Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 07:58:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: A fusillade towards the past



Roxanne asks:

>The CP's own Daniel Rubin wrote in 1987 in an introduction to
"Anti-Semitism >and Zionism" that most Jews, or at any rate most American
Jews were "moving >away from the "specific policies of Zionism".  Is this
true?  My mother >still remembers [Communist Party] clubs in Brooklyn that
were composed >entirely of Jews...  Elderly Jews still provide much of the
New York party's >financial support...Do not Communists risk alienating an
important >constituency by posing Zionism as the political equivalent to
Naziism?


My main concerns -- which, incidentally do not necessarily parallel those of
the CP's leadership -- are the emergence of modern Israel as both a Fascist
State of a new type, one which contains many of the principles of the
historical antecedents of European fascism, of which it is a direct
descendent, and the role of American Jews in more or less acquiescing in
this central fact of their political life.  All this, of course, is related
to Israel's aspirations to become a great regional Power while continuing
its role as a particularly ruthless gendarme for US and British imperialism
throughout the world. 

Much of my criticism of American Jews derives from the fact that virtually
all of them are in unison in defending Israel's theoretical "right to
exist". But does Israel have such a "right" any more immutable than that of,
say, South Vietnam, or even that of the Soviet Union, whose citizens voted
overwhelmingly to "exist" a few short months before they were dissolved as a
nation, a nation that granted full rights to *all* its citizens, unlike
Zionist Israel?  

The Zionist State cannot exist in the current geopolitical situation as a
non-Fascist entity; it would be simply overwhelmed without US aid (most of
it in fact "grants-in-aid" -- which means it will never be paid back).
Israel as the official homeland of the Jewish Absolute can only exist as the
client of a larger imperial power.  This is, I believe, tacitly recognized
by American Jews themselves, who nevertheless have voted overwhelmingly with
their feet, hearts and pocketbooks to sustain this sordid project, oblivious
to the suffering this has inflicted on untold millions in the Middle East
and throughout the Third World.

The CP, though it nominally supports the rights of the Palestinian people
(and has in fact contributed mightily in the past in support of those
rights), is still in thrall to the idea of a separate Jewish homeland.  This
is part of the legacy of the CP, dating back to the days of Stalin and the
lopsided contributions made by American Jews to the Communist movement in
this country.  The idea of a natural affinity between Jews and the Left has
a long and honorable pedigree, which had prevailed pretty much unchallenged
until 1967.  Too, Jews, and espcially New York Jews, have been a vital
source of financial support for the Party at a time of profound political
and pecuniary crisis.  

Since 1967, there has been a shift of American Jewish intellectuals
profoundly to the far Right.  What changed?  A coming of age, perhaps a
maturing of the ambience surrounding intellectual life coupled in part with
the emergence of Israel as a regional power of considerable weight.  Too,
the sixties and seventies witnessed the professional apotheosis of Jewish
intellectuals and professionals.  This has led to a sharpening of perhaps a
natural conservatism among this strata.  The intellectual has always enjoyed
a status within the Jewish community unparalleled in other groups, and this
shift has had a profound impact among American Jews.  The tensions
occasioned by the civil rights struggles of the seventies, which many whites
-- including Jews -- viewed as excessive has also played a role.

Again, Israel in my opinion has evolved into the quintessential modern
Fascist State.  Its "right to exist" -- even as a Fascist State -- is
supported by the overwhelming majority of American Jews, regardless of
individual political colorings (Rosser's and other's eight, nine, six
"points" postulating this or that faction are irrelevant and in fact amount
to so much cant).  And that American Jews are just as doomed to support
Israel's crimes against humanity as is American and British imperialism,
which invented Israel in the first place.  I will go a step further and
predict that this nuclear-armed theocratic Fascist State, which, like other
Fascist states, exists as a cancer on the body of humanity, will, in time,
be destroyed.   Many illusions -- including the one that posits a
significant difference between the Zionists and the Nazis -- will,
hopefully, perish with it.

Louis Godena



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