This article was first published on the IWL’s magazine Marxism Alive n. 14, under the heading line “What is the State of Israel and why should it be destroyed?”. Although it firstly appeared in 2007, we believe it provides the main concepts to understand the current situation in the Middle East and the nature of the state of Israel.
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The Zionist legend says that the creation of the State of Israel was another of the nations that achieved political independence after the II World War, through rebellion or wars of national liberation against imperialist colonisers like, for example: India, Indonesia, Algiers, Viet Nam and many other examples of this process.
But the emerging of Israel differs totally from the above examples for it was born as a colonial enclave set in the middle of Palestine to defend the interests of imperialism on strategic territories. The creation of Israel is based on a “transplant” of a population that is foreign to the region, the Jewish immigrants. Seeking support in the anti-Semitic persecution and taking advantage of the desperation of the persecuted Jews, the world Zionist organisation organised immigration, especially from Eastern Europe, to guarantee the fidelity of these new occupants to their imperialist sponsors. Their were financed by European Jewish millionaires such as Rothschild and stimulated by imperialist metropolis, such as England. On the other hand, against the lies of Zionism there is the fact that it was not “a land without people”; those territories had been inhabited for centuries by the Arab Palestine people.
The alighting of the new Jewish settlers led by Zionism and imperialism may be compared, therefore, to that of the western settlers in the century XIX and early XX in the British colonies, like Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) and Falklands; of the French ones in Algiers, or the Afrikaans of Dutch origin in South Africa, etc.
In other words: the Jewish settlers who came to live in Palestine are not a local nationality oppressed by imperialism but a foreign population that settled on the land of the natives and act as the oppressor in the service of imperialism in the area. As they are “transplants” of a colonising minority they acquire a racist and militarist character in order to survive. This was very clear during the white administration in Rhodesia, in the case of the French settlers in Algiers or in the Apartheid in South Africa.
The fact that the first Jews settlers in Palestine had been persecuted in Europe cannot conceal the reality that the Zionist project was, from the very beginning, the creation of a colonial enclave. Ever since its foundation in 1948, the State of Israel was present in that strategic region growling in the defence of the great powers’ interests, when a “watch dog” was required. (…)
A racist state
In the first place, ever since its foundation, Israel was constituted as a racist state, from the ideological and legislative point of view. Israel is officially “a Jewish state”, that is to say, the state is no of all the inhabitants or of all those born there. Only those who are considered to be because of faith or descendants of Jews can be Judaic and can be citizens. To make this feature clearer: 90% of the land is reserved exclusively for Jews, through Jewish National Fund the statute of which defines that these “lands of Israel” belong to this institution and cannot be bought or leased or even cultivated by someone who is not a Jew. Moreover, Palestinians are barred from buying or even leasing the land annexed by the state since 1948.
At the same time, Jews from all over the world may legally immigrate and obtain Israeli citizenship and thus accede to endless privileges that the non-Jewish natives are barred from. Since the foundation of Israel, there is a system of racial discrimination that dominates over all the aspects of the Palestinian fate. What could we say today of a country that applied the official policy to expropriate the land belonging to non-Jews or simply forbade somebody non-Jewish could settle there or marry a Jew? Obviously we would say that it was a case of flagrant discrimination, anti-Semitism and that it could be compared to Nazism or to the South African apartheid. And yet, this is legal in Israel because of a series of institutions and laws that affect only the non-Jewish inhabitants of that state.
The Law of Nationality clear distinctions in the way to obtain citizenship depending on whether it is for Jews or non-Jews. According to Law of Citizenship, no Israeli citizen can marry a resident of the Occupied Territories of Palestine. Should this happen, they will lose all right of citizenship in Israel and the family, unless separated, must emigrate.
By the Law of Return, any Jew in the world may become a Jewish citizen. But the relatives of the Palestine citizens of the State of Israel who live abroad (many expelled from their land in Palestine, or their offspring) are not entitled to the same privilege simply because they are not Jews.
The Law of Absentee gives room for the expropriation of the land that had not been farmed for certain time. But the land of a Jew has never been expropriated. Most of the expropriations are carried out on land belonging to Palestinian refugees in exile, Palestinians, citizen of Israel and all the Palestinian residing on the Western Bank of river Jordan and had land in the broadened area of Jerusalem.
These laws are but a part of the legislation used exclusively against the Arab population of Israel. Apart from the important economic element due to loss of great extension of Palestine land, there is a major thing, the social element: the division of many families forced to emigrate. Other laws that have just been exposed bar marriages between non-Jewish individuals who inhabiting different areas of the occupied territories and even reunification of families: husband and wife, parents and children, etc.
“In a similar way, in the year 2000, they “revived” rules that had been made with respect to Palestinians whose spouses were citizens of Arab countries, that is to say, non-occidental and were not allowed to return home. Between 1994 and 2000, during the Oslo years, instructions were given to hold back the process of “family reunification” and consequently tens of thousands of families in the occupied territories are still waiting. These families do not live in Haifa or Ashkelon (Israeli cities) but on the Western Bank and on the Gaza Strip.”[1]
The control posts “for Palestinians only” imposed by the occupation army, with intentionally long and irritating queuing stand in sharp contrast against the modern and free motorways “for Jews only”. (…)
An increasingly militarised and violent society: genocide of the conquered peoples
A state like Israel must exert permanent violence against the dominated population. If it is to maintain its colonial and racist character, it cannot tolerate the slightest internal resistance or challenges on its frontier. It won character forces it to be expansionist and to repress even the slightest questioning of that nature.
That is why, ever since its foundation, Israel has practised the policy of “ethnical cleansing” from the Palestinians driving them away from their ancestors’ land or repressing ruthlessly the Palestinians who lived within the frontiers as those from the occupied territories.
Over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners are rotting in Zionist jails and hundreds of them are under age. Torture is practised with authorisation by justice and “selective murder” of fighters on the territories is daily practise. Such a state cannot have a name different to “nazi” because when an entire nation is persecuted in order to eliminate their identity, to turn them into slaves or to expel them form their land, there is no other way that can express it more accurately. The terrible historic contradiction is that now it is the offspring of the persecuted in Europe who apply the very same methods against another people.
In order to defend the Zionist character of the state, Israeli population lives on a permanent “war path”. Once they are 18, every Israeli – man or woman – must do the compulsory military service. After that, they remain as “reservists” until the age of 50 with a month of training every year.
That means that the population is educated to be always in the service of the army. And Israelis accept that naturally for only the armed forces can guarantee the survival of a military enclave. That is why it is the armed forced who constitute the most important institution of the state. It is no coincidence that most of their political leaders have previously been military commanders.
For this population, the use of extreme violence against the Palestinians or neighbouring Arabs is a “something natural”. For example, the repression in Gaza and Eastern Bank is rarely reported in Israel. After all, Palestinians are not regarded as humans, at least not with full human rights. The dead and the tortured are merely a consequence of “Israel’s right to self-defence” against the Intifada or the suicide raids. Before these issues, they did not even fit into the news section of Israeli newspapers. It was nothing but police issues exclusively for territories. A nuisance that has to be dealt with by means of more repression or by isolation of the Wall of Disgrace.
Another expression of the racist society is the division and unevenness between the different groups of Judaic population. Historically the elite came from among the Ashkenazi, the Jew original from Europe. Beneath them we can find the oriental Jews or Sephardim who re treated better than the Israeli Arabs. Recently, the immigration of a million Russian Jews spawned a sector not much appreciated by the other social groups due to the fact that they are known as these who live off state grants.
Another sector that has the parasitic role is that of the farming settlers living on the territories occupied in 1967. They are the base for the right and religious extreme right who keep on demanding more benefits from the State in order to act as the spearhead for colonising the Palestinian land and the expulsion of Palestinians from it. As a rule, they come from the latest migrations and live in a very protected bunkers next door to the Arab population, in exchange for state grants and financing.
Lately there has also been a fluctuating population of temporary non-Jewish immigrants brought from distant places such as the Philippines and other parts of Asia in an attempt to substitute the Palestinian labour for the closure of frontiers prevent the latter from working in Israeli companies. That stands for about 250 000 people working in conditions of semi-slavery in such areas as building. They are the pariahs, entitled to no rights and living on the margin of the Israeli society.
In spite of the crisis and the differences, Israeli settlers defend their state
Beyond any social differences, there is a common link that draws all the Israeli Jewish citizens: the awareness that – one way or the other – they all live off the usurpation of the land of another people and the aid they receive from imperialism if they dutifully play the role of “watch dog” in the region. They know that that the Arab and Moslem people are their victim and fear that they may get together to drive their victimisers away. That is why the main element of cohesion of this racist, violent and militarist society is the fear of “the enemy they share”, and this is something that political leaders of all colours of Israel never fail to remind their people. “It is either them or us” is the basic demand that keeps up the union and the links inside this society. That is why the Zionist idea of “our right to exist” means the defence of the racist state and for Jews as the privileged looting on the natives and exploiting this character.
This is what explains that the immense majority of Israelis are for “unilateral separation” and “ethnical cleansing” of the Palestinians as well as why they are for the destruction of Hezbollah and that they had given massive support to the war against Lebanon even when its genocidal character was evident. The truth is that after each war, even after a defeat, like the latest war was, the ones that emerge strengthened are the politicians of the furthest right wing.
This character of the Jewish Israeli population also has its economic base. Essentially, Israel can be defined as imperialism’s great military base where the families of the soldiers live, too and where some supporting productive activities are carried out. But the centre of their activities is clearly with war and production of weapons.
Assessed by “normal” parameters, the Israeli state has a chronic budget deficit. The trade balance sheet is also in the red in nearly 10 000million dollars. But these “gasps” are filled with funds from abroad, in the first place by the 3 000 million dollar a year of grants officially sent from USA. Another estimated 2 000 million reach the country by under diverse names and finally there are the funds collected by Zionist organisation all over the world.
At the same time, the production of weapons and associated technology has been, for years now, the main economic activity of the country. It not only is self-sufficient as far as its own needs go but also accounts for about 40% of the exports of the country; about 12 000 million dollars a year are weapons and military technology. In spite of its reduced population, Israel is today the fifth world exporter of military products, though the official data are made available under the disguise of “products of high technology”. There has even been some gentle telling off from the USA for exporting Israeli military radars to such countries as China and India. In other words, most of the Israeli population lives directly or indirectly for the war and weapon production.
An army undergoing a process of corruption
Seen against this background, it is perfectly understandable that the defeat in the Lebanon should produce such a deep crisis for it revealed Israel as a “vulnerable country” to put it in the words of Haaretz newspaper. The historic military superiority does not carry a lifetime guarantee as the refugees from Haifa and the north of the country soon found out.
It is interesting to analyse the process of deterioration that took place in the Zionist army. Uri Avneri, an Israeli pacifist from the Gush Shalom organisation, forwards the following diagnosis:[2] “The occupation (of the Palestinian territories – Editor’s note) is causing corruption in our army (…) The last was would be … was that of Yom Kipur in 1973. After several serious flops, there came a crushing victory. And yet, when this happened, the occupation was barely six years old. At present, thirty-three years later, we can see the damage caused by the cancer called ‘occupation’ that has already spread to all the organs of the military body.” The attitude of general Dan Halutz, commander in chief of Israeli troops, worried about the fate of his exchange investments in the middle of the a meeting where the invasion on Lebanon was being decided, is just one symptom of the moral deterioration at the HQ level of the Israeli armed forces.
Avneri refers to the fact that the colossal unevenness among the Zionist armed forces and resisting Palestinians drove the Israeli officers and soldiers to get accustomed along the years to attack their targets without having to worry about the response. They attacked, bombed and murdered at will with practically no risks. But this time they had to challenge the real guerrilla without much morale any longer and not even the necessary training. “For thirty nine years they have been compelled to the work of a colonial police force: to chase away boys throwing stones and Molotov bombs, arrest women, who try to prevent them from carrying their sons away, capture people sleeping in their homes.”
For an enclave and colonial gendarme, which is what Israel is, to have a problem as serious as that in the armed forces is frightening and it generates insecurity in all the different layers of the society. As this tendency of the reality proves to be increasingly dangerous, many Israelites get tired of this atmosphere and this is expressed through a considerable number of people leaving the country.(…)
Can the grassroots of the Israeli society or their working class turn against Zionism?
The crisis in Israel and, especially in the army is very important because it weakens the Zionist state, opens gaps through which Arab resistance can deliver blows and prepare defeat. But we cannot analyse Israel as a “normal” country”, not even as an imperialist country. Its population consists of usurping settlers depending on this racist enclave for existence, to keep up their standard of living and for being defended against the claims of the exploited peoples.
Let us have a look at a chronicle by Lidon Soriano, a Spanish authoress who spent several weeks with the Palestinians and then in Israel, in the Zionist settlements of Eastern Bank. The feeling of arrogance and superiority of the Israelis and their conception of the Palestinians and Arabs as inferior, uncivilised and violent, who are feared in a totally irrational way. (…) It is habitual to see soldiers treating Arabs as if they were animals. (…)”[3] This vivid image of “cancer” and the treatment can be applied to the State of Israel as a whole.
Discussion on the solution for Palestine
The numbers of those who are shocked at the genocide committed by Israel repudiate their misdoings and search for a solution for this situation of permanent war in the region. In general, we might say that there are three positions.
The most widespread is the one that says, “two peoples, two states”: one Jewish and one Palestinian; it points in the same direction as the UN 1947 resolution that divided the Palestinian territory and created Israel. Since the Oslo agreements there has been some very strong pressure to get Palestinians to accept that solution. The betrayal of the PLO under the leadership of Arafat, permitted the creation this “creature” called PA (Palestine Authority) that legitimised Israel and posed the impossible task of building a viable “Palestine State” on the base of isolated Bantustans totally dominated economically and militarily by the racist oppressor. In those days, this was accurately described by the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said as something resembling “the collaborating Vichy administration under Nazi domination in France” during the II World War. This alternative places the racist state, the cancer, next to the excluded populations, with a clear domination of the former.
But after 15 years of applying the Oslo Agreements and seeing the absolute failure of this policy as a real solution, some of the left-wing supporters of this treaty envisaged that it was increasingly unviable because Israel was grabbing more and more land, driving more and more Palestinians away and repressing them in the territories. The Wall of Shame, the heft of more than half the land on the East Bank and the water sources made even this “Palestine mini-state” allowed by the Oslo Agreements totally unviable. Zionist enclave refuses to withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967 or to grant any real autonomy to the Palestinians.
The second proposal is the construction of a “binational state” of a federative type, as is the case of Belgium. This position is practically forgotten today but it used to be posed in its day by trends of the Zionist left, such as Hashomer Hatzair. Apart from having the same problems as the “two states solution” there is the additional stumbling block: Zionism will never admit citizen rights to Palestinians for they fear the “demographic menace” of incorporating over three million “non-Jews”.
The only real solution: destroy the state of Israel
We are back at the same great issue placed on the agenda: there will be neither peace in the Middle East nor any real solution for Palestine unless the State of Israel is definitely defeated and destroyed. That is to say: unless the imperialist cancer is extirpated definitely. Any other solution means the survival of the cancer and the continuity of is lethal and destructive action.
In agreement with what we analysed in another article, this historic task, equivalent to what was the destruction of the Nazi German state or the South African apartheid is on the agenda today after, is posed on the agenda as something possible now, after the defeat of the Zionist troops in Lebanon and in as far as the political and military struggle is developed and united not only for the Palestinian people but for the Arab and Moslem masses as a whole as well.
We wish to develop another aspect of the discussion within the worldwide left: what actions are necessary to achieve the destruction of Israel? It is our claim that, in this struggle, every blow delivered against the Zionist State and army and every action that causes the sensation of foreboding and insecurity in the population of the enclave, is positive. The struggle against colonial usurpation is always very tough. For example, the independence of Algiers took years of rebellion, guerrilla actions and a worldwide support campaign to defeat not only the French army but also fascist groups such as OAS, and force the French imperialist settlers to abandon their farms in that country.
The issue get deeper in the case of Israel. Due to its nature of “gendarme state”, with GQ in Tel Aviv, all the social structures are part of military machinery: a kibbutz is an armed fortress of the settlers and so is an Israeli city. That is why missile raids on kibbutzim and cities are absolutely legitimate and necessary in a war of national liberation. These raids and the ensuing disheartening of the population of the enclave help towards the aim of destroying the genocidal state. Unless we do support and defend such actions, we shall fall into the false “mid-way” of such organisations as Amnesty International, who condemns both sides for “war crimes”, equalling the actions of the Zionist state and those of the Lebanese resistance, in a similar way to what the resolutions of the UN – that tool of imperialism – do.
We are for the destruction of the State of Israel for it will allow the recovery of the historic territory of Palestine and the construction of a Secular, Democratic and Non-Racist Palestine, fundamental demand of the PLO in the 70s. In this Palestine, without wall or concentration camps, millions of workers, now driven away from their land, will be able to return and recover full rights those who are now oppressed. Also all those Jews who are willing to live in peace in equality will be able to live there. That is why we call on all the workers and on the Jewish people to join this struggle against the gendarme, racist state of Israel. We must be aware, however, that due to the character of the Israeli population that we have analysed, only a tiny minority is likely to accept this proposal while the vast majority will most certainly defend “their” state and privileges and, consequently, we shall have to fight against them to the last.
The blackmail of anti-Semitism
Zionism has always used the memory of the nazi holocaust and of anti-Semitism that had spawned it to defend their policy. Their argument was that only the creation and the existence of Israel could guarantee the haven for the persecuted Jews and, at the same time, security for all the Jews on earth. Stemming out of this idea, they identified the concepts of “Judaism” and “Zionism” hence anybody who criticises Israel and Zionism is automatically dubbed “anti-Semitic”.
This false and hypocritical argument is meant to conceal the cruel irony of fate that today’s Jews from Israel represent, many of them being descendants of those persecuted by German nazism, they not only apply the same inhuman methodology but also they have become, as the Israeli pacifist Uri Avnery pointed out, “the biggest factory of the virus of anti-Semitism.”
On the other hand, a study of the history of Zionism will show us that, in the days of nazism, Zionist trend were accomplices of the holocaust and did nothing to save the Jews from Western Europe in the service of their major target: create the “Jewish state” by hook or by crook.
Simultaneously it is necessary to highlight that anti-Semitism, even if still surviving, is no longer one of the major manifestations of racism and discrimination in the world. Most of the Jews are integrated into their societies and some of them are even part of the ruling classes. In the imperialist countries, the strongest actions of discrimination and racism are aimed at Negroes and immigrants: Arabs, Moslem, Latin Americans and Africans. For example: at present, the main target of German neonazis is not Jews but Turkish immigrants.
Going beyond this analysis, we repudiate any anti-Semitic manifestation and any attack against Jew because they are Jews. If something of this kind happened, for example, in Argentina or in Russia, we have no doubt that it will have to be responded with a joint mobilisation to reject it.
But this principled position cannot lead us to forget that, according to Zionists; “Anti-Semitic” is anybody who opposes the racist and genocidal character of the State of Israel, the real Nazism of today.
[1]Amira Hass, Naaretz, 5/9/06
[2]¡Buenas días, Elijahu!, Rebelión 2/9/06
[3]Lidon Soriano, Rebelión 14/9/06. In the same article we can find: “On top of it, when you talk to the settlers, you realise the rotten bullshit they have in their heads:
– This is our land; it belongs to us.
– Palestinians are uncivilised and violent and it is impossible to talk to them because they do not want peace
– Arabs want to destroy us and we have the right and the duty to defend ourselves
– All that Israeli army is doing is to defend the population from the Palestinian terrorists
Another argument that used to crop up at the end of the conversation and that evidences their feeling of being victims and their non-existing political self-criticism nil capacity of reflection was ‘everybody hates us. I do not know why, but everybody hates us’”.
