Les communistes américains sont contre le boycott d'Israël

"En l'absence de toute perspective révolutionnaire, des campagnes comme celles pour le boycott d'Israël peuvent apparaître comme un substitut radical. Mais, à mesure que la crise du capitalisme s'étend, le caractère "anti-Israël" de ces campagnes est tout simplement une forme moderne de la haine des Juifs. Tous ceux qui soutiennent avec sincérité la lutte pour les droits nationaux des Palestiniens doivent s'y opposer." (Israel boycotts and divestment serve as cover for anti-Semitism, Paul Pederson) 

Un lecteur, que nous remercions, nous a fait parvenir la précision suivante (05/07): "Le SWP n'est pas le Parti Communiste américain mais bien l'organisation trotskyste : compte tenu de la place que prennent les trotskystes européens dans le mouvement anti-israélien, cette prise de position est d'autant plus significative."

Encore une différence entre communistes européens et américains.

Source: Judeosphere (Communists Against Boycotting Israel)

The U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) just held its 46th annual convention. (350 people attended! Can you feel the momentum?)

Still, I was intrigued by this description of one of their seminars:

“World Capitalist Crisis, Israel, and the Roots of Jew Hatred” took up the need for a multinational, working-class leadership to fight for a democratic, secular Palestine. Communists would fight for Palestine to be a refuge for all Jews facing persecution. Conference participants discussed how the call for a boycott of Israeli products is not a road toward winning self-determination for the Palestinians, but a dangerous concession to anti-Semitism.

That’s not the type of dialectic I normally expect at such gatherings, but, interestingly, SWP has been a vocal opponent of the BDS movement and the annual “Israel Apartheid Week” carnival on college campuses.  Take, for instance, this editorial in the SWP’s newspaper, the Militant:

"The anti-Israel boycott campaign paints all Israelis as being the enemies of the Palestinian people. But that is false. The capitalist regime in Israel is the enemy of the Palestinian people, but it is also the enemy of Israel’s working people, Jewish and Palestinian. Only a political program that appeals for a common struggle of all the oppressed and exploited—regardless of their national origin, or religious belief—can point the way forward.


The organizers of the current anti-Israel boycott compare it to the international campaign led by the African National Congress (ANC) as part of building support for the revolutionary struggle to overthrow apartheid in South Africa. There are sweeping differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and the capitalist regime in Israel—in terms of organization of labor, the character of the regimes, and the historical conditions under which they emerged. The attempt to paint them as the same simply obfuscates the real social and class relations in Israel and the tasks facing the toilers there to chart a revolutionary course forward. Applied to Israel the term “apartheid” is simply an epithet, rather than a scientific description of a social structure.

Perhaps the most glaring difference between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the fight for Palestinian national rights today is the existence of a revolutionary organization—the ANC under Nelson Mandela—in the case of South Africa. The Freedom Charter, the basic document of the ANC written in 1955, leads with the following call: “We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.”

In contrast to that revolutionary perspective, the current leading forces in the Palestinian national movement—the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist party that controls Gaza today—both have political programs that point in the opposite direction….The Hamas covenant….speaking of the Jewish people, states, “With their money, they took control of the world media… . [T]hey stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution… . With their money they formed secret societies… . They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources.”

In the absence of any revolutionary perspective, campaigns such as the anti-Israel boycott can appear to be a radical substitute. But, as the crisis of capitalism deepens, “anti-Israel” character of these campaigns is simply a modern form of Jew-hatred. All who genuinely support the battle for Palestinian national rights must oppose it."

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