The paradox of Zionism that perplexes a wannabe Jew

Dr Anjuli Pandavar is a British writer and social critic who holds a PhD in political economy. She was born into a Muslim family in apartheid South Africa, where she left Islam in 1979. Anjuli is preparing to convert to Judaism. She is one of the staunchest defenders of Israel and a constructive critic of the Jewish state when she believes it is warranted. She owns and writes on Murtadd to Human, where she may be contacted.

The state, the government and the people of Israel, overwhelmingly internalise the wellbeing of the Palestinian Arabs as fundamentally Israel’s responsibility. This tenacious “Jewish man’s burden” has been the handmaiden of Zionism from the start and manifests on so many levels: from a self-imposed obligation to share the bounty of their once-barren land, transformed solely by their own hands, capital and ingenuity, with the Arabs, to forcing onto the Arabs parts of the land itself in the expectation that the latter will “seize the opportunity” to transform that ceded land into a prosperous Palestinian Arab homeland living in peace alongside what remains of the Jewish homeland.

No number of intifadas, no contemptuously-rejected Singapore-on-the-Med, no amount of abused Israeli work-permits, nor ungratefully-received life-saving medical treatments by Jewish doctors in Israeli hospitals, ever disabuses the Jews of their self-imposed burden. It is the root cause of October 7 and all Israeli responses to October 7, including the current obsession with “the day after.” Bizarrely, after a century of periodic massacres, there is still concern for whether the Palestinian Arabs will prosper wherever they end up. Jews taking upon themselves responsibility for the wellbeing of the Palestinian Arabs is one of the root causes of Jews tearing their own nation apart.

The consequences of insisting on bearing such responsibility is the very negation of Zionism in three ways. Firstly, it confirms the “settler-colonialist” accusation in being analogous to “the white man’s burden” of civilising the natives whose land they have colonised. This alone amounts to an admission that the land does not belong to the Jews, but the admission is compounded by a compunction that can only be assuaged by sharing the land. Whether that assuaging takes the form of unconditional Jewish surrender (Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Benny Gatz, Ronen Bar, etc.), or is conditioned by a refusal to compromise on Jewish security (PM Benjamin Netanyahu), the basic concern remains the wellbeing of the Palestinian Arabs. Those Jews who fail to show the requisite concern for the pathological murderers of Jews are relegated, so to speak, beyond the Pale.

Secondly, concern for the wellbeing of Palestinian Arabs makes a mockery of the Right of Return. Every Jew everywhere enjoys the right of return to the ancestral homeland, and the right, whether de jure or de facto, to remain in the ancestral homeland never to be expelled no matter what they do to bring about the destruction of that homeland. The paradox is that Palestinian Arabs within Israel after 1948, regardless of what they do to bring about the destruction of Israel, enjoy that same inalienable right to remain in the Jewish ancestral homeland even though they are not Jews, while those outside of Israel are denied a right of return because they are not Jews.

Thirdly, the Palestinian Arabs, and not they alone, have consistently demonstrated in the most gruesome and barbaric ways, especially since the First Aliyah, their utter rejection of any Jewish presence in Eretz Israel. While humiliation has persuaded some Arabs to seek a truce, and others see embrace of Israel as a way out of Islam (or, at least, the clutches of the Muslim Brotherhood), no such dilution afflicts the Palestinian Arabs. Palestinian mothers rejoicing at their children killing themselves killing Jews is proof enough of this. No amount of concern for Palestinian Arab wellbeing gets around this.

While Jewish concern for the wellbeing of the Palestinian Arabs persists, the paradox—indeed, a double-paradox—of the Right of Return cannot be resolved. Ze’ev Jabotinsky was one of the first to understand and articulate that the wellbeing of the Palestinian Arabs was none of the Jews’ business, hence The Iron Wall.

Whether the Arabs prosper or perish is entirely a matter for the Arabs. No action must be taken or policy adopted that does not satisfy this fundamental criterion. If Israel is ever to interfere in Palestinian Arab wellbeing, then it must be solely, or overwhelmingly, in the interest of Israel. Just eighteen months after the Palestinian Arabs had perpetrated “the worst massacre of the Jews since the Holocaust,” we are treated to the depressing spectacle of an Israeli Cabinet arguing over whether to feed those very perpetrators, viewed through a false distinction between “innocent civilians” and Hamas.

To roll back the psychological stranglehold that the Palestinian Arabs have over the Jews, no policy must ever be adopted, or action taken, the purpose of which is the improvement of the condition of the Palestinian Arabs, and to the extent that any policy happens to also benefit the Palestinian Arabs, it must never be presented as Jewish or Israeli care, compassion or humanity. The Palestinian Arabs must absorb the message that their fate is utterly irrelevant to the Jews. This is the first step towards psychological dominance over the Palestinian Arabs. Then will the muddied waters of Zionism begin to clear.