Goodreads review of Rodinson's ISRAEL, A COLONIAL SETTLER STATE?

A friend reviews Israel: A Colonial Settler State

Maxime Rodinson, a Jewish specialist on the history of the Mideast, argues that Israel was at its founding a colonial-settler state. But as he points out, such a state doesn't stay that forever, otherwise the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other states would still be colonial-settler states. And not all the Jews who moved to Palestine were Zionists (for the role of Zionism in Europe, see 'The Jewish Question' by Abram Leon) they went because both during and after the war there was no other place they could go.

Members of the party I support, The Socialist Workers Party, demanded that the US "Open the doors to victims of Hitler's Nazi terror," but Roosevelt had cut the quotas for Jewish refugees, and even these quotas weren't filled. The bourgeois leadership of the Jews didn't protest. (See 'The Founding of the Socialist Workers Party').

I have read I.F. Stone's writings on the formation of Israel and have a different opinion now than when I first read Rodinson. One can perhaps describe Zionism (a form of Jewish nationalism) as having a settler-colonial character--although there were people who called themselves Zionist--like I.F. Stone and Albert Einstein--who rejected the idea of a Jewish, as opposed to a binational state.

Zionism played a big role in the formation of modern Israel, but Israel came into being because almost no one cared what happened to the Holocaust survivors--they had to find a way on their own.

If revolutionary Marxists had been in the leadership of the Soviet Union (see Trotsky's 'Struggle Against Fascism in Germany') Hitler would never have come to power! While more and more people during the war discovered and publicized the "final solution," it had nothing to do with allied war aims. They refused to bomb the train tracks leading to the death camps. When US GIs opened the camps as Nazis fled, they viewed themselves as liberators. But death camp residents continued dying. There was no plan for what would happen to survivors. Their homes had other people living in them, and all their property and money had been confiscated. People didn't by magic stop hating Jews. The United States, the richest country in the world, took in even fewer Jews than the few their quota system in theory allowed. The Balfour Declaration gave Jews a semi-legal opening to go to Palestine, although Britain, facing colonial revolt in much of the world, tried to prevent it. That is why Israel exists. Anyone who says "it has no right to exist" is calling for continuing the final solution.

At one time anyone with the slightest criticism of Israel was called an anti-Semite or a self-hater. Those days are over. And the hatred for Arabs in the Israeli capitalist state is on the decline, not rising. More Arabs, who have no obligation to, are joining the IDF, including as officers. Israel has never met the Leninist definition of an imperialist country, but for some years it was an expansionist country. There are still hostile settlers moving to Arab areas, but the US has a president talking about seizing foreign territory by force.

Trump is crude, but he's not a fascist. Anyone familiar with Cold War history knows that the US dominated much of the world. Those countries were not bourgeois democracies--they were countries "willing" to be dominated by the US. If they weren't, the US attempted coups and/or invasions.

Today the Democratic Socialists of America call Roosevelt a democratic socialist. A man who did nothing to save the lives of Jews, and who soon after arranged to have the Socialist Workers Party leadership indicted under the Smith Act for refusing to support the US imperialism in the war. (Some liberals will assume that we resisted the draft, but that's not the proletarian approach to war--We go with the working class into the army, although we preferred getting our members into war industry and the maritime unions). (See 'Teamster Bureaucracy' and 'Socialism on Trial'). For Roosevelt's real record, see 'While Six Million Died.'

The PLO played an important part for some years, since at first, both Israel and the US refused to admit there was such a thing as a Palestinian! But the PLO had the chance to form a Palestinian state and failed to do so. The Palestine Authority is a bureaucratic organization that engages in Jew-baiting and refuses to negotiate. Hamas has even less to do with a national liberation movement--they are fascist-like pogromists! People who support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions are not necessarily aware of the role of Hamas in it, but after a while it becomes clear that it is an organization of Jew-haters, some from the "left" and some from the "right."

If one has conspiracy theories involving Jews, what difference does it make which of these one calls oneself? They're all from the self-titled "enlightened meritocracy" and are on a road that may well move them toward fascism (see 'Are they Rich Because they're Smart?' 'Fascism and Big Business' and 'The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany' by Leon Trotsky).

There is nothing unique about Israel; most nation states are formed by the conquest of one group by another, usually involving "ethnic Cleansing." The US could not have been formed without genocide against the Indians. Today those Palestinians who live in Israel have better lives than most people in the neighboring countries. Is there racism against them and against Ethiopian Jews? Yes, just as there's still racism in the US, but no one says, "the United States has no right to exist." Why? The fight against racism begins at home, and there's still Indian land being stolen.

I realize that I haven't said much about the book, but I wrote about what is important NOW. It goes without saying that if someone is "Woke" and views history with "Presentism," they will disagree with me on this, and pretty much everything, including the nature of reality.