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The Logic of Zionism: From nationalist myth to the Gaza genocide
The lectures presented in this volume are not only a penetrating analysis of the reactionary ideological and political foundations of Zionism. They are as well a powerful call for international action by the working class in defense of the Palestinian people.
As David North declared in his third lecture, delivered in Berlin on December 14, 2023: “The ongoing war, for all its horrors, has made one significant political contribution. It has awakened the youth. It has opened the eyes of the world. It has exposed the Zionist regime and its imperialist accomplices for the criminals they are. It has set into motion a tidal wave of outrage that is sweeping across the world and will sweep across those responsible for this genocide.”
As David North declared in his third lecture, delivered in Berlin on December 14, 2023: “The ongoing war, for all its horrors, has made one significant political contribution. It has awakened the youth. It has opened the eyes of the world. It has exposed the Zionist regime and its imperialist accomplices for the criminals they are. It has set into motion a tidal wave of outrage that is sweeping across the world and will sweep across those responsible for this genocide.”
90 pages, Paperback
Published March 14, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 18, 2024
This book is made up of three detailed historical and polemical lectures delivered during the still unfolding 2023-2024 genocide in Gaza. David North examines the reactionary roots of Zionist ideology, which developed in the nineteenth century in direct opposition to Marxism and socialist internationalism.
He discusses the founding of the state of Israel and the role played by the imperialist powers, the US and UK, in supporting it, as well as their role in the current atrocities. He also addresses the pernicious lie that the state of Israel is somehow the legitimate representative of all Jewish people.
Throughout the lectures, North elaborates the alternative presented by the Trotskyist movement, the Fourth International. In opposition to the Stalinists, who supported the founding of Israel and dispossession of the Palestinians, Leon Trotsky opposed this as a trap for the Jewish people and the Palestinians.
Crucially, these lectures make the connection between the Stalinist betrayal of the Russian Revolution and the creation of Israel in 1948. As North explains, this "was the direct outcome of the defeats of the working class in the 1920s and 1930s because of the betrayals of Stalinism and Social Democracy. Without the mass of displaced persons, survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and without the political demoralization and loss of confidence in the perspective of socialism, the Zionist leaders would not have had at their disposal the numbers of people required to conduct a terrorist war against the Palestinian people, expel them from their homes and villages, and create, through essentially criminal methods, a Jewish national state."
Highly recommended for anybody seeking to understand the roots of the present genocidal war against the Palestinians, and the socialist and internationalist strategy that is required to put an end to it.
He discusses the founding of the state of Israel and the role played by the imperialist powers, the US and UK, in supporting it, as well as their role in the current atrocities. He also addresses the pernicious lie that the state of Israel is somehow the legitimate representative of all Jewish people.
Throughout the lectures, North elaborates the alternative presented by the Trotskyist movement, the Fourth International. In opposition to the Stalinists, who supported the founding of Israel and dispossession of the Palestinians, Leon Trotsky opposed this as a trap for the Jewish people and the Palestinians.
Crucially, these lectures make the connection between the Stalinist betrayal of the Russian Revolution and the creation of Israel in 1948. As North explains, this "was the direct outcome of the defeats of the working class in the 1920s and 1930s because of the betrayals of Stalinism and Social Democracy. Without the mass of displaced persons, survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and without the political demoralization and loss of confidence in the perspective of socialism, the Zionist leaders would not have had at their disposal the numbers of people required to conduct a terrorist war against the Palestinian people, expel them from their homes and villages, and create, through essentially criminal methods, a Jewish national state."
Highly recommended for anybody seeking to understand the roots of the present genocidal war against the Palestinians, and the socialist and internationalist strategy that is required to put an end to it.
December 10, 2024
Siyonizme ve onun ortaya çıkışına ve gelişimine dair muazzam bir tarihsel çalışma. Aynı zamanda günümüzde siyonizm ile mücadele konusunda da eşsiz bir marksist analiz sunuyor.
November 17, 2024
This volume is an indispensable collection of lectures that review the origins and development of Zionist ideology—as the antipode of Spinoza’s writings and the Haskalah, in the writings of Moses Hess and Herzl, and how the irrational religious orthodoxy of Zionism and its anti-Enlightenment rejection of cultural integration further developed in hostile reaction particularly against the Social Democratic movement in Russia at the turn of the 20th century.
From there, the lectures shed more light on the highly significant position of the Zionists in Germany after the ascension of Hitler to power (the August 1933 financial agreement known as the Haavarah) and during the Holocaust, as well as polemicize against more contemporary irrational-metaphysical apologetics for Zionism (from Meir Kahane’s “Theology of Revenge” to Professor David Patterson’s blatant anti-Enlightenment positions).
All of this is cogently explained in parallel with the century-long political and theoretical struggle of the Trotskyist movement both within the former USSR and throughout the world against all reactionary nationalist tendencies, the latter given one of its most destructive forms in the 20th century by the Stalinist totalitarian dictatorship. This point is a key theme underlying all the essays, for it compellingly emphasizes the essential historical, theoretical, political, social, and intellectual implications of the current U.S.-NATO-backed war of extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by the Zionist regime.
Without assimilating these vital lessons for today, and, flowing from this, orienting to the objective revolutionary social force within society, the international working class, the anti-genocide movement, genuine as the protesters may be, will be deceived by countless charlatans whose political mission is to shackle it to and smother it in bankrupt pressure rallies, demonstrations, and campaigns that do nothing to target the root cause of modern-day genocide—the capitalist system. At their worst, certain demoralized pundits (e.g., Chris Hedges) even exploit pessimistic and nihilistic acts committed by infuriated individuals, such as Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation, to convince all horrified onlookers that such acts may be the “divine” way out.
From there, the lectures shed more light on the highly significant position of the Zionists in Germany after the ascension of Hitler to power (the August 1933 financial agreement known as the Haavarah) and during the Holocaust, as well as polemicize against more contemporary irrational-metaphysical apologetics for Zionism (from Meir Kahane’s “Theology of Revenge” to Professor David Patterson’s blatant anti-Enlightenment positions).
All of this is cogently explained in parallel with the century-long political and theoretical struggle of the Trotskyist movement both within the former USSR and throughout the world against all reactionary nationalist tendencies, the latter given one of its most destructive forms in the 20th century by the Stalinist totalitarian dictatorship. This point is a key theme underlying all the essays, for it compellingly emphasizes the essential historical, theoretical, political, social, and intellectual implications of the current U.S.-NATO-backed war of extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by the Zionist regime.
Without assimilating these vital lessons for today, and, flowing from this, orienting to the objective revolutionary social force within society, the international working class, the anti-genocide movement, genuine as the protesters may be, will be deceived by countless charlatans whose political mission is to shackle it to and smother it in bankrupt pressure rallies, demonstrations, and campaigns that do nothing to target the root cause of modern-day genocide—the capitalist system. At their worst, certain demoralized pundits (e.g., Chris Hedges) even exploit pessimistic and nihilistic acts committed by infuriated individuals, such as Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation, to convince all horrified onlookers that such acts may be the “divine” way out.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews