[WCUSP] The Zionist Project: Pitting the West Against Islam (counterpunch.com)

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The Zionist Project
 
Pitting the West Against Islam
 
By M. Shahid Alam
 
_http://www.counterpunch.com/shahid11251006.html_ 
(http://www.counterpunch.com/shahid11251006.html) 
 
It is tempting to celebrate the creation of Israel as a great triumph,  
perhaps the greatest in Jewish history. Indeed, the history of Israel has often  
been read as the heroic saga of a people marked for extinction, who emerged from 
 Nazi death camps--from Auschwitz, Belzec and Treblinka--to establish their 
own  state in 1948, a Jewish haven and a democracy that has prospered even as 
it has  defended itself valiantly against unceasing Arab threats and 
aggression. Without  taking away anything from the sufferings of European Jews, I will 
insist that  this way of thinking about Israel--apart from its 
mythologizing--has merit only  as a partisan narrative. It seeks to insulate Israel against 
the charge of a  devastating colonization by falsifying history, by camouflaging 
the imperialist  dynamics that brought it into existence, and denying the 
perilous future with  which it now confronts the Jews, the West and the Islamic 
world.  
When we examine the consequences that have flowed from the creation of  
Israel, when we contemplate the greater horrors that may yet flow from the logic  
of Zionism, Israel triumphs appear in a different light. We are forced to  
examine these triumphs with growing dread and incredulity. Israel's early  
triumphs, though real from a narrow Zionist standpoint, have slowly mutated by a  
fateful process into ever-widening circles of conflict that now threaten to  
escalate into major wars between the West and Islam. Although this conflict has  
its source in colonial ambitions, the dialectics of this conflict have slowly  
endowed it with the force and rhetoric of a civilizational war: and perhaps  
worse, a religious war. This is the tragedy of Israel. It is not a fortuitous  
tragedy. Driven by history, chance and cunning, the Zionists wedged themselves 
 between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnessing 
the  strength of the first against the second, it has produced the conditions of 
a  conflict that has grown deeper over time. 
Zionist historiography describes the emergence of Israel as a triumph over  
Europe's centuries-old anti-Semitism, in particular over its twentieth-century  
manifestation, the demonic, industrial plan of the Nazis to stamp out the  
existence of the Jewish people. But this is a tendentious reading of Zionist  
history: it obscures the historic offer Zionism made to the West--the offer to  
rid the West of its Jews, to lead them out of Christendom into Islamic  
Palestine. In offering to 'cleanse' the West of the 'hated Jews,' the Zionists  were 
working with the anti-Semites, not against them. Theodore Herzl, the  
founding father of Zionism, had a clear understanding of this complementarity  
between Zionism and anti-Semitism; and he was convinced that Zionism would  prevail 
only if anti-Semitic Europe could be persuaded to work for its success.  It is 
true that Jews and anti-Semites have been historical adversaries, that  Jews 
have been the victims of Europe's religious vendetta since Rome first  
embraced Christianity. However, Zionism would enter into a new relationship with  
anti-Semitism that would work to the advantage of Jews. The insertion of the  
Zionist idea in the Western discourse would work a profound change in the  
relationship between Western Jews and Gentiles. In order to succeed, the  Zionists 
would have to create a new adversary, common to the West and the Jews.  In 
choosing to locate their colonial-settler state in Palestine--and not in  Uganda 
or Argentina--the Zionists had also chosen an adversary that would deepen  
their partnership with the West. The Islamic world was a great deal more likely  
to energize the West's imperialist ambitions and evangelical zeal than Africa 
or  Latin America.  
Israel was the product of a partnership that seems unlikely at first blush,  
between Western Jews and the Western world. It is the powerful alchemy of the  
Zionist idea that created this partnership. The Zionist project to create a  
Jewish state in Palestine possessed the unique power to convert two historical 
 antagonists, Jews and Gentiles, into allies united in a common imperialist  
enterprise against the Islamic world. The Zionists harnessed the negative  
energies of the Western world--its imperialism, its anti-Semitism, its Crusading  
nostalgia, its anti-Islamic bigotry, and its deep racism--and focused them on 
a  new imperialist project, the creation of a Western surrogate state in the  
Islamic heartland. To the West's imperialist ambitions, this new colonial  
project offered a variety of strategic advantages. Israel would be located in  
the heart of the Islamic world; it would sit astride the junction of Asia,  
Africa and Europe; it would guard Europe's gateway to the Indian Ocean; and it  
could monitor developments in the Persian Gulf with its vast reserves of oil.  
For the West as well as Europe's Jews, this was a creative moment: indeed, it  
was a historical opportunity. For European Jews, it was a stroke of 
brilliance.  Zionism was going to leverage Western power in their cause. As the Zionist 
plan  would unfold, inflicting pain on the Islamic world, evoking Islamic 
anger  against the West and Jews, the complementarities between the two would 
deepen.  In time, new complementarities would be discovered--or created--between 
the two  antagonist strains of Western history. In the United States, the 
Zionist  movement would give encouragement to evangelical Protestants--who looked 
upon  the birth of Israel as the fulfillment of end-time prophecies--and 
convert them  into fanatic partisans of Zionism. In addition, Western civilization, 
which had  hitherto traced its central ideas and institutions to Rome and 
Athens, would be  repackaged as a Judeo-Christian civilization. This reframing 
not only  underscores the Jewish roots of the Western world, it also makes a 
point of  emphasizing that Islam is the outsider, the adversary. 
Zionism owes its success solely to this unlikely partnership. On their own,  
the Zionists could not have gone anywhere. They could not have created Israel 
by  bribing or coercing the Ottomans into granting them a charter to colonize  
Palestine. Despite his offers of loans, investments, technology and 
diplomatic  expertise, Theodore Herzl was repeatedly rebuffed by the Ottoman Sultan. It 
is  even less likely that the Zionists could at any time have mobilized a 
Jewish  army in Europe to invade and occupy Palestine, against Ottoman and Arab  
opposition to the creation of a Jewish state on Islamic lands. The Zionist  
partnership with the West was indispensable for the creation of a Jewish state.  
This partnership was also fateful. It produced a powerful new dialectic, 
which  has encouraged Israel, both as the political center of the Jewish Diaspora 
and  the chief outpost of the West in the heart of the Islamic world, to 
become more  daring in its designs against the Islamic world and beyond. In turn, a 
wounded  and humiliated Islamic world, more resentful and determined after 
every defeat,  has been driven to embrace increasingly radical ideas and methods 
to recover its  dignity and power--and to attain this recovery on the 
strength of Islamic ideas.  This destabilizing dialectic has now brought the West 
itself into a direct  confrontation against the Islamic world. We are now staring 
into the precipice.  Yet do we possess the will to pull back from it? 
M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University,  and 
author of _Challenging  the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on America's 'War 
Against  Islam'_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1889999458/counterpunchmaga)  (IPI Publications: 2006 forthcoming). He may be reached at 
_alqalam02760 at yahoo.com_ (mailto:alqalam02760 at yahoo.com) . 
© M. Shahid Alam 


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