The assassination was an act of revenge by the PFLP after Israel assassinated the PFLP’s leader, Abu-Ali Mustafa. Ze’evi was a member in the Israeli Cabinet that decided to murder Mustafa.

Ze’evi was known as the most radical politician in the far right camp inside the Israel establishment. The assassin of Prime Minister Rabin was a supporter of his party, and many of the members in the group led by fascist Rabi Meir Kahana (who was also assassinated in 1989) supported his party. Ze’evi openly called on many occasions for the removal of all Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Territories to surrounding Arab countries – i.e. ethnic cleansing.

Ze’evi supported the model of transfer to the Palestinian people, in the same form it was done in 1922, when the governments of Turkey and Greece agreed on “population exchange”, and caused to the death of many innocent people.

He was popular among the Jewish settlers; his party had not grown since its establishment in 1988, and he had only 2-3 members in the Israeli parliament. But the alliance in the 1999 elections between his party (“Homeland”) and two other parties (“the Freedom Movement” and “Revival”) made him as an important leader of the right-wing Zionists. Sharon nominated him as the Tourism minister and a member in the Israeli Cabinet.

He supported the reoccupation of the PNA’s territories and the demolition of Palestinian cities and villages. A day before he was assassinated, he decided to leave the government with his partners in the faction since he thought Sharon too weak.

However, all the Zionist parties condemned the assassination and a nationalistic coalition of all the Zionist parties mourned his death. The most radical party in the Zionist left defined Ze’evi as a”friend”; even a member in the Islamic movement defined Ze’evi as a ”friend as well as a rival”.

Even the Communist Party of Israel published a condemnation, as well as the anti-occupation group, “Peace Block”, led by the journalist Uri Avneri. They compared the assassination of Ze’evi to the assassination of Abu-Ali Mustafa (PFLP’s leader). The past of Ze’evi during the last decades – as a military commandant who caused the death of so many innocent people, was totally ignored by the Communist Party and the activists of this anti-occupation group.

Given his record of active racism and complicity in the murder of PFLP leader Abu-Ali Mustafa no anti-Zionist or anti-imperialist can seriously be expected to mourn the loss of this foul politician.

We refuse to respond to the invitation of the Zionists to condemn this action, as if it were “a terrorist attack” on a par with attack on the World Trade Centre on 11 September. The two actions are not comparable. Having assassinated the newly elected political leader of the PFLP all the Israeli cabinet made themselves legitimate targets.

Faced with a systematic campaign of political assassination by Israel of the leadership of the Palestinian national struggle all forces in this struggle have the right to defend themselves, even including taking preemptive actions against the enemy.

Ze’evi was not an innocent man; he represented a racist ideology and during his life he killed and ordered to kill innocent people for the fulfillment of his ideas. We do not renounce any tactic including the use of terror against our enemies. But the PFLP and others would be misguided to embark upon a new strategy of political assassination of Israel’s leaders. Why?

First of all, a resistance movement and its actions should based on the activity and the struggle of the masses. The PFLP is a political organisation supported by 3-5% of the Palestinian people.

The PFLP has not split with the PLO, although the PFLP claims to be an opposition to Arafat. It didn’t adopt any revolutionary Marxist programme and have many petit-bourgeois and Stalinists origins.

In the PFLP programme, the organisation supports the decisions of the UN. The PFLP has failed to mobilise the masses in revolutionary action in order to replace to present leadership of the PLO, to establish in Palestine a socialist and secular republic and even to establish a revolutionary workers party.

A campaign of individual terror – disconnected to the development of the mass revolutionary movement – will end in disaster. An assassinated political leader can be replace by another. A mass action of the workers class can change the political reality completely. The PFLP can not do so and does not make any effort to progress towards this stage, so it chose an audacious but in the end easiest response to the killing of their leader: killing a politician and escaping. Meanwhile, after momentarily rejoicing, the Palestinian masses remain on the sidelines.

Trotsky wrote in his article “Why Marxists oppose Individual Terrorism” (1909):
“In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda of the deed' can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more 'effective' the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy”.

The PFLP helps, de facto, the Israeli right to dominate more and more key positions in the government; the united government of the Labour and the Likud adopt the programme of the Israeli right-wing parties. Today, Israel threatened the PNA that if Arafat will not extradite the assassins of Ze’evi and the political leadership of the PFLP – Israel will declare that the PNA is a “terrorist entity” and the IDF will act accordingly to this definition. Did the Palestinian masses gain anything lasting from the assasination?

With no revolutionary party, with no organising the workers to a struggle, with the present corrupt leadership – the task of defeat the occupation forces is almost impossible. We do not condemn the PFLP for assassinating Ze’evi; we do day that it is a result of a degenerated ideological origins. Individual terror can NOT replace a mass action!

We believe that a revolutionary workers party of all the workers in the Middle East and a revolutionary action of the workers in Palestine – democratic Jewish workers and Palestinians – can lead an effective resistance movement to the occupation. We urge the supporters and activists of the PFLP not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to concentrate in building a revolutionary workers’ party.

It means changing the PFLP’s outlook and mthods of struggle as well as their goal; if it will not be fulfilled, the progressive forces inside the PFLP should do so, break with Stalinism, adopt a Leninist-Trotskyist programme and mobilise the masses to a revolutionary mass action.

The League for a Revolutionary Communist International - LRCI