April 13th, 2001

Letter to a Trotskyist comrade from Romania,
who hasn’t it got clear about the counterrevolutionary Zionist activities.

Dear Comrade,

 We are going to approach the discussion we had pending in regards to the grandiose Palestinian Revolution –which eight months after having started could not be forced to give in- and the “Jewish Question”.
Effectively, the differences that separate us facing this hot and crucial fact in the world class struggle are very deep. As you say, according to the outcome of this discussion our mutual political relationship would or would not have a future, because we think –as we have said publicly and written in many of our documents- the Palestinian Revolution has become in a cleavage that clearly separates revisionists, opportunists and centrist from revolutionaries.
To confirm this statement, we refer you to the opportunist currents that usurp the banners of Trotskyism, as the French LCR and its “Euro-representative” Alain Krivine, who travelled to Middle East for helping his own imperialist bourgeoisie convince the Palestinians of the “marvels” of the counterrevolutionary plan by Clinton meaning the definitive partition of Palestine and the creation of a fictitious “Palestinian State” side by side the fascist-Zionist State of Israel, which wouldn’t be other thing that a true ghetto, a concentration camp, plainly speaking. In the same way we have witnessed legislator and his party PO refusing to raise as a program the destruction of the State of Israel, and kneeling straightforwardly before Zionism and Clinton’s plan, to put only a few examples.

It is a cleavage because, either you are for the victory of the Palestinian Revolution, for the destruction of the Zionist-fascist State of Israel and for the imposition of a Palestinian State, that is secular, democratic and non-racist, under a worker and peasant government of the Palestinian masses, both armed and self organized; or you are, overtly or covertly, by one way or another, for the imperialist positions about the existence of “two nations” and so you end to the feet of Zionism and Clinton’s plan. From the COTP (CI) we have declared a out-and-out war against all those that attempt to soil the clean banners of the fourth International putting them under the boots of Zionism and imperialism.
Unfortunately, comrade, before the Palestinian Revolution, it is clear that with the position that you declare in your document, you are on the opposite side of the water divide; you are now to the feet of Zionism –a position that we firmly hope could be a result of your confusion, of the wicked influence of the tradition of the centrist and opportunist  currents that have long put themselves to the service of Zionism, and which have carried the fourth International to crisis and degeneration, usurping and soiling its banners. That’s why we are debating with you, to help clarify the discussion and dissipate the nefarious influence of opportunism, and to arrive to the truth.
Differently from the travesty of Two and a Half International that PO attempts to set up, we debate this publicly, facing the vanguard and the international Trotskyist movement, not only in our Internal Bulletin of International Discussion, but also en our public materials, reproducing your document and our reply to it, and, as you will see, we are not entitling the debate as “Correspondence with a centrist from Rumania”, as you say in your letter. We Trotskyists do not have anything to hide: if we have debated publicly with currents with which we have absolute differences, both strategic and of principles, as is the case with En Defensa del Marxismo (Spain)… How could we refuse to debate with a comrade such as you are, with whom we have fought alongside, elbow to elbow, against common contenders and with whom we have reached important strategic agreements!

A position that regards the fascist –Zionist State of Israel as an ordinary nation-state, corresponding to an alleged “Jewish Nation”.

The first thing that appears to the sight in your document is that, along the six pages devoted fundamentally to the “Jewish Question”, you never question a qualitative fact: that of the creation of the fascist-Zionist State of Israel in 1947-48. How is it possible to speak in 2001 about the “Jewish Question” without mentioning, even superficially, that Israel was created on iron and fire, based on the expulsion from their land, from all their houses, of the inhabitants of Palestine, smashing entire villages and towns, massacring the people, confiscating lots, crops and cattle, boycotting the Palestinian produce, expelling the Palestinian proletariat from factories at the beginning of the process, in order to transform it in an enormous industrial reserve army, and some years later, rehiring them as very cheap labor, living in conditions of slavery in the refugee camps (ghettoes) and under a fascist regime of terror!
How can you speak of the “Jewish Question” after 1948 without mentioning, even superficially, the occupation of Palestine by an invader army, armed to the teeth with the state-of-the –art in weaponry and logistics by the US imperialism; the creation of an state of a particular character: an artificial state, an enclave of imperialism’s, supported economically, financially and militarily by it, so as to have in the region a gendarme which can rearguard and control the vital oil routes, while smashing and submitting the Palestinian people and the whole of the Arab peoples!
Not issuing a statement to this regard, about the genesis and the character of the State of Israel, and on the Palestinian question, and at the same time saying “I am for the destruction of the Zionist State of Israel” is, at least a complete irresponsibility. The creation of that State in the aftermath of the 2WW was part of the counterrevolutionary deal sealed in Yalta and Potsdam. In that Deal, the counterrevolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy played its role of contention against the world revolution, so preventing the victory of the revolution that was lifting its head at the end of the war in the European imperialist countries (France, Italy, Germany, Greece) and undertook the compromise of containing across Eastern Europe. The creation of the Zionist-fascist State of Israel as an enclave of imperialism, turned into a state that manufactured and exported weapons, to guarantee the smashing of the Palestinian people and the control of revolution in the Arab countries –with the entire support and agreement of the Stalinist bureaucracy- was a part of that deal.
The, comrade, how can you speak today, at early 21st Century, about the “Jewish question” leaving aside all that?! How can you go on discussing the “national problem of the Jewish people” without taking into account that the Zionist bourgeoisie, supported, armed and financed by imperialism set up this gendarme State more that 50 years ago?!
These irrefutable facts of the genesis and the character of the State of Israel, however, are not even mentioned by you; you speak about this State as if it were a “national state” as any other, because you start your reasoning from the definition of the existence of an alleged “Jewish Nation” that should inhabit… the same territory that the Palestinian people!

You say:
 “I am for the socialist revolution in Palestina. I support critically any revolt or revolution that is not led by a party of the type Leninist-Bolshevik. I am for the destruction of the Zionist State of Israel. I am for the free self determination of the nationalities. I am for the union of the proletarians of any nationality, for fighting against the Zionist State and against the bourgeoisies of Middle East”. (Our bolds).
When you speak of the “free self determination of the nationalities”, what you are saying is that today, in the territory of Palestine, there is a “Jewish nation” that has the right of occupying that territory; that means the grandiose Palestinian revolution, in its struggle for expelling the invader and destroying the gendarme State, would be harming the former’s “right to the free self determination”. This is, no more no less, the myth of “A landless people” over which Zionism is based!
Your entire concern along the six pages is about the “right to the free self determination” of the alleged “Jewish nation”.
You, starting from the Zionist myth of the existence of a “landless Jewish nation”, consider the fascist Zionist State of Israel as an ordinary bourgeois national state, and not as it is, i.e. an enclave of imperialism, of the same kind as the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands or Gibraltar. So we are in the right to ask you, why don’t you raise the “right to self determination” of the kelpers in Malvinas, the British usurpers that have lived there for a century now? With the position you have facing the fascist-Zionist State of Israel, when the Malvinas war in 1982 you should have aligned on the side of her Majesty the Queen and her royal Navy, in defense of the “right of self determination” of the kelpers whom the Argentineans would be violating when occupying militarily the Islands!
Comrade, on this point you have to pronounce clearly. Contrariwise, it is you who have to demonstrate that Palestine is the territory that –for a “divine will”, for “tradition” or whatever weird reason!- corresponds to the alleged “Jewish nation” you speak us about, a position that leads anybody immediately to conclude that, if there are “two nations”, one Jewish nation and a Palestinian one,  there has to be “two states”; this is complete with name and all, the same as Clinton’s Plan.
Against this position, we may quote here rightly the statement of Trotsky’s, about South Africa in the ‘30s under the British colonial regime and the apartheid: “The South African possessions of Great Britain constitute a dominion only from the view of the white minority. From the point of view of the Black majority, South Africa is an enslaved colony”.
Similarly, the State of Israel is a “national state” only from the point of view of imperialism and Zionism, a point of view that is today, unfortunately, yours; from the point of view of the Palestinian workers and peoples, Palestine is today an enslaved colony.
For that reason, your statement that you are “for the destruction of the Zionist State of Israel” doesn’t mean that you are for the victory of the national insurrection of the Palestinian workers and people, for the defeat and the expelling of the Zionist invader, and for the imposition, over the ruins of this imperialist enclave, of a Palestinian State, one that is secular, democratic and non-racist, under a worker and peasant government of the Palestinian insurrected massed, and that will be the only one where they could coexist peacefully the Palestinian workers, being them Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or of any other religion, a question that you don’t take into account at all.
These slogans democratic-revolutionaries of destruction of the State of Israel and of a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestine play today the same role of engine driving the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian masses as was played by the slogan of “For a Black Republic” in the South Africa of the apartheid: that of concentrating the fight for the national liberation of that people. Of course, these slogans must be raised as a part of a program that combines them with the most urgent demands of the masses, with the necessity of attacking the private property of the capitalists, with the struggle for the soviets and the armament of the proletariat, and with the fight for a worker and peasant government.
But your refusal to raise these democratic-revolutionary slogans, your assertion about the unity of the Palestinian and Jewish workers” in general, without saying that the only possibility for a peaceful coexistence of the workers of any religion goes through the destruction of the State of Israel and the imposition of a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestine under a worker and peasant government, your assertion of the necessity for a “socialist revolution in Palestine” in general, is the confirmation that you deny the national character of the Palestine Revolution and is a true slap on the face of the heroic workers and people in Palestine and their present revolution, as we will demonstrate later. This is so, because if you speak us of an alleged “Jewish nation”, if you defend its “right to self determination”, this cannot mean other thing that the continuation of the State of Israel, only that you imagine it “reformed”, without its “Zionist” and “Theocratic Character”, transformed into a “democratic” state, coexisting side to side with a fictitious “Palestinian State” consisting in the current concentration camps. That is the same position that Altamira and his Two and a Half International hold, i.e. one of the currents most openly pro Zionist usurping the banners of Trotskyism! It is no more no less that the position of Clinton’s Plan, which the “Euro-representative” Alain Krivine of the LCR went to sell feverously to Middle East in the name of the Fourth International!
You break thus absolutely with the revolutionary position raised by the Fourth International in 1948 facing the creation of the State of Israel –confronting Stalinism that supported its creation-; the Trotskyist position started precisely from the struggle against the partition and occupation of Palestine, and for the expelling of imperialism, its troops and its agents, for the independence of Palestine, for a Palestine with an Arab national character:
“Down with the partition of Palestine! For an Arabic, united and independent Palestine, with full rights as a national minority for the Jewish community! Down with the imperialist intervention in Palestine! Hands off the country! Out with all the foreign troops, plus the “mediators” and “observers” sent by the UNO! For the election of a constituent Assembly through universal and secret suffrage! For the agrarian revolution!” (Quatrième Internationale, June 1948). And the Palestinian Trotskyist Group, denouncing from the start the character of imperialist enclave of the Zionist State that was intended to be created –and never ever speaking about an alleged « Jewish nation », said: “US imperialism has got a direct agent: the Zionist bourgeoisie which, for that reason, has become completely dependent from US capital and US politics. From now on US imperialism will have an excuse for intervening militarily in Middle East each time it considers it convenient (…) the inevitable consequence of this war will be the total dependency of Zionism from US imperialism”. (Idem).
You say: “I am frightened to realize that based on the agreement over the Palestinian and Jewish questions, with a terribly wrong position, the merging between the LOI and the CIOS has taken place, and a closer position has appeared with respect to the US and Ukrainian comrades”. You are frightened by a revolutionary merging on the base of a revolutionary position in front of the grandiose Palestinian revolution, one that is a full and absolute continuity of the position raised by the fourth International in 1948; but you are not at all frightened when, with similar arguments to those you give about the alleged “Jewish nation” or “the unity between the Jewish working class and the Palestinian working class” –arguments that break absolutely with the above mentioned position of the Fourth International-, treacherous opportunists as Krivine go round Middle East praising the advantages of Clinton’s Plan, or Legislator Altamira and his PO place themselves openly as the “genuine Zionist left”.
So, we suggest you to leave your attempt of hiding your capitulation to Zionism by speaking about the “destruction of the Zionist State of Israel”, and to be consistent: if you think that today in Palestine there are two nations and both have a right to the same territory, then your position cannot be other than “PEACE”; you have to align with the Zionist group “PEACE NOW!” and with the Zionist Altamiraist group in Israel, and raise together the fight for two states: a democratic Jewish state and a “Palestinian state” coexisting side by side with the former, in which the Palestinian masses had the only task of making a revolution against the nationalist bourgeoisie of Arafat’s, leaving alone the Zionist bourgeoisie and imperialism!!!

From Altamiraism to Morenoism there is only one step, and the Romanian comrade has stepped it.
 
Comrade, less than one year ago, you abandoned that opportunist engender, the mimicking of the Two and a Half International of Altamira and PO through the main gates, giving a very correct and brave public combat against the method of the unprincipled and diplomatic “international agreements” that are utilized as a cover for the national capitulations, each in its respective country, of the PO and the groups that compose that centrist hodgepodge; against the parliamentarian cretinism of Altamira and the PO; and fighting for a scientific vision and a revolutionary program for the former workers states in process of liquidation. Unfortunately today, in front a qualitative fact as is the Palestinian revolution, that divides waters and separates clearly, black on white –as any great revolution does- opportunists and centrists from revolutionaries, you return to the Two and a Half International of Altamira’s through the window, raising with some negligible shades, the same position, completely capitulating to Zionism, imperialism, and Clinton’s Plan.
Though you do not only turn again, as somebody who has been walking in circles, to the starting point, i.e., Altamira’s; you suddenly turn out to be a most consistent Morenoite. Let’s see.
The second question that strikes the attention in your document is that in it you never mention imperialism, or its role in the creation and supporting of the Zionist-fascist State of Israel, a creation about which you don’t say anything, as you don’t say anything about the latter as a gendarme and enclave of imperialism.
If you think the State of Israel, created by imperialism, is an ordinary bourgeois state, a “normal” one, so to say, so what you are telling us is that capitalism, in its imperialist epoch could resolve fully and effectively the “Jewish question”, giving that “landless people” their own nation.
Thus, in a single step, you become a most consistent Morenoite. Nahuel Moreno revised precisely the theory of Permanent Revolution, and reached as a conclusion an stage-ist conception, that of the “democratic revolution”; he raised precisely that the “democratic” imperialist powers (USA, France, Great Britain), in the 2WW had played a “progressive” role, by combating fascism and liberating France and Italy from its occupation. He said that Trotsky was wrong because he had defined the war only as an inter-imperialist war and at the same time one of aggression against the Russian Worker State. Moreno said that Trotsky had not wanted to recognize that the war was first and foremost, a “war between regimes”, i.e., “Democracy against Fascism”.
You are the living proof that between Altamira-ism and Morenoism there is only a step (though this assertion gets the Altamiraists crazy because they think they are vaccinated for life against the “Morenoite virus”). You argue with the same method: against the “solution” applied by German imperialism, a “fascist” one, to the Jewish question, i.e. the physical extermination, US and UK imperialisms –the democratic imperialisms that emerged victorious from the war- gave a progressive solution, they solved fully and effectively the “Jewish question”, conceding the Jews the status of “nation” and ceding them a territory that was (in spite of the Zionist denying that it was inhabited, speaking about “a people-less land for a landless people”) inhabited by the Palestinian nation, its legitimate owner.
So, you are telling us that imperialism, far from being “reaction all along the line”, imperialism can play a progressive role!!! That is a total rupture with the Leninist theory on imperialism, which says: “Imperialism is the epoch of the finance capital and the monopolies, which introduce everywhere the tendency towards domination and not the tendency towards liberty. Whichever it could be the political regime, the result of that tendency is the reaction all along the line and an extreme intensification of the antagonisms in that ground. The yoke of the national oppression was remarkably intensified and also the tendency to the annexations, that is, the violation of the national independence (because the annexations are no other thing than the violation of the right of the nations to their self determination)” (Lenin “Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism”, our bolds).
Contrary to what Lenin affirms, you, when regarding the State of Israel as an ordinary bourgeois national state, one more in the count, you are considering that imperialism, at creating that State, has realized the right of the alleged “Jewish nation” to its self determination. It is this fact, starting from the point of view that imperialism played a progressive role solving the “Jewish question” with the creation of the state of Israel, what makes you recognize the alleged “Jewish nation”, and the children of the Zionists that usurped Palestine in 1948 you also recognize the right of inheritance, that is: thanks to the fact that they have maintained along all this time on the base of the most ferocious massacring and oppression exerted over the Palestinian people, and  thanks to the help and support of the imperialist powers, you recognize them an “acquired right” (that is, a right sanctified by the permanence along all the years since 1948, NT) of considering itself a “nation”!!!
Anyway, to be true, it is necessary to say that Nahuel Moreno, in spite of his total revision of the Theory-Program of the Permanent Revolution favoring the semi-stage-ist theory of the “democratic revolution” he never reached a pro-Zionist position as that you are today defending in the case of the Palestinian national question and the attitude facing the State of Israel. Moreno raised the necessity of the fight for the destruction of the Sate of Israel and the imposition of a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestine, but –with his semi-stage-ist vision of the revolution, with a first stage of “democratic revolution”, he separated those slogans from the fight for the imposition of a worker and peasant government based on the self organization and armament of the Palestinian masses, so he ended capitulating to the Palestinian bourgeois nationalist leadership of Arafat and the PLO.
You comrade, break with the Marxist thesis about imperialism and go to the Morenoite vision of the “progressive role” of the “democratic” imperialist powers, and also break with the revolutionary resolutions of the Third International that already in 1920 said, in its Theses and addenda about the national and colonial problems, and speaking specifically about Palestine as an example to demonstrate that imperialism is already unable of solving the legitimate demands of the oppressed nationalities: “c) The necessity of explaining indefatigably and unmask continuously before the ample toiling masses of all the countries, over all to the workers, the deception systematically utilized by the imperialist powers, which, under the appearance of politically independent states, create in reality states submitted from every point of view by them in the economic, financial and militarily sense. As a fragrant example of the deceptions practiced against the working class of the countries submitted by the combined effort of the “Allied” imperialists and the bourgeoisie of such and such nation, we can quote the affaire of the Zionists in Palestine, a country where, under the pretext of creating a Jewish state, in spite of the Jewish being an insignificant minority, Zionism has delivered the native population of Arab workers in the hands of the British exploitation…” (Our Bolds)

However, your break with revolutionary Marxism of the 20th century does not stop there, in your capitulation to Zionism. Your position that imperialism would have solved the “Jewish question” with the creation of the State of Israel, you break fully and absolutely with the Theory-Program of Permanent Revolution, which starts precisely from the assertion that in the imperialist epoch the democratic and national tasks that the bourgeoisie left unresolved –that is, the agrarian problem and the national problem in the colonies and semi-colonies, and the “Jewish question”,  as the emergence of the imperialist epoch adopted and left unconcluded the process of assimilation of the Jews to the fundamental classes of the capitalist society- can only be resolved through the victory of the proletarian revolution and the imposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus say the theses of that Theory: “Thesis 2: with regards to the countries of backward bourgeois development and in particular the colonial and semi colonial ones, the theory of Permanent Revolution means that the complete and effective resolution of their democratic ends and their national emancipation can only be conceived by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the latter seizing the power as the chief of the oppressed nation and first of all, of its peasant masses”.
And in spite of the defense that you try to do of Abraham Leon in your document –misunderstanding him, changing at each step the contents and even the formulation of what Leon says, and ignoring historical facts that took place after Leon was assassinated, as is the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, as we will demonstrate in another article- you destroy systematically the main foundation of the revolutionary Marxist position acing the “Jewish question”: That it cannot be solved by capitalism in its imperialist stage, and that it can only e solved by the proletarian revolution succeeding all over the world. And this is not only the position of Abraham Leon’s, but also that of Lenin, Trotsky and the entire revolutionary Marxism of the 20th century.

A position that denies the national character of the Palestinian revolution for its independence.

You say that the LOI-CI, when holding that the Jews are not a nation, would be saying that “for that reason, the present conflict in Middle East has not any kinf of national or nationalist connotation”. His is completely false: what you call “the present conflict”, that is, the ongoing revolution and the long struggle of the Palestinian people for their independence and for expelling the usurper and destroying the State of Israel is a struggle for the national liberation of that subjugated people, colonized by imperialism and its Zionist gendarme. It’s you who deny that there is one only nation in Palestine: the Palestinian workers and people!
This heroic national struggle of the only nation that exists there, the Palestinian one, is what you try to hide, while you are concerned by the “rights” of the alleged “Jewish nation”.

And this is clear when, along the 6 pages of your document, for you the Palestinian people do not exist, you don’t even mention their long struggle for their national liberation, or talk about their current heroic revolution, or raise the necessity of fighting for their victory.
On the contrary, you speak to us - as we mentioned above - that you are for a "socialist revolution in Palestine" in general. I.e., You talk to us of a revolution that would not have any national character: for you, therefore, it is not crucial that the current Palestinian insurrection succeeds, that it destroys the State Zionist-fascist of Israel and imposes on its ruins a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian State of national character - democratic-revolutionary slogans that were the engine of the struggles of the Palestinian masses after 1948 in the same way that the fourth international raised in 1948 the struggle for a United and independent  Arab Palestine - which, of course, can only be achieved under a worker and peasant Government formed by the insurgent Palestinian masses.

You try to hide under the phrase of "socialist revolution in Palestine" generally speaking, to deny the national character of the Palestinian revolution. Therefore, and as we have already seen, you deny the program of the destruction of the State of Israel and the imposition of a secular, democratic and non- racist Palestine, a great structural anti imperialist task, that in Palestine, plays the same role that the struggle for national liberation in any semi-colonial or colonial country, in the same way as the slogan of "Black Republic" in the South Africa of Apartheid.
Thus, said Trotsky about the national character of the South African revolution: "in these conditions, the South African Republic will emerge first and foremost as a ' Black Republic ´;" of course this does not preclude the total equality to whites, or fraternal relations between both races; it will depend primarily on the conduct adopted by the whites, but it is obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from their slavish dependence, will make their mark in the State.
Since a victorious revolution will radically change not only the balance of power between the classes but also the relationship between races and ensure Blacks the place that corresponds to them in the State according to their number, in South Africa the social revolution will also have a national character". (Trotsky, op. cit. Our bolds)
Similarly, the social revolution in Palestine has a national character, since a victorious revolution, destroying the Zionist-fascist State of Israel, will ensure that the Palestinian workers and people--freed from their enslaving dependence - the place that corresponds to them in a Palestinian State of a national, secular, democratic and non-racist character, that includes the "full equality or fraternal relations" with the Jewish Christians, or of any religion, workers which mainly depends on the conduct that the latter adopt.
Of course, as we say in our BIOI N ° 1, Second Epoch, the slogans of destruction of the State of Israel, and imposition of a secular, democratic and non-racial Palestinian State must be raised as part of a '' program that articulates them along with the demands of the workers and the masses against poverty, unemployment and their unprecedented suffering, with the slogans that attacked the imperialist monopolies and the own bourgeoisie Palestinian private property, the development of worker councils and worker militias and the need for a worker and peasant government. If the masses are mobilized and are fighting for this program they will identify more and more the secular, democratic and non-racial Palestinian State with the workers Republic".
But, was said by Trotsky for South Africa, today in Palestine "(...) Setting aside or weakening the national slogans to not collide with the white chauvinists in the ranks of the working class - in this case, with the so-called " Jewish working-class in Israel" - would be, of course, a criminal opportunism.  The thesis posed admirably that “to those ' socialists´ struggling for the privileges of whites we have to point out them as the greatest enemies of the revolution" (our Bolds). You, comrade, unfortunately, today, before the Palestine revolution, have chosen, for now - and we believe because you are confused, and therefore we call you to reflection - the wrong trenches: you are located on the side of those "Socialist" who as Krivine, Altamira and his group in Israel, defend the privileges of the Zionists; i.e., you have placed in the trench of the greatest enemies of this great revolution.

The so-called "Israeli working class": an arrogant, privileged layer of Zionist labor aristocracy, allied to imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie and pillar of a fascist state.

We want to clarify, it was entirely deliberate from our part, that we put in our statements that the only working class that exists today in the Zionist-fascist State of Israel is the Palestinian working class: we knew that it was the only way to expose all the pro-Zionists who usurp the flags of the IV International - even to those who want to hide their capitulation to the Zionism generally speaking about the "destruction of the State of Israel" -they were going to hoot immediately in defense of the rights of the so-called "Israeli working class".
But then let’s see what the so-called “Israeli working class” is which you talked us about. The so-called "Jewish working class" of the Zionist -fascist State of Israel, is but a arrogant layer of privileged Zionist worker aristocrats, allied to imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie, bought and paid for with the super-profits which the Zionist bourgeoisie and monopolies imperialist obtain from the Super-exploitation of the Palestinian working class, and of the colonies and the semi-colonies, so they sustain and defend the State of Israel and its bourgeoisie so that it can fulfill its role of gendarme of imperialism in the region.
Your position of talking in general about a supposed "Israeli working class" denies Leninism from A to Z, since, as we the revolutionaries know, the working class is not a homogeneous class but the advent of the imperialist epoch produces the emergence of worker aristocracy and bureaucracy in the ranks of the proletariat. Thus, Lenin says:".. .the monopoly gives super-profits, i.e. an excess of earnings above the normal, usual, of capitalism around the world. Capitalists may spend part of those super-profits (and even a not small part) to corrupt their workers, creating something like an alliance "(...)" of workers from one country with its capitalists against other countries "(...)"on the one hand, the trend of the bourgeoisie and of opportunists the handful of richest, most privileged Nations, into eternal parasites on the body of the rest of humanity, to ‘sleep on their laurels' for the exploitation of blacks, Indians, etc., holding them subjects through modern militarism, equipped with a superb destructive technology. On the other hand, the tendency of the masses, which are more oppressed than before, that support all the sufferings of the imperialist wars; tendency to throw off their shoulders the yoke, to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The history of the labor movement will be developed now inevitably in the struggle between these two trends. Because the first trend is not a result of chance, but has an 'economic basis' "." (…) The most important thing is that it has matured and has been produced the economic separation of a sector of the labor aristocracy towards the bourgeoisie. This economic fact, this mutation in the relationship between classes find without special 'difficulty' one political way or another." (Lenin. “Imperialism and the split in socialism”). That economic fact found throughout the 20th century, its political expression in the emergence of the counter-revolutionary worker parties, first in social democracy, then in Stalinism, and also in the current centrists and opportunists that adapt to them, and in that way, to the labor aristocracy.
The Fictional creation to iron and fire of the Zionist-fascist State of Israel involved the buying off of that layer of Zionist privileged labor aristocrats, so that they acted together with the Zionist petty bourgeoisie as a shock force against the Palestinian proletariat.
. Therefore, the qualification we do of the Zionist State of Israel as "fascist" - on which calcification you do not pronounce or mention-is not a sentimental category, dictated by the horror of the massacres, genocide, the detention of Palestinians in ghettos and concentration camps, of their reduction to slavery and apartheid, but it is a scientific characterization: it is a State created artificially on the basis of the use - by part of the imperialist finance capital and the great Zionist bourgeoisie-, of the Zionist petty bourgeoisie (among it, the fascist Jewish settlers) and the labor aristocracy (organized in fascist trade unions such as the Histadrut) as a shock force to smash the Palestinian workers and people.
The so-called " Israeli working class " you are so hard defending, has nothing to envy to the white labor aristocracy in the South Africa of apartheid. León Trotsky well said:
"The proletariat of the country is formed by backward black pariahs, and by a privileged, arrogant, white caste. Here lies the main difficulty (...).The worst crime on the part of the revolutionaries would be to make the slightest concession to privileges and prejudices of whites. Who give even the little finger to the demon of chauvinism, is lost". (On the South African theses – to the South African section, April 20, 1935).
In the same way, there is today in Palestine a proletariat consisting of Palestinian pariahs reduced to slavery, and a privileged and arrogant breed of Zionist labor aristocracy bought off by imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie. In these circumstances, trumpeting the "unity" of the working class in general means making all the concessions to the privileges and prejudices of the Zionist labor aristocracy; it means not only giving the finger, but the entire arm to the demon of chauvinism, which, unfortunately, is what you are doing today with the position you hold in your document.

A policy for subordinating the revolutionary Palestinian working class and people to the Zionist labor aristocracy that supports the State of Israel, or a revolutionary program to foster the emergence of the soviets and the arming of the proletariat and to prepare the triumphant uprising of the Palestinian proletariat and people?

Of your document, Comrade - as we have quoted-, one could apparently infer that you support (although critically because it is not directed by a Bolshevik-Leninist-type party) the Palestinian revolution now underway.  But, as every serious revolutionary knows, it does not suffice to declaim the general support to a revolution: Trotskyists raise a revolutionary program and a strategy so the proletariat and the oppressed can carry her to victory.
And here is the most serious problem with you, comrade, since the entire '' program '' that you up against this great revolution is limited to the generality of "socialist revolution in Palestine, destruction of the Zionist Israel State and unity of the Palestinian workers with the Jews".  This is not serious, Comrade! Tell us when, in front of what revolution, Trotsky and the Fourth International were limited to raise such caricature of "revolutionary program"! It is you who has to show us that Trotskyism intervened with an "agenda" of "socialist revolution and unity" in general in the Chinese revolution of 1925-27, in the Spanish revolution of 1931-36, in the French Revolution, in Germany, etc.!
It is crystal clear that, as we will not tire of repeating, the Palestinian revolution - as any great revolution - divides waters, since what defines if one is a revolutionary or not, is the program that one rises for the same.
Against your caricature of a "revolutionary program", principled Trotskyists of the COTP (CI) have written that in Palestine the workers and the people have started a revolution which we have defined as of a "February": type; that is, a revolutionary spontaneous and immature insurrection of the masses who, going beyond the will of their leaderships, shook and broke the institutions and mechanisms of coercion (the State of Israel and its army, the own ANP and its Palestinian police); though, not having an organized plan, without clear objectives, and without a revolutionary leadership at their head, the masses failed to take power; although they did constitute their own power in the Palestinian towns and refugee camps, which is the power of the armed masses that control them with their militias, establishing a situation of dual power. "In the autonomous territories the revolutionary legality collides with the political and constitutional legality", even a daily bourgeois imperialist as Le Monde is forced to recognize (Le Monde Diplomatique, Spanish Edition, March, 2001).
Therefore, so that the Palestinian workers and people can carry until the end, to its triumph, this great revolution, the key policy and program of the revolutionaries should be the fight for promoting and extending the bodies of dual power, of direct democracy of the masses, and their armament. The key is to strive to strengthen that double power with worker and peasant committees in the towns and camps – real soviets-, to extend and strengthen the militias of the refugee camps, transforming them into true working-class militia, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and also in Lebanon and Jordan, where the majority of the Palestinian people currently live.
This is the way to carry to its successful end the revolution that they have begun to conquer their independence by expelling the invaders, recover their lands, their houses, put an end to the massacres, unemployment, misery and famine, i.e. the preparation of a conscious and organized insurrection that destroy the Zionist -fascist State of Israel and impose a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian State under a worker and peasant Government of the insurgent self organized and armed Palestinian masses; in order to attain that they need to their head  is a revolutionary fourth-internationalist party that confronts and fights the nationalist bourgeois leaderships as Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.

But your caricature of a program, comrade, does not say a word of the fight for the soviets. We are with Leon Trotsky, which raised clearly that whoever in front of the beginning of a revolution did not put at the Centre of his program the fight for the soviets and the arming of the proletariat, is a traitor to the interests of the working class! All nationalist bourgeois leaderships that the Palestinian masses have at their head, are declared enemies of the dual power of self-organization of the Palestinian masses, are against the masses’ carrying until the end the revolution that they have started, since this would mean not only the destruction of the State of Israel, the expropriation the Zionist bourgeoisie and the imperialist monopolies, but also the attack on the property of the own Palestinian bourgeoisie and a threat to the Arab bourgeoisie in the region. The self-organization of the masses and their armament has also another staunch enemy - of course! - Zionism, and also that privileged caste of Zionist labor aristocrats that you call "Jewish working class" and to which you call the Palestinian working class and people to subordinate themselves.
There is not in its caricature of "program" either the struggle for the arming of the Palestinian proletariat, comrade, when the Palestinian workers and people have already armed - raiding Palestinian police stations, stealing the weapons from the Israeli army itself-, and they have established a de facto dual power with the militias in the camps. The only thing that prevents today the masses from using the weapons that already have and set up true workers and farmers militia to prepare for the insurgency, is the bourgeois nationalist leaderships of Fatah, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc., which want to keep forcing the masses to fight with stones against the fifth most powerful army of the world, armed and financed by imperialism. While they use the method of individual terrorism as a mechanism of pressure and blackmail so the Arab bourgeoisie, the sheikhs and the ayatollahs - exploiters and oppressors of the working class and the Arab peoples - can better bargain their share of oil rent with imperialism.
Therefore, to confront those bourgeois nationalist leaderships, to expose them to the eyes of the Palestinian workers and masses, it is necessary to fight for the disbanding and disarmament of the Palestinian police - armed branch of Arafat and the Arabic bourgeoisie - and for the confiscation of their weapons in favor of the militias in the camps; it is necessary to fight for those militias in camps to become true working-class and peasant militias. To every militiaman of Fatah's, Tanzim, Hamas, Hezbollah it must be asked, if he says to support the revolution and fight for its victory, if he says to fight for the destruction of the State of Israel: put yourself immediately to the service of extending and organizing worker militias in the Palestinian cities and camps, subordinating and disciplining under the workers and peasants self-organization bodies. Thus, if they refuse to do so, it will become clear in the eyes of the masses that they are at the service of the Palestinian national bourgeoisie, which in its turn is an accomplice of the State of Israel, and the masses will soon ask for them the fate that the collaborators deserve.
The key then facing the Palestinian revolution, is to raise a revolutionary program to foster the emergence of the soviets and the arming of the proletariat, struggling within the organizations of direct democracy of the masses for defeating the bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalist leaderships trying to prevent the masses from advancing along this path, and to win the leadership of the working class and the masses to prepare the insurrection which destroy the State of Israel and to impose a secular, democratic and non racist Palestinian State under a worker and peasant Government of the insurgent Palestinian masses, based on their self-organization and armament, in the way towards the conquest of a Federation of worker-Peasant Republics   in Middle East.
And you, comrade, who said to support the revolution underway, says nothing about all this, while raises a caricature of program and is limited to consider, once and again, the need for the "unity of the Palestinian workers with the Jewish workers".
At this point, it is necessary to say it clearly: the so-called "unit of the Jewish working-class with the Palestinian workers" which you speak of to us, is not any other thing than the total and complete subordination of the insurgent Palestinian working class and people to that arrogant caste of privileged Zionist labor aristocrats defenders of imperialism, their Zionist bourgeoisie and its State, the policeman of imperialism in Middle East.
And this is so, because to realize the 'unity' that you cry for, there's a condition: that the Palestinian working class and people renounce their historic struggle for independence, for the destruction of the State of Israel, for a secular, democratic and non-racial Palestinian State and for a worker and peasant government of the Palestinian masses, and recognize the "right to self-determination" of the so-called "Jewish nation", its "right" to usurp the Palestinian territory, i.e. to recognize the State of Israel. This is the same position of Arafat and the PLO, Zionism and imperialism; the same position which was the basis for the imposition of the counter-revolutionary Oslo accords against which the Palestinian masses irrupted and with its revolution, have blown up into the air!
The principled Trotskyists’ position is opposed by the vertex to yours, and is continuity to which was raised by León Trotsky for South Africa during the 1930s: "the Revolutionary Party has to make consider every white worker the following alternative: or with British imperialism and the white bourgeoisie of South Africa, or with the black workers and farmers against the white slavers and feudal lords and their agents in the ranks of the working class".
In the same way, today, in Palestine, , there is a single "right" that we principled Trotskyists of the COTP recognize that arrogant caste of Zionist labor aristocrats: to immediately go over with weapons and baggage to the ranks of the Palestinian working class and people, to go to the ghettos and concentration camps of Gaza and the West Bank to fight in the the first line of combat to shoot against their “own” Zionist bourgeoisie, to fight and die for the destruction of the Zionist fascist State of Israel, for the victory of the Palestinian uprising, the independence of Palestine and for a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian State, under a worker and peasant Government of the Palestinian rebel masses. It's the only revolutionary form of raising the unity! Only thus the unity would be possible, only thus the Jewish workers and young Jews who embrace the cause of the Palestinian revolution will find their place in the worker and peasant committees and worker militias!
Your vision, comrade, is a fully pacifist position, which denies that revolution means a civil war not only against the bourgeoisie, but to the interior of the proletariat itself, against the labor aristocracy and the bureaucracy, agents of the bourgeoisie within the labor movement.
So the 3rd International said it: "one of the greatest obstacles to the revolutionary workers movement in the developed capitalist countries derives from the fact that, thanks to the colonial possessions and to capital gains (plus value) obtained by financial capital, the bourgeoisie has been able to create a small relatively important and stable labor aristocracy.  This benefits from getting better remuneration and therefore has a narrow corporate spirit, capitalist and petty bourgeois prejudices. It constitutes the true social support of the Second International, the reformists and ´centrists´ and at the current time, the main point of support of the bourgeoisie within the labor movement. It cannot exist a previous preparation of the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie without a direct, systematic, prolonged, declared, open fight against that small minority who will, without a doubt, (as experience has shown), give many of its members to the white guard of the bourgeoisie after the victory of the proletariat". (The major tasks of the Communist International, July 1920).
By this, the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian working class and people for the destruction of the Zionist -fascist State of Israel, for setting up soviets and workers militias and prepare the insurgency includes a " direct, systematic, prolonged, declared, open fight," a true civil war also against the labor aristocracy and that fascist labor bureaucracy of the Histadrut, which has given many of its members to the white guard of the Zionist bourgeoisie of the State of Israel and imperialism, whose "rights" you defend so hard and to whom you call the vast majority of pariahs without rights who are workers and exploited Palestinians to subordinate themselves.
You so deny one of the central tasks of the proletariat towards the victory of the Socialist Revolution: the defeat of the labor aristocracy and the bureaucracy.  In fact you renege the transitional program that includes as part of the program for the political revolution in the USSR that "it is necessary to expel from the soviets the labor aristocracy and the bureaucracy". Trotsky thus responded to the objections of a militant to that slogan in a letter:
"My correspondent - as I said - considers that the criteria regarding the bureaucracy and the aristocracy are incorrect, ´misrepresented´, which leads to the exclusion a priori of tens of millions" (in the case of the so-called " Israeli working class ", according to your vision, our position leads to excluding a priori hundreds of thousands of "Jewish workers"). "Precisely therein lies the central mistake of the author of the letter. It is not a matter of a constitutional ´definition´ that is applied on the basis of permanent legal qualifications, but actual self-identification of the camps in fight. The soviets can only arise in the course of a decisive fight. They are created by layers of workers who are drawn into the movement. The importance of the soviets consists precisely in the fact that its composition is determined not by formal criteria, but by the dynamics of the class struggle.
Certain layers of the Soviet ´aristocracy´ dither between the revolutionary workers and the camp of bureaucracy. That these layers come into the soviets and on what stage, will depend on the general development of the struggle and the attitude adopted by the different groups of the Soviet aristocracy in this fight. Those elements of the bureaucracy and the aristocracy which, in the course of the revolution, go over to the side of the insurrectionists, will also undoubtedly find a place in the soviets. But this time not as bureaucrats and ´aristocrats´, but as participants in the uprising against the bureaucracy"(Talks about the transitional program, "It is necessary to expel from the soviets the bureaucracy and the aristocracy" July 4, 1938).
In the same way, and taking care of not stretching the analogy too much, today in Palestine You cannot speak of the 'union of the proletarians' of any nationality in general, as you do to try to hide your defense of the privileges of the Zionist labor aristocracy; but the only possibility of unity between the Palestinian proletariat and the exploited who are starring in the revolution, and any sector of the Zionist labor aristocracy, will depend on "real self-definition of the camps in the fight" and the attitude taken by the latter with respect to the revolution. Those elements that, in the course of the revolution, go over the side of the insurgents - the Palestinian working class and people – will find a place in combat and the soviets and militias not as Zionist labor aristocrats but as participants of the Palestinian insurrection for the destruction of the State of Israel. Contrariwise, those who are defending imperialism and the Zionist -fascist State, should be treated without any contemplation as enemies of the Palestinian proletariat and people.
You say you "support" the revolution of the Palestinian workers and people, but in your document the word "insurrection" does not appear, or the need to prepare it consciously. Today, when imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie with Sharon at their head have released a Kornilovist attempt to crush the Palestinian revolution, with the entry of Israeli tanks and bulldozers to the Palestinian camps, with the recurrent bombings, when Palestinian militias in the camps are facing them, and the open civil war has thus begun, to continue talking about the "unity of Palestinian and Jewish workers in general", as you do, amounts to a betrayal. In the civil war trenches are clear: the only road that has any worker or young Jew who wants to support the Palestinian revolution today is the deserting the Zionist field, going over to the Palestinian camps, joining the militia and fighting against the State of Israel and its army, for its destruction and the victory of the Palestinian insurrection.
And the same is true for you, Comrade. In front of the civil war, your time has finished: either you, now locate unconditionally in the trenches of the Palestinian workers and people, or remain in the other trench, that of the mortal enemies of the revolution, and then, what up to here may have been, for your part, a product of confusion, of the infection of the capitulations of opportunism to Zionism, due to fifty years of crisis and degeneration of the Fourth International will be transformed into an open and conscientious betrayal to the historical interests of the world proletariat, i.e. in your own "crossing of the Rubicon".

A POSITION THAT DENIES THAT THE ARGENTINE REVOLUTION TODAY IS THE VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE OF ALL ARAB MASSES AGAINST THE FASCIST ZIONIST STATE OF ISRAEL AND IS REFUSING TO FIGHT FOR THE UNITY OF THE ARAB MASSES IN A SINGLE REVOLUTION AGAINST IMPERIALISM, THE STATE OF ISRAEL AND THE ARAB BOURGEOISIES

As we have already said, you speak of a Palestinian "socialist revolution" in general, denying the national character of the Palestinian revolution, denying the democratic-revolutionary tasks that are its engine, etc., and are going over and over to advocate for the "union of the Palestinian workers with the Jewish ones".
But you do not say a word about - and this is a scandal of capitulation to Zionism, to imperialism and to the exploitative and oppressive Arab national bourgeoisies- that the first great task now facing the Palestinian revolution is the fight for the unity of the Palestinian workers and people, with all the exploited masses in the Arab Nations; since their revolution is part and parcel of a same revolution of all the Arab masses against imperialism and its gendarme in the Middle East, and against the lackey national bourgeoisies and junior partners under imperialism in the exploitation and plundering of their own peoples. How can anybody today write 6 full pages on the national issue in the Middle East and not to mention this! How can you claim to "support" the current revolution of the Palestinian people without putting this question in the center of the revolutionary program, without throwing the rallying cry of "one Arab nation, a single revolution!"!!
You deny, in an effort to defend the rights of so-called "Jewish nation" and its alleged "working-class" the internationalist character of the Palestinian revolution. It is a fully “national-Trotskyist” position (and therefore completely anti Trotskyist) which denies that the State of Israel is an enclave of imperialism which has the role to act as its policeman not only against the Palestinian people but against the whole of the Arab peoples, that denies that the creation of that State was a terrible counter-revolutionary coup not only against the Palestinian people but against the whole of the exploited and oppressed masses of the Arab Nations. It is a position that denies that this so-called “Jewish working class " of whom you speak, that arrogant and privileged caste of Zionist labor aristocracy, is that not only in relation to the super exploited and enslaved Palestinian working class but it is also that in relation to the whole of the working-class of all the Arab semi colonial nations.
The fight for the destruction of the State of Israel and the expulsion of imperialist troops from the region, is a revolutionary and anti-imperialist democratic task motorizing since fifty years ago not only the struggle of the Palestinian workers and people - both in the occupied Palestinian territory as in the refugee camps, in Jordan and Lebanon, where today the majority of the Palestinian people concentrates but of the working class and the exploited of all the Arab Nations, from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc.
And you speak of "socialist revolution in Palestine in general", and of the "union of Palestinian workers with the Jewish ones"! Now, Comrade, you are a thousand kilometers behind the Iraqi masses that in their million signed up as volunteers to go to fight to Palestine; of the Yemeni, Egyptian, etc. masses, that by hundreds of thousands and millions mobilized in support of the Palestinian revolution.
And today, when it has already started the civil war in Palestine, when few weeks ago the us-uk imperialist butchers returned to bomb the Iraqi people, when imperialism and Zionism are preparing to drown in blood the Palestinian revolution, when the militias in the camps are facing daily the Israeli assassin army, you, as we have shown, not only do not say a word on the need for the soviets and the widespread arming of the Palestinian workers and people, but will not fight for the unity of the same with the whole of the Arab masses.
When it is urgent to strive to put up real worker militias, not only in the camps within the occupied Palestinian territory, but also in Lebanon, from where the Israeli army had to flee humiliated and where today the South of that country is under the control of the Palestinian militias; the same as Jordan where Palestinians are 40% of the population; when it has come the time to call workers organizations - and especially now when the open civil war has begun - to take into their hands and endorse the will of the Arab masses to go and combat in Palestinian territory already organizing international worker militias, you shut up your mouth and devotes yourself to preach... "the union of Palestinian workers with the Jewish ones".

In this way, you get not only to the feet of Zionism and of imperialism, but also to the feet of Arafat and the Arab bourgeoisies of the region, all of them sustaining Clinton’s plan, and which fear rather than the plague the possibility that the revolution of the Palestinian workers and people and the civil war that has begun could turn into a revolutionary war setting the Arab masses against imperialism and Zionism, and against their own exploitative Arab bourgeoisie.

 
Your complete capitulation is clear before your absolute silence on the fact that the prerequisite for the unity of the Arab masses against imperialism and the Zionist -fascist State of Israel is their rupture with the exploitative Arab national bourgeoisies, junior partners of imperialism and accomplices of the Zionist State. You refuse to fight for the working class and the exploited from Egypt, Iraq. Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and all Arab Nations -in the way of their revolutionary struggle for the destruction of the Zionist -fascist State of Israel, for the expulsion of imperialism, for the conquest of a secular, democratic and non-racial Palestinian State under a worker and peasant Government of the insurgent Palestinian masses- overthrow their own national bourgeoisies, establish, workers and peasants government, in the way of a Federation of Worker-Peasant Republics in Middle East.
And you want that the Palestinian masses and Arab masses renounce all this... not to injure the 'right to national self-determination" of the so-called "Jewish nation!"

Comrade, at this point, it is clear that with the position that you raise, you aren't for the triumph of the ongoing Palestinian revolution; on the contrary, you are enemy of this great revolution. And if this position is the product of misunderstanding, product of the infection of opportunism that has led to the degeneration to the Fourth International, reviewing and destroying its theory, its strategy and its program, driving it into a crisis that is already almost half a century old, we want to with this hard but fraternal debate, help you understand up to where is your position carrying you: the total and absolute surrender to Zionism, imperialism and the Middle East servile national bourgeoisies. We hope that this debate will contribute to your revising your position - as soon as you can, since the start of the open civil war already gives you no more time-, and going over to the right trench, to the side of the revolutionary program of principled Trotskyism.

ALTAMIRAITES, MORENOITES, MANDELITES, AND ALL THE OTHER REVISIONISTS AND OPPORTUNISTS: HANDS OFF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL AND THE HEROIC PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

You say in your document: "it is distressing that all this occurs in a Trotskyist current holding that it defends the principled Trotskyism. Others are at least more honest, they say: "we are Morenoites", or "we are Posadaites", and at least take (via their "guru") their responsibility. But you make responsible León Trotsky and Abraham Leon." This position of yours is a big lie, and a whitewash –one as since long time we did not see- to any Morenoite, Mandelite, Altamiraist - i.e., opportunists and revisionists usurpers of the flags of the fourth International is at large all over the world: all of them, the reverse of what you say , claim to be "Trotskyists", they speak in the name of Trotskyism and the Fourth International ("re-founded", "rebuilt", etc.), and try to hide behind the Trotkskyist and fourth Internationalist undefiled flags more and more nasty betrayals and capitulations to, as in the case of the Palestinian revolution, Zionism and imperialism. Unfortunately, today you, with your position against the Palestinian revolution, have begun to walk in the same footsteps.
It is very clear that, as any great revolution, the Palestinian revolution has the virtue of clearing the dust, clean the scene, divide waters and show who is who among those who speak on behalf of the Fourth International and Trotskyism on the planet. It shows clearly that Alain Krivine and the LCR; the legislator Altamira, PO and his mimicking of two and a half international; the PTS in Argentina talking - as you - of the "right to self-determination" in general; others seeking more eccentric arguments as the talk of the "unity" between the "Hebraic-speaking" and "Arab-speaking" to try to get into through the window the same policy of "unity with the Israeli working class"; all have the same position: they have aligned themselves with Zionism in the defense of the State of Israel and the imperialist plan of "two States" against the heroic revolution of the Palestinian workers and people for their independence, for the destruction of the Zionist -fascist State of Israel, to squeeze out imperialism and conquer a Palestinian State that is secular, democratic and non-racist under a worker and peasant Government of the insurgent Palestinian masses, as a step in the direction of a Federation of Worker And Peasant Republics in Middle East.

Your position, comrade, as we have shown, absolutely breaks with the Theory-program of the Permanent Revolution, with the revolutionary resolutions of the Fourth International in 1948 - before the Pabloite and centrist cancer popped-; it breaks with the Leninist theory on imperialism and also breaks with Abraham Leon. In short, it doesn’t leave stone on stone of revolutionary Marxism, and puts it, unfortunately, beside Krivine and Altamira, at the foot of Zionism.

It is clear, faced with this situation, the agreements of principles that we had begun to achieve around the fight against imitations of “two and a half” internationals, against parliamentary cretinism and the task of the struggle for the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary forms in the former - workers States in liquidation, are today fully under question; because not only the revolutionary resolutions are the guarantee to select who will not betray the proletariat in the time of storm - as we said, quoting Lenin, in our fight in common against Altamira and its two and a half international -, but, and fundamentally, it is the Revolution itself, against which the theories, programs and also the quality of the revolutionaries are tested today; a true revolution defines and separates, black and white, centrists and opportunistic traitors from revolutionaries. Therefore our struggle today is for an international grouping of all those who, claiming of Trotskyism, raise a revolutionary program for the great Palestinian revolution - beyond the current or historical differences we have on other grounds-to hit as a single fist in the world by the triumph of the same, and to prevent that the clean banners of the Fourth International are mixed in the disgusting betrayals of the Krivines the Altamiras and all the opportunistic lackeys of Zionism and Clinton’s plan, an issue that is one of life and death for the Fourth International.
We believe, comrade that, unfortunately, in the last year that has passed since we gave together a very correct fight against the “two and a half international” of Altamira and the PO, you opted to not go until the end in the fight for the international grouping of the principled Trotskyism, but on the contrary, maintaining your "independence" to be courted from all over the world, not assuming any categorical commitment to the revolutionary strategy and program.

Unfortunately, we believe that it is beginning to act on you the same law acting in the last ten years over the resistant groups that were trying to resist the more right-wing aspects and the exacerbated revisionism of the centrist currents usurping Trotskyism which they came from and which exploded in the heat of the events of 1989. That is, it is acting on you the law marking that these scattered and isolated resistant groups that initially tend to go to the left, unless they advance until the end the path of principled Trotskyism, of the struggle for an international grouping of the same and combat for the regeneration and re-foundation of the Fourth International, they end up returning to turn right and degenerating themselves. This is the danger that now hangs over you, comrade. This tough debate and discussion is part of our hard fight to prevent it.

Today, in the context of the worsening of the global situation, the trend towards a more open confrontation between revolution and counter-revolution, you are in front a real crossroads, an alternative of iron: either you continue  prioritizing your "independence" (which, ultimately, is nothing more than to have "permission" to be "independent"... of revolutionary Marxism), dedicating yourself to take a little of each suitor to "partner" of those who woo you and ending, like today facing the great Palestinian revolution, again in the swamp of Altamiraism, Morenoism, or any other opportunistic or centrist variant, at the foot of Zionism, the treacherous leaderships and bourgeois regimes, or you enter decidedly the active and relentless struggle  against revisionism and opportunism of all kinds for an international regrouping of principled Trotskyism which let face the former centrally and as a single fist in the world, as a step in the path towards the regeneration and the re-foundation of the Fourth International on a principled basis.           

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Annex:

Hands off Abraham Leon!
In defense of his revolutionary writings about the “Jewish question”!

You are in your right of disagreeing with our position, you are even in your right to raise the scandalously pro-Zionist position that you rise. What you have no right to is of falsifying the positions of Abraham Leon to make him say the opposite of what he says, and in that way try to make Abraham Leon look like someone whose ideas go in defense of your own capitulating positions to the Zionism and imperialism!!!

Confusion and a first fragrant falsification
In your letter, you state: “Abraham Leon refers to the internal migration of the Jewish in Poland, from the small towns or villages to the great cities; besides, A. Leon writes, evidently, before the proclamation of the Zionist State. Nevertheless, the same can be said of the (Zionist) Jews that immigrated in the XX century in Palestine (Israel). They began to differentiate socially. That is, a Jewish proletariat would be created in Israel, something that you even deny to exist. You deny the existence of a Jewish proletariat in Israel. The almost massive emigration of the Jewish to a great city as Jerusalem, won’t it entail any kind of social differentiation? Everyone dedicates him/herself to the same activity? It is ridiculous”.

We believe that this affirmation is in part of a great confusion of yours, of your misunderstanding –as we have already explained in our answer- of the genesis and role of the Zionist Fascist State of Israel. Abraham Leon, when he spoke of “social differentiation of the people-class”, meant the emergence of a strip of the Jewish proletariat in the countries of Eastern Europe, in Russia and United States, and to the emigration of the Jewish masses to the cities seeking a place in the production under the impulse of the intrinsic laws of capitalism that permanently creates an industrial army reservoir. Instead, the “emigration” of the Jewish to Palestine, wasn’t because of the typical laws of capitalism: they were carried there by the Zionist bourgeoisie and imperialism as a part of the conscious counterrevolutionary politics of occupying Palestine, of the expulsion of the Palestine workers and people and the creation of an artificial Zionist-Fascist State of Israel as an enclave and gendarme of imperialism. Besides, Abraham Leon could have never referred to a supposed “Israeli Jewish proletariat”, because in 1942, the date when he wrote his work, the open Zionist and imperialist occupation of Palestine hadn’t already happened, and therefore there was no Zionist-Fascist State of Israel.

Up until here we can talk about a confusion of yours, of an abusive and irresponsible use of the revolutionary writings of Abraham Leon. But, comrade, you go even further. You carry on saying “You refuse raising the slogan of the gathering together of the Arab and Jewish workers of Middle East and you accuse to anyone that even only recognize the existence of a Jewish proletariat to capitulate to Zionism. And at the same time, you state that your position derivates from Abraham Leon’s book. Abraham Leon was of a different opinion: `And tomorrow, when national barriers and prejudices begin to disappear in Palestine, who can doubt that a fruitful reconciliation will take place between the Arab and the Jewish workers, the result of which will be their partial or total fusion?´ (page 173, your bolds)”. And of this affirmation of A. Leon, made 6 years before the creation of the State of Israel, when Palestine was a British colony, you infer: “Abraham Leon was for the union of the Palestinian and Jewish workers in the (then) future Zionist State” (our bolds).

This is already a scandalous and absolute falsification of Abraham Leon, which we ask you to immediately withdraw. In the quotation of Abraham Leon that you transcript, he meant the future union of the Arab workers –in a Palestine under British colonial domination- with the Jewish workers minority in a common revolutionary fight against British colonialism, for the independence of Palestine as an Arab nation. He never at all refer to a “future Zionist State”, because as he himself makes clear, he saw that its instauration was very unlikely to occur. “A relative success for Zionism, cannot, naturally, be excluded along the lines of creating a Jewish majority in Palestine and even of the formation of a “Jewish state,” that is to say, a state placed under the complete domination of English or American imperialism,. (…) Even supposing that the Zionist dream is realized and the “centennial injustice” is undone –and we are still very far from that- the situation of Judaism throughout the world will in no way be modified by that.” (p.164). That is, Abraham Leon, barely 6 years before the creation of the State of Israel, saw that as a remote possibility, and he bet on that the proletarian revolution in Palestine for its national independency, against British imperialism and the attempts of the Zionist bourgeoisie to creating a “Jewish State”, would conquer the union of the Palestinian working class with the Jewish workers minority, and solve the problem with the victory of the proletariat revolution and the instauration of the proletariat dictatorship.
Again, comrade: Where did you read that Abraham Leon “was for the union of the Palestinian workers with the Jewish workers in the (then) future Zionist State”? We ask you once again that you withdraw that flagrant falsification!

Second falsification

Your polemic starts from stating that we keep holding that today, in the 20th century, the Jewish are still a people-class; that –contrariwise to what Abraham Leon stated-, we don’t see that the advent of capitalism destroyed the pre-capitalist material conditions that allowed it’s subsistence as such for 2000 years and that, while denying the process of social differentiation that it started to suffer, we therefore deny the existence of a Jewish proletariat in general.
It is your turn to show even one quotation from all we have written in which we state that. For us, it is clear that capitalism, by liquidating the pre-capitalist relationships of production, produced a process of social differentiation inside the old people-class. As Abraham Leon brilliantly explains, in the 21st century (mainly in the second half), the old people-class starts to differ socially: a Jewish bourgeoisie arises that, in Western Europe, tends to assimilate quickly, and also a Jewish proletariat arises (mainly in Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe, being even in Poland at the beginning of the 20th century the 25% of the working class) that tends to the unity with the non-Jewish proletariat in a common fight against the bourgeoisie and that nurtures the ranks of the revolutionary movement. But Abraham Leon also says that the advent of the imperialist stage interrupts this tendency to assimilation –because imperialism, that is reaction all along the line, can’t carry to the end any of its tendencies- and creates the so-called “Jewish question” in the 20th century, that is, the drama of huge Jewish masses that find no place in production, and that roam along the world emigrating in mass, which explains the arising of modern anti-Semitism and gives the base to the arising of Zionism –the “return” to Palestine- first as a Jewish petit-bourgeois ideology that is then used by the Zionist bourgeoisie and British imperialism, and later by the US one.
Though you, comrade, end up polemicizing with a false position, constructed by you, to try to hide that what you are falsifying is Abraham Leon’s position. So you try to make Abraham Leon say –someone who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942, six years before the creation of the State of Israel - that today in Israel there would be, a “Jewish proletariat”!!! You say, quoting Abraham Leon: “Here we come upon a new and important fact: for the first time in centuries a Jewish proletariat was born. The people-class began to differentiate socially”. And you add: “what contradicts the theses, supposedly Marxist of the LOI, that in Israel… there is no Jewish proletariat!”
The discussion established with you is about the existence of the supposed “Jewish working class” of the Zionist-Fascist State of Israel, and not about the existence or not of a Jewish proletariat in general, especially in the countries of the Eastern Europe and in Russia, where great strips of Jewish proletariat existed and still exist. Abraham Leon must be rolling over within his grave, while seeing that today, more than fifty years after his death, someone tries to use his great revolutionary work –a jewel of historical materialism-; the work of a Trotskyist that was born in the Warsaw ghetto and died in a Nazi concentration camp; to rise a position that justifies the Zionist-Fascist State of Israel and the privileged strip of Zionist labor aristocrats that support it; a state that since half a century to the day keeps the Palestinian workers and people in true ghettos and concentration camps under a terror regime that has nothing to envy to the one imposed by Hitler against the Jewish and non-Jewish masses in Germany and Eastern Europe!

Third falsification

You say: “A. Leon stated clearly that, due to the Diaspora, it is more accurate to speak about Jewish nationalities and not in singular. The occupation of Palestine by the Zionist will create, A. Leon said, a new Jewish nationality, different to the rest of them (Sephardic, Ashkenazi, from United States, from Argentina, etc.)”.
This is already a complete lie: Can you show us where, in what page, A. Leon says what you are trying to make him say?
What Abraham Leon says and you deny is:

 “Well then—neither assimilation nor Zionism? No solution at all? No, there is no solution to the Jewish question under capitalism, just as there is no solution to the other problems posed before humanity—without profound social upheavals. The same causes which make the emancipation of the Jews an illusion also make the realization of Zionism impossible. Unless the profound causes for the Jewish question are eliminated, the effects cannot be eliminated”. And further “Thus life itself demonstrates that the problem which so bitterly divides Judaism—assimilation or territorial concentration—is a fundamental problem only to petty-bourgeois dreamers. The Jewish masses want simply an end to their martyrdom. Socialism alone can give it to them. But socialism must also give the Jews, as it will to all peoples, the possibility of assimilation as well as the possibility of having a special national life.” (…)
“In the sphere of nationality, only socialism can bring the widest democracy. It must provide the Jews with the opportunity of living a national existence in every country they inhabit; it must also give them the opportunity of concentrating in one or more territories, naturally without injuring the interests of the native inhabitants. Only the widest proletarian democracy will make possible the resolution of the Jewish problem with a minimum of suffering.”
You are openly falsifying Abraham Leon. He says that only socialism will be able to solve the Jewish question, stating to the Jewish masses every single alternative –assimilation, autonomy or even a territory for their own- and in that sense it can be said that socialism will be able to create new nations. This is what Abraham Leon says: “It is not excluded that new nations, fanned by the fusion or even the dispersion of nations now existing, will be created. However it may be, socialism must limit itself in this sphere to `letting nature take its course.´”
Though as we have already explained, all this that A. Leon says will be a task of socialism would’ve already been achieved according to you, completely and effectively by imperialism with the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine. Here it is the full demonstration, if any doubt lasted at all, that you break with revolutionary Marxism of the 20th century to grant capitalism a progressive and redeeming role in its imperialist stage, of decadence and agony of capital, and of reaction all along the line!
You distort Abraham Leon’s ideas trying to make him say the opposite to what he effectively says: you want to make him state that the creation with fire and iron of the Zionist-Fascist State of Israel by imperialism, concentrating a few million of Jews in the territory usurped to the Palestinians, would have given origin to a new “Jewish nation” that –as we have already unmasked in the main article-, would be for you a legitimate nation with a legitimate right to self-determination and existence over the lands robbed to the Palestinians. You want to make Abraham Leon, mortal enemy of Zionism and Imperialism, kneel today before them alongside you!
Hands off Abraham Leon, you defendants of Zionism!