Comrades Alexander, Javad and George, As a result of this exchange, I am beginning to see things more clearly, and to understand the extent to which I had not broken from revisionist positions on this question. This is ironic, but symptomatic, because before I was in contact with members of the revisionist CPI, my position was clearly for the smashing of the zionist state and its replacement by a unified secular democratic state on the whole territory of mandate Palestine. Ironic, because these were positions forced on me in the first place. Symptomatic, because as is the nature of revisionism, correct positions are slated as petty bourgeois leftism, while essentially counter-revolutionary positions are dressed up in the garb of Marxism-Leninism. And when in doubt, amd when it suits them, they are the first to quote Stalin or Lenin without clearly stating the historic context, in order to "support" their revisionism.
Alex makes a good case with respect to the revisionist Iraqi CP. They took a shamefully opportunist position during the imperialist aggression against Iraq - the same position, more or less, as Klo. They called for an uprising against the Ba'athist regime while the entire Iraqi people was under attack (they still are under attack, of course). By then I was no longer in touch with the former members of the CP of Iraq who were member of the Israeli CP, so I do not know what position they took, but I suspect they supported their former party. In other words, at time of imperialist war, they crossed the class line definitively. The people I knew were persecuted at an earlier period, and most actually prefered to leave the country as soon as they were able, which is why I knew them (in London). They were not explicit zionists. They were expelled from Iraq, in the early 60s I think, at the height of the Ba'athist repression against the CP. But a few individuals, whether they are subjectively zionists or anti-zionists, is neither here nor there. I have been really trying to think this question through here, and not trying to complicate matters. As you probably know, my background is in the pro-Moscow wing of the CP. The two biggest influences on me in the 80s were the SACP and the Arab communists I met in London (I include the Israeli CP dissidents within that group, as I said, their culture and language was Arabic, not hewbrew). In fact, one of these people [Daoud Cohen, an Arabic scholar and former member of the Iraqi CP and later Israeli CP] is buried opposite or next to (memory is such an imprecise aid) Yusef Dadoo in Highgate cemetary. They chose to leave the zionist state as soon as they could, actually. These people supported the intifada, and were close to the PCP, very close in fact. But the question here is: what was the nature of their support? >From the 60s onwards the South African CP supported armed struggle, whereas the revisionist Israeli CP never has, and the revisionist PCP only supported armed struggle outside of Palestine (in Lebanon etc). This is a big difference, of course. So they supported the intifada, but on condition that the struggle stopped short of armed struggle. Protests, a few stones, but no real material challenge to the Israeli state. No protracted peoples war. It is legitimate to ask: is it possible for there to be an anti-zionist position from within the Israeli state and from within the jewish people living there? I think the answer is yes, but only in the same way as it was in South Africa. A minority can break from the majority colonialist perspective and side with the oppressed nation in its struggle for national liberation and smashing of the colonial settler state. But to do that they would have to identify themselves above all as Palestinians. The idea that they could do so as Israelis is a pipedream. Your arguments have helped me to see this. To pose my former central question again: not just should the zionist fascist state be smashed, but how? To go back to South Africa, the CP there adopted the correct stance in my view only in 1928 and subsequently when it saw national liberation of the African majority as the key to the road to socialism. More than that, a specific South African nation identity, cutting across ethnic divisions, was created precisely through the struggle against the settler state. If such a position were adopted in the case of Palestine, what would it mean concretely? Thinking it through, the fact is that the zionists have occupied the whole of mandate Palestine (plus a bit of Syria and whole chunks of Lebanon at different times) since 67. In reality, the borders of the zionist fascist state were the same bascially as mandate Palestine. The fact that they themselves made a distinction between the West bank and Gaza and the rest (though they call these areas by hebrew biblical names)doesn't really alter the question. Looked at that way, there should never have been two CPs, but only a Palestinian CP. The CPSU may well have made an unwarranted concession to zionism in supporting the creation of a separate Israeli CP in 48, and in advocating the absorption of Arab members of the old PCP who were in the diaspora into the Jordanian, Lebanese and Egyptian CPs. If this is correct, then the error was probably the same as the one which led to support for partition in the first place. In fact, the defacto decision to dissolve the Palestinian cp amounts to acceptance of the zionist creed that there are no palestinians, only Arabs. If so, if there were any genuine communists of jewish origin in Palestine in 48, their role should have been to build for a Palestinian national liberation movement and the creation of a democratic Palestine as the first step towards a socialist Palestine. The communists of Palestine should have fought to be the leading force within this movement, and for the movement as a whole to accept the leading role of the proletariat in the national democratic revolution, in the way the ANC accepted the role of the working class at the Morogoro conference (in 69?). The Israeli CP NEVER had this position. To have adopted such a position would have led to its being outlawed. It is a shameful fact that the CPI has remained legal throughout the period from 1948 and does so now. My error was fundamental here: I accepted, despite my scepticism, the lie that the Israelis constituted a nation. They do not and cannot. The creation of the Israeli state has created another case of colonialism of a special type where the oppressors and the oppressed nation occupy the same territory. Whether I as an individual evolve towards genuine Marxist-Leninist positions is not important in the big scheme of things. The existance of the Marxist-Leninist list is for the reaffirmation of Marxism-Leninism, not for the re-education of Jim Hillier. However, on a personal note, I am very grateful to the comrades who have participated in this debate for assisting me in developing a self-criticism. For a democratic secular state of Palestine! Death to zionist-fascism! Death to Israel! Death to imperialism! Forward to communism! Jim Hillier __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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