Zionism – An Ugly History

by Christopher Towne / February 2009

The Zionist movement from the very beginning was aided and funded by capitalists who saw it as a preferred option to socialism and militant labor struggles, which they feared. Jews were heavily represented in the labor movement and the socialist parties of Europe. As an especially oppressed group within the working class, Jewish workers were more exposed to the brutality of capitalism, and were more likely to see a solution in socialism.

Theodore Herzl, the founding father of modern Zionism and the author of "The Jewish State" saw Zionism as way to lead victimized Jews away from socialism. Herzl met with Count von Plehve, author of the some of the worst pogroms in Russia, to find support for a Jewish state and said of the meeting, "I have his positive, binding promise that in 15 years, at the maximum, he will effectuate for us a charter for Palestine. But this is tied to one condition: the Jewish revolutionaries shall cease their struggle against the Russian government."

He also told von Plehve, "Help me reach land sooner and the revolt will end. And so will the defection to the socialists" ("The Iron Wall," by Lenni Brenner, pp. 14 and 15).

Herzl saw no reason for Jews to fight for equal rights in the countries of they lived in. Anti-Semitism, which he blamed the Jews themselves for creating, could only be solved by the establishment of a Jewish state. He remarked, "The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America."

He believed that these states would be better off if the Jews left, by encouraging "an inner migration of Christian citizens in to the positions relinquished by Jews. The outflow will be gradual, without any disturbance, and its very inception means the end of anti-Semitism. … Once we begin to execute the plan, anti-Semitism will cease at once and everywhere."

Anti-Semites found a new ally in the Zionists. Winston Churchill wrote in his infamous article "Zionism versus Bolshevism" that the Jewish movement, from Spartacus to Marx to Trotsky, was a "world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality."

A Jewish state "under the protection of the British Crown," said Churchill, could embody a solution to this problem "and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire."

Churchill's attitude embodied the true feeling of capitalist leaders who wished to use Zionism to kill two birds with one stone: (1) draw Jews away from revolutionary socialism and (2) set up an imperialist client-state in the Middle East.

Zionism and the Holocaust

The anti-socialist nature of the Zionist political program was manifested in their approach towards fascism. In the 1930s, Zionist organizations in the UK and U.S. practiced deliberate non-involvement as workers mobilized against Nazi rallies in their countries.

Beating back the fascist movement was not an important goal to most Zionist leaders in the U.S. and Europe. They believed that supremacist ideologies could continue existing in Europe—allowing Jews to be starved in the ghettos, subjected to murderous pogroms, and even sent to the death camps—so long as Jewish supremacy could exist in Palestine.

The World Zionist Organization was the leading distributor of Nazi goods in the Middle East, defying the worldwide Jewish boycott of Nazi products.

With support from the highest leaders of the Jewish Agency, the safe passage of some 1600 "prominent" Jews was exchanged for keeping secret the planned extermination of 450,000 Hungarian Jews. Israel Rudolph Kastner, deputy head of the Relief and Rescue Committee of Hungarian Jews, lied to them, saying they would only be relocated ("The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust," by Segev, p. 271).

Kastner and other Zionist leaders effectively ruined any chance of revolt by Jews in Hungary, something deemed less important than adding a few more colonists to the Zionist project in Palestine.

On several occasions, Zionist leaders deliberately torpedoed efforts to enable European Jews to escape the Nazis by emigrating to countries other than Palestine.

In 1943 the U.S. Congress proposed a commission to "study" the problem of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. Rabbi Stephen Wise came to Washington to testify against any rescue bill because it would divert attention from colonizing Palestine. Also in 1943 the British Parliament proposed several hundred immigration permits for Jews fleeing Nazi Europe, which was opposed by Zionists.

At the end of World War II over 80 percent of displaced Jews wished to emigrate to the U.S., but Zionist leaders spoke against permitting that to happen. Chaplain Abraham Klausner, an American rabbi who helped to liberate the Dachau concentration camp and worked to reunite the families of survivors, reflected the Zionist position when he stated, "I am convinced that the people must be forced to go to Palestine."

Dividing the workers of Palestine

Israel pits Jewish workers against non-Jewish workers, preventing them from forming a natural class unity. The formation of the apartheid state itself was only made possible by destroying any solidarity between Arabs and Jews.

The Irgun, the Zionist terror group that Rahm Emmanuel's father belonged to, chose the Haifa oil refinery as a target in 1947 because it was a workplace that enjoyed cooperative strikes by Arabs and Jews. So deep were the bonds there that a Jew eulogized an Arab that died on the job ("Comrades and Enemies," by Zachary Lockman, Chapter 8). But one act of terror, killing innocent Arabs waiting for work, undid the solidarity and caused reprisals in which Jewish coworkers were killed.

The forced expulsion of Arabs from Palestine was carried out soon after with no threat of a united resistance, due to the success of both Zionist propaganda and terror. Workers were told that the "Jewish state" would be different from others, and that Jewish workers would enjoy a privileged place. Whatever privileges they had were fleeting; 60 years later one out of three Israeli children is below the poverty line.

In a very real and serious way, Israel and the ideology of Zionism serve imperialism against the interests of all Arab and Third World peoples. If all the Arab-speaking peoples were united into one county, it would be the seventh largest economy in the world. Yet all of them separately are underdeveloped, unable to pool resources for socially important projects.

The extraordinary struggle of the Palestinians is a danger to all the capitalist regimes of the Middle East. Its inspiring legacy explains why the Hussein regime in Jordan fought against them in the 1970s, why the Lebanese regime fought against them in the 1980s, and why the Egyptians fire upon innocent Gazans today.

Any revolutionary fight in the Arab world can inspire others across the borders, themselves victims of imperialism. The workers of Egypt have been inspired by their brothers and sisters in Gaza, and vice versa.

How do Palestinians win their freedom? How do Jewish workers fight against the endless rollback of social services and increasing poverty? How do foreign workers end near-slavery wages and win equal rights? Only a working-class leadership is capable of uniting these forces into a combined fight.

The ongoing wars, the apartheid, and the ideology of Jewish supremacy itself only prevent this fight from being fought and won. Since the Israeli state can only carry out these reactionary campaigns thanks to the support it receives from the U.S. government, promoting solidarity with the Palestinian struggle is extremely important in the United States.

Marxist and socialist education is also important, as we need to remove the influence of capitalist ideologies like Zionism and racism from our trade unions and other working-class organizations.