NOVANEWS
Why the Zionist ‘Left’ Are the Most Dedicated Supporters of Arab Dictatorships?
In most countries, the Left of the political spectrum is normally opposed to dictatorships and the apparatus of the police state. Of course exceptions need to be made for the lingering fondness of Stalinism for autocracy, but in general the Left stands for democracy, workers’ rights and internationalism and the Right will invade anything and kill anyone to preserve the rights of capital to exploit wherever and whenever it wants.
The Zionist ‘peace movement’, including the doyen of the fight against Occupation, Uri Avnery, are an exception. This is a ‘left’ that supported co-operative structures in order to fulfill the goals of colonialism more efficiently. As I wrote 2 years ago the Zionist left has fulfilled its historical mission, which was to divert Jewish workers away from socialism and towards Zionism. Today it is a fossil, a relic left on the shore for the sake of old times.
When the Zionist left protests the loyalty oath of the Netanyahu/ Lieberman coalition, it does so because it fears that in the developing witch-hunt it too may be caught out for not being loyal enough. Loyalty oaths, military rule, torture, arbitrary imprisonment, land confiscation – you name it and there’s nothing the Zionist Right has done that the Zionist Left didn’t do better.
For the Zionist left ‘peace’ was a primary goal. Not the peace of international co-operation and the free movement of workers in the Middle East, as even the European Union has managed to achieve. The common struggle against imperialism was the last thing they had on their minds. Instead the desired goal was the peace of the graveyard, the peace of a Mubarak which freed them to attack the north of Israel and colonise the West Bank.
Internationalism was never a principle for the Zionist left. On the contrary, founded on the basis of a Jewish only racist state, where being Jewish was the most important characteristic, internationalism and solidarity between workers was secondary to the needs of the Israeli state. And if workers in the Arab countries saw Zionism as a hostile colonial entity then those workers were merely deluded, and being Arabs or Moslems, were the products of a backward culture. This was the response, incidentally, of the Zionist left, who led the Zionist Organisation and the Jewish Agency in Palestine up till 1948. The opposition of the Palestinian Arab workers to Zionism was attributed to their leaders, the feudal effendis. It had nothing to do with being driven off the land by Kibbutzim under the watchful eye of British bayonets. It had nothing to do with the open alliance between British imperialism and Zionism. It was merely the product of the Arabs’ backward and ‘anti-semitic’ nature.
It is because the Zionist left never believed in joint work with the Arab workers, whom they derided as simpletons, that Histadrut and the Israeli Labour Party Mapai coined the term ‘from class to nation’. Because they vigorously opposed joint work with the Arab workers, they redefined the very concept of class. Indeed they had superceded and transcended it. Class struggle was merely a milestone on the road to national unity. The Arabs were defined as the enemy class, the mere representatives of feudal Arabs who were united only by their anti-Semitism.
It was thus natural that the Zionist left sought, from the very start an alliance with Arab despots. Gold Meir in 1947 made the journey to see King Abdullah in Transjordan (see Avi Shlaim’s ‘Collusion Across the Jordan’). Shimon Peres, who was described as an ‘indefatigable intriguer’ by Yitzhak Rabin and who at one time was seen as to the ‘left’ of Rabin, was also the instigator of the Oslo Accords. He it was who was responsible for the process whereby Arabs were turned into their own policemen, better to enforce the Occupation.
No more devout supporters of Arab repression were there than the Labour Zionists and no more ardent supporters of the link with US imperialism were there than these ‘left’ Zionists. Indeed the main complaint against Begin and Sharon was that they were endangering the ‘special relationship’ that Israel and the USA have. Whereas Netanyahu told Obama to back off from ideas of a settlement freeze, and with the support of Congress and the neo-Cons won that battle, Labour might have backed down. This has resulted in the obscenity that not only the ‘Right’ of Zionism – the Lieberman’s and Netanyahu’s supporting Mubarak, but Peres going out of his way to praise this mass murderer and torturer.
It is natural if one is to insert oneself in the Middle East as the United State’s surrogate that the masses are going to oppose you. It is therefore also natural that Arab dictatorships were seen as the only way of cementing the rule of imperialism in the region. Despite its laughable claims to be the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ (despite not giving half those under its rule a vote) it is Israel which has, as the Jewish Chronicle puts it, trembled at the thought of all those nice, friendly, pro-US Arab dictators, falling one by one. And this is true not just of the hypocrites of the Israeli Labour Party and Meretz, but also of even the most consistent sections of the Zionist peace camp, Gush Shalom led by Uri Avneri.
Below is an excellent article by Tikva Honig-Parnass, an Israeli anti-Zionist, laying bare much of the above. In particular her article demonstrates that Uri Avnery, for long the one remaining Zionist who was consistent in his opposition to settlement and occupation, could not defy the logic of his own position. There is no greater supporter of the Palestinian Police State than Uri Avnery.
Tony Greenstein
