Its important to start of by saying that making case for Palestinian liberation and criticizing the actions of the Israeli state does not amount to anti-Semitism (racist oppression of Jewish people). Socialists have always been at the forefront of fight against anti-Semitism where ever it raises it ugly head, be it the pogroms of Czarist Russia, the holocaust or Northwestern university against a holocaust revisionist.
I want to be really clear that socialists hold the opinion that anti-Semitism should not be tolerated in any way shape or form. But there is a big difference between the struggle against anti-Semitism and Zionism or the state of Israel. Socialist disagree that the political doctrine of Zionism which led to the formation of the Israeli state is the solution to the problem of anti-Semitism. At the root of this disagreement is the notion that a group of oppressed people cannot find liberation in the oppression of another group.
Abduction of Europe
Theodor Herzl leaning over the balcony of the Hote...
anti-semitismThat is simply not acceptable. I think that Dr. Shlomo Shmelzman, a holocaust survivor, put it best when he described the actions of Israel.
Read quote Jewish scholar Noam Chomsky in his book Fateful Triangle offers a scathing critique of Israel I want to reiterate that it is possible to be against Zionism and Israel and not be anti-Semitic.
What is Zionism and why is it not a solution to the problem of anti-Semitism? That is what I'm going to try to answer starting with the origins of Zionism and going on to the crisis today.
At the end of the last century there was a upsurge of anti-Semitism in Europe. In the more economically advanced countries of western Europe, such as France and Britain, Jews had largely assimilated into economic and political life, but the empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary were far more backward,