“Dear comrades, if we shall keep
mum today, tomorrow the Jewish Marxists will ride on our
backs… Vladimir Lenin”
The New Bund at Old Tricks
(My response to Greenstein’s attack
on Gilad Atzmon et al)
By Israel Shamir
Tony Greenstein (Blind
eye to anti-semitism) is obsessed with
Jewishness. He views the world through the prism of a
Jewish Nationalist. He judges people by one criterion
which he shares with my late grandmother: “Is he/she
good for Jews?” He and his friends "Jews
Against Zionism” claim to be
antizionists, but Zionism is just a form of Jewish
bourgeois nationalism, and not the only one. By creating
their Jews-only organisation, Greenstein et al enforced
Jewish separatism and caused unnecessary and dangerous
split in the Palestine solidarity movement.
History repeats itself. Over a
hundred years ago, the Russian Jewish socialists,
Bund, (antizionists to a man) asked Lenin for
permission to join his new movement as a separate
collective member. ‘Everyone of you is welcome to join
the common struggle of workers against Russian and
Jewish moneybags, but as a separate group you would just
split our forces’, he replied, and expelled the Bund.
Eventually many Russian Jews joined the movement of
Russian workers, and together they changed the course of
history. The Bund withered, some of its members
drifting to Zionism.
But history repeats itself as a
farce, in words of Marx. Bund had hundreds of thousands
members; the New Bund, Jews against Zionism is a tiny
grouping which mustered one hundred signatures
world-wide, from San Francisco to Tel Aviv to London.
Their contribution to the struggle is zero, their
nuisance value is much higher for they mainly attack
antizionists.
I can imagine a few things Jews can
meaningfully do together (pray?), but political struggle
for equality in Palestine does not call for a separate
Jews-only discussion. Moreover, it is a self-defeating
course. The concept of Jews for Justice, Jews for Peace
and other separatist all-Jewish groups in pursuit of
common goals appears to me about as justifiable as that
of Whites against Apartheid. Equality in South Africa
was achieved by overcoming such dubious groupings, by
the color-blind force of the ANC. The civil rights
struggle in the Southern states was carried out by
Blacks and Whites together. It appears that the cause of
justice in Palestine should not be different. Why, then,
such groups exist?
Extremely wealthy leaders of Jewish
organisations are worried by high desertion rate in
their rank and file. They spend billions trying to stop
assimilation and return descendents of Jews into the
fold. A UJA- organised program The Birthright brings
thousands of young people of Jewish origin into
Jerusalem from all over the world – all paid, generous
accomodation supplied – in order to discourage
intermarriage and promote marriages within the
community. They build the world-wide continuation of
Sharon’s Wall in order to separate Jews and non-Jews.
Jews Against Zionism is a part and
parcel of this effort; an attempt to keep even people
who understood criminality of Zionism, within the fold.
In their attack on Gilad Atzmon, Paul Eisen and me they
repeat verbally accusations delivered by Aaronovitch and
Pollard in The Times, and rude lies disseminated by
ADL-financed internet sites, because we stand for full
integration of descendents of Jews in the countries they
live, for their assimilation, for putting paid to the
reactionary idea of Jewish exclusiveness.
Our view agrees with Marx and Lenin’s
reading of Jewishness. In 1903, Lenin wrote in the
Iskra, and his words are extremely relevant to the
present discussion: "the idea
of a Jewish 'nationality' is scientifically wrong and
politically reactionary, not only when expounded by its
consistent advocates (the Zionists), but likewise on the
lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of
Social-Democracy (the Bundists). The idea of a Jewish
nationality runs counter to the interests of the Jewish
proletariat, for it fosters among them, directly or
indirectly, a spirit hostile to assimilation, the spirit
of the 'ghetto'."
The Jews Against Zionism are but a
Trotskyite offshoot of Bundism, and at least one of
their members and co-signers of anti-Atzmon petition,
Abraham Weizfeld, openly calls himself ‘a Bundist’.
Their antizionism does not impress us overmuch, as an
important Marxist thinker Georgi Plekhanov (http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/)
noticed that “The Bundists want to establish their Zion
here, not in Palestine” and added a witticism: “The
Bundists are nothing more than Zionists suffering from
sea-sickness”. This opinion was shared by Zionists, and
Ber Borokhov prophesied that “one day the future Jewish
State will have to erect a gold monument to the Bund for
its illustrious achievements.” It did not happen yet,
but not for a want of trying.
Tony’s accusations are difficult to
refute; for they are based on his inability to
understand a text, whether for reasons of dumbness or
for more sinister reasons. For instance, I write: “There
is no ‘tainted blood’, acceptance of Christ is the Final
Solution of the Jewish question, while assimilation and
intermarriage is the way to undo the vestiges of Jewish
separatism” and he interprets this sentence as “the
salvation of the Palestinians lies in the conversion of
the Jews, the ‘christ-killers’, to christianity”.
Symptomatically, he changes in all quotes Christ for
christ, and Christianity for christianity, as in his
view of Jewish nationalist, the capital letter should be
preserved for Jews only. I write: “No Jew is responsible
for misdeeds of his ancestors”; but he insists: “He
calls us Christ-killers”.
His attack on our comrades Paul Eisen
and Jeff Blankfort is equally unwarranted. Mr Greenstein
is obsessed with the subject of the Jewish Holocaust and
divides people into sheep and goats on basis of their
attitude to this narrative. What is so special about
this narrative? Why he does not attack deniers of the
Armenian massacre (by Kurds), deniers of the Azeri
massacre (by Armenians), deniers of the Jenin massacre
(by Jews), deniers of the Huguenot massacre (Night of St
Bartholomew), and deniers of Dresden Massacre (by
Brits)? If he is such an antizionists, why he is not
worried that his ally Steven Plaut, another enemy of
Atzmon and me, who quotes him word-perfect, denies the
Deir Yassin Massacre (http://kurtnimmo.com/blog/?p=741
)? Why he does not picket Plaut?
Our view is quite different. The
Holocaust narrative is used to
enforce Jewish separatism and
specialness, it is connected with that racist slur of
“natural criminality of non-Jews”. Not in vain, the
leading ideologist of Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt, also
preaches against intermarriage which ‘spoils purity of
Jewish blood’. We support deconstruction of the
narrative. The very term Holocaust Denier is a
quasi-religious expression akin to Christ Denier, a
usual accusation by the Inquisition, but as we saw, Tony
is ready to deny Christ even his capital C.
While Tony accuses others of
‘racism’, he and his chums are as racist as anybody.
Tony G. calls me “an ex-Russian/Swedish fascist now
living in Israel” – this is a hoodwink way of saying “he
is not a Jew”. Tony’s right-wing Jewish friends and
allies of Frontpagemag.com are not that reticent and say
so loudly. So did his friend ‘antiracist and Marxist’
Roland Rance. This is beneath my dignity to discuss. I
can’t even argue against accusation of ‘fascism’ as Tony
G. did not produce a single line that connects me to the
fascist doctrine.
The New Bundists just unable to cope
with the fact that at their letter of protest, the
Socialist Bookshop and the SWP did not drop everything
and stood to attention. The British Communists may well
take to their heart a retort of Vladimir Lenin, who
wrote in 1913 from Krakow: “Dear comrades, if we shall
keep mum today, tomorrow the Jewish Marxists will ride
on our backs… The Bund turns socialism into nationalism”.
Complete Works, v. 48, page
134, Moscow