GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – International working class action to blockade the Zionist state
Israel is a Zionist settler state colonised by miliary conquest. It is not a Jewish state. Most Jews around the world do not recognise it as their state. Jews as a minority oppressed people have the right to a nation, but not at the expense of an existing nation, Palestine. The right to a nation’s self-determination cannot be realised by destroying another nation’s self-determination. Moreover, this right should be the expressed will of the majority, not the project of a small section of ultranationalist Zionists who want a national territory to advance their financial interests.
It was this bourgeois nationalist Zionist faction that negotiated with the ruling classes in Germany, Britain, the US, and the bureaucratic Stalinist USSR, to facilitate the migration of Jews to Palestine before and after WW2. That ruling class solidarity between the Zionists and their powerful allies allowed the Zionists to occupy Palestine without facing any serious opposition to decades of expansionary wars against the displaced and oppressed Palestinians.
The solution can only be the national liberation of Palestine from Zionist colonial rule. This will not result from the intervention of any of the great powers. The US/EU powers and their Russia/ China rivals do not want a fight over Palestine. The US/EU already backs Israel as its gendarme in the Middle East. US allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt are concerned to keep their own working masses under control. Russia and China and their allies Iran and Turkey fear popular support for Palestine and the risk of a wider regional revolutionary uprising. And of course, the UN is no more than a fake democratic façade for the imperialist powers gang.
The question is: how can the Arab and other masses in the region rise up in support of the Palestinian cause of freedom? Some signs that the Arab masses are capable of winning are the new generations of youths who do not respect the narrow bourgeois politics of their national elites including Hamas and Fatah; Arab Israeli youth behind the 1948 Green Line who as second class citizens are standing up for the cause; the Palestinian diaspora in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon are also rising in solidarity. These uprisings expose the fragility of the weak and divided ruling classes of these anti-democratic regimes.
While the Arab Spring has faded and the Syrian revolution left a divided and destroyed nation, the masses are like a smouldering fuse. Serious working-class supporters of Palestine in the big powers should follow the lead of unionists in Livorno, Italy to black the export of munitions to Israel, and dockers in Durban (SATAWU) and the ILWU dockers in Oakland, who both have a history of banning Israeli cargo plan another ban this weekend refusing to work Zim Line ship. A strong international blockade of Israel would raise the costs of Israel’s Zionist project and further divide the country internally to the point where their international backers withdrew their support and the regime was isolated and weakened.
The Palestinian masses and their Israeli supporters backed by an international workers movement, should join forces to remove their bourgeois nationalist factions, liberating Palestine and building a workers’ and farmers’ government. A socialist Palestine, as part of a wider union of socialist republics in the region, would see all the old oppressive historic feudal and imperialism borders replaced by a multi-ethnic federation of socialist republics.
Communist Workers Group (Aotearoa/New Zealand) 20th May 2021 https://redrave.blogspot.com/
https://redrave.blogspot.com/2021/05/no-halfway-house-of-national-liberation.html
https://labourheartlands.com/italian-dockers-refuse-to-load-weapons-for-israel/
http://www.labournet.net/docks2/1007/blockade1.html
Dave Brownz is TDBs guest Marxist blogger
From Canada: A River of Blood on the Consulate’s Steps
“The death and destruction inflicted by Israel in Gaza, as well as the heightened violence by Israel across Palestine, cannot be washed away.”
Jewish Canadians and allies on Friday symbolically poured a “river of blood” on the steps of the Israeli consulate in Toronto to represent the human carnage in Gaza over recent days—and across historic Palestine for decades—as they demanded the Canadian government end its support for the Israeli government’s violent policies.
The demonstration was led by World Beyond War, Independent Jewish Voices, Just Peace Advocates, and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
The protest came a day after diplomats brokered a ceasefire between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas—a temporary reprieve that was desperately needed following an 11-day assault in which more than 230 Palestinians, including 65 children, were killed and nearly 2,000 wounded. According to Israeli authorities, 12 people were killed in recent days by Hamas rockets.
While the ceasefire was welcomed by Canadian advocates for Palestinian rights, Rabbi David Mivasair of Independent Jewish Voices said, “the ceasefire doesn’t end the injustice and oppression.”
“It can no longer be business as normal at Israel’s consulates in Canada,” said Mivasair. “The death and destruction inflicted by Israel in Gaza, as well as the heightened violence by Israel across Palestine, cannot be washed away. This belligerence is the latest in an ongoing aggressive 73-year settler-colonization project by Israel across historic Palestine.”
“Red paint streaming from the Israeli consulate onto the street in Toronto represents the blood of massacred innocent Palestinian civilians, the blood on Israel’s hands,” said the groups in a joint statement. “As Canadians, we demand that our government holds Israel accountable for war crimes and stops the Canada-Israel arms trade.”
Canada has exported $57 million in weapons to Israel since 2015, including $16 million in bomb-making materials. The Canadian government also recently signed a contract to buy drones from the same Israeli company that supplies 85% of the drones used by the IDF to surveil and attack Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
“Jews in our communities in Canada are overcome with grief and anger,” said Mivasair. “Many of us stand in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings. We say loud and clear, ‘not in our name.’ Israel can no longer continue to commit these atrocities in the name of the Jewish people.” Read More Here
Or here
Mapping Solidarity protests around the world
Nearly 200,000 in London on Saturday in history-making solidarity
From that link:
Nearly 200,000 people gathered in London Saturday for what organizers said was one of the largest demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinians in the United Kingdom’s history.
Organizers with the Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Muslim Association of Britain had planned the protest before Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire that began early Friday after an 11-day bombing campaign targeting the Gaza Strip.
The attacks killed more than 230 Palestinians including dozens of children. Rockets launched by Hamas killed 12 Israelis, according to authorities.
The groups went ahead with the demonstration despite the ceasefire—which was brokered by diplomats from Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations—noting that “Palestinians in Gaza still face a 15-year long siege that entraps them and violates all of their human rights.” Read more
From Dave’s ‘Italian Dockers’ link, above:
After discovering that a shipment of arms destined for Israel was arriving in Italy’s ports, workers from the USB (Unione Sindacale di Base) refused to load the ship in support of the Palestinians fighting for their lives against Israeli occupation.
Autonomous Collective of Port Workers of Genoa and the WeaponWatch association, organised in L’Unione Sindacale di Base, learning that the ship was filled with weapons and explosives bound for the Israeli dock of Ashdod.
They stated these weapons and explosives would be used to kill Palestinians, who have already been hit by a brutal Israeli military offensive that has murdered hundreds of victims, including many children. The union announced shortly after that it would not allow this or any other maritime shipments of armaments to set sail for Israel.
The statement from the USB read:
The Port of Livorno is not complicit in the massacre against the Palestinian population: no to the transit of the weapons ship in our port
This afternoon the Asiatic Island ship will arrive in the port of Livorno. Thanks to the report of the Autonomous Port Workers Collective of Genoa and the WeaponWhath association, we know that inside there are containers loaded with weapons and explosives headed for the Israeli port of Ashdod. Weapons and explosives that will be used to kill the Palestinian population already hit by a severe attack this very night which caused hundreds of victims among the civilian population, including many children. Read more here
In the US, Bernie Sanders has introduced a Resolution to block Biden’s sale of $735 million of weapons to Israel.
“We cannot simply let another huge arms sale go through without even a congressional debate.”
Joining his progressive allies in the House, Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday introduced a resolution of disapproval against the Biden administration’s proposed sale of advanced weaponry to the Israeli government..
The Senate measure—which, under the International Security and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, must receive a vote—aims to block the pending U.S. sale of $735 million worth of Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Small Diameter Bombs that humanitarian groups warn would be used against civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories.
During Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza, U.S.-made bombs and aircraft have been deployed to obliterate a building housing media offices and kill dozens of Palestinian civilians. Read more
Robert Inlakesh reports to 21stcenturywire. Very good podcast – Robert begins at 28 mins.:
https://21stcenturywire.com/2021/05/16/episode-373-uprising-with-guests-robert-inlakesh-and-nacho-from-standupx/
NEVER AGAIN!!
is an explanation used by many young American Jews to explain why they are so disturbed ..and angry..about the extreme cruelty constantly inflicted on Palestinians.
NEVER AGAIN TO ANYONE!!
https://adalahny.org/