Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Zionist Project’s Duality: Escaping Racist Oppression and Reproducing It in Colonial Context

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

The Zionist Project’s Duality: Escaping Racist Oppression and Reproducing It in Colonial Context

Click here to access article by Gilbert Achcar from Jadaliyya.

This essay made perfect sense to me. It tied together so much knowledge that I've gained from other historical writings on this issue. By reading it, see how he weaves together many historical facts to arrive at this rather dramatic conclusion:

...Zionism is not a “normal” movement of national liberation that shares the dual character of many such movements struggling against colonial oppression while oppressing other communities, be they national or of another nature. This is the claim of those partisans of Israel who are not fanatical to the point of denying the oppression perpetrated by the Zionist state. The truth, however, is that the Zionist movement was built upon exploitation of the oppression suffered by the Jews and reliance on the help of anti-Semites in order to create a colonial state structurally integrated in the imperialist system—not a postcolonial state as it pretends.