The Palestinian story: Enter Zionism

We have become the majority in the cemetery and ripped of our land. Our death is what they seek, but only if the world knew how it all began...
He spoke words in private that he would not say in open. He knew how to use the persecution of Jews in Europe as a tool to forbid us our right to Palestine.

He was called the father, the father of Zionism, and those he touched would later carry on his legacy and unleash upon us a whole new system of persecution and hate.
Between June and July 1895, he spoke of a solution to the problem of his comrades -- the Jews in Europe. In his book Der Judenstaat (German, The Jewish State), Theodor Herzl envisioned the establishment of an independent Jewish state during the twentieth century.

The father floated the idea that the realization of political Zionism would be in the best interests of European powers -- powers that did not welcome Jews in their lands.
His aspirations were perhaps the result of the Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal in the 1890s that divided France and showed the anti-Semitic colors of the cultured European society.

"The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution," proclaimed the Jewish Hungarian.

The father argued that Jews "introduce" anti-Semitism wherever they go and therefore need to establish a Zionist state in "Palestine or Argentina".
Argentina is among "the most fertile countries in the world, extends over a vast area, has a sparse population and a mild climate" while Palestine serves as our ever-memorable historic home, he wrote.

The very name of our Palestine, according to the father, would attract Jews with a force of marvelous potency.
As shown by his writings and the Zionist slogan of 'A land without a people for a people without a land', us Palestinians were nothing but barbarians that did not even consist of a nation.

In his eyes, we were barbarians that needed to be shielded from the cultured anti-Semitic people of Europe.
He himself has said that his proposed Zionist state would be "a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization opposed to barbarism".

According to Herzl, Jews returning to their "historic fatherland" would do so as representatives of Western civilization, bringing "cleanliness, order and the well-established customs of the Occident to this plague-ridden, blighted corner of the Orient". "The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness and whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity," so he claimed.

His proposal did meet with fierce resistance from Jewish religious leaders who argued Jews were not a nation and that Zionism was incompatible with the teachings of Judaism but such opposition did not stop the floodgates from opening on us.
Although he was not the first to suggest the eradication of our communities for the sake of Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe, Herzl is indeed the person who systematically planned the elevation of his vision into a program of action.

He met with key international figures of the time -- the Sultan, the Kaiser, the Pope, King Victor Emmanuel, Chamberlain and prominent Tsarists. He strived to persuade them to support the Zionist cause of creating a secular 'Jewish' (Zionist) state in Palestine.

Herzl did not live to see the creation of his envisaged 'Judenstaat' but did provide the inspiration, the leadership and the establishment of the Zionist movement.
David Ben Gurion -- the first prime minister of "Israel" -- publicly pronounced the declaration of the state of "Israel" on May 14, 1948 in Tel Aviv beneath a large portrait of the father.

The natural element of Zionist ideology clearly was and is to evict us -- the native Arab population -- from Palestine or from areas of Palestine intended to become the 'Jewish' (Zionist) state.
Priest and theologian Michael Prior says Zionism would not realize its goals without us Palestinians being booted out of our homeland.

"Privately, Herzl and the majority of Zionists after him were in no doubt that the realization of the 'Jewish' (Zionist) dream would require a nightmare for the indigenous population," he writes in his book Zionism and the State of "Israel".
A June 12, 1895 entry in Herzl's personal diary reveals the words he spoke in private and exposes the true nature of the Zionist monster unleashed upon us.

"We shall try to spirit the penniless population [us Palestinians] across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly," he wrote.

But in public, how could he speak of entering our lands and banishing us into exile? In a letter on March 19, 1899, he assured a concerned Arab that Zionists do not want to send them away from their lands.
"But who would think of sending them away? It is their well-being, their individual wealth, which we will increase by bringing in our own," Herzl wrote.

The father then drafted a charter for a Jewish-Ottoman Land Company (JOLC), which gave the JOLC the right to obtain land in Palestine by giving its owners comparable land elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire.
According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, the Zionist initiative indicates Herzl's "bland assumption of the transfer of the Palestinian to make way for the immigrant colonist."

Our real torment began when the emerging powers of the World War II decided to give in to Zionist demands by establishing "Israel" in compensation for the crimes Europe had committed against the Jews.
The justification of sixty years of the theft of our land by the violent "Israeli" settlers and the children of Zion began with our holocaust -- the Nakba -- when the world proved that the Palestine we cherished was nothing but 'a land without a people'.

Even after years of suffering and the massacre of our children, let those who cannot understand the inherent violent nature of Zionist "Israel" continue to contemplate only on current events and think we have had any choice other than resistance.
And to all who think that the "Israelis" are the victims, I ask why it is that we were chosen to suffer under Zionist oppression? Were we even involved in the mass killing of the Jews in the Holocaust?

Why is it that those supporters of "Israel" who speak of human rights advocacy still fool themselves into believing that Tel Aviv wants a two state solution?
I also ask how many of us have to die?