On some Questions of the Zionist Oppression and the Permanent Revolution in Palestine
Thoughts on some exceptionalities of the Israeli state, the national oppression of the Palestinian people and its consequences for the program of the Bolshevik-Communists in Palestine
By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), May 2013
The Palestinian Revolution has been a central issue of the international class struggle for more than half a century. The reason is that it constitutes one of the biggest crimes of imperialism in the 20th century. It symbolizes the barbarism of the imperialist Great Powers who expel a whole people from its historic homeland by the artificial creation of a colonial settler state in order to control a geo-strategically highly important region – the Middle East.
Not surprisingly, Palestine and Israel have been the focus for a number of wars – 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, 2008/09 and 2012. In addition to this we have already seen two popular Palestinian Intifadas which started in 1987 and 2000 respectively and lasted each for several years. The Arab Revolution which started in early 2011 has even more increased the centrality of the Palestinian Revolution.
For us Bolshevik-Communists the Palestinian question has always played a central role both in theory and practice. One can not be a revolutionary in any meaningful way without consistently fighting against Zionism and the Israeli Apartheid state and for its replacement by a single workers state from the River to the Sea with the right of all Palestinian refugees to return.
This was and is the position of those who stand in the tradition of authentic Marxism. Such a common revolutionary approach to the Palestinian Revolution forms an important element in the fusion between the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and the Internationalist Socialist League (ISL) in Israel/Occupied Palestine. Both organizations defended in the past a revolutionary perspective against Zionism, for the unconditional support for the Palestinian liberation struggle and for a single workers state from the River to the Sea with the right of all Palestinian refugees to return. However, the discussions around this fusion process were very fruitful and helped us to deepen our common understanding. An important result of this has been the draft for an Action Program for National Liberation and Socialist Revolution in Palestine.
In the following document we intend to outline a number of important questions for the strategy of Permanent Revolution in Palestine.
Trotsky’s Theory of the Permanent Revolution
Let us begin with a brief summary of Trotsky’s concept of Permanent Revolution. It is based on the dialectical concept that the revolution cannot be divided schematically into stages which are separated from each other. This does not mean that there are not different stages in the development of the revolution. This is of course the case. But in all stages of the revolution it is one and the same class which must lead the struggle in order to win the democratic as well as economic goals of the revolution: the working class. Naturally the working class must seek allies amongst the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie. But it is the proletariat and only the proletariat which can lead the struggle to victory. The reason for this is that the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie – regardless of their numerical size – are not classes that can act independently and therefore they cannot play a leading role. They must rather subordinate themselves sooner or later under one of the two main classes of capitalist society - the proletariat or the bourgeoisie.
From this follows that in all stages of the revolution the strategic goal is to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and not the power for any other class. While temporary blocs with sectors of the bourgeoisie cannot be excluded, it would be criminal for the working class to subordinate its goals and interests in order not to wreck a potential alliance with such bourgeois forces. It would be even more criminal to support the taking of power by bourgeois forces. Every sector of the semi-colonial bourgeoisie will look for a compromise with imperialism and betray the working class and the popular masses.
The theory of permanent revolution assumes that if the revolution is not continued up to the socialist seizure of power, it will inevitably end with the victory of the ruling class and a counter-revolution. Similarly, the theory of Permanent Revolution considers that the revolution cannot last victoriously in a single country (as Stalin claimed), but must be spread internationally. The modern economy, especially in the age of global capitalism, makes all countries dependent on the international exchange of goods, technology and knowledge. Moreover, sooner or later the imperialist powers would not tolerate a victorious revolution in a single country. Marxists therefore support the strategy of permanent revolution not because it is more radical or "exciting", but because it represents the only realistic way to overcome the capitalist system and establish a truly socialist society. [1]
In his book “The Permanent Revolution”, written in 1929, Trotsky explained the three basic elements of this theory:
„The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against reaction from without: that is, a revolution whose every successive stage is rooted in the preceding one and which can end only in the complete liquidation of class society.
To dispel the chaos that has been created around the theory of the permanent revolution, it is necessary to distinguish three lines of thought that are united in this theory.
First, it embraces the problem of the transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist. This is in essence the historical origin of the theory. (…)
The theory of the permanent revolution, which originated in 1905, declared war upon these ideas and moods. It pointed out that the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations lead directly, in our epoch, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and that the dictatorship of the proletariat puts socialist tasks on the order of the day. Therein lay the central idea of the theory. While the traditional view was that the road to the dictatorship of the proletariat led through a long period of democracy, the theory of the permanent revolution established the fact that for backward countries the road to democracy passed through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus democracy is not a regime that remains self-sufficient for decades, but is only a direct prelude to the socialist revolution. Each is bound to the other by an unbroken chain. Thus there is established between the democratic revolution and the socialist reconstruction of society a permanent state of revolutionary development.
The second aspect of the ‘permanent’ theory has to do with the socialist revolution as such. For an indefinitely long time and in constant internal struggle, all social relations undergo transformation. Society keeps on changing its skin. Each stage of transformation stems directly from the preceding. This process necessarily retains a political character, that is, it develops through collisions between various groups in the society which is in transformation. Outbreaks of civil war and foreign wars alternate with periods of ‘peaceful’ reform. Revolutions in economy, technique, science, the family, morals and everyday life develop in complex reciprocal action and do not allow society to achieve equilibrium. Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such.
The international character of the socialist revolution, which constitutes the third aspect of the theory of the permanent revolution, flows from the present state of economy and the social structure of humanity. Internationalism is no abstract principle but a theoretical and political reflection of the character of world economy, of the world development of productive forces and the world scale of the class struggle. The socialist revolution begins on national foundations – but it cannot be completed within these foundations. The maintenance of the proletarian revolution within a national framework can only be a provisional state of affairs, even though, as the experience of the Soviet Union shows, one of long duration. In an isolated proletarian dictatorship, the internal and external contradictions grow inevitably along with the successes achieved. If it remains isolated, the proletarian state must finally fall victim to these contradictions. The way out for it lies only in the victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries. Viewed from this standpoint, a national revolution is not a self-contained whole; it is only a link in the international chain. The international revolution constitutes a permanent process, despite temporary declines and ebbs.“ [2]
Such is the theoretical concept of revolutionary Marxism for the inner mechanic of the revolutionary process. Let us now move to discuss specific problems of the permanent revolution in Palestine.
The uniqueness of Israel as a colonial settler and oppressor state
The national oppression of the Palestinian people has a special character which is the consequence of the special character of the oppressor state Israel. It is not a “typical” state which oppresses another nation. This is a wrong assumption which is widely held by many centrists like the IMT, the CWI, the various groups in the Spartacists tradition (ICL, IBT, IG), etc. In fact, Israel is – as both the ISL, the RCIT, and its respective predecessor organizations have stated for many years – a colonial settler state. It is based on the expulsion of the huge majority of the original population – the Palestinians – from their homeland and their replacement by a settler people. This settler people had to be transferred with the help of Zionist institutions and imperialist Great Powers – mostly from Europe – during the 20th century to Palestine. Only by this displacement of the Palestinians were the Zionists capable to build a “Jewish State” in a country where the Jews where historically a tiny minority. According to the official statistics of the Ottoman Empire they originally formed only 4% (in 1880) and respectively 5% (in 1914) of the total population. [3] Even at the time of the creation of the Israeli state in 1947/48 – after decades of systematic expulsion of Palestinians and the waves of Jewish settler immigration – did the Jews constitute only 1/3 of the total population.
So, we see already three important differences to other capitalist states which oppress another nation:
The Israeli-Jewish oppressor “nation” always constituted a minority compared with the nation it oppressed. Today the relation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians is 1:2.
* Secondly, it oppresses the Palestinians not where they originally lived but expelled the majority of them from their homeland.
* Thirdly, it is an oppressor nation and state which has been artificially created via a systematic population transfer policy. (Nevertheless it still doesn’t possess all characteristics of nation as we will discuss below.)
True, if we consider the whole history of capitalism, Israel is not the only colonial settler state in the world. The USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have a similar history. These states also expelled and murdered the Native Americans, Aborigines and Maoris. There are indeed strong similarities which, by the way, show the hypocrisy of these imperialist “democracies” and which are the reason why we fully support the struggle of the Native Americans, Aborigines and Maoris for their national rights.
However, from a historical-materialist point of view there are also important differences. Colonial settler states like the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have all been formed in the ascending epoch of capitalism in the 16th to the 19th century. In opposite to these examples, Israel and the Israeli-Jewish “nation” have been formed in the imperialist epoch in the 20th century, i.e. in the epoch of capitalism’s decline.
This had important consequences. The white majority nation in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand could nationally integrate and develop over a long historic period and at the same time they could successfully reduce and imprison the aboriginal people into small enclaves. Hence the aboriginal people in these countries today form only small minorities and have been denied, to a larger or smaller degree, the possibility to develop themselves as proper nations.
Israel and Zionism on the other hand came – historically speaking – “too late”. As a result the Israeli-Jewish “nation” itself has important deficiencies in its national formation as they still constitute only a minority in Palestine while the Palestinians, on the other hand, are a fully developed majority nation (with the support and sympathy of the whole surrounding Arab and Muslim world).
For all these reasons the RCIT and our Arab and Jewish comrades in the ISL consider Israel as a unique colonial settler state and hence we recognize the special form of the national oppression of the Palestinian people. It can only exist and reproduce itself as a state and nation by permanent brute force and wars of aggression. Only by this it can continue to expel the Palestinians from their homeland and grab their land as well as rob their water reserves. Thus for example half a million Israeli-Jewish settlers in the West Bank grab 85.7% of its water reserves while 2.6 million Palestinians have to make ends with the rest. It is worth noting that Israel is also – together with the USA, Britain and China – one of the biggest global land grabbers. [4]
The ruling class of Israel knows that it must permanently attack, humiliate and put down the Palestinians and the Arabs in the region since otherwise its days are numbered.
Various centrists use a formally correct but abstract criticism against Arab nationalism as a pretext to ignore the specific problems in the revolutionary struggle against the Israeli colonial settler state. Let us take the example of the centrist IMT of Alan Woods. They claim that it is the Palestinians and Arabs fault that the Israeli-Jewish working class has not rose up against their ruling class:
“We understand that the Israeli Jews fear being literally killed and destroyed by the hostile neighbouring Arab states. This is what drives them into the arms of Netanyahu and co. And so long as groups such as Hamas until recently and the PLO in the past raise the idea of driving out the Jews, rather than weakening the Zionist state, the bulk of the Jewish population is pushed into rallying around the Israeli ruling class, thus strengthening and not weakening Zionism.” [5]
It is certainly true that a revolutionary party and a Workers and Peasants Republic in the Arab world would have conducted systematic internationalist propaganda and appealed to the poorer Jewish workers to break with Zionism. It is also true that revolutionaries all over the world have to fight systematically against all forms of Anti-Semitism. But the centrist leaders of the IMT reduce the problem of Zionist loyalty of the Israeli-Jewish workers only or mainly to the existence of Arab nationalism. This is utterly wrong and betrays a lack of dialectical-materialist understanding! The main reason for the Zionist loyalty of the Israeli-Jewish workers is not Arab nationalism but the huge material privileges which they gain as a result of the imperialist colonial settler status of the state they are living in (more on this below). But as the IMT (and most other centrists) refute the Leninist conception of labor aristocracy and their relative privileges paid from the super-profits of the imperialist monopolies and states as the material basis for their backward consciousness, so do these centrists ignore the ideological consequences of the material factors of an imperialist settler state on the consciousness of its privileged population. [6]
The Israeli Jews as a nationality or an “almost nation”
Exactly for the reason of its late, artificial and brutal formation, the Israeli Jews did not experience a full nation-formation process. True there a number of important elements of a nation-formation process. In addition to having a common territory as well as a common economy, the use of a common language made important progress. At the beginning of the state of Israel only a minority spoke Hebrew. However a conscious effort by the Zionist state to create a national consciousness led to the situation, where today a majority of Israeli Jews speak this language.
However the limitations of this nation-formation process become obvious from the fact that despite the most determined efforts of the Zionist state, still today a significant minority of Israeli Jews doesn’t speak Hebrew. According to the latest official statistics of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, only 49% of the country’s total population report Hebrew as their mother language, 18% Arabic, 15% Russian, 2% Yiddish, 2% French, 2% English, 1.6% Spanish and 10% other languages. [7] This means that still today – after 65 years of Israel’s existence as a state – only about 3/5 of Israel’s Jews use Hebrew as their mother language.
Additionally, the Zionist self-conception of Israel as a state of all Jews world-wide – which they claim to be a nation – is an obstacle for a national identify of the Israeli Jews.
The ISL comrades wrote on this some years ago: “The Israelis have many objective attributes, which characterize a nation: territory, common economy; a state and common culture. However, there can be no nation where there is no national consciousness, i.e. a bourgeois consciousness of a common interest separated from other nations (reflecting the reality of national economy which has unified local markets). The Israelis however have a Zionist consciousness not an Israeli national consciousness.” [8]
Related to this is the fact that the Israeli Jews are sharply divided not only by class lines – as it is the case in all nations living in capitalism – but also along ethnic and religious lines. Hence we have the traditional Ashkenazi Jews coming from Europe, the Russian Jews who came after 1991 from the former Soviet Union, the Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. And more recently there has been a new wave of Jews coming from Ethiopia. There are various forms of discrimination against the Jewish communities coming from poorer countries. In addition we see the increasing discrimination of the poor ultra-orthodox Jews – the Haredim – who are a growing minority of about one million. [9]
These deficiencies in the Israeli-Jewish nation-formation process are another important factor which explains the permanent Israeli expansionism. Only by permanent war against the Palestinians and the whole Arab and Muslim world can the Israeli ruling class hope to unite the Israeli Jews.
Finally, one has to take into account that because of the unique character of Israel, the national consciousness of the Israeli Jews is necessarily interwoven with reactionary chauvinist attitude towards the Palestinians and the Arabs in general. [10]
For all these reasons we come to the conclusion that the Israeli Jews are a group which possesses important elements of a nation. But they have been prevented to develop into a full nation because of specific characteristics which are related to the Zionist project (claims that not the Israeli Jews as such but the all Jews in the world are a nation, permanent waves of immigration which cause international ethnical divisions). Thus we can characterize them as a pre-form of a nation – a nationality or an “almost nation”.
Can Marxists support the right of national self-determination for the Israeli Jews?
The Bolshevik-Communists reject the right of national self-determination for the Israeli Jews. For this question it is not decisive if Marxists consider the Israeli Jews as a nation or an “almost nation”. The RCIT and the ISL oppose the right of national self-determination for the Israeli Jews because the realization of such a right automatically implies the denial of the right of national self-determination for the oppressed majority nation – the Palestinians. [11]
On the other hand many centrists support the right of national self-determination for the Israeli Jews. Let us give a few examples for this. Already in 1973 leaders of Matzpen, A. Said and Moshe Machover, raised it in an article published by the centrist “United Secretariat of the Fourth International” of Ernest Mandel. [12]
A similar approach is repeated by the Spartacists school who call explicitly for “the right to self-determination for Palestinians and Hebrews” [13] Similarly the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT), who split from the Spartacists: “For Leninists, all nations, including the Jews in Israel, have a right to self-determination” [14] The same idea is repeated by another Sparts split, the Internationalist Group of Jan Norden who calls for “recognizing the right of self-determination for both Hebrew speakers and Arabs in Palestine”. [15] Consequently the crude Spartacist school of “internationalism” defends the right of the Israeli Jewish colonial settler people to form their own state after the socialist revolution: “Nevertheless, if the level of hostility is such that by democratic means one or the other people wishes to lead a separate national state existence, a revolutionary workers government would recognize this as their right, which, unlike under capitalism, could be accomplished (with difficulty) in a way that is not discriminatory toward one or the other community, in the framework of a socialist federation of the Near East.” [16]
We note in passing the funny fact that the Spartacists demonstrate their ignorance of the situation in Israel by consistently referring to the “Hebrew-speaking” people instead of the “Israeli Jews”. They seemingly do not even know that many of those, whose “right to self-determination” they advocate, do not use Hebrew as their mother language.
While more hidden, the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) of Alan Woods and the late Ted Grant argues in a similar direction. They call for “autonomous homelands and full respect for all national rights” for Arabs and Israeli Jews which is a concealed support for a separate “socialist” Israeli-Jewish state: “Nevertheless, Israel now exists as a state, and the clock of history cannot be turned back. Israel is a nation and we cannot call for its abolition. The solution of the Palestinian national problem can only be achieved through the establishment of a socialist federation of the Middle east in which Arabs and Israelis can co-exist with their own autonomous homelands and full respect for all national rights.” [17]
The most consistent “Socialist” Zionist amongst the centrists is the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) which has a section in Israel (Maavak Sotzyalisti). For many years they have called “for a socialist, democratic Palestine and a socialist Israel, as part of a equal and voluntary socialist confederation of the Middle East.” [18] The CWI leaders are aware that this is against the wishes of the oppressed Arab people: “We accept that many Arab workers have the hope that the Israeli state must be destroyed. It is an imperialist wedge against the Arab Revolution.” [19]
Nevertheless, the CWI calls for a continuation of the Israeli state (on a “socialist basis”) and therefore the continuation of the collective expulsion of the Palestinian people from their home territory. How does the CWI leadership justify such an awful ignorance of the wishes of the oppressed Palestinian people? By referring to the wishes of the oppressor nation, the Jewish-Israeli people, as the following quote shows:
“They will come to nothing as the Palestinian masses will not give up their demands for a separate state. Equally, the Israeli population will not accede to the demand that they form a possible minority in a ‘common state’. To do so would mean that they would take the place of the oppressed Palestinians; this would be inevitable on a capitalist basis. Our demand for a socialist, democratic Palestine and a socialist Israel linked to a socialist confederation of the Middle East retains all its validity.” [20]
We consider such a position as reactionary and a capitulation towards Zionism. The right of national self-determination implies naturally the right of separation to form an independent state. Any such right would constitute a denial for millions of Palestinian refugees to return in their homeland. Let us not forget that out of (officially) 11.6 million Palestinians, 5.8 million live in the Diaspora (mostly in Arab countries). Of the 4.4 million Palestinian living in the West Bank and Gaza, 44% are refugees. Add to this a number of those 1.6 million Palestinians who live inside the 1948-occupied Palestine but who are refugees too. All in all about ¾ of all Palestinians are refugees living in the enforced Diaspora. [21]
Naturally this violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people would be closely related to economic discrimination since Israel – i.e. 1948-occupied Palestine – is industrially much more developed than the Palestinian inhabited areas. Any two-state solution would automatically mean a rich Israel exists beside a poor Palestine – and would therefore continue the massive gap and hence oppression.
This does of course not mean that the Israeli Jews would have no rights in a single Palestinian workers state, as we will see below.
A favourite argument of the centrist supporters of the right of national self-determination for the Israeli Jews is their claim that Marxists apply this right to all nations and thus also for the Israeli Jews. In fact this is a caricature of Marxism. The right of national self-determination is not a juridical right in the abstract realm but a tool of an oppressed nation (or ethnic group) to liberate itself from the oppressor nation.
Thus the right of national self-determination is a right for oppressed nations, not for all – oppressed and oppressor – nations. This becomes clear if one considers the various tactics which flow from this right. In a conflict between oppressed nation and oppressor nation we defend the former against the later. Marxists defend the right to separate and form an independent state of oppressed nations. But which sense would it make to defend the right to separate and form an independent state of an oppressor nation?! Shall we call for the right of Spain to separate from Basque Country or of the Sinhala majority population in Sri Lanka to separate from the Tamils?!
Supporting the right of national self-determination and thus the right to separate and form an independent state of an oppressor nation would not only be absurd but is potentially reactionary. It could form a pretext for the ruling class of an oppressor nation to get rid of and ghettoize an oppressed people under its conditions. This is exactly what happened when Israel exercised such a “right to separate” in 2005 when it withdrew from the Gaza strip and transformed it into an open prison camp. Or it can be a pretext for the formation of a reactionary vendee in order to keep the privileges of the old oppressor minority. The fascist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging of the late Eugène Terre'Blanche in South Africa, which calls for secession and the creation of an independent Boer-Afrikaner republic ("Volkstaat/Boerestaat") in parts of South Africa, is an example for such a reactionary, aristocratic application of the “right to separate” for an oppressor nation.
Similarly Marxists defend the right of oppressed nations to protect its economy against the domination by imperialist multinationals. But at the same time we oppose any protectionist barriers of imperialist economies against products of the semi-colonial countries. To give another example: Only a reactionary chauvinist – like the right wing parties, social democracy, Stalinism or centrists like the Spartacists – can defend the right of oppressor nations to close its borders for migrants from the poor, semi-colonial countries. On the other hand, oppressed nations have a right to defend themselves against reactionary settlements projects which have the purpose to undermine their national existence. The justified opposition of the Palestinians against the Zionist settlement policy in Israel is such a case.
Our rejection of a “right of national self-determination” for the Israeli-Jewish nationality is not a denial of a revolutionary democratic right. It is the refusal of their right to oppress the Palestinians, to continue their expulsion from their homeland. It is the refusal to continue the inherently racist political project of Zionism.
The Marxist classics and the right of national self-determination
“Socialist” Zionists like the Spartacists school claim that the right of national self-determination applies both to oppressed nations and oppressor nations: “Basic to the Leninist position on the national question—the only consistently democratic position—is that all nations have a right to self-determination.” [22]
This is of course complete nonsense. Marxists understand the right of national self-determination as a revolutionary democratic right of oppressed nations. This was also always the meaning and understanding of the Marxist classics on this question. Lenin underlined again and again that it is the „division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which forms the essence of imperialism“. [23]
For Lenin and Trotsky it was clear that the right of national self-determination applies for oppressed nations and not for oppressor nations. In every major document on the national question, they made this clear.
We shall give just a small selection of the numerous quotes from major works of Lenin on the national question:
„Socialists cannot achieve their great aim without fighting against all oppression of nations. They must, therefore, unequivocally demand that the Social-Democratic parties of the oppressor countries (especially of the so-called “Great” Powers) should recognise and champion the oppressed nation’s right to self-determination, in the specifically political sense of the term, i.e., the right to political secession. The socialist of a ruling or a colonial nation who does not stand for that right is a chauvinist.” [24]
“Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and, consequently, not only introduce full equality of nations but also realise the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, i.e., the right to free political separation.” [25]
“As regards the right of the nations oppressed by thetsarist monarchy to self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form independent states, the Social-Democratic Party must unquestionably champion this right.” [26]
“That is why the focal point in the Social-Democratic programme must be that division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which forms the essence of imperialism, and is deceitfully evaded by the social-chauvinists and Kautsky. This division is not significant from the angle of bourgeois pacifism or the philistine Utopia of peaceful competition among independent nations under capitalism, but it is most significant from the angle of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism. It is from this division that our definition of the “right of nations to self-determination” must follow, a definition that is consistently democratic, revolutionary, and in accord with the general task of the immediate struggle for socialism.” [27]
“The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political separation from the oppressor nation. (…) It implies only a consistent expression of struggle against all national oppression.“ [28]
In its program, the Bolshevik Party also spoke about the right of national self-determination and thus the right to separate in connection with the oppressed people:
“In order to overcome the distrust felt by the working masses of oppressed countries towards the proletariat of states which used to oppress those countries, it is necessary to abolish all the privileges enjoyed by any national group, to establish complete equality of rights for all nationalities, to recognise the right of colonies and dependent nations to separation.” [29]
This is also how Trotsky understood the Bolsheviks and his own approach towards the national question:
“But the very conjuncture of the national movements with struggle of the proletariat for power was made politically possible only thanks to the fact that the Bolsheviks during the whole of their history carried on an irreconcilable struggle with the Great Russian oppressors, supporting always and without reservations the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, including separation from Russia.
The policy of Lenin in regard to the oppressed nations did not, however, have anything in common with the policy of the epigones. The Bolshevik Party defended the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination with the methods of the proletarian class struggle.” [30]
Revolutionary Defeatism against Israel in its Wars and Revolutionary Defensism for the Arab countries
Israel’s inherent reactionary character entails that revolutionaries supported the Palestinian guerillas and the respective armies of its neighboring Arab countries in all wars which took place in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, 2008/09 and 2012. Both the ISL and the RCIT and its respective predecessor organization did and do take a revolutionary defeatist position in relation to Israel – this means we call for its defeat and for actions of the working class and the oppressed both inside Israel and its army as well as internationally to foster such a defeat. At the same time we are revolutionary defensist in relation to the Palestinian guerillas and the respective Arab armies – this means we support their military struggle and call workers and oppressed in these countries as well as internationally to support their struggle by proletarian methods of struggle.
However, this support is unconditional but critical. We call to support the Palestinian and Arab struggles with the working class methods. We warn against any illusions and reliance on the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois leaderships. We call for independent mass organization of the working class as well as the formation of a revolutionary party in order to replace the non-revolutionary leaderships. [31]
It is not accidental that those who wholehearted defend the “right of national self-determination” for the Israeli Jewish oppressor nation have often failed in the past to side unconditionally with the Palestinian resistance and respective Arab countries in their wars against the Zionist state. As we have shown with a number of examples in our recently published book “The Great Robbery of the South”, centrist organizations like the CWI or the IMT have failed to call for the victory of the Palestinian resistance, of Hezbollah, of Iraq or of Afghanistan and for the defeat of the imperialists or of Israel in their wars in the Middle East in the past two decades. [32]
Surely, the centrists like to cover their betrayal by radical sounding denunciations of Palestinian (petty-)bourgeois nationalists. Such the IMT recently wrote “The idea that the fundamentalists are somehow "anti-imperialist" is absurd. The Islamic fundamentalists are utterly reactionary and play no progressive role whatsoever.” [33] It is certainly true that Hamas is reactionary. However, because of their roots amongst the Palestinian masses and the pressure of the later, Hamas is forced to fight (inconsistently) against the Israeli aggression. This is not a lot but certainly much more than the Western middle class centrists of the IMT ever managed to do! They did not even support the Palestinian and Arab military struggles against Israel in the wars in the last decade in their agitation in mass demonstrations in the West! Sure, the Hamas leadership is ready to betray the Palestinian liberation struggle. But how can socialists gain the confidence of the Palestinian and Arab workers and oppressed if they don’t support their resistance even if it is under a non-revolutionary leadership and if they justify this absence with pseudo-radical sounding phrase-mongering?! And, by the way, it is hypocritical to the extreme to state that Hamas is not anti-imperialist in any way and “utterly reactionary” while at the same time the IMT tail and work inside the social democratic labor parties and even the bourgeois, popular frontist PPP in Pakistan. These parties which the IMT supports and has helped to build for decades certainly undertook much less “anti-imperialist” actions than Hamas!
Characteristically such organizations like the CWI, the IMT or the Spartacists equally failed to side with Argentina in the Malvinas War against British imperialism in 1982. One of the favourite arguments of the CWI to justify their capitulation towards British imperialism was the “right of national self-determination” of the 1,800 colonial British settlers on the Malvinas islands in front to the Argentine coast. [34] One can easily recognize the same aristocratic logic in the case of Malvinas and Israel: Imperialism uses its dominance to send settlers in this or that region in order to expel the native population respectively to gain control over a territory. Once it has succeeded in this and the colonial people rebel against this blatant act of robbery and expansionism, the imperialists invoke the “right of national self-determination” for their colonial settlers. Unfortunately they find supporters in the camp of centrist “Marxism”!
In fact the settlers “right of national self-determination” invalidates the authentic right of national self-determination of the oppressed nation. This is why Marxists can only support the right of national self-determination of oppressed nations.
Israel’s development into an imperialist state
Israel has become a small imperialist power. We hope to deal with this issue more in detail in a future document. [35] We limit here ourselves to a brief overview.
Israel has developed a powerful monopoly capital in the last decades. It has developed into a highly industrialized economy which is superior to all other countries in the region. In addition Israel has a very powerful military. It is – despite the small size of the country – the eighth largest nuclear power in the world as well as the number 10 of the world’s arms exporters. [36]
Israel’s monopoly capital controls the country’s economy. According to the Bank of Israel "some twenty business groups, nearly all of family nature and structured in a pronounced pyramid form, continue to control a large proportion of public firms (some 25% of firms listed for trading) and about half of market share." [37]
These monopolies do not only dominate the domestic economy, they also lead a massive surge of capital export. Many of the top Israeli multinationals are based on High-Tech industries, pharmaceutical etc. The Top 20 Israeli Multinationals have foreign assets of nearly 16 billion US-Dollars and their foreign sales were just over 35 billion US-Dollars. They have 667 affiliates abroad and their employment abroad exceeded 87,000 (Figures from the year 2010). [38]
Reflecting a strengthening of Israel’s imperialist character, the stock of foreign direct investment abroad has risen much stronger in the past two decades than inward foreign investment in Israel. While FDI in Israel grew from 4.5 to 66.8 billion US-Dollars between 1990 and 2011, Israeli FDI abroad rose from 1.2 to 71.6 billion US-Dollars in the same period. [39]
Another reflection of the Israel’s imperialist character is the increasing global role of its monopoly capital. In The Forbes Global 2000 – a ranking of the biggest, most powerful companies in the world – 10 multinational corporations from Israel are listed. This is similar to other smaller imperialist countries which have a much longer history of imperialist development like Austria or Belgium (each 11 corporations) or Finland (12). [40]
Israel’s Gross domestic product per capita is 28,611 US-Dollars which is above the level of Greece and Portugal and slightly below the level of Spain (30,222). [41] According to another calculation by the United Nations, Israel Gross National Income Per Capita was slightly above the level of Italy in 2012. [42]
Certainly, Israel is a rich, imperialist fortress in the poor region of the Middle East. It’s GDP per head is double as high as Turkey, five times as high as Egypt’s, six times of Jordan’s and seven times of Syria’s. [43]
Is Israel a fascist state?
Some left-wing organizations – like various Maoists or the comrades from the FLTI (the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction led by Carlos Munzer) – call Israel a “fascist state”. [44] While it is understandable if such a characterization comes from a political uneducated person as a spontaneous expression of outrage, it is utter unscientific nonsense if it comes from political organizations which raise the banner of Marxism.
Fascism as a specific form of bourgeois class regime does not differ in essence from other forms of bourgeois rule by the brutality of its suppression of another nation. It rather differs by the fact that it mobilizes the petty-bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat in order to totally smash the working class and its organizations and to annihilate all forms of democratic rights. Trotsky explained this in the following way:
“The Social Democracy, which is today the chief representative of the parliamentary-bourgeois regime, derives its support from the workers. Fascism is supported by the petty bourgeoisie. The Social Democracy without the mass organizations of the workers can have no influence. Fascism cannot entrench itself in power without annihilating the workers’ organizations. Parliament is the main arena of the Social Democracy. The system of fascism is based upon the destruction of parliamentarism. For the monopolistic bourgeoisie, the parliamentary and fascist regimes represent only different vehicles of dominion; it has recourse to one or the other, depending upon the historical conditions. But for both the Social Democracy and fascism, the choice of one or the other vehicle has an independent significance; more than that, for them it is a question of political life or death.
At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium – the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie, and bands of the declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat; all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy. From fascism the bourgeoisie demands a thorough job; once it has resorted to methods of civil war, it insists on having peace for a period of years. And the fascist agency, by utilizing the petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram, by overwhelming all obstacles in its path, does a thorough job. After fascism is victorious, finance capital gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, directly and immediately, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive, administrative, and educational powers of the state: the entire state apparatus together with the army, the municipalities, the universities, the schools, the press, the trade unions, and the cooperatives. When a state turns fascist, it doesn’t only mean that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance with the patterns set by Mussolini – the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role – but it means, primarily and above all, that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism.” [45]
Using the term “fascist” to characterize Israel is simply wrong and radical phrase-mongering. It doesn’t help to clarify an understanding of the specifics of the Israeli state but rather confuses it.
Israel built a bourgeois-parliamentary regime with democratic rights for the Israeli-Jewish population including trade unions, the right to strike, even the right to express Anti-Zionist viewpoints, etc. It also knows limited democratic rights even for the Israeli-Arab citizens. Thus it has not smashed and annihilated trade unions and democratic organizations. This is possible because Zionism expelled most of the native Palestinian population from their homeland. As a result it is a totally aristocratic rich oppressor nation which can afford a limited amount of democracy. The Israeli ruling class in the last decades did not need fascism because it was strong enough to bribe a huge Israeli-Jewish labor aristocracy and middle class and rule via parliamentary means.
Of course it killed many Palestinians and continues to do so. But let us not forget that all bourgeois – including “democratic” – regimes oppress the working class and (semi-)colonial nations. Such oppression often includes brutal killings and expulsions. It would amount to a dangerous and naïve praising of imperialist bourgeois democracy if Marxists would conclude that a regime must be fascist if it is killing and oppressing. Such people stop being Marxists and turn to become petty-bourgeois moralists. No, bourgeois democracy is killing and oppressing too!
Finally, let us not forget that the fascist states – in Germany, Italy, and Spain etc. – did not only brutally oppress other nations, it also smashed all organizations and democratic rights of the working class in its domestic countries. Only a fool can ignore the fact that the Israeli-Jewish working class has much more rights than the German, Italian or Spanish workers had in the 1930s and 1940s.
Naturally this can change in the future and Israel can become a fascist state in a period of sharp crisis. But this has not been the case in the past 65 years and it is therefore wrong to characterize Israel as a “fascist state”.
As a side note we remark that such a mistake is similar to the characterization of Turkey as a fascist state by most Turkish Maoist groups. Despite the existence of a bourgeois-bonapartist regime with a limited parliamentary democracy these groups continue to denounce the state as fascist. Such a characterization is only confusing for the working class and serves as a pretext for a combination of popular-frontism and ultra-left guerillaism.
Who will the vanguard of the Revolution in Palestine?
The massive historic support of the Western imperialist powers and the emergence of Israel as an imperialist state have given the Zionist ruling class massive resources to bribe huge sectors of the Israeli Jewish working class. The living standard of the Israeli Jewish working class is not far away from workers in some Western European countries. For example Israeli Jewish people have a similar level of actual individual consumption to people in Spain. The OECD in an international comparison of social developments came to the conclusion that the average Israeli household income is above the level of Portugal and about 18% below the level of Italy. [46] Another indicator for the Western standards of living for Israeli Jews is the so-called Human Development Index which the United Nations regularly measures and which calculates income, poverty, education, health etc. According to the latest reports, Israel is ranked on place 16 amongst 186 states, before countries like Belgium, France and Austria. [47]
One has to bear in mind that this comparison is distorted insofar as the figures for Israel in these statistics include the Arab Israeli citizens as well as the Haredi Jews who are both massively poorer than the majority of the Israeli Jews. Hence in reality Israeli Jewish workers (except the Haredi Jews) have a living standard equal to countries like Italy or Spain.
The average wages of the Palestinian and migrant workers as well as of the Arab workers in the region is ways below those of Israel. The average wage of male Arab Israeli worker is about half of the male Israeli Jews. [48] While about 57% of the Arab Israeli citizens are living in poverty, it is only about 12% of the Israeli Jews (except the Haredi Jews of whom about 62% are living in poverty). [49]
This gap is much worse compared with the Palestinians living in the 1967-occupied territories. For example per capita income in the West Bank is less than 2,000 Dollars a year, while Israel’s is just above 30,000! [50]
Furthermore one must recognize that all these relative material privileges of the Israeli Jewish workers are closely related to the Israeli oppressor state and the national expulsion of the Palestinians on which it rests. Without their expulsion no Israeli state, no appropriation of the Palestine land and no Israeli wealth would have been possible.
For all these reasons it is obvious that the Israeli Jewish working class can never play a vanguard role in the revolution. The vanguard will be those who have to rise up not only to overthrow their capitalist class enemy but even to achieve their democratic demands. It will be the Palestinian working class and their class brothers and sisters in the neighboring Arab and Muslim countries. The heroic Intifadas as well as the Arab Revolution since 2011 are the living proof for this perspective.
Does this mean that the Israeli Jewish workers will play no role in the revolution? Of course, this will not be the case. But they will not be its vanguard. They will be rather in the tow-rope of the Palestinian and Arab working class. This of course does not mean that smaller groups of revolutionary Jewish workers and supportive intellectuals can not play an important role. In fact this has already been the case several times as one can see in the history of the Palestinian Communist Party in the 1920s as well as today where individual Jewish revolutionaries play an important role not only in the Trotskyist movement but also in the revolutionary democratic, Palestinian nationalist movement (like in Abnaa al-Balad). But such cases will be more the exception than the rule.
Furthermore it is unlikely that the Israeli Jewish working class will support the revolution in its totality. It is much more likely that a large section of its aristocracy will oppose the revolution and the Marxists will fight hard to win over a significant section to join the revolution or at least to remain neutral. This is clear not only from a theoretical point of view but also from the actual experience both in South Africa as well as in Israel. In South Africa only few white workers supported the struggle against Apartheid. Similarly, only few Jewish workers in Israel supported the Intifada or the national resistance of the Palestinians and Hezbollah.
However one has also to recognize the differentiation within the Israeli-Jewish society. The lower strata of the Israeli working class as well as specially discriminated layers like the 130.000 Ethiopian Jews or sectors of the poor Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews are certainly more likely to break with the Zionist state than the majority of the population. It is an important task for revolutionaries in Israel/Occupied Palestine to advance such a class differentiation and to win as many Jewish supporters for the socialist perspective as possible.
The Palestinian Revolution must begin as a national, democratic revolution leading to the socialist revolution
The extreme character of the national oppression, i.e. the expulsion of the whole Palestinian people, and its constitutive character for the Zionist state and hence the Israeli-Jews, has important consequences for the revolutionary strategy. The Palestinian national liberation must be the starting point for any revolutionary development in Israel/Occupied Palestine. This democratic question totally overshadows all other questions. The RCIT and the ISL are therefore convinced that the permanent revolution in Palestine can only begin as a democratic revolution which means the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people.
Naturally there can and indeed have been several economic class struggles of the Israeli Jewish working class against the government. However the Israeli Jewish working class is not able to raise the struggles to a political level because this would immediately put into question its loyalty to the Zionist state and therefore its own privileged position. Exactly for this reason the Israeli ruling class has been able to integrate the lower strata of the Israeli Jewish population (first the Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews, later the Russian Jews) into the Zionist project. To break out of this trap, Israeli Jewish workers must break with Zionism and join the struggle for national liberation of the Palestinians. This is what revolutionaries in Israel/Occupied Palestine are fighting for.
Does this mean that revolutionaries in Israel/Occupied Palestine should ignore economic class struggles of the Israeli Jewish working class? Certainly not! They support every minimal struggle against the Zionist ruling class. But they will connect such a support with the perspective of solidarity with the Palestinians liberation struggle and the permanent revolution.
For all these reasons, the primary orientation of Arab and Jewish revolutionaries in Israel/Occupied Palestine must be towards the Palestinian liberation struggle and hence towards the vanguard of the Palestinian workers and oppressed. The revolutionary party and its pre-party organization must be primarily composed of Palestinian fighters. Naturally Israeli-Jewish revolutionaries who join the struggle have an equal place in such an organization.
Oppression of Women
As in all parts of the world, women face specific oppression, earn less than men and bear the brunt of domestic work. According to the latest available official statistics, the average daily wages of Palestinian female employees were 13.2% lower in 2012 than of their male counterpart. The gap is particularly high in the mining and manufacturing as well as the commerce and hotel sector while it is below the average in the transportation, storage and communication as well as the service sector. In the agricultural sector, women earn a higher daily wage than men. [51]
As a side note we remark that this gap between male and female wages is lower than in most – so-called enlightened – Western imperialist democracies where arrogant sneering about the “backward Muslims” is wide-spread both amongst the liberal intelligentsia as well as the right-wing reactionaries.
However the extremely oppressed and poor living conditions of the Palestinian people reinforce a patriarchal division of labor which intensifies the discrimination of women. Since there are hardly any facilities for public childcare and the technical domestic conditions for cooking, washing etc. are very backward, domestic labor forms a central and time-consuming element of daily life. Given the patriarchal social structures most of this domestic work falls on women. As a result most women are housewives and therefore not part of the labor force. While 69.1% of men are part of the labor force, it is only 17.4% of the women. Amongst those in the different age-groups between 25 and 54 years, 84 to 88% of the Palestinian men are part of the labor force, but only 20 to 28% of the women. [52] In addition 32.9% of all women laborers are unemployed, it is “only” 20.5% of the men. [53]
Women workers also play a very significant role amongst sectors of migrants who are employed in Israel. Nearly all of the migrants working in domestic care are women. This explains why migrants from some countries are mostly female – like those from the European part of the former USSR (93%), the Philippines (87%), Nepal (81%), Romania (79%) and India (60%). On the other hand migrant workers who are mostly exploited in the construction sector come from other countries and are nearly all men – e.g. 97% of Turkish migrants who arrived in 2011 are male as are 96% from China and Thailand. Taking all migrants arriving in 2011, 51% of them were female. [54]
The role of Women in the national liberation struggle
Women are however not only oppressed; they also play an important role in the liberation struggle against the oppression. The heroic role of women in revolutions in history is well known: the fisher wives in the French Revolution 1789-94, the militant women clubs during the Paris Commune 1871 or the revolutionary women during the Russian Revolution 1917 – symbolized in the names of leading Bolsheviks like Nadezhda Krupskaya, Inessa Armand, Alexandra Kollontai, Ludmila Stal, Elena Stasova, Evgenia Bosh or Larissa Reissner. [55]
The Palestinian liberation struggle has its famous women fighters too. Fatmeh Khalil Ghazal was one of the first women combatants who was killed in action on 23.6.1936 at the battle of Wadi Azzoun during “The Great Uprising” – as the Arabs call the mass insurrection in 1936-39 which was led by the revolutionary nationalist Sheikh ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam and directed against the Zionist expansionism as well as the British occupation. Leila Khaled – a famous airplane hijacker and later a leader of the PFLP – is the best known of today’s women activists. Recently women like Wafa Idris, who was the first shahidat – or successful female suicide bombers – on 27.1.2002, have become famous. [56]
However the role of Palestinian women is not limited to a few famous activists and leaders but finds its reflection in the broad mass movement. This is a response to the specific role of women in the oppression and exploitation of the Palestine people. Particularly in the First Intifada 1987-93, women played a major role in the popular committees – the central underground structures which coordinated the resistance as well as daily life in the towns and villages. During this Intifada, the number of Palestinian women active in women’s committees also rose massively from only several hundred women before 1987 to near five thousand. [57]
Sai'da Nusseibeh summarized the experience of Palestine women in the resistance in the following way:
“Palestinian women played a major role in the Uprising from the beginning. They actively participated in the demonstrations and in the stone throwing. They broke the taboos of women being physically involved in the political arena. They were beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The Palestinian home, which has been the place of seclusion and sanctity for women, became violated on daily bases by army searches and demolitions.
This brought the issue of female sexuality, from the private domain to the public sphere. Female sexuality, which is so sacred to the honor of the Arab family and clan, was threatened by the Israeli soldiers, through sexual harassment in the home and the prison. But this did not intimidate these women neither it prevented them from further participation in the struggle. On the contrary, it made them more determined to fight and this in turn accorded them a lot of respect and regard from the male population, who by now have come to depend on them, for much more than participation in the political struggle. (…)
It was a heavy burden on the Palestinian woman, who has lost children, husbands' father of other close relative/family members. Not a single Palestinian home was untouched by tragedy. Women became the guardians of the family, and took over the responsibility, previously held by men.
The grassroots committees which were formed before the uprising, now created these structures. Which sustained this uprising. Women's organizations assumed a major role in these committees and they came to the forefront helping with every aspect of daily life. They taught the children when schools were shuts, they protected the teenagers from the Israeli soldiers pretending every young one is their own child surrounding the soldiers, and they started home production to boost the economy and many other countless services.
Palestinian men were showing signs of accepting the more active role of women in the struggle and the social life.” [58]
The high level of militarization in the Second Intifada 2000-2004 – the so-called Al‐Aqsa Intifada – prevented women initially to play a similar central role in the resistance. However they later started to join in increasing number the armed units of the resistance organizations and some even became shahidats. This is reflected in the fact that since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, over 300 Palestinian women have been arrested as part of the struggle against the occupation. Rula Abu Daho reports:
“In 2008, approximately 126 women prisoners remain incarcerated, including 12 children (under the age of 18). This number reflects a significant rise in the participation of Palestinian women in the national struggle. Ninety percent of the female prisoners are affiliated with one or other Palestinian political faction. This is a new phenomenon; during the First Intifada only three percent of the women arrested resisting the occupation had a factional affiliation. It is also notable that some of the affiliated women prisoners were members of their faction’s military wings. They took part in activities that exceeded merely aiding resistance fighters; this had never happened before. Finally, the majority of these prisoners, approximately 70 percent, are affiliated with Islamic organizations (Hamas, Islamic Jihad) indicating that the Islamic movements were able to incorporate women in the resistance. This was non-existent in the past among the Islamic movements.” [59]
In addition a number of women were elected as deputies in local elections in the West Bank and Gaza in 2004 and 2005. “The first phase of elections in the West Bank that included 26 local councils had 139 women candidates and 748 men; 52 of the women won seats by direct voting while only 19 women won through the quota system compared to 255 male candidates. The second phase included 76 local councils in the West Bank and eight in the Gaza Strip. The number of women candidates was 397 compared to 2124 men. One hundred and five women won through direct voting and 59 won through the quota system; 748 male candidates won seats.” [60]
Such a level of women deputies of course still reflects the inequality between the genders. However it should be noted it is clearly above the share of women amongst parliamentarian deputies in such modern capitalist democracies like Japan (7.9% of all deputies) and Ireland (15.1%) and is on a similar level like Luxemburg (21.7%) or Britain (22.5%). [61]
The new wave of mass resistance which started with the beginning of the Arab Revolution in early 2011 had massive repercussions for young women. Particularly, young women played a central role in the mobilizations and committees:
“The real rising of the new youth movement was influenced by the Arab Spring in the early 2011. Women had an active role in this new movement. As it remains currently not politicized, the movement has attracted large number of women. On the street, it was the women’s role that was more dominant than the men’s role this time. The chanting and demonstrations were led by young female activists either against the occupation or against the local leadership. The new generation of women seemed more determined to challenge the social restrictions of the Palestinian society. (…)
Every week in the different villages of popular resistance, you can clearly see the women standing in the front line of the demonstrations. Most of these young women leave their houses secretly to attend these demonstrations.
Being a woman, a 48-Palestinian and person with disability has, in many ways, imposed extraordinary difficulties on my political activism in general,” said Budour Hasan, a law student and woman activist. “The biggest challenge I continue to face is the staunch opposition of my family. My family’s opposition means that I have to carry out the bulk of my political activities under the radar.”
In the organizational meetings of the new youth groups, the numbers of women are mostly larger than those of the men. With the dominant role of women on streets, women have an equal role to that of men in the decision making within the new youth groups. Nonetheless, many challenges remains, and the fear of the repetition of the scenario of the first Intifada exists.” [62]
Thus we can summarize that on one hand Palestinian women face detrimental factors for their liberation struggle insofar as the Palestinian society is characterized by a low level of industrialization and urbanization as a result of the long history of imperialist oppression and exploitation. As a result patriarchal structures remain very strong. On the other hand, the particularly brutal national oppression by the Israeli state pushes women at a certain point into a very active and prominent role in the liberation struggle.
Revolutionaries fight for the massive organization of women. The already existing women’s committees are an important starting point. They could become the basis for a revolutionary working class women’s movement as part of a revolutionary workers party and the Fifth International. Naturally the goal is not to separate the women’s movement from the working class and resistance movement but rather to strengthen the role of women inside the liberation movement and to overcome the manifold obstacles for women caused by the patriarchal structures and traditions. A revolutionary working class women’s movement will be based on a program which struggles for the complete liberation of women as part of the permanent revolution, i.e. the program of the combined national liberation and socialist transformation of the whole society.
The role of Migrants
Since the first Intifada and the treacherous Oslo Agreement in the early 1990s, Israel has systematically replaced Palestinian workers with migrant workers coming mostly from Asia and Africa. As a result non-Israeli workers today number between 250,000 to 400,000, more than half of whom are in the country illegally. [63] This is a significant proportion out of 3.1 million wage laborers in Israel. [64]
Most migrants work in three sectors of the economy: agriculture, construction and domestic care. [65] Today the majority of new migrants come from Asian countries (India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Thailand, Nepal, China as well as Turkey) and Eastern Europe. [66]
They are – like migrants from poorer countries in general who live in imperialist countries – nationally oppressed and economically super-exploited. [67] They have only very limited rights or none at all (if they are living illegally in the country). Migrants are increasingly victims of mass deportations and fascist attacks. [68]
Migrant workers in Israel get an average wage of 4,622 NIS while the average wage for all workers (i.e. Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian and migrants) is 8,563 NIS (2011). [69] From these figures it is easy to conclude that Israeli Jewish workers have at least double as high wages as the Palestinian and migrants workers.
Thus migrant workers constitute a sizeable minority of the working class in Israel which – in opposite of many Israeli Jewish workers – don’t have any privileges. Furthermore they have no national loyalty to the Israeli Zionist state. For these two reasons they can be an important ally of the Palestinian working class – the vanguard of the coming revolution. Arab and Jewish revolutionaries will do their best to build links to these layers of the working class.
What should be the slogans for power in the Permanent Revolution in Palestine?
After outlining several specifics of the permanent revolution we can now move to summarize central aspects of the Transitional Program for the Palestine Revolution.
The comrades from the ISL have repeatedly raised the slogan of a “Workers and Fallahin Government from the River to the Sea”. By this they emphasized the correct transitional slogan for power – i.e. for a government where the working class in alliance with the peasants takes power on the basis of councils and armed militias in order to expropriate the bourgeoisie and opens the door to socialism. They also – by using the Arab word Fallahin for the peasantry – emphasize the Palestinian character of the government as well as the need to integrate the poor peasants into the revolutionary transformation.
Finally the slogan correctly points out the need to fight for power in the whole of historic Palestine (“from the River to the Sea”). Of course, giving the fragmented character of Palestine today – 1948-occupied Israel, West Bank, Gaza – it is possible that the revolution advances unevenly, i.e. that the struggle for power advances more in one part before reaching another part. However, even if the Workers and Fallahin take power first in let us say Gaza they must immediately strive to extend the revolution to the whole of Palestine.
Such a Workers and Fallahin Government has to fight for a single state from the River to the Sea that is a
* Democratic, Palestinian and multinational Republic as well as a
* Workers and Fallahin Republic
Let us explain this more in detail. The slogan of a single Democratic State in the whole of Palestine is a historic and progressive one. It expresses the desire of the Palestinians and all progressive Jews to smash the Zionist state and to replace it with a single state. In this state all privileges for the Israeli Jewish oppressor nation – which they automatically have in the present Apartheid State – will be abolished. All Palestinian refugees will have the right to return and will – given the fact that they form a 2:1 majority and that it is their historic homeland – shape the character of the future state.
Such a Democratic State will be a Palestinian State since the Palestinian people are historically and actually the majority population. In addition, the driving force of the Revolution will be Palestinian workers and peasants and their Arab brothers and sisters in the region, not the relatively privileged Israeli-Jewish workers. This will undoubtedly imprint the character of the future state.
Our attitude is the same as Trotsky’s when he developed the revolutionary perspective for the Revolution in Apartheid South Africa. Given the national oppression of the black majority, he stated that the future state coming out of the liberation struggle will be a “Black Republic”:
“Under these conditions, the South African republic will emerge first of all as a "black" republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites or brotherly relations between the two races- depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. But it is entirely obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain imprint on the state.
Insofar as a victorious revolution will radically change the relation not only between the classes but also between the races and will assure the blacks that place in the state that correctly corresponds to their numbers, thus far will the social revolution in South Africa also have a national character.
We have not the slightest reason to close our eyes this side of the question or to diminish its significance. On the contrary, the proletarian party should in words and in deeds openly and boldly take the solution of the national (racial) problem in its hands.” [70]
It is in this spirit that we define the future state we are fighting for in Palestine as a “Palestinian Republic”.
The new state will have a multinational character for several reasons. First we take into account that migrant workers constitute a sizeable minority of the working class in Israel. Even more important they are not part of the huge and privileged Israeli-Jewish labor aristocracy. Thus in opposite of them, these migrant workers have nothing to lose but their chains. For that reason the revolutionary slogan of power must reflect that the migrant workers shall play a role a future state in Palestine if they wish to stay. Hence the revolutionary Action Program recognizes their full and equal rights like equal wages, full citizenship rights, equality of languages etc.
Secondly we have to take into account smaller minorities like the approximately 130,000 Druze as well as the Bedouins.
Thirdly the Jews will form an important minority in the future Workers and Fallahin Republic. We have said that the Jews will lose any privileges which they got in the Zionist Apartheid state. They will have equal citizenship rights like all others. For reasons we explained above they will have no right of national self-determination. But this does not mean that they have no special rights at all. They shall have full citizenship and cultural rights – like equality of the Hebrew language in all spheres of the public (education sector, media, administration etc.), public restaurants with kosher food, respect for Shabbat and other holy days, etc. In addition it is important to commemorate to the Marxist concept of local self-government to which Engels and Lenin attached so much importance. [71] Such local self-government will give all people – including the Jews – the possibility to organize their life according to their needs.
It is however equally important to understand the following limitations. As we already said Marxists defend the full national right of self-determination of the Palestinian people. This includes their right to return to their homeland. Their wish to return to their houses, villages and towns are superior to the Israeli Jewish settler “right” to continue living where they currently stay. Naturally a future workers state has no interest in any chaotic expulsions. But if a Palestinian family wants to return to their home, they must have this right. Of course it is also possible that they prefer to live in new houses in areas close to their former homes. In both cases a massive public housing program is urgently necessary – to build alternative houses either for the Jewish or the Palestinian families – and will be a major project of the future workers state.
If one takes into account the extraordinary privileges which the Israeli Jewish population enjoy by the Zionist Apartheid state, it is very likely that a significant proportion of them will not accept a democratic state and equality with the Palestinians. We have seen the developments in Africa after the end of the European colonial empires. Many of the white colonial settlers left the country since they didn’t want to accept being a minority in a (formally) independent country in which the black population dominates. For example, at the end of the 1970s, Portugal’s withdrawal from Mozambique and Angola spurred a great exodus, in which 95% of whites in both countries left. In Zimbabwe, this exodus was also huge where the white population dropped from a peak of around 296,000 in 1975 to 120,000 in 1999 to just 30,000 today. [72] In South Africa this development was less dramatic. Nevertheless even here and even despite the fact that the white population could retain their privileged material position, some 800,000 out of a total white population of 4 million have left the country since 1995. [73] Bear in mind that these developments did take place despite the fact that all these countries remained capitalist and therefore the wealthy white settler population could keep their material privileges. Obviously in a Workers State the rich will lose their wealth which will be put to the use of the whole society.
On the other hand, Israeli Jews will get a life in peace and security, without the permanent danger of wars and terrorist attacks. In short, a future Palestinian Workers State will offer a peaceful life and equal rights to all Jews who accept the loss of their Apartheid privileges and the implementation of the democratic rights for the Palestinian majority population.
Such a democratic revolution can only be successful if it is combined with the socialist revolution leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore a democratic republic must be a Workers and Fallahin Republic.
For Marxists a Workers and Fallahin Republic is another name for what scientifically should be called a Palestinian multinational Workers State from the River to the Sea. The RCIT and its section in Israel/Occupied Palestine are fighting for this goal. [74]
The tasks of this Workers and Fallahin Republic will be manifold. It has to expropriate the big capitalists which are mostly either Israeli-Jewish or foreign. This expropriation is essential to plan the economy according to the society’s needs. In particular such a planned economy will be necessary in order to organize the massive rebuilding projects which will enable the Palestinian people (many of them refugees) to come back and to live under decent conditions as well as to end the extreme gap in living standards between the Jews and the Palestinians.
This shows once more the close relationship between the Palestinian democratic revolution and the socialist revolution. The democratic tasks of giving the Palestinian homeland back to its people can only be realized if the new Workers State takes over the economy. Only by this, the economic means can be made operative for the purpose of the (Palestinian-majority) society instead of the Israeli Jews capitalist class and the Israeli Jewish oppressor nation.
The same is true for the question of control over the land. Currently the Zionist state or by quasi-state agencies owns an estimated 93% of the country’s total land area (excluding the West Bank and Gaza). About ¾ are directly state-owned, about 13% are owned by the Jewish National Fund and the rest is controlled by the Development Authority. [75] In the West Bank too, Israel has granted Jewish settlements control of 43% of the land. In addition, it has designated 18 to 20% of the West Bank as closed military zones and another 10% as park land. [76] All this land must be nationalized and taken over by the Palestinian Workers State. It will be given for use to the poor Palestinian peasant families who have hardly any land or who were expropriated and expelled in the past. Naturally voluntary cooperatives shall be promoted in order to organize efficient large-scale agricultural production.
The struggle for such a Workers and Fallahin Republic is part of our perspective of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East which would be the unity on equal base for all people of the region.
For all these reasons we can summarize our perspective in the slogan: “For a Democratic, Palestinian, Multinational and Socialist Workers and Fallahin Republic from the River to the Sea”. Its agitational short version is “Free, Red Palestine!”
On the slogan of a “single democratic state in Palestine”
A number of left-wing forces share our perspective of fighting for a single state in the whole of Palestine and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees but they differ from the revolutionary Marxists on the question of the class character of such a future state. While we clearly state that it must be a Workers and Fallahin Republic, i.e. a Workers State, they prefer to call – in different but similar formulations – for a “United Palestine, secular, democratic and non-racist”. Such a perspective is only natural for left-wing petty-bourgeois nationalist Palestinian forces like the PFLP and DFLP or revolutionary democratic movements like Abnaa al-Balad.
It is however absurd if such a perspective is called for by organizations who claim to be “Trotskyist”. This is particularly true for those who come from the centrist tradition of Nahuel Moreno. They raise the slogan of a “United Palestine, secular, democratic and non-racist” as an independent slogan, without inextricably linking it with the slogan of a Workers and Peasants Republic. [77] But only a clear statement about the class basis of a democratic state can avoid the petty-bourgeois trap of following the Menshevik two-stage concept of fighting first for (capitalist) democracy and later for a socialist revolution. If the working class, in alliance with the peasantry and the poor, will not erect its socialist dictatorship, other classes will automatically rule. In other words, the bourgeoisie – in combination with the upper strata of the petty-bourgeoisie – will unavoidably constitute the ruling class, if the working class does not consciously and systematically smash their state apparatus (army, administration etc.) and take over the economy. This is why Trotsky denounced the Stalinist use of the old pre-1917 Bolshevik slogan “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” and developed the strategy of Permanent Revolution. In his writings on the lessons of the Chinese Revolution in 1925-27 and the betrayal of the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois Kuomintang Trotsky wrote:
“To advance now the slogan of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry after the role not only of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but also of Chinese "democracy" has been put to a thorough test, after it has become absolutely incontestable that ''democracy" will play even a greater hangman's role in the coming battles than in the past -- to advance this slogan now is simply to create the means of covering up the new varieties of Kuomintangism and to prepare a noose for the proletariat.” [78]
However one has to say that the Stalinists in the 1920s at least spoke about the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”. The Morenoites are even worse and speak only about a “democratic Palestine” without even mentioning the proletariat!
A more left-wing version of this Morenoite deviation can be found in the program for Palestine of the comrades from the FLTI. They raise the slogan: “For a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state of the workers and poor farmers government defended by the self-organised and armed Palestinian masses!” [79]
While such a slogan which raises the workers and poor peasant government is certainly more left-wing than the LIT Menshevism, it fails to overcome the failure of the 1920s right-wing centrism of the Stalinist-Bukharinist Comintern. It does not exemplify the class character of the state which such a workers and poor peasant government should build. As such it is open to the Menshevik two-stage concept.
However, despite all these programmatic failures, one has to state that the Latin American-based Morenoite tradition at least knows which side to take in Israel’s wars and calls for the victory of the Palestinians and the Arab people. This differentiates them positively from the imperialist economist and aristocratic currents based in Europe and North America like the CWI, IMT, the Spartacist school, etc.
The Arab Revolution and its consequences for the Palestinian Liberation Struggle
In our recently published document Thesis on the World Situation and the Tasks of the Bolshevik-Communists we noted: “For obvious historic and geostrategic reasons, Palestine remains a most central issue of the Arab Revolution. Already in November 2012 we could see the strength of the Palestinian Resistance when it heroically defended the Gaza strip successfully against the Zionist army. Given the background of this political and military victory and strengthened by the wave of the Arab Revolution, it is possible that the Palestinian liberation struggle could culminate into a new Intifada.” [80]
Historically speaking the Arab Revolution has opened a new chapter of the Palestinian Revolution. Until now the Arab dictatorships were – in addition to the imperialist Great Powers – the most important pillars of stability in the Middle East which secured both the Western Great Powers’ control over the region as well as Israel’s privileged position.
The revolutionary wave which brought several dictatorships down since early 2011 will have inevitable massive consequences for the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Surely the Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood of Mursi is already showing its pro-imperialist character and it is also possible that Hamas will follow the path of Arafat’s and Fatah’s capitulation and sign an Oslo II agreement. While such agreements will constitute setbacks in the struggle, it remains a fact that these bourgeois regimes in the semi-colonial Arab world are much less stable than the reactionary dictatorships of Nasser/Sadat/Mubarak, of Gaddafi, of Assad, of Ben Ali etc. who ran the Arab world for decades.
However, the decisive question is if the vanguard of the working class and the oppressed in the Middle East can build a revolutionary party in time. Such a party must fight against the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois Islamists. These forces are fake alternatives which are radical in words but which serve either directly the imperialists (like Mursi, Erdogan or Ennahda) or which reactionary mislead the struggles with sectarian, anti-working class perspectives and tactics (like al-Nusra in Syria, various Salafists in Egypt). The revolutionary party must consistently support the workers and oppressed to advance independent mass organizations – independent trade unions, popular committees and action councils, armed self-defense committees etc. It must defend the right of women, youth and national minorities. And it must link the struggle for democratic rights with the perspective of the socialist revolution.
The struggle for the Permanent Revolution in Palestine is closely linked with the fate of the Arab Revolution. A successful revolution in an Arab country, bringing the working class to power, would have tremendous effects for the Palestinian masses. Similarly, after the fall of the Arab dictators it might be easier to organize mass support in the Arab world for the Palestinian resistance – including weapons and volunteers. It is therefore understandable why the Israeli ruling class is frightened by the Arab Revolution. [81]
New wars of Israel against the Palestinian resistance and/or the Arab countries are inevitable and the Zionist state could face defeats in these wars. This could have important effects for the self-confidence of the Arab masses and the Palestinian masses in particular as well as demoralizing effects for the supporters of the Zionist state.
Revolutionaries in Palestine should intervene in the coming struggles with a program for a “Democratic, Palestinian, Multinational and Socialist Workers and Fallahin Republic from the River to the Sea” and seek to organize Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish workers and oppressed around it. The RCIT and its section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, the ISL, are fighting for such a program and for the building of revolutionary party in these countries as well as internationally.
[1] We have taken this summary from the chapter “The Theory of Permanent Revolution and its Program for the Working Class Struggle” in our recently published book Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South. Continuity and Changes in the Super-Exploitation of the Semi-Colonial World by Monopoly Capital. Consequences for the Marxist Theory of Imperialism. (for details see www.great-robbery-of-the-south.net)
[2] Leon Trotsky: The Permanent Revolution, The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects, Pathfinder Press, New York 1969, pp. 131-133
[3] See Gudrun Krämer: Geschichte Palästina, München 2002, p. 164-165
[4] See Israel at forefront of 'land grab' in poorer countries, 29 January 2013, http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/5110-israel-at-forefront-of-land-grab-in-poorer-countries
[5] International Marxist Tendency: Perspectives for Revolution in the Middle East, 18 February 2013 http://www.marxist.com/perspectives-for-revolution-in-the-middle-east-part-1.htm
[6] On the question of the Labor Aristocracy see also our new RCIT book: Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South. Continuity and Changes in the Super-Exploitation of the Semi-Colonial World by Monopoly Capital. Consequences for the Marxist Theory of Imperialism, pp. 228-240
[7] Yaron Druckman: CBS: 27% of Israelis struggle with Hebrew. Central Bureau of Statistics finds that Hebrew is native tongue of only 49% of Israelis; 12% of Arabs, 26% of Russians don't speak any Hebrew at all, 21.1.2013, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4335235,00.html
[8] ISL: On Zionism, August 2009, http://www.the-isleague.com/on-zionism. This article gives an excellent overview of the reactionary history of Zionism and the Israeli state.
[9] See on this the article of our comrade Yossi Schwartz: What is the meaning of the Zionist’s Offensive against the Haredi Jews? 25.3.2013, http://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa/israel-haredi-jews
[10] We observed this phenomenon in the Theses on Palestine which we elaborated in our predecessor organization (MRCI/LRCI/LFI): “But an important element of the national consciousness of the Israeli Jews is its chauvinist and oppressive attitude to the Arabs. The Israeli Jews, while they have forged a national consciousness in the last forty years which is distinct from their sense of themselves as part of world Jewry, are part of an oppressor nation; their national consciousness has been forged only by a simultaneous denial of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians to self-determination.” (MRCI: Theses on Zionism, Israel, Palestine and Arab nationalism, September 1988, in: Trotskyist International No. 2, p. 12, http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/theses-zionism-israel-palestine-and-arab-nationalism)
[11] The ISL comrades stated correctly in a document in 2009: “Whether the Israelis are a nation or not, we as Marxists do not support the right of self-determination for imperialist states. Our position is in sharp contradiction to the Middle class Marxists who claim that Marxists support the right of self-determination of all nations, including the imperialists.” (ISL: On Zionism, August 2009, http://www.the-isleague.com/on-zionism) A similar position was expressed in the MRCI Theses on Zionism, Israel, Palestine and Arab nationalism from 1988 mentioned above: “Consequently Israel is an oppressor nation and as such we do not recognise its right to exist as a nation state.”
[12] A. Said and Moshe Machover: Arab Revolution and National Problems in The Arab East, Matzpen, The International, Summer 1973, http://98.130.214.177/index.asp?u=101&p=revolution. In German language in: die Internationale , March 1974. Irrespective of these political failures we appreciate the important role which Matzpen played in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the only, pre-dominantly-Jewish, Anti-Zionist organization in Israel. They stood against the stream in words and deeds. Revolutionaries in Israel today can build on their courage and achievements and at the same time overcome their political weakness. It is worth noting that our comrade Yossi Schwartz was an active member of Matzpen at that time and is one of the extremely few who still continue the struggle against Zionism and for revolutionary Marxism. Most others have either left politics or, like Michel Warschawski, developed towards social democratic left-liberalism.
[13] Spartacists: Zionist Cops Murder Arab Strikers. For a Socialist Federation of the Near East!; in: Workers Vanguard #105, 16 April 1976, http://www.regroupment.org/main/page_wvpal.html
[14] IBT: For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East! Israel Out of the Occupied Territories! in: 1917 No.5 (Winter 1988-89) http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no5/no05pala.html
[15] IG: For an Arab-Hebrew Palestinian Workers State in a Socialist Federation of the Near East, June 2010, http://www.internationalist.org/palestineworkersstate1005.html
[16] IG: Defend the Palestinian People! For an Arab/Hebrew Workers Republic in a Socialist Federation of the Near East! February 2001, http://www.internationalist.org/palestineintifada0201.html
[17] Alan Woods and Ted Grant: Marxism and the National Question, 25 February 2000, http://www.marxist.com/marxism-national-question250200.htm
[18] CWI: The crisis of capitalism and the naked role of imperialism are graphically manifested in the Middle East. Document No. 3, CWI 10th World Congress, 28.12.2010 http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4736
[19] Peter Taaffe: Marxismus heute. Antworten auf Krieg, Kapitalismus und Umweltzerstörung (2006), p. 40; We are quoting and translating from the German translation since we don’t possess the English-language original of „Marxism in today’s World“.
[20] CWI: World Relations. Document No. 1, CWI 10th World Congress, 26.12.2010 http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4735
[21] See Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Palestine in Figures 2012, Ramallah 2013, p. 10; Elior Levy: Report: Palestinians to outnumber Jews by 2020, 01.01.13, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4327295,00.html; Asher Zeiger: Israel at 65: Population tops 8 million, April 14, 2013, http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-at-65-population-tops-8-million
[22] Spartacists: Zionist Bloodbath in Jenin, in: Workers Vanguard No. 779, 19 April 2002, quoted by the Spartacists in their article: LRP: Apologists for Arab Nationalism, Workers Vanguard No. 796, 31 January 2003, http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/archives/oldsite/2003/LRP796.htm
[23] V. I. Lenin: The revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1915); in: LCW 21, p. 409. On the issue of the contradictions and struggles between imperialist and semi-colonial countries, oppressed and oppressor nations we refer readers to our new RCIT book: Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South. Continuity and Changes in the Super-Exploitation of the Semi-Colonial World by Monopoly Capital. Consequences for the Marxist Theory of Imperialism
[24] V.I. Lenin - Socialism and War (1915); in: CW 21, pp.316-17
[25] V. I. Lenin: The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1916); in: LCW 22, p. 143
[26] V. I. Lenin: Resolution on the National Question. Resolution of the Summer 1913 Joint Conference of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. and Party Officials (1913); in: LCW 19, p. 428
[27] V. I. Lenin: The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, in: LCW 21, p. 409
[28] V. I. Lenin: The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, in: LCW 22, p. 146
[29] Programm der Kommunistischen Partei Rußlands (Bolschewiki) (1919); in: Boris Meissner: Das Parteiprogramm der KPdSU 1906-1961, Köln 1962, p. 128; in English: Program of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): adopted March 22, 1919 at the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party
[30] Leon Trotsky: On the South African Theses (1935); in: Trotsky Writings 1934-35, p. 251
[31] See on this various articles from the ISL. For example The ISL Position on Wars, August 2009, http://www.the-isleague.com/wars. ISL: The Zionist State Tries to Break Gaza Again – and Fails Again, http://www.the-isleague.com/gaza-war-2012-english.php. The RCIT respective its predecessor organization (MRCI/LRCI/LFI) expressed the same position e.g. in MRCI: Theses on Zionism, Israel, Palestine and Arab nationalism (1989), in: Trotskyist International No. 2, http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/theses-zionism-israel-palestine-and-arab-nationalism; RCIT: New Wave of Israeli Terror against Gaza: Support the Palestinian Resistance! Defeat the Zionist killing machine! Statement from 15.11.2012, http://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa/defend-gaza. Comrade Yossi Schwartz is currently working on a series of historical article about Israel’s wars which we intend to publish it the near future.
[32] Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South. Continuity and Changes in the Super-Exploitation of the Semi-Colonial World by Monopoly Capital. Consequences for the Marxist Theory of Imperialism, Chapter 13.
[33] International Marxist Tendency: Perspectives for Revolution in the Middle East, 18 February 2013 http://www.marxist.com/perspectives-for-revolution-in-the-middle-east-part-1.htm
[34] Such e.g. CWI leader Peter Taaffe wrote in his book on the history of Militant: “The democratic rights of the 1,800 Falklanders, including the right to self-determination, if they so desired, was a key question in the consciousness of British workers. (…) Marxists could not be indifferent to the fate of the Falklanders, particularly given the consciousness of the British working class as it developed over this issue.” (Peter Taaffe: The Rise of Militant, London 1995, Chapter 20 “The Falklands/Malvinas War”, http://socialistalternative.org/literature/militant)
[35] In our old Theses on Palestine from 1988 (which we quoted above) we stated that Israel is not an imperialist country, but is rather a “special type of semi-colony”, a unique, reactionary and highly privileged state which is dependent of the imperialist powers. The comrades from the ISL however convinced us that this has changed since then and that Israel has become a small imperialist power.
[36] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, 2012, Summary, pp. 13-14
[37] Quoted in Daniel Doron: Breaking Israel's Monopolies, Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440604575495710079605480.html
[38] Israeli multinationals back on track after a difficult year. Report by the Manufacturers Association of Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv University and the Vale Columbia Center, 12.12.2011, pp. 1-2
[39] UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2012, p. 173
[40] The World‘s Biggest Companies, The Forbes Magazine, 18.4.2012, http://www.forbes.com/global2000
[41] Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel): Statistical Abstract of Israel 2012, p. 1025
[42] United Nations Development Programme: Human Development Report 2013. The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, p. 144
[43] CIA: The World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html
[44] See e.g. FLTI: Palestine: An Internationalist Revolutionary Position, International Workers’ Organizer, Brochure # 2, July 2009
[45] Leo Trotzki: Was Nun? Schicksalsfragen des deutschen Proletariats (1932); in: Schriften über Deutschland, Band 1, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1971S. 193f.; in English: Leon Trotsky: What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat (1932), http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1932-ger/index.htm
[46] OECD: Society at a Glance 2011: OECD Social Indicators, 2011, p. 43 (Panel A: Annual median equivalised disposable household income in USD at current prices and current PPPs in 2007)
[47] United Nations Development Programme: Human Development Report 2013. The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, p. 144
[48] Phil Hemmings, Peter Jarrett, Charlotte Moeser: OECD Israel Economic Survey, 2010, p. 27
[49] OECD Economic Surveys: Israel, December 2011, Overview, p. 20
[50] The Growing Income Gap between Israel and Its Closest Neighbor, November 11, 2011 http://knowledgetoday.wharton.upenn.edu/2011/11/the-growing-income-gap-between-israel-and-its-closest-neighbor
[51] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Labour Force Survey 2012, Ramallah 2013, p. 110
[52] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Labour Force Survey 2012, Ramallah 2013, p. 62
[53] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Palestine in Figures 2012, Ramallah 2013, p. 18
[54] Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel): Statistical Abstract of Israel 2012, pp. 247. The figures are for migrants which arrived in the year 2011. The figures for 2010 are nearly identical.
[55] See on this e.g. Nina Gunić: Die Geschichte der Frauenbewegung und ihre Klassendifferenzen, in: Unter der Fahne der Revolution Nr.5 (2010), www.thecommunists.net/theory/klassenkampf-frauenbewegung
[56] On Wafa Idris and other shahidats see Meredith E. Ebel: My Body is a Barrel of Gunpowder: Palestinian Women's Suicide Bombing in the Second Intifada (2012). Dietrich College Honors Theses, Paper 147, http://repository.cmu.edu/hsshonors/147
[57] See Sarah Levene: What was the Role of Palestinian Women in the First Intifada? 3 October 2011, http://sarah-levene.blogspot.co.at/2011/10/what-was-role-of-palestinian-women-in.html
[58] Sai'da Nusseibeh: Palestinian culture and identity and the role of Palestinian women, Women's NGOs annual meeting-1997, http://www.mideastweb.org/palestinianwomen.htm; see also Marianne Torres: Women in the Intifada, Palestine Papers, Issue: August, 1989, http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/palestine/women2.html
[59] Rula Abu Daho: Palestina: The Second Intifada. The Women’s Movement at a Crossroads, 12 March 2008, http://www.cetri.be/spip.php?article385&lang=en
[60] Rula Abu Daho: Palestina: The Second Intifada. The Women’s Movement at a Crossroads, 12 March 2008, http://www.cetri.be/spip.php?article385&lang=en
[61] Inter-Parliamentary Union: Women in national parliaments (April 2013), www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm
[62] Maath Musleh: Women’s Activism in Palestine. From the Disappointment of the First Intifada to the Hope of a New Movement, April 16th, 2012, www.deliberation.info/women-activism-in-palestine; see also Interview with Khitam Saafin (Chairwoman of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees): Why Hana al-Shalabi’s hunger strike is the focus of Women’s Day in Palestine, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, The Electronic Intifada 7 March 2012 http://electronicintifada.net/content/interview-why-hana-al-shalabis-hunger-strike-focus-womens-day-palestine/11036
[63] See e.g. Yehudah Mirsky: Illegal Immigrants in Israel, http://www.myjewishlearning.com/israel/Contemporary_Life/Society_and_Religious_Issues/Illegal_Immigrants_in_Israel.shtml; 260,000 Foreign Workers in Israel, 11.1.2012, http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/article.php?p=114087
[64] Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel): Statistical Abstract of Israel 2012, pp. 602
[65] Adriana Kemp: Reforming Policies on Foreign Workers in Israel (2010), OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 103, OECD Publishing, p. 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5kmjnr8pbp6f-en
[66] Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel): Statistical Abstract of Israel 2012, pp. 247; see also Adriana Kemp: Reforming Policies on Foreign Workers in Israel (2010), OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 103, OECD Publishing, p. 10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5kmjnr8pbp6f-en
[67] See on this Michael Pröbsting: Marxismus, Migration und revolutionäre Integration (2010); in: Der Weg des Revolutionären Kommunismus, Nr. 7, http://www.thecommunists.net/publications/werk-7. We have published a summary of this study in English-language: Michael Pröbsting: Marxism, Migration and revolutionary Integration, in: Revolutionary Communism, No. 1 (English-language Journal of the RCIT), http://www.thecommunists.net/oppressed/revolutionary-integration. See also the sub-chapter “Value Transfer from the Semi-Colonial South to the Imperialist North: Migration” in our book Michael Pröbsting: The Great Robbery of the South. Continuity and Changes in the Super-Exploitation of the Semi-Colonial World by Monopoly Capital. Consequences for the Marxist Theory of Imperialism, pp. 179-188
[68] See Yossi Schwartz: Fight against Zionist Racism and Fascism in Israel, 5.3.2013, www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa/fight-zionist-racism
[69] Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel): Statistical Abstract of Israel 2012, pp. 604-606
[70] Leon Trotsky: On the South African Theses (1935); in: Trotsky Writings 1934-35, p. 249
[71] See e.g. V. I. Lenin: The State and Revolution. The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution; in: LCW Vol. 25, pp. 452-454
[72] Joshua Hammer: (Almost) Out of Africa: The White Tribes, World Affairs, May/June 2010 http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/almost-out-africa-white-tribes
[73] Scott C. Johnson: Fleeing From South Africa, Newsweek, 13.2.2009 http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/02/13/fleeing-from-south-africa.html
[74] In our predecessor organization, the MRCI/LRCI/LFI, we used the slogan of an “Arab-Jewish Workers State”. While meaning essentially the same (for the right of all refugees to return, no right of self-determination for the Israeli Jewish settler people, etc.), this slogan has a disadvantage compared to the slogan of a “Palestinian multinational Workers State”. It expresses less precisely the national, democratic aspect of the permanent revolution – i.e. the fact that the revolution can only succeed, can only be democratic, if it ensures the right to return for the Palestinian people to their homeland which as a result will form the national majority of the new, multinational workers state.
[75] See Israel Lands: Privatization or National Ownership? http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/land.html; Anshel Pfeffer and Yoav Stern: High Court delays ruling on JNF land sales to non-Jews, 24.9.2007 http://www.haaretz.com/news/high-court-delays-ruling-on-jnf-land-sales-to-non-jews-1.229946
[76] Equal Rights for Palestinians. Apartheid and Occupation, www.seamac.org/EqualRights.htm
[77] See e.g. International Workers League-Fourth International (LIT-CI): One State – Palestine. For a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state; in: New Epoch. Number 139, May 2008, http://internationalsocialistleague.org.uk/ileague-fourth-international/international-courier/foe-a-secular-democratic-and-non-racist-palestinian-state
[78] Leon Trotsky: The Third International After Lenin (1928), New York 1970, pp. 193-194, http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti09.htm#p3-03.
[79] FLT: Appeal Of The Leninist Trotskyist Fraction: Let’s build a revolutionary internationalist Bloc, in: International Workers’ Organizer No. 1 (2008), p. 8; see also FLTI: Palestine: An Internationalist Revolutionary Position, International Workers’ Organizer, Brochure # 2, July 2009
[80] RCIT: The World Situation and the Tasks of the Bolshevik-Communists (March 2013). Theses of the International Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, March 2013, www.thecommunists.net/theory/world-situation-march-2013
[81] As an example for Israel’s rulers fear we quote from a document written by former IDF Major General Danny Rothschild and Tommy Steiner for the 2012 Herzliya conference: “Thus, a year after the beginning of the popular uprising across the region, not only is there no progress in addressing the two major Middle East challenges – under-development and radicalism – the region has regressed.” (Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Danny Rothschild and Tommy Steiner, ‘The 2012 Herzliya assessment: Israel in the eye of the storms’, working paper for Twelfth Annual Herzliya Conference, 2012, p. 5, http://www.herzliyaconference.org/eng/?CategoryID=477&ArticleID=2358