ContentsNote for this 2019 edition: inside coverIntroduction (2019) — Sean Matgamna — 2Preface (1993) — Sean Matgamna — 7

DEBATE: JIM HIGGINS AND SEAN MATGAMNA“Mr Foot, do you hate the Jews?” — Paul Foot — 8Paul Foot, philo-semite — Sean Matgamna — 8A secular-democratic state — Jim Higgins — 9Two states for two peoples — Sean Matgamna — 11I am an anti-Zionist because I am an anti-racist!— JimHiggins — 14Anti-racism is indivisible — Sean Matgamna — 15The arrogance of the long-distance Zionist — Jim Higgins— 19Up on the Malvolian heights — Sean Matgamna — 22

1. ANTI-ZIONISM AND ANTISEMITISMGerry Healy and the World Jewish Conspiracy — SeanMatgamna — 24Free speech for Zionists! — Sean Matgamna — 26Banned for being Jewish — Jane Ashworth — 26Don’t ban Zionists! — Sean Matgamna — 27Are nations guilty? — Jakob Taut — 29The left and antisemitism — Sean Matgamna — 30Yes, smash Israel! — Andrew Hornung and TonyGreenstein — 36Israel is not South Africa — Sean Matgamna — 37Ignoring the real Israel — Tony Greenstein — 39The Jewish nation — Liam Conway — 39A moral blackjack — Sean Matgamna — 39No self-determination! — Tony Greenstein — 40Utopia in Palestine — Clive Bradley — 40

2. ‘SECULAR DEMOCRATIC PALESTINE’ OR ‘TWOSTATES’?The only answer: two states — Sean Matgamna — 40A single state is the best structure — Bruce Robinson — 41Merge oppressor and oppressed? — Martin Thomas — 42Transform Israel from within — Clive Bradley — 42Editorial introduction to 1985 discussion — unsigned — 42What rights for Jews? — Sean Matgamna, Bas Hardy,Rachel Lever, Bruce Robinson — 44What we said in 1973 — Sean Matgamna — 44

How to unite Arab and Jewish workers — Sean Matgamna,Martin Thomas — 44Democracy is only possible in a single state — BruceRobinson — 46Will “two states” divide? — Robert Fine — 48Racism will remain until Israel is destroyed — TonyGreenstein — 49A socialist union of the Middle East — Moshe Machover,Jabra Nicola — 49What is the “democratic secular state”? — Fatah — 51The DFLP’s version — 51Unite Israel and Palestine? — Arthur Bough — 52Israel can’t be reformed — Lenni Brenner — 52Lenni Brenner’s fake internationalism — Sean Matgamna— 54Summer school debate — unsigned — 55Compromise for coexistence — Avraham Shomroni — 55Changing our view — unsigned — 56

3. ZIONISM AND THE HOLOCAUSTZionism, twin of antisemitism — Andrew Hornung — 57More demonology than Marxism — Jeremy Green — 58Brenner on the Nazi massacre — Jeremy Green — 58Rewriting Zionism — Tony Greenstein, Andrew Hornung —60Ignorant and libellous — Lenni Brenner — 61

4. ‘ZIONISM’ AND ‘ANTI-ZIONISM’ IN BRITAINPink Ken changes — Sean Matgamna — 62Unfair to Pink Ken — Clive Bradley — 63Reply — Sean Matgamna — 63What is ‘Zionism’ today? — Sean Matgamna — 63Not Zionist: 1 — Clive Bradley — 64Not Zionist: 2 — Bryan Edmands — 64Where ‘anti-Zionism’ leads — Sean Matgamna — 64Not Zionist: 3 — Clive Bradley — 65Against ideological terror — Sean Matgamna — 65A perverse definition — Martin Thomas — 66In the Zionist camp — Tony Greenstein — 67Huffing and puffing — Steve Channon — 68Zionism is still racism — Bryan Edmands — 68Rights and wrongs — Clive Bradley — 68A socialist federation — Duncan Chapple — 69Double standards and anti-Zionism — Sean Matgamna —69

Left: one of the recent protests organ-ised by Workers’ Liberty with other so-cialists at the Israeli embassy. Above:poster we produced in 2012.

IntroductionSean Matgamna

Here I will give a brief account of theevolution of the ideas of what is nowAWL on the Israeli-Arab conflict, andof those of us whose ideas thesewere.

Before Stalinism replaced commu-nism, communists rejected the Zionistproject on three main grounds. It wasa “utopian nationalism”. It misdirectedJews away from the class struggle inthe countries in which they lived. Itsgoal could be achieved, if at all, only incollaboration with the British (Leagueof Nations mandate) authorities inPalestine, and by siding with Britainagainst the Arabs. (Britain occupiedthe territory, formerly part of the Ot-toman Empire, from 1918).

The Communist International was“assimilationist”. Until the end of the1920s it was nevertheless for freemovement, and therefore for the rightof Jews to go to Palestine.

In the 1930s, when the Zionist proj-ect became linked to the urgent needfor a Jewish refuge from the Nazis,Trotsky and his comrades argued thatlogistically, if for no other reason, smalland underdeveloped Palestine simplycould not provide a refuge for all theJews who now needed it. The fate ofthe Jews of Europe would be decidedby the class struggle in Europe; it wasinseparable from the fate of the revolu-tionary workers’ movement.

At the time of his death in August1940, Trotsky was studying the Jewishlabour movement in Palestine. Pam-phlets and books on the questionswere found on his desk. He wrote in1932-3 seemingly in support of Jewishmigration into Palestine. “There is nosuch thing on this planet as the ideathat one has more claim to land thananother”. That cuts both ways, but itwas the Jews who were being kept outof Palestine and desperately in needof a place to go.

The Communist International’s de-monisation of Zionism — as distinctfrom politically opposing and fighting it— began with the pogrom that brokeout in Palestine in 1929. The small andmainly Jewish Communist Party inPalestine and the Communist Interna-tional first defined it as the anti-Jewishpogrom movement it was. Then theStalinist Communist International de-creed that it was in fact an anti-imperi-alist movement and should beendorsed and supported.

It was decreed that the leadership ofthe Communist Party of Palestine hadto be Arabs (few members were).

The Stalinists were now against freeJewish migration to Palestine. In paral-lel, at the same time, the British au-

thorities severely limited Zionist landpurchases, and continued a processthat incrementally rescinded the Bal-four declaration. In the late 1930s,strict limits were placed on Jewish mi-gration to Palestine — 75,000 overfive years. The British authorities im-posed those limits rigidly during thewar and the great massacre of Jewsby the Nazis and local antisemites inthe Nazi-occupied countries, and untilthe foundation of Israel in 1948 al-lowed the Jews in European displacedpersons’ camps to migrate.

The Trotskyists rejected the Stalin-ists’ 1929 turn on Palestine. MaxShachtman wrote in The Militant, 1October 1929: “”Not every movementled by spokesmen of an oppressednationality is a revolutionary move-ment. It is a lamentable fact that at thepresent time the Arab movement is di-rected by unconcealed reactionaries...They are against all Jews as Jews.They set up the reactionary demandfor the ‘restriction of the Jewish immi-gration into Palestine’...”

Trotsky pointed to antisemitism inthe Moscow Trials of 1936-8, in whichmen like Gregory Zinoviev and KarlRadek, who had been known by suchnames for decades, were given theiroriginal Jewish names.

The Trotskyists remained in favourof free Jewish migration until the mid1940s. In the 1930s, throughout WorldWar 2, and after, the US Trotskyistsadvocated that the US open its doorswide to Jews who needed refuge.

On the Jewish movement for inde-pendence at the end of World War 2,the two main currents into which Trot-skyism had split in 1940 developed im-portant differences. The self-named“Orthodox Trotskyists” — those whowould go on to see the expansion ofRussian Stalinism in the war (thoughthey criticised it severely) as positiveand progressive — and the Heterodox,those who saw Russia and its replicasin many countries as a horrendousnew form of exploitative class society,had differences in their approach tothe “Jewish Question” after the war.

Both advocated opening the gatesof the US to the Jewish survivors thenconfined in displaced persons’ campsin Europe, some of them made-overold concentration camps. The Ortho-dox did not now advocate free Jewishmigration to Palestine, and they didnot support the Jewish guerrillas fight-ing the British in Palestine. The Het-erodox did both.

In the 1948 war, neither currentbacked the Arab states. The Hetero-dox regretted the partition of Palestine,but defended the right of the Palestin-ian Jews to have a state of their own,and their right to defend that state, i.e.themselves.

Thereafter there was de facto recog-nition of Israel by the Orthodox. Theformula of a Socialist United States of

the Middle East, with autonomy for mi-norities such as Jews and Kurds,came into use among the Orthodox.The Orthodox wrote very little aboutIsrael or the Palestinians; the Hetero-dox a lot more, much of it very critical,as in Hal Draper’s articles on the ill-treatment of Israel’s Arab minority(1956-7).

What is now the common coin ofmost would-be Trotskyists, the equa-tion of Zionism with Nazism andhyper-imperialism, is now found in thework of Lenni Brenner and his politicalsiblings and offspring. It first tookshape as a deluge of Stalinist propa-ganda between 1949 and 1953. Thatwas spread in the Stalinist pressacross the world — in Britain by theMorning Star, then called Daily Worker— from the USSR and Eastern Eu-rope.

From 1949 to Stalin’s death in 1953,show trials of leading Stalinists mainlyof Jewish origin were held in Hungary,Czechoslovakia and Poland indictingthem as Zionist-imperialist agents.“Zionists” (in fact, long-time Stalinists)were hanged in Hungary and Czecho-slovakia.

At his death Stalin was preparing abig anti-Zionist show trial in Russia. Itwould have been the visible part of amass purge and rounding-up of Jews,and the killing of we can’t know howmany of them. Stalin’s successorsstopped it. In 1956 antisemitism wouldbe among the crimes for which his re-forming successor Nikita Khrushchevposthumously indicted Josef Stalin.

All the Trotskyists in 1949-53 identi-fied the anti-Zionism of the Stalinistsfor the antisemitism it was, and con-demned it.

In 1956 Israel joined Britain andFrance in invading Egypt, which hadnationalised the Suez Canal. The Trot-skyists condemned the invasion andhelped mobilise people against it. No-body said Israel had forfeited the rightto exist because of it.

In the 1950s and 60s, the Trotsky-ists looked on the Egyptian-controlledPLO leader Ahmed Shukeiri’s enuncia-tions of the slogan under which Egypt-ian armies had entered Palestine in1948 — “drive the Jews into the sea”— as reactionary ravings with whichthey had nothing in common. [1]

In 1967 Israel defeated Egypt, Jor-dan, and Syria in the Six Day War. TheWest Bank, designated for the territoryof a Palestinian state alongside JewishIsrael in the UN’s 1947 partition plan,had been annexed by Jordan, andGaza had been under Egyptian rule.Israel conquered them in 1967, reunit-ing 1948 Palestine, but under Israelirule.

An Israeli offer of those territories inexchange for normal relations was re-jected by the Arab states, none ofwhich at that point recognised Israel.(Egypt and Jordan would, years later).

2

Israel for the first time entered intoclose alliance with the USA.

The shift to what is now the commonleft-wing position did not happen all atonce. The main movement was to-wards acceptance of a formulaadopted by the PLO to replace “drivethe Jews into the sea”: a secular dem-ocratic state in all of Palestine. Theshift to present-day full-throttle ab-solute anti-Zionism did not take placeuntil after the aftermath of the YomKippur war in 1973.

Egypt made a surprise attack on Is-rael during a Jewish religious festival.For a while it looked as if Israel wouldbe overrun. Israel won. The Arabstates then used oil price rises as aweapon and triggered economiccrises, with high inflation, in Europeand the USA.

Now there was a shift in the Westernmedia to sharp criticism of Israel andhostility to it. That was paralleled bysharpening hostility on the left, for in-stance in the press of the SWP-UK. Itwas still far from the present level ofhysterical anti-Zionism, which wouldrequire another SWP intensification of“anti-imperialism” and “anti-Zionism” in1986-7.

II

AWL began in late 1966 as four peo-ple, two of whom, Rachel Lever andPhil Semp, were Jewish in back-ground. We had to sort out what wethought about Israel at the time of theJune 1967 war in the magazine Work-ers’ Republic, which Rachel Lever andI produced in association with an exileIrish political organisation, the IrishWorkers’ Group.

In common with all Orthodox Trot-skyists, we saw the world as experi-encing a great “colonial revolution”,which in some cases, China for exam-ple, led to the creation of states mod-elled on Russia. The Middle East waspart of that. There were progressiveArab nationalists (Egypt, Iraq, Syria)freeing themselves from imperialism,and reactionary Arab regimes (SaudiArabia, Jordan, the emirates, etc.) whoopposed that progressive nationalism.Israel was on the side of the Arab re-actionaries against the anti-imperialistArab nationalists. We were (in retro-spect: the war was over by the timewe were producing the magazine) forIsrael’s defeat by the Arab nationalists.We were for a Socialist United Statesof the Middle East and autonomy forJews and Kurds.

We did not understand ourselves tobe for Israel’s destruction. Any “drivethe Jews into the sea” nonsense wedismissed as vicious.[2]

We shifted in the moving consensusof the left, in response to Israeli rule inthe West Bank and Gaza, to accept-ance of the new PLO slogan, seculardemocratic state. It seemed to offer

justice to both Palestinians and Jews.The idea that it did was deeply stu-

pid, but it was a stupidity that quicklyconquered most of the revolutionaryMarxist left. And, once adopted, it hadan anti-Israeli logic of its own.

When people in politics are being alot more stupid on some issue thanusual, you ask the question: what po-litical and psychological function doesthis advanced level of stupidity serve?Here, it served to allow us to side withthe beaten and oppressed Palestini-ans and the anti-imperialist Arabs andat the same time do something likejustice to the Jews, who would (wepersuaded ourselves) have equalrights in a secular democratic state.The Jews would not have nationalrights; but neither would the Palestini-ans. It seemed a just compromise. Aliveable solution.

But how do you get there? We didn’texamine it too clearly. We were con-tent to fudge and go on fudging, withthe whole complex of thinking set inplace by hostility to what came to beIsrael’s colonial rule in the Palestinianmajority territories in the West Bankand Gaza. We were for the defeat ofIsrael in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Wechose to inhabit a culpable delusion, apolitical fiction.

III

I have no memory of direct animos-ity to Jews. I had been religious; I’dread a Catholic re-telling of the OldTestament and thus had some vagueidea of ancient Jewish “history”.

I had had to persuade Rachel Lever— who had been a five year old childin Jerusalem during the Arab siege of1948 — to the view we took on the1967 war. Later, “secular democraticstate” made most sense to us as thesolution to a complex conflict. I was noless, and possibly more, vehementlyhostile to Israel than the other com-rades.

On a certain level I was unhappy tobe thus in conflict with most Jewishpeople. However, politics had to rule.

Midway between 12 and 13 yearsold, I had moved with my family fromthe town of Ennis in the west of Irelandto Manchester. For 15 years I lived inthe Cheetham Hill Road area, whichthen had a large Jewish population. In1947 a pogromist crowd, triggered bythe British-Jewish conflict in Palestineand led by Mosley fascists, hadsurged up Cheetham Hill Road fromthe nearby city centre, throwingstones, breaking windows, and attack-ing people they thought were Jewish.Similar things happened in Leeds andLiverpool at that time.

My arrival in England involved me ina precocious instant politicisation asan “anti-imperialist”. I had in my headthe story of Ireland’s long history of op-pression and resistance to it. I had

heard my mother’s and father’s storiesof the Irish war of independence, theBlack and Tan war. My mother hadbeen in her late teens then, and livingon the west coast of Clare, in one ofthe flashpoint areas of the conflict. Ihad learned to share my mother’s loveof the old songs, many of them nation-alist.

I remember only one big incidentfrom that time in my life, when I re-fused to stand for “God Save TheQueen” at a Halle Orchestra concert atthe Manchester Free Trade Hall. I gen-eralised from Irish history. The worldwas divided into oppressed peopleand oppressors, and I identified withthe oppressed. “We” were of the op-pressed, and the oppressed were of“us”. For instance, I picked up thatthere was a war in Algeria for freedomfrom France, and knew exactly whereright and wrong was there, which sideI was on, though I knew little elseabout it and had difficulty finding theinformation about it which I sought. Iwas 15 at the time when Britain in-vaded Egypt and occupied Port Saidover the nationalisation of the SuezCanal in 1956.

I was not yet a communist: it wouldbe the better part of a year before Ilearned to see communism as the lib-erating Russian Revolution, and not asit was epitomised in the horrid old menruling Russia. But I sided with Egypt. Iremember how someone at worksummed up what I was arguing for, toa third person who had just joined us:“He thinks that if he agrees Eden [theBritish prime minister] has a right to in-vade Egypt, then he will be saying thatEngland was right in Ireland”. The Irishparadigm of national oppression ofpeoples and resistance was a service-able one.

It didn’t misdirect me about “theJews”, either, then or now. I learned insome detail about Hitler’s massacre ofthe Jews. Excerpts from or early draftsof what became “The Scourge of theSwastika”, by Lord Russell of Liver-pool, were serialised in the Daily Ex-press in mid 1954. (I’ve checked: itwas part of a big campaign againstcreating a new German army). “TheJews” were oppressed people, too.Like us, but more so. There was a cer-tain degree of identification.

Jewish migration north fromCheetham was well underway, buteverything I became involved in as ateenager, the Young CommunistLeague, the local Labour Party youthorganisation, the clothing industry, washeavily Jewish. The conversation ofoldsters in the CP-led tailors’ and gar-ment workers’ union group, for in-stance, would often centre on whatsome of their rivals and sparring part-ners in the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen, Ajex, had said or done.The local leaders of the small Trotsky-ist group I would join, Harry Ratner

3

and Greta Karpin, were of Jewishbackground.[3]

My first job after leaving school wasin a small furniture factory, and my firstpartner there, standing across fromme as we fed raw timber back andforth through a sawing machine tomake planks, was a Polish Jew whomwe called John. He was a survivor ofthe Hitler camps, a decade in the past.A very small, quiet, subdued man. Ihad enough sense to resent it and seeit for what it was when another adultwood machinist whom I’d been movedon to serve told me that John was “amean, tight bastard”.

Vehement against Israel after 1967as the oppressor of the Palestinians inthe West Bank and Gaza I was; butslowly, after a long time, towards theend of the 1970s, I was assailed bydoubts about the “secular democraticstate” formula. Because of the strongcommitment to the immediately op-pressed, the Palestinians, I had a lotof entrenched resistance, and condi-tioning and self-conditioning, to breakthrough. But it finally registered that“secular democratic state” simplydidn’t make sense. It couldn’t possiblymean in reality what we wanted to itmean and had convinced ourselves itmeant: equality for Jews and Arabs.And eventually it clicked that it wasn’tgood for the Palestinians, either.

A “secular democratic state” de-manded Israeli agreement. Since Is-rael would never agree to dismantle itsstate and to put itself at the mercy of ahostile Arab world, it meant the priorconquest of the Israelis. At the culmi-nation of that conquest, what was leftof the Israeli Jews would not have andcould not have equality in a “seculardemocratic state”. The practical mean-ing of “secular democratic state” wasthe same, more or less, as that of“drive the Jews into the sea”. Immedi-ately it meant delegitimising Israel,saying that it had no right to exist, stillless to defend itself. “Secular demo-cratic state” was “drive the Jews intothe sea” for squeamish dimwits, orpeople made stupid by politics.

All that is obvious and very simple.But for us, buttressed by emotionalsiding with the Palestinians, the op-pressed, it was not simple and least ofall could it be obvious. That sort ofmechanism is possibly a factor now,except that the level of antisemitismgeared round the “secular democraticstate” formula is a great deal higher.

The strong resistance meant that ittook a long time for this to establish it-self clearly in my head. When it had, Isought separate discussions with eachof the people in the organisation who, Ithought, had more than a superficialknowledge of the Middle East, half adozen people perhaps.

I couldn’t get anyone to agree withme. Rachel Lever rejected the argu-ment vehemently. I couldn’t unper-

suade her.They did, however, by their blocking

out of the problem I saw and the is-sues I raised, succeed in letting meconvince myself that I was right. WhenI raised the question with members ofthe leading committee I met with in-credulity as well as incomprehensionand dismissal.

Years later I asked one of them, whotries to be rational in politics, why hecouldn’t then see the problem I raised.He answered: “I followed the Jewishcomrades”. That is, it was easier tostick to the comfort of a blatant politi-cal fiction. As I had done for a longtime.

A lot of people in the wider revolu-tionary left “followed the Jewish com-rade” — Tony Cliff — into de factoantisemitism.

If not “secular democratic state”,then it had to be either the status quoin the West Bank and Gaza, or twostates.

In a letter to our paper, Workers’ Ac-tion, in 1974, a comrade, Neal Smith,had advocated two states soon afterthe Democratic Front for the Liberationof Palestine had started to advocate it(as a stepping-stone to a “seculardemocratic state”). I was among thosewho opposed him.

In fact, though, “two states” was onlya more developed, fleshed-out, moreconcrete version of the old policy —socialist United States of the MiddleEast with autonomy for Jews andKurds. It had the advantages of ac-cepting the right of Israel to exist anddefend itself, and of working outwardsfrom the idea of an independentPalestinian state. It was, of course,what had been stipulated in the 1947UN resolution.

For me it had been a circular move-ment from autonomy to “two states”.The other comrades, Rachel Leverand Phil Semp, who also had startedwith Jewish autonomy, stuck with “sec-ular democratic state”. (Phil Sempeventually agreed with two states, butby then he had dropped out of politicalactivity).

I had to accept that I couldn’t shiftthe others, and I think on one level Iwas content with that. I had the samestrong inhibitions about seeming toside against the Palestinians that theothers had. The truth, I think, is that Iwasn’t unhappy at being a politicalprisoner on the issue.

Another realisation also had to workits way through slowly: that the de-stroy-Israel slogans, postures, inten-tions, and activities were in fact thebitter enemy of the oppressed Pales-tinians — the living Palestinians, asdistinct from the symbols of Arab de-feat in Palestine, of Muslim subordina-tion, and, for the left, ofanti-imperialism.

The Israelis had Israel, a sovereignstate; the Palestinians had nothing.

Any proposed “settlement” that de-manded the destruction of Israel —whether it be called “drive the Jewsinto the sea”, “from the river to thesea”, Muslim Holy War and recon-quest, or “secular democratic state” —condemned the Palestinians to an in-definite purgatory. Its realisation re-quired the collapse of the will of theHebrew nation to live and defend it-self.

Once the US-Israel alliance was es-tablished, from 1967, it required anepochal change in the balance ofworld power. It left the Palestinianswithout redress while they waited forthe change in Israel’s ability to defenditself and in the world balance, and en-tirely dependent on the good will ofwhatever Arab big powers might con-quer Israel. The most seemingly radi-cal slogans and demands, expressedin the obsession of Arab-nationalistsand Islamists, and sections of the anti-imperialist left, with aspiring to destroyIsrael, did not at all serve the livingPalestinian people.

“Siding with the oppressed”, in itspolitical expressions in the various de-stroy-Israel slogans and programs,was not siding with the oppressed. Itwas just siding against Israel — andsiding with Arab, Islamist, and “anti-im-perialist” intransigents and irreconcil-ables for whom the Palestinians werea cipher. Bringing down Israel, notraising up the Palestinians, was itscore drive.

In our political tradition, the answerto the question whether siding with theoppressed demands of us that we ac-cept the given policy at all times of theoppressed (in fact, of their leaders), is,no, it does not. Our basic politics de-mands of us that we fight the chauvin-ism of the oppressed, too, andpromote workers’ unity. We’d havegiven that correct copy-book answer tothat question, in the late 1970s — inLenin’s words, “we fight against theprivileges and violence of the oppres-sor nation, and do not in any way con-done strivings for privileges on the partof the oppressed nation” — but inpractice it was not easy for us to dis-entangle and disengage.

When others on the ostensible leftdid begin to differentiate from the ma-jority view of Palestinian leaders, itwas to side with Hamas against Fatah.Hamas were better anti-imperialists(that is, more tunnel-visioned) thanFatah, you see. Some on the left re-joiced at the victory of the clerical-fas-cist Hamas over the quasi-secularFatah in the Palestinian elections of2006, and the Hamas coup in Gaza in2007. It was the reduction of their poli-tics to something hard to distinguishfrom political lunacy.

IV

In 1981 our group, by then called4

Socialist Organiser, fused with anotherTrotskyist group, the Workers’ SocialistLeague. Led by Alan Thornett, it was abreakaway from the Workers’ Revolu-tionary Party [WRP] of seven yearsearlier — the WRP as it was before itsleaders sold themselves to Arab gov-ernments and it became the crazilyantisemitic thing it ended as.

In the discussion preceding theamalgamation, it was agreed that bothorganisations were for a “secular dem-ocratic state” and that would be theposition of the new organisation. Noproblem there.

In fact the fusion brought togetherpeople who adhered to a common slo-gan, “secular democratic state”, butgave it radically different political, his-torical, emotional, and moral content.The Socialist Organiser people foundthat the Thornettite “secular demo-cratic state” was not quite theirs. Simi-larly from their side for our newcomrades.

The Socialist Organiser people didsincerely, albeit stupidly, believe inequal rights for the Israeli Jews in thefuture “secular democratic state”. Thequestions I had been raising about the“secular democratic state” may havemade some comrades more aware ofthat and strengthened their need toassert and believe that “secular demo-cratic state” meant equality.

The Thornettites understood “secu-lar democratic state” as meaning Arabself-determination in the “secular dem-ocratic state” and Jewish subordina-tion. It was a contradiction in terms —a joint Jewish-Arab “secular demo-cratic state” which was also an Arab“secular democratic state” and gavePalestinian Arabs self-determination.In fact, they had a far less effete andmore realistic idea of what “seculardemocratic state” meant (and couldonly mean) than the Socialist Organ-iser people did.

It was as with the different under-standings now of the “two states” posi-tion on the left. Some who notionallyare for two states, the antisemitism-fo-menting Morning Star for example,rage against and demonise Israel andZionism. Their extreme and in manycases hysterical hostility to Israelpoints not to their notional politics —two states — but to an adoptive Arab-Islamic chauvinism.

So it was with the Thornettite adher-ents of the “secular democratic state”.Some of them even proposed the slo-gan: “Drive the Zionists out of thelabour movement”.

This very soon became obvious. Iused the clash to get people to thinkabout the issue and about our politicson it. The contradiction between thetwo versions of “secular democraticstate” would be the locomotive of radi-cal change in the understanding of alot of comrades.

In June 1982 Israel invaded

Lebanon to get at the PLO militaryforces there. Lebanon was an unsta-ble confessional state set up in 1943,based on rules for power-sharing be-tween Maronite Christian and MuslimArabs. The PLO presence destroyedthe delicate confessional balance. TheMaronites allied with Israel. In Sep-tember 1982 they massacred Pales-tinians in two refugee camps, Sabraand Chatila, in territory within the over-all control of the Israeli army underDefence Minister Ariel Sharon. An Is-raeli enquiry would later apportionsome of the blame to Sharon and hiscolleagues. The anti-Zionist left in-stantly gave all the responsibility andblame to Israel.

The Russian invasion of Afghanistanat Christmas 1979 had triggered whatcame to be called the Second ColdWar, and that was the internationalbackground to the conflict in Lebanonand to how the left perceived it.

A tremendous hysteria gripped thepro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli left. Our or-ganisation too. It could be argued, Ithink, that Socialist Organiser was theworst of the left press in that period onIsrael and the Middle East. Part of itwas style. Alan Clinton, who was bythis time Chief Whip of the rulingLabour group on Islington council,under Margaret Hodge, suggested —in the paper — that Israel shouldnever be referred to as Israel. So itwas screaming headlines about “theZionists”. Another problem was thatJohn Lister, joint editor of the paper, athoughtless and conscienceless hackwho saw his place in the political worldas that of Alan Thornett’s amanuensis,wrote most of the stuff on “the Zion-ists”. It was very unpleasant, and morethan a little crazed.[4]

Less than a year after the fusion, theorganisation had begun to pull apart.The group was united in opposingThatcher’s Falklands War (April-June1982), and for the first six weeks alsolargely united in opposing support forArgentina, which had invaded theFalkland Islands.

Then the Thornettites discoveredthat the Falklands War was a majorevent in the world struggle against im-perialism, and that the fascistic militaryjunta ruling Argentina was now “in ourclass camp” (alongside Russia). Sid-ing with Argentina was the commonOrthodox Trotskyist response. Ourside refused to accept those ridiculousfantasy politics.

The hysteria about Israel in Lebanonmerged into that anti-imperialist “high”.Denunciation of “the Zionists” at meet-ings became even less inhibited andmore of a gut-level hostility to “theZionists” than a pro-Palestinian posi-tion.

The organisation came very close toimploding. It didn’t, but we hadreached the political turning point onthe Middle East.

The National Committee, formed byamalgamating the committees of thetwo previous organisations, was big,about 40 members. Into this commit-tee, with the Middle East on theagenda, Alan Thornett brought an Is-raeli Jewish socialist, a member of theWorkers’ League in Israel, linked toPolitica Obrera in Argentina. He spokefor the outright destruction of Israel.He himself had, like Tony Cliff beforehim, done the logical thing and left.

Everybody in that room, except forone other comrade (Clive Bradley) andI, was for a “secular democratic state”,and yet the two halves into which themeeting divided faced each otheracross a great political chasm. Therewere those who saw “secular demo-cratic state” as involving equality forJews and Arabs in the future settle-ment, and wanted it to mean that; andthose for whom it meant primarily thedestruction of the Jewish state, by warand conquest. I don’t know if minutesof the meeting survive, and it’s a longtime ago.

I drove wedges into the gap be-tween the two versions of “seculardemocratic state”. “Secular democraticstate” must mean equal rights forJews! Half the meeting believed that. Iremember the excitable Alan Clintonbeating the table when I was talkingabout equal rights for the Israeli Jews,chanting “No rights for Jews! no rightsfor Jews!”

Alan was a decent man (fallenamong municipal reformists, and soonto leave us for them), and I didn’t be-lieve that he was antisemitic on a per-sonal level. He meant no rights forJews in Israel-Palestine, in the “secu-lar democratic state”.

Those who had the old Socialist Or-ganiser version of “secular democraticstate” now saw themselves in the mir-ror of their formal political co-thinkers,and some of them experienced a crisisof political identity. The equipoise ofthe politically-hybrid slogan, “seculardemocratic state”, was shaken. “Secu-lar democratic state” could no longerprovide an emotional refuge fromthinking about the real situation andthe real choices. They had to thinkabout the issues without the comfort ofa nonsensical fantasy solution.

The Middle East was also discussedat a big conference of Socialist Organ-iser supporters in mid-1982, at theheight of the hysteria. People talkedabout “secular democratic state” as“self-determination for the PalestinianArabs”. I took the floor to argue that“secular democratic state” for Jewsand Arabs implied, and had to imply,Jewish and Arab equality. It couldn’tmean self-determination for the Pales-tinian Arabs any more than self-deter-mination for the Israeli Jews. (In fact,that was one reason for rejecting it).Each people, the Jews and the Arabs,had to be taken into account by the

5

other side. I remember two things fromthat long-ago meeting — the waves ofhostility I evoked; and two youngstersclose to the front of the meeting, oneof whom I think was Jewish in back-ground, nodding emphatic agreementwith what I was saying.

V

The group was being draggedthrough the libel courts — or JohnBloxam and I, on behalf of the group,were — by the WRP which, amongother things, accused us of being partof a world Zionist conspiracy stretch-ing all the way into Thatcher’s andReagan’s cabinets.

I was able in Socialist Organiser topublish a reasonably comprehensiveattack on their antisemitism. It had tobe done within bounds, but it includeda criticism of our own antisemitism too.I wrote about the slogan “drive theZionists out of the labour movement”.Which had been raised — by some ofour comrades.

I became joint editor of Socialist Or-ganiser in June 1983, and CliveBradley later became a staff writer.The hysteria about “the Zionists” hadabated a little by then. We began topublish such things as a critical as-sessment of Lenni Brenner’s rehash ofStalinist antisemitic “anti-Zionism” ofthe 1949-53 period. Jane Ashworthhad become student organiser in mid1982, at the height of the anti-Zionistagitation. She came to agree with meon “two states”, and began to influ-ence some of our younger comradeson the question.

The Thornett group had fallen apartbit by bit in the course of the politicalbattles, with groups and individualspeeling off, and Socialist Organiserparted company with the rump in mid1984. The organisation’s mindchanged over time and we formallyadopted a two-states position in 1985.

We allied with the Union of JewishStudents against the kitsch-left in thecolleges, and that was educational forsome comrades too. We worked to en-large what we saw as our island of so-cialist sanity in the swamp of leftabsolute anti-Zionism and barely dis-guised antisemitism. Already in the1970s, and again in the mid 1980s, weopposed attempts to harass and banJewish student societies, seeing theadvocates of the bans for what theywere — “left-wing” antisemites andboneheaded “anti-Zionists”.

VIThe present-day antisemitism, or

absolute anti-Zionism, of the ostensi-ble left does not of course exist in avacuum, and it is not the start ofsomething new in history.

Uninhibited Nazi-style and simplyNazi antisemitism has been cultivatedinside the Arab countries, without a

break as far as I know, after the crush-ing defeat of the Nazis in 1945. Acrossthe world antisemitism has become“anti-Zionism”.

The left has inherited and developedthe Stalinist “anti-Zionist” antisemitismof the years 1949-53 (some of whichcould be traced to Stalinist ideas in the1930s). Events and the passage oftime have moved the ostensible leftonto strange new ground. The agita-tion now for the “right of return” is in lit-eral terms a species of racism, or of“gene-ism”

Of the six million Palestinians desig-nated as “refugees” who should collec-tively “return” to and repossess what isnow Israel, perhaps 200,000 werealive in 1948, that is, one in thirty. (Or,on another estimate, as few as30,000). The number of Jews in Israelwho were there in 1948 must be aboutthe same. In due course we will reachthe point where none of the desig-nated refugees are actually refugeesfrom 1947-8.

Do the six million Arabs have a rightto displace — that is what “return”means, inescapably — a similar num-ber of today’s Israeli Jews, who havegrown up in Israel and (in many cases)whose parents, grandparents, andeven great-grandparents were bornthere?

What is that right to displace basedon? The six million are descendedfrom certain people, and that givesthem rights stronger than those of thepeople born there?

Racism is used as a swear-wordnow, a bludgeon, a demagogic obliter-ation of grades and nuances in thecontinuum from affinity to nationalismto chauvinism to warfare against a na-tionality to what is properly calledracism. But what is the Palestinian“right of return”, the superior claimover the existing Jewish Israel of thesix million “refugees” who are mostlynot refugees but descendants ofrefugees, based on, if not genetic con-tinuity, “race”?

Guarding the proportions here, itcan be truly said that the absolute anti-Zionist “left” unites the Stalinist politi-cal antisemitism of 1949-53 withaspects of the older, racist-genetic, an-tisemitism. I repeat: that is what thesuperiority of the claim to the territoryof pre-1967 Israel of the designatedrefugees, over the community who livethere, comes down to: genes.

And of course Western history issaturated with the many strands of an-other antisemitism, Christian anti-semitism, beginning with the assertionthat “Pontius Pilate, the Roman gover-nor, did it” — the condemnation todeath of Jesus Christ — “at the desireof the Jews”. (That is how it was putuntil recently in the Catholic Cate-chism of Faith) [5]. That Christian anti-semitism also inspired the Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion, forged by the se-

cret police of Holy Mother Russia ahundred years ago, and circulated invast numbers and many languagessince.

The Bible story has the Roman gov-ernor Pontius Pilate speaking to theJewish crowd: “When Pilate saw thathe could prevail nothing, but thatrather a tumult was made, he tookwater, and washed his hands beforethe multitude, saying, I am innocent ofthe blood of this just person: see ye toit. Then answered all the people, andsaid, His blood be on us, and on ourchildren”.

On the heads of those who in 1948won Israel’s right to exist against peo-ple marching under the injunction todrive the Jews into the sea, and ontheir heads of the generations of theirchildren, is the fault that deprives Is-rael of historical legitimacy and makesthe claim of those born and living in Is-rael forever inferior to the claims ofgenerations born elsewhere.

Those who now get gratification andjoy out of uninhibitedly crusadingagainst the blood-guilty “Zionists” con-tinue a foul tradition of demagogiccampaigning and spurious self-right-eousness and hate-blinded anti-semitism.

Footnotes

[1] One measure of how thingsstood in the early 1960s: I debated Is-rael with a Zionist, another member ofthe Labour Party youth organisation inCheetham, Manchester. My main ar-gument, as I remember, was that thekibbutzim were utopian socialistcolonies and that therefore Israel of-fered no viable socialist model.

Irish in background, and therefore“anti-imperialist”, I would have beenmore aware than average, not less so,of the sort of “colonial” question thatwould dominate discussions of Israellater. There was little general aware-ness of Palestinian refugees, and cer-tainly no putting all the blame for theircontinued plight as refugees on Israelalone.

[2] Worrying that a line in the Work-ers’ Republic article on the Six DayWar might be taken to imply the wishor the threat of destroying Israel, Itravelled in a dinner hour across Man-chester from Salford to Cheetham,where Workers’ Republic was beingproduced on a stencil duplicator, todouble-check. Memory suggests thatwe re-did the page.

[3] In the later 1950s, I even foundJewish-background youngsters in theYCL who sang Irish nationalist, IrishRepublican, and even Catholic-sectar-ian songs, led by the branch secretaryTerry Whelan, who was making a bit ofa name for himself as a folk singer —“Johnson’s Motor Car”, “KathleenMavourneen”, and a darker song, ofwhich all I can remember are the lines:

6

“Early one morning, on my way toMass, I met a bloody Protestant andkilled him for his pass”. No, I didn’t ap-prove.

[4] See for example “Zionism red intooth and claw”, John Lister, SocialistOrganiser 91, 1 July 1982, and “Zion-ist policy: genocide”, Andrew Hornung,Socialist Organiser 89, 17 June 1982.

[5] A good-hearted neighbour hadme learning the catechism early, and Icould recite that at the age of four orfive. It was similar with all Christiansbrought up in that tradition.

Preface (1993)This pamphlet contains a large se-

lection of articles and letters about Is-rael and the Arabs, and how socialistsshould see the Jewish-Arab conflict,which were published over a numberof years in the weekly Marxist newspa-per Socialist Organiser.

In the last few years Socialist Or-ganiser has reassessed and revisedits attitude. Until mid 1985 — thoughwith decreasing conviction — SO heldthat socialists should advocate the re-placement of Israel with a seculardemocratic state in the whole of pre-1947 Palestine, within which Jews andArabs would have equal citizenship. InSeptember 1985 we brought a longprocess of reassessment to a conclu-sion by deciding that, desirable thoughthe creation of a joint Jewish-Arabstate in Palestine might be, it was im-possible that it could come into exis-tence by peaceful agreement in anyforeseeable future, and that in practi-cal politics the “secular democraticstate” slogan functioned as a cover fora programme of conquest and subju-gation of the Jewish nation in Israel bythe Arab states. On any realistic ac-count, the first stage would have to besuch a conquest — and after that in-evitably bloody conquest of the Jews,there would be no second stage inwhich Jews and Arabs would live to-gether as equal citizens.

We found ourselves having to gothrough a prolonged and painful re-assessment because, in line with thegeneral drift of would-be Trotskyistopinion in the 1970s, we had too un-critically accepted the “secular demo-cratic state” programme adopted bythe Palestine Liberation Organisationin the late ‘60s. We did so under themoral pressure to side with the de-feated and oppressed. We understoodthe formula in our own way as mean-ing complete equality for Jews andArabs in the new Palestine — this di-verged appreciably from the PLO’sown version, in which the secular,democratic state would be an Arabstate in which the Jews (or someJews) would have equality of citizen-ship and religion.

The sad truth is probably that wewere less concerned with thinkingthings through rigorously than withadopting a consistently militant anduncompromising stand of support forthe oppressed: and we were not tookeen to probe beyond the superficialplausibility of the “secular, democraticstate” programme and its seemingpromise to do justice to the Palestini-ans and reconcile Jews and Arabs ona higher plane.

With us, as with many on the leftnow, something more was involvedthan mere obtuseness and politicaland moral cowardice. The PalestinianArabs are terribly oppressed. Thougharguably they have suffered far greatermassacres at the hands of Jordan,Syria, and Lebanese Christian andMuslim militias than from the Israelis,the root problem for the PalestinianArabs has been their displacement bythe Israelis

Therefore it is easy to lapse by wayof proper moral indignation into a vi-carious Arab revanchism and national-ism. But something more specific wasa factor in our (and others’) obtuse-ness on this question: the fact that it isimpossible to do full retributive justiceto the Palestinian Arabs without doinga grave injustice to the Jewish nationthat has grown up in Palestine. No fullrestoration of the Palestinian Arab po-sition is possible without driving outthe Jews.

Where no satisfying solution exists,there is scope for fantasy and vague-ness. The “secular, democratic state”is a fantasy solution — the promisethat the lion will lie down with thelamb, that those who have fought eachother for at least seven decades willintegrate into a harmonious unit, eitherby the Israeli Jews voluntarily aban-doning their own nation-state in orderto share the disputed territory or by theArab powers conquering the Jews andthen instituting the sort of equality ofnationalities that exists nowhere in theMiddle East.

If you rule out the ‘secular, demo-cratic state’ as a fantasy, then the onlypossible and equitable solution is con-ciliation and division of the disputedterritory between the two peoples.

The articles and letters reproducedhere look at the Arab Jewish conflictand its history from a number of radi-cally different viewpoints. They are allreproduced exactly as published. Thepamphlet also contains two items notpreviously published in Socialist Or-ganiser: a contribution (written at thetime, by me) to the discussion onwhether Socialist Organiser can nowbe called “Zionist”, which, for reasonsof space, balance, and decent editorialrestraint was not published in thepaper; and a brief comment on a con-tribution to the SO discussion by LenniBrenner (author of ‘Zionism in the Ageof the Dictators’ and ‘The Iron Wall’)

which nobody bothered to reply towhen it was published.

As is to be expected in a prolongeddiscussion in which people’s ideasevolve, change and develop, thereader will find many ragged edges.One thing that jars with me particularlyis the unqualified definition of Israel assimply a ‘racist state’ in pieces I wroteas recently as two or three years ago(or some five or six years after I per-sonally had begun to argue that Israelhad a right to exist). Now Israel’s treat-ment of the Palestinian Arabs is racist,and it deserves to be called racist. Theproblem is with classifying the entireentity of the Jewish state as ‘racist’.

Ideas and attitudes that anywhereelse would be readily identified as na-tionalist (and in Israel’s case, it is a na-tionalism surrounded by murderouslyhostile other nationalisms) are in rela-tion to Israel classified as ‘racist’. Thismisuse of ‘racism’ to describe Israeli-Jewish nationalism (or chauvinism) isonly another way of denying that theJewish state has a right to exist andasserting that it is an illegitimate na-tion.

There are other examples of un-evenness and confusion, and of resid-ual ideas and attitudes jostling withnewer ideas and attitudes which, rigor-ously worked through, imply their op-posite. All this is mortifying. But noneof us have denied that we were im-mersed for a very long time in the gen-eral quagmire of confusion on thesequestions which chokes and distortsthe thought processes of the left.

We have been trying to work ourway out of it as best we can. We col-lect these articles under one cover inthe hope of helping other socialists towork their way out.

Sean Matgamna, 1993

7

DEBATE: JIMHIGGINS ANDSEANMATGAMNA

This debate between SeanMatgamna and the late Jim Higgins(former National Secretary of theSWP), was sparked by a column bythe late Paul Foot in Socialist Workerand Sean Matgamna’s comment on it.The debate ran in Workers’ Libertynos.32-34 and 38, in 1996-7.

“Mr Foot, do youhate the Jews?”

By Paul Foot

I got this letter recently from awoman in Surrey.

Dear Mr FootI was so disappointed in you when I

heard your hysterical outburst againstIsrael on Any Questions.

I have admired your column in theGuardian and your cogent socialistviews for a long time. However, youdid yourself no good in the programmein revealing your up-till-now well-hid-den anti-Jewish bias.

You took no account of the provoca-tion received by Israel for such a longtime from the terrorist group, Hezbol-lah.

You just hate Jews — it was per-fectly obvious. And you should be hon-est enough to say so instead of hidingit behind your criticism of Israel.

Here is my reply.Thank you very much for your letter.

Almost every time I manage to publi-cise my strong views about the stateof Israel, I get attacked for being anti-Semitic and for “hating Jews”.

My instinctive reaction — ‘No, I don’thate Jews at all” — harks back to theold and notoriously patronising, “Someof my best friends are Jews”.

So let me explain why I am againstIsrael. The idea of a safe homeland forJews gained a lot of sympathy amongsocialists after the long years of Nazipersecution.

The problem with the chosen home-land, Palestine, however, was that itwas already populated by Palestini-ans. A Jewish state could not be cre-ated there without the forcibleexpulsion from their homes of a millionpeople, most of whom have been liv-ing as refugees ever since.

This expulsion was followed by thegrossest discrimination against thePalestinians living in Israel, and peri-odic outbursts of unashamedly imperi-

alist aggression and occupation ofneighbouring countries.

The Six Day War in 1967 was a warof conquest in which thousands ofmiles of other people’s territory wereadded to Israel by force of arms.

Naturally, all this led to violent resist-ance among the expelled and state-less Palestinians, which in turn led toIsraeli counter-terrorism in an appar-ently endless spiral.

Throughout, the Israeli aggressionswere supported by the United Statesgovernment, whose greed for cheapoil is always threatened by Arab na-tionalism, and especially by Arab so-cialism, both of which have beensidetracked and contained by the veryexistence of Israel.

The arguments which gave rise tothe sympathy for a Jewish homelandon the left were turned on their head.The persecuted became the persecu-tors — the oppressed the oppressors.

One result is that Jews are far lesssecure in Israel than they are, say, inBritain or the United States or in mostother places in the world.

This brings me to your accusations.It is you, not I, who automatically con-nect the state of Israel with Jews, andconstrue every attack on or defence ofIsrael as an attack on or a defence ofJews.

In this, it seems to me, you are cut-ting yourself off from the best Jewishsocialists and reformers who haveconsistently been anti-Zionist.

So, although it’s true, I don’t rely onthe fact that some of my best friendsare Jews.

More optimistically, I conclude thatsome of the fiercest fighters for humanemancipation are Jews, and all ofthose are anti-Zionist.

Paul Foot, philo-semite

By Sean Matgamna

Dear Paul Foot:In your Socialist Worker column (16

May 1996) you print a letter in re-sponse to what you said about Israelon “Any Questions”, headed “Mr Foot,Do You Hate The Jews?”, and reply:“No, I don’t hate Jews at all”.

Of course not. Who could possiblysuspect you of hating Jews — a life-long socialist and for three and a halfdecades the most prominent acolyte ofTony Cliff, who is in origin a Palestin-ian Jew? No.

You deny the right of Israel to exist.You are hostile to Jews (and others)who are “Zionists”, that is, to Jewswho pointedly defend Israel’s right toexist, which means most Jews alive.You engage in blinkered, savagelypartisan, propaganda against Israel on

the radio, on TV, and in newspapercolumns. Against Israel you supporteven such an Arab Hitler as SaddamHussein.

To tell you the truth, if I didn’t knowyou for a socialist I might conclude:“Typical upper-class twit giving vent tothe ingrained prejudice of his sort — abit like the people who run PrivateEye, perhaps — part of the romanticArabist strain of British upper-classanti-Jewish feeling”. But I know you fora member of the Socialist Workers’Party. You do not hate Jews.

But substitute hate for being bribed,and the position is rather as describedin the well-known comment, HilaireBelloc’s I think: “You simply cannotbribe or twist/ The honest British jour-nalist./ But seeing what the chap willdo/ Unbribed, there’s really no occa-sion to”.

You consistently reject the only so-cialist approach, Arab-Jewish working-class unity and consistent democracyas a means to achieve that unity —that is, the most equitable settlementpossible in this tragic conflict, twostates for the two peoples and fullequality for Jews and Arabs in eachothers’ states.

Your column is astonishing in its ig-norance of or lack of concern for truth— astonishing not according to thestandards of a high-profile bourgeoisjournalist, but according to the stan-dards of someone who might possiblyconsider himself a Marxist.

You say socialists sympathised withthe idea of a safe home for Jews as“the long years of Nazi persecution”. Infact, 12 years. You substitute an exag-gerated measure of time to avoid men-tioning the relevant measure: sixmillion Jews murdered and many oth-ers uprooted.

You say the “chosen homeland”,Palestine, was “already populated” byPalestinian Arabs. But the Jews wereby 1947 a big national minority, aboutone-third of the population: why didthey not have rights, including the rightto separate and the right to defendthemselves?

“The Jewish state could not be cre-ated without the forcible expulsionfrom their homes of a million people”.In fact, Israel was proclaimed, in May1948, in territory allotted by the UnitedNations, without any Arabs being ex-pelled. Hundreds of thousands ofArabs did flee — the great majority notexpelled — after Arab states, with thebacking, naturally enough, of thePalestinian Arabs, invaded Israel.

If Israel had not won that war, thenthe Jews would have been massacredor expelled: indeed, in the followingyears, almost as large a number ofJews were expelled from or fled Arabcountries. It would have been better ifno-one had been expelled, but whatsense other than malevolent Arabchauvinism can there be in such dis-

8

tortions of history — if you yourselfknow the history, such lies — for thetoo-tolerant readers of SocialistWorker?

The Six Day War of June 1967 didbecome a war of conquest by Israel,but the moves that triggered the warcame from Egypt, which blockaded theGulf of Aqaba. Until the Egypt-Israeltreaty of 1979, all the Arab states —and, until 1988, the Palestine Libera-tion Organisation — took as their goalthe complete destruction of Israel andthe subjugation of its people. Thatbeing so, to talk as if the long conflictcame only from Israel’s “unashamedlyimperialist aggression and occupationof neighbouring territories” is to be thesocialist equivalent of a Sun journalist,a shameless lawyer for a precon-ceived view rather than an objectiveanalyst.

Israel has been moving — so Iwould argue, though the 30 May elec-tion may change that — towards with-drawal from the occupied territories,trading land for peace. If the Arabstates and the PLO had been willing tomake peace in the aftermath of the1967 war, then Israeli withdrawal fromthose territories would have been theimmediate result, and without thepainful uncertainties that accompanythe process three decades later.

The cycle of terrorism and counter-terrorism did not begin with Israel’s“shameless imperialist aggression”. Itbegan way back in 1929, or earlier,with Muslim chauvinist pogromsagainst Jewish settlers (who were notalways “Zionists”, either).

“The persecuted became the perse-cutors, the oppressed the oppressors”.Yes, tragically, that was the experienceof the Palestinian Arabs. Yet all thisoccurred in the context of Arab inva-sions, threatened invasions, or foiledinvasions.

“Jews are far less secure in Israelthan they are, say, in Britain and theUS”. Yes indeed: in other words, Arabchauvinism is a real threat. But in the1930s and 40s, when Israel wasshaped, all major countries — from theUS through the UK to Stalin’s Russia— kept out the Jews threatened withannihilation. Britain kept them out ofPalestine.

After the Second World War manythousands of Jews languished in Dis-placed Persons’ camps — often for-mer German concentration camps —or in British internment camps inCyprus. Some Jews going home toPoland from Hitler’s camps met withpogroms and murder.

What should the Israeli Jews donow? Pack up and move?

It is not you, so you say, who con-nect Israel, and your hostility to it, withJews in general; rather, it is those whosay that your attitude to Israel is anti-semitic. But can you possibly fail tounderstand that since Israel has come

to be central to the identity of mostJews alive — a few religious peopleand revolutionary socialists excepted— the distinction you make is spuriousand false? Isn’t it no more than asmirking smart-arse hypocrisy, theequivalent of saying “if the cap fits,wear it”?

By her attitude to Israel, you say,your correspondent is “cutting herselfoff from the best Jewish socialists andreformers”. They have “consistentlybeen anti-Zionists”. Some of your bestfriends are Jews, eh? These are“some of the fiercest fighters forhuman emancipation”. “All... are anti-Zionists”.

Is it that you don’t notice that hereyou automatically label almost the en-tire Jewish population of Israel —workers, socialists, the lot — as reac-tionary, together with most Jews world-wide who are not “anti-Zionist”, andread them out of the forward march ofhumankind? Surely not! You are not,as supporters of Workers’ Liberty are,critical of Israel, and in support ofthose within it who fight for equalitybetween Jewish and Arab Israeli citi-zens and for an independent state forthe Palestinian Arabs where they arethe majority. You want Israel de-stroyed. Even a Saddam Hussein is tobe supported in such an enterprise.

You probably are unaware that sinceTrotsky, continuing to follow the pre-Stalinist line of the Communist Interna-tional, supported the right of Jewishmigration to Palestine (as to Britain,the US, etc.), he would not qualify as alatter-day anti-Zionist, and that in SWPterms his credentials as a “fiercefighter for human emancipation” wouldhave to be severely reviewed, if not re-voked!

It is you, let me suggest, and Cliff,your mentor, who part company withthe fight for human emancipation.That, ultimately, is a fight for socialism.It will not be waged under the bannerof Arab nationalism or of any other na-tionalism. In practice you are vicariousArab nationalists.

For you, Israel is to blame even forArab chauvinism. “Arab nationalism...and Arab socialism have been side-tracked and contained by the very ex-istence of Israel”. Israel, and theJewish settlers before that, are to beblamed for not letting themselves becrushed? Comrade Foot, isn’t this adisgraceful exhibition of British bour-geois Arabism disguised as socialismand licensed for socialist consumptionby the strange figure of Cliff, thePalestinian-Jewish Arab chauvinist?Cliff gets away with training people likeyou in such politics because it is hardto pin the proper anti-Jewish tag onsomeone who in his persona is a be-nign person’s idea of an old IsraeliJew. But that is what Cliff is: an Arabchauvinist.

Nonsense? Recall the interview with

Cliff about his history in the SWP mag-azine in which he criticises himself forbelieving in 1938-9 that Jews shouldhave a right to flee from Hitler toPalestine (Socialist Review no.100).

Think about it. What is he sayinghere but that, if countries like Britainand the US could not be persuaded tolet Jews in, then it would have beenbetter that they were left at the mercyof Hitler than that they should go toPalestine? The interview is very slop-pily done, but the implication is clear— and it fits the vicarious Arab chau-vinist politics which Cliff purveys andhas educated you and others in.

Cliff presents himself as havingbeen in the Stalinist party in Palestinein the mid-1930s. If that is true, thenhe was brainwashed, like other youngJewish members of the CP, into Arabchauvinism. (Some were sent to plantbombs in Jewish quarters: if you wantmore details, see the article on “Trot-sky and the Jews” in Workers’ Libertyno.31). Even if he did falter in 1938-9,for 30 years now he has spread an up-dated version of such politics. Yourpolitics on Israel/Palestine, Paul Foot,are rooted in Third Period and thenPopular Front Stalinism in Palestine!

I repeat, contrary to the SWP’s vi-carious Arab chauvinism, the only so-cialist policy for the Jewish-Arabconflict is the fight for Jewish and Arabworking-class unity on the basis ofmutual recognition of national rights:two states for the two peoples!

For sloppiness, double standards,deliberate misconstruction, misrepre-sentation, and plain mendacity, itwould be hard to find so large a con-centration in so small a number ofwords as your column contains. PaulFoot, the line you push on Israel is ananti-socialist disgrace! But no, you arenot anti-semitic. Some of your bestfriends are Jews. You, comrade Foot,are for the Jews what Belloc’s journal-ist was for the truth.

“I really must refute your views,Believe me: I don’t hate no Jews.For seeing what pure love will do,What need have I for hatred too?”

A secular-democratic state

By Jim Higgins

It is always a pleasure to see SeanMatgamna in full spate and my enjoy-ment of his piece, “Paul Foot, philo-semite” (WL 32), was abated only bythe fear that the might do himself a se-rious mischief, carrying that immenseweight of heavy irony.

What a spiffing wheeze, Sean musthave though, to belabour Footie withHilaire Belloc, because one thing issure, whatever Foot’s prejudices mayhappen to be, Belloc was a brass-

9

bound and copper-bottomed anti-semite, the author of the lines: “Howodd of God, to choose the Jews.”

Now I have not read, and I hope I donot have to do so, the Paul Foot arti-cles that have so aroused Sean’srage, but I assume that it is anti-Zionistand that it sees the state of Israel asthe single greatest barrier to socialismand peace in the region. If that is thecase then Paul Foot has adopted, inthis case if no other, the only tenableposition for a Marxist.

There used to be a man, I do notknow if he is still alive, called PatSloan. He was for many years the sec-retary of the British Soviet FriendshipSociety. If anyone suggested in thepress that Joe Stalin had smelly feet,or Molotov was “old stone bottom”, Patwould write in to say that he personallyowned two pairs of Stalin’s socks, andthey glowed in the dark, suffusing hisbedroom with a perfumed aroma likeChanel No.5. As to Molotov, his bumwas in fact made of the finest Ferraramarble, which like aeroplanes, cars,radio, TV and the air conditionedpogo-stick had been invented in Rus-sia. Sean on Israel puts me very muchin mind of Pat Sloan in full apologiamode.

Let us take the question of the ex-pulsion of a million Arabs from theirhomes. Sean says, “In fact Israel wasproclaimed in May 1948, in territory al-lotted by the United Nations, withoutany Arabs being expelled. Hundreds ofthousands of Arabs did flee — thegreat majority not expelled — afterArab states with the backing, naturallyenough, of the Palestinian Arabs, in-vaded Israel.” In this case Sean isguilty of exactly that of which he ac-cuses Foot, distorting history. As theresult of a plan conceived in January1948, the Zionists moved in April ofthat year. The Irgun Zvei Leumi bom-barded Jaffa for three days, Haganahattacked the Arab community inJerusalem, and on the 9th April, theIrgun and the, fascist-trained, SternGang attacked the Arab village of DeirYassin, killing in cold blood 254 men,women and children. It was the newsof these massacres which set the Arabrefugees on the move and it was theirland expropriation that enabled theZionists to increase their share of thepartitioned state by 25% before theUN resolution was even passed. In1948 the Arab armies, apart from afew Egyptian troops, all fought on Arabland.

In a sense, the detailing of who didwhat to whom is not very productive.What the Arabs did to Jews in 1929,and on several other occasions, orwhat Jews did to Arabs in 1948 andhave done consistently ever since,suggests an equality between Arabsand Jews that does not exist. It sug-gests that they were acting as in avacuum. It really was not like that.

From the very beginning of the Zion-ist movement, its leaders attempted toget the support of powerful backers.Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism,tried unsuccessfully to approach theGerman Kaiser and the Sultan ofTurkey. After his death, Weitzman hada first meeting with Arthur Balfour in1906, that bore fruit in 1917 in the Bal-four Declaration for a Jewish NationalHome in Palestine. Balfour was notonly giving away a land already occu-pied by Palestinians, but also was ef-fectively disposing of the spoils of warthat had yet to be won.

Weitzman, however, had chosenwisely, and a Jewish population thathad stood at 130,000 in 1914 underthe British increased by half a millionby 1939. Naturally enough, while thisrepresented no great British sympathyfor Jews — Balfour in fact was an anti-semite — it did represent a usefulcounterbalance to the Arabs and madeit easier to control Palestine which wasimportant strategically for its proximityto the Suez Canal and as a vital linkfor the sea route and air routes toIndia and the East. Oil from Iraqflowed through the pipeline to Haifa,which was known as the Singapore ofthe Middle East.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930sBritish imperialism put on a virtuosoperformance of divide and rule. Theyblew up Arab houses, they demolishedvillages to punish “collective guilt”, es-tablished concentration camps, whichthey justified on the basis of protectingJews and Jewish property. On theother hand the British would turn offthe immigration tap to punish Jewsand reward the Arabs. Any sign ofArab-Jewish rapprochement would bemet by a sold alliance of Arab feudal-ists, Zionists and the British adminis-tration.

At the beginning of the war in 1939,the Zionists recognised that Britainwas in decline and that America was amuch more powerful patron. Americain its turn sought to replace Britain asthe power in the Middle East; Zionismwas a useful weapon in this project.

The role that Israel has played in theMiddle East was nicely summed up bythe editor of the Israeli daily newspa-per, Ha’aretz, when he explained in1951: “Israel has been given a role notunlike a watchdog. One need not fearthat it will exercise an aggressive pol-icy toward the Arab states if their willcontradicts the interest of the USA andBritain. But should the west prefer forone reason or another to close itseyes one can rely on Israel to punishseverely those of the neighbouringstates whose lack of manners towardsthe west has exceeded the proper lim-its.”

Israel has certainly lived up to itspromise to punish those failing toshow proper respect and in theprocess has taken on more and more

of its neighbours’ territory. Of course,they have learned, like other invadersbefore them, that it is not always easyto keep the natives quiet, even if youpursue a humanitarian Rabin policyand just break the arms of stonethrowing children.

Sean makes much of Tony Cliff’s70th birthday statement: “I used toargue that poor Jewish refugeesshould be allowed to come to Pales-tine… That was an unjustified compro-mise…” To which Sean responds:“Think about it. What is he saying herebut that, if countries like Britain andthe US could not be persuaded to letJews in, then it would have been bet-ter that they were left to the mercy ofHitler than that they should go toPalestine?” There is, however, a slightproblem here, because at theBermuda Committee in 1943 Roo-sevelt suggested that all barriers belifted for the immigration of Jews fromNazi persecution. To avoid offendingBritish sensibilities Palestine was ex-cluded from consideration. Zionist re-action was immediate and hostile,alleviation of Jewish misery was to bein Palestine or not at all. As Dr Silvertold the 22nd World Zionist Congress:“Zionism is not an immigration or arefugee movement, but a movement tore-establish the Jewish state for aJewish nation in the land of Israel. Theclassic textbook of Zionism is not howto fund a home for the refugees. Theclassic textbook of our movement isthe Jewish state.” You cannot getmuch clearer than that. Hal Draper, aMarxist with some prestige in Workers’Liberty circles, records: “Morris Ernst,the famous civil rights lawyer, has toldthe story about how the Zionist leadersexerted their influence to make surethat the US did not open up immigra-tion (into the US) to these Jews — forthe simple reason that they wanted toherd these Jews to Palestine.”

Sean, quite correctly it seems to me,says the answer is the unity of Araband Jewish workers. He then goes onto spoil it by suggesting they then setup separate states. What kind ofstates are these? Is there a mini-Palestine on a bit of the West Bank,plus the Gaza Strip, and a bigger,much more prosperous Jewish state,or has Sean got some complicatedscheme for population exchange, likehe used to have for Ireland? Surely,what is needed is a secular Arab-Jew-ish state based on socialism anddemocracy in all of Palestine.

Paul Foot, of course, can speak forhimself, and why not, it is his favouritesubject, but there is nothing manifestlyanti-semitic in the points Sean attrib-utes to him. Indeed what is strangeabout Sean’s piece is the absence ofany mention of the role of British andAmerican imperialism in the MiddleEast. There is nothing Stalinist in arecognition of Israel’s client status to

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US imperialism. Nor is there anythinganti-Semitic in recognising that a Zion-ist state smack in the middle of the re-gion, is the greatest enemy of peaceand socialism for all the Jews andArabs of the Middle East.

Two states fortwo peoples

By Sean Matgamna

In the recently made Disney cartoonversion of the “Hunchback of NotreDame” — so I’ve read somewhere —Quasimodo — “Quassi” — is not seri-ously deformed, and he is not crip-plingly deaf; the villain is no longer apriest; the chirpy, friendly characterssing to each other in American ac-cents; and, for all I know, it ends withEsmerelda and Quasimodo — “Essieand Quassi” — going off together handin hand into the sunset.

It explains quite a lot, though it does,I admit, surprise me, that Jim Higginsoperates with a — darker-toned —Disneyfied version of history.

When I read Jim’s whimsy aboutsmelly socks and marble backsides itdid flit through my mind that he was,inappropriately, trying to be funny. Ihad to abandon that idea because henever pulls out of it. The supposedlyserious stuff is all on the same level!

The feeble humour disappears, buthis entire account is in the samemode, consisting of snippets ofchewed up “history” concocted into asimple albeit malevolent tale.

Highly complex questions of nationalconflict are reduced to children’s talesof good guys and black-jowelled badguys.

Let me tell you the grown-up story,Jim. You’d have done better to leaveStalinism and its spinners of malignfairy stories out of it, for your politicson Israel come directly from Stalin.

Stalin was, to take the pertinent ex-ample, at the end of his life running araging campaign of paranoid anti-Jew-ish propaganda, complete with showtrials, and seemingly getting ready fora wholesale rounding up of Jews inRussia and Eastern Europe — he diedtoo soon — and possibly for large-scale massacres.

Following Kremlin propaganda, insupport of Russia’s post-1949 foreignpolicy in the Middle East, and Stalin’santi-Jewish — “anti-Zionist” — purgesand trials in Eastern Europe, the Stal-inists created in the early 50s and aftera full-scale account of modern history,and of Jewish history, in which the“Zionists” were the great villains, pos-sessed of a demonic power andmalevolence. The Zionists in, for ex-ample, the show trial in Prague in1952 were revealed as being almost

as tricky as the Trotskyists, who hadbeen exposed and branded as allies offascism in the Moscow Trials of 1936-8.

There, the Trotskyist left of Bolshe-vism was amalgamated with theBukharinite right, old Bolsheviks wereshown to be Fascists and the menwho led and organised the Octoberrevolution were shown to have beensecretly working for its defeat!

Things were never what theyseemed: eternal vigilance was theprice of Stalinist probity, and eternalparanoia was even better.

Like the Trotskyists, the Zionists toowere not always what they seemed.The devil can change his form in aflash of light.

Zionists? Ha! In a world where Jewswere surrounded by anti-semitism,they worked with anti-semites, “implic-itly accepting” their racist premises:the Zionist Herzl visited Von Plehve,the anti-semite Tsarist minister, just asTrotsky had treacherously negotiatedwith the Germans at Brest-Litovsk.More: they worked closely with theNazis: didn’t some of them freelychoose to negotiate with the massmurderers who held guns to the headsof millions of Jewish captives?

Jewish nationalists whose avowedmission was to redeem the Jewishpeople from the Diaspora and to recre-ate a Jewish nation in Palestine —why, these were in reality the arch-col-laborators with the Nazis who set outto kill every Jew in Europe, and did killtwo out of three of them.

This was propagated and believedfrom the late 40s and early 50s by theworld “communist” movement: thegreat irony is that it spread in the 70sto the Trotskyist current and is still apower there.

Against fairy-story history it is nec-essary to erect real history, andagainst Arab-chauvinist politics work-ing-class politics, and I will do that. Butfirst we need to establish what thepoint of all this is. Can it be that thoseof us who defend the right of Israel toexist as a Jewish state so long as thatis what the Israeli Jews want, and pro-pose as a solution to the conflict whatthe PLO now proposes — two states;and full and equal citizenship forPalestinian Jews and Arabs in eachother’s state — simply lack sympathyor empathy with the PalestinianArabs?

Is our attitude the mirror image ofthe vicarious Arab chauvinism I wouldascribe to Jim Higgins — and TonyCliff and Paul Foot? Are we just nativeor adoptive Jewish nationalists? Nowe’re not!

Of course we sympathise with thelosers so far in the Arab-Jewish con-flict, the Palestinian Arabs and theirdescendants. Of course we supportedtheir Intifada against intolerable condi-tions and Israeli occupation of the ter-

ritories where they are the majority. Ofcourse we support the PLO aspirationto have an independent Palestinianstate — where the Palestinian Arabsare a majority.

They have our sympathy and in gen-eral our support. But then what? Thenwe adopt their viewpoint in its entirety?We do what kitsch Trotskyists and JimHiggins, who has spent a lot of his lifesneering at “Trots”, do and propagatethe old Stalinist paranoid myths aboutmodern Middle Eastern history? Weexpress and elaborate and rationalisethe Arab bourgeois and petty bour-geois account of their own history?

No, we don’t, no we can’t — if weaspire to be communists and not oneor another sort of vicarious nationalist.

Let us look briefly at history, match-ing facts against fairy stories, and realhistory against Jim Higgins’ Disneyisa-tion of the story.

How did it happen that in the middleof the 20th century a Jewish statereappeared after 2,000 years? Fromwhere did the ideologists of ‘Zionism’suddenly derive such power over theminds of so many Jews, people ofmany classes scattered across manylands, as to induce hundreds of thou-sands of them to be pioneer settlersand workers in Palestine?

Zionism gripped Jewish minds as anurgent project of Jewish resettlementbecause of the alarming growth ofanti-semitism in the late 19th centuryand the first half of the 20th century.There are recorded statements of as-tonishing accuracy predicting large-scale massacres of the Jews —Weizmann in 1919, for example. Judo-phobia would continued to grow until itproduced the murderous crescendo ofthe Holocaust.

After 1881, there was the start ofsystematic pogroms in the Russianempire, including Poland, whencemany of those who went to Palestinecame. In France, where the great rev-olution had long ago raised the Jewsto equal citizenship, anti-semitism be-came a powerful rallying cry for theright (and not only for the right; therewas ‘left’ anti-semitism too: “the social-ism of idiots”).

Everywhere there were stirrings ofanti-semitism. Jews became the vic-tims of the international plague of na-tionalism and chauvinism, and thewidespread post-Darwin pseudo sci-entific racist nationalism.

Zionism, initially a minority amongJews, gained force and strength fromthese events until, in the aftermath ofthe Holocaust, the big majority of Jewswere Zionists.

The uneasy sense of mortal dangerand real persecution gave much of itsenergy to Zionism.

The gathering poison gas of Judo-phobia drove the Zionist enthusiasts ofthe first and second waves of Jewishimmigration to Palestine, from Tsarist

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Russia and Poland. Long before Hitlercame to power, in the mid 20s, thethird great wave of Jewish immigrationto Palestine came from Poland, a di-rect result of anti-Jewish measurestaken by the regime there. Already, thealternative escape routes were clos-ing. The USA had ended its opendoors policy for emigration in 1924.The next great wave in the 30s was adirect response to Hitler and to contin-uing Polish anti-semitism. The pointhere is that already, before the Holo-caust, mass Zionism as an idea, andmigration to Palestine as a refuge, asthe best option in a world closing in onthe Jews, were inextricably bound to-gether and impossible to prise apart.

The same was true only much moreso after the Holocaust. Tens of thou-sands of Jewish survivors of the deathcamps languished for years in Dis-placed Person’s Camps, some of themmade-over former concentrationcamps.

Anti-semitic feeling did not hide itshead for shame then, as you mightthink it would.

There was widespread prejudice: inthe USA at about that time the cinemanewsreels were showing pictures ofthe Nazi death camps there was aspate of attacks on Jews and even onJewish children in American citystreets, in Minneapolis to take an ex-ample reported in the US Trotskyistpress of that time.

Another example from the samesource: asked in 1945 by the US De-partment of Education in a question-naire what they thought of educationalprovision and training for their profes-sion, the official association of US den-tists made the formal and official reply:everything is fine except that there aretoo many Jews in the dental colleges.

Deported Jews returning to Polandmet with pogroms and murder. In anopinion poll taken amongst JewishDisplaced Persons in camps in Europethe big majority gave Palestine as theirfirst choice of refuge: they wanted tobe with their own; they couldn’t truststrangers after their experience.

By that time there were half a millionJews in Palestine, about one in threeof the population. Why from a socialistas distinct from an Arab chauvinistpoint of view did they not have na-tional rights?

The Jewish national minority inPalestine was first offered partition byBritain in 1937 and then had it takenaway: on the eve of the war Britain an-nounced that Jewish immigrationwould be cut to a few thousand a yearand after five years stopped. Effec-tively, Britain closed the ports of Pales-tine to Jews fleeing Nazi Europe.

Jewish “boat-people” crossed thesea in unseaworthy craft that some-times sank; if they got to Palestinethey were refused the right to land, orinterned. In 1942, one unseaworthy

boat, the Struma, driven out from aTurkish port and refused the right toland in Palestine, sank, killing 700people, including children.

Leave the demonology aside here,for a moment Jim and what do youget? Jews threatened with annihilation— six million of whom would die — forwhom it was a “world without a visa.”

For example, on the eve of WorldWar Two a shipload of Jewishrefugees — the St. Louis — sailedaround the coasts of the Americasand, refused the right to unload itshuman cargo anywhere, had to goback to Europe. Almost all these peo-ple perished.

The idea that “the Zionists”, who in-deed were, avowedly, in the businessof getting Jews to Palestine, andwhose leaders made statements tothat effect — Jim Higgins quotes one— shaped and controlled this situationis ridiculous.

The idea that because Zionistswanted Jews in Palestine, thereforethey would prefer them dead thanhave them elsewhere is grotesque.*

Jim Higgins’ malignant fairy talelevel of anti-Zionist demonology isthere in his tale about the 1943Bermuda Conference. The good guyRoosevelt wanted to open the doors toJewish refugees but was dissuaded by“the Zionists.” No Jim, two things werespecifically excluded from the agendaat Bermuda: Palestine at Britain’s be-hest, and US immigration policy, at theinsistence of the USA. That was just“the Zionists”?

In relation to what other groups ofpeople would the utterly monstrouscharges that are so casually bandiedabout, be even given a hearing? As Iunderstand it, in both Britain and theUSA at that time, the authorities keptquiet about the systematic killing ofJews for fear that to make much of itpublicly would provide a backlash andthe charge that this was “a Jewishwar.” The “Zionists” who, according toHiggins, could tell Roosevelt in 1943what his policy was to be couldn’t —and they tried — get the allies to bombthe railway lines to Auschwitz to stopthe death trains bringing victims to theovens.

There was, over the ages, continuedJewish focus on Jerusalem — and al-ways a small Jewish element in Pales-tine. The majority of the population ofJerusalem was Jewish at the turn ofthe century. The Jewish populationbuilt up slowly.

Why exactly was it ruled out thatlarge numbers of Jews should come inhere, even if that meant that theywould eventually be a majority?

It is not just Zionist myth that desertand swamp and uncultivated landmade up the greater part of the areassettled by Jews under the League ofNations Mandate.

What did the Communist Interna-

tional say about Jewish migration toPalestine?

When it was a communist move-ment, it did not oppose Jewish immi-gration into Palestine, though theyopposed the Zionist project and calledon Jewish and Arab workers and farm-ers to unite. They were not concernedthat if enough Jews went to Palestinethey would be the majority, or that thesteady influx of Jews was creating anational minority, with great implica-tions for the future. These were seenas living processes, self-regulating.The shift to something like Jim Hig-gins’ politics on the question came inthe Communist International after1929.

In the 30s Trotskyists did not sharethe Stalintern’s blinkered Arabism. Thedominant line of the Trotskyists wasnot that Jews should not for anti-impe-rialist principle or out of deference toMuslim-Arab chauvinism flee to Pales-tine if they could get in but that Pales-tine could not possibly take enough ofthem for Zionism to be any solution tothe threat they faced.

In fact, the Arab-Jewish conflict andits vicissitudes, is very complex. In the20s there was a sizeable Arab migra-tion into Palestine from surroundingterritories as a result of the increasedeconomic life attendant on the Zionistcolonisation. Conflict erupted for cul-tural and religious reasons as well asfor reasons of Arab resentment thatBritain and the League of Nations haddesignated Palestine as a Jewish na-tional home. In 1929 there were majorelements in the pogroms of the back-ward Muslim countryside being raisedagainst the urban heretical Jews. Thearistocratic Muslim clans demagogi-cally attacked the newcomers. Theseare recognisable processes and pat-terns in many countries.

I am not sure this complex of ani-mosity on the part of Muslim society,led by landlords and priests who werethe oppressors of the Arab peasantry,is something sacred, to which all elsehas to be subordinated; I’m not surewhy the growing Jewish national mi-nority in Palestine, who were in thegrip of their own nationalist egotism,should have bowed down to Arab orMuslim national, cultural and religiousegotism. Or from what point of viewsocialists should ask them to — ordamn them to the third and fourth gen-eration for refusing to.

For the Palestinian Arabs, I can un-derstand such an attitude. For social-ists? These things are generationsback. Whatever the past rights andwrongs, the Israelis are now mainlypeople whose parents, and often theirgrand or great grandparents, wereborn there; and conversely the over-whelming majority of Palestinian“refugees” were not born in the terri-tory that is now Israel.

Whatever it was in the past, it is a12

conflict now of right against right: con-sistent democrats and socialists seekthe best “compromise” solution, ratherthan a solution that crushes one side.From what point of view other than anarrowly Jewish or Arab one, can ei-ther side claim all the right? So, wemight if we were gods choose — givena real choice, I would — a secularcommon Jewish-Arab state with Araband Jew sharing equal citizenship?Unfortunately, it has no purchase onreality, nor did it in the 1940s when theidea of a bi-national state had somesupport as the alternative to partition.It presupposes mass willingness todissolve existing entities and nationalidentities.

That does not exist on either side.The call for it functions only to de-monise Israel and to legitimise the ob-jective of subduing and crushing it.The good and desirable solutionchanges imperceptibly into a sanctionfor conquest, subjugation and as muchviolence to the Jews as necessary.

From an Arab nationalist point ofview I can see the sense: but whyshould international socialists take re-sponsibility for advocating or support-ing the inverting of the presentJewish-Arab position? There can beno socialist or democratic reason.

But imperialism... A J Balfour some-where talked of the Jewish colonistsas creating a “little loyal Jewish Ulster”that would be England’s outpost. Theactual course of events however is farmore complex. Pretty quickly Britainconcluded that the little loyal JewishUlster was more trouble than it wasworth. By 1930 after the riots andpogroms of 1929 Sydney Webb withthe initial backing of Prime Minister JR MacDonald, tried to kill off the Jew-ish National Home and retreatedunder fire.

After the Arab uprising of 36-38Britain first came out for Partition(1937) and then retreated under Arabpressure until in 1939 it turned sharplyagainst the Jews, closing the doors toJewish immigration. On the eve of theHolocaust, Britain’s responsibility forthe Jews, as Arabs saw it, had openedthe possibility of an Arab-Nazi alliancein which Germany would use theArabs against Britain as Britain hadused them against the Turks in theFirst World War.

Britain maintained that hostilestance until it scuttled in 1947/8. Therigour and fanaticism with whichBritain policed Palestine against Jew-ish refugees from 1939 to 1948 is avery ugly story.

Jim Higgins is right that fighting, in-cluding the indefensible massacre ofDeir Yassin, preceded the Declarationof Israel; it is of no consequence.Britain had effectively abdicated thestate power after the United Nationsdeclared for partition in November1947 and there was continuous fight-

ing thereafter, with Jews and Arabsjockeying for position. JewishJerusalem suffered a long siege andthe Jewish quarter of the old city fell tothe Arabs. Deir Yassin is said to havebeen a link in the chain aroundJerusalem, though nothing can excusewhat happened there [it was immedi-ately condemned by the mainstreamJewish forces].

The very next day nearly 60 Jewishmedical personnel were ambushedand massacred…

In other words it was a horrible,communal war, involving outside Arabvolunteers and then after 14th May1948 invasion and attempted invasionby the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan,Iraq and a task force of Saudi Arabiaand Yemen.

Inevitably, Israel has relied on its USalliance: the Arabs too have madesuch alliances — with Russia and theUSA.

The idea that American imperialismdepends on Israel for “control of theArabs” when it has friendly links withEgypt and Jordan and Saudi-Arabia isso far from any reasonable picture ofMiddle-Eastern reality as to be risible.Conor Cruise O’Brien in his valuablebook, The Siege, makes a convincingcase that the USA’s relationship to Is-rael a) owes more to the power of theZionist lobby in the USA than to any-thing else and b) has actually hinderedthe USA in pursuing its real interests inthe area. Amongst other things heshows that there have been many upsand downs in the relationship. Israelhas pursued its own interests, playingstates off against each other.

I will join Jim Higgins in morally con-demning the whole system of worldand regional power politics: I will takeit as evidence of bias and prejudicewhen he condemns only, or especially,the Israelis.

But then he is awash with prejudice.The conflict from November 1947,when Britain began the process ofwithdrawal, in which perhaps three-quarters of a million Arabs fled or weredriven out can only be blamed on theJews alone if you deny them the rightto defend themselves against armedattack — in May 1948 by five armies.

Jim Higgins quotes Hal Draper.**The Trotskyists in 1948 did not supportthe Arabs! None of them, as far as Iknow, did. That sort of stuff came later.

Where in fact there was a war Jimhas “Zionists” as the only aggressors:the “Zionists”, though they were underattack from November 1947 and ear-lier, “moved” in April 1948 — whenJewish Jerusalem was already be-sieged…

Where Jewish Jerusalem was be-sieged and fell, Jim sees only tales ofHaganah attacking the Arab commu-nity in Jerusalem... Israel alone is theenemy of peace and socialism in theMiddle East!

This is not history, not even on thelevel of honest narrative! Tell me Jim:should the Jews in 1948 have surren-dered? Let themselves be massa-cred? Driven out? Where, in a worldwhere Jewish Displaced Persons werestill languishing in European camps,should they have gone? That wasn’tthe Arabs’ problem? No, but it was theJews’ problem: they resolved it byfighting and winning…

History is a messy business. IsaacDeutscher’s image for Jewish-Arab re-lations of the Jews as a man jumpingout of the window of a burning buildingand accidentally injuring an innocentcivilian down below, captures it, I think.

A Palestinian Arab state would beeconomically much weaker than theJewish state? States have unequalwealth. He uses that as both an argu-ment against the giant step forward forthe Palestinians of having their ownstate and against the right of the Jew-ish nation not to be forced to dissolveitself!

It seems to me that in response tothe tragic fate of the Palestinian Arabs,Jim Higgins and all his Arab nationalistco-thinkers in effect propose that weabandon a class interpretation of his-tory in favour of an account in terms ofgood and bad peoples and the malig-nity of demonic forces like “Zionism”.

They abandon any attempt at an ob-jective overall Marxist assessment ofthe history of the Arab-Jewish conflict,including factual accounts of what re-ally happens and why. They settle un-critically into repeating the hurtaccount of the losers in a national con-flict in which, had their side won in the30s and 40s, they would have done tothe other side everything that wasdone to them or worse. The underlyingidea is that they would have had aright to…

Because Higgins and his co-thinkersare indignant at Israeli treatment ofthose they defeated, we demonise theJews — “Zionists” — backwards intime for generations and forwards intime to the hoped-for day when theforces of progress, enlightenment, jus-tice and righteousness — which justhappen to include Saddam Husseinand the King of Saudi Arabia! — willtriumph and conquer Israel.

They stigmatise Israel, surroundedby enemies, for its collaboration withimperialism, and ignore the connec-tions of the Arab states with imperial-ism — right back to British-Arabcollaboration during World War 2 tostop the Jewish national minorityopening the gates of Palestine to Jewswho otherwise faced annihilation.

They become vicarious Arab-nation-alists who find unforgivable even afterhalf a century the uneasy and conflictridden Jewish-British collaboration inthe late 30s and early 40s, and pardonwith a benign shrug of complacentshoulders the collaboration of Pales-

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tinian Arabs and, in the first place theirleader, Husseini, the Mufti ofJerusalem, with the Nazis for the spe-cific purposes of a common pro-gramme of wiping out the Jews, whotried to organise a Muslim brigade tofight for Hitler and whose supportersorganised a sizeable anti-Jewishpogrom in Baghdad in 1941 during thepro-Nazi Iraq coup of Rashid Ali.

Your viewpoint, Jim, is shaped anddetermined mechanically and compre-hensively by the taking of sides withthe defeated side — the “oppressed.”

But suppose the other side had won:suppose, to tell the shortest version ofthe story, that the Nazis, and their de-spised Arab clients had won — eventemporarily, as they might have in theMiddle East in 1941-2 — and that thehalf million Palestinian Jews had gonethe way of the six million in Europe?Why then our sympathy would now beon the other side — with “the poor,poor Jews.”

The Palestinian Jews are on theother side of your good people/badpeople divide because they did not letthemselves be crushed, because, in alimited sphere, they prevailed.

Your standpoint has no point of con-tact with Marxism or even with the old-fashioned belief in the equality ofpeoples. For Marxists there are no badpeoples: conflicts between competingpeoples contain more or less of atragic element of right as against right.We look to working-class unity andreconciliation.

Socialists support the PalestinianArab demand for liberation and justice— that is, for self-determination in anindependent state on the territorywhere they now constitute a majority— but we do not demonise one peo-ple, or erect Zionism into a demon-ex-machina force above history: we see itin history; that is, we look at the realhistory, recognising that this is the onlybasis on which to prepare the force —the minds of the working class, Araband Jewish — for the fundamental so-lution to the conflict: consistentdemocracy and socialism.

* Jim Higgins’ equation of the nation-alist machinations of bourgeois Zion-ists during the war with the coldstatement of Tony Cliff decades afterthe Holocaust that Jews should havebeen barred from Palestine before thewar is very revealing.

** The quote from Hal Draper is mis-leading. Draper was a bitter critic of Is-rael; in the 50s he published veryscathing and, from anything other thana Jewish chauvinist point of view,unanswerable accounts of the system-atic expropriation of Arab land withinIsrael. Draper continued to advocatethe “de-Zionisation” of Israel. But hewas not in favour of the subjugationand destruction of Israel. More to thepoint, the Workers’ Party in the 40s

was outspokenly in favour of the rightof Jews to go to Palestine. They wroteit into the programme they printedeach week in Labor Action! It was abone of contention between them-selves and the Cannon organisation.The truth is that Jim Higgins’ politicsand Tony Cliff’s politics on this ques-tion come out of the degenerating“Fourth International” of Pablo andCannon, which broke in the 40s withthe old Communist International andLeon Trotsky’s position on this ques-tion of Jewish migration. Tony Cliff, thehonorary Arab nationalist, was one ofthe theorists of this break and descentinto vicarious Arab revolution.

I am an anti-Zionist because Iam an anti-racist!

By Jim Higgins

Arguing with Sean Matgamna israther like wrestling with a warm jellyand, despite my long-term experiencewith the gelatinous character of his po-litical method, I was foolhardy enoughto agree to his request to enter the de-bate flowing from his article: PaulFoot: Philo-Semite (if I am not mis-taken this means a lover of Jews).

This I did, under the proposed head-line: Sean Matgamna: Philo-Pedewhich means lover of feet. The articleactually appeared with another, quiteinappropriate headline: A SecularDemocratic State says Jim Higgins.

This is inappropriate for two rea-sons. 1. Nowhere in my article do I callfor a secular-democratic state. 2. I donot believe in a secular-democraticstate. The reason for the headline ispresumably to justify such absurditiesas Sean’s accusation that I am, alongwith Foot and Cliff, a sufferer from “vic-arious Arab chauvinism.”

It would seem that if the PLO hasthe demand inscribed on its bannerthen, according to Sean’s brand ofchop-logic, anti-Zionists must adhereto it as well. I do not know if Tony Cliffor Paul Foot subscribe to the secular-democratic formulation. If Cliff does Iwould lay a fair shade of odds thatFoot does too, but what either of themthink is a matter of supreme indiffer-ence to me. I am, though, virtually cer-tain that Cliff and Foot are notanti-semitic and I know for sure that Iam not and I take strong exception toSean suggesting that this is the case.One of the reasons I have agreed,after further urgent representationsfrom Sean Matgamna, to write thispiece is to take the opportunity toprotest at his inability to debate with-out characterising his opponents asracists. I am an anti-racist and that is

the primary reason why I am also anti-Zionist.

I was not seeking in my piece inWorkers’ Liberty to write a history ofArab-Jewish relations in the MiddleEast, merely responding to various du-bious statements by Sean. He wrote inWorkers’ Liberty 32: “In fact Israel wasproclaimed in May 1948, in territory al-lotted by the UN, without any Arabsbeing expelled. Hundreds of thou-sands of Arabs did flee — the greatmajority not expelled — after Arabstates, with the backing naturallyenough of the Palestinian Arabs, in-vaded Israel.”

In my reply I pointed out that in April1948, according to a strategy workedout in January of that year, the Irgunbombarded Jaffa for three days, Ha-ganah attacked the Arabs inJerusalem, and the Irgun and theStern Gang carried out the massacreat Deir Yessin. It was these threeevents that set in motion, as was theintention, the Palestinian refugees.Sean does not dispute the facts thatmake nonsense of his original asser-tion, his response to his mildly ex-pressed correction is pure bluster:“Jim offers us only tales of Haganahattacking the Arab community inPalestine… Tell me Jim,” he says,“should the Jews in 1948 have surren-dered?” How about that for a piece ofbare-faced impudence. In April Israeliforces attack and Sean thinks theironly alternative was to surrender. Howabout the alternative of not attackingthe Arab community in Jerusalem?How about not shelling Jaffa? Whatsay you to not killing 250 men, womenand children in Deir Yessin?

Why, readers of Workers’ Libertymight as, do people go on about DeirYessin? After all, they might say, 250dead Arabs is terrible enough, but it isa mere drop in the ocean compared tothe millions of Jews lost in the Holo-caust? The reason why Deir Yessin isso important and why the deathsshould not be forgotten, or brushedaside as a matter of little consequenceis that these people died because theywere Arabs. They had done nothing tooffend the Zionists. Nothing at all. Thevillagers had refused to allow Arab ir-regulars to fortify the place. They hada non-aggression agreement withJewish settlers in the area. An agree-ment they faithfully carried out.

It was precisely because of this, be-cause they were Arabs living at peacewith their Jewish neighbours, that theywere killed and their houses reducedto rubble. It is worth repeating, theydied because they were Arabs. Thefew pathetic survivors of Deir Yessinwere paraded in triumph throughJerusalem, what any survivors ofHitler’s death camps thought aboutthis one can only speculate. (For thoseinterested in a fuller discussion of theDeir Yessin massacre there is a wealth

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of documentation, but the one thatmay be most authoritative for WL ad-herents is by Hal Draper in Israel’sArab Minority: The Beginning of aTragedy, New International Vol XXIINo.2 1956 from which this account istaken.)

It is absurd, but apparently neces-sary, to have to tell Sean that racism isindivisible. Just one dead child be-cause he or she is an Arab, or a Jew,or Irish or a Red Indian is exactly onemore than any self-respecting socialistcan countenance and is quite enoughto condemn the perpetrators. If Seanthinks that Deutscher’s analogy, of theman jumping out of a burning buildingand landing on some innocent pedes-trian, is appropriate to Deir Yessin, orany of the actions of April 1947, then Ican only suggest that he seeks urgentadvice about the moral vacuum in hisconsciousness. The analogy would bebetter if it involved a man burningdown another man’s house and whenthe owner rushed out to avoid theflames, directing him to a tent on theother side of the Jordan.

I have neither the time not the incli-nation to follow Sean through every ir-relevancy with which he chooses topad out his reply. Nevertheless, Iwould like to take up a couple of hisadditional attempts to rewrite historyincluded in his two nations piece. TheComintern he suggests, in its bravedays, was not opposed to Jewish im-migration into Palestine. Wrong. At thesecond congress of the Comintern,The Theses on the National and Colo-nial Question, drafted and introducedby Lenin, says in part: “… Zionism asa whole, which, under the pretence ofcreating a Jewish state in Palestine infact surrenders the Arab working peo-ple of Palestine, where the Jewishworkers form only a small minority, toexploitation by England.” Or the ECCIstatement of July 1922 on the questionof Poale Zion: “… the attempt to divertthe Jewish working masses from theclass struggle by propaganda in favourof large scale settlement in Palestineis not only nationalist and petty bour-geois but counter-revolutionary…”(Degras Vol 1 p144 and p366). In late1923 the Palestine Communist Partywas formed, and admitted as a sectionof the CI, on a programme of opposi-tion to the “Anglo-Zionist occupation.”Where Sean gets the idea that the CIwas not opposed to Jewish settlementin Palestine is a mystery.

Next we have Sean co-opting Trot-sky as one of those not opposed toJewish immigration to Palestine.Wrong again, Sean. All his life Trotskywas firmly opposed to Zionism and onoccasion wrote and spoke against itwith some vigour. Around the begin-ning of 1937 he reformulated his ideasafter seeing the extent of anti-semitismin Germany and Russia. He came tothe view that the Jews, even under so-

cialism, would require a “territorial so-lution.” According to Deutscher: “Hedid not believe, however, that thiswould be in Palestine, that Zionismwould be able to solve the problem, orthat it could be solved under capital-ism. The longer decaying bourgeoissociety survives, he argued, the morevicious and barbarous will anti-semi-tism grow all over the world.”(Deutscher The Prophet Outcast, foot-note p.369).

Sean does not even acknowledgethe client status that Zionism gladlyperformed for first British and thenAmerican imperialism, a fairly seriousomission for a socialist you mightthink. He ignores the fact that Israel’sexistence has had a profoundly reac-tionary effect on the region and that isone of the reasons that the major pow-ers conspired in its founding. The Arabrevolution has been put back and theArab masses have suffered every kindof repressive regime, from the pre-feu-dal primitives of the House of Saud tothe murderous tyranny of SaddamHussein, taking in on the way theclownish Arafat whose tiny statelet re-quires several police forces and whereeven the fire brigade maintains its ownjail. All this, one assumes, should be ofconcern to socialists, even those ofthe bureaucratic collectivist persua-sion. This legacy of 1948 and the pre-vious 50 years of Zionist endeavourhave destabilised the region in whichIsrael has pursued an aggressive andexpansive nationalism and where Is-raelis live in neurotic insecurity that isin no way strengthened by possessionof nuclear weaponry.

In July 1940 Trotsky wrote that: “…the salvation of the Jewish people isbound up inseparably with the over-throw of the capitalist system.” It is justas true today as it was 56 years ago.

Anti-racism isindivisible

By Sean Matgamna

Let us start where this debatestarted, with Cliff and the SWP. Therewas a sea-change on the Israel-Pales-tine question in the post-Trotsky Trot-skyist movement in the middle andlate 1940s.

Tony Cliff, who left Palestine in Sep-tember 1946, played a central role asan ideologist of this change. His pam-phlet Middle East At The Crossroads(1946) was published in at least threelanguages; he was boosted in theSWP-USA’s internationally-circulatedMilitant, after the Cannonite fashion,as one of the Great Marxists whose“method” allowed him to understandthings obscure to everyone else, etc.etc. In the SWP-USA internal bulletin

Cliff functioned as a hatchet-managainst an opposition (Goldman-Mor-row) sharing the Shachtmanite Work-ers’ Party’s support for free Jewishimmigration into Palestine, which wasa big issue between the WP and theSWP-USA.

Cliff’s 1946 pamphlet does not dealat all adequately with the politicalquestions in the Middle East, havingmore to say about the price of oil thanabout the rights of national minorities.Where concrete politics should havebeen, there was a vacuum; and, to fillthat vacuum, the “official” Trotskyiststook the Arab nationalist line againstthe Jewish minority in Palestine. In theUS Militant, for example, it was saidcandidly that any line other than oppo-sition to Jewish immigration and to aJewish state would isolate the Trotsky-ists from the “Arab Revolution”. Thiscatch-penny opportunist adaptation toArab chauvinism foreshadowed laterattitudes.

Between 1948 and 1973, however,there was in the Trotskyist press atacit acceptance of Israel’s right toexist. In 1967, after the Six Day War,Tony Cliff wrote a pamphlet which iscloser in its political conclusions andimplied conclusions to what Workers’Liberty says than to what the SWP andJim Higgins say now. The decisiveshift came after 1967, and wasbrought to the present level of non-sense after the Yom Kippur war of1973. The “honour” of having estab-lished the post-1973 IS/SWP line be-longs, I think, to none other than JimHiggins (in an article in IS Journal).

Obviously, the “objective” explana-tion for the shift is the fact that pre-par-tition Palestine had once again beenunited, but under Jewish rule — brutal,predatory colonial rule in the Arab-ma-jority areas. It had, however, been pre-pared for by decades of ambivalenceand confusion. There was a generaldrift on the left, an often unexaminedacceptance of the new Palestine Lib-eration Organisation policy of a secu-lar democratic state as the solution.

We (the forerunners of Workers’ Lib-erty) went along with the drift, for thesame reason, I guess, as everybodyelse — hostility to Israel’s brutal colo-nialism and wishful thinking aboutwhat a secular democratic statemeant. In my own case, that was theculpable delusion that it could mean astate in which Jew and Arab could beequal citizens.

Cliff’s personal role in this historyhas been a big one, and not only inBritain. Now I don’t share Jim Hig-gins’s feelings of being cheated andbetrayed by Cliff, since I was neverother than politically antagonistic tohim. The old factionalism in IS was byits nature often nasty, but there wasnot on Cliff’s part much gratuitous nas-tiness. God knows what 25 years ofbeing Tsar and Caliph of the SWP has

15

done to his brain by now, but I foundhim then a more than halfway decenthuman being.

Yet Cliff has been a carrier of a poi-son to the left he influences. He getsaway with it, to a large extent, be-cause of his origins in Palestine. Inpractice he is an unteachable Arabchauvinist. That is paradoxical only ifyou don’t know the history of the Com-munist Party of Palestine, in which Cliffclaims to have received his politicaleducation. Take Cliff at his word thathe was in the CPP in the mid 1930s,and you have a self-portrait of some-one who, a Jew, was part of an organi-sation in which young Jews wereheavily brainwashed into extremes ofhostility to the Jewish community.

Cliff first appears in the English-lan-guage Trotskyist press in 1938-9, indiscussion pieces in the Americanmagazine New International. It is seri-ous work by a young man trying tothink things through. The political con-clusions are vague and unclear, yet heis for the right of Jews to go to Pales-tine as a refuge from persecution.

He next appears in the English-lan-guage press in 1944, in the BritishWorkers’ International News as afierce, almost modern-day, “anti-Zion-ist”. (It is an unsigned article, but thescissors-and-paste technique, incorpo-rating bits of his 1930s articles,strongly suggests Cliff). In this article,aimed to influence British labourmovement opinion, much is made of aJewish demonstration against Arabproduce being on sale in what theywanted to be a Jewish-only area. This,in a world where the Holocaust wasstill going on, and where Jewishrefugees were being killed and in-terned, as a result of British state pol-icy, when they tried to get intoPalestine! Cliff would regale audiencesin the late 1960s with the same story.The sense of proportion and perspec-tive are, as always, crazy. The publica-tion of that article then in the Trotskyistpress was, in my opinion, evidence ofthe movement’s radical disorientation.

Later, with the 1946 pamphlet, Cliffbecame one of international Trotsky-ism’s two “authorities” on the Palestinequestion (or, with Ernest Mandel,three). The other was Abram Leon,who died at the hands of the Nazis in1944, and whose unfinished historicalwritings, shaped and edited by ErnestMandel, were published posthumously,eventually in book form (The JewishQuestion). Neither the dead Leon northe living Cliff had much to say aboutthe politics of national conflict in Pales-tine.

Leon had an account of Jewish his-tory which quickly became an article offactional faith for people who had noindependent means of judging it(though in my view Maxime Rodinsonmakes a convincing case againstLeon’s thesis). Cliff offered mainly an

economic analysis, slotted into Arabistanti-imperialism.

Whatever intrinsic merits they mayhave had, for the purposes of politicsthe writings of both Cliff and (thoughthe dead man, unlike Cliff, can hardlybe blamed for it) Leon were a speciesof pseudo-knowledge, offering no polit-ical answers. The political conclusionswere filled in by chameleon adaptationto Arab nationalism, which was seenas part of the “colonial revolution” seg-ment of the imminent world revolution.There was a clear parallel between themethod of the disoriented Trotskyistsand that of the Third Period Stalinismafter 1929. Post-Trotsky Trotskyism, inits degeneracy, had found a use forthe personal history and prejudices ofTony Cliff!

Cliff separated from Mandel and the“official” Trotskyists in 1950. After a si-lence of two decades on theIsrael/Palestine question, he resumedin 1967 and after as if he were still inthe 1930s, fighting old factional battleswith Zionists in Palestine. At the end ofthe 1960s, he revived what had beenmid-1930s CPP policy on Palestine.Others did the same, but Cliff had aspecial authority. Cliff could get awaywith bias, double standards, Arabchauvinism, and outright hatred of theIsraelis, where others could not.

It is to Cliff’s credit that as a youthhe sided with the most downtroddenpeople around him, the PalestinianArabs. It was not enough, however,and his present attitude probably hastwisted roots. Cliff is obviously guilt-stricken about the terrible fate of thePalestinian Arabs, but that does notexplain his savage hostility to thePalestinian/Israeli Jews. Isn’t there inhis attitude also guilt about survivingthe Holocaust, safe, as it turned out, inPalestine? His feelings about the Jew-ish national minority in Palestine were,after all, about the pre-1946 Palestin-ian-Jewish national minority — thosewho, like himself, survived; and he ex-perienced a violent shift between 1939and 1944. Cliff’s vicarious Arab chau-vinist hatred for Israel may well be asomewhat unusual form of self-hatred.Long-range “assassin psychoanalysis”is of course of limited use, thoughCliff’s role demands and licences itand strips away his right to privacy onthis issue.

IIIt is a pity that Jim Higgins’s ‘hu-

mour’ has gone and is replaced bycholer, rodomontade, unleavenedabuse, some of it purely personal, andby evident social embarrassment be-fore his SWP friends and former com-rades. Protesting that Paul Foot, TonyCliff, and the SWP are “a matter ofsupreme indifference” to him, he isnevertheless at pains to explain pub-licly how he came to get involved in adiscussion with vile people like our-

selves. He seems to offer an over-the-shoulder apology for it.

It did take a long argumentative let-ter from me to persuade him to replyto my reply. I hoped for serious argu-ment. In vain. He declines to take upthe reasoned case I made over threepages of the last Workers’ Liberty, andfocuses instead on repeating pointsmade or conceded [1], and on red her-rings. He has neither time nor space todeal with the central thing I said, andargued in some detail — that the ap-pearance of a Jewish state in the mid-dle of the 20th century can beunderstood only in terms of a complexhistory and not in terms of a de-monised devil-ex-machina “Zionism.” Iasked the not entirely rhetorical ques-tion why the Jewish minority, a third ofthe population of Palestine in the1940s, did not have national rightsthere. He declines to reply. Did they ordidn’t they? If not, why not? If they did,then they had a right to defend them-selves in 1948, and the entire elabo-rate scheme in which “Zionism” is thecause of all evil dissolves into a seriesof concrete questions, on each ofwhich Israeli policy can be evaluatedand if necessary denounced — as wedenounce Israel’s behaviour in the oc-cupied territories now, for example.

Jim Higgins does have time andspace, however, to protest that I killedthe very obscure and never verystrong joke he put as a headline on hispiece. (It was in Latin! Tridentine Trot-skyism?)

With more justification, he is angryabout the headline we put on hispiece. He says we misrepresented hisposition. I offer him my apologies for it.But I can not see that the mistakenheadline strengthened the case for myallegation that Jim Higgins (and Cliffand Paul Foot) are Arab chauvinists.

IIIJim Higgins wrote — and, of course,

we printed — “What is needed is asecular Arab-Jewish state based onsocialism and democracy in all ofPalestine”.

I take it that he means by socialismwhat I mean: democratic working-class power. If so, then there are twoproblems.

Everywhere the Arab working classis in the grip of Islamic chauvinism, orat best secular populism. It has beenand is crushed, politically, under theweight of dictatorial states. It is poten-tially very powerful, but it has as yetscarcely begun to realise itself politi-cally, or to emerge as a “class for it-self”. It will, but we cannot gauge howsoon.

Therefore, as any sort of immediatesolution, socialism in the Middle East— if you mean working-class socialism— is a non-starter. Suppose, however,that there were a powerfully organisedand more or less international-socialist

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working-class mass movement in theMiddle East now, with a real possibilityof taking power in the short or mediumterm. What would be its programmefor the smaller non-Arab nationalitiesin the Middle East — Jews, Kurds, Ar-menians? What programme would weadvocate? One of two things: eitherthis mainly-Arab socialist working-class mass movement would be suici-dally poisoned by Arab (and probablyMuslim) chauvinism and obscuran-tism, or it would have a Leninist policyon the non-Arab peoples.

“Socialism” would resolve the issuesin Israel/Palestine only if the mainly-Arab socialist mass movement hadsuch a Leninist, that is a consistentlydemocratic, working-class programme.The Bolsheviks in 1917 did not onlysay to the oppressed nationalities inthe old Tsarist empire: “socialism is theanswer”. They had a democratic —Leninist — programme on the nationalquestion. They advocated the right ofself-determination for all peopleswhere they were the compact majority;preached the indifference of consistentdemocrats and socialists to existingstate borders; repudiated all nationalrevanchism. On that basis, they advo-cated the unity of the working class,and consistent socialist policies,across all national and communal divi-sions.

Jim Higgins will agree with that ingeneral — but he will exclude the Is-raeli Jewish nation from the applica-tion of the general principles. Forthem, the film of 20th century historywill be rolled back. To the Israeli Jew-ish workers, though to the workers ofno other nation, international socialismwill be presented as an ultimatum. Dis-solve your national state — instantly!Now! — or be forced to. Surrenderyour right to be a compact nation, orbe forced to.

The secular democratic state meant— whatever various left-wingers un-derstood it to mean, and wanted it tomean — an Arab Palestine with reli-gious (not national) rights for suchJews as survived the process of Arabconquest necessary to get their statedismantled. If the solution Jim Higginsfavours — “a secular Arab-Jewishstate based on socialism and democ-racy in all of Palestine” — is reallydemocratic in the sense that Lenin’s,Trotsky’s, and the Communist Interna-tional’s national programme was dem-ocratic, then, even after the workingclass in the whole region has takenpower, it will include the right of the Is-raeli Jewish nation to keep its ownstate, and the right of the Kurds, Arme-nians, and others to set up their ownnational states. If it does not do that,then it will be neither democratic norsocialist.

The “smash Israel” policy can not besquared with socialist or democraticpolitics by reference to the Palestinian

Arab refugees. For here, too, the “so-lution” favoured by many socialists isunique to Israel. Nobody on the left ar-gues that the Poles, in areas whichare now Poland, should make way forthe ten million Germans driven out ofthose areas in 1945, or for their manymillions of descendants — or that weshould insist on a joint Polish-Germanstate to allow for it. Nobody on the leftargues for reclaiming the Sudetenlandfor the three million Germans drivenout of what was then Czechoslovakiain 1945, or their many millions of chil-dren. Nobody on the left has any timefor the German revanchists who talk ofsuch things. Israel is special.

Socialism in its early stages will radi-cally soften national antagonisms, butit will not dissolve nations. The social-ists who would inscribe on their ban-ners or their VDUs the demand thatnations should immediately dissolve— in this case, that one nation amidstcompeting nations should dissolve —would be not Marxists but anarchists.Their attitude would be wildly ultra-leftin theory, and in practice mean vapidself-removal from real politics, leavinga vacuum to be filled by somethingother than the consistent democracy inthese affairs which Leninists argue for.

The entire tenor and substance ofwhat he wrote in WL 33 — malignantlyanti-Israel and wildly prejudiced comic-book history — suggests that Jim Hig-gins agrees with the SWP, whoseessentially meaningless “socialist” so-lution leaves them free to back Arabchauvinists and militarists against Is-rael? [2] Or does he have nothing tosay at all about immediate politics ex-cept “socialism is the answer”? Theoutright Arab chauvinists. Cliff andFoot, draw their conclusions. WhenJim Higgins says that their practicalpolitics do not define them as Arabchauvinists, that — to me — brandshim as one too. Can it be that youdon’t know that, Jim? [3]

IVThe pre-1929 Communist Interna-

tional rejected, opposed and de-nounced the Zionist project. I said this,and then asserted that neverthelessneither they, nor Trotsky in the 1930s,opposed Jewish migration into Pales-tine, as the post-1930 Stalintern andthe “orthodox” Trotskyists from themid-40s did. The Leninists and Trot-skyists believed in the free movementof workers to Palestine as elsewherein the world. Jim Higgins replies by cit-ing evidence for what I said, in theform of quotations. Thank you Jim!The political descriptions and denunci-ations he cites are about Zionism as apolitical ideology and as a practicalproject which involved a favourable at-titude to British imperialist occupationof Palestine. Of course the CommunistInternational was against British occu-pation, which the Zionists favoured —

and that is what the quotation about“Anglo-Zionist occupation” means.

When the Communists appealed toJewish workers to stay in the classstruggle in the countries where theywere, and not to go in for utopian-so-cialist colony-building in Palestine,Higgins equates that with advocacy ofthe exclusion of Jews from Palestine.In doing so, he is reading later atti-tudes backwards, anachronistically.Jews were not, and were not consid-ered to be, identical with Zionism.Most Jews, including Jews fleeing per-secution, were then, unlike now, notZionists. The Communist Interna-tional’s opposition to Zionism did nottake the form of advocacy of or sup-port for the exclusion of Jews, still lessof support for Arab/Muslim chauvinismagainst them.

The Communist Party of Palestinewas throughout the 1920s almost en-tirely Jewish, beginning as a breakfrom the socialist Zionists, Poale Zion.Against Zionism, they advocated Jew-ish-Arab worker and peasant unity inPalestine. Demonisation was not partof it, though rough polemic was. TheHistadrut could, for example, take astall at a workers’ gathering in Moscowin 1923.

The Communist Party of Palestinecompeted with the Zionists for the alle-giance of the Jewish workers: they ad-vocated neither their own expulsion —though the British were normally eagerto expel Jewish Communists — northe exclusion of Jewish workers who,for whichever of many possible rea-sons, wanted to enter Palestine. Ac-cording to one report, when theanti-Jewish movement began in 1929,the small Executive Committee of theCP, all Jews, was meeting in an Arabvillage and had to be rescued by theJewish defence force, the Haganah;the CP turned over guns to aid theJewish self-defence. Then the line waschanged in Third Period Moscow andthe pogroms were redefined as part ofa holy anti-imperialist crusade. After apost-1929 Stalinist “Arabisation” drivewhich insisted that the main leadersbe Arabs in a party of supposedequals, still consisting mostly of Jews,Jews were made second-class citi-zens in the Communist Party of Pales-tine.

The Trotskyists at the time did notgo along with the Stalinist line on the1929 movement (see Max Shachtman,Militant, October 1929). Later, in the1930s, the American Militant publishedan outraged report, based on an arti-cle by ex-Stalinist Malech Epstein inthe social-democratic Yiddish dailyForward, that the Communist Party ofPalestine was sending young Jewishmembers to plant bombs among Jews.

VThe Deir Yassin massacre was de-

nounced by the mainstream Zionist17

leaders when it happened. I neitherdefended nor justified nor excused it,though I did put it in its historical con-text. Deir Yassin was the work of aJewish group against which the main-stream Zionists were prepared towage civil war a few months later!

Higgins raises it again because it iseasier to beat the reverberating drumsof big atrocity than to reason about theoverall picture. He says he raises itbecause it was an act of racism —“these people died because they wereArabs” — though how to distinguishbetween ideological racism and na-tionalism in a “civil war” situation likethat of 1948 might perplex a more cau-tious man. “Racism is indivisible”, hesays. “Just one dead child because heor she is an Arab, or a Jew, or Irish ora Red Indian, is exactly one more thanany self-respecting socialist can coun-tenance and is quite enough to con-demn the perpetrator.”

Agreed! I’ll vote for that with bothhands. If it will carry greater convic-tion, I’ll prick my thumb and sign a res-olution to that effect in my own blood.But what is this fine universalist princi-ple doing in this debate, in the mouthof someone who is a passionate parti-san of one side, to the extreme ofwanting to force the other people todissolve as a national entity? Howdoes it square with the double-stan-dard-skewed one-sidedness of whathe says about the Arab-Jewish con-flict? Can Jim Higgins really think thatno Jews have died because they wereJews at the hands of Arabs and Mus-lims? In which case he needs only tobe reminded that, for example, 60Jewish religious teachers and pupilswere massacred in Hebron in 1929 —they were not Zionists — and he willchange sides. Or understand that so-cialists need an overview and an over-all programme for the whole complexof issues.

In fact, though, the universalist prin-ciple is just empty rhetoric, isn’t it? It isa common enough gambit. The Provi-sional IRA paper, An Phoblacht has,for example, a convincing line in anti-sectarianism — directed against theother side and used to bolster withself-righteousness similar attitudes onits own side.

Anti-racism is indivisible, Jim, butsomeone who uses talk of the “indivisi-bility” as a means of damning one sidein the interests of the other, which hasalso killed children, is a hypocrite.

It is “absurd but evidently neces-sary” to point out to you, Jim, thatthough one dead child may be and isenough to condemn its killers, the ideathat the cause — or in this case theentire people to which the killers be-longed — is thereby condemned, is ei-ther the theme of a note resigningfrom the sinful human race beforegoing into the desert to found autopian-socialist colony, or something

you write just before you blow yourbrains out. Otherwise it is a lot offlabby-minded old guff. Hypocritical orhysterical guff.

I accused Jim Higgins of being“awash with prejudice”, citing his de-monising “history” as proof and refut-ing it. Now he passionately defendshimself — and, I think, the SWP —against a charge I never made, that of“racism”. No, Jim, I don’t think you orthe SWP are racist, that you subscribeto zoological theories about some peo-ples being inferior, that you are predis-posed towards hostility to individualJews, or any similar idiocy. I know thatI was not a racist when I held viewsvery like yours.

The views you hold about Israel do,however, commit you to a pretty com-prehensive hostility to Jews who willnot endorse your fervently held anti-Zionism or join you in branding Israeli-Jewish nationalists as racists — Jewsinto whose identity Israel has been in-corporated and who will, not alwaysgently, defend Israel’s right to exist.Your views commit you to making theIsraeli Jews an exception to the gen-eral principles you proclaim for everyother nation. They commit you to ad-vocating the destruction of the Israeli-Jewish state: you can not believe thatin the calculable future the state of Is-rael will voluntarily be liquidated andsubsumed into something higher. Theycommit you to an emotion-chargedpropagation of Arab-chauvinist mythsand thinly made-over old-fashionedanti-semitic caricatures of Jews.

All that, Jim, may not be anti-Jewishracism, but it shares the essential ele-ment common to all the various anti-semitisms of history, be they religious,nationalist, or zoological-racist: com-prehensive hostility to most or all Jewsalive. The tub-thumping and fulminat-ing that you are not a racist can notsuppress the fact that your attitude is aform of anti-semitism. Since you wantJews to “convert” from the identifica-tion with Israel which a terrible historyhas stamped on modern Jewish con-sciousness, your attitude has more incommon with the old Christian anti-semitism, which wanted to save thesouls of Jews even if it had to burntheir bodies, than with the racism ofthe 19th and 20th centuries. Insistingthat you are not a racist is here ameans, and perhaps also an internalpsychological mechanism, for evadingthe plain implications of what you say.Even if you draw no practical conclu-sions from your demonisation of Israel,others will and do. At best there is a di-vision of labour.

Higgins in an earlier contribution toWorkers’ Liberty showed undisguisedbitterness towards Tony Cliff. He does-n’t seem to notice that the worst thingCliff did to him was to poison him withanti-semitic anti-Zionism.

Footnotes1. My original article confused things

by hanging the story on the date of Is-rael’s declaration of independence. Isaid that this was of no consequencefor the process described. Jim Higginsignores that, but repeats the point. Yethe himself made a similar inconse-quential slip, seeming to date theUnited Nations resolution not in No-vember 1947 but in April 1948.

2. You might, developing Lenin’sanalysis of “Economism” and then “Im-perialist Economism”, call this line“Arab Nationalist Economism” — ahappy marriage of the general econo-mistic method of the SWP with Cliff’spersonal prejudice.

3. I hold no brief for the idea that theousted one-time leaders of theIS/SWP such as Jim Higgins possessspecial, or even ordinary, levels ofsharpness in political understanding.Rather the opposite. In a reasonablywide experience I have never else-where encountered anything like theMalvolio-like collective self-conceit,snobbery and self-satisfaction, built onsmall achievement, that I saw in theleading circles of the IS group, andsee now in Jim Higgins’s article. Dis-daining any attempt to be consistentLeninists, this group of eclectic sectari-ans found themselves in the late1960s, unexpectedly, in veryfavourable circumstances. They blun-dered about for a while, helped Cliffcreate a monstrosity of an organisa-tion, wasted a tremendous opportunity,and then abandoned the field of poli-tics to Pope Tony and his toy-town Bol-shevik “party”. They could notunderstand what was happening in theorganisation they “led”, not even whenit was pointed out to them in plainEnglish; and they have not understoodit yet. But Jim, even you can not butbe aware that if socialism and democ-racy is the answer, then it can only bein the sense of working-class politicsand equal rights for all nations, andtherefore that demonisation of Israel isno part of it. You can not but know thatwhat you write is grist to the mill of theSWP who back Saddam Hussein andAssad of Syria against Israel.

4. There is a subtext in this discus-sion: repeated attempts to cite HalDraper as for us high general authorityagainst what we say now. This is amisunderstanding. On the concretequestions of the Jewish-Arab conflictsuch as the right of Jews to go toPalestine, the Shachtman organisationwas right, in my opinion. Draper wasgenerally right in his criticism of Israel,though a lot of what he wrote on Israelreminds me of the legendary bird with-out feet unable to alight, doomed for-ever to hover high above the ground.But Draper was on our side as againstHiggins, Cliff et al. He was in favour ofIsrael’s right to exist. James D Youngtells a story of an encounter between

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Cliff and Draper on the question in thelate 50s. After a meal in London,Draper, Cliff, Young and others are sit-ting around a table, the taciturn Drapersilent, the talkative Cliff talking —about Israel. Suddenly Draper turns onCliff in irritation and accuses him: “Youwant to destroy the Israeli Jews! Idon’t!”

The arrogance ofthe long-distanceZionist

By Jim Higgins

This will be the third time that I haveventured to disagree with SeanMatgamna on the vexed question ofZionism.

I do so with some trepidation be-cause, or so it seems, even when I amright I am in reality exposing myself asfundamentally wrong and mischie-vously so. In my first article I at-tempted to lighten the subject with afew mildly humorous quips. I wassternly rebuked for this failure of seri-ousness. Chastened, in part two Iadopted a serious tone. Sean re-sponded by regretting my humour hadbeen replaced by ‘choler, rodomon-tade, unleavened abuse, some of itpurely personal...’ Did I really do all ofthat? I feel particularly cheered to hearthat I was guilty of choler androdomontade, rather like the man whodiscovered at an advanced age thathe had been speaking prose all hislife. Normally, of course, I only use un-leavened abuse during Passover.Sorry about that.

Having reviewed Sean’s articles Ican see that they fit quite nicely intothe Matgamna mode of polemic. Firstand foremost, his views are lumped to-gether in such a way that they willsharply divide him from other social-ists. This is what Al Richardson calls‘consumer socialism’ and Marx calls‘sectarianism.’ In practice, this meansthat since Bernard Dix died, therehave been no adherents of theShachtmanite school of bureaucraticcollectivism on these shores and ifSean were to occupy this vacant fran-chise he would acquire a whole slewof policies to differentiate himself fromeverybody else. All you need is a fileof the New International (publishedmonthly between 1936 and 1958) andyou can start to kid yourself you arewriting with all the style and eloquenceof Max Shachtman. Along with all theclever nonsense about Russia you willalso inherit the Workers’ Party — Inter-national Socialist League line on Is-rael.

A comparison of Sean’s article witha sampling of the WP-ISL texts shows

that whatever Sean lacks in originalityhe has made up for in the diligence ofhis researches into the New Interna-tional. In the September issue ofWorkers’ Liberty we have Sean as fol-lows: ‘Cliff’s 1946 pamphlet does notdeal at all with the political questionsin the Middle East, having more to sayabout the price of oil than about therights of national minorities. Wherepolitics should have been there is avacuum…’ Now here is Al Gates in theNew International in September 1947:‘T Cliff’s competent analytical work onPalestine, and here too we observed afine study of the economic growth andproblems of the Middle East and theplace of Palestine in that situation. Yetthe whole work was outstanding for itsstudied evasion of the political ques-tions of the class and national struggletaking place there.’

Gates is more polite than Sean, butthat will probably surprise nobody.

Another standard feature of Sean’smethod is the one where he complainsbitterly that he is being abused unfairlyas a prelude to unleashing a little ofhis own venom into the argument. Forexample, I raised the case of DeirYassin because it took place in April1948 and set in motion the Arabrefugees, countering Sean who hadsaid that they only fled in May 1948when the Arab armies started their of-fensive. In so doing I neglected tomention the killing of 60 Jews byArabs in the bloody attacks of 1929.For this I was accused of hypocrisy.Perhaps now I should go on to apolo-gise for failing to condemn the similarArab outrages of 1920, 1921, 1929,1936 and 1938. In the interests of bal-ance perhaps I should also throw inthe massacres of Sabra and Chatila,because I condemn them as well. Inthe same vein, Sean insists that hedoes not believe that I, or the SWP,are racist, but in virtually the samebreath he repeats his accusation thatwe are anti-semitic. This does notcome from the WP-ISL, I havenowhere in the pro-Israel polemics ofAl Gates and the rest seen them ac-cuse their socialist opponents of anti-semitism. For that we must look toofficial Zionist spokesmen and SeanMatgamna. It is, I suppose, alwaysnice to have two sources of inspira-tion.

Let us now turn to Sean’s predilec-tion for discovering sinister and malignpurposes in the work of others andconstructing a sort of retrospectiveamalgam. About a quarter of his pieceis devoted to a partial and not very in-formative trawl through Cliff’s works onthe Middle East. On the strength of his1946 pamphlet Middle East at theCrossroads, this apparently made Cliff,along with Abram Leon, one of theFourth International’s two experts onthe Jewish question. Unfortunately,Leon was killed by the Nazis, so after

1946 Cliff must have stood pre-emi-nent, although Sean assigns a subor-dinate role to Ernest Mandel. Thus wehave the sinister Cliff leading the Flalong the road of ‘anti-semitic anti-Zionism.’ Unfortunately, by the timeSean got round to this particular fan-tasy he had forgotten what he hadwritten on the previous page: ‘In 1967,after the Six Day War, Cliff wrote apamphlet which is closer in its politicalconclusions and implied conclusionsto what Workers’ Liberty says than towhat the SWP or Jim Higgins say now.The decisive shift came after 1967 andwas brought to the present level ofnonsense after the Yom Kippur war of1973. The ‘honour’ of having estab-lished the post 1973 IS/SWP line be-longs, I think, to none other than JimHiggins (in an article in IS Journal).’

There you have it, comrade readers,Cliff set the style for the FI and espe-cially the American SWP, except thatuntil 1973 his views were not much dif-ferent from those of Workers’ Liberty,which I assume are the same asSean’s. Far from Cliff being the deusex machina of anti-Zionist anti-semi-tism, I am. In International SocialismNo.64 in 1973, I wrote this seminal of-fending piece, ‘Background to the Mid-dle East Crisis.’ At the same time, theground-breaking significance of the ar-ticle passed without a murmur. No-body, including the author, was awarethat it was any more than a very shortexplanation of the IS Group’s attitudeto the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, which Ihad reported for Socialist Worker. Inthe 23 years since it was written prob-ably only Sean Matgamna has read it.Now that Sean, with Holmes-like skill,has unmasked me as the eminencegrise of ‘non-racist anti-semitic anti-Zionism’. I too have read it, and regretthat it has no claims, subliminal or oth-erwise, to trend-setting originality.

Delving further into the Matgamnapolemical method we encounter thatspecial form of arrogance that insistson setting all the terms of any debateand finding significance in a failure tofollow him up any logical blind alley hemay choose. Let us then consider his‘serious and not entirely rhetoricalquestion, why the Jewish minority, athird of the population in the 1940s,did not have national rights there.’ Letus leave aside the fact that rhetoricalquestions are precisely the ones thatare not looking for answers, and thinkabout this one. First, in those terms ofrealpolitik to which Sean is so ad-dicted, who was to afford them na-tional determination in the 1930s and1940s? Was it the Arab majority? Nota bit of it, the very notion of any kind ofaccommodation with the Arab majoritywas totally anathema to the Zionistleadership. Should they have ad-dressed themselves to the British? Ac-tually they did and were turned down.The fact is that there were no rights for

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self determination for anyone in Pales-tine. British policy had been to utiliseZionism as a force to divide and disci-pline the Arab masses. That is how theJewish population rose from fewerthan 100,000 in 1917 to over 400,000in 1939 (a third of the total population).The plan was eventually for a Jewishhomeland under strict British tutelage.The turning off of Jewish immigrationin 1939 was because the British wereconcerned to pacify the Arab majorityto safeguard Palestine as a Britishcontrolled Middle Eastern hub, espe-cially the oil pipeline, in the war.

The question of self-determinationfor the Zionists had nothing to do withdemocracy, because any solution,while the Jewish population remaineda minority, would under democraticnorms have to be cast in such a waythat came to terms with the Arab ma-jority. It is for this reason that the Zion-ist leadership fought so hard forunrestricted immigration and why theArabs were against it. It is for thesame reason that the Zionists whiledemanding Jewish immigration wereopposed to Arab immigration. It is thesame reason why Zionist policy wasbitterly opposed to the idea of a con-stituent assembly. This vexed questionof population arithmetic is what dis-torted the political agenda of Pales-tine.

With two thirds of the population theArabs would seem to have a fairly safemajority. In fact, they had a plurality ofonly 400,000. For the Zionist leader-ship this was the magic number and tooverhaul it took precedence over allother considerations. Such a numbermight just, with massive difficulty andat the expense mainly of the Arabs, beaccommodated. This was the empha-sis of Zionist propaganda, despite thefact that Palestine, assuming a com-plete disregard for the Arabs, couldtake only a small proportion of theJews threatened and eventually mur-dered by Hitler. The massive propa-ganda effort was expended on alteringPalestine’s population statistics, in-stead of demanding asylum from theUS and Britain (who were infinitelybetter able to provide it) for these andmany, many more Jews who were tobe lost in Himmler’s ovens. This wasnot a matter of emphasis, shoutinglouder about Jerusalem than NewYork, it was a positive opposition toJews going anywhere other thanPalestine. If the intention had been tosave Jewish lives at all costs, the ar-gument should have been: ‘If you willnot let Jews into British-mandatedPalestine, then you have an urgentand absolute moral responsibility togive them asylum elsewhere.’ No suchcampaign was mounted.

Nevertheless, comrades might ask,is not the hallmark of socialist interna-tionalism the free, unfettered flow of allpeople throughout the world? Why

should Palestine be different? Theshort answer is that immigration aspart of a concerted plan that will takeover the country, expropriating, ex-pelling and exploiting the nativemasses, is less immigration and morea long drawn out and aggressive inva-sion. For socialists, the reactionarycharacter of Zionism is defined by itsracist ideology, imbued with the spiritof separation and exclusion, the veryreverse of socialist solidarity. It wasprepared to ally itself with every reac-tionary force that might help its pur-poses. It lobbied such figures as theKaiser, the Sultan of Turkey, for twentyyears it cosied up to British imperial-ism, finally snuggling into the embraceof the biggest imperial power of all, theUnited States. In the process, it hastreated the Arab population as aspecies of untermensch and has effec-tively driven a large portion of the Arabmasses into the hands of Islamic ob-scurantists and bigots. It stands in theway of any socialist advance in theArab world, operating as imperialism’sgendarme in the region, a far more ef-fective force for imperialism than, forexample, the feeble Saudi royal familyor the Hashemites. If Zionism has hadone redeeming feature over the years,it is that it never bothered to concealits intentions, but it is difficult to com-mend a man for his honesty in tellingyou that he is going to beat yourbrains out, especially if he then deliv-ers the mortal blow.

As Sean indicates, the developmentof ideas on Zionism in the Trotskyistmovement is quite interesting. AsSean says, Cliff, in his New Interna-tional article of June 1939, was forJewish immigration into Palestine andfor the sale of Arab land to the Jewishpopulation, both points vigorously op-posed by the Palestine CP. His argu-ment for this, and it is a thin one, is:‘Yet from the negation of Zionism doesnot yet follow the negation of the rightto existence and extension of the Jew-ish population in Palestine. This wouldonly be justified if an objectively nec-essary identity existed between thepopulation and Zionism, and if theJewish population were necessarily anoutpost of British imperialism andnothing more’. Like a lot of Cliff, thistakes a bit of time to get your headaround. With perseverance one is,however, struck by how abstract it isas a serious formulation. Whether thisis a reaction against the Arab chauvin-ism of the CPP I cannot say, but itclearly suggests that unless Zionism is100 per cent in the pocket of Britishimperialism it is OK to augment itsforces. But as we well know, national-ist movements are not wedded to anyparticular sponsor, and their interestsare never seen as identical and oftenantithetical. The Grand Mufti ofJerusalem could make overtures toHitler, Jabotinsky, the founder of revi-

sionist Zionism, was a great admirer ofMussolini, and, during the war, Chan-dra Bhose, the leftist Indian nationalist,worked with the Japanese, building anIndian national army. In the same way,the Jewish population were not 100per cent identified with Zionism, Cliffand the handful of Jewish Trotskyistswere not and neither was the CPP, butin the absence of anything of conse-quence, Zionism certainly had at leastthe tacit support of an overwhelmingmajority of the Jews. After the war andthe holocaust, that support became farmore active.

I have a suspicion that it is from this1939 article that Sean acquired hisidea that the Comintern were not op-posed to Jewish immigration to Pales-tine in the 1920s. In truth Cliff, as is hiswont, is being a bit economical withthe actualité here. He says: ‘The mem-bers of the Comintern in Palestine...while absolutely opposed to Zionism(against the national boycott [of Arabgoods and Arab labour-JH], againstslogans like the Jewish majority andthe Jewish state and the alliance withEngland, etc ), declared at the sametime that the Jewish population is notto be identified with Zionism andhence demanded the maximum free-dom of movement for Jewish immigra-tion into Palestine...’ You will notice theodd usage of the ‘members of theComintern in Palestine’. He is tryingnot to refer to the CPP, which he exco-riated earlier in his piece, and alsoneglects to say that the CPP wasformed of resignees from the semi-Zionist Poale Zion in 1922. Whateverthe CPP’s policy, may have been, upto 1926-7, it was not the Comintern’s.

Cliff’s article concludes by proclaim-ing that the only solution is socialism,but in the meanwhile calls for a secu-lar, unitary state in a parliamentarydemocracy. The suggested pro-gramme included: compulsory educa-tion for all, a health service, pensions,minimum wage and all the other ap-purtenances of the welfare state. All ofthis seemed to have a familiar ringabout it, especially when taken withthe call for Jewish immigration. Then itstruck me, Cliff’s 1939 policy was thesame as that of the WP-ISL, as set outin various resolutions of that party.Shachtman never acknowledged thisfact, but then he always denied thatthe theory of bureaucratic collectivismcame from Bruno Rizzi. We are nowleft with a terrible problem. We have iton no less an authority than SeanMatgamna that Cliff, in 1946, had setthe political line of Palestine for theFourth International, especially of theCannonite SWP. Now I find that suchis the dastardly cunning of T Cliff, hehad previously masterminded the op-posing Shachtmanite WP-ISL policy.With the brain reeling, one realises thefull horror of it all. The Cliff-inspiredShachtman variant has now been

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taken up by Sean Matgamna. Whenone recalls that for some years therewas no greater fan of the US-SWPand James P Cannon than SeanMatgamna (he endorsed their defen-cism, violent anti-Shachtmanism aswell as their anti-Zionism), we mightdescribe this phenomenon as ‘devi-ated apostolic succession’.

In all this chopping and exchangingof opinions, we can confidently affirmthat Sean’s ‘two states for two peo-ples’ formulation did not come fromLenin, Trotsky, Cliff (pre or post-1946),Shachtman, Cannon or any other in-ternational socialist source. In Sean’sthesis it seems that if most Jews sup-port a Zionist state, although the over-whelming majority of them do not andwould not live there, then socialistsmust support them regardless of thedemocracy of numbers or the rights ofothers. By the same token, presum-ably, the rural Afrikaners who wanttheir own state must have it becausethey represent a significant minority.

It is possible to argue that after thewar the people who suffered the ulti-mate barbarism of the holocaust de-served special treatment from theworld that bore no little responsibilityfor that horror. It is a persuasive argu-ment and one that struck the heart-strings of many in the aftermath of1945. It was that public sympathy atthe condition of Jews, who had en-dured so much, languishing in dis-placed persons camps, that putpressure on the Allied governments tosolve this humanitarian problem. Whatnone of them were going to do wasopen their own doors to a flood of im-migrants. Not least of their calculationsconcerned the fact that there werealso hundreds of thousands of dis-placed people and prisoners of warwho might have claimed similar privi-leges. Their attitude was rather likethat of Kaiser Wilhelm II who thoughtof a Jewish homeland as ‘at leastsomewhere to get rid of our Yids.’ Thepeople’s conscience about the Jewswas salved at little cost to the worldbut at the expense of the Palestinians.Many of the other refugees wereherded callously to their deaths behindthe Iron Curtain. In both instances, acheap and easy solution for the Allies,but not one that readily commends it-self to international socialists. It isironic that the displaced personscamps in Europe emptied as the dis-placed persons camps in the MiddleEast were filling with Arabs. Whyshould the world’s debts be paid bythe poorest people?

Of a piece with this affection for theaccomplished fact and his perverse in-ability to see the need for change andto fight for it, is his sneering responseto the suggestion that the answer isrevolutionary socialism. For Sean, thefight must be for the maintenance ofIsrael. The socialist Matgamna is the

eager partisan of this robustly capital-ist state, this proud possessor of anarsenal of atom bombs, this outpost ofimperialism that enshrines the expro-priation and exploitation of its Arab citi-zens and finds its justification in thenotion of the exclusive and superiorcharacter of its Jewish people. Seanmight condemn (but not too loud) thedenial of human and democraticrights, the legal theft of property andland, the arbitrary arrests, the rigorousapplication of collective guilt, the de-portations and curfews, but he drawsno political conclusions other than toexcuse this on the grounds of the rightof Israel to be secure. For my part, Ibelieve that so long as Israel exists asa Zionist state, then Jews and Arabswill continue to die needlessly and tono good purpose, as they are dyingwhile we conduct this argument. Therewill be no peace. I further believe thatonly under socialism can the nationalquestion be solved for both peoples,because only then can there be anychance of fairness and equity. The his-tory of the last 50 years is the negativeaffirmation of that fact.

Scattered throughout Sean’s text arefour footnotes. Footnote 3 is quitecharming, because it bangs on atlength abusing the leadership of IS,during Sean’s recruiting raid within itsranks from 1968 to 1971. As part ofthe leadership during that time I wasoverjoyed to discover that, along withCliff, Duncan Hallas, Chris Harmanand Nigel Harris, I had displayed‘Malvolio-like snobbery, self-satisfac-tion, and brain-pickling conceit, builton small achievement...’ As Malvoliosaid: ‘Some are born great, someachieve greatness and some havegreatness thrust upon them.’ I have tosay that, since he transferred his loy-alty from Cannon to Shachtman, Seanhas acquired an entirely better class ofvituperation, although he still hassome way to go before he is in thesame street as Max Shachtman for hishigh-grade abuse. Probably better toget the politics right, Sean, especiallythe WP-ISL’s opposition to Zionismand two nations theory.

The disconnected footnote 4 con-cerns an anecdote told to Sean byJames D Young, concerning a discus-sion about Israel, in the late 1950s,between Cliff and Hal Draper, wit-nessed by James. According to Sean:‘Suddenly Draper turns on Cliff in irrita-tion and repudiation, and accuses him:‘You want to destroy the Israeli Jews! Idon’t!’ Leaving aside the ‘irritation’ and‘repudiation’ — this is just Sean spic-ing up the story — this little anecdoteis actually more revealing of Sean’smethod than of Cliff’s. We hear whatHal Draper said, as recalled by James,forty years after the event. But whatdid Cliff respond to this accusation ofhis wanting a pogrom of holocaustproportions? Did Sean ask James for

this information and he could not re-member? Or is that Sean, having ac-quired the evidence for theprosecution, did not want to confusematters with any defence? Or did Cliffhave no explanation and confess thathe, along with the Grand Mufti ofJerusalem, wanted to drive all the Is-raeli Jews into the sea? If the answerto this last question is ‘yes’, then heshould have been scandalised out ofthe movement. Or is this just some-thing that Sean has failed to checkproperly with James D Young? Whatwe do know, however, is that Draperwas against the Zionist state andwanted to replace it with an Arab-Jew-ish socialist state. And so say all of us,including Cliff, I think.

Throughout Sean’s reply there runsan accusatory thread that I am con-ducting this argument as some way ofmaking my apologies to Cliff. If I de-fend his line on Palestine in Workers’Liberty it is to cover my ‘social embar-rassment before [my] SWP friends andformer comrades.’ Which ones arethose, pray? Paul Foot, Chris Harman,Jim Nichol? I think not. I do not defendCliff’s line on the permanent armseconomy, because I no longer agreewith it. I no longer defend his line onRussia, because I no longer agreewith it. I defend his line on Zionism,because I agree with it. I defend the ISline on the Minority Movement thatboth of us, I and he, abandoned. Itmay come as a surprise to Sean butthere are those of us who can dis-agree on fundamentals with Cliff with-out consigning everything he has saidor done to the dustbin of history. At thesame time, I do feel a degree of bitter-ness that what I saw as the best hopefor the revolutionary movement inBritain since the 1920s, that I spentsome time in helping to build, shouldhave been diverted down various blindalleys at the behest of Cliff’s impres-sionism and caprice. Most of all, myreal complaint is not that Cliff hasmaintained his position on variousmatters, it is that he is capable of jetti-soning almost any of those positionsfor at worst imaginary and at best tran-sitory benefit. All of this and a greatdeal more, I have set out in a recentlycompleted book on the IS Group [2].At the end of it I do not think anybody,including Cliff, will think that I am apol-ogising, or wonder why I, and manyothers, are a touch bitter.

Finally, I would like to apologise tothose Workers’ Liberty readers whohave got this far, for taking up so muchof their time, but they really shouldblame Sean. He started it.

1. Current medical research sug-gests that Alzheimer’s may be causedthrough eating from aluminium cook-ing utensils. If Sean still has such potsin his kitchen, I suggest he replacesthem without delay.

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2. More Years for the Locust by JimHiggins, to be published by the Inter-national Socialist Group.

* Jim Higgins’ suggested title for thispiece was ‘Sean Maxshachtmana’.

Up on theMalvolian heights

By Sean Matgamna

I find it difficult to accept that JimHiggins intends his piece as a seriouscontribution to the discussion. Hemerely regurgitates and reformulatesmuch that he said earlier, and which Irefuted and corrected earlier — onDeir Yassin, for example.

Higgins, I fear, confuses track-cover-ing repetition with serious argument,just as he confuses oblique evasive-ness with wit, and elephantine orotun-dity with a praiseworthy style.

Up on the oxygen-starved Malvolianheights, Higgins has adopted the lateHealy’s idea of a powerful argument —saying things twice or, preferably,three times and four times, at increas-ing length, lacing the polemic with des-perate abuse, direct and ‘stylish’. Likethe late Healy, the late Higgins fails tonotice that this sort of thing harms noone so much as its author.

Higgins does try to give value formoney — politician, literary critic, liter-ary detective, style guru, Jim is all ofthese and more. Those who can, do,those who can’t, try to teach? Jim —no fool he — has twigged that I’veread the files of old Workers’ PartyUSA publications. His conclusion thatwhat I say about the Middle East isculled from this treasure house identi-fies him as someone who left politicsin the late 70s, and has no idea ofwhat happened after his demise. Whatwe say about the Middle East and sim-ilar questions — and Northern Irelandis, in principle, almost the same ques-tion — is the result of long public dis-cussion in the pages of SocialistOrganiser. His idea that other peopledo what Tony Blair and bourgeoispoliticians do, and change policies inpursuit of ‘market openings’, accu-rately describes Tony Cliff’s approach— for example, it is what Cliff did whenhe became a ‘Luxemburgist’ circa1958 — but not that of the AWL. (Bythe way, the late Bernard Dix becamea Welsh nationalist and joined PlaidCymru, around 1980!)

The idea that the political identity ofa tendency can be put on like clothesfound in an attic is worthy of someonewho, I understand, has written a bookto prove that Jim Higgins is the livingembodiment and custodian of ‘the IStradition’. It doesn’t work that way, Jim.The politics of the AWL are the result

of work to develop and clarify what westarted with — the politics of the Can-non tendency — in the light of discus-sion and experience, and work in theclass struggle too. As it happens, it istrue that we probably are now thenearest approximation in politics to theWorkers’ Party of the 1940s — thoughwe are not identical with it, and, formyself, though I criticise Cannon, Imake no blanket repudiations of himand what he tried to do.

In brief: which is Higgins saying?That I haven’t read Cliff’s 1946 work?Or that I wouldn’t notice without help,not unless Al Glotzer had already no-ticed it forty years earlier, that it simplyhas nothing to say about the politicalissues I spend much time debating?Or is Higgins simply short of some-thing to say? He should have read thefootnote where I link the approach tothe Middle East conflict he and Cliffshare with a famous discussion in theMarxist movement between Lenin andBukharin-Piatakov on the so-called‘imperialist economism’. He might thenhave avoided the method Lenin rightlycastigates there and dealt seriouslywith my question: why, from a socialistand consistently democratic point ofview, did the Jewish national minoritynot have national rights? He destruc-tures this basic question in a welter ofnot always accurate detailed ‘practical’considerations. Who, he asks, was ‘toafford’ national rights to the Jews? Infact, nobody did: they won the right ofself-determination in war with theBritish, the Palestinian Arabs and thesurrounding Arab states. I repeat why,in the world as it was and is, were theynot entitled to do this?

Neither before, during, nor after thewar did ‘the world’ protect the Jews:that is where the often very brutal psy-chology of the Israeli state, of the heirsof those who survived Hitler’s slaugh-ter, and those who died in it, comesfrom. It is the Palestinian Jews whohave the irreducible right of self-deter-mination. As for the rest of the world’sJews — if we denounce as racist allthose who do not agree to, or advo-cate, the destruction of Israel then weare comprehensively hostile to mostJews alive. We therefore fall into aform of anti-semitism. Higgins can’tseem to take in the idea that to saythis is not to say that ‘left-wing’ anti-semites are racists. No, you are notracist; yes, you are for practical pur-poses an anti-semite — comprehen-sively hostile to most Jews alive.

This comprehensive hostility doesnot on the left go back much morethan a quarter of a century, though itsroots can be traced far into the past,as I explained. Higgins puts the Arabpropagandists’ picture of Europeandisplaced persons’ camps emptying ofJews as Middle Eastern displaced per-sons’ camps filled up with Arabs. Miss-ing is the fact that almost as many

Jews were then ‘displaced’ from Arabcountries — to Israel — as Arabs fromPalestine. Missing is the element inthe situation of the deliberate mainte-nance for political purposes by Arabregimes of the refugees as refugees.Possibly Jim worked too long for anArab bourgeois journal to be still ableto see such things.

Unteachable, Higgins drops his idi-otic — but very revealing — idea that itwas ‘the Zionists’ who stopped the be-nign F D Roosevelt opening the USAto Jewish refugees [WL 34], but hegoes on blaming ‘the Zionists’ for allthe closed doors in ‘the planet withouta visa’ for Jewish refugees. I think theTrotskyists were right, in the USA forexample, to demand of Zionist organi-sations that they join in our campaignfor open doors. Like the blinkered sec-tarian he is, underneath the desperatemimicking of urbanity, Higgins stillblames the Zionists for everything thatfollowed. Our old political criticism ofJewish nationalism thus becomes theattribution of moral responsibility toJewish nationalists for all that wasdone to millions of Jews! Essentiallythe demand here is that the Zionistsshould have ceased to be nationalists,that is Zionists. Nationalists are nation-alists, of course. But Jewish national-ists are worse than other nationalists— indeed, on them falls the guilt forwhat the nationalists, chauvinists andracists of other nations do to their peo-ple. In fact, they ‘bring it on them-selves’, don’t they, Jim?

Higgins, like Cliff, confuses whatcould reasonably be said in a debatewith a socialist Zionist in say 1930 withan attitude to the reborn Jewish nationin Palestine; except that the old Marx-ist criticism by words is replaced withArab bourgeois and feudalist criticismby bomb, gun and poison gas. Israelwill not cease to be ‘Zionist’, in JimHiggins’ sense, unless it is militarilyconquered and overrun. But Jim Hig-gins says that, though he wants Israeldone away with, he would like to see itreplaced by socialism. The problem isthat Saddam Hussein, etc. will notmake socialism, or even accord Jewsequal citizenship.

At this point I find myself very impo-litely thinking that Jim Higgins is incor-rigibly stupid; and then, abundantevidence to the contrary notwithstand-ing, I remember that he isn’t; and thusI reach the truth: here stupidity, impen-etrable, albeit would-be smart and‘stylish’ stupidity, serves the same pur-pose as hypocrisy; it is a variant of it.For nobody not born yesterday canthink socialism is an immediate MiddleEastern option if only Israel is nomore, or not know that Jim Higgins-style anti-Israeli propaganda, includinghis deceptive talk of socialism — so-cialism without an agency — servesthose who in the world of realpolitikwant to destroy Israel in the name of

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Arab and Muslim vindication and re-venge.

Leninists are not vague socialistpropaganda mongers: we are alwaysconcerned with ‘realpolitik’. Without re-alpolitik — as Lenin explained to thosesocialists, the so-called economists,who wanted to leave the struggle fordemocratic rights, a bourgeois republicand other non-socialist things to theRussian liberals — your enemies es-tablish their version of realpolitik anduse it against your socialist cause.Here Jim Higgins, who is in fact anold-style socialist sectarian of the sortLenin fought, winds up spouting finesocialist words that have no grip on lifeand in real politics he finds himselfhappily in tow to Arab bourgeois re-alpolitik. So does the SWP.

I refuted Higgins’ tunnel vision ac-count of things by putting the emer-gence of Israel in historical context. Herepeats it now in terms of the politicsof population arithmetic in 30s Pales-tine. He sees the calculations of theZionist demon as all-determining. As ifthe movements of the Jews to Pales-tine can be understood apart fromHitler and earlier smaller Hitlers! But Ihave already covered this in consider-able detail.

In fact the Zionists would have ac-cepted the partition proposed by theBritish Peel Commission in 1937 —and then, under Arab pressure, re-jected by the British government. Hig-gins admits that Arab immigration wasimportant in Palestine in the 20s and30s; why was that legitimate, and Jew-ish immigration — the migration ofpeople fleeing for their lives to their

own community in Palestine — not?It is of small consequence, but I

never imagined that in Higgins’ 1973piece he was being anything but Cliff’shack, on the way out: the pieceseemed to me to register a stage inthe degeneration of SWP thought onthis question.

I said that the Trotskyists in Trotsky’stime believed Jews had a right to go toPalestine. The exceptions to that Iknow of were the French POI, thegroup which published Spark in SouthAfrica, and, I think, C L R James. Jimresponds with speculation that Iformed this opinion from Tony Cliff’s1938-9 pieces in New International. Ididn’t, though Cliff’s stuff then is evi-dence for my case. What I said wasderived from the whole history, includ-ing Trotsky’s writings.

Thus drooling over Cliff and specu-lating, Higgins evades the wholebroader question! Is my account of thepre-war Trotskyist movement right orwrong?

Higgins is too busy being stylish tobe loyal in the discussion: I am con-cerned for the ‘security’ of Israelagainst those who advocate its de-struction in the name of ‘anti-imperial-ism’ and ‘socialism’; but I am for thoseIsraeli socialists, Jewish and Arab, andfor those in the Arab world, who wantequality and democracy and a freeArab state alongside the Jewish statein Palestine. All nationalists — Irishnationalists for example — see theirnation as ‘superior’ and ‘holy’ and‘elect’ — it is the nature of the thing.[How do I know? Guess] Calling itracism can sometimes make people

think: but you can’t do it to only onenation in a national conflict without lin-ing up on the side of the other no less‘racist’ nation. Jim Higgins does that,despite his repudiation of realpolitikand talk of socialism, because he is asleepwalking ‘socialist’ sectarian whohas no notion of the Leninist way ofcombining socialism and working classrealpolitik.

I like jokes and humour and ‘style’,Jim, and I’m not invariably unapprecia-tive of an adroit, well filled double neg-ative, in good season. But to tell it toyou plain, in old-fashioned English: Idon’t give a fuck for any of that if it iscounterposed to politics, and I don’tsee anything that is not simply pitiablein would-be funny polemic that evadesthe issues, and cleverisms that tie theauthor, not his opponent, in knots. Thestyle appropriate to our business —mine anyway — is one that lets yousay it truthfully, plainly, and as sharplyas necessary for presenting things asthey really are. The rest is trimming. IfShachtman is the measure here,Shachtman used humour to throw lighton things: in the work that I know henever sacrificed political substance tostyle, still less to the vain pursuit of it— that way, Comrade Higgins, liesdecadence, as you have here oncemore demonstrated.

Arabesques, he once turned inCliff’s rodeo,

Who now sits ad absurdum, reduc-tio!

See him fret, see him fume,Watch him preen and presume:‘God, I’m pleased I was me’, sighs

Malvolio.

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1. ANTI-ZIONISMANDANTISEMITISM

Gerry Healy andthe World JewishConspiracy

Sean Matgamna, SO 127, 14.4.83

Newsline has continued in its ridicu-lous campaign of bluff and blusteragainst the BBC Money Programme.But still, litigious though it is, it has notgot round to suing the BBC.

Many — solicited — letters frommembers and supporters have beenprinted. The campaign continuesagainst Socialist Organiser, linked withthe BBC according to the well-triedStalinist technique of the “amalgam”.Example from a piece by long-stand-ing member Alex McLarty: “Tradeunionists! Members of the labourmovement! Be warned! Depending onits substance a small dose of poisoncan do a lot of harm. What is the sub-stance of Matgamna and ‘Socialist Or-ganiser’? We know enough now. Timemay tell even more”.

Much of the denunciation of SO isextremely shrill and hysterical, lynchmob stuff.

It is also extremely sad. People writeexpressing their faith in the charlatanswho put out Newsline. Letter after let-ter testifies to real sacrifices and devo-tion. People who couldn’t possiblyknow the secrets of the autocratic andconspiratorial leaders of the organisa-tion write to testify from their own ex-perience of struggling to raise moneyfor the paper that it could have no fi-nancial link with Libya. Playwright TomKempinski writes in ringing tones, “Weare not bought” — rhetoric that ringspathetic and false in the circum-stances.

As false has have always been thehopes and wishes of the many finerevolutionaries who have devotedthemselves to Healy’s “machine formaiming militants”. We reproduce theeditorial in which they responded toour comment last week.

Newsline’s editorial uses the codeword “Zionist”, but in fact it is talkingabout a conspiracy of Jews whichruns, they say, from the centre of MrsThatcher’s Cabinet, to the command-ing heights of the BBC, all the waythrough to Socialist Organiser. If a Jewbecomes “the youngest ever chair-man” of the BBC, what else can it bebut a “Zionist” conspiracy?

Pre World War Two antisemites ex-plained communism and finance capi-

tal alike as different aspects of a singleWorld Jewish Conspiracy. So now dothese petrodollar anti-Zionists ofNewsline depict “the centre” ofThatcher’s government and SocialistOrganiser as secretly linked andbonded — despite ocean-wide classand political differences — by a hiddennetwork of “Zionists”.

“Zionism” here is not a political refer-ence meaning those who support theright of Israel, or a modified Israel, toexist. That would include the over-whelming majority of the people ofBritain.

There are Zionists and Zionists.There are Zionists and Jews. It is thelatter who are the conspirators. Evenan anti-Zionist Jew, this racist logicsays, will have ineradicable loyaltiesand allegiances more basic than poli-tics: some people are congenital“Zionists”.

SO is opposed to Zionism? It sup-ports the national rights of the Pales-tinians? SO advocates a seculardemocratic state in Palestine withinwhich Jewish and Arab Palestinianscould live as equals? Though rejectingwith contempt the “socialism” of the“Green Book”, it would support Libyaagainst an imperialist invasion?

That’s just a front. Don’t the commu-nists pretend to denounce the “financecapitalists” and the “finance capitalists”make war on communism so as to foolthose on both sides who don’t knowthere is an International Jewish Con-spiracy? Thus Gerry Healy in hisdotage seems to have rediscoveredthe “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” —that forgery of the Okhrana, the Tsaristpolitical police, which became a war-rant for genocide against the Jews ofEurope.

Newsline in effect defines Jews as“agents of Zionist imperialism” —which must be the very heart of impe-rialism if, as they say, its controllingtentacles reach secretly right into “thecentre” of Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet. TheJews, it would seem, are now the in-ternational janissaries of imperialism.

How can the mutant remnants ofwhat was once the most serious revo-lutionary organisation in Britain havecome to this? For the last nine or tenyears, the WRP has seen the world,and especially the international Trot-skyist movement, mainly in terms ofpolice “conspiracies” and the opera-tions of “agents” and counteragents.

Vast amounts of newsprint, time andmoney have been given over to thesearch for the “conspirators” and“agents” who are the root of all evil inthe world, and whose subterraneancombats and manoeuvres seem in theWRP’s eyes to have replaced thestruggle of classes as the locomotiveof history.

Add to this paranoid obsession MrHealy’s present “cupboard love” poli-tics which puts Zionism and anti-Zion-

ism at the centre of world politics —because to judge by all the circum-stantial evidence, Libyan gold is at thecentre of the WRP’s survival — andthe scenario more or less writes itself.The inbuilt logic of such “politics” takesover and takes off.

It easily becomes a matter of Jews— “Zionists” — against all the rest.

The racist logic breaks through intheir account of the Money Pro-gramme’s “witch hunt”. Why is this thework of “Zionists”? Because a Jew isappointed chairman of the BBC? Be-cause only “Zionists” are concernedwith the Middle East? Because theJewish Chronicle showed interest inan expose of people it must regard asat least potential pogromists? Ofcourse, if the Jewish Chronicle wastipped off in advance, that is proof pos-itive that “Zionists” were in control!

Or it is that all “witch-hunters” areZionists? No: it is a view of the worldin which the Palestinian question is thecentral pivot of the struggle of twobasic camps, the imperialist and the“anti-imperialist”; which decrees thatwithin the imperialist countries, “Zion-ists”, linked by ineradicable ties to thearch-imperialism — Zionist imperialism— are the main enemy, everywhere.

Faced with an earlier left wing flirta-tion with antisemitism dressed up asanti-capitalism [the German socialist]August Bebel said that: “antisemitismis the socialism of idiots”. WRP-styleanti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism ofidiots. And it is indistinguishable fromantisemitism.

All Jews other than certain religiousanti-Zionists and some revolutionarysocialists do support Israel — that is,they are Zionists.

They are a people scattered throughall segments of society. Seek evidencethat there may be a conspiratorial net-work of Jews and you will find it — redJews and Rothschilds, members ofMrs Thatcher’s (or Ronald Regan’s)cabinet and writers for SO. These linksare the raw material from which theo-ries about “Zionist conspiracy” caneasily be spun.

But the only possible “rational” com-mon denominator on which to basesuch a theory is “race” (whatever thatmay be).

The leaders of the WRP are peoplewhose history must make themashamed in some part of their mindsabout what they have become. So,cheaply, they warn that Mrs Thatcher,who now (they say) has Zionist con-spirators at “the centre” of her govern-ment, may engage in antisemiticagitation. But they can’t even disavowantisemitism without linking the Zion-ists to Hitler, saying that Hitler con-sciously and deliberately made forcibleconversions to Zionism.

Morally outraged by Israel — andrightly outraged — the more emotionalor “third worldist” left in Britain has

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sometimes tried to brand all Zionists,that is, the vast majority of Jews, asracists, and (especially during theultra-left heyday of the early 70s) pro-posed to treat them accordingly. Theslogan “drive the Zionists out of thelabour movement” has been raised —it can only mean: drive the Jews out ofthe labour movement.

There is simply no way that this sortof anti-Zionism can avoid shading over— despite the best “anti-racist” inten-tions — into antisemitism.

Even if it were true that Jews whosupport Israel are racists, the evil con-sequences of left wing antisemitismwould far outweigh any help it wouldgive the oppressed Palestinians. Butin fact it is hysterical and stupid tothink that all Jews who support Israelare racists.

Most of them have the haziest no-tion of the history of Jewish-Arab rela-tions in Palestine. They do have anunderstandably vivid awareness thatsix million Jews were murdered in mid20th century Europe. Naturally theyare inclined to,believe its officialspokesmen.

Yet the recent outcry against theBegin government by millions of non-Israeli (Zionist) Jews and the vastdemonstrations within Israel itselfwhen the facts about Israel’s treatmentof Lebanon were made known, and itbecame impossible to shut out knowl-edge of Israeli complicity in the mas-sacres, prove how far millions ofZionists are from being consciousracists. Most of them can be got to un-derstand that the treatment of thePalestinian Arabs by the PalestinianJews is a betrayal of the best tradi-tions of the Jewish people.

But idiotic attempts to treat them allas part of a “Zionist conspiracy” canonly convince Jews that in parallel towhat they see as the Arab threat towipe out the Jews of Palestine, thosein Britain who talk of justice for thePalestinian Arabs are a crowd of loonyfuture pogromists. And that won’t helpthe Palestinian Arabs either.

The state of the left on this questionis indicated by the fact that Ken Living-stone in the same issue of Newslinechattily adds his support to the ideathat the Money Programme expose onthe WRP was a Zionist plot. He hadn’tthen read the antisemitic editorialprinted on the opposite page? Whatdoes he think of the editorial? Does hethink we should just shrug and acceptantisemitism as a feature of the farleft?

Perhaps what the Ayatollah Healyhas discovered in his political dotageis not the “Protocols of the Elders ofZion” but the last will and testament ofJoseph Stalin, who during his lastyears infected much of the Stalinistand quasi Stalinist left with his own in-grained antisemitism. At the time of hisdeath in 1953 Stalin had set the stage

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for a purge trial of five “Jewish doc-tors” from the Kremlin’s own hospitalaccused of plots, poisonings etc.

It was to have been the signal for afinal act in the vast anti-Jewish cam-paign, legitimised as “anti-Zionism”which had raged in most of EasternEurope and the USSR since 1948 —which for example, was a prominentfeature of purge trial like that of RudolfSlansky in Czechoslovakia in 1952.The trial of the doctors would havebeen the signal for the mass deporta-tion of the USSR’s Jews — and possi-bly for their annihilation.

Stalin’s successors cancelled thetrial, but antisemitism remains rampantin the Stalinist states.

When the WRP (then SLL) wentMaoist for a year back in 1967 MrBanda, now the WRP General Secre-tary, wrote that they would “march”even under the portrait of Stalin. Onceagain he is “marching” under the por-trait of Stalin.

He won’t write about it, but he isalso uncomfortably close to marchingunder the portrait of Adolf Hitler.

Free speech forZionists!

Unsigned [Sean Matgamna], Work-ers’ Action 77, 29.10.77

The National Union of Students Ex-ecutive is to consider taking actionagainst certain Student Unions in re-sponse to bans on college Israel Soci-eties and/ or Jewish Societies.

Those who want to proscribe theZionists from exercising free speechwithin student unions argue as follows:The Zionist state of Israel is based onracial criteria. It is a racist state in itsconstitution and its definitions of citi-zenship. Zionism established itself inPalestine in a racist manner (e.g. boy-cotts of Arab produce and labour bythe Zionists) and with racist goals. Thepractice of the state of Israel since itsinception has been racist.

Therefore pro-Israel propaganda isracist through and through. Any andevery apologist for the existence of thestate of Israel must take as a startingpoint the denial of any rights to thePalestinian Arabs

By logic Zionists, like other racists,should be denied the right to organise,recruit, and justify the crimes of thestate of Israel.

But to establish the fact that Zionismis racist, a form of racism, does notcompletely describe the problem. Forwho are the Zionists in Britain?

The hard core Zionists with a firmcommitment to Israel are the Jewishcommunity.

In Britain in general, there is wide-spread sympathy with Israel and ac-

ceptance of the Zionist state. But inthe Jewish community this amounts tocomplete identification. Apart from rev-olutionary socialists whose origins arein the Jewish community, there arevery few Jewish non-Zionists.

This identification with Israel has itsroots and motive force not in anti-Arabracism, nor in a thought-out pro-gramme of displacing the Palestinians,but in the fact that the Jewish massesin Europe have themselves been thevictims of racist persecution. It wasonly during and after the Third Reich’s“Final Solution” the terrible paroxysmof antisemitism that slaughtered sixmillion Jews, that Zionism gained gen-eral acceptance among the Europeanand US Jewish communities. Beforethat, the Zionist project to colonisePalestine had been a minority creedamong Jews.

The identification with the Zionistcolony and later the state establishedwith US imperialist support was largelyidentification by those who escapedthe Nazi holocaust with a Jewish statethat claimed to be a guarantee that theages-old persecution of Jews wouldcease as a Jewish “homeland” wasacquired.

That this state was European andnot Middle Eastern, that it was exclu-sively Jewish, no doubt made it easierfor western Jews to identify with it; butthese were not the essential startingpoints for them. Far from being con-scious racists, most Jews in Britain arenot even conscious of the racist basisof the state of Israel.

Zionism is inescapably racist. But tosay that Zionists are racists whoshould be treated like the NationalFront is to miss the point that the hardcore Zionists are Jews not motivatedby fascist-type race hatred but by awrong and misguided response toanti-Jewish racism.

The Jewish community which is thebedrock of Zionist support is not or-ganised and kept together by this Zi-onism even. Still less is it a racistselection of people. Its collusion withZionism is not the essential character-istic of the Jewish community

Of course Zionist Jews are responsi-ble for themselves. Those who supportthe state of Israel are supporters of aracist state even if they have evadedthe less acceptable facts about Israel’sorigins and its mode of operation inthe Middle East in the past thirtyyears. As Zionists, they are still our po-litical and ideological enemies.

That is quite a long way, however,from being the same as the NationalFront or other groups formed aroundfascist programmes and fuelled byrace hatred.

Most members of the Jewish com-munity can be reasoned with. The self-same consciousness of their ownhistory that is manipulated by Zionismand imperialism leads many Jews to

oppose those who are the organisedracists in this country, such as the Na-tional Front. Even the conservativeJewish Chronicle said after Lewisham:“Not even the Mirror made the (to me)obvious point that, what ever their de-fects, the Trotskyists have the right at-titude to the National Front and shouldnot be left alone to stop its provoca-tions”. (Article by Philip Kleinman,cited in the anti-fascist paper CARF).

These Jews should be welcomed asallies in the anti fascist struggle, evenwhile they give support to racist Israel.

The abstract logical chain — Zion-ism is racism and since racism mustbe denied free speech so must Zion-ism — leads to the suppression of therights of a community which is itselfstill potentially threatened with racism.As the NF has grown it has felt moreconfident to express its antisemitismmore and more openly. It cannot at allbe excluded that the constant outpour-ings against “finance” capital (by whichthey mean Jews) will lead before longto violent attacks on the Jewish com-munity

With extreme Zionist organisationssuch as Herut, which are overtly andaggressively racist against Arabs, di-rect action rather than de bate may beneeded. But ordinary college JewishSocieties can not be treated the sameway. A general proscription of Zionistmeetings is an unnecessarily blunt in-strument.

Their pro-Israel propaganda shouldnot pass unchallenged, but there aremany other ways to intervene and op-pose it. Such interventions may welllead to violent incidents, as there arecertainly thuggish Zionists who try tosilence anti-Israel views. We should beprepared for that; but it is preferable toa blanket ban on any student societyor group that is explicitly (Israel Soci-eties) or implicitly (Jewish societies)Zionist.

Banned for beingJewish

Jane Ashworth, SO 216, 13.2.85

The Union of Jewish Students is stilloutlawed at Sunderland Polytechnic.Over 500 students at the almost 1000-strong general meeting voted last Fri-day to continue the ban.

Student Union President AndyBurke, who opposed the ban, nowfaces a no-confidence motion at theExecutive and intends to take thewhole matter to the union council laterthis week.

During the week leading up to thegeneral meeting, the Union of JewishStudents organised a national rally inSunderland which was leafleted bySocialist Students in NOLS (SSIN)

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supporters from the North East andManchester.

Unfortunately, there is now the dan-ger of the Polytechnic’s managementstepping in. The leader of SunderlandCouncil — Jim Slater — is a Zionistand a right winger who sits on the gov-erning body. It is feared that the banwill be used to further erode theunion’s autonomy.

The ban has more serious implica-tions than at first seems.

The confrontation at Sunderlandstarted when the general meetingpassed a motion saying that Zionismis racism. So it followed that the UJS,which is a Zionist organisation, shouldbe banned.

But that simple equation is a non-sense in principle. Certainly Israel is aracist state, but to say that Zionism —the belief that Jews have a right to astate — is racism is ridiculous. Thesubsequent ban at Sunderland Poly isbordering on antisemitism.

Large numbers of Labour Partymembers are Zionists. And not justright-wingers. Tony Benn, Eric Heffer,Jo Richardson all support the contin-ued existence of the state of Israel. Inthat, they are Zionists. Even thoughsupport for Israel is only one part oftheir politics, they are still Zionists.

Many of the comrades at Sunder-land who voted to ban the UJS arealso in the left of the Labour Party.Some will be supporting the campaignto pressurise Tony Benn to run againstKinnock for Labour Party leader. ThatBenn is a Zionist doesn’t stop themsupporting him.

So the only objection they can haveis to organised Zionists. But that does-n’t hold true either. Benn and Hefferare members of Labour Friends of Is-rael, so in that sense they are organ-ised Zionists.

When it comes to wider politics, thenthe misguided comrades at Sunder-land do not think that being a Zionistputs you beyond the pale. Zionism isnot such an issue for them that every-thing else is always secondary. So tosay that Zionism is racism, and tomean it, must lead the comrades towant to ban large chunks of theLabour left.

It would also mean that the com-rades would want to ban a LabourClub which supported the continuedexistence of the state of Israel.

But Sunderland wouldn’t carry thatout. Certainly they may choose toleaflet or picket a Tony Benn meeting,but to talk about banning him is clearlyridiculous.

The only people Sunderland want toban are the Jewish Zionists!

Don’t banZionists!

John O’Mahony [Sean Matgamna],SO 221, 28.3.85

Israel is a racist state, and Israeliatrocities such as its savage reprisalsagainst Arab men, women and chil-dren in Lebanon are crimes againsthumanity.

Should anti-racists therefore treatZionists — or all those who supportthe right of the Israeli state to exist —as racists? Sunderland Polytechnic’sban on the Union of Jewish Studentshas placed this issue at the centre ofstudent politics. The issue goes waybeyond student politics.

For almost all Jews — apart fromrevolutionary socialists and some reli-gious zealots — are Zionists (at leastin a broad sense), and therefore whatis at issue here is whether or not so-cialists, and anti-racists, should politi-cally persecute Jews.

The Sunderland student union banwas not the work of an unrepresenta-tive minority. Over 1000 students at-tended its General Meeting last monthwhich endorsed the ban on the Unionof Jewish Students on the groundsthat the UJS is racist because it isavowedly Zionist.

Nor is the majority attitude at Sun-derland untypical of the Left.

Lenin and Trotsky never dreamed of‘banning Zionists’ — though such aban would have been a much lessdrastic matter in their day, when onlyan ideological minority of Jews wereZionists. They opposed Zionism politi-cally: but, for example, the Poale Zion(Workers of Zion) movement contin-ued to publish its paper in the USSRuntil 1927, the year the Left Oppositionwas outlawed.

Yet many today who consider them-selves Leninists or Trotskyists supporta ban on Zionists.

The intention of the Sunderland Polystudents is to show the sharpest pos-sible intolerance and hostility towardswhat they consider to be racism —and that is good.

What they have done. however,looks more like racism than the anti-racism they intend. They have tar-geted a community which forsomething like 1500 years has beenthe victim of Europe’s ingrained, tradi-tional Christian anti-Jewish racism.The greatest racist crime in recordedhistory was done foot by Jews butagainst Jews.

Israel exploits that fact, and uses theNazi holocaust of six million Jews forself-

3justification and moral blackmail.But the holocaust does not thereby be-come some thing we can forget aboutor regard as an event of ancient his-

tory. One of the tragedies of Israel, con-

ceived as a refuge against anti-semitism, is that its activities nowcombine with the effect in the West ofthe increased power and wealth of theArab states to generate antisemitismdressed up in the garb of anti-Zionism.

Today the rump National Front hasturned “left” and denounces “financecapitalism”, which it says is ‘Jewishcapitalism’. They are poking around inthe old vomit of the Nazis, who tried toappeal to workers by scapegoating theJews for the crimes of capitalism. Thenew NF even denounces Israel and Zi-onism for their ill-treatment of thePalestinians.

The drive, motives and intentions ofeven the most confused left-wing anti-Zionist are of course radically different.Yet today justified hostility to Israel haspushed much of the revolutionary leftto the edge of a new antisemitism, andsome so-called leftists (“Newsline”)over the edge.

It is not that they are supporters ofHitlerite racial mumbo-jumbo, or any-thing like that. But whatever the goodintentions, there is no way that a banlike that at Sunderland Poly can avoidbeing antisemitic.

Zionism is part of the identity thatmodern history — centrally, Hitler’smassacres, and the callous attitude ofthe big powers to those massacresand their survivors — has stamped onJews. To differentiate between ban-ning Zionists and banning Jews is nomore than a thin fiction when the vastmajority of Jews today identify with Is-rael and are supporters — active orpassive, callous or guilty, blinkeredand happy, or deeply troubled support-ers — of the existing Jewish state.This is part of their identity as Jews,and not easily detachable.

The ban on Zionists is akin to theold proselytising Christian anti-semitism which wanted to convert theJews, rather than, like Hitler and theracists, to kill them, but was bitterlyhostile to those who refused to changeand be converted.

Jewish identification with Israel hasits roots and motives not in anti-Arabracism, nor even in a thought-out com-mitment to displace the PalestinianArabs, but in the Jews’ experience ofracist persecution, culminating in theNazi slaughter.

It was only during and after the ThirdReich’s “Final Solution”, the terribleparoxysm of antisemitism that slaugh-tered six million Jews, that Zionismgained general acceptance in the Eu-ropean and US Jewish communities.Before then the Zionist project tocolonise Palestine had been a minoritycreed among Jews.

The identification with the Zionistcolony, and later with the Israeli state,was identification with a Jewish statethat seemed to offer a guarantee that

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the age-old persecution of the Jewswould now cease.

Far from being conscious racists,most Jewish Zionists in Britain are noteven conscious of the racist basis ofthe state of Israel.

They are not motivated by race-ha-tred, but by a wrong and misguided re-sponse to anti-Jewish racism.

Of course Zionist Jews are responsi-ble for themselves. Those who supportthe state of Israel are supporters of aracist state even if they refuse to ac-knowledge the less acceptable factsabout Israel’s origins and its mode ofoperation over the past 40 years.

As Zionists they are our political andideological opponents.

That is quite a long way, however,from being the same as the NationalFront or other groups formed aroundfascist programmes and fuelled byrace hatred.

The attempt to treat Zionist Jews asif they were racists is both unjust anditself inevitably productive of racist atti-tudes, albeit wrapped up in good in-tentions.

Listen to the usefully crass“Newsline” editorialising in support ofthe Sunderland decision. Benevolentlythey conclude:

“We reject the spurious premise thatall Jews are and must be Zionists, orthat anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Sun-derland Poly students are right to takea stand. We would support the forma-tion of a Jewish Society which anti-Zionist Jews would be eligible to join.But a Zionist society is not accept-able.”

Repeat: “We would support the for-mation of a Jewish Society which anti-Zionist Jews would be eligible to join”.

Newsline of course goes in for child-ish pretences and denies that mostJews are Zionists. But its ‘benevo-lence’ shows how closely the attitudesof sections of the Left now parallel tra-ditional antisemitism — in this case,the Christian antisemitism that wantedto convert the Jews.

One of the blocks to rational discus-sion of this question on the left todayis that things are rarely spelled out.Even many who would not — for tacti-cal or better reasons — ban Jewishstudent societies, share the notion thatZionists should — more or less — betreated as racists. Translated, thatmeans that most Jews — those whocannot be persuaded to stop believingthat Israel, or some version of Israel,has a right to exist — should be perse-cuted.

Some people define away the prob-lem by pretending that antisemitismmust be defined as Hitlerism or big-oted Christianity (and therefore cannotinclude them).

As if there haven’t been many anti-semitisms in history! Hitler’s anti-semitism was very different from theCatholic antisemitism to be found in

old Austro Hungary or Poland: differentagain was the antisemitism in Polandin the 50s and 60s in which hatred of aJewish Stalinist terrorist like party bossBeirut blended with the older Catholicstrain. It was a section of a Stalinistbureaucracy, not an old ruling class,which offered its Jewish Beiruts (likeRothschilds in pre-war Europe) asscapegoats to deflect popular hatred.

Jews — rich and poor alike — havebeen the universal scapegoat. Thebasic culture of Christian society fortwo millennia has been saturated withthe Bible’s myth about who killedChrist.

If hypocrisy is a tribute paid by viceto virtue, mental dishonesty here is adevice to keep the left from facing upto the implications of its attitudes. Butthe implications are there under thesurface. And sometimes they showthrough — as in the ravings ofNewsline about the “Zionist world con-spiracy” or the crude drawings of“Zionists” in the style of traditional anti-semitic caricatures of Jews publishedin the early Labour Herald. That thesepeople are tolerated on the Left aspart of the anti-Zionist common fronttells its own story.

We should try to be logical — be-cause that is the only way to be hon-est.

In face of the crimes of the Israelistate. perhaps we should say that theold antisemites had something afterall? That is an abhorrent idea for al-most everybody on the Left. Yet it isthe right way to pose the question, be-cause it honestly sums up what is im-plicit in the attitude that ‘all Zionists areracists’.

After all, if the ban on the Jewishstudent society at Sunderland Poly isright, then we should not stop there.Other Jewish societies should bebanned. Jewish community organisa-tions like the Board of Deputies shouldbe outlawed. Mainstream Jewishnewspapers should be proscribed.And then what about the synagogues?Centres in each area of organisedZionist support for Israel? Why shouldthey be allowed freely to meet likethat?

If it is right to ban a Jewish studentsociety, then it makes no sense to tol-erate synagogues (unless they adhereto those small Jewish religious sectswho reject the state of Israel).

It is, of course, this horrible logic thatkeeps sections of the Left from recog-nising the implications of their position.They also do not recognise the an-tecedents.

The truth — and many on the Leftnaturally find it unpalatable — is thatantisemitism of various sorts has morethan once found a home in the organi-sations of the working class and of theLeft.

In the late 19th century many anti-semites identified Jews with money-

grubbing capitalism, though mostJews were terribly poor. Areas of thelabour movement became tainted withthe sort of “well-intentioned” anti-semitism which Marxists denouncedas the ‘socialism of idiots’. Even theAustrian Marxists, faced with a power-ful Catholic antisemitism, ostenta-tiously declared themselves “neitherantisemitic nor philosemitic”.

For many decades — and still to thisday — antisemitism has been rampantin the USSR and in most of the EastEuropean Stalinist states. For exam-ple, in 1968-9 there was a thoroughgo-ing antisemitic purge in Poland.

In the later 40s and early 50s, a viru-lent antisemitism, thinly disguised asanti-Zionism, was poured out by thepropaganda machine of the Stalinistgovernments and by the westernCommunist Parties.

On the eve of his death in 1953,Stalin was about to stage an antise-mitic show trial of the ‘Jewish doctorsin the Kremlin’. Most likely this wouldhave been the start of Stalin’s versionof Hitler’s “final solution”, mass depor-tation and slaughter for the survivingJews of the USSR and Eastern Eu-rope.

Today, overwhelming revulsion atthe crimes of the Israeli state and sym-pathy with the Palestinian Arabs pro-vide the emotional drive for the sort of“anti-Zionism” which has antisemiticimplications:

Some of the most fervent and con-fused left-wing ‘anti-Zionists’ are ‘ThirdWorldists’ or ‘socialist bloc’-ists, seeingthe world not in terms of class strugglebut of “progressive” and reactionarynational bloc, and of a division of theworld into ‘imperialism’ and ‘anti-impe-rialism’. In one way or another, theythink in terms of national conflicts, na-tional confrontations, national causesand national — not class — solutions.They see progressive and reactionarypeoples, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nations. It isa small step from all this to the idea ofgood and bad peoples.

Memories of fascist antisemitismstop such ideas from developingdearly. So the logic of such ‘Third-Worldism’ remains just under the sur-face.

Another root of “left-wing” anti-semitism is the fact that many of thevociferous ‘anti-Zionists’ do not acceptthat the Palestinian Jews have anyrights in Palestine. To put it at itsweakest, it is usually not at all clearwhat positive alternative much of theLeft is advocating when it denouncesIsrael and the crimes of its govern-ments. All too often the implication cer-tainly the logical and emotionalimplication — is ‘Zionists out of theMiddle East’ (with the escape clausethat this is nothing against Jews, be-cause anti-Zionist Jews can remain).Many left-wing anti-Zionists operatenot on class politics but on Palestinian

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or pan-Arab nationalism. So believes that the solution to the

Jewish-Arab conflict is the creation ofa secular democratic state for Pales-tinian Jews and Arabs, with guaran-teed rights for the Jewish nation inPalestine. (A small minority of SO sup-porters think that the only practicablesolution is some rearrangement in twostates. Jewish and Arab). The idea ofthe democratic secular state is widelyaccepted. But that part of it which saysthat the Jewish nation, too, has rights,is often downplayed. SO accepts itand means it.

We should denounce the crimes ofthe Israeli state. We should defend thePalestinian victims of that state andchampion their rights But we must doso as working class socialists, not asThird Worldists or vicarious Arab chau-vinists. We must not mumbling aboutour fine anti racist intentions, fall our-selves into a variant of the oldestracism in history.

Are nationsguilty?

Jakob Taut, SO 229, 22.5.85

The recent banning of a Jewish stu-dent society at Sunderland Polytech-nic — on the grounds that it is Zionist,and Zionism is racist — has stirred de-bate on the British left about Zionism,anti-Zionism, and antisemitism.

The West German left has also beenpushed into controversy on these is-sues following a visit to the MiddleEast by a delegation from the Greens,the West German ecological party.

The leader of the delegation, JurgenReents, came out in favour of thePalestinians. But he put it like this:“German anti-fascists must stand forcompensation to the Palestinians be-cause they are ‘victims of the victimsof the Nazis’.”

Responding to the official Israeli ar-gument about the guilt of the wholeGerman people in relation to the Jews,and the obligation therefore for Ger-mans to aid Israel, he declared: “TheNazi atrocities and neo-Nazi daubingspale in comparison with the Zionistatrocities, and not only I ask myself,when will the Jews be given some-thing to think about, that will stop themmurdering their fellow-beings”.

Pro-Israeli critics of Reents withinthe Greens responded in the sameterms of collective national guilt: pre-cisely as a German, one should notcomplain too loudly about what Jewsdo.

In the socialist paper Was Tun,Jakob Taut, a Marxist of German-Jew-ish origin now living in Israel, re-sponded:

The Zionist idea of the solution ofthe Jewish question through the “gath-

ering-together of the exiles” and theirsettlement in Palestine arose over 100years ago in Eastern Europe as a con-sequence of a wave of anti-Jewishpogroms. The founders built Zionist or-ganisations to realise this dream.

Eventually the trauma of the Nazis’annihilation of the Jews gave the ideaand practice of Zionism a previouslyunknown force among the remainingJewish communities and individuals.This, among many other factors, wasa powerful impetus behind the setting-up of the Jewish state of Israel inPalestine in 1948.

Originally Zionism neither plannedthe driving out of the Palestinian Arabsnor intended to create a bastion for im-perialism. Zionism was a product ofthe extremely tragic and complicatedJewish problem. If revolutionary Marx-ists nonetheless declare war on Zion-ism, this is primarily on the basis oftwo points.

Firstly... the concentration of somemillions of Jews in Palestine/ Israel,where the original Arab population wasmostly driven out in 1948-9 and 1967and the same fate threatens the Arabsremaining there, cannot be a basis forovercoming the ghetto existence ofJews. A nationally or ethnically op-pressed people has never been liber-ated by oppressing or discriminatingagainst another people.

The situation of the isolation of Is-rael in the Arab region created in factthe biggest ghetto... We are thus anti-Zionists because Zionism inevitably,because of its principles, oppressesanother people and can be no solutionto the Jewish problem.

Secondly [the alliance between Is-rael and US imperialism against libera-tion struggles all over the world,including Central America.]

These two starting points of anti-Zionism do not mean, however, thatevery anti-Zionism is automatically“progressive” or “revolutionary”. Weseek neither to deny nor to gloss overthe deeds of Zionism. But to comparethose deeds with the Nazi atrocities isoutrageous... The Nazis systemati-cally, as an industry, murdered all theJews they could get hold of becausethey were Jews, and wanted to exter-minate the whole of world Jewry. In allthe shameful record of Zionist “atroci-ties” there is — up to now, anyway —no trace of such behaviour by Israelagainst the Palestinians.

The demand to “give the Jewssomething to think about” would havegone well in the bloodthirsty Nazipaper Der Stürmer... To call the Pales-tinians “victims of the victims of theNazis” and on those grounds to givethem “humanitarian” aid from the de-scendants of the Nazis, is tasteless.Intentionally or not, “compensation”here substitutes for support for a peo-ple fighting for its rights.

Besides it is incomprehensible why

the anti-fascist forces of today, whohave nothing to do with the plight ofthe victims of the Nazis 40 or 45 yearsago, should relieve their consciencesby “compensation” to the “victims ofthe victims of the Nazis”... Are theGreens, or their spokesperson Reents,somehow of the view that they carrythe guilt of their “elders” in theirblood?...

If Reents wants to help the Palestini-ans as “victims of the victims of theNazis” and not from internationalistsolidarity with an oppressed people,like every other oppressed peoplewhether it is a “victim of the victims ofthe Nazis” or not, then this betrays anationalist narrowness. And nationalistnarrowness is fertile soil for the exam-ple, above, of a reactionary anti-Zion-ism...

In conclusion, a personal note: thewriter of these lines ... had to fleeHitler Germany, lived as a retiredworker in Palestine (later Israel), andhas been politically active there for 50years. He was also seriously injuredby Arabs in the Jewish-Arab “con-flict”...

The intention “as a German not tocomplain too loudly” not only does notcompensate for the crimes of theNazis against the Jews, but showscowardice and lack of principle. As avictim of the whole complex I am ofthe view that both the Nazi crimes andinternational and regional Israeli policy— without in the least equating the two— can and should be sharply con-demned and fought by Jews and Ger-mans and all other people.

Distorted ideas of national “honouror dishonour” unfortunately hinder thevitally necessary international action toprevent the destruction of human civili-sation, which the Israeli regime, atleast objectively, is helping to pave theway for.

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The left andantisemitism

Sean Matgamna, SO 265-6, 3 and10.4.86

The WRP split wide open last Octo-ber, and now there are two organisa-tions calling themselves the WRP.

One, led — perhaps nominally — byGerry Healy, the dictator of the old or-ganisation for 3/4 decades, resumedpublishing a daily paper, “TheNewsline”, at the beginning of Febru-ary. The second WRP, which seems tocontain all the other prominent leadersof the old organisation — the Bandabrothers, Cliff Slaughter, Tom Kemp,Bill Hunter, etc. — now publishes aweekly, the Workers Press.

The Newsline group is indistinguish-able from the WRP of the previousdecade except that one more conspir-ator and enemy is now added to thelong list of its devils — the “Banda-Slaughter clique”. For the Newslinegroup all the old lunatic certainties —like the dogma that the miners did notsuffer defeat in 1985 — remain fixedand the dialectical prophet Healy isstill in his place in the firmament.

The Workers Press group is the in-teresting WRP. For many weeks nowthey have given over a large propor-tion of the paper to a free discussionof some of the issues thrown up bytheir break with Healy. They have along way to go yet before they willhave worked themselves clear ofHealyism, and it is not at all obviousthat they will arrive at coherent or sta-ble revolutionary socialist politics as aresult of their political reappraisals.

The pressure on them, and thetemptation, must be to sink into a low-est common-denominator of “kitsch-Trotskyism” — that is, “Trotskyist”forms filled with the current, often pop-ulist, fashions and enthusiasms of thebroader left.

Those who were prominent leadingmembers of Gerry Healy’s WRP stillmaintain the transparent fiction that“they didn’t know” about Healy’s mis-deeds. On the other hand, it must takea great deal of courage for those ofthem who spent decades inside GerryHealy’s “machine for maiming mili-tants” even partially to confront theirown past and set about radically re-assessing it.

That they are trying to do that testi-fies to a continuing devotion to the so-cialist goals they must have thoughtthey were serving during all their yearsof moral, intellectual, political andphysical thraldom under the unfetteredrule of the brutal and sadistic bullyGerry Healy. Old-timers like BillHunter, politically eclipsed and si-lenced for a quarter of a century, nowseem to be playing a prominent role.

In a curious way what is happeningto them resembles what happened tothinking members of the British Com-munist Party in 1956-7 afterKhrushchev denounced Stalin at theso-called 20th Congress of the CPSUin February 1956 and thereby blew thelid off the Stalinist parties, puttingeverything up for reassessment. Andas a matter of fact some of them wentthrough that experience as CPers in1956-7 before making their way to asort of Trotskyism.

The discussion pieces published byWorkers Press have included a letterby SO’s editor John O’Mahony whichasked for clarification on the WorkersPress group’s attitude to such thingsas the libel case the Healyites broughtagainst SO. The Workers Press groupitself is now facing a barrage of legalactions by the Healyites — actions de-signed to drive them out of business.

One very important issue raised inresponse to John O’Mahony’s letter isthe question of the antisemitism ofHealy’s WRP. In 1983 SO publishedan article by John O’Mahony accusingthe WRP of blatant antisemitism, andnow Charlie Pottins, a Workers Presssupporter and also a prominent mem-ber of the Jewish Socialist Group, hasre-raised this question in WorkersPress.

He accuses O’Mahony of “smearingthe Party as ‘antisemites’ and even‘pogromists’” (Workers Press, 8.3.86).Such “vicious slanders and incite-ments” are not “honest polemics”, heinsists.

In fact in 1983 it was Charlie Pottinswho wrote the three-page Newslinereply to O’Mahony’s SO article, lend-ing his name as a prominent JewishSocialist Group member to cover forthe Healyites’ antisemitism.

Now this is a very important ques-tion. It can be easily demonstrated thatthe Healyite WRP was and is indeedblatantly antisemitic. But if that wereall there was to it, then it might not beworth returning to the subject now.

The fact is, however, that the explicitantisemitic ravings of Healy’s WRP areno more than an extreme and openexpression, in (as we shall see) lan-guage and forms close to those of tra-ditional antisemitism, of ideas whichare implicit in the fervent “anti-Zion-ism”, the strident insistence that Israelmust be destroyed, common to muchof the left.

To go over the edge into more orless explicit antisemitism the Healyitesneeded only to add to the common leftanti-Zionist demonology their owncharacteristic paranoia and a merce-nary desire to get into step with themost extreme anti-Israeli Arab chau-vinism.

While it would be libellous to identifythe “anti-Zionist” left with the anti-semitism of the Healyites, it neverthe-less seems to us that what the

Healyites made of the anti-Zionist de-monology which they share with muchof the left (and until not so long agowith SO too) holds an accurate mirrorup to that ideology,

The Newsline editorial reproducedon [page 25] was not just somethingthat can he shrugged off as a peculiar-ity of Healy’s crackpot WRP. On thesame day that the editorial appeared,and side by side with it on the samepage, Newsline carried an interviewwith “Red Ken” Livingstone, thenleader of the Greater London Council.In that interview Livingstone — whonow considers himself a candidate tobecome leader of the Labour Party —chattily agreed with the interviewerthat, of course, the item in a recentBBC Money Programme exposing thedistribution of Libyan money to politicalgroups in Britain, and in the first placethe WRP, had been inspired by “the“Zionists” to discredit the WRP.

Livingstone was then a joint editor ofLabour Herald — a publication set upby Healy’s WRP for Ken Livingstoneand Ted Knight and technically editedby Steven Miller, a member accordingto Workers Press) of the Central Com-mittee of Healy’s WRP.

Livingstone did not demur at the an-tisemitism of the Newsline editorial.SO publicly asked him to say wherehe stood on it: “What does he think ofthe editorial? Does he think we shouldjust shrug and accept antisemitism asa feature of the far left?” (SO 14.4.83).

Livingstone never answered explic-itly — but he continued to collaboratewith the WRP and appear on its plat-forms at public meetings for two yearslonger. In its own way that was a prettyclear answer.

Such tolerance of Healy’s antise-mitic ravings tells its own story.

It would be wrong and unfair to holdthe Workers Press group responsiblefor the Healyite editorial (though onestill finds some echoes of its ideas inWP — see below). Reflex self-de-fence, such as Charlie Pottins’, is hu-manly understandable and may proveto have no political significance —even for Pottins himself. The WorkersPress group may well choose tocleanse itself of this most filthy part ofHealy’s legacy too.

I take it up here not to try to brandthe Workers Press group with theHealyite editorial but because of thegeneral importance of the issue re-raised by Charlie Pottins.

Though Healy has now gone yetdeeper into the isolation of his own po-litical sewer, the question of our atti-tude to the Jewish state and ourpolitical programme for the MiddleEast — which Healy solved by merg-ing pseudo anti-imperialism with vicari-ous Arab chauvinism into somethingclose to Hitlerite antisemitism — re-mains a major one for the left.

The first part of this article deals with30

Healy’s WRP. The second, next week,will deal with the serious left and Is-rael.

Charlie Pottins says it is just asmear to accuse Healy’s WRP of anti-semitism.

What are the facts? Healy’s WRPdid publish undisguised and unmistak-able antisemitic material, as I’ll nowprove. As well as the particular recordof the WRP, I think much that an entirebroad spectrum of the revolutionary,“Trotskyist”, left says about Israel and“Zionism” is implicitly antisemitic. I’llseparate the two issues out.

On Saturday 9 April 1983 Newsline’seditorial (“This Morning”) appearedwith a small strapline in the top lefthand corner “From Socialist Organiserto Reagan and Thatcher” followed bythe main headline, across the column:“The Zionist Connection”.

The strapline summed up the editor-ial’s thesis: there is an internationalZionist conspiracy stretching fromRonald Reagan’s cabinet, through MrsThatcher’s Downing St, all the way toSocialist Organiser!

The editorial began: “A powerful Zionist connection runs

from the so-called left of the LabourParty right into the centre of this gov-ernment in Downing St. There is nodifficulty whatever in proving this”.

Evidence? “Mr Stuart Young, a di-rector of the Jewish Chronicle” hasbeen appointed “the youngest everChairman of the BBC”. “He is thebrother of Mr David Young, anotherThatcher appointee, who is chairmanof the Manpower Services Commis-sion... This is the key organisation theTories are transforming into a corpo-ratist ‘front’ [Newsline’s quotes] to mo-bilise jobless youth from 14 yearsupwards into a slave labour body tobreak trade union wages, safety pro-cedures and working conditions”. “TheTUC and Labour chiefs have acceptedthese appointments” of the ZionistYoung brothers “without a murmur ofprotest”.

Yes, but what is special about theYoung brothers as distinct from anyother Tory pigs? Why is it essential togive the job of organising slave labour-ers to David Young as opposed, say,to Norman Tebbit?

Following immediately after the lastquote comes Newsline’s answer

“The Tories know they can rely to-tally upon Zionist imperialism [sic] toproduce the most hated reactionaries”for use in such filthy work. But the To-ries have other goals too. They canturn to their own use the reasonablehatred people will feel against these“Zionist imperialists”, “in order to trans-form the situation at a later date into apro-fascist antisemitic pogrom againstall the Jews in general”.

There follows a paragraph in boldtype intended to illustrate the last pointbut which is sheer gobbledegook. Zi-

onism and Hitler agreed to let richJews leave Germany on condition thatthey become Zionists. Today the To-ries “know they have a powerful anti-semitic trump card up their sleeves, toreplay...” Dastardly Zionist imperialistslike the Youngs — i.e. politically promi-nent Jews — are helping them pre-pare it.

In what way do the Young brothersespecially represent “Zionist imperial-ism”?

That’s not clear, but in the contextthe answer can only be that they areJews and that any Jew in any similarposition is necessarily a link in thechain through which Zionist imperial-ism interlaces itself with the other im-perialisms — which the editorial willlater strongly suggest, it guides andmay even control.

Newsline continues: “From the support and advance pub-

licity which the Jewish Chronicle gavethe BBC’s Money Programme the re-actionary Zionist link was clear for allto see [sic]. But it also stretchesthrough Downing St channels right intothe White House and President Rea-gan”.

Naturally any Jewish Chronicle inter-est in an organisation it knows to befunded by Libya is proof positive thatthe WRP, Libya etc. are victims of aninternational Zionist conspiracy.

Now the editorial goes off on an-other tack.

US provocation against Libya“raises in its sharpest form the centralpolitical question”. Do “Trotskyists”support Gaddafi’s “régime” [sic]against US imperialism on principle, orseek neutrality between US imperial-ism and Gaddafi? Newsline lies thatSocialist Organiser is neutral

And Socialist Organiser supportedthe “Zionist-sponsored Money Pro-gramme”. Now we come to the knot-tying exercise — “Here from SO isunqualified support for the work ofThatcher’s appointee as chairman ofthe BBC” who is also a director ofBritish Caledonian Airways (eh?) andthe British Overseas Trade Group forIsrael.

So it is all clear. They needed to putin a Jew as chair of the BBC to get theLibyan gold item into a little early Sun-day evening programme! And ofcourse only Jews backed by the Cabi-net could organise this attack on theWRP.

Newsline continues: “SO has landeditself right bang in the middle ofThatcher’s hand-picked Zionists as anoutright supporter of their policies ofwitch hunting the WRP and the NewsLine for our principled stand againstimperialism and in support of theLibyan masses [sic] under their leaderMuammar Gaddafi”. Gerry Healy obvi-ously thinks that Thatcher has set theJews on him!

“The question of the hour, we re-

peat, is the pro-Zionist policies of theReagan and Thatcher administra-tions”.

So who is in charge here? Zionism?Or Washington and London? Which isdog and which tail?

We shall see. But the author hasmore to reveal. He knows or sensessomething special about SO that ex-plains how SO fits into the “Zionistconnection”.

“In the background of the SocialistOrganiser one can detect a powerfulcurrent of anti-Arab racism — alsoshared by Reagan and Thatcher. Thatis the substance of their support forthe Money Programme...” By contrast.Newsline “unhesitatingly supports theLibyan and Palestinian people and itsleadership”. Yes. And against what ex-actly do they need support? “Againstthe nuclear war plans of Reagan,Thatcher and the Zionists in their cam-paign to destroy all national liberationmovements in the Middle East. Social-ist Organiser has joined the classenemy”. We are probably making ourown small nuclear device in a cellarsomewhere in London as our contribu-tion.

Finally comes the editorial’s punchline and finale. “The Zionist connectionbetween these so-called ‘lefts’ in theLabour Party right through to Thatcherand Reagan’s White House is there forall to see in its unprincipled naked-ness”.

Now the writer of that editorial couldbe briefly dismissed as a nutcase —albeit an antisemitic nutcase. Pettypersonal paranoia oozes out of it, in-terwoven with the grand historicalparanoia of the various world Jewishconspiracy theories with which the edi-torial aligned itself. If a Jew becomeschair of the BBC, then what else can itbe but a “Zionist conspiracy” calling onthe aid of the prime minister to fix upfor a rather mild item on the WRP tobe broadcast on a low-audience earlySunday evening television pro-gramme. If the WRP is feeling perse-cuted, why it must be “the Zionists”.

Why was the Money Programme’salleged “witch-hunt” the work of “Zion-ists”? Because a Jew is chair of theBBC? Or did the WRP notice whatmight be a Jewish name credited forpart of it? Or is it because only “Zion-ists” are concerned with the MiddleEast? Because only “Zionists” exhibitthe sort of powerful current of “anti-Arab racism” that the sensitive andomniscient “one” who wrote the edito-rial could detect in the background ofSO? (There are people with a flair fordetecting these things, you know...)

Is it because the Jewish Chronicleshowed interest? Interest in an exposéof people it must regard as at least“potential pogromists” (to quote what Isaid in the 1983 SO article).

The Newsline editorial is the work ofa writer who feels himself to be sur-

31

rounded by Jews — Tory “Zionists”,Reagan “Zionists”, SO “Zionists”. Per-haps his buried conscience is troublinghim.

But the small-beer paranoia of onewho needs to believe that Thatcherhad to appoint a Jew chair of the BBCto secure the very tame revelations ofthe Money Programme should be sep-arated out from the picture of the worldwhich is painted. It is a very familiarpicture.

The Newsline editorialist theorisesalong the well-worn paths of classicantisemitism, such as that embodiedin the Tsarist secret police forgery “TheProtocols of the Elders of Zion” (1905)— the book that has rightly beencalled a warrant for genocide againstthe Jews of Europe under Hitler.

What the editorial asserts is thatthere is a world-wide “Zionist” conspir-acy linking and bonding people whoare politically millions of miles apart,from members of Reagan’s govern-ment to the centre of Mrs Thatcher’scabinet, the commanding heights ofthe BBC and all the way through to...the publishers of Socialist Organiser.

And what links these seeming polaropposites? “Zionism” and “Zionist im-perialism”. But Zionism here is a trans-parent code word, and plainly thewriter is talking about a conspiracy ofJews — a conspiracy of political oppo-sites who can nevertheless conspiretogether in the interests of “Zionist im-perialism” because they are Jews.

Who are the “Zionists”? ForNewsline the Zionists are all Jews whodo not accept the proposal to smashand dismantle the Israeli state and toreplace it by a Palestinian Arab statein which Jews are promised individualthough not national rights — in otherwords all Jews except a few revolu-tionary socialists and a few of theultra-religious.

“The Tories know that they can relytotally upon Zionist imperialism to pro-duce the most hated reactionaries...”Newsline in effect defines all Jews as“agents of Zionist imperialism” (or, toput it at the mildest, it assumes theright to so define any hostile Jew it canidentify in any place of prominencewithin the capitalist system).

In this picture Zionist imperialism isno small or secondary power. Israel isnot merely what it really is, a mere re-gional sub-imperialism with specialfeatures. “The question of the hour” isnot US imperialism, or the dominationof a large part of the world by Stalinisttotalitarianism: it is the subservience ofthe US to “Zionism”, “the pro-Zionistpolicies of the Reagan and Thatcheradministrations”.

“Zionist imperialism” must be thevery heart of imperialism, whose con-trolling tentacles reach secretly rightinto the centre of Mrs Thatcher’s cabi-net and into Reagan’s too.

The Jews, it seems, are now the in-

ternational janissaries of imperialismand — the logic is inescapable — pos-sibly imperialism itself is only a projec-tion of the Jewish drive for worlddomination.

Now there are Jews — or if you like“Zionists” — in bourgeois cabinets,perhaps in some politburos still, in theBBC and in SO. The Jews are a peo-ple scattered through all segments ofsociety and throughout the world.

Seek evidence that there may be aconspiratorial network of Jews, andyou will find it — red Jews and Roth-schilds, members of Reagan’s andThatcher’s cabinets and writers forSO. These “links” are the raw materialfrom which theories about “Jewish” or“Zionist” conspiracies can easily bespun.

But — given the vast political gulfseparating those linked together in theNewsline editorial — the only possiblerational common denominator onwhich to base such a theory is race(whatever that may be).

Of course not all the “Zionists” areimperialists. Some of them are social-ists and call themselves Trotskyists,like SO. They too are part of the con-spiracy — and to judge by all the at-tention we were being given, a veryimportant part of it. This is the proof ofthe vile racist basic structures andlogic embedded in that editorial.

There is a parallel if not identity withJewish world conspiracy theories pop-ular before World War 2 (and still viru-lently alive in Eastern Europe). TheHitlerites and other antisemites usedto explain that both communism and fi-nance capital — those seemingly im-placable enemies — were reallydifferent aspects of a single world con-spiracy. coordinated by the “Elders ofZion” and directed against the Germannation, against “Christian civilisation”,or whatever.

Likewise the Newsline editorial por-trayed the centre of Thatcher’s gov-ernment and SO as secretly linkedand bonded — against the WRP andthe Libyan and Palestinian peoples —by a hidden network of “Zionists”.

But SO is opposed to Zionism (ifthat means Israeli chauvinism or Jew-ish exclusivism)? It supports nationalrights for the Palestinians? Thoughcontemptuous of Gaddafi’s claims tosocialism, and of much of his hollowanti-imperialism, SO would defendLibya against an imperialist invasion?Why, all that is just a front, a meresham division of labour among theconspirators.

Didn’t the pre-war communists pre-tend to denounce finance capital andthe finance-capital police shoot thecommunists in pre-war Germany? It’sjust a show to fool those who have notheard about the international Jewishconspiracy.

You could object: isn’t the assertedcommon thread political Zionism? Isn’t

it a case of making Israel and hostilityor friendliness to Israel the measure ofall things? Isn’t it a matter of startingwith the Arab-chauvinist picture of Is-rael and reading everything off nega-tively from that?

No: Zionism here is not a politicalreference. Today “Zionism” commonlymeans pro-Israeli sentiment of onesort or another. It includes the over-whelming majority of the people ofBritain. If political Zionism is the point,then adding a Zionist Jew to the cabi-net is to add nothing, as all the cabinetmembers are Zionists anyway!

There are Zionists and Zionists:there are Zionists and there are Jews.Plainly it is the Jews who are the coreconspirators and who make up thespecial “Zionist connections”.

The implication is inescapably this:that even anti-Zionist Jews like the SOwriters the Newsline writer had in mindwill have ineradicable loyalties and al-legiances more basic than politics.These are the conspirators: some peo-ple are congenital “Zionists” whatevertheir politics.

(And such ideas have not all gonewith Gerry Healy. In his recent long ar-ticle on the history of the Fourth Inter-national Michael Banda ascribedalleged errors by the movement overPalestine in 1947-8 to the “Zionist”proclivities of Ernest Mandel. What ishe talking about? There was no seri-ous dispute in the FI on this questionin 1948. Ernest Mandel played no no-table part in discussing the position onPalestine in 1947 or 48. There is nopolitical reason to link Ernest Mandelwith Zionism in 1948 or 1986 exceptby way of the underlying thought thathe has a “Jewish” name, therefore is— or may be, I don’t know — a Jew.)

l submit that whatever Charlie Pot-tins may say, the charge of overt, bla-tant antisemitism is one that theHealyite WRP has to answer to, andthat one of the clearest examples of itis this editorial. The writer sub-con-sciously (I assume) found himself pen-cilling in the outlines of the world viewenshrined in the Protocols of Zion the-ories. He fills those outlines, to besure, with fervent though incoherentand false “anti-imperialism”; but thenthe Nazis and other antisemites usedto get very angry at the crimes of capi-talism — what they called, in scape-goating fashion, Jewish Capitalism.

How did the WRP arrive at such aposition? There are reasons peculiarto the WRP and reasons which theWRP has in common with many “Trot-skyists”.

Though Healy’s WRP has gone fur-ther into explicit antisemitism thananyone else on the left, because of itsleaders’ paranoia and the malignantinfluence of the petrodollar brand ofanti-Zionism, I think that the funda-mental cause of this degeneracy is themistaken position on the Middle East

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which the Healy WRP and the presentone share with much of the left (anduntil recently with SO). As I’ll provebelow, much of the left has Arab-chau-vinist and not working-class politics onthe question, though for good anti-im-perialist reasons and from the fine im-pulse to champion the defeated andoppressed Palestinians.

But first let us get out of the waywhat was specific to Healy’s WRP ingenerating that editorial.

From the mid-’70s or earlier theWRP saw the world and especially theinternational Trotskyist movement,mainly in terms of police “conspira-cies” and the operation of “agents” andcounter-agents.

Vast amounts of money and timewere given over to the search for the“conspirators” and “agents” who wereseen as being at the root of all evil inthe world, and whose subterraneancombats and manoeuvres sometimesseemed in the WRP’s eyes to have re-placed the struggle of classes as thelocomotive of history.

You can find large numbers of indi-viduals in the labour movement whowill never be politically rational againafter an intensive course by Mr Healyon world history and politics for thelast 50 years as a spy-hunt.

Add to this paranoid view of theworld Healy’s financial links withGaddafi and Iraq, etc., which put Zion-ism and anti-Zionism at the centre ofworld politics because Libyan and Iraqigold was at the centre of Healy’s sur-vival, and the scenario virtually writesitself.

There is more to it than that, though.There is the effect of an inbuilt“Pabloite” tendency in the WRP to seethe world in terms of the struggle oftwo basic camps.

This view arose first as the basicpattern of a world divided between theStalinist states and the capitalist. Butover the years it has shifted — and notonly for the WRP — to mean imperial-ism and “anti-imperialism”.

During the Falklands/Malvinas warmost of those calling themselves Trot-skyists accepted even the butcherGaltieri who ruled bourgeois (and in-deed sub-imperialist) Argentina intoour “class camp”.

In the view of the world developedby the WRP under the influence ofparanoia and petrodollars, the Pales-tine question came to be seen as thecentral pivot of this struggle of the twobasic camps, the imperialist and theanti-imperialist. The Arab bour-geoisies, what ever their “faults” and“limitations”, were in the “anti-imperial-ist” camp — ours.

Now if the Palestine question and“Zionism” is the pivot of this worldstruggle between two basic camps,then I suppose it does make a sort oftwisted sense to think that within theimperialist countries the “Zionists”,

linked by ineradicable ties to the arch-enemy, the very core of imperialism —Zionist imperialism — are the mainenemy, everywhere. As we saw above,the Newsline editorial even definedLondon and Washington politics bytheir relation to Israel, not the otherway round. This was no slip: it fits per-fectly into the picture.

In one sense therefore the worldview held by the WRP — and not onlyby the WRP — implies and demandsantisemitism. What is remarkable isnot the editorial but that the basic Trot-skyist and socialist conditioning ofHealy has kept open antisemitismpartly at bay, relying on such littlemental tricks as the transparent pre-tence that “the Zionists” are only a fewsuper-villains and not most Jews.

Writing soon after World War 2 inone of the essays collected in “TheNon-Jewish Jew”, Isaac Deutscher re-ported that he had found rampant anti-semitism and open hostility andcontempt for the Jews among Britisharmy officers guarding Jews in the dis-placed persons’ camps of Europe.

The DPs had survived Hitler andnow — Britain having forbidden Jew-ish migration to Palestine, and thedoors being closed elsewhere too —they were told that they had to stay inor return to their countries of origin.For most of them that meant return tovirulently antisemitic Poland. Theirwish was to get to Palestine.

Deutscher commented that it wasthe tragic fate of the Jews, even afterthe holocaust that engulfed almost sixmillion of them, to exist still in popularconsciousness as the embodimentand personification of lucre and dirtymoney.

Not only in popular speech, where amean or tight person may be called(and not necessarily with consciousmalice) a “Jew”, will you find the Jewused as a symbol of money and capi-tal in their dirtiest functions. You willfind that even in the writings of KarlMarx, who spoke often in the brutallanguage of 19th century national andracial stereotypes but was surely freeof anything we would call racism.

Before Hitler sections of the socialistmovement too identified the Jews withmoney and capital, and acceptedJews — rich, poor and destitute alike— as a representative and symbol ofthe things they were fighting against incapitalism.

A “socialist”, anti-capitalist, anti-semitism was a living current in or onthe fringes of most European socialistand labour movements. “Rothschildbaiting” merged with popular Christianantisemitism, which was often, as inCentral Europe, quite fierce. For ex-ample, faced with a Christian antise-mitic crusade, the Austrian SocialDemocrats — whose leader VictorAdler was a Jewish atheist — ostenta-tiously declared that they were neither

anti- nor philosemitic.Prominent British Labour leaders

supported the 1905 Aliens Act passedin Britain to keep out Russian and Pol-ish Jews. In the published correspon-dence of Frederick Engels with KarlMarx’s son in law Paul Lafargue youwill find Lafargue expressing enthusi-asm for the socialist “potential” of thequasi-fascist and antisemiticBoulangist movement of the late1880s and Engels reprimanding him,affectionately but sharply.

Against this once quite importantcurrent in socialism, Engels (or was itthe German socialist leader AugustBebel) launched the slogan: “anti-semitism is the socialism of idiots”.

Today this sort of antisemitism existswidely in the far left, slightly trans-formed — now the Jew in his guise ofthe “Zionist” has come to symboliseracism and imperialism.

“Zionism” — which though the pre-cise meaning of the word is no longerclear must include most Jews — hasentered the consciousness of largeparts of the left as another word for theworst form of imperialism and racism.Our attitude to it should be little differ-ent from our attitude to fascism. Theprevalent programme on the left fordealing with it is to “destroy Zionism”,that is, destroy Israel.

Is this accurate? Is this reasonable? The Israeli state has committed and

commits great wrongs against thePalestinian people. Israel could onlycome into existence at all by displac-ing the Palestinian Arabs and then bydefeating the various Arab armieswhich tried to conquer and overrun theJews of Palestine in 1948. In thecourse of the 1948 war vast numbersof Palestinian Arabs fled the Jewish-occupied territory or were driven out.

Israel wound up with more of Pales-tine than the UN had allotted as theJewish portion, and the UN was al-ready generous, giving the Jewishone-third of Palestine’s people muchmore than half its resources. And in1949 Israel joined together with theArab state of Transjordan (now Jor-dan) to divide up what was left of theterritory allotted by the UN to thePalestinian Arabs.

After 1948 the Israeli state system-atically robbed Palestinian Arabswithin Israel of their land. Israel is a re-gional sub-imperialism allied to US im-perialism. Since the 1967 War Israelhas occupied the West Bank andGaza, acting as a brutal colonialpower there. Israel recently invadedLebanon.

There is much for socialists to criti-cise and condemn in Israel, and in-deed most far left socialists areoutspoken in their criticism and con-demnation.

There is also much to condemn inall the other states of the Middle East,such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, etc. Both Iran

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and Iraq continue to wage barbaricwar on the Kurdish nation. Jordan in1970 and Syria in 1976 subjected thePalestinian Arabs under their rule tomass slaughter. The Christian Arabs inLebanon have done likewise. In addi-tion much of the Arab world which sur-rounds Israel is in the grip of aresurgent Islamic fundamentalismwhich threatens to throw its societyand culture back to the Middle Ages.The religious barbarians who rule Iranleave socialist observers little room forpretence about the consequences ofresurgent Islam when it has the whiphand.

Yet socialists — or at any rate most“orthodox” Trotskyists — are surpris-ingly reluctant even to fundamentallycriticise the Islamic states and brandthem as reactionary. Some of them —and not only Healy’s WRP — some-times accept some of their bour-geoisies into our “class camp”. Muchof Ernest Mandel’s “United Secretariatof the Fourth International” continuesto see something “progressive” inKhomeini’s Islamic revolution. Wherethe Iranian oppression of the Kurds isobjected to, for example, the press ofthe section of the USFI led by the USSWP talks about “errors” and “mis-takes” of the revolutionary regime.

The contrast with the left’s attitude toIsrael could not be sharper.

It is, as we shall see, often wrappedup in seemingly reasonable proposalslike creating a secular democraticstate in Palestine, but, put starkly, thefar left’s programme for Palestine isthat “Israel must be destroyed”.

Now this is a unique programme:the destruction of a state and the radi-cal alteration of the population of thatstate’s core area (the pre-1967 Israeliborders). From this everything else fol-lows.

The programme is made to appearnot unique by identifying Israel withSouth Africa. But that is an utterly falsecomparison of an organic society,made up of all classes and not essen-tially dependent on exploiting a sub-merged population, on one side, andon the other a society in which thewhite population are an exploitingcaste dependent for what they haveon the submergence and helotry of anumerically much bigger black popula-tion.

Whatever similarity in political mili-tary techniques there may be betweenSouth Africa and Israel, they are radi-cally different societies. Israel wasgiven its character by the Zionists’ res-olute refusal to exploit Arab labour andtheir drive instead to replace it. What-ever one thinks of the left Zionistcolonists’ “Jewish labour only” policy itwas the opposite of that mass ex-ploitation on which modern SouthAfrica was built. The exploitation ofArab labour from the occupied territo-ries since 1967 has not fundamentally

altered the character of Israel in thisrespect.

But, whatever about the comparisonwith South Africa, don’t the crimes ofIsrael brand it as something speciallyabhorrent and therefore justify the pro-gramme of destroying the Zioniststate? Doesn’t the fate of the dispos-sessed Palestinian Arabs make anyother programme than the destructionof the Jewish state inadequate if jus-tice is to be done?

The proper socialist answer is no. Toanswer yes is to take up the goals ofArab nationalism and chauvinism, butmost of the left does answer yes.

This is the dominant, all-shaping facton the far left: that the left supports thedestruction of the state of Israel — notmerely its defeat in this or that battlewhere such defeat might be desirableon the issues, but the destruction ofthe core pre-1967 Jewish area as aterritory where the Palestinian Jewscan congregate as a compact nationalmass

From that everything else follows. Itonly takes a twist of Gerry Healy para-noia or the touch of the petro-dollar tobring up the antisemitic logic.

Uniquely in the whole world, the leftthinks that in the Israeli Jews, it con-fronts a “bad” nation which can not bereformed or modified, not even by itsown proletariat — unless they aban-don their national identity and the na-tional territory where most of themwere born — and which must be de-stroyed. In this unique case, unlike allthe others created by the complicatedand immensely tragic events of thelast 40, 60, or even 80 years (and forwhat people were those years moretragic than for the Jews?) the left takes— its stand on a historical-reversionist,roll-history-backwards position. Theposition is inseparable from Arab re-vanchism and Arab chauvinism.

In part one of this article I provedthat Gerry Healy’s WRP was rabidlyantisemitic. I asserted that the basicreason for this — to which Healyadded paranoia and the mercenarydesire to earn Arab petrodollars —was the WRP’s support for the de-struction of the Jewish state of Israelby its Arab neighbour states, a positionwhich the Healyite WRP and the pres-ent one share with much of the left.

It follows, therefore, that much of theleft is — though repudiating the para-noid ravings of a Gerry Healy — im-plicitly antisemitic. I will nowsubstantiate and justify what I saidabout the broader “Marxist” and “Trot-skyist” left...

Israeli chauvinism once rejected, theMiddle East reality allows of only twopossible or imaginable solutions to theJewish-Arab conflict in Palestine.

Either drive the Jews out; or acceptthat a Jewish nation has, despite theunderstandable Arab resistance, comeinto existence, and must be accepted

as having rights, in the first place theright to exist as a nation in Palestine.

The programme of driving out theJews means continuing to try to dowhat much of the Arab feudalists,bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie andworking class have been united in try-ing to do for at least five decades. Thelatter option must mean compromiseover the disputed territory, recom-pense for the Palestinian Arabs, and acomprehensive peace in which Israel’sright to exist with agreed borders (notnecessarily the present ones) is notchallenged militarily.

At a later stage in the peaceful de-velopment of the region the integrationof the Jewish state into a Middle Eastfederation would be posed. Exclu-sivism would break down as the barri-ers between the formerly warringnations have partly broken down inEurope over the last four decades.

It seems to me to be no part of a so-cialist solution to national conflicts likethat of the Jews and Arabs in Pales-tine to advocate the destruction of oneof the warring nations. The socialistprogramme in such a situation is forcompromise, compensation, reconcili-ation.

But isn’t there a third alternative —the secular democratic state! No, thereisn’t, because — as we shall see — itis unrealisable in reality and the slo-gan functions in politics as a propa-ganda auxiliary for the drive out theJews position.

Of course the idea of solving the ter-rible national conflict by simply enfold-ing, intermeshing and merging, asequal citizens, the hostile nations whocompete for the disputed Palestinianterritory is an attractive one, and allthe more seductive because there isno other solution that even appears todo justice to both sides.

But it is nonsense. The idea that youcould integrate any other two nations— say France and Germany — in theterritory occupied by one of themwould be dismissed as ludicrous, evengiven the fading in the last decades ofmuch of their old animosity. In Pales-tine the proposal for a secular demo-cratic state amounts to a proposal toso enfold two nations, peoples whohave related to each other with themost bitter and merciless war for half acentury and more. As a practical pro-posal it is a utopian absurdity. Nationalidentities and conflicts will not be over-come or superseded historically inanything like that way.

More than that. It is inconceivablethat the Jews would agree to disman-tle their state in return for a promise ofequal citizenship. So the road to thesecular democratic state lies in-escapably through war and full-scaleconquest of the Jews — after whichthe victorious armies (of Iraq, Syria,Iran?) will gallantly establish and pro-tect the democratic rights of the Jews

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as individuals (rights their own citizensdo not have now) in a Palestinian Arabstate.

In reality such a conquest would beresisted to the death by the Jews, andthe idea of such a conquest is in prac-tice inseparable from a proposal todrive out the Jews or massacre them.

The secular democratic state is farmore attractive and internationally“saleable” than the programme of driv-ing the Jews into the sea that YasserArafat’s predecessor AhmedShukhairy used to advocate in the1960s. For many people the “seculardemocratic state” slogan also repre-sents a different intention and aspira-tion. But in practice it comes down tothe same thing. It cannot but comedown to the same thing, because itcannot be done by agreement. It dif-fers essentially in being a more usefulpropaganda tool.

So the secular democratic state is infact a proposal to destroy the existingJewish nation and at best to grantequal citizenship rights to those Jewswho survived being conquered andwanted to remain in an Arab state.

But — so many say — if the Jewsreject this proposal of equal citizenshipin a secular democratic state, thenthey are demanding to retain intolera-ble privileges and therefore they de-serve what they will get. The choicewill be theirs, and the responsibility forwhat happens theirs.

But this is a-historical moralism;moreover it takes as its premise, assomething to be taken for granted andbeyond discussion, a stark denial ofany national rights for the Jews inPalestine. It demands of them thatthey do what no other nation has everdone, and what no people extant willever do — submit to the forced disso-lution of their own national communityand surrender the protection of theirown state.

For the Jews this would involve ad-ditionally putting themselves into thehands of those they have been fightingfor 40 years and more — people inwhose own states minorities like theKurds (or Palestinian Arabs) are habit-ually repressed and routinelybutchered. Yet if one questions thesense of proposing to the Jews thatthey agree to secular-democratic-stateindividual citizenship status when infact none of the Arab states are fullysecular or at all democratic, then nodoubt that is anti-Arab racism.

That, I think, is a fair account of thereasoning one finds on much of the“Marxist” left. It is a series of moralisticdemands cut loose from any consider-ation of how the world works, and ad-dressed as an unique ultimatum to thePalestinian Jews — a series of de-mands that it would be impossible forserious people to make without theprior unquestionable assumption thatthe Jewish nation does not have the

right to exist — still less the right to de-fend itself.

In short, in its superficially attractiveup-front version the idea of a seculardemocratic state is simply a delusion.The slogan could not ever help deliverthe solution it seems to promise —conciliation and equality of Jews andArabs in a common state.

It could not unless the way politicsand the relationships between peopleswork everywhere else in the worldcould somehow be replaced in Pales-tine — 40 years after the Israeli war ofindependence — by a different set ofways of functioning.

A common democratic state couldonly be realised by agreement. So tobelieve that the “secular democraticstate” could be realised, you have tobelieve that the Jews can be per-suaded that the way things are be-tween conflicting peoples and intereststhrough out the rest of the world canbe superseded and dispensed withinPalestine. You have to believe it possi-ble to persuade people who knowthemselves surrounded and who aremotivated in part in their notoriousruthlessness by the living memory ofwhat happened to them when theywere disarmed and helpless minoritiesin other states to surrender all their de-fences, first, as an act of faith in thisnew way of doing things. And this newway would at best make them onemore minority in the Arab world, and aminority that had agreed to surrendernational rights of the sort that theKurds have spent decades fighting toestablish.

The “secular democratic state” is ei-ther disingenuous or it is absurd. Andit is worse.

If you take it at its face value the“secular democratic state” idea is anattractive utopian proposal. But wehave seen that it cannot be taken at itsface value. It is a political ultimatumbehind which is posed a fearsome “orelse”. Immediately it is refused by Is-rael and the “Zionists” it translates intoa moralistic-political denunciation ofthose who refuse. They are “exposed”.That “exposure” and denunciation thenbecome a warrant for the military de-struction of the Israeli state, the subju-gation and if necessary killing of thecitizens of Israel, and the forcible re-moval from them of national rights.

What happens if the Israeli Jewsdon’t accept the “secular democraticstate” formula and fight? Conquerthem and remove from them all pow-ers of resistance, or of self-defence.What if they don’t trust a promise thatthe conqueror will give them equalpersonal citizenship and absolve andprotect them from the charge of beingor having been agents or spies for the“Great Satan” US imperialism, or of“Zionist imperialism” — why, that’sproof beyond dispute that they are un-reasonable in rejecting “secular demo-

cratic state” citizenship and deservewhat they get.

What they would get would be ex-pulsion or the right to emigrate. It is tobe 1948 again, and worse — only thistime the “right” people do the uproot-ing and expelling.

The raising of the “utopian” seculardemocratic state demand as the open-ing political/ideological gambit pro-duces a political and moral opiate forthe left about what must inevitably fol-low from and is implied in the proposalto destroy the Jewish state and de-prive the Palestinian Jews of nationalrights. Under the influence of this opi-ate, the most horrendous things arethen proposed to be done to the Jewsof Palestine — things no socialistwould advocate or tolerate for anycomparable situation.

It is surrender and dissolve, or resistand deserve to be forcibly dissolved.

So the secular democratic state isnot an alternative to driving the Jewsout; it is a treacherously barbed facetof that programme to drive the Jewsout or reduce them to a vastly de-pleted territorial minority.

What might possibly be an attractiveidea, and is certainly in the minds ofmany of its advocates a respect-wor-thy ideal, has to be judged by how itfits into the whole picture, and by whatfunction it performs in the mechanicsand ideological swordplay of MiddleEast politics.

We have seen what role it does play.In the circumstances it could play noother role. Those who seek to avoidthe real choice and try to settle for theunrealisable ideal wind up neverthe-less tied to the war chariot of Arabchauvinism.

They flee from the real choices intoa fantasy, and wind up neverthelesshaving a choice imposed on them bythe logic of circumstances.

All the “secular democratic state”evasion does it act as camouflage forthe chauvinist position and, for the left,introduce a deep measure of mystifi-cation, confusion and some times hys-teria.

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Al Glotzer’s 1947 article on “The JewishProblem” is in Workers’ Liberty 3/13

Yes, smashIsrael!

Andrew Hornung and Tony Green-stein for the Labour Movement Cam-paign for Palestine, SO 271, 29.5.86

Not long ago Socialist Organiser ini-tiated discussion about the attitude tobe taken by socialists towards thePalestinian and Hebrew national ques-tions. The seriousness with which thatdiscussion was undertaken contrastssharply with the curious methods ofJohn O’Mahony’s polemic of recentweeks.

O’Mahony’s central thesis is madeclear in “Anti-semitism and the left,part 2” (SO no. 266). He writes: “Zion-ism — which though the precisemeaning of the word is no longer clearmust include most Jews — has en-tered the consciousness of large partsof the left as another word for theworst form of imperialism and racism.Our attitude to it should be little differ-ent from our attitude to fascism. Theprevalent programme on the left fordealing with it is to ‘destroy Zionism’,that is, destroy Israel,”

It is curious that O’Mahony thinksthat Zionism no longer has any clearmeaning, though he seems to thinkthat the term “anti-semitism” has soclear a meaning that it doesn’t meritthe slightest attention.

Let us say straight away that we donot think that there is any truth in whatO’Mahony asserts. That does notmean that there are no mistaken atti-tudes towards Zionism, towardsracism, imperialism, Arab nationalismand the ways of dealing with thesecurrents in and out of the labour move-ment. But to reduce all this to “anti-semitism” is a ridiculous perversion ofthe truth.

First of all the problem: it is true thaton the left there is a widespread ten-dency to mask the shortcomings, fail-ures, even crimes of those forcesengaged in a struggle with an imperial-ist power or the agent of an imperialistpower.

Obviously this leads some leftists tooversimplify such struggles and seethem in moral terms: as if the forces ofunalloyed good were combatting theforces of unmitigated evil. No doubtthis is as true of the Palestine-Israelconflict as of scores of others.

But while O’Mahony — who hasoften written on this general problem— claims that the attitude taken by theleft towards this conflict is unique, thetruth of it is that the attitude taken bythe left on the Palestine-Israel conflictin general and on the question of thedestruction of the state of Israel in par-ticular is completely in line with its atti-tude on other cases of conflictsbetween settler states or the states

deriving from colonial settlement andthe national movements of the indige-nous population directed against thesestates. We need only mention in thisconnection South Africa and Ireland toprove our point. Of course the left maybe wrong on these questions, it mayhave been wrong on Algeria — thoughwe don’t think so — but it is not mak-ing a special or “unique” case of Israel!

Thus we see no reason to attributethe left’s errors — if errors they are —on the question of Israel to some“unique” cause — like antisemitism.O’Mahony’s claim that the left tries tomake its programme on the Hebrewnational question seem not unique byidentifying Israel with South Africa isabsurd: it is the identification of Israelas a society based on recent settlercolonialism that is the essential featureit shares with South Africa.

O’Mahony’s point, however, illus-trates that he is just as guilty of deal-ing with moral rather than scientificjudgements as those he inveighsagainst. He says “Whatever similarityin political military-techniques (!) theremay be between South Africa and Is-rael they are radically different soci-eties. Israel was given its character bythe Zionists’ resolute refusal to exploitArab labour and their drive instead toreplace it (!). Whatever one thinks ofthe left Zionist colonialists’ “Jewishlabour only” policy, it was the opposite(!) of the mass exploitation on whichthe modern South Africa was built.”Really, this is amazing!

Is the colonisation and the denial bya relative minority of settlers of the na-tional rights of the indigenous majoritysimply a matter of “political-militarytechniques”? Isn’t Israel’s characterbased not so much on the replace-ment of Arab labour by Jewish labour,but the driving out of their homes ofhundreds of thousands of people, thedenial of their right to return and theimposition on the area to which theyhad undisputed rights of an alien rule?Is the effect — rather than the tech-nique — of Zionist colonisation reallythe “opposite” of that in South Africa?

It isn’t simply the same, that’s true:indeed right now South Africa seemsto be attempting something like an Is-raeli solution while Israel seems to bedeveloping certain traits reminiscent ofSouth Africa. But let’s be clear: thepoint isn’t that Israel is just like SouthAfrica, but that despite their differ-ences they share essential colonial-settler traits. O’Mahony might takeissue with this: he might believe thatIsrael can’t be classed as a colonial-settler state. But then this is the nub ofthe issue and not this obsessive silli-ness about anti-semitism.

It is possible — indeed likely — thatidentification of Israel with South Africa(with whom of course it has a specialrelationship) and identification of Zion-ism as a racist ideology leads some

leftists to thinking that they can doaway with concrete analysis and restany strategy on these generalities. Butdoes this invalidate the generalities?Not at all! Zionism is racist even ifmany of those diplomats insisting onthis in the UN daily defend racism: Zi-onism is racist even if the way social-ists should deal with Zionism ismarkedly different from the way theyshould deal with traditional Britishracism.

Is it true that for large parts of theleft Zionism is another word for theworst form of imperialism and racism?Firstly, it is obvious that for theavowedly reformist left, Zionism is aform of socialism. For which avowedlyrevolutionary organisations then is it“the worst form of imperialism andracism”? For the Healyites? But O’Ma-hony has written in the past that theHealyites aren’t even part of the labourmovement, let alone the left. For Mili-tant? Hardly. For the USFI? [MandeliteFourth International] We don’t think soand a single quote revealing its short-comings on Iran can hardly be said toprove the case.

In any case, doesn’t the USFI sup-port the right of Israeli Jews to self-de-termination? That hardly makes it acandidate for the charge of anti-semi-tism.

The SWP, perhaps? Despite somevery irresponsible positions taken bySWP students, an organisation thatfounded the Anti-Nazi League, launch-ing it with a call signed by scores ofcelebrities who no doubt support Zion-ism, can hardly be accused of adopt-ing an attitude towards Zionism littledifferent from our attitude to fascism.Which “large sections” does that leavebloodied by O’Mahony’s sharp-edgedpolemic?

Surely the point is simply that thosewho think that the world is divided intotwo moral camps and whose most so-phisticated analytical tool is the allega-tion of guilt by association — asO’Mahony does himself time andagain — end up with wrong politicalpositions.

The trouble is that O’Mahony addsto the confusion — which is not in factas great as he points out, which is whythe only texts he can analyse in detailare Gerry Healy’s nonsense — by hisdisgraceful claim that to oppose Zion-ism is to be anti-semitic.

It is true that sections of the earlysocialist movement (especially the an-archists) saw something progressivein anti-semitism and others, includingMarx, were too inclined to identifyJews with the rise of capitalism. Truetoo that Stalinism made use of anti-semitism, particularly in its attacks onTrotsky, and that the German Commu-nist Party made concessions to anti-semitism in order to try to relate to thenationalist “volkische” right both in the20s and in the 30s. Ruth Fischer,

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shortly before she became Partyleader, called on her audience to“crush the Jew-capitalists, string themup from the lamp-posts, trample themunderfoot”. This is not unimportant, butwe must be wary of the conclusionswe can draw from it.

Whatever its ideological shortcom-ings from time to time the left — whichis today infinitely more sensitive to is-sues of racism than in the past — hasan unparalleled record of fighting fas-cism and racism, including anti-semi-tism. We ask: whose heroism in theBattle of Cable Street helped to stopthe Mosleyites? Who supported theAnti Nazi League? Who are the ac-tivists in scores of anti-fascist and anti-racist committees up and down thecountry that, among other things, mon-itor and combat anti-semitism? Whatis O’Mahony’s answer? The right, themiddle of the road liberals and social-democrats?

Let’s be serious: even if O’Mahony’sdescription of the traditions of the leftwere accurate — and it most certainlyisn’t! — does it make any sense to callthese fighters against antisemitism“antisemites”? When one considersthe very large number of Jews amongthese fighters — most of them anti-Zionist Jews — O’Mahony’s insultingdesignation becomes even more lurid.

But O’Mahony’s mud-slinging is notonly insulting. It implies a rewriting ofhistory. For if the left can be calledanti-semitic for some times in its pre-World War 2 past endorsing or echo-ing anti-semitic ideas, in howeversmall measure, cannot Zionism itselfbe called antisemitic with even greaterjustice? Here we have a movementwhich has no real history of fightingantisemitism, though it has a long his-tory of doing deals with antisemites.Here we have an outlook held by com-munity leaders who spend their timepouring abuse on anti-fascists (retail-ing claims similar to those now beingrehearsed by O’Mahony) when theyorganise to combat anti-semitism.Here we have an ideology which hasat its core the idea that fighting anti-semitism is useless because anti-semitism is essentially justified.

Indeed, while it is true that promi-nent British Labour leaders — to theirshame — supported the 1905 AliensAct (something with had more to dowith their reformism and nationalismthan with antisemitism), what O’Ma-hony fails to mention is that Balfourand the anti-semites of the BritishBrothers League who lobbied for theAct were given unequivocal support bythe Zionists organised in the EnglishZionist Federation in the 1900 and1906 general elections. David Hope-Kydd, who described the Jewish immi-grants as the scum of the Europeannations” was supported by the Zionistsin the Whitechapel constituency. Simi-larly the French anti-semites and later

Mussolini and even certain Nazis be-fore 1941 actually praised Zionism andsaw it as an ideological movementsimilar to their own.

We don’t cite this to prove that Zion-ism is simply the same as anti-semitism — though both drink in partfrom the same poisoned pools —rather to show that O’Mahony’s ac-count is not only absurd in its conclu-sions but partisan to the point ofmendacity.

Anti-Zionist socialists are in the habitof explaining both in the face of slursfrom Zionists and as part of their strug-gle against anti-semitism, that anti-Zionism and anti-semitism are not thesame. We patiently explain, for in-stance, that Zionism was for half itshistory a minority trend among Jews,indeed one seen by millions of Jewsas a treasonous current, always willingto do the bidding of antisemites. Wepoint out — and O’Mahony makes thepoint too — that certain ultra OrthodoxJews are vigorous opponents of Zion-ism and that orthodox Jews of alltrends were opposed to Zionism up to1948.

But O’Mahony knows better. To wantto see the destruction of the state ofIsrael — not the only but certainly awidely-held aim of anti-Zionists — is,he says, “implicitly anti-semitic”.Sometimes he seems to be resting hisargument on the fact that today thevast majority of Jews support the exis-tence of the state of Israel — which islike claiming that support for Algerianindependence was a product of aracist view of the French and some-times on the spurious claim (dealt withabove) that the left’s programme for Is-rael is “unique” when all along it is of apiece with other attitudes towardscolonial settler states.

It is not surprising that O’Mahony’sslurs, illogic and fact-twisting influencehis analysis of the slogan of the “secu-lar, democratic state”. For someonesupposedly interested in the living po-litical struggle, one would havethought that he might mention that thisslogan was adopted by the PLO as theresult of a struggle against those ele-ments who wanted simply to throw theJews into the sea.

The fact that some elements whowould be happy to return to the old po-sition currently claim to support the“secular, democratic state” slogan hasnothing to do with the matter. The factthat one of the world’s most conserva-tive powers calls itself the “Soviet”Union doesn’t invalidate the signifi-cance of the soviet idea for revolution-aries.

Central to O’Mahony’s argument ishis estimate of the Arab or pro Arabforces: “The road to the secular demo-cratic state lies inescapably throughwar and full-scale conquest of theJews — after which the victoriousarmies (of Iraq, Syria, Iran?) will gal-

lantly establish and protect the demo-cratic rights of the Jews as individuals(rights their own citizens do not havenow) in a Palestinian Arab state.” Trulya remarkable statement. Has it not oc-curred to O’Mahony that one of themost important aspects of the ‘secular,democratic state’ slogan is the criti-cism it implies of the lack of demo-cratic rights prevailing in the Arabstates, in Iran, etc? And since when dorevolutionary socialists give up theirstrategic conceptions simply becausethe balance of forces for their fulfil-ment is not present?

One might as well ask what on earththe propagation of the idea of a social-ist Britain could possibly mean whenthe vast majority of those calling them-selves socialists are led by one NeilKinnock. Even if you don’t agree withthe slogan of the “secular, democraticstate”, comrade, you should see that itis an attempt to create a democratic,non-confessional society in contradis-tinction to all others in the region (in-cluding Israel).

As far as the supposed “utopianism”of the secular, democratic state slo-gan” is concerned, we insist that it isno more utopian than the slogan of asocialist united Ireland. Nor, more tothe point, is it more “utopian” thanO’Mahony’s own solution: two states inthe area currently held by Israel withthe right of secession for Arab areasinside the pre-1967 boundaries. What“ism” should one ascribe to O’Ma-hony’s inability to see any possibleprogressive developments within theArab camp (that would realise the slo-gan of the “secular, democratic state”),while holding firmly to a solution whichimplies a fundamental transformationof Israeli Jewish consciousness? IfO’Mahony stood in the Zionist tradi-tion, we would just say it was typicalleft Zionist arrogance.

Israel is notSouth Africa

Sean Matgamna, SO 271, 29.5.86

Oh what a monstrous deal of splut-ter and bumpf to so small a part ofsolid matter! So many angry words,and so few of the key points I made onanti-semitism taken up!

No, I did not reduce what the writersdescribe as ‘mistaken attitudes to-wards Zionism...’ to ‘anti-semitism’ —i.e. say these things arose as an ex-pression of the traditional anti-semi-tisms. I said that the attitude to Israeldominant in most of the far left isunique in that it proposes to destroynot only a state but the Israeli Jewishnation, and that on that level ‘anti-Zionism’ is inevitably anti-semitic —firstly and primarily towards the Israeli

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Jews, and secondly, by derivation, to-wards the big majority of Jewsthroughout the world who solidarisewith Israel. This may include attemptsto treat Zionist Jews (as distinct fromother, non-Jewish, Zionists) as if theyare fascists — for example banningtheir student associations, as wasdone recently at Sunderland Poly.

The writers insist that the attitudetaken by the left on the Palestine-Is-rael conflict “... is completely in linewith its attitude on other cases of con-flicts between settler states or statesderiving from colonial settlement andthe national movements of the indige-nous population directed against thosestates”. As other examples they men-tion South Africa, Northern Ireland,and pre-independence Algeria, whichhad a large white population.

The comrades scientifically satisfythemselves that all these, especiallyIsrael and South Africa, are similar‘settler states’, and then read off me-chanically a common political pro-gramme: Smash the settler state.

But — isn’t it obvious? — even if the‘settler state’ tag fits Northern Ireland,South Africa, and Israel, these soci-eties are so vastly different that the tagalone is inadequately concrete to baseany political conclusions on. What dif-ferentiates them is more importantthan the common name-tag.

It is preposterous to equate North-ern Ireland’s Protestant communitywith the South African whites. One is areplication of British society — thoughwith some peculiarities — the other isa vastly privileged white caste rulingover a much large black populationwho are super-exploited, disenfran-chised, repressed helots.

And in Israel there is not a rulingJewish caste exploiting Arab helots.There is a comprehensive Jewish so-ciety organised in a Jewish nationstate. This is not the same sort of soci-ety as South Africa’s or colonial Alge-ria’s! ‘Smash the settler state’ in SouthAfrica or colonial Algeria means: abol-ish the monopoly of power and thecaste privileges of the white minority:let the majority rule.

But what does ‘smash the settlerstate” meant for Israel? It is a statewhich is extremely democratic for itsJewish majority. Its army is prettyclose to being a citizen army. For anexternal force to ‘smash the state’ isnot a matter of destroying a repressiveapparatus, or defeating it in war, but ofoverrunning Israel and forcibly de-stroying the Jewish nation. It couldonly be done by slaughter, expropria-tion and terror — and, pretty much forcertain, the driving out of large parts ofthe population.

Do the crimes of the Israeli occupy-ing forces in the West Bank and elsewhere make this poetic justice? If so,say so! The comparison with SouthAfrica and with Algeria — where the

settlers were mostly driven out — im-plies that programme, but I’m not surethat the writers understand that that iswhat they are saying.

People who play around the edge ofa question, juggling with abstract la-bels, often do so because they need toavoid the real issues. In politics, com-rades, the truth is always concrete.

The comrades’ attempt to prove thatit is not true that large parts of the leftthink of Zionism as another word forthe worst form of imperialism andracism is junior debating society stuff.

Sure, I’ve written that the Healyitesare not part of the labour movement —but the Healyite text which I analysedappeared on the same page as an en-dorsement from Ken Livingstone of theHealyites against their “Zionist” perse-cution, and Livingstone did not repudi-ate the editorial when specificallyinvited to do so. Labour Herald, theHealyite Labour Party paper, was for along time highly respectable on sec-tions of the left.

Of course the SWP is anti-racist andopposed to anti-semitism. I never saidotherwise.

Most telling of all is the case of theUSFI [the Mandelite Fourth Interna-tional]. Yes, the USFI believes in self-determination for the Jews ofPalestine. [Note (2019): that was truein 1985; it is not now, in 2019]. Butwhat do their people in Britain say anddo about it? They are silent about it. Itis common to find members of theirsutterly unaware that their organisationhas held this position for many years.

Do the comrades seriously want todeny that the most common attitude ofthe hard (and much even of the soft)left now is intense hostility to Israel,support for the Palestinians, and sup-port for the ‘secular democratic state’?That, even though it often lacks coher-ence and consistency, the left attitudeoften goes far beyond the criticisms ofIsrael which SO shares, and in factsupports the replacement of any Jew-ish state with something else?

It is true that Israeli apologists at-tempt to morally blackjack critics of Is-rael into silence with cries of‘anti-semitism’. Criticism of Israel on ofZionism is equated with antisemitism.This of course is contemptible.

There is, however, a level at which‘anti-Zionism’ is indeed anti-semitic —the level at which ‘anti-Zionism’ becomes support for the destruction ofthe existing Jewish nation in Palestine.

Quite the most revealing thing in thecomrades’ article is their account ofanti-semitism and the labour move-ment. They know something about thesubject. Therefore I don’t believe theyreally think it all came to an end withthe Second World War. They know, forexample, about the tide of thinly dis-guised anti-semitism in the USSR andEastern Europe — and the WesternCPs — after 1948. The reason the

learned comrades prefer much moreremote examples, of course, is thatthis, the most sustained and murder-ous anti-semitic campaign in any bodyclaiming to be part of the labour move-ment, was conducted under the ban-ner of ‘anti-Zionism’.

Most of the stuff on why and how theleft could not be anti-semitic is bumpf,answering charges I never made, andmissing the point that I did make: thatthe widespread left-wing commitmentto the destruction of the Jewish stateis inescapably anti-semitic, howeversincere the same left is in its condem-nation of Nazism, Christian anti-semi-tism, etc. etc.

The writers trip themselves up, too.How could left-wing movements havebeen anti-semitic when they containedJewish militants, they ask. They them-selves give us at least part of the an-swer. Earlier they mention the Germancommunist leader Ruth Fischer de-nouncing ‘Jew-capitalists’. Yes. But,comrades, unless my memory is play-ing tricks, Ruth Fischer — who was anhonest communist who lived to learnfrom her mistakes — was a Jew!

The argument about Zionism andNazism is irrelevant. I am not con-cerned to defend Zionism’s record,and no thing I say about Israel nowdepends on doing that.

It is also obscene. For what is thepoint of going on about the manyepisodes of Zionist would-be realpoli-tikers who made the best deals theycould with various anti-semites, fromTurkish dignitaries at the beginning toNazis 50 years later?

The point for some ‘anti-Zionists’,like Tony Greenstein, a prominentmember of the Labour MovementCampaign for Palestine, is to try tosmear the Zionists with some of theresponsibility for the crimes of theNazis — for the holocaust of six millionJews.

Wrongheaded, shortsighted, stupid,criminal as were many of the activitiesof the Zionist leaders who thought theycould find some common ground withanti-semites because both agreed onthe separating out of the Jews, it is ob-scene to attribute to them a part of theresponsibility for the holocaust.

It is a childish attempt to escapefrom the powerful retrospective logicthe holocaust imparts to the Zionistcase by saying to the Zionist: youcaused or helped cause Hitler — youcollaborated!

And it is double-edged and verydangerous for pro-Palestinians to at-tempt to condemn the people of Israelnow because of the deals which someof their grandfathers and fathers madeor attempted to take with the all pow-erful monster which destroyed somany helpless millions of them. Forthe leaders of the Palestinians collabo-rated with the Nazis too. Their chiefpolitical leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem,

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actively worked for the Nazi causefrom Berlin. There is no good reasonto doubt that had the Nazis got toPalestine — and they almost decidedto try in 1940-1 — then Palestinewould have become a slaughter housefor the Jews and the Mufti’s Palestin-ian Arab followers would have beenactively on the side of the Nazis, justas the Zionist Haganah collaboratedwith the British to brutally put down theSyrian-Palestine Arab revolt in 1936 —but with the difference that the Naziswould have killed every last Jew inPalestine.

Of course this ancient Palestiniancollaboration with the Nazis can haveno effect on our attitude to the op-pressed Palestinians today. But nei-ther can all the historical footnotesabout the Zionists in the 1930s haveany effect on our attitude to the rightsof the Palestinian Jews. Our attitudesmust come from the rights and wrongsof the conflict, and from the possiblesolutions.

Time and again the comrades’ argu-ment comes down to moral exaspera-tion. And the lesson is that if you stopat moral protest, then you only dis-tance yourself from ‘Zionism’ but re-main on the same nationalist plane.You do not rise to the level of working-class, internationalist politics.

Ignoring the realIsrael

Tony Greenstein, SO 272, 12.6.86

Having accepted that “Israel’s apolo-gists attempt to morally blackjack crit-ics of Israel into silence with cries of‘anti-Semitism’” and having, quite cor-rectly, described such behaviour as“contemptible” John O’Mahony isguilty of exactly the same behaviourhimself.

There can be to other interpretationof the phrase “some ‘anti-Zionists’ likeTony Greenstein, a prominent memberof the LMCP”. Given the context of thearticle, the inverted commas can onlymean that I am an anti-Semite mas-querading as an anti-Zionist. I suggestthat O’Mahony either substantiatesthis allegation or retracts it.

For the record I have been active inthe anti-fascist movement all my politi-cal life.

Nor is it true that I “smear the Zion-ists with some of the responsibility forthe crimes of the Nazis for the holo-caust of six million Jews”. On themoral and political level, the responsi-bility is solely that of the Nazis.

There is no serious historian —Zionist or otherwise — who has notraised the question as to whether theZionist goal of statehood did not act atcross purposes to the need to rescueas many Jews as possible.

It is equally untrue to suggest thatthe Zionists tried to get the best dealsfrom various anti-Semites from the Ot-toman dignitaries to the Nazis. Unlessyou mean the best deal for the Zionistmovement. In Czarist Russia they didtheir best to undermine Jewish partici-pation in the revolutionary movement.In Weimar Germany they abstainedfrom all anti-fascist activity, even themost minimal bourgeois kind.

The tragedy is that with his talk ofthe Israeli army being a “citizen army”(i.e. a conscript army like South Africa)and being “extremely democratic” forits Jewish majority, O’Mahony has nowadopted identical positions to those oftraditional left Zionist apologists for Is-rael. Even for the Jews of Israel, theoptions are narrowing as Israel followsa path not unlike that of Nazi Germanyand South Africa today. It is overtlyracist and the fascist right is growing,not the left Zionists that O’Mahonyidentified with. Unfortunately O’Ma-hony ignores the reality of Israel todayin favour of ideological abstractions.

The Jewishnation

Liam Conway, SO 273, 19.6.86

It is a pity that Tony Greenstein hasnot bothered to read John O’Mahony’sposition on Palestine. Maybe then hewouldn’t take isolated comments andgive them ludicrous importance, in-venting a political position that doesn’texist.

In fact O’Mahony’s writings likethose in Socialist Organiser generally,have persistently sought to condemnthe nature of the current Israeli state.Indeed SO condemns racist policies instates all over the world, includingBritain.

But condemning the racist nature ofIsrael does not mean that the Palestin-ian Jews are not a nation or that therecannot be a smaller non-racist Israelwhere Arabs have full rights, includingregional rights to secede to a Pales-tine Arab state.

Greenstein may be right to say thatIsrael “is overtly racist and the fascistright is growing”. It may even be truethat “Israel follows a path not unlikethat of Nazi Germany”.

But then is he suggesting that Ger-many has no right to exist because ofits Nazi past? That any state which is“overtly racist” forfeits its right to be anation?

Considering the widespread occur-rence of racism in the world it appearsto me there would be few people leftwith national rights in Tony Green-stein’s world.

Thus any solution in Palestine whichfails to recognise the existence of twonations there is not a solution at all be-

cause it seeks to build class con-sciousness by trampling on the na-tional rights of the Jewish workers.

Tony Greenstein sees no politicaldifference between Jewish nationalrights and the present Israeli state.Greenstein is not an anti-semite but hefails to recognise the proposed seculardemocratic state has massive antise-mitic implications for the Jews inPalestine, Indeed, it is only achievableover the dead body of the Jewish na-tion, which is both impossible and un-desirable.

A moral blackjackJohn O’Mahony [Sean Matgamna],

SO 275, 3.7.86

Tony Greenstein (SO 272, 5 June)gets very excited because I put the de-scription of him as an ‘anti-Zionist’ inquotation marks; that, he writes indig-nantly, is to say that he is an anti-semite masquerading as ananti-Zionist.

But this is just bluff and bluster byGreenstein, who doesn’t even try toanswer the serious points I made.

Greenstein — like much of the hardand soft left — is committed to the de-struction of the state of Israel and itsreplacement by a “secular democraticstate” (SDS). In reality, this meanscommitment to the defeat and destruc-tion of the Jewish nation in Palestine.

Some advocates of the SDS think itis a benign compromise in which Jew-ish and Arab Palestinians could co-exist as equal citizens (that is whatmost supporters of SO used to think).But as I’ve argued at some length inSO, the SDS is no more than a seem-ingly benign mask used in the West bythose who pursue the military con-quest and destruction of the Jewishnation.

That Israel’s apologists sometimesequate any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism should not blind critics of Is-rael to the fact that an ‘anti-Zionism’that proposes to treat the PalestinianJewish nation as a bad and illegitimatenation which does not have the right toexist; an anti-Zionism which sets itselfthe goal of destroying the PalestinianJewish nation and will be satisfied withnothing less — such an ‘anti-Zionism’is certainly a form of anti-semitism.

It is distinct from earlier Christian orracist strains of anti-semitism, butnonetheless it too is comprehensivelyhostile to Jews. Since the big majorityof Jews, critically or otherwise, supportIsrael’s right to exist, the hostility to Is-rael inevitably spills over from Israel toengulf Jews everywhere.

Extreme and active hostility to Jew-ish Zionists (who are treated quite dif-ferently from other Zionists) is now, forexample, an established feature of col-lege political life.

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And we should keep in mind that‘anti-Zionism’ has long served in Rus-sia and Eastern Europe as a thin dis-guise for the old anti-semitism that hasnever ceased to be a force there.

Tony Greenstein does belong to the‘smash Israel’ current, and thus I put‘anti-Zionist’ in quotes. But I’m con-cerned with drawing out the logic ofwhat Greenstein and other socialistssay about Israel, not with casting as-persions on their motives.

It’s a shame that Greenstein takesrefuge in the pretence that I’m brand-ing him as some sort of old-style anti-semite instead of answering thecharges I do level against him.

And isn’t it strange that he so neatlyparallels and inverts those Zionistswho avoid thinking about our specificcriticisms of Israel by branding the crit-ics as anti-semites? Greenstein too isconcerned not with thinking about theissues, but with getting hold of a moralblackjack and wielding it.

No self-determination!

Tony Greenstein, SO 278, 7.8.86

In reply to Liam Conway: Israel isone of the few remaining settler colo-nial states in the world, established bydriving out another people, institution-alising racism, into every aspect of itsfunctioning. Israel is an apartheidstate, supporting reaction both inneighbouring states and worldwide.

The fact that it is Jews who are theperpetrators of racism is irrelevant asis the question of anti-Semitism. Aslong as Israel remains a Jewish state,it cannot help but be a racist state con-stantly at war with the Palestinians.

And because Israel is a statefounded in alliance with imperialism,which only survives today by virtue ofthe support of US imperialism, toimagine a “smaller non-racist Israel” isto substitute fantasy for reality. Israel isan expansionist state with a strategicrole in the Middle East, and a Zionistideology that imbues both “left” andright Zionists with the idea of a biblicalgreater Israel.

In so far as Israeli Jews constitute anation, and that is debatable, it is asan oppressor nation. The question ofself determination does not arise asthey are not oppressed as a nation.

Zionism is an intra-class alliancebased on the oppression of the Pales-tinians. As long as the latter are op-pressed, either inside Israel or in thebantustan on the West Bank, or both,then the Israeli workers will neverachieve even the most minimal classconsciousness.

It is precisely because Israeli Jewsare held together by their relationshipto the Palestinians and the Arab

masses, that a democratic, secularstate solution is the most basic demo-cratic demand that socialists shouldsupport. It is a demand opposed bothby the Zionists and the Islamic chau-vinists in the region. In no way is it in-consistent with e.g. language rights forthose Liam Conway rightly termsPalestinian Jews. Far from being im-plicitly anti-Semitic it stands in opposi-tion to all chauvinisms in the region. Itmay be incompatible with Israeli Jew-ish nationhood, but then so is the latterwith Palestinian self-determination.

Utopia inPalestine

Clive Bradley, SO 279, 14.8.86

Tony Greenstein (SO 278) has, onceagain, missed the point in his defenceof the ‘secular, democratic state inPalestine’ argument.

Of course, Marxists seek to useeven limited democratic demands astools for mobilisation; and any mobili-sation necessarily poses new socialquestions, so that a struggle for purelydemocratic demands may develop intoan assault on the entire social system.But it is not the Marxist approach tosay: this is our democratic pro-gramme, but it is utterly meaninglessunless all social relations are over-hauled and society begins afresh.

This is precisely what the ‘seculardemocratic state’ slogan boils down to.To be at all possible it would require acomplete change in consciousness ofthe vast majority of the Hebrew-speak-ing nation. Currently they are opposedeven to autonomy for the Palestinians,let alone an independent Palestinianstate: but they would have to accept,on Tony’s own account, the extinctionof Israeli Jewish nationhood. Theywould not only have to reject national-ism, but discard national identity —something Marxists generally reckonto be possible only after generationsliving under socialism.

The ‘secular democratic state’ cannot rationally be a proposal for an im-mediate solution to the Israeli/Pales-tine conflict. It can only be a proposalthat could, possibly, take effect sometime in the future, after the conflict issolved. Yet Greenstein et al talk aboutit as if it could be implemented imme-diately.

How? By what means are the IsraeliJews to miraculously change theirconsciousness overnight?

This question is not answered, be-cause it cannot be. In reality, the ‘sec-ular, democratic’ state could only comeinto being in the foreseeable future onthe basis of the military defeat of Israelif a way that could not be ‘democratic’at all. The result would not be thehappy intermingling of the two commu-

nities, but the opposite. This is all thatcan be meant by ‘smashing the Zioniststate’, whatever the subjective inten-tions.

2. ‘SECULARDEMOCRATICPALESTINE’ OR‘TWO STATES’?The only answer:two states

John O’Mahony [Sean Matgamna],SO 233, 19.6.85. This was one of aseries of short articles in Socialist Or-ganiser formally opening a public dis-cussion on “secular democratic state”and “two states”.

For about seven years Socialist Or-ganiser editor John O’Mahony hasheld to a minority point of view amongSO supporters in that he rejected thecall for a secular democratic state inPalestine as unrealistic, and arguedthat socialists should advocate a solu-tion to the conflict of Arabs and Jewsin Palestine on the basis of two states.Here he outlines his views.

We have to support the Palestinians,as the oppressed, against Israel as theoppressor. However, what is our alter-native to the existing situation of op-pression?

The idea of a secular democraticstate as a solution to the Jewish-Arabconflict is a good and attractive one inthe abstract, but it is impossible to re-alise. These are distinct nations whichhave related to each other with bittercommunal-national hostility or unre-strained war for 50 or more years(from the 1936 Syria-Palestine generalstrike and earlier).

The Jews occupy a distinct nationalterritory (most of the area within thepre-1967 borders of Israel).

The secular democratic state as wehave understood it involved thesmashing and destruction of the Israelistate, an end to the Law of Return(which gives Jews everywhere in theworld a right to Israeli citizenship), thereturn of the Palestinians to all the ter-ritory of Israel. All this was expected toenfold and merge the two peoples intoa democratic secular state.

The attraction for us of the idea of asecular democratic state lay in its al-leged ability to do justice to everyoneconcerned. The Jews would cease tobe “Zionists”. The Palestinians couldreturn and either repossess or becompensated. The Jews would haveequal rights to what they have createdin the last 40 years.

It is plainly nonsense. 40

Nothing short of the complete, in-evitably very bloody conquest of theJews, and driving them out or slaugh-tering them, would be required to en-force it.

At the end of such a process, thelast thing you would get would be theintermingling of the two peoples in onesecular democratic state.

The idea of the secular democraticstate is a mental construction inca-pable of realisation in our benevolentversion of it. Since the PLO was reor-ganised in the late 1960s and the old“drive the Jews into the sea” leaderShukairy gave way to Yasser Arafat,the secular democratic state sloganhas served fundamentally as just anArab propaganda weapon in a conflictwhich could not conceivably, by thevictory of the Arabs who supposedlyfought for it, lead to the creation of asecular democratic state in Palestine.

A roughly equivalent project wouldbe to amalgamate the German andFrench nations on the territory occu-pied by one of them. The difference isin the intense level of fear. grievance,and mutual animosity that exists be-tween Jews and Arabs compared withFrench and Germans.

In reality. there are only two alterna-tives in the situation:

1. Drive out the Jews (that is, acceptthat that is what military conquest —“smashing the Zionist state” — wouldmean). Abandon any commitment todefend the rights of the PalestinianJews. Or:

2. Create two states. “Drive out the Jews” — most of them

born in Palestine from parents thecore of whom were refugees fromracist persecution — has no place inour programme or world outlook. It isthe programme of rampant Arab chau-vinism.

That leaves the two states solution. It would serve no purpose for us to

try to define precisely where the bor-ders would lie, or what precise rela-tionships the two states would havewith each other and with Jordan, theLebanese communities. etc. (If it couldbe achieved, some form of federationof Israel, the Palestinian Arab state,Jordan and the component parts ofLebanon would seem to be the bestframework with in which to solve suchproblems as economic viability. over-lapping and intermingled populations,etc.)

The point of principle here is thatthere is no way other than the creationof two stales in Palestine to expressthe idea that the Palestinian Jewshave the right to stay in Palestine, andat the same time to express and de-fine the demand for the restoration ofthe national rights of the PalestinianArabs. Full Arab restoration to all ofPalestine is now impossible short ofdriving the Jews out.

This is a basic outline of my posi-

tion. so I have not attempted to elabo-rate on any of the points made or toanticipate objections.

A single state isthe best structure

Bruce Robinson, SO 233, 19.6.85

Bruce Robinson argues that a singledemocratic state in Palestine is thebest framework to advocate; the col-lective rights of both Arabs and Jewscan be safeguarded by some form oflocal autonomy.

The Palestinians suffer three as-pects of national oppression. Firstly,they lack a territory in which to live asa nation. The areas from which manyof them came in 1948 have since beensettled and are now inhabited by anestablished Jewish population. ManyPalestinians wish to return to live inthose areas.

Secondly, the West Bank and GazaStrip have since 1967 been under amilitary occupation by Israel, whichhas combined wide-ranging repressionof the Palestinians with settlement ofthese areas by Israelis.

Finally, there is a 650,000 Arab pop-ulation within pre-1967 Israel, who arediscriminated against as second classcitizens. In the northern parts of Israelin which they are concentrated, theyform a majority in some areas.

As Marxists we are concerned tofind a consistent democratic solutionto national oppression which allowsboth national groups the fullest rightscompatible with not oppressing any-one else. This is both because we op-pose national oppression as such andbecause the divisions it causes pre-vent the development of class con-sciousness.

In most cases, we favour the right ofthe oppressed nation to secede andform its own nation state. In the caseof Palestine, this approach is not pos-sible because both nations lay claim tothe same territory and if the Palestini-ans and Israeli Jews were to have aseparate nation state it could only beby denying at least some of the na-tional rights of the other group. This isboth because of the large degree of in-termingling of the population that ex-ists and because the form the nationalquestion has taken in Palestine is thatof driving out the indigenous popula-tion and settling the same areas.

Given this situation there are threepossible approaches:

1) Choosing an arbitrary division —such as the pre-1967 Israel border,which either leaves minorities in bothstates who do not wish to be part ofthat state or can only come about withtransfers of population.

2) Redrawing the boundaries toallow for example, those parts of pre-

1967 Israel with Palestinian majoritiesto secede and join a Palestinian state.

3) Recognising that a democraticsolution cannot be based on a territo-rial division of pre-1948 Palestine.

The first option would lead to botharbitrary borders and to continued na-tional conflict. Given that Israel wouldremain the dominant economic andmilitary power in the area and that inthis option Israel would remain a Zion-ist state, a West Bank/Gaza statewould either have no room for inde-pendent action and be subject to Is-raeli domination or very quickly comeinto conflict with Israeli “national inter-ests”, probably leading to war.

While it might provide an immediatesolution for the Palestinians in the oc-cupied territories, it is unlikely to leadto a long-term defusing of nationalconflicts.

The second option tries to solve theproblem by giving both Palestiniansand Israeli Jews the right to decide onwhich state they want to belong in.This option does not seem to deal ad-equately with the wish of many of thePalestinians to be able to live in theareas of pre-1918 Palestine fromwhich they originally came. It is alsonot clear how the West Bank/Gazastate would be a step towards such afederal solution.

A common state — the third option— seems to me to provide the beststructure for a long-term solution.Such a state would have to be basedon a recognition and guarantee of thecollective rights of both Arabs andJews to maintain their separate identi-ties. Such rights would include free-dom of religion and language, controlof education, etc. They could be imple-mented by a form of local autonomywhere communities — whether Arab,Jewish or mixed — would have thepower to decide freely on these is-sues.

A number of objections have beenraised in this. Firstly, that it would failbecause what both the Palestiniansand Israelis want is their own nationalrights, including the right to separateterritory. However, if that right can onlybe granted at the expense of the othernational group’s rights, then part ofany process of solving the nationalconflict would require a recognition ofthis from both sides. The Palestinianswould have to recognise the rights ofthe Jews in a Palestinian state and atleast a large section of the Jewishpopulation would have to break withZionism and be prepared to give upthe privileged position they at presentenjoy vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

The overwhelming weight of theconcessions have to come from theJewish population — not surprisingly,given that they at present form the op-pressor nation.

This may sound a distant prospectbut the conditions under which a fed-

41

eral solution which includes a non-Zionist state for the Jews would comeabout would be very similar, while theshort cut of the West Bank/Gaza stateoption would not come anywhere nearto solving the problem.

This seems also to deal with the ob-jection that a single state could onlycome about by a forcible integration oftwo nations. Any lasting solution wouldhave as a prerequisite considerablereconciliation of the two peoples. Noexternal force would be able to imposea solution.

Finally, we should re-emphasisethat, while we defend the rights of theJews, it is at present the Palestinianswho are suffering national oppression.We have a duty to give them our un-conditional solidarity in that struggle,whatever our differences on their tac-tics or long-term aims.

Merge oppressorand oppressed?

Martin Thomas, SO 233, 19.6.85

Some Socialist Organiser support-ers who previously advocated a demo-cratic secular Palestine have beenconvinced in the recent discussion thatthis formula is not an answer to thenational conflict in Palestine, but rathera description of something desirablewhich might be possible after the na-tional conflict has been resolved. Mar-tin Thomas argues this view.

Generally no situation of serious na-tional oppression can be resolved byproposing to amalgamate oppressorand oppressed nations on the basis ofindividual equal rights. To propose thisin Palestine is to produce a democraticsounding formula which actually canonly be a gloss for Israeli-Jewish sub-jugation of the Palestinian Arabs (in aGreater Israel) or Arab subjugation ofthe Israeli Jews (in an Arab Palestine).

Or else it is advice to the Palestini-ans to become super-internationalists,and then to wait until the Israeli Jewsare also super-internationalists andthey can live in harmony.

Paradoxically, the ‘democratic secu-lar Palestine’ slogan actually deniesthe Palestinians’ national rights asmuch as the Israeli Jews’. The slogantells the Palestinian Arabs either towait until the Arab states subjugate theIsraeli Jews or to wait until the IsraeliJews become internationalists.

But Marxists should propose objec-tives for struggle to the Palestinianswhich they can win without having torely on dubious external saviours or amiraculous change of heart by theiroppressors themselves. That, to mymind, is a crucial argument for a twostates position (whether simply twostates, or coupled with a proposal forthe federation of those two states, is a

secondary matter).The Palestinians can fight for their

own state in part of Palestine, perhapsalso linked to a revolutionised Jordan:they can fight for Israeli withdrawalfrom the West Bank and Gaza, and fornational minority rights (including theright to secession) for the Arabs in Is-rael.

They can — in principle — forcesuch concessions from Israel. They donot have to emancipate themselves inadvance from all national prejudice forsuch a solution to be possible.

The Palestinians could get a demo-cratic secular Palestine — a real dem-ocratic secular Palestine, a realmerging of the two nations — only bythemselves first becoming pure-minded internationalists, and then theIsraeli Jews freely agreeing to give ademocratic Palestine to them.

Far from being a solution to the na-tional question, the democratic secularPalestine is something which might bepossible after the national questionhas (by some other means) beensolved. You could almost say about itwhat Marx said about the “labourmoney” demand popular with social-ists of his day: it can be realised onlyunder conditions where no-one wouldany longer particularly want to raise it.

Transform Israelfrom within

Clive Bradley, SO 233, 19.6.85

Clive Bradley argues that support foran independent Palestinian state canand should be coupled with a politicalstruggle within Israel against its dis-criminatory structures.

Our position should look somethinglike this: We are for, here and now, theestablishment of a Palestinian state.Such a state could be established onthe West Bank and in Gaza if Israelwas to grant these areas self-determi-nation.

We are for a Palestinian state withno strings. We would be against, and ifwe had forces there, would fightagainst, any attempt to restrict or limitthe real independence of that state —either by subordinating it to Israel, orto Jordan or to anybody else. Wewould oppose any conditions on theestablishment of a Palestinian statethat limited its independence. To saythat we recognise Israeli nationalrights means one thing: we are not infavour of forcing change on the struc-tures the Israeli state through externalmilitary force. We are not in favour ofan independent Palestinian state at-tempting (assuming — which is a daftassumption — that it was capable of it)to ‘destroy Israel’, to ‘smash’ the Zion-ist state from the outside.

Accepting Israeli national rights

means that and that only. It cannotcommit us to accepting that an inher-ently racist, discriminatory state is un-changeable. It cannot commit us tosacrificing the democratic rights ofthose many Palestinians for whom aWest Bank/ Gaza state is no solution.

We are against conquering theJews. We are not against transformingthe Israeli state from within.

Unsignededitorialintroduction

SO 233, 19.6.85

The Zionist movement began as aJewish response to anti-semitism inlate 19th century Europe. The Zionists— mostly middle-class Jews — hopedto evade anti-semitism by creating aJewish state elsewhere.

Marxists at the time condemned thisstrategy as utopian, a cop-out, and re-alisable only in alliance with imperial-ism.

But after the horrors of Nazism, Zi-onism became a mass movementamong European Jews.

Over 30 years — 1918-1948 — theZionists colonised Palestine, underBritish imperialist protection. Throughdeals with Arab landlords they pushedArab peasants off the land. Through apolicy of establishing an autonomousJewish economy (Jewish labour only,Jewish produce only), they excludedthe Arabs from employment.

Then in 1947-9 the Zionist settlerskicked off the British harness. The en-suing war, as Britain bailed out, droveout the majority of the Arabs, or pan-icked them into fleeing and then pre-vented them returning home. Some800,000 Arabs were made refugees. AJewish state was established over77% of the land area of Palestine acountry where in 1947 Jews had beenonly about a third of the population.

The Arabs remaining in the Jewishstate — a sizeable minority, about16% today — have been third-classcitizens. Most of them lived under mili-tary administration from 1948 to 1966.Perhaps 70% of their land was confis-cated under various pretexts.

Many state and quasi-state servicesand benefits are reserved to Jewsonly: for example, 92% of the land,controlled by the Jewish NationalFund, is reserved for Jews only. Arabmunicipalities suffer discrimination asregards public services (electricity,water, etc).

Militant expression of nationalism —i.e. their actual majority politics — isforbidden to the Israeli Arabs. For ex-ample Israeli Palestinians whoprotested at the Sabra and Chatilamassacres were jailed for demonstrat-

42

ing, inciting, stoning military vehicles,and “supporting the PLO”.

In 1956, in 1967, in 1973, and againin 1982-5 Israel went to war againstthe neighbouring Arab states. In be-tween times, Israel pursued a policy ofmassive reprisals for any Palestinianaction.

In 1967 Israel seized those parts ofPalestine which the Jewish forces hadnot conquered in 1948-9, the WestBank and the Gaza Strip. Another350,000 or so Arabs were maderefugees, many for the second time.(Another wave of some hundreds ofthousands of second-time-overrefugees has since been generated bythe Israeli invasion of Lebanon). Since1967 those Arabs who remain in theoccupied territories have lived underIsraeli military rule, without even therights of the Israeli Arabs. Some 40%of their economically active populationworks in Israel proper, but they are notallowed to stay the night there.

Harassment and straightforward de-portations have driven over half a mil-lion Arabs out of the occupiedterritories since 1967, but still sometwo million Palestinian Arabs out of 4million Palestinian Arabs altogetherlive under Israeli rule as third-class cit-izens or fourth-class non-citizens.

The other 2 million are refugees,many of them still living in miserablerefugee camps. Even there they are atrisk from the Israeli military machine,as in Lebanon recently.

Yet the Israeli Jews are a nation — anation whose rights must be taken intoaccount for any progress to be possi-ble. They have a national language, anational economy, a more-or-less de-fined national territory.

Despite the increasing use of Arabsas menial, low-paid labour, the IsraeliJews are a nation rather than an ex-ploiting caste like the whites in SouthAfrica. Despite the considerable powerof Orthodox rabbis within the Israelistate, the Israeli-Jewish identity is na-tional rather than religious. Many Is-raeli Jews are atheists or onlynominally religious.

Israeli-Jewish national conscious-ness is generally an oppressor-nationconsciousness, usually chauvinist, andoften shot through with open racism.

However, these facts do not doaway with the reality of the nation. Amajority of Israeli Jews — 57% as ofDecember 31 1981 — were bornthere. A majority of adults — 66% ofover-20s — are settlers born else-where. But most of them came fleeingpersecution — including the persecu-tion under which the Nazis systemati-cally murdered perhaps one third of allthe world’s Jews. Most of them individ-ually have, and certainly the commu-nity is a whole has, no otherhomeland.

Before 1947 the Palestinian Arabswere, in their great majority, peasants.

Like peasants elsewhere they werenot able to create their own au-tonomous political leadership. They fellunder the leadership of the reactionaryArab landlords and money-men. Thisgave their resistance to Zionist coloni-sation the form of wild outbursts ofpeasant fury, topped by chauvinistrhetoric and stained by anti-Jewishatrocities.

After their desperate and bitter re-bellion in 1936-9 was suppressed byBritish and Jewish force, the Palestin-ian Arabs were politically exhaustedfor nearly 30 years.

Between 1947 and the late ‘60s theArab states spoke in their name. In1948-49 they talked bloodthirsty chau-vinism — Azzam Pasha, general sec-retary of the Arab League, proclaimed:“This will become a war of extermina-tion and an enormous massacre” —while actually fighting to see whichstate could grab most of Arab Pales-tine for itself. In 1967, again, the Arableaders proclaimed that they would‘drive the Jews into the sea’.

Meanwhile these Arab states weremistreating and discriminating againstthe Palestinian refugees in their terri-tory, sometimes carrying out or spon-soring massacres of them (Jordan1970, Syria/Lebanon 1976).

Out of this experience the Palestini-ans emerged as an autonomous politi-cal force, with Fatah’s takeover of thePLO in 1968-9. The social compositionof the Palestinians had changed dra-matically, and there was a new leader-ship. The old Arab-chauvinist rhetoricwas replaced by the slogan of a secu-lar democratic Palestine.

But the new leadership was and is abourgeois leadership, attuned to ma-noeuvring with Arab states and imperi-alist powers rather than to anyendeavour to unite Arabs and Jewsfrom below. Its guerrilla attacks fre-quently hit civilian targets in Israel.

Thus the bitterness and despair —and on the other side, the spirallingchauvinism of Israeli-Jewish society —have not been ended.

What rights forJews?

In May 1980 the editorial board ofWorkers’ Action — one of the groupswhich founded SO in 1978 — dis-cussed Palestine. The discussion wassummarised in minutes taken by Mar-tin Thomas. The issues now being dis-cussed by SO supporters were spelledout clearly. Excerpts:

John O’Mahony [Sean Matgamna]:Think about the concrete implicationsof the secular, democratic state sloganfor Palestine. It has no grip on reality.It’s an ambivalent slogan, fundamen-

tally wrong because it proposes theforcible integration of two peoples. Thehistory of Zionist oppression is terrible.But forcible integration means forcibleabolition of nationality, which is hardlypossible. We’re for a socialist unitedstates of the Middle East, but we alsoneed to uphold self determination. Wedon’t need to question the sincerity ofthe Palestinians’ declaration of notbeing hostile to Jews as such. Butwhat is the logic of depriving the Jewsof the right to their own state? It’s in-conceivable it will be acceptable to theJews. Who’s going to do the forcibleintegration? There is no force capableof making it happen. The only evenconceivable method is conquest of Is-rael by the Palestinians and/or Arabs.A socialist revolution is more feasiblethan the secular democratic state.

The secular, democratic state slo-gan is not ‘algebraic’ in a real sense,just ambivalent. It actually means justPalestinian nationalism. But the na-tional rights of the Israelis must be partof our programme. A nation has beencreated — by terrible means perhaps,but it exists.

Our error: to identify with the op-pressed (which is correct) but to gofrom that to identifying with their na-tionalist programme (which is wrong).

Our only real answer for the Pales-tinians consistent with the Israelis’rights must be some sort of partition.(Though I don’t know what dividingline).

We’ve failed to distinguish betweenthe historic reality of Zionism and Zion-ism as a political entity now. There isnot just Zionism as an ideology butalso the vicissitudes (i.e. recent his-tory) of the Jewish people.

The USFI approach, which hascoloured our attitude. is woolly senti-mental third-worldism.

And what about the Jews in Israelwho were born there? We can’t visitthe sins of their fathers on them. Par-allels with South Africa, Northern Ire-land, etc., do not hold up. Zionism isnot fundamentally about exploitingArab labour. And, if Northern Irelandwere a homogeneous Protestant state,would we advocate military conquestof it?

I don’t propose raising self-determi-nation for the Israeli Jews now. But itshould be part of our programme. Self-determination for the Palestinian peo-ple — does that include the right todetermine what happens to the Jews?It seems to, so I’m against it.

Israel is a racist state? Yes it is. Butaren’t all states racist. What’s differentabout Israel is the hostility to and driv-ing out of the Arabs. But the majorracist crime is now a fact of history.

Is a different Israeli state possible?Yes, it is possible: e.g. withdrawal to1967 frontiers, etc.

Bas Hardy: John’s attitude would43

amount to left Zionism. He approachesit entirely from the Israeli angle, not atall from the Palestinian.

John ignores the evolution of thePLO. Fatah states it “would help Jewsany where if they faced persecution byracists’’. It also recommends rights forthe Jews and, e.g. Hebrew as an offi-cial language in a secular, democraticPalestine.

The PFLP say they don’t think Israelis a nation — colonialism cannot bejustified just by continuing a bit longer.Israeli workers, even, gain from theirsettler-state status.

These positions are completely dif-ferent from the caricatures presentedby John. There is even considerableracism within Israel against OrientalJews. Yes, Jews were terribly op-pressed. But that cannot justify theiroppression of the Palestinian nation. IfIsrael were even curtailed as John in-dicates, then there would in any casebe massive emigration.

Imperialism wants a Palestinian ministate. John’s attitude is similar. Andwhere are the Palestinian refugees togo?

Rachel Lever: The Israeli nation isnot just some cultural society, but ithas a big state apparatus, an expan-sionist logic, etc. Crimes of 30 yearsago? There have been two wars and alot of other crimes since. The crimescontinue.

But John is contradictory. The Jewsare supposed to be so backward thatthey will quit and go to New Yorkrather than live together with thePalestinians. And at the same time theIsraelis are presented as innocents,while the Palestinians are presentedas likely to cut the Israelis’ throats anddrive them into the sea.

If the Israelis want to emigrate be-cause they can no longer oppress thePalestinians, that is up to them.

Bruce Robinson: Is the secular dem-ocratic state feasible? Well, is John’sproposed reformed Israeli state, e.g.within 1948 frontiers, feasible? Andhow would repartition help the strugglefor socialism? It would increase ten-sions and conflicts.

The secular, democratic state is not,I think, utopian — it is an algebraic slo-gan for the national conflicts in Pales-tine. John seems to confuse the rightsof the Jews in the area and their rightto a state. And much of what he saysabout the changes in the nature of Zi-onism is a myth. Logically, John’s posi-tion would lead to arguing the PLOshould give up their struggle.

What we said in1973

SO 233, 19.6.85

This is an excerpt from an editorialin the paper Workers’ Fight, October20 1973. It contains two political com-mitments — to the destruction of theIsraeli state by external force, and tofull rights for its Jewish population whoinhabit it. Its author, John O’Mahony[Sean Matgamna], now argues thatthese two commitments are incompati-ble, rendering writing such as this po-litically incoherent.

A decisive and crushing defeat forIsrael will be good news for revolution-ary workers throughout the world, andfor enemies of imperialism every-where.

We say this knowing that the work-ing class rules in neither Israel nor inany Arab country, and that on thatlevel there is nothing to choose be-tween them.

Yet the world’s working class, includ-ing the Israeli working class though itdoesn’t yet know it, has an interest inthe defeat of Israel and in the victoryof the Arabs.

Israel is a pro-imperialist policemanin the Middle East, a bayonet perma-nently pointed at the throat of theArabs and their desire to free them-selves from imperialist rule. Israel isalso a racist state.

The ‘pampered child of imperialism’in the Middle East, the Zionist State ofIsrael, has by its very existence beenthe main force militating against thegrowth of independent working classconsciousness in both the Arab andJewish Middle East peoples. Only thedefeat of Israel and the destruction ofthe Zionist state opens a way throughthe road block which Israel is for theArab, and Jewish, masses of the area.

The open support of the Britishpress for Israel has as its centrepiecedefence of the “right of Israel to exist”.That, for once, takes us to the heart ofthe question.

We are firmly opposed to the exis-tence of Israel: we say it has no rightto exist.

We are opposed to Israel’s exis-tence because its existence is insepa-rable from the oppression of thePalestinians, who have been drivenfrom their homeland because, accord-ing to the way the Zionist state is con-structed, they are racially unsuitable.Whilst the Palestinians are prepared toparticipate in a multi-racial state, theZionist state is racially exclusive andmust be destroyed before such amulti-racial state can be built.

The Jewish community has, ofcourse, a right to reach an agreementwith the Arabs, and the demand for the

defeat of Israel is not at all the de-mand to expel or drive out her popula-tion. The only solution is to create asecular democratic state in which thePalestinians have full right to return totheir homeland with compensation andfull equality with Palestinian Jews.

But the existing exclusive Zioniststate can only exist at the expense ofthe Arabs, in alliance with and under li-cence from their imperialist masters:such a state can never be even a nor-mal capitalist state, because it isbased on ‘religion’ and ‘race’ and de-prives the Palestinians of the right tolive in their own country, while everyJew in the world... is automatically acitizen of Israel…

How to unite Araband Jewishworkers

John O’Mahony [Sean Matgamna]and Martin Thomas, SO 234, 3.7.85

At the Socialist Organiser AGM onJune 22-23 [1985], we discussedPalestine.

Until now SO has supported the slo-gan of ‘a democratic, secular Pales-tine’. Some SO supporters still say weshould call for a single state in Pales-tine, embracing Jews and Arabs; oth-ers argue we should propose anindependent Palestinian-Arab statealongside a modified Israeli Jewishstate.

The AGM felt that we weren’t yetready to take a decision, and so re-solved to continue the discussion.

This week we publish a draft state-ment of the ‘two states’ position byJohn O’Mahony [Sean Matgamna] andMartin Thomas. Further contributionsto the debate are welcomed, and willappear over the coming weeks.

Preamble The Palestine question mainly pres-

ents itself to working-class militants asfollows:

a) 37 years ago a new Jewish state,Israel, was created in Palestine by im-migrants from Europe, America andthe Arab countries. The core of themwere refugees from European anti-semitism, including survivors of thegreatest racist crime in recorded his-tory, Hitler’s massacre of six millionJews. The Jewish state is heavily de-pendent on outside financial supportand it functions as a satellite of US im-perialism, though it has autonomousinterests and projects of its own.

b) Most of the Palestinian peoplehave been displaced, and transformedinto refugees and stateless personsoutside Palestine. The remainder areeither an oppressed minority withinpre-1967 Israel. or under military rule

44

in the West Bank and Gaza. c) A chronic national antagonism ex-

ists between Israeli-Jewish and Arabworkers in the region, and betweenJewish and Arab workers in Israel andin the Israeli-occupied territories. Thisantagonism has crippled the workingclass in the entire region for manydecades.

Our problem is to explain and inter-pret these developments and to an-swer the question: what programmedo socialists propose as a solution tothe Jewish Arab antagonism in Pales-tine and in the region?

The most widespread left-wing reac-tion to the Palestine problem states orassumes that the Zionist enterprisewas and is a ‘conspiracy’, and identi-fies Zionism totally with imperialism.General denunciation of ‘Zionism’ and‘Zionists’ follows, in terms which implythat the ‘Zionists’ have no rights inPalestine except possibly individualrights.

Class considerations therefore giveway to national/communal categories.

The Arab ruling classes have morethan once massacred Palestinians,and willingly condemn them to bepawns on the political chessboard; butthis outlook puts the Arab states onthe ‘progressive’ side. The wholequestion is seen as a mere item in thestruggle between progressive and re-actionary, good and bad, camps on aworld scale. The problem is thus de-fined almost as a conflict of good andbad peoples.

Against this, we assert basic Marxistworking class ideas. Class is decisive.We approach all questions of nationaland communal antagonisms from theviewpoint of the class struggle, and ofthe working-class programme for solv-ing such conflicts by way of consistentdemocracy.

The Palestinian Arabs are bitterlyoppressed; but a Jewish nation existsin Palestine and has a right to con-tinue to exist there, with national rightswhich irreducibly include the right toself determination on some territory ofits own. We champion the PalestinianArabs’ fight against oppression anddisplacement on a programme not ofthe implicit or explicit denial of Jewishrights, but of compensation, restitution,division of the disputed territory, andconciliation.

We advocate the immediate creationof a Palestinian Arab state alongsidean Israeli-Jewish state (a modified ver-sion of Israel). We advocate an end toall discrimination against the Arabsunder Israeli rule. We advocate fulland equal citizenship for the Arabs,and the right to secede to the Palestin-ian-Arab state of the majority-Arab dis-tricts in Israel.

Revolutionary militants must ap-proach this question from two view-points simultaneously, and integratethose two viewpoints. We are against

chauvinism and national exclusivismeverywhere, whether in Britain, North-ern Ireland, or Palestine, and thePalestinian Jews are chauvinistic andexclusive. We support those in Israeland the West Bank/Gaza who fight forJewish Arab equality. But the ending ofJewish chauvinism and exclusivenessis not and cannot be, for us, a precon-dition for accepting that the Jews haverights in Palestine.

The Jews have the right to a certainportion of the territory of Palestine byvirtue of the fact that they are there.and most of the Jews now there wereborn there. Their rights there cannotbe made conditional on how they con-duct themselves in that territory, anymore than the vile racist immigrationlaws of Britain — which we fight andoppose, as some Israeli socialists fightand oppose the chauvinism of the Is-raeli Jews — nullify Britain’s right toexist. (Or any more than the openlychauvinist line of the PalestinianArabs’ leaders up to the late 1960scould nullify the Palestinian Arabs’ na-tional rights).

We recognise the right to self-deter-mination of the Israeli Jews; we sup-port those in Israel who fightchauvinism and exclusiveness and ad-vocate equal citizenship of Arabs andJews; we advocate an independentPalestinian-Arab state on the bestterms possible which are compatiblewith Israeli-Jewish national rights. Allthese elements must be combined intoone coherent working class socialistviewpoint.

Resolution 1. In general we support the op-

pressed Palestinians against oppres-sor Israel. We seek a solution whichgives both Palestinian Arabs and Is-raeli Jews the right to a life as a na-tion.

2. The proposal to amalgamate thetwo Palestinian nations — Arabs andJews — into a unitary democratic sec-ular Palestinian state is unfortunatelyutopian. Such an amalgamation is im-possible. National identity, and stillless national oppression and conflict,cannot be conjured away; two hostilenations cannot be amalgamated into asingle unit.

Where there is national oppression,the demand to forget national differ-ences is usually a cover for the op-pressor. A unitary Palestine — in theforeseeable future — would mean astate in which the Palestinian Arabswere oppressed by the Israeli Jews, ifthere were no outside intervention.

In fact the practical meaning and im-plications now of the Arab-nationalistslogan, ‘democratic-secular Palestine’,are: full conquest of the Israeli Jewsby the Arab states. It is not a proposalfor a democratic solution, but the cut-ting edge of Arab propaganda whichwould turn the Jews from oppressors

into the oppressed. A ‘democratic, secular Palestine’ is

not an answer to the national question,but something desirable which mightbe possible in the distant future afterthe national question has (by someother means) been solved — indeed,after national identities and prejudiceshad begun to wither away. As a pro-posed solution to the Palestinians’ op-pression, either it tells them that theymust themselves shed national preju-dice, and then also convince their op-pressors to do likewise — or it is anencoded term for full suppression ofthe Israeli Jews by the Arab states.

3. Immediately, we demand an inde-pendent Palestinian state in the WestBank and Gaza, in line with the right ofself-determination of the people ofthose territories.

4. A Palestinian mini-state in theWest Bank and Gaza could alleviatethe situation, but the national conflictof Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jewswould certainly continue. A solution tothat conflict demands a more far-reaching programme. Considered as anational territory for 4 million Palestini-ans, these areas — essentially fringedistricts of the Israeli state — are verylimited in size and resources. Theycould not provide an adequate Pales-tinian homeland.

5. Meanwhile some 600,000 to700,000 Arabs would remain under Is-raeli rule. The Israeli Arabs consider —rightly — that they are part of thePalestinian Arab nation, that they haverights in the area where they live andhave long lived, and that the territoryof Israel cannot be considered the ex-clusive property of the Israeli Jews.The situation of the Israeli Arabs isthus not a separate ‘minority question’,but an integral part of the PalestinianArab/Israeli-Jewish conflict.

We support the right of secession tothe Palestinian-Arab state of themainly Arab areas within present-dayIsrael (western and Central Galilee,Little Triangle).

Over one million Palestinians live inJordan, forming half or more of thepopulation there. They live under therule of a monarchy artificially createdby British imperialism, and propped upmilitarily and financially in successionby Britain and by the US and oil-richArab states. We support the overthrowof the monarchy in Jordan, and feder-ation or merger between a Palestinianmini-state and a democratic Jordan.

6. If it can be achieved, a federal re-lationship (in the circumstances, nec-essarily a loose one) between thePalestinian Arab state and a modifiedIsrael (or over a broader area), includ-ing agreements to defend the rights ofthe Arab minority and of Arab labour inIsrael, will be preferable to Arab se-cession from Israel and full-scalerepartition.

a) The two nations are at present45

heavily intermeshed (Arabs living in Is-rael, West Bank and Gaza peopleworking in Israel, etc.) Full intermesh-ing is not possible in the short term,given the national hostilities. However,we should seek to minimise the sepa-rating out.

b) Economically, a larger unit ispreferable. The present economic iso-lation of Israel from the surroundingcountries is economically irrational andpolitically leads to dependence on theUS, etc. Generally, the division of theMiddle East into several, mainly small,nation-states boosts nationalist andcommunal narrowness, economic un-derdevelopment, and imperialist ma-nipulation. A West Bank/Gaza state, oreven a West Bank/Gaza state unitedwith Jordan, would be extremely weakeconomically and thus would beforced into dependence on states likeIsrael (the main employer of WestBank/Gaza labour) or Saudi Arabia(the paymaster of the present Jordan-ian state).

Though our programme is a socialistfederation of the Middle East, withself-determination for national minori-ties (Israeli Jews, Kurds, etc.), thisshould not contradict proposals forsmaller federations, e.g. in Palestine.

c) Full-scale repartition would bebloody and almost certainly untidy,creating material for fresh conflicts.

For these reasons, advocacy of afederation would be advantageous forJewish-Arab working-class unity. How-ever, the ‘two states’ formula is notconditional on federation being possi-ble. It is the irreplaceable first step topeaceful coexistence of Arabs andJews in Palestine and thus to working-class unity.

Historic Zionism, 1897-1948, wasreckless and devastating in its conse-quences for the Palestinian Arab peo-ple.

But we reject the idea that either his-toric Zionist or modern Zionism (i.e.pro-Israel Jewish sentiment, howeverdefined) can be simply described asracist. The state of Israel is a statepursuing racist policies and heavilybased on racist institutions. It was notand is not a racist conspiracy, butrather a product of many circum-stances. To try to ‘ban Zionists’ is to tryto outlaw the reflex nationalism of themass of Jewish people, and it is thusin effect anti-Jewish.

In terms of political argument, how-ever, we counterpose internationalismto Israeli-Jewish nationalism, anddemocracy to Jewish sectarianism andJewish supremacy in Israel (or anymodified Israel). Within Israel (or anymodified Israel) we argue for full indi-vidual rights and national minorityrights for the Arabs; for an end to theban on Arab labour in major industries;for an end to Israel’s alliance with USimperialism and its role as a major mil-itary supplier to South Africa, Central

American dictatorships, etc; for the fullseparation of religion from the state;for the dismantling of the specifically‘Zionist’ features of the state (in partic-ular, the set-up whereby quasi-stateorganisations, the Jewish Agency andthe Jewish National Fund, providefunds and services to Jews only); forthe creation of a labour movement in-dependent of the state and the em-ployers.

We demand compensation from Is-rael and the US to fund the resettle-ment of the Palestinian-Arab refugeesin the Palestinian-Arab state.

The repossession of all Palestine bythe Palestinian Arabs is now impossi-ble without suppressing the Jews; andthe Israel Jews’ national rights cannotdepend on them ceasing to be ‘Zion-ists’ or agreeing to an unqualified rightof resettlement in all of Palestine forArabs. However, among the Israeliswe would argue for immigration lawswhich would allow individual Palestin-ian Arabs to move in and out freely orto go and live there. Israeli-Jewishagreement to easy entry for Arabswould be an essential contribution tonational reconciliation and working-class unity.

We explain to Israeli Jews that nonation that oppresses another can it-self be free or secure, and that theycan achieve peace, freedom and se-curity only by a democratic attitude to-wards the Arab peoples — just as weexplain to the Palestinian Arabs thatany solution that would oppress the Is-raeli Jews would be regressive and re-actionary,

8. While the Arab states have beenvictims of predatory attacks by Israel,they themselves are bourgeois orbourgeois-feudal states with expan-sionist and predatory ambitions. Theyhave cruelly oppressed and more thanonce massacred the PalestinianArabs. While in some circumstanceswe side with the Arab states againstIsraeli attack, we do not support thedestruction of Israel by the militaryforces of the Arab states.

Democracy isonly possible in asingle state

Bruce Robinson, SO 238, 24.7.85

The Socialist Organiser AGM onJune 22-23 decided to continue ourdiscussion on Palestine. Until now SOhas supported the mainstream Pales-tinian Arab slogan of ‘a democraticsecular Palestine’ with equality forJews and Arabs (Muslims and Chris-tians). Some SO supporters nowargue tor a separate independentPalestinian Arab state alongside amodified Israeli-Jewish state; here

Bruce Robinson argues for a unitarydemocratic Palestinian state.

John O’Mahony refers sarcasticallyto our old position having an “allegedability to do justice to everyone con-cerned”, contrasting it to his approach,which starts from the real divisionsthat exist. Our approach, however,should be precisely that of what Lenindescribed as “consistent democracy”.

Our job is not that of acting as diplo-matic advisors to the Palestinians orarguing about which policy is mostlikely to be acceptable to the Israeliworking class at present given theirpresent consciousness and attitude tothe Palestinians. We are only inter-ested in the national question from theviewpoint of finding a programme thatrepresents a real solution to the na-tional oppression and thus removes itas an obstacle to class unity.

Lenin poured scorn on Rosa Luxem-burg (who was opposed to Polish in-dependence from Russia because, asa Polish Socialist she was frightened itwould strengthen Polish nationalism)for emphasising that what was re-quired was a “practical” solution to thenational question.

“The whole task of the proletariat inthe national question is ‘unpractical’from the stand point of the nationalistbourgeoisie of every nation, becausethe proletarians, opposed as they areto nationalism of every kind, demand‘abstract’ equality: they demand, as amatter of principle, that there shouldbe no privileges, however slight. Fail-ing to grasp this, Rosa Luxemburg, byher misguided eulogy of practicality,has opened the door wide for the op-portunists, and especially for oppor-tunist concessions to Great Russiannationalism”.

John O’Mahony’s position is similarto Rosa Luxemburg’s, in that out offears about the effects of the national-ism of the oppressed — the Palestini-ans — on the rights of the IsraeliJews, he looks for a practical solutionwhich avoids challenging the privi-leges of the oppressor nation. It is anattempt to find a short cut to a solutionwithout any fundamental changes inthe relationships between the Pales-tinians and the Israelis.

His position amounts to saying thata solution will be achieved on thebasis of the Palestinians giving uptheir unrealistic demands, so as toavoid having to face the thorny prob-lem of how it is possible to break theIsraeli workers from their current atti-tudes towards the Palestinians. JohnO’Mahony claims that any policy of asingle state in Palestine must implyforcible integration of the two nationali-ties. Martin Thomas also seems to ac-cept that the nations will want to holdon to their separation above all else,even if Israel was no longer a Zioniststate.

The policy I am proposing is unlikely46

to recommend itself to the bour-geoisies of the Arab states, who eitherwant a deal with Israel or are not inany position to impose a solution any-how. (Even if they were, I would op-pose it as there would be no way thatthey would impose an even remotelydemocratic solution). It is based on theidea that both sides would have had tomove towards a recognition of theother’s rights as a precondition of anylasting and fair arrangement.

John O’Mahony argues that two ele-ments in the programme of a unitarystate make its voluntary acceptanceby the Israelis impossible. His firstpoint is that a single state is in itself adenial of Jewish national rights andthus unacceptable. On this basis, how-ever, for the reasons outlined above,no solution will ever be possible if one(or both) nationalities continue to claiman exclusive right to even a part of theterritory. If the Palestinians were togive real guarantees of Jewish rightsof the type I have already mentioned,such a claim would not be justified.

John O’Mahony’s second objectionis that the right of the Palestinians toreturn to any part of pre-1948 Israelmeans dispossession of the Jews cur-rently living there and would be resis-ted. However, the right of return doesnot necessarily require the restorationof every square inch of land to who-ever owned it in 1948. Obviously giventhe length of time that has passed,changes in the economic structure ofthe country, etc., this would be impos-sible.

What is at issue is a) the right ofPalestinians to return to live in thoseareas; b) some form of compensationfor land taken as part of an overall set-tlement; c) removal of some recentsettlements. Of these, the third can becalled dispossession — and it wouldalso be required to set up a WestBank/Gaza state.

Both communities will have to makeconcessions for any solution to work.The Palestinians will have to recog-nise that moving towards their goalsrequires winning over a large sectionof the Jewish population. This in turnrequires them to recognise the perma-nence of the Jews in the area and thecollective rights which this implies. Itprobably also requires a change oftactics from one which emphasisesguerilla action to one which puts moreemphasis on political action and hasan active orientation towards winningthe trust of the Jews.

However, the main balance of con-cessions must come from the IsraeliJews as they are at present enjoyingprivileges as the oppressor nation. Thenational consensus across classes inIsrael is not just maintained by Zionistideology or an external threat, but alsorests on the fact that all sections of so-ciety benefit from the present discrimi-natory and oppressive relationship to

the Palestinians, e.g. access to betteror more secure jobs, land, more exten-sive political rights. As in the case ofIreland, it is often those sections of thepopulation for whom the relative privi-lege is smallest who cling to it most —in this case, the working class OrientalJews.

What forces then will break out ofthe vicious circle of mutual antagonismbetween the Palestinians and the Is-raelis? In the short term, it is difficult tobe optimistic, whatever position youhold. It is possible that the nationalconflict would only be ended as a re-sult of successful social revolutionselsewhere in the region, though clearlywe cannot advocate that all the partiesconcerned wait around before trying tofind a means of coming together.

More positively, a number of devel-opments have begun which undercutthe basis on which Israel has beenable to maintain ‘national unity’ in thepast. The war in Lebanon has led tosome questioning of Israel’s claim toact militarily only in its own defenceand to a war-weariness among somesections of the population. The econ-omy is in more or less permanent cri-sis. The shift in US policy in the regionlessens Israel’s room for manoeuvre.

None of these developments neces-sarily mean a progressive shift in gen-eral attitudes towards the Palestinians,but perhaps a few cracks are appear-ing in the general acceptance of thenational interest of Israel.

In such a situation it is difficult to as-sess what the effect of a Palestiniandeclaration of recognition of Jewishrights would have. It is however a pre-condition of any long-term progress

1. A democratic solution to the na-tional conflicts between the IsraeliJews and the Palestinian Arabs canonly take place within the frameworkof a single state. The intermingling ofthe two national groups is such thatany territorial division would be un-likely to be democratic or provide alasting solution to the conflict.

2. Such a unitary state would recog-nise and guarantee the collectiverights and identities of both groups, in-cluding freedom of religion, languageand education. These would be imple-mented by devolving powers in theseareas to whichever level would assurethe two communities best control oftheir own affairs with out imprisoningminorities. The Palestinians wouldhave the right to live in any part of thestate (which would cover the area ofpre-1948 Palestine).

3. While defending the rights of theIsraeli Jews, we recognise that atpresent it is the Palestinians who arethe oppressed nation and give themunconditional support in their struggleagainst the Israeli state.

4. For a single Palestinian state tobe realisable requires that at least asizeable section of the Israeli popula-

tion break from Zionism and the ‘na-tional consensus’ currently existing inrelation to the Palestinians. No solu-tion is possible while the Israeli work-ing class enjoys privileges at theexpense of the Palestinians. Such abreak will only come about if thePalestinians make it clear that theyhave no intention of suppressing theJews and are willing to grant them thecollective rights in a common Palestin-ian state.

The normal approach of Marxists tothe national question has been toargue for the right of self-determina-tion — that is, for the right of an op-pressed nation to secede and form itsown nation state. We generally sup-port self-determination, not becausewe support nationalism or think thatthe nation state is the best political unitfor socialism, but because it providesa democratic solution which ends na-tional oppression and removes a divi-sive obstacle to developing class unitybetween the different national groups.

However the right to self determina-tion cannot be applied where the twonational groups are intermingled andboth claim the same territory withsome degree of legitimacy.

In Palestine there are no borderssuited to a democratic solution basedon separate states for the Israeli Jewsand the Palestinians. Even if the pres-ent population were to fall into two dis-tinct territories, there is still theproblem of the Palestinians currentlyliving outside pre-1948 Palestine whowish to return.

Of the Palestinian refugees about10% lived in the areas which becameIsrael in 1948 prior to that date. Ofthese about half remain refugees.Many of those born in the camps since1948 identify themselves as comingfrom the areas where their familieslived before fleeing in 1948.

Whether all of the Palestinianswould return to those areas given thechoice or whether they would accept aWest Bank/Gaza state is a debatablepoint. However, given that the processof settlement and colonisation of theseareas has been the root cause of theirnational oppression, it seems to bethat the demand for the Palestinianright to return to those areas must begranted as part of a democratic solu-tion. (How this could be done is dis-cussed later).

Given this population distributionand the precise form the nationalquestion takes in Palestine there arethree different ways of dealing with thesituation:

a) drawing boundaries which essen-tially maintain the existing majority-mi-nority relationships using a recognisedborder, such as the pre-1967 one. Thiswould mean either leaving minoritieswithin the new states or some form ofpopulation exchange;

b) drawing new boundaries by allow-47

ing pieces of territory with a majoritydifferent to that with in the pre-67 bor-ders to secede and join the other state(e.g. the areas of pre-67 Israel withArab majorities):

c) recognising that a democratic so-lution cannot be based on a territorialdivision or redivision of pre-1948Palestine.

The second position at least has themerit of recognising that the pre-1967borders are undemocratic. If the na-tional question in Palestine wasmerely one of national minorities want-ing to form their own state or associatewith another state, it would provide afeasible solution.

However, it does not take account ofthe odd features of the situation whichcome from Israel being a state basedon settlement of an area, whose previ-ous inhabitants have not disappeared,but still have legitimate claims to rightswithin the same area.

It is also difficult to see how a WestBank/Gaza state would be a step to-wards this solution. If a WestBank/Gaza state were to succeed inthe aim of reducing national tensions.it would have to become the statusquo for relations between the two peo-ples for some considerable period oftime. While the Palestinians could inprinciple force concessions, includingthe right for Arabs in Israel to secedeto the other state. who would be ableto enforce it? Presumably the Palestin-ian state on the West Bank and Gaza.How would this give the breathingspace for reconciliation Martin Thomastalks of?

A common state would have to bebased on and guarantee the rights ofboth the Israeli Jews and the Palestini-ans to maintain their separate collec-tive identities, unhindered by the stateand with control over those aspects ofpolitical life necessary to require themto do this. This differs from the classicconception of the secular democraticstate as advocated by the PLO in giv-ing collective rights to the Jews withina unitary state and offering such rightsunconditionally.

Such rights would include freedomof religion and language, control of ed-ucation, the rights of free political or-ganisation etc. They could beimplemented through a form of localautonomy where communities —whether Arab, Jewish or mixed —would be able to decide what provisionwould be made for these issues intheir area.

Local autonomy is not however thecornerstone of my argument. It merelyseems to be the most likely way ofguaranteeing to the furthest possibleextent the rights of both communities.Some rights, however, such as theright to use either language wouldhave to be guaranteed by the centralgovernment. What is crucial is that themeans exist for justice to be done

within the framework of a single state. The main argument against this has

been that it ignores what is fundamen-tally at stake — namely, the rights oftwo nations rather than merely demo-cratic rights.

It is suggested that real autonomywould lead to one or other nation wish-ing to secede from a united state.However there is no way that full na-tional rights (which include the right toa territory) can be put into effect for ei-ther nation without it oppressing theother.

For what it’s worth. I would recog-nise the Israeli Jews as a nation. How-ever we should remain aware of someof the peculiarities of both nationalgroups.

Firstly, the national consciousness ofthe Israeli Jews has until now beenbased on the Zionist ideology of theright to an exclusive Jewish state inPalestine, a state which has beenbased on settlement of the territorypreviously occupied by the Palestini-ans. Whether the Israelis feel them-selves to be political Zionists in the fullsense is irrelevant. Quite what form aJewish national consciousness wouldtake it the exclusivist, chauvinist and,usually, racist elements based on thisideology were to disappear (or evenbegin to break down) is highly prob-lematic.

Secondly, the rights of the peoplesof the area and whether they form na-tions or not cannot be asserted simplyby reading off a set of characteristics(language, culture, economy, territory)a la Stalin of 1912 and seeing howwell they fit. On this basis, one wouldhave to reject the Palestinians’ claimto be a nation on the grounds that theydo not have — and never have had —a distinct national economy or histori-cally well-defined national territory.

It is precisely the fact that the Pales-tinian question is not a straightforwardissue of the rights of nations or na-tional minorities which makes it so in-tractable.

Any programme we put forwardmust deal with three aspects of Pales-tinian oppression as well as the rightsof the Jews. Firstly, they lack any terri-tory in which to live. Secondly, in theWest Bank and Gaza Strip they face amilitary occupation. Thirdly, within Is-rael the Arabs are treated as second-class citizens.

Will “two states”divide?

Robert Fine, SO 238, 24.7.85

I am particularly interested in thePalestine debate which I think is fasci-nating and on precisely the right ter-rain. 1 have been entirely supportiveof the efforts of John O’Mahony andothers to break from the common leftposition with its blanket endorsementof third world nationalism and its hints/strains of anti-semitism. I am less en-thusiastic about the proposed two-state solution, but I withholdjudgement.

One aspect which disturbs me iswhat it entails for those consigned tolive within the Israeli state. I think thatwe should recognise that Israel is notracist in an ordinary way. The idea of aJewish state is not an ordinary nation-alism. There has never been an ade-quate separation of church and state,for all the secularism of the Zionistmovements, and this lack of separa-tion has become much more pro-nounced. The exclusion of non-Jewsfrom full citizenship rights is not an or-dinary racism.

Obviously we oppose these thingswhether there is one state or two, butit seems to me that the latter optiondoes not help. We have to consider inmy opinion what a Jewish state im-plies not in abstract but as a presentreality.

It is racist in an extraordinary wayand undemocratic in an extraordinaryway. Surely there is a potential amongJews fed up with the influence of reli-gious orthodoxy, with militarism, withJewish particularism, with siege men-tality, etc., to tie their dissent to the dis-sent of Palestinians and others whobear the brunt of state and para-staterepression?

Does not advocacy of two states cutacross this unifying potential? Does itnot, from the Jewish point of view, as-sume a static fixation with a Jewishstate that for many is becoming moreof a weight than a means of emanci-pation?

Are we not underestimating the ef-fects of the gulf between the idea ofZionism and the reality of today’s Is-rael on the consciousness of ordinaryIsraelis?

My own knowledge and experienceof Israel — where most of my familylives — is well out of date now. I havenot visited for many years and I havenot studied developments in any detailbeyond the Guardian and the JewishChronicle. But my strong impression— from friends, family and even theJewish Chronicle — is that we wouldbe foolish to underestimate the grow-ing disillusion with the particularismrepresented by Israel.

48

Racism willremain until Israelis destroyed

Tony Greenstein, SO 239, 7.8.85

The article by John O’Mahony andMartin Thomas (July 3) calling for theestablishment side by side with Israelof a Palestinian state, fails to under-stand the specific features of the Is-raeli state that prevents it frombecoming a normal western capitaliststate with a working class capable ofmoving from economic to politicalstruggles.

Over 52% of the land of the WestBank has already been confiscated.Hundreds of millions of dollars havebeen spent on settlements and thenecessary infrastructure. There are al-ready over 30,000 settlers and theWest Bank is an integral part of the Is-raeli economy and a reserve of cheaplabour.

How else than utopian can we termthe call for a separate PalestinianState? No Zionist party in Israel, in-cluding Mapam — the so-called Marx-ist Zionists — supports such a state.

Precisely which forces in Israelwould push for such a settlement? Atleast Arafat recognises that only theUnited States is capable of exertingpressure to achieve such a state aspart of an imperialist solution to thePalestinian question, not that they dis-play the least inclination to do so.

Such a state would become an Is-raeli Bantustan, in which the Jordanianregime held the whip hand. It would bedependent on the Gulf regimes and Is-rael economically and its first actionswould be to crush the Left and TradeUnions in order to guarantee its exis-tence. It would be a state where con-fessionalism reigned supreme. Surelythe example of partition in Irelanddemonstrates this?

Far from uniting the Israeli Jewishand Palestinian working class, it woulderect state borders between themwhilst providing the opportunity formass expulsions from Israel and theopportunity to remove even the mostmarginal rights that Israeli Arab work-ers possess. It would reinforce thefeeling of privilege and racist su-premacy that Israeli workers possess.

O’Mahony and Thomas demonstratethat they don’t really understand thenature of Zionism. Zionist settlementbegan in earnest after the First WorldWar under the British Mandate and thealliance between the Zionists andBritish imperialism lasted until 1945.

It is factually incorrect to say that thecore of the Israeli state when it wasfounded consisted of refugees fromEuropean anti-Semitism and the Holo-caust. The latter came to Israel after

its founding. As Lenni Brenner and others have

documented, the Zionists used thesepeople as a battering ram to open thegates of Palestine to Jewish immigra-tion whilst at the same time supportingimmigration controls against Jewishrefugees in the USA and Britain, justas today they oppose Soviet Jews set-tling in any other country bar Israel.

But what has this to do with the na-ture of the Israeli state! Did not thePlymouth Brethren feel oppressedwhen they colonised America? And theAustralian settlers? And what aboutthe pieds noirs in Algeria, amongstwhom there was a far stronger Com-munist Party than ever existed inPalestine and some of whom hadfought against Franco in Spain.

All that this demonstrates is howreprehensible colonialism and Zionismare, in that it creates racists out of themost progressive of people, includingSocialists. And weren’t the Afrikaanersthe first victims of (British) concentra-tion camps?

Instead of an analysis of how Zion-ism created a settler working classwhich never fought for its own inde-pendent class interests, we are told ofa “chronic national antagonism” be-tween Israeli Jewish and Palestinian/Arab workers. Not a hint of whеrе thiscomes frоm пог аnу attempt to differ-entiate between the nationalism of theoppressed and oppressor.

The racism of Israeli workers de-rives from the settler colonial statethey live in. It doesn’t magically appearwhen different peoples come into con-tact. Until the Israeli state is destroyed,the racism and chauvinism of IsraeliJewish workers will remain, indeеd іn-crеаѕе if thеrе іѕ a rеpartitioning, andthey will never go beyond a rudimen-tary economic class consciousness.

The same holds true of the SouthAfrican white working class and theLoyalist working class.

Instead Israeli workers will cling totheir privileges and see their mainenemy as the Palestinians. It is littlewonder that the Israeli working classhas been unable to create its own in-dependent trade unions, still less aParty, and instead is contained withinIsrael’s largest employers’ federationand economic empire, Histadrut.

I don’t accept that a Jewish nationexists in Israel, but even if it did itwould still be an oppressor nation likethe Afrikaaners. It has no right to aseparate portion of territory. What theydo have is the right to live in a demo-cratic secular Palestine and enjoy allthe same religious cultural and individ-ual rights as others.

The question of ‘self-determination’of the Israeli Jews does not arise be-cause they are not an oppressedgroup. They enjoy a high standard ofliving precisely because of the rolethat Israel plays in the Middle East. fi-

nanced but not exploited by the USA. The comparison between Israel and

the British state is thereby false. Israelis a settler colonial state and has anexpansionist and racist dynamic of itsown.

In contributing to this debate wehope that Socialist Organiser does notabandon the fight against Zionism andgo for a muddle-headed. middle of theroad approach that tries to walk atightrope between the oppressor andoppressor.

A socialist unionof the Middle East

Moshe Machover and Jabra Nicola,SO 240, 14.8.85

Moshe Machover, a founder mem-ber of the Israeli socialist organisationMatzpen and currently a member ofthe editorial board of the journal‘Khamsin’, will be speaking on Zionismand Palestine at the Socialist Organ-iser summer school on August 23-261985. As a summary of his views hehas asked us to print the following arti-cle by himself and Abu Sa’id [JabraNicola], originally written in 1969 andadopted as a policy document byMatzpen.

The Middle East is approaching acrossroads. The four great powers areconferring in an attempt to reach anagreed “solution”, which they will thenproceed to impose on the inhabitantsof the region, and which they hope willrestore the stability that was shakenby the June 1967 war and its after-math. Our aim here is to analyse thedangers which wait at this crossroadsand which threaten the future of therevolution in the Middle East.

An important new protagonist hasappeared on the Middle Eastern politi-cal stage: the Palestinians. True, theyhad taken action into their own handsa few years before the June 1967 war,but the real impetus came only afterthat war. The positive factor here isthat Palestinian action has transferreda struggle formerly between govern-ments into a mass struggle.

For nearly twenty years the Pales-tinians had been an object of history.passively awaiting salvation by theArab states in general, or by the “pro-gressive” Arab states, in particularEgypt, under the leadership of AbdelNasser. The 1948 war exposed thebankruptcy of the old middle-class andlandowners’ leadership of the Arab na-tional movement. As a result, a newleadership — petit bourgeois in itsclass nature — came to the forefront;it overthrew the old regime in severalArab countries and scored consider-able successes in the anti-imperialiststruggle. But the June 1967 war re-

49

vealed the limitations of this leader-ship: limitations resulting from its classnature and its nationalist ideology.Among other things it proved its totalinability to solve the Palestinian ques-tion. Despite the Soviet support,Nasserism and Ba’athism are in astate of political bankruptcy.

Against this background the emer-gence of Palestinian mass strugglecan be understood. As mentionedabove, the emergence of this new fac-tor is a positive phenomenon. But onecan also discern a negative and dan-gerous trend in it. Some sections ofthe Palestinian movement haveadopted the view that the Palestinianmasses can and should “go it alone”and solve their problem themselves, inseparation from the all-Arab revolu-tionary struggle. Those who hold thisview present the problem solely as aPalestinian one, which can be solvedin a purely Palestinian frame work.The stick has not been straightened, itis being bent in the opposite direction.

The former passive attitude, hopingfor salvation by others, risks being re-placed by a narrow localist attitude.The only help which is demanded fromthe rest of the Arab world is aid to thePalestinian front itself. This attitudedisregards the connection between thePalestinian struggle and the strugglein the Arab world as a whole, and ittherefore advocates non-interventionin the internal affairs of the Arabstates. The Arab governments encour-age this attitude. The very mobilisationof the masses in Arab countries —even if only for the Palestinian cause— threatens the existing regimes.These régimes therefore wish to iso-late the Palestinian struggle and toleave it entirely to the Palestinians.

The Arab governments both reac-tionary and progressive are trying tobuy stability for their regimes with aransom to the Palestinian organisa-tions. Moreover, the governmentswant to use this financial aid to directthe Palestinian struggle along theirown politically convenient lines, to ma-nipulate it and to utilise it merely as ameans of bargaining for a political so-lution acceptable to them. The Egypt-ian, Syrian and Jordaniangovernments are mainly interested inregaining the territories they lost in theJune war (and in thereby regainingtheir lost prestige and consolidatingtheir authority), while the Palestiniancause is, from their point of view, onlysecondary, a means rather than anaim. This is what the Arab govern-ments mean when they call for “liqui-dating the results of aggression.”

Clearly, if the Arab governmentsachieve their aim (e.g. through the fourgreat powers), they will be prepared todesert the Palestinians, and even totake an active part in political andphysical liquidation of the Palestinianmovement. The four powers will prob-

ably insist on this as a condition for apolitical settlement. As the conse-quences of the 1948 war provided thebackground for the downfall of the oldnational leadership in the Arab worldand for the emergence of the petitbourgeois leadership — so the conse-quences of the 1967 war have set thestage for replacing this leadership by anew one, representing a new class.

Since the propertied classes provedunable to solve the social, political andnational problems of the Arab world, ithas become apparent that only the ex-ploited masses themselves, under aworking class leadership, are capableof solving their historic problems. Butthe existence of suitable objective con-ditions does not mean that this newleadership will automatically emerge.For this further requires a subjectivefactor — a political organisation with arevolutionary theory and a revolution-ary all-Arab strategy.

However, it is precisely this need forpolitical work and for an all Arab revo-lutionary strategy that is explicitly re-jected by some important sectors ofthe Palestinian movement. They advo-cate the confinement of the struggle tothe Palestinian front alone and its limi-tation to armed operations without apolitical programme. The balance offorces, as well as theoretical consider-ations, shows the impossibility of solv-ing the Palestinian problem in aseparate Palestinian framework.

What is the balance of forces? ThePalestinian people are waging a battlewhere they confront Zionism, which issupported by imperialism; from therear they are menaced by the Arabregimes and by Arab reaction, whichare also supported by imperialism. Aslong as imperialism has a real stake inthe Middle East, it is unlikely to with-draw its support for Zionism, its naturalally, and to permit its overthrow, it willdefend it to the last drop of Arab oil.On the other hand, imperialist interestsand domination in the region cannotbe shattered without overthrowingthose junior partners of imperialist ex-ploitation that constitute ruling classesin the Arab world. The conclusion thatmust be drawn is not that the Palestin-ian people should wait quietly until im-perialist domination is overthrownthroughout the region, but that theyshould rally to the wider struggle forpolitical and social liberation of theMiddle East as a whole.

Just as it is impossible in practice todefeat Zionism without overthrowingimperialist domination throughout theregion, so it is theoretically absurd topresent formulas for solving the prob-lem within the territory of Palestinealone: if one speaks about the situa-tion existing before the overthrow ofimperialism in the entire region — thenthe de-Zionisation of Israel and the es-tablishment of a Palestine without Zi-onism is quite impossible. And if one

thinks of the situation after the over-throw of imperialism — then what isthe sense of a formula which refers toPalestine alone, without taking into ac-count the necessary changes whichwould take place in the whole region?

In the last analysis, the formula thatrestricts itself to Palestine alone, de-spite its revolutionary appearance, de-rives from a reformist outlook whichseeks partial solutions within theframework of conditions now existingin the region. In fact, partial solutionscan only be implemented through acompromise with imperialism and Zi-onism. In addition, the solutions whichare limited to Palestine, cannot grap-ple successfully with the national prob-lem. The formulas which speak of anindependent democratic Palestine allof whose citizens, irrespective of reli-gion, will enjoy equal rights have twodefects.

On the one hand, they imply the cre-ation of a new separate Palestiniannation whose members do not differfrom one another nationally but onlyreligiously. The authors of these for-mulas are themselves aware of theabsurdity of separating the Palestini-ans from the general Arab nation; theytherefore hasten to add that “Palestineis part of the Arab fatherland”. Thislooks suspiciously like the old sloganof “Arab Palestine” dressed up in new— and more nebulous — garb.

This attitude results from a misap-prehension of the national problem ingeneral and of Israeli reality in particu-lar. It is true that the Jews living in Is-rael came to settle here under theinfluence and leadership of Zionism,and that they — as a community —have oppressed and are still oppress-ing Palestinians. But it is impossible toignore the patent fact that today thiscommunity constitutes a national entity(which differs from world Jewry on theone hand and from the PalestinianArabs on the other), having its ownlanguage and economic and culturallife. In order to solve the Palestinianproblem, this community (or at least asubstantial part of it) must be severedfrom the influence of Zionism and at-tracted to a joint struggle with the rev-olutionary forces in the Arab world forthe national and social liberation of theentire region. But clearly this can notbe achieved by ignoring the existenceof that community as a national entity.

This problem cannot be solvedwithin the narrow framework of Pales-tine. If one is thinking of a democraticstate pure and simple — “one man,one vote” — then in fact it will be astate with a Jewish majority, and thereis nothing to prevent it from being likethe present state of Israel, but havinga larger territory and a bigger Arab mi-nority. If one is thinking of a binationalstate, then it will be an artificial cre-ation separating the Palestinian Arabsfrom the rest of the Arab world and

50

from the revolutionary process takingplace in it. Besides, in a binationalstructure there are no inherent guaran-tees that one of the two nationalgroups will not dominate the other. Allthis refers to proposed solutions whichcan be considered feasible within thepresent condition of the Middle East,i.e., which do not presuppose a com-prehensive social revolution.

On the other hand, if one considersthe situation which will exist after a vic-torious social revolution, after imperial-ism and Zionism are defeated, thenthere will not exist a separate Palestin-ian problem, but rather the problem ofthe various national groups livingwithin the Arab world (Kurds, IsraeliJews, South Sudanese). This problemcan be solved only by granting thesenationalities the right to self-determi-nation. Of course, recognition of therights to self determination does notmean encouragement to separation;on the contrary, it provides the correctbasis for integration without compul-sion or repression. Moreover, self-de-termination in the Middle East isimpossible so long as that region isunder direct or indirect imperialistdomination, but is possible only after itis liberated from all imperialist influ-ence, i.e., after a victorious socialistrevolution. In particular, this situationpresupposes the overthrow of Zion-ism.

To sum up: The existing objectiveconditions enable and require the cre-ation of a revolutionary mass move-ment, led by the working class, guidedby a revolutionary Marxist theory andacting according to an all-Arab strat-egy, which will recognise the nationalrights of the non-Arab nationalities liv-ing within the Arab world and provecapable of attracting them to a com-mon struggle for the national and so-cial liberation of the entire region.

What is the“democraticsecular state”?

SO 241, 21.8.85

Socialist Organiser supporters aredebating whether we should continueto back the mainstream Palestinianslogan of a democratic secular Pales-tine, or instead adopt a policy whichwould allow for the existence of amodified Israeli-Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state or a widerArab federation. These two state-ments, from Fatah and from the moreleft-wing DFLP, summarise what thePalestinian movement meant by ademocratic secular state when itadopted the slogan in 1969. [Fatahmoved to back “two states” in 1988,and the DFLP floated a version of that

idea in 1974].Pre-1948 Palestine — as defined

during the British mandate — is theterritory to be liberated, the territorywhere the democratic progressivestate is to be created.

The liberated Palestine will be partof the Arab homeland and will not beanother alien state within it. The even-tual unity of Palestine with other Arabstates will make boundary problemsless relevant and will end the artificial-ity of the present status of Israel, andpossibly that of Jordan as well.

The new country will be anti-imperi-alist and will join the ranks of progres-sive revolutionary countries.Therefore, it will have to cut the pres-ent life-line links with and the total de-pendence on the United States.Therefore, integration within the areawill be the foremost prerequisite.

It should be quite obvious at thisstage that the new Palestine dis-cussed here is not the occupied WestBank or the Gaza Strip or both. Thearea of the homeland of the Palestini-ans usurped and colonised in 1948 isno less dear or important than the partoccupied in 1967.

Besides the very existence of theracist oppressor state of Israel, basedon the expulsion and forced exile ofpart of its citizens, even from one tinyPalestinian village, is unacceptable tothe revolution. Any arrangement ac-commodating the aggressor settler-state is unacceptable and temporary.

All the Jews, Moslems and Chris-tians living in Palestine or forcibly ex-iled from it will have the right toPalestinian citizenship. This guaran-tees the right of all exiled Palestiniansto return to their land whether theyhave been born in Palestine or in exileand regardless of their present nation-ality.

Equally, this means that all JewishPalestinians — the present Israelis —have the same right provided, ofcourse, that they reject Zionist racistchauvinism and fully agree to live asPalestinians in the new Palestine.

The revolution therefore rejects thesupposition that only Jews who lived inPalestine prior to 1948 or prior to 1914and their descendants are acceptable.

After all, [Moshe] Dayan [minister ofdefence and [Yigail] Allon [deputy pre-mier| were born in Palestine before1948 and they with many of their col-leagues are diehard racist Zionistswho obviously do not quality for aPalestinian status, whereas newcom-ers may be anti-Zionists and work ar-dently for the creation of a newPalestine.

In the interview referred to earlier[published in al-Taleea, June 1969],Abu Iyad, one of the officials of Fatah,asserted that not only progressiveanti-Zionist Jews but even presentZionists willing to abandon their racistideology will be welcome as Palestin-

ian citizens. It is the belief of the revolution that

the majority of the present Israeli Jewswill change their attitudes and will sub-scribe to the new Palestine, especiallyafter the oligarchic state machinery.economy, and military establishmentare destroyed.

The call for a nonsectarian Palestineshould not be confused with a multi-re-ligious, a poly-religious or a binationalstate. The new Palestine is not to bebuilt around three state religions ortwo nationalities. Rather, it will simplyprovide freedom from religious oppres-sion of any group by another and free-dom to practice religion withoutdiscrimination. No rigidification of reli-gious lines is desired by the revolution.No hard and fast religious distributionof political offices and other importantjobs is envisioned.

Furthermore, religious and ethniclines clearly cross in Palestine so as tomake the term binational and theArab-Jewish dichotomy meaning less,or at best quite dubious.

The majority of Jews in Palestinetoday are Arab Jews — euphemisti-cally called Oriental Jews by the Zion-ists. Therefore, Palestine combinesJewish, Christian and Moslem Arabsas well as non-Arab Jews (WesternJews).

The DFLP’sversion

SO 241, 21.8.85

The struggle for a popular demo-cratic solution for the Palestinian andIsraeli questions to be based on theliquidation of the Zionist entity exem-plified in all the government establish-ments (army. administration, police)and all the chauvinistic Zionist politicaland labour organisations. The estab-lishment of a people’s democraticPalestine state in which the Arabs and(Israeli) Jews will live without any dis-crimination whatsoever, a state whichis against all forms of class and na-tional subjugation, and which givesboth Arabs and (Israeli) Jews the rightto develop their national culture.

In accordance with the link of historyand destiny that exists between Pales-tine and the Arab nation, the people’sdemocratic state of Palestine will bean integral part of an Arab federalstate in this area. The Palestinian statewill have a democratic content hostileto colonialism, imperialism and Araband Palestinian reaction.

The democratic solution put forwardis capable of liberating the Arab andthe Jew from all forms of chauvinistic(racist) culture — liberating the Arabfrom reactionary culture, and the Jewfrom Zionist culture.

The Democratic Front for the Libera-51

tion of Palestine calls on all the Israeliand Jewish elements and groupingswho are hostile to Zionism and imperi-alism to support the above solutionand participate in the common Pales-tinian and people’s armed struggle forthe implementation of this democraticrevolutionary solution.

Unite Israel andPalestine

Arthur Bough, SO 241, 21.8.85

Some comrades have argued thatthe “democratic secular state” cannotconceivably be made a reality. As analternative they have put forward theidea of establishing a separate Pales-tinian State in the West Bank andGaza. (and may be some parts ofpresent-day Israel), and a struggle fora modified Israel in which the rights ofthe remaining Palestinians would beprotected.

There are, however, more problemswith the two state theory than with theDemocratic Secular State. Firstly, theestablishment of a separate statewould be opposed not only by the Is-raeli State, but by the Jewish workingclass.

A basic right of a Palestinian Statewould be the right of a standing army.Imagine what fears Jewish workerswould have about a Palestinian Stateon their doorstep which would nolonger be restricted to launching guer-rilla attacks like the PLO so far, butwould be tooled up with all the militaryhardware of a fully fledged state.

Imagine their fears being heightenedby the fact that some 700,000 Pales-tinians would still remain trapped in-side Israel, still denied democraticrights, and that such a Palestinianstate could hardly be expected tostand idly by when those Palestinianscalled on it for assistance.

In short whilst in principle the Pales-tinians could fight for the establish-ment of a separate Palestinian state,in practice there is no more chance ofit being achievable than the Demo-cratic Secular State. It also lacks agrip on reality.

On both sides would be capitaliststates within which would be trappednational minorities. In Israel the racist,Zionist State would remain unchal-lenged, now with a large section of itsmost radicalised population, the Pales-tinian workers, hived off. With a newhostile neighbour on its border theZionist State would be even more ableto avert class antagonism by rallyingJewish workers around the flag. Meanwhile. the link between Israel and USimperialism would probably bestrengthened.

On the other side of the borderwould be a feeble bourgeois Palestin-

ian State, economically dependent onneighbouring Arab capital. Such astate could offer nothing to the Pales-tinian workers, and even less for theminority Jewish population trappedwithin its borders.

We have a duty to advocate a pro-gramme which is aimed not just at thePalestinian workers, but at the Jewishworkers.

The first step in winning Jewishworkers away from the Israeli state isto remove their fears. A basic positionof any Marxist should be to say thatwe are opposed to any attack on Israelby the Arab States, and that we areopposed to the military campaign ofthe PLO other than where it is a matterof it acting purely as a self-defencesquad against attacks by the IsraeliState.

The military campaign of the PLO,like the military campaign of the IRA,is an alternative to political struggle,not an integral and subordinate part ofit. It is a typical petit bourgeois strat-egy.

If the Palestinian workers were toapproach Jewish workers on the clearbasis that they opposed that militarycampaign it would open up a powerfulopportunity for political dialogue. ThePeace Now campaign showed that Is-raeli workers do not like being in aconstant state of war.

That political solution has to be onethat is consistently democratic, thatprovides for the rights of both nationsto exercise considerable self-govern-ment in those areas where they consti-tute a majority, and which at the sametime protects the rights of minorities. Itrequires the establishment of a federalUnited States of Israel and Palestine.

The Israeli state would obviously op-pose such a solution, and so too,probably, would the bourgeois leadersof the PLO. Our job as Marxists, how-ever, is to mobilise the workers of bothnations against their respective bour-geoisies in the political struggle for thedemand.

It is an algebraic demand — mobilis-ing the workers without limiting in ad-vance the scope and aims of thatmobilisation. The demand for a UnitedStates of Israel and Palestine wouldhave to be supplemented by other de-mands.

A Democratic Programme wouldhave to be elaborated which wouldprotect the rights of minorities. In addi-tion we would need to raise varioustransitional demands such as the slid-ing scale of wages, disbandment ofthe standing army and establishmentof workers’ militias, a crash housebuilding programme financed by amassive reduction in the militarybudget, so that the Palestinianrefugees could be rehoused, etc.

Put in this way the Jewish workerscould see that they did not need amassive military machine, that their liv-

ing standards could be improved ifthey were to come to a political settle-ment with the Palestinians, and thattheir potential for winning such im-provements would be considerablystrengthened if the Palestinian workingclass was fighting alongside them.

The demand for a United States ofIsrael and Palestine, therefore, by fo-cusing on the Palestinian and Jewishworkers as the only force capable ofresolving the problem, establishes thebasis for deepening the struggle intoone for socialism in accordance withthe theory of Permanent Revolution. Incontrast. both the Democratic SecularState and Two State solutions mirrorthe Stalinist stages theory. Both seethe necessity of a first stage wherebya bourgeois democratic solution to thenational question is achieved before“normal” class struggle can take place.

Israel can’t bereformed

Lenni Brenner, SO 252, 14.11.85

Socialist Organiser has been carry-ing a discussion on socialist pro-grammes for the Israel/Palestineconflict. Here we print a contributionfrom Lenni Brenner, author of the re-cent books “The Iron Wall” and “Zion-ism in the Age of the Dictators”.

The Palestine question is of the pro-foundest importance for revolutionaryinternationalists. “Israel” and a “demo-cratic secular Palestine” are notsquares on an American Monopolygame board. Human equality, legal,economic and social, is at stake. Theslightest accommodation to Jewishchauvinism in Palestine will, inex-orably, lead to similar capitulations inprinciple to communalism in otherparts of the world.

Classic Zionism was unabashedlycolonialist, and never concealed itsaim of converting of Arab land into aJewish state. However, lacking thepower to seize Palestine on its own,Zionism perforce developed under theoften grudging patronage of British im-perialism, until it was able to take ad-vantage of the unusual conjuncture ofpolitical factors in the post-World War2 period to establish a racist regime.The near-Apartheid system in the terri-tories conquered in 1967 is an exten-sion of, rather than a departure from,the herrenvolk order created in 1948.

Can Israel be reformed? No. TheZionist state also discriminates againstJews. Jewish women cannot initiate adivorce, testify in such cases, or sit onthe religious judicial benches, whichhave exclusive jurisdiction over allJews in marriage matters. Nor canHarry Cohen — Hebrew for priest —marry a convert or divorcee.

52

For yea, verily, the Lord will yet re-store His Temple in His holy city, andHarry, today a butcher-baker-candle-stickmaker, would be defiled by sexualcontact with such unclean creaturesand couldn’t perform the ritual animalsacrifices on that grand and gloriousday. Their children would be bastards,and Zionism’s medievalist rabbis willnot marry them, year unto the tenthgeneration.

Anyone who expects a movementso fanatic in its official discriminationagainst Jews to ever grant legal equal-ity to any mere Arab is a certified idiot.

There are those who would concedethat Zionism is both sectarian andracist, but see an Israeli nation inplace, and conclude that it has a rightto its own state, sans racism.

To be sure, Zionism has created aHebrew nation, and that nation, aswith the Afrikaners, is entitled to lin-guistic equality. However no right ofself-determination is acquired intoday’s world by conquering anothernation, denying it self-determination inany part of its land, dispersing much ofit. Savagely discriminating against thenational development of the remainingnatives, and then bringing in middleclass Jewish bible-bashers fromBrooklyn to usurp their remaining pat-rimony.

The Palestinian refugees were drivefrom their homes by rabid Irgun andStern Gang murderers at Deir Yassin,and Haganah war criminals at Lydda.They and their descendants are fullyentitled to return to every inch of theirhomeland and live there as equals.

Further: equality means that Arabsfrom the surrounding region have asmuch right to immigrate into the coun-try as any Jew. But a Jewish state,Zionist or otherwise, would only havelegitimacy for democrats if Jews are amajority within its borders. Eventuallythose borders would have only onepurpose: to keep the Arabs from de-mographically annexing the country,which is exactly the situation today.

And in fact a successful revolution-ary upsurge in the Arab world, which isan historic inevitability, would find itselfin instant conflict with such a racistcrusader castle, which cuts the territo-rial bridge between the Asian andAfrican Arabs, and which is eternallylinked to imperialism, because such astate, like the imperialists, will alwaysbe the sworn foe of Arab unity.

Those who call for a two state solu-tion do so as a concession to the prej-udices of the Jewish population. Theyforget that it is the oppressed whomake revolutions, and that only a por-tion of the dominant caste in such stri-ated societies as Israel, Ulster orSouth Africa will ever come over to theside of the oppressed, regardless ofwhat assurances are given to them.

What demoralises the oppressed isalways to be rejected and it is obliga-

tory to stress that recognition of Israelcan never be a Palestinian rallying cry.

The formula for success is an al-liance of the majority of the Palestini-ans and the progressive Jewishminority. Without winning over that mi-nority the Palestinians can never —repeat — never win.

But it must be clear to that minoritythat they must come over to the Pales-tinians and not the other way round.That minority must grasp that it is soci-ologically impossible for them toemancipate themselves from the sec-tarian and capitalist nature of Israelisociety without that alliance.

There can be mo illusions: Israelisociety is teeming with fanatics. TheHatikah and Florentine Oriental Jewishslums of Tel Aviv are the Shankill Roadof Israel. Only a minority can ever bewon over to the revolution from suchreactionary po’ white trash communi-ties. The doctrine of equality is univer-sal, but it is never universally received.Similarly, only a minority of the Ashke-nazi intelligentsia — as with any intelli-gentsia — can be won over. The bulkof the educated will stay loyal to thesystem that gives them privileges, andthe liberals amongst them will stayloyal to the Labour Party as the lesserevil.

About 20% of the Jews are religiousfanatics and cannot be won over, ex-cept in the rarest cases. Even amongthe women, only a minority of progres-sive women can envision anythingmore enlightened than a Labour Align-ment government, sans the Likud.That is to say that most liberal Zionistwomen are prepared to accept a gov-ernment of the criminal party that tookaway the right of civil marriage whichthe state had inherited from the BritishMandatory.

An alliance with the Palestinians, the17% Arab minority of Israel’s citizens,the Palestinians of the territories con-quered in 1967, and the progressivesof the surrounding Arab states, on aprogramme of a democratic secularsocialist Palestine in a democratic sec-ular socialist Arab Middle East, is theonly way forward for the Jewish left.

But, in their July 3 Socialist Organ-iser article. John O’Mahony and MartinThomas maintain that the implicationsof the slogan, ‘democratic secularPalestine’ are: full conquest of the Is-raeli Jews by the Arab states.

Which Arab states are they talkingabout? Egypt? Lebanon? Jordan? Mo-rocco? In fact only a few Arab statescan be thought of as resisting Zionism.

Libya, for one does not accept theslogan, it calls for an Arab Palestine,but it has no following among thePalestinians. Syria backs the Amalgangs against the Palestinians, and bynow is opposed to Israel only in so faras it holds the Golan Heights. Algeriais nominally opposed to Zionism butthe struggle is hardly a priority for the

bureaucrats there. And South Yemen says nothing that

could be thought of as seeking a chau-vinist solution.

Contrary to the two writers, intoday’s Arab world, the democraticsecular notion is profoundly revolution-ary in its implications, and an indict-ment of the bankrupt regimes. Withinthe PLO, we have seen the same phe-nomena.

The Arafat clique long ago aban-doned the notion of a unitary Pales-tine, and for over a decade its entirediplomatic effort was on behalf of pre-cisely the sort of mini-state SocialistOrganiser’s two writers so cherish.Now the full implications of Arafat’s re-treat on principle are clear: he is com-pletely demoralised and hopes fornothing more than that Reagan willpressure Israel into agreeing to a ban-tustan firmly attached to the Jordanianpolice state.

There is no more communally op-pressed group on this earth than theblacks of South Africa, yet the ANC isopen to whites, unlike the PLO, oreven its most left element, the PopularFront for the Liberation of Palestine,for all its Leninist pretensions. Every-one who is intimately involved with thePalestine question knows that the en-tire PLO is ideologically stagnant, andit can be said with certainty that it, oreven its left wing, will remain stultifieduntil they transcend their reflex nation-alism, as have the black comradeswithin the ANC. All know this — exceptthe two writers.

For they, in their own backwardness,have done nothing more than reinforcethe dead end nationalism of both theJewish and Arab left in Palestine. In sodoing they have committed a gravedisservice to them both, and notmerely to them but to the internationalrevolution. For every word they wroteagainst democracy and secularismand bi-nationalism was an argumentagainst Marxism.

We are for democracy or we are fornothing. We are for secularism or weare for nothing. We are for the unity ofthe workers of both nationalities, andall nationalities, on the basis of an un-compromising solidarity with the op-pressed — and no one else — or weare for nothing.

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Lenni Brenner’sfakeinternationalism

Sean Matgamna (first published inthe first pamphlet edition of Arabs,Jews, and Socialism)

The welter of empty phrase-monger-ing and senseless ultra-left sloganisingin which Brenner’s Socialist Organisercontribution indulges has so little gripon reality that you are naturally in-clined just to shrug and get on with thereal discussion of the real issues.

To unravel the tangled skein ofweasel words, good aspirations, slo-gans, double standards and emptyphrases promises to be both tediousand difficult, and also pointless. Yet itisn’t pointless.

Brenner’s two books on Zionism,and Jimmy Allen’s use of Brenner’swork as part of the basis for his notori-ous play Perdition have given Brennera certain prominence in the discussionon the Middle East. And his incoherentsloganising in Socialist Organiserdoes, if you look at it closely, show upthe school of thought of which he is sovociferous a representative.

The ideals of internationalism areessential to socialism. It must there-fore go without saying that socialistsare against Israeli nationalism, andthat we condemn Jewish chauvinismand all its manifestations. So far, sogood.

But Israeli nationalism does not existin a vacuum. It is part of a network ofinterlocking nationalisms and nationalantagonisms. It is confronted by Arabnationalist chauvinisms which havetaken as their goal the destruction ofthe Israeli state and nation. Any fairaccount of Israeli nationalism wouldtherefore put it in its framework. Thedemurrals and condemnations wouldtake account of the counter-nation-alisms and condemn them also.

Not so with Brenner. He is scathingabout the PLO. But where he con-cludes from his strictures on Israeli na-tionalism and chauvinism thattherefore the national organism itselfdoes not have a right to exist, hemakes no such conclusions for Arab orPalestinian nationalism.

The “internationalism” is unequaland false because in practice the con-demnation of Israel that flows for Bren-ner from his internationalist credo isabsolute and mortal: the condemna-tion of the Arabs is a moral strictureonly, and a series of admonitions.Brenner does not make his support forthe Arab (or Palestinian) side condi-tional on them not being nationalists orchauvinists. They are the legitimatenation. The Jewish is the illegitimatenation. One lot of nationalists have

positive rights, the other the right onlyto surrender and submit.

The PLO’s old commitment to a“secular, democratic Palestine” is hereused as a mechanism for having dou-ble standards. Brenner accepts thedisguise of one of the competing na-tionalisms, a disguised and mystifiedversion of its chauvinist demands. Hisinternationalism is thereafter a club tobludgeon a way clear for Arab nation-alism.

Human equality, legal, economicand social, is at stake”, writes Brenner.“The slightest accommodation to Jew-ish chauvinism in Palestine will, inex-orably. lead to similar capitulations inprinciple to communalism in otherparts of the world”.

“Human equality” does not exist be-tween states and peoples. We want itto. How do we proceed? By advocat-ing that all state boundaries and citi-zenships be dissolved, and all nationsand nation-states abolished? No: weadvocate the right or nations to self-determination, hoping on that basis tomake the dissolution of national fron-tiers possible after a long period ofreconciliation.

If all we can do in the face of the ex-isting nationalisms and chauvinisms,with their deep material roots, is topreach internationalism and call forpeople to rise above national con-cerns, then our struggle is hopeless. Infact we do not pretend that it is possi-ble to dissolve national distinctions im-mediately. or even after a socialistrevolution. On the contrary. Why didthe Bolsheviks have a programme onthe national question for the USSRafter the 1917 Revolution?

We have both a democratic and asocialist programme. We do not pre-tend rationalistically that national iden-tity is a misunderstanding that caneasily be dispelled. We ignore neithernational oppression nor the fears of it.

Neither does Brenner. But he has adouble approach. Towards the IsraeliJews he is a dogmatic, rationalistic in-ternationalist, offering internationalismor nothing. Towards the Arabs he losesthis rigidity, and becomes an enthusi-astic advocate of the rights of op-pressed nations. In effect hisprogramme is Arab nationalism.

In Brenner’s historical writings, thetrick is to blame the Zionist movement— presented as some sort of diaboli-cal power outside the ordinary Jewishpeople — for the Holocaust, as if theZionists in Europe did not go to thedeath camps too. The argumentranges from the possibly reasonablepoint that if the Zionist movement haddevoted all its energies to opening thedoors of the USA, then that mighthave made a difference, all the way tothe libellous nonsense that “the Zion-ists” would rather have the EuropeanJews dead than have them go any-where but Palestine.

The latter claim is backed up bygrossly unfair use of quotations like a1938 comment by Ben Gurion that hu-manitarian work for refugees musttake second place to building the Jew-ish state in Palestine.

Ben Gurion was not talking aboutthe Holocaust. He was a hard-headedpolitician convinced that there wasonly one real solution to antisemitism,and fighting for that. It is possible todisagree with Ben Gurion’s objective,or condemn it outright — but you haveto tell the most scandalous lies to pre-tend that Ben Gurion was condoningthe Holocaust in advance.

In 1938 the Zionist leaders still sawevents under Hitler in the framework ofthe worst previous Judaeophobia.They probably could not imagine whatwas to come, and in any case theycan’t possibly have know what was tocome. Which Zionists would, with clearforeknowledge, have chosen thePalestine colony at the cost of six mil-lion dead? None of them did, andnone of them saw the issue that way.

Brenner is effectively saying ofHitler’s victims: “It was their fault, or atleast the fault of their leaders. And,look, the Zionists (this time the entireIsraeli Jewish nation, not only theZionist leaders) are still pursuing theperverse racist doctrine which helpedbring the Nazi catastrophe down ontheir heads. This can only be broughtto a proper end if they consent to dis-solve the Israeli Jewish nation or, fail-ing that, they are overwhelmed”.

This political programme, which im-plies the bloody subjugation or de-struction of an entire nation, is dressedup and presented in terms of anti-na-tionalism and anti-racism.

Instead of arguing for Jewish-Arabworking-class unity on the basis of anagreed democratic solution. Brennerrelies on ultra-left fantasies, in whichhe talks vaguely about “permanentrevolution” and an Arab conquest of Is-rael merging into or triggering the so-cialist revolution. While in fact what isproposed is just the conquest and de-struction of one nation by another.

One of the things that makes thismost disgusting is the way Brennerand others sift through some or themost terrible events of which we havedetailed records looking for cheap po-litical dirt. Did Zionist leader ChaimWeizmann in the late ‘30s ruminateout loud about the probable fate of theolder layers of the Jewish populationwho remained in Germany and had lit-tle prospect of being able to make anew beginning in Palestine, sayingthat they would “perish like dust”? Itseems he did.

Well then, grab hold of it and pres-ent it as if he was talking with full fore-knowledge of the fate of the GermanJews, and blame the kith and kin ofthe victims for the horrors!

None of this is serious history, and it54

is indecent politics. It is either dirtypropaganda, or else it is hysterical“factionalism” against Brenner’s Zion-ist opponents within the Jewish com-munity.

The memory of Hitler’s massacre ofthe Jews acted for a long time as abulwark against antisemitism, forcing itunderground. Even today, in most cir-cles, it dare not bear its own name. Itdisguises itself.

The attempt to put part of the blamefor the Holocaust on Jews does morethan attempt to discredit Israel and tobuttress the Arab chauvinist case thatit has no right to exist in any form. Itbreaks down that bulwark against anti-semitism.

On the left, Zionist complicity in theHolocaust is now increasingly an arti-cle of faith in a movement which hasadopted an attitude of comprehensivehostility to Jews, in Israel and outsideit, who will not “convert” to anti-Zion-ism and adopt the demand that Israelcease to exist.

There are striking parallels. “Holo-caust Revisionists” of history say thatthe Jews didn’t die in Hitler’s deathfactories at all. The “blame Zionists”revisionists say: yes, they did, but theydied partly because of the machina-tions of their leaders whose succes-sors now rule Israel.

A candid antisemitism, indifferent tothe massacre, might say: the Jews gotwhat they deserved. The left “anti-Zionists” say: they got what their lead-ers decreed, or at least connived at.The different versions are, of course,not identical, least of all in their mo-tives; but the parallel exists independ-ently of anyone’s good intentions.

Brenner’s basic thesis presents theissues in terms of a world-wide Jewishconspiracy (“Zionism”) — with the as-sumption that even when the Jewswere being massacred in Central andEastern Europe, the world-wide Zionistmovement was still powerful enoughto decide whether or not every otherdoor would be closed to the Jews.

Logically you cannot separate this“Zionist conspiracy” view of realityfrom the Jewish conspiracy thesis ofHitler and the Protocols of the Eldersof Zion. And many people who believeBrenner will not have the inhibitions ofhis Trotskyist and leftist dogmatism,and will make their own way “back”.

That is one basic reason why thewhole left “anti-Zionist” campaignagainst the Jews — yes, against theJews — is part of a cultural fermentthat can lead to full-fledged persecu-tion of Jews.

Summer schooldebate

SO 242, 28.8.85

Moshe Machover, a founder mem-ber of Matzpen and now an editor ofthe journal Khamsin, spoke in the de-bate on Palestine. He was againstboth the ‘democratic secular Palestine’and ‘two state’ formulas.

‘Democratic secular Palestine’ as animmediate or short term proposal issheer fantasy. Moreover, it is not quitewhat it appears. The term secular im-plies a definition of the people involvedas three religious groups (Christian,Muslim, Jewish), and thus denies thenational identity of the Israeli Jewish orHebrew nation.

In the long term, in the context of asocialist revolution in the whole region,the proposal for ‘democratic secularPalestine’ is pointless: for what reasonshould we insist on the territory ofPalestine being a single and separatepolitical unit in that context?

‘Two states’ could be a short-termproposal. But both states would be un-viable fragments. Socialists cannot ad-vocate this, even if we recognise thatIsraeli withdrawal from the West Bankand Gaza, and creation of a Palestin-ian state there, might ease the situa-tion slightly.

We should have two slogans, Ma-chover concluded: a socialist, Arabfederation, with the right of self-inter-nal for non-Arab minorities like the He-brew nation; and, immediately, theright of self-determination for thePalestinians in those areas where theyare a majority.

Brice Robinson argued for a unitarydemocratic Palestine. He acceptedmuch of what Machover had saidagainst the standard formula of a ‘de-mocratic secular Palestine’; but ar-gued that, given the intermeshing ofthe two peoples, Israeli-Jewish andPalestinian Arab, no partition couldyield justice. A democratic settlementwould be possible only in a singlestate giving rights to both nations.

John O’Mahony agreed with the gistof what Machover had said, but ar-gued that we must guard against put-ting off answers to national conflictsuntil after the socialist revolution. A so-cialist revolution can be made only bythe working class; therefore any pro-gramme for socialist revolution in theMiddle East must include proposalswhich can unite Arab and Jewishworkers before the revolution.

Tony Greenstein of the LabourMovement Campaign for Palestinesaid that O’Mahony’s argument was“left Zionist”. “The Israeli Jews are anoppressor community, like the SouthAfrican whites or the settlers in colo-nial Algeria. There can be no solution

until that colonialist presence is re-moved”. That means not driving outthe Jews but smashing the Zioniststate and creating a democratic secu-lar Palestine. It is possible onlythrough a socialist revolution in thewhole region.

Tom Rigby replied that Greenstein’smethod was similar to that of Militant:“socialism is the only answer”. Exceptthat Greenstein uses the formula “de-mocratic secular Palestine” in place of“socialism”, explaining as an answer toobjections that the two are in practicethe same.

Moshe Machover also spoke in aworkshop on Zionism, and DaveRosenberg of the Jewish SocialistsGroup did a workshop on anti-semitism.

Compromise forcoexistence

Avraham Shomroni, SO 243,12.9.85

Avraham Shomroni, UK representa-tive of Mapam, an Israeli SocialistZionist party, replies to Tony Green-stein’s article in a recent issue of So-cialist Organiser.

The discussion in Socialist Organ-iser has shown a welcome and helpfulrealisation that the problem of thePalestinians and Israel can be solvedonly by an awareness of the rights andneeds of both contenders. Indeed,only if British socialists maintain aneven-handed attitude can they play aconstructive role in helping the sidesto come together.

It is all the more sad therefore to seein your pages also the oft rehearsedoutpourings of Tony Greenstein callingfor the destruction of Israel with thecomplete denial of Jewish nationalrights (Socialist Organiser, 7 August).

None are as blind as those who willnot see, but for the genuinely-con-cerned, some points are worth restat-ing.

In complete contradiction to whatTony Greenstein writes, Mapam’s posi-tion in regard to the Palestinian ques-tion has its roots in the long-held viewthat the historic Land of Israel is thecommon homeland of two peoples —the Jewish people returning and thePalestinian Arabs living there.

As socialists, in the 30s the hopewas cherished that there might be co-operation with the Arab working classover the heads of their feudal rulers,but of course national solidarity alwaysprevailed. Today, Mapam fully recog-nises the rights of the Palestinians topolitical, national sovereignty and inthe wake of a peace agreement withJordan and the Palestinians, thePalestinians themselves should decidewhether they want an independent

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state, federation with Jordan, a theoc-racy, monarchy or what-have-you.

For Tony Greenstein to advocate aconcrete solution on their behalfsmacks of arrogance.

National liberation movements are,by definition, concerned about solvingthe problems of their own peoples in agiven historical context. As the na-tional liberation movement of the Jew-ish people, the Zionist movement isconcerned with the Jewish problem,and Israel was not chosen arbitrarilyby spinning a globe and blindly stick-ing in a pin.

Similarly, the national liberationmovement of the Palestinians is not,primarily, worried about the needs ofthe Eskimos, Red Indians or Corsi-cans. This implies neither indifferencenor opposition and has nothing what-soever to do with racism.

The antagonism of the Jews andPalestinians is rooted in the fact thatfor close on a century they have beencompeting for the same plot of landwith both sides having been oppressorand oppressed. On this it is worthquoting the Jewish philosopher MartinBuber, who said that when two justcauses meet there are two possibleoutcomes — tragedy or compromise.

In order to lessen the great tensionwhich has accumulated, we need toseparate; not ‘it’s all mine’, not one in-stead of the other, but two peoples liv-ing side by side. As the dynamic ofnational conflict has brought increas-ing violence and hate, so we mayhope that a dynamic of peace willslowly but surely engender co-opera-tion and a feeling of security for all.

One of the proposals glibly pro-pounded is that of a ‘democratic secu-lar Palestine’ where Jews would alsoenjoy all the same religious, culturaland individual rights as others’. Is theexperience of South Lebanon, wherethe PLO ruled for years over Shi’itesand others, to serve as an example?Where in the Arab world might we seesuch an example?

In fact this is a code which hidesmore than it reveals. Other codes like‘free trade’ sound good because any-thing ‘free’ sounds attractive. In thecase of the democratic secular state,the talk is of Christians, Muslims andJews; the context makes it clear thathere the Jews are considered, like theothers, only a religious, not a secular,group. In other words, it is a cover foranother national Arab state instead ofthe only national Jewish state in theworld.

In utterly absurd contradiction of thesituation, Tony Greenstein writes that“the Israeli working class has been un-able to create its own trade unions,still less a Party”. Similarly, to call theHistadrut “the largest employers’ fed-eration” is completely ridiculous, itbeing nothing of the kind.

The Socialist-Zionist movement, as

part of the broadly based Zionistmovement, has made great gains ingiving the whole movement a sociallypositive content. New forms of socialorganisation have been evolved, withgreat measures of equality, self-man-agement, welfare, mutual solidarityand direct democracy.

The kibbutzim have been strong,leading elements of the Israeli workingclass and the great economic enter-prises created are the inalienableproperty of the organised workingclass and both a guarantee of the in-dependence of the working class aswell as a model sought by others theworld over.

There is, of course, no totalitarianideological consensus in the Israelilabour movement but a very vigorous(sometimes bitter) interplay of policies,which is an expression of the innatedemocracy of Israel

Much still remains to be struggledfor, and the imperfections are many,but looking at the great British labourmovement, who can say of it that allhas already been won? There is stillmuch to be learned from the lessonsof the nationalisation of industry andthe NHS, and the experience of theHistadrut enterprise with its bank andits great workers’ sick-fund, which sup-plies up-to-date health service for thevast majority of Israel’s Jewish andArab population, may also serveBritish Labour to advance to a socialistsociety.

Changing ourview

SO 243, 12.9.85

At a National Editorial Board meet-ing on Sunday September 8 [1985],Socialist Organiser decided to changeits long-standing assessment of theArab-Jewish conflict in Palestine andto adopt new proposals for solving thatconflict. A motion advocating twostates for Jew and Arabs in Palestinewas carried against one calling for asingle democratic state.

For many years the majority of So-cialist Organiser supporters have sub-scribed to a version of the democraticsecular state position — that the an-swer to the Arab-Jewish conflict is asingle democratic state in which all areequal citizens.

Following a long and wide rangingdebate — it began six years ago —Socialist Organiser has decided thatthe secular democratic state is an un-attainable fantasy. The creation ofsuch a state by amalgamation of thetwo bitterly warring peoples as equalcitizens in a common territory is incon-ceivable.

Although the democratic secularstate appears to offer reconciliation

between the two peoples and there-fore to point towards working classunity, in fact it does not and cannot dothat. In reality it denies the nationalrights of the Jews.

The socialist revolution itself is muchnearer than the merging of the na-tional identities of the Jewish and ArabPalestinians in a common secularstate. At best it is a consoling fantasy.At worst it is a propaganda weapon ofArab nationalists, the logic of whoseposition is the conquest and drivingout of the Jews.

In reality there is a stark choice inPalestine. In broad terms only two so-lutions are possible. Either drive out(or massacre) the Jews, thus restoringthe land to the Palestinian Arabs, or di-vide the disputed territory. This beingso, the choice for socialists must beadvocacy of compromise and divisionor redivision of the disputed territory.Despite the immense practical difficul-ties no other democratic or socialistsolution is conceivable.

Rejection of Zionist expansion andcondemnation of the Israeli treatmentof the Arabs inside pre-1967 Israel andon the West Bank is common groundon the left; so should be rejection ofthe programme of Arab nationalismand revanchism in all its variants, in-cluding the democratic secular statewhich is understood by its Arab nation-alist advocates as a Palestinian Arabstate with no more than religious rightsfor Jews on a confessional basis.

Socialist Organiser continues tosupport the oppressed and displacedPalestinians in their struggle for justice— but we do it from our own classstandpoint and programme, not byway of endorsing Arab nationalism andrevanchism wrapped up in consolingfantasies. We support those Israeliswho are fighting against the expan-sionism and chauvinism of the Israelistate, and for withdrawal from theWest Bank.

But we insist that it is no part of ademocratic or socialist programme forPalestine to call for or support the de-struction of the Israeli Jewish nation —and this is what is implied in the slo-gan for the secular democratic stateand is in fact its only real political con-tent.

The discussion will continue in So-cialist Organiser.

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For debate in1987 over Jim

Allen’s playPerdition, seeworkersliberty.

org/node/18867

3. ZIONISM ANDTHEHOLOCAUSTZionism, twin ofantisemitism

Andrew Hornung, SO 109, 18.11.82

Andrew Hornung reviews TonyGreenstein’s pamphlet ‘Zionism —anti-semitism in Jewish garb’.

Chief Rabbi Emmanuel Jacobowitzwas once asked by a BBC interviewerwhether there was any difference be-tween being anti-Israel and being anti-semitic. ‘In theory that is possible’, hereplied, ‘in practice it isn’t.’

Earlier this year, a Jewish shopperin Regent Street, no doubt impelled bythe same view, insisted that police ar-rest Labour Committee on Palestinemembers who were picketing the Is-raeli state airlines in protest at the in-vasion of Lebanon.

‘I want you to arrest these people,officer, for stirring up racial hatred.They are anti-Semites,’ he confidentlyasserted, undaunted by the fact thatthe people he was pointing to saidthey were Jewish.

Tony Greenstein’s pamphlet, Zion-ism, antisemitism’s twin in Jewishgarb’ is an attempt to give the lie to theequation made by Jacobowitz; and toshow, on the contrary, that early Zion-ists particularly collaborated regularlywith anti-Semites.

Now people aren’t convinced of thewrong headedness of Zionism todayby having it pointed out to them thatTheodore. Herzl, the founder of Zion-ism, negotiated with the notoriousRussian anti-Semite von Plehve andwith the Czarist minister, Count Witte,who openly boasted that ‘If it werepossible to drown six or seven millionJews in the Black Sea I would be per-fectly happy to do so...’

But the pamphlet also reveals thatfar from being a road to emancipationfor Jews, Zionism has always consti-tuted an obstacle to emancipatorymovements.

The establishment of the state of Is-rael was not only the culmination of acolonial drive whose victims were thepeople of the Arab East, but the foulfruit of a movement that set its faceagainst all progress for Jews in Eu-rope.

Zionism began in an age in whichquack science looked to physiology formany of its answers. Phrenology andpalmistry aspired to be scientific pur-suits, and theories were developed ac-cording to which criminal behaviourwas the outcome of certain physicalfeatures.

Thus Pinsker, a pioneer Zionist,could write in 1882 that “Judophobiais... a mental disease, and as a mentaldisease it is hereditary, and havingbeen inherited for 2,000 years, it is in-curable”.

Herzl came to the same conclusionas Pinsker: the Jews were not to beassimilated; gentile society rightly re-jected them. So they had to become acolonising force which, under the pro-tection of imperialist-colonialist pow-ers, would create a Jewish state. In hisdiaries, Herzl wrote, “In Paris... Iachieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to un-derstand historically and to pardon.Above all, I recognise the emptinessand futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.”

With blackhearts like von Plehveand Witte, early Zionism shared theassumptions that racial persecutionwas inevitable — and the view that so-cialism was to be opposed.

Tony Greenstein quotes from Herzl’sdiaries again: “Herzl told von Plehve,‘Help me faster to land and the revoltwill end. So will the defection (of Jews)to the socialist ranks’.”

Two decades on, Zionism proved noless intransigent in its attitude towardsrevolutionary socialism. The ZionistOrganisation in Palestine in 1921 wasglad to see the arrest and deportationof leaders of the Jewish CommunistParty by the British authorities.

Three years later the fledgling His-tadrut (the Jewish trade union move-ment in Palestine and then Israel)expelled members of the PalestineCommunist Party.

Even those trends within Zionismwhich claimed to be socialist collabo-rated with the British both against theArabs and against Jewish revolution-aries. The petty-bourgeois nationalist‘socialism’ of these trends gloried inpseudo-radical phrases concerning‘liberation of the land’ and ‘non-ex-ploitation of Arab labour’, when all thismeant was the snatching of land fromthose who actually worked it and de-barring Arabs from employment. Thecontradiction between the radicalphrases and the reactionary reality iswell-brought out in this quotation fromDavid HaCohen, a leading LabourZionist.

“I had to fight my friends on theissue of Jewish socialism to defendthe fact that I would not allow Arabs inmy Trade Union... to defend preachingto housewives that... they should notbuy at Arab stores; to defend that westood guard at orchards to preventArab workers from getting jobs there...to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; toattack Jewish housewives in the mar-kets and smash Arab eggs they hadbought... to take Rothschild, the incar-nation of capitalism, as a socialist andto name him the ‘benefactor’... to doall that was not easy...”

The image of the Nazi daubing Jew-ish shops with the slogan ‘Don’t buyJewish’ here finds its grotesque paral-lel in the Jewish ‘socialist’ ruining theArab crops and telling Jewish ‘house-wives’ ‘Don’t buy Arab’...

But Zionism did not simply replicatesome features of German anti-semitism, it collaborated with it.

The Nazis were well aware that theZionists were not their enemies. In1935 Heydrich ordered the activities ofthe Zionist orientated youth organisa-tions are not to be treated with thesame strictness that it is necessary toapply to the members of the so-calledGerman Jewish organisations (the as-similationists).

In line with this policy the Zionistswere put in control of Jewish represen-tative bodies, because, as HannahArendt put it, ‘according to the Nazis,Zionists were the decent Jews sincethey too thought in national terms’.

A Jewish police force was estab-lished to bring in those unwilling to besent to concentration camps.

Through the period of the holocaust,the Zionist organisations set out not torescue Jews but to rescue Jews,preferably young ones, who wanted togo to Palestine...

The Jewish Agency consciously de-cided in the midst of the most terriblecarnage the world had ever witnessedthat they should concentrate on mak-ing propaganda for a Jewish staterather than give aid to Jews in desper-ate need. As an ex chairperson of theChief Rabbi’s Rescue Committeewrote in The Times in 1961: ‘My expe-rience in 1942/3 was wholly in favourof a British readiness to help openly,constructively. and totally, and that thisreadiness met with opposition fromZionist leaders who insisted on rescueto Palestine as the only form of help.’(My emphasis — AH)

At every stage Zionism, while it re-flected the emancipatory hopes ofsome Jews, sided with reaction, re-fused to rally resistance and played anignominious part in ensuring that therecould be no escape... except viaPalestine.

Tony Greenstein’s pamphlet pro-vides irrefutable evidence of the reac-tionary nature of Zionism in terms ofthe interests of Jews. He takes forgranted that the colonising pro-imperi-alist project of Zionism had wholly re-actionary results for the people of theArab East, above all the Palestinians.

The weakness of the pamphletarises out of its initial intention — toreply to the jibes coming, for the mostpart, from Jews. In attempting tocounter, the common charges levelledagainst anti-Zionists by Jews, the au-thor some times fails to give a bal-anced assessment...

For instance, he rightly attacks thenationalist ideas of Zionism. But whatmakes Zionism reactionary is not its

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nationalist character alone. After all, the Garvey movement in

America (and beyond) was a pro-foundly progressive one — despiteGarvey’s announced intention not tostay to fight American racism but to or-ganise emigration to a ‘Negro Zion’,despite Garvey’s contact with the KuKlux Klan, and despite a certain in-verse racism.

Why — I can almost hear the ques-tion being asked by people like Ja-cobowitz — pick on Jewishnationalism? Tony Greenstein isn’t suf-ficiently explicit about what makes Zi-onism different.

Zionism’s unremittingly reactionarycharacter arises out of the fact that:

firstly, it teamed up with imperialismto establish and maintain itself whereother national movements fought im-perialism to gain liberation;

secondly, because Zionism was acolonial movement of Europeans it in-evitably became an instrument for thedenial of the national rights of millionsof Arabs;

thirdly, unlike Garveyism, for in-stance, it did not draw hundreds ofthousands — even millions — into po-litical struggle but out of it;

and fourthly, its class compositionand dependence on Diaspora capitalas well as imperialism meant that fromthe beginning Zionism was virtuallydevoid of those class contradictionsthat remain live within nationalist massmovements in spite of their national-ism.

Lastly, because the author is atpains to fling back the accusations ofJews, the pamphlet — its title immedi-ately reveals this — is too much con-cerned to deal with the events of thefirst half of this century. Too little issaid about, say, Zionism in the last tenyears.

The last six months have revealedthe open collaboration between thefascist inspired Phalange and the Is-raeli forces; the blitzkrieg and thebutchery have reminded less-blindedIsraelis of the hellfire of Hitlerism.

Such will always be those livingproofs of the nature of Zionism thatmight be capable of raising a move-ment to oppose it, stronger and morecompelling than the most thoroughhistorical research.

Moredemonology thanMarxism

Jeremy Green, SO 112, 9.12.82

Comrade Andrew Hornung’s reviewof Tony Greenstein’s pamphlet ‘Zion-ism — antisemitism in Jewish Garb’was almost as bad as the pamphlet it-self. Both present a picture of Zionism

as an evil conspiracy rather than astragic illusion; their accounts havemore in common with demonologythan with Marxism.

The version of history they offer is ofZionism as a consciously reactionarygroup, seeking actively to promote an-tisemitism, work together with anti-semites, and suppress Jewishresistance in order to achieve theiraims.

For Greenstein and Hornung, Zion-ists have always lined up with anti-so-cialist forces. Any indication, anyevidence that there were contradic-tions in Zionism, that there was anymore to it than this. are resolutely ig-nored. Thus, from Greenstein we don’tlearn about the left Zionists who foughtside by side with Bolsheviks in theRussian Civil War (mentioned by Trot-sky) or the Zionists who went fromPalestine to fight in defence of theSpanish Republic.

And while we are told a lot aboutZionist ‘collaboration’ with the Nazis,we hear nothing of the Zionists whoorganised Jewish partisan groups inthe forests and ghettos of Poland —including Zionists from Palestine likeHannah Senesh who were parachutedinto Nazi-occupied Eastern Europespecifically to organise Jewish resist-ance.

The argument about Zionist ‘collabo-ration’ with Nazis is based on:

1. Quotes from Nazi sources hardlyreliable on Jewish matters anyway), allsome years before the Nazis decidedon extermination as the ‘final solution’to the ‘Jewish problem’.

2. The desperate behaviour of Jewsfaced with mass extermination. Toargue that this is evidence of sinisterconspiratorial deals between antise-mitic Nazis and antisemitic Zionists isquite simply sick.

Moreover, there is hardly an indica-tion as to the origins and mass appealof Zionism.

Both Greenstein and Comrade Hor-nung seem to want to obscure the factthat Zionism grew up among Jewishcommunities of Eastern Europe facedwith a degree of murderous persecu-tion almost unique to European his-tory. Fifty years before Hitler, massslaughter of Jews was a regular occur-rence in Eastern Europe.

Thus Pinsker’s ‘Auto Emancipation’,quoted by Greenstein as evidence ofZionist racism towards non-Jews, ap-peared in 1882, as a response to theKishinev and Odessa pogroms, inwhich literally thousands of Jews weremurdered. Greenstein ignores this. Inthe absence of this context, Zionismmust indeed seem like a conspiracy.

Greenstein ignores the way in whichthe failure of the labour movement tofight antisemitism, and the supportgiven to immigration controls by so-cialists anxious to prevent Jewishrefugees from coming to Britain, lent

plausibility to Zionist arguments. Finally, Comrade Hornung takes

Greenstein to task for ignoring the lastten years of Zionism. A similar com-plaint might be made against his ownaccount of antisemitism.

Over the last few years, Jewish peo-ple have been killed all over Europe,sometimes by so-called ‘communist’groups, acting in the name of anti-Zionism. Fascist antisemites havemade ‘Zionist conspiracies’ a centralpart of their world view, and arguedthat anti-Jewish racism must be bal-anced against ‘Jewish racism’.

In order for socialists to convincinglyclaim to Jews that we are anti-Zionistsand not antisemites, we have to fighthardest against real antisemitism. Wehave to purge our writing of commentswhich have the rhetorical flavour of an-tisemites. We have to understandsympathetically the Jews and aspira-tions of Jews. In his review ComradeAndrew Hornung fails to do all thesethings.

Brenner on theNazi massacre

Gerry Ben-Noah [Jeremy Green],SO 199, 4.10.84

Gerry Ben-Noah reviews LenniBrenner’s books ‘Zionism in the Age ofthe Dictators’ and ‘The Iron Wall’.

Denial of the holocaust has becomethe stock-in-trade of the far right in Eu-rope and the USA, from Richard Hare-wood’s ‘Did Six Million Really Die?’ toArthur Butz’s ‘The Hoax of the Cen-tury’. That pro-Nazis should seek toexcuse their heroes of one of thegreatest crimes in history can hardlybe surprising.

What is remarkable, however. is therecent emergence of a “left-wing” ver-sion of holocaust revisionism.

At the most extreme, a French Trot-skyist defends Robert Faurisson’s rightto deny the existence of gas chambersand extermination camps. More often,though, the “left” revisionists do notdeny that the holocaust happened:they merely argue for a redistributionof responsibility for the tragedy. Theysuggest that the Nazis were not solelyto blame for the disaster that befell theJewish people. Zionism, too, mustshare the guilt.

Now, in fact, various Zionist leadersdid calculate that antisemites would fortheir own reasons collaborate withthem. They understood that there waslogical common ground between Zion-ism and anti-semitism — old-fash-ioned, central-European, pre-NaziChristian antisemitism — in that bothrejected assimilation.

Zionism was generated by anti-semitism. Then, once embarked ontheir project of removing the Jews to

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Palestine, out of reach of the anti-semites, the Zionist leaders madehard-headed calculations and assess-ments of the world they lived in, seek-ing to find ways of realising theirprogramme.

Thus Zionist leaders had discus-sions with ministers of the viciouslyanti-semitic Tsarist government, withVon Plehve, for example.

In the same way the Zionists haveallied in succession with Turkish,British and then US imperialism. Brutalrealism and cynical realpolitik in theservice of their central goal of creatingthe Jewish state has always charac-terised the central leadership of theZionist movement. It has led toshameful episodes and unsavourycontacts.

The realpolitik of the Zionist leaders— together with a slowness to realisethat older strains of anti-semitism hadevolved in to the lethal, genocidal Nazivariant, with which there could be noaccommodation — may well havehelped blunt the response of Euro-pean Jews to Nazism.

But to go on from this tragic confu-sion to identify Zionism and anti-semi-tism, to place the moral or politicalresponsibility — or any share of it —on the Zionist Jews for Hitler’s holo-caust of European Jewry — that ishysterically and obscenely stupid.

Yet that is what the new revisionism— at its sharpest when it stops playingwith hollow, abstract logical identifica-tion between Zionism and anti-semi-tism and bases itself on the historicalfacts — concludes and now proclaimsto the world.

It is important to recognise that,whilst holocaust revisionism is ab-solutely central to the ideology of thefar right, “left” revisionism remains —so far — a marginal and aberrant be-lief within the socialist movement.

Until now, it has been propagatedonly by scattered articles in the “Work-ers Revolutionary Party” press, or byquaintly titled pamphlets such as TonyGreenstein’s ‘Zionism: antisemitism’sTwin in Jewish Garb’. Until now, it haslooked like the work of cranks.

Until now. Lenni Brenner, ‘left’ revi-sionism’s newest recruit, is a Jew,whose books have all the appearanceof serious works of history and arepublished (expensively) by commercialpublishers.

Both the books argue, with apparentauthority, that Zionists did not fightback against anti-semitism becausethey were in sympathy with it. Accord-ing to Brenner, the Zionists saw anti-semites as nationalists likethemselves, with a common objectivein the removal of the Jews from Eu-rope and a similar evaluation of the in-trinsic worth of diaspora Jewry.

Where does one begin to reviewwork like this? The revisionists of theright have shown how easy it is to con-

test and even subvert what hadseemed unassailable historical facts.For, of course, very little history cansurvive scepticism of this kind, basedon the rejection of any evidence onedoes not like.

Now Brenner does not, by andlarge, engage in this kind of revision-ism. Brenner’s unique contribution tohistorical revision lies in the sense hemakes of events.

Most of the events he refers to arereal and publicly known. They havebeen described before by pro-Zionistwriters, notably Hannah Arendt in‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’. (This is notto say that a sizeable catalogue of in-accuracies and contradictions withinthe Brenner corpus could not be as-sembled — but such an exercisewould miss the point).

Brenner’s theory of Zionist-Nazi con-gruence rests upon two sets of phe-nomena: the actions of individualcollaborators who were Zionists, andthe policies of Zionist organisationswhich, for him, were lacking in anti-Nazi resolution.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is, ofcourse, easy to see that many Zionistsunderestimated the Nazis. Theythought the new anti-semitism wouldbe like the old; brutal, humiliating anddangerous for individual Jews. Theycould not and did not conceive of theannihilation that was to come. Thus,their strategy was based on a series ofassumptions about the immediateprospects for Europe’s Jews whichwas horribly wrong.

To move from this tragic confusion,however, to the suggestion that theywere unconcerned about the fate ofthose Jews is absurd. To argue thatthey were therefore in sympathy withthe Nazis is bizarre.

It would be foolish to deny that therewere Zionists who collaborated. So, nodoubt, did some Communists,Bundists and liberals. In the nightmareworld of Nazi Europe many people didbad things to save their own lives orthose of people they loved.

For Brenner, though, these individ-ual acts of collaboration are expres-sions of the inner logic of Zionism.Individual or collective acts of anti-fas-cist resistance by Zionists on the otherhand. are dismissed as merely histori-cal accidents, exceptions that in someunexplained way prove the rule.

It would be trivially easy to write asimilar account of the “inner logic” ofcapitalist democracy, or of Marxism,which proved to this standard theiraffinity with Nazism. Such accountshave little to do with serious history.

Brenner claims to be opposed toJewish, Arab and every other kind ofnationalism. Perhaps he is so far fromnationalism that he does not feel theneed to avoid racial slurs, which hesprinkles throughout his writing. Thus,the inter-war Palestinian Arab leader-

ship were not only “a parasitic upperclass” but also “classic levantines”(Iron Wall p.57); and the PalestinianArabs as a whole had a “low level ofculture” (ibid p.65). As for the Jews: “...the old Jewish slums were notoriouslyfilthy: ‘Two Jews and one cheesemake three smells’ was an old Polishproverb. Karl Marx was only beingmatter-of-fact when he remarked that‘The Jews of Poland are the smeariestof all races’.” (ibid p.11).

For a self-proclaimed socialist to re-peat anti-semitic Polish proverbs asmatters of fact is simply incredible.Such remarks are frequent in Brennerand range from the paranoid: the sug-gestion that rich Jews control the USDemocratic Party and thus Americanforeign policy — to the merely un-pleasant Agudat Israel demandingfrom the Likud “their pound of flesh”(p.207) as the price for parliamentarysupport.

There is, then, a curious ambiva-lence in Brenner’s writing. He cen-sures Zionism for despising Jews andon the other hand he clearly despisesthem himself. Similarly, he charac-terises the Zionist Revisionists asnear-fascists, and cites quotes fromanti-revisionist Zionists to establishthis. But he also argues that the Revi-sionists were the most authentic Zion-ists, closest to the inner logic of themovement.

Therefore, the opposition of theLabour Zionists to Revisionism, ofwhich good use is made in proving thelatter to be reactionaries, is then dis-missed as either bad faith or false con-sciousness. Either Labour’sdisagreements with Jabotinsky’s fol-lowers were entirely tactical, a contestover who should control the colonialistventure — or the left simply did not ap-preciate, as Brenner can appreciate,that they were really just logical Zion-ist-Revisionists.

For a Marxist, Brenner places enor-mous weight on his own ability to criti-cally examine other people’s psychesacross the years. (This ability is not re-stricted to the minds of Labour Zion-ists; Brenner also “shows” that Betarwas fascist by reference to the mentalstates of a hypothetical “average Be-tari” (ZAD.p.114).

We are also offered a psychoanaly-sis of Jabotinsky: “... there was noth-ing ambiguous about Jabotinsky’s oralfixation... he hated mathematics andwas always undisciplined as a student:the infallible signs of oral fixation... Hehad other stigmata of the fixation... hebecame hopelessly addicted to detec-tive stories and westerns.” (Iron Wall,p.6).

This is the sort of thing that getspsychoanalysis a bad name. It re-veals, too, that underneath the glossycovers Brenner’s work is every bit ascrankish as former attempts to con-struct a “socialist” version of historical

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revisionism. Why, then, has it any credibility? A

comment by Isaac Deutscher offers aclue:

“The anti-Zionist urged the Jews totrust their gentile environment, to helpthe ‘progressive forces’ in that environ-ment... and so hope that those forceswould effectively defend the Jewsagainst anti-semitism ... The Zionistson the other hand dwelt on the deep-seated hatred of non-Jews and urgedthe Jews to trust their future to nobodyexcept their own state. In this contro-versy Zionism has scored a terriblevictory, one which it could neither wishnor expect.” (The Non-Jewish Jew.p.91).

Brenner, like most socialists, wishesthat this victory had not happened. Butinstead of thinking seriously aboutwhat kind of socialist strategy couldwin the Jews away from Zionism, heconstructs a fantasy-world in which theZionists did wish for and expect theholocaust, and in which the most fa-natical Jewish nationalists were, in re-ality, ardent anti-semites.

All of this would undoubtedly be aninteresting case-study for psychoana-lysts. Marxists would be better off byturning to Nathan Weinstock’s ‘Zion-ism, False Messiah’.

RewritingZionism

Tony Greenstein and Andrew Hor-nung, SO 208, 6.12.84

Tony Greenstein and Andrew Hor-nung take up a debate with Gerry BenNoah’s review (SO 199) of Lenni Bren-ner’s books Zionism in the Age of theDictators’ and ‘The Iron Wall’

To reply to Gerry Ben Noah’s reviewarticle, “Re-writing the holocaust” (SO199), we shall ignore some of the de-tailed remarks concerning, for in-stance, Lenni Brenner’s books. Onsome of these questions Ben Noah isright, on others wrong — most of thetime his points are simply not relevant.

What we are concerned with are thecentral issues raised by Brenner andothers and raised again by Ben Noah;we are concerned with the “sense hemakes” (to use Ben Noah’s ownphrase) of the history of Zionism.

A second preliminary remark: for anarticle that accuses certain writers ofcreating a grotesque “amalgam” — ofequating Zionism with anti-Semitism— the review itself offers a prettybizarre example of this very techniquewhen it equates Nazi apologists whorewrite the history of the holocaust(note the title!) with people with aproven record of combatting racism in-cluding anti-Semitism.

Running through the article is the ar-gument that there exists a “left” anti-

Semitism equivalent to that of theright, as if the Left has, from the daysof Marx onwards, constituted a secondwing of anti-Semitism.

While examples of anti immigrantcampaigning of a decidedly anti-Se-mitic character are not hard to find be-fore World War 2, it is the Left, theworking class movement, that hasproved the most consistent opponentof anti-Semitism.

Indeed, here we have the wholeissue in a nutshell: it is the Left (withall its imperfections) that has been theopponent of anti-Semitism while theself-styled movements of national sal-vation of the Jews, Zionism, has mani-festly failed.

That Zionism should seek to falsifythis — indeed, claim the contrary — isnot surprising. How else should it jus-tify itself? By its colonial conquestsalone?

This distortion — the picture of “left”anti-Semitism — is peddled by theJewish establishment in Britain today.Firstly, it serves as a cover for theirown inactivity in fighting the real anti-Semites of the fascist and Tory Right.Whether it has been the Lewishamdemonstration of 1977, the formationof the ANL, the fight to exclude PatrickHarrington from North London Poly-technic or other situations where astand against racism and fascismneeded to be made, the British Boardof Deputies — the overwhelminglyZionist “representatives” of the Jewishcommunity in Britain — has opposedthem.

The simplest justification for their re-fusal to fight has always been to claim,falsely, that the Left who organised op-position in these cases is anti-Semiticbecause it is anti-Zionist.

Of course, the inactivity of the BoDtoday is hardly different from the inac-tivity of the BoD before it was over-whelmingly Zionist. Zionism does notdetermine — in the above cases —the BoD’s stand entirely, rather it givesan ideological cover to its inactivity.

Secondly, Zionism justifies its gen-eral programme by claiming that nocountry, no regime and no socialmovement can provide a solution tothe Jewish question because all areinevitably anti-Semitic. It is one of themany crimes of Stalinism that anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union underStalin appeared to prove the truth ofthis view. The consequences of this forSoviet opposition movements can befelt to this day.

Just as it is ludicrous to place theLeft in the same camp as the Rightwhen it comes to antisemitism, so it isnonsense to talk of a “left” version offascist revisionism which seeks todeny the holocaust took place. Whatsome Leftists are, however, trying todo is measure Zionism against its im-plicit and explicit claim to be the move-ment which saved Jewry and which

offered a resistance to fascism thatnon Jewish movements could not do.

Stating that the Zionist movement —not merely individual Zionists — col-laborated with the Nazis (why they didis another matter) and, more to thepoint, even obstructed attempts at res-cue does not minimise the Nazis’ guilt,as Ben Noah states.

To claim as much is like assertingthat Trotsky, by insisting on the re-sponsibility of Stalinism for Hitler’s riseto power, was minimising the Nazis’responsibility for what happened as aconsequence of Hitler’s victory.

Or perhaps Lenin was wrong to seeGerman Social Democracy’s class col-laboration as a decisive element in thevictory of German imperialism over thelabour movement? Perhaps he waswhitewashing German imperialism!

Clearly this line of argument is sim-ply a sentimentalist’s confusion. It isutterly alien to Marxism.

Of course, the Nazis were responsi-ble for the holocaust. The Nazis’ re-sponsibility, however, should not beused to obscure or conceal the role ofothers. Despite the good intentions ofmany Zionists — and many peoplejoined the Zionist movement when allelse had failed, more out of despera-tion than ideological conviction — wehave to say (and Gerry Ben Noahnowhere denies it) that Zionism’s start-ing point was the abandonment of thefight against anti-Semitism.

No wonder then that the Nazislooked to the Zionists to run the Ju-denrat’s Jewish Councils and the Jew-ish police. As many have testified, theyplayed an important part in pacifyingthe Jewish communities and in Hun-gary and elsewhere actually helped inrounding up victims. This is why theJudenrate were so despised andhated.

Let us emphasise one thing: we donot say simply (as an antisemitemight) that Jews betrayed Jews. It isneither a matter merely of individualJews nor of Jews in general — we aretalking about Zionist organisations.Gerry Ben Noah’s whole article basesitself on just the kind of confusion —the confusion between “Jew” and“Zionism” that he rails against.

It is essential to remember that be-fore World War 2 Zionism was almosteverywhere little more than a smalltrend within Jewish communities.

In order to increase the confusion,the article claims that the Polish Bund— the majority party of the Polish Jew-ish working class — collaborated onthe same scale as the Zionists. It didnot: it had a record of unswerving op-position to Nazism. Again, we are nottalking about individual members butabout the movements as a whole.

Ben Noah’s defence of Zionism onthese matters leads him to try to justifyHerzl’s meeting with von Plehve, theTsarist Minister of the Interior and a

60

noted anti-Semitic pogromist. But itwon’t do simply to brush this off as a“hard-headed calculation”, an alliancewith the devil by a movement with itsback to the wall.

The fact is that Zionism sought toally with Russian autocracy againstthe progressive forces amongst whomthe Jewish workers and petty bour-geoisie formed a sizeable number.

Again, Ben Noah’s sentimentalismbreaks through. Perhaps he wouldprefer to see Herzl as a basicallynoble man. Who cares? The argumentis not about good and bad persons,people acting in good or bad faith. Theargument is about political affinitiesand political logic.

If Herzl, Weizmann — and, yes, whynot? — Jabotinsky were all good peo-ple and devoted to the survival (asthey saw it) of Jewry, then it is all themore clear how reactionary an ideol-ogy Zionism is when it was capable ofgetting the first to praise von Plehve,the second to praise Mussolini and thethird to support Petlyura, the leader ofthe White Russians with over 200,000Jewish lives on his hands.

Note well: Jabotinsky did not simplyparley with Petlyura, he supported himagainst the Left!

To Ben Noah this is all “tragic confu-sion”, the product of desperate circum-stances. Weizmann’s comparison ofthe Bolshevik Revolution with the ad-vent of Nazism was perhaps such a“tragic confusion” — a confusion be-tween those who outlawed pogromsand those who instigated them!

Perhaps the leaders of HungarianZionism whose “Rescue Department’’worked under the aegis of Eichmannand Becher and without whom Nazismcould never have been so successfulin their exterminatory drive in Hungary— perhaps they were also tragicallyconfused?

Or perhaps the economic transferagreement between Nazi Germanyand the Zionist settlement in Palestine— an agreement approved by theZionist Congress of 1935 — whichhelped break the anti Nazi boycott wasboth a “hard headed calculation” and a“tragic confusion”.

The only “confusion” here is in BenNoah’s own head. And it is a doubleconfusion: firstly, he is confused aboutthe facts (Weizmann was well awareof the genocidal drive of Nazism as hisspeech in 1937 to the 20th ZionistCongress made clear) and secondlyhe is confused about the point underdebate.

No one argues that the Zionistswere just as willing to kill six millionJews as the Nazis.

The point under debate is whetheror not Zionism as an ideology dis-armed its followers in the face of per-secution, whether it minimised theimplications of anti-Semitism by its be-lief in the worthlessness of Diaspora

Jewry (Weizmann in the above men-tioned speech refers to the millionsabout to perish as “dust, economicand moral dust in a cruel world”) andwhether as a movement it didn’t al-ways put the building up of the Jewishsettlement in Palestine before the sav-ing of Jewish or other lives... even tothe point of obstructing emigration if itwasn’t to Palestine and of rounding upJews for the gas chambers.

Let Gerry Ben Noah answer the sim-ple question as to whether Zionism asan ideology and as a movement dis-armed its followers in the face of fas-cist attack and obstructed efforts atsaving Jewish lives. If he believes itdid not, let him say what part of theoverwhelming evidence — “events(which) are real and publicly known”,as he himself calls them is wrong.

The truth is that the over whelmingevidence demonstrates that Zionistleaders were concerned about the fateof European Jewry only insofar as itconcerned the establishment of a Jew-ish state. To understand why, it is nec-essary to realise that Zionism wasnever about saving Jews but redeem-ing them.

To the logical Zionist, then, a greatstream of refugees to non Nazi Europeor the US could only marginalise theeffort to build up a Jewish state — theprecondition for ‘redeeming’ Jewryfrom its Diaspora mentality — andthreaten the existing communities inthe countries of reception.

Ben Gurion put it most succinctlywhen he said, by way of warning theZionist Executive at its December 171938 meeting: “If Jews will have tochoose between the refugees, savingJews from concentration camps, andassisting the national museum inPalestine, mercy will have the upperhand and the whole energy of the peo-ple will be channelled into saving Jewsfrom various countries. Zionism will bestruck off the agenda not only in worldpublic opinion, in Britain and theUnited States, but elsewhere in Jewishpublic opinion. If we allow a separationbetween the refugee problem and thePalestinian problem, we are risking theexistence of Zionism.”

Ben Noah knows that such quota-tions can be produced in great quan-tity from spokes persons of every wingof Zionism. He knows Zionism op-posed the anti-Nazi boycott; he knowsZionism opposed the opening of theUS to Jewish refugees in excess ofthe numbers stipulated in pre-war rul-ings; indeed, he recommends to usNathan Weinstock’s excellent book,“Zionism, False Messiah” as an alter-native to the books he condemnsthough that book tells us (p.136) that,“The role of the Zionist Organisation’srefusal to contribute to the rescue ofEuropean Jewry elsewhere than inPalestine remains to be written. Some-times, this attitude was akin to outright

sabotage.” So what is he saying? That Ben Gu-

rion was joking? That he was lying tothe Executive, playing a diplomaticgame as Herzl had done with von Ple-hve? Or simply that the coincidencebetween the words and actions ofZionism’s leaders is just that... a coin-cidence, a fluke of history?

In the final analysis, all Ben Noahhas to say is this: even if Zionism asan ideology aided the Nazis and otherreactionaries before them and even ifthere are documented acts of collabo-ration between Zionists and reac-tionaries (not just diplomaticagreements), the ultimate aims of theZionists and those of the anti-Semiteswere different: the former wanted toredeem Jews while the latter didn’t.

Needless to say, that is not some-thing we deny, nor is that very surpris-ing. But that is not what the dispute isabout.

A final word to Socialist Organiser. Itis a good thing that you publish viewsthat you don’t agree with. This only be-comes a problem when it is not clearwhat your own position is. Is it the po-sition contained in a review some timeago which did not dispute the interpre-tation that Gerry Ben Noah attacks oris it Gerry Ben Noah’s? Or have youno view at all?

It is time you pinned your colours tothe mast before others do it for you.

Ignorant andlibellous

Lenni Brenner, SO 234, 3.7.85

The world, she do run in funnyways. Way back on October 4 1984,your publication ran a review by oneGerry Ben Noah of my books, ‘Zionismin the Age of the Dictators’ and ‘TheIron Wall’.

Now Ben-Noah is forced to admitthat “Most of the events he (Brenner)refers to,” meaning my charges thatvarious Zionist factions collaboratedwith the Hitlerites, “are real”. However,“This is not to say that a sizeable cata-logue of inaccuracies and contradic-tions within Brenner’s corpus could notbe assembled”.

Well said, except that he then kindof forgot to tell us about even one spe-cific inaccuracy.

After wasting a page with unsub-stantiated charges about my allegederrors, Ben-Noah sagely counselledus that “Marxists would be better offturning to Nathan Weinstock’s Zion-ism: False Messiah”. An excellentchoice, especially as Weinstock hasbeen kind enough to write me that mybook is “a fine piece of work,” and thathe has tried to get it translated intoFrench!

Ben-Noah had the audacity to call61

me a “paranoid”. Why? Because of thesuggestion that rich Jews control theUS Democratic Party and thus Ameri-can foreign policy”.

Except that since the Democratsdon’t control Washington, not even aparanoid like me can think that anyDemocrat, Jewish or otherwise, runsReagan’s foreign policy.

However, crazy guy that I am, I donot ‘suggest’, I insist that rich Jews —not rich Albanians — are the singlemost important financial factor in theDemocratic Party, and that thereforethat party will stick with Zionism to theend.

But would you believe it, I’m not theonly lunatic on the set. Certainly mostAmerican scholars would acknowl-edge G. William Domhoff as the greatspecialist on the country’s rich. Thatsociologist wrote, in his ‘Fat Cats andDemocrats’, that:

“Since the gentile financial commu-nity is almost exclusively Republican,however, it is the Jewish financierswho by default provide the Democratswith their handful of essential moneyraisers among the super-wealthy...Jewish investment bankers combinedwith other Jews... to provide the finan-cial leadership of the Democratic Partyin every major non-Southern city ex-cept Boston.”

There is no need to go on, it is obvi-ous that when Ben-Noah is not libel-lous he is ignorant, and when notignorant he is libellous. All that needsto be further said is that it is evidentthat Zionism is in deep trouble over mycharges if the Jewish Chronicle had tostoop to trying to utilise Ben-Noah’sfrothings to defend itself.

4. ‘ZIONISM’ AND‘ANTI-ZIONISM’IN BRITAIN

Pink Kenchanges

“Graffiti” column (unsigned), SO267, 17 April 1985

It must say something about thestate of the left that the drift to the rightof former leftists sometimes, inciden-tally, leads them to adopt better politicsthan they used to have before. Social-ist Organiser has commented on thisphenomenon, for example, when theirmove to the right led careerists likeNeil Kinnock to drop the “identikit left-ist” Little-England opposition to theEEC [EU].

And now Pink Ken Livingstone haschanged his position on Zionism.

Remember that Livingstone used totalk about “Zionist” conspiracies toGerry Healy’s “Newsline” (see lastweek’s SO). Though he spoke onmany WRP platforms for three years,he never in the smallest degree disso-ciated himself from the antisemitic rav-ings of Healy’s organisation.

But now all is changed. Last weekLivingstone told a meeting at the Na-tional Union of Students conference inBlackpool that he now realises that Zi-onism is not “racism”, but merely aform of “nationalism”. Well done, Ken!Take 3 out of 10.

But what a comment all this is onLivingstone’s past. More to the point, itis probably a comment on his futuretoo. For during his years with Healy,Livingstone was no hot-eyed youngrebel blinded by enthusiasm or angerinto going along with whatever “poli-tics” Healy dished up. He was a calcu-lating operator who balancedeverything he did and said accordingto the advantages of disadvantages itwould bring to his career.

His was a self-serving relationshipwith the WRP — which provided thematerial basis for Labour Heraldamong other things — and with TedKnight. As well as that, it served himwell to mouth the consensus politicson the Middle East of the identikit left.

He differentiated himself from theprotection of that consensus only atthe point where Thatcher put him upagainst the gun and he had to choosebetween his career and defying thegovernment. Then he gave into thegovernment and openly broke with theleft.

Probably he broke from the left forthe same reasons that he hadmouthed its slogans and ideas in the

first place.Just as he once adopted the career-

indicated left-wing political colouring,now he adopts the career-indicatedpolitical colouring of the Labour centre.At heart Livingstone is not — as ru-mour has it — a newt, but a politicalchameleon! It so happens that theLabour Party centre politics Ken nowaccommodates to has a more sensibleattitude to Zionism than the identikitleft has.

So the former Red Ken valiantlystrives to improve himself, in moresenses than one! And he succeeds.

It was always highly improbable thatLivingstone ever privately shared thepositions he associated himself withand sometimes endorsed as part ofhis package deal with Healy andKnight. He is too urbane, too civiliseda man to share in the stupid “anti-Zion-ist” demonology or in the antisemitismof Healy’s WRP. The best thing abouthis administration at the GLC was itsaggressive commitment to fight antiblack racism. It just happened to suitwhat he thought were his career inter-ests to appear to go along with Healy.

Of course, in a serious situation KenLivingstone might surprise everybody,including Ken Livingstone. But in hiscareer so far he has shown himself tobe the very type of those much-dis-cussed German and Central Europeanpoliticians of the ‘30s and ‘40s whoadapted themselves to antisemitismwhen that current was at its strongestand then after the war adapted them-selves to the newly prevailing liberalanti-racist consensus.

He is of the type — for example —of Konrad Adenauer, who made agood career as the Catholic mayor ofCologne under the Nazis and lived tobe Germany’s post war “liberal-democ-ratic” Chancellor, disavowing thecrimes of the fascists whom he wasnever conspicuous in opposing when itmight have made some difference.

Gerry Healy is not Hitler. He is not ina position to threaten to massacre“Zionists”. But the type to which Living-stone belongs remains what it alwayswas — politically spineless and soul-less, and without commitment aboutanything other than the well-being ofits practitioner.

And what it is in small scale and notvery important things like Livingstone’sparticipation in Gerry Healy’s circus,that it will also be in big and importantthings in the future.

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“Star of David = Swastika” or “Zionist= Nazi” imagery has become morefrequent, including on the would-beleft, since the 1980s

Unfair to PinkKen

Letter from Edward Ellis [CliveBradley] and reply [unsigned], SO 268,24 April 1986

Last week’s SO (no. 267) carried anarticle on Red Ken Livingstone that Ifeel went a bit over the top. The authorof the article “Pink Ken changes” in the“Graffiti” column compared him to Kon-rad Adenauer “who made a good ca-reer as the Catholic mayor of Cologneunder the Nazis and lived to be Ger-many’s post war ‘liberal democratic’Chancellor”.

The basis for this charge is Living-stone’s opportunism on the issue of Zi-onism: he will do what he has to tofurther his career.

I certainly have no sympathy for Liv-ingstone. And I applaud SO’s breakwith the anti-imperialism of idiots —the crude, latently, potentially andsometimes actually antisemitic logic tomuch of what has passed as anti-Zion-ism. People like Livingstone, who haveindulged in world Zionist conspiracyarguments, deserve to have theirfaces rubbed in the dirt.

But however crass, careerist, andoffensive Livingstone is, he is not aNazi nor a Nazi collaborator.

Such charges are very serious andshould never be made lightly. The im-agery of the Second World War doesmuch to obscure issues, and the end-less desire of socialists to call their op-ponents “Nazis” is deeply unhealthy. Itis to substitute name calling for politi-cal argument.

Edward Ellis, Deptford

Reply

Edward Ellis has simply got hold ofthe wrong end of the stick here. TheGraffiti piece didn’t say Livingstone isa “Nazi”, or an antisemite. It said, pre-cisely the opposite — that he is not anantisemite and that he was not de-luded into sincerely believing the anti-semite ravings of Gerry Healy, whichhe associated himself with and pub-licly endorsed.

That’s the point! He went along withit because he thought it was to his ad-vantage to do so. He was the manwho “didn’t notice”, the “normal philis-tine citizen” with no convictions of hisown who says what is expected of him(as when he chattily told Healy’sNewsline yes, the BBC’s allegationsthat the WRP gets Libyan money doeslook like a Zionist job on the WRP),and who tolerates anything from thosepeople he expects benefit or favourfrom. And who can switch his line ascasually as he changes his shirt whenhe thinks that it’s to his advantage.

Konrad Adenauer was no Nazi. He

was one of a vast number who toler-ated and went along with the Hitlerregime when it was in his interest todo so — and then became a new-fledged post war democrat when itwas in his interest to do that. The pointis that such people made the crimes ofthe Nazis possible either by their col-laboration or by their passivity. Ofcourse the Konrad Adenauers riskedgetting shot or jailed. What did Living-stone risk?

What is ‘Zionism’today?

Mick Ackersley [Sean Matgamna],SO 289, 23.10.86

‘Pillar of Fire’ was made, as thecredits say, for Channel Four by the Is-raeli Broadcasting Authority. It is there-fore likely to be dismissed by the leftas ‘Zionist propaganda’. It shouldn’tbe.

Zionism is a term that has nowceased to have any very clear mean-ing. It originally meant a Jewish politi-cal movement aiming to set up aJewish state in Palestine. The Zionistswere a minority of Jews until well afterHitler took power in Germany.

With the founding and consolidationof the state of Israel in 1948 and after,the original ‘Zionism’ was consigned tohistory.

What does ‘Zionism’ mean today?The right of the Jewish state of Israelto exist, even if you would like to see itradically changed? In that sense prob-ably a majority of politically aware peo-ple in the world, vastly though theiroutlooks differ, are ‘Zionist’. In thatsense, too, Socialist Organiser is‘Zionist’.

But the ‘Zionism’ that is denouncedon the left is not some vast amorphousbody. It is far narrower than that. Inpractice it means the Zionist hard coreof activists and enthusiasts, that is theJews.

The commitment of large chunks ofthe left to the destruction of the stateof Israel inevitably leads it to adopt at-titudes of deep hostility to Jews — notracist hostility, for the left is not racist,but political hostility — except that it ispolitical hostility to almost an entirepeople, and on a matter of life anddeath.

‘Pillar of Fire’ tells a story whichshould make every ‘anti-Zionist’ social-ist who sees it examine his or her con-science. For the facts do not lie. Andthough inevitably the story told by Pil-lar of Fire’ is the story as seen by theJews, and the series is thus ‘biased’,beyond that the facts are straightfor-ward.

The late Isaac Deutscher comparedIsrael to a ‘life-raft state’ — the Jewswho have survived the Holocaust fled

there. The tragedy was and is thatthere were people there already.

Hitler — the most terrible enemy inthe history of the Jews — made thestate of Israel. In the 30s hundreds ofthousands of Jews went to Palestine— because no other country wouldhave them.

The great American democracy,whose Statue of Liberty invites theworld to give me your poor, your hud-dled masses, could not find room forJewish refugees even to save theirlives. A shipload of Jewish refugeescrossed the Atlantic but the few hun-dred passengers could not get permis-sion to land in the USA — or anywhereelse on the two American continents.

They returned to Europe on the eveof World War 2. Most of them per-ished.

There are many pictures of the mil-lions of Jews of Eastern Europe goingabout their daily lives — traders, ped-dlers, scholars, children playing in thestreet — almost all of them destined todie soon at the hands of Hitler’s racistmaniacs.

In 1937 a Commission of Enquirywas set up by the British governmentwhich then ruled Palestine, and it rec-ommended that Palestine be parti-tioned, giving the Jews their own state.It was shelved because of Arab oppo-sition.

The Arab opposition was under-standable enough: but maybe if theJewish state had been set up, theJews of Europe would have had arefuge, and millions might have sur-vived. Instead the Jews of Europewere trapped on a continent whichsoon offered them nothing but death.

Palestine itself came close to beinga death-trap for the Jews there. If theGermans and Italians had won thebattle in the Western Desert in 1942,then Palestine would have been theirs.In fact the British had plans for evacu-ating Palestine.

Last week’s episode told of theHolocaust — the systematic extermi-nation of Jews which began with theNazi invasion of the USSR in mid-41.In Poland, the Jews had been treatedwith great brutality and herded into aghetto in Warsaw — the Jews theNazis encountered in the USSR wereslaughtered immediately.

Then came the exterminationcamps. All in all, nearly six millionJews died.

Presumably the next episode willshow what happened when the fewsurvivors of the death camps tried topick up their lives again. In Poland,many were attacked and driven out:they fled, mostly to Palestine.

The terrible truth is that ‘Zionistpropaganda’ had all its work — andmuch more — done for it by the viru-lent anti-semites and those who eitherconnived with them or looked away.

‘Pillar of Fire’ made the telling point63

that though the Allied airforces hadcontrol of the air over Europe from mid1944 and hit innumerable airports, de-pots, munitions factories, etc. (not tospeak of cities), and though what washappening in the death camps wasknown to the Allied governments, noattempt was made to destroy thedeath factories or the railway linesleading to them.

Watch what’s left of the series.

Not Zionist: 1Clive Bradley, 20 290, 30.10.86

I disagree with some of what MickAckersley had to say in his review ofPillar of Fire, I didn’t see the pro-gramme so I can’t comment on it; butthe review raises broader issues.

It is true that Zionism in its originalsense has been ‘confined to history’ —the movement for separate Jewishstate. But I cannot agree that Zionismas a term now means no more thanthe belief that the Israeli Jews havethe right to a state. If this is so, themajority certainly of Israeli anti-Zion-ists and non-Zionists are ‘Zionists’. Ido not agree that SO’s position is, orshould be in any sense Zionist.

Much of what is reactionary and op-pressive in the Israeli state flows fromits specifically Zionist character. That itis defined as a state for all Jews ratherthan its citizens is not incidental; thatJews are free to immigrate to Israelbut displaced Arabs are not, is not inci-dental either. These features, amongothers, define Israel as a Zionist state,and to understate this aspect of theissue is liable to lead to an underesti-mation of the problems posed by theMiddle East conflict.

Similarly, it is right to condemn theanti-semitism of the ‘democratic’ Alliesprior to 1948 in refusing to open theirborders to Jews fleeing Hitler; but itseems to me to undermine that con-demnation to add “maybe if a Jewishstate had been created, the Jews ofEurope would have had a refuge, andmillions might have survived”. Maybe.But far better, surely, if they had beenable to escape to America, or Britain,where most of them would have pre-ferred to go. And where were the com-munists, homosexuals, gypsies, tradeunionists supposed to seek refuge? A‘refuge’ was not the answer — aspost-1948 history has tragicallyshown.

In any case, the fate of the ‘refuge’would have depended on Allied mili-tary success in north Africa.

SO is right to bend the stick againstthe ‘idiot anti-imperialists’ on the ques-tion of the Middle East; but I thinkmaybe there’s a danger of bending ittoo far.

Not Zionist:2Bryan Edmands, SO 290, 30.10.86

I wish to correct the balance of, andone of the central assertions made in,the article “The making of the Jewishstate” in SO 289.

Mick Ackersley states that “Zionismis a term that has now ceased to haveany very clear meaning”. However, ashe asserts, it does mean the right ofthe Jewish state of Israel to exist”,even if perhaps “radically” altered.

But the state of Israel, a state clearlybased upon the democratic wishes ofthe vast majority of its Jewish people,is a state fundamentally resting uponthe oppression of over 2.25 millionPalestinian Arabs — Arabs scatteredthroughout the Middle East (and else-where) or forced to live under the Is-raeli state’s military control of theannexed West Bank and Gaza Strip,not to mention the concentrationcamp-like ghettoes in South Lebanon,denied democratic, civil rights, ex-pelled from their homelands.

To say that in a “sense”, then, So-cialist Organiser is “Zionist” is thusakin to saying that we support andcondone all of this — and the manifes-tation of the Israeli government’s for-eign and domestic policy in the region,namely the continued and systematicterrorisation of the Palestinian andArab peoples.

I understand the motivation behindthe sentiments expressed in the article— there is no easy solution to this situ-ation: and that most solutions put for-ward by the Left in essence reduce toan external and forceful destruction ofnot only the Israeli state but Jewishsociety and people!

But in trying to differentiate from thisposition Mick Ackersley has gone toofar the other way!

Zionism is a thoroughly racist andreactionary ideology — one todaybased upon the maintenance of powerof one people, the Jews, organised intheir own militarised state, over that ofa dispossessed and dispersed people,the Palestinian Arabs.

The terrible tragedy of the Jewishpeople is that in fleeing the Holocaustthey built a homeland by the system-atic brutalising and oppression of an-other people — a people who to thisday continue a hard, bitter, misrepre-sented and all too often forgottenstruggle against this reality.

Where ‘anti-Zionism’ leads

Jack Cleary [Sean Matgamna], SO293, 20.11.86

Clive Bradley was one of the first

two or three SO supporters to breakaway from the delusion we used toshare with many on the left that theanswer to the Jewish-Arab conflict is a“secular democratic state” in Pales-tine.

His comments on Mick Ackersley’sreview of “Pillar of Fire” are thereforesignificant, because, it seems to me,they are inspired by an emotional left-over from the old position and the atti-tudes that properly went with it.

Like “Socialism”, “Communism” and“Trotskyism”, “Zionism” is now a prettydecayed word with lots of differentmeanings: it no longer defines some-thing clearly — today you need addi-tional information before you knowwhat the word is being used for andwhat it means.

Its original — now its historic —meaning was clear enough; the goal ofa Jewish state and activity to achieveit. Its logical meaning now, developingfrom its original meaning, shouldsurely centre on the state created bythe original Zionists and in one’s atti-tude to that state. Those who supportthe right of the Jewish state, in someform, to exist, are, logically, “Zionists”— and that now includes a vast spec-trum of opinion, including those, likeSO, who are hostile to aspects of theexisting Jewish state.

When we wanted to replace Israelwith the mythical and impossible secu-lar democratic state, we logically re-garded all who supported Israel asZionists of one sort or another. I did,certainly. Now we should try to be con-sistent and honest with ourselves.

If the word ‘Zionism’ could be forgot-ten about or left in its decayed form tothe reforming Israeli critics of the Jew-ish state as a term of abuse for the Is-raeli establishment, fine. But we haveto relate to the word ‘Zionism’ accord-ing to its use in the society around us,and especially its use on the left. For,though logically all who support Is-rael’s right to existence are Zionists,‘Zionist’ on the left now in fact meansJew.

It is the Jews who have the hardcore commitment to Israel and fromwhom come Zionism’s militants. It isthe Jewish Zionists who are the targetof the “no-free-speech-for-Zionists”campaigns.

It was surely established in our dis-cussions in SO that the left’s “anti-im-perialism-of-idiots” Zionist-bashing isanti-semitic — a new form of anti-semitism, if you like, but antisemiticnonetheless.

It is anti-semitic not only because ofits unique proposal to destroy a nation,but also because of what it implies to-wards most Jews outside Israel, whodefend Israel’s right to exist. Thatbeing so, we can distance ourselvesfrom certain detestable policies andactivities of the Israeli state; but to dis-tance ourselves from ‘Zionism’ is nei-

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ther consistent nor honourable. No name, no mere word will saddle

us with responsibility for the crimes ofthe Israeli state. But on the left nowthe violent repudiation of that word,when in fact it is used to mean Jew,would saddle us with some share ofthe responsibility for the latent, andsometimes rampant, anti-semitism im-plied in the left’s attitude to Israel and‘Zionism’ — and some responsibilityfor the left’s vocal and active hostilityto Jews (‘Zionists’) who refuse tobreak with Israel and Zionism and en-dorse the Arab goal of conquering anddestroying the Jewish nation state.

Not Zionist: 3Clive Bradley, SO 294, 27.11.86

If all that being a ‘Zionist’ meant orimplied was support for the right of anIsraeli Jewish nation to exist, and op-position to their forcible inclusion into a‘democratic secular state’, I wouldhave no quarrel with Mick Ackersleyand Jack Cleary.

I am even prepared to concede thatif that is all you mean by it, then I am a‘Zionist’ too — it would be logically ir-refutable.

But I don’t think that is all it means.Zionism is an ideology — a decayedone, no doubt, but an ideology all thesame. There are two claims in particu-lar of this ideology that I think weshould oppose.

First, is that the movement for thecreation of Israel was a movement ofJewish national liberation. Whateverthe subjective intentions of its adher-ents, it was in practice a movement ofcolonial conquest.

Second, even if it had not been a re-actionary movement in this sense, theproject of a Jewish state would havebeen a false method of fighting anti-semitism in Europe (as false as a no-tion of a ‘homosexual state’ for othervictims of fascism): and a ridiculousmethod of developing a Jewish social-ist movement as the ‘socialist’ Zionistsbelieved.

Just history? I don’t think so. Whilst.to repeat; defending the rights of theJews, we have to explain the origins ofthe conflict. It is simply impossible todiscuss the question of Palestine with-out doing so. These historical issuesare therefore very live political issues.

And the Israeli state is recognisablyZionist — recognisably the product ofthe Zionist movement. It is a state forJews, as opposed to a state for its citi-zens; Arabs expelled since its creationcannot live in it.

I oppose a programme to conquerIsrael. I think that to propose the sell-obliteration of the Israeli Jewish nationis utopian rubbish. I think that the ex-pelled Arabs have no absolute right, inthe sense of a right that in principle

could be enforced by external armiesand thus conquest, to “return”. But I dothink they have a “right” in a more min-imal sense, to live in Israel, and thattheir exclusion is chauvinist, indeedracist.

Zionism, minimally, is Israeli Jewishchauvinism. I do not think we shouldcall ourselves ‘Zionists’ any more than,through support for Palestinian na-tional rights, we should be Palestiniannationalists.

To do so obscures real political is-sues rather than clarifying them.

Againstideological terror

John O’Mahony [Sean Matgamna],SO 295, 4.12.86

After Clive Bradley’s letter in lastweek’s SO I’m not sure what his quar-rel with Mick Ackersley and JackCleary is about. Clive objected to MickAckersley’s assertion that Zionism log-ically means support for the right of Is-rael to exist and that those whosupport its right to exist are Zionist.Now Clive — who does support theright of Israel to exist — concedes thatif this is all that is meant by ‘Zionism’then he too is a Zionist: ‘It would belogically irrefutable’.

Clive insists that Zionism meansother things too. Yet nobody proposedthat we formally adopt the name — orthe ideas and attitudes — of the cam-paigning Zionists, who are usuallyJewish chauvinists.

Israel was created by ‘a movementof colonial conquest’ — of sorts. Butpeople who emphasise this are usuallyconcerned with more than preciseclassification. They use it to justify adenial of Israel’s right to exist and toback up a proposal to roll back the filmof history by destroying the Jewish na-tion in Palestine. It encapsulates a re-actionary Arab revanchist andchauvinist programme.

In any case support for Israel’s rightto exist does not necessarily implysupport for the ‘movement of colonialconquest’. We can only relate to thatnow as an event of past history.

Setting up a Jewish state was afalse way to fight anti-semitism in Eu-rope? I’m not so sure about that. Bythe end of his life Trotsky, though herejected the Zionist enterprise inPalestine, had come round to the viewthat a Jewish state was necessary.

The historic fact is that Zionism was-n’t able to save Europe’s Jews fromanti-semitism, or from massacre.Nothing but the socialist revolutionwould have saved the Jews.

The fascist armies might very wellhave got to Palestine — they almostdid early in the war — and turned itinto a death trap for the Jews. Yet that

didn’t happen. The Jews in Palestinesurvived, while the Jews of Polandand most of Europe were murdered intheir millions. That fact makes onewish that what Isaac Deutscher called‘the life-raft state’ had come into exis-tence before the war.

History tells us that all methods offighting anti-semitism in Europe failed,and that our method — assimilation —failed more thoroughly and disas-trously than the Zionist method: andthat it failed most completely in thecountry where the Jews had beenmost assimilated — Germany. Trotskyfaced up to that fact after a lifetimespent as an assimilationist.

I don’t conclude that, therefore,those who said to the Jews ‘assimilateand fight for the socialist revolution’were wrong. The tragic outcomewasn’t inevitable. But that’s how itturned out.

The massacre of the Jews — like somuch else — was a byproduct of thedefeat of the revolutionary socialistworkers’ movement in the early twenti-eth century. But the workers were de-feated; and the Jews were massacred;and as a knock-on effect terrible thingswere done — and are still being done— to the Palestinian Arabs (though in-comparably less terrible things thanwere done to the Jews in Europe).From 1986 it is a matter of evaluatingthe history of the Jews in the 20th cen-tury and not what it was in 1900, achoice of programmes — Zionism orassimilation — to fight for.

Israel is a state for all Jews as op-posed to a state for its citizens? Yes,but what is wrong with that?

As an ideal, a state in which Jewsand Arabs would coexist as equal citi-zens is very attractive. But haven’t weall agreed — very belatedly to be sure— that it is an utopia behind whichhides the Arab chauvinist demand forthe conquest and destruction of theJewish nation?

Either the Jews have a right to theirstate, or they don’t. And if they do wecan’t make it conditional on us liking orapproving everything they do. Ofcourse while defending Israel’s right toexist we champion the PalestinianArabs within Israel and on the occu-pied West Bank; we support thoseJews who fight Jewish chauvinism andso on. I can’t see why within thatframework and within those qualifica-tions — it is of special concern that Is-rael says all Jews in the world have aright to Israeli citizenship. Israel is astate conceived as a refuge for all thevictims of anti-semitism — why de-mand that the Israelis forget this? Thelaw of (Jewish) return and the treat-ment of the Palestinian Arabs are sep-arable and should be separated.

Surely the big issue here, though, isnot just whether our support for theright of the Jews to have a statemakes us — strictly speaking — Zion-

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ist or not. What makes that importantand worth arguing about is that ‘Zion-ist’ now is used on the left as a form ofcondemnation whose emotional con-tent — used to bludgeon, intimidateand stigmatise — is about equal to theterm ‘racist’ and not too far away from‘fascist’. That is the political issuehere.

It is necessary for us to stand up tothis thinly disguised antisemitism andto insist that it is based on ideologicallies and on pseudo-historical mythsabout how Israel came into existence

Think about it. On the left ‘the Zion-ists’ — read the very big majority ofJews — are stigmatised as imperial-ists and racists of the very worst sort.Israel is imperialism incarnate, with itstentacles everywhere. It was the un-dercover workings of powerful Jewishconspirators which led to the creationof Israel. Comparisons with Nazismcome easy to those who see it like thisand are frequently used. It may beonly the demented “Petrodollar anti-Zionists’ of Gerry Healy’s old WRPwho say all this clearly, but neverthe-less that picture is widespread.

All this — despite the crimes of Is-rael against the Palestinian Arabs — ispreposterous! The Jews have beenchief single victim of imperialism in the20th century The supposedly all-pow-erful pre Israel world Jewish commu-nity couldn’t even save its own frommassacre. li couldn’t secure entryvisas for refugees from Nazism in toBritain, the USA, or into any othercountry — not even to save their lives,

The picture of Zionism and Israel asa creation and tool of imperialism (asdistinct from an ally playing power poli-tics with various imperialisms) is agrotesque historic libel and misrepre-sentation. That isn’t how things hap-pened, or why, whatever the long termplans and machinations of the Zionistmovement. The Jews who made mod-ern Israel possible fled to Palestinefrom murderous fascism, As late asthe all-decisive war in 1948 Israel de-pended not on monopoly capitalist im-perialism but on Moscow and itsCzech satellite for the arms withoutwhich they might have lost.

The picture of modern history andthe Jews’ demonic place in it, nowdominant on the left is if you thinkabout it, not too far off a left-wing ver-sion of the ‘blood libel’ of the Christiananti-semites, according to which Jewsmurdered children during their reli-gious rituals.

You don’t need to regard Israel andZionists as they are regarded on muchof the left to be able to oppose andcondemn aspects of Israel and to de-mand justice for the Palestinian Arabs.

In fact our equivalent of the bloodlibel — which owes a great deal to thethinly disguised anti-semitism of theStalinist movement and its post 1948campaigns against ‘Zionism’ — serves

another purpose: It backs up and legit-imises ‘socialist’ support for the Arabchauvinist programme of conqueringand annihilating the Jewish nation inPalestine.

Clive Bradley has as little time forthis horrible nonsense as I have. But Ithink he hasn’t freed himself fromemotional attitudes and from hints andhalt thoughts which imply attitudes andpolicies he both rejects and con-demns.

The job of SO is to help the leftscour itself clean of the new anti-semitism. That is why, working in a po-litical milieu in which Zionism is usedas a demonological name tag tomorally blackjack and ideologically ter-rorise Jews who stand up to the hys-terical “anti-Zionists”, SO cannot affordto go along even part of the way withthe blackjackers. If we are Zionists, sothen we are Zionists.

A perversedefinition

Martin Thomas, SO 297, 8.1.87

Faced with rising anti-semitism inlate 19th century Britain, Eleanor Marxused to declare at public meetings, ‘Iam a Jewess’.

Strictly speaking she wasn’t, but shewanted to confront the anti-semiteshead on.

The position of Mick Ackersley andJack Cleary is in some ways similar.Faced with anti-Zionists who say that ifthey defend the rights of the IsraeliJewish nation then they’re Zionists,they respond: “So I’m a Zionist. Sowhat?”

The impulse is clearly honourable.But the logic, I think, is faulty. Zionismhad a clear meaning before 1948.Marxists opposed Zionism. They re-garded it as a tragically mistaken at-tempt by the oppressed to respond tooppression, rather than as an anti-Arab imperialist conspiracy: but theyopposed it.

They were right to oppose it, I thinksand I believe Mick Ackersley and JackCleary would agree. But an IsraeliJewish nation now exists and howeverit came into existence, it has rights.

Crude anti-Zionists often refer to theIsraeli Jewish nation as ‘the Zionists’.They evade the issue of the rights ofthe Israeli Jewish nation by first reduc-ing the Israeli Jews to a political group(‘Zionists’) and then reducing Zionistpolitics to the driving out of the Pales-tinian Arabs.

Now most Israeli Jews would acceptthe label ‘Zionist’. And historic Zionismdid mean the driving out of the Pales-tinian Arabs. But historic Zionism alsomeant many other things. And the bigmajority of Israeli Jews are IsraeliJews not because of an ideological

choice but because they were born inIsrael or found Israel as refuge frompersecution. So the ‘anti-Zionist’ defini-tion grossly distorts the reality.

Then the ‘anti-Zionists’ add an in-escapably anti-semitic twist by pro-ceeding further in the same line ofargument and extending the term‘Zionist’ to all those (Jews) who feel aspecial national allegiance to the IsraelJewish nation.

Even as a gambit in debate, saying“So then I’m a Zionist too; so what?” isa more confusing that clarifying re-sponse. Obviously we — Mick Ackers-ley, Jack Cleary, myself — do not feelany special national allegiance to theIsraeli Jewish nation above all others.Rather, we defend the rights of thatnation like all others.

The point is to separate out all thedifferent elements blurred together inthe word ‘Zionism’. It is crucial to insistthat the Marxist opposition to historicZionism has no bearing on the issue ofthe rights of the modern Israeli Jewishnation.

There is another problem. In Israeliand wider Jewish politics, ‘Zionism’has a current meaning which is nar-rower than Jack Cleary’s ‘logical’ defi-nition as meaning defending the rightof Israel to exist (maybe with modifica-tions).

The narrower meaning is: seeing thestate of Israel as having some mysticmission for the redemption (physical,social or spiritual) of the whole world-wide Jewish people; and thereforeseeing it as having not just rightsproper to the Israeli Jewish nation asto any other nation, but special, addi-tional rights, higher than those of othernational entities.

I don’t particularly advocate this nar-rower meaning as ‘my’ definition of Zi-onism. But it is certainly more logicalthan Jack Cleary’s (one can very wellcondemn historic Zionism yet be a‘Zionist’ in Jack Cleary’s definition).

And another thing: in the generalBritish labour movement we can verywell deal with the crude ‘anti-Zionists’by saying that their use of ‘Zionism’ isan ideological amalgam, and by insist-ing on defining issues more precisely:the politics of the state of Israel, andthe rights of the Israeli Jewish nation,non-Israeli Jewish identification withthat nation, etc.

But it is almost impossible to partici-pate in Israeli, or broader Jewish, poli-tics without accepting the narrowerdefinition of Zionism, at least provi-sionally. And to have ‘our’ definition ofZionism in which almost all Jewish andIsraeli anti-Zionists, and a sizeablespectrum of Palestinian nationalists,are ‘Zionists’, is perverse.

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In the Zionistcamp

Tony Greenstein, SO 298, 15.1.87

When, some 18 months ago, Social-ist Organiser began debating its posi-tion on Zionism/Palestine, we forecastthat SO would move into the Zionistcamp.

Moshe Machover of Matzpen, theSocialist Organisation in Israel, was in-vited to participate in that debate, be-cause he too disagreed with thedemocratic, secular state position.Were he to read John O’Mahony’s arti-cle (4 December) he would, I am sure,disagree with it in its entirety. Moshe isone of those who struggled to win apreviously Zionist left over to an anti-Zionist position. O’Mahony seeks to dothe opposite.

By his own admission he is a Zionistsupporter and despite all that hasbeen written on the Zionist movement,its colonial roots, its reactionary role inJewish politics, he has learnt nothingand forgotten all. He has even con-fused the terms ‘Jewish’ and ‘Zionist’and then accused the rest of the Leftof anti-semitism for the same sin!

Zionism never was a method offighting anti-semitism. It held anti-semitism couldn’t be fought, far betterto come to terms with it and establishtheir own state. For most Jews itwasn’t even a means of escape. Some2.5 million Jews who did flee went notto Palestine but to Britain and Amer-ica.

Describing those who believed thatthe Bolshevik Revolution made Zion-ism irrelevant, Chaim Weizmann, thefirst President of Israel, wrote “Nothingcan be more superficial and nothingcan be more wrong than that. The suf-ferings of Russian Jewry never werethe cause of Zionism.”

Similar statements were made byBen Gurion during the Nazi era andthe leader of American Zionism. AbbaHillel Silver. Israel was not conceivedas a refuge for all the victims of anti-Semitism (otherwise it could hardlyhave seen in antisemitism a force forgood that stimulated emigration) butthe only means of preserving the Jew-ish people as a collectivity. It was theresponse of the Jewish petit bour-geoisie.

It is beyond doubt that the Zionistmovement obstructed the movementto save Jews from the Holocaust,terming it ‘refugeeism’, e.g. it opposedthe lowering of the immigration move-ments in Britain and the US arguingthat the refugees should go to Pales-tine. Nor is it true that all methods offighting anti-semitism in Europe failed.

Not only, by Begin’s own admission,did some two million Jews survive byescaping into Russia, degenerated as

the revolution was, but opposition toanti-semitism in countries such asDenmark (where the entire Jewishcommunity was smuggled out to Swe-den), Bulgaria and Italy did preventmany more News being killed. In Hol-land there was even a general strikeagainst the deportations which theZionist Judenrat opposed. Whosereading of history is false?

Even today, far from being the ‘life-raft state’, Israel jeopardises the posi-tion of Jews in the diaspora with itsgenocide of the Palestinians. Whatwas Israel doing when over 2,000young leftist Jews were being torturedto death in Argentina? Selling arms tothe Junta. And the Zionist leaders ofthat community? Telling others not tomake a fuss. Compare that to theZionist campaign over Soviet Jewry.

Nothing in Trotsky’s writings leadsone to the conclusion that he sup-ported the Zionist enterprise in Pales-tine. In July 1940, just before hisdeath, he wrote: “The attempt to solvethe Jewish question through the mi-gration of Jews to Palestine can nowbe seen for what it is, a tragic mockeryof the Jewish people... Never was it soclear as it is today that the salvation ofthe Jewish people is bound up insepa-rably with the overthrow of the capital-ist system.”

O’Mahony’s obsession with anti-semitism blinds him to the fact thatanti-semitism today in Europe is not,unlike 50 years ago, state sponsored.It is a personal form of racism, con-fined to fringe fascist groups. It isblack people in Britain, Arab people inFrance, Turkish workers in Germanywho experience state racism. Jewishpeople have socially moved upwardsand politically moved rightwards.

That is why we say that antisemitismhas been redefined and the term‘black anti-semitism’ like ‘left anti-semi-tism’ is used as a means of counteringopposition to Zionism.

Racism is not merely a question ofpersonal prejudice, but at the level ofclass, a specifically oppressed sectionof the working class. Apart fromFrance, there is no Jewish workingclass in the West, unlike the 1930s.The Jewish people have changed andwith it anti-semitism.

As Abram Leon noted, “Zionismtransposes anti-semitism to all of his-tory, it saves itself the trouble of study-ing the various forms of antisemitismand their evolution” (Jewish Question,p. 247). If Jews today, unlike the Jewsof the East End who fought the fas-cists, base their identity around Israel,then that is a reactionary identity.

Zionism as a colonial movement isnot something of the past. Internalcolonisation has been a continuingfeature of Israel’s existence. Today’soperations on the West Bank are nodifferent to what it did in the Galilee.

O’Mahony asks what is wrong with

Israel being a state for all Jews as op-posed to all its citizens. The answer isracism, not merely in this or that policybut in every single face of the State’soperations.

It means Israel’s Arabs are at besttolerated and at worst unwanted. Itmeans the growth of Kach and Tehiya,it means apartheid and expulsion. Itmeans concern over the ‘demographicproblem’, i.e. too many Arabs.

The article demolishes other strawtargets. Socialists did not advocate as-similation as a strategy, neither do wemourn it. Only incorrigible reactionar-ies would consciously seek to pre-serve differences of caste or religionwhere individuals choose otherwise,

Nobody on the Left believes Jewshave a ‘demonic place’ in history.Those of us who are Jewish andwhose opposition to Zionism came asa consequence of our revolutionarysocialism understand not only Zion-ism’s relationship to antisemitism butalso its reactionary role within Jewishpolitics.

Even the Jewish Socialists’ Groupunderstand that Israel feeds off the di-aspora Jewish communities, contribut-ing nothing to their well-being.

Instead of an analysis which seesIsrael as an artificial state, which cannot exist other than in alliance with im-perialism, O’Mahony resorts to moralrelativism. Jews are ‘the chief singlevictim of imperialism in the 20th cen-tury’. ‘Incomparably less terriblethings’ were done to the Jews than tothe Palestinians.* This ranking of hier-archies is ironically attacked on thefacing page [of that issue of SO] by MsCarlisle and Ashworth.

Even were these statements truethey would be irrelevant. Since whenhas support for a democratic, secularstate been part of reactionary Arabchauvinism? It is a demand that is re-jected by all the Islamic chauvinists.Unfortunately, Socialist Organiser, inrefusing to give any meaningful sup-port to the Palestinians — either in thelabour movement or in National Unionof Students (where it is to the right ofmost reformists and on a par with Mili-tant) has accommodated to imperial-ism.

As for helping the left scour itselfclean of anti-semitism, this in itselfspeaks volumes about O’Mahony’sanalysis of racism — it’s not located insociety but in individuals. However notwishing to stand in his way, I suggestan open debate between ourselvesand John O’Mahony in which he willhave the opportunity to begin scour-ing.

* This sentence appears here aswritten in the original manuscript.

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Huffing andpuffing

Steve Channon, SO 299, 22.1.87

Oh the rhetorical polemic of TonyGreenstein (SO. 15 January)... Somuch huffing and puffing but very littlein the way of actual accuracy. Yet an-other tirade of half-truths, sheer fan-tasy and what the writer would notdoubt claim to be anti-Zionism andnothing more.

Firstly there is the question of Zion-ism and the Holocaust. In the inim-itable style of the new breed of (leftwing) Holocaust revisionists, Green-stein attempts to justify his illogicalanalysis with plain lies.

The truth is that Zionists were at theforefront of the resistance against theNazis — in the ghettos, concentrationcamps and towns — and to label theJudenrat and others who did not resistas ‘Zionists’ is crass reactionarystereotyping of the worst order.

Jews did not die in the Holocaustbecause of so-called ‘Zionist collabo-ration’ but because of the failure of theworking class and indeed the entireworld to resist the Nazis. Don’t attemptto blame Jews (or Zionists, it’s thesame thing really) for antisemitism —that is the sole responsibility of the an-tisemites.

True, there was some support of-fered against the Hitlerite regime bycertain states or people but the factthe matter remains that these wereisolated incidents. The majority ac-tively assisted or passively acceptedthe attempted genocide of the Jewishpeople. That is why six million Jewwere slaughtered and, as therenowned Marxist intellectual IsaacDeutscher wrote:

“If instead of arguing against Zion-ism in the 1920s and 1930s, I hadurged European Jews to go to Pales-tine, I might have helped save some ofthe lives that were later extinguishedin Hitler’s gas chambers.’

Secondly, there is Greenstein’s mar-ginalisation and trivialisation of anti-semitism in contemporary society.However, state racism still existsagainst Jews in countries such asSyria and the USSR.

The truth of the situation is that anti-semitism remains the binding force ofinternational fascism today — it iswhat links the National Front to Far-rakhan and to the neo-Nazi AWB inSouth Africa. Anti-semitism is still verymuch at the core of racist and fascistideology.

It may not be so evident as, say, theoppression of blacks in this country,but to dismiss it as fringe, with it beingat the bottom of Greenstein’s leaguetable of oppression, is hardly a social-ist response.

But if one is to believe Greenstein’sanalysis then the reason why anti-semitism is not like it was 50 yearsago is neither due to socialism nor Zi-onism but to capitalism. For accordingto the writer it is the process of bour-geoisification that has reduced anti-semitism to the fringe!

Then again, such a reduction of anti-semitism and intellectual perversion ishardly surprising from someone likeTony Greenstein.

Zionism is stillracism

Bryan Edmands, SO 299, 22.1.87

Our stand against anti-semitism isboth important and commendable.However, this has nothing to do withsupport for present day Israel.

Well-documented histories of theracism of the Israeli state since itsproclamation in May 1948; of the pre-ceding 30 years of Zionist encouragedand organised immigration to Pales-tine; and of the propaganda used byZionists which often (purposely)served the interests of anti-semitesexist.

It is now undoubtedly true that duein large part to the systematic and bru-tal terrorisation of the Palestinians,that Israel is held in contempt andhaired by not only Palestinians but allArab peoples.

This brings me to the question: theabove being the case, what shouldSocialist Organiser’s position be?

I believe the basis of it should be:condemnation of the state of Israel;support for the Palestinian struggle;neighbouring Arab governments areno real friends of the Palestinians orindeed of their own working classes(they are their class enemies); a call— addressed to the only agency thatcould possibly carry it out, short ofthere being socialism in a good part ofthe world), the Jewish working class— that Israel should renounce all ex-pansionist claims and move back tothe very least its pre-1967 boundaries;and to begin to make extensive repa-rations, both in terms of financial aidand technical know-how if so desiredby the Palestinians.

Unlike the supporters of the ‘democ-ratic secular state’ I agree that if thereis a desire by Jews for some territorialexpression of nationhood (and like-wise the Palestinians), and acceptingthe reality that history has placed be-fore us, some modification of pre-1967Israel should be established throughnegotiations between the Jewish work-ing class and the Palestinians.

As Trotsky said in October 1934. ina reply to a letter from a group of Jew-ish Left Oppositionists working insidethe Soviet Union:

“... for the Jews, as for any nation,the very best circumstances for cul-tural development should be created).This means, inter alia: to provide forthose Jews who desire to have theirown schools, their own press, theirown theatre, etc., a separate territoryfor self administration and develop-ment... In the sphere of the nationalquestion there must be no restraint: onthe contrary there must be an all-sidedmaterial assistance for the culturalneeds of all nationalities and ethnicgroups”.

It is not from emotionalism that wecondemn Israel and support the Pales-tinians — it is in the name of democ-racy!

It is certainly not anti-semitic to con-demn Zionism as an ideology, utterlyand completely.

It is semantic nonsense to attemptto define Zionism away by saying thatit now just expresses a desire for Jew-ish territorial rights.

The ‘Law of Return’ should be chal-lenged, though not denied by us, onthe basis that Israel is a diversion (andnot a safe haven) from the class strug-gle. Jewish people would do better tofight for socialism in their countries ofbirth, rather than seeking a refugealong a spiritual/religious path.

Finally, Zionism is racism, of a pecu-liarly Jewish form true, but still racism.

So to assert as comrade O’Mahonydoes that ‘if we are Zionists, then weare Zionists’ does nothing in aidingJewish people, the Palestinians, andthe working class, but on the contrary,gives cover to Zionism and ammuni-tion to our enemies.

Rights andwrongs

Clive Bradley, SO 300, 29.1.87

Perhaps the clearest way to reply toJohn O’Mahony’s comments (Letters,SO 295) is to explain briefly my overallviews.

Much of what passes as ‘anti-Zion-ism’ is implicitly, and sometimes ex-plicitly, anti-semitic. The nice soundingprogramme of a ‘secular, democraticstale’ is a utopia, and in fact could onlybe implemented by force. In reality,whatever people mean by it, it is a pro-gramme unrealisable except by mili-tary conquest of Israel.

If it is supposed to be voluntary onthe Jews’ part, it is not an answer lothe national question. A long (whocould know how long?) process ofchance of heart by the Jews is notmuch of a programme for Palestiniansfacing oppression now. Withdrawal ofIsraeli forces from the post-1967 occu-pied territories, combined with the rightof secession of majority Arab areaswithin pre-’67 Israel, is a big part of an

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immediate democratic programme. So, I support Israel’s right to exist. I

agree with John O’Mahony that this isan unconditional right — that is, it isridiculous to say that we support theconquest of Israel until such time thatIsrael is a nicer place. I am completelyopposed to the conquest of Israel.

John O’Mahony says that we shouldchampion the rights of the Palestini-ans, and support Jews fighting Jewishchauvinism. On what basis, though?What does opposition to Jewish chau-vinism mean?

It seems to me that it must includetrenchant criticism of the refusal orJews to countenance a large influx ofArabs into their state. We should notadvocate ‘return’ on the point of achauvinist’s gun, nor deny the Jewsrights until they agree to allow Arabsin. The agency for opposition to theracist, exclusivist character of Israel,and therefore for change, is the work-ing class in Israel.

But Israel is exclusivist, and we dohave a socialist responsibility to op-pose this exclusivism. Israel’s right toexist is not conditional upon it ceasingto be exclusivist, but opposition to itsexclusivism should be part of our pro-gramme.

Israel’s definition as a state for Jewsrather than its citizens, which O’Ma-hony sees no problem with, is in ex-pression of this exclusivism. It is partof the institutional structure that deniesArabs rights within Israel.

Because of this, I think it is wrong toidentify ourselves with ‘Zionists’ evenin a quiet way to make a stanceagainst the hysterical ‘anti-Zionists’.The Zionist movement — though not,of course, all individual Zionists — areour political enemies.

I think it is possible both to makestand against anti-semitism on the leftand to maintain a socialist critique ofthe Israeli state.

A socialistfederation

Duncan Chapple, SO 302, 12.2.87

Adam Woolf in SO-296 is quitewrong to say that John O’Mahony is inany way “condoning racist oppres-sion”. Even so there are some pointsJohn made I’d like to comment on.

Socialist Organiser takes a ‘twostates’ position on the Middle East.Why? Not because we support Israelinational chauvinism, but because werecognise the national rights of the Is-raeli and Palestinian peoples. Thatleads us to reject the formula of a mili-tary conquest of Israel.

SO supporters do not condoneracism: we take the lead of Lenin onthe national question in supporting na-tional rights; but that should not lead

us to support the state of Israel in theway John O’Mahony seems to.

What we want is class unity for a so-cialist federation of the Middle East.Recognising those national rights laysa basis for building that unity. We wantto smash the Israeli state only so faras we want to smash all “states”, in asmuch as they are mechanisms for op-pression.

The yes/no choice O’Mahony seemsto offer ignores that there is more thanone alternative. It ignores that our sup-port for Israel to exist is based on ouropposition to that blood-bath, not onsupport for Israeli-Jewish oppressionand chauvinism, nor because we seeIsrael’s existence as the best possiblestate of affairs in the Middle East.

Double standardsand anti-Zionism

Sean Matgamna (written at the timeof the previous contributions in thissection, but not published until the firstedition of this pamphlet)

I don’t know what Tony Greensteinwas doing getting himself involved inthe SO discussion on Zionism. Apartfrom Greenstein it was a discussionbetween people all of whom share acertain common commitment to:

• The right of both the Israeli Jewishnation and the Palestinian Arabs to astate in Palestine — the two stales po-sition..

Opposition to the Judaeophobic‘anti-Zionism’ that is dominant on theleft; and

• Hostility to Israeli-Jewish chauvin-ism, and to Israel’s treatment of its‘own’ Arabs and those on the WestBank.

But Greenstein is a hard man tokeep out. That’s all right, except thathe tends to drag the discussion down,and this time he did that too. Yet I wel-come his presence in the discussionbecause it serves a useful purpose.

It demonstrates that you can’t — de-spite what people like Martin Thomasthink — have a calm, elevated, ab-stract, scholarly or pseudo-scholarlydiscussion on the mere meaning of theword Zionism. It is a living question ofpolitics: the whole network of ques-tions — of history and so on — cannotbe separated from the central politicalquestions at Middle East politics now:one state or two? the right of the Jew-ish nation to exist or the right of theArabs to destroy it?

You cannot in the political arena dis-cuss the meaning of ‘Zionism’ apartfrom current politics, or separate sucha discussion from the attitude weshould take, as socialists and democ-rats, to Jews and ‘Zionists’ who defendthe right of Israel to exist and refuse toaccept the ultimatum that they are

posed with by much of the left — en-dorse the demand that the people ofthe Jewish state agree to dissolvethemselves in an Arab secular demo-cratic state, or be branded (like Israel)as racists and imperialist stooges,

Thus Martin Thomas’s letter is typi-cally balanced, and a fair-minded sum-mary of what has gone before — butit’s five miles above the political terrainon which we operate. It simply doesnot engage with the political questionsI have tried to take up. It doesn’t relateto, let alone answer, the problem thatwe need to answer — that anti-Zion-ism mostly means antisemitism on theleft, and moreover that it is part of amassive political infection. Or the factthat by running before the hystericalanti-Zionists we give their campaignextra power and momentum, andabandon those who cannot so readilysolve their dilemmas by adding theirown curses to a word — Zionism.

Martin Thomas should think aboutthe very flattering analogy he makesbetween those of us who would beprepared to accept, with qualifications,the label Zionist, and Eleanor Marx’sdeclaration during the anti-Jewish agi-tation in Britain that she was a Jew-ess. I think Martin misunderstandswhat she was doing. I don’t think shewas just making a romantic personalgesture. Eleanor Marx was a well-known and respected trade union ac-tivist among the East End workers.She had helped organise match work-ers, gas workers, dockers, and others,helping to start what is today the GM-BATU. She taught the union’s first sec-retary, Will Thorne, how to read andwrite.

Surely Eleanor Marx was trying tocounter the xenophobia, the fear ofaliens and outsiders, by identifying‘Jews’ with someone her listenersknow and accepted. SO has taughtfew on the left to read either English orMarxian, and there are those, in thehard left and the soft left, who wouldbrand us ourselves as aliens; but still,something can be gained by making ademonstrative stand against the anti-Zionist hysteria — and all the more soif we combine this, as we should, withhonest defence of the oppressedPalestinian Arabs and support for theanti-chauvinists within Israel.

The point was made very early inthe discussion that Zionism is a wordwith more than one meaning. By nowit is a pretty decayed word. I think thelogical meaning is what Jack Clearysaid: acceptance of the right of Israelto exist. Martin Thomas says that theIsraeli left use ‘Zionism’ to mean theidea that the Israeli Jewish nation hasrights above all other nations. All right!But how many copies of SO go to Is-rael? If we were in Israel we couldadopt the terminology of the left, andwe’d have no reason to quarrel aboutit. In Britain we have, and that’s the

69

point of this discussion. Greenstein takes advantage of the

use of ‘Zionism’ in Israel to go all overthe place on what is and what isn’t Zi-onism. He is also dishonest.

Leave aside the dispute aboutwords and labels for a moment. As faras I know almost all the Israeli left anti-Zionists are in favour of the right of (amodified) Israeli State to exist; theyare against Israel being subjugated;they reject the secular democraticstate slogan. Whether they choose tocall themselves Zionists or not, they fitwhat our side in the discussion hasbeen defining as ‘Zionist’. They are notin Greenstein’s ‘anti-Zionist’ camp.And, of course, the issue that con-cerns us over the use of the term‘Zionist’ does not arise for them. In Is-rael Zionophobia can hardly be a codefor Judaeophobia.

I did not ‘admit’ that I am ‘a Zionistsupporter’ in any sense Greensteinuses. I do not support or accept re-sponsibility for the crimes of the Israelistate, and no amount of play withwords can saddle me with that respon-sibility. I want to defend the rights ofZionists and of Jews, not Israel’s treat-ment of the Palestinian Arabs.

Have I “confused” the terms “Jew’and “Zionist”: and then accused therest of the left of anti-semitism for thesame sin! More small-beer polemicaltrickery! At issue here is a question offact: is it or is it not true that mostJews instinctively support Israel? Theonly exceptions are some very reli-gious Jews and a thin smattering ofrevolutionary socialists.

It is not a matter of imposing the‘Zionist’ label on Jews who would notaccept it, a substitution of a ‘congeni-tal’ Zionist definition of Zionism for theproper one, but of defining rigorouslywhat exists now. Either we accept thatany emphatic hostility to “Zionists” is ineffect hostility to Jews, or we try toevade this problem by using Zionist asa tag only for the allegedly super-vil-lainous super-Zionists. But who arethese? There are specifically Zionistorganisations. But a broad campaignagainst such people for their pro-Israelstand, or for the crimes of Israel, is im-possible without at the first move claw-ing in most ‘Zionists’ in the widerdefinition.

Greenstein says that Zionism wasnever a method of fighting anti-semitism. It certainly wasn’t ourmethod — though I think it is a re-quirement of political honesty to re-ex-amine our methods and the others inthe light of what actually happened.What bourgeois Europe in its mid-20thcentury nationalist convulsions did tosix million Jews does, it seems to me,in retrospect powerfully support thereasoning of the Jewish nationalists.

The logic does not dispose of theobjections to the Zionist project — inthe first place the existence of the

Palestinian Arabs. However, it sug-gests to me some sympathy with theZionists and their terrible choices anddilemmas. I have no wish to defend orendorse the policies of historical Zion-ism. These were bourgeois, and alsowere steeped in the ‘small nation’ psy-chology and ways of working of theJewish communities, who for centurieshad lived and manoeuvred for survivalin a sea of more or less rampant hos-tility.

Zionism’s break with that past wasinevitably only partial. It could only bepartial. Zionism could only operate bytrying to play realpolitik with more orless hostile powers — and, under theNazis, at gunpoint. That is the fate ofall small peoples and states caught upin the cross-currents of the competi-tion between the big states, and theJewish nationalists had no secureundisputed territory of their own, noreven, in almost all of Europe after1940-1, general recognition that theirpeople had a right to stay alive.

It is possible to understand the vari-ous shifts to which the Zionists weredriven without necessarily endorsingthem — and without shifting to thestandpoint of Jewish nationalism. It ispossible to sympathise with the Jewishnationalists without thereby ignoringthe Palestinian Arabs or failing to sym-pathise with them and support theirjust demands. I think we should dothat.

But it seems to me that sympathy,understanding, or even retrospectiveendorsement of the Zionist movementwould be a thousand times more ap-propriate to the facts of modern Jew-ish history than the stupiddemonology, based on utterly dishon-est pseudo-history, in which Green-stein, Brenner, etc. engage.

For Greenstein to deny that Zionismwas an attempt to tackle anti-semitismbecause ‘logically’ Zionism acceptedantisemitism and tried to build a Jew-ish nation as the answer to it, is logic-chopping. To go on to depict thevarious machinations of the Zionistswith anti-semites as burdening themwith some share of the responsibilityfor the Holocaust is obscene. Green-stein’s argument is not proper histori-cal discussion, but a contrived use ofhistory to preach a message about thepresent. Its only real content is hysteri-cal and incoherent emotionalism aboutthe present-day relations of Israel andthe Palestinian Arabs.

Some Zionists spoke of anti-semi-tism as a force for good? But suchviews can be paralleled by statementsfrom other radicals and nationalistsabout the ennobling or identity-restor-ing or galvanising effects of oppres-sion. For example, try reading themost influential modern Irish Catholicnationalist, Patrick Pearse. You couldcite remarks like his greeting of WorldWar 1 in the name of an Ireland now

offered the chance to expel Britain ac-cording to the Fenian axiom, Britain’sdifficulty is Ireland’s opportunity, “Thetired old Earth needed to be refreshedwith blood”, and you could depict himas a fascist-minded maniac. He wasvery far from being anything like that,

The Zionists put nation-buildingabove “refugeeism”: as they saw it,they wanted a fundamental solutionrather than palliatives. But the fact isthat Zionism became a majority move-ment among Jews because Jewsturned to it under the blows of Nazism.

There was some successful resist-ance to anti-semitism in Nazi Europe,says Greenstein. True. But three mil-lion surviving and six million murderedis not a good testimonial for assimila-tion... At the end of World War 2, Eu-rope’s. surviving Jews overwhelminglywanted to go to Palestine rather thanto the USSR, or Denmark, or Holland,where workers had struck to saveJews. Why? Not because of thedemon power of Zionism, but becausethey no longer trusted any promises oftoleration and equal rights. They wereresolved to trust only their own people.

But, despite Greenstein’s determina-tion to avoid it, the point of the argu-ment does show through when hesays that ‘Israel jeopardises the posi-tion of Jews in the diaspora with itsgenocide (sic) of the Palestinians’.How, exactly? Because the ‘anti-Zion-ist’ agitation against Israel inevitablyclaws in all Jews.

Greenstein’s answer to this problemis to join in the Zionophobic agitation,and to sanitise it morally with the de-mand that Jews support the destruc-tion of Israel or stand condemned as‘Zionists’ and racists.

We would not have advocated Zion-ist solutions before 1948. In fact ourmovement opposed those solutionsand fought for different ones though,and it bears repeating, the politics ofthe entire Trotskyist movement before1948 (including Tony Cliff, who nowtells a different story) bore little rela-tionship to the present Zionophobiaand honorary Arab nationalist politicsthat have since become “Trotskyism”.In any case the Jewish nation-state inIsrael is now a fact.

Greenstein tries to evade the issueof the rights of that nation, and its pos-sible place in any democratic or social-ist future, by instead polemicisingagainst Zionists of the first half of thiscentury. It is an evasion and an under-hand way of trying to justify having thesame attitude to a whole people (theIsraeli Jews, and all other Jews whoidentify with Israel) as to a rival ideo-logical tendency. Clive Bradley is rightthat we have to discuss the roots of Is-rael (and that discussion will includecriticism of Zionism before 1948) —but we must not confuse the roots withthe tree that has developed from it.

I never said that Trotsky supported70

the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. ButI did show — at some length — thatTrotsky concluded in the 1930s that aJewish state was necessary. Green-stein quotes Trotsky: “The attempt tosolve the Jewish question through themigration of Jews to Palestine cannow be seen for what it is, a tragicmockery of the Jewish people... Neverwas it so clear is it is today that thesalvation of the Jewish people isbound up inseparably with the over-throw of the capitalist system”.

This is an example of ‘cunning’ dog-matism used to stop thought. Trotskysought to defeat anti-semitism throughsocialist revolution. He was defeated.There was no socialist revolution. Sixmillion Jews were massacred. Then, inthe aftermath of that defeat, Israel wasestablished. Greenstein’s implicationhere is that Trotsky’s struggle in the1930s for socialist revolution justifiesthe destruction of Israel today, be-cause Israel arose as a result of thedefeat of socialist revolution and thevictory of a programme Trotsky foughtagainst. But that is absurd.

Oddest, but most revealing of all, isGreenstein’s stuff about anti-semitism.“Anti-semitism today in Europe is not,unlike 30 years ago, state-sponsored.It is a personal form of racism, con-fined to fringe fascist groups. It isblack people in Britain, Arab people inFrance, Turkish workers in Germanywho experience state racism. Jewishpeople have socially moved upwardsand politically moved rightwards.

“That is why we say that anti-semi-tism has been redefined and the term‘black anti-semitism’ like ‘left anti-semitism’ is used as a means of coun-tering opposition to Zionism.

“Racism is not merely a question ofpersonal prejudice, but at the level ofclass, a specifically oppressed sectionof the working class. Apart fromFrance, there is no Jewish workingclass in the West, unlike the 1930s.The Jewish people have changed, andwith it anti-semitism”.

This could be better put, but Green-stein seems to be saying that anti-semitism today, even if it exists,doesn’t matter. In the first place, it isnot state-sponsored, like Nazi anti-semitism in the 1930s or the discrimi-nation through immigration laws andso on against blacks, Turks and Arabs.(As if even the worst of the racism suf-fered by blacks in Britain, Arabs inFrance and Turks in Germany today isin the same order of things as the‘state anti-semitism’ of the 30s!)

Moreover, only workers can experi-ence real antisemitism; or at any rateanti-semitism does not matter much ifit does not target Jewish workers.Even to talk of anti-semitism (blackanti-semitism, or left anti-semitism)today is a means of countering opposi-tion to Zionism. To protest at anti-semi-tism is to play the Zionists’ game, as it

might have been put in the sort of Stal-inist polemics in which the now-pre-vailing ‘left anti-Zionism’ first made itsappearance nearly 40 years ago.

This version of a Marxist attitude toracism, if it makes any sense at all, iseconomistic — assuming that weshould be concerned about oppres-sion and prejudice only as they imme-diately affect the working class. It alsocontains a prize bit of historical ob-tuseness.

Where does Greenstein think thatstate-sponsored antisemitic racism of‘50 years ago’ came from? Did itspring into being fully-formed from aruling-class brainstorm? No! The anti-semitism which in its Hitlerite versionproved lethal for two-thirds of Europe’sJews had been evolving, developing,inter-breeding and cross-fertilising formany decades. Part of the cross-fertil-ising came from left-wing anti-semi-tism — the well-named ‘socialism ofidiots’. 1930s anti-semitism did notbegin with state racism.

Greenstein argues: “If Jews today,unlike the Jews of the East End whofought the fascists, base their identityaround Israel, then that is a reac-tionary identity”. And hostility to that‘reactionary identity’ — what weak-minded a-historical people would callanti-semitism — is... what? Progres-sive? Or at any rate not reactionary?On the good side, that of the Arabsand the anti-imperialists?

Greenstein says that I am ‘ob-sessed’ with anti-semitism. No. Ofcourse I am concerned about anti-semitism. But I am ‘obsessed’, or atany rate very concerned, with some-thing else too — the state of the left.

I do think that anti-semitism is aliveand a serious problem, and that itcould become a very big problem inthe future. Explicit anti-semitism hasgrown in Britain in recent years. Nev-ertheless, I agree that antisemitism isnot now the main racism, or the mostburning question of oppression inBritain. Anti-semitism is a burning, un-postponable issue for the left not onlybecause of what it means now, imme-diately, for Jews in Britain, but be-cause of what it means for the left.

Greenstein’s central thesis is thatsome of the victims of Nazi race-mur-der — ‘the Zionists’ — shared respon-sibility for the attempted genocide, andtherefore that Israel, constructed byZionists, does not have the right toexist. Zionism was always the centralenemy of the Jews (and of others). Itis a demon responsible even, in part,for the slaughter of the Jews in WorldWar 2.

Yet Greenstein is not an isolatedcrank. Nor is Lenni Brenner, whosewritings, though vastly superior toGreenstein’s and seemingly more ‘bal-anced’, also use history just as asource of material for preconceivedand preposterously one-sided polemic.

Greenstein’s and Brenner’s ideas arewidely accepted on the left, sometimesin diluted form, and sometimes even incruder versions, as in Jim Allen’s re-cent play ‘Perdition’.

No socialist can defend or justify Is-raeli chauvinism or Israel’s treatmentof the Arabs within and on its borders.I have no desire to. I condemn thosepolicies. The problem, though, is thatGreenstein’s camp is concerned tomake the case for the destruction —not the modification, the destruction ofthe Jewish state — and in that cause itexaggerates and distorts without scru-ple.

No doubt there are Jewish racists inIsrael. But what is elsewhere, in othercountries, defined as nationalism, ishere routinely translated as racism.The state of Israel is a vile capitaliststate. Let us treat it as we treat othervile capitalist states — advocate aworking-class revolution, and supportthe right for other nations oppressedby that state to get out from under itsoppression.

For Greenstein this is ruled out. Is-rael does not have the right to exist.He sides against it with other vile capi-talist states — all of them far viler to-wards the people they consider theirown than Israel is to its own — anddenounces Jews who don’t agree asZionists, pro-imperialists, and racists.

This is double standards — or nostandards, except the standards ofwartime ‘say what you need to say’propaganda.

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Some of the back issues of Workers’Liberty relevant to this debate.Complete list at:bit.ly/v3-wlBack issues of Workers’ Liberty canbe ordered at £1.50 each includingpostage viaworkersliberty.org/payment

72

Solidarity, yes! Boycott, no!Why supporters of "two states" shouldnot join the "smash Israel" boycotters

workers’ libertyreason in revolt

50p if sold separately Volume 3 No.12 June 2007

An open letter to Hilary andSteven Rose from JohnO�Mahony

COMRADES: As well-known supporters of the proposal toboycott Israel, you will have been pleased by the boycottresolutions carried recently by the lecturers� union UCU

and the journalists� union NUJ, and by the move to �boycottIsraeli institutions� contained in Resolution 54 to the conference(starting 19 June) of the public services union Unison.

You, I know, support a boycott as something to help bringabout �two states� in Israel/ Palestine � Israeli withdrawal fromthe Occupied Territories, and the creation of a sovereign, inde-pendent Palestinian state alongside Israel. On the goal of �twostates�, I agree with you. But I believe the boycott will harmrather than help that cause, and in this Open Letter I want toexplain why.

The mood for boycott is backed by strong feelings of indigna-tion and outrage against Israel, and by a powerful and unanswer-able sentiment that something must be done by the British labourmovement to help the Palestinians.

The following, the main, features of the relationship of Israeland the Palestinian people cry out for action against Israel and onbehalf of the Palestinians.

The relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is one ofoverwhelming Israeli superiority in the technology of modernwar. Israel�s bad showing in the July 2006 war in Lebanon has notaltered that. The Israeli right concludes from that experience thatthere should be another such war, so that Israel can reassert itsmilitary superiority.

Israel uses the disparity in power and armaments with sick-ening ruthlessness and evident disregard for Palestinian civiliancasualties.

Israel has ruled over the Palestinian majority territories as anoccupying colonial power for exactly forty years � since theJune war of 1967.

Th P l ti i i th O i d Territories are harassed int

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Trotskyists debate Ireland

Workers’ LibertyVolume 3 No 49 April 2015 published with Solidarity 360 www.workersliberty.org Reason in revolt

Anti-Semitism andanti-Muslim

racism in EuropeBy Yves Coleman of Ni patries, ni frontières (France)

Trotskyists debate Ireland

Workers’ LibertyVolume 3 No 51 December 2015 published with Solidarity 387 www.workersliberty.org Reason in revolt

Jewish revolutionaries,revolutionary Jews

By Daniel Randall This article is adapted from a talk first given at Nottingham Liberal Synagogue in November 2013, and in different versions since

at meetings of the Jewish Socialist Group (JSG) and Workers’ Liberty, as well as at the Jewish educational and culturalconference Limmud in December 2014. A transcript of the original talk was published by the radical Jewish community

organisation Jewdas in April 2014. It is intended as a broad sketch of the topic, a brief introduction to key characters and episodes from the period discussed. Itowes much to Bill Fishman’s East End Jewish Radicals, Janine Booth’s writing and talks on Minnie Glassman, Irving Howe’sWorld of Our Fathers, Tony Michel’s A Fire In Their Hearts, and the writing and walking tours of David Rosenberg of the JSG.

A Yiddish cartoon celebrating the Russian Revolution