The dialectics of Israel’s rights
Preface
This is the fourth article in the series covering key concepts of Zionism and my critical awareness of these ideas as I developed from being a Zionist Jewish South African to becoming an anti-Zionist Jewish South African.
All four articles are within a framework of ideas developed by Gramsci. These are the notion that there exist ideological frameworks separate from our individual minds and that these are built on certain core concepts or elements. The building of ideological frameworks is contested by groups that are excluded from the identities that are being built, a process that is driven by underlying social antagonisms including — but not reducible to — class conflict and class struggles. There are a broad range of possible identities. For our purposes in these articles we have focused on two key identities namely the ‘state’ and the ‘nation’. And how Zionism and its opponents have defined their preferred state, as well as the nation it purportedly represents, in the context of historic Palestine.
The first article in this series was a background sketch to who I am and how I became what I am.
The second article in this series provided a conceptual framework for understanding the significance of the identities ‘state’ and ‘nation’ and how they are used by groups that are struggling to get their attributed meaning established as a dominant discourse. Within this framework we identified a key turning point in the pre-state phase of Zionist ideology, i.e. the juncture (in 1937) at which a Zionist bloc was constituted, committed to partition and ethnic cleansing. The second article also unpacked the meaning that Zionist ideology attributes to the key identity, namely the right to Jewish statehood in the territory known as Eretz Yisrael — the article also recounted my interpellation as a young Zionist.
The third article in this series discussed the critique of the right to exist concept and described important milestones on my journey towards fully grasping that critique. In that article I noted that the essence of anti-Zionism is contained in the phrase ‘Israel has no right to exist’, in other words the ideology of anti-Zionism rests on the critique of Israel’s right to exist and its right to exist as a Jewish state.
This article is based on the framework elicited previously, to make sense of the ideological struggles between Zionism and its opponents. Its central theme is the development, through social conflict, of ideas about the state of Israel and the Jewish nation state. The social conflict referred to is the historical and ongoing ideological struggle between Zionists and anti-Zionists about the nature of the state and the nation(s) in historical Palestine.
The first section of the article describes Zionism’s development from a subaltern to a hegemonic ideology. The second section describes the ideological struggle against Zionist hegemony. The third section describes the struggle between the state of Israel and the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement with reference to the binary one state and two state solutions. The fourth section examines this ideological struggle in the context of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, as it manifests itself both in the United States (US) and globally.
This article concludes the discussion about the contradictory meanings attributed to notions of state and nation in respect of Israel and the Palestinian people. It lays the basis for further discussions about other key concepts in the ideological arsenal of Zionism. The next series of articles will shift focus to the meaning of being Jewish and of antisemitism.
From subaltern Zionism to hegemonic Zionism
The Zionist movement succeeded in building a historical bloc of powerful supporters for their narrative based on the two cardinal concepts of the right to exist and the right to exist as a Jewish state. These concepts are crucial when considering and understanding the case for one state or two states, in historic Palestine, as a liberatory reality for the Palestinian people and also for Jewish Israelis. In 1948 the application of these concepts entailed changing the demographics of already-settled Palestinians in the territory of what would soon become the new state of Israel. The core concepts have persisted over time as Israel expanded the territory under its control (in 1967) to cover all of historic Palestine.
This was despite the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the umbrella of Palestine resistance groups led by Fatah and formed in 1964, adopting the goal of a single, secular democratic state over the whole of historic Palestine. The PLO’s strategies, which included armed struggle, came asunder under the might of massive Israeli military response (including the 1967 Six Day War), contradictory interests (to Palestinian liberation) from the neighbouring states of Egypt and Jordan, and finally the PLO’s expulsion from Jordan during Black September (1971) and during the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, from Beirut to Tripoli (Libya). Right to exist and the right to be a Jewish state are critical concepts in Israel’s Zionist ideology that legitimates its original conquest of the land (1948) as well as its ongoing expansion and concomitant relocations of the Palestinian population and their concentration in ever-smaller conurbations (i.e. within the West Bank and in Gaza).
Counter-hegemonic ideological struggle
The documentary The Occupation of the American Mind makes the point that until the 1982 invasion by Israel of Lebanon and the massacres at the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps, the hegemonic view of Israel’s right to exist as a state and also as a Jewish state, held sway in the Anglo-American media. The justice of defending these rights resonated powerfully given the history of the holocaust. But this hegemony did not happen spontaneously — Israeli historian Ilan Pappe explains that it was organised starting with the pivotal role of then Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban in the establishment of
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the 1950s. (APAIC has since developed into a powerful group lobbying the US state and government in the interest of Zionism and the state of Israel). The popular view was of Israel as a beleaguered state defending its rights against backward, irrational people. But events in Lebanon changed all that. Investigative journalist Robert Fisk(and others) reported the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF’s) complicity in the refugee camp massacres, which was televised around the world, undermining the hegemonic ideology of Israel being a state denied its rights. Instead, Israel was increasingly seen as a state aggressively attacking other states (and undermining their right to existence by violating their borders).
Suraya Dadoo, Palestinian rights activist and scholar, has pointed out that simultaneous to a beleaguered PLO under Fatah shifting from the idea of a single state towards ultimately recognising not only Israel’s right to exist as a state, but also its right to exist as a Jewish state there was the development of other counter-hegemonic narratives. (The PLO’s ideological shifts were prompted by what was named “the peace process” which culminated in the 1990s Oslo Accords, that were supposed to lay the basis for final settlement talks — which, in the event, never happened). With the ideological fragmentation within the Palestinian national movement came the emergence of other forces. One was the Islamic Resistance Movement (also known as Hamas), which has recognised neither Israel’s right to exist nor its right to
exist as a Jewish state — since 2006 Hamas has held administrative control over Gaza. But it was the emergence of a third strand of resistance at the grassroots that has led to a significant global challenge of the concept right to exist as a Jewish state. Two popular uprisings — the first intifada (1987) and second intifada (2002) reflected growing grassroots disenchantment with Fatah and the Oslo Accords. It was these intifadas that prompted the emergence in 2005 of the BDS movement, supported by over 170 Palestinian civil society organisations
BDS, ideological struggle and one state-two states.
Gramsci emphasised ideological struggle (or what he called the ‘war of position’) as the main driver of social change — this has important implications for a progressive and revolutionary strategy aimed at significant, albeit incremental, social change. One of these implications is to look beyond one’s own propaganda and develop analyses that reflect actual historical circumstances of the dominated classes and oppressed populations.
Policy and Practice of Likud
Pappe (in “The Biggest Prison on Earth”)[1] and Israeli historian Avi Shlaim (in “The Iron Wall”)[2] show in detail the consistent development of Zionist policies to corral Palestinians into enclaves, rather than making a serious concession to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Israel’s alleged right to exist and its further right to exist as a Jewish state, have been important elements in the ideological cement legitimising (or explaining) Israeli policies towards Palestinians. In this process Israel adopted an open-minded view about negotiations with the PLO (in the 1990s, in the process leading to the Oslo Accords) while at the same time effectively foreclosing on there ever being a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. This is encapsulated starkly in the programme of the Likud Bloc (the organised power base of then Israeli Prime Minister Nethanyahu), that says that it will never permit a Palestinian state to exist in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The earlier annexation of the Golan Heights (which lies within the internationally recognised borders of Syria), the annexation of East Jerusalem (which lies outside the internationally recognised borders of Israel) as well as the moves in 2020 by Nethanyahu and Likud — supported by the Trump administration — to annex large swathes of the West Bank, are consistent with this view.
The ideological struggle around the notions of right to exist and right to exist as a Jewish state, has intensified since the 1990s and especially after the emergence of BDS. These contested rights are also related to the demands for either two states or one democratic secular state, to transform Israeli apartheid into a just society. Local struggles in Palestine/Israel, citizens movements globally and also Israel’s response to what it identified as an ‘existential threat’, were indications of this. But manifestations of this are also to be observed in international relations. One of these is with post-apartheid South Africa.
Mandela: “de facto Right to Exist”
Zionists and anti-Zionists have contested the meaning of the views of Nelson Mandela regarding Israel’s right to exist as a state and also its right to exist as Jewish state. Zionists claim that Mandela supported these rights while anti-Zionists claim that he said nothing of the sort but implacably supported Palestinian resistance to occupation including through armed struggle in the face of Israeli intransigence.
Mandela’s views on Israel’s rights are important: as an icon of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, his views carry weight. The Mandela personality cult persists within the ANC and the country as a whole. Thus, credence in the public domain will accrue to that worldview (either Zionist or anti-Zionist) best able to make the case for Mandela’s support. At the same time it should be noted that the aura that surrounds Mandela has a chilling effect on questioning where he stood with respect to these important, claimed, rights. This is the likely reason why little has been written and debated on this topic in the public domain.
Claiming Mandela
In October 2021 South Africa Friends of Israel (SAFI) erected billboards with Mandela’s picture and an inputed quote “We insist on the right of the State of Israel to exist”. (SAFI is an initiative of the South African Zionist Federation). Iqbal Jassat, from Media Review Network (MRN) countered that the quote was an incomplete quote, had been published without regard for context and was therefore dishonest and misleading. (MRN is a South African group working to expose Zionist apartheid and the occupation of Palestine).
In 2020 Dadoo (referred to earlier) described a 2018 meeting of South African Zionists at Lilliesleaf farm, Rivonia (the underground headquarters of the ANC’s armed struggle, where Nelson Mandela and his colleagues were arrested in the early 1960s): she criticised what she called the Zionist hijacking of Mandela’s legacy, whereby they focused entirely on the emphasis on dialogue, forgiveness and reconciliation that characterised the Mandela released from prison in the 1990s. This, she argued, was cottoned on to by liberal Zionists who bemoaned what they saw as the lack of similar characters from the Israeli and Palestinian camps, who would negotiate peace. However, she said, there was another side to Mandela, namely the armed revolutionary warrior fighting against the enormous injustices of apartheid in South Africa. And that it was only once the balance of power had turned against the South African regime and they agreed to a democracy based on universal franchise, that Mandela was prepared to have dialogue, forgive and reconcile.
Responding to Dadoo David Saks (of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies [SAJBoD]) referred to Mandela’s 1992 address to the Muslim community where he told them that he recognised “the right of Israel’s existence”. Saks added that in his 1993 address to the SAJBoD national conference Mandela had said that he recognised the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism just as he recognised the legitimacy of Zionism as Jewish nationalism and “the right of the state of Israel to exist within secure borders”. What Saks was emphasising was Mandela’s (alleged) support for Israel’s right to exist as an ethno-Jewish state, and that therefore it could not be expected to commit national suicide by giving up Jewish political supremacy. The implication is that until the PLO, Hamas and BDS accept Israel’s right to exist there can be no negotiation. (The irony, as recalled in the second article in this series, is that under Arafat the PLO had accepted in writing not only Israel’s right to exist but also its right to exist as a Jewish state).
The critical question for this analysis is where Mandela stood with respect to Israel’s claimed right to exist and also to exist as a Jewish state, meaning as the nation state of the Jewish people and not for all its citizens. Related to this question is the question of his view of the real political, social and military actions through which the state of Israel was founded in 1948, and through which it has been reproduced these past 74 years. Finally, what did he understand the PLO policy to be and how did he relate to it. The last point is important because as we have seen the PLO formally recognised Israel’s right to exist as well as its right to exist as a Jewish state, in the course of what came to be known as the peace process and the Oslo Accords.
Mandela’s expressed views on Israel
It is instructive to examine Mandela’s and the ANC’s historical views (during the 1950s and 1960s) of the Palestinian struggle and the establishment of the state of Israel. These should give insight into later views that the ANC as a movement and then a government articulated in relation to developments in historic Palestine over the past 74 years. Despite access to large databases of information through the internet, there was no relevant historical information discovered during my considerable on-line research time. Instead, the little information that I was able to glean comes from comments made by two biographers of Nelson Mandela. They say nothing about the ANC’s and Mandela’s position on Israel’s right to exist and its right to exist as a Jewish state. But they do reflect the view of senior ANC military operatives of the struggle by Zionists to establish the state of Israel. These views are instructive because they imply that Israel had a right to exist as a state and as a Jewish ethno-state.
This unconscious — or intuitive — acceptance of Zionism’s proclaimed rights are reflected in the role of a Jewish Zionist in the ANC’s armed struggle, and perceptions by his ANC colleagues of his military and armed activities in historic Palestine during 1948 and 1949. Mandela’s official biographer, Anthony Sampson[3], notes that Arthur Goldreich — who had fought the British in Palestine in the 1940s — was brought into the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), as an expert who knew about explosives. David James Smith[4], who has written on the life of Mandela during the 1950s and 1960s, also identified Goldreich as a Zionist fighter in the Palmach (an originator of the IDF) who became part of the ANC underground movement and in 1961 joined the armed struggle. According to Hazel Goldreich (Arthur’s wife) and Mac Maharaj (a comrade of Mandela’s in MK, and also imprisoned on Robben Island) MK revolutionaries viewed the birth of the state of Israel as a struggle against British colonialism based on a culture of solidarity developed through kibbutzim (the collective military-agricultural settlements that spearheaded the Zionist colonisation of Palestine).
In neither biographical account is there indication of Mandela, Goldreich or Maharaj using the term “Nakba” nor is there any hint that what was going on was a conquest of land from an indigenous peasantry. This is noteworthy given the fact that Goldreich was a communist, and the 1940s and 1950s was a period during which many individual communists participated in ANC structures. The process of separation of the direct producers from the land had already been identified in Marx’s Capital in the late 19th century, as primitive accumulation, the precondition for cycles of capital accumulation that would come to characterise a modern economy. But for Zionist communists actively participating in their colonisation of Palestine, their ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population presented no contradiction to their views regarding national liberation and socialism (we will return to this point in a later excerpt on the meaning of being Jewish, dealing with labour Zionism and its role in the colonisation of Palestine). Thus, with respect to Marxism, there was a glaring lacuna in the ideology of Zionist communists insofar as it claimed to understand the historical emergence of the capitalist mode of production.
My internet research revealed no insights into Mandela’s mindset vis-a-vis historic Palestine during the long years of his incarceration. Fast forward to his release from prison in 1990, from which juncture neither Mandela nor the ANC government have clarified the Zionist relationship with then British colonialism and where the then Palestinian peasantry, petty commodity producers and urban petite bourgeoisie fitted into the picture of historic Palestine. Consistently the ANC (both as party and government) and Mandela have remained vague in their discourse on Israel’s proclaimed rights.
Shortly after his release from prison, in February 1990, Mandela met Arafat (PLO Chairman) and said “there are many similarities between our struggle and that of the PLO. We live under a unique form of colonialism in South Africa as well as in Israel”. “Colonialism” suggests the occupation of the land of an indigenous people by foreigners, yet Mandela (unlike archbishop Tutu) did not call out the Israeli state as having a colonialist or an apartheid[5] regime. In fact, his further statements on the issue of Israel’s rights could plausibly be interpreted (as they were by David Saks, referred to above) as endorsing the Zionist claimed right of Israel to exist as a Jewish ethno-state.[6]
In June 1990 Mandela acknowledged Israel’s de facto right to exist within its 1967 borders. Mandela made his comments supporting Israel’s right to exist in a meeting with prominent leaders of US Jewish communities who reported that his tone was apologetic for causing offence by his earlier public appearance with Arafat and reiteration of ANC support for the PLO. Writing in the Seattle Times Jesse Jackson quoted Mandela’s explanation of his position: “there has never been any doubting the existence de facto and de jure of the state of Israel within secure boundaries”…. “If you refer to the continued occupation of areas conquered by Israel from the Arabs, then we do not regard the maintenance of these as ensuring secure borders for Israel”. This is consistent with the point that he made at the 1993 SAJBoD conference referred to earlier.
In 1994, after having become President, Mandela visited the Marais Road Shul (in Sea Point, Cape Town) as part of his outreach to various religious denominations in the country. Alon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, said that during that visit Mandela made the point that Israel was the homeland of the Jewish people. The term “homeland” can have various meanings attributed to it. The second article of this series referred to the Balfour Declaration which supported the idea of a national home for the Jewish people in historic Palestine. Although the Balfour Declaration also said that nothing should be done to infringe the civil and other rights of the indigenous people of Palestine, David Hirst in “The Gun and the Olive Branch”[7] shows that in other more discreet and private communication both Zionists as well as British and French colonialists seriously pursued the idea of a Jewish ethno-state in historic Palestine. What this tells us is that in order to judge an individual or a socio-political movement a broader understanding of their practices is required — reducing intentions to the isolated comments of this or that official statement or document misses the implications of their broader social practices. So while Mandela might have intended a non-state meaning by the word “homeland”, objectively this term already had a history and consequence: namely, a Jewish ethno-state in Palestine.
Later, in 1997 Mandela made his now oft-quoted comment that “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Two years later, in 1999, Don Kampeas reported him as saying that Israel had to give up Arab land — but only in return for peace. This was in a context where he supported then Israeli Prime Minister Barak’s demand for a full peace with Syria — he could not conceive of Israel withdrawing from the Golan Heights if Arab states did not recognise Israel’s right to exist within secure borders.
Meaning of Mandela and ANC views
A close reading indicates that Mandela was referring to Israel’s internationally recognised borders, i.e. its right of existence and not it’s right to exist (a point of distinction explained in the third article of this series). So while ostensibly conceding to a key Zionist ideological element, the inclusion of the terms ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ in his statement suggests he might have been diplomatically pushing back. While Mandela and the ANC did not explicitly endorse Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish ethno-state, they also left the idea uncriticised. They failed to critique the assumption that the 1948 struggle was a war of independence against Britain (the Palestinian population, subjected to violent land dispossession and population relocation, experienced this as the “Nakba”, or catastrophe).[8]
Mandela remained fulsome in his praise of Arafat after the latter’s death. This stands in sharp contradistinction to the harsh 2002 critique of Arafat’s legacy by Palestinian public intellectual Edward Said,[9] himself once a member of the PLO. Following from this Mandela and the ANC focused their criticism on the post-1967 Israeli occupation but at the same time accepted the Israeli assumption that it too was a victim, of Arab aggression, and therefore required the latter to recognise its rights before conceding the occupied territories. Mandela’s support of Israel’s “peace for land” slogan assumed a symmetrical conflict between two competing nationalisms, ignoring the aggressive nature of Zionism and Israeli policies[10] towards the neighbouring states.
The above way of seeing the conflict in historical Palestine underpins the so-called two state solution for which there is international consensus as reflected by the western powers (led by the United States [US]), Russia and China, and therefore in the United Nations [UN]). Under this scenario Palestinian Israelis could at best be second class citizens, and Palestinian refugees would have to forfeit their right to return (according to UN GA Resolution 194). The approach of South Africa’s ANC government — but probably not of all its people — is aligned with this geo-political narrative. Within this ideological framework the South African government ignores the global BDS movement by refraining from implementing sanctions against Israel.
Ideas within the US Jewish community
Since 2005 the growth in popularity of the BDS movement in civil societies across the world, particularly among large sections of the younger US population, also manifested in critiques of basic Zionist concepts from within a younger cohort of the US Jewish community. Nor has this been restricted to the younger generation of Jewish US citizens.
Prominent Jewish leader Henry Siegman had been present at the 1990 meeting between US Jewish leaders and Mandela referred to earlier. Siegman was reportedly a doubting Thomas even while publicly clinging to Zionist precepts. In 2012 Siegman declared himself for a one state solution with equal civil and national rights, thereby jettisoning his support for the right to exist as a Jewish state. Before his 2012 ‘conversion’, and as part of his Road to Damascus experience, he had met senior Hamas leaders and heard from the horse’s mouth that it would consider a truce with Israel — including accepting the Palestinian people’s collective recognition of the state of Israel.
Another staunch Zionist supporter of a two state solution, South African-born Peter Beinart, also declared his support for a one state solution in July 2020.
BDS and global Palestine solidarity positions
BDS does not articulate a demand for either a two state or a one state solution but it’s three core demands are based on recognising the human rights of all who live between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea (whether through two states or through one state). Strategically this makes sense, reflecting the almost equal support amongst Palestinians for realising their freedoms either through two states or through one state (in 2020 39 per cent supported the former and 37 per cent the latter option). Since 2011 support amongst Palestinians for a two state solution has dropped from a high of 55 per cent to the current low of 39 per cent.
Not all Palestine solidarity activists agree with BDS’ agnosticism regarding Israel’s right to exist as a state. In 2012 prominent critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein had pointed out that the practical implications of BDS’s three demands are the transformation of the current state of Israel (the borders of which are defined by the 1949 armistice lines) into a single state in which Jews would be a minority — thereby contradicting this claim on rights. According to Finkelstein the BDS lack of a position on the right of existence is an opportunistic usage of international law — claiming the authority of international law (i.e. for Palestinian rights) when it suits its political purposes but effectively denying Israel’s right under international law. He argued that claiming national equality for the Palestinian minority in Israel, but not addressing the treatment of minorities in other Middle Eastern countries, or for example the status of the ‘untouchables’ in India, was hypocritical. To rectify this Finkelstein required BDS to drop its demand for nationality equality of Palestinian Israeli citizens and the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and to limit its demands to ending the occupation. His argument was strategic, namely that BDS could sell the demand for ending of the occupation — and for two states — to a broader US public but not the demand for equality of Palestinian Israeli citizens nor the right of return for Palestinian refugees, which would be seen as unreasonable.
In responding to Finkelstein Palestinian activist and publisher Ali Abunimah pointed out that it would be possible for a two state solution to meet all the three BDS demands, implying that the agnosticism of the BDS leadership on the question of one state or two states reflected this potential, rather than hypocrisy. He referred to the 1998 Belfast Agreement (between Protestant Northern Ireland and its Catholic minority), which Finkelstein had also used as an example to demonstrate his point of view. Abunimah noted that this agreement did not abolish the state of Northern Ireland but it did end its status as a ‘Protestant state’ (an oppressive ethnocracy, as is the case with the state of Israel as a Jewish state) and enshrined national equality, the right to citizenship in either Northern Ireland or the southern republic and strong redress measures in favour of the Catholic minority, as fundamental principles. Activist scholars Virginia Tilley and Richard Falk, on page 18 of their UN study into the question of Israel having an apartheid regime, make a similar point: ending the apartheid regime of the Israeli state does not necessarily affect its statehood [i.e. right of existence as a state]). Abunimah questioned whether Zionists and Finkelstein could accept a two-state solution on these terms. If not, then their priority was to preserve racial and colonial privileges for Jews at the expense of Palestinian rights. In a further critique of Finkelstein’s views Abunimah noted that Finkelstein attributed most movement on anti-Zionism to Jewish groups, neglected to acknowledge Palestinians’ struggles and sacrifices and attacked them outright. Abunimah argued that in doing this Finkelstein prioritised the practices of organisations like Human Rights Watch, which he argued was tied to global US power.
Zionist ‘broad tent’ and ‘red lines’
In 2011 the State of Israel and Zionist organisations particularly in the US (but likely elsewhere) responded strategically to what they saw as the ‘delegitimation’ threat to the state. In that year, and in response to the BDS movement, the Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank that provides strategic services to the Israeli government, developed its Broad Tent and Red Lines strategy. The strategy referred to what it saw as the then two most successful delegitimation events, namely the Goldstone Report (into war crimes and human rights violation during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in
2008) and the Gaza Flotilla, a project of the Free Gaza Movement, an international Palestine solidarity organisation that sponsors sending boats to Gaza to challenge the Israeli naval blockade that commenced shortly after Hamas’s victory in the Palestine Legislative Council 2006 election. In August 2008 the first flotilla breached the blockade to reach the port of Gaza. Over the next 10 years 35 more boats would challenge the blockade, of which three would succeed in reaching the shores of Gaza. In 2010 a second aid flotilla (in which the lead ship was the Mavi Mamara) was attacked by Israeli naval forces and ten participants were killed. The remaining participants were detained, imprisoned and ill-treated (including being assaulted and tortured). Clearly the sending of flotillas to challenge the siege of Gaza was seen by Israel as crossing a red line in practice.
Reut’s strategy assumed the necessity of building a broad bloc of sympathisers and supporters for Israel’s cause, as a basis of countering the delegitimation of Israel. Its aim was to broaden the base of support for Zionism and Israel by narrowing the definition of who should be kept out of the bloc, and broadening the definition of who should be allowed in. This Open Tent approach opposed the Israeli government’s hitherto Closed Tent approach which responded with harsh consequences to anyone daring to criticise Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. But to be included in the Open Tent critics had to accept the two key concepts, Israel’s right to exist and its right to exist as a Jewish state. In practice Reut recommended that there be a series of local grassroot activities and practices by Zionist and their sympathisers to win over potential supporters on the basis of their accepting these two rights. It was thought that this would be sufficient to marginalise the delegitimisers and reengage with groups who had been pushed away from identifying with Israel.
However, six years later (in January 2017) Reut (in conjunction with the Anti Defamation League — a pro-Zionist organisation that operates as a watchdog patrolling the bounds of permissive criticisms of Israel) issued a second report based on extensive research. This showed that despite a twentyfold increase in investment to marginalise the deligitimation of Israel and its policies, challenges to the fundamental legitimacy of the state of Israel continued to grow across the world. The report’s response was still based on the earlier Broad Tent Red Lines approach. It emphasised that the pro-Israel network had to improve its adaptive capacity. This required improved thought leadership, a greater toleration of different opinions in the broad tent, and upgrading information collection (through cyberspace monitoring), strategy building capabilities (through cyberspace counter strategies), and scalable tools and platforms. The report highlighted ten critical challenges that would have to be overcome to defend the hegemony of Zionist ideology, including a backlash against the implementation of anti-BDS legislation, the breakdown of the two-state solution and the rise of intersectionality. The last-mentioned point refers to the identification of other oppressed minorities — like black US citizens and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual and Queer (LGBTQ) communities — with the anti-Zionist struggle and targeted the leadership of these communities for engagement.
Recently I came across a contact in LinkedIn that reflects this strategy of using tools and platforms to transform Israel’s image and win back supporters. The text of a recent blog on this site criticises the BDS movement and the notion that Israel is an apartheid state, and decries the alleged antisemitism and the speech that it identifies with ant-Zionism. There was a brief interaction between us on our opposing ideologies, in which the other person emphasised his openness to hearing about other experiences and ideas, but that we would be unlikely to communicate again given our views were poles apart. What is interesting is the apparent reasonableness of this response as opposed to the usual moral condemnation that I am used to receiving, either through cold silence or verbal denunciation of my alleged treachery.
Palestine and BLM — global and US context.
In the struggle for an anti-Zionist hegemony, based on the principles of equal civil and national rights for all inhabitants of historic Palestine, making alliances with organised formations of other dominated classes and marginalised social groupings (identified along ethnic, colour, gender, etc. lines), becomes crucial, particularly in the US. Israel functions as US imperialism’s policeman. BDS has a strong presence in the US particularly on US university campuses. Recent years have witnessed large scale grassroots protest against US elites. The BLM Movement emerged within
this context, sparked by egregious police violence against African Americans. During 2019 and 2020 ongoing nationwide protests in the US called for curtailment or abolition of police forces, and an end to mass incarceration and redress for black US citizens. All of this was taking place within a sluggish global economy which the lockdown strategy dealt a severe blow.
BLM’s anti-imperialist potential
BLM-led revolts are important because they often go beyond purely US-based issues, focus on US imperialism and express solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. Statements of solidarity from activists in Palestine with those in Ferguson in the US, have their roots in an awareness that not only does Israel act on behalf of US imperialism in the Middle East, but it also offers direct support to US police forces to pacify BLM-inspired and led revolts. BLM is not only leading a revolt in the US but has chapters in the UK and elsewhere.
In South Africa prominent people like rugby springboks Siya Kolisi, Tendai Mtawarira and Brian Habana have gone public in their support for BLM. More recently there have also been expressions of solidarity with the BLM movement by the South African national cricket team (Proteas) and the governing body Cricket South Africa. These expressions have not been without their contradictions,[11] reflecting different ideological outlooks and agendas in relation to the issue of race and the questions of white supremacy and black socio-economic marginalisation. However, these expressions of solidarity are often void of the connections between post-apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel in the context of US imperialism.
Israeli security services and US imperialism
Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist, argues that Israel’s provision of security services and products to governments around the world, in order to quell their own restive and protesting populations, provides the basis for the passivity of many governments in the face of Israel’s egregious violation of Palestinian rights.
Halper includes South Africa within the circle of states with which Israel can establish some measure of hegemony or influence through its security ties. He reports that Israel Aerospace Industries sells its Gabriel (sea skimming anti-ship) missiles to, inter alia, South Africa. Furthermore, Israeli weaponry is produced under licence in South Africa — the SA police massacred 34 miners at Marikana in 2012 with R5s, a licensed replica of the Israeli Galil SAR, or LM5 assault rifles, specifically designed for infantry and tactical police use.
Developing a pro-Zionist consensus in South Africa would be the outcome of many determinations, not all of which are under the control of the state of Israel. There might already be an emerging consensus amongst some South African commercial farmers with respect to Israel, influenced through security services provided by individual Israelis to South African farmers. There are also individual relationships between pro-Zionist Jewish entrepreneurs, like Ivor Ichikowitz (CEO of the Paramount Group, a defence contractor with revenue approaching US $1 billion in 2014) and ANC leaders like Mandela and Zuma. The above expressions of solidarity with BLM by prominent South Africans are agnostic about US imperialism: hence they ignore the anti-imperialist potential in, and congruence of the BLM struggle, with the Palestinian struggle.
Organisations that support Israel’s right to exist and its right to exist as a Jewish state — like the ADL — have moved to influence BLM and LGBTQ activists. This reflects a conscious strategy advanced by a 2019 Reut Report on navigating Intersectional Alliances — the objective is to engage movements like BLM and LGBTQ organisations in a way to influence them to drop their global focus on US imperialism and Israel. The method is based on the Broad Tent Red Lines approach developed earlier. An analysis of the Jewish community into “four tribes” provides a platform from which to target Jewish audiences flexibly. The overall aim is to win over sufficient harsh and moderate Jewish and Gentile critics of Israel, and thereby to isolate and marginalise the radical anti-Zionists. Given the outreach of the BLM-led protest movement and its currency in Democratic Party politics and progressive political circles in the US, there is an urgency about this strategy.
Black US leaders’ sympathy for Israel
There is historical precedence for the identification of the struggles of Black US citizens with the struggles of Jews against oppression, and also with Zionism seen as a movement for Jewish self-determination. Robin Kelly, Professor of US history, refers to the identification of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association with the modern Zionist movement. The basis for this and later the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and W.E.B du Bois’ championing a Jewish state lay in the view that Jews were victims of persecution and hate, like African Americans. Martin Luther King’s (naive) support for Israel in 1968, shortly before his untimely death, reflects a similar view about the meaning
of being Jewish and why Jewish survival necessitates Jewish political supremacy in the state of Israel. That said, by the time of his Beyond Vietnam speech, King had clearly developed a critique of US imperialism that would have challenged his earlier support for Zionism.
The success of the move by ADL and other Zionist organisations to engage BLM depends on whether they can persuade the BLM to either remove or water down its anti-imperialist critique. These were contained in an articulated BLM platform several years ago. A critique of Zionism and solidarity with Palestinians forms a strong part of the discourse. The platform of demands appeared on the BLM website. This was then taken down, the reasons for which remain unclear. Within the BLM movement there appeared to be a struggle over these and related issues. Therefore, understanding the meaning of these concepts of right to exist and right to exist as a Jewish state, is necessary to help mitigate the risk of progressive forces (like BLM) and followers across the world being coopted into the Zionist narrative.
Conclusion.
This fourth article explicated the contradictory ideological positions arounf Israel’s claimed rights to exist and as a Jewish ethno-state. It noted that contradictory meanings are attached ny Zionists and anti-Zionists to notions of ‘state’ and ‘nation’ in respect of Israel and the Palestinian people.
The article commenced by mapping some key milestones in the development of Zionism from being a peripheral to becoming a globally dominant mainstream ideology. The article also identified the impact of the ideological struggle against the idea of the right to exclusive Jewish statehood in historic Palestine. In describing the ideological struggle against Zionism the article differentiated the different ideological strands within the Palestinian liberation and solidarity movements.
There has been a strong and ongoing ideological struggle around Mandela’s position on each of these notions, because as an anti-apartheid icon Mandela’s name carries considerable weight for ideological legitimation. We saw that Mandela’s and the ANC’s discourse on the meaning of these rights is characterised by noticeable silences on key questions.
In particular we reflected on the contradictory articulations for support for and critique of Zionist claim of right to exclusive Jewish statehood in Palestine with the Black civil rights and Black nationalist movements in the US.
We noted the current vanguard role of the BLM movement in the uprising by a broad demographic against the US imperialist state both through critique of its domestic policies (extreme privatisation, support for corporations and cutting back of welfare to working people) and its foreign policies (between 800 and 1 000 military bases world-wide and regime change against recalcitrant states).
If the article succeeds in sensitising sufficient Palestine solidarity activists here in South Africa as well as abroad to the risks of co-optation into a pro-Zionist narrative, and an avoidance of an anti-imperialist critique, it will have achieved its aim. The road to greater ideological clarity is through developing and deepening a culture of debate, and not stifling voices that speak to inconvenient truths.
Concepts underlying and justifying exclusive Jewish statehood in Palestine do not stand alone in the edifice of Zionist ideology. They are reinforced by — and in turn reinforce — concepts that proclaim Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, define who is a Jew and what constitutes antisemitism. The next series of articles will explore the meaning of these terms, our critique and describe the historical development and function of these terms as reciprocal to the Zionist notion of exclusive Jewish statehood.
Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 15 February 2022.
[1] Pappe, I 2017 The Biggest Prison on Earth — A History of the Occupied Territories, One World. Cf. Palestine Book Awards, ‘The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories’ by Ilan Pappé, for a review of the book.
[2] Schlaim, A 2000 The Iron Wall — Israel and the Arab World, Penguin Books. Cf. Hughes, M 2000 The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, for a review of the book.
[3] Sampson, A 1999 Mandela — The Authorised Biography, Harper Collins, page 155. Cf. Talbot, A Biography falls short of penetrating myth surrounding ANC leader, for a review of the book.
[4] David James Smith, Young Mandela, Phoenix, 2010, pages 226 and 227. Cf. Cartwright, J 2010 Young Mandela by David James Smith, for a summary of the book. Cf. Linklater, A (undated) The critics on Young Mandela, for a critical review comment.
[5] See the following for detailed arguments that since 1948 Israel has established an apartheid regime that entrenches an ethnocracy that guarantees Jewish supremacy and reduces Palestinian Israeli citizens to a second-class status, and that this was formally extended across historic Palestine in 1967:
- UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), 2017 Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, Beirut.
- For further argumentation that the Israeli state is an ethnocracy (and not a democracy) see Jeenah, Ne’eem 2012 Pretending democracy, living ethnocracy, in Jeenah (editor) Pretending Democracy — Israel, an Ethnocratic State, AMEC, Johannesburg, pages 3–23.
- See also Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), 2009 Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A Re-assessment of Israel’s Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Under International Law, A report of the Middle East Project in the Democracy and Governance Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town. The HSRC Report concludes that Israel has indeed imposed an apartheid regime over the OPTs known as the West Bank.
- Recently reports by Amnesty International , Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have reinforced the views referred to above that Israel is an apartheid state.
[6] The deeper signification of the phrase ‘Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state’ is that the Jewish ethnos has a right, like any other ethnos, to rule itself (self-determination) through having supreme political power, which is realised democratically where there is a Jewish electoral majority. We will return to the concept of ethnos in the later excerpt on the Zionist meaning of being Jewish.
[7] Hirst, D 1977 The Gun and the Olive Branch — The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, Faber, pages 37 to 42. Cf. Good Reads for a set of review comments about this book.
[8] Pappe, referred to earlier, holds Zionist forces primarily responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, and therefore for the Palestinian refugee situation that pertains until today For details see Pappe, Illan 2009 The Vicissitudes of the 1948 Historiography of Israel, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 39, №1 (Autumn), pp. 6–23, Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies.
[9] Cf. Viswanathan, G 2002 Power, Politics and Culture — Interviews with Edward W Said, Vintage, pages 432 to 436. Said said that Arafat
“had been effectively isolated by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza during the intifada [1987 -91 uprising], which was their movement. He either had to accept his irrelevance or he could accept a deal that guaranteed hus survival but, alas, did not advance the best interests of his people. He took the latter. And that’s why I separated from him.
I think he persist now because he had no choice. He has become a prisoner of the peace process. He has a little authority, because he has 50 000 men under arms, but effectively he does Israel’s bidding. He is a prisoner of the Israelis. I mean literally. He can’t go in and out of Gaza without their permission. But he is a strutting dictator in his own territory. I think he’s betrayed his people’s interest and their dreams of self-determination“. Cf. Hook (undated), in Transformation, for a Reviewof this book.
[10] There is strong historical evidence that the 1967 war was not forced on Israel but was indeed a war of choice to enable the conquest of more land, seen as vital for the security and expansion of the borders of the state. Cf. Miko Peled, The General’s Son — Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, Just World Books; Joseph L Ryan, the Myth of Annihilation and the Six Day War; and, Mondoweiss interview with Norman Finkelstein.
[11] These expressions took the form of ‘taking the knee’, a form of protest initiated in 2016 by US athlete Colin Kaepernick when he remained kneeling during the signing of the US national anthem at a major national football league match, in protest against police brutality against black US citizens. In South Africa some white members of the Proteas proved controversial when they did not take the knee in solidarity with BLM. This has been criticized. At the same time SA cricket’s Social Justice and Nation Building Report’s tentative findings of racism against the Director of Cricket and the Proteas manager, have also elicited legal criticism.
