Economic gloom for Zionist rulers

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Whilst Israeli chief of staff, General Rafael Eitan, boasts that war between Syria and Jordan would be to Israel's advantage, there can be little enthusiasm felt on the economic front by the Begin government.

The last month has seen a no-confidence vote survived by only 57 votes to 54 with fewer than half the 120 members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, supporting the ruling Likud block headed by Begin. The source of the confidence vote was the soaring inflation level now around 130% with forecasts for the last quarter predicting further rises to reach an annual average of 160% or even more.

Ezer Weizman, a former defence minister and member of Begin's Herut party voted no confidence in his own government and was promptly expelled by Herut.

Further embarrassment followed with the Minister of Religious Affairs Aharon Abuhatzeira being charged by the Attorney General of receiving bribes.

In addition to the burden of inflation close to one third of the Israeli budget is spent on defence and almost another third is repaying and servicing foreign debts most of which were incurred to pay for defence needs.

Finance Minister Hurvitz, attacked from all sides for his failure to stem the rise of inflation, has suggested that the respite attorded by the Guit War should be used to think of ways to cut the defence budget.

Any such respite for the Zionists is a further testament to the inability of so-called "progressive' Arab governments and petit-bourgeois leaderships to consistently fight Zionism and actively support the Palestinians.

Zionist ' propaganda

Britain argues that to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Jewish. The economic chaos of Israel provides an unprecedented opportunity for British workers to counter this lie.

With even the UN voting by 200 to 1 (Israel) against the recent shootings of unarmed students in the West Bank, we must argue in the labour movement that Zionism as a political theory holds no future for Jewish workers based as it is on the racist notion that antisemitism is inherent in workers.

Such theories, and the resulting 'separate state' for Jews are alien to socialists who fight racialism and anti-semitism by attacking the exploitative nature of the system with the unity of the working class.

Economic want

Socialists should take every opportunity to show that a Zionist Israel, created in 1948 by the massacre and expulsion of the Palestinians, has not provided the promised safe home for world Jewry. The only reality for Jewish workers is one of war and economic want with millions wasted on defence to guarantee the continued repression of the Palestinians.

The first duty of socialists must be to fight with the Palestinians for their right to national self-determination. As part of that fight a struggle must be taken up to win layers of Jewish workers to the fight against • For their part the Palestinians have constantly denied any suggestion that they wish to drive the Jews into the sea, as Israeli propaganda claims.

A socialist Palestine can only be built after the break-up of the Israeli state and its replacement by equality of political and social rights for Arabs and Jews.

In achieving this end we should strive to learn the lessons of the Gulf War and the West Bank resistance.

Only the Palestinian workers and peasants themselves can be relied upon to fight consistently for their self-determination. If this fight is to avoid being tied to the coat-tails of the various petit-bourgeois Arab leaderships a powerful Trotskyist movement must be buit in the Middle East.