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Comrade this was a very informative and interesting article. I really do not know much about Jabotinsky but the split between him and Ben Gurion is worth exploring. Perry Anderson mentions that the State of Israel could only be created through strong statist institutions. You would describe that as the role of social democracy, would you not? The inference is that Jabotinsky's fascism could not build the state he postulated. I myself am interested in the role of the kibbutzim. They, I think, constituted the morally acceptable face of Zionism. At school one of my teachers used to talk enthusiastically of the socialism of the kibbutzim. When I was at uni there was a lot of cachet attached to having been in a kibbutz for a time. Chomsky & Sanders both followed that path btw. I recall how when Ben Gurion retired to a kibbutz that was seen as a splendid moral gesture. Now the kibbutzim hire and exploit foreign workers. The Utopian facade has long withered away. But let us pose again the question implied in the heading of your post. In what way does Israel represent the extreme expression of the crisis of world capitalism? One possible answer is the Foucauldian one that the biopolitics of neoliberalism now reign supreme in Israel. You put great store, rightly, about the morally destructive impact of a permanent war footing. Together these two tendencies have undermined the morally acceptable face of Zionism. But without a moral imperative no state can endure and we are witnessing that now in Israel in that every day it becomes clearer that it is a scandal and a blight unto the nations. But I think we also need to factor in the truth that Israel as a nation is not economically viable. It only exists through the most massive subsidisation by the USA. This has a primarily military front but it extends to other aspects of the Israeli economy. At the heart of this failure is that Israel exists as an imperial force in the region and cannot be integrated into the regional economy other than through conquest. Every Zionist victory makes this failure to integrate even worse. It is also here that the BDS movement can have the greatest purchase. Before this post degenerates into a ramble, let me say that the contradictions, including the economic, of the Zionist project are a subset of the contradictions of the entire capitalist system. We will leave it there for now. Comradely Gary On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 5:34 AM, John Reimann via Marxism < [email protected]> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > "On Monday, May 14, we were treated to the scenes of tear gas, massive > smoke, thousands protesting… and massive violence by the Israeli army, as > some 60 Gazans were killed and over 2500 wounded or treated for tear gas. > > Meanwhile, just 49 miles away, the “graceful” Ivanka Trump (as one > newspaper referred to her) and Jared Kushner were living in a different > world as they presided over the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem. > The opening and closing benedictions (what happened to the separation of > church and state?) were given by the fundamentalist preachers Robert > Jeffress and John Hagee. The presence of Hagee, who has said that the > Holocaust was part of god’s plan, was welcomed by Netanyahu and company. > After all, these religious bigots and fanatics are Netanyahu’s closest > allies in the United States. > > However, these twin events have set off tremors throughout the world, > especially the Muslim world. Even Netanyahu’s ally Erdogan in Turkey felt > forced to recall the Turkish ambassador to Israel in protest. This shows > the enormous anger that must be felt by Muslim people the world over at > what the racist, expansionist state of Israel is doing. > > How did we get to this point, where is it headed, and what is the socialist > position on this? To answer that, we have to see the situation not as > something unique to Israel. Rather, what is happening in Israel and the > role Israeli capitalism is playing is the most extreme, the most > concentrated expression of the crisis of world capitalism." > Read entire article here: > https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/05/24/israel-as-the-most- > extreme-expression-of-the-crisis-of-world-capitalism/ > > John Reimann > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/gary. > maclennan1%40gmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
