By Felix Quigley
The WSWS is a website which claims to be Trotskyist. They claim to stand in the footsteps of Leon Trotsky.
But the WSWS are liars in this very important regard.
It is a fact that Leon Trotsky in the 1930s supported the Jews getting out of Europe, making their way to the only place open to them (despite the role of Great Britain in blocking Jewish Immigration into Palestine), which was the area known as Palestine, and there setting up their own state which he insisted must be free from antisemitism.
Today the WSWS are doing the very opposite. They are supporting antisemitism in Israel, and indeed in the whole world, because they are campaigning internationally on a programme which is indeed antisemitic.
The WSWS website is not insignificant, at least by appearances. It has an editorial board made up like this:
| World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board | ||
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Hyland and Marsden in the above list are of special note in that they are British and were part of the old WRP, perhaps even SLL which preceded the WRP.
And the roots of the SLL go very far back. In dealing with these roots on this site we will show that the destruction of the views of Leon Trotsky go back to the years following his murder by Stalin.
Yesterday, January 24, 2007, the WSWS ran an article:
In face of Israeli repression, tens of thousands of Palestinians force their way into Egypt
By David Walsh
24 January 2008
Walsh in this article merely trawls through the world press to give some facts. This is a “Trotskyist” merely doing a copy of what he reads. Which in one sense is fair enough. We all do this. We depend on the Media for news. But we do it very critically. Walsh does not!
Many Jews, along with Serbs, were persecuted in the Balkans and we now know that the World Media, the BBC, CNN etc, is very biassed as well against Israel.
Let us deal with the position of Leon Trotsky because WSWS claim to be Trotskyist. I would make these points.
1. The Jews had to escape from the Nazis. Trotsky was horrified that the rise of antisemitism caused such danger to the Jewish people. He essentially called for Jews to establish their Homeland in Palestine, and that that Homeland must be free from antisemitism.
2. The Jews who have made their way to Palestine, and who have worked to create Israel, have met only antisemitism from the great majority of the Arabs.
3. They have met antisemitism which was promoted by both Fatah and by Hamas
4. The ideological roots of both Fatah and Hamas, just as the ideological roots of the Bosnian Islamofascist Izetbegovic, go right back into the German and Italian Nazi Party
5. Fatah and Hamas in their constitutions vow to destroy the Jewish state of Israel
6. Both are spreading antisemitism against Jews in Israel and in all of the countries in the Middle East and beyond.
7. These antisemites are at war with Israel and the Jews in Israel and have vowed to never give up until they destroy Israel.
8. The ideological inspiration and political founder of these Arab antisemitic movements is none other than Hajj Amin el Husseini, right hand man of Eichmann in the Holocaust of the Jews, carried out by those German Nazis. This monster was the chief leader of the Arabs who lived in Mandated Palestine.
None of this is dealt with in the WSWS article of yesterday. In fact it is material that its American editor David North carefully conceals.
Let me quote from the WSWS article, just 2 paragraphs:
Conditions in Gaza were already impossible before the most recent act of collective punishment meted out by the Israeli regime. Approximately 80 percent of the Gazan population lives in poverty, and more than 80 percent are dependent on relief agencies. The official unemployment rate reached 32.3 percent in mid-2007, but many have simply given up looking for work.
Rates of anemia caused in part by a lack of food and adequate nutrition have risen since 2007 in Gaza, with some 70 percent of infants aged nine months now suffering from the condition. Diarrhea is also on the increase partly due to the lack of clean water and the lack of hygiene. The water supply dropped last year to 75 liters per person per day, about half the international standard of 150 liters per person per day.
Here the WSWS are painting a picture for a special anti-Jewish reason. But it must be remembered:
The people in Gaza elected Hamas who have vowed to destroy Israel. Hamas has vowed to destroy the Jewish state. Hamas has carried on antisemitic propaganda of the worst kind. Hamas (and Fatah) stand in the footsteps of Hajj Amin el Husseini.
So in opposition to the WSWS it must be stated very clearly that Israel must consider itself at war with Hamas and with the people who support Hamas.
At this level of politics it is a struggle for the survival of Israel and for the very survival of the Jewish people.
In that sense I cannot in any way concede to the WSWS that anything has changed since the Jews faced such danger in the 1939s, and when Trotsky said they must create their own space, and that that space must be free from antisemitism.
No matter what way you look at it, this WSWS is standing on a political programme which is assisting antisemitism against the Jews of Israel, against Jews everywhere, and most importantly of all against the stated views of Leon Trotsky.
4international 
And these “impoverished” Gazans came back from Egypt with the latest electronic goods. So much for being desperate for the bare necessities.
The WSWS, like most of the current left, is clearly aligned with the global jihad.
Keep up the good work in fighting for the Jewish people, Felix.
“I am, it is understood, opposed to Zionism and all such forms of self-isolation on the part of the Jewish workers.”
“Both the Fascist State in Germany, as well as the Arabian Jewish struggle bring forth new and very clear verifications of the principles that the Jewish question cannot be served within the frame work of capitalism. I do not know whether Jewry will be built up again as a nation. However, there can be no doubt that the material conditions for the existence of Jewry as an independent nation could be brought about only by the proletarian revolution. There is no such a thing on our planet as the idea that one has more claim to land than another.
“The establishment of a territorial base for Jewry in Palestine or any other country is conceivable only with the migrations of large human masses. Only a triumphant Socialism can take upon itself such tasks. It can be foreseen that it may take place either on the basis of a mutual understanding, or with the aid of a kind of international proletarian tribunal which should take up this question and solve it.
“The blind-alley in which German Jewry finds itself as well as the blind-alley in which Zionism finds itself is inseparably bound up with the blind-alley of world capitalism, as a whole. Only when the Jewish workers clearly see this inter-relationship will they be forewarned against pessimism and despair.”
L.D. Trotsky
“On The Jewish Question”
(1934)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/xx/jewish.htm
” The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. Interested in winning the sympathies of the Arabs who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has sharply altered its policy toward the Jews, and has actually renounced its promise to help them found their “own home” in a foreign land. The future development of military events may well transform Palestine into a bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews. Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system. ”
Trotsky, July, 1940
sorry, but wsws is correct : there is no point trying to find out if hamas is legitimate or not, they are not socialist anyway, but the israelian govt isn’t either.
The only answer worth bringing to bith arabs and jews is “throw out your rotten leaders and build a united socialist workers movement”
“and meanwhile ?” will you say.
Well, first, meanwhile should be as short as possible to begin with.
And then, I think it is clear that Israel is a strong ally of the only imperialist superpower in the world, while hamas and Co have access to largely inferior support, namely Iran whose leaders can take some outrageous anti-US poses but in reality are ready to strike a deal with Obama as soon as the price of the peace would be high enough.