The big lie is israel was created because of the Holocaust. israel collaborated with the nazis ex. transfer agreement. israel collaborated with otto skorzeny. israel collaborated with south africa when the rest of the world was turning on them. There is nothing enlightened or progressive about israel. Eichmann's arrest was propaganda, nothing less and nothing more.
From the very onset of Zionist colonialism in Palestine, enormous efforts were undertaken to control the telling of the story. A new grand narrative was created, one which lionized the settlers and demonized the Palestinian natives -that is, if the Palestinians were even acknowledged. Like all foundational mythologies, it was half-baked, contradictory, and twisted the truth to the point of breaking it many times over. Consequently, many misunderstandings surrounding the establishment of Israel are common to this day.
For instance, the myth that the United Nations created Israel is frustratingly widespread. So too is the belief that Israel was established by the world community because of -or even as penance for- the Holocaust. This imbues the creation of Israel with an air of legitimacy, of righting wrongs, and learning from the past. This, of course, is nonsense.
Zionism and Palestine
Nearly 80 years before the Holocaust, a group which came to be known as the “Bilu pioneers” came to settle in Palestine. It was comprised of primarily Russian Jewish settlers who viewed their mission in Palestine as a pioneering one towards “the physical upbuilding of the land as contributing toward both a revitalization of the Jewish nation and the reemergence of Jewish masculinity and virility”. While this group predated Zionism as a political movement as we understand it today, it would not be unreasonable to call it proto-Zionist.
Unsurprisingly, and like all colonialist movements at the time, they had the same condescending and racist attitude towards the Palestinians living there. In a rare moment of reflection, one of the group leaders, Chaim Chissin, wrote the following entry in his diary, after failing to grow any crops:
“Whenever the Arabs told us that it was already too late to sow barley, or that the land was unsuited for it, we never hesitated to tell the ‘barbarians,’ with considerable self assurance, ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’ll plow deep, we’ll turn the soil inside out, we’ll harrow it clean, and then you’ll see what a crop we’ll have!’ We provided ourselves with big plows, sunk them deep into the soil, and cruelly whipped our horses which were cruelly exhausted. Our self-confidence had no limits. We looked down on the Arabs, assuming that it was not they who should teach us, but we who would show these barbarians’ what a European could accomplish on this neglected land with the use of perfect tools and rational methods of cultivation. The only trouble was that we ourselves knew about European methods of cultivation only from hearsay, and our agriculturalist, too, knew very little [about conditions in Palestine].”
The Bilu pioneers would be followed by other groups, such as the Hibbat Zion. Some would fail and leave, others would remain. However, the shift in the quality and organization of Zionist colonialism would begin in 1897. Convened in the Swiss city of Basel, the first Zionist congress included over 200 delegates from all over Europe. The program of the congress called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and to begin coordinating the settlement of Zionists there. The Zionist congress distinguished itself from previous attempts at settling Palestine by being the first to organize and marshal colonization efforts in a centralized and effective manner.
All of these efforts to colonize Palestine began nearly a century before the Holocaust, and was already picking up steam after the first world war. By the end of the 1800s, Theodor Herzl -the founder of political Zionism- was sending out letters to imperialist powers all over the globe in an attempt to elicit their aid in colonizing Palestine. Perhaps the most infamous is his letter to Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion”:
“You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen, but Jews. How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”
The big lie is israel was created because of the Holocaust. israel collaborated with the nazis ex. transfer agreement. israel collaborated with otto skorzeny. israel collaborated with south africa when the rest of the world was turning on them. There is nothing enlightened or progressive about israel. Eichmann's arrest was propaganda, nothing less and nothing more.
From the very onset of Zionist colonialism in Palestine, enormous efforts were undertaken to control the telling of the story. A new grand narrative was created, one which lionized the settlers and demonized the Palestinian natives -that is, if the Palestinians were even acknowledged. Like all foundational mythologies, it was half-baked, contradictory, and twisted the truth to the point of breaking it many times over. Consequently, many misunderstandings surrounding the establishment of Israel are common to this day.
For instance, the myth that the United Nations created Israel is frustratingly widespread. So too is the belief that Israel was established by the world community because of -or even as penance for- the Holocaust. This imbues the creation of Israel with an air of legitimacy, of righting wrongs, and learning from the past. This, of course, is nonsense.
Zionism and Palestine
Nearly 80 years before the Holocaust, a group which came to be known as the “Bilu pioneers” came to settle in Palestine. It was comprised of primarily Russian Jewish settlers who viewed their mission in Palestine as a pioneering one towards “the physical upbuilding of the land as contributing toward both a revitalization of the Jewish nation and the reemergence of Jewish masculinity and virility”. While this group predated Zionism as a political movement as we understand it today, it would not be unreasonable to call it proto-Zionist.
Unsurprisingly, and like all colonialist movements at the time, they had the same condescending and racist attitude towards the Palestinians living there. In a rare moment of reflection, one of the group leaders, Chaim Chissin, wrote the following entry in his diary, after failing to grow any crops:
“Whenever the Arabs told us that it was already too late to sow barley, or that the land was unsuited for it, we never hesitated to tell the ‘barbarians,’ with considerable self assurance, ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’ll plow deep, we’ll turn the soil inside out, we’ll harrow it clean, and then you’ll see what a crop we’ll have!’ We provided ourselves with big plows, sunk them deep into the soil, and cruelly whipped our horses which were cruelly exhausted. Our self-confidence had no limits. We looked down on the Arabs, assuming that it was not they who should teach us, but we who would show these barbarians’ what a European could accomplish on this neglected land with the use of perfect tools and rational methods of cultivation. The only trouble was that we ourselves knew about European methods of cultivation only from hearsay, and our agriculturalist, too, knew very little [about conditions in Palestine].”
The Bilu pioneers would be followed by other groups, such as the Hibbat Zion. Some would fail and leave, others would remain. However, the shift in the quality and organization of Zionist colonialism would begin in 1897. Convened in the Swiss city of Basel, the first Zionist congress included over 200 delegates from all over Europe. The program of the congress called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and to begin coordinating the settlement of Zionists there. The Zionist congress distinguished itself from previous attempts at settling Palestine by being the first to organize and marshal colonization efforts in a centralized and effective manner.
All of these efforts to colonize Palestine began nearly a century before the Holocaust, and was already picking up steam after the first world war. By the end of the 1800s, Theodor Herzl -the founder of political Zionism- was sending out letters to imperialist powers all over the globe in an attempt to elicit their aid in colonizing Palestine. Perhaps the most infamous is his letter to Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion”:
“You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen, but Jews. How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”
https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/israel-penance-for-holocaust/