Zionism

[Sid Shniad]

Robert Rosenthal on Facebook 

Some surprising and not‑surprising things about Theodor Herzl, known as the founder of modern Zionism:

– He was an atheist raised in a secular home and considered himself German.
– In Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), he mocked Yiddish as a “crippled and repressed ghetto language.”
– In his diaries, Herzl explicitly used colonial language, writing that “the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly,” and speaking of “spiriting the penniless population across the border.”

A long time ago, I asked a Palestinian‑American friend who had become a scholar of Zionism whether that movement was always racist or only took an immoral turn later in the 20th century. He said it was racist from the very beginning.

My friend was right.