7 - The Socialist Opposition to Zionism in Historical Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2009
Summary
The attitude toward Zionism of the established socialist movement on the eve of the First World War can be summed up in two words: complete rejection. At the very well attended congresses of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party held in Stockholm and London in the years 1906–07 and attended, inter alia, by the Polish and Lithuanian parties as well as by the Jewish Bund, there was not a single Zionist to be found. The Second International, then at the height of its prestige, contemptuously dismissed the requests of the Poale Zion party to join its ranks. Of course, among those participating in the congresses of the Second International were many Jews, including representatives of Jewish parties – specifically, delegates of the Bund who formed part of the Russian Social Democratic faction, and of the Sejmist party (otherwise known as the SERP), which found a place in the Socialist Revolutionary delegation – but Zionist parties were explicitly excluded. The key argument underpinning this policy of rejection was consistent and repetitive: Zionism, by its very essence, served the forces of reaction in the Jewish world. And as for socialist Zionism, whatever the subjective intentions of its adherents, it was objectively a contradiction in terms, a grotesque caricature of genuine socialism.
However, it would be erroneous to assume that there was a simple uniformity in the attacks on Zionism launched from the Left.
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- Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews , pp. 157 - 180Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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