Jewish People’s Liberation Organization: A Non-Zionist Declaration
1. We, the Jewish People, are a wandering Nation who have been seeking a
secure right to live in those lands where we reside. It has been
written that the Jewish nation is the most oppressed in Europe, and
judging from the persistence of
anti-Jewish prejudice, one has to acknowledge the distinctly historic
proportion of that oppression. Never have we been permitted a continuous
homeland for more than a few hundred years before another expulsion
takes place. Now it seems that the possibility of complete extermination
is not out of the question, judging by the degree to which the recent
Nazi Holocaust was permitted to proceed. The consequences of such a
reactionary demonstration of power have not been concluded, since
fascism continues to function, and the response of a permanent
revolutionary wave throughout the world has yet to reach its full
proportions.
2. At the present time, confusion is spread by
those seeking only to establish a power-base for themselves and so will
attack Jewish people while posing as either anti-Zionists, German
nationalists, Christian zealots, or more recently, as "White" Power
advocates. The manipulations of the newer-Nazis and even former Nazis
are by no means irrelevant as Western Nation-States have repeatedly
demonstrated how much suffering they are willing to have the Jewish
people endure in continuation of the various crusades launched against
us and the Arab and African Muslim nations.
3. Although the
Arab nation has largely been absent from the persecutions of the
European Christian Nation-States, the Zionist settler-colonial
organizations
and parties have moved into Palestine based on the
disadvantaged position of the resident population. Zionism built itself
upon the Western need to make its amends when at the same time the West
rejected the Jewish post-war refugees, who could not tolerate racism in
Europe any longer or Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The Zionist parties
accepted the Christian States' exclusion of the Jewish people from its
very inception in exchange for their support. The realization of Zionism
is the fulfillment of the Protestant "restorationist" programme which
preceded it. The successes of Zionism have merely been accomplished
through its assimilation to the Western Christian-Statist notions of
religious militarism with its Crusader orientation towards the "Middle
East". The Jewish Zionists adopt the Christian image of ancient
Israelites, while the actual Israelites actually had more in common with
their Semitic brothers and sisters, including their common Aramaic
language, rather than Hebrew. Israel resembles the 52nd state of the
U.S.A. more than the Kingdom of David and Solomon (who was also of
Hittite parentage). The Jewish people need to liberate themselves from
the Christian Nation-State and the ideology of Zionism which is only the
colonized mentality of assimilation into the dogma of Protestantism,
that sees the only place for Jewish people being in Israel.
4.
The Zionists and the Arabic peoples are in a state of no war / no peace
which the Israeli governments seek to perpetuate in order to suppress
and maintain the Palestinians in exile. Only the balance of forces has
resulted in certain limited and partial concessions towards the
independence of the Palestinian People. While such concessions are
welcome, these represent only the beginning of the reconciliation
(SaaLaHa) process. It is obvious that the resistance of the Palestinian
youth in the Intifada since 1987, the diplomatic initiatives of the
Palestine Liberation Organization and the internal Israeli opposition of
the Peace Now - Gush Shalom movement has brought about the agreements
for which the Israeli and U.S. governments take credit.
5.
However the Palestinians and the Jewish people are tied together by
bonds stronger than war, more amiable than the antiquity, and more than
each People realizes. It is not a semantic coincidence that
anti-Semitism means both the Jewish and the Arabic peoples are feared
and hated in the Occidental political culture. The bonds that unite
Jewish and Arab people in practice extend to the degree that the
Palestinian struggle should necessarily stand for the liberation of the
Jewish people as well from anti-Semitism and from Zionism; and the
Jewish struggle for liberation needs to also include the liberation of
the Palestinians, each in reciprocity to the other. It is evident that a
common struggle against resurgent fascism is a vital necessity.
6. It is necessary to break out of the impasse constructed by the
Zionists who believed that Zionism presented the only recourse for
Jewish refugees, and now presents the only recourse for future security,
as if the Israeli State is to be worshipped as a deity. The Jewish
People must be liberated from Zionist ideology by the actual fulfillment
of our civil and collective rights in pluralist society, by
national-cultural autonomy and possibly even territorialism. Territorial
claims of course must only be considered valid if they respect such
claims in general. One takes into consideration that the achievement of
national auto-determination by the pursuit of independence is, of
course, the right of every national entity, if only accomplished by
means of the reciprocal principle, respecting mutual interests and
rights.
7. Although both the WWII Allies and the Zionist
movement presented Palestine as the only avenue to leave Europe for
Jewish people in 1947, the reluctance of many Jewish Holocaust Survivors
living in the Displaced Persons districts to become Zionist
colonialists enforced their emigration to North America. More recently
the Zionist enterprise has not even been considered a desirable
situation by Israelis themselves, who have emigrated en masse. The
Jewish people in the Federation of Russia do not have even a choice in
the matter because of the U.S.A. / Canada quota system, in much the same
way as they were excluded before and during World War II, with the
collaboration of the Zionist organization.
8. It is in the interests of the Palestinian people's struggle to support the Jewish struggle against
racism so that there will no longer be the apparent need for the only
alternative currently presented to aid the Jewish people. The great loss
of the Jewish revolutionary socialists (Bundists) to Nazism and to
Stalinism has removed the most viable alternative to Zionism. There is
an intertwining of the two struggles so that a solution to
Palestinian-Arab oppression is circumscribed unless there is an end to
Jewish oppression in general;
whether or not this conclusion is
welcomed by any Palestinian party. To begin with, one cannot ignore, and
so accept the existence of fascists and even Nazis presenting
themselves as anti-Zionists. It should be obvious as a
counter-revolutionary act, and that it serves to hinder the development
of a Jewish alternative to Zionist hegemony. The same is true in return;
whether or not Jewish people accept that peace will only be achieved
with the emancipation of the Palestinians -- all else is conjunctural to
both Peoples. The ties that bind our two peoples are a consequence of
the recent European purging of the Jewish population even though the
Arab peoples had no responsibility in the Holocaust. The pertinence of
the nature of Jewish existence to Arab concerns should rather be based
upon the necessary world perspective with which to achieve their own
national emancipation. This is a strategic consideration which
identifies racism and fascism as common concerns. Arab nationalities in
Occidental countries know very well what these concerns are.
9. We shall not be enslaved, made homeless, nor killed when it is so
dictated by the whims of ideology, and so we are hated whether we be
Jewish or Palestinian. Why then should either of us consider the
Occidental World to be our ally, and the other to be an enemy. We are of
the same status, origins and oppression, and so if we cannot co-exist
in peace then no-one, it seems, will be able to, because of the powers
which strive for political hegemony and oligapolistic economic
dictatorship.
-A Jewish Alternative to Zionism-
10.
Together with the continuing degeneration into a social existence of
perpetual war and war preparation -- called peace -- there has arisen
(Yesh Gvual/ There is a Frontier amongst the Israeli military, Shalom
Achshav / Peace Now) a dynamic of resistance to war and its
corresponding economic stagnation.
Despite all the formal rationales
designed to perpetuate what is universally abhorred, a Jewish
opposition to the Zionist leadership and their followers of both the
left and the right has emerged. This opposition is inevitable as long as
we are pushed, educated, trained, ordered, tricked and then led into
fighting yet another war, a secular 'Sacrifice for Israel'. Ironically
the perpetuation of the rationale for violence has rebounded unto itself
with the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin himself,
because he failed to live up to his ideology's prerequisites, by having
sought to accommodate the leading Palestinian figure, the President
Yassar Arafat.
11. The need and desire for a Jewish territory
that is self-determinant -- freed from expulsions and pogroms -- has
been led into the fortified ghetto being called Eretz Yisroel but which
actually operates as the State of Israel under the auspices of the
U.S.A.
12. The territorial solution that had been sought has
been converted into an absolutist religious idea, replacing the
traditionalist culture and its meditative routine of ritual. Prior to
the Holocaust the concept of the deity was considered to have the power
to deliver the chosen people towards salvation. With the dissolution of
religious ideological practice itself, there arose territorialist
Zionist parties based on the surviving religious conviction that only in
the Land of Israel (Canaan) could there be formed a Jewish homeland.
Such an idea was encouraged by the Christian States which were refusing
entry to the Jewish refugees with the complicity of the Zionist parties.
13. However, the nature of things is that currently a greater
proportion of Jewish people live in lands other than Palestine (Israel):
in North America, Russia, Europe, South America, the Makreb (north
Africa) or other Arab countries, southern Africa, India, Pakistan, China
and elsewhere. In fact less than a third of the world's more than 14
million Jewish people live under the State of Israel. The fundamental
premise of Zionist theory has in practice been ignored or rejected
consciously by the greater proportion of all the Jewish people, who are
non-Zionists. Israel is thus not considered the sole legitimate homeland
of the Jewish people.
14. The Jewish nationality exists within
and with out the Israeli State. However the non-Israeli Jewish
communities live within an illusion of assimilation oftentimes
sugar-coated in Zionist acquiescence or pretension. While the
territorialist yearnings of Jewish people -- to form a majoritarian
society -- is currently sifted into the Zionist pot, the territorial
need should actually be satisfied in those areas where Jewish
communities are centered, where our rights as citizens must and shall be
met to truly satisfy our social existence. This is auto-determination
for all the Jewish people rather than the pseudo-independence of the
Israeli State.
15. Presently Zionism negates the very freedom
of auto-determination, which it itself claims to represent, by
attempting to submerge the Palestinian people below the level of the
struggle forInter-national auto-emancipation;
the only common
definition for freedom. One's right to auto-determination is predicated
upon the respect one holds for that very same right as it is held up by
others. One's principled needs cannot be fulfilled unless such a right
is to be upheld for all others as well, as a principle, forging a
solidarity through which we become allies on the basis of our reciprocal
rights. In this way are our needs to be ensured, not by militarism. In
this manner, one
reaches (as did Israel Zangwill) "a land without a
people for a people without a land", and not by means of the
Israeli-supervised Sabra-Shatila massacre -- a pogrom which has ended
the illusions of all who are not deluded. After the Hebron reoccurrence
and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, such anti-human outbreaks can
easily be seen as being integral to the lingering status quo situation.
16. An historic turning point has been passed. Let it be universally acknowledged, as it has been
by the past Director of the Planning Center of the Palestine Liberation
Organization in Beirut, Lebanon, and currently Palestinian Authority
Planning Minister (Nabil Sha'ath), as early as 1977, that the
Palestinian Charter; signifies equally, that the exercise by the people
of Palestine of their right of self-determination in Palestine does not
include the right to exclude the Palestinian Jews from Palestine, that
signifies also that this right does not include the right to create in
Palestine a State solely Arab. The right to self-determination of the
Palestinian People, applied to the Jewish Palestinians, means that they
must exercise this right on the land of Palestine, and that this right
does not include the right of separation and consequently, the exclusion
of the Arab people of Palestine. This is why the right to
self-determination of Jews and of Arabs in Palestine must be exercised
in common on the same land, Palestine. The Principle of Reciprocity is
thereby acknowledged by Shaath: that signifies the end of all States
which require that the self-determination of its ethnic group assumes
the exclusion of another ethnic group ... it is thus the definitive end
of all States in which segregation exists de jure or de facto.
Ethnic-cleansing then is refuted by the PLO and the hypocrisy of Zionism
remains. Currently the Palestine National Authority is attempting a
negotiated settlement in ambiguous terms which provides for the partial
solution of two States. Further negotiations between the two States
cannot be expected to produce the desired results because of the
terribly unbalanced power relation.
17. According to
tradition, the Jewish people are the second brothers and sisters of the
Palestinian Arab People, and it should be understood that the respect
given to another is the measure of the respect to be expected, in any
reciprocal manner of living. We, the Jewish People, should acknowledge
that the Palestinian tradition parallels the Jewish history in duration,
intensity and tragedy. We recognize the historic cultural affinities
with the Holy Land by the Jewish People but we do not consider our
history to be exclusive of others. The Neturei Karta provide an example
of Jewish residents who have lived in peace with the Palestinians in
Jerusalem.
18. The one comprehensive solution presented, of an
all-inclusive pluralistic Palestine, is an alternative to war; that is,
a solution poly-national in scope, including all the Palestinians who
are able to return, including the resident Jewish population and
including the Druze people. The method of resolution available is an
international conference of reconciliation for all concerned parties,
this being an immediate necessity and possibility; a mechanism provided
with some momentum by the current peace process. However the
intransigence of many Zionist Israelis will not allow them to tolerate
the return of the Palestinian refugees because of their will to remain a
majority. Such a paralysis could be resolved by the departure of those
who insist that
there is not enough space for the Palestinians' return, but many Israelis currently wish to leave if they could in any case.
-Independence and Territoriality-
19. The State of Israel of 1948 was not the unique first attempt to initiate a modern Jewish homeland or territory;
the first attempts having been in 1791, the Czarist prison called the
Pale of Settlement in western Russia, and in 1926 at Birobidjan in
easternmost Russia. A true Jewish Land failed to materialize from the
Bolshevik revolution, despite the Leninist promise to the Jewish Bund /
Union organization of 1905. Those attempts have failed the test of
viability and yet the Jewish people have continued to desire those
features of life unavailable to them in the prevailing States; that is,
urban national-cultural autonomy in existing settings and the need for
autonomous or independent territories. This need for a Land is evident
in the worship from afar politics of the various Jewish communities
towards the Israeli State, a desire which is based upon the real needs
for land, security, peace and the freedom of identity and culture
historically denied the Jewish people. Existing societies do not provide
for these material necessities, and prevailing political doctrines do
not consider these Jewish needs. However Jewish territorialism should
not and need not mean the abandonment of traditional Jewish opposition
to political power manipulations and Statism. Considering the failure of
the Zionist project, there may be a need for such territories to
accommodate Sephardim and Ashkenazim in their respective regions in
order to facilitate the departing Israeli population who wish to remain a
majoritarian society or who have no country to go to and do not wish to
remain in Palestine. At the present time the Russian Jewish population
is being obliged to emigrate to the Zionist State even though previous
immigrants now wish to leave. The crisis in Palestine is an
inter-national problem and should be placed in a world context. The
solution to Palestinian liberation is intertwined with the liberation of
the Jewish People worldwide. As such it is conceivable that an
Ashkenazic territory could be formed to accommodate the Jewish
populations of Russia and Europe, as well as an autonomous territory for
Sephardim in the Makhreb, and national - cultural autonomy for the
Hebrew Jewish nationality in Palestine.
20. In this aftermath
of the Nazi Holocaust, no one should deny the hostility of prevailing
Occidental Nation-States to national minorities, as none of the
participants or spectators in that war of extermination have undergone a
substantial transformation. The Zionist establishment follows these
Nation-States in parallel, seeking to jump into the footsteps of power
politics. How bizarre it is that a stockpile of at least 200 genocidal
nuclear bombs with a Jericho intermediate-range missile to carry them
have been accumulated by a State professing peaceful intentions and
created in the aftermath of our genocide. This hypocrisy is evident in
the Israeli and Zionist support for the criminal actions of the USA-led
axis with respect to Iraq, Iran and the Libyan Jamahiriya.
21.
Should anti-Semitism be permitted to exist because of those who do not
believe it is possible to overcome racism? Is that why the Labour
Zionists signed the Haavra (Transfer) Agreement so acting in complicity
with the Nazi Third Reich, as early as August 1933. Does this not reveal
that those who accept the existence of racism in others accept it also
in themselves? Has Zionism recreated the footsteps of those whom it did
not have the will to oppose? Who could
dare to dictate obedience to Zionism after its adherents generally acted as spectators to the spectacle of the Holocaust?
-A Jewish Revolutionary Movement-
22. In the tradition of the early nationalist formation, the 1897
Jewish Bund (General Jewish Workers' League), and based on prior efforts
in the development of the Jewish People's Liberation Organization such
as the Toronto-based Alliance of Non-Zionist Jews (1974), the group
Canadian Jews Supporting the Palestinians (1980 UN - NGO) and, the
publication Logikun Sychel, we are building a movement for liberation on
an inter-national basis. We are also indebted to the Israeli Committee
Against the War which publicly protested the 1982 war on its very first
day and so inspired the Peace Now movement of 500,000 participants.
23. The Jewish People's Liberation Organization, a non-Zionist
formation, acts on behalf of the Jewish and Palestinian Peoples to
generate national emancipation in cooperation with the Palestinian
movement for the liberation of Palestine, as a contribution to making
war unneeded and unwanted. As an ally of the Palestinian People in this
struggle, we greet the Palestine National Council in solidarity.
24. Likewise, the JPLO exists as an ally of the other liberation
movements operating in our common societies: New Africans/African
Americans, Indigenous Peoples, Kébékoise, Chicana, Puerto Rican,
African-Caribbean, or Azanian (South Africa);
consequently we
declare our support to the International Human Rights Association of
American Minorities (NGO) and the Anti-Racist Action (ARA) movement.
~~ JPLO Basic Principles ~~
1) We call for a complete immediate
withdrawal of all the Israeli military and intelligence
services from the Palestinian
territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 war, in accordance
with U.N. resolutions. Withdrawal from
both the occupied Lebanese and Syrian territories is
also a necessary precondition for
peaceful relations among the societies of the eastern
Mediterranean.
2) We call for the creation of a fully
independent Palestinian Country; a Civil Society with all
the powers of a State, in accordance
with U.N. resolutions, throughout the territories, with full
U.N. membership rights, including east
Jerusalem and serving as a democratic and pluralist
territory for all people of Palestinian
origin, serving to reunite families continuing to live in
refugee camps throughout the eastern
Mediterranean region. Such provisions should not be
interpreted as possibly restricting the
individual civil and collective rights of the Palestinians
living in the Israeli administration,
comprising 19% of that citizenry. Full voting rights for all
Palestinians to the Palestine National
Council are necessary for those who were forced to flee
Palestine during the 1948 and 1967
wars, or during the years of Israeli occupation, as well as for
holders of Israeli citizenship.
Likewise Jewish residents who live in Palestinian-controlled lands
in peace are assured their individual
civil and collective rights.
3) These interim provisions of the
peace process should lead to the formation of a pluralist and
bi-national Civil Society in the land
of Palestine, with a united Jerusalem based upon the
dissolution of the State of Israel. The
return of Palestinians to their historic origins shall be a
right according to the civil
constitution formed by a Constitutional Assembly of all nations
inhabiting Palestine. Such a
Constitutional Assembly would receive representation by all
nationalities to formulate a federation
of autonomous national-cultural communities who govern
only themselves and not the others. All
rights will exist in reciprocity respecting land rights,
water rights, subterranean resources,
air passage, immigration, water routes, environmental
controls, militarization, federated
affiliations, alliances, international representation, etc. It
should be noted that citizenship rights
are governed by each autonomous nation while respecting
the United Nations codes of human
rights. Personal religious affiliation becomes a personal
choice within each nationality itself.
Recuperation or compensation for familial properties of pre-1948
Palestine shall be established by treaty.
4) We insist upon the establishment of
a nuclear free zone throughout the region so that no
country possesses or prepares nuclear,
biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Transport of materiel used in the
production of such devices shall be forbidden by all countries.
5) We furthermore call for an end to
economic and political sanctions against Iraq, Iran and the
Libyan Jamaihiriya; except for military
arms sales restrictions that are equally applied to all other
key countries in the region.
6) There must be an end to the
misguided policy known as "dual-containment", designed to
continue Western/US-led policies of
"divide and rule" which encourage the development of
competing blocks along with continuing
regional arms escalation.
7) We recognize Pan-Arabism as the
functional basis of the Arab autonomous societies, thus
rejecting private and external economic
enterprises' interventions on the economic and political
plane. The Palestinian Arab People and
Palestine form an integral unit in the Pan-Arab Nation.
The world context situates the Arab
Nation not only among the Third World's peoples but also
amongst the nationalities that exist
within the industrially developed countries as well.
8) The JPLO seeks to liberate the
individual civil and collective rights of Jewish People in the
context of the various societies where
we reside. Our collective rights include provisions for
national-cultural autonomy in
particular and auto-determination in general. It must be
recognized that anti-Jewish
anti-Semitism cannot be tolerated and refugee rights must be
respected irrespective of the presence
of the Zionist State.
9) Full voting and political rights
must be accorded to all Jewish nationals throughout the world
in their representation to the Jewish
Congress of their society, as well as the World Jewish
Congress, irrespective of any possible
Zionist or religious affiliation.
10) Recognizing the tendency of
privately-owned competitive economies to corrupt various
State structures in the interests of
fascism and in opposition to Civil Society, and acknowledging
the tendency for the revolutionary
process to degenerate into Statism; the JPLO seeks to further
the development of the historic dynamic
of Socialist Permanent Revolution.
