Zionist Ideology Rooted In Racism And Virulent Expansionism

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Brecht Jonkers

Rabi' al-Awwal 08, 1447 2025-09-01

News & Analysis

by Brecht Jonkers (News & Analysis, Crescent International Vol. 55, No. 7, Rabi' al-Awwal, 1447)

The genocide against the people of Gaza continues unabated. It is one of the most brutal massacres in recent human history. We must not, however, lose track of the wider developments in the zionist colonization of Palestinian lands.

The fate of Gaza is in many ways the result of decades-long occupation across Palestine that has been going on since 1948. It has become one of the last refuges of free Palestinians since Hamas’s electoral victory of 2006.

Meanwhile, the territory that was “left” to Palestine following the Oslo Accords of 1993, being East Jerusalem and the West Bank, went down a path that was different but no less bloody and riddled with injustice.

While East Jerusalem remains entirely annexed and occupied by zionist squatters, West Bank’s status has become a classic example of the duplicity and dishonesty of western politics. While the “international community” keeps harping about the pre-1967 borders for Palestine and the supposedly inviolable status of the West Bank, the reality on the ground is that zionist squatter colonies are being allowed to take over the land, piece by piece, murdering and robbing Palestinians as they go along.

According to the OCHR, at least 964 Palestinians have been murdered by zionist squatter thugs in the West Bank alone, just in the period between October 7, 2023 and July 2025, of which 96 were in the month of June alone. At least 2,907 more people have been displaced by targeted and illegal demolitions of their houses, and 2,400 expelled from their residences in the same period. In total, the OCHR estimates there are 30,000 displaced Palestinians in the West Bank at this point.

People who have nothing to do with Hamas, or as a general rule even with organised Palestinian resistance, and are living in what is universally recognised as Palestinian land are targeted. For instance, Awdah Hathaleen, Palestinian activist and documentary maker, was brutally murdered by zionist squatter Yinon Levi in July. Levi, who has a history of violence against Palestinian civilians, was released by an Israeli court despite the fact that video evidence shows his direct involvement in the murder.

It is easy to lose track of the fact that, despite the official designation of the West Bank as Palestinian land since the Oslo Accords of 1993, only a meagre 18% of the West Bank is fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Not 18% of historic Palestine, or even of post-1948 Palestine. Eighteen percent of the West Bank alone. That is the “two state solution” that Palestinians have been forced to accept.

An eye-opening way of looking at the facts: a map displaying only the West Bank territories actually held by Palestine; islands in an ocean of zionist occupation

Meanwhile, in occupied East Jerusalem, one of the last remaining free areas, the holy sanctuary of Masjid al-Aqsa is under regular attack. The neo-Nazi minister Itamar Ben-Gvir recently violated the sanctity of the Masjid al-Aqsa by breaching into the sacred compound under military and police protection.

This desecration comes as part of the ongoing campaign to destroy the site of the Prophet’s Night Journey and replace it with a so-called “Third Temple”, an apocalyptic policy that finds significant support among Evangelical circles in the US as well. The extent of this millenarian, pseudo-religious delusion is further emphasized by the recent purchase of “red heifer” cows from Texas to be brought to Zion as part of a ritual sacrifice to supposedly herald the End Times.

The indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu himself has always been a major supporter of this expansionist agenda, with an ideology known as revisionist zionism: a revised and more radical plan for the establishment of a Jew-only “state” in the middle of the Arab world. In an interview with i24 News, Netanyahu claims he is on a “historic and spiritual mission” and feels “connected” to the vision of Greater Israel.

This project, known also as ‘Eretz Israel’, would include Gaza, the entire West Bank, all of Jordan and Lebanon, the part of Egypt west of the Nile, as well as major chunks of Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

This demand is not new. It dates back to the proponent of zionist ideology, Theodore Herzl. As far back as the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 in the wake of World War I, the zionist delegation that arrived to cash in the prize promised to them by Lord Balfour two years earlier, stunned the world with its brazen and arrogant demand made at a time when a Jewish state wasn’t even a major consideration.

The World Zionist Organisation “proposed” that the victorious Anglo-French forces “give” them out of the recently conquered Ottoman Empire not only the entirety of what we now know as Israel and all of Palestine, but also the East Bank of the Jordan river, the entirety of Quneitra in Syria, Lebanon up to and including the city of Sidon and the land of Egypt extending to El-Arish. As we know now, the establishment of a ‘Jewish-only’ state was at the time rejected by the present delegates, but the tragedy had already been set in motion by then.

The proposed “Jewish State” as claimed by the World Zionist Organisation in 1919

Revisionist zionism has been around since the very inception of the zionist entity, and was the driving ideology behind the terrorist death squad Irgun, which played a crucial role in the Nakba. In many ways, it was this sort of preemptive and aggressive behaviour that influenced the paramilitary gang Haganah to initiate the so-called Plan Dalet and begin the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian lands already in March 1948, two months before the British Mandate even ended.

Under the provisions of Plan Dalet, an estimated 800,000 Palestinians were deported and up to 16,000 brutally murdered. Many of them didn’t even reside in the territory that the UN “partition plan” had assigned to the proposed “Jewish state”.

After all, the UN proposal that initiated the partition of the British Mandate foresaw “only” 56% of the land going to the newly established Jewish state, while the rest would go to what was called the Arab State. The entirety of Jerusalem was to be placed under an “international regime” and be accessible to all.

Zionist death squads such as Haganah and Irgun had their own idea about the territorial division and were not satisfied with the proposed land grab. During the Nakba, the so-called “State of Israel” would come to include the Galilee Panhandle at the Lebanese and Syrian border, significant parts of the West Bank that were assigned to be part of a Palestinian state and notably West Jerusalem, among other areas.

This meant that by 1949, the zionist territory came to include no less than 78% of the Mandate, for a total Jewish population that was no more than 30% of the total number of inhabitants of the region. This area has since then expanded to the detriment of the Palestinian people.

Notably, this still fell short of the initial and highly greedy proposal of 1919, which fed resentment among a generation of radical zionist militia members, including later prime ministers such as Ariel Sharon (member of Haganah), Menachem Begin (Irgun) and Yitzhak Shamir (Lehi). This resentment and bellicose expansionist feeling would later translate into aggressive territorial expansion from 1967 onwards.

It could be argued that one of the reasons why governments such as Jordan and Egypt are so easily influenced and swayed into collaboration with Tel Aviv and appeasement of its aggression against Palestinians is the ever-present fear that Jordanian or Egyptian lands could be next. If that is what the collaborationist rulers were hoping for, recent statements by Netanyahu about his “historic and spiritual mission” clearly proves how wrong they have been.

Gaza continues to take the brunt of the cruelty of zionism in action, suffering a genocide on a scale that revives memories of European colonial atrocities. However, the experience of the rest of Palestine, not to mention South Lebanon and Golan Heights in Syria, shows clearly that zionism is not limiting itself to the Gaza Strip alone.

Zionism can’t be placated, appeased or charmed into peaceful coexistence. It is an ideology rooted in exclusion, ethnic segregation and institutional racism. By definition, it dehumanizes the “goyim” for the sake of a perceived chosen people. And, as the experience of de facto zionist settlements popping up in Cyprus following the intake of Israeli fugitives has shown, it is not even an issue that is necessarily limited to Palestine or the Arab world.