A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #351 - THE FAR RIGHT, ANTISEMITISM, AND ISRAEL (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The Israeli government has invited the president of the National Rally 
to visit Israel. He is expected to speak at a "rally against 
antisemitism." The purpose of the rally is to denounce as antisemites 
anti-Zionists and those who criticize Israeli policies, particularly the 
genocide in Gaza and the rampant ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. This 
invitation is a sign of a development that has escaped the watchdogs of 
anti-fascism raised in the 1990s and 2000s to occupy the political space 
on the left. Reducing the FN (from which the RN was born) to the Nazi 
party, reducing Nazism to anti-Semitism, not situating the extreme right 
in the class struggle, ignoring its colonial roots, all this has 
prevented and prevents a relevant perception of the extreme right.
The settler colonization that Zionism carries out places it within the 
trajectory of the ethnic nation-state. (1) This too has escaped the 
proponents of the "republican nation-state" and the "two-state solution."

The Historical Roots of Far-Right Antisemitism
For a long time, the French far right has embraced an anti-Jewish legacy.
Part of the Judeophobic legacy of the far right in France dates back to 
the end of the 19th century, which saw its flagship event with the 
Dreyfus Affair starting in 1894. Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French 
army, was accused of treason, convicted, deported to the penal colony, 
and ultimately found not guilty and the victim of a frame-up. This 
Judeophobia continued in the interwar period and during the collaboration.
Another part of the Judeophobic legacy lies in the Judeophobia specific 
to the "French of Algeria," who were unhappy with the accession of 
Algerian Jews (with the exception of the Jews of M'Zab, southern Sahara) 
to French citizenship (Crémieux Decree of 1870, which was abolished by 
the Vichy regime on October 7, 1940). Let us remember that the 
"Indigènes" (90% of the population of Algeria in 1954) are "French 
subjects" and not citizens and are subject to the code of the indigénat. (2)
At the end of the 19th century, mayors in Algiers and Oran were elected 
under the anti-Semitic label. Drumont, anti-Jewish propagandist, 
newspaper editor in Paris and author of La France juive (a sort of 
"bible" of anti-Semitism), was elected deputy in Algeria in 1898.

Jordan Bardella and Marion Maréchal invited to Israel, drawing by Soph 
published in L'Humanité, March 28.
Zionism: A Political Project
Zionism aims at the creation of a Jewish state in the land of Palestine. 
The Jewish State (or State of the Jews according to the translation of 
more recent editions) is the title of the work by Theodore Herzl 
published in 1896. This project became that of the World Zionist 
Congress held in Basel the following year (the name Zionism refers to 
Zion, the name of a hill in Jerusalem). It claims to be a response to 
European anti-Semitism, but it seeks support from states in which 
anti-Semitism is almost a state position (Tsarist Russia, for example). (3)


First Zionist Congress in Basel (Switzerland) in 1897
Zionism is a national project based on the right of blood; it aims to 
bring together Jews from all over the world. (It is always the State 
that creates the nation and designates nationals, in Israel as elsewhere.)
Zionism is also a project of settler colonization that seeks to ignore 
the existence of a population, of a society in Palestine.
Hans Kohn, disciple of the philosopher Martin Buber, to whom he wrote in 
1929: "We have been in Palestine for twelve years, without ever having 
seriously tried to worry about the consent of the people or to negotiate 
with the people who inhabit this country." After twenty years of 
responsibility in the Zionist movement, including ten years in 
Palestine, Hans Kohn broke with Zionism and emigrated to the USA.(4)

Settlement colonization
The myth of an empty land or sparse, chaotic populations is recurrent in 
colonialist ideology. It allows for the association of an ideology of 
pioneers, thus of "courageous farmers developing an abandoned, even 
barren, land."
Ultimately, settler colonization aims to replace the indigenous 
population with a population from elsewhere.
It was particularly successful on the American continent. Colonists from 
the European continent, after exterminating the indigenous Indian 
populations through wars, forced labor, and epidemics, freed themselves 
from their mother country. With the Indian workforce exhausted, the new 
states exported enslaved labor from the African continent. The United 
States of America was the first independent state formed by settlers of 
European origin. Other territories on the American continent followed. 
In Oceania, Australia and New Zealand were also settler colonies. As was 
Kanaky.
The same phenomenon was found, for a time, in Africa: Rhodesia, South 
Africa. In Algeria, colonization of settlement was also attempted. The 
law of the right of the soil (1889) granted French 
nationality-citizenship upon reaching the age of majority to the 
children of immigrants born in France. However, Algeria from 1848 
(Second Republic) was France. However, the project in Algeria failed.

Mandatory Palestine and Zionist settlement
The issue of the "Zionization" of Palestine is not only a question of 
land ownership; it is also one of dispossession of the conditions of 
work, and therefore of the production of the conditions of existence. It 
transforms social relations: peasants (sharecroppers, tenant farmers, 
that is, those excluded from land sales contracts, even small 
landowners) are transformed into proletarians.
Having left their towns or villages, the refugees of 1948 also become 
proletarians. In 1949, a UN agency (UNWRA) was created specifically for 
Palestinian refugees. The UN demanded the return of the refugees...
Ethnic cleansing, proletarianization, and humanitarian assistance worked 
together.
In 2025, the State of Israel banned the activities of UNWRA.

From the 1967 war to the present day
After the 1967 war, the State of Israel occupied all of Mandatory 
Palestine, leading to further population displacement and new 
Palestinian refugees. A UN resolution demanded the departure of Israeli 
forces from the conquered territories... Israel annexed East Jerusalem 
(formerly Jordanian territory) and the Golan Heights (belonging to 
Syria). Israel occupied the Egyptian Sinai, which was evacuated in 1977. 
From the
first day after the 1967 war, Israel took steps to ensure economic 
domination of the conquered territories and began establishing "Jewish 
settlements."

These settlements, with settler-specific roads, the establishment of 
so-called "protected natural areas," and the construction of a wall that 
cuts through fields and villages, not to mention the proliferation of 
checkpoints subject to the arbitrariness of the Israeli army, result in 
a greater fragmentation of the West Bank territory. This system of 
settlements allows Jews (sometimes from the USA) to find housing under 
better conditions than in Israel. This economic reality is often 
articulated with an ideological discourse inspired by the Bible. The 
construction of a wall along the 1967 borders amputates 10% of the West 
Bank's territory.
The weight of the settlers is not only demographic. It is also in the 
freedom of action they enjoy, their weaponry, their impunity, the 
goodwill of the Israeli army towards them, and even their direct 
support. Settlers are becoming the spearhead of Israeli policy in its 
relationship with the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The colonial roots of the FN/RN and Israel
While anti-Jewish racism has roots in colonial Algeria, the creation of 
the State of Israel, the "State of the Jews," changed the situation. 
From the beginning of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), 
supporters of French Algeria established relations with the State of 
Israel, proclaimed on May 14, 1948.
The fight for French Algeria was supported by Israel, notably at the UN, 
but not only there. Activists of the Secret Army Organization (OAS), 
supporters of French Algeria who carried out attacks against the Muslim 
population and against supporters of Algerian independence in Algeria 
and mainland France, made reference to Israel. Thus, General Zeller, 
during the generals' putsch of April 1961, indicated the aid on which 
the OAS could count: "Portugal (led by Salazar), Spain (led by Franco), 
Israel, South Africa (of apartheid)."
Another figure of French Algeria, Jacques Soustelle (who was Governor 
General of Algiers in January 1955, Minister of Information, then of the 
Sahara when General de Gaulle came to power in 1958, before breaking 
with him on the question of Algerian independence), declared in his work 
Dans une route nouvelle (edition du spindle 1964): "(...) For years, I 
have unequivocally expressed my admiration and my support for the State 
of Israel, and my adherence as a non-Jew to the cause of Zionism. With 
all due respect to the anti-Semitism retards, I considered, and still 
consider, that the rebirth of the Jewish State in Palestine, as the 
brilliant Herzl had dreamed of, was first and foremost a work of justice 
towards a people who were atrociously persecuted, who saw six million of 
their own scientifically massacred by Hitlerian racism. I considered, 
and still consider, moreover, that the presence and maintenance in the 
Orient of a modern democratic State, in the face of fanatical and 
retrograde pan-Arabism, constituted a guarantee of peace.

At the founding of the National Front (1972) there were survivors of 
collaboration, but also and above all the supporters of French Algeria, 
often activists from the Secret Army Organisation (OAS).

the founders of the RN, visual produced by L'insoumission.fr
As a spokesperson for Algeria's colonial memory, the National Front (FN) 
has, throughout its history and to this day, nominated candidates from 
those nostalgic for French colonization for various elected positions. 
Jean-Marie Le Pen, a volunteer in the colonial wars of Indochina and 
then Algeria, would run for the presidency of the Republic on several 
occasions.

The Creation of Israel and the Capitalist World System
As Enzo Traverso showed in La violence nazi (La fabrique), Nazism 
achieved a synthesis between anti-communism (against the Social 
Revolution), anti-Semitism and colonialism, but it is not a "suitable" 
reference. However, some of its elements, which have their sources in 
the racist or colonialist ideologies of the 19th century, can be 
reconfigured (for example, the Slavophobia practiced by Nazism and the 
Italian fascist allies during the Second World War (5) and which 
reappears in relation to Serbia or Russia).
The anti-Semitic legacy of the interwar period and of collaboration is 
(relatively at least) strategically in the process of being exhausted, 
both because of the disappearance of its protagonists, the ranking of 
Nazi anti-Semitism (along with genocide) among the catastrophes of 
History, but also, even more so, because of the contemporary global 
configuration, notably with the creation of the State of Israel, its 
place in the Middle East, its international involvement, and its 
insertion into the capitalist world system dominated by the USA.
The current world system is built on a hierarchy inherited from the 
world system of the colonial era. It is to maintain this hierarchy, in 
France and throughout the world, that the far right practices the 
rejection of the descendants of colonial immigrants, that of new 
immigrants who are also for the most part proletarians due to the 
restructuring of the workforce brought about by immigration. For today's 
far right, the anti-Semitism of the interwar period and of the Second 
World War has been replaced by the rejection of Arabs (often grouped 
under the name of Muslims, or even Islamists, in fact, the descendants 
of the former colonized, mainly from the Maghreb, especially from 
Algeria because of the war of independence).
Logically, the far right proclaims its support for the State of Israel.

"Ethnic Cleansing": From World War II to Today
"In the interwar period, when people started talking about immigrants, 
it was in reference to "immigrant Jews"; North Africans were still only 
North African workers, but for the police and in the news, there was 
already a "North African type." René Gallissot(1)

In France, in the 20th century, the extreme right only came to power 
"thanks" (if one can say that) to the defeat of the French army against 
the German army in 1940 and the vote of the National Assembly elected in 
1936. (6) Vichy's policy (1940-1944) also called into question 
naturalizations. As early as July 22, 1940, the Minister of Justice 
created a commission for the review of naturalizations. This review went 
back to August 10, 1927. Out of 500,000 files examined, the commission 
revoked the nationality of 15,154 refugees, including 607 Israelites. 
"The "purification" of the French nation is underway." (7)
The stigmatization also concerns "foreigners from within," the 
"Anti-France": Protestants, Freemasons, Jews, anarchists, and communists 
(or those labeled as such). We know how this continued.
The violence of the State of Israel since its creation has followed the 
same path, the same manifestations as the violence exercised by European 
powers against non-European peoples through conquest, colonization, 
resorting to the plundering of resources and the exploitation of labor, 
carrying out massacres, and genocides.
Settler colonization inscribes in its historical horizon the erasure and 
then the physical elimination of the "indigenous" population. This is 
the specificity of the Zionist implantation in Palestine. It adds to it 
the domestication of the peoples of the Middle East through economic 
means, resorting to war if necessary to impose it. This domestication 
takes place within the framework of US hegemony, which is ensured by 
economic, monetary and military means.

The Western capitalist countries that practiced the colonization of the 
world, that terrorized and terrorize, designate those who oppose its 
order as terrorists, erasing the political dimension of the opposition 
and reducing it to a mode of action that, moreover, is not dominant. The
terrorist and genocidal violence of the Zionist state of Israel is 
legitimized with the help of the media that, in the service of the 
global capitalist order, abhor history, especially as a process, and 
celebrate the Western way of life based on pillage, dispossession, and 
exploitation.
The record of the ethnonationalist state of Israel can only arouse the 
support of the European far right (particularly the FN/RN in France) 
given the convergence of modes of political understanding and historical 
references.

However, it is important to point out two paradoxes:

The invocation of the memory of the genocide of European Jews by the 
Nazis and their European allies (Italian fascists, Ukrainian, 
Lithuanian, Latvian nationalists, etc.) is combined with support for the 
genocidal enterprise of Israel, considered to be the "State of the Jews."
The confusion between the State of Israel and all Jews throughout the 
world is part of the ethnicist vision of anti-Semitism.
Currently, in Europe, in the countries that emerged from Yugoslavia such 
as Slovenia or from the USSR such as Ukraine, Azerbaijan, the Baltic 
countries, but also in Western Europe, the projects of ethnonationalist 
states (based on the fragmentation of multinational states) resonate 
with the Zionist project of "ethnic cleansing" and reconnect with the 
projects of homogenization of states in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Language policy is an instrument of this homogenization ("one people, 
one territory, one language"). In Yugoslavia and Algeria, the linguistic 
question preceded the massacres. We are also witnessing the construction 
of national founding myths erasing collaboration with the Nazis.

illustration representing a real exchange filmed in the Cheikh Jarrah 
neighborhood: - "Jacob, you're stealing my house!!!", Jacob's response 
"If I don't steal it, someone else will".
The "demographic peril" and the "great replacement" haunt Zionists just 
as they haunt other ethnonationalists. It is in this project that the 
National Rally in France finds itself with the "republican right" in 
questioning the right of the soil in the acquisition of French 
citizenship-nationality. The abolition of state medical aid is also part 
of the nationalist divide "Them against Us." The vote on the Immigration 
Law is a step in the same direction. (8) The Prime Minister's remarks on 
"migratory submersion" complete the process of giving the FN/RN's 
anti-immigrant theme institutional recognition.

Are France and the Western capitalist world ripe for, in France, a 
National Front/National Front government or a government of "national 
unity"? For both, but with slightly different teams, policy will be 
conducted in the name of the fight against immigration, against Islamism 
(in fact mainly against the Arab population of working-class 
neighborhoods) and against anti-Semitism (in fact for support of 
Israel), for a restructuring of capitalist social relations, for the 
completion of the dismantling of the "welfare state" and for the 
repression of social movements thanks to the increase in the "defense" 
budget, an increase presented as a "response to the Russian threat."

Like colonial conquests throughout history, genocide and ethnic 
cleansing in Palestine are methods designed to maintain an unequal order 
based on the hoarding of wealth, the exploitation of masses of people, 
or their direct or indirect extermination.
Like colonial conquests, genocides and ethnic cleansing enjoy widespread 
approval in Western countries among capitalists, the ruling classes, and 
a portion of the population.
Does the "normalization" of the far right signify an advance of the 
capitalist state toward a fascistoid form?

Lucien SEMINOLE March 15, 2025

Notes:
1. René GALLISSOT: Mondher KILANI: Annamaria RIVERA The ethnic imbroglio 
in fourteen key words Éditions Payot 2000
2. René GALLISSOT The French Republic and the natives, Éditions de 
l'atelier 2006
3. On the subject of anti-Jewish supporters of Zionism, we can recall 
the support for Israel given in 1967 by the former Vichy commissioner 
general for Jewish affairs from 1940 to 1942 Xavier Vallat. (Declaration 
Why I am a Zionist published in the Action française newspaper Aspects 
de la France)
4. BUBER Martin A land two peoples Éditions Lieu commun. Historical 
texts of binational thought during the rise of Zionism.
5. "In the Nazi plan there was even talk of exterminating the entire 
Russian people: a report was discovered by Poliakoff, the Wetzel report, 
which poses the question of "the biological annihilation of the 
Russentum" while asking whether the immense Russian spaces could be 
populated entirely by Germanentum." Jean-Pierre FAYE interview with 
Rebecca Behar Around Nietzsche, Heidegger and Lou Salomé Man and Society 
No. 140-141 2001 /2
6. Only 80 deputies opposed Pétain's full powers; the communist deputies 
were removed because of their support for the German-Soviet pact.
7. Robert PAXTON Vichy France (1940-1944) p169
8. If, at the end of 2023, the votes of the Macronist parties combined 
with those of the Republicans and those of the National Rally caused 
astonishment, it would be appropriate to recall the legal forms of 
discrimination against foreigners under the Third Republic and even, 
after Vichy, under the Fourth Republic. (CF Gérard NOIRIEL Les origines 
républicaines de Vichy Hachette Littératures). "The leaders of the 
national revolution were the heirs of a republican state which, through 
its laws, its institutions, its bureaucratic practices and its 
categories of thought, had gone to war, in the 1930s, against the 
foreigners established on its territory." op. cit p. 210)

Some bibliographical elements

Ilan PAPPÉ: Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine, originally published by 
Fayard, was reissued by La fabrique in April 2024
and Les Dix Légendes structurantes d'Israël (éditions les nuits rouges) 
(2021). An essential tool for freeing oneself from Zionist 
representations that have become commonplace.
Ilan PAPPÉ, an Israeli historian, left his position as a professor of 
political science in Haifa following various pressures and bans due to 
the publication of his work; he currently teaches and lives in England.

On the ongoing genocide in Gaza:
Andreas MALM For Palestine as for the earth, The ravages of fossil 
imperialism (La fabrique) January 2025 156 p
In addition to an interesting historical perspective on the fossil 
subjugation of the Middle East region for two centuries, one will read 
with interest chapter 2 Response to certain objections on resistance. 
Chapter 3 challenges the notion of lobbying on the subject of Israel, a 
notion "which excludes a convergence of interests". It recalls that 
there has existed and still exists a Palestinian left whose analyses are 
deliberately ignored by the proponents of the European left who present 
themselves as the "supporters of the Palestinian people".
Enzo TRAVERSO Gaza before history (Lux 2024)
A critical reflection on the present and on the history which is invoked 
to interpret it.
By the author, 45 years ago, of a fundamental work, The Marxists and the 
Jewish Question and author since of important historiographical essays 
on the 20th century.
Didier FASSIN A Strange Defeat, On Consent to the Crushing of Gaza (La 
Découverte) September 2024 192p
Taking up the title of the work by historian and resistance fighter Marc 
Bloch in the aftermath of the French defeat of 1940, Didier FASSIN 
examines how places of power, intellectual circles and the media 
"consented to the destruction of Gaza" and prevented the expression of 
critical points of view. "A thought police was imposed. The 
misappropriation of words and the inversion of values put political 
intelligence and moral discernment to the test." (p. 4 of the cover)

Also worth noting are two articles available on the internet:

Why the struggle for Palestine is a struggle against US imperialism 
(Adam Hanieh) July 1, 2024, text published by Mondoweiss and translated 
by Chronique de Palestine
Why has the German far right taken up the fight against anti-Semitism? 
The reasons for a "kidnapping" (Sonia Combe) text published in Socio La 
nouvelle revue des sciences sociales 19 | 2024 Memory, history and politics

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