The following article by Professor Yakov M. Rabkin, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Montreal, deals with the important issue of the future of Zionism and whether, due to the genocidal and fascist turn it has taken under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government, it can be saved or should be dismantled.
Like all religious minorities in all countries till recent times, the Jews have always suffered and been treated as second-class citizens, but this has not been an exceptional or unique phenomenon. It is something that they have shared with all minorities at all times, all over the world.
However, the prejudice against them was particularly acute in Medieval Christian societies, which regarded the Jews as guilty of the Crucifixion, or deicide. In Islamic countries, the Jews were regarded as second-class citizens, but as the “People of the Book”, they were respected as a genuine religious community and many of them achieved high office. This is why, during various pogroms in the West or the mass expulsion of Jews or after the Spanish Inquisition, many Jews moved to Islamic countries and found safety there.
The rise of Zionism in the nineteenth century and especially after the Balfour Declaration with the promise of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, aimed at winning the support of large Russian and German Jewish communities, intensified the traditional religious hostility towards the Jews and turned it into a political campaign. The persecution of the Jews by the Nazis had a political, as well as a racial and religious basis.
Quite naturally, after the Holocaust, many persecuted Jews turned towards Zionism as a possible source of salvation. However, many prominent Jews such as Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and others, and strangely enough the majority of prominent US Jews, were against it and warned that it might undermine Judaism’s moral principles and turn it into a fascist movement.
Most people don’t know that Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British cabinet at the time of the Balfour Declaration, strongly opposed it on both political and religious grounds and later resigned from the cabinet. He submitted a vehement memo titled “The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government”, in which he argued that the Declaration was harmful to the rights of the Jews in Great Britain and worldwide and was even anti-Semitic.
At the beginning of the establishment of Israel, there were many liberal Jews with democratic aspirations, but as the state became more powerful, especially after the Six-Day War, which many religious Jews saw as a sign of divine redemption, the nature of the society changed. It became more right-wing and more fanatical, until it ended up in the fascist Likud government, with its most extreme manifestation under Netanyahu, culminating in the genocide in Gaza and the fantasy of Greater Israel, supported blindly by subservient US governments and Congress.
However, there are still many enlightened and learned Jews, especially in the diaspora, who have rejected this distortion of Judaism and are speaking bravely against it. What we need is truly democratic governments in the West and in Islamic countries that would treat the Jews with complete equality with other citizens, and a democratic government in Israel that will deal equally between the Jews and the Palestinians.
As Professor Rabkin, one of the leading Jewish scholars of genocide, and many other eminent Jewish scholars, such as Professors Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Jeffrey Sachs, etc., have pointed out, Zionism has failed as it has given rise to one of the most racist, murderous, genocidal regimes in the world. Its time is up. The question is whether it will fade away or change peacefully, or whether it will set the region on fire before it disappears. The answer to a large extent depends on the policies of global powers, especially the United States.
There is a realistic fear that a militant form of Judaism will also encourage more militant forms of Islam, and will result in an ugly religious war. It is not often realised that the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government and the late Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran’s support for Israel were among the main motivations behind Ayatollah Khomeini’s opposition to him. In a fiery speech in Qom in 1964, which resulted in his exile from Iran, first to Turkey and then to Iraq, Khomeini addressed the Shah, asking him whether he was a Jew, in which case he would tell the people to throw him out.
He argued that as the king of a majority Muslim country, he could not support and befriend Israel at a time when it was occupying and suppressing the Palestinians. Starting in 1963, Khomeini accused the Shah of assisting Israel through oil shipments and commercial trade. In that way, according to Khomeini, he was acting against the interests of Islam, the Quran, and Muslim nations.
Sadly, in most Middle Eastern countries, and even in the rest of the world, anti-Israeli sentiment is turning to anti-Jewish prejudice. This dangerous trend must be avoided, especially in view of the fact that as time goes by and as more people learn of the crimes of the Israeli regime, many Jewish people throughout the world, especially the younger generation, are turning against the state of Israel. Polls show that a majority of young Jewish Americans are sympathising more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis.
The answer is not to question the existence of Israel, but to oppose its extreme views and apartheid system and to demand that it abides by UN resolutions. In other words, it should learn to live as a normal, peaceful state, alongside other countries of the region, and give up its aggressive dream of the Greater Israel, or a special status due to what happened before and during the Second World War.
Israel should admit that the age of Zionism is over, in the same way that the Nazi ideology died and was rejected by most sane people after the Second World War, and the ideology of the South African apartheid system also died with the rise of a new multi-racial South Africa. A new, democratic and peaceful Israel can continue to live and thrive in a predominantly Muslim Middle East, but an exclusive state based on apartheid and ethno-supremacist ideology cannot. Friends of Israel should help her adopt the first option. The alternative is disastrous for the region, especially for the Jews.
“The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore, it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”
https://www.juancole.com/2026/08/history-proven-leibowitz.html
F Jahanpour 