According to Wikipedia, Zionism is “the national movement of the Jewish people that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic land of Israel (Eretz Israel in Hebrew). Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19^th century in central and eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to new waves of anti-Semitism and as an imitative response to other exclusionary nationalist movements. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism continues primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to address threats to its continued existence and security.”

Wikipedia also says that around 1895 Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian writer and political activist, rejected his earlier ideas regarding Jewish emancipation and assimilation and came to believe that, since anti-Semitism couldn’t be defeated or cured, Jews needed to remove themselves from Europe and establish a Jewish state. His work led to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the World Zionist Organization. When Herzl’s attempts to reach a political agreement with the Ottoman rulers of Palestine were unsuccessful, he sought the support of other governments, culminating in the British Balfour Declaration of 1917 announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, which then had a minority Jewish population of around 3–5%. The British made this promise in the throes of World War I, hoping to obtain American Jewish support, while at the same time making contradictory promises to Arabs also seeking national self-determination.

After the war was over, the British occupied and attempted to govern Palestine as a League of Nations mandate. They grew more and more frustrated in their efforts to keep the peace and satisfy both the native Palestinians – the Muslim (Arab) majority, Arab Christians, and longtime Jewish residents, who actually opposed Zionism – and the new influx of European Jewish settlers. According to the book I just finished reading, which I’ll describe in just a minute, this was mainly because of the intransigent attitudes of the latter group: Zionists living on donations who believed they had a historical and racial right to the whole of the area.

The book is called State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel. By a researcher and writer named Thomas Suárez and published in 2017, it demonstrates “how violence and terror were used by Zionist militias [which after 1948 became the Israeli Defense Force] against Arabs and the British to transform Arab Palestine into a Jewish state.” I’m quoting from the back cover, but trust me – the claim is true, and depressing as the litany of horrors is, I hope everyone who reads this will get a hold of a copy.

Again from the back cover: “The Israeli-Palestine conflict is often seen an inevitable clash between two ethnic groups – Arabs and Jews – inhabiting the same land. In fact, as this book shows, what actually occurred was the takeover of an Arab land, Palestine, by a political organization of European Jews, Zionists, using terror tactics to assert by force a claim to the land that has no [moral or] legal basis. Thomas Suárez has written a shocking book detailing a litany of terrorist acts over a period of [37 years, from 1918 to 1955], against the British government, the indigenous Palestinians, and even Jews who disagreed with terrorism. Suárez has discovered documents in the British archives, many revealed here for the first time, which establish beyond doubt that far from being isolated incidents by rogue groups, the use of terror to acquire and keep Palestine for the Jews was deliberate, planned, and sustained well into the early years of the Jewish state. It also casts new light on the use of violence by Israel against the Palestinians,” bringing the total of years this has been going on to 99 – almost a century!

The reason there can be no peace in the Middle East isn’t because the Palestinians refuse to negotiate, as the Israeli government would have us believe – or because in retaliation for Israeli aggression, the residents of blockaded and horribly suffering Gaza periodically retaliate with crude rockets. It’s because the still-Zionist Israeli government hasn’t completed its project of securing Eretz Israel just for Jews. It’s hoping to complete the ethic cleansing of “their” land by making the Palestinians of tiny Gaza and the patchwork West Bank suffer as badly their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents – die or leave!

I thought I knew most of this stuff, but here are some things I didn’t know:

Far from caring about other European Jews suffering anti-Semitism, especially during the Hitler years and immediately post-World War II, the Zionists refused to help them in any way unless they agreed to emigrate to Israel. They even tore children from adoptive homes in France and Britain for this purpose.

Zionists extorted money from non-Zionist Jews in Palestine and also threatened harm to teenagers (and their families) who didn’t enlist in their paramilitary force.

And they didn’t just ethnic cleanse before and after achieving statehood in 1948 – they raped, tortured, and mutilated, ordering Palestinians into their homes and then burning or bombing them. They even used bacteriological warfare, poisoning Palestinian wells with cholera. Israeli troops were even ordered to send people into the desert with no food or water – to die – just as the Turks did to Armenians during World War I (the Armenian genocide). And make no mistake about it, this is genocide – in no way justified by anti-Semitism or the Holocaust.

Zionist propaganda has and continues to be quite successful in the United States. And then and now, when that doesn’t work, the accusation of anti-Semitism is thrown in our faces. Well, sorry – I’m not anti-Semitic, just anti-terrorist and anti- these horrendous massacres – so, therefore, anti-Zionist and anti- the Israeli government.

As hard as it is to do, I hope you’ll also familiarize yourselves with these lies and injustices. Even if we can’t stop it or make it not have happened, we owe it to the victims to know and spread the truth. I think and hope that eventually that will stop it.

Thanks.