ZIONISM FROM THE STANDPOINT ( » ITS VICTIMS HJ II Z io n ist P opulation , Palestinian D ep o p u la tio n I have been discussing the extraordinary unevenness in Zionism between care for the Jews and an almost total disregard for the non-Jews or native A rab population in conceptual terms. Zionism and European imperialism are -• epistem ologically, hence historically and politically, coterm i­ nous in their view o f resident natives, but it is how this irreducibly imperialist view worked in the world o f politics and in the lives o f people for whom epistem ology was irrelevant that justifies on e’s looking at epistem ology at all. In that world and in those lives, among them several million Palestinians, the results can be detailed, not as mere theoretical visions, but as an immensely traumatic Zionist effectiveness. O ne general A rab Palestinian reaction toward Zionism is perfectly caught, 1 think, in the following sentence written by the A rab delega­ tions’s reply in 1922 to Winston Churchill's W hite Paper: "T he intention to create the Jewish National Home is to cause the disappearance or subordination o f the A rabic population, culture and language,’’25 What generations o f Palestinian Arabs watched therefore was an unfolding design, whose deeper roots in Jewish history and the terrible Jewish experi­ ence was necessarily obscured by what was taking place before their eyes as well as to those in Palestine. There the A rabs were able to see embodied a ruthless doctrine, calling for monastic self-discipline and cold detachment from environment. The Jews who gloried in the name of socialist worker interpreted brotherhood on a strictly nationalist, or racial basis, for they meant brotherhood with Jew, not with Arab. As they insisted on working the soil with their own hands, since exploitation of others was anathema to them, they excluded the Arabs from their regime. , . . They believed in equality, but for themselves. They lived on Jewish bread, raised on Jewish soil that was protected by a Jewish rifle.1-