International Socialists

Part 1

A militarised state, a society under arms, besieged, but simultaneously the jailer of a millions strong indigenous population who are political prisoners and economic serfs – who are subject to curfews, economic blockades, constant humiliation and intimidation; at risk at any time of extra-legal detention or murder, or even court-sanctioned torture. An economy in crisis, dependent on foreign aid; a society as much divided by its faith as it is united. An immigrant people – European, African, Slavic, Arab – united by fictional ethnicity but divided by the pall of racism that hangs over the Holy Land. This is what has become of the dreams of Zion.

In part one of a three part series, Mike Tait looks at the origins of Zionist theory and its practical implementation as another colonial enterprise. The next two of articles will deal with Israel's alliance with imperialism, and the difference between the Palestinian national liberation or the struggle for tino rangatiratanga and Zionism. This article is based on the research of Norman J. Finkelstein. All quotes are from his book "Image and reality of the Israel/Palestine conflict." 

The origins of Zionism
"From the ashes of the Holocaust, the state of Israel was born." This is the popular myth. Reality is, of course, more complex – the leaders of the new state were lifelong Zionists, not Holocaust survivors and a Jewish state in Palestine had been planned and promised by Britain before World War II. But the Holocaust did drive many European Jews to embrace Zionism – previously a minority current in Jewish politics – and swung public opinion in the West behind the project. But the Holocaust and Zionism are more intimately linked than that: they both spring from the same racist version of nationalism that led to Nazism, and to the death trap that Israelis now find themselves in.

Modern nationalism first emerged in Europe with the French Revolution, as the ascendant urban merchant classes – the bourgeoisie – mobilised popular support to push aside feudalism and absolute monarchy. Instead of the authority of the state coming to the king from God, it was sourced in the people – the nation. For the French revolutionaries, the state and the nation were based on a mutual contract between free people. Its message and its appeal were universal – French Jews were for the first time admitted as citizens of the state, and the French armies that swept through Europe spread the ideals, sparking revolutionary upheavals and questioning of the old order.

This modern, liberal nationalism was the political ally of Enlightenment ideals such as Reason, Science, and Progress. But these ideals did not go unchallenged. The Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries opposed the ideal of reason with passion and science with nature. Liberal nationalism, with its citizenship by contract, was countered by a Romantic nationalism that saw the nation as a natural, organic unit; with citizens not bound by reason and consent but by the indissoluble bonds of blood and a mystical oneness with the land.

The nation state, according to this idea, could not be neutral or belong equally to all who lived in the country. It had to belong especially to the ethnic group that "belonged" to that land. Hitler's National Socialism was the clearest and most extreme form of this idea. Against the "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" of the French Revolution, he proclaimed "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" – one people, one state/land, one leader. Authority no longer came from the democratic will of the people, but from the mystical national will, which could be expressed by a single, charismatic leader.

But anti-Semitism in Europe existed before modern nationalism. Europe had had a large Jewish minority since the destruction of the Temple in 79 AD and the Diaspora. Like the Gypsies, Jews existed on the margins of the feudal system, a people apart: not allowed to own land, and under the constant threat of persecution. Liberalism, by questioning the religious basis of the state, theoretically opened the state for Jews to participate as equal citizens. However, despite some progress, anti-Semitism persisted.

Socialists located the source of anti-Semitism in capitalist competition – an attempt by non-Jewish businessmen to handicap their Jewish rivals, and many Jews made great contributions to revolutionary socialism, including Rosa Luxembourg, Leon Trotsky, and of course, Karl Marx. But others, like Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, saw anti-Semitism as the natural impulse of an organic community that was infected by a foreign body. According to his Romantic nationalism, the only solution to anti-Semitism was for Jews to withdraw from Europe and constitute themselves as a nation with their own state in their own land – in Palestine.

Colonialism
Short of moving to Antarctica, Zionism's goal of a Jewish nation state was always going to involve conflict with an indigenous people. And for an unarmed minority scattered throughout Europe, the aid of an imperial power was always going to be crucial in any conflict. Such an alliance would not come without a price.

Choosing a land to establish the Jewish state wasn't difficult. The religious ties to the biblical land of Israel made it the obvious candidate for a land that Jews could make special claim to – although Madagascar and Argentina were considered. But despite the religious resonance of Palestine, Zionism was a strictly secular project, bitterly opposed by Orthodox Judaism, which saw the project as blasphemy. Zionism was a colonial enterprise similar to all others, which offered Jews, too long cooped up in unhealthy European cities, their own wide, open spaces. Like the myths of Australian, South African, and New Zealand colonialism, Palestine was portrayed as an empty land, roamed over by scattered nomadic tribes.

It was "a land without a people for a people without a land." But this was empty propaganda that was not taken seriously by Zionists who had travelled or settled in Palestine. Yitzhak Epstein in 1905 chided Zionist leaders for "overlooking" the fact that, "In our beloved land there lives an entire people that has been dwelling there for many centuries and never considered leaving it." As settlement increased, Zionism was forced to acknowledge the existence of Palestinian Arabs, but not their claim to the land. They were disqualified from having a special relationship because 1) they were just part of the greater Arab nation, and could be equally at home in Iraq or Egypt; and 2) they had lost their right to the land because they had neglected it.

David Ben Gurion – army general, Labour Zionist, and first prime minister of Israel – described Palestine on the eve of colonisation as "in a virtual state of anarchy... primitive, neglected, and derelict." Jewish settlements, according to Ben Gurion, revitalised the land, thus proving the mystical connection between the Jewish people and Palestine. Even though Zionism aimed to create a Jewish state, it was nominally democratic, and was not opposed to non-Jews having equal citizenship in Israel. According to Ben Gurion, the Palestinians could have full equality with Jews, but the state would belong to the Jewish people "... in order to bring in masses of Jews from the Diaspora and to assemble and root them in their homeland." As Vladimir Jabotinsky, a right wing Zionist, put it, "the creation of a Jewish majority... was the fundamental aim of Zionism." In other words, the Palestinians would have to be transformed from a majority in Palestine into a minority living on the sufferance of the Jewish majority.

Convincing Palestinians to allow this was recognised by the Zionist leadership to be impossible and, where persuasion would not work, force was the only option. The death trap logic of ethnic nationalism, with its vicious circle of violence set in.

Next article: US imperialism and Arab resistance