Hannah Arendt and Israel's dependence Day

In 1944, four years before the Zionist paramilitaries ethnically cleansed Palestine and Ben Gurion establish a state of Jewish dependency upon global white power, Hanna Arendt wrote a re-appraisal of Zionism after 50 years of existence. It is a good moment as ever to re-appraise that reappraisal, but given time constraints, a long quote would have to suffice.

Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts in nothing but the rude force of the nation. A nationalism that necessarily and admittedly depends upon the force of a foreign nation is certainly worse. This is the threatened state of Jewish nationalism and of the proposed Jewish state, surrounded inevitably by Arab states and Arab people. Even a Jewish majority in Palestine--nay even a transfer of all Palestine's Arabs, which is openly demanded by the revisionists--would not substantially change a situation in which Jews must either ask protection from an outside power against their neighbors or come to a working agreement with their neighbors.

If such an agreement is not brought about, there is the imminent danger that, through their need and willingness to accept any power in the Mediterranean basin which might assure its existence, Jewish interest will clash with those of all other Mediterranean people; so that, instead of one "tragic conflict" we shall face tomorrow as many insoluble conflicts as there are Mediterranean nations. for these nations, bound to demand a mare nostrum shared only by those who have settled territories along its shores, must in the long run oppose any outside--that is, interefering--power creating or holding a sphere of interest. These outside power, however powerful at the moment, certainly cannot afford to antagonize the Arabs, one of the most numerous peoples of the Mediterranean basin. If, in the present situation, the powers should be willing to help the establishment of a Jewish homestead, they could do so only on the basis of a broad understanding that takes into account the whole region and the needs of all its people. On the other hand, the Zionists, if they continue to ignore the Mediterranean people and watch out only for the big faraway powers, wil appear only as their tools, the agents of foreign and hostile interests. Jews who know their own history should be aware that such a state of affairs will inevitably lead to a new wave of Jew-hatred; the antisemitism of tomorrow will assert that Jews not only profiteered from the presence of foreign big powers in that region but had actually plotted it and hence are guilty of the consequences.

The big nations that can afford to play the game of power politics have found it easy to forsake King Arthur's Round Table for the poker table; but small powerless nations that venture their own stakes in that game, and try to mingle with the big, usually end by being sold down the river. The Jews, trying their hand "realistically" in the horse trading politics of oil in the Near East, are uncomfortably like people who, with a passion for horse-trading but disposing of neither horse notr money, decide to make up for the lack of both by imitating the magnificent shouting that usually accompanies these gaudy transactions. (Hannah Arendt, Zionism revisited, 1944, in Kohn, Feldman (eds.) The Jewish Writings, 2007)

Happy White Power Day, Israel!