"TRIBAL MARXISM FOR DUMMIES"

By Gilad Atzmon 

This is an old paper of mine it was published originally on PTT

(June 2009). I re-post it following the disappearance of PTT
and its Archive.

"The European left must make a serious critical assessment of this “we
know better” attitude and the ways it tends to deal with popular forces in
the south as ideologically and politically inferior." Hisham Bustani

“The subsequent emergence of Islamism holds a false promise. While it

poses a challenge to Western domination, it is backward looking and
inherently unable to deliver progress.” Moshe Machover June 2009.

For very many years the Palestinian solidarity discourse was

dominated by leftist ideology carried largely by Jewish Marxists.
Though the support of Jewish leftists was rather important at an
early stage, it lost its primacy and urgency as Palestinian
resistance and the Palestinian solidarity discourse evolved into a
vivid autonomous discourse based on widely accepted ethical
grounds. The Israeli war crimes against Palestinians are now well
documented. No one needs the odd kosher ‘righteous Jew’ to
approve that this is indeed the case.
And yet, in spite of the clear fact that Palestinian solidarity
discourse moved ahead, Jewish Marxists are still insisting upon
dictating their tribally orientated pseudo-analytical vision of
reality.

Jewish Marxism is very different from Marxism or socialism in

general. While Marxism is a universal paradigm, its Jewish
version is very different. It is there to mould Marxist dialectic
into a Jewish subservient precept. Jewish Marxism is basically a
crude utilisation of ‘Marxist-like’ terminology for the sole
purpose of the Jewish tribal cause. It is a Judeo-centric pseudo
intellectual setting which aims at political power.

Palestinian thinkers were probably the first to realise that the

situation in Gaza, Nablus and the refugee camps had little in
common with 19th century Europe. This was enough to defy
Marxism as a sole analytical political tool. However, the Jewish
Marxists had a far more adventurous plan for Palestinians, Arab
people and the region in general. They wanted Arabs to become
cosmopolitan atheists. They suggested that Arabs should drop
‘reactionary Islam’ and liberate themselves as ‘the Jews did’ a
century ago.

Seemingly, Palestinian and Arab intellectuals grasped that the

method that successfully transformed Russia into a Soviet
Union, at the expense of millions, was not going to liberate
them. They obviously realised that the Jewish Marxists did not
intend upon bringing millions of Palestinian refugees home
either. It wasn’t even set to launch any form of an adequate
resistance. It was there to saturate the discourse with empty
rhetoric and pseudo-analytical jargon in order to divert the
attention from questions having to do with Jewish tribal politics
and Jewish identity.

As interesting as it may be, it is actually the Jewish Marxists,

those who support Palestinians as long as they drop Islam, who
are the ultimate exemplary exponents of Jewish tribal politics. It
is the Jewish Marxist rather than the 'Zionist’ who exposes the
Jewish political ugly attitude in its worst crude form. This is
good enough reason to monitor the Jewish Left and to
understand its philosophy. As we will see soon enough, Jewish
Marxism is there to suppress any form of engagement with the
Jewish question by means of spin. It is there to stop scrutiny of
Jewish power and Jewish lobbying. The Judeo Marxist is an
imposter prophet who claims to know the answers and yet, for
some reason, his reading of historical events is no less than a
total catastrophe. None of his predictions stand the reality test.

One of the last prime exponents of Judeo Marxist ideology is

Professor Moshe Machover. Machover was born in Tel Aviv, then
part of the British Mandate of Palestine, he moved to Britain in
1968. He was a founder of Matzpen, a miniature Socialist
organisation in 1962.

Machover’s reading of Zionism is pretty trivial. ‘Israel’, he says,

is a ‘settler state’. For Machover this is a necessary point of
departure because it sets Zionism as a colonialist expansionist
project. The reasoning behind such a lame intellectual spin is
obvious. As long as Zionism is conveyed as a colonial project,
Jews, as a people, should be seen as ordinary people. They are
no different from the French and the English, they just happen
to run their deadly colonial project in a different time.
However, as much as Machover is desperate to divert the
attention away from the Jewish question, Jewish tribal politics
and the Jewish identity, his entire premise can be demolished in
a one simple move. If Israel is a ‘settler state’ as he says, one
may wonder, what exactly is its ‘motherland? In British and
French colonial eras, the settler states maintained a very
apparent tie with their ‘motherland’. In some cases in history,
the settler state broke from its motherland. Such an event is a
rather noticeable one. The Boston Tea Party may ring a bell.
However, as far as we are aware, there is no ‘Jewish motherland’
that is intrinsically linked to the alleged ‘Jewish settler state’.
The ‘Jewish people’ are largely associated with the Jewish state,
and yet the ‘Jewish people’ is not exactly a ‘material’
autonomous sovereign entity. The lack of material Jewish
motherland leads to the immediate collapse of Machover’s
colonial argument.

Moreover, native Hebraic Israeli Jews are not connected

culturally or emotionally to any motherland except their own
state. As an ex-Israeli, I can testify that neither my parents nor
myself or any of my fellow expatriates have ever been aware of
our ties to any other (mother) state except Israel. Accordingly, it
may be true that Zionism carries some colonial elements and
yet, it is not a colonial project per se, for no one can present a
material correspondence between Jewish ‘motherland’ and a
Jewish ‘settler state’. The Jewish national project is unique in
history and as it seems it doesn’t fit into any Marxist materialist
explanation.
We are therefore entitled to assume that Machover’s ‘settler
state’ is just another Judeo Marxist spin that is there to divert
the attention from the clear fact that Israel is the Jewish state. In
order to understand Israel’s unique condition we must ask, “who
are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness?” In fact
answering these questions will help us understand why
Machover and other Jewish Marxists invest so much effort
producing all those spinning lines. As interesting as it may
sound, Machover’s alteration of Marx’s ideology is very similar
to the Zionist distortion of the Old Testament.

Machover’s recent publication is a pompous lengthy talk

delivered in November 2006 at the Brunei Gallery Lecture
Theater (SOAS). For some reason it was published this month by
the ‘International Socialist Review’ (ISR).

Considering the embarrassing fact that none of Machover’s

prophetic predictions ever stood the reality test, the publication
of such an embarrassing paper raises serious concerns
regarding the editors of the ISR’s understanding of world
current affairs. It would be very interesting to learn from the ISR
whether they approve Machover’s suggestion that Islam “is
backward looking and inherently unable to deliver progress.” It
may also be important to make sure that every Muslim on this
planet grasps that an Elder Jew Marxist from London is
convinced that they should throw away their Qur’an.

I may as well mention that here in Britain and in some other

European countries more than just a few people are concerned
with the latest rise of nationalism. Shockingly enough,
comparing Machover’s pretentious and supremacist take on
Islam with rightwing nationalists reveals a very amusing fact. As
it happens, Machover, the supremacist tribal Jew, has managed
to locate himself on the right of Nick Griffin and the BNP. While
Griffin is kind enough to offer ‘foreigners’ £50,000 to go back
to their ‘homeland’, our Kosher Marxist Machover is set to rob
the indigenous of his belief on his land. Griffin would not be
able to get away saying about Islam that it is 'backward looking'.
This is hardly surprising, while Griffin has to meet a vast
opposition, Machover would have very little opposition within
the left. One reason is obviously due to the fact that Machover
and his three Jewish supporters are unnoticeable. Another
reason may be that racism and supremacy is, unfortunately, a
Jews only territory. As we can see Machover is getting away with
it. Hopefully, this will change soon.

Machover launches his 2006 talk raising an interesting question:

“How should we think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?”

One may notice that Machover uses the word ‘should’ and ‘we’.
This form of speech suggests that the elder may possess the
right answers within his intellectual arsenal. Following the
tradition of the Hebrew prophets, Machover declares with
confidence “We must be clear as to how the issue ought to be
approached.”

I may admit that when a Jewish marginal Marxist voice utilises

the “we”, ”should” and the “ought”, my red alert light turns on. I
recently read about some Bolsheviks who held similar ideas to
Machover’s did to Ukrainians peasants in the name of just
another “we”.
Machover dares to come with a pretence of an analytical
argumentation that will produce a concept of resolution.
“Understanding,” he says, “ought to precede judgment.”
Someone should remind the Hebraic ‘prophet’, who probably
failed to read a single philosophical text in the last 50 years,
that ‘understanding’ is itself subject to prior ‘understandings’
and ‘judgments’. In fact Machover’s own systematic failure to
understand the power of Islam and Arab resistance is in itself
due to his own prior understandings and some severe Judeo
Marxist indoctrination.

It would take Machover many thousands of words of pseudo-

analytical text before he outlines his vision of ‘Resolution—
principles and preconditions’.

“Above all,” he says, “pressure must be applied on Israel to end

its military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the
Syrian Golan Heights.” “Equal rights”, he affirms are “essential
elements that a lasting resolution must embody”. This is quite
an astonishing insight from a man who claims to understand the
conflict. In spite of his ‘analytical research’ Machover somehow
failed to realise that the Jewish state is not going to willingly
approve any form of equality, for Jewish political ideology does
not succumb to the belief in human equality.

“The right of return,” he continues, is the “ recognition of the

right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, to
be rehabilitated and properly compensated for loss of property
and livelihood.”
This is indeed beautiful and correct and yet, Machover fails to
tell us what is going to lead the Israeli Jews to give away their
little ‘Jews only state’.

Machover eventually comes with a very simple resolution. “The

third and most fundamental element in a genuine resolution is
removal of the fundamental cause of the conflict: the Zionist
colonisation project must be superseded.” I may stress at this
point that Moshe Machover is not one of my satirical fictional
characters. He is real and he even has at least 3 Jewish Marxist
followers. The crucial question here is how these 4 Judeo
Marxists are going to sell this reasonable idea to the Israeli
Jews?

Like other deluded solidarity campaigners who fail to realise that

the Palestinian future will be determined by ‘facts on the
ground’, Machover engages himself in the one state/two state
academic resolution discourse. “For a two-state setup to satisfy
them, Israel would have to be de-Zionized: transformed from an
ethnocratic settler state into a democratic state of all its
inhabitants.” For some reason, Machover, who doesn’t even live
in Israel, believes that he can tell the Israelis in what kind of
country they should live in. “On the other hand, a single state
would have to be not merely democratic (and hence secular) but
have a constitutional structure that recognizes the two national
groups and gives them equal national rights and status.” Once
again the Elder Jew Marxist, the embodiment of the ultimate
possible marginal voice, is telling the Palestinians and the
Israelis that if they want to live together they better be secular.
One should admit by now, it indeed takes some chutzpah to be
a Judeo Marxist.

After 22 pages of Marxist self-indulgence on the verge of verbal

masturbation, the man himself comes with the necessary goods.
He admits that he was wasting the time of his listeners.

“Indeed, no genuine resolution is possible in the short or

medium term, because of the enormous disparity in the balance
of power.”

So in case you happen to wonder what may bring a change. Here

it is. ‘Moishe of Arabia’ has two answers to offer. “First, decline
in American global dominance” as if Israel is bound to crash with
its current allies. As Machover knows, Jews changed their allies
rather often in the last century.

“Second,” he continues “a radical-progressive social, economic

and political transformation of the Arab East, leading to a
degree of unification of the Arab nation—most likely in the form
of regional federation.” Seemingly, the archaic Marxist fails to
gather the most obvious evolving story, the Arab nation is
largely Islam. Arab people are becoming more and more united
around their love of Allah and the notion of Ummah. As far as
reality is concerned, Islam is the rising force, whether our four
Judeo Marxists like it or not.stunning win in the first Palestinian
parliamentary election which it has taken part in. Would
elections take place in the PA today, the Hamas victory would
even be greater. Considering the fact that Islam is the only
successful resistance force against Western colonialism and the
Zionist war machine, the fact that ISR published Machover’s
Judeo-centric intellectually lame analysis is there to prove that
the time may be ripe for Socialists and Marxists to save
themselves from the Judeo political grip. In 1884, in his
invaluable paper ‘On The Jewish Question’ Marx argued that for
the world to emancipate itself of capitalism, it should liberate
itself of the secular Jew[1]. I do not know much about people
liberating themselves. I would narrow it down and argue that for
Marxist and socialists to liberate their discourse in accordance
with their master mentor, they may have to consider liberating
themselves of their tribal infiltrators.

As we saw before, in terms of tolerance and ethics, Machover

positioned himself to the right of Nick Griffin and the BNP. In
terms of political pragmatism, he is to the right of Shimon Peres
and his ‘New Middle East’. Machover has his own plans for a
New Middle East. He is going to unite them all and throw their
Qur’an away.

By now we are really accustomed to the fact that Machover

doesn’t like Islam. “The subsequent emergence of Islamism
holds a false promise …Nor can it possibly be a uniting force: on
the contrary, it is deeply divisive as between Sunnis and Shias,
and has no attraction whatsoever for non-Muslim and secular
Arabs (including Palestinians), let alone Hebrews.”

Interestingly enough, Moishe of Arabia comes with these

embarrassing lines in November 2006, just 5 months after the
Shi'a Hezbollah gave a signal of support to its Sunni brothers in
Gaza, reminding Israel that they were just to the north, and wide
awake, serving the Israeli army with a humiliating defeat. The
Marxist elder comedian gave his 2006 talk less than a year after
Hamas has scored a

In fact, many Socialists and Marxists do, especially out of the

Anglo-American world. However, those Marxist and Socialists
who keep spreading anti-Islam views better just join the Jewish
Lobby, Wolfowitz and the Neocons, the NJF They better do it
because this is where they belong.

[1]“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-

interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering.
What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation
from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real
Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.” Karl Marx
On The Jewish Question, 1844

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