The attacks by fascist groups on left-wing protesters in Israel are one of the most important indications of the implosion of Israeli society. Violence by settlers and other right-wing activists against Palestinians is a constant daily occurrence, but until recently, attacks on leftists were mostly limited to the West Bank. Ever since last Saturday, though, attacks in Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem have been on the rise. On the 12th, several dozen right-wingers attacked several hundred people protesting against the attack on Gaza, while the police stood aside. Since then, several similar attacks took place. This violence already claimed the life of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair, with several others injured and even hospitalized.
Of course, when it comes to murdering Palestinians indiscriminately, these fascist amateurs have nothing on the Israeli army, as has been clearly demonstrated since the latest attack on Gaza began. The death toll for the latest attack is already over 500 at the time when this post is being written. As such, it seems weird to focus a post on the comparatively minor violence employed against left-wing demonstrators. But others have already written extensively on the unfolding massacre in Gaza and, having no eyes or ears there, I don't feel like I have anything to add; but I have yet to see anyone discuss the significance of the rise of Zionist fascism.
Comparing the demo organized by Hadash in Haifa last Friday to the demo organized by Balad and Abnaa al-Balad earlier on the same day the day before, one important difference is evident: while both demonstrations were attacked, the former was attacked by a fascist mob, while the latter was attacked by the police. The fascists only feel confident attacking demonstrations because they know there will be no repercussions. When the first attack took place, the fascists were only a few dozens against a demonstration of hundreds; even according to the fascists, they were no more than 50 against a crowd of 800. That is, despite outnumbering the fascists 16 to 1, the left-wing demonstrators could not handle the attack.
It wasn't a question of organization. The fascist demonstration was organized quite spontaneously, representing rather marginal organizations of Freon-huffing settler youth and other assorted racist scum. No, what allowed the fascists to win, what emboldens them further, is the lack of response from the left. The leaders of the movements which organized the demo are, for the most part, middle-class Ashkenazis, who rely on the power of the state to protect them. Their day-to-day lives teach them to trust the policeman and the soldier to defend them. For many of them, the fascists are misguided brethren with whom there should be some sort of dialogue. What these leftists fail to realize is that the fascist only understands one language, and he is only brave when facing those who are not proficient in it.
The Zionist state's function in our region is to police the Arab masses in the interests of Western imperialism, especially US imperialism. It is useless to its sponsors when it is not engaged in attacks on Palestinians or neighboring countries, and its rulers are painfully aware of that fact. This explains why Israel always finds a way to break ceasefires and peace agreements - for example, in 2012, Israel signed an agreement with Hamas which included, among other things, an Israeli commitment to lift the siege on Gaza. For three months, not a single rocket was fired from Gaza, and yet the siege stayed in place, while Israel continued with its oppressive policies.
However, Israel's ability to be effective in its role depends on its ability to keep its own population in line. This is done by giving privileges to its Jewish citizens, at the expense, of course, of the Palestinian people. This contract between the state and the masses, typical of colonialist-settler states, also meant that Israel's working class is exceedingly passive, and can always be pressured into ceasing industrial action by claiming that such action would harm the state's ability to oppress the Palestinians. This made it very easy for the Zionist ruling class to attack the working class and poor, and indeed, the attacks in Israel started earlier than anywhere else (which is the main reason why the 2007-8 financial crisis was less serious in Israel than in other imperialist countries - there was simply less to cut at that point).
With the growing crisis of the world capitalist system, imperialist countries are increasingly unable to afford the democratic rights that they have accorded to the masses in the past. This is even more true in Israel, a country which relies on its role as an oppressor and which faces the justified hatred of its neighbors and many of those living under its control. The fascist attacks on the left are but another example of the unraveling of the alliance between the state and the masses, a warning to Israeli Jews that both their economic and "democratic" privileges will be severely reduced in the near future.
When I told people in 2012 that Israel only has a decade or two left, I faced a lot of skepticism. Israel seems to be strong; while its army is poorly trained and only really fit for fighting against massively disadvantaged opponents - as well as, of course, unarmed civilians - it remains very well-funded, thanks to US imperialism, and thus there is no prospect of Israel losing a war to any of its neighbors anytime soon. I can never seem to find the quote saying that whatever a petit-bourgeoisie's religion, their god is power, but it holds true here: Israel's military strength blinds many on the middle-class left to its inherent internal contradictions and to its increasingly tenuous alliances with other imperialist countries.
I based my estimation on the hitherto development of the Arab uprisings, which were and still are the only hope for defeating Zionist oppression and the imperialist domination of the region. The Egyptian uprising was especially significant. By 2012, it was clear that this wave of revolutions would not be victorious: the Marxist cliche of the crisis of humanity being the crisis of proletarian leadership had justified its status as a cliche once more, and indeed, neither the Muslim Brotherhood, the Nasserists under Sabahi nor the centrist Revolutionary Socialists could carry out a consistent struggle against the oppressive pro-Western and pro-Zionist Egyptian state; they engaged in various alliances, sometimes with each other, sometimes with the army, never really breaking with the collaborationist ruling class, never attempting a revolutionary policy. Similar developments took place in other countries.
Many took this as a sign that the Arab uprisings were defeated, and that Israel and the regimes holding back the struggle against it will stay in power for many more decades. But the masses, while beaten, have not been defeated; their organizations have not yet been crushed, and they still raise their heads from time to time, a demonstration against the execution of activists here, a rebel attack there, everywhere showing signs of life amidst an atmosphere of despair. These masses, while generally not yet open to a Marxist program, have learned certain lessons from their experiences. It will not be long before a new wave of uprisings sweeps the region.
Since this is my first post, I suppose some sort of introduction is in order. My name is Yehuda Stern, and I spent around a decade as an activist in and around various Marxist organizations, mostly Trotskyist ones. About a year and a half ago, seeing that I had very little to show for my time in organized politics, I decided to retire from activity and let others carry on.
In my time as an activist, I've had a chance to examine pretty much every international Marxist organization, and I rarely saw anything that I liked. There were two international organizations that I was associated with, and while, in times of peace, they knew how to speak like anti-imperialist revolutionaries, both failed the test of resisting imperialism in practice.
When Hamas won the 2006 elections, Israel and the US plotted with Fatah - the secular, bourgeois-nationalist darlings of the European left - to overthrow this new government. I wrote an article explaining the need for revolutionaries to support Hamas against the imperialist-backed Fatah offensive without giving Hamas any political support, and for that, me and another comrade were expelled from the organization we belonged to at the time, the International Marxist Tendency. Years later, my group broke with the League for the Revolutionary Party - with which we were never in a common tendency - over the organization's failure to issue a timely call to action against French imperialism's attack on Mali.
My former collaborators went on to form the local section of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency. I had faith that, despite feeling uneasy about certain positions the organization took, my comrades would carry on the spirit of true anti-imperialism and build a genuine revolutionary organization in this land. I had come to identify my activities of the last decade as a manifestation of what Trotsky called Souvarinism:
"...a disease combining the paralysis of political will with hypertrophy of rationalizing. Cabinet wit without roots, without an axis, without clear aims, criticism for criticism’s sake, clutching at trifles, straining at gnats while swallowing camels – such are the traits of this type, concerned above all with the preservation of its narrow circle or personal “independence.” A circle of this kind, too irresolute to join the social democrats, but likewise incapable of the politics of Bolshevism, incapable of active politics in general, is primarily inclined to jot notations on the margins of actions and books of others. This spirit, I repeat, is most graphically expressed by Souvarine who has finally found an adequate medium for his tendency in the shape of a bibliographical journal, in which Souvarine subjects to criticism everything and everybody in the universe as if in the name of his own “doctrine.” But the whole secret lies in the fact that Souvarine has no doctrine and, by virtue of his mental makeup, cannot have. In consequence, Souvarine’s spiritual creative work, which lacks neither wit nor resourcefulness, is by its very nature parasitic. In him are combined the calcined residues of communism with the as yet unfolded buds of Menshevism. This precisely constitutes the essence of Souvarinism, insofar as it is at all possible to speak of any essence here..." (A Letter to Albert Treint, 1931)
My faith turned out to be misplaced; the RCIT, no doubt feeling the pressures of Russian imperialism channeled through its new section there, no doubt feeling the pressures of Russian imperialism channeled through its contacts there, supported Russia's annexation of Crimea, meaning supporting the transfer of territory from an oppressed country to an imperialist country, including its minority of Tatars who will now have to suffer racist oppression under the Russian state.
It became quite clear that none of the existing Marxist organizations could be trusted to carry out a consistent struggle against imperialism. In looking to find an explanation to this, my vantage point was the only possible one from a Marxist perspective: their class composition. Despite all of their differences, almost all of their leaders were middle-class. In theory, they were all for the working class liberating itself; in practice, they all sent the message that intellectuals are the ones who should lead the struggle for socialism. That sends a much stronger message than all the theory in the world.
Ever since Trotsky's death and the Fourth International's descent into middle-class politics, no genuine revolutionary working class organization was ever formed. The existing organizations would, from time to time, find some support in the working class, only to divert this support back into electoralism or other forms of politics alien to Marxism. And so, I realize now that a new organization of the working class must be created, but it will not be created by me. It will be created by those working class people who come into political life as the attack on the working class, poor and oppressed intensify in the following years. And me? I'll be right here, jotting my notations, and supplying my criticism to those who might be able to use it for something other than just criticism's sake.
Ever since Trotsky's death and the Fourth International's descent into middle-class politics, no genuine revolutionary working class organization was ever formed. The existing organizations would, from time to time, find some support in the working class, only to divert this support back into electoralism or other forms of politics alien to Marxism. And so, I realize now that a new organization of the working class must be created, but it will not be created by me. It will be created by those working class people who come into political life as the attack on the working class, poor and oppressed intensify in the following years. And me? I'll be right here, jotting my notations, and supplying my criticism to those who might be able to use it for something other than just criticism's sake.
There will be many who will dismiss all I write as worthless, because I am not an activist, because I am not in an organization, and so on, and so on. Who can blame them? I'm very, very bad. I'm the worst.
I'm the Bad Leftist.
Corrections: I have been informed of two factual errors in the text that I have corrected: the Balad demo took place on the day before the one by Hadash, and the RCIT position which I criticize was opposed by its Russian section (as it should have been). I thank Comrade Boris Hammerschlag from the ISL for the corrections.
Further corrections: I have been informed by Comrade Hammerschalg that I was right about the Russian group supporting the Russian annexation of Crimea, and that my mistake only consisted in identifying this group as a section rather than contacts for the RCIT. I thank him for this correction.
Further corrections: I have been informed by Comrade Hammerschalg that I was right about the Russian group supporting the Russian annexation of Crimea, and that my mistake only consisted in identifying this group as a section rather than contacts for the RCIT. I thank him for this correction.
