The List, the Left & Zionism (Forwarded from Chris Brady)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I experienced an episode similar to Gary's Iraqi Jew bash when I was
working in Manhattan back in the early-mid 1980s.  I was employed by a
large Upper West Side restaurant, famous in those days, and we had a big
staff.  The front of the house (bar and floor) were young, hip and
cosmopolitan, and the back of the house (kitchen workers and porters)
was young and international, with a strong Latin character with a few
Iranians and some US-born labor.  In all, there was an extremely low
proportion of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans in consideration of
the location of the neighborhood.  At a party I introduced a young man
from one of the war-torn provinces of El Salvador to some co-workers.
He was basically a refugee.  He and I had become friendly mostly because
I knew more about the situation in his home land than anyone else.  The
other guys were an American handy-man and bass player, an American
Indian trucker who had done some work for the place, and a piano-player
pal of the bass player who had crashed the party.  I had hoped to get my
Salvadoran friend to elucidate on the US role in the civil war in El
Salvador, but I erred in initiating such a dialogue late into the
party.  The guy had put the bottle to his lips too many times and what
issued forth from his mouth was a scandalous and vicious invective
against Jews.  I almost swallowed my tongue.  It just so happened that
the three other guys were all part-Jewish.  Although anti-rite (a term
worthy of note) they were understandably sensitive to anti-Semitism and
quite taken aback, to say the least.  I can't recall precisely how I
handled that gaff but I made the Salvadoran chap aware of the ethnic
makeup of his astonished audience whereupon he clumsily disengaged and
fled the festivities.

I later button-holed my Central American co-worker and confronted him
about his anti-Semitic diatribe.  He apologized.  He said he was sorry
for embarrassing me in front of my friends. But he made no apologies for
his condemnation of Jews.  He remarked that Jews in New York were so
aggressively defensive about Israel and intensely sensitive about
anti-Jewish remarks and yet they were so racist and so rich.  The
prosperous restaurant where we worked was indeed owned by a couple of
Jewish guys.  "And you know what they're like, man?"  Privately I
quipped to myself, "yeah, they're a schandar for the goyim."  I argued
that they were hardly representative of the Jewish people.  Why don't
the Jewish people care about other people? He demanded. Why are they so
special?  Did I know that Israel was pumping money, and weapons, and
special advisors in interrogation and trainers in murder, into Central
America and the Jews of New York
did-not-care-all-they-care-about-was-their-goddamed-Israel-that-treats-other
s-like-they-were-treated-by-the-Nazis?

His humble repentance had turned around to a vituperative attack, and I
felt at the time that it was close to an attack on me personally because
I too was ignorant of what was happening then in Central America.  I had
no idea Israeli counterinsurgency specialists were aiding the likes of
Roberto D'Aubbison in El Salvador or the Contras surrounding Nicaragua,
as well as other places.   I was not wholly surprised, however, because
I was just learning about the fascism of Menachim Begin and Yitzhak
Shamir.  Later I discovered that Israel is the largest producer of
weapons per capita of any country in the world.  Their Uzi machine guns
are famous.  Their Kahlil assault rifles are well-known among military
men.  Huge state-supported yet privately-owned arms industries have made
a select few Jews in Israel very wealthy.  Who could blame them for
wanting to stay rich?  You can blame them for other things.  A lot of
other things.  But they are no different than the Americans who reap
riches by sowing death around the world.  In fact they are all together
in it.  As Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran noted in the early Fifties, US
capitalism was rescued by the Second World War.  Why should it kill the
goose that laid the golden egg?  Now that the Cold War is over the beast
stands naked yet so few remark on its over-indulged malignance, on its
useless evil.  But it is not useless.  It is the reason that capitalism
is paramount and it is the reason that the working class of the world,
in El Salvador and in Israel as well as everywhere else, suffers.  The
many must suffer for the few to revel in their extravagance.  Capitalism
wastes people and the world we live in. That is how it lives.  It is
still that blood-drenched, slavering creature caricatured in
early-twentieth century publications. It really lives on death.

I am still trying to trace the development of what Gary identified as
the movement of American Jews from left to right, and I have certain
thoughts there that need some time and more input to gestate. From what
I can gather, the Soviet Union played a counter-productive and
self-destructive role.  Right-wing elements in Palestine and the USA,
and elsewhere, stoked class struggle in the context of the Cold War, and
there being a city that is effectively the capital of capitalism that
also has the biggest population of Jews anywhere, contributed to this
development.  Fold in the Hollywood Ten (many Jews), the Rosenbergs, and
the rest of the Truman/McCarthy witch-hunt and initially apolitical or
uninformed/neutral US Jews got the point.  You are with the US or
against the US.  Israel, right and wrong.

The real problem is to coordinate an international socialist
organization that includes Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians.
That is a problem for capitalists, as well, if it occurs, so do not
think they did not take that into account.  They were far more effective
in their assaults on left political Arab organizations than with the
religious zealots throughout the Middle East.  Who among Israelis could
possibly have anything in common with Hezbollah?  As with the mujahedin
in Afghanistan, the West supported the zealots against the reds.  It is
perfect.  The threat of socialism is aborted = constant low-level
warfare is guaranteed under the leadership of religious maniacs (in
Eretz Yisrael, too) = markets for the best products for profits (other
than drugs) are assured.  A vacuum cleaner designed by engineers steeped
in planned obsolescence has nothing on a cruise missile.  Use once.
Need to restock.  NO wonder the Stock Market has no ceiling. The sky is
not the limit.  Not with Star Wars!

In solid.,
Chris Brady
Las Cruces, CHILE


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/