Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 25.06.2024
Many left tendencies fail to understand the nature of Israel as an apartheid state of settler colonialists and expect that the opposition to Netanyahu’s government will act like the Americans did in 1968 during the war of US imperialism against Vietnam.
The first left party that ignored the nature of Israel as a settler-colonialist society was the CPI (The Stalinists) which claimed that the war of 1948 was an anti-imperialist war. The ISA and its section in Israel’s “Socialist Struggle” call for a two states solution which is a clear pro-Zionist program.
Tony Cliff (Yigael Glückstein), who led the Palestine Revolutionary Communist League, claimed that the Jewish workers and the Palestinian workers could be united against the British Mandate. This also brings to mind the program of the Socialist Organization in Israel, better known as Matzpen, after its monthly publication. It called for Socialist Israel to be part of the Socialist Federation of the Middle East. Both organizations have disappeared from history because of their wrong program.
The Black Panthers, which claimed that North African Jews were able to change society and form an equal society, ended when they demanded part of the Zionist loot of the Palestinian lands. Those who ignore the nature of Israel should ask themselves how many whites joined the struggle of the black South Africans.
Today in Israel, “Opposition politicians from both the left and the proper praise the High Court’s ruling overturning decades of draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
“There are judges in Jerusalem,” Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman tweets, quoting a saying frequently attributed to Likud founder and former prime minister Menachem Begin: “In a year where a whole brigade of soldiers was lost or badly injured, in a year where reservists served for over 200 days, there is no clearer proof that the IDF needs more recruits, more people to share the load,” he says” [i]
“Congratulations on a just decision of the High Court of Justice. Where there is no government, there is justice,” declares newly elected Labor Party chief Yair Golan.
Labor chief Yair Golan speaks at the Labor party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset in Jerusalem, June 17, 2024. (Sam Sokol/Times of Israel)
Civil and military service should be the duty of every Israeli “regardless of race, religion, and gender,” he states. “We will continue to fight for the democratic and egalitarian image of Israel[ii].”
“In a message directly aimed at the ultra-Orthodox community, National Unity leader Benny Gantz blames Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for seeking out “solutions for maintaining the coalition” rather than a resolution to the enlistment issue. Gantz insists that it is “not too late” to reach broad agreements on the issue.
Military service “is a security need and also a moral obligation, not in place of the world of the Torah, but so that we can continue to exist in this country, which belongs to the matter.”[iii]
Unlike the Zionists, the ISL position is against the military service of the Haredim because the interest of the international working class and the oppressed is to weaken the Zionist monster.
Israel out of Gaza!
Exchange all for all!
For Palestine, red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/there-are-judges-in-jerusalem-opposition-politicians-welcome-high-courts-enlistment-ruling/
[ii] Ibid
[iii] Ibid