discussion of this article

David Broder said…

Clearly we should not lose sight of the fact that the Israeli state was the hugely more powerful aggressor in the conflict, killed many times more Palestinians than the number of Israelis killed and that the sides are not simply even or balanced. We should utterly condemn the assault on the people of Gaza.

But sentiment "Israel must pay the price" is far, far from an internationalist one. You would never say "Britain must pay the price" or "the USA must pay the price", (and even if you think Israelis don't have the right to self-determination I don't see why that distinction would justify this line of collective revenge/punishment, which is a bit reminiscent of the chauvinist English press calling for harsh terms for Germany after WWI (and the Stalinists doing so after WW2)).

You make zero attempt to relate to Israeli workers or to represent any of the divisions within Israeli society. Even if relatively few are anti-war, we do not label all passive supporters/those apathetic towards the conflict as war criminals who ought to be "punished". Throughout the piece you write "Israel does this..." "Israel does that..." "Israel will not listen to reason". Who does this mean? Nation states don't "do" things, only groups of human beings do.

Are Israeli workers all unable to "listen to reason" and thus not worthy of trying to build dialogue with or relate to?

It is of course true that in some ways Hamas has been strengthened by the conflict, but this is not a good thing and is one subsidiary reason why we should oppose the war (much as one reason we oppose sanctions on Iran is that it gives credibility to the regime)

Thu 22, January 2009 @ 02:09

bill j said…

David's concern that Israel must not pay the price for the recent slaughter of the Palestians is odd.

What is Israel?

Israel is a racist/Zionist colonial state, which exists under a legal regime of apartheid laws and Jim Crow segregation. It ensures that rule by the regular massacre of the Palestinians population in the region, as was demonstrated very clearly in Gaza.

Of course Israel - the racist oppressor state must pay the price.

David's view that the working class - who overwhelmingly supported that war - will suffer as a consequence is revealing too. How will we "build a dialogue" with those workers? By pretending that they should go scot free for their participation in this crime?

Why should they go scot free?

Not only is this misguided it is wrong too, they need shaking up, made to realise that they cannot bathe in blood for free.

Thu 22, January 2009 @ 16:14

David Broder said…

Again though, Bill, you just represent the Israeli state apparatus/military and the entire population as one and the same thing, as if it was totally impossible to relate to (i) those who do not support the government and (ii) those who might be broken from support for it...

You wouldn't advocate military reprisals against American workers who supported the war in Iraq or who sat idle when the Jim Crow laws were in place.

Thu 22, January 2009 @ 16:56

bill j said…

Where did the article advocate military reprisals? What it said was;

 "Now is the time to reverse all this and to emulate the mass international anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s that did so much to force the government of De Klerk in South Africa to dismantle its repressive regime."

Just for your info - it was the workers of South Africa who overthrew apartheid and those workers supported - well the progressive black ones did and those whites who had broken with the racists - the call for a campaign of sanctions and the boycott. Just indeed as the progressive workers and those who have broken with the racists do in Palestine today.

Of course Zionist/racist groups like the AWL worry about the racists of Israel - working class racists and others. That is natural. Socialists on the other hand understand that while these workers remain racists - while they continue to support the racist apartheid Jim Crow state - then they are not much use for anything. And those workers who participated in or supported the slaughter of Gaza have to be held to account, not excused by some misguided notion of class solidarity.

Thu 22, January 2009 @ 19:08

mike f said…

So the Israeli working class is collectively responsible for the actions of its rulers and should be included in any retribution?

I don't think thats a misreading. Its very reminiscent of the attitude of some WP members in Leeds who were happy to tell me socialists in Iraq who failed to join the Islamic militias deserved to be shot.

You're anti imperialism seems to have led you to forget that class is always our key concern. You abandon not just a class perspective in you're call to 'punish' Israel but dismiss any attempt to appeal to Israeli workers or for that matter any group of workers saturated by a reactionary ideology as you state:

'Socialists on the other hand understand that while these workers remain racists - while they continue to support the racist apartheid Jim Crow state - then they are not much use for anything. And those workers who participated in or supported the slaughter of Gaza have to be held to account, not excused by some misguided notion of class solidarity."

So in the UK all those who vote BNP or for that matter New Labour and so defacto supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are beyond the pale. Attempts to engage with them would be 'misguided'. I can't honestly belief thats what you mean so will allow for the fact that you may want to correct that.

Because if you want to start adressing that 'racism' you need a programme that deals with nationalism not by promoting it on one side and denying it on the other. Overcoming it by a call for consistent democracy as the basis for working class unity through the demand '2 nations, 2 states' etc as I posted on the other thread or can be read in full @ http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/08/israel-must-withdraw-gaza-and-west-bank

Fri 23, January 2009 @ 21:04

George B said…

The AWL has chosen to privilege the nationalism of what is (presumably) the last colonial settler state, predicated on the violent expropriation of pre-existing local populations not in the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries, but in the lifetimes of tens of millions of people still around today.

The sorry reality is that the vast majority of Israeli Jews enthusiastically backed the asymmetric assault on Gaza. Opinion polls suggested approval ratings of 90-95% with up to 80% supporting a renewed occupation of the territory.

Along with much of the mainstream media the AWL reminds us of the anti-Semitism of Hamas (ironically an organisation that enjoyed covert support from the Israeli state in the 1990s as part of the effort to destabilise the PLO). Nobody in PR is denying that or much that is reactionary in the programme of a petit-bourgeois nationalist movement that has adopted substantial elements of Islamist ideology. What the AWL appears to gloss over is the vicious and barely concealed anti-Arab racism characteristic of so many Israeli nationals and virtually the whole of the political establishment.

Of course, there was opposition within Israel, but it came from a very small minority around Gush Shalom. Whatever my political differences with Uri Avnery and co, their stance along with that of a good few Israeli intellectuals, along with hundreds of residents of Sderot, has required some courage.

In sharp contrast, the Histradrut trade union federation issued a statement that unambiguously supported the Gaza offensive reflecting not simply the views of a trade union bureaucracy but also the fact that the Israeli Jewish working class is a quite highly privileged labour aristocracy, not only in regional but in global terms.

While successive Israeli governments have pursued neo-liberal programmes that have eroded a very substantial welfare state, the living standards of Israeli Jews (thanks in no small measure to huge injections of aid and investment from the US) still compare favourably with those in a number of old EU states such as Greece and Portugal, never mind the accession states.

Needless to say, none of the above will persuade those who support the AWL's line but it does underscore how equating the nationalisms of the oppressed and oppressor inevitably shields the latter.

Sat 24, January 2009 @ 10:06

Kirstie said…

Dave B and Mike F...

What I want to know is this - in a war of national liberation between on the one hand, an oppressed people, the palestinians, and on the other side a racist, colonial settler state hell bent on a policy of ethnic cleansing, which side are you on?

It is a harsh reality that workers and poor peasants are often moblised for thoroughly reactionary purposes. In this case, the majority of jewish workers have been sold the lie that their interests lie in a Zionist state that can only exist by destroying palestinian communities. Calls for unity at the moment ring on deaf ears in Tel Aviv. Of course, every act that weakens the Zionist state militarily, politically, economically and psychologically should be welcomed. Refusniks in the army, academics who condemn the role of their government and refuse to engage in academic activities that strengthen Zionism, etc.

That is why the workers movement of the world needs to launch an effective boycott on all fronts to bring the Israeli State to its knees. We know this form of workers boycott can be the basis of building a powerful movement of international solidarity based on working class unity against the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli state, as the Anti-aparteid struggle showed. Do you support such a boycott?

Communists in Israel would seek to build on any tenuous links between jewish workers and palestine and strengthen them - but with the goal of building support for the palestinians struggle for justice and not appeasement with Zionsim. This is what real unity means. Anything else crumbles at the first rock thrown by a palestinian youth or rocket fired by Hamas in the face of IDF aggression. I refuse to condemn the rights of the palestinans to fightback. Do you?

Sat 24, January 2009 @ 13:19

David Broder said…

"Of course, every act that weakens the Zionist state militarily, politically, economically and psychologically should be welcomed."

But it is far from necessarily the case that any particular assault on the Israeli state or its population would achieve this, because whatever their current politics the Israeli working class is a *potential* ally for the Palestinians and therefore counter-productive attacks on it should be avoided. Including this article.

On a more extreme level, even apart from the fact that shooting people/firing rockets at civilians is in itself not good, the attitudes expressed by Hamas and their shooting at Sderot etc. (however puny and militarily ineffective) clearly help galvanise the Israeli state and help it win popular support.

The phrase "refuse to condemn the rights of the palestinans to fightback" is just an abstraction. Do I condemn fighting back? No! Of course not. But that can only mean concrete actions by real living people, which (i) have political agency beyond merely fighting back/reacting to what the Israeli state does and other projects for Palestine itself (ii) have tactics which vary in their desirability and efficacy.

Much as if the "military support" wing of Permanent Revolution fired rockets at random in London it would cause damage/sow chaos and in that sense weaken capitalism, but would give credibility to the government to crack down on civil liberties/launch attacks, hopelessly damage your cause and end up totally counter-productive.

Sun 25, January 2009 @ 19:46

Kirstie said…

I'm still not clear - do you support the palestinians struggle against Zionist aggression? You seem to remain equivocal on this - using the question of 'unity' as a way of avoiding the issue of which side do you take?

It is niave at best to suggest that one Hamas rocket propelled the majority of the Israeli jewish working class into support for the destruction of Gaza. That support has been fermenting for years and every act of resistance by the palestinians strengthens it. By your logic, the palestinians should just shut up and put up and then the Israeli workers would support them! Of course that is the problem with the two state solution - it means palestinans accepting the prison-house of Gaza and the permanent threat of Zionist expansion.

I would speculate that one of the ways that the reactionary alliance between Imperialism, Zionism and jewish workers in Israel would begin to falter is if the state is decisively weakened, fractures and can no longer sustain the labour aristocratic layer of workers that it does today. This could lead to class divisions within Israel as workers begin to question their support for Zionism and under such an economic and political crisis workers would begin the challenge their own ruling class.

In such a revolutionary situation, where the Israeli ruling class are weakened - the possibility of an independent workers movement could emerge. The only way such a struggle could have any progressive outcome is if it was linked to the building of a democratic state which would mean breaking up the Zionist state apparatus and it's apartheid structure. This would give enormous confidence to workers across the middle east to see the 'gendarme' of US imperialism in crisis.

In this situation, socialists would be doing their upmost to link the national rights of the palestinians to the revolutionary struggle against despotic pro-imperialist goverments across the region. The call for a socialist palestine as part of a federation of states in the middle East would embody the most progressive goal to this revolutionary struggle.

That is why it is in the objective interests of workers across the globe to exert their collective pressure to bring about such a crisis. The workers of South Africa were acutely aware of this which is why they demanded that workers internationally exert pressure to destroy the South African economy, even though it meant in the short term, they would be victims of this economic crisis. They understood that this would aid the political crisis by which they could build their own independent working class resistance.

That is why the boycott is a key tactic in the coming period. Do you support an international boycott of Israel? Will you be involved the campaigns in various universities across the UK to put an academic boycott into practice and to argue for a programme of disinvestment in the Israeli state?

Sun 25, January 2009 @ 22:10

stuart king said…

The trouble is David Broder wants an ideal and selfless fightback before he is willing to support it. He will never see it. I'm sure if Hamas and the other resistance groups had artillery and the means to protect it, they would prefer to fire it at the advancing Israeli army rather than Israeli settlers. They haven't got such weapons.

Likewise David demands that no action should be taken that might offend his idealised Israeli working class. The only organised mass protests in Israel against the war were of the arab citizens of Israel and they, and their organisations, were severely repressed.

This tells us something we already knew, that the Israeli working class is a highly privileged, colonial settler working class like its protestant Northern Irish and white South African counter-parts. To pretend that the Israeli working class will play some progressive role in the current situation is phantasy politics. To tie the strategy of the Palestinian masses to such an idea would be asking them to wait passively forever.

But our full argument is in our new Palestine pamphlet - perhaps David would like to do a critique?

Sun 25, January 2009 @ 22:29

Mike Calvert said…

The following is the concluding section of the extraordinarily prescient book, The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Schoenman.

Written before Gaza, in 1988, it says the following:

"The Palestinian masses are in motion. The extraordinary will to struggle on the part of the entire population has shown that there is no going back. The Intifadeh needs to focus on specific features of oppression and to challenge them by reclaiming the land, planting forbidden crops, sinking wells and withholding labor in the course of demanding unconditional Israeli withdrawal.

A revolutionary Palestinian leadership will need to devise a program for inside the Green Line which addresses the Jews within Israel as well as the Moslems and Christians. In short, what is necessary is a blueprint for a post-Zionist society which inspires people and associates the inequities of their lives with the Zionist state.

As the Zionist state is at once a species of capitalist class rule and an extension of U.S. imperial power in the region, the struggle against Zionism becomes, programmatically, a struggle for a socialist Palestine and, as the dawn follows the long night, a struggle for a socialist Arab East - from the Mediterranean to the Gulf.

A P.L.O. faithful to its promise of a democratic-secular Palestine would include in its leadership those anti-Zionist Jews who have fought the colonial-settler state. In this way, the Jewish masses themselves would be able to see who really speaks for them, and who offers them a way out of perpetual war, insecurity, and deprivation.

A clear call for a democratic and secular Palestine is essential to uniting mass social forces capable of dismantling the Zionist state and replacing it with a humane society dedicated to the ending of class and national oppression.

The Palestinian revolutionary movement can only advance by hammering out a new strategy based on combining the Palestinian national struggle with the struggle of the workers and peasants of the whole Middle East for liberation from both capitalist and imperialist domination - for a socialist Middle East.

There is no short cut to liberation, as the century-old ordeal of the Palestinian people has shown. The road to victory will only be shortened when a leadership arises which knows its direction and proposes the path in a language which enlists the people, mobilizes them in their own behalf, and exposes fearlessly the false leaders dangerously in the way.

The Palestinian answer to the Zionist and imperialist schemes can be found in the stone-throwing children of Jabaliya, the Beach Camp, Balata and Dheisheh. For this, as Jabotinsky was obliged by them to acknowledge, is a people, a living people - not a rabble, but a conscious people fighting with stones and sling shots against the fourth largest military power in the world.

We owe them, at the very least, fidelity to their revolutionary struggle, which can never be complete until it extends from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates - and, as their Zionist oppressors forever proclaim, "and beyond"."

Mon 26, January 2009 @ 06:44

Robin Sivapalan said…

I read Kirstie's comments soon after she posted them, and thought, ok, these are the right questions, or at least important questions to answer. I've been fairly run off my feet and need to write some other stuff for our paper at the moment. I more or less know what I think at the moment, these being questions that we've discussed on our e-lists, website, forums, branches and with others on demonstrations. But, the depressing fact about talking about Palestine-Israel is that it is ridden with constant misunderstandings, polemics, accusation, and counter accusation, some of which is productive, all of which make you think twice before saying anything. But just wanted to say, for now, that I think Kirstie poses important questions, only I don't answer them as she would and also ask some different questions. For another day.

Tue 27, January 2009 @ 00:18