Zionism, Israel & the Arabs Hal Draper CSH Center for Socialist History ZIONISM, About the Author:The late Hal Draper is the author of the five-volume study of Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution published by Monthly Review Press. A socialist journalist and author for many years, Mr. Draper has published articles in such ISRAEL, journals as Études de Marxologie, New Politics, and Le Contrat Social. He was the editor of the Independent Socialist journal Labor Action from 1948 to 1958. His previous books include Socialism from Below (Humanities Press), War and Revolution: Lenin and the Myth of Revolutionary Defeatism (Humanities Press), Berkeley: The New Student Revolt (Grove Press), and a verse translation of the works of & Heine published by Suhrkamp/Insel. About the Center for Socialist History: The Center for Socialist History is a non- profit corporation founded to promote research and publication in the field of the ARABS the history of socialism. We strongly believe that (to paraphrase) socialists who don’t know their own history are doomed to repeat all the old mistakes. And the history of socialism shows that they do. The socialist movement is an amnesiac: socialists know little about where they are coming from—no wonder they hardly know where they are going. The fact is that little work or publication goes on in the field by socialists; most is by nonsocialists or antisocialists. They too can serve; but socialists’ concern with their own history is not of an academic character. A living movement has to know the lessons of the past. by There is a big gap that needs closing up, a vacuum that needs filling. We think this can and should be done on an all-inclusive basis—across the lines of schools, tendencies, sects and viewpoints. Notes Hal Other CSH Publications: For a complete list of Center publications and a on the price list write us at the address, send us email, or got to our website. Historical Draper PO Box 626 Alamed CA 94501 www.socialisthistory.org [email protected] Background of the Middle East Tragedy ISBN 0-916695-09-3 51599 9 780916 695095 ZIONISM, ISRAEL & THE ARABS Hal Draper CENTER FOR SOCIALIST HISTORY Copyright 1997 Center for Socialist History All rights reserved ISBN 1456310550 EAN-13 9781456310554 Second Printing Center for Socialist History PO Box 626 Alameda CA, 94501 Tel: (510) 601-6460 www.socialisthistory.org [email protected] CONTENTS PREFACE . v Chapter I WAR OF INDEPENDENCE OR EXPANSION? . 1 Chapter II HOW TO DEFEND ISRAEL . 7 Chapter III ISRAEL’S ARAB MINORITY; THE BEGINNING OF A TRAGEDY . 15 Chapter IV ISRAEL’S ARAB MINORITY: THE GREAT LAND ROBBERY . 47 Chapter V THE SUEZ INVASION: ISRAEL’S ALLIANCE WITH IMPERIALISM . 87 Chapter VI THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FEDAYEEN . 93 Chapter VII THE ORIGINS OF THE MIDDLE EAST CRISIS . 107 Chapter VIII THE MISTAKES OF THE ARAB SOCIALISTS . 121 Chapter IX THE TRIPLE CRISIS OF ZIONISM . 139 Chapter X “THOU SHALT NOT CRITICIZE ISRAEL” . 163 Chapter XI GERMAN REPARATIONS AND ‘BLOOD-RESPONSIBILITY’ . 169 Chapter XII ZIONISM vs. THE JEWS: ISRAEL’S NATIONALITY ACT . 173 Chapter XIII ANTI-SEMITISM AND ARAB PROPAGANDA . 177 Chapter XIV SACRILEGE & ANATHEMA: Notes on CHRISTIANITY & JUDAISM TODAY . 191 Chapter XV TO BREAK THE VICIOUS SPIRAL . 197 Reference Notes . 207 Preface SOME PERSONAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND A personal word may help to explain some minor aspects of this collection. It does not offer a systematic analysis of Zionism and Israel, with a complete overview, but rather only studies in certain sides of the subject. There is a reason for this. My intensive concern with the question of Zionism began only when the issue was thrust on me—as on the socialist movement, and on the rest of the world—by the outbreak of war in the Middle East over the 1948 partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel. Zionism had never been of special interest to me: my own secular-minded Jewish family was as uninfluenced by Zionist ideas as by religious beliefs; and I had never even personally run into anti-Semitism, at least not knowingly. In general, my parents, immigrants from East Europe, reflected a milieu which has now vanished almost completely—the world of the socialistic-minded needle- trades workers of New York, like most of the other militants of the Shirt Workers Union and its successor Amalgamated Clothing Workers. They viewed Jewishness as purely a cultural artifact; they looked to build their Zion here; they looked with something like contempt on the idea of running away from the class struggle here to dream of a nationalistic utopia far away. During the 1930s, at any rate about 1932 to 1937, I had often worked closely in the activities of the socialist student movement with young socialist Zionists (belonging, I think, to Hashomer Hatzair); but I do not recollect ever getting into an argument, or discussion, with them about Zionism. As a Marxist I held a dim view of Zionism, as negative then as it is now. I was not particularly well prepared to grapple with the problem in 1948. The 1948 partition was generally approved by socialists as a practical- political necessity; and of course everyone was under the impress of the Holocaust horror. Still, the outbreak of war raised a new problem of policy, as war always does. As far as I recall, there was no sentiment in the Independent Socialist League—the third camp socialist organization of which I was a member— opposed to supporting Israel’s defensive stance. It was a question of the context in which the war was seen: critical or uncritical of the Israelis’ policies vis-à-vis the Arabs? (Remember that the American public knew little about these policies, and we knew little more.) It turned out, or we found out, that we had a wing of the League that was—well, not exactly pro-Zionist, but soft-on-Zionism; for example, inclined to gloss over and apologize for whatever the new “Jewish state” wanted to do, with a minimum of criticism. The spokesman of this tendency in our ranks was one Al Findley, whose political approach tended to waver from soft-on-Zionism to harder-on-Zionism, depending on the level of nationalistic hysteria in the Jewish community, to which he was very sensitive. This spectrum (soft-on to harder-on) had a stronger influence on the organization as a whole—it turned out—than I had known. To anticipate events a little: this was shown at the ISL convention of 1949. There were two resolutions on Israel and the Jewish question presented there, even though in previous years there had been no objection to a straight anti- Zionist line. One resolution was mine; it is available now because it was adopted later (in 1951) and published in the New International. A counter- resolution was submitted by Findley, to express a viewpoint which teetered on the brink of endorsing an essentially Zionist view of Israel with fuzzier words. Neither resolution gained a majority at the 1949 gathering; but the Findley thesis garnered more votes than mine. And influential leaders, who had not previously been known as sympathetic to Zionism, now abstained from the vote: in particular, Max Shachtman and N. Gould. Obviously our group was temporarily reeling under the wave of Jewish-nationalist sentiment unleashed by the establishment of Israel. I say temporarily, for at the next convention in 1951 I reintroduced the same resolution word-for- word, and this time got a unanimous vote in favor (including even Findley—temporarily). This 1949 episode was the last time the group as such staggered on the question, though on later occasions—as when England, France and Israel ganged up to attack Suez—our small soft-on-Zionism wing went through its heart-burnings. But let us return to early 1948; the delicate state of affairs in the ranks was still unknown to me. I had just returned to New York from a five-year sojourn in the Los Angeles area, had just taken on editorship of the New International—the monthly journal of the organization—and become a member of the ISL’s resident political committee. In this situation, the very first heavy political issue I faced was the one on the Palestine partition and the new war. It turned out (to skip many details) that in the political committee it devolved on me to work out the appropriate policy on the Middle East war. And I did work this policy out. It was embodied in two pieces: first, an unsigned editorial in our weekly paper Labor Action (May 24 and 31) headed “War of Independence or Expansion?” Then a signed article in the New International (July) on “How to Defend Israel.” This policy statement is included in the following pages. Why reprint it here? In the first place, I still think it is a key analysis in thinking out the vi Middle East puzzle. In the second place, I am very proud of it for a special reason. Many years later, during the 1960s, a revolutionary socialist group called Matzpen arose in Israel out of native Israelis—principledly anti- Zionist, third-camp in politics, home-grown (before it was torn apart by burrowing sects, Maoist and Trotskyist). And a Matzpen representative in this country made my day when he read those old pieces about 1948 and expressed his astonishment that the ISL back in 1948 had worked out exactly the same analysis of the “war of independence” that Matzpen itself had worked out a couple of decades later... This policy statement on the war was fundamentally a warning.