Read Online On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Frank Barat - Free Book Online

succeeded in founding their own state, the native population has to strategize differently and find ways of coexisting with this generation of colonizers.
    The reason the colonialist impulse of the Zionist movement did not end at a certain historical moment lies in the territorial appetite and greediness of these settlers. When they were offered part of Palestine in 1937 they regarded it as insufficient space for implementing their aspirations. But they had a wise leader, David Ben-Gurion, who understood that it was tactfully beneficial not to spell out clearly these annexationist dreams. So he told the Royal Peel Commission the Zionist movement was content with a small part of the country.
    He continued this tactical and successful policy in 1947 and led his community to accept a larger part of Palestine than that offered in 1937, but one that he still deemed as insufficient. He told his colleagues he was very unhappy with the map offered by the UN Partition Plan in November 1947 and promised them, as indeed happened, that they would have the means, the opportunity, and the plan to change these borders later on. His successors still hope to re-create his winning formulae today after Israel completed the takeover of the whole of Palestine in 1967. But unlike Ben-Gurion in 1937 and 1947, they so far failed in obtaining the international legitimacy for the last territorial expansion (and unlike him at least some of them were even seeking, again unsuccessfully, Palestinian legitimacy for this act).
    NC: I think that’s a correct characterization of what you’d call hard-core Zionism or more generally political Zionism, which of course Ben-Gurion was a leading figure of. But Zionism generally was broader. Like Ahad Ha’Am was a Zionist, but not a political Zionist. The groups that I was involved in admittedly were marginal. Like Kalvarisky’s League for Arab-Jewish Rapprochement. They were Zionists, but anti-state. They were class based and in favor of Jewish-Arab working-class cooperation. It might sound strange today, but it did not in the context of the thirties and the forties.
    IP: The Jews were a minority then. Is it possible when the Jews are a majority and in power to develop such ideas?
    NC: Well this is later. A majority and a state. In fact they were strongly opposed to it at the time. So the concept changed. What you are describing is a correct characterization of the mainstream of political Zionism. Technically the Zionist movement did not formally accept the notion of a state until 1942, but it was always in the background of political Zionism. You just could not say it. I think it’s worth thinking through what the options were because that may be some kind of a guide to what the future could be.
    FB: Nowadays a lot of people describe Zionism as a settler-colonial movement. Do you both agree with this definition?
    NC: The Jewish settlement in Israel was certainly a settler-colonial movement. When you talk about what Zionism was, it depends on how wide you want to spread it. The movement that developed, yes, is a settler-colonial society. Like the USA, Australia, the Anglosphere. Israel is one of them. It’s not a small point. If you take a look at the international support for Israeli policies, it’s of course primarily the USA, but secondarily it’s the Anglosphere. Australia, Canada. . . . I suspect that there is a kind of intuitive feeling on the part of the population. Look, we did it, it must be right. So they are doing it, so it must be right. The settler-colonial societies have a different kind of mentality. We did exterminate or expel the indigenous population so there has to be something justified about it—superior civilization or other ideas.
    IP: Our chance to change international perspective and perceptions even in settler-colonialist societies has to do with the past. Even if you go to the USA and Australia nowadays, maybe because the policies were genocidal and