U.S. 'New World Order' means changes in relationship with Israel

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"The conflict has recently emerged because of the inability of the United States to maintain its dominati over the Middle East without reducing Israel's role a le East without reducing Israel's rol its main strateaic instrument for control in main strategic instrument for control 24 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1991 American imperialism's vital interests in the Middle East spurred President Bush to put the screws on the Israeli Zionist regime. He demanded Congress postpone any action for 120 days on a $10 billion loan guarantee requested from the United States by its Israeli client state.

Bush knows that the $10 billion will be used to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights to house the bulk of the million new Soviet immigrants in addition to the 300,000 already arrived during the last few years.

The underlying conflict is deep. Although of recent origin, it is implicit in the relationship between imperialist master and subordinate junior partner. The conflict has recently emerged because of the inability of the United States to maintain its domination over the Middle East without reducing Israel's role as its main strategic instrument for control in the region.

When Secretary of State James A Baker III was sent to line up the world for its war on Iraq's Saddam Hussein— whose actions it correctly judged to be a distorted expression of the Arab revolution-the Bush administration knew that it could no longer maintain imperialist domination there on the old basis. It was necessary to guarantee to the Arab states a bigger role at the expense of the Israeli settler state's expansionist dreams of a "Greater Israel."

Most important, this option was now possible given the decisive capitulation of the Soviet bureaucracy. The United States no longer needs a strong Israeli ally against Arab states that were backed up by Soviet Stalinism.

Bush knows that the Middle East "peace" talks planned for this month have no possibility for success unless Israel is forced to retreat from its intransigent insistence on holding on to all territories stolen from the Palestinian and other Arab peoples.

Although Bush doesn't care a whit about the plight of Zionism's victims, he knows that the Arab rulers will not be able to help establish his "New Order" in the region if Israel remains hardnosed and uncompromising. The Arab rulers must have something to show their peoples to justify their past treason and gain a measure of acceptance for the hateful neo-colonial status quo.

But neither is Bush prepared to close any doors on the Israeli puppet. His recent demand, made at that the United Nations withdraw its previously adopted position that Zionism is racisin is primarily intended to allow the Israelis to acquiesce to his demands gracefully. It is also intended to reassure Zionists in this country of imperialism's continued commitment to the Israeli settler state.

Response by Israel's rulers On his part, Yitzhak Shamir fears that even a token Israeli retreat will encourage Palestinians to press for full redemption of their national rights. He further fears that the United States will, under this pressure, drift inexorably toward ever-greater reliance on its Arab allies. Consequently, the current frantic campaign to root settlers in the occupied territories is designed to strengthen Israel's bargaining position against this dynamic.

The withholding of the loan guarantee is intended to convince Shamir that he must give back some of his territorial loot and retreat from attempts to dictate who shall represent Palestinians in the talks designed to work out a more stable relationship of forces in the region for American imperialism.

Baker's message provoked a sharp outcry from the Israeli ruling class. Israeli capitalists know that they will be compelled, in the end, to subordinate their interests to those of their paymaster, who subsidizes Israel to the tune of $3 billion a year—not to mention supplying them with the latest in military equipment.

They fear, most of all, that when the Arab revolution resumes its forward march, imperialism will have no qualms about sacrificing Israel when it deems that to be necessary for the preservation of imperialism's own interests.

Nevertheless, no ruling class gives up without a fight, and Shamir's game is to strengthen the Zionist hand by calling on American Jews to intercede on behalf of the "Jewish homeland." Zionist desperation was highlighted when one of Shamir's cabinet ministers foolishly called President Bush an anti-Semite and a liar.

Shamir also revealed panic when he slandered American Jews, many of whom were embarrassed by Zionist demands that they vigorously support the massive construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Besides, American capitalists who are Jewish still have a basic loyalty to American capitalism and its vital interests.

A distortion of history Shamir's aim, in any case, was to prod all U.S. Jews to raise a clamor in support of his policy by shaming them with the false charge of having done "nothing" to save European Jews from mass murder during World War II!

This canard is an outrageous distortion of history. It was not the millions of American Jews who refused to help save the region."

Europe's Jews. It was Zionist misleaders-and the "democratic" imperialists-who blocked Jews and others who sought to help Hitler's victims. It was such people as Rabbi Stephen Wise, the principal American Zionist representative, who in 1938 opposed any change in U.S. immigration laws which would have allowed more Jewish victims of Nazi terror to find refuge in this country.

Nor was this some bizarre quirk of American Zionism. It was a Zionist policy applied everywhere. Chaim Weizmann, for instance, who later became the first president of Israel, opposed changes in immigration laws in Great Britain and other potential havens. These laws, while far from a solution, would have opened the door for many more Jews to escape the Nazi holocaust.

Zionist policy was to block such changes because the immigration of Jews to Europe and America did not serve their goal of colonization of Palestine. 1 Anything short of this, they falsely reasoned, prolonged the agony of the Jewish people.

Yitzhak Shamir's call to American Jews to mobilize in support of Israeli policy will surely contribute to the absurdity dear to the hearts of all antiSemites, fascists, and incipient fascists—that "a conspiracy of rich and powerful Jews dominates the world." This is just the other side of the Zionist counter-myth that all gentiles, in their heart of hearts, are anti-Semites.

Even Israeli Zionist "leftists" are concerned at Shamir's recklessness. The Sept.16 New York Times, for example, reported that Yossi Sarid, a member of the Israeli parliament, characterized Shamir's action as a "'vulgar mistake' that could increase anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feelings in the United States."

And that's exactly why the news mediharp on the myth of "the formidable Israeli lobby"—as if American imperialism's role in the Middle East was dictated by anyone other than the American capitalist class, which is non-Jewish in its great majority.

It is a mistake, too, to call Bush an anti-Semite-even though he, along with the great bulk of ruling capitalists in America, is certainly capable of embracing this reactionary ideology when it serves their class interests.

This was the case in Nazi Germany, whose capitalists were no more antiSemitic than other ruling classes. Nevertheless, when they needed fascism to save German capitalism from a workers' revolution, the great majority of German capitalists embraced Hitler.

Zionism's shameful record From the beginning, before there was a Zionist settler state ruling over the land of the Palestinians and before its indigenous people were made foreigners without rights in the land of their ancestors, Zionism allied itself with the enemies of the Jewish people. On June 21, 1933, for example, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent a memorandum of support to the Nazi Party which read in part:

...a rebirth of national life such as is occurring in German life ... must also take place in the Jewish national group.

"On the foundation of the new [Nazi] 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."2 Again, this is not a quirk of German Zionists, it is inherent in the reactionary philosophy of Zionism!

American imperialism still supports Zionism. But tomorrow, when imperialism has no further use for it, it will drop any pretense at being "friends" of anyone or anything Jewish.

The working class and socialist revolution remain the only solution to the abomination of anti-Semitism and all other expressions of capitalist racial, sexual, and religious prejudice and social injustice.

1 See "Zionism in the Age of the Dictators," by Lenni Brenner, Lawrence Hill, Westport, Conn.

2 Ibid.