Lazare’s most recent letter, being a response to a response, et cetera, is somewhat disjointed, and any attempt to follow its own train of logic will only result in an even more muddled addition to the discussion. Therefore, I will begin by attempting to summarize Lazare’s concerns, before addressing them in turn.
Lazare characterizes the events of October 7 primarily as “atrocities” and “aggressive terrorist violence,” the sole consequence of which has been destruction and death within Gaza to the advantage of the Zionist movement. He believes that militant action by Palestinians is counterproductive, as “there is no military solution in Israel-Palestine”. He further argues that Hamas is a bourgeois nationalist party and that the correct socialist leadership in Gaza and Israel could have avoided the need for violent conflict by campaigning for entry into Israel’s trade union federation. He concludes by quoting a piece by Lenin that sets unity with workers of oppressor nations as a priority for workers of oppressed nations.
With all this in mind, we can now systematically test the validity of Lazare’s claims.
1. Was October 7 aggressive terrorist violence?
Anyone would agree that October 7 was an act of organized violence, but as socialists, we do not dismiss all violence out of hand. So then, was this violence aggressive or terroristic in nature? For now, let us define aggression as an unprovoked attack of one state against another for any number of reasons, but often invasion or annexation of territory. Gaza has no meaningful statehood, and whether the territory involved in the attack is Israeli or Palestinian is a matter of opinion. More importantly, aggression is necessarily unprovoked. If the daily beatings, killings, sexual assaults by IOF forces, and all other manner of degradations against Palestinians by Israel (not to mention the systematic starving and denial of emergency medical care to the population) do not amount to provocation, I do not know what does.
What about claims of terrorism then? If we want to use this term meaningfully (always a difficult task), it seems necessary to restrict it to the intentional attacking of civilians as a means toward a political end; any broader definition is useless. While it is clear that a large number of Israeli civilians died (766 according to recent estimates1), it is also clear from the assaults on Israeli military bases and the number of hostages taken that civilian casualties were not the actual aim of Hamas’ attack. That is not to say that atrocities did not occur, or that further investigation is not needed, but other than the highly dubious propaganda put out by Israeli media and its allies, we have no actual evidence to base this charge of terrorism on. This leaves us only with the observation that Hamas utilizes violent tactics.
2. Has there been any positive consequence to October 7 for Palestinians? And is militant Palestinian action counterproductive?
The genocide of Palestinians over the last few months is heartbreaking, and I sympathize with Lazare in feeling my stomach turn when some socialists in the US puff their chests out and speak gleefully of abstract concepts such as “contradictions unraveling” and so on in the face on the deaths of over 24,000 people. It is always worth asking whether any political gain, no matter how great, is worth such a loss – just as it is worth reflecting on whether the superficial “peace” of the status quo is worth preserving.
However, Lazare’s statement that October 7 achieved nothing concrete except death and destruction is simply wrong. International support for Palestine has never been higher, nor more vocal, and even in the US, the smear that anti-Zionism is equal to anti-Semitism is becoming less convincing to the public with every passing day. South Africa is charging Israel with genocide against the Palestinian people at the ICJ. Yemen’s activity in the Red Sea has massively disrupted international trade, and some of Israel’s most long-standing supporters have broken ranks in calling for a ceasefire. Besides the positive effects on Palestine’s standing in the international community, there is also the implosion of Israeli politics to consider. Netanyahu’s entire project, built on the premise that only indefinite military occupation can provide stability to the region, has been irreversibly destroyed. All attempts by Israeli ministers and diplomats to justify their actions both before and after October 7 only reveal their genocidal intent, and Israel increasingly finds itself in the position of apartheid South Africa, where public condemnation has begun to present real, devastating consequences for the government.
I agree with Lazare that it is important to ask whether Hamas had the right to further expose the Palestinian people to the fury of Israel, but to act as if there have been no political gains for Palestine – not to mention assuming that Hamas did not predict these gains as part of their larger strategy – is stubborn blindness. From this, we can quickly dismiss the claim that militant action has been counterproductive. Of course there is no purely military solution to Palestine’s suffering, but if diplomatic measures are to be the solution, it must be recognized that such measures have been initiated as a direct result of militant action forcing the crisis onto the international stage.
3. Should socialists reject cooperation with Hamas?
Lazare is correct in his recall of Marxist theory that bourgeois nationalists inevitably turn on the working class once they have gained control of the state, and that the role of socialists in such times is to demonstrate to the masses that only socialism can bring about true national liberation. But is this political model applicable to Hamas in the current state of affairs?
If Hamas is indeed a bourgeois nationalist party in control of the state, then socialists would be forced to reject any form of cooperation with them. But while Hamas won the most recent elections in Gaza, and is the dominant political force, it cannot be said to have control over any kind of Palestinian state, as Gaza has no sovereignty. The economy is almost entirely controlled by the Israeli blockade, with any other products either being smuggled in or produced in secret. Similarly, any meaningful political action must take place underground, in the face of the inevitable assassinations and imprisonments that come for all but the most conciliatory of Palestinian political groups. Considering this total lack of economic or political freedom, Gaza is better described as a concentration camp under autocratic Israeli control. In such a situation, the ruling class is not any incipient national bourgeoisie in Gaza – it is the Israeli bourgeois state.
The necessary illegality of political action in Gaza also muddies Lazare’s painting of Hamas as being purely a national bourgeois party on a “medieval religious crusade” (I would remind Lazare of his own denunciation of flippant, “juvenile” language!). Everyone is aware that Hamas is not a socialist party. We are not expecting them to support their socialist allies in the war coalition indefinitely, just as we would not wish for Palestinian socialists to abandon socialism and assimilate with Hamas. But in calling to attention the differences between the original and revised Hamas charters, Lazare actually provides evidence against his conclusion that Hamas is the same old Islamist party it has always been. Once Hamas won the 2007 elections in Gaza and had to represent the views of the population of Gaza, it was almost immediately forced to abandon its policies that Palestinian society at large considered unacceptable. Hamas’ inability to either repeal its old charter or prevent the creation of its new charter reflects the evolution of Hamas since 1988, and especially since 2007, into a party with factions that hold extremely different ideas on the meaning of the organization. Unlike in politically free societies where parties can represent the interests of their respective classes in the typical Marxist model, and where large differences in interests result in the formation of distinct parties, the prevention by Israel of an open, legal political structure in Gaza means that Hamas is forced to accept extreme internal contradictions if it wishes to avoid annihilation by Israel. Under these circumstances, Hamas might be better described as a permanent wartime coalition of various classes in Gaza, all of whose primary material interest is the end of the Israeli apartheid regime. If we accept this premise, it is no surprise that groups such as PFLP have been correctly willing to ally themselves with Hamas against Israel.
4. Could Palestinian entry into Israel’s trade union federation have provided a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict?
Here we reach the end of any claim to serious discussion by Lazare.
In order to have trade unions, you need to have a proletariat with the power to collectively bargain. Before October 7, there were around 18,000 people in Gaza with work permits for Israel2, while unemployment in Gaza was at 45% as of 20223. The desperation of those few workers with permits, combined with the huge labor reserve at Israel’s disposal, makes any talk of developing trade unions in Gaza a hopeless delusion that mocks Palestinian suffering more than anything else. It is possible to go further in discussing the nature of racist labor movements in segregated societies, but it will suffice for me to say that trade unionism can exist separately from broader socialist theory, and that settlers often value racial domination over any other kinds of material gains that class solidarity might bring.
Lazare concludes with his signature style of gesturing to a few sentences from Lenin devoid of any broader context. It seems indicative of the weakness of his claims that he had to reach for a letter that apparently went unpublished for over a decade, but it is worth examining the quotation very briefly, as it illustrates a confusion of terms by Lazare. Lenin’s call here is for unity between Social-Democrats of oppressed and oppressor nations specifically, not just the proletariat, or even the organized working class. I doubt he would attempt to describe Israeli trade unionists as avowed Communists, and it is a waste of time for us to do the same.
Having reached the end of Lazare’s analysis, we find little of substance besides the following: Hamas uses violence; nothing good came of October 7, except for the international transformation of attitudes toward the conflict; socialists should not hand over leadership of the masses to bourgeois nationalists, which they have not done; and socialists should instead spend their time hypothesizing impossible scenarios while the real world goes on around them.
Lazare is right that “slaughtering innocent civilians is not exactly the best way of effectuating a merger of two proletariats living side by side.” Why then does he insist on continuing to defend an Israeli society that so strongly supports the destruction of the Palestinian people?4 I understand Lazare’s anger at being named a national chauvinist – it is an ugly brand. Its ugliness does not make it untrue, however, and I would encourage Lazare to think seriously about why he forces himself into such mental contortions in order to admonish supporters of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation.
– Fred M.
- https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths
- https://www.npr.org/2023/11/04/1210588361/israel-palestinian-workers-construction-economy
- https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/post.aspx?lang=en&ItemID=4421
- https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine/