WEST BANK (Dispatches) – In a remarkable political conversion, Yaakov Sharett, the heir to an iconic Zionist family and son of the Zionist regime’s second prime minister, Moshe Sharett, has turned his back on the founding ideology of the occupying regime.
“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 Zionist regime to one of its harshest critics.
Sharett was born in 1927 and is said to belong to a well-connected family from the cream of the Yishuv, the Zionist community in Palestine. His father was the occupying regime’s first foreign minister and one of the country’s leaders who signed the so-called Declaration of Independence in 1948. Sharett also served the occupying regime as a member of the Shin Bet, the regime’s spy agency, and helped Soviets flee to the occupied territories.
Ending his days in Tel Aviv as an anti-Zionist, Sharett predicts dark days for the regime 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 the occupying regime’s creation in 1948. More than half of the indigenous community were expelled in an attempt to artificially construct a Zionist majority.
Sharett recollected the history of Zionism and its rise within Zionist communities. He argued that the moment Zionism called for the Jews to immigrate to the occupied territories, in order to establish an ‘ethno-nationalist’ regime, 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.
“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?”
Lamenting his continued presence in the occupied territories he said that he sees himself as “a collaborator” against his will.
“I’m a forced collaborator with a criminal regime. 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 regime occupying and abusing another people.”