I just got into an argument with a Zionist settler who claimed that in the years of austerity after the Entity was established, that it had state ownership of the means of production, ergo it was a socialist state - but that the state's mismanagement led the settlers to shift towards liberal capitalism. The settler interlocutor also stressed that there were ties between the USSR and the Zionist entity.

So basically, what's up with that, and how can I better argue against Zionism, bearing these facts in mind?

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[–] axont@hexbear.net 12 points 2 years ago

There were socialist elements in the creation of Israel, and I don't even mean the Labor Zionists who promoted kibbutzim and moshavim. But I wouldn't call Israel a socialist project in itself, that's an exaggeration. The standard communist opinion in the 1940s was actually advocacy for the creation of a binational state of Israel/Palestine. That was Stalin's initial stance, actually, although he'd bring Soviet Jews back to the USSR in 1946 after the Yalta conference.

Leftist politics were also dominant among Jewish people in Europe. Most of the initial settlers to Israel after it attained statehood were European holocaust survivors, so those factors influenced initial Israeli politics. For instance, the Israeli Labor Party was dominant from the outset all the way until 1977. The other dominant party was Mapai (Workers' Party of Israel), a "socialist" party that got a third of the votes in the first Israeli elections.

Although I'm avoiding the elephant, which is that these movement were "labor zionism." Which is they did have working class, leftist rhetoric and would often cite people like Lenin and Marx, but they also absolutely believed in Zionism too. They weren't above displacing Arabs from their homes. Mapai and the Israeli Labor Party were absolutely complicit in genocide. So any initial socialist leanings that the Israeli people and early politicians might have had quickly folded. Israeli leftism has become just another flavor of settler colonialism, especially after the six-day war where many labor zionist leaders wanted to annex all the land taken from jordan, Egypt, and Syria. There are very fringe socialists who are properly socialist in Israel, but they aren't well represented and I'm not even sure what they do.