Two Nations Two States

Two States, or "Secular Democratic State"? There is no "democratic" way to wipe out Israel!

A Letter to an Advocate of "Secular Democratic State" By Sean Matgamna Dear Andrew It seems to me that the terms of the only just solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are clear and unmistakeable. Unless you think the interests of one side should be entirely sacrificed to the other - that is, unless you are either an Arab or an Israeli chauvinist - there is only one acceptable solution. Each nation should have self-determination in the territory where it is the majority. I understand that to mean, essentially, the 1967 border. There should be full equality for members of each...

Boycott? A Jew-hunt won't help the Palestinians

From the Workers' Liberty pamphlet Two Nations, Two States The boycotting of nations and states is a crude, undifferentiating and normally ineffectual weapon. Typically, it has more to do with the taking of a political and moral stand by the boycotter than with effective political action. That said, boycotts are, nonetheless, sometimes useful. A boycott of Israeli academics and scientific institutions is advocated by, amongst others, Hilary and Steven Rose. Sections of the left are trying to organise a boycott of Israeli goods. The most bedrock argument, though not a conclusive one, against...

Chronology of a conflict

1881: Wave of pogroms in the Tsarist Empire, followed by a series of laws discriminating against Jews. 1894-5: Start of Dreyfus affair: a Jewish officer in the French army is falsely convicted of treason. 1897: First congress of the Zionist movement. 1903-6: New wave of pogroms in the Tsarist Empire. Start of systematic efforts to build up Zionist settlements in Palestine (then ruled by the Ottoman Empire) on the basis of "Jewish labour only". 1905: Aliens Act bans Jews fleeing Tsarist pogroms from settling in Britain. 1908: "Young Turk" revolution in Ottoman Empire, which triggers a rise of...

The Stalinist roots of left "anti-Zionism" 2

Part 1 of this article Thus, the rise of Zionism and of Israel had nothing to do with reflex responses to Nazi or more general anti-semitic persecution. It was a gratuitous act of evil. Immediately upon the creation of the state of Israel, "Zionism, a dangerous, fascistic force reminiscent of the Black Hundreds, a doctrine which is reactionary and expansionist by its very nature, became the ideology of its ruling circles."45 "Such is the irony of history: the Zionist rulers of Israel carry out the very same policies of genocide in relation to the Arabs as those which were carried out by the...

The Stalinist roots of left "anti-Zionism" 1

By Stan Crooke In the 1970s the rulers of the USSR launched a sustained 'anti-Zionist' campaign, in fact anti-semitic. No surprise. But an examination of the publications from that campaign shows something much more shocking than the fact that the old Stalinist despots were ready to use any sort of reactionary prejudice for their own ends. It demonstrates that much of what many British and international leftists - even Trotskyists - say about Israel is an indirect and unwitting copy of the Stalinists' efforts at constructing a Marxist-sounding gloss on old anti-semitic themes. Zionism equals...

A mirror for anti-Zionists

Walking from Westminster to Trafalgar Square one afternoon in May or June 2002, I came upon a small picket-demonstration - a dozen people perhaps - waving Palestinian flags and placards on the pavement across the road from the entrance to the Prime Minister's residence in Downing Street. I saw from a distance, and wondered at it, that half the demonstrators were dressed in the black hats and clothes and the beards that identified them as some sort of especially religious Jews. I had known, of course, that some devout Jews believe that the creation of the state of Israel is a monstrous act of...

What is Islamic fundamentalism?

The term "Islamic fundamentalism" first became common during the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. The Western-backed Shah (who had been put in power by the CIA) was overthrown by an enormous popular revolt, one element in which, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, expressed itself through the largest traditional religion in the country, Shi'a Islam. In fact, political movements inspired by Islam, calling for a return to "Islamic values", go back much further. In Egypt they go back to the 1930s at least, with the formation of the Moslem Brotherhood. But throughout the Moslem world - from north-west...

Trotsky and the Jewish Question

Revised version of an article published as "Marxism and the Jewish Question" in Two Nations, Two States" (2002, new edition 2016) "The socialist revolution is the only realistic solution of the Jewish question. If the Jewish workers and peasants asked for an independent state, good - but they didn't get it under Great Britain. But if they want it, the proletariat will give it. We are not in favour, but only the victorious working class can give it to them." Leon Trotsky, 15 June 1940 (Writings 1939-40, p.287) It is one of the ironies of politics. Trotskyism, in most of its post-Trotsky...

Unravelling the issues part 2

The "right of return" Condemnation of the Israeli law under which Jews throughout the world have the right to come and claim citizenship in Israel is an article of faith among most anti-Zionists. It is outrageous, they say, that people with no direct connection with Palestine should have the right to come to Israel while the Palestinian Arabs do not. The same anti-Zionists advocate the collective right of the Palestinian Arabs to "return", and claim that this return, rather than some agreed division of the disputed territory, is the only solution. Yet think what is involved here. In 1948...

Unravelling the issues

Why a Palestinian Arab state? The Palestinian Arabs are a defeated people, the main victims of the Jewish-Arab war of 1948. The root problem of the Palestinian Arabs is their dispossession by the Israeli Jews. However, their condition today is not just Israel's responsibility, and it cannot be mended by seeking revenge on Israel. The fact that many Palestinians continue today as refugees is also to be explained by intra-Arab politics, and by the desire of various Arab states to have them as a living indictment of Israel. The remnant of Palestine allotted to the Arabs by the UN in 1947 was not...

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