AWL Can't Defend Their Zionism

The AWL's Jim Denham, in a recent blog post, took issue with the position of the Morning Star over the current war waged by the Zionist state against the Palestinians. I have no truck with the Stalinists of the CPB, and Morning Star, and no reason to defend their position. However, the AWL, have previously proclaimed themselves to be Zionists, and it is their pro-Zionist stance that I take issue with. 

The AWL proclaim themselves to be in favour of Israel's right to self-defence. As I have set out before, talking about “Israel's Right To Self-Defence”, is itself intentionally duplicitous. Israel is a country in which Jews, Palestinians, and others live, and yet, the Zionist state, far from defending its Palestinian citizens is violently attacking them, not to mention those it is responsible for under international law, in the occupied territories. The Zionist state is not defending “Israelis”, whether Palestinians or non-Zionist Jews, but only Zionists, and in particular the ruling Zionist caste.

But, even setting that aside, the Zionist state in Israel is a capitalist state, in fact, not just a capitalist state, but one of the most heavily and nuclear armed states in the world, not to mention inextricably linked to US imperialism, which finances and arms it. The position of Marxists, going back, at least, to WWI, is that we do not recognise any right of a capitalist state to defend itself, as against the right of workers to defend themselves, in opposition to such states. Marxists oppose bourgeois defencism, and instead base their position on revolutionary defeatism. So, on Wednesday, I wrote a comment on Denham's post to that effect, which immediately appeared. A short time later, it was removed. So, I wrote it, and posted it again. But, I was not surprised to find that it had again been removed. I posted it, again, this morning, and, again, it was removed without comment. The contents of my comment, are set out, below.

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"Marcel Cartier, published in the October 30 edition) argued that Israel has no right to defend itself – not that what it’s doing in Gaza is barbaric and completely disproportionate (which it is), but that Israel, as the “oppressor” has no right to defend itself at all."

The Zionist state in Israel is a capitalist state. The fundamental Marxist position set out by Lenin, Trotsky and even the Mensheviks in 1914 is that capitalist state have no right of self-defence. We are for the destruction of capitalist states, not their defence. Marxists support the position of revolutionary defeatism in relation to the capitalist state, and to the bourgeois ruling class. The position you propose is that of Liberals and social patriots.

Your overnight and peculiar conversion to the reactionary nationalist ideology of Zionism, means that you have to defend the Zionist state, thereby, abandoning the fundamental Marxist position. It means that you have to treat the Zionist state as different to any other capitalist state, which is just one example of how the contradiction inherent in Zionism is itself anti-Semitic, because it requires treating the Zionist state as different to any other state.

Given that Lenin and Trotsky opposed defence of the backward, semi-feudal state in Russia in 1914, on the basis of revolutionary defeatism, on what possible grounds could any real Marxist support defence of the heavily and nuclear armed Zionist, imperialist state, backed by US imperialism? None whatsoever. Yet, having done so, its no wonder you then have to back other corrupt and reactionary, imperialist, capitalist states like that of Ukraine.

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Clearly, the AWL are unable to defend their Zionist politics, and so, as they have done for a very long time, now, simply retreat into their bunker, and resort to censorship of any views contrary to their own. Netanyahu, and his Bonapartist regime would be proud of them. But, their action, now, gives me the opportunity to examine, Denham's argument, in response to the Morning Star, in more detail.

Denham admits that “what it’s doing in Gaza is barbaric and completely disproportionate”. No shit Sherlock! Most observers, including the UN, would go much further than that, and label it what it is – genocide, an attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and seize that land for itself. Netanyahu, and his government, are at least honest enough to admit that is what they are doing, and to admit that they have no interest in a Two State Solution, but are seeking a one state solution, of a Zionist state extending from the river to the sea, to replicate the mythical Kingdom of David.

As Zionists, in Britain, however, the AWL cannot be that honest, about the real intentions of Zionism, especially as they attack Hamas for seeking a one state solution, based on the same territory. The AWL, instead, have to cling to the ridiculous ideas of a Two State Solution, a solution that has been promoted for the last fifty years, but which has never been possible, and, today, is even more impossible, given the continual theft of Palestinian lands by Zionist settlers, backed by the Zionist state.

The AWL cannot bring itself to rise even to the level of the Liberals of the UN, to describe the actions of the Zionist state as genocide, but even taking their weasel words of description of the barbarous nature of its actions, in Gaza, we are left with the obvious question of what then, immediately, is their response to it? In Kosovo, they perverted the words of Trotsky in relation to the Balkan Wars, when he wrote, opposing liberal intervention

"An individual, a group, a party, or a class that 'objectively' picks its nose while it watches men drunk with blood massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive".

They logic and text chopped that, out of context, to justify their support for the intervention of NATO. So, where is the same concern for such intervention, now, to prevent a genocide being committed by the Zionist state, in Gaza? In Libya, they used the same logic to argue against opposing NATO intervening, there. So, where is that same concern to stop those Zionists “drunk with blood”? The same is true, in relation to Ukraine, where they have actively demanded that NATO intervene to support the corrupt Ukrainian state, and provide it with the latest weapons. So, where is the application of the same principles to support the Palestinians, and prevent the genocide being committed against them by the Zionist state, or even to prevent what they describe as being merely “barbaric and completely disproportionate”?

No such demand to stop those genocidal attacks, and support the Palestinians to defend themselves is made. The Zionists of the AWL, defend the bourgeois right to self-defence of the Zionist, imperialist state, but not any such right of the Palestinians. Instead, their only response to the genocide unfolding is to suggest the Two State Solution, a solution that has never had a chance of being implemented, that is further away, today, than 50 years ago, and which Netanyahu has rejected, anyway. Its like someone seeing someone about to be hit by a bus, suggesting as a solution, a course next week on road safety!

Denham attacks the MS and CPB for talking about Zionist settlers, on land that was seized in 1948.

“Pull on that thread too hard and you end up with a kind of “blood-and-soil” nationalism of the left. And, of course, it completely undermines the basis of a “two state” solution that the paper and the CPB in theory at least, support.”

Quite true, but Zionism is itself, even more, an ideology based upon ““blood-and-soil” nationalism”, and the AWL defend it! The position of Zionism, and at least Netanyahu speaks openly about it, is precisely that kind of “blood and soil nationalism”, fused with mythology and religion. It equally amounts to “clerical-fascism”, as does the ideas of Hamas. Yet, the AWL defends Zionism, and defends the right of the Zionist state, and Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu, to “defend itself”, meaning to wipe out the Palestinians.

At a time when the world is watching the Zionist state commit genocide in Gaza, and increase its murderous attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and inside Israel, when even Liberals are disgusted at the carnage being inflicted, Jim Denham, uses his blog, instead to defend the Zionist butchers, and to attack the Morning Star, and Hamas. They have no shame, and should have no place inside the labour movement.