The Zionist Story
“The Zionist Story”, an independent documentary released in February 2009, written, edited, produced and directed by “Berek Joselewicz” (Ronen Berelovich), presents:
… not just the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but also the core reason for it: the Zionist ideology, its goals (past and present) and its firm grip not only on Israeli society, but also, increasingly, on the perception of Middle East issues in Western democracies.
These concepts have already been demonstrated in the excellent ‘Ocupation 101′ documentary made by Abdallah Omeish and Sufyan Omeish, but in my documentary I approach the subject from the perspective of an Israeli, ex-reserve soldier and someone who has spent his entire life in the shadow of Zionism.
Watch the whole film (1hr 15min) or see it in parts (below):
Promises (2001), an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary film that looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspectives of seven children living in the Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Israeli neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to return to our homeland. Why do people believe that Arabs should rule over the Jewish homeland? This Web site is filled with evil Communist and Islamofascist propaganda.
The ‘Jewish homeland’ was once a (relatively) peaceful place where Jews, Muslims and Christians all lived among one another. The Ottoman Turks were responsible for forcing out both the Jews and the Christians, the Palestinians were not responsible for that. The website gives it’s own views, how about providing your own instead of launching an attack and a pointless tirade about communism and Islamofascism, which btw, isn’t actually a word unless you include a hyphen and create a compound word phrase. I welcome intelligent discourse on this subject. I also included my Christian given name to my post as I do not believe in hiding my identity behind phrases and jingoistic word jumbles.
lol, really? “evil” communist and islamofascist propaganda? who are you, the ghost of mccarthy? What about all the acts of terrorism committed in the name of Zionism to found Israel?
Thank you Paul Woodward for your work creating this public site, posting films and other sources of information that can help us better understand what is happening to other people, such as the people living in Palestine. Revealing their actual experiences, as well as the experiences of Jews brave enough to confront their own people about the horrifying treatment of people in Palestine, is an important step toward real, if painful, social change.
And thanks to Matthew Watson for an incredibly calm, well reasoned response to the ‘Zionist and Proud’ reply. Hopefully the person was passing through, looking to get a rise out of others to build his or her own self-esteem, and not actually attempting to promote hate on a broader social scale. You both give me hope for a better world.
Israeli’s are an invented people.
The jews can return to their homeland without getting 8 million dollars per day from the united states. Racial cleansing is a crime against humanity and the systematic killing of semitic people, namely the palestinians, is a war crime. These types of actions were rightfully criticized when nazi germany did them. But the new nazi’s, the nationalist zionist party, like hitler’s nazi’s, feet that they are above the law. American soldiers should not be put at risk because, like the nazi’s, some jews think that they are god’s chosen.
Most intelligent people who read and understand history, know how we have arrived at this juncture. The past is past, let it remain there. What is important, is what are we going to do about the unending hatred and conflict from both Muslim and Jewish sides? Much of this conflict is fanned and nutured by outside forces, who are making fortunes from the misery of the people in the holy land.
If the people living in the holy land truly think the land is indeed “holy”, then they all should sanctify it, obey Gods laws and know there is one God, no matter what name you give him or how your worship. To please God and to sanctify the land, is to follow Gods laws, which prohibit hate and violence to fellow men.
I beg to differ with Edward on three points: the past is past, the use of the word “conflict,” and that the occupation (and its attending apartheid and human rights abuses) is fueled primarily by outside forces. The present does not exist without a past. To remove it from that context is to destroy and/or deny the history that created it – something no historian would do. If we are ever to understand, and justly resolve the present situation, we must also understand its antecedents.
I object to the use of the word “conflict” because it dilutes a situation in which there is a clear oppressor and a clear oppressed. I wonder if my fellow Jews would want the Holocaust to be described as a “conflict?” Or that the black South African resistance against the Afrikaaner’s system of apartheid was merely a “conflict.”
Finally, as to his assertion that the “conflict” is fueled from the outside, I can only assume that he has never been to the West Bank and lived and worked among among the Palestinians. Had he seen the atrocities with his own eyes: watched male children & young men stripped, humiliated, and beaten at checkpoints; women in the midst of giving birth denied passage through the checkpoints; houses demolished on the flimsiest of excuses and people dispossessed only because they are on land coveted by Israel; children arrested in the middle of the night, thrown into prison, beaten and often tortured; young people shot dead for no reason (read Chris Hedges reports from Gaza for a small taste); the wall and how it separates farmers from their lands, schoolchildren from their schools; the water that is withheld from Palestinians while Israeli settlers have swimming pools and no lack of water, etc. – if he had seen these atrocities committed day in and day out, perhaps he would know that Israel has no need of “outside” assistance – it’s doing a knock-up job all by itself.
How are they the ” chosen people, ” if they’ve been kicked out and have created so much hatred over the centuries? There has to be a middle ground and peace in the region we want a peaceful United States. I do not feel safe here anymore.
I think God is either very crazy or sleeping because there is so much trouble in the world today. But it was already prophesied long ago that Israel will suffer wars but eventually win against its enemies.
If the Jews of Israel lay down their arms they will all be massacred. If the Arabs lay down their arms there will be peace in Palestine.
The exact quotation is: “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war.” And this came from Benjamin Netanyahu at the conclusion of Israel’s attempt to bomb Southern Lebanon back to the stone age in the summer of 2006.
Enola Gay – are you Jewish?
What make you so sure of yourself? You certainly sound like you believe that – but if I was an Arab I wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
As a white, Catholic, British/Canadian I’ll simply give your comment the scant attention it deserves…
Zionist and Proud wrote — “Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to return to our homeland.”
Absurd — totally absurd. Judaism is a religion and a culture, and it is not a nation, and it is not a ‘race’ or ‘blood’ group. Ironically, Zionism follows a Nazi-like logic, measuring and validating itself by assumed blood and racial groupings,genetic and DNA studies and other such race and blood line obssessed fixations. Sadly and tragically, the Nazis and other European anti Semites were also fixated with viewing Jews via the same prisms.
But — A black Jew from Ethiopia and an Arab Jew from Yemen and a Persian Jew from Iran and Azerbaijan has no ‘racial’ or blood link whatsoever to blue eyed blonde haired Jews from Denmark, France, England and Poland. The latter are descended from Turkic/European/Crimean Khazarian people ( as recorded by Shlomo Sand and many others.) Many of the present day Jews are converts, and have no linear connection to that piece of land currently called Israel. So many authors have written on that point, the most recent being Shlomo Sand. In fact, Sand makes the point that it is far more likely that the Muslim and Christian Palestinians themselves are descdended from the earlier Jewish populations of that land. Jews know these truths very well, but use the ( paradoxically, very Germanic) volkish blood and soil nationalism inherent within Zionism to justify what they do. And Zionists even use their ‘unity of a Jewish people’ myth to paper over the cracks in their own project — if one reads the Israeli press, the racial hatred of the European Jews towards African and Arab Jews is obvious.
“Why do people believe that Arabs should rule over the Jewish homeland? This Web site is filled with evil Communist and Islamofascist propaganda.”
Are you serious?
Enola Gay wrote “If the Jews of Israel lay down their arms they will all be massacred. If the Arabs lay down their arms there will be peace in Palestine.”
You know, that is exactly what the white South Africans and British settlers in Kenya used to say during the apartheid/colonial era. They considered themselves so virtuous and inherently special, that they simply could not understand why they were hated so deeply by the black and mixed nationality peoples, so they had to rationalise it by assuming that the natives/savages were just mad, bloodthirsty subhumans; why, they were people just beasts, straining at the leash to destroy the white people….
But why did the native savages hate them so?
Why do the Christian and Muslim Arabs hate the Zionists so much Enola?
Ironically, contrary to the Zionist propaganda, Middle Eastern Jews/Arab Jews did actually live in peace and thrive living amongst their Christian and Muslim Arab brothers — before Zionist-European Jewish colonialism smashed everything to bits.
Do you want proof? That is easy to provide — Egyptian Jews, Syrian Jews, Libyan, Morroccan, Tunisian, Algerian and Iraqi Jews pre 1948 were a very successful community,and were often amongst the academic/scientific/literary elites of those countries. And when the Arab Jews moved to Israel — they were treated like second class citizens due to their Arab identity.
BTW, your online name is very fitting — your Zionist project surely has turned out to be an utter destruction for the Christian, Muslim and Jewish Arabs of the Middle East. And it is unbelievably selfish too, because the hatred and imbalance Zionism has caused, has now overflowed into the politics of the entire world. So, we all have to suffer to maintain your selfish little blood and soil volkish 19th century Zionist ideology.
“Jews living in Tel Aviv, New York or Moscow do not share the same secular practices and language and thus cannot be called one people, says Professor Shlomo Sand.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq6EPYLfcM0
The movie omots a few very relevant informations being required to undesrstand the complete story fro the beginning.
Although it correctly mentions that the “Balfour Declaration” was included into the British Mandare over Palestine (The mandate was assigned to the British Empire by the League of Nations which had been founded by the British Empire a few days before), iz does npt say what the purpose of the Balfour declaration was. In 1917 the Germans had won the war on the Eastern Front and were about to deploy those troops into the West, were the Entente against 50% of the German army had reached nothing but a static trench warfere. The British Empire knowingthat it was a matter of weeks until the Germans would overran them, was about to start peace negotiations probably based on the German proposal of a “neutral peace” from 1916. The British Zionists however proposed to draw the USA into WWI for the promise to receive Palestine for settlement. When the USA entered in April 1917, the Balfour declaration was released in Nov. 1917. To the public the Lusitania incident was claimed to have been the cause, however that was in March 1915, two years earlier.
By starving 900.000 civilians, a great part of that atrocity occured after the armistice was signed on Nov. 11th. 1918, the British Empire forced the Germans to sign a foul confession of war guilt and to pay “reparations” to the British perpetrator of that crime against humanity, which were fixed by the League of Nations immediately after its foundation to amount 236 Billion Gold Mark, the complete German Reich having an estimated value of 350 Billion Gold Mark.
When it became known to the Germans that the Zionists were one of the main reasons for their misery, anti semitism was on the raise which eventually lead to the known outcome.
German anti semitism however was actively supported by Zionists, who had signed a contract with the Nazi governement in 1933, the “Haavara agreement”. Under the Haavara agreement Jews were allowed to emigrate to Palestine taking with them all of their assets, their belongings being purchased by the Reich and the amount of its value being transferred from the PalTreu Bank in Berlin (Palästina Treuhand/Palestinian Trust) to the Haavara Bank in Tel Avis (Haavara: transfer). With the amount being available to the settlers only German export goods were allowed to be purchased. Thus the Zionists helped to break the international Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany. Zionist newspapers in Germany openly applauded all Nazi ani Jewish legislation because it served their own cause: to press Jews into emigration.
The cooperation went so well that the SS became the most pro Zionsit organization in Germany.
Quotation from the first link below:
End of quote.
Haavara pumped large amount of capital and state of the art machinery into Zionist settlements in Palestine. Ironically when Jews were prohibited by the Nazis to raise the German National Swastika Flag it was officially allowed to them to raise the Zionist flag, the Star of David in Blue on White, today’s flag of Israel.
With the above it can be understood why the British occupation authority in Palestine only very hesitantly took measures against the Zionist atrocities. It can also be grasped the reasons for the inclusion of the Balfour declaration into the Palestine mandate and the behaviour of the UN, the League of Nations and the United Nations being founded immediately after both world wars by the victorious nations (the so called “Allieds” used the term “United Nations” for themselves during WWII, “Allieds” were introduced after the war to conceal the connection).
Even the script of the partition of the Palestine territories as shown in the movie and the expulsion of the Palestinaians is following the one how the Germans were treated after WWI and WWII. This “handwriting” however discloses the authorship of the story.
http://www.effedieffe.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9185&Itemid=152
http://thecounterpunch.hubpages.com/hub/The-Haavara-Agreement
http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/judentum-aktenlage/hol/EncJud_haavara-agreement-1933-ENGL.html
http://mises.org/daily/4308
http://www.bearcanada.com/fae/israel/benjaminfreedmanspeech.html
This is sad. I’m a Zionist and I would love to see Israelis and Palestinians living together side by side.
One useful avenue of approach to the propaganda would be to keep attacking the use of two terms that the Zionists have commandeered: anti-Semitic and holocaust. It should be possible to ridicule the use of these out of fashion among those with any literate pretensions whatever. Since the vast majority of the Semites in this world are Muslim or Christian Arabs, the use of the term “anti-Semitic” is a weird and confusing evasion when one simply means “anti-Jewish.” In the same manner are we not ignoring the deaths of many times as many Chinese peasants murdered by fanatical followers of a secular-Jewish saint when the term “the holocaust” is tossed about? What made that considerably smaller mass death THE holocaust, the fact that few Chinese peasants own media conglomerates?
Whatever of that afore mentioned may be true, it is ashaming to hear of such essential crossroads of history in such a manner, only here and now, and as rarely as it happens.
We, the people… are deemed to stupid to handle the truth. But maybe it is also the other way round. Maybe the truth seems too stupid from a modern day point of view that isn`t even our own. By some other people point of view. And ours is a massively simplified point of view, handed to us by those in power. It gets distorted because some wiseguys in power try to hold on or enlarge their power and that means defining their surroundings, toying with our perception. And as somebody said above, the past is part of the present. So they shape our history with their own egoistic versions of what is right, in the process eliminating all that could have been. Somewhat like the catholic church imnsho. Something may grow and even bloom, but it takes the light that all plants would need. I guess this shows that information must be free. And that history is written by the victor. That lying can also mean simply withholding information, that we are being lied to and probably many other rather important things. If you care for history, if you care for who you could be, what is part of you no matter what. And that not caring for history means letting the change happen, means letting the lies fortify. And building on and foundation that must surely crumble one day.
I am sure that we are ready for it if we can keep emotions out of it. The past cannot truly be changed. But humans can. We could build our world on lies if we don’t mind loosing the wisdom of our forefathers. We can start anew at 0 and let others do the thinking for sure. What a loss of culture and civilisation that would be. Oh gosh, and I don’t even know what an opposing view to that long post above would look like. It just sucks being lied to that much and I can at least verify that 3rd Reich and zionists had this Haavara treaty which encouraged (some rich) jews to leave the country. I don’t however belueve that SS and zionists cooperated very much or that those jews that left Germany under the treaty did so out of their free will. As for the zionists getting America to join WWI… Well, if that was true, that would indeed explain an awful lot. But only the apparently blatant fact that the official explanation was a lie and the statement that the zionists had gained a special treatment (Balfour Declaration) during the war doesn’t suffice as proof. Btw, I still don’t know what this declaration is about, but it’s my guess that it is one of many similar ones made to other minorities.
Even a casual study of Levantine history shows that there has been constant strife in the region over two thousand years, from way before the crusades. Somehow cant get over the feeling that the land is cursed. Saddest part is that all that blood is spilt over the centuries in the name of religion.