As Palestinians face a continuing genocide in Gaza, and oppression in the West Bank and elsewhere, and their supporters, in Britain, face attacks by the British state, the Zionists of the AWL, issue weasel words, and join in the attack.
The weasel words come in the form of the most flaccid criticism of the Tories attempts to ban protests. But, the AWL basically accepts and endorses many of the lies put out by the Tories and Zionists, used to support the proposals for such bans. For example, AWL member Jim Denham, writes, in relation to the chant “From The River To The Sea, Palestine Will Be Free”,
“Some may first think it’s a bland “freedom everywhere” call. But by now most protesters must know that many Jews see it as threatening; as meaning Arab or Islamic rule in all of 1918-48 Palestine, “from the river to the sea”, and the wiping-out of Israel. So, using that slogan must either mean you want to make the threat, or that you simply don’t care.”
Well, that is odd, then, isn't it, and seems to confirm the Tories claims about many Jews in London being legitimately afraid, and their statements about “No Go Areas”. Its odd, because, there have been large numbers of Jews on all those demonstrations, who most certainly did not appear to be at all afraid, and who marched, as distinct and identified Jewish groups. Owen Jones has covered it in some of his videos. Yet, no mention of it, from the Zionist Jim Denham, no thought from him that, maybe, if there are Jews in London who feel afraid of these marches, those fears are not legitimate, and have simply been stoked up by Tories, and Zionists, just as with the ridiculous fears that some had that a Corbyn Labour government was going to be introducing gas chambers! Jim Denham, in simply talking about those fears, is part of the process of stoking them.
Meanwhile, Denham asserts his own interpretation of what that chant means, as calling for the violent destruction of Israel. No doubt some of those responsible for it, have that intent, and it is an intent that no Marxist could support. Yet, oddly, the same slogan “From The River To The Sea”, forms part of the programme of the Zionist Likud Party, which dominates the current government of Netanyahu. It sets out clearly the intention of Zionism to remove Palestinians from historic Palestine (and beyond) so as to establish a racist, confessional state, in which Jews have exclusive rights, and non-Jews are either excluded, or reduced to second-class citizens. Netanyahu has even presented maps in speeches to the UN, in which such a state is presented, and in which Palestine does not exist. What is more, as against the inability of the Palestinians or their supporters to eradicate the state of Israel from existence, the Zionists do have the power, backed by western imperialism, of eradicating the Palestinians, and though Denham seems to have missed it, that is precisely what the Zionists have been doing for the last six months!
But, Denham does not seem to care that the slogan "From the river to the sea", is the mantra of the Zionism he supports, and that, as we speak, it is being implemented by the Zionist state, via a genocide against the Palestinian people.
Denham gives us more weasel words and slipperiness, linked to his previous social-patriotic clap-trap, about capitalist states' right of self-defence. He says,
“The gist is: smash Israel. Not have the workers within it “smash” capitalist rule within it, but simply wipe out the country itself (something that socialists have never in the whole of history sought to do to any other country).”
That, of course, is precisely what the AWL supported when they backed NATO's bombing of Libya, and before that, they had carried articles, basically supporting the idea of backing “democratic imperialism” in destroying Nazism in Germany, in WWII. Today, they back NATO imperialism in backing Ukrainian imperialism in its war against Russian imperialism. But, the weasel words, here, are not just contained in what is said, but what is not said. True, socialists have never interpreted “revolutionary defeatism” to mean that we actively seek the defeat of our own state, by some other state in war. But, unlike the AWL, what we do interpret it to mean is that we do not recognise any right of self-defence for any capitalist state, in war. We start from the principle that our main enemy is at home. We start from the principle that we seek only to defend the working-class, in opposition to our own ruling class, including in Israel, and that to do that its necessary to solidarise with workers elsewhere, not with that ruling class. The AWL has abandoned that basic Marxist principle to pursue its Zionism and pro-imperialism.
Denham says,
“The slogan “Free Palestine” was brought into currency on demonstrations in 2002 precisely because it was ambiguous. It could mean freeing Palestinian territories from Israeli occupation and founding an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel (i.e., two states for two peoples). But its promoters meant “freeing” the whole of 1918-1948 Palestine from any “Zionist” (i.e., Jewish) presence whatsoever.”
He seems to have no concern for actual people as human beings, but only for bits of land, in which people live, typical of a nationalist. As I pointed out forty years ago, when I was a member of the WSL, which was a predecessor organisation of the AWL, before it degenerated, the whole two-states idea was a fantasy, and did not, for one thing deal with the national minorities that would be trapped inside these two sectarian hell-holes. Everything I said would happen, has happened. The reality is that there have been two states – a Palestinian state, divided between Gaza and the West Bank, and the Zionist state in Israel. Did it resolve the issue, no, it made it worse. The Zionist state in Israel, would never allow the Palestinian state to function as a state, and it has been backed by the US, in that endeavour.
The Palestinians were left with one leadership that sought to suck up to western imperialism and the Arab bourgeoisie, and was led to police its own population, and an alternative leadership – Hamas – that looked to other reactionary, “anti-imperialist forces”. Neither offered the Palestinian masses any progressive solution to their plight, just as, inside Israel, the Zionist state apparatus, locked the workers into a Bonapartist, militarised state, doomed to perpetual conflict with a large portion of its own population, and its neighbours, unless it could inflict a “final solution” upon them.
Denham seems to have no concern in his above formulation for the fact that, not only is the two-state solution a reactionary fantasy, but that, even were such a fantasy to be realised, in some kind of Motherhood and Apple Pie scenario, a quarter of Israel's own population, around 2 million people, are Israeli-Arabs, who are also, currently, neither equal, nor entirely free citizens. These are not Palestinians in the West Bank, and other occupied territories, but in Israel itself. Does Denham not think that these Palestinians, should also be free? Does he not think they should have equal rights to Israeli Jews, indeed, the same rights that the Zionist state offers to all Jews, wherever they live in the world, but does not offer to Palestinians?
No comments:
Post a Comment