7 August 2016, Alternative Information Center http://www.alternativenews.org (Israel)
Written by Michel Warschawski*
Struggling against Israel as a fascist or
apartheid state must be a part of an anti-colonial struggle that Jews
themselves participate in.
Fascism, apartheid
My friend and comrade Eli Aminov sent me a text
that he wrote titled Fascism or Apartheid. In his piece,
he argues with an
article recently published in Haaretz and
written by Professor Zeev Sternhell, a leading expert on European fascism.
Sternhell’s article warns of fascism in Israel and convincingly demonstrates
local developments reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. In response, Aminov
argues that the term “apartheid” is key to understanding contemporary Israeli
society.
If we use the term “fascism” in its broadest
sense rather than its classical definition – which
assumes that a strong working class threatens the capitalist system and
consequently must be destroyed – then
Sternhell, Avrum Burg and others who use the term are right: in the past
decade the radical right wing regime has employed violent means to thwart all
opposition. Such means include passing anti-democratic laws, employing tactics
of
delegitimisation, consolidating institutional authorities portending to
protect the regime as a “Jewish and democratic state,” and constructing the
media as a hostile entity. The unrestrained attack on Palestinian citizens,
their leaders, and institutions, however, must be added to this list.
Though Aminov accepts that the current Israeli
government uses oppressive tactics, he argues that Strenhell’s use of the term
“fascism” legitimizes the old regime and the oxymoron of a “Jewish and
democratic state.” As such, he prefers to use the term “apartheid regime.”
To comment on Aminov’s insistence of
“apartheid,” I will quote an article that I published some five years ago
titled Apartheid?
Worse than Apartheid!:
‘Five, six, seven eight, Israel is an apartheid
state!’ Like many other slogans we shout at demonstrations, this is not a
scientific definition of a regime, just like the famous slogan of students in
May 1968 'CRS=SS' didn't mean that [Charles De Gaulle]'s special forces were
committing genocide, or even something approaching that. This is an expression
of anger, and nothing more. Our South African friends from the [African
National Congress] often warned us about use of the term apartheid outside of
the South African context.
To conclude the article, I noted that if it's
best to leave the matter of defining terms to political science, we must focus
instead on the apartheid crimes being committed by the Israeli authorities.
Apartheid is both a philosophy of separation
(the literal meaning of the word in Dutch) and a regime based on dividing the population
into groups with various degrees of civil, political, social and cultural
rights. There is no need to elaborate on how these two aspects co-exist in
the Israeli regime, both within the Green Line and in the West Bank: apartheid
crimes are meticulously defined in the International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and
Israel is systematically committing dozens of such crimes.
Colonialism
Defining the regime is important to understand
its meta plan as well as the mechanisms it employs to attain its goals. It
allows us to identify who in society has an immediate interest in the struggle
– i.e. who are the direct victims of the regime or the people who pay the price
for the implementation of its plans. Therefore, Aminov's disagreement with
his interlocutor is not just a disagreement over definitions of "fascism
or apartheid," but over our duties and the social forces that can and
should be mobilized in the struggle against the regime.
Israel is a colonial state in every way – it's
regime, institutions, and laws. It was not only born of a colonial movement
(Zionism), but primarily functions to this very day as a colonial entity
without borders using its resources to establish an ethnic state, an
exclusively Jewish state, and secure development for the benefit of a national
group defined as the owners, the Jewish community.
In Aminov’s lengthy article, the Palestinian
people and its liberation movement are not mentioned. The term “colonialism” is
mentioned only twice: first, when Aminov quotes Sternhell in a 2014 interview
with journalist Gidi Weitz, “[Israel] today is the last colonial state in the
western world... without the fear of charges of anti-Semitism, settlements
would have been boycotted long ago in Europe,” and second in his initial
response to Sternhell's statement, “indeed, every word is true... Sternhell was
correct in his assertion that Israel is the last colonial state existing in the
world due to munificence of the West.”
Let there be no mistake: I am casting no doubt
whatsoever on the anti-colonialism (i.e. in the Israeli context, anti-Zionism)
of Aminov. The disagreement with him pertains to the question of centrality of
the Palestinian national movement.
When reading his article (and all of his
articles), we meet “the masses,” – i.e. Jews and Arabs, who must be united in a
struggle for secularism and democracy, or “a secular democratic state,” and
whose difference in identity is, at most, the religion of their parents or
grandparents. This, by the way, was the initial approach (with various nuances)
of Fatah and most of the Arab left-wing groups until the end of the 1980s.
In contrast to Aminov’s approach, I maintain
that the key players on the ground are not an apartheid state and the “masses”
that must be united. Instead, the key players include a colonial state that
continues to rely on the support of people who enjoy vast privileges over the
indigenous population and the Palestinian national liberation movement that
relies on the support of the Arab peoples (due to today's absence of an
organized Arab national movement).
From here, of course, we can derive some
conclusions on the role of Israeli anti-colonial activists: on the one hand to
support, as best they can, the national rights of the Palestinian people and
their struggle for liberation (solidarity), and on the other to entrench
divisions amongst the colonial population. This population is not homogenous
block, but a society with classes, rich and poor, the exploited and exploiters.
Jewish-Arab unity is not a reality but a
project that must be built with solidarity and through the accentuation of
the internal contradictions that underpin the colonial Israeli society.
*Michael Warschawski is
a veteran anti-colonialist Israeli activist, former political prisoner,
and co-founder of the Alternative Information Center.
Translated by the Alternative Information
Center.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário