WHAT IS WHITE SUPREMACY?
White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to all other races and should thus dominate them.
Contemporary white supremacist ideology stems from the pseudoscientific antisemitic and anti-Black racial “science” that emerged in the seventeenth century.
This racial “science” established the foundation for the Holocaust.
WHAT IS ZIONISM?
Zionism is the national movement for Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People.
Self-determination is the concept that peoples who share a national identity — not to be confused with nationality — have a legal right to choose their own governance, rather than being forced into living under the thumb of an empire. Self-determination is a basic tenet of international law, applicable to all peoples.
In 1897, Jewish delegates from across the world met for the First Zionist Congress. There, they defined Zionism in simple terms: “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel [the Land of Israel] secured under public law.”
Zionism has absolutely nothing to do with race. Zionism is a movement for self-determination for all Jews, regardless of skin color. Early Zionists included figures such as Taamrat Emmanuel, who was an Ethiopian Jew.
SCIENTIFIC RACISM, ANTISEMITISM, AND WHITE SUPREMACY
Antisemitism is foundational to white supremacy, but it is not exclusive to white supremacy. As the “world’s oldest hatred,” antisemitism predates both white supremacy and other forms of anti-minority bigotry. White supremacy built upon the already existing foundation of antisemitism.
“Scientific racism” (also known as “biological racism”) is a pseudoscientific form of racism that claims there is scientific evidence to justify racial discrimination or the belief that some races are inferior or superior to others. Scientific racism reached its peak and “legitimacy” between 1870 and the end of World War II. The Nazis applied the theories of scientific racism to antisemitism, which in turn was one of the main factors that fueled the Holocaust. Today’s white supremacist ideology stems from scientific racism.
In the 1870s, Wilhelm Marr, a scientific racist and antisemite, coined the word “antisemitism” to replace the previously used term “Jew-hatred,” as “antisemitism” sounded scientific, which “legitimized” it (as in: “I’m an antisemite, not a Jew-hater!” Sound familiar?).
There is no white supremacy without antisemitism. It’s absurd to describe the Jewish movement for self-determination as “white supremacy” when white supremacists themselves openly revile Jews (and Zionism). Marr, for example, said of Zionism, “the entire matter is a foul Jewish swindle, in order to divert the attention of the European peoples from the Jewish problem.”
WHAT DO WHITE SUPREMACISTS THINK OF ZIONISM?
White supremacists, historically, have loudly opposed Zionism. As mentioned, Marr himself called Zionism a “foul Jewish swindle.”
Arguably the most infamous white supremacist of all time, Adolf Hitler, wrote in his infamous manifesto, Mein Kampf, “For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle…”
Before, during, and after the Holocaust, the Nazis worked to prevent a Jewish state from establishing. The Nazis supported Palestinian Arab nationalists, most notably the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in material ways. In November of 1933, the Nazis revealed that they had established a direct contact with the Arab leadership in Palestine, with the hopes of “adapting the Nazi program” to the Holy Land.
Between 1936-1939, the Arabs in Palestine revolted against the British and Jewish immigration, killing some 500 Jews. The British quickly suspected Nazi involvement, noticing that the Arab rioters carried smuggled Nazi weaponry. The Jerusalem police found that the Arabs had received 50,000 pounds from Germany and 20,000 pounds from Italy. The British also suspected the Germans of planning the 1938 pogrom in Tiberias.
In November of 1941, al-Husseini met with German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and with Hitler himself. Hitler promised al-Husseini that once the German troops reached the Arab world, “Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere…”
In 1957, a top secret document came to light, which revealed that Germany and Italy recognized the right of the Arabs to “solve the Jewish question” in Palestine and other Arab nations. During the meeting, Hitler told the Mufti: “Germany is resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.”
Between 1948-1949, 1000 former Bosnian Muslim SS members joined the Palestinians in their fight against the Jews. Hundreds of members from the 13th and 23rd SS Divisions volunteered as well.
In early 1948, 30,000 army veterans from various fascist forces created an army known as Black International. Some of the members included Nazi soldiers, a pro-Nazi renegade Soviet battalion, and pro-Nazi Poles and Yugoslavs, as well as the Muslim members of a brigade that al-Husseini had organized to fight alongside the Nazis. Black International attacked Jewish towns and kibbutzim.
A source close to the group commented: “These Poles, Russians, Germans and Yugoslavs…are the Arabs fighting for national liberation…Actually their cynical joy is unbounded at the double gift which has been handed them — the opportunity to butcher Jews, and get paid for it.”
After the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, white nationalists have continued to oppose Zionism. In 1976, an American neo-Nazi, Eric Thomson, used the term “Zionist Occupation Government,” alleging that Zionist organizations, working on behalf of an international Jewish conspiracy, are controlling foreign governments. The “ZOG” conspiracy remains popular among white supremacists and white nationalists.
Just as Hitler once did, neo-Nazis have continued colluding with Palestinians in their quest to destroy Israel. In 1972, the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September carried out a massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Black September had enlisted the help of two notorious German neo-Nazis, Willi Pohl and Wolfgang Abramowski, to carry out the attack, though apparently the neo-Nazis were unaware of their exact plans.
Specifically, Pohl aided Abu Daoud, the mastermind behind the Munich Massacre, by helping him obtain forged passports, credentials, and other documents. Even worse, he helped Daoud obtain weapons. According to Pohl himself, “[I] drove Abu Daoud around Germany, where he met Palestinians in various cities.”
Former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, openly reviles Zionism. He’s made statements such as “the only Nazi country in the world is Israel,” echoing the sentiments of many Islamists and those on the far left today. Just recently, David Duke, along with fellow white supremacists Nick Fuentes and Jake Shields, met with a number of pro-Palestinian influencers. Duke also coined the antisemitic slur “Zio,” now popular among many in the pro-Palestine crowd.
THE ZIONISM IS RACISM LIBEL
In 1969, the United Nations passed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Both the United States and Brazil wanted to add a clause including antisemitism. The Soviet Union, which had been heavily oppressing its Jewish population since the 1950s, worried that such a clause would be used to rebuke them for persecuting Soviet Jews. As such, they included a counter proposal, which was a clause that equated Zionism to Nazism. That way, they could say that they were (rightfully) anti-Zionists, not antisemites. Neither clause passed.
But the Soviets were never covert about the fact that their “anti-Zionism” was actually just antisemitism. In the 1960s, Soviet propaganda made blatantly antisemitic claims, including: “The character of the Jewish religion serves the political aims of the Zionists,” “Zionism is inextricable from Judaism, rooted in the idea of the exclusiveness of the Jewish people,” comparisons of Judaism to the Italian mafia, and claims that Israel was merely a means to an end of Jewish imperialism and world domination.
On November 10, 1975, on the 37th anniversary of the Nazi pogrom of Kristallnacht, the United Nations, headed by the Soviet Union, Soviet satellite states, and over countries in the Arab League, passed Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism a form of racism. Absurdly, the resolution never defined Zionism, nor did it explain, how and why, exactly, Zionism is a form of racism. In fact, the delegate for Liberia stated that, while reading the resolution, he “anxiously waited” to see a definition for Zionism, and an explanation as to how Zionism is racism. Since he found no such thing, he voted against it.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia all but admitted that Resolution 3379 had been nothing more than a Cold War propaganda ploy, calling it “a relic of the Ice Age.” In December of 1991, UN Resolution 46/86 revoked Resolution 3379. But while Resolution 3379 was repealed, the dark shadow of its legacy lingers.
THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT IS NOT ABOUT RACE
Many people in the west, particularly in the United States, only understand oppressor-oppressed dynamics through the lens of race and white supremacy. Given the history of their country, that makes sense. Many anti-Israel activists are weaponizing this ignorance by framing the Israelis in the conflict as the “white people” and the Palestinians as the “people of color.” For example, in 2021, Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 massacre, compared himself and the Palestinian people to George Floyd in an interview with Vice News. Another example? Various anti-Israel groups have been pushing the “Deadly Exchange” conspiracy theory, falsely alleging that Israel is behind police brutality in America.
Unfortunately, many people are falling for it. But what they don’t realize is that they are projecting their own experience of the world onto a drastically different region of the world, where the dominant force of oppression is not white supremacy but Islamist fundamentalism.
Palestinians and Israeli Jews are both Middle Eastern people, with Middle Eastern ancestry, belonging to Middle Eastern cultures. The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, whose ancestors spent many, many centuries continuously in the Middle East and North Africa. Ashkenazi Jews, whom many people incorrectly dub “European Jews,” can trace their genetic ancestry to Israel, have practiced a Middle Eastern culture for thousands of years, and were considered “Asiatic foreigners” for the centuries during which they were exiled to Europe.
Of course, racism and anti-Blackness exist in Israel. But they exist in the Palestinian Territories, too. Afro-Palestinians first arrived to what are now Israel and the Palestinian Territories via the Arab slave trade. The Arab slave trade laid the groundwork for the transatlantic slave trade most of us are familiar with; in other words, they established the routes.
Before October 7, some 11,000 Afro-Palestinians resided in the “Al Abeed” neighborhood in Gaza, translating, quite literally, to “slaves.” They are also derogatorily referred to as “abeed,” meaning slaves. This conflict is not between two different races, but between two opposing national movements.
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