by Justin Soutar
As a freelance writer who
has been following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Catholic perspective
for twenty years, it’s heartbreaking to watch what is now happening in the
Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza, as the dangerous radical
Zionist ideology unleashes its destructive power against hundreds of thousands
of innocent civilians and the historic Christian community in the Holy Land continues
to dwindle toward extinction. No less disturbing is the hard-heartedness of
well-intentioned American conservative politicians, TV and radio commentators,
magazine editors, and citizens who, blinded by their wholehearted support for
Israel, cannot see the naked evil of radical Zionism or the havoc it is
wreaking in the Holy Land and the surrounding Middle East.
Radical Zionism is the
fundamental root cause of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Without the existence and activity of this century-old ideology and movement,
no such conflict would have arisen and persisted so stubbornly. The radical
Zionists’ trademark crime of seizing Palestinian property outside Israel’s internationally
recognized borders, evicting or killing its owners and tenants, and handing it
over to illegal European Jewish settlers has instigated and fueled the conflict
while provoking occasional wars between Israel and surrounding Arab nations as
well as radical “Islamic” terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians by a
handful of Palestinians. In this vicious circle of injustice perpetuated by
Israeli and Palestinian extremists, radical Zionists bear greater
responsibility, as they initiated the cycle of violence and consistently kill
and displace far more innocent people than the radical “Muslims” do.
The radical Zionist ideology and movement were founded by a handful of non-religious European Jewish
intellectuals who settled illegally in British-occupied Palestine in the early
1900s, often forcing native Palestinians off their ancestral lands in the
process. An offshoot of the mainstream (that is, peaceful and legitimate) Zionist
movement, which led to the creation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948 and
has generally dominated its politics since then, radical Zionism has much in
common with the better-known twentieth-century ideologies of Nazism and
Communism: it is fundamentally atheistic, secularist, utopian, racist, violent,
and genocidal. Its ambitious goal is to expand Israel’s territory until it includes
all of the land that was part of the ancient biblical Kingdom of Israel, which
stretched from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq,
and to create therein an earthly paradise reserved exclusively for European
Jews. The radical Zionist ideologues have used, are now using, and will
continue to use any and all means necessary to achieve this goal of restoring
the “Eretz Yisrael” (“Greater Israel”), including anti-Palestinian propaganda
and economic warfare; the Israeli electoral process; mass forced displacement
of Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews; illegal immigration and
settlement of Palestinian land; bribery; intimidation; terrorism; arbitrary
arrest and detention; military invasion, occupation, and annexation; and mass
murder.
In their blissful ignorance of radical Zionism, American conservative commentators cite radical “Islam” as the
greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. From the perspective of the
radical Zionists, this common misconception conveniently deflects public
attention from the elephant in the room. Radical Zionism is the more dangerous
of the two ideologies because its followers are more widespread, more
professional, better organized and trained, better funded, more secretive, more
determined, and more violent. Its adherents in Israel, the U.S. and Europe
range from headline-grabbing settler-terrorists to behind-the-scenes
intelligence operatives to politicians in business suits. Their visibility,
activities, and locations may differ, but they are united in a single purpose:
to make the dream of the Greater Israel a reality. The radical Zionist movement
of the twenty-first century wields an international terrorist organization of greater
reach, destruction, and effectiveness than any radical “Muslim” terrorist
network, and it is operating virtually unchecked.
The success and influence
of the radical Zionist settler movement has waxed and waned through the years
depending on various political, diplomatic, social, cultural, and economic
factors. Concomitantly, the methods used to illegally acquire Palestinian land
parcels and the number of illegal settlements have fluctuated significantly over
time. For much of its existence, the movement was limited to small and
scattered groups of European Jewish illegal immigrants living permanently in
Palestinian territory with the knowledge, if not always the approval or permission,
of the Zionist council or the Israeli government. Israeli leaders unsympathetic
to radical Zionism have attempted to halt illegal settlement construction
altogether, which allowed the peace process to move forward. On the other hand,
during those occasional periods when the radical Zionists managed to gain
control of the Israeli government and military, illegal settlement construction
boomed, provoking further violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
We are in such an
unfortunate period now. Following the murder of more than 1,000 Israeli
civilians by terrorists from the violent wing of Hamas in October 2023, radical
Zionists cunningly played on Israeli citizens’ fears of additional attacks to seize
full control of the Israeli government and armed forces. The recent pattern of
official Israeli statements and actions clearly indicates the current government’s
aggressive and unconditional support for the radical Zionist movement and
betrays its genocidal intentions. The current Prime Minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, is a lifelong radical Zionist who committed terrorist attacks
against Palestinian civilians in his youth. His regime is dramatically accelerating
the process of establishing the Greater Israel through forced displacement and slaughter
of the Palestinian people. The killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian
civilians and the expulsion of one million more from Gaza is just the tip of
the iceberg. Building the Greater Israel will require the unilateral annexation
of all Palestinian territory and, eventually, parts of nearby Lebanon, Syria,
Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; the obliteration of priceless Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim holy sites; the massacre of several million innocent Palestinian
and other Arab civilians; and the forced displacement of many millions more Arabs
into nearby countries and areas. In other words, genocide, a regional war,
cultural destruction, and a massive refugee crisis are in the offing, to say
nothing of the environmental and economic devastation the war will inevitably
cause. These regional hostilities will expand into a world war if the international
community intervenes decisively to stop the radical Zionists from founding
the Greater Israel, just as it did eighty-plus years ago to prevent the Nazis
from establishing the Third Reich.
In the violent conflict
of the last two years (not a “war,” properly speaking, as wars are fought by
nation-states, such as Russia and Ukraine) between “Islamic” terrorists from
the radical wing of Hamas and the radical Zionist-controlled Israeli military,
approximately 3,000 innocent Israelis and 65,000 innocent Palestinians have
been killed. It is clear from the outrageously disproportionate nature of the
casualties—more than twenty Palestinians for every Israeli—which ideology is
bloodier, yet American conservative commentators do not sound the alarm about the
dangers of radical Zionism, dismissing factual reports of Palestinian genocide by
Israel out of hand, blaming radical “Muslim” terrorists for the Palestinian
refugee crisis, and denouncing criticism of Israeli policies as “anti-Semitic”.
Whenever an Israeli civilian is killed, these commentators speak and write all
about it; but when a Palestinian civilian is killed by violence or starvation, they
remain silent or mention it in passing, seeming not to notice or care. Are
Israelis and Palestinians not both children of God? Has the Creator not equally
endowed them with inalienable rights?
During the twentieth
century, Turkey slaughtered its Armenians, Germany killed its Jews, and
Pakistan butchered its East Bengalis, to mention just a few modern examples of ethnic
cleansing. Yet in most cases, the genocidal tyrants were defeated, often at the
cost of a bloody war, and the victim peoples survived to realize their dream of
self-determination. In the case of the East Bengalis, the independent nation of
Bangladesh came to birth on India’s east-central border. The good of natural
law ultimately triumphed over the evil of ideology. Taking a lesson from
history, this author predicts that the Palestinian people will survive the
current genocide and return to their homeland to establish the independent
nation that is rightfully theirs.
In 1948, after careful
and extensive research, the recently founded United Nations Organization, led
by the United States, approved the establishment of the modern nation of Israel
with specific borders and with the understanding that within ten to twenty
years, a modern nation of Palestine would be established alongside it.
Unfortunately, due to the persistent and outsized influence of the radical
Zionist ideology, modern Israel has always illegitimately claimed and occupied various
portions of territory beyond its internationally recognized borderlines, and
the birth of the Palestinian nation has been delayed indefinitely. Meanwhile, demographic
shifts during the past eight decades have only strengthened the Palestinian
position. The number of Palestinians during this time has grown rapidly, leading
to a high population density in the Palestinian Territories, while the number
of Israelis has increased quite modestly by comparison. So if anything, the
borderlines drawn by the UN in 1948 are considerably more generous to Israel
than they were almost eighty years ago.
It has been the position
of the Holy See for decades, which this author shares, that the long-proposed two-state
solution, with two independent nations of Israel and Palestine existing
side by side within internationally recognized borders and the historic Old
City of Jerusalem in a special international zone, is the only way to end the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bring real and lasting peace to the Middle
East. There can be no peace without justice, and there will be no justice for
the Palestinian people until the radical Zionist ideology and movement are defeated.
Let us pray daily for the conversion of the radical Zionists and of those well-intentioned
commentators whose ignorance and silence allow the evil of radical Zionism to
grow more powerful with each passing day.
Copyright © 2025 Justin D. Soutar.
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