[lbo-talk] Dealing with the 'new anti-semitism'

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Sun Sep 3 11:21:10 PDT 2006


On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 10:41:01 -0700 joanna <123hop at comcast.net> writes:
>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Put a cork in the insults.
> >
> > Look, while I can't follow Angelus into his stateless place of
> pure
> > communism, he does have a point about nationalism. In fact,
> Israeli
> > policy really crystallizes in pure form a lot of the trouble with
>
> > that doctrine (and it's no accident, is it, that Zionism arose
> along
> > with a lot of other reactionary nationalisms in the 19th
> century?):
> > the denial of divisions within the national body, and the creation
> of
> > external enemies against which the nation is defined. While Israel
>
> > may be an extreme case, there are plenty of other instances. I
> > remember from my visit to Australia in 2001 the paranoia about
> Asians
> > overrunning the old white country (even Greeks are racialized as
> > dusky, no?) - even an anxiety about foreign invaders overwhelming
>
> > native marine life documented on a sign at the Hobart waterfront.
> And
> > the USA, too - we're full of anxieties about external threats, and
>
> > proclaiming the rightness of the Good American. I can't think of a
>
> > practical way to get beyond the nation-state, but it is pleasing
> to
> > dream about it.
>
> But what is different about the Zionist state is that it would not
> exist
> in its present form without the collusion first of the Brits and
> then of
> the U.S. In other words, its autonomous image is a chimera, an
> illusion,
> guaranteed by the protection and subsidy of the most powerful and
> militarized nation state on earth.
>
> Joanna
>

Over on Marxmail, I have written the following concerning that point: --------------------------------

That's been a problem with Zionism from the very beginning. The Labor Zionists, in particular, were over the years quite successful in sowing illusions among progressives, by no means limited to progressive Jews, that the Zionist project was compatible with progressive and even socialist values and ideals. Thus support for Zionism was among other things portrayed as being compatible with support for anti-imperialism for instance, which is clearly nonsensical.

One of the few early Zionists, who had an even halfway realistic understanding of how things would turn out was the intellectual father of Revisionist Zionism, Z'ev Jabotinsky. In his essay, "The Iron Wall," (http://www.saveisrael.com/jabo/jabowall.htm), Jabotinsky, argued among other things that the success of the Zionist project required that the Zionists ally themselves with Western imperialists (in his day, the British, Italians, and French) against the national aspirations of the Arabs and other peoples of the Middle East. He wrote:

"We can offer only two things: either money or political assistance or both. But we can offer neither. Concerning money, it is ludicrous to think we could finance the development of Iraq or Saudi Arabia, when we do not have enough for the Land of Israel. Ten times more illusionary is political assistance for Arab political aspirations. Arab nationalism sets itself the same aims as those set by Italian nationalism before 1870 and Polish nationalism before 1918: unity and independence. These aspirations mean the eradication of every trace of British influence in Egypt and Iraq, the expulsion of the Italians from Libya, the removal of French domination from Syria, Tunis, Algiers and Morocco. For us to support such a movement would be suicide and treachery. If we disregard the fact that the Balfour Declaration was signed by Britain, we cannot forget that France and Italy also signed it. We cannot intrigue about removing Britain from the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf and the elimination of French and Italian colonial rule over Arab territory. Such a double game cannot be considered on any account.

"Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say "no" and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population -- an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy."

Jabotinsky did not mince words here. He also made it quite clear in his essay, that Arab opposition to the Zionist project was not at all irrational. From their perspective, they were quite right to oppose it, since it necessarily threatened their own national aspirations. As he put it:

"Any native people -- its all the same whether they are civilized or savage -- views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I flatly reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are 500 years behind us, spiritually they do not have our endurance or our strength of will, but this exhausts all of the internal differences. We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile. This childish fantasy of our "Arabo-philes" comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people, of some kind of unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network."

I think that Jabotinsky was quite right in his assessment and the events of the past eighty-three years have only shown his analysis to have been correct. Where he goes wrong is in his faith in the continued viability of colonialism, and he clearly saw Zionism as kind of colonialist project. The success of the Zionist project, in his view, required the backing of the imperialist powers (in his day, Jabotinsky spent much time, trying to cultivate support from the British, then the Italians, and later the British again). Now a days, the US plays this sort of a role. Thus to support Zionism, is to support imperialism and colonialism. That was true in 1923 and it is true now, as we can see when we look at the news about both Iraq and Lebanon.



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