The crimes of Zionism
I WOULD like to thank SocialistWorker.org for its extensive coverage of the Palestine-Israel conflict, which I have learned a great deal from.
From firsthand experience, I know well that Zionism is taught deeply within Judaism in many instances. Many Jewish teenagers eventually go to Israel during or right after high school in order to instill Zionist teachings. Constant reminders of past anti-Semitism, especially the Holocaust, are drilled into them to identify Zionism as an important form of Jewish identity. The Nazi Holocaust and its intention to wipe out the Jewish people is something the state of Israel has used as its shield.
Coincidentally, today's apartheid in Gaza can only be compared to the beginnings of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Hitler and Nazi Germany enacted increasingly heavy restrictions on Jews. The Star of David was required to be sewn onto Jews' clothing. Jews were quickly forbidden from all public places such as restaurants, entertainment venues, pools and recreation centers. Jewish businesses were marked as such before being forced to go out of business.
Hitler quickly created his merciless propaganda comparing Jews to rodents and vermin. Restrictions on Jews became extreme, and soon, Jews were allowed very little access to food and property. German citizens who were friends with Jewish people were ridiculed as mercilessly as Jews themselves. Soon, many Jewish people saw their former friends and neighbors hate them.
Before long, Jewish property and belongings were stolen, as Jews were forced into the densely populated Warsaw ghetto--as Palestinian people are now. In the ghetto, two major uprisings occurred but were brutally crushed.
Eventually, the ghetto was liquidated--and we know what happened next to the Jewish population in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, along with homosexuals, communists and gypsies. While this was happening, the international and German media fully hid the extent of these crimes, if not completely covered up all of these atrocities.
Palestinian people, like Jews before them, are being driven out of their homes and are facing the most dire situation on Earth without adequate food, water, medicine or sanitation. Countless Palestinians have watched their family members die before their eyes from Israeli bullets and bombs, or simply starvation and disease. For the most part, the media has never portrayed the conflict for what it is and has tried hard to hide the extent of the atrocities while blaming the victims.
More and more Jewish people from around the world have spoken out and demonstrated against Israel's crimes, including Norman Finkelstein and Amira Hass. In Israel, those who have spoken out have been punished brutally by the Israeli government. Jewish women who occupied the Israeli embassy, for example, were marginalized as "self-hating" Jews.
More Jewish people must seek the courage to look back on their history and speak out against the very concept of Zionism itself. It is only an extremist form of brutal imperialism that is wiping away a race of people, and must be stopped and solved with a one-state solution.
Greg Morse, Providence, R.I.
