Peter Buch

American Trotskyist activist and writer, former Zionist turned leading defender of the Palestinian revolution

Peter Buch
Image
Born	Brooklyn, New York
Died
Nationality
Residence
Occupation	Political activist, writer
Known for	Critique of Zionism; defense of the Palestinian revolution
Parents
Spouse(s)
Children
Sibling(s)
Education
Predecessor
Website

Peter Buch is an American Trotskyist activist and writer best known for his outspoken defense of the Palestinian revolution and his critique of Zionism as a colonial-settler project. A former member of the socialist-Zionist youth organisation Hashomer Hatzair, Buch spent six months in Israel in 1951 working on a kibbutz before breaking with Zionism and joining the Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the US.

Buch’s political evolution from committed Zionist to anti-Zionist Marxist is documented in his writings and public interventions of the 1960s and 1970s. He argued that Israel was not a progressive or socialist state but an artificially sustained capitalist outpost allied with imperialism, whose creation required the displacement of the Palestinian Arab population.

Early life and Zionist period

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Buch joined Hashomer Hatzair, a left-Zionist youth group, as a young man. In 1951 he spent six months in 'Israel', working on a kibbutz and attending a leadership training school. He later described this period as his “original sin”:

Everyone has an original sin: I used to be a Zionist.

Break with Zionism and turn to Trotskyism

By the mid-1960s Buch had rejected Zionism and embraced Marxism. In his 1967 pamphlet Zionism and the Arab Revolution: The Myth of Progressive Israel, he systematically dismantled the claim that Israel represented a progressive or socialist society. He wrote:

The myth pictures Israel as a land of Kibbutzim or communal farms, with workers’ parties dominating the government and steering Israel in a socialist direction. … If Israel really is moving in a progressive direction, why is its foreign policy so reactionary, and why does its policy in the Middle East meet with such approval from Washington, Chiang Kai-shek, Nguyen Cao Ky, etc.?

Buch detailed Israel’s dependence on imperialist aid, its capitalist economy, discrimination against Arab citizens and Oriental Jews, and its repeated alignment with Western powers against Arab national liberation movements.

Peter Buch on the Mid-East Crisis (1969)

In his March–April 1969 article Burning Issues of the Mid-East Crisis, published in International Socialist Review (Vol. 30, No. 2), Peter Buch analyses the escalating conflict in the Middle East following the 1967 war. He argues that the rise of the Palestinian liberation movement has exposed Israel's role as a pro-imperialist outpost and that Zionism, far from solving the Jewish Question, perpetuates capitalist exploitation and national oppression.

Buch opens with Israel's December 1968 commando raid on Beirut airport, which he describes as a provocative act that backfired politically:

The Israeli commandos destroyed thirteen civilian airplanes… causing $50 million in damage… This attack… provoked international censure, including from U.S. leaders.

He highlights the transformation of the Palestinian movement after 1967, quoting Yasir Arafat and other Fatah leaders to show its anti-imperialist and non-racist character:

We have not taken up arms to force two million Jews into the sea or to wage a religious or racial war… Our aim is… to rid Palestine of the Zionist control fastened upon it in 1948 and to repatriate the Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland.

Buch traces Zionism’s origins to collaboration with imperialism (Herzl’s appeals to the German Kaiser and czarist ministers) and its role in dispossessing the Arab majority in Palestine. He details land seizures, labour boycotts, and post-1948 expulsions and discrimination against Arabs:

Zionists bought 23% of land from tenants… and 77% from landlords, using clauses forbidding resale to Arabs… Joseph Weitz described “redemption” of land, e.g., occupying sites by force.

On Israel’s internal character, Buch rejects the “progressive” or “socialist” myth, describing it as a capitalist society with class exploitation, unemployment, wage cuts, and discrimination against Oriental Jews and Arabs. He notes the Histadrut’s role in breaking strikes and serving capitalist interests.

Buch concludes that only the rejection of Zionism, recognition of Palestinian national rights, and the building of a socialist workers’ and farmers’ regime in Israel allied with the Arab revolution can bring lasting peace:

The only solution… is the repudiation of Zionism, the return of the Palestinians or full compensation, equal rights for all, and the identification of Israel with the Third World… A new workers’-farmers’ regime in a socialist Israel-Palestine, allied with the Arab revolution, offers the only road to peace.

Peter Buch on Trotsky’s The Jewish Question

In his April 1970 introduction to Leon Trotsky’s pamphlet On the Jewish Question, Peter Buch presents Trotsky’s writings as highly relevant to the radical youth of the time, especially young Jews grappling with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Buch stresses that Trotsky viewed the Jewish Question not as a problem requiring a separate Jewish homeland but as a symptom of capitalism’s death agony.

Buch writes that Trotsky traced the rise of anti-Semitism to the crisis of the capitalist system:

Before exhausting or drowning mankind in blood, capitalism befouls the world atmosphere with the poisonous vapors of national and race hatred. Anti-Semitism today is one of the more malignant convulsions of capitalism’s death agony.

According to Buch, Trotsky rejected Zionism outright as a false alternative to socialist revolution. Instead of waiting for socialism or relying on Zionist colonization of Palestine, Trotsky demanded immediate practical action: a mass international campaign to force open the doors of the United States and Britain for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Buch highlights Trotsky’s slogan “Workers of the World Unite!” as the strategic answer to the Jewish Question.

Buch notes that Trotsky, himself of Jewish origin and raised in the “prison house of nations” under Czarism, had long rejected Zionism in favour of the revolutionary overthrow of the old order. He argues that Trotsky’s analysis showed the only real solution lay in international socialist revolution combined with urgent humanitarian measures to save Jewish lives.

Buch does not cite Moses Hess, Karl Marx or Abram Leon (or any other Marxist theorists) on the Jewish Question in this piece; his discussion is confined exclusively to Trotsky’s own writings and the immediate political context of the 1930s and 1970 radicalization.

Palestine defense activism

Following the 1970 Jordanian civil war, Buch undertook an extensive speaking tour across the United States and Canada in October 1970, addressing approximately 75–100 campuses in defence of the Palestinian revolution. He reported a marked shift in American student opinion:

There was a great deal more sympathy for the Palestinians, or at least greater open-mindedness than on previous tours. There was a greater willingness on the part of people to actually hear the facts and not shout you down. They were critical-minded regarding Zionism and its claims to represent Jewish liberation and democracy in the Middle East.

Buch emphasised the united-front tactic, defence of Arab student rights on campus, and opposition to U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. He stressed the importance of supporting the entire Palestinian liberation movement without becoming entangled in factional disputes.

Introduction to Rodinson’s Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?

In 1973 Buch wrote the introduction to the English edition of Maxime Rodinson's seminal work Israel: A Colonial-Settler State?. He summarised the core thesis:

Israel was established as the result of a colonial conquest, justified by an ethnocentric and racially exclusive ideology … The Zionist project required the reciprocal collaboration of the Zionist agencies in upholding British rule against Arab strivings for independence, that it demanded the continued expansion of the bounds of Jewish settlement, the implantation of a modern economy and technology from which Arabs were excluded, and the ultimate displacement of the majority of the native Arab population from their own homeland.

Legacy

Buch’s writings and speaking tours played a significant role in winning sections of the American radical left — particularly among Arab students and Jewish youth — to an anti-Zionist position grounded in Trotskyist internationalism. His work remains influential in discussions of the Palestinian question within the Marxist tradition.

Selected publications

• 1967: Zionism and the Arab Revolution: The Myth of Progressive Israel (Young Socialist Pamphlet) –
• March–April 1969: Burning Issues of the Mideast Crisis (International Socialist Review, Vol. 30, No. 2) – full text
• September–October 1969: Palestinian Liberation and Israel (International Socialist Review, Vol. 30, No. 5) full text
• April 1970: Introduction to Leon Trotsky, On the Jewish Question – full text of introduction
• 1971: PALESTINE DEFENSE PANEL 1971 SWP Convention (SWP Internal Information Bulletin)
• March 1973: Introduction to Maxime Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? (Monad Press)

External links

• Citizens of the Whole World (Medium article discussing Buch and the Jewish left)