The False Prophets of Peace Quotes

“Very few Zionist Left intellectuals see Israel as a colonial settler state. They do not attribute its “internal” regime, laws, and political culture to this central characteristic of state and society (not to mention Israel’s Apartheid nature). The majority refuses to see the Zionist movement as an ongoing colonial project.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The Zionist Left lacked compassion when referring to the Nakba. Even its most humanist figures often expressed justification for the 1948 ethnic cleansing in a laconic, offhand manner, claiming it was a necessary and inevitable response to the existential danger that the Yishuv was confronted with.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“It would be the Zionist Left who led the Jewish army in the 1948 war and, after committing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, established the state of Israel. Their governance lasted until 1977 when the Labor Party lost its governmental monopoly to the right-wing Herut Party—later the Likud—headed by Menachem Begin.31 Though”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Their positions are part of a wider worldview that legitimizes any effort to abolish Palestinian national resistance nor that of Arabs against their dictatorial regimes. The lack of a radical anti-imperialist perspective, let alone an approach of anti-capitalist globalization, is in line with their support of US imperial interests in the region and Israel’s role as their enforcer. The Zionist Left wholeheartedly backs the US war against “Islamic terror,” which enables Israel to escalate its military involvement against “refusing” states and resistance movements in the Middle East. The current warmongering by the Israeli security and political establishments against Iran (and Syria and Lebanon) has gained the support of a wide strata of Israeli society. The Zionist Left shares this perspective of a continuous threat to the “security” of the state and has largely internalized it. Hence, no Left movement will be there to resist the disastrous war when it comes.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“All peace initiatives reject the notion of the unity of the Palestinian people and thus reduce the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a territorial dispute with the residents of the 1967 occupied territories alone.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“What we have in hand is sheer opportunism. Shenhav defends his retreat from his earlier challenge to Zionism by referring to his Jewish identity, and even to his personal condition and needs. In turn, the fight for democratization of the state is left to the Palestinians. Indeed, Azmi Bishara “can better defend his own positions [emphasis added]” because they are absolutely contradictory to those of Shenhav. The Israeli establishment persecuted Bishara precisely because he refused to be “an Israeli patriot”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“What a pathetic victory for the historic Zionist Labor movement! Its ideological triumph has been so complete that its distinct political framework was made obsolete.59 The majority of Israeli society has by now adopted the duplicitous discourse of the Left: calling for peace while supporting a devastating war against the Palestinians that blocks said peace. Since the Zionist Left had, by the end of the 2000s, disappeared as a distinctive force, did the post-Zionists fare any better? In a word: no.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“While Lieberman’s open racism seems at odds with secular rationalism and humanism, the Zionist Left has more in common with Lieberman’s worldview than it would like to admit.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“2008 interview with Labor Party member and political philosopher Yuli Tamir, the Minister of Education in the Kadima-Labor government and founder of Peace Now, was fairly typical. Asked her opinion on the wall and on Jewish-only roads in the West Bank, Tamir replied: “There are processes which have been institutionalized, like road 443 [for Jews only].34 And I have always supported a wall. When our citizens are killed in terror operations, I am not a vegetarian. This is not the role of the Left. It [the left] should be activist in regards to the comprehensive solution and the unnecessary attacks on innocent civilians.”35”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The right of return of refugees was rejected, and Israel declined to acknowledge any moral or legal responsibility for the creation of the problem.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“In this context, a critique of the Zionist colonial project that brought about the 1948 Nakba is essential; it targets the very identity of the state and those committed to it. Yet post-Zionists have been cautious to address the pre-state Zionist colonization period and the Nakba.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“This has allowed them to maintain a critical stance toward the Jewish state, while at the same time they leave the fundamentals on which the Jewish state was built unchallenged.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The leading post-Zionists’ lack of solidarity with Palestinian citizens results from their reticence to confront the core nature of Israel as a settler colonial state and society.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“In fact, the Keshet made a deal with the government: silence on the Palestinians was rewarded with benefits for Mizrahim.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Palestinian attorney Jamil Dakwar made clear the betrayal of Palestinian rights as presented in Keshet’s appeals to the High Court:65 “These appeals in fact aim at preserving the status quo which existed prior to accepting the ILA decisions regarding the privatization of lands and the change of their designation. Namely, the situation in which the state continues to hold ‘state lands’ and act in accordance with the discriminatory designations of them. Moreover, since the allocation of lands in the past was discriminatory, the transfer of the ownership to those who benefited from the discriminatory policy means perpetuating the discrimination and even making it more severe.” Dakwar ends his article by demanding that the state return all confiscated lands to their Palestinian owners.66”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“conspicuous example of Keshet’s commitment to Zionism, and its lack of solidarity with Palestinian rights, can be seen in its campaign demanding the reallocation of ownership rights to state lands and public housing apartments.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“But this is impossible: by definition, colonialist projects cannot be liberation movements because they are fundamentally based upon subjugating and oppressing the colonized.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Why they explicitly avoid the notion that Israel is a vehicle for advancing the Zionist colonial project is found in an answer to a question they raise: “What is the relevance of the concept ‘colonialism’ for the discussion on the society and culture in Israel today?”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Instead, they hesitate to define Zionism as a colonial project and when it is mentioned they refrain from elaborating on it.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Silencing the use of the concept ‘colonialism,’” they emphasize, “means silencing history as well.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“However, while the discourse of postcolonial studies may describe the situation of third world immigrant groups in Europe in some respects, its application to the case of Palestinians in Israel is totally misleading. One cannot label Palestinians as an “ethnic identity group” (as is the case with immigrants), because it is they who are the original inhabitants of the land and whose national homeland was occupied by a colonial force.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The tendency of multiculturalism and identity politics to ignore the strengthened nationalist consciousness of Palestinian citizens of Israel and their challenge to the Jewish Zionist state is consistent with avoiding the fact that Israel is the vehicle implementing the Zionist colonial project, and not just another Western nation.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Ein-Gil and Machover’s analysis concludes that framing Palestinians in Israel as another identity group fighting marginalization empties the Palestinian national struggle of its true essence: the democratization of the Zionist state and the dismantlement of its colonial-Zionist nature”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“the very concept of citizenship in Israel is built upon the exclusion of Palestinians from the national Jewish collective. Threats of emptying Palestinian second-rate citizenship of any real political meaning and stripping them of basic human rights are constant. As the absolute “other,” Palestinians are always in danger of ethnic cleansing, as the state waits for an opportunity to arise. In contrast, Mizrahim are included in the Jewish national collective and receive full citizenship, even though they are positioned in the socioeconomic hierarchical structure as inferior to that of Ashkenazim. The difference between Mizrahim and Palestinians is essential.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The Mizrahim continue to face educational and cultural disadvantages, which mostly reflects class barriers justified by racist ideology. This is fundamentally distinct from the national oppression of the Palestinians.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“was thoroughly criticized by Matzpen veterans Ehud Ein-Gil and Moshé Machover.49”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“What makes identity politics so crippling as an alternative to Zionism is the claim that Mizrahi and Palestinian citizens are equal “victims of Zionism.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The Bracha report declares, “[Israeli] society confronts a real danger of falling apart. Emerging multiculturalism will undermine the dream to bring to life the motivation towards a re-birth of Jewish/Israeli culture. This is a dangerous game.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“Seven years after Swirski’s social class explanation of Mizrahim oppression, Ella Shohat, a radical cultural critic, published her essay, “The Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims.”23 After mentioning Swirski’s analysis of the class divisions between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, Shohat discusses the Zionist project as a Eurocentric, Orientalist effort that oppressed its third-world subjects, Palestinians, and Mizrahim alike. Following in the footsteps of Edward Said’s Orientalism,24 Shohat emphasizes the need to consider the negative consequences of Zionism upon Mizrahim, in addition to the Palestinians. “The Zionist denial of the Arab-Muslim and Palestinian East, then, has as its corollary the denial of the Jewish Mizrahim, who like the Palestinians, but by more subtle and less obviously brutal mechanisms, have also been stripped of the right of self representation. Within Israel, and on the stage of world opinion, the hegemonic voice of Israel has almost invariably been that of European Jews, the Ashkenazim, while the Mizrahi voice has been largely muffled or silenced.” Both Edward Said’s book and Shohat’s essay made little impact on the established social sciences in Israel. Additionally, Swirski’s deviation from the cultural-based analysis of mainstream sociology was completely ignored.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine

“The accumulated rage of the Mizrahim against Mapai governments eventually found its expression in “the rebellion at the polls” during the 1977 elections, when Mizrahim shifted their allegiance en masse to the right-wing Likud Party. Later, much of this political energy was co-opted into religious Mizrahi parties, which gradually diverted any potential radicalism into anti-Palestinian sentiment. By 2009, the Mizrahi orthodox Shas Party, which at its onset was politically moderate, had become an extremely right-wing, racist party.”
― Tikva Honig-Parnass, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine