At Thursday, 2 May 2002, you wrote: >In a message dated 4/27/02 10:02:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time, inform@left. ru >writes: > ><< When a Palestinian > bomber blows the > enemy into pieces - and let us be clear *this enemy is the entire > nation of Israel* for we are dealing here with > national, and only secondarily with class oppression - he or she > pays for this by his or her life. This is justice. >> > >Diana Johnstone wrote: "Making policy by distinguishing between "friend" and >"enemy" peoples is pure Hitlerism." It is also precisely the strategy of the >US Empire which finances both sides in the mideast conflict.
I do not know who Diana Johnson is, but judging by her name she is not a Palestinian. Neither am I. So I leave it to the Palestinians to decide who their enemy is, who deserves to be blown to pieces and who does not. At least, they are the ones who pay for their decisions. When I and my people are subjected to what they have been in the hands of Israeli occupiers, then I may be in the position to advise them on these questions. Also, I would excercise particular caution in everything even remotely looking like chastising the Palestinians if I were an American, especially at the very moment when my country is working hand in hand with Israel to prepare for the "Final Solution" of the "Palestinian question". Back to Diana Johnson's dictum. Were the American Indians "Hitlerites", when they did not distinguish between "peaceful settlers" and the U.S. Cavalry? If anybody at all deserves such a comparison, Diana's ancestors would be my first choice. Did not they make distinction between "human" and "not quite human" races, "civilized" and "primitive" peoples? Didn't they talk about "Lebensraum" and the "Manifest Destiny" before Rhodes, Hitler, and the Zionists did? And did not their working classes, from British trade unions to Nazi Labor Front and Histadrut settled, fought and "pacified" aborigens all around the world? In his Memoirs, Ilya Erenburg described one peciular problem that the Soviet armies faced in the opening months of the Great Patriotic War. Erenburg was a war correspondent for Pravda, I believe. He recalls one Soviet battery refusing to open fire at the column of German infantry. - What are you waiting for?- Erenburg asked the young officer. -"But look at them, they are just workers in uniforms; they have been deceived by Hitler. We cannot shoot at them just like this....someone must talk to them and explain things..."--answered the leutenant. That generation of the Soviet people was brought up in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and they certainly did not divide nations into bad and good. The problem was that their internationalist sensibility did not correspond to the objective state of affairs. By that time the German workers, whether in uniforms or not, were solidly behind Hitler in the war of racial extermination. Racial, not class war. Just like it was the case in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. In Israel this bond between the working class and the ruling class is even stronger than it was in Germany, because Jewish workers find themselves in the position of "white" versus "colored" workers in the same economy. Another list member has already made the point about the responsibility of the electorate in democratic countries for the policies of elected officials. Editor http://www.left.ru Workers of All Coutries, Unite! _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
