أساطير الصهيونية

by John Rose, جون روز, قاسم عبده قاسم (Translator)

This is a controversial book. It is a critical account of the historical, political and cultural roots of Zionism. John Rose shows how this powerful political force is based in mythology; ancient, medieval and modern. Many of these stories, as with other mythologies, have no basis in fact. However, because Zionism is a living political force, these myths have been used to justify very real and political ends -- namely, the expulsion and continuing persecution of the Palestinians. Chapter-by-chapter, John Rose scrutinises the roots of the myths of Zionism. Mobilising recent scholarship, he separates fact from fiction presenting a detailed analysis of their origins and development. This includes a challenge to Zionism's biblical claims using very recent and very startling Israeli archaeological conclusions. He provides a detailed exploration of Judaism's links to the Middle East. He shows clearly that Zionism makes many false claims on Jewish religion and history. He questions its rationale as a response to European anti-Semitism, and shows that, if there is ever to be peace and reconciliation in the land of Palestine, this intellectual dishonesty must be addressed.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Middle East, Religion, Israel, European History

283 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2004

About the author

John Rose was an English socialist and anti-Zionist Jew who taught sociology at Southwark College and London Metropolitan University. After growing up in Harrogate as a Zionist in 1966 he went to the London School of Economics where he met Tony Cliff and was recruited to the International Socialists, later the Socialist Workers Party (UK) in 1967 amid discussions around the Six Day War. He was one of the London Recruits who undertook anti-apartheid work as a student in South Africa under the direction of the ANC. In the late 1970s he was an editor of Socialist Worker for a period.

Rose was a tireless campaigner for Palestinian rights and the author of numerous articles and the book The Myths of Zionism. He attended and spoke at the Cairo Anti-war Conference in the mid-2000s. He completed his PhD on Workers Power and the failure of Communism at King's College London in 2020.

Reviews

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simply essential reading for those wishing to make sense of Zionism and its horrendous consequences for the displaced people of Palestine and the status of the international jewry. The Israel-Palestine conflict, so shrouded in propoganda and misinformation, necessarily requires the wide perspective and sagacious research Rose formulates so lucidly.

Shedding light on its manifold contradictions within a framework on imperialist critique, Rose traces the complex history of jews in the middle east and beyond through the lens of dispelling the web of lies underpinning zionist claims.

Having been raised jewish within a zionist community and recieving an education swamped in parroted zionist dogma, I faced a calculated indoctrination into zionist ideology from a young age. The modern jewish education curriculum is absolutely uncompromising in its acceptance of zionism, which assumes a central position of self-evident truth, uncritically taught by teachers and (for the most part) unquestionably absorbed by students. Piling onto this the social stigma that comes with even entertaining anti-zionism as remotely legitimate, a 16 year old me would be shocked to learn that the idea of a jewish state is a distinctly modern invention bound up in imperial geopolitical interests, all but completely divorced from the reality and aims of ancient judaism so often cited as justification for the zionist claim.

As I matured, questioning my education on all fronts, a deep intuition began to emerge. Despite lacking the knowledge why, I suspected that there was something seriously perverse about the modern instatiation of zionism. Inevitably, by progressively engrossing myself in socialist thought, I encountered anti-zionist critiques more and more, and more and more did my image of a noble, victimised Israel start to seriously disintegrate.

By this point I had already resolved that Israel was, and continues to be an oppressive, colonialist enterprise. Though I of course maintain the integrity of this view, it's important for me to recognise my naivety at the time. This was made blatantly obvious to me upon discussing the issue with some zionist family members. Though I held fast to my convictions, the experience revealed to me some glaring gaps in my knowledge of zionism and its history. Uncomfortable though this was, it illuminated my pressing responsibility to investigate further.

The Myths of Zionism constitutes my most determined attempt thus far to educate myself, and my family and community in turn. The jewish community, at least the one I am familiar with, widely perpetuates and justifies a genocidal ethnic cleansing, whether knowingly or not. For them especially, works like these are indespensible resources. Actually convincing them to engage with such alien ideas, leading to the conclusion that the surrender of the zionist project is the only viable solution, is another challenge entirely.

[Ala' Al-Azizi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brave and amazing book. It uses archeological and historical evidence to draw a bold line between Zionism and Judaism, discrediting Zionism's most frequently used claims and stories.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was saddened to hear that the author, John Rose, passed away late last month. This book is a good summary of contemporary research that decisively shatters the core of Zionist mythology. Recommend.

[Andre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a book that a staunch defender of Israel and Zionism would like as it challenges many of its core myths and it was quite an interesting book.
As a matter of fact, one of its earliest statements is:
Though it took 20 years to emerge, the PLO was the Jewish State’s negative alter ego. It had a moral and political right to recognition on equal terms and to recognition of its equal claim on all of the land of Palestine. The suicide bomber at the beginning of the twenty-first century represents the failure of the Jewish State to understand this.

It also delves into the topic of public relations and shows of bravado to bolster the legitimacy of the country, like with the Eichmann trial, which was in Ben-Gurion’s eyes a way,
as Hannah Arendt observed (1963), of bolstering the legitimacy of
the Jewish State.

Furthermore I noticed that the Zionist phrase 'land without people for a people without land’ sounds familiar and is for me reminiscent of things like the Australian/British concept of Terra Nullis down in Australia.
Speaking of history, you get a good chunk of that here as well regarding the myth that at the time of the Romans most Jews lived in the “Holy Land,” basically refuting it, as well as the myth of inherent Arab hostility towards Jews.
In fact the author makes it abundantly clear what he thinks about statements like these by Herzl: "the transfer of Jews to ‘our ever memorable historic home’ in Palestine could end ‘eighteen centuries of suffering’. The author states that this Zionist myth is a crass insult to the dynamism, mobility and immense creativity of the Jews faced with the task of steering within and between the changing fortunes, shapes and sizes of the burgeoning and mutually hostile Christian and Islamic empires and I agree with him. This constant whining about alleged endless suffering does not match with the reality of a constant up and down, in fact where it this endless parade of atrocity, a culture like Ashkenazi Judaism could have never developed. In fact according to this a person named Biale argues that the legal status of Jews in Spain, France, Germany and Poland was considerably better than that of serfs and in many cases approached that of the nobility and the burgher class. You wouldn't get that idea if you listened to the majority info over here. Trade networks are rarely mentioned. Something the author links to anti-Semitism is a pattern which traces its origins to the time of Alexander the Great, and continues to this day with the Zionist settlement in Palestine: Jews sell their highly valued skills and services to a ruler in return for a degree of autonomy – traditionally, protection of their religion. However, the services provided sometimes involved oppressive means of exploiting the poor. Which then of course would not endear the populace to the Jews in question. In fact Jewish emancipation political circles identified the roots of peasant anti-Semitism in the ‘middleman’ role Jews had played in the medieval economy.
Furthermore, what he wrote about how Zionists believed that those German Jews who had identified themselves as Germans ‘of the Mosaic faith’, i.e. Germans in terms of nationality and Jewish in terms of religion, were ‘an undesirable, demoralizing phenomenon’ would explain a lot actually.
Interesting was also the stance of those British officials helping with the Zionist project and were anti-Semitic themselves, e.g. Churchill had been profoundly disturbed by the Russian Revolution and was convinced that the ‘International Jew’ was behind it. He called the Bolsheviks ‘a bacillus’, an expression frequently applied to Jews in anti-Semitic publications and he believed that the Zionists ‘would provide the antidote to this sinister conspiracy and bestow stability instead of chaos on the Western world.’
Speaking of Zionism, the book also deals with the question, asked even in its earliest days, as to whether Zionism itself would, far from alleviating anti-Semitism, inadvertently promote it. According to the book this is precisely what the Zionists of the past wanted. ‘The anti-Semites will become our most loyal friends, the antisemitic nations will become our allies,’ Herzl had written in his diary. In public discourse I never heard of that before, and I also never heard that in the early 20th century Germany was beginning to make promises about a Jewish Palestine.
Regarding Zionism’s darker sides, the book brings up the topic of whether the ‘life-for-death’ principle really is a feature of our age, the age of atrocity, then Zionism and Zionists need to think very carefully about the lessons they are drawing from the Holocaust. Hasn’t the Zionist enterprise been based, at least in part, on saving Jewish lives at the expense, if necessary, of dead Palestinians? For some it surely did.
And ironically, the famous Ben-Gurion’s attitude had real life-and-death implications. He once opposed a British plan to allow migration to the UK of several thousand German Jewish children and according to the book: The assertion of the alleged needs of the Jewish state-in-waiting over the priority of rescue was paralleled in the ways this attitude could not only compromise resistance to the Nazis, but even suggest collaboration. In fact, certain Zionist organizations did do a form of collaboration with the Nazis as they considered it useful to use Nazi jewish discrimination to make Jews immigrate to Palestine.
Furthermore there is something the present-day Likud Party rarely admits a certain ghost from its past: when Menachem Begin, visited New York at the end of 1948, he and his political organization faced an attack. Einstein, as well as many leading American Jews, denounced Begin in the New York Times for leading a party ‘akin in its organisation, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.’
And oh boy, no wonder stuff like Mein Kampf and the protocols of the elders of zion caught on in the middle east. Regarding how the US and Israeli governments acted for decades now, no wonder the slippery slope to belief in a global Jewish conspiracy is so easy in this regard.
And before that everywhere they ruled in the Middle East, Britain and France deliberately widened the gap between the religious minorities, Jews and Christians and the Muslim majority. This had begun as a political device to undermine the Ottoman Empire by offering different forms of ‘protection’. Then offers of citizenship turned some Jews and Christians into direct agents of the British and French colonial authorities.
And if you want to hear some more: Many Jews from Arab countries ended up in Israel. On their arrival some were sprayed with the insecticide DDT, to rid them of their ‘Arabness’ (Alcalay 1993: 37). This is no exaggeration, and Alcalay has many pages describing what happened.
If I had done that I am sure I would be called a Nazi.

So, if you are a staunch defender of Israel and Zionism, this book will surely make your blood boil.

[Yassir Morsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rose presents a thorough critique of some ideological underpinnings of Zionism, challenging the common narratives that have shaped Israeli claims to political and historical legitimacy over Palestine/Palestinians.

I found Rose's ability to mix historical analysis with political insight done particularly well. He debunks several long-standing myths, such as the portrayal of Palestine as a "land without people" and the idea that Israel was built purely through Jewish self-reliance. Rose reveals how British imperialism and later American geopolitical interests were critical in the establishment and survival of Israel.

One of the most striking parts of the book is how Rose reexamines Jewish-Arab relations, highlighting periods of peaceful coexistence that are often overlooked. His exploration of how Zionism, influenced by European colonialism, disrupted centuries of "symbiosis" between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, Rose discusses how Arabs, at times, collaborated with Zionists, especially in the early phases of Zionist settlement. This cooperation was not limited to a singular narrative of conflict; rather, it highlights the pragmatic and often transactional nature of these relationships

However, Rose’s argument is consistently clear: Zionism is not just about Jewish self-determination; it is also a political project with colonial characteristics.

[Fran Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent

[Marwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

المُنقِذ
حليف قوي
حر يفاوض

[Rushay Booysen · Rating 3 out of 5]

History books is always difficult to rate as you are often caught up on one side of the coin.While the author gave countless historical facts i am always baffled by the correctness of it.The Palestine/Israel topic will always have countless views im just very careful to make a judgement when i know there is propaganda on both sides.The countless lives lost seems to continue.I wish for us all to view our humanity to accept our humanity.Zionism is indeed a cruel agenda,if the scale gets tipped will the opposite side live for peace?

[SALAH · Rating 5 out of 5]

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