The following article appeared in the October 19 issue of La Gauche, weekly newspaper of the Ligue Revolutionnaire des Travailleurs (Revolutionary Workers League), Belgian section of the Fourth International, Nathan Weinstock, a leading member of the LRT, is the author of Le Sionisme Contre Israel (Paris: Maspero, 1969), the best available work on the Arab-Israeli conflict. (The translation of the article is by intercontinental Press: 1. The Zionist movement - whose end result was the creation of the state of Israel - had as its goal the establishment in Palestine, an Arab land, of a 'Jewish state under the protection of the great imperialist powers. That was the programme adopted by the Zionist Congress held in Basie (Switzerland) in 1897, the official date of the founding of political Zionism (as opposed to the carlier sentimental Zionism, whose aim was to create a Jewish spiritual home in Palestine and only incidentally to implant a few agricultural villages there).
Such a nationalist ideology that directly coindides with imperialism's game could obviously take root only in the consciousness of those who despaired of defeating the anti-Semitism that permeated the societies of Eastern Europe (where the great majonty of Jews were concentrated during the nineteenth century). SEEN AS HAVEN Initially, Zionism remained a minority current among Jews, restricted mostly to the young petty bourgeoisie squeezed out by the chauvinisen of the rising local non-Jewish bourgeoisie. The preat majority of the Jewish masses remained hostile to Jewish nationalism, at least. in its Zionist form, either out of religious traditionalism or out of ideological conviction. The Jewish bourgecisie was hoping for a Liberal teform of the Tsarist empire; the Jewish workers movement - especially the Bund - was struggling for socialism, which would abolish the structural causes of anti-Jewish racism.
The inability of the world workers movement to prevent the victory of fascism, and the Stalinist degeneration of the Third International had the effect of transforming the Zionist minority within the Jewish population into a nearly unantmous tendency, Moreover the Jewish masses concentrated in Eastern Europe were exterminated by Nazism. As for the survivors, in a state of shock as a result of the genocide and the masked anti-Semitism in the USSR, which dashed their hopes for a socialist solution to the Jewish problem, they saw no other means of salvation than the plan to set I apologie for the delay in writing, but circumstances up the Jewish state, a possible haven in case of renewed persecation; in short, Zionism seemed to assure their survival.
COLONISATION 2. Precisely because the Zionist movement aimed at transforming an Arab land, Palestine, into a Jewish state, it inevitably came into con fict with the local population (including moreover, the Palestinian Jewish minority of the time). In fact, transforming Palestine into a land with a Jewish population implied either displacing or expelling the inhabitants (and in his diaries the Zionist leader Herzi did not hide that) or, better still, setting up colonial relation: between the Jewish Immigrants and the Arab peasants.
This resulted in a programme that necessarily would involve: - the opposition of the Palestinian masses (the leaders could possibly be won over):
- petting amperialist protection for the settlers against the native resistance.
The whole history of the Jewish colonisation of Palestine is the history of these processes. Zionist land purchases were accompanied by eviction of Arab peasants, and they provoked a vigorous opposition that crystallised politically as from 1911. In order to implement the programme of Jewish settlement, the Zionist novement relied on support from the dominant powers of the region, then the British (during the period of the mandate), then the Americans and the Soviet Union in 1947-48, then Great Britain and the United States in 1956, and the United States ever since then.
ZIONIST PROGRAMME It follows that the tragedy of the Palestinian refugees, and the succession of Arab revolts against the Zionist implantation, derive from the Zionist programme itself. As the fascist Zionist Jabotinsky lucidly pointed out in a work entitled The iron Wall, there was no reason for the Palestinians to accept the fate that the Sioux had rejected, Henee, he wrote, differences among Zionists are secondary: "Among us there are no "carnivorous" or "vegetarian" Zionists. We all know that the Zionist programme can be carried out only by force." The only serious divergence was over the question of whether the Zionists should rely primarily on their owned armed militia or on the military force of imperialism. Hence the formation of various Jewish n Bitary units during the ycar between the two world wars and after the second (Haganah, the Irgun, the Stern Gang), which later fused into the Isracli army. These units were especially strengthened by the support of British colonial Palestine, and political interosts.
Tinst the Ottomans, 1936-39.
FORCED EVICTIONS Statement by the Fourth International The following statament was issued October 23 by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
For the twenty-five years that the Zionist state has existed in Palestine, the Arab East has been throw into a permanent stato of intermittant war. The whole responsibility for that situation rests on the rola Israof plays as policeman for imparialism, combined with the particular aims of the Zionist enterprise in The fourth Arab-Israeli war of autumn 1973 is a new phase in the armed resistance of the Arab peoples to the counter revolutionary policy of aggression ayate matically practised by the Zionist state. Even though this war pits the armies of bourgools Arab regimes against the Zionist armies, its character is that of a struggle against israeli colonialism and exparsionism. It follows that revolutionary Marxists affirm the legitimate character of the struggle of the Arab states against Zionism and call for their victory. But any illusion about the ability of the Arab regimes to consistently confront Zionism and im perialise would be out of order. As far as Egypt, Syria, and the Arab states that are supporting them are concerned, the aim of the war la a compromise between Israel and the Arab regimes that would be less unfavourable to the Arab bourgeoisies and military burenucracies; a compromise that would allow them to contain the mobilisation of the Arab masses against Zionism and Imperialism within limits socaptable from the standpoint of thair own economic Ruined buildings in Damascus after Israeli power during the great Palestinian revolt of In the coume of the six-month-long Arab general strike and rural guerilla war, Dayan's Then recognition of the state of Israel, the Zionist colonial presence in Palestine, would become possible for the exploitative Arab owning classes, while at tha same time the oppression and expulsion of the Arab people of Palestine would be maintsined. No peaceful solution and no mensure appearing as such can over be found to the Arab-Israeli confile! unless it recognises the right of the Arebs of Palestine to taice back thair lands. The origin of the conflict lies in the denial of that right, and so does the root of future conflicts. Because the struggle of the Arabs of Palestine is a basically radical anti-impurialist and proletarian one, it is a permanant throat to the Arab bourgeoisies just as it is to the Zionist state. It requires the destruction of the Zionist socio sconomic structure and state, and can be achieved only through the socialist revolution in the region, based on a common fight of the Jawish and Arab working masses, All the Arab regimes and Firset, along with thair respective military and financial supportens, oppose this solution, the anly ane that can possibly establish real and durable peace in the Arab Enst. A so-called peaceful solution imposed by Wishington and Moscow wauld meun acceptance of the Zionist state. Revolutionary Merxiats oppose this mystifica tion and denounce the intervention of the great powers in the Arab-loraeli conflict. No accord arrived at by Washington and Moscow can bring peace to the Arab East or to the world, The policy of so-called peeceful coexistence can lead only to militias aided the Royal Air Force and the British troops in raking through the Arab willages in Galiler and in guarding the Irag Petroleum Corporation's pipeline The Isracli "war of independence of 1948-49