https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2017/11/who-saved-israel-in-1947/

After all, the Jewish people has been closely linked with Palestine for a considerable period in history. Apart from that . . . we must not overlook the position in which the Jewish people found themselves as a result of the recent world war. . . . The solution of the Palestine problem into two separate states will be of profound historical significance, because this decision will meet the legitimate demands of the Jewish people, hundreds of thousands of whom, as you know, are still without a country, without homes, having found temporary shelter only in special camps in some Western European countries.

The Soviet Union voted “yes” for partition, as did its satellites Belorussia, Ukraine, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. (Yugoslavia, another satellite, abstained.)

“They saved the country, I have no doubt of that,” Ben-Gurion would say two decades later. “The Czech arms deal was the greatest help, it saved us and without it I very much doubt if we could have survived the first month.” Golda Meir, in her memoirs, similarly wrote that without the arms from the Eastern bloc, “I do not know whether we actually could have held out until the tide changed, as it did by June 1948.”

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Stalin was a big proponent of national liberation, which is how the creation of the Zionist entity was portrayed to him. After the Holocaust there was almost universal agreement that something had to be done to protect Jewish people. You cannot fault him for having good intentions and for making a decision that made sense within the geopolitical context of the time.

    Try and put yourself in the shoes of the Soviets at that time. Your soldiers had just liberated the concentration camps and witnessed the horrors there. You are told by "left-wing Zionists" that they plan on establishing communes and building a socialist society in Palestine for the protection of Jewish people. The cold war had not quite started yet and your old allies from the war - who you wish to maintain amiable relations with as you focus on the reconstruction of your country - all strongly support this idea as well.

    However, after the first Arab-Israeli war, when the real nature of the Zionist project became clear and it was revealed as a violent colonial project and an extension of Anglo-American imperialism, the Soviets made almost a complete 180° switch in their stance toward "Israel". So when discussing this issue it is important to look at the entire period 1945-1991, not just at the one brief snapshot in time when they supported the creation of the Zionist entity.

    As Marxists we should remember to view history dialectically, consider how things change over time, and try and not view events in a vacuum but in their appropriate historical circumstances. This does not excuse the historic mistake that the Soviet Union made in supporting this genocidal colonial project, but maybe it puts it into perspective.

    If you were leading the SU at the time, can you guarantee that you would see through the deception of the Zionists and stand firm against pressures both from your own people and from your external allies, knowing that if you do so you will almost certainly be seen as anti-semitic, almost certainly inviting comparisons to the Nazis whom you had just defeated and thus severely damaging the reputation of communism worldwide?