A change of tack for today’s post, on this Glorious Twelfth. Your correspondent was struck by a thought in writing one of his letters on Palestine and the injustices visited upon the Palestinian people: that the Jewish people, as a nation, have a natural claim to a nation state, particularly given the two millennia of oppression endured at the hands of Europeans (themselves followers of a Jewish mystic who encouraged peace, love and forgiveness).
It is, of course, out of the question that this homeland should be in Palestine. There is probably little to be gained from imagining a world in which there was an Israel in Europe from 1948, perhaps on land formerly described as German or Austrian. It is diverting instead to think of how the loudest voices in favour of zionist supremacy today will respond to the need to take in settlers when Palestine is free, assuming that in the coming Chaos the Palestinian nation will be able to assert itself, as opposed to being obliterated by the zionist Shadow State. Let us take it as a given that settler supremacists will leave the new Palestine, constantly voicing the usual fear of colonists that what they have perpetrated on the natives will be done unto them, notwithstanding the many historical examples demonstrating that natives do not, as part of their state-building campaign, carry out the kind of systemic violence that is integral to colonisation. We can expect some of the settlers to adopt a Jewish Palestinian identity: a restoration of the Arab Jews so undermined by the zionist project. But there are many who will leave, and whom it will be better for the Palestinian State to be rid of, in this writer’s opinion.
Now Macdara takes antisemitism so seriously that he refuses to believe that those who wield antisemitism as a weapon against Brown and Black People, and certain other undesirables like Leftists, actually care about the safety of Jewish people. Assuming that all Jews are supporters of genocide, and that the genocide should be condoned and assisted, hardly speaks to a respect for Jewish people and culture, nor an interest in the safety of Jewish people in history-to-come. Not to mention the fact that this assistance is offered from the base assumption that Jewish people are helpful allies to have, you know, being in powerful positions, being well-connected, well-funded…
Will Germany or France or the US or England willingly open their borders to a load of crazed and bloodthirsty settlers, whose arrogance and entitlement even exceeds that of the citizens of those spoilt and violent countries? Macdara is doubtful. There is some evidence that white migrants are treated differently, looking at Ukranians. But there is already a nasty sense that Ukrainians have outstayed their welcome. And within Western Europe there has been plenty of horror for two decades at entirely legal EU migrants from Central and Eastern Europe.
But if the vocal support for zionism from these countries is to be believed, then shouldn’t we expect a new Israel to emerge in a comfortable European home? Is this not what European and American support for Israel suggests? No. The best the settlers can expect is that there will arise a revanchist European campaign against Palestine, which will be accused even of being the source of European antisemitism—an ahistorical phantasy that is already being promoted (Arabs made Hitler antisemitic, you see)—which is to say that the expulsion of the settlers will be used by the Right for its own purposes, but without any sympathy for those expelled. Europe has always hated its Jewish population. It celebrates Jewish settlers now for fighting Brown People and for being Elsewhere. Jewish settlers would do well to recall that the only sensible position to adopt in relation to European and Creole European regimes is one that is opposed to White Supremacy.
Let us imagine a better future, in which the lessons learnt from the zionist experiment—an experiment in which settlers have been subjects, though in a different way to Palestinians—have been applied, and a movement for a new Israel emerges, one based not on claiming Palestinian land, but rather a piece of Europe; one based on a dialectical relation to the notion of Europeanness, and which is therefore able to include those Jews who are not Ashkenazi.
We must take as our slogans:
FREE PALESTINE
END ANTISEMITISM
SMASH ZIONISM
>UNLESS IT IS IN EUROPE
>>THEN LET IT EXIST TO PISS OFF WHITES
This Eurozionism may be Utopian politics, but why aim for less?
There was a settler woman sitting next to Macdara on the U-Bahn recently, whose social media was all holidays and food, unlike your correspondent’s own, which is 90% genocide (the other 10% being, for some reason, pistachio pastries). Now your correspondent does not assume that all those of settler descent support the genocide, though the majority do, and it must be difficult for someone born into a settler state to imagine its Abolition. Perhaps this woman has turned to social media to escape from a genocide to which she is deeply opposed, perhaps she and the men she was with had fled in order not to be forced to witness the genocide, or even participate in it. At his most charitable, Macdara imagines that for her, the app is a glimpse into a Utopian future, where the freedom to have brunch of each is the condition for brunches for all. But we can only get there by looking at the real world in front of us, its horrors, its starvation, its blood.