Tag: palestine

We oppose Palestine inaction with class war against imperialist war!

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Gaslighting Gaza: Hunger, hypocrisy and history all over again…

If media promoted photographs are to be believed, crowds of desperate Palestinians surrounding aid convoys in the Gaza Strip have now joined the Great Wall of China as one of the few earthly human spectacles visible from space.

It is an instrument of torture to revive the victim, sustain their capacity to live sufficiently to draw out the terrible suffering inflicted on them, as a warning, revenge, or punishment.

This is the context in which the current rush to drop crumbs from the air into a starving caged mass and the temporary short-term pauses in their exposure to horrific violence in Gaza could be seen.  For survival, dignity or resolution, it is neither use nor ornament.

A 1000 people at least have been killed in the sadistic “hunger games” conducted by the Israeli state and US mercenaries over the last few months, to the increasing ‘tut-tut’ of an apparently disapproving world. 

The fact that a pause has occurred at all is not a measure of the commitment and efforts of Israel’s allies to reign it in, but of their complicity, having clearly always possessed such power but refused to apply it for the sake of their global imperialist goals. 

The ruling socialites of the Labour Party have proved themselves again as one cheek of the capitalist arse as Shammy Lammy and Starmer Chameleon perform the full pragmatic masquerade to serve their master Trump.  They will never serve the interests of the working class they rob. 

It might be better, observed President Lincoln, to avoid such treachery by choosing somewhere “…where despotism can be taken pure… without the base alloy of hypocrisy”.  He was referring to Russia verses the US, we might well ask today, what’s the difference?

The far-right administration of the Israel state continues to squander the last of its historic good will or guilt credits, still peddling the line that the hunger it has created doesn’t exist. 

This while juggling between military pauses and renewed bombing costing around 30 lives a day – double that currently caused by the induced famine.  That any in the West can seriously claim this as a success is again masking a cynical complicity. 

Hamas, meanwhile, the ‘state-aspiring’ anvil on which the Palestinian working class is being hammered, unapologetically continues to feed the meat grinder at the other end.

The western governments continue to supply Israel, block refugees fleeing war zones and suppresses even the flimsiest internal descent against their Israeli ally as antisemitism. 

The banning of Palestine Action as terrorists for their nonviolent direct action has fooled no one, not even the usually supine United Nations which has called for the ban to be lifted. 

We don’t support the ultimate goals of Palestine Action as we believe none of the artificially divided sections of the worlds working class should be subjected to the brutalising local policeman of capital that is the state, Palestinian or Israeli. We do however acknowledge this as a sign of greater repression to come and raise the alarm against it on that basis.

We have seen the seeding of periodic challenges to the power of Hamas brutally repressed by the Palestinian state-in -exile, while in Israel resistance is beginning to emerge to both genocide and forced military service.

While this initially appears small and far from the reality we are seeing elsewhere on the ground, we must counterpose it by asking what have those marching in their millions have achieved over the last three years other than sore feet and burnout. 

Objectively they have bought time for the slaughter to continue by refusing to confront it with vigour and class interest with which this slaughter has been perpetrated.  So far, our focus on the horror abroad has served to divert our attention to how it is paid for – by our increasing exploitation at home through austerity.

We must continue to argue that capitalism’s Social Peace at home is its violent immiserating pause enroute to the next generalised global bloodletting for profit, whose pathway is being paved almost everywhere we look at the moment. 

The frontiers of capitalism are ablaze in preparation for our destruction; it’s destruction through the global struggle of our Class War is our necessary response.

Article by Dreyfus

Glastonbury and the Warfare State – Know thine enemy

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Ironically, in the face of capitalism’s accelerating drive towards its global war of destruction in the ‘national interests’, the flags of ‘other patriotisms’ are coming back to hide the existential struggle of our class and humanity behind the claims of those nationalists who want the ‘states in exile’ like a United Ireland or Palestine to take over from those ‘states in power’.

The keyword here is the State.  The bourgeois political entity that’s become the local franchise of international capitalism, it inevitably siding with one imperialist bloc or other.  

Taking sides here has its own appeal.  You can blow up a political relationship and achieve the illusion of change.  Social revolution, however, is not a change of management and rearranging of deckchairs.  It is the abolition of an exploitative social and economic relationship that cannot be reformed but requires our liberation and the solidarity of class struggle. 

The flag of any nation will only ever lead us to one or other imperialist camp to die for.  All claims pushing us to take the side of one state, bloc and camp or another are a betrayal of the historical internationalist interests of our class

Whoever broke woke is now haunting the political playgrounds of bourgeois Bohemian liberalism, the performance and the festival.

Who is this Glastonbury that now so openly opines on the political partisanships of the capitalist state and who must be obeyed?

A direct inheritor, if not usurper, of the free festival movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, it has long been a haven for leftist and liberal ideas.  It used to be joked that breaking into Glastonbury was mandatory training for the peace movement!

Its organisers have promoted this with pride.  Its founder, Michael Eavis, stated as recently as the current festival, “people that don’t agree with the politics of the event can go somewhere else.”  To follow this by endorsing the establishment voices in condemning Bob Vylan’s sloganeering against the IDF (the 170,000 conscript Israeli army) appears to be a response to external political pressure.

The Guardian newspaper observed that, “the Gaza discourse has been Vylanised” as a diversion.  However, that was clearly not working given the number of voices mobilising in its favour – the duo’s album miraculously climbing the charts again!

Starmer then, condemned the allegedly antisemitic chants of, “Death to the IDF” as, “unacceptable hate speech”.  Yvette Cooper with similar timing banned Palestine Action’s peaceful (if injurious to the deity of property) protest against the mass indiscriminate targeting of people with devastating high explosive bombs and bullets, including the massacre of noncombatants, as “terrorism”.  This, ironically just as the Yoorrock Justice Commission in Australia found Britain guilty of genocide against the indigenous First Nations of Victoria during colonisation.

Not to be outdone, journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil took the festival accusations one step further, for he stated, “I was going to say that they (Glastonbury) seem to have more in common with the Nuremberg rally,” though even the Nazis didn’t say, ‘Death to the Jews’”.  This prompting some conservatives to even call for the prosecution of the BBC simply for showing the festival!

So, Bob Vylan, Kneecap’s Gaelic republicanism and even Palestine Action are cast as the villains in the fog of war, predominantly as a diversionary tactic.  Not just from an ongoing mass slaughter but from the state’s shared interests with its enemies to not undermine its monopoly on the use of violence.  And if ‘your army’ questions whether “right is actually on its side?” and then falls for the desertion argument, so could ‘ours’.  “We (they) can’t be having that!”

However close one might be to the strictly defined legal characteristics that name a mass slaughter a genocide, the horrific trauma of Gaza is an atrocity by any measure.  Consensus amongst experts is between 60 to 90,000 dead and perhaps treble that wounded. This represents in excess of 10% of the pre-war population of Gaza. 

Vylan’s error is not in trying to find one enemy to accuse, but to find the wrong one and find itself colluding with the state’s tactic to avoid the real significance of the commentary.  “Death to the IDF” is no more antisemitic than ‘death to the Nazis’ is calling for the killing of all Germans.  It does however pitch us as one state entity against another – one side of the prospect of imperialist slaughter.  Supporting the killing of our class to oppose the other side where our class is also dying!

The cycle of war doesn’t end because our class has died in sufficient numbers to support our state in killing our class in the enemy state. The prospect of war ends when our class flat out refuses to fight for both the state and for appointed leaders within capital and instead fights the very system and barbaric ruling class which wants to pit us against and murder each other.

Far from calling for the death of the IDF conscripts, revolutionists should be calling for the working class treated as canon fodder, as the producers of wealth who have nothing in common with those who control and manipulate that wealth through its extorted acquisition, to see what they have in common with the repressed and exploited working class conscripts of the fundamentalist bands of Hamas and its Iranian backers in the anti-western camp.

War ends when the fighting stops forever. That can only be brought about in the long-term by the internationalist action of the world’s working class, refusing all sides but its own and the negating of the power and wealth of capitalism and imperialism for a free world commune.

While there may be an increasing number of voices criticising the ‘Vylanising’ of the Gaza debacle, that voice yet needs to find its target against the warring factions of this imperialist conflict, against the system of capitalism and state, and not upon workers dying because of it.

Article by Dreyfus

How many more corpses do you need to understand what’s going on?

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An article by Lukas Borl – https://lukasborl.noblogs.org

The Russian and Ukrainian state sends people to war to defend the rule of the Russian and Ukrainian bourgeoisie. The Israeli state and Hamas do the same for their own local bourgeoisie. People are dying by the thousands under the flags of “their” states and nationalist movements. They murder each other for the sake of “their own” rulers, for the business of “their own” bosses, for the property and power of “their own” bourgeoisie. “We are defending the survival of our own nation”, these people shout, while running towards their own destruction on the field of war. “We are fighting for the right to national self-determination” they chant in chorus, while overlooking that everywhere in the world it is the bourgeoisie that dictates the conditions of our lives. There is no self-determination anywhere. The bourgeoisie in Ukraine determines (i.e. imposes and dictates) the conditions of the local proletariat, the bourgeoisie in Russia does the same to the local proletariat. The various bourgeois factions around the world are uniting in transnational alliances to compete with their rivals. How can anyone believe the delusion that by waging war for one of these factions the working class can gain the possibility of self-determination? So, if the proletariat in the Ukraine, Gaza or Israel sacrifices enough lives on the front, the bourgeoisie will give it as a gift the voluntary surrender of its own power and will no longer exploit the proletarian masses?

War between states will never bring us the opportunity to determine the free conditions of our lives. Even if the “smaller and weaker” or “invaded” state wins the war with the help of the allies, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie will be preserved. Being exploited by the local bourgeoisie and oppressed by the local state is no victory. It’s not something we should sacrifice our lives for. Yet some are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives for the illusion that the victory of one state is important for the future liberation from all states. It’s one of the many oxymorons of these people. In the name of fighting against states, they urge us to defend a particular state and its nationalist/democratic ideology. In the name of fighting against war, they tell us that we must engage in war. How many more people have to die on the front for these oxymoron lovers to realise that war between states cannot bring peace, that against tyranny of states cannot be fought by collaboration with states, that capitalist exploitation cannot be fought by working class alliances with capitalists?

Warmongers on both sides of the war line use economic, violent and ideological pressure to mobilize people for war. If we proclaim the struggle against all factions of the bourgeoisie, including the struggle against the bourgeoisie of the “invaded” states, they accuse us of aiding the more aggressive, dictatorial, imperialist states, as if it were not perhaps obvious that we are also waging the struggle against them at the same time. They believe that collusion with this or that local bourgeoisie and state is a question of survival. They do not take into account that the same bourgeoisie they defend does everything to avoid being conscripted to the front itself, while the state authorities forcibly dress the proletarians in uniforms and drive them to their deaths in the front struggle. They sees that, the “friendly” bourgeoisie, uses the state to close the borders to men who want to travel to safety. They fail to see that the bourgeoisie is not concerned with saving the lives of the entire bombed population, but with forcing the proletarian part of the population to shed blood to save their own power, property and sphere of economic influence. When it comes to saving lives in a war zone, the proletarians certainly have to look for other options than enlisting in the army.

Whether the warmongers are capitalists, nationalists or the left of capital, they are all terrified by the idea that the enemy state will win the war, but they are not at all terrified by the corpses of proletarians that war always “produces” on both sides. No matter what banner they stand under, no matter what ideological label they put on themselves, we must repudiate all warmongers. When the question is put to us as to which side we take in the war, we clearly answer that we take the side of the proletariat in Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, Israel and all over the world. We do not choose the side of this or that state in the war, but the side that organises against states. We do not stand aside while war massacres our class brothers and sisters. We stand on the side of those who rebel against the war and resist all efforts to drag us into the war. The only way to stop wars is to undermine the ability of all states to continue to wage war.

The aim of ‘revolutionary defeatists’ today is not that one side should win and the other lose but to draw a clear line between the capitalist perspective which entails ever more war and misery, and the proletarian revolutionary perspective, which entails humankind’s liberation. There is no compromise between them possible.

Internationalist perspective

https://lukasborl.noblogs.org/how-many-more-corpses-do-you-need-to-understand-whats-going-on/#more-1958

ANTI-WAR PROTESTS IN ISRAEL AND GAZA

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Despite chauvinistic sentiments in Israeli and Palestinian societies,
not everyone on both sides of the front lines agrees with the war that
began with the brutal attack by Hamas clerical fascists on October 7.
Demonstrations are taking place in Israel and Gaza demanding an
immediate ceasefire and holding to account the ruling circles on both
sides responsible for escalating the conflict.

Already on October 14, voices were raised in Tel Aviv in solidarity with
Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, demanding the resignation of Prime
Minister Netanyahu. He is accused that his policies have actually
strengthened Hamas in opposition to Palestinian Authority circles
willing to seek compromise and coexistence with Israel. The very next
day, the government introduced measures authorizing the arrest of those
who harm the “spirit of the nation.” After an anti-war demonstration in
Haifa, the police chief threatened to send protesters to Gaza on October
19. Despite repression and terror by the far-right, a protest was staged
outside the Israeli prime minister’s residence on November 4. On
November 8, Israel’s Supreme Court authorized police to disperse
anti-war rallies. Nevertheless, on November 18, the first legal
demonstration against the war was held in Tel Aviv. A week later, on
November 25, demonstrators gathered in Jerusalem, demanding the prime
minister’s resignation. The following actions were met with police
repression: on November 29, protesters were arrested outside the
parliament, and on December 2 – outside the prime minister’s house in
Caesarea. On December 16, protesters camped outside the Israeli War
Ministry.

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-Hamas_war_protests [4])

On December 28, Israeli Jews and Arabs demonstrated together in Tel Aviv
to demand a ceasefire. However, scheduled protest marches for
Israeli-Palestinian peace in Tel Aviv on January 11 and in Haifa on
January 13 were banned by the police.

(https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-deny-permit-for-anti-war-protest-left-wing-groups-vow-high-court-appeal/)


But a demonstration in Haifa followed on January 20. Protesters chanted:
“Refuse to kill, refuse to fight, refuse to murder!”

(https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/1/20/refuse-to-fight-jewish-arab-activists-call-for-peace-in-israels-haifa)


The first protests against the Hamas regime in Gaza since the beginning
of the war were reported back in the fall, but it was difficult to
confirm this information, and the videos circulating on the Internet at
the time were from before the war began.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1OaYZO-aWs)

However, there were periodic reports of “hunger riots” in Gaza – attacks
on warehouses and food convoys. Now, in January 2024, there is finally
evidence of major protests in Gaza against the war with Israel and
against the clerical-fascist dictatorship, which, with its bloody
provocation on October 7, exposed civilians in the Strip to bombing and
fighting. For several days in January, hundreds of residents took to the
streets. On January 25, they marched through the Khan Younis
humanitarian corridor, chanting, “Down with Hamas!” “The people want a
ceasefire! Netanyahu and Sinwar, we want a ceasefire. Enough with war
and enough with the destruction!”, – could be heard over loudspeakers.
The day before, a video of a protest by Gaza youth in front of a
hospital in Deir el-Balah went around. Participants demanded that Hamas
release Israeli hostages and end the war so that they could return to
their homes in the northern sector.

(https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/welt/gazastreifen-hunderte-palästinenser-protestieren-gegen-die-hamas/ar-BB1hnNYd

Israel and Anti-Militarism

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Murderous conflicts occurring through the system of capital and state continue, intensify and now threaten to engulf entire regions.  Both the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East drag on into another year and become increasingly barbarous.  Starvation, mass killings, ethnic cleansing, kidnappings, humiliation and torture are clearly encouraged by the powers that be.  The war in the Middle East, as well as in Eastern Europe, increasingly involves power and imperial blocs taking up their battle positions. This, despite the war focused on Gaza supposedly being “over by Christmas” (how many times have we heard that before?)!

As such, effective resistance often demands great bravery on the part of members of our class, their companions, supporters and friends.  In this context, a number of us now know the names, Tal Mitnick and Yuval Dag. 

Tal Mitnick is an 18-year-old vocal member of ‘Mesarvot’ (‘We Refuse’), which numbers a few hundred.  Tal became the first open objector to serving in the IDF since the start of the current conflict and cited his opposition to the attacks upon the collective population of Gaza as a reason.  For Tal considers the attacks, a “murderous revenge”, that does nothing to address the root cause of the conflict. 

Meanwhile, Yuval Dag is a 21-year-old who served 64 days in Neve Tzedek military prison in Tel Aviv last Spring.  He was supported as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and has if anything, become increasing vocal in his criticism of the situation throughout the Middle East and in Gaza and the West Bank, in particular, since then.

In Israel, military conscription is mandatory and is seen as, “defining you as a somebody in Israeli society”.   There is also a saying that, “a nation building an army is a nation building itself”.  This lays bare the shared roots of nationalism and militarism, as part of the cancerous ethos of state and capital. 

Dissent in Israel does have quite a lengthy tradition.  However, outside of the ruling class, nationalist religious zealots, and their supporters (who often get a pass on risking their necks), people there trying to avoid military service lately face massive obstacles and are at the least pressurised to keep quiet – or else! For in the wake of the attacks of 7th October last year, the state in Israel and unfortunately among a substantial part of the wider society, has been engaging in a bitter offensive against any who dare to even think about resisting the cry to take up the fight for nation, religion, and the exploitative and oppressive current system.  This reflects a call by the master class that increasingly imperils our class and humanity itself.

It is likely then that for such reasons, reports of actual open opposition to the draft in Israel during the Gaza war have not been noted or publicised until very recently.  However, in the last month, pieces on Mitnick, Dag, their friends and supporters have appeared.  Of note too, these reports describe their increasingly determined stance, where they have made comments strongly alluding to the importance of internationalism among our class.  Mitnick has appeared in embracing both radical anti-authoritarian and anti-militarist perspectives.

The bravery of these people in doing this is laid bare by the fact that Mitnick faces at least 30 days (and likely substantially longer) in jail after being sentenced in late December 2023, and will no doubt be bitterly ostracised when is freed.  Meanwhile, Dag, though being imprisoned last year and from a nationalist family, has not kept quiet, and vocally supports Mitnick and fellow conscious workers for their anti-militarism.  There are others starting to do the same.

The names of those openly resisting is now increasing.  Sofia Orr (18 yrs old) and Iddo Elam (17 and also from the ‘Mesarvot’ group) have gone public in stating their opposition to being drafted (the former in the face of being ‘called up’ next month). All have described the importance of having a network of friends and supporters around them, now more than ever. 

Iddo has stated that “one massacre doesn’t justify another” and then gone on to say that they are now steadfast in their “rejection of the entire current system”.  Iddo and Sofia fear both for their friend Tal in prison and of the same fate whilst receiving death threats awaiting themselves.  However, being members of a group showing solidarity with each other has galvanised their collective determination.

Their numbers may appear still relatively few as yet, but they could increase notably further as the murderous battles continue, the reality of the current system perhaps becomes transparent to many more and if the internationalist word spreads.  Importantly, as noted above, some appear to be starting to embrace a class struggle, emancipatory position, as opposed to a liberal pacifist one.  It is greatly encouraging to see that revolutionary No War But the Class War graffiti has now been spotted in the local urban streets around Tel Aviv.

All is vital to stop the nightmare of war, famine, poverty, nationalism, ethnic cleansing, barbarity, torture, the growing threat of theocrats, as well as the daily dose of oppression, alienation and exploitation.  The anti-militarist class war is the only war which will unite us as an international working class to prevent a death spiral, to liberate ourselves and to finally live in harmony with this planet.  Total respect to those resisting and to those who share the struggle in solidarity!

Article by Bloque