Zionism and Colonialism

Political Zionism: The Hegemonic Racism of the early 21^st Century

Sunday 14 February, 2 pm – 4.30 pm

Cock Tavern, 23 Phoenix Road, Nr Euston NW1 1HB

Speakers

Ian Donovan: Socialist Fight EB

Gerry Downing: Socialist Fight EB

Ailish Dease: Socialist Fight EB, Author The imperialist rape of the Congo: the Longest Genocide

Chair: Carol Foster, Socialist Fight EB

Hollywood’s demonisation of Arabs

The amazing political authority of Zionism globally persists even on the left despite its regular ‘lawn mowing’ genocidal mass murder of mainly defenceless Palestinians. “Pro-Israel ideology has a similar level of hegemony to Cold War anti-communism among the ruling class” Ian Donovan observes; “Jewish organisations (outside Israel) support Israel with the same loyalty which communist parties accorded to the USSR for so long”. And he sets out the material basis for the power of the Israel lobby in the USA (and elsewhere):

“for the United States, which is the most powerful state in human history, you can easily find informed Jewish sources that place the representation of Jews among billionaires, the most powerful elements of the capitalist elite, at between 40 and 48% – nearly half. This is the only logically coherent explanation for the power of the so-called lobby.”

 Marxists reject the notion of collective guilt of peoples for the crimes of their ruling classes. We equally reject the notion of collective innocence: that Jews by virtue of past suffering can be collectively absolved of Zionism’s crimes. This merely displaces collective guilt elsewhere.

All Germans are not guilty of the Holocaust; the Nazis were, all Jews are not guilty of the Gaza atrocities; the Zionists are.  Netanyahu’s attempts to excuse Hitler and blame the Palestinians for the Holocaust via the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is an attempt to justify genocide against Palestinians. Marxists reject the notion of collective guilt of peoples for the crimes of their ruling classes.

Much of the left, even anti-Zionists, avoid addressing the specific responsibility of Jewish bourgeois in other imperialist countries for supporting Israeli crimes on a ethnocentric basis. The theory of the colonial-settler state implies that Israel and its ‘lobby’ is a mere tool of the US, and not a predatory force in its own right. In fact, the Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie has now acquired enormous political and moral authority among the imperialists. Refusing to address this liberal prejudice on the left forces the Palestine Solidarity movement to fight Zionism and its world power with one arm tied behind its back

The genocide in the Congo by King Leopold (which cost between 10 and 20 million lives between 1885 and 1908 see The imperialist rape of the Congo: the Longest Genocide by Ailish Dease in Socialist Fight No. 21, p.26). These lives and those of the 10 million lost in the ongoing war in that unfortunate land do not merit the name Holocaust.

King Leopold and his families in Belgium and the Congo.

Black Though, in the last essay in IDOT 17, expresses the outrage of the world’s indigenous peoples:

“One may often wonder why the plight of the Jewish people has become so well known, so mourned over, and so thoroughly impressed into the global collective consciousness… And why is it that the innumerable casualties of Africans, Native Americans, Asians, and virtually all non-white ethnic groups of the world are deemed unworthy of tears, mourning, and remembrance. For them, a mere “sorry” must suffice for the tens of millions they lost, and the plight and suffering of their ancestors is merely swept under the rug, cast into oblivion—forgotten. While our school textbooks devote entire chapters to the subject of Jewish suffering, especially the Holocaust, other genocides, such as that of the Congolese, have not merited even paragraphs.”

Black Thought: I am not a black supremacist. I am not a black nationalist. I am not a black separatist. I am not an Afrocentric. I am a black thought.
http://originalblackthought.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/silent-holocaust-belgian-genocide-of.html