International Socialists

Part 2

In the last article: 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.

This article, part two of a three part series by Mike Tait, is based on the research of Norman J. Finkelstein. All page references are to his book "Image and reality of the Israel/Palestine conflict."

Link to first article

Socialists locate the origin 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. But to have control totally in the hands of ethinc Jews meant that Palestinians would have to be transformed from a majority in Palestine into a minority living on the sufferance of the Jewish majority.

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.

Alliance with imperialism
Convincing Palestinians to allow European Jews to establish an ethnically-based nation-state in their land was recognised by the Zionist leadership to be impossible and, where persuasion would not work, force was the only option. As the Zionists had no serious armed forces, they were dependent on the protection of an outside power. As Jabotinsky put it, "Settlement can [only] develop under the protection of a force which is not dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down."

The Great Power in Palestine was Britain, which did allow Jewish migration and partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, the other Jewish. Even then, the Partition Plan was seen as only one step towards a Greater Israel. Ben Gurion, in the late 1930s, said, "The Jewish state now being offered to us is not the Zionist objective. Within this area it is not possible to solve the Jewish question. But it can serve as a decisive stage along the path to a greater Zionist implementation. It will consolidate within Palestine, within the shortest possible time, the real Jewish force which will lead us to our historic goal." (emphasis in original, p.15)

While the British army was the "iron wall," behind which Jewish settlement was able to proceed, building a Zionist military force for the purpose of evicting the Palestinians was a priority. Ben Gurion, in a letter to his son, said that the Jewish state would have "an outstanding army – I have no doubt it will be amongst the world’s outstanding – and so I am certain that we won’t be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, whether out of accord and mutual understanding with the Arab neighbours or otherwise." (p.15)

Ben Gurion’s prophecy was true in a sense – the Zionist armed forces won a decisive victory in the 1948 "War of Independence" (a war not for independence from a foreign power, but for independence from its Arab neighbours). But a military victory that brought millions of Palestinians into Israel would create more problems for Zionism’s attempt to create a Jewish majority.

The Palestinians had to be terrorised into abandoning their homes and farms or killed. It is perhaps here that the Zionist army was most outstanding, in its calculated use of atrocities, and the terror they inspired, to ethnically cleanse the land and prepare it for Jewish settlement. According to a former director of the Israeli army archives, "in almost every Arab village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murder, massacres and rapes."

By choosing to take a path of conflict with the region, the Zionist enterprise became almost entirely dependent on an alliance with an outside power, first Britain, and then the US. But this support is of course never freely given. Before any Great Power would support a colonising project in the Middle East, which was growing in strategic importance as industrialised countries became more dependent on oil, the colonisers would have to subordinate their project to its strategic interests.

What Jewish colonialism offered was an military launch pad in a volatile region, and a population isolated from their neighbours, simultaneously undermining the homogeneity of the region’s states and serving as a lightning rod, or even a scapegoat, for local popular opposition to the imperial power. As Jabotinsky said, "if there is one outpost on the Mediterranean shore in which Europe has a chance of holding fast, it is Palestine, but a Palestine with a Jewish majority." (p. 18) The Israeli ruling class has served Western interests in the region slavishly, and the Jewish and Arab populations have paid a high price in blood for this deal with the devil.

Arab resistance
Palestinian Arabs have heroically resisted this enterprise from the start and, as has become clear since the US president declared open ended war on an open list of enemies, the Palestinian struggle is the frontline of the fight against imperialism and colonialism. Socialists support their struggle for national liberation, but we criticise the narrow goal of a Palestinian nation-state. If there’s anything to learn from Zionism, it’s that a nation based on ethnicity not real democracy is a recipe for disaster.

We also criticise the Palestinian leadership, who like the Zionists before them, accept unquestioningly US imperialism, and the economic system that gives it birth: capitalism. That’s why they accept derisory "peace deals" that will only sell their own people into semi-slavery, locking them into the Israeli economy as an expendable, poorly paid labour force, which would in turn drag down the wages of Israeli workers as well.

The only force in the region whose interests can’t be reconciled with imperialism is the Arab working class, but the Palestinian leadership is afraid to mobilise the "Arab street" for fear of destabilising the corrupt, undemocratic Arab regimes and angering the US. But the Arab working class is the only force that can break this bloody deadlock.

For ordinary Israelis, it’s essential to break with the Zionist dream of a Jewish dominated state, which can only offer unlimited bloodshed and economic crisis. By comparison, a democratic, secular, socialist Palestine is a goal worth fighting for. Within Zionism itself there are signposts towards a better future. Zionist dissident Gershom Scholem wrote in the 1930s that the Jews, persecuted and oppressed in Europe, had to side with the Arabs in their struggle against oppression. He warned that if Israel aligned itself with the forces of oppression "either it will be swept away with the imperialist nations or burned in the furnace of the revolution of the renascent East… If we must fall it is better to fall with those on the right side of the barricades." (p. 20)

Socialists oppose the colonial nationalism of Zionism, but critically support the Palestinian struggle for independence and the struggle in Aotearoa for tino rangatiratanga.

A double standard?

Judge for yourself in the third and final article "Zionism and Tino rangatiratanga" in the next issue of Socialist Review.