VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
The theoretical founders of the political Zionist movement in Europe from the 1880s were well aware that their desire for a region in the world for exclusively Jewish people was dependent on the support of the imperialist powers.
One of the theoretical founders, Herzl, was acutely aware of this. He realized that the Zionist movement needed to paint a picture of a Jewish state that would enhance European imperialist expansion and that colonization needed to be presented as spreading of "progress, civilization and well-being".
Herzl opposed the "spiritual Zionism" of Ahad Ha'am, who only wanted to form a spiritual homeland in Palestine, not necessarily a distinct state of Israel. He envisaged scattered Jewish agricultural colonies spread "harmlessly" across Palestinian land.
Herzl criticized this as being based on the "false principle of successive infiltration". Herzl said infiltration will always end badly because it would not enable the "influx" of European Jews. Only a Jewish state of Israel could do this.
Herzl's "Society of Jews" would "negotiate with the sovereign authorities of the territories in question, and it will do so under the protectorate of the European powers, if they find the arrangement to their liking".
The "sovereign authorities" were the Ottomans and then the British imperialist power.
Nowadays it is US imperialism and its supporters including the Australian Government!
In the Introduction to Maxime Rodinson's book, Israel A Colonial Settler State?, Peter Buch quotes Herzl as to what he foresaw as the value of a state of Israel in Palestine
"If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could undertake to regulate Turkey's finances. For Europe, we would constitute a bulwark against Asia down there, we would be the advance post of civilization against barbarism. We would remain in constant touch with all of Europe, which would guarantee our existence".
The language used by Herzl way back in the late 1800s which frames Israel as the "advance post of civilization against barbarism" is similar to how the current Zionist leaders frame their vicious genocidal attack on the Palestinian people.
The world-wide protest movement in support of the Palestinians is an aspect of the international situation that was not present in Herzl's time. The power of the people will defeat Zionism and its imperialist backers.