(This was written in early December 2023 against what I see as the soft Zionism of the CWI and other Trotskyist groups and the reluctance of many from that tradition to fully support the Palestinian struggle)
A ” two state solution” for Israel/ Palestine isn’t possible. It’s doubtful if it ever was but it’s certainly not now. To push this now makes no sense and is soft Zionism.
The ” two state solution” takes the Palestinian right of return off the table. It means continuing the dispossession and oppression in over half of Palestine. It ignores the fact that the Nakba isn’t just a horrible tragedy that happened in 1948 but is still continuing today and the existence of “Israel” depends on continuing the 75 year program of ethnic cleansing.
Also there is zero chance of solidarity between the Israeli working class and the Palestinians. Zero. Only 2% of Israelis think that the current near genocidal bombing of Gaza is excessive. Israel is a settler colonial state, this is baked into its DNA. It’s what the theorist and long time editor of Race Traitor Noel Ignatiev called a ” herrenvolk state”. There’s class struggle but it’s played out within the context of the contending classes jointly exploiting an oppressed population. So many Trotskyist groups seem to be desperately hoping for the Israeli Jewish working class to join with the Palestinians and somehow “rise up” and smash capitalism. This will never happen. To my knowledge there have been no instances of cross-ethnic working class solidarity once in 75 years of “Israeli” history. This is not how things work. There are powerful material forces mitigating against this. There has been much relatively recent unrest in “Israeli” society; the Tent Movement of 2012 and mass protests against Netanyahu in 2020 /21. In neither case though was any solidarity extended or appeals made to Palestinians or Arab-Israelis. The working class protesters in 2012 and the liberal protesters in 2020/21 were just as Zionist as the forces they were protesting against.
The closest historical parallels to “Israel” was the apartheid regime of South Africa and the French colony in Algeria. There were class struggles, sometimes bitter and intense, within these settler-colonial societies but in no case was there any solidarity with the indigenous population. Indeed this would have been inconceivable. In the 1920s the slogan of the South African Communist Party was “workers of the world unite, for a white South Africa”. In the 1930s Leon Trotsky told his followers, forcefully and several times, that they had to embed with the indigenous African struggle, which indicated that they were uncomfortable doing this. The founders of modern UK based Trotskyist internationals-Ted Grant, who emigrated from South Africa and Ygel Gluckstein/Tony Cliff, who, ironically, emigrated from Palestine, partly because organizing in their home countries were so difficult.
There have been some amazing Israeli revolutionaries, figures such as Moishe Machover, Akiva Orr of Matzpen and others, such as Illan Pape, but they had to leave “Israel”. The Israeli left, both social democratic and revolutionary, collapsed by the 1980s. Right now it’s extremely dangerous for anyone on the left in ” Israel”. In a recent article the CWI (Committee for A Workers International, a London based Trotskyist international, of which I was a member for over ten years) featured their Israel/Palestine branch for fundraising purposes. There is anecdotal evidence that the CWI branch in Israeli however has collapsed, with only a rump remaining. You won’t find any reference to this in the CWI literature though.
Journalists like Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen describe contemporary Israel as a violent fascistic society where genocide is openly discussed .
Like it or not, this is a Palestinian national struggle. Organizations like the CWI and the ISA (International Socialist Alternative, a group which split from the CWI in 2018 over a somewhat arcane dispute over identity politics, something both groups practice) are pushing soft Zionism, which goes far in explaining why they aren’t growing. In a debate in an ISA Facebook group during the last Zionist assault on Gaza in 2021 young ISA members felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea of settler state theory itself and labeling Israel as a settler state. ISA members seemed to hang on to a desperate hope that the “Israeli” working class is going to join with the Palestinians. All they have to do is realize their true class interests, join with the people they’ve been ethnically cleansing for over 70 years, form workers councils and “rise up”. Even a superficial knowledge of the history of the Palestine conflict shows how absurd this is. For politely pointing out elementary truths a comrade who thought similarly and myself were kicked out of the FB group even though we had been in the parent organization for many years.
The IG, the Internationalist Group, is an “orthodox Trotskyist” group of about 60 people. It split from the Spartacist League in the 1990s. I was a sympathizer for a time around 2018. Their militant rhetoric originally attracted me. Beyond more radical sounding rhetoric however their Middle East policy is nearly identical to the CWI. While the CWI calls for a “socialist Palestine and a socialist Israel” in a greater “Middle East socialist federation” the IG calls for a “Hebrew/Arab federation”. This is pretty much the same thing. Could South Africa have been an “Afrikaaner/English/African federation” or Algeria a “French/Arab federation”? Things don’t work this way. Its still soft Zionism.
It’s interesting to note that after a small spurt during the Trump years none of these organizations have grown, rhetoric about a “revolutionary regroupment” not with standing.
Liberation for Palestine will come from the bitterly fought efforts of the Palestinian people themselves, their allies in Lebanon, Yemen and Iran and, most important of all, revolutionary struggle in the US. As RFK jr recently said (unironically) “Israel” is a US aircraft carrier. Its an extension of US imperialism. The enemy is right here at home.
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