zionism

[joanna bujes]

At 04:26 PM 07/13/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Herzl lured the Jewish middle class and small capitalist who were facing
>a tough time around the turn of the century with visions of their own
>domestic markets and domination over vast labor resources of Eastern
>European and other Jews.  He also promised to 'rehabilitate' small
>capitals with favorable government policies, including "centralized
>labor agencies" with workers like "a body of troops."  The settler
>working class would benefit by escaping competition from non-Jewish
>labor in Europe and Russia, and would form a workers' aristocracy in
>Palestine.  As Jews in a Jewish State, members of the settler working
>class woiuld suppress competition from Arab labor with racist unions,
>intimidation, and terror.  The state and Zionist elite would would grant
>privileges to the Jewish settlers to make them loyal.

Yes, thank you for bringing this up. I read a history of zionism last year. 
One of the most striking things about this book (which supported everything 
you say) was the map of Europe shown at the beginning. It listed the dates 
when Jews were politically emancipated in Europe: the dates were 1789 in 
France; 1848 (I think in Germany); 1917 in the former Soviet Union. In 
other words, the emancipation of the Jews coincided with the major European 
revolutionary struggles. The book argued that this process of emancipation 
was threatening to those Jews whose power/status was guaranteed by Jews 
remaining a second-class, ghetto-bound people. To these people, 
transforming the ghetto into a colony/state serving the interests of the 
imperialist powers was an ideal solution. When you consider that the 
emancipation of the Jews did create the conditions under which Karl Marx, 
Freud, Einstein, Wittgenstein, etc could develop their thought and 
practice, you can see how some Jews were threatened not only by oppression, 
but by its opposite. The creation of the state of Israel is always said to 
have been necessary because of the oppression. It is equally true to say 
that it was necessary for the opposite reason: the emancipation of the jews 
put into question too many orthodoxies for the comfort of some.

Joanna Bujes