Zionism and Western Civilization

Description

It has become common in Arab analytical discourse to claim that Zionism is rooted in the Torah, the Talmud, and Jewish religious and ethnic traditions. I believe there is a fundamental classification flaw here. Zionism, as we attempt to demonstrate in this study and others, has Western roots to which Jewish embellishments have been added. The Jewish dimension is often merely decorative and justificatory, added for its mobilizing power. This classification flaw has led to erroneous assumptions at the outset of much research in the Arab world. This, of course, determines the scope of this research and the way it classifies the information and conclusions reached by the researcher, which often lack significant explanatory or predictive value. To address this deficiency, we have written this study, which examines this issue and attempts to clarify the fundamental Western elements (material and moral) that have shaped the Zionist worldview. It argues that Zionism is not merely a deviation from modern Western civilization, as some claim, but rather an organic product of this civilization and what we call Darwinian modernity—a modernity that aims to transform the world into a commodity to be exploited for the benefit of the powerful (in contrast to humanistic modernity, which seeks to achieve a balance between the self and nature and calls for the cooperation of all humankind to develop the earth for the benefit of all humanity, including future generations).