[Marxism] responding to Avneri's nostalgia

[Gary MacLennan <gary.maclennan1@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am due to give a speech on May 15th at a ceremony to commemorate the
Nakba. So I was extremely interested to read Luko's post of Uri Avnery's
nostalgic reminiscences of his child hood and the songs he sang to celebrate
the sacrifices of the Zionists. I have posted before about the "acceptable
face of Zionism" and was taken to task for suggesting that Zionism ever had
such a face.  But I think one cannot understand the success of the Zionists
without acknowledging the roles of Zionist idealism and the nation building
institutions and the kibbutzes. Certainly as I have said before when I was
an undergraduate in the early 60s it was seen as a left wing "thang" to
spend some time on a kibbutz. Similarly when the old racist David Ben Gurion
retired to a kibbutz this was regarded as proof of his moral probity and
idealism.

But these days are long gone and their vanishing has left a terrible vacuum
which we can detect from these words of Avnery:

"Today, a growing number of Israelis have started to understand the full
significance of the "Nakba", the great tragedy of the
Palestinian people and all the individuals who lost their homes and most of
their homeland. But the songs come and remind us of what we
felt at the time, when the things happened. An abyss yawns between the
emotional reality of those days and the historical truth as we
know it now."

I have a good deal of admiration for Avnery and even some sympathy here.  He
is obviously a sensitive and torn individual. But it is necessary to ask
what are we being asked to feel? Is it not sympathy for the Zionists who
really want to be able to sing the songs but cannot because such songs
celebrate the most awful historical events?  Yet the Zionist occupation was
always a colonial enterprise with the unique feature that there was no
"motherland" for the settlers.  They claimed instead to be returning
"home".  But they were always aware of the need to latch on to the coat
tails a major imperial power.  It is as if the Zionists had learned the
brutal lessons of the confrontation with Imperial Rome  in the First Century
CE and determined that next time around they would be on the side of Empire.


Again I have written how colonial enterprises always contain a good share of
dirty business -  rigged trials, bribery, torture, assassinations, ethnic
cleansing, massacres etc, etc.  But they also contain a share of idealists
who go forth to bear the white man's burden.  In Israel the idealists of
course were placed at the front for all to see, while the likes of Ariel
Sharon and Ehud Barack did their best work in the dark.

What has happened since in Israel is that the water boarders and assassins
are now out there in the open for all to see. They are plainly running the
show.  And it is this that the likes of Avery and liberals like Gideon Levy
mourn.   However what they do not mourn of course is the fact of the Zionist
enterprise -an historical crime against not only the people of Palestine but
also humanity. And it is this crime that is brought to our attention in the
phrase the "Nakba".

Here I would like to mention that recently I attended a talk by the Human
Rights activist Rachel Johnson.  She is a most impressive person but her
catalog of the daily humiliations and sufferings that the Israelis inflict
on the Palestinians made for very grim listening. She did say however that
she had detected something of a shift in Israeli society.  There were now
some references to the Nakba, but generally couched in statements such as
"The Arabs must forget about the Nakba".

I spoke briefly suggesting that we should compare these sentences:

1. The  Jews must forget about the Holocaust

2. The Arabs must forget about the Nakba.

The first sentence is unthinkable. Its very utterance would rightly earn
almost universal condemnation. However it is only when the second sentence
has attained the exact same status as the first that we will be close to
justice in Palestine.  On that day the songs that now bring Avnery close to
tears will have the same status as *Die Fahne Hoch! Die Reihen fest
geschlossen!*

regards

Gary
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