Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident to have natives do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plow and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful. But it is not only for ourselves that we desire its fertility. The Jewish farmers have begun to teach their brothers, the Arab farmers, to cultivate the land more intensively; we desire to teach them further: together with them we want to cultivate the land \u2014 to \u201cserve\u201d it, as the Hebrew has it. The more fertile this soil becomes, the more space there will be for us and for them. We have no desire to dispossess them: we want to live with them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is the true application of Zionism, not the tortured misrepresentation peddled by JVP.<\/p>\n
It is also a lie to say that Zionism was based on the idea of a \u201cland without a people.\u201d Palestine was not empty prior to the birth of the Zionist movement, but neither was it teeming with people \u2014 as photos and eyewitnesses easily prove. Moreover, the influx of Arabs to Palestine \u2014 who subsequently called themselves Palestinians \u2014 was driven in part by the desire to benefit from the social and economic advances produced by the Jewish community.<\/p>\n
Zionists were well aware of the existing population and expected that Arabs would be included in a Jewish state. And that is precisely what happened when Palestinians who remained in Israel during the 1948 war were given citizenship.<\/p>\n
Further turning history on its head, JVP speciously claims that \u201cPalestinian dispossession and occupation were by design.\u201d The group knows that it was the Palestinians under the Mufti<\/a> and, later, Arafat<\/a>, Abbas,<\/a> and Hamas who believed that the Jews have no place in their homeland. The current plight of the Palestinians is not a result of a Zionist plot; rather, it is the direct consequence of the Arab states trying to drive the Jews into the sea.<\/p>\n
JVP neglects to mention the occupation of the West Bank by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt, during which time the Palestinians never demanded a state. Had Jordan and Egypt not attacked Israel, the Palestinians would still be living under this occupation, and no one would be talking about a two-state solution with their Arab neighbors.<\/p>\n
Similarly, JVP overlooks decades of Palestinian terrorism<\/a> directed at Jews in Israel and around the world. Instead, JVP blames Zionism for teaching Jews to \u201ctreat our neighbors with suspicion.\u201d Conveniently, JVP forgets that Zionists withdrew from 40 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip, and that these concessions prompted more terror.<\/p>\n
JVP is also uninterested in abuses against Palestinians<\/a> by their fellow Palestinians and other Arabs. Instead of condemning Palestinian violations of human rights, and Palestinian terrorism and glorification of murderers, JVP is \u201chumbled by the vibrance, resilience, and steadfastness of Palestinian life, culture, and organizing.\u201d<\/p>\n
JVP\u2019s idea of a Palestinian icon is Rasmea Odeh, a member of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was convicted of the murder of two Jewish students in the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket. JVP invited her as a guest of honor to its 2017 national meeting. That year, the United States stripped Odeh of American citizenship and deported her after she admitted to lying about her past on her citizenship application. Contrary to JVP\u2019s claims about her innocence, US officials reported<\/a> that \u201cother admitted participants in the bombings named Odeh as the person who chose the supermarket as a target, scouted the location and placed the bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n
JVP\u2019s moral contortions are used to justify its support for the antisemitic boycott against Israel. The BDS movement\u2019s raison d\u2019etre is the destruction of Israel, and its proponents discriminate against Jews by asserting that only Palestinians have a right to self-determination. JVP presumes to speak for Jews, but 134 major international Jewish organizations<\/a> representing a broad cross-section of Jewish religious and political opinion oppose BDS.<\/p>\n
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