Zionists don't speak for all Jews
Support for Palestine is not 'anti-Semitism'
By Leslie Feinberg
As pro-Palestinian activism sweeps campuses across the
United States, pro-Zionist supporters of Israel are trying to
block this rising movement by labeling any expression of
solidarity with Palestinian freedom--indeed, any criticism of
Israel itself--as "anti-Semitic." This is a despicable and
unconscionable accusation in light of the historic toll that
genuine anti-Semitism has claimed.
Zionism has long hid its crimes against the besieged
Palestinian nation behind the claim that it represents a
"Jewish homeland" and that as an ideology it articulates the
aspirations of Jewish people everywhere.
But Zionism has never been the voice of all Jewish
people.
Modern political Zionism and its goal of a Jewish
colonial-style settler state took root with the development of
inter-imperialist competition and expansion. The drive to
emigrate from Czarist Russia and eastern and central Europe was
fueled by the widespread anti-Semitism engendered by the ruling
classes of the continent and the scattered and oppressed
condition of this minority population.
For many decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
Zionism was not the voice of the majority of Jewish people.
Quite the contrary. Jewish workers and intellectuals played a
major role in the socialist, communist and other progressive
movements. They took part in the working class struggles to
overturn the ruling classes. They fought for equality, not
separation. Prior to World War II, progressives largely viewed
Zionist ideology as a reactionary political current.
Zionism hitched its wagon to the emerging imperialist
monopoly stage of capitalism as capital burst beyond the
borders of the industrialized countries and sought to expand by
colonizing the planet. Cloaked in a religious guise, Zionist
leaders offered themselves as colonial shock troops.
The ruling classes in England and the United
States--permeated with anti-Semitism themselves--later stood by
and did little while six million Jews were systematically
exterminated, as long as Hitler was crushing the Soviet Union
under the treads of his military machine. They did not bomb the
rail lines that carried precious human cargo to the
concentration camps. They did not open their borders to a flood
of refugees fleeing the holocaust.
After World War II the imperialist powers saw an opportunity
to sink their claws more deeply into the oil-rich Middle East
by allowing the Zionists to create the settler state of Israel
in historic Palestine. The formation of this "safe Jewish
homeland" was itself a terrible act of anti-Semitism, as well
as a violent racist crime against the Palestinian people.
The terror used to force Palestinians into a Diaspora, the
maintenance of a brutal apartheid state in Israel, the military
crushing of Palestinian resistance and holding back the tide of
Arab revolutionary aspirations have all created worldwide rage
against Israel. Because Zionism speaks in the name of all
Jewish people, much of that anger can become directed at Jewish
people as a whole.
Zionism and its deep-pocketed benefactors on Wall Street and
in the White House bear the responsibility. Zionism is itself
an anti-Semitic ideology in two ways: by inflaming anger at the
crimes of its "Jewish state" and by fueling anti-Arab hatred,
since the Arab population--including Palestinians--is also a
Semitic people.
Today the ranks of the burgeoning international solidarity
movement in support of the Palestinian liberation struggle have
been swelled by growing numbers of Jewish people of all ages
and walks of life.
They are traveling to the occupied territories to put their
bodies on the line for the Palestinian struggle. They are
speaking out on college campuses for divestment from Israel.
They are marching for Palestinian self-determination.
They are revitalizing and swelling the ranks of the
left-wing Jewish political current that has for generations
been a large and dynamic component of the struggles of the
working class, fighting back shoulder-to-shoulder with those
who bear the greatest burdens of inequality and injustice. And
in doing so, they are delivering a body blow to
anti-Semitism.
At this moment in history, the battles to defeat
anti-Semitism and free Palestine are inextricably entwined.
Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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