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Two
weeks ago I responded to an article posted on The
Blanket by Henry McDonald entitled “The
Beast is Back”. The thrust of his argument
was that sympathy for the Palestinian cause in this
country was symptomatic of an historically-rooted,
especially virulent form of anti-semitism peculiar
to the Irish-and most specifically the Irish left.
As evidence, McDonald recounted the discussion that
he’d heard on a radio talk show that was overwhelmingly
sympathetic to the Palestinians, but failed to supply
a single quote to confirm that anti-semitism rather
than, say, basic human decency, motivated the callers.
Pilfering rather selectively from an important recent
study on Racism and Social Change in the Irish
Republic, McDonald attempted to lend academic
credibility to his argument by tracing this national
inclination back to the early twentieth century.
The
piece was, in my view, a shoddy and malicious attempt
to smear those involved in organizing against ongoing
brutality in the occupied territories and in that
sense typical of the kind of journalism-by-caricature
that McDonald and his employers inflict upon the reading
public every Sunday morning. Moreover, as I attempted
to show, it was unoriginal. Whether wilfully or not,
McDonald has lent whatever professional authority
he enjoys to a concerted effort by “friends of
Israel” around the world to push the solidarity
movement onto the defensive and thereby clear the
way to a relentless and unimpeded assault on Palestinian
life.
McDonald’s
recent rejoinder is more telling for what it does
not say than for what it does. Nowhere does
he defend the central thrust of his previous argument
that the “Irish left” is driven by anti-semitism.
Now we (in the latest rendition the “ultras”,
the “so-called anti-imperialist left,” the
“left allies of the Palestinian Authority”)
are berated for the lesser crime of clinging naively
to a “simplistic two-dimensional approach”
to the conflict, of being dupes of a reactionary and
anti-semitic surge in the Arab world.
But
those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
In spite of the vast experience that he claims in
reporting the Middle East, McDonald’s most recent
entry shows him to be both uninformed historically
and out of touch with the current situation. In a
word, he holds to an extremely simplistic perspective
on the conflict that dovetails with the commentary
emanating out of Downing Street and the White House.
Without wishing to prolong this discussion endlessly,
there are several important points that cannot go
unanswered:
- The
1967 war: McDonald asserts that in 1967 “four
Arab armies unilaterally attacked the Jewish state
with the aim of wiping it off the face of the earth”.
Almost no one except Zionist propagandists any longer
holds to this version of events. In the first place,
Israel struck first, launching “pre-emptive”
air strikes against Egypt at 5am on June 5th. But
the provocation came earlier. The UN secretary-general
at the time concluded that “[b]ellicose statements
by Israeli leaders…created…panic in the
Arab world.” The British ambassador in Tel
Aviv at the time described Israeli strategy as “deliberately
contrived preventive war”. The American anti-Zionist
Norman Finkelstein, whose parents survived the Warsaw
ghetto and the Maidanek and Auschwitz concentration
camps, concludes that Israel "faced no significant
threat, let alone mortal danger, in June 1967 [and]
diplomacy seemed…to be working [before Israel
launched pre-emptive air raids]. In The Iron
Wall: Israel and the Arab World, the gifted
Israeli historian Avi Schlaim concludes that “Israel’s
strategy of escalation on the Syrian front was probably
the single most important factor in dragging the
Middle East to war in June 1967,” a finding
supported by Michael Brecher in his authoritative
Decisions in Crisis. Israel’s minister
of defense at the time, Moshe Dayan, conceded afterward
that his forces deliberately provoked Syria: “
I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there
started…. It went this way: We would send a
tractor to plough someplace [in the demilitarized
zone] and knew in advance that the Syrians would
start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would
tell the tractor to advance farther, until…the
Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we
would use artillery and later the air force also….”
According to Shlaim, Dayan and his officers “did
not accept the 1949 armistice lines with Syria as
final and hoped to change them by means that fell
short of war, by ‘snatching bits of territory
and holding on to it until the enemy despairs and
gives it to us’.” Sound familiar?
- The
Palestinian Authority and the Rise of Hamas:
Few people on the left, and fewer on the ground
in the occupied territories, have any illusions
in the PA. But what is the basis for opposing the
PA, and what should replace them? Bush/Blair/Sharon
call for reform of the PA, as do Edward Said and
a number of other Palestinian intellectuals committed
to a secular, left-wing alternative. Here’s
the problem, though, which McDonald’s vague
critique founders upon. George Bush and company
want reform in order to manufacture a leadership
that is even more craven, more corrupt, more committed
to repression in the territories than Arafat. But
Arafat’s star is falling and the Islamist’s
rising because he has compromised too much already
and has been completely ineffective in organizing
resistance to Israeli brutality. There are mixed
signals coming out of Palestine: many have commented
on the growing influence of the Islamists (divided
themselves between those who would accept a two-state
solution and those who want to see the destruction
of Israel, and between the hesitant middle classes
and those with no reasons left to hesitate); Said
and others have suggested that a secular left is
also re-emerging. Of course socialists favor and
seek by every means at our disposal to promote the
latter. But you can’t do that with the “tit-for-tat,”
plague-on-both-your-houses understanding of events
being articulated by McDonald.
- Israeli
democracy/Arab dictatorship: I am hoping that
Henry was not suggesting in his recent piece that
the entire legacy of the Enlightenment has been
reduced to the right of lesbians to parade bare-breasted
with political slogans scrawled across their nipples
(much as I would defend their right to do so). At
the moment Palestinians in the occupied territories
would settle, I suspect, for the right to walk unmolested
to the corner shop for a pack of smokes, or to breathe
freely on what’s left of their balconies without
being fired upon by an IDF sniper. Fundamentalist
Islam has won a following in the region precisely
because in the Middle East more than any other corner
of the world “western civilization,” the
Enlightenment, all that, has never really delivered
on its promise of human emancipation. It seems hollow
enough these days in the “advanced” west,
but the gap between rhetoric and reality must be
unbearable in a region where stark poverty and crushing
oppression coexist alongside such colossal, even
obscene wealth and luxury. Imperialism-to use a
dirty word-has for the past fifty plus years relied
on two main pillars to retain control of the oil-rich
Middle East-Israeli militarism and Arab dictatorship:
they are not opposite entities but complimentary
ones. That might help explain why-contrary to what
McDonald asserts-every major Arab ruler is on record
recognizing Israel’s right to exist. The simple
fact is that genuine democracy and real freedom
in the region has always been a far more potent
threat to US and Israeli interests than dictatorship.
That was true in 1967, when the CIA defined Israel’s
main objective as “the destruction of the center
of power of the radical Arab socialist movement”
and it was true in Jordan in the early 1980s and,
as Henry should know, in Lebanon during the same
period, when Israel faced mainly secular and left-wing
opposition. Islamic fundamentalism-dubbed by Tariq
Ali the “anti-imperialism of fools”-arose
out of the ashes of their defeat.
- The
two-state solution: No hidden agenda here. Those
active in building solidarity for Palestine hold
differing opinions, with the majority probably supporting
a two-state solution. As a socialist and a defender
of the Enlightenment I am opposed to religious states
as a matter of principle. Just as I would oppose
the creation of an Islamic state, or a Catholic
one, or a Protestant one, or a Hindu one, I am opposed
as well to a Jewish state-and particularly since
that state is founded upon the dispossession of
Palestinians. Moreover, the past two years bear
out the argument that no independent Palestinian
entity is viable so long as Israel exists in its
present form. Nor is any lasting solution to the
wider conflict in the Middle East possible so long
as the people and resources of the region are dominated
by imperialism. So yes, a democratic and secular
state which gives equal rights to Jews, Muslims,
Christians and non-believers, and which accepts
that all those presently living in Israel/Palestine,
along with those forcibly expelled after 1948, have
a right to reside there. What’s so “ultra”
about that?
The
impending war against Iraq is horrible enough to contemplate
on its own, but to make matters worse, it is fairly
evident that the Israeli right will use the confrontation
to hammer the Palestinians even further, perhaps even
making good on the call to begin their “transfer”
out of the West Bank and Gaza. In the coming weeks
it is important to step up the excellent work that
has already begun throughout Ireland and Britain to
stop Bush, Blair and Sharon from unleashing even more
terror. We shouldn’t be diverted from the most
important challenge this generation has ever yet faced
by those who can no longer see the forest for the
trees.
Brian
Kelly is a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party
in Belfast.
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