‘Socialist’ Zionism: just say no
by Laurie Smith
Alliance for Worker’s Liberty members have been trying to smuggle their poisonous pro-imperialist politics into the Sheffield occupation for Gaza. For those not in the know, the AWL are a small Marxist group bureaucratically controlled by the dear leader Sean Matgamna and a close circle around him. Uniquely on the left, they refuse to call for the withdrawal of western troops from Iraq, and Matgamna is an outspoken Zionist. Some members are irked by the term, but there is no opposition to the concretely Zionist policy of the organisation, which is to deny the right to return of nearly 5 million Palestinian refugees. They talk of the establishment of Israel as a legitimate act; an act justly remembered by Palestinians as ‘the catastrophe’. Generally the AWL have chuntered about working class internationalism and avoided pushing their actual policy; if they did, no-one would touch them with a barge pole. There is, however, a constant playing up of the level of Israeli opposition to the Zionist project, and comrade Dan Randall actually told us that the Left is ‘confused about the meaning of Zionism’. Really, Dan? I don’t think the enfeebled remnants of the Palestinian population living in Gaza and the West Bank are in any doubt about what Zionism means. Neither are the Arab underclass within Israel or the millions of refugees scattered across the world denied access to Israel because they are not Jewish. And really, the AWL know what it means too, but sugar it with phrases about international solidarity and working class unity.
In an occupation meeting on the history of the conflict, Randall made the offensive contribution that as the Arab states refused entry to millions of Jews fleeing from fascism, this somehow made it more acceptable for Jewish people to expel millions of Palestinian Arabs and colonise their land. Absurd ethnic moralism, not the working class internationalism which the AWL make frequent reference to, but these are the sort of crass equations which result when arguments
Socialists stand for the oppressed of the world
for a position are lacking. Another recourse is lies; Randall asserted that the SWP’s speaker, Dick Pitt, and everyone else on the Left wanted to ‘drive the Jews out’ of Israel and that we were all under suspicion of anti-Semitism. A nice way to make friends and influence people. In fact there is no-one at the occupation who thinks that or has argued anything like it. That would result in swift ejection. Yet for the AWL, anyone arguing for a one-state solution, or a two-state solution with the right to return, is guilty of Jew-baiting. They argue the right of return would mean the poles of oppression would be reversed with Arabs dominating Jews. Why this would necessarily be the case is left unexplained. The AWL are so earnest about Arab-Israeli unity yet cannot seem to imagine the masses acting on anything but chauvinistic impulses.
Most of us in CS are for two states, and any democratic settlement has to entail full national and religious rights for Israeli Jews. All nations are ultimately artificial, and while Israel is unusual in being created within living memory it is clear that two generations of Jewish immigrants have created a distinct nation there, with a common language and culture. To argue that Israeli Jews of today have no right to be there and should be driven out is indicative of either anti-Semitism or a warped political outlook. It is Israeli colonialism and the existence of Israel as a racist state, i.e. Zionism, that must be destroyed. How Worker’s Liberty has become so enmeshed in social imperialism and Zionism in particular is an interesting question. Recently Sean Matgamna asked that if Israel were to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, ‘in what name would we condemn such an attack?’. Not in the name of the international working class, comrades? The AWL’s ‘internationalism’ boils down to supporting competing bourgeois forces, in a world where they have no influence. But they do have a marginal influence on the British left- and this must be fought. They must be exposed as the social imperialists they are behind their honeyed phrases.
Do not forget leading AWL member Mark Osborne’s assertion that Israel “has a point” in Gaza during the conflict.
Or patriarch Matgamna himself arguing that in spite of the “disproportion”, the war on Gaza was actually a “two-sided war”, with “Hamas waging war on Israel too”.
Apparently, Anti-war activists were being led into “one-sided anti-war war-mongering – pro-Hamas; demanding, in different degrees of boldness and clarity, the end of Israel”.
All quotes here: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/759/israelhas.html
Sounds like Zionism to me.
The fact that AWL have taken a leading role in this occupation is a very unfortunate event indeed, the ramification of which on the Palestine Solidarity movement in Sheffield must not be over looked. To put into the context of this situation, imagine the Palestine Solidarity Campaign with a chair who works part time at the Israeli embassy in London!?
This is one of the very few places where they were given legitimacy in the Palestine Campaign; they would definitely want to take advantage of the situation.
The consensus on the left is that AWL are unique in their position on Palestine and on all issues related to oppression of the ‘underdeveloped’ countries (i.e. working class). Being Pro-Imperialist leftists makes those political tendencies NOT surprising, but rather expected.
It is the first time in my life that I hear someone claiming to be a leftist and yet publicly supports Zionism, gives Israel and other Imperialist powers excuses for doing what they do, and has a website full of racist politics (especially against Muslims). AWL should be boycotted when it comes to the Palestinian question, or any other cause of justice for that matter!
Well said comrade Laurie
Political illiteracy of the first degree, or possibly willful misunderstanding, runs like a yellow thread through this dismal article. But then, I presume that writing an incoherent, vitriolic misrepresentation of the AWL’s politics on the middle east is now a condition of membership of the CPGB-PCC/Weekly Worker Group/Tuff Boyz Club.
Al-Hussein worries about the AWL’s influence in this occupation. The fact that the ideas that we in the AWL are putting forward – principled internationalism, the importance of a solution arrived at on a democratic basis, safeguarding the rights of both of the two nations involved in the conflict and a recognition of the centrality of class struggle (cf our website) – dominate in this occupation and have largely displaced the SWP’s cod-anti-imperialist bilge, has to do with the fact that here we have been able to intervene and present our ideas ourselves, rather than having them filtered through the kind of baffling sectarian word-games that McCauley indulges in above.
Read our website, measure it against the politics that we’re arguing in this and other occupations – we are arguing our full politics. And guess what – when sect leaders aren’t on hand to order the faithful to shout us down with slander, these politics dominate because they are the only rational answer that the left can offer the problem of the palestinian conflict. I’m still waiting for CS comrades to step up and argue their ideas in these meetings with similar clarity.
Wilful misunderstanding? Your leading theoretician calls himself a zionist and one of your leading members thinks israel had a point in gaza. This zionism you provide cover for is there for all to see.
Thanks for the references Chris. Indeed, Matgamna characterises this as a conflict of ‘right against right’ and Osborne contends that Hamas rockets mean ‘Israel has a point’. Not that those rockets are a result of desperation and hatred created by the Israeli state’s effective imprisonment of Palestinians in Gaza. This is really an organisation falling apart at the seams as imperialist conflict intensifies.
In private conversations, AWLers here no longer defend Matgamna, and one expressed the hope that he take leave of his own accord. Why, in this case, they don’t try and remove him from the leadership of the organisation is a good question, but apparently his ‘minority’ views are not so extreme to be objectionable.
@Maltby: ‘principled internationalism, the importance of a solution arrived at on a democratic basis, safeguarding the rights of both of the two nations involved in the conflict and a recognition of the centrality of class struggle’
would be a fair description of CS’s approach to this conflict.
But not the AWL’s, I’m afraid. Why do you not defend your refusal of the right to return? Why don’t you defend Sean’s piece on Israel bombing Iran? Your reply is so contentless that there’s not much I can say.
P.S. in fact, it is the SWP & PCS who have dominated the top table speakers. AWLers on the floor have been politically marginalised by us exposing their Zionism.
P.P.S. using lots of long words and slander doesn’t substitute for reasoned argument.