On 11 Jan 2004 14:07:30 -0500 Travis Fast <tfast at yorku.ca> writes:
> On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 13:31, Dennis Perrin wrote:
> > > What that shows is that Benny Morris is at heart a rather old
> > > fashion Labor Zionist. Years ago, it was not uncommon
> > > for Labor Zionists, at least privately, to justify their
> treatment of
> > > the
> > > Palestinians, in language similar to Morris's. Israel was
> > > said to represent a a more advanced social formation
> > > (i.e. a socialist democracy) which therefore had the
> > > right to to use whatever means necessary for prevailing
> > > over the less advanced , reactionary social formations like the
> > > feudal monarchies of the Arab states.
> >
> > > Jim F.
> >
> > How in essence is this different from what the Bolshies did to
> peasants and
> > workers who didn't agree with them? Weren't they guided by
> Superior Theory
> > and Logic (as well as having Dame History on the arm), something
> that the
> > backward, reactionary peasant class could only comprehend at
> gunpoint? Or
> > are certain types of political elitism *truly* in the interests of
> humanity
> > as a whole?
> >
> > DP
> >
>
> Interesting how a a thread that began with a discussion of Benny
> Morris's unapologetic Zionist nationalism has turned into a forum
> for
> everyone to purge and pillage the left of and for its past sins.
I think that is because Morris does come out of a political tradition, Labor Zionism, which has always regarded itself as being left-wing. And the fact is, there is considerable precedent within socialist history, for the type of reasoning that Morris invokes for justifying Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. The fact is that there is an element of social Darwinist type thinking within the socialist and Marxist traditions (which in part stems from the fact that peole like Kautsky and Plekhanov had been disciples of Darwin and Spencer before their becoming Marxists).
And since DP has cited the Boshies for us, it is interesting to note that back in the 1930s and 1940s, the Labor Zionists were debating the merits of the "transfer" of Palestinian Arabs, some of them cited the example of Comrade Stalin's "transfer" of the Crimean Tartars in order to justify the "progressiveness: of such a policy. For that matter, David Ben Gurion back in the 1920s and 1930s was in the habit of invoking the names of Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin in public speeches.
>
> I wonder if I started with an observation about Stalin's paranoia
> and
> insularity if we would pull the thread all the way to the Bush white
> house in the space of three posts.
>
> In any case it would be an equally absurd equivocation.
>
> Travis
>
>
> >
> > ___________________________________
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> >
>
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