ZIONISM FROM THK STANDPOINT OF ITS \ ICT1MS bV were described as inferior and subhuman by nineteenthcentury imperialists. For although it coincided with an era of the most virulent Western anti-Semitism, Zionism also coincid­ ed with the period o f unparalleled European territorial acquisi­ tion in A frica and A sia, and it was as part o f this general movement o f acquisition and occupation that Zionism was launched initially by Theodor Herzl. During the latter pari of the greatest period in European colonial expansion, Zionism also made its crucial first moves along the way to getting what has now becom e a sizeable A siatic territory. A nd it is important to remember that in joining the general Western enthusiasm for overseas territorial acquisition, Zionism never spoke of itself unambiguously as a Jewish liberation m ove­ ment, but rather as a Jewish movement for colonial settlement in the Orient. T o those Palestinian victims that Zionism displace, it cannot have meant anything by way o f sufficient cause that Jews were victims o f European anti-Semitism and, given Israel’s continued oppression of Palestinians, few Palesti­ nians are able to see beyond their reality, nam ely, that once victims themselves. Occidental Jews in Israel have becom e oppressors (o f Palestinian Arabs and Oriental Jews). These are not intended to be backward-looking historical observations, for in a very vital way they explain and even determine much o f what now happens in the Middle East. The fact that no sizeable segment o f the Israeli population has as yet been able to confront the terrible social and political injustice done the native Palestinians is an indication o f how deeply ingrained arc ihe (by now) anomalous imperialist perspectives basic to Zionism , its view o f the world, its sense of an inferior native Other. The fact also that no Palestinian, regardless o f his political stripe, has been able to reconcile himself to Zionism suggests the extent to which, for the Palestinian, Zionism has appeared to be an uncompromisingly exclusionary, discriminatory, colonialist praxis. So powerful, and so unhesitatingly follow ed, has been the radical Zionist distinction between privileged Jews in Palestine and unprivil­ eged non-Jews there, that nothing else has em erged, no perception of suffering human existence has escaped from the