Forward to an international General Strike to stop the genocide
Response to the RCIT conception of ‘Settler colonialism’
The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) wrote to us insisting that Israel be classified as a ‘settler colonial state’. We think they are making a fundamental error, which seems to be quite widespread. This is response is meant to clarify the matter for the proletarian vanguard elements the world over and thus for the proletariat as a whole.
Unwitting support of a ‘2-state solution’
The RCIT, by limiting the struggle of the Palestinians to areas of Gaza and West Bank, no matter how Red they claim they want Palestine to be, is actually support for a permanent division of the working class and a de-facto support of the imperialist notion of a ‘2-state solution’. They refuse to make any call on the masses in ‘Israel’ to join with the Palestinian masses in struggle against the Zionist state and against imperialism. The weekly marches of Israeli masses and the mass protests and strikes of 31 August, 1st and 2nd September against the Zionist regime, is ample evidence of their mistaken policy.
The struggle of the Palestinians is actually centred around the freeing of all of historic Palestine. It is therefore also about freeing the entire population and the refugees from the yoke of imperialist capitalist rule. This means freeing all those in ‘Israel’ too. The 2018-2019 marches of Return in Gaza, where many thousands marched to the walls of Gaza, demanding the Palestinian right of return of all refugees, was spontaneous and not under the control of any of the Palestinian factions. Here was the working class in Gaza raising the banner of their democratic right as refugees to return home. They were unarmed, marching weekly. They were brutally shot down but they kept going.
The 7th October 2023 operation by the Palestinian resistance, although primarily aimed at taking captives for exchange of the many thousands of prisoners held in the Zionist gulags, was also an actual physical attempt to return to the rest of Palestinian land. Imperialism falsified the events of the day by mass Hannibal (mass killing of the Israeli masses by the IDF) and fake allegations of rape, mutilation and wanton killings. Imperialism then started to carry out their long-planned mass extermination of Palestinians. This extermination is still continuing in Gaza and has now been expanded to the West Bank. Throughout, imperialism has supplied a massive amount of weapons and logistical support. Without imperialism this genocide would not be able to happen.
The Israeli masses are expendable pawns of imperialism
Eleven months of mass murder by imperialism of the Palestinians and the disregard for all captives on both sides demonstrates that those masses who claim to be for ‘Israel’ are expendable ‘assets’ of imperialism.
At the same time, we need to realise that both the PA and the Hamas leadership are bound to the ‘2-state option’ which is a betrayal of the struggle for the total liberation of Palestine. The ‘2-state’ is actually a recognition of “Israel’, an artificial creation by imperialism. It is a Bantustan option for the Palestinian masses, enforcing permanent division of the masses in historic Palestine and thus an obstacle to the attainment of the struggle of the Palestinians for democratic rights, such as for land, the right to elect their own representatives in a parliament/council of their choice, the right of return, freedom of movement, etc.
The central lesson from this is that the Israeli masses and the Palestinian masses have more in common with one another than with imperialism. The Zionist regime and imperialism are common enemies of the masses in historic Palestine, whatever their religious belief or nationalist label.
On ‘settler colonialism’
RCIT uses the Oxford definition of ‘settler colonialism’ which unsurprisingly is devoid of any analysis or even reference to imperialism or classic colonial powers.
By 1947-48 the imperial powers had just fought two world wars on redivision of the world among themselves. Yet we are expected to accept that the Zionists were able to snatch large parts of Palestine without the opposition of any of the main imperial powers. This is not only ahistorical but contradicts the actual course of events.
The RCIT admit that Israel started as a semi-colony but that it has suddenly become imperialist. Now we have the absurdity that a semi-colony has become imperialist without any opposition from any imperialist power.
The above not only demonstrates a break from Marxism but has implications for class struggle and the path to Socialist revolution.
While admitting that the Israeli regime has the same relation to the Israeli masses as the US regime has to its own masses on home soil, the RCIT refuses to give leadership in the class struggle of the masses in what is nominally “Israel” and wants to wait until the Arab masses either inflict a military defeat on Israel or lead a successful revolution. Thus we have a 2-stage revolution for Israel, according to the RCIT. So the RCIT members in Israel are asked to wait until such time as the Arab revolution succeeds. Without a shred of groundwork the labour aristocracy, the rest of the working class and the rest of the masses in Israel is supposed to wake up after a major defeat in war or Arab revolution as fully fledged revolutionaries. Dialectics is replaced with the diabolical, with magic. How Israel transformed from a semi-colony to an imperialist state is not explained. How all the imperialist powers just allowed a new imperialist to emerge without any opposition is a mystery, and this in an area which has the major oil reserves that keeps the world capitalist economy rolling.
The actual path of events shows a different reality.
The imperialist era- from 1900 and its implications
To accept Israel as the colonial power obscures its real relation to imperialism. Israel could not have been set up without the direct assistance, military, political, economic, social support of imperialism.
What were the driving forces behind the creation of Israel?
- It was the export of capital from the imperialist centres
- The need to convert the land in Palestine to capital. Therefore the partition plan of the UN in 1947. This plan was a means to grab the Palestinian land and convert it into capital. As the RCIT indicated, by this time the Zionist capitalists had only managed to buy up 6% of Palestinian land. This process was insufficient and did not go far enough. The UN plan was to give 55% of Palestine to the Zionists, who were a tiny minority at the time. This plan itself was an act of dispossession. [It follows that one of the key instruments of dispossession of the Palestinian masses is the UN itself. The UN is a key agency of imperialist control of the working class around the world.] Thus it may be argued that imperialism laid the basis for the Nakba of 1948. The 2023 -24 genocide against the Palestinians cannot be adequately understood without understanding that the main force behind the genocide is imperialism itself. It has laid the basis through decades of groundwork, of dehumanisation of the Palestinians and the conscious building up of the reactionary core of Zionism.
- It was necessary not only to displace the Palestinian agricultural masses but to also proletarianise them- to keep them in permanent landlessness and in commodity form (free to sell their labour but separated from the means of production). Imperialism needed measures to ensure permanent subjugation of the Palestinian masses.
- The Middle East is a region of the major strategic oil reserves that world capitalist rule actively depends upon. Imperialism cannot tolerate any independent development as this would create a competitor for it and threaten its control over this strategic resource. Is Israel challenging imperialist control over the oil resources? No. On the contrary , Israel has served as a bastion for imperialist control in the region.
- Palestine is also of geo-strategic importance, bordering the Suez canal and a major sea route for the world commodity production system. This is another reason why Israel was created- to safeguard imperialist control here.
- As part of the redivision of the region among the imperialists, which is always under tension as major imperialists each vie to increase their share of the control, Palestine is under US and British imperialist control with the active support of German, French and Japanese imperialism; Lebanon is under French imperialist control with US imperialism contesting for control; Syria is under French control but being disputed by both Germany and US imperialism; Iraq is under US control; Iran is under French imperialist control but this is being contested by US imperialism; Libya was under Italian control but this is now disputed by US imperialism; Egypt is under US and British imperialist control; Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Kuwait are under US imperialist control; Turkey is under US imperialist control.
- The masses in the Middle East have a militant history. In the 1930s there were several general strikes and uprisings against imperialist control. The imperialist strategy was to Balkanise the region, dismantling the Ottoman empire and imposing imperialist-capitalist relations over independent capitalist development and the remnants of feudal relations.
- The era of the birth of Israel was after 2 world inter-imperialist wars. It was a period of imperialist decay. After WW2 there was the threat of revolution from the masses in the imperialist centres. Imperialism had to fend off revolution. They did this through making democratic concessions in the imperialist centres while intensifying the exploitation of the masses in the colonies and semi-colonies. At the same time the Stalinist world apparatus betrayed the struggles from within the workers movement. The Stalinists called on all the armed masses in the imperialist centres to disarm in exchange for broad democratic reforms, thereby saving the rule of the capitalists and imperialism. In Eastern Europe where the masses still overthrew their capitalist regimes the Stalinists intervened to crush the revolts from within and imposed bureaucratic control. In the semi-colonies and colonies the Stalinists promoted the 2-stage approach, namely leaving the struggle for democratic demands and for national liberation in the hands of the petit bourgeois and in effect calling for a period of capitalist relations while the struggle for Socialism was postponed indefinitely and only used for holiday speechifying. Thus the Stalinists buried the struggle even for democratic demands because the struggle for the most basic democratic demands in the imperialist epoch requires the working class to take power in order to attain these. Thus the stalinists saved imperialist capitalist rule and control over the colonies and semi-colonies. With the active support of the Stalinists the imperialist UN partitioned a number of countries where the masses were very militant and the threat to imperialist capitalist rule was strong. Thus Germany was partitioned into East and West, Yemen, into North and South, Korea into north and south and Palestine into Palestinian bantustans and Israel. The working class in the imperialist centres were given a few gains in improved standard of living, in exchange for giving up their struggle for working class power. The Stalinists saved the capitalist system and ensured capitalist rule in the imperialist centres and in Western Europe too. These privileges of the working class in Western Europe were paid for by increased repression in the colonies and semi-colonies, which saw the rise of an era of military dictatorships and in the case of Palestine, the rise of fascist rule which was built on the world imperialist sponsoring a privileged life of a petit bourgeois mass and labour aristocracy. This was built based on the Nakba and slow-motion Nakba over years to dispossess the Palestinian masses, keeping them in slave camps and continually extending the conversion of land to capital and the expulsion and enforced permanent poverty of the Palestinian masses. The Stalinist apparatus deliberately split the Palestinian Communist Party and created an Isreali Communist party too, thereby enforcing a permanent split in the working class and ensuring a permanent defeat of the Palestinian masses. The Stalinist regime in Russia was among the first in the world to recognise the state of Israel, thereby showing their total subjugation to the whims of imperialism and continuing to play the role of betrayer of the working class from within our ranks.
- Israel was thus born as a capitalist state, acting as the armed imperialist agency in the Middle East, not only to permanently suppress the Palestinians but also to police the entire masses in the Middle East. It is an assassination and terrorist apparatus set up by imperialism to carry out many of its anti-democratic murders and bloody acts that imperialism would not be able to get away with on home soil. Israel is therefore an artificial instrument of imperialism set up to divide and suppress the Palestinian masses. At the same time it is the bulwark of reaction for imperialism to ensure the permanent suppression of the masses in the Middle East.
Settler Colonialism is another variant of the Stalinist conception of colonialism of a special type or internal colonialism thesis. It rests on a 2-stage path to Socialism
The conception of the internal colonialism thesis of Stalinism also deliberately hides the true role of imperialism in their total control of South Africa and the rest of Africa. It creates an artificial construct of a ‘white nation’ and ‘white monopoly capital’ as if this is a special development in isolation from imperialism. It deliberately hides the class divisions among this group and creates a permanent division in the working class. It expresses the false concept that the ‘white nation’ is colonising the ‘black nation’ as if the very process of oppression and exploitation is not being done by imperialism. What follows from this is the false concept of ‘apartheid’ as if separation and the fight for equal rights within the capitalist framework is the central struggle. Thus the notion of ‘apartheid’ implies the fight is for the black elite and middle class to fight for incorporation within the capitalist system.
We pose it differently, namely that the fight for democratic demands, for land, for jobs at a living wage, requires the united working class to fight for power for the attainment of these very basic demands.
Similar to the internal colonial thesis of Stalinism for South Africa , the notion that Israel is a settler colonial state implies the permanent division of the working class in Palestine. The notion that no work be done to win over the working class in Israel to join with the rest of the Palestinian working class reinforces the divisions and is a Stalinist policy that ensures the permanent defeat of the Palestinian masses. It hides the fact that the division was caused by imperialism and is sustained by imperialism. It hides the fact that the Israel state apparatus is tied hand and foot by imperialism. The settler colonial thesis divides the working class in the imperialist centres from the struggle to liberate Palestine and reduces them to passive solidarity marchers. It hides the interdependence between the struggles of the working class in Palestine for their liberation and the struggles of the working class in the imperialist centres for their liberation. The working class is interconnected as is their fate. The so-called Israeli working class are actually a section, a privileged part of the Palestinian working class.
The liberation of Palestine is also tied to the liberation of the masses in the imperialist centres. There are 200 000 arms companies in the USA. Thus there are millions are workers in the arms and transport industries in the USA and hundreds of thousands of ranks and file soldiers whose lives are interconnected to the masses of Palestine, Sunda, DRC and many other regions and neo-colonial countries that are either at war or threatened by war.To a lesser extent workers in the arms and transport industries in the other imperialist countries are also connected with the oppressed an exploited workers of the world. This is not to say that we wait for the working class to seize power in the USA before the masses will be liberated in Palestine. No one can predict where the overturn of power will come first. If the USA regime is overthrown it follows that all their neo-colonies will be freed. The liberation of Palestine requires the active support and revolutionary action of the masses in the imperialist centres. But for the working class in Palestine to take power it requires unity with a decisive section of the working class in ‘Israel’. It requires a split in the armed apparatus of ‘Israel’. In the event that active support is not immediately attained, we need to lay the basis for it, which may include winning them to neutrality or opposition to the Israeli regime or direct support by them of the rest of the Palestinian masses at the time of war. The reality is that over 100 Israeli soldiers committed suicide and several others have begun to resist conscription. Over 10 000 youth have been permanently disabled in the genocidal war; the Haredi resist being conscripted; the resisters have set up a Refuser Network that has been active for decades. But to the RCIT, they refuse to actively work among the Israeli working class and youth to oppose the genocide. To the RCIT and others, they will wait until the IDF is defeated before they begin to do work among the Israeli youth and workers to win them over. This fatalism has nothing to do with revolutionism. RCIT policy is pushing the Israeli working class into the hands of the right wing. They brush all the Israeli working class as ‘settlers’ as if there are no divisions among them. No revolution can succeed if the armed might of the state is not divided and weakened. The passivism of the RCIT leaves the masses without a program. It abandons them to the capitalist and reformist and the right wing forces. To the RCIT, the weekly marches against the Israeli state are brushed aside as irrelevant, as reactionary, as if the majority support the genocide. They uncritically accept the fake polls by imperialism. It is our task as revolutionaries to examine the trends, even partial ones and to expose and help accelerate the divisions in the state and always take a class line to promote the unity of the working class and steps towards attaining this unity in action.
‘Settler colonialism’ precludes in advance the seizure of power by the working class to attain any of the democratic demands. This is due to the theory reinforcing a permanent division in the working class.
This theory ignores the many divisions and shifts in the masses and working class; it also does not provide a revolutionary path for working class Palestinian Jews in Israel.
Yes, many of the masses in “israel’ recognise they are ‘assets’ for imperialism. However, the current genocide shows that these ‘assets’ are expendable; imperialism just cares for its total rule not for the ‘assets’/pawns they use to achieve their objectives. There are many opportunities to expose the true role of imperialism. But RCIT falls into the mainstream narrative as if Netanyahu is to blame. They actually state that imperialism is powerless to act and that imperialism really wants a ceasefire. This is covering for the real role of imperialism which directly follows from the ‘settler colonialism’ thesis. Imperialism controls the UN and its courts that pay lipservice to democratic rights while overseeing the genocide against Palestinians. All imperial powers supplied and still supply weapons to Israel. Without these weapons the genocide would be impossible. How can one say that imperialism is ‘powerless’ to stop Netanyahu? It took one phone call from US imperialism for Israel to stop after the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. It was not the ‘sympathy’ of Ariel Sharon. There are many examples that demonstrate the controlling role of imperialism.
A key distinguishing feature of the neo-colonial era as compared to the colonial era is that imperialism can exercise its absolute control over a country or region without having a single representative directedly appointed from the ranks of imperialism. Imperialism has established an international terror apparatus, supported by its total domination of world trade and monetary flows to exercise its control. The Israeli terror apparatus is controlled US imperialism, with the active support of the other imperialist powers who also have a vested interest in the continued enslavement of the Palestinian and Middle Eastern masses.
The Stalinists claimed that the struggle is to fight the ‘whites’ just as the settler colonial thesis claims that it is necessary to fight the Israelis. This is a non-class analysis and covers up on the real role of imperialism in the genocide. Imperialism is behind the genocide not only Netanyahu. He is just their blunt instrument.
The mere existence of the Histadrut shows that there are workers in Israel. Yes it is a reactionary union but a policy of winning over their members should be worked out. (see Lenin’s Left wing Communinism, an infantile disorder). Yes, we work even in reactionary unions to win the workers over to a revolutionary position in action.
The Israeli army has been split since 1967 with several thousands refusing to serve in the so-called occupied territories. This is a healthy split and should be built upon to get the rank and file soldier to be won over to support the struggle of the Palestinians for liberation. The active debunking of all the lies of imperialism (mass rape, beheaded babies, mutilation of corpses, etc) is an important task of demonstrating just how the Israeli army was swept up into a genocidal frenzy. Imperialism is using the IDF for its genocidal aims. If imperialism willed it, the genocide could have stopped from day 1. Imperialism cannot tolerate any armed force that threatens its control of the Middle East. This is why the genocide is ongoing. At the same time this demonstrates the relation of Israel to imperialism. Israel has the 4th biggest army in the world. That it exists is only with the blessing of imperialism. Israel is the genocidal arm of imperialism in the Middle East.
The notion that Israel is now imperialist is ridiculous. It implies Israel is in opposition to other main imperialist powers, who have given Israel over $260 bn in arms since 1948. This is more than 6 times what is needed to abolish world hunger. What type of imperialist gives such huge sums to a competitor? Imperialism controls Israel’s every move. That Israel has murdered US and UK officials and soldiers does not change the nature of the relationship that the IDF and Israel is totally under the control of imperialism. Imperialism uses a sham of democratic lies for local consumption. This hides their real brutal face. When some of their own soldiers or diplomats take these lies as if they are true, when they are killed it is mere nuisance value. This is why, after each assassination or attack by Israel on any diplomat, that imperialism continues as before to direct Israel in every important matter.
The land theft against the Palestinians is part of the imperialist capitalist plan to convert land to capital and to dispossess the independent agricultural population. Imperialism carries this on at a pace that they can get away with it. The very settlers’ arrival was paid for by imperialism; imperialism sent the arms to them. How can it be claimed that the Israeli ruling class is independent?
Settler colonialism is just another variant of the Stalinist notion of ‘Socialism in one country’ , no matter how Red you say this Palestine will be. It is a policy to defeat and isolate the working class revolution. The RCIT poses the task of the revolution in Palestine as if it does not centrally involve the fight against imperialism and the revolutionary support of the workers in the imperialist centres, not merely solidarity marchers. The RCIT position is a nationalist view of internationalism. Socialism in Palestine cannot be built in isolation from the workers in the region dealing with their reactionary leaders. It cannot be built in isolation of revolutionary mass action in the imperialist centres and principally the USA. Israel is the creation of all of imperialism. The liberation of Palestine requires the revolutionary support of the working class in all of the imperialist centres. Socialism will be built on an international basis, higher than the current global capitalist networks.
We call on the RCIT and the ISL to break from the ‘settler colonialism thesis’.
Imperialism is sacrificing the cream of the Palestinian and Israeli youth for the profits of the arms industry; imperialism wants to destroy the Palestinians and expel them from the few remaining pockets in Gaza and the West Bank. Imperialism must be stopped.
Immediate Ceasefire now
For immediate food and medical aid to the Palestinian masses; for the immediate reconstruction of all the destroyed buildings and facilities
Release all the captives on both sides; end the system of indefinite detention and the policy of political assassinations.
For setting up of joint councils of Palestinian and Israeli masses which must include the Palestinian refugees.
For these grassroots councils to elect a Constituent Assembly and an interim government
For the disbandment of the Israeli regime.
For the immediate holding to account of all the leaders in the imperialist centres and in Israel who were supporters and participants in the genocide.
For a federation of workers’ states in the Middle East.
For workers and student committees for Palestine, in the imperialist centres and in all the neo-colonies. For a workers-led arms and total embargo on Israel. For consideration of an international general strike to stop the genocide. For local, regional, national and international coordination committees to prepare for the general strike. Let us mobilise an international general strike on 7 Oct 2024. Genocide no more.
Issued by the Workers International Vanguard League
30 August and 4 September 2024
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