This piece is a contribution to the Pre-Convention Discussion for our 32nd National Convention. During Pre-Convention Discussion, all aspects of the party’s program, strategy, and tactics are up for consideration and debate. The ideas presented here are those of the author or authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Communist Party USA, its membership, or their elected leadership bodies. — Editors

What is the material basis for the fascist embrace of Israeli nationalism? Well, in the first place, like recognizes like. Nationalists of all stripes tend to support each other. This has historical roots. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a founding father of the Israeli Right, was a staunch admirer and personal correspondent with Mussolini, who tried to build direct material and financial ties between Zionist organizations and the emerging fascist governments of Europe.

Winston Churchill himself penned an infamous editorial to the Daily Mail in 1920 where he asserted that there were two kinds of Jews, “Good Jews and Bad Jews”. The “Good Jews” were the nationalist Jews, the Zionists, who Churchill asserted, the British state needed to back, in order to fight the “Bad Jews”, the Internationalist Bolshevik Jews. Such a naked assertion of Western Imperialist interests gives away the game of why Britain and then the U.S. backed the state of Israel: to help control the Middle East and to fight the left.

More recently, the rise of U.S. evangelical Christian Zionism, backed by Big Oil and US military strategic interests, explains the direct connection in our time between the U.S. far-right and Israel.

The biggest Zionist organization in the world is Christians United for Israel (CUFI). It actually owns and runs its own oil and natural gas exploration company, Zion Oil and Gas, which is currently buying up the petroleum exploratory rights in the Megiddo Valley. The Christian Evangelical population makes up nearly one-third of the U.S. electorate, and the Evangelical movement has been the strongest financial backer of politicians who support a neo-colonial U.S. Middle Eastern policy.

Ideologically of course, the Evangelicals believe themselves to be the “new Jews”, and believe that the “ingathering of the exiles” (i.e. having all Jews return to Israel) is a precondition for the apocalyptic war of Armageddon.

According to their reading of the Book of Revelations, all Jews and other non-believers who don’t convert will be killed, Jesus will return, and everyone will live happily ever after off of their oil company investments.

This means that Christian Evangelicals are quite literally the biggest supporters of the growth of the Israeli settlements and the growth of the far-right, especially its media arm within Israel.

When the alt-right-connected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson staged a provocation by “visiting with threatened Jewish students at Columbia,” he was merely serving his constituency’s beliefs and interests. He did not meet with the many Jewish students at the pro-Palestine encampment nearby, whose safety is threatened by his constituency. He brought along, for good measure the neo-nazi Proud Boys founder Gavin McGuinness, and a gaggle of fascist Congressmen to preach to the Columbia students about anti-semitism.

Where we go from here

We are in very dangerous waters. MAGA fascists use coded Evangelical-apocalyptic replacement theology, nationalist solidarity, Islamophobia and white supremacy as a cover for their financial and strategic interests, claiming they are the true supporters of Jews and of Israel. MAGA-supporting Christians evangelicals financially incentivize Jewish migration to Israel, with the hope they’ll ultimately all be killed or converted.

This follows directly in the footsteps of 19th century British policy of backing Jewish migration to Israel to help break up the Ottoman Empire, while simultaneously funding Wahabist madrasas and Arab nationalist separatist movements.

Our watchword must be solidarity and internationalism. Let’s dare to be the “Bad Jews” of Winston Churchill’s nightmares and demand full rights for all ethnic and religious minorities everywhere! This means we must embrace the historically majoritarian strand of Jewish political values and fight against all ethno-nationalist states, movements, and policies.

In concrete terms that means we must fight like hell against any and all legislation which attempts to conflate opposition to Israeli state policy with antisemitism. This is a fascist trick of the far-right which is being used to violently suppress actual Jewish organizations and constituencies, let alone the rights of all students to protest and enables the vicious targeting of Palestinian and Arab American students.

We must fight for the right to protest and for free speech against the real estate and hedge fund managers who masquerade as administrators of Colleges, against the police, and against the state and city governments who are complicit in this hideous repression.

We must put our bodies on the line to protect our Palestinian and Arab American siblings who are being subjected to the full weight of state repression, through the use of disgraceful and unconstitutional 9/11 era “anti-terror” statutes.

And we must fight even harder to end this genocidal terror in Gaza. We must not let the failures of the Biden administration enable the destruction of the people of Palestine abroad, while paving the way for the fascism here at home.

Comments