By Rima Najjar

Since 1897, the first Zionist Congress, Judaism has been entangled with Zionism. It’s time to disengage the two – no easy matter.

When Zionist Jewish terrorist gangs in Palestine were transformed into Israel’s Defense Forces, they continued systematically practicing sociocide, politicide, ethnic cleansing, and incremental genocide on the Palestinian people under the banner of a bastardized Star of David.

“The bond between the IDF, Judaism and the Jewish people is strong. Both the state and the army have adopted symbols that stress the association with the partly historical, ­­­ mythological – and undoubtedly symbolically loaded – House of David. Israel’s white and blue flag, the Degel Lavan, removes any question of religious affinity.” (See Religion and coming to terms with soldiering in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF))

The Israeli Knesset (parliament) is presided over by a menorah and swears allegiance to a warmongering Jewish state that is following in the footsteps of the ancient Israelites in the time of Moses, as follows:

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. (Deuteronomy, 7:1-2; NKJ)”

The Knesset sees nothing wrong in the maiming, torture and outright slaughter of Palestinian children and sets itself up as the embodiment of Jewish self-righteousness. In order to “exist” as a Jewish state, Israel must continue to rob and oppress the Palestinian people targeting and shooting hundreds of unarmed protesters and arresting community leaders as a routine measure..

I’d like to wish religious Jews worldwide a happy Hanukkah holiday in the name of the children of Abu Dis as well as all Palestinian children in the Holy land, over whom Israel now has an iron grip, and those in exile.

Abu Dis is a suburb of Jerusalem in the Holy Land behind the illegal annexation apartheid wall the Jewish state built to keep Palestinians out of al-Quds, where I have lived and taught there many years and taken hundreds of pictures of the place and its people.

“In Israel’s dystopic vision, the village of Abu Dis outside Jerusalem is proposed as the capital of a future fragmented Palestinian “state” – one never created, given that (along with all US-led peace processes), its eventual appearance is entirely dependent on Israel’s permission. This is named, in “peace process” language, as any solution to be agreed “by the parties themselves”, via “a negotiated settlement by the two sides.” (See In Jerusalem we have the latest chapter in a century of colonialism | Karma Nabulsi)

I’d like Jews who identify with Israel to understand what Palestinians want, and I’ll say it, not in angry words, although my anger is monumental, but in the measured words of a highly-regarded scholar – Karma Nabulsi:

“The goal of Palestinians is to unify for the struggle to liberate their land and return to it, and to restore their inalienable human rights taken by force – principles enshrined in centuries of international treaties, charters, and resolutions, and in natural justice.”

In plain language, that means an end to Israel as a Jewish state.  As many political analysts have written, a single state has existed in historic Palestine since 1967 – it’s the status quo. The time has come to battle over the nature of Israel’s racist, apartheid Zionist regime and to call for one democratic state in historic Palestine.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­  – Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.