LENIN'S TOMB: January 2009

Friday, January 30, 2009

Support the occupations. posted by lenin

I just got off the phone with some of the people who are occupying Nottingham University over the crisis in Gaza. There has been an effort to turf them out, with the power turned off (they got it back on after a while), and a couple of suits representing the Vice Chancellor visiting the occupation to threaten the students with disciplinary action. It is not entirely clear at the moment what the university can do, but given that other occupations have registered some success so far, one would hope for the students to prevail. 'Pete' explained to me what the students would like people to do:

"We have a petition that we are producing which we would like people to sign, so they should check the website for this. We would appreciate messages of support, especially if people could send them to us [occupationnottingham@gmail.com] and the Vice Chancellor [david.greenaway@nottingham.ac.uk] at the same time. And we would love for people to come and visit. It is a little bit difficult to get in, but we've got thirty people in so far. If people can bring supplies and food, that would be great. If you can't visit us, please try and visit one of the other occupations happening near you. There have been eighteen overall around the country, even if some of them are concluded. Also, read up on Gaza, that's far more important than us. And donate to the Disasters Emergency Committee, and Medical Aid for Palestine. We are going to set up a mechanism whereby people can donate through us, so we can see how much money we have been able to raise for Gaza by occupying."

These guys are doing a great job, so please help them in whatever way you can. Meanwhile, via Solomon's Mindfield, you can watch some interviews with the students who are in occupation on ITV.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, occupation, palestine, protest, students, zionism

Ugly turn posted by lenin

Backtrack time? I think it is. When I wrote my post earlier, I was under the distinct impression that the racism was among a minority, and that the 'British jobs for British workers' slogan was an ill-thought-out nationalist reaction of a few that could be fought. We've seen this before. For example, there was a (tiny) minority on the Rover protests back in 2000 arguing that it was about 'British jobs', which the media focused on. In that light, the Tories, the right-wing press and the fascists all speaking out in support of the strikes would be an opportunistic hi-jacking of a genuine revolt for full union rights, jobs, pay, and conditions. That assumption is presumably why many people praised the post - they too are sick of the media perpetuating myths about the 'white working class' being especially racist.

The more I look at this, however, the more different it is. For a start, the overwhelming slogan of the Rover workers was 'Occupy, Organise, Nationalise'. But I am astonished to hear that there is a 'British jobs for British workers' protest planned by trade unionists for next week. Thus, this horrible slogan is not only the single most prominent one on the picket lines, it is actually becoming an official line of trade unionists who have in the past been an ally of anti-racists. Moreover, the arguments of some of the shop stewards supporting the strike are disgusting. This is how one Unite shop steward put it: "I'm a victim, you are a victim, there are thousands in this country that are victims to this discrimination, this victimisation of the British worker." This is an argument that comes straight from the playbook of the far right. Not all of the arguments are this bad, but there is some consistency regardless. Another shop steward, for example, states that it isn't a strike against "foreign labour" but "against foreign companies discriminating against British labour". That is exactly the wrong way to go about the argument, because it still says that the struggle is somehow between British workers and 'foreign' workers, not between the workers and the bosses. Moreover, it seems strangely congruent with the recent protectionist strategy of the Unite union. All of this is feeding into the racist coverage by the tabloids, and probably worse hysteria to come.

Of course, it is right to strike for jobs, and fair pay. That is what should be happening here. And I'm not going to pretend that the companies involved aren't engaged in union-busting. But I cannot, in good faith, stand by the claim that racism is only incidental to this strike. That was just not a realistic assessment. Given the way the demands have been raised, the only way the strikers could win would be if the the 'foreign workers' were sacked. As a consequence, I can't help but agree with those in the earlier thread who are worried about the fall-out. The bitterness that has been built up for years over low pay, deteriorating conditions, run-down housing estates, underfunded public services, and so on, has been intensified by the recession. Now, one expects Brown, whose slogan it is, to defend 'British jobs for British workers'. And the fascists, who gave it to Brown in the first place, will lap it up. But it would be a disaster if this slogan caught on. We do need a struggle, but this is the wrong basis for it.

Labels: bnp scum, class struggle, immigration, racism, trade unions, working class

The wild cat strikes are not racist posted by lenin

This is ~~not~~ a racist strike. Naturally, a media obsessed with the idea of a 'white working class' can't see this. But thousands of workers across the UK aren't dropping their equipment and walking out at risk of losing pay and possibly their jobs over some racist bullshit. As Phil BC has already pointed out, interviews with strikers yield a much more complex picture than just British workers striking against 'foreign labour'. As one worker puts it: "This is not a racist protest. I’m happy to work hand-in-hand with foreign workers, but we are not getting a look in. There are guys at this site who had been banking on that work and then it gets handed to an Italian firm. It’s about fairness."

Those few who are raising slogans like 'British jobs for British workers' need to sort their arguments out, because they're wrong and they're misleading, and they seriously damage the prospects for solidarity. What's more, they got that slogan from Gordon Brown, and that itself should warn them that there's something wrong with it. This is not about foreign labour as such - the vast majority of these workers have no problem working alongside migrant workers. And the decision to refuse local workers access to those jobs has nothing to do with the company involved being nice and pleasantly multicultural. Nor is it about labour shortages, as there are plenty of skilled workers available to the employers at the Lindsey oil refinery. Nor is it even about cheap labour in this case, although there have been attempts to use cheap labour to run down conditions in the past. This is about the way Italian workers, who aren't responsible for this problem, are being used in an attempt to break trade union organisation among construction workers in the UK, and in particular to break the terms of previous agreements. If it was about anything else, why would the employers exclude them from the jobs in advance? Why shouldn't the jobs be open to anyone?

If you look at the contributors to the forum on the Bear Facts website for construction workers (which unfortunately does allow that horrible slogan, 'British jobs for British workers' to occupy a prominent position on its front page), you can see for yourself what the arguments are. There are a few who talk about 'British' this and that. But most of the arguments are about why on earth workers should put up with their pay and conditions being shredded, why are unions still funding the Labour Party, and don't we need a general strike to sort this out once and for all, etc. There are also people who are explicitly standing up against the nationalist arguments of the minority. These people are taking an exceptionally brave stance in defying Tory anti-trade union laws, and they're not being intimidated by the attempts to paint them as racists. They are fighting when, by and large, union bureaucrats are not. For that reason at least, the left has to defend this strike and stand up against those who are trying to pass this off as some sort of Powellite reaction.

Update: Socialist Worker has produced a much more critical discussion of the strikes here.

Update 2: Alarming developments.

Labels: class struggle, militancy, racism, strike, trade unions, wildcat strikes

Thursday, January 29, 2009

France's General Strike posted by lenin

Greek workers are up in arms, the Italian working class is revolting against the Berlusconi administration, protesters in Iceland have deposed their government, and now Sarkozy is the latest to feel the wrath. Today's strikes and rallies involved millions of workers and took place across the country as this map shows:

The strikes were in protest over job losses, pay cuts, and planned reforms of the education system which would deprive teachers of paid time in which to do their work. Polls show that 69% of people back the strike. Here are some pictures:

Labels: anticapitalism, france, general strike, protest, sarkozy, socialism, trade unions

BBC: keep the pressure on posted by lenin

Let's see: we have a campaign of protests and returning license fees. We have the initiatives of celebrities (see David Soul, Ursula Le Guin and China Mieville on the Stop the War website). We have had three BBC HQs occupied, the latest of which was BBC Manchester. There was also a new protest outside BBC Scotland yesterday. We have ~~112~~ 170 MPs backing a motion to force the BBC to change its stance on the Gaza Crisis Appeal. We have the Archbishop of Canterbury sticking his beard in. Now we have the nobel prize winning head of the IAEA boycotting the BBC. Every time Mark Thomspon restates his position, he only sounds more incoherent. He cannot explain how ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 managed to show the appeal without a sudden collapse in viewer confidence. And now the UN, as if to underline the terrible needfulness of the situation in Gaza and the callousness of those who would withhold aid, has launched an appeal for $613m. Could the UN be... good Lord... taking sides? And amid all this talk about impartiality, what has been brought out in striking clarity, and even reported in some right-wing papers, is the BBC's manifest bias toward Israel. I tell you, even if the BBC doesn't back down on this, this campaign is going to make them rue the day. We can and should make it the worst decision Mark Thompson ever made.

Labels: bbc, gaza, hamas, humanitarianism, Israel, war crimes, zionism

The war against pre-terrorism posted by lenin

Following his detailed exposition of the "Tarnac 9" case, Alberto Toscano has an excellent article in today's Guardian on the way in which European states are inclined to use 'anti-terror' laws to attack and undermine forms of dissent that, while illegal, clearly are not terroristic.

I note that a number of the commenters under the article don't actually understand this point: there is much ado about how the suspects should "spend a very long time in jail" if the charges are proven correct in court. But the fact that the normal legal safeguards have been bypassed surely undermines the validity of any verdict reached. Moreover, the crimes of which the Tarnac 9 are accused amount to vandalism, but their case is treated by the French state as a preemptive strike against direct action and non-parliamentary forms of dissent, which are - in a way that is ominously familiar to environmental or antiwar protesters in the UK - increasingly categorised as terrorism. The invocation of 'war on terror' rhetoric is arbitrary, but it helps to justify "bypassing customary legal safeguards, above all the presumption of innocence". If it is permitted in this case, it sets a precedent that will be hard to reverse.

There is another problem here, in that there is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, and anti-terror legislation is usually opaque and riddled with double standards on the topic. Have a read of Lord Carlile's review from 2007 if you need confirmation of that. It can include sabotage and vandalism, or even the threat of sabotage and vandalism. It can include murders prompted by no obvious political goal. It can include also include mass murder. In this way, current conceptions of terrorism can be used to bracket flyposters (destruction of property after all) and protesters (where it might be argued that there is a threat of property being destroyed), with airplane hijackers and hotel bombers. It does not require a leap of the imagination to see how strikes and sit-ins could also be absorbed into the category of terrorism. A discourse that is supposedly about protecting the public is also the means by which the public is to be intimidated and repressed, just as a new wave of protest and rebellion is sweeping Europe.

Labels: 'war on terror', anticapitalism, antiwar, protest, repression, terrorism

On Gaza occupations posted by lenin

I got word this morning that yet another University building has been occupied in support of Gaza, this time in Nottingham. You can read about the growing list of occupations here, but I just want to point out that this is not happening in isolation or without being noticed. Here is a statement from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees on the issue:

The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) salutes the solidarity actions of students from universities across England in response to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Students from eleven universities have occupied buildings in their campuses in solidarity with Palestinian rights, including the right to education, and in outrage over Israel’s rolling massacres and wanton destruction in Gaza, including many educational institutions, in its latest war of aggression on Gaza and the year and a half of its criminal siege of Gaza that continues till today.

Students from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), the London School of Economics (LSE), Kings College, Oxford University, University of Warwick, University of Leeds, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Sussex, Newcastle University, University of Birmingham, and the University of Essex have all acted to pressure their respective university administrations to respond to their demands.

In part, the students’ demands have included calls for their universities to condemn the attacks on Palestinian educational institutions as well as urging official mechanisms and programs that would support the right to education for all Palestinians. In light of the atrocities committed by the Israeli army in Gaza, students have also demanded that their universities pursue practical steps towards divesting from companies and institutions implicated in Israeli occupation of Palestine and its violation of international law.

We in PFUUPE are grateful for the hard and principled work of our colleagues in the British academic community over the past years in support of the cause of justice and peace in Palestine and for Palestinian academic freedom, in particular. The University and College Union’s 2008 motion condemning the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in the perpetuation of Israel’s occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people gives an excellent example of these efforts. We acknowledge the latest forms of student activism in England and elsewhere as a welcome continuation of those efforts aimed at holding Israel accountable for its injustice and crimes.

The bombing of the Islamic University, scores of public and UNRWA schools, and the headquarters of the University Teachers’ Association-Palestine in Gaza is only the latest episode in an ongoing Israeli policy of undermining and directly targeting Palestinian educational institutions. In light of this policy of the occupation, the effective solidarity of academics and students worldwide, particularly in the form of boycott, is particularly significant and highly appreciated by Palestinian academics. By their work in protest of these barbaric acts, our comrades have shown that this destruction cannot and will not occur in silence and without protest.

Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza was described by leading international jurists as constituting a war crime, even a crime against humanity. It has caused over 1300 deaths and the injury of more than 5000 Palestinians, the great majority of whom are civilians. As the dust begins to settle in Gaza, we are only now beginning to comprehend the enormity of the indiscriminate destruction caused by the Israeli attacks.

We strongly admire and support the students in the United Kingdom who are calling for boycott and divestment, urging their universities not just to protest and condemn Israel's massacre in Gaza, but also to join and intensify the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel to end its impunity and to hold it accountable for its persistent violations of international law and Palestinian rights. We agree that, without sustained, effective pressure by people of conscience the world over, Israel will continue with its gradual, rolling acts of genocide against the Palestinians.

We urge academics around the world to intensify their boycott of Israeli academic institutions, and to isolate the Israeli academy in international forums, associations of academics, and other international venues. Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the entrenched system of oppression practiced by the Israeli state, and their silence at this critical moment is only the most vociferous indicator of this complicity.

Dr. Amjad Barham

President

PFUUPE

Labels: boycott, gaza, hamas, Israel, occupation, palestine, students, universities, zionism

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Who has the right to self-defence? posted by lenin

As Israeli troops re-enter Gaza, the omnipresent mantra will be that "Israel has a right to defend itself". I recognise no such right, given that what it actually means is that "Israel has a right to defend its supremacy over the Palestinians with extreme force". But I just want to briefly point out one implication of this constant invocation of the right to self-defence in this context. The IR theorist Marc Trachtenburg once pointed out that the humanitarian intervention of the Victorian era "dramatised the fact that the society of nations was not a society of equals — that there were in fact two castes of states. To be a target of intervention — indeed, even of humanitarian intervention — was to be stigmatized as of inferior status". The obverse of this was that those of the inferior caste did not have the right to defend themselves. At best, they had the 'right' to be protected by members of the ruling caste, supposing anyone felt like giving a hand.

It might be argued that today the lower caste of states do have some rights of self-defence, but these are heavily circumscribed. Thus, the ruling caste reserves for its exclusive use the right to weapons of mass destruction, to aerial bombardment, invasion, and so on. Israel has a right to all of this but, say, Iran does not. And the Palestinians who - poor fools - don't even have a state, are not even permitted to have a rusty cache of rockets. The question of statehood is important. It is not uncommon for Israel's supporters to emphasise the fact that it is a sovereign state while its designated foes (Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, Islamic Jihad etc) are non-state actors. This emphasis presumably derives from the perspective of Just War theory, particularly that championed by Michael Walzer who is a strong supporter of Israel and can be relied upon to offer a sophisticated apologia for whatever war it is currently engaged in (Operation Cast Lead was no exception). For Walzer attributes to states the right not only to defensive violence, but to violence that targets civilians - both rights he denies nonstate actors. As Andrew Valls has pointed out, this is a double standard that relies on a heavily loaded conception of the kind of violence that nonstate actors might employ ("random murder"). This is an intriguing form of myopia given Walzer's background. For Walzer is, after all, one of those who helped pioneer the idea of Zionism - against the increasingly sceptical New Left - not as a religious or colonial venture but, rather absurdly, as a national liberation struggle with Labour Zionists juxtaposed to the Indian National Congress and the Algerian FLN. Nonetheless, the double standard operates in most conceptions of 'just war', and is mobilised in support of Israel's "right to defend itself against Hamas".

This caste arrangement was once structured by claims of racial solidarity, such as those of Anglo-Saxonism. Such are the origins of the 'special relationship' between the US and UK in the later 19th Century, in which the US resisted the urge to annexe any part of British territory in Canada or the British West Indies while the British not only acceded to American expansionism but embraced it at key points, such as during the 1898 war. Anglo-American competition did not disappear, but it was twinned with a new strategic orientation based in part upon racial sentiment and fear of emerging rival imperialisms of Russia and Japan. At this point, race and conceptions of democracy were inseparably intertwined, the latter seen as a function of the former. That is, for American imperialists such as Theodore Roosevelt no less than for the British empire, democracy was appropriate to the 'white race' which had alone reached a state of self-government.

The trend since 1945, however, has been to make racism invisible - as Robert Vitalis puts it, there is a pervasive 'norm against noticing' the way in which the global order is powerfully structured by race. In the Cold War, of course, the defence of white supremacy in South Africa, Rhodesia or even in the Deep South of the US, was interpreted as an anticommunist imperative. Opposition to anti-colonial movements was 'antitotalitarian'. Even the defence of right-wing dictatorships supported or imposed by western states was a defence of 'the Free World'. Today, the explicit justification for such caste distinctions is almost wholly democratic, (even if one will occasionally hear that the difference between the UK and Iran, for example, is that the former is a "civilized" state). Israel, it is argued, is not only a sovereign state but a democratic one. The world's democracies, it may then be added, have a duty to support one another against undemocratic rivals, at most offering friendly criticism if an ally appears to act against its own interests. Moreover, those democratic states have enhanced legitimacy in their global actions as they are said to be genuinely constrained by popular will, as opposed to despotic states that pursue narrow and parochial interests without the humane restraints that democratic states operate under (thus, "Israel takes the greatest of care not to harms civilians..."). This set of assumptions, as Vitalis suggests, rests upon a certain faux-naïveté about the endurance of race as an organising principle in world affairs, and in this way they help naturalise western supremacy. It would be pedantic to list the examples of democratic states that have been targeted for subversion and military attack by western states, or the democratic movements that have felt the iron heel of western repression. It is sufficient to note that in the most recent case of Israel's 'self-defence', the opponent has been the elected government of Palestine. Such violence by western states is neither democratic in method nor in aim, unless one is willing to descend to the argument that by definition political coercion by democratic states constitutes an enlargement of democracy's scope.

The way that the right to political violence (and to the technology and ideological legitimacy that enables it) is distributed, tells us a great deal about the way in which the global "colour line" that Du Bois wrote of has persisted beyond its formal overthrow. It stands as a rebuke to those polytechnic Polyannas who still insist that the era of 'humanitarian intervention' is one of unbounded egalitarianism.

Labels: colonialism, empire, gaza, hamas, international relations, Israel, palestine

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Obama and the liberal defence of murder posted by lenin

Yours truly in The Guardian. Amusingly, a lot of the regular Guardianistas seem to be really pissed off about the mean things I said about Obama's foreign policy.

Labels: barack obama, cruise missile liberals, the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the liberal defense of murder, US imperialism

Monday, January 26, 2009

Gaza appeal posted by lenin

Watching this, you get a sense both of how insolent and stupid the BBC is being, and how frightened the Israeli government must be. It is extremely moderate, even - perhaps because it was made weeks ago, I don't know - somewhat understating the extent of the problem. It is as depoliticised as it is possible to be. Yet, it is still damaging for Israel because it is no secret how that suffering came about. And the demand of Israel and its supporters has been: cover up our war crimes, and don't do anything to help our victims, otherwise you're biased. That agenda is essentially what the BBC has acceded to. I note that, aside from the various celebrities speaking out (Samantha Morton, Bill Bailey, David Soul), The Guardian reported today that BBC workers were increasingly incensed at the attitude of the director-general. The NUJ and BECTU have also condemned the BBC. After having seen what all the fuss was about, those workers would be forgiven for going postal on the management.

Labels: bbc, gaza, hamas, humanitarianism, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Boycott statement posted by lenin

Steven Salaita sent me this:

International Writers and Scholars Endorse Academic Boycott of Israel

We stand in support of the indigenous Palestinian people in Gaza, who are fighting for their survival against one of the most brutal uses of state power in both this century and the last.

We condemn Israel's recent (December 2008/ January 2009) breaches of international law in the Gaza Strip, which include the bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods, illegal deployment of the chemical white phosphorous, and attacks on schools, ambulances, relief agencies, hospitals, universities, and places of worship. We condemn Israel's restriction of access to media and aid workers.

We reject as false Israel's characterization of its military attacks on Gaza as retaliation. Israel's latest assault on Gaza is part of its longtime racist jurisprudence against its indigenous Palestinian population, during which the Israeli state has systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited the Palestinian people.

We reject as untrue the Israeli government's claims that the Palestinians use civilians as human shields, and that Hamas is an irredeemable terrorist organization. Without endorsing its platforms or philosophy, we recognize Hamas as a democratically elected ruling party. We do not endorse the regime of any existing Arab state, and call for the upholding of internationally mandated human rights and democratic elections in all Arab states.

We call upon our fellow writers and academics in the United States to question discourses that justify and rationalize injustice, and to address Israeli assaults on civilians in Gaza as one of the most important moral issues of our time.

We call upon institutions of higher education in the U.S. to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions, dissolve study abroad programs in Israel, and divest institutional funds from Israeli companies, using the 1980s boycott against apartheid South Africa as a model.

We call on all people of conscience to join us in boycotting Israeli products and institutions until a just, democratic state for all residents of Palestine/Israel comes into existence.

Mohammed Abed
Elmaz Abinader
Diana Abu-Jaber
Ali Abunimah
Opal Palmer Adisa
Deborah Al-Najjar
Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany
Amina Baraka
Amiri Baraka
George Bisharat
Sherwin Bitsui
Breyten Breytenbach
Van Brock
Hayan Charara
Alison Hedge Coke
Lara Deeb
Vicente Diaz
Marilyn Hacker
Mechthild Hart
Sam Hamill
Randa Jarrar
Fady Joudah
Mohja Kahf
Rima Najjar Kapitan
Persis Karim
J. Kehaulani Kaunanui
Haunani Kay-Trask
David Lloyd
Sunaina Maira
Nur Masalha
Khaled Mattawa
Daniel AbdalHayy Moore
Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Nadine Naber
Marcy Newman
Viet Nguyen
Simon J. Ortiz
Vijay Prashad
Steven Salaita
Therese Saliba
Sarita See
Deema Shehabi
Matthew Shenoda
Naomi Shihab Nye
Magid Shihade
Vandana Shiva
Noenoe Silva
Andrea Smith
Ahdaf Soueif
Ghada Talhami
Frank X. Walker
Robert Warrior

Labels: boycott, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, zionism

Broadcasting House invaded posted by lenin

"Students protesting against the BBC's refusal to broadcast an emergency aid appeal for Gaza have been ejected from Broadcasting House in central London.

Police moved in when about 15 members of Stop the War Coalition occupied the reception area and demanded to speak to a senior member of the corporation.

Spokeswoman Lindsey German said: "This is a question of humanitarian need. It doesn't imply any support for anybody.""

Labels: bbc, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

CBS on Israel-Palestine posted by lenin

Watch CBS Videos Online

Labels: apartheid, cbs, democracy, Israel, palestine, racism, zionism

Update from Glasgow Stop the War posted by lenin

Glasgow Stop the War Coalition

BBC Scotland headquarters occupied after refusal to show DEC Gaza aid appeal – Occupation victorious in highlighting the issue

GLASGOW – Over 100 people participated in an occupation of the BBC Scotland headquarters today, demanding that the broadcaster show the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza. Occupiers entered the building at 5pm, and despite the police threatening mass arrests to remove everyone within 15 minutes, the occupation remained for almost 4 hours.

The occupation was successful in applying additional pressure on the BBC through extensive national and international media coverage, including CNN, CBS and Al-Jazeera. Tony Benn also telephoned the occupation to offer his support, saying 'The decision to occupy the BBC in Glasgow must be understood as a plea for the people of Gaza, who are suffering so much and who need our help to help get the money through'.

A delegation from the occupation was elected to meet with Ian Small, Head of Public Policy & Corporate Affairs and member of the BBC's Executive Board, who was called in specially to meet with the occupiers. The occupation had three main demands:

* That the BBC reverse its decision and show the DEC Appeal for Gaza.
* That the BBC director responsible for the decision not to air the appeal should be asked to resign.
* That the BBC show coverage of the outrage of the British people against the stopping of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The BBC agreed that it will arrange a meeting with the delegation with Ken McQuarrie, the Controller of the BBC Scotland, and Atholl Duncan, the head of news for BBC Scotland on Wednesday the 28th of January. Glasgow Stop the War Coalition is asking its supporters and those who support humanitarian aid to Gaza to gather outside the BBC on Wednesday at 4.30pm.

Protestors also promised to return unless the DEC appeal is aired. Glasgow Stop the War also called for others to take similar actions around the UK.

All the occupiers decided to leave the building together, and no arrests were made.

'The life of every man, woman and child in Gaza is just as valuable as the lives of people anywhere else in the world. The people of Britain want to help the people of Gaza, and the BBC should give them the information to do so. Every day that the BBC waits to show this appeal, more people in Gaza will die,' said Penny Howard, of the Stop the War Coalition.

Labels: bbc, gaza, humanitarianism, Israel, stop the war coalition, war crimes, zionism

Sunday, January 25, 2009

The very model of a modern director-general posted by lenin

From the archives:

"The BBC is often accused of an anti-Israeli bias in its coverage of the Middle East, and recently censured reporter Barbara Plett for saying she 'started to cry' when Yasser Arafat left Palestine shortly before his death.

Fascinating, then, to learn that its director general, Mark Thompson, has recently returned from Jerusalem, where he held a face-to-face meeting with the hardine Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Although the diplomatic visit was not publicised on these shores, it has been seized upon in Israel as evidence that Thompson, who took office in 2004, intends to build bridges with the country's political class.

Sources at the Beeb also suspect that it heralds a "softening" to the corporation's unofficial editorial line on the Middle East.

'This was the first visit of its kind by any serving director general, so it's clearly a significant development,' I'm told.

'Not many people know this, but Mark is actually a deeply religious man. He's a Catholic, but his wife is Jewish, and he has a far greater regard for the Israeli cause than some of his predecessors.'"

(Some sort of prize will be awarded to anyone who can suitably re-work the original Gilbert & Sullivan lyrics).

Update: Whatever happened to Orla Guerin?

Labels: bbc, gaza, hamas, humanitarianism, Israel, war crimes, zionism

BBC HQ occupied! posted by lenin

Stop the War Coalition
Press Release
Saturday 25 January 2009
Immediate
www.stopwar.org.uk

Contact: Keith Boyd: 07912348366

BBC HEADQUARTERS OCCUPIED IN SCOTLAND

Over 100 supporters of Scottish Stop the War Coalition and Palestinian groups
have occupied the BBC headquaters in Glasgow. They say they will not end their
occupation until the BBC has reversed its decision not to broadcast an
emergency aid appeal for Gaza. The protestors are demanding to meet with a
senior representative of the BBC.

Keith Boyd, one of the protesters occupying BBC Scotland's HQ, can be contacted
on: 07912348366

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Andrew Burgin
07939 242 229
Press Office
Stop the War Coalition
27 Britannia Street
London WC1X 9JP
www.stopwar.org.uk

Labels: bbc, gaza, hamas, humanitarianism, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Independent on Sunday reviews 'Liberal Defence' posted by lenin

"Richard Seymour is the blogger Lenin's Tomb. For the past five years, he has been following the war party, noting every suggestion of this group, and connecting their various journalistic musings to the shifts of power on the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad. Through his blog, Seymour has built up an audience of thousands of committed readers. For them and for him there must be a real pleasure at the predicament of the so-called pro-war left now faced with an Obama presidency. Atlanticist to their heart, they find that America has rejected them. At times Seymour perhaps takes too little care to acknowledge those other, precious occasions when liberals and others have refused the appeal of arms. But that quibble aside, this is an excellent antidote to the propagandists of the crisis of our times."

Update: This appeared in yesterday's Times:

"The Liberal Defence of Murder by Richard Seymour Verso, Eur16.99 Eur15. 29 In a powerful counter-blast against the monstrous regiment of "useful idiots" who, he says, have contributed in recent decades to the murderous mess of modern times, Seymour indicts not only the obvious suspects - the neocons - but the international cadre of liberal, left-leaning intellectuals and politicians, the "pro-war Left", who supported the War in Iraq for professed "humanitarian" reasons. In anger as much as sorrow, he examines the tropes they defend, such as "civilisation", "progress", "democracy", "freedom", arguing that their attitudes amount merely to an assertion of the status quo, supportive of neo-imperialism, Islamophobia and exploitation."

Labels: cruise missile liberals, the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the liberal defense of murder

Saturday, January 24, 2009

BBC shoe in posted by lenin

The BBC was, of couse, the target of today's protest because of its pro-Israel bias in the coverage of the recent war. However, its decision to ban the DEC appeal on Gaza actually resulted in two ministers attacking it, including Ben Bradshaw (of all people!) who said that the BBC should stand up to the Israeli authorities from time to time, thus implying that they were taking their lead from Tel Aviv. This sort of made our case for us.

Mark Thompson, editor-in-chief of BBC News, has written a pathetic self-justificatory piece on the BBC's editors' blog. He repeats his argument that one of the criteria for rejecting the appeal was a concern that the aid would not be efficiently delivered. Now, I ask you: what the fuck does an overpaid BBC editor know about the delivery of aid? What do they know that 13 humanitarian organisations don't? He also repeats his claim that it would be 'contentious' to highlight the humanitarian situation there, because there is an ongoing debate about who bears responsibility. But that is nonsense. There is no contention about whether there is a humanitarian crisis: the only sense in which broadcasting such an appeal would be 'contentious' is that it would potentially offend the hardcore supporters of Israel. But even the pro-Israel Daily Telegraph is chastising the BBC for its decision. Now, if they backed down over the Ross and Brand nonsense, they can and should be made to back down over this, and fast. As the rally was under way today, news came through that ITV and Channel 4 would air the appeal, while Sky said it was considering its position. The more other television stations broadcast it, the more pressure will be on the BBC to reverse this contemptible decision.

Incidentally, I hear the BBC said on its Teletext service that only 200 had turned up at the protest. I don't know what the total turnout was, but the pictures I shall post later will give the lie to that preposterous figure. More pictures and footage are on the way but, for now, here is a quick shot from the show-throwing outside Broadcasting House.

And another (thanks Michael):

The police, having agreed it with the organisers, took all this in good humour. I regret to say they didn't keep their cool later on when they decided to wade into the crowd, fists and arms flying, ending up in a huge fight and arresting several people. I'll post the footage later and let you see for yourself. In the meantime, Ellis Sharp has more pics here

Okay, more pics:

And here is the fracas with the cops:

Some more footage:

Labels: bbc, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Friday, January 23, 2009

The facts are insufficiently impartial posted by lenin

Facts are awkward. They take sides. They do not conveniently distribute themselves evenly along the spectrum of opinion and, therefore, they lack balance. They must either be suppressed or complemented by some lies. For instance. It is a matter of controversy only to Tzipi Livni that Gaza is experiencing a profound humanitarian crisis. Aside from the thousands dead and wounded, 50,000 people have been left homeless, 400,000 have been left without water, and 84% of the population have no secure source of food. Power shortages are normal - 40% of the population gets no electricity, while the remaining 60% only have intermittent access. Eight of Gaza's hospitals were partially destroyed by bombing and shelling during the war and 26 clinics were hit, and the whole medical system is suffering from severe shortages, including those resulting from having inadequate or non-existent power supplies. For over a month, access to Gaza's already diminished medical structure was severely reduced. By standards that are commonsensical, this is a humanitarian catastrophe. It has been worsened by the fact that, due to Israeli attacks on humanitarian workers, much aid delivery had to be suspended during the war itself. 89% of the people have received no aid at all. The simple fact is that if aid doesn't arrive soon, a great many people will suffer horribly and die.

The Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella group of 13 UK-based humanitarian agencies, did what it usually does in such circumstances. It prepared an urgent campaign to raise funds from the British public, for Gaza. Under an agreement dating back to 1963, the BBC broadcasts the DEC's emergency appeals, and other broadcasters tend to follow suit. Yet, this time, they have refused, a decision that will deny the campaign millions of pounds. Other broadcasters are now using this as an excuse to refuse to carry the appeal. The BBC says that its decision was prompted by concerns that broadcasting such an appeal would call its impartiality into question. I have to confess, I have absolutely no idea what this can mean. Does it actually mean anything? Note that the BBC didn't consider its broadcast on Kosovo, just under a decade ago, to have any implications for its impartiality. This despite the fact that the (very real) humanitarian crisis in Kosovo was at that point being used as a justification for war by the NATO powers that were at that point actually co-responsible for the crisis through their bombing campaign. In that case, there was an obvious consequence of broadcasting the DEC's appeal, inasmuch as it could have fed into pro-war propaganda and facilitated further carnage - but only a miserly sod would have demanded that it be withdrawn on those grounds. In the case of the Gaza appeal, the only likely consequence of broadcasting it is that some people get a slightly more comfortable and prolonged life. Obviously, the consequence of not broadcasting it is that they don't. The BBC is therefore clearly not being impartial. It is taking sides, effectively boycotting aid for Gaza on the apparent assumption that their job is to avoid offending Israel's supporters.

Tomorrow's protest starts outside BBC Broadcasting House at Portland Place, from 1.30pm. In the meantime, Stop the War recommends that you call the BBC and complain, on this number: 03700 100 222. Press 3 for complaints. And you might also consider donating to the DEC appeal.

Labels: bbc, gaza, humanitarianism, Israel, stop the war coalition

The shock doctrine at work posted by lenin

"Every downturn opens a window of opportunity to adjust the status quo, and astute managers push through necessary changes while the window is open. An economic crisis marks a sharp break with the past, and, observing the break, employees recognise that a firm cannot continue to do what it did in the past. The downturn lowers their resistance to change and cuts through complacency. A downturn often brings latent challenges to a head, and savvy managers can harness the resulting energy to infuse the organisation with a sense of urgency in fixing these problems. A downturn provides a ready-made external rationale to justify painful decisions that would appear extreme in better times."

Labels: class, class struggle, economy, recession, ruling class

This land is your land posted by lenin

I know I expressed some disgust with the Obama inauguration spectacle, but there are ways to hijack such affairs for one's own nefarious purposes. This (spotted at Qlipoth) is one example:

Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger get a vast crowd to sing along to Woody Guthrie's socialist anthem, 'This Land Is Your Land', including the lyrics calling for the overthrow of private property. Fantastic.

Labels: obama, spectacle, this land is your land, woody guthrie

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Gaza Protest posted by lenin

If you have not heard by now, you should know that there is going to be a major national demonstration for Gaza this Saturday. Because of the pro-Israel bias of the British media, and the BBC has the worst record on this, the demo will be starting outside BBC Broadcasting House at Portland Place from 2pm, and then heading down to Downing Street. The demands of the protest are simple: end the blockade, stop arms sales to Israel, bring the war criminals to justice, and free Palestine. It should be a shoe-in. Incidentally, I want to mention that the best source for news and images of the recent and ongoing student protests and occupations over Gaza has been Solomon's Mindfield. One day, SOAS are in occupation, then LSE students, then King's College students, then Warwick University students... given the way the NUS leadership is trying to neutralise its internal democracy and expunge radical politics, this is quite an inspiration.

Labels: gaza, Israel, palestine, protest, students, zionism

"Wiped off the map" posted by lenin

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, war crimes, zionism

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

To earth with a crash posted by lenin

You may have noticed the world's media creaming its collective pants over the Obama inauguration yesterday, with superlatives every bit as hyperbolic as Obama's speech was bland. Gullible liberal columnists couldn't get over the "magic" - it was like being five again, and Santa Claus was coming. Everyone, it seems, got the chance to cry again, and to tell everyone else about how they cried, as well as where they were when they cried. All of that stuff about Obama's disappointing appointments, his bellicose language, the support for TARP and his Wall Street backers, and the silence over Gaza, was forgotten for one spellbound day, sprinkled with fairy dust and dubya pee. Today, it's back to the bad news.

The "trillion dollar crash" is fast becoming the multi-trillion dollar crash. The US economy has continued to slump, despite the immense capital resources injected into the financial system. As Doug Henwood points out, the statistics for December were horrendous. Employment fell by over half a million, and the official unemployment rate is now 7.2% (sure to be a substantial underestimate). Retail sales took a record dive of 10% last year. Almost one in four US banks was unprofitable in the third quarter of 2008 and things can only get worse. The outgoing Bush regime estimated that the US economy would lose close to 3 million jobs over the next year. As incomes plummet, the number of unpaid or 'troubled' loans will increase. TARP will soon have more sequels than Police Academy.

Obama's elite supporters are sanguine about his ability to sort out the crisis. Indeed, Obama would probably not have won had he not benefited from a surge in support after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Yet,the new Treasury Secretary (and known tax-dodger), Timothy Geithner, collaborated with Hank Paulson's disastrous decision to let Lehman Brothers go bust when he was chair of the New York Federal Reserve. The incoming Obama administration promises a fiscal stimulus, which is vital, but it is not likely to be more interventionist than the Bush administration has been over the last few months. On New Years Day alone, they threw $10bn at the Bank of America. It now seems that the incoming admin is intent on rehabilitating the failed TARP strategy of buying up 'toxic stock', removing it from bank balance sheets and supposedly leaving a healthy, profit-making institution in its place. This policy of socialising the losses while privatising the profits was exactly what made 'TARP I' so unpopular. Paulson actually abandoned the idea of buying toxic assets some time ago in favour of direct capital injections (though with only nebulous commitments from the institutions receiving such funds), but Geithner is now pushing the strategy quite forcefully, while blunting the edge with a promise to help small businesses and 'working families'. No member of the incoming administration shows any signs of wanting to reverse the Bush administration's pattern of buying non-voting stock in failing banks and allowing existing management to stick around with little or no alteration in their generous payments. This means that the same people who helped bring us to this impasse continue to be rewarded, maintain their power, and have no incentive to act in a more accountable way.

More bad news. The UK banking system is close to terminal. Contrary to the insistence of the Treasury that we are better placed than other economies to weather the storm, New Labour have encouraged a disproportionately huge and powerful financial sector while allowing the manufacturing sector to slowly bleed to death. Not only that, but the UK economy is uniquely reliant on overseas investment, which supports a third of all UK lending according to Will Hutton. As the world banking system collapses and neighbouring economies shrink, we are unusually exposed. As a result, unemployment is soaring - hitting just under 2 million by November (earlier than even David Blanchflower predicted). Current predictions are for unemployment to reach 3 million by 2010. Corporate profitability in the non-financial sector is sliding, which means that the resources for new investment are diminishing. Consumers, lacking income and with a tightened credit market, are increasingly forced to rely on pawnbrokers and short-term moneylenders. That will restrict their future spending even more.

Now, even the strongest City institutions, such as HSBC, are the subject of reports suggesting they need urgent recapitalisation. They continue to insist that this isn't so, and that they won't be going crying to the government any time soon, but the stock markets appear not to believe them. And as Lloyds-HBOS and RBS shares slide, the chair of the Treasury select committee is demanding their full nationalisation. If things continue as they are, the result may be a protracted and reluctant take-over of the entire UK banking system. The government's proposed new bank bail-out was received poorly by financial markets, probably because they know it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. Darling, like his new trans-Atlantic colleagues, is committed to buying up 'toxic securities' to help the banks stay afloat as private entities. Now, if we are going to pay for the banks' losses, we should own them and as owners we should protect jobs, and ameliorate conditions for borrowers and home owners. If the government is going to rehabilitate Keynesian demand-side economics, as it noisily announced in November, this would be a very moderate demand at the moment. As it is, we have a situation where banks are being given big rate cuts by the Monetary Policy Committee, but are refusing (with the exception of HSBC and Lloyds) to pass it on to consumers. True, the Chancellor has pledged that he won't let a single bank go down, but he has yet to be open about what this means. Leaving these institutions under private control while accepting the liabilities means that the government budget has to effectively bear trillions of pounds in liabilities. This could literally lead to the UK going bankrupt, Reykjavik-style.

The timidity of the Brown government is odd. It can't be explained by its relationship to big business. British capital is obviously divided over this, but when the Financial Times calls only half-jokingly for the government to shoot the bankers and nationalise the banks, it is obvious that a profound shift is taking place. Nor can it be about the polls. New Labour has never hesitated to impose unpopular policies, and it is right now implementing welfare cuts that are sure to further alienate its voting base. The government's proposed tax increase on higher income earners was popular, but it will raise little toward the costs now being racked up. The Fabian-funded research suggests that most people would support much higher taxes on upper incomes - but polls have often found much stronger public support for wealth redistribution than exists in the parliamentary Labour Party. My vague intuition is that, for all the bravado of the pre-Budget report, and for all the hints that Brown and Darling were dusting off the Keynesian texts, the government's reflex position is decidedly neoliberal. Neither the Labour Party, nor its parliamentary representatives, nor the cabinet, possesses a left-wing force substantial enough to force a different direction. Moreover, I think that both the Blairites and the Brownites, for all the petty wrangling between them, are keen to avoid anything that encourages the Left. Their psephological analysis continues to tell them that to win an election they must build an electoral coalition that includes pro-business, pro-family middle class voters in marginal constituencies, and they are determined to resist anything that looks like burying that New Labour project.

The political fall-out from this, even if we don't go bankrupt, is potentially explosive. Even on the overly optimistic assumptions of the government's last pre-budget statement, the Treasury expects to slash public spending in a disastrous way by 2011. Now, with a new bail-out weighing heavily on the public purse, and more surely to be expected, the only way to balance the budget will be to have serious tax rises, and a sustained and vicious attack on public services and welfare far more extreme than anything we have seen so far. Even before we get to that stage, millions of people are already being pushed to the edge by the job losses and pay cuts. Partly because of the government's weakness in the polls and the threat of a Tory government, most of the trade union bureaucracy is resistant to giving any expression to those grievances. This appears to be what is happening with the Chemilines dispute, for example. Moreover, the fear of losing a struggle in the current climate, where people are frightened of losing mortgages and so on, is likely to countervail against any tendencies toward militancy. If that pessimism and lack of confidence prevailed, then the initial stimulus for any widespread revolt might well originate from outside the institutions of organised labour, in the form of mass protests and riots (Reykjavik-style). Such a combustion has the virtue of gaining momentum rapidly and giving people confidence, but it also has the disadvantage that, unless it feeds into union resistance and lays deep roots in society, it will lose that momentum just as quickly, and hit the earth with a crash.

Labels: economy, financial sector, great depression, rate of profit, recession, uk, us economy

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

A friendly warning from the IDF posted by lenin

He returned yesterday to find the houses ransacked and scarcely habitable, with furnishing and electrical appliances tossed out of the window, gaping holes in the wall made for firing positions, furniture smashed, clothes piled on the floor, pages of family Korans torn out and remains of soldiers' rations littered in many rooms.

Stars of David and graffiti in Hebrew and English proclaiming "Arabs need 2 die", "no Arabs in the State of Israel" and "One down and 999,999 to go" had been scrawled on walls. A drawing of a gravestone bore the inscription "Arabs 1948 to 2009".

Labels: gaza, genocide, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Beit Lahiya posted by lenin

The UNRWA school that was fired on with white phosphorus:

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Monday, January 19, 2009

Map of Destruction posted by lenin

(Via).

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, operation cast lead, war crimes, zionism

Gaza: was there a winner? posted by lenin

Guest post by redbedhead:

It may seem crass to talk about winning and losing in the face of the Gaza slaughter, as though it were a football game. But there is good reason when one considers that the final tally of a battle or a war shapes key future events, determining the likelihood of future victories or even whether other battles will be entered into by those involved. And it is not only those directly involved who must be considered, for a victory or defeat by the army of choice will determine future actions. It is a truism about the Middle East, for instance, that Israel's 3-day, smashing victory over three Arab armies in 1967 secured them the sponsorship of the United States, which has sustained their superior position viz. their regional competitors.

Based upon a body count it would seem that Israel is the definite winner. There are, after all, something like 1300 dead Palestinians, plus another 5400 wounded, with well over half of the total being accounted for by civilians, even with only women and children being counted as such. This compares to 3 dead Israeli civilians and another 10 dead soldiers, most of them killed by friendly fire, apparently. But we can't look at the present invasion in terms of crude - and deadly - numbers. Israel has a massive military superiority over Hamas and its allied militias, like Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and DFLP. They have F-16s, guided bombs and missiles, Merkava tanks, phosphorous shells, unmanned surveillance drones, a navy, all the latest techno gizmos, access to US satellite intelligence - not to mention, apparently, the intelligence support of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's favourite Palestinian collaborator, and leader of Fatah. All of this ensured that a Hamas military victory over Israel was utterly impossible and Hamas seems to have been smart enough to avoid direct confrontations in the open.

Israeli political leaders had set themselves a series of goals prior to and during the operation. Since Israel initiated the present conflict, planning it far in advance, prior even to the 6 months ceasefire negotiated with Hamas, and set the terms for its victory, it must be measured against those goals. In addition, other, unintended consequences must be looked at. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, along with Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have argued that the primary goal of the Gaza invasion was to stop Hamas lobbing rockets and mortars into southern Israel. If this were really the purpose of the attack, then certainly Israel has failed miserably, as demonstrated by the ceaseless firing of rockets throughout the invasion and even immediately following Israel's unilateral ceasefire. What's more, if the Israeli government wanted to end Gazan rocket fire the answer was very simple - meet the conditions of the original ceasefire negotiated with Hamas and agree to continue it. Hamas had, after all, met its terms - not only discontinuing Hamas' firing of rockets but putting a lid on rocket fire by rival militias such as Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Between June 19, when the ceasefire was agreed and November 4, when Israel launched a military raid, breaking the ceasefire, rocket and mortar fire was effectively nil (see attached pdf,p.6). It was Israel that failed to meet the terms of the ceasefire and which repeatedly provoked Hamas with attacks, arrests and killings.

The second stated goal was to prevent Hamas from re-arming. However, again, actions speak louder than words. If this were Israel's sole goal, they could have negotiated a deal with their pliant Egyptian ally or focused bombing strictly in the border region, where the smuggling tunnels exist. Nonetheless, even the head of Israel's intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, reports that the tunnel network hasn't been destroyed and that it will be up and running again in short order if Egypt doesn't clamp down. In other words, stopping smuggling was never dependent upon bombing the hell out of Gaza - it couldn't even be effective. What was required was Egyptian cooperation. But Egypt is now less likely, not more, to agree to a politically unpopular clampdown against the Palestinians, after hundreds of thousands demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza and against the Egyptian dictatorship. That was made clear after Israel and the US signed an agreement - without telling the Egyptians - to tackle the tunnels on Egyptian soil. The Egyptian Foreign Minister responded saying that Israel and the US can "do what they wish with regard to the sea or any other country in Africa, but when it comes to Egyptian land, we are not bound by anything except the safety and national security of the Egyptian people and Egypt's ability to protect its borders." President-for-life Mubarak went on television to specifically state that foreign monitors would not be allowed in Egypt. But even if Egypt agrees to more American Army Engineers to help it police the border, or an increase in police numbers IDF officials don't believe that this will stop the smuggling. So, Israel's second policy goal is clearly a failure. The real key for Israel was the need to restore its deterrent capability" - basically to instill fear in any and all Arabs who might think to challenge the occupation or any other Israeli strategic goals. New York Times billionaire columnist Thomas Friedman supportively referred to this as "educating" Hamas by "inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." This was, in other words, according to Israeli supporters and critics, a terrorist operation by the state of Israel. As Norman Finklestein pointed out in a recent interview: "The goal of the operation was to terrorize the civilian population so that Palestinians would be afraid of Israel. This is the dictionary definition of terrorism."

Has Israel restored its deterrent capability, so badly damaged by its failed war in Lebanon in 2006, and its withdrawal under duress from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000? Certainly every Israeli politician, journalist and military leader is claiming this. However, if the goal was simply to impress upon Hamas that they couldn't defeat Israel militarily, this was already known. Hamas has been trying since at least 2002 to agree a long term truce with Israel, only to face Israeli bombs and targeted assassinations. Certainly by now, any Palestinian knows that it doesn't matter what you do, Israel will try to kill you:

"it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days."

The irony is that this pattern almost ensures the continuation of violent resistance since even non-violence is met by Israeli attacks. At a certain point, Israel's deterrent capability is undermined by the fact that only utter defeat and an acceptance of genocide would prevent Palestinians from resisting Israel's aggression. Certainly Hamas was suitably unbowed to fire off nearly two dozen rockets after Israel's unilateral ceasefire and to demand a withdrawal within one week or they would restart hostilities. What's more, everyone can see, as they did in Lebanon in 2006, that while Israel could defeat three Arab armies in six days in 1967, after three weeks fighting a starved, blockaded, disarmed population in Gaza, the IDF didn't take more than a corner of Gaza City.

Ultimately, of course, it will be in the coming days that the interpretation of events will unfold, depending upon the actual state of Hamas and other resistance organizations. It is likely that while Arabs throughout the region will of course remember that Israel can, in fact, destroy unarmed populations, that it is possible to resist and survive. What's more, Hamas will likely be strengthened politically, while Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization will be fatally weakened. Israel, the US, EU and their Arab client regimes may try to hold him up but everyone knows that they are now dead as a resistance movement and thus in the eyes of the Palestinian people. This makes it more likely that Israel will, as a result of this onslaught, be forced to recognize Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians, as will the international community. The 18 month campaign to destroy the results of the democratic election of Hamas, first by arming Fatah and fomenting a civil war and now with a direct intervention, have utterly failed. And outside of the Middle East, Israel has managed to discredit itself even further, spurring into being a massive movement in solidarity with the Palestinians and against Israel. They have shattered the myth that Israel is the victim and the Palestinians the aggressors. This movement, the heroic resistance of the Palestinians and the images of Israel's utter brutality, which they were unable to hide, though they barred all journalists from entering Gaza, has pushed even Israel's staunchest allies to criticize them. Turkey, Israel's only Muslim ally, strongly rebuked Israel, demanding their exclusion from the UN until they implemented the Security Council resolution. Egypt, the biggest Arab nation and paid billions by the US to play with Israel, has been made even more unstable by the slaughter, creating concern for the US' major Arab bulwark in the region. Jordan recalled their ambassador in protest. And there is even suggestion in a fascinating article by Justin Raimondo that the US ruling class is growing tired of Israel's mad dog routine, which threatens US hegemony in the region by alienating Arab allies and threatening others with domestic political upheaval because of Israel's penchant for killing Arab civilians.

It's unclear how all this will pan out over the medium term. But it is clear that the Gaza operation, which Israel was forced to end before Obama's inauguration, has not all gone the way Israel hoped. It may not even go the way that Livni and Barak hoped it would in terms of their electoral prospects, with the ultra-war mongers in Likud making most of the gains from the invasion. Hamas and the Palestinian people will live to fight another day, with a much larger international movement, one in which the call for boycott and divestment may get a major hearing. And the whole region has been destabilized thanks to Israel's compulsive need to avoid peace at any costs. The blowback is looking to be much worse than what they started out fighting, as they have internationalized the conflict.

Labels: fatah, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, west bank, zionism

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Outposts of civilization posted by lenin

Israel is a First World country in a Third World region. It is unique among the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in that it is a non-oil-exporting economy with a high per capita income. With one of the highest population densities in the region, it has the ability to satisfy the needs of every citizen, even if it chooses not to do so (poverty rates, for example, are comparable to those in the UK). In a region notorious for looming food insecurity and growing water shortages, Israel maintains a high-technology economy with a big financial sector and, for no small number of its citizens, a properous lifestyle. It also has a reasonable share of the world's billionaires (ten on the most recent count). Eyal Weizman points out that these very suburban bourgeois living conditions are what Israel exports to its colonies in the West Bank and, previously, Gaza. Those heavily fortified village-like compounds with their pitched, red-tiled roofs are islands of luxury and comfort overlooking some of the worst poverty in the world.

Israel is a First World country in a Third World region, but this is a feat that could not have been accomplished without the original dispossession of the Palestinians and the theft of their natural resources and farmland (including about 500 orange groves in Jaffa), and which cannot be sustained without the continued dispossession of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. For example, Israel suffers from the same water shortages that bedevil the rest of the MENA economies, even though it doesn't have to support a large, water-intensive agricultural economy, but one means of resolving this issue is to steal West Bank water supplies. The West Bank's water sustained running taps and swimming pools for 282,000 Israeli colonists as of December 2007 (not including the approximately 200,000 Israelis living in occupied East Jerusalem). The growth rate of this population is currently about 5% a year. To support such growth, new land has to be confiscated on a regular basis.

Outside of the small areas of the West Bank in which the Palestinian Authority formally exerts either civil and military control (Area A) or just civil control (Area B), Israel still maintains its own 'Civil Administration' (Area C, 59% of West Bank territory), which gives planning permission to settlers while restricting the necessary growth of Palestinian villages and towns. When the authorities want to annexe more land for a colony, they either declare it abandoned or insist that it is needed for military security or public services. And despite occasional hypocritical condemnation of 'extremist' settlers who engage in regular pogroms against Palestinians, Israeli rules of engagement authorise IDF soldiers to protect the settlements in quite extraordinary ways. For example, according to Weizman, they are permitted to shoot any Palestinian who looks at the settlements through binoculars or in any other 'suspicious' manner. At any rate, the settler militias are not outlawed, and they are even permitted to collect funds from American organisations. (Intriguingly, there appears to be a number of Israelis who would like to form militias to attack Gaza, and former New York mayor Ed Koch has written in support of such an idea.) And, as the colonies expand, the necessity for obsessively regulating Palestinian movements, imposing ever more severe restrictions on the indigenous citizens of the West Bank, increases. There is evidence that Annapolis, and the sleazy accord that ensued, actually facilitated this process, resulting in a serious contraction in the West Bank economy - despite the fact that the West Bank was supposed to have benefited from a relaxation of the blockade that had been imposed since 2005.

That Israel solves its resource problems in this way is seen by its planners as both natural and just - indeed, Israeli supremacy is taken as proof of its intellectual, cultural and moral superiority. This has always been a mainstay of Zionist colonial ideology: Palestinian Arabs were seen as a negligent, backward race of peasants who had failed to properly develop the land, and therefore must give way to their sophisticated European overlords who, with all the grandiose pretensions of Paul Bert wooing the natives of Annam and Tonkin, entreated locals to see the colonization as a civilizing mission. It is a matter of broad consensus in Israel now that all of the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean belongs to the 'Land of Israel'. Menachem Begin was not deviating from the norm when he scolded Ronald Reagan to the effect that what everyone called the West Bank was actually Judea and Samaria, and that the territory had been 'liberated' from Arab domination in 1967. Livni today explains her support for an eventual 'two-state' settlement in terms of a willingness "to give up a part of the country over which I believe we have rights". From this, it follows that any failure to exercise those "rights" is an act of immense generosity. And it then follows that Israel's failure to respect even the most basic rights of Palestinians, including the right to breathe, is mainly the fault of Palestinians themselves. According to Abba Eban's contemptible maxim, they "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Palestinian attempts to resist the usurpation of their land and resources are in this light irrational acts of aggression.

The Palestinians must be made to understand. What must they be made to understand? Reportedly, when Lt Gen Moshe Ya'alon was Chief of Staff and suppressing the Second Intifada, he said that the Palestinians must come to understand "in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." It is necessary to humiliate them, repeatedly, until they understand. It is necessary to isolate, demoralise, divide and deprive them. It is necessary to take out their kids with head shots.

Labels: colonialism, fatah, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, west bank, zionism

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Strange ceasefire. posted by lenin

Despite brave protests by a tiny group of leftists, polls find that 94% of the Jewish population of Israel have supported the Gaza massacres - even if grieving Palestinians are sometimes liable to cause a scene. I expect there will be a strong majority in favour of the banning of Arab political parties as well, as even the official Israeli 'left' voted for the measure on the grounds that it is "patriotic". Now, a ceasefire of some variety is imminent according to the BBC. Just so that no one gets the idea that this indicates any softening of the Sabra heart, the IDF decided to bomb yet another school today, adding a mother and her son to the 1,200 killed so far, and fourteen to the 5,300 wounded (or 1.5 million wounded, if we use Israel's method of calculation). Once again, the school was doubling as a refuge for terrified civilians, and once again, the IDF made sure to shell it several times so that none but Israel's ridiculously infatuated fan club could mistake it for an accident.

The rumoured ceasefire (it has only just been announced as I write, and no details are yet available) is most likely to be a unilateral one, rather than the result of a deal with Hamas. This would leave open the possibility for Israel to resume its attacks or launch a bombing raid at any time in the future, as there will be no binding agreement. This would mean that Olmert and the generals had lost the argument in the cabinet to Livni and Barak, who have reportedly sought this outcome for a week. In addition, the US and UK will help Israel to stop arms from getting into Gaza, thus leaving them defenseless in the event of a future attack. This is precisely the time when it is most obvious that Gaza needs all the weapons it can get, and fast. The rumoured framework isn't 'moderate' in any sense, but many of the 94% backing the attack will be furious anyway. If you look at the comments below this Ynet article, it would seem there is going to be some serious discontent with the decision: "pathetic" and "Lebanon mark 2" being among the verdicts. Under Haaretz's report, the sighs of woe are of a similar quality. You can understand why this would be. Israelis were given to understand that the gloves were off, that there would be no more of this one-hand-tied-behind-the-back bullshit. They weren't going to leave until the job was done. Some of the more excitable types called for the rebuilding of Gush Katif, and former colonists said they were ready to return. Now it is reported that they intend to withdraw, with a few Hamas leaders killed but with the party still very much the dominant political force in Gaza.

Although the war itself was supposed to be part of an electoral calculation by Kadima, it seems to have backfired. The immediate result was to widen Likud's lead over Kadima and such a ceasefire, which will surely be compared with Munich, will probably reverse any gains by Mapai and strengthen the far right. Certainly, the governing coalition will claim a 'victory' as they usually do in these circumstances. But the waves of global protest (believe it or not, there is actually a rainswept demonstration by angry youths proceeding up Edgware Road as I write, chanting "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!") have undoubtedly created an unprecedented fissure in the pro-Israel camp. Governments traditionally sympathetic to Israel have been obliged to utter mealy-mouthed condemnations. The protests will continue, and it is now almost certain that a global boycott campaign will take root in some form. I sense that Israel has lost a great deal of diplomatic leverage, as well as a battle for hegemony in constituencies that it values for strategic reasons. The New York Times suddenly opened up to critical perspectives. Even Murdoch's comically pro-Israel Wall Street Journal did. Israel may now be forced to allow the re-opening of the Rafah crossings, and thus end the 'diet' they have been putting the Gazans on for some years now. Mubarak has certainly been weakened at a time when he was already in critical danger. Some sort of social explosion is likely to rock the Middle East soon, and upset the precarious balance of forces favouring Israeli dominance. Any gains for Israel, which could possibly include annexed territory, have to be set against that. It may well be, despite the relative defenselessness of Gazan society, that Israel has notched up a worse loss than Lebanon.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Friday, January 16, 2009

"IDF troops posing as Hamas men" posted by lenin

Someone sent this to me last night. It is an image of an article by Amira Hass for Ha'aretz that, while still cached, and listed on Google news for the time being, has since been deleted:

IDF dissimulation is not the most interesting part of the article. What is far more interesting is the revelation about how to clear a building. Apparently, you just a fire a missile at it, problem solved. Also note the "mini-transfer" (as Amira Hass calls it) that is going on: 40,000 people, or almost 3% of the population, have been driven out of the border areas. That border area, I will bet you anything, will become a 'security corridor'.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

"Israel must lose". posted by lenin

Statement published in The Guardian:

The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel's ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel's war against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of gigantic political prisons. There is nothing symmetrical about this war in terms of principles, tactics or consequences. Israel is responsible for launching and intensifying it, and for ending the most recent lull in hostilities.

Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides... against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force.

We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

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Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, israel must lose, palestine

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Insufficiently deceased. posted by lenin

Be very clear about what is being done, with foresight and planning, by the Israelis in Gaza. This time, the IDF has fired three white phosphorus shells at a UNRWA compound in Gaza City that was being used to shelter hundreds of civilians (fortunately, for some reason, few were injured and no one died). Elsewhere, they shelled a hospital, leaving it in flames. There are no reports yet as to whether any injuries or deaths resulted.

These are not just two more pieces of vital life-supporting infrastructure that Israel has continually gone out of its way to attack in this war. Nor is it only a large, luminous 'fuck off' sign to the world, after all the whining about the UNRWA school and the hospitals bombed and the ambulances shot at, and the Red Cross being blocked. Much more importantly, it is a message to the UN to pull out. Bear in mind that UN staff have already had to suspend operations because of the risk posed by the IDF. Other aid agencies such as the Red Cross have also had to suspend crucial activities after attacks by the IDF. Eventually, the UN might well be forced to withdraw its staff entirely if it can't guarantee their safety. At that point, the UN and its few millions and scant food and supplies, will no longer be available to the civilian population. This terrorised and starving population will soon be almost completely alone. They will only have the meagre social services and military defense structures of Hamas. They can't look to international law, because the ICC has declared that it has no jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Gaza - just in case anyone gets any ideas. There will be no journalists, because Israel prevents journalists from entering, and regularly attacks media buildings and personnel. No one will be able to report with the slightest semblance of accuracy on what is being done. That is what is happening here: that is what is being accomplished (and the culprits do look upon it as an accomplishment).

But, apparently, this is still not enough. "Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins," said Walter Benjamin. "And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious". Yesterday, the Israelis decided to give this maxim proof, by blowing up a cemetery, and sending body parts flying into nearby houses. Some of these limbs and entrails were quite possibly the body parts of those who had recently been killed by Israeli attacks, because the graves have repeatedly been reopened to bury the hundreds of dead. This is one sense of the term 'overkill' that I had never before contemplated. As long as the shade of Palestine hangs over Israel, it seems, no matter how many die and no matter how humiliating their death, they will not be dead enough.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, UNRWA, war crimes, zionism

The Sun exposed over British Gaza 'blowback' posted by lenin

Just in case anyone missed it, this is vital reading. Islamophobia Watch had been keeping track of the story, in which so-called 'terror expert' Glen Jenvey was used by The Sun as the source for a splash front-page claiming that Alan Sugar was going to be targeted by British Muslims. Jenvey, a Walter Mitty for the 'war on terror' generation, styles himself as a "private intelligence professional" with extensive international experience working for intelligence agencies. Now, he writes books detailing the 'Islamic threat' to the UK, and is the source behind a great many alarmist stories. His forays into the field of cyber-terrorism had taken him to the Ummah.com message board where he found shocking messages asking for the names and addresses of prominent British Jews so that they could be 'targeted'. This was the main material used in The Sun's story. As the owners of Ummah.com pointed out, the context was a thread recommending a terrifying letter-writing campaign, not assassination. But there remained a mystery. The message that was used as the main source material for The Sun came from a poster named 'abuislam', who was relatively new to the board. Tim Ireland did some digging, and found evidence suggesting that "Glen Jenvey and 'abuislam' are one and the same person"...

Labels: 'war on terror', gaza, islam, islamophobia, terrorism, the sun

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Lights Out in Gaza? posted by lenin

As the bombing of Gaza began, I speculated on the barbaric language that would be generated in the course of the coming invasion. It turns out that I was not far wrong in my guesses. Glenn Greenwald points out that Tom Friedman is indeed openly demanding Israeli attacks on Gazan civilians:

He explains that the 2006 Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon was, contrary to conventional wisdom, a great success. To make this case, Friedman acknowledges that the deaths of innocent Lebanese civilians was not an unfortunate and undesirable by-product of that war, but rather, was a vital aspect of the Israeli strategy -- the centerpiece, actually, of teaching Lebanese civilians a lesson they would not soon forget:

"Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.

"Israel’s military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon — when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That’s when Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: 'What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?'"

Friedman says that he is "unsure" whether the current Israeli attack on Gaza is similiarly designed to teach Palestinians the same lesson by inflicting "heavy pain" on civilians, but he hopes it is:

"In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to 'educate' Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims."

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, the liberal defense of murder, zionism

SOAS students occupy Brunei Gallery in solidarity with Gaza posted by bat020

Socialist Worker report here

Press release:

Protest against the conflict in Gaza erupts on SOAS campus
14 January 2009

The public outcry of horror at Israel's continued military bombardment of Gaza broke out at a British university yesterday. Students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in central London have taken over a Ministry of Defence exhibition being shown on campus and locked themselves in.

At 7pm last night, following a student union meeting which condemned both Israel's actions and the perceived racism of the Ministry of Defence exhibition, students stormed the building and secured it using tables and bicycle locks.

Police were immediately on the scene with 20 or more officers. They were visibly nervous following recent violent outbreaks across the country over this issue. The confrontation passed off peacefully and the students' stated intentions are entirely peaceful.

Over the coming days workshops and gallery tours will be conducted by the students.

For more information:

email soas.occupation@gmail.com
blog soassolidarity4gaza.blogspot.com

UPDATE: Students declare victory

Labels: gaza, Israel, ministry of defence, soas, students

Operation Cast Lead, phase III posted by lenin

As of 5pm yesterday, Israel's army had succeeded in killing at least 971 Palestinians and injuring at least 4,418 of them (see OCHA report [pdf]). Obviously, this is a crude body count rather than an estimate, and therefore leaves out the unknown number of corpses stuck under the rubble and left in areas where fighting is ongoing, or where the Israelis have sealed off and prevented medical staff from entering. 40% of the dead, and 50% of the wounded, were women and children. Among the dead are civilians gunned down while fleeing their homes under orders from the IDF, and clutching little white flags. Among the wounded are those suffering burns from white phosphorus, which has reportedly been fired into refugee camps. That's right - they decided to douse civilians hiding from the fighting with a substance that is known to melt the flesh to the bone. Just to show them.

Such recreational malevolence continues to undermine Israel's elaborate propaganda campaign, (as does its own inability to stick to its story). The UN has repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes, and there may now be a referral to the International Court of Justice which, although it is a toothless advisory body, can give Israel a PR bloody nose. Even David Miliband, the Blairite foreign secretary who demands a ceasefire 'on all sides', is supporting demands for a war crimes investigation. Of course, what he ought to be doing is expelling the Israeli ambassador and cancelling all arms shipments to Israel - but that would imply that he was somehow serious about all that 'war crimes' stuff. Mainstream parliamentarians such as Gerald Kaufman are denouncing Israel in the most forceful terms: "Olmert, (Tzipi] Livni and (Ehud] Barak are mass murderers, war criminals and bring shame on the Jewish people whose Star of David they use as a badge in Gaza.". The US media is increasingly, if reluctantly, offering critical viewpoints. Time magazine worries that Israel may be losing the media war. Ha'aretz reports that there is an increasing view outside of Israel that its image in the world has been "destroyed".

However that may be, most of the Western media and almost the entirety of the US political class supports the war. Most of the Israeli public do too, and even the peace camp is invoking comparisons with Fallujah to mitigate(!) Israel's crimes in Gaza. And there is no substitute for success - perhaps Israel's rulers calculate that if they can pull off something that could be called a victory, much of the criticism and complaining will stop. Now, as the swelling army marches into Gaza City behind a fleet of tanks, the Israeli government has let it be known that you ain't seen nothing yet. Phase III of Operation Cast Lead is in the pipeline.

'Hubris' is an over-worked phrase, but if there ever was an example of a state enraptured by its own sense of omnipotence, Israel is it. What else could possibly explain Olmert bragging that he orders his paymasters about? Such mafiosi-style swaggering is stupid and pathetic. You really get the impression that in being so limitlessly cruel, in humiliating the Palestinians with such gleeful vigour, the Israeli elite is starting to buy its own bullshit. There is no doubt that Israel can terrorise the largely defenseless Palestinian people and destroy Gaza's infrastructure, but it is increasingly in doubt that they can obtain a political victory. Such a victory would entail crushing Hamas politically and forcing them to accept the reassertion of Fatah's rule in the Gaza strip. This is what the US is planning for.

But Israeli intelligence says that Hamas' military capacity remains unbroken, while news reports indicate that the factions in Gaza have been driven together by Israel's attack. Even Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is back in action, claiming to have killed and wounded 20 Israeli soldiers in a suicide attack. Not only is Hamas more popular in Gaza, it is also gaining support in the West Bank, despite the best effort of Abbas' thugs to suppress its public expression. According to some analysis, Israel's leadership has been divided on what to do next. While there are no plans to rebuild Gush Katif, Olmert and most of the military establishment (who express fear of another Lebanon-style ceasefire) have advocated the prosecution of a more intense ground attack. Livni and Barak would apparently withdraw and leave open the option to attack Gaza at any time in the future, without warning. But, since the reservists have been sent in there and are entering Gaza City, one has to suppose that the Phase III escalation is going ahead. The rate of atrocity is about to increase.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

NYC Gaza protests posted by lenin

Photojournalist Jonathan Auch kindly sent me these images of recent protests in New York for Gaza:

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

Israel: A Nation in Decline? Discuss. posted by lenin

Guest post by redbedhead:

Generally attention is rightly focused on Israel's many crimes in the Gaza Strip. But this editorial by Alexander Cockburn on the widely read Counterpunch.org argues that the Gaza offensive is also a sign of Israel's decline. Cockburn quotes approvingly Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, from an interview prior to the invasion, who makes the same point. It's worth quoting at length:

"But since '82, 26 years ago, Israel has not won any war. They did not defeat the Palestinian resistance, and they did not defeat the Lebanese resistance. Since that time, Israel has not expanded but has contracted. They have withdrawn from southern Lebanon and from Gaza. These are indicators that the future is not favorable to Israel. Then today Israel, with all its military capabilities conventional and unconventional are not enough to guarantee Israel's security. Today, with all these capabilities, they can¹t stop a simple rocket from being launched from Gaza."

Oddly enough, from the opposite end of the spectrum, that crazed zionist wingnut Daniel Pipes suggested back in 2004 that Israel was in decline:

"In its early decades, Israel's strategic prowess was legendary, transforming a weak country into a regional powerhouse. The past decade has seen the opposite process, whereby that powerhouse reduces itself to a tempting target."

You gotta hand it to Pipes, he was pointing out Israel's decline a couple of years before the 2006 Lebanon fiasco. And Israel's present attempt to eliminate that embarrassment hasn't changed Pipes' mind. In a January 11 editorial in the Jerusalem Post he attacks the present Gaza offensive and comes to the devastating conclusion that "no one at the upper echelons of Israel's political life articulates the imperative for victory. For this reason, I see Israel as a lost polity, one full of talent, energy, and resolve but lacking direction."

Pretty strong words.

Pipes also points to an interesting paper by Anthony Cordesman for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, entitled "Tactical Gains, Strategic Defeat?" Cordesman, Senator John McCain's former national security assistant and the former director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, is a thoroughly mainstream, relatively high level analyst in the US state machine with a long resume. His arguments are equally stark and worth quoting at length:

"This raises a question that every Israeli and its supporters now needs to ask. What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war. In fact, their silence raises haunting questions about whether they will repeat the same massive failures made by Israel¹s top political leadership during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in 2006. Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel¹s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?

"To blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. To paraphrase a comment about the British government¹s management of the British Army in World War I, lions seem to be led by donkeys. If Israel has a credible ceasefire plan that could really secure Gaza, it is not apparent. If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it not apparent."

The fact that there is a growing sense of unease and dismay amongst Israel's strongest supporters, even as Zionism's opponents detect important weaknesses should hearten those of us who want to see a just peace in the Middle East. It will only be through a series of defeats for Israel, on multiple levels and not just the military, that such a peace is possible.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

"Wipe them all out" posted by lenin

Max Blumenthal has been attending the pro-Israel rallies in New York, attended by major Democratic politicians:

Labels: gaza, genocide, hamas, Israel, palestine, zionism

"Israel must lose" posted by lenin

A statement is currently being prepared for the press, and the organisers are seeking signatures of UK-based academics and intellectuals, urging people to 'take sides' in the current conflict in Gaza. If you would like to review and sign the statement, please send your name and position (in the format 'Alberto Toscano, Sociology, Goldsmiths'; or, 'Lara Pawson, writer and journalist') to: p.hallward@mdx.ac.uk

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes

Resisting the recession posted by lenin

Amid the slaughter in Gaza, and the opposition to it, this may seem like an odd issue to raise. Fantastic mobilisations have occurred in response to Operation Cast Lead. But how on earth can one 'resist' a recession? Surely it is a force over which we have precious little control, almost a force of nature? There is a tendency to be paralysed by the incessant haemhorraging of jobs, and the lack of confidence in one's ability to do anything about it leads to the hope for the state to intervene in such a way as to counter the slump. Moreover, Gordon Brown's vaguely left feint and sudden rediscovery of the Keynesian lessons of his youth has bolstered this tendency and improved the standing of trade union leaders who don't want to do anything to weaken a Labour government. Unions, instead of demanding reforms to redistribute wealth and nationalisation to protect jobs are looking to protectionism to save the economy - despite the fact that protectionist measures are, on the whole, unlikely to work. The soft left hail the death of New Labour, despite the ascendancy of the Blairites, without sufficiently taking the point that the government is continuing with its punitive roll-back of the welfare state, which will have the effect of increasing the reserve army of labour and thus lowering the cost of labour to capital: a classic neoliberal measure. The government, in a bid to create 100,000 jobs, now offers employers a £2,500 'golden hello' if they take on the long-term unemployed. But similar deals (the 'New Deal' after 1997, for example) have failed to work. Brown's Lazarus-like revival since the Lehman Brothers collapse still leaves the Tories ahead in the polls, but it does reflect the fact the fact that voters have far less confidence in Cameron's ideas than in New Labour.

In this context, the prospects for resistance can look bleaker than they are. Yet, we have had the sudden re-emergence of the Italian left from the doldrums after its defeat last year and the horrifying rise of the far right. We have seen Greece explode in angry protests and mass strikes - nominally over the murder of a young protester by cops, but involving all sorts of issues from low pay to cut-backs in education and pensions. We have seen a rising tide of strikes in Ireland, as the government has been under extraordinary pressure from business to slash public spending and reduce the public sector wage bill by up to 17bn euros. The finance minister Brian Lenihan is planning huge cuts in public sector employment, but this has provoked the unions into taking a tougher stance. In the UK, some of this has been forestalled by the government's pledge to bring forward public sector spending plans, but the plan is to follow this up with an aggressive attack on such spending, far larger than anything accomplished under Thatcher. But as the recession bites, there is no reason to believe that people can't resist here.

The obstacles to this are obviously not just 'union bureaucrats', or even the left-wing of the union bureaucracy which helped stifle the public sector pay revolt over the last year. They could only get away with this, against the votes of members, because those members don't have the confidence to resist. This surely has its origins in the effects of the Thatcherite attacks on organised labour in the 1980s. The argument that keeping Labour in will hold back the tide somewhat and ensure a minimally socially just response to the crisis has some temporary pull. And then there is the ever-present threat of the far right. As the crisis deepens, the appeal of arguments blaming 'economic migrants' is likely to increase and, if history is any guide, the government will be the most craven in capitulating to such arguments. Brown may revisit his 'British jobs for British workers' spiel. To the extent that this gives the far right any traction at all, it will weaken the chances of resisting job losses and pay cuts.

Though the record of economic augury is marked with embarrassing failure, there is a general acceptance that this is not going to be the short-lived crisis that the government is betting on. It doesn't do to second-guess such a complex system, but the fact is that the main means by which capital has restored its profitability and overcome its difficulties since the Seventies - that being debt, and often mortgage-backed debt - has just collapsed. This could be a U-shaped recession, or an L-shaped one, but the V-for-victory slump that the Brownites hope for looks more unlikely by the day. The polarising effects of such a crisis increase the unpredictability of its political effects, but it also increases the likelihood of some sudden explosion, whether that takes the form of riots, factory occupations, resistance to home repossessions or something else. The examples I raised above, from Greece, Italy and Ireland, show how quickly this can spread.

From the above, slightly perambulatory, discussion, I draw a few conclusions. First of all, there is no strict opposition between antiwar activity and resistance to job losses. I don't just mean that the confidence and anger from one can feed into the other. It is also the case that a self-confident antiwar movement that brings Muslims into confident political militancy also diminishes the prospects of the far right and improves the general terrain in which the radical and far left operates. Secondly, resisting the recession means opposing the fascists. They are good at misrepresenting their position, pretending to be economic populists when in fact they are ideologically opposed to trade unions and public services. Their attempt to usurp any anticapitalist dynamic has to be broken. And since the BNP are now aggressively championing Israel's assault on Gaza, I should point out that I don't respect their 'right to exist'. (A minor side-point here: the fascists have been very clever at using the internet and online media to disseminate their talking points. The antifascist movement has been less good at this, and we need to up our game. When the next Love Music Hate Racism carnival hits Stoke, right at the centre of the BNP's current 'stronghold' (for want of a better word), you can be sure that there will be glorious photographs and updates posted on the day to Flickr and on the LMHR website, but that pattern has to be repeated when UAF hits the ground. Just a thought.) Thirdly, the more that New Labour's remedies show themselves to be bankrupt, the more likely it is that the union leaders will be under pressure to back some sort of militancy. But to the extent that we cannot depend on this, we are going to need to find a generalised political expression of those demands that can unite a broad coalition. This isn't going to come by diktat, but by experimentation both locally and nationally. We also need to be attentive to the initiative of those who aren't organised in official labour movement forums. When those Woolworths workers in Liverpool did the conga line out of their livelihood and into unemployment, it was one of the most depressing spectacles of the recession. Don't get me wrong: there is something life-affirming and defiant about meeting doom in that way, but how much more so it would have been if they had said "we are not going to let you do this to us", and just bloody occupied the place. And that can, and probably will, happen in the future.

As you were.

Labels: anti-fascism, antiwar movement, economy, gaza, palestine, recession, socialism, trade unions

Monday, January 12, 2009

Speeches from the Gaza demo posted by lenin

Ady Cousins has posted video footage of the protest speeches.

Labels: gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, protest, war crimes

More on "the only democracy in the Middle East" posted by lenin

The news is that Israel has banned Arab parties from standing in the upcoming elections:

Parliament spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist.

This can't be a complete surprise since a) there are many Israeli politicians who would like the chance to dispose of the Arab minority permanently, and b) there are always moves to repress Arab political expression during one of Israel's periodic wars against, well, other Arabs. It will be recalled that during the 2006 Lebanon invasion, the Israeli press was filled with stories concerning the unpatriotic attitude of the country's Arab population. Ehud Olmert complained that Israeli Arab parliamentarians were guilty of treason and should be put on trial. Subsequently, some Arab parliamentarians were the subject of investigations by Israeli police, as they were accused of travelling to Lebanon and Syria and providing information to the enemy in September 2006. Reports last year showed a serious rise in racism toward Israeli Arabs, demonstrated in part by killings on the part of the police, the army, and Jewish Israeli civilians. It is increasingly clear that mainstream Israeli politicians do not view Israeli Arabs as proper citizens of the country. Only last December, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni advocated the transfer of Israeli Arabs. Her 'clarification' was interesting. She said:

I am willing to give up a part of the country over which I believe we have rights so that Israel will remain a Jewish and democratic state in which citizens have equal rights, whatever their religion.

How sweet. But even the far right Avigdor Lieberman doesn't talk about violent transfer: he talks precisely about the kinds of 'peaceful' transfer that Livni does. This has always been the way in which the Zionist idea of 'tihur' has been expressed. But what if Israeli Arabs don't want to go anywhere? What if they insist on their rights as citizens in what is supposed to be, but never has been, a democratic state? Moreover, doesn't this illustrate an inherent problem with the two-state position? Allowing Israel to exist in its current form, qua "Jewish state", is a racist proposition. It means that Israel cannot stomach too many Arabs, that Jews and Arabs can't live together.

The current repression isn't only directed against Arabs. As the Israeli philosopher Avi Ophir points out, this war has unleashed a serious crackdown on all internal dissent (his reflections on the nature of the war are also well worth taking time to read). But, seriously, after this disgrace, can anyone be left in doubt that Israel - from its inception to this denouement - is a racist state?

See also this and this.

Labels: democracy, gaza, hamas, Israel, israeli arabs, palestine

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Jon Stewart on Gaza posted by lenin

I am not a big fan of Stewart, but he was great on Lebanon, and is brilliant on Gaza:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Strip Maul

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I think this, and other examples, represents a real shift in global political culture. I notice that the head of liberal Judaism in the UK dissociated himself from today's thankfully small pro-Israel demonstration, and instead decided to speak to a Muslim organisation. Also, note this: "I don’t buy the rationalizations any more. I’m so tired of the apologetics. How on earth will squeezing the life out of Gaza, not to mention bombing the living hell out of it, ensure the safety of Israeli citizens?". This is not a radical position, but nor is it the first time I have heard such sentiments issued by Jewish commentators previously loyal to Israel. Gaza, this time, really is the last straw for large numbers of people. It's important to recognise that, as I keep hearing, a rubicon has been crossed.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, jon stewart, palestine

Sderot woman speaks out against Gaza op posted by lenin

"Not in my name and not for me you went to war. The current bloodbath in Gaza is not in my name and not for my security. Destroyed homes, bombed schools, thousands of new refugees - are not in my name and not for my security. In Gaza there is no time for burial ceremonies now, the dead are put in refrigerators in twos, because there is no room. Here their bodies lay, policemen, children, and our nimble reporters play acrobatically with Hasbara strategies in view of "the images that speak for themselves". Pray tell me, what is there to "explain"?"

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, sderot, war crimes

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Up to 200,000 protest Israeli aggression in Central London posted by lenin

The estimated turnout for this protest, according to Andrew Murray, was 200,000. I don't mind what precise figure people put on it, but it was massive, and certainly above 100,000. To this can be added the protests across the UK, which respectively numbered in hundreds and thousands. As I said earlier, this was the largest ever pro-Palestinian demonstration in the United Kingdom. I met a guy I know from MPAC at the start, and he agreed that the size of the demo was astonishing - this was as we were crowding into Hyde Park, before it even really kicked off. The severity of what Israel is imposing on Gaza, with the assistance of UK arms and the benevolence of UK diplomacy, has galvanised people in a way that we haven't seen since 2003. The tone of the protest was also very different from past demonstrations. For one thing, there was much more visible condemnation of the Arab regimes that are complicit in this attack. When speakers called for the Egyptian regime to be overthrown, the cheers were among the loudest of the day. For another, there is a great desire that this historic demonstration become the basis for a campaign. In some form or another, there is a desire to sanction Israel, up to and including a full-blown boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. I would be delighted if such a campaign could be made to work.

This brings me to something else I want to point out about the demonstration. In today's Guardian, over seventy Jewish writers and activists wrote to condemn Israel's atrocities in Gaza. The letter calls for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, which was also recently backed by Naomi Klein. This letter was cited twice by speakers, one of them Azzam Tamimi, who said "this war is not between Muslims and Jews, it is between the oppressed and the oppressor". The other speaker who I think was Ismail Patel said something that I think is extremely important, reflecting what Alexei Sayle said at last week's demonstration: it is long past time to stop allowing the state of Israel to call itself "the Jewish State". It is a travesty that a racist state that imposes apartheid and mass murder on the Palestinians has for so long been allowed to legitimise itself with reference to Jewish suffering, and particularly the Nazi holocaust. When its soldiers are bestialising themselves in Gaza, coldly murdering people in the most humiliating way, and imposing a system that seems in some respects to be deliberately redolent of the Warsaw Ghetto, the idea that Israel is the bearer of a legacy of resistance to fascism is disgusting, and absurd. Now, I know full well that we are not watching a repeat of the Final Solution, but it shouldn't have to get that far before Palestine has its Marek Edelmans. And we should not hesitate to support them when they defend Palestine.

Finally, a word about the apparent ruckus outside the Israeli embassy. I didn't see it become at all serious, but I do know the police sealed off hundreds and perhaps more people in the area, and it has to be said that the police acted as if they wanted a fight. They had tried to confine an enormous amount of people into a densely barricaded bottleneck and, as far as I could see, this made the stewards' job more difficult. A number of protesters did evidently want to get into the Israeli embassy, and I did notice that one of them got onto the entrance walls and waved a Hamas flag around. Frankly, good. The logical thing to do at this point would be to expel the Israeli ambassador and convert the building into the embassy of a future Palestinian state. But, as angry as people justifiably are, and as much as one would have every reason to expect a riot at this point, I personally saw nothing that could have even notionally justified the kind of clampdown that the police eventually imposed.

Update: Here is the poem that Michael Rosen wrote, and read out for the protest:

In Gaza, children,
you learn that the sky kills
and that houses hurt.
You learn that your blanket is smoke
and breakfast is dirt.

You learn that cars do somersaults
clothes turn red,
friends become statues,
bakers don’t sell bread.

You learn that the night is a gun,
that toys burn
breath can stop,
it could be your turn.

You learn:
if they send you fire
they couldn’t guess:
not just the soldier dies -
it’s you and the rest.

Nowhere to run,
nowhere to go,
nowhere to hide
in the home you know.

You learn
that death isn’t life,
that air isn’t bread,
the land is for all.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.
You have the right to be
Not Dead.

And since my digital camera wasn't working today, here are some good quality pics from Ellis Sharp. More from septicisle here. Jamie's pics, videos and report are here. See also, pictures from the Paris demo.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine, war crimes

Israeli embassy posted by lenin

The whole street outside the embassy is packed, dangerously so. There

have been clashes at the entrance, but nothing serious so far. The
rally, a little further on, is already well under way, but loads of
protesters haven't even got to kensington. And hundreds of riot police
are running toward the embassy with some protesters following them.

Videos from demo taken within the last 30 mins posted by lenin

Pics from demo posted by lenin

Massive, noisy and freezing posted by lenin

Well, the opening rally was at least 100k, and it has grown as we have
hit the road. This the biggest pro-palestine demo in british history.
Temperatures in hyde park are below zero. I wonder if they'll invite
us into the embassy for a hot drink? Pictures and footage coming soon.

Arrived. posted by lenin

Just got here and the gathering crowds are massive. It is also rowdy
as hell. There's no way they were prepared for the scale of this.
There's an atmosphere of barely contained chaos.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Today's protest posted by lenin

Just a few quick points. I would expect today's protest to be enormous, at least as large as last week's very angry demonstration. Despite the attempted pressure on us from the government to stop the march, it is going ahead, and it will converge outside the Israeli embassy. Even so, we can't expect a fair hearing from the media. Because of this, I think it's a good idea that the StWC has launched this initiative, a website to which you can upload photographs from your mobile. It goes live at mid-day. Those who can't be there, or at any of the other demonstrations happening across the UK, will at least be able to get a sense of what is happening without necessarily relying on the BBC. For my part, I'll be doing a bit of mobile blogging and, if that doesn't work, using the 'Twitter Updates' in the sidebar. If all goes well, pics taken on my mobile will periodically appear throughout the day. You still have to wait until early evening for the good stuff, however.

Labels: bloggery, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, protest

Nasrallah: Arab leaders should learn from Chavez posted by lenin

"Yesterday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that he would expel the Israeli ambassador in Venezuela. He, of course, did this in order to show his support for the Palestinians. Venezuela is very close to America, it is a neighbor of America. This is Chavez. He did this because of his humanity, his sense of revolution, and, in this way, he dealt a severe blow to those who are now hosting the ambassadors of Israel in their capitals and do not have enough courage to even think about telling them to leave.

"Today, Arab leaders need to take lessons from this Latin American leader. They have to learn how to show support for the people of Palestine."

Labels: chavez, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, nasrallah, palestine, war crimes

Friday, January 09, 2009

Why are people so mean to poor little Israel? posted by lenin

Because Zionism is sick, twisted and cruel. Because killing Arabs is a spectator sport for Zionists:

And because they have the nerve to be self-righteous about it.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war crimes

War pornography posted by lenin

From Ernie Halfdram:

How does it work? Let's say that after a full day of Yonit, Yaacov and Ronny Daniel [TV anchors] you're feeling a little low. War-shwmar, whatever, but what about a little entertainment? Escapism? Something for your soul? You calmly go into Hot’s VOD and there on the main menu waiting for you is the category of Cast Lead. You select it and there you are -- whole worlds of rich and entertaining content, courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson Office!

In the "operational activity" category, for instance, you are invited to choose between "Air Force assaults," "Navy assaults" and "humanitarian activities." -- just a minute, isn't that category included in the previous two anyway? -- and watch ourselves, as one poetic reserve soldier put it, give it to the Arabs in the whatever.

For starters I treated myself to a film of "assault on the Hulafaa Mosque," after the selection of which the screen wished me "pleasant viewing." I really did enjoy it like I haven't enjoyed anything since my circumcision. After the sights stop on the mosque, the business is bombed from above; a giant bright cloud fills the screen and then a close-up of the burning mosque. No plot, no acting, no sound, no nonsense: straight to the action. If only all porn was like this!

Labels: bombing, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, war pornography

An extremist minority who should be ostracised. posted by lenin

Here's something to chew over. If you have participated in a public demonstration supporting Israel's operation in Gaza (such as this one or this one), you are a moral idiot. You don't get to tell anyone about 'terrorism', or 'war crimes', or 'humanitarianism' ever again, because you have flunked it at the first test, proving that your passionately avowed norms do not apply universally as far as you are concerned. The next time there is a Beslan or some similar atrocity, you will have to live with the fact that you have chosen to exist at roughly the same moral level as the perpetrators. In the interests of avoiding hypocrisy, in fact, you should be out on the streets cheerleading the massacre. The fact that you are unlikely to understand this only means that you are not just a moral idiot.

Let's bring ourselves up to date. The death toll as of yesterday - certainly a sizeable underestimate, given that there is only a rare interval in which to recover bodies crushed under the flaming rubble - is 758, 42% of which the UN estimates are women and children. Last night the UN Security Council produced a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, unimpeded access for humanitarian and relief workers, and the opening of border crossings. From an 'international community' that has hitherto backed Israel's blockade and regular offensives, this is jaw-dropping. This only happened because the US surprisingly refused to use its veto power, and even stressed that it "fully supports" the resolution in principle - a signal to Israel that its paymasters are not completely happy with how this is going. With that resolution passed, Israeli forces proceeded to pound Gaza into the night, and in the process attacked yet another apartment building, killing seven civilian inhabitants. Israel is consciously and deliberately violating almost every possible human norm in the conduct of its war. Whether it is rounding up families and shelling them to death, attacking schools, shooting up medics, killing aid workers, or bombing hospitals, it is increasingly the case that Israel is struggling to outdo itself.

Arguably, yesterday's news that Israeli forces had been deliberately starving children to death trumps everything else to date. I mean, sealing off a neighbourhood, bombing and shelling it, blocking medical and humanitarian entry, and knowingly leaving children to slowly die next to their already deceased relatives is sick. Forcing wounded adults to lie around dying on blood-soaked mattresses is also sick. And when the Red Cross finally gets in there and discovers some of the dead, to then attempt to expel them and prevent them from doing any more work is, well, sick. And I don't like saying this, but that level of calculated predation and sadism positively invites Nazi comparisons. What does that make the supporters of Israel's war at this moment?

One unexpected result of the travesty is that even some of Israel's more aggressive boosters, such as Roger Cohen in the New York Times, are expressing disgust and shame. Some of those who backed Israel's war in Lebanon are admitting, sometimes with heavy qualification and great reluctance and much ponderous nonsense about how treacherous the pro-Palestinian Left nevertheless is, to similar feelings. But the livid, lunatic fringe of Israel supporters not only have an inexhaustible capacity for sanctimony and hypocrisy, they lack any sense of shame. They are truly at their worst hour, the vilest they have ever been. No excuse can or should be made for such people: they ought to be shunned, and treated as the moral and political degenerates that they are.

Labels: gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, murder, the liberal defense of murder

Thursday, January 08, 2009

UNRWA spokesperson statement on Israeli retraction of mortar fire claims posted by lenin

Just so this doesn't disappear down the memory hole entirely:

Labels: gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine, school, UNRWA, war crimes

Eye-witness accounts from Gaza posted by lenin

I just received these two eye-witness descriptions of Israel's conduct in Gaza from the journalist Ben White, and I thought you should have a look at them. One is from a doctor in a Gaza hospital, and the other is via a friend of Ben's whose father lives in Gaza.

The numbers of death and injured reported in the media are far below reality as the media is not able to cover incidents as they unfold. I know of cases where homes were surrounded by the Israeli army and people inside gave themselves up and were shot anyway when they exited.

When bakeries open there are thousands lining up to get their share of bread.

A clinic near my hospital was hit by an Israeli missile earlier today.

What is taking place is a massacre, more than a massacre.

Almost all the cases I saw today at the hospital were civilians, many women and children. This is not an attack on Hamas, it is on the most innocent of people in Gaza

6 ambulance staff members have been killed. Two ambulances were hit. Nothing is safe, nowhere is safe. No moving vehicle is safe. We are afraid for our lives. There is no differentiation between Hamas and Fatah or anyone else

We have witnessed weapons we have never seen before in our lives. Some explode in the sky and scatter bombs all over. Sporadically. I have smelt smells from some of the burns and wounds that I have never before witnessed.

We get the feeling no one is asking about us, the world is not even noticing this is going on, no one cares.

Dr Attallah Tarazi, al-Shifaa Hospital, Gaza City

***

Israel has arrested a number of farmers who live near where the invasion is, they collected their weapons (which are used to protect them from theives and any other dangers) claiming to have arrested some Hamas fighters. This is to prove that the war has been successful so far! Those people are just farmers living quite outside the city between fields...

Labels: gaza, invasion, Israel, palestine, war crimes, zionism

We take the greatest care... posted by lenin

Via Jamie, who also cites an Amnesty report that accuses Israel of killing civilians on purpose, this astonishing Telegraph article reports an act of organised sadism:

Concerns had been growing that Zeitoun had witnessed massive civilian casualties after surviving members of the Samouni clan reached Gaza City three days ago.

They said that after the Israeli army first took the town on Saturday night soldiers had ordered about 100 members of the clan to gather in a single house owned by Wael Samouni around dawn on Sunday.

At 6.35am on Monday the house was repeatedly shelled with appalling loss of civilian life.

A handful of survivors, some wounded, others carrying dead or dying infants, made it on foot to Gaza's main north-south road before they were given lifts to hospital. Three small children were buried in Gaza City that afternoon.

According to the survivors between 60 and 70 family members had been killed by shrapnel and falling masonry.

Convoys of ambulances twice headed to the area to look for wounded but they were driven back by Israeli shooting.

You were wondering why they don't want the media in Gaza? You were wondering what "all-out war" meant?

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine, war crimes

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

A lie you weren't supposed to believe posted by lenin

Let's be clear about this. On 6 January, three UN-run schools in Gaza were attacked by Israeli forces, not just one. What is more, the previous day an Israeli bombing of a UN school had killed three members of the same family. This sort of killing can usually be dealt with in a perfunctory fashion ('we regret all loss of innocent life, but the responsibility belongs to those who use terror and hide among civilians...'). However, the massacre of 43 people in a UN school bearing flags and insignia and housing some 350 refugees from the fighting (many of whom had fled on orders from IDF leaflets dropped on the towns and cities), demanded a more considered explanation and justification. I just want to take a quick look at the explanations offered by Israeli spokespeople and its military.

The IDF's initial justification for the attack on the Al-Fakhura school was that Hamas had used the building to fire mortars from, and its tanks had responded. Implicit in this was an admission that they had targeted the school on purpose. The tank shells, presumably shot from quite nearby, were fired by soldiers operating under orders from command centres equipped with detailed targeting intelligence. As is now known, the Israeli military had the GPS coordinates not only of this UN school but of the other UN schools that it attacked. We also know that the UN told Israeli forces that the schools were being used as refuges for those driven out of their houses by Israel. And the first thing the IDF let us know is that it was done on purpose. Their excuse was barbaric, of course. The idea that an invading force may attack a building filled with hundreds of terrorised civilians just in order to kill two of those resisting the invasion is nothing short of grotesque. But the fact that it was barbaric was part of the point: rather than bluntly condemning a war crime, you were invited to focus on whether Hamas would be so evil as to attack Israel's brave boys from within a civilian building. Because it is so frequently repeated you might be predisposed to assume that Hamas did indeed position its 'infrastructure of terror' among unsuspecting citizens but, whether you are so predisposed or not, you are already drawn into the macabre calculus of the murderer if you even get involved in that argument. You have tacitly accepted the logic in which war crimes are not merely acceptable, but actually appropriate, if the enemy really is as evil as Israel says. The usual suspects, of course, immediately embraced Israel's excuse: Israel's killing, they expostulated, merely demonstrates the ruthless, diabolical genius of Hamas. If anything, they added, the IDF was admirably restrained in its action. But it is doubtful that many others were taken in.

The second thing that the IDF claimed was that there were Hamas troops hiding inside the building, nestling among the refugees, thereby forcing the Israelis to slaughter the innocent. This is quite a different claim, and the first thing that would occur to any reasonable observer would be that the sudden embellishment reflected some sort of dishonesty ('the elaborations of a bad liar', as Hannibal Lecter would put it). Or perhaps there had been a failure by everyone to get their stories straight and stick to them. At any rate, the logic of the astounding claim that Israel acted in self-defense remained as tortuous as it had been. But Israel claimed to have identified the bodies of Hamas members, and even fed two names to the media, (so once again you were invited to get bogged down in the merits of Israel's claim rather than decide on an appropriate response to the slaughter).

The next part of the story is the most interesting. In order to get around the absurd idea that Hamas military operatives had sneaked into the building and launched mortars without anyone in the school noticing, Israel's spokespeople claimed that Hamas gunmen had taken over the UN building, taken the civilians hostage and used the base to fire mortars at Israeli soldiers. Mark Regev said it was a "very extreme example of how Hamas operates". Such a claim was obviously checkable in a matter of minutes. Any UN personnel present in the school at the time could easily say whether in fact they had all been suffering under Hamas captivity until Israel 'liberated' the building. The UN produced an emphatic denial, based on its own investigations, that there was ever any Hamas fighter in the building. By now, the fact that Israel has never provided any real evidence for its claims, which continue to shapeshift, comes into sharp focus. Moreover, since Israeli troops didn't visit the building or have access to the records of the deceased, it would be highly improbable that they would be able to not only name two of the dead, but also gather intelligence that proved they were members of Hamas' military wing, within such a short space of time.

So, the Israeli government topped that brazenness with a stroke of effrontery that is somehow not adequately captured by the word 'chutzpah'. Israel announced that as it was lodging a complaint with the UN for allowing the building to be secretly used by Hamas. Now it appears that Israeli diplomats admit that no rockets were fired from the school. They are now briefing that there was some mortar fire, but that it came from outside the school. Now, there is no evidence that there was any mortar fire at all, but perhaps you aren't really supposed to believe it. Actually, you were never supposed to believe any of it. There was no way that you were ever expected to be taken in by this pitiful subterfuge. They didn't even present a very convincing lie, or a very good case. What they did was tell you up front that they attacked a clearly marked UN school building filled with civilians on purpose, and then follow it up with a flimsy cover-story followed by an even more flimsy revised cover story and an outlandish allegation against the UN that they have dropped in a matter of hours in such a way as to undermine their previous cover-stories. This is obviously contemptuous, but it isn't just a sensational flip-off to 'world opinion'. They are saying they killed civilians on purpose, that nowhere in Gaza is safe, and that they reserve their right to do it again and offer the same risible mitigations and alibis as before.

Labels: al-fakhura, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine, war crimes

Israeli consulate occupied posted by lenin

A group of Jewish women have occupied the Israel consulate in Toronto:

A diverse group of Jewish Canadian women are currently occupying the Israeli consulate at 180 Bloor Street West in Toronto. This action is in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.

The group is carrying out this occupation in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza and to ensure that Jewish voices against the massacre in Gaza are being heard. They are demanding that Israel end its military assault and lift the 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.

This sort of thing is liable to give people ideas.

Labels: air strikes, canada, gaza, hamas, Israel, occupation, palestine, protest

Government attempts to block Gaza march posted by lenin

From the Stop the War Coalition:

GOVERNMENT BLOCKS GAZA DEMONSTRATION AT ISRAELI EMBASSY

Ministers are obstructing the holding of a national demonstration on Saturday
to protest against the Israeli invasion of Gaza, march organisers said today.

Officials of the Royal Parks Agency, acting under the authority of Culture
Secretary Andy Burnham, have blocked a plan to hold a rally in Kensington
Palace Gardens near the Israeli Embassy in London.

The demonstration, organised by the Stop the War Coalition, Palestine
Solidarity Campaign and British Muslim Initiative, is expected to attract tens
of thousands of people from across the country, outraged at the massacre of
Palestinians taking place in Gaza.

"The arrangements for our march and rally were notified to the police days
ago," Stop the War Coalition chair Andrew Murray said today. "We have now
found that they are being blocked by the Parks authorities, in consultation
with ministers, on the spurious pretext of a lack of precedent.

"This nonsensical argument recalls government attempts to stop the rally
against the Iraq war in February 2003 on the grounds that the grass in Hyde
Park might be damaged.

"Ministers should understand that the anger against Israeli aggression against
the Palestinian people is also without precedent. We are determined to
exercise our democratic right to express that outrage in a public space near
the Israeli Embassy.

"Attempting to block our plans - which have been drawn up with a view to
ensuring a peaceful and orderly protest on Saturday - risks making thousands of
people angrier still.

"We are therefore seeking an urgent meeting with Mr Burnham to ensure that he
removes these bureaucratic obstructions and allows our protest to proceed as
planned."

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine, stop the war coalition

Free Gaza posted by lenin

Labels: derry, gaza, Israel, palestine

The Only Democracy in the Middle East posted by lenin

A great article by Avi Shlaim which, aside from punching holes in Israeli propaganda, points out that while Israel is a "rogue state" that practises terrorism and threatens the use of weapons of mass destruction, the Palestinians have built "the only genuine democracy in the Arab world" against all odds. A point worth remembering next time one of Israel's chronically self-righteous apologists pleads that Israel is "the only democracy in the Middle East".

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, zionism

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Israel's fabricated rocket crisis posted by lenin

Jim Holstun and Joanna Tinker on Electronic Intifada:

For more than four months after 19 June 2008, Hamas refrained from any military actions that might endanger the negotiated truce or "calm" with Israel.

The evidence for this is ready to hand. For example, the Wikipedia entry on the events of the summer, "List of rocket and mortar attacks in Israel in 2008" (revised 4 January 2008), based almost exclusively on Israeli newspapers and government sources, confirms that there were no rocket or mortar attacks claimed by or plausibly attributed to Hamas during the calm. This can also be verified by surveying archives of news reports from the period.

The few that were launched, none of them causing any casualties, were claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, by Islamic Jihad, by "the Badr Forces," or by nobody. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called repeatedly for a cessation of rocket fire, and denounced those factions who broke the truce. A Hamas spokesman criticized Fatah for allowing the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is affiliated with Fatah, to fire rockets. Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces' murders and settler pogroms continued unabated on the West Bank. They included an attempt by a settler to fire a homemade rocket toward the Palestinian village of Burin, which nearly killed another settler. During the lull, then, Israeli settlers fired more rockets (i.e., one) than did Hamas.

In a document entitled "The Hamas terror war against Israel," The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides striking visual evidence of Hamas's good faith during the lull.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, qassam rockets, zionism

On hasbara posted by lenin

My article in Socialist Worker on Israel's propaganda efforts. Also, Simon Assaf has an excellent article on Israel's strategy of terror against the Palestinians.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, propaganda

It was a 'Hamas stronghold' posted by lenin

"At least 40 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a United Nations-run school in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources have said.

A number of children were among those who died when the al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp took a direct hit, doctors at nearby hospitals said.

People inside had been taking refuge from the Israeli ground offensive."

That's the trouble with 'taking refuge' from Israeli attacks. The IDF don't recognise refuge when they're out to kill. What is more, it has a history of attacking UN facilities because, apart from anything else, the UN sometimes says mean things about Israel. During the Lebanon war, the IDF punished the UN for its mealy-mouthed criticisms by attacking UNIFIL positions fifteen times. As John Ging of the UN points out, not only is the school clearly marked with UN flags and insignia, the GPS coordinates and full details of all UN facilities in Gaza are known to Israel. That this was a school was known to Israeli forces. They presumably also knew that locals were hiding there, petrified, scared out of their minds by what Israel is doing. So, the Israelis sent a clear message that, as Ging also says, "nowhere in Gaza is safe". Let it be repeated, until the message gets through: Operation Cast Lead is an unmistakeable and vicious attack on the civilian population of Gaza.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, israeli terrorism, zionism

At what point does it become genocide? posted by lenin

Jamie has an excellent, detailed post on 'those "Hamas targets"' that keep turning out to be ambulances, hospitals, schools, etc., with detail from Physicians for Human Rights, UN OCHA, B'TSelem, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and a number of organisations and news agencies empirically refuting Israel's claim that it targets only combatants. The list of examples, though by no means comprehensive, is nonetheless quite staggering. Norwegian volunteer doctor Mads Gilbert describes Israel's attack as "an all-out war against the civilian population in Gaza". This, perhaps, is why the definition of 'civilian' and 'combatant' must be as elastic as possible. Israel is literally saying, if you follow that link, that anything is fair game in Gaza if there is the slightest connection with Hamas. Combatants are not only those doing the fighting, not only Hamas military cadre, not only members of the Hamas political organisation, but anyone working in an institution that Hamas runs as the government of Gaza. As Phillipe Sands points out, the effect of this is to obliterate the category of 'civilian'. Martin Shaw has written of this tendency of 'degenerate war', a process that is intimately connected with the transition from war to genocide (see his very useful War and Genocide, Polity Press, 2003, pp 23-26). In this phase of war, it has been deemed a military necessity to classify the whole population of the enemy state as an enemy.

I am not as inclined to use 'holocaust' metaphors as Israeli spokespersons, and there is a very sensible desire to avoid emotionally-laden words like 'genocide', particularly given that the justification for atrocitiy is often based on the invocation of such terms. Nonetheless, when the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes a process of genocide in Gaza, as he did last year, it is clear that there is something more to it than an emotional reaction to oppression. True, 'only' 550 have been directly killed in Gaza in this particular 11 day old operation, but that in itself wouldn't be the basis for denying that a genocidal process is under way. The number is proportionally equivalent to killing 22,000 in the UK - or, if you prefer, about 3,000 in Darfur. In Darfur, the total number killed over the worst ten months of violence when it really was a 'killing fields' situation was 30,000. If the argument was really just about the numbers of people directly slain, the fate of Gaza is now proportionally worse than it was in Darfur during its worst period. I doubt many people will assent to that judgment.

Still, Israel is 'only' doing exactly what it has done in previous operations, and what it has been doing slowly in Gaza for some time: it is destroying the civilian infrastructure while preventing medical and humanitarian responses so as to make life as unbearable as possible for inhabitants. 1 million people are without electricity, a quarter of a million without water, and food shortages are sending prices through the roof. In itself, that does not constitute genocide in the conventionally understood sense - namely, a deliberate attempt to physically destroy a people or community in whole or part. Still, as Martin Shaw has pointed out elsewhere (What is Genocide?, Polity Press, 2007, pp 63-77), the proliferation of -cides to account for all the phenomena that involve attacks on civilian life (democide, urbicide, ruricide, classicide, gendercide, politicide) are a reflection of the fact that these are different aspects of genocide, rather than just lesser degrees of criminal political killing. Genocide is not the 'ultimate' form of such killing - rather, it is a framework within which such killing is comprehended. If, in discussing Jenin or Gaza you have to revert to concepts such as urbicide or democide, as scholarly accounts have tended to do, that should set alarm bells ringing. If, in describing the attempt to destroy the Palestinians as a nation and a potential polity you come to use a term like 'politicide' (the name of a book on the topic by Baruch Kimmerling), then again the signs are that you may be talking about a dimension of genocide.

There is also an aspect of territorial expansionism in this war, which will squeeze the population of Gaza into an even tighter, more overpopulated and less viable space. The threatening phone calls and leaflets being dropped on Gaza, it is now confirmed, comprise part of an ethnic cleansing operation starting in the north of Gaza similar to that attempted in southern Lebanon in 2006. The Guardian reports that 15,000 people have responded to the threats by fleeing major urban centres such as Beit Hanoun. The next step is surely the annexing of a sizeable portion of Gaza (or 'the Land of Israel' as Israeli politicians call it and any other territory they think belongs to them by right) under the rubric of creating a 'security zone'. (It was reported as early as March last year that the Israeli government was considering an operation to secure such ends.) Israel now claims that its aim is to drive Hamas out of Gaza. Taken literally, and on Israel's own terms, this would mean the expulsion of the greater part of the population of Gaza.

The 'tihur' (often translated as 'transfer', but closer to 'purification') element of Zionist thought is, as Benny Morris has written, in-built. Even if he were right to claim that there was no actual plan to expel the Palestinian Arab population, the process was ineluctable once the war for control of Palestine got under way. 'Tihur' has involved, since 1967, a slow-burning process of colonisation, displacement, occupation, the destruction of communities, massacres and expulsion. Both settler-colonists and their backers in the Israeli army engage in routine violence to destroy Palestinian property and enclose it for the ever-expanding colonies. Often they beat and kill the Palestinians who try to resist. Sometimes, as Chris Hedges has documented, they like to bait Palestinian kids with racist insults and then gun them down. These massacres have taken place not only in territory directly annexed by Israel, but also in occupied Lebanon during the Israeli occupation when it engaged in a vicious war against PLO guerillas. The strategy there was to take control of territory by creating a broad belt, driving civilian residents out of it, then moving the belt forward, thus driving the citizens into an increasingly small space with more and more casualties as a result. Refugee camps were frequently a target. The Rashidiyeh refugee camp which housed 9,000 people was attacked and destroyed with shelling and aerial bombardment. Those who survived, fled, and were herded on a beach to watch the final destruction. Subsequently, every teenaged and adult male was placed in blindfolds and binds, then led away to camps: little was heard of them after that. On another, more notorious occasion, 150 Lebanese Phalangists were sent in to the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps under the control of the IDF and surrounded by IDF soldiers who prevented anyone from leaving, and slaughtered up to 3,500 Palestinians. That massacre was described as genocide at the time by the United Nations - much to the dismay of Israel's supporters (even those supporters who denied that Israel was in any sense responsible). Between such outstanding atrocities is the regular, dull, daily grind of oppression and killing. The regular targeting of civilians for violence and killing by the IDF is extensively documented by human rights organisations (some of the material is discussed here and here). Not only that, but the occupation has been puncuated by campaigns against Palestinian culture, including attacks on journalists and academics and their respective institutions. The Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein has described this as an attempt to expurgate the traces of an Arab national character (cited in Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians, Pluto Press, 1999).

Although the public justification for such violence involves an obnoxiously self-righteous language about resisting 'terrorism', the ongoing concern with the 'demographic timebomb' and the repeated proposals for 'transfer' (always peaceful, always benevolent, as it was in early Zionist ideology) somewhat give the game away. The very existence of the Palestinians as a people is being treated as an existential threat to Israel. Since Israel has never shown any sign of being willing to accept a Palestinian state and live within even the 1967 boundaries, the logic of such a position is to find a way to dispose of the Palestinian residents of the occupied territories. This is not new, nor is it an artefact of the rise of Israel's far right. Israeli leaders, both Labour and Likud, have tried to find ways to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the occupied territories. Meir Cohen once regretted Israel's "grave mistake" in not expelling between two and three hundred thousand Palestinians from the West Bank in 1967. Yitzhak Rabin thought that the demographic problem was best solved by creating conditions that would produce "natural and voluntary" migration from the territories to Jordan, and believed that King Hussein and Arafat had to be engaged to this purpose. Obviously, the creation of terror, immiseration, starvation and increasing confinement is one way to help bring this about. Additionally, Avigdor Lieberman's proposals for the 'transfer' of Israeli Arabs is but one aspect of a generally perceived need to manage down the Arab population of Israel, including efforts to settle territories in Israel with high Arab populations such as the Negev and Galilee (there has been, since 2005, a minister charged solely with the development of these territories). As Shaw has written elsewhere, Israel is of necessity a society based on genocide, as the destruction of the Arab communities that made Israel possible "clearly fits the definition of genocide enshrined in the Genocide Convention of the same year". Much "of its history to the present day represents the slow-motion extension and consolidation of that violent beginning."

It isn't that any single attack or massacre by Israel constitutes genocide. It is that the ongoing war against the entire Palestinian population, its infrastructure, its political expressions, its culture, and its life-support, contains a genocidal dynamic. The fact that this is reflected in current Israeli tactics is the reason why many are ready to take the Israeli minister fully at his word.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, genocide, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine

Monday, January 05, 2009

A man-made disaster. posted by lenin

Despite the BBC's hectic schedule of relaying pro-Israel propaganda (and it truly is an outstanding effort on their part), they manage to have found someone to go into Gaza and report directly on the humanitarian situation. Here, Rushdi Abu Alouf reports from the al-Shifa hospital, where he interviews a Norwegian medic who angrily disputes Israel's claim that it does not target civilians. He describes it as the worst man-made disaster he has seen. Interestingly, the idea that there is some human - as opposed to natural or divine - agency involved in this slaughter seems rather out of place in the overall coverage. Still, I admit there is nothing subversive about the BBC's sideshow. Even the New York Times is reporting that Gaza's hospitals are filling with civilian casualties. But it is nice to see the BBC, which possibly has the worst record on Israel-Palestine across the whole UK media, find a Johnny Foreigner to explain things to them.

Actually, it sems that hospitals are increasingly a target themselves. So are ambulances. No surprises here: one of the bitter jokes of the 'war on terror' has been that smart bombs are so fabulously accurate that they can even hit buildings and vehicles with big red crosses on top of them. And these hospitals are themselves suffering from shortages brought about by the blockade. Apparently, one of their biggest shortages these days is body bags. Naturally, all of these targets and corpses were either contiguous with legitimate military targets or insidiously taken over by the ominous Qassam rockets. Still. I don't want to alarm anyone, but you do realise that if the Israeli military wanted to attack civilian targets and terrorise the population of Gaza, they would be almost guaranteed to pretend that every target they hit was somewhere that Hamas had been hiding weapons or fighters?

Labels: 'humanitarian intervention', air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine

Gaza: Could Israel Lose? posted by lenin

Guest post by redbedhead:

The fifth largest army in the world, equipped with nuclear weapons and the full-backing of the most powerful empire in world history, has just invaded the Gaza Strip. It is fighting against a people in one of the poorest, most densely populated regions on the planet - and they have endured years of a total blockade of all entry points that have all but starved the people and destroyed the economy. It seems foregone that Israel will utterly crush Hamas and all Palestinian resistance. That's certainly the attitude of even Fatah, which had previously led the Palestinian national liberation movement. Why else capitulate so thoroughly to Israel's apartheid agenda, other than a belief that nothing else is possible but to lead an eviscerated bantustan?

But will it? Let's consider the possibility that Israel could lose their war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

OUTGUNNED
Obviously the Palestinians are outgunned. However, so were Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 when Israel was thoroughly humiliated by failing to achieve any of its constantly changing stated objectives. Hezbollah, and the politics of anti-imperialist resistance, received a huge boost as a result of that war, which also undermined regional quisling powers like the Mubarak dictatorship and the craven Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. And the defeat in Lebanon highlights a key point made by Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch.org: "The last time Israel had an effective military campaign that could be called a victory was 27 years ago, in the 1982 attack on Lebanon. Hamas has been greatly strengthened by the current attack and the status of President Abbas reaffirmed as a spineless collaborator with Israel;Mubarak likewise; Syria and Turkey alienated from Western designs; Hezbollah and Iran vindicated by the world condemnation of Israel¹s barbarous conduct." In fact, as he also argues, "Although ruthless and horrifying Israel¹s onslaughts on Gaza are evidently an expression of weakness..."

Israel's leaders are thus striking against Gaza based upon a desperate need to restore Israel's deterrence and prestige, and short-term electoral calculations, rather than any real belief that they can win any lasting victory. After all, this is the third time since Israel's unilateral withdrawal that Gaza has been invaded - each time to no effect. Rather than achieving any of the stated, nebulous, goals (deja vu Lebanon, 2006), the "world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm." Unless Israel is able to utterly smash Hamas - an unlikely prospect given its wide support and deep roots - all they will achieve within Palestine, besides wide-spread destruction, is more support for the resistance movement. And it may well be the case that Israel is forced to lift the siege of Gaza's economy to achieve an internationally backed ceasefire.

There is good reason to expect that this will be the case and that a further political crisis will follow inside of Israel, given Israel's record in the last three decades. "The three last major conflicts entered into by Israel - Yom Kippur in 1973, Lebanon 1982 and Lebanon 2006 - have cost the jobs of three defence ministers, curtailed the military careers of commanders and weakened prime ministers. "So the current Israeli leadership will have to pull off something special to survive the fallout from operation Cast Lead." In the context where only 19 percent of Israelis supported a ground invasion and where tens of thousands have already demonstrated inside of Israel against this latest adventure, the stakes are high for the present Israeli leadership. And the sight of the carnage being wrought by Israel is undermining it internationally as masses of people mobilize in Europe and North America - key bastions of support and money for Israel.

US JEWS: THE LEAST ZIONIST AMERICANS?
The present invasion is likely weakening Israel's support base within the Jewish community for whom the Zionist state claims to speak. Already, there has been a long term decline in Jewish identification with Israel. Barely a majority of young Jews in a 2005 survey by the ultra-Zionist Israel Project identified themselves as "strong supporters of Israel" - part of a 20 year decline in support. And the number of Jews who defended Israel regularly was barely a third. This reinforces a 2008 survey by the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J Street, which found only 8 percent of Jews in the US felt that Israel was an important enough issue to decide for whom they would vote. As well, 78 percent supported a two state solution and 76 percent supported negotiating with Hamas. This puts Jews firmly in the mainstream of American opinion on the question. In fact, while the Israel Project's survey states that two-thirds of American's believe that Jerusalem should stay entirely under Israel's control and that only 20 percent believe it should be divided, J Street's survey indicates that 44 percent of US Jews accept the idea of Palestinian neighbourhoods in Jerusalem falling under control of a Palestinian state. In addition, while 59 percent of Jews support the idea of dismantling most West Bank settlements to achieve a lasting peace, the Israel Project survey of the general US population suggests that 52 percent think Israel shouldn't have to and 70 percent believe Israel should be able to trade other land, rather than move settlers.

Now, the results of both surveys should be taken with a large grain of salt, with poll questions so tilted to the ideological bias of the organizations that commissioned them as to be scientifically laughable. But they do indicate that American Jews are not somehow especially pro-Israel - if anything they are more critical of Israel than the general population in the United States. American Jews - and this must surely apply to Jews in the UK, Canada and around the world - are just as apt to move into political opposition to Israel as the general population. That means that mass mobilizations that erupt - like the ones involving tens and hundreds of thousands that have already happened - can undermine a key ideological foundation for Israel.

This war could put Israel's position as a key military and ideological prop in the war on terror at risk. This will be especially the case if Hamas, like Hezbollah, fights Israel to a standstill or makes the cost of the war high in terms of Israeli soldiers and the comforts of Israeli citizens and settlers. There should be no illusions that Hamas can "defeat" Israel but they can, as with all asymmetrical warfare, wear down the enemy. But even in the unlikely event that Israel is able to achieve a "total victory" there is still the growing danger that the Arab anger this present brutality has unleashed will destroy the American empire's already shaky hegemony in the Middle East. In Egypt there have been demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands, feeding into a pre-existing movement for labour rights and democratic change. In Lebanon Israel's slaughter will strengthen Hezbollah and other resistance organizations. The rule of Jordan's "liberal" monarchy is also being tested as the Saudi regime's regional and domestic leadership is undermined. The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 is now truly dead - perhaps the last gasp of the two state solution and any claim by Arab leaders to be able to provide a way out of the impasse. If these regimes begin to collapse - and Egypt's is the one to watch - it will signal the collapse of four decades of work to create a compliant network of pro-American regimes, with Egypt as the jewel in the crown. America's rulers, already frustrated with Israel's failure in Lebanon to weaken Iran, may begin to raise graver doubts about the utility of Israel's Iron Wall strategy. Israel truly has everything to lose in this battle and very little that it can possibly gain. Fifty years should have made clear that the spirit of the Palestinians cannot be broken. And the time has passed when it would be politically possible for Israel to exterminate or totally cleanse the Palestinian population. The end game may yet be a long way off, but that it approaches shouldn't be doubted.

Labels: air strikes, egypt, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine, US imperialism

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Why oh why Obama won't 'speak out'? posted by lenin

Quick point, since this keeps coming up in the papers. Obama's silence on Gaza might strike some as cowardly. To others it must seem an improvement on him opening his mouth and saying something disgustingly obsequious about Israel's right to 'defend' itself. In fact, he has relied on his advisors and spokespeople drip-feeding his pro-Israeli sentiments to the media, so it is obvious that he is basically sympathetic to Israel's attack. However, a small mystery remains. Obama has spoken out on a number of issues, including the economy and the bail-out, so his sudden pretence that he is cleaving to the 'one president at a time' rule (the one that he just invented as a rationalisation for remaining schtum) is an unconvincing one. It is true that the Democratic base are nowhere near as rabidly pro-Israel as the leadership. But this has never stopped Democratic leaders from ventilating noisily on Israel's behalf.

But this is different. Obama was the first US president in living memory to win on an antiwar vote, and to win he had to mobilise constituencies way to the left of himself. People will put up with a lot of bullshit to keep the right out. However. As disgusting as most of his economy and foreign policy picks have been, to come out as a full-throated cheerleader for this slaughter, right when there are dozens of sizeable protests taking place across America against this outrage, would probably be an insult too far. One powerful anecdotal example is the questions and contributions left by members of the public on the president-elect's Change.gov website, under foreign policy. By an overwhelming margin, the most popular topic is Palestine, and almost every comment is pro-Palestinian. The polling evidence is also instructive. On 31 December, a Rasmussen poll found Americans 'closely divided' over the Gaza attacks, but noted that while 62% of Republicans supported the attacks, only 31% of Democrats did. Maybe Obama figures he'll wait until he's actually been inaugurated before he decides to burn that many bridges.

By the way, did you hear the one about the terrorist school? No, I expect you didn't.

Labels: air strikes, barack obama, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, palestine

Emergency Gaza Protest Outside Israeli Embassy posted by lenin

For a freezing Sunday afternoon, on the day after a huge demo in the centre of London has already taken place, today's protest was great. Hundreds of people gathered for a very militant emergency protest against Israel's invasion of Gaza. I am constantly amazed by the speed at which people have moved on this. The big one will undoubtedly be on Saturday, but in the meantime I think you could almost guarantee there will be protests all week. Here are some initial pics:

Here's some footage:

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, invasion, Israel, massacre, palestine

Egyptians protest for Gaza - "Mubarak! You bring us shame!" posted by lenin

Via Hossam:

أهل العريش يهتفون يا مبارك يا طيار يملبسنا توب العار
by monempress

Labels: air strikes, egypt, gaza, Israel, protest

Sentimentality as the superstructure of barbarism posted by lenin

In a way, the few increasingly deranged voices spewing pro-Israeli propaganda, right when it is engaged in a degenerate war against civilians underwritten by a military doctrine that deems collective punishment a virtue, are talking themselves into a corner. The more strident their voice, the less convincing they are. They more voluble they are, the less they have to say. And, the more emotive their language, the more barbarous is their logic - but then, as Jung once supposedly said, sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality. So, then, consider this eye-opening tribute to Israeli humanitarianism - in Jenin, no less:

as part of its operation against Palestinian fighters in the West Bank, Israel did not launch a massive and indiscriminate air assault. Instead it sent troops into Jenin. The result was between 50 and 60 Palestinian deaths, almost all of them fighters (not the massacre of 500 originally reported and eagerly believed by so many). But the Jenin operation also cost the lives of 23 Israeli soldiers.

That is to say, Israel sacrificed the lives of its own sons to avoid massive casualties among Palestinian non-combatants.

Emphasis in original. For Israel so loved the Palestinians that it sacrificed its "own sons" in order to save them. This reminds me of that other example of condign humanitarianism described at Harry's Place, in which Israeli hospitals treat Palestinians who have been wounded by Israeli violence. The argument apparently being that Israel does blow the Palestinians to pieces, but it also puts some of them back into one piece, and is thus essentially giving the Palestinians the gift of surprise. Still, let us stick with Jenin, the refugee camp and city attacked amid a general assault by Ariel Sharon on the Occupied Territories in the spring of 2002. The fact that Israel launched a ground invasion in Jenin, just as it is now doing in Gaza, is taken to prove the integrity of the IDF's 'purity of arms' doctrine. This, it is implied, proved that the aim was to attack the "terrorist infrastructure" as Ariel Sharon claimed at the time.

The assault on Jenin has been pored over again and again, usually with an impassioned attempt by apologists to decouple the word 'Jenin' from the word 'massacre'. It has been necessary, in the course of this, to refute the claims made by the IDF, who claimed to have killed up to 300 people, and Shimon Peres, who called the operation a "massacre". Now, we know that Israeli troops 'only' killed a few dozen people. As Yitzhak Laor has written, "ten dead Israelis are a massacre; 50 Palestinians not enough to count". Yet, there are some points about which there is no controversy. Israel didn't simply send in its best boys to do battle with Palestinian insurgents, for example: it sent its boys encased in enormous metal shells called tanks, supported by great buzzing metal hulks called helicopter gunships. Sweeping in from the rear were squadrons of bulky metal objects known as bulldozers. The centre of the refugee camp was bulldozed, burying civilians alive and making 4,000 people homeless. Hospitals were bombed, medical equipment looted, and ambulances were denied access to the wounded and dying. Water tanks were perforated with bullet-holes, and roads dug up. The entire urban infrastructure was attacked. Almost half the population of the city was driven out. The manifest aim was to deprive the Palestinians in that camp, collectively, of the water, electricity, housing, and medical care that they required to sustain a minimally acceptable life. This was congruent with the overall conduct of Operation Defensive Shield, in which it is estimated that 500 died (this is the origin of the rumours that a Palestinian spokesperson claimed that 500 had died in Jenin alone) with thousands wounded. The Israelis attacked not merely the minute military infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority and various Palestinian groups, but beseiged the civilian infrastructure. As the Israeli refuseniks have pointed out, the destruction of Palestinian civil life, the regular annulment through violence and blockade of a normal life, is integral to Israeli strategy. The aim, they have said, is "to dominate, starve and humiliate an entire people".

Today, sez HP Sauce, the ground invasion of Gaza is being carried out in such a way as to avoid simply destroying Gaza from the air and killing tens of thousands - that is to say, in order to avoid committing genocide, Israel is committing a lesser form of mass murder. After all, it has 'only' killed 470 people so far (that was 13 hours ago, before last night's massacres), and has 'only' injured 2,400. It has 'only' attacked mosques, apartment buildings, universities, police stations, television stations, schools, parliament buildings, ambulances, medical centres, and hospitals. It is 'only' engaged in mass terrorism. In the algorithm of apologia, this is the ultimate rationalisation when everything else has been tried and found wanting. Whatever evil one is perpetrating is a lesser evil than one could perpetrate: the killing only proves one's humanity, and nobility. As Alexei Sayle has said, this is the psychology of the murderer.

Labels: air strikes, barbarism, gaza, humanitarianism, Israel, palestine, sentimentality

Saturday, January 03, 2009

The Invasion Begins: emergency protest tomorrow posted by lenin

From the Stop the War Coalition:

STOP ISRAEL'S CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
EMERGENCY PROTEST AGAINST GROUND INVASION
SECOND NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION CALLED
DAILY PROTESTS AT ISRAELI EMBASSY

Following the start of Israel's ground invasion of Gaza, an
emergency demonstration for Sunday 4 January and a daily
programme of protests has been announced, culminating in a
second national demonstration in London on Saturday 10
January. (See below for details.)

Israel is escalating its already barbaric attacks on Gaza by
sending in ground troops, which will inevitably lead to the
killing of yet more civilians, including many women and
children, and will deepen the humanitarian catastrophe which
the United Nations says Palestinians are suffering.

UN representative Richard Falk says, "The magnitude, the
deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian
law… warrant the characterisation of a crime against
humanity."

This crime against humanity has provoked nationwide anger
and outrage in Britain, as was shown by today's
demonstrations calling for an immediate end to Israel's
attacks on Gaza, with 50,000 demonstrators in London, 4000
in Manchester, 3000 in Edinburgh, and many thousands more
around the country.

EMERGENCY DEMONSTRATION
SUNDAY 4 JANUARY 2.00 PM
ISRAELI EMBASSY, KENSINGTON HIGH STREET
Following Israel's ground invasion, an emergency
demonstration has been called for Sunday, 4th January at
2.00 pm. (Nearest tube High Street Kensington).

DAILY PROTESTS AT THE ISRAELI EMBASSY
There will be daily protests at the Israeli Embassy from
Monday 5 January to Friday 9 January, at 5.30 pm - 7.30 pm.

NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION: SATUDAY 10 JANUARY
The national demonstration on Saturday 10 January is planned
to march to the Israeli Embassy. Stop the War is asking all
its local groups outside of London to book coaches or
arrange other transport to help make this the biggest
demonstration yet seen in this country in the cause of
Palestinian freedom.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, protest, stop the war coalition

Gaza protest posted by lenin

I can't say an exact figure, but tens of thousands turned out for today's protest, more than beating my expectations - more than that, it was a very militant protest, comparable to the response to the invasion of Lebanon. The StWC estimates a turnout of about 75,000. Reportedly, between hundreds and thousands turned out for respective demonstrations in Wales, Glasgow (5,000), Manchester (3,000), Edinburgh (thousands), Leeds (800), Birmingham (300), Portsmouth (500), and Brighton (2-300), to name but a few. I am quite sure that the police are putting an insultingly low figure on the turnout for the media's consumption, but they ought to bear in mind that, apparently, policemen are no longer civilians. Unfortunately, some irresponsible elements decided to treat their footwear as Katyusha rockets, hurling leather shoes, boots and slippers at Downing Street (some footage of this follows later). Several police approached the assembled crowd on horseback and bellowed orders through loud hailers. This, predictably, produced a chorus of boos and taunting from the shoe-lobbing extremists. The rally in Trafalgar Square featured some strong speeches, including - to my astonishment - from Clare Short, who rightly pointed out the absurdity of pretending that Hamas and Israel are on an equal footing, and attacked the lies about Hamas having broken the ceasefire and being a rejectionist party. The speeches will probably be posted on Ady Cousins' Youtube account at some point, so check it for updates.

Afterward, a few thousand people embarked on a trip to Kensington, where they picketed the Israeli embassy. According to Stop the War, they were attacked by police:

George Galloway MP was among protestors on their way this
evening to a demonstration at the Israeli Embassy in
Kensington High Street when they were trapped in the Hype
Park underpass by riot police. The protestors were making
their way to the embassy following the demonstration in
Trafalgar Square this afternoon, attended by tens of
thousands protesting against Israel's bombardment of the
Gaza Strip.

Dozens of protestors, Mr Galloway and his daughter among
them, were thrown to the floor by police charges and a
number of people were injured. "It was very frightening,"
said Mr Galloway. "The police trapped us in the tunnel and
attacked us repeatedly."

Stop the War intends to make the strongest complaint to the
Metropolitan Police. "I have never seen such irresponsible
behaviour by the police on a demonstration," said Andrew
Burgin, a national officer of Stop the War Coalition.

The earlier march and demonstration calling for an end to
Israel's attack on Gaza had been entirely peaceful, as a
packed Trafalgar Square listened to speeches from singer
Annie Lennox, Clare Short MP, representatives from the
Muslim community and many others.

In case anyone should demand to know why we don't just all picket the Israeli embassy en masse, I would point out that this is exactly what is planned for next week: the demonstration will start at Hyde Park and march down to Palace Green. This movement has built up a head of steam with amazing rapidity. It is crucial to keep up the pressure on this government to stop supporting Israel, especially if a ground invasion is imminent. (UPDATE: The ground invasion has begun - time to pull out all stops.) Anyway, here are some pictures of the demo to start you off.

I can't resist adding this one, from the newspapers:

And now, here is the first of your footage, of the notorious shoe-chuckers:

And here is some video of the protest making its way toward Trafalgar Square:

More from the Heathlander here and here. Le Poireau Rouge has photographs from the demo in Paris here. Pics by Ellis Sharp here. Pics from the New York demo here. (I am told there have been really impressive demos across the US, an extremely encouraging political development that may oblige me to temper my anti-American venom in future.) Pics from huge protest by Palestinians in Israel here.

Labels: gaza, hamas, Israel, london, palestine, protest

Friday, January 02, 2009

انتفاضة posted by lenin

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, kids take on military, palestine

Dahiya doctrine in Gaza posted by lenin

Norman Finkelstein mentions something I hadn't heard of before, namely the 'Dahiya doctrine', first mentioned by Israel's Northern Command General Gadi Eisenkot in this interview with Ha'aretz back in October. The doctrine is quite straightforward, as reported by AP (one of two English language news sources to discuss it, and the only major one):

"What happened in the Dahiya quarter in Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired upon. We will apply disproportionate force upon it and cause great damage and destruction there," he said. "From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases."

“This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved”.

Discussing the plans, the International Law Observer commented:

Regional scholars working in the field of military strategy and national security have confirmed that the IDF is putting together a new programme for facing up to possible upcoming wars, whether with Lebanon, Syria or the Gaza Stip. The solution, as it appears, has come in the form of a “disproportionate eruption” through a newly acquired emphasis on air bombardment, where Israel plans “to act fast and with disproportionate force…in order to punish in a scope that would oblige long and costly reconstruction processes.”

It is, as the Heathlander points out, a doctrine based on the annihilation of a major population centre which even Human Rights Watch felt compelled to condemn because of the attacks on infrastructure and civilian apartment blocks where the IDF believed support for Hezbollah was strong. Israeli military doctrine as currently applied in Gaza involves the deliberate perpetration of crimes against humanity. This is why medical centres, ambulances, apartment buildings, a university, mosques, a school and a children's hospital, a television station, and parliament buildings are being blitzed.

Before Israel began its latest operation, it engaged in what can only be described as a terrorist cold-calling campaign, in which Palestinian families were warned that their houses may be bombed if the Israeli military suspected it was hiding weapons or Hamas members. The attempt to preemptively terrorise non-combatants worked in some cases, sending families fleeing. This is perhaps not as crude as the air-dropped leaflets and radio messages used by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, during which civilians were simply ordered to leave on pain of fiery death, but if Israel intends a ground assault, this is surely to be the next step. Then they will say, as the US did in Fallujah, 'we ordered them to leave, so only bad guys can remain', as if the war crime of ethnic cleansing justified the war crime of mass bombing.

Labels: dahiya doctrine, gaza, hamas, hezbollah, Israel, lebanon, zionism

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Is the Gaza attack driving a wedge through the pro-Israel camp? posted by lenin

Just a thought. Whether it's Mad Mel sputtering about Ed Hussain's apostasy, or a member of Labour Friends of Israel expressing dismay over the attack on Gaza, isn't there some suggestive evidence accruing that Israel's usual allies are divided by this assault, and particularly by the sheer viciousness of it? Even the most pro-Israel constituency in the world, the American public, is divided, with 44% backing the attacks and 41% opposed.

By and large, it has to be said, some of the liberal responses have been immensely, if predictably, disheartening. The Labour Friend of Israel in question, for example, relies on the falsehood that Hamas broke the ceasefire (it did not), and that Hamas is in rebellion against the elected government (Hamas is the elected government, and has always sought national unity, despite the coup-plotting of the Fatah faction). David Grossman, supposedly on the left of the Israeli spectrum (and supported by Norman Geras), calls for the attacks to be ceased now that Hamas has been given a punishment beating, meaning that he approves of the blood-letting to date. The asshole also manages to sound magnanimous about it. Robert Dreyfuss, a usually very critical voice at The Nation, nonetheless posits a spurious equivalence between the forces involved, and seems mainly angered about the two sides having made life difficult for Obama (this is similar to The Nation's first reaction to Mumbai, which involved a meditation on how it affected Obama's prospects once in office). The Huffington Post, from what I have seen of it, seems to be largely supporting the venture.

Still, the uneasiness among some of Israel's supporters seems to be in stark contrast to the strident support for aggression in Lebanon back in 2006. This is encouraging. The scale, swiftness and militancy of protests probably had an effect here. Were it not for the immediate expressions of outrage, including the brilliant blockades outside the Israeli embassy in London, I suspect that many of the critics would have held their tongues, or moderated their position. That is one more reason, at least, to make this Saturday's protest in London as huge as possible.

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, zionism

Livni posted by lenin

"There is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce."

Labels: air strikes, gaza, hamas, Israel, palestine, zionism

Glorification of resistance posted by lenin

Seen on the Falls Road, Belfast:

Labels: air strikes, gaza, Israel, palestine, resistance, war crimes, zionism

Support the occupations. posted by lenin

Ugly turn posted by lenin

The wild cat strikes are not racist posted by lenin

France's General Strike posted by lenin

BBC: keep the pressure on posted by lenin

The war against pre-terrorism posted by lenin

On Gaza occupations posted by lenin

Who has the right to self-defence? posted by lenin

Obama and the liberal defence of murder posted by lenin

Gaza appeal posted by lenin

Boycott statement posted by lenin

Broadcasting House invaded posted by lenin

CBS on Israel-Palestine posted by lenin

Update from Glasgow Stop the War posted by lenin

The very model of a modern director-general posted by lenin

BBC HQ occupied! posted by lenin

Independent on Sunday reviews 'Liberal Defence' posted by lenin

BBC shoe in posted by lenin

The facts are insufficiently impartial posted by lenin

The shock doctrine at work posted by lenin

This land is your land posted by lenin

Gaza Protest posted by lenin

"Wiped off the map" posted by lenin

To earth with a crash posted by lenin

A friendly warning from the IDF posted by lenin

Beit Lahiya posted by lenin

Map of Destruction posted by lenin

Gaza: was there a winner? posted by lenin

Outposts of civilization posted by lenin

Strange ceasefire. posted by lenin

"IDF troops posing as Hamas men" posted by lenin

"Israel must lose". posted by lenin

Insufficiently deceased. posted by lenin

The Sun exposed over British Gaza 'blowback' posted by lenin

Lights Out in Gaza? posted by lenin

SOAS students occupy Brunei Gallery in solidarity with Gaza posted by bat020

Operation Cast Lead, phase III posted by lenin

NYC Gaza protests posted by lenin

Israel: A Nation in Decline? Discuss. posted by lenin

"Wipe them all out" posted by lenin

"Israel must lose" posted by lenin

Resisting the recession posted by lenin

Speeches from the Gaza demo posted by lenin

More on "the only democracy in the Middle East" posted by lenin

Jon Stewart on Gaza posted by lenin

Sderot woman speaks out against Gaza op posted by lenin

Up to 200,000 protest Israeli aggression in Central London posted by lenin

More videos and a pic.... posted by lenin

Israeli embassy posted by lenin

Videos from demo taken within the last 30 mins posted by lenin

Pics from demo posted by lenin

Massive, noisy and freezing posted by lenin

Arrived. posted by lenin

Today's protest posted by lenin

Nasrallah: Arab leaders should learn from Chavez posted by lenin

Why are people so mean to poor little Israel? posted by lenin

War pornography posted by lenin

An extremist minority who should be ostracised. posted by lenin

UNRWA spokesperson statement on Israeli retraction of mortar fire claims posted by lenin

Eye-witness accounts from Gaza posted by lenin

We take the greatest care... posted by lenin

A lie you weren't supposed to believe posted by lenin

Israeli consulate occupied posted by lenin

Government attempts to block Gaza march posted by lenin

Free Gaza posted by lenin

The Only Democracy in the Middle East posted by lenin

Israel's fabricated rocket crisis posted by lenin

On hasbara posted by lenin

It was a 'Hamas stronghold' posted by lenin

At what point does it become genocide? posted by lenin

A man-made disaster. posted by lenin

Gaza: Could Israel Lose? posted by lenin

Why oh why Obama won't 'speak out'? posted by lenin

Emergency Gaza Protest Outside Israeli Embassy posted by lenin

Egyptians protest for Gaza - "Mubarak! You bring us shame!" posted by lenin

Sentimentality as the superstructure of barbarism posted by lenin

The Invasion Begins: emergency protest tomorrow posted by lenin

Gaza protest posted by lenin

انتفاضة posted by lenin

Dahiya doctrine in Gaza posted by lenin