The Left in Israel

[progressive_lefty]

Where does the left get its support from in Israel from its Jewish citizens? Apart from the obvious voting nature of Arab-Israelis, is there a particular sport with-in Jewish areas of Israel that votes for the left-wing party Meretz-Yachad? Is there a particular Jewish minority that supports Meretz-Yachad?

In the US, we're usually told that the Democrats have the 'Catholic vote' or Hispanic vote', I was wondering what the situation was in Israel.

Hopefully there is some Israelis on here that may be able to inform me.

[Yehuda Stern]

Well, by your definition of Yachad as a left party, I see that you don't understand much about Israeli politics. There are three major parties in Israel: Kadima, the current centre-right ruling party; Labor, a center-left party with a very small social-democratic wing; and Likud, a right-wing party. These parties have no meaningful differences between them. Unlike major parties in most capitalist countries, there isn't even the difference that Labor has some base in the trade unions, so it cannot even be considered to be a bourgeois workers' party. Currently, Kadima rules in a coalition with Labor and some small parties.


In Israel, the ethnic divide, if one can call it that, inside the Jewish community, is between Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Russian Jews. The Ashkenazim are the Jews of European origin, and are the most privileged group. The Sephardim are the Jews of Arab / Muslim origin, and the majority of poor and working class Jews come from this group. The Russian Jews also make up a large percent of this group. The lowest rung of Jewish society is made up of Ethiopian Jews, relatively new immigrants who have little effect on politics, and who are terribly exploited and live in awful conditions.


Yachad is not a left party in any meaningful sense. It is a Zionist party and as such has no principled differences with any other Zionist party. Yachad sees itself as a left pressure group on Labor, intended to force it to adopt more dovish policies. It supports all of Israeli imperialism's wars and the separation wall. Their base is composed mostly of middle class Ashkenazim.

Most working class and poor Jews support the extreme right. This can be explained by the colonialist nature of Israel and the inability of the great majority of its population to rise up against imperialism. Exactly for this reason, Israeli workers are exploited on a worse level than workers in other imperialist countries, though of course, not as much as workers in the third world.

Other major forces on the left are Hadash, the CP front, which receives support from the Palestinian-Israeli middle-class and to a much lesser extent from Jewish leftists, and Balad, a liberal-nationalist party, which is somewhat to the left of Hadash and receives support from similar social layers.

There are two centrist groups in Israel. One is the Israeli CWI section, which advocates a separate Palestinian state next to Israel. Many will recognize this as the usual two state position, only covered up with some socialist rhetoric. There is also Da'am, a group which publishes the journal Etgar (Challenge) and takes a very strong anti-immigrant position. There are also several small Maoist groups that are incapable of any cooperation.

[Dr Mindbender]

Ive never got my head round this one.

Surely Israeli leftism is an oxymoron?

[Yehuda Stern]

It is. Like I said, the Zionist parties, left or right, have no principled differences. The only difference between them is how the Israeli state could be more effective in its campaign of ethnic cleansing. The arguments can be quite vocal, and in the past have even reached the level of assassinations, but they remain purely tactical.

[chimx]

Surely Israeli leftism is an oxymoron?

Perhaps it is today, but a few decades ago Zionism had a very powerful socialist base.

[Redmau5]

Ive never got my head round this one.

Surely Israeli leftism is an oxymoron?

What, like leftists in Northern Ireland who come from the protestant community?

[Yehuda Stern]

Perhaps it is today, but a few decades ago Zionism had a very powerful socialist base.

That's a common misconception among leftists whose anti-Zionism is, well, problematic. Zionism was never socialist. It used socialist rhetoric to attract Jews in Europe who became disillusioned with revolutionary ideas after the defeat of the revolutionary wave of the 1920s. It was also useful because at the time, the 'socialist' nationalism of the Stalinists could be used to justify the Zionists' "conquest of labor" and "conquest of the land." But no Zionist ever supported a single working class revolution, or a movement of an oppressed nation against imperialism. In fact, every time you'll check, you'll see the Zionist movement on the side of reaction. This was even true in Nazi Germany:


May we therefore be permitted to present our views, which, in our opinion, make possible a solution in keeping with the principles of the new German State of National Awakening and which at the same time might signify for Jews a new ordering of the conditions of their existence ... Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition ...
... an answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural, and moral renewal of Jewry ... a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life ...
On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible ... Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group ...
... fidelity to their own kind and their own culture gives Jews the inner strength that prevents insult to the respect for the national sentiments and the imponderables of German nationality; and rootedness in one’s own spirituality protects the Jew from becoming the rootless critic of the national foundations of German essence. The national distancing which the state desires would thus be brought about easily as the result of an organic development.
Thus, a self-conscious Jewry here described, in whose name we speak, can find a place in the structure of the German state, because it is inwardly unembarrassed, free from the resentment which assimilated Jews must feel at the determination that they belong to Jewry, to the Jewish race and past. We believe in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious Jewry and the German state ...
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question no sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples, and at the present moment especially the German people.
The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build ... Our observations, presented herewith, rest on the conviction that, in solving the Jewish problem according to its own lights, the German Government will have full understanding for a candid and clear Jewish posture that harmonizes with the interests of the state.

(Quoted in Lenni Brenner, "Zionism In the Age of Dictators")

[progressive_lefty]

Thankyou for that information Yehuda Stern.
It's interesting to see the diversity with-in the Jewish state. I can understand your opinion that the major parties are all very similar. That's quite obvious when there was a Arab from Labor in the coalition, along with the extremist party Yisrael Beiteinu(who has now left), a party that supports moving Israeli Arabs to the occupied territories.

Is the division between the Ashkenazi and other Jewry quite deep, I have heard before that non-Ashkenazi Jews are banned from attending their schools or living in their housing areas?

[Yehuda Stern]

There's no official policy, but like everywhere, the state takes care to leave the better schools and homes to the ruling class, which is mostly Ashkenazi (though there are a few Sephardi bourgeois Jews).

[KC]

There are two centrist groups in Israel. One is the Israeli CWI section, which advocates a separate Palestinian state next to Israel. Many will recognize this as the usual two state position, only covered up with some socialist rhetoric.That's completely untrue and a blatent attempt at slander. The position of the CWI is that two socialist states be formed - one Israeli and one Palestinian. Of course, if they decide to form a single socialist state then that is fine as well, but judging from current and historical trends this wouldn't be the case. This is completely in line with Lenin's view on the National Question:


What makes our explanation so “amazing”? Why is it considered a departure from the “literal” meaning? Does recognition of the right of nations to self-determination really imply support of any demand of every nation for self-determination? After all, the fact that we recognise the right of all citizens to form free associations does not at all commit us, Social-Democrats, to supporting the formation of any new association; nor does it prevent us from opposing and campaigning against the formation of a given association as an inexpedient and unwise step. We even recognise the right of the Jesuits to carry on agitation freely, but we fight (not by police methods, of course) against an alliance between the Jesuits and the proletarians. Consequently, when the Przedświt says; “If this demand for the right to free self-determination is to be taken literally [and that is how we have taken it hitherto], then it would satisfy us”—it is quite obvious that it is precisely the P.S.P. that is departing from the literal meaning of the programme. Its conclusion is certainly illogical from the formal point of view.

We do not, however, wish to confine ourselves to a formal verification of our explanation. We shall go straight to the root of the matter: is Social-Democracy in duty bound to demand national independence always and unreservedly, or only under certain circumstances; if the latter is the case then under what circumstances? To this question the P.S.P. has always replied in favour of unreserved recognition; we are not in the least surprised, therefore, at the fondness it displays towards the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, who demand a federal state system and speak in favour of “complete and unreserved recognition of the right to national self-determination” (Revolutsionnaya Rossiya, No. 18, the article entitled “National Enslavement and Revolutionary Socialism”). Unfortunately, this is nothing more than one of those bourgeois-democratic phrases which, for the hundredth and thousandth time, reveal the true nature of the so-called Party of so-called Socialist-Revolutionaries. By falling for the bait presented by these phrases and yielding to the allurement of this clamour, the P.S.P. in its turn proves how weak in theoretical background and political activities is its link with the class struggle of the proletariat. But it is to the interests of this struggle that we must subordinate the demand for national self-determination. It is this that makes all the difference between our approach to the national question and the bourgeois-democratic approach. The bourgeois democrat (and the present-day socialist opportunist who follows in his footsteps) imagines that democracy eliminates the class struggle, and that is why he presents all his political demands in an abstract way, lumped together, “without reservations,” from the standpoint of the interests of the “whole people,” or even from that of an eternal and absolute moral principle. Always and every where the Social-Democrat ruthlessly exposes this bourgeois illusion, whether it finds expression in an abstract idealist philosophy or in an absolute demand for national independence.Source (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/jul/15.htm) (Emphasis Mine)

[chimx]

That's a common misconception among leftists whose anti-Zionism is, well, problematic. Zionism was never socialist.

I'm sorry, but you are incorrect. Zionism from about 1905 until the 1930s was dominated by labor Zionism which was explicitly socialistic and advocated participating with the local Arab population. Labor Zionism controlled the Jewish Agency and condemned people like Herzel for ignoring the indigenous population. These were the people that started the Kibbutizm movement.

[Yehuda Stern]

The position of the CWI is that two socialist states be formed - one Israeli and one Palestinian. Of course, if they decide to form a single socialist state then that is fine as well, but judging from current and historical trends this wouldn't be the case.So wait - you say that I'm slandering the CWI, only to say in the next sentence that I am in fact correct? That you do advocate two separate states?

There's a lot of difference between recognizing in principle the right for secession and supporting secession. Marxists support the right but not the act itself. Even if I avoid the fact that support for an Israeli state in any form is an expression of Zionist chauvinism, the fact that the CWI section in Israel feels that it must calm Jewish workers' fears of having to live with Arabs in the same state says a lot about them.


I'm sorry, but you are incorrect. Zionism from about 1905 until the 1930s was dominated by labor Zionism which was explicitly socialistic and advocated participating with the local Arab population. Labor Zionism controlled the Jewish Agency and condemned people like Herzel for ignoring the indigenous population. These were the people that started the Kibbutizm movement.

I would really love to see quotes proving any sentence but the last. Labor Zionism was never socialist and never advocated participating in anything with the Palestinians. It advocated the conquest of labor and the land by the Zionist movement. Even some of the liberal Zionists had a better attitude towards the Palestinians than the Laborites, who broke eggs that Jewish women bought from Arab dealers, and made sure that no Jew employed Palestinian workers.

[KC]

So wait - you say that I'm slandering the CWI, only to say in the next sentence that I am in fact correct? That you do advocate two separate states?

No, you are stating that the CWI holds a bourgeois-democratic approach to the National Question (by stating that it supports "two states" without taking into account the class struggle). Because of this you are creating a straw man by attributing to the CWI a position it does not hold.

I then went on to emphasize the fact that the CWI supports the creation of two socialist states in Israel and Palestine, and then backed it up with a quote by Lenin, who held the correct position as well.


There's a lot of difference between recognizing in principle the right for secession and supporting secession. Marxists support the right but not the act itself.

Clarify this and I will respond to it.

[chimx]

I would really love to see quotes proving any sentence but the last. Labor Zionism was never socialist and never advocated participating in anything with the Palestinians. It advocated the conquest of labor and the land by the Zionist movement. Even some of the liberal Zionists had a better attitude towards the Palestinians than the Laborites, who broke eggs that Jewish women bought from Arab dealers, and made sure that no Jew employed Palestinian workers.

Labor Zionism was a very dynamic movement. It had left-of-center ideologues that later became extremely antagonistic to the native population after WWII, but it also constituted Marxist-Zionists such as the Socialist League of Palestine, which accepted Arab members as political equals in their party. Other people such as Achad Ha-Am, though not a socialist, heavily influenced Zionism prior to WWII and was very critical of Herzl's political zionism ignoring the Arab question. (Achad was of course not a labor zionist, but a leader of "cultural zionism")

[Dean]

Surely Israeli leftism is an oxymoron?

Why? Why can't Israelis fight for liberation for their own people as well as the Palestinians? Isn't that tantamount to saying that, because America is so distinctly imperialist, that the Americans cannot be leftist?

What is intrinsically attributed to Israeli citizens which makes them different in that they somehow can't be leftist?

[Yehuda Stern]

you are stating that the CWI holds a bourgeois-democratic approach to the National Question

Oh no, a democratic approach would be a welcome step forward. The one Palestinian state approach is bourgeois-democratic and, although utopian and, being bourgeois, also reactionary, it is miles ahead of the imperialist two state position.


(by stating that it supports "two states" without taking into account the class struggle)

I am "stating" that the CWI supports a two state solution? Did you not just admit that you support the creation of two separate states, one Israeli, one Palestinian? Sounds like a two state solution to me.


Quote:
There's a lot of difference between recognizing in principle the right for secession and supporting secession. Marxists support the right but not the act itself.
Clarify this and I will respond to it.

Marxists from an oppressor nation should support the right of an oppressed nationality to secede from the socialist federation. Marxists from the oppressed nation should oppose the secession itself.


Labor Zionism was a very dynamic movement. It had left-of-center ideologues that later became extremely antagonistic to the native population after WWII, but it also constituted Marxist-Zionists such as the Socialist League of Palestine, which accepted Arab members as political equals in their party.

Oh, you mean Hashomer Hatzair. Well, Hashomer Hatzair was quite left for a Zionist organization, but despite all its rhetoric, it participated in the ethnic cleansing in 1948, and it supported the conquest of labor and land by the Zionist movement. There are Zionists with internationalist rhetoric to this day too, be certain of it. So you see, Zionism may be dynamic in the sense that it can take on many masks. But that doesn't mean that between all the masks lies any principled difference. And like you stated yourself, even the non-socialist Acham Haam had a more progressive attitude towards the Palestinians than the Labor Zionists, who, again, physically threatened any Jew who dared buy Arab products or employed Arab workers.


Why? Why can't Israelis fight for liberation for their own people as well as the Palestinians?

Israelis cannot fight for their liberation as a people because they are not a people. They are an oppressor colonialist society. Israelis who wish to fight for any sort of freedom must join the revolution of the native working class.

[Dean]

Israelis cannot fight for their liberation as a people because they are not a people. They are an oppressor colonialist society. Israelis who wish to fight for any sort of freedom must join the revolution of the native working class.

Well, the U.S., EU, Russia and arguably china are imperial, colonial oppressor states. Are you telling me that I can't be revolutionary if I live in the U.S.?

Oh, and Israelis are a people. You may not life the character of the society, and you shouldn't, but people live, raise families, etc. all under the flag of Israel in the given land it occupies. It is unfeasible and altogether wrong to dismiss an entire group of people which includes children, and people who were born and raised on the land for such "nativist" rhetoric.

[KC]

I am "stating" that the CWI supports a two state solution? Did you not just admit that you support the creation of two separate states, one Israeli, one Palestinian? Sounds like a two state solution to me.

Again you are ignoring the important part of my post. Here, let me highlight it for you:


No, you are stating that the CWI holds a bourgeois-democratic approach to the National Question (by stating that it supports "two states" without taking into account the class struggle). Because of this you are creating a straw man by attributing to the CWI a position it does not hold.

I then went on to emphasize the fact that the CWI supports the creation of two socialist states in Israel and Palestine, and then backed it up with a quote by Lenin, who held the correct position as well.

Let me now provide Ma'avak's own words on this issue:


We have consistently explained that the Palestinian masses and the Israeli Jewish working class would never achieve genuine stability and prosperity as a result of the capitalist peace process which Oslo represented. We argue for the overthrow of Israeli capitalism and the Arab elites in the Middle East through a revolutionary struggle by the working class and oppressed masses of the region. We campaign for such a movement to be committed to the objective of a socialist Palestine and a socialist Israel as part of a voluntary socialist confederation of the Middle East - a voluntary association of different socialist states where all the rights of ethnic, national, and religious minorities would be guaranteed.

A vountary socialist confederation of the Middle East, with the socialist state of Palestine and the socialist state of Israel.

That sounds terribly imperialist.:laugh:

[chimx]

Oh, you mean Hashomer Hatzair. Well, Hashomer Hatzair was quite left for a Zionist organization, but despite all its rhetoric, it participated in the ethnic cleansing in 1948, and it supported the conquest of labor and land by the Zionist movement. There are Zionists with internationalist rhetoric to this day too, be certain of it. So you see, Zionism may be dynamic in the sense that it can take on many masks. But that doesn't mean that between all the masks lies any principled difference. And like you stated yourself, even the non-socialist Acham Haam had a more progressive attitude towards the Palestinians than the Labor Zionists, who, again, physically threatened any Jew who dared buy Arab products or employed Arab workers.

I'm not sure what you mean by supporting ethnic cleansing in 1948 (it's a pretty vague term really). If you mean they defended Israel against Transjordan and Syria trying to "drive the Jews into the sea" then what do you expect? However, immediately prior to 1948, Hashomer Hatzair voted for Israel to not become a state in a conference in the US I believe which name I forget.

As for Acham Haam, his ideas were extremely popular and I would argue dominated Zionist thought up until the 1930s, a period when Labor Zionism was the leading ideology.

[dso79]

I'm not sure what you mean by supporting ethnic cleansing in 1948 (it's a pretty vague term really).


It's not that vague. In 1948 hundreds of thousands of Arabs were driven from their homes, and Hashomer Hatzair participated in that campaign.

They may have considered themselves socialists, but their main goal was always to advance zionism and to establish a Jewish state, and they were more than willing to commit crimes against the Arab population in order to achieve that goal.

[chimx]

ethnic cleansing can mean anything from genocide to mass deportations (it is also a crime of intent, not consequence, which has to be showed). I dont' think it is good that it happened, but considering the political climate in Israel at the time, I'm not terribly surprised.


and to establish a Jewish state

They specifically opposed the creation of a Jewish state. That was one of their main political positions.

[Dr Mindbender]

What, like leftists in Northern Ireland who come from the protestant community?
you couldnt call yourself an israeli leftist in the true sense because surely if you were a socialist from israel in the true sense you'd be advocating returning the land to the palestinians.

I dont regard myself a 'unionist socialist' unlike the confused bunch from the PUP.

[Yehuda Stern]

Well, the U.S., EU, Russia and arguably china are imperial, colonial oppressor states. Are you telling me that I can't be revolutionary if I live in the U.S.?

I'm not arguing that at all. I'm an Israeli and I'm a revolutionary. But the difference between the US, EU, and Russia (but not China) and Israel is that they are imperialist but not colonialist. In Israel, the Zionist movement has stolen the land from the Palestinians and has colonized it. The Israeli Jews never fought imperialism - they therefore never could become a nation but only a colonialist society.

And don't give me the sentimentalisms. I live here, I never very well how life goes around here. That is irrelevant to the discussion.


you are ignoring the important part of my post

And you are ignoring mine:

1) Your section supports, whatever way you twist, a two state solution;
2) You section supports the existence of Israel;

That is an imperialist and pro-Zionist, not revolutionary, position. Even if I were to believe that there is an Israeli nation, I would not argue in advance for two separate states but for a confederation (as we have done some time ago).


If you mean they defended Israel against Transjordan and Syria trying to "drive the Jews into the sea" then what do you expect?

So, before we continue, just clear this up for me: would you have supported Israel in 1948?


They specifically opposed the creation of a Jewish state.

Well, they did it pretty badly, joining in on the Zionist militias fighting against the Palestinians.

[chimx]

1) Your section supports, whatever way you twist, a two state solution;
2) You section supports the existence of Israel;

There is nothing wrong with supporting the existence of Israel. And a two state solution is the most realistic option in the near future, from what I have gathered. A single secular state would no doubt be preferably, but anything would be better than the current conditions for Palestinians..

At the 1942 Biltmore conference, they specifically voted against the idea of the creation of an Israeli nation state. What changed between 1942 and 1948? Probably a war in which every neighboring country was chanting for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews in the region. We can be critical of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but we should keep in mind that Transjordan, Syria, and to a lesser degree Egypt were trying to do the exact same thing to Israelis.

[Yehuda Stern]

There is nothing wrong with supporting the existence of Israel.

Well, no, not if you're a Zionist. Because supporting the existence of an Israeli state in any form is a Zionist position, is a position of support for imperialism.


a two state solution is the most realistic option in the near future, from what I have gathered.

When a purported solution gains a lot of support but still fails to materialize over the course of decades, it might be time to no longer consider it very realistic.


At the 1942 Biltmore conference, they specifically voted against the idea of the creation of an Israeli nation state. What changed between 1942 and 1948?

WWII came and the American and Soviet imperialists saw a chance to push Britain out of the region and gain a foothold here. Do you truly believe that the imperialists cared for the fate of the Jews in Israel or anywhere? The ruling classes of all countries are anti-Semitic and they are hiding this only because they are currently using Israel.


we should keep in mind that Transjordan, Syria, and to a lesser degree Egypt were trying to do the exact same thing to Israelis.

Perhaps, and I would not support the British League in war either. The revolutionary position would be to side with the Palestinian masses against both Israel and the Arab regimes. However, to justify the slaughter and expulsion of a native people based on a concern for members of a colonialist movement is somewhat monstrous.