Labour Zionism?

[Soseloshvili]

I considered this the other day, and I'm really not to certain so I figured I'd start a thread on it.

Should we cooperate with / allow to be on this site / condone so-called "Labour Zionism"?

I really don't know myself. I mean think about it, we wouldn't hesitate to work with a Liberation Theologist and the majority of us at least don't condemn Islamic Socialism, so what about Labour Zionism? Sure, they believe in a Jewish homeland in the Holy Land, but it's rare to see them object to the Palestinian's' presence in Israel.

On top of that Labour Zionism does to some extent stick up for the Israeli proletariat, we don't hesitate to support any other movement that supports a particular proletariat irregardless of its background, for the most part we even support working class movements in America, our hated enemy. So why not?

But then again, they are Zionists, an ideology that oppresses the Palestinian people. They believe in the state of Israel, despite its almost Fascist inclinations.

I really don't know. It seems like in some ways it might be anti-semitic to deny them, but in some ways it seems like it should be our duty to deny them.

Discuss.

[Obs]

Labour Zionist
National Socialist

[Soseloshvili]

Labour Zionist
National Socialist

Good point.

[hatzel]

the majority of us at least don't condemn Islamic Socialism

But...I thought that all religion was inherently evil and had to be eliminated at all costs, and that people who follow leftist agendas just because they think their god tells them to, rather than because of some genuine feeling for the proletariat, are of no use to the movement, and have no place there, as they're all just reactionary numbskulls...

...or maybe I just misunderstood what people keep telling me :confused:

Oh, and by the way, Labour Zionism isn't religious. In fact, many Labour Zionists were / are pretty staunch atheists, so I don't really know why Libertarian Theology or Islamic Socialism has anything to do with it...

[Soseloshvili]

But...I thought that all religion was inherently evil and had to be eliminated at all costs, and that people who follow leftist agendas just because they think their god tells them to, rather than because of some genuine feeling for the proletariat, are of no use to the movement, and have no place there, as they're all just reactionary numbskulls...

...or maybe I just misunderstood what people keep telling me :confused:

Well I don't doubt that you feel that way, but really a lot of people on the left are willing to accept Islamic Socialists because of their anti-imperialism and hatred of Israel.

Personally I agree, to some degree. I mean so long as it's not doctrinaire I guess I'm okay with Islamic Socialism, look at the gains that Islamic Socialist Libya has made. But really being secular is the way to go.


Oh, and by the way, Labour Zionism isn't religious. In fact, many Labour Zionists were / are pretty staunch atheists, so I don't really know why Libertarian Theology or Islamic Socialism has anything to do with it...

I know, you don't have to be religious to be a Zionist. However it is based on the religious concept that Israel should be a homeland for the Jews, whether they are individually religious or not. So yes, you can consider it comparable to Liberation Theology or Islamic Socialism because it is based on religious doctrines with a bit of leftism thrown in.

[M-26-7]

Honestly, you don't seem to have any familiarity what "Labour Zionism" is, beyond the name. Simply reading the Wikipedia article would have helped you out here.

Labor Zionism was basically a movement to promote the use of Jewish-only labor (not Arab labor) by Jewish employers, and on Jewish kibbutzim and moshavim, in Palestine. It therefore had nothing to do with international socialism, and everything to do with national chauvinism.

It is as though there were a movement in America among white Protestant workers to get white-owned businesses not to hire anyone but white Protestants as workers, and you asking if we should support them.

See, for instance, this article:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10379.shtml

From what I have read, Israelis calling themselves Labor Zionists today are usually active in the Israeli peace movement. We should of course support the peace movement, but this has absolutely nothing to do with its having "Labor Zionists" in it.

[hatzel]

Well I don't doubt that you feel that way

Oh, I do not. Deeeeefinitely not. I just get shot down for supporting my lovely form of Judaic communism, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to suggest that there are a number round abouts who don't like it. Unless there are, heaven forbid, double-standards! No, no, of course there aren't...


I know, you don't have to be religious to be a Zionist. However it is based on the religious concept that Israel should be a homeland for the Jews, whether they are individually religious or not. So yes, you can consider it comparable to Liberation Theology or Islamic Socialism because it is based on religious doctrines with a bit of leftism thrown in.

Zionism isn't based on that at all. Zionism is based on the entirely secular concept that the only way for Jews to escape pogroms and persecution and so on is to establish a state of their own, where they can break. Had it been religiously motivated, then they would never have even discussed the possibility of setting up a Jewish state in Argentina, Australia, Ukraine, Kenya etc. But they did. It just seemed most logical to set up the state in Israel, because what's Argentina got to do with the Jewish people? I ask that, but a good number of Zionists did actually go to Argentina and start setting up farms and so on, thinking the new Zion would be there. In fact, the more religious a Jew is, the more likely he is to call for the total dissolution of Israel, and advocate all the Jews actually moving out to Argentina somewhere...so I hardly consider Zionism a religious concept. Israel as a homeland for the Jews as a religious concept is...you know...the Messiah and stuff. And I don't remember anybody seeing him knocking about, rebuilding the Temple and ushering in the era of world peace, or anybody in the early Zionist movement claiming to be or being claimed as said Messiah, leading the Jews back to Eretz Israel, so...it can't really be a religious movement...

I'd also like to point out that Labour Zionism isn't really about excluding Arab workers. It was more about the idea that merely sitting around talking to world leaders, saying "give us a state!" wasn't going to achieve anything, and the only way the state would be established would be by going to the land in question, draining the land, setting up agriculture and industry and starting development at the bottom, using this to assert their legitimate claim to the land which they settled and developed. Rather than just showing up in the newly declared Jewish state and employing whoever was already there. Because the idea of the Jews going to Palestine or Argentina or Kenya as the bourgeois class, employing Arab or Argentinian or Masai workers was pretty incompatible with the idea of the Jews actually constituting a distinct nation. That is to say, unless Jews occupied all levels of society, primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors, it wouldn't be a Jewish state, it would be a Jewish-lead state. And that's not really the point of Zionism, as they would still be effectively in the hands of some non-Jewish population who might choose to just stop working the land at some point, for instance, as a new form of pogrom.

Anyway, of course those who identify as Labour Zionists in the modern sense wouldn't really have any place here. The clue's up in the top left of the page, 'home of the revolutionary left'. Labour Zionists are nowadays no different from British Labour, or your standard European Social Democrat party. So I don't think they'd even want to be here. In its original sense, though...well, I guess it could fit in. Go to a spot of land, start establishing yourself as a constituent of the proletariat in said land, and if push comes to shove, get your guns out and overthrow British rule :thumbup1: Seems somewhat compatible with the whole revolutionary leftist idea to me, in all honesty...

[M-26-7]

I'd also like to point out that Labour Zionism isn't really about excluding Arab workers.

I didn't say it is, I said that it was. And yes, it was. Furthermore, it was done with an eye towards eventually pushing the Palestinians off of their land.

"Yigal Allon asked Ben-Gurion what was to be done with the civilian population. Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture of 'drive them out.' 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lydda did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the ten or fifteen miles to the point where they met up with the Arab Legion."
--Yitzhak Rabin

"The strategic objective [of the Jewish forces] was to destroy the urban communities, which were the most organized and politically conscious sections of the Palestinian people. This was not done by house-to-house fighting inside the cities and towns, but by the conquest and destruction of the rural areas surrounding most of the towns. This technique led to the collapse and surrender of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, Acre, Beit-Shan, Lydda, Ramleh, Majdal, and Beersheba. Deprived of transportation, food, and raw materials, the urban communities underwent a process of diintegration, chaos, and hunger, which forced them to surrender."
--David Ben Gurion


During the 1948 "war" (ethnic cleansing) against the Palestinians, the Haganah dropped the following leaflet in Galilee:


We have no wish to fight ordinary people who want to live in peace, but only the army and forces which are preparing to invade Palestine. Therefore...all people who do not want this war must leave together with their women and children in order to be safe. This is going to be a cruel war, with no mercy or compassion. There is no reason why you should endanger yourselves.

So much for the "voluntary" Palestinian exodus. It was about as "voluntary" as the exodus of refugees from Darfur.

Finally, as even Joseph Schechtman--a man who certainly did his part to create the myth of a "voluntary" Palestinian exodus--admits, the Palestinians were not just exiled because of a worry over their safety in the coming war. If that were the case, they would of course been invited to return after the end of the fighting. Instead, according to even Schechtman, their land and their homes were used to house Jewish immigrants whom the Zionist state deemed worthy to live on that land:


It is difficult to overestimate the tremendous role this lot of abandoned Arab property has played in the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants who have reached Israel since the proclamation of the state in May 1948. Forty-seven new rural settlements established on the sites of abandoned Arab villages had by October 1949 already absorbed 25,255 new immigrants. By the spring of 1950 over 1 million dunams had been leased by the custodian to Jewish settlements and individual farmers for the raising of crops.

Large tracts of land belonging to Arab absentees [sic!] have also been leased to Jewish settlers, old and new, for the raising of vegetables. In the south alone, 15,000 dunams of vineyards and fruit trees have been leased to cooperative settlements; a similar area has been rented by the Yemenites Association, the Farmers Association, and the Soldiers Settlement and Rehabilitation Board. This has saved the Jewish Agency and the government millions of dollars. While the average cost of establishing an immigrant family in a new settlement was from $7,500 to $9,000, the cost in abandoned Arab villages did not exceed $1,500 ($750 for building repairs and $750 for livestock and equipment).

Abandoned Arab dwellings in towns have also not remained empty. By the end of July 1948, 170,000 people, notably new immigrants and ex-soldiers, in addition to about 40,000 former tenants, both Jewish and Arab, had been housed in premises under the custodian's control; and 7,000 shops, workshops, and stores were subject to new arrivals. The existence of these Arab houses--vacant and ready for occupation--has, to a large extent, solved the greatest immediate problem which faced the Israeli authorities in the absorption of immigrants. It also considerably relieved the financial burden of absorption.

Labor Zionism was merely one more theory about how best to prepare for this final ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arabs from the land which they were living on. Ben-Gurion was a Labor Zionist. Most of the first generation of Israeli leaders were Labor Zionists. Being a Labor Zionist merely signified that you thought it was important to build up a Zionist economy in Palestine before attempting to declare your own state and push the Arab residents out. That is the only difference between Labor Zionism and Political Zionism. And in 1948, the Labor Zionists all became Political Zionists anyway. They had only been Labor Zionists before because, at the time, they thought that declaring a Jewish State was premature.

As for your statement that Zionists won the state of Israel by "overthrow British rule", I think that everyone on this site is familiar enough with Britain's role in the founding of Israel to see through that. The British gave the land to the Zionists. The Zionist terrorists that attacked the British (killing plenty of civilians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_Bombing), by the way) did so to ensure that they would get an even bigger handout from the British partition, not out of some anti-imperialist sentiment. Not to mention that the primary target of groups like Irgun was always the Arab residents, not the British occupiers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks

Israeli historians like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé have documented all of this. You see, it is quite possible to be a Jew, even a Jew born and raised in Israel, and yet refuse to adhere to the official chauvinist distortions of history.

Zionism was a European colonial ideology. And it still is, insofar as it finds expression in the policies of the Israeli state. For you as a revolutionary to deny this is disgusting. Don't get me wrong, I am not singling Israel out as deserving of special criticism. [I]Many nations have such a past, and nearly all of them try to deny it. If an American calling himself a revolutionary were to deny that America was really built on land that was already inhabited, or to suggest that Manifest Destiny wasn't "really about" excluding the Native Americans, or to exude a general attitude of approval toward early American expansionism, even going so far (as you have done) as to assert that a European colonial movement and ideology "Seems somewhat compatible with the whole revolutionary leftist idea to me, in all honesty...", then I would call him out on his blatant chauvinism and historical revisionism just as I am doing with you.

[The Hong Se Sun]

Simple answer- Fuck no.

[EvilRedGuy]

Hell no.

[blake 3:17]

The foundation of Labour Zionism is the racist exclusion of Palestinians from the work force. Labour Zionists have been well to the right of many relatively conservative Zionists.

The Wikipedia entry on the Zionist trade union central is not bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histadrut