“The State of Israel and the Zionist enterprise were born in sin,” said Sharett in an interview with Haaretz. The 95-year-old spoke at length about his journey from a faithful servant of Zionism in the state of Israel to one of its harshest critics.
Sharett was born in 1927. His father was Israel’s first foreign minister and one of the country’s leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1948. Sharett also served Israel as a member of the Shin Bet, the country’s security agency.
‘Israel was born in sin.’
‘I’m collaborating with a criminal country’
-says Yaakov Sharett, son of Israel’s 2nd prime minister.https://t.co/W49s43ciIp pic.twitter.com/lSrVW9DUPy
— #Africa4Palestine (@Africa4Pal) September 20, 2021
Ending his days in Tel Aviv as an anti-Zionist, Sharett predicts dark days for the country he spent nearly his entire life serving. “This original sin pursues and will pursue us and hang over us,” said Sharett referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine prior to Israel’s creation in 1948.
Sharett recollected the history of Zionism and its rise within Jewish communities. He argued that the moment Zionism called for the Jews to immigrate to Israel, in order to establish an ethnic-nationalist state, a conflict was created. “I see in this whole transformation of the majority [Arab] to a minority and the minority [Jewish] into a majority as immoral,” explained Sharett.
Palestinian refugees were forced by Zionist militias to flee their homes during the ‘Nakba’ – The Catastrophe – of 1948 . (Photo: via UNRWA)
Yaakov Sharett, the son of Israel’s 2nd prime minister and a former member of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, describes Israel as a “criminal country” “occupying and abusing another people.” Its “national agenda”, he says, is “blood, death & violence.”https://t.co/iysDpFdT60
— Dimitri Lascaris (@dimitrilascaris) September 20, 2021
“Have you seen anywhere in the world where the majority would agree to give in to a foreign invader, who says, ‘our forefathers were here,’ and demands to enter the land and take control?” Sharett rhetorically asked.
“The conflict was inherent and Zionism denied this, ignored it… as the proportion of Jews to Arabs changed in favor of the Jews, the Arabs realized that they were losing the majority. Who would agree to such a thing?”
Between September 15-18, 1982, the genocide of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon took place, where 3,500 Palestinians were murdered by militias led by the Israeli army. This massacre continued the ethnic cleansing carried out by the #Nakba of 1948 and again in 1967. pic.twitter.com/O4bgTjNsLV
— Embassy of the State of Palestine – The Caribbean (@Embpal_caribe) September 17, 2021
Lamenting his continued presence in Israel he said that he sees himself as “a collaborator” against his will.
“I’m a forced collaborator with a criminal country. I’m here, I have nowhere to go. Because of my age, I can’t go anywhere. And that bothers me. Every day. This recognition won’t leave me. The recognition that in the end, Israel is a country occupying and abusing another people.”
Sharett also railed against Israel’s turn towards religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism. “When I see the prime minister with a kipah on his head, I don’t feel good,” he added. “This is not the Israel I want to see. How did it happen that this new place, that was to have brought innovations, became the blackest place, controlled by the nationalist ultra-Orthodox? How is it that here of all places, there’s reactionism and zealotry, messianism, the desire to expand and control another people?”
Source: MEMO, PC, Social Media
