Zionist Lies and Socialist Tactics
Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism with the background of the “Israel” flag and the Palestine Plan of Partition.
Over 140 individuals signed up to speak on the topic of a proposed resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during the public comment portion of the Cincinnati City Council meeting on Feb. 14, 2024. Many of those in attendance were in support of a resolution, despite the efforts of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, who bussed in a few dozen speakers to advocate against a ceasefire. As of the date of this publication, Feb. 28, a ceasefire resolution on behalf of Cincinnati City Council has yet to be passed. The comments of the supporters of Israel are ones that are heard frequently in the discourse surrounding the Israeli assault on Gaza. Given that these beliefs are so widespread, they require examination.
Zionist Distortions and Lies
Members of the pro-Israel Jewish Federation spoke one after another in a Cincinnati City Council meeting, repeating the same arguments in opposition to a ceasefire resolution. Their comments amounted to justifying the forced starvation and slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women and children being committed by the apartheid-state of Israel. They did so with same tired reasons we’ve heard from genocide apologists for months, characterized by the ignorance or deliberate denial of historical events preceding Oct. 7.
The arguments of the supporters of Israel stand on the basis of a fabricated version of reality which conveniently glosses over the countless human rights abuses committed by Zionist settlers before 1948 and the state of Israel over its more than 75 year history. In this constructed reality, all was peaceful in “the land of Israel” until Oct. 7, when Hamas, out of nowhere, launched an attack. This narrative is either born out of ignorance of historical events surrounding the establishment and maintenance of the state of Israel, or, the more likely reason, it is a deliberate attempt to distort and conceal the historical facts which expose the state of Israel as a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate.
Numerous facts, which our genocide apologists try to conceal, expose Israel’s colonial nature and are widely accepted by the international community. Supporters of Israel deny the fact recognized by the UN that the state of Israel was established through the violent dispossession and displacement of the indigenous Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba. They deny that Israel is an illegal occupation of the land of Palestine (recognized and reaffirmed by the UN) or that Israel has set up systems of apartheid (also recognized by the UN), concentrating Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas enclosed by concrete walls, armed security and military checkpoints, restriction of movement, the issuance of special IDs and license plates, etc. They deny the historical and ongoing settler violence as well as the displacement carried out by Israeli “civilians” (much of which occurs in the occupied West Bank where there is no Hamas.) They deny the fact that 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians to date before Oct. 7, as well as the fact that there were more than 5,200 Palestinians being held as prisoners in Israel before Oct. 7. They speak of the necessity of Israel’s military campaign against innocent civilians, more than half of whom are women and children, in order to “free Israeli hostages,” while not acknowledging the multiple times Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied hostage deals and refused to negotiate, or the number of Israeli hostages that have been killed as a result of excessive force employed by the IDF. They deny that there is a genocide taking place at all.
In fact, what’s happening now is a continuation of the historic and explicit goals of the Zionist movement. Theodore Herzl, otherwise known as the father of Zionism, in 1897, convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. There he laid out the idea of a European quasi-state apparatus to supervise the colonization of Palestine and the eradication of its indigenous population:
If we wish to found a [Jewish] State today, we shall not do it in the way which would have been the only possible one a thousand years ago. It is foolish to revert to old stages of civilization, as many Zionists would like to do. Supposing, for example, we were obliged to clear a country of wild beasts, we should not set about the task in the fashion of Europeans of the fifth century. We should not take spear and lance and go out singly in pursuit of bears; we would organize a large and active hunting party, drive the animals together, and throw a melinite bomb into their midst.
Zionist colonialism has, from the very beginning, planned for the Final Solution of Palestinians. Herzl’s dream succeeded after three tries and 20 years only by material and financial support from the British Empire, driven by their desire to remain in control of trade via the Suez Canal. World War I set the stage for an alliance between Zionist colonizers and British imperialism that would conclude in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration, paving the way for the dispossession and expulsion of Arabs in Palestine and the creation of a Zionist settler-state which would later be fully funded by the United States.
The real expansionist ambitions—the colonization of the whole of the land of Palestine—of the state of Israel are so unjustifiable, the Zionists are forced to construct, out of their imaginations, an Israel which is not a genocidal apartheid-state in order to defend it. Once they’ve created in their minds this fake Israel, they proceed with their argument that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” It is pointless to dwell on this fabricated state of Israel which is born out of the inventive Zionists’ imaginations. An Israel that was not a genocidal apartheid-state would be one thing, but this Israel does not exist. Instead we are forced to deal with the real state of Israel, divorced from feelings or prejudice. This Israel opposes and makes impossible the realization of sovereignty for the people of Palestine by rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state. This Israel has stated that it will not stop its bombardment of Gaza until "total victory." This Israel invokes the biblical Amalek in their call to genocide (Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass (1 Samuel15:3)) and carries it out through a ruthless scorched earth policy. This Israel is even so bold as to claim that Palestinian people do not exist. Despite all this, Israel and its supporters, in the most hypocritical fashion, repeat again and again that it has the right to exist and defend itself while completely trampling on those same rights of the Palestinian people (whether they are Jewish, Muslim or Christian) which are recognized by international law.
These supporters of Israel who claim that Hamas broke peace on Oct. 7 confuse peace with order. We do not deny that Israelis have enjoyed the privilege of “peace,” but this “peace” on Palestinian land can only exist through the subjugation, imprisonment and removal of the indigenous Palestinians from their land. The Israeli government has maintained order over the people of Gaza by their concentration into an open air prison and the use of military force. There is no peace for Palestinians.
Subjecting indigenous peoples to military occupation, apartheid, displacement, settler-violence and genocide and expecting anything but resistance is delusion on behalf of the state of Israel and its supporters. A state which denies indigenous people their sovereignty and their right to exist itself does not deserve to exist. The fact is that the state of Israel, with its goal of colonizing the whole of the land of Palestine, is incompatible with the continued existence of indigenous Palestinians. This fact is being proven in reality, as the extermination of the Palestinians continues side by side with the realization of Israel’s colonial ambitions.
It is from this position that we conduct our work on the question of Palestine, and from this position where we launched our attacks against the genocide apologists of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati and other supporters of Israel, including the revisionist renegades of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), during the City Council meeting of Feb. 14.
Unity, Struggle and Our Tactics
“…in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or above-class ideology” - V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?
We now come to members of the City Council and their empty calls for “unity” of Palestinians and their supporters with Zionists living in Cincinnati. In an act of self-paralysis, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and members of City Council claim they are unable–in reality, unwilling–to pass a resolution in support of a ceasefire because doing so would be “too divisive.” It isn’t worth spending too much time saying what we’ve already said in our statement on the Cincinnati City Council meeting which took place on Feb. 7. Of course claiming a “neutral” position between perpetrators and victims of a genocide is tantamount to supporting it.
In yet another instance of Cincinnati’s local government ignoring the will of the people, City Council has decided that they will not condemn the genocidal acts of the state of Israel, nor call for a ceasefire. Not only is their act completely transparent, so is their reasoning. The Council states that its goal is to foster unity between the communities affected by the events following Oct. 7, but what kind of unity can be shared between Palestinians and Zionists?
The only unity shared between colonizer and colonized is unity in struggle. Their existence depends on the existence of its opposite. A colonizer is not a colonizer without a colonized people. A people cannot be colonized without a colonizer. The colonizer, with the goal of settling on already inhabited land, comes into conflict with the colonized, who is already living there. There can be nothing but struggle between these two forces which stand in dialectical opposition. This struggle is what makes up their relationship to one another, and this struggle will carry on until one completely destroys the other, just as the state of Israel is now attempting to destroy the Palestinian people.
For us it is clear. We stand in unconditional support of the colonized in their struggle for their existence.
What then, is our party’s task in supporting the struggle of the oppressed? It is to facilitate and strengthen the movement of the working and oppressed masses toward their liberation from capitalist and imperialist domination. The strength of the people grows with its organization and the recognition of the task of liberation which is set before it against the ruling class and the state which protects their privilege.
It is for this reason that we do not engage in what Rosa Luxemburg called “statesmanlike barter” with the members of our City Council in order to see a ceasefire resolution passed. In the case of a local ceasefire resolution, the means of achieving it are perhaps more important than the outcome. Realistically, a ceasefire resolution passed by Cincinnati City Council will do little to actually liberate Palestine. The question also arises, if Cincinnati does pass a ceasefire resolution, what comes next? The over 65 ceasefire resolutions passed, in response not to the pleas, but the demands of the people, in cities around the US represent the level of the strength and class consciousness of the masses.
Revolutionary Black Panther Assata Shakur was correct when she said, “nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”
Thus, when our party speaks, whether it be in the streets or at City Hall, our orientation is to the masses—for only the masses, armed with revolutionary thought, are revolutionary. We reject any and all attempts to blunt the revolutionary edge of the movement toward the liberation of the masses from capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. Those who attempt to do this in order to legitimize the movement in the eyes of the ruling class and the state, in actuality, weaken it.
Our position is summed up by the words of a Marxist and martyr from Ireland, another land which experienced forced famine at the hands of imperialism, James Connolly:
As a Socialist I am prepared to do all one man can do to achieve for our motherland her rightful heritage—independence; but if you ask me to abate one jot or tittle of the claims of social justice, in order to conciliate the privileged classes, then I must decline. Such action would be neither honorable nor feasible. Let us never forget that he never reaches Heaven who marches thither in the company of the Devil. Let us openly proclaim our faith: the logic of events is with us.
The struggle for Palestine is the struggle for humanity. We urge the people to join the struggle for its liberation against the same forces which oppress them at home. Only through a victorious struggle against murderous bourgeois imperialism can we realize the liberation of all of its victims. Revolutionary consciousness and organization in 2024 is growing worldwide. Socialist parties everywhere must work to ensure that this is not looked back on years from now as a mere trend.
SWP Betrays Socialism
Now we come to the handful of so-called “socialists'' of the SWP who made common cause with the Zionist speakers at City Hall on Feb. 14, co-opting leftist phraseology as they argued against a ceasefire, ludicrously claiming that a ceasefire is not in the best interests of the proletarians in Gaza, nor the global proletariat. For them, this stands to reason because the “dictatorial” Hamas is a reactionary force with no intentions of establishing socialism in Palestine.
We did not expect to have to address such nonsensical arguments—especially not from those who claim to be socialists. National liberation movements, whether they are socialist in character or not, deserve the support of all those who call themselves Marxists. The SWP claims to be a Trotskyist organization, but they seem to have forgotten that Leon Trotsky himself argued that Marxists in the imperialist nations have a first duty to defend colonized peoples against imperialist aggression, even in the case of reactionary leadership among the colonized. They have forgotten the fundamental principle formulated by the German revolutionary martyr Karl Liebknecht, that for authentic socialists, “The main enemy is at home!” Offering support to national liberation movements only on the condition that it be socialist in character is a disgusting position only to be expected from idealist ultraleftists and social-chauvinists–upholders of Marxism in word, cheerleaders of imperialism in deed.
The argument for supporting the Israeli military assault in order to defeat Hamas, which they claim is reactionary force, betrays itself when one considers Israel’s history outside its own borders. This history consists of Israel being a belligerent and reactionary rogue state. For evidence, we can look at the late 20th century, during which Israel provided crucial material and ideological support to the racist apartheid government in South Africa from the 70s to the 80s. Likewise, during the 80s, Israel trained and armed the genocidal forces of Efraín Rios Montt en Guatemala, and, according to some sources, helped plan the rural pacification program of 1982, which led to the extrajudicial slaughter of approximately 10,000 Indigenous Guatemalans. Israel was also a massive arms supplier and crucial military ally of Chile during the régime of the butcher, President Augusto Pinochet. During Pinochet’s rule, approximately 130,000 civilians were arrested and tortured, more than 3,000 were killed, and many more forced to leave the country.
It cannot be seriously argued that the state of Israel is a progressive force. Israel's actions demonstrate a continued path of reaction and proletarian destruction. Compare this history with that of the United States and the similarities are apparent. SWP either doesn’t know this history or they conveniently gloss over it. In either case, they support reaction. It is of no surprise to us that SWP enjoys little support from the people of Cincinnati.
As if this were not bad enough, the traitors and renegades of the SWP, in their appraisal of the situation, have abandoned Marxism, as they’ve completely ignored the material conditions of those in Gaza. We remind the SWP that it is not Hamas that indiscriminately drops bombs on the Palestinian people. It is not Hamas that displaces Palestinians from their homes. It is not Hamas that keeps the Palestinian people under systems of apartheid. It is the state of Israel which oppresses the Palestinian proletariat. To argue that Hamas has complete control over Palestine is to completely ignore the current material conditions and absolve Israel of any responsibility in their violent expansionist campaigns and policies past and present, which have given rise to resistance groups like Hamas.
Of course, Palestinians have no interest in their own deaths. Arguing against a ceasefire, in effect, is arguing for the continuation of their genocide. The logic of the SWP brings them into agreement with the reactionary forces they, in word, stand opposed to.
Nothing but complete rejection of these so-called “socialists” and their ideas is appropriate. Thankfully, given their negligible influence in Cincinnati, this battle is already largely won.