Penguins, Zionism, and the Instinct for Survival

Notes on the wailing Western Wall in Jerusalem Israel Credit: BrasilNut1

Yahweh gave Palestine to the Jews in perpetuity: thus the story goes in the ancient literature of the Hebrews as recorded some 2,500 years ago in Genesis. Why would the Palestinians refuse to hand over their country to the "original" Ashkenazi title-holders to Palestine: if not for their hatred of Jews—if not for their inveterate hatred of Jews?

Is there any merit to this accusation? Could it be that, in fact, this accusation is a smear—one instance of the weaponization of antisemitism—employed by Zionist Jews to malign their Palestinian victims? Indeed, this smear is hurled at anyone with the temerity to disagree with the narrative that Zionist Jews have constructed to justify their European exclusionary settler-colonialism in Palestine, now ongoing for more than a century.

It is as if the Whites in the United States were to accuse the Blacks of anti-white racism whenever they demanded their human rights. It appears that the Whites in the USA have not thought to be this creative when defending their apartheid, their exclusion of Blacks from the rights of citizenship. That is not to say that they have not been nearly as creative in other ways.

Consider a simple test to discover where the truth might lie in this matter, with the Jewish accusers or the Palestinians accused. Imagine a replay of the history of Palestine starting with the announcement of the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917.

In this infamous Declaration—actually, a letter written by one British Lord, Sir Arthur Balfour, to another British Lord, Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent member of the Rothschild banking family in Britain—Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, tersely and artfully conveyed the British government’s commitment to create "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. In other words, the British Empire would use all the authority at its disposal to enable European Jewish Zionists to create a Jewish colonial-settler state in Palestine.

Soon after the Balfour Declaration, European Jews began arriving in Palestine under the military protection of the British colonial government in Palestine. Over the next thirty-one years, these Jewish colonial-settlers—drawn almost entirely from Europe—built the political, social, administrative, and military infrastructure of an exclusionary Jewish state in Palestine—one that rigorously excluded Palestinians—with the fullest support and cooperation of its British colonial government.

When the Palestinians organized to resist the settler-colonization of their lands, the British colonialists were ready to use brutal force against them. Starting in 1936, the British responded with blunt and brutal force as the resistance gained momentum. They made mass arrests of Palestinians, incarcerating them in concentration camps without trial; they demolished homes and villages suspected of supporting the resistance; and clamped curfews on villages and cities to disrupt the movement of Palestinian fighters. By the time the Palestinian resistance was crushed in 1939, nearly all the leaders of the resistance had been executed—often staged as public spectacles—sentenced to long prison terms or exiled. In other words, the British had created the conditions for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Jewish colons.

In 1947, the Ashkenazi Jewish colons began to employ their superior societal, state, and military power to initiate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. By the end of 1948, they had captured 78 percent of mandatory Palestine; simultaneously, the Jewish military and militia perpetrated dozens of massacres to expel 80 percent of the Palestinians from the lands conquered for the Jewish state. Israel banned the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes inside Israel, and those attempting to return were repulsed with deadly force.

Of the Palestinians who remained inside Israel, many lost their homes, agricultural lands, and businesses. In addition, all were placed under military rule that would not be lifted until December 1966. After military rule ended, these Palestinians have lived under a variety of restrictions that remain in force to this day. Israel has been an apartheid society since its inception, with two sets of laws, one for Jewish colons and another for Palestinians.

In a mere thirty-one years, then, the European Jewish colons had created a Jewish state in Palestine after ethnically cleansing more than half its population, a unique achievement in the history of settler colonialism. In June 1967, Israel conquered the rest of Palestine—East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank—while also expelling another 200,000 Palestinians from these areas.

All the other European colonial-settlers in the Americas, Oceania, and Southern Africa had taken centuries to create their own state, something the Jewish colons in Palestine achieved in a mere thirty-one years. In addition, the Jewish colons achieved this without a natural "mother country." How did a tiny, hated, weak, and persecuted minority manage to achieve this miracle?

In our replay of this history, we will not change any of the events of this history of the settler-colonization of Palestine. We will only change the identity of the colons; we will replace the European Jewish settler-colonists with Penguin settler-colonists from Antarctica. These Penguins, too, will enter Palestine to establish an exclusionary Penguin settler-colonial state after expelling 80 percent of the Palestinians from 78 percent of Palestine. In other words, the Jews and Penguins do not differ in their aims, methods, or achievements as colonial-settlers in Palestine. They differ only in their identity: one group consists of Jews—at first overwhelmingly from Europe—another consists of Penguins from Antarctica.

If Palestinian opposition to the Zionist project was motivated by their antisemitism or prior hatred of Jews, then we should expect them to react differently to an identical settler-colonial project, now undertaken by Penguins from Antarctica. The Palestinian reaction has to be different because the Penguins are not Jews, and no one could accuse the Palestinians of antipenguinism or an ancient hatred of Penguins because of their Penguin identity.

No Orientalists—Jewish, Christian, or secular: English, French, or German—have accused Islam, the Qur’an, Prophet Muhammad, Muslim rulers, Muslim theologians, Muslim poets—Hafiz, Rumi, Omar Khayyam—Muslim philosophers—Al-Kindi, Avicenna, Averroes—of teaching the Muslims to hate the Penguins.

Simply stated, the Palestinians could not have brought a prior anti-Penguinism to their encounter with the Penguin settlers-colonists in Palestine. Without prior hatred of Penguins, therefore—using the logic of the Zionists—we can expect the Palestinians to welcome the Penguin settlers who begin arriving after November 1917. Since the Palestinians are not infected with anti-Penguinism, they would not object to their dispossession by the Penguins.

Indeed, if the Penguin settlers could cite ancient Penguin could cite chapter and verse from their ancient scriptures to prove that a feathered Yahweh, some 5000 years ago, had awarded Palestine in perpetuity to the progeny of a Penguin Abraham and Jacob, we might expect the Palestinians to honor the feathered Yahweh’s pledge, since there is only one God, whether he reveals himself to Penguins, Jews, Arabs, Ostriches, or Kangaroos. We might even expect the most devout Muslims among the Palestinians to insist on serving the divinely chosen Penguins as their slaves in perpetuity.

However, we would be sorely disappointed in these expectations. Once we grant the Palestinians their humanity—and we have to, willingly or not—surely they will oppose the Penguin settler-colonists—as they had resisted the Jewish settlers-colonists—but not because of any prior hatred of their Penguin identity. The Palestinians would oppose the Penguin settlers because of what they must do to them as exclusionary settler-colonists. Like their Jewish counterparts, they too will use terror to ethnically cleanse them and establish an exclusionary Penguin settler-colonial state in Palestine.

In other words, the Palestinians will oppose the Penguins because they have arrived in their land with the same intentions as the Zionist Jews. Notwithstanding their disparate identities, both are exclusionary settler-colonists entering Palestine under the military protection of a British colonial government. Regardless of why the Jews or Penguins may have launched their exclusionary settler-colonial project, regardless of who they are, both will use terror to expel the Palestinians from their lands.

Since the Palestinians are humans, as human as the Jews, no more and no less, their human instincts of self-preservation, their human pride in their history and culture, their human love for their homes and their children will persuade them to oppose both the Jewish and Penguin colonial project. Indeed, they have the right and moral obligation to resist settler-colonialism, no matter who the colons are, no matter the promises the deities may have made to the colons, no matter the national mythologies they believe or pretend to believe in.

We may now summarize the argument of this essay. Since an exclusionary settler-colonialism seeks the total or near total erasure of another people, the natural instinct for self-preservation (common to all forms of life) will propel its victims to resist and repel the settlers. The victims’ instinct for self-preservation is not predicated on any prior hatred towards the settler-colonists; their present revulsion over the past and ongoing actions of the colons will suffice to activate their instinct of self-preservation.

In other words, the Palestinians resisted Zionism because it sought their erasure as a people, not because the people who sought their erasure were Jews, real or fictive descendants of the Hebrews. One has to conclude that Zionist accusation of antisemitism against Palestinians is based on the premise that the latter do not possess the instinct for self-preservation. In the Zionist narrative, the Palestinians opposed Zionists not because they were opposed to their own erasure, but because this erasure would be effected by the hated Jews. They would have welcomed their own erasure if only this were to be effected by any other people—Yemenis, Vietnamese, Nepalese or Australian Aboriginals—or any other species—Penguins, Kangaroos, Koala Bears or Dolphins.

Notwithstanding the pretext of Zionism—claiming that the European Jews were reclaiming their divine patrimony—the mostly secular Zionist leaders must have understood that this was a cover for their exclusionary settler-colonial project. The white settlers who effected the erasure of Native Americans also sought cover for their slaughter in divine sources. Many of them thought of themselves as the new chosen race, and of America as their promised land. Other white settlers in North America spoke of their manifest destiny: this was part of God’s plan to create a new freer, Christian society in a new land.

The Jewish Zionists owe their success to brute force, not originally their own, but the brute force of antisemitic Western imperialist powers. This is not to suggest that the results of brute force cannot endure. I will claim exemption from such naivete. No doubt, the Jewish Zionists were inspired by the many successful European colonial-settler states in the Americas and Oceania. There were many failures too. I am thinking of the many European settler-colonies in North Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa that were dismantled in the second half of the twentieth century. There were also two settler-colonial states that belong in this category: South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.

Certainly, history will decide whether Zionism belongs in the first or second category of settler-colonialisms—not time that is measured in years or decades, but historical time that is witness to the birth and death of hundreds of states.

Unfortunately, it may be the case—and I may be wrong about this—that the pioneers of Zionism were not thinking of historical time. Smart as they were, they may have been misled by their own recent successes and by their envy of European nation-states.

M. Shahid Alam is professor emeritus of economics at Northeastern University. He is author of two books of poetry: Intimations of Ghalib (Orison Books, 2018) and Yardstick of Life (KDP, 2024). He may be reached at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.