened age in Europe and in the U.S.

Reform Judaism addresses both the Zionist idea of the historical inevitability of a Jewish state resulting from antisemitism and other external factors, as well as the messianic idea resulting from religion and religious texts — the book of Exodus and the belief in the advent of the messiah. Reform Judaism disrupts the conception, so useful to Israel, that Zionism is heir to a long uninterrupted Jewish history. It also opens up the door for the universal application of the supposed values of modern (i.e., political) Zionism — namely, individual liberty, national freedom, economic and social justice, i.e., the door for the Palestinian people that Zionism slammed shut against them in their own homeland.

Many Jews (as well as Evangelical Christians) understand Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a wonderful, almost miraculous restoration of Jewish sovereignty over ancient religious sites. To Reform Jews worldwide who had been shaken out of their optimistic, universalist stance after the Holocaust, the war of 1967 also brought Israel close to home to Canadian, American (and other) Jews around the world, through “ethnic pride”.  The Naksa, as Palestinians call the war, fed the “Jewish identity” side of Reform Judaism, destabilizing the balance this reform movement was trying to uphold,at its inception, in the “interplay between universalism and particularism”, an interplay that, to Palestinians, means having one’s cake and eating it too.

Reform Judaism has now reached its 200th anniversary. Can the Reform movement, not Zionism, finally satisfy Jewish religious and identity needs in a way that swings the interplay between the universal and particular in Palestinians’ favor?In ‘History of Reform Judaism and a Look Ahead: In Search of Belonging’, Rabbi Lawrence A. Englander (Canadian) writes:
Two hundred years ago, one’s personal identity was essentially defined through one or two primary groups to which one belonged-usually country and religion. Today, identity is more fractionalized and complex, determined by such factors as country, language, gender, profession, socioeconomic status-and religion. Each of these components make up our identity like pieces of a pie.

The PLO charter declares Judaism as a religion and not “nationalism”, and describes Jews as “citizens of the states to which they belong … not a single people with a separate identity.” These definitions of Judaism and Jews play an important role in the rhetorical battle against Zionism. In the 1964 and 1968 PLO National Charters, the words Muslim or Islam don’t appear.

Palestinian nationalism is universalist in nature, encompassing both Muslims and Christians — as well as indigenized Jews pre-1948. And even though the multiplicity of religions within a single national movement does not abolish concerns or religious communal interests from the national agenda, such concerns can be addressed rationally within the context of one secular and democratic state. The Palestinian will for national liberation is not disconnected from religious impulses. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are explicitly religious and function as a response to the judaization of Jerusalem, in particular.

The Palestinian understanding of Zionism as a movement at the heart of which lies religious, messianic interests and myths (as documented and argued prolifically by the PLO Research Center in Beirut) has long been silenced or attacked in scholarly debate and blurred by contemporary politics as going against the secularist claims of Zionist leaders, but it provides us with an important insight. Ignoring it or refusing to engage in it dismisses a vital context of the Palestinian struggle and forms an insurmountable obstacle to the formation of a secular democratic state in all of Palestine, the only remaining viable solution to Israel’s aggression on the Palestinian people.

Christians who now embrace Zionism (some as a result of funds and gifts received from Zionists) abdicate true Christian values, as do Jews who call for Jewish nationalism on a secular (political) or religious basis and embrace a mythical “birthright” in Palestine.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/

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It ought to be crystal clear but curiously isn’t to the media that, rather than deter Palestinians from their decades-long struggle to free Palestine, the collusion between the Trump administration and some Arab governments to impose “the deal of the century” on Palestinians will radicalize the mainstream Palestinian population, and plunge the struggle into, at the very least, another intifada (uprising).

At the heart of the matter is the struggle for the collective rights of the Palestinian people as a whole. What Palestinians are interested in are the questions of who is capable of undoing the disastrous consequences of the Oslo Accords; who can hold Israel accountable; who can build grassroots strategies for steadfastness rather than simply “ruling”?

But the reality is that Palestinians must contend with the complexities and failings of the political structures they already have.  Which political bloc is likely to emerge as stronger, once the chips are all down?

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Today, in addition to Fateh (also spelled Fatah) and Hamas, the political party most likely to emerge as a strong contender in the vacuum that will emerge after Mahmoud Abbas (now 83) is gone from the political scene is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose revolutionary strategyfor the liberation of Palestine as published in February 1969 differs from that of Fateh’s pragmatic and concession-based approach .

As Khaled Barakat writes:

The PFLP’s strategy emphasizes that we are not starting from scratch. There is no zero point in thought, history and struggle, and the Front is a democratic revolutionary party with a rich historical experience of half a century. It has lived a permanent, continuous experience amid battle and confrontation. The march of half a century of right and wrong, achievements and setbacks, and we want this situation to remain consistent with the general goals of the revolutionary party, a necessary condition for progress and growth.

PFLP General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat has been Israel’s political prisoner for 13 years now, but he and his comrades continue to be steadfast.

Another leader, KhalidaJarrar, recently released from Israeli administrative detention, is also steadfast.

What’s happening today in Palestinian politics is dismal, but there is hope.

In 2012, the UN recognized the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine”, but what transpires politically in Palestine is not happening in an independent Palestinian state; it is happening in the occupied West Bank and encaged Gaza Strip.

Palestinians have a new prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, whose political affiliation is with Fateh, the party that has control over the Palestinian Authority. This party is loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, who has little popular support or relevance, and run by Fateh strongmen known for their corruption and occupation profiteering.The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which is supposed to represent all Palestinians, including those in exile, is Fateh-dominated, its National Council having elected Abbas as the Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee (May 4, 2018).

Keep in mind that that neither Hamas, nor Fateh (in the form of the PA) possesses political autonomy. Economically too, Israel has sole control over the external borders and collects import taxes and VAT for the Palestinian Authority, trimming what it passes on to the PA at will.

Some background and context on Palestinian representation:
It’s important to understand that Palestinian government in the occupied territory derives its legitimacy from the Palestine liberation Organization (PLO).

The PLO was formed on May 28, 1964to unite Palestinian political movements from the extreme right to the extreme left under one umbrella and approve the Palestinian National Charter , which proclaimed in Article 2 that “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”. The Palestinian National Charter legitimized support for armed struggle as a strategy of resistance against Israel and affirmed its morality.

The creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was prompted by a desire on the part of Palestinians to move away from the disastrous conventional political and military approach of the Arab Higher Committee in 1948.  The PLO quickly movedtowards, as ‘IsamSakhnini put it in 1972, “an autonomous Palestinian action by which the Palestinian people will address themselves to their cause directly and not vicariously.”

Early on, the Palestinian groups that espoused guerilla warfare against Israel emerged as the new leaders of the PLO. Less than a year later, Yasser Arafat, the head of Fateh, became chairman as both Fateh and the popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) made substantial political gains.

All that changed when the Oslo Accords established agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO made huge concessions before even entering negotiations in order to be recognized by the United States, after it had secured United Nations and Arab League recognition as “the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

And as OsamahKhlalil shows in Oslo’s Roots: Kissinger, the PLO, and the Peace Process – Al-Shabaka, “The PLO leadership, in particular key figures in Fateh, sought to establish a relationship with Washington at the expense of other Palestinian factions.”

In 2017 Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, organized a roundtable discussion among Palestinians on PLO and Palestinian Representation, in which the topics of discussion were the following three issues: Reforming the PLO, Representation Under Occupation, Leadership to What End?  Al-Shabakais an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law.

Fateh today dominates the PLO, because the party of the “pragmatic approach” to the struggle of Palestinian liberation since Oslo has been the dominant and increasingly authoritarian party in the Palestinian Authority administration.

Now that the Oslo Accords, which had held them back for more than two decades, is defunct, the reform of the PLO or the formation of a new organization to represent all Palestinians is inevitable.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

Courtesy: Counter Current
 

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