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Writing As A Jewish Traitor - An Imagined Disputation With My Comrad

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  • Writing As A Jewish Traitor - An Imagined Disputation With My Comrad

    WRITING AS A JEWISH TRAITOR - AN IMAGINED DISPUTATION WITH MY COMRADES ON ANTI-SEMITISM

    Workers' Liberty, UK
    http://www.workersliberty.org/node/7203
    Oct 31 2006

    Submitted on 31 October, 2006 - 21:21 :: Left anti-semitism Steve
    Cohen contributes to the debate on "left-wing anti-semitism"

    For forty five years as a Jew and a revolutionary Marxist I have been
    waiting for this debate, this disputation. The time lag it itself
    revealing - revealing of the 'eft's refusal to get beyond platitudes,
    often nasty platitudes, in discussing Jews.

    Let me say what this is not about. It is not about Zionism. Rather
    it is about the anti-Zionism of fools. And it is about the
    anti-imperialism of fools. I speak as an anti-imperialist. Over a
    century ago August Bebel, the German Marxist, coined the phrase
    "the socialism of fools" to describe those early socialists who
    equated world capitalism and world Jewry. In my view much modern
    anti-Zionism contains caricatures and myths which are equally foolish
    and equally dangerous. They are both a slur on Jews, all Jews, and
    do nothing whatsoever to advance the absolutely justifiable struggle
    of the Palestinians to become free of Israeli hegemony. And yes
    I think anti-Zionism and anti-semitism should be conceptually and
    politically kept absolutely apart. However it is the result of the
    dominant discourse on the modern left that they have crashed into
    each other and joined up. This discourse is joined up anti-politics
    at its most grotesque.

    What makes these anti-politics even more grotesque is that prior to
    the triumph of zionism (and the establishment of Israel) there was
    another anti-semitic slur (often found in Stalinist mythology) - that
    of the rootless, cosmopolitan Jew, that is the Jew without a country
    of his/her own and owing loyalty to no other state. So it is damned
    if you do and it's damned if you don't. The language of damnation,
    of fire and hell water, is itself absolutely appropriate coming from a
    Christian-imperialist tradition which is responsible for anti-Semitism
    (as it is for Islamophobia)

    As I understand it , the emergence of idiotic anti-Zionism as
    being dominant within anti-Semititic discourse found within the
    (non-Stalinist) left began in earnest after the 1982 Israeli
    invasion of Lebanon and the consequent Sabra-Chatilla massacre
    (actually committed by Christian Phalangists) . In 1985 I wrote a
    small book on the subject of Left anti-Semitism - That's Funny You
    Don't look Anti-Semitic (which is now posted on the web). This looked
    historically at how there has always been a significant current within
    the left who have adopted conspiracy theories about Jews. Only a few
    pages of this were devoted to the issue of anti-Zionism. Now I feel
    a whole library would be insufficient to house what is required.

    The real turning point were the Twin Towers destruction and the
    subsequent aggression against Iraq, both which have resulted in a
    global anti-Semitic backlash. Twin Towers is perceived as a response
    (legitimate or illegitimate) to Zionism and the invasion of Iraq
    as being manipulated by Zionism. Of course neither of these events
    were in any way the responsibility of Jews or of Zionism. But even
    if they were they would not justify an anti-Semitic response. Even
    the real horrors of Zionism (such as the non-stop invasions of Gaza
    and the West Bank) are no such justification This is blaming Jews for
    anti-semitism. An outrageous concession to this oldest ,or certainly
    the most persistent, of all racisms.

    Let me here acknowledge my imaginary opponent in this imaginary
    debate. He is Alan Hart who has been advertised as speaking at a
    Palestinian Solidarity Campaign meeting in Manchester on the subject
    of "Zionism, the real enemy of the Jews". At its best I find such
    a title foolish. At its worst I consider it politically dangerous
    and in its political danger to encapsulate the worst elements of
    foolish anti-zionism. It is the title of your talk that has provoked
    the present debate. Zionism is not the real enemy of the Jews. It
    is the real enemy of the Palestinians. The enemy of the Jews is
    anti-semitism. To confuse the two in this way is precisely to confuse
    anti-semitism and anti-zionism...which the left is continually accusing
    Zionists of doing! Also if the title is implying Zionism created or
    increases anti-semitism then it simply reproduces the myth that Jews
    themselves are responsible for anti-semitism. But hallo, Alan. I don't
    take it personally. Only politically. Also I do not claim that you
    necessarily hold the totality of the views I describe below. What I do
    assert is that the title of your talk fits within the terrible anti
    logic of these views which are continually expressed in one form or
    another by foolish anti-zionists. As such I see you as a representative
    of the latter but I am sure there are far worse representatives.

    Allow me to state my position on Zionism as a political movement.

    Surprisingly it is doubtless at least in its basics the same
    as yours. I am opposed to it. I am opposed to it because of its
    racism towards the Palestinians. Because of its dispossession of
    the Palestinians. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, bad that you
    can tell me about Zionism that I would even start to justify. What
    is more I am opposed o the state of Israel. And I am opposed to the
    suggested two state "solution". If anything I am for a "no state"
    solution - that of a federated Socialist Middle East. I am opposed
    to Israel because I am opposed to all exclusivist states. Israel
    is an exclusivist state. Therefore I am opposed to it. I am a kind
    of anarcho Marxist on this question. I am for the absolute right of
    a law of return for Palestinians (and jews). As a diaspora Jew I am
    absolutely proud to hold no allegiance to any country on the planet -
    including Israel. I am proud to be both a Jewish traitor and a traitor
    of the Jews.

    In fact I regard the very idea of a Jewish state as quite ludicrous.

    Can a state be circumcised? Can it eat kosher meat? Can it be
    barmitzvahed? And I feel the same way about the idea of a Muslim
    state - such as Pakistan. And I guess this is where we start to
    differ. I refuse to exceptionalise Israel. I am against exclusivist
    states. But all states are exclusivist, certainly all bourgeois
    states. It is their nature. They cannot be otherwise. The British
    state is a prime example. It is defined, and defines itself, by its
    immigration laws - who can come and who can stay and who has what
    rights (if any) dependent on immigration status. Want to define
    Israel as an apartheid state? Fine - as long as you are prepared
    to do the same for the UK. Want to organise a boycott of Israeli
    universities ? Fine - as long as you are prepared to do the same for
    British universities , who are up to their necks in the enforcement
    of immigration controls. Open your eyes to the fees discrimination
    against "overseas" students - who can be deported after extraction
    of fees on completion of studies. Open your eyes to the vetting by
    university authorities of every single potential employee to ensure
    they have the "correct" immigration status. This in addition to
    the paid research or training contracts I have been informed some
    educational institutions have with the Immigration and Nationality
    Directorate. Want to demand the "dismantling" (whatever that means)
    of the Israeli state? Great! I'm for the smashing by the workers of
    all bourgeois states and their replacement with workers democracy.

    This is elementary Marxism. Which is why I am for unity between
    Palestinian and Jewish workers against their own rotten (mis)leaders.

    What I am not for, what I am against, are clerics waving Kalashnikovs
    in their attempt to recreate another theocratic monstrosity. The
    exceptionalisation of Israel has lead to the utterly demeaning
    slogan on anti-war demonstrations in this country of "We are all
    Hizbollah now". Well count me out of that one. Hizbollah is a
    clerical organisation which peddles the notorious Protocols of
    Zion - the nineteenth century forgery that reiterates the claim
    that Jews control the world (which is itself the central tenet of
    anti-semitism). It is a clerical organisation whose chief political
    and military backer is Iran - whose leader is a holocaust denier. It
    is a clerical organisation which ultimately has no interest in a
    Palestinian state as such but seeks to recreate the Caliphate ( which
    belongs to Islam's golden age of philosophy, science art and medicine
    - an age long past like the age of all religious contstructs). This
    exceptionalisation of Israel is anti-enlightenment. It is spiralling
    political debate and practice into the most obscurantist period of
    history. It is replacing politics by religion of the most mindless
    variety (is there any other?). As a traitor of the Jews I am also
    an atheist - and therefore opposed to Jewish religious practice in
    any guise. But who are paraded (like puppets) at the head of marches
    organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign? It is (male) members
    of the Naturei Karta sect. Sure these people are opposed to Israel.

    Why? Because the messiah, the real one, the Jewish one, has yet to
    arrive - and until he arrives then a Jewish state is sacrilege! When he
    (these people sure are not looking for a female messiah) arrives then
    doubtless Naturei Karta members will be queuing up for their share
    of Kalashnikovs, will be training in the art of suicide bombings and
    will be promising each other their allocation of virgins in heaven
    or other such comparable inducements (an indefinite supply of bagels
    and lox?) and may even be piloting planes into the architecture
    of Manhatten ("we can do it for you cheap - we use only low cost
    airlines"). I joke because the only alternative is to throw up and
    be sick. And all this identification with religious obscurantism is
    supposed to pass as modern politics? And all this lauding of religious
    fundamentalism is supposed to be beyond criticism?

    As an opponent of Israel I will not exceptionalise Israel And as an
    opponent of Zionism I do not, will not, demonise Zionism.

    Demonisation reverts to the popular inspired myths of medieval
    Europe. It is the dark side of theology - and ultimately there is
    no other side. It is anti secular. It is anti Semitism. Jew as the
    hidden hand of history. Jew as the devil. Jew as the killer of god.

    The demonisation of zionism simply transfers this to the killer of all
    god's people. It is the twenty first century equivalent of the blood
    libel accusation - the Jew as the murderer of Christian children
    and the drinker of their blood in order to acquire super-natural
    powers.. This fantastic accusation has been responsible for a thousand
    years of pogroms. As Lenny Bruce used to joke - don't the statute of
    limitations apply here? Just as the Jew of medieval Europe (and then
    Nazi Europe - there is a direct line) was depicted as all powerful, as
    being in possession of life's secret mysteries, mysteries inaccessible
    to mere mortals but which determine the life and death (usually death)
    of all mortals- so Zionism is depicted as a supra national force,
    more powerful politically than any other force on earth, and the
    cause of all war - from Iraq,to Afghanistan. Next stop Iran! And
    it doesn't need to this in its own name! It operates as the modern
    hidden hand - manipulating the lesser powers of Yankee and British
    imperialism. Armageddon in the New York sun? The destruction of the
    modern pyramids of the Twin Towers? None of this would have happened if
    zionism wasn't occupying the West Bank. This is the hidden hand twice
    removed. And the hidden hand operates under a supposed central zionist
    ideological imperative - namely that Jews are a superior people,
    the real master race (in fact whatever the undoubted material wrongs
    done to the Palestinians, Zionism - unlike many other nationalisms -
    does not contain any such premise) If only Zionism would disappear
    then peace would reign on earth. The Messiah would have returned
    (the Christian one - the Jewish one hasn't yet been)! I'm tempted
    to say to my supposedly secular comrades in a paraphrase of the only
    language they appear to understand, biblical language (the language
    of the "New", not the "Old", Testament), "Forgive them Marx they know
    not what they do- or say"

    As an opponent of Israeli nationalism I will not be party to another
    calumny. One which puts the Zionist, the Jew, in league with what
    might accurately be described as the actual satanic force of our
    own age - Hitlerism. - in order to validate the establishment of
    the future state of Israel. However show me the evidence of ziomist
    co-operation/collaboration (there is a difference) with the Nazis!

    I've seen it. I believe it. Use Lenni Brenner's "Zionism in the age
    of dictators" as your bible. I'm not going to advocate burning it .

    For the sake of my argument - the argument that many unpleasant
    zionists said or did many unpleasant things - I'm prepared to believe
    every dot and comma (though in practice he gets many dots and commas
    wrong). And the rot set in well before Nazism. Quiz time. Who told
    a Berlin audience in March 1912 that "each country can absorb only
    a limited number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach.

    Germany already has too many Jews"? No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim
    Weizmann, later President of the State of Israel. As an opponent of
    immigration controls this is hardly a position I'm going to support.

    But then Weitzman was a Zionist, it defined his political essence.

    You would hardly have expected him to have said otherwise. I'm not
    a zionist and it doesn't define my politics.

    Again there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can say or
    evidence that you can produce which will force me into denying the
    conduct of some Zionists (and non Zionists) during the holocaust
    itself. Why should I deny it if it is true? Am I responsible for it?

    Of course not. No more than you are. Did the revisionist (right wing)
    Zionist Jacobs Gen collaborate (there is no other word) with the
    Nazis in becoming the overseer of the Vilna ghetto in Lithuania? For
    sure. Did he have fellow-collaborators who were constituted as the
    Judenrat - the local Jewish leadership installed by the Nazis?

    Absolutely correct. Did Gens turn in to the Nazis the leader of the
    Vilna underground resistance, Yitzhak Wittenberg? Yes. Were there
    the equivalent of Gens in other ghettos. No doubt. I can give as
    yet another example Adam Czerniakow, President of the Association of
    Jewish Artisans, who headed the Warsaw Judenrat. Chaim Rumkowski of
    Lodz was perhaps unique in being referred to as "King Chaim" by his
    'subjects' (the Nazis would have described him somewhat differently)
    and putting his portrait on the ghetto post Were Judenrats established
    in other ghettos? Definitely. With similar betrayals?

    Doubtless . Let us forget for the moment the ghettos (though the
    memory of their resistance needs to be preserved). Did Rudolf Kastner,
    a leading Hungarian Zionist, do a deal with Adolf Eichmann in June
    1944 where the Jewish elite were allowed to escape to Switzerland
    for a substantial sum of money - leaving another half million trapped
    under the Nazi jackboot, most to perish at Auschwitz-Birkenau? This
    is central to Jim Allen's play Perdition. It happened. Was part of
    the deal the concealment by Kastner of Eichmann's plans to transport
    the Hungarian Jewish masses to their murder? This is a matter of
    legitimate and genuine historic controversy. But of Kastner I'm
    prepared to believe about anything.

    Want to mire yourself further in the role of Kastner and similar
    figures? Read "Perfidy" by his American contemporary, the Hollywood
    screen writer Ben Hecht. OK forget this stuff. Why don't we talk
    about the Kapos? The concentration camp inmates used to control
    the other inmates. You needn't lecture us Jews on the perfidy of
    collaboration. We have become experts in it (and resisting it).

    What does all this show? What does it prove? One thing it absolutely
    does not prove is the one thing that it is continually cited as
    proving - that the Nazis and the Zionist formed some unholy bond. I
    use the word "unholy" because only the mindset of medieval European
    theological obscurantism can do justice to the assertion. The
    supposed bond was not just that in some ways both were nationalist
    movements. The supposed bond was not just that in some way they both
    shared a common aspiration - the Nazis didn't want Jews in Europe
    and the Zionists wanted them in Palestine. Even these assertions
    are grotesque caricatures. There was absolutely no symmetry between
    Nazism and Zionism. Crucially (again I use the language of the cross
    deliberately) the former didn't want Jews simply out of Europe - they
    wanted them out of the world. Indeed given the Nazis mad apocalyptic
    view of Jewish domination they wanted them out of the universe. It
    does not require anti-Zionists to (correctly) point out that in the
    event of a Nazi victory then Palestine would have been no safe haven.

    No! The real supposed bond that (mis)informs this discourse was that
    both the Nazis and the Zionists wanted the holocaust and in some way
    (the way of the hidden hand) they actually joined together in creating
    it - the Nazis because they hated/despised/feared Jews and the Zionists
    because they were prepared to go to any lengths/sink to any depths to
    see created a Jewish state. Once more I can only scream out against
    such an assertion "Forgive them they do not know what they say".

    Like all accusations of Blood Libel the idea that the Zionists were a
    party to engineering the holocaust is a lie. Simply that. A lie. But
    then Jews are used to being assailed with lies - not least in respect
    to the holocaust. What about the lie that Jews went like sheep to
    their slaughter? Kind of misses out on the fact that until 1944 the
    only civilian uprisings against the Nazis took place in the ghettos -
    of which the Warsaw ghetto uprising was only the biggest. The real
    truth is the truth of the non-Jewish sheep who observed passively
    the bloody construction and then the even more bloody deconstruction
    of each ghetto. However the assertion that Zionists were actively
    instrumental in the genocide is the biggest lie since the lies spread
    by Nazis about the Jews and these were the biggest lies popularised
    since medieval Europe. Actually if there were added together all
    anti-semitic lies of the last thousand years they probably could not
    equate to the accusation that the Zionists wanted/wishes/willed the
    destruction of six million of their compatriots in order to realise
    their own political project. It is insane. And it is promulgated openly
    by people on the left who in my opinion are politically insane. Let me
    give you just one example - if only so you can reflect on the origin of
    such anti-ideas, such anti-history. In 1988 a certain Ralph Shoenman
    wrote his "Hidden History of Zionism" - a title itself deliberately
    reminiscent of the supposed Jewish "hidden hand" of history. The book
    has a chapter on Zionism and the Jews which itself contains subheadings
    which jump from "Zionism and Fascism" to "Collaborating with the Nazis"
    to "Embracing the SS" .

    This Ralph Shoenman had previously been a founder of the Vietnam
    Solidarity Campaign - in which myself and hundreds of thousands of
    others asserted ourselves as revolutionaries. Since then Shoenman has
    developed more and more bizarre conspiracy views - from who killed
    Kennedy to responsibility for twin towers (according to the internet he
    believes it was Mosad - the Israeli secret service). Jean Paul Sartre
    (who played a central role in the international defence of Vietnam)
    is reported to have said that he was so sickened by Shoenman that
    he had to gargle after speaking to him. Vomiting would have perhaps
    been a healthier alternative. When it comes to the Zionist/fascism
    equation I think it reasonable to say you can always judge an idea
    by the company it keeps. And I wouldn't be seen dead with Shoenman. I
    don't think you should either.

    So what does it show - the quote from Weitzman , the co-operation or
    collaboration or betrayals of the Kastners, the Gens the Rumkowskis?

    As a revolutionary Marxist opposed to all these people I'd respond as
    follows. First as I've already hinted they were Israeli nationalists -
    even before Israel existed. And they represented the full continuum
    of that nationalism from Left to Right. As such they cut deals,
    acted without principle, you name it they did it - just like all
    nationalists. It is the nature of the beast. And nationalism - in my
    view all nationalism - is a beast - and as such ultimately racist.

    The difference is that no other nationalism has been demonised in this
    way. And unlike other nationalisms it has its own unique language of
    abuse hurled at it. The language is not even racism! It is not even
    Israeli nationalism! No! It is Zionism! This is not the Zionism of
    diaspora Jewry in its overwhelming support for the Israeli enterprise
    (a support which only became the majority position post 1945). No! It
    is the language of Zionism as itself the pre-eminent global force -
    as the force that literally controls the globe.

    Second the idea that Zionism, or all Zionists, or the majority of
    Zionists, or all the Zionist leadership, or the majority of the
    Zionist leadership, collaborated with the Nazis is pathologically,
    clinically, crazy. It is crazy because many of the leading ghetto
    fighters were, like it or lump it, Zionists. And they were operating
    under their various leaderships (most of whom hated each other -
    but again that is the nature of the beast) of left and Right. I've no
    idea of respective numbers, Zionists, non-Zionists,anti-Zionists. Who
    cares? The issue lies not numbers. So Abba Kovner who died in 1987
    was a famous Israeli poet. He was a Kibbutznik, a member of the
    Israeli left (MAPAM) and the Youth movement Hashomer Hatzir (Young
    Guard). He was also a leading partisan in the Vilna ghetto and then
    when that struggle was lost in the woods outside Vilna. And after the
    war he and his comrades returned to the killing fields in order to
    exact vengeance on those Nazis they could find who were responsible
    for the holocaust. Hardly a great advert for the thesis that Zionists
    co-operated with Nazis in the holocaust. In the Warsaw ghetto uprising
    the main resistance force, the ZOB (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or
    Jewish Fighting Organization or Yidische Kampf Organizatzion) was a
    united front of mainly left wing Zionists such as Hashomer Hatzair
    and Poelai Zion and anti-zionist Bundists.

    However there was also another group of heroic fighters not associated
    with the ZOB for ideological reasons.These were organised within the
    ZZW (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy or Jewish Military Union).

    The ZZW was in essence the armed (anti fascist) defence squad of the
    most extreme Right-wing of the zionist movement -the self styled
    Revisionists which post-war found expression in the Irgun (which
    was responsible in part for the notorious April 1948 massacre in the
    Palestinian village of Dir Yassin) and later spawned Menachem Begin
    as Israeli prime Minister in 1977. The fact that the Revisionists
    would not have hesitated to have attacked/imprisoned/ murdered those
    of us taking place in this disputation is irrelevant to the present
    argument. What is relevant is that they fought the Nazis within
    Nazi controlled Europe. And of course no-one knows, no-one will ever
    know (because it is hard enough to get into the heads of the living
    let alone the dead), the number of zionists not affiliated to any
    organisation who participated in the numerous ghetto uprisings in the
    numerous ghettos. And Zionist participation in all these uprisings
    exposes yet another lie - the lie that Zionism views anti-semitism
    as some form of historical inevitability, rather like disease but a
    disease to which only Jews are prone, which cannot be resisted but
    must be accommodated to via the creation of a Jewish homeland which
    can then operate literally as a cordon sanitaire.. In fact given
    the historic longevity of anti Semitism, given that Jews are often
    isolated in opposing it, it often incorrectly has the appearance
    of inevitability. However the resistance by Zionists to the Nazis
    exposes as a nonsense the notion that inherent within zionism as a
    political philosophy is the irresistibility of jew-hatred. I guess
    what Nazism shows is that Jews can't do it ( defeat anti-semitism)
    on their own. But at least don't eradicate from history their brave
    attempt to try.

    Third there is the question of the actual betrayers - the Kasteners,
    the Gens the members of the Judenraat. And the Kapos. Well for myself
    I hope I would have joined the resistance and murdered these bastards
    where possible. And I hope you would have as well. The closest I got
    (and it wasn't close at all) was pissing on the wall of the former
    headquarters of Jacob Gen's judenrat in Vilna. But this was in 1997
    and it was born out of disgust and the need for a piss. As it happens
    Kastner was assassinated but only after a long delay - in 1957 in
    Israel where he had become a national figure in the Labour Party. The
    motives of the assasnation are themselves unclear - whether it was
    the anger of the survivor who pulled he trigger (Zeev Eckstein) or
    the desire of the secret service to keep secret Kastner's wartime
    role. However an essential point here is that the role played by all
    these betrayers was not determined by their Zionist affiliations.

    Their Zionism was incidental. So Ben Hecht who condemned Kastner was
    himself a Revisionist Zionist. Lenni Brenner, in looking at the roles
    of Czerniakow in Warsaw and Rumkowski in Lodz says "They were not,
    in any way, authorised representatives of the Zionist movement". In
    fact he omits to say that Rumkowski had been formally expelled from
    the Zionist movement just prior to the war but for intra party reasons
    and there appears to be some historic dispute as to whether Czerniakow
    actually was a Zionist. By January 1941, the Zionist parties - General
    Zionists, Revisionists, Right Poalei Zion and Hitachdut - had formed a
    coalition against Rumkowski. However Brenner then goes on acknowledge
    that "Not all the councils (judenrat) were headed by Zionists; some
    were headed by assimilationalist intellectuals or rabbis and even,
    in one city (Piotrkow), by a Bundist". So what we are seeing here is
    not a question of Zionism. It is a question of leadership - or rather
    the crisis of misleadership.

    What we are seeing here is the co-option of a (relatively) privileged
    elite being used to police the mass of the community on behalf of the
    Nazi overlords. Don't you recognise this? Is not this the traditional
    modus operandi of the state in controlling its marginalised members?

    It didn't require Nazis to invent it - they just took it to its most
    extreme form. Social democratic (ie anti-social, anti-democratic)
    Britain is a master of the technique. Ever since the Jewish masses
    came here following the 1880s Tsarist pogroms, the British state
    has backed and encouraged an intermediate layer (in particular the
    self-proclaimed Board of Deputies of British Jews) to control and
    depoliticise the community. I have appropriated a Yiddish vocabulary
    to describe this process - the process of macherism. A macher is a
    self-appointed leader and collectively these Quislings are the tribe
    of the macherites. And now is not the British state grooming a Muslim
    leadership to take on exactly an analogous role - in particular the
    role of controlling and vetting and policing and depoliticising the
    angry youth of the community in the name of anti-terrorism? Is not
    the Muslim Association of Britain the vehicle for the Muslim machers?

    They and the Board of Deputies of British Jews deserve each other. As
    individuals some may or may not be prepared to become members of a
    future judenrat or muslimrat under a fascist regime. I do not know.

    However what I do know is neither are a front for Zionism The
    psychology of our modern machers is one where they exist in order to
    exercise petty power and accumulate pathetic "honours". They don't
    even recognise themselves for the puppets that they are. Called Cohen
    or Khalid? We despise you! But want to become a Sir or a Lord? Well
    declare yourself a self-elected leader! Control your own community!

    Macherism in Nazi occupied Europe raises far more acute moral and
    philosophical issues which foolish anti-zionists simply ignore. The
    issues are more acute because the situation was far more grave.

    Ignoring them means ignoring the real plight of the Jews abandoned to
    their own fate in the Nazi Gotterdammerung. I am not unaware of the
    sharp moral dilemmas posed by and for even members of the judenrats -
    some of whom did not choose to be members but were forced to do so
    by the Nazis. Retrospective moral judgement can become all too easy.

    Maybe the Czerniakows and Rumkowskis and all the other machers were
    into power and prestige whilst "their" ghettos burned around them.

    Maybe they were just into saving their own skins (as though the
    Nazis had any regard for their lives! They all died. They were
    just commodities). What made them the enemy of the Jews. What made
    them worthy of being assasinated was, as far as I'm concerned, for
    essentially three reasons. First they were to a greater or lesser
    extent continually prepared to surrender Jewish lives. Second they
    were only "elevated" to their status in order to disrupt the activities
    of the ghetto partisans and to betray the ghetto fighters.

    Third they did have a choice, however difficult for those forced
    into becoming judenrat members - and this was to join the ghetto
    resisters. Again I am quite prepared to accept that there was
    often a big difference in the behaviour of the ghetto machers -
    and the extent of their moral responsibility differed. For instance
    Czerniakow seems to have been the most genuine and tormented of all
    these characters. When the mass deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka
    death camp began in July 1942 he committed suicide rather than be a
    party to them - his suicide note read "I can no longer bear all this.

    My act will prove to everyone what is the right thing to do."(in
    spite of this Czerniakow was condemned by Emmanual Ringelblum,
    the brave historian of the Warsaw ghetto who was executed by the
    Nazis ) Moreover I am quite prepared to accept as truthful their own
    justifications for their actions. This was that they were actually
    trying to save lives . The same justification appears time and time
    again - it is better that a thousand should die (or in the case of
    Kastner -half a million should die) so that a hundred should survive
    (such apologias clearly are inapplicable to the camp Kapos - most of
    whom were anyhow not even Jewish let alone Zionists). Personally I find
    such an exercise repulsive. Who chooses the thousand? Who chooses the
    hundred? But.... where do you stand on this one? Imagine you yourself
    or someone close to you were chosen as one of the hundred? What would
    you have done? I can't say what I would have done. Hopefully still
    assassinated the macher making the choices.

    Because in the end I am one hundred per cent for the ghetto fighters
    against the machers. But I don't know what I would have done if,
    for instance, my children had been one of the hundred.. However the
    point here is that these people, these machers, were not revolutionary
    proletarians. Their world view was not one of resistance, of struggle
    ,from below. Rather it was one of doing deals from above. So they did
    deals. This was their class role, which to paraphrase Shakespeare's
    Malvalio, they were born into, assumed or had thrust on them. So why
    expect otherwise? But what is for sure - these deals were not cut in
    furtherance of zionism. To assert otherwise is anti-Semitic slander.

    On the other hand many of the ghetto fighters were Zionists. So
    to assert that Zionism rejects struggle against anti-semitism is
    another slander.

    So can I ask you another "what if" question? What if you had been a
    Jew in Germany/Checkoslovakia/Poland - in fact anywhere in Europe -
    after the Nazis first came to power in Germany and then proceeded
    to annex/conquer everything around them? Completely isolated by the
    historic defeat of the workers movement (thanks to Stalinist betrayals)
    what would you have done? And even if you weren't a Jew then what
    would you suggest Jews should have done? For myself I think (depending
    where I was living) I would have had to acknowledge that the battle
    was lost. Resistance by Jews alone was not going to overturn the Nazi
    monster. Like today's refugees I would have probably sought escape -
    and indeed advocated mass escape. Certainly I would not have criticised
    those who took this position (tragically they were shown to have been
    historically correct). However there was just one problem. Even at
    a time when the Nazis may have been prepared to allow such exit yet
    every other state in the world was imposing immigration controls
    against Jews. There was no escape route available! Leon Trotsky
    in his autobiography (My Life) has a chapter entitled "On a planet
    without a visa" - describing politically and graphically his attempt
    to secure a refugee visa after he had escaped the Soviet Union. Under
    the Nazi yoke, or the soon to be impending Nazi yoke, millions were
    to find themselves on this earth without a visa. A Jew in Germany
    in May 1939? Fancy a trip to Cuba that might even turn into a world
    cruise! Then welcome aboard the SS St Louis.

    Appropriate initials - SS. A private vessel, the St Louis flew
    the Nazi flag. But at least lives will be saved! Except Cuba , in
    reneging on a previous promise, refused entry to the passengers. So
    did the Dominican Republic. So did the USA. As did every country on
    the planet with a port. So the ship turned round - to disembark the
    Jews back in Germany. A two-way journey back to hell. Just imagine
    it. Some passengers imagined it - and jumped overboard to their
    suicide. Others, lead by Aaron Pozner, staged a failed mutiny.

    Eventually the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee managed
    to generate enough publicity so that Britain, France, Holland and
    Belgium took about one quarter each of the 800 passangers. Many of
    these who disembarked in the last three countries perished after their
    subsequent Nazi takeover. On this planet without a visa for Jews
    there was one possibility of flight - to Palestine. Palestine was
    then of course under the colonial boot of Britain - which exercised
    immigration controls there against Jews there as it did in the UK
    itself. However there was the possibility of clandestine help from
    other Jews. I would have had no hesitation in seeking refuge there -
    or helping others get there. I have been to meetings where I have
    been told this was politically wrong. Wrong because it is the role of
    socialists to fight oppression where they find it - not flee from it,
    and not flee from it even where it is irresistable. Well, that would
    avoid all solidarity with today's refugees. Wrong because it was and is
    somehow morally indefensible for a European to assume a right of entry
    into a "third world" country. Why? Who wrote this text book? I'm for
    a world without borders. A world where in the 1930s what was required
    was proletarian solidarity - given by Palestinians as well as Jews -
    to those seeking refuge in Palestine. Maybe some or many Palestinian
    workers did offer such solidarity. I don't know the history. But I
    also know that as a communist I would have entered Palestine not as a
    coloniser but with a communist political programme - the same programme
    of Jewish/Palestinian proletarian unity that I advocate today. In the
    1930s this would have meant unity against the Zionist leadership,
    against the absentee Palestinian landlord class, against the Mufti
    of Jerusalem and his open support for Hitler and against the British
    occupying forces. What would you have done my anti-zionist friends?

    The slanders directed against Zionism, either directly or by
    default, are endless. It is impossible to deal with them all. But
    here are just more. Some nationalists actually did support the Nazis
    politically. Others fought alongside them. Even others were party
    directly to the holocaust. However these were not Zionists! The
    most vicious and most powerful was undoubtedly the Ustasa movement
    which ran the puppet State of Croatia (and many of today's Croatian
    leadership continue to act as Ustasa apologists). And of course
    there was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and
    his followers. Al-Husayni, a leading Palestinian nationalist, met
    with Hitler personally during the holocaust. He was instrumental
    in forming specifically Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans. The
    largest was probably the Bosnian 13th "Handschar" division of over
    21,000 men. The list of his crimes appears infinite. But the point
    I am making here is that none of this perfidy has ever called into
    question the inherent justice of Croation, Bosnian or Palestinmian
    nationalism. And I'm certainly not arguing that it should. - as far
    as I'm concerned nationalism can stand or fall on its own terms and
    these obviously need not be fascistic. What I am arguing is that
    the double standards at play are fantastic. Zionism is condemned as
    illegitimate for somehow supporting the Nazi enterprise - which it
    never did. Other nationalisms, or other nationalist leaders, which
    did support the holocaust are continued to be seen as legitimate.

    And this brings me to another highly dubious point. I am being told
    more and more that it is politically incorrect to designate this
    Nazi genocide of the Jews as "the" holocaust. Instead it should
    simply be called "a" holocaust. Personally for myself I do not mind
    whether you use a "the" or a "a". All that I am concerned about is
    the murder of six million Jews. I am well aware, and equally concerned
    about, other genocides both under Nazi Germany (of countless gypsies,
    trade unionists, lesbians, gay men, communists, disabled people....),
    historically (death through the slave trade, deliberate genocide of
    the American Indian, Turkish massacre of the Armenians, Stalinist
    atrocities...) and unto the present (Rwanda, Somalia...). Historically
    Jews themselves have suffered a thousand years of European pogroms
    many of which may legitimately be referred to as holocausts (where
    does one finish and the other start?). So for myself language is
    irrelevent. Except the challenge to language can itself be highly
    political. And what concerns me about the emphasis on refering to
    what happened to Jewry under the Nazis as "a" holocaust is the hidden
    accusation that Zionists have somehow magnified, exaggerated, inflated
    (as though any of this were possible) what happened to Jews in order
    to justify the creation of an illegitimate entity - Israel.

    At the same time this attack on language seems to be suggesting that
    Jews are claiming for themselves a unique victimhood. Well, for me,
    this simply reproduces the dark and medieval image of the "squealing"
    Jew. I would personally be prepared to argue that what happened to
    Jewry under fascism was pretty unique. But so what? The idea that
    Jews have been politically or genetically programmed for victimhood is
    just another myth. As a Jew I also know something else. Ask all Jews
    in the world whether they would surrender Israel if retrospectively
    the events under Nazism could be undone -if the/a holocaust could
    miraculously be undone. I bet most, maybe all, would gladly give up
    Israel. But the/a holocaust did happen. And therefore so did Israel.

    The Chairperson has passed me a note - "wind up, only 5 minutes
    left". I've seen a thousand in my lifetime. Anyhow this debate is only
    imaginery. But I'll conclude on two points which I hope are provocative
    (what's the point of exchanging truisms?). First I take it as axiomatic
    that the state of Israel would not have come into existence without
    the holocaust - it was the holocaust that legitimised (vindicated) its
    need. And its need was as a refuge from anti Semitism. Of course (and
    unfortunately) most Jews who sought refuge were not communists. Workers
    unity has not(yet) materialised.

    The Palestinians have suffered a terrible wrong. However this
    terrible wrong should not conceal another truth. This is the uniquely
    contradictory nature of Zionism - unique because as far as I can see
    it exists no where else. In fact Zionism contains within itself its
    own contradiction. And it is this contradiction which renders it such
    an emotional as well as political firecracker (I know of no other
    political area where the emotions get raised so high on both sides).

    On the one hand Zionism is undoubtedly, unquestionably racist towards
    the Palestinians. Which is why I'm an anti-Zionist. On the other hand
    it is seen, and I think correctly seen, by most Jews as anti-racist.

    It is anti-racist in that it was and is a response by Jews to extricate
    themselves from the racism of anti-semitism. Maybe not your way of
    fighting racism. Maybe not mine. But anti-racist nonetheless.

    And the majority of Jews in the world today view Israel as a
    "bolt-hole" were Nazism to arise again. It is in response to this
    political contradiction that I have started to assume the somewhat
    novel self-description of being an "anti-zionist Zionist". I am an
    anti-zionist like no other (maybe I exaggerate) in that I refuse to
    accept anti-zionist myths and untruths. I am a Zionist unlike no
    other (here I don't exaggerate) in that I am opposed to the state
    of Israel. The only way out of this contradiction - a political
    contradiction not one of my personal pathology - is the unity of
    Palestinian/Jewish workers within Palestine/Israel combined with a
    relentless fight against anti Semitism internationally.

    My final point is to emphasise my role as a traitor. I no longer see
    any point in being Jewish. And I aim to give up on it. Not that I feel
    bad about being a Jew. Just the opposite. Rather I want to become
    the sort of Jew the anti-Semites warn us against. The cosmopolitan
    of no fixed identity. .And I hope you are willing to surrender your
    own tribal/ethnic/nationalist/religious identities allegiances. Join
    me as a traitor to your own traditions. Become cosmopolitans! What
    I mean by this is that the one phenomenon which in my experience
    renders this whole debate impossible is communalism.

    It is the communalism which says (if you are Jewish) - Jew right
    or wrong. Or if you are Muslim it says - Muslim right or wrong (or
    if you are Christian it says - fuck you two suckers, we always win
    anyway). Let me tell you a terrible but true and recent story. I read
    of a Jewish couple in ,I think, London that adopted a child. This
    was a right-wing Zionist couple. A couple who raised the child to
    be explicitly racist about and towards Palestinians. When the child
    grew older he went on a voyage of discovery in search of his birth
    parents. He discovered them. They were Muslims. And anti-Semites. He
    has now become an anti -Semite. In the face of this nonsense I
    want to become unJewish - a person of the world. However to become
    unJewish means first working through a Jewish identity in order to
    unidentify.. It is all I know. It is my bedrock. The positive image I
    have is bouncing on a trampoline called "Jewish". I bounce higher and
    higher until one day I bounce beyond the power of gravity and become
    a free-floating human. We should all try it - Jews, Muslims whoever.

    It sure would make the world a far more energetic place.

    Of course this notion of divestment of identity through self-volition
    is on one level playing with paradoxes. But they are politically
    important paradoxes. I am constantly shocked by meeting Jewish
    chauvinists (Jews right or wrong) or Muslim chauvinists (Muslims
    right or wrong) when their political positions come solely from
    accident of birth. Again the allusion to trampolines is a fantasy,
    an image. But (unlike the preposterous notion of yogic flying)
    I think that politically it is a significant image. However can
    I bring it back to earth with a very political suggestion. We all
    agree that anti-semitism and anti-Ziomism should be separate. I have
    tried as best I can to show that unfortunately they now have become
    so intertwined as to appear inseparable. The real political task -
    and one which should unite us all - is to separate them once again. I
    think that paradoxically the only way to achieve this is to bring
    together the two issues that underlay both - that is the struggle
    for Palestinian liberation and the struggle against Jew hatred. I'm
    suggesting a solidarity movement be built on this basis. In my view
    such a movement would by definition exclude those across the present
    huge "communal divide" who adopt either an "Israel right or wrong"
    or "we are all Hizbullah now" positions. It would challenge the
    Islamaphobes and the anti-semites (many of whom exist outside the
    present communal divides) It would allow for the freeing up of the
    debate in the streets and not just in meetings like this.

    In conclusion can I quote another story which may or may not be true.

    It concerns Noel Coward, the very English actor and playwrite. Who
    was gay. And apparently an anti-semite. He had a lesbian friend. Who
    was also an anti-semite. At the end of the war there was discovered
    and released a "black book" the Nazis had prepared. This named those
    who would be first exterminated on a successful invasion of the UK.

    Of course the majority were Jews. But it also included Coward and
    his lesbian friend. And it is she who is reputed to have said to him
    "Darling - you wouldn't believe who we would have been seen dead
    with". I've thought for a long time what this means. And of course
    what it means politically is the need for unity. Political unity.

    Unity in struggle against reaction of all sorts. Without unity we are
    all eventually doomed to enter into the pages of the next black book.
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