The Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Anti-Racism Controversy Revisited—Controversially? (original) (raw)

Unfinished Business: Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination

2023

This paper seeks to trace the drafting history of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism as a form of racism with an emphasis on how the text and process shaped a racial theory of Zionist settler-colonization. Fayez Sayegh, Palestinian scholar and founder of the Palestine Research Center, and who would be a leading force in passing the Resolution, provided one of the earliest racial theories of Zionism in 1965. In his essay he explains that Zionism is constituted of three elements, racial purity, racial supremacy, and racial segregation and driven by a policy of “racial elimination.” Notably, Resolution 3379 was not an initiative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization thus providing the earliest indications that the while the nationalist movement understood the racial dimensions of Palestinian subjugation, it believed its struggle was primarily an anti-colonial one for independence. This ambiguity regarding the exact contours of the relationship between racism and colonialism was also evident in the diplomatic process. Despite enthusiastic support for Palestinian self-determination among the African nations that led the Decade Against Racism, there was mixed support for Resolution. The Resolution ultimately passed only to be rescinded by the PLO itself in 1991. This paper seeks to revisit this diplomatic and intellectual history for the sake of considering an alternative trajectory of the Palestinian freedom struggle as one against racism.

The Challenge of Post-Zionism

Nations and Nationalism, 2004

The notion that a number of politically troublesome problems are due to a form of wickedness called racism is central to popular discourse and media discourse. On the day that this is written 'racism' is said to be operative in, of all places, Wrexham. There it seems there have been two nights of rioting and fighting between local people and incomers variously referred to as asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants. A few years ago the term was used in the discussion of the problems of northern British cities with substantial Asian populations and simultaneously of the murder of an asylum seeker in Glasgow. Often these events were seen as capable of interpretation in terms of the findings of the Macpherson enquiry into the murder of the Black teenager Stephen Lawrence. This kind of generalised discussion of racism is so general as to be worthless and social scientists struggle to achieve greater conceptual clarity. Some like myself, however, base their conceptual clarification on a range of political and intellectual encounters which they have had. Banton's approach in this book is more objective than this. It seeks to assess all these other forms of discourse in terms of an international approach based upon social science and on the implementation of legal conventions. This is quite extraordinarily valuable and makes this an impressive book. Banton had devoted much of his earlier thought to developing scientific concepts of race and racism. On this basis, however, he came to attach the greatest importance to the International Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). One response to what he had to say about this was that it was too legalistic and that Banton seemed to imagine that the mere adoption of the Declaration would be sufficient to abolish racism. In fact, however, Banton drew attention to the fact that the Declaration could only become effective if it was adopted by individual states, but by drawing attention to the Declaration he had projected the debate on to an international level. It also seems to be the case that whereas some states like the United Kingdom had anti-discrimination legislation in existence before the Convention, others passed legislation because of their new obligations under the Convention. So the Convention did have practical effect. From this perspective it was possible to analyse more sharply what the issues were in a number of different political situations. These included Nazism and the Holocaust, the so-called system of apartheid in South Africa, immigration into the United Kingdom, Britain's relations with Europe, the break-up of communism and the resort to ethnicity and ethnic cleansing, the emergence of Third World politics, the position of native people in countries of White settlement and new holocausts of Central Africa. What is even more important than this, however, is Banton's report on and analysis of International interventions by UNESCO and the United Nations. So far as the first of these is concerned, I was a participant actor and in retrospect I can see more clearly the pressures under which the so-called experts committees, especially that of 1967, were working. Accepting that earlier conferences of biologists had shown that racial differences strictly understood had no relevance to the political differences among Nations and Nationalism 10 (3), 2004, 375-401. r ASEN 2004 human beings, it saw that the real problem was that of racism. Yet racism had to be defined and this led to a discussion between the British Marxist Robert Miles and myself. In fact there was much in common between us though Miles persisted in arguing that Banton and I had both sought to define what were really structural problems in terms of race. Ignoring the work of UNESCO and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the United Nations called a conference in Durban in 2001 to adopt a declaration on behalf of the world against racism and xenophobia. This declaration is now being taken up by various governments especially in Europe as a basis for their domestic anti-racist policies. The exercise, however, appeared to Banton absurd and, indeed, intellectually disgraceful. Each country brought its own problems to the conference and sought to get international support for what it was doing and, inevitably, what it was doing was condemned by its opponents as 'racist'. There developed arguments about such questions as whether Israel was racist, whether the American government should apologise and give financial recompense for slavery, about whether there were new forms of slavery as reprehensible as that in the Americas and whether the Indian caste system was racist. The politicians from the European Union struggled to promote compromise resolutions and the whole question was complicated by the fact that along with the conference of governments there was a second conference of non-governmental organisations. Of course, other social scientists will disagree on many points with Banton's conclusions. So will ideologists and activists. But the book does our understanding great service and one can only agree with the endorsement of the book by Don Horowitz that this is Banton at 'his lazar-like best' giving 'a piercing analysis of what would otherwise remain a thoroughly murky subject'.

Beyond Discrimination: Apartheid is a Colonial Project and Zionism is a form of Racism

EJIL:Talk! , 2021

In this essay, I will explore the dominant Palestinian tradition first by highlighting Palestinian intellectual thought on Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. I will also review the legal analysis underpinning Israel’s apartheid regime, which reflects its Zionist ideology rather than the outcome of a failed political project to establish a Palestinian state. The essay will then show how Zionism is better understood as a political and intellectual analog of apartheid in order to emphasize that Israel did not become a discriminatory regime but is defined by such discrimination. I will conclude with thoughts on the international responsibility to end the apartheid of our time.

Rethinking Zionism Political Affairs Article, 2006

click here for related stories: Middle East 2-07-06, 8:51 am A comrade who is a sophisticated Marxist-Leninist asked me recently to try to deal with the question of "Zionism" theoretically. His point, which is a good one, was that criticisms and condemnations of Israeli policy and general attacks on "Zionist" ideology are routinely condemned as anti-Semitic by supporters of those policies. At the same time, there are both neo-Nazi and other anti-Semitic groups in Europe and the U.S and rightist groups in Middle Eastern countries, including the Palestinian group Hamas, who for different reasons have cloaked anti-Semitic ideology and policies in anti-Zionist rhetoric. • Previous message: [lbo-talk] Dems force Hackett out of race • Next message: [lbo-talk] Rethinking Zionism • Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] More

Why Zionism is Anti-Semitic

This paper explores the anti-Jewish heart of Modern Political Zionism. It is asserted that modern Zionism is a racist, anti-Semitic ideology and movement in a double sense. Zionism is most clearly racist in the obvious sense that it is an ideology invented for the specific purpose of displacing the native inhabitants of a land in favour of an external group that claims sole title to that land, as a superior, so-called ‘Chosen People’. At the centre of this worldview is a profound pessimism: anti-Semitism is eternal, because it is impossible to eradicate.

SYMPOSIUM ON RACE, RACISM, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW RACE, PALESTINE, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

Race, Palestine, and International Law , 2023

In 1922, the League of Nations inscribed the goal of establishing a settler colony in Palestine for the Jewish people-in denial of the national self-determination of the Indigenous Arab population-in public international law. 1 The Palestine Mandate juridically erased the national status of the Palestinian people by: (1) framing the Arabs as incapable of self-rule; (2) heightening the significance of establishing a Jewish national home; and (3) distinguishing Palestine from the other Class A mandates for possessing religious significance that exceeded the interests of any single national group. A century later, the still-unresolved "question" of Palestine remains central to struggles for anti-racism and anti-colonialism in international law. This essay revisits two flashpoints in the tangled history of Palestine and international law, where questions of race and racism have been central: first, ongoing debates over the regime and crime of apartheid; and second, the now-repudiated UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, recognizing Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. Both stories demonstrate the importance of understanding race and colonialism as conjoined concepts, neither of which can be properly understood in isolation from the other.

Antisemitism and Zionism: The Internal Operations of the IHRA Definition

Middle East Critique, 2024

In this paper, I focus on the cultural and political work the IHRA definition of antisemitism carries out to explain why it has been adopted by hundreds of actors. I offer three key reasons to explain its effectiveness: First, it operates on an affective level, interpolating people who identify as Jews to also identify with Israel and Zionism; Second, it ties the right to Jewish difference with a Jewish State and Jewish sovereignty; Third, the definition provides a defence of a regime I call 'democratic apartheid'. The analysis reveals that the IHRA definition of antisemitism serves as a counterinsurgency tool aimed at shielding Israel from resistance to its oppressive form of racial governance and, following its recent war on Gaza, from accusations of genocidal violence.

The USSR and the analogy between Zionism and racism- Precedents of UNGA Resolution 3379

On November 10, 1975, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted Resolution 3379, a document that imparted an ill definition of Zionism, labeling Jewish nationalism as a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” The resolution was passed due to the automatic voting-majority secured by the Eastern (Soviet) bloc, its Arab clients, and other Soviet-leaning nations from the Third World. Western and pro-Israel observers of Soviet policy have long argued that the USSR was the main force fostering the analogy between Zionism and racism, both on ideological as well as pragmatic grounds. The Soviet Union initially encouraged the vilification of Zionism at the United Nations’ halls as a calculated move; in response to what Moscow perceived to be unwarranted American interference in its domestic affairs. At the time, the United States voiced strong condemnation of the Soviet’s refusal to allow Jewish emigration to Israel. Moreover, the formula equating Zionism with racism was used to foster Third World solidarity, though at Israel’s expense. In all, this article argues that the analogy between Zionism and racism is a product of antisemitism as much as of Cold War dynamics.