Zionism is Now The Highest Stage of Imperialism
In 1922 the League of Nations issued its Mandate for Palestine which gave the British formal ruling power of the country. The Mandate was part of the carving up of the Middle East territories by western capitalist states after World War I in the so-called Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Mandate was issued at a time when about 78 percent of the indigenous population was Arab or Muslim, and about 9 percent Jewish.
The Mandate also made good on the “Balfour Declaration” of 1917. Lord Balfour, an antisemitic British imperialist, promised the Jewish Zionist movement that Britain would support a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. The Middle East was strategically chosen to further Britain’s dominance in the oil-rich region. As scholar Rashid Khalidi notes, the League of Nations Mandate was an “extraordinary gift to the Zionist movement…the clear implication…is that only one people in Palestine is to be recognized with national rights: the Jewish people.”
These two events effectively made the Jewish Zionist movement a junior partner of Western imperialism. Zionist colonization of historic Palestine was given the full blessing of western capitalist ruling classes who sought to push Jews out on their own nations, while creating a foothold of western power and influence in the Middle East.
