Boycotting Israel Is Wrong: The Progressive Path to Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis
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Boycotting Israel Is Wrong: The Progressive Path to Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis
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| ISBN-13: | 9781742242019 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 08/06/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 196 |
| File size: | 956 KB |
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Boycotting Israel Is Wrong
The Progressive Path to Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis
By Philip Mendes, Nick Dyrenfurth
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Philip Mendes and Nick DyrenfurthAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74224-730-4
CHAPTER 1
The Left, Zionism and Israel, 1897–2014
Debates over the national rights of the Jewish people have exercised thinkers and parties associated with the Left from the mid-19th century onwards. This trend strengthened with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Despite once offering unyielding support, since 1967 the major source of political and ideological hostility to the world's only Jewish state has largely emanated from the Left.
Today, too, most of the Western support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement also comes from individuals and groups who identify with the political Left. Indeed it is sometimes assumed that there has always been a natural affinity between progressive politics and support for hardline Palestinian nationalism. This view is badly mistaken.
In this opening chapter we show that the Left has always held a wide spectrum of ideas concerning the Zionist ideal, the legitimacy of a Jewish national homeland and the precise means of solving the near-century-long conflict in Israel/Palestine.
To be sure, many progressive groups ridiculed Theodore Herzl's pioneering formation of the Zionist movement in 1897, and strongly opposed Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration proposing the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. But equally, many leading Left figures supported both Jewish settlement and the Zionist goal of creating a Jewish state in mandatory Palestine. Later, almost the entire international Left, whether communist or social democratic, supported the creation of Israel in 1948.
Left support for Zionism and Israel has declined significantly since Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War and its ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories. However, today there exists a substantial difference between the majority of Left groups, which favour a two-state solution and reject the West Bank settlement project, and the minority of anti-Zionist fundamentalists who would seek to deny Israel's very existence. As we shall see, it is mainly the latter group who endorse the full agenda of the BDS movement.
Left attitudes to Zionism pre-1948
Prior to World War One, the international socialist movement was not sympathetic to Zionism. Major figures such as Lenin, Stalin and the influential Czech-German Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky were all strong critics of the Zionist movement. In general terms, this opposition reflected the Left's hostility to any form of distinctive Jewish national or group identity, whether in its Zionist or Bundist (a secular, socialist European movement founded in the late 19th century that emphasised the common culture of the Jewish people and Yiddish language) forms.
Opposition to Zionism existed for a number of reasons. First, from a philosophical point of view, Zionism was viewed as a counter- revolutionary force that allegedly abandoned the struggle for Jewish rights in Europe, and instead ceded victory to right-wing anti-Semites who wished to rid Europe of the so-called 'Jewish question' by forced emigration. By contrast, the Left believed that the global triumph of socialism would end all forms of racial hatred including anti-Semitism.
A second argument reflected self-interest. Most European left-wing groups included a significant number of Jewish members whose activism was seen as vital to the success of the class struggle, whether social democratic or communist in trajectory.
A third, ostensibly practical, argument held that Zionism had little chance of success given the extent of Arab hostility towards a Jewish homeland in their midst and later the perceived perfidy of British imperialism. A review of Herzl's 1896 book The Jewish State in the German Socialist press, for example, described the plan to create a Jewish State in Palestine as 'bizarre' and 'utopian'. Another late 19th-century socialist writer dismissed the Zionist project as 'a movement created by a nucleus of romantic intellectuals by which a nation that is no longer living presents itself for the last time on the scene of history before disappearing definitively'.
It should also be remembered that at this time the Zionist movement enjoyed the support of only a small minority of Jews, such as the European activists of the Poale Zion socialist–labour organisation and Herzl's liberal grouping. The chief opposition came from the Jewish Labour Bund centred in Poland which viewed labour Zionism as a potentially significant rival for the allegiance of the Jewish working class. The Bund opposed Zionism as a reactionary diversion from the task of fighting anti-Semitism and defending Jewish rights in the diaspora.
But anti-Zionism was also influential within mainstream Jewish establishment groups, religious (Orthodox and reform) or otherwise secular. Many Jews appear to have regarded Zionism as an extremist movement with utopian, if not politically dangerous, objectives. They feared that support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would provoke dangerous accusations of dual loyalties. Additionally, there were other competing non-territorial Jewish nationalist movements that demanded national autonomy within existing European states. Some religious Jews did not believe in, and remain opposed to, the idea of Jews establishing a form of government in the Land of Israel without the divinely inspired intervention of a Messiah (Moshiach).
Yet even at this early time there was a socialist exception to the anti-Zionist orthodoxy. The source was the Sozialistische Monatshefte, the magazine of the German revisionist socialists, which was ideologically opposed to the orthodox Marxism espoused by the leading theoretical journal of German social democracy, Die Neue Zeit. This revisionist magazine, which was published by an East Prussian Jew, Josef Bloch, critiqued the Left's assimilationist perspective, recognised Jewish national rights, and published positive reports of Zionist communal settlements in Palestine.
The issuing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 during World War One and the establishment of the British mandate over Palestine provoked a major increase in Jewish support for the aims of Zionism. It also impacted positively on key sections of the socialist movement, which now viewed Zionism as a practical movement with some prospect of success. Additionally, the horrific pogroms perpetrated upon Eastern European Jews during and immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution of the same year demonstrated to many European socialists that anti-Semitism could not suddenly be eliminated by revolution or cultural assimilation.
To be sure, the Bolsheviks and subsequently the Soviet Union and the Communist International (later known as the Comintern) consistently opposed Zionism on ideological grounds from 1917 until at least the end of World War Two. They denounced the Balfour Declaration and the British mandate in Palestine. But they also displayed some tolerance for Zionist activities inside the Soviet Union until the late 1920s, broadly accepted the legitimacy of Jewish settlement in Palestine, and advocated Jewish-Arab unity within Palestine. It was only following the 1929 Arab riots in Palestine that the Soviets shifted to a clear endorsement of the Arab nationalist agenda. Henceforth the Comintern rejected any distinction between the Jewish community and Zionism, and labelled all Palestinian Jews counter-revolutionary tools of British imperialism.
By contrast, many socialists reconsidered their approach to Zionism. This was particularly the case for those of a revisionist or social democratic stamp. The non-Marxist or social democratic fragment of Poale Zion (which had split during the latter part of World War One) won official recognition from various International Socialist Conferences between 1917 and 1920, and from the Socialist Second International. In addition, leading social democrats such as the Austrians Engelbert Pernerstorfer and Max Adler; the Germans Rudolf Breitscheid, Eduard Bernstein and Paul Loebe; George Lansbury, HN Brailsford, Richard Tawney, Fenner Brockway, Philip Snowden and Bertrand Russell from Britain; the Frenchmen Leon Blum, Charles Gide, Marius Moutet, Vincent Auriol and Jean Longuet; and the Belgians Emile Vandervelde and Camille Huysmans gave their support to the goals of Zionism. Forty socialists representing eight different countries attended a pro-Zionist international Socialist conference convened by Poale Zion in 1928. This conference voted to establish a Socialist Pro-Palestine Committee to assist the activities of the Jewish labour movement in Palestine.
One of the strongest supporters of pre-World War Two support for Zionism was the leading Belgian socialist Emile Vandervelde. During his visit to Tel Aviv in 1928, he proclaimed how the Yishuv had demonstrated that 'the sun of socialism is beginning to rise on the world'. He argued that Labour Zionism had made a special contribution to the practical development of socialism due to its agricultural base, its collective ownership of the land and its emphasis on avoiding exploitation of other ethnicities. His subsequent book A Marxist in Palestine praised Zionism as 'one of the most wonderful idealistic efforts of our time'.
The British Labour Party was particularly sympathetic to the aims of the Labour Zionist movement. As early as August 1917, it committed itself to the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Numerous Labour MPs including Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Henderson, Herbert Morrison and Josiah Wedgwood visited Palestine and were impressed by Zionist activities. Successive annual party conferences from 1936 to 1945 supported the establishment of a Jewish state. The party strongly condemned the British Government's 1939 White Paper on Palestine, which limited Jewish immigration. In 1944, the Labour Party Conference voted for the admission of Jews to Palestine 'in such numbers as to become a majority'. The relevant motion, principally drafted by leading party figure Hugh Dalton, stated that 'There was a strong case for this before the War. There is an irresistible case now, after the unspeakable atrocities of the cold and calculated German Nazi plan to kill all Jews in Europe.' The motion also urged the 'transfer' of the Arab population to neighbouring countries.
Nevertheless, this explicitly pro-Zionist position was never implemented. Due to a range of pragmatic military and foreign policy considerations, the British Labour Government from 1945 to 1948 displayed overwhelming hostility to the Zionist campaign for a Jewish state in Palestine. The Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin attempted to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine and sent the navy to intercept boatloads of Jewish Holocaust survivors and place them in internment camps. However, the party leadership was repeatedly challenged by left-wing MPs and intellectuals such as Harold Laski, Richard Crossman, Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot who fought for the Party's traditional pro-Zionist objectives. They viewed the Jewish settlement of Palestine as a necessary socialist enterprise, and demanded that the government adopt a position in support of unlimited Jewish immigration leading to partition and the establishment of a Jewish state.
This passionate left-wing support for Zionism and later Israel was also reflected in most other Western social democratic parties. Many social democrats were impressed by the activities of the Histadrut, the General Federation of Jewish Labour, and various co-operative agricultural settlements – the kibbutzim and the moshavim. In 1945 the prominent Austrian socialist Julius Braunthal wrote a highly positive account of his visit to Palestine during 1938, describing the Jewish labour movement as the equivalent of the famous earlier Austrian labour movement of 'Red Vienna'. Braunthal praised the Histadrut organisation, the workers' health service and the broader socialist Zionist political parties and culture. He also claimed that Jewish immigration had assisted rather than hurt the indigenous Arab population.
Conversely, there was little if any pre-war socialist interest in or links with the Palestinian Arab national movement. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to suggest that all or even most social democrats were sympathetic to Zionism during this period. The movement continued to be divided. Some orthodox socialists including the Austrian socialist leaders Victor Adler and Friedrich Adler, and the ageing Karl Kautsky, continued to portray Zionism as a reactionary movement. The Jewish Labour Bund, which exerted considerable influence within the Socialist International, also remained virulently opposed to Zionism.
From the end of World War Two to the 1967 Six-Day War
Following the events of World War Two including the Holocaust, most of the non-Communist Left wholeheartedly supported the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. The Australian Labor Party, as one example, was strongly supportive of the Zionist perspective during 1947–48. Its foreign Minister Dr Herbert Evatt arguably played a key role as Chair of the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine in influencing the debate in a pro-partition direction.
The intellectual Left largely followed suit. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stated in February 1948 that it was 'the duty of non-Jews to help the Jews and the Zionist cause'. Sartre offered unqualified support for Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of the same year and urged the United Nations to provide arms to the Israelis. The prominent left-wing magazine The Nation in the United States was also strongly supportive of Israel's creation and, during the key 1947 United Nations debates, sought to expose the alleged earlier pro-Nazi record of leading Palestinian and Arab spokespersons.
More surprising was the Soviet Union's reversal of its traditional anti-Zionist position. The tragedy of the Holocaust appears to have forced some reconsideration of the traditional Marxist belief that the solution to anti-Semitism could only be found via individual assimilation. In May 1947, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, dropped a geo-political bombshell when he expressed support for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab State. In a passionate speech that broke with traditional communist dogma, Gromyko emphasised the significance of Jewish oppression, the experience of 'almost complete physical annihilation' during the Holocaust, and the continuing plight of the survivors who had lost their homes and livelihood. European culpability, Gromyko argued, lay behind 'the aspiration of the Jews to create their own state. It will be unjust if we ignore this aspiration and deny the Jewish people the right to realize it'. Granted, Gromyko initially expressed a preference for a binational Arab-Jewish State, but added that if 'such a solution proves unworkable because of the deteriorated relations between the Jews and the Arabs, it will be necessary to examine a second solution ... namely, the partition of the country into two independent autonomous states, a Jewish one and an Arab one'.
The Soviet Union and its allies voted in favour of United Nations Resolution 181 (tabled on 29 November 1947) which called for the partition of Palestine into two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab. They then strongly supported the creation of the State of Israel and its war of independence, providing vigorous diplomatic support including a defence of Israel's right to self-defence within United Nations debates, and condemned the 'armed aggression' directed against the Jewish state. They also defended Israel's right to retain strategically significant territory such as the Negev region captured in the 1948 war, and rejected any Israeli responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. In addition, the Soviet Union provided via Czechoslovakia badly needed military supplies and the training of pilots and paratroopers which contributed significantly to Israel's military victories in that conflict.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Boycotting Israel Is Wrong by Philip Mendes, Nick Dyrenfurth. Copyright © 2015 Philip Mendes and Nick Dyrenfurth. Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Abbreviations,
Introduction,
1 The Left, Zionism and Israel, 1897–2014,
2 The progressive case against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions,
3 Case study: BDS in Australia,
4 Case study: BDS in Britain and North America,
Conclusion: The progressive alternative to BDS,
Appendix 1: BDS myths and facts,
Appendix 2: One state or two? A brief guide to solving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,