The Future of Palestine - Part 1 (1935)

From the July 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany, with the subsequent persecution of Jews, has resulted in renewed interest in the Zionist movement.

Zionism first came into existence as a political theory at the end of last century at the time of the Dreyfus case. Before then it had taken, more or less, the form of a religious longing to return to the “Holy” Land. It happened that an Austrian journalist, Dr. Theodor Herzl, had been sent to Paris to report on the Dreyfus affair, for a Vienna newspaper. Dr. Herzl was a Jew who had assimilated the culture and manners of Austrian society, and was greatly removed from Judaism. But the story goes that the Dreyfus case, with its attendant anti-Semitism, stirred him so deeply that he set himself the momentous task of discovering a solution to the Jewish problem. He “discovered” that the Jews are persecuted because they have no country of “their own,” and that the problem would be solved if they could be confined to a certain geographical area. He expounded these views in his book, “The Jewish State,” and declared that the Jews must establish a state of their own, preferably in Palestine. He obtained the support of well-known men like Max Nordau, Israel Zangwill and the French Baron, Edmond de Rothschild, who contributed a large fortune for the cause.

In 1901 the Jewish National Fund was inaugurated, in order to facilitate the collection of money for the purchase of land in Palestine and to assist the settlement of Jews in that country.

The movement grew slowly, but in 1917 Lord Balfour addressed his famous letter to Lord Rothschild, informing him that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine . . .” This aroused the enthusiasm of Jews all over the world, who now imagined that here at last was something worth striving for. It was not, however, till 1921, when the Palestine mandate was finally granted to England by the Allied Powers, that the Zionist movement began to assume a more practical form. Different parties had arisen in Zionism representing a variety of opinions and interests. There were the General Zionists, the Poale Zionists (“Socialists”) and the Mizrachists (religious party).

At about this time Dr. Chaim Weitzmann, the chemist who helped to supply England with explosives during the Great War, was the leader of the World Zionist movement, and he sought to interest prominent British Jews in the development of Palestine. Amongst those whom he visited was the late Lord Melchett, head of the Imperial Chemical Industries. We are told by his biographer, Hector Bolitho (“Alfred Mond, first Lord Melchett”) that Dr. Weitzmann touched some hidden chord in Lord Melchett’s heart, with the result that Melchett visited the “Holy Land.” He was so impressed that, according to his biographer, ". . . he had made a vow that he would amass a fortune of fifteen millions, that he would work ruthlessly, until he had enough money to bring the Jews back to their country . . .” (page 366). He was elected to important positions in the Zionist movement, but we are told that ”. ..  the business man in him caused him to curb his zeal and work cautiously . .. ” (page 369).

There now arose a great deal of dissatisfaction with the administration of the Zionist movement, and the Union of Zionist Revisionists was formed by Vladimir Jabotinsky, assisted by Meyer Grossmann, who claimed that their policy alone was in line with the original Herzlian ideal. Meyer Grossman, however, has since left the Revisionists and formed another party of his own called the "Jewish State Party.”

In 1929 there was a serious Arab uprising, stated to have been caused by a demonstration at the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem. Lord Melchett, greatly incensed at the slaughter of his "fellow Jews” in Palestine, poured an avalanche of letters on the Press, and spoke passionately at a huge protest meeting in the Albert Hall. He wrote a letter to Lord Beaverbrook beseeching him to give the support of his Press to the Zionist movement. Hector Bolitho (page 370) quotes this letter to Beaverbrook: ”. . . It ought to be under the India Office, which is used to dealing with Eastern people . . . We might as well say that we must evacuate India because of the Moslem rows there . . . as that we must evacuate Palestine because once in six years there is a week’s trouble . . . We simply cannot evacuate Palestine, for the reason that if we did the Italians would be only too glad to walk in . . . and the French would support them. It would give them command of our flying route to India . . . and one bank of the Suez Canal . . . They would then command a magnificent naval harbour in Haifa, the outlet of what is probably the most important oilfield outside the United States of America—the Mosul oilfield.”

Lord Beaverbrook, however, did not agree with Melchett. He looked on Palestine as a barren, rocky country with little avenue for profit-making But Melchett did not see Palestine as barren and rocky. His biographer tells us (page 371). that Melchett ”. . . had bought hundreds of acres of land; he had seen the Dead Sea concessions and the Rutenberg Electric Power Concession growing from strength to strength . . .”

In view of this we are at a loss to understand whether Melchett wanted 15 million pounds to bring the Jews back to Palestine or whether he hoped to make this sum by bringing them to Palestine!

Revisionist Fury.

The Revisionists and the other sections were furious at this Arab uprising, the blame for which they laid at the door of the General Zionists because of their maladministration. A congress was called and Nahum Sokolow was elected president in succession to Weitzmann. But this did not stem the opposition of the Revisionists, who claimed that Sokolow or Weitzmann represented the same policy. Stormy scenes occurred. The Revisionists hurled unkind epithets like ”Red gangsters” at the ”Socialist” Zionists, who retorted by calling the Revisionists ”Dirty Fascists.” Mr. Jabotinsky tore up his congress card, and together with a large body of Revisionists marched out of the Congress Hall. (Quite recently the Revisionists left the Zionist Organisation completely.) When Lord Melchett died, his son continued to support the Zionist movement. He also holds an honoured place on the Board of Directors of Palestine Potash, Ltd.

Among other prominent Jewish capitalists who support Zionism are Lord Reading, Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, Sir Montague Burton and Sir Herbert Samuel. These capitalists feel themselves ”touched” at the plight of their ”fellow” Jews all over the world, and they have contributed large sums of money towards the Zionist movement. Hardly an appeal is made without some of these names, and others equally prominent appearing in the list of donors.

The quest of a country of one’s own would lead some people to believe that the Jews are different from any other race or nation. But Jews, like other races, are divided into two classes, capitalists and workers, and the fact that a Jew is employed.by another Jew does not alter his standing. He is a wage-slave and will be treated as such. No special privileges are conferred on him on account of his religious beliefs, or because of the shape and size of his nose. He is exploited with no less vigour than, for instance, is a Jewish worker employed by a non-Jew, or a non-Jew worker employed by a Jewish capitalist. All capitalists, be they black, white, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist, Jew or atheist, exist by exploitation, and it is the workers whom they exploit.

As has already been mentioned, the Zionists represent all types of opinions, and there is even a so-called Socialist Party amongst them. This party is out to build a ”Socialist” country in Palestine for Jews only, but their ”Socialism” is only Labourism—"State ownership,” and the usual stock-in-trade of reform parties. We need not pay much attention to this party and its chimeras. It spends its time in compromising with the General Zionists, and declaring coalitions. It speaks airily about "Marxism” and claims to have set up "Communistic" colonies in Palestine.

Jewish Imperialists.

The party that most concerns us is the Union of Zionist Revisionists, who are the only party which demand a Jewish state in the fullest sense of the word. Palestine to them is not a place where a few thousand Polish and German Jews may find refuge, it is not a spiritual home where Jews may study the Talmud, or attend universities. Palestine must be a Jewish state, inhabited by a Jewish majority, governed by Jews, administered by Jewish civil servants, and “protected" by a Jewish navy, army, air force and police.

In their pamphlet "Blue-White Papers, 1935," they say ". . . we happen to be thoroughly convinced that a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan is not only the best way, but the only way to give the Empire a permanent stronghold on the Mediterranean . . . Many British statesmen fully realise that the whole value of Palestine to the Empire depends on its transformation into a Jewish state . . . Palestine as a Jewish state, surrounded on all sides by Arab countries, will in the interests of its own preservation always tend to lean upon some powerful Empire, non-Arab and non-Mohammedan. This is an almost providential basis for a permanent alliance between Britain and a Jewish Palestine . . ."

But why is it the British Government does not see eye to eye with the Revisionists? The reason is that they have many conflicting aspects to take into account. A movement by the British Government towards the establishment of a purely Jewish state in Palestine would, for example, arouse antagonism from the Arabs. It favours British imperial interests to remain on good terms with the Arabs as well as with the Jews. They are not going to bum their fingers for Mr. Jabotinsky and Co. Again, it is hard to see how a Jewish state in Palestine will make England’s position more secure in the Mediterranean.

Kaye and Scrutator.

[To be continued.]

Zionism – A case study in nationalism (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the nineteenth century there were conflicting views in Jewish communities as to how their best interests might be served. Some opted for a liberal view that assimilation was possible in an increasingly enlightened Europe.

Those favouring a reformed Judaism considered it best for the religion to be confined to the private sphere. The resolutely orthodox strove to maintain a traditional faith.

However, Europe was witnessing the emergence of an ideology that appealed to an increasing minority of Jews: nationalism.

Wider European society was embracing notions of national histories, distinctive cultures and languages, and self-determination. Jews found themselves faced with a choice between their Jewish or national identities. The latter was often compromised by persistent anti-semitism.

The concept of a Jewish national state began to emerge. Auto-emancipation was the term coined in the 1882 pamphlet of the same name written by the Russian Leon Pinsker.

Twenty years prior, in Rome and Jerusalem, Marx’s ‘communist rabbi’ Moses Hess proposed an independent Jewish socialist commonwealth, a blending of socialism with the nationalist ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini.

These declarations of Jewish nationalism did not initially attract widespread support. This began to change following the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the subsequent pogroms, the development of pan-Germanism voicing racist myths about all-powerful Jews, and the anti-semitism in the 1890s exposed by the Dreyfus affair.

Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist, began observing developments. Assimilated and relatively prosperous, he had little or no interest in the culture or religion of his forebears. His influences were Bismarck, Wagner and the pan-Germanists. However, he could not ignore the rising anti-semitic trend and came to the conclusion that assimilation had failed due to economic competition between Jews and gentiles. Liberated from physical ghettos, Jews were becoming confined socially.

Determined to free Jews from this emerging ghetto, Herzl considered both mass conversion to Christianity and socialist revolution. He eventually settled on the prevailing nationalist concept of self-determination.

In The Jewish State (1896), he argued for founding a European Jewish homeland that would remove the competition between Jews and non-Jews. Subsequently, both Argentina and East Africa were considered as possible locations. The Holy Land, Palestine, became the dream.

Palestinian Arabs, unsurprisingly, opposed this prospect. Herzl though regarded non-Europeans as backward, arguing that a Jewish homeland would be ‘a rampart of Europe against Asia’. In 1897 he organised the First Zionist Congress in Basel that established the World Zionist Organisation (WZO).

When Herzl died in 1904, his ideas were not universally accepted by all Jews. Another strand of Zionism aimed at renewing Judaism rather than confronting anti-semitism. Herzl’s supporters were accused of furthering assimilation, rejecting their forebears’ faith. This Zionist strand favoured a country that was uniquely Jewish, not a Jewish state on a European model.

Despite its disparate beginnings, Zionism gathered a momentum focused on Palestine, both as a reaction to anti-semitic nationalisms in Europe and as a nationalism in its own right.

Via the Balfour Declaration of 1917, made as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and the Nazi-instituted Holocaust, the Zionist cause achieved its objective in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state of Israel.

However, this was by no means the beginning of Jewish settlement in Palestine. There had already been a small Jewish community in that predominantly Muslim Ottoman area. The first formal Jewish community that can be considered an expression of Zionist aspirations was a kibbutz founded in 1910. This was followed by dozens more across the area that would become Israel. The kibbutz movement is significant as it was an expression of an ideological link that was destined to become horrifically problematic. That is the linking of nationalism with socialism.

From its early days Zionism was associated by some advocates with socialism. Moses Hess regarded it as an amalgam of socialism and Italian-style nationalism. Then Theodor Herzl introduced the notion of revolutionary socialism as a potential element of Zionism. Certainly, the kibbutz movement claimed Marxist influence in its organisation of communities. The goal was collective living. There was no private property, as all of it was held collectively by the community. Meals were even taken together.

Stanford economics professor Ran Abramitzky has stated, ‘Jewish immigrants who founded kibbutzim rejected capitalism and wanted to form a more socialist society.’ The paradox the professor seems not to have realised is that socialism is not something that can become the private preserve of one ethnic group, even if they do hold their property in common.

Herzl certainly made no secret of his view of the racial superiority of a Jewish homeland as a bastion against the barbarians beyond. The exclusive nature of the kibbutz reflected this attitude.

There is also the seemingly unquestioned acceptance that taking already occupied land for living space is justified. This is an idea that can be traced back to the very earliest days when humans began to develop a stratified society.

Certainly, in modern times the European conquest and settlement of the Americas paid little regard to any sense that indigenous populations had any rights.

For European Jewry, the concept of national exclusivity tied to ‘socialism’ and lebensraum became a monumental tragedy.

Before that tragedy could fully unfold, the seemingly antagonistic nationalisms had a moment of common purpose. In 1937 two SS officers, Herbert Hagen and Adolf Eichmann, visited Palestine and met with Fevel Polkes, an agent of Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary force formed to protect Jewish communities in Palestine from Arab attacks. After 1948 it was incorporated into the Israeli Defence Force.

Polkes took the two Nazis to visit a kibbutz. In 1960 Eichmann wrote, ‘I did see enough to be very impressed with the way the Jewish colonists were building up their land… had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist.’

It would be a grievous mistake to equate Zionism with Nazism. But one thing all nationalisms have in common is that they pit what they see as their national collective interest against that of the ‘other’, those beyond, outside, excluded.

Whatever socialist pretensions Zionism had they have been subsumed into reformist politics that makes no claim to abolishing capitalism. Kibbutzim now only account for about 3 percent of Israel’s population. Collective living has been abandoned and the kibbutz has turned into village life.

Antagonistic nationalisms and competing economic interests are at the root of Hamas atrocities in Israel and Israeli atrocities in Gaza. While the outpouring of support for Gaza by Palestinian flag-waving demonstrators is an understandable reaction, the solution to the ongoing conflict is surely not to counterpose one nationalism with another.

A one-state or two–state solution will not remove the underlying tensions. It may ameliorate the situation for a while, but only until the next time competition flares into conflict.

To simply oppose Zionism could be interpreted as being anti-semitic. It would invite the question, why just pick on Jewish nationalism? The socialist response has to be opposition to all nationalisms.

The oxymoron ‘National Socialism’ is particularly mistaken. The definitions are mutually exclusive. Not only in the Nazi formulation, but also in such seemingly reasonable and moderate forms as ‘Scottish socialism’, a variant of Scottish nationalism.

Whatever label is attached to it, nationalism, as it arose variously in the nineteenth century, persists as an ideological shackle for the workers of the world, keeping them bound as wage slaves to capitalism. While workers continue to identify themselves with their countries of birth they will deny themselves the worldwide possibilities of socialism, without borders and the wars fought to maintain them.

The irony is that while Herzl thought Jews had been confined to an invisible ghetto, Zionism is confining them to a very visible one, Israel, even for those choosing to live beyond its borders. The way forwards is not assimilation, but socialism.

Dave Alton

Promised Land (1982)

From the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “promised land” of Biblical myth is so-called because, for all the impoverished Jewish and Arab workers who are trained to kill over it. “promised” is all it will ever be. Investors, capitalist employers of one side or another will continue to dominate, or come to dominate, the lucrative industry and markets there as long as world capitalism remains.

Class division among Jews was typified towards the end of the last century by the reaction of the “Cousinhood” of established Anglo-Jewry to the wave of poorer Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. For example, Benjamin Cohen, the Conservative MP for Islington at the time, supported the 1905 Aliens Act to limit further immigration. The historical tendency towards international integration and class polarisation makes Jewish nationalism, like its Palestinian counterpart, a pointless and reactionary response to the exploitation and oppression of the past and present. There is no Jewish “race": Israeli and British workers share the same interest in i breaking down national boundaries and forming a democratic, socialist society.

In the nineteenth century, Zionism developed as a nationalist movement similar to many others involving the setting up of capitalist states. Because of the banning of Jews from many fields of work in the Middle Ages, and the Christian ruling against taking part in money-lending, many Jews ended up as moneylenders. This was used as part of the vicious campaign of persecution directed against Jews over centuries, as they were used as a scapegoat for the problems of poverty and conflict which were endemic to the rise of capitalism. In the twentieth century, the idea of giving the Jews a country where they might be safe from the painful discrimination and attacks they had suffered was harnessed to the need for Western capitalism to have an outpost in an area of great strategic importance, the Middle East.

As early as 1840 Lord Shaftesbury, anxious to ensure an overland route to India, proposed a scheme of Jewish colonisation to use “the wealth and industry of the Jewish people for the economic development of a backward area”. In the nineteenth century Rothschild invested £2 million in Palestine, and the French government showed an interest in colonisation. The first Zionist conference was held in 1897 at Basle, at a time of violent anti-semitism in Germany and France. Herzl originally advocated a Jewish settlement in Uganda, but the congress decided on the area of Palestine, because of its religious significance. For thousands of years, it had been a crucially situated trade centre. The pogroms in Russia since the 1880s had sent thousands of Jews fleeing across Europe, and the prospect of a Jewish state seemed welcome to them.

During the First World War, as pact of its contradictory war-bribes, Britain promised the Jews a “national home” and the Arabs independence throughout the Middle East. In 1940 Joseph Weitz, then heading the Jewish Agency Colonisation Programme, wrote in his diary:

Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country . . . the only solution is Palestine without Arabs (Quoted in Socialist Charter, February 1979).

Indeed, the attempt to solve the problem of anti-semitism within a nationalist framework demanded that Jews should remain in a majority in the newly created state, with all of the immigration restrictions that implies, if the exercise was not to lose its point.

The state of Israel was founded in 1948, and by 1968 the annual influx of capital invested in the area was equivalent to about one tenth of the total world “aid” bill. Most of this capital was owned by British, French and American investors who did not live in the Middle East and for whom the religious ideals of Zionism meant nothing, other than a pool of labour inspired by those ideals to work hard to produce a substantial return for such investors.

Did the formation of Israel solve the problem of anti-semitism? Clearly not, and for three reasons in particular. First, the only real binding factor between people calling themselves Jewish is the acceptance of Judaism. Like other religions, Judaism is a reactionary dogma with its own implicit racism, in its reference to the “chosen people”. Second, capitalism generates racism and divisiveness because of its class divisions, and the competition between nations over world markets and between workers over jobs. The problems of poverty, unemployment, state violence and war are as evident in Israel as anywhere else. Israel is allied to the segregated state of South Africa. At least three Israeli trade unions bar Palestinian Arabs. The elements of Jewish culture which have attracted some to Zionism are all but wiped out by the demands of the capitalist state. Shops are opened on Saturdays, despite the religious ruling against it, to compete more aggressively for the market. Yiddish has been all but suppressed.

Thirdly, there is the creation of a new, Palestinian "diaspora” around Israel, and a Palestinian minority within Israel. The search for a scapegoat for the problems of the area, in the form of “Arab terrorists”, or the official anti-Jewish policies of some of the surrounding Arab states, are yet another way in which Zionism has generated racism, rather than ending it.

The persecution of Jews over many centuries, culminating in the Nazi genocide of the ’thirties, led many Jews sincerely to hope for a better future in the creation of a “humane” Jewish homeland in the Middle East. Such hopes are dangerously idealistic, and have themselves proved divisive and reactionary. The Zionists and Palestinian nationalists who argue over the borders in the area hardly own between them a single acre of that territory. As workers, owning no substantial property, they are arguing about where and by whom they will be exploited. The solution to the oppression which Jews have suffered is not to build “Jewish” prisons, tanks and bombs. The truncheons in the hands of Israeli police feel no different to those wielded in Germany, Russia or Ireland. In this respect, Israeli nationalism is basically no different from dozens of other nationalist movements with their roots in the nineteenth century expansion of capitalism. Each has its own myths, its own religious sanction, irrational loyalties, violence and senseless support for capitalism.

One final way in which racism is still being generated is in the reaction towards Israel’s recent military policies. Liberal newspapers like the Guardian, for example, have tried to interpret events by unsubstantiated racist myths:

Most opponents of the government are Ashkenazi, and most supporters of the government are oriental. "And those people don't understand peace or compromise.” said the journalist, "they understand dominance. And that's what Begin promises them.” For much of this constituency, the arguments about Palestinian purposes don't matter. (Martin Woollacott, 2 September 1982)

Like every other state, Israel is a political unit for the accumulation of capital. From 1948 to 1968, productivity increased nine-fold. Lacking natural resources, Israel imports more than 67 per cent of its raw material requirements, uses its pool of labour to work these up into finished products, and then exports nearly half of the resulting industrial production to earn foreign currency. In 1981, about 5 billion dollars was received from industrial exports, and 7.5 billion dollars spent by Israel on the world market. Since the early ’seventies there has been a high technology boom, which has largely replaced textiles and other industries of the ‘fifties. The general way in which the profit system functions across the world has been very clearly summed up in the ease of Israel as follows:

That magic ingredient (“added value”) is the difference between the cost of raw materials, plus transport and related costs, and the same price after the raw materials have been turned into highly sophisticated equipment . . . the higher the added value, the more foreign currency Israel earns. With diamonds, for example, the added value is between 20 and 25 per cent; in many electronic and other highly sophisticated products, it can reach between 45 and 70 per cent.

British Israel Trade, journal of British-Israel Chamber of Commerce, May/June 1982.

The wages and salaries on which the majority of Israelis depend in order to live are simply one of the "related costs" which this process seeks to minimise.

Seventy per cent of capital in Israel is owned by private investors, ten per cent is controlled by the state and about twenty per cent is owned by Hevrat Ovdim, the industrial holding company of the Histadrut, the main trade union, which is otherwise known as the General Confederation of Labour. In any of these cases, the same extraction of "added value” from the subordinate class of wage- and salary-workers is carried on in the interests of capital; 35 per cent of the budget goes on arms. When the Sinai Peninsula was evacuated it still had over 17 billion dollars' worth of military bases and armaments invested in it. It was Israeli and American shareholders who lost out as a result, not wage-earners or peasants.

Earlier this year, the President of the Israeli Bonds Drive attended a London lunch given by Bank Leumi for “business people and financiers”. He reported that Israel’s stock exchange, currently valued at over 11 billion dollars, is growing "by leaps and bounds" and is second in profitability only to Singapore, with an average rate of profit of 18 per cent. Israel Bonds are now the third most widely held security in the USA, after US government bonds and shares in AT and T. The President of the Bonds Drive stressed that Israel Bonds were “making an important contribution to peace". They are in fact doing so no more than Israeli bombs.

Some of the more idealistic of the early Zionists thought that it would be possible to establish a separate country which would be insulated from the conflicts and crises of world capitalism. This hope has also been shown as ill-founded by the course of history. Ernest Japhet, Chairman of Bank Leumi, said at the Industrial Club in Israel in January 1982, that “the Israeli economy, more than many other national economies, is dependent on developments in the world economy” and he went on to list problems such as fluctuations in markets and prices, and the uncertainties of market demand for Israeli exports.

The only practical way in which the majority of Israelis. Palestinians and others in the Middle East are going to come together in harmony and solidarity is through the recognition of their common class interest against their border-drawing rulers. How many Arab workers and peasants sat at the Arab summit conference of oil-sheiks and princes, which proclaimed the PLO the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”? How many Israeli workers, their wages and salaries trailing desperately behind the spiralling cost of living in Israel, are among the millionaire shareholders in high- technology industries, or American and French arms and firms?

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli workers have recently been involved in the Peace Now movement against the war in the Lebanon. If they are to make their dream of peace into a practical reality, they must be prepared to throw off their ideological chains of religion, nationalism and support for the profit system in any of its many forms. They could do worse than to follow the advice given nearly a hundred years ago. in the Yiddish socialist paper Arbeiter Freund (“Workers' Friend"). January 15, 1886:

We say again that no colonisation, no land of one's own and no independent government will help the Jewish nation. Jewish happiness will come with the happiness of all unhappy workers, and Jewish emancipation must come with the general emancipation of humanity.

Clifford Slapper

Blogger's Note:

A correction to an item in this article appeared in the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Potash and Palestine: Dead Sea Fruit. (1929)

From the October 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fighting between Arabs and Jews, which broke out in Palestine in the middle of August with heavy loss of life and the usual stories of “atrocities” on both sides, has drawn renewed attention to the Zionist Movement and to the whole question of racial and religious strife in the modern world.

The Zionist Movement was founded by a Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, who in 1895 was sent to Paris by a Vienna newspaper to report on the famous Dreyfus case. In his pamphlet, “The Jewish State,” he argued that the relationship between Jews and non-Jews would never cease to be a problem until an independent Jewish national state had been set up, preferably in Palestine. His scheme was received at first with hostility or indifference, but from 1897, when the inaugural congress was held, the movement grew continually stronger and wealthier, being helped considerably by the gifts of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. There seemed to be little prospect of settlement on a large scale in Palestine, then part of the Turkish Empire, until the British Government, on the capture of Jerusalem, issued a declaration in 1917 committing themselves to the idea of establishing a Jewish national home in that country. Since 1919 the Jewish population has increased from 57,000 to 162,000, but they still represent a small minority in comparison with the 650,000 Arabs. The Christians number about 75,000.

It has been too readily assumed that the conflict is wholly or mainly due to racial of religious differences, a view which has been seemingly supported by the fact that the actual incident which precipitated the outburst was connected with the “Wailing Wall,” a spot sacred to the adherents of the Jewish religion but the property of Moslems. It is not necessary to look far below the surface to see that this kind of explanation is inadequate. The differences exist, but while they add bitterness to the dispute they are not the underlying cause of it. For a thousand years until after the war Arabs and Jews lived side-by-side in Palestine without ill-will. The Jews in Baghdad have issued a manifesto condemning Zionism and associating the local Jews with the protests of the Moslems. (See report in Times, 31st, August.) Many Jews in Palestine are indifferent to the Jewish religion. It is interesting to notice, also, that whereas British and American Christians in Jerusalem helped to defend the Jews against the Arabs, the native Christians sided with the Moslems. The Arab Christians are reported to have expressed the opinion not long after the British Government’s Zionist Declaration that they would prefer to be back under the Turks. (See Morning Post, September 13th.) Moreover, many Jews in Europe and America and elsewhere are still in complete hostility to the objects and principles of the Zionist Movement.

The British Prime Minister has stated his view that the conflict is not one of race or religion, but merely the outburst of disorderly persons—an explanation which again fails to explain. Then the Communists inform us, in a resolution passed at the last Congress of the League against Imperialism (one of the numerous aliases of the Communist International), that Zionism is one of the “instruments of Imperialism” for the “oppression of the Arab peoples.” (See Sunday Worker, September 1st.) They call on the British and Jewish workers “to stand side by side with the fight of the Arabs for independence.” (Sunday Worker, September 8th.)

Let us now consider the chief interested parties and what exactly their interests in Palestine and Zionism are. And, first of all, let us consider the position of the British Government.

The story is that Mr. Lloyd George was led to support Zionism out of gratitude to Dr. Weizmann, who in addition to being the head of the Zionist organisation was the chemist who made good Britain’s shortage of explosives during the war. But it is well to remember certain other facts. One is that Palestine occupies a commanding position in relation to the protection of the Suez Canal route to India and beyond. It is an essential link in the Imperial Airway to India, and there is talk of an oil pipeline from Persia to the Palestine coast. Haifa has been described as the finest naval harbour on the Mediterranean, and the only harbour except Malta in which the British fleet could anchor for its protection. In the House of Commons, on April 30th of this year (see Hansard of that date). Mr. Amery, Colonial Secretary, said that Haifa will become “one of the main ports of the Middle East.” In short, it is obvious that the British ruling class have some very powerful “Reasons of State” for remaining in Palestine, whether their proteges, the Zionists, are in trouble with the Arabs or not.

Next, let us consider the Zionist movement. On July 28th of this year the 16th Congress of the Zionists opened at Zurich, and resulted in some very important changes in the constitution of the governing body. Hitherto the “Jewish Agency,” the body which has officially represented the Jewish settlement in Palestine, has been entirely composed of Zionists. The 16th Congress marked the success of Dr. Weizmann’s plan to create an “extended Agency” representing Jewish circles quite outside and indifferent to the old Zionist movement. The correspondent of the New Statesman (August 31st) says that the old movement was democratic in organisation and “represented chiefly the lower Jewish middle-class, which in Eastern Europe was even poorer than the proletariat.” The new Agency is frankly non-democratic and “represents on the whole higher Jewish finance and big business …. the practical, hard-boiled American business man.” At its first meeting on the 11th August there were present, among others, Sir Herbert Samuel and Lord Melchett (Mond). (See Industrial and Labour Information, Geneva, September 16th.) We may observe in passing that the correspondent of the New Statesman says that many of these hard-boiled business men are interested very much in the philanthropic side of the venture, and Mr. Amery, too, thought that the American interest was “no doubt largely sentimental.” (Hansard, April 30th.) But, then, there are other things also. Lord Melchett and his business associates have interests in Palestine in connection with water power concessions for the production of electricity, but what is, at hast potentially, of most importance to them, as chemical producers, is the concession for the extraction of potash and other valuable salts from the Dead Sea. At present a German cartel practically monopolises potash and its allied chemicals, and it is hoped by the Anglo-American interests who take this philanthropic interest in Palestine that the Dead Sea may make them independent of the German producers. Colonel Howard-Bury, M.P., has said (see Hansard, 30th November, 1927) that the potash deposits alone are estimated to be worth £14,000 million at current prices ; although it is true that Mr. Amery (Hansard, 12th March, 1928) would not commit himself to this figure, and Sir Herbert Samuel has estimated it at a mere £800 million. Mr. Amery, has, however, stated that the Dead Sea is estimated to contain 2,000 million metric tons of potassium chloride and 980 million metric tons of magnesium chloride, and the financial interest behind the concessionaires believe that it can be profitably extracted. (Hansard, 12th March.) In the light of this information those words “philanthropic” and “sentimental” make us smile.

It is true that big business men, especially the hard-boiled ones, are notoriously sentimental, and they can afford to be philanthropic; but we too could afford to be philanthropic and sentimental if we were in their shoes, more especially if there was a chance that the philanthropic sprat might hook a Dead Sea mackerel worth £800 million.

In face of this it is not surprising that Mr. Felix M. Warburg, the American Chairman of the new Jewish Agency, should be very angry with the British authorities for having allowed his fellow Jews to organise provocative demonstrations at the Wailing Wall, and thus disturb the “prosperity” of Palestine. (See Times, 6th September.) Riots are bad for business as well as being a source of grief for the hard-boiled but tender-hearted captains of industry.

And what of the Arabs, on whose behalf the simple Communists want British and Jewish workers to fight for independence? Arab workers have been incited against Jewish immigrant landowners, but forget that Arab property owners sold them the land. The Mufti, in an interview with the Palestine High Commissioner on September 6th (see Daily Telegraph, September 7th), demanded :

“on behalf of the Arab community equal economic rights with the Jews, the abrogation of Jewish monopolies for hydro-electric and other concessions, and the regranting of all concessions by and through a Federal Government on the basis of open competition.”

Translated into actual facts, this means that the wealthy Arabs resent seeing all the loot pocketed by their Jewish rivals. Many of these Arabs made vast sums of money out of land speculations owing to the rise in prices following the increased demand for land on the part of the Jews. But what is the value to the propertyless Arab worker of the “right” to tender in “open competition” for Dead Sea concessions? It is worth precisely the same as the British worker’s “right” to become a shareholder in Melchett’s Chemical Combine, or the existing concession companies—nothing whatever. The whole struggle is one between rival Jewish, Arab, American and British capitalists for the valuable privilege of exploiting Jew and Arab, Christian and Atheist, and any other kind of worker. Jewish as well as Arab working-class organisations are suppressed in the employers’ interest. Religion and race, national independence and patriotism, are now, from the worker’s point of view, just so many ruling-class devices useful for the purpose, among others, of stirring up hatred when and where they may want it. Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Iraq have no more interest at stake in the independence of the states in which, and by which, their exploitation is carried on, than had British and German workers in 1914. Socialism alone is worth struggling for. That is the message of the Socialist to all the working-class dupes of the closely-allied superstitions of religious, racial and patriotic rivalries. Jewish workers and Arab workers both suffer, but not because they are Jew or Arab, or because they happen both to be in Palestine, but because they are workers and therefore exploited by those who own and control their means of life. The Jewish workers cannot solve their problems by transferring their misery from New York or Berlin to Jerusalem. The world will be fit for Jewish workers and Arab workers to live in when, and only when, the working-class, as a whole, have gained political control for the establishment of Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Zionism and anti-semitism (2007)

From the January 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two dangerous ideologies that thrive on each other

It's now 110 years since Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) and launched the Zionist movement, nearly 60 since the state he envisaged came into being. Upset by the Dreyfus case (Dreyfus was a French Jewish army officer framed as a spy for Germany), Herzl had concluded that Jews would only be safe when they had a state of their own.

As they ran for the shelters during the war with Hezbullah, Israelis may well have wondered whether there is any country in the world where Jews are less safe. And although the Israeli government keeps emigration statistics secret, it is estimated that since 2003 more Jews have been seeking refuge by leaving Israel than by entering it. Thoughtful Israelis may also wonder how much of the anti-semitism in the world today is generated by Israel itself through its mistreatment of Palestinians and Lebanese.

Zionists are always complaining about anti-semitism, real or imaginary. They use such complaints especially as a gambit to de-legitimise criticism of Zionism and Israel. From the start, however, Zionist opposition to anti-semitism has been superficial and selective, because Zionism is itself closely connected to anti-semitism. The Zionist needs anti-semitism like heroin addicts need their fix.

Allying with anti-semites

Herzl realised that if his project was to succeed he had to seek support wherever it might be found. And who was more likely to back his movement than the anti-semites? Not the most extreme anti-semites, who wanted to exterminate the Jews, but "moderate" ones who would be content to get rid of them. And so Herzl set off for Russia to sell his idea to the tsar's minister of police, Plehve, a notorious anti-semite widely regarded as responsible for the Kishinev pogrom of 1903.

An opportunistic alliance with another anti-semitic ruler of Russia – Stalin – was crucial to the establishment of the state of Israel. On Stalin's instructions, Czechoslovakia provided arms and training that enabled the fledgling Zionist armed forces in Palestine to win the war of independence in 1947-48. Stalin's motive was to undermine the position of Britain in the Middle East. For some years the Israeli government continued to rely on Soviet military and diplomatic support, while keeping silent about the persecution of Soviet Jews, then at its height. (For more on this episode, see Arnold Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc, 1947-53, University of Illinois, 1974.)

In 1953 the Israeli-Soviet alliance finally broke down. Israel switched to the other side of the Cold War, obtaining aid first from France and then from the US. Alliance with "the West" also entailed maintaining good relations with anti-semitic regimes, notably in Latin America. Consider Argentina: a disproportionate number of Jews were among those killed, imprisoned and tortured by the military junta that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983. Given the "anti-democratic, anti-semitic and Nazi tendencies" of the Argentine officer corps, we may assume that they were persecuted not merely as political opponents but also as Jews. Meanwhile a stream of Israeli generals passed through Buenos Aires, selling the junta arms. (See link and this link; also Jacobo Timmerman's book Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.)

Ideological affinities

But it is not just a matter of Zionists and anti-semites sometimes having strategic or business interests in common. There are ideological affinities. Zionists, like anti-semites, are mostly racists and nationalists for whom it is abnormal that an ethnic group should live dispersed as a minority in various countries. It is therefore natural and only to be expected if the majority reacts badly to such an anomaly. There is a strong tendency in Zionism to agree that Jews have objectionable traits, which are to be overcome as they turn themselves into a normal nation by settling in Palestine "to rebuild the land and be rebuilt by it."

What if the Jews in a given country are well integrated, face no significant anti-semitism, and show no interest in being "normalized"? Originally Zionism was conceived as a means of solving the problem of anti-semitism. From this point of view, where the problem does not exist there is no need for the solution. However, ends and means were inverted long ago, and Zionism became an end in itself, with anti-semitism a condition of its success. Anti-semitism might still be regarded in principle as an evil, but as a necessary evil. Often it was also said to be a lesser evil compared to the threat of assimilation supposedly inherent in rising rates of intermarriage.

Against this background, it seems a trifle naive to ask why Israel's ruling circles don't realise that by their own actions they are generating anti-semitism. They realise. But they make it a point not to give a damn what the world thinks of them.

There is nothing unique about the affinity between Zionism and anti-semitism. Russian nationalism thrives on Russophobia (the denigration of Russians), Irish nationalism on anti-Irish prejudice, Islamism on hatred of Moslems, and so on. To escape the vicious circle, we must respond to ethnic persecution not by promoting "our own" brand of nationalist or religious politics, but by asserting our identity as human beings and citizens of the future world cooperative commonwealth.

Stefan.