In the context of growing global mobilization in support of Palestine and in rejection of Israeli genocide, we share a short excerpt from a 1986 interview with Nahuel Moreno, leader and founder of the Trotskyist current of which we are part as the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International. In this short text, Moreno refutes accusations of “anti-Semitism,” defines the Zionists in Palestine as oppressors, identifies Arab terrorism as a consequence of this brutal oppression, and advocates a revolutionary policy for the liberation of Palestine. Today, in the midst of 21st-century genocide and 39 years after its publication, these lines remain powerful and guiding for thousands of activists.
You draw a parallel between Nazism, Apartheid, and Zionism. Have you ever been accused of anti-Semitism because of it?
– Yes, the Zionist left accuses me of anti-Semitism, especially as I argue the destruction of the Zionist state is necessary.
As a Marxist, I start from the premise the proletariat of a nation which exploits and oppresses another, as Israel does to Arabs and Palestinians, can’t be liberated. The Jewish working class is heir to a glorious tradition of class struggle — the path of the Western proletariat, including the Argentinian, is strewn with a multitude of heroic Jewish fighters. But this proletariat can’t continue to the end, or to grow green again and exceed its glorious tradition until they get on the side of the Palestinians and the Arabs, who are repressed, persecuted and enslaved by the State of Israel. Genocide is a constant of Zionism, from the early years until the recent invasion of Lebanon and slaughter in the camps of Sabra and Shatila.
Calling us anti-Semites is a trap for the unwary. It’s like saying a German who wanted the defeat of Nazi Germany was anti-German, or someone who wants to sweep Boer republic off the map because it’s anti-black is a racist because he’s against the Boer farmers.
The question to be answered with regard to relations between peoples, races, nations and classes is very simple, I would say too simple — who oppresses, who is oppressed? For a revolutionary Marxist, the answer is as simple as the question: we’re against the oppressors and for the oppressed. We defend to the bitter end the latter while pointing out, when needed, the mistakes of their leadership.
Arab terrorism is an aberrant tactic, totally wrong, and so we say. But we continue beside the Palestinians and Arabs, defending these fighters although they use aberrant and monstrous tactics that go against the interests of their people.
What is essential for us is that this terrorism is born out of desperation of the Palestinians youth living in conditions similar to those of the Nazi concentration camps. Look at the photos of the inhabitants of these camps — they have the skin attached to the bones. They show the same state as the survivors of the Buchenwald and Auschwitz camps when liberated at the end of the war. The culprit is the State of Israel, supported, unfortunately, by its people; just as the Nazi state, during its early years, had the support of most of the German people. It doesn’t matter these camps are within or without the borders of Israel, its existence is because of the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.
The similarity with the Boer State and Nazism is obvious. The Nazis not only persecuted the left but also used the most brutal methods of civil war against other races, mainly against Jews. We have always fought in the front row against all expressions of Nazism and will unconditionally defend the Jews.
When one belongs to an oppressing race or nation fighting against an oppressed nation or nationality, if one is a consistent revolutionary Marxist, one is for revolutionary defeatism. The lesser evil is the defeat of one’s own country or nationality. Lenin favoured the Russian defeat in the Russian–Japanese War and in the First World War, and so they called him a traitor, anti-Russian, racist, German agent. And our comrades fighting the Zionist Jews are called traitors, renegades, anti-Semitic, for opposing the oppression and genocide of the Arabs and the Palestinians by the State of Israel.
Racial oppression in Israel and South Africa is a modern expression of Nazi barbarism; it shows once again that where there’s capitalism, Nazism is just around the corner if not stopped by the mass movement.
And even without going to the monstrous extremes of Nazism and its younger brothers, Zionism and apartheid, the economic development of capitalism itself leads to cases of NorthEastern Brazil and India — dwarfism, progressive and cumulative stultification.
