Anti-semitism
Dear Editors.
Your September cover and Coleman's Holocaust 2 article discredit your journal and your party — with whose aims I have been largely in agreement for a long time.
I prefer not to believe that Coleman's article was intentionally anti-semitic. But the fact remains that it is no different in tone or choice of language from those articles in scores of newspapers and journals throughout the world, whose content on the Israel-Lebanon conflict has been characterised by thinly disguised hostility to Jews.
Like Coleman, the writers of those articles are ever quick to remind readers of the involvement of prominent Israelis in proscribed organisations. "Thug" is the standard word used to describe them, usually prefixed by "Zionist". Zionists are largely "trigger-happy", except for the handful of British and Israeli soul-searching Zionists whom they all claim to know.
Like the press everywhere, the Standard. via Coleman, finds the Lebanon war more horrifying and more horrible than other wars. "Not for a long time", writes Coleman, "has the horror of war been so evident as in Lebanon." True. I suppose. Since, until the war in Lebanon, neither Press nor Television were so public-spirited as to show readers and viewers the true consequences, in human terms, of war. I daresay that there were a few horrors in the Falklands that we will never be shown — though that war was practically simultaneous with the one in Lebanon. Come to that. I have heard some pretty hair-raising stories in connection with the Iran-lraq war. That war is still going on: but neither reading nor viewing public are treated to a daily dose from that front. No Jews, no news.
The photograph which accompanies Holocaust 2 is journalistic weaseling of the worst kind. Take any old photograph, fill your caption with innuendo and let your readers draw the wrong conclusion. Your photograph could have been taken in scores of differing circumstances: and anywhere in the world. How do you and Coleman know that the clenched fist of the man in the foreground is that of (presumably Israeli) nationalism?
But these are relatively minor protests. For Coleman has been unable to write of events in Lebanon without recourse to those twin gibes of “anti-Zionists" Holocaust and genocide. The first of those words was coined by Jewish historians to describe the terrible fate which overtook Jews in Nazi Europe. The second word — genocide has no long etymological history. It was coined only in 1945. for the purpose of giving a name to the crime committed against European Jews. Its meaning is: the calculated, total and deliberate destruction of one race by another. But to Jews the word is also a reminder of the terrible methods used to accomplish the deed: the highly organised transportations, the extermination camps, the gas chambers, the vile experiments on Jews and even viler tortures practised on them before they were "mercifully" gassed.
I hold little brief for military operations whatever their objectives: and I know too well that civilian populations (and soldiers) suffer in wars. But there has only been one Holocaust in our time — that which engulfed the Jews of Europe. And in the whole of recorded history, there has only been one authenticated and determined attempt at genocide the attempt against European Jews. Every writer on Lebanon whose Jew-hatred masquerades under pretended concern for Palestinians, has used Holocaust and genocide as a calculated sneer and libel, not against Israelis, not against Zionists, but against all Jews. If Coleman has any proof that the Israelis (and by implication and association, the majority of Jews in the world) have an official policy of genocide, he had best produce it. word for word and chapter for chapter.
I began by saying that I preferred to absolve the Standard and Coleman from the charge of being tainted by anti-semitism. But, I repeat, there is no discernible difference between the tone of Coleman's article and that of "anti-Israeli" writers whose motives are of the basest kind.
I believe that you owe it to yourself to weigh every single word used in the Standard and to ask yourself the precise effect it is likely to have on your readers — not all of whom are members and many of whom come to you for the first time, totally unaware of your history and aims.
Further, I believe that you ought to express regret to your readers for a serious lapse of taste in publishing Holocaust 2 and your September cover.
L de Swart,
London N19
Reply:
Mr. de Swart begins by stating that he has been largely in agreement with the aims of the Socialist Party for a long time. It is always pleasing to discover such people outside the Party, but what is the small reason that has kept Mr. de Swart away from the active struggle for socialism in all this "long time"? Could it be that he agrees entirely with the materialist conception of history, but for the "minor qualification" that he thinks there is something worth preserving in the religious mumbo-jumbo of Judaism or Christianity or Islam? After all, if he is not “anti-Jewish” — Judaism being a set of outdated religious beliefs and no more — we must assume that he is pro-Jewish. Or is it that he completely agrees with the socialist aim of establishing a world without frontiers and class possessions, but “in the meantime" thinks that certain forms of national chauvinism — such as Zionism — should not be attacked too severely? After all, if he is not an anti-Zionist — in the sense of opposing the nationalist aspirations of the Israelis — we must assume that he is pro-Zionist. Mr. de Swart does not tell us what his disagreements are with the Socialist Party.
What he does tell us in terms which are as clear as his "long time" disagreements with the Socialist Party are hidden — is that the cover of the September Socialist Standard and an article on the Lebanon in the same issue have offended him; he does not suggest that they did so because they conflict with our established views. Seven specific criticisms are made.
1. The article refers to members of the Israeli government as ex-terrorists. Perhaps Mr. de Swart thinks it's unjustifiable to refer to the perpetrators of calculated violence, including murder, as "thugs". We consider it a quite appropriate description. The Socialist Standard cannot be accused of using the term discriminately: as far as we are concerned, "thuggery" aptly describes killings on behalf of the Stern Gang, the PLO, the Provisional IRA or the Christian militia. Furthermore, we do not distinguish between the thuggery of terrorists and that engaged in by state armies. The terrorist founders of the Israeli state were referred to for a particular reason: it has become common in recent times for certain Zionists, such as the Poale Zion (Labour Zionists), to refer to "Beginism” as a new form of Zionism. This is a myth, based on the belief that Israeli nationalism once was, and still could be, less oppressive and chauvinistic than any other form of nationalism. The point was to show that Begin and his ruthless form of nationalism have not just arrived on the scene — they have been there from the start.
2. The article did not state that the war in the Lebanon was either "more horrific" or “more horrifying" than other wars. Socialists are not interested in making comparisons of human suffering. What the article said was what Mr. de Swart quotes in his letter. In the weeks prior to the publication of our September issue the media provided detailed coverage of the Israel-Lebanon war and the article was written because the event was in readers' minds. It is true that atrocities are committed in other wars, but if our critic is a “long time" reader of the Standard he will know that these have been dealt with in the journal. For example, the writer whose article he criticised also wrote a lengthy analysis on the Falklands war only two months earlier.
3. The statement about the photograph is entirely incorrect: it was not “any old photograph” but one taken in the Israeli town of Hebron showing a specific Israeli Zionist — a member of the Koch movement. It is true that similar pictures may have been taken elsewhere — such as a PLO rally or a National Front get-together — but the fact is that it happened to be a picture of Israeli nationalists.
4. The intention of the cover was not to imply that "the Jews want to conquer and possess the world". The point was to show that "defensible borders" (which are what the Israelis claim to be fighting for) are impossible to achieve within capitalism unless a country dominates the entire globe. We accept the possibility that anti-semites might use the same illustration to make a different point. But then, so may Tories use our anti-CND position and fascists our opposition to African dictatorships in order to make points with which the Socialist Party is in total disagreement. We regret these facts, but will not refrain from stating our case for fear that it is misinterpreted by those who have an interest in doing so.
5. The dictionary describes holocaust as "wholesale slaughter”. Certain historians may reserve the term for one particular "wholesale slaughter", but socialists do not respect such exclusivity of meaning. Thatcher insisted that the war in the South Atlantic was a military conflict, but not a war: the Socialist Standard ignored her distinction. Similarly, we refuse to accept that the murder of millions of Jews was a holocaust, whereas the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the devastation of West Beirut are merely "wholesale slaughters".
6. Unfortunately. Mr. de Swart’s letter is dated 10 September, one week before the Beirut Massacre. There is considerable evidence to prove the complicity of the Israeli government in this terrible act of human slaughter. (Even a Jewish Chronicle editorial made the point — and Mr. de Swart could not accuse that paper of being anti-semitic.) To be associated with a military operation in which hundreds of men, women and children are murdered in cold blood is close to being "an official policy of genocide". Mr. de Swart may disagree with the use of that particular term on the grounds that it does not fully match his dictionary definition (although we would inform him that the Nazi act of genocide was not genocide either: firstly because the Jews were not totally destroyed by the Nazis, and secondly because the former are not a race), but we think he should be more concerned about the act committed rather than the precision of the term used to describe it. Mr. de Swart informs us that he holds "little brief for military operations": we are glad to know that he largely opposes wars, but would be pleased to also know about the "little brief" which he does hold for some of them.
7. Mr. de Swart's final argument amounts to the claim that a friend of an enemy is an enemy: if what you write looks like what someone else writes, the two views must be the same. So, for example, if the Tories state that they do not enter elections in order to abolish the monarchy (because it is "a great institution") and the Socialist Party state that we do not enter elections in order to abolish the monarchy (because it is irrelevant to the main electoral task of winning conscious support for the dispossession of the capitalist class), does that make both the Tories and the SPGB supporters of the monarchy? When the Socialist Standard provides a Marxist criticism of the PLO we are accused of being "Zionist agents"; when we criticise Zionism we are told that we are no different from anti-semites. But if our critic did not confine himself to odd words — and he does only refer to three words, a sentence, two pictures and a "tone" — he would see that the whole article makes a case about nationalism and war which is both unique and correct. The writer specifically makes the point that, unlike others, socialists are not opposing Israeli nationalism more than we oppose other kinds of nationalist ideology. Our battle with Zionists is not because they are Jews, but because they are usually members of the working class who support the capitalist system. The article can only be seen as a "serious lapse of taste” by those whose taste is offended by the honest exposure of social and political ugliness.
The socialist attitude to all wars, including the Israel-Lebanon one, is to show, firstly, that the conditions which cause war are rooted in the present, capitalist system and. secondly, that the only way to provide security from war is by establishing socialism. “Holocaust 2" made both of those points. Since it was published there has been even more killing and suffering in the Middle East; those who are mourning the dead of Sabra and Shatila and those who live in fear on the border towns and villages of Israel and the Lebanon have no secure and peaceful option short of the immediate organisation for socialism. Today they are the victims of capitalism's war — tomorrow it may well be us.
Editors.
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