I received an academic paper by Professor Amal Jamal from the University of Tel Aviv titled "Unveiling …". Having read several academic papers criticizing Zionism from the Settler-Colonialist perspective, I am surprised (and I should not be) that they deal only with past European Zionist debates and publications and ignore the vast and far more important literature on Zionism in Jewish religious circles. I have never seen any quotation of the vast Zionist literature in the Jewish communities of the Islamic countries, before they were dispersed. European Zionism died with the Jews of Europe, and at least half of the "settler colonists" combatted by Tel Aviv University Professor Dr. Jamal are not White Europeans but brownish refugees from the Islam. For them and also for the important religious sector, the legitimacy of Israel does not follow from the writings of secular European Zionist leaders, but from the belief in the promise written in the Bible. I should add that many of them would not even recognize Jamal's post-Emancipation secular leaders as Jews. It may be surprising to Prof. Jamal and his Western colleges to discover that Jews keep the Shabbat and eat only kosher food. From the Roman times till the Emancipation the concept of secular, non-religious Jews was unknown.
I mean that these academics are discussing things that have been long abandoned and are irrelevant to Zionism 2019. The leading and most dynamic sector of the "settler" movement today are the religious youth, and they totally ignore the old post-Emancipation Zionism of Poland and the Galut, and follow the rabbinical leaders of the Jerusalem yeshivot. These religious leaders are extremely influential in the government, and their representatives will hold key ministries in the next government. While Prof. Jamal discusses what, say, proto-communist Moses Hess wrote in Germany two hundred years ago, he is totally ignorant of the ideological debates of the Jewish religious universe. Jamal's condemnation of assimilated European Zionists' thesis is irrelevant for contemporary leaders like Smotrich, who represents the "colonial settlers" that Jamal tries to debate and oppose. Jamal is fighting ghosts and the actual settlers. And he lives here and meets them every day.
(I have a correction to make: Jamal does not fight dead White Jews, he fights his living rivals in the academy, the dominant post-Zionist professors. Once I realized it, it was all too obvious. He is not very talented at it, and twice or thrice falls into vulgar anti-Semitic conspiracy accusations, like "hidden" motives of Zionism).
(I am intrigued by the concept of "settler colonialism". They had to invent this new label since they discovered that colonialism is done by colonialist country, and Zionism is an orphan without a mother country. So the settlers are, all by themselves and without being the emissaries of a colonial power, colonialists. All this bizarre definitions are to show that the Palestinians have no agency, they are innocent victims, and not, never, God-forbid, that there may be something wrong with them. That idea would be unconceivable, destructive of their self-image and their mental sanity.)
(I have a correction to make: Jamal does not fight dead White Jews, he fights his living rivals in the academy, the dominant post-Zionist professors. Once I realized it, it was all too obvious. He is not very talented at it, and twice or thrice falls into vulgar anti-Semitic conspiracy accusations, like "hidden" motives of Zionism).
(I am intrigued by the concept of "settler colonialism". They had to invent this new label since they discovered that colonialism is done by colonialist country, and Zionism is an orphan without a mother country. So the settlers are, all by themselves and without being the emissaries of a colonial power, colonialists. All this bizarre definitions are to show that the Palestinians have no agency, they are innocent victims, and not, never, God-forbid, that there may be something wrong with them. That idea would be unconceivable, destructive of their self-image and their mental sanity.)
Jamal et al ignore the whole universe of that created the ideology that the settlers are implementing. Jamal has no access to the ferocious debates maintained by the different yeshiva heads which contain the sole relevant thinking in the settler sector. Even if he should read a few of the numerous brochures and books of the Jerusalem literature, he would feel absolutely foreign and incomprehensible all that arguing about God's mandates and later comments, and could not find believable that there is an actual connection between those exotic elucubrations and actual moving to Samaria. In conclusion, it is possible that the people that understands the "settler colonialists" are the ayatollahs of Iran (pic), who do think in religious terms. They could maintain an equal-to-equal debate with contemporary Zionism.
