Israel/Palestine

See our publications on Israel/Palestine, and articles on fighting left antisemitism.

The Trotskyists and the Creation of Israel: Nine Key Documents, 1929-1948 (Workers' Liberty 3/13)

Download whole pull-out as pdf . Hal Draper The Fourth International, The Revolutionary Communist League of Palestine, Max Shachtman. Debate: Albert Glotzer and Ernest Mandel Most “Trotskyists” today are, everywhere, agitators and propagandists against the Jewish state of Israel, “demanding” that Israel should cease to exist. This political attitude is far from the politics of the international Trotskyist movement on this question in the 1920s,‘30s and ‘40s when Israel was established, as these documents show. The 1947 debate between Albert Glotzer and Ernest Mandel is especially important...

Debate: No support for Fatah

No support for Fatah THE recent article by Sean Matgamna on the AWL website, “The only way to be for the Palestinians, or the Israelis, is to be for two states”, and the editorial in Solidarity 3/114, “Hamas victory is a tragedy for Palestine”, were right to reject the left’s predictable rallying behind the clerical fascist Hamas band in the aftermath of its war against Fatah. However, in both cases the comrades were too ready to give credit to bourgeois political forces which might defeat Hamas, rather than positing an independent working-class perspective uniting workers against the conflict...

Debate: No support for Fatah

No support for Fatah THE recent article by Sean Matgamna on the AWL website, “The only way to be for the Palestinians, or the Israelis, is to be for two states”, and the editorial in Solidarity 3/114, “Hamas victory is a tragedy for Palestine”, were right to reject the left’s predictable rallying behind the clerical fascist Hamas band in the aftermath of its war against Fatah. However, in both cases the comrades were too ready to give credit to bourgeois political forces which might defeat Hamas, rather than positing an independent working-class perspective uniting workers against the conflict...

The Palestine Civil War

Editorial, Solidarity 3/114 The rulers of Israel are frequently accused, and justly so according to the evidence, of wanting a “settlement” with the Palestinians in which a “Palestinian state” is really a series of “Palestinistans”, what in South Africa were called bantustans. Now the Palestinians are doing it for themselves. After a short civil war, “Palestine” has been split into two, Gaza ruled by Hamas and the West Bank (or, rather, pockets within the West Bank) ruled by Fatah. Thus the seemingly endless tragedy of the Palestinian people has taken a new turn. On one level the civil war and...

Demonstration shows the need for rational solidarity

The Enough! demonstration today (9 June) to mark forty years of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was small - between five and ten thousand, I would guess - and predominantly a march of ageing British lefties. This despite very wide trade-union sponsorship for the demonstration, and - I don't have opinion-poll figures to hand, but it's impossible to doubt it - very wide public sympathy for the right of the Palestinians to have their own state alongside Israel. The small numbers are less surprising in the light of the vehemently anti-Israeli "subtext" of the demonstration. There...

Unison "contracts out" solidarity with the Palestinians

On Wednesday 20 June, the conference of the public services union Unison voted about three to one to endorse an "economic, cultural, academic, and sporting boycott of Israel". That we won a quarter of the conference against the boycott, from a standing start - the union's Executive unanimously endorsed the boycott motion, and the Unison United Left backed it too - was an achievement. Still, the boycotters got away with presenting themselves as the people proposing something practical to help the Palestinians - though Helen Jenner, speaking for the union Executive recommendation, stated that...

"Solidarity yes, boycott no" meeting at Unison conference

About 30 people attended a "Solidarity yes, boycott no!" fringe meeting at Unison conference on Tuesday 19 June, in the run-up to the debate on boycotting Israel on Wednesday 20 June. Newly-elected Unison Executive member Alison Brown explained the case against the boycott, and CWU Executive member Maria Exall (speaking in a personal capacity) put the case for a positive "Trade Unionists For Two States" campaign. An activist from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign came to put the case for the boycott, but unfortunately left before listening to any of the responses to her speech. Her argument...

For the Third Camp – Yes to Palestinian Liberation! No To Anti-Semitism!

By Steve Cohen (1) Though anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism should and could be distinct yet they have in many respect merged – not least due to the kitsch Left. The immediate political task is to separate them. Paradoxically this can only be achieved by forming a new movement – one based on the principles of solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to anti-Semitism. (2) Only such a movement can exclude the racists/chauvinists from both "sides". (3) In essence this racism/chauvinism is based on a primitive tribalism – Muslim right or wrong/Jew right or wrong. This is not politics it is...

For the Third Camp – Yes to Palestinian Liberation! No To Anti-Semitism!

For the Third Camp – Yes to Palestinian Liberation! No To Anti-Semitism! By Steve Cohen (1) Though anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism should and could be distinct yet they have in many respect merged – not least due to the kitsh Left. The immediate political task is to separate them. Paradoxically this can only be achieved by forming a new movement – one based on the principles of solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to anti-Semitism. (2) Only such a movement can exclude the racists/chauvinists from both "sides". (3) In essence this racism/chauvinism is based on a primitive tribalism –...

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