This might be controversial but I think at the time of the Nakbha, Israel was not an enemy of the USSR and there was a strong strain of labor Zionism in the early days of Israel. (Though personally believe that Zionism [labour Zionism or otherwise] and communism are ideologically incompatible and that communists should view Zionism as the mortal enemy that it is.)

You're absolutely right that enemies can learn from each other but I think that Lenin in this era was very much a cipher that all sorts of figures protected their own ideologies and aspirations on to. (You still see this same thing with Trots today.)

I think that Grün genuinely believed himself to be a Lenin-like figure and did not consider Lenin to be his enemy.

To me, the lesson here is that it's very easy to grossly distort historical figures, such as Lenin or Stalin, in all manner of ways and the other lesson is that socialists need to be on guard for the kind of idealism that made Grün believe that he was akin to Lenin and which also fooled people into believing the mythologised image that labour Zionism projected onto the world and which fooled plenty of socialists at the time.

There's this clip of a Chinese documentarian who was invited to Israel as part of Israel's typical press junket endeavours. I could never find the whole interview translated unfortunately but he didn't know shit about Israel in the same way that we as westerners don't know shit about a place like Tuva. He visited a kibbutz in an Israeli settlement and they tried to sell him on the idea that they were a commune and that they were a living example of socialism. He was naïve and so he asked too many questions about how they got the land and how Palestinians were excluded from joining the kibbutz and how they depended upon external ~~Palestinian~~ (E: found the vid, was wrong about this part insofar as what the guy himself said) migrant labour to function. His conclusion was that they hadn't developed a socialist society but rather they had recreated a feudal system and he's not wrong about that assessment. If a guy who doesn't know shit about Israel can figure out what's going on then all socialists need to be as materialist as he is and we should be very careful about assessing the material reality of things while remaining agnostic about whatever label or image is projected - be it David Grün's image of himself or the social and economic claims of labour Zionism or anything else for that matter.

Edit: Found the interview

[–] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 9 points 3 months ago

I'm under a current impression that the reason there was an amicable relationship between the Soviet Union and Israel stems from a sense of realpolitik in regards to, at the point in time leading up to it's creation, an inevitability of an Israeli state being released from the British Mandate of the region in the aftermath of world war two, the holocaust, and the rapidly snowballing wave of decolonization movements around the world from the European powers. The Soviets wished to attempt to subvert the alignment of Irael towards the U.S-U.K during the stages it was being formulated, therefore did everything within their power to grow labor zionism and socialist thought there, in addition to championing israel in the U.N and combatting the western power's attempts to build influence there. This support of Israel also extends through the Cominform to the communist parties of the world who possessed Jewish membership, such as CPUSA - from who's historical documents i've had knowledge shared to me by Jewish comrades illuminated me on the head-spinning complexities of the period. Quite obviously one can see this blew up in the face of the Soviets with how genocidally reactionary the zionist movement was and still is, but looking back I can see how difficult such a decision was and not envy being burdened with the weight of making such decisions.

Thus, ultimately, it comes to no surprise of mine of how deep or how often Soviet influence pops up in the opening stages of the settling of Israel. The history of the two have interconnected and tangled branches which have to be carefully examined as not an insignificant portion of the truths and lies of the communist movement lie in that mess.

[–] Ecoleo@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why he throwing the DPRK under the bus 😭

[–] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago

I don't think he's particularly politically-developed if he had zero awareness of what Israel's deal is so I wouldn't put much stock in his opinion on the DPRK but despite his lack of awareness with politics, he sure managed to grasp the fundamental nature of the kibbutz he investigated.