HRS agrees with the LTF that we should oppose self determination for Israel, as well as the two-state “solution,” because these are reactionary measures that will leave the Palestinians oppressed under concentration camp-like conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. Creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would force the Palestinian people to continue living under unbearably crowded conditions, and to remain a source of cheap labor for super- exploitation. The Palestinians’ plight will not change if their direct oppression by the Zionists is simply replaced with indirect exploitation by the Zionists and imperialism, through the collaboration of the Palestinian bourgeoisie who will be in charge of the “independent” state.
We also consider the two-socialist-states “solution,” that is, two separate socialist states, one Palestinian and one Jewish, to be utopian and reactionary. First, any solution that does not give the Palestinians the right to return to their stolen homes and lands is pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist. What will happen to the Palestinians if there are two socialist states? Will the Israeli Arabs (almost 1.5 million people, about 20% of the population of Israel) be moved to Gaza and the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians to try to implement “socialism” under the crowded, inhumane conditions of Gaza and the West Bank? What will happen to their stolen homes and lands in Israel “proper”? The simple truth is that the Jews and the Palestinians live side by side in a totally interpenetrated country. From downtown Haifa, in the Jewish commercial area, a five-minute walk will take you to the part of the city populated by Arabs whom the Zionists have not yet managed to displace. Driving through Galilee, you can pass through an Arab town, drive five more minutes and pass through a Jewish town, and then drive for ten minutes more and arrive at an Arab village. That is how Israel is arranged, even within the “green line” (the 1949-1967 boundary). So how can we build two separate states, even two separate socialist states? By creating walls around Arabs villages and towns, and tunnels that connect the Arab areas? This kind of two-state socialism, or any other kind, cannot be anything other than reactionary.
When the Palestinians rise up and fight, together with the sector of the Jewish working class (and even some Jewish petty bourgeois) that is willing to break from Zionism and support them, they will not need two states. This is even more true if they join forces to achieve the socialist revolution. In order for the Jewish and Palestinian workers to build enough trust between them that they can fight together for the socialist revolution, their consciousness will need to evolve to the point where both groups will only laugh at the idea of displacing mass numbers of people in order to establish two separate socialist states. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the later development of socialism are only possible if there is real solidarity between the Palestinian masses and the Jewish workers – the kind of solidarity that acknowledges the need for the destruction of the state of Israel as a necessary step on the road to socialism. Such solidarity will not become possible unless the Jewish workers allow the Palestinians to return to their original homes and villages (and arrange for proper compensation if in some situations this is not possible). This will create an environment that is even more interpenetrated than that of today. Thus, the only possibility for the creation of socialism in the region is for a single secular state, in which the Palestinians and the Jews will live together peacefully after the defeat of Zionism.
Is Israel a Fascist State?
So we think that on the most important questions regarding Palestine, we are in agreement. But there are two important areas that we need to discuss. First, whether Israel is a fascist state. We think that you are wrong in thinking that it is. And from this error, follows a second error, in which you conclude that when a revolutionary civil war between the Palestinian proletariat and Zionism takes place, the great majority of Jewish workers (since they are fascists or pro-fascists) will be part of the Zionist “white army.”
First we need to discuss what fascism is, and how it differs from reactionary nationalism and other forms of brutality on the part of capitalist states. Marxism, and Trotsky in particular, have a very clear definition of fascism. Fascism rises to power in very specific historical times, when the bourgeoisie and its Social Democratic and Stalinist backers cannot stop the revolutionary advance of the working class. These are times of deep economic and political crisis. The bourgeoisie does not prefer fascism, but uses it as last resort. When fascism is rising to power, the ruined petty bourgeoisie and the backward workers join the frenzied fascist movement to smash the advance of the proletariat and kill all its leaders, as well as thousands if not millions of advanced workers. Every part of the state apparatus is controlled by the fascists, who often temporarily nationalize key industries and banks. Strikes, and any other form of opposition, even the slightest, are met with brutality in which the participants are killed.
If this definition is not yet clear enough, let Trotsky explain it further:
At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium – the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat – all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.
From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the co-operatives. When a state turns fascist, it does not mean only that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance [with] the patterns set by Mussolini – the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role – but it means first of all for the most part that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism.
(Trotsky, What is Fascism (our emphasis).)
So fascism is a very specific capitalist regime, whose main task is to smash the working class in times of economic and political severe crisis, when the workers are fighting for the socialist revolution (with or without their misleadership). Nationalist atrocities, or nationalist ethnic cleansing by a reactionary national bourgeoisie, do not in and of themselves constitute fascism. The level of brutality alone is not what characterizes the fascist state. Rather, fascism is a special means used by the capitalists in times of severe crisis to preserve their power by killing the vanguard of the working class. The fascist state stifles any attempt to build the independence of the proletariat with mass murders and the iron fist. The fascists can and will commit racist and nationalist atrocities, but the destruction of the workers’ vanguard always comes first. In Germany, the fascists hanged Communists and the Socialists from streetlamps before they started exterminating the Jews. Here, again, is how Trotsky explains it:
In the various countries, the decrepitude and disintegration of capitalism are expressed in diverse forms and at unequal rhythms. But the basic features of the process are the same everywhere. The bourgeoisie is leading its society to complete bankruptcy. It is capable of assuring the people neither bread nor peace. This is precisely why it cannot any longer tolerate the democratic order. It is forced to smash the workers and peasants by the use of physical violence. The discontent of the workers and peasants, however, cannot be brought to an end by the police alone. Moreover, if it often impossible to make the army march against the people. It begins by disintegrating and ends with the passage of a large section of the soldiers over to the people's side. That is why finance capital is obliged to create special armed bands, trained to fight the workers just as certain breeds of dog are trained to hunt game. The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.
In Germany, the same. We had a revolutionary situation in 1918; the bourgeois class did not even ask to participate in the power. The social democrats paralyzed the revolution. Then the workers tried again in 1922-23-24. This was the time of the bankruptcy of the Communist Party – all of which we have gone into before. Then in 1929-30-31, the German workers began again a new revolutionary wave. There was a tremendous power in the Communists and in the trade unions, but then came the famous policy (on the part of the Stalinist movement) of social fascism, a policy invented to paralyze the working class. Only after these three tremendous waves did fascism become a big movement. There are no exceptions to this rule – fascism comes only when the working class shows complete incapacity to take into its own hands the fate of society.
(Trotsky, What is Fascism (our emphasis).)
So there should not be any confusion that, as Trotsky said in the quotation above, “[t]he historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations.” Zionism is about national oppression, not about destroying the organizations of the working class; therefore, it is not fascism. Moreover, Zionism’s enemy has been nationalist rather than working class in character. So far, the Palestinians have not developed a revolutionary socialist consciousness, because they have been (and continue to be) misled by pro-capitalist traitors. Thus, as far as we know, all the Palestinian uprisings and Intifadas, even though they were heroic, have not been attempted proletarian revolutions, or even uprisings led by socialists, but nationalist uprisings led by the rotten Palestinian bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, sometimes with some help from the Stalinists.
Nowhere in the documents that we have received from the LTF have we been able to find any clear and scientific explanation as to why the LTF characterizes Israel as a fascist state. In the letter to the WIVL, the Chilean comrades explain it as follows: “The fictitious creation of the fascist-Zionist State of Israel, the colonial enclave of occupation to act as a gendarme for the sake of imperialism in the region, and its existence till today have involved the purchase of that layer of Zionist privileged worker aristocracy so that they act alongside the Zionist petty bourgeoisie like shock forces against the Palestinian proletariat. Comrades, that’s the reason for our definition of the Zionist State of Israel as fascist.”
This is a very confused analysis. A state is not fascist merely because it acts as a gendarme on behalf of imperialism in a region. Other states around the world have the same function. That does not make them fascist according to the Marxist definition of fascism. Imperialism purchases the workers’ aristocracy all over the world, who together with sectors of the petty bourgeoisie engage in the racist repression of oppressed nationalities. The entire history of world capitalism is littered with dozen of such examples. That by itself does not make the countries of the oppressor fascist.
For example, the British army includes many privileged workers (at least in comparison to the poor Irish), together with rotten petty bourgeois layers. That army engaged in regular massacres of Irish workers. Often, after an IRA bombing, backward workers, together with some privileged trade unionists and petty bourgeois elements who hate the Irish, beat up and taunted Irish people in England. England killed thousands of Catholic workers and IRA fighters to ensure its domination over Ireland. Does this make England fascist? Even though we can possibly characterize some of the Protestant militia as fascists, that does not even mean that most of the Protestant working class in northern Ireland is fascist.
In the US, during the second world war, all the Japanese people on the West Coast were put in concentration camps. Those who remained free had to hide or risk death at the hands of American “patriots” (members of the workers’ aristocracy and petty bourgeois elements). That did not make the US a fascist state. And what about the killing and lynching of Black workers by white mobs in vast areas of the southern and central US? Until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to a lesser extent even today, Black people were and are horribly oppressed in the US. White privileged trade unionists, some openly fascist in their ideology, together with white racist petty bourgeois elements, have attacked and killed many Black people in the South and the Midwest. Did this made the US (or the states in the South) a fascist state?
The decaying international imperialist system is often maintained by massacres by imperialist and pro-imperialist countries. In India, British imperialism massacred thousands if not millions to ensure its imperialist control. Belgium did the same in the Congo. Does this mean that England and Belgium are fascist states?
And what about the Balkan wars in the 1990s? In these wars, imperialism did its usual trick of divide and rule by supporting ethnic cleansing to ensure that the emerging new capitalist states would become subordinate to European and American imperialism. The nationalism in the Balkan wars was at least as reactionary and ugly as the nationalism of Zionism. The Serbs killed and displaced hundreds of thousands, in their project to build a pure great chauvinist Serbian state. This was done by fascist or fascist-like militias. The Croatians were not any better. They killed hundreds of thousands, and they tried to displace every Serb in Croatia in their attempt to build a pure Croatian capitalist state. We know that the Croatians were trained by the Americans and their weapons were supplied by US imperialism. Does this mean that the states of Serbia and Croatia were fascist? No. The purpose of the nationalist bloodbath was not to smash workers’ resistance to capitalist restoration. There was only weak resistance by the workers to the restoration of capitalism in Serbia. The purpose of the nationalist bloodbath was to distract the workers from the truth that their real enemies were the Stalinists-turned-capitalists who were plundering the nationalized property, and driving the masses into poverty. The new ruling classes wanted to make sure that the anger of the workers and peasants was directed against other workers and peasants with a slightly different religion or nationality, rather than against the new ruling classes. And while the states in the Balkans were repressive, it was nationalist repression, not fascist repression. The Balkan wars also had the purpose of ensuring imperialist control of the region. Once such control was established, the imperialists did not need fascist states. The states in the Balkans ended up having various versions of what Trotsky calls “parliamentary screens.” They implement repressive measures against oppressed minorities, but maintain the façade of a bourgeois democratic capitalist system.
Comrades, you have confused fascism with national and racist oppression. Both are despicable, but in Marxist terminology, they are not the same thing. If the LTF wants to emphasize the brutal nature of Zionism, it does not need to equate it with fascism in order to do so. It is true, for example, that the way the Zionists treat the Palestinians is fundamentally not different that much from the way the European settlers in the Americas massacred the indigenous Native Americans. But that does not make the countries that the settlers established fascist. Thus we need to be scientific about our definitions.
One classic example of fascism is Franco’s Spain. Franco’s army fought to smash the heroic Spanish working class, and after the fascist victory, the leaders of the socialist currents (Stalinists, Poumists, etc.) were killed, and the independent workers organizations were destroyed. Another is Chile, which exemplifies the same phenomenon. Pinochet and the CIA built a frenzied petty bourgeois fascist mob in order to overthrow the social democratic government of Allende. Together with the military, the fascists killed thousands of workers and their reformist leaders, including Allende. The militant unions (miners, for example) were suppressed.
In Palestine, however, the rise of Israel to power was a totally different phenomenon. In 1947-48, when the Zionist state was being established, the Zionists did not take power with the goal of smashing a potential Palestinian proletarian revolution, because no such revolution was on the horizon. The Palestinian masses were led by reactionary nationalist leaders who were more interested in keeping the Palestinian peasants enslaved to their landlords than anything else. The incipient Palestinian bourgeoisie did not lift a figure while the Zionists drove the Palestinian peasants and workers from their lands and homes. The fact that the Zionist army was armed by American imperialism does not change the fact that the 1947-48 war was a nationalist war to establish an oppressor nation, not a civil war to destroy the proletariat and “reduce[] [it] to an amorphous state,” to use Trotsky’s words.
It is true that in the occupied territories, which are de facto colonies of Israel, the Palestinians are not even third class citizens. They are dealt with the same kind of brutality that fascists use regularly. But that by itself does not make Israel a fascist state. The British used the same brutality in their colonies, and the Americans are using the same brutality in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Yet we all agree that the US and Britain are not fascist states. It is also true that American imperialism and the UN did not care that the Zionists used genocidal methods to establish a pure Jewish state. Indeed, that is exactly what the Americans wanted (and had already done against the Native Americans). But they did not completely succeed, and still many Palestinians remained in Israel after its establishment, and are still there to this day.
In the so-called Israel “proper,” within the old green line, the Zionists have established a “parliamentary screen.” The Arabs are second class citizens, and comprise the most oppressed workers. Yet officially, they can vote. Many of the Arabs in Israel vote for the CP, which has some members in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament). We know that the Stalinists are traitors, and that they betray both the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians in the occupied territories. But that is not the issue here. The question is: If Israel were a fascist state, do you think that the fascists in power would allow the Arab workers to vote at all, much less for the CP? That contradicts everything that Trotsky said about fascism. If Israel were fascist, it also would never allow the CP to be in the Parliament; the Stalinist deputies would have been killed or imprisoned.
Many of the Arabs in Israel who support the CP go on strike and hold regular demonstrations against the Zionist state and in support of the Palestinians. If Israel were really a fascist state, it would kill many of those who participate in such actions. Sure, sometimes their leaders are arrested and tortured. But this is done regularly in the “democratic” countries. Prison or assassination have been the fate of many black leaders who oppose the racist system in the US, and lately also of many Arabs here. Many of the Black Panther leaders were murdered by the FBI in cold blood. But all this brutality does not make the US a fascist state.
The “Peace Now” movement mobilized a million Jewish and Arab workers in just one demonstration against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Do you really think that a fascist regime would have tolerated such an action, even though led by a reformist movement? No. It would have killed hundreds, at least, and arrested thousands more. Such is the nature of fascism. It crushes to dust any opposition from the working class, and even from reformists and liberals.
The bottom line is that Israel is a settler state that is also an organic part of American imperialism’s methods for controlling the masses in the Middle East. It also has its own colonies (the West Bank and Gaza), and its own barbaric interest in systematically displacing the Palestinians from these areas and replace them with Jewish settlers, who are (we agree) mostly fascists. Nonetheless, in “proper” Israel there is the screen of bourgeois democracy. The Zionists don’t need fascism to keep the Arabs enslaved. The police and the army are sufficient instruments.
True, Israel is a theocratic state fueled by religious hatred and extreme nationalism. There is no separation between the state and religion. In this respect the state has some characteristics similar to the Iranian regime. But the similarity is superficial. The religious parties, some of which are fascist, are always in a coalition with the non-religion parties. That guarantees the ultra-nationalist character of the state and the continuation of settlements in the occupied territories. But it does not make the state fascist. The Zionists and the imperialists always make sure that the majority in the coalitions will consist of non-religious parties, and that the extreme elements are kept under control. Thus, although the Likud, and less extreme moderate parties like Kadima and the “Labor” Party, use pure brutality and genocide in the occupied territories, they also sometimes withdraw and let the Palestinian traitors in the PLO and Hamas control the occupied territories.
The non-religious parties even talk about “peace” and the two-state “solution,” and conduct negotiations with the Palestinian traitors. If the Zionists were letting the religious fascists run the show, the consistent genocide committed by the fascists would generate a massive uprising throughout the entire Middle East, something that neither the Zionists nor the imperialists want to face. And until the uprising of the Palestinian proletariat threatens to engulf the cities of Israel, the Zionists and the imperialists do not need to release the fascist dogs. For now, the Israeli fascists are under control. They will not become a mass brown-shirt movement (many with yarmulkes on their heads) unless and until they must be released as a last resort, when the masses are marching forward and threatening to destroy the Zionist fortresses.
Can a Sector of the Jewish Workers Break with Zionism and Join the Proletarian Palestinian Revolution?
Before dealing with this question, we need to correct a factual error by the LTF. The Palestinian workers are not 90% of the working class within the “green line” boundaries of Israel. They are not even the majority of the working class. We do not know the percentage of workers in Israel who are Arab and Palestinian. But if they were the great majority, it would be visible. When you walk in most streets in the cities and towns in Israel, you do not see any such thing. In fact, because the Zionists want a pure Jewish state, they have never have allowed the Arabs and Palestinians to become a majority within the green line.
It is true that there are thousands of slave laborers who travel from the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon into Israel, and must return back to their ghettoes or refugee camps in the evenings. But even when their numbers are added to those of the Arab workers who live in Israel, they are still a minority. They mostly do the “dirtiest” jobs that Jews do not want to touch. Moreover, in the last 20 years Israel has deliberately reduced the flow of workers from the occupied territories for “security” reasons. The Zionists let the Palestinians starve in the occupied territories, and instead of hiring them, they bring in labor for super-exploitation from Thailand and other countries in Asia. These are “guest” workers who stay in run-down motels for few years until they are replaced. They live in a manner similar to that of the Turks, Albanians, and others in Europe, and Latin Americans in the US, who are also super-exploited in comparison to the resident white labor aristocracy.
We also need to understand what the term labor aristocracy means. It is not an absolute, but rather a term that has relative meaning. The standard of living of most Jewish workers in Israel is comparable to that of white workers in Western Europe. Of course, all Jewish workers are labor aristocrats in comparison to the super-exploited Arab, Palestinian and Asian workers. But by that standard, we can say that in Germany the great majority of white West German workers are labor aristocrats compared to the Turkish workers; that white English workers are labor aristocrats compared to the Irish workers in Northern Ireland and the Indian workers in England; and that white workers in the US are labor aristocrats compared to Black and Latino workers. The privileges of these workers come from the super-profits of imperialism, which super-exploits the workers in the most oppressed sectors. But this is all relative. There are many shades of grey. Many white German, English, and US workers are quite poor, though not nearly as poor as most of the oppressed sector or “guest” workers. Within the sector of white workers, there are many sub-layers and contradictions. Some are poor and unemployed, some work hard in return for a few privileges, and others make good money and are clearly worker-aristocrats.
Moreover, the privileges of workers in Europe and the US are under severe attack, and most of them are certainly not fascists. We cannot simply write off all these white workers, and even all worker-aristocrats. We condemn and repudiate only those who are openly racist, go on strikes for the nationalism of the oppressor and against immigration, such as occurred recently in England, and call for a pure English (or German, or French, or “real American”) working class.
Anyone who thinks that all of the Jewish working class in Israel are fat aristocrats who take long vacations every three months is quite simply wrong. There are the same divisions and layers within the Jewish working class in Israel as there are within the European and American working class. Some still work in factories; some are low paid clerks or taxi drivers; some are unemployed; and some have privileges and benefits comparable to those of the labor aristocracy in Europe. And another fact that should be borne in mind is that the Jewish workers’ privileges they are always under attack, just like the white workers’ privileges in Europe and the US. This is particularly true because inflation in Israel tends to be as high as it is in some third world countries.
We agree that Histadrut is a reactionary Zionist tool that ties the Jewish workers to the aims of the Zionist bourgeoisie. Histadrut’s program is to fulfill the Zionist goal of creating a pure Jewish nation, that is, displacing the Palestinians. When its program was written, these nationalist goals were at the top of its program, and only at the bottom were there a few lines about workers’ rights. Histadrut excludes Palestinian workers from joining it, and it is not even as “democratic” in its internal workings as the business unions in the US. It is a boss of many factories, and it is run by a bureaucracy of the Zionist state. In our opinion, it is not a trade union at all, and in many ways it is structured like a fascist “trade union.”
But before we rush to conclude from those facts that all the workers in Histadrut are fascists, we must bear some critical facts in mind. The Jewish worker who looks for a job is not given any choice but to join Histadrut. His/her dues are deducted automatically without his/her permission. If the Jewish worker refuses to join Histadrut, he/she will starve on the streets without a job or health care. So without a mass movement for new Palestinian/Jewish anti-Zionist trade unions run by rank-and-file workers, the Israeli workers as individuals have no choice but to be in Histadrut. Very few workers see Histadrut as “their” trade union. Many Jewish workers hate the Histadrut and are in constant conflict with it. Many important strikes have been wildcat strikes, not authorized by Histadrut.
There have been general strikes in Israel, and even a few political strikes. One of those strikes I witnessed personally when I was in Israel 12 years ago. The students went out for a general strike to demand more benefits and to denounce the Orthodox Jews (many of them fascists) who receive huge benefits from the Zionist state but are not required to be in the army. They demanded that the Orthodox Jews be required to serve in the army like the students, and that their special benefits should be eliminated. Their slogans included “Down with Orthodox Jews!” Significantly, secular Jewish workers joined them in sympathy strikes. This is by no means a clear break from Zionism, and the students and workers still have a long way to go before they get to that point. But they are under attack like all workers around the world, and the attacks have intensified under today’s grave global financial crisis.
In short, it is a mistake to assume that because of the relatively privileged nature of the Jewish working class in Israel, socialists should write off all Jewish workers in advance, before the Palestinian Proletariat revolution even begins. Indeed, not only is it possible to organize within the Jewish working class, there is at least one critical reason why we must do so. In order to create the conditions that will give the greatest chance for the success of the Palestinian Revolution, we need to split the Zionist army. Israeli workers serve as conscripts in that army. Thus, we must have an approach toward these workers.
There are some misconceptions about the Israeli army in the letter to the WIVL. Like all imperialist and pro-imperialist armies, it is riddled with contradictions. First, only a minority of the soldiers join it with enthusiasm and want to kill Palestinians. It is a conscripted army. Those who refuse to serve in it can spend years in prisons. The reserve army is also a conscripted army. Every Jewish worker (except the reactionary pro-fascist Orthodox Jews) must serve about a month in the army every year until the age of 50. If a Jewish worker refuses, he spends time in prison. Many young workers refuse to serve, even though they risk severe punishment. There is a whole organization of “Refuseniks” who have signed petitions against obligatory conscription.
Even among the soldiers who do serve, many are opposed to the massacres and atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians. Some refuse to shoot, and others develop doubts about Zionism. Even the bourgeois press carried stories about soldiers who denounced the latest massacres in Gaza. When I was politically active in Israel in the early 1970s, a group of us were distributing a leaflet in downtown Haifa denouncing the Zionist massacres in Gaza. We were surrounded by a Zionist mob that was about to start lynching us. We were rescued from the mob by left-wing soldiers (and, of course, when the police arrived, they arrested us).
The approach toward the army is decisive, because revolutionaries must work within the Israeli army to try to destroy it from within. We know that this is critical in times of revolution. When the Palestinian proletarian revolution begins, and particularly when it starts to spread from the occupied territories into the area within the “green line,” the Israeli army must be weakened and split in order for the revolution to be fully successful. Many of the left-wing Zionists in the army could break from Zionism and join the revolution, if proper preparatory work in the army has done by revolutionaries. Some other soldiers will at least lay down their arms. Comrades, don't you remember what happened in the Bolshevik revolution? At the height of the revolution, even the Cossacks, the brutal arm of the Czar, refused to kill the revolutionary workers and peasants.
Having said all of that, we must remain clear on the overall situation in Israel. There are at least one to two million Orthodox Jews in Israel and their number is growing, especially since their religion forbids the use of contraceptives (among other ways in which it oppresses women). Many of them are fascists, or at least will undoubtedly become part of the white army when the Palestinian revolution arrives. In addition to them, there are at least one million right wing Zionists, who are not necessary religious, but who vote for the Likud on a regular basis. Some of them are fascists, although I am not sure that this is the case for the majority. But this does not really matter, because those people will also join the white army when the Palestinian workers’ revolution starts. Because of the huge numbers of Orthodox Jews and right wing Zionists, we think that it is unlikely that the majority of Jews will join the red Palestinian army.
Many Likud supporters are Sephardic Jews (those who came to Israel from Arab countries). Until the mid 1970s, they were part of the oppressed sector of the working class, but later the Zionists, through the right wing Likud party, literally bought off a sector of these workers and turned them into rabid Zionists. Still, there remain many Sephardic workers who are relatively low paid, and who might break from Zionism when the revolutionary heat blasts across Palestine.
What will happen to the rest of the Jewish working class in revolutionary times? We know that it will split; some will become white, some red, and others will refuse to shoot the Palestinians but remain confused as to which side they are on. I do not want to get into a detailed prediction since it is impossible to know how different sectors of workers will act in the heat of a revolution. It is possible that even a sector of the Jewish labor aristocracy could break from Zionism during revolutionary upheavals. As we said earlier, their privileges are relative, and in today’s crisis these privileges are under attack. We recently witnessed how labor aristocrats can turn to the left, through the actions of French electrical workers in the area in and around Paris. Because their union is under intense attack, these workers repeatedly cut the electrical lines in several different areas, and they joined French workers from Morocco and Algeria during a general strike, all shouting “Death to capitalism!”
So, can we tell in advance that none of the labor aristocrats in Israel will break from Zionism in the heat of a revolution? I don’t think so. And what about the million plus petty bourgeois and workers in the “Peace Now” movement who are left Zionists that stand for the two-state solution? Yes, they are liberals and reformists. We should denounce this now. But in the heat of a revolution I can guarantee you that they will split left as well as right; some will join the white army, but others will break from Zionism and support the Palestinian revolution.
The same applies to the Refusenik movement in the army. Under the right circumstances, left-wing soldiers can start doubting and breaking with Zionism. I know this from my own experience in the 1960s and early 1970s. The 1968 events in France and the anti-war movement in Europe and the US had deep effects in Israel. There was a mass Jewish movement that called for “Israel Out of the Occupied Territories.” We went to the West Bank and confronted the Zionist soldiers, asking them to support us. There was also a big socialist student movement. It had three main factions. One faction consisted of left-wing Zionist socialists who were against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. There was a “non-Zionist” faction and even a sizable Anti-Zionist faction. This is not the place to criticize their politics. I mention this just as an illustration of how things can change when there is hope for social change on the international scale.
And the international revolution is the key to a successful proletarian Palestinian revolution. Unfortunately, we don’t think that the international revolution will start in Palestine. The repeated betrayals by the PLO and the Stalinists have pushed many Palestinians into the arm of Hamas, which is in some ways a step backward. The workers in Hamas are certainly not educated in the revolutionary traditions of socialism. The lack of revolutionary leadership in Palestine, and the time it will take to build one, will likely mean that Palestine is not the first state with a healthy dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletarian revolutionary upheavals are more likely to start in Latin America, France, Greece, etc., and then spread to the Middle East.
How many Jewish workers in Palestine will join the revolution? They are likely to be a minority of the working class, but we cannot tell in advance how many. That depends on many complex factors such as how strong is the revolutionary party within the Jewish working class and the soldiers in uniform, how powerfully and how fast the international revolution is advancing, and what positive effects it will have on the Jewish workers. The most decisive factor is how many Jewish workers and students and youth will break from Zionism and join their Palestinian brothers and sisters in common anti-Zionist joint trade unions and/or other organs of struggle. This is perhaps the key question.
We agree that there are many fascists in Israel. They consist of right wing rabid Zionists and the most nationalist sectors of the Orthodox Jews. This scum establish fascistic-like settlements by killing Palestinians in the West Bank, driving them out of their lands with the help of the Israeli army. Then this scum builds the settlements in the name of their "superior” god. These fascistic settlements must be destroyed. The Palestinians need to build armed workers’ and peasants’ militias to accomplish this. It will be very difficult for them to do so alone, in the absence of a disintegration or significant weakening of the Israeli army. In revolutionary times, armed anti-Zionist workers and soldiers need to join the armed Palestinian revolutionary militias. This will be a vital test of whether a deep and real solidarity has developed between the Palestinian revolution and the Jewish workers and soldiers who want to become part of it.
Throughout the years there have been (and I believe that there still are) regular demonstrations in Israel in which the right wing and the fascists confront the left. This has sometimes resulted in physical confrontations. This kind of event will probably intensify as the Palestinian revolution advances, and Zionism begins to disintegrate. We know that for the proletarian Palestinian revolution to be fully successful, a sector of the Jewish working class will have to join the revolution. Unless it does, the Zionist army and the rest of the powerful Zionist repressive apparatus cannot be broken – at least not unless the entire Middle East becomes engulfed in revolutionary fever, and the red armies enter Israel and smash the Zionist state.