On 24 October, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) called a counter-protest to an English Defence League (EDL) demonstration in support of Israel outside the Israeli Embassy in London. Although the UAF claimed it held a ‘lively anti-fascist event’, there were at most 60 anti-fascists, of whom only a handful were actually from the UAF; they were significantly outnumbered by 200 EDL supporters.
The event revealed UAF’s completely unprincipled stance on the Palestinian struggle. In a statement beforehand it said ‘UAF does not have a position on the question of Israel and Palestine but unites around the common aim of opposing fascism and racist division’ – as if the question of Zionism were not one of fascism and racism!
Let us be clear: Zionism is racism, and until US imperialism got its way in 1991, had been defined as such by the United Nations since 1975. Its aim is genocide: making life so intolerable for the Palestinian people that they are remorselessly driven from their lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem, completing the expulsions of 1948.
Let us also be clear that Zionists in Britain are as racist as the EDL. Many are out-and-out fascists like the Betar supporters who vainly tried to stop the Marks and Spencer pickets in Oxford Street, which FRFI has been central in organising since 2000, or those who mobilised dozens in Manchester against our M&S picket in Market Street in 2005-07, waving their Union flags and singing ‘Rule, Britannia’ and the national anthem like any common-or-garden fascist. Zionists too are opposed to immigration, hate all Muslims, and would like any pro-Palestinian protest banned. Both EDL supporters and Zionists organise against protesters outside the Israeli Ahava shop in Covent Garden, London.
In its subsequent website report, the UAF says that ‘the EDL is just trying to use the issue of Israel in an attempt to appeal to Jewish people, some of whom may support Israel.’ The fact is that, despite the presence of vocal Jewish anti-Zionists in the Palestine support movement, many, possibly the majority, support Israel, and thereby condone the brutal racism of the Israeli state. With defence of Israel a cornerstone of British imperialism’s foreign policy, no serious anti-racist or anti-fascist movement can be neutral on the question without capitulating to Zionism and pretending it is something other than what it is: militant racism.
The EDL is not the BNP: it is an unequivocal, militant supporter of Zionism and Israel because it is an unequivocal, militant supporter of the interests of British imperialism. It rejects the populist ‘little Englandism’ of the BNP, realising that a fascist movement in this country cannot be built on the BNP’s mix of holocaust denial, opposition to the war in Afghanistan and demands for the repatriation of British capital. The EDL clearly expects support from Zionist activists for its standpoint, and that is why it held the event on 24 October. This means that it cannot be confronted by those who imagine that the question of Zionism is irrelevant to building an anti-racist, anti-fascist movement in this country.
Without explicit opposition to British imperialism, there can be no real anti-racism. FRFI will continue to make the question of Palestinian freedom and opposition to Zionism central to an anti-racist standpoint in this country.
