What’s happening in Gaza and Palestine today shows the failure of the Zionist project, conceived of towards the end of the 19th century, to set up a separate state for Jews.
The Zionists preached that what Jews, including Jewish workers, should do is not simply integrate into the states in which they found themselves but agitate for a separate Jewish state — somewhere, anywhere. Uganda and Madagascar were considered at one point. In the end, on religious and ancient historical grounds, the Zionists decided that this should be Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman Empire.
Arguably, it was a crazy project from the start. To settle people from Europe in another part of the world, where the people and their rulers were unlikely to accept this, was a recipe for trouble. But at the time — the end of the 19th century — this would not have seemed so crazy, as it was common practice for European states in a position to do so — Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and belatedly Italy and Germany — to settle Europeans in various other parts of the world, mainly Africa, on land traditionally occupied by locals.
The idea of a separate state, to be a safe home for Jews, seemed particularly attractive after the experience in WW2. Israel was to be that safe home. But it could never be. Israel was established as a recognised separate state in 1948 but was opposed by the local rulers who immediately went to war to try to prevent it but lost, resulting in hundreds of thousands of the local population being expelled from where they lived.
Ever since, Israel has sought ‘secure frontiers’. After winning the Six-Day War In 1967, again initiated by the rulers of surrounding states, Israel annexed the Golan Heights from Syria and East Jerusalem from Jordan and occupied the rest of Palestine including Gaza and also Sinai. They later withdrew from Sinai but kept ‘security control’ of the rest, creating a sort of Greater Israel. Following the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria last December Israel has occupied more of that country.
The Hamas massacre of 7 October 2023 confirmed that Israel was not in fact a safe place for Jews. And Israel’s response — not an eye for an eye, but 40 eyes for one eye and rising — has made things more insecure, through the growth of anti-semitism, for those Jews who choose not to settle in Israel (most Jews in fact).
So, in terms of providing a safe home for Jews, Zionism has been a complete failure. Jews living outside Israel (most of these are in the United States, as many in fact as are in Israel) are in a much safer position.
Israel may well reconquer Gaza but history suggests that in the long term its present government’s policy of trying to hold down a hostile population larger than the number of Jews living there cannot succeed. It is bound to fail, just as apartheid did in South Africa.
What this shows is that socialists were correct in opposing from the start Zionism and its project. Socialism, not a separate Jewish state, was the solution to problems Jewish workers faced. In the meantime, Jewish workers should integrate into the workers’ movement in the state where they lived. Many did — more in fact than went to live in Israel — and took part not just in the workers’ movement but also in politics generally. Some of the key figures involved in current discussions and decisions about the Gaza war chose this sensible path. For instance, Trump’s special envoy Witkoff, the French President Macron, and Ukraine President Zelensky.
Most of the Leninist left enthusiastically support armed action to abolish the state of Israel. That would just be to continue the senseless cycle of massacres and counter-massacres that have gone on since the first Jews arrived from Europe. Today Israel is where 70 to 80 percent of the Jews living there were actually born. More than half have no family connection with Europe but rather with the Middle East and North Africa, so can hardly be called colonists. It is now just another state, which like all states needs to be captured by the working class to establish socialism and then abolished along with all states, not singled out for abolition under capitalism while all other states remain.
Most of those on the marches — and probably of those expressing support for the banned Palestine Action group — will basically just want an end to the daily killing and destruction in Gaza and are understandably frustrated that nothing is being done about it. For them, ‘free Palestine’ will mean simply that the population there and in the West Bank should be free from the political oppression by the Israeli state that it undoubtedly is suffering. Naturally those oppressed want it to end and socialists obviously sympathise with this. But how to bring it to an end?
Most governments say they favour the setting up of a separate Palestine state alongside Israel. That would certainly end political oppression by the Israeli state for the new state’s subjects but, a relief as that would be, it would not end capitalist exploitation; from that point of view, it would just be another capitalist state and a different ruling class.
In any event, a two-state solution doesn’t seem practicable in present circumstances as, to work, it would require a change of attitude by the rulers — and indeed of most of the Jewish population — of Israel. That is not impossible, but the effort required to bring this about would be better employed in convincing all sections of the working class living in the historic territory of Palestine that they have a common interest in ending their exploitation by uniting to bring capitalism to an end. Even within capitalism they have an interest in there being political democracy, which includes the equal treatment of all the subjects of a state (and indeed of non-citizens living there too).
In the end, the only effective and lasting way out is going to be the ‘no state’ solution, the abolition of capitalism on a world scale and the establishment of a classless, stateless world community based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources.
Adam Buick
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