That's Funny, You Don't Look Anti-Semitic

There Must Be Some Way Out of Here

2007-02-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

In 1984 I wrote a booklet against anti-Semitism. For this I was denounced as a Zionist.

In 2005 I wrote a pastiche poem criticising Zionism. For this I was denounced as an anti-Semite by some people on the Engage website. What is happening here?

It seems to me that one of the things that is happening is that whatever the fundamental political distinction between anti Semitism and anti Zionism (a distinction I see as absolute) yet on an emotional and existential level the two have become hopelessly intertwined—and this itself is political. Something else which is happening is the confirmation as far as I'm concerned of a political analysis of anti-Semitism which in my naivety, strikes me as obvious but which I've never seen articulated anywhere else. This is that the Jewish Chronicle and Socialist Worker are both correct. And incorrect. Zionism is anti racist. And Zionism is racist. I cannot see how Zionism in its triumphant form (the Israeli state) is anything except essentially racist. It was founded on the dispossession of the Palestinians. And it continues on the super exploitation and humiliation of the Palestinians as the "other". To deny this strikes me as fundamentally immoral. I also happen to think that two states, one of which by definition has to be exclusively Jewish is similarly immoral. I think majoritarianism (the legitimisation of an entity through numbers) is immoral wherever it presents itself—it leads at the very least to forced population movement and at its most extreme to ethnic cleansing and all that implies. I'll leave open to discussion and personal judgement the point on this continuum that Israel may already guilty and at which a divided state would become guilty.

On the other hand it seems to me equally undeniable that Zionism in its inception was anti-racist. It was a reaction against, a way of dealing with, European anti-Semitism. Maybe as a revolutionary socialist writing in Prestwich in 2005 it would not be my way. However as a Jew of whatever political persuasion in Europe after the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 or the defeat of the revolution in Spain in 1939 I may well have had a different position. And if fascism ever took over here and Jews were barred entry elsewhere then I guess I might take a different position. I empathise with the "bolt hole" theory of Zionism. I appreciate the significance of the remarks by Isaac Deutscher, the Polish Marxist ex-rabbi, who wrote in later life "In this controversy (between socialism and Zionism) Zionism has scored a horrible victory, one of which it could neither wish nor expect; six million Jews had to perish in Hitler's gas chambers in order that Israel should come to life ... If instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s I had urged European Jewry to go to Palestine, I might have saved some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers" (Israel's Spiritual Climate). I take it as axiomatic that any revolutionary of that pre-war period would have fought for the absolute right of Jews to enter Palestine. To have argued otherwise, to have argued for immigration controls, would have meant support for the British Mandate whose army tried to prevent entry. However the tenets of revolutionary socialism (tenets to which I still hold even in these days of Blair, Bush, Sharon and ... Bin Laden) would demand that entry into the then Palestine would/should have lead to an attempt to forge an alliance between Jewish workers and Palestinian workers and peasants against the Zionist leadership, the absentee Palestinian landlords and the British soldiery. Of course the task would have been enormous. But the failure of that historic task has lead to what we have today—Israel the perpetual blood bath.

It is because Zionism is both racist and anti-racist that I call myself an anti-Zionist Zionist. It is also because Zionism is racist and anti racist that there is an even more urgent need to rigorously distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism. This itself requires a rigorous definition of both—otherwise how is it rationally possible to ever distinguish the two? I do not think there is ever the question of anti-Zionism discourse "becoming" or "sliding into" anti-Semitism. If a position is anti-semitic then it is anti-semitic in its origins—it does not become so. It is nothing whatsoever to do with Zionism. So, fascistic critiques of Israel are not about Zionism. They are about Jews. And this is the point. Anti-Zionism is about solidarity with the Palestinians. Anti-Semitism is about the Jewish conspiracy. Not all critiques of Israel are based on Jewish conspiracy theories. And anti-Semitism is not going to help progress the Palestinian cause. Just as August Bebel famously described the equation of capital with Jew as the socialism of fools then the equation of Zionism with world domination with Jew is the anti-zionism of fools.

It often feels like the wisdom of Solomon is required to know how to deal politically with this grotesque foolishness. One issue is the actual (the "cleansing" of Jews from Jerusalem in 1948, the suicide bombings of today) or threatened ("drive them into the sea") repression of Israeli Jews which fuels a fortress mentality and to which sections of the left retain an ambivalent or agnostic attitude. Another issue that should be a matter of concern is that anti-semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism drives away those who would otherwise want to give solidarity to the Palestinian cause. For myself, this is what I found unfortunate in the debate over the boycott of some or all Israeli universities. Whatever the motive of those proposing the boycott (and like Engage I'm opposed to exceptionalising Israel) there is still an imperative need to offer real, material, political support to the Palestinians. I think for myself the best way of dealing with any particular proposed boycott is to come to a decision on whether the boycott would help the Palestinians irrespective of its proposers—and organise independently against anti-Semitism. Which perhaps meaning building a movement that simultaneously is dedicated to Palestinian solidarity and opposition to anti-Semitism.

It is apparent from what I've said that I also disagree with what I take to be the dominant position within Engage—namely that in our contemporary world anti-Zionism must inevitably equate with anti-Semitism. Paradoxically I also disagree with Engage's position that in the modern world the form that anti-Semitism takes is through (foolish) anti-Zionism. I think it is worse than that. Obviously this is one form that is taken by the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy. However it seems to me that this is merely concealing more classic forms—Jew as all-powerful (the "Zionist lobby" running the USA), Jew as financial manipulator (the world being supposedly run by trans-national corporations and not imperialist states), Jew as murderer (take your pick—the blitzing of Iraq comes in there somewhere through its constant equation with the repression of the Palestinians). Jew as the subject of the blood libel (ditto but add the surreal accusation that Jews are responsible for September 11th), Jew as the killer of the first born (double ditto), Jew as poisoner of the wells (the anti-urbanisation of much Green politics—with Jews being the urban people par excellence). These images, these world-views, are powerful enough to split off from any anti-zionist base. And they have begun to split off within sections of the anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist movement. It is here that the anti-Zionism of fools emerges with a vengeance but is still subservient to the classic socialism of fools and also to the pre-capitalist feudalism of fools—the real McCoy of jew hatred. This is because anti-capitalism is shared by socialists who aspire to post-capitalist formations and right-wing organisations who hark back to an earlier pre-capitalist age—which is one of many reasons why genuine socialists have to be vigilant against any equation of capital with Jew.

Anti-Semitism on the left has for too long been a taboo subject—probably since the inception of the socialist project itself. I know because in 1984 I was that taboo! I became for a short period a political pariah in sections of the socialist/communist movement (my movement) for daring to raise the subject. Actually when I began writing my book I had no intention of writing anything on anti-Semitism, left or right. I wanted to write and condemn the (latest) Israeli onslaught on Lebanon. I used the left press as source material—and became horrified by what I was reading. And what I was reading was gross stereotyping of the Jew via the stereotyping of Israel as the most powerful force in the universe. All this was redolent of all the old-time European, Christian imagery—just stopping short it seemed of accusations of desecrating the wafer. So I did some research and quickly realised that this left anti-Semitism did not spring from nowhere but unfortunately had a long and dishonourable tradition—going back at least to the successful agitation for immigration controls against Jewish refugees and the 1905 Aliens Act. As it so happened, I was at that time thinking of writing another book just on this agitation—but Pluto Press told me that "Jews don't sell". To which I replied that I thought this was what we've always been accused of doing too much of. To show Pluto they were not being true Marxists I quoted Marx's own piece of self-hatred from his On The Jewish Question: "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling". And then bizarrely I started to come across references and allusions (illusions) in parts of the left press to the wealth and power of Jews, of Jewry, all in the service of Israel—or maybe Israel was in the service of Jews and Jewry. Who knows? It was all rubbish anyway—but extremely dangerous rubbish.

And without managing (with the support of some comrades in the Jewish Socialist Group—the JSG) to keep fixed in my head the absolute distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, I guess I could have gone schizophrenic. There were two great successive nights when I was evicted from a mosque then a shul. I'm always sorry I never made the hat-trick of our common enemy—a church. The mosque incident involved picketing (along with some Asian youth) some local anti-Jewish ayatollah. The shul incident was wonderful. It was in Liverpool. I went with other members of the JSG to picket a meeting that was being held in support of the invasion (a shul supporting a military invasion? This really was Old Testament stuff). What we didn't know was that the guest speaker was some Israeli General—we should have recognised him by his ripped jeans and tee shirt. As we were being lifted horizontally, face downwards, out of the shul by the stewards I looked down on a face looking up at me. The face looking up said "Weren't we at Oxford together?". To which I replied "I think so—were you at Trinity?" That to me is a classic example of tribalism. Mea culpa. I always regret not screaming out "Let my people go!".

That's Funny You Don't Look Anti-Semitic did create ripples. It managed to split the JSG whose then dominant leadership thought it might offend the Socialist Workers Party. It resulted in some pretty dreadful correspondence over many weeks in journals like Searchlight and Peace News. A pamphlet was written denouncing me as a "criminal". There was a particular review—in Searchlight—one sentence of which I will never forget. Every Jew on the left will know that terrible syndrome whereby, whatever the context and wherever one is, we will be tested by being given the question "what is your position on Zionism?" Wanna support the miners—what's your position on Zionism? Against the bomb—what's your position on Zionism? And want to join our march against the eradication of Baghdad, in particular the eradication of Baghdad—what's your position on Zionism? And we all know what answer is expected in order to pass the test. It is a very strong form of anti-Semitism based on assumptions of collective responsibility. Denounce Zionism, crawl in the gutter, wear a yellow star and we'll let you in the club. Which is one reason why I call myself an Anti-Zionist Zionist—at least that should confuse the bastards. Anyhow this particular review, noting that my book actually did attack Zionism, said "It is not enough to trot out platitudes, as he does, about being against Zionism and in support of the Palestinian struggle". So I'm not allowed into the club even though I fulfil the entry requirements. I'm not allowed in because I recognise and oppose the existence of anti-Semitism on the Left—and this therefore renders all support for Palestinians a "platitude". Well it ain't me who's here confusing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

An accusation greeting the publication of That's Funny was that even if anti-Semitism existed, it was trivial compared to other forms of oppression—not least that being inflicted on the Palestinians. I find this argument abhorrent. The struggle for communism is not about establishing some equitable scale of oppression and exploitation. It is about smashing all such oppression and exploitation. Switch to Germany 1925—"Comrades why are you harping on about anti-Semitism? It's trivial. If it ever became significant we will deal with it. Honest".

But there were positives back in 1984. There were allies out there—for instance the then Manchester and Liverpool branches of the JSG. I discovered that a similar political battle was going on within the feminist magazine Spare Rib and a kind of informal alliance was formed here. I remember that a large debate was organised in the Peace Studies department at Bradford University—where I shared some dope with a member of the PLO. It was Lebanese! And then the three of us who had published the book (we called ourselves The Beyond The Pale Collective) organised a biggish conference in Manchester. And Pluto Press was wrong—we sold a lot of books. We sold enough books to publish another one—on Holocaust Denial by Gill Seidel. This had been accepted by Pluto but then pulped after it had been typeset! I guess this was part of their reality denial.

As far as I'm concerned I'm still prepared to stand behind most of what I wrote those two decades ago. However there is one issue where my position has somewhat changed. And there is a second where I think I missed the plot entirely. First I think the book was, in its critique of assimilation, far too uncritical of the concept of "Jewish culture". In fact I think it was implicitly far too generous towards Bundism in this respect (though I still support the Bundist championing of political self-organisation). I no longer see Jewish (or any) culture as monolithic. It is fractured and determined by issues of class. I have been in too many situations where the need to fight racism (racist attacks, immigration controls, fascist mobilisations) has been counter-posed by some suggestion about having an "ethnic" evening with "ethnic" clothes and "ethnic" food. It's got to the stage where, to paraphrase Goebbels, whenever I hear the word multiculture I want to reach for my gun. In particular I am now ruthlessly opposed to denominational schools—be they Jewish, Muslim, Catholic or Church of England. Some of this has been informed by the racist admission practices of the Jewish School in Manchester (no Jewish mother no entry). However the substantive point is that as a militant atheist I am opposed to the state subsidising the garbage of religion—any religion. And anyhow, I'm for the unity of people of all ages not their division. At the same time I'm equally opposed to the (political) drive towards assimilation—I don't see incorporation into the norms of imperialism as a step forward for humanity. The latest example of this drive towards incorporation is the suggestion by the Home Office Minister, Hazel Blears, following the London underground bombings that 'minorities should be described as, for example "Asian-British" rather than simply as "Asian"'. (Times 8 August 2005). The idea of the labelling and re-labelling of human beings as a method of protecting the citizenry of London is as ludicrous as all other justifications used for restricting the free movement of the same human beings. In the past slaves were branded—literally and with fire. Under the modern market economy it is people. This commoditisation of the alien reduces her or him to a piece of capital, to a new form of enslavement - the enslavement of a forced identity within a hostile society ever ready to deport and expel.

Second I come to missing the plot. This is not about what I wrote. It is about what I did not write. In fact it was what I explicitly refrained from writing. So I said "The book says nothing about socialist or liberation movements in the third world, deliberately so, because countries in the third world have not historically been within the grip of Christianity, and thus have no tradition of conspiracy theories. For example within Islam both Jew and Christian were seen as infidels—and certainly there was no constant mythology of universal Jewish domination. If notions about Jewish power entered the third world, then that is a product of imperialistic and Christian penetration".

Looking back on this from today's realities it clearly is inadequate. For instance I cannot see any basis for conspiracy theories (i.e. classic anti-Semitism) within Islam historically, however badly Jews (usually alongside Christians) were sometimes mistreated. I guess for this we have to be thankful we never bumped off Mohammed as well as Jesus. However it would be a matter of interesting political investigation to see precisely how conspiracy theories have subsequently entered the Muslim world—to see how they have become the Islam of fools. Moreover whatever the significance today of Left anti-Semitism, its influence and social weight is insignificant compared to that within Muslim communities (an anti-Semitism which is possibly matched by racism within the Jewish community). So the Elders of the Protocols of Zion is a best seller in Arabic speaking countries. So I've read how Islamicists blame "world Jewry" for both the New York and London underground bombings. And this junk needs to be challenged. And it needs to be challenged by the Left—and it isn't. In fact it is encouraged—if only obliquely.

It is encouraged by Israeli exceptionalism—by the constant depiction and caricaturing of Israel as somehow being the pre-eminent world imperialist power. Inasmuch as I might be for some boycott of Israeli universities then I'm equally in support of a boycott of British universities because of their collusion in the institutionalised apartheid of immigration controls—that is either collusion by their silence or by their active co-operation with the Home Office in developing controls (which appears to be the case with University College London). It is encouraged by the emergence on demonstrations against the American invasion of Iraq, of the denunciation of Israel's occupation of the West Bank—as though there was some intrinsic connection between the two which is not shared with other imperialist interventions. It is encouraged by the sycophantic, uncritical relationship that the SWP/Respect has towards the Muslim leadership as organised, for instance, around the mosques—these Muslim machers are as right-wing and often as anti-Semitic as their Jewish macher counterparts organised around the shuls are anti-Islam. In the beginning was the Board of Deputies? Today there is the Muslim Association of Britain. Macherism, the political reliance on a self-appointed leadership (the macherites) is a political disease which needs to be challenged and destroyed—instead sections of the Left are cultivating it at its most dangerous points.

Is there any way out of this mess? Particularly is there any way out of this mess for socialists in this country trapped politically between the existential linkage of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism? Is there a wisdom of Solomon? In all humility I think so. Of course we can all have our own politics on the way forward as regards Israel/Palestine. My own vision is of a federated secular and socialist middle east. This maybe is utopic but so is socialism. So is the revolution. So is all meaningful change. However there is going to be no way forward without a recognition of the fundamental block towards any change whatsoever—namely the world wide antagonism between Jews and Muslims. The international nature of this cleavage is central. Only joint and grassroots solidarity between the players in the game can possibly open up any dialogue. In Israel/Palestine this means between the Jewish and Palestinian masses. For instance let there be a march of a hundred thousand Israeli peaceniks into the occupied territories—and let them stay until the Israeli army and the settlers march out (or co-operate with the Palestinians in the sharing of resources—including the opening up of the new townships to Palestinians). Let Engage encourage this with its co-thinkers in Israel!

In this country it means joint activity between Jews and Muslims (and socialists) with the Jewish and Muslim communities. And what this boils down to is joint activity against fascism and racism. I suggested above the necessity to start to develop a movement simultaneously based on struggle for Palestinian rights and against anti-Semitism. This is presently an abstraction. However another real movement does exist against racism which can draw the two communities together in struggle. This is the disparate movement against immigration controls—for whom the Jews were the first and Muslims the latest victims. Of course controls need to be challenged in their own right—not just as a device for unity. However the challenge can also forge a unity which presently seems a million miles away. What is more the history of the last thirty years of struggle by migrants, immigrants and refugees against controls shows something that SWP/Respect have utterly missed. This is that real, meaningful, progressive political activity within the Muslim community (and all third world communities) comes from the grassroots either by by-passing or defeating the community machers. Let Engage become involved in these struggles both because of their intrinsic political importance and as part of its commitment to challenging left anti-Semitism by building meaningful alliances!

It could begin by supporting the campaign of Samina Altaf and her two children to fight deportation. Samina's is just one of countless stories—though I guess more immediately poignant. Having fled Pakistan to avoid repeated domestic abuse she was refused asylum here. Like all asylum seekers she is outside of the welfare state and has been forcibly dispersed into Salford by the so-called National Asylum Support Service (NASS—a wing of the Home Office). And now as a failed asylum seeker who is refusing to return "voluntarily" to the country from she fled she is being threatened by NASS with eviction onto the streets. And I forgot to mention this—Samina is disabled with rickets. And her children are crippled with rickets. Get involved with the campaign! Write a letter of support to her constituency MP—Hazel Blears that well known re-labeller of third world identity and warrior against international terrorism (address House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1). Blears happens to be a Home Office MP—so terrorise her with letters of support. And invite a speaker from the campaign to one of your meetings—whilst sending money to the campaign (address Samina Altaf Defence Campaign, c/o Bury Law Centre, 8 Banks St, Bury BL9 ODL).

Finally I think that not one iota of the above can ever be resolved through communalism, through tribalism, through uncritically supporting Jews as Jews or Muslims as Muslims. My religion right or wrong! And all due to an accident of birth. I guess I recoil when I read on the Engage website the reflection on being Jewish—"frankly I can't get enough of it". Jewish identity as an addiction is not much of an advert for clarity of political thought. I was shocked by a news report I read a few years ago. It is a story that deserves creative fictionalisation. It concerned a guy who was raised in a highly Zionist family (I guess High Zionism is the Jewish version of High Church). He was raised as a conscious racist towards the Palestinians. Dirty Arabs! Until he discovered he was one of them—He was an adopted son. His biological parents were, I think, Libyan. Overnight (or maybe it took a little longer) he became a vehement anti-Zionist—and Jew hater. Dirty Jews! I was struck by two very powerful televisual images during the recent eviction of the Gaza settlers by the (Orwellian entitled) Israeli Defence Force. One was that of Israeli soldiers crying. The Israeli army in tears? One of the most powerful militaries in the world! Why no tears when the Palestinians were evicted? The second image was just bizarre in its tribalism. This was that of the settlers being evicted and the soldiers evicting them temporarily desisting from their civil war and praying together on shabbos—with the evictions resuming as soon as shabbos ended. Compared to this crazy chauvinism the legendary Christmas Day football match in the trenches of World War One between German and British soldiers was a genuine act of internationalism. However there can be no genuine internationalism, no genuine international solidarity, no meaningful working together of ordinary people wherever tribalism or communalism dominates. And at the moment it is precisely these reactionary formations that dominate both Muslim and Jewish communities—and the tragedy is they are hardening. It would be good if Engage put its energy into helping soften them.

Steve Cohen
2005

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Why is this book different from all other books?

2007-01-31T18:01:00.000-08:00

In all other books we are not allowed to see anti-semitism, let alone the anti-semitism of the Left.
But in this book we can.

In all other (non-feminist) books we do not identify the links between Jews, Blacks and women.
But in this book we do.

In all other books we are told to assimilate or go to Israel.
But in this book we need not do either.

In all other books we can be either Jewish or Left.
But in this book we can be both.

Beyond the Pale Collective comprises:
Erica Burman and Libby Lawson.

We would like to thank the Collective for being there when we needed them, for endless cups of tea, for providing help and encouragement when the going got rough while editing, producing and publishing this book. They made it all possible!

Beyond the Pale Collective

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2007-01-29T17:58:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Chapter 7: The Non-Jewish Question

Bibliographical Sources

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Introduction

2007-01-28T18:02:00.000-08:00

This book is written from a perspective of communism and anti-racism. It is, naturally, opposed to anti-semitism in whatever guise. In particular, it is a polemic against manifestations of anti-semitism by those who claim to be part of the socialist or communist tradition. It has been a painful piece to write, intellectually and emotionally. I guess it will be painful to read. Leon Trotsky once said that "only the truth is revolutionary". This was his answer to those who refused to criticise Stalinism for fear that imperialists would jump on these criticisms, to further attack the very real achievements of the Bolshevik revolution. The facts in the book might well provide some perverse ammunition to reactionaries of all kinds, who want to denounce revolutionary change. So be it. Reaction has to be defeated honestly, not by defending the indefensible; what is written here is not in any way presented as a last word, rather it is an attempt to open up a genuine debate on the Left. Hopefully, something positive will emerge from the dissection of such negative material.

Even in draft form, the book has been attacked by individuals on the Left and the Right. However, what has made it possible and worthwhile has been the tremendous encouragement from so many different people (many of whom I have never met). Not least are those who have donated the entire cost of the production. I would like to thank Manchester Jewish Socialist Group for their support—in particular Joe Garman and Jeremy Green for their midnight discussion. I would also like to thank all those women in the women's caucus at the national Jewish Socialist Group day school on Left anti-semitism, who forcefully expressed their desire for publication. Francesca Klug and Judy Keiner wrote me extremely long and constructive letters, helping to clarify many points and raising further ones. Bill Williams spent years, literally, discussing the issues raised in the book. Finally, limitless thanks to Libby Lawson and Erica Burman who kidnapped the manuscript after it had been through countless drafts and, by editing it, made sure that it is Kosher and fit for human consumption.

All money that is received through sales will go to Shifra magazine, which is about to be produced by a Jewish feminist collective. So buy!

Steve Cohen
1984

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The Socialism of Fools

2007-01-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

To struggle as a Jewish socialist it is a distinct advantage to have been born with three hands—at least three hands. On the one hand it is necessary to struggle against the anti-semitism of daily life both in its casual and its organised forms. On the other hand, it is necessary to struggle against the reactionary Jewish communal leadership which simultaneously advocates zionism in Israel and a form of assimilation in the diaspora as the fulfilment of Jewish identity. On the third hand, it is necessary to resist the anti-semitism that has permeated much of the socialist tradition and which was described by August Bebel, German Social Democrat leader, as the "socialism of fools".

This book is about Left anti-semitism and is written as a contribution to the anti-racist struggle. Contemporary socialist practice is self-critical enough, albeit to a limited and inadequate extent, to acknowledge that an examination of its own anti-black racism is a legitimate exercise. At the very least, socialists will be prepared to admit that national chauvinism may be present in their own groups. Whatever commitment there is to this, self-criticism has only come about through the existence and pressure of autonomous black organisations and black resistance. However, any attempt to raise even a discussion about the anti-semitic nature of much socialist practice is almost invariably met with apoplexy and vilification. It is virtually a taboo subject.

The reasons why it is essential to study Left anti-semitism are self-evident. Firstly, just as we look to reject the reactionary elements within the Jewish heritage and seek to build only on what is positive, so likewise we have to disregard all reactionary elements that have entered socialism. This is particularly the case with socialism, as it is a movement aimed at changing the entire world and claims to be based on theories of consciousness: hence lack of consciousness of anti-semitism within socialist practice opens up major questions about that practice. Secondly, the Left has often found itself complicit in anti-semitism, and this has had a profound effect on Jewish identity: it has driven many Jews away from socialism, despite the fact that Jewish people played an important role in the development of the socialist movement from its inception. The Jewish masses were active from the Bund (the revolutionary union of Jewish workers) of Russia and Poland to the major movements of Jewish anarchists and communists in this country. These movements were also of significance within the Jewish community itself and were often able to challenge the Jewish establishment. Today this has all but disappeared. Socialists who have an awareness of their Jewishness are isolated inside the Left and have almost no base within the Jewish community.

There are many reasons for this—not least the triumphant anti-communism of the communal leadership. However, one other particular reason is that socialism has appeared to offer no answers to Jewish people and has been seen as tainted with anti-semitism. This is highly significant within the Stalinist tradition because of the generations of Jews who joined or identified with the Communist Parties of the Third International, only to be disillusioned. The socialism of fools, though, also appears both with the reformism of social democracy and with the revolutionary groupings that have dissociated themselves from both reformism and Stalinism. It is not surprising therefore, that so many Jews have turned away from socialism.

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Anti-Semitism

2007-01-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

It is not difficult to construct a catalogue of grotesque statements and actions by socialists with respect to Jewish people. These are bad enough in themselves and should be opposed from any anti-racist perspective. However, the purpose of this book is to show that Left anti-semitism cannot be understood empirically, merely as a series of unrelated descriptions or examples: rather there is a pattern, a methodology, of Left anti-semitism.

This methodology is by no means confined to the Left. It exists in society at large. It provides anti-semitism with its uniqueness as a form of racism and hence with its definition as a specific category.

Anti-semitism is not simply a type of national chauvinism that happens to be directed against Jews—although this is obviously an important aspect of it. Though Jewish people have suffered and are suffering horrifically from the material consequences of anti-semitism, its uniqueness cannot be located merely in this material suffering. The peculiar and defining feature of anti-semitism is that it exists as an ideology. It provides its adherents with a universal and generalised interpretation of the world. This is the theory of the Jewish conspiracy, which depicts Jews as historically controlling and determining nature and human destiny. Anti-semitism is an ideology which has influenced millions of people precisely because it presents an explanation of the world by attributing such extreme powers to its motive force—the Jews. For instance, Arnold White, a fanatical advocate of Jewish immigration control into the U.K. at the turn of the century, wrote that

"Jewish power ... baffled the Pharaohs, foiled Nebuchadnessar, thwarted Rome, defeated feudalism, circumvented the Romanovs, balked the Kaiser and undermined the Third French Republic." (The Modern Few)

The ancient roots of anti-semitism as ideology can perhaps be found in the pre-Christian world. From the time of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century B.C., most Jews lived outside Palestine and were subjected to accusations of disloyalty because of their allegiance to a god which was not only monotheistic and therefore omnipotent, but which was also supra-national. Jews had a loyalty beyond that to the particular kingdom in which they resided. However, the development of anti-semitism as a theory is a consequence of Christianity.

Christianity transformed notions of Jewish disloyalty into a fundamentally demonic view of the entire world: it equated Jewry with a universal satanic influence. Such an equation is probably inherent within Christianity, as a theology, because of the identification of Jews with the crucifixion. As the Gospel of St. John says of Jews:

"You are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning."

The Christian church was promulgating such a theory as early as the 2nd century, whilst engaging in a highly political struggle with the synagogue for converts in the Hellenistic world and when, indeed, each was still struggling to win adherents from the other. As Norman Cohn has written in Warrant For Genocide:

"It was to terrorise the judaising Christians of Antioch into a final breach with the parent religion that St. John Chrysostom called the synagogue 'the temple of demons ... the cavern of devils ... a gulf and an abyss of perdition' and portrayed Jews as habitual murderers and destroyers, people possessed by an evil spirit. And it was to protect his catechumens against Judaism that St. Augustine described those who had been the favourite sons of God as now transformed into sons of Satan. Moreover the Jews were brought into relation with that fearsome figure Antichrist 'the son of perdition' whose tyrannical reign, according to St. Paul and the Book of Revelations, is to precede the second coming of Christ. Many of the fathers taught that Antichrist would be a Jew and that the Jews would be his most devoted followers."

This mythology flowered with a vengeance and gained popular acceptance during the Catholic church's most militant period—the crusades. Here Jews were presented as the Devil's offspring—ritually murdering Christian children, poisoning the wells and torturing the consecrated wafer. Apart from anything else, this led to murderous attacks on many Jewish communities in Europe. For instance, the Third Crusade (1189-92) commanded wide support in England where it led to attacks by the assembled crusaders on Jews in various towns, especially York. It would be patently inadequate to regard the crusades simply as a war with Islam. They also represent the final victory and consolidation of Christian hegemony within Europe itself. This was the period when Christianity finally began routing paganism—both physically and by expropriating myths. On one hand, pagan festivals were incorporated into Christian holy days, on the other hand, popular folk perceptions of the evil eye were synthesised into anti-semitism.

It is possible to develop a materialist and class analysis of anti-semitism which relates the ideology of Jewish domination to underlying economic and social changes. The most obvious example of this is the way the conspiracy theory became secularised in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was at the end of the 19th century that the mass circulation of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion began. This document purported to show that there actually existed a Jewish government which met in secret and which exercised international political power through its control of the media and of the banks. It metamorphosised the devil into a world parliament of Jews. This secularisation was, in reality, nothing more than a reflection of the secularisation of social life as a whole—not least as manifested through the development of the national secular state.

However, a crude deterministic analysis is out of place here. The form of anti-semitism as ideology may change but its essence remains intact, independent of the economic formation under which it is operating. Indeed, the supposed secularisation of the conspiracy theory in the age of rationalism was inevitably flimsy—as the theory itself is profoundly irrational: it grew out of demonology and it always returns to demonology. Ultimately, anti-semitism is about the cosmos and not simply a world parliament. This demonology surfaced in its most powerful way in the middle of the 20th century with the rise of Nazism. Nazism had no pretence that anti-semitism was anything other than devil-power. As Hitler is quoted as saying:

"It is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination ... Two worlds face one another, the men of God and the men of Satan. The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another God ... I set the Aryan and the Jew ever and against each other" (Davidowicz—The War Against the Jews).

Anti-semitism is a classic example of how not simply pre-capitalist, but also pre-feudal formulations, can flourish in capitalist (and in the case of the U.S.S.R.) post-capitalist societies.

As an ideology anti-semitism is irrationalism par excellence. Moreover, its proponents do not deny this irrationalism—they exalt it. Since anti-semitism takes as given that Jew-power determines history, then the fact that it determines it in seemingly contradictory ways is simply part of the conspiracy. Hence Jews can apparently be dominating the world simultaneously through capitalism and through communism; through sexually corrupting non-Jews and through keeping themselves isolated sexually by not intermarrying; through being cosmopolitans without a nation state and through being zionists. Literally everything can fit into the conspiracy. It is infinite. Even Nazism can, since its defeat, be seen as part of the conspiracy. The Australian fascist Eric Butler in his book The International Jew, The Truth about the Protocols of Zion, claims that Hitler was himself a tool of the conspiracy and was seeking to further the international dispersal of Jews. One of the fearsome features of anti-semitism is that while its essence remains the same its shape is constantly shifting and enlarging as it accumulates more myths. This increase can either be gradual or explosive, depending on the social and political situation. Its nearest equivalent in the realm of natural phenomena, is that of the ever-expanding universe where the constant energy source of the initial big bang is represented in Christian culture by the ceaseless responsibility given to Jews for the crucifixion.

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Anti-Semitism without Jews

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The ultimate 'full-circle' irrationalism of anti-semitism as an ideology is that it does not actually need Jews. There can be anti-semitism without a single Jew. This is precisely because anti-semitism is an ideology which claims to provide cosmic understanding. Central to the ideology are demonic notions which quite clearly transcend the material presence of Jews. Many examples can be given of this. Thus the identification of Jewry with the devil makes Jewry responsible for all satanic influences, including humanity's original sin—the Fall in Eden—which, even according to Judeo-Christian mythology, took place before the identifiable existence of Jews.

Again, if the almost unimaginable had occurred and the holocaust had been successful in its declared aim, then it would be ludicrous to think this would have been the end to anti-semitism. If anything, it would have been its historical triumph. The ideology would have remained, and if Nazism would ever have felt the need for a material presence of Jews it would simply have designated particular individuals as Jews. Indeed, Nazi law did invent its own definition of Jewry which did not necessarily relate to Jews' self-definition. Apparently in the Warsaw ghetto there was a Catholic church which opened for practising Catholics, who were designated as Jews by the Nazis, and who were destroyed in the same gas chambers as Jews (see David Ruben, 'Marxism and the Jewish Question', Socialist Register 1982). Similarly, in Poland today anti-semitism, under the guise of anti-zionism, exists even though the bulk of the Jewish population has been destroyed. Anti-semitism is apparently unique in that not only does it perceive its victim, the Jew, as having ultimate power, but this perception also remains even when there are no victims left alive.

Perhaps the ideologies of all class societies are based on a completely negative form of irrationalism—because such societies combine both irrationalism and negativity. Maybe if all other assumptions were swept away, then sexism and anti-black racism would also be exposed as resting on the fear by men, or white people, that women or black people had ultimate control. However, sexism and anti-black racism are different phenomena which operate in different ways from each other, and both operate differently from anti-semitism.

The distinguishing feature of anti-semitism is that for its ideologues the conspiracy theory operates on the surface—it is visible. No other assumption has to be pulled away for it to be revealed—it is the assumption. For instance, according to National Front mythology, even the very presence of black people in the U.K. is part of a Jewish conspiracy.

It is of course true that there have been historical periods where sexism has operated as an almost explicit conspiracy theory. For example, in medieval times, witches and homosexuals, men and women, formed, along with Jews, the unholy trinity of the Antichrist. In particular, images of Jews and of witches as sorcerers and defilers, were often interchangeable. Again, beneath the surface of much anti-black racism lurks fear of voodoo and occult rituals.

What gives sexism and racism their own unique irrationalism, however, is precisely the fact that notions of conspiracy are rarely explicit. They are normally quite hidden and therefore in this way harder to combat. It is not coincidental, nor any more reassuring, that there is not a plethora of explicit literature on a supposed world conspiracy of women, gays or black people. Indeed medieval witch massacres had to make a profoundly nonsensical distinction between witches and "good" women. There is no hierarchy of oppression but each operates in its own frightening way.

There is no reason to assume that individual anti-semites have an explicit world conspiracy theory—just as there is no reason to assume, for example, that capitalist traders have a fully worked-out theoretical appreciation of bourgeois economics. Many Jew-haters just seize on particular anti-semitic images of Jews—as bloodsuckers, usurers or whatever. These images have been within Christendom and accumulating, one on another, for nearly two millennia. In terms of individual psychology, false consciousness of the conspiracy theory is usually quite fragmented—individuals will carry around some anti-Jewish images in an ad hoc manner.

The distinguishing feature of anti-semitism is the success and persistence of the attempts which its most powerful ideologues, from the early Christian fathers, to the crusaders, to the Protocols, to the Nazi philosophers, have made to theorise it in terms of the conspiracy of Jews. The anti-semitism of daily life, whether or not it is understood by its adherents, all takes place within this theoretical framework. Moreover, popular consciousness about Jews, however individually fragmented, is sufficiently potent to be regularly stimulated by demagogues into a mass psychology—by demagogues who have genuine awareness of conspiracy theory. Fascist politicians in this century have well understood this.

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Left Anti-Semitism

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Anti-semitism on the Left is essentially identical to, and has the same methodology as, that of society at large. It is the expression of the conspiracy theory—but under the false guise of socialism. Usurping the language of class struggle it negates the very idea of class struggle and replaces it with anti-Jewish struggle.

Of course, socialist practice is not a monolith. Some of it has accorded with socialist theory and has not been anti-semitic. Inasmuch as that has any relevance to the present debate, however, it is relevant only to the weight of the anti-semitic tradition within socialist practice. It neither explains nor denies that tradition. Moreover, there is no balance sheet with any form of racism. It is hardly worthwhile to subtract the number of racist statements made from the number of non-racist statements to calculate how racist a movement is. Why bother? It is intolerable that socialist practice should contain any anti-semitism and it is equally intolerable that a wall of silence, often to the point of censorship, should have been thrown around its existence. Indeed, there is some hypocrisy present here. Many socialists, and many socialist organisations, will wish to distance themselves from any insinuations about their own anti-semitic practice, precisely by claiming that the Left tradition has not been monolithic. However, if it has not been so monolithic in their eyes, then it is perfectly legitimate to ask why they have consistently remained silent and complicit in the face of Left anti-semitism.

This book is primarily about socialist practice in the U.K. in general, and England in particular. However, this practice also comes out of a European tradition of socialism, so inevitably, references are made to other movements outside the U.K.—including those in the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. The book says nothing about socialist or liberation movements in the third world, deliberately so, because countries in the third world have not historically been within the grip of Christianity, and thus have no tradition of conspiracy theories. For instance, within Islam both Jew and Christian were seen as infidels—and certainly there was no constant mythology of universal Jewish domination. If notions about Jewish power have entered the third world, then that is a product of imperialistic and Christian penetration.

Left anti-semitism has gone through two distinct, if related and overlapping, stages. The first coincided with the establishment of the modern socialist movement itself, at the end of the 19th century. Here, the particular mythology of Jew as finance capitalist took root within important sectors of the emergent socialist and industrial labour movement. This was crucial, as it meant that socialist practice had a tradition of anti-semitism almost from its birth. The second stage developed around the question of zionism—particularly after the war which created Israel in 1948. A significant feature of contemporary socialist practice is, on the one hand, the expansion of zionism to equate it with world imperialist domination and, on the other hand, the reduction of the entire Jewish experience to equate that with zionism. It is a combination of the conspiracy theory with that of collective guilt.

Quite clearly, anti-zionism is not in itself anti-semitic. However, much of what the Left poses as anti-zionism is transcendental: it relates neither to the struggle of the Palestinians nor to what the Israeli state is actually doing. Rather it is concerned with ascribing world power to zionism and holding all Jews in the world responsible for this. Left practice presents as anti-zionism something which is neither about zionism nor about Palestinian liberation, but is about some alleged responsibility of Jews on a global scale. This is anti-semitism. The fact that this book is written in full support of the Palestinian struggle is absolutely irrelevant. Left anti-semitism has to be condemned irrespective of one's position on zionism. However, socialist Jews who are committed equally to solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle and to the fight against anti-semitism, are put in an impossible "catch 22" situation by the Left. Any mention of anti-semitism is seen as a diversion from the struggle against zionism. Moreover, the merest suggestion that the Left can itself be anti-semitic is equated with an attack, both on communism, and on the Palestinian cause. An example, which is almost a caricature, occurred in an editorial in the journal Big Flame which stated that an "obsession" with anti-semitism detracted from the need to "focus" on zionism (October, 1982).

There is, manifestly, an ideological link between the anti-semitism present at the birth of a definitive socialist practice in the last century, and Left anti-semitism in relation to zionism in this century. It would be anti-dialectical to expect the disappearance of ideological deformations without their being consciously challenged. There is also a specific ideological linkage uniting the two historical periods and running like a chain between them. This is assimilationism. The general chauvinism which permeates the Left on matters of cultural and national identity has assumed such a form that an independent Jewish identity is seen as either conceptually impossible or hopelessly reactionary. The relationship between assimilationism and anti-semitism as ideology is a problematic one, and is looked at later. What is being emphasised here is the strength of assimilationism within socialist thought.

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Socialism, Anti-Semitism, Thatcherism and Fascism

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Anti-semitism on the Left is harmful to Jews and degrading to socialists, irrespective of the precise historical period in which it manifests itself. However, there is a particular urgency in facing up to it today. We are now witnessing a popular resurgence of the New Right, best exemplified by Thatcherism in the U.K. As well as being a direct attack on the working class this represents chauvinism in all aspects-racial, national and sexual. It is arguable whether anti-semitism could become an explicit part of Tory philosophy. It certainly has popular appeal and is an important component of the "Victorian Values" that this government is so fond of espousing. However, it may well be that even the Tory Party could not incorporate anti-semitism institutionally in the direct way that all parliamentary parties now incorporate anti-black racism. Arguably, this requires a party of open fascism.

In any event, it is inconceivable that a socialist movement which is shot through with its own anti-semitism could face up to any of the aspects of Tory, let alone fascist, chauvinism. Over the last few years, sections of the socialist movement, mainly stimulated by the ideas and attitudes of feminism, have been re-evaluating their practice in order to develop a socialist practice which is both aware of the aspirations of the oppressed and is unoppressive in itself. This book about Left anti-semitism is written in that spirit.

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The Anti-Semitism of English Socialism's Formative Years

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The Background

The period 1880 to 1914 is central to understanding how anti-semitism has permeated much of the socialist tradition. This was an epoch which witnessed:

(a) the consolidation of world imperialism.

(b) the formation of the first self-styled socialist organisations such as the Social Democratic Federation—the S.D.F.—and the Independent Labour Party—the I.L.P.

The impact of imperialism was to imbue the labour movement and the socialist organisation with national and chauvinistic ideas—ideas which persist today. Another phenomenon also occurred in these years—the mass immigration of Jews into England as they fled from the progroms of Russia and Eastern Europe.

The immigrants arrived into a country that was already deeply anti-semitic. Anti-semitism in England had existed well before imperialism or capitalism. It was pre-feudal and rooted in Christianity. The entire Jewish population had already been forcibly expelled by Edward 1st in 1290. Readmitted by Cromwell, they were ghettoised and portrayed through popular mythology as Shylocks and Fagins. It is not surprising, therefore, that Jews in the 1880's were greeted by anti-semitism on arrival. A significant consequence of this was that the chauvinism of the socialist and labour movement became fuelled by a specific and virulent anti-semitism. Like all anti-semitism this was based, to a greater or lesser extent, on notions of the world Jewish conspiracy.

The most obvious example of this was the equation of Jews with capitalism—the classic socialism of fools. For instance, Today, the monthly magazine of Scientific Socialism, in its first issue of 1884 printed an article where it was taken for granted that "economically and socially Jews are our antagonists". This equation was not simply of Jews with capitalism. It was an equation of Jews with imperialist domination—a domination that was conscious and conspiratorial. Justice, the paper of the S.D.F., claimed that:

"Jew moneylenders now control every Foreign Office in Europe" (5.4.1884)

and that:

"It seems to be an open secret that the government of France is too much in the grip of Jews to take active measures against them as a body" (25.6.1898).

This latter quote was taken from the time of the Dreyfus affair in France. Similarly, Robert Blatchford's journal, The Clarion (around which the Clarion Clubs were organised), quoted with approval the claim that:

"Modern imperialism is really run by half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish, to whom politics is a counter in the game of buying and selling securities and the people are convenient pawns." (24.2.1900)

It was frequently alleged that all imperialist wars were organised and manipulated by Jews, in the interest of Jewish finance. Sometimes it was suggested that this was channelled through just one family—the Rothschilds. Labour Leader, the paper of the I.L.P., stated that:

"Wherever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumours of war circulate and men's minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity, you may be sure that a hooked-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbances" (19.12.1891).

In particular, the Boer War and the events leading up to it were frequently pictured as being in defence of Jewish financial interests in South Africa. H.M. Hyndman, the leader of the S.D.F., warned against the construction of an

"Anglo-Hebraic empire in Africa" (Justice, 25.4.1896).

Not only did Jews allegedly control the world through financial and military domination—but also, apparently, through control of the media. Justice spoke of supposed Jewish press power in England acting

"in accord with their fellow capitalist Jews all over the world" (5.7.1890).

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The Background

2007-01-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

The period 1880 to 1914 is central to understanding how anti-semitism has permeated much of the socialist tradition. This was an epoch which witnessed:

(a) the consolidation of world imperialism.

(b) the formation of the first self-styled socialist organisations such as the Social Democratic Federation—the S.D.F.—and the Independent Labour Party—the I.L.P.

"Jew moneylenders now control every Foreign Office in Europe" (5.4.1884)

and that:

"It seems to be an open secret that the government of France is too much in the grip of Jews to take active measures against them as a body" (25.6.1898).

"Modern imperialism is really run by half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish, to whom politics is a counter in the game of buying and selling securities and the people are convenient pawns." (24.2.1900)

"Wherever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumours of war circulate and men's minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity, you may be sure that a hooked-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbances" (19.12.1891).

"Anglo-Hebraic empire in Africa" (Justice, 25.4.1896).

"in accord with their fellow capitalist Jews all over the world" (5.7.1890).

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Immigration Controls

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The Aliens Act of 1905 is almost entirely forgotten today by the Jewish community and by socialists. It was the natural corollary to the anti-Jewish ideology described above, namely the successful demand for immigration control on Jews. The Act was passed by a Tory government with the full support of its leadership and of the Tory Party. It was enforced by a Liberal government. However, in many ways it was the result of nearly twenty years of agitation by the English working class.

This agitation took two main forms. Firstly, there was the grassroots proto-fascist organisation in London's East End—the British Brothers League. Between its inception in 1901 and its victory in 1905, the Brothers organised constant demonstrations and rallies through the East End against Jewish immigration. Secondly, there was the organised labour movement itself. From 1892, the T.U.C. was formally committed to a resolution excluding Jews. This was not a passive 'paper' position, indeed the issue of immigration control was included in a list of questions to be asked of all Parliamentary candidates, which was compiled by a special conference of the T. U. C. in 1895 (Manchester Evening News, 11.7.1895). Indeed, the T.U.C. sent a delegation to the Home Secretary demanding control (Times, 6.2.1896).

This was only the tip of the iceberg. W.H. Wilkins, a fanatical campaigner for control, in his book The Alien Invasion, published in 1892, named 43 labour organisations, not including the T.U.C., advocating restrictions on Jews. These ranged from the National Boiler Makers and Iron Ship Builders Society to the Miners Association of Durham to the Oldham Provincial Card and Blowing Room Operatives. It also included the Liverpool Trades' Council. Many other trades' councils were to come out in favour of control. These included London, where control was supported by the renowned rank and file dockers' leaders Ben Tillett and Tom Mann (London Evening News, May 27th and June 19th 1891), Manchester (Trades Council Report, 1892) and Leeds (evidence of its secretary, to the 1903 Royal Commission on Alien Immigration). J.H. Wilson, who was an M.P. and also secretary of the Seamen's' Union, was actually one of the first to propose legislation in Parliament (Hansard, 11.2.1893).

The attitude of most of the emergent socialist organisations to all of this, varied from agreement to inconsistency. For instance, The Clarion came out eventually for total exclusion. In an article just after the Act became law, The Clarion stated that Jewish immigrants were:

"a poison injected into the national veins", they were the "unsavoury children of the ghetto", their numbers were "appalling" and their attitudes "unclean" (22.6.1906).

The S.D.F.'s position was, to put it mildly, fainthearted. Hyndman at a meeting called ostensibly to oppose controls, declared that he was against "free admittance of all aliens" and went on to attack Jews for living in ghettos and refusing to intermarry (Jewish Chronicle, 1.4.1904).

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English and Jewish Opposition to Controls

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Fortunately for the communist movement today, there is an alternative socialist tradition in relation to the Aliens Act from which we can learn. There were pockets of protest against the agitation for immigration control from within the emergent socialist movement and, to an even lesser extent, from within the labour movement as a whole. However, such protest was relatively small and could not swim against the tide. The most honourable example of this was the Socialist League, which split from the S.D.F. in 1885, and whose most well-remembered figure is William Morris. The League's journal, Commonweal, showed a totally principled position in its opposition to anti-semitism and immigration control. In one article—sarcastically called "Blarsted Furriners"—the journal attacked the other Left groups for their chauvinism and anti-semitism, asking them:

"Are we then to allow the issues at stake in the struggle between the robbers and the robbed to be obscured by anti-foreigner agitation?" (28.4.1888).

The same article also then offered solidarity to the Aborigines, Maoris, American Indians and black people everywhere, against their exploitation by the colonising English. In another article, John Burns of the I.L.P. was criticised for claiming that "England was for the English" (23.8.1890). However, the League and its journal ceased to exist in the early 1890's—unable and unwilling to compete with the increasing chauvinism of its rival organisation. Nonetheless, individuals and individual branches within the S.D.F. and I.L.P. occasionally kept the torch of protest alight. Again, individual trades unionists occasionally tried to speak out. Thus there was some opposition on the London Trades Council to Tillett and Mann—Mr. Taylor (a lithographic artist) spoke out against restriction and in favour of the "solidarity of the workers international brotherhood" (London Evening News 19.6.1891).

It must be said, that with the honourable and important exceptions of the Socialist League and odd individuals, the remaining opposition to immigration control by the English socialist and labour movement was not only spasmodic, but was despite itself, and was the result of pressure put on it by its Jewish members. This was certainly the case with the S.D.F.—where it was essentially only its London East End branch (that is, its Jewish branch) which organised activity against the Act. In May 1904, the East London S.D.F. convened a conference composed of "delegates from the Jewish trade unions and others" to plan some disruption of Parliament over the proposed Act (Jewish Chronicle 6.5.1904). After the Act became law the East London S.D.F. organised a meeting of protest in the Wonderland, Whitechapel Rd. The meeting was conducted in Yiddish and English (Jewish Chronicle, 19.9.1905). In fact the S.D.F. meeting, where Hyndman had turned up and spoken in favour of control, had been organised by its East London branch as a meeting against control. Likewise, the I.L.P. held protests—but again apparently only through the pressure of its Jewish members. Labour Leader reported a protest meeting in Tib Street in Manchester and advised those who wanted to follow up the protest to get in touch with the I.L.P. through J. Deschman, who was secretary of the Jewish Tailors Union in Manchester (3.6.1904).

The only organised trade union opposition which included British trade unionists, was when Jewish workers took the initiative. The major example of this was the meeting attended by over 3,000 people, organised in the East End by the Federated Jewish Tailors Union of London, where the speakers included W.P. Reeves of the Women's Union League, Margaret Bondfield, secretary of the National Union of Shop Assistants and Frank Brien of the Dockers Union (Eastern Post, 20.9.1902). The way in which at least some English workers were forced into action against anti-semitism by the independent initiative of Jewish workers is obviously mirrored today, when women and black organisation have placed sexism and racism on the political agenda of the Left.

Given the backward role of most of the English labour and socialist organisations, Jewish workers were compelled to take independent action against the agitation for immigrant control. An Alien Defence League was established by Jews to fight control and was based at 38 Brick Lane in London (Jewish Chronicle, 24.1.1902). Moreover, Jewish trade unionists took initiatives that were directed specifically against the anti-semitism of the English labour movement. In 1895, Jewish trade unionists in London circulated a leaflet called The Voice of the Alien which attacked the T.U.C.'s support for immigration control. This was written by Joseph Finn, a Jewish socialist from Leeds (see his letter to the Jewish Chronicle, 14.2.1902). Alongside this, Der Arbeiter Freund (The Worker's Friend, a Yiddish anarcho-communist journal) consistently attacked the English labour movement for its chauvinism and anti-semitism. It correctly understood the alignment of forces when it attacked the T.U.C. and "its papa—the State" (17.4.1903 quoted in Immigrants and the Class Struggle by Joe Buckman).

It could be argued that this Jewish fight-back, within and against the English labour movement, did have some limited success, in that one or two trade unions did alter their position. Thus, by 1903, Manchester Trades Council had become simply indifferent to the question of control and had ceased to campaign for it (Manchester Evening News, 28.1.1903). A similar neutralisation occurred with respect to Leeds Trades Council. Again, in 1905, James Sexton, the President of the T.U.C. personally denounced control at the T.U.C. conference (1905 T.U.C. Annual Report).

In conclusion, there are two points which can be made. Firstly, it was all far too little and too late. Only one or two labour movement bodies actually stopped campaigning for control. The T.U.C. was not one of these. No organised union body ever campaigned against control. In any event, after 1901 the working class movement for control had taken to the streets with a vengeance, under the leadership of the British Brothers League. Secondly, insofar as one or two union organisations did ameliorate their position, it was more due to the (belated) recognition that the militancy and high degree of unionisation of Jewish workers were actually helping raise the living standards of English workers than the result of Jewish opposition to control. For instance, Tom Mann and Ben Tillett were prepared to speak at the inaugural meeting of the Federation of East London Labour Unions in 1889. G. Kelley, secretary of the Manchester Trades Council, explaining why the Council no longer supported control, emphasised the good example that the Jewish Tailors Union in Manchester had set for English workers (Manchester Evening News, 28.1.1903). In other words, even this small group of labour organisation did not renounce anti-semitism. Rather they concealed it behind a newly discovered economic identification with Jewish workers.

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Rich Jew, Poor Jew; the conspiracy theory in practice

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Arguments often used in favour of control were that Jewish workers were taking away English people's jobs, undercutting wages, weakening unionisation and taking away housing from the English. An obvious question that arises is the connection between an anti—semitic movement which was directed against working class Jews, and the anti-semitic notion of Jewish capitalist domination. Of course, there could be no rational connection, but given assumptions about the world Jewish conspiracy, then links could be made on the most irrational and transcendental of levels.

One way of dealing with this was to try and make some distinction between "rich Jews" and "poor Jews". It is at this point some of the socialists' apparent opposition to control becomes quite ambiguous, as opposition was also couched in anti-semitic imagery. For instance, in 1904 the I.L.P. actually issued a pamphlet against control—The Problem of Alien Immigration. On its first page it mounted an attack on:

"The rich Jew who has done his best to besmirch the fair name of England and to corrupt the sweetness of our national life and character"

and to compare this to the "poor Jew" who should be allowed in.

More frequently, the socialist groups tried to discover actual links between "rich Jews" and "poor Jews", in order to attack the latter as being in some way a pawn of the former. For instance, Beatrice Potter, one of the founders of the Fabians, constantly argued in her investigation of East End life that the only aim of a Jewish worker was to become a capitalist. In one essay she wrote that:

"The love of profit distinct from other forms of money earning" is "the strongest impelling motive of the Jewish race" (Nineteenth Century, vol XXIV).

This is not so much a picture of the poor Jew as pawn, but rather of the poor Jew as embryonic capitalist, clone and biological imperialist. The Fabians, as an organisation, never opposed control—they merely abstained and let it happen. Moreover, Beatrice Potter deliberately lied about Jews in the East End by concealing all reference to the powerful Jewish labour movement developing there. Indeed, in the essay quoted above, she claims that Jews, as embryonic capitalists:

"Have neither the desire nor the capacity for labour combination".

Potter combined very well the prejudices of the attack on rich Jews and on poor Jews.

Ben Tillett had another angle. He argued that it was ultimately the British government which was a pawn in the hands of Jewish capitalists and was therefore reluctant to enact controls. He asserted:

"Our leading statesmen do not care to offend the great banking houses or money kings"

and went on to say:

"For heaven's sake, give us back our own countrymen and take from us your motley multitude" (London Evening News, 19.6.1891).

So it seems, Tillett perceived Jewish financiers—"money kings"—as somehow engineering and manipulating the immigration of the Jewish masses—"your motley multitude". Tillett was quite willing to speak on the same platform as the most infamous Jew baiters, none of whom cared whether Jews were rich or poor. He spoke on the same platform as Arnold White at a meeting of an early control organisation—The Association for Preventing the Immigration of Destitute Aliens (London Evening News and Post, 25.7.1891). At this meeting he was supported by J.H. Wilson of the Sailor's Union, J. Tanter of the Progressive Union of Cabinetmakers, J. Cross of the St. Helens Colliery Enginemen's Society and "many other delegates from trade unions in London and the country". In 1900, at the T.U.C. Conference, a new dimension was introduced when John Ward, leader of the Navvies' Union argued that:

"Practically £100,000 of the taxpayer's money has been spent in trying to secure the gold fields of South Africa for cosmopolitan Jews, most of whom had no patriotism and no country" (T.U.C. Annual Report, 1900).

In other words, all Jews, rich or poor, were cosmopolitan with gold on their mind-particularly South African gold.

It is relevant to note another way the conspiracy theory operated. Whilst "socialists" were attacking Jews as either imperialist financiers or lumpen scabs, the bourgeoisie were attacking them as militant trade unionists and anarchists. The London Evening News proclaimed that:

"The advance of socialistic and anarchical opinion in London is commensurate with the increased volume of foreign immigration" (21.5.1891).

Given the conspiracy theory, the bourgeoisie had no need even for themselves to be consistent about this. So S.H. Jeyes, another ardent restrictionist, argued in his essay Foreign Pauper Immigration In A. White (Ed.) The Destitute Alien of Great Britain that Jews deliberately did not organise in unions, in order to suppress the general level of wages, and so incite the English to revolution. As he put it:

"To strengthen the spirit of discontent and disorder on which the agitators live and batten and which in time would pollute England with the visionary violence of continental socialism".

Finally, in this context of the conspiracy theory in action, it is worth noting that the British Brothers League attracted members who regarded themselves as socialists. At least one member of the Independent Labour Party left that organisation to join the Brothers (The Eastern Post 19.10.1901). Someone signing themselves "Mile End Socialist" wrote to the Jewish Chronicle (21.11.1902) stating that:

"Jew versus Gentile" will be my battle cry at every election as long as life is spared ... the Jew has made himself obnoxious through the incarnate instinct of his race to every nation where he has now emigrated. This is an historical fact and beyond controversy".

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Anti-Alienism or Anti-Semitism?

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Bourgeois historians—and these are the only historians who have hitherto examined this subject—have argued that the struggle for the Aliens Act was based on xenophobia against all foreigners rather than on anti-semitism. Colin Holmes in his book Anti-Semitism in British Society argues that:

"It is more important to categorise the 1905 Act as anti-alien rather than anti-semitic"

and that:

"The legislation was aimed at aliens rather than specifically at Jews as Jews".

According to this viewpoint, it was just bad luck and coincidence that Jews were restricted—it could have been any foreigner. Now this attempt to deny the specificity of immigration controls is extremely reactionary. Exactly the same argument is used in relation to the current Immigration Act—where attempts are constantly being made to deny its specific anti-black racism by the assertion that it keeps out all foreigners. As socialists we should oppose all immigration controls. This is precisely because any immigration control is inevitably based on national chauvinism—namely the belief that foreigners are in some way inferior to the English. It is crucial to appreciate the political dimension of controls, that they are never brought in against the whole world, in the abstract, but are always brought in against a specific non-English victim group, through the use of specific imageries.

Obviously, one aspect of the movement for the Aliens Act was a generalised chauvinism against all foreigners. England is the imperialist country par excellence and therefore popular ideology is inevitably chauvinistic. Many examples of this can be found within the early socialist movements. Bruce Glasier of the I.L.P. argued in Labour Leader that:

"Neither the principle of the brotherhood of man nor the principle of social equality implies that brother nations or brother men may crowd upon us in such numbers as to abuse our hospitality, overturn our institutions or violate our customs" (3.4.1904).

Such phrases as "our institutions" clearly substitute a chauvinistic analysis for a class one.

However, it is inadequate to regard the Aliens Act as being simply based on such general chauvinism against all-comers. This underestimates the strength of anti-semitism and misunderstands the history of immigration control—and thus fails to understand the real relationship between the two. The Aliens Act was aimed specifically at Jews by invoking specifically anti-semitic imagery. In essence, running right through the movement for control, were variants of the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy. Moreover, much of the actual imagery used by 'socialists' was of the basest anti-semitic kind—harking back to medieval Christianity and looking forward to Nazism. The frequent reference in The Clarion to Jews as "The Nose" (1.9.1892) is not a trivial example. Again, much of the language used to describe alleged Jewish capitalist domination was itself of a classic anti-semitic mould. A.J. Hobson's writings are typical. Hobson was a well-known radical journalist of the day, who later became prominent in the Labour Party and made his name covering the Boer War as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian. It was his opinion that the Transvaal was controlled by "Jew power" and

"those who came early made most and then left leaving their economic fangs in the carcase of their pray" (Contemporary Review vol LXXVII).

The image of the Jew as parasite and bloodsucker is an historical constant within anti-semitism.

The history of immigration control, itself, illustrates the nonsense of regarding the 1905 legislation as being simply the product of an anti-alienism, to which anti-semitism was peripheral. The significant point is that prior to 1905 England had never had serious immigration control (at least since the expulsion of the Jews by Edward 1st). Today, it is difficult to appreciate that a century ago immigration control was a novel concept, and it needed the struggle against the Jews to legitimise it. Even this required a prolonged struggle which lasted nearly two decades—1885 to 1905. A comparison between the response to Jews and to other immigrants is illuminating. Irish immigration into England throughout the 19th century was greeted with almost total hostility. Anti-Irish chauvinism was as enormous as it is today. In one way, the Irish were even more vulnerable than the Jews—their own country had been devastated and colonised by the English. But whatever else it did, the agitation against the Irish did not lead to immigration control.

Similarly, at the same time as agitating against Jews, some parts of the labour movement were agitating for controls against non-Jewish workers. For instance, Keir Hardie, a founder member of the I.L.P., gave evidence at the 1889 House of Commons Select Committee on Immigration. He spoke on behalf of the Ayrshire Miners Union and the Scottish Labour Party. As well as opposing Jewish immigration save for those fleeing persecution—these organisations were opposed to Polish Christians being allowed to come and work in the mines, in iron and steel mills and on British ships. The essential objection to this was the importation of scab labour to work these industries in times of industrial unrest. However, no legislation was ever introduced against immigrant strike-breakers. This was in spite of the fact that Hardie, who incidentally himself voted against the Act, introduced an amendment to the Aliens Bill calling for the exclusion of immigrant strike-breakers. In the end the only controls enacted were those which were aimed at Jews.

Of course, particular reasons can be advanced as to why the bourgeoisie did not exclude other groups. They had no material interest in excluding scab labour and they did have a material interest in the use of manual Irish labour. Moreover, if one were to look at the matter purely from the point of view of imperialist material self-interest, then the bourgeoisie should not have included the Jews—as Jews organised whole sections of the garment and footwear industries. However, such an economically deterministic approach to history simply ignores the role of ideology as a factor in politics.

Thus it was anti-semitism which was the ingredient necessary to popularise the ideology of immigration control, so that such control became politically viable. This is no coincidence and relates in part to the nature of anti-semitism. All movements for control against any foreigner invoke the image of the alien horde taking over Britain. What distinguished anti-Jewish agitation was the conspiracy theory. This asserted that the Jew had a conscious plan to take over, not simply Britain, but the entire world. This was an extremely comprehensive and therefore powerful justification for control. In the end it was irresistible. In other words anti-semitism, far from being simply an example of, or peripheral to, anti-alienism, was the force which ensured anti-alienism would be given statutory authority for the first time.

The legitimisation of immigration control has had enormous repercussions in the 20th century, not least because it kept out tens of thousands of Jews from England in the 1930's—thus resulting in their deaths. It also meant that the equally racist agitation for controls against black people was successful, in a relatively rapid period. It took just four years after the race attacks in 1958 in Notting Hill and Nottingham, before control was legislated. The labour movement did not campaign either for or against it: controls were accepted as "natural" and being based on "common sense". It was the active, if forgotten, struggle for controls by the labour movement over 60 years earlier, which had legitimised them.

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Imperialism and History

2007-01-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

Socialists, Marx in particular, correctly emphasise the need for a consciousness of history, so that we may learn from it. However, socialist historians have simply ignored the Aliens Act which has led to a serious gap in the understanding, not just of anti-semitism, but of imperialism. It is obviously not possible to appreciate the history of immigration controls without understanding the Aliens Act, nor is it possible to understand how false ideology penetrated both the trade union movement and large sections of the early socialist movement. Indeed the struggle for immigration controls against Jews is a classic example of how imperialism, particularly English imperialism, works in practice. It is a crystal clear instance of how the English ruling class repeatedly attacks immigrant masses, whether they be Jewish, Irish or black—through an alliance not only with the English masses but through attempted alliances with the leaders of the immigrant community. Hence there were three major social forces which were attacking the Jews.

The first such force was the English bourgeoisie who won English workers away from their class interests by the false consciousness of 'national interests'. The Prime Minister of the Tory government which passed the Aliens Act was Arthur Balfour. Balfour is regarded by zionists as a major friend of the Jewish people as it was his Declaration in 1917 that promised a Jewish 'national home' in Palestine. To regard Balfour as a friend of the Jewish people reveals much about zionist philosophy. Balfour was an anti-semite who wanted to exclude Jews from England on the grounds that, as he stated in the 1905 debate on the Aliens Act, Jews were not

"to the advantage of the civilisation of this country"

and

"they are a people apart and not only hold a religion differing from the vast majority of their fellow countrymen but only intermarry amongst themselves".

Again, Joseph Chamberlain M.P. is well known in history books for his 'social imperialism'. This was his attempt to win British workers over to imperialism by offering social reforms. He is famous for his unsuccessful campaign for protectionism and import controls against 'foreign' goods but there seems to be little knowledge that he combined this with propaganda for 'Jew controls'. Moreover, the Liberal government of 1906, combining as it did massive social reforms with the enforcement of immigration controls against Jewish people, is a variant of social imperialism.

Exactly the same can be said about the post-1945 welfare state and about the ideology of 'welfarism' itself: it combined social reforms with increasing immigration controls against black people. The battle for these politics had been won decades earlier over the struggle for the Aliens Act. The welfare state has now taken this one stage further against black people through the implementation of internal controls by the Home Office or by the 'caring' agencies of the state who assess entitlement to welfare benefits through the criteria of nationality and residence.

The second element in the attack on the Jewish masses was the Jewish establishment, who were won over by the British ruling class. The Jewish communal leadership in this country did not immigrate here as an already formed block, but was created through its treacherous alliance with the British bourgeoisie. Class interest was stronger than any 'communal' interest. The Jewish establishment policed the Jewish masses on behalf of the British ruling class, by pressurising them into assimilation and anglicisation. Moreover, major sections of the Jewish leadership actually advocated immigration control.

Benjamin Cohen was an M.P. and President of the Jewish Board of Guardians. In 1894 he told the annual general meeting of the Board that:

"Jews should make it clear not to endeavour to oppose any action which the responsible advisors to the Crown may deem necessary for the national interests which we are as desirous to protect as our fellow citizens" (quoted by Gartner in The Jewish Immigrant in Britain).

Cohen was created a Baronet in the Resignation Honours of 1905, immediately after voting for the Aliens Act. Harry Samuels, another Jewish M.P., spoke on the same platform as the British Brothers League, at a rally organised by them in the East End which attracted an audience of 4,000 (East London Observer, 18.1.1902). Samuels declared his "intention to discharge his duties as an English citizen". Also speaking at this meeting was Arnold White—who manifestly regarded Jewish Tory M.P.'s like Samuels, and British trade union militants, such as Tillett, as equal allies in his restrictionist crusade.

Actually, the Jewish establishment did not need the Aliens Act—it was quite prepared to use its own initiative and send Jews back to Russia and to further pogroms. Lionel Alexander, Secretary to the Board of Guardians, told the House of Commons Select Committee on Immigration in 1888 that:

"My Board does not favour unwarranted immigration but ·do their utmost to check it by warnings rather than prohibitions ... it is one of our largest operations sending people back who, having wandered here, prove useless".

In other words, a section of the Jewish leadership was prepared to do the dirty work for the British ruling class and to police the Jewish community as an alternative to legislative control.

Of course some elements of the Jewish bourgeoisie did take a principled opposition to the demand for control and the anti-semitism that stimulated it. However, this was tiny. There were few communal organisations that came out in opposition, and those which did were reluctant and only acted under pressure of the Jewish masses. It took the Jewish Chronicle until a few weeks before the Act became law to recognise the strength of grassroots Jewish opposition and to suggest that it might be amended through a 'write-in' campaign to Members of Parliament (Jewish Chronicle, 9.6.1905). Propelled by the activities of Jewish workers, this obviously fell well short of what was required.

The third element in this story is the role of the English working class. This is the concern of the present book. It is undeniable that the working class played an important role in the agitation for controls; it is arguable that without their intervention controls would not have been introduced. Certainly, the campaigning of the organised labour movement and the British Brothers League was far in excess of the demagogy of the bourgeois politicians and their press. It was as though the working class agitation assumed a relative autonomy of its own. Behind this, 'socialist' groups such as the S.D.F. and the I.L.P. provided false rationalisations. All this is important today—not least because the present Labour Party was constituted precisely on trade union affiliation and was supported by organisations such as the I.L.P. and the Fabians.

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Fascists Reclaim History

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At its best, the Left ignores the history of anti-semitism and therefore of imperialism within the labour movement. At its worst, it is even prepared to rewrite history. An example of this is the quaintly titled pamphlet "Zionism ... anti-semitism's twin in Jewish Garb". by Tony Greenstein and produced by Brighton Labour Briefing (a grouping within Brighton Labour Party). In its opening paragraph it makes the incredible assertion that zionism exploited "the natural hatred of the labour movement for anti-semitism". It is as though the political agitation by the trade union movement, which was anti-semitic to the core and supported by many socialists, to keep Jews out just did not happen. The labour movement is now claimed to be 'naturally' (whatever that means) opposed to anti-semitism.

This ignorance and dishonesty does itself have political consequences. Groupings within the fascist movement today have an acute awareness of the history of early socialism—and embrace this history as their own! For instance there was an article in the National Front magazine, Spearhead, in March 1980 called 'Nationalism and the Old British Socialists'. This was produced at a time when a faction of the N.F., led by Martin Webster, was arguing that the organisation had to have a working class base with the politics of 'national socialism'. With justification, this article could claim that such a tradition already existed. Spearhead began by stating:

"Modern socialists who support the so-called 'Anti Nazi League' and other anti-racialist organisations would be highly embarrassed to learn of the nationalist and racialist attitudes displayed by many early British socialists".

The article then praised particular groups and individuals—Robert Blatchford's Clarion Clubs, the Fabians, the S.D.F., the LL.P. and various trade unionists. Blatchford's book Merrie England, which combined the demand for import controls with virulent anti-semitism, was said to be

"echoed by the Nationalist Movement which blossomed all over Europe in the 1920's and 30's".

The Fabians, Beatrice Potter and Sydney Webb, were praised for describing Jews in the book Industrial Democracy as a "constant influence for degradation" and George Bernard Shaw for characterising the Jews as

"the real enemy, the invader from the East, the Druze, the ruffian, the oriental parasite" (Morning Post, 13.12.25).

Pete Curran, a leading member of the Gasworkers' Union and the I.L.P. was approved for advocating controls against Jews. Hyndman of the S.D.F. was claimed as the first National Socialist. The article ends by stating:

"The obvious patriotism and candid racialism of these early socialists is in marked contrast to the attitudes and views held by socialists today. The triumph of internationalism and the changes from an open-minded and well-meaning approach to a mindless religious fanaticism is a reflection of the changing genetic complexion of Socialism's own advocates".

Presumably the 'changing genetic complexion' means that Jews are now supposedly controlling the Left, as well as everything else. The reality is that anti-semitism still exists today on the Left. One aspect is the refusal even to acknowledge the anti-semitism of much of our own tradition. Unless, as socialists, we undertake this re-evaluation, then we are ideologically powerless to prevent fascists embracing the anti-semitism of our history.

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The Left Returns to Zion

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Chapter 3: Contents

The Left organizations—The Issues—Zionism and the theory of world domination—Equating Zionism with imperialism; anti-Zionism without Zion—The Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility —Zionism's dominant position within Jewry—The distortion of the Jewish predicament—The alternative to Zionism

The Left Organisations

2007-01-13T06:23:00.000-08:00

It would be surprising if the anti-semitism which flourished within the English socialist tradition at its formation had simply disappeared. False consciousness has to be challenged—and there was little opposition to the socialism of fools. Today, however, it has assumed a very different form. Rather than the caricature of the Jew as all-powerful capitalist, there is now the frequent equation of zionism with world domination and of all Jews being zionists, or at least responsible for zionism. This equation can be found in an explicit form within the Stalinist tradition. A classic case was the intended show trial, cancelled in the wake of Stalin's death, of the five 'Jewish doctors' from the Kremlin's own hospital, who were accused in 1953 of attempting, under 'zionist influence', to poison Stalin and most of the communist hierarchy. Similarly, in Poland today, the regime has attacked both Solidarity and K.O.R. (the intellectual group influential with Solidarity) as being controlled by a 'zionist clique'. Two articles by Zbigniew Kot in the paper of the Polish communist party—described K.O.R. as having the:

"Pseudo-left programme of the Trotskyite International which is inspired by zionist circles"

and:

"K.O.R. openly confesses to having sympathies for free-masonry and for the cosmopolitan fatherland-negating concepts promoted in the West by zionist and free-thinking circles". (Trybuna Ludu, 22/23.12.81 quoted in Research Report of the Institute of Jewish Affairs May 1982)

Anti-semitism posing as anti-zionism is particularly frightening within Stalinism, as Stalinism has state power in many countries. It occurs sometimes in a confused and sometimes in an unambiguous way, in the new Left groups consolidated since the 1960's in this country. Attitudes within the Labour Party are far more complex for various reasons. Firstly, given the coalition of interests within the Labour Party, there is no guarantee that the leadership ever reflects the will of the Party. Secondly, the commonly-held belief that historically the Labour leadership has been pro-zionist, does itself need serious revision.

It is undoubtedly the case that the Labour Party has made many outspoken statements of sympathy for zionism. As early as December 1917, at a special conference of the Labour Party and the T.U.C. to draw up a 'war aims memorandum', it was acknowledged that Palestine was a land "to which such of the Jewish people as desired to do so may return and work out their salvation".

In the following years numerous similar resolutions were passed. (See documents collected in British Labour Policy on Palestine, edited by Levenberg). Indeed Poale Zion, the pro-zionist Jewish workers party, has long been affiliated to the Labour Party, but it is simply a myth to regard the Labour leadership as having a genuine commitment to zionism. Ultimately, its position on the Middle East was, and is, guided by purely diplomatic considerations—that is by considerations of imperialism.

The Labour government of 1945 emulated the Tories in relation to Palestine as in India, by playing off the conflicting communal groups through false promises to both. Again, it was the same Labour government which mobilised the British army to prevent Jewish refugees fleeing to Palestine. Indeed in 1947, Labour ordered two destroyers to intercept the refugee boat Exodus on its way to Palestine with over 4000 Jews on board and forced it to divert to Germany. The rationale was that Germany was the

"only territory under British jurisdiction outside of Cyprus where such large numbers of people can be housed and fed at such short notice". (Palestine Post, 21.8.47)

The Hamburg docks saw the survivors of Nazism being dragged by British soldiers back onto German soil.

Since the creation of Israel, Labour's politics have been determined solely by the need for imperialism to secure a base within the Middle East, and rationalised by a typically social democratic confusion that Israel is in some way a socialist state. At no time has the politics of the Labour Party ever been motivated by genuine commitment to the freedom of either the Jewish or the Arab masses. In a very real sense this is anti-semitism by default: there is no consideration of either the relationship, or lack of it, between zionism and Jewish liberation in Labour's attitude towards zionism.

The emphasis of the rest of this chapter is on the Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyist groups which constitute the New Left. Some of these, or at least their individual members, have in fact virtually dissolved themselves into the Labour Party. Of course such organisations are extremely small, but they represent a significant continuation of socialist politics following the degeneration of Stalinism. The New Left groups of today claim to be preserving the traditions of revolutionary socialism. This claim is in many positive ways justified. However, much of their purported anti-zionism rests on a tradition which, whatever the revolutionary rhetoric, has always been anti-semitic.

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The Issues

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Any attempt at even a discussion of the relationship between anti-semitism and anti-zionism is normally calculated to cause apoplexy on the Left. This is no reason to censor the discussion, it is a reason for clarity and several points need to be clarified:

(1) It would be patently absurd to regard all socialist writings antagonistic to zionism as being based on anti-semitism. The present book is not about zionism—but it is certainly hostile to it. Nathan Weinstock's book, Zionism the False Messiah, is a brilliant communist work. There are others. Anti-semitism is a relative not an absolute phenomenon on the Left.

(2) It is not only absurd but reactionary to make a direct equation between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, on a theoretical level. The two are obviously not identical. Indeed it is grossly insulting to define the struggle of the Palestinians for liberation as being in any way intrinsically anti-semitic. It is similarly insulting to condemn as anti-semitic any solidarity with that struggle. It is a tragedy there is not more solidarity—there cannot be enough.

(3) It is equally tragic that much of what passes for 'anti-zionism' on the Left is profoundly anti-semitic. It is a debatable point as to whether or not this is the dominant view on the Left. All that matters is that anti-semitism is now an important and legitimate tendency within the Left. It is the existence of this tendency which allows the zionist leadership to condemn all Left critiques of zionism as being anti-Jewish. It feeds the anti-communism of this reactionary leadership. The Left claims it makes a rigorous distinction between anti-zionism and anti-semitism yet it is manifestly not rigorous in practice. In practice, any condemnation by Jewish people of anti-semitism is somehow seen as an attempt to justify zionism.

(4) It is insufficient and unserious merely to assert that some, but not other, 'anti-zionist' politics are anti-semitic without distinguishing between a principled anti-zionism and anti-semitism. Without a scientific definition of anti-semitism the whole debate becomes useless and painful. In fact, anti-semitism in this context, as in every other context is rooted in a variant of the world Jewish conspiracy. This has two linked aspects in relation to notions of 'zionism': (a) the concept of zionism is expanded to equate it with world domination; (b) the entire Jewish experience is reduced to 'zionism'—and likewise all Jews are held to be responsible for zionism. This is the concept of collective guilt which is intrinsic to theories of the world conspiracy. It is the presence of these ideas which distinguishes anti-semitism from genuine anti-zionism.

(5) The distinction between anti-zionism and anti-semitism is absolute. Methodologically, there is no question of anti-zionism 'merging into' or 'becoming' anti-semitism. We are talking about two completely different phenomena. If an analysis is anti-semitic then it is anti-semitic in its origins and absolutely so—it does not become so. There is no such concept as anti-zionism 'tinged' with anti-semitism. To take an example, Fascist organisations in this country are consistently anti-Israel. Issue number 15 of Nationalism Today (a National Front magazine) had an article attacking Israel and concluding with the exhortation—"Anti-zionists of the world unite and fight!" The September, 1982 issue of Spearhead (the private magazine of John Tyndall) had a three page supplement on "The Jewish rape of Lebanon". The National Front even tried to infiltrate the first anniversary commemoration demonstration for the Sabra-Chatilla massacres. They had 'anti-zionist' leaflets. It would be grotesque to characterise groups like the National Front as 'anti-zionist'. They are anti-semitic plain and simple.

The starting point for genuine anti-zionism is full support for the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation. This inevitably involves some analysis of the penetration of imperialism into the Middle East and the undoubted role of Israel in furthering this. It also has to involve a recognition of the fact that zionism is itself an attempt by Jews to escape the scourge of anti-semitism, in a world where no other escape routes have become apparent. Conversely, the starting point for anti-semitism is the blaming of everything on Jews collectively and internationally—especially whatever happens in the Middle East. This is also its finishing point. The examples given below are not about solidarity with the Palestinians, but are about Jews—Jews everywhere. The attempt to expropriate the language of anti-zionism does not disguise the deep anti-semitism. These examples concern themselves not with zionism, but with Jews.

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Equating Zionism With Imperialism: Anti-Zionism Without Zion

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The Left, or a section of it, obviously considers zionism a pretty powerful force. It controls the media. It finances British diplomacy. It rewrites history—and it also runs British Caledonian Airways. This is not merely reminiscent of the world conspiracy theory—it also has an uncanny resemblance to the hyperbole of that theory. It sounds very similar to Arnold White's belief, already seen, that Jews have done everything from 'baffling the Pharaohs to undermining the Third French Republic'.

In fact, the Left's conspiracy views are not just anti-semitic, they are also explicitly anti-Marxist. Thus zionism is not seen as merely furthering the interests of imperialism in the Middle East-which nowadays it undoubtedly does. Rather it is seen as in some way being the same as imperialism with the same international power. In other words the Left has not only an anti-semitic analysis of zionism but, in common with all other adherents of the conspiracy theory, it has an anti-semitic analysis of the world. Indeed at times, zionism is portrayed as a form of world domination that is on an even higher level than imperialism itself, and is actually pictured as controlling imperialism. Thus Newsline (9.4.83) speaks of a zionist power "stretching through Downing Street channels right into the White House". Newsline has obviously discovered a new law of the world's development. Lenin was presumably wrong when he analysed imperialism as being the highest form of capitalism: zionism is apparently even higher, as it is able to control the two main nerve centres of imperialism! This method of analysis has more in common with Stalinism than with revolutionary socialism. For instance Pravda (4.10.67) claimed that the United States—the most powerful state ever known to history—was itself a "Zionist colony" (quoted in Wistrich). This is truly looking at reality upside down.

This form of 'anti-zionism' transcends anything done by the Israeli state—or even the very existence of that state. It could just as easily exist without Israel, without zion and even without zionism. A 'socialism' which perceives zionist influence throughout the world, from Downing Street to the White House, stopping off at the B.B.C., is no different from the classic anti-semitic imagery of Jews being 'rootless cosmopolitans', without a state of their own, feeling no loyalty to any particular state but only to themselves. This imagery was much in vogue before the creation of the state of Israel. Stalinists still use it today—as in the Polish government's condemnation of K.O.R.¹. The imagery is the same, the existence of Israel is quite irrelevant. Anti-zionism without Zion has the same transcendental qualities as anti-semitism without Jews; it has no necessary relationship to anything a real zionist, or real Jew is doing. It exists in the air quite apart from material reality—except for the reality it creates for Itself. Thus Newsline is full of imagery about 'links' and 'channels' and 'connections' that zionism is making between Caledonian Airways, the White House, the B.B.C. and the Jewish Chronicle. It also manages to make another 'zionist connection'—with the Manpower Services Commission whose chairperson happens to be the brother of the omnipotent Stuart Young. In exactly the same way, Arnold White in his book The Modern Jew talks of a Jewish "subterranean and invisible influence" and of the existence of a "complex and mysterious power denied to any other living race".

¹KOR—Intellectual group Influential with Solidarity in Poland

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Zionism and the Theory of World Domination

2007-01-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

The equation of zionism with world domination shares a similar incoherence with the notion of the Jewish world conspiracy. It is unclear whether zionism is already supposed to have international power or whether it is still trying to achieve it via the Israeli state. The section that follows contains many examples.

A glaring example occurred in the paper of the Workers Revolutionary Party (Newsline, 8.12.79). This managed to combine the long-standing belief in international Jewish financial power with modern political zionism. The paper quoted with approval a member of the National Union of Mineworkers who said: "It was Britain who sold the Palestinian people out to Zionist money power". The reference here is presumably to the period before 1948 when Britain was the Mandate authority ruling Palestine. One would have thought that a supposedly Marxist journal would at least have commented that Britain "sold out" the Palestinians because of Britain's imperialist interests. However, the quotation continues without comment as though it were from Der Stürmer (propaganda newspaper of the Nazi party in Germany), "Many promises were made to the Palestinians but none were delivered for fear of upsetting the Jewish '£' sign". In fact, the sentiments behind this are remarkably similar to the "explanation" given by the National Front as to why the United States government allowed Israel to invade the Lebanon—"because America's economy, mass media and political system is totally dominated by the Zionist-Jewish Money Power" (National Front News, August 1982).

Newsline has in fact managed to reproduce the notion of the media as under zionist influence—a typical instance of the conspiracy theory. In March 1983, the B.B.C. "Money Programme" purported to show that the W.R.P. was financed by the Libyan regime. One response to this by Newsline was an editorial which claimed that the programme was "zionist sponsored" (9.4.83). The same editorial then pointed out that Stuart Young had recently been appointed chairman of the B.B.C. Young was described as being a director of the Jewish Chronicle. No explanation was given of the politics of the Jewish Chronicle to the readers of Newsline—most of whom had probably never before heard of the newspaper. The implication was that the B.B.C. was under the influence of, or controlled by, zionists. Newsline also gave the irrelevant information that Young was a director of British Caledonian Airways. It is difficult to draw from this any other conclusion than that not only is the media zionist controlled but that zionism itself, a movement of the Jewish masses, was in fact created by Jewish capitalists. The National Front has also emphasised that the B.B.C. is chaired by a "leading zionist" (Nationalism Today, number 17). Fortunately for the credibility of communism this outburst from the W.R.P. was condemned by at least one other organisation as coming straight out of the Protocols of Zion (Socialist Organiser, 18.11.82).

The Socialist Workers Party has also articulated its own variant of the conspiracy theory—making the fantastic allegation about zionism that:

"It's essence is that a 'chosen people', the Jews, are superior to everyone else and should trample on the rights of other peoples" (20.10.73).

This is incredible. A Marxist approach to the 'essence' of zionism would look at its social roots—which manifestly lay in the reaction of the Jewish masses to the pogroms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to Nazism. It seems that Socialist Worker imagines that zionism emanates from a mysterious plot in which Jews see themselves as the "chosen people"—a biblical reference which is seemingly equivalent to modern 'master race' theories and in which Jews believe themselves 'superior to everyone else'. The S.W.P. has substituted, at least on this occasion, a materialist analysis of zionism for an idealistic one—and one that is completely anti-semitic.

The logic of these politics within the S.W.P. was shown several years later (31.5.80) when it printed a letter from a certain Anthony Jones. Its ostensible purpose was to argue that the T.V. film "Death of a Princess" (which portrayed some of the more reactionary aspects of life in Saudi Arabia) somehow gave support to zionism. In reality the letter was grossly anti-semitic and was full of innuendos about Jewish control of the media. To quote:

"Such is zionist influence in Britain-particularly in the media ('Lord' Lew Grade, 'Lord' Bernstein) -that this film was bound to be shown and therefore used to stir up anti-Arab feeling".

Anthony Jones was, in fact, one of the organisers of the National Front in Tameside. Even if the S.W.P. did not know this then the nature of the letter should have alerted them. However, Socialist Worker was seen to be quite unable to distinguish anti-zionism from blatant anti-semitism.

The attempt to invoke biblical images of the 'chosen people' to explain zionism as the latest example of Jewish power-seeking, is in fact found in diverse political sources. The unifying theme is that the Judaic religion is viewed as both the basis of zionism and as a faith which preaches genocide and the enslavement of gentiles.

Spearhead (December 1982) claimed that zionism was based on the belief by Jews that they were "God's chosen people". The Stalinist soviet academic Kichko has written in his book Judaism and Zionism that:

"Judaism teaches that Jews should force the subjugated people in the invaded lands to work for them as a people of priests".

The Stalinist Vladimir Begun similarly wrote in his Creeping Counter Revolution that:

"Zionist gangsterism ... has its ideological roots in the scrolls of the Torah and the precepts of the Talmud" ('Anti-zionism in the USSR' in The Left Against Zion, ed. Wistrich, in which both the above books are quoted).

Even a revolutionary socialist magazine on the Middle East claims that the politics of zionism come from the Talmud. (Israel Shahak, 'The Jewish Religion and its Attitude to Non-Jews', Khamsin, issue 8, 1983). Actually, this particular article has a certain uniqueness amongst Left conspiracy theories, in that its author makes the claim, remarkable in a revolutionary socialist journal that:

"An examination of radical, socialist and communist parties can provide many examples of disguised Jewish chauvinists and racists who joined these parties merely for reasons of 'Jewish interest' and are, in this region, in favour of 'anti-gentile' legislation".

In other words, just as the Right claim that Jews enter communist groups in order to subvert capitalism so now a member of the Left claims that they enter such groups in order to subvert communism!

In 1982, Labour Herald (produced by several people prominent on the left of the Labour Party) published a book review and letter by H.C. Mullin (March 19th and May 28th respectively). In his letter, Mullin said:

"I assert that the Zionists use the lie that the Western democratic forces made no attempt to rescue Europe's Jews from the Nazi terror to instil guilt in the members of Western society. The reason being, of course, that guilty persons are easily manipulated in the services of zionism".

In accomplishing this manipulation Zionists are allegedly able to control "the right wing propaganda organs"—in other words, the media. This really is 'revisionist' history of a major order.

Far from being a lie that the "democratic" forces made no attempt to rescue Europe's Jews, it is a patently obvious fact. Indeed for six years after the Nazis came to power, the Allies remained silent, attempting a policy of appeasement and an alliance with Nazism against the Soviet Union. At the same time, all the major imperialist countries imposed rigid immigration controls against Jewish refugees which continued to exist throughout the war, both in this country and in the U.S.A. For instance in 1942, the Vichy regime in France agreed to hand over 19,000 Jews to the Germans for slave labour and then extermination in Poland. Appeals were made to the British Foreign Office to take these Jews into the U.K., to which one official replied:

"We cannot turn our country into a sponge for Europe".

Those Jews who did manage to get here before the war were put into internment camps as 'enemy aliens'. Many were deported to Canada or Australia—a ship-load of deported Jews was sunk when the Arandora Star was torpedoed in July 1940. For many years even the exitence of the concentration camps was denied or minimised on the grounds that (quoting another Foreign Office official):

"As a general rule, the Jews are inclined to magnify their persecution".

Throughout the war Jewish organisations made repeated requests to the Allies to bomb the gas chambers and incinerators at Auschwitz. They were told that such pin-point bombing was impossible. However, in September 1944 the U.S. airforce was able to bomb the I.G. Farben industrial complex which was immediately adjacent to Auschwitz. All these facts are well known to the survivors and have been documented in such books as Britain and the Jews of Europe by Bernard Wasserstein (from which the above quotations have been taken).

Mullin's writings mirror the attempt by Nazi 'revisionist' historians to deny the murder of six million Jews. This is part of a similar attempt to portray Jews as manipulators of historical truth. As has been said in previous chapters, the Left has accused Zionists of exploiting "the natural hatred of the labour movement for anti-semitism". It is also a Nazi ploy, as seen in a fascist magazine Holocaust News, to accuse Jews of 'exploiting' and exaggerating the holocaust. The opening line of its first editorial stated:

"The Zionists used the 'Holocaust' myth to create a smoke screen of international public sympathy".

As a socialist paper, Labour Herald's printing of Mullin's letter without comment, must be seen as complicity in the perpetration of anti-semitic myths. Furthermore, the real lie peddled by the Western bourgeoisie—namely that the last war was somehow a war against 'fascism and anti-semitism—remains unchallenged. The reality was that it was a war between two rival imperialisms, British and German—a rivalry that was perceived as too great to permit a joint alliance against the U.S.S.R. The fascistic and anti-semitic nature of the Nazi regime was absolutely irrelevant to Britain and the U.S.A., as neither declared war until their imperialist interests were threatened.

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The Collective Guilt Of All Jews For Zionism

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The elevation of zionism to the equivalent of world imperialism and beyond is just one half of the conspiracy theory. The other half is the reduction of all Jews and all Jewish history to the zionist experience. There is a systematic tendency on the Left to define Jewish identity simply in terms of zionism. The natural corollary of this is to hold all Jews, wherever in the world, responsible for zionism, irrespective of what they actually believe. This is the theory of collective responsibility. In addition to all the examples given above, here are others which relate directly to the perceptions of collective guilt:-

A bizarre example, important not in its own right but for what it indicates, was the conversion in 1979 of Bob Dylan from the Jewish religion to Christianity. Socialist Challenge (the paper of the then International Marxist Group, now renamed the Socialist League) did not respond to this by any Marxist critique of the Christian religion or the Christian church. Rather it denounced Dylan as a zionist. In fact it denounced him as a millionaire zionist (27.9.79). This incidentally was just over a year after the paper had been raffling Dylan concert tickets!

Far more serious was the response by the Left to the Paris synagogue bombing on the Rue Copernic in October 1980. This was an openly fascist attack and was condemned by the entire Left, but this condemnation was equivocal. Most of the commentary actually concentrated on the "opportunity" the bombing presented to zionism! Socialist Challenge proclaimed that:

"The Israeli government is doing its best to exploit the bombing" (October 9th).

Its editor Geoff Sheridan, in a letter to the paper, stated that:

"The Israeli government is quite cynical about the benefits it hopes to accrue from the fascist attacks in the diaspora" (November 27th).

It is incredible that the significance which 'socialist' organisations accord to fascist attacks on Jews is mainly in relation to the reaction on the Israeli government. The Left in this instance reduced the experience of even dead Jews, murdered by anti-semites, as being nothing more than tools of zionist propaganda. Is the main criticism of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust now to be that it provided the "opportunity" for zionism? In fact, the National Front takes this to its logical conclusion by claiming that "everybody in France knows" that the Rue Copernic Shul was actually bombed by "zionist terrorists"—just as it claims the Holocaust was itself a zionist invention (National Front News, November 1982).

Equally significant was the Left's response to the machine gun and grenade attack on the synagogue in Vienna in August 1981, resulting in yet more deaths. Unlike the Paris bombing this met with virtual silence. There only can be one explanation for this: responsibility for the attack was claimed by a Palestinian splinter group. So it seems that all Jews are seen as legitimate targets because all Jews are somehow responsible for zionism. It is interesting to note that when this was raised with two of the larger Left papers they both denied such motives and claimed they did not have the 'space' to report such attacks (Socialist Challenge, 17.9.81; Socialist Worker, 26.9.81). The excuse of 'we haven't the space' has almost been developed into a scientific theory by the Left whenever outrages are committed against Jews. In the case of the Vienna attack, it would be farcical, if it were not tragic, and it is dishonest given the coverage of the openly fascist bombing a year previously.

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The Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility

2007-01-09T22:01:00.000-08:00

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was quite obviously an action that all socialists should have energetically condemned. However, it brought to the surface the ways in which the Left ascribes collective guilt to all Jews—for zionism in general and the Israeli government in particular. This was perhaps seen most clearly in the newspaper Big Flame—precisely because it was prepared to respond openly to criticisms made of its editorial policy.

Big Flame in its editorial of October 1982 stated that the massacres at Sabra and Chatilla "cannot fail to spark off acts of revenge through-out the world". By "acts of revenge" is meant, presumably, the bombings and other attacks on Jewish institutions and individuals that occurred throughout the diaspora, following the invasion. What is remarkable is that Big Flame seems to think that these are 'natural' or 'inevitable'. The paper seems to consider that Jews who were bombed in, for example, Sydney Australia were legitimate targets—as if by being Jewish they were somehow responsible for what was happening in the Lebanon. It would be interesting to know why Big Flame doesn't think that acts of revenge were inevitable against Christians—given that the Phalangists were at least as responsible as the Israeli government for the massacre. It does explain, however, the complete silence of Big Flame in response to the actual attacks made on diaspora Jewry—they were never mentioned.

Once Jews everywhere are assigned a particular responsibility for what happened in the Lebanon, then other horrific assumptions follow. In particular, it is assumed both that Jews are under a greater moral obligation than anyone else to speak out against the invasion and also that we have to speak out against it explicitly 'as Jews'. Why should we be obliged to speak out 'as Jews' about what is happening in the Middle East any more, for example, than Italians should speak out 'as Italians'? To be accepted as 'good' Jews apparently, the onus is on us to make public disavowals of zionism. Occasionally another hypocrisy creeps in; Jews 'of all people' should know better because of the history of our own oppression (Big Flame editorial, Sept. 1982). This is the ultimate double-standard. Jews are now expected to be on a higher level of morality than anyone else because of the oppression inflicted on us; but if we act immorally, or if any one Jew misbehaves, then we also have to apologise more than anyone else and make public penance. In fact, the theory that our own suffering should have cleansed our souls owes more to the gospels than to Marxism. What our suffering points to is the need to combat anti-semitism. It is no advertisement for the purity of our morals.

The entire Left described the Lebanon invasion by invoking the language of the 'holocaust' and the 'final solution'. This use of language is itself anti-semitic. This is not because the invasion was not murderous. It was. It is not because the slaughter of the Palestinians has not reached the number of Jewish people massacred by the Nazis—numbers are irrelevant. There is no scale of injustice as far as murder is concerned. The reason why the use of language such as 'holocaust' and 'final solution', when applied to zionism, is anti-Jewish is because these words are no longer neutral or objective. They have a particular political significance. They refer to Jewish people. In fact they refer to all Jewish people—because it was the genocide of all Jewish people that was contemplated in the final solution.

It is because these words have this precise political significance, a significance well understood by Jews, that they reinforce the idea all Jewish people everywhere are responsible for the invasion and the massacres. Words used to describe the collective predicament of Jews now prescribe the collective guilt of Jews. The September Big Flame in responding to criticism, said that in describing bloody events

"One's language can all too easily become looser, using terms that fall into the hands of the oppressor. With Israel this is particularly the case".

It is difficult to know whether this is meant as an apology. It doesn't even begin to explain why the actions of the Israeli government should "particularly" reduce the Left to anti-semitism. Should we now expect a racist analysis the next time a government of black Africa operates in an oppressive way?

It is seen later that the ultimate trap placed in front of Jews by the Left is that Jews themselves are responsible for anti-semitism. The anti-semites are correct—everything is our own fault! This is the destination to which the theory of collective responsibility leads. Sometimes it is expressed quite explicitly. Big Flame (October, 1982) stated that:

"zionism is the monster that is doing most to fuel anti-semitism in the modern world".

This stands reality on its head. The crime of Begin, Sharon and the rest of the Israeli government was the attempted destruction of the Palestinians as a nation. This is why they are to be condemned—and not for any consequences their actions may have had on diaspora Jewry (namely 'revenge' which Big Flame seems to see as rational). Neither Begin nor any other Jew, zionist or otherwise, is responsible for anti-semitism. This is solely the responsibility of anti-semites. Big Flame did apologise for this statement in its following issue, but attitudes such as this are not simply 'mistakes'. They are intrinsic to the way sections of the Left hold the entire international Jewish community responsible for the actions of one, or some, or many, Jews.

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Zionism's Dominant Position Within Jewry

2007-01-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

The fact that within certain Jewish communities, particularly those in Europe and the U.S.A., zionism holds a hegemonic position, does not render the notion of 'collective responsibility' for zionism any less anti-semitic. This is not simply because, even within these communities, there are countless Jews who are not zionists. More important is the fact that the anti-semitism of the 'collective guilt of Jews' is based on the bizarre premise that non-Jews cannot be zionists or supporters of zionism. Indeed in a political sense, Jewish people are the least significant, the least powerful, advocates of zionism, since zionism is hegemonic throughout the body politic of all Western imperialism. There is no major political party which does not provide it with its backing.

The creation of Israel was naturally impossible without Jewish struggle within Palestine, irrespective of outside help (which if anywhere came from Eastern Europe). However, the continued existence of Israel is due neither to its own resources nor to the help of diaspora Jewry. It is due to the political, economic and military support of the U.S.A. and its allies. There is a supreme historical irony present here. For two millennia Jewish people have been held collectively accountable for the action of any one Jew. This is simply one consequence of the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy to which zionism was a political response. Yet it is the hegemonic position of zionism within some Jewish communities which is today being invoked in order to 'prove' the conspiracy theory and to hold all Jews collectively liable. A frequent example is the way in which the full spectrum of political opinion refers to the 'Jewish lobby' in the U.S.A. as somehow controlling the foreign policy of the most powerful country in the world.

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The Distortion Of The Jewish Predicament

2007-01-07T22:04:00.000-08:00

The Left does not simply have a perception of zionism as part of a Jewish conspiracy. Rather it grossly minimises the anti-semitism which gave rise to zionism, and completely distorts the Jewish response to anti-semitism. In spite of all its pretensions to the contrary, the Left provides no socialist or revolutionary alternatives to zionism. In essence, it wrongly portrays European Jewish communities as entirely passive in the face of anti-semitism, which is seen as invincible and unavoidable. Instead of struggling against anti-semitism, the Jew allegedly attempts to escape it by colonising Palestine and oppressing the Palestinians. This is the scenario of the Jew as passive victim or homicidal maniac. It has as much to do with political reality as Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde has to do with the reality of schizophrenia. It substitutes impressionism for serious analysis. This sort of approach has a long historical pedigree throughout the Left. Here are some examples:

The classic Marxist critique of zionism was Karl Kautsky's Are The Jews A Race? It is interesting, in the light of later criticisms of zionism, that Kautsky hardly refers to the national rights of the Palestinians. In fact he only mentions them as being an obstacle to the zionist enterprise. His objection is wholly on the grounds that zionism is a retreat from, a passive refusal to fight, anti-semitism. Thus he wrote:

"It is not in Palestine but in Eastern Europe that the destinies of the suffering and oppressed portion of Jewry are being fought out. Not for a few thousand Jews or at most a few hundred thousand but for a population of between eight and ten millions. Emigration abroad cannot help them no matter whither it may be turned. Their destiny is intimately connected with the revolution in their own country".

Similarly, Big Flame talks of the establishment of the Jewish state as being an "accommodation with the oppressor" (Sept. 82).

It is, of course, a principled and correct socialist position to try and struggle, as long as is practicable, against oppression wherever it is found—though it hardly seems correct to put moral blame on the victim for fleeing from it. This book is definitely in favour of Jews staying as long as possible in this country to create a socialist revolution and, hopefully, to defeat anti-semitism. However, most socialists have adopted a position whereby Jews are expected to struggle in impossible situations, to become martyrs, rather than go to Palestine/Israel. Kautsky wrote the above in 1921. By 1939 it had become ironic.

The 'logic' of the statement by Big Flame that the creation of Israel was an "accommodation with the oppressor" is that Jews in Europe should have stayed around before (and during?) the war or returned later to fight anti-semitism. The truth is that no-one put up a serious fight against anti-semitism until it was too late. Germany itself is a classic example—as neither the parties of Stalinism nor of social democracy put up any effective resistance to the Nazis, in spite of the desires of many of their members. In this situation what would Big Flame have expected German Jews to have done (given that every major country imposed restrictions on their entry) other than have tried to get into Palestine? What does Big Flame think of Isaac Deutscher, the renowned Marxist intellectual and life-long opponent of Stalinism, who wondered in 1954:

"If instead of arguing against zionism in the 1920's and 1930's I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers" ('Israel's Spiritual Climate' in his collected essays The Non-Jewish Jew).

It is no wonder that many, maybe the majority of Jews, still see Israel as a place of 'last resort' even if they do not consider themselves as zionists.

The Left does not only consider that Jews should martyr themselves, in the face of fascism. It also assumes that zionists will, in any event, martyr themselves by abdicating from the fight against anti-semitism. Thus Kautsky described zionism as something "which amounts practically to a desertion of the colours".

In like manner, Big Flame argues that zionism "means giving up the battle against anti-semitism" (Sept. 1982). The assumption appears to be that Jews are self-ordained victims who will go meekly to their deaths without struggle—or else will lapse physically or metaphysically, into the 'escapism' of the false Jerusalem of Israel. The myth that six million went to their graves like sheep is still prevalent everywhere.

It is actually inconceivable that the Jews could have waged a successful resistance, given their total isolation in the night of the holocaust. It does however, require a profound ignorance to be unaware that much anti-Nazi struggle, both before and during the war, was led by a combination of Bundists (Jewish socialists) and Left zionists. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the first major civil uprising of the war, is just one notable example. There were many others. It is also a complete distortion of the position of zionists in other periods to imply that they simply submitted to anti-semitism. It is the caricature of the Jew as a masochist with an insatiable death wish.

At a time when major sections of the Left in this country were advocating the Aliens Act many zionists actively opposed it, Poale Zion (the workers' zionist movement) for one. At one of their meetings in Whitechapel a resolution was passed:

"This mass meeting declares that Jews must continue to work for their economic and political freedom in the lands of their sojourn" (Jewish Chronicle, 26.5.1905).

The main opposition to immigration control came from Jewish socialists who were anti-zionists. However, it is simply a lie to claim that zionists have a perspective of never resisting anti-semitism. Again, in the 1935 general election a policy statement was issued by the Central Committee of Poale Zion emphasising the need for the Labour Party to join with Poale Zion in the struggle against fascism and anti-semitism (see essay by Knowles in collection of pieces on Racism edited by Robert Miles).

Finally, Big Flame criticises zionists, particularly Theodor Herzl (one of the founders of political zionism) as regarding anti-semitism as timeless and 'inevitable'. Some zionists do certainly think in this way. The Left escapes its responsibility, however, avoiding the critical question of why anti-semitism does appear inevitable to so many Jews. An answer to this would require a more complete analysis of the persistence of anti-semitism throughout different historical epochs and social formations. This has not yet been done by the Left. All that is forthcoming is the repetition of vacuous rhetoric. When reassessing the East European Jewish community of his youth, Isaac Deutscher wrote:

"The anti-zionist urged the Jews to trust their gentile environment, to help the 'progressive forces' in that environment to come to the top and so hope that those forces would effectively defend the Jews against anti-semitism. 'Social revolution will give the Jews equality and freedom. They therefore have no need for a Zionist Messiah'—this was the stock argument of generations of Jewish Left wingers. The zionists on the other hand dwelt on the deep seated hatred of non-Jews and urged the Jews to trust their future to nobody except their own state. In this controversy zionism has scored a terrible victory, one which it could neither wish nor expect; six million Jews had to perish in Hitler's gas chambers in order that Israel should come to life" (Deutscher, 'Israel's Spiritual Climate', The Non-Jewish Jew p.91).

In other words, it is only realistic that the onus should be on us as socialists to prove that anti-semitism is neither inevitable nor invincible.

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The Alternative to Zionism

2007-01-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

Zionism has seen the expropriation, colonisation and dispersion of the Palestinian people. This obviously has to be opposed. One such necessary form of opposition is solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. However, it is wilful blindness to imagine that this will, in any way, undermine the social roots of zionism, because zionism was an attempted liberation struggle by the Jewish people. It was an attempt by Jews to free themselves from the noose of anti-semitism, at a time when no other way was apparently possible. Deutscher has written that:

"for the remnants of European Jewry (is it only for them?) the Jewish state has become an historic necessity" (Deutscher The Non Jewish Jew).

For zionists to believe that such a state is no longer necessary, it is vital to attack that which necessitated it—namely anti-semitism. When confronted by the spectacle of an arsonist firing a person's home, it is not morally justifiable for a passive observer to blame that person for jumping—even if s/he lands on a complete stranger. Certainly the stranger may be justifiably aggrieved—and with equal certainty cannot be expected to take responsibility for a fire they did not create. However, if no other homes are to be burned then the arsonist must be stopped. Moreover, isolated householders cannot be expected to do this unaided. As long as passers-by remain observers then the sorry saga will continue. The analogy with the triangle of the anti-semite, the Jew and the Palestinian is obvious. The onus for resisting anti-semitism cannot be on Jews alone. Wherever there is anti-semitism the socialist and labour movements have to oppose it. Unfortunately these movements have, all too often, been either passive or complicit.

¹KOR—Intellectual group Influential with Solidarity in Poland

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Assimilationism

2007-01-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

Running parallel with, and sometimes overlapping, the Left's infection by anti-semitism as an ideology is a chauvinistic attitude towards Jewish culture. The content of Jewish culture is never actually discussed by the Left. Jews are viewed as one-dimensional people. We are defined in terms of any combination of four variables: from one point of view we are defined in terms of religion or zionism, an irreligious, anti-zionist Jew is simply deemed not to exist; from another point of view our existence is reduced to being either aggressors through zionism or, less frequently, victims through anti-semitism.

Genuine questions which should be of concern to socialists—such as the class content of Jewish culture, or the effects of imperialism on that culture, or whether it is possible to talk of a single Jewish culture, or what is positive, and why, about that culture—are hardly ever mentioned. Instead there is the assumption that Jews should forget their culture and assimilate. This chauvinistic and reactionary attitude is also one that has long been held by the Western European diaspora leadership, which believes that assimilation is the route to 'acceptance'. It also accords with the practice of imperialism of which the British is probably the best and most successful example. Thus British imperialism, following its Christian tradition, is an expert at engulfing, invalidating and then destroying all 'alien' forms. When confronted by a socialist tradition, which in practice advocates the same process, it is no wonder that progressive Jews find it hard to assert an identity that is both Jewish and socialist.

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Left Orthodoxy

2007-01-03T06:40:00.000-08:00

Assimilationism has today reached the status of a tenet of faith on the Left. Like most faiths this 'gospel' is simply assumed and is normally made explicit only when challenged, when it is then stated as dogma. Thus the editor of Socialist Challenge, Geoff Sheridan, made the stark statement in relation to Jews that "assimilation is not a process socialists would wish to halt" (13.11.80). This immediately begs the question—assimilation into what? The only culture that Jews can assimilate into in this country is a racist, sexist, capitalist and anti-semitic one. If the revolutionary Left exists to promote this then it need not bother—British imperialism is possessed of far greater resources and experience. Support for assimilation is support for British chauvinism. In reality, socialist practice in the U.K. is simply to ignore, and therefore be complicit in, the fact that this is a WASP¹ country. Christian culture is somehow assumed dead and is in any event believed to stop at the church door. It is considered unremarkable that the leading 'revolutionary' press should have seasonal Christmas editions whilst the festivals of non-Christian cultures are ignored or regarded as opiates. Indeed, it is a spurious and peculiarly Christian atheism which allows British socialists to welcome public holidays (holydays) within the Christian tradition, but tolerates a system where members of other religions are compelled to work or take unpaid leave during their own festivities.

Within the Left there is the rhetoric of 'support' for national and cultural minority rights. However, the idea that there may be anything positive within Jewish culture is simply dismissed. Socialist practice extends only as far as liberal patronage. Lenin is the most obvious example. His writings on these matters are collected in Lenin on the Jewish Question edited by Hyrnan Lumer and where all subsequent quotations can be found. Lenin wrote:

"It is the Marxist's bounded duty to stand for the most resolute and consistent democraticism on all aspects of the national question" (Critical Remarks on the National Question).

However, he immediately followed this by stating, "This task is largely a negative one". In other words, Lenin seemed to regard the substance of most minority cultures as being either reactionary or non-existent. For instance, in referring to the Jews of Russia and Galicia (half the Jews in the world), he said that "Jewish national culture is the slogan of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie" (On the National Question). For Lenin the only alternative to ghettoisation was assimilation. A proper socialist position on these matters would permit and encourage a struggle within minority cultures against their own oppressive elements, whilst simultaneously waging a struggle against the chauvinism of the host culture. Lenin, however, established Left orthodoxy by his advocacy of assimilationism combined with patronising toleration of Jewish culture. Thus John Nolan in a letter to Socialist Challenge talks about the existence of sexual oppression within 'Judaism' and states that:

"This is not incompatible with our defence of oppressed groups—even if they hold views incompatible with our views of socialism" (1.1.81).

There is no recognition of anything beneficial within Jewish life—which is merely reduced to a matter of religion. In particular, there is no acknowledgement that there may be elements within Jewish culture which are in opposition to oppressive attitudes. It is interesting to know why John Nolan wants to 'defend' Jews—as he believes everything we stand for is incompatible with his views of socialism. Actually all he is willing to defend (if anything) is, apparently, the physical existence of Jews—our identity he will let rot.

To be specific, socialist practice disparages virtually everything to do with Jewish culture. Karl Kautsky, the leading Marxist theoretician of his period, wrote in 1914 of Polish Jewry that:

"They have preserved to this day a peculiar language, the so-called Yiddish, a corrupt German—the only Jewish population in the world that has not assimilated the language of its environment" (Are the Jews a Race?, all further quotations from Kautsky can be found in this book).

Such a statement revealed a profound ignorance of other Jewish communities who had preserved their own languages. Most prominent were the Ladino-speaking Jews of the Mediterranean, whose great centre until the 2nd World War was Salonika. Ladino is still in use today in areas of the Balkans.

Moreover, completely lacking from Kautsky's observation was the fact that for several hundred years prior to the holocaust, Yiddish was the autonomous and rich language of daily communication for virtually all of East European Jewry. It was a wonderful vehicle for the expression of Jewish imagination—through poetry, prose and drama. Fundamentally, Yiddish was not simply a language. It was the basis of a whole cultural life—Yiddishkeit. Kautsky reduces all such vital manifestations of communal life—a life split as in every community by class conflict—to German dialect.

Lenin—who likewise seemed to think that Jews lived only in Europe—was even more pernicious. In Critical Remarks on the National Question he divided Jewry into two groups—those from the East of Europe who were 'rabbis' and those from the 'civilised world' of Western Europe where:

"The great world-progressive features of Jewish culture stand clearly revealed, its internationalism, its identification with the advanced movements of the epoch".

This is glib and patronising. Not only was the Marxist movement in Eastern Europe itself heavily composed of many Jews, not only is it left unexplained how 'rabbis' migrating West suddenly became proletarian internationalists, but Lenin displays complete ignorance in defining progressive elements within a culture exclusively in terms of its overt political expression. There is more to European Jewish culture than socialist thought—though this was certainly one of its achievements.

¹WASP—White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

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Assimilation as an Answer to Anti-Semitism ?

2007-01-02T06:48:00.000-08:00

Throughout most socialist literature about Jews there is a judgemental attitude which suggests that Jewish people should assimilate in order to avoid anti-semitism. For instance, Lenin quoted Kautsky with approval, in relation to Russian Jews:

"Hostility towards non-native sections of the population can only be eliminated when the non-native sections cease to be alien and blend with the general mass of the population. This is the only possible solution to the Jewish question" (The Position of the Bund in the Party).

The modern Left crudely repeats this. Nigel Ward in an article in Socialist Challenge gave as one explanation for the holocaust the fact that Jews in Western Europe were not "assimilated into the fabric of Western society" (2.10.82). Big Flame took this one step further when it claimed that Jews were attacked as they were "visibly different" (September 1982).

This advice that Jews should assimilate in order to avoid 'pogroms' is startlingly reactionary for various reasons, some of which are examined later. For the time being, it is merely necessary to point out that the Left echoes the Jewish establishment, which also advocates assimilation as a way of avoiding political struggles against anti-semitism. Indeed, the Left is articulating a position which is almost identical to the 'aspects' of zionism that it attacks with the most vehemence. Thus zionism is seen as an avoidance of the necessity to fight against anti-semitism—but this is precisely what assimilationism is. Furthermore zionism is criticised for presupposing an 'eternal anti-semite' who cannot be confronted but must be by-passed through the creation of some form of national ghetto. In a sense, Lenin's position is even more extreme. He seems to believe in the eternal anti-semite whom Jews can neither confront nor avoid but can only satisfy by unbecoming Jewish.

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Young, Jewish and Left - Antisemitism

2007-01-01T12:39:00.000-08:00

Antisemitism

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Jewish Survival Through Anti-Semitism ?

2007-01-01T06:59:00.000-08:00

The Left has a completely contradictory position on the relationship between Jewish survival and assimilation. It argues that assimilation is necessary for some form of survival, and simultaneously argues that Jewish culture and identity have only survived because of anti-semitism. Whereas all other groups exist in spite of, and in opposition to, their oppression, Jews exist as a result of it! Amongst the classic Marxist writers, the clearest exponent of this view was Kautsky who wrote that:

"Judaism draws its strength-as a specific group segregated from its environment-from anti-semitism alone. In the absence of the latter it would have been absorbed long ago ... When the Jews shall have ceased to be persecuted and outlawed the Jews themselves will cease to exist".

Similarly Geoff Sheridan wrote in his letter to Socialist Challenge

"Jewish identity has been undermined in those societies where anti-semitism has become relatively dormant".

Two examples will suffice to show that this view is not only politically suspect, but also obviously historically incorrect. In both Moorish Spain and immediate post-revolutionary Russia, Jewish culture flourished in relatively favourable circumstances. It is an anti-semitic myth that Jewish people have a 'victim mentality', but too much reading of certain 'Marxists' might make such a mentality appear necessary for the survival of Jewish identity.

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Determinism and Fatalism

2006-12-31T07:37:00.000-08:00

Behind Left orthodoxy there is a crude historical determinism which is not only chauvinistic but also quite defeatist. This is the determinism which claims not only that assimilation is necessary to avoid anti-semitism, but that it is in any case historically inevitable. It was with specific reference to Jews that Lenin talked about:

"Capitalism's world historical tendency to ... assimilate nations… which is one of the greatest driving forces transforming capitalism into socialism" (Critical Remarks on the National Question).

In similar vein, a Stalinist soviet scholar, Iosef Braginsky, has written that:

"The Marxist cannot view assimilation from the narrow standpoint of 'dos pintele yid'. One has to realise that assimilation is a natural historical process" (quoted by Lumer in his introduction to Lenin's writings).

The political consequences of this are predictable—namely a complete fatalism and defeatism in the face of the projected disappearance of Jewish culture. What is the point of struggling for something which some pre-determined historical law has deemed to be doomed? In fact, Otto Bauer, the Austrian Marxist active at the turn of the century, stated this explicitly when he wrote:

"Where a whole nation are doomed to extinction by economic development it is petty-bourgeois, reactionary, utopian to oppose this inevitable course of events" (quoted in Robert Wistrich—Socialism and the Jews).

A central feature of Lenin's writings is his hopelessness and defeatism about the survival, let alone development, of Jewish culture. As a renowned revolutionary activist, he nevertheless exhibited a passive acceptance of the status quo as he saw it—namely the disappearance of Jewish culture. It is scarcely believable that he was, in the last resort, prepared to allow 'market forces' to determine cultural progress. This was most evident in his attitude towards the survival of Yiddish as a language. In Critical Remarks on the National Question he argued, correctly, that revolutionaries in pre-revolutionary Russia should be exposing the privileged status of the Russian language as chauvinistic, since it was the language of all official state documents and transactions. He suggested that Russia should have several official languages on the model of Switzerland. Beyond that, he was prepared to leave everything to capitalist anarchy. He wrote that:

"The requirements of economic exchange will themselves decide which language of the given country is to the advantage of the majority to know in the interests of commercial relations. This decision will be the firmer because it is adopted voluntarily by a population of various nationalities and its adoption will be the more rapid and extensive the more consistent the democracy and as a consequence of it the more rapid the development of capitalism".

This shows a touching faith in capitalist 'democracy' and its economic system. Completely lacking from this schema is any notion of struggle to preserve, popularise and validate a minority culture amongst the majority. There is no recognition of the fact that, for example, the disappearance of Yiddish within a generation in this country (capitalist 'democracy' par excellence) was not to be the result of any 'natural process', but was, rather, a political victory for cultural imperialism.

Finally, Lenin does not even consider the political option of members of a cultural and economic majority taking the initiative and learning about the cultures of other people—not as an academic exercise but in order to enrich themselves and communicate with others. In the absence of this, the struggle against anti-black racism by white people and against anti-semitism by gentiles, can never be more than a liberal and patronising platitude. The only sort of assimilation that socialists should be campaigning for is the assimilation of the majority into the minority, and not the other way around.

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Are the Jews a People-Class ?

2006-12-30T07:42:00.000-08:00

The most articulate expression of this determinism is to be found in Abram Leon's book—The Jewish Question. Leon was a Jew and a Trotskyist who perished in Auschwitz at the age of twenty six. His book is a major attempt at a Marxist study of the history of world Jewry and, incidentally, of anti-semitism. It purports to provide a materialist explanation to both the existence and the 'inevitable' disappearance of Jewry. Its central thesis is, however, untenable. Leon addressed himself to the question of "the miracle of the Jew," that is the question why Jewry had survived so long in spite of persecution and martyrdom. His answer was that Jews had survived because of their economic role as traders and usurers and will disappear with the disappearance of those functions. As he said:

"Above all, Jews constitute historically a social group with a specific economic function. They are a class, or more precisely a people-class".

There are many basic flaws in Leon's argument which have been pointed out by Maxine Rodinson in his preface to the French edition and by David Reuben (Socialist Register, 1982). Firstly, it is extremely Euro-centric As Reuben points out, Leon fails to consider Jewish communities where trade was not a significant feature, such as Jewry

"...in the Byzantine Empire, the Yemen, the Falashim of Ethiopia, the Jewish farming communities of Daghesten and Kurdistan, the Jews in Babylon under Persian rule who were an agriculturally based community and the Jews of Cochin in India".

Even assuming that Leon was correct, at least with respect to Europe, and that he could prove his assertion that "the overwhelming majority of Jews in the diaspora engaged in trade", this would still leave unexplained the social situation of Jews which confined them to mercantile enterprise.

Moreover, Leon was historically incorrect even about Europe. European Jewry throughout its history seems to have been involved in occupations shared by the surrounding populations. For instance (at least at the start of the Middle Ages) land ownership was widespread amongst Jews in Western Europe. A further argument against the people-class theory is that even if some Jews were traders or usurers it is fantastic to reduce the survival of Jewry, as an identifiable grouping, to the role of a miniscule minority amongst them. Finally, Reuben emphasises that the idea of the survival of a people-class owing to its economic function only makes sense if that function was unique to it, and to no other group. In no sense, however, was either trade or usury a particularly Jewish preserve. The Church's opposition to usury was never strong enough to control it effectively amongst Christians, who were far more important economically than Jews. James Parkes has written (The Jew in the Medieval Community) that:

"Compared with the effectiveness and ubiquity of Italian credit that of the Jews appears a very small affair and the part which they played in the Middle Ages has been much exaggerated".

"Throughout the period the chief moneylenders were Christian and apart from short periods and particular localities the Jews never played more than a subordinate role".

In fact the only historical period—and this is debatable—when some Jews performed any unique economic function was that of international traders between 700-1100 A.D. These merchants (Radanites) may have had a particular advantage, being neither Christian nor Muslim, during a period in which the Moorish control of the Mediterranean cut off normal trade routes between Western Europe and Asia. It was also in this period that there developed the vast Jewish empire of the Khazar Kingdom, stretching from the Volga delta to Kiev—the strategic importance of which was that it separated Christianity and Islam. In any event, the trading activities of the Radanites is hardly a persuasive explanation for the existence of world Jewry.

The excessive determinism of Leon's thesis can be appreciated when it is understood that it was an attempt to refine an even cruder version of the people-class found in Kautsky's Are the Jews a Race? Kautsky took the notion of 'survival of Jewry as a result of economic function' to its inevitable conclusion by arguing that Jews had become 'genetic' traders. He wrote:

"They must have developed emphatically those abilities needed by merchants and this great capacity must, in the course of many generations of such activities within the same families, have produced hereditary aptitudes and traits".

So this is the view of a 'leading Marxist': Jewish culture has survived because of Jewish genes!

The conclusion that Leon draws from his thesis is as deterministic as its premise. He views assimilation as inevitable, precisely because the transition from feudalism to capitalism caused the alleged people-class to lose their functional role. He argues that:

"Capitalism destroyed feudal society and with it the function of the Jewish people-class. History doomed the people-class to disappearance".

According to Leon the only reason Jewry remains a distinct entity is because of anti-semitism (which was also Lenin's position). Leon sees anti-semitism as a pre-capitalist caricature of Jews as usurers, which has survived into capitalism, in spite of the fact that Jews are 'no longer' usurers. He states that:

"Historically the success of racism means that capitalism has managed to channelise the anti-capitalist consciousness of the masses into a form that antedates capitalism and which no longer exists except in a vestigal state; this vestige is nevertheless still sufficiently great to give a certain appearance of reality to the myth".

What Leon is saying here is that the existence today of some Jewish financiers is sufficient to evoke folk-memories of a time when the world was overrun by Jewish loan merchants—a time which, in fact, has never existed. According to his analysis, capitalist society needs a 'diversion' from the class struggle and this is provided by anti-semitism which, as well as facilitating assimilation, also needs to 'resurrect' the Jews. This is seen in his telling phrase, "The Jewish masses find themselves wedged between the anvil of decaying feudalism and the hammer of rotting capitalism".

Abram Leon, as a Jew and a Trotskyist, had an absolute feeling for anti-semitism. He paid the highest price in the struggle against it when most of Europe had given up that struggle. But the deterministic conclusions in his book are just as erroneous as the deterministic premise on which they are based. We shall see later that anti-semitism cannot be viewed merely as a 'diversion' from capitalist crisis—rather it is a constant in daily life. Nor can it be viewed in any way as emanating from Jewish behaviour, if only retrospectively, as Leon suggests. It emanates from anti-semites. It does no justice to the richness and diversity of Jewish culture to suggest that it has continued and developed only as a result of anti-semitism.

The fundamental difficulty with Leon's work is that the original question he sets out to answer—what is the reason for the 'miracle' of Jewish survival?—is a strange one. A similar interrogative is not normally asked about any other people or group. No-one usually asks why the English, who have state power, or the Irish, who live in an occupied state, or the Romany gypsies, who have no territorial state, have survived. These could well be important and interesting questions, but why is the question asked only of Jews? The fact is that it is usually only religious Jews who ask Leon's question, and they naturally arrive at a theological solution—namely it was a miracle. It was to avoid such a conclusion that Leon appears to have adopted an ultra-materialist and deterministic analysis.

However, a materialist understanding of the world does not need to deny the intrinsic value of particular cultures. A proper study of Jewish survival would examine those aspects of Jewish culture which act as a positive and sustaining force, the very diversity of such culture being one main element. Indeed the diaspora—which many Jews understandably view as a negative experience—was in this respect a powerful force for expansive development. Hopefully, such a study would show that Jewish culture (or rather its progressive aspects) far from being doomed, has a role to play in socialist reconstruction. Unfortunately, the final conclusion of Leon's thesis is that socialism will have no place for Jewry or its culture, since its two supposed pillars—its economic function and anti-semitism—will have disappeared.

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Marx—The Assimilated Jew

2006-12-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

It is ironic that Marx, in particular, is frequently paraded as an example of the way Jews should assimilate. John Nolan in his letter to Socialist Challenge writes that:

"We will be happy to persuade people to 'assimilate' along the road that Marx and Trotsky took away from their Jewish traditions towards the socialist revolution".

It is significant that John Nolan counterposes the 'Jewish tradition' and 'socialist revolution'. It is as though Jewish revolutionaries and Jewish revolutionary organisations spring out of nowhere. Moreover Marx himself is a most disreputable example of where assimilation leads. He is a classic case of the self-hating Jew who has internalised his own oppression—albeit at a generation removed as Marx's father actually converted to Christianity. This is not to make the reactionary claim that Marxism as a philosophy is anti-semitic, rather it is to show that as an individual he had assimilated anti-semitism—the clearest example of which comes from his essay On the Jewish Question. This includes the following observations:

"What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling".
"What is his secular god? Money".
"Exchange is the true god of the Jew".
"The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant".
"The emancipation of the Jew is, in the last analysis, the emancipation of mankind from Judaism".

Various apologies have been given for this diatribe. One is that the essay in question was actually written in favour of Jewish emancipation. However, as such, it was based on the worst form of liberal tolerance, as Marx obviously hated everything Jewish. Secondly, it is argued that Marx was not referring to any actual Jewish community but, in common with the language of his time, used 'Judaism' in an abstract sense to equate it with capitalist exchange values. For instance Nathan Weinstock has written that:

"Marx uses Judaism as an abstract category and does not seem to refer to any actual Jewish communities" (see Appendix to Zionism the False Messiah).

However, even if Marx was using the term abstractly, then his language would be no less anti-semitic. Besides, Marx equated Jews and capitalism in very concrete, not abstract, imagery. Thus in the same essay he says of a Jew "When he travels it is as if he carried his shop and his office on his back and spoke of nothing but interest and profit". Quite contrary to Nathan Weinstock, Isaac Deutscher tries to justify this article on the grounds that Marx, far from writing abstractly, was simply making "a factual statement about the Jews' particular function in Christian society" (see 'Who is a Jew?' in the collected essays The Non-Jewish Jew).

Apart from On the Jewish Question, Marx made countless other anti-semitic remarks in his writings. In his Theses on Feuerbach, he says that the German philosopher did not grasp the significance of revolutionary activity because practice is conceived by him "Only in its dirty-Jewish manifestations". Furthermore, in a personal letter to Engels, he gave a description of Ferdinand Lassalle, a contemporary socialist, which managed to combine both anti-semitism and anti-black racism. He wrote:

"I see clearly that he is descended, as the shape of his head and hair indicate, from the negroes who were joined to the Jews at the time of the exodus from Egypt (unless it was his mother or paternal grandmother who mated with a negro). But his mixture of Judaism and Germanism with a negro substance as a base was bound to yield a most curious product. The importunity of the man is also negroid" (Quoted by Silbemer in an article on Marx in Historia Judaica 1949).

Paradoxically, Lassalle himself fits into the category of the assimilated Jewish socialist who eventually renounced everything in the Jewish heritage.

In what must be one of the most extraordinary love letters in human history he wrote to Sophie Sonstev:

"I do not like the Jews at all. I even detest them in general ... During the past centuries of slavery these men acquired the characteristics of slaves and this is why I am unfavourably disposed towards them".

Elsewhere he wrote that "There are two classes of men I cannot bear, men of letters and Jews—and unfortunately I belong to both" (Silberner's article on Lassalle in the 1952-53 Hebrew Union College Annual). The epithet 'self-hating Jew' is an unpleasant one, but it is difficult to avoid its use in the case of both Marx and Lassalle. Neither are great advertisements for a liberated identity.

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Jewish Self-Organisation

2006-12-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

Left assimilationism takes an organisational form in the frequent attacks on the notion of independent Jewish self-organisation Whereas Kautsky's main reason for writing about Jews was to attack zionism, Lenin was mainly concerned with attacking the autonomous existence of the Bund—the revolutionary union of Jewish workers in Russia and Poland. Both used almost identical arguments. In fact, it is extraordinary that while Kautsky's criticism of zionism was in part based on a perception of the need for Jews to fight oppression, in whatever country they were living, when Jews did organise through the Bund to fight such oppression they were denounced as separatists. The Bund was an anti-zionist organisation, but their advocacy of autonomous Jewish socialist organisation led Lenin to denounce them for zionism (see The Position of the Bund in the Party).

Lenin launched a vast polemic against the Bund, superficially on the question of whether there was a 'Jewish culture' or a Jewish 'nation'—both of which he denied. Some of his positions were quite obscurantist: he went to exceptional lengths to 'prove' the Jews were not a 'nation'. In the Position of the Bund he quoted Kautsky's statement with approval: "The Jews have ceased to be a nation, for a nation without a territory is unthinkable", This is sheer scholasticism. The ultimate logic of such an argument is that all diaspora Jews suddenly became a nation when Israel was established. In fact the whole debate is a complete abstraction. The political questions—for or against zionism of for or against self-organisation—cannot be 'solved' through a semantic debate about whether Jews have achieved the status of something which, like 'race' is completely metaphysical—namely 'nationhood'. To the extent that Bundists as well as Leninists—and as well as zionists—dealt in these abstractions they were all dealing in myths.

Nevertheless, behind all this obscurantism, Lenin was attacking the very idea of the autonomy of Jewish political organisation. Some of his writings are very similar to criticisms made by sections of the Left today of independent black and women's organisations. This is perhaps most evident in his article Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an Independent Political Party? He attacked separatism on the grounds that:

"we must not weaken the force of our offensive by breaking up into numerous political parties, we must not introduce estrangement and isolation".

This is precisely what is argued today against autonomous organisations, that they somehow weaken class struggle by initiating divisions. There is a reluctance to acknowledge that class struggle is already fragmented through, for example, sexism, racism—and anti-semitism. Independent organisations of the oppressed are a way of combatting this. In fact, Lenin specifically objected to the Bund for daring to suggest that anti-semitism was not only found amongst the bourgeoisie, but "had struck roots in the mass of the workers." Finally, Lenin attacked the Bund for apparently referring to the Bolsheviks as a "Christian working-class organisation"—just as some modern Left groups object to being designated the 'white Left' or the 'male Left'. What determines the categorisation of a political organisation is not simple its aspirations, or its sociological membership, but also its attitude towards present oppression—and in this sense it was understandable that the Bolsheviks should have been considered 'Christian' by many Jewish revolutionaries.

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Assimilation and The Jewish Establishment

2006-12-27T07:56:00.000-08:00

Lenin wrote that "the best Jews have never clamoured against assimilation" (Critical Remarks). For Lenin, Jewry consisted of only two groups—the 'rabbis' who advocated a cultural ghettoisation, and the 'progressives' who urged assimilation. He saw no third way. He seemed ignorant of the fact that, particularly in Western Europe, it was actually the anti-Communist Jewish leadership which was trying to force the masses into assimilation. A correspondent to the Jewish Chronicle wrote:

"To anglicise the Russian immigrant is a paramount duty ... his children are in excellent hands at the Jews Free School but it is hard for the teachers of that institution to have to find their efforts partly neutralised by the fearful patois which their children have to hear, and often speak, at home ... what is needed is some systematic apparatus for teaching English to adults and indeed for teaching them everything that is needed to make Englishmen of them" (31.7.1891).

The drive towards assimilationism, from within the community, was a product of two interlinked motives which determine all actions of an elite within an oppressed community. Firstly, assimilationism was an exercise in class power by the establishment. It was an attempt to tame the Jewish masses and as such the establishment were acting as pawns for the British bourgeoisie. Indeed, the elite had highly personal motives for this as some of them owned factories—particularly in the garment making industry—where their own Jewish employees had achieved high levels of militancy and socialist consciousness. A classic illustration of this was the attitude of the elite towards the development of a radical Jewish political forum. The Jewish Chronicle spoke disparagingly of the opening of an autonomous Jewish Socialist Club in Manchester where:

"A number of men and children were interspersed with a few women. A lecturer standing on a slightly raised platform held forth in "Yiddish" on the wrongs of the proletariat" (3.7.1891).

This was one of several such clubs that sprung up in Manchester, Leeds and London. The response of the communal establishment was to sponsor alternative venues for Jewish workers where collaboration, not conflict, was the theme. The Manchester City News (7.2.1891) reported the opening of a Jewish Working Men's Club where the mayor and "leading Jewish families" were seated on a platform flanked by a banner with a portrait of the Queen and the motto "God bless England, the land of freedom". In describing the club's activities the President noted that "the only subject excluded was politics".

There was an additional motivation, as well as naked class interest, which led the elite to advocate assimilation. This was a direct consequence of anti-semitism. The fear this engendered lent the elite a self-perceived altruism—they saw themselves as responsible for the protection of the entire community. Protection, they believed, would come through assimilation. Assimilation did not mean a haphazard merger into the host community, but a conscious merging to avoid persecution. This consciousness has been a constant feature of the world view of the Western European Jewish establishment.

As early as 1888 the Jewish Chronicle was arguing that:

"If poor Jews will persist in appropriating whole streets to themselves in the same district, if they will persevere in the seemingly harmless practice of congregating in a body at prominent points in a great public thoroughfare, like Whitechapel or the Commercial Road, drawing to their peculiarities of dress, of language, of manner, the attention which they might otherwise escape, can there by any wonder that the vulgar prejudices of which they are the objects should be kept alive and strengthened?" (28.8. 1888).

Perhaps the most extreme example of the drive towards assimilation can be found in the pocket book Helpful Information and Guidance for every Refugee issued In 1938 by the "German Jewish Aid Committee in conjunction with the Jewish Board of Deputies", This was given to the few Jewish refugees who managed to pass through U.K. immigration control. It spoke of "the traditional tolerance and sympathy of Britain towards the Jews", and then immediately went on to provide the refugees with a list of "duties to which you are honour bound" in order to avoid intolerance, including:

"Spend your time immediately in learning the English language and its correct pronunciation",
"Do not talk in a loud voice",
"Do not criticise any government regulation or the way things are done over here",
"Do not make yourself conspicuous by your manner or dress",
"Do not join any political organisation or take part in any political activities",
"Do not spread the poison of 'It's bound to come to this country', The British Jew greatly objects to the planting of this craven thought".

The above attitudes only just stop short of advocating forced conversion for Jews! The impression gained from such material is that the elite had to stop short at some point if only to retain its own power base. In essence, they were calling for the abolition of the public expression of Jewish identity. From this perspective an analogy with the Marranos of Spain and Portugal, who though baptized, remained secret Jews, is not inappropriate.

It may well be that this combination of class interest and perceived altruism is what has historically defined the position of the Jewish establishment. Thus it also explains its support for immigration control at the turn of the century, which was seen as a way of both controlling and protecting those Jews already in this country. In any event, such a combination is absolutely prejudicial to the interests of the Jewish masses in that its whole thrust is to attempt to remove them, as far as possible, from progressive political struggle. In this country the Jewish bourgeoisie attempted to depoliticise the struggle against the Aliens Act, and then the struggle against fascism in the 1930s. An example of this is the attitude of the Jewish Chronicle towards the fascist march through Cable Street. Under the heading "Urgent Warning" the paper said:

"It is understood that a large Blackshirt demonstration will be held in East London on Sunday afternoon ... Jews are urgently warned to keep away from the route of the Blackshirt march and from their meetings. Jews who, however innocently, become involved in any possible disorders will be actively helping anti-semitism and Jew-baiting. Unless you want to help the Jew-baiters keep away" (2.10.36).

The attitude of the Board of Deputies, as expressed by its President Nathan Laski at a public meeting in Shoreditch, was to rely on the police and the Home Office (Jewish Chronicle 18.9.36). In answer some Jewish militants replied in a letter aptly headed "Did Judas Maccabeus² Stay at Home?" (Jewish Chronicle 23.10.36).

All historical experience has shown that assimilation is never an answer to anti-semitism. It can actually provoke further anti-semitism. The habit of Jewish immigrants of anglicising their East European names was, at the turn of the century, frequently pointed to as an example of how Jews wanted to remain powerful but 'hidden'. Even conversion is no defence—the Inquisition in Spain was launched precisely to persecute the Marranos. Moreover, the drive towards assimilation by the Western European and U.S.A. elite in the last hundred years has itself had a disastrous historical consequence: the Jewish masses are left confused about their Jewish identity, apart from whatever relationship they have with zionism. One reaction has been for sections of the Jewish youth of the last decade to hark back to the past. There has been a mini-revival both of interest in Yiddish and in Hasidic religious movements. However, all this is essentially recidivist and based exclusively on either nostalgia or obscuranticism. Especially within Hasidism, there is a rejection of progressive movement for social change.

Matters of culture and the struggle against organised fascism are equally 'political'. It is a pernicious form of liberalism which relegates culture to the domain of the 'personal'. The truth of the feminist axiom the personal is political' is no more vividly obvious than in a response to anti-semitism which calls for the abolition of Jewish cultural identity. One of the most startling realisations in reading the historical and modern documents is how closely the assimilationism of the Jewish elite resembles that of Lenin. Both expressly saw assimilation as an answer' to anti-semitism. Both were, and are, wrong.

²Judah the Maccabee led the Jewish revolt against Syrian occupation in about 160 B.C.E. He exploited ambush, night movement and rapid attack, in what was essentially a guerrilla Campaign.

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Chauvinism or Anti-Semitism ?

2006-12-26T08:10:00.000-08:00

Assimilationism is undoubtedly reactionary. A generous interpretation of its acceptance by the Left is simply that it is an inadequate resolution of the 'national question' under socialism. Being less generous, however, assimilationism is a classic case of national chauvinism. It is based on the assumption that minority cultures have only a transient historical validity and inevitably have to disappear into the 'mainstream'. For example, Lenin saw only the Yiddish and not the Russian language as being an historical remnant.

Nevertheless, it is true to say there is a real problem in determining the relationship between the classic anti-semitism of the conspiracy theory and assimilationism directed by the 'host' community at Jews. Assimilation, unlike classic anti-semitism is not necessarily derived from Jewish conspiracy theories of history. It can be more frequently traced to the essential nationalism and chauvinism of the nation state. This is usually the case with the Left—which is capable of manifesting chauvinism to any minority, not just Jews. It would be ludicrous to see, for example, Bolshevik opposition to Bundist separatism as being motivated by conspiracy theories. The point is that the Bolsheviks were explicitly against separatism by any group! Indeed Lenin complained of the accusation of singling Jews out and said:

"This is disseminating an outright falsehood for we have advocated denying representation not only to the Jews but also to the Armenians, the Georgians and so on" (The Position of the Bund in the Party).

There is, nonetheless, a living relationship between national chauvinism against Jews and anti-semitism as an ideology. This exists on various levels. In the most general, but profound, sense both are firmly rooted in Christian perceptions. This is as true of the conspiracy theory as it is of the development of what was a European (and therefore Christian) phenomenon—the growth of the nation state. Significantly, Isaac Deutscher spoke not of European civilisation but of 'Christian-European civilisation' ('Who is a Jew' in The Non-Jewish Jew). Indeed, dependent on its period of social, economic and ideological development, the state was able to advocate either ghettoisation or assimilation as a way of 'dealing with' its Jewish population.

Even on the Left there is a ruthlessness and explicitness about advocating Jewish assimilation that takes it beyond the 'normal' bounds of chauvinism. The vocabulary used to describe the daily life of Jews—'doomed', 'extinct'—reads like a post mortem. In fact, it is correct to say that the policy of Jewish assimilation becomes part of anti-semitism; ideology precisely at the point were conspiracy theories are used. to justify it. A classic case is the forced conversions of Marranos in Spain and Portugal as part of the relentless battle against Jewish devil-power. Nothing like this has occurred within Left anti-semitism, except perhaps the closing down of Soviet synagogues which is a step in this direction.

However, even in non-Stalinist sources, the conspiracy theory does sometimes raise its head in advocating assimilation. Occasionally this takes the form of crude anti-semitic imagery and analogy. Lenin could relapse into evoking the image of usury. He correctly criticised the Bund when they adopted two different constitutions—a minimum and a maximum programme (essay Maximum Brazenness and Minimum Logic). However, he expressed himself as follows to the Bund:

"This is the positive last price not 'last word'. Only is it really your last, gentlemen? Perhaps you've got a minimal minimum in another pocket? .. We very much fear that the Bundists do not quite realise all the 'beauty' of this maximum and minimum. Why, how else can you haggle than by asking an exorbitant price, then knocking off 75 per cent and declaring 'That's my last price'? Why, is there any difference between haggling and politics?"

He could hardly have been unaware of the anti-semitic stereotyping in this—echoing Marx's remarks "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling".

There is, though, a more consistent way in which anti-semitic theory is used to justify assimilationism. There is a repeated reference to the notion that Jews are pleading a 'special case' in trying to retain their own autonomy—either cultural or organisational. This is the 'uppity-Jew' syndrome. For black people the equivalent abuse means going above their status as slaves. For Jews it means trying to gain an ascendancy over others. We see in the next chapter that the idea that Jews are trying to gain special privileges is a recurring theme of the Left.

In particular, it is alleged that Jews believe they are life's only victims. However, those Jews who oppose assimilationism are also branded as arguing a 'special case'. In Socialist Challenge John Nolan says, apropos of nothing, "in the fight against oppression there are no special cases". Likewise, Lenin accused the Bund of 'exceptionalism' for advocating the maintenance and development of Yiddish and other aspects of cultural life. (The Position of the Bund).

Perhaps the clearest practical illustration of this accusation occurred in the Austrian Social Democratic Party. Its 1899 Brun conference contained a resolution suggesting that legislative power should be given to national minorities on a non-territorial basis. By this scheme, minorities were to be given power to legislate on their own cultural affairs, run their own schools and decide their own language. Irrespective of the merits of this attempt to resolve the national question—it was never passed—it is interesting that Jews were excluded despite the fact the Galicia was one of the world's largest centres for Jewry. Hence "there are no special Jewish traits worth preserving. All retention of Jewish uniqueness is deleterious" and:

"We cannot accept the separation of the Jewish proletariat in the realm of social life, which far exceeds the limits of ordinary national differences and finds its basis in religious and social conflicts" (quoted in Wistrich—Socialism and Jews).

The idea that Jews who claim organisational and cultural autonomy are somehow claiming a special privilege, is a typical example of how Jews are put in a double-bind by the Left. Austrian social democracy shows that on the one hand the Left frequently does treat Jews differently from other groups, but on the other hand, when Jews dare point this out, they are accused of arguing a special case—that is they are accused of wanting different treatment! Indeed Lenin came close to asserting that in some ways the Bund's separatism was based on the belief that Jews were intrinsically superior to all other people—a classic anti-semitic jibe. He expressly accused the Bund of considering that "The Jewish nation ... occupies a special position amongst the nations" (The Position of the Bund).

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Jewish Behaviour Seen as Responsible for Anti-Semitism

2006-12-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

There is another relationship between the ideologies of anti-semitism and assimilationism. Assimilationism itself has various facets: it can refer to the categorisation of Jewish culture as inferior and even doomed; it can refer to condemnation of Jewish self-organisation. These attitudes are obviously also directed at other minority groups. However, Lenin has a particular argument that seems almost uniquely directed towards Jews—namely that we should assimilate as a political gesture in order to avoid persecution.

Lenin may have been sincere in his opposition to Jewish oppression, nonetheless his argument is, paradoxically, based on assumptions that are found in anti-semitism. If not anti-semitic itself it is still a capitulation to anti-semitism, as it locates the source of Jewish persecution not in the persecutor but within some perceived behaviour by Jewry—which Lenin himself described as "non-native" and "alien". Such a description reads in terms very similar to those of the anti-semite Arnold White who attacked Jews for "clinging to a community that prefers to remain aloof from the mainstream of modern life" (The Modern Jew). Of course it is central to the conspiracy theory that it is a response to some 'real' Jewish behaviour. The analogy with sexism is powerful. How would a 'socialist' analysis be received if it argued that to understand sexism it is necessary to examine, not the attitudes of men, but the behaviour of women? According to Lenin, Jewry must literally obliterate its identity not to be oppressed. In fact this sort of logic would have to tell women that the only way of dealing with sexism is to become men.

Unfortunately, a similar concession to the enemy occurs in the writings of Abram Leon. He treats anti-semitism as being a reaction to what he perceives as the Jewish historical role—namely trade and usury. Moreover, he views this as persisting even though Jews no longer perform such functions. In any event, he still locates the source of anti-semitism as being in some way linked to actual Jewish behaviour. Again, it is as though sexism were analysed as a reaction against the supposed behaviour of all women, or of some witches several centuries ago. Quite clearly, Leon's own personal and political practice—his revolutionary struggle to death against fascism and anti-semitism—was inevitably at odds with his theoretical model.

However, the crudity of such a model can be found in the statement made by Tony Greenstein, writing as chairperson of the Labour Committee on Palestine, that Nazism was built on "the memory of the peasants regarding their relations with Jewish money lenders/tax collectors in feudal times" (Letters Page Big Flame December 1982). This attributes an extraordinary memory to the German peasantry—it is as though there were no intervening anti-semitic ideology. It fails also to ask why the activities of Christian money lenders did not lead to the annihilation of most of Christendom several centuries later.

In fact, there has arisen a whole school of liberal historiography which acts as an apologia for anti-semitism precisely by arguing that it is somehow a reaction against real Jewish behaviour. A recent example is the book Anti-Semitism in British Society by Colin Holmes. Holmes explicitly acknowledges that he is engaged in an "interactionist approach" by which he means that "in order to understand anti-semitic hostility we need to recognise the characteristics of the Jewish minority". In other words Holmes is saying that to understand anti-semitism we have to look at behaviour within Jewry.

The fundamental error of both revolutionaries such as Lenin, and liberals such as Holmes, is the belief that it is possible to discover a 'rational' source for anti-semitism. All such beliefs are premised on the assumption that there is some material conduct by Jews to which anti-semitism is a form of reaction, however perverse. Any genuine socialist understanding of anti-semitism requires not an examination of Jewish behaviour, but of the material behaviour of the anti-semite and of false consciousness. This is because, in spite of all its claims to the contrary, anti-semitism as an ideology has nothing to do with the behaviour of even one single Jew, let alone of all Jews. It is a view of the world based on myths and fantasies. To attempt to locate the source of such myths in Jewish life is ultimately a major concession to that ideology.

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The Politics of Terminology

2006-12-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

It would, in the last resort, be dangerous to be rigid in reserving the terminology of 'anti-semitism' exclusively for a definition of the ideology of the Jewish conspiracy, and to use the language of 'chauvinism' to describe assimilationism by the host community. This is not just because the two may be conceptually linked, as has been seen. Rather they are also, as far as Jewish people are concerned, linked in daily life. To put it at its most basic, Jewish people feel trapped within their oppression. There often seems no way out. It is the totality of this oppression that is felt to be anti-semitic, irrespective of the theoretical origins of its components.

The historical periods detailed in this book are a good example of the mechanism of anti-semitism. Jewish people who, at the turn of the century, came to this country fleeing from pogroms, were met with conspiracy views on the Left. Such views have re-emerged today in the guise of anti-zionism, at a time when more and more Jews are beginning to find this racist country intolerable. Linking these two historical periods has been the constant propaganda of Left ideologues saying that Jewish culture is dead and urging Jews to assimilate on the grounds that this is the only way to resist oppression. This succession of traps have in themselves gradually helped deter the Jewish masses from socialism as an answer to their problems. The most vivid illustration of this is that whereas zionism is attacked in part as avoiding the struggle against anti-semitism, Jewish self-organisation, such as the Bund, is attacked as being separatist and a concession to zionism!

These traps are just a faithful reflection of everyday reality as felt by Jewish people, where social life in gentile society is seen as one big double bind. There are many good Yiddish jokes about how we regard the slightest criticism as a form of anti-semitism, but these must be seen as a response to the way anti-semitism often seems to be a closed circle, with no exit. It is not for the oppressor to deny the reality of the oppressed. It is not for Christian society to deny the potency of anti-semitism as an ideology, to deny the power of the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy. The historic effects of this theory have been dramatic. Not least it is the mechanism which starts and closes the circle of oppression around Jewish people: its inherent irrationality provides it with infinite elasticity.

Nothing can be understood about the Jewish predicament without understanding that what defines it as a unique category of racism is the existence of anti-semitism as ideology. It is this ideology that needs to be destroyed in order to give hope for Jewish liberation. This requires a serious political struggle-and one which is able to distinguish friend from foe. Assimilation is not the answer. It is part of the problem.

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Left Responses: Jews Exaggerate Their Predicament

2006-12-22T18:26:00.000-08:00

When discussing Jewish people the Left has few remaining surprises. It is possible to guess the sorts of answers, often contradictory, that will be given to the critique of Left anti-semitism made in this pamphlet. One typical argument has already been seen—namely the absurd and insulting proposition that any discussion of anti-semitism is somehow an apologia for zionism. There are, though, other replies that the Left makes with monotonous regularity. These are:-

'Jews Exaggerate Their Predicament'

Any attempt to uncover anti-semitism is branded as an "obsession" (Big Flame October 1982). This is part of the whole process of denying the significance of anti-semitism. Connected with this is the repeated accusation that Jews are arguing a 'special case'. We have already seen how this operates, in the sense that Jews are accused of wanting special privileges with respect to preservation of cultural and organisational autonomy, and that it is also used against Jews in the sense that we are accused of considering ourselves the only victims in the world.

Such an attitude goes back at least to the early days of the Second International. For instance at the 1891 International Socialist Conference, the United States Jewish delegation, led by Abraham Cahan, wished the international labour movement to condemn anti-semitism—not an unreasonable request considering the pogroms taking place in Russia. Instead, the Congress adopted a resolution which opposed both anti-semitism and "philo-semitic agitation" (quoted in James Joll—The Second International). The phrase 'philo-semitic agitation' is highly significant and needs deciphering. At its best, it implies the identification of capitalism with a few Jewish capitalists—the essential socialism of fools. At its worst, it simply means 'Jew-Iovers'—the essence of naked fascism. The 1891 conference must be unique in the history of international socialism, in that it is, presumably, the only instance in which friendliness towards any oppressed group was ever condemned by an international socialist body. The Times correctly opined that:

"The resolution in so far as it had any definite bearing on the Jewish question was deprived of any point it ever possessed" (20.8.1891).

Even Justice, the paper of the SDF, admitted that

"There appears to be a strong feeling against the Jews in the Congress" (22.8.1891).

However, in Justice's own opportunistic, and anti-semitic, tradition it added ...

"This is a pity. Even on the grounds of tactics ... we need the poor Jews to beat the rich Jews".

Again in the last two thirds of this century it has been a frequent tactic to point out that it was not only Jews who were killed by the Nazis—the implication being that Jews consider they are the only victims of fascism. For example at a conference, organised in 1936 by the Labour Party against fascism, Hugh Oalton stated that there had been

" ... excessive emphasis upon the fate of Jews in Germany—let us not forget the vast mass of gentile trade unionists, socialists and pacifists who have been subjected to atrocity and murder ... Many millions of the best and purest Aryans have suffered" (quoted by Gisela Lebzelter in Political Anti-Semitism in England).

Likewise Ed Rosen tells us that Gypsies also perished in the camps (Peace News, 21.3.80). Well, as Jews and as Socialists, we are well aware of the numbers and range of Nazi victims. All human life is of equal validity. However, it is also necessary to express the strongest possible disgust with those who deliberately invoke the sufferings of others in order to deny the extent of anti-semitism ... including their own anti-semitism. It is a constant ploy of anti-semites first to victimise Jews and then to stigmatise Jews for 'wailing' and 'playing the victim'. Members of the Foreign Office, in refusing to help Jews trapped in Europe during World War Two, came out with such remarks as:

"One notable tendency in Jewish reports on this problem is to exaggerate the numbers of deportations and deaths" (quoted in Britain and the Jews of Europe by Bernard Wasserstein).

So it is yet another double-bind for Jews: dare to cry out when you are being victimised and you will be accused of playing the victim, or else remain silent and be accused of being sheep led passively to slaughter.

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There Are Jews on the Left

2006-12-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

Many of the individuals criticised here and many members of the organisations criticised here are ... Jewish. So Big Flame attempts to answer criticisms of its anti-semitism by asserting that its editorial board "comprises both Jews and non-Jews" (December 1982). However, this is tokenistic and naive if it is meant to 'prove' that Big Flame is not capable of anti-semitism. Obviously Jews, like everyone else, can internalise their own oppression. This, at one extreme, is what constitutes unconscious anti-semitism. At the other extreme, it is what constitutes the near-conscious self-hatred of Marx. None of this is to blame individual Jews in Big Flame. None of us could possibly claim to have a monopoly of wisdom in such hard circumstances and there are many routes to liberation. However, it is necessary to emphasise the very real existence of anti-semitism so that all of us as Jews have, at some level of consciousness, accepted certain anti-semitic attitudes as 'natural' and based on 'commonsense'.

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Criticism of Left Anti-Semitism Plays Into the Hands of Anti-Communists

2006-12-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

It will be claimed that this book is in some way echoing the views of the Jewish establishment, which seeks to discredit communism by asserting that the 'extreme Left' is exactly the same as the 'extreme Right' as both are anti-semitic. However such a claim is evasive, in that it does absolutely nothing to explain the substance and persistence of the examples of Left anti-semitism that we have quoted. It simply refuses to look at them.

Likewise, it may well be claimed that focusing on the anti-semitism of the Left only serves to draw attention away from the 'real' enemy—the fascist and Thatcherite Right. Again such a response is trivial, as it simply avoids acknowledging genuine ideological weaknesses on the Left. It is bizarre to expect that a socialist movement which so readily accepts anti-semitism could possible face up to the present offensive by the 'new Right', an offensive that will invoke anti-semitism more and more. Behind all this is an extremely dangerous assumption—namely that historical and contemporary truths should be suppressed in order to avoid further weakening the Left. Such an approach has its roots in the Stalinist tradition of fabrication. The anti-communism of the Jewish establishment and the dangers from the British Right are perfectly obvious. This is why it is necessary to struggle against reactionary ideas both inside and outside the Jewish community.

At the same time, are those of us who are socialists and conscious of our Jewish identity supposed to make concessions to anti-semitism on the Left? Are we supposed to be grateful that the Left has not got a conscious policy of genocide? Is it supposed to make us feel any better that its anti-semitism often operates on a crass, unaware level? If Left anti-semitism is not as 'bad' as Right anti-semitism ... then what perverse criterion should we be using as Jews and as socialists to convince ourselves of this? Would anyone seriously expect women and black people to stop challenging the Left whenever it operates on sexist and/or racist assumptions?

Moreover, the difference between 'Left' and 'Right' is genuinely problematic. It certainly cannot be taken for granted—no more in relation to Jews than with respect to any other matter of social or political life. It would seem absurd to describe Stalinism as 'Left-wing' even though historically it arose within the Bolshevik party. Similarly it is quite absurd to regard the distinction between Left and Right as self-explanatory in a situation where, for example, the National Front can claim the anti-semitism of the early socialist tradition as its own, and where Socialist Worker can print an anti-semitic letter from a known fascist. To define 'Left-wing' in some amorphous way as being 'the struggle against all oppression' is circular and apologetic, given the reality of the anti-semitism of so much Left practice.

Analysis of the Left/Right problematic in relation to anti-semitism does reveal two important differences. Firstly, anti-semitism is intrinsic to Right-wing ideology along with all other forms of reactionary ideas. The ultimate in Right-wing ideology, Nazism, can probably be reduced to anti-semitism. This is, of course, why it is so ironic that the Jewish establishment is constantly moving towards the Right. On the other hand anti-semitism is certainly not intrinsic to the concept of socialism or communism. Otherwise socialists would never struggle against anti-semitism whereas they actually do ... on occasion. Indeed it would be grotesque to suggest, as members of the Jewish Board of Deputies never tire of suggesting, that the entire practice of the Left, on whatever issue, can be seen as expressions of anti-semitism.

The second distinction between anti-semitism on the Right and that on the Left exists on the level of consciousness. Anti-semitism operates on a more or less conscious level on the Right. Historically, there have been periods when anti-semitism has operated on a fairly conscious level on the Left—for instance in England at the time of the Aliens Act and under Stalinism. However, it is doubtful whether the Left could ever produce anything as conscious and as explicit as The Protocols of Zion. This would mean having expressly to abandon the theory of class struggle. In fact today the Left, at least outside Stalinism, seems to be functioning not so much on the basis of consciousness nor even of false-consciousness ... but of unconsciousness.

Formally, the Left has a commitment to struggling against anti-Jewishness. The W.R.P., for instance, constantly proclaims its opposition to anti-semitism. Thus in its editorial in Newsline referring to 'The Money Programme', it stated in bold type:

"The Tories know too that they have a powerful anti-semitic trump-card up their sleeve to replay once again as the most reactionary manifestation of racialism, which is anti-semitism" (9.4.83).

At least this acknowledges the existence and obscene nature of anti-semitism, even though it still perceives it as a political tool rather than having an existence in everyday life. There is no reason to believe that the W.R.P., as an organisation, is not sincere in what it sees as its commitment to fight anti-semitism, and there is no reason to believe that any individual in the W.R.P. is a conscious anti-semite. Unfortunately the anti-semitism of the W.R.P. takes place on an apparently unconscious level. If the W.R.P. took time to consider, it would, hopefully, see that an editorial which claims that a B.B.C. programme was "zionist sponsored" and then goes on to remark that the new chairperson of the B.B.C.is a director of the Jewish Chronicle can only lead to one conclusion in its readers' minds, namely that the B.B.C. is itself zionist sponsored—i.e. controlled by zionists. Indeed in the absence of even a mention of the politics of the Jewish Chronicle (a journal whose politics no socialist would wish to defend but which, albeit occasionally, has printed articles critical of zionism), the obvious conclusion is that the B.B.C. is 'Jew sponsored'. Any group which claims to be against anti-semitism should be ultra-vigilant in the imagery it evokes—particularly when it also introduces irrelevant information about the financial interests of individual zionists. Actually, this lack of awareness is both ironic and frightening. The assumption is supposed to be that it is the Left and not the Right which operates on the level of consciousness—at least a consciousness of what it is saying. In relation to anti-semitism it often appears the other way around. Moreover, though it would help marginally, it is ultimately inadequate to argue that all the Left should do is to exercise greater 'editorial vigilance'. It first has to develop a consciousness of the anti-semitism against which it has to be vigilant—starting with its own. It is a tragedy that a movement based on the theory of consciousness has diverged so far from it in its own practice.

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Anti-Semitism Is A Series of "Mistakes"

2006-12-19T13:41:00.000-08:00

Many people will wish to face up to the existence of Left anti-semitism. However, they will be confronted by an argument based on a crude empiricism, which claims that instances of Left anti-semitism, though undoubtedly reactionary, are simply 'mistakes' or are 'merely' manifestations of false consciousness. In this scenario, socialist practice has generally been exemplary towards Jews, and on the question of anti-semitism, and all that has to be done is to lop away the reactionary ideas that 'occasionally' still crop up. After all—it will be claimed—even socialists are not perfect. This last claim, which is undoubtedly correct, is really based on the assumption that what is required is simply more 'vigilance'.

Now it is, fortunately, true that there does exist an alternative socialist tradition which has consciously refrained from anti-semitic positions or even opposed anti-semitism and which, in some instances, has even taken a positive attitude towards Jewish culture.

Engels in his famous Anti-Dühring attacked Dühring for, amongst other matters, his rabid Judeophobia—as witnessed by Dühring's statement that "socialism is the only power which can oppose population conditions with a strong Jewish admixture". Similarly Lenin, in spite of his reactionary advocacy of Jewish assimilation, took a totally principled position against pogroms of any sort. For instance, in a decree of July 1918 signed by Lenin it was stated that

"The Council of People's Commissars instructs all Soviet Deputies to take uncompromising measures to tear the anti-semitic movement out by the roots. Pogromists and pogrom agitators are to be placed outside the law" (quoted by Hyman Lumer—Lenin on the Jewish Question).

Again the Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S.A. campaigned in the late 1930s against the immigration quota imposed on Jewish refugees from Europe by the U.S. government (Socialist Appeal 29.10.38)—though the Fourth International, to which it was affiliated was in favour of total control of Jews going into Palestine. Trotsky himself seems to have developed an extremely enlightened attitude towards Jews—indeed an attitude which was extraordinary, when compared with that of other revolutionary Marxists. In an interview he gave in 1937 to a Jewish paper in Mexico, he effectively attacked crude assimilationism by stating that:

"The Jews of different countries have created their press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument adapted to modern culture. One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come".

In an article—Thermidor and Anti-Semitism—published in 1941, he acknowledged that a revolution does not immediately or inevitably dissolve anti-semitism and that it can even provoke it as:

"History has never yet seen an example where the reaction following the revolutionary upsurge was not accompanied by the most unbridled chauvinistic passions, anti-semitism amongst them".

Interestingly, this led him, a confirmed anti-zionist, into envisaging the need for a Jewish state after a world revolution! (all quotations from Trotsky's writings On The Jewish Question by Pathfinder Press).

There has also been in this country at least one socialist organisation which took a principled position on everything Jewish—from opposing anti-semitism to refusing to define Jews negatively and only in terms of anti-semitism. This was the Socialist League in the last century. The League, as has been mentioned, through its activities and through its journal Commonweal consistently opposed the agitation for Jewish immigration control. At the same time, it explicitly denounced all anti-semitic imagery of Jews, opposed chauvinistic notions that Jewish workers were in competition with British workers, and preached unity and internationalism. The League regularly publicised, and actively involved itself in, the emergent Jewish labour movement in London, Leeds and Manchester. The League had particularly good relations with the important Jewish anarchist movement in London's East End—with whom Peter Kropotkin also identified and worked. On top of all this it is important to remember that countless socialists fought before and during the war, not simply against fascism but also with a consciousness of a struggle against anti-semitism.

All the above instances are worth recording. However, the following has to be said to put them into perspective:-

Struggling against anti-semitism is the bare minimum requirement for a correct socialist practice in relation to Jewish people—but this is just the negative side. What is also necessary is a recognition of the positive aspects of Jewish culture, tradition, history and aspirations.

Moreover, even when the Left has organised against anti-semitism, this has often been in spite of itself and because of the pressures put on it by its Jewish members. Examples of this have already been seen in relation to the Aliens Act. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of the pressure of Jewish socialists on their own organisations concerns the 'battle of Cable Street' in October 1936, when the Mosleyites were physically prevented from marching through London's East End. The Communist Party has, in its own mythology, always taken credit for this as an almost single-handed operation. However, as Joe Jacobs, a Party activist at that time, shows in his autobiography, Out of the Ghetto, the Party at first argued against going to Cable Street. It was only pressure by its, mainly Jewish, Stepney Branch and by the militant Jewish People's Council which forced the Party to mobilise against the fascists, thus compelling them to make a complete volte-face two days before the march.

Finally, the citing of relatively favourable attitudes on the Left towards Jews only touches on one particular issue. This is the relative weight of the anti-semitic tradition within the Left. It does not explain the existence of that tradition. Instead, it assumes that Left anti-semitism can be viewed in some vulgar pragmatic way as a series of 'mistakes'. This is an expiricism which denies the persistence of anti-semitism on the Left and does nothing to explain its cause. It starts with the 'imperfection' of individual socialists who have been corrupted in some way by bourgeois ideology and ends up simply by calling for 'greater vigilance'. In fact, it does nothing at all to resolve the essential question of methodology. The obsessive insistence on highlighting examples of good socialist practice in relation to Jews, is an attempt to avoid bringing out into the daylight the distinct pattern which lies behind Left anti-semitism—namely the theory of the world Jewish conspiracy.

Of course, in an important sense, it is true that the existence of this pattern, this methodology, represents the penetration of the working class movement and its socialist ideologues, not only by bourgeois but also by feudal and pre-feudal ideology. It is a question of false consciousness. However, it is simply insufficient to state this without defining precisely what 'consciousness' it is that is false. This consciousness is the theory of world Jewish domination.

Avoiding looking at how the conspiracy theory has entered the Left means either denying the existence of Left anti-semitism, or viewing it as a series of unrelated and unexplained examples. It is absurd to regard the illustrations presented in this pamphlet—for instance the notion peddled by the S.D.F. that 'Jew moneylenders now control every foreign office in Europe'—as being simply 'mistakes' by 'psychologically imperfect individuals'. Rather we are dealing here with the reactionary politics of mass psychology which does not just exist as an individual phenomenon. The Left also shares this mass psychology.

Inevitably this empirical approach to (mis)understanding Left anti-semitism is the exact mirror image of the empiricism with which bourgeois historians treat the whole of anti-semitism. According to much bourgeois historiography, anti-semitism is simply a string of 'false accusations'—Jews ritually kill Christian children, Jews poison wells, Jews desecrate the host, Jews are usurers, etc. etc. Such an analysis again totally avoids the question of how such 'false accusations' arose in the first place and how they fit within the context of the conspiracy theory. It does not attempt to locate the underlying ideology which unites them and which gave rise to their existence. Like all empirical philosophy, it is concerned with appearance-the use of particular anti-semitic imagery-rather than with essence.

Moreover by seeing anti-semitism as nothing more than a series of 'mistakes' which need to be 'corrected' by rational argument, this empiricism also reveals a compartmentalised and over-rational approach to consciousness. It believes that anti-semitism can be overcome by pin-pointing certain 'mistaken ideas'—e.g. Jews ritually kill Christian children—held by particular individuals and then by explaining the 'truth'—e.g. Jews don't ritually kill Christian children. Such transparent nonsense totally fails to understand the theory of a world conspiracy that underlies and sustains all anti-semitism, the history of this theory (which stretches back to the early days of the Christian church), and the mass psychology which gives it its political strength.

None of this can be overcome by a process of individual re-education, as it is not simply an individual problem. Nor can it be overcome by a rational presentation of facts—as the last thing anti-semitism is about is rationality. This emphasis on individualism and rationalism is the hallmark of liberalism. Unfortunately it has a dangerous pedigree as far as an attempt to resist anti-semitism is concerned. In the 1930s, the Jewish Board of Deputies argued against confrontation with the fascists, and instead employed researchers to investigate and publicise the 'real' contribution that Jewish people had made to humanity. Indeed this is still the position of the Deputies today. Moreover, in the 1930s it was also the official stance of the Labour Party to invoke an appeal to 'facts' to refute fascist assertions about Jews (see essay by Caroline Knowles in Racism edited by Robert Miles). This belief that a liberal rationalism can somehow defeat a negative irrationalism, somewhat in the manner of the collapse of the walls of Jericho, avoids facing up to the need for a political struggle against anti-semitism. Such a struggle will inevitably have to take place on the level of emotionality as well as intellectuality. It will have to defeat the mass psychology of fascism and anti-semitism.

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How The Left Does Not Fight Anti-Semitism: Left Modesty

2006-12-18T13:58:00.000-08:00

There is one particular response from the Left, when presented with accusations of its own anti-semitism, that is almost liturgical in its repetition. This is the vanity which leads not merely to protestations that the socialist movement has actually opposed anti-semitism, but to the claim that it has consistently been in the vanguard of all such opposition. For instance, John Nolan (letters Socialist Challenge 1.1.81) made the modest claim that "in the struggle against all forms of oppression, including anti-semitism, the I.M.G. and Socialist Challenge have proved themselves to be amongst the best of working class fighters". The Stalinists have made a similar claim about their own organisations. Hyman Lumer in his preface to Lenin On the Jewish Question states that the official Communist Parties "have been the most resolute fighters against all national and racial discrimination and oppression". The sect may change, but the catechism remains the same!

Enough has already been presented to reveal the misplaced arrogance of this. How could a socialist practice which has internalised so much anti-semitism be in the forefront of resistance to it? However, it is relevant to go beyond this and to criticise much Left practice even on those occasions when it is apparently opposing anti-semitism. The point is that this opposition often, at its best, severely underestimates anti-semitism and, at its worst, is complicit in it by accepting its terms. Either way, it ultimately rests on a refusal to see anti-semitism as an ideology.

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Complicity in Anti-Semitism

2006-12-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

There have been periods in this country, as elsewhere, when sections of the Left, far from fighting anti-semitism have threatened to unleash pogroms against Jews. An article in Justice claimed that socialists

"have no feelings against Jews as Jews, but as nefarious capitalists and poisoners of the wells of public information we denounce them. It would be easy enough to get up a capitalist Jew-bait here in London if we wished to do so" (21.1.1893).

It is, incidentally, not insignificant that the medieval accusation of Jews poisoning the water wells reappears under a different guise in imperialist England. Moreover the S.D.F, like many other 'socialists' believed that pogroms were a prelude to an anti-capitalist revolution. Thus Hyndman applauded popular attacks on Jews in Austria on the grounds that:

"The attack upon Jews is a convenient cover for a more direct attack upon the great landlords and Christian capitalists" (The Historical Basis of Socialism, 1883).

However, the reality is that even where the Left has purported to struggle against anti-semitism it has frequently compromised itself with anti-Jewish feelings.

For instance the most classic form of compromise is to appeal to anti-semites to fight fascism! If Hyndman could call upon anti-semites to destroy capitalism (as represented by Jews), then it is equally 'logical' to call upon anti-semites to fight fascism as a manifestation of capitalism. In 1937 the Left Book Club published a book by G. Sacks entitled The Jewish Question. This proclaimed:

"Hate the Jew if you must but do not allow your hatred to make you the victim of the fascist who, on the plea that he also hates the Jew, makes you his accomplice in worse crimes".

Sacks then went on to point out that what was wrong with fascism was not its attacks on the Jews but that these attacks were no guarantee of a better society, thus:

"If fascism really meant the end of the class struggle, then the humiliation and destruction of sixteen million Jews would be worthwhile, for the ultimate benefit to humanity would transcend that of a small minority of people who would scarcely be missed".

In other words the 'explanation' we have previously examined, that anti-semitism is just a series of 'mistakes', appears here in its ultimate form—namely as a total concession to anti-semitic ideology.

It would be wrong to see this form of complicity as being confined to the Stalinist and social democratic tradition around the Left Book Club. Thus the Big Flame editorial of September 1982 actually stated that as a socialist response to the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon "it would be a serious error to participate in or help incite the emergence of a new wave of anti-semitism". The use of the word 'error' implies that the question of unleashing pogroms is merely one of tactics. The perverse logic of this is that if anti-semitism acted as a break on the Israeli government then it would in some way be legitimate.

Even amongst those on the contemporary Left fighting fascism, there is occasionally a residual belief that Jews are somehow legitimate targets for popular hatred. For instance Ed Rosen in an article in Peace News (21.3.80) wrote that the Nazis used anti-semitism in order "to break the power of a privileged Jewish economic community". In other words, German Jews were supposedly rich and powerful—so what else could they expect? They asked for it. Indeed, we have already seen that advocating assimilation, as an answer to anti-semitism, itself rests on the assumption that there exists something actual and tangible in Jewish behaviour to which the anti-semite is merely responding.

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Denying The Significance Of The Material Consequences Of Anti-Semitism

2006-12-16T14:03:00.000-08:00

Anti-semitism is essentially a view of the world, an ideology, yet of course it does have material and atrocious consequences for Jews—witness the 'final solution'. However the Left has systematically under-estimated these material consequences as can be seen in the following examples.

The holocaust is seen as unique and without any historical precedent. Thus Nigel Ward has stated that anti-semitism did not exist in Eastern Europe until the penetration of capital in the last century (Socialist Challenge 2.10.82). He ignores centuries of pogroms, often sanctioned by the Orthodox churches, not the least of which were the atrocities perpetrated by Chmielnicki in 1648, when an estimated one million Jews were killed—only those accepting baptism being spared. Chmielnicki is still regarded in the Ukraine as a national hero. Similarly, Ward claims that the economic position of Jews in Western Europe was "threatened by the development of early capitalism" after the eleventh century. Quite apart from the historical error of an assumed Jewish economic position—the word 'threatened' suggests some minor material decline. The reality was the constant attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Crusades. These in fact were repeated shortly afterwards, during the period of the Black Death (1348-9) when Jews were blamed in popular mythology for the plague. In Germany alone, over 200 communities were exterminated whilst attacks took place on a smaller scale in Poland, Catalonia and in the north of Italy.

The other side to the perverse view that the holocaust was without precedent, is the equally perverse notion that anti-semitism disappeared with the holocaust. Big Flame criticised those whom it claims "hark back constantly to the history of anti-semitism" (October 1982). In other words anti-semitism exists only in 'history'—though Big Flame does have the grace to admit that the 'tiniest elements' might still be around today. This is not simply reactionary. It is ahistorical and seems to be based on the liberal and social democratic myth that anti-semitism was defeated by the bourgeoisie in World War Two ... as though this were somehow seen by the Allies as a war against anti-semitism. The same politics occurred in the propaganda slogan of the Anti-Nazi League in the middle of the 1970s—"Yesterday it was the Jews, today it is the blacks", This imagined that somehow anti-black racism didn't exist at the time of pre-war fascism and that anti-semitism disappeared after, and as a result of, imperialist war.

There is another particularly insidious aspect to this constant under-estimation of anti-semitism. This is the appalling attitude by the Left that Jews will have to have one foot in the grave before it will respond. By this time, of course, it will be too late anyway. Thus Uri Davies (Peace News 26.1.79) was anxious to stress that

"Given the current social and political circumstances prevalent in Britain, anti-semitism does not feature as a prominent element in British racism ... Jews in Britain are not the first nor the worst victims of racism. There is no denial that in future, given certain social and political developments, racism directed against Jews could figure more prominently in British society. But this is a contingent possibility and not a present development nor a likely development in the near future".

It is not claimed that Jews are either the 'first' or the 'worst' victims of racism—and such was certainly not claimed in the article to which this was a reply. However, it is remarkable that any attempt to draw attention to the existence of anti-semitism can result in such slanderous assertions. The message appears to be that there is a queue or hierarchy of victims, and Jews will have to wait till they get to the front before anyone will take any serious political notice. Uri Davies seems to have a touching faith in the present social order. He should remember the misassessment of August Bebel who, in spite of his active opposition to anti-semitism, said in 1906 that "It is comforting that in Germany it will never have a chance to assert a decisive influence on the life of state or society" (quoted by Silberner in an article on German Social Democracy, Historia Judaica 1953).

Paradoxically, although the reality of Jewish oppression is often denied, the Left still persists in defining the Jew as a victim, but in a purely abstract way. However, this status is a surrogate one to play us off against different groups. A coarse example was the statement by Ken Livingstone, the Labour leader of the Greater London Council, that the suffering of the Irish at the hands of the English was worse that the Nazi holocaust of European Jewry. Who are statements like this supposed to help? Certainly not the Irish, who have an autonomous existence, and don't require their oppression to be validated by a league table with other groups. Neither do they help the Jewish people who are in any event being constantly told that their oppression is near the bottom of any league table.

Even when certain socialists claim that the Left has constantly fought anti-semitism, they have a totally restricted meaning of what anti-semitism is. They ignore and leave unopposed the anti-semitism of daily life on which fascism is ultimately built. For the Left, anti-semitism only seems to exist, if at all, when matters get to the stage of organised violence on a mass scale. There is absolutely no recognition of the profoundly anti-semitic culture which underlies these physical manifestations. It is as though major physical violence against Jews is an aberration which springs out of nowhere. There is a reverse side to all this. This is that anti-semitism without physical violence is deemed simply not to exist. Cultural imperialism is just ignored. As has been emphasised, the Left actively advocates assimilationism.

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Denying The Significance Of Anti-Semitism As An Ideology

2006-12-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

Central to the socialist compromise with anti-semitism, and the underestimation of its material consequences, is the failure to perceive anti-semitism as an ideological force existing in daily life. It has already been emphasised in the previous chapter how anti-semitism is wrongly seen as a series of 'mistakes' made by its proponents. There is a reverse side, though, to this analysis. Anti-semitism is viewed as a series of tactical manoeuvres by the bourgeoisie designed to mislead the workers. The conventional wisdom of the Left is that 'pogroms' are simply a diversionary tactic by the ruling class: for tactical considerations the ruling class spreads false propaganda about Jews in order to induce erroneous perceptions in the rest of the workers. It is often presented as openly as this. For instance, the Daily Worker, then the paper of the Communist Party, stated that anti-semitism was a vehicle "to divert the attack upon the capitalist class as a whole into an attack upon a section of that class—the Jewish section (2.3.1933). In similar vein and in the same period, A.M. Wall, the Secretary of the London Trades Council, in addressing a meeting called by the Jewish People's Council in London's East End, said

"Anti-semitism has always been used for the same purpose—in order to give the masses an enemy to attack so they won't discover the real enemy" (Jewish Chronicle 16.10.36).

This analysis permeates every single part of the Left and can easily be found today. Thus Big Flame in its editorial of September 1982 explained anti-semitism by asserting that Jews are used as 'scape-goats' in periods of crisis. Newsline, as has already been seen, described anti-semitism as a 'trump-card' which the Tories have 'up their sleeves'. In other words, anti-semitism is viewed as some form of magic trick that is kept hidden until a period of capitalist crisis, and is then used to divide the workers—who apparently have not been previously divided by it.

This is a nonsense. People are already divided by reactionary ideas of all kinds. Anti-semitism exists in daily life. It does not need a conspiracy of the bourgeoisie to convince people. Anti-semitism may be, in Marxist terms, ruling class ideology, in that it arguably serves the interests of any particular governing class. However, it has also developed a relative and extremely strong autonomy over the last two millennia. It is genuinely believed by all classes.

One of the reasons why Nazism was so successfully expansionist right through Europe and into parts of the USSR, was because there was a large measure of popular support for the anti-semitism that was explicitly central to it. For instance, Polish Jewry was under increasing attack in the years prior to the Nazi take-over, and at least one village to which Jews returned after the Nazi defeat suffered massacres in 1945. The myth that Jews went like sheep to the slaughter is parallel to the myth that the mass of the local populace throughout Europe was either ignorant or immobilised through fear. The holocaust had popular support in many places in the occupied countries. Indeed, complicity in the 'final solution' is now a national scandal in France today.

However, just as people like G. Sacks tried to win anti-semites to the anti-fascist cause, so today some of the Left seek to deny the popular appeal of the Nazi anti-semitism. They do this by disputing the centrality of anti-semitism to Nazi theory. Thus Ed Rosen in his article in Peace News wrote that anti-semitism was a "sideshow" with Nazism. He also stated that "both before and after Hitler came to power anti-semitism was never a mass movement in Germany" and that it occurred only "periodically" under the Nazis. The assumption is that the Nazis did not believe their own anti-semitic ideology. It was just a tactic—and not an important one—that could be turned on and off like a tap. This is almost the 'reductio ad absurdam' of the denial of the mass appeal of the ideology of anti-semitism as an explanation of the world. To present this ideology as a tactical 'invention' by fascist demagogues to divide the workers, simply misunderstands the depths of its roots.

Moreover, behind this lies a completely cynical amoralism which exists today with respect to the struggle by Left groups against anti-black racism. The suggestion is that racism of any kind is not to be opposed for its own sake, but because it divides the class. Socialist ideologues are apparently immune to it by definition. Within the class, it is simply an 'error'. The logical conclusion of this is that Jewish people, along with everyone else, should not be fighting anti-semitism because it is anti-Jewish, but because it divides the class! Indeed, A.M. Wall actually did say that in the struggle against fascism ... "It was necessary for the Jews not to talk of themselves as Jews" as this was somehow divisive. There is another logical conclusion to this: where there are no Jews, or where all Jews have been massacred and there is no longer a danger of class division, then presumably anti-semitism is permissible.

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The Non-Jewish Question

2006-11-28T18:33:00.000-08:00

The few serious contributions by socialist writers towards understanding Jews and Jewish history are normally entitled The Jewish Question (Abram Leon's book) or The Jewish Problem (Isaac Deutcher's essay on 'The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Problem'). Also, reactionary writings on this subject have similar titles—for instance Marx's article and Sack's book on The Jewish Question. What is really at issue here is a non-Jewish problem. It is a non-Jewish problem every time a Jew on the Left comes out as Jewish and is immediately requested—with grave suspicion by the person making the request—to give their position on ... zionism. No questions are ever asked, either on a personal or a political level, about other aspects of Jewish identity or Jewish culture, or anything that might conceivably be positive about being Jewish. Every single contemporary quotation referred to in this book originates either in articles by the Left on zionism, or alternatively in articles by the Left responding to criticism of anti-semitism by Jewish socialists.

Non-Jews have an independent responsibility to face up to the power of anti-semitism in all its aspects—including anti-semitism within the Left. It should not always be up to Jews to take the initiative. The tragedy is that much of the socialist tradition, far from being a liberating force, is actually part of the problem.

It is unfortunately true that many of the criticisms made in this pamphlet can be made of the Left in all its activities—and not just in relation to Jews.

Generally speaking, the Left has a hierarchical view of oppression: it ignores questions of culture; it is threatened by separatist organisations; it has an ignorance of history in general and of its own history in particular. In a sense this book is merely a detailed examination of these matters through the specific illustration of how Jews are perceived. There are Jewish socialist organisations which are trying to (re)create an unoppressive socialist tradition in this country. As Jews we hope we have particular experiences that can enrich this. However, this book also has a very particular purpose. This is to try and make sense of the recurring examples of anti-semitism on the Left, and to show that they form a coherent pattern, based on the notion of the Jewish conspiracy. It is intolerable that the socialist movement has never been prepared to look at its anti-semitism in a self-critical way.

Moreover, there are four specific factors which stand out in this pattern and which illuminate it:

The first is the extraordinary popularism within the Left—in which it appeals to 'common sense' views that often make it genuinely indistinguishable from fascism. A lot of the writings quoted in this pamphlet, about Jews at the turn of the century, and about zionism, could have come directly from anti-semitic journals. The result is that papers like Socialist Worker actually print anti-Jewish letters by known fascists.

This book is primarily about Left anti-semitism in Britain. Nonetheless the examples drawn from this country are by no means unique. The tendency to rely upon popular anti-semitism can be seen as intruding into the whole tradition of European socialism. Robert Wistrich in his book Socialism and the Jews has recently shown its prevalence in the early social democratic parties in Austria and Germany at the turn of this century. These parties were mass organisations. Their extreme popularism can be seen most clearly by the fact that many of their leaders welcomed the victory of Karl Lueger's notoriously anti-semitic Christian Social party, in the 1895 Vienna municipal elections, as a prelude to the anti-capitalist revolution. Incidentally, an article by Derek Mahon in the New Statesman (which supports the Labour Party) has recently described Lueger as a "socialist" (9.9.83). At the same time, Jews who raised the question of anti-semitism were accused of pleading a 'special case'. For instance, in 1911 the myth of the blood libel reappeared in Russia when Menahem Beilis was accused of the ritual murder of a Christian boy. This led to violent anti-Jewish propaganda. Victor Adler, the leader of the Austrian socialists, rejected requests to hold protest meetings in favour of Beilis and was reported as saying "Jews and more Jews—as if the whole world revolved around the Jewish question".

The 'Left' is obviously not a monolithic block. It has distinct strands and differing traditions. Left anti-semitism, though, has never been confined to anyone particular socialist tradition—as well as being found within Marxism and the reformism of social democracy, it also appears within the anarchist movements. The following information is taken from E. Silberner's article on Bakunin in Historia Judaica 1952. Bakunin is regarded as a hero by most anarchists because of his theoretical writings and practical activities. In fact he was a complete anti-semite. He wrote that:

"The whole Jewish world constitutes one exploiting sect, one people of leeches, one single devouring parasite closely and intimately bound together not only across national boundaries but also across all divergencies of political opinion".

Bakunin also attacked Marx for being Jewish—just as Marx attacked Lassalle and Lassalle attacked himself!

Indeed, Bakunin's own justification of anarchy was remarkable in that it was founded explicitly on his own belief in the world Jewish conspiracy. He saw both capitalism and communism as being based on centralised state structures at all times controlled by Jews. He wrote

"This Jewish world today stands in large part at the disposal of Marx on the one hand and of Rothschild on the other. This may seem strange. What common ground can there be between communism and the big bank? Oh! but the communism of Marx wants a powerful governmental centralisation and where this exists there must inevitably be a central State Bank and where such a bank exists the parasitic Jewish nation, which speculates in the labor of the people will always find means to exist".

In addition to this the Narodnaia Volia (the People's Will Party) of Russia—a pre-Bolshevik organisation with strong Bakuninist and popularist tendencies—completely adapted to anti-semitism to the point of fermenting pogroms. Its executive committee issued on September 1st 1881 a proclamation urging the masses to revolt against the 'Jewish Tsar'.

"Only blood", declared the proclamation, "will wash away the people's affliction. You (Russian peasants) have already begun to rebel against the Jews. You are doing well. For soon over the whole Russian land there will arise a revolt against the Tsar, the lords and the Jews. It is good that you, too, will be with us".

In conclusion, Jewish socialists who are today trapped within the innumerable double-binds of Left anti-semitism and who often doubt their own stability as voices crying in the dark should take heart. Left anti-semitism is not a figment of anyone's imagination and it is not an 'obsession' to protest against it. There have always been Jews within the socialist movement who have protested and not let their pain remain secret or their anger unheard. Theodore Rothstein, then a member of the Social Democratic Federation, condemned that organisation's anti-semitism as an "indelible burning stain" on socialism (quoted by Emest Bax in Justice 28.10.1899). Likewise, another member of the S.D.F., M. Shayer, wrote to Justice saying that the politics of that paper would ensure that "Jews have no guarantee that they will enjoy peace and equality even in a socialist regime" (7.10.1899). Though these protests have been long buried ... we should revive them and swim against the tide in order to create a genuine socialism.

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Bibliographical Sources

2006-11-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

Writing this book has been like both a voyage and a detective series. I have had to follow up references from many different sources. In doing so I have learned a lot. I am aware that one of the difficulties in discussing the matter of Left anti-semitism is a certain shared ignorance amongst socialists, Jewish or otherwise, of the historical material and where to locate it. In fact anyone who claims to be an 'expert' in this area is just a fool. It was to help encourage other people to read the material that I have encountered that I have included the references in the main body of the text.

However, some people have suggested that I compile a list of the main books (as opposed to periodicals or newspapers) that I had the pleasure (or lack of) to read. These were

J.Buckman, Immigrants and the Class Struggle—The Jewish immigrant in Leeds, Manchester University Press, 1983

E. Butler, The International Jew, Adelaide 1948

N. Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967

L. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-45, Pelican, 1979

I. Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew, Merlin Press, 1981

L. Gartner, The Jewish Immigrant in England, Simon Publications, 1973

C. Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876-1939, Edward Arnold, 1979

J. Jacobs, Out of the Ghetto, Calverts North Star Press, 1978

K. Kautsky, Are the Jews a Race? Greenwood Press (Connecticut), 1972

G. Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England 1918-1939, Macmillan, 1978

A. Leon, The Jewish Question, Pathfinder Press, 1970

H. Lumer (ed.), Lenin on the Jewish Question, International Publishers (New York), 1974

K. Marx, On the Jewish Question—This is included in Early Writings on Marx, Penguin, 1975

R. Miles and A. Phizacklea (ed.), Racism and Political Action in Britain, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979

L. Trotsky, On the Jewish Question (a collection of writings), Pathfinder Press, 1970

B. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, Clarendon Press, 1979

N. Weinstock, Zionism the False Messiah, Ink Links, 1979

A. White, The Modern Jew, London, 1899

A. White (ed.), The Destitute Alien in Great Britain, London, 1892

W. Wilkins, The Alien Invasion, London, 1892

R. Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews, Associated University Press, 1982

R. Wistrich (ed.), The Left Against Zion, Vallentine Mitchell, 1979

Acknowledgements for photographs
2-5, Rollins Collection at Modern Records Centre, Warwick University.
7, Manchester Studies Unit, Manchester Polytechnic (special thanks to Don)

Obituary for Steve Cohen (ZT"L)

2006-11-14T03:14:00.000-08:00

Steve Cohen (ZT"L) died peacefully on Sunday 8th March 2009

Steve was a member of the Jewish Socialists Group, the International Marxist Group, and a leading campaigner for migrants rights.

David Rosenberg wrote:

“I knew Steve from 1978 when he joined the JSG, and one of the first impacts he had on us, and later on other groups within the left and anti-racist movements, was the importance of the history of immigration control.

He did a lot of original research unearthing aspects of the 1905 Aliens Act and from this research he wrote about how every key principle of racist immigration practice and the machinery to implement them, was enshrined in that first act of 1905 - the idea that some people were considered “undesirable”, the use of medical criteria to exclude, and powers of deportation after people were permitted entry.

In our last conversation a couple of months back Steve was talking about an article he planned to submit for Jewish Socialist about Jewish funerals - he was having grief with the jewish authorities trying to arrange a Jewish humanist funeral. The article never came and I hadn’t realised how quickly his already severe condition had deteriorated. In the end - no funeral - he decided to leave his body for medical research.

His impact on the group was especially in the area of campaigning around immigration and refugees - something he was still doing days before his death. His pioneering research on the Aliens Act was the inspiration behind an exhibition we prepared in 1985 that linked the reaction to Jewish immigration to that against later waves of immigrants and refugees. He was a consistent and unbelievably tireless champion of the victims of racist immigrataion and refugee legislation.

Of course there were areas where we had genuine disagreement - such as the framework for understanding antisemitism on the left, and on the Israel-Palestine conflict where he was a much more convinced one-stater than I have ever been, but I will remember the times in which we strove together for common socialist and anti-racist goals more than I will remember times of disagreement.

He was and a warm and humorous comrade and a great campaigner. Condolences to family and friends.
Koved zayn ondenk.

Please take the time to read Steve''s landmark work on the history of immigration controls, anti-semitism in the labour movement and the historical failures of the Left to develop genuine anti-racist stance with regard to anti-semitism...

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Writing as a Jewish traitor - An imagined disputation with my comrades on anti Semitism by Steve Cohen

2006-10-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

For forty five years as a Jew and a revolutionary Marxist I have been waiting for this debate, this disputation. The time lag it itself revealing – revealing of the Left’s refusal to get beyond platitudes, often nasty platitudes, in discussing Jews. Let me say what this is not about. It is not about Zionism. Rather it is about the anti-Zionism of fools. And it is about the anti-imperialism of fools. I speak as an anti-imperialist. Over a century ago August Bebel, the German Marxist, coined the phrase “the socialism of fools” to describe those early socialists who equated world capitalism and world Jewry. In my view much modern anti-Zionism contains caricatures and myths which are equally foolish and equally dangerous. They are both a slur on Jews, all Jews, and do nothing whatsoever to advance the absolutely justifiable struggle of the Palestinians to become free of Israeli hegemony. And yes I think anti-Zionism and anti-semitism should be conceptually and politically kept absolutely apart. However it is the result of the dominant discourse on the modern left that they have crashed into each other and joined up. This discourse is joined up anti-politics at its most grotesque.

What makes these anti-politics even more grotesque is that prior to the triumph of zionism (and the establishment of Israel) there was another anti-semitic slur (often found in Stalinist mythology) – that of the rootless, cosmopolitan Jew, that is the Jew without a country of his/her own and owing loyalty to no other state. So it is damned if you do and it’s damned if you don’t. The language of damnation, of fire and hell water, is itself absolutely appropriate coming from a Christian-imperialist tradition which is responsible for anti-Semitism (as it is for Islamophobia)

As I understand it, the emergence of idiotic anti-Zionism as being dominant within anti-Semititic discourse found within the (non-Stalinist) left began in earnest after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the consequent Sabra-Chatilla massacre (actually committed by Christian Phalangists) . In 1985 I wrote a small book on the subject of Left anti-Semitism – That’s Funny You Don’t look Anti-Semitic (which is now posted on the web). This looked historically at how there has always been a significant current within the left who have adopted conspiracy theories about Jews. Only a few pages of this were devoted to the issue of anti-Zionism. Now I feel a whole library would be insufficient to house what is required. The real turning point were the Twin Towers destruction and the subsequent aggression against Iraq, both which have resulted in a global anti-Semitic backlash. Twin Towers is perceived as a response (legitimate or illegitimate) to Zionism and the invasion of Iraq as being manipulated by Zionism. Of course neither of these events were in any way the responsibility of Jews or of Zionism. But even if they were they would not justify an anti-Semitic response. Even the real horrors of Zionism (such as the non-stop invasions of Gaza and the West Bank) are no such justification This is blaming Jews for anti-semitism. An outrageous concession to this oldest ,or certainly the most persistent, of all racisms.

Let me here acknowledge my imaginary opponent in this imaginary debate. He is Alan Hart who has been advertised as speaking at a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign meeting in Manchester on the subject of “Zionism, the real enemy of the Jews”. At its best I find such a title foolish. At its worst I consider it politically dangerous and in its political danger to encapsulate the worst elements of foolish anti-zionism. It is the title of your talk that has provoked the present debate. Zionism is not the real enemy of the Jews. It is the real enemy of the Palestinians. The enemy of the Jews is anti-semitism. To confuse the two in this way is precisely to confuse anti-semitism and anti-zionism…which the left is continually accusing Zionists of doing! Also if the title is implying Zionism created or increases anti-semitism then it simply reproduces the myth that Jews themselves are responsible for anti-semitism. But hallo, Alan. I don’t take it personally. Only politically. Also I do not claim that you necessarily hold the totality of the views I describe below. What I do assert is that the title of your talk fits within the terrible anti logic of these views which are continually expressed in one form or another by foolish anti-zionists. As such I see you as a representative of the latter but I am sure there are far worse representatives.

Let me state my position on Zionism as a political movement. Surprisingly it is doubtless at least in its basics the same as yours. I am opposed to it. I am opposed to it because of its racism towards the Palestinians. Because of its dispossession of the Palestinians. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, bad that you can tell me about Zionism that I would even start to justify. What is more I am opposed o the state of Israel. And I am opposed to the suggested two state “solution”. If anything I am for a “no state” solution - that of a federated Socialist Middle East. I am opposed to Israel because I am opposed to all exclusivist states. Israel is an exclusivist state. Therefore I am opposed to it. I am a kind of anarcho Marxist on this question. I am for the absolute right of a law of return for Palestinians (and Jews). As a diaspora Jew I am absolutely proud to hold no allegiance to any country on the planet – including Israel. I am proud to be both a Jewish traitor and a traitor of the Jews.

In fact I regard the very idea of a Jewish state as quite ludicrous. Can a state be circumcised? Can it eat kosher meat? Can it be barmitzvahed? And I feel the same way about the idea of a Muslim state – such as Pakistan. And I guess this is where we start to differ. I refuse to exceptionalise Israel. I am against exclusivist states. But all states are exclusivist, certainly all bourgeois states. It is their nature. They cannot be otherwise. The British state is a prime example. It is defined, and defines itself, by its immigration laws – who can come and who can stay and who has what rights (if any) dependent on immigration status. Want to define Israel as an apartheid state? Fine – as long as you are prepared to do the same for the UK. Want to organise a boycott of Israeli universities ? Fine - as long as you are prepared to do the same for British universities , who are up to their necks in the enforcement of immigration controls. Open your eyes to the fees discrimination against “overseas” students – who can be deported after extraction of fees on completion of studies. Open your eyes to the vetting by university authorities of every single potential employee to ensure they have the “correct” immigration status. This in addition to the paid research or training contracts that I have been informed some educational institutions have with the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. Want to demand the “dismantling” (whatever that means) of the Israeli state? Great! I’m for the smashing by the workers of all bourgeois states and their replacement with workers democracy. This is elementary Marxism. Which is why I am for unity between Palestinian and Jewish workers against their own rotten (mis)leaders. What I am not for, what I am against, are clerics waving Kalashnikovs in their attempt to recreate another theocratic monstrosity. The exceptionalisation of Israel has lead to the utterly demeaning slogan on anti-war demonstrations in this country of “We are all Hizbollah now”. Well count me out of that one. Hizbollah is a clerical organisation which peddles the notorious Protocols of Zion – the nineteenth century forgery that reiterates the claim that Jews control the world (which is itself the central tenet of anti-semitism). It is a clerical organisation whose chief political and military backer is Iran – whose leader is a holocaust denier. It is a clerical organisation which ultimately has no interest in a Palestinian state as such but seeks to recreate the Caliphate ( which belongs to Islam’s golden age of philosophy, science art and medicine - an age long past like the age of all religious contstructs). This exceptionalisation of Israel is anti-enlightenment. It is spiralling political debate and practice into the most obscurantist period of history. It is replacing politics by religion of the most mindless variety (is there any other?). As a traitor of the Jews I am also an atheist – and therefore opposed to Jewish religious practice in any guise. But who are paraded (like puppets) at the head of marches organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign? It is (male) members of the Naturei Karta sect. Sure these people are opposed to Israel. Why? Because the messiah, the real one, the Jewish one, has yet to arrive – and until he arrives then a Jewish state is sacrilege! When he (these people sure are not looking for a female messiah) arrives then doubtless Naturei Karta members will be queuing up for their share of Kalashnikovs, will be training in the art of suicide bombings and will be promising each other their allocation of virgins in heaven or other such comparable inducements (an indefinite supply of bagels and lox?) and may even be piloting planes into the architecture of Manhattan (“we can do it for you cheap – we use only low cost airlines”). I joke because the only alternative is to throw up and be sick. And all this identification with religious obscurantism is supposed to pass as modern politics? And all this lauding of religious fundamentalism is supposed to be beyond criticism?

As an opponent of Israel I will not exceptionalise Israel And as an opponent of Zionism I do not, will not, demonise Zionism. Demonisation reverts to the popular inspired myths of medieval Europe. It is the dark side of theology – and ultimately there is no other side. It is anti secular. It is anti Semitism. Jew as the hidden hand of history. Jew as the devil. Jew as the killer of god. The demonisation of zionism simply transfers this to the killer of all god’s people. It is the twenty first century equivalent of the blood libel accusation – the Jew as the murderer of Christian children and the drinker of their blood in order to acquire super-natural powers. This fantastic accusation has been responsible for a thousand years of pogroms. As Lenny Bruce used to joke – don’t the statute of limitations apply here? Just as the Jew of medieval Europe (and then Nazi Europe – there is a direct line) was depicted as all powerful, as being in possession of life’s secret mysteries, mysteries inaccessible to mere mortals but which determine the life and death (usually death) of all mortals - so Zionism is depicted as a supra national force, more powerful politically than any other force on earth, and the cause of all war – from Iraq, to Afghanistan. Next stop Iran! And it doesn’t need to do this in its own name! It operates as the modern hidden hand – manipulating the lesser powers of Yankee and British imperialism. Armageddon in the New York sun? The destruction of the modern pyramids of the Twin Towers? None of this would have happened if zionism wasn’t occupying the West Bank. This is the hidden hand twice removed. And the hidden hand operates under a supposed central zionist ideological imperative – namely that Jews are a superior people, the real master race (in fact whatever the undoubted material wrongs done to the Palestinians, Zionism – unlike many other nationalisms – does not contain any such premise) If only Zionism would disappear then peace would reign on earth. The Messiah would have returned (the Christian one – the Jewish one hasn’t yet been)! I’m tempted to say to my supposedly secular comrades in a paraphrase of the only language they appear to understand, biblical language (the language of the “New”, not the “Old”, Testament), “Forgive them Marx they know not what they do - or say.”

As an opponent of Israeli nationalism I will not be party to another calumny. One which puts the Zionist, the Jew, in league with what might accurately be described as the actual satanic force of our own age – Hitlerism – in order to validate the establishment of the future state of Israel. However show me the evidence of ziomist co-operation/collaboration (there is a difference) with the Nazis! I’ve seen it. I believe it. Use Lenni Brenner’s “Zionism in the age of dictators” as your bible. I’m not going to advocate burning it. For the sake of my argument – the argument that many unpleasant zionists said or did many unpleasant things - I’m prepared to believe every dot and comma (though in practice he gets many dots and commas wrong). And the rot set in well before Nazism. Quiz time. Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that “each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews”? No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later President of the State of Israel. As an opponent of immigration controls this is hardly a position I’m going to support. But then Weitzman was a Zionist, it defined his political essence. You would hardly have expected him to have said otherwise. I’m not a zionist and it doesn’t define my politics.

Again there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can say or evidence that you can produce which will force me into denying the conduct of some Zionists (and non Zionists) during the holocaust itself. Why should I deny it if it is true? Am I responsible for it? Of course not. No more than you are. Did the revisionist (right wing) Zionist Jacobs Gen collaborate (there is no other word) with the Nazis in becoming the overseer of the Vilna ghetto in Lithuania? For sure. Did he have fellow-collaborators who were constituted as the Judenrat – the local Jewish leadership installed by the Nazis? Absolutely correct. Did Gens turn in to the Nazis the leader of the Vilna underground resistance, Yitzhak Wittenberg? Yes. Were there the equivalent of Gens in other ghettos. No doubt. I can give as yet another grotesque example Adam Czerniakow, President of the Association of Jewish Artisans, who headed the Warsaw Judenrat. Chaim Rumkowski of Lodz was perhaps unique in being referred to as “King Chaim” by his ‘subjects’ (the Nazis would have described him somewhat differently) and putting his portrait on the ghetto post Were Judenrats established in other ghettos? Definitely. With similar betrayals? Doubtless. Let us forget for the moment the ghettos (though the memory of their resistance needs to be preserved). Did Rudolf Kastner, a leading Hungarian Zionist, do a deal with Adolf Eichmann in June 1944 where the Jewish elite were allowed to escape to Switzerland for a substantial sum of money – leaving another half million trapped under the Nazi jackboot, most to perish at Auschwitz-Birkenau? This is central to Jim Allen’s play Perdition. It happened. Was part of the deal the concealment by Kastner of Eichmann’s plans to transport the Hungarian Jewish masses to their murder? This is a matter of legitimate and genuine historic controversy. But of Kastner I’m prepared to believe about anything. Want to mire yourself further in the role of Kastner and similar figures? Read “Perfidy” by his American contemporary, the Hollywood screen writer Ben Hecht. OK forget this stuff. Why don’t we talk about the Kapos? The concentration camp inmates used to control the other inmates. You needn’t lecture us Jews on the perfidy of collaboration. We have become experts in it (and resisting it).

What does all this show? What does it prove? One thing it absolutely does not prove is the one thing that it is continually cited as proving – that the Nazis and the Zionist formed some unholy bond. I use the word “unholy” because only the mindset of medieval European theological obscurantism can do justice to the assertion. The supposed bond was not just that in some ways both were nationalist movements. The supposed bond was not just that in some way they both shared a common aspiration – the Nazis didn’t want Jews in Europe and the Zionists wanted them in Palestine. Even these assertions are grotesque caricatures. There was absolutely no symmetry between Nazism and Zionism. Crucially (again I use the language of the cross deliberately) the former didn’t want Jews simply out of Europe – they wanted them out of the world. Indeed given the Nazis mad apocalyptic view of Jewish domination they wanted them out of the universe. It does not require anti-Zionists to (correctly) point out that in the event of a Nazi victory then Palestine would have been no safe haven. No! The real supposed bond that (mis)informs this discourse was that both the Nazis and the Zionists wanted the holocaust and in some way (the way of the hidden hand) they actually joined together in creating it – the Nazis because they hated/despised/feared Jews and the Zionists because they were prepared to go to any lengths/sink to any depths to see created a Jewish state. Once more I can only scream out against such an assertion “Forgive them they do not know what they say”.

Like all accusations of Blood Libel the idea that the Zionists were a party to engineering the holocaust is a lie. Simply that. A lie. But then Jews are used to being assailed with lies – not least in respect to the holocaust. What about the lie that Jews went like sheep to their slaughter? Kind of misses out on the fact that until 1944 the only civilian uprisings against the Nazis took place in the ghettos – of which the Warsaw ghetto uprising was only the biggest. The real truth is the truth of the non-Jewish sheep who observed passively the bloody construction and then the even more bloody deconstruction of each ghetto. However the assertion that Zionists were actively instrumental in the genocide is the biggest lie since the lies spread by Nazis about the Jews and these were the biggest lies popularised since medieval Europe. Actually if there were added together all anti-semitic lies of the last thousand years they probably could not equate to the accusation that the Zionists wanted/wishes/willed the destruction of six million of their compatriots in order to realise their own political project. It is insane. And it is promulgated openly by people on the left who in my opinion are politically insane. Let me give you just one example – if only so you can reflect on the origin of such anti-ideas, such anti-history. In 1988 a certain Ralph Shoenman wrote his “Hidden History of Zionism” – a title itself deliberately reminiscent of the supposed Jewish “hidden hand” of history. The book has a chapter on Zionism and the Jews which itself contains subheadings which jump from “Zionism and Fascism” to “Collaborating with the Nazis” to “Embracing the SS”. This Ralph Shoenman had previously been a founder of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign – in which myself and hundreds of thousands of others asserted ourselves as revolutionaries. Since then Shoenman has developed more and more bizarre conspiracy views – from who killed Kennedy to responsibility for twin towers (according to the internet he believes it was Mossad – the Israeli secret service). Jean Paul Sartre (who played a central role in the international defence of Vietnam) is reported to have said that he was so sickened by Shoenman that he had to gargle after speaking to him. Vomiting would have perhaps been a healthier alternative. When it comes to the Zionist/fascism equation I think it reasonable to say you can always judge an idea by the company it keeps. And I wouldn’t be seen dead with Shoenman. I don’t think you should either.

So what does it show – the quote from Weitzman , the co-operation or collaboration or betrayals of the Kastners, the Gens the Rumkowskis? As a revolutionary Marxist opposed to all these people I’d respond as follows. First as I’ve already hinted they were Israeli nationalists – even before Israel existed. And they represented the full continuum of that nationalism from Left to Right. As such they cut deals, acted without principle, you name it they did it – just like all nationalists. It is the nature of the beast. And nationalism – in my view all nationalism – is a beast – and as such ultimately racist. The difference is that no other nationalism has been demonised in this way. And unlike other nationalisms it has its own unique language of abuse hurled at it. The language is not even racism! It is not even Israeli nationalism! No! It is Zionism! This is not the Zionism of diaspora Jewry in its overwhelming support for the Israeli enterprise (a support which only became the majority position post 1945). No! It is the language of Zionism as itself the pre-eminent global force - as the force that literally controls the globe.

Second the idea that Zionism, or all Zionists, or the majority of Zionists, or all the Zionist leadership, or the majority of the Zionist leadership, collaborated with the Nazis is pathologically, clinically, crazy. It is crazy because many of the leading ghetto fighters were, like it or lump it, Zionists. And they were operating under their various leaderships (most of whom hated each other – but again that is the nature of the beast) of left and Right. I’ve no idea of respective numbers, Zionists, non-Zionists,anti-Zionists. Who cares? The issue lies not numbers. So Abba Kovner who died in 1987 was a famous Israeli poet. He was a Kibbutznik, a member of the Israeli left (MAPAM) and the Youth movement Hashomer Hatzir (Young Guard). He was also a leading partisan in the Vilna ghetto and then when that struggle was lost in the woods outside Vilna. And after the war he and his comrades returned to the killing fields in order to exact vengeance on those Nazis they could find who were responsible for the holocaust. Hardly a great advert for the thesis that Zionists co-operated with Nazis in the holocaust. In the Warsaw ghetto uprising the main resistance force, the ZOB (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or Jewish Fighting Organization or Yidische Kampf Organizatzion) was a united front of mainly left wing Zionists such as Hashomer Hatzair and Poelai Zion and anti-zionist Bundists. However there was also another group of heroic fighters not associated with the ZOB for ideological reasons. These were organised within the ZZW (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy or Jewish Military Union). The ZZW was in essence the armed (anti fascist) defence squad of the most extreme Right-wing of the zionist movement –the self styled Revisionists which post-war found expression in the Irgun (which was responsible in part for the notorious April 1948 massacre in the Palestinian village of Dir Yassin) and later spawned Menachem Begin as Israeli prime Minister in 1977. The fact that the Revisionists would not have hesitated to have attacked/imprisoned/ murdered those of us taking place in this disputation is irrelevant to the present argument. What is relevant is that they fought the Nazis within Nazi controlled Europe. And of course no-one knows, no-one will ever know (because it is hard enough to get into the heads of the living let alone the dead), the number of zionists not affiliated to any organisation who participated in the numerous ghetto uprisings in the numerous ghettos. And Zionist participation in all these uprisings exposes yet another lie – the lie that Zionism views anti-semitism as some form of historical inevitability, rather like disease but a disease to which only Jews are prone, which cannot be resisted but must be accommodated to via the creation of a Jewish homeland which can then operate literally as a cordon sanitaire.. In fact given the historic longevity of anti Semitism, given that Jews are often isolated in opposing it, it often incorrectly has the appearance of inevitability. However the resistance by Zionists to the Nazis exposes as a nonsense the notion that inherent within zionism as a political philosophy is the irresistibility of Jew-hatred. I guess what Nazism shows is that Jews can’t do it (defeat anti-semitism) on their own. But at least don’t eradicate from history their brave attempt to try.

Third there is the question of the actual betrayers – the Kasteners, the Gens the members of the Judenraat. And the Kapos. Well for myself I hope I would have joined the resistance and murdered these bastards where possible. And I hope you would have as well. The closest I got (and it wasn’t close at all) was pissing on the wall of the former headquarters of Jacob Gen’s judenrat in Vilna. But this was in 1997 and it was born out of disgust and the need for a piss. As it happens Kastner was assassinated but only after a long delay – in 1957 in Israel where he had become a national figure in the Labour Party. The motives of the assasnation are themselves unclear – whether it was the anger of the survivor who pulled he trigger (Zeev Eckstein) or the desire of the secret service to keep secret Kastner’s wartime role. However an essential point here is that the role played by all these betrayers was not determined by their Zionist affiliations. Their Zionism was incidental. So Ben Hecht who condemned Kastner was himself a Revisionist Zionist. Lenni Brenner, in looking at the roles of Czerniakow in Warsaw and Rumkowski in Lodz says “They were not, in any way, authorised representatives of the Zionist movement”. In fact he omits to say that Rumkowski had been formally expelled from the Zionist movement just prior to the war but for intra party reasons and there appears to be some historic dispute as to whether Czerniakow actually was a Zionist. By January 1941, the Zionist parties - General Zionists, Revisionists, Right Poalei Zion and Hitachdut - had formed a coalition against Rumkowski. However Brenner then goes on acknowledge that “Not all the councils (judenrat) were headed by Zionists; some were headed by assimilationalist intellectuals or rabbis and even, in one city (Piotrkow), by a Bundist”. So what we are seeing here is not a question of Zionism. It is a question of leadership – or rather the crisis of misleadership. What we are seeing here is the co-option of a (relatively) privileged elite being used to police the mass of the community on behalf of the Nazi overlords. Don’t you recognise this? Is not this the traditional modus operandi of the state in controlling its marginalised members? It didn’t require Nazis to invent it – they just took it to its most extreme form. Social democratic (ie anti-social, anti-democratic) Britain is a master of the technique. Ever since the Jewish masses came here following the 1880s Tsarist pogroms, the British state has backed and encouraged an intermediate layer (in particular the self-proclaimed Board of Deputies of British Jews) to control and depoliticise the community. I have appropriated a Yiddish vocabulary to describe this process – the process of macherism. A macher is a self-appointed leader and collectively these Quislings are the tribe of the macherites. And now is not the British state grooming a Muslim leadership to take on exactly an analogous role – in particular the role of controlling and vetting and policing and depoliticising the angry youth of the community in the name of anti-terrorism? Is not the Muslim Association of Britain the vehicle for the Muslim machers? They and the Board of Deputies of British Jews deserve each other. As individuals some may or may not be prepared to become members of a future judenrat or muslimrat under a fascist regime. I do not know.However neither are a front for Zionism.

The psychology of our modern machers is one where they exist in order to exercise petty power and accumulate pathetic “honours”. They don’t even recognise themselves for the puppets that they are. Called Cohen or Khalid? We despise you! But want to become a Sir or a Lord? Well declare yourself a self-elected leader! Control your own community! Macherism in Nazi occupied Europe raises far more acute moral and philosophical issues which foolish anti-zionists simply ignore. The issues are more acute because the situation was far more grave. Ignoring them means ignoring the real plight of the Jews abandoned to their own fate in the Nazi Gotterdammerung. I am not unaware of the sharp moral dilemmas posed by and for even members of the judenrats – some of whom did not choose to be members but were forced to do so by the Nazis. Retrospective moral judgement can become all too easy. Maybe the Czerniakows and Rumkowskis and all the other machers were into power and prestige whilst “their” ghettos burned around them. Maybe they were just into saving their own skins (as though the Nazis had any regard for their lives! They all died. They were just commodities). What made them bastards - what made them worthy of being assasinated was, as far as I’m concerned, two things. First they were to a greater or lesser extent continually prepared to surrender Jewish lives. Second they were only “elevated” to their status in order to disrupt the activities of the ghetto partisans and to betray the ghetto fighters. Third they did have a choice, however difficult for those forced into becoming judenrat members – and this was to join the ghetto resisters. Again I am quite prepared to accept that there was often a big difference in the behaviour of the ghetto machers – and the extent of their moral responsibility differed. For instance Czerniakow seems to have been the most genuine and tormented of all these characters. When the mass deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka death camp began in July 1942 he committed suicide rather than be a party to them – his suicide note read “I can no longer bear all this. My act will prove to everyone what is the right thing to do."(in spite of this Czerniakow was condemned by Emmanual Ringelblum, the brave historian of the Warsaw ghetto who was executed by the Nazis ) . However I am quite prepared to accept as truthful their own justifications for their actions. This was that they were actually trying to save lives (in the case of Czerniakow I do believe it – he seems to have been the most genuine and tormented of all these characters). The same justification appears time and time again – it is better that a thousand should die (or in the case of Kastner –half a million should die) so that a hundred should survive (such apologias clearly are inapplicable to the camp Kapos – most of whom were anyhow not even Jewish let alone Zionists). Personally I find such an exercise repulsive. Who chooses the thousand? Who chooses the hundred? But…. where do you stand on this one? Imagine you yourself or someone close to you were chosen as one of the hundred? What would you have done? I can’t say what I would have done. Hopefully still assassinated the macher making the choices. Because in the end I am one hundred per cent for the ghetto fighters against the machers. But I don’t know what I would have done if, for instance, my children had been one of the hundred.But I don’t know. However the point here is that these people, these machers, these scum, were not revolutionary proletarians. Their world view was not one of resistance, of struggle from below. Rather it was one of doing deals from above. So they did deals. This was their class role, which to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Malvalio, they were born into, assumed or had thrust on them. So why expect otherwise? But what is for sure – these deals were not cut in furtherance of zionism. To assert otherwise is anti-Semitic slander. On the other hand many of the ghetto fighters were Zionists. So to assert that Zionism rejects struggle against anti-semitism is another slander.

So can I ask you another “what if” question? What if you had been a Jew in Germany/Checkoslovakia/Poland – in fact anywhere in Europe – after the Nazis first came to power in Germany and then proceeded to annex/conquer everything around them? Completely isolated by the historic defeat of the workers movement (thanks to Stalinist betrayals) what would you have done? And even if you weren’t a Jew then what would you suggest Jews should have done? For myself I think (depending where I was living) I would have had to acknowledge that the battle was lost. Resistance by Jews alone was not going to overturn the Nazi monster. Like today’s refugees I would have probably sought escape – and indeed advocated mass escape. Certainly I would not have criticised those who took this position (tragically they were shown to have been historically correct). However there was just one problem. Even at a time when the Nazis may have been prepared to allow such exit yet every other state in the world was imposing immigration controls against Jews. There was no escape route available! Leon Trotsky in his autobiography (My Life) has a chapter entitled “On a planet without a visa” – describing politically and graphically his attempt to secure a refugee visa after he had escaped the Soviet Union. Under the Nazi yoke, or the soon to be impending Nazi yoke, millions were to find themselves on this earth without a visa. A Jew in Germany in May 1939? Fancy a trip to Cuba that might even turn into a world cruise! Then welcome aboard the SS St Louis. Appropriate initials – SS. A private vessel, the St Louis flew the Nazi flag. But at least lives will be saved! Except Cuba, in reneging on a previous promise, refused entry to the passengers. So did the Dominican Republic. So did the USA. As did every country on the planet with a port. So the ship turned round – to disembark the Jews back in Germany. A two-way journey back to hell. Just imagine it. Some passengers imagined it – and jumped overboard to their suicide. Others, lead by Aaron Pozner, staged a failed mutiny. Eventually the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee managed to generate enough publicity so that Britain, France, Holland and Belgium took about one quarter each of the 800 passangers. Many of these who disembarked in the last three countries perished after their subsequent Nazi takeover. On this planet without a visa for Jews there was one possibility of flight – to Palestine. Palestine was then of course under the colonial boot of Britain – which exercised immigration controls there against Jews there as it did in the UK itself. However there was the possibility of clandestine help from other Jews. I would have had no hesitation in seeking refuge there – or helping others get there. I have been to meetings where I have been told this was politically wrong. Wrong because it is the role of socialists to fight oppression where they find it – not flee from it, and not flee from it even where it is irresistable. Well, that would avoid all solidarity with today’s refugees. Wrong because it was and is somehow morally indefensible for a European to assume a right of entry into a “third world” country. Why? Who wrote this text book? I’m for a world without borders. A world where in the 1930s what was required was proletarian solidarity – given by Palestinians as well as Jews – to those seeking refuge in Palestine. Maybe some or many Palestinian workers did offer such solidarity. I don’t know the history. But I also know that as a communist I would have entered Palestine not as a coloniser but with a communist political programme – the same programme of Jewish/Palestinian proletarian unity that I advocate today. In the 1930s this would have meant unity against the Zionist leadership, against the absentee Palestinian landlord class, against the Mufti of Jerusalem and his open support for Hitler and against the British occupying forces. What would you have done, my anti-zionist friends?

The slanders directed against Zionism, either directly or by default, are endless. It is impossible to deal with them all. But here are just more. Some nationalists actually did support the Nazis politically. Others fought alongside them. Even others were party directly to the holocaust. However these were not Zionists! The most vicious and most powerful was undoubtedly the Ustasa movement which ran the puppet State of Croatia (and many of today’s Croatian leadership continue to act as Ustasa apologists). And of course there was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and his followers. Al-Husayni, a leading Palestinian nationalist, met with Hitler personally during the holocaust. He was instrumental in forming specifically Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans. The largest was probably the Bosnian 13th "Handschar" division of over 21,000 men. The list of his crimes appears infinite. But the point I am making here is that none of this perfidy has ever called into question the inherent justice of Croation, Bosnian or Palestinmian nationalism. And I’m certainly not arguing that it should – as far as I’m concerned nationalism can stand or fall on its own terms and these obviously need not be fascistic. What I am arguing is that the double standards at play are fantastic. Zionism is condemned as illegitimate for somehow supporting the Nazi enterprise – which it never did. Other nationalisms, or other nationalist leaders, which did support the holocaust are continued to be seen as legitimate.

And this brings me to another highly dubious point. I am being told more and more that it is politically incorrect to designate this Nazi genocide of the Jews as “the” holocaust. Instead it should simply be called “a” holocaust. Personally for myself I do not mind whether you use a “the” or a “a”. All that I am concerned about is the murder of six million Jews. I am well aware, and equally concerned about, other genocides both under Nazi Germany (of countless gypsies, trade unionists, lesbians, gay men, communists, disabled people….), historically (death through the slave trade, deliberate genocide of the American Indian, Turkish massacre of the Armenians, Stalinist atrocities…) and unto the present (Rwanda, Somalia…). Historically Jews themselves have suffered a thousand years of European pogroms many of which may legitimately be referred to as holocausts (where does one finish and the other start?). So for myself language is irrelevent. Except the challenge to language can itself be highly political. And what concerns me about the emphasis on referring to what happened to Jewry under the Nazis as “a” holocaust is the hidden accusation that Zionists have somehow magnified, exaggerated, inflated (as though any of this were possible) what happened to Jews in order to justify the creation of an illegitimate entity – Israel. At the same time this attack on language seems to be suggesting that Jews are claiming for themselves a unique victimhood. Well, for me, this simply reproduces the dark and medieval image of the “squealing” Jew. I would personally be prepared to argue that what happened to Jewry under fascism was pretty unique. But so what? The idea that Jews have been politically or genetically programmed for victimhood is just another myth. As a Jew I also know something else. Ask all Jews in the world whether they would surrender Israel if retrospectively the events under Nazism could be undone -if the/a holocaust could miraculously be undone. I bet most, maybe all, would gladly give up Israel. But the/a holocaust did happen. And therefore so did Israel.

The Chairperson has passed me a note – “wind up, only 5 minutes left”. I’ve seen a thousand in my lifetime. Anyhow this debate is only imaginary. But I’ll conclude on two points which I hope are provocative (what’s the point of exchanging truisms?). First, I take it as axiomatic that the state of Israel would not have come into existence without the holocaust – it was the holocaust that legitimised (vindicated) its need. And its need was as a refuge from anti Semitism. Of course (and unfortunately) most Jews who sought refuge were not communists. Workers unity has not (yet) materialised. The Palestinians have suffered a terrible wrong. However this terrible wrong should not conceal another truth. This is the uniquely contradictory nature of Zionism – unique because as far as I can see it exists no where else. In fact Zionism contains within itself its own contradiction. And it is this contradiction which renders it such an emotional as well as political firecracker (I know of no other political area where the emotions get raised so high on both sides). On the one hand Zionism is undoubtedly, unquestionably racist towards the Palestinians. Which is why I’m an anti-Zionist. On the other hand it is seen, and I think correctly seen, by most Jews as anti-racist. It is anti-racist in that it was and is a response by Jews to extricate themselves from the racism of anti-semitism. Maybe not your way of fighting racism. Maybe not mine. But anti-racist nonetheless. And the majority of Jews in the world today view Israel as a “bolt-hole” were Nazism to arise again. It is in response to this political contradiction that I have started to assume the somewhat novel self-description of being an “anti-zionist Zionist”. I am an anti-zionist like no other (maybe I exaggerate) in that I refuse to accept anti-zionist myths and untruths. I am a Zionist unlike no other (here I don’t exaggerate) in that I am opposed to the state of Israel. The only way out of this contradiction – a political contradiction not one of my personal pathology – is the unity of Palestinian/Jewish workers within Palestine/Israel combined with a relentless fight against anti Semitism internationally.

My final point is to emphasise my role as a traitor. I no longer see any point in being Jewish. And I aim to give up on it. Not that I feel bad about being a Jew. Just the opposite. Rather I want to become the sort of Jew the anti-Semites warn us against. The cosmopolitan of no fixed identity. And I hope you are willing to surrender your own tribal/ethnic/nationalist/religious identities allegiances. Join me as a traitor to your own traditions. Become cosmopolitans! What I mean by this is that the one phenomenon which in my experience renders this whole debate impossible is communalism. It is the communalism which says (if you are Jewish) – Jew right or wrong. Or if you are Muslim it says – Muslim right or wrong (or if you are Christian it says – fuck you two suckers, we always win anyway). Let me tell you a terrible but true and recent story. I read of a Jewish couple in, I think, London that adopted a child. This was a right-wing Zionist couple. A couple who raised the child to be explicitly racist about and towards Palestinians. When the child grew older he went on a voyage of discovery in search of his birth parents. He discovered them. They were Muslims. And anti-Semites. He has now become an anti -Semite. In the face of this nonsense I want to become unJewish - a person of the world. However to become unJewish means first working through a Jewish identity in order to unidentify. It is all I know. It is my bedrock. The positive image I have is bouncing on a trampoline called “Jewish”. I bounce higher and higher until one day I bounce beyond the power of gravity and become a free-floating human. We should all try it – Jews, Muslims whoever. It sure would make the world a far more energetic place.

Of course this notion of divestment of identity through self-volition is on one level playing with paradoxes. But they are politically important paradoxes. I am constantly shocked by meeting Jewish chauvinists (Jews right or wrong) or Muslim chauvinists (Muslims right or wrong) when their political positions come solely from accident of birth. Again the allusion to trampolines is a fantasy, an image. But (unlike the preposterous notion of yogic flying) I think that politically it is a significant image. However can I bring it back to earth with a very political suggestion. We all agree that anti-semitism and anti-Ziomism should be separate. I have tried as best I can to show that unfortunately they now have become so intertwined as to appear inseparable. The real political task – and one which should unite us all – is to separate them once again. I think that paradoxically the only way to achieve this is to bring together the two issues that underlay both – that is the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the struggle against Jew hatred. I’m suggesting a solidarity movement be built on this basis. In my view such a movement would by definition exclude those across the present huge “communal divide” who adopt either an “Israel right or wrong” or “we are all Hizbullah now” positions. It would challenge the Islamaphobes and the anti-semites (many of whom exist outside the present communal divides) It would allow for the freeing up of the debate in the streets and not just in meetings like this.

In conclusion can I quote another story which may or may not be true. It concerns Noel Coward, the very English actor and playwright. Who was gay. And apparently an anti-semite. He had a lesbian friend. Who was also an anti-semite. At the end of the war there was discovered and released a “black book” the Nazis had prepared. This named those who would be first exterminated on a successful invasion of the UK. Of course the majority were Jews. But it also included Coward and his lesbian friend. And it is she who is reputed to have said to him “Darling – you wouldn’t believe who we would have been seen dead with”. I’ve thought for a long time what this means. And of course what it means politically is the need for unity. Political unity. Unity in struggle against reaction of all sorts. Without unity we are all eventually doomed to enter into the pages of the next black book.

Steve Cohen

Lieberman Camp Plays Anti-Semitism Card… Jewish Dems Not Happy by Mik Moore

2006-07-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

by Mik Moore, JSpot • July 26th, 2006
There has been considerable buzz, particularly among Jewish bloggers, about the accusation by some in the Lieberman camp that anti-semitism is driving support for Ned Lamont.

[According to] Dan Gerstein, a political consultant and informal advisor to the Lieberman campaign, “A lot more Jews voted for Bush than in 2000; it’s a reflection of weakened support among Democrats for Israel and the war on terror.

Mr. Gerstein says he has detected what he calls a “growing strain of anti-Semitism on the far left, which he believes is in part fueling the strident opposition to Mr. Lieberman.

Regardless of who you support in this campaign, it is important to recognize how this accusation of antisemitism by the Lieberman camp could do lasting damage to the Democratic party, and Jewish Dems in particular.

Just as I believe Barack Obama was reinforcing conservative talking points when he said that Democrats should lay off God in the pledge (a true red herring), the accusation that liberal support for Lamont is motivated by anti-semitism has a similar effect: it lends undue credence to an accusation usually made by Republicans. In the fight between the parties over Jewish electoral and financial support, allegations of anti-semitism on the left have been a primary scare tactic used to peel Jews away from their support for Democratic candidates in federal elections.

Yes, there are surely some who oppose Lieberman and support Lamont who are antisemites and are motivated by anti-semitism. Left-wing anti-semitism is real. But the significance of this miniscule minority is being blown all out of proportion for short term electoral gain. Unfortunately, the impact of these exaggerations will be felt long after election day.

The Anti-Defamation League remains unquestionably the leading authority on domestic antisemitism. To get a snapshot of anti-semitism today, visit their website. With the exception of a few on the far left, anti-semitism in America remains a right-wing phenomenon. Neo-nazis, klan members, militias, anti-immigrant vigilantes, Pat Buchanan: all are politically on the far right, not the far left. [As other bloggers have noted, the most vicious act of anti-semitism this year was perpetrated by conservative Christians.] Certain conservatives have spent a good deal of time trying to obscure right-wing anti-semitism by overhyping left-wing anti-semitism. It is dismaying to see Democratic supporters of Joe Lieberman joining this offensive.

A politically mature Jewish community and a robust Democratic party must be able to engage in a primary on the merits, without accusations of anti-semitism being thrown around so blithely. If this keeps up, the folks who will suffer the most are Jewish Democrats.

Update: Today’s NYTimes has an article about the Jewish vote in the Lieberman/Lamont race. In it, Dan Gerstein raises his previous critique a notch, this time pointing a finger directly at the Democratic party.

“There’s a small but vocal pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and perhaps anti-Semitic faction of the Democratic Party,’’ said Dan Gerstein, a former Lieberman aide and informal adviser to the campaign. “It is a small minority but it is getting bolder, and even worse. There is a growing tolerance of it in the progressive community.

As someone who has seen piles of campaign lit targeting Jews, I would be shocked if that quote isn’t used against Dems in the future. All this to skim off a few Jewish votes for Lieberman…

"I would hate myself in the morning"

2006-05-29T04:53:00.000-07:00

The quote above comes from Ring Lardner Jr, the famous writer and member of the Hollywood Ten – who were convicted in 1947 of criminal contempt for refusing to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee. The ten were imprisoned for a year for their defiance. In fact Lardner was one of the few who did respond to a question put to him. The question of course was whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. To which he replied “ I could answer the question exactly the way you want , but if I did I would hate myself in the morning”.

I am sure Lardner, whatever his position on Zionism (if he had one) would have responded in exactly the same way to the resolution passed at the NATFHE conference which calls for a “a boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from” Israeli governmental policies towards Palestinians. It is this imposition of a loyalty test which is so reminiscent of McCarthyism. And of course Lardner did not stand alone. The playwright Lillian Hellman famously said "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions". The fact that this year’s fashion –support for the Palestinians – is to be supported whereas old fashioned anti-communism is to be condemned – is irrelevant. The issue here is loyalty tests. It is being forced into making an open and public political statement not out of principle but out of blackmail.

Loyalty tests have a particular significance when forced on Jews. The significance is the assumption of collective responsibility, of collective guilt. Intrinsic to this is the requirement to grovel. Groveling, the humiliation of Jews, is fundamental to all anti-semitism. Degradation ceremonies are central to Jew-hatred. Remember those shocking images of Nazi Berlin where rabbis were forced to scrub pavements. Likewise it was central to McCarthyism. As the actor Larry Parks said "I would prefer, if you would allow me, not to mention other people's names. Don't present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer". As far as I am aware Larry Parks (who rose to fame playing Al Jolson in the Jolson Story before being destroyed by McCarthyism) was not Jewish. However being a squealie, a snitch, an informer, has always been seen within the Jewish tradition as being an abomination - particularly where the victim of denunciation is another Jew. For what it is worth (and culturally it is worth a lot) it says in Genesis “Though they all be killed they shall not betray a single soul from Israel”. This is one reason why the Kapos (the Jewish guards of the concentration camps) are so reviled. Morally there is no difference between this and loyalty teats – including the NATFHE test (though of course politically NATFHE have not achieved the status of Kapos). Loyalty tests, by blackmailing some into “coming clean” only act to point a finger at others who refuse to submit and who then become subject to a blacklist. And there is no suggestion that Palestinian academics submit to such a test (why should they?). Only Jews (and why should they?).

The NATFHE resolution refers to be boycotts of individuals and institutions – with the loyalty test applying to both. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has said in support of the boycott "no Israeli academic body or institution has ever taken a public stand against the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.". This I am sure is true. But it is equally true that in the UK no academic body has taken a stand against the institutionalised racism of immigration control – which creates at least a quasi apartheid in the UK and which renders legality of employment in colleges (as elsewhere) as well as level of student fees dependent upon immigration status. Why does not NATFHE campaign for a boycott (not a loyalty test) against UK college institutions for compliance with such racism? In reality NATFHE has for years been accepting the loyalty test set by UK colleges and universities –“Are you or have you ever been of full immigration status?”. It would be interesting to know if NATFHE as an employer demeans itself by complying with immigration legislation (legislation which incidentally would prevent it employing Palestinian asylum seekers fleeing Israeli repression). Perhaps NATFHE should start boycotting itself.

Obtaining names was actually irrelevant to McCathyism. The American state (through its own espionage agents) already had these. What was important was naming names – the degradation ceremony. Likewise the deep anti-semitism behind the NATFHE resolution is not the boycott principle. It is the loyalty test on which it is based. It is the loyalty test more than anything else exceptionalises Israel. As a materialist I am far more concerned about what people do as opposed to what they say. I am far more concerned to see solidarity in action with the Palestinians – both in the occupied territories and Israel itself - than with verbal support extracted through blackmail. It may be that the proposers of the NATFHE boycott were not conscious anti-semites. It may be that the loyalty test was clumsily added as a “compromise” against a blanket boycott. So what? It doesn’t make it any less anti-semitic in its consequences. If I were a Israeli academic campaigning for Palestinian rights I would only have one response to the NATFHE demand – the response would be to get lost. Otherwise I would not be able to live with myself in the morning.

Steve Cohen

AN ISRAELI VIEW: Jews, beware of Islamophobes bearing gifts

2006-03-10T06:18:00.000-08:00

With Friends Like These . . .
Jews, beware of Islamophobes bearing gifts.

BY FANIA OZ-SALZBERGER
Opinion Journal, Sunday, January 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

An Israeli gal like me cannot afford to be too picky about her friends, certainly not in Europe. Recent European polls proclaimed Israel the single most dangerous country on earth, the guiltiest monger of global conflict, and, to crown it all, the least desirable place to live. Most Israelis, busy with their thriving economy under a warm Mediterranean sun, tend to forgive such pronouncements coming from dismal Düsseldorf and snowbound Stockholm. But a new challenge has now cropped up. We seem to have gained new European friends, and not quite for the right reasons.

These new pro-Israel voices base a love of Jews upon the hatred of Muslims. Last September the European Coalition for Israel convened in Brussels, its most prominent speakers lamenting the loss of European Jewry alongside the rise of European Islam. The tone was belligerent, the linkage crude: "The enemies of Israel are also a threat to Europe," delegates were told. And also: "In only two generations, most parts of Europe will be under Islamic law." Other self-declared friends grimly speak of Londonistan and augur the coming of the European Caliphate. Such statements may reflect genuine concern, but are disconcerting when made on European soil.

Unlike the late Oriana Fallaci, whose commitment to the Jews stemmed from her heroic anti-Fascist youth, and whose harsh critique of Islam came from an enraged liberal soul, many of these new friends are Muslim-bashers first and Israel-backers second. Their blanket condemnation of Muslim communities on their continent rings eerily familiar. Their sweeping verdict against a whole civilization has that strange déjà vu feel. And their rather sudden nostalgia for Europe's lost Jews is, I'm sorry to say, far too late and somewhat suspect. As the Mishna wisely warns, "Any love that depends upon some thing, when that thing is no more, the love is no more." You see, we have a very long experience with human relationships.

I, for one Israeli, would be grateful to my newfound buddies if their sympathy for me did not rely on the trashing of another religion. Unlike them, I'm touched by the sight of young Muslim women in European university campuses. They remind my of my own grandmother, a student in Prague who had to flee after the Nazi rise to power, and of all the other young and hopeful Jews whose dreams and lives were shattered by the European culture they so admired. I will therefore not solicit support based on unqualified dislike of other human groups, least of all on the continent that kicked out my grandparents.
To be sure, Israelis could use more friends in Europe: sober, reliable, critical friends. And Europeans who care to look find some of their own best ideas well-implemented in Israel, from the rule of law to the bright application of technology for human well-being. They can trace their own literary, artistic and musical traditions flourishing among the country's diverse cultural origins. Most important, they may realize that gaining Israel's ear can yield political fruit and bring Europe closer to Middle Eastern peacemaking: Ask the German government, whose sensitive involvement in the aftermath of the second Lebanon war makes good footing for future diplomacy.

Jewish people have a long memory, whereas the European Union often seems short of the asset. It may be our role to remind today's Europeans of the medieval past, the great centuries when Islam was young, tolerant to minorities and philosophically minded. There would be no Maimonides, no glorious Sephardi Jewish tradition, without the Arab world. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be threatening the existence of Israel today, but no Muslim power has ever dealt the Jews such calamities as brought upon them by Europe.

Israelis probably deserve a better European opinion, warranted by our history, culture, science and freedom. Not for being the targeted foes of Islam. Beware of Islamophobes bearing gifts.

Ms. Oz-Salzberger is director of the Posen Research Forum for Political Thought and senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law and School of History at the University of Haifa.

Journey of a (“Self-Hating”) Jew by David Rovics

2006-03-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

Among other events in recent history, the formation of the group Independent Jewish Voices in the UK has once again pushed the debate on Israel and Palestine into the spotlight. Along with this, the usual, tired and outrageously misplaced allegations of "self-hatred" are made by the more shrill voices among the "Israel can do no wrong" lobby. Here are some of my ruminations on this discussion.

Journey of a ("Self-Hating") Jew

There are few issues more divisive in US society, including on the left, than the issue of Israel and Palestine. Even the word "Palestine" is divisive! The state of Israel claims to represent Jews worldwide. This is a preposterous and plainly incorrect claim, but one often made and often assumed, to the detriment of much of humanity. People who vocally oppose Israeli policies are labelled anti-Semites. Jews who oppose Israeli policies – or who dare to question the right of this apartheid state to exist as such – are labelled "self-hating Jews." Supporters of Israel are using historic anti-Semitism and the memory of the Nazi holocaust as a means to stifle dissent. Reason and compassion is not on their side, so they resort to name-calling. I have some personal experiences with this state of affairs, and I thought I'd recount some of them and share some thoughts on the subject.

I used to be lovers with a woman from Germany. She and I were visiting my grandmother at her retirement community in Florida. It seems about half the Jewish population of Brooklyn ends up in Florida by the time they're 65, and grandma Diane was among them. One of the women grandma played Bridge with was a German Jewish holocaust survivor. When she met my partner, there was something she clearly felt compelled to tell her. "We were Germans," she said. "We were Germans." That was all, three words.

Any non-fascist historian can confirm this fact. By the early twentieth century most German Jews were what they call "assimilated." They were about as German as any other German. For many, their Jewish identity was about as important to them as which Christian denomination their neighbors belonged to. They were integrated members of a European society, Europeans, Germans. They were communists, social democrats, conservatives. They were laborers and they were bosses. They were renters and landlords, rich, poor, and in between. Obviously, the rise of Hitler changed all that, and suddenly Jews recognized themselves as Jews again. The Nazis wanted to kill all of them, so Jewish identity suddenly became a matter of life and death. When people are thus threatened, oppressed, and ultimately slaughtered in their millions, this sort of thing tends to bring people together to attempt to defend themselves. Thus from this disparate group of people once again is born a "community."

Enter 21st-century USA. There is no such thing as a "Jewish community." There is no such thing as a "Christian community" either, or an "Irish community," "Italian community," etc. There is no oppression to speak of in the US or Europe directed at people based on their Jewish or Christian identity, any more than there is still oppression against people of Irish or Italian descent. Certainly there used to be all of these things, but it's been a while. In the forty years I've been living in the US I have hardly ever heard a serious anti-Semitic remark. I've never been victimized in any way as a result of being Jewish, and I don't think I have ever met anyone of my generation who has had a problem with anti-Semitism of any significance, either.

Jewishness of course is an unusual phenomenon that is often defined as a religious, ethnic, and/or quasi-national identity, depending on who's doing the defining. Regardless of the definition, there is plenty of common history for Jews anywhere, but like Catholics, Poles or whoever else in the modern US, Jews do not have a common identity in terms of their politics, professions, geography, etc. Jews are not ghettoized anymore, whether by law or by a generalized discrimination. They are rich, poor and in between, and they live anywhere in the country where you might find other people. Sometimes in large numbers, sometimes in very small numbers. Sometimes they have contact with each other as Jews for one reason or another, usually they don't.

Once I had a gig at a law school in Vermont. Three people came to hand out literature about my alleged anti-Semititic views to people coming to the show. These three people were in a group that called itself The Jewish Community, as I recall. But in the civilized discussion that followed my concert, it turned out that there were more than three people of Jewish lineage in the crowd who were not members of The Jewish Community and didn't share their views on Israel. It didn't seem to me that these Jews were any less Jewish than The Jewish Community -- they just weren't in a group that called itself The Jewish Community.

This also, it seems to me, is the distinction between groups like AIPAC and the rest of the Jewish population. The rest of us don't tend to organize as a "Jewish community," but as whoever we are – environmentalists, anarchists, union members, real estate developers, whatever.

Of course, there is plenty of oppression in the US. Racism, for example, permeates society. Race, of course, is a social construct with no biological basis, but it is a social construct that is the basis for both historical and ongoing discrimination of massive proportions. But if a Jew, a Catholic, or even a Muslim is white, then he or she is white, and treated as such. This is how modern US society functions. There is a sort of caste system, and it changes in various ways over time. It used to be a liability to be most anything other than a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. This is no longer the case. Over the course of the post-war period the "white" category has expanded to include light-skinned Jews and other historically-oppressed ethnic and religious groups such as Irish and Italian Catholics.

This is not to say that white people don't suffer from discrimination. You can still be discriminated against according to your regional accent, how you dress, whether you can read or write, etc. As a youthful, long-haired hippie driving an old beat-up car, I was pulled over by the cops many times more than most other white people, probably for all of those offenses – being young, having long hair, and driving an old car. But I'm quite certain it was not for being Jewish.

History is another matter entirely. While the label of "self-hating" is generally misapplied and used to try to silence Jews critical of Israel, self-hatred certainly exists, and other conditions like it. I think of my nanny when I was very young, living in upper Manhattan. She was a deeply loving woman full of enthusiasm for life, and children, her own two sons and the many young children she took care of. I visited her now and then for decades after my family moved from New York City when I was a small child. She was full of stories. She talked about all the gangsters in the area and how they never pick on her because she's known them all since they were babies. New York was her city. She had a strange accent, impossible to place. She said she was English. She met an Italian-American jazz musician there in England and moved back to New York with him after the war. She talked about being a teenager in London during the blitz, and how she used to use the air raids to her advantage, to spend more time with boys. "Sorry mom, I can't come home now, there's an air raid happening."

She raised her kids to be Irish-American Catholics in New York City. Several years ago I was visiting New York and I gave her a call. Her eldest son answered the phone. His mother had died a few months before, he told me. He also told me that he had found out during the last year or so of her life that she was not from England -- she was a German Jew. She was one of the last Jewish children sent to England during the Kindertransports. For whatever reason, she had hidden her identity from everyone, her friends, her family. She told her son on her deathbed about how her society, Germany, had rejected her. Perhaps the rejection was too much to bear, and she had to try to forget about her past, her German and Jewish identity. Perhaps the term "self-hating" could in some measure apply to this wonderful, vibrant, but apparently troubled woman, although the term seems far too simplistic to fit such a complex person so full of love for humanity.

Perhaps it was experiences she had after arriving in the US that strengthened her resolve to keep her ethnic and national identity hidden. My grandmother's mother was from Russia, and spoke Yiddish, never becoming very fluent in English. When my dad was young it was Yiddish that the matriarchs of the house spoke, their secret language which they never taught him. Grandma Diane's parents were refugees, leaving Russia because they didn't want to be killed in the pogroms and didn't wanted to be drafted into the Tsar's army, a death sentence in itself. Before the Nazi holocaust, Diane Rovics and her mother were in touch with dozens of relatives in Europe, Diane once told me. Her mother died soon after the war, and I don't know how much Diane tried to get back in touch with her relatives across the ocean, but she said she never heard from any of them, and presumed them all to be dead.

Grandma Diane's Jewish identity was always terribly complex for her. For a long time she was looking for housing outside of Brooklyn. This search went on for years before she eventually moved to New Jersey and then Florida. In every community she visited there were either too many Jews or not enough Jews. She wanted the safety of having lots of Jews around, but didn't want anybody else to notice. When I was a child she often told me that I was lucky to have blond hair and blue eyes and not to "look Jewish." She'd say the same about our last name, from Grandpa Alvin's part of the family, Rovics, which she informed me was not a typical Jewish last name.

Once when she left the safety of New York City to visit Connecticut about a half century ago, land of the "gentiles" back then, there was a sign on the beach saying "no Jews or dogs allowed." I'm sure she had many other similar experiences. Being Jewish was for her a source of strength and a source of anguish, but mostly anguish. She always just wanted to fit in, to be an American, and ultimately, she did, and she was. She was traumatized by her family history and by the Nazi holocaust, but she wanted to put it behind her. She would often tell her idealistic leftwing grandson, "you can't change the world." She'd tell me to just look out for myself, get a good job, go to business school, become a dentist, be a respectable part of society and hopefully you will be respected in turn, or at least left alone.

For other assimilated, white, light-haired, blue-eyed US citizens such as Diane's daughter, my aunt Judy, who knows where life could have gone. But as with so many others, the Jewish genocide that was going on when she was born in 1941 made a lasting impact. The Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland, not very popular among Jews worldwide before the Nazi holocaust, became much more popular after it. Lots of Jews – though far from all – joined that bandwagon, and my aunt was one of them. We haven't spoken in years, but from what I understand, for her and her synogogue in New Jersey, criticism of Israel is completely unacceptable, there is no room for debate.

For people like Judy, "never again" means "never again to us." Fuck everybody else, especially Arabs. The fascists in Europe killed us, nobody stopped them, and now if we need to steal somebody else's land in order to have a home, so be it. People like Judy invent all kinds of outrageous theories to justify the fundamentally racist movement that has led to the state of Israel. There are no Palestinians, they're all Arabs, and the 800 million Arabs in the world all hate Jews and want to "drive the Jews into the sea." The Palestinians are really Jordanians and should be just as happy there as in the land of their ancestors. The hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed by the Zionists never really existed. The Palestinians were all nomads if they weren't Jordanian. The refugee problem is one created by the Arab states -- not the Jews who drove the refugees off their land.

People like Judy live in a sea of lies, and are miserable. At least they're miserable. Hating other people so vehemently – Arabs, your fellow Jewish critics, and whoever else – causes one to be miserable. I'm sure there must be some happy ones out there, but the "ardent Zionists" I meet tend to be about as miserable as other members of hate groups I've met. I remember seeing the Orange marchers in Glasgow one time. What a miserable bunch. They all looked so pathetic, those men and boys dressed in their antiquated outfits, singing songs about being "knee-deep in Fenian blood." These people have decided that the solution to their perceived problems lies in the oppression of another people. Not only does this kind of mentality breed misery, but it also doesn't work.

Disenfranchised people always struggle for their liberty. Sometimes their struggles will be crushed, as in the case of the German left in the 1930's. Sometimes their struggles will meet with relative success, such as the European labor movements that have been largely responsible for creating many of the most prosperous societies on Earth. Other times the oppression of a people leads to an ongoing struggle for justice that goes on for decades, such as the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. There can never possibly be peace and security for Israel as long as there are millions of impoverished, angry refugees surrounding it, no matter how high the walls they build, no matter how many children they massacre, no matter how many youths they torture in their prisons. History has demonstrated this fact, over and over again. Where there is oppression there will be resistance. The resistance may or may not be successful, but it will always harm the oppressor to one degree or another. This is not mere rhetoric. It is history and current events, all over the world.

There are those for whom "never again" takes on a very different meaning than for people like my aunt. For them, these lessons of history are learned. Of course, such people have existed since long before the Nazi holocaust, but the holocaust also was responsible for creating lots more of them. People who believe oppression should be opposed in all it's forms, and those struggling for their lives and liberty should be supported. For these people, the term "us" means something much bigger than Jews, Catholics, Americans, or some other such limited category. Bob Steck is one such example.

Bob Steck died last December at the age of 95. He was a friend of mine, who I used to see much more of back when he lived near my mother in Connecticut, before he and his wife moved to Arizona. Bob grew up near Davenport, Iowa. When he was a boy in the 1920's, Davenport was a town full of socialist intellectuals. The countryside around the town was full of radical farmers. When the fascist generals rebelled against the democratically-elected government in Spain in 1936, Bob was one of many thousands of Americans who volunteered – against the wishes of the US government – to fight fascism in Europe. Bob had never been to Spain, and I'm not sure if he had ever even met a Spaniard before, out there in the middle of the farm belt. He was not fighting for people he knew, or for "his people" in some kind of limited sense – he was fighting for humanity, for the future, for justice, for dignity.

Along with Bob, thousands of young men and women joined the International Brigades from England, Ireland and elsewhere. The biggest contingents of people ready to die in the fight against fascism came from Germany and Italy. After more than a year fighting the war in Spain he was captured, and spent 16 months in a concentration camp where he was regularly beaten, where the conditions were atrocious. Some German Nazis visited the camp once and measured everybody's faces, thinking they could tell the Jews apart from the others by the size of their noses. He was Jewish, though that never occurred to me until one morning at his house when he made a particularly tasteless Matzo Ball omelette for me. Most of the Americans to go to Spain were killed there, but Bob was one of the those who ultimately returned home.

More than anything, Bob was a communist, and a historical optimist. He would tell me that ever since society has been divided into classes, several thousand years ago for much of the planet, there has been a class struggle, and this struggle will continue until we eventually abolish poverty, racism, and these sorts of divisions in society. Just as he fought against fascism in Europe, he fought against racism in the US. He was the Director of Activities of Camp Unity, a daring inter-racial working-class resort in upstate New York. He saw himself as a part of a movement, not as an exceptional individual, though he was most certainly both. He taught history for 30 years in the public schools of New York City, playing his part in the evolution of society, with books and lectures, just as he had in Spain with rifles and supply trucks. Yes, he was Jewish, and like so many Jews and so many other people of his generation, he was a communist first and foremost.

Bob was a very stoic man, by his own admission. He was stoic before the Spanish Civil War, but being held in the concentration camp taught him stoicism to a much larger degree. Never let the guards know how badly you are suffering, or it will demoralize the other prisoners. This was his view. I don't know how much he may have had to question his beliefs from time to time, but when I asked him what his thoughts were on Israel, his response was quick and unequivocal. There must be justice for the Palestinians.

Long before I ever went to Israel I had strong opinions on the behavior of the Israeli government, and whether there should even be an Israeli government as such (that is, a government wherein non-Jews are systematically discriminated against, disenfranchised or killed). I had never been there, but my impression was that it was a colonial state, a society of settlers, like South Africa, Australia, the US, Canada and others. One of many societies where European invaders had colonized the place at gunpoint and either killed or driven out the indigenous population. The scars of living in societies like these can be seen on anybody living in them, whether they are members of one of the oppressed groups or one of the privileged groups. Whether they are being killed, doing the killing, or giving the orders to fire.

I was uncertain what to do when in 1999 I received an invitation from the Israeli Folk Music Society to do a tour of Israel that they would set up. But I quickly decided I should do it. I lived in one society that was brutally colonized by European invaders, so it seemed silly not to go, just because Israel was much more recently-conquered territory than the US. Besides, I wanted to see first-hand what was up there, and the offer to organize a tour was a perfect way to meet real Israelis.

And that's what I did. Not Peace Now, not Gush-Shalom, not Women In Black, not Anarchists Against the Wall. They're not members of the Israeli Folk Music Society. I met regular Israeli Jewish anglophone folk music fans. Like so many Israelis, the vast majority of the men and women I met were not born in Israel. Many were from New York, and others originally came from Britain, Australia and elsewhere. I was trying to be sort of undercover, wanting to see what Israeli Jews thought about their situation, not wanting to impose my viewpoint first. Besides, I hadn't yet written any songs about the Palestinian struggle (at least nothing I liked enough to sing in public), so that made it easier for me.

What I found in my ten-day tour of Israel was the most racist society I had ever encountered. The secular yuppies of Tel Aviv were the worst, while the most compassionate people opposed to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza tended to be very religious, which was an unexpected revelation for me. The most sensible person I met on that trip was a religious man who was in the Israeli military for the wars of both 1967 and 1973. It was after 1973 that he had an awakening, and came to recognize the brutal reality of the Israeli occupation.

I met some other fairly decent folks there, but most people I encountered seemed to be right out of a Klan rally in 1950's Alabama. Very odd, since many of the Americans among them had been involved with the Civil Rights movement back in the day. But they seemed to have no problem talking about "the Arab mind," refusing to use the term "Palestinian" in conversation, even when avoiding it meant jumping through all kinds of verbal hoops. They talked fondly of one friend living on a West Bank settlement, whose politics were often described as "somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan." One of them talked often of her "Christian Arab" friend who lived in a "Christian Arab" town in Israel, who we should visit at some point. (We never did.)

Once I was doing a house concert there. As long as I sang about oppression elsewhere in the world people loved it. They were reminiscing of their days in the movement against the Vietnam war and their time in SDS. I was trying to end my show after quite a while, but they wanted more, more. It was at least the fifth encore, and I thought, OK, now I'm gonna hit 'em with a song against the US bombing raids and UN sanctions that were currently causing mass suffering in Iraq. It was the first time I sang a song at a gig and nobody clapped.

After a very pregnant silence, a self-described socialist originally from Scotland began clapping, but no one joined him. There was basically unanimity in the room. The song was wrong, the bombing of Iraq was right. And how outrageous to sing that song in Israel, I was told, since "we had to put gas masks on our children and hide in bomb shelters." A handful of Israelis were killed by the Scud missiles, a few years after Israel had itself bombed Iraq, and the Israelis had to sleep in bomb shelters, all emerging safely the next morning, unlike the Iraqis who were being killed in their hundreds of thousands, including those incinerated by the US Air Force while hiding in their bomb shelters.

But for these people, the suffering of the Iraqis simply was irrelevant. The Iraqis didn't matter, they all wanted to kill the Jews, even the Iraqi children, I was told there to my unbelieving face.

My German girlfriend was with me on that tour. In the long discussion that followed me singing the song about the war on Iraq, she and I were told that the bombing of Dresden was a good thing. This man was telling us that the killing of a hundred thousand women and children, for no reason other than to kill them, was a good thing. He was telling us that one of the great war crimes of world history -- right up there with other mechanized mass killings, such as the blitz, the Nazi holocaust or the carpet-bombing of Korea and Vietnam – was a good thing. He couldn't justify it in any way, but it was good, and he wanted us to know that.

This was around the time that I realized that the whole of Israeli society is full of trauma survivors of one sort or another. Palestinians inside and outside Israel traumatized by ongoing oppression of so many sorts, and Jews traumatized by living in the war zone they created when they declared their "independence" (from whom?) in 1948. Traumatized by their parents and other relatives being killed in Europe. Traumatized in such a way that most of them had decided, it seemed, that "never again" clearly meant "never again to us Jews." To hell with everybody else.

About a year later, to my surprise, the Israeli Folk Music Society offered to organize another tour for me. I again decided in favor of constructive engagement. But then, a couple months before the tour was to happen, Ariel Sharon took a thousand troops to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the spark – along with the settlement-building, the road closures, the increasing numbers of checkpoints, the bulldozing of houses and olive groves -- that lit the powder keg that set off the second Intifada. And then I wrote a song about the Israeli soldiers gunning down children with live ammunition soon after Sharon's visit to the mosque, and it was all over.

The organizer of the tour didn't cancel it right away. One by one, the organizers of nine of the ten shows I was scheduled to do wrote me outraged emails. How could you write a song like this, how could you say these things, we thought you were one of us, you sound like them. From most of the presenters there, and then from other supporters of Israel from the US and elsewhere, I started receiving emails regularly calling me a self-hating Jew, a neofascist, a fascist, a Nazi, etc. One of the ten presenters wrote me and said he liked the lyrics and looked forward to hearing them. He was the veteran of 1967 and 1973 I mentioned earlier.

Then a few days later I started receiving emails from Palestinians throughout the diaspora who had gotten the lyrics to my song somehow, too. These emails far outnumbered the ones from the Israel supporters. Many were short, just thanking me for making this statement. Others were much longer and full of stories of the nakba, "the catastrophe," as they call the events of 1948. Others wrote about the brutality and humiliation of life under occupation, or life in the refugee camps. I started meeting Palestinians of all walks of life, in the US, Canada, England, and eventually in Palestine itself.

The news lately is full of factional fighting between Fatah and Hamas. But this is not the sort of thing that characterizes Palestinian society. Palestinians do have a community. One reason for this is the fact that they are all under siege, and all struggling to live under the occupation, all wanting it to end. The Muslims and Christians get along fine. They are all Palestinian. When you're there, these things are obvious, especially if you've visited other communities engaged in resistance. You see those common signs, that universal sense of determination, purpose, existing in the moment, not knowing what horrors tomorrow may bring, whether their house will be bulldozed, whether their daughter will be shot by a sniper while sitting in school, whether the olive grove will be burned by settlers. On the ground in Palestine, it's very clear what's happening. This is a place under occupation by a massive, fundamentally racist military power.

Most people in the world with a knowledge of world events recognize the situation for what it is. This is certainly true in Europe. According to polls I've seen lately, most Jews in Europe and in North America do not identify with Israel as a country that represents them. Most people in Europe do not have any problems with Jews. There are always a few boneheads here and there desecrating cemetaries. It doesn't take many people to do that. But generally, serious acts of anti-Semitism are virtually unheard of in Europe or North America. Most Europeans, however, are very critical of Israel and concerned about the plight of the Palestinians. And most Europeans recognize that there is no contradiction here, since they understand that "Israel" and "Jews" are, thankfully, two different things.

Germany, however, is a unique case, where as far as Israel and Palestine are concerned, it's a different story.

In my family there's long been a bit of a suspicion of Germany and Germans. Most of us have been to Europe, but only a couple have actually visited Germany. Bordering countries, yes – Holland, France, Denmark, but not Germany. Of course, the neighboring countries are all much more attractive, since most of their cities survived WWII intact, while almost all of Germany's were destroyed by British and American carpet-bombing. But the comparative lack of pre-war architecture wasn't why my family avoided visiting Germany.

I was a bit hesitant about it the first time I visited. I didn't know a lot about recent German history. I mostly knew German accents from WWII movies. After spending quite a bit of time there, though, I developed a real affection for German society. Spending lots of time with lots of Germans, I found so much beauty, and so much anguish. As much as German society suffered from the Allied bombardments, from a generation of young men being sent off to kill and be killed in battle, from so many non-Jewish Germans also being killed in the camps, Germans as a whole are even more paralyzed with an unbearable guilt about the genocide of their Jewish brethren. Most Germans today have no recollection of what society was like with millions of German Jews in it, but their absence is like a ghost standing on every street corner.

Most Germans would be horrified to be accused of anti-Semitism. Whereas the left throughout almost the entire world is critical of Israel and supports Palestinian sovereignty, the German left is largely quiet about it, or actively and uncritically supporting Israel.

I remember one guy in the neighborhood in Hamburg where I spent quite a bit of time, who had a radio show at the local free radio station (equivalent of what we'd call community radio in the US). For one of his shows he interviewed a Palestinian doctor about life under the Israeli occupation.
Specifically about the challenges of providing medical care under the circumstances, with the checkpoints delaying ambulances for hours or turning them back, with tanks firing at ambulances, etc. By consensus, the collective board that ran the radio station canned his show permanently for this offense. What did he do? He failed to have an Israeli on his show at the same time. To dare to have a Palestinian doctor with no Israeli to somehow balance out his views was unacceptable.

Many Germans on the left who have dared to try to be consistent internationalists in solidarity with oppressed people around the world, and have included Palestinians within that worldview, have suffered similar fates. When you know that this is the environment on the German left and in German society in general, the Autonomen become even more impressive. These were Germans in the tradition of Bob Steck, true internationalists who supported liberation everywhere, including for Palestinians.

In the 1980's the German autonomous movement followed in the footsteps of the Italian autonomous movement a decade before. They ccupied buildings, reclaiming the commons, building a different society. They rejected the Soviet model as well as the capitalist one. They opposed US as well as German military and economic intervention in the Third World. They were antifascists to the core, spending much of their time physically battling Nazi boneheads on the streets of Germany, and often battling the German police as well. (When they have to choose, the police almost always side with the right in these situations.) They supported struggles for self-determination around the world. And, consistent with the rest of their principles around anti-racism and Third World liberation, at the top of their flagship squat in Hamburg, Haffenstrasse, were two words that shocked German society probably more than anything else coming from the Autonomen: "free Palestine."

But with the decline of the Autonomen has come, among other things, the rise of a uniquely German organization known as the Anti-Deutsche.

I'll be returning to Germany for the G8 protests this summer, but the last time I was there was several years ago, and the last concert I did there was in the town of Marburg. I had seen a flyer that the Anti-Deutsche had made, criticizing me and my music the night before. This time, when I got to the arts center in Marburg where my concert was to happen, there were eight or so blond men and women in their early twenties, forming a gauntlet in front of the entrance to the building, handing out the flyers. Some people didn't go to the show as a result, I don't know how many.

The flyers claimed I was an anti-Semite. I was clearly an anti-Semite because I support the Palestinian struggle, and the Palestinians all hate women and hate their own children, since they fail to prevent them from being shot by Israeli tanks. They furthermore argued that since I was critical of capitalism, I was therefore anti-Semitic because making statements against institutions like the World Bank is a veiled anti-Semitic thing to do. This kind of thinking seems to be supporting all kinds of strange anti-Semitic myths about the ranks of Jews being filled with rich bankers, but there you go. Also, since I opposed the war in Iraq, I was an anti-Semite, since the war in Iraq was being waged to benefit Israel, and therefore it was good, and therefore the US should be supported most of the time, and Israel all of the time. I approached them politely to try to have a civil discourse about the flyer, but was told by one of them that "we don't talk to fascists," so there would be no discussion.

If this was an isolated cult of wingnuts it would be one thing, but the Anti-Deutsche are a fairly common phenomenon all over Germany, with their base in Leipzig. They actually originally come out of the more communist end of the German left. Many Germans will privately acknowledge them as nutters, but they're often loathe to confront them, fearing the label of anti-Semitism.

To their credit, the Anti-Deutsche apparently spend much of their time opposing actual fascists. But they seem to spend at least as much time harassing people like me. I haven't seen any overviews on this sort of thing, but my friend Attila the Stockbroker, a punk rock songwriter and poet from England who tours in Germany regularly, has recently been banned from a number of music venues on account of his fairly mild opposition to Israeli policies. He hasn't written any songs specifically on the subject, but just mentioning his opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was enough to get the Anti-Deutsche to actively denounce him. And that was enough to get several venues to ban him, and for some of his traditional leftwing punk audience to stop coming to his shows.

As irrational as the Anti-Deutsche patently are, they have a chilling effect on the German left, and they are a real product of German history, and of the German collective guilt complex. So in order to avoid being anti-Semitic, that is, in order to avoid being anti-racist, they must support a racist regime. It's convoluted logic that most people outside of Germany can see through, but in Germany this logic plays pretty well. Two wrongs make a right. We are traumatized because our people killed millions of Jews, therefore we must support the traumatized victims of the Nazi holocaust as they act out their displaced feelings of aggression towards us and focus them against the Palestinians, slaughtering thousands of them annually and making sure the rest live in a state of squalor.

Jews like my aunt or like so many Israelis say "never again to us," while the Anti-Deutsche and other Germans say "never again to them." The Autonomen and the Bob Stecks of the world say never again to anyone.

Who holds the moral high ground is obvious. The thing that allows people like me to sleep well at night, though, is having the knowledge that not only is this the moral view, the view that is easier to live with as a human being with a conscience, but it is also the sensible understanding of history and reality. Blinded by rage, trauma, or guilt, what the pro-Israel people apparently don't see is that no matter what you do, a subjugated people will fight back. As anybody who's visited a VA clinic in the US can tell you, the cost of oppression is also very high for those doing the oppressing.

So I say save the Jews and free Palestine

David Rovics

Israel, Anti-Semitism, and The Left by Brian Klug

2005-11-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

Red Pepper

Special issue on Israel-Palestine

Final Revision: 24 November 2005
ISRAEL, ANTISEMITISM AND THE LEFT

In November 2005 an all-party inquiry into antisemitism was set up at Westminster. John Mann, labour MP for Bassetlaw, said that antisemitism is no longer “solely a problem of the far right.” He added pointedly, “The liberal and progressive left is not immune.” An article in the November issue of Progress went further, claiming that “parts of the left peddle a particular version” of antisemitism.

Here is an example of what leads some people to make this allegation. In Davos, Switzerland, January 2003, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, a group of anti-globalization protestors engaging in street theatre were captured on camera. Two masked figures in monkey costumes represented Donald Rumsfeld and Ariel Sharon. Pinned to ‘Rumsfeld’s’ chest was a yellow six-pointed badge that looked like the yellow Star of David that Jews had to wear under the Nazis, except that it was inscribed sheriff rather than Jude. On ‘Rumsfeld’s’ shoulders was a yoke supporting a massive golden calf. Standing to one side and slightly behind him, arm upraised as if goading him on, ‘Sharon’ brandished a club.

For some, this is the face of the ‘new’ antisemitism: hostility to Israel and Zionism. Others claim that partisans of the Jewish state call their opponents antisemitic in order to silence them. And some of them do. But this does not mean their accusations are always false. If we sincerely want to know the truth of the matter, we need to stop engaging in polemics and to start thinking clearly about what antisemitism is – and what it isn’t.

Let’s start with Mann’s remark that the left is “not immune” to antisemitism. Some find this hard to swallow. After all, antisemitism is racism against Jews, racism is a form of oppression, and fighting oppression is precisely what the left is all about. So, how could there be such a thing as left-wing antisemitism? The very idea seems absurd. Yet human beings are not beyond being absurd. Voltaire, the ‘man of reason’ who represents the Enlightenment, was not exactly rational about Jews. In his Philosophical Dictionary (1764) he writes: “It is with regret that I discuss the Jews: this nation is, in many respects, the most detestable ever to have sullied the earth.” This outburst is in his article on ‘Tolerance’: absurd but true.

The case of Voltaire illustrates how powerful a deeply-embedded cultural prejudice can be; and antisemitism has run deep in Christian Europe for centuries. So, perhaps we should not be surprised to discover that antisemitism was never ‘solely a problem of the far right’. There has always been a vein on the European left. Take Proudhon, the utopian socialist who coined the phrase ‘Property is theft’. He wrote: “The Jew is the enemy of humankind. The race must either be sent back to Asia or exterminated.” For Bakunin, the celebrated anarchist, “the whole Jewish world” is “one exploiting sect, one people of leeches, one single devouring parasite”. Crossing national and political boundaries, it “stands in large part at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other.” Marx himself (baptized into Christianity as a young child) spoke of “the practical dominion of Judaism over the Christian world” and averred: “Money is the jealous god of Israel before whom no other god may endure”. His words conjure up the golden calf of Davos.

Marx’s ultimate target, of course, was not Judaism: it was money and commerce as the basis of bourgeois society. The fact remains that he equated this with Jews – when in reality the vast majority were (like my own family) chronically poor. True, he supported Jewish emancipation. But his perception of Jews was itself unemancipated. In general, seminal figures on the left were radical thinkers whose general political thought was liberating. But this does no mean that they were altogether liberated themselves. Their example is salutary: people on the left today cannot assume immunity from bigotry – including antisemitism.

But what is antisemitism? Though the word only goes back to 1879, the prejudice is much older. Antisemitism is an ingrained European fantasy about Jews as Jews. Whether they are seen as a race, religion, nation or ethnic group, and whether antisemitism comes from the right or the left, the image of ‘the Jew’ is much the same. To an antisemite, Jews are a people set apart, not merely by their customs but by their collective character. They are arrogant, secretive, cunning, always looking to turn a profit. Loyal only to their own, wherever they go they form a state within a state, preying upon the societies in whose midst they dwell. Mysteriously powerful, their hidden hand controls the banks and the media. They will even drag governments into war if this suits their purposes. Such is the figure of ‘the Jew’, transmitted from generation to generation.

Where this fantasy is projected on to Israel because it is a Jewish state, or Zionism because it is a Jewish movement, or Jews in association with either Israel or Zionism: there you have antisemitism. But Israel’s occupation beyond the green line is no fantasy. Nor is the spread of Jewish settlements, the destruction of Palestinian homes and olive groves, the building of a barrier that slices through Palestinian land, the roadblocks and curfews, and so on. These are realities. So is the institutionalized discrimination against Israeli Palestinian citizens. Hostility to Israel or Zionism on the basis of these realities is not antisemitism.

But, it is said, anti-Zionism can be a mask concealing antisemitism that lies behind it. True, it can be. An infamous example from the left comes to mind: the so-called anti-Zionist purges carried out by the Polish communist government in 1968. But let’s think this through. If anti-Zionism can function as a mask this implies that, in and of itself, it is not anti-Semitic; a mask that looks like what it is masking is no mask. (That would be like a wolf in wolf’s clothing.) On the other hand, if what is hidden is antisemitism, then the image of ‘the Jew’ is a subtext; and there are ways of bringing subtexts to light by taking in evidence from other sources. So, for example, we can examine other literature produced by an anti-Zionist group, or look at their political connections.

Some people say that singling out Israel for criticism is evidence of antisemitism; similarly when criticism of the Jewish state is unfair or defamatory. But there are many good reasons for focussing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or indeed on Israel as such. And if, for example, someone is outraged by the ‘sound bombs’ over Gaza, they might well exaggerate the facts or use intemperate language. Whatever else we might call this, it is not antisemitism.

Nor is it necessarily antisemitic to question Zionism as a project or the very idea of a Jewish state. No state is sacrosanct. The legitimacy of every state is open to challenge, as are the constitutional arrangements for the inhabitants of any area of the globe. Where once there was a single Czechoslovak state, there are now two separate countries. Two German republics have joined into one. Perhaps more states have come into being and gone out of existence in the last hundred years than at any other time in history. Israel itself is an example. Moreover, there were Jews (even some Zionists) who opposed the creation of a Jewish state and antisemites who were in favour.

A familiar argument goes like this: “How can people on the left support Palestinian nationalism and yet oppose Jewish nationalism? They must be antisemites.” This brings us to an issue that lies at the heart of so much misunderstanding about Zionism: its profound ambiguity.

Zionism belongs to two opposite histories at one and the same time. On the one side, it saw itself as a movement for self-determination by (or on behalf of) the Jews, the ‘inside outsiders’ of Europe, a people with a long history of persecution. On the other side, it was itself part of a European expansion into non-European territory. This is because, unlike the case of other self-styled national liberation movements, there was no existing national territory under occupation; the project was to gather in the exiles and populate a land rather than expel an invader. From the beginning, starting with Herzl’s address to the first Zionist congress in 1897, Zionism spoke the language of colonization – but for the sake of emancipation, not empire. Seen from this side, Zionism historically was a flight from Europe, not an extension of the European homeland. But seen from the other side, the Jews who came as settlers were Europeans by any other name. And they were. They were both. They were Jewish as distinct from European, and European as distinct from Arab.

Yes, antisemitic prejudice does motivate some of the hostility to Israel. But by and large this antagonism is directed against one face – the European colonizing face – of Zionism. This is the face that the Palestinians have overwhelmingly experienced. It has loomed larger since the war of 1967 and the growth of Israeli Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories; even larger since the collapse of peace talks in 2000; and larger still since Israel’s military offensive in the West Bank in April 2002. It is, naturally, the face that catches the eye of the left in general.

Nonetheless, something is wrong with a left that forgets one people’s oppression because it is struck by another’s. Zionism, after all, was a reaction to antisemitism – not the only Jewish reaction, but that’s what it was. Because of antisemitism, Jews in Europe were marginalized, excluded and finally subjected to the catastrophic ‘final solution’. When people on the left seem oblivious to this history, when they simply fold the Jewish story into a larger narrative of Western imperialism, Jews, whether Zionist or not, are liable to feel marginalized and excluded all over again. It is understandable that this feels like antisemitism, even when it isn’t.

Sometimes there is reason to suspect that it is; we have to examine the evidence. Which brings me back to Davos. It is hard to know what to say in this case. It turns out that several other world leaders were impersonated and most of them, like ‘Sharon’, carried clubs. Moreover, in another photo ‘Sharon’ stands apart from the golden calf ensemble, no longer looking dominant. Still, the badge worn by ‘Rumsfeld’ is deeply disturbing. One member of the group said that it had not occurred to any of them that the color and design recalled the Jewish star. If true, this bespeaks a degree of naivety that is not only astonishing but reprehensible. For if you engage in political activism you are accountable for the predictable consequences of your political action.

In his “anti-racist analysis of left anti-semitism”, the Jewish socialist Steve Cohen writes: “Any group which claims to be against anti-semitism should be ultra-vigilant in the imagery it evokes”. The left, in short, must take responsibility for the rhetoric of its statements. Equally, for the rhetoric of its silence: the failure to speak out clearly against anti-Jewish sentiment when this finds expression in the anti-globalization and anti-war movements. No quarter must be given on the left to such sentiment – any more than it is given to racism against other groups. This is a matter of basic humanity. It is also good politics: rubbing salt into the open wounds that gave rise to Zionism in the first place does not advance the cause of peace and justice in the Middle East. Nor does it promote anti-racism at home.

What about the claim that parts of the left ‘peddle’ a version of antisemitism? The word ‘peddle’ seems more calculated to attack the left than engage it in self-examination. Nevertheless, there is a real question here: Does the antisemitic figure of ‘the Jew’ ever find its way into, or gain credence from, left-wing opposition to Israel and Zionism? If you care, then look at the evidence – and you be the judge.

Brian Klug

St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford

Founder member, Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights

email: brian.klug@stb.ox.ac.uk

http://news.pipex.com/Pipex/News/Story_Page/0,13319,5337_833247,00.html (viewed 20 November 2005). See also Guardian, 17 November 2005, p. 14. Mann is chair of the Parliamentary Committee Against Anti-Semitism.

Jane Ashworth and David Hirsh, ‘The state they’re in’, Progress, November/December 2005, available at http://www.progressives.org.uk/magazine/Default.asp?action=magazine&articleid=940 (viewed 15 November 2005). The authors are co-founders of Engage, “an organisation dedicated to combating anti-semitism on the left” (ibid.).

The World Economic Forum annual meeting was held from January 23 to 27, 2003. The image (by Fabrice Coffrini) is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Davos_WEF_Golden_Calf.png (viewed August 31, 2005).

Quoted in Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 233.

Quoted in David Vital, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe 1789-1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 203.

Quoted in Edmund Silbener, ‘Two Studies on Modern Anti-Semitism’, Historia Judaica, vol. 14, part 2, October 1952, p. 101.

In On the Jewish Question, extracts in Paul Mendes-Flohr & Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 326.

Vital, p. 302.

Theodor Herzl, ‘First Congress Address’ (1897), in Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, Philadephia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1997, pp. 226-230.

The point I am making is not quite the same as the one made by Tony Klug in his writings on the Middle East, beginning with A Tale of Two Peoples (London: Fabian Society, 1973), but it is inspired by his approach.

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wef/images/wef3453.jpg (viewed September 3, 2005).

‘Image talk:Davos Switzerland G8 Summit.jpg’ [sic], available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Davos_Switzerland_G8_Summit.jpg (viewed August 31, 2005).

Steve Cohen, That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic: An Anti-Racist Analysis of Left Anti-Semitism, Leeds: Beyond the Pale Collective, 1984, p. 86.

I am an anti-Zionist Zionist by Steve Cohen

2005-08-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

I am an anti-Zionist Zionist because for forty years the Zionists have attacked me and beaten me up and ostracised me for being an anti-Zionist and the anti-Zionists have attacked me and beaten me up and ostracised me for being a Zionist.

I am an anti-Zionist because Zionism is racist
I am a Zionist because Zionism is anti-racist
Zionism is racist because it oppresses, depresses, represses and suppresses the Palestinians
Zionism is anti-racist because it is a response by Jews to the oppression, depression, repression and suppression of anti-semitism
Maybe it isn’t my response
Maybe my response is to slug it out here in Blighty and not the deserts of Judea
But this isn’t the 1930s
This isn’t the Holocaust hour
This isn’t no other way out hour
This isn’t the no other country in the world will offer refuge hour
This isn’t concentration camps round the corner hour

Anyhow which socialist guru invented the mantra that you always, invariably, timelessly, tirelessly fight for liberation in your country of birth?
Tell that to the escapee from Nazi Germany now living in old age in Jerusalem
Tell that to the next Iraqi refugee you see fighting for asylum in Manchester
(it’ll make an interesting defence campaign)

The Socialist Worker proclaims Zionism is racism
So I declaim myself an a Zionist
The Jewish Chronicle declaims anti-Zionism is racism
So I proclaim myself an anti-Zionist
I’m into declaiming and proclaiming and reclaiming language
And I’m the sole owner and archivist of the Biblical forerunner of Socialist Worker;

Red Herring. Special Edition:
“Children of Israel devestate Egyptian ecology, drain the Red Sea and lay claim to the whole of Canaan!
Peace of all known world threatened!
The Red Herring denounce the Mosaic misleadership as reactionary running dogs!
The Hebrew massses should break from this foul class collaboration!
Children, return across the desert and unite with your taskmasters against the Pharoic despotism!
Forward to the Asiatic mode of production!
Repeal the Ten Commandments!
Canaanite Minister of Information: confirms walls of Jericho still standing!
Joshua forced into hiding!
Solidarity with the Amorites, Hittites, Moabites and Midianites!”

And I treasure my biblical equivalent of the Jewish Chronicle: Jewish Shmatte.
Passover Colour Supplement and Property Development Special:
“The long march is over!
The Children of Israel walk free!
Story of Golden Calf revealed as a hoax!
Prime building sites still available in Sumaria!
Jewish scientist perfects way of genetically modifying manna from heaven!
Moses offers to negotiate with the Canaanites - but no recognition of their leadership until the book of Sharon comes to pass!
Aaron willing to perform the snake trick at barmitzvahs!
Build the blue boxes!
Beware the Assyrians!
Support the law of return to a place we’ve never been to before!
Everyone hates us!
Sail El Al!

I am an anti-Zionist Zionist
And like Isaac Deutscher I’m a non-Jewish Jew
I’m an irreligious Jew
I’m a Jew of very little faith
I have little faith in what passes for anti-Zionism
Which tells me that Israel, not the USA, is the meat of world imperialism
Which tells me it is Jewish finance, not the military industrial complex of the USA, that feeds Israel
Which tells me that the Board of Deputies is more powerful than the board of Boings
Which tells me that it is the Old Testament, not the old anti-semitism, that provides the text book recipe for Israel
Which tells me that as a Jew living in Prestwich I’m responsible for whatever is cooking in Petah Tikva
This is the anti-Zionism of fools
This is the anti-Zionist lobby
This is the Protocols of the Elders of Anti Zion
Enjoy!

I’m a Jew of very little faith
And I have little faith in what passes for Zionism
Which tells me that Palestine was a land without people for a people without land
(which I guess was fifty per cent correct – just a pity about the other fifty)
Which tells me it can put a political damp course in the wailing wall
Which tells me it is prepared to accept a two state solution – as long as both states are Jewish
Which tells me that it can offer me a luxurious apartment in Netanya - with an en suite blood bath
Which tells me that Judaism equals tribalism equals a dead end. Very dead.

I am the Zionist who went to Palestine in 1933 and tried to form an alliance between the Jewish workers and Arab peasantry against the absentee Palestinian landlords, the right wing Zionist leadership and the British Mandate military occupation
It was a short stay
I am a minority Zionist
I am the anti-Zionist who doesn’t believe in one national secular state, who doesn’t believe in two theocratic states, who doesn’t believe in capitalist states
I’m for the no-state solution
Jews and Palestinians allowed to live wherever they want to live
From Jerusalam to Ghelum
I’m a lonely anti-Zionist
Not an orthodox Jew – but a paradox Jew
Whose political destination is JAFFA
Jews Against Fascism
Is there anyone else out there?

Yesterday I was an anti-Zionist Zionist
Today I’m a Zionist anti-Zionist
Either way it negates the negation
Of the tribal nation

COHEN’S ANTI-ZIONIST ZIONIST CREDO

I believe in the end of tribalism. Jews supporting Jews because they are Jews is wrong. Muslims supporting Muslims because they are Muslims is wrong. That is the road to the indoctrination of generation upon generation. That is the road to the massacre of the innocents at Sabra and Chatila. That is the road to suicide bombings. That is a never ending road.

I believe in the difference between right and wrong. I believe it was wrong for the anti-senites/the Nazis/the fascists to drive the Jews out of Europe. I believe it was wrong for the Jews/the Zionists/the Israelis to drive the Palestinians out of their homeland. I believe the first wrong can only explain but not excuse the latter wrong. I believe that the latter wrong cannot be excused or forgiven by a plea of diminished responsibility.

I believe in politics. I believe in the unbridgeable gap between the oppressed and the oppressor. I believe that right and wrong cannot be reconciled by prayer or good will. Wrong must be destroyed. The wrong of anti-semitism can only be destroyed by solidarity with the struggle of the Jews against fascism. The wrong of Palestinian dispossession can only be destroyed by solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinans against Israeli might.

I believe in the law of return for everyone who wants to live in Israel/Palestine. For Jews. For Palestinians. For everyone. That’s everyone that wants it. Until this equality is achieved I renounce my own right of return. It is not a right it is a wrong.

I believe there should be an unbridgeable gap between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. I believe anti-semites have crossed the bridge. I believe genuine anti-Zionism begins and ends with support for the Palestinians. I believe anti-semitism begins with, ends with and has in its middle an attack on Jews. On Jews as being all-powerful. On Jews as being all knowing. As Jews as being all over. On Jews as being extra rich. On Jews as being extraordinary. On Jews as being extra terrestrial. On Zionist Jews in Morocco as being responsible for Sabra . On anti-Zionist Jews in Tel Aviv as being responsible for Chatila. I believe in entering a plea of not guilty.

I believe there is no two state solution. A state for Jews and a state for Palestinians. One for you and one for me. Two exclusevist, theocratic, tribalist states do not create a bridgehead to peace but are a kosher and halal recipe for perpetual war and division. I believe there is no one state solution. A little Israel/Palestine in a big Middle East doesn’t make sense. I believe in a no state solution. Forward to the communist federation of Arabia! Put it this way – I believe Utopia’s better than Dante’s Inferno.

I believe that the very concept of a Jewish state is quite mad. The defining of a person as Jewish is itself difficult and problematic and is only resolved through Cohen’s First Law of Hyperdymanics (A real Jew is one who defies all rules – especially the rule defining who is a real Jew). Defining of a state as Jewish is meaningless. A state cannot have a Jewish mother. A state cannot go to shul. A state cannot eat kosher. A state cannot be circumcised.

I believe that the realization of this Credo will require a revolution. A revolution against the machers and the racists on each and every side of a many sided political conundrum.

I believe in Cohen’s Second Law of Hyperdymanics. Zionism is both racist and anti- racist. Therefore I proclaim myself an anti-Zionist Zionist

Steve Cohen

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That's Funny, You Don't Look Anti-Semitic

There Must Be Some Way Out of Here

Why is this book different from all other books?

Contents

Chapter 1: The Socialism of Fools

Chapter 2: The Anti-Semitism of English Socialism's Formative Years

Chapter 3: The Left returns to Zion

Chapter 4: The Left's Advice to Jews—Assimilate and Stop Being Jewish

Chapter 5: Left Responses

Chapter 6: How The Left Does Not Fight Anti-Semitism

Chapter 7: The Non-Jewish Question

Bibliographical Sources

Introduction

The Socialism of Fools

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism without Jews

Left Anti-Semitism

Socialism, Anti-Semitism, Thatcherism and Fascism

The Anti-Semitism of English Socialism's Formative Years

The Background

The Background

Immigration Controls

English and Jewish Opposition to Controls

Rich Jew, Poor Jew; the conspiracy theory in practice

Anti-Alienism or Anti-Semitism?

Imperialism and History

Fascists Reclaim History

The Left Returns to Zion

Chapter 3: Contents

The Left Organisations

The Issues

Equating Zionism With Imperialism: Anti-Zionism Without Zion

Zionism and the Theory of World Domination

The Collective Guilt Of All Jews For Zionism

The Lebanon Invasion and the theory of Jewish collective responsibility

Zionism's Dominant Position Within Jewry

The Distortion Of The Jewish Predicament

The Alternative to Zionism

Assimilationism

Left Orthodoxy

Assimilation as an Answer to Anti-Semitism ?

Young, Jewish and Left - Antisemitism

Jewish Survival Through Anti-Semitism ?

Determinism and Fatalism

Are the Jews a People-Class ?

Marx—The Assimilated Jew

Jewish Self-Organisation

Assimilation and The Jewish Establishment

Chauvinism or Anti-Semitism ?

Jewish Behaviour Seen as Responsible for Anti-Semitism

The Politics of Terminology

Left Responses: Jews Exaggerate Their Predicament

'Jews Exaggerate Their Predicament'

There Are Jews on the Left

Criticism of Left Anti-Semitism Plays Into the Hands of Anti-Communists

Anti-Semitism Is A Series of "Mistakes"

How The Left Does Not Fight Anti-Semitism: Left Modesty

Complicity in Anti-Semitism

Denying The Significance Of The Material Consequences Of Anti-Semitism

Denying The Significance Of Anti-Semitism As An Ideology

The Non-Jewish Question

Bibliographical Sources

Obituary for Steve Cohen (ZT"L)

Writing as a Jewish traitor - An imagined disputation with my comrades on anti Semitism by Steve Cohen

Lieberman Camp Plays Anti-Semitism Card… Jewish Dems Not Happy by Mik Moore

"I would hate myself in the morning"

AN ISRAELI VIEW: Jews, beware of Islamophobes bearing gifts

Journey of a (“Self-Hating”) Jew by David Rovics

Israel, Anti-Semitism, and The Left by Brian Klug

I am an anti-Zionist Zionist by Steve Cohen