> You are comparing apples and oranges, i.e.,
> immigrants and refugees.
> International law recognizes the right of refugees
> to return home or
> get compensated, but would-be immigrants, to Canada,
> Israel, or
> anywhere else, do not have the right to enter and
> stay in their
> destinations.
You are right about this distinction, of course. To be fair, I should note that I generally don't have a high opinion of "International law" (scare quotes, I know, I know) nor am I supporter of the Palestinian right of return, or any sort of "national liberation" struggle for that matter.
I don't like the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip (I don't use the phrase "oppose," since that would imply some sort of active position), but more because of the dehumanizing effect the occupation has upon the occupiers.
I'm old school ultra-left, Pannekoek, Gorter, Korsch, with some Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Postone tossed in. I think the nation-state is a fetish relationship complementary to the value-form. However, I think the unique nature of anti-semitism as a foreshortened, populist, ressentiment-driven sort of anti-capitalism makes the existence of the state of Israel a necessary pre-condition for any future communist society.
CUPE, like most trade unions in the northern hemisphere, is a racist, system-immanent white job trust. Rather than take a position of fundamental opposition to the Canadian state or the value form, they engage in this sort of populist, ressentiment-driven demonization of Israel. Ho-hum.
The day the NPD and other neo-Nazi formations started taking a position of aggressive support for the Palestinian cause was the day I had to rethink all my assumptions about this issue. The emergence of the "Nouvelle Droite" in France and Germany should have rendered "national liberation" obsolete for all thinking communists.
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