Is Zionism Fascism?

We reprint below [in a separate post] the FLT statement in opposition to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The FLT takes the view that the Israeli state is ‘Zionist-Fascist’. CWG has historically opposed the analysis of Israel as a ‘fascist’ regime as it is a form of democracy. We are opening this question up for debate in our group. Here a CWG member puts the outline of an argument in support of the ‘Zionist-Fascist’ position.

Fascism is an extreme social movement that arose in Europe between the wars in response to the crisis-ridden capitalism of the early 20th century. It emerged under the threat of a workers’ revolution when bourgeois democracy had exhausted its ability to contain the working class. Its function was to smash the revolutionary vanguard before it could mobilise the working class in a revolutionary uprising. It employed an extreme nationalist, racist ideology in order to bind together the middle classes with sections of the working class in the name of defending the nation from communism.

Zionism is the founding ideology of the Israeli state. It is based on several founding myths that declare Jews’ God-given right to be the exclusive occupants of Palestine. It defends that right by constant reference to anti-semitism and the ‘holocaust’.

Zionism as a doctrine fatalistically submitted to anti-semitism. In the Europe of the early 20th century anti-semitic movements called on all Jews to ‘get out’. Zionism took up this call to provide a homeland to escape to. Yet in doing so, Zionism made many deals with the European ruling classes, not least the Nazis, in return for their cooperation in transferring Jews to Palestine.

The cost of these agreements to Jews was millions of more deaths than would have been the case had the Zionists not existed. The Zionists agreements with the Nazis were to concentrate Jews for shipment to labour camps and extermination camps in exchange for the freedom to select and relocate some Jews to Palestine. Where the Zionists were weak, resistance to Nazi extermination saved the majority of Jews. In some countries active opposition prevented any transportation and killing (Denmark). Where Jews fled Europe into the Ukraine or Russia they survived in their millions.

Thus Zionism is not an antidote to fascism but its junior partner in the death and destruction of Jews. The sacrifice of Jewish workers can only be explained by a Zionism that is the class ideology of Jewish capital. The Zionists representing the interests of the Jewish bourgeoisie which needed a homeland to defend their capital. Jews as finance capitalists facing the collapse of European capitalism before and after WW1 were both bankrupted by national capitals with which they were associated and forced to flee. Those who could not move their capital to new countries wanted to found a Jewish state to protect their capital. Not only that, they wanted a Jewish working class, selected from the European working class to establish a capitalist economy in Palestine.

The price paid by Jewish workers who were rounded up by Zionist organisations to feed the Nazi’s labour and extermination camps proved that Zionism was motivated by exactly the same class interests as the Fascists in Europe. They wanted to select a racially pure and strong stock out of those ‘concentrated’ in Europe, take them out of the hands of the ‘anti-semites’ who would work them to death, and save them for shipment to Palestine where they would become the core of a Jewish working class. Just as the European capitalist powers were prepared to sacrifice millions of workers in wars to defend their capital, the millions of weak, old and otherwise defective Jews who would not be of any ‘use-value’ in Palestine were similarly sacrificed.

But if Palestine was already being formed as a racially pure Jewish state in collaboration with the fascists, could it be any less fascist? First, Zionist reactionary nationalism was the ideology of Jewish capital facing destruction during the capitalist crisis of the interwar years and organised bourgeois, petty bourgeois and working class settlers to found a national homeland for Jewish capital.

Second, the class collaboration with the Nazi’s scapegoating of Jews, betrayed working class Jews into the labour and extermination camps and played into the Nazi’s objective to smash the communist movement. This complicity was critical, since working class Jews were strongly overrepresented in working class struggles and revolutionary organisations and even more so in the leadership of these organisations. Where the Zionists were unable to separate Jewish workers from the rest of the working class their role in the resistance proved that this was the only way to defeat fascism.

Finally, the very act of establishing the state of Israel mimicked the Nazi invasion and seizure of foreign lands. Palestine was already occupied by a large majority of non-Jews. The peasant and working class inhabitants were evicted, relocated in ghettos and concentration camps, and then terrorised by a policy of military genocide.

Dave Brown

From Class Struggle 67 June/July 2006

Why nuke Iran?

The reformist left is alarmed at Bush and his threat to nuke Iran. They think that Bush is crazy and the alternative is a return to ‘sanity’. Juan Cole says a war with Iran might “alarm” the US public and “could cost the Republican Party its majority in Congress”. Wow, maybe good old US democracy in the form of the Democrats will come to the rescue at home. This would be an interesting twist to Bush's logic, “You envy our democracy, OK we can drop it on you”.

The theme is that the neo-Cons represented by Bush, and by default, the whole Republican Party, are the problem here. After all how else to explain something as 'crazy' as nuking Iran's nuclear installations? Must be the neo-cons. No-one else wants to nuke Iran. The Russians and Chinese have too much at stake. The EU and even poodle Blair are reluctant. Even the Israelis cannot be so stupid (but they might do it if the price was right).

So why go to such lengths to destabilise the 'international community’? Because the neo-cons are crazy (most commentators) wrong (Fukayama) irresponsible (Tony Negri) arrogant elites (Chomsky) or oily Texans (Eisenhower). So wake up US public kick out the Republicans and elect the Democrats.

Are these people blind to what has driven US foreign policy for nearly 200 years? The US has gone to war, overthrown governments, used nukes on Japan, threatened to use them against Vietnam, Cuba and the USSR for years (it was called the Cold War).

What is doing in Iraq and threatens to do in Iran is par for the course. Are we saying that the US was led by crazy, stupid, ignorant Republican Presidents and ruling parties for its whole history? We can easily disprove this. Look at the record of Democrats Roosevelt, Johnson, Carter and Clinton. None of them reneged on wars, sanctions, blockades etc to pursue US imperial interests.

Imperialism is the root cause

Instead of looking for some 'aberrant' cause in the George W. Bush’s personality, new right ideology, cabals of crooks, etc to explain US actions in any particular case, let’s be parsimonious. Let’s try for a one size fits all explanation.

What about imperialism? This accounts for a lot. The US was the ‘first new nation’ to become a super-power able to rival and then dominate its competitors. In the post-WW2 period the US became the dominant global capitalist power occupying its rivals and quarantining the USSR and China.

Globalisation is really about US finance capital taking over the world economy. While no-one else can challenge it, it can do what it likes. There is no UN, or ‘international community’ except as a cover for the US policy of unilateral, pre-emptive assaults. Now it’s so powerful it no longer needs this cover and simply asserts its ‘rights’.

For the US the opportunity cost of running the world is greatest gain for least cost. Having ‘rogue’ states bucking the US is a potential cost in terms of resources and military enforcement. The US ruling class knows that its long term requirement for resources will meet resistance. It must neutralise that resistance in advance.

In the post-Cold War period it has shifted the target from the ‘reds’ who have conveniently opened up their countries to US corporate exploitation. It is not a priority to pursue North Korea as an minor irritant which might risk the investment in a dynamic capitalist East Asia. But they can still pull out the ‘red card’ when former Stalinist politicians like Putin get in the way of US corporate interests in what remains of the old USSR.

The main parts of the world that the US still needs to dominate are in Central Asia. Here client regimes are being established and pepper potted with US military bases. Resistance to US dominance in Asia is demonised as ‘radical Islam’. And the new military target is the potential WMDs of radical Islam. The US does not need another 9-11 to mount a nuclear strike on Iran – it is a continuation of 9-11 and the ‘war on terror’. Iran is already set up as an irresistible target.

Defend Iran’s right to nukes!

This demand is the one that most of the left find hard to swallow. Most people agree that it is wrong for the US or Israel to threaten to use nukes, but they can’t make the step from their to accepting Iran’s right to nukes. For us the issue has nothing to do with nukes as such. Nukes are merely weapons. True they are dangerous and potentially calamitous. But they are weapons essentially. The important distinction is nukes in the hands of imperialism, and nukes in the hands of oppressed countries.

We argue that oppressed countries have the right to defend themselves from imperialist military invasions with whatever weapons necessary. It seems only nuclear weapons are capable of deterring the use of nuclear weapons – e.g. Cuba 1960, Vietnam 1968, North Korea today. The problem therefore is imperialist nukes, not the nukes of oppressed semi-colonial countries. The more the workers in the imperialist countries are able to disarm the military machines of nuclear weapons at home, the less will it be necessary for oppressed countries to resort to the use of nuclear weapons to defend themselves from imperialism.

And just as we expect that the working classes in the imperialist countries will not sit idly by and allow their ruling classes to use nukes, we also expect that the worker, peasant and student masses in the oppressed countries will want to take the control of nuclear weapons out of the hands of the nationalist regimes that share in the exploitation and oppression of the working people. With nukes in the hands of popular militias their use will be determined not by ruling class military adventures but by the defensive needs of the working people alone.

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

Review: Whose News?

Documentary made by Aotearoa Independent Media Centre, 2004. 27 minutes.

This short documentary raises some serious issues about the quality of news in New Zealand media. Leading with the statement that NZ has the "most deregulated, commercialised media market in the world", it examines private ownership and the drive for profits with the implication they both have a profound effect on news content. But it sees the main culprit as foreign ownership.

Bill Rosenberg of the Campaign against Foreign Ownership sets out patterns of ownership in the press, radio and television. His argument is that not only do foreign owners dominate the media market, but they influence media content. The evidence he presents of the domination of NZ media by foreign owners is incontrovertible. But what about content?

Are foreign-owned media more business biased?

The commentary points to NZ having no restrictions on foreign ownership nor cross media ownership to prevent monopolies. But although the question of influence by these foreign owners is raised, the film gives only one example.

In 2001, as part of a campaign in the New Zealand Herald promoting NAFTA, the Herald owner Tony O'Reilly brought Brian Mulroney, a former Canadian Prime Minister, to NZ to advocate for international trade agreements. At the same time, the anti free-trade lobby brought Naomi Klein to speak. Thousands attended her public meetings. The Herald covered Mulroney extensively, while Klein was relegated to soft news on the features page.

Rosenberg suggests that Rupert Murdoch papers supported the war in Iraq but gives no evidence. The Guardian ran a story claiming that the Murdoch press editors world-wide followed their boss's pro-war line (Greenslade, 2003). Wellington’s Dominion was included.

Yet The Dominion also carried stories by Robert Fisk opposing the war and that the Labour Government had popular support for refusing to join President Bush's rush to war. Therefore the claim that their editorial line supported the US invasion of Iraq would seem to be unproven.

To test Rosenberg’s claim that foreign owners influence content, the documentary makers should have looked at the only remaining locally owned metropolitan daily in NZ, the Otago Daily Times, and compared its content with the other metropolitan dailies. The NZ press has always been a profit-making enterprise, and local capitalist owners must operate their papers in competition with their foreign-owned rivals. The bottom line means bottom feeders. So putting one’s faith in local media ownership is like asking Doug Myers to give the $500 million his family made from booze to NZ charities.

The sacking of Malcolm Evans

One section of the documentary looks at the dismissal of NZ Herald cartoonist, Malcolm Evans as a case of the censorship of political views. His cartoons on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drew complaints, Evans says, from Zionists. He was asked by the editor not to submit work on the subject. Evans says he was employed on the basis of editorial independence and refused this directive.

Should we defend Evan’s absolute right to freedom of speech? The cartoon at the centre of the controversy substituted a Star of David for the second 'a' in the word 'apartheid' on a wall in a Palestinian area. Evans quotes at length from Avraham Burg, an Israeli who objects to his Government's policy on Palestine, in support his own position. He equates his case with that of cartoonist Tony Auth whose cartoon in the Philadelphia Enquirer showed Arabs herded into jail-like sections of the Star of David. Lobby groups protested strongly but Auth's editor defended him publicly. See also the Oliphant cartoon above.

It is true that the Star of David associates all Jewish Israelis with their Government's treatment of Palestinians, including those who actively oppose the occupation of Palestine. One could argue that Evans is playing into the hands of Zionists who claim that pro-Palestinian supporters are anti-Semitic. Nevertheless Evans has a right to freedom of expression and we do not support his sacking. We are for mass media owned and controlled by the workers in which all views including anti-Semitism can be expressed openly and debated freely.

Profits vs. public service on quality news?

The documentary presents convincing evidence for the claim that commercial pressures undermine the quality of news. Joe Atkinson cites the deterioration of state television news since the push for deregulation in the 80s when TVNZ was made a State Owned Enterprise. But the real question is ‘how much deterioration’?

But the doco makers say it is "too soon" to test whether the new TVNZ charter with its public service goals, has made any impact on news and news programmes. Or is it?

When Bill Ralston became TVNZ's first head of news and current affairs under the charter, he came with a reputation as a good investigative journalist. But Ralston declared he wanted no more boring stories. Mediawatch (2004) has tracked the shedding of experienced journalists and the demise of the weekly documentary programme Assignment leaving Sunday to cover current affairs with stories that lack depth and context. Colin Peacock's comments imply it takes a tabloid approach;

Most often...Sunday's stories simply aren't newsworthy enough. Take last weekend - the Maori Party was registered, ACT got a new leader - but Sunday chose to trail this:

[trailer for a story on infidelity]"Are you being cheated on? Are you cheating? -It's our nature, women get away with affairs far more than guys do. Convinced it will never happen to you?" (Mediawatch, 2004).

Despite such alarming early signs, Whose News? concludes by suggesting public broadcasting is a solution and not part of the problem of inferior standards of news. This is a blind liberal act of faith. It needs to be put into the context of a state ‘hollowed-out’ by international capital with few resources to fund public service media, which is somehow going to pull off objective and balanced reporting? Pull the other one. Only a media owned and controlled by the workers can come anywhere near a ‘democracy of ideas’.

From Class Stuggle 58 October November 2004

Palestine: The Road Map to Hell

From Class Struggle 50, May-June 2003

The so-called “Road Map” for the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was born of a US-UK desire to help various Arab regimes defend their support for the war against Iraq before their hostile subjects. Bush proclaimed his support for the eventual creation of a Palestinian mini-state at the Azores summit in March, immediately prior to the start of hostilities against Iraq by the “coalition of the willing”.

The circumstances surrounding the final release of the Road Map and its contents make clear that the purpose of US intervention on the Palestine question is to consolidate its own position as the Mideast superpower. Unlike previous similar initiatives, the Road Map was unveiled without even a US presidential appearance, much less the Rose Garden handshake between Palestinians and Israelis that has accompanied previous initiatives. Israeli reaction was swift and unmistakable. In the immediate aftermath of the road map’s publication, the Israeli Defence Force launched a number of operations in the West Bank and Gaza. The most devastating was on May 1 in Gaza City, claiming 12 lives, including those of top Hamas member Yusef Abu Hein and his two brothers and three children—one aged just two years

The road map was only issued after the US successfully forced part of the first stage on the Palestinians—“comprehensive political reform”. This translates into the removal or sidelining of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the installation of a regime that is ready to do Washington’s bidding.

Arafat has for a long time wanted a sell out deal with Israel, as was demonstrated by his signing up to the Oslo Accords in 1993. But both Tel Aviv and Washington have wanted to remove him because of his subsequent refusal to go along with Israeli efforts to rewrite the Oslo agreement in order to reduce the territories making up a Palestinian state and legitimise the vast increase in Zionist settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arafat’s fate was sealed when he failed to suppress the intifada that erupted in September 2000 as a result of Likud leader Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount.

The Chalabi of Palestine

Washington’s chosen replacement for Arafat is Mahmoud Abbas — known as Abu Mazen — a businessman and adviser to the rulers of Qatar, who sits on the right wing of Arafat’s Fateh and who led the discussions culminating in the Oslo Accords. Abu Mazen is the Chalabi of Palestine. His elevation to the post of prime minister, which he assumed by making a speech promising to combat terrorism “by any party and in all its shapes and forms”, was backed by Washington. So was his slate for cabinet posts —particularly the nomination of Muhammad Dahlan as top security official because of his proclaimed readiness to crack down on militant Palestinian groups.

Only after Abu Mazen was successfully installed was the road map published. An unnamed Bush official told the press candidly of Washington’s intentions: “We’re telling people that this is the moment to build up Abu Mazen, and it undermines that objective if you treat Arafat like he’s still in charge. That cannot happen and must not happen.”

Three Phases of Defeat

As for the road map itself, the document offers little to the Palestinians other than a series of demands that they abandon and suppress any struggle against Israeli occupation. Its proposals are divided into three phases, culminating in the founding of a Palestinian mini-state by 2005. “The Quartet” — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia — are to decide whether each stage has been completed successfully. But each stage is progressively less well defined and no definition is given as to what would constitute a Palestinian state. From the general tenor of the document, it can only be an apartheid-style bantustan, wholly subservient to its more powerful Israeli neighbour and answerable more or less directly to Washington.

Phase One of the Road Map begins with an immediate and unconditional cessation of violence by the Palestinians, “visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere” and the mounting of “effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure”. The restructured/retrained Palestinian security forces” are to resume security cooperation with their counterparts in the Israeli Defence Force, “with the participation of US security officials”.

Only after such a massive security clampdown is deemed by Washington to have been successful is Israel to begin a “progressive withdrawal” of its troops — and then only from those areas occupied from September 28, 2000, the start of the intifada — and freeze any further settlement activity.

Phase Two is meant to focus on “the option of creating an independent Palestinian state”, but with only “provisional borders” and “attributes of sovereignty” as determined by “the consensus judgment of the Quartet” and only after Palestinian elections are held that it is hoped will further marginalise both Arafat and any group opposed to Washington’s dictates. The fate of the Palestinians is also linked in the document to securing “the goal of a comprehensive Middle East peace (including between Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon)”.

Phase Three, a “final, permanent status resolution in 2005”, is meant to include a settlement of all outstanding issues including borders, sovereignty over East Jerusalem settlements and the disputed right of nearly 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to the lands from which they were dispossessed in 1948. None of this is defined, other than with a prescription that it should be “agreed, just, fair, and realistic”.

The Road Map offers far worse conditions to the Palestinians than anything contained in the Oslo Accords, and it holds out potential rewards that are even less attractive. There is not a chance that any Palestinian entity created by this document would have even a semblance of independence. It would not enjoy territorial contiguity and would continue to be policed by Israeli forces as a virtual prison camp for a captive population. The Road Map could only be advanced by a regime drunk on its own power, which believes it can do what it wants in the aftermath of the military crushing of Iraq.

The Palestinians will inevitably resist efforts to impose a US-inspired settlement.Abu Mazen has no popular base and is widely viewed as a tool of the US and Israel. As for Sharon, he calculates that he enjoys enough support in Washington to derail any negotiated settlement that requires Israeli concessions. The majority of his cabinet is on record as opposing an independent Palestinian state in any form, while some have come out forthrightly for what amounts to the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza in order to establish a “Greater Israel”.

Speaking to Haaretz on April 14, Sharon granted that the “Iraq war created an opportunity with the Palestinians we can’t miss”, but boasted that he had told President Bush “a number of times—I made no concessions in the past, and I will make no concessions now, or ever make concessions in the future, with regard to anything that is related to the security of Israel.”

Labour, Greens side with Sharon

Predictably, the Clark government has added its weedy little voice to the chorus of Western nations demanding that the Palestinians accept Bush’s Road Map. On his recent visit to the Occupied Territories, New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff met Arafat personally to warn him of the ‘consequences’ of not following the Washington line. Goff’s ‘friendly advice’ is the diplomatic flipside of the military pressure New Zealand helps to bring to bear on Palestine as a part of the so-called Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), a US-funded international army which patrols the southern border of the Gaza Strip on behalf of Sharon. The ‘peacekeepers’ in the MFO specialise in trying to stop supporters of the intifada smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip across remote tracks and through tunnels from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. And how about the Green Party, which has been keen to present itself as a supporter of the Palestinian cause, sending MPs to speak to rallies and condemning Sharon in parliament? The Greens are giving enthusiastic support to the Road Map. The Greens are a party which represents the interests of small business, so they are naturally sympathetic to the politics of the small-time capitalists in the Palestinian Authority who are selling out to the US in the hope of becoming the managers of a UN neocolony. We’ve already seen the Greens sell out over Afghanistan, where they supported UN-organised military action, and Iraq, where they backed a Franco-German military occupation as an ‘alternative’ to US military occupation. Support for the Road Map is one more reason not to trust the Greens.

Some of the information in this article comes from the World Socialist Web Site at www.wsws.org

Different Road, Different Destination

If Bush’s Road Map offers nothing but destruction, is there a different, revolutionary road for the Palestinians and their supporters around the world? Let’s look at the facts: Palestine is a small semi-colony whose economy is dominated by the imperialist US and its puppet Israel. Israel itself is an artificial apartheid state which can only exist because of enormous US subsidies. The US has always supported Israel over the Palestinians, because Israel is a guaranteed friend for the White House in the Middle East. Surrounded by Arab populations that hate it for its treatment of the Palestinians, Israel has only ever had Western imperialist powers like America to turn to for help. That suits the Americans fine – they can use Israel as a foothold in an oil-rich region, in return for throwing it billions of dollars worth of financial and military aid yearly. American help might seem on the surface like a good thing for working class Israeli Jews, but in reality they pay for Uncle Sam’s ‘aid’ with dangerous lives in a garrison state in perpetual economic crisis.

Even if it achieved full political independence, Palestine could never be free of imperialist domination, as long as its economy was dominated by the US and Israel. As we have seen, the Road Map offers the Palestinian people not a viable state but a Bantustan. Under the terms of the accord, this ‘state’ would constitute less than 20% of the original Palestine, be broken into hundreds of pieces by Israeli roads and be pockmarked with armed Zionist settlements and Israeli army bases. Devoid of heavy industry or a proper infrastructure, such a ‘state’ could serve only as a crash pad for Palestinians forced to cross its borders every day to work in Israel. The petty capitalists who dominate the Palestinian Authority would serve as managers of the Palestinian labour force, taking a few crumbs from the Israelis and the US. In order to achieve real independence, then, the Palestinians also need to get rid of imperialist economic domination. In other words, they need to take over the resources and industry in Palestine and run them for their own benefit under a planned economy.They need socialism. But the tiny size of the Occupied Territories means that a socialist revolution would have to spread to Israel to survive for long. Sharon’s artificial Jewish theocracy needs to be abolished and replaced by a secular, socialist Palestine.

From Popular Committees to Permanent Revolution

A socialist, secular Palestine in place of Israel and the Occupied Territories seems a long way off, but the Palestinians people have at times taken steps in its direction, despite the aggression of Israel and the sabotage of Arafat. In the first months of the intifada, grassroots organisations called Popular Committees were formed to organise the resistance to the Israelis. The Popular Committees featured fighters and supporters from a range of Palestinian factions, and soon began to attract considerable support from a population tired of the empty promises and backroom deal making of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. As the war intensified and spread throughout the Occupied Territories the Popular Committees began to threaten the authority of Arafat. A power struggle emerged with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority continuing to attract the loyalty of the Palestinian elite and the Popular Committees rallying workers and students.

When Arafat was directly threatened by the Israelis, the Popular Committees would mobilise their forces to defend him, without giving up their independence. In other words, they made a ‘military bloc’ with the Palestinian capitalists for the purpose of fighting the occupying imperialists, but retained the independence that would be necessary to overthrow Arafat and Co once the Israelis had been defeated. Trotskyists refer to this as a strategy of ‘permanent revolution’. Watching the Popular Committees in action, the Trotskyists in the Palestinian Socialist Workers League recognised that they were a force with the potential to create a new, socialist Palestine.

Unlike the corrupt capitalists Arafat represented, the Popular Committees had the desire to fight the Israelis until victory, and to mobilise the masses of the Arab world to help them in their task. And, with their base in the working class, the Popular Committees had the potential to be political and economic building blocks of a socialist society in post-Zionist Palestine.

In a leaflet issued early in 2002, the Socialist Workers League wrote that “it is necessary to develop and expand the Popular Committees, turn them into elected councils of representatives of the Palestinian workers, peasants and soldiers opposed to occupation, and coordinate their activities at the national level. This national council will have the political and moral authority necessary to conduct the mass uprising and turn to the masses of the region, including the Jewish workers, with the call: Let us fight together against imperialism, Zionism, and the client regimes from Egypt to Saudi Arabia! Let us build our own social regime: the socialist society of the workers, peasants and refugees!”

The Left Let Palestine Down

But the Socialist Workers League slogan ‘All power to the Popular Committees!’ was largely ignored by the left outside of Palestine. Instead of supporting the real nucleus of a socialist Palestine, the Western left either supported Arafat and an independent capitalist Palestine ‘as a step forward’, or else argued that support for the intifada meant support for Arafat and suicide bombers, and was thus not worth giving. A better response came from Workers Democracy, the group that was on the frontlines of the Argentinean revolution at the same time as the Popular Committees were forming in Palestine.

Together with the Communist Workers Group and three other organisations, Workers Democracy produced a statement urging the international left to rally to provide arms and other aid to the Popular Committees. The failure of the left to take up this call by the ‘group of five’ can be linked to the failure of the Popular Committees to develop into a successful challenge to Israel and to the government of Arafat. Without the massive international solidarity Workers Democracy wanted to see, the Popular Committees were overwhelmed by Sharon’s reoccupation of the West Bank. Today the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have taken over the role of the Popular Committees, fighting the Israelis independently of the Palestinian Authority. But the Islamist, pro-capitalist and anti-worker politics of these groups are reflected in counterproductive tactics like suicide bombing, and in an Arafat-style willingness to sell out in return for a few crumbs from the imperialist table. Hamas is already talking about a ceasefire with Israel, if only the Israelis will ‘give us back the 1967 boundaries of Palestine’.

Back in New Zealand...

What about the hard left in New Zealand? Here as elsewhere, the anti-capitalist left has tended to divide between a stagist ‘capitalist state as a step forward’ line and an ultra-left ‘no struggle for independence is worth supporting’ line.

Some groups haven’t even made it that far. On Palestine as on other issues, the Socialist Workers Organisation (no relation to the Socialist Workers League in Palestine) has tailed the Greens, trying vainly to pick up a few stragglers with ‘moderate’ policies that nip at Nandor’s heels. At an emergency rally held in Auckland after Sharon’s invasion of the West Bank last year, SWO members rolled up armed with placards bearing the militant slogan ‘Palestine attacked – Helen Clark should speak out’. Unfortunately for the SWO, Helen Clark had already issued an empty and utterly useless condemnation of the invasion. So for that matter had George Bush. The SWO’s slogan reflected the fact that its leadership shares the Greens’ belief that the New Zealand government can play a ‘good cop’ role on the international scene, helping to rein in ‘bad cops’ like Sharon and Bush. Back in 1994, for instance, the SWO urged Jim Bolger to send a frigate to Mururoa Atoll in retaliation for French nuke tests. The SWO thought that a National Prime Minister could represent Kiwi workers against the French, so it’s no surprise that it thought Helen Clark could fight for the Palestinians against Sharon. The Clark government’s wholehearted endorsement of the Road Map shows how wrong the SWO was.

The ultra-left attitude toward the intifada was expressed locally by two articles in the now-defunct anarchist paper thr@ll. Bad Badder Baddest, a January-February 2002 article which thr@ll co-editor Fyd McLean described as ‘exquisite’, openly announced that ‘We are not hung up on Palestine for the Palestinians.’ For the authors of this piece, Palestinian national liberation could only mean ‘localised tyranny...religious and cultural oppressions’ (1) In a later article, thr@ll reported the protests which followed Sharon’s invasion of the West Bank, but asked whether these actions could have any value, if they were motivated by the desire to create an independent Palestine. thr@ll couldn’t understand that it was possible to create a revolutionary independent Palestine, by building the Popular Committees into organs of direct democracy like the workers’ councils of revolutionary Russia or 30s Spain. Like many anarchists used to the strategy-free ‘ra ra ra’ politics of the militant end of the Western anti-globalisation movement, thr@ll’s authors struggled to deal with the complexities of a real revolutionary situation in a semi-colony where nationalism inevitably has a powerful appeal amongst the working class. Obsessed with avoiding the pitfalls of capitalist nationalism, thr@ll’s articles failed to see the anti-capitalist potential of the intifada.

At the other extreme is the Dunedin-based International Socialist Organisation. The ISO has been very active in the anti-war and pro-Palestine movements in Dunedin and Wellington, and the latest issue of its Socialist Review features an article called ‘Victory to the intifada!’(2) The ISO makes the very good point that activists shouldn’t be afraid to use the slogan ‘Victory to the intifada!’ Nor though should revolutionaries be afraid to explain what that slogan should mean. Nowhere in its article does the ISO draw a class line through the intifada. Nowhere is it clear whether the article favours Arafat’s intifada for a capitalist Palestine, or the intifada for a socialist Palestine reflected in the slogan ‘All power to the Popular Committees!’ If Fyd McLean is blinded by Arafat’s capitalist nationalism, then the ISO is blind to the danger of national capitalists hijacking the intifada. In their different ways, McLean and the ISO exemplify the mistakes the revolutionary left has made over Palestine.

At most, Bush’s Road Map can only temporarily quash the intifada. More dangerous, in the long-term, is the failure of much of the Western left to understand the logic of the Palestinian struggle and the strategy required to defeat Israel and its allies in the White House. In Palestine and elsewhere in the Third World, the theory of permanent revolution offers the only way forward, past the twin wrecks of stagism and ultra-leftism.

(1) Bad Badder Baddest is online at http://thrall.orcon.net.nz/21badbadder.html (2) The ISO’s article is online at http://www.iso.org.nz/sr/14/intifada.htm

AGAINST ZIONISM

When revolutionaries say that are for the destruction of the Zionist state they are called anti-Semitic. What is the difference between Zionism and Judaism? What is the difference between Zionists and Israeli workers who are prepared to fight for the Palestinians right to self-determination? Does the call for the end of Israel today mean that the "Jews will be driven into the sea?". We reprint our analysis of Zionism especially its most 'left-wing' sections, first made in 1998, to answer these questions.

Israel recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. The 'peace settlements' have pushed the PLO leadership, Egypt and Jordan to recognise Israel. It seems that Syria and other Arab states will do the same.

There are almost 4 million Jews in the State of Israel and many elements of a Hebrew-speaking nation. Is it the time to abandon our demand for the destruction of the Israeli state and its replacement with a secular, multi-ethnic, democratic and Soviet Palestine, and to advocate a united front with the Lutte Ovrier and the Zionist left in order to achieve a bi-national state or a two-state solution to the Arab-Iraeli conflict?

This article will examine the programmatic positions of the most left-wing Zionists. We will explain what the Marxist position on the Palestine question must be and why we cannot recognise any national rights of Israel.

Left Zionism's backward evolution

In the early years of the Communist International, Poalei Zion (Workers Zion) participated as observers in some of its activity. This current tried to fuse Marxism with Jewish nationalism. For them the Jews where a nation without a territory. In order to make a socialist revolution the Jews needed first to create its own state and multi-class society.

Poalei Zion initially accepted the possibility of a bi-national Arab-Hebrew state but later they backed the division of Palestine and the creation of a pure Jewish state. Poalei Zion became one of the pillars of the MAPAM, which achieved around one fifth of the votes in the first Israeli elections. The MAPAM initially combined Marxist and Leninist phraseology with its active integration in the Hagana (Israeli army), the Histadrut (Israeli anti-Palestinian corporate union) and the Labour Zionist cabinets. They built many kibutzim and they believed that these islands of rural collectivism where the seeds of socialism.

MAPAM survived as the left wing of Zionism and many Labour governments. It backed Israel in all its wars against the Arabs. In the late 1940s MAPAM capitalised on the pro-Moscow sentiment that was created all over the world resulting from Hitler's defeat and Stalin's backing the creation of Israel. Before the creation of the Israeli state many thought that the Jews where in general an oppressed people despite that the Zionists wanted to transform them into colonial settlers against the Arab native population. However, Israel became an oppressor whose existence was based in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians, and the founding of a US pillar against all the anti- imperialist movements in the Middle East.

A "Marxist" movement that adapts to forms of third-world nationalism can survive with some radical proposals. However, a socialist movement that became an apologist of an expansionist and colonialist power would become more and more reactionary. Moving to the right MAPAM was loosing its initial roots and became confused with the pragmatic Zionists.

Around ten years ago MAPAM, Shilumit Aroni's Ratz and Shinui created Meretz, a political front that in 1997 became officially a united party. Ratz was a movement in favour of constitutional rights and Shinui was an ultra-liberal organisation committed to Thatcherite economics in a context of liberal concessions to the Palestinians. The Shinui believed that the best way to develop an open `free market' was to allow Israel to be a county at peace with its neighbours and with the capacity to export capital to them.

On February 1997 the founding convention of the new Meretz Party adopted its `Basic Principles'. In it there is no mention of the struggle against imperialism or for socialism and for a working class based party. MAPAM simply abandoned any class reference. Meretz proclaimed the combination of `the values of enlightened liberalism and democratic socialism'. A few countries had already experienced the fusion between their political extremes on economic issues. Just as it is impossible to fuse oppressive nationalism with any form of socialism, is it not possible to combine Thatcherite economics with any form of progressive economic reforms. The former Zionist collectivists abandoned their initial goals and accepted a neo-liberal agenda.

MAPAM gave up all its former demands for state intervention and rural collective expansions. Now it accepts neo-conservative economics. "Initiative, profitability, and fair competition between all sections of the economy will be facilitated". Meretz is in favour of privatising some of the companies that the `left Zionists' put under public ownership. They only oppose privatisation of natural monopolies, education, postal service and the welfare state. The rest, transport, communications, industries, arm production, etc. could be sold.

For an exclusionist state

In all of its Basic Principles Meretz does not mention the struggle against anti-Semitism. The main purpose of Zionism is to "struggle against assimilation which threatens the existence of the Jewish people in the Diaspora". Assimilation means that Jews should abandon their religious-cultural values and became assimilated into the nations in which they live. They want to stop that process. In places in which the Jewish workers are struggling alongside their own class brothers and sisters against the bosses, they want to divide the workers. The Jews have abandoned other workers to migrate to Israel in order to help Zionist capitalists to build their own state.

"The Zionist objective of the State of Israel is to provide an open door for any Jew. Aliya [mass Jewish emigration to Israel] is also a source of reinforcement for the State of Israel. Meretez wants Aliya to Israel, with the goal of gathering the majority of the Jewish people in the state". Meretz wants to move the majority of the fifteen million Jews all over the planet to Israel. Eight million Jews in Israel would be a strong basis for maintaining a state.

Its aim is doubly reactionary. On the one hand they try to dislocate many Jews (some of which were the basis of many socialist and progressive movements in their own countries) from their own homelands and to divide the working classes. On the other hand they want to use the Jewish as colonial tools to consolidate a state founded on the expulsion of its native population.

Regarding the Arabs, Meretz is the most `heretical' of all the Zionists. It is in favour of granting the right to create a weak state in a minority of their former lands for "the Palestinian Arab people, which has lived in this land for generations and which is now beginning to realise its right to national self-determination". The ones who are starting "to realise its right to national self-determination" are, precisely, Meretz. The Palestinians fought for their own state in the 1947-48 wars and even before (like in the 1936 upheavals). It was the Zionists who destroyed their aspirations.

In which territories will Meretz grant a Palestinian state? "In a context of the permanent settlement, Israel will be obliged to vacate most of the territories occupied during to the Six Day War." Before the mass expulsions of Palestinians after the creation of Israel, two thirds of Palestine where inhabited by Arabs. In 1947 the UN resolved to divide that land in around two halves. In 1967 Israel managed to conquer around 40% of the Palestinian half. Therefore the territories that Israel occupied after 1967 represents a small fraction of Palestine.

For the left Zionists the Palestinians should accept not only the loss of the majority of their land but also of some of the post-1967 occupied territories as well as their historically claimed capital. For the Palestinians Jerusalem is their capital. For the Christian and Islamic Arabs it is one of their holy cities where they were the majority of its population from the beginning of the first millennium until 1948. Until 1967 Eastern Jerusalem (which includes the historical city) was in Arab hands. Since then the Zionists have tried to buy Arab land or to expel Palestinians. For Meretz "Jerusalem, Israel's capital, will never again be divided."

First the Zionists expelled the Palestinians. Next its left wing `discovered' that they want national rights. Now, its most radical wing is prepared to concede a sort of independent Bantustan for them. For Meretz the new Palestinian State should occupy less than a half of that half of Palestine that the UN undemocratically resolved to give them in 1947. The Palestinians should give up 100% of Jerusalem and at least 75% of the land in which they where the majority of the population when the British left 54 years ago.

The new Palestinian State will not have a contiguous territory and between its two main areas (Gaza and the West Bank) Israel will be allowed to maintain a heavily guarded territory. The Palestinian State not only would have to accept the ethnic cleansing of its own people by Israel but also to be an impotent and unarmed scattered country surrounded and patrolled by Middle East's main Nuclear Power.

Meretz is also in favour of keeping and developing the strength and superiority of the Israel army: "The protective might provided by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is the main guarantee for Israel's security, even in an era of peace. The strength of the IDF and its technological and personal superiority over all the other armies in the region must be ensured."

Israel a reactionary military machine

Israel has one of the most reactionary military machines. It destroyed the Palestinian State in 1948 and led to millions of Palestinians being forced to live in the worst humanitarian conditions. Israel sided with France and the UK against Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal. It invaded Egypt in 1956,1967 and 1973; Jordan and Syria in 1967 and 1973. It helped the Kingdom of Jordan's bloody repression of the Palestinians in 1970. It occupied southern Lebanon in the 1980s.

It unconditionally supported every US and NATO reactionary movements against any regime that has had clashes with imperialism in the Middle East (Libya, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, etc.). It backed Turkey against the Kurds, the largest nation without a state. It was one of the main enemies of all the de-colonising and anti-imperialist movements through the entire planet. It legalised torture and killed many Arab children in the Intifada [and continues to do so in Sharon's current invasion] and in its terrorist bombing and incursions into Lebanon. It helped the anti-`terrorist' commands in Somoza's Nicaragua and in Peru. And what does it mean to "ensure" IDF's "superiority"? Perhaps to develop more nuclear and bio-chemical weapons which can be used to make a holocaust that could be a thousand times more devastating than Deir Yassin?

In a country that has a very strong Jewish colonialist-fundamentalist camp, Meretz appeared as the most extreme Zionist force concerning civic rights. In the state of Israel every Jew who was born in any other part of the globe can have citizenship automatically. However, a Palestinian whose family inhabited that land for centuries, is a second class citizen and does not have the right to return to the land or home from which he/she was expelled in 1948 or 1967.

No Palestinian occupies any leading position in any Israeli government, the state or the army. Who decides who is a Jew? It is not a secular entity or even any Jewish religious congregation. That right is in the hands of the most orthodox and archaic rabbinate. This is such a reactionary body, that even the US Conservative Jews are to its left. The State of Israel does not have a constitution because it is based on a Jewish religious code.

Meretz 'radicalism' is limited to "the separation of religious institutions from the institutions of the state". Israel should be "governed by the rule of law, rather than by the rule of the Halakha." Nevertheless, Meretz vindicates that "Jewish heritage and the Jewish legal core are a cornerstone of our national culture and a source of inspiration in our lives and in creativity".

As we saw, Meretz' programme does not have any reference to the working class. It has very reactionary goals. It wants to keep a Jewish identity based in elements of Jewish religion. It tries to separate progressive Jews from their non-Jewish compatriots and to transform them into colonial settlers, dispossessing a native population. It wants to maintain a purely Jewish exclusionist state. It has a neo-liberal anti-working class economic programme. It differs from the hard-liners only in the sense that it is prepared to soften the rabbinical influence on the state institutions and allow Palestinian 'self-determination' in the form of a fragmented and powerless 'independent' Bantustan.

The Oslo peace accords, instead of pushing 'socialist Zionists' to the left, are causing a backward evolution towards neo-liberalism and reaction. Despite the possibility of organising common demonstrations and actions with them against the colonialist settlers and hard-liners, it is impossible to make any kind of anti-imperialist united front with currents that are advocating an imperialist and segregationist solution to the Palestinian question.

Zionism has no single progressive aspect

The doctrine of Zionism was created by Theodor Hertzl. He wanted to convince the Tsar and all the great powers that the best solution to the `Jewish question' was to provide the Jews with a state. Instead of being persecuted, the Jews could `expand 'Western civilisation'' against `barbarians'. Hertzl offered his services to transform the Jews into a colonialist tool against native peoples.

When Zionism was born (one century ago) hundreds of thousands of Jews were very active in the labour and anti-capitalist movement and many socialists were Jews (as was Marx, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Zinoviev, Kamenev etc). Zionism was also used to divide the Jewish workers from their fellow classmates. If Marxists advocate the unity of all the workers of all nations and communities against the capitalists, the Zionists advocated the unity of the Jewish workers with and behind the capitalist Jews and their imperialist associates against other peoples. The Zionist emigration to Palestine had a reactionary goal. Jewish capitalists, unions and co-operatives excluded the natives from their ranks. Arab lands where purchased and given to Jewish colonial settlers. The Arab population felt that they were being driven away from a new colonialist movement.

After the holocaust the imperialist powers and the USSR where prepared to give the Jews a state in Palestine. In 1947 the UN partitioned British Palestine and created two states. In its war against its neighbours, Israel captured many Arab lands and the rest of the Palestinian lands were taken by Egypt and the Transjordan kingdom (since then it became Jordan).

Comprising less than 10% of the world's Jewish population Israel was created as the homeland for all the Jews. The Jewish minority in Palestine (most of them where settlers born in Europe) took most of the country. Zionism managed to transform a persecuted people into Western colonialists.

Zionism did not end with anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it produced the expulsion of most of the Jews from the Arab world (a region which had a much less anti-Jewish traditions than the West). Zionism became another form of anti-Semitism. A new state was created expelling and oppressing a Semitic people (the Palestinian Arabs).

Marxists need to address the Israeli Jewish working class. A big difference that we have with the Arab nationalists and fundamentalists is that they don't want to create a bridge or form an alliance with the Jewish proletariat. We should support the Hebrew workers struggles for better wages and labour conditions, against privatisation and for de-militarisation and civic rights.

However, we need to understand that imperialism can create communal privileges amongst one ethnic section of the working class against another section. In South Africa and Northern Ireland the White or Unionist workers achieved better social conditions than the Black and Republican workers. Some of the most reactionary terrorist forces where recruited amongst that layer of privileged workers.

We need to address the most oppressed sections of the proletariat. The anti-Unionists in the six counties and the Black workers in South Africa are the vanguard of the anti-imperialist movement. The actions of these layers should influence workers from the privileged communities. The only way to win the workers from the oppressor states is to win them to solidarity with the most oppressed sections of society and to show them that, instead of maintaining their privileges, they need to fight together with all the working class against their common enemies: the capitalists.

Marxists are champions of the right of self-determination for every nation. However, we can deny such rights in some concrete circumstances, like when the national right of one community would clash with the rights of another community. In Northern Ireland and South Africa that would mean an attack on the oppressed population. The same principle we apply to Israel. We are against the right of the Protestant Unionists and the Afrikaners to form their own states because, like the Israeli nation, they would have their inception in the oppression of the native population.

A society created on discrimination

While the Boers and Ulster Protestants can show that they were the majority of the population of some part of their lands for many centuries and that they had some historical-territorial continuity, the Israeli Jews only started to arrive in Palestine in this century. They arrived from all the corners of the planet.

The Jews from Western or Eastern Europe, Yemen, Mesopotamia, Maghreb, Central Asia, Kurdistan, the Caucasus, South Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Australasia, India or Ethiopia had different histories, cultures, histories, traditions, religious practices, languages and races. Some of them evolved in a near complete isolation from other Jewish communities. There are tens or even hundreds of different Jewish religious congregations.

The only thing that unites all of them is their common belief in the first Testament and in a common vindication of the old Jerusalem faith. Hebrew, a 'dead' classical language only used for religious rituals and education, was modernised and transformed into the new `national' language. In order to develop Hebrew, Zionists undermined Ladino, the traditional Jewish mother tongue of the Jews in the Ottoman empire based in old Spanish, and Yiddish, the traditional European Jewish language based in old German. The Bolsheviks, on the contrary, massively promoted Yiddish Publications, Higher Education institutions, schools and even set up a territory (Birobidjan) for the development of the Yiddish culture and language.

Arabic was the language spoken by the overwhelmingly majority of the population in Palestine until 1948. Around half of the Jews that came to Israel after 1948 came from Oriental countries where most of them had Arabic as their mother tongue. Like all discriminatory societies Israel has a system based on different levels of privileges. The Arabs are the most oppressed. Among the Jews, Oriental Jews are oppressed by Azkanazim Jews of European origins. The Black Jews (Falasha) suffer racism and discrimination. The Chief rabbinate does not fully recognise Falasha as having Jewish status. They are a sort of inferior Jew.

Israeli society is also divided amongst religious believers. The most orthodox minority (like the small Naturei Carta) is against the Israeli state because they think that a Jewish state could only be created with a Messiah and that the present state tries to eliminate the Jewish traditional community in order to create a modern secularised state. The majority of the orthodox (the `crows') wants a fundamentalist Talmudic and segregationist state. They even attack non-orthodox Jews when they drive cars on the Sabbaths (holy Saturdays) or when they see women with `improper' clothes. Many Israelis wants a modern and secularised life.

Most nation-states were created claiming the continuity of a people that lived in the assigned territory for many centuries. Most of the nations, despite having an official religion, adopted some secular and non-confessional legal basis. Pakistan was divided from India around religious allegiances. However, most of the people that inhabited Pakista

In India Marxists are against the creation of Khalistan. A Sikh state could be based in a community that is the majority of the population of certain parts of the Punjab. However, it would be created under religious and communalist basis and would became a reactionary tool against the most secularised Sikhs and the Indian population.

The Israeli nation cannot offer any territorial-historic continuity. Until the last century less than 5% or even 1% of Palestine were Jews. The Jews who arrived in that land had different histories and they and their immediate ancestors lived mainly in other countries or continents. Their only territorial claim to that land was that of descent from the old Israelis who inhabited that land 2,000 years ago.

The Welsh, Gaelic and Bretons could claim Britain and even most of Western Europe because the Celts where the majority of the population 2,000 years ago. Different regions in the Balkans and Eastern Europe could have been claimed by Albanians, Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Germans, Hungarians, Turks or Polish because only one century ago they used to be the majority of the population. With this kind of territorial claim the Canaanites or the Philistines, who inhabited Palestine before the Jews -as the Bible related- bloody invaded them, could have better claims. In fact, the Palestinians can claim to be the direct descendants of them.

A Jewish state can be created only around some religious allegiances because that is the only thing that all Jews share in common. A secular state would mean a republic based on a constitution in which every citizen has equal rights. In the Bolshevik Soviet Union, Jews, who were only 2% of the people, were allowed to lead the Red Army, the two main Soviets and the ruling International Party.

Would an Israeli entity allow an Arab to become Prime Minister, mayor of Jerusalem or chief of the army? This is impossible because the state is founded on religious segregation. A Jewish state in a territory that was populated by a heterogeneous Jewish minority for less than half a century and founded on the expulsion/oppression of its native population, can only survive by means of its Apartheid character.

Can we recognise the right of a Jewish nation?

Palestinians (and progressive Jews) should not recognise the right of Israel to exist. A two-state solution would imply that the Palestinians must renounce most of their lands from which they were pushed in the last five decades.

In Argentina, Australia and the USA the native population was largely wiped out and new modern White settler nations where created on the basis of massive European emigration. We cannot demand that these big countries should be given back to their original peoples. The indigenous populations where reduced to few hundreds of thousands. On the other side tens of millions now constitute industrialised societies. In these countries we defend the First Nations rights to use their mother tongue in their education and every day life, to have lands and even to achieve self-government in the areas that remain under their control.

Palestine does not offer the same scenario. The Zionists could not annihilate large chunks of the local population. There are more than four million Palestinians living under Israeli control or in neighbouring countries. The Palestinian working class and intelligentsia are among the Middle East's most enlightened and militant ones. Palestinian fighters are at the forefront of the region's anti-imperialist struggles. Palestinian demonstrations are a major source of inspiration especially for the hundreds of millions of Arab and Muslim masses.

The idea that the Arabs have to accept the colonist entity as a nation with the right to have its own state, is a demand to surrender made by the most pro-imperialist wings of the ruling classes. The left-wing Palestinians are resisting that capitulation. If the Arab left came to terms with Israel it would reinforce the Islamic fundamentalist attempt to monopolise the anti-Zionist Arab sentiment. That would be a colossal tragedy.

A bi-national Israeli/Arab State would be an unworkable contradiction. Palestine is the historical denomination of a territory. It does not have an exclusive, segregationist or religious connotation. Christians and Muslims, and even some non-Zionist Jews, also use that name. Israel means by its name the desire to create a separate and pure Jewish communalist state. It is possible to talk about a bi-national or bi-lingual country in Belgium or Wales. In these places different linguistic-cultural communities developed alongside each other without any strong degree of discrimination.

In Spain, Iran, the Andes, India and other countries it is possible to argue in favour of the right of self-determination for all its components or even for a multi-national federation. Basque, Kurds, Quechuas, Tamils are oppressed nationalities which had historical roots in territories in which they were the majority of the population for centuries.

A bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state would not be based on the equality of both communities. The Arabs have the worst jobs and do not have the same rights as the Zionists. Israel and Aliya are inseparable. Israel needs to grant citizenship to every Jew no matter if he/she was born in Argentina or Australia and has never been in the country before. Israel provides housing, jobs and benefits to the Jewish emigrants while the Arab native population are denied their rights to return to their lands or homes and they cannot have important positions in the state, the police or the army.

Marxists oppose Aliya. We are, of course, in favour of free frontiers and against people's displacement. We want open borders for all the Jews, Gypsies and other peoples who suffer discrimination. However, we have to oppose colonialist emigration. We opposed the French or Italian attempts to resettle poor peasants or workers as colonial tools in Northern Africa. We rejected the Rabat's kingdom mass march on Western Sahara because they wanted to solve a land problem in Morocco at the expenses of the Sarahui local population. A democratic secular Palestine should welcome citizens from all countries but they could not accept émigrés that try to create a segregationist state at the expense of the original people.

In Ecuador the Council of Indian Nations (CONAI) demand that this state should accept its multi-national character. The achievement of that goal would imply a great conquest for all the Indian peoples. In Palestine the native population is not fighting to be considered just one of several cultural and national components of the state. Israel is, by definition, based in a Jewish supremacist and segregationist doctrine and in the necessity to ethnically cleanse Palestine. The Palestinians are claiming their land back. Their historical aim was to refuse to recognise the state that deprived them of their lands and citizenship.

We are not in favour of a bi-cultural Northern Ireland or of a bi-national White/Black South Africa. It does not mean that we are in favour of a clerical Catholic all-Ireland or for expelling all the Whites from South Africa. It means that the former privileged community has to accept that they should stop considering the rest of the population as inferior and to accept that they should be an equal minority.

We are for the destruction of a purely Jewish segregationist and confessional state. But that does not mean that we want to drive all Jews into the sea or to support yet another genocide. We want to convince as many Jews as we can that the best thing for them is to unite with the Arab workers in order to create a secular non-religious and non-racist egalitarian republic.

The Bolsheviks promoted the Yiddish culture and they designated a territory for Jewish colonisation. The Jews did not arrive in Birobidjan as a racist segregationist colonist who tried to exclude the native peoples. They coexisted peacefully with the locals. Today, for example, Birobidjan's Slav majority is very keen to retain the Jewish identity of that country as a means of attracting investment, technology and people.

In countries where the Jews constituted a compact oppressed majority in some territories (like the Falasha in Ethiopia) it was possible to advocate their right of self-determination, including autonomy or separation. However that right cannot be extended to a group of people that wants to come into a new country to ethnically cleanse the local population.

Zionism needs to trample on the rich cultural and linguistic traditions of the Arab, Ladino, Yiddish, Falasha and other Jewish communities in order to create a new Hebrew oppressive nation which is forged in bloodiest battles against the Arab natives. We need to emphasise the fact that the Israeli Jewish community is, in fact, a multi-ethnic amalgam. Zionists try to unite them against a common enemy: the native Arab peoples. We should not help them in doing that.

We need to defend many of these communities against the Zionists attempts to deny some of their most progressive traditions (like the Yiddish working class movements) and its discriminatory conditions in Israel. Begin and Likud tried to use the Oriental Jew resentment against the Azkenazim in a reactionary way: trying to transform them into the most patriotic anti-Arab pro-Israeli force. We should address the oriental Jews explaining that their enemies are not the Arab neighbours or natives but the capitalists and Zionists.

A socialist, secular, multi-ethnic Republic

Our demand is for a socialist, secular, multi-ethnic and democratic Palestinian republic. In that country there would live scores of communities: non-religious Jews and Arabs, secularised Russian-speaking Jews, Ladino-speaking Jews, Yiddish-speaking Jews, Arab-speaking Jews, Hebrew-speakers; non-Talmudic Jews (Samaritans, Falasha, Karaite), as well as Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews; various Christian congregations (Armenians, Copts, Catholics (Roman and Orthodox); Maronnites, Protestants, etc.); Muslims (Shias, Sunni, etc.); Druses, Bedouins, Bahai, etc.

All these communities should have equal rights. No single community should impose its own religion onto the state. A secular constitution with a secular civic code should regulate their activities. There would not be special treatment for those of the same religion that come from other countries. Palestinians should have the right to return.

A democratic multi-ethnic Palestine could only be achieved as a result of a socialist revolution based on workers councils and militias. It would also be part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East. In that context not only Palestinians would have the right to return but also Arab Jews would have the right to return to Syria, Morocco, Iraq and other Arab countries. Kurds, Assyrian and other nationalities would achieve self-determination and equal rights.

LCMRCI December 1998

From Class Struggle 44 April/May 2002

PALESTINE: CHOMSKY'S NON-SOLUTION

As Israel steps up its war with Palestine it is important to see this as a continuation of US policy in the region that has been building up for decades. The US backs Israel as its own client state in the region to control the Arab masses and ultimately to hold onto access to oil. It writes the rules so that Palestine has not national rights, cannot defend itself without being labeled terrorist, while Israel’s right to exist is guaranteed along with its right to attack its neighbours is fully backed by the US. With Bush in the Whitehouse and the world economy facing a recession, US policy is today even more belligerent towards its ‘enemies’ in the Middle East and the Far East. The crucial question is why? We critique Noam Chomsky’s argument that the US is a’ rogue’ state and can be ‘tamed’ by ‘democratic’ institutions and argue that only permanent revolution can bring an end to capitalist imperialism.

US Role

In a talk to MIT students on 14 December 2000 titled "THE CURRENT CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. WHAT CAN WE DO?" Noam Chomsky gave his views on why the US continues to call the shots in the Middle East. He argued that the ongoing Intefada that followed Sharon’s visit to Jerusalem on Sept 29 was the latest in a long history of opposition to US/Israel domination of the Middle East. For 50 years the US has backed Israel as its ‘proxy’ in the Middle East in order to retain control of the regions resources. In this process the US has willfully ignored UN resolutions, and continually refused to allow Palestinian national rights will militarily backing Israel’s right to use force to defend it’s right to exist.

"The U.S. role is highly significant. That's always true throughout the world just because of U.S. power, but it's particularly true in the Middle East, which has been recognized in high level planning for 50 years (and goes back beyond that, but explicitly for 50 years) as a core element in U.S. global planning. Just to quote documents from 50 years ago, declassified documents, the Middle East was described as the "strategically most important region of the world", "a stupendous source of strategic power", "the richest economic prize in the world", and, you know, on and on in the same vein. The U.S. is not going to give that up. And the reason is very simple. That's the world's major energy reserves, and not only are they valuable to have because of the enormous profit that comes from them, but control over them gives a kind of veto power over the actions of others for obvious reasons, which were recognized right away at the time. So, that's a core issue. It's been the prime concern of U.S. military and strategic planning for half a century. The gulf region, the region of major energy reserves, has always been the target of the major U.S. intervention forces, with a base system that extends over a good part of the world, from the Pacific to the Azores, with consequences for all of those regions because they are backup bases for the intervention forces targeting the gulf region, also including the Indian Ocean."

Sometimes the US and Israel miscalculate in their actions:

"There have been mistakes in the past and the United States and Israel have certainly learned from them. So in 1996 for example, when Shimon Peres launched yet another attack on Lebanon, killing large numbers of people and driving hundreds/thousands out of their home, it was fine and the U.S. was able to support it and Clinton did support it, up until one mistake, when they bombed a UN Camp in Qana, killing over a hundred people who were refugees in the camp. Clinton at first justified it, but as the international reaction came in, he had to back off, and Israel was forced, under U.S. orders in effect, to call off the operation and withdraw. That's the kind of mistake you want to avoid. So, for those of you going into the diplomatic service, you can't allow that kind of mistake to happen. You want low level atrocities, fine-tuned, so that an international response is unnecessary."

Danger of Over-reaction

This creates the danger of an overreaction on the part of the nations the US is trying to dominate. The key involves trying to maintain peace between Israel and the Arabs:

"Back in 1994, Clinton's National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, described what he called a paradigm for the post cold war era, and for the Middle East. The paradigm was what's called "dual containment", so it contains Iraq and Iran, but as he pointed out, dual containment relies crucially on the Oslo process, the process that brings about relative peace between Israel and the Arabs. Unless that can be sustained, the dual containment can't be sustained, and the whole U.S. current policy for controlling the region will be in serious danger."

"The governance in the Arab world is extremely fragile, especially in the crucial oil producing region. Any popular unrest might threaten the very fragile rule of the U.S. clients, which the U.S. would be unwilling to accept. And it might, equally unacceptably, induce the rulers of the oil monarchies to move to improve relations (particularly with Iran, which, in fact, they've already been doing), which would undermine the whole framework for U.S. domination of the world's major energy reserves."

"Well, how dangerous is that? Turn to another expert, General Lee Butler, recently retired. He was head of the Strategic Command at the highest nuclear agency under Clinton, STRATCOM. He wrote a couple of years ago that it's dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly with stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so as well, and also to develop other weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent, which is highly combustible and can lead to very dangerous outcomes.

All of this is still more dangerous when the sponsor of that one nation is regarded generally in the world as a rogue state, which is unpredictable and out of control, irrational and vindictive, and insists on portraying itself in that fashion. In fact, the Strategic Command under Clinton has, in its highest level pronouncement, advised that the United States should maintain a national persona, as they call it, of being irrational and vindictive and out of control so that the rest of the world will be frightened. And they are.

And the U.S. should also rely on nuclear weapons as the core of its strategy, including the right of first use against non-nuclear states, including those that have signed the Non-Proliferation treaty. Those proposals have been built into presidential directives, Clinton-era presidential directives, that don't make much noise around here, but it is understood in the world, which is naturally impelled to respond by developing weapons of mass destruction of its own in self-defense. But these are prospects that are indeed recognized by U.S. intelligence and high-level U.S. analysts.

About two years ago, Harvard professor Samuel Huntington wrote an article in a very prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs, in which he pointed out that for much of the world, he indicated most of the world, the United States is considered a dangerous rogue state, and the main threat to their national existence. And it's not surprising, if you look at what happens in the world from outside the framework of the U.S. indoctrination system. That's very plausible even from documents, and certainly from actions, and much of the world does see it that way, and that adds to the severe dangers of the situation."

"Actually U.S. relations with Israel developed in that context. The 1967 war was a major step forward, when Israel showed its power and ability to deal with Third World radical nationalists, who were, at that time, threatening, particularly Nasser. Nasser was engaged in a kind of proxy war with Saudi Arabia, which is the most important country, that's where all the oil is, and the Yemen. And Israel put an end to that by smashing Nasser's armies and won a lot of points for that, and U.S. relations with Israel really became solidified at that point. But it had been recognized 10 years earlier and the U.S. intelligence had noted that what they called the logical corollary to opposition to radical Arab nationalism is support for Israel as a reliable base for U.S. power in the region. And Israel is reliable because it's under threat, and therefore it needs U.S. support, which has another logical corollary, that for the U.S. interests', it's a good idea for Israel to be under threat."

UN Resolution 242

Such an attempt to establish ‘peace’ and settle down the region was UN Resolution 242 of November 1967 which required Israel to pull back from the territories overrun in the 1967 war, but in the process it did not recognise the national right of Palestine:

"UN 242 called for - the basic idea was full peace in return for a full withdrawal. So, Israel would withdraw from the territories that it just conquered, and in return, the Arab states would agree to a full peace with it. There was kind of a minor footnote, that the withdrawal could involve minor and mutual adjustments. So, for example, regarding some line or curve, they could straighten it out, that sort of thing. But that was the policy, and that was U.S. policy - it was under U.S. initiative. So, full peace in return for full withdrawal…But UN 242 was completely rejectionist. It offered nothing to the Palestinians. There was no reference to them, except the phrase that there was a refugee problem that somehow had to be dealt with. That's it. Apart from that, it was to be an agreement among the states. The states were to reach full peace treaties in the context of complete Israeli withdrawal from the territories. That's UN 242."

"What can we do"?

Chomsky then goes on to ask, "what can we do"? To do anything the public must be informed of the real interests that like behind the US Middle East policies.

"Well, if we decide on the latter choice, which is always open here and elsewhere, there's a prerequisite. The prerequisite is that we know what's going on. So you can't make that choice, say to stop providing military helicopters (and you know the helicopters are just an illustration of a much bigger picture) unless you know about it. Again, the grave responsibility of the intellectual world, the media, journals, universities, and others, is to prevent people from knowing. That takes effort. It's not easy. As in this case, it takes some dedication to suppress the facts and make sure that the population doesn't know what's being done in their name, because if they do, they aren't going to like it, and they'll respond. Then you get into trouble."

The most important facts are first, that the US has repudiated UN 242 in practice and backs Israel’s occupation of the territory gained in 1967; second the US and Israel do not recognise the national rights of the Palestinians; third, this means that there is no right of Palestinian resistance which becomes defined as ‘terrorism’; fourth, this allows Israel the right to attack its Arab neighbours on the pretext of responding to ‘terrorism’.

"But, contrary to propaganda, almost the entire series of U.S./Israeli attacks, certainly in the occupied territories, but in Lebanon as well, were not for any defensive purpose. They were initiated. That includes the 1982 invasion, and that's no small matter. I mean, it's not considered a big deal here, but during the 22 years that Israel illegally occupied Southern Lebanon in violation of Security Council orders (but with U.S. authorization), they killed about maybe 45,000 or 50,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, not a trivial number. This included many very brutal attacks going on after the Oslo accords as well, in 1983, 1986, and so on."

More than this, the right to attack can be turned into permanent occupation by proxy troops:

"Israel and the United States had made a rather serious error in the occupied territories. It's not a good idea to try to control a subject population with your own troops. The way it is usually done is, you farm it out to the natives. That's the way the British ran India for a couple of hundred years. India was mostly controlled by Indian troops, often taken from other regions, you know like the Gurkhas and so on. That's the way the United States runs Central America, with mercenary forces, which are called armies, if you can keep them under control. That's the way South Africa ran the Black areas. Most of the atrocities are carried out by Black mercenaries, and in the Bantustans, it was entirely Blacks. That's the standard colonial pattern and it makes a lot of sense. If you have your own troops out there, it causes all kinds of problems. You know, first of all they suffer injuries, and these are people who don't like to feel good about killing people, and their parents get upset and so on and so forth, but if you have mercenaries or paramilitaries, you don't have those problems. So, Israel and the United States were going to turn to the standard colonial pattern and have the Palestinian forces, who in fact mostly came from Tunis, control the local population - control them economically and politically, as well as militarily."

Peace ‘front’

So the US has managed to maintain a front of ‘peace’ by redefining UN 242:

"UN 242 now means what the United States says it means, as do other things, that's the meaning of power. It means withdrawal, insofar as the U.S. and Israel determine, and that's what it's meant ever since. So when Palestinians or Arab states now complain that Israel isn't living up to 242, they are just choosing to ignore the historical record and blindness

is not a helpful position if you are in world affairs.

You might as well have your eyes open. UN 242 since February 1971 does not exist. It exists only in the Kissingerian sense. Now, here you have to be a little nuanced, because officially the U.S. continues to endorse UN 242 in its original sense. So you can find statements by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, or you know speechwriters, and George Bush, saying yeah, we insist on 242 in its original sense. You can't find statements by Clinton. Clinton, I think, is the first president not even having given lip service to it. But the fact is that the lip service is pure hypocrisy, because while they are adhering to it for public purposes, they are also providing Israel with the wherewithal, the funds, the military support, the diplomatic support, to violate it, namely to act to integrate the occupied territories within Israel, so the endorsement of it is hypocritical and you should compliment Clinton on having the honesty simply to withdraw it, in effect."

Palestinians fate

Meanwhile the fate of the Palestinians has been to be an oppressed semi-colonised people:

"Right through the occupation from 1967 to 1993, Israel was making sure, and again, when I say Israel, I mean the United States, was making sure that there would be no development in the occupied territories. So, right after 1993, when Israeli journalists who had covered the territories were finally able to go to Jordan, they were shocked by what they saw and they wrote about it in the Hebrew press. Jordan is a poor country, and Israel is a rich country. Before the 1967 war, the populations in Jordan and the Palestinian populations were pretty comparable, in fact, there was more development in the West Bank.

By 1993, it was totally different. In the poorer country Jordan, there were agricultural development, universities, schools, roads, health services, all sorts of things. In the West Bank there was essentially nothing. The people could survive by remittances from abroad, or by doing dirty work in Israel, but no development was allowed, and that was very shocking to Israeli reporters, and it is also backed up in the statistics.

The most important work on this topic, if you want to learn about, is by Sara Roy, a researcher at Harvard who has spent an awful lot of time in the Gaza Strip. Just to give you a couple of her figures, current ones, in 1993 electric power usage in the West Bank and Gaza was two thirds that of Egypt, half that of Jordan – and those are poorer countries, remember. Israel is a rich country. Sanitation and housing in the West Bank and Gaza was about 25 percent for Palestinians, 50 percent in Egypt, and 100 percent in Jordan, and the figures run through that way. GDP, per capita, and consumption per capita declined and then it got worse. After 1993, it's been the worst. So GDP, per capita, and consumption per capita have dropped, according to her, about 15 percent in the West Bank and Gaza since 1993 - that's even with large foreign assistance pouring in, from Europe, mostly."

"It's gotten worse in other respects. Up until 1993, the U.S. and Israel permitted humanitarian aid to come into the territories. UN humanitarian aid was permitted into the West Bank and Gaza. In 1993, that was restricted. This is part of the peace process. After Oslo, heavy customs duties were imposed, lots of other restrictions were imposed, you know various kinds of harassment. Now, it's blocked. Right now, humanitarian aid is blocked. The UN is protesting, but it doesn't matter. If the UN protests the blocking of humanitarian aid, and it doesn't register here, it doesn't matter. And it doesn't register here because it's not reported.

So, they can say, yeah the Israelis are stopping humanitarian aid from coming in, and people are starving, and so on, but what does it matter as long as people in the United States don't know about it. They can know in the Middle East, they can know in Europe, but it makes no difference. These are our choices again. For the Palestinians themselves, they are under a dual repression, very much like the Bantustans again, the repression of Israel and the United States, and then the repression of the local mercenaries who do the work for the foreigner, and enrich themselves. It's again a standard, colonial pattern. Anyone who has ever taken a look at the Third World sees it."

"As for the population, it's kind of hard to improve on a description by Moshe Dayan about 30 years ago. He was in the Labor Party, and among the Labor Party leaders, he was one of those most noted for his sympathetic attitude towards Palestinians, and also his realism. And he described what Israeli policy ought to be, U.S. policy as well. He said the Palestinians should live like dogs and whoever wishes may leave, and we'll see where this leads. Reasonable policy, and that's U.S. policy as well, and it will continue that way as long as we agree to permit it."

[Transcription of full text by Angie D'Urso http://www.media.mit.edu/~nitin/mideast/chomsky.html]

Chomsky’s solution?

Chomsky’s solution is to inform world opinion to act against the US as a ‘rogue’ state. Once people realise how bad the US treats other states, they will mobilise to stop it. So far so good. But is a campaign to recognise Palestine’s right to exist enough? No! This has already been granted to ‘dogs’ to live in poverty in occupied ’bantustans’. Will the US and Israel ever allow Palestine to exist on equal terms? No! Chomsky has illusions in the democratic processes in the US if he thinks that the US will ever voluntarily give up its dominant role in the Middle East and meekly accept UN resolutions.

Chomsky does not understand what drives the US to world domination. He thinks that it is the result of bad capitalists who flout human rights out of greed. For him capitalism does not need to adopt such inhuman behaviour to survive. Therefore it can be reformed to allow its ‘human face’ to prevail. In reality, the US and its Israeli puppet occupy the Middle East to prevent the Arab masses from rising to take control of their own economic resources because if they do not US economic wealth will suffer a serious decline and Israel’s very survival is at stake.

The only way that this will change is when the Arab masses reject US/Israeli domination and fight for national self-determination. To succeed in this they must be backed by workers in the US/Irael and NATO countries whose task is to overthrow their ‘own’ capitalist/imperialist states. In this way resistance to national oppression can become the catalyst for permanent revolution on a global scale.

From Class Struggle No 38 April-May 2001