The Anti-Zionist Idea: History, Theory, & Politics II (Joel Beinin and Esmat Elhalaby)

Quick Overview

The Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen) developed a comprehensive critique of Zionism, identifying it as a settler-colonial movement that dispossessed Palestinians to establish a Jewish state, a perspective largely influenced by Jabra Nicola. While Matzpen's analysis of Israeli society as settler-colonial remains correct in its essentials, it proved unviable as a basis for significant political organizing and mobilization among Israeli Jews, who largely resisted explicitly anti-Zionist platforms. Esmat Elhalaby further defines Zionism as a "state of torture" for all humanity, extending its violence beyond Palestine to global affairs, and highlights its historical engagement with the Third World as imbued with racism and condescension.

Key Points: Joel Beinin's rejection of Zionism began in the early 1970s in Israel, influenced by solidarity with the Israeli Black Panthers, a Mizrahi Jewish group that consciously looked to the American Black Panther Party. The Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen), established in 1962, initially focused on international communist issues but later developed its distinctive analysis of Zionism as a settler-colonial movement, a shift significantly influenced by Palestinian Arab member Jabra Nicola. Matzpen's core ideological hallmarks included the de-Zionization of Israel, its transformation into a socialist state integrated into a Middle East confederation, and recognition of the Hebrew nation's right to self-determination within a broader Arab revolution. Matzpen criticized Palestinian groups like Fatah for not seeking to abolish occupation but merely to "reverse the situation to make the Arabs the occupiers and the Jews the occupied," and rejected their strategy for neglecting the necessity of a broader Arab revolution. Matzpen denounced attacks on Israeli towns like Kiryat Shimona and Ma'alot, stating that the DFLP's inability to exercise discipline in armed struggle "destroyed its credibility for Matzpen." In a 1975 joint press conference, PLO representative Said Hamami told Moshe Makover, "Not a single progressive Palestinian can say to an Israeli Jew, you don't have a right to this country," and rejected terrorism for both moral and political reasons, stating, "Our enemy is Zionism, not all Israelis." While Matzpen's analysis of Israeli society as settler-colonial was and remains correct in its essentials, it proved "unviable as a basis for political organizing and mobilization in Israel," as it was impossible to organize a significant number of Israeli Jews on an explicitly anti-Zionist platform.