Solidarity with the Palestinians AfghanistanAfghanistan2 MidEast Solidarity Autumn 2002 When I first...

MidEast Solidarity #2 $2 Autumn 2002

Middle East bulletin of revolution www.revolution.org.nz

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MidEast Solidarity Autumn 20022

When I first read the script to BlackHawk Down, I didn’t think it was thegreatest thing in the world—far from it.But I thought the script at least raisedsome very important questions that aremissing from the final product. I wasmisled to think that the release of thefilm would allow for forums like thisone—where some of these questionscould be answered. In certain scenes,U.S. soldiers—before they evenentered the now-infamous firefights inMogadishu—were asking whether theU.S. should be there, how effective theU.S. military presence was, and whythe U.S. was targeting one specificwarlord in Somalia, Gen. MohammedFarah Aidid.

As we moved closer to actuallyfilming the script, the script movedfurther and further away from the littlethat existed of its questioning character.

In February of last year, anotheractor and I flew down together toGeorgia for our “Ranger OrientationTraining” at a place many of you mightknow—Fort Benning in Columbus,Georgia.

In Atlanta, we caught a shuttle planeto Columbus, and on our flight, therewere a bunch of guys with Marinehaircuts speaking Spanish. It took usa few moments to realize these guyswere “students” of the School of theAmericas, the U.S. Army’s own terroristtraining camp for Latin America, whichis stationed at Fort Benning. Thatstarted to put things into perspective.

US Army RangersFor the next five days, we received acrash course in military training at FortBenning, and I learned a lot. The U.S.Army Rangers, who we were portrayingin the film, are an elite group of soldiersthat only number 1,500 or so. Theiraverage age is 19. They’re not SpecialForces, but they carry out “SpecialOps”—or Special Operations.

While they trace their history backto wars that helped to ethnicallycleanse Native Americans and to theirexploits in the Civil War fighting for theSouth, the modern-day Rangers werecreated to help rejuvenate a defeatedand demoralized U.S. imperialism afterthe war in Vietnam. Since then, they’vebeen used in all sorts of interventions—from Lebanon to Grenada to Panama,

and, of course, Somalia.The Rangers—whose motto is

“Rangers lead the way”—are supposedto be the shining example of the Army.Their extreme training, tan berets andugly haircuts are supposed to separatethem from the hundreds of thousandsof other soldiers.

Before you go to Rangers school,you go through the Rangers’ ownversion of boot camp—which is calledRIP, or the “Ranger IndoctrinationProgram.” RIP is only about threeweeks. In Rangers school, you get onemeal a day and two hours sleep forabout 10 weeks.

This is all meant to simulate theharsh conditions of war. But no matterhow much you train and no matter howmuch you complete mock missions inlife-sized mock cities at Fort Benning,it can’t prepare you for actual combat,when the bullets are ripping past yourhead.

Client stateDuring the Cold War, Somalia was aclient state of the former USSR, withthe U.S. supporting the regime of KingHaile Selassie in rival Ethiopia. WhenHaile Selassie was overthrown, thealliances switched, and the U.S. thenbacked the dictator Siad Barre inSomalia.

From the late 1970s onward, theU.S. sent about $50 million a year inarms to Barre’s regime to help him keepa tight grip on the country. When

repression wasn’t enough, Barreexploited divisions among the differentclans in Somalia. When Barre wasoverthrown, these clan rivalriesexploded.

The civil war that followed caused ahorrible famine that took 300,000 lives,as the warring factions took over thefarms of rival clans and burned theircrops.

Had the U.S. given Somaliaconstructive aid—like money foragriculture and infrastructure, insteadof military aid—the famine most likelynever would have happened. U.S.intervention was supposedly to stopthis famine, but the reality is completelydifferent.

The film Black Hawk Down paintsthe Somali people as wild savages.Elvis Mitchell, who reviewed the film forthe New York Times when it opened inDecember, wrote: “The lack ofcharacterization converts the Somalisinto a pack of snarling dark-skinnedbeasts—intended or not, it reeks ofglumly staged racism.”

I think that’s an accurate description.The Somalis are portrayed as if theydon’t know what’s going on, as if they’retrying to kill the Americans becausethey - like all other “evildoers” - will doanything to bite the hand that feedsthem. But the Somalis aren’t a stupidpeople. In fact, many were upsetbecause the U.S. military presencepropped up people tied to the old,corrupt Barre regime. The UnitedNations wasn’t too favored either—because the UN was run at the time byBoutros Boutros-Ghali, a formerEgyptian official who also supportedBarre’s regime.

Somalis good reason to be upsetThe Somalis had plenty of reason tobe upset with the U.S. presence,especially when the U.S. objectivechanged from “food distribution” tobasically kidnapping Gen. Aidid. Aididhad climbed the ranks of Barre’sregime, later helped to depose him andthen became the U.S. government’s“Public Enemy Number One.”

There was nothing much differentabout Aidid from the other warlordsvying for power. The main differencewas that he wasn’t yet ready to cut adeal with the U.S.

Black Hawk Down actor speaks outBrendan Sexton 111, who played the part of ‘Aphabet’ in Black Hawk Down, wrote the following criticalaccount of the film and the US intervention in Somalia

MidEast Solidarity Autumn 2002 3

Warlords, dictators and terrorists arenormally okay with the U.S., as longas they do the bidding of U.S. corporateinterests. In fact, the U.S. promotedAidid for a time. He belongs on that longlist of former U.S. allies who commitatrocities with impunity, but once theystep out of line are denounced as the“new Hitler”--a list that includes the likesof Osama bin Laden, Saddam Husseinand Slobodan Milosevic.

What the U.S. tried to accomplishin Somalia was nearly unprecedented.The goal was to travel thousands ofmiles to a different continent andliterally kidnap someone who wassurrounded by armed men.

DisastersThe first few attempts to capture Aididand his top lieutenants were disasters.First, U.S. troops attacked the wronghouse, which turned out to be the officefor the UN Development Program.Later, they attacked the offices of thecharities World Concern and DoctorsWithout Borders.

Unfortunately, there’s l itt leinformation out there on Somalia. Whathappened in 1993 is probably the mostunder-researched U.S. intervention ofthe past 50 years.

This is unfortunate because there’smuch to learn from Somalia. Forexample, many people who werehorrified by the destruction caused byU.S. bombs in Afghanistan called onthe U.S. to use ground troops tominimize the killing.

Let’s not forget that U.S. groundtroops caused much more devastationin Mogadishu—killing close to 10,000people in a matter of just a few weeks.Let’s not forget that U.S. ground troopsturned whole neighborhoods ofPanama City to rubble in 1989, whilekilling thousands of people.

We can’t just question the tacticsused by the U.S. military. We have toquestion the U.S. government’s claimthat it has the moral high ground tointervene anywhere, at any time, in anyway it so chooses.

Somalia, in certain ways, representsa recurring theme with U.S.interventions abroad. It’s one of thepoorest countries in the world, comingface to face with the world’s richest andmost powerful—much like Afghanistan.

One of the true tragedies of the warin Somalia was the support that itreceived from liberals and evenradicals.

Vietnam SyndromeWhen the world’s biggest militaryattacked a struggle for nationalliberation in Vietnam, it was met withdissent at home. This created what wascalled the “Vietnam syndrome”—thereluctance of the U.S. to commit groundtroops abroad.

The Vietnam syndrome was a goodthing. It meant that the U.S. had to pullout of Indochina, and it meant that theworld’s biggest bully couldn’t as easilygo wherever it wanted, thus savingmillions of lives.

The 1980s saw the restoration ofU.S. imperialism—baby step by babystep—with covert and overt operationsin Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvadorand Panama.

But the rehabilitation really tookplace in the 1990s, with the reinventionof U.S. imperialism through whatbecame known as “humanitarianintervention”—operations like“Operation Restore Hope” in Somalia,“Operation Restore Democracy” inHaiti in 1994, and interventions in theformer Yugoslavia in 1995 and 1999.

When the U.S. was attackinggenuine national liberation movements,

it was much clearer why U.S.intervention had to be opposed. Butwhen the U.S. went up against the “evildictators” in the interest of “helpingpeople,” it became more confusing.

U.S. officials used the cover of“humanitarian intervention” formissions abroad that actually worsenedpeople’s lives in those countries.

Afghanistan—bombing an alreadywar-torn country, leaving more than3,700 dead and hundreds of thousandsmore on the brink of starvation.Kosovo—2,000 dead in the 1999bombing campaign, the war worsenedthe refugee crisis, and generations tocome will grow up with high levels ofcancer because of the U.S. use ofdepleted uranium. This is the“humanity” of U.S. humanitarianinterventions.

This should teach us that, at best,the U.S. can only create a more violent,unstable world when it intervenesabroad.

Many people say that those of uswho are against the war have noanswers to the world’s problems. Theysay that we advocate doing nothing.But hindering the U.S.’s ability tointervene is actually doing something—it’s saving lives.

Plus, our movement can take upslogans and demands like “Money forjobs, not for war” and “U.S. out of theMiddle East”—which, if won, couldactually better millions of people’s lives.

That’s a project worth fighting for,and, if you’re not involved with that fightalready, I encourage you to getinvolved.

The above is the text of a February 11speech Brendan Sexton gave at aColumbia University forum on the war.


United Nations - friend or foe?

Two faces of the UN - the velvet glove(above) and the fist (below)

a revolutionary programme, we the

Isn’t the United Nations a neutralbody representing the internationalcommunity? Can’t it work in anunbiased way?

The United Nations was established bythe winning powers in WW2. Theyredivided the world between them, withlittle concern for anyone else. TheUnited Nations was created to givelegitimacy to this new world order.

One of the first major activitiesof the UN was to create the stateof Israel, thereby dispossessingthe Palestinians. Shortly afterthis, the UN intervened militarilyin Korea to back up thedictatorship in the South andpreserve imperialist interests. Inthe Congo in the early 1960s, theUnited Nations used its ‘neutral’cover to play an important part inthe overthrow of the radicalregime of Patrice Lumumba. Thisresulted in years of dictatorshipand the continued plunder of thewealth of the Congo by Westerninterests.

Today, the United Nations isresponsible for the sanctions onIraq – sanctions which h a v ekil led hundreds andhundreds of thousands ofIraqi people.

The idea of theinternational communityalso needs to bechallenged. Are ordinaryworkers anywhere in theworld are part of this‘international community?Or does the term merelyrefer to Westerngovernments andlegitimise their continuedinterference in the affairsof Third World countries.

What about aid? Surelythe UN is useful inproviding humanitarianassistance?

In Afghanistan, Westernaid agencies begged for abreak in the bombingcampaign, but the US-led

coalition simply refused. When theanti-Taliban Northern Alliance said itdidn’t want UN forces in Afghanistan,British forces, operating under thebanner of the UN, simply seizedBagram Airport outside Kabul and saidit was needed in order to distribute aid.

In other words, even at besthumanitarian aid delivered by the UNis subordinate to the militarymachinations of the Western powers.

Moreover, aid itself is a politicalweapon wielded by the Westernpowers, including when it comes in aUN package. It never goes to ThirdWorld countries without strings. It isused to get governments and peoplesin the Third World to follow policyprescriptions laid down by the West.

Because it is a tool for advancingthe interests of the Western powerswho control it, the UN has a terrible

record on ‘humanitarian’ issues.Their sanctions on Iraq are themost glaring example. But youcan also take examples such asSomalia. There, in 1992, the UNused fake pictures of famine tojustify an invasion by 30,000 UStroops who shot dead 5,000Somalis and ended up causingreal mass starvation.

But how we can provide aid topeople who need it withoutdoing so through the UnitedNations?

There are a number ofalternatives. Some people favour

demanding no-strings aidfrom the West; this meansthat the West should justhand over aid to ThirdWorld countries. Althoughthis would be fair enough,it’s very unlikely that anyWestern governmentswould do this. They willalways use whateverweapons are in theirpossession to advancetheir own interests in suchsituations.

Moreover, if we couldbuild a mass movementstrong enough to makethem do this, wouldn’t it bebetter for that massmovement to organisedirect aid – where workersand concerned people inthe West donate aidwhich is delivered directlyto fellow organisations inthe Third World, eg totrade unions and other

Many well-intentioned people still see the United Nations as some kind of alternative to imperialism. Belowwe review the arguments and put the anti-imperialist case


bodies which represent ordinarypeople.

This is the most effective solidarity– grassroots solidarity. It is realsolidarity and real internationalism,because it builds links between thepeoples of the world, rather thanbetween regimes and institutions whichoppress us.

This kind of solidarity andinternationalism is therefore linked tothe fight for a better world as well,rather than applying a few band-aidswhile preserving the existinginternational order.

What about terrorism and alsodictators in the Third World? Surelysome kind of UN-sponsoredinternational court is useful?

Firstly, if the US government wants totry the people who carried out theSeptember 11 attacks, they can dowhat anyone else does. Assembleevidence, find the party the evidencepoints to and seek their extradition.The Taliban said that if the USpresented them with a prima facie casein relation to Bin Laden, they’d handhim over. Bush bombed them andinvaded Afghanistan anyway.

The main point, however, is that forthose of us who are serious about abetter world, it is pointless to get intothe exercise of giving advice to theWestern powers on how to carry outtheir policies. Rather, we need to turnthe argument around and askquestions like, “How can the oppressedof the world get our oppressors off ourbacks?” and “How can we establishgood relations with the mass of people

in the Third World and show them weare their allies, that the mass of peoplein the West are part of the solution andnot part of the problem?”

As long as we debate on the terrainlaid out by the Western governmentsand their flunkeys, we will never getanywhere.

Just look at who the real warcriminals are since WW2. Look at whatthe Allied powers got away with evenin WW2, with Hiroshima and Nagasakiand the fire-bombing of Tokyo and alsoGerman cities. Look at what the USgot away with in Vietnam. Look atBritain and France’s dirty records intheir colonial wars in the twentiethcentury. Does anyone seriouslyimagine the members of Westerngovernments responsible for all this aregoing to be brought before internationalcourts.

International courts are instrumentsof Western governments’ policy,masquerading as impartial, legalinstitutions. First comes the bigpropaganda campaign about someThird World tyrant, then comes theWestern bombs and invasion, thencomes the trial to legitimise thepropaganda, bombs and invasions.

But is there really any alternative tothe United Nations?

Yes, certainly. It is the alternative ofprojects l ike Workers Aid toAfghanistan. This provided aid directlyfrom workers in the West to secularworkers’ organisations in Pakistan whochannelled it into Afghanistan.

Not only does workers’ direct aidbuild up solidarity between the workers

and oppressed of the whole world, itmeans there are no fat cat bureaucratsskimming off huge administrative feesor state officials in Third Worldcountries grabbing the aid forthemselves.

So even at the most basic level, it ismore effective than UN aid. In the bigpicture scenario, it means underminingthe use of aid as a political weapon bythe Western ruling classes and,instead, promoting the commoninterests of workers the world over.

This kind of solidarity used to bevery common on the left. Unfortunately,as much of the left has becomeinstitutionalised over the years, it is nowquite rare. Many on the left prefer nowto help run capitalism, rather thanstruggle for its overthrow.

The kind of alternative aid which canbe developed therefore asserts thepolitical independence, too, of theoppressed from the institutions of ouroppressors.

So we are advocating a workingclass, rank-and-file response which isboth a realistic alternative to Westerninterference and domination and a partof struggling for fundamental, globalsocial change.

OK, you’ve got me convinced. Nowhow can I get involved?

See page 20.

Scott Hamilton of Auckland’s Anti-Imperialist Coalition and Philip Fergusonof Christchurch’s MidEast Collectivecontributed the anti-imperialist arguments

The UN kills with bombs and sanctions, hardly an improvement on the more open imperialism of the US and its allies


Peace is not good enoughDuring the campaign against the waron Afghanistan, some leading ‘peace’campaigners put their cosy relationshipwith Helen Clark ahead of the rights ofthe Afghan people not to be bombedby the West. One notable peacecampaigner preferred not to speak outbecause it got in the way of her coffeesoirees with Clark. Some ‘peace’luminaries were even happy to playsome kind of role in helping the Westcobble together a regime of underlingsin Kabul.

Abroad various ‘moderate’ left and‘peace’ people not only failed to workto build an anti-interventionistmovement, but actually supported theWest’s war on Afghanistan, arguingthat this was somehow ‘different’ to theusual imperialist wars in and on theThird World.

Peace or freedom?For some of the peacenicks, peace iswhat is primary, not justice, let alonehuman emancipation. But peace in theThird World is more often than not thepeace of the grave, rather than thepeace of prosperity and freedom.

As radical Jamaican musician PeterTosh once addressed such people,“Everyone is talking about peace, butno-one is talking about justice; I wantequal rights and justice.”

The fight against the intervention inAfghanistan revealed that there is onlyone basis on which a consistentstruggle can be waged – the basis ofclass-oriented anti-imperialist politics.

At the end of the day, the middleclass in New Zealand has little reasonto support the peoples of the ThirdWorld against domination and plunderby the West. Even the most ‘advanced’liberals from the middle class merely

want to alter the terms on which thedomination and exploitation take place.

Since the Western powers arethemselves tending these days toreplace exhausted dictatorships in theThird World with shiny, new‘democratic’ regimes even morebeholden to them, the liberalpeacenicks’ politics fit in quite well withWestern foreign policy.

Not surprisingly, there has been ahuge increase in the role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs),many of which are bound by all kindsof threads to Western governments andpolicy, despite their name.

By contrast, the working classes ofthe First World have every reason tosupport the peoples of the Third World.For a start, we are exploited by thesame global class of capitalists, whoare overwhelmingly based in the FirstWorld. And the same politicians whohave overseen cuts in workers’ livingstandards in the West over the past twodecades are the ones organising thebombings, sanctions and interventionsin Third World countries.

Also at issue is the struggle ofworkers in the West for emancipation.The class struggle of Western workers

simply cannot be pursued effectively ifone day workers here strike againsttheir bosses and the next day line upbehind their bosses against the peopleof the Third World. To fight ourexploiters at home we need todifferentiate ourselves from them onevery issue, establish an independentclass position, and oppose ourexploiters’ policies at home and abroad.

Only the working class has a realstake in consistently opposingimperialism and supporting theoppressed peoples of the Third World,because our exploiters and theirs arethe same. And only the working classhas the power to prevent Westernintervention, because we are thepeople who create all the goods andservices that make the world go round.

An antiwar movement that is seriousabout establishing a permanent peaceacross the globe has to fight to removethe causes of conflict. The causes arebound up with the terrible inequalityand other injustices that are entrenchedin the global order of capitalism. Thuswe have to orient to the working class– the only class in NZ and otherWestern societies that has a reasonand an interest in fighting for a betterworld, and the only class with thepotential power to bring this about.

In short, we need to build a militantanti-imperialist movement, not a mealy-mouthed peace movement. Such amovement must orient to the workingclass and work to raise the politicalconsciousness of workers with the goalof putting an end to inequality,exploitation and oppression andestablishing a new world of plenty andfreedom. Only the establishment ofsuch a world can consign war and theweapons of war to the museum of thepast.

Wellington demo after Sept 11 called for ‘reconciliation not revenge’. But peoplein the Third World need liberation!

‘Peace’ usuallymeans thepeace of relent-less oppres-sion for ThirdWorld people.What they needfrom us is soli-darity with theirstruggles, notcalls to makepeace withtheir oppres-sors in theWest.


Palestine - solidarity urgently needed

This is an anti-imperialist workgroupestablished by supporters ofr e v o l u t i o n magazine. Weconcentrate on the Middle Eastbecause it is the area in which thecontradiction between the rights ofoppressed people in the Third Worldand the inhumanity and intervention ofimperialism is currently sharpest. Inparticular, we focus on the struggle ofthe Palestinians for freedom and theright of the Iraqi people to run their owncountry without Western sanctions andbombings. We counter the racistimages of Arabs prevalent in theWestern media, showing that theirstruggles are completely rational anddeserving of our support.

This support is not because we seethem as helpless victims - it is aquestion of working class solidarityacross frontiers, in support of the rightsof people struggling for the same thingsas most people in the West want.

Moreover, this internationalism is vitalto the development of real classconsciousness in the West. Classconsciousness is not about a group ofworkers in NZ just fighting for a wagerise - it is about workers here seeingthemselves as part of an internationalclass. This means making commoncause with workers around the worldagainst our own government, the NZgovernment, and its all ies inWashington, Canberra, London andother imperialist centres.

As long as workers in the Westremain passive in the face ofoppression in the Third World, or evengo along with it, we will never pose aserious threat to our own rulers andexploiters.

While focussing our main attentionon information and solidarity with thePalestinians and the people of Iraq, asagainst Western domination andoppression, we also condemn the part

played by those who have sold out thePalestinian struggle and act as Israel’sfifth column: the PLO leadershiparound Yasser Arafat and thePalestinian Authority.

* Western Hands off the Middle Eastand Afghanistan* End the sanctions and bombings ofIraq* End Israeli repression of thePalestinians and Western backing ofIsrael* For the dismantling of the apartheid-like state of Israel* For a democratic, secular Palestine -a free, socialist Palestine withoutdistinction between Jew and Arab; fullequality for all* No deals which betray the rights ofthe oppressed - eg Camp David andthe Oslo Accords

Come along and get involved - seep20.

Middle East Information and Solidarity Collective

As we go to press, Israeli troopscontinue to run amok in Palestinianareas in the Occupied Territories on theWest Bank. Tanks, armouredpersonnel carriers and heavily-armedsoldiers are terrorising a largely-defenceless Palestinian population.

Forty years ago the Israeli state’sfriends and all ies administeringapartheid in South Africa similarly ranamok, committing the Sharpevillemassacre. Sharpeville became abyword for the brutality of the apartheidregime. Whereas the rulers in SouthAfrica decided, under mass pressure,to call it a day on apartheid there, theIsraelis have continued on, confidentof support from Western governments.

AbominatedAround the world, the apartheid regimein South Africa was abominated. Thebiggest anti-apartheid protests in theworld, outside of South Africa itself,took place in New Zealand. Althoughit had much earlier roots, the anti-apartheid movement here reachedmass proportions in the 1970s and,especially, the 1980s.

After the huge and militant protestsof 1981, around the Springbok tour ofthat year – see revolution #16 and #17for twentieth anniversary accounts –sporting contact with South Africa wasno longer tenable. Protesters here

braved the batonsand other violence ofthe riot police andbrutal attacks by toursupporters in orderto help isolate SouthAfrica and showsolidarity with theoppressed blackmajority there.

O p p o s i n gapartheid in SouthAfrica was the ‘greatcause’ worldwide,and especially inNew Zealand, in the1980s. Twentyyears on we need towork to make the dismantling ofapartheid Israel the same kind of ‘greatcause’.

How far we have to goA number of protests have taken placein NZ recently – big pickets of the IsraeliConsulate in Wellington, starting onApril 3, and a march of 4-500 people inAuckland on April 6. These are goodstarts, but they also reveal how farbehind we are in this work comparedto the rest of the world (see pp22-23).

There is one hell of a lot to do.However, even the anti-apartheidmovement here began with just a tinycore of committed activists. We need

such a core now to work and build, toensure we start to generate amomentum in support of thePalestinians and the ending ofapartheid Israel similar to the kind ofmomentum created here in support ofthe black struggle against apartheid inSouth Africa.

The Palestinians have been turnedinto refugees and outcasts in their owncountry for over 50 years already. Let’swork to make sure they don’t spend thenext 50 in the same state. Let’s maketheir cause our cause – the cause ofall workers and progressive people inNew Zealand.


When the last Israeli troops leftthe Gaza strip in May 1994, theywere accompanied by stoneshurled by thousands of youngPalestinian protestors and riflevolleys were shot in the air as asign of victory. Indeed the youngdemonstrators had every reasonto feel a sense of victory.

It was them, their friends, theirbrothers and their sisters, whoseresilient defiance against theIsraeli authority, through on-going rioting and stone throwingat Israeli troops, forced theIsraeli state into makingconcessions. Since 1987, it wastheir Intifada - which means both t h e“awakening” and the “uprising” inArabic - and their “war of the stones”,as it came to be known, whichmaintained a state of ungovernabilityover much of the Israeli-occupiedterritories. This was particularly so inthe refugee camps in which the poorestlayers of the Palestinian people areimpounded by the Israeli state.

DemoralisingOver nearly seven years, hundreds ofPalestinian youth were shot, thousandswere arrested and jailed. Yet day inand day out, they went back onto thestreets, constantly pulling more youthinto the fight. Their mobilisation madeit impossible for the Israeli state toconsolidate its rule over the occupiedterritories. Even more worrying for theIsraeli state was the increasinglydemoralising effect of the “war of thestones” on its own soldiers. They couldno longer be described as carrying outthe “noble” task of defending the veryexistence of the Israeli state againstterrorist groups and hostile Arabdictators.

The only “enemies” that Israelisoldiers ever confronted now were 15-year old Palestinians hurling stones atthem, against whom they were orderedto use their heavy automatic weaponry.They were constantly surrounded by

the hostil ity of an impoverishedpopulation. This was leading more andmore Israeli soldiers, and even officersto question the whole policy behind thedirty job they were ordered to do.

Without the “war of the stones”, theso-called “historical” handshakebetween Yasir Arafat - Israel’s mostwanted public enemy - and ItzhakRabin, the Israeli prime minister andformer Israeli army chief of staff duringthe Six-Day War, would not have takenplace in Washington on 13 September1993. Nor would a series ofsubsequent discussions have led to thefinal agreement signed in Cairo on 4May this year, paving the way for thehanding over of power by Israel toArafat’s Palestinian LiberationOrganisation (PLO) in newly-created“autonomous areas”. So, yes, seeingthe backs of the Israeli troops in theGaza strip, in mid-May, was theachievement of the Intifada youth, andtheirs alone.

Today’s concessions by the Israelistate may be limited. They may wellbe loaded with all kinds of hiddenschemes which have nothing to do withthe aspirations of the Palestinianpeople. But the mere fact that the

Israeli state was forced,eventually, into agreeing tothese political concessions,amounts to a recognition thatthe policy followed fordecades by all successiveIsraeli regimes - a policy whichinvolved turning thePalestinians into refugeesimprisoned in their owncountry, with the Israelipopulation as their wardens -has been a failure.

Zionism and its rootsThe Israeli state and itspolicies cannot be dissociatedfrom two primary factors - on

the one hand the zionist movementand, on the other hand, the complexoperation of imperialist rivalries in theMiddle-East.

The zionist movement emerged along way from the Middle-East, inEastern Europe where relativelynumerous Jewish communities were tobe found in the latter part of the 19thcentury. Before that time, a balancehad been established over thecenturies between the mostly urbanJewish communities and indigenouspopulations which were sti l loverwhelmingly tied to the land. In thecountryside the Jewish communitiesprovided many of the craftsmen andtraders that were indispensable for afarming economy, while in the townsthey often provided the skills neededin administration.

This balance was disrupted by thelate emergence of capitalism in Polandand Russia. Being late-comers,compared to the rest of Europe, thebourgeoisies of these countries wereborn crippled and degenerate evenbefore they had time to develop theirgrip over society. To the weak Russianand Polish aspiring bourgeois, whosefuture looked already so bleak, thelong-established Jewish petty-bourgeois were not only potential rivals,they also made easy scapegoats. Thus

Behind the war onthe PalestiniansThe article below is a reprint of a 1994 pamphlet by the British Marxist organisation Workers Fight

A trophy kill: Israeli soldier takes pic-ture of two of his fellow soldiers stand-ing over a Palestinian they’ve just killed


anti-semitism grew out of theimpotence of aspiring bourgeoisieswho were looking for someone toblame for their own incapacity.

The dictatorial regimes of EasternEurope, particularly the tsarist regime,were also quick to see the use theycould make of anti-semitism to split andstifle any opposition - whether theliberal opposition of the bourgeoisie orthe more radical opposition of theemerging working class. Pogroms, inwhich rioters went on the rampage,killing and looting Jewish houses, whilethe authorities were looking the otherway - when they were not leading therioters - became part of urban life in thelast two decades of the century. Thiswave of pogroms led to a massiveemigration of East European Jewstowards Western Europe and, aboveall, to America. Although in fact theanti-semitic disease even spread toWestern Europe during that period,where it became one of the distinctivepropagandistic weapons used by themost reactionary political currents.

Zionism emerged against thisbackground, as a reaction against bothanti-semitism and the emigration waveit had triggered. Theodor Herzl was itsmost famous promoter. His “State ofthe Jews”, published in 1896, arguedthat the only way out of persecutionsand disintegration through emigrationacross the world, was for the Jews tobuild their own state somewhere.Herzl, an admirer of Cecil Rhodes,thought in terms of Western colonialinterests. If a Jewish colony were setup in, say, Palestine, though Cyprus,Uganda and even China werementioned as possibilities, the Jewishpeople would form “a portion of therampart of Europe against Asia, anoutpost of civilisation as opposed tobarbarism”.

Socially, zionism was the expressionof a Jewish middle-class who aspiredto a share of the social cake and wereprevented from getting it by their non-Jewish rivals’ usage of anti-semitism.It contrasted sharply, for instance, withthe socialist movement that was thenemerging among Jewish workers andcraftsmen in Poland, who saw anti-semitism as the ultimate weapon usedby the property-owning classes todivide and oppress those who hadnothing.

Like all nationalisms, Herzl’szionism set itself the task to forge anideology and a set of values with whichpeople from very different social andgeographical backgrounds could

identify, thereby putting their “national”identity first and forgetting all socialdifferences. To this end, all sorts ofjustifications had to be dug up fromancient history, as well as a commonlanguage, Hebrew, which had longsince ceased to be used except forreligious purposes. Indeed, there wasabsolutely nothing natural, let alonerational, in the idea that all these Jewishcommunities which had been scatteredacross Eastern Europe and separatedfor so long, often for centuries, hadsomething specific in common. Sucha bizarre concept would probably havenever won much credit just on thestrength of the half-baked so-calledhistorical justifications produced byzionist propaganda, if it had not beenfor anti-semitism itself which proved themost effective propaganda tool forzionism.

Zionism was a utopia, but afundamentally reactionary one since itadvocated turning the clock back toancient times in a certain sense. Inaddition it was an absurd utopia in thatit purported to create a state whichwould have been a shelter for allpersecuted Jews and would haveprotected them from the violentconflicts which had generated anti-semitism - as if any part of the worldcould have been left untouched by thespasms of the capitalist system. Andlike all nationalist ideologies, iteventually became a justification for,and an instrument of, oppression.

A weapon for British imperialismFor a long time zionism remained aminority idea among the Jewish

communities of Eastern Europe. True,there was a steady trickle of Jewishsettlers moving to Palestine, so that by1914 they represented about 14 percent of the half-a-mill ion strongpopulation. But there was no questionof a Jewish state or anything of the sort.While there were the odd clashes withthe Arab feudal landlords, there wasplenty of space for the Jewish settlersto coexist with the Arab farmers. Evenin Palestine, zionism was having a hardand unsuccessful t ime gainingcredibility. But World War I and thegames played by imperialist powers inthe Middle-East offered the zionistleaders a new opportunity.

Among the war aims pursued by theBritish and French governments wasthe break up of the Ottoman empirewhich was allied to Germany andcontrolled most of the Middle-East.Having defeated Germany, andtherefore the Ottoman empire as well,the British and French split the spoilsbetween them, with France takingLebanon and Syria, while Britain tookPalestine, and today’s Iraq and Jordan,in addition to Egypt.

During the war, however, the Britishhad encouraged Arab nationalism as ameans of weakening the Ottomanempire. They knew, however, that oncethe Ottoman empire was defeated, theArab nationalists would inevitably turnagainst the British Empire. So evenbefore the end of the war, the Britishgovernment sought to use zionism asa counterweight to Arab nationalism.They encouraged the zionist leaderswho were canvassing support for large-scale Jewish emigration to Palestine.And, in 1917, the Balfour Declarationpublicised British support for “a nationalhome for the Jewish people”. This, itmust be said, did not prevent the Britishgovernment from promising at the verysame time a “great Arab kingdom” tothe Arab nationalist leaders as a rewardfor their fight against the Ottomanempire.

Not that the Balfour declaration ledto an immediate flow towardsPalestine. In fact, it took no less thanthe Great Depression and Hitler ’sseizure of power in Germany for theprevious trickle of settlers to turn into asignificant flow.

Obviously the British government’ssupport for the zionist cause hadnothing to do with any humanitarianconcern for persecuted Jews. In factBalfour himself had campaignedvocally some years before againstallowing East European Jewish

Theodore Herzl, 1860-1904: founder ofzionism


refugees into Britain. No, theDeclaration was only part of Britain’straditional “divide and rule” colonialpolicy. It was meant to play off Jewagainst Arab in the same way as inIndia, for instance, Muslims and Hinduswere set at each other’s throats.

Thus the hope created by Britain’spromises of an Arab federation whichwould span the entire Arab world wasshattered by the Treaty of Versailles in1919. Instead, it created a network ofsmall states which were almostcompletely artificial as a glance at amap of the Middle East shows - theborders between Palestine, Iraq, Syria,Jordan and Saudi Arabia being mostlyby straight lines. In these states, Britainand France installed semi-feudalmonarchs in power who were little morethan puppets of their imperialistmasters. These regimes were hatedby their populations, both by the MuslimArab majority and by the variousminorities - Jewish, Christian Arabs,etc.. But they fulfilled their purpose,which was to split the Arab populationso as to deprive it of any sense ofstrength.

Blocking common consciousnessThere were signs, nevertheless, that acommon consciousness could havedeveloped across cultural and ethnicboundaries around the general hostilityto imperialist rule over the Middle East.In 1918, for instance, the JerusalemArab community signed a petitionstressing their desire to live peaceably,as they said, “with our brothers theIsraelites”. The following year a SyrianCongress claimed to represent Jews,Muslims and Christians alike. Aboveall there was the development ofCommunist parties, some of them quiteprominent, as in Syria, which wereinspired by the class-based alliance ofall nationalities that had been sosuccessful in the Russian revolution.

British imperialism, however, madeno mistake on that account and tookno chances. All through their thirty-yearrule over Palestine, until 1947, everypolitical force which diverged from anarrow nationalist perspective andaimed at unifying the poor classes ofthe region against imperialism and itslocal agents, was ruthlesslysuppressed.

It was thus Britain’s policy whichsowed the seeds of the future conflictbetween Arabs and Jewish settlersover Palestine and, eventually, of theprocess which resulted in the

dispossession of the Palestinian Arabs.By the end of World War II, the

extent of the genocide against theJewish population by the Nazisemerged brutally. For most of Europe’spopulation, this was a stunning andfrightening discovery. Of course therulers of the Western victorious powershad known it all along. But they hadchosen to keep it quiet. They hadignored numerous calls to rescue theJewish victims and refused help to themany Jewish resistance movementswhich had sprang into existencethroughout Eastern Europe - like forinstance the ghetto uprisings inWarsaw and Lodz.

The Western imperialist powersremained consistent in their policy afterthe end of the war. It is estimated that,by 1947, there were 450,000 Jewishrefugees scattered across EasternEurope, who had nowhere to go backto. Between them, the USA and thericher West European countries couldeasily have welcomed and assimilatedsuch numbers. Instead, the imperialistgovernments only allowed entry to aselected handful. Predictably, thispolicy led to a revival of the zionistutopia, with large numbers of Jewishrefugees turning to Palestine for theprotection and support that was refusedto them by the imperialist powers.

The new immigrants to Palestinehad to bypass Britain’s refusal to allowthem in by resorting to clandestinemethods. Those who got caught werejailed in another kind of concentrationcamps, British this time, set up inCyprus. Many others became theforerunners of today’s Third Worldboat-people, as the ships on which they

were trying to reach Palestine wereturned away by all ports on theMediterranean coast.

By then the Jewish minority hadrisen to one-third of the 1.8 millionpopulation of Palestine. It had becomea highly structured community,complete with political parties rangingfrom the far-right to the far-left. And itwas now strong enough to feelconfident of its ability to take on theBritish rulers of Palestine. It hadseveral armed organisations. The mostimportant of these was Haganah - ”defence” in hebrew - a milit iaorganised by the social-democraticMapai party (or Labour party) whosepolicy was, until very late, to seekBritain’s support.

In reaction to Haganah’saccommodation to British imperialism,more radical armed organisations haddeveloped on the zionist far-right. Thebest-known among them was Irgun,which made extensive use of terroristmethods and trained many of Israel’sfuture leaders, l ike for instanceMenahem Begin and Itzhak Shamirwho were to become prominent, yearslater, for their vocal attacks againstterrorism - that of the Arab nationalists,of course.

The struggle of the Jewish settlersagainst imperialist rule in Palestinecould have been aimed at freeing thePalestinian population as a whole fromthe grip of imperialism. The leadingrole played by the zionist organisationsin this struggle ensured that this wasnot the case, however. Instead, its aimwas from the very beginning the settingup of a separate Jewish state - whichamounted to pointing to the Arab

Palestinians were turned into refugees in their own country


population as enemies sincethere was to be no space forthem in the future state.

Thus even the social-democrat Mapai leaders, asearly as 1940, posed thequestion in the following terms:“. . . the only solution isPalestine, or at least WesternPalestine without Arabs... andthere is no other way but totransfer all the Arabs from hereto the neighbouring countries. .. Not one village, not one tribeshould be left behind”. And yetMapai was probably the most“moderate” wing of the zionistmovement!

Having failed to contain the growthof Jewish nationalism and beingfrightened of a possible Arab nationalistbacklash as a result, the Britishgovernment resorted to a trick whichhas become all too common by now - they ditched the responsibility onto theUnited Nations, or to put it another way,they got the UN to formulate andendorse the compromise that Britishministers were too scared to suggestthemselves. This involved the settingup of two separate states in Palestine,one Jewish and one Arab. Thedeadline for their independence was tobe 15 May 1948, by which time Britain’srule over Palestine would be broughtto an end.

The official rationale for giving in tothe zionist leaders was to stop thelooming civil war carried out by thezionist far-right. Predictably however,the announcement that a Jewish statewas to be set up only resulted in theraising of the stakes. Instead of alooming civil war, outright warfare brokeout as the zionist militia proceeded toshift the balance of forces as much aspossible in their favour before thedeadline.

Irgun was most prominent in thisrespect. They would go into an Arabvillage and give a few hours for thepopulation to collect their belongingsand leave. Recalcitrants were giventhe “Mauser treatment” from the nameof the German guns, which Irgun hada large supply of: they were just shoton the spot, sometimes by the dozen,sometimes the whole village as was thecase of the 254 inhabitants of DeirYassin in April 1948.

Irgun’s aim was to terrorise the Arabfarmers into abandoning their villagesand their lands and they stopped atnothing to achieve it. In the name of

the right of the Jewish victims tocompensation, the zionist far-right justused against the Palestinian Arabs thevery same methods that the Nazis hadused against the Jewish population inGermany.

Meanwhile, the Arab states hadmobilised their troops. But theirintervention to defend the PalestinianArabs was, to say the least, lukewarm.None of these reactionary regimescared in the least for the PalestinianArabs of course. If they intervened atall, it was for fear of being accused bytheir own public opinion of havingagreed to the setting up of a Jewishstate on what they still consideredofficially as Arab land.

By the same token, by declaring a“Holy War” against the Jewish state, theArab rulers diverted the deepfrustration in the population away fromtheir imperialist masters. Thecorruption and lack of resolve shownby the Arab regimes allowed thecomparatively weaker Jewish militia tohold their ground. Eventually this firstIsraeli-Arab war came to an endthrough a series of armistices signedbetween Israel and each Arab statesduring the year 1949.

In fact, long before the end of thewar, a secret agreement had alreadybeen reached between the zionistleaders and king Abdullah of Jordan.This came to light when, following theend of the fighting, Abdullah occupiedmost of the land set aside by the UnitedNations for the planned PalestinianArab state, without Israel havinganything to say against it. Two yearslater, Abdullah was to declare this land

- more or less today’sWest Bank - as part ofJordan. Meanwhile Egypthad taken over anotherpart, the Gaza strip.

Thus, despite the UNpartition plan of Palestine,no Arab Palestinian stateever came to existence.What Israel had left ofPalestine was sharedbetween Egypt andJordan. The new state ofIsrael occupied a territorynearly 50 per cent largerthan in the UN’s plans.Only 133,000 of the850,000 Arabs who hadlived there before

remained in Israel. The rest, over600,000 people, had become landlessand resourceless refugees who werescattered between the West Bank, theGaza Strip and the neighbouringcountries.

The zionist nightmareThe policy of the zionist leaders insetting up the state of Israel had beenblatantly criminal. Nonetheless thesupport for this policy among the Israelipopulation was the distortedexpression of aspirations which werenot reactionary by themselves.

The old Jewish settlers aspired toescape at last from the grip ofimperialism, but they failed to realisethat their best allies to achieve this endwould have been the Arab masses.Likewise the newer generation ofJewish refugees aspired to having aland of their own far from the scene ofthe mass genocide engineered byHitler’s regime.

But, while three years after the endof World War II this aspiration wasunquestionably legitimate, it did nothave to be satisfied at the expense ofthe Palestinian Arabs. There wasenough space in Palestine for theJewish and Arab populations to coexiston the same land, without having to setup separate states, let alone a statebuilt openly against the Arabs, as Israelwas.

Despite the deeply reactionarycharacter of the new state, its initialstructure reflected somehow thelegitimate aspirations that existed in itspopulation. It also reflected thewidespread illusion that Israel offeredat last a chance to implement ideals ofpeace, freedom, generosity and socialjustice. For instance, the “kibbutzim”,

Mahmoud Sala: stripped and executedin the street by Israeli soldiers, March2002


the collective farms set up after themodel of the Russian kolkhoz, and theindustrial co-operatives whichmushroomed over the first decade ofIsrael’s existence, reflected thesocialist ideas which were dominantamong zionist supporters. It was evencommon in those days to refer to an“Israeli socialism”, all the more so asfor nearly thirty years, the social-democratic Mapai remainedcontinuously in power.

Yet at the same time, Israeli societywas also shaped by the process thathad led to its formation and the siegementality which was its mainexpression. Ben Gurion, Israel’s firstprime minister, ensured that Israelwould remain a state for the Jews only,where Arabs would always feel alien.Thus, while the “law of the Return”allowed every Jew from any part of theworld to “ascend”, i.e. to return, toIsrael, all Palestinian Arabs who hadfled the country in 1948 for fear of theirlives had to apply for naturalisation andtake an oath of loyalty to the zioniststate.

Besides, the very fact that Israel wasset up as a Jewish state gave aparamount importance to the Jewishreligion, far more than what it actuallyrepresented for the population as awhole. No-one ever dared to fightreligious prejudices openly, not eventhose parties which were supposed tobe atheist, for fear of being accused ofbetraying the besieged Jewish state.

As a result Israeli society becameincreasingly plagued by the mostreactionary obscurantism, to the pointof fuelling the growth of sizeable Jewish

fundamentalist parties. And likewisethe implicit anti-Arab racism which hadbeen the very foundation of Israel soongave birth to other deep-rooted racismswithin the population - for instanceagainst the Jewish immigrants whocame from Mediterranean countries inthe 50s.

In the end, the Israeli state and thezionist organisations were able tochannel and divert the generousenthusiasm and the aspirations of theinitial Israeli population to serveinterests alien to them. The collectivecharacteristics of Israel’s early daysgradually disappeared to be replacedby a fully-fledged capitalist society,similar in many ways to that which theearly Jewish settlers had wanted toescape from.

At the same time, the state of Israelhad developed into a monster of its ownkind - a sort of imperialist micro-state,which acts right at the heart of theMiddle-East, as a permanent militaryauxiliary for imperialism in general, andUS imperialism in particular, in chargeof maintaining law and order andpolitical stability in the unstable but oil-rich countries of the region.

Playing this role can only increase

even further its isolation in the region,it effectively makes Israel a merehostage of imperialism.

The Six-Day WarBy 1967 Israel had developed into afully-fledged, militarised state heavilyfunded by the USA. The Six-Day Warwhich took place that year is a graphicexample of, on the one hand, the roleof imperialist policeman played byIsrael in the region and, on the otherhand, the permanent threat that thezionist logic represents for thepopulation.

The war was preceded by a longperiod of tension arising from rivalIsraeli and Syrian schemes for divertingthe waters of the river Jordan, andincreasing border confrontationsbetween Syrian forces, units ofPalestinian guerrillas and Israeli troops.In themselves these were not reasonsfor all-out war. What was crucial wasthe increasingly bell icose war-mongering of the zionist hardliners andthe willingness of the USA to use theopportunity to smash the relativeindependence displayed by the Syrianregime towards imperialism.

The previous period from 1963 to

David Ben Gurion, 1886-1973: Israel’sfirst leader

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948,commandos of the Irgun (headed byMenachem Begin) and the Stern Gangattacked Deir Yassin, a village withabout 750 Palestinian residents. Thevillage lay outside of the area to beassigned by the United Nations to theJewish State; it had a peacefulreputation. But it was located on highground in the corridor between Tel Avivand Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slatedfor occupation under Plan Dalet and themainstream Jewish defense force, theHaganah, authorized the irregularterrorist forces of the Irgun and theStern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, andchildren were systematically murdered.Fifty-three orphaned children wereliterally dumped along the wall of theOld City, where they were found byMiss Hind Husseini and brought behindthe American Colony Hotel to herhome, which was to become the DarEl-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.

Part of the struggle for self-determination by Palestinians has been

to tell the truth about Palestinians asvictims of Zionism. For too long theirhistory has been denied, and this denialhas only served to further oppress anddeliberately dehumanize Palestiniansin Israel, inside the occupied territories,and outside in their diaspora.

Some progress has been made.Westerners now realize thatPalestinians, as a people, do exist.And they have come to acknowledgethat during the creation of the state ofIsrael, thousands of Palestinians werekilled and over 700,000 were driven orfrightened from their homes and landson which they had lived for centuries.

New Zealand anti-imperialistsorganised a national day of solidaritywith the Palestinian struggle, on April9 this year, with meetings in severalcities. For further info contact thedirectory on p20.

There is also an internationalwebsite on Deir Yassin at:

http://www.deiryassin.org/

Deir Yassin massacre


1966 had seen a waning ofthe militant zionism of thefounding period. Ben Gurionhad been forced to resign andgovernment passed into thehands of a youngergeneration of politicians whomade some gestures towardsthe Israeli Arabs and talkedabout settling the Palestinianissue. This correspondedwith the wishes of the broadmass of the Jewishpopulation who no longer feltunder constant Arab threatand wanted peace. It was thetentative steps made in thisdirection which propelled thezionist right into overdrive.General Moshe Dayan, forinstance, fulminated against“levantinisation” and old BenGurion thundered “We do notwant the Israelis to turn intoArabs”. He drew closer toMenahem Begin, the ex-Irgunterrorist leader. Thegovernment buckled underthe pressure, despatched apunitive raid which destroyed125 buildings, including aschool and a dispensary, in aJordanian border village. Thestage was set for a new majorconfrontation.

All of the Arab countriesdeclared war on Israel. In thecase of the King of Jordan hewas a reluctant combatantbut had no option as over halfof Jordan’s population werePalestinian. As to Israel, itsmain target was the same asthat of imperialism - Syria.

The victory of the Israelis wasassured from the moment theylaunched a pre-emptive air strikeagainst the Arabs states on 5 June1967 and destroyed their airforces onthe ground. Israel’s armies weresuccessful on every battle front. Within6 days the defeat of the Arab states wastotal. Israel occupied East Jerusalemand the West Bank - both part ofJordan - the Gaza Strip and the Sinaidesert - which were part of Egypt - andthe Syrian Golan Heights.

UN Resolution 242 called on Israelto return the Occupied Territories inexchange for the Arab states’recognition of Israel. But as it madeno mention of a Palestinian state it wasunacceptable to the Arab regimes.Israel stuck to its guns and the USAstood aside.

Israel’s occupation of Arab territorieshad two objectives. One was probablyto set an example and to show the Arabstates as well as their populations thatany provocation against Israel, anyopposition to its diktats, would be metwith drastic retribution. The otherobjective was to start implementing thezionist demand for a “Greater Israel”while providing the Israeli capitalists,who found the limits of the Israelimarket too tight, with a bit more elbowroom.

But by occupying these territories,the Israeli state created a series ofpotential sources of explosion. Firstbecause, like in 1948, they forced280,000 Palestinian Arabs from theWest Bank to flee to Jordan, therebycreating in Jordan an explosivesituation which was soon to come to ahead. And, second, because even after

this massive emigration,Israel now included on its ownterritory nearly half-a-millionof the Palestinian Arabs whohad been dispossessed bythe setting up of the Israelistate and who, therefore, hadaccounts to settle with thisstate.

The rise of the PLOPredictably the Six-Day Warwas a major recruiting agentfor the still small Palestiniannationalist groups.

One of these groups, al-Fatah, had been created in1959 by Yassir Arafat, ayoung building engineer whohad set up a very profitablebusiness in the building tradein Kuwait. As opposed toother leading Palestinianfigures like Georges Habacheand Nayef Hawatmeh, whosaw themselves as Arabnationalists, Arafat’sambitions were strictly limitedto Palestine. In fact thename, “al-Fatah” was simplythe acronym of “PalestinianNational LiberationMovement” written in reverseorder. In other words, Arafat’saim was the establishment ofa Palestinian state underPalestinian rule, no more, noless. And to begin with, Arafataimed at establishing al-Fatah as a recognisednationalist organisationamong the Palestiniansthemselves and, above all,

among the Arab rulers whose financialand political backing would be vital inthe future.

Soon the Arab regimes becameconscious and wary of the increasingnationalist agitation among Palestinianrefugees. In order to keep this agitationunder their control and to counter thevarious small radical nationalist groupssuch as al-Fatah, the leaders of theArab League launched the PalestinianLiberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964.Shukairy, who they nominated to runit, was a notoriously corrupt reactionarywho had been a functionary of the ArabLeague for a long time. And, of course,they ensured that the new PLO wouldenjoy the funding and the facilitiesrequired to achieve the high profilewhich the small radical groups couldnot afford to have.

The defeat of the Arab states in


1967 was a turning point because itdiscredited the Arab rulers in the eyesof the vast majority of the Palestinianrefugees. All of a sudden there was aspace to fill. And Arafat, who hadorganised al-Fatah’s first armedcommando only two years before,jumped in to fill the vacuum. Theweakening of the Jordanian regimeallowed al-Fatah to organise newcommandos inside the Jordanianrefugee camps from where attackscould be launched into Israel. The first,although very modest, military successwas achieved in March 1968, when oneof Arafat’s commandos fought a twelve-hour battle with an Israeli unit.Overnight, recruits started to flowtowards al-Fatah whose troop numberssprang suddenly from 700 to 3000.Less than a year later, this allowedArafat to take over control of the PLOduring its fifth congress held in Cairoin February 1969.

Drawing on the examples ofVietnam and Algeria, Arafat promiseda long guerrilla war in which the Arabstates would play a supporting role.Although, unlike his predecessor at thehead of the PLO, Arafat was alwayscareful to retain his independencetowards the Arab rulers, occasionallyplaying one against the other, but nevertying his political future to any oneleader in particular.

The potential strength of thePalestinian refugees, and what worriedthe Arab rulers so much, was theiroverwhelming proletarian status, theirmilitancy and radicalism, and the factthat they were concentrated in largenumbers within the refugee campswhich provided them with a form ofnatural organisation. Above all, the factthat they were scattered across theMiddle-East, from Jordan, Syria andLebanon to Iraq and Kuwait, as well aswithin the Israeli-occupied territoriesthemselves, made a powerful fermentpossible on the scale of the wholeregion which could have drawn intoaction entire sections of the Arabpopulation in all these countries. Butof course, for this to happen, thePalestinian refugees had to beequipped with a perspective that wasmeaningful for the Arab masses rightacross the Middle-East, a policy thathad therefore to address the destitutionof these masses as well as their hatredfor the Arab rulers.

But to offer such a policy was not atall what the PLO leaders intended,including Arafat himself. Their narrow-minded Palestinian-only nationalism

whose sole aim was the setting up of aPalestinian micro-state, and theirrespect for, and reliance on the Arabregimes meant they had nothing tooffer the Arab masses as a whole. Inthat respect the PLO marked a stepbackward from bourgeois nationalistslike Nasser in Egypt who, at least,inspired popular mass movementswhich transcended national bordersand threatened the semi-feudalmonarchies. In so doing, despite theirstubborn Palestinian nationalism,Arafat and the PLO were actuallyundermining the Palestinian causeitself, by preventing the Palestinianrefugees from gaining potential activeallies in the Arab masses.

The PLO from Jordan to LebanonNevertheless the radical actions of thePLO brought it into headlong conflictwith King Hussein of Jordan. ThePalestinian refugee camps in andaround Jordan’s capital, Amman, hadbeen swollen by many thousands in theaftermath of 1967. The camps were aferment of rebellion and posed a deadlythreat to Hussein’s feudal regime, allthe more so as the slum-dwellers ofAmman looked on them as their ally intheir own struggle against the regime.Hussein feared the possibility ofPalestinian and Jordanian massesjointly overthrowing the Hashemitemonarchy. And though the PLO hadno intention of kicking out Hussein, theycould not afford not to be part of thismovement, if they wanted to build their

credibility.In September 1970 a left faction in

the PLO under the leadership ofGeorges Habache hijacked fourWestern airliners and blew three ofthem up in Jordan. It was a spectacularmove and was greeted enthusiasticallyby refugees and slum-dwellers alike.This provided Hussein with the pretexthe had been waiting for. With the tacitunderstanding that the US wouldintervene, if necessary, “to tip themilitary balance” as President Nixonremarked, Hussein demanded that thePLO surrender its weapons. Whenthey refused to hand them over, heavyfighting broke out between the PLO andJordanian troops. A small contingentof Syrian tanks invaded in support ofthe PLO but without air cover. TheSyrian air force chief, Assad, refusedto order in his planes and the Syrianswithdrew. For Assad it was the firstmove in a coup d’etat after which hewould establish one of the MiddleEast’s longest-lived dictatorships - andcertainly no friend to the Palestinianmasses.

The stage was set for the massacrewhich followed. Despite theassurances of the PLO’s leadershipthat their militias existed only to combatIsrael, more than 3,500 Palestinianrefugees, including many PLO fighters,were killed on Hussein’s orders duringwhat the Palestinians came to call“Black September”. When Hussein’ssoldiers rampaged through Ammanlooking for PLO fighters often hiddenin the slums, the slum-dwellers foughtalongside the PLO. Many weremurdered in their own homes. This wasa serious defeat for the PLO and theorganisation was forced to flee to Syriaand later Lebanon. But in theconfrontation, Arafat had managed toprove his responsibility and respect forthe established order: first by refusingto call the Jordanian population to joinranks with the Palestinian refugees inan uprising to overthrow the regime;and second by taking part in a“reconciliation” meeting with Husseinthe day after the massacre. Thisdemonstration of respect for theexisting institutions and order was,undoubtedly, the starting point ofArafat’s long career as a trustworthypolitician from the point of view of theArab rulers as well as of imperialism.

In Lebanon the PLO joined 150,000Palestinian refugees living near Beirutand in parts of South Lebanon. This“Switzerland of the Middle East” - so-called because of its banks and wealthy

Arafat’s cap in hand approach hasgotten the Palestinians nothing but akick in the teeth


bourgeoisie - was a former Frenchprotectorate and the Frenchbourgeoisie still retained close linkswith the ruling feudal Christian familieswho dominated a largely Muslimpopulation.

In fact Lebanon was a fine balanceof different ethnic and religiousgroupings. With Arabs already in a bigmajority, the arrival of morePalestinians, in great numbers - andprepared to fight - was bound to tilt thebalance. It led to an upsurge of supportfor the left in the elections of 1972. Onthe ground it was reflected in strikesand demonstrations in solidarity withthe PLO. By 1975 South Lebanon wasknown to journalists as “Fatahland”,such was the extent of the PLO’sinfluence.

In Spring 1975 the far-right Falange,which grouped together Christians andwas modelled on Mussolini’s fascism,started attacking the PLO. Worried bythe restlessness of these troublesomeintruders, and with the blessing of theFrench and leading Christian families,the Falange sought to put paid to thePLO as Hussein had done previously.The gunning down of a busload ofLebanese and Palestinian Muslimswho were travelling through a Christiansuburb of the capital, Beirut, sparkedoff a civil war that was to rage for 19months.

Christian massacres of Palestinianand Lebanese slum-dwellers forced thePLO out of its policy of semi-isolationism into siding with the self-styled “progressist” Lebanese NationalMovement which was under attack.This alliance of the Lebanese and thePalestinians proved too strong for theFalangists. It unleashed a tremendouspopular movement resulting in theransacking of government offices, theoccupation of empty flats and housesin West Beirut by the poor and attackson prisons leading to the freeing ofprisoners. Genuine “liberated” zoneswere created where the only authorityrecognised was that of the progressist/PLO alliance.

In January 1976 the Lebanese armybroke up. The Muslim elements had aunified leadership and took charge ofthe garrisons in the Muslim-dominatedpart of the country. By March theycontrolled two-thirds of the country. Itwas at this point that Syria intervened- not on the side of the Muslims but toassist the Christian elements who werein danger of total defeat. For a secondtime Assad showed his treachery to thePalestinians and, in this instance, the

Lebanese poor. The Syrian regime hadintroduced various reforms to bolsterits image at home. But in the regionthey intended to preserve the statusquo even if it meant in reality, as inLebanon, working hand in glove withthe Israelis.

But with elements of the PLO alsointervening to “restore order”, the PLOleadership showed their own hostilityto the actions of the masses. The PLOwere stepping into the shoes of theFalange, one of whose aims had beento have them expelled from Lebanon!It was a drastic revelation of theintentions of the moderate PLOleadership who were prepared to usetheir own militants in a counter-revolutionary role in order to impressArab and Western bourgeoisie alike oftheir “responsibility” in the socialsphere.

When the civil war finally ended,between 60-80,000 people had losttheir lives, 130,000 had been injuredand, in a population of 3.25m, 1.35mhad lost their homes. MeanwhileSyrian troops remained to ensure the“peace”.

The PLO confronts Israel inLebanonThe entrenchment of the PLO in SouthLebanon in the so-called “Fatahland”enabled PLO commandos to carry outregular raids into Northern Israel. Afterone such raid, in March 1978, 32Israelis were killed. Four days later theIsraeli military retaliated and carried outa punitive raid, the first time that PLOand Israeli armies had confronted eachother on battlefield. 20,000 Israelistroops were supported by planesdropping cluster bombs. In the processthe Israelis killed 700 people and a

further 160,000 were made homeless.The grip of the PLO had been brokenalong the frontier. The Israelis now setup an enclave to be policed by anIsraeli-armed Christian militia.

In 1979 the Camp David peaceagreement between Israel and Egyptgave back to Egypt the land she hadlost in 1967. By returning the SinaiDesert to Egypt and with Egypt signingseparate economic agreements withthe USA, Israel virtually removed thedanger of attack from the Arab statesand was therefore free to reinforce itsgrip on the Occupied Territories andeven to embark on an expansionistpolicy, as in Lebanon in 1982.

In 1981 the Israeli airforce made anunsuccessful attempt to kill Arafat bybombarding the PLO’s headquarters inBeirut. Then, in June 1982, Israelundertook a full-scale invasion ofLebanon, although its scale was initiallyhidden from the Israeli population byreferring to it as an “operation”. Underthis onslaught the PLO was forced toretreat. The Israelis also took on theSyrian troops stationed in the BekaaValley and used the opportunity todestroy the Syrian airforce anddefences around Damascus.

The PLO fighters withdrew to WestBeirut offering stiff resistance in theprocess. Unwilling to sustain the highcasualties which street by streetfighting would have entailed, the Israeliarmy resorted to Dresden-stylebombing to try and flush out PLO.Thousands of Lebanese civilians werekilled in process.

With international indignation atIsraeli aggression mounting, the USAintervened and had talks with Arafat toorganise the evacuation of the PLO toDamascus. The widespread anger


amongst the Palestinians and theirsupporters at what was seen asdesertion by the leadership was onlycompounded by what followed.

The assassination of the Falangepresident, Bashir Gemayel, by a Syriansecret service agent was the excusefor Israel and their Christian allies tocarry out atrocities against the localpopulation. This culminated in themassacres of the Sabra and Shatilarefugee camps carried out by theIsraeli-armed South Lebanese militias.1300 defenceless women and childrenwere murdered cold-bloodedly with theblessing of the Israeli invasion forcescommander.

In the wake of these massacres,protests erupted in Israel and a fullinvestigation was carried out. Butalthough Israeli Defence MinisterSharon was forced to resign and theconsensus on Israeli war aims wasbroken for the first time since 1948, theIsraeli state had succeeded in its mainaim of forcing the PLO out of Beirut.The eradication of the PLO as a seriousmilitary threat had been accomplished.

Yet the Israeli army stayed on,thereby showing that Israel wasdetermined to consolidate its hold onLebanon and to keep it. And the civilwar carried on, this time between theFalange, supported by the Israeli army,and the poor Muslims led by pro-Syrianand fundamentalist groups.

The Israelis’ losses were alsoincreasing, even if they were negligibleby comparison with those of the otherside. Still by the autumn of 1983 morethan 500 Israelis were dead and insideIsrael opposition to the war wasgrowing. The military commanderswere forced to begin what amountedto a retreat. By 1985 the Israelis hadcompleted their withdrawal. But withmore than 750 killed in a country whereeven a handful of dead was consideredgrounds for national mourning, thewhole enterprise was considered bymany to have been a criminal folly. Allthe more so as the decline of PLOinfluence had apparently only pavedthe way for the much more radicalHezbollah backed by the Iranianfundamentalist regime. And althoughIsrael retained their Christianmercenaries in the buffer zone of SouthLebanon, they proved unable to stopattacks on border settlements or theregroupment of PLO sections. As aresult an intermittent war in SouthLebanon has gone on ever since.

Thus for all their military triumphs,the Israeli adventure was a failure: if

Israeli stubbornness had contributed tothe collapse of pan-Arabism, Israeliterror in the Lebanon had assisted thegrowth of a potentially more radicalreplacement. The role of Iran and therising tide of fundamentalism, inaddition to the ending of the dominantposition of the pro-Israeli Christians,were ominous developments.Moreover, Iran’s ally Syria, anotherinveterate foe of Israel as long as sheretained the Golan Heights, hadconfirmed her dominant role inLebanon. But for the tiny populationof the former “Switzerland of the MiddleEast” the war has been a catastrophewith more than 200,000 dead and800,000 forced into exile between 1975and 1988.

From Intifada to compromiseWith the bulk of the PLO removed asfar away as Tunis, the influence of thePLO in the Occupied Territories, andthe refugee settlements generally,appeared to wane. But as thePalestinian people’s opposition toIsrael stemmed from loss of homeland,lack of freedom and the intolerableconditions of the refugee camps, theopposition itself did not go away. Infact as the Arab populations of theGaza strip and the West Bank steadilygrew, so the problems which the Israelioccupation forces confronted grewsteadily worse.

The daily humiliations by armypatrols; high unemployment, totalpoverty and restrictions on those whocould work in Israel but were notallowed to live there, made life in theOccupied Territories unbearable for anew generation of young Palestinians.An initial confrontation in Gaza in

December 1987 quickly spread out toinclude all the Occupied Territories.Confrontations then spread to includethose Arabs living in Israel, by thennumbering some three-quarters of amillion.

As what came to be known as theIntifada developed the image of youngPalestinian Arabs, some as young as12 or 13, battling it out with armedIsraeli soldiers became a regularoccurrence on TV screens across theworld. Stones against bullets andscarves to protect against tear gasmade for a one-sided contest. Exceptthat in the densely-packed shantytowns with their maze of alleys andescape routes, the youngsters hadnumerous ways of ambushing their foeand making good their escape.

In the Occupied Territories frequentgeneral strikes and boycotts had athoroughly disrupting effect on theIsraeli economy. In Gaza in particularwith its vast population numberingaround a million crowded into 136square miles, there was a large workingclass which poured over the border at4am every morning to do much of thework in the factories and thesweatshops in the greater Tel Avivregion.

In such an uncontrollable situationthe PLO saw its chance. King Husseinof Jordan, probably acting underAmerican pressure, abandoned anyclaims to the West Bank (which he hadheld between 1948 and 1967) to pavethe way for the creation of a Palestinianmini-state. In November 1988 the PLOrecognised those UN resolutionsimplying recognition of the state ofIsrael. A landless state of Palestinewas proclaimed by the PLO andfollowed by a world-wide diplomaticoffensive to have it recognised. In May1989 Arafat declared “void” the PLO’scharter which had declared Palestine“indivisible”. The stage was being setfor a deal but the USA and Israel hadstill to be persuaded to be part of it.

The Gulf War, and Arafat’spropagandistic support for SaddamHussein, suspended the process. Butit did not change the situation in theOccupied Territories, while the mood ofthe majority of the Israeli populationbecame ever more disenchanted. Thewidespread opposition of Israeli youthsto serving in the Occupied Territoriesaffected army morale. The Israelielections in 1992 brought back Labourto office after a campaign in which theparty leader Rabin had indicated awillingness to negotiate with the PLO.

Israeli terrorist and premier ArielSharon


And clearly this was one factor inLabour’s victory.

But Labour was not just talkingabout negotiation for electoral reasons.They obviously had the backing of theIsraeli bourgeoisie as well as that ofimperialism. There were a number ofreasons for this. One was economic:the Intifada was weighing more andmore heavily on an economy whichwas already close to bankruptcy.

The other reasons were political. Infact the PLO was in a position ofweakness, partly discredited amongthe population. Its leadership was farfrom being recognised amongst thenew generations thrown up by theIntifada. At the same time, the PLOstil l had a local apparatus, theycontrolled most of the Palestinian towncouncils, directly or through allies,which gave them a certain leverage inthe Occupied Territories, if not amongthe youth. It also had a long-established apparatus of cadres - the5,000 or so who staffed the PLO’sheadquarters in Tunis and its extensivediplomatic representation across theworld - which was used to operate asa state machinery, away from thepressure of the masses.

On the other hand, the radical wingof the Intifada was increasingly turningtowards the fundamentalist groups.And while Arafat’s respect towards theestablished order was known andtested, it was not the case with thefundamentalist leaders who, inaddition, had loyalties which went farbeyond the framework of Palestine - toSyria or Iran. And there was noguarantee as to their future attitude,especially if the support they enjoyedkept increasing.

Eventually the Israeli rulers choseto negotiate with a partner they knewrather than to take the risk of anuntested partner being forced on themby the balance of forces in the future.At the same time, by offering a deal toArafat and the PLO, Rabin wasrescuing them from their relativediscredit, boosting their popularityamong the Palestinian population andlimiting, for a while at least, the rise ofthe fundamentalists. On the otherhand, Arafat’s weakness meant that hewas in no position to impose his ownconditions on the Israeli governmentand the PLO’s lower credit with themost radical elements of the Intifadameant that the deal would notencourage them to step up their action- which is always a possibility when afight is taking place.

Will the Palestinian masses goalong with the deal?The content of the deal which wasreached, at least for the immediatefuture, is well-known. A Palestinianauthority has taken over control ofslightly over half of the Gaza strip - therest remaining under Israeli control forthe sake of the 3000 Israeli settlersestablished there, while 850,000Palestinians must make do with therest - and of the immediatesurroundings of the town of Jericho, inthe West Bank. This temporary set upshould last “no more than five years”.This is how blurred the agreementremains for the time being.

On the other hand this agreementdoes show the immediatepreoccupations of the Israeligovernment. It provides for theestablishment of a Palestinian policeforce under PLO responsibility, whilethe overall responsibility for militarysecurity and the safety of the Israelipopulation remains in the hands of the

Israeli army. In other words, it amountsto inviting Arafat to show what he candeliver in terms of restoring law andorder. The fact that the Gaza strip, withits 600,000 refugees leaving in squalidcamps, was included in the deal is nota coincidence - it is in the Gaza stripthat the frustration of the Palestinianpoor is the highest. As to Jericho, aquiet town which has been left largelyuntouched by the Intifada, it will providea cosy head office for the embryonicPalestinian state machinery and a safeone, as it well away from the directpressures of the Palestinian masses.

Who will benefit from the deal in theshort term? First of all the PLO cadreswho have been waiting for so long inexile for some crumbs of power. Therewill be jobs and positions for them. ThePalestinian middle-class will gain alsothe possibility of using its money freelyin Israel, if they wish to do so. So will,by the way, the Arab millionaires whowere so far banned from having anybusiness dealings with Israel and theIsraeli capitalists themselves who willgain access to all Arab markets.

But there will be no benefitwhatsoever for the Palestinian poor,despite the fact that they have providedthe bulk of the PLO fighters for nearlythree decades and all the Intifadademonstrators. The refugee camps willremain what they were, only the policewatching them will be Palestinianinstead of being Israeli. Their povertywill not change. The lucky 23,000 GazaPalestinian workers who have theprivilege to have a pass allowing themto go and work in Israel, will not beoffered better jobs than those they havealready - the lowest among the low inthe Israeli economy. And whenentering Israeli territory they will stillhave to endure the harassment of theIsraeli soldiers, who have the authorityto decide ultimately who is allowedthrough and who is not. As to theoverwhelming majority of those whohave no legal right to work in Israel,

Israeli state bulldozes over Palestin-ian rights

12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura is sheltered by his father, Jamal, while they arepinned down and shot at by Israeli forces. The boy was eventually killed and hisfather paralysed.


they will carry on trying their luck bylooking for illegal underpaid jobs in theblack economy. For in Gaza itself, dealor not, there will be no more jobs thanthere are now. In fact there may beeven fewer, as some Israeliadministrations have decided to stoppaying those they employed in Gaza - 7,000 public service employees forinstance have been told that Israel willnot pay them, while the PLO has notyet got the financial resources to takeover.

Both the Israeli and PLO leadersseem to expect that a quickimprovement of the economic situationwill defuse the present explosivesituation. Maybe. But not without largesubsidies from the West which, so far,are not forthcoming, not even on paper.Definite foreign assistance seemslimited, so far, to such things as thetraining of senior police officers byBritain and lawyers by France! Buteven if the money did come, it wouldstill leave the Palestinian people witha ridiculously minute country, totallyunworkable economically, even to caterfor the needs of its present population,let alone to accommodate the millionsof Palestinian refugees scattered allover the Middle-East.

For ongoinginformation on the

Palestinian strugglecheck out:

www.electronicintifada.com

Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO)The PLO was originally created bythen head of the Arab League andpresident of Egypt, Nasr, in 1964 torepresent Palestinian interests in theLeague. Ahmad Al Shokeri wasappointed by the Arab League to headthe PLO and represent it in the League.In 1969 the PLO was taken over byYassar Arafat’s Fatah party and thePopular Front for the Liberation ofPalestine (PFLP). Over time the PLOhas become increasingly the almostexclusive instrument of Yassar Arafathimself and by extension his Fatahpolitical party. The PFLP and a numberof other smaller groups retain theirmembership in the PLO but their roleis mostly nominal and symbolic.

In terms of political programme thePLO has always, at least officially,called for a single, secular, democraticstate in all of British Mandate Palestineas the only viable settlement to theArab-Israeli struggle. However, as amatter of practice this “single state”position was shelved at an ArabLeague summit at Rabat, Morocco in1974.

At this summit the PLO wasrecognized as the “sole and legitimaterepresentative” of the Palestinianpeople and adopted an “interimstrategy” that called for a temporarytwo-state settlement and implemen-tation of all UN resolutions dealing withIsrael-Palestine which included theending of Israeli occupation of Gazaand the West Bank, the establishmentof a Palestinian state in thoseterritories, and (crucially) the right ofthe, now 3.5 million, Palestinians toreturn to their homes.

Palestinian National Authority (PNA,more often abbreviated PA)In 1994 as part of the U.S. brokeredtwo-part Oslo Accords, negotiatedbetween Israel and Yassar Arafat in1993-1994, Arafat became head of thePalestinian National Authority (PA), thesemi-autonomous pseudo-state set upto run municipal functions of theoccupied territories and to police thePalestinian people while leaving Israelin control of the physical territory andnatural resources of the West Bank and

Gaza. The PA has nominal control overroughly 30 percent of the West Bankand Gaza.

Corruption and repression are themost notable features of the PA. Forexample, in 1997 literally one half ofthe PA budget went unaccounted foras Arafat and his cronies (who camewith him from Tunisia in 1995) siphonedoff funds for their own personal gainas public workers went over a yearwithout pay, infrastructure decayed andover 60 percent of Palestinianssubsisted on less than $US2 a day.

The levels of corruption within thePA had become so embarrassing thatby the late 1990s many donor countriesand organizations refused to dispersefunds directly to the PA and sought tofind alternative mechanisms for fundingPalestinian charity and “civil society”organizations.

The one aspect of the PA whereresources are spent lavishly is security.The PA has the largest per capita policeforce in the world with over 50,000police and nine intelligence agenciesfor a population of 3 million Palestiniansin the West Bank and Gaza. Between1995 and September 2000, working fora PA security apparatus was essentiallya form of welfare for members ofArafat’s Fatah political party, buying offdiscontent within Fatah’s ranks with aregular paycheck.

The PA’s jurisdiction legally expiredin 1996, when according to the OsloAccords a Palestinian “state” would berecognized by Israel. However, Arafatunilaterally extended the mandate ofthe PA until the year 2000 in an effortto “maintain stability and continuity”while the Oslo peace process was stillunderway. Unsurprisingly, as of March2002 the PA has yet to have elections,since both Israeli and Palestiniansurvey research shows popular supportfor Arafat and the PA in the currentIntifada at below 25percent amongPalestinians.

Palestinian National LiberationMovement (Fatah)Fatah is numerically the largest andbest-funded Palestinian political party,accounting for between 25-35 percentof popular support among Palestinians.Fatah was formed in 1965, drawing

Who’s who in Palestine?Sean Noonan provides a snapshot of Palestinian organisations


from elements of Palestinianstudent organizations, Palestiniannationalists and former members ofthe Muslim Brotherhoodorganization. Yassar Arafat hasbeen the head of Fatah since itsinception and has alwaysmaintained a high level of personalcontrol over and discipline withinFatah.

Fatah’s polit ical program isidentical to the PLO’s, officiallyseeking a single, secular anddemocratic state in the long term butworking towards a short term interim“two-state settlement” with Israel.Fatah’s base of support is both deepand wide, drawing backing from wideswathes of the Palestinian people andinternational recognition. However,over time the political trajectory ofFatah’s leadership has progressivelydiverged from the impulses of theFatah’s base, reflecting the inherentdifferences of interest between the tinyPalestinian capitalist class, and the mixof refugees, peasants , workers,professionals and small businessowners that make up the rest ofPalestinian society.

In the current Intifada these tensionsare growing within Fatah. Theleadership dodges and weavesbetween accommodation with Israeland supporting the Intifada, whileseeking ultimately to restore somesemblance of the Oslo Peace Accordsaimed at achieving a semi-autonomousBantustan-style statelet in slices of theWest Bank and Gaza segregated byIsraeli settlements, by-pass roads andthe massive Israeli securityinfrastructure.

In contrast, a small but growingnumber of grassroots Fatah activistsare seeking to tap into the popularsentiments of total resistance to theIsraeli presence in any part of the WestBank and Gaza.

Popular support for Fatah does notdirectly translate into popular supportfor the Palestinian Authority. A goodportion of Fatah’s popular support in thecurrent Intifada is due to resistanceactivities carried out by the moremilitant factions within Fatah such asthe Al Asqua Brigades and Tanzim.

Islamic Resistance Movement(Hamas)Hamas is the second largestPalestinian political organization, withbetween 15 to 25 percent supportamong Palestinians. Ahmed Yassin isthe spiritual leader of Hamas and

Khalid Mashal is the head of theHAMAS political bureau.

Hamas grew out of the MuslimBrotherhood in 1987. Prior to the 1980sIslamicism as a political ideology didnot have deep roots in theMediterranean-oriented, secular-leaning and mixed Muslim-Christianreligious culture of Palestine. However,following the failure of bourgeois Arabnationalism, the stagnation (and latercollapse) of the Soviet Union, and withgenerous aid from Saudi Arabia and theGulf States, Islamicism began to gainground in Palestinian societythroughout the 1980s and continues togrow today.

Notably, prior to becoming Hamas,the Muslim Brotherhood collaboratedwith the Israeli intelligence agency,Shin Beit, during the mid 1980s. TheMuslim Brotherhood used weaponsprovided by Shin Beit to launch a seriesof bloody attacks on Fatah and theMarxist Popular Front for the Liberationof Palestine. Aside from attackingsecular nationalists and leftists, prior tothe 1987-93 Intifada, the MuslimBrotherhood did not join in the struggleagainst Israel. During this time theMuslim Brotherhood’s primary activitieswere cultural, educational andcharitable.

With the rise of popular resistanceto the Israeli occupation during the firstIntifada Hamas began to lose supportas people flocked to the secular andleftist organizations that were activelyengaged in resistance to occupation.In response, Hamas was created as avehicle for orthodox Islamicists to takepart in the first Intifada of 1987-1993.

Ideologically Hamas taps into andcultivates the backward currents ofIslamicism that seeks to restore amythical Islamic state invoking theprinciples of Sharia Islamic law. Thebase of support for Hamas is strongest

in the refugee camps, theurban poor andimpoverished peasants.

Hamas is not a memberof the PLO and competeswith it for leadership of thePalestinian people.However, the track recordof the Hamas leadership isnot as militant or radical asmainstream pressaccounts suggest. Hamasis in the habit of makingsure it does not cross the“red line” of full-blown

opposition to Arafat and the PLO.Some analysts attribute this red lineeffect to the purse strings of SaudiArabia and the Gulf States that officiallyoppose Israel but are more concernedabout the risks a wider regional conflictwould pose to the stability of their ownU.S. client regimes.

Popular Front for the Liberation ofPalestine (PFLP)Combined, the Palestinian left issupported by between 10 and 15percent of the Palestinian people. Thelargest and leading left party inPalestine is the Popular Front for theLiberation of Palestine (PFLP), with theDemocratic Front for the Liberation ofPalestine (DFLP), which split from thePFLP in 1969, coming in a distantsecond ahead of a number of smallergroupings such as the PalestinianPeople’s Party (former Moscow-oriented CP), and the strictly militaristPFLP-GC (which also split from thePFLP in 1969). The PFLP, formed in1967, is the third largest political partyin Palestine and grew out of the panArab nationalist movements of the1950s and 1960s.

The formation of the PFLP waslargely in response to the failure ofbourgeois Arab nationalism in the 1967war with Israel and the success ofMarxist-oriented anti-colonial strugglesgaining ground around the world at thattime. George Habash was the head ofthe PFLP from 1967 to 1999, when hestepped down in order to encourageinternal democracy within the PFLP.Habash was briefly replaced by Abu AliMustapha who became GeneralSecretary of the PFLP until hisassassination by the Israeli Army inAugust of 2001.

Ahmed Saadat is now GeneralSecretary of the PFLP. At the time ofthis writing Saadat, and over 180 otherPFLP activists are under arrest byArafat’s PA, at the behest of Israel.

Ahmed Yassin and Khalid Mashal


Israel has demanded that Arafat arrestand put on trial those responsible forthe October 2001 assassination ofIsraeli cabinet minister Ze’evi inretaliation for the Israeli Army’sassassination of Abu Ali Mustapha.

The PFLP espouses a Leninistflavored version of Marxism and callsfor a single, secular, multiethnic, andsocialist state in all of British MandatePalestine. The PFLP has left theexecutive of the PLO in protest overArafat’s accommodations with Israel ona number of occasions, only to return

at a later date. The PFLP’s role withinthe PLO is that of a junior partner inthe PLO and secular socialistopposition within the Palestiniannational l iberation movement.Nevertheless, the PFLP’s credibility, inPalestine and in the Arab worldgenerally, is greater than its size.

The PFLP is respected for itssuccess in organizing among refugees,peasants, intellectuals (such asGhasan Khanafani and Naji El-Ali),students, and the small trade unionmovement, as well as its militaryeffectiveness (including figures such asLelah Khalid, Ilich Ramiriz Sanchezand Koso Okomoto). However, PFLPhas not been successful in translatingthis intellectual and militaryrespectability into a coherent politicalmovement capable of pushing thePalestinian national liberation struggleinto a more explicitly anti-imperialist orfully socialist direction.

Islamic JihadIslamic Jihad is generally recognizedas the fourth largest Palestinianpolitical party, with support rangingfrom 5 to 10 percent of Palestinians.Islamic Jihad began as a movementamong Palestinian students in Egyptduring the 1970s and 1980s whosought to bridge the gulf betweennationalists who rejected Islam andIslamicists with no agenda towards

Palestine.Later, in the 1980s, Islamic Jihad

drew inspiration from the IranianRevolution, Hezbollah in Lebanon, aswell as financial support from Iran andSyria. The founder and first head ofIslamic Jihad, Fathi Shakaki, wasassassinated by Israel. Islamic Jihadis currently headed by the formeruniversity professor Ramadan Shalah.

Like Hamas, Islamic Jihad draws itsstrongest support from the refugeecamps, urban poor and impoverishedpeasants. Politically, Jihad’s politicalprogram is in line with the Syrian-Iranian stance towards Israel, involvinga stronger stance (at least in word ifnot deed) in opposition to Israel thaneither Fatah or Hamas. Importantly,while Islamic Jihad is undoubtedly anIslamicist party, Jihad’s emphasis isreligiously less sectarian and more“National-Islamic” than Hamas.

Islamic Jihad calls for a “democratic”accommodation with Palestine’sJewish residents, does not call for theimplementation of Islamic Sharia lawon Palestinian society as a whole, andseeks “brotherhood” with PalestinianChristians on the basis of sharednationhood, history and culture. GivenJihad’s small size and short history itis unclear whether the populist“National” or religious “Islamic”tendencies is stronger in the party.

Continued from p19

Getting involvedThere are anti-imperialist groupsfunctioning in Auckland, Wellingtonand Christchurch.

ChristchurchThe Middle East Information andSolidarity Collective meets everysecond Wednesday evening oncampus. For info on meetings, [email protected] or writeto us at P.O. Box 513, Christchurch.

Check the revolution website:www.revolution.org.nz

The MidEast Collective site:www.middleeastsolidarity.org

We are currently organising video andpowerpoint showings, meetings,leafleting, stalls and pickets aroundthe city.

WellingtonContact: Paul (021-454-037) or Jared(3829766) or email:[email protected]

AucklandThe Anti-Imperialist Coalition meetsevery Wednesday in the AucklandTrades Hall. For further info, ph 025-2800080, or e-mail: [email protected] website is at:w w w . g e o c i t i e s . c o m /anti_imperialist_coalition/

Other areasIf there’s no anti-imperialist group inyour area, get in touch with us and wecan help you set one up.

Auckland and Christchurch havedownloadable leaflets and otherresources such as videos andpamphlets.

Christchurch is also puttingtogether powerpoint shows on thesanctions on Iraq and the Palestinianstruggle. Plus we have cheappamphlets and copies of this bulletin,which can help you get off the ground.

Anti-imperialist e-groupYou can also subscribe to the anti-war/anti-capitalist e-group at http://g r o u p s . y a h o o . c o m / g r o u p /antiwar_anticap_nz

As the situation of the Palestiniansworsens by the day, and with theUnited States, fully backed by NZ,threatening fresh interventions aroundthe world, the need for an anti-imperialist movement is especiallyurgent. Don’t delay - get involvednow!

PFLP leader Ahmed Saadat


V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: the higheststage of capitalism, classic study, witha major new introduction covering theperiod since, $17.50

Frank Furedi, The New Ideology ofImperialism, exposing the humanitarianideology which masks Western powerover the Third World, $22.50

Cheques for books and t-shirts should be made out to RM Club, and sentto P.O. Box 513, Christchurch

www.revolution.org.nz

NZ anti-imperialists to run jointelection campaignrevolution and the Workers Party of New Zealand, both ofwhich are involved in anti-imperialist activities around thecountry, have recently come to an agreement to run acombined campaign in the upcoming general elections.

A basic platform has been agreed, while the two groupsare also left free to campaign on the platform however theychoose and bring in whatever elements of their own specificpolitics they want to. The joint campaign will be called theAnti-Capitalist Alliance. Its basic platform consists of six shortpoints:

1. Opposition to all NZ and Western intervention in theThird World and all Western military alliances

2. Jobs for all with a living wage and shorter working week.3. For the unrestricted right of workers to organise and

take industrial action.4. For the fullest democratic rights for workers and poor

with no restrictions on their freedom of speech and politicalactivity. For full equality for women and for Maori and otherethnic minorities, and gay men and women.

5. For working class unity and solidarity - open borders,full rights for migrant workers.

6. For a working people's republic.It is hoped that we will be running candidates in at least

Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, in seats heldby government ministers and also with a concentrationon large working-class areas.

We expect few votes. However it does provide uswith an opportunity to gain a wider hearing than usual,challenge the warmaking, anti-working class politicianswho run the country, and draw more people into anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist activity.

We urge people who like what they read inrevolut ion, MidEast Solidarity and our otherpublications to get involved. Come and help spreadthe message that this is not the best of all possibleworlds and that humanity collectively can achieve muchmore.

The campaign also desperately needs funds to getgoing. Donations can be sent to RM Club, P.O. Box513, Christchurch, New Zealand. Cheques should bemade out to RM Club.

You can also help by buying books and t-shirts, aswe are turning over our merchandise account to theelection campaign. So when you buy a book or t-shirt,all the money goes to the election account.

revolution t-shirts come in gold andblack backgrounds, in all sizes. $25for regular t-shirts and $27.50 for fittedversion. Price includes postage withinNZ.


Since Israel’s all-out invasion of thePalestinian territories, millions of Arabsfrom Iraq to Morocco have taken to thestreets daily to support their sisters andbrothers under attack. Tens ofthousands in Muslim countries like Iran,Turkey, the Sudan and Bangladesh, butalso in Western Europe, southernRussia and Japan, also protestedIsraeli violence and its patron, theUnited States government.

Yemen, Syria, Iraq: mass demosIn Yemen, Syria and Libya, thedemonstrations were massive andmilitant. In Damascus hundreds ofthusands marched. On March 26,hundreds of thousands of Yemenis tookto the streets of the capital Sanaa,according to the French Press Agency,chanting “Freedom of Jerusalem is amust,” “No to capitulation” and “Let’sresist in Iraq and Palestine.” The officialSABAA news agency estimated that1.5 million people took part in themarch. General Popular Congress

Baghdad on March 30 denouncingIsrael’s “savage attacks” against thePalestinians. A general strike wascalled on April 1 in Jordan in solidaritywith the Palestinian people and to backup calls for a boycott of U.S. goods anda holy war against Israel.

The Jordanian government has hadto allow the spontaneous feelings of itscitizens, a majority of whom arePalestinian, to be expressed in thestreets, even though the Jordanianmonarchy has warm diplomaticrelations and a long border with Israel.

Jordanian state television, asquoted by the BBC, even said, “For thesecond consecutive day, Amman anda number of cities and refugee campswitnessed marches that hailed thesteadfastness of the Palestinian peopleand condemned the criminal Israeliacts against the Palestinian people andtheir sacred issue and legitimate

Palestine solidarity actions

Members of Brazil’s landless peasants’movement burn US flag in pro-Palestin-ian protest

Egyptians take to the streets Protest in a Gaza Strip refugee camp

Secretary GeneralAbdul Karim al-Iriyani led it andcalled on the ArabLeague to supportthe Intifada.

On March 31Libyan leaderMuammar al-Qaddafi led ademonstration ofmore than 100,000people in Tripoli anddeclared Arabcountries must“open their bordersand let through theLibyan volunteersto Jerusalem.”

Street fighting inEgypt; general strike in JordanEgyptian television covered the Israelioccupation of Ramallah live. It wasreported that a scene in which anEgyptian driver, who was dying afterthe Israeli Defense Forces had shothim, asked the person filming him totake care of his son caused people toopenly weep in the streets and coffeeshops where they were watching.

But they didn’t just weep. They gotout into the streets and fought the cops.Over 50,000 Egyptians protestedMarch 31 and April 1, most in Cairo butalso in northern cities in the Delta. InCairo, the cops tried to control thedemonstrators with tear gas and watercannons. When they were turned backfrom the Israeli Embassy, they attackeda Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Ninepolice injured by thrown stones and 16demonstrators went to the hospital.Thirty demonstrators were arrested.

The slogans of the protestchallenged the collaboration and

collusion between Israel and theUnited States and called on Egyptto break off the relations it hadestablished with the Zionist state in1979.

Street protests in Egypt havebeen illegal and harshly repressedever since President Sadat’sassassination in 1981. ForEgyptian cops to attack Egyptianstudents to protect the IsraeliEmbassy while the Israeli armywas attacking Palestinians inRamallah adds to the political crisisin Egypt. Egypt is the largest andmost influential Arab state.

Some 100,000 Iraqis marched in

Huge protest in Damascus


national authority.”According to the French press,

about 20,000 people marched inAmman. There were numerous militantprotests in and around refugee camps,where burning barricades were set upand traffic was stopped. There weresome skirmishes with the cops, butnone as serious as the ones in Egypt.

Marches in the campsTens of thousands of Palestinianrefugees demonstrated on March 29 inrefugee camps in Lebanon todenounce the assault on Ramallah.

An estimated 30,000 refugeesmarched at the refugee camps ofRashidiyeh, Bass, Burj Shamali andAinal-Helweh in southern Lebanon.More than 20,000 refugeesdemonstrated at the Shatila and BurjBarajneh camps south of Beirut while6,000 people marched at the Beddawicamp in northern Lebanon. Shatila wasthe site of an infamous massacre ofPalestinians orchestrated by ArielSharon in 1988.

On April 1, according to the Germanpress agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur, hundreds of Lebanese andPalestinians demonstrated outside theheavily guarded U.S. Embassy.Demonstrators were led by fourambulances and doctors of the

Palestinian Red Crescent, whosevolunteers had been stopped fromevacuating the wounded and the deadin the besieged town of Ramallah. Theprotesters were stopped by Lebaneseantiriot police 100 feet away from theembassy, located in Awker, northeastof Beirut.

Protests even occurred in stateletslike Bahrain and Kuwait, whose feudalrulers are totally dependent on thegood wishes of the United States.Leaders throughout the Arab world arewatching their streets as thousandsprotest what they see as Israeli

aggression and the “passivity” of theirgovernments in protecting thePalestinians. These protests, if theygrow, could shake their hold on power.

There have been protests in mostmajor cities in Latin America fromMexico City to Quito, Ecuador andSantiago, Chile. For instance,thousands demonstrated in Santiagoon April 6 (see pic at bottom of page).Landless peasants in Brazil have alsoprotested in support of the Palestinians(see pic previous page).

There have been protests acrossEurope and the United States, too.Among the biggest in Europe havebeen an April 6 protest in the Swisscapital, Berne, which drew 9,000 andan 18,000-strong march in Paris thesame day. April 6 also saw hundredsof Arab-Americans rallied at CrawfordHigh School football stadium inCrawford, Texas, near Bush’s ranch,where Blair and Bush were meeting atthe time. Pickets at Israeli consulatesin Chicago and Detroit have drawn upto a thousand people, while a March30 protest in Washington DC drew3,000.

The above is edited and slightly added tofrom an original article by Greg Dunkelin the US weekly left paper Workers World

London protest

Clockwise from top left: 9,000 at April 6 protest in Berne, Switzerland; hundreds in Crawford,Texas;Indonesian protest; thousands in Santiago, Chile;


Civil liberties afterSeptember 11

USAMilitary courts for terrorist suspectsThe USA Patriot Act -Administrativedetention of non-citizens committingoffences (including violation of visaconditions if they cannot be deported)-Reduction of judicial supervision overofficial surveillance of telephone andinternet communication; criminalisationof membership and support for ‘terroristgroups’; vague legal definition ofterrorist group to include any ‘violentactivity’ including by domestic groups;secret surveillance of private financialinformation with no judicial scrutiny;removal of almost all restrictions onpolice access to information onstudents

BritainAnti-terrorism, Crime and Security Bill-Indefinite detention of foreign‘suspected terrorists’; law againstincitement of religious hatred; forciblephotographing of arrested suspects;police power to demand removal ofclothing that obscures identity;expansion of jurisdiction of the Ministryof Defence police - unrestricted accessfor police to electronic and telephonecommunication data for allinvestigations; new offence of failure tosupply police with informationregarding terrorism; powers to seizefunds belonging to suspected terrorists

CanadaAnti-Terrorism Act - Wide definition ofterrorism including acts committed outof jurisdiction; legal designation of‘terrorist groups’ and criminalisation ofparticipation in them; increased policesurveillance powers over electronicdata; widening the Official Secrets Act- new offence of failure to supply policewith information regarding terrorism;preventative detention of suspectedterrorists; criminalisation of computerhacking; new ‘hate propaganda’offences

Right across the Western world governments are hurriedly introducing repressive legislation underminingfree speech, freedom of association, liberty of the person, privacy of information and due process of law.James Heartfield provides an overview of just some of the ‘highlights’ from selected countries

AustraliaIncreased police surveillance powersover electronic and tele-communications data; deployment ofmilitary against asylum seekers;restrictions on legal appeal rights ofasylum seekers; offshore detentioncamps for asylum seekers; legalimmunities against suit and prosecutionfor secret services and political police;offence to identify secret servicepersonnel; authorisation for intelligenceservices to spy on Australian citizensoverseas

GermanyNew offence of membership of foreign‘terrorist group’; increased policesurveillance powers over electronicdata; ending immunities enjoyed byreligious groups; power for domesticdeployment of army

The new powers being taken share apattern. In every country interior andjustice ministries insist that these newlaws are needed to deal with the‘changed threat’ that terrorismrepresents after September 11. Thisis not true anywhere, and in the caseof Britain at least this claim isdeliberately misleading.

The British bil l includes some

powers that the government has triedto get through parliament beforewithout success, such as widening thearrest powers of the Ministry ofDefence police. It also includes powerssuch as the unrestricted access ofpolice to electronic communicationrecords, which are not restricted toinvestigations of terrorism. These aresimply being introduced ‘under cover’of September 11.

Moreover, Home Secretary Blunketttold parliament on 15 October thatthere was ‘no immediate intelligencepointing to a specific threat to the UK’.He has not changed that position. Hehas now told Labour MPs that the stateof emergency that he will formallyannounce is only a ‘technical’ state ofemergency. ‘Technical’ because therehas to be a state of emergencydeclared to permit the government tointroduce indefinite detention ofterrorist suspects under Clause 23 ofthe Bill without violating the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights.

The Convention allows thegovernment to derogate from its Article5, which protects the liberty of theperson, only on the grounds that thereis a national emergency. Technical isone word for it, cynical would beanother, but either way the detention

Western bombs and sanctions, along with economic exploitation, kill millions inthe Third World. Now the Western terrorists are using new repressive legislationto block dissent.


power is plainly unrelated to any newterrorist threat. The Australian attorneygeneral has also confessed that hissecurity apparatus has been unable todiscover any terrorist targeting ofAustralia, nor is it clear in what senseCanada and Germany are facing anemergency.

Terrorising oppositionIt is worth remembering that anti-terrorism laws have never been

effective against determinedconspiracies, but they have alwaysserved to repress wider polit icalopposition. Two decades of the UK’sPrevention of Terrorism Act entirelyfailed to prevent the actions of the IRA;but then the vast majority of thehundreds of Irish people arrested anddetained under its draconian provisionswere never charged with anything. Itseffect was rather to intimidate politicalsupporters of Irish republicanism in

mainland Britain.It is in this context that the new

indefinite detention power of the Britishand American interior ministries shouldbe seen. Part 4 of the Anti-Terrorism,Crime and Security Bill allows the UKHome Secretary to detain indefinitelyany foreigner who has been refusedasylum but who cannot lawfully bedeported to his country of originbecause he would face torture orexecution, and so his deportation wouldviolate Article 3 ECHR.

It is enough that the Home Secretary‘suspects’ that the person is involvedwith terrorists or has ‘links’ to otherswhom the Home Secretary suspects ofbeing terrorists. This power is verywide ranging indeed.

When combined with the very broadand vague definition of terrorismalready legally enacted in the TerrorismAct 2000, the new power means thatthe Home Secretary can detainindefinitely any foreign citizen who is acritic of a regime which the Britishgovernment supports, but whichroutinely persecutes its polit icalopponents.

The trend in Britain, which leads theworld in this respect, is towards thecriminalisation of all unauthorised exilepolitical activity. The Terrorism Actalready allows the Home Secretary todesignate certain organisations asterrorist groups. Under the Act it is acriminal offence to be a member of orraise funds for or assist in any way such

Civil rights are under attack with arange of extremely repressive lawsbeing pushed by the Government.One of the most repugnant pieces oflegislation is the TerrorismSuppression Bill which if passed willabolish basic rights which have beenwon in the past by hard struggle.

The Terrorism Bill was firstintroduced in April last year. Followingthe September 11 events ForeignMinister Goff tried to insert secretclauses into the Bill. This arousedwidespread opposition and he backeddown a little to allow a few weeks forsubmissions on the clauses (see TheSpark 18 November 2001).

The Bill in its entirety should bescrapped. For a start it expands thepowers of the state to suppressdissent by defining terrorism in broad

terms but completely legitimises stateterror. In fact it is a replica of fascistlaws being pushed by Washington andthis highlights the position of the NewZealand state as a junior partner in theUS-led imperialist bloc. Will Clark andco. decide now to follow PresidentBush who has declared that foreignerssuspected of terrorism will be tried inmilitary courts and can be executed?

The Bill also curtails many civil rightsincluding the right to a public trial andthe right for the accused to know hisaccuser and to have access to theevidence which may be deemed‘classified’ and never revealed. Thestate will have the power to act onbehalf of secret service agencies suchas the CIA - an organisation notoriousfor its drug-running and coup-plotting.

One of the most objectionableaspects of the Bill is it gives extremepowers to the Prime Minister andForeign Minister who can designate a

person as a terrorist on the say-so ofa spy agency. Designated or accusedindividuals have little protection underthe Bill.

Behind the declarations of‘preventing terrorism’ the real aim ofthe Bill is to suppress protestmovements and prevent internationalsupport for liberation struggles bymaking illegal any financial and moralassistance to those organisationslisted as ‘terrorist’. It imposes hugesentences, beyond those of similarcharges under standard criminal law.It could also be used to deny entrypermits to NZ to representatives ofany number of liberation movementswhom groups in NZ might like to invitefor speaking tours.

The above is slightly edited from anarticle in the NZ left-wing fortnightly TheSpark, December 5, 2001

New Zealand

As the Western powers prepare fresh interventions abroad, attacks on civil liber-ties at home are escalating


Civil libertiesContinued from previous page

an organisation.The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),

for example, is one of the organisationsthat have been proscribed under theact. Apart from being the largest of thegroups resisting decades of oppressionof the Kurds by NATO member Turkey,the PKK is the dominant organisationamong Kurdish exiles living in Britainand one of the largest political partiesin Europe.

The new offence of incitement ofreligious hatred is also a politicalweapon. Although widely criticised asa sop to Muslim sensitivities, its mostlikely initial victims will be Islamists.Muslim activists are already facingprosecution under the UK’s existingrace discrimination laws for criticisingIsrael.

This repressive trend appears tohave gained more legal authorityfollowing the decision last October bythe House of Lords in the case ofRehman, a Muslim cleric whom thegovernment wished to deport to India.

In this case, the UK’s highest courtendorsed a concept of the ‘interests ofnational security’ that includes threatstowards other states.

The ‘interests of national security’ isnow a means to suppress the politicalorganisation of people exiled in theWest who represent no threat to the lifeof the UK or to the British state.

Defendcivil

liberties -get

involvednow, see

details p20

Gareth Peirce is probably Britain’sleading human rights lawyer. Amongmany cases, she acted as solicitor forsome of the Birmingham Six andGuildford Four, along with other casesof Irish people stitched up in Britain.Recently Irish socialist and republicanPatricia Campbell spoke to Garethabout civil liberties and detention post-September 11. And remember this isHelen Clark’s model, Tony Blair,overseeing the draconian measures.

GP: In 1998, after the bombings inNairobi and Darussalam and alsoOmagh, parliament was recalled for aday and legislation was rushed throughon the basis that it was necessary andwould allow for prosecutions forconspiring to commit acts abroad or beinvolved in serious crime and allegedterrorist acts. In fact, that legislationhas never been used although it’s two-years-old.

And, again, legislation pushedthrough parliament, including lastyear’s Terrorism Act, which effectivelycriminalises a whole range ofmovements here and liberationstruggles in many parts of the world.People involved in resistance to trulyappalling regimes were all criminalised.

All that was waiting in the wings.There was not a lack of legislation! Butwhat happened after September 11was that it was said that there werepeople who could not be deported –since they’d face torture – and thatthese people also couldn’t beprosecuted here because there wasinsufficient evidence, but plenty of‘intelligence’. So they introducedinternment for them instead, and thathas been a truly wicked piece oflegislation.

Think too, we’ve been told that weneeded all of that previous legislationto deal with people here supposedlyassisting terrorism abroad. And yet itwas never used. It’s very odd, butpeople haven’t been detained underthat legislation. Instead, people havebeen rounded up – who are all, bar one,asylum-seekers – as scapegoats. Thelegislation will ensure that they are notput on trial, just interned.

The allegations against them areappalling, with appalling consequencesfor their families. They are locked up,on the face of it for life, without trial,and they are branded ‘internationalterrorists’.

They are in Belmarsh Prison here,

in the Special Secure Units (SSUs) andthey are locked up 22 hours a day. Thecurrent prison regime is even worsethan it was five years ago when it drovepeople to mental and physicalannihilation. And they are locked upfor no reason at all. One just seesfurther writing on the wall if this worksand if these people don’t win theirchallenge.

The government had to lodge noticeof derogation with the European Courtof Human Rights, with the Council ofEurope, saying that there was anational emergency threatening the lifeof the nation, so that it could dispensewith the protections of Article 5 (nodetention without trial). So, they’veclaimed there is a national emergencythreatening the life of the nation, whenthere clearly isn’t. That is absoluterubbish!

If they get away with it, one will seemore and more secret trials, becausethey are heard by judges who are goingto hear most of the evidence in secretas it’s based on so-called ‘intelligence’.

This legislation has been sitting in acupboard somewhere with nobodythinking ever in a million years wouldthey get it past parliament and, instead,it was rushed through without a squeak.

You watch people crumble in frontof your eyes and they are facing theprospect that this is going to go on forever, because there will never be aresolution by trial as they are detainedwithout trial.

The intelligence services must bechuckling with absolutely massivesatisfaction. No more the necessity ofbothering with a trial and no moreneeding to get evidence. They canproffer any old rubbish, behind closeddoors in secret to a judge, and thedetainee is never going to know.

The above is taken from issue #9 of theIrish journal Fourthwrite

British lawyer speaks out


revolution , Marxist andanti-imperialist quarterlymagazine. $3.75 per copy,or $22 for a six-issuesubscription, within NZ.Packed full of info forunderstanding the world inorder to change it. Chequesfor revolution should bemade out to Radical MediaCollective and sent to P.O.Box 513, Christchurch

Get with the revolutionThe events of September 11, 2001 andthe subsequent Western onslaught onAfghanistan, are stark reminders of thenature of the world we live in.Capitalism is a system of exploitation,oppression, alienation and violence.

While capitalist development andtechnology brings humanity togetheron a scale never before witnessed,capitalist social relations divide us ona scale never seen before either.

While creating more wealth than hasever been amassed in human history,capitalism creates greater inequalitythan ever before by spreading thatwealth around more unevenly thathumanity has ever known.

The richest 225 individuals on theplanet have combined assets of over$NZ2.5 trillion. This is greater than thetotal annual income of nearly half of thepopulation of the whole world. The networth of the top ten billionaires aloneis greater than the combined nationalincome of the 48 poorest countriesadded together.

Across the world three billion people– about half of all humanity – struggleto live on $NZ5 a day. One in fivehuman beings don’t expect to livebeyond 40. Around 300 million peoplelive in 16 countries where lifeexpectancy has actually decreased inthe past 25 years

In New Zealand, the past severaldecades have seen a marked erosionin overall incomes and living standards,while a handful of people at the top ofsociety have become richer than ever.

In 1971, three percent of thepopulation owned 20 percent of thewealth; by the early 1990s, this threepercent owned 37 percent of thewealth. Yet average household incomein wages and salaries between 1982and 1996, measured in 1996 dollars,fell from $34,000 to $31,500 - adecrease of around ten percent(Household Economic Survey, 1996).Given that this includes the householdincomes of the upper salary earners,the loss of income of most workers wasmuch greater. Thus, for instance, theaverage wage in Christchurch is nowaround $20,000 (Press, September 1,2001).

At revolution , we want to build apoltical movement which challenges

this state off affairs.We know that the only reason the

system staggers on - at our expense -is because too many people believethey can’t really change things. This islargely the result of the dominance ofcapitalist ideology, but it is also a resultof the failure of the left to make aconvincing case against capitalism inits heartlands in the West.

Too often the left has merely taggedalong behind Labour-type parties andsingle-issue reform movements. It hasprovided no real, revolutionary critiqueof the system and the forces which propit up.

We started revolution magazinein 1997 to begin to try to turn thissituation around, at least in NZ. Now

we are setting out to build a politicalmovement to start more effectivelyputting our ideas into practice.

We have already initiated a lot ofMiddle East solidarity work, we produceboth this bulletin and revolutionmagazine, and bulletins for workplaces,women’s liberation and socialism, andcampus.

Come and join us.The first step is taking out a

subscription to revolution magazineand finding out more about our ideas.If you like the mag, and are inclined tobe a do-er, rather than someone whojust sits and watches the world go by,then you’llwant to get involved with usin building a new left movement in NZ.One serious about revolutionary ideasand fundamental social change.


Prisoners from the Western assault on Afghanistan, held at the United States base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba

Where will the West strike next?From one end of the globe to the other,the Western powers are using a varietyof pretexts to intervene in Third Worldcountries. From ‘the war on drugs’(Colombia) to the ‘war on weapons ofmass destruction’ (Iraq), to the ‘war onterror’ (any Third World country), weare being bombarded withrationalisations for Westernintervention.

Yet, the biggest problem that peoplein the Third World face is preciselyWestern military intervention andeconomic plundering. The oppressedpeoples of the world need the West toget its boot off their necks.

In the West, the majority of peoplehave no stake in our leaders’ wars onthe peoples of the rest of the world.What do workers in New Zealand, forinstance, gain from the fact that ourgovernment is part of the UN sanctionswhich have kil led hundreds ofthousands of people in Iraq?

In fact by going along with this stateof affairs workers in NZ and otherimperialist countries are crippling theirability to fight their own governmentsand employers. It simply it is notpossible to fight at home for the thingswe need while going along withdepriving people abroad of the same

things.We don’t know where NZ and the

other Western powers will strike next -but wherever it is we need to side withthe Third World country they attack andhelp the Third World strike a blow forits own self-respect and independence.

We need to breath new life intoslogans such as ‘Workers of the WorldUnite’ and ‘An Injury to One is an Injuryto All’ and understand that theseinclude the peoples of the Third World.

If our rulers are weakened bysetbacks in their wars on the peoplesof the Third World, then it will be easierfor us to fight our battles here at home.

In NZ and other advanced capitalist countries, workers continueto be screwed by governments led by politicians like Clark, Blairand Bush. Instead of supporting their wars on the poor of theworld, we need to unite with the poor of the world against them.

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