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Class struggle in the
Zionist state
By/Tony Iltis
25 March 2007
Like Australia, Israel was established by
settlers on the myth of an empty land. However,
unlike here, expulsion rather than genocide has
been the preferred method of removing the
previous inhabitants.
A large proportion of Palestinians were expelled
when the state of Israel was established in
1948. They fled to the 22% of Palestine that
initially remained outside the new state. These
areas — the West Bank and Gaza — were occupied
by Israel after the 1967 war. It is for this
reason, Israeli socialist Guy Cohen told Green
Left Weekly, that the national question remains
central to resolving Israel’s war on Palestine.
Cohen explained that 80% of Palestinians were
expelled after the 1948 war. “Out of 450 newly
established Jewish settlements, 400 were on the
sites of demolished Palestinian towns”, he said.
“They tried to completely erase the memory of
Palestinian occupation.”
Historically, the Zionist project of creating a
new nation for Jewish immigrants from around the
world also meant an intersection between class
and ethnic differences within the Israeli Jewish
population.
“Israel was established by East European Jews,
known as Ashkenazim”, Cohen said. “They formed
the elite, responsible for the discrimination
during the first couple of decades against Jews
from the Arab countries, known as Mizrahim. In
the 1970s, the Israeli Black Panthers tried to
give the Mizrahim a more socialist point of view
and make links between the Mizrahim and the
Palestinians.”
This project failed because, as Israeli Jews,
the Mizrahim were in a privileged position
compared to Palestinian Arabs, and this
outweighed the discrimination they faced
vis-a-vis the Ashkenazim.
This was particularly the case after the 1967
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza created a
pool of cheap Palestinian labour. Over
subsequent generations, intermarriage between
the two groups broke down the divide between the
Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. As Cohen, who is of
mixed Ashkenazi and Mizrahi descent, wryly
observed: “We are now all together, against the
Palestinians”.
Subsequent waves of Jewish immigration have been
similarly integrated. In the early 1990s, about
1.5 million immigrants came from Russia, and
have established Russian language newspapers and
a TV station. Cohen said the Russians have
gravitated towards the far right of the
political spectrum “to prove how Israeli they
are”.
The 70,000 Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel at
the same time received a less friendly welcome.
The Ethiopians suffer much discrimination in
employment and housing, and right-wing religious
groups have run a racist campaign to restrict
Ethiopian Jews immigration to israel. “Israel
claims to be a country for all Jews, but this is
less so for African Jews”, Cohen said.
Despite these attacks, Cohen said, Ethiopian
Jews are nervous about working with the left
because their desire to be accepted as Israelis
would be undermined by association with parties
viewed as traitors by the Zionist mainstream.
In the early 1990s, following the first intifada,
travel restrictions made it virtually impossible
for Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to
travel to work. “Every Palestinian is today seen
as a potential terrorist first and a human being
second.”
Migrant workers from Eastern Europe and the
Third World, “abused, underpaid and overworked”,
have replaced Palestinians as a pool of cheap
labour, Cohen said. As Israeli law does not
provide for non-Jewish immigration, these
workers are not entitled to permanent residency
and are often deported without pay. One
organisation, Kav La’Oved (Workers Hotline),
campaigns for the rights of migrant workers,
Palestinians working in the settlements and
other super-exploited workers.
Cohen is a member of the socialist Hadash party,
the only party in the Israeli parliament with
both Arab and Jewish members. In parliament,
Hadash blocs with two other parties that
represent Palestinians in Israel, Ra’am and the
National Democratic Assembly (Balad).
About 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab
Palestinians, descendants of the minority of
Palestinians who did not flee in 1948. Despite
pressure from the Israeli state, they continue
to identify as Palestinians. Most Palestinian
citizens of Israel have family in the West Bank
or Gaza.
The bloc of three anti-Zionist parties has 10
members in the 120-seat parliament, elected by
proportional representation. Explaining the
under-representation of Palestinians in the
parliament, Cohen said that some Palestinians
vote for Zionist parties to try to get services
for their communities, while others feel that
voting at all would be legitimising the Israeli
state. “Some left-wing Israelis don’t vote for
the same reason.”
“One disturbing thing is that more and more
Israeli Jews are supporting disqualification of
Palestinian parties from elections”, Cohen
continued. Before the last election, Balad was
banned because its leader, Azmi Bishara, met
with the Syrian government. The ban was later
overturned by the Supreme Court.
In parliament, Hadash has tried to “raise and
support laws against the occupation, although
not with a lot of success”. Because of
parliamentary limitations, Cohen and other
Hadash members also work in activist groups,
including Ta’ayush (Working Together), an
Israeli-Palestinian group that organises
protests against the apartheid wall, and the
West Bank and Gaza settlements. It also
undertakes humanitarian work, such as
transporting food and water to communities under
siege by the Israeli army.
A contradiction of Zionism is that despite a
majority of Israelis being secular, most support
a theocratic state, including laws banning civil
marriages. Preventing marriage between people
from different religious backgrounds is an
important prop of apartheid-like segregation
within Israel.
According to Cohen, Hadash aspires to a single
democratic, secular state, but acknowledges a
two-state solution is a more realistic target.
“A majority of Palestinians and Israelis want to
have their own state.”
Ironically, the 400,000 Israeli settlers in the
West Bank are undermining the possibility of
there being a two-state solution. Cohen
explained that the majority of these are in
settlements close to the Green Line (the
pre-1967 Israeli border), which are “like
suburban areas”.
These settlements are populated by Israelis
attracted by cheap housing. A lot of immigrants
are housed there. Cohen said that some Russian
immigrants were not aware that they were living
in settlements, but “the majority [of settlers]
simply don’t care”.
A significant minority of settlers are
right-wing extremists, many from the US, in
outposts deep inside Palestinian territory. The
settlements have produced full-blown apartheid
in the West Bank, with two separate law systems.
Cohen holds the Israeli government responsible
for facilitating these extremists. “There are
nut-job fascists in every country. The question
is how does the country react. [In Israel], if a
few nut cases make a settlement between two
Palestinian villages, the government will send
soldiers to protect them, taking more
Palestinian land.”
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