CRITICS of the Israeli state and its policies are often. RDECI cmites Zionists.
sented being aonymous with Judaism and that, ry left Zionists claim, it is nothing at of the jewish people.
Zionism represented a historic accommodation to anti-semitism, one that could only grow to the extent that socialist, working within the jewish communities were defeated. Its offspring, the state, today CCLNCO tionary origins of Zionism in its racist Laws, its oppression mians, its cosy relationships with every reactionary current in the world from the South African regime to the contras and its symbiotic with imperialism.
Modern political Zionism is less than 150 years old. It began in the late nineteenth century as a reaction of the jewish petit-bourgeoisie to economic crisis. The jewish population Eastern Europe at that time predominantly concentrated in the middle layers of society — merchants and money lenders existing between the aristocracy and the peasants. With the late development of capitalism in Eastern Europe this economic was increasingly squeezed and jews found themselves, LC WOLeS Abram Leon*, 'wedged between the anvil of decaying feudalism and hammer of rotting capitalism'.
However Zionism amongst many responses to this crisis and the accompanying persecution. At the same time those down into the ranks of the working class were organising themselves into the Bund — a socialist and nationalist party spanning Russia, Poland and Lithuania. JuIC Bund soldarlly with non-jewish against ine TenCOZY Eastern Europe and was anti-Zionist.
Zionism based itself on the dominant ideas of the time, incorporating the theories of social Darwinism and eugenics to explain the 'fundamental differences' between races. Assimilawas impossible, Herzl the father of modern Zionism, because jews were a race and antisemitism was a natural phenomenon CH OLESL H01 CWs.
struggle azallisi semitism was therefore futile. Zionism tore anti-semitism out of its social and economic context and posed it as an eternal, ahistorical mystification.
Zionism. was as ant- comodation virtually In fact towaras assimuation mcrcascu Tono «uu-sctlsu currents Zionist the reac- avv-ue coromsauon ol lalu the Palesti- various times as the not nola state power.
relationship non witn imperaust anui-scnules.
Wing to rid their lands return for support was UiUCL Audience role dience for their League, "rejoiced' . was iust one •.. lave always asserted.
racial jews driven oucouls.
lousIlt for open WUIKCIS regimes violently Ben Gurion warned, the existence of Zionism.
Leading according to migration spokesperson Zionists argued: tention anti- uou laws alld behalf OI B'nai man refugees' benefit.
nerete on acto anti-semitism. Both Zionists and anti-semites agreed that jews constituted a race and that racial assimiation was impossible. In lact. as Leon noted, jews were a 'people-class' and their separate identity survived as long as their economic role persistea. As this disappeared so the tendency Zionists argued that the only soluWas IO1 CWO LU have a separate homeland and, again ConVHe MC TCN ortuC Huluue crassci of the time, this could be achieved on, Argentina and Uganda were considered at possible targets.
The problem was that, as Zionism did an imperialist power would have to be found to sponsor the colonisation. The theoretical accomodation to anti-semitism theretore led to attempts at practical collaboraHerzl approached anti-semites from Count Von Phelve, organiser of the pogroms barism'. in Russia, to the Ottoman Sultan ofterof the jews in for the Zionist tially With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s Zionists found a new anti-semitic auideas. The Nazis recognised the coincidence of interest that existed with the Zionists. Heinrich Class, President of the Pan German at the growth of Zionism and noted that "the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the jews Along with their agreement on the found alullISl themselves arguing, like the Nazis, for jews to leave Germany. However, unlike the socialist organisations, such as the sections of the Trotskyist Fourth International which launched campaigns to the borders of Europe and the USA to the fleeing refugees, Zionists were compromised by the fear that if iews around the world had to choose between helping the refugees or supporting Zionist colonisation, then, a.
. we are risking Zionist organisations in the USA, for example, adopted a policy LIUl of collaboration with the criminal impolicies of the US government. Rabbi Wise, the leading Zionist told congressional hearing in 1939 that there was 'no inof opposing the US immigraMax Kohler testified, on B'rith ana the American Jewish Committee, that he opposed special legislation for Ger- lilalls Zionism, by counterposing fight against Nazism to the colonisation of Palestine, sabotaged the united front that was needed to deteat Nazism. The rise of Zionism to become the dominant ideological current within the jewish diaspora was rooted in the ollaical liquidation workers' organisations — and particularly those of the jewish working class, It gained its strength from the despair following the boigration of re gees to Palesinel holocaust forcible Within Palestine, Zionists had, at best, ignored the existing Arab inhabitants. A popular Zionist siogan reterred without a people looking for a people without a land'. At worst the Zionist vlcallsalivis reproduced the racist attitudes of the imperialists. In fact, Herzl, in attempting to sell the idea of Israel to the imperialist powers, explained that the state would be 'an outpost: of civilisation against barThe imperialists understood the importance of 'a little loyal jewish Ulster' in a sea of potenhostile Alabislll as Storrs, Jerusalem's first British civilian governor, put it. Between 1922 and 1943 the jewish population had risen from 11 to 31.5 per cent of the total population of Palestine.
Under the British mandate after World War I, jewish immigration to Palestine was encouraged to act as a counterweight to the Arab population's desire for independence. return the Zionists supported British colonial rule. the citizenship on any jew from anywhere in the world. Although Palestinians have to pay taxes, their entitlement to welfare benefits is dependent upon military service, from which the vast majority of Palestinians are excluded. Workers from the occupied territories are allowed into the Israeli state to work, but they do not have the right to stay, even overnight. Their situation is in 'essence identical to that of black workers from the bantustans in South Africa. Within the ritories the Zionist state exercises its 'right' continually Palestinian land, in contravention of "land international law.
Internationally, the Zionist state helps to arm and sustain some of the most bloodthirsty world. It is a close collaborator with ,had the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua when even the USA was unwilling to do so. too, Those on the British left, such as budget.
The Howeve occupied terexpropriate regimes the It continued to support were living only jewish MP, Sals.
Israeli state -wonder that from the Arab labour to people.
of jewish and Arab just as in South Africa Along Zionism. for its services in policing the Middle East. By 1982 it was receiving a stagger ing $6 million per day in military and economic aid from the USA .-a sud sidy of one third of the Israeli national drive create a viable economic entity, and; to secure its military position, gives the Zionist state its continual expansionist :dynamic each expansionist thrust creates its own contradictions. The 1967 war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan resulted in the Israeli state seizing control of the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, with the new markets thus opened creating mini DOOTE economy. But it also incorporated more Palestinians into the Israeli sphere.
By 1982, two million Palestinians in sraell occupiea territories and there is now a net jewish emigration from the Israeli state. It is La matter of time before the population once again becomes a minority within the territory it controls. The fascist Israeli Kahane, simply expresses the deadly logic of Zionism when he calls for the expulsion of more PalestiSuch even if it were possible, would simply repeat Israel's problems on a more gigantic scale.
Indeed these contradictions now touch Israel itself. . The invasion of Lebanon brought 400,000 people onto the streets in protest the largest demonstration in the history of the • and led to the growth of organisations such as Peace Now. Such military adventures risk loosening the stranglehold of Zionism over the Israeli population and are in any case more and more difficult. Palestinian uprising in the West Bank Gaza has further complicated Israel's contradiction.
There is an unbroken continuity earliest Zionist writings, through Zionism's criminal response to the threat of Nazism, to its present day pol Seed of iss teligioenad Shed ,religious ideological mystifications the Israeli state stands out more clearly than ever before for what it is — a settler col onial state, a heavily armed outpost of imperialism in the Middle East - an anachronism in the late 20th century...
with its international twin, South Africa, it is one of the states in the world that today face the greatest internal contradictions. *Leon, a Belgian Trotskyist, was the first to develop a systematic Marxist critique of news murce erDymie lvuza during World War II.