Re: [Marxism] Shlomo Sand reinvents "the Jewish people"

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

"The project to found Israel as a settler state was and still is “a crime”,
said comrade Conrad. But that crime has resulted in the coming into being of
an Israeli Jewish, or Hebrew, nation and a working class solution must
recognise this reality. While comrade Conrad could envisage the necessity of
expelling recent Israeli settlers from the West Bank as part of an agreed
democratic settlement, it was out of the question to talk about uprooting
the Israeli Jewish people as a whole. The Israeli Jewish nation, like any
other, has the right to self-determination, so long as it is not exercised
at the expense of the oppression of other peoples.

The founding of the state of Israel resulted not only in the creation of an
Israeli nation, but a Palestinian nation too. So now there are two mutually
hostile nations contesting the same territory. Of course, if the two nations
were prepared to join together in a democratic, secular state, that would be
an excellent thing, but such a merger could only be achieved on a voluntary
basis and the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews reject it out of hand.
What is more, the Israeli state is “armed to the teeth and allied to the
US”, the most powerful imperialist country on earth. So how would it be
possible to attain a single state in current circumstances?

Comrade Conrad concluded by saying that we need to approach the whole
question from a different angle - taking the perspective of the Arab
revolution as our starting point. The working class “must win leadership of
the Arab nation” to achieve a democratic solution for the entire Middle
East. A voluntary merger of the Arab peoples under working class hegemony,
having defeated Zionism, would certainly grant the Israeli Jewish nation the
right to self-determination, including the right to form their own state."

http://cpgb.org.uk/worker/789/mapping.php

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:

> And the notion that Palestinians SHOULDN'T return
> and that the current colonizers won't accept being a minority, flies
> in the face of a variety of historical examples, from Algeria to South
> Africa and so on. The main lesson of those examples being, of course,
> that the majority will find a way by whatever means it can to assert
> its rights.
> Andy Pollack
>
>

YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Shlomo Sand reinvents "the Jewish people"

[Andrew Pollack]

I went to the talk by Sand at the Brecht Forum last night (see
Sebastian's post announcing it). It was disgraceful. If anyone goes to
the one today, make sure to ask Sand about his position on the right
of return of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, he opposes it.
Sand deconstructs the myth of a worldwide Jewish people and shows how
this myth was used to justify the theft of Arab land (he doesn't think
there was a Palestinian people until 1948, when it was formed by
antiZionist consciousness!).
But in the decades since 1948, Sand believes, a new Israeli people has
been formed -- and therefore only a two-state solution is possible,
and the right of return of the Palestinian people can only be admitted
verbally but not in practice.
Like the hypocritical Zionist "soldier who weeps," Sand is a historian
who weeps. Israel should recognize the tragedy of the Palestinian
people, but doing anything about it is impossible. He calls the
creation of Israel a "rape," to impress us with how radical and
sorrowful he is, but insists nothing can be done to rectify this
injustice. He even calls "criminal" those who teach Palestinian
refugee children that they can and should return!
Asked why return is impossible, he says because Israel has nuclear
weapons, and because Israelis will never consent to being a minority.
These reactionary positions seem to me to derive from two sources.
First, the backward theory of Matzpen, of which he was once a member,
supporting the "Hebrew right to self-determination" (a theory opposed
when it was first formuilated by other Trotskyists groups, first and
foremost the US SWP. Second, Sand's own further conservatization. The
notion that a country like Israel, with all its wealth, can't
accommodate the return of Palestinian refugees, flies in the face of
material realities. And the notion that Palestinians SHOULDN'T return
and that the current colonizers won't accept being a minority, flies
in the face of a variety of historical examples, from Algeria to South
Africa and so on. The main lesson of those examples being, of course,
that the majority will find a way by whatever means it can to assert
its rights.
Andy Pollack


YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com