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by Peter A. Belmont / 2014-03-10
© 2014 Peter Belmont
Anyone interested in powerful polemics on an older subject of dreadful contention — Stalinism/Trotskyism/Communism — might read the (densely argued) book “Isaac and Isaiah” (David Caute) about the fierce antagonism between Isaiah Berlin, English (born in Riga) Jewish philosopher, and Isaac Deutscher, English (born in Poland) Jewish philosopher/historian.
I recommend this book, even though it was hard for me to read it, because it makes so vivid the way that life-experience, ideology, and personalities generate the life-stances of intellectuals. How they fought! How strongly they held their beliefs. How they ignored the weak points of their own positions and blamed the other for ignoring the weak points of the other’s position! A great read. Reveals philosophy and history as great human undertakings and shows in many ways just how that humanity (human weakness mostly) shapes academic work.
Today many are concerned with the rights and wrongs of Zionism, of the Israel project generally, initially, and of the occupation project and settlement project undertaken by Israel, largely in violent violation of international law, since 1967.
Our troubles with the “right” (or not) of Zionist Jews, first, to expulsively take over green-line Israel in 1948 and, second, to behave to the remaining Palestinians as they did through 1967 and thereafter on a larger scale—these Zionist projects pale in comparison to what Marx-Lenin-Stalin etc. did, whether the comparison be made to the size/extent (number of victims) of the crimes or to the per-capita violence.
It is quite a read, to see how the defender of Communism (Isaac Deutscher) did his best to excuse the horrible dictatorship of the Party (not of the Proletariat) over the people, the Stalinist purges, the starvation during the early collectivization of the Ukrainian farms, the deportation to labor camps of many non-peasants/non-workers, etc.
The book also relates, but necessarily more briefly, how the attacker of communism (Isaiah Berlin) ignored the sea he himself swam in, the world of capitalist domination, environmental degradation, etc.
We see clearly what we want to attack, especially the warts. We see but dimly what we want to defend, and tend to ignore the warts in favor of remembering the glowing promises, descriptions, etc.
The book gives perspective also on how illogical people can be when arguing fiercely held positions. Berlin, for example, decries the horrors visited upon “the people” by Communism but didn’t “see” (didn’t anyhow condemn in public) the horrors of industrialization, capitalism, environmental degradations, et al. which — having been seen rather accurately by Marx served as justification for those who aligned themselves with Communism.
Living as we do in the time of oligarchic control (rather than democratic control) of the USA, a control made possible by the commodification of political power (which meant that capitalists not only owned everything else but also owned the government), we might see the sense of revolution, even if few have the energy, daring, etc., to seek to bring revolution about. And even if we see that oligarchic control as largely responsible for the failure of the USA to act decisively—or at all?—to reduce American “carbon” contributions to climate change.
Zionists seem unable to see the crimes they’ve committed w.r.t. the Palestinians.
Is this because they have an inescapable sense of Jewish or “white” superiority over others generally or over “dark” people or over Palestinians specifically?
Or is it because of promises said by some to have been made to “the Jewish People” by God?
Either way, this line of belief is a racist view allowing Zionists to feel fine about their crimes against the “other”,
But there may be another justification in the eyes of the Zionists and their apologizers.
Zionists tend to have an overwhelming sense of the wrongs done to Jews in Europe which (to them) gave them the right to perform a “transfer” seldom identified under that name, namely, the transfer of the homeless, refugee, uprooted -status of postwar European Jews into the homeless, refugee, uprooted -status of an almost equivalent number of other people, namely, most of the Palestinian people. (“This rowboat can only contain so many people and we are determined that it shall be us and not you,” Zionists seem to say of Palestine.)
I believe that the sense of entitlement of Zionists is so deep-rooted that (just like the fiercely held pro- and anti-Communism described in David Caute’s book) they will never voluntarily make restitution for anything, not for 1948, not for 1967-present, and must therefore be forced to do so by external pressure. In that context, long live the educational venture known as BDS and may its lessons fix themselves into the hearts of mankind.
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