[Marxism] Re: Communism, anti-German criticism and Israel

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, Ed Thehappyclown is gone and, despite the charming moniker, it is
no loss.

But I think an aspect of this problem has been highlighted -- how the
crimes of the German state and society against the Jews have twisted up
this issue, with great assistance from the German imperialists
themselves, in the minds of progressive and democratic-minded Germans.

And of course, Germans know better than most people that a generality
like "Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism" doesn't butter many parsnips.
They are not the same but there is overlap. Zionism and anti-Semitism
are not mutually exclusive.
Which Eichmann may have claimed to be a "Zionist,"  Hitler was an
anti-Zionist and so were most of the top leaders.
"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is an anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic
forgery.  The Protocols, unsurprisingly, are a best seller on the West
Bank. The paranoid-syle anti-semitic fantasizing probably reads like a
pretty credible, explanation of what happened to anybody without a broad
international education -- for the Jews of Israel have been organized
and educated to act and derive national privileges from acting as
irreconcilable national enemies of Palestine.

Part of the problem is that broad strata of Germans, including of course
most progressive Germans, are imbued with the idea of German war guilt
as judged at the Nuremberg trials, at the innocence of the rival
imperialist powers, and the UNIQUE criminality and dangerousness of
German imperialism AS DISTINCT FROM THE NATIONALISM OF ITS RIVALS IN
WORLD WAR II.

Anyway, the facts about Palestine have to be brought to Germans.
"Solidarity with the defense of Israel" against the Palestinian people
-- the billions that German imperialism gives to Israel in aid and in
the name of reparations each year -- does not make up for Auschwitz and
the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Germany's defense of Israel belongs on the same side of the ledger book
as its crimes against the Jews -- another imperialist crime,  not a
"reparation".

My greetings and solidarity to Germans who are working on straightening
out this difficult and challenging question.
Fred


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