[lbo-talk] RE: Benny Morris

[Dennis Perrin]

"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."


> Joanna

Well, it's not that simple. Chomsky lived and worked on a kibbutz in the
50s, and he has maintained that it was as close to the anarcho-syndie ideal
as was possible (along with the anarchists of 30s Barcelona). He also said
that the local Arabs were not invited to join, and that that was obviously a
problem. But as Finkelstein has pointed out, many Jewish intellectuals
distanced themselves from pre-'67 Israel on the grounds that it was too
"socialist." Chomsky was not one, and while critical, he still saw the
libertarian socialist potential in Israel. That of course was altered by the
Six Day War and the true start to the current madness.

The point I was trying to make is that no Forward Thinking movement is
completely free of elitism, or even tribalism. To say that Israel is somehow
unique in this regard, just because Benny Morris has now embraced it, is
ahistorical at best.

DP