What's behind U.S.-Israeli discord?

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SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1991 13 The sparks flying between the governments of the United States and Israel reflect a divergence of interests between the imperialist master and one of its puppet states in the Middle East.

The tactical division derives from U.S. imperialism's need to broaden its base of support among the Arab states. To gain their cooperation for establishing a pro-imperialist bloc which includes Israel, the U.S. government must provide Arab governments with at least some political cover against the expected outcry of the Arab masses.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III undoubtedly used a combination of threats and promises to win support form imperialism's Arab allies in preparation for its assault on Iraq.

Both the Bush Administration and its Arab puppets well knew they were risking an uncontrollable uprising throughout the Arab world. To minimize this threat, Baker flitted from capital to capital in a desperate effort to gain the complicity of most Arab states before launching the crushing military offensive against the leader of Iragi capitalism and Arab nationalism.

Even though U.S. imperialism's military success exceeded all its expectations, it is still not out of the woods. It must continue its efforts to reconstruct a stable Middle Eastern component of President Bush's New World Order. This is not feasible without diminishing somewhat the central role previously occupied by Israeli capitalism in the U.S. imperialist line-up of puppet states there.

Handwriting on the wall The Zionist Israeli government could see the handwriting on the wall in the early stages of the American build-up, before the latter launched its air and sea assault on Iraq. The Zionists, from the first, howled in protest when Baker first suggested Israel might have to give up direct control over some of the territory it stole from Palestinians in order to restructure a stable pro-imperialist Middle East alliance.

Hard on the heels of the imperialist military victory, Israeli Prime Minister Yitshak Shamir's government took steps to strengthen its hand in the "peace process" promoted by the U.S. Secretary of State. Each time Zionist repression (continued from preceding page) movement in Israel, a movement opposed to the occupation and one that wants a compromise solution recognizing the rights (or at least some rights) of the Palestinian people. And there has been a beginning of a dialogue, a dialogue that no longer concerned the radical far left but that went very deep into the society. This is a dialogue on various levels-meetings, common actions, an expression of solidarity. This was perhaps one of the most promising elements in these last three years.

However, this dialogue was very often based on misunderstandings. For a great many Israelis, and especially for the notables of the Israeli left and the Israeli peace movement, their Palestinian interlocutors were supposed to be the Palestinian allies of Peace Now. Perhaps these interlocutors did not always dot the "i"s, because they were too happy to see cracks in Israeli society.

However, a war forces people to take a position. And the position that the Palestinian people took, along with their national leadership in the occupied territories, was unequivocal. They lined up behind Iraq— without thereby supporting the invasion of Kuwait, against the American and European offensive. A lot of their Israeli interlocutors felt duped.

On the Palestinian side, there also was a surprise. They didn't expect such violent reactions as Yossi Sarid's "don't call me," such as the often rude refusal of Israeli interlocutors to answer phone calls from their friends, from those Palestinians who thought they were their friends. They did not understand, because they had certain illusions that the concern of the Israeli peace movement was for recognition of the Palestinian rights. But that is still a long way away.

The primary concern of the Israeli peace movement is the interests of the state of Baker went near Israel in his efforts to get a "peace" conference going, the Israeli Zionists gave the signal for launching new waves of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip-making Baker's task more difficult.

There are about 1.7 million Arabs in the occupied territories. It has been reported that in the last several months, alone, Israel has seized 7500 acres of Arab land in the West Bank and has begun action to take another 10,000 acres.

The Israeli government is basing its land Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

ripoff on Turkish laws established during the Ottoman empire's 19th-century occupation of the area.

One of these "laws" allows the Israeli settler state to seize land for which Arab peasants do not have clear title. Unfortunately for the Arabs, most do not have land titles like those in Western countries. Land ownership in this part of the world is sufficiently proven by generations of family occupancy.

The Turkish statute allows confiscation of such untitled land from poor peasants if it has not been cultivated for one year. And because many Palestinians had stopped cultivation of their land years before when offered higher paying jobs in Israel, their land is subject to Israeli confiscation. So far, the Zionist occupiers have seized more than half Israel. If they are against the occupation, it is not because the Palestinians have rights; it is above all because the occupation "is degrading the moral quality of Israel."

The minute it had to choose its camp, the great majority of the Israeli peace movement and [political] left chose the camp of imperialist aggression. And the Palestinians unanimously chose the camp of Iraq, the victim of aggression.

There is an advantage to this clarification because I think that the dialogue is going to resume. Unlike some of my friends, I don't think that the break in national unity, the emergence of a peace movement in Israel, was a passing thing, and that now everything has returned to normal.

The proof of this is that even before the end of the fighting, after a very difficult period, the movement resumed. Three weeks ago, the Women in Black resumed their weekly demonstrations. Before, they demonstrated at 30-some points. Now, demonstrations have resumed in about 20 places. In Jerusalem, which I know best, about 25 women usually came. Last week, there were already a hundred.

There is a second element that makes for optimism—the number of soldiers who refused to serve in the occupied territories, even during the war, has not declined. What has declined is the number of soldiers sent to prison, because there were orders that this was not the time to make a fuss about this, and the soldiers who refused to go were sent home.

Israel's vulnerability exposed This is reinforced by an element that was brought on by the war and which can serve as an impetus in a new mobilization. The Gulf War showed Israeli society as a whole how vulnerable it was. For the first time in a long time, Israelis also experienced fear.

Fear is something Palestinians have experienced for three years, or even for more the territory in the West Bank utilizing this and similar pretexts.

Aside from the obvious aim of the Zionists-to take land from Arabs and give it to Israeli citizens-the purpose is also to establish settlements as points of military support for further oppression and exploitation of Palestinians.

Poor Jewish settlers, like their white counterparts in South Africa, have been allowed to share in the loot ripped off by Israeli capitalists. This gives them a direct material interest in defending Zionist and Der Spiegel imperialist interests.

The waves of invading settlers serve a third purpose. The Zionists know that a new quia pro quo between them and the other vassal states in the region is unavoidable-—if the boss insists. They are grabbing more now so that they will have to give back less later.

Seeds of future anti-Semitism Many Jewish workers in Israel and the United States do a grave disservice to Jews everywhere by giving support to Zionist crimes. Zionism's argumentation is not significantly different from the Nazi rationalization for its oppression of Jews.

Hitler justified his crimes by interweaving the myth of "Jewish bankers and Jewish than twenty. People fled Tel Aviv-40 percent of the population fled. There were a lot of myths about this. There was a lot of false fear. But the fear was a reality, even if it was provoked artificially by a stupid campaign that the Israeli authorities themselves reject today.

All of a sudden, there was a feeling that the security of Israel, of the Israeli people, depended on the good will of the Americans. Never, since 1973, has this been so clear.

Israel's vulnerability is a basis for the peace movement resuming a campaign and explaining that taking on 150 million Arabs is not necessarily the best way to assure Israel's security, even if the Americans and 23 or 25 countries of the world are on its side.

On several occasions in these last days, people have asked me what the perspectives are-what can be expected from this war and its aftermath in terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations? Personally, I don't think that an imperialist war will produce anything but an imperialist peace. I don't think, as a lot of my friends on the Israeli left do, that this war holds the potential of a progressive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Some have justified their support for the war by saying that this war is going to produce, if not an Israeli-Palestinian peace, at least the beginning of a grand march that will lead to such a peace. But we should not fall into any kind of fatalism. Even if it is true that an imperialist war produces an imperialist peace and a new imperial order, I think that the peace that is taking form in the Middle East will bring as much of a fight as the war.

Palestinians not defeated

Not only is the outcome not predetermined but we have a big ace in this battle that is going to have to be fought to determine what kind of peace—what kind of order— Communists" with reference to the Versailles peace treaty, whose terms compelled the defeated German nation to pay heavy "reparations" to the Anglo/French-led victors at the end of World War I.

Now the Zionists play a similar game, justifying their crimes against Palestinians by the terrible holocaust the Jewish people suffered in Nazi concentration camps. And while the beneficiary of Nazi policies was German capitalism, the beneficiaries of Zionist policies are Western imperialism in the first place and Israeli capitalism in the second.

It is not a coincidence that here in the United States the most reactionary, venomous anti-Semites are among the loudest cheer-leaders for Zionism. Virtually the entire American capitalist class—which, of course, includes a Jewish minority—is proZionist.

This has resulted in a rise of antiSemitism among the gullible who are led to believe that this policy is imposed on the U.S. government by "powerful Jews."

Nor is this a coincidence. Tomorrow, when the economy slips out of control, social crises erupt, and workers are forced into sharpened class struggle, the Jewish people will again be scapegoated to cover up an anti-working class counter-offensive.

Then, when pressed against the wall by the rising tide of revolution, the American ruling class will attempt to drive the wedge of anti-Semitism into the workers' movement to augment their strategy of divide and conquer. "The Jews" will then be declared to be responsible for U.S. capitalism's criminal Zionist policy-and other "crimes," we can be sure, for which they will be entirely innocent.

The great majority of Jewish people, having suffered more than their share of persecution, had an honorable history of identifying with the working class and the oppressed nationalities of the world before imperialism deceitfully carved "a homeland for the Jews" out of the Arab nation. Many, unfortunately, have been suckered into the camp of imperialism by the false and reactionary solution of a Jewish clerical state.

This was a profound break from their proud past, which must be corrected. The only way forward for all those truly opposed to all forms of racial, national, and sexist bigotry is to support the demand of the indigenous peoples of the area for a Democratic Secular Palestine, wherein all who live there—irrespective of religion or nationality—will enjoy equal rights.

this war is going to lead to. This ace Intifada.

The Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza have not been defeated in this war. If their situation today is difficult—I would even say tragic-there is no reason to think that the young people in Nablus, the young people in Gaza, have given up, as some write in the Israeli press.

In this battle that has to be waged now to determine what kind of new order is going to be created in the Middle East, you in Europe have a central role to play. For us, you have been a hope, and when I say "us, " I mean both Israelis and Palestinians.

You have been the opposite of the picture they tried to present of a war between West and East. You have been the bearers of a hope, of a possibility, that can represent something else, a front of what is good in both the East and the West against this imperialist order that threatens us.

The battle that you have fought in your hundreds of thousands must be continued.

The fight for self-determination, for democracy, for human rights, for respect for all the articles of the Geneva Convention which have been trampled on-these are the focuses, in my opinion, of the fight that will determine not only the fate of the Palestinian people but also of the new order that the allied powers want to impose on us in the region. (That is also the order they want to impose on the entire world.)

A campaign for Palestine today is not only just. Iț was just a year ago, it was just 10 years ago.

A campaign for Palestine and the Palestinians' rights is possible today. This is why a movement around these axes-the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and the defense of the human rights in the occupied territories-emerged before the Gulf War and continued during it despite an extraordinary press campaign. Today, it must get a second wind.