Haven't read the entire article (much of it is actually just extracts/quotes), but there's some critical commentary on the Zionist movement in this issue. Pankhurst reviews the anti-Zionist Charles Robert Ashbee's bookA Palestine Notebook: 1918-1923, in which Ashbee provided his views on the Zionist movement and Mandatory Palestine (i.e. British-occupied Palestine), among other topics. Ashbee had been a Civic Adviser for the Mandate government in Palestine.
Pankhurst wrote: Mr. Ashbee's opposition to Zionism is based on two facts:—
Firstly, the Jews are in a small minority in Palestine, and the country cannot be administred as a Jewish preserve, on the basis of a democratic franchise, because if the Arabs had the vote they would out-vote the Jews.
Also he regards the Jews [i.e. Zionists in Palestine presumably] as largely parasitic; as he thinks that only a small portion of them will be willing permanently to work on the land or as industrial producers. The majority will engage in trading and speculation.
Assuming Pankhurst paraphrased him accurately, I also disagree with the second point (especially the use of the word "Jew"); a large number of Zionists who migrated (or "made Aliyah") to Palestine were actually poor Eastern European Jews, not just exploitative or upper-class Zionists. Labor Zionists, such as those who migrated during the Third Aliyah (1919-1923), were mostly impoverished Eastern European Jews who stressed relying on Jewish (rather than Arab) labor in their effort to take over Palestine. To quote Charles Smith's book on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, these Labor Zionists "attacked Jewish landlords for using Arab labor, both as socialists on the grounds of exploitation and as Zionists on the grounds that these actions undermined the Zionist goal of a self-governing Jewish community devoted to restoring Palestine to Jewish control" (Smith 113). I'm not sure if Ashbee stated it elsewhere (I'm guessing he actually did and Pankhurst just didn't mention it here), but an opposition to Zionism should have instead been based on the wrongness of the idea itself and of displacing the Arabs already living there, not simply on the fact that it was unfeasible or would have created conflict.
...an opposition to Zionism should have instead been based on the wrongness of the idea itself and of displacing the Arabs already living there...
The displacement of the population of Palestine based on a spurious ethnic basis, and an actual class (peasantry) basis, was not an original idea of Zionism but only came to be on the practical establishment of the new capitalist state of "Israel".
In reality, opposition to the established capitalist State of Israel has come not from the realm of ideas, whether those be the moral "wrongness" or practical infeasibility of this capitalist project, but purely and simply from the working class.
Comments
Haven't read the entire…
Haven't read the entire article (much of it is actually just extracts/quotes), but there's some critical commentary on the Zionist movement in this issue. Pankhurst reviews the anti-Zionist Charles Robert Ashbee's book A Palestine Notebook: 1918-1923, in which Ashbee provided his views on the Zionist movement and Mandatory Palestine (i.e. British-occupied Palestine), among other topics. Ashbee had been a Civic Adviser for the Mandate government in Palestine.
Assuming Pankhurst paraphrased him accurately, I also disagree with the second point (especially the use of the word "Jew"); a large number of Zionists who migrated (or "made Aliyah") to Palestine were actually poor Eastern European Jews, not just exploitative or upper-class Zionists. Labor Zionists, such as those who migrated during the Third Aliyah (1919-1923), were mostly impoverished Eastern European Jews who stressed relying on Jewish (rather than Arab) labor in their effort to take over Palestine. To quote Charles Smith's book on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, these Labor Zionists "attacked Jewish landlords for using Arab labor, both as socialists on the grounds of exploitation and as Zionists on the grounds that these actions undermined the Zionist goal of a self-governing Jewish community devoted to restoring Palestine to Jewish control" (Smith 113). I'm not sure if Ashbee stated it elsewhere (I'm guessing he actually did and Pankhurst just didn't mention it here), but an opposition to Zionism should have instead been based on the wrongness of the idea itself and of displacing the Arabs already living there, not simply on the fact that it was unfeasible or would have created conflict.
...an opposition to Zionism…
The displacement of the population of Palestine based on a spurious ethnic basis, and an actual class (peasantry) basis, was not an original idea of Zionism but only came to be on the practical establishment of the new capitalist state of "Israel".
In reality, opposition to the established capitalist State of Israel has come not from the realm of ideas, whether those be the moral "wrongness" or practical infeasibility of this capitalist project, but purely and simply from the working class.