Since the end of World War II and the establishment of Israel, many have looked back on the Bund with contempt and criticism, labeling the movement naive, uncompromising, and weak. But while the Bund lost, it was not a failure. As Crabapple writes, « Failure is what happens to those overcome by their own faults and errors. To lose is to succumb to greater force. »
The Bund had faults and internal problems, just as any organization does. But fundamentally, it did not collapse because of brewing contradictions or internal dysfunction. It lost because it simply could not counteract the gargantuan force of European fascism. Fascism, like fire on dry brush, spread quickly and with great intensity through Europe. It killed everything in its way and launched a conflagration predicated on territorial annexation and ethnonationalist supremacy.
Six million Jews died in this fire, as did tens of millions of non-Jewish Eastern Europeans. The Bund didn’t fail because of a lack of strength or commitment or even strategy; it lost to a force of history that enveloped and decimated an entire continent.
The fact of that defeat does not render the Bund irrelevant. Instead, as Crabapple shows, old ideas are now being rejuvenated for a world in desperate need of them. The Bund’s predictions on Zionism and ethnonationalism have largely come true, and with disastrous consequences. Rather than decades of peace and reconciliation, Zionism within Israel has moved further right in response to insecurity and regional hostility. As Crabapple notes:
In 1938, [Bundist] Henryk Erlich wrote, « If a Jewish state should arise in Palestine, its spiritual climate will be: eternal fear of the external enemy (Arabs); and eternal struggle for every bit of ground with the internal enemy (Arabs). . . . Is this a climate in which freedom, democracy, and progress can grow? Indeed, is it not the climate in which reaction and chauvinism ordinarily flourish? »
This climate of perpetual reaction has resulted in…
Auteur: Grant Morgan
