A View Over Time - by Ester Woolfson
The pamphlet was in between some books on a shelf when I came across it the other day. It’s called ‘The Zionist State and Jewish Identity.’ It’s dated 1973, cost 15 pence and was produced by ‘I.S.R.C.A’- ‘the Israeli Revolutionary Action Committee Abroad’, a group of left-wing Israelis who left Israel in response to the aftermath of the Six Day War and the continuing occupation of Palestinian land in defiance of U.N. resolution 242. (One of the members of this group and author of some of the pamphlet was Moshe Machover, father of the distinguished anti-Zionist lawyer Daniel Machover.His remarkable interview with Owen Jones is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8raPPzme )
Once, I had so many of these pamphlets and papers but one can’t keep everything. Reading through it, it occurred to me that, apart from the mention of political figures of the day (Golda Meir!) most of it could have been written today, so percipient is it, critiques of Zionism and accurate, pessimistic and entirely correct forecasts of what has come to be.
(It weighs in on me as it has done in the many decades since I left Israel in despair and disgust, repelled by the cruelty and racism I saw, that the only weapons I have are the fact that I’m a Jew and that I’ve watched developments over a very long time.)
The most striking thing about reading it was for me, the realisation of the magnitude of the past months since October 7th last year, not in the hideous toll of genocide and murder carried out by Israel, nor in their frankly obscene efforts to justify their actions but in the response of the people of the world.
In real time, before our horrified eyes, we’ve all watched genocide taking place. Despite the despairing, furious protests of millions of us around the world, nothing has hindered Israel’s maniacal destruction or altered the US and UK’s unforgiveable support for this terrible regime. The sense of powerlessness has been overwhelming as we’ve watched political and religious leaders, ‘celebrities’, sundry commentators and ‘journalists’ flocking to support Zionism or to be photographed with one of the most evil political leaders in the world.
What has changed is that Israel’s misdeeds are no longer hidden. The kind of response to the shocking events in Gaza could once only have been dreamed of and while it hasn’t yet had its full effect, it will. Zionism has been revealed for what it is. The wall of Israel’s implacable impunity has been breached. When young people are making Tik Tok videos explaining, often with admirable clarity, the crimes of Zionism and exposing the falsehoods of colonialism, nothing can ever be the same again.
Watching Israel’s increasingly frantic efforts to deflect attention from the forthcoming hearing at the International Court of Justice are disquieting, a reminder that there is no lie that they won’t tell and no end point to their depravity. But it’s worth remembering that they’re doing it because they know that the world has found them out.