The Jewish Council and other tokenistic Jews vs the real Jewish Left: It’s a re-run of the famous clash between Trotsky and the Jewish Labour Bund 1903 

In recent months, a parade of tokenistic Jews – both representatives of organizations such as the Jewish Council of Australia/JCOA and individuals such as Socialist Alternative activist Yasmine Johnson – have presented submissions to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion demanding a right to be given an equal hearing to mainstream Jewish organizations that reasonably claim to represent majority Jewish opinion in Australia.

I have previously defined tokenistic Jews as those who internalize manifestations of antisemitism in order to conform to dominant social codes within their ideological communities, actively align with and provide a Jewish alibi for pro-racist groups, and deny or belittle Jewish lived experiences of racism (Mendes 2026a). I would add that there is no inherent connection between having a Jewish cultural background and being knowledgeable regarding Jewish affairs. Just because a small number of people were born into Jewish families or the Jewish community, or even in some cases attended Jewish schools or youth groups as children, that does not mean they will have an informed let alone specialist understanding as adults of global Jewish history and politics including particularly the long history of oppression of Jews in both the Global North and Global South and the associated intergenerational trauma impact on Jews today.

To use an obvious analogy, it’s the same as myself claiming a Czech identity on the sole basis that my mother was born in 1930 in a small village (called Nagyszollos) in the then state of Czechoslovakia which was based in the area called Transcarpathian Ukraine. For the record, she and her family came to Australia in April 1938, and never returned to that town which became part of Ukraine after World War Two. But regardless, I could copy the JCOA and the likes of Yasmine Johnson, and absurdly pretend that I was an expert on Czech politics and history even though I do not speak the language, and have never visited the country. It would of course be ludicrous, but no less so than the tokenistic Jews who claim a right to speak on behalf of Jews in Australia.

But even more annoying is the fact that they ignore a long malevolent history of tokenistic progressive Jews doing just that: claiming wrongly to represent Jews for cynical and opportunistic political purposes. One infamous historical example is Trotsky’s intervention to damage the Jewish Labour Bund at the 1903 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Congress.

It is well known that the Bund played a major role in organizing and hosting the 1898 founding Congress of the RSDLP which later split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. Indeed, three of the nine founding delegates were from the Bund including Samuel Katz who was the only worker attending alongside eight middle-class intellectuals. That meeting was scheduled in the Bund stronghold of Minsk for security purposes, and the Bund was influential in planning the future program of the Party, and determining its revolutionary strategy and political tactics.

Initially, the RSDLP granted autonomous status to the Bund to organize Jewish workers. But, the Bund’s relationship with the broader socialist movement collapsed at the 1903 RSDLP Congress over the question of Jewish nationalism. The Bund demanded formal recognition as the sole representative of the Jewish proletariat without geographical limits. However, the Bolshevik leader Lenin strongly rejected the notion of Jewish national culture, insisting that the concept was inherently reactionary, and that the only solution to antisemitism was the eventual assimilation of Jews into the broader population.

Lenin proposed instead to restrict the Bund’s autonomy to the practical question of communicating and interpreting Party views and strategies within the specific language and living conditions of Jewish workers. Twelve Jewish delegates led by Trotsky initiated an aggressive attack on the Bund’s so-called nationalist perspective, claiming that they had as much right as the Bund to speak on behalf of the Jewish proletariat. Mark Liber of the Bund responded that these delegates had never worked with Jewish workers. As a result, the Bund decided to withdraw from the Party (Crabapple 2026: Chapter Four; Mendes 2013: 2014: 211-215; Portnoy 1979: 288-290).

I should add that Trotsky was not an antisemite, and later he transitioned to a less dogmatic view of Jewish nationalism (Johnson 2019). But regardless, his cynical manipulation of his Jewish background to marginalize the genuinely representative Bund in 1903 serves to remind us that Jewish........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)