LETTER | In the non-Muslim world, conservatives generally support Israel, saying that it has an important role in fighting "Islamic" extremism. In the Muslim world, conservatives often come to the correct conclusion that Israel is unjustly occupying Palestine, but for all the wrong reasons.

Over the weekend, protests broke out worldwide over Donald Trump's declaration that Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel. Over 1,000 people gathered in Kuala Lumpur at the US Embassy to protest the decision, in a Umno-approved rally.

Sadly, these sorts of rallies too often degenerate into outright anti-Semitic affairs. It is not difficult to see that certain Muslim leaders here are happy to use any opportunity available to stir up hatred of Jews. It is less obvious that Israel is itself happy to exploit these sentiments.

A close look at Zionism

Zionism is inherently an ideology of victimhood. It was formulated to solve the very real problem of discrimination that Jews faced in Europe and Russia during the centuries after their exodus from the Roman Empire.

Most of us would describe Zionism as the idea that Jews should have a right of return to their homeland where they can be safe from discrimination. This is all most of us ever hear of the founding principle of Israel. From this perspective, the formation of Israel sounds perfectly reasonable.

However, this idea contains a number of very serious implicit flaws, the kind that should outrage progressives, anti-racists and Jews just as much as it should anger Muslims.

First, Zionism holds that anti-Semitism is inevitable. Jews will face racism wherever they go, no matter how hard they and their allies fight for their rights. Therefore, the only option is to retreat to a homeland.

Second, Zionism seeks the formation of an exclusive homeland. If anyone else happens to be there when it is set up, they will be expelled by whatever means are necessary. Jews will be held to a higher status than all other citizens of such a homeland.

Third, Zionism frames itself as a religious idea rather than a political one. If Muslims are unhappy with Israel, it must be because our religions or cultures are incompatible, not our political goals.

Leaving Europe

Zionists began seriously advocating for their ideas around the late 19th century, through at first, they found little influence. At the time, they argued for individual Jews to leave their native countries and live in Palestine.

As the World Wars began, leaders from both sides of the conflicts used racism and anti-Semitism to whip up nationalist sentiments, as is a common tactic in war. Until the 1940s, the US and Britain severely restricted entry of Jewish refugees fleeing war and later the Nazis.

At the same time, the Western powers saw the value of having a friendly state in the Middle East to police their interests. Winston Churchill declared in 1921 that "Zionism is good for the Jews and good for the British Empire".

Jews and anti-racists fought hard to keep the focus on destroying Nazism so that Jews could live in peace everywhere. But the horror of the Holocaust was too much, and most of the Jewish diaspora and many beyond accepted the need for Israel. What they did not foresee was the cost that would be incurred to "save" the Jews.

The Nakba

I have always held that any casual observer who supports a two-state solution to the Palestine conflict will be shaken upon studying the means by which Israel was brought into existence.

By 1948, the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. The Nazis had been defeated. British Palestine had been slowly filling up with Jewish immigrants over the past few decades. The UN voted for the partition of Palestine in November 1947, at which point Zionist militias, backed by the Western powers, began to drive out the Palestinians from their half of the country.

The instructions given to the Zionist militias were chilling in their casualness. From Plan Dalet: "These operations can be carried out either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up and by planting mines in their rubble), and especially those population centres which are difficult to control permanently; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines; encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.”

The resulting massacre is known today as the Nakba, and would be reasonably described as a terror campaign designed to scare the remaining Palestinians into fleeing as far from the Israelis as they could get. Some 850,000 Palestinians were driven out of their ancestral homes. Thousands were killed, and children and infants were not spared.

In many ways the political chaos that the Middle East is infamous for was realised at this point. The Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the first and second Intifadas, the blockades and sieges of Gaza, and the rest of the legacy of Western and Soviet imperialism in the Middle East were all enabled by the creation of the Israeli watchdog.

Israel is thus a land born of two genocides. It remains a highly militarised apartheid state which continues its campaign to suck in the remaining Palestinian land by building settlements and violently driving out the existing residents.

The West continues to pour money and weapons in to prop up their watchdog. Arabs paid with their lives for the rescue of the Jews. And Jews, not realising the folly of Zionism, have paid with their sanity.

What does this have to do with us?

There are some simple observations that I can now reward to those of you who made it through this history lesson.

First, the fact that conservative Malays support Palestine does not give us non-Malays cause to support Israel. The image of a small nation of oppressed people protecting itself from Muslim encirclement is a lie designed to win sympathy. Israel is a colonial settler state that exists on stolen land.

In particular, I want to point out to Chinese readers that we are sometimes referred to as the "Jews of the East". This is normally a reference to our economic reputation. But it is worth considering the accuracy of the metaphor.

Our homeland, China, also bullies non-Han races within its borders. Some are marginalised and turned into tourist attractions. Those who put up resistance, as the Tibetans did, are brutally suppressed and occupied.

China purports to look out for the interests of the Chinese diaspora, but it is obvious that the diaspora is much too diverse to be universally beholden to the political views of our communist-but-actually-quite-capitalist homeland.

Second, Israel deliberately cultivates a perception of vulnerability, and has always framed any opposition to its existence as "antisemitism." It frequently complains that the Palestinians are never interested in the "peace process," even though they won't pause construction of new settlements while talks run. In reality, Israel is far and away better armed than any of its neighbours. Their Iron Dome missile defence system means that rockets from Gaza are now almost totally useless, though that hasn't stopped them from bombing Gaza in retaliation.

Conversely, protesting Israel on the grounds that it is the centre of some Jewish conspiracy to control the world plays right into Israel's hands. There is nothing the Israeli government would love more than to make their American benefactors think that they're about to be invaded by angry Muslim barbarians. That means more aid and weapons for them to use against Palestinians.

Third, anybody who opposes Israel while being a racist in some other capacity is a hypocrite, and is not helping. That includes Umno, who was happily scapegoating Chinese people again during their general assembly, and who routinely steps on Orang Asli to log their forests.

What else is Ketuanan Melayu but Zionism for Malays? Likewise, those of us who support Israel because it "fights Muslims" is simply playing into Israel's narrative.

In the same vein, we cannot expect our rulers to actually help Palestine when push comes to shove. It was the Arab leaders who compromised with Israel after the Six Day War, and who today are happy to jab at Israel from time to time while making sure that Palestinian activism doesn't threaten their own regimes.

Why should we trust our own government, silent allies of the Saudis who are currently destroying Yemen, or who would rail against Myanmar for oppressing the Rohingya but turn away Rohingya refugee boats when they beg for our help? Only international solidarity and popular movements can create a secular Palestine with equal rights for Jews and Arabs.

The only way to fight is together

The story of Jerusalem is not the story of two unruly neighbours at each other's throats. It is a story of a people who were thrown out of their land and live under the jackboots of their oppressors while clinging on to their history. It is a betrayal of the memory of Jews who fought and died for racial equality all around the world. The state of Israel was a mistake and should not exist as it does.

Peace for the Jews will not be won by a decreed homeland. It will be won the same way, the only way, it is won by other oppressed peoples: struggle and solidarity.

Overseas Jewish groups such as the Australian Jewish Democratic Society and the US-based Jewish Voice for Peace show that many in the Jewish diaspora are critical of Israel's treatment of Palestine.

That means that in Malaysia, all of us need to support the Palestinian struggle and its campaign of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and we need to do it on an anti-racist, anti-imperialist basis.

Further we must translate that struggle to the fight for racial equality here. We are not fit to aid the Palestinians if we would not fight against Ketuanan Melayu, for the sake of both non-Malays who are discriminated by it and poor Malays who are fooled into supporting it.

This world of ours is broken up with lines drawn by greedy men who would hoard the fruits of our labour while turning us against each other. Let us be rid of them.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.