Birth of the Zionist State - Marxist Analysis (Workers Vanguard) 1973

Audio Mp3 (1:04:44 min) https://xenagoguevicene.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/wv1973.mp3 Only with the world historic defeat of the German proletariat in 1933 was Zionism transformed into a mass movement. Prior to 1933 Zionism was a tiny sect of petty-bourgeois Jewish intellectuals who were emancipated but not assimilated. The Jews of the Eastern European ghettos, if they identified with any political movement at all, were either Communists or members of the Bund, an anti-Zionist Jewish socialist group with Menshevik policies.

At the end of World War I there were 60,000 Jews in Palestine, many of these living in ancient orthodox communities which were hostile to political Zionism, and 644,000 Arabs of whom 574,000 were Moslem and 70,000 Christian. In order to encourage an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, Britain armed and equipped Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, to wage “Holy War” on the Turks. The Levant was carved up in the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty (1916) between Britain, France and tsarist Russia, a treaty which was made public only by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. This treaty gave Lebanon and Syria to France, while Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq went to the British. (cont. https://xenagoguevicene.wordpress.com/2021/07/03/the-birth-of-the-zionist-state-a-marxist-analysis-workers-vanguard-nov-1973/ )