Why socialists must

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dice and discrimination But isn't it true that against them only by allying persecuted Jews all and with the struggle for over the world see socialism - not through a Israel as a refuge - as racist state like Israel which their home?

- a tool of imperialism in Zionist cause gathered Zionism is a distinct result of the Nazi holocaust political philosophy, linked of the 1930s - and that to the creation of a racially thousands of European Jews exclusive Jewish state "as fled at that time to Palestine.

English". Exponents of this went to Palestine not view set out to achieve this through choice but because goal by the forcible dis- the so-called "democratic" possession of the Palestinian countries, including Britain Arabs from their own home- and the USA, refused to land and by the establish- allow fleeing Jewish refugees ment of a state which to enter.

To oppose such • a to settle in Israel. Indeed, political philosophy and the despite the fact that the state based on it is not anti- Zionist state enshrines a Semitic. Indeed Zionism is constitutional *right of and always was in essence a return' for any Jew anycapitulation to anti-Semit- where, it has failed to Arab military dictators and medievalstyle monarchs on one side, the longpersecuted Jews on the other. No wonder large sections of the Left side with Israel. But the horror of Begin's raid on Lebanon has made many reconsider. Harry Sloan argues that the interests of liberation for both Arabs and Jews demand support for the oppressed - the Palestinians - and for the overthrow of the Zionist state.

Isn't it true that those who condemn Israel and Zionism are anti-Semitic?

No. Many Jewish socialists are anti-Zionist. They explain that Israel is not a haven, but a death-trap, for the Jews. And they stress that no nation that oppresses another can itself be free: the militarisation and brutalisation of Israeli society inseparable from its warfare against the Palestinians and the Arab states are no liberation for the Jews.

They argue that Jews can Funht tha rantinian of nrainwith other oppressed peoples has made itself - and therefore the Jews of Israel the Middle East.

Jewish as England is denies to the Palestinians the most elementary rights.

United Nations Partition P for a Jewish State in 1947 Territories seized by in 1947 and 1.948:

Territories seized by in June 1967 Territory ceded bact under Camp David d Mediterranean CAIRO EGYPT ism, accepting the racist claim that Jews and gentiles can't mix. It is not unknown for Zionists to actually collaborate with anti-semites.

It is a fact that the massively more support as a But in many cases they It is by no means the case that it is every Jew's dream GULF OF SUEZ Gulf of Agaba LEBANON Beirut SYRIA SAUDI ARABIA Red Sea attract more than a tiny fraction of them. Even where anti-semitic persecution continues to be a major scandal - in the Soviet Union and the deformed workers' states - emigration figures show that less than half of the Jews leaving the USSR want to go to Israel: most head for the USA!

Most important - as a belligerent, militaristic state, built upon i the forcible eviction of the native population from their land, the Zionist state of Israel is probably the most dangerous place on earth for Jews to live.

What would happen to the Jews if the Zionist state were destroyed?

It is no part of the programme of the Palestinian nationalists to drive out the Jews. Their struggle is first and foremost for the right of return to their own land, and for their legitimate rights within that country to be respected.

The Zionist state, constructed to perpetrate exclusive Jewish control, stands as an armed obstacle

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