By Rima Najjar

In breathtaking cognitive dissonance that is impossible to explain, so-called liberal Zionists stand against every wrong known to man except for the wrong meted out by the Zionist movement to Palestinian Arabs.

Zionism is, as Dr Gideon Polya put it, “genocidal racism in awful theory and appalling, intentional genocidal practice”. [See Zionist quotes reveal genocidal racism and Palestinian Me Too: 140 Alphabetically-listed Zionist crimes Expose Appalling Western Complicity & Hypocrisy.]

While on tour in Canada, Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle whose latest book is the wonderful The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story, posted on his Facebook page something that has made me think. He says,

“I hear most frustrating discussions by solidarity activists that are constantly centered around defending themselves against accusations of antisemitism. They cite Israeli writers to prove their point. They reference Haaretz not the Electronic Intifada or the Palestine Chronicle. They know everything that can be known about the history of the Zionist movement; little about Palestine. They go out of their way to prove their good intentions and demonstrate their innocence.”

Well, I don’t know everything that can be known about the history of the Zionist movement, although I have had my fair share of fending off accusations of anti-Semitism and citing Haaretz writers.

Given how history about Zionism has been glorified and misrepresented in Israel [see Israel to Build $3.9 Million Memorial Honoring Zionist Pioneer Jabotinsky] and also among many scholars, it takes a Ph.D. to sift through the ins-and-outs of the movement.

But I know enough to have no trouble calling the founder of Zionism Theodor Herzel a racist psychopath [one example: Theodor Herzl on Using Antisemitism as Controlled Opposition (Quote)] or the existing leader of the Zionist Movement Benjamin Netanyahu a serial war criminal.

Zionism and the Jewish state it spawned in Palestine are at the heart of our Palestinian tragedy.

A TakeAction meme is going around saying, “If you’ve ever wondered what you’d do during slavery, the Holocaust or civil rights movement; you’re doing it right now.”

Not many had the courage to do something about slavery, the holocaust or Jim Crow, when things were at their worst. I certainly have wondered about what I would have done myself.

On Netflix in his interview with Barack Obama, David Letterman at one point exclaimed in consternation about what he had been doing as a young man during the 54-mile march in 1965 led by Martin Luther King out of Selma toward the state’s capitol (Montgomery, Alabama). Letterman said he was then on spring break partying in Florida.

Zionism is just as bad as the ideologies driving the catastrophes the meme mentions. If you are an activist or person of conscience not standing up as an anti-Zionist – i.e., against the Nakba that has violently partitioned Palestine in 1948 and established the racist Apartheid Jewish state, you are on the wrong side of history right this minute.

Baroud is right when he says,

“…We must empower Palestinian voices and quit validating, willingly or otherwise Zionist voices. Supporting the Palestinian narrative can’t be achieved with wearing a Palestine pin or raising a flag, but by constructing our understanding of Palestine through the words of Palestinians.”

That is why it is crucial to fight censorship that aims to silence Palestinian voices trying to expose Zionists as the bigots they are and to counter the bullying attacks and misrepresentations of Zionists so prevalent on social media.

– 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. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.