Perspectives for the Israeli Left Jonathan Brandow

May 1, 1972—Six hundred people had gathered in Jerusalem's David- ka Square to demonstrate against domestic repression and the war policies of the government. That had been an hour before. Now the troops were moving in. Armored halftracks rumbled up the narrow avenue, pushing the suddenly silent mob into the corner offshoots of the plaza. Then there was only concrete slab, the escape routes spotted with heavily armed and willing riot police. A rock wafted from the crowd, ricocheting off the halftrack and landing less than five feet from the deputy police commissioner's mount. "Enough of these bastards . . . No mercy!" The cav- alry descended, whipping yard-long billy clubs in the windmill motion of polo players. For five hours, chaos and blood ensued.

THE TRIP TO RAFIACH IS NEVER TOO PLEASANT. The area is inhumanly hot, the ground rock hard. Four hundred people showed up. Not a week before, the government had announced the final expulsion of 10,000 residents from the area to make way for a new industrial complex and, according to the Minister of Finance, Pinchas Sapir, a possible new "Jew" ish city in Gaza." Incredibly, the indigenous Bedouin farmers had left without a murmur. In a lightning response, the leftists from all over the country united to promote a day of protest highlighted by a march on the disputed village. At the last minute, 3,000 social democrats from sur- rounding kibbutzim, which had initiated the idea, knuckled under to a United Workers' Party (MAPAM) advisory prohibiting engagement in the vigil. The rest tried to maintain a complement of ardor in spite of the disappointment. After all, in a drastic departure from normal practices, the press was covering the affair. As the last speaker finished and a discussion concluded the worth- lessness of a deeper physical probe that day, we turned to make our way toward the buses. Mobile machine gun units stared us in the face. As we passed by, the gunnery crews continued bolting and releasing their heavy weapons. The motorcade back to Tel Aviv groaned and began.

PERCEPTION OF A VIABLE LEFTIST FORCE IN ISRAEL has eluded most West- ern radicals for too long. Yet the Israeli left drifts along, often hobbling, sometimes strutting, isolated from political comrades throughout the world. The image of the daring Palestinian resistance fighter has so cap tivated the imagination of Western radicals that an assessment of the Israeli left is frequently dismissed as a minor addendum. That a radical force still exists in Israel today is miraculous. That it is in constant dan- ger of submergence is a reality. That it could ultimately decide the po-

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED litical future of the Middle East as no existing Palestinian force might is a truth that will become more and more difficult to escape. Sadly, it seems that a liberation front with a brandished Kalachnikov is much simpler for left-intellectualized self-identification than are the incessant, often violent and always evocative actions of the numerous factions of the progressive Israeli forces. The Israeli left is growing and becoming bolder. It is maturing. But, with neither allies nor uniting program, it is running scared. Israel is an ideologically-rooted country. The legends—now deemed trite—regarding the revolutionary aspirations of the mass of Jewish pio- neers in Palestine are grounded in fact. A healthy percentage of Israelis still consider themselves Marxists. (How they manipulate their inter- pretations of Marxism is an entirely different matter.) The parents of today's youthful radicals were faithful to the Comintern and Cominform in turn. Those same parents attempted to pass on their legacy of reform- ism and Stalinism. At the instant of rejection of that political transfu- sion from the older to the younger generation, the story of the real Is- raeli left begins, and that of the misguided idealism of its antecedents draws to an ineffectual close. Rebelling against the dogmatism preached throughout their party- oriented educations, kibbutz-born soldiers broke from MAPAM, Israel's traditional Marxist opposition, which differed from the Communist Party only on the abstract aspect of the Zionist ingathering. The radical dis- senters' immediate precipitant was MAPAM's decision to join the new Government of National Unity (Ma'arach) before the 1967 war. Tired of MAPAM's reactionary-patriotic policies and its internally omnipotent bureaucratic elite, the dissident kibbutznikim, grouped in Tel Aviv and the Negev (southern desert region) around the name SIACH an anagram for The New Israeli Left spelling the Hebrew word for "discussion." Simultaneously, a group of radical students in Jerusalem, emerging from predominantly CP backgrounds, realized the need for a national radical unit and joined forces with the kibbutz-based activists, despite the lat- ters' original outspoken advocacy of Zionism. This breakaway was not the first encountered by Israel's two CPs. (Pretense of unity among the major factions had cracked in 1965.) Six years before the formation of SIACH, a left-wing group calling itself the Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen) had virulently denounced Zionism and formalized a self-avowed revolutionary cadre. Despite its singular glorification in the Western radical press, Matzpen has never gained any measure of popular sympathy in Israel. Ideological conflicts tore at the fledgling revolutionaries, finally carving them into two major splinter groups (a Jerusalem Trotskyist and a Tel Aviv anarchist sector) and an uncounted number of minor fractions among Matzpenikim

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED around the world. This waste of revolutionary zeal manifests itself through a cumulative membership in all Matzpen segments of only 35- 50 persons. A third element in the radical socialist spectrum was yet another significant split from the traditional Israeli left, MAPAM, this time by older activists under the leadership of Ya'akov Riftin, that resulted in the creation of Brit Ha'Smol (The Left Union), a radically oriented Zionist Party which participates in most SIACH actions by virtue of the fact that a number of prominent individuals (including central committee member Mordechai Cafri and former head of the radical, anti-Brit- ish terrorist LECHI, Natan Yellin-Mor) retain membership in both organizations. Their presence in SIACH deters the group's criticisms of Zionism per se. Friendly but wary, the younger non-Zionists have—and probably will—not move to oust the Zionists for some time, an observa- tion which often surprises foreign ideologues but is logical from the Israeli viewpoint.

EMERGING FROM HIGHLY BUREAUCRATIZED AND CORRUPT PARTIES, the Israeli version of the New Left, terrified at the prospect of producing yet another set of political functionaries, a clique regarded as the sinister force which arrested revolutionary development between Arabs and Jews in Palestine, harbors an abiding suspicion of almost any mode of organization. For the first three years of its existence, SIACH refused to en- dorse the concept of a platform or even working committees which were not committees of the whole. Although this attitude has been somewhat modified by the dire political necessities of the past year and a half, the general atmosphere of preference for consensual work prevails, threat- ening extensive national cracks in the structure. The awkwardness pre- sented by consensual democracy in an organization of five hundred activists and numerous supporters is plain. Brit Ha'Smol and Matzpen have long since surpassed SIACH in political maturity.

Two YEARS AGO, an organization new in conception and trend burst onto the Israeli political scene. The Israeli Panthers (IP) assumed their name in an outbreak of enthusiasm and naivete. If their political outlook was limited, their spirit was not. In the first few months of their existence, the Panthers aroused more furor among the Israeli Sephardic masses, comprising upward of 65% of the country's population, than any street- oriented organization in Israeli history. Their central demands for de- cent housing, jobs and education for Sephardic (especially North Afri- can) Jews resounded in shanty-towns and slum developments until the government felt constrained to repress systematically the Panthers and their closest political ally, SIACH. Originally, the Panthers were composed almost exclusively of Jews 39

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED of Moroccan extraction, and, in the tradition of many Oriental Jews in Israel, were among the most chauvinist elements in the country. The IP leadership studiously avoided contact with any leftist organizations and publicly proclaimed its solidarity with the "Arab policy" of the Israeli ruling elite. As their struggle broadened at an astonishing pace, the more sophisticated politicos in the IP recognized the inexorable swing to the left that the organization would need to maintain political consistency. The point was driven home to the rank and file Panther adherents by police surveillance, confiscation of leaflets, scores of arrests and beatings at demonstrations and periodic comments from the Prime Minister. The evolving Panthers were eagerly offered aid by sections of Matzpen which, after flat rejection, scorned the IP as politically immature and narrowly nationalistic. SIACH's diverse membership and less dogmatic approach appealed much more to the Panther complex in Jerusalem, and a close working relationship developed. Last summer, personal talks with Pan- ther leaders and co-founders Sa'adia Marciano and Charlie Biton con- firmed their ultimate desire to enter into a more permanent "roof organization" coalition with certain other left movements, especially SIACH. Other individuals in the recognized but unofficial Panther hierarchy began to speak in terms of an overall Israeli and Middle Eastern revolution, laying aside restrictive preachings dealing only with Sephardim. In less than a year, the Israeli Panthers had transformed themselves from a "delinquent" life in corrugated hovels to a highly conscious, if non- doctrinaire, cadre of dedicated political workers. Paradoxically, the government's feeble attempts at coopting the Panthers with soft jobs and the "rehabilitation" of young Sephardim succeeded only in sloughing off sections of the original Panther right-wing from the main body. If a State authority can ever raise the political awareness of an oppressed group through tactical miscalculation, the Panther case is a classical em- bodiment. As the activities of SIACH, the Panthers, Brit Ha'Smol, Matzpen and a host of lesser groups, including the considerably active immigrants fresh from radical groups in the West, dovetailed, the Israeli government panicked. The controlled media (State or party-owned) circulated stories lumping all of the groups together under the Matzpen label, isolating leftists from a public which recalled only that Matzpen had at one time endorsed Fateh without reservation. Minus the financial resources al- located by law to recognized parties, the left had no means of combatting such blatant lies. Worse, every political action produced distortion in or was ignored by the press (which is generally unwilling to print paid left-wing advertisements) and the State-owned media. Aside from dis- satisfying meetings and small-scale campus work, the radicals were sti- 40

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED fled. Both the Israeli Labor Party of Meir and Dayan and its jingoist right-opposition, Gahal, gained strength. After years of spiralling support for marches into occupied territory, on the Knesset or the premier's residence, after non-stop and relatively well-received support for the national rights of the Palestinian people, the Israeli left was strangling. In the summer of 1971, the contradictions of Israeli society altered the situation. Inflation was gouging the country. Factory workers threatened strikes wholesale. Unexpectedly, the Labor government devalued the Is- raeli currency by 20%, clamped a lid on wage increases and permitted business a virtual free rein in pricing, all with the resigned acceptance of the union bureaucracy. The Israeli working class grumbled with a restlessness unseen since the widely militant dock strikes early in the country's history. Capitalizing on the situation, the left, in conjunction with an angered MAP AM Youth, decidedly to the left of its parent organization, starkly portrayed the betrayal of the giant Histadrut (Gen- eral Federation of Labor) to the public, effectively tying the common war mentality and the suppression of Sephardim and Palestinians in the occupied territories to the crisis. Alarmed, the government banned strikes, revoked demonstration permits and methodically arrested activists, both Arab and, more signifi- cantly novel, Jews, on almost any pretext. Militants were confined to mental asylums or simply detained for indefinite periods without trial. SIACH members experienced several instances of house arrest. Finally, the public began to recognize the radical opposition in the country, a phenomenon exhibited in the growing size, interest and scope of activities in the face of State pressure of physical and threatened forms. May Day saw thousands marching in Tel Aviv, followed by the ugly riot in Jerusalem described above. Today, the left is ready to move. It is still crying for funds and politically hesitant, but is at least popularly le- gitimized.

SINCE THE IMMEDIATE FOCUS of the left is peace (or, for the Panthers, an equality which can only result from peace), the concentration of a radical campaign must be on behalf of Palestinian rights. The Israelis must be convinced that the recognition and granting of these rights will ben- efit them, too. Despite the multi-sided approaches of the various left factions in Israel, Palestinian groups have yet to respond to a contact, much less offer support to the issues exploited by the Israeli radicals. Notably, the situation extends even to Matzpen's positive advocacy of an immediate- ly implemented bi-national state, apparently unacceptable to members of the Palestine Liberation Organization. SIACH, admittedly, has provided only the outline of a future pano- 41

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED rama. The New Israeli Left suggests the existence of a Palestinian state alongside of an Israeli political unit, a transitional solution which would involve the repatriation of the Palestinian refugees as well as insurance of cultural, political and educational autonomy for the two peoples. Given the obvious but often mischanneled nationalist ardor on all sides, this option is a viable one. Behind SIACH's unpopularity among some Palestinian and West- ern radicals lies its insistence upon the equalization of long-range national rights of all peoples in the region, refusing to limit support to one people in deference to another. The last SIACH national conven- tion, in July 1972, formulated a resolution stating that Israel/Palestine is the territorial basis for the self-determination of two peoples: The Jewish people living there, and those parts of it who regard [it] as their homeland and aspire to achieve their national aspirations by emi- gration [and] . . . equally—the Palestinian Arab people living there, and those parts of it abroad possessing national consciousness who wish to return ... The Palestinian Arab people was deprived of this right (to national self-determination). Today the Israeli policy of continuing the occupation of Arab territory is responsible for the further denial of this right. In short, SIACH has opted for the right of national expression of all peoples in the area during the course of any movement toward social- ism. Beyond the formal resolutions lies a universal sentiment that the formalization of a Palestinian state next to a non-exclusivist Israel is the only possible path toward an eventual union between the peoples in the form of a bi-national secular state. It is the only resolution which might satisfy both Palestinians and Israelis while creating positive conditions for revolution in currently hostile Arab states. Other left-wing Israeli alliances have been hesitant to support Pal- estinian self-determination as explicitly as SIACH. Vague calls for un- defined "mutual rights" issue from those reformist organizations which have split from the traditional social democratic parties, but are fear- ful of alienating their sympathizers remaining inside the older, decay- ing structures. Various single-issue coalitions, such as the intelligentsia- based Movement for Peace and Security, have sprouted, endorsing an immediate end to Israeli occupation of territories conquered in 1967, but steadfastly denying the need for any extensive program which could be considered dangerous to the current national authority itself. Adherents of these peace groups insist that the Israeli masses will only be radical- ized through a prolonged exposure to single issue opposition movements and actions. The Panthers, too, have manipulated the single issue tactic to alert the Sephardic population to the general discrimination practiced against

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED it by the Ashkenazi elite. From the outset of 1972, efforts have been made to incorporate "acceptable" (i.e., mainly Iraqi or Iranian) Sephardim into government and reigning party posts to placate Israel's oppressed ma- jority. The non-impression resulting from such ludicrous appeasement has contrasted the old passivity of the Sephardim and the Panthers' original nationalist impulses to the new communal frame of mind which has blossomed. The Panthers are no longer satisfied with "Sephardic issues" alone, and actively cooperate in almost all general leftist actions to freeze the Israeli war machine. According to Panther spokesman Kochavi Shemesh, "We [Panthers] want a social revolution. One cannot speak of revolution and . . . limit oneself to dealing only with Sephardic issues. Social, economic and security issues must not, and actually, cannot be disentangled." The left (including opposition Zionists) has responded by supporting each of the Panther struggles even more vociferously. What began in 1968 as indi- vidual discontent has by now merged into a coordinated coalition of Israeli radicals confronting almost every issue—not excepting the possi- bility of a united front campaign around the upcoming parliamentary elections—that would be the germ of a true working class party. Never- theless, the seed lies dormant. The actions and talk are not propped up by a consistent program, and have yet to receive even verbal bulk support from either the Israeli or Palestinian publics. Their willing coordi- nation is a minimal necessity in a situation in which the accepted dare of solidarity would encourage other, more reticient, communities to shift similarly. *

THE COMMON POSTURE OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT, the Palestinian resistance and most foreign leftists notwithstanding, Zionism constitutes a distracting irrelevancy within the Israeli context. The word has been utilized here only to facilitate the general understanding of readers. Is- raeli radicals would be annoyed at its use, dismissing the word and its application as a diversion from the real struggle at hand. If the appa- ratus of international Zionism were destroyed, the Israeli people, the Palestinians and the primitive aspects of their respective nationalisms would remain. Israeli social contradictions have been disguised and, in the people's mind, assume the characteristics of a mystical form of na- tionalism termed Zionism, rendering consequences more tolerable. Peace in Palestine does not hinge on an abstraction called Zionism as much as on a persistent application of militancy against any and all oppres- sive authorities. And if peace between Palestinians and Israelis requires

*On February 15, 1973, the Israeli Panthers announced the formation of a new political party, DAL, uniting with radical Knesset member Shalom Cohen's intelligentsia-based Democrats. Panther leader, Sa'adia Marriano, will serve as chairman of the group which will represent "the exploited class of Sephardim and Ashkenazim ..."

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED the formation of a bi-national state, this objective, too, is thereby le- gitimized. Under no conditions should the Israeli left commit itself to eternal isolation through rigid adherence to Utopian, and perhaps undesirable, dogma which denies national rights to any people in the Middle East. The uniquely Israeli term "Non-Zionist" is not, as is frequently charged, a pretext to cloak deep-seated chauvinism. It is the only terminology which disdains the semantical snares into which so many have fallen. It promotes action toward a new Israel without reliance on empty theo- retical formulations.

ON OCTOBER 14, 1972, seven members of SIACH were arrested in Hebron on the occupied West Bank for distributing a leaflet denouncing the terror of Black September, the bloodthirsty cries of Meir Kahane for re- venge and the de facto policy of terrorism carried out by the Israeli air force under the euphemism of "retaliatory strikes." The leaflet ends with the central slogan "For Arab-Jewish Fraternity!" Accused of "in- citement" and "publication of material having political significance," four of those arrested have been denied a civil court and are to be tried before a military tribunal in Hebron. In early December, four members of a Matzpen fraction were charged with masterminding a Syrian spy ring. If the activities of Israel's left remain anathema to international radical movements, the Israeli bureaucracy may not have much more need for concern. A slow and slanderous erosion of left-wing ranks bereft of defense or defenders can only snowball in one direction.

JONATHAN BRANDOW, an activist in the anti-war movement, worked as a construction worker in Israel from 1970 to 1972 and was a member of the foreign relations committee of SIACH, Panthers.

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IN A BIZARRE PIECE IN NEW POLITICS [Volume X, No. 2], Burton Hall writes about Frank Schonfeld's troubles in Painters District Council 9. Among the troubles, one not mentioned by the author, is Burton Hall. Somewhere around 1960, when we were all getting involved in labor reform, I introduced Hall to Schonfeld. For the next seven years, Hall served intermittently as Schonfeld's attorney. In 1967, Schonfeld had just been elected Secretary-Treasurer and had hardly moved supplies into his new desk when Hall dumped on his head a small pile of garbage—also contained in New Politics—accusing him of betraying his reform program before he had had even a few weeks in office. That revealed, in retrospect, an odd client-lawyer relationship: the way I sized it up, and still do, is that Hall is confused about his own role: is he Attorney Hall representing men who are themselves leading reform movements? or should he be Mass Leader Hall directing workers in combat against all their oppressors, misleaders, betrayers and deceivers, of which there is an unending multitude and everywhere? I may be wrong; there may be some better clue to Hall's insatiable quest for Schonfeld's "betrayal"; perhaps a specialist in some other field of human conduct might find a more adequate explanation. In any event, as Attorney Hall, he is usually down to earth and effective. As leader-of-the-masses Hall, he dominates a realm of his own creation. In Hall's fantasy world, Schonfeld is in trouble because he is an "ex- reformer" who has betrayed his original reform program. Real life is quite different. Schonfeld is indeed in trouble, but precisely because he continues to defend a foothold for honest and democratic unionism in, of all places, the building trades where payoffs, bribes and extortion are common; where men are frequently afraid to talk lest they get a bullet in the back; where you are often blacklisted if you say the wrong thing; where a smart man can make a fortune if he is unscrupulous and knows how to operate.

FOR SEVEN YEARS, I960 to 1967, Schonfeld fought as an opposition reform leader. Since then, from his precarious outpost as the single official of DC 9 elected by membership vote, he has continued the good fight. In all this time, I am proud to say, I have worked closely with him. I have come to know him as a rare and admirable person and as an incorruptible union leader. He handles himself under nerve-wracking conditions with intelligence, prudence, boldness and effectiveness, which is why he has survived all this time without going down in flames and which is probably what Hall will never forgive. He had been a rank and file painter for twenty years before becoming Secretary Treasurer. As soon as he was elected in 1967, the old combination began its campaign to undermine him. The old officials and business agents controlled the delegated District Council, and still do; they installed his enemies as Council President, Executive Board, and Trial Board. The Carpenters union moved in to raid one section of the DC 9 jurisdiction. The Teamsters union 45

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