Subject piece of discussion: https://crimethinc.com/2024/10/03/ya-ghazze-habibti-gaza-my-love-understanding-the-genocide-in-palestine

A recent piece published by Crimethinc is described as “in-depth account, an anarchist from occupied Palestine reviews the history of Zionist colonialism and Palestinian resistance, makes the case for an anti-colonial understanding of the situation, and explores what it means to act in solidarity with Palestinians.” It is certainly an extensive account, but when it comes to depth there is always deeper one can go with this issue. That being the case, a response to such an account could easily be double or triple its size if it attempts to go any deeper. But the issue that I have with this account is not its depth, it’s a fundamental assumption that a good deal of the rest is built upon. That assumption can be seen easily here:

“We must be honest about what we’re saying. For example, in the debate about the phrase “from the river to sea,” about whether it means democracy or the abolition of Israel—the simple answer is that it means both. Decolonization on Palestinian conditions—the abolition of Zionism, the return of the refugees, the end of military rule, and equal civil rights—will mean that Palestine goes back to what it was before Zionist colonization, a majority Arab land.”

A majority Arab land…

As the author themselves notes early in the piece, the land in question has a long history of changing hands:

“Gaza, which has always been a central point for passing empires, trade routes, occupations, and cultures, owing to its geographic location along the coast line of the Mediterranean. Gaza, through which passed the Via Maris, connecting Egypt to Turkey and Europe. Gaza, through which the Greeks, the Romans, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Crusaders, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the British, the Egyptians, and Zionist forces pressed their claims—writing its story as a history of occupations, wars, atrocities, and resistance.”

This is a region that has been ruled by many groups of people, by empires centered in the three continents the region is between. Only when history is truncated by thousands of years can we make sense of the notion that this region was meaningfully “majority Arab”. Though Arab peoples have lived in the region for centuries, long before the rise of Islam, the land has also been the home of non-Arab peoples. The demographics have shifted time and time again. From the 7th Century until the Zionist immigration waves, there was an Arab majority. But there have certainly been times when Arab peoples were a minority as well.

What makes all of this discussion of majorities and minorities relevant at all is a history of state-building: the state-building initiative that was decided upon by the League of Nations when they invented their system of mandates, transforming former German and Ottoman territories into territories governed by the so-called “People”. Prior to this history, ethnic majority was far less relevant. Under the rule of the Ottomans, there was no question that it was the Ottomans who were sovereign and that its subjects resided in Ottoman territory and resided on Ottoman land. It wasn’t until the Tanzimat in the mid-19th Century that these lands were registered and titles granted to landowners who could then treat such land as a commodity. And it is this development of land as private property which created the conditions of possibility for the historical developments that allowed the Jewish minority to grow through land purchases.

Before Zionism, the Jewish population of Ottoman Palestine was about 4% and the total population was somewhere between 450,000 to 500,000 people. This was not a large population for a region of its size. The ecological features of the region were themselves a limiting factor in how large of a population it could support. However, there were also several periods of drought, famine, and conflict that made it a difficult place to live. Although the Zionist notion “a land without a people for a people without a land” was an exaggeration that ignored not only the Arab peoples living there but also the Jews living there, the undesirability of much of the land was an important fact of the region. Besides being arid, malaria was extensive throughout. The eradication of malaria, the modernization of agricultural techniques, and the industrial development that followed later are the factors that made it possible for this region to support the population sizes that it does now.

Above are all factors that even made it possible for there to be 800,000 Arab people to displace during the Nakba, a number almost twice that of the total population prior to Zionism’s existence. From the Tanzimat when the land laws were reformed to the Nakba, capitalism and the creation of nation-states changed everything about what was possible.

The Ottomans reformed the land laws, which allowed the land to be accumulated by powerful individuals and families like the Sursock family, who sold hundreds-of-thousands of acres of land to Zionist organizations. The League of Nations then exacerbated the situation by giving the British a mandate to oversee the development of nation-states in the region. And since they were encouraging the development of nation-states, specifically, it was the notion of “nationality” that regulated the types of states that would form. According to the League of Nations and their emphasis on “national self-determination”, the new rulers would be those “nations” who could prove that they were capable of running a state… states that would be grounded in nationality and allied with the winners of first World War. In effect, nationalist groups were put into competition with one another for recognition by the developing global nation-state system. These conditions not only favored Zionist over Communist Jews. The conditions were intended to favor nationalist groups generally: Arab, Jew, or otherwise.

The factors that allowed the total population to grow did not on their own lead to the formation of nation-states. Those factors had to be harnessed by imperial powers and pointed towards the formation of nation-states. Additionally, the Soviet Union was also encouraging the development of nationalism, seeing such a development as the appropriate form of administering an industrial society. While some communists were opposed to nationalism, those with the approval of the Soviet Union were not opposed to it. There were indeed splits amongst the Jewish Left in Palestine along these lines, the nuances of which are outlined wonderfully in Zachary Lockman’s Comrades and Enemies. In the same book, we are also given an excellent overview of the very few and very weak forces opposed to the nationalists, both Jewish and Arab.

Anarchy in Palestine

It is with those very few and very weak forces that we anarchists and socialists broadly should see the history of our own movements in the region. Already in the 1920’s and 1930’s, European imperialism, antisemitism, industrialization, and world war had allowed for socialists, communists, and libertarians to organize under the mandate. But for the most part, those who were fighting each other were more nationalist than they were socialist, whether they were Jewish or Arab. The conflicts that these nationalists had with one another, which they were pushed into by the British, lead to cycles of violence that increasingly fed all of those feelings that nationalism thrives from. The less trust there could be between groups, the more people relied on who they thought of as their own kind. After the 1929 Palestine riots and especially after the 1936-1938 Arab Revolt, the nationalists had very much secured themselves as majority amongst the Jews and amongst the Arabs. By 1942, the Zionists made their aim to create an exclusively Jewish nation-state official at the Biltmore Conference and 2 and a half years later, the League of Arab States (the Arab League) formed and adopted the Alexandria Protocol.

To put this another way, by 1944 both the Zionists and the Arab League had officially decided on mutually exclusive programs, destined to bring explosive conflicts in the future…

As M Gouldhawke has been documenting, anarchists were very aware of the events taking place in Mandate Palestine and were debating the situation with themselves and other socialists. One debate of note between Emma Goldman and Reginald Reynolds highlights the depth and nuance that anarchists were considering these matters with. While their conclusions are interesting, what is most important is that we have an explicitly anarchist history that we can refer to when thinking about how we should relate to the situation today. That is to say that as anarchists, we have had and can continue to have our own distinct positions that aren’t merely the infrequently creative appropriation of nationalist narratives.

As Emma Goldman pointed out in response to Reginald Reynolds, the attempts by Arab Nationalists to prevent Jewish refugees from migrating to Palestine do not align in any straightforward way with anarchist principles. Thought that point was somewhat lost in their debate, it is still a critical point today. There is nothing anarchist about the logic that follows from what national group has a demographic majority to such a national group having a right to state sovereignty over an entire region. The idea that because the land was “majority Arab” it should be ruled by an Arab state is not an anarchist idea. It is a nationalist idea and it is only relevant as argument against the claims by Jewish nationalists… Zionists. The Arabs of Palestine had no ethical right to prevent Jewish refugees from migrating to Palestine. Nevermind that many of those Jewish refugees were not Zionists.

As anarchists, we can not justify the control of people’s free movement from one part of the Earth to another. We can not reject the control of Palestinian movement on the one hand and then approve the control of Jewish movement on the other hand. It doesn’t matter who the ethnic majority is in a region. In the same way that we reject the proposals of National Anarchists, we must reject this logic of government based on nationality. To whatever extent we affirm the right of a national group to self-determination, that does not include the right to draw borders on the map and police the migration of others across those borders.

Settlers and Settler-Colonizers

“We also need to talk about the settlers. There any many different ways to analyze Israeli society. We can use the useful distinction that historian Ilan Pappe makes between the State of Israel and the State of Judea. In short, on one side, the liberal, secular, and “democratic” (Jewish democracy, for Jews only) wing of Jewish supremacy, apartheid, and settler colonialism, the one leading the anti-Netanyahu protests in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities; on the other side, the more far-right, theocratic, and openly fascist wing, composed chiefly of West Bank Jewish pogromists and their allies. The anti-fascist author and journalist, David Sheen, offers another useful schema, dividing Israeli society into supremacist, opportunist, reformist, and humanist camps.

All of these analyses explore the internal debate within settler society over the best way to manage apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. These social rifts are not new, but they have been exacerbated over the last few months. If we do not understand them, we might reach the wrong conclusions.”

What anarchists condemn when they review the history of colonialism is not the mere migration of people from here to there. What we condemn is the displacement, exploitation, domination, and extermination of those who were living somewhere prior to the colonial project. The creation of colonies isn’t itself condemnable. It is the use of colonies for the establishment of an imperial outpost that we are against. A colony created by artists or back-to-the-landers isn’t itself a bad thing and as anarchists, we are often advocating explicitly for the creation of our own colonies. We have in fact called our own past projects “colonies,” such as the Ferrer Colony in Stelton or the Home Colony in Seattle.

There is an argument that can be made that even these anarchist projects are guilty of profiting from the theft of indigenous lands and that they strengthen instead of harm empires. In the context of Israel-Palestine, such arguments are made often about the most egalitarian of Kibbutzim. This is true and it can not be denied. But the intentions matter of the residents who create such colonies, communes, or whatever you want to call intentional communities engaged in collective production. Should the power of the State that rules a territory shatter and should those indigenous peoples who have been dominated by that state gain full control of the regions they live, it will matter whose side various groups of settlers take.

As anarchists, we do not have an interest in subordinating ourselves to a state of tribal nations nor to subordinating ourselves to a state of colonial nations. Anarchism isn’t a philosophy of putting all the right people into all the right places. Anarchism rejects such things so that it can affirm the self-determination of people, both collectively and individually.

Now, there is a somewhat popular idea on the Left today that fascism is really just settler-colonialism coming home. Again, we get an idea that is based on starting one’s reading of history at too-late a period. The formation of the states that become imperial and become settler-colonial was already based on the domination, assimilation, and extermination of ethnic groups that were not involved in defining the national cultures that became hegemonic. The formation of nation-states already has these characteristic qualities of settler-colonialism before it even becomes settler-colonial. Fascism is the militant rejection of communism. It is what nationalists resort to when the principle of rule by nationality is discarded by those who had once accepted it.

The creation of the nation-state itself is what leads to a situation where all political discourse is bound within the confines of a territorial entity that accepts no opposition to its legitimacy. The “internal debate within settler society” is the same internal debate that is had in indigenous society about who belongs to the nation and who does not. It is the very basis of the Jewish Question which asked first if Jews could even be considered a nation and second if they could be trusted as members of indigenous European nation-states. Afterall, in Germany the Germans were mostly German. This is the logic of nationalism, settler or not.

Therefore, it is within the normal development of nationalist politics for Israelis to distinguish themselves from one another superficially. And as the essay points out, it is also within the normal features of nationalism for those superficial distinctions to be put aside when defense becomes a priority. This is even true when nationalism isn’t ethnic and is instead based on civic belonging. We witnessed this for years after 9/11 in the United States where jingoist, islamophobic, and genocidal rhetoric exploded amongst those who united as Americans whose freedom was under attack. Attributing something special to Israelis because their state is “Jewish” is erroneous. This is how nation-states operate. They must reaffirm their claims to legitimacy when their power is threatened. Palestinian or Arab nationalism has similar consequences.

As anarchists, we should be trying to smash this nationalist logic. It needs to be addressed at its roots. We do not advance anarchist society by affirming the right to political national self-determination, which is the type of national self-determination that seeks to realize itself politically instead of being lived culturally, without territorial control. Ultimately, nationalism is the logic of property at the level of nationality. The nation-state is the institutionalization of the idea that a nation can own a land. A democratic nation-state is merely one way that a nationality can govern itself through state institutions. Democratizing nation-states does not undermine their national foundations. This is why anarchists aren’t mere democrats. We reject the first and most fundamental argument regarding states: that any group of people has the right to rule a territory that others also inhabit. Lands don’t have nations. They just have residents… some settled, some nomadic, some agricultural, some artisanal, etc.

Final Words

The essay says so many other things that are true. They are also things that I would hope anyone calling themselves an “anarchist” today would be familiar with. After a year since 10/7, most of us should be able to recite much of this history in our sleep. And for those of us who have been paying attention to any of this before 10/7, much of this has been understood for decades.

My intention isn’t to deny the atrocities that Israel has committed against Palestinians everywhere the live and especially in Gaza. My intention is to extend an anarchist critique beyond the broad anti-Zionist and anti-Colonial discourse that a lot of this essay articulates. However, I don’t want to suggest that this essay merely reproduces that discourse without adding anything to it. It does. It addresses some especially bad takes that have come from anarchist quarters, like the class reductionism. It also offers some much needed nuance to the way Palestinian resistance is understood in its diverse composition, ideologies, goals, and distinctions from Salafi-Jihadist organizations.

There is also much in the essay that I don’t agree with and that I didn’t address here. As I said at the outset, a response “could easily be double or triple its size”. I don’t have the concentration to write that, nor the energy. So I don’t expect anyone to have the concentration or energy to read that if this were to be any longer.

I also don’t want to suggest that there is anything close to moral equivalence when it comes to the various groups who have been in conflict throughout this history. Israel and the Zionist program it institutionalized has by far the most to condemn and fight against. For whatever blame can be laid on the Ottomans, League of Nations, Britain, the UN, the Soviet Union, the Arab League, and United States over the past 100+ years, today’s atrocities belong most to the hands of Israelis. Furthermore, it is quite fair to see Arab and Palestinian nationalism, including its Islamic forms, as various forms of struggle for liberation.

Finally, to emphasize my point again, the problem is that nationalism and its logic leads to conclusions like “Palestine should be a majority Arab land”. Obviously, it also lead to Zionist conclusions about Jewish statehood as well. The pursuit of a national politics and especially ones that seek a nation-state, whether Zionist or Palestinian, ties movements to the broader power dynamics of global capitalism and imperialism. This is a problem that an anti-colonial emphasis underplays by recognizing some forms of national sovereignty as more legitimate than others, so long as it is not colonial. From an anarchist perspective, national sovereignty itself is illegitimate: no one should be born to rule, nor born to serve.