Israel & the Arab Revolution

Socialist Workers Party resolution  / August 1971



The following resolution was adopted by the Twenty-fourth National
Convention of the Socialist Workers Party, held in Cleveland, Ohio,
August 8-12. The resolution is divided into three parts. The first
consists of numbered theses setting forth the basic political line of
the SWP on the Middle East. Part II answers the main Zionist arguments
in defense of the present state of Israel, and presents a critique of
several mistaken notions held by anti-Zionists. Part III is a brief
summary of developments in the Mideast since 1967 and an outline of the
tasks the SWP has set itself in defense of the Arab Revolution.



PART I



The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national
liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is,
we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships.
Our foremost task in implementing such support is to educate and
mobilize the American people against U. S. imperialist actions in the
Mideast.



Israel, created in accordance with the Zionist goal of establishing a
Jewish state, could be set up in the Arab East only at the expense of
the indigenous peoples of the area. Such a state could come into
existence and maintain itself only by relying upon imperialism. Israel
is a settler-colonialist and expansionist capitalist state maintained
principally by American imperialism, hostile to the surrounding Arab
peoples.



It is an imperialist beachhead in the Arab world that serves as the
spearhead of imperialism?s fight against the Arab revolution. We
unconditionally support the struggles of the Arab peoples against the
state of Israel.



The principal victims of the creation of Israel were the Palestinians?i.
e., the Arabs who inhabited the region where Israel was established,
who have been driven from their homes or placed in subjugation within
Israel and the newly occupied territories. The Palestinians are a part
of the Arab peoples, but they also form a distinct national grouping,
with its own history of struggle against imperialism. There were
Palestinian up risings in 1921, 1929, and during the 1930s, reaching a
high point in 1936-1939. At the height of the 1936 rebellion, the
Palestinians conducted a six-month general strike. Expulsion from their
homeland through the creation of Israel greatly intensified national
consciousness among the Palestinians. The upsurge of Palestinian
nationalism in the recent period, especially after the 1967 war, was
particularly marked in the refugee camps and newly occupied territories
as a result of the direct oppression these people have suffered at the
hands of Israel. The September 1970 civil war in Jordan further
intensified Palestinian national consciousness.



The struggle of the Palestinian people against their oppression and for
self-determination has taken the form of a struggle to destroy the
state of Israel. The currently expressed goal of this struggle is the
establishment of a democratic, secular Palestine. We give unconditional
support to this struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination.



An integral part of our program for the Palestinian revolution and the
Arab revolution as a whole is support of. full civil, cultural, and
religious rights for all nationalities in the Mideast, including the
Israeli Jews. The major Palestinian liberation organizations also
advance this concept and view it as essential to their attempt to win
the Israeli Jewish masses away from support to Israel.



Our revolutionary socialist opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state
has nothing in common with anti-Semitism, as the pro-Zionist
propagandists maliciously and falsely assert. Anti-Semitism is anti-
Jewish racism used to justify and reinforce oppression of the Jewish
people. Marxists have been and remain the most militant and
uncompromising fighters against anti-Semitism and the oppression of
Jews.



The source of the oppression of the Jewish people in this era is the
capitalist system, which in its period of decay carries all forms of
racist oppression to the most barbarous extremes. This was horribly
illustrated in the holocaust directed against the Jews of Europe by
German imperialism under the Nazi regime. Today, anti-Semitism remains
widespread in all of the Western imperialist countries. Until the
capitalist system is abolished in these countries there is the ever-
present danger that a new variety of virulent anti-Semitism can arise.



In the Soviet Union and the workers states of Eastern Europe the
privileged Stalinist bureaucracies perpetuate and reinforce many forms
of racism and national oppression inherited from the previous
capitalist era, including anti-Semitism and oppression of Jews. In
these countries a political revolution is needed to sweep away the
reactionary bureaucracies and institute the norms of proletarian
democracy, equality, and internationalism.



In the colonial and semicolonial countries, including those in the Arab
world, the bourgeois regimes perpetuate and foster racism and
oppression against national minorities, including the indigenous Jewish
population. Only when the colonial and semicolonial countries win
complete national liberation, through the process of permanent
revolution culminating in a socialist revolution, can the oppression of
these national minorities be ended.



The struggle against anti-Semitism and the oppression of Jews is part
of the struggle to abolish all forms of racism and national oppression.
This struggle can be fully and finally won only in alliance with all
the oppressed of the world.



Zionism is not, as it claims, a national liberation movement Zionism is
a political movement that developed for the purpose of establishing a
settler-colonialist state in Palestine and that rules the bourgeois
society headed by the Israeli state today in alliance with world
imperialism.



Zionism does not represent or promote the interests of the Jewish
people. Within Israel, the Zionists lead the Jewish masses into the
trap of opposing the national liberation struggle of the Arab peoples,
a just and democratic struggle that will ultimately be victorious. The
racist oppression of the Israeli state against the Arabs is paralleled
by racist oppression within Israel against Jews who come from the Arab
countries and other colonial and semicolonial countries. Israeli
capitalism exploits the Jewish workers in addition to superexploiting
the Arab workers. Police repression against Arabs carries over to
increasing repression against those Jews who oppose Zionism. Clerical
restrictions on civil liberties affect Jews, and Arabs even more.



The Zionists promulgate the lie that to be Jewish is to be a Zionist,
and therefore a supporter of Israel and imperialism. They thus make it
easier for racist demagogues in other countries to foster anti-Semitism
among the masses. The Zionists and their imperialist allies, who were
incapable of fighting for the salvation of the Jews against Nazism, are
incapable today of defending the interests of Jews where they are
oppressed.



Cynically utilizing the crimes of the Nazis as a pretext, and with the
complicity of the Soviet bureaucracy and the Stalinist movement, the
imperialists and Zionists created the state of Israel at the expense of
the Palestinians, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Nazi
crimes. Portraying the victim as the criminal, imperialist and Zionist
propaganda now attempts to equate the Palestinian goal of national
liberation with the barbaric genocidal actions of the Nazis. One of the
factors enabling the imperialists and Zionists to make this false
comparison is the widespread racism against the Arab peoples that
exists in Europe, North America, and Israel.



The imperialists and Zionists to the contrary, the basic interests of
the Jewish masses of Israel reside in alliance with the Palestinian
liberation struggle and support of the goal of a democratic Palestine.
We have incessantly warned Jews throughout the world: Zionism leads you
into conflict with your potential allies?the oppressed of the world?and
has led you to ally with your worst enemy, imperialism. Imperialism in
its death agony has already led to one holocaust against European
Jewry; it can inflict similar catastrophes again unless it is
overthrown in time by the mass force of the socialist revolution.



In the epoch of imperialism, neither the Palestinians in particular,
nor the Arab peoples in general, can fully attain the goals of their
struggle for national liberation, national economic development, and
other democratic tasks, except through the process of permanent
revolution. These objectives can only be fully realized and guaranteed
by the victory of the working class at the head of the toiling masses,
chiefly the peasantry, in a revolution against the imperialists, their
Israeli agents, the Arab national bourgeoisie, and Arab feudal
remnants. The program of this revolution will combine democratic and
transitional demands directed toward the creation of a workers state.
This proletarian strategy implies unconditional support for carrying
out the democratic tasks. The national bourgeoisie, whether
?progressive? or ?conservative,? cannot lead the struggle for national
liberation and democratization to victory over the imperialists, but
instead limits, diverts, and suppresses it.



To lead the struggle for national liberation to completion through the
process of permanent revolution, the creation of mass revolutionary-
socialist par ties is absolutely essential in both the Arab countries
and Israel.



Such parties do not yet exist either in the Arab countries or in
Israel. At the present time, only a few Trotskyist cadres are active in
those countries. In Israel, a small group of Trotskyists participate in
the Israeli Socialist Organization, a heterogeneous grouping yet to be
won to political support of the Fourth International and Leninist
organizational concepts. In Europe and North America a promising
development has been the winning of a number of Arab cadres from
different Mideast countries to Trotskyism.



None of the various Palestinian liberation organizations meet the
criteria for such revolutionary-socialist parties, in theory, program,
or organization. However, among these groupings numerous militants have
appeared who can potentially be recruited to the Trotskyist movement.
The best of them are to be found in the major Palestinian liberation
organizations. The September 1970 civil war in Jordan demonstrated that
the Palestinian liberation organizations have deep ties with the
Palestinian masses. An important and hopeful sign is that Stalinism has
not succeeded in attracting, holding, or shaping the major Palestinian
liberation groups.



At the present time, in view of our limited information and the lack of
clarity among the Palestinian groups about the political issues behind
their splits and their organizational differences, and the fact that no
one of these organizations has incontestably become the decisive
leadership of the Palestinian struggle, it would be premature for us to
give any one of them special support over the others. We should
maintain an attitude of general support to the Palestinian struggle and
in that sense to all the main struggle organizations, reserving full
freedom to present our own views on program and other issues.



Although one of the goals of the Arab revolution will be the unity of
the Arab peoples, we cannot approach this perspective schematically or
formally. Historical developments, not least the divisive role of
imperialism, have created separate Arab states and differences among
the Arab peoples. The revolution will therefore unfold in an uneven way
throughout the region, and can leap ahead or suffer setbacks in one or
another of the Arab states or Palestine. We envisage the establishment
of a united socialist Middle East. But such a political formation will
not issue from a simultaneous and uniform revolution throughout the
area.



The dialectical relationship between the Palestinian revolution and the
Arab revolution as a whole was graphically illustrated at the time of
the 1970 civil war in Jordan. The logic of the Palestinian struggle
against Israel led to a situation approximating dual power in Jordan
and a new stage in the independence of the Palestinian fighters from
the Soviet bureaucracy and those Arab regimes that accepted the Rogers
plan. This pitted the Palestinian masses in a revolutionary struggle
against the Hussein regime.



The bourgeois regimes in several Arab states have turned to the USSR
for economic and military aid to help their economic development and to
counterbalance imperialist pressure. As a result, in recent years the
Soviet Union has become more deeply involved diplomatically and
militarily in the Middle East The Middle East, which borders on the
Soviet Union, is an area where imperialist power immediately endangers
the workers state, and is consequently an area of vital importance for
Soviet foreign policy.



But the international policy of the Soviet bureaucracy is predicated on
its conservative and narrowly conceived identification of the
bureaucracy?s own interests with the interests of the workers state. It
sees the Arab liberation struggle as a pawn that can be sacrificed in
its dealings with imperialism. Moscow?s goal is a Middle East
settlement based upon the maintenance of the capitalist status quo and
a division of this area into stable spheres of influence between it and
imperialism. The Soviet bureaucracy and the Stalinist parties in the
Middle East oppose all independent revolutionary developments that
threaten this status quo fundamentally, such as the Palestinian
liberation struggle.



However, despite the enmity of Washington and the double-dealing of
Moscow, the Arab revolutionary struggle will continue in spite of
temporary setbacks and defeats until complete national liberation is
attained. The central role played by U.S. imperialism in continually
attempting to contain and crush the Arab revolution raises the
dangerous possibility that it will force the Soviet Union into a
military confrontation in the Middle East that can easily escalate into
a worldwide nuclear war. This places special obligations upon the SWP
to educate the American people about, and mobilize opposition to,
Washington?s aims and actions in the Mideast. The perilous situation
there highlights the mutual interrelation and interdependence of the
three main sectors of the world revolution: the socialist revolution in
the advanced capitalist countries; the political revolution in the
bureaucratically deformed or degenerated workers states; and the
combined democratic and socialist revolutions in the colonial
countries.



PART II



This resolution aims to outline only the basic general points of
political principle involved in a Marxist approach to the Mideast
crisis. It would be wrong to attempt to draw a blueprint for the exact
juridical and governmental forms of a democratic Palestine or a united
socialist Middle East We cannot predict the length, severity, or the
vicissitudes of the revolutionary struggles in the Middle East or
provide a recipe for the tactics that will be employed. All of this
depends upon many factors, including the development of the
revolutionary struggle in the imperialist countries and the workers
states, the pace of development of Leninist parties in the Middle East,
and the extent to which the Israeli Jewish masses can be won away from
adherence to the Israeli state to active support of the Palestinian and
general Arab liberation movements.



Our program for the Palestinian revolution and the Arab revolution as a
whole includes support of full civil, cultural, and religious rights
for all nationalities in the Mideast, including the Israeli Jews. But,
while we support the right of the Israeli Jews to pursue their national
culture within the framework of a democratic Palestine, we are opposed
to the Israeli state.

Two of the key arguments used by Zionists in defending the Israeli
state are: (1) The Jewish people, an oppressed nationality throughout
the world, have a right to self-determination. The existence of the
Israeli state is the realization of that right Because of the
historical oppression of the Jewish people, the right to maintain the
Israeli state supersedes the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs;
(2) However one may disagree with the present policies of the Israeli
state or the manner of its creation, the Israeli state must be defended
against the Arab peoples, because a victory for the Arab revolution and
the destruction of the Israeli state would result in genocide, mass
expulsion, or the oppression of the Jews presently living in Israel.



Both of these arguments are false to the core.



The situation of the Israeli Jews is essentially different from that of
Jews in other parts of the world. The struggle against anti-Semitism
and the oppression of Jews in other countries is a progressive struggle
directed against their oppressors. In some circumstances the demand for
self-determination for oppressed Jews, directed against the oppressor
nation, could become appropriate. Thus the Bolsheviks under Lenin and
Trotsky recognized the right of the Jews in Russia to set up a state on
their own territory, if they wished. However, the oppression of Jews in
other countries does not justify the creation and maintenance of the
existing Israeli state at the expense of the Palestinians, who were not
and are not responsible for the oppression of the Jews. There, the
situation is the reverse. The Israeli Jews form an oppressor
nationality of a settler-colonial character vis-a-vis the Arab peoples.
The Israeli state is the means by which this oppression is maintained.



From the point of view of the Leninist concept of the right of nations
to self-determination, the key fact is whether the given nationality is
an oppressed nationality or an oppressor nationality. Revolutionists
call for the right of self-determination for oppressed nationalities,
those that are being denied their democratic rights through national
oppression. This demand means that the oppressed nationalities have the
right to decide to form a separate state, or to exist in a unitary or
federated state alongside a former oppressor nationality, or to adopt
some other form of self-determination, as the oppressed nationality so
chooses. The oppressor nationality has no right to decide this
question. The purpose of fighting for the right of self-determination
for oppressed nationalities is to guarantee them whatever state forms
they believe are necessary to end their oppression. In the epoch of
imperialism, the national liberation struggles of oppressed
nationalities tend to merge with the world socialist revolution against
imperialism through the process of permanent revolution.



This revolutionary dynamic is entirely missing from the concept that
the Israeli Jews?an oppressor nationality vis-a-vis the Arab peoples?
have a right to a separate state. Proletarian internationalism includes
the recognition that the struggles of the oppressed nationality and the
toiling masses in the oppressor nationality have the same enemy. But it
does not at all endorse the concept that oppressed nationalities must
support the right of self-determination of the oppressor nationality.



The burden for forging a fighting internationalist alliance rests on
the proletarian movement of the oppressor nationality or country. It
must prove in deeds that it is opposed to its own bourgeoisie on this
question by fighting side by side with the oppressed nationalities and
supporting their right to self-determination. There is no equation
between the demand for self-determination for the Vietnamese, which is
directed against imperialism and its lackeys in Saigon, or for the
Palestinians, which is directed against their imperialist and Israeli
oppressors, and the demand to support the Israeli state. The latter is
directed on behalf of the imperialists against the Arabs, primarily the
Palestinians. In the current situation, this demand mobilizes the
Israeli Jews against the Arabs, who are oppressed by Israel.



The second argument of the Zionists is equally false. It is not
justifiable to assume that a likely development of the Arab revolution
will be the future oppression of the Israeli Jews. There is no reason
to believe that the Arab liberation movement?contrary to the dynamic of
such struggles everywhere else, contrary to the basic principles being
put forward by its most advanced components (the Palestinian liberation
fighters)?will institute a system of national oppression against the
Israeli Jews. To consider that the Arab revolution will necessarily -
threaten the national oppression of the Israeli Jews is an unfounded
fear of the revolution itself, a fear which is incited for
counterrevolutionary reasons by the imperialists and Zionists.



Of course, the possibility of future oppression of the Israeli Jews
cannot be theoretically excluded. A bureaucratic deformation or
degeneration of the state power issuing after a successful revolution
in Palestine could conceivably result in systematic oppression of the
Jews. Under such circumstances, the demand for their right to self-
determination could become appropriate. But this unlikely future
possibility does not justify the existing oppression of the Arab
peoples through the maintenance of the Israeli state.



In contrast to this speculative future danger, there are real problems
which will definitely have to be surmounted after the victory of the
Arab revolution. Even under the most favorable conditions hi which the
socialist revolution in the Middle East can take place, many vestiges
of national oppression suffered by the Arab peoples will still remain
for a time. The revolutionary policy is to give preferential treatment
to the formerly oppressed nationalities as the only means by which they
can overcome all the economic, social, and cultural deprivations that
they have suffered at the hands of Israel and the imperialist
countries.



Within the revolutionary movement there have been some different but
nevertheless mistaken positions regarding the right of the Israeli Jews
to self-determination. Some of the spokespeople for the Israeli
Socialist Organization have raised these arguments in the most clearly
developed form. We differentiate their motivations and positions from
those of the Zionists. They are courageous Israeli revolutionaries who
oppose Zionism and call for the integration of the Israeli Jews in a
socialist federation of the Mideast



Their reasoning goes along the following line:



The Israeli Jews form a new Hebrew nationality separate and distinct
from the Jewish people in other parts of the world. After a victorious
socialist revolution, this minority nationality within the Mideast
should have the right to self-determination. In such a revolutionary
context, self-determination for the Hebrew nationality would not result
in a Zionist-type settler state opposed to the Arab revolution.
Although this demand is not meant to be applied now, and is not
designed to imply support to the maintenance of the Zionist state, it
should be raised now as part of a revolutionary program for the Mideast
in order to facilitate the process of winning the Hebrew masses away
from Zionism.

This argument is wrong.



The question of whether or not the Israeli Jews form a separate
nationality from Jewish people in other parts of the world is subject
to theoretical investigation. But that issue is not relevant to the
matter under discussion. It does not follow that because an Israeli
Jewish nationality exists, either as a separate entity or as part of
world Jewry, we must automatically support its right to a separate
state in the Mideast. Nor does the right of self-determination flow
from the fact that a given nationality may be numerically a minority
nationality. Each case must be examined separately within the totality
of the given conditions, the key fact being whether a given nationality
is an oppressor nationality or an oppressed nationality.



To Leninists, the right of self-determination is not an abstract moral
right belonging to all nationalities at all times and under all
circumstances. It is a political demand for oppressed nationalities
that is raised for the following purposes: (a) by guaranteeing them
whatever state forms they feel are necessary to end their national
oppression, it mobilizes the presently oppressed nationalities in
struggle against their oppressors; (b) it mobilizes the working class
of the oppressor nations to struggle against its own ruling class on
this question; (c) in this way it lays the basis for forging a genuine
internationalist alliance between the national liberation struggle of
oppressed nationalities and the class struggle of the working masses in
the oppressor countries.



These are the main reasons why the self-determination struggles of
oppressed nationalities lead in the direction of a socialist
revolution, which will eventually lead to the abolition of the nation-
state. These three factors are all missing from the demand for self-
determination for oppressor nations.



Even if the demand for self-determination for the present oppressor
nationality?the Israeli Jews?is to be implemented only after a
socialist revolution, the raising of it at the present point can only
be interpreted as directed against the presently oppressed nationality?
the Arab peoples. As such, there is no revolutionary thrust to this
demand.



Since the Leninist demand for the right of oppressed nations to self-
determination is designed to guarantee them the state forms they feel
are necessary to end their oppression, the implication of the argument
for future Hebrew self-determination is that this demand is necessary
to guarantee that the Israeli Jews will not face national oppression
after the victory of the Arab revolution. As was said before, this
danger is not at all real and pressing. Leninists raise demands that
speak to the actual situation, which is the exact opposite: the Israeli
Jews are the oppressor nationality vis-a-vis the Arabs. To raise such a
demand now as a safeguard against a possible future danger is
unfounded, obscures the present reality, and diverts from the struggle
going on right now for the rights of the oppressed Palestinians and
other Arabs against the imperialist and Israeli oppressors.



On the tactical level it is also wrong to raise the demand for the
right of self-determination of the Israeli Jews, even if the right were
not to be applied now, but only within the context of a successful
revolution in the Mideast. Among the Israeli Jews, such a demand would
reinforce the racist fears, fears fostered by the imperialists and
Zionists that the Israeli Jewish masses do have something to fear from
the victorious Arab revolution. It is unlikely that Israeli Jews will
be convinced to support the Palestinian struggle to destroy the state
of Israel on the ground that the Palestinians and other Arab peoples
promise them the right to set up another state in the future to protect
themselves from oppression by these same Arabs. Such a demand would be
easily twisted by the Zionists to their own advantage. The Zionists
would argue that the Israeli Jews have a state and self-determination
today, and that the duty of those who believe in this right for the
Israeli Jews is to fight now to preserve Israel, even though they may
disagree with many aspects of the Zionist state.



Moreover, such a demand would certainly be understood by the Arab
masses as a disguised form of Zionism. To advance such a slogan in the
present circumstances would call into question the genuineness of our
support to the Palestinian struggle for national liberation.



Instead of raising slogans which reinforce the racist fears that
Zionism and imperialism foster among the Israeli Jews, it is the duty
of revolutionists to show the Israeli Jews how Zionism is wholly and
completely against their interests, how it has led them into the trap
of opposing the Arab liberation struggle and of aligning themselves
with imperialism, the worst enemy of the Jewish people everywhere. We
explain to the Israeli Jews, as we have in the past, that their future
lies only in aligning themselves with the Palestinian and general Arab
liberation movements, wholeheartedly and without any reservation
whatever. It will be to the extent that they do this that they can
escape from the trap that Zionism and imperialism have set for them in
the Mideast.



A related slogan that has been raised by spokesmen of the ISO is for
the de-Zionization of Israel. This slogan is wrong if it is
counterposed to the demand of the Palestinian liberation movement for a
democratic Palestine, because in that case it can be interpreted to
mean support for the maintenance of Israel. Revolutionists support all
struggles within Israel against every Zionist discriminatory law and
practice, but since the national oppression of the Palestinians cannot
be ended within the framework of the maintenance of the Israeli state,
these struggles must be linked with the goal of replacing Israel with a
democratic Palestine.



PART III



A focal point of the world revolution, the revolutionary struggle in
the Mideast has become even more important since the 1967 war. The 1967
military defeat was followed immediately by a mass upsurge in Egypt
that prevented the replacement of the Nasser regime by one more
directly tied to imperialism. The most significant development after
1967 was the subsequent growth of the Palestinian resistance movement,
reflecting the heightened Palestinian national consciousness after the
1967 defeat The Palestinian resistance based its fight around the
demand for self-determination through the establishment of a democratic
Palestine. This put it into direct conflict with any attempted denial
of this right through a settlement between imperialism, Stalinism, the
Israeli state, and the bourgeois Arab regimes. The independent struggle
for Palestinian rights gained widespread support among the masses
throughout the entire Arab world. It has also won widespread solidarity
in other sectors of the world revolution, particularly the colonial
revolution. In the imperialist countries of Europe and North America,
the democratic goals of the Palestinian revolution have helped dispel
the impact of imperialist and Zionist propaganda among large sections
of the radicalizing vanguard. Since 1967, important sections of the
radicalizing youth have been won to support of the Arab revolution.



The outcome of the 1970 civil war in Jordan was a severe setback for
the Palestinian resistance and the entire Arab revolution. The
Palestinian resistance was able to deepen its ties with the Palestinian
masses in the course of the battle and in certain areas large masses
were involved in the struggle against the Hussein regime, but Hussein
was able to win a military victory. Although the Palestinian resistance
was not destroyed, it was forced to accept severe limitations on its
ability to function politically and militarily. Since then, the Hussein
regime has pushed forward with military and political measures to
diminish the remaining power of the Palestinian resistance. After the
civil war in Jordan several Arab states moved closer to an
accommodation with imperialism.



The continued drive by imperialism and the Israeli state, in collusion
with the Kremlin and the bourgeois Arab regimes, to impose a
?settlement? with Israel that would deny Palestinian national rights
will generate a new resurgence of struggle by the Palestinian people.
The experience of other sectors of the colonial revolution shows that
this can occur within a relatively short span of time. The ongoing
political discussion among the Palestinian fighters after the
experience of the 1970 civil war in Jordan can mean that this new
resurgence of struggle will occur on a more advanced political level.



The fact that the United States is the chief imperialist power involved
in the Mideast makes opposition to Washington?s aims and actions there
our central task in defending the Arab revolution. During the 1967 war
itself, the SWP was the only major organization on the left to rally to
an internationalist defense of the Arab revolution. Since then, as the
importance of this sector of the world revolution has increased,
defense of the Arab revolution has been an increasing part of the SWP?s
political activity. During the 1970 civil war in Jordan, the SWP
campaigned against the threat of direct U. S. military intervention.



The SWP?s political work in this area has centered on an educational
campaign to counter imperialist and Zionist propaganda against the Arab
revolution. Continuing this campaign remains the central focus of our
political activity hi defense of the Arab revolution. This campaign
takes the form of thorough press coverage of developments in the
Mideast, expanded publication of literature, participation in debates,
teach-ins, organizing speaking tours, and other means of educating the
newly radicalizing forces to an internationalist position on this
question.



While support to the Arab revolution is still limited to a small
vanguard in the United States, this support has been growing steadily
since 1967. Key reasons for this are the impact of the actions of
imperialism and Israel in the Mideast; the growing radicalization in
the U. S., with its tendencies towards internationalist and
anticolonialist consciousness; and an identification of the Palestine
fighting forces with the Vietnamese. The growing national liberation
struggles within the U. S., primarily those of the Black and Chicano
peoples, generate solidarity among these nationalities and supporters
of their struggles with the struggles of nationally oppressed peoples
everywhere. The mass antiwar movement has sensitized large numbers of
people to the role of U. S. imperialism and to solidarity with the
colonial revolution. The expansion of these movements will be important
factors in the increasing growth of sentiment in solidarity with the
Arab revolution.



The key slogans around which a broad-based, united-front opposition can
develop to Washington?s aims and actions in the Mideast are analogous
to the slogans around the issue of Vietnam. No U. S. troops to the
Mideast!?if the threat of direct U.S. military intervention is again
posed. Bring the Troops Home Now!?if the threat becomes actual. During
the 1970 civil war in Jordan, the slogan of no U.S. troops to the
Mideast won wide support within the organized antiwar movement.



An important side of the SWP?s work in defense of the Arab revolution
is the opportunity it provides to gain a hearing for our ideas among
Arab, Israeli, and other Near Eastern students in the U. S. It is our
obligation to try to convince as many Near East revolutionaries as
possible of the ideas of Trotskyism. Consistent work along this line
can help lay a basis for the formation of Trotskyist parties in the
Arab countries, Israel, and other Near East countries when these
students return home. The development of such parties will be key to
the success of the socialist revolution in the Near East.



Another important side of the SWP?s work in defense of the Arab
revolution is the increased opportunities it provides to explain our
position on the Jewish question. This question is important
internationally, because of the history of past and present anti-
Semitism and the potential that this danger can become virulent in the
U. S. Combined with opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state is our
irreconcilable opposition to any form of anti-Semitism or oppression of
Jews. We must make it clear that revolutionary internationalists are
the best and most consistent fighters for the rights of Jews wherever
they suffer oppression, and that the oppressed peoples everywhere are
the only reliable allies of the Jewish people. This is important in
countering the appeal of reactionary hooligan groups like the Jewish
Defense League, which pretend to be fighters for the rights of Jews,
while trying to draw the Jewish masses into support for their enemies
and opposition to their potential allies.



The Zionist establishment is disturbed because so many radical Jewish
youth hi the United States have turned away from Zionism and toward the
Arab revolution. Many of them are in the Trotskyist movement and a firm
and clear policy on the Arab revolution, Israel, and the Jewish
question will win over many more.

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