#title Intro to Anarchists & Fellow Travellers on Palestine
#author M. Gouldhawke
#LISTtitle Intro to Anarchists & Fellow Travellers on Palestine
#date 2024
#source Retrieved on May 12, 2024 from [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/anarchists-on-palestine/][mgouldhawke.wordpress.com]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-05-13T03:43:40.423Z
#authors M. Gouldhawke
#topics palestine, israel-palestine, palestine solidarity, national liberation, internationalism, settler-colonialism
#notes Intro to a collection of links to texts by various writers.



Anarchists over the course of history have never had a unified stance on [[https://decolonizepalestine.com/introduction-to-palestine/][Palestine]] and [[https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/zionism-is-not-colonialism-just-jewish-self-determination/][Zionism]].

Some Jewish anarchists active in the late 1800s and early 1900s, such as [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/bernard-lazare][Bernard Lazare]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_Solotaroff][Hillel Solotaroff]], drifted toward Zionism over time (as noted by Mina Grauer in an [[https://www.jstor.org/stable/1396403][article]] from 1994).

In 1906, Jewish anarchist [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/emma-goldman][Emma Goldman]] published an pseudonymously-authored [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2024/01/29/national-atavism-mother-earth-1906/][article]] by a fellow Jewish anarchist which criticized Zionism, as well as nationalism more generally, and claimed that "Prejudices are never overcome by one who shows himself equally narrow and bigoted."

The Russian anarchist [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/petr-kropotkin][Peter Kropotkin]] in 1907 debated Zionism with a Jewish anarchist by the name of Yarblum in the pages of the anarchist journal, <em>Listki Khleb i Volia</em>, with Kropotkin taking a stance against the formation of the Zionist state in Palestine (also noted by Grauer in 1994).

In 1913, [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/gustav-landauer][Gustav Landauer]], a Jewish-German anarchist, seemingly [[https://libcom.org/article/sind-das-ketzergedanken-gustav-landauer][exalted]] the Jewish diaspora over the proposed Zionist state, as he claimed that “the Jews can only be redeemed with [all of] humanity, and that the two are one and the same: to pursue persistently the messiah in [national] banishment and dispersion, and to be the messiah of the nations" (as [[https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110368598/html?lang=en][noted]] by Paul Mendes-Flohr in 2015).

In the wake of the 1929 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots][al-Buraq Disturbances]] in Palestine, the Italian anarchists [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/camillo-berneri][Camillo Berneri]] and [[https://www.estelnegre.org/documents/napolitano/napolitano.html][Nino Napolitano]] wrote [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/10/22/palestine-idealists-and-capitalists-vernon-richards-1938/#berneripalestine][articles]] denouncing British imperialism and the oppression of the Palestinian people (Berneri additionally addressed antisemitism in his 1935 booklets, <em>[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/camillo-berneri-against-the-racist-delirium][The Racist Delirium]]</em> and <em>[[https://search.worldcat.org/title/Le-Juif-antisemite/oclc/458487337][Le Juif antisémite]]</em>).

Also in 1929 and in reference to the same disturbances, Jewish anarchists [[https://jewishcurrents.org/yiddish-anarchists-break-over-palestine-1929][debated]] Zionism in the Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper, <em>Di fraye arbeter shtime</em> (as noted and translated recently by Eyshe Beirich); while the Mexican anarchist newspaper, <em>Verbo Rojo</em>, published an [[https://www.libradorivera.com/Periodicos/Periodicos%201913-1930/Verbo%20Rojo/1929/Verbo%20Rojo%2014%20Epoca%20III%201929.pdf][article]] criticizing Zionism through a condemnation of nationalism more broadly (as [[https://anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/emma-goldman-and-reginald-reynolds-on-palestine-some-notes-on-anti-semitism-and-zionism-before-world-war-two][noted]] recently by A.W. Zurbrugg).

In 1938, the Italian-English anarchist Vernon Richards wrote a book review [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/10/22/palestine-idealists-and-capitalists-vernon-richards-1938/][article]] proclaiming that the "Arab demand for independence is far from vague in its significance […] And we further add that Zionism will not solve the Jewish problems.”

Beginning in 1939, [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/albert-meltzer][Albert Meltzer]], an English anarchist born to a Jewish family, wrote several [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/11/05/anarchist-tactic-for-palestine-albert-meltzer-1939/][articles]] against Zionism and British imperialism in Palestine; while in his 1996 autobiography, Meltzer [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/albert-meltzer-i-couldn-t-paint-golden-angels#toc38][related]] from personal experience a part of the violent political and military context leading up to the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948.

From the [[https://decolonizepalestine.com/intro/from-nakba-to-naksa/][Nakba]] (Catastrophe) to [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/10/16/against-the-destruction-of-gaza/][today]], many anarchists have continued to support the fight for Palestinian liberation (and in some cases are [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-from-the-galilee-to-gaza-a-voice-from-palestine][themselves]] Palestinians fighting for the liberation of their own people), while also carrying on the [[https://www.redblacknotes.com/2023/11/16/palestine-platitudes-and-silence/][critique]] of fellow anarchists' stances on the matter.

Historically, anarchists have a long and contradictory history of engagement with [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/anarchism-indigenous-peoples/][colonialism]] and [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/anarchists-on-national-liberation/][national liberation]] more generally, of which the subjects of Palestine and Zionism form a constituent part.

This [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/anarchists-on-palestine/][page]] is an attempt to collect some of the statements by anarchists and their fellow travellers that seem most relevant to the Palestinian struggle and to anarchist solidarity with that fight, or at least to an overview of anarchist perspectives on Palestine and Zionism.

When it comes to fellow travellers, to my knowledge, Reginald Reynolds, Mustapha Khayati, Lafif Lakhdar, [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/fredy-perlman][Fredy Perlman]] and Bassel al-Araj did not self-identify as anarchists. However, in my view, they were anarchist-adjacent enough (to varying extents) to have their writing included in this collection. Aside from these authors, and those in the specified [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/anarchists-on-palestine/#aaronbushnell][section]] on Aaron Bushnell's action, all the other writers whose texts are found here did or do self-identify as anarchists, as far as I can tell.

I myself do not agree with every point made in each of these articles, particularly Emma Goldman's 1938 [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-on-zionism][text]] implicitly invoking [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke][John Locke]] (regarding the ideology of entitlement to other people's land granted through invasion and individual labour, a point [[https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/anarchists-on-palestine/#reynolds][critiqued]] in the same time period by fellow traveller Reginald Reynolds) and Sam Dolgoff's [[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sam-dolgoff-anarchists-in-israel][ideological defense]] of the Israeli state, but I include them due to their historical significance and to show that anarchists have had conflicting (and even self-contradictory) positions on Palestine and Zionism.

M.Gouldhawke (May 2024)