What immediately springs to mind when one thinks of the British left and its relationship with the state of Israel? Boycotts maybe, or rhetoric verging on the anti-Semitic? Or perhaps a veneration of reactionaries and clerical fascists, just so long as they see Israel as public enemy number one?
As Sean Matgamma points out:
“Most ‘Trotskyists’ today are, everywhere, agitators and propagandists against the Jewish state of Israel. Not agitators for the view that Israel should change its relationship with the Palestinians, or that it should help set up an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. No. The agitation and propaganda centres on the ‘demand’ that Israel should cease to exist...In war [these ‘Trotskyists’] have sided with the Arab states - Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan - in the hope and expectation that, victorious, they would put an end to Israel. At the start of the 21st-century they back the medieval-minded forces of Arab and Islamic clerical fascism - the Muslim Brotherhood and its off-shoots, and Hezbollah, Hamas and the jihadists in Iraq. Rejecting a two-state solution, these mystics of ‘anti-Imperialism’ back the Muslim mystics who would recreate the Caliphate - the pre-World War I Turkish Empire, against Israel.”
What is less well-known to some who see themselves as modern day carriers of the Trotskyist flame is that many of their ideas about Israel actually come from a Stalinist section of the Marxist movement in the 1920s. Most of the Trotskyist left at the time argued for Arab-Jewish reconciliation and solidarity in anti-imperialist struggle - along working class lines against the Zionist bourgeoisie as well as against reactionary Arab clerics; and together against US and UK imperialism.
One thing that stands out in the Statement of the Fourth International on the Jewish Question is the call for united Jewish and Arab trade unions. Contrast this with those today who wish to write-off Israeli trade unionists entirely in their clammer for boycotts. Interestingly, the Palestinian Federation of Trade Unionists continues to oppose boycotting its Israeli counterpart. Which Palestinians do the modern-day so-called “Trotskyists” listen to however? The pious clerical fascists who call for an immediate severing of all ties with the Jewish state.
While we see some on the left today who would consider themselves opposed to Stalinism embracing the likes of Hamas, in the past it was the Stalinists themselves who felt compelled to make every event occurring anywhere in the world fit into their “anti-imperialist” blueprint. In Palestine this meant refusing to distinguish between the genuine aspirations of the Arab working-class and the corrupt, anti-Semitic agenda of the Mufti. In response, American Trotskyists of the time put out an article entitled Pogrom or revolution?, highlighting the sordid compromises being made by the Stalinists in their support for reactionary Arab leaderships, at the expense of the Arab working classes: “The Arab leaders have curbed the genuine movement of the masses, they have stunted its growth and prevented the development of its natural courses of struggle; they have repeatedly misled and devitalised it. They are still the only spokesmen of the movement, and they speak for reactionary aims. They fight for an ‘Arab Empire’. They have compromised with imperialism and are willing to do it again. They are against all Jews as Jews...They promise the peasant no land and the worker no social improvement. They are vehement enemies not only of Bolshevism, but of the mildest kind of labour movement. In this respect, they far ‘excel’ their Zionist competitors...”
There is the same failure on the left today, seen most vividly in groups like the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP,) who fail to distinguish between the Arab working masses and their reactionary, clerical rulers. This is perhaps the symptom of a loss of faith in the emancipatory potential of the working class as a whole. Equally crass opportunism prevails at home in the UK, where the SWP play a game of crude identity politics, opportunistically supplanting any oppressed minority for the working class as a whole, even if in doing so they act against the interests of the workers’ movement.
In the 1920s and 1930s Trotskyists called for Jews and Arabs to transform the war between themselves, which served the ends of imperialism, into a war of both nations against imperialism. To oppose the reactionary rulers of both sides, whether right-wing Israeli Zionists, or Arab clerical fascists. It's worth remembering this the next time a person on the kitsch-left starts lazily proclaiming their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
All very interesting, however, historically to gain a more balanced view you need to look at Soviet anti-Zionism in the 1960s, its dissemination to CPs and how that set the agenda after the 1967 conflict.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, as far, as I see it, that many Trotskyists were not immune to the influence of the CP on *this* issue. They set the agenda that we see now today.
Some, a few, notably saw through it, but they are a very, very small minority.
Again, the influence of European CP's (at the behest of the Soviet state) set the agenda that we see today and intellectually, because of the Leninist antipathy towards Zionism (see the debates in the early 1900s), many Trots weren't able to resist it.
"The problem is, as far, as I see it, that many Trotskyists were not immune to the influence of the CP on *this* issue."
ReplyDeleteNot in the 1960s/1970s they were not, but earlier in the 1930s it had actually been the Stalinists who were blurring the lines between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Many so-called Trotskyists adopted this position themselves only much later.
This was censored by Shiraz Socialist
ReplyDeleteThe reality of 'left Zionism' in the 20' 30's and beyond
From
http://electronicintifada.net/content/histadrut-israels-racist-trade-union/8121
Histadrut: an apartheid union
As unemployment grew in the Zionist economy in Palestine in the 1920s, Histadrut launched a campaign to promote Jewish labor (Avodat Ivrit) and Jewish produce (Totzeret Haaretz), which was essentially a boycott of Arab labor and produce. David HaCohen, former managing director of Solel Boneh, described what this meant:
“I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there … to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought … to buy dozens of dunums [of land] from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalism as a socialist and to name him the ‘benefactor’ — to do all that was not easy.” [13]
In 1944, “the mere rumor that a cafe in the exclusively Jewish town of Tel Aviv had taken on a few Arab workers provoked an angry gathering of thousands of demonstrators. … Every member of the Zionist Trade Union Federation — the Histadruth [sic] — had to pay two compulsory levies: (1) ‘For Jewish Labor’ — funds for organizing pickets, etc. against the employment of Arab workers, and (2) ‘For Jewish Produce — for organizing the boycott of Arab produce.’” [14]
There are innumerable examples of the complicity of the Histadrut in the Israeli state’s racist oppression of Palestinian workers. Just some examples:
ReplyDeleteIt never spoke out against the Israeli crackdown against Palestinian unions formed in the late 1970s, during which Palestinian unionists were assassinated, tortured and interrogated and their union offices attacked and shut down.
It actively opposed the 1976 general strike of Palestinian workers in Galilee against land confiscations. During the strike the Israeli military and police attacked a demonstration, killing six young Palestinians, injuring 96 and arresting over 300 people (this attack is commemorated each year on March 30 as Palestinian Land Day).
It has never objected to the mass arrests of Palestinian workers from the West Bank and Gaza who reach their workplaces without proper “permits”. The permit system is used as a method of control, with the flow of workers without permits tolerated in order to create a cheap and unprotected labour force for Israeli employers.
It did not oppose the mass lay-offs of Palestinian workers that took place after the second intifada began in 2000.
In 2004 Palestinian construction workers in the Knesset (Parliament) grounds were required to wear helmets marked with a red X to identify them for assassination in the case of an “emergency”. Histadrut made no objection.
Histadrut has also facilitated the super-exploitation of Palestinian workers to its own benefit. In 1970 the Israeli military administration took over supervision of the employment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. With the collaboration of Histadrut, 10% of Palestinian workers’ wages went to the “Equalisation Fund”, supposedly to fund social and cultural services in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), but actually used to fund the occupation. As part of this deal, Histadrut received 1% of all Palestinian workers’ wages, for which these workers received nothing in return. In 1995 Histadrut signed an agreement with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) to repay 8 million shekels to compensate for this stolen money — a tiny fraction of the over 1.5 billion shekels it owed.
James,
ReplyDeleteI should point out that anon's contribution is spam from a Kathy Newman article of 2009, and given its author's bias, it is probably about as much use as accepting Thatcher's unvarnished view of trade unions, not worth much.
James,
ReplyDeleteThe above author's party, RSP, are fans of Ahmadinejad. Forget what I said of above, they are racists by another name.
"Despite the fact that Ahmadinejad’s speech did not contain any anti-Jewish remarks,"
http://directaction.org.au/issue11/why_israel_is_a_racist_state
Thanks for pointing this out Modernity.
ReplyDelete