Video Infoblog: Joseph Massad: The core of Zionism is settler-colonialism, not democracy

Transcript

0:00

Zionism has never been a movement for

0:02

self-determination it never claimed to

0:04

be this is a new claim we began to hear

0:07

of something called Israeli

0:08

self-determination in the 1960s and 70s

0:11

and only in the last ten years that the

0:14

Israeli government began to put forth

0:15

something called Jewish

0:17

self-determination

0:18

[Music]

0:31

the term would be used sometimes in

0:33

Zionist circles in the 1940s during the

0:36

terrorist war that Zionist gangs had

0:39

launched against the British colonial

0:41

forces in Palestine in the 1940s

0:43

now Zionism of course is first and

0:46

foremost a settler colonial movement

0:48

this is not a national movement for

0:50

example who are trying to liberate its

0:52

country from colonial forces this is a

0:55

movement by European settler colonial

0:58

who wanted to take over someone else's

1:00

country and create a settler colony

1:04

father of Zionist and Theodor Herzl

1:05

spoke about this openly in his writing

1:08

is the Zionist organization that was

1:10

built by Theodor Herzl it named itself

1:13

used the word colonial and for most of

1:15

its agencies to explain that what it was

1:18

doing was actually a colonial project by

1:20

the 1940s they realized that using the

1:23

word colonial are colonizing in their

1:25

own literature is becoming offensive

1:28

because colonialism was no longer

1:30

fashionable at that time in the age of

1:32

anti-colonialism so they immediately

1:34

called the strategy of purging these

1:37

words from their programs and from the

1:39

names of their agencies Israel and

1:41

Zionism speak of

1:44

kind of a Jewish colonial settler

1:46

project that they now define as some

1:48

kind of a national liberation group this

1:50

is what they used to say actually in the

1:52

70s and 60s and 70s that we are national

1:55

liberation group and this was as a

1:56

result of the rise of national

1:58

liberation groups around the world that

2:00

they wanted to capitalize on I think in

2:01

the split increasingly it's becoming

2:03

between perhaps anti-zionists and

2:07

Zionists including by Jewish

2:09

anti-zionists so liberal Zionists of

2:12

course realized that the image of Israel

2:16

which they had propagandized over many

2:19

years as democratic I was no longer

2:21

defensible so for example you have a new

2:24

group in the US a new Lobby called J

2:27

Street which again supports racism

2:30

inside Israel but is interested in

2:32

supporting the end of the occupation and

2:34

some or some variation therein at the

2:37

end of occupation so they are at odds

2:39

with the more conservative pro-israel

2:41

lobby represented by AIPAC and the other

2:44

mainstream pro-israel Jewish American

2:46

organizations but really J Street has

2:49

not been able to galvanize a lot of

2:51

people increasingly for example Jewish

2:53

Voice for Peace which is much more

2:55

critical of Israel much more critical of

2:57

Israeli racism inside Israel and is not

3:00

Zionist is that is the force within the

3:04

and young generation of Jews that is

3:08

challenging these kinds of two options

3:11

the kind of a hypocritical liberal

3:14

defensive Israel or the more honest

3:16

conservative defensive misery

English (auto-generated)

AllPolitics newsRelatedRecently uploadedWatched