At least three factors gave Zionism, as the Jewish nationalism, its loathsome face: firstly, it was one of the nationalisms of Eastern and Southern Europe that came late, born tense and hostile; secondly, it was shaped by its displacement and settlement project, forcing out the original inhabitants who are considered redundant or superfluous; finally, it has grown and developed amid the many wars and confrontations that either it waged or were waged against it.
Because of these factors together, Zionism created an extremely high and well-fortified barrier in the face of the Palestinian other, and the Arab other by extension, to the same extent that it tried, theoretically at least, to break down all barriers between one Jew and another. Besides the “law of return,” which grants any Jewish person in the world the automatic right to become an Israeli citizen, the Jewish state was presented as a national paradise where Jew embraces Jew, regardless of their social class or their national and cultural origins.
As for the two theories that best express these two sides of Zionism, i.e., extreme homogeneity founded in love “among ourselves” and an extreme Spartan rift with “the others,” they were formulated by Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky in 1923 and then David Ben-Gurion seven years later. The former, who is the spiritual father of the Zionist right, spoke of an “iron wall,” which is simultaneously both military and psychological, that leaves the Arab other with no choice but to accept the reality imposed by the Zionists’ power and conquest. As for the latter, who is one of the spiritual fathers of the Zionist left, he saw the clashes of 1929 as demonstrating the need to separate “Jewish labor” from “Arab labor”: wherever there is a Jewish project, the labor should be exclusively Jewish. Here, with Ben-Gurion’s socialists, the scientism within European socialism was utilized extensively to give national distinction precedence over any form of transnational class unity.
“Ironing awareness” thus moved in two directions: the Palestinians had to be convinced that they had been defeated and excluded, besides being wrong, and the Jews had to be convinced that they were strong, united, and victorious, besides being right.
You won’t find anyone today who applies these principles as literally as the Arabs linked to the axis of resistance. “We” who make up the axis of resistance are one; we are not struck by any ideological or political differences among us, be they between the secular and religious or between the left, nationalists and fascists. Our hearts and sentiments unite around the pioneering political models in Syria and Iran, as well as obsolete slogans weighed down by defeats. On the other hand, “we” will be against them all: We will not allow a child “of ours” to play with a child “of theirs.” Nor will we watch a movie that an Israeli actress is a part of, read a book by an Israeli writer or novelist, or attend a conference with a shadow of Israeli representation. Of course, it is forbidden to explore channels that could allow for circumventing the political conflict through a joint cultural or economic initiative... It is a rift between everyone and everyone that applies to all domains and fields.
This absolutist approach, which deserves to be labeled racist, makes the members of the axis of resistance students of Zionism- indeed not very upright students. Taking practical policies, regardless of their ethics, as the criteria, the latter were working to further their national project, which was crowned with the establishment of their state in 1948; meanwhile, our parties to the axis of resistance have been working in to further Iran’s imperial project at the expense of their impoverished peoples and collapsed countries. Moreover, the Zionists moved in the shadows of rising global projects that they aligned themselves with: from serving European colonialism and accommodating Soviet influence to complementing US policy in the Middle East, and from siding with the victors in the first and second world wars to benefiting from the ramifications of the Soviet Union’s disintegration and the Cold War ending. As for our parties to the axis, they are fighting battles that are hopeless in the end, even if small victories are attained in the longstanding “war of positions” against the “Great Satan.”
In this sense, the Arab parties to the axis of resistance mentored by Zionists does not serve the adoption of the principle of “discovering the secret of progress,” which some of the Arab intellectuals of the 20th century recommended to us. It does imply one painful thing, failure to innovate, whether for good or bad. It is akin to a bald woman bragging about her neighbor’s hair.
For this reason, the axis of resistance’s attempts to “iron our awareness” implies nothing but Asaad Abou Khalil and his like replacing Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion. That is not joyous news to anyone but the Zionists, though it does induce chuckles on a universal scale.
