Trotskyist Antisemitism

(Source)

My Trotskyist friends are fond of fine distinctions. To wit: they insist that anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism.

And of course they're right on some level. One can legitimately criticize Israel for any number of things: the settlements on the West Bank, the status of its own Arab citizens, its policies with respect to Syria or Saudi Arabia, etc. None of these positions are intrinsically antisemitic. Though not only will anti-Zionists share these criticisms, but so also will anti-Semites. The latter outnumber the former.

But what an anti-Zionist can't do is support Hamas. Hamas' principle agenda is to kill all the Jews, thinly disguised with a bunch of code words.

• Occupation is the term Hamas uses to describe any Jew living in Israel. Their demand to End the Occupation is a demand to kill/exile all Jews in Israel.
• From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be Free advocates a Palestine that is Judenrein, ie, cleansed of all Jews. The Jews who live there now should be either killed or exiled.
• Resistance is the actual act of killing Jews, as illustrated by the events of Oct. 7th.

The ADL, quotes the Students for Justice in Palestine, 

In a statement published after the October 7 invasion, SJP described Hamas’ massacres of Israelis as “a historic win for Palestinian resistance,” and called for “Not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”

Of course--simply by living in Israel--Jews are oppressors, despite the fact that they oppress nobody. The true oppressors of Gaza are Hamas, who in furtherance of their murderous goals keep Gaza locked up and in dire poverty.

Hamas is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, an avowedly fascist organization founded in 1928, and modeled after Franco's Spain, except instead of championing the Catholic Church, it instead substituted Islam. Its leading intellectual/theologian was Sayyid Qutb (1906 - 1966), an Egyptian who spent a couple of years in the United States, which experience molded him into an implacable enemy of secularism. His most famous book is In the Shade of the Quran, a book written while he was in prison in Nasser's Egypt. He died by execution.

My friends over at Left Voice posted a Declaration: Stop Israel’s Airstrikes and Military Intervention Against the Palestinian People. The lede paragraph reads (emphasis mine)

In the early hours of October 7, militias led by Hamas, the organization that governs the Gaza Strip, carried out the most important armed incursion into Israeli territory in the last 50 years. It launched nearly 5,000 missiles and hundreds of soldiers attacked villages close to the Strip. The military operation resulted in the taking of more than a hundred hostages and the deaths of nearly one thousand people, including young people attending a music festival, families living in kibbutz, and others unconnected to the military.

The adjective "important" is truly strange. Surely other adjectives are more suitable: horrific, barbaric, criminal, etc. (Since that was written the Israeli death toll has risen to 1400, and there are over 200 hostages.)

So what is Israel supposed to do about this? Our Left Voice friends don't say, but they roundly criticize Israel for what it is doing.

Israel has already bombed entire buildings and health facilities in the Gaza Strip, as well as other locations that the Zionist army has supposedly identified as centers of operation for Hamas militias. In the first 48 hours of Israel’s offensive, at least 700 Palestinians have already been killed. The new offensive phase will include new, more deadly attacks, and the IDF has not ruled out sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip. With each passing hour, the situation is escalating rapidly. Israeli attacks have now spread to Lebanon, and U.S. imperialism has announced that it will send further military support to Israel to reinforce its presence in the area.

The paragraph is factually wrong: Israel is not attacking Lebanon, but is responding to Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon. Beyond which there have certainly been Palestinian deaths, but the numbers coming from the Hamas government have to be treated with serious skepticism. For example, they blame Israel for bombing a hospital and killing 500 people; it is now known that Israel didn't bomb the hospital, and nowhere near 500 people were killed in what was a misfired, Palestinian rocket.

It's amazing how Left Voice and their close allies in the Democratic Party are so overjoyed to hear about Palestinian deaths! Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Hamas) reportedly broke down in tears when informed that 500 Palestinians were NOT killed in the hospital explosion. Nobody celebrates Palestinian deaths more than my Trotskyist friends and their comrades in the Democrat's Progressive caucus.

Hamas is working hard to create as many civilian casualties as possible--using their own citizens as human shields. Meanwhile, the Israelis are trying hard to prevent civilian casualties, eg, warning residents to leave buildings before they are destroyed, and asking residents in Northern Gaza to leave the area before the invasion starts.

There is another party to the dispute who cheers on Palestinian deaths: the Iranian Ayatollahs. Like Hamas, the Ayatollahs want to kill all the Jews. They've been shouting "death to Israel" for decades now--and they're not joking. But killing all the Palestinians is an additional benefit--a feature, not a bug. For if there is one group of people that the Ayatollahs hate almost as much as the Jews, it's the Palestinians.

In the Ayatollahs' view, the Palestinians are Sunni, stupid losers, and (I'll say it again) Sunni. Palestinians are only good for cannon fodder, and the more of them that get killed while slaughtering the Jews, the better. It's a two-fer.

No wonder the Ayatollahs collaborated with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (who conveniently lives a luxurious, peaceful life in Qatar) and arranged training and materiel support for what was a suicide mission to kill as many Jews as possible. Only Iran benefits from the inevitable Israeli response, which will unfortunately result in the deaths of many Palestinians.

So here are some questions for my Left Voice comrades:

• Why are you siding with the Ayatollahs in championing the slaughter of both Jews and Palestinians?
• Do you really believe the world will be a better place if all the Jews are killed?
• What positive outcome do you expect from Hamas raids into Israel killing as many Jews as possible?
• Will Palestinians really be better off if Israel is destroyed and Palestine is Judenrein?
• Why is Left Voice--a group that supposedly hates fascists--siding with an open and avowedly fascist group like Hamas?

Obviously, any solution to the Israel-Palestine problem has to substantially improve the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and within Israel. Toward this end a constructive Palestinian nationalism is both desirable and appropriate. But constructive does not mean "killing all the Jews." Hamas--far from advancing the cause of Palestinians, is destroying it.

A constructive Palestinian nationalism realizes that the conflict between Palestinians and Jews is not a zero-sum game. It is certainly possible--indeed, necessary--for Israel and Palestine to live on the same land and get wealthy together.

Hamas is the enemy of that vision. Hamas' vision is to kill all the Jews. Left Voice surely knows that, and therefore they are as antisemitic as any Nazi.

Further Reading:

• The SWP Defends Civilization
• Oppression!
• Left Voice and the SWP