Mohsen Abdelmoumen: During the last 20 years, we have seen the parallel and frightening rise of the neocons in the West (France, UK and the USA) and the right-wing messianic, supremacist and apocalyptic wing in Israel. According to you, how did this happen and is there a link between both?
Tony Greenstein: I don’t think the rise of the neo-cons is anything new. Similar forces have always existed in the imperialist West even if they didn’t call themselves neo-cons. In essence the belief that the West possessed a divine right to intervene in the colonies or third world whenever it was necessary to protect their interests. The British did this all over the Middle East – Iraq, Egypt and of course Palestine.
The right-wing messianic, Jewish supremacist wing of Israel has roots of course in Labour Zionism. It was a Labor Zionist government which conquered the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights and it was Labour Zionist governments under Levi Eshkol, Yigal Allon, Gold Meir and Yitzhak Rabin which began the colonisation and settlement of the West Bank. It was the Labor Zionist government which sanctioned the presence of settlers in Hebron under Rabbi Moshe Levinger.
Messianism is not just peculiar to the right-wing of the Zionist movement though it has achieved its fulfilment in the advent of openly racially supremacist, Judeo-Nazi settler forces today. But this is the logical culmination of Zionism itself. In the words of the ‘moderate’ Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the most desirable solution is maximum land with fewest Palestinians. Well of course the settler right can justifiably argue that if a Jewish state means fewer Palestinians they can go one better and have one with no Palestinians or at least a Jewish state where the Palestinians are legally inferior in fact with no rights whatsoever. Messianism is really the fulfilment of the colonial mission dressed up in terms of a Messiah returning to provide salvation to the settler colonial forces. Always of course they have Divine inspiration because God is always on the side of the victor.
Do you also see a connection between the rise of the eschatological forces within the Jewish population and the overall rise of non-democratic and illegitimate forces in the West, such as the all-mighty oligarchs after 40 years of neo-liberalism and the so-called Deep State?
I think there is a tendency to assume that because Israel sees itself as the rampart of civilisation against barbarianism, to quote the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, that the phenomenon of rulers like Victor Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France and Georgia Meloni in Italy that political tendencies and currents in Israel are simply a reflection of what is happening in Israel.
This is a fundamental mistake. Whereas bourgeois democracy is under strain as authoritarian regimes take hold in much of Europe Israel has never even been a bourgeois democracy. It has always been an apartheid state although only today is that clear even to the human rights industry such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem. Israel is a settler colonial state and settler colonialism always produces an apartheid situation between the settlers and the colonised. Settler colonialism sets up a form of democracy for settlers but as Israel is now experiencing, if you maintain a military junta in the Occupied Territories sooner or later the repression of the colonised starts to come home and is expressed as the curtailment of rights for socialists and anti-imperialists within the settler society and even against mainstream liberals as we see with the judicial reforms.
However, it is a mistake to simply compare the very different societies in Europe with Israel.
With the Covid psy-ops and the war in Ukraine, the level of dystopian control of the populations and repression of political opponents, especially left-wing forces, have never been so high since the Cold War. Where is the West heading according to you?
I’m not sure I agree with the term ‘Covid psy-ops’ and I’m not even sure what is meant by that.
The war in Ukraine which is a NATO proxy war has as its raison d’etre the expansion of the global empire of the United States and its junior allies in Europe. Russia is a target, not because it is socialist, it is not, but because it is seen as resistant to the plans of the American Empire, whose ultimate goal is confrontation with China. Of course, when you go to war, then there will be increased repression at home as we are seeing in Britain with the attacks on direct action protesters and the enactment of repressive legislation such as the Public Order Act 2023 whose aim is to prevent any protests which are effective.
For many years, you are targeted for your engagement for Palestine by an institutional system which tries to destroy your political career and now threatens your freedom. How is it possible in Great Britain, which is considered as the mother of liberal democracy?
All bourgeois democracies consist of a sugar coating of democratic rights and a hard state made up of Police and the Intelligence services. The alliance of the West with Israel has brought forth an ideological battle in which ‘anti-Semitism’ is the favourite weapon of a Right which only knows the language of one form of racism. Anti-Semitism is the false anti-racism of the Right.
I was personally involved in a direct-action group Palestine Action and I was arrested on an outing which targeted the Israeli arms company Elbit. Elbit are integrally involved with the British armed forces and so an attack on Elbit is seen as an attack on the state itself. I am paying the price as are other activists. As we saw with the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019 when faced with a perceived threat to their interests then the whole of the mass media from the right-wing Daily Mail to the ‘liberal’ Guardian turned their guns on Corbyn and the left with bogus accusations of anti-Semitism.
In your situation, what is particularly striking is the irony that a Jew can be charged for antisemitism only because of his humanist and non-Zionist convictions, which is a political stream which has always existed among Jews since the creation of modern Zionism. How do you explain that Zionists have succeeded so completely in this vicious goal of assimilating critics of Israeli state and antisemitism in the entire West?
When Zionism arose on the political scene in the late 19th century it was Jews who were their fiercest opponents. They saw Zionism, with its belief that Jews formed a separate nation, as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. The first Zionist Congress was held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. The reason for this was that when it was originally scheduled to be held in Munich, Germany the Jewish community rose in revolt and accused the local authorities of anti-Semitism. Zionism which argued that Jews did not belong where they lived but should emigrate to Palestine did no more than echo the voice of the anti-Semite who also said the same.
Zionism was a Christian idea originally not a Jewish one. It was non-Jewish anti-Semites such as Arthur Balfour, who introduced the first immigration Act, the Aliens Act 1905 to keep out Jewish refugees. He didn’t want them in Britain but he was happy for them to colonise Palestine.
Israel has taken over the collation of statistics for anti-Semitism worldwide. It has in a sense colonised diaspora Jewish communities and in the process has redefined anti-Semitism as hostility to Israel and Zionism. This is called the ‘new anti-Semitism’ to distinguish it from those who hated Jews as Jews. The ‘new anti-Semitism’ treats Israel as a ‘Jew among the nations’. In other words, hostility to Israel is not because of what it does, its expulsions, home demolitions etc. but because it is a Jewish state.
Zionism ascribes the opposition of Palestinians to their settler colonial activities as being on account of ‘anti-Semitism’ not their justified reaction to colonisation.
How do you explain the fact that the criminal Zionist entity of Israel continues to murder Palestinians with impunity? Is it above the law?
Israel has the same impunity that the United States had in Iraq, Vietnam etc. In that it is not unique. Julian Assange is facing extradition to the USA because he revealed American war crimes in Iraq. Have the war criminals been punished? Of course not. So when you say is it above the law I ask which law? International law has no enforcement mechanism except when the West wish to use the International Criminal Court against its opponents. So yes, in so far as Israel is the West’s main ally in the Middle East it is above the law because it sets the law.
In your opinion, can we say that citizens in the West really live in democracy?
I think I have answered this question. Of course, we don’t live in a democracy. We have limited democratic rights, that is all. In a state and economy where the few control the livelihoods of the many, where there is no economic democracy or control over natural resources, then of course society is not democratic.
The Zionist lobby owns almost all the media in the West. In your opinion, how can the public be effectively informed about the barbaric acts committed by the Zionist entity of Israel against the Palestinian people?
I think it is a mistake to say that the ‘Zionist lobby owns almost all the media in the West.’ Apart from anything else it is not true. The Zionist lobby consists of what? The Israeli Embassy and various offshoots of the Zionist movement – BICOM, Community Security Trust, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish Leadership Council, Union of Jewish Students etc. These don’t own the vast majority of the media. Tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere etc. aren’t the Zionist lobby but they are supporters of Western imperialism and therefore they support Zionism and its creation, the Israeli state.
The non-Jewish bourgeoisie in this country adopted Zionism long before the Jewish bourgeoisie did. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration represented the alliance between the non-Jewish bourgeoisie and the Zionist movement in this country. Sir Edwin Montagu was the only member of the Lloyd George War Cabinet, which approved the Balfour Declaration, to dissent. He was also its only Jewish member. It was only in 1940 that the Zionists captured the Board of Deputies with its first President, Sir Selig Brodetsky.
One must not fall into conspiratorial ways of looking at these things. If it was in the interests of western imperialism to disown Israel, then the media would not be so supportive of Zionism. Nonetheless people are much better informed now than they ever were about the Palestinians and what they suffer.
My country, Algeria, is targeted by Israel through media and other campaigns, in particular via Team Jorge and using the Moroccan vassal. Why, in your opinion, does the Zionist entity of Israel arrogate to itself the right to attack countries and peoples with impunity? Is Israel not a rogue entity built on wars?
I know nothing of the particular situation you refer to. However, Zionism arrogates to itself the right to attack other countries because it is given permission to do so by the United States primarily. When Israel attacked Egypt in 1956 in alliance with France and the UK, against the wishes of the United States Eisenhower made his views known very quickly and Israel was forced to withdraw from the Sinai. This was the Suez War. Israel does what it does because it is the licensed guard dog of the USA in particular. It isn’t a free agent. Israel was forced to give back the Sinai to Sadat because the US pressurised them to do so as part of the Camp David Accords. It did not do so willingly.
Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen
Who is Tony Greenstein?
Tony Greenstein has been a political activist for all his adult life, mainly focusing on Palestine, anti-racist and anti-fascist activities. Tony is a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods. He has authored “A History of Fighting Fascism in Brighton and the South Coast”, and “Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponization of Memory in the Service of State and Nation“.
Tony has written for many publications including Tribune, Labour Briefing and Weekly Worker. His writings have been published in Hodder & Stoughton’s The Essentials of Philosophy & Ethics (2006). Tony has also written a number of articles for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, before being censored because he rejected the idea that comparing Zionism and the Israeli State to the Nazis was anti-Semitic. He has been a fierce critic of anti-Semitism in the Palestine solidarity movement, in particular the supporters of Gilad Atzmon.
Tony is an active trade unionist, a member of Brighton & Hove Trades Council, UNISON and secretary of the Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre. He is a campaigner with the Brighton Benefits Campaign. Tony has a law degree and works in the field of employment rights.
With his comrades of Palestine Action, he is facing a prison sentence for planning an action on a drone factory – Elbit Systems – that supplies weapons to Israel. The court’s decision will be announced on next 26 June.
Tony Greenstein’s blog : https://azvsas.blogspot.com/
Published in French in Algeriepatriotique: https://www.algeriepatriotique.com/2023/06/23/interview-tony-greenstein-israel-est-un-chien-de-garde-des-etats-unis/
