THERE IS MORE confusion (even on the left) surrounding the 'Jewish Question' than possibly any other. Surely - some may think - Jews are entitled to a 'homeland', and to attack Israel, for not being right-wing or capitalist, but for being a Jewish state, runs the risk of developing into an anti-semitic argument.
Even left-wing zionists denounce anti-zionists as anti-Jewish for supporting the Palestinian people's right to national self-determination while simultaneously not supporting this right in respect of 'the Jewish people'. Left-wing zionists, in common with all zionists, believe that Jews constitute a nation and are, as such, a race. Zionism - a distortion of Jewish history. Zionism was born in the Russian pogroms of 1882 and the notoriously anti-semitic Dreyfus Affair in France. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political zionism, covered the Dreyfus 'treason' trial as a journalist. In his diary Herzl summed up his reactions in an attitude attitude which has subsequently echoed and re-echoed in zionist literature: 'in Paris...I achieved a freer attitude to anti-semitism, which I now began to understand historically, and to pardon. Above all, I recognised the emptiness and futility of trying to "combat" anti-semitism.'
Zionism is a very young movement, but this fact does not prevent it from pretending that it draws its origins from a past more than 2000 years old, asserting that it constitutes a reaction to the state of things existing since the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD70. Zionism's recent birth naturally the best reply to these pretensions.
How is it that the remedy for a 2000 year-old evil was discovered only at the end of the nineteenth century? Zionism has never posed these questions: why during these 2000 years didn't Jews 'return' Palestine? Why was it necessary to wait until the end of the 19th century for a Herzl to succeed in convincing them of the necessity? Why were all the predecessors of Herzl - like the famous Sabbatei Zebi — fiercely prosecuted by orthodox Judaism?
Zionist claims to Palestine derive from a distortion of Jewish history and are based on the false question: zionism = Judaism. In reality, as long as Judaism was incorporated into the eastern European feudal system, the 'dream of Zion' was nothing but a dream and did not correspond to any real interests of Judaism. Zionism was born in eastern Europe when the feudal system broke down and the persecution of the Jews began in earnest. It developed and came to matur22 ity with the spread of fascism in weanti-semitism
Post Perdition, it should be apparent just how powerful, and indeed how paranoid, the zionist lobby is in British society. From the zionist perspective, it is (just about) acceptable to sympathise with the plight of the Palestinian people. However, to oppose zionism at an ideological level almost inevitably leaves one open to the charge of anti-semitism. This is so even if the anti-zionists in question happen to be Jewish, in which case the charge is one of being 'self-hating' Jews who deny their history and background. In fact, there is nothing that infuriates zionists more than being confronted with anti-zionist Jews, who are therefore singled out, in particular, for attack by zionism. JOHN TURKIE looks ai Zionism in the light of the history of Judaism.
stern Europe. Zionism could not gain a foothold until the social conditions for its emergence were ripe. It is a product of its time. Anti-semitism and the myth of Jewish capitalism. The tragedy experienced by Jews in eastern Europe in the early twentieth century was due to a combination of the decline of feudalism and the degeneration of capitalism. Hardly born, the capitalist system was already showing all the signs of senility. The general decay of capitalism manifested itself in crises and unemployment throughout eastern Europe. Jews began to face great hostility from both the petty bourgeoisie - who saw them as a 'threat' - and the working class who, suffering from permanent unemployment and poverty, blamed Jews for their problems. Governments and capitalists engaged themselves in organising anti-Jewish sentiment. In Poland in the 1920s, the state organised an effort to 'dejudify' and 'Polanise' all professions. The universities became a favourite arena for antisemitism. They became places of terrible pogroms, which swept through Poland in the 1920s and 1930s.
"The fate of the Jews is inseparable from the fight against racism'
Western and central Europe were also soon to become theatres of a frightful rise in anti-semitism. After World War One, these countries saw tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants - most of them destitute poor from eastern Europe. " The Jewish bourgeoisie in western Europe viewed this mass arrival with alarm, and began lobbying for the colonisation of Palestine. Not for themselves course, but to help the 'poor Ostjuden' ('eastern Jews') return to the land of their ancestors. In other words, the Jewish bourgeoisie, who with reason feared the rise of anti-semitism, wanted them to go as far away as possible.
The seeming post-war prosperity permitted many Jewish immigrants to penetrate branches of business and artisanry. But not for long. The economic catastrophe of 1929 threw the petty bourgeoisie into a hopeless situation. The primarily commercial and artisan character of Judaism, heritage of a long historical past, made it the principal enemy of the middle classes on the domestic market. The concept of 'Jewish wealth' was (and probably still is) solidly entrenched in the consciousness of the majority, and for the racists it was only a question of reawakening and giving 'presence' - by means of well-orchestrated propaganda - to the image of the 'usurious'
Simply, we can say that the violent racism against Jews during this period not only expressed the will of the ruling classes, it also expressed the hatred of the middle classes in particular toward foreign' elements within the domestic market. Capitalism used this racism and saved itself by resurrecting the Jew and the hatred of Jews. This elementary anti-semitism of the working and middle classes was fashioned into a major component of fascist ideology. But it is precisely because Jews did not play the role attributed to them that anti-semitic
Settlers ariving in Haifa 1949 persecution could take on such magnitude. 'Jewish capitalism' is a myth which is why it was so easily 'vanquiA capitulation to racism Zionism came about in response to virulent anti-semitism, its "solution' being to remove Jews from among non-Jews and concentrate them in a country exclusively their own. It is often claimed that zionism is 'the national liberation movement of the Jewish people', a claim which assumes that the 16 million Jews around the world constitute a national entity. Yet, liberation movement of any oppressed group of people should exist, by definition, to fight their oppressors. According to zionism however, rather than waste time in a futile fight against emigrate to the 'Jewish homeland'.
For many zionist ideologues, antisemitism is endemic among non-Jews. Leo Pinsker, a precursor of political zionism, came to the conclusion that anti-semitism is a manifestation of a
"judophobia' which is hereditary among non-Jews: *Judophobia is then a mental disease; and as a mental disease it is hereditary; and having been inherited for 2000 years, it is incurable.' And the zionist historian Yigal Elam writes: 'Zionism has not regarded anti-semitism as an abnormal, absurd, deformed and marginal phenomenon. It has regarded anti-semitism as a natural phenomenon, something given and normal in the attitude of Gentiles to the presence of Jews in their midst'.
Zionist propaganda claims that the extermination of millions of Jews by the Nazis 'proves' the necessity of an exclusive Jewish homeland'. Many
Robert Caba Socialist Outlook No 1 May/June 1987 Robert Capa
more Jews were saved from the gas camps by escaping to the depths of
Russia, or to the USA, or to this coun try, than by going to Palestine. The simple fact is that Jews were exterminated wherever the Nazis reached, and were saved otherwise. The only thing that this proves is that the fate of the Jews (as of other persecuted groups) is inseparable from the fight against racism, fascism and reaction.
Even by its own admission, zionism was involved in saving the lives of Jews only insofar as this meant bringing them over to Palestine as settlers. In he late 1930s, under the pressure of public opinion, various projects were proposed by the American, British and other governments for saving the Jews of central and eastern Europe by organising a large-scale emergency migration to places other than Palestine.
The zionist movement refused to cooperate and helped shelve these projects. In a recently published book,
Post-Ugandan zionism in the crucible of the holocaust, the zionist historian SB Beitmindedness and the fear of the "territorialist danger" (the migration of Jews to countries other than Palestine) led the zionist movement to act in a number of cases against the efforts of others, Jews and non-Jews, to save
In fact, zionism has on many occasions used anti-semitism to encourage Jews to emigrate to Israel. A February 1969 issue of the daily newspaper, Yediot Aharanot, stated: 'It is of course not customary to talk about it in public, but many of us felt a tiny bit of joy when we read newspaper reports of the swastika epidemic in Europe in 1960; or about the pro-nazi movement in Argentina'. Zionism is a response to anti-semitism. However, it is a response which capitulates According to zionist logic the struggle against anti-semitism should be given up as 'pointless' and the problem 'solved' by segregation, exactly as the racists recommend. Zionism as colonisation Zionism came into being in the heyday of European colonial expansion, when 'colonisation' was not regarded as a dirty word, certainly not in the Euromiddle-class circles in which zionist leaders like Herzl moved. A whose population was not European was regarded as 'uninhabited', 'a land without a people'. In the many places colonised by Europeans the 'natives' were used as a source of super-exploited labour power in the service of the settlers. This practice was not to be followed by the zionist settlers. The specific feature of zionism which distinguishes it from all other modern settler colonisation 24 movements is that it wanted not simply the resources of Palestine, but the country itself, for the establishment of a new national state which through immigration would create its own classes, including a working class.
The indigenous people were not thereexploited, but totally
This strategy is confirmed in the diaries of Joseph Weitz, an important official in the zionist machine in the
1940s: 'Between ourselves it should be clear that in this country there is no room for both peoples together...The only solution is Palestine, or at least
'Zionism capitulates to anti-semitism' western Palestine (later to become Israel and the West Bank), without Arabs...There is no other way but to transfer all the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries. To transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe should be left behind...For this purpose money, plenty of money, can found. And only after such a transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brethren."
In order to facilitate this robbery, and to 'preserve the Jewish character
- that is, Jewish supremacy - various racist and discriminatory laws, regulations and practices were introduced. It is not so much a question of zionists regarding Arabs as inherently inferior to Jews, although many zionists do have such views; rather, the point is that in practice, in order to implement the aims of zionism, it was necessary to dispossess the Palestinians and to violate not only "The "Jewish Race" is a myth' their national rights as a people but also their human and civil rights as
From the start it was clear to Herzl and the other zionist leaders that in order to colonise Palestine they would need the backing and support of the major imperialist ingly, they worked hard in order to obtain - from these powers - a 'charter' for the colonisation Palestine. It takes two to tango, and zionism had to offer something in exchange for such a charter. In the bible of the zionist movement, The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, author explains what that something' would be: 'For Europe we shall serve there as part of the rampart against Asia, and function as the vanguard of rians... We shall keep our times with all the European nations, who will guarantee our existence there'. Since that time, Israel's role as imperialism's cop in the Middle East - particularly after the USA took over as the major imperialist power in the area has greatly increased in importance.
Anti-zionism: anti-racism In conclusion, it is incorrect to brand, as do all zionists, any opposition to zionism or Israel as anti-semitic. The false assumption that zionism Judaism are one and the same thing — an association which allows zionists to label all opposition as anti-semitic — is in fact a distortion of Jewish history.
The zionist state is an exclusivist Jewish state which has institutionalised the expulsion of Palestinians from their land, daily discriminates against them in every aspect of life, and does not even officially recognise the existence of Palestinians. The rationalisation of the colonisation of Palestine at the expense of its Arab inhabitants has created an ideology and society which what of the concept of 'the Jewish people' and their 'right' to national self-determination? Surely, left-wing zionists argue, Jews constitute a race and it must be anti-semitic not to support both Palestinian and Jewish self-determination? In reality, because of the diaspora character of Judaism, Jews constitute a mixture of the most diverse Palestine, Jews far from constituted a 'pure race'. Leaving aside the fact that according to the Old Testament, the Israelites brought a mass of Egyptians with them when they left Egypt, it is enough to recall the numerous races which had established themselves in Palestine - Hittites, Canaanites, Philistines ('Aryans'), Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Arabs.
There is no racial homogeneity between the Syrian Jews, for example, and the Jews of Russia. The first are Oriental in type (Sephardic), while the second are European (Ashkenazy). There are black Jews in India, Ethiopean Jews (Falasha) and "Troglodite' Jews in Africa. The 'Jewish race' is a myth. Judaism has no 'racial characteristics, and it is thoroughly racist to however, zionism shares many of the assumptions of the racists.
Zionism is a false solution to the problem of anti-semitism and is based on a capitulation to anti-semitic arguments. Indeed, if you believe that Jews can and should live in freedom and dignity among non-Jews; that antisemitism can be fought and beaten, then you are thinking as an anti-racist and a socialist. But if you believe Jews should go away 'where they belong' to live 'among their own kind', then you are thinking as an anti-semite. Or a