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Tikva Honig-Parnass

The United Secretariat of the Fourth International, its Israeli


Section, and their Perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian 'Conflict'

Introduction
What is this document about and why is it important
I took on myself a rather strange task: to review the history of the Revolutionary
Communist League (RCL), Israeli section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International, although Michael Warschawski (Mikado), its founder and leader, ignores the
fact that it ever existed and the United Secretariat of the Fourth International never
criticized him. I refer mainly to the omission of the RCL in his autobiographical book, first
published in French: Sur la frontier (Editions Stock, 2002), and translated to English in 2005
with the title On the Border (Pluto Books/South End Press). I strongly endorse the review
of the book by Moshe Machover, a founder and leader of the ISO (Matzpen- later renamed
Socialist Organization in Israel - SOI) of which Mikado was a member prior to his split from
it.1
The RCL was active in Israel from 1972 to 1994. I joined it in the mid-80s and was an active
member till its end. However, in his autobiographical book Mikado presents himself as a
member of the Israeli Socialist Organization (ISO), better known by the name of its journal,
Matzpen (Compass) till its demise. Twelve years later, in 2005, International Viewpoint, the
magazine of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (henceforth IVP) published
an interview with him by Wilno, who repeats Mikado's disregard of the RCL (see below).
The ISO was founded in 1962 by 4 persons, Oded Pilavsky, Irmiyahu Kaplan, the late Akiva
Orr and Moshe Machover. In his autobiography, Mikado speaks on behalf of the ISO
without mentioning the fact that he joined it in 1968 and split from it in 1972, when he
founded the RCL as the section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. As
Moshe Machover emphasizes in his well-based criticism of Mikado's book: "The splinter
group led by Mikado, the Jerusalem-based Revolutionary Communist League, claimed the
name Matzpen for themselves and published their own rival journal, Marxist Matzpen.

1 For a sharp criticism of Mikado's book, including his misleading description of the ISO - the Israeli socialist
Organization (Matzpen), see Moshe Machover "A Peace Activist on the Border" in Israelis and Palestinians:
Conflict and Resolution: Essays by Moshe Machover, Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2012, pp. 249-257.

Thereafter, the RCL was usually referred to in Israel as Matzpen Jerusalem, while the
original group, the ISO, was referred to as Matzpen Tel-Aviv"2 (see below the details of
the split and Mikado's untrue presentation of the ISO-Matzpen).
On the other hand, Mikado speaks about the Alternative Information Center (AIC) as his
life enterprise. However, since he does not mention the split from the ISO (Matzpen), the
reader gets the impression that he founded the Center while being a member of the ISO.
In fact the ISO (Matzpen) had no connection whatsoever to the foundation of the AIC or to
its activities. It was the RCL which decided on its foundation following Mikado's Initiative in
1984, twelve years after the split from the ISO. In its first years, the AIC was subordinate to
the decisions of the RCL Central Committee and its Political Bureau (Halishka Hapolitit).
But step by step it became independent of the RLC, although the members of the RLC
were involved in its activities. Some of them (like Sergio, me, Ingrid and Mikado) were
employed by the AIC.
With the years, especially after the Oslo Accords (1993-95), the AIC has gradually changed
in both political and administrative terms. It has abandoned its initial identity as a radical
internationalist, socialist and anti-Zionist political organization. Instead, its discourse and
activities came close to those of an NGO which focused mainly on the violation of human
rights in the territories occupied in 1967 and in Israel "proper". It thus shared the general
NGOnization trend that has emptied organizations of a radical political content.
The French government recognized the human rights essence of the AIC and granted it the
yearly Human Rights Award prize of 2002. Mikado received the prize on behalf of the AIC
from the French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault in a ceremony which took place on 10 December
2002 (the French version of his book came out in that year). The pride of the AIC in
receiving the prize from Frances government, which is committed to the US-Israel policy
of oppression of the Palestinians, is reflected in the AIC announcement of the prize under
the headline "France Honours the Work of the Alternative Information Center" (see
Appendix I).
Not only the fact that he was the founder and leader of the United Secretariat of the
Fourth Internationals section was erased from Mikado's autobiography; he also turned his
back on socialist internationalism in general. Instead, he adopted the ideology which

2 Moshe Machover, Ibid. See also the excellent article on the ISO (Matzpen) by Doug Enaa Greene,
Matzpen: Revolutionary anti-Zionism in Israel, Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, December
23. http://links.org.au/node/4213. For information on Matzpen, its history and political positions, see
http://www.matzpen.org/english/. See also Moshe Machover, Israelis and Palestinians (above).

Machover justly depict as "not so much Israeli-Hebrew patriotism which he criticizes for
its tribalism but a diasporic Jewish identity, an ideology that (for lack of a better term)
may be described as ethno-patriotism". According to Mikado's own statement in On the
Border, already in the 80s socialist internationalism seemed rootless to him:
For the activists, [not" comrades" and without specifying who they were] those meetings
[with Arabs or Palestinians] were not encounters between enemies or negotiations before
their time. They were discussions between comrades of different countries. [...] there was
a high price to pay for that internationalism. [It] involved voluntarily giving up an identity, a
step that rather quickly proved to be politically sterile and personally destabilizing. *+
Having chosen to be citizens of the world, or members of an international class, we
willingly cut off the roots that bound us to our society and our culture. (p. 39)

Replacing socialist internationalism, to which Mikado had formerly subscribed, with


ethnic-based identity, inevitably led to emphasizing "the border" between Jews and
Palestinians. Since the early 90s Mikado openly called to remain on the Jewish side of this
border (and not cross it to the other side).
But if this common overriding commitment to socialist internationalism is lacking, a person
who actively embraces Jewishness as a primary identity and a Palestinian nationalist are
not full partners in a common struggle. The two remain politically separated by "The
Border" even when trying to bridge it. And in such circumstances an intimacy in
personal relations that does away with ethnic or religious belonging, and which one can
call friendship, is almost impossible to achieve. (p. 63)
International Viewpoint (IVP) has not published a response to Moshe Machover's review
on Mikado's book, published by Haymarket - the Chicago publishing house of the sister
Trotskyite organization, the "ISO". Nor has it refuted Mikado's erasure of the RCL from the
history of Trotskyism in Israel. It has continued to publish Mikado's articles - often in
contradiction with the publications of comrades, including me, who are committed to
Socialist Internationalism in their approach to Zionism and the "conflict".
As regards the RCL in Israel and Mikado, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International
failed to fulfill its leadership role: it did not reject Mikados positions on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict and Zionism or support the revolutionary opinions of other
contributors to International Viewpoint. This may have made it difficult for the United
Secretariat of the Fourth International followers to adopt clear-cut positions on the
apartheid nature of the Jewish-Zionist state, the Zionist lefts role in portraying its ideology
and policies as well as on the collaborative essence of the Palestinian Authority.

I quote a lot from Machover's review of Mikado's autobiography. However, since his
criticism does not deal with the RCL and the AIC nor with their relationship with the United
Secretariat of the Fourth International, I see it as my obligation to rescue the history of the
RCL from its intentioned distortion by its past leader and from its indirect confirmation by
the IVP. Inevitably I focus largely on Michel Warschawski (Mikado) himself because he
founded and led the RCL and the Alternative Information Center and controlled almost
exclusively the connections with the United Secretariat.
I hope that this presentation of the political activities and positions of the RCL and the AIC,
including their relationship with the Bureau of the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International, will help comrades adopt a clearer revolutionary perspective on the central
issues of the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" than that transmitted to them by the United
Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals leadership.

The ISO, the Split and the Foundation of the RCL


I met Akiva ORR and Moshe Machover, two of the four founders of ISO (Matzpen), almost
immediately after it was established in 1962 and became its enthusiastic supporter until
the present.
Talking with them shattered at once my Left Zionist worldview which had been crystallized
while serving in the Palmach during the 1948 war and my position as the secretary of
Mapam (an acronym for the Unified Workers Party), in the Knesset in the years 1952-4.
The ISO was the only political organization in Israel which saw Zionism as a colonizing
enterprise and the state of Israel as a tool for the embodiment, enforcement and
expansion of it. Matzpen's anti-Zionism stemmed from being socialist and anti-imperialist.
Israel was depicted as the lesser partner of British and later US imperialist interests in the
region, which, with the collaboration of the corrupt Arab regimes, oppressed and exploited
the peoples of the region.
This analysis prepared me to reject the various peace plans which started to appear soon
after the '67 war - including the Oslo Accords which, unlike the RCL, I strongly condemn.
I first met the RCL members in 1982 in the various protest groups which were active in
Jerusalem, namely the committee for Solidarity with Bir Zeit University, the Committee
against the War in Lebanon, Enough with Occupation and Women in Black. I became very
close to them politically and socially and participated in their discussions on political

issues. Thus, in 1984 I supported the RCL decision to establish the Alternative Information
Center under the direction of Mikado, and was elected as member of its Board.
In 1985 I officially joined the RCL, which I saw as truthfully committed to the Marxist
socialist and anti-Zionist world view. I supported their past decision to join the United
Secretariat of the Fourth International, which was the main reason for splitting from the
ISO (Matzpen), since I identified myself as Trotskyist I did not appreciate enough the
political openness and anti-sectarianism which characterized the ISO (Matzpen), as
emphasized by Machover: "Eschewing the sectarianism that cripples the radical left almost
everywhere, Matzpen included members (both Jews and Arabs) of various Marxist
persuasions, united by thorough internationalism and, consequently, opposition to
Zionism".
But the main reason for joining the RCL was the important role it played as a group in the
protest movement against the occupation of the territories conquered in 1967 (as opposed
to those conquered in 1948), which already in mid-80s became almost its main activity. I
remained in close relationship with the late Akiva Orr and with Moshe Machover and their
partners Lea and Ilana, who moved with their families to London in mid 70s. They
remained involved and even led the discussions and decisions which took place among the
remaining comrades in Israel, and they also continued to write in Matzpen Magazine and
to represent it among the Marxist Left supporters in England. Machover has continued to
the very present elaborating on the political principles of Matzpen and its theoretical
foundations from the 60s and 70s, elaborations which appeared in the Weekly Worker and
other publications.
I continued to support the positions of the ISO and to see it as a guide for Socialist
revolutionaries, in Palestine and worldwide. My being a Trotskyist did not prevent me from
feeling a comradely fraternity towards them. Precisely because the ISO (Matzpen) was not
committed to any specific tendency in the radical socialist left I could fully support its
positions.
However, through a long list of lies and distortions, Mikado has tried to make it look as if
the group he joined after the 1967 war the ISO (Matzpen) was from the start a wholly
or largely Trotskyist organization. As Machover rightly claims: "The story he tells on pp. 24
25 about the creation of Matzpen (when he was still a schoolboy in Strasbourg) is carefully
crafted to give wings to that canard. [...] Indeed, this myth is widely repeated in Trotskyist
circles." Moshe Machover exposes this myth: "The truth is that when Matzpen was
founded, in 1962, it had not a single Trotskyist member. A handful of Trotskyists, led by the
Arab Marxist intellectual Jabra Nicola, joined the group more than a year later, on the
understanding that they could keep their individual ties with the Brussels-based [United

Secretariat of the] Fourth International, provided they did so openly; but the group as such
would not affiliate to that organization. The majority resolutely opposed such affiliation,
and we all agreed that it was important to keep the broad non-sectarian unity of various
shades of Marxist opinion." "Jabra Nicola", says Machover, "was the one Trotskyist
comrade who, with his profound understanding of the Arab East, made a valuable
contribution to Matzpens political theory."3 This fruitful cooperation as well as the
profound respect for Jabra did not change the non-sectarian character of Matzpen.
Moreover, this was a solid proof of its openness.
Identifying the ISO (Matzpen) as a Trotskyist organization permitted Mikado to ignore
completely the split he led in 1972 - four years after joining Matzpen - and his founding of
the RCL as the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals section in Israel.
Here is Machover's take on the "non-existent split" from the ISO:
"Mikado was apparently convinced not only that the world revolution was at hand, but
also that it was going to be orchestrated by the Brussels HQ. He therefore pressed for the
ISO (Matzpen) to affiliate itself to the [United Secretariat of the] Fourth International. As
he could not gain sufficient support for this move, he engineered a destructive sectarian
split as a result of which, instead of one non-sectarian group whose size was just above
the critical mass that enabled it to make a significant mark on the Israeli political scene,
there were now two groups of roughly equal size, both below that critical mass. By then
Jabra Nicola had moved to London and was in bad health. Opposed to the split, he was
unable to prevent it. [...] As mentioned, the splinter group led by Mikado claimed the
name Matzpen for themselves. Mikado deliberately avoids telling the reader that after the
split (and until the demise of the RCL after Oslo) there were two groups using that name,
and make it clear to which of the two he is referring. He suppresses all mention of the split
he engineered and of the official name of the group he founded and led. This economy
with the truth" says Machover, "is designed to create the false impression that there was
always one Matzpen, and it was a Trotskyist group".
The RCL and the Alternative Information Center
Unlike the ISO (Matzpen) the RCL had a Leninist hierarchical structure in which the Central
Committee and especially the Political Bureau made the political decisions. After I joined
the RCL the latter consisted of three members: Mikado, Eli Aminov and Marcelo Wexler. In

3 See articles included in Part 1: "The Palestinian Struggle and the Arab East: Jabra Nicola and his Heritage",
Moshe Machover, Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution, Haymarket Books Chicago Illinois, 2012.

closed meetings they made the political decisions, which were communicated to the
comrades. I was not aware of the absurdity of keeping a "democratic centralist" structure
in a group that at its peak did not count more than 25 members.
Already before the 1993 Oslo Accords, the RCL repeatedly called for the recognition of the
PLO as the "only representative of the Palestinian People". It did not challenge its nature
and policies as did the ISO (Matzpen). (See below Mikado's support in 2008(!) for the
Palestinian Authority and its two-state solution, arguing that it represents the Palestinian
People). Hence the cooperation of the RCL and the AIC in the late 80s and early 90s, prior
to Oslo, with representatives of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, Fatah supporters like Faisal
Husseini and Sari Nusseibeh. The aim of the joint group which met weekly in Husseinis
offices in East Jerusalem was to struggle together against the 1967 occupation. I portrayed
the cooperation with those who supported the 1988 PLO decision to recognize the Zionist
state as an implementation of the strategy of "Popular Front".4
For many years the RCL avoided adopting an unequivocal position on the solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian "conflict". This permitted Eli Aminov to "benefit from the doubt" and to
issue in Hebrew a document headed "The Second Palestinian Uprising and the Democratic
Solution" in which he called on behalf of the RCL for a Secular Democratic State. He gave it
to the members but got no reaction either from the leadership or from the discussions
about it in our weekly meetings.
When finally the general meeting did decide for a One Democratic State solution, the
slogan appeared in the RCL magazine Marxist Matzpen in a distorted form. Out of nowhere
appeared a vague addition to the decision, namely, "A Secular Democratic and Bi-National
State." The addition reflected Mikado's ethnic-Jewish self-identity, which we were not
aware of, and his not as yet explicit resistance to openly call for any solution other than
that of two states. This explains why, despite Mikado's and the RCLs prominent position in
the protest movement "Dai Lakibush" (Enough with Occupation), we tailed after the
communists and Shasi (smol sotzyalisti israeli -Israeli Socialist Left) members and did not
object to the newly introduced norm of ending every pamphlet against the occupation
with the call for the two-state solution.

4 News From Within, Vol. XVII May 2001 (less than a year after Toufic and me were fired) was dedicated to
the death of Faisal Husseini. See Michael Warschawskys "Abu el-Abed", in which Mikado expresses his deep
admiration for Husseinis political positions as one of the Fatah leaders. It reflects his departure from any
internationalist revolutionary positions as well as class distinctions in each of the "global" entities, "Jews"
and "Palestinians."

The motives for this opportunistic position were not just "tactical," as I was then inclined
to believe. Mikado and the RCL majoritys support for the Oslo Accords as well as Mikado's
publications afterwards confirm that he was committed to the two-state solution which
was never officially accepted by the RCL.
I did not know then that the Fourth International supported the two-state solution. The
first time I was informed about it was only in 1997, when I was invited to an alternative
conference commemorating 100 years since the first Zionist congress, which took place in
Basel. The conference was organized by Birgit and Urs, members of the United Secretariat
of the Fourth International, by comrades from other places in Switzerland and by some
comrades from Germany. It had a wide attendance of activists in the solidarity with
Palestine movements- a large majority of whom supported the one state solution. The
panel on the solution included among others, Yakov Moneta, the long-time, well-known
Trotskyist from Germany, a PFLP member from a Palestinian research center in Lebanon, a
Swiss comrade and me. I spoke for the one state solution which the others in the panel
agreed with. And so did many of the participants who spoke from the floor.
Salah Jaber (Gilbert Achcar) then a member of the bureau of the United Secretariat of the
Fourth International, carried on a fierce debate with me from the floor in which he
supported the two-state solution and sharply criticized my position.5

5 In his July 2012 article "Standing the Test of Time," Weekly Worker, no. 923, 19 July 2012, Machover
summarized Matzpens four principal positions - two of which are related to the resolution of the "conflict".
<http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/923/standing-the-test-of-time/> Through the 2000s I supported
Machover and Matzpen's position on the solution, which reads: The imbalance could only be redressed,
and Palestinian liberation would only become possible, as part of a revolutionary transformation of the
region, by an Arab revolution led by the working class, which would overthrow the repressive regimes, unify
the Arab east and put an end to imperialist domination over it. The resolution could therefore not occur
within the confines of Palestine, established by the British imperialists and their French allies following World
War I. "Thus, we did not advocate a so-called two-state solution in a repartitioned Palestine, nor a onestate solution in a unitary Palestine. Instead, we envisaged incorporation of the two national groups - the
Palestinian Arabs and the Hebrews (so-called Israeli Jews) - as units with equal rights within a socialist
regional union or federation of the Arab east." However, when Michael Letwin asked me on 11 February
2013 if I agreed to be among the initial signatories of the "Jews for the Palestinian Right of Return and One
State" I was only glad to support wholeheartedly the new movement. My departure from the
Machover/ISOs position was expressed in my critical article against Machover's position. (See Tikva HonigParnass, One Democratic State in Historic Palestine: A Socialist Viewpoint, International Socialist Review,
Issue #90 <http://isreview.org/issue/90/one-democratic-state-historic-palestine>, in which my article was
presented as a response to Machover's old article in ISR rather than as a response to his then recent article
in Weekly Worker).

I mentioned above Mikado's confession that already in the 80s he felt that the
internationalist perspective was rootless and that he replaced it with an ethnic-based selfidentity Jewishness. However, during the years I spent close to him in the RCL and the AIC
I never heard him expressing explicitly that feeling. In retrospect, one can say that the
words were already written on the wall when he first announced his thesis "on the
border". This happened in a mass meeting in support of him in which Faisal Husseini sat on
the stage together with Mikado and me. The meeting took place after Mikado's conviction
by the District Court for helping a terrorist organization in 1989. Since then, "on the
border" became the credo of the RCL and the AIC. From the beginning it was not just a
slogan intended to relieve Mikado and the AIC from the alleged accusation of serving the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It actually stemmed from Mikados political
ideology, which he shared with the bourgeois leader Faisal Husseini.
In the three years between 1989 and 1991, when the appeal to the Supreme Court was
pending, Mikado was banned from entering the AIC office. In those years, including the
five months he spent in prison, I replaced him as the AIC director.6
From then on, the retreat even from the "on the border" ideology increased gradually. The
support for the treacherous Oslo Accords of 1993 by Mikado and the RCL's majority
signified a major step towards abandoning a genuine internationalist worldview.
The Oslo Accords
The catastrophic essence of the Oslo Accords was clear to me from the moment its details
were made public. I was fortunate to insert my article against it in the September 5 issue
of News From Within, the AIC monthly which I edited. The headline of my article "The Oslo
Agreement - No Recognition for the National Rights of the Palestinian People" - was

6 In 1989 Mikado, as the director of the AIC, was accused of "providing services for illegal (Palestinian)
organizations" and sentenced to twenty months in prison, with a 10-month suspended sentence. The judges
ruled that a typesetting of a booklet had come from members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. The booklet described torture and interrogation techniques employed by Israel's security
apparatus, with advice on how to withstand them. The AIC was closed for a month and had to pay a high
fine. Mikado's attorney appealed to the Supreme Court, which in turn reduced his sentence to eight months
in prison, of which he spent four and a half months due to the rule of reducing a third of a sentence for
"good behavior" .The Court determined that that Mikado was unaware of the booklet's origins, but guilty of
"closing his eyes" to the evidence.

10

displayed in large letters on the cover. My second article, which emphasized the Oslo
recognition of the Jewish-Zionist state, was published in the next issue of NFW.7
In a meeting which took place in the RCL Tel Aviv office, around 25 comrades voted for
Mikado' position which supported the Oslo Accord against my rejection of Oslo.8
Soon after the voting, Mikado initiated a move to exclude me from the editorial board of
our journal "Marxist Matzpen". Sergio Yani was sent to Paris to present the "majority
document" at a United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals meeting. When I found out
about it, I sent him a fax demanding to give my "minority" document to the comrades,
which he did. In January 1994, International Viewpoint No. 252 published "A dossierdebate on Israeli-PLO Accords" (not available online) which included three positions: the
RCL majority position by Sergio Yani and Michael Warshawski, called "The Struggle Will
Not End", my "Bantustan in the Making" and the United Secretariat of the Fourth
Internationals position by Salah Jaber (Gilbert Achcar), "A Retreat under Pressure," which
was similar to my position.
The RCL "Majority"/Mikado's Document on the Oslo Agreement
The "majority" document written by Mikado assumes that the multiplicity of unknown
factors makes it impossible to determine what would be the "fate of the new order".
This determination is strange to say the least. The disastrous consequences of the Oslo
agreement were known in advance to anyone who realized the Imperialist and Zionist
colonial interests which motivated it. But the

RCL document lacks an attempt to analyze Oslo in the context of imperialism and global
capitalism, or in relation to Zionist colonialism, whose striving for eliminating the
Palestinian people has been inscribed into its ideology and policies since its inception.9

7 See Tikva Honig-Parnass, The Oslo Agreement: No Recognition of Palestinian National Rights, News From
Within, Vol. IX, No. 9, and Tikva Honig-Parnass, "PLO Recognition of the Jewish-Zionist State", News From
Within, Vol. IX, No. 10, November 1993. (By mistake 1992 was printed instead of 1993).
8 Eli Aminov was against the Oslo Accords but he was not actively involved in the internal fight which
followed the voting on Oslo. Three month later, in February 1994, he independently printed his article "The
RCL and the Imperialist Settlement in the Middle East: Comments to the Document A Bad Settlement that
should be Exploited" (published in Marxist Matzpen, December 1993). But by then (winter 1994) the RCL
was about to be ended, so there was no debate on it.

11

Mikado's document points to a kind of exchange which took place: the PLO recognized the
right of Israel to exist and, in return, Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the
Palestinians in the areas occupied in 1967. The Palestinian Authority was granted the role
of repressing resistance in collaboration with Israel.
In the "majority" document written by Mikado, the PLO headed by Arafat was not depicted
as the organization which betrayed the national rights of the Palestinian People. On the
contrary, it emphasized that, due to the "balance of power," they did not have another
alternative. However, it says, despite the fact that the Oslo Accord was dictated "by Israel",
the achievements of the Palestinians are significant: The Israeli government agreed to
grant the Palestinians the small area of Jericho and to give more authority to the selfgoverning Palestinian area. But, most importantly, it is Israel's recognition of the PLO which
according to Mikado constitutes an essential turning point in its attitude towards the
Palestinian issue. It allegedly has a tremendous symbolic and political significance because,
despite its weakening, the PLO still represents the majority of the Palestinian people.
On the other hand, Mikado does recognize the significant achievements of Israel. Most
importantly, the Palestinian willingness for normalization and cease-fire (meaning
abandoning resistance) before the basic problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have
been solved. Still, says Mikado, this should not hinder the support of Oslo. (!)
One of the misleading arguments for supporting Oslo was the statement that a
fundamental change had taken place in the Israeli society; namely, that it is now ready to
make "substantial compromises" far beyond those that are included in the Accords. Hence,
Mikado rejected any deterministic evaluation of Oslo. Indeed, the Accords expressed the
existing balance of power, but "the way in which they are applied depends on the balances
of power at each state of the process" .Thus Mikado's document not only did not conclude
that the very Oslo Accord had worsened the relations of forces. It determined that "the
Oslo agreement creates a situation in which the Palestinian People in the occupied
territories are in a better condition to campaign for their rights." [...] "Would it not be
easier today to organize the political prisoners and their families in a mass struggle for
amnesty? Would I not be easier to organize a struggle against the building of new Jewish
neighborhoods within the heart of Arab Jerusalem?" Moreover, according to Mikado the
Agreement opened, in the autonomy areas, "new horizons for popular political and
political activities aimed at changing the Oslo framework itself".

9 The ISO (Matzpen) was the only group, among those in Israel claiming to be socialist and Marxist, which
adopted genuine socialist anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism as a framework for analyzing the shameful Oslo
Agreement.

12

In determining that a new era had opened for the Palestinian struggle, Mikado disregarded
the aim of Oslo, publicized by Rabin: the suppression of the Palestinian resistance by the
Authority itself, which would be free to act "without B'Tselem and without the Supreme
Court" (which presumably opposes Israel's violation of human rights). Mikado knew very
well that Arafat's order from Tunis in the first Intifada ended Beit Sahour's popular "tax
rebellion," planned to spread the civil disobedience into other towns. He was also aware of
how Arafat had blocked the activity of the radical forces which led the first Intifada and its
popular essence.
The document ends with a new perspective on the role of a Marxist revolutionary
organization which contradicted that of the RCL in the past: "The RCL is not an organization
of political interpreters, nor is it an organization of judges of history." Therefore, the RCL
first task is not to denounce the agreement but to do everything in our power to create
those conditions which will enable the Palestinians to defend their right to navigate this
new agreement towards their interests, to "work against all the barriers that stand on the
way of fulfillment of the accord within the framework of enlightened interpretation."10
According to Mikado, this could be attained through activity within the protest movement,
the struggle for dismantling the settlements, the Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem,
for release of the prisoners and for canceling the undercover units. Without achieving
those "democratic tasks", namely a change of the Israeli government's policy, the accords
were doomed to fail, as well as the prospect for peace.
Uri Avnerys Gush Shalom which replaced the relatively more radical protest movement
was signified as the partner appropriate to fulfill the RCLs tasks.
I would have expected the Fourth International to understand that supporting the Oslo
Accords is not just a different opinion from my opposition and their own opposition to
Oslo. It should have been understood that supporting Oslo would necessarily entail
disastrous results for the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist struggles in Israel. This was
already clear from the RCL document, which explicitly called for revolutionary activists to
cooperate with the Palestinian Authority and Gush Shalom. Hence, in my opinion, the
Bureau of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International should have written a critical

10 This "anti-theory" position was presented by Mikado in a 24 November 2012 gathering commemorating
the ISO (Matzpen) foundation, in which many activists from the radical left participated. Turning to the young
activists in "Anarchists against the Wall," he said that they had to act without the need for Marxist or any
other radical theories. Those youth have been radicalized by long meetings with the late Akiva Orr (Aki), who
indeed stood up and strongly criticized Mikado while emphasizing that the ISO had never been a "protest"
movement but a revolutionary Marxist organization which aimed to dismantle the present regime.

13

response to the RCL document, instead of just posting it alongside my document and their
own document, as well as depicting those different positions as a "debate". Failing to do it
then and in the coming years, when Mikado's support of the Oslo process became clear,
meant that the Fourth International did not send an unequivocal message to its members
and supporters among the different Trotskyist movements. The declaration on Palestine
adopted by the International Committee of the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International on 24 February 2015 indicates that its continues to refrain from placing at
the center of analysis a strong condemnation of the Oslo Accords and from portraying
them as the initiators of the disastrous situation of the Palestinians.
Uri Avnerys Gush Shalom and the Palestinian Authority as partners of the RCL
What best indicates Mikados and the RCL's withdrawal from an independent socialist and
anti-Zionist stance is the call for partnership with the Palestinian Authority and with Gush
Shalom headed by Uri Avnery, who for years has been at Arafat's command.
The Gush Shalom block was founded with the help of the RCL in 1993, just a few months
before the return of Arafat and the PLO leadership from Tunis to the areas of Palestinian
autonomy. I participated with Mikado in the meetings with Avnery and others in which the
name of the new movement and the nature of its activities were decided. In fact Mikado
handed the leadership of the new movement to Avnery, who previously had a marginal
role in the protest movement (the solidarity with Bir Zet University and Dai La Kibush),
formerly led by the representatives of the RCL, the Communist party and Shasi. Avnery
indeed was most fit for a movement who would submit to the PAs policies. The partners
to the RCL in the old protest movement (the Communists and Shasi as well as individual
militant activists who were active in the "old" protest movement) did not join Gush
Shalom since they understood that the independent and more radical dimension of the
protest movement would be eliminated by Avnery and his now-ally Mikado. And indeed in
a very short time their concerns came true. The Gush Shalom ("Peace Block") became,
both in organizational and political terms, the representative of the collaborative PA within
the Israeli "peace Camp".
The principle which formerly guided the activists in the past protest movement was to
keep direct cooperation only with Palestinian grass-root groups like womens
organizations, student committees, trade unions and residents of refugee camps, without
taking into consideration their political party identity. But under the leadership of Avnery
and with the support of Mikado, this was changed.

14

In the first meeting of Gush Shalom, I was nominated to head the committee for
connections with the Palestinians in the territories occupied in 1967. I was sure that the
past principle of cooperating with Palestinian grassroots would be kept in Gush Shalom as
well. However, I was shocked when in the first session of this committee Uri Avnery
announced that he had already been in touch by phone with Arafats offices in Tunis,
which informed him that they had nominated a go-between on behalf of the Palestinian
leadership, a Fatah person from Jerusalem who would be responsible for organizing joint
protest activities with Gush Shalom.
I still believed that Mikado would support my objections to Avnery's new policy of
adapting Gush Shaloms activities to the PAs policies, but he did not. His support of it
indicated the above-mentioned change in the RCLs identity as a revolutionary organization
which strives to change the Zionist regime. According to its new priorities, the RCL activist
in Gush Shalom now emphasized the 1967 Occupation (rather than the 1948 Naqba or the
Zionist colonization of Palestine in prior decades) as the root of the conflict, and its
resolution as a matter of territories and borders a perspective that the ISO (Matzpen)
warned against already 30 years ago. Thus the RCL lost any distinct nature that would
justify its existence and, in mid-1994, it faded away.11
My criticism of the "On the Border" political perspective adopted by the RLC and AIC, the
condemnation of the Oslo Accords and the integration into the "Gush Shalom" movement,
constituted a significant turn to an independent political thinking, free from the authority
attributed to Mikado in the past. It mainly strengthened my understanding the
implications of Internationalist Socialism for analyzing the "conflict" and its resolution,
which the ISO (Matzpen) had never abandoned.
After the 1993 Oslo Accords, I was gradually removed from positions of decision-making in
the AIC. I continued to edit News From Within - during the last 2 years together with Toufic
Haddad. In July 2000 Toufic and I were fired, allegedly due to financial difficulties (see

11 An attempt to renew the RCL with the same non-revolutionary character which caused its demise was
doomed to fail. In a letter sent to past RCL members on 7th March 1995 Mikado wrote: "A number of
comrades are not willing to accept the disappearance of an anti-Zionist revolutionary socialist address from
the political map." However, loyal to his position on the Oslo Accords which befits the conception of a
protest organization, he rejected any "theory" that would guide it: "We are interested in creating a
framework of activists which would contribute to those aims. Matzpen [sic] members may be its core. But
not only Matzpen members, and not necessarily those who were members of Matzpen, since we have no
interest in abstract discussions which dont connect to praxis, and which are not aimed at activity within and
towards the public which we will define during the discussions."

15

below our 2003 letter to Peter, then director of the United Secretariat of the Fourth
Internationals Amsterdam School which details the real reasons for it).12
Following the failing of the talks between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak and the outbreak
of the second Intifada in October 2000, we began issuing the Between the Lines (BTL)
monthly for the next three years.13
The Bureau of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International was aware that the
differences between Mikado and me had widened tremendously since Oslo (I twice
complained at length about Mikado when meeting Salah Jaber/Gilbert Achcar in 1995 in
Paris and in 1997 in Basel). However, they never attempted to approach me directly in
order to learn about the political rift between us (maybe this avoidance indicated their
shared some of Mikado's principal perspectives albeit in a softer version, as reflected in
the 2015 document below.) They also knew that Toufic and I were fired and that we
started issuing Between the Lines, which continued to defend the political positions of
News From Within positions -far removed from those of Mikado and the AIC. But they did
not deem it necessary to inform the comrades about it or to keep in touch with me - a past
central comrade in the RCL and a supporter of the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International, or with Toufic, a supporter of revolutionary socialist organizations, including
the Fourth International.
The 2000 Decade
All through the 2000 decade Mikado did not retreat from his basic position towards the
Oslo Accords and its implications - supporting the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian
bourgeoisie on the one hand and the Zionist Left on the other.

12 In those years my articles were published in El Ahram weekly and in radical publications like New Politics
and Against the Current. I was often invited by sections of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International
in collaboration with Palestinian solidarity movements to talk about Zionism and the "conflict" (to Spain,
London, Germany, Basel and Amsterdam, among other destinations). I very often met with delegations or
well-known public figures like Edward Said, who asked specifically to talk with me on behalf of the AIC. I am
mentioning this in order to compare it with the lack of any connections with the leadership of the Fourth
International.
13 See Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad, Between the Lines (Haymarket 2007). The book includes
most of the articles written by anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of the territories
occupied in 1967. Toufics and my own articles analyzing current events in Palestine are included as well.

16

Despite of this, International Viewpoint continued to publish Mikado's articles and his
publications in the AIC magazine, read by many among the radical left, without criticizing
them.
Loyal to International Viewpoints "pluralist" policy, very few of my articles were published,
usually submitted by other comrades, in which I emphasized my anti-Zionist and antiimperialist position in regards the "conflict". Also a number of articles by others were
published, written by radical socialist and anti-Zionist comrades of the Fourth International
or sister organizations, like David Finkel or Sherry J. Wolf, which expressed positions similar
to mine.
In 2001, (three years before the death of Arafat) the betrayal of the PA, including the
police role played by Arafat in collaboration with Israel's security forces, was already well
known. Nevertheless, Mikado still adhered to his pro-Oslo positions, seeing the Palestinian
bourgeois leaders as allies in the struggle against the 67' Occupation. The May 2001 issue
of News from Within was dedicated to Faisal Al-Husseini, who had died from a sudden
heart attack. In his article, Mikado praised him for his cooperation with the Israeli "Peace
Camp," including its Zionist supporters, and criticized the Palestinian Left parties who
depicted this as a false "normalization" against which they fiercely fought. Mikado also
agreed with Husseni that this cooperation was "the core of the future co-existence":
"Quite a few Palestinian activists are ready to meet, dialogue and collaborate with Israelis.
But I know very few Palestinians who really have an internalized vision of coexistence and
reconciliation, not as a second best option or really out of a pragmatic consideration, but
because it is good and beautiful in and of itself. Faisal Husseini was one of those who had
this vision. It is not by accident that Faisal Husseini invented the concept "our Jerusalem".
Unlike many Israeli peaceniks and Palestinian nationalists, he was able to think and to
dream a collective, bi-national "we." The huge faith in a joint future led Faisal Al-Husseini
to invest all his energies in the political process which started in Oslo. Despite the fact that
he was skeptical regarding the peace process he knew that its failure would open the road
to a historical setback in the relations between the two peoples and maybe even to the
permanent closure of the window of opportunity opened in the mutual recognition at
Oslo.14

Many of the comrades and supporters who happened to read this News from Within
article had just a month before read my article in International Viewpoint in which I

14 Michael Warshawsky, "Abu el-Abed", News from Within, Vol. XVII, Number 4, 2001 (edited then By Jeff
Halper, who claimed he was not anti-Zionist, and Nassar Ibrahim, after Toufic and me were fired towards the
end of 1999.)

17

condemned the "Zionist Left" whom Mikado depicted as the political partner to the
Palestinian struggle. I emphasized that the assumed differences between left and right
Zionism had been revealed as fake. The Zionist left shares both the ideology and policies of
the right, as well as its position towards the solution of the "conflict":
"Therefore it is important once again to refute this imaginary perception which misleads
many, preventing the growth of a true Left which struggles for social and political
transformation of the Jewish-Zionist state, which is an essential condition for a just peace.
*+ Both blocs, Left and Right, do not embody any significant difference in economic-social
interests, as is classically attributed to social democracy vis-a-vis conservative or right
wing in Western Europe. Both politically represent the Ashkenazi (European Jewry)
economic, military and political establishment. Thus, from the 1980s on, they accepted the
dictates of the US and the World Bank and began a policy aiming at integrating Israel
within the processes of capitalist globalization. [...] [However] "while their similar attitudes
towards the economic policy are expressed openly, (although the argumentation is
different), this is not the case with the political process. In regards to peace, the agreed
deception about the 'most severe rift in Israeli society has been kept and sustained by
both camps."15

In 2002 the same confusing double messages recurred.


In May, International Viewpoint published in the same issue (No. 340 16 May 2002) an
article by Mikado ("A Destructive Fury") and an interview with me which was first
published in the German Imprekor ("Behind Israels offensive"). Both relate to the bloody
military attack on the West Bank towns led by the Likud-Labor unified government
("Defensive Wall Operation," March 29 April 2002).
The difference between our answers to a similar question is telling.
In the interview with me I was asked: "What is the aim of the current military attack on the
Palestinians?" My answer was:
"The current brutal military offensive, typical to Israels Orwellian double talk, indicates the
opening of a new stage in the long process that aims at destroying the Palestinian national
movement embodied in the Intifada strugglers and `liquidating the existence of the
Palestinian people on the land of Palestine (Haidar Abdel Shafi in an interview to Yossi
Algazi, Haaretz, April 2). This strategic aim of the Jewish-Zionist state is in accord with the

15 Tikva Honig-Parnass, "Disappearance of the Israeli Left, Reappearance of the Good Old Zionist
Consensus,"
International
Viewpoint,
Tuesday,
No.
330,
3
April
2001.
<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article684> This article is taken from Between the Lines,
vol. 1, no. 5, March 2001 (the address of the review is PO Box 681, Jerusalem).

18
US imperialist interest in eliminating any independent nationalist regime or political
movement in the Middle East (as well as in the third word in general) which by definition
constitute a barrier to the capitalist globalisation project in the area. [...] The Oslo
Agreement, initiated and executed by a government led by the Labor party, which
represents the Israeli capitalist class, was an attempt to implement these US-Israeli aims.
However, the Israeli military operation which has begun two weeks ago, signals the end of
the former stage of the Oslo process."16

In his article Mikado answers his own question: "What lies behind this destructive
madness?" as follows: "As far as the government is concerned, it is the result of an
ideology that mixes ultra-nationalism, hatred of Arabs and messianic fundamentalism (the
presence of Shimon Peres only confirms the confusion of those elements in international
social democracy who believed the Israeli Labour Party were anything other than national
socialists)."17
Mikado avoids mentioning Zionism and colonialism in his characterization of the ideology
behind the massacre. Nor does he emphasize that the attack is but a link in the continuous
policies of both "Left" and Right governments aimed at implementing the Zionist project.
He indeed mentions the "presence of Shimon Peres," but avoids saying explicitly that Peres
was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on behalf the Labor party which participated in
Sharon's national unity government, with Benjamin Ben Eliezer as its Defense Minister.
This means that Labor was equally responsible for the "madness."
By the same token Mikado avoids taking a clear position on the PLO collaboration with the
US and Israel, aimed at liquidating the Palestinian anti-colonialist struggle, which was the
real purpose of the Oslo Accords. Hence he is disappointed that "no international
pressure" on Israel has developed. Moreover, Mikado still supports the US-led "steps
towards peace" since Saadats visit to Jerusalem and blames the Israeli government for
ignoring them, while continuing its bloody policies "As if nothing had happened since the

16 Tikva Honig-Parnass, "Behind Israels offensive," International Viewpoint, Tuesday, No. 340, May 2002.
<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article447>
17 See Tikva Honig Parnass on the strategy of launching every few years a bloody destructive attack on Gaza:
"Zionist Left Support for Bloody Assaults on Gaza Signifies Its Erasure from Israels Political Map", in The
Palestine Chronicle, October 1, 2014 <http://www.palestinechronicle.com/zionist-left-support-for-bloodyassaults-on-gaza-signifies-its-erasure-from-israels-political-map/>

19

war of 1973, neither the coming of Sadat, nor the peace with Egypt, nor the Madrid
Conference, nor the Oslo process, nor peace with Jordan nor the Saudi plan."18
In his autobiographic book On the Border (2002,2005), Mikado continues to justify his
support for the Oslo Accords by misleadingly determining that they included an explicit
promise for an independent Palestinian state (p. 152). Theres no need to repeat that such
a promise was not made, not even a promise to stop building settlements. (In his last
speech in the Knesset, on 5.10.95, Rabin explicitly disclaimed agreement to a Palestinian
state)
Mikados recurrent attempts to exculpate the Zionist left from responsibility for the brutal
policies against the Palestinian people have continued as well. In this case, he exempts
them from initiating and supporting the colonization of the territories occupied in 1967
from the start. He tells us that only after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
in 1995 *t+he previously minority ideas of the right had become official policy, particularly
with regard to the settlements (p. 165). However, the truth is that the colonization was
initiated immediately after the war by the Labor-led government and spread at a steadily
accelerating pace under all Israeli governments since then including the Labor-led
government headed by Rabin. While that government was negotiating the Oslo Accords, as
well as after signing them, the colonization continued relentlessly.
International Viewpoint did not publish a critical review of Mikado's book. Nor did they
relate to Moshe Machover's criticism of its 2005 English version.19 No doubt their
avoidance contributed to the confusion of comrades and non-members who read the
book, as well as to their difficulty to adopt unequivocal positions against the Zionist state,
especially against the Zionist lefts potential to making "peace."
Relations with the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals Bureau and comrades
Our firing from the AIC motivated many comrades and readers of News from Within and
Between the Lines to contact us and express their support for our political positions. In
2002 the Basel comrades (Birgit and Urs) invited me and the PFLP representative in
Belgium to a weekend seminar on the One Democratic State solution. After long

18 Michel Warschawski, "A destructive fury," International Viewpoint, Tuesday, No. 340, May 2002, emphasis
mine. <http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article446>
19 For a sharp criticism of Mikado's book, including his misleading description of the ISO - the Israeli socialist
Organization (Matzpen), see Moshe Machover "A Peace Activist on the Border" in Israelis and Palestinians:
Conflict and Resolution: Essays by Moshe Machover, Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2012, pp. 249-257.

20

discussions, which led the comrades to accept the one state solution, the PFLP member
reiterated in his summary speech his support for two states solution. The renowned
Trotskyist theoretician and trade unionist activist Jacob (Yaakov) Moneta has long been my
close political friend. I happily accepted his request to take the train from Basel to his
home in Frankfurt and meet him and two other German comrades from the United
Secretariat of the Fourth International. They were concerned about the prestigious
standing which Mikado had enjoyed among the United Secretariat of the Fourth
Internationals leadership, and about the fact that the comrades had not been informed
about the crucial political differences between us. They pleaded me to address the Bureau
with my criticism on Mikado and to send a copy to them, so that they could interfere and
ask for a meeting with me. In the meantime Peter, who, as mentioned, was then the
director of the Fourth Internationals Amsterdam School, and young comrades from and
around the School and from other places in France and Switzerland, started pressuring the
Bureau to agree that I and Toufic should oversee a weekend seminar organized by the
School, in which we would present our views on Zionism and the "conflict."
The negotiations went on for many months, albeit never directly with us. The Secretary
refused to confirm the Amsterdam plan and instead suggested that we participate with
Mikado in one panel included in a seminar organized by them, in which we would present
our views on the issues on Zionism and the "conflict".
The reasons for our refusal to this proposal are detailed in the letter below:
Dear Peter
There are several issues we find of significance and that you should know of which relate
to our decision not to participate in the seminar.
The matters at hand are detailed and are somewhat complex, though we see of no other
way to address them other than going through them so you understand where we are
coming from. Additionally, the events relate in different ways to both of us, though it is
clear we believe how they relate in the given context.
The first part of the letter includes a detailed report of the structural changes in the AIC
which put an end to its collective nature, and of its increasingly centralized, hierarchical
and anti-democratic structure (see Appendix II).
The second part, presented below, discusses the political positions of Mikado and the
United Secretariat of the Fourth International vis--vis Zionism and Palestine, as well as
towards the abuse I and later also Toufic experienced during the years we worked in the
AIC.

21

Second: The political positions of Mikado and the FI vis-a-vis Zionism and Palestine
First: The AIC was founded under the auspices and control of RCL and with the moral and
political support of the FI. With the disappearance of the RCL (mainly due to Mikado's
intention and behavior), all Marxist, revolutionary political follow-up of the Center
disappeared. Mikado took over as a hierarchical director, and turned the AIC into a regular
bureaucratic capitalist formation with an enormous gap in salaries (where he and his
friends (read: loyalists and those to whom he owed political kickbacks on the Palestinian
side) enjoyed high salaries and decision making power, far above me (Tikva), and double
that of Toufic). Furthermore I (Tikva) was pushed outside the system of decision making- a
step which had both political and personal motivations.
The first to be fired was Ingrid Gassner a former member of the FI in Austria who is
married to a Palestinian (Mohammed Jaradat) and who had built while at the AIC the now
flourishing center for the Right of Return- BADIL. After her came the turn of me and Toufic
After 13 years in the AIC (and the years before when I (Tikva) was a member of the board)
I was literally thrown to the street- without pension and without being able in my age to
find a job, and after years of service to the cause and to building the AIC and indeed its
very name and credibility it once enjoyed. *+
Since then I have not met Mikado (or Sergio who was full partner to this scheme), nor
have we confronted him on this shameful behavior towards us. The FI also never bothered
to ask about the case. Can you imagine Toufic and me (Tikva) meeting with the man who
dismissed us from the wonderful political work we have done and prevented me from
having any decent income in my age? Dont you think that by this we shall be conferring
legitimation and decency to this person, and aid and contribute to reducing the entire rift
between us to just "a political debate", which is in itself a "legitimate difference of
opinions between revolutionary comrades within the framework of the political basics
they share?
2. The political rift between me (Tikva) and Mikado (as well as between him and another
comrade of RCL - Eli Aminov) which continued later with Toufic as well, had begun before
Oslo, which was its expression. The rift was due to Mikados gradual distancing himself
from the political line of the RCL, which emphasized the "joint struggle" of the Palestinian
Left and anti-Zionist Jews for the democratization of lsrael-Palestine. We saw in Zionism
and the Jewish-Zionist state of Israel a form of apartheid regime (although we did not use
then this term) which serves US Imperialism in the region and the struggle against it as
central to our agenda. Our intervention in the Israeli "Peace camp was aimed primarily to
mobilize understanding and support for OUR positions, through cooperation with grass
roots/non-bureaucratic bodies in the occupied territories. We never saw in the '67

22

Occupation the root cause of the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" as the Zionist left peace
camp did, and who deliberately separated its "opposition" to the 67 occupation from the
historic causes of Zionist colonization and of the form of Apartheid which characterizes the
Jewish state.
However under the leadership of Mikado, RCL gradually became immersed in the Peace
camp and neglected the distinctness of RCL positions and organization. This was reflected
in Mikados celebration of Oslo as "an historic turning point." Mikado has never really
conducted any self-criticism of this position and never admitted that Oslo (which is a code
name for the entire mechanism of "peace talks") has been a plan initiated by the US and
Israeli bourgeois to implement a Bantustan state with the cooperation of Arafat, and NOT
a rather promising plan which was mis-implemented and only violated by Israeli
governments.
Oslo accepted the Jewish-Zionist nature of the state, gave up the notion of the unity of
the Palestinian people, neglected the second rate citizenship of the Palestinians within
Israel and abandoned the demand of the ROR as a pre-condition to any peace settlement.
Awareness of that brought about the escalation of the national consciousness among
Palestinians in Israel and advanced their demands to not only individual political rights
("equality) but for national collective rights as an homeland group- which challenges the
very foundations of the Jewish-Zionist state
Whoever does not see Zionism and the Jewish state as central in the fight against the '67
occupation is lagging behind the demands of the Palestinians in Israel an actually
sabotages their struggle. Moreover he/she is thus supporting the continuity of the JewishZionist state and Imperialism. Upon these issues there can be no discussion.
Indeed, the FI has never come up with an official position on Zionism and the Jewish
state. Nor did it adopt a position on the PLO, Arafat, the PA and the Palestinian resistance.
At the same time, it is imprecise to say that the FI has no position on Zionism and
Palestine. The complete disappearance of "the conflict" from every International
Viewpoint issue, since long is in itself a position and constitutes a message to the FI
members saying that Palestine, Zionism and the resistance is NOT in the center of the FI
agenda because it is not significant for its main campaign against globalization and
imperialism. On the other hand it is known that the French section does have a positionsharing that of Mikado - and that it is very influential in the FI secretariat
What happened to the FI that it claims that it is now searching for a position on these
issues? 10 years have passed since Oslo, 4 years since we have been fired from the AIC and
began issuing BTL- our essentially different Magazine than what NFW is today. If there

23

would have been a real readiness to determine a position- the FI should have invited us to
listen and understand our grievances and differences of opinions. We are doubtful about
the motivation of the FI, knowing that the seminar was decided upon as a result of the
pressure that came from comrades who side with our political positions. Moreover, we
doubt the readiness of the secretariat itself to be "convinced." And even if it were, the
seminar forum and content as it is, is definitely not the suitable framework for us to
convince or to reach any decision. These issues relates to basics which should be selfevident to any genuine revolutionary movement. It is not about a list of different, eclectic
issues (as the forum is designed) which are important for the comrades to enlarge their
knowledge about. The structure of the seminar is thus doomed to result in more confusion
thus legitimizing the non- position of the FI.
Furthermore, the FI cannot act as though it has not been preferences to Mikados
position throughout these years. We genuinely believe in your sincerity regarding your
appreciation of our participation in the seminar Peter, but we also not blind to the fact
that even now, as the seminar is designed, the FI is ignoring many of these conflicts we
have mentioned, supporting the FI priorities it has upheld over the years and in so doing
making our participation impossible.
Given these circumstances, it is not us who risk losing anything we have never gotten. It is
the FI who preferred to ignore things and did not take any initiative concerning the
positions of comrades on Zionism and the Palestinian issue.
Comradely yours,
Tikva and Toufic
The Bureau of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International did not respond to our
letter, nor did they make efforts to convince us to change our mind about participating in
the panel. They thus continued their evasion of any direct contact with us since we had
been fired. Avoiding any direct contact with me and Toufic indicates their lack of
inclination to seriously engage in a deep analysis of Zionism and the Palestinians, including
the self-criticism which this would inevitably entail.
During the years that followed our letter, Mikado continued to publish his articles with no
criticism by the Fourth International. I have chosen to shortly discuss his article from 2008)
irreversibility" which reflects his continued full retreat from revolutionary socialist
positions. Indeed, the article was published in Alternative, the AIC magazine
(alternativenews.org) and not in International Viewpoint. But the fact that it was read by
Moshe Machover, and resent to his mailing list together with a sharp critical review,
indicates that the Alternative readership included many among the radical left as well as

24

among the International Viewpoint comrades. The prolonged un-revolutionary tendency


of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International and International Viewpoint comes
into view while reading this article. Four years after Arafat's death Mikado still supports
the treacherous Palestinian Authority a creation of Oslo and depicts it as representative
of the "Palestinians."
Mikado supports the two states solution and rejects the one democratic state
perspective. However it is the arguments he uses which indicate a complete departure
from an internationalist socialist perspective. They are critically presented below:
1. No independent socialist stance
Mikado: "The Palestinians are the only ones to be allowed to make or to reject this choice,
certainly not the Israelis, even when the latter claim to defend the rights of the Palestinian
people. This is what self-determination is all about."
Machover Rightly says: "Mikado has completely abandoned any independent socialist
position on the issue, and is simply committed to supporting any formula that the
Palestinians happen to demand. He speaks about the Palestinians as an undifferentiated
entity. But what he clearly means is that one ought to endorse the position of the current
Palestinian leadership. Far from taking an independent socialist position, this amounts at
best to tail-ending Palestinian bourgeois nationalism. But in fact it is worse: it consists in
tail-ending a corrupt and abject Palestinian leadership. It amount to supporting its position
against that of the leftist Palestinian opposition."
I have mentioned above Mikado's self-claimed retreat from an internationalist perspective
to the new political notion of a Jewish ethnic- based self-identity. Now we are witnesses to
its full disastrous implication: denying legitimacy to Israelis supporting a different position
than that accepted by the Palestinians. He thus argues for supporting the Palestinian
Authoritys two-state solution, imposed on the Palestinian leadership by the oppressors
the US and Israel in the name of a false notion of the Palestinians' right to selfdetermination.
2. Praising Arafat's "Realpolitik"
Mikado:
In 1988 the PLO, at its National Council in Algeria and under the leadership of Yasser Arafat,
adopted its historical compromise, which was based on an equation composed of two
elements: a solution to the conflict with Israel and the time factor. What is better, asked
the President of the PLO, the full realization of the national rights of the Palestinian people
in a century, or a small independent state now? The opinion of the President and, after a

25
tough political discussion, of the great majority of the PNC, was to spare decades of
suffering, death and destruction for the next Palestinian generations at the price of a
painful and unjust compromise with Israel, in which the Palestinian people renounce
implementation of their legitimate rights on more than three-quarters of their land.20

3. False interpretation of Palestinians in Israel.


The most dishonest argument for supporting the two-state solution is the interpretation
Mikado gives to the struggle for equal right carried on by the Palestinians in Israel. He
misleadingly interprets this struggle as if it indicated a renunciation of their claim to unite
with their brethren or acceptance of the Jewish Zionist nature of the state of Israel.
The comparison between the Palestinians of the Galilee and the Palestinian of the West
Bank is very revealing in this instance: after six or seven years of Israeli occupation, the
Palestinian population of these territories occupied and annexed by the Israeli state
stopped aspiring for secession, and changed their political demands to those for equal
rights, democratization and full citizenship. From that moment, the occupation of the
Galilee and the Triangle became irreversible, i.e. acceptedagainst their willby the
primary victims of the Zionist conquest.21

What a chutzpah! During the first seven years after the 1948 Naqba, the remaining
Palestinians lived under a harsh military government (which lasted till 1966) and
thousands of them were enforced into concentration labor camps while their most of their
lands were confiscated. Desperate for the simplest human needs, the only fight they could
carry on was for minimal conditions for survival. Can that devastated, traumatized and
atomized community be portrayed as making a decision to compromise their national
aspirations and replace them with "demanding equal rights"?
Mikado distorts the meaning of the struggle for equal rights which presumably contradicts
that of the Palestinians in the territories occupied in 1967. He should know better, since
he, together with me and other comrades, actively supported the founding of the National
Democratic Assembly (NDA), headed by Azmi Bishara, which challenged the Jewish state.

20 Michel Warschawski, "The One State Solution and Irreversibility," Alternative, 15 April 2008.
<http://alternativenews.org/archive/index.php/blogs/michael-warschawski/1142-the-one-state-solutionand-irreversibility-1142>
21 Michel Warschawski, Ibid.: "The One State Solution and Irreversibility," Alternative, 15 April 2008.
<http://alternativenews.org/archive/index.php/blogs/michael-warschawski/1142-the-one-state-solutionand-irreversibility-1142>

26

They demanded that Palestinian citizens be recognized as a national group living in their
homeland, not as minorities - thus challenging a central premise of Zionism.
This perspective combined the Palestinian struggle for full equality with a challenge
against the Jewish state and its Zionist essence. It has been adopted in principle by the
majority of the Palestinian intellectual and political leadership in Israel, as reflected in the
four position papers released in 2007 by leading Palestinian organizations.22
Not less significant is Mikado's disregard for the PLOs responsibility for the only possible
struggle left for the Palestinians in Israel. He ignores the fact that it was the Palestinian
leadership headed by Arafat which recognized the Jewish state and gave up the claim to
represent the Palestinians in Israel.
2015: Similarity between Mikado's interview in International Viewpoint and the United
Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals Decision on Palestine
It is indeed distressing to find out that by 2015 International Viewpoint still continues to
publicize Mikado's wrong perspective on Zionism in general and Left Zionism in particular.
As I claimed above, the confusion caused by the Fourth International's avoidance of any
criticism of Mikado's views, presented in his multiple articles in International Viewpoint,
will inevitably result in many comrades adopting his stance. Moreover, the 2015
Declaration of Fourth International on Palestine explains this avoidance as elaborated
below
Interview with Mikado
The interview conducted by Henri Wilno, a member of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste
(NPA) in France and the Fourth International, was published in International Viewpoint in
March 2015 under the self-contradictory headline "Jews and Arabs: the Revolutionary
Perspective of Living Together". Listing the references to his 21 articles published in the
International Viewpoint during the last 15 year at the end of the interview, can't but be
understood as a recommendation of the opinions presented in them.23

22 See detailed review of those papers in Tikva Honig-Parnass, False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and
the Struggle for Palestine, Haymarket Books, 2011, introduction, p. 7, and on the NDA and Bishara, see Tikva
Honig Parnass and Toufic Haddad, Between the Lines, Haymarket Books, 2007, chapter 6 and 7.
23 In the same International Viewpoint issue was published the Declaration of Fourth International on
Palestine, adopted by the International Committee of the Fourth International on 24 February 2015 (No. 482,
March 2015). <http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3904> which I criticize below.

27

In introducing Mikado, Wilno repeats his concealing the fact that he led the split from ISO
(Matzpen) and founded the RCL the local section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International. Wilno also reiterates the distortions of the political positions of ISO which
Mikado introduced in the service of his re-invented personal and political history.
Michel Warschawski has been politically active in Israel for many years. He retraced his
biography in one of his books, Sur la frontire (Stock, 2002). [...] In 1968 he joined the
Israeli Socialist Organization, which had been founded in 1962 by expelled members of the
Israeli Communist Party and older activists influenced by Trotskyism. *+ Although
composed mainly of Jewish activists, Matzpen tried both to mobilize Israeli Jewish youth
and to develop ties with the Palestinians of Israel [actually Matzpen was an internationalist
organization, open to both Jews and Palestinians] as well as Palestinian left organizations
[mainly with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine while the RCL had ties
with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] and those of Arab countries.24

Thirteen years after Mikado's autobiography was published, his deceptive history of the
Trotskyist movement in Israel is still adopted by a central comrade of the French section
without any reservation by the International Viewpoint editorial.
Not less distressing is the fact that International Viewpoint still publishes Mikado's
misleading account of the Zionist left, which hides its central role in laying the foundation
of the colonial settler state of Israel, in articulating its hegemonic fascist ideology and in
legitimizing the apartheid regime both inside Israel and in the 1967 occupied territories.
This central role continued after the loss of the political hegemony to the right in 1977.
The Labor Party participated in most of Israeli governments at least 15 years hereafter.
Also the liberal intellectuals who supported Labor or Meretz and their bloody policies have
long been depicted as the "consciousness of the nation". Their determined support of a
Jewish state a central premise of Zionism underlies the hypocritical "peace camp" and
the false peace process initiated by the Zionist Left, as well as the brutal policies aimed
at retaining the aspired-for Jewish majority.25

24 Israel, Jews and Arabs: the revolutionary perspective of living together. Michel Warschawski interviewed
by
Henri
Wilno,
International
Viewpoint,
No.
482,
Monday
9
March
2015
<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3911 >
25 See my book False Prophets of Peace, Chapter 2, "Jewish Majority Spells Racism". Haifa University
progressive sociologist Sammy Samooha What is a Jewish state for me? It is of two foundations: The first is
a Jewish majority. But not a coincidental majority. *+ It is a planned majority, an ideological majority; a
majority which was planned throughout history, a part of the [Zionist] national aspirations, part of an
intentional policy which entailed the expulsion of Arabs in 1948 and many other additional decisions
(quoted in p. 42 of my book False Prophets of Peace). In the same page I quote Yossi Beilin, the former chair

28

Disregarding the Zionist left's centrality in building the apartheid Jewish state puts in
doubt any claim to anti-Zionism. One can't analyze or understand the nature of the
colonial settler state of Israel and its current policies while ignoring the enormous impact
of its chief creators on them. This significant evading stance is reflected in Mikado's answer
to the interviewers question on the source of the current escalating fascism in Israel.
Q.: In something you wrote in the summer of 2014, you speak of "fascism" in Israel. What
are the roots of this process? Is it just the product of the state of war? Can we say that it is
now the far right that governs?
A: I am speaking of a long process that dates back to the campaign of hatred and
delegitimization that preceded the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. *+ So we have
had twenty years of continuous power of the Right, which has changed the situation, not
so much in the field of the colonial policy towards the Palestinians, but in the internal
regime of the State of Israel. [...] Racism has been unleashed, in political discourse, in the
streets and in legislation which culminated in the proposal to amend the "Basic Law Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people. [...] The assassins of the Prime Minister took
power and have in fact been in power since then. *+ If for a year I have been talking about
fascism, it is because on top of everything I have just mentioned we have to add violence
against democratic activists and organizations, from small fascist groups or even passersby. Far-right government + draconian laws + violence aimed at terrorizing any words of
criticism = fascism.26

Mikado reiterates his claim that the Zionist right is responsible for the rise of fascism in
Israel, since its ascent to power after the assassination of Rabin. However it was the Zionist
Labor movement which, after the establishment of the state, applied the constructive
socialism of the pre-state period to the new reality of the sovereign settler state. Namely,
they replaced socialism with full-fledged statism (a state-centered approach), which
was to become Israels dominant ideology and praxis. "The states laws, symbols, and
particularly its army were positioned at the heart of societal values, enjoying a halo of
sanctity and serving as the basis of a civil religion, as depicted by the late renowned
of the Meretz party and one of the initiators of the Oslo Agreements and of the Geneva Initiative: If this
state is not the state of the Jews and there is not within it a Jewish majority, it [the state] does not interest
me (Shahar Ilan and Amiram Bareket, To Win Hitler, an Interview with Avraham Burg, Haaretz, June 8,
2007). The leftist author Sami Michael, the current president of Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI)
says he would rather leave the entire region if he belonged to a minority in the state (David Grossman,
Sleeping on a Wire, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchd Publishing House, 2002, p. 97).
26 Israel, Jews and Arabs: the revolutionary perspective of living together. Michel Warschawski interviewed
by
Henri
Wilno,
International
Viewpoint,
No.
482,
Monday
9
March
2015
<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3911 >

29

sociologist Baruch Kimmerling." This state-centered approach, says Kimmerling, created


close to fascist perceptions of the role of the state, its institutions and agencies which
succeeded to repress the development of a civil society in Israel for many years. 27
Indeed, as Machover emphasizes, Mikado's position on Zionism seems to have softened.
According to it, Zionism acquired its colonizing character following the 1967 war, rather
than being a colonizing project from its inception.
Appendix I:

http://www.infor.co.il/img/PressMessage/2012%5C11%5C10%5Cpm96957_111020323.DOC

FRANCE HONORS THE WORK OF THE ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER


The French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault will grant the French Republic Human Rights Award for
the year 2012 to the Alternative Information Center.
The Prize honors the work of the Alternative Information Center on the issues of human
rights. It is given to the organization for its activity in espousing the immunity of the
Army's and settlers deeds in the occupied territories and their responsibility for the
violence against the Palestinians.
Michel Warschawski (Mikado) will receive the prize on behalf of the AIC in a ceremony
which will take place in Paris on December 10, 2012. Warchawski a long-time activist in
Matzpen and the radical left, a founder of the organization [SIC!], is active in human
rights in general and the Palestinians' rights in particular. His book On the Border was
recently translated to Hebrew.
According to Michel Warschawski, "The Alternative Information Center, has never aspired
to receive awards for its work. However, this honor emphasizes the State of Israel'
responsibility for its deeds."
Two years later, on July 2014, in the midst of the carnage in Gaza, the IVP published
Mikado's article in which he admits that he "thought a moment about returning this prize
to the French authorities in response to the ban by Franois Hollande and Manuel Valls
government of a protest in Paris last Saturday against the crimes committed by the Israeli
army in Gaza". However, later on, when he saw that "thousands of protestors had ignored

27 See my book False Prophets of Peace, p. 63, quoting from Baruch Kimmerling, Immigrants, Settlers,
Natives : Israel Between Plurality of Cultures and Cultural Wars, Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2004, Hebrew, p. 151.

30

this unjust order of their politicians, I told myself that the prize AIC had received in honor
of the struggle against injustice was actually given by France, not by the prime minister.
France should be proud. It was Valls and Hollande [not PM Jean-Marc Ayraultt] who
brought shame upon themselves. See Michel Warschawski, "The shame of France",
International Viewpoint, 31 July 2014.
Appendix II:
First, the AIC:
You should know that Mikado fired both of us after 13 years of service in the AIC (Tikva)
and just under 2 years (Toufic).
- The official reason Mikado fired us (together with 2 other employees) was due to a
financial crisis at the AIC. This however was only the excuse provided for public
consumption. In fact, no sooner had he fired us - and in so doing deliberately removing the
entire editorship of (News from Within) he promptly hired a new editorship to take our
place. Soon enough, NFW was back in publication telling the magazines readers, that we
(Tikva and Toufic) had done a great job as former editors.
- The magazine's editorship which replaced us at NFW (Jeff Halper) refused to call himself
an anti-Zionist (The AIC itself does not call themselves anti-Zionist anymore).
- The financial crisis which supposedly led to our firing, also was engineered by Mikado
himself. Mikado removed himself from the AIC as director in January 2000 though only
after not having done any genuine fundraising for it. This despite the fact that virtually all
the contacts and connections with the financial sources were with him via his personal
connections with donors .His replacement (Ronit Chacham) became director of an
organization 150,000 S in debt. She proposed reforms to the organization which she
thought could help solve many of the outstanding problems within the organization - both
financial and organizational. The only problem was, her reforms threatened the corrupt
regime erected by Mikado before he left and which was composed of personal benefactors
and non-transparent political kickbacks. This regime had in fact been imposed upon the
staff the previous two years, and resulted in the staged liquidation of any internal
resistance under Mikados guidance. Ronit's reforms and support of the worker's demands
expressed in the workers committee document submitted to the board (as a new director)
were rejected by the board which was composed of other Palestinians and Israelis with
personal and political relations with the very benefactors of the Mikado regime. Realizing
that the AIC was a front for protecting nepotism (and with no revolutionary content to it),
Ronit submitted her resignation bringing about the situation of Crisis

31

- Mikado returned onto the AIC setting, and promptly fired us and two other employees.
Three of the four employees fired (excluding Tikva) were the heads of the AIC staff
committee - elected by the staff- and had been active in organizing the staff of the AIC to
protest the unfair labor practices and corruption (political and financial) within the
organization. It was not by accident that the heads of the staff committee were fired
something we also feel directly spills over from the personal into the political.[..][
- We have not spoken of these things in 4 years, despite the fact that we know we were
deliberately wronged. Upon the founding of BTL, we made it a point to leave these issues
out of the readerships concern, despite the fact that the AIC lied about our firing, directly
benefited from the image and work and readership we had built for NFW and AIC, and
covered up why we were no longer around to international contacts and comrades
- Furthermore, we worked for 3 years on BTL, on an entirely voluntary basis because of
our dedication to the cause and to the events on the ground. We did all this without the
involvement of the IV international who did not raise a telephone to inquire what was
going on.
- It is ironic that the AIC now tries to carve a niche for itself in the "globalization crowd,
considering it is a thriving example of the NGOization and corruption promoted by
globalization amongst the left, and which has deep infectious roots in Palestine / Israel - to
the extent that the national movement has very much become an industry bought and
sold on the global market place.
Criticism of the Declaration of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International on
Palestine (24 February 2015)
The following declaration on Palestine was adopted by the International Committee of the
Fourth International in Amsterdam on 24 February 2015:
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3904
Trying to grasp the real meaning behind the cautious, wary, indistinct and somewhat
blurred language of the Declaration has revealed to me the fact I had not realized before
writing this essay; namely that the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals soft
Zionism and what it implies for its approach to the "conflict" are rather similar to those of
Mikado. Let me mention a number of the issues it raises:
Oslo
The Declaration refrains from explicitly depicting the tremendous significant of the Oslo
Accords as determining all that came later. Oslo is mentioned offhandedly in paragraph 3:

32

"These dynamics had already been manifest before the Oslo accords of 1993-94" and in
paragraph 6 when speaking about the conflicts that Hamas was exposed to as ruler of Gaza
under Israel's control. Instead the main target for criticism is the "Peace Process"
This avoidance serves the subsequent failure to submit a truthful analysis of the "conflict"
which would lead to an anti-Zionist campaign from a revolutionary socialist perspective.
This is inevitably reflected in the tasks outlined for supporters and followers
The end of Israel's direct rule in the Palestinian centers?
Repeating the Oslo misleading differentiation between "direct" and "indirect" rule is
indeed amazing. Paragraph 2 says: "This period [the last two decades which the
declaration reviews] has seen an end of the direct Israeli military occupation of the main
Palestinian population centers." The United Secretariat of the Fourth International reports
this Oslo bluff as if it had any significant meaning or had been implemented since then.
I would expect the United Secretariat of the Fourth International leadership to go further
than using the official deceptive language of Oslo and emphasize that by now there is one
Israeli regime throughout entire historical Palestine. The small area of the alleged
Palestinian autonomy granted in Oslo has been a farce from the beginning. The military
direct rule of Israel (daily kidnapping and arresting, killing and wounding of "civilians"), the
control of exit and entrance of people and products, not to mention the economic
strangulation by Israel, ridicules the "not under direct control" according to the United
Secretariat of the Fourth International.
Indeed, the very mentioning of this fraud among the supposed most significant events and
development that took place in the last two decades is astonishing, to say the least.
The Palestinian Authority
The declaration refrains from explicitly portraying the Palestinian Authority as the creation
of Oslo in which Arafat renounced the national rights of the Palestinian People. This was
exactly in accord with his position since 1988 when the PLO recognized the Jewish state.
As mentioned, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International continued for years after
1988 to see the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people and supported the 2 states
solution.
Now the document tries in an indirect way to confer some justification for their past
support of Arafat and the PA he chaired. In paragraph 3 and 4 the alleged divisions within
the PA are accentuated. It gives a misleading impression that these divisions are about
fundamental demands which relate to Palestinian national rights. However these are but

33

petty differences: '"on the one hand, those who advocated trying to maintain an
implausible balance between struggling against the occupation and collaborating with the
occupation authorities, and, on the other hand, those who supported unqualified
integration into the colonial system."
In other words: a debate about the extent of surrender. However, dealing with these trivial
"divisions" in the PA has some logic for the United Secretariat of the Fourth International:
it implies attributing more radicalism to the first group, who supposedly are more loyal to
old Fatah and Arafat's legend. The Declaration does not stress the submissive essence of
those presumably seeking for a "balance" between independent strategy and
collaboration with Israel. It seems as if it were preparing the reader for what comes soon:
an indirect attempt to somewhat exonerate Arafat (and Oslo) by putting most of the blame
on Abu Mazen and his PA, for playing the role of an "auxiliary of the Israeli occupation
forces and the reorganization of the Palestinian security services under US tutelage
(paragraph 4). What a soft, weary language! (The only time the PA after Arafat is identified
as traitors is in paragraph 5, in the context of explaining the victory of Hamas and even
then they make efforts to clean the supposed "nationalists" in Fatah).
All this blurs the required explicit unequivocal emphasis on the betrayal of the PLO already
in Oslo, to which all the past and present PA members are partners and supporters. The
cleaning of Arafats name by stressing the collaboration of Abu Maazen amounts to
blurring the historical surrender of Oslo. But this was predicted by those who did not want
to close their eyes to the disastrous developments determined by Oslo Accords. In 1994
Israel got rid of Arafat only because he did not deliver all the goods -- the insignificant ones
which did not indicate any real retreat from Oslo.
Israeli society and the Left
The document avoids the widely used term "Zionist Left," which implies the recognition of
the role the Zionist Labour movement played in laying the infrastructure to the apartheid
state of Israel, the Oslo Accords and its role in conferring legitimacy to the appalling
policies of the Right. Instead it states that "The Israeli centre and centre-left" have shared
responsibility for these developments, either by participating in coalition governments or
through their silent complicity in these policies (clause 10).
The Bureau thus blocks the United Secretariat of the Fourth International and other radical
Left organizations from understanding the nature of the Apartheid colonial settler state of
Israel as embodying the Zionist project in the spirit of the Zionist Labour movement. It
thus prevents them from articulating clear critical positions towards the "Peace Camp" and
its leaders in Israel and abroad (as seen in their unspecified "solution" below).

34

I only have to reiterate what I have written above: One can't analyse or understand the
nature of the colonial settler state of Israel and its current policies while ignoring the
enormous impact of its chief creators on them. Ignoring it indicates a position towards
Zionism in general and not only towards the "Left" - a soft Zionist perspective similar to
that of Mikado.
Tasks
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International chose to open this section with the
"tactic step" taken by the PA 3 years ago: turning to international organizations for human
rights, particularly the UN. The latter aims at pressing the UN to adopt a resolution
imposing a calendar for Israeli military withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967,
etc. "The failure of this last attempt shows the limits of the tactical shift."
We have no hint of the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals position on this
naivety, to say the least. It doesnt criticize sharply the "diplomacy" tactic or denounce its
hypocrisy. Instead the United Secretariat of the Fourth International adopts a kind of
"neutral" or even forgiving stance towards the PA, which aims "to change the relation of
forces" by turning to the capitalist imperialist institutions. Are these institutions supposed
to freeing their people from the oppressing regime built with their consent in Oslo, of
which they have been daily partners since then? Seeing this initiative as a task of a
revolutionary movement only distances the reader from the main issue: stop collaboration
and support the resistance!
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS Movement)
The document wrongly stresses that the PA had a motivation for choosing the diplomatic
tactic similar to that of the BDS movement which begun seven years prior to it. It thus puts
them both on a shared platform of strategies initiated and supported by the Palestinian
people. However, contrary to the PA diplomacy alternative, the BDS was initiated and
supported by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society organizations in both
the 67' and the 48' occupied territories.
In paragraph 14 the United Secretariat of the Fourth International document presents the
goals of the BDS: they focus on rejecting the compromise which the bilateral negotiations
process may entail. BDS is thus meant to escape from the logic of bilateral negotiations
and of an acceptable compromise. It is also a question of breaking with the logic of
military confrontation with Israel, a dead end for the Palestinians, and to combine external
pressure and the new development of a popular movement within the country.

35

The bilateral negotiations, however, are dealing with the 67 occupation alone, which is
contradictory to the perspective of the BDS. Its a telling attempt to compare the United
Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals presentation of the BDS goals with that of the
Palestinian founders and leaders of the movement: Omar Bargouti and Lisa Taraki. Below I
will emphasize those places that contradict the United Secretariat of the Fourth
Internationals document, which omit or use a soft language compared to the official
Palestinian BDS positions (see PACBI , 10 February 2010: Boycott Ariel and the Rest! All
Israeli Academic Institutions are Complicit in Occupation and Apartheid
<http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1175>)
"[..] In this respect, the importance of the 2005 BDS call lies in its comprehensive approach
to the Israeli colonial and apartheid system as a whole, and its subjugation of the
Palestinian people, whether as second-class citizens inside Israel, subjects under its military
occupation, or dispossessed refugees. This was summarized in the concise demands
outlined in the Palestinian BDS call that Israel recognize the inalienable right of the
Palestinian people to self-determination and fully comply with international law by:
respecting, protecting and promoting the right of return of all Palestinian refugees; [The
emphasize is on the RIGHT of RETURN; unlike the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International they dont add the right to compensations] ending the occupation of all
Palestinian and Arab lands; and recognizing full equality for the Palestinian citizens of
Israel. In this sense, the BDS call effectively counters the systematic Israeli fragmentation of
the Palestinian people and the reduction of the struggle for freedom and selfdetermination to an endless bargaining game over land in the occupied West Bank and
Gaza Strip."
[..]"Central to the Palestinian BDS movements three demands is an understanding of Israel
as an apartheid state. Israel fits the UN definition of apartheid not just in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip; it defines itself as a Jewish state, not a state of all its citizens. Most
importantly, Israeli laws, policies, and practices discriminate openly against Palestinian-i.e., "non-Jewish"-- citizens of the state. The pervasive and institutionalized racism and
discrimination are particularly evident in the vital domains of land ownership and use,
education, employment, access to public services, and urban planning. The apartheid
character has been part of the design of Israel since its inception. (Reference 11: For more
on Israel's regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid see this important BeNC
strategic position paper: >http://bdsmovement.net/files/English-BNC_Position_PaperDurban_Rview.pdf>)
The paragraph is also part of the blueprint of the BDS: The state of Israel was established
in 1948 by forcibly displacing the overwhelming majority of Palestines indigenous Arab

36

population from their homeland. Today, these Palestinian refugees are prevented from
returning to their homes and lands from which they were expelled. In contrast, any person
who claims Jewish descent from anywhere in the world may become an Israeli citizen and
national under the so-called Law of Return. Moreover, Israels brutal war on Gaza was not
an anomaly; rather, it represents the most recent example of the systematic policies of
ethnic cleansing that Israel has carried out against the Palestinian people for more than six
decades."
In paragraph 16 the Declaration of unlike the United Secretariat of the Fourth International
states: "The Palestinian initiators of the BDS campaign rely on the creativity and tactical
sense of the international solidarity movements, so that they take account in each country
of the different possible aspects and levels of BDS suitable to specific national and regional
realities. [..] In different countries and regions, therefore, different demands can be
highlighted"
It is sad to witness the United Secretariat of the Fourth International fully legitimizing the
different interpretations to the BDS radical positions without mentioning the real position
of the BDS towards the various BDS groups namely, free choice of subjects to fight for.
Moreover, I would expect the revolutionary United Secretariat of the Fourth International
not to be satisfied with tactical considerations and to support the position of the
Palestinian BDS leaders.
We again quote from PACBI , 10 February 2010: Boycott Ariel and the Rest! All Israeli
Academic
Institutions
are
Complicit
in
Occupation
and
Apartheid
(<http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1175>):
"Despite the clarity with which the Palestinian BDS movement has enunciated the goals of
the Palestinian struggle, some Israeli and other advocates of boycott have tried to limit its
scope. They have attempted to limit the goals of the BDS movement by restricting it geopolitically and confining it to a call to end the Israeli occupation over the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. This "interpretation" of BDS is most dangerous as it attempts to appropriate the
right to redefine the terms of the struggle in Palestine and to impose an ideologically
suspect political agenda that lets Israel off the hook on the charges of apartheid and
practicing the most pernicious form of racism and discrimination in all the territory under
its control.
"As for the targets chosen for BDS actions, the strength of the BDS movement lies in the
fact that it does not impose specific targets or tactics on solidarity groups around the
world. Based on the principle of context-sensitivity and respect for the autonomy and
integrity of democratic international groups supporting Palestinian rights, the Palestinian

37

BDS collective leadership has always believed that people of conscience and organizations
advocating human rights know their respective situation best and are the most capable of
deciding the appropriate ways and pace to build the BDS movement in their contexts.
Sometimes the tactical targeting of settlement-only products may be the best way for a
campaign to progress. At other times, it may be resolutions at local unions endorsing BDS,
or cultural boycott targets, etc. But even if one were concerned only about Israels
occupation, not its denial of refugee rights or its apartheid system, this cannot justify a
principled focus on boycotting settlement products only, as if Israels colonies
themselves were the party guilty of colonialism, not the state that established them and
sustains their growth. In no other boycott context in the world does anyone call for
boycotting a manifestation of a states violations of international law, rather than the state
itself. After all, under international law states are the legal entities that are supposed to be
held accountable for crimes and violations that they commit".
Indeed, the contrast between the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals
presentation of the BDS tasks and the Palestinian BDS blueprint discloses as in a nutshell
that the United Secretariat of the Fourth International is far from the Palestinian approach
to Zionism, left Zionism and the Apartheid state of Israel.
The gap between the Palestinian popular call for BDS and that of the United Secretariat of
the Fourth Internationals is reflected in paragraph 20 regarding the "solution" (see below
THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA, Sunday, 2 August 2015).
The 2005 Declaration does not mention the change in supporting the 2 states solution (as
does the one state document) and its "new" support for a twisted form of one state
solution. It does not explicitly identify it as "one state in all Historic Palestine" or call for
mobilization to actively participate in what is by now a living movement. While it bothers
to detail the need to abolish some of the expressions of the 67' occupation (dismantle of
settlements and the wall among others things) this is not the case as regards the Israeli
apartheid state. It does not call to abolish its land laws and the "law of return" for Jews.
Moreover, the Declaration does not recognize the unity of all parts of the Palestinian
people, including the right of the Diaspora, the refugees and the Palestinians inside Israel
to participate in the decision-making process for the implementation of the "solution".
(The one-state blueprint says: "In articulating the specific contours of such a solution,
those who have been historically excluded from decision-making especially the
Palestinian Diaspora and its refugees, and Palestinians inside Israel must play a
central role")

38

The call by the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals Declaration "for a political
solution based on equal rights" is but a weak echo to the One State Solution, if at all. It can
mean anything, for example a bi-national sate.
Also it is rather telling to compare the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internationals
Declaration support for the "the right of return for the refugees or compensation for those
who demand it", with the emphasize of the One State blueprint on the RIGHT without
going into details which are secondary to it: "The implementation of the Right of Return
for Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 194 is a fundamental
requirement for justice, and a benchmark of the respect for equality."
The blurred approach of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International seems to me
rather damaging any prospects for building a socialist, anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist by
radical left on the Palestinian issue. I feel as repeating the old dictum: May God defend
me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA, Sunday, 2 August 2015: The One State Declaration
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/one-state-declaration/793>
29 November 2007 (Various undersigned)
Editors Note: The following statement was issued by participants in the July 2007 Madrid
meeting on a one-state solution and the November 2007 London Conference.
For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to
provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a
genuine process leading towards them.
The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and
presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied
people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is
predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national
rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of
Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution
condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their
homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews
constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution
denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.
The two-state solution entrenches and formalizes a policy of unequal separation on a land
that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically. All the international

39

efforts to implement a two-state solution cannot conceal the fact that a Palestinian state is
not viable, and that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish independence in separate states cannot
resolve fundamental injustices, the acknowledgment and redress of which are at the core
of any just solution.
In light of these stark realities, we affirm our commitment to a democratic solution that
will offer a just, and thus enduring, peace in a single state based on the
following principles:

The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were
expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national
origin or current citizenship status;

Any system of government must be founded on the principle of equality in civil,


political, social and cultural rights for all citizens. Power must be exercised with
rigorous impartiality on behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities;

There must be just redress for the devastating effects of decades of Zionist
colonization in the pre- and post-state period, including the abrogation of all laws,
and ending all policies, practices and systems of military and civil control that
oppress and discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion or national origin;

The recognition of the diverse character of the society, encompassing distinct


religious, linguistic and cultural traditions, and national experiences;

The creation of a non-sectarian state that does not privilege the rights of one
ethnic or religious group over another and that respects the separation of state
from all organized religion;

The implementation of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees in accordance


with UN Resolution 194 is a fundamental requirement for justice, and a
benchmark of the respect for equality;

The creation of a transparent and nondiscriminatory immigration policy;

The recognition of the historic connections between the diverse communities


inside the new, democratic state and their respective fellow communities outside;

In articulating the specific contours of such a solution, those who have been
historically excluded from decision-making especially the Palestinian Diaspora
and its refugees, and Palestinians inside Israel must play a central role;

40

The establishment
and reconciliation.

of

legal

and

institutional

frameworks

for

justice

The struggle for justice and liberation must be accompanied by a clear, compelling and
moral vision of the destination a solution in which all people who share a belief in
equality can see a future for themselves and others. We call for the widest possible
discussion, research and action to advance a unitary, democratic solution and bring it
to fruition.
Madrid and London, 2007

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