“Zionism is the vast, enormous, unbelievably successful rescue project.” So claimed the Zionist activist Haviv Rettig Gur in a Tuesday interview with the ‘Breakfast Club’ show.
“Zionism is a rescue project” has long been a key Zionist talking point. Even if Zionism has meant displacement, apartheid, and genocide for the Palestinians, at least it meant heroic rescue for Jews, right?
Wrong. Zionism was not about rescuing Jews; it was about establishing a “Jewish state” in an overwhelmingly non-Jewish country. Those two goals were frequently at odds, which is why Zionist doctrine was hostile to persecuted Jews for decades. They were deemed a material and spiritual burden. Zionist leaders wanted “pioneers,” meaning young, wealthy, and healthy Jews, not families, refugees, or invalids. Persecuted Jews were themselves persecuted by Zionism.
But it gets worse. Persecuted Jews were not just a financial burden and a moral stain, but efforts to rescue them were considered existential threats. The idea that Jews could be saved anywhere other than Palestine, so Zionist logic went, undermined the whole idea of Zionism. This is why Zionist leaders sabotaged countless rescue efforts. The movement staked its claim to legitimacy on rescuing Jews, as Rettig Gur reminds us, while Zionist leaders constantly intervened to prevent the rescue of Jews. It was one of the most cynical, if successful, narrative coups in history.