This is the legacy of a country that never denazified, but still falls in line with Western hegemony regarding the imperialist project of Israel. They have found a new victim to foist their racist paranoia unto and simultaneously use the widespread opposition among Muslims and Arabs to Israel (a state that ethnically cleanses and exterminates them) as means to justify their extermination because their opposition to the Israel is systemically and legally classified as antisemitic.
This is the obvious consequence of labeling valid criticism of Israel as rote antisemitism is fueling anti-Muslim villainization and hysteria. If you oppose Arab extermination and ethnic cleansing, you are antisemitic. And if you're antisemitic you deserve extermination.
This is a big question: how does a revolutionary vanguard oppose Zionism, but not give fuel to anti semetism. I don't think it's enough to just shrug and say they arent the same thing, but a lot of people aren't going to make that seperation.
I sent an older person a bunch of info on the occupation, and she came back at me with all this anti semetic stuff about american Jews. I was like wwooooo woohoo noooo. I was like the Greek anarchists from that ancap copypasta nnnnnooooo nnoooooo. I tried to explain, but it just didn't get through.
Well it's honestly a huge failed legacy of the communist movement in general to properly conceptualize and move forward with a proper characterization of Jewish nationhood. The argument itself can really be primarily dated back to the major factional argument between the Bolsheviks and the Bundists in the Russian Social Democratic movement, where the Bund wanted a federated party based on the Bund representing the national interests of the all Jewish proletariat. The question of Jewish nationhood, imo, became subsumed to the more practical question of organizing a clandestine and illegal party and its incommensurability with federation in that context. Obviously the Bolsheviks wanted a centralized structure given the prevailing political context, and I think that was the right call, but they justified this political practicality through launching a theoretical and historical survey of how to classify a nation with Stalin's seminal pamphlet that asserted Jews did not classify a nation and the only path forward was Jewish "assimilation" into the greater nationalities. A view shared by Lenin as well.
Obviously, this "assimilation" concept does a lot of heavy lifting, but was never properly outfitted with an actual practical vision for what this would mean or how it would be accomplished. History has kind of proven the assimilation thesis untenable, especially given that the only conceptions of Jewishness are negative in that Jewishness is defined as in opposition and "otherness" to nationalities, rather than primarily being fixed to a positive conception of what it actually means to be Jewish. Following the holocaust, the conception of Zionism was of great practical importance because Jews were asking themselves how they could ever exist in a context where they were straddling a line between being assimilated but existentially opposed and unable to actually assimilate into greater schemas of nationhood. So the Jews took a step in constituting themselves as a "true" nation by founding a national territory. The criteria that Stalin used to deny them the historical classification as a nation.
Now the great question is can Zionism exist as a way of life that integrates ancestral Jews into an indigenous way of life and existence in the Middle East, or can Zionism only exist as an imposition of a European linked and defined nation-statehood? If Zionism is only possible as a settler-colonial construct, then does this necessitate the resettlement of 9 million Jews out of Israel? This is a huge question that obviously needs to be very carefully dealt with and theoretically well developed. Currently I think anti-Zionism is probably a poison pill, and the left should focus their efforts more on a positive affirmation of Palestinian problems and clearly and unequivocally supporting the Palestinian right of return and an end to Israeli occupation and settlement. That's probably the best that can be done from the Western left in the interim.
All of this is to say I don't actually know lol. But it's clear to date that the orthodox interpretations of nationhood are insufficient in conceptualizing the problematic introduced by Jewishness, and we really need to renew an investigation and study into what our conceptions of a nation truly are.
One thing I think is missing from your analysis is the fact that Jews have existed in what is now Israel since before Zionism existed as a colonial project. In fact it wasn't until after the Nakba that the identities of "Arab/Palestinian" and "Jewish" were considered to somehow be at odds. Indigenous Jewish Arab groups lived well throughout Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine right up until the mid-20th century, when the conflict between Israel and the larger Arab world forced a lot of people in those groups to have to pick between their identities.
Zionism is inherently the product of European colonialism, in that a persecuted minority within a colonial empire knew of no other strategy of liberation than to be granted a colony of their own, and the ruling class of that empire was only too happy to use their plight to further their own geopolitical ends.
No leftist should be opposed to Jewish people living in greater Palestine; they've always been there. But we should oppose Zionism as an explicitly racist, colonial ideology that seeks to create a false division between "Jews" and "Arabs" for the benefit of capitalist empire and mostly-white settlers from mostly Europe and America.
Excellent points, comrade o7
I think you have a national bourgeoisie forming after the formation of the state with a material interest in apartheid and disenfranchisement to develop the internal capitalist economy through arms industry and real estate/ construction coming tangential with the interests of European and US imperial interests in the region.
I think in the conflict the principal contradiction is related to the national bourgeoisie (and presumably petite bourgeoisie, taking over services and business etc. hence the fascist elements. there is clearly a class collaborationist element here.) Imperialism could become the principal contradiction if there was as situation whereby the Palestinian population became enfranchised enough to seriously impede Israel being used as a base for imperialist operations, but it is possible to have a largely woke liberal multicultural state that would still materially benefit from imperialist assuming the superstructural aspects of arab nationalist etc. didn't overshadow the material motivations for imperial patronage.
or something along those lines.
It's hard to separate the Palestinian population from anti-imperialism at this point, though, given that they've been some of the most visible victims of imperialism of the last 70 years at least. It's why the American / Israeli / W. European governments are so opposed to a one-state solution with full Palestinian enfranchisement.
If the Palestinian population is fully enfranchised, and if the systemic apartheid against Mizrahi and Arab Israelis is ended, I'd bet big money that Israel's stance toward the U.S. and Europe would do a 180.
I agree, I'm just saying that the principal contradiction that maintains the occupation is domestic. There is no doubt that imperialism plays a big role.
It's maybe 6 of one half dozen of the other though to be fair.
This is basically a contradiction inherent in the concept of the nation state. Nation states are inherently exclusionary, but states that are multicultural or assimiltory obfuscate national insterests and end up generally serving the interests of the most powerful nation group, for example white Americans in Canada or the United States.
It's a question of the principal contradiction to me: what drives the power inequality between nations? I think at its root it's class, because the majority of what makes a nation a nation is superstructural. The real simulated meat of the issue is that nations are going to have a bourgeois class or a comprador class etc. who will have a material interest in maintianing material and political inequality between nations.
I don't think there is an easy out. It's just going to have to be a long drawn out dialectic process of national liberation, finding new inequalities, more national liberation until we untie this hairball.
This is the kind of thing that gives me headaches. Is there some drawn-out, agglunative word for "I agree with the Anarchist criticism of the nature of the state but I just think it's idealistic to think we'll be able to go straight from a world of capitalist nation-states to a completely state-free world"?
I mean, it should give you a headache. Neo-colonialism and imperialism form the principal contradictions of our age. To the extent that solving problems give you headaches, this one should give you the biggest headache.
Yeah I would say it's simply more constructive for the left at large to positively affirm Palestinian right to return and end of Israeli occupation and settlement, than to take on anti-Zionism at this point.
I have no issue with anti-zionism. Zionism in its current form should be opposed and it is on Israelis to redefine it as something constructive. If Zionism is redefined as an indigenous movement ascerting that Jews should have EQUAL rights to live in Palestine/Israel, I'll be out protesting in support of that.
Anti semetism, on the other hand, I am extremely opposed to.
I guess I'm agnostic on anti-Zionism. Does Zionism necessitate this form of Jewish existence? Then obviously I'm anti-Zionist. But I think it's just easier and more clear to oppose the current construction of Israel and its history than the principle of Zionism writ large.
youtube suggested this interview between Noam Chomsky and this Ruby Rochberg guy who is basically like a woke liberal Zionist. and Noam actually said he used to be a Zionist in the 40s, but the definition has changed from Jewish right to equality and to live freely in what the Jews call Israel to what it is today, basically a form of Jewish supremacy and settler colonialism. I can support the former, the later is cringe zone 9k.
I think honestly what happened is that after the state was formed you see the creation of a national bourgeoisie who have an obvious material motivation for continual expansion and disenfranchisement of the other local population. It is pretty much you standard internal primitive accumulation creating the base for capitalist development.