GROUPS by the PFLP led to the first split in its ranks: thelf undies the patronage of the Syrian Bated. the Jibril-Shruru group seceded and In August 1968, the second conference of the PFLP was dominated by the left wing proposed a radical platform openly adopting Marxism-Leninism; the right wing pretended to accept the resolutions and political line of the conference only to launch an all-out offensive against the left. This led to the second split of the PFLP, after which the left formed its independent commando organisation under the name of the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The roots of the conflict between the petty-bourgeois right of the PFLP and its aspiring Marxist-Leninist left lay in the crisis of the Arab Nationalist Movement all over the Arab Middle East; the conflict reflects the rapid process of disintegration of petty-bourgeois nationalism represented by the Baath and Nasserism. From the ruins of this discredited Zionism is the theory and practice of the Zionists political movement which seeks to solve the Jewish Problem by concentrating world Jewry in a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. The colonization of Palestine by the Zionist movement since the beginning of this century as well as the establishment, and expansion, o the State of Israel are conceived by the Zionists, as means towards that end; they are but stages in a process which is not yet completed.
At the turn of the century Palestine was an underdeveloped country populated by some 600,000 Arabs, mostly peasants. The local Jewish community numbered some 50,000 persons, well integrated into the local society, and indifferent, if not hostile, to Zionist claims The process of creating settlers' community in Palestine generated, from the beginning, a whole complex of conflicts with the indigenous population. These conflicts are simply the specific, Palestinian, form of the general conflict between colonizers and colonized throughout the colonial world. However, the attitude of liberal, progressive and left-wing opinion in the West to this particular conflict differed from its attitude to similar conflicts elsewhere. One important reason for this is, no doubt, its reluctance to express views which could be condemned as anti-Semitic.
The Jews in the West have suffered racial persecution for generations; extermination of Jews during the Second World War demonstrated the MOTTO which anti-Semitism can lead. As Zionism is a Jewish movement which claims to represent national interests of the Jews' it is hardly surprising that so many on the left hesitate to criticize it. Zionist and pro-Israeli propaganda heavily bank on this factor; they label anti-Semitic anyone who dares criticize Israeli policies. In most cases this technique has been effective.
Let us take a closer look.
doubtless anti-Semitism; it was created by it and claims to provide a solution to the problem posed by it. This, however, does not exhaust the relation between Zionism and anti—Semitism.
The founder of Zionism ideology, Y.L Pinsker, WrOtE his Auto-emancipation, published in 1882.
Now that we have grasped that Jew-baiting is a kind of hereditary demonopathy, unique to the human lace and that anti-Semitism inherent in the hereditary abberations of the Human spirit we must draw a conclusion which is important for us, namely - we must give up the attempt to overcome these trends of hatred just must give up the attempt to overcome any other psychological, hereditary, trend.
The founder of the Zionist political movement and organization, T.H. Herzl, stated, similarly, in his diaries, in 1893 In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically, and pardon. Above all, 1 recognized the emptiness and futility trying "combat' anti-Semitism.
This 'free' attitude to anti-Semitism, this readiness to 'understand and pardon' it, persists in Zionist attitudes to this day. It is an essential part of the ideology. In fact, Zionism shares with anti-Semitism a common premise: that Jews cannot live a normal life as a minority amongst non-Jews because the persecution of minorities is inherent in "Human nature'. When an anti-Semite, say in Poland, calls to a Polish Jew: Leave us and go to Jerusalem, the echo: Leave them and come to Jerusalem.
It is therefore not surprising that Lucier Wolf, a leader of British Jewry during the first World War, said of Zionism: Tve spent all my life fighting against these views when they were presented to me in the guise of anti-Semitism"
Zionism does not combat anti-Semitism, but drops this assumption, Zionism loses its justification as a solution to the Jewist the Powelite demand: "send them back to where they came from, by echoing that same slogan instead of fighting it An interpretive illusion which seems to support the Zionist views is the fact that the Jews in Palestine were saved from only in Palestine but in every other place tha (a fact which has nothing to do with Zionism that the Jews in Palestine did not share the fat of those in Eastern Europe. The lesson to b drawn is quite different from the one suggestec by Zionist propaganda. Only by combating, anc minorities be spared persecution. Anti-Semitisn defeating, reactionary, racist forces car is not an isolated, unhistorical, phenomenon but an integral part of a world-wide reactionar setup; the proper response to anti-Semitism i in the movement which fight to take part against the reactionary forces everwher Zionist movement and the Zionist policies o the Israeli government are part and parcel that same, world-wide, reactionary set up.
This article was written by members of th Istaeli Socialist Organization, Matzpen. to
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accepts it as a permanent evil, it starts from the assumption that it is futile to fight it. If one
problem'. Imagine a movement among coloured immigrants in Britain which would respond to
extermination during the second World War. "If only more Jews could come there they would all have been saved'. As a matter of fact not
was out of reach of the Nazis were the Jews saved from extermination. It is only because the German Army was defeated in El-Alamein
(including the bureaucratic regimes in Easter Europe). And one must bear in mind that th