For some time now, I’ve been searching for the right moment to correct the simplistic anti-Israeli slogans promoted by certain supporters of the Palestinian cause since the October 7 attacks by Hamas. The fact that I sympathize with the Arabs who were displaced in 1948, and again in 1967, by an expansionist Jewish state that is often ruthless toward its neighbors is immaterial. The history-trained journalist in me can’t help but feel upset upon hearing phrases like, “Zionism is racism,” “Israel is an apartheid state,” “Israel is engaged in a genocide in Gaza,” or “Israel is colonialist.”
The first phrase is illogical. Any people, especially an historically persecuted one like the Jews, may prefer to live among those of the same ilk without necessarily hating others. The more cosmopolitan and heterogeneous way of life chosen by the millions of Jews in the United States, Canada, and France is the result of a choice, not proof of tolerance. Although the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, supported a charter that would have allowed the deportation of Arabs from Palestine, his wish, according to George and Douglas Ball in The Passionate Attachment, was to demand “the same powers in the new Jewish homeland whether it was in Argentina, Kenya, or Cyprus.” His partiality to ethnic homogeneity thus had nothing to do with “racism” as such.
The accusation of apartheid is also distorted. With two million Arab citizens, the Israeli state is not comparable to pre-1991 South Africa. There is a strong tendency in Israel to keep Arabs and Jews segregated, as well as an informal discrimination toward Arabs. But the political system is not legally based on a separation of the races or of religions, notwithstanding Israel’s excessive requirement that all citizens swear loyalty “to the state of Israel, as a Jewish and democratic state.”
As for genocide, Merriam Webster is clear: it is the “act committed with intent to partially or wholly destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” The Israeli army right now is killing a large number of innocent Palestinians in Gaza, randomly and recklessly. Jewish extremists, who wish they could expel or kill Palestinian people and take their lands, have no objections to this. However, neither the current massacre nor an eventual expulsion constitutes genocide. As far as I know, there are no Jewish ideologues who want an Arab purge for pseudo-scientific reasons, like the Nazis wanted for the Jews. Frankly, project “Eretz Yisrael” is not so different, in principle, from the “manifest destiny” America inflicted on the country’s Indigenous population. Even if mass expulsion were to ensue, there is no Israeli plan to eliminate the Arabs.
As for the idea of a “colonialist” Israel, there is a contradiction that cannot be ignored. A main driver of the Israeli “war of independence” was the anticolonial terrorism carried out by the Irgun and Lehi, Jewish paramilitary groups that destabilized the British “occupier” in the 1940s with support from the Haganah, the main Zionist paramilitary organization during the British Mandate, and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The July 1946 attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem dealt an emblematic blow to the colonial power from London, then the imperial capital of the world. Ninety-one people died in that explosion, the vast majority of them civilians.
Although it is true that during the 1956 Suez Crisis Israel conspired with the United Kingdom and France, two colonial powers, against the ambitions of General Nasser of Egypt, this was an opportunistic move: Tel Aviv wanted to expand its borders and not colonize the Arabs. Ironically, it was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who put an end to that neocolonial venture. Today, Israel occupies the West Bank and Gaza with the tacit support of the United States, and the Israelis would be glad to see the occupied Arabs leave.
I am, however, going to stop here, even though I find some comfort in criticizing my own camp and a number of its ill-informed champions. As much as I like discussing the Holocaust and my support for the creation of a Jewish state, the horror I feel for Adolf Hitler’s fanatical project—to which there is no equivalent in modern history and which greatly accelerated the founding of Israel—will never prevent me from saying how disgusted I am by the fanatical project supported by some right-wing Israelis and by the arrogance of Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems willing to do almost anything to stay in power.
There is clearly no comparison between the Nazis and Israeli extremists, but neither is there one between Hamas leaders and the Third Reich. Like the Israeli Minister of National Security, the Palestinian-hating Itamar Ben-Gvir, Hamas wants to “encourage the migration” of Tel Aviv residents. Hamas uses inhumane terrorist methods (murder and taking children hostage, in particular, as well as rape), but these acts are more reminiscent of the American army at My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968 than of the terrorism committed by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir in 1946.
Either way, Netanyahu is distorting history by invoking the survival of Israel to justify the killing of more than 30,000 civilians and the mutilation of hundreds of children. It’s as if Yahya Sinwar were backed by the Wehrmacht (watch the BBC for a week if you don’t believe it). These are absurd statements from a head of state in possession, as my colleague Jean-Philippe Immarigeon reminded us, of “600 combat planes, 1,000 modern tanks, and above all, a hundred nuclear warheads, some of which are mounted on Jericho III missiles.” As we attempt to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza, can we also declare a truce in the war of false slogans.
