Democratic Palestine : 7 (ص 27)
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- Democratic Palestine : 7 (ص 27)
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tage’ which President Reagan has promised to maintain for
them. Without the economic subsidy Israel's credit would van-
ish and its economy would collapse. in other words, Israel can
only do what Washington allows it to do.»
israel’s role and the logic of Zionism
What is the specific role assigned by imperialism to Israel
within this struggle? Israel functions as the dominant local milit-
ary power in the Middle East, responsible for frontline defense
of U.S. regional domination. Its aggressive military provoca-
tions are aimed at smashing the Arab national liberation move-
ment, particularly the PLO.
While functioning as the principal instrument of
imperialism in the Middle East, the aggressive compulsions of
Israeli Zionism also derives from its own aims and needs as a
distinct capitalist entity. The central political drive of Zionism
has always been and continues to be the establishment of an
exclusivist, racialized Jewish settler state carved out of the
Arab nation. This inherently requires the obliteration of the par-
ticular Arab people--the Palestinians--whose homeland was
seized in order to realize Zionist ambitions.
In addition, the Zionist entity must expand in order to attain
the land, water and cheap labor necessary to achieve a degree
of economic viability, drive the vast majority of Palestinians into
permanent exile and to disperse them as anation. Such are the
fascist underpinnings of Zionist policy vis-a-vis the Palesti-
nians, underpinnings that do not vary from one Israeli administ-
ration to another, but are inherent in its nature and practical
reality.
Zionism began in the late 1880's as one of several
responses to the increasing wave of anti-Semitic pogroms ter-
rorizing Jews across Europe. It is a classic kind of bourgeois
nationalism, matching the aspirations of the Jewish
bourgeoisie for a «nation» which it could rule by resorting to
white settler colonialism.
From the beginning, Zionism as a political movement
completely identified its cause with the emerging imperialist
system in Europe. But it was not until after WWII that this effort
was crowned with success. The horror of Hitler's Holocaust led
many to see an exclusivist Jewish state as the only protection
against genocide. But the key factor in the formation of Israel
was the qualitatively increased importance of oil in the world
imperialist economy which impelled the U.S. to step forward as
the main guarantor of a separate Jewish state.
From the outset, terror and aggression have been una-
voidable necessities for Zionist Israel. While all capitalist
economies must incessantly grow to survive and prosper, this
drive is grossly magnified in Israel by virtue of it being no more
than a military garrison state that is unviable as an independent
economic entity. Despite an annual infusion of some $6 billion
from the U.S. alone, the Israeli economy is in shambles, suffer-
ing from 400% inflation per year.
Thus, behind the absurd and inherently racist conception
of a «Greater Israel» promised by God to the Jews are compel-
ling material considerations. Access to the water of the Jordan
and Litani Rivers, for example, is one of the reasons why Israel
has seized and stubbornly holds on to the West Bank, the
Golan Heights, and Southern Lebanon. The incessant seizure
of land is key to clearing the way for capitalist expansion and
preparing for a hoped for increase in Jewish population.
And, as the Christian Science Monitor noted, «The final
exploitable resource in the occupied territories is the block of
more than 75,000 laborers who migrate daily into Israel. Their
wages are much less than Jewish workers and they do not
receive the same benefits, which further reduces their cost.» In
short, any Zionist hope to stabilize the Israeli economy, is pre-
mised upon aggressive expansion to attain badly needed land,
water, cheap labor, and military security.
It is Israel's avid pursuit of these economic necessities; its
unshakable committment to a religious state in which non Jews
have no rights that Jews are bound to respect; as well as its
role as a gendarme for imperialist interests; that Israel has car-
ried out one atrocity after another against the Palestinian and
other Arab peoples. The fascist terror that now reigns in south-
ern Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza is thus no recent aber-
ration of the Begin-Sharon-Shamir regime, but a relentless
compulsion of the inner logic and reality of Zionism.
The vuinerability of Israel
Yet this on-going Zionist terror policy toward the Palesti-
nians and its Arab neighbors masks the inner weakness of the
Israeli state. This weakness resides in the fact that Israel is a
politically-imposed white settler state, which, according to the
logic of Zionism, must attempt to disperse a real nation rooted
in hundreds of years of development.
Immediate military security is not the main way this prob-
lem manifests iiself today, as Israel is qualitatively superior
militarily to its adversaries in the region. Rather, it is the gross
instability of the Israeli economy that focuses all of the prob-
lems facing the Zionist settler state. The economy is totally
dependent on massive and ongoing U.S. aid. Israel’s huge
military budget and the fact that Israel's largest industry is arms
production (40%), means that huge sums of money are tied up
in the defense area, where they are not producing goods for
the market. This results in the capitalist world’s highest inflation
rate--400% per year. This high inflation is not just a temporary
problem but endemic to the distorted nature of the Israeli
Capitalist economy.
The political impact of this economic distortion is pro-
found. Jewish workers, concentrated in the most privileged
and highly unionized jobs, are institutionally protected from the
ravages of inflation by monthly cost of living allowances in their
union contracts. Even so, their buying power has been steadily
decreasing over the last several years. On the other hand,
Palestinian workers, who make up the basic mass of the pro-
letariat in Israel are concentrated in the least privileged, mostly
non-unionized sectors, and are overwhelmingly unprotected
from the inflation rate.
Political discontent among Jews over the high inflation
rate is a strong pressure on Zionist leaders. This is because
Zionism must be able to offer both security and prosperity in
order to attract and keep its settlers. It must be able to offer to
the average Jew a standard of living that is not only far superior
to that enjoyed by the Palestinians and other Arabs in the reg-
ion, but that is not inferior to what they enjoyed in the U.S.,
Western Europe and the Soviet Union before they immigrated
to Israel.
Yet it is the grotesquely intense national, racial and class
brutalization of the Palestinian people that produces the
greatest political challenge to Israel. In response, a powerful
national liberation movement has taken deep root among the
Palestinians. This movement encompasses all classes, yet its
backbone is a highly exploited, specially oppressed working
class population. Herein lies the deep roots of the Palestinian
Liberation Organization, especially its anti-imperialist forces,
and the basis for the development of a highly conscious, well-
organized populace. Their struggle against Zionism and for
national democracy--i.e. for a democratic secular state in
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