The misery being inflicted on the people of Gaza by the Israeli state is now more intense and violent than ever. Israeli troops are mounting a ground offensive and around 300 people have been killed and 1,400 injured since the assault began on Saturday.
Children make up 5% of the dead and will be the most vulnerable as general conditions of life deteriorate further. We condemn these murderous acts. We share the huge rage towards the Israeli state, and complete solidarity with the people of Gaza. We also regret the loss of the one Israeli civilian killed so far.
For us, this war like many others ‘is a continuation of politics by other means’, and to a certain extent we would also think that ‘the main enemy is at home’. What these phrases mean, will hopefully be explained.
The solidarity around the world in response to the massacre - so far in the form of demonstrations at Israeli (and at least one Egyptian) embassies around the world - needs to be stepped up urgently and we are determined to be part of that. We welcome the shutting down of the (grotesquely rich) Kensington High Street outside the Israeli embassy on Sunday 28th December by (largely) ordinary Muslim people, especially the children and young people, and were proud to be there. We condemn the police arrests - and also their very presence. We are not the ones to be controlled. We welcome the 1,000 strong protest mobilised by Gush Shalom on Saturday 27th in Tel Aviv, Israel, and send our solidarity to the Israeli high school students – the Shministim - who are being thrown in to prison for refusing to fight for the Israeli Defence Force, their protest at the continued occupation.
At the same time, we question some of the current tactics and politics, evolved over years by the left-wing in the UK, that have come to characterise ‘solidarity with the Palestinians’. A priority for us is discussing our politics – internationalist socialist politics - with the young people of a Muslim background who have been mobilised over the last few years. We do think our politics represents the most coherent, meaningful and principled approach to solidarity with the Palestinians.
We’re activists with Workers’ Liberty, a group that promotes a quite different set of perspectives and political solutions than you’ll find in the mix at most of the demonstrations against the wars in the Middle East. We base our politics on the need for an international movement of revolutionary workers to smash the capitalist state and end the global system of exploitation and poverty forever. We’re fundamentally for human freedom across the world. For us, our anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism does not mean backing anyone who is fighting the US, when the victor is also an exploiter and oppressor of workers, women and the powerless. We look to the workers, the class of direct-producers of capitalist wealth and power, as the main force that can both fight capitalists directly en masse, and replace this system with a collective social and political economy based on universal democracy, justice, equality and freedom.
For months last year we kept a weekly picket of the Israeli embassy, as part of the Committee for 2 States. We’re probably most known for opposing the calls for a general boycott of Israeli goods (and Israeli workers) in the trade unions here. Probably also for refusing to support Hamas and Hezbollah, which we see to be among the political enemies of the working-class and women. Often we criticise much of the left-wing for their refusal to acknowledge the national rights of Jewish Israelis, their right to a homeland, we criticise what we see to be the anti-Semitic roots of this in the Stalinist period. In the RMT, a militant transport union, our activists won the argument this year for a ‘2 State Solution’ to the conflict.
We opposed the creation of Respect off the back of the Stop the War coalition both of which - rather than uniting all working-class people against war, Islampophobia and exploitation, in solidarity with the Iraqi social movements - was led by George Galloway, long-time apologist and ally of Saddam Hussein, included British off-shoots of reactionary clerical-fascist movements in the Middle-East, and was led by small business–men and mosque leaders. This had nothing in common with working-class socialism, and it is good that it has split. It is a shame that the conduct of the socialists will probably have done little to educate young Muslim people about working-class socialism.
We make solidarity with the struggles of women, workers and students throughout the Middle East: against the global capitalist system of exploitation, against Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, against occupation and imperialism, against the Saudi regime, against Iranian theocracy, against sectarian Islamist militias, against Sharia law being imposed, against the execution of gay people and feminists, against the repression of student protest and trade unionism.
We primarily try to build this solidarity in the corresponding anti-war, workers’, women’s and students’ movements here. We are not for the power of capitalist and other repressive regimes. The ‘them and us’, the real clash, is between workers and capitalists. Or at least that is the struggle we see as most crucial for humanity. This is the struggle that shapes the world almost entirely, and especially when it comes to Palestine.
The modern history of Palestine opens up all the history of the growth of capitalist rule around the world. From anti-Semitism in Europe, the real causes of the First World War, to the subsequent carve up of the Ottoman Empire by the victors (into the modern states of Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria), the rise of fascism around the world, the rise of Arab nationalism, the Second World War, the Holocaust and the UN partition of Palestine. Hidden away from the history textbooks from Iran to England is the history socialists can tell, of the international workers movement, it’s victories and defeats, it’s arguments and perspectives, splits and solidarities, and how the outcomes have shaped the history of Palestine.
We don’t understand the world in the terms of CNN, the BBC, the Bible, Torah or Quran. We are Marxists. Today, the capitalist system lies exposed, in Israel and around the world. The unity of capitalist governments around the world has been almost total in the face of a shared economic crisis. Yet war and division of the international working-class have ever been the resort of capitalist rulers.
We must make sure that the fight against capitalism is the fight we mobilise for. For us, the unity of the Arab and Israeli working-class cannot come through force. We call for the immediate creation of an independent Palestinian state after decades of occupation, often pawns in a bigger power-struggle between forces competing in the Middle East. We call on the Israeli working-class to fight a long-overdue fight against the ruling-class that would send them, for generations to come, to kill innocent Palestinians and be killed. The Israeli working-class must fight for equal rights for Arabs, the immediate end of the occupation and withdrawal from West Bank, and for massive reparations to be paid to the Palestinian people. The working-class of Egypt must end the blockade on Gaza and full citizenship should be granted to all Palestinian refugees, should they want it, throughout the region.
We stand with the Palestinians in their fundamental resistance to Israeli violence and aggression, and their right to self-defence, but do not support the targeting of Israeli citizens. We are not there, but we may begin to understand the despair of decades of occupation, and have maintained our support as an organisation for years. We do not believe that Hamas or Fatah will lead the Palestinians to freedom. The onus is on the stronger sections of the working-class to act, and act with urgency, in solidarity with Palestinians (especially such Palestinian socialists as may emerge again) and fight for an immediate amelioration of the Palestinian situation. For us this means a struggle, with international working-class power, for an immediate 2 State solution - as the basis for Palestinian survival and dignity today, and for unity between the Arab and Israeli working-class movement tomorrow against all the oppressors. Ultimately, we oppose borders between peoples.
This Israeli onslaught comes after 18 months of an Israel-Egypt blockade of Gaza as a collective punishment for the election of Hamas in 2006 - and the Islamist group’s continued control over the Gaza territory after a decisive victory in the civil war with Fatah in June 2007. Over the last six months of official ceasefire between Hamas and the Israeli state, there has been a persistent control and strangulation of Gazan life, with severe food and medical shortages. Many describe Gaza as an open prison camp. These attacks have, within days, crippled the already fragile social infrastructure of Gaza.
In July this year, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was forced to resign amid corruption allegations. His Kadima party successor, Tzipi Livni, the current Foreign Affairs Minister, failed to assemble a government and called elections for February 2009. The current war should be seen in this context, with each mainstream Israeli party trying to be seen as the most effective in toppling Hamas.
Any air strikes on Gaza, one the most densely populated territories on earth, would result in the killing of civilians. The actual targets, including a university and a power station, and the supply tunnels that are the main source of medical and food supplies under the Israel-Egypt blockade, represent a collective punishment of the Gazan people for having elected a Hamas government.
We don’t know where and how this will end. We know that even if Israel stops the assault today, many hundreds more Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of lives made even worse, a despair and fury I find difficult to imagine. If Hamas stop firing these small rockets, will that change a thing for the better? We must also ask, who has nothing to lose?
It is so important that all those who want to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians now think quickly and seriously about the strategy of solidarity we must develop. As well as these protests, there should be meetings at work-places, schools, universities, political groups, community groups, that co-ordinate on the basis of a fighting strategy, intended to promote justice for the Palestinians and international working-class solidarity, particularly the action of the working-class of the Middle-East, including and especially Israeli.
Workers’ Liberty and like-minded activists will renew our efforts in the student movement and labour movement, and make a particular effort to engage young Muslim people who are at the forefront of the solidarity in the UK. We invite all those who want to discuss these perspectives, and advance solidarity on this basis to work with us.
You can read our literature online or buy it from our activists, come to our meetings, talk to us at protests. Get a copy of Solidarity, our newspaper. The next opportunity to meet with our activists and discuss what to do about Palestine, is at the NW London Workers’ Liberty branch meeting on Wednesday 7th January 2009 @ the Tricycle Theatre café, Kilburn High Road, 7.30pm. We will also have an educational discussion on children and children’s rights, about which there is a lot to be discussed, thought about and done.
