Eldad Yaniv Mismaps Zionism and Settlements
“Zionists are not settlers. Zionists are not racists” is the online headline of an Op-Ed in Ha’aretz today by Israeli attorney Eldad Yaniv, author of the National Left Manifest, who unfortunately errs about Zionism and settlements.
In an effort to separate Zionism from a history of settlement, Yaniv fumbles:
[In an earlier Op-Ed Israel Harel] claims that Ofra is the equivalent of the prestate “tower and stockade” settlements, that today’s settlements in the territories are a continuation of the pioneering enterprise of that time.
But when David Ben-Gurion and the Jews in Palestine encouraged settlement under the nose of the British, they were building Jewish sovereignty and creating a Jewish majority in places that the world had designated for a Jewish state.
In fact, many Jewish settlements founded during the time of David Ben-Gurion were located in areas designated by the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan as part of a future Arab state. They include Nahariya, Matzuva, Hanita, Eilon, Yehiam, Kfar Hahoresh (in the Galilee), Nitzanim, Yad Mordechai, Kfar Darom, Nirim (in the Gaza Strip area), Ben Shemen, Hartuv, Kfar Menachem, Kedma, Galon, Gat, Revadim, and many, many more (in the central region).
Take a look at this map from Martin Gilbert’s Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, clearly depicting the Jewish settlements sitting within areas designated by the U.N. as part of a future Arab state:
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