ganisation for defeating the Tories other then At the end of last year, the world press was filled with the story that the Israeli police had uncovered a "Syrian spy ring, which was composed of both Arabs and Jews. In our last issue we published a report of the methods being employed, including torture, in the hunt against the Israeli revolutionary left. Below we publish an important editorial from the January issue of Matzpen, the newspaper of the Israeli Socialist Organisation (Marxist), the Israeli sympathising organisation of the Fourth International. The editorial, published on the tenth anniversary of Matzpen, both analyses the current situation in Israel and maps out a revolutionary strategy against the Zionist state.
Witch-Hunt is an understatement to describe the hysterical and McCarthyist campaign being conducted these days in the Israeli Press after the discovery of what is called the "Jewish-Arab Spy and Terror Network". Contrary to the general opinion, we believe this hysteria to be real and not fictitious and artificial. For the first time since statehood, sensationalistic arguments fill the newspaper columns claiming the active participation of Israeli Jews in the Palestine national liberation struggle. It is clear that if all of the detained were Arabs, the Israeli Press and public would not have been so panicked over the matter. The arrests of tens and hundreds of "saboteurs and terrorists" (the current term used by journalistic charlatans) and their detainment in prison for long years does not shock anyone and does not become front page news. The fact that Israeli Jews together with Palestinian Arabs have been accused and arrested by the government is the factor which gives rise to the Zionist Establishment's panic.
The sole source of the "facts" brought to the public knowledge is the regime and its tool of oppression - the Shin Bet (the Israeli Secret Police) and the Police. We do not accept these "facts" and we do not believe them. Moreover, from the clear contradictions in the various "official sources" reports, it is clear to all whose eyes are not blinded by "the new patriotic blaze" that the Shin Bet (Secret Police) have committed a frame-up and provocation of the first degree. Agents of the Shin Bet, so hoasts the police spokesman, penetrated the "network" from the beginning and vigilantly observed its actions....only observed? It is well known that in similar cases in other countries, when *Security Agents" have penetrated extremist groups they have not been just passive observers. On the contrary, these provocateurs have been the most "extreme"; the most "militant"; those who have planted the incriminating "evidence"; and afterwards became the chief socusers and state witnesses. So it was in Germany in relation to the Baader-Meinhof group; so in the U.S, with the Weather Men" and the "Black Panthers". And in Israel?' We know of at least one Jewish provocateur who during the years has seriously harmed organisations of the anti-zionist left. This instigator, making calls for "action" and "picking up the gun", openly slandered many of Matzpen's members as being "Shin Bet Agents", confusing many naive youngsters who were fooled by his "revolutionary" banalities. In the last months he was seen circulating around the "Red Front", and now, while his triends are in prison, he is walking around free...giving interviews to journalists and continuing his vile farce. Moreover, considering it from the political point of view, the government's accusation is patently absurd. We do not accept it. True, there are political programmatic differences organising locally and nationally must be started at once so that the struggle can go on whatever the trade union and Labour Party bureaucrats do. Some may argue that by starting action at an unofficial, rank and file, level we are jumping the gun and by assuming for ourselves an organising initiating role we will drive away the official leaderships into opposition to the struggle. In fact the reverse is the case. For this is to concede that the fight against the pay freeze, the fight for working class interests must be subordinated to the narrow tactical interests of the official leadership. In fact of course the only way to guarantee the participation of the trade union bureaucracy in any struggle is by action which threatens to leave them behind and lose them the support of their memberships.
All those forces which declare themselves in between the I.S.O. and the "Red Front". The reciprocal arguments and critiques of the two organisations were published in their respective journals. However, their world-view was based upon Socialism and Marxism. And in no way can Socialism and Marxism be compatible with the "individualistic terror" and "spy networks" of which the government accuses members of the "Red Front". But this is not the principal question. The crucial question is: Should the struggle against Zionism be solely an Arab struggle? The whole existence of the Zionist regime is based upon national discrimination. After establishing the Israeli State on expropriated land, transforming the Palestinians into a landless people, residents of wretched refugee camps - Israel continues to exercise a regime whose basic principle was, and still is, national discrimination between Jews and Arabs. The Israeli Arabs are victims of systematic oppression; expulsion, expropriations, administrative arrests, confinements, discrimination in all spheres of life, explicit and implicit racism - are just a few aspects of national oppression suffered by Palestinians under Isralei rule. According to the racist logic of the Zionist State, the simple fact that you are a Jew grants you a certain immunity even if you are a member of a revolutionary organisation. Arab and Jewish members of the same organisation are treated differently by the government. The first is confined, arrested. The second - free. Up to a point, it is permissible for a Jew to be against the Zionist Regime, and only after that is brutal repression used. (Remember the expulsion orders and the preventive arrests used against the "Black Panthers", the back-to-work orders, the courts, and even military trials used against striking workers - all in accordance with the infamous Emergency Security Regulations). But this is nothing compared to the brutal oppression that comes down upon Arabs who participate in political struggle against the regime. It is enough to recall the example of the 800 Arab Rakah (New Communist List) activists who were detained prior to the 1969 elections and the fact that the majority of Arab members of anti-zionist organisations are detained and administratively confined to realise the extent of discrimination and political oppression. The "principle" is clear: What is permitted for the Jew is forbidden to the Arab, even when we are speaking about anti-zionist political organisations.
On the other hand, it is "natural" that Palestinians who have been expropriated and oppressed under Israeli rule will fight against Zionism and for national liberation. But, when Jews who were born and raised in the country, who have been forced-fed the Zionist poison and then have vomitted it up, rise up and declare: We are fed up with Zionist Israel! We are tired of oppression! It is up to us to abolish the Zionist regime that oppresses and expropriates the Palestinian Arab Nation and leads the Israeli Jews into a death-trap of eternal war against the Arab masses - this, the racist logic of the government and the Zionist establishment is incapable of grasping. The mere idea that a common struggle of Jews and Arabs against the conquering and oppressive Zionism is possible - even on the basis of a mistaken political line - makes them shudder.
Therefore, government spokesmen, "liberal" types, and the Palace Guards of the Zionist "Left" have banded together in a common denunciation against "Jews who have dared to raise their hand against other Jews". The whole of the racist Zionist logic is contained in this denouncement.
The hypocritical stance of the government spokesmen, that "we should not generalise from the actions of isolated individuals to all favour of unifying the organisation of the rank and file nationally and locally must be taken up. The Communist Party and the trade union leaders who support its line have gathered together representatives of shop-stewards committees and trade union branches on a national scale in the past. Such an initiative is called for urgently in the struggle to smash the freeze, not simply to stage a rally to protest against government policy or pressurise the General Council, but to hammer out lines of action and organise the struggle on a rank and file level whatever the trade union bureaucracy does.
A number of unions are moving into struggle for claims which exceed the legal limit. A fight must be waged within these unions for the leaderships to prepare national industrial action to smash the freeze and to unite nation"leftist organisations' ", does not stem from liberal and democratic principles. Let's not fall into that trap. The devious strategies of the government are not intended to "cleanse" and vindicate the Left. Their purpose is to prove to the alarmed public that the Jewish detained suspects are "deviants". "If they are examined," declared Golda the Great, "it will become clear that they are insane". This fixed response is necessary for her as it is for all the Zionist Establishment from the Right to the "Left". Because without this "Truth", a horrible danger lurks for them - the "threat" of a common revolutionary struggle of Jews and Arabs. If an organisation like the "Red Front" brought out the whole Zionist Camp from its arrogant indifference, it is easy to imagine what danger and what threat confronts them in a mass Arab-Jewish struggle against Zionism, Imperialism, and the Arab Reaction.
The violence of the oppressed against the oppressor is just and therefore, we support it; the struggle against the oppressive and expropriative Zionism is just and therefore, we support it without reservation. However, every justified way is not necessarily an effective way. We have repeated time and time again that the victory in the anti-zionist struggle will only be achieved through the path of revolutionary struggle, i.e. the conscious struggle of Jews and Arabs for a Socialist Arab East. Today, the Arab masses, and even more so, the Israeli Jewish masses, are far from realising this. Facing the arrogant, seemingly victorious Zionism, occupying the conquered territories and enjoying the support of the most powerful imperialist force in history, facing the decline in the revolutionary consciousness of the masses of the region. There is no doubt that there are. naive youths - that are fed up with the horrors, the "deviance", the oppression and expropriation - who are looking for a "short-cut". They are looking for a way to exchange conscious actions of the masses for actions of isolated individuals. But, every "short-cut" hinders and obstructs the advancement of the real anti-zionist struggle. Against the violence of isolated individuals, the Zionist Regime will always come up on top. Not only is the regime capable of defeating easily such actions, but they also use them tor their own interests, by instigating the public against all the anti-zionist left and strengthening the "national unity" consciousness.
But, against the revolutionary violence of the masses rising up against their aggressors and exploiters, the situation is completely different. Against this, even the strongest, the most predatory regime with the most sophisticated means of oppression cannot stand. The revolutionary objective is the building of the only tool capable of realising the revolutionary potential contained within the Arab and Jewish masses of the region. On the agenda stands the task of building the All Regional Leninist Party that is the indispensable tool for a victorious struggle against imperialism, zionism, and the Arab Reaction.
This is a long and difficult path. This is the path we have chosen and from which we shall not be deterred. In spite of the witch-hunt that is being carried out against leftist groups in general and Matzpen and Siah particularly; in spite of the outcries of the institutionalised "Left", and faced with the terrorising campaign carried out presently in the Arab Sector by the authorities against anyone who is not ready to become a submissive servant of Zionism, we will intensify the anti-zionist struggle and the efforts to build a Jewish-Arab Proletarian Party - the irreplaceable tool for the defeat of imperialism and its local lackeys - for the victory of the Socialist Revolution in the Arab East.
ally and locally with other unions fighting the freeze.
Already rank and file unity is being established locally between members of different unions through joint meetings, demonstrations and the establishment of action committees. It is within these bodies that socialists must raise policies s uch as those mentioned above for drawing into the struggle those who are not organised in the trade union movement: tenants' associations, housewives, unemployed workers, students, etc., should be drawn into a common front to generalise the movement. In this way the struggle against the pay freeze and the Tory Government's whole policy of attacking the working class can be turned into a struggle for a working class solution to the social crisis.
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