Joseph Massad: The core of Zionism is settler-colonialism, not democracy
Zionism has never been a movement for self-determination it never claimed to be this is a new claim we began to hear of something called Israeli self-determination in the 1960s and 70s and only in the last ten years that the Israeli government began to put forth the term would be used sometimes in Zionist circles in the 1940s during the terrorist war that Zionist gangs had launched against the British colonial forces in Palestine in the 1940s now Zionism of course is first and foremost a settler colonial movement this is not a national movement for example who are trying to liberate its country from colonial forces this is a movement by European settler colonial who wanted to take over someone else's country and create a settler colony father of Zionist and Theodor Herzl spoke about this openly in his writing is the Zionist organization that was built by Theodor Herzl it named itself used the word colonial and for most of its agencies to explain that what it was doing was actually a colonial project by the 1940s they realized that using the word colonial are colonizing in their own literature is becoming offensive because colonialism was no longer fashionable at that time in the age of anti-colonialism so they immediately called the strategy of purging these words from their programs and from the names of their agencies Israel and kind of a Jewish colonial settler project that they now define as some kind of a national liberation group this is what they used to say actually in the 70s and 60s and 70s that we are national liberation group and this was as a result of the rise of national liberation groups around the world that they wanted to capitalize on I think in the split increasingly it's becoming between perhaps anti-zionists and Zionists including by Jewish anti-zionists so liberal Zionists of course realized that the image of Israel which they had propagandized over many years as democratic I was no longer defensible so for example you have a new group in the US a new Lobby called J Street which again supports racism inside Israel but is interested in supporting the end of the occupation and some or some variation therein at the end of occupation so they are at odds with the more conservative pro-israel lobby represented by AIPAC and the other mainstream pro-israel Jewish American organizations but really J Street has not been able to galvanize a lot of people increasingly for example Jewish Voice for Peace which is much more critical of Israel much more critical of Israeli racism inside Israel and is not Zionist is that is the force within the and young generation of Jews that is challenging these kinds of two options the kind of a hypocritical liberal defensive Israel or the more honest conservative defensive misery
