Why European enemies of Jews and Palestinians embraced Zionism

“Why European enemies of Jews and Palestinians embraced Zionism Submitted by Joseph Massad on Sat, 05/30/2026 - 17:08 Protestant imperialists, antisemitic governments and Zionist settlers all sought to rob Palestinians of their homeland. Two centuries on, they have not succeeded A boy waves a Palestinian flag during a solidarity rally in support of the Global Sumud Flotilla in Gaza City on 30 April 2026 (Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP) Off Following the expulsion of the Catholic Crusaders and the dismantlement of their "Latinate Kingdom" settler-colony in the 12th and 13th centuries, Palestine remained in the crosshairs of Europe's fanatical Christians. The followers of Christianity's new iteration, Protestantism, were then joined by Europe's fanatical imperialists in the late 18th century. Ever since, the European enemies of the Palestinian people have persisted in their efforts to rob them of their homeland. Napoleon Bonaparte conquered southern and central Palestine, marching from Gaza to Jaffa between February and May 1799, before being defeated in Acre. His April 1799 proclamation , inspired by French Protestant Huguenot thinkers, urged Europe's Jews to colonise the country, but it went unheeded. Meanwhile, since the late 18th century, the British had actively sought to convert European Jews to Anglican Protestantism and dispatch them to Palestine to rob the Palestinians of their homeland while simultaneously expediting the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. In addition to the British and French regimes, the enemies of the Palestinians included evangelical white American Protestants , evangelical English and Scottish Protestants and evangelical German Protestants - all of whom established white Protestant colonies in Palestine during the 19th century. The Protestant British Empire was the major sponsor of efforts to convert European Jews before disposing of them as colonists in Palestine In the late 19th century, they were joined by Russian Jewish colonists, the Zionist Organization founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897 and the western European Jewish bourgeoisie who funded both. Before the end of World War One, these implacable enemies of the Palestinian people would be joined by the regimes of much of western Europe and the United States . All of them remain today just as determined to rob the Palestinians of their homeland. To be clear, all these enemies of the Palestinians were also the enemies of European Jews. British officials and white evangelical Protestants sought to settle Palestine themselves and convert European Jews so that, as fellow Protestants, they could join them in colonising the country. The Protestant British Empire was the major sponsor of efforts to convert European Jews before disposing of them as colonists in Palestine. Shared enemies The Zionist Organization was correctly considered an enemy of Jews by all major sectors of European and American Jewish society. These included the rabbis of both Orthodox and Reform Judaism, who ejected Herzl and his inaugural Zionist congress from Munich in 1897; assimilated liberal Jews in Britain, the US, France and Germany ; and socialist and communist Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia, among others. How is Israel antisemitic and why does it attack Jews? Read More » The western European Jewish bourgeoisie and the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia opposed the immigration of poor eastern European Jews to western Europe, fearing it would undermine the gains of western European Jewry and fuel antisemitism. They instead sought to evict them from Europe altogether, a goal shared by antisemitic western European governments, by facilitating and funding their migration to the Americas and Palestine as colonists. Rather than helping them overcome poverty and fight for their rights in their own countries, as the anti-Zionist International Jewish Labor Bund - the Jewish labour organisation also founded in 1897 - sought to do, they financed their departure. All of these groups and countries today claim to love Jews, equating it with support for Zionism, which most Jews continued to oppose until World War Two as an anti-Jewish movement sponsored by antisemitic powers. Some even claim to love the Palestinians, equating it with support for the quisling Palestinian Authority regime. In effect, they all remain enemies of both peoples. The US and European purported love for the anti-Jewish Zionist Organization and the anti-Palestinian Palestinian Authority follow the same logic. Recasting antisemitism Ironically, the antisemitism of Christian and Jewish Zionism and Protestant imperialism came to be identified by their proponents as a "pro-Jewish" position after 1917, and especially after 1945, while anti-Zionist Jews came to be depicted by those same antisemitic Zionists, especially after 1967, as "antisemitic" and "self-hating Jews". The anti-colonial struggle of the Palestinians against Christian and Jewish colonisation of their country and imperialist tutelage since the 19th century likewise came to be depicted by those same colonialist and antisemitic imperial powers as an "antisemitic struggle". Against the views of most Jews, Zionism claimed to represent all Jews while seeking to colonise Palestine in their name. Palestinian resistance to that colonisation was then recast not as an "anti-colonial struggle" but as hostility to its supposedly "Jewish character". This illogical propaganda convinced only antisemites, imperialists and their racist supporters - as it still does. It is true that since 1948, and more so since 1967, the majority of European and US Jews were converted from anti-Zionism to non-Zionism and pro-Zionism. Yet over the last quarter century, a major segment of western Jewry has reclaimed its anti-Zionist positions and now stands firmly against Israeli colonisation and genocidal wars. Among Palestinians, despite the subordination of their liberation struggle beginning in the mid-1970s - a process that culminated in the Palestine Liberation Organisation's final surrender to Israel in 1993 - most continue to resist daily against Israeli colonial predations and unimaginable colonial and genocidal sadism and racism. Yet the enemies of both peoples remain committed to supporting Zionism, the most antisemitic Jewish movement in the history of Jewry, and the Vichy-style Palestinian Authority whose complete subordination to and collaboration with the imperialist US and European agenda is equally unprecedented in Palestinian history. This is the impasse facing the US and the European sponsors of Israel today. They remain intransigently committed to a world in which they can coerce all Palestinians into submitting to Israel's colonial and genocidal policies and threaten all anti-Zionist Jews with excommunication. Resistance endures The war launched against the Palestinians and their Jewish and Christian supporters, let alone their Muslim ones, has not abated since the beginning of the 19th century, despite its utter failure to secure the complete theft of the Palestinians' homeland or guarantee the survival of the Zionist settler-colony. Hard as they try, these enemies of the Palestinian people are in a losing battle - one they know could end in the collapse of the genocidal and racist structures of the Israeli state. Hard as they try, these enemies of the Palestinian people are in a losing battle - one they know could end in the collapse of the genocidal and racist structures of the Israeli state As Israel marked its 78th birthday this month, western media and its barons, western businesses, obsequious western universities committed to suppressing academic freedom and upholding their national security states, and the repressive and judicial arms of the coercive US and European regimes continued to be mobilised for the task of preserving it. After two centuries of sponsoring and abetting the theft of Palestine, these enemies of the Palestinian people have failed to complete their colonial task. Yet their commitment to depriving the Palestinians of their homeland remains as obstinate as ever. The Palestinian resistance has proven no less enduring. Like its 12th and 13th century predecessors, who evicted the crusading Catholic colonists, it has not stopped since fanatical American evangelical Protestant colonists established many colonies in Palestine in the 19th century. The first, "Mount Hope", was founded in Jaffa in 1851, followed by the "American Mission Colony" in 1854 and many others thereafter, all of which were ultimately dismantled. This resistance persists today against the equally fanatical Zionist colonists and their colonial structures across the land of the Palestinians, named " Israel ". It is this resistance and the global solidarity it has fostered, including among western Jewry, that stands in the way of the predatory plans continuously hatched by the western colonial enemies of the Palestinians and their local agents. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 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