Zionism and the new left Zionists
THE greatest enemy of socialism is nationalism, and the chauvinism that asserts an identity of interest between the
When whole nations are oppressed, with the greatest burden falling on the working class, this is in itself a form of class oppression; but on the other hand there is also the temptation to bury the aspects of the struggle in order to concentrate on national objectives. distinguish between different forms "socialism" in the abstract to giving concrete support to national liberation movements.
This is especially true when it Palestine/Zionism. In each case the presence of a settler working class is
Ta stumbling block to scenario of working ciass revolution
achievement of socialism. For groups like Militant, the solution is to put the National Question to one
propagandise ter (Loyalist/Israeli Jewish) tionalist/Palestinian) working classes. In the case of Israel, they ignore the
Greal material privileges underpin the political support that Israeli Jewish workers give to the Zionist state.
The Second World War proved pivotal to the Zionist cause on the Left. Tribune, which previously had not been particularly sympathetic to Zionism, became the most ardent of the Zionists' cheerleaders under the stewardship of Foot and Mikardo. Indeed up till the 1967 War of Expansion, the British Left other than a few small Trotskyist groups, was virtually unanimous in its support for Zionism.
The Holocaust of European Jewry was seen as validating the claims for a Jewish state, and was used by the Zionists, not as a warning against the dangers of racism and fascism occuring, but as the justification for the dispossession and oppression of another people — the Palestinians.
For 20 years the Zionists' re-writing of history went unchallenged (for example the myth that nearly 1 million Palestinians uprooted themselves in 1948 and became refugees as a result of broadcasts by Arab radio stations.
TONY GREENSTEIN. a member of the Steering Committee of the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine, argues against a retreat by the left.
Erskine Childers debunked this particular myth in an article in the Spectator in 1961,
transcripts monitoring to demonstrate that there were no such broadcasts).
The Labour Left, oblivious to the integration of Israel into the economy, and western geo-political
saw in the Kibbutzim those collective examples of racial exclusivism and exploitation of others (collectively of course!) - ideal examples of practical socialism. Only
started to produce a and even then it was the Labour Right in the form Labour Middle East Council (LMEC) that made the running.
The election of a Likud government under Begin in 1977 and the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 broke the logjam on the left. Slowly it became apparent that Zionism was inherently racist. But although many on the left paid lip-service to the Palestinians, bothered to develop a coherent
The traditional Zionist rallying cry of "anti-Semitism" lost its effect (except that is in the Women's Movement where the Zionist Feminists used the language of "personal politics" and their "oppression" quite effectively to deflect support for the Palestinians). But as the memory of the Lebanon invasion fades, and Labour government in Israel at the moment, it is hardly surprising that some on the far left are reassessing around Socialist Organiser who have begun moving towards a position as well as abandoning support for the concept of a democratic, secular state in Palestine. They claim that anti-Semitism, the legacy of the
Othe existence sup posedly of an Israeli Jewish nation, Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985. Page 28
justify the existence of the Israeli state, sanitised and normalised within
This move to a non-Zionist position has been welcomed by Young Poale Zion (youth wing of the Israeli Labour Alignment's overseas section, an atfiliate of the Labour Party) in the Jewish Chronicle (5.7.85), and encouraged by the Jewish Group, a motley collection of leftist Jewish academics, who Lebanon invasion performed a balancing act between condemning the invasion and supporting state's right to exist.
In a recent booklet by JSG member Steve Cohen (That's Funny, Don't Look Anti-Semitic), reviewed in Socialist Organiser, the myth of "left" anti-Semitism is used in order to deflect support from Palestinians. anti-Semitism establishment which, faced with the growth of the National Front in the 70s, sought to redefine anti-Semitism and so present the Jews' enemy as coming not from the far Right but from the Left. This conveniently excused their own inactivity against the
"personal politics" borrowed from sections of feminism, the subjecdividuals are counterposed to the objective role of different movements. Zionism, they say, cannot be inZionists, individually, are racist and because they themselves are or were the victims of that racism isn't something inherited, and that any group of people given the right set of circumstances can
Two States
It is ironic that a current like form the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine and which played Corterence Test to call Conterence resolution callPalestine, should now be retreating
This is especially relevant given the drift to the Right inside the PLO and the de-facto abandonment by Fatah of the democratic, secular state formula. The adoption of this slogan had represented a major advance for
Palestinians are oppressed as a nationality in the Zionist State. the Palestinians, signifyng as it did a rejection of the chauvinism and bigotry of the landowning and feudal classes who mirrored the Zionists* racism.
It is a slogan which MEC, chaired by Don Concannon MP, has also fought against, representing as it does a challenge to the legitimacy of the Israeli state.
Now Socialist Organiser argues that the democratic, secular state
slogan is a long term, maximalist demand, not achievable without revolution in the Arab East too; and that such a state would have to be a socialist state.
This is true, but it is inconceivable that Zionism can be overthrown without major convulsions in at least the surrounding states. The question is whether a Palestinian state on the West Bank/Gaza would be a step in the right direction. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985, Page 29
John O'Mahony at the "Debating Socialism" weekend school described the call for 2 states as being part of a "democratic programme and agreed that such a demand would have been part of just such a programme in 1921 when Ireland was partitioned
Yet as Connolly remarked concerning Ireland, partition would mean a "Carnival of Reaction" both sides of the border. Thera is no reason to
presume any differently with
Palestine. Socialists who call for such a state are in reality calling for an imperialist solution to the Palestinian question, a solution which would mean a bloodbath of the Left and the Trade Unions and a state dependent on both Israel and the Gulf economically.
Working Class Unity
It was Lenin who argued for making a clear distinction between the nationalism of the oppressed and oppressor instead of conflating the two. It is often forgotten that the Palestinian working class are not oppressed merely because they are workers but because they are Palestinian, paid less, without any union protection if they live in the occupied territories, and as such migrant labour without any of the political rights that Israeli Jewish workers enjoy
History shows that when a settler working class does break from simple economic militancy, it is all too often to pursue thoroughly reactionary Loyalist sie in 1974. A shike such the Ulster Loyalist strike in 1974. A strike such as the British Miners' strike would be inconceivable in Israel, because it would challenge the very state itself. Zionism, like Loyalism, represents an inter-class alliance.
With the increase in unemploy. ment in Israel, there are increasing demands to sack Arab workers in order to reduce Jewish unemployment. The Israeli workers see the Palestinian workers as their main enemy, not their bosses.
The Labour Zionists consciously created a Jewish working class in order to dispense with the Palestinians, which is why the call by the right wing extremist Kahane for the sacking of Arabs and their expulsion finds a ready audience - after all he is merely echoing the 1920s and 1930s demands of the Histadrut = Israel's major employer and also its Trade Union Federation - for "Jewish Labour and Produce".
Zionism and Anti-Semitism
On this subject the Zionists have been most sensitive and susceptible. Accustomed to labelling their opponents as anti-Semitic they have found the charge that it was the Zionist movement which collaborated with anti-Semites and Nazis particularly galling.
Of course this isn't to say that every individual Zionist collaborated or was even aware of what was happening. But we shouldn't be reticent about saying that Zionism undermines the
fight against anti-Semitism, believing as it does that anti-Semitism is inherent in Gentile society.
According to Jeremy Green (G
Ben Noah) of JSG writing in Socialist
Organiser, and Steve Cohen, there is no difference between those who accuse Zionism of collaborating Nazism and the revisionist historians of the fascist right who pretend that the Holocaust never ocurred.
The ISG (and apparently SO) forget that Zionism
was political current in pre-war European lewry. reviled not workers precisely because it played in to the hands of the anti-Semites, and was quoted by them.
Ironically Steve Cohen's own book cites in its bibliography Dawidowic's War Against the Jews. Although it seeks to justify the Nazi appointed Judenrat (Jewish Councils) which ran the ghettoes, if one turns to p. 118, we find that the paper of the SS, Der Angriff, and the Nazi leader Heydrich, make very clear distinctions adhered tote ideas one who between Zionists "nation") and what are termed the "assimilationists"; this is why the only Jewish political organisations allowed to operate in Nazi occupied areas were Zionist ones! Only those who contuse being Jewish with being a Lionist can really believe that those of us who point out the extent of ZionistNazi collaboration - economic deals between Zionist Palestine and Germany in defiance of an anti-Nazi boycott; the hunting resistance leaders in the ghettoes; and the rounding up of Jews for the cattle trucks that would take them to Auschwitz - are the same as those who deny there was a Holocaust.
It is precisely because we reject drawing an equation between being Jewish and being Zionist that this is not saying that the Jews were responsible for their own extermination. No one is suggesting that the Zionists were reponsible: they were merely a quisling, collaborationist movement. And socialists distinguish between a movement and the individuals who comprise that movement.
Although many genuine fascist Zionists were shocked by the Kastner revelations in Israel in the early *50s, when a major court case revealed the extent of the collaboration, amongst the leadership of the Zionist Organisation there was a clear understanding that the priority was achieving Jewish state everything else, including saving Europe's Jews, was secondary.
Israel today there widespread feeling that Semitism in Europe does no harm, as it will "encourage" Jews to come to Isreal (see The Red Lights Flashing, by Rabbi Yehuda Amital, in the Jewish Chronicle, 15.4.83).
For all the bluster by the Zionists and JSG there has been no serious attempt to disprove the evidence col-
(non-Jewish) For some, pressed because with destruction, small least by the oppression. discriminated Lucy migration controls, in this society. anti-Semitism social sometimes them so, especially when it is used - as was the case in the Women's Move- oppression of another group. This isn't to say that racism isn't important or that anti- Nazi part of the ideological make-up of down of anti- and is a anti- are Zionist a fascist.
lected in the book by Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.
Anti-Semitism Finally the question of antiSemitiam is also proving problematic. which Jews in Britain are apparently op-
Cof anti-Semitism. And because the vast majority of Jews support the Israeli state, to call for its societies (as happened at Sunderland Zionist Poly) is itself "anti-Semitic". It is unfortunately evidence that some sec tions of the Left talk about oppression without analysing the nature of that
lewish people in Britain are not
against economically or politically; do not suffer from state racism, and are not subject to im-
police harassment, etc., because lews are "white"
Discrimination against Black people is very real and directly related to Mapam class. What there is is a legacy of
ideologically, which manifests itself in a form of personal oppression - feeling different and
exclusion. That some lews define themselves as oppressed does not necessarily make ment, in order to try and justify the
personal slead Semitism won't reoccur or that it isn't Some leading Zionists collaborated with Hitler's forces: but this does not make every Socialist Viewpoint, No. T, September 1985. Page 30
fascist ideology: but that yesterday's victims of racism can become today's oppressors too.
when socialists claim to have a blueprint for Palestine in
- Israel can exist behind redrawn borders, they forget the Zionist nature of the Israeli state. That Zionism from the beginning was expansionist; that its state depends solely on the support for the West and United States whose interests it protects. Zionism without expansion is like capitalism without exploitation.
Little wonder that John O'Mahony stated that he doubted that Zionism existed any more, and that Israel is just another state. And while some pursue dreams of a non-Zionist, normalised Israeli state, the reactionary Kach and Tehiya forces grow by leaps and bounds. Polls suggest that the fascist right could control 19 out of 120 seats in next Israeli Knesset, a position held in 1949 by
— the "Marxist" Zionist party which will now be lucky to control 3 seats next time around.
Combine that with the accession of General Ariel Sharon to the leadership of Likud, and it should be obvious that there isn't going to be even a bantustan on the West Bank, still less a Palestinian state.
It is abstract Marxism that ignores the concrete and specific features of a society, and drops a principled opposition to Zionism and embraces in-
Tan illusory "solution" to the Palestinian problem.
January 1649: the revolutionary English bourgeoisie execufes King Charles I: four months lafer they crushed the radical Levellers of British workers and
deEmingh ant Block Sent 2-0gre greward
cold. nel Hacker F. De terre Bel D. Counte Tomeanirort Burford. aware and resolute elements of the British labour movement -particularly of its revolutionary wing - have always rallied to the cause of the Irish people, A sure litmus test of