Israel once had a communist movement. Could things have been different?

1. Link the article

2. They're trying push communist religion. They must be stopped.

3. Было нтересно смотреть

4. I guess it'd be no different from anywhere else: being proud to be part of the proletariat is one thing, and the opposite is being part of Anywhere's communist central comittee, lets say, oligarchs AF.

5. @7:30 answer: Irgun terrorists

6. Bill should not be working for this network…came here to say this and down vote only…

7. Of course but instead were bribed by Nazis to be Nazis !

8. 😅

9. Jews ended apartheid in South Africa. They were Jews, not Zionists.

10. 30:46 No, "one person one vote" is NOT the definition of democracy. Or if it is, then someone intentionally subverted the meaning to justify top-down rule. Each person having a single vote is only one PART of the definition; the rest is full of discussion and creating solutions together. If all you have is the vote then you don't REALLY have a say in anything except what your "betters" allow you to. The people who write the legislation that you vote on (if you're in Congress, say, which regularly means the lawyers of big businesses writing legislation favorable to their interests. Bribery never need enter the equation to charge officials with corruption) provide the solutions that you (a member of the voting body) decide to accept or reject…and let's not kid ourselves, you won't even read it because you've already been told to vote for it regardless. In elections, you vote for whichever puppet of the elite (local, regional or national) will make the decisions for you, and all of the bureaucrats and aides that come with them; you make no other decisions, nor do you have any discussion with your fellow voters, because you're not MEANT to. "One person one vote" is mob rule, except that it's organized so that the mob dances to the tune of skilled puppeteers.

    There's nothing I fundamentally disagree on with the rest of what he's saying (I can't remember at this point. I get heated when people brain-puke garbage about democracy, even if they mean well), just that stupid "one person one vote is the definition of democracy" nonsense. Democracy is literally "rule of the people," and in a republic "the people" are never the masses because they never actually play a significant role in the decision-making process. Not like capitalists do in a capitalist republic (or even a capitalist-friendly dictatorship), because there's a severe lack of infrastructure to make it happen, and a complete lack of legally-binding mandates for it to happen. It's ALWAYS, without exception, the masses being allowed to vote for which new feudal lords, I mean, "representatives," will make make the decisions for them. That also applies to political parties like the DSA; party makeup doesn't change the fact that the structure of the party resembles every top-down system to have ever existed.

11. Thanks you!
    God Bless Israel and the United states of America

12. 29 Million Russians died fighting off the Nazi Invaders during The Great Patriotic War.
    You seem to have forgotten that Hitler and his allies slaughtered 6-8 million Jews, along with 8-10 million others in the Shoah.
    Remember, the Bá-ath Parties were Arab Nationalist Socialist Parties that were organized along the lines of the NASDP and were violently anti-Semitic. The original Arab Fedayeen were organized, trained and led by Otto Skorzeny, who was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Colonel) and an ardent Nazi and anti-Semite.

13. I am a member of the Communist Party of Israel and I feel I need to make a few corrections to this discussion, and more broadly in Beinin's overly generalized analysis. It is true that building a joint internationalist revolutionary politics in Israel and Palestine has always had its challenges, but for the last century it has always been the communists from both peoples who worked together to build that politics. We celebrated our 100th anniversary in 2019 (as the first iteration of the party was founded in 1919) with several open discussions about our history. The early years of the party were defined by the rejection of the Zionism of the Zionist Labor movement in favor of revolutionary internationalism and anti-imperialist struggle- out of a point of view that integrating as equals in the middle east rather than being colonial servants to foreign imperialism was in the best interest of the Jewish People in Palestine/Israel. At the same time the original communist party of palestine was the originator of communist parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Palestinian diaspora and Jordan (alongside other marxist movements among the Palestinian People). The discussion completely ignored the significant role of non-European Mizrachi Jews (particularly Jewish-Iraqi Communists) who were a major contingency of the party during the early Israeli history when the party had its peak popular support among Jews. Also the role of the British Empire and its puppet monarchies in the 1948 war, or that the decision to split the party in 1943-48 was imposed by the Comintern. Right from 1948 it was the Communist Party that lead the struggle against the military regime imposed on the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and continued to lead their struggle for equality throughout the Land Day revolt in the 70s, becoming the leading political formation among the Arab-Palestinian national minority in Israel. In fact, it is hard to overstate the importance of the Communist movement on the formation of the Palestinian national liberation movement, including the towering cultural figures including Mahmood Darwish, Taufik Ziad and Emil Habibi. Also, right now the CP (through the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) is leading the Block Against the Occupation, which indeed has seen tremendous successes these past few months validating the long-help line of the party that the military occupation imposed on the Palestinian People contrasts with the interests of the people of Israel who want to live in a democracy (so I don't understand the suggestion that this block will form into a new party).

14. 2 of my neighbors were members of Palmach, which was the Communist Militia that was displaced by the Irgun (Socialist Militia that became the IDF) in the 1950’s. One of these neighbors led the defense of the Negev Potash Works during the Israeli War of Independence…

15. This whole conversation is nothing but normalization of the Zionist entity. This isn’t a ‘conflict’. This is Zionist settler colonialism and the temporary entity is a cancer in the region of west Asia.

    Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea soon by the Palestinian resistance along with the entire axis of resistance. All these Zionist settlers can choose to go home or they can go the less pleasant way.

16. I just saw a credible report that the U.S. is waiving Visa requirements for Israeli business people.

17. This comment is not meant to diminish the ANC's importance or accomplishments in any way, but Arab leftist movements tended to fragment because imperialist pressures were much greater. They were at the center of the Cold War, whereas Africa was a side show in comparison, Africa has great mineral wealth, too, but the importance of the petroleum reserves of ME and North Africa to western capitalism and militarism was of the first order. The secretive cellular structure ended up undermining and ideologically corrupting the left parties, but it was necessary for personal and organizational survival.

    This presentation is really thought provoking about a very important, but neglected subject. The "good Zionists" – some of whom were just progressives rather than leftists – included very admirable people like Achad Ha-am, Judah Magnes, Hannah Arendt, Einstein, Martin Buber and Henrietta Szold, who could have created a Jewish homeland at peace with its neighbors in a different time…maybe that time is in the not so distant future.

    PS: That last phrase was not an endorsement of the Abraham Accords.

18. This was an amazing discussion indeed! Thank you. I would recommend Mahmood Mamdani's Neither Settler Nor Native book which I think would also be of interest to anyone who found this discussion interesting. Perhaps Mr. Mamdani could be interviewed by Bill in the future?

19. Well said!

20. My fantasy was to attend Stanford for History as that college for History was the best on the West Coast.

21. Israel had communes before becoming a state . I know this history because History my passion.

22. Screw Donald Trump . 😅

23. Right, it was called the USSR.

24. They still have communist party, its kept quite😮 Talmudic indoctrination is communism.😮😂😢😅😊

25. no…. yall all over the place.

26. Yes this is exactly what you have done in the USA trying to turn all communist

27. Fascinating history 🇮🇱

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