“We’re not teetering on the verge of collapse. We are collapsing.” An interview with Israeli anarchist Uri Gordon on the Gaza war, anarchism, and other things.

After the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, I wanted clarity from someone who opposes both the terrorist madness of Hamas and the Israeli response. To date, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 2 million more, many of whom are at risk of starvation. Uri Gordon, author of Anarchy Alive!, is active with Israelis Against Apartheid and is International Editor at Freedom, the world’s oldest surviving anarchist publication. A co-founder of the Anarchist Studies Network, his work on anarchist politics and theory has been translated into 13 languages. The following interview with Gordon was conducted via telephone in mid-February by Lenticular editor R. Cleffi.

Individual sections of this interview can be directly accessed via the links below.

1. Anarchism, a working definition, differences with “libertarianism,” “anarcho-capitalism,” etc. 
2. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seen through an anarchist lens 
3. Netanyahu, the Israeli right, the war 
4. Defeating Hamas?
5. Anarchists in Israel and the prospects for binational cooperation 
6. Making sense of the problematic left response to the crisis
7. Some suggested additional reading

Anarchism, a working definition, differences with “libertarianism,” “anarcho-capitalism,” etc. 

Lenticular (L): Could you explain anarchism as you see it?

Uri Gordon (UG): Anarchism is the pursuit of anarchy, which is the absence of rulers. And anarchism is the resistance to all forms of domination in society and all of the intersecting regimes that shape hierarchical society. So for me, anarchism in essence, is not very different from any old ideal of human liberation from slavery and serfdom and industrial-era servitude, only with the understanding that liberation has to be done by ourselves. We can’t expect or rely on any kind of mediator or representative to do that for us. Liberation needs to be done from the ground-up rather than the top down. And anarchists are the conscious group of people who take that view. Anarchism is the pursuit of an equal society, of the decentralization of power, in an anti-authoritarian way, “from below and to the left.”

L: I know this always gets brought up, but what about the critics who say human nature runs contrary to the anarchist ideal?

UG: I think all of these human nature arguments tend to come from people who have something vested in the system. I don’t find it a very good use of my time to argue with liberals or to argue with defenders of the existing order. I don’t need to argue for anarchism. Other people do it better than me. If people want to go and explain anarchism to people who think humans are authority-bound and so on, that’s their choice if that’s how they decide to spend their time. I think, as a movement, we need to focus on direct action and solidarity with the most vulnerable in society, and on being a presence in the most significant social movements and mass resistances that come by.

I don’t think the anarchist movement is by itself a mass revolutionary movement or is going to be any time soon. Maybe anarchism will again in the future become a prevailing point of view of real mass movements of the oppressed. I’m talking about refugees and peasants and everything else. Maybe someday…

L: How does your type of anarchism differ from some of the other people currently using the term “anarchist” to describe themselves, i.e., “anarcho-capitalists” or “an-caps,” so called libertarians, etc.?

UG: I don’t use the term “anarcho-capitalist,” I call them propertarian impostors. I mean, where’s the anarchism when these guys are often the most misogynist and antiqueer and inhumane types that there are? Anarchism is not just “no state.” It’s a classless society. It’s a balance between our communities and the ecosystem as it continues to crash and deteriorate. It’s the abolition of racial and gender categories. It’s all of those things. The so-called an-caps, they stick to anti-statism but that’s a very narrow conception of anarchism. I think they deny the existence of social class, they are not sociological. They have no understanding of society. Their way of thinking about the world is mostly couched in ethical, atomistic terms of contracts and so on. It’s kind of Smithian. It’s exactly what Marx or Proudhon would’ve critiqued about bourgeois economics.

L: If you search for anarchism online, it can be difficult to get a handle on things because this stuff gets pushed at you via algorithm or paid advertising or whatever.

UG: I don’t know whether this is still just only an internet-based phenomenon. But it doesn’t really matter because it seems to be influencing people’s discourse. I think a lot of the people who are drawn to this ancap shit, and perhaps even to the worst aspects of incel culture, sometimes these kids would be on our side if they’d flipped the right way. It’s especially about the United States, I don’t think it’s a fault of the United States movement. I just think it’s because of how much better organized and well-funded the far-right are—the economic far-right. and now also the nationalist far-right—in shaping the English-language internet and alternative media landscape. I think anarchists did invent alternative internet-based, participatory media, but it was the far-right that didn’t mind making it completely commercial as well…it got captured by the right. So now there is no Indymedia. There’s Infowars.

The transformative anarchistic egalitarian drive did capture some of the zeitgeist in the late nineties/turn of the millennium, but very soon that led to a far-right backlash. What happened online with the capture of what could have been a left-libertarian agenda by the an-cap shit was just another aspect of the right-wing backlash to the movements of the millennium, to the alter-global movement and so on. There’s all that background there…if you encounter it for the first time, you might think, wow, that’s how it’s always been. But it’s because there’s been a concerted effort and these people are more active in those ways.

L: I think there’s also a problem in the US left, generally only the right wing (and some anarchists) use terms like “liberty” or “freedom.” The concepts are attractive to people. Who doesn’t want liberty and freedom? But the terms sometimes have weird connotations in the US.

UG: Because it’s integrated into a settler-colonial frontierist sort of narrative. It has all those contradictions, but yeah, it’s associated with the right.

“My outlook is not optimistic, I’m sorry to say. But I think that this spirit of bottom-up struggle without leaders and self-organization will always survive as long as people can resist.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seen through an anarchist lens

L: How does anarchism inform your influence of the Israeli Palestinian conflict?

UG: I think inasmuch as that part of the world is where war was invented, if you will. It’s a bridge of land where sedentism and hierarchical societies probably emerged, where the first city was built, Jericho. This has been ground zero of hierarchical civilization. And it’s only fitting that the clear turn towards the collapse of hierarchical civilization would be marked by tragedy of historical proportions in that part of the world. For me, everything is coming from a point of view that says there is a likelihood that we’ll see some kind of nuclear war in in my lifetime. If I survive it or not is a different question, or if it affects me or not. The collapse of global society has already begun. We’re not teetering on the verge of collapse. We are collapsing.

I haven’t lived in Palestine-Israel for over a decade, I’m still involved in some documentation work. But for me it’s all part of a much bigger package about where the whole world is going. Hierarchical civilization is collapsing with an intensification of armed conflict, of more and more wars of attrition, that are lower-intensity conflicts. There are throttles on them, and I’m afraid Gaza will become another one like that. And then we have a massive generational change that’s taking place. My parents’ generation was the last generation that could expect to have a better life, level of welfare and economic security, or even prosperity than the previous generation. And that is never going to get better.

There is only going to be an attempt by the now-extremely wealthy elites to colonize this process of collapse and maintain their grips on power through increasingly sophisticated combinations of social control through brutality and social control through culture, all kinds of things. And that’s how the world ends. And anarchists are going to keep being there, representing this idea about what happens when you resist and what matters about resistance. I don’t think we’re ever going to win. I don’t think we’re going to have a revolution. I don’t think there’s going to be a no-state solution in Israel and Palestine, in my lifetime. No, I think we’re losing. My outlook is not optimistic, I’m sorry to say. But I think that this spirit of bottom-up struggle without leaders and self-organization will always survive as long as people can resist.

L: To fast forward to what’s going on today, with the war, and with, October 7th and then the over-the-top Israeli response, how do you make sense of that?

UG: There’s still a dire emergency. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Rafah who are in imminent danger of dying in their masses from disease and starvation, if not from direct military invasion. And then it really will be genocide, no matter what the legal fineries might indicate right now. Ethnic cleansing has already happened, and war crimes have already happened. And crimes against humanity have already happened. And by this I also mean the Hamas attack.

I think we are still unable to even come to terms with the enormity of what’s going on in the same way that most people are not beginning to come to terms with what economic and ecological collapse and refugee crisis and runaway climate change mean for our societies.

L: What should people be pushing for on a practical level?

UG: Right now, we need a ceasefire right away. We need captive exchange right away. As an anarchist, what can I say? At the moment only the United States can accomplish that. I see some signs—somebody else said, “the US is not a skateboard. It’s an aircraft carrier.” It takes time to turn it around. But once it’s turned around, it’s consistent. I can only hope that there will be some real change. Of course, this is even worse because this coalition and the current Netanyahu government is such a bunch of awful people. It has really mixed the most extremist ideas with the worst human material. I think this part of the horror of it, really these awful, awful people that are in the Israeli government. And I have nothing especially positive to say about the ex-generals either, of course. But I think they would be simply more obedient to the superpowers if they decided to do something. But Netanyahu and the far-right, they have such a hubris, it’s grotesque.

Netanyahu, the Israeli right, the war

L: In the US now, we hear a lot of critiques along the lines of, the problem isn’t necessarily the war, it’s just the people running it, and as if it would be justified if it was done more efficiently and, less visibly brutal.

UG: The people who are running it are also responsible for it having happened. It’s Netanyahu and his government who are responsible for leaving two battalions around Gaza. Which in weekend format is around 400 soldiers. While 32 battalions were moved to the West Bank to provide security for far-right settler provocations and attacks. And of course that’s not even touching on the apartheid regime itself.

L: You’ve mentioned elsewhere, that you thought Netanyahu was keeping the war going in anticipation of Trump winning. Is that something you still think?

UG: Netanyahu wants to continue the war for as long as he can, not just till Trump gets elected or not, but, so he can stay in power so that he can avoid a national committee of inquiry and so that he can avoid sentencing in his corruption trials. This is a prime minister who has been charged in court on trial for corruption and has not quit. In this way, Israel’s pretense of democracy and rule of law is being completely eroded. It’s somewhere between Hungary and Turkey, but with still a bit more centrist resistance.

But I also think Netanyahu is a fool if he thinks Trump is going to do him any favors. I think it’s still possible that Trump will be elected. I think the cleverest thing Biden can do politically right now is show a much tougher stance toward Israel, for his own electorate, because they’ve just gone too far. But with Trump, it’s a very personal-loyalty thing, and once he can’t look at Netanyahu as his own lackey, I don’t think Trump is going to help. Maybe, if Netanyahu holds until then and Trump gets in and it’s really an apocalypse fest with the American far-right and then the US is totally into genocide and everything is hunky dory. That’s the worst-case timeline. So we’re in a situation where, except for the European Union, you’ve got straight-up authoritarian nuclear powers. It’s very hard to predict.

L: Aside from keeping himself in power, what’s Netanyahu’s end game with the war?

UG: There is no end game. Netanyahu is not a person who makes long-term plans. His strategy is to survive in power, buy time, while seeding hatred and suspicion and division, surrounding himself by shouty, stupid politicians, similar to the processes we’ve seen in other right-wing parties with a narcissist leader.

L: What do you make of these open fascists in Netanyahu’s coalition like the Kahanists Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir talking about resettling Gaza? Does Netanyahu really care about that sort of thing, ideologically? Is he humoring them? Is he using them?

UG: He is letting them have their far-right celebratory planning thing. I don’t know if Smotrich will be in the dock in the Hague for it. But I think eventually he won’t be able to go anywhere. But Netanyahu doesn’t care about that, they’re keeping him in power. He’s got [an electoral] coalition of 64 out of 120 even without the generals. So what worry is he in? In the meantime, they are robbing the public coffers, diverting tons of funding both to the settlements and to the ultra-orthodox sector.

And, this is—particularly with the education system—it’s a process of making the population less western, less STEM-capable, and tending to vote for right-wing and religious parties. The ultra-orthodox parties, I guess they really believe that the most important thing in the world is to study Torah. At the same time, these are hierarchical structures that sit on the back of their own publics, of the ultra-orthodox. And they govern that public internally through religious strictures. They don’t want kids to study English and math, who needs that? Just sit and study Torah.

There are also thousands of Israeli Jews who’ve had to leave their homes around the Strip and in the north of the country. I don’t know if it’s tens or hundreds of thousands. Netanyahu can’t keep the war going forever, because it’s killing the economy. And he knows any election that happens, he’ll lose. But the next Israeli election, 2026, that’s a hugely long timeframe for him. He doesn’t even think that long. All he’s interested in is his own ass. I don’t know if he has some stupid trip that he is appointed by history to be the leader of the Jewish people, some shit like that, or if he’s just this nowhere man being pushed around by his family and his coalition partners, I have no idea.

But right now he’s also pissing from the springboard onto the US. He’s really losing it. I just hope something shifts really soon. It’s been a rolling traumatic disaster for months.

L: Aside from opposition to Netanyahu, the war is very popular among Israelis. Do you think that’s because of the trauma of October 7th? Or just the media?

UG: That’s what they think it is. This is what you’ve seen every previous cycle. This isn’t the first time that a military operation stymies social protest in the country. Part of what’s been useful to Israeli governments about this unsustainable equation— that’s what they called it in the press—with Hamas in Gaza, was that there were periodic exchanges of fire, which were of course much more costly in human life and in infrastructure for the Gazans, and which served as shunts, as safety valves for social protest. Because the Israeli-Jewish normative public has a deeply ingrained siege mentality, through the educational system and everything else, a patriotism, a togetherness, and a notion of permanent existential threat. Once the previous wars with Hamas started, even when Israel clearly started it, then everybody jumped to attention, and the press and the media, and “the people are one family” – the type of mentality that you could see in Western Europe during World War I, when there was such massive propaganda. That stuff in Israel is like Swiss clockwork. It’s extremely reliable. So now, when this war is triggered by an atrocity, then Israelis think it’s possible to now defeat Hamas once and for all. They are hardly exposed at all to any images or facts from Gaza. The Israeli media does not show it. They’re only showing soldiers’ funerals. The media is completely conscripted.

Defeating Hamas?

L: In the US, a narrative that we’re hearing quite a bit from the experts and retired generals makes a World War II comparison. They talk about a denazification process, whereby Gaza will be rebuilt without Hamas, and all the bad ideology will disappear. They are going to get rid of all the bad textbooks and teach the next generation to be embrace peace and prosperity.

UG: I’ll tell you one thing. Kahanism is Judeo-Nazism. The minister of police is coming from what I would say without difficulty is a Judeo-Nazi theological supremacist position. And Smotrich too is a theological-supremacist religious fascist. And Hamas are theocratic fascists too, of course, they’re misogynist, hierarchical, choose your adjective. But to be honest I don’t see a lot of ideological distance between Hamas and some central elements in the current Israeli government. And this is what the asymmetric warfare between them looks like. These are two groups of fascist theocrats that have been in a reciprocal relationship for the last several years. People in in the US should talk about de-nazifying America first. Let’s get rid of our own Nazis. People are kicking Maus off library lists.

L: But what do you think about the idea that something like Hamas can be defeated militarily. The idea that the problem is just bad ideology?

UG: If you kill the entire population of Gaza, 100%, if you killed everyone, then that would include the Hamas, wouldn’t it? That would be “defeating it militarily.” I’m saying this extremely sarcastically. We need a ceasefire. We need a captive exchange. And I would hand the entire area back to the UN. Look, if we’re talking diplomatic solutions and so on, then I think two-state confederation, three-state confederation with Jordan, whatever. Move the UN headquarters to Jerusalem, make it the capital of the world. I don’t know. But there’s nothing like that in the cards right now. Two state, one-state, nothing. Unless the superpowers are going to force something.

Anarchists in Israel and the prospects for binational cooperation

L: Where does the Israeli anarchist movement fit into all of this? Is there one?

UG: There is hardly anybody. An anarchist movement proper, I don’t think you can speak of right now. There is one cooperative library space, and there’s a minuscule punk scene, but there’s nothing else really right now. There are individuals with that point of view are in various human-rights or education or other kinds of organizations. But there is no organized anarchist movement in Israel right now. There is a broader, but still extremely small, let’s call it a decolonial left. What I wanted to suggest, there’s an article that appeared on crimethinc.com by Jonathan Pollak just a couple of days ago. He writes stuff that’s really on point about this, and it’s a good thing that I’d recommend, if people want to read something from a very consistent anarchist who is still on the ground right now, unlike me.

L: And do you see any hopes of binational solidarity or joint struggle between those groups and anyone on the Palestinian side?

UG: That’s the only form it takes, right? That’s about it. There can’t be such a thing as a Jewish-only left. There has to be a Palestinian and Jewish left. The idea of Palestinian-Jewish partnership is now being really suppressed. I’m from Haifa, which holds itself up as a model of coexistence, I’m saying this in an ironic tone. There was going to be a presentation of a book [Colum McCann’s Apeirogon] by two bereaved [Israeli and Palestinian] fathers, famous ones. And the municipality wouldn’t let the Jewish-Arab Center host that. So it was hosted in the offices of Mossawa, a pro-equality NGO… Demonstrations were really suppressed in the beginning [of the war]. Now they’re restarting again and allowed as long as they’re not against the war, but only against Netanyahu. They’ll allow anti-Netanyahu demos, although there has been police violence there too, including against hostages’ families. The anti-Netanyahu movement is not a radical movement. It’s not a decolonial movement by any measure. It only recently, just before the war, started opening up to questioning the occupation, and this only in ‘67. And to talk about Jewish-Arab partnership in a very limited way. But now it’s gone back to the mainstream Israeli programming—Patriotic, supremacist, but democratic in its self-perception.

Making sense of the problematic left response to the crisis

L: In the US, there is now a large Palestinian solidarity movement. While it isn’t coming from the majority of participants, there are open expressions of antisemitism and some of the “tankie” types have actually embraced Hamas. How do you make sense of this?

UG: I think a lot of the problematic things that sometimes appear, in pro-Palestine situations that depart from where we want our politics to be, usually just come from looking at things in black and white, this my-enemy’s-enemy position, which a lot of the old left is guilty of too. Also remember that not everybody who’s in Palestine demonstrations necessarily shares everything else we think about, gender and capitalism and whatnot. Sometimes you will find also reactionary forces in those situations. It’s not a movement that we should automatically associate with the left.

Some suggested additional reading

Below is a listing of some additional texts on anarchism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anarchist perspectives on the conflict, etc. This modest list is by no means exhaustive. The authors represented here are overwhelmingly male. In instances where the texts appear online, hyperlinks are included. Interested readers are encouraged to dig in, but keep in mind, Lenticular is a platform for ideas. No one is seeking to convert anyone to anything or to sell readers anything.

Anarchism, past to present

George Woodcock. Anarchism: of Libertarian Ideas A History and Movements. World Publishing, 1962. An excellent starting point for anarchist history/theory.

Lewis Krimerman and Lewis Perry, eds. Patterns of Anarchy: A Collection of Writings in the Anarchist Tradition. Anchor Books, 1966. This anthology is as good of a starting place as any.

Emma Goldman. My Disillusionment in Russia. Doubleday, 1923. Essential critique of Bolshevik organization of society and suppression of political opponents.

J. Hampden Jackson. Marx, Proudhon, and European Socialism. English Universities Press, 1958. An immensely readable history of the coeval development of Marxism and Anarchism, with much attention paid to the similarities and antagonisms. Told through the biographies of Marx and Proudhon.

Stewart Christie. We, the Anarchists! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927-1937. Meltzer Press. 2000. In-depth history and examination of inner workings of the organized anarchist section of the Spanish Revolution.

Paul Avrich. The Haymarket Tragedy. Princeton University Press, 1984.

Paul Avrich. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background. Princeton University Press, 1991.

Both of these Avrich books are excellent accounts of watershed events in American anarchist history.

Uri Gordon. Anarchy Alive! Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory. Pluto Press, 2008. Does a very nice job of presenting anarchist organizing and theory, with much focus on the 21st century. Includes an interesting discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis from an anti-authoritarian perspective.

Israel-Palestine conflict, background

Zachary Lockman. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. This unique history deals with the various forms of working-class organizing among Arab and Jewish workers in the pre-state Israel. Lockman discusses the instances of workplace solidarity and joint union organizing, as well as the unfortunate divisions and conflicts that existed.

Tom Segev. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the Mandate. MacMillan, 2000. An important history of the period by this veteran Israeli journalist/historian.

Vernon Richards, ed. British Imperialism and the Palestine Crisis: Selections from the Anarchist Journal, Freedom, 1938-1948. Freedom Press, 1989. An anthology consisting of reprints of articles published during the run-up to, and establishment of, the state of Israel. Some fascinating perspectives from important 20^th century anarchists like Emma Goldman and Albert Meltzer.

Uri Gordon and Ohal Grietzer, eds. Anarchists Against the Wall: Direct Action and Solidarity with the Palestinian Popular Struggle. AK Press, 2013. Firsthand accounts from the Israelis who took direct action against the construction of Israel’s separation wall, which surrounds (and in some cases, bisects) the West Bank.

Uri Gordon. Anarchism in Israel and Palestine. 2009. Very good account of this little-known history.

Alfredo M. Bonanno. Palestine, Mon Amour. Elephant Editions, 2009. Insights from the recently deceased Bonanno, one of the more-interesting anarchist writers in recent times.

Fredy Perlman. “Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom.” 1983. An essay by Perlman, who fled the Nazis in Europe, examining the dynamics of power and nationalism, and the ways in which formerly oppressed peoples can oppress others.

Uri Gordon and Palestinian anarchist Mohammed Bamyeh in discussion, January 2024.

Jonathan Pollack. “Human Rights Discourse Has Failed to Stop the Genocide in Gaza. An Anarchist from Jaffa on the Necessity of Anti-Colonial Strategies for Liberation.” Crimethinc, February 2024.

Recommended anarchist publications:

Freedom, UK

Fifth Estate, Detroit

 

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