To our friends in the Anti-Globalist Movement:
ACCEPTING "ISRAEL" MEANS ACCEPTING GLOBALISM
by Muhammad Abu Nasr/ FAV

endorsed by the FAV editorial board

Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab and Islamic worlds have been the target of the most concentrated and ferocious campaign by global capitalism spearheaded by the imperialist United States. Globalism, the hegemony of the world's ruling exploitative class, claims victims throughout the world on a daily basis. But its most vicious and brutal assault is underway today in what was once called the "crescent of crisis." This focus is natural given the crucial importance of the region in terms of its natural resources and its strategic location. Control of this region is vital for global hegemony.

Given this geographical focus, the globalist threat represents an outgrowth both of older forms of imperialism and of Zionism, the racist movement aimed at creating a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab homeland, thereby denying self-determination to the Arabs, occupying and usurping the Palestinians' homeland, and permanently obstructing the geographical and political unity of the Arab Nation. The struggle against Zionism is one of the most important fronts in the battle against globalism.

Since 1948 Zionism has been not merely a reactionary theory or a racist movement. It has also been embodied in the Zionist Jewish colony that calls itself "Israel," established on Palestinian soil with brute force and the connivance of the imperial powers. The phrase "occupied Palestine" refers not to those territories seized by the Zionist entity in 1967 or in later years; it refers to the land stolen by the Zionists on which they proclaimed their "state" in 1948 as well as any other Palestinian territory that they appropriated later on.

The Zionist Jewish colony that calls itself "Israel" is the poisoned fruit of the racist Zionist movement. The Zionist Entity and Zionism in general constitute an integral and crucial part of the globalist onslaught. There can be no rejection of globalism that accepts the Zionist entity, any more than there can be a rejection of globalism that accepts other instances of colonial rule.

Ever since the imposition of the Jewish Zionist entity in Palestine, the Arab people have taken a firm stand against any suggestion of normalization with the colonial presence. Opposition to normalization with the Zionist movement and its colonists began long before 1948, in fact. Normalization is a recognition, an acceptance of the colonial status of Palestine and the dependent status of the Arab Nation. The racist colonial-settler movement of Zionism set itself the aim of replacing Arab Palestine with a colony of Jewish aliens. Thus, the term "normalization" does not only refer to dealings with the Zionist "government," but with any individuals or institutions associated with the Zionist movement or with the Zionist colony in Palestine.

To this day, hundreds of individuals, groups, parties, and grass roots organizations throughout the Arab Nation issue a constant stream of denunciations of normalization and its perpetrators on a daily basis. Opposition to normalization is so intense that there are even people who criticize the term normalization. They point out that there is nothing "normal" at all about accepting a colonial occupation of one's country, or meeting with people whose political identity signifies a usurpation and denial of your own identity and rights.

Of course Palestinians who have clung to their homeland despite the brutal racist occupation (whether in 1948 or 1967) have no choice but to deal with the Zionists and their institutions just in order to survive - to get jobs, driver's licenses, travel documents, etc. But this is not a matter of their choice. The issue of normalization within Palestine, therefore, is mainly a matter of POLITICAL dealings with the Zionists, i.e., participation in their parliament or other institutions. Such actions are not a necessary part of daily survival but a type of service that helps to reinforce and stabilize the Zionist colonial presence.

People outside of occupied Palestine, however, have no such daily need to deal with the Zionist entity or with Zionist colonists. Those Arabs who nevertheless establish trade or other types of relations with them are effectively normalizing relations with the Zionist colonial entity and are rightly denounced as normalizers.

Globalism presses on relentlessly using every possible means to impose occupation, division, and dependency upon the Arab Nation. Every method - from armed force and economic subjugation, to advertising, public relations and ideological poison - is employed. Just two months after US imperialist troops blasted and bribed their way into Baghdad, the Davos Forum staged an "extraordinary meeting" in Amman, Jordan, bringing together Zionist and Arab compradore representatives to discuss their "visions for a shared future" in the "Middle East." As if to underline the way that globalized economics are served by Arab political surrender and normalization with the Zionist entity, the US government allotted time at the conference to hold political talks with its allies to further the so-called "Road Map" that provides for the establishment of Palestinian Bantustans as a "solution for the Palestine problem."

Meanwhile (as Husam Tammam and Patrick Haenni report in the September 2003 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique) the international ruling class is pursuing its aims on the ideological front by fostering its own globalist version of Islam, complete with Muslim televangelists preaching a free-market, compradore version of "Islam" to go along with their compradore politics and economics.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the imperialists, Zionists, and their compradores in the Arab countries would push normalization. The Zionist entity and the imperialists have pushed for Arab recognition of their occupation since 1948. Naturally indeed: for what criminal does not want to "get away" with his crime? Normalization with the Zionist entity in effect grants the racist Jewish colony absolution for all the crimes of murder, ethnic cleansing, aggressive warfare, occupation, theft of property, expropriation of land, and the trampling of the Palestinian and Arab right to national self-determination - all of which crimes have been committed without respite since the first Zionist colonists arrived one hundred years ago.

What is genuinely disturbing, however, is the fact that calls for normalization are now being heard not only from the ranks of the open enemies of the Arab people, not only from the Zionist entity and the US imperialists. Today there are organizations such as the Alternative Information Center that ostensibly support Palestinian rights but which are pushing locally and internationally for normalization with Zionist colonists in Palestine. The stated justification for this outrageous approach is that Palestinians are thereby able to coordinate their strategies and tactics with "progressive 'Israeli' public opinion."

Yet just as there is no "progressive colonialism" and no "progressive imperialism," so there is no "progressive 'Israeli' opinion." "Israel" has been a colonial state from its inception and every inch of "its" territory is Palestinian. Every "Israeli" Jew lives on occupied Palestinian land. Every "Israeli" Jew, regardless of his or her subjective ideas, is a part of the colonialist occupation of Palestine. And they serve it, furthermore, both men and women, as soldiers on active and/or reservist service to racist Zionist colonialism.

An attempt at a dialogue with so-called "Israeli" "progressives" is tantamount to an acceptance of the Zionist colony and the Zionist colonial project as just another state in the Arab region. Pseudo "humanistic" or "leftist" rhetoric is used to conceal the very essence of the conflict in the region which is not a battle for border revisions between two peoples with equal title to the land, but a struggle for the very existence of the Palestinian people and for the integrity and self-determination of the Arab Nation from Morocco to the Arabian Gulf.

It is strange indeed that the globalist imperialist and Zionist forces' military, economic, and even "spiritual" drive for normalization with the colonial Zionist entity in Palestine, should find an echo within the anti-globalist movement itself. Intentionally or unwittingly, the effort to push Palestinians into joint work with elements from the Zionist colony is opening yet another front FOR globalism, right in the middle of the anti-globalists themselves.

Unfortunately a pattern of such fifth-column activity has begun to emerge in many sectors of the anti-globalist movement. In the run-up to the American invasion of Iraq earlier this year, the American liberal Z-Magazine published a petition that ostensibly opposed the impending war, but in reality backed the US imperialist and Zionist approaches. (See: "On bogus petitions against the war on Iraq," in the Free Arab Voice, 27 January 2003.)

Like many similar petitions that circulated in the west on the eve of the US aggression, this petition came out against war, yet it endorsed the Bush Administrations chief war aim of "regime change" in Iraq. Signed largely by Jewish Americans, the "anti-war" petition chimed in with Bush in denouncing the Baghdad government as a "threat to its neighbors" which could only mean "a threat to 'Israel'" since Iraq in the spring of 2003 posed no threat to any of the US-occupied states on its borders. The petition also coincided with the lines of official US and Zionist ruling circles by branding Palestinian resistance fighters "terrorists." Meanwhile it called for "self-determination" for "Israeli" Jews, despite the fact that Jews are members of a religious group and therefore not entitled to national self-determination insofar as they are Jewish; and despite the fact that "Israel" is a colonial entity with as much right to "self-determination" as French settlers had in Algeria or Dutch settlers had in southern Africa.

Couched in left-liberal and pacifist language, the petition in fact reproduced the key demands of the militarist Bush administration, and helped divert progressive American opinion from practical opposition to the war into channels that ultimately legitimized the US strategy of conquest of Iraq, Zionist occupation of Palestine, and subversion of the rest of the Arab world.

Thus, leading figures in the very heart of the anti-globalist, anti-war movement in the United States underwrote an approach that worked in tandem with the White House and the Pentagon. Today, activists within the ranks of the anti-globalist movement are pushing normalization with the Zionist entity and are objectively working in tandem with the most aggressive globalist forces on earth.

It has been reported that progressive Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife, who has refused for decades to participate in any event that also hosted Zionist colonialists, has now been inveigled to take part in a "peace" activity together with them. Needless to say, making "peace" with the Zionist entity means acceptance and recognition of its colonial existence on Palestinian Arab soil. The force that finally pushed him into the camp of normalizers was a nominally "anti-globalist" organization. Such is the sinister role being played by proponents of normalization who masquerade as opponents of globalism and undermine that movement from within.

Sixty years ago, Europe was locked in a bitter and bloody struggle against fascism. Yet there were no voices raised in the anti-fascist camp demanding that the Greek Resistance or the Russian or Yugoslav Partisans hold dialogues and coordinate strategy with "progressive Nazi" occupiers. Only a traitor would have dared to suggest that peoples of occupied Russia, for example, should coordinate with "progressive" members of the Nazi party and accept fascist seizure of three-fourths of their country in exchange for a patchwork of reservations surrounded by walls, barbed wire, and occupation troops.

The struggle against Zionism and the Zionist occupation of Palestine is not a struggle for Arab civil rights in a Jewish state. It is an anti-colonial struggle for the total liberation of Palestine from every last vestige of Zionist occupation, for the complete self-determination of the Palestinian and Arab people. Genuine progressives around the world have consistently supported the anti-colonial national liberation movements of Asian, African, and Latin American peoples. They have not fallen for imperialist games of promising "limited self rule," Bantustans, or "enlightened" colonial administrators.

Normalization in any form with the Zionist entity and its colonial residents constitutes recognition of colonialism, an acceptance of occupation, a renunciation of the right of self-determination. With the guns of imperialism all trained on the Arab world, normalization with the Zionists amounts to collaboration to the most aggressive spearhead of globalism. This issue is today the touchstone by which organizations, movements, and persons can - and will - be judged. Those who accept normalization, regardless of any claims they make to be against globalization, are in fact serving in its front ranks
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