Anti-Zionism Is Racism

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

<< Oppressor Nationalisms and Oppressed Nationalisms are two different things 
entirely.  Nationalisms of oppressed peoples can be progressive, since often 
class oppression took the form of national oppression, so class struggle took 
the form of national struggle (as Samir Amin, among opthers, has pointed 
out).  As Said,
among others has pointed out, Zionism came out of an era of imperialism and 
colonialism and nationalist struggles--and chose to model itself after the 
imperialists, not with Third World Nationalist Struggles. sorry, I don't 
think your argument holds a drop of water. >>

Sitting here in the desert of anti-Zionism argumentation, sipping a whole 
canteen of water from my argument.

The Stalinists used to say of the Trotskyists, with some justification, they 
support socialism everywhere but where it exists. This distinction of 
oppressor and oppressed nationalisms strikes me as a piece of this Trotskyist 
worldview: you support nationalism everywhere but where it succeeds in 
establishing its own nation-state.

Of course, Zionism is not exactly the only nationalist ideology to have 
created its own nation-state. But, here on LBO-Talk and elsewhere on the 
Left, I don't see regular denunciations of Hutu nationalism, which just 
happened to use state power to conduct a genocide against the Tutsis in 
Rwanda, as racist; nor do I see regular denunciations of Serbian nationalism, 
after the ethnic cleansing conducted in its name in Bosnia, Croatia and 
Kosova, as racist [to the contrary, I see depressingly regular defenses of 
its racism]; nor I do see regular denunciations of Russian nationalism for 
its scorched earth policy in Chechyna as racist; nor do I see denunciations 
of Turkish nationalism for its continuing wars against Kurds and Armenians as 
racist; nor do I see regular denunciations of Vietnamese and Chinese 
nationalism, as they waged nationalist wars with each other, as racist; nor 
do I see regular denunciations of Chinese nationalism in its suppression of 
national minorities, as racist; nor do I see denunciations of Latvian, 
Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Estonian nationalisms as they purge Russians as 
racist; nor do I see denunciations of Arab Sudanese nationalism as its 
enslaves and conducts a genocidal war against the African Sudanese as racist; 
nor do I see regular denunciations of the Syrian nationalists for its 
massacres of tens of thousands of minority Muslims in Aleppo and Hamah as 
racist; nor do I see regular denunciations of the campaigns of Nigerian 
nationalism against the Ogoni and Ibo peoples as racist; and so on.

But barely a day goes by when Jewish nationalism, in the form of Zionism, is 
not so singled out. How is it different? Not because it actually holds state 
power, but because it is Jewish. Anti-zionism as it is regularly represented 
here, is, in my humble goy opinion, anti-semitic and racist, singling out 
Jewish nationalism for criticisms that could and should be applied to every 
nationalism.

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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