"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?"
The similarities are at best superficial: I guess I would sum them up as "The ends justify the means." But that describes too many things to be useful. It is also true that Marxists need to take a long, hard, critical look at the "darwinist-technical-progress-is-all" strands that have woven themselves into the creed/practice. In fact, I don't think Marxist thought has a future without that particular analysis.
But as for the labor Zionists...I want to point out two things: 1) If we talk about relative degrees of progress in the middle east, there is no question but that Palestine (due to its geographical position that ChuckG pointed out) as a cross-roads was one of the most "advanced" countries in the Middle East at the time of the Zionist invasion. 2) I have read through a lot of founding zionist documents and I do not remember ever reading anything about the Arabs that distinguished one group against another; the overall impression is that the Arabs were either invisible to the settlers (a land wihout people for a people without land) or they were contemptible, backward, "n-words." Within the context of world jewry, the zionists themselves represented the most backward, hidebound, regressive, and for that matter, self-hating faction. These were the folks who did not want to let go of the ghetto. Their stated aim in going into Palestine was not to liberate or bring progress to the locals: it was to act as an imperial agent for 1) the Turks 2) the Brits 3) the U.S. The talk of democracy, liberation, etc. was the same kind of talk that colors US discourse about its middle east ventures. Just talk. Or, if you will, just lies.
So, when I look at all that, there seem to be no meaningful parallels with the Bolshies.
Joanna