How you and I handle disagreements depends on how much the issue at hand means to us and on our surroundings. Most of us are reluctant to offend, to stand alone in a school yard at the start of life, to be excluded from the graveyard at the end of it. Cowardice, perhaps, but on the other hand, is it not wise to avoid being too confrontational? I have just these past few days found myself in a situation where I have had to have a good, long think.
Some issues mean so much to us that we are willing to lose friends, maybe even break with family. We might be willing to risk being ostracised, fired from work or kicked out of college. If I found myself living in the equivalent of a KKK community, for instance, would I not have to try to induce change?
My political education started when, as a small child, I was traumatised by the film “How to Kill a Mockingbird”. I took consolation in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” which I read and reread a great many times, before I went on to Les damnés de la terre by Franz Fanon and Venas abiertas by Eduardo Galeano. That did it! Racism became, and is still, truly anathema to me.
Before I continue I should remind you that there is no such as thing as race within the human species. Look it up if you doubt my words. There are, however, differences in skin colour, religion, customs, etc. And since time immemorial, I suppose, powerful tribes – and later, powerful nations – have oppressed less powerful tribes/nations using pretexts such as the skin colour, religion, customs, etc. of the oppressed. The word “racism” should be understood, then, roughly as “ethnic exclusivity”.
We’re still at it!
So, back to my situation of these past two days: Is Zionism racist? Interestingly, I find no brief definition of Zionism online. Britannica, for instance, cleverly evades the ticklish matter of ethnic exclusivity. The clearest and most poignant answer comes from Israel itself, from the human rights organisation Btselem. If anybody deserves donations, Btselem does, donations and medals for bravery. Take a look at the short video https://conquer-and-divide.btselem.org/, while you’re at it.
So yes, Zionism is racist in its very essence. Far from all Israelis are Zionists, however, and far from all Zionists are Jews.
I once spent three years in a wonderful school in New York. My former classmates still stay in touch, send each other hurricane condolences, comments and greetings of all kinds. We have, naturally, all been taught to deeply revere the memory of Holocaust. So deeply have we revered it that we never mention Palestine or, for that matter, Israel. It has been a non-topic.
Until now. The bubble broke three days ago.
Somebody wrote: “I can’t bear this! People are being burnt to death in their hospital beds.”
For 24 hours, this dramatic message was followed by silence.
Then came the first response: “I have seen how cheaply and without value the lives of people who look like me and my children and grandchildren are held by my adopted country. Our government is funding, arming and providing diplomatic cover for Israel while it breaks every Humanitarian Law and every International Law of War.”
Then came a trail of responses, amongst them my own. Some thanked the bubble breaker for her “moral courage”.
But one person declared he no longer wanted anything to do with any of us any more. After his message, there were others who urged us to leave the matter in the name of friendship.
Frankly, I don’t much care for that particular approach. Why? Well, just as we condemn the Nazis’ Holocaust, there is simply no way for me to not condemn the ongoing Holocaust. But how?!
I offer this analogy: What if my former classmates and I had graduated in, say 1933, in Germany, yes, Germany. I had gone back to Norway, but had stayed in touch with one very dear friend by mail. Then the war broke out and Norway was invaded. In 1943, in spite of the war, I might have sent an unhappy letter to my former classmate and dear friend in Germany: “I have heard that Germany is exterminating Jews…”
How would I have proceeded? How to raise such an issue with a German friend in Germany at a time (1943) when my country is occupied by Germans whom I suspect are treating people with a certain religion as vermin?
I have never given much thought to the concept “reality” and I never understood why so many philosophers even doubt its existence. From my perspective, the thing I see gliding across the blue sky is surely a seagull, unless it is too far away to discern properly, in which case it might be a plane. It has never occurred to me that somebody else might be equally certain that it is a winged reptile or perhaps a drone, and that the sky is anything but blue. (No kidding: about eight per cent of all men are colour blind, as I learnt quite recently after having babbled at length about the beauty of a maple tree in autumn.)
And how do we rate seagulls: I think they are beautiful. There are others who loathe them because they “scream” and litter beaches. I doubt there are many people who would want to exterminate them, though.
So “reality” is truly a strange thing. Some people find it magical, particularly if they are in love. For my part, at 90 seconds to midnight according to the “doomsday clock”, I almost wish I, too, could doubt its existence.