Letters

Two Dans

I get the feeling that there are two Dan Lazares – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

On the one hand, the Dr Jekyll in him writes thoughtful and erudite articles on American politics and its constitution. On the other, Mr Hyde leads him to refrain from supporting the Palestinian struggle because he sees it as tainted by anti-Semitism. The Jewish exceptionalism that is part psychological and part political leads to his blind attack on Hamas without any evidence that he understands anything concerning the context in which Hamas arose and developed.

In his letter of September 14 he criticises Pete Gregson as anti-Semitic. I agree, which is why I organised a statement, ‘Why the Palestine solidarity movement should have nothing to do with Peter Gregson’, which has been signed so far by over 60 Palestine solidarity activists. It is still open for signatures if you contact me. Likewise his critique of Ian Donovan’s bankrupt theory that Jews have a pan-national bourgeoisie is not something I disagree with.

However, his reference to David Miller, sacked by Bristol University as a result of a ruling class campaign against him, as a “disgraced academic” is itself disgraceful. Miller was targeted by the Zionist movement in this country and supported by over 100 reactionary MPs and peers because of his steadfast support for the Palestinians and his research on the connections between Zionism and Islamophobia.

Lazare demonstrates that he understands nothing about racism, not least in the United States. He equates black and white militias. Whilst knowing nothing about the former, I am well aware that the latter are white supremacist threats to anti-racist and radical groups.

I am accused of living in an “ideology-free world, in which lower-class racism is perfectly excusable to the degree it exists at all”. I don’t excuse any form of racism, but I try to understand that black anti-white racism is a product of their own oppression, whereas white racism flows from colonialism and slavery. It is a product of capitalist exploitation and serves the interests of the ruling class. One is lethal; the other isn’t. One serves the ruling class; the other doesn’t.

There is no doubt that Jews in eastern Europe had contempt for non-Jews and Christianity, but I also understand that this was a product of anti-Semitic persecution and therefore understandable. Anti-Semitic persecution was not merely a prejudice. It could and often was lethal - a big difference. But, living in the realm of ideology, Lazare is incapable of understanding that one form of racism is reflective, a form of prejudice, while the other flows from the racial division of society and reinforces the rule of capital.

To say that Jews are “overrepresented” in, say, parliament or among billionaires is not, in itself, anti-Semitic. Of course, it could be if the aim was to introduce ghetto benches in universities. But it could also be a simple sociological observation. So, when professor Geoffrey Alderman, the historian of British Jewry, observes that 40% of Jews are in social class A and B, compared to 20% amongst the rest of the population, he is being anti-Semitic according to Lazare. Total nonsense.

One reason for pointing out that there is no economic discrimination against Jews is in order to point out that Jews are not oppressed in British society - unlike Black people, who are underrepresented. It is perfectly valid to point to statistics that suggest that Jews are not the victims that the Zionists make them out to be. The only question is what use one makes of it. If Jews claim, as they do, that they are in no different position to Muslims in this society, then it is perfectly valid to point out that they are a privileged white minority.

In his letter of October 12 Lazare takes Moshé Machover to task over Hamas. I was unable to attend Moshé’s talk, so I am taking what Lazare says as true. Yes, Hamas are a reactionary group politically, but it is also true that they represent a large chunk of Palestinian society. I am not aware that they supported jihadis in Syria and very much doubt that they supported either Isis or al Qa’eda, neither of whom supported the Palestinian struggle. I do know that they criticised al Qa’eda’s attack on Jews in France, when four were killed at the Hypercache supermarket in 2015.

Nor do I accept that Hamas are responsible for attacks on Christian churches in Egypt. Hamas does not operate in Egypt and, although they originated from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, they have obviously progressed since then.

Lazare has previously argued that Hamas are anti-Semitic, which seems somewhat at variance with Yocheved Lifshitz, the freed Israeli hostage, who had nothing but praise for their treatment of her. Hamas are at pains to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, but unfortunately Lazare is blind to such distinctions.

I don’t know whether Machover said that Hamas was a national liberation movement. If he did I disagree - an Islamic movement can’t claim to represent a whole people. However, Hamas is clearly a genuine Palestinian resistance movement, as witnessed by the support their attack on Israel on October 7 received.

Lazare says that Marxists do not side with rightwing groups claiming to speak in the people’s name. Wrong. In the 1950s we supported Eoka in Cyprus against the British. Likewise we supported the IRA. Lazare fails to understand that the nationalism of the oppressor and oppressed is not the same. It is all very simple. We support the struggle of the oppressed. Lazare is concerned about a reactionary Hamas, but has nothing to say about the growth of openly genocidal forces in Israeli society, such as those who are arguing for extermination of the Palestinians.

The problem is that Lazare is a Jewish exceptionalist. I prefer him as Dr Jekyll, not Mr Hyde.

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

US and Israel

As we witness daily the barbaric carpet-bombing of Gaza by the Zionist apartheid regime, as the deaths and horrific injuries rise exponentially, it’s worth asking who is behind this murderous campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing.

Obviously it is the Zionist Israeli soldiers who are spearheading the near total destruction of northern Gaza. The continued pulverising of over 25,000 residential homes, the murder of 900 entire families and the ongoing targeting of hospitals, community centres, UN schools now used as shelters for some of the million-plus displaced souls, the deliberate attacks on ambulances and rescue workers - all are in the hands of Netanyahu and his fascist cabal of religious fundamentalists, quoting biblical threats to destroy all men, women and children as enemies of Israel and to show no mercy.

But who are the other players in this macabre dance of death? America has for decades tried to portray itself as an honest broker in an intractable conflict between Muslims and Jews, between Arabs and Israelis. With American naval battle groups now in the region, with credible reports that the American administration is not only rearming the Zionist regime in support of their efforts to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population, it now appears American planes are on bombing sorties over Gaza, and have ‘special forces’ boots on the ground. $14.6 billion of war aid has been promised to Israel by the American administration, while the EU has suspended aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.

America not only gives Israel political cover in the United Nations: it is also continuing to supply weapons of mass destruction to the Zionist entity which is destroying Gaza from the land, sea and air. America, along with the British and the French, appears to be playing a more active role in the conflict. As Nato has already lost its proxy war against Russia in Donbas and the Crimea, they are determined not to lose in Gaza. This war of terror on the innocent is in my opinion now being directed by America - and by extension other Nato members.

It is to regain its place as the world’s only superpower that they are encouraging the Israelis to continue their war on Gaza - as an extension of American hegemonic foreign policy and as a veiled threat to any nation that considers joining the new fledgling, multipolar world order. They want to expel Gazans into the Sinai in Egypt and West Bankers into Jordan to complete the Zionist dream of conquering all of Palestine by expelling its inhabitants.

But beware: Israel will not stop there - the illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanese Sheba Farms is testament to the greater Israel project that covets lands much larger than that which they have stolen so far. But Palestinians will not go meekly. They will die before they allow another Nakba to take place.

Britain created the problem with the secret Balfour Declaration of 1917, allowing for a Jewish state to be created in Palestine, combined with the Sykes Picot agreement of 1916 that carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War I to give imperialist colonial giants France and Britain the opportunity to exploit and militarily occupy west Asia.

Every death today in the region is at the hands of the British and French foreign policy to divide and conquer the region - a tactic subsequently employed by America in the last 40 years. A younger Joe Biden stated: “If Israel did not exist, America would have to create it.”

It is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends that the Gazans may remember after the deluge - well, those that are lucky enough to survive!

Fra Hughes
Belfast

Terrorist?

Perhaps a moot point, but, given the ‘culture wars’ being conducted against the BBC over its editorial decision to not refer to Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”, I thought it was worth raising.

During the most recent Online Communist Forum I was surprised to hear Jack Conrad say, “I have no problem myself describing Hamas as a terrorist organisation”, and then go on to explain the use of terror by military organisations, both state and non-state. Quite correctly he outlined the Israeli Defence Forces campaign against the people of Gaza as terrorism, but I don’t think the IDF is a ‘terrorist organisation’, despite it using terror as a military tactic.

In his exposition he does touch on the difference between terror as a tactic and a strategy. I have always considered that it was organisations that elevates terror to the level of strategy that are ‘terrorist’. These groups are typically isolated with no popular base: hence, the Narodnik groups in the 19th century, or Baader Meinhof or the Red Brigades in the 20th, are correctly regarded as ‘terrorist organisations’, whereas the IRA, Tamil Tigers and other national liberation movements were not, despite them using terrorism as a tactic in their struggles.

Hamas is clearly not a working class organisation fighting for human liberation. And, while indeed the Hamas incursions beyond the Gaza prison were designed to strike terror into the Israeli population, I’m not so sure it has elevated terror to the overall level of its strategy. It also clearly has mass support within Gaza, which the IDF are using to justify their collective punishment terror campaign.

Martin Greenfield
Australia

Missing aspects

As stimulating and sophisticated as the Weekly Worker’s coverage was last week of Gaza and Palestine as a whole, surely it failed to recognise several hugely significant aspects.

Aspect 1: How Hamas’s official announcement stated in clearest possible terms that the primary objective was to effect the release of a thousand-plus prisoners held by the state forces of Israel; ie, by exchanging them for the captured Israelis (aka ‘kidnapped hostages’) it had managed to take.

Aspect 2: How the Flood operation has immediately and completely scuppered the US-initiated strategy of Arab states cuddling up far more closely to Israel, and with it the ‘normalisation’ of regional relationships (although to a certain extent that comes as a result of Israel’s sheer barbarity in its response).

Aspect 3: How Hamas’s bursting out on behalf of the Gazan population from their vicious, unending open-air imprisonment has completely shattered an entirely phony status quo; they’d finally had enough of being neglected and betrayed by all global forces involved, including Arab regimes.

At least to that extent, surely these are entirely acceptable areas for ‘support’ of Hamas’s actions and certain specific policies. Needless to say, we should do so without compromising an overall critical stance of its underpinning reactionary nature. Incidentally, the same norms are relevant and so equally applicable to Russia’s (USA-provoked) military actions in Ukraine.

So surely the situation in respect of both Gaza and Ukraine exposes a more generalised flaw on the part of the Weekly Worker/CPGB to draw up lines of thinking that encompass subtly mixed objectives, allowing a slightly looser but still strict stance. That would possibly lead to a far more effective organisation - one that would be far more appealing, and with a distinctly less isolated image.

In addition to ‘minimum-maximum’ demands, alongside sensibly implemented rules for a fully connected membership, there needs to be democratic-centralist, open debate, allied not to mere cyclical reinforcement of long-held tenets, but rather to dynamism: to learning, growth, evolutionary adaptation - indeed, to a psychic/spiritual expansion.

Bruno Kretzschmar
Email

Humble bragging

Caitriona Rylance likes to parade her humility (Letters October 26). Apart from that she has little or nothing to say. Empty phrases aplenty about communist unity, true, but nothing worthwhile.

She does, though, accuse me of not wanting to “engage”. Well let’s leave aside my numerous articles on communist unity dating back to the first issue of The Leninist in 1981, over the last few weeks I have written one article ‘Getting in touch’ and two letters on the subject.

It would seem therefore that I am more than willing to engage, it’s just that I don’t engage in the way she wants.

Jack Conrad
London

Polemic or fact

In his report of the CPGB aggregate of October 22, James Harvey accuses me of “opportunism on the organisation question” (‘Opportunism in matters of organisation’, October 26). Apparently my straightforward proposal for clarity on the manner in which party dues operate was an attempt to “excuse those who want an excuse for those not wanting to commit themselves”. I am also reported as having “denounced the intolerant and political style of some leading members. Jack Conrad in particular was singled out.” The report then suggests that I argued for all barriers to membership to be removed.

I listened back to the recording of the meeting, which was useful in confirming what was actually said, rather than the words Harvey put in my mouth in his efforts to accuse me of trying to liquidate organisational principle and discipline.

Firstly I explained that my proposal for clarity was made because of confusion as to how the 10% dues requirement of membership actually operates. This was grist to the mill of some who wanted to undermine comrades joining. Then Jack Conrad wrote to Gerry Downing on two occasions to assure him that dues for unemployed and student members were nominal. I did not know this fact, and I can say with conviction that some other members did not know either. So I sought clarification from the PCC. A basic democratic request, I would have thought.

I did not denounce the style of some leading members. I accused Jack Conrad of being overly defensive in his dealings with ex-members who regurgitate our politics in broad-front groups. I said that I thought we should rewin these comrades politically, and he should be more patient with them. I have been a member or associate member of this organisation for more than 30 years. Conrad is fully aware of my respect for his political leadership, but not always his style. This does not amount to me trying to create some kind of cosy consensus. It is me saying what I think, and being a bit sharp.

Finally I did not say we should drop all barriers to membership. I said all unnecessary barriers. I know - I checked. I was not the only one who argued that we need to make a greater effort to recruit. I did say that all communists should be in the CPGB. I said that, because I want the organisation to grow and become a pivotal pole of attraction.

Anne McShane
Cork