Simon Schama's recent intervention in defence of Israel is
presented as a contribution to historical understanding. In reality, it belongs
to a broader political campaign whose purpose is to delegitimise mass
opposition to the genocide in Gaza by conflating anti-Zionism with
antisemitism. The significance of such arguments lies not in their historical
accuracy, but in their political function. At a moment when millions of people
around the world are expressing opposition to war, ethnic cleansing and imperialist
violence, intellectuals associated with the political establishment are
increasingly being mobilised to provide moral and historical justification for
repression.[1]
The campaign's central mechanism is straightforward.
Criticism of the Israeli state is equated with hostility to Jewish people.
Opposition to Zionism is portrayed as a modern form of antisemitism. Protest
against the destruction of Gaza becomes evidence of sympathy for forces
allegedly seeking the destruction of Jews. Through this process, the unique
moral authority associated with the Holocaust is transferred to the
contemporary Israeli state, allowing criticism of its actions to be denounced
as a revival of humanity's greatest historical crime.
This conflation is not an intellectual mistake or conceptual
confusion. It is a deliberate political operation. Its target is not the racist
right, which continues to flourish across Europe, the United States and
elsewhere. Rather, it is directed against anti-war demonstrators, socialist
organisations, students, academics and workers who oppose genocide and
imperialist war.
The narrative's omission of the far right is especially
revealing. Many of Israel's most enthusiastic supporters are found among
political forces with long histories of xenophobia, racism and authoritarian
nationalism. Across Europe and North America, right-wing nationalist movements
have increasingly presented Israel as a model of ethnic exclusivity,
militarised borders and state violence against a subject population. These
forces are rarely accused of antisemitism when they support Israel because they
are politically useful allies. The contradiction exposes the dishonesty of
claims that support for Israel constitutes the defining measure of opposition
to antisemitism.
At the centre of Schama's argument lies a familiar
liberal-Zionist distinction between Israel's allegedly noble foundations and
the unfortunate excesses of its current government. Schama portrays Benjamin
Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich as departures from a
fundamentally democratic and humane project. The implication is that Israel has
somehow lost its way.
This narrative cannot withstand historical examination. The
catastrophe now unfolding in Gaza did not emerge from a temporary deviation
from Israel's founding principles. It grew out of the state's historical
foundations. The Nakba of 1948, during which hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes, was not an accidental
by-product of state formation. It was the decisive event that established the
state. The subordination and displacement of the indigenous Palestinian
population were not peripheral episodes but central components of the Zionist
project as it developed in practice.
For decades, Israel has functioned as a strategic ally of
the major imperialist powers in the Middle East. Its military, economic and
diplomatic position has been inseparable from its role within broader
geopolitical calculations pursued by Britain and, increasingly after the Second
World War, the United States. To describe the destruction of Gaza merely as the
consequence of an extremist government is therefore to obscure the deeper
historical and political forces that have shaped the state from the beginning.
Mario Kessler on
Antisemitism
The German historian Mario Kessler has made an important
contribution to understanding antisemitism by examining it through the history
of the socialist movement. His work is particularly valuable because it
challenges the widespread assumption that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are
fundamentally the same thing. Instead, Kessler demonstrates that some of the
strongest and most principled opponents of antisemitism were found within the
revolutionary socialist tradition, many of whom were also critics of Zionism.
Kessler approaches antisemitism not simply as a prejudice
but as a social and political phenomenon rooted in specific historical
conditions. Drawing on Marxist scholarship, he shows how antisemitism often
emerged during periods of economic and political crisis, when ruling elites and
reactionary movements sought to channel social discontent away from the
existing social order and towards a minority group. Jews were portrayed as
responsible for social problems that were, in reality, products of capitalism
itself.
One of Kessler's key themes is the distinction between
antisemitism and criticism of Zionism. He traces debates within the labour
movement from the late nineteenth century onward, showing that many Jewish
socialists rejected the Zionist project while remaining uncompromising
opponents of antisemitism. For figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky,
and many members of the Jewish labour movement, the solution to Jewish
oppression lay not in creating a separate nation-state but in the international
struggle for socialism and democratic equality.
Kessler's work also highlights the twentieth century's
tragedy. The rise of fascism and the Holocaust devastated the European Jewish
population and transformed political attitudes towards Zionism. Yet he argues
that understanding this catastrophe requires serious historical analysis rather
than political myth-making. The history of antisemitism, in his view, cannot be
reduced to support for or opposition to Israel.
Kessler is particularly relevant today because he insists on
historical precision. He rejects attempts to use accusations of antisemitism as
a weapon against all critics of Israeli policy, while equally opposing genuine
antisemitism in all its forms. His work reminds us that the socialist movement
developed both a powerful critique of antisemitism and a tradition of
internationalism that sought solidarity between peoples rather than separation
through competing nationalisms. For readers interested in the relationship
between antisemitism, socialism and Zionism, Kessler provides an important
historical bridge between nineteenth-century Marxism and contemporary political
debates.
The effort to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism also
requires the systematic suppression of an alternative political tradition,
namely that of revolutionary socialist internationalism. The historical record
is clear. The socialist movement, not Zionism, produced the most consistent and
principled struggle against antisemitism. During the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, socialist organisations opposed antisemitism not as an isolated
prejudice but as a reactionary ideology rooted in the contradictions of class
society.
David North's The
Logic of Zionism and the Fate of Palestine
David North's The Logic of Zionism and the Fate of
Palestine is less a conventional history book than a collection of
political and historical essays that examine the origins of Zionism, the Palestinian question, and imperialism's role in the Middle East. Written
from a Trotskyist and international socialist standpoint, the book challenges
both the mainstream defence of Zionism and the various nationalist perspectives
that dominate discussion of the conflict.
One of the book's strengths is its placement of Zionism in a broader
historical context. North argues that Zionism emerged as a response to the
oppression of European Jews, but that it developed as a nationalist movement
whose fate became closely bound up with the interests of the major imperialist
powers. Rather than treating Israel as simply the fulfilment of Jewish
self-determination, he examines how the state was formed, its relationship to
the displacement of the Palestinian population and its strategic role in the
Middle East.
A recurring theme is the distinction between Judaism and
Zionism. North insists that opposition to Zionism is not the same thing as
antisemitism and points to the long history of socialist opposition to both
antisemitism and Jewish nationalism. The book draws heavily on the writings of
Marx, Engels, August Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and, above all, Leon Trotsky.
These figures argued that antisemitism was rooted in the crises and
contradictions of capitalist society and could not be overcome through the creation
of a separate national state.
Particularly interesting are the sections dealing with
Trotsky's analysis of the Jewish question in the 1930s. Trotsky recognised the
terrible danger facing European Jewry under fascism while maintaining that
Zionism offered no lasting solution. North argues that subsequent events,
including the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, have
confirmed many of Trotsky's warnings.
The book also connects the Palestinian struggle to broader
questions of war, imperialism, and class politics. Rather than advocating
either Israeli or Palestinian nationalism, North advances socialist
internationalism, arguing that a genuine democratic solution requires workers'
political unity throughout the region.
Whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, The Logic
of Zionism and the Fate of Palestine is an important statement of the
Trotskyist position on one of the most contested questions of modern history.
It combines historical analysis, political polemic and theoretical argument in
a way that encourages readers to think beyond the narrow framework through
which the conflict is usually presented.
August Bebel and
the Socialist Struggle Against Antisemitism
August Bebel (1840-1913), the co-founder and leading figure
of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), played a decisive role in
establishing the Marxist movement as the most consistent opponent of
antisemitism in late nineteenth-century Europe. At a time when antisemitic
agitation was gaining influence among sections of the middle classes and even
among workers affected by economic crisis, Bebel insisted that hostility to
Jews was not a form of social protest but a reactionary diversion from the struggle
against capitalism.
Bebel is best known for describing antisemitism as "the
socialism of fools." By this he meant that antisemitic demagogues sought
to exploit genuine popular grievances while directing anger away from the
capitalist system and towards a vulnerable minority. Rather than identifying
exploitation as a consequence of the social relations of capitalism,
antisemites attributed poverty, unemployment and financial crises to the
alleged conspiracies of Jewish individuals. In doing so, they transformed social
discontent into racial hatred and protected the existing economic order.
For Bebel and the Marxist movement, antisemitism was not
simply a prejudice or moral failing. It was a political weapon used by ruling
elites and reactionary forces to divide the working class. Antisemitic
campaigns encouraged workers to blame Jewish neighbours instead of the
capitalist class as a whole. This undermined workers' unity across national,
religious, and ethnic lines, which Marxists regarded as essential to socialist
struggle.
Bebel's opposition to antisemitism anticipated later Marxist
analyses developed by figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin and Leon
Trotsky. His insistence that workers reject all forms of racial and religious
chauvinism became a foundational principle of socialist internationalism. At a
time when many liberal politicians accommodated antisemitic sentiment, Bebel
and the SPD publicly opposed it, making the socialist movement the principal
political force combating antisemitism in Germany.
His intervention remains historically significant because it
demonstrated that the fight against antisemitism is inseparable from the
struggle for working-class unity and social equality. For Bebel, the liberation
of Jewish people could not be achieved through exclusion, nationalism, or
scapegoating, but only through workers' common struggle against capitalism
itself.
No figure understood this process more profoundly than Leon
Trotsky. Writing as fascism rose, Trotsky warned that capitalism's crisis threatened
catastrophe for European Jewry. The destruction of democratic institutions, the
growth of fascist movements and the degeneration of bourgeois society pointed
toward unprecedented crimes. At the same time, Trotsky rejected Zionism's claim
to provide a solution to the Jewish question through the creation of a national
state in Palestine. He argued that the historical problem confronting Jewish
people could not be resolved through a nationalist project, but only through
the international struggle against capitalism itself.
Subsequent history tragically confirmed both aspects of
Trotsky's analysis. The Holocaust exposed the barbarism to which capitalism in
crisis could descend. Yet the establishment of Israel did not eliminate
antisemitism. Nor did it resolve the underlying contradictions that had
produced it. Instead, new forms of oppression and conflict emerged, above all
through the dispossession and subjugation of the Palestinian people.
This history poses an insurmountable challenge to Schama's
argument. The political tendency that most consistently analysed antisemitism,
fought it and predicted the catastrophe confronting European Jewry was also the
tendency that opposed Zionism. The existence of that tradition refutes the
claim that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic.
Indeed, the current attempt to identify opposition to
Zionism with hatred of Jews requires the erasure of a century of socialist
political experience. Most crucially, the conflation of Judaism with the
Israeli state does not protect Jewish people. It places them in greater danger.
Antisemitism has historically functioned by attributing the crimes, failures
and contradictions of society to Jews as a collective. Zionist ideology,
particularly in its contemporary forms, insists that Israel acts in the name of
Jews everywhere and that Jewish identity is inextricably bound to the state.
This claim reproduces, from a different starting point, precisely the framework
upon which antisemitism has traditionally depended.
When the actions of the Israeli state are identified with
Jews as a whole, the distinction between a government and a people is
consciously blurred. The responsibility for state crimes is transferred to an
entire global community. This does not undermine antisemitism. It creates
conditions in which antisemitic narratives can flourish.
The defence of Jewish people against antisemitism therefore
cannot be entrusted to the Israeli state, nor to the imperialist governments
that provide it with diplomatic cover, financial support and military
assistance. Genuine opposition to antisemitism requires a fundamentally
different political perspective.
That perspective begins with rejecting all forms of
nationalism and ethnic exclusivity. It insists on the unity of Jewish, Arab,
and international workers based on common class interests. It recognises that
war, racism, authoritarianism and genocide arise not from ancient hatreds but
from the crisis of the capitalist system itself.
The growing effort to criminalise anti-Zionist sentiment and
suppress opposition to genocide is part of a broader assault on democratic
rights. Governments that support Israel's actions in Gaza increasingly resort
to censorship, police repression and legal intimidation because they confront
widening popular opposition. The attack on Palestine solidarity movements is
one aspect of a wider turn toward authoritarian forms of rule in conditions of
mounting social inequality, geopolitical conflict and economic instability.
Viewed in this context, Schama's essay is not primarily a
contribution to historical debate. It is a political intervention on behalf of
the existing order. Its purpose is to provide intellectual legitimacy for the
suppression of opposition to imperialist violence and to shield the Israeli
state from scrutiny by presenting criticism as prejudice.
Defending historical truth requires rejecting this
falsification. Antisemitism is a real and deadly form of reaction whose history
culminated in some of the greatest crimes of the twentieth century. But it
cannot be fought through support for a state carrying out mass violence against
an oppressed people. Nor can opposition to genocide be silenced by accusations
designed to delegitimise political dissent.
The struggle against antisemitism and the struggle against
Zionism are not mutually exclusive. Historically, some of the most principled
opponents of antisemitism understood this. Their perspective remains
indispensable today. The defence of democratic rights, the opposition to
genocide and the fight against antisemitism all require the same political
foundation: the independent mobilisation of the international working class
against capitalism, imperialism and war.
Bibliography
Bebel, August. Mass and Class: Selected Writings. New
York: Pathfinder Press, 1980.
Kessler, Mario. Antisemitism, Zionism and Socialism:
Studies in the History of Jewish Labour and Political Movements. Berlin:
Metropol Verlag, various editions.
Lenin, V. I. "Anti-Jewish Pogroms." In Collected
Works, Vol. 29. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
North, David. The Logic of Zionism and the Fate of
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North, David. "Socialist Internationalism and the
Struggle Against Zionism and Imperialism." International Youth and
Students for Social Equality Lecture, 2023.
Trotsky, Leon. "Thermidor and Antisemitism"
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Trotsky, Leon. "On the Jewish Question"
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