Rene — Tariq Ali — Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and Palestine – Ali
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March 12 2004
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and Palestine – Ali
“The daily suffering of the Palestinians does not excite the liberal
conscience of Europe, guilt-ridden (and for good reason) by its past
inability to ..”
By TARIQ ALI
1. Anti-semitism is a racist ideology directed against the Jews. It
has old roots.
In his classic work, The Jewish Question, A Marxist Interpretation,
that was published posthumously in France in 1946, the Belgian
Marxist, Abram Leon, (active in the resistance during the Second World
War, he was captured and executed by the Gestapo in 1944) invented the
category of a ‘people-class’ for the role of the Jews who managed to
preserve their linguistic, ethnic and religious characteristics
through many centuries without becoming assimilated. This was not
unique to the Jews, but could apply just as strongly to many ethnic
minorities: diaspora Armenians, Copts, Chinese merchants in South East
Asia, Muslims in China, etc. The defining characteristic common to
these groups is that they became middlemen in a pre-capitalist world,
resented alike by rich and poor.
Twentieth century anti-semitism, usually instigated from above by
priests (Russia, Poland), politicians/intellectuals (Germany, France
and, after 1938, Italy), big business (USA, Britain), played on the
fears and insecurity of a deprived population. Hence August Bebel’s
reference to anti-semitism as ‘the socialism of fools’. The roots of
anti-semitism like other forms of racism are social, political,
ideological and economic. The judeocide of the Second World War,
carried out by the political-military-industrial complex of German
imperialism, was one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, but
not the only one. The Belgian massacres in the Congo had led to
between 10-12 million deaths before the First World War. The
uniqueness of the judeocide was that it took place in Europe (the
heart of Christian civilization) and was carried out systematically—
by Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, French and Italians— as
if it was the most normal thing in the world. Hence Hannah Arendt’s
phrase, ‘the banality of evil.’ Since the end of the Second World War
popular anti-Semitism of the old variety declined in Western Europe,
restricted largely to remnants of fascist or neo-fascist
organisations.
In Poland, a country where virtually all the Jews were killed, it
remained strong, as it did in Hungary. In the Arab world there were
well-integrated Jewish minorities in Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus.
They did not suffer at the time of the European judeocide.
Historically, Muslims and Jews have been much closer to each other
than either to Christianity. Even after 1948 when tensions rose
between the two communities throughout the Arab east it was Zionist
provocations, such as the bombing of Jewish cafes in Baghdad that
helped to drive Arab Jews out of their native countries into Israel.
2. Non-Jewish Zionism has an old pedigree and permeates European
culture. It dates back to the birth of Christian fundamentalist sects
of the 16th and 17th centuries who took the Old Testament literally.
They included Oliver Cromwell and John Milton. Later, for other
reasons, Rousseau, Locke and Pascal joined the Zionist bandwagon. And
then for vile reasons the Third Reich, too, supported a Jewish
homeland. The introduction to the Nuremburg Laws of 15 September 1935
state:
“If the Jews had a state of their own in which the bulk of the people
were at home, the Jewish question could already be considered solved
today, even for the Jews themselves. The ardent Zionists of all people
have objected least to the basic ideas of the Nuremberg Laws, because
they know that these laws are the only correct solution for the Jewish
people.”
Many years later, Haim Cohen, a former judge of the Supreme Court of
Israel stated:
“The bitter irony of fate decreed that the same biological and racist
argument extended by the Nazis, and which inspired the inflammatory
laws of Nuremberg, serve as the basis for the official definition of
Jewishness in the bosom of the state of Israel” (quoted in Joseph
Badi, Fundamental Laws of the State of Israel NY, 1960, P.156)
And Zionist leaders often negotiated with anti-semites to attain their
objectives: Theodor Herzl talked openly with Von Plehve, the chief
organiser of pogroms in Tsarist Russia; Jabotinsky collaborated with
Petlura the Ukrainian hangman of the Jews; ‘revisionist’ Zionists were
friendly with Mussolini and Pilsudski; the Haavara agreements between
the Zionists organisations and the Third Reich agreed the evacuation
of German-Jewish property.
Modern zionism is the ideology of secular Jewish nationalism. It has
little to do with Judaism as a religion and many orthodox Jews to this
day have remained hostile to Zionism, like the Hassidic sect which
joined a Palestinian march in Washington in April 2002 carrying
placards which said: “ZIONISM SUCKS” and “SHARON: PALESTINIAN BLOOD IS
NOT WATER”. Zionism was born in the 19th Century as a direct response
to the vicious anti-semitism that pervaded Austria. The first Jewish
immigrants to Palestine arrived in 1882 and many of them were
interested only in maintaining a cultural presence. There is no such
thing as the ‘historical rights’ of Jews to Palestine.
This grotesque myth (already in the 17th century, Baruch Spinoza
referred to the old testament as ‘ a collection of fairy-tales’,
denounced the prophets and was excommunicated by the Amsterdam
synagogue as a result) ignores real history. Long before the Roman
conquest of Judea in 70 AD, a large majority of the Jewish population
lived outside Palestine. The native Jews were gradually assimilated
into neighbouring groups such as the Phoenicians, Philistines, etc.
Palestinians are, in most cases, descended from the old Hebrew tribes
and genetic science has recently confirmed this, much to the annoyance
of Zionists.
Israel was created in 1948 by the British Empire and sustained by its
American successor. It was a European settler-state. Its early leaders
proclaimed the myth of a ‘A Land without People for a People without
Land’, thus denying the presence of the Palestinians. Four weeks ago
the Zionist historian Benny Morris in a chilling interview with
Haaretz (reprinted as a document in English in the New Left Review,
Mar/Apr 2004)admitted the whole truth. 700,000 Palestinians had been
driven out of their villages by the Zionist army in 1948. There were
numerous incidents of rape, etc. He described it accurately as ‘ethnic
cleansing’ not genocide and went on to defend ethnic cleansing if
carried out by a superior civilization, comparing it to the killing of
native Americans by the European settlers in North America. That too,
for Morris, was justified. Anti-semites and Zionists shared one thing
in common: the view that Jews were a special race that could not be
integrated in European societies and needed its own large ghetto or
homeland. The fact that this is false is proved by the realities of
today. The majority of the world’s Jews do not live in Israel, but in
Western Europe and North America.
3. Anti-Zionism was a struggle that began against the Zionist
colonisation project and intellectuals of Jewish origin played an
important part in this campaign and do so to this day inside Israel
itself. Most of my knowledge of Zionism and anti-Zionism comes from
the writings and speeches of anti-Zionist jews: Akiva Orr, Moshe
Machover,Haim Hanegbi, Isaac Deutscher, Ygael Gluckstein (Tony Cliff),
Ernest Mandel, Maxime Rodinson, Nathan Weinstock, to name but a
few. They argued that Zionism and the structures of the Jewish state
offered no real future to the Jewish people settled in Israel. All
they offered was infinite war. After 1967, there was a revival of the
Palestinian national movement and many different groups arose, most of
whom were careful to distinguish between anti-Zionism and
anti-semitism. Nonetheless the role played by Israel undoubtedly
fuelled popular anti-semitism in the Arab world. But these are not old
roots and a sovereign Palestinian homeland or a democrat single state
would soon bring this to an end. Historically, there have been very
few clashes between Jews and Muslims in the Arab Empires.
4. The campaign against the supposed new ‘anti-semitism’ in Europe
today is basicly a cynical ploy on the part of the Israeli Government
to seal off the Zionist state from any criticism of its regular and
consistent brutality against the Palestinians. The daily hits carried
out by the IDF have wrecked the towns and villages of Palestine,
killed thousands of civilians (especially children) and European
citizens are aware of this fact. Criticism of Israel can not and
should not be equated with anti-semitism. The fact is that Israel is
not a weak, defenceless state. It is the strongest state in the
region. It possesses real, not imaginary, weapons of mass
destruction. It possesses more tanks and bomber jets and pilots than
the rest of the Arab world put together. To say that the Zionist state
is threatened by any Arab country is pure demagogy. It is Israel that
creates the conditions, which produce suicide bombers. Even a few
staunch Zionists are beginning to realise that this is a fact.. That
is why we know that as long as Palestine remains oppressed there will
be no peace in the region.
5. The daily suffering of the Palestinians does not excite the liberal
conscience of Europe, guilt-ridden (and for good reason) by its past
inability to defend the Jews of central Europe against extinction. But
the judeocide should not be used as a cover to commit crimes against
the Palestinian people. European and American voices should be heard
loud and clear on this question. To be intimidated by Zionist
blackmail is to become an accomplice of war-crimes.
Tariq Ali’s latest book, Bush in Babylon: The Re-colonisation of Iraq,
is published by Verso. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
Source: Il manifesto. Feb 26, 2004
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid040311121306106