Editorial: One State, Two States or No States?
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Written comment received at Head Office from comrade Kephas Mulenga:I refer to the editorial which appeared in the Socialist Standard September 2013. I had trouble in visualizing the editorial concerning Israel as an aggressor in the Middle East. It is hard for me to believe that Hamas is not an affront to political settlement in Palestine. Its refusal to merge with the PLO was not touched upon.The ideology of Zionism like apartheid is only believed in by those who hold state power — the military generals. Not every Jewish citizen of Israel is Zionist at heart — they are merely workers, Indeed Jews and Arabs live side by side in Israel and Palestine. Zionism is a matter of nationalism. It is a political opportunity of the ruling elites to defend their racial and political prejudices against Hamas and the PLO.I feel that the editorial should have condemned both Hamas and the political elites in Israel for having failed to find a political solution for the long-waged war. Your depicting of Israel as a conderella state seems like a wanton supporting and taking sides between Arabic and Jewish nationalism. Israel is not notoriously a political counter-weight to the setting up an independent Palestinian state. It is true that Zionism is a racial rhetoric and so are the political sentiments of Hamas.Our appeal must concentrate on the Jewish and Palestine workers to shy away from the political intentions of both the rulers of Israel and Hamas. But the plain fact is there for everyone to see — that condemned Israel as the aggressor even without consideration of the deeper and long-lasting anti-Western political or nationalist grievances being waged by Hamas both against Israel, Lebanon and Egypt.
Following is a discussion on the page titled: Editorial: One State, Two States or No States?.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!I find myself in general agreement with comrade Mulenga, in recent days the 'Left' has refound it's antiwar principles. Months of slaughter in Iraq, in Syria, in the Ukraine and in countless other conflicts where workers have been hurled at the throats of their brothers in the name of nation, of faith, or of ideology; but always in the service of Capital, have found little protest from the myriad forces of the left. Now that the Israeli- Palestian conflict has re intensified mas demonstrations have sprung up across the country. Israel is being universally condemned as an Apartheid ( or even Nazi!) pariah, even as it remains a parliamentary democracy with a functioning civil society, free trades unions (which organise both Arab and Jewish workers), And Israeli military operations are regularly represented as a crime equivalent to, or even worse than the holocaust, explicitly determined to exterminate the Palestinians.the left do all this as a part of justifying a political agenda which under serious consideration would be condemned by anyone with even an ounce of Socialist, or working class consciousness. They do not want to unite the working class in order to challenge and overthrow capitalism and it's blood soaked sirens; Nationalism and Religion. Instead they campaign for the mass expulsion of millions of people from their homes, purely on the basis of their race. And the establishment of a racially and religiously pure state. In this they are happy to be the catspaws of religious psychopaths and the capitalist ruling classes of the Arab States. Only the realisation of our common class interests as workers, the ending of all states and the establishment of a socialist society can free the people of the region from this cycle of violence. 8 years ago when I was a member of class war I wrote the following, which had the distinction of being banned by several 'anarchist' websites ( an honour I also got for my statement 'Islamophobes r us')HezBollocks and IsRabies (26th July 2006)A Class War Federation statement on the War in LebanonClass War is appalled at the carnage that is occurring in the Middle East. We are also disappointed but not surprised at what is being said about it, especially by some "progressive" organisations.Lebanon is being turned into a grotesque war-games board as the real protagonists – The USA and Iran use their proxies to slug it out.Neither the Israeli army nor Hezbollah give a flying fuck about 'their' civilians, except as bloody totems to hang in front of the cameras of the world's press in order to justify their own next atrocity.The left have adopted two approaches.Firstly, wholesale adoption of the Islamist agenda, cheerleading Hamas or Hezbollah without qualification or criticism. This 'Idiot anti-imperialism', the trademark of today's SWP, says my enemy's enemy is my friend and any criticism of them, no matter how mild, is 'racism, islamophobia, and Zionist pro American warmongering.'The second approach is slightly more subtle – Hezbollah is fighting back, therefore we must support Hezbollah and the slogan 'we are all Hezbollah' is an act of basic solidarity with those who are fighting back against imperialism – the slogan is compared with the Parisian students who, when Danny Cohn-Bendit was attacked in the bourgeois press as a German Jew, marched through Paris chanting 'nous sommes tout les jiufs allemands!' (we are all German Jews).This argument is crap – Hezbollah isn't a nationality or a racial epithet, it is a political party/militia, if the slogan really wanted to fit then the SWP should have handed out placards proclaiming 'WE ARE ALL SH'ITE'.Lebanon has a radical history, albeit one distorted by the chains of Leninist communism, but this has been written out of the Brit left's history books in their rush to embrace Islamo-trottery.A real working class alternative is desperately needed – one that recognises that there can be no peace whilst borders are drawn by reference to the Torah, and International policy is determined in Washington by consulting the Book of Revelations."Israelis living in Tiberuius fund the war, and contribute bodies to the war. It's not true to say they are wholly 'innocent'… "- that quote is from an otherwise relatively sane leftist, and is a justification for every atrocity against civilians ever. It gives an idea just how much the left loses it when the question of Israel is raised.The Israeli state oppresses the Palestinians, driving them into the hands of the fanatics of Hamas out of despair at the failure of the secular Palestinian left. In turn the suicide bombers provide for the Israeli state 'proof' of the murderous nature of the Palestinians and drives the Israeli public to support harsher and harsher measures against the 'terrorists'.This is a self destructive spiral and must be broken.The Israeli state is not shaken by katyushas or by suicide bombers – it is strengthened by them.The last real challenge to the Israeli state was the Intifada, mass popular resistance on the streets of the west bank and Gaza, and amongst the 'Israeli Arab' population, this rose up from below from the streets and spread all across the middle east and north Africa as the Arab working class drew inspiration from the bravery of the Palestinian youth, and employed the same tactics to confront their own ruling classes. Inside Israel proper the intifada created real tensions within the army, as soldiers refused to be used to gun down children and sparked a massive peace movement amongst the general population.The Oslo peace process was designed to derail the intifada and create from the PLO a police force to keep the unruly Palestinians in line.All the arguments of the left revolve around one state/two state. All happily accept the artificial divisions created in the twentieth century by the very imperialists that they claim to oppose, and all ignore the actual people – Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese, Druse, Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Bedouin – who live there. Re-jigging the lines on a map will create new oppressions, new grievances and new horrors, and we as revolutionaries should have no part in assisting that.We should stand shoulder to shoulder with those struggling against the oppressors of the Israeli state and the Palestinian bantustan. We fight against our 'own' rulers who attempt to use this slaughter to their own ends and use measly words 'condemning the violence' whilst writing out the receipts for the latest arms contract.Any state solution is a continuation of the same bullshit.No BordersNo StatesNo GodsNo War but the Class War
ALB wrote:"Multiculturalism" is the government policy of encouraging historically-evolved cultural groups to identify with that group and to construct and teach them a concocted history to that end. I'm opposed to it on the ground that it encourages identity politics instead of class politics. As was well explained in an article from Class War in 2007 which can be found by typing "cowley club" + "class war" + "multiculturalism" into a search engine (perhaps someone can find an easier way of accessing it. It's from the Summer 2007 and entitled "Multiculturalism — The Newspeak of the Left Cop".)Did you also have a hand in this article too?
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