The continuing distortion of Western discourse on Israel - by Amb. Alan Baker

Distorting and presenting Israel’s creation as a “catastrophe” serves to falsify and overturn the historical narrative from one of inherent denial of the right of existence of a Jewish state through aggression and rejectionism, to one of victimhood and denial of rights.

Amb. Alan Baker..
JNS/JCPA..
07 September '20..

Regrettably and increasingly, Western intellectual discourse regarding anything connected to Israel has been taken hostage by pseudo-intellectual, radical leftist extremists who, using distorted information, flawed facts, “progressive” language and accepted buzzwords, seek to enhance and expand existing efforts to deny and undermine Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic nation-state.

This ideological goal of dismantling Israel is particularly evident in a curious July 9, 2020, article published in radical leftist Australian literary journal Overland, titled, “Fighting against a Racist’s Peace: What It Means to Oppose Annexation.” The author is the child of Palestinians, Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak, whose doctoral research project at Melbourne’s Monash University seeks to explore what she describes as the “emergence of radical political subjectivities and imaginaries.”

Her ultra-radical language indicates a thought process based on misconceptions and flawed assumptions. The abundant use of extreme, radical leftist buzzwords indicates an inherent lack of seriousness and intellectual honesty.

What is perhaps even worse is an apparent linkage that emerges in this article between pseudo-intellectual leftist modes of thinking and extreme, fanatical Palestinian terror and incitement to Israel’s destruction.

The following are some examples of such exaggerated, illogical and inciting terminology used in the article.

“Zionism is a settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist project”

This is an often repeated and meaningless cliché using pseudo-intellectual terminology intended to appeal to extreme ultra-liberal, leftist elements that are opposed to the very existence of Israel as a state and deny, as a matter of principle, the claims and rights of the Jewish people.

Israel has valid historical, legal and political claims to its sovereign territory and land, as well as to the land it presently administers.

In addition to the long-term historical evidence of Jewish presence, as set out in the writings of Persian, Greek, Roman and other historians who visited the area in the early centuries, and in biblical sources, extensive archeological evidence, publicly available, affirms the existence and presence of a Jewish national population in the area for over 3,000 years. The “return to Zion” has been a central theme of Jewish prayers for two millennia.

These Jewish claims have been acknowledged legally and internationally by the 1917 Balfour Declaration affirming the right of the Jews to reestablish their national homeland, the 1921 San Remo Declaration, which transposed the Balfour Declaration into an internationally recognized document and reaffirmed in the subsequent League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the United Nations Charter.

This land has never been part of any sovereign entity since the termination of the Ottoman Empire more than 100 years ago, and as such, Israel has not colonized and is not colonizing the land of any other state or entity.

For more than 120 years, the Zionist movement has been universally recognized as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and is no different from other ethno-national movements.

To single out and condemn Zionism in such a manner is tantamount to singling out the Jewish people and denying them a fundamental right that is possessed by all other national peoples.

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