'Populism' and the Zionist left – part 2

Read part one of this article here.

Unlike both Trump and Macron, who have both ultimately done their best to suppress voter turnout, a genuine political revolution, such as that represented by a transformed UK Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, emphasises increased voter turnouts and popular participation at all levels of society.

With Corbyn also being a long-time supporter of the Palestinian cause, it is no wonder, then, that the right-wing of the Labour party have wanted – and have tried their best to encourage – his departure.

After Corbyn’s surprisingly good general election performance, and with his place as leader of the party seemingly cemented for years to come, these forces have slowly started to look elsewhere for their tedious inspiration. Some (like now-ex MP Tristram Hunt) have begun to drift away from the party. Others remain within, carrying the torch of Blairism and fighting a rearguard action against the popular tide of socialism.

They have scant sources of hope, but regard Macron as one. Avi Gabbay seems to be their latest.

Unlike the Zionist right, which is more open and honest about its racism, liberal Zionists and the supposedly socialist variation of Zionism are cleverer in marketing their settler-colonial vision in the West.

As such, Labour Friends of Israel Director Jennifer Gerber, writing recently for Blairite think tank Progress, emphasised Gabbay’s supposed support for “two states for two peoples” and for “peace” with the Palestinians.

According to a profile of Gabbay in the liberal Zionist Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz, after quitting Netanyahu’s government, he repeatedly emphasised that “I believe what [former Labor Prime Minister Yitzak] Rabin believed.”

Rabin was lauded by the hypocritical West as a “peacemaker” – in reality, as Palestinians know only too well, he was the former Israeli war criminal who, as “defence” minister during the First Intifada (the historic unarmed Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1993), engineered the infamous “force, might and beatings'” policy which ordered Israeli soldiers to torture Palestinian participants in that uprising by literally breaking their bones with stones and clubs – a quite obscene form of punishment.

This is the legacy of the Israeli leader whom Gabbay apparently seeks to emulate.

As for the commitment to “two states” which Gerber lauds, the reality of that too can also be seen in the Haaretz profile. He has committed to making the Jordan Valley “part of the country’s eastern security belt in any deal” with the quisling Palestinian Authority.

Look at a map of the West Bank and you will see right away that the execution of this plan to annex the Jordan Valley – the same plan which the supposedly “dovish” Israeli Labor party has advocated for decades – would make a mockery of the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. It would be a totally landlocked entity, surrounded on all sides by Israel, and sliced into fragments by the settlement blocs.

This is indeed already the reality on the ground, but it has not been solidified into a formal annexation. The Labor party’s (and UK Labour Friends of Israel’s) idea of “peace” is for this Palestinian bantustan to be given the formal seal of approval by the “international community” of Western leaders (something the South African apartheid regime’s bantustans never achieved).

No one should be under any illusions: the Israeli Labor party – regardless of its leader – is a leading part of the historic and current problems which face the Palestinians. Indeed, historically speaking, the Labor party has in many ways been worse than the Likud.

Who carried out the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, the Nakba, which drove out the vast majority of the indigenous population? The Zionist militias under the direction of leader David Ben Gurion of the left-Zionist party that merged into Labor.

Who was prime minister in 1967 when Israel attacked Syria, Egypt, Jordan and the remaining Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza? Levi Eshkol, a leader in the same Israeli Labor tradition as Ben Gurion.

All of this is of course not to say that the right-wing Likud/Revisionist tradition would have been any better – the Lehi and Irgun terrorist groups participated in the 1948 massacres and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians almost as much as the Zionist Labor movement’s Hagannah.

The Israeli Labor party is fundamentally racist, colonialist and will always be so. The only way there can ever be any change in Palestine is for the whole concept and structures of Zionism to be dismantled.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.