http://www.israelshamir.net/Left/Left1.htm 

"Dear comrades, if we shall keep mum today, tomorrow the Jewish Marxists
will ride on our backs... Vladimir Lenin" 

The New Bund at Old Tricks 

By Israel Shamir 

Tony Greenstein (Blind eye to anti-semitism)* is obsessed with
Jewishness. He views the world through the prism of a Jewish
Nationalist. He judges people by one criterion which he shares with my
late grandmother: "Is he/she good for Jews?" He and his friends "Jews
Against Zionism" claim to be antizionists, but Zionism is just a form of
Jewish bourgeois nationalism, and not the only one. By creating their
Jews-only organisation, Greenstein et al enforced Jewish separatism and
caused unnecessary and dangerous split in the Palestine solidarity
movement. 

History repeats itself. Over a hundred years ago, the Russian Jewish
socialists, Bund, (antizionists to a man) asked Lenin for permission to
join his new movement as a separate collective member. ‘Everyone of you
is welcome to join the common struggle of workers against Russian and
Jewish moneybags, but as a separate group you would just split our
forces’, he replied, and expelled the Bund. Eventually many Russian Jews
joined the movement of Russian workers, and together they changed the
course of history. The Bund withered, some of its members drifting to
Zionism. 

But history repeats itself as a farce, in words of Marx. Bund had
hundreds of thousands members; the New Bund, Jews against Zionism is a
tiny grouping which mustered one hundred signatures world-wide, from San
Francisco to Tel Aviv to London. Their contribution to the struggle is
zero, their nuisance value is much higher for they mainly attack
antizionists. 

I can imagine a few things Jews can meaningfully do together (pray?),
but political struggle for equality in Palestine does not call for a
separate Jews-only discussion. Moreover, it is a self-defeating course.
The concept of Jews for Justice, Jews for Peace and other separatist
all-Jewish groups in pursuit of common goals appears to me about as
justifiable as that of Whites against Apartheid. Equality in South
Africa was achieved by overcoming such dubious groupings, by the
color-blind force of the ANC. It appears that the cause of justice in
Palestine should not be different. Why, then, such groups exist? 

Extremely wealthy leaders of Jewish organisations are worried by high
desertion rate in their rank and file. They spend billions trying to
stop assimilation and return descendents of Jews into the fold. A UJA-
organised program The Birthright brings thousands of young people of
Jewish origin into Jerusalem from all over the world – all paid,
generous accomodation supplied – in order to discourage intermarriage
and promote marriages within the community. They build the world-wide
continuation of Sharon’s Wall in order to separate Jews and non-Jews. 

Jews Against Zionism is a part and parcel of this effort; an attempt to
keep even people who understood criminality of Zionism, within the fold.
In their attack on Gilad Atzmon, Paul Eisen, Mary Rizzo and me they
repeat verbally accusations delivered by Aaronovitch and Pollard in The
Times, and rude lies disseminated by ADL-financed internet sites,
because we stand for full integration of descendents of Jews in the
countries they live, for their assimilation, for putting paid to the
reactionary idea of Jewish exclusiveness. 

Our view agrees with Marx and Lenin’s reading of Jewishness. In 1903,
Lenin wrote in the Iskra, and his words are extremely relevant to the
present discussion: 

  The idea of a Jewish 'nationality' is scientifically wrong and
  politically reactionary, not only when expounded by its consistent
  advocates (the Zionists), but likewise on the lips of those who try to
  combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy (the Bundists). The idea
  of a Jewish nationality runs counter to the interests of the Jewish
  proletariat, for it fosters among them, directly or indirectly, a spirit
  hostile to assimilation, the spirit of the 'ghetto'.

The Jews Against Zionism are but New Bundists, and at least one of their
members and co-signers of anti-Eisen petition, Abraham Weizfeld, openly
calls himself ‘a Bundist’. Their antizionism does not impress us
overmuch, as an important Marxist thinker Georgi Plekhanov
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/) noticed that "The Bundists
want to establish their Zion here, not in Palestine" and added a
witticism: "The Bundists are nothing more than Zionists suffering from
sea-sickness". This opinion was shared by Zionists, and Ber Borokhov
prophesied that "one day the future Jewish State will have to erect a
gold monument to the Bund for its illustrious achievements." It did not
happen yet, but not for a want of trying. 

Tony’s accusations are difficult to refute; for they are based on his
inability to understand a text, whether for reasons of dumbness or for
more sinister reasons. For instance, I write: "There is no ‘tainted
blood’, acceptance of Christ is the Final Solution of the Jewish
question, while assimilation and intermarriage is the way to undo the
vestiges of Jewish separatism" and he interprets this sentence as "the
salvation of the Palestinians lies in the conversion of the Jews, the
‘christ-killers’, to christianity". Symptomatically, he changes in all
quotes 'Christ' to 'christ', and 'Christianity' to 'christianity', as in
his view of Jewish nationalist, the capital letter should be preserved
for Jews only. I write: "No Jew is responsible for misdeeds of his
ancestors"; but he insists: "He calls us christ-killers". 

His attack on our comrades Paul Eisen and Jeff Blankfort is equally
unwarranted. Mr Greenstein is obsessed with the subject of the Jewish
Holocaust and divides people into sheep and goats on basis of their
attitude to this narrative. What is so special about this narrative? Why
he does not attack deniers of the Armenian massacre (by Kurds), deniers
of the Azeri massacre (by Armenians), deniers of the Jenin massacre (by
Jews), deniers of the Huguenot massacre (Night of St Bartholomew), and
deniers of Dresden Massacre (by Brits)? If he is such an antizionists,
why he is not worried that his ally Steven Plaut, another enemy of
Atzmon and me, who quotes him word-perfect, denies Al-Nakbah and the
Deir Yassin Massacre (http://kurtnimmo.com/blog/?p=741 )? Why he does
not picket Plaut? 

Our view is quite different. The Holocaust narrative is used to enforce
Jewish separatism and specialness - it is connected with that racist
slur of "natural criminality of non-Jews". Not in vain, the leading
ideologist of Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt, also preaches against
intermarriage which ‘spoils purity of Jewish blood’. We support
deconstruction of the narrative. The very term 'Holocaust Denier' is a
quasi-religious expression akin to 'Christ Denier', a usual accusation
by the Inquisition, but as we saw, Tony is ready to deny Christ even his
capital C. 

While Tony accuses others of ‘racism’, he and his chums are as racist as
anybody. Tony G. calls me "an ex-Russian/Swedish fascist now living in
Israel" - this is a hoodwink way of saying "he is not a Jew". Tony’s
right-wing Jewish friends and allies of Frontpagemag.com are not that
reticent and say so loudly. So did his friend ‘antiracist and Marxist’
Roland Rance. This is beneath my dignity to discuss. I can’t even argue
against accusation of ‘fascism’ as Tony G. did not produce a single line
that connects me to the fascist doctrine. 

The New Bundists just unable to cope with the fact that at their letter
of protest, the Socialist Bookshop and the SWP did not drop everything
and stand at attention. The British Communists may well take to their
heart a retort of Vladimir Lenin, who wrote in 1913 from Krakow: "Dear
comrades, if we shall keep mum today, tomorrow the Jewish Marxists will
ride on our backs...The Bund turns socialism into nationalism"[1]. 

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* http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/584/zionism.htm 

[1] Complete Works, v. 48, page 134, Moscow