Our colleague, Arieh Lebowitz, has learned over the weekend that the old Trotskyist political party, the Socialist Workers Party, has dropped its traditionally fierce anti-Zionism. The following is a statement by an SWP candidate for the city council of Washington, D.C. Note that it includes this explicitly pro-Zionist sentence: “We support the right of return for all Jews to move to Israel if they choose.” It also condemns Hamas terrorism.
This calls to mind the fact that Isaac Deutscher, a follower and classic biographer of Leon Trotsky, had regretted his anti-Zionism when he reflected on what happened to Polish Jews he had advised against leaving for Palestine. This also may remind us of the brief pro-Jewish phase of Soviet policy in its early years, and the brief pro-Zionist stance of the USSR at Israel’s birth.
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| Vol. 79/No. 4 February 9, 2015 |
Recent murderous attacks on Jews in Argentina, in a kosher grocery store in France and on the street in Israel are a blow and a challenge to all working people.
The attack on Jewish hikers in Argentina came on the heels of the death of Alberto Nisman, a state prosecutor who was to testify the next day on charges that Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner conspired with Iranian authorities to cover up their involvement in a 1994 bombing at a Jewish community center that killed 85 people.
The Socialist Workers Party opposes Jew-hatred and joins in fighting it whenever it raises its head. We support the right of return for all Jews to move to Israel if they choose. And we demand Washington open its doors to all who seek refuge here.
The poison of anti-Semitism seeks to divide and weaken the working class, pointing away from the propertied rulers as the source of attacks on our wages, hours, working conditions and safety on the job. When Hamas hails the knife attack that wounded Israelis on a city bus Jan. 21 as a “bold, heroic act,” it is a blow to common struggle by working people in the Middle East.
Fighting all expressions of Jew-hatred is a precondition to advancing the struggles by the multinational working class in Israel and by the Palestinian people against national oppression.
Related articles: Anti-Semitism spawns attacks in Argentina, Israel, France
I have it from many credible sources that the SWP long ago degenerated into a Jack Barnes personality cult. Is not Islamophobia -not anti-Semitism-now rampant in the United States ? It is all to easy for working class Americans to sympathize with poor Palestinians not relatively affluent and secure Jews in Israel. How can any individual with a spark of democratic socialism not be revolted by the very idea of a Jewish state ? But no real socialist will promote a hateful attitude toward Jews as a people. Too many left-wing Jewish intellectuals have betrayed their socialist ideals for idol worship of Israel.
I write mainly on Facebook. My intention is to build a Trotskyist Party. There is sadly none at present. The SWP is wrong towards Islam of which the “Palestinian Arabs” are merely a branch of this Islam which is a curse on mankind and is deeply antisemitic, as the founder of the “Palestinians” was Hajj Amin el Husseini, in turn mentor to Arafat, part of his tribe, and it is thought related. El Husseini was the leader of Islam and an equal collaborator with Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann in the Holocaust. The other group mistakingly and mischievously calling itself Trotskyist (wsws.org) is really equally perniciously antisemitic and blocks my comments on their site in which I wish to air my differences with them. Trotsky was very supportive of the Jews going to Palestine to set up their JEWISH state.
Partly at least the antisemitism of Stalin was related to his hatred for Trotskyism. Although I would have certain difference Joseph Nedava “History of the Jews” came closest to telling some truth about Trotsky and his support for the Jews.