Ralph Seliger has taken on my Zionist history guru Jack Ross re the progressive tendencies inside Zionism. I'm going to offer Seliger's response to Ross's recent post. Then Ross's response to Seliger. I imagine Seliger may wish to respond to Ross, and I expect we'll leave it at that. I like to give guests whose views I disagree with the last word by and large.
Seliger:
Citing Ross: "Is Seliger really claiming with a straight face that before
Biltmore conference in '42 (when Zionists endorse a Jewish state in
Palestine) Weizman, Ben Gurion, et al were in favor of binationalism?"
of Zionism, because he apparently does not know about the factional
differences in the historic Zionist movement. Enemies of Zionism seem always to attribute statements or policies of the different factions to all
Zionists: for example, from Labor Zionists such as Ben-Gurion, general
Zionists (centrists) like Weizmann, or Revisionists (rightists) like
Jabotinsky and Begin. Weizmann and Ben-Gurion were not in agreement
with the bi-nationalist views of Hashomer Hatzair
and Brit Shalom or IHUD. Hahomer Hatazair was a
radical socialist-Zionist movement which had attempted to join the
Comintern (Communist International) in 1927 and had opposed the idea of
a Jewish state prior to the Arab attacks of 1947-48; Brit Shalom and
IHUD represented outstanding liberal voices of Jewish conscience in and
outside of Palestine– including Martin Buber, Judah Magnes and Hannah Arendt. (In its early years, Hashomer Hatzair's political party, MAPAM, was the second largest in Israel's parliament.)
a place of refuge for a horribly persecuted minority) within the
context of a bi-national state or union of Arabs and Jews
in Palestine. Both these strains of Zionism have always advocated peace
and reconciliation. Hashomer Hatzair still exists in name as a Zionist youth movement,
but its political legacy remains with Meretz [of which Seliger is a US leader]. They are no longer
bi-nationalist because this has ceased to be practical, but they do
favor complete equality between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. Martin Buber's influence lived on via New Outlook magazine (which folded in '91 or '92) and the Palestine-Israel Journal.
aimed at peace and reconciliation, rather than largely drifting into
the orbit of the Axis Powers via the Mufti, the history of Palestine might have been very different.
Jack Ross responds:
I know that there were factions within Zionism, yes, as Seliger
incredulously suggests I thought otherwise. I thought Ichud and Brit
Shalom were the same thing, maybe not, and it is their legacy which I
embrace. Seliger is however whitewashing the history of Mapam, which
in the late mandate/early statehood period was totally in hock to the
Soviets and their party line. In this connection I would remind
readers of the anecdote I think I saw on this blog of how Khrushchev's
son said in an interview recently that Stalin's pro-Zionism was based
on a long term calculation of giving the west an intractable stumbling
block to sound policy, which unfortunately succeeded brilliantly.
Re Martin Buber. This is a red herring, no one was opposed to Palestine as a refuge
insofar as it was amicable with the native population, though
"homeland" to me is a weasel word, or what Ayn Rand called an
"anti-concept" – indeed exactly the sort of weasel word or anti-concept
which was used by the Yishuv and Jewish Agency to duplicitously solicit
support.
Meretz was the merger of what was left of Mapam and the pro-peace faction of Labor led by Bellin. Yes, they support a two-state solution,
but, with the facts on the ground, for how long? It is the two-state
solution which has never been practical. Many very good people have
sincerely believed in it, but in the hands of Israeli leadership it has
been nothing but a ruse in order to serve world opinion.
As to the Arabs, I have never been an apologist for the Arabs, and the Mufti was a
vicious mother, no question. But it is irresponsible to deny that the
Mufti, Chandra Bose, and the Free Iraqi Government had legitimate
anti-imperialist aspirations which led them to collaborate with the
Axis. And the Mufti's Axis collaboration was no better or worse than
that of Irgun as late as '38.
In fact, if you've seen this
insane new neocon biography of the Mufti meant to argue that we've
always been at war with East Asia, which goes so far as to claim that
the Mufti, not Hitler, first proposed the Final Solution.
I suspect that the grain of truth to this is that some time in 1941-42
Hitler made the calculation that his fortunes lay not with the likes of
Begin and Lord Haw-Haw but with the anti-imperialist forces of the British Empire such as Bose and the Mufti, which helped push the Final Solution along, though of course by no means exclusively.
