For various reasons, some covered elsewhere in this blog, I no longer consider myself a “Marxist.” I do, however, still subscribe to many of its tenets and believe that Marxism for the most part provides the fullest and most accurate explanation of human society and relationships. Perhaps nowhere is this more urgent at the moment than in explaining the current conflict in Israel and Gaza.

Several friends have posted important contributions to the discussion. Two weeks ago in his blog, the Union of Workers, David Rowlands published “Support the right of Israel to exist as a haven for Jews. For the defeat of Hamas!” You can read it here along with a comment I posted there in response.

Yesterday another Marxist friend, Marc Lichtman, posted a short essay on his Facebook page that quickly and succinctly distills some key vital points about this conflict, the history of Jewish oppression, the origins and nature of Israel, and the worldwide fight against antisemitism. Being on Facebook his comments won’t get wide distribution so with his consent I am republishing them here. I’ve made slight punctuation and missing word edits, and added the title.

Israel, its Founding and Nature, & the Fight Against Antisemitism

By Marc Lichtman
Originally Published on Facebook, December 23, 2023

It’s amazing how many people who still think they’re Marxists have concluded that U.S. imperialism is not the main threat to peace, but it’s tiny Israel, which they insist is “imperialist,” practices “apartheid,” is conducting “genocide” against the Palestinian people, and just happens to be Jewish, but that has nothing to do with why people are demonstrating against it. And the rise in Jew-hatred while this goes on is either a media myth or just a coincidence!

Yes, Zionism was a colonial-settler movement, but without the fact that the workers movement, dominated by Stalinists and Social Democrats, missed their opportunity to stop Hitler, Israel would never have been formed. If the United Strates and other “democratic” imperialist countries had been willing to let in the huge number of Jewish refugees, Israel would not have been formed. Between 1880 and 1924, only 45,000 Jews from Eastern Europe emigrated to Palestine, the same number who went to South Africa during that period. (The Zionist myth, based on one prayer, said at the Sedar, is that Jews always wanted to go to the Promised Land, but 1,750,000 Jews viewed the US during that period as the promised land. Millions of Jews fought in the Russian Revolution and the other European revolutions rather than flee).

And colonial-settler states don’t stay that way, otherwise the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and God knows how many other countries would be characterized that way. One clown who argued with me said they all ARE, but the difference is television! He was born too late and the Woke, like President Obama, “aren’t very interested in anything that happened before they were born” (rough approximation of what he said to Raúl Castro).

But I remember 40 years ago in the U.S. when we had TV, and almost no one had sympathy for the Palestinians during that long period. A few revolutionaries and some Arab-Americans was it.

After the end of Apartheid South Africa, some people, first in Britain, who didn’t understand the role of the Cuban troops or the leadership ability of Mandela and other ANC leaders, and the fighting spirit of the Black working class, claimed that it was all done by the international boycott, and since they claimed that Israel was “an Apartheid state,” they thought they could do what actually hadn’t been done by a boycott movement, but had merely helped somewhat. These people established ties to Hamas, and convinced various “leftists” in the U.S. as well to join BDS. The fact that the popularity of this coincided with an economic downturn when Jews are always scapegoated, either was missed by them, or, more likely, they didn’t give a damn.

Israel is no paradise, but capitalism, just like with the rest of the world, is the main problem. Israel is not that unique. It has capitalists and workers, both Jewish and Arab, frequently in the same unions. Those who say there is no class struggle in Israel, or any other country have given up on Marxism — some of them a long, long time ago.

Further Reading

During the opening years of the 21st century, anti-Semitic venom and incidents of violent assault on Jews have begun spreading. They are not a historical aberration. They are fueled by today’s capitalist crises and fracturing of the post–World War II imperialist “order,” described in recent decades as “globalization.”

At every turning point in history—from antiquity through feudalism, to capitalism’s rise and the imperialist death throes of the past century—Jews have been targets of persecution. Including the genocide cold-bloodedly touted by Hitler as the “Final Solution.”

Why is Jew-hatred still raising its ugly head? What are its class roots? Why is there “no solution to the Jewish question under capitalism, just as there is no solution to other problems before humanity,” without revolutionary struggles that transform us as we fight to transform our world?

Abram Leon was killed in October 1944, at age 26, in the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz. He left us this book to help answer those questions. — Description reprinted from Pathfinder Press website

Title image by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash.

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