No Joint Struggle With Settler Colonialism
New Politics
, responds to Daniel Fischer’s “
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For Marx, the working class was the revolutionary class, the only class for whose self-liberation would mean the liberation of all. In Daphna Thier’s chapter “Not An Ally” she argues that the Israeli working class is an exception to this rule. The reason for this is that the class character reflects the settler colonial nature of the Zionist state. The very class formation of the Israeli working class came with the ethnic cleansing and forced appropriation of Palestinian land and replacing Palestinian society with Israeli one. Zionist labor and labor parties both were essential actors and thus guilty parties. This Zionist welfare state served as the cocoon that gave birth to Israeli capitalism. She argues that Israeli workers are bestowed direct benefits at the expense of Palestinians and that a political economy constructed around the continued war and occupation of the Palestini