Tony Greenstein of the Weekly Worker has reviewed Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People – describing it as “an important book” that hammers another nail into the Zionist coffin.
Sand’s assault on the biblical foundations of Zionism comes as a far greater shock to the Zionist psyche than the impact of Israel’s new historians such as Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris, who destroyed the myths that alleged that the Palestinians went into voluntary exile in 1947-49 in order to facilitate an attack on the Israeli state. The acceptance that the Palestinians were expelled at the point of a gun is quite compatible with the idea of that the Zionists had a right to the land of Palestine. Sand’s argument is on an altogether different plane. It strips Zionism of its self-serving mythical identity, leaving it historically and culturally naked.
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I agree with the main points made by Tony Greenstein in his letter to Weekly Worker dealing with the obstacles faced by the pro-Gaza mobilization, which are essentially the same obstacles faced by the Palestinian resistance. The enemies of the Palestinian anti-imperialist struggle include not only the Israeli state and the other imperialist states, but also the Arab ruling classes and the PA, which collaborate with Israel and serve the imperialist order against the masses.
As for Hamas, while revolutionaries favor its victory in a military conflict with imperialism and its agents, this defense should never be extended to political support, as Hamas’ leadership is seeking a place for itself in the imperialist order and the reason it does not act like the PA today is that so far Israel has not agreed to the 30 years cease fire Hamas has offered a few times. Hamas’ willingness to police the masses in Gaza was exposed not only by the way they treated the pro-Palestinians activists, but also in the last demonstration against the Egyptian army, when young people in Gaza threw stones at Egyptian soldiers and Hamas dispersed them by shooting in the air.
Trotsky’s theory of the Permanent revolution explains very well what is behind the behavior of the Arab ruling classes, the PA and even Hamas. In this epoch of the decline of capitalism, the bourgeoisie in the countries that have not gone through the bourgeois democratic revolution are too afraid of losing control over the masses and prefer to collaborate with the imperialists rather than to stand at the head of a democratic revolution. The tasks of the democratic revolution therefore fall on the shoulders of the working class, which must lead the masses in a socialist revolution.
While the imperialists and their servants oppress the Palestinians, the international working class, from South Africa to Greece and Australia, shows its solidarity, not only in resolutions, but in actions, like hot cargo of Israeli ships carrying goods, and in particular military goods.
While the ruling classes in the Arab countries collaborate with Israel against the Palestinians, the working class in Egypt, Iran and many other countries shows its solidarity with the Palestinians in spite of the repression.
I also agree with comrade Greenstein that the situation of the Palestinians today brings to mind the situation of the Jewish mass in Europe during the horrible persecution by the Nazis and their servants. The Nazis are not the only ones responsible for the holocaust. Also responsible are the “democratic” imperialists who supported the Nazis until 1938 as a brutal force against the working class revolutions that were possible in the 1920s and 1930s. Their support for Hitler was very clear during the 1936 Olympics, their “non-intervention” policy in Spain and their appeasement policy. When it came to the Jews, they closed the gates in the West to the Jewish refugees. This is the fault not only of the imperialists, but also of the Zionist organizations, that welcomed the Nazi rise to power, collaborated with the Nazis – for example, in the Haavara – and helped close the gates to the Jewish refugees.
President Roosevelt convened the Evian conference July 6-15 1938 to deal with the Jewish refugee problem. The Jewish Agency delegation, headed by Golda Meir (Meirson), ignored a German offer to allow Jews to emigrate to other countries for $250 a head, and the Zionists made no effort to influence the United States and the 32 other countries attending the conference to allow immigration of German and Austrian Jews.
On Feb 1 1940, Henry Montor, executive vice-President of the United Jewish Appeal, refused to intervene in favor of a shipload of Jewish refugees stranded on the Danube river, stating that “Palestine cannot be flooded with… old people or with undesirables.”
In 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that: a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily.
The answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, stating that only Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees. In 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved. The same Zionist hierarchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions).
The British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The “Jewish Agency” leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and so allowed the 300 rabbis and their families to be gassed.
On December 17, 1942 both houses of the British Parliament declared their readiness to find temporary refuge for endangered persons. The British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany. This motion received within two weeks a total of 277 Parliamentary signatures. On Jan. 27, when the next steps were being pursued by over 100 M.P.’s and Lords, a spokesman for the Zionists announced that the Jews would oppose the motion because Palestine was omitted as a possible destination.
In 1944, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People called upon the American government to establish a War Refugee Board. Stephen Wise, testifying before a special committee of Congress, objected to this proposal.
During the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weizman, the future first president of Israel, stated: “The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important”.
The Nazis were assisted by Jewish policeman and by the Jewish councils controlled by the Nazis. The Israeli state has never made any effort to bring to trial those Zionists who collaborated with the Nazis, for fear that the responsibility of the Zionist leaders for this collaboration would be exposed.
Those who try to hide the actions of the Arab ruling classes are no better than the Social Democrats and the Stalinists, whose policy of popular frontism was the defeat of many working class revolutions.
The solution for the Palestinians will come only through independent working class actions, which will culminate in workers revolutions that will form a Palestinian workers state from the river to the sea as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. This will be realized when the working class will constitute itself into a revolutionary working class party fighting for world socialist revolution
Yossi Schwartz
From Israel(occupied Palestine).