Opinion of Labour Zionism

[H. Ross Peron]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionism

Freedom Ideology

[MalaspinaGold]

Major FI

[SNJ1985]

Two horrible ideologies rolled into one.

[Indy Texas]

Two horrible ideologies rolled into one.

[TNF]

Horrible Ideology. Zionism is pretty clearly incompatible with socialism, as are all other racist ideologies and belief systems.

[Oakvale]

Horrible, like all zionism.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Horrible, like all zionism.

[MalaspinaGold]

Certain people really need to stop calling themselves Socialists right now.

[TNF]

Certain people really need to stop calling themselves Socialists right now.

Yep, that would be everyone who also claims to be a Zionist while also claiming to be a socialist.

[MalaspinaGold]

No, it's the "socialists" who would side with autocrats over a socialist state.

[TNF]

No, it's the "socialists" who would side with autocrats over a socialist state.

Israel is not a socialist state by any stretch of the imagination, and I take issue with your characterization of the Palestinian resistance as 'autocratic,' given that, you know, they're not the ones who expelled people from their land and took their homes and possessions and confined them to an open air prison.

[SWE]

TIl Israel is a socialist state

[TNF]

TIl Israel is a socialist state

Yeah, I must have missed out on them abolishing wage labor, money, exploitation by the capitalists, implementing a worker-owned and managed socialist economy, etc. Who knew?

[MalaspinaGold]

First off, I am not talking about Israel today, I'm talking about Israel in the 1940s, when Labour Zionism when actually relevant. And I am not talking about Gaza, which did not exist at the time, but the various autocratic countries such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, who I'm sure you would be cheering on despite their decidedly right-wing economic policy.

[TNF]

First off, I am not talking about Israel today, I'm talking about Israel in the 1940s, when Labour Zionism when actually relevant. And I am not talking about Gaza, which did not exist at the time, but the various autocratic countries such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, who I'm sure you would be cheering on despite their decidedly right-wing economic policy.

Israel wasn't a socialist society by any stretch of the imagination in the 1940s, either. Israel has always been a capitalist society, with a capitalist economic framework and bourgeois governing institutions. The fact that it has a welfare state and had amongst its founders people calling themselves socialists does not change the fact that Israel was then and is still today a capitalist society.

This idea that I should support Israel because it provides free health care to its citizens (or whatever) is insane when put into perspective, because you're literally arguing here that it's totally fine and good to push people off of their land and strip them of their rights so long as the people doing that are nice to people like themselves. This is the modern equivalent of justifying the forced expulsion of American Indians from their lands on the basis that America was bringing 'civilization' to the wilderness and that, you know, the American Indians were just a bunch of savages anyway. That's what you're essentially arguing here, but updated for the 21st Century and a few continents over.

I support the struggle of the Palestinians against the Israelis because I don't buy into the idea that the latter are intrinsically entitled to rule the land in which they inhabit with an iron fist and deny human rights and basic human dignity to the former. I do not support Israel because Israel is an appendage of American imperialism in the region. That's the whole design of the state itself: to serve as an outpost by which the U.S. and its Allies can disrupt and exercise control over events going on in the region. It's the last of the classic settler states, and any socialist that's worth their salt is going to oppose imperialism that binds one nation under the oppressive hand of another, regardless of what kind of government the oppressed nation has chosen for itself. The point is not to identify with or support that government (and believe me, I don't support Hamas or condone their attacks upon civilian populations or any of that), the point is to identify with those struggling to be free and to back them to the hilt. Only by supporting that struggle can you hope to change the region (and the world) for the better.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

No, it's the "socialists" who would side with autocrats over a socialist state.

You do realize that support for the general cause of Palestinian liberation does not equate to support of the idiots actually in charge of Gaza, right?

[MalaspinaGold]

First off, I am not talking about Israel today, I'm talking about Israel in the 1940s, when Labour Zionism when actually relevant. And I am not talking about Gaza, which did not exist at the time, but the various autocratic countries such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, who I'm sure you would be cheering on despite their decidedly right-wing economic policy.

Israel wasn't a socialist society by any stretch of the imagination in the 1940s, either. Israel has always been a capitalist society, with a capitalist economic framework and bourgeois governing institutions. The fact that it has a welfare state and had amongst its founders people calling themselves socialists does not change the fact that Israel was then and is still today a capitalist society.

This idea that I should support Israel because it provides free health care to its citizens (or whatever) is insane when put into perspective, because you're literally arguing here that it's totally fine and good to push people off of their land and strip them of their rights so long as the people doing that are nice to people like themselves. This is the modern equivalent of justifying the forced expulsion of American Indians from their lands on the basis that America was bringing 'civilization' to the wilderness and that, you know, the American Indians were just a bunch of savages anyway. That's what you're essentially arguing here, but updated for the 21st Century and a few continents over.

I support the struggle of the Palestinians against the Israelis because I don't buy into the idea that the latter are intrinsically entitled to rule the land in which they inhabit with an iron fist and deny human rights and basic human dignity to the former. I do not support Israel because Israel is an appendage of American imperialism in the region. That's the whole design of the state itself: to serve as an outpost by which the U.S. and its Allies can disrupt and exercise control over events going on in the region. It's the last of the classic settler states, and any socialist that's worth their salt is going to oppose imperialism that binds one nation under the oppressive hand of another, regardless of what kind of government the oppressed nation has chosen for itself. The point is not to identify with or support that government (and believe me, I don't support Hamas or condone their attacks upon civilian populations or any of that), the point is to identify with those struggling to be free and to back them to the hilt. Only by supporting that struggle can you hope to change the region (and the world) for the better.

Short answer to your response:

No, it's the "socialists" who would side with autocrats over a socialist state.

You do realize that support for the general cause of Palestinian liberation Zionism does not equate to support of the idiots actually in charge of Gaza Israel, right?

But since that won't do, I suppose I'll have to go a little farther.
First off, did most socialists and communists oppose the Stalin regime? If not, keep in mind the hundreds of thousands of Jews deported to Birobidzhan, the Crimean Tatars deported to Uzbekistan, the Georgians, Volga Germans, Chechens, and countless more. Does this naturally mean that socialism itself is a racist theory? Of course not. Similarly, neither is Labour Zionism.

Now, before you say that Zionism is an inherently racist ideology, let me give you the definition. While there were different strains of Zionism, consider the following: the right of the Jewish people to travel to a Jewish homeland. NOWHERE in that definition is there any talk of evicting Palestinians, nor of confiscating property. There is not even any mention of a Jewish STATE itself. There is simply a desire for Jews to settle in a place they have a very strong tie to. An analogous situation would be the repatriation of Crimea by the Crimean Tatars after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Essentially what happened in Israel was that at a much faster rate.

As for your insinuation that the sole reason Israel came to exist was because of American Imperialism, that is patently, and dangerously false. The reason the Jewish state came to be (and why many Anti-Zionists were converted to Zionism) was because of the Holocaust. It became perfectly clear that without a place that would unconditionally accept Jews, they would be at the mercy of another Holocaust, as the general disinterest of their plight was apparent (for example, the St. Louis incident, as well as other such tragedies).  The idea was to have a place any Jew could live without fear of persecution.

Now you might say, how can you do this without displacing the ethnic Arabs? (FTR: in an ideal world there should not have been any displaced Palestinians). Well, the Jews did two things in addition to the tragic uprooting of some towns: first off, there was a concerted effort to buy the land from the Arabs fairly, which met with some limited success. More successful was the reclaiming of the uninhabited swampland found throughout the Mandate, which of course required no uprooting of Palestinians. Keep in mind that at the time, there were less than 800,000 people living throughout the Mandate, a very small number even considering the small size of the region, and the population of 10 million present now. As no Palestinians were evicted, I cannot possibly see what opposition you have to reclamation in particular.

So the question comes to the question of the right of Jews to immigrate. I would imagine almost anyone would say yes, they do have that right, provided they were not evicting or otherwise inconveniencing the Palestinians. I don't know, do you agree (keep in mind that in reality, there was no right per se to immigration; even during and after the Holocaust, the British kept strict quotas on the numbers admitted, interspersed with immigration bans.)

Indeed, the Marxist faction of the Kibbutz movement, called Kibbutz Artzi, was directly in favor of a binational state, rather than a strictly Jewish state of which you have already expressed your support. And yet they were an explicitly Zionist organization (they did favor unlimited immigration of Jews, for what should be obvious reasons (Hint: Holocaust).

To sum up, Labour Zionism is as diverse a movement as socialism in general. To blanketly condemn it for avoidable mistakes made by the implementation of this ideology, or even sillier, to blame it for the woes inflicted specifically by the current regime, is akin to condemning Marxism because of the Soviet experiment.

I don't have time, but if you wish, I can go into how you're wrong in your belief that Labour Zionism amounted to a latte liberal state. In addition I can show you how large swaths of the international socialist movements, including the largest Socialist paper in the United States, were Labour Zionists. Ultimately the two thingsI want to get across, are that Zionism does not mandate a solely, or even officially Jewish state, and two, Snowstalker's quote.

EDIT: Here's a quote I found on the Zionism issue from none other than Red Emma Goldman:

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Again, this is Zionism. Very left-wing Zionism, but Zionism.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Freedom ideology.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Two horrible ideologies rolled into one.

[ElectionsGuy]

Pretty terrible, much like Zionism itself.

[Sol]

Pretty terrible, much like Zionism itself.

[Indy Texas]

First off, I am not talking about Israel today, I'm talking about Israel in the 1940s, when Labour Zionism when actually relevant. And I am not talking about Gaza, which did not exist at the time, but the various autocratic countries such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, who I'm sure you would be cheering on despite their decidedly right-wing economic policy.

Saudi Arabia doesn't even allow non-citizens to own shares in Saudi companies. And the government more or less guarantees it will find you a job (or pay you a salary if they can't find you one) when you finish college. They also subsidize gasoline prices to make it artificially cheap for all citizens. Such a right-wing Randian hellscape, that place...

Also, what do you mean Gaza didn't exist in the 1940s? Was that area of land buried under the Mediterranean Sea at that time?

[MalaspinaGold]

I've generally found most socialists dislike the idea of a monarchy, whatever its policies.

What I mean  by that is that Gaza alternated between periods of direct and indirect occupation and administration by the Egyptians.