Şenay Yeğin
Tuesday , 24 April 2007
Author: Hyman Lumer. New York: International Publishers, 1973. 152 pages. ISBN 0-7118-0383-X
In the 8th Century, after the exile of Jews from Jerusalem by the Romans, the word “Zion” has been uttered by the Jews to emphasize their longing for the Promised Land: Palestine. Today, the word Zion is being used as a modern term, Zionism which is the name given to the movement of the Jews who are in Diaspora to gather on the land of Palestine again. Zion has become an ideology as Zionism; but it did not serve to the civilization development in the Middle East. Instead Middle East came out to be a deadlock. Is it a deadlock because of pure Zionist intentions or imperialist missions? The American Marxist Hyman Lumer in his book “Zionism Its Role in World Politics” answered this question by defining Zionism as a nationalist movement serving to imperialism and US aims over the oil territories.
It is easy to understand the message that Lumer tries to give from the cover of the book on which there is a shape of world circled by “Zionism”. Lumer’s thesis in his book is that Zionism is not only gathering of Jews in the Promised Land but its support to imperialism which is a big actor in world politics. In the first part of his book, Lumer introduces Zionism by explaining its roots and nature, its contribution to the establishment of Israel, and its socialist side. In the second part, his emphasis is on the purpose of Zionism which is being in the service of imperialism. He supports his arguments by questioning how Zionism got support from imperialist powers, what kind of an expansionist policy it had and its imperialist policies over Africa. In the third part, Lumer elaborates on the Zionist organizations in the US and on the role of monopoly capital. In the next part, he emphasizes that Zionism was a nationalist movement and he explains that Zionism’s reaction was the formation of a fascist organization, the Jewish Defense League. In the fifth part, he points to the Soviet Jews in Israel and in the last part; he emphasizes the reaction of Jews in the US and in Israel to Zionism.
In the first part, Lumer defines political Zionism by the creation and perpetuation of a Jewish state and makes a distinction with its religious definition which is the belief in an eventual return to the Holy Land upon the coming of the Messiah. The two most important forerunners of Zionism were Leon Pinsker and Theodor Herzl who wrote books about it after the development of anti-semitism with the upsurge of imperialism and racism in the 19th Century. According to Lumer, as a political ideology Zionism was based on two points which were that the Jews throughout the world form a nation and that anti-semitism is eternal. He emphasized that Zionism is not only an ideology, but it is also an organized movement which is based on the principle of the establishment of a state which is purely Jewish to escape anti-semitism. However while escaping anti-semitism; Lumer emphasizes that Jews treated Israeli Arabs as second-class citizens.
In the first part, Lumer emphasizes that there were also socialist trends in a nationalist movement like Zionism in the beginning of 1900s. The supporters of socialist Zionists in the tsarist Russia had gathered under organizations like Workers of Zion which supported a socialist Jewish state in Palestine. Moreover Lumer emphasizes that today; there are socialist developments in Israel like kibbutz, which is the communal enterprise whose members in return provided only by the necessities of life. He emphasizes that 58.5 percent of Israel’s economy is private sector which belongs mostly to foreign capital.
In the second part of the book, Lumer is supporting his argument that, Zionism is serving to imperialism because of Israel’s will of all of Palestine, its expansionist policies and its relations with Africa. Israel willed not only to possess their homeland but all of Palestine. Herzl wanted Jews to be backed by imperialist countries such as the Ottoman Empire, Germany, Russia and France for possessing the land of Palestine. Other than these countries Britain and the USA supported Jews for their mission, too. By the Balfour Declaration in 1917, with the invasion of Palestine by Britain, Jews were assisted by Britain. Besides Britain a committee in the USA, American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, was founded for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth.
Between 1958 and 1966, Israel implemented expansionist policies; forming ties with 39 countries in Africa, 23 in Latin America, 11 in Asia and 8 in Mediterranean. Israel supported French imperialism against the independence movements of Algerians and it joined to Britain’s and France’s invasion of Egypt in 1956. In 1958, after the leadership of an anti-imperialist regime in Iraq, Israel supported Britain and US when their troops landed to protect Jordan and Lebanon from the regime. In 1967, Israel used its expansionist policies by invading Egypt. However its expansionist policies were not only for Arab countries but also for African countries. Israel was basically an associate of South Africa which had an apartheid regime. However, it gave military aid to national liberation fronts in Africa for presenting Israel as a socialist but not communist and more acceptable than imperialist powers.
In the third part, Lumer emphasizes that Zionism is in association with the US by explaining Zionist organizational movements there, US aid to Israel and its dependence on US capital. In the US, Zionism did not have many followers in the beginning of the 19th Century, because the ones who did not support it thought the return to the homeland could only occur by the upcoming of the Messiah. However after the Holocaust and the upsurge of Jewish nationalism, organizations were founded some of which were Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Zionist Organization of America and United Labor Organization of America. Moreover, the US Jews aided Israel’s political parties and the institutions that support their policies since the establishment of Israel, under the umbrella organization called The United Jewish Appeal. Furthermore, Lumer emphasizes that US imperialism shows itself in the Israeli economy, by saying that a vast part of investments are owned by Ford, Motorola and other US companies. Eighty percent of Israel’s foreign debt is also owned by US government which makes Israel dependent on the foreign capital of the US imperialism. Moreover, the main point of the book is given in this part which is that US is trying to use Israel as a weapon against Arab liberation movement and its threat to US oil investments by making it dependent on its capital. Especially after the 1967 war with Egypt Israel became highly dependent on US.
Besides, Lumer’s emphasize on Israel’s dependence on the US capital, in the fourth chapter, he raises the point that Zionism became a reactionary movement and that it supported racism by forming an ultra-racist organization which tried to combat Soviet Russia, blacks and Arabs. According to Lumer, if a country is capitalist it uses racial or nationalist oppression to prevail its exploitation. For the Jewish question, there are Marxist and Zionist views. According to the Marxist point of view Jewish question is based on the recognition of the class roots of anti-semitism and working class unity. On the other hand, the Zionists view anti-semitism as everlasting and a distinctive form of repression. Moreover, he gives the example of the Soviet Russia which resolved the Jewish question by eliminating the capitalist roots of racism. According to Lumer, the incline of Jewish nationalism after the 1967 war caused the establishment of Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968. The shift to right among Zionists is being criticized by Lumer. He says that racism fosters the exploitation of workers and anti-semitism only occurs in the societies of class exploitation. According to Lumer, it was a reactionary movement that was founded for protecting Jews from blacks in New York. JDL was found guilty because of the bomb attacks. Some of the targets of the attack were against Soviet News Agency, Soviet Embassy, and Palestinian Liberalization Organization. Moreover, Lumer emphasizes that JDL was used as a tool for CIA’s anti-Soviet operations.
In the fifth part, Lumer singles out the point that the difficulties that Jews came across in the Soviet Union are only lies. The Jews in the Soviet Russia came across with Zionist hostility especially after the 1967 war. The Soviets were accused by implementing discriminatory laws to the Jews like not allowing them leave the country or by forcing them to carry domestic passports to expose Jews to discrimination. In the Soviet Russia, Jews’ religious freedom was restricted, too. However, Lumer emphasizes that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights invoked the Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel. However after the immigration Jews wanted to return to Soviet Russia, because it was hard to live in a capitalist system. Moreover, he points out that there is a big lie which claims that the Jews in the Soviet Russia were treated intolerably by the Russians.
In the last part, Lumer is making emphasize on the point that there is a rising opposition to Zionism in the USA and Israeli policies in Israel. There is an incline of peace movements in Israel which are usually against Israeli imperialist policies. The opposition in the US is generally among the young Jews who have leftist political views. It is not only among Jews but also among non-jews, too.
As far as Lumer has Marxist point of views and that he was one of the editors in the Political Affairs Magazine which is a publication of the Communist Party in the USA, it must be considered that a Marxist point of view can not be neutral for criticizing a nationalist movement of the Jews. It must be noted that this book was published in 1973, while the Soviet Union was still alive. So as a Marxist author in a capitalist country, the longing for a communist regime and also criticizing Zionism as a servant of imperialism are both inevitable. However, when the policies of Israel are compared with its current policies, it is noteworthy that Israel is still making attempts to invade its neighbors and it is still a major ally of the US.
Showing posts with label imperialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imperialism. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Moral Imperative
March 26, 2007
By Charles Sullivan
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. --Andre Lorde
It should surprise no one that the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq four years ago was based upon lies and fabricated evidence. Other wars instigated by the U.S. were begun in the same way, but we never seem to learn the lessons that history could teach us. The purpose of the U.S. invasion was not to free the Iraqi people or to spread democracy (when has the government ever done that?); it was to privatize the natural wealth of the region and to transfer ownership from the Iraqi pubic domain to the coffers of U.S. corporations. We have a long and shameful history of imperial invasions and occupations, and no experience building democracies.
The United States Middle East policy is also intended to suppress the enemies of radical Zionism and to extend Zionist control of the region, as well as to prop up the sagging U.S. dollar against the strengthening euro. It is the continuation of Manifest Destiny; the foolish but stubborn believe that Americans are superior to everyone else; what historian Howard Zinn refers to as American exceptionalism.
Manifest Destiny and the spread of capitalism go hand in hand. The growth of the military industrial complex requires imperial conquests and continuous expansion—an impossibility on a finite planet. We have yet to learn that wherever reality clashes with economic myth, reality prevails.
The Pentagon, which is the iron fist of American capitalism, requires enemies in order to justify its vast expenditures to an unquestioning public, even if it has to invent them. In the past those enemies were the spread of communism and socialism, which were a threat only to Plutocratic rule, not to the American people themselves. Now the danger is as cryptic and ubiquitous as state propaganda—the exaggerated threat of Islamic terrorism.
I do not contend that there is no real threat of terrorism against U.S. citizens. I do, however, assert that those threats remain small and are a direct response to unjust U.S. foreign policy, including the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
It is important to understand that the interest of the people and the government are always in conflict. The will of the people has never mattered to the ruling clique, as evidenced by the ongoing occupation of Iraq, despite overwhelming public opposition. What matters to America’s rulers is the acquisition of private wealth through war and expansionism. The ruling elite have never hesitated to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers and workers for imperial ambitions, or to sanction the deliberate killing of innocent civilians in unknowable numbers.
It is equally important to understand that imperial wars are a product of capitalism. A core element of capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth and political power in which a small cadre of owners can literally purchase political power. The very wealthy are never satiated. They never have enough. They have ambition. They are driven. They want more. They want it all. Their dream is to rule the world and privatize its wealth. To aid them in their quest the language of patriotism and religion are evoked to stir the public emotions and to inspire hatred and contempt. The people will be told that we are under siege by the forces of evil, even as terror emanates from the nation’s capital like spokes radiating from the center of a wheel.
America’s imperial wars will continue until capitalism is abolished and replaced by a more just and equitable system—a for use, rather than for profit economy.
The architects of the invasion of Iraq would have us believe that U.S. Middle East policy is a complex matter that is best left to high minded experts. In fact, it is a fantastically simple matter that can easily be understood by anyone having a conscience, a sense of justice; a moral compass. What it boils down to is simple right and wrong. A five year old child can understand that but imperial presidents and their cohorts in congress and industry cannot.
A thing is wrong when its purpose is anything other than a desire for justice. We need not make things more complicated than that. A nation founded upon injustice will have a history of ethnic cleansing, genocide, chattel slavery, racism, inequality, class divisions, sexism, a suppressed work force, murder, and war—a history very much like our own. Indeed, our history.
Injustice breeds fierce resistance that can never lead to peace, as we are witnessing throughout the Middle East. The United States will fail in Iraq because the government’s policies are not driven by a desire for justice. Its purpose is not honorable or principled; therefore, it will ultimately fail. It is wrong to impose our will on other people. It is wrong to murder innocent civilians. It is wrong to steal their wealth. It is wrong to subjugate people and to exploit them as cheap labor.
Eventually Israel will be expelled from Palestine for the same reasons—its cause (ethnic cleansing) is not only unjust—it is immoral and criminal.
Will governments ever learn that it is not the physically strongest who prevail, but the just? Were these not the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Henry Thoreau, and Gandhi?
Justice and morality do not enter into the economic equation of capitalism. Neither does compassion, the rights of other people to exist unmolested in their own belief systems, or equality. There can be no peace without justice; no reckoning without a high regard for truth. Our past speaks volumes about the probable future.
We need not look very far into the past to realize what the future holds. A better future demands that we act justly in the present. Otherwise, the patterns of history will continue to repeat themselves in endless cycles of death and violence, disparity and suffering. We must stop putting our faith in politicians who serve the plutocracy by exploiting the people, and a system that from its inception was created to serve the wealthy and privileged.
Our policies are a continuous negative feedback loop that has always produced consistent results. We cannot continue doing the same thing over and over and expect to get different outcomes. The fatal flaw is not in the administration of policy, it is in the policy itself and the corrupt system that created them; a system that is at its core unequal and unjust; and therefore, immoral.
A sound moral imperative should inform all that we do, and it must have at its core a burning desire to see justice done and to help others fulfill their promise. A strong moral imperative should be the basis of cooperation between individuals and nations. Without ethical moorings there can be no trust, no justice, and no peace. It is as simple as cause and effect. We truly do reap what we sow.
Charles Sullivan is an architectural millwright, photographer, and free-lance writer living in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at: csullivan@phreego.com.
By Charles Sullivan
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. --Andre Lorde
It should surprise no one that the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq four years ago was based upon lies and fabricated evidence. Other wars instigated by the U.S. were begun in the same way, but we never seem to learn the lessons that history could teach us. The purpose of the U.S. invasion was not to free the Iraqi people or to spread democracy (when has the government ever done that?); it was to privatize the natural wealth of the region and to transfer ownership from the Iraqi pubic domain to the coffers of U.S. corporations. We have a long and shameful history of imperial invasions and occupations, and no experience building democracies.
The United States Middle East policy is also intended to suppress the enemies of radical Zionism and to extend Zionist control of the region, as well as to prop up the sagging U.S. dollar against the strengthening euro. It is the continuation of Manifest Destiny; the foolish but stubborn believe that Americans are superior to everyone else; what historian Howard Zinn refers to as American exceptionalism.
Manifest Destiny and the spread of capitalism go hand in hand. The growth of the military industrial complex requires imperial conquests and continuous expansion—an impossibility on a finite planet. We have yet to learn that wherever reality clashes with economic myth, reality prevails.
The Pentagon, which is the iron fist of American capitalism, requires enemies in order to justify its vast expenditures to an unquestioning public, even if it has to invent them. In the past those enemies were the spread of communism and socialism, which were a threat only to Plutocratic rule, not to the American people themselves. Now the danger is as cryptic and ubiquitous as state propaganda—the exaggerated threat of Islamic terrorism.
I do not contend that there is no real threat of terrorism against U.S. citizens. I do, however, assert that those threats remain small and are a direct response to unjust U.S. foreign policy, including the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
It is important to understand that the interest of the people and the government are always in conflict. The will of the people has never mattered to the ruling clique, as evidenced by the ongoing occupation of Iraq, despite overwhelming public opposition. What matters to America’s rulers is the acquisition of private wealth through war and expansionism. The ruling elite have never hesitated to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers and workers for imperial ambitions, or to sanction the deliberate killing of innocent civilians in unknowable numbers.
It is equally important to understand that imperial wars are a product of capitalism. A core element of capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth and political power in which a small cadre of owners can literally purchase political power. The very wealthy are never satiated. They never have enough. They have ambition. They are driven. They want more. They want it all. Their dream is to rule the world and privatize its wealth. To aid them in their quest the language of patriotism and religion are evoked to stir the public emotions and to inspire hatred and contempt. The people will be told that we are under siege by the forces of evil, even as terror emanates from the nation’s capital like spokes radiating from the center of a wheel.
America’s imperial wars will continue until capitalism is abolished and replaced by a more just and equitable system—a for use, rather than for profit economy.
The architects of the invasion of Iraq would have us believe that U.S. Middle East policy is a complex matter that is best left to high minded experts. In fact, it is a fantastically simple matter that can easily be understood by anyone having a conscience, a sense of justice; a moral compass. What it boils down to is simple right and wrong. A five year old child can understand that but imperial presidents and their cohorts in congress and industry cannot.
A thing is wrong when its purpose is anything other than a desire for justice. We need not make things more complicated than that. A nation founded upon injustice will have a history of ethnic cleansing, genocide, chattel slavery, racism, inequality, class divisions, sexism, a suppressed work force, murder, and war—a history very much like our own. Indeed, our history.
Injustice breeds fierce resistance that can never lead to peace, as we are witnessing throughout the Middle East. The United States will fail in Iraq because the government’s policies are not driven by a desire for justice. Its purpose is not honorable or principled; therefore, it will ultimately fail. It is wrong to impose our will on other people. It is wrong to murder innocent civilians. It is wrong to steal their wealth. It is wrong to subjugate people and to exploit them as cheap labor.
Eventually Israel will be expelled from Palestine for the same reasons—its cause (ethnic cleansing) is not only unjust—it is immoral and criminal.
Will governments ever learn that it is not the physically strongest who prevail, but the just? Were these not the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Henry Thoreau, and Gandhi?
Justice and morality do not enter into the economic equation of capitalism. Neither does compassion, the rights of other people to exist unmolested in their own belief systems, or equality. There can be no peace without justice; no reckoning without a high regard for truth. Our past speaks volumes about the probable future.
We need not look very far into the past to realize what the future holds. A better future demands that we act justly in the present. Otherwise, the patterns of history will continue to repeat themselves in endless cycles of death and violence, disparity and suffering. We must stop putting our faith in politicians who serve the plutocracy by exploiting the people, and a system that from its inception was created to serve the wealthy and privileged.
Our policies are a continuous negative feedback loop that has always produced consistent results. We cannot continue doing the same thing over and over and expect to get different outcomes. The fatal flaw is not in the administration of policy, it is in the policy itself and the corrupt system that created them; a system that is at its core unequal and unjust; and therefore, immoral.
A sound moral imperative should inform all that we do, and it must have at its core a burning desire to see justice done and to help others fulfill their promise. A strong moral imperative should be the basis of cooperation between individuals and nations. Without ethical moorings there can be no trust, no justice, and no peace. It is as simple as cause and effect. We truly do reap what we sow.
Charles Sullivan is an architectural millwright, photographer, and free-lance writer living in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at: csullivan@phreego.com.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Israel As a Strategic Liability
1945-1956
By Harry F. Clark
March 2007
Abstract
The present catastrophic partnership of the United States and Israel in the Middle East is the opposite of conditions that existed during Israel’s founding, sixty years ago. The US foreign policy establishment opposed sponsorship of a Jewish state during the military and diplomatic struggle over Palestine after World War II. The State Department expected the US to inherit a position of leadership in the region, based on decades of good will, antipathy toward the British and French empires and qualified sympathy for the nationalism of their subaltern peoples. The region was valued for its oil reserves and communications links, including the Suez Canal, and was to be secured behind the "northern tier" of Greece, Turkey and Iran, where the Cold War began in 1945-6.
Zionism was opposed because it antagonized the Arabs, and US support for a Jewish state after the war was due to the nascent Israel lobby, which overwhelmed the government’s diplomatic and military expertise. This complemented the Zionist struggle against British rule in Palestine, which ended in the conquest of most of Palestine and exile of 750,000 Arab Palestinians, and introduced a force more inimical to Arab interests than British imperialism. Once Israel was established, US diplomats and strategists accepted it and acknowledged its military prowess, but kept it at a distance, limiting arms sales and excluding it from military alliances. The US feared political instability and radicalism from the desperate plight of the Palestinian refugees, the precarious Arab-Israeli armistice, and the rising force of Arab nationalism.
PDF
By Harry F. Clark
March 2007
Abstract
The present catastrophic partnership of the United States and Israel in the Middle East is the opposite of conditions that existed during Israel’s founding, sixty years ago. The US foreign policy establishment opposed sponsorship of a Jewish state during the military and diplomatic struggle over Palestine after World War II. The State Department expected the US to inherit a position of leadership in the region, based on decades of good will, antipathy toward the British and French empires and qualified sympathy for the nationalism of their subaltern peoples. The region was valued for its oil reserves and communications links, including the Suez Canal, and was to be secured behind the "northern tier" of Greece, Turkey and Iran, where the Cold War began in 1945-6.
Zionism was opposed because it antagonized the Arabs, and US support for a Jewish state after the war was due to the nascent Israel lobby, which overwhelmed the government’s diplomatic and military expertise. This complemented the Zionist struggle against British rule in Palestine, which ended in the conquest of most of Palestine and exile of 750,000 Arab Palestinians, and introduced a force more inimical to Arab interests than British imperialism. Once Israel was established, US diplomats and strategists accepted it and acknowledged its military prowess, but kept it at a distance, limiting arms sales and excluding it from military alliances. The US feared political instability and radicalism from the desperate plight of the Palestinian refugees, the precarious Arab-Israeli armistice, and the rising force of Arab nationalism.
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