Our party thanks Andrew Murray for the solidarity article he wrote recently for the Morning Star newspaper.
We would note, however, that the overriding point that is missing from his article is the recognition that the Labour party, with its consistent promotion of the interests of British imperialism, is playing the most insidious role in the erosion of workers’ rights in Britain.
Labour control suffocates our movement
It is allegiance to Labour that has stopped the organisers of Palestine solidarity marches from offering meaningful (or even verbal) support or solidarity to those who have been arrested at their events.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Stop the War, under the influence of their ‘left’ Labour connections, have all remained silent. Meanwhile, those who actively defend the right of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli genocide are likely to find themselves expelled from the ‘official’ solidarity movement (see the recent case of the dissolution of the Manchester branch of the PSC, for example).
This is not a new phenomenon. Many of our readers will recall the PSC’s refusal to organise a campaign in defence of the young men, many of them teenagers, who were imprisoned for the crime of throwing water bottles at the Israeli embassy during a PSC-organised demonstration against the December 2008 bombardment of Gaza (‘Operation Cast Lead’).
Ideological and historical connection between nazism and zionism
In his article, Murray minimised the connection between the ultranationalist (fascist) ideology of zionism and its role as the middle-eastern facilitator of Anglo-American domination, questioning the validity of the imagery on our pamphlet’s cover, which illustrates this well-established historical and ideological connection.
While British and US imperialism had the key role in sponsoring Israel’s creation and maintenance, in pursuit of their imperialist interests, it is not a minor point, but a defining feature of zionism that its German and Hungarian organisations made notorious transfer agreements with Hitler’s SS during the jewish holocaust of WW2.
The zionists made these deals with nazism in order to further the settler-colonial project in Palestine – at the expense of and behind the backs of the majority of progressive European jews. They thus negated from the start their claim that the Israeli state would stand as the guarantor of the rights of jewish people worldwide. The reverse was and remains the case.
To opine that a picture on the cover of a book that details the history of zionism (an image that compares the Israeli state to the Nazi state) is “deeply offensive” is meaningless. If the two are historically-connected ideological bedfellows; if Israel is at this very moment involved in perpetrating a Nazi-like ethnic cleansing and genocide – then where is the ‘offence’ in pointing out and emphasising this important truth?
Surely it is Israel’s genocide itself that is ‘deeply offensive’ to all humanity?
Anyone who cares to read the book in question will see just how deeply complicit in the Nazi holocaust of European jews were the zionists in Palestine and Hungary. This has been documented even by an Israeli court during the Kastner case and in Lenni Brenner’s excellent book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, which is quoted in our pamphlet. (1983)
We make these points both to further the cause of the Palestinian people struggling for national self-determination and as part of our shared struggle to end the US and British-sponsored (and Labour party supported) genocide.
A clear understanding of the nature and role of the Labour party is vital for British workers in their own fight for self-defence and social emancipation.
Only by shaking off Labour’s suffocating embrace will we be able to organise an effective defence of free speech and civil liberties. Only by breaking all ties to this agent of imperialism in our midst will we be able to build an effective fighting force capable of creating a new society in Britain – one in which the interests of the working people decide all.
