[Jerusalem Post] Eli Kavon - Professors on university campuses brand the State of Israel the creation of a racist and colonialist European imperialism. This libel of the Jewish state betrays an ignorance of the history of the Jews and the story of the Zionist movement. From the beginning, the Zionist movement has been a foe of imperialism. If the Zionist founders of the State of Israel were, indeed, imperialists, what empire did they represent? It is true that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 committed British imperialists to the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine. In the end, however, the British Empire betrayed the Jews of Europe to curry favor with the Arab world. It shut the gates of Jewish immigration to Palestine, abandoning the Jews to their fate in Nazi-occupied Europe. If only the Jews had the power of an empire, perhaps millions of Jews could have been saved from genocide. Finally, to brand Zionism as imperialism is to deny the connection of the Jews to the Land of Israel that goes back 3,000 years. The British in India and the French in Algeria did not have an ancient connection to the lands they colonized. The Jewish pioneers settled in Palestine to find a place to live as free men and women, free of the domination of imperialists in the European and Islamic world. To label as imperialist a small nation of Jews that flourished despite the power of great empires is absurd. The writer is on the faculty of Nova Southeastern University's LifelongLearning Institute in Davie, Florida.
2009-06-19 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive