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From International Socialism, No. 62, September 1973, p. 28.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Paul Blackledge.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East
Irving Howe and Carl Gleshman
Bantam Books, 60p
THERE WAS A TIME, many years ago, when Irving Howe was a socialist, even a revolutionary. Today, if this collection of articles is anything to go by, he is little more than an apologist for Zionism. Underlying almost all the articles is a single theme (and how often have we heard the same argument from apologists for apartheid): the Israeli settlers in Palestine were not opposed to the interests of the Arab masses, who were backward, not able to develop the country, and would be quite happy were it not for outside agitators.
‘These pioneers found a land that was arid, desolate and forsaken-spoiled by years of misuse by men and goats.’ Such open racialism is accompanied by a seemingly endless collection of lies and half lies: only one per cent of the Arab land was colonised (yes, if you include in the ‘Arab land’ vast expanses of desert in Syria, and the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt); the refugees could have been resettled by the Arab governments (yes, but the Arab countries are run by reactionary governments which will not even find land for their own rural populations and every time there is a popular attempt to replace such governments, the Israeli colonists do their utmost to keep them in power); restrictions on the rights of Arab Israelis are necessary because the country is ‘at war’ (yes, because the settlers have driven Arab peasants off the land, depriving them of a living and consigning them to refugee camps that are little more than concentration camps).
The blurb to this book speaks of a ‘unique collection from the democratic left’. But it is not unique – any Zionist will give you all the same arguments at the drop of a hat; its writers are not ‘democratic’ – almost without exception they deny that Arabs are entitled to equal rights with Jews in Palestine; and if they are left wing, then Nixon is a Communist.
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Last updated on 2 March 2015