EDITOR: The Success of the BDS campaign is getting to Israel’s guts!
The following hysterical article is evidence not just of the state of irrationality that Israeli society and its elites are now in, but also very clear evidence of the success of the campaign, and all those who tols us for years that it cannot succeed (including our great friend Chomsky) should now seriously rethink their positions and join the BDS camp!
Break the Palestinian boycott: Haaretz
By Karni Eldad
The Mishor Adumim industrial zone in the West Bank is home to a cosmetics plant that sells 70 percent of its products to Palestinians. Recently, however, there has been a slight turnaround in relations between the factory and its customers. The Palestinian Authority ruled − in a presidential order, not the small-scale campaign of a few − to stop buying Israeli products manufactured east of the Green Line.
How is such an order enforced? Simple. The life of the factory sales manager is threatened, and he is then given an offer he can’t refuse: sell the factory at a ludicrous price, and we’ll transfer it to PA control, because we won’t be buying your products in any case.
Those who silently stood by as Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad burned Israeli goods made in the West Bank simply accepted the presidential decree. Moreover, the PA recently established a “National Honor Fund” to finance its boycott activities, to which it injects $150,000 a month. Whence the money? International donations meant to support political institutions.
Israel remained silent last month when the so-called “committee against distributing settlement goods” confiscated and destroyed 7.5 tons of watermelons grown in West Bank fields. Israel stays mum when the Arabs work to impose an economic embargo on settlement products, and when the PA imposes the same on Israeli mobile phone companies, which are not centered in the West Bank. It is indeed remarkable that the cellular boycott has been put in place exactly when the son of a high-ranking PA official is launching a company that will distribute the same services.
Amid the presidential order on settlement-made goods, Palestinians have been forbidden to work in the factories producing these goods or in construction in settlements. For now, the order applies only to new workers, but veteran employees have been offered one month’s pay from the PA as an incentive to quit.
In the wake of the accursed Oslo Accords, the 1994 Paris Protocol was signed, establishing interim economic ties between Israel and the PA. The boycott against settlement merchandise is a clear violation of this agreement, by which both sides pledged not to undermine the other’s economy.
The same agreement also determined customs and tax issues between Israel and the Palestinians. When a Palestinian individual or company imports merchandise from abroad, Israel collects customs taxes and transfers them to PA coffers. In total, more than $1 billion is collected annually. Reason dictates that in the case of such a flagrant violation of the Paris Protocol by the Palestinians, we should collect the money lost by Israeli companies due to the boycott by recouping it from customs money we transferred to the Palestinians. Such a move requires no law, only a modicum of national honor − and it’s a step that could bring the economic embargo to an immediate end. At a recent meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee, Manufacturers Association President Shraga Brosh − hardly viewed as a staunch rightist − proposed another solution: barring the export of Palestinian goods from Israeli ports.
With Israeli manufacturers facing closure in the face of a Palestinian presidential order, I would expect to hear an outcry from lawmakers from every hue of the political spectrum. The Palestinians’ blatant violation of the Paris Protocol is an affront, but silence in the face of it is a crime.
UK ‘blocking’ Mossad return to London: The Guardian
Official reportedly prevented from taking up embassy post after Israel refuses to commit itself not to misuse British passports
The father of Palestinian militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in Dubai, with his photograph. Israel has never admitted any role in the killing Photograph: Hatem Moussa/AP
Britain has refused to allow Israel’s Mossad secret service to send a representative back to the country’s London embassy following the row over the killing of a Hamas operative by agents using forged UK passports.
Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported yesterday that the Foreign Office is digging in its heels because Israel is refusing to commit itself not to misuse British passports in future clandestine operations.
Neither Britain nor Israel gave any details of the embassy official who was ordered to leave the country in March after an investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency showed that the Mossad was behind the passport theft.
But the official was understood to be an intelligence officer who was known to the UK authorities and worked as official liaison with Britain’s MI6. There was no suggestion the officer was personally involved in the passports affair.
Israel has never admitted any role in February’s Dubai assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was described as a key figure in smuggling Iranian weapons into the Gaza Strip on behalf of the Palestinian Islamist movement. It has abstained from signing any material that might be construed as a confession.
Britain had made clear in public statements and private meetings with the Israelis that it expected formal guarantees that there would be no repeat of the passport cloning. The real documents belonged to Britons living in Israel.
Forged or stolen Irish, Australian, French and German passports were also used by the hit squad, whose operation – including the use of elaborate disguises – was extensively recorded by CCTV cameras in the emirate.
Israel conspicuously refrained from retaliating for the expulsion of the Mossad officer, apparently accepting that it was no more than a slap on the wrist before a return to business as usual.
The Mossad and MI6 are known to have a close working relationship especially over terrorism – despite political differences over the peace process, settlements and the Palestinians between the UK and Israeli governments. Iran’s nuclear programme is likely to be another high-priority issue of common concern.
Yediot reported that Israeli security officials were concerned about the breakdown in relations between the two agencies. “It is estimated that the affair will only be resolved, if at all, after this week’s UK general elections,” the paper said.
The Foreign Office said it had not been approached by the Israelis about a replacement for the expelled official. “However we look to Israel to rebuild the trust we believe is required for the full and open relationship we would like,” said a spokesman. “We have asked for specific assurances from Israel, which would clearly be a positive step towards rebuilding that trust. Any Israeli request for the diplomat to be replaced would be considered against the context of these UK requests.”
Israel yet to replace diplomat expelled in passport row: BBC
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in his hotel room in Dubai on 19 January
Israel is yet to replace a diplomat expelled after forged British passports were used in the killing of a Hamas leader, it has emerged.
The Foreign Office said no request had been made to replace the official, but added that “specific assurances” would be sought from Israel if one was made.
The Israeli Embassy in London refused to comment on the situation.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai in January, allegedly by Israeli agents using forged foreign passports.
It is believed the fake passports – 12 of them British – were used in the plot to murder Mr Mabhouh, the founder of Hamas’s military wing, in his hotel room in Dubai on 19 January.
Dubai officials said they were “99% certain” that agents from Mossad, the Israeli secret service, were behind the killing.
We look to Israel to rebuild the trust we believe is required for the full and open relationship we would like
Foreign Office
The names and details on the UK passports used by eight of the 12 suspects belonged to British-Israeli citizens living in Israel – all of whom have denied involvement in Mr Mabhouh’s murder.
Their passports had been copied and new photographs inserted.
During the ensuing diplomatic row, in March, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said there were “compelling reasons” to believe Israel was responsible for the forgeries.
He said the misuse of British passports was “intolerable”.
Israel’s ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, said he was “disappointed”, but Israel confirmed there would be no tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsion.
Israel has previously said there is no proof it was behind the killing at a Dubai hotel.
The name of the expelled diplomat has not been released.
‘Specific assurances’
Several newspapers have reported that the person expelled was a Mossad representative and claimed that UK authorities are now preventing Israel from replacing the individual until it agrees not to use British passports in the same way again.
The Foreign Office said: “We have had no approach from the Israelis about a replacement. However we look to Israel to rebuild the trust we believe is required for the full and open relationship we would like.
“We have asked for specific assurances from Israel, which would clearly be a positive step towards rebuilding that trust. Any Israeli request for the diplomat to be replaced would be considered against the context of these UK requests.”
Dubai police said forensic tests showed Mabhouh was drugged with a quick-acting muscle relaxant and then suffocated.
Earlier reports had said he may have been strangled or killed by a massive electric shock.
US envoy George Mitchell meets Israel PM Netanyahu: BBC
“Proximity talks” were meant to have begun, but the start has been delayed
US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the start of indirect talks with the Palestinians.
The three-hour meeting in Jerusalem was described as “good and productive” by the US state department.
But no announcements were made and Israeli officials have said the two are to meet again on Thursday.
Mr Mitchell is due to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday in Ramallah.
The meeting with Mr Netanyahu had been planned as the start of “proximity talks” but the Palestine Liberation Organisation has still to agree to them.
The PLO said it would meet on Saturday to finally decide if talks can proceed.
Mr Abbas has said the talks need to immediately grapple with the toughest issues at the heart of the conflict.
He said first on the agenda should be the borders of a future Palestinian state.
But the issue, connected to the building of Jewish-only neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, has been a stumbling block.
The talks were delayed in March by a row which strained Israeli-US relations.
The Palestinians pulled out after an announcement that Israel had approved plans for new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
Earlier Obama administration adviser David Axelrod said the issue of Jerusalem would come at the end of the programme for talks.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, although Palestinians want to establish their capital in the east of the city.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Nick Clegg to Haaretz: I admire Israel, but won’t stop criticizing its government: Haaretz
‘We must distinguish clearly between the Israeli people and certain actions of the Israeli government,’ says the Liberal Democrat leader ahead of British elections.
I lift the receiver and hear: “Adar?” In recent weeks the voice on the other side has become familiar to millions of people in Britain and around the world.
A few minutes earlier I was still involved in intercontinental conversations with a dozen other graduates of the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, recently dubbed “the Harvard of the European elite” by the British media.
Clegg’s dizzying success hasn’t surprised any of us alumni. Many of those old friends are being hounded by Britain’s tabloid press these days, as they search for small crumbs of information to shed light on – or smear – the relatively unknown Liberal Democrat leader.
Eran Katz, the other Israeli who studied with us at the time, in the early 90s, has become well known in his own right, for the books he’s written on memory theory. On the phone, Katz recalled how he helped along Clegg’s love affair with Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, a talented and attractive fellow student: how he recommended a romantic vacation spot in the Ardennes Mountains, and how, thanks to his intervention, or so he would like to believe, they eventually married.
The Spaniard Jose-Ramon Leon Lora, today the European Commission representative in Morocco, reveled as he remembered how Clegg overcame the undisputed star of the exclusive university with his candidacy for head of the student council. Canadian Millie Stanisic, now a film producer in New York, is convinced she could have written the script even back then. She recounts a conversation she had with Clegg in the college cafeteria in which she prophetically uttered: “The day will come, Nick Clegg, when I’ll be your guest at 10 Downing Street.”
Clegg laughs loudly when he hears this. He has made clear during the election campaign that he is going for gold, betting all he’s got, and that he wants to be Britain’s next prime minister.
But now’s the time to put things into perspective: “We’re not there yet,” he says modestly.
His glowing performance in the first televised debate shuffled the deck completely, turning him into the Susan Boyle of British politics, and the campaign’s hottest story. He has been called “the most popular British politician since Churchill,” and “the British Barack Obama.” He has even been compared to Che Guevara.
The kingmaker
If the surveys are right, no party will win an absolute majority in the British Parliament today, for the first time in 35 years. Clegg, who may take second place, will be the kingmaker who decides whether Labour governs Britain for another four years, or whether there will be an upset in the Conservatives’ favor after 13 years out of power.
He is the one who will decide whether a minority or a coalition government will rule; and whether for the first time in 90 years, the Liberal Democrats will return to a position of influence, with the implications reaching all the way to Jerusalem.
On the eve of the election, he refuses to make any predictions. He prefers not to talk about his ministerial preferences. It all depends on “these untypical elections,” and “the great desire of millions for change.”
Instead, he talks about “an opportunity that won’t be repeated, the one-in-a-lifetime chance to change Britain forever.”
In his mind’s eye he sees “a quick and radical shift in the tectonic plates of politics,” but he’s also cautious. “Our message is that this time there’s no need to return to the old patterns and alternatives. If enough people vote for the Liberal Democrats, then we can make big changes,” he states.
Commentators say that Clegg’s popularity lies in, among other things, the fact that he managed to steal the banner of change and new ideas from David Cameron and the Conservatives. These new ideas include a new distribution of taxes to benefit the poor, more money for education, canceling an expensive nuclear submarine project in favor of investment in the economy, the development of ecologically sound “green businesses,” granting legal status to illegal immigrants who have spent at least a decade in the country; and above all, changing the anachronistic election system which distorts the will of voters and which allows the candidate less votes than his rivals to take office as prime minister.
No joy in Jerusalem
Though Cleggmania is rife in the U.K., Jerusalem is sunk in a Clegg-pression.
“Clegg is bad news for Israel,” one official here said. “His party is running on a human rights platform, and the atmosphere is hostile to Israel. We remind the Liberal Democrats of South Africa during apartheid. Even if Clegg decides not to take the foreign portfolio, the very fact that Liberal Democrats sit in the cabinet is likely to mean trouble for us.”
In the wake of the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead, the Liberal Democrats asked for an arms embargo on Israel, and to suspend its preferential trade status with the European Union. The party was also behind the demand to mark Israeli products made in the West Bank.
In December, Clegg was at the head of the list of signatories of a letter attacking the Israeli government for the blockade on Gaza. “The confinement and punishment of an entire population is no way to bring about peace for all of the people of the Middle East,” the letter read.
Most of the bad blood was created by Baroness Jenny Tonge, a former Liberal Democrat MP, who became a member of the House of Lords in 2005. A year earlier, Tonge announced that if she were a Palestinian living under occupation, she would herself have become a suicide bomber. In 2006, she said that the pro-Israel lobby exerted a “financial grip” on her party and on Britain.
In February, she went even further and called for an investigation into claims that IDF soldiers who were sent to aid Haitian earthquake victims were involved in harvesting body organs from the dead. Her remarks caused a storm and Clegg fired her from her job as shadow health spokesperson.
“Too little, too late,” a member of the British Jewish community said. “In light of the blood libel, he should have expelled her from the party.”
Clegg, who called Tonge’s remarks “wrong, distasteful and provocative,” says that he is “a very staunch defender of the people of Israel, of a very staunch defender of the rights of the Jewish community here in Britain, a community which is feeling quite beleaguered at the moment because of the rise in anti-Semitism and the rise in prejudice generally.”
He recently criticized the cooperation of British Conservatives in the European Parliament with extreme right-wing parties in Eastern Europe, whom he terms, “nutters, anti-Semitic, and homophobic.”
“As to the accusations that I am hostile to Israel, my actions prove the opposite. I have always sharply opposed various efforts to impose academic and cultural sanctions on Israel. I am also one of those who said that Britain should not have participated in the Durban 2 conference when it became clear that it would turn into an anti-Israel event.”
“I have tremendous admiration for the state of Israel and its people. When I visited, I was once again exposed to the genius of this nation, which has managed to maintain a democratic regime and a thriving and open economy, despite its existence under a constant threat. This is a great achievement.
But we must distinguish clearly between the Israeli and the Jewish people on the one hand, and certain actions of the Israeli government on the other. If I have criticism it is focused solely on these actions. I plan to continue to voice my thoughts, which stem from honest and legitimate concern, and in my estimation that the long term interests of the people of Israel are not being met properly at this time.”
Clegg rejects speaking to Hamas “as long as Hamas continues to nurture an extremist ideology of violence and terror. I totally understand the feelings of the residents of Sderot who are under constant missile attacks that are meant to impose terror. My condemnations of Hamas have always been clear and unequivocal, and the same is true of my attitude toward the fact that Israel has the full right to defend its inhabitants. That is the role of every country and every government.
“However,” he adds, “I don’t understand the Israeli strategy regarding Gaza. The imposition of the siege against 1.5 million people, many of them young people who become increasingly itter, and the disproportionate use of force.
Operation Cast Lead did of course bring about a certain neutralization of the attackers and the missile attacks ¬ but did it reduce the bitterness prevailing between the peoples, did it weaken Hamas’ position, and did it guarantee Israel’s long-term security interests? I’m not at all certain.”
Clegg comes out against Israel’s “continued development of the illegal settlements,” he welcomes the approaching proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and as far as Hamas is concerned, he says: “The only way to deal with Hamas is to work to split the organization between the extremists who want to destroy the peace process and those who are willing over the long term to recognize Israel and to work to find a solution in a non-violent manner.”
Clegg rejects out of hand the claim that the British public is today the most “anti-Israel” in Europe.
“Operation Cast Lead and incidents like falsifying documents in Dubai do create tension, but just as I would never treat any public criticism of some activity or other of the British government as an anti-British attitude, in the same way, British criticism of the policy of the Israeli government should not be treated as ‘anti-Israeli,'” he says.
In December 2009, 51 of the 63 members of the Liberal Democrats stood behind a draft bill in the Parliament in support of universal jurisdiction, which allows private citizens to apply for the arrest of Israeli politicians for alleged war crimes while they are on British soil.
“I’m very happy that we should review it, but it shouldn’t be reviewed in a sort of panic. It needs to be reviewed in a calm and deliberate way. I was against the Labour government’s wish to try and rush through changes before the election, I think that’s wrong. I think there are issues of principles at stake, which I would like us all to have a look at calmly after the elections.”
Looking to Europe
As befits a graduate of the College of Europe, 43-year-old Clegg is undoubtedly a dyed-in-the-wool “European.” He speaks five languages. His Dutch mother was a captive in Indonesia during the Japanese occupation during World War II. His banker father, who is half Russian, is the scion of an aristocratic family. His wife, a lawyer, is the daughter of a former Spanish senator. His three sons have Spanish names. He himself spent more than 10 years in the corridors of the European Union. This record is already making many people nervous, both in England and abroad.
Although he supports his country’s joining the eurozone, he says that this is “a totally mistaken move now.” He cannot say anything else, in light of the fears that Britain will become “the Greece of Northern Europe.” Nevertheless he declares that “we have to recall that the crisis in Greece stems from the fact that past governments there were not up front regarding their financial situation. The fault is theirs, not that of the euro bloc.”
Between the lines, we can perhaps understand that he has not really abandoned the dream of adopting the single currency.
He is proud of the fact that he was one of the first to oppose Britain’s participation in the Iraq war. His policy is to put an end to the era of being a “poodle” of the United States. He wants to abandon the “exaggerated dependence” on Washington and at the same time to build closer ties with Europe.
Jerusalem is afraid that Clegg, who sees Washington’s approach to Israel as overly gentle, is liable to oppose joining future U.S. war activities.
“We cannot leave pressure on the Middle East to the U.S. alone,” he declared recently at a press conference.
To Haaretz, he says, “No country is allowed to embark on war only out of loyalty to its ally. To this day I’m angry about the way in which Gordon Brown and [former British prime minister] Tony Blair – with the support of David Cameron and the Conservatives – decided to go to war in Iraq, in order to make [former U.S. president] George W. Bush and [former U.S. vice president] Dick Cheney happy. That certainly cannot be a good enough reason for an illegal invasion of another country. We must embark on military actions only when they are in our interest. That’s why we supported and continue to support the international effort in Afghanistan. As opposed to Iraq, Britain has a clear interest in the war in Afghanistan, in spite of the fact that we have growing fears about the way in which the war there is being conducted.”
Clegg rejects a military option in Iran too. “If they were to convince me that there’s a practical option, then clearly we would have to consider it. I have not been exposed so far to any proof that we can stop the Iranian nuclear program by means of an aerial attack, while a comprehensive and all-out ground war is not an option. Our greatest ally against [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and the extremists in Tehran is of course the Iranian people themselves. The opposition in Iran is widening and it’s our best chance over the long term to neutralize Iran’s nuclear capability. We must find the proper and difficult balance between putting pressure on the Iranian regime by expanding the sanctions on the one hand and creating the conditions that will enable the Iranians themselves to confront their leaders on the other. Talking about a military option does not contribute to that – on the contrary, it makes Ahmadinejad’s life easy and enables him to claim that he is acting as he is because of the external military threats.”
As far as relations with the U.S., says Clegg, they should be described as “special.”
“I lived and worked there [at the University of Minnesota], and I love that country. We have a common language, history and culture – it’s a unique partnership that cannot be taken away from us. All that doesn’t mean that our relationship should become a subservient one, in which we automatically do what they tell us to do. At the end of the day, Britain’s foreign policy, just like that of Israel, must be conducted in accordance with British interests rather than those of the White House.”
“In any case, I think that’s the type of relationship that President Obama and his White House advisers are interested in. What they want is for Britain to be a strong force in Europe, so that it can influence the continent in accordance with our common transatlantic interests. There’s no contradiction between being strong within Europe and being a close ally of the U.S. On the contrary: One is necessary to guarantee the other.”
When Clegg talks about “common transatlantic interests” he is of course referring to the Middle East as well.
“I tend to say that the European Union must stop being an economic giant and a political pygmy,” he says. “Since it is Israel’s largest trade partner and one of the largest providers of assistance, infrastructure and money to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza – it must use its influence to bring about the goal to which we all aspire – a peaceful solution of old and bloody conflict, to bring about a situation where the two nations will live in peace alongside one another. That has always been my perspective.”
Clegg’s attitude indicates that his recent stardom has not gone to his head.
“What goes up can come down too,” he says. “The higher they lift you, the more painful the fall. Those are the laws of gravity.”
But whatever the results, nobody in Britain today will question the fact that the election campaign that has already been described as “the most important since 1918” ¬ when women were given the vote – will be remembered as such mainly because of one man. His name is Nick Clegg.
Tikva Honig-Parnass on Israeli Apartheid, Matzpen, and the contradictions of the Zionist Left: IOA
Israeli socialist activist Tikva Honig-Parnass fought in 1948 War as a Zionist. Years later she would break with Zionism and join the ranks of the Socialist Organization in Israel, also known by the name of its publication, Matzpen (“Compass”).
Matzpen distinguished itself as a Marxist anti-Zionist group that was active in Israel during the 1960s and 1970s. The group called for the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a regional framework that would involve the unification of the Arab East under a socialist and democratic banner, while also granting Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews equal individual, as well as equal collective national rights. Matzpen exists today as a network of individuals in Israel as well as abroad. Its theory and analysis can be found under a website with the same name.
After obtaining a Ph.D in sociology from Duke University in the United States, Tikva returned to Israel where she is active in various anti-occupation, Mizrahi and feminist movements until this day. Along with Palestinian activist Toufic Haddad, she co-edited the journal Between The Lines, and later they wrote a book entitled “Between the Lines” – Readings on Israel, The Palestinians and the U.S. “War On Terror”. She is currently working on a new book about the Zionist Left. We now publish a full-length interview she agreed to give to the Flying Carpet Institute in her Jerusalem home.
You started out as a committed Zionist and a veteran of the 1948 War. Could you give a description of the factors that convinced you to break with Zionist ideology?
To understand the reasons and the nature of my breaking away from Zionism, I have to emphasize that I crossed over to anti-Zionism from the camp of the Zionist Left, and even the Zionist far Left – the “Marxist” party of Mapam (an acronym for the Unified Workers Party), which called for “Zionism, Socialism and Fraternity Among Nations” without seeing the inherent contradiction within this slogan.
Besides being a member of Mapam, I was also the secretary of the party in the Knesset between 1952 to 1955, agreeing fully with its hypocritical stance reflected in its calling for socialism on the one hand, and participating in the great theft of the lands of the Palestinians who remained within the borders of Israel after 1948 – while they were living under military rule (between 1948 and 1966) – on the other .
It is often argued that Israel was initially founded as a socialist-inspired state since Mapai, the Israeli equivalent to the German SPD or the British Labour, was instrumental in creating the state´s institutions. How was that possible in a capitalist framework?
The Zionist Labor movement, headed by Mapai, lead the Zionist colonial project in Palestine during the pre-1948 period. Its political, economic and ideological hegemony was the product of a kind of division of labour between it and the embryonic Israeli bourgeoisie. I won’t go into the reasons for this agreed-upon division (they are systematically elaborated by Prof. Zeev Sternhell in his book Nation Building or a New Society? The Zionist Labor Movement (1914-1940) ). It is sufficient to say that the weak emerging bourgeoisie conferred the political hegemony to the Zionist Labor movement, which was responsible for retaining the “industrial quietness” it needed, while collectively building the political and economic infrastructure for the future state. What I would like to emphasize here, because it has implications for the present, is the role that left Zionist intellectuals, academics and publicists had – and still have today – in articulating the main narrative of Zionism and legitimizing the Zionist colonial project. Claiming to possess the “scientific“ or the moral authority, they have justified the most terrible violations of human rights committed by all Israeli governments – Left and Right alike. The pre-state Zionist Labor movement created the false theory of “constructive socialism”, which was a local version of nationalist socialism: It called for the collaboration of labour and bourgeoisie – the “productive forces of society” – which contribute to the “collective” interests of state and society. This theory and ideology was easily established after 1948 as the “state-centered” system of values which lies at the center of Israeli society´s culture until this day. What we are dealing with here is an ideology that sees the state and its “security” as the most important values, having priority over any individual interests. This is something deeply-rooted in Israeli culture – a semi-fascist culture, as described by late critical sociologist Baruch Kimmerling. It admires what Left Zionist social scientists from the Functionalist-Structuralist school, lead in the first decades of the state by S.N. Eisenstaedt, liked to call the “collective goals” of society. These imagined “collective” goals were pointed out as a justification to subdue individual aspirations and rights which, in an apparent contradiction to any liberal-democratic tradition, are regarded as “egoistic”.
But Left Zionism’s exclusive rule ended years ago. Isn’t all of this a thing of the past now?
The loss of exclusive rule by Labor in 1977 and the ascent to power of the right-wing Likud didn’t lead to an end of the hegemonical status of the ideology and narrative composed by the Zionist Left. There was no change in the widely accepted image of Zionist Left intellectuals, academics, publicists and writers like Amos Oz as the representatives of consciousness, justice and equality. The latter, however, continued to legitimize every atrocity and every war that Israeli governments, whether Left or Right, have launched against the Palestinians or neighbouring Arab countries. At the same time, however, they supported the peace plans initiated by Zionist Left leaders, whose vision of a two-state-solution ensured the continuity of Israeli rule on a fragmented Palestinian Bantustan.
The hegemony of the ideological and political principles of the Zionist Left continues to this day, because it continued to constitute the various elite groups like the Israeli academia, the legal system, the governmental bureaucracy, as well as public and national institutions. This hegemony reaches as far as the directors of economic enterprises in the private sector and even the capitalist class itself. Here lies what seems like a contradiction: The Israeli capitalist bourgeois class has in the last decades supported the Labor governments, which in turn represented its interests. Indeed, it was the Labor government that introduced economic neoliberalism in 1985 as part of a US plan for a globalized economy and military dominance in the Middle East. And, of course, the Israeli capitalist class adopted the US-Israeli peace plans since the Oslo Agreements in 1993, which have been perceived as a necessary condition for the survival of imperial interests in the region.
There was never an actual schism between Left and Right about the central premises of Zionism. As emphasized by historian Avi Shlaim, the only difference between Ben Gurion, the leader of the Zionist Labor movement, and Jabotinsky, the forefather of the right-wing Herut and Likud, was in the sequence of the stages that the project of an exclusivist Jewish state in the entire area of historical Palestine had to take in order to achieve its aims.
This basic affinity explains the gradual wipeout of the traditional secondary differences which existed between Right and Left. Kadima and Likud have adopted the “pragmatism” of the Zionist Left, as well as its hypocritical discourse relating to the “peace process”. Beginning with Sharon, who won the elections in 2001, Right and Center have declared their adoption in principle of the concept of “dividing the Land” and of the “two-state solution” – previously the position of the Zionist Left alone. No wonder Labor can participate in the present ruling Likud coalition alongside the racist Ivet Lieberman, the chair of “Israel Beitenu” – the most extreme secular right-wing party – who calls for the “transfer”, ie. the expulsion of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The wide adoption of Labor positions, however, signifies a rather Pyrrhic victory for the Zionist Left, since due to this success it lost its rationale for a distinct political existence and has become an altogether irrelevant political force today.
What was the personal impact of Left Zionism on you and at what point did you begin to challenge this ideology?
I was in fact the prototype of the pre-1948 generation, that is, someone who was committed blindly to the dominant Zionist Left discourse, namely, “our” historical right to “return” from exile to the entire “Land of Israel” and to regain its sovereignty in an exclusivist Jewish state. In my youth years prior to 1948, I had read all of the Marxist literature published in Hebrew and never saw any contradiction between it and my own Zionist position. For my generation, the Palestinians were considered a kind of nuisance which should be removed from the way leading to the foundation of the Jewish state. This self-dehumanization, as well as the dehumanization of the Palestinians, prepared us for accepting the 1948 mass expulsion of the Palestinian people that was committed under the leadership of the Zionist Labor movement – Mapai and Mapam. The glorification of the concept of a “Jewish state” permitted the prevailing indifference of my generation in taking part in the 1948 ethnic cleansing without any emotion or doubt.
In order to comprehend the difference between Zionist Left semi-fascist statism on the one hand, and real liberalism on the other, I will give you a short story: I served in the Palmach unit which conquered the area which included the Palestinian villages of Saris, Beit Jibrin and Zakariya among others, and expelled their residents. I have a letter I wrote to my parents in October 1948 which was written on the stationery of the Palestinian owner of the Har Tuv gas station, who was expelled just a few days before. Typically, however, I don´t even reflect on this fact.
In my letter I´m writing about two Jewish American volunteers, liberal Zionists, who had not been brought up in the ideology of the Zionist Labor movement. They were among many American Jewish veterans of World War II that came to support the Yishuv (the pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine) military forces in the 1948 War. One evening, they came from a mission shouting that they met on their way back to the base Palestinian women and children starving to death and begging to go back to their villages. They added angrily that “if this new state cannot take care of its Palestinian inhabitants, then it has no right to exist”. And me, a Left Zionist, who claimed to be a Marxist and an internationalist wrote: “Dear mother and father, I´m sick and tired of these American “philanthropists”. Notice that I used the expression “philanthropists” rather than “humanists”. So this is just an example of the difference between liberalism, universalism and internationalism on the one hand, and Zionist “Left” values on the other.
After the war, I went back to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to continue my studies. I remember being in a student hall one day when someone burst into it saying that Mao Zedong had proclaimed the People´s Republic of China. We were cheering and clapping at the news, while at the same time a military government was being imposed on the Palestinians who remained after the 1948 War under Israeli rule and their lands and property were massively been confiscated. At the same time, those expelled who attempted to cross the border back to their homes were shot by the Israeli security forces.
My Stalinist approach to the issues of Israel and the Middle East had even been strengthened when I quit my post as secretary of Mapam in the Knesset and moved closer to the Communist Party. Accordingly, I continued justifying the UN partition plan and the founding of the Jewish state, which was supported by the Soviet Union, and whose satellite, the Communist Party of Israel, had signed the Declaration of Independence.
Some years later, in 1961, the book “Peace, Peace And No Peace,” written by Akiva Orr and Moshe Machover, came out. Without access to any official files, which were released over two decades later, and basing their study only on information published in newspapers and professional magazines alone, they succeeded in proving that Israel was indifferent to the will of Arab states to make peace with it and systematically ignored their peace proposals. This was a big shock for me, since the very idea that the state of Israel refuses to make peace was unthinkable, especially when the ruling propaganda depicted the Arab states as aspring to destroy Israel.
However, the book convinced me to reject the prevailing misleading discourse spread by the establishment. This was the first doubt that appeared in my mind, shaking the firm belief in a peaceful Israel and preparing me to accept wholeheartedly Matzpen’s political position when it was founded in 1962 by a group of about 15 people headed by its four initiators, among whom were Moshe Machover and Akiva Orr.
The meeting with Matzpen was a kind of revelation for me. It wiped out all the misleading beliefs which until then had been part and parcel of my being and self- identity. I learned that Israel was a colonial settler state – a vehicle for implementing and advancing the Zionist project which – long before the 1948 Nakba – aimed at the expulsion of the indigenous residents of Palestine. I accepted the regional perspective of Matzpen which emphasized Israel’s role as the enforcer of imperialist interests in the Middle East and which places the ultimate resolution of the conflict outside the Palestine box. The connection Matzpen made between Marxism, class analysis, anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism has never before – and never again – existed among the Israeli Left. The Communist Party, despite its non-Zionism, failed to draw the connection of the first three elements with the last. It had signed the Declaration of Independence in 1948 and saw the alliance of Israel with imperialism as somehow a matter of choice rather than a central characteristic of Zionism and the state of Israel. Until this day, the Communist Party has not put the challenge of the Jewish state at the center of its agenda. It has focused its struggle on achieving equal citizenship and individual rights for the Palestinian citizens, rather than that for national collective rights which the Jewish Zionist state does not and can not recognize.
Did Matzpen achieve a degree of significant influence in Israel? What is the status of Jewish (i.e., non-Palestinian) anti-Zionism inside Israel today?
Matzpen was the first group to come out against the 1967 War and was at the forefront of the protest movement against the occupation which spread in the first years after the war. This gained Matzpen support among a rather substantial number of young people. Part of this support was then due to the 1968 impact of the student uprising in Europe and the civil rights movement in the United States. Matzpen’s political positions were seen as the right translation of these uprisings to the local version of the oppression of the Palestinians. However, the adoption of the comprehensive anti-Zionist and class-based perspective of Matzpen has been rather limited.
The only real full impact of Matzpen was on the militant uprising of the Mizrahim (Jews from Middle Eastern countries) Black Panthers, which took place between 1970 and 1972. They were second-generation Jews from the Arab countries who had been brought to Israel in order to fulfill the urgent need of the newly born state to settle the “empty” occupied territories the Palestinians had been expelled from, as well as to increase the numbers of the Israeli army. The Mizrahi immigrants were in fact dumped in places without any real economic planning or productive employment, thus creating the “development towns” which subsequently would become the most neglected Jewish communities in the country. “Emptied” neighbourhoods in originally Palestinian or ‘mixed’ towns, were also re-settled with Mizrahi newcomers, which soon enough turned into pockets of poverty as well.
Under the ideological influence of Matzpen, a young group of Mizrahim Jews in an ex-Palestinian neighbourhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the Musrara neighbourhood, began to articulate their rage against their systematic discrimination by the Zionist establishment in class terms. Matzpen formed not only their ideological perspective, but also provided them with logistical support. This was truly a movement with a massive potential. But they were crushed by the authorities who jailed their leaders and activists and harshly persecuted them after their release from prison. Moreover, the Black Panthers’ anti-Zionist and anti-capitalist message was twisted since then by identity and culturalist-oriented Mizrahi activists and Post-Zionist academics.
For morally conscious intellectuals since the mid-90′s, Matzpen stood out as a role model. Since then, some of the critical among them (Post-Zionist sociologists like Uri Ram and Yehuda Shenhav) made sure to pay homage to Matzpen as the first to depict Zionism as a colonialist movement. However, by taking Zionist colonialism out of the anti-imperialist framework and the class analysis of Matzpen, entirely distorted its approach and failed to create any alternative to Zionist ideology and praxis. Thus the full impact of Matzpen has been materialized mainly among genuine anti-colonialists, socialists or democrats, both in Israel and abroad, who are willing to apply its principles for a full rejection of Israel as a Zionist state.
As I have already mentioned, anti-Zionists are considered by Left Zionist intellectuals, as well as by wide strata in Israel, as traitors who challenge the very existence of the state. The discourse around this issue blurs and confuses the idea of physical existence of the Jewish citizens of this state with that of its existence as a “Jewish state”. Moreover, the Jewish identity of Israel has become synonymous with the notion of its “security” and thus further deepens the commitment of most progressive Israelis to its racist nature as well.
Much is heard in Europe about Post-Zionism. What are, in your opinion, its strengths and/or limitations?
You have to distinguish between the New Historians and critical sociologists on the one hand, and those I depict as Post-Zionists on the other. The first group refuted some basic narratives of Zionism regarding the 1948 War and the Nakba, but without challenging the very nature of the Jewish state as an ethnocratic colonial settler state (Ilan Pappe is an exception). On the other hand, the Post-Zionists had the intention to disclose and refute Israel’s assumed structural inequality as reflected in the discrimination of its Palestinian citizens, as well as other Jewish “minority groups”. Their theoretical base, however, was post-modernism and its related fields – multiculturalism, post-colonialism and identity politics – which they have wrongly used for their analysis of the Zionist state. For instance, some of them tend to equalize the oppression of the Palestinians with that of the Mizrahim, perceiving both as the victims of the Ashkenazi (European Jewish) Zionist state. They thus ignore the central feature of Zionism which implies the full exclusion of the Palestinians from the exclusivist Jewish state, while the class-based oppression of Mizrahi Jews does not stem from the colonial character of the state of Israel, whose main dividing line is that between Jews and Palestinians. In fact, their “multiculturalism” and politics of identity brought many Post-Zionists to turn their backs to the strengthened Palestinian and Arab nationalism among the Palestinian citizens and to their demands, which are far away and even contradictory to the quest for recognizing their “minority group identity”.
Post-Zionists have not concentrated upon a thorough analysis of Israel as a colonial settler state. They have not been anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, as they never challenged economic neoliberalism or Israel’s role in serving US interests in the region.
Are we witnessing, in your opinion, a radicalization or an erosion of Zionist ideology?
Zionist ideology, its discourse and implementation in policies and laws has enormously radicalized. When the false self-identity as a peaceful state is being crushed on a daily basis, there is a need to strengthen the commitment of the people to Zionism. A main feature of this stage of Zionism is the overt confirmation of Matzpen´s thesis about the regional nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The US-Israeli quest for hegemony in the Middle East and the “war against terror”, aimed at subduing “disobeying” states like Iran and Syria and crushing Islamic resistance movements like Hizbullah and Hamas, are at the center of public discourse. The establishment, supported by wide strata – including the Zionist Left – has been involved in a determined effort to describe this war as a necessary condition for the survival of the Zionist Jewish state. Indicative of the establishment awareness of the role that Zionism plays in harnessing Israelis to support its war policy, is the opening lecture by Benjamin Netanyahu in the last annual Herzliya conference which gathers Israel´s political, economic and military elites for discussing the most urgent topics that are included in the present agenda of the state. Netanyahu’s lecture focused on the exclusive Jewish right to all of the Land of Israel, i.e., historical Palestine, and the need to strengthen the citizens´ Zionist consciousness.
I will just give you an example from my own experience: Last year, I went to a ceremony at my grandson´s school in northern Tel Aviv, a known bourgeois, secular and liberal area, where most people vote for “Left” Zionist parties – Labour or Meretz. It was a commemoration day for all fallen Israeli soldiers, where all the the pupils and their parents, as well as the bereaved families were present. The event was opened when a boy with a kippa – in a supposedly secular school – read from the Bible that God said to Abraham, “Look from the place you are there, to the north and south and east and west, because all the land you see, I will give to you and your offsprings until eternity”. This scene just shows the strengthened tendency in education to deepen the commitment to Zionism and the aggressive war policies of the state of Israel. To open the memorial day with this promise of God to Abraham is a message given to the children that you must fight fiercely in the future inevitable wars against the Palestinians and others because this land, which is is exclusively ours, is in danger.
Israel is referred to as “the only democracy in the Middle East“ and the civil rights enjoyed by Israel’s Palestinians are indicated as a proof of this. What is the situation of Israel´s Palestinian citizens?
The Israeli regime encompasses by now all historical Palestine – from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Israel has settled half a million of its own citizens there; it has extended its own laws there and uses aquifers and airspace there every single day. In practice, Israel has annexed the West Bank without officially declaring it. Many among the Left Zionists adhere to the misleading claim that the West Bank (and Gaza) are exterior to the state of Israel and that the ’67 occupation is only temporary and eventually these areas will constitute the independent Palestinian state. They thus conceal the fact that these areas have in fact been annexed and are part and parcel of Greater Israel – something that allows them to retain the image of Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Zionism has enforced its government upon different parts of Palestine in different historical stages. Hence the different levels of civil rights and civil status of the Palestinian inhabitants of these parts – from no civil rights in the West Bank and Gaza, to formal citizenship granted to the remaining Palestinians after the Nakba of 1948, something that was a condition imposed on Israel in order to be accepted as a member of the United Nations.
Therefore, the discussion on Israel’s democracy must include both the obvious and observable apartheid regime in the ’67 occupied territories – to which the Left abroad is willing to admit – and the somewhat masked apartheid within the Green Line (“Israel Proper”), which they are reluctant to depict as such and still regard as a democracy.
Isn’t apartheid a bit exaggerated? The Palestinians in Israel are after all able to vote for their representatives in the Knesset…
Indeed, one should emphasize Matzpen’s thesis which was elaborated by Moshe Machover regarding one essential difference between the Israeli version of apartheid and that which prevailed in South Africa. Accordingly, Zionism, like the North American or Australian species of colonization, aimed at eliminating the native population instead of keeping them as a reserve of cheap labour power. Unlike the Blacks in apartheid South Africa, Palestinians were considered dispensable, which explains the notion of mass expulsion looming in Zionist thinking long before 1948. This “solution” is still adopted by Israeli political and intellectual elites, as explicitly expressed by historian Benny Morris. However, until the right circumstances appear, a consistent policy of ethnic cleansing in slow motion – physical, political and social – has been taking place all over historical Palestine, albeit with different methods and levels; by disconnecting Palestinians from their cultivated lands, banning their access to basic resources of livelihood, not to mention the devastation and massacres which took place in Jenin and Gaza.
The characteristics of the structural discrimination of the Palestinian citizens qualifies Israel as an apartheid regime which is similar to that of South Africa, albeit, as said, intentionally camouflaged. Unlike apartheid in South Africa, which openly declared its racism in all walks of life, what we have seen until recently in Israel is a kind of racism that avoids any racist language which explicitly points to the discrimination of Palestinians. The legal, political and ideological infrastructure of this form of apartheid regime was laid down during the first decade of the state by Zionist Labor governments in which the “Marxist” party of Mapam was a senior member.
As Saree Makdisi shows in a recent article, every single major South African apartheid law has a direct equivalent in Israel today. For example, the Population Registration Act of 1950 assigned to every South African a racial identity according to which each of them was entitled to (or was denied) a different set of rights. This has a direct equivalent in the Israeli laws that assign to Jews and Palestinians a distinct national identity. According to Israeli law, there is no such thing as Israeli nationality. The only nationality Israeli law recognizes is the Jewish nationality, which encompasses Jews all over the world who Israel claims to be their state. Non-Jews, although they can be citizens of the state, are explicitly not members of an Israeli “nation”.
Thus, while the Jewish citizens are recognized as having a national identity, Israeli law strips Palestinian citizens of their national identity and reduces them to a mere ethnic minority, the “Israeli Arabs”. This in itself is the backbone of the discriminative regime, even before any statement is made about discrimination. In Israel, various fundamental rights – access to land and housing, for example – are dependent upon national identity, not the lesser category of mere citizenship.
The system of regulations that determine access to land inside Israel exemplifies a wide range of these rights. They constitute a direct equivalent to the South African Group Areas Act of 1950 which assigned different areas of South Africa for the residential use by different racial groups. Palestinian citizens are legally excluded from residing in officially designated “Jewish community settlements”. Moreover, they are barred from living on state land or land held by “national institutions” such as the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which comprise 90 percent of lands in Israel – most of which had been confiscated from Palestinians. These institutions openly claim that they are “the caretaker of the land of Israel on behalf of its owners, Jewish people everywhere”.
Even the formal citizenship granted to the Palestinians who survived the Nakba in 1948 is systematically stripped of any solid guarantee for political and individual rights. Thus for example, political parties and individuals, if they don’t recognize the Jewish state and even use the right to challenge it by democratic means, are seen by the Shabak (the internal security service) as a security threat to the existence of Israel and risk being barred from participating in the elections for the Knesset. The right to citizenship or even residency is denied from a Palestinian spouse from the the ’67 occupied territories or other Arab states.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a highly divisive issue among the German Left. Some leftists have come to the conclusion, given the shift in the region for Islamic movements like Hamas and Hizbullah (and the subsequent weakening of the secular nationalists and the Left) that supporting Israel’s “Right To Exist” is a necessary step to defeat “reactionary” or “medieval antisemitic“ tendencies. What is your response to that?
“Israel’s right to exist” is a slogan that contradicts any aim related to secular democracy. Nor can it replace the role which the current weak Left and secular democratic forces are unable to fulfill in fighting for democratization of the Middle East and defeating Islamic fundamentalism. On the contrary: Precisely this discourse has served as the pretext for the “war against terror” which US imperialism has been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the US-Israeli wars in Lebanon and the bloody assault on Gaza in 2009. Therefore, those in the Left who believe in fighting for “Israel’s Right to Exist” should realize that this implies joining the war against the new demon which US imperialism has created after the fall of the Soviet Union. That is, using “Islamic fundamentalism” as a pretext to crush the resistant forces in the Middle East, be them secular or religious – all this in the name of “secular democracy”.
“Israel´s right to exist” is the right of US imperialism to consolidate its political, military and economic rule in the Middle East. You cannot separate between Israel as the tool for advancing the Zionist colonial project and its apartheid regime, from its role as the enforcer of US imperialist interests in the Middle East. Israel is the US’s one solid, reliable supporter, the US’s very owned armed watchdog against any state or movement that challenges US imperial interests in the region. As such, its total war against the Palestinians is part and parcel of US strategy to abolish any call for genuine national independence.
Indeed it is sad that the anti-imperialist struggle in the region has not been led by Left forces. However, the Left should recognize that Hizbullah and Hamas are by now the only organized forces which fight against Zionist Israel, the US and the collaborative Palestinian and Arab leaderships. Hizbullah plays the most genuine role in fighting for the national independence of Lebanon. If not for Hizbullah, Lebanon would have been ruled by now by the Lebanese fascist Phalanges – indeed “secular”- in collaboration with Israel and the US.
Hamas was elected to power through the most democratic general elections. The joint American, Israeli and Palestinian Authority total war against Hamas is in fact a war of ethnic cleansing against the entire population of Gaza. This is the nature of the war, cynically claimed to be waged for the “right of the state of Israel to exist”. Therefore, the position of some in the German Left regarding Islamist movements like Hizbullah and Hamas is in fact nothing else but a call to support the US-Israeli efforts to intensify the fragmentation of the people throughout the Middle East. In this case, to prevent the reunification of Gaza and the West Bank, to which Hamas aspires, and to delegitimize Hizbullah and its integration into the Lebanese political system. The right of Israel to exist is in fact the right of the Zionist apartheid state to continue its project of eliminating the Palestinian people and subduing the Arab nation in the service of Western hegemony over the region.
The recently published insight of Left Zionist academic Zeev Sternhell regarding the alleged rise in European antisemitism contradicts the prevailing rhetoric about a “medieval antisemitism” relating to Islamic movements:
“One of the research institutions reported a dramatic rise in events defined as antisemitic during “Cast Lead” [In Gaza]. It is doubtful if the motives to all, or even to most of these events were antisemitic. It stands to reason that regarding part of them, we are witness to escalating anti-Israeli [attitudes]. Past antisemitism was not dependent upon the objective deeds of Jews. On the other hand, there is a clear and consistent connection between hostility to Israel and the deed it commits. It is not by chance that anti-Israeliness is a phenomenon which appeared in the last generation: It is a reaction to the deepened occupation [of the ’67 territories]“.