Sheffield: Row over "No To IDF No To Hamas" Placard

Being opposed to Hamas and the IDF is completely legitimate. Does the guy with the megaphone think he owns the campaign against the bombing? This is horrible old school lefty politics with mini dictators slapping around anyone who disagrees with them.

Is the rest of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign happy to side with this guy? The Protests over Gaza have brought to the surface all the poison on the old Communist left. As an Anarchist I don't want to have anything to do with these people.

Some 'anarchist' wrote:

"Being opposed to Hamas and the IDF is completely legitimate."

which is certainly true. Putting them on the same placard, and taking it to a demo and parading it in front of people who have lost relatives in the last few days is however, a somewhat insensitive thing to do. And I for one applaud Musheir for acting on his rage. So, it seems did others who were there.

" Does the guy with the megaphone think he owns the campaign against the bombing?"

Does the woman with the placard think she owns the campaign against the bombing of the relatives of the guy with the megaphone? Did she go there to show support, or was she perhaps viewing the slaughter of Palestinian civilians as an opportunity to force her views on the rest of us?

"This is horrible old school lefty politics with mini dictators slapping around anyone who disagrees with them."

Rather than a reaction of someone who is grieving? Did you even bother to listen to the audio that was linked before you came to this conclusion?

"Is the rest of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign happy to side with this guy? The Protests over Gaza have brought to the surface all the poison on the old Communist left. As an Anarchist I don't want to have anything to do with these people."

One would hope that the rest of the PSC isn't fooled by the claims that zionist violence is the product of Palestinian fireworks. One would also hope that they understand the need to offer solidarity and support at a time when Palestinians are suffering.

One would hope that they are standing behind the Palestinians, rather than attempting to tell the Palestinians how best to struggle in the face of overwhelming odds.

Palestinians have been subjected to the same barrage of criticism of Hamas that we all have. They have heard Bush tell them that Hamas is responsible for the violence, despite the fact that they lived with Israeli attacks for 58 years before Hamas was elected, and will continue to do so long after Hamas is voted out of power - when they believe that it is not acting in their interests. This after all is what they did to Fatah.

Nothing the AWL does surprises me - but the AF should certainly have cause to stop and reflect and think if it is the AWL that they want to be seen to be allied with.

Likewise they should think long and hard if they want to be associated with the West's latest attack on Hamas - whereby the US and UK promise to disarm Hamas (whilst arming Israel to the hilt) and to join Israel as the jailers and executioners of Gaza. To attend solidarity rallies and echo the propaganda of the politicians is not going to make them many converts.

I want nothing to do with the 'anarchist' who responded in this way - and I'm not very keen to have anything to do with the AF while it is cheering on zionists who disrupt Palestinian solidarity rallies with placards that are designed to offend those who they say they are showing solidarity with.

Political equivalence in a massacre is immoral. This banner would have been better suited to the pro-Israel rallies in London and Manchester with their "“Peace to Israel and Gaza” slogan.

As anarchists AF won't believe in Heaven either. Does that mean they are going to contact Samer Abed Rabbo to tell her that her sisters aren't in heaven, they are just dead? If not, why not ?


Four-year-old Samer Abed Rabbo lay half-covered by a blanket yesterday in her hospital bed as she tried to explain the bullets that crippled her and killed her two sisters. Samer was hit by a bullet in the back that damaged her spinal cord and left her arms and legs paralysed, probably permanently. Her sisters Amal, two, and Suad, eight, who was nicknamed Soso, were killed outright when their house in northern Gaza came under attack from an Israeli tank last week. "They killed us. We're dead. Me, Amal and Soso. They've gone to heaven," she said. "I was at home. The Jews destroyed the house and I don't want to go back there. I love Amal and Soso."

does the Palestine Solidarity Campaign support Hamas who it is fair to say are a terrorist organisation.

I can't find anything on the PSC website that supports Hamas - I did find this though:

 http://www.palestinecampaign.org/index7b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=4&l2_id=25&Content_ID=367

Why don't you read it and see if you think it indicates support for Hamas?

Also, why not take the opportunity to regurgitate Israeli propaganda and explain how "it is fair to say (Hamas) are a terrorist organisation.?" Should be fascinating. Then perhaps you can address the central question of the thread: - Is it okay to use a solidarity campaign to be deliberately offensive to those you claim to be showing solidarity with, or to stand in solidarity with those that do?

PS: When did you stop calling yourself Josh, Jonathon?

Hmm...whilst I wasn't at this demo, I did see those posters at the last sheffield one, and as far as I remember the AWLers weren't shouting out anything or harassing people. Their posters weren't hateful, they weren't judgemental, they didn't say it was fine what the IDF were doing because Hamas were doing bad things too - they just said that they oppose both.

Whether you think it was the time to say it or not, you can't claim it wrong to oppose two fundamentalist right-wing groups - it certainly didn't warrant someone ripping down their poster. If they were shouting at the guy who was grieving then fair enough, it probably wasn't the time and someone should have told them to shut up, but if they were just stood there holding those posters up then it is appalling. Are people also going to go and rip up the posters of the Tamil people protesting? Their posters mentioned what's happening in Gaza and Sri Lanka, will people therefore get 'offended'? No, I would hope not, and if they do then shame on them. Hamas have killed people too, saying that you are against them doesn't warrant you getting shouted at and your posters ripped up.

Quote 'does the Palestine Solidarity Campaign support Hamas who it is fair to say are a terrorist organisation.'

Would it be fairer to say that Hamas is the democratically elected governement of Gaza and that they won that position in UN observed democratic elections, that have been described as the most free and open election to have taken place in the Middle East?

Would it be fairer to say that whilst the firing of rockets is obviously wrong, they are more of a cry for help from a people that have been strangled for 18 months by an illegal and inhumane blockade (a blockade is an act of war btw)?

Would it be fair to say that this rabid terrorist organisation did not fire a single rocket out of Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel broke that ceasefire on November 5th by entering Gaza and killing 6 members of Hamas? (I would see that as breaking the truce, how about you?)

Would it be fair to say that this rabid terrorist organisation has stopped all suicide bombings since it took power 18 months ago by outlawing them?

Would it be fair to say that this rabid terrorist organisation has kept its popularity in Gaza, despite the siege, because they are actually concerned with the welfare of their people? Unlike Abbas who is concerned with doing the bidding of the US and Israel.

Would it be fair to say that this rabid terrorist organisation has offered to recognize Israel if it retreats to its pre-1967 borders, allows the Palestinians a viable state and doesn't blockade them any more (as per UN resolution 242)?

Is it fair to say that the democracy that we, apparently, hold so dear in the West is nothing more than ensuring pliable leaders who will do whatever is required for the expansion of US hegemony in the Middle East?

Is it fair to say that democracy is a double edged sword and that you have to live with the choices people make if you offer it to them?

Is it fair to say that the Hamas 'problem' is mostly of the making of Israel as they funded and supported Hamas in order to weaken the PLO? (in the same way that the bin Laden problem is mostly the making of the US as they funded his outfit to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, Brezinski was so pleased with their efforts he described Afghanistan as Russia's own Vietnam).

I don't know whether you are ignorant of these things (I hope this is the case), or deliberately avoiding bringing them up as they mess with your one eyed view of the situation. Rest assured that there are a lot of people who aren't falling for the 'War on Terror tm' and the 'We're fighting terrorism' and the 'We're the good guys and they're the bad guys' bollocks. If you look at US meddling in the ME you can see who the bad guys are if you look hard enough and think a bit more (see if you can work out how Iran became an Islamist state? I'll give you some hints: - search for 'Mossadeq and oil nationalisation' and 'Shah of Iran and the US' and then 'Islamic Revolution').

The well worn aphorism "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" pretty much sums this up. If you want to believe everything you read in the Daily Express then more power to you, some of us like to use our noggin a bit more!

But they attack working class activists and put down political dissidence INSIDE PALESTINE -  http://www.nosweat.org.uk/story/2007/07/19/hamas-attacks-palestinian-unions-tuc-backs-workers-organisations

I notice this isn't the first time that the PSC has equated political criticism with support for the Israeli state and used force to remove what they deem to be the wrong political line from their demonstrations -  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2004/06/293454.html

SHIN FEIN could have been said to be a terrorist organisation until the IRA finally decommissioned their weapons the link is undeniable.They are now a legitimate political party whereas before they were the PR front for the IRA same applies to Hamas's political wing.so who are you fooling here.Hamas broke the ceasefire and they have broken it again the last few hours fact.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7835981.stm

So when two AF groups put out statements saying that it was increasingly common to see the expectation that opposing the IDF means supporting Hamas we had a chorus of criticism saying that this is a "lie". Now you have a very clear demonstration that support for Hamas is expected as part of opposing the war - to be clear, supporting one set of combatants in a war is expected as part of opposing it, and the criticism is of the soft-trots of the AWL for the "insensitivity"!

The idea that it is "insensitive" to oppose Hamas, who murder trade unionists, break strikes, impose Sharia law on women and gays, deliberately target civilians and who have used this conflict as an opportunity to eliminate their political rivals is utterly obscene.

You mean like the PA attack Hamas supporters in the West Bank? You mean like the illegal detention of Hamas representatives that Israel carries out? (going across the 'border' and kidnapping them illegally. It's interesting to note that the Gaza and West Bank borders seem to be as unilateral as the Israeli wars and truces, they only appear to work if Palestinians want to come out) You mean like the detentions that have taken place in Tel Aviv by the Israelis against dissenting voices against the slaughter in Gaza? You are championing the 'working class activists' (right on brother), but you fail to mention something much worse that Israel have done and that is outlaw ANY of the Arab parties from standing in their elections.

I am not saying for one minute that Hamas are angels, far from it, but to try and make out that they are the WHOLE reason for the problems is insidious, deceptive and plain old wrong! Hamas' use of rockets against Israeli civilians is wrong, but I can see why a group of people displaced from their land, ignored by the majority of the western world, penned in, starved, denied education, proper medical care, safety for their children, the right to earn a living, electricity, fuel, warmth, the right to self determination and freedom of movement might just resort to something so obviously futile against a country with the 4th strongest army in the world (I say futile because, whilst every death from violence is lamentable, these rockets have killed 20 people in 8 years! Hardly the most effective tactic is it?).

Our media and politicians visit Sderot on a regular basis to tell us about the rocket fire. What they ALWAYS neglect to tell us is that Sderot is built on exactly the spot that Najd used to occupy, a Palestinian village that was ethnically cleansed.

Yes Hamas have their faults, probably more than we know but let me give you an analogy. If you were watching some muscle bound bully beat the shit out of a 7 stone weakling, would you be pointing out the injustice of it, or would you be pointing out the faults of the 7 stone weakling?

...I was a member in the late '90's; they struck me as a bunch of arrogant middle class drunks.

From what I can remember, they espouse the "old" Labour - "New" Labour myth and are in league with Labour left celebrates.

They also believe, if my memory serves me correctly, that Britain has an historical debt to the loyalist community in the North of Ireland - try telling that to the nationalist minority under the yoke of British imperialism and it's brutal torture and murder maniacs in the British army, loyalist gangs and the RUC.

The AWL also had a wishy washy analysis on Palestine and did nothing on the streets from what I saw - apart from sell their news paper and the occasional info' stall - just a middle class talking shop blabbering on about the two state solution.

Targeting Hamas as being conservative, clerical, homophobic etc is of no use to the heroic people of Palestine. There is only one state and that is Israel, let's fight for the Palestinian state first - In Palestine at the moment those fighting for Palestine are Hamas and their resistance fighters - legitimatley elected - as well as the Palestinian people, many of whom voted for them.

Israel is an abonimation and was racist from its very inception, it was born out of terror and murder - it is a Jewish only state.

The AWL are also against pickets of M&S because they claim that it might fuel anti-Semitism. They say other companies do trade with Israel so why target M&S? - I ask, just because other companies trade with Israel, why does that delegitimise targeting one of them? What is wrong with targeting a company that has been an unequivocal supporter of Zionist Israel from it's very inception? What is wrong with targeting Britain's biggest corporate sponsor of Israel? What is wrong with targeting a British high street symbol of middle class consumerism? If we had the numbers in a mass anti-apartheid movement, we could target all of them - and sometimes there are rolling pickets - but for the time being targeting a zionist company is a good tactic because it is a zionist company - it does not simply trade with Israel for profit like other companies do - it is a political zionist supporter of apartheid Israel.

Hamas are the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. The US, UK, EU and others simply do not recognise that fact - and neither do groups like the AWL. What right have middle class (or anybody for that matter) people got - in the safety of England's cosy suburbs, thousands of miles away from the horror of a Jewish only state terror machine - to tell the people of Palestine that they got it wrong? The people of Palestine voted for Hammas because they saw Fattah for the corrupt, impotent hucksters that they are.

Hamas represent a concrete challenge to imperialism in Palestine - that is why we should be supporting them, instead of this middle class cluck-cluck, tut-tutting talking-shop from groups like the AWL.

regardless of the rights or wrongs, this is another SWP attempt at dominating a single issue event and applying their politics, i don't rip down every communist placard at a demo, because its just not the correct thing to do, its not like his placard read "bomb Hamas!" and in fact to be fair the very fact a white (seemingly middle class) person is teaching Palestinian politics to a Palestinian seems like another step towards swappie colonialism.
everything we know* about Palestine, read, watch and hear has come through our idiot boxes, i'd trust the word of a Palestinian before i trust Rupert Murdock.

why is this guy allowed to smash up someones placard he doesn't agree with, and yet we have to sit back and let socialists sell papers full of bravado bullshit, and propaganda.

fuck the SWP.

*unless you've been to Palestine for a while yourself,

Interesting analogy Johnathan. There are a number of points I'd like to ask but firstly I want to look at the issue of 'ceasefires'. You say that Hamas broke the ceasefire (I take it that you are on about the 6 month ceasefire in the first instance).

Are you denying that Israeli forces entered Gaza on Nov 5th and killed 6 members of Hamas and that Hamas fired rockets in retaliation to this? as per this link ->  http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4A37B520081105

Do you have a verified example of Hamas aggression during the ceasefire prior to this date? If you do not, then can you tell me if you think that entering Gaza and killing 6 members of Hamas is consistent with the terms of the ceasefire?

Israel broke the ceasefire as soon as it started because one of the conditions was that the blockade be eased but in actual fact it was tightened. Regardless of this clear breach of the conditions Hamas held to that truce and not a single rocket was fired from Gaza up until Nov 5th.

You say that Hamas have broken a ceasefire in the last few hours. This would be the one that Israel unilaterally decided upon and there was no dialogue with Hamas about, let alone commitment to. Are you an idiot or just a complete all out Israeli apologist. It is only a ceasefire if BOTH sides agree to it, otherwise it is one side stopping shooting and hoping the other side will stop too. If Israel wants the rockets to stop then they should get out of Gaza and lift the illegal blockade (funnily enough these are the terms that Hamas see as being required for a ceasefire to be put in place, before they break it again probably eh?).

Anyway on to your IRA analogy, Sinn Fein were the political arm of the IRA of that there is no doubt. How did peace in NI come about? Was it through dialogue with Sinn Fein, who in turn persuaded the IRA to stop their actions? Or did the UK send the army, navy and air force to bomb Southern Ireland until the IRA gave up. Yes there is a way out of the mess in the ME, unfortunately Israel will not follow the course of actions that has been shown to work in NI.

I think that it is a bit of a red herring to compare the troubles in Ireland to the ones in Palestine/Israel. Realistically the treatment of the Irish population in comparison to the ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid and other atrocities inflicted on Palestine is not really comparing apples wth apples.

Fatah cracks down on Hamas in W. Bank
 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231950868927&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The latest anti-Hamas measures in the West Bank, which are being carried out in coordination with the IDF and under the supervision of US security experts, are designed to foil any attempt by the movement to overthrow the PA.

Earlier this week, Israeli security officials expressed satisfaction with the coordination between the PA security forces and the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) in fighting Hamas in the West Bank.

The officials praised PA President Mahmoud Abbas's forces for employing an "iron-fist" policy against Hamas since the beginning of the military offensive.

On the instructions of the PA leadership in Ramallah, protesters are banned from expressing solidarity with Hamas by hoisting the movement's flag or chanting slogans in its favor.

The PA has also banned demonstrators from marching toward IDF checkpoints or settlements to avoid friction.

In the past three weeks, dozens of Hamas supporters have either been detained or summoned for investigation by the PA's much-feared Preventive Security Force and General Intelligence Service.

Hamas claims that the PA had already arrested more than 400 of its supporters in the West Bank prior to the IDF offensive in Gaza.

In the Nablus area alone, more than 200 Hamas supporters were rounded up by the PA in the past two weeks, a Hamas representative in the West Bank said.

Most of the detainees were university students affiliated with pro-Hamas tickets in campus political races, he said.

The PA has also banned pro-Hamas activities at universities and schools. According to sources close to Hamas, the PA Education Ministry recently fired a number of teachers who voiced sympathy with Hamas.

Several Palestinian journalists have also been targeted by the PA security forces in recent weeks. In Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah, policemen beat a number of Palestinian reporters and photographers who were covering protests against the IDF operation. Other journalists have been receiving threats almost on a daily basis from the PA security forces in the West Bank.

One journalist said he was told by PA security officers that they would break his arms and legs if he dared to report about pro-Hamas demonstrations. Another journalist complained that policemen confiscated his camera and assaulted him while he was covering a demonstration in Bethlehem.

In Ramallah last week, the PA deployed more than 1,000 policemen to stop a relatively small number of demonstrators from identifying with Hamas.

In Tulkarm, PA security officers detained a Hamas spokesman shortly after he appeared on an Arab satellite TV station. In Hebron, several demonstrators who hoisted Hamas flags during a recent protest were dispersed by policemen who fired tear gas at them.

Some Hamas members who are being held in PA prisons told their relatives that they were severely beaten by policemen and security officers who were "celebrating" the beginning of the IDF operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians said the PA policemen responsible for the massive crackdown received special training in Jordan and the West Bank as part of a security plan engineered by the US. They claimed that these forces report directly to PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, and not to Abbas.

The anti-Hamas campaign in the West Bank is taking place not only on the ground, but also in the PA-controlled media that continues to blame Hamas for the "massacres" in Gaza.

Do the Hamas apologists really think that uncritical support of a reactionary clerical fascist organisation (which if they were in an area controlled by them in Palestine would probably haave them locked up or worse for espousing Trotskyism, Stalinism or Secularism) is a way to gather support for the ordinary people of Palestine?

The equivalent was the Spartacists chanting "Malvinas Argentinas" in support of the Argentine Fascist junta on Falklands peace marches, the NCP and other tankies holding "Victory to The Soviet Union" banners on CND demos, the goons who attacked the views of HOPI activists at Stop The War meetings because they are not-slavishly pro the current Iranian regime but support the Iranian workers, the Western secular leftists carrying Hizbollah flags during Lebanon demos and those "anti imperialists" who support Mugabe and have supported genocidal maniacs like the Khmer Rouge and Kim Il Sung. You could not do better for the CIA and Mossad if you were paid by them (now you come to mention it...)

The alarming thing here is that the apologists appear to be not just the usual loons form extreme Trotskyism and Stalinism, but the spokespeople of the main solidarity campaign.
I do not support the ideas of either the AWL or AF in general, but I would say that here they are for more in line with the interests of the working class (as a whole - not divided in a racist fashion into bad jews and good arabs) than the Hamas apologists.

Anyhow, if anti-imperialism is to be the sole preserve of radical Islamists and those prepared to suck up to them in an unprincipled way (and possibly treacherous - remember the WRP denouncing and betraying Middle Eastern secular leftists to fascistic regimes) then you can count out most of the British working class and most of the non-lunatic left in this country. That would be a shame, and a gift to the imperialists.

"The idea that it is "insensitive" to oppose Hamas, who murder trade unionists, break strikes, impose Sharia law on women and gays, deliberately target civilians and who have used this conflict as an opportunity to eliminate their political rivals is utterly obscene."

Well thanks for the lop sided dirge. Is the AF saying now that the union bosses are the same as the workers, have they evidence of the murdered trade unionists, and can they show us that there was no US/Fatah alliance in which Dahlan was annointed to overthrow Hamas?

Is there any context here? Have the AF been to Gaza on a fact finding mission or are they relying on propaganda from a Fatah alligned trade union leadership as gospel?

There is clearly a legitimate critique of Hamas - but it can't be made out in the words "No to the IDF No to Hamas" and parading those words, in front of Palestinians without the context, at a rally to show solidarity with the dying. That is the insensitive part.

In the article I previously linked to Lowenstein wrote:

"The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel’s demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State."

We can probaly add "and the AF" at the end of that paragraph.

You hate Islam, you hate Hamas and seem to have more time for Fatah and its quislings.

So does Israel.

If you're different to Israel - then you need to think about how you present yourselves.

One thing is absolutely clear about the current situation in Gaza: the Israeli state is committing atrocities which must end immediately.

With hundreds dead and thousands wounded, it has become increasingly clear that the aim of the military operation, which has been in the planning stages since the signing of the original ceasefire in June, is to break Hamas completely.

The attack follows the crippling blockade throughout the supposed ‘ceasefire’, which has destroyed the livelihoods of Gazans, ruined the civilian infrastructure and created a humanitarian disaster which anyone with an ounce of humanity would seek an end to.

In the name of ‘national unity’ the Israeli state bangs the war drums and whips up a frenzy of nationalist fervour to send its conscripted youth off to murder for the state. Simultaneously, in the name of ‘the national interest’ it opposes action by Israeli workers to improve their living conditions, such as the Ashod port workers strike in 2007 and the Tel Aviv airport workers wildcat in 2008. It is clear that the Israeli state represents the interests of the Israeli ruling class, whose sons and daughters are far less likely to be marched off to kill and be killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon…

In the name of ‘national unity’, and as the bombs rain down on Gaza, the Hamas leadership are calling from their bunkers for Palestinians to make martyrs of themselves. While in the name of ‘national interest’ they repress workers - seizing union offices, kidnapping prominent trade unionists, and breaking strikes - and summarily execute those who fall foul of their hardline Islamist views. The secular nationalists are no better; the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades attacked the Palestine Workers Radio for “stoking internal conflicts.” Clearly a free Palestine cannot be run by these groups, who are acting like every government does in a time of war - repressing dissent, beating the war drums and calling for blood sacrifices.

Behind this conflict looms Western imperialism. The US in particular are protecting Israel’s actions from UN sanction long enough to see if they can damage Hamas.

But if Israel’s actions in Gaza become a liability, the US will about-turn and reign Israel in, like they did during the 2006 attack on Lebanon. But it’s not just the US - components made right here in Bristol by Raytheon corporation are being used to bombard Gaza at this very minute. And here too, the state represses anti-war activists demanding ‘our’ weapons factory to be shut down. (see bristol.indymedia.org)

What sense does it make for British workers to produce weapons used by Israeli workers to kill Palestinian workers? It is so that Western capitalists can profit from the fight between the Israeli state and assorted Islamist gangsters over who gets to oppress and exploit the population of Gaza. Profit and power are behind this latest bloodshed.

This is not to say there is a symmetrical situation - Israel is in control and could stop the onslaught at will, Hamas is much weaker. However, our enemy’s enemy is not our friend. Opposition to Israeli barbarism cannot mean support for Hamas or their rivals, any more than opposition to the Iraq war meant supporting Saddam Hussein.

We must be internationalists, opposing the idea that the rulers and ruled within a nation have any interests in common. Therefore, we must reject Palestinian nationalism just as we reject Israeli nationalism (Zionism) and US imperialism. Ethnicity does not grant “rights” to lands, which require the state to enforce them. Therefore, against the divisions and false choices set up by nationalism, we fully support the ordinary inhabitants of Gaza and Israel against state warfare – not because of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion, but simply because they’re real living, feeling, thinking, suffering, struggling human beings.

The only real solution is one which is collective, based on the fact that as workers, globally, we ultimately have nothing but our ability to work for others, and everything to gain in ending this system – capitalism – and the states and wars it needs. That this seems like a “difficult” solution does not stop it from being the right one. Any “solution” that means endless cycles of conflict, which is what nationalism represents, is no solution at all. And if that is the case, the fact that it is “easier” is irrelevant. There are sectors of Palestinian society which are not dominated by the would-be rulers – protests organised by village committees in the West Bank for instance.

These deserve our support. As do those in Israel who refuse to fight, and who resist the war. But not the groups who call on Palestinians to be slaughtered on their behalf by one of the most advanced armies in the world, and who wilfully attack civilians on the other side of the border.

For solidarity with the civilian population of the region, because whoever wins the war, the working class pay the price in broken bodies and shattered lives.

AF are more critical of Hamas than even the most right wing Israeli. In this thread 'One of AF' accused Hamas of being corrupt - even Zionists recognise the Hamas electoral success was in great part due to their lack of corruption. Later they falsely accused Hamas of collusion with the Egytpian government, a dictatorship that has persecuted their sister organisation the Muslim Brotherhood since it's inception. Again, I can't even find a Zionist commentator who makes this outlandish and plain foolish claim.

I think AF may just be ignorant but there is a point where stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

"You hate Islam, you hate Hamas and seem to have more time for Fatah and its quislings. "
This would be the same Fatah that we describe as "nationalist gangsters" in our leaflets, yes?

 http://libcom.org/library/no-state-solution-gaza

It astonishes me that people who are able to see through "with us or against us" bullshit when it comes from the Labour party are so utterly bamboozled by the idea that the AF supports neither Israeli nor Palestinian nationalism.

arrogant git, then i wouldnt turn out to waste time protesting - a futile act if ever there was one.
I liked that he had some misplaced energy, he can place it somewhere more useful next time.
all violence violates, all protest is negative like wingeing, Be proactive in your resistance, creative in your expressions, and kind in your interactions - and ignore the bigots, and bullies.

swp=bully classical ideological claptrap
protest=wingeing
nonviolence=creative nonviolent calm interventions

..they drowned Fatah in blood when Arafat was the elected representative of the Palestinian people. Now Hamas are being terrorised as the elected representatives of the Palestinian people as Fatah are corrupted; they bathe in the corpses of Palestinian children.

The AWL and their supporters can bang the drum for the unions in this country as much as they like - these are the same unions that are affiliated the the capitalist, imperialist, zionist and racist Labour party - A Labour party has been a zionist party since its 1944 conference called for the establishment of a Jewsish state in Palestine.

Listening to their analysis you'd think that only the employed are capable of forging a working class anti-imperialist movement; what about the unemployed, asylum seekers, refugees, students and those in the lower working class that are not in unions or who the larger unions could not give an opportunist damn about?

They despise Cuba and spread old fashioned anti-communist propaganda about it. What has Socialist Cuba got to do with Palestine? The Cuban government was amongst the first to express outright condemnation of the Israeli attacks on Gaza and against the illegal blockade imposed by Israel - a blockade that Cuba understands all too well.

Cuba and Palestine are linked in struggle against imperialism. Che flags and t-shirts are a common sight in the occupied Palestinian territories, a symbol of resistance and freedom. Equally, in Cuba the Palestinian people are considered as brothers and sisters and their history is studied in depth by all Cuban children. Cuba also provides concrete solidarity to Palestine. Palestinian medical students are studying for free in Cuba thanks to the Socialist government of Cuba.Their specialism is artificial limb technology, which highlights the barbarity of the situation imposed by Israel, such that the medical resources that Palestine has must be focussed, not on extending peoples lives or ensuring good health, but repairing the human carnage do by the Israeli occupation. Unsurprisingly, Israel consistently votes in the UN to maintain the world wide US blockade on Cuba.

And just to be clear, the AWL supported the drunkard Boris Yeltsin and danced with glee at the fall of the former soviet union seeing it as a victory for the international working class. Can anyone now look at the corrupt, half starved once proud soviet union and see that as a victory for the working class of that country and the international working class; a Soviet Union that once supported anti-imperialist Cuba, Angola, Vietnam.

The AWL in their slavish support for the old Labour myth and the unions STILL affiliated to "new" Labour don't recognise the split in the working class and the opportunist role that Labour affiliated unions play, Labour leftists and they them selves play... (then again...)

"Well thanks for the lop sided dirge. Is the AF saying now that the union bosses are the same as the workers, have they evidence of the murdered trade unionists, and can they show us that there was no US/Fatah alliance in which Dahlan was annointed to overthrow Hamas?"

These would be the same trade unionists who have been kidnapped by Fatah gunmen as well as those of Hamas?  http://libcom.org/news/palestinian-union-hit-all-sides-25072007

No, we do not see them as the same, but we could point to Hamas closing medical centres where workers have sought to improve their working conditions. You'd have to be thick to think that they'd allow working people to make class demands at their expense.

Supporting Hamas is meaningless anyway, as they have no chance of "winning". The best outcome they could get out of this is survival, and calling on Gazans to join their "resistance" which would mean being slaughtered by the IDF is insanity. The best they can do is allow the victims unimpeded access to medical care in Egypt.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081228/wl_afp/mideastconflictgazaegyptaid_081228101521

"There is clearly a legitimate critique of Hamas - but it can't be made out in the words "No to the IDF No to Hamas" and parading those words, in front of Palestinians without the context, at a rally to show solidarity with the dying. That is the insensitive part."

I agree it was a bit simplistic, and I wouldn't necessarily have phrased it myself in that way (just for the record, it's worth repeating that it was an AWL placard, not an AF one), but complex issues are often difficult to fit onto simple placards. The key question, tho, is do you support the censorship? I can see why smashing up a pro-Israel placard (or an anti-semitic one, for that matter) might be justifiable, but since it started "NO TO IDF", it was clearly against the massacre. Or should people only be allowed to oppose the IDF if they agree with a very narrow, usually SWP-defined, set of politics?

"You hate Islam, you hate Hamas and seem to have more time for Fatah and its quislings.

So does Israel."
No, we have no time for Fatah or Israel. It's just that Fatah are pretty irrelevant at the moment, and no-one seems to be defending them, so critiquing their (many, unforgivable) failures seems a bit irrelevant atm.

"If you're different to Israel - then you need to think about how you present yourselves."

Our leaflet starts "One thing is absolutely clear about the current situation in Palestine: the Israeli state is committing acts of horrific violence against the Palestinian working class, and this needs to be stopped immediately." The AWL's placard started "NO TO IDF"*. How much clearer could we be? Is "No to the IDF" somehow a zionist slogan now?

* Just for the record, a lot of the AWL's politics are deeply dodgy, they claim that Israel has a "right to exist" that I don't believe in, and it pisses me off that I'm having to spend time defending them.

"However, by making its announcement this afternoon, Hamas expects to place international pressure back on Israel's shoulders. After his forces' humiliating failure to defeat Hezbollah guerrilas in southern Lebanon in 2006, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would want to avoid at all costs bowing to a Hamas ultimatum without being sure of first wrecking the group's rocket-firing capabilities."

Supporting Hamas is dangerous short-termism. Sure, Palestine is the underdog now and we all support them against the fascist Israeli occupation.

But I'm under no illusion that if Hamas achieved major power and/or wealth they wouldn't become a theocratic or oligarchic state like Saudi Arabia, Taliban Afghanistan, Dubai or Kuwait. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I can understand the idea to support them tentatively for now but disown them if/when they go bad, but I think once they have used the early support to gain power they will kick those opportunist supporters in the face.

Religion is brainwashing bigotry. The Israeli massacre is foremost in our minds for now, but it won't last forever and it's not the only issue of importance.

I would say: fuck states (Israel & Palestine), fuck religion (Judaism and Islam) and all the racism, sexism and homophobia that comes with it. That's the long-term solution, so let's not let the short-term tactics get in the way of of that, they are just like putting a sticking plaster on an open wound.

We should be open about what we think, not pretend to support Hamas but really have a hidden agenda against them.

Maxine Bowler and the rest of the SWP in Sheffield should be totally and utterly ashamed of themselves for supporting this blatant act of censorship. Not only are they siding with a reactionary, anti-working class organisation, they're mimicking their attitude towards dissidents. It would seem that any criticism of Hamas will not be tolerated and I don't see how that can be justified.

Is this how a free and open Hamas society will look like? Is this how a free and open Socialist worker society would look like?

While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2, of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."[1]

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

Thanks Chris for a fair report and to Sheffield AF for good suming up, the facts are simple 65 years on from WW2 The Zinoist are still doing what they had done to them see 20 Parallels of Zionism with Nazism ( http://projectsheffield.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/20-parallels-of-zionism-with-nazism-2/) it was clear from the start of the action the SWP was pulling the strings, now i do not agree with The AWL or The SWP and nither do i agree with former Workers Power Memebers it was not a joke both The AWL and The SWP suport nationalism.

Therefore, we must reject Palestinian nationalism just as we reject Israeli nationalism (Zionism) and US imperialism. Ethnicity does not grant “rights” to lands, which require the state to enforce them. Therefore, against the divisions and false choices set up by nationalism, we fully support the ordinary inhabitants of Gaza and Israel against state warfare – not because of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion, but simply because they’re real living, feeling, thinking, suffering, struggling human beings.

underclassrising.net

"does the Palestine Solidarity Campaign support Hamas who it is fair to say are a terrorist organisation"

My view of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Committee (which I'm presuming is similar to the SPS) is that at best they are an open church, allowing any vague adherence as long as the adherent believes in a Palestinian state of some sort. At worst is the fact their speaker at the recent march in Edinburgh spoke along the lines of how Hamas and their militants would have their names written in gold for the generations to come to marvel at, and how they were the equivalent of Spartacus etc. A statement that was met with much support (unfortunately) by many who had stayed to listen. As far as I can remember they didn't even attempt the standard "get out clause" of saying he was speaking in a personal capacity. In other words, horrible opportunist tailgating of nationalism which has nothing to offer the working class.

If the SWP are taking it upon themselves to police demos, where were they last Saturday in London confronting all the rampant anti-semitism and pro-war bloodbaying displayed on a large minority of banners and placards? I saw one placard which consisted of a hook-nosed Jew spitroasting Arabs over a barbecue, another which claimed Zionism was "more than 1000 times worse" than Nazism (!!), a third which asked if Israelis were "God's children or sick, psychotic bastards". Also, a Jewish protestor was attacked during the melee outside the embassy.

Once again, the SWP pandering to religious fanatics with racist undertones in order to further its own profile, what redundant social climbers you all are.

Alan you can find racist bigoted lunatics anywhere you look, try this for size ->  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FABqq_jjRRo

Which racist bigoted lunatics you choose to point out is all dependent on your own pre-conceived ideas I guess. I can see that there is blame to be aportioned to both sides but as I stated earlier: -

If you were watching some muscle bound bully beat the shit out of a 7 stone weakling, would you be pointing out the injustice of it, or would you be pointing out the faults of the 7 stone weakling?

If you were trying to show support for the 7 stone weakling as part of an organised demonstration how would you react to someone with a placard pointing out their faults.

What if the placard had read 'Hamas asked for this'? Would that still be fine with you? The very fact that she was trying to aportion blame equally in a situation where the atrocities are so one sided smacks of stupidity a bit.

Now try and look at this through the eyes of someone who has lost family members in the last 3 weeks due to the actions of Israel. Don't you think it is at best insensitive and at worst deliberately provocative? Nice camerawork, the raging conspiracy theorist in me might see this as a deliberate divide and conquer ploy by someone or other, but that would just be paranoia wouldn't it?

I am not in AWL but was at this demo. I nearly left after the physically aggressive actions of the organizers/PSC (which as you can see involved trying to take the camera off one of the protestors - maybe to stop the pictures, i don't know), I was impressed though by the composure of AWL who were happy to debate/argue but did not get involved in the aggression against them. It perhaps also needs to be expressed that the other side of this placard (which says something like 'support to women, workers and the left') was destroyed also.

What appalls me is that the writer of this article feels it acceptable to use the tragic circumstances of Musheir (organiser of PSC) to somehow deplore a banner written by AWL. Not only would AWL not have known about his tragedy but it some how suggests that, even if they did, they can't make a valid political statement

To oppose the IDF and Hamas is not saying they are equivalent sides in a war, anyone who spoke to AWL or saw their other signs (or literature) would see this not to be the case.

What a shameful, anti-democratic attack on free speech. The photograph of Maxine "I bit my lip for too long" Bowler standing by whilst political freedoms are attacked makes a mockery of her mealy-mouthed calls for democracy in her own party.
What a joke.

"What if the placard had read 'Hamas asked for this'? Would that still be fine with you?"

No, but it didn't say that, did it? This is the point, someone had their poster ripped up NOT for saying that Palestine deserve it or any such things, NOT because it was pro Israel, but because it said something the organisers of the demo didn't like.

So if you had attended a demo in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday you would have carried a sign that read "No to British Paras, no to the IRA" ?

Or for the Sabra and Shatila massacre, "No to IDF, No to PLO".

Or for the My Lai massacre, "No to US Army, No to VietCong".

Or for Nagasaki and Hiroshima, "No to US atomic strikes, No to the Emperor"

Or the Warsaw Uprsing, "No to Nazis, No to Polish Army"

Or the Peterloo massacre, "No to Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, No to Henry Hunt"

Or the Wounded Knee massacre, "No to 7th Cavalry, No to Lakota Ghost Dancers"

Or the Conquistadors slaughter at Tenochtitlan "No to Cortes, No to Moctezuma"

With a sign like that at a time like this you are beyond pastiche and very lucky not to get beaten up.

Jane said:
"To oppose the IDF and Hamas is not saying they are equivalent sides in a war, anyone who spoke to AWL or saw their other signs (or literature) would see this not to be the case."

Indeed lets be absolutely damn clear what their literature says about Hamas:

"But we also oppose Hamas's war against Israel because it is the continuation of its anti-Semitic and theocratic politics and its project to destroy the Israeli-Jewish nation."
 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/13/why-we-should-oppose-both-israeli-army-and-hamas

Zionist dirge that they insist on splurging out at a rally to show solidarity with the many vicitms of zionist violence (and for those of you have forgotten, 60 years of occupation and ethnic cleansing) and the AF supports them in their behaviour.

Anyway did you hear the one about the AFer who said to his sister - "Look sis I'm sorry your baby died, but to be honest it was the uglist baby I ever did see." - He believed that with all his heart and neither his AF nor his AWL friends could see any reason why he should be denied his 'freedom of speech'.

ignoring daniel's standard impotent online threats of violence, Ashley writes "If you were watching some muscle bound bully beat the shit out of a 7 stone weakling, would you be pointing out the injustice of it, or would you be pointing out the faults of the 7 stone weakling?" The whole point is that the '7 stone weakling' is a concrete human being, not analogous to 'Palestine' which as a 'nation' is an imagined community conflating the population with the ruling class. This is precisely the AF (and indeed libertarian communist) objection to nationalism of all stripes. [of course in this particular instance the 'muscle bound bully' (well, a bit lardy) is the PSC guy smashing up the placard which looks like it's being held by a 9-10 stone girl).

another way to think about this is when the 7/7 bombings happened in the middle of the anti-G8 protests, a wide range of anarchists co-signed a joint statement condemning the attacks and the policies of the british state [1]. they didn't wave the union jack to show solidarity with 'Britain', because they were well aware that this was an attack on ordinary people in response to the actions of the ruling class, and the calls for national unity in the face of the attack were calls to rally behind that same ruling class and their repressive backlash at home and continued military interventions abroad.

now when it comes to palestine, why is there the difficulty applying the same analysis and standards? we must reject all nationalism and all states and would-be states, and extend solidarity to concrete human beings, not abstract nations.

for what it's worth i don't really give a shit about trot-infighting so much as their attempts to impose a nationalist, pro-war agenda (supporting one of the combatants) on anti-war demonstrations. self-described anarchists finding themselves in agreement with the SWP on this need to have a long hard look at themselves.

[1]  http://www.anarkismo.net/article/885

re. your comment about a woman with a placard saying 'No to IDF No to Hammas'

'cheering on zionists who disrupt Palestinian solidarity rallies with placards that are designed to offend those who they say they are showing solidarity with'.

why do you tar this woman with the brush of 'zionist'? This is just a name-calling, out-of-hand dismissal of someone you disagree with, the same as the guy who tore her placard up.

\you should be glad she turned out to show solidarity with the Palestine people, but not its 'government'.

It kind of puts you in the position of saying 'any government is better than no government'.

"ignoring daniel's standard impotent online threats of violence"

If it's a smear instead of an argument it must be an AFer. What I said was "With a sign like that at a time like this you are very lucky not to get beaten up". I don't have relatives and friends in Gaza so I couldn't give a fuck what moronic crap you think makes for a good sign, I wouldn't march with you anyway as I am busy actually doing real stuff, like fundraising and direct action.

Still not going to defend your previous nonsense about Hamas being corrupt or colluding with Egypt ?

you clearly have no idea who i am or my political activity, though anyone with a bit of nouse could deduce it from my initials and website link. no, i'm not in the AF and have no idea what you're talking about on that front. my comment of 'standard threats of violence' relates to your comments (deleted by mods - although Steven's reply gives a flavour) on an IMC thread smearing the website i help run [1], your insistence that you're "no longer peaceful in [your] conviction" on a thread where you criticise the AF [2] and your comment above on this very thread that "with a sign like that at a time like this you are beyond pastiche and very lucky not to get beaten up." that's a pattern.

of course you know a thing or two about smears, having baselessly accused myself and the other libcom admins of zionism, paedophilia, domestic violence, being state agents etc ad nauseum on previous occasions when your mental flights of fancy have been rebutted.

does anyone supporting the PSC guys bullying behaviour think it would be ok to confiscate and destroy hamas flags on demonstrations, or do you reserve such actions for (however simplistic) internationalist sentiments, and let supporters of murderous gangsters off the hook? or perhaps you just assume hamas supporters might have a bit more fight in them than student trots, so they're not as suitable a target for such bullshit and subsequent macho internet posturing.



[1]  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/415681.html?c=on#comments
[2]  https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/418475.html?c=on#comments

"does anyone supporting the PSC guys bullying behaviour think it would be ok to confiscate and destroy hamas flags on demonstrations"

Would you have a problem with Antifa taking a BNP supporters union jack at an Antifa rally? As to destroying Hamas flags - I'm sure the zionist rally would have done it.

I'm just wondering. Ok so Hamas were democratically elected in a free and fair election. So we can't condemn them, right?
So presumably we support the election of BNP councillors?
Does working this out mean I can join the SWP now?

Chris, as a former member of the AWL, your political positions of recent years have indeed strayed very, very far from those of the AWL. Why is it that in all your time in Sheffield and all my time in Sheffield, you have never initiated a conversation with me, or even a row if that's what you want. Come on, time to stop hiding behind a keyboard! Debate me, or any member of the Sheffield AWL, face to face. Call me an "imperialist" and a "Zionist" to my face, and I'll rationally defend my anti-imperialism and socialism of consistent democracy against 'an anti-imperialism of fools' that degenerates the British Left. I'll defend my solidarity with progressive political forces in Palestine and Israel. Comradely, Camila (Sheffield AWL)

"Would you have a problem with Antifa taking a BNP supporters union jack at an Antifa rally? "

Well no because that would be a counter demonstration. Unless the demonstration in question was a Pro Hamas, which I'm pretty sure it was, then your comparison is severely flawed.

The AWLers weren't protesting against the protest, they were protesting along side them, so perhaps a better comparison would be, would you, at an anti-BNP demo, rip down a poster saying nationalism is bad but that they don't approve on antifas methods? You may not agree with the sentiment but I hope you would have the decency not to rip up their poster or claim that it somehow makes them a fascist.

I don't have the time or the inclination to write a comprehensive response to the wealth of (deeply boring) lies, distortions and smears that have been levelled against us in this "discussion", so I'll just make a few quick points on some of the key issues to clarify our position. Beyond this, I guess people will have to make up their own minds.

--

1) IS SUPPORTING HAMAS A PRE-CONDITION FOR SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE?

The obvious implication of what happened to our placard on that demo is that, unless you positively support Hamas (or at the very least agree not to openly criticise them) then you're not allowed to express your solidarity with the Palestinians against the Israeli state. If that's the case, then what's being built in Britain isn't a pro-Palestinian solidarity movement but a support group for Hamas.

The people (on this thread and elsewhere) who supported the attack on our placard and have intimated that we should've been physically removed from the demo (or beaten up) haven't levelled any criticism at those people who carry, for example, placards calling on the British state to impose sanctions on Israel. So apparently, calling on UK imperialism to solve the world's problems is okay, but criticising Hamas is a fundamental bottom line that, if crossed, will result in your being attacked.

Strike anyone else as a bit undemocratic?

2) DOES OPPOSING MORE THAN ONE FORCE AT THE SAME TIME MEAN "EQUATING" THEM?

Clearly not. The Israeli state is obviously the "main enemy" here and opposing its assault on Gaza (and its ongoing colonial occupation of Palestinian territories) is the primary task. But the existence of a main enemy does not transform other enemies into friends, and given the pro-Hamas/Hezbollah politics of many Palestine solidarity demos since the 2006 war on Lebanon, we feel it's important to make it clear that opposing the Israeli state doesn't mean supporting whichever force happens to be fighting them regardless of what they represent politically. If war is the continuation of politics by forcible means, then your attitude to wars depends on your attitude to the politics of which they are a continuation. This doesn't mean claiming that the war parties are evenly matched or capable of wreaking equivalent slaughter/destruction, but unless you're incapable of holding more than one idea in your head simultaneously then I can't see why this is so difficult for people to comprehend.

3) IS HAMAS THE SAME AS THE NLF OR THE FLN?

This analogy is so ahistorical as to be almost unworthy of response. The comparison of Hamas with the Peterloo martyrs is particularly distasteful.

Politically, the Viet Cong and the Algerian FLN were obviously deeply reactionary forces, but they emerged and developed as mass movements of the Vietnamese and Algerian people respectively and, crucially, the immediate primary result of their military victory would have been democratic (i.e. self-determination for their people; they didn't have a project to destroy America or France).

Anyone who knows anything about Palestinian history will know that Hamas is of a very different character indeed. It was funded in its early days by Israel to provide an Islamist counterweight to the radical secular nationalism of the PLO and its first campaigns were not against the Israeli occupation but rather against secularist elements within Palestinian society. Their project is not simply against the colonial Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories but rather against any expression of the national rights of Israeli-Jews (read their charter if you don't want to take my word for it). Their military victory wouldn't mean freedom for Palestine; it'd mean turning the whole of Palestine into a theocratic state like Iran and slaughter for the Israeli-Jews.

4) BUT HAMAS IS DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED...

So what, frankly? So was Tony Blair. So was the Israeli government, for that matter.

The fact that a political movement or party comes to power through democratic means doesn't place their ideology and actions beyond criticism. Hamas represent a very specific, politico-religio-military tendency within Palestinian politics; they are not the sole legitimate representatives of the entire Palestinian people anymore than the Israeli war-mongers are the sole legitimate representatives of the Israeli people, which - let's remember - includes the tens of thousands of people who demonstrated in Tel Aviv against war and the hundreds of sixth-formers facing jail for refusing to serve in the IDF.

--

I don't intend to get drawn into a protracted exchange about this; I think our position is pretty clear so as I say, people can draw their own conclusions. Palestinian secularists, trade unionists, socialists, women and LGBT activists have managed to combine struggle against Hamas with struggle against Israeli occupation for decades. If they can do it in far more difficult and life-threatening conditions than anyone posting here will ever have to face, British activists have no excuse whatsoever.

Well, I've got photos of war factories I've damaged and a receipt for a £100 donation for talestotell. I don't have anywhere to post them though now the familiar 'do-as-we-say' clique has clicked in.

While i think that the women perhaps misjudged the feeling of those on the demo i think the chap whose snatched the placard off her and torn it up was out of order. The placard clearly opposes the actions of the IDF and it's being held aloft on a demo against the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, it isn't suppporting the Israeli state, it certainly isn't "zionist" and it implies that the person holding the placard isn't fooled into cupporting one reactionary element over another. If every placard set out the holders exact theoretical position on any given situation we'd have people carrying scrolls miles long, obviously there's going to be people who disagree with the statements on peoples banners but that doesn't mean we go around smashing each other placards. There's been some really crap banner son many of the demonstrations against the Israeli bombing of Gaza, many have been anti-semitic, others plain stupid, but you haven't seen anarchists tearing these banners out of peoples hands because that isn't what you need on demonstrations of this nature.

I think it's important the left don't go down the road of supporting the "enemy of our enemy", of implictly giving legitimisation to nationalist and fundamentalist groups because of their national liberation struggle. This has happened time and time again in the past when dictators, theocrats and paramilitaries have been implicit support inspite of their attacks on working class people in their countries, simply because they're erroneously seen as being "anti-imperialist".

I think the poster above makes a good point when they write:

"another way to think about this is when the 7/7 bombings happened in the middle of the anti-G8 protests, a wide range of anarchists co-signed a joint statement condemning the attacks and the policies of the british state [1]. they didn't wave the union jack to show solidarity with 'Britain', because they were well aware that this was an attack on ordinary people in response to the actions of the ruling class, and the calls for national unity in the face of the attack were calls to rally behind that same ruling class and their repressive backlash at home and continued military interventions abroad."

I think the left is so weak and malleable in this country that they're quite happy to have truck with nationalist and fundamentalist factions as long as it sells them a few papers and makes them appear more important than they are. The reality is that the conventional left in this country is a dead duck, their class politics have gone down the drain and they are more than happy to extol the virtues of reactionary nationalism and pseudo "anti-imperialism" in the form of supporting national liberation struggles.

Oh do please FRO, your statement: -

'The whole point is that the '7 stone weakling' is a concrete human being, not analogous to 'Palestine' which as a 'nation' is an imagined community conflating the population with the ruling class.'

I'm wondering whether you are taking the piss here or whether you are serious. I think the very fact that the population and the ruling class are both getting bombed conflates them by default at the moment.

You are correct that the 7 stone weakling is a concrete human being, it was not a direct comparison, it was an analogy and I fail to see how your obfuscation with some false divide between the people suffering at the hands of Israel devalues it.

This turning of the issues in to some football for all the different factions to kick around is ridiculous. At the end of the day I think one thing we can all agree on is the slaughter has to stop.

I've seen many comments on here about how bad it is to support one side over the other etc, but they all seem to assume the same thing. Namely that you are either completely pro-Israel, completely pro-Hamas or have to place yourself directly in the middle. Now in the real world (where people are dying from these actions) there is a propensity to make a value judgement and come down on one side or the other (to a greater or lesser extent). I would guess that to be exactly in the middle of any two points of view is very rare and is more of a concious decision rather than a natural occurence.

I am not unswervingly pro-Hamas, but I know why they exist, why their popularity has increased and who funded them in the first place. I can also sympathise with the Palestinians and can see the way they have been treated over the last 60 years is nothing short of appalling. That does not mean that I agree with Hamas in everything they do, it does not make me a Hamas supporter.

When I posted the question about whether a 'Hamas asked for this' placard would be OK too, my reason for asking the question is that I see that as kind of the next logical progression from 'No to the IDF' to 'No to the IDF and no to Hamas' to 'No to Hamas'. Given the subject of the demonstration it takes the piss to slag off the very people who are being bombed (or do you think all of the Hamas members are in a secret bunker with solid gold bathtaps and loads of food, medicine, blankets and caviar?).

You lot on here remind me of the bit in Life of Brian (are you the peoples front of Judea?), you are all so interested in petty point scoring it's no wonder they get away with murder.

I think arguments about whether the existence of states and nationalism are valid on Indymedia are not only an irrelevance, but a luxury we are afforded, whilst the streets of Gaza are covered in (mostly innocent) blood.

"Would you have a problem with Antifa taking a BNP supporters union jack at an Antifa rally?"

of course not, i've been consistently arguing against any and all nationalism and use of nationalist symbols. in fact in *the very same post* you're responding too i praise the anarchist response to the 7/7 bombings for not falling into a flag-waving defence of 'britain' but stressing that the interests of ordinary people in britain are not the same as those of the ruling class. i like that you're comparing opposition to the IDF and Hamas to the BNP though, that's real clever.


"As to destroying Hamas flags - I'm sure the zionist rally would have done it."

right, sure. i'm also sure islamic fundamentalists would destroy israeli flags, does that make anyone doing it an islamic fundamentalist? of course not. how the fuck in even the most 'with us or against us' leftists malformed worldview is a placard saying 'no to the IDF' zionist? what is so complicated that opposition to one bourgeois faction doesn't mean support for another? i oppose the 'war on terror', i also oppose islamic fundamentalism. simple. it's not a fucking FA cup tie where we harmlessly side with the plucky underdog.

hamas are the de facto government of gaza (legitimate democratic government according to their apologists, as if that excuses Brown or Olmert) and are acting like any other government in a time of war, demanding the population line up to die for them whilst repressing or murdering those who refuse, or organise as workers, or happen to be sex workers to make ends meet, etc etc. it's fucking embarassing to see so-called anarchists lining up behind a *government* just because they're militarily weak (compared to the IDF anyway, they're very well armed compared to your average palestinian prole).

i don't think destroying hamas flags would achieve much, but equally it makes a mockery of supposed 'anti-war' demonstrations when they're full of blatant support for one side in it - as opposed to the overwhelmingly proletarian civilian population that bears the brunt of these bourgeois faction fights - like when the SWP got a spokesman for al-sadr speaking at an 'anti-war' rally. i expect this shit from trots however, their tradition has always supported the state against the working class up to and including massacring revolutionary workers. but i'd like to think anarchists could do better.


"Well, I've got photos of war factories I've damaged and a receipt for a £100 donation for talestotell. I don't have anywhere to post them though now the familiar 'do-as-we-say' clique has clicked in." - 18:40

congratulations. i've no idea who this is aimed at, but given as this is a largely anonymous discussion the 'armchair' jibe is completely pointless as you can have no idea what activity other posters are engaged in. fwiw, as someone who's been dragged through the civil and criminal courts for anti-war direct action i wouldn't recommend bragging about it either. in any event it has absolutely no bearing on the discussion at hand - the support for hamas is no less 'armchair' from this safe distance, apart from that PSC guy destroying the placard. unfortunately he got away with it as if that kind of leftist bullying is acceptable.

"I've seen many comments on here about how bad it is to support one side over the other etc, but they all seem to assume the same thing. Namely that you are either completely pro-Israel, completely pro-Hamas or have to place yourself directly in the middle. Now in the real world (where people are dying from these actions) there is a propensity to make a value judgement and come down on one side or the other (to a greater or lesser extent). I would guess that to be exactly in the middle of any two points of view is very rare and is more of a concious decision rather than a natural occurence."

see, this is exactly what's being argued against by internationalists, the viewing of the world in nationalist terms and then trying to pick the right balance between them. in contrast to this the internationalist position is to support the overwhelmingly proletarian civilian population of the region that is suffering at the hands of the armed gangs (in quantitative terms overwhelmingly the IDF, and less so Hamas and other 'resistance' factions). for instance far more ordinary palestinians have been fleeing the bombing than joining the 'resistance.' when we pointed this out during israel's assault on lebanon in 2006 we were labelled 'cowards' by anarchists a safe distance away from lebanon. running away may be far less glamourous than picking up an AK and martyring yourself for the nation, so it doesn't give western leftists the same hard-on as a bunch of nationalist gangsters. but it is an example of a practical response to the war which both assists the survival of those fleeing and doesn't represent siding with any of the murderous gangs that would rule a 'free' palestine.


"When I posted the question about whether a 'Hamas asked for this' placard would be OK too, my reason for asking the question is that I see that as kind of the next logical progression from 'No to the IDF' to 'No to the IDF and no to Hamas' to 'No to Hamas'."

you see here we have the same problem again. only from a nationalist perspective could opposition to the IDF and Hamas lead to just opposition to Hamas. from an internationalist perspective a rejection of all national, bourgeois factions is a basic point of departure, we don't pick and choose sides between factions of the ruling class. i've no idea the politics of the AWL member involved, but in any case the slogans on the placard were far more in line with the supposed 'anti-war' nature of the demo than the PSC guy's destruction of the placard, which represented a repressive attitude to internationalism and advocacy of workers and womens rights quite befitting a hamas supporter - i'm shocked to see anything other than outright condemnation of his actions from anarchists.


"Given the subject of the demonstration it takes the piss to slag off the very people who are being bombed"

so presumably you never criticised Saddam Hussein during the invasion of Iraq or the sanctions before that? none of these murderous cunts offer the working class anything but repression and bloodshed, they should always be opposed. even if you don't agree to support the physical suppression of such views - especially when anti-semitic and other placards pass unchallenged - is to cross a line that has nothing to do with libertarian communists. like i say i'd expect this from trots or nationalists, but not anarchists who i'd hope would know better. i mean i've helped distribute this solfed leaflet [1] at anti-war demos in brighton - do you think i should have been attacked and/or had my leaflets stolen and destroyed? maybe some people wanted to, but refrained because i don't look so easy a target, i don't know. fwiw the leaflet was generally well recieved.


"You lot on here remind me of the bit in Life of Brian (are you the peoples front of Judea?), you are all so interested in petty point scoring it's no wonder they get away with murder."

that's funny, because the life of brian sketch is precisely a send-up of idiotic leftist anti-imperialist politics desparately trying to work out which 'national liberation' gang to support. you'll notice none of the internationalist commenters are saying 'don't support hamas, support fatah/PFLP/whoever - they're the *real* resistance!' - because internationalism involves a rejection of the whole politics of nationalism, which in real life is the tragedy monty python repeat as farce.


"I think arguments about whether the existence of states and nationalism are valid on Indymedia are not only an irrelevance, but a luxury we are afforded, whilst the streets of Gaza are covered in (mostly innocent) blood."

most of which is caused by the IDF, and a good proportion of which is caused by the hamas government (who summarily execute sex workers) and their secular rivals (who attack trade unionists). this is anything but an academic argument, but one that cuts to the core of the bloodshed: none of these gangsters offer the working class anything and all must be opposed. our solidarity thus has to go out to concrete human beings not abstract nations. this isn't a case of saying 'anarchism now!', but recognising that states and nationalism offer the working class nothing but bloodshed. one look at the middle east should tell you this is anything but abstract.


[1]  http://libcom.org/library/against-war-warmongers

I support the Palestinian cause and think the occupation is wrong and the bombing of children and the use of phosphorus bombs is obscene, but like many, this level of intolerance is why I have stopped going on these Demo’s. One can see all the usual self righteous Trot’s SWP , etc intimidating the woman, but she has a right to express her opinion, whether they agree with it or not. It’s also revealing that on the many PSC/STWC protests across the country (and especially the London ones), images and banners supporting Hamas, Saddam Hussein, even anti-semitic ones are allowed but not anything which condemns the fundamentalist Hamas. These clearly will be met with threats from the Comrades and their fellow travellers.

However, I am surprised at the chair of the PSC acting the way he did though, I have met him a number of times and he seems a very humane man who will not tolerate the sort of dubious shenanigans seen on the London protests. One can only assume the awful news which the OP refers to and the constant images of destruction of his homeland are clouding his judgement, I do hope he reconsiders his actions.

On a broader theme, as another poster has said we don’t really have a left in this country any more: in the last major slump, the Great Depression of the 1930’s the Left as well as raising Milk for Spain’ for the Civil War Orphans etc, also fought against mass unemployment and the means test. In the 80’s recession. We fought against apartheid but still supported the Miners in their dispute. Now, we are facing the biggest slump since the 30’s with unemployment reaching possibly 3 million. repossessions and welfare cuts, Yet, all the far left do is marches and rallies against ‘imperialism as well as Palestine, surely it is possible to do both.


Oh and good on Sheffield Indymedia for publishing all this, (even if Chris gets some digs in at AWL) the U.K one is censoring comments on Hamas, anti-semitism, etc,

Sorry mate you and I are going to have to agree to disagree. You seem to think there is a class system in Gaza. Whilst I haven't ever been there I think, from what I can gather, that they are all repressed, they are all part of an underclass, they are all un-people as far as Israel is concerned. The only way you get crumbs from the table of Israel is to do what you are told, like Abbas and Fatah.

In an ideal world there would be no-one taking advantage of anyone else, we'd all live together in peace and harmony. In Gaza it is pretty far from that at the moment and whilst Hamas has its faults, it wants the borders opened so it can get food, medicine, trade, fuel etc which will benefit the Palestinian people as a whole. This argument that supporting them is short termist is all well and good unless it is you that has no food for your family. Ivory towers I'm afraid JK.

You seem happy that they should rise up against their oppressors but don't seem happy if they organise themselves to do it in the way that they have. It should be purely on a self organising, anarcho, anti-capitalist, non-nationalist, secular, class war agenda type way or not at all. With due respect, you aren't in their situation (and by the grace of God neither am I), so who are you to tell them how and when they should rise up and whether they are doing it properly?

If someone was starving you, denying you basic human rights, terrorising your children, depriving you of medical aid, bulldozing your home, fencing you in, denying you education, denying you freedom of movement, stealing your property and treating you like an animal what would you do? Join the biggest group telling your oppresors to FRO, or form your own little group with a couple of like minded individuals and try and change the whole world in one fell swoop?

Like it or not, we are stronger together and this constant dividing and highlighting of our differences are a ploy THEY use to keep US down. Yes we are all different, some are religious and some aren't, there are wide ranging political views, people who like Marmite and people who don't, but at the end of the day there are a few things we can agree on.

The vast majority of people don't want to kill other people, don't want to be killed, want food, security for our families, justice, liberty and peace. Let's use that as a starting point and realise that there is strength in unity, and realise that unity is as diverse as the whole world.

I wholeheartedly agree with the dude who did put that placard down.

To me it shows he is fully aware of all what is going on and it was the right thing to do with it IMO.

"You seem to think there is a class system in Gaza. Whilst I haven't ever been there I think, from what I can gather, that they are all repressed, they are all part of an underclass, they are all un-people as far as Israel is concerned."

well, it's a far cry from the class relations of developed industrial or post-industrial economies, but i think there's a difference between the proto-state apparatus controlled by Hamas and the general population. they've got cops, execute opponents etc. even if you don't consider this a class relation (i'd say it largely is since proles are defined as dispossessed whereas Hamas clearly possesses significant military and other resources), there's clearly a distinction between the armed groups and the general population, a distinction we can make when offering political solidarity.


"In an ideal world there would be no-one taking advantage of anyone else, we'd all live together in peace and harmony. In Gaza it is pretty far from that at the moment and whilst Hamas has its faults, it wants the borders opened so it can get food, medicine, trade, fuel etc which will benefit the Palestinian people as a whole. This argument that supporting them is short termist is all well and good unless it is you that has no food for your family. Ivory towers I'm afraid JK."

this 'ivory towers' jibe is the standard off-the-shelf criticism of any internationalist position on war. you'll have to try harder than that. saddam hussein wanted the "genocidal" sanctions on iraq lifted, so fucking what? he's still a murderous cunt i'd be appalled if anyone gave political support to, however 'critically.' i mean i went on the Feb 15th demo with a banner slagging off the coalition, saddam and al-qaeda - should i have been physically prevented from doing so since it's "insensitive" to criticise those being bombed?


"You seem happy that they should rise up against their oppressors but don't seem happy if they organise themselves to do it in the way that they have. It should be purely on a self organising, anarcho, anti-capitalist, non-nationalist, secular, class war agenda type way or not at all. With due respect, you aren't in their situation (and by the grace of God neither am I), so who are you to tell them how and when they should rise up and whether they are doing it properly?"

this 'who are we to tell them' argument is a load of nonsense. i mean the israeli population have chosen to elect a government dedicated to bombing the fuck out of lebanon and the palestinian territories. the british population elected tony fucking blair. libertarian communist ideas are a minority, what's the point of politics if all we do is declare support 'for whatever people decide to to anywhere' - it's not even populism, just empty relativism.

of course there are more self-organised tendencies in the palestinian territories, attempts towards workers organisation opposed by both principle factions (hamas/fatah), and in the west bank the village committees struggling against the wall. on the other side of the border there's the israeli refuseniks. small seeds of hope for sure - in the palestinian examples seeds being repressed by the very forces you'd have us offer 'critical' support to.


"If someone was starving you, denying you basic human rights, terrorising your children, depriving you of medical aid, bulldozing your home, fencing you in, denying you education, denying you freedom of movement, stealing your property and treating you like an animal what would you do? Join the biggest group telling your oppresors to FRO, or form your own little group with a couple of like minded individuals and try and change the whole world in one fell swoop?"

i'm perfectly familiar with the appalling conditions in the palestinian territories and how this boosts support for nationalist gangsters. it's telling that while western leftists are banging on about ordinary palestinians joining hamas - the reality on the ground is far more palestinians opted to flee than martyr themselves 'resisting' [1] - a far more sensible response, and the response of those with 'nothing to lose', a proletarian response. of course we think hamas and the rest offer workers nothing but bloodshed and repression, and we shouldn't bite our tongues out of some misplaced desire not to comment on things remote from us. it's not like we respect BNP councillors or new labour ministers just because a majority chose them.


"Like it or not, we are stronger together and this constant dividing and highlighting of our differences are a ploy THEY use to keep US down. Yes we are all different, some are religious and some aren't, there are wide ranging political views, people who like Marmite and people who don't, but at the end of the day there are a few things we can agree on."

yes, but to make your abstract appeal for unity more concrete, 'some of us are hamas gunmen executing sex workers, some of us are sex workers' and 'some of us are workers trying to organise being repressed by nationalist armed gangs, some of us are doing that oppression.' this is exactly the kind of appeal to 'national unity' that calls on workers to die for their masters. it has nothing to do with an anarchist or libertarian communist perspective. i can only repeat what i said above which has been ignored by yourself and other critics:

[another way to think about this is when the 7/7 bombings happened in the middle of the anti-G8 protests, a wide range of anarchists co-signed a joint statement condemning the attacks and the policies of the british state [2]. they didn't wave the union jack to show solidarity with 'Britain', because they were well aware that this was an attack on ordinary people in response to the actions of the ruling class, and the calls for national unity in the face of the attack were calls to rally behind that same ruling class and their repressive backlash at home and continued military interventions abroad.

now when it comes to palestine, why is there the difficulty applying the same analysis and standards?]


"The vast majority of people don't want to kill other people, don't want to be killed, want food, security for our families, justice, liberty and peace. Let's use that as a starting point and realise that there is strength in unity, and realise that unity is as diverse as the whole world."

yes, but to include groups that specifically *do* want to kill other people and to an extent be killed (martydom ideology; suicide attacks), groups whose conception of 'justice' is sharia law, groups for whom 'peace' means having their own state apparatus to exploit the population of gaza free from israeli interfeance in such 'unity' is to make a mockery of the concept.

you are correct that most people reject these things, which is precisely why i and the other internationalists here are offering political support to the ordinary people in the region as concrete human beings, not political support to abstractions like 'palestine' or 'the resistance' or more concretely to hamas who clearly don't fit your description of peace-loving justice-seekers who don't want to kill other people.


[1] there's a link for this and a good general summary of the internationalist position on gaza written by a comrade in the AF here:  http://libcom.org/library/“sometimes-we-shoot-same-way”-–-attack-gaza-internationalism-left

[2]  http://www.anarkismo.net/article/885

Alistair... intimated that we should've expected such treatment because of how "crassly" we'd posed things. This was a common refrain in arguments we had (or tried to have) with people about the issue - i.e. that we'd only made the placard to "cause trouble". On a certain level, I guess that's true; we raise the slogan to make people think about the politics of the matter and if that equates to "causing trouble" then fine, that's why we did it.

 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/18/awl-people-aaarttacked-sheffield-anti-gaza-war-demo

How do these two sentences from the AWL's Sean Matgamna read if a couple of words are changed... from "Muslim" to "Jewish":

"The Muslim communities are part of a world-wide movement which includes states and some of the richest people on earth. This world-wide movement is, in political terms, very reactionary... The serious left has to find ways of supporting the Muslim communities against racism, discrimination, and social exclusion, without accommodating politically or socially to their reactionary traits".

To:

"The Jewish communities are part of a world-wide movement which includes states and some of the richest people on earth. This world-wide movement is, in political terms, very reactionary... The serious left has to find ways of supporting the Jewish communities against racism, discrimination, and social exclusion, without accommodating politically or socially to their reactionary traits".

Not good is it?

substitute 'white' or american' or british' for muslim or jewish and it still rings true if you leave your preconceptions behind

Sean Matgamna does actually refer to the history of left-wing engagement with the reactionary politics of "superstition-riddled Jewish communities" in the sentence immediately preceding the pointless, out-of-context quote in the post above. (Does this make him an anti-Semite? No; the communities were "superstition-riddled".)

He goes on to say that "involvement of Muslim workers and youth in the labour movement, combined with militant labour-movement commitment to defending the communities against racism and discrimination, is our chief method here."

If he's trying to be "Islamophobic" or an anti-Muslim racist, he doesn't appear to be very good at it...

While everyone else is getting together and supporting direct action and the activists on the ground, some of the most verbose and inactive middle-class rejects have decided to score petty political points at the expense of the Palestinian people.

"Opposition to Israeli barbarism cannot mean support for Hamas or their rivals, any more than opposition to the Iraq war meant supporting Saddam Hussein."

Nobody here has been supporting Hamas so that is a false argument. None the less Ewa Jasiewicz refers to Hamas fighters as 'resistance fighters' and claim they have great support on the ground. The fact that they were elected in fair elections differentiates them from from Saddam Hussien so that is a smear by a false association.

The AWL and AF try to act superior to those in solidarity with the victims of this massacre. They have made false claims about Hamas that they have been unwilling to defend, such as they are corrupt, proving they have either no idea about the region or are being deliberately trying to split the solidarity. Their anondyne banners - 'No to IDF, No to Hamas' - are identical to the "Yes to peace, No to terror" banners witnessed on the pro-Israeli demonstrations.

The AF take this opportunity to crassly rubbish the hopes for a genuine Palestinian state that thousands of people have just died for.

Above all, when challenged, not one of AF or AWL can name any positive action that they have done against this Israeli massacre.

"of course you know a thing or two about smears, having baselessly accused myself and the other libcom admins of zionism, paedophilia, domestic violence, being state agents etc ad nauseum on previous occasions when your mental flights of fancy have been rebutted."

Those are serious charges so I hope to have the right of reply as if they are made in good faith then you are mistaking me for someone else

I have never accused anyone of Zionism because I don't see that as a crime, it is a postition to be argued. Chomsky for instance used to describe himself as a Zionist and insists the meaning of the word was changed from someone who supports the right of Israel to exist to the expansionist supporters of a greater Israel.

I have only met one paedophile in my life and to the best of my knowledge he has never been a LibCom admin or even a LibCom poster.

I have never witnessed any domestic violence in my life so have never accused anyone of it.

Two people have grassed me up to the police, which I can prove, again I don't think they have anything to do with LibCom. One of them, the paedo, did have IM Scotland admin rights which he used maliciously but that isn't a LibCom problem and so I would never have accused LibCom admins of that.

One of the LibCom posters, not admins, did leak my first action, maybe innocently due to him being drunk.

So I hope that humbly clears up any misapprehensions LibCom may have about me. However a misapprehension repeated without evidence does read like a smear.

"Nobody here has been supporting Hamas so that is a false argument. None the less Ewa Jasiewicz refers to Hamas fighters as 'resistance fighters' and claim they have great support on the ground. The fact that they were elected in fair elections differentiates them from from Saddam Hussien so that is a smear by a false association."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by the same standards, Kadima could be described as the fairly elected government of Israel, no? How is this not supporting Hamas? How is ripping up anti-Hamas placards on an *anti-war* demo not supporting Hamas?

AF Watch, what's most annoying about this whole spat is the fact that many AF members *have* been involved in Palestinian solidarity for many years, including being actively involved in the planning of direct action, including marching alongside many of the people attacking us on this and other threads. Yet just for chosing to put forward an argument counter to the mainstream left dogma around Palestine, we've been smeared as "Zionist" (for putting out a leaflet that opens by referring to Israel's actions as "attrocities that must end immediately"), as "cowards" (by people who make anonymous threats of violence over the internet), as "racist vanguardists" (by white British people who presume to speak on behalf of the entire population of Gaza from their position of relative safety and privilege) and perhaps most bizarrely of all, we've been attacked for criticising the "fairly elected government" of Gaza by self-identifying anarchists.

In any case, how's about you explain how us putting out a leaflet condemning both Israeli state violence against Gazans and Hamas' violence against the Palestinian working class comes "at the expense of the Palestinian people". Better yet, how's about you show how the fuck your lefty posturing from afar does *anything* to help "the Palestinian people".

The AF have never "acted superior" to the victims of this conflict - from the very beginning the AF and comrades in Solfed, No Borders and Organise! have been on these demonstrations. The leaflets we give out state clearly and explicitly IN THE FIRST SENTANCE that "the Israeli state is committing atrocities which must end immediately". Given we have been on demonstrations around the country, I'd like to see what those who accuse us of "doing nothing" are doing, as I very much doubt that they are stupid enough to try and get funds or weapons to the "resistance".

We have been absolutely clear in our solidarity with the victims of war, unlike those who support Hamas, who claim to be "anti-war" whilst supporting one of the sides. As has already been pointed out above, our seperation of the population of Gaza from Hamas has been supported by the fact that Gazans have been fleeing the conflict en masse, not martyring themselves for Hamas.

Theres an article here which goes into the conflict and the motivations behind it in detail here:
 http://www.libcom.org/library/%E2%80%9Csometimes-we-shoot-same-way%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-attack-gaza-internationalism-left

"How is this not supporting Hamas? How is ripping up anti-Hamas placards on an *anti-war* demo not supporting Hamas? "

A fair question, if badly worded. Thousands of Palestinians have just been slaughtered in a massacre, some of them Hamas fighters but mostly civilians or state employees employed by Hamas ( the police academy recruits for example). War crimes have been committed by both sides by one side dispreportionally.

Many Fatah supporters are now questioning their loyalties as Hamas have been cast - in lead - as the enemy of the the genocidal army. "We killed your kids accidentally to attack the evil Hamas" just doesn't wash. Even Fatahs spokespersons aren't publically criticising Hamas just now, not in the Western media at least, and the parties are hardly friends. They are emphasising solidarity with the victims, not passing the blame around as this placard does. It implies it was half Hamas' fault, half the IDF, and that is a lie. There are valid reasons to criticise Hamas that must be made. To do so at this point in time is insensitivity to the point of betrayal.

Kadima is the elected government of Israel, and these genocidal acts have been met with widespread Israeli approval. I wonder how the 'no state' proponents argue that they have made any progress in conflict resolution by blaming both sides equally for a one sided massacre - an ariel assault on a basically unarmed, entrapped populace.

A valid slogan but would it really be appropriate on a demo against the slaughter in Falluja ?

this whole 'debate' is ridiculous. the way in which the AF and AWL (neither of which i am a member of, by the way, but i know members of both who have been to the Occupied Territories) have been painted as the ones in the wrong is simply astoundingly bad politics.

the geopolitical importance of Palestine-Israel, and its centrality to global circuits of capital shouldn't go unnoticed. nor should the horrific asymmetry of death and destruction caused by the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. the two positions are not mutually exclusive: you can be against the far-right, reactionary theocratic politics of Hamas, as well as the far-right, neo-colonial, and racist politics of the IDF and the Israeli government. in fact, the two are very much related. as people like JK have mentioned, it is a class war out there - the hierarchies of both Israeli and Palestinian governments are for the most part safe and comfortable, while the people over whom they rule are suffering the effects of their power games. the main difference is that Israel is supported financially and politically by some of the richest and most powerful governments around the world, and is therefore better armed, its people generally have a far better quality of life, and its 'cause' is heard much louder than that of the Palestinians.

fair play to AF and AWL, and shame on the apologists of any form of religious hatred.

no war but the class war.

"So I hope that humbly clears up any misapprehensions LibCom may have about me. However a misapprehension repeated without evidence does read like a smear."

the posts in question, now removed, did seem to conflate libcom and IMC scotland, which was a little baffling. as we have nothing to do with them i have no idea of the veracity of your claims against them, but i'm willing to accept you're not accusing us of any of these things so i stand corrected.


"There are valid reasons to criticise Hamas that must be made. To do so at this point in time is insensitivity to the point of betrayal."

betrayal of who? what loyalty do we have to hamas that could be betrayed? this is PRECISELY the trot, more specifically SWP line. 'yes they're bad, but don't criticise them now they're fighting imperialism!' this kind of opportunistic, 'my enemies enemy' bullshit has seen them march alongside everyone from islamic fundamentalists to serbian fascists, and give a platfrom to muqtada al-sadr's spokesman amongst others. i would really hope anarchists would show more critical faculties and less opportunism than the trots.


"I wonder how the 'no state' proponents argue that they have made any progress in conflict resolution by blaming both sides equally for a one sided massacre - an ariel assault on a basically unarmed, entrapped populace."

by 'no state proponents' you can't be referring to the AWL placard, since the they're statists in favour of a 2 state solution. so you must be referring to the AF leaflet, and the versions based on it distributed by Solfed, Organise!, No Borders and others. If you had actually read the leaflet [1] you would stop repeating the lie that it 'blames both sides equally' - it outright condemns israeli "atrocities which must end immediately" in the VERY FIRST LINE, and also notes that Hamas, and their secular rivals are no angels either. Saying two things are bad does not imply equality of blame. to use the example of the anarchist response to 7/7 again - because hamas apologists keep on ignoring it - it managed to condemn both the bombings and UK state policy without apportioning any ratio of blame.


[1]  http://libcom.org/library/no-state-solution-gaza

"The AF have never "acted superior" to the victims of this conflict "
Strawman. That wasn't what was I said. You have brought division where there was solidarity.

"Given we have been on demonstrations around the country"
Given that all the activists in Gaza are saying demos aren't enough

"I'd like to see what those who accuse us of "doing nothing" are doing, as I very much doubt that they are stupid enough to try and get funds or weapons to the "resistance"".

Trying to get funds to the Gazans and the activists there. Trying to prevent more weapons going to the genociders.

"unlike those who support Hamas"
Strawman.

"www.libcom.org"
Strawmen / strawpeople

"We have been absolutely clear in our solidarity with the victims of war, unlike those who support Hamas"
Strawman. I don't support Hamas and I doubt the Palestinian who took oofence at the crappy slogam does either. Who exactly are these Hamas supporters you keep refering to? The dead and the drowned?


"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt."

"A fair question, if badly worded. Thousands of Palestinians have just been slaughtered in a massacre, some of them Hamas fighters but mostly civilians or state employees employed by Hamas ( the police academy recruits for example). War crimes have been committed by both sides by one side dispreportionally."
I don't disagree (except for the "thousands" part, which is an unnecessary exageration of what is already a terrible slaughter).

"I wonder how the 'no state' proponents argue that they have made any progress in conflict resolution by blaming both sides equally for a one sided massacre - an ariel assault on a basically unarmed, entrapped populace."
At no point has the AF (who are the only people you could be referring to here as 'no state' proponents) blamed both sides equally. That is *not* the basis for our criticisms of Hamas and anybody who has actually read the statements that various AF local groups have put out should realise this.

The argument put forward in AF leaflets has consistantly been that the Israeli state is massacring Palestinians, but that Hamas are not the allies of ordinary Gazans in any meaningful sense and that consequently lending political support to Hamas at a time when we should be showing solidarity with the victims of this attack is a mistake. This is not the same thing as saying that "both sides are equally to blame".

I'd be very surprised to learn that there *weren't* placards or banners saying exactly that on some of the early anti-Iraq war demos. It's a perfectly sensible slogan that makes a pertinant point.

Betrayal of the dead Gazans irregardless of political beliefs or political affiliations.

So far, everyone on IM has been able to show a solid front in condemning the massacre (Is it too soon to start calling it the '2006 Gaza massacre'?) This banner didn't, and the untrue smears both against Hamas (corrupt, colluding) and against those who have acted to support the Palestinian victims of Israeli agression ( Hamas supporters) are reprehensible.

"'yes they're bad, but don't criticise them now they're fighting imperialism!'"

No, don't criticise them now because they are dying and injured. I don't support the taleban either but I should feel free to criticise their supporters being loaded into cargo containers and left to die.

Against Abu Ghriab, against the Bathists is not an appropriate slogan when our state is supporting one side and you haven't ended our state

"Saying two things are bad does not imply equality of blame"

That particular banner does imply equality of blame. You have had to be prompted to make this belated differentiation. Shameful.

"You have brought division where there was solidarity."

let me get this straight - a member of the PSC attacks a member of the AWL cheered on by SWP members... and this is the AF's fault? any solidarity that amounts to 'agree with us or we'll attack you' is nothing of the sort. i expect this statist logic from the trots, i expect it from the IDF, i expect it from Hamas. what fine company you keep.

if you're so sure that nobody supports hamas, why are so many people throwing a tantrum over a leaflet that criticises them? why are people being assaulted for criticising them? why are people making threats against the AF for criticising them? why don't people on demos waving hamas flags raise an eyebrow, let alone get their placards stolen and destroyed?

stop talking shit, plenty of people are saying it's wrong to criticise hamas, and backing that up with threats of and actual force. that is support. you'd have no problem labelling me an 'IDF supporter' if i said we shouldn't criticse them now they're on ceasefire - and you'd be right. so stop being so disingenuous and/or trolling.

"I don't disagree (except for the "thousands" part, which is an unnecessary exageration of what is already a terrible slaughter)."

Is it? Add to the currently published death toll the thousands more who are dying for lack of medical supplies, medical care, food, and the living victims of the carcinogenic DIME weapons. Never mind the thousands who will never be born. Your surface acceptance of a Western media casualty count is not to your credit.

"No to George Bush, No to Saddam Hussein" is a "perfectly sensible slogan that makes a pertinant point" on a Falluja demo? For fucks sake.

Yeah well, I am having to go out now to take direct action against another British 'defence' company, so I'll leave the last word to the AF meat puppets who blame Hamas for this tragedy while doing nothing except talk, talk, talk. I thought real anarchists were meant to prize deeds above words? Not according to the Fed.

"I am so afraid that I listen to you,
your sun glassed protectors they do that to you.
It's their ways to detain, their ways to disgrace,
their knee in your balls and their fist in your face.
Yes and long live the state by whoever it's made,
sir, I didn't see nothing, I was just getting home late. "

when you've lost all you bearings and crossed class lines, you don't need to make a political argument - you can just smear the AWL!
Whats the AWL been doing in terms of practical solidarity:
 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/14/17-days-solidarity-palestinians-london
Quite alot it turns out.

So why were a load of apologists for imperialism and Islamophobes standing shoulder to shoulder, night after night, with young muslims getting the shit beaten out of them by the British state (while the majority of the left packed up their pasting tables and went home). If your idea of solidarity is meekly lining up behind Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood then you are stabbing the Middle Eastern working class and the people of Palestine in the back. More than that, you are leaving open space for radicalised young people to be brainwashed with ideas of restoring the caliphate. We're not prepared to do that and we are clear where the class lines are drawn.

Lastly, this is not a side issue. People come to these demonstrations with clear ideas that they want to promote. All the demonstrations these last few weeks have been led by various degrees of political Islam tailended by the SWP, WP and the Stalinist left. The extreme version (heard in many conversations and from the platform) sees Palestine as a "useful tool" to mobilise an Islamist uprising in Egypt, Syria etc. and start a war with the aim of destroying Israel and restoring the Caliphate. They are happy for Hamas to continue a ground war with Israel over the bodies of the Palestinians in order to mobilise. We should be clear that there are organised Islamist forces on these demonstrations (distinct from 99% of Muslims who have been mobilised) and we should pose ourselves sharply against their programme.

On the massive anti-war demo in London a few years ago I was proud to carry a banner which said No to War, No to Saddam (solidarity with Iraqi workers).

I carried a similar banner on demos in Sheffield.

No-one tried to tear it from me or rip it up. Plenty of people came up to say how much they supported the sentiment including a number of Iraqi and Iranian dissidents. The only abuse i got was from a man in Sheffield who was carrying a placard with Saddam's face on it shouting that Saddam was a hero etc..

There were people who tried to glorify Saddam Hussein on the anti-war protests. There are people who glorify Hamas now.

As a socialist I consider it an obligation to show my solidarity with the Palestinians without suppressing important criticism of Hamas. To do otherwise is to betray those who Hamas repress within the occupied territories.

So some of you disagree? Fair enough. But since when have people on the activist left supported the ripping up of placards because you disagree with the politics? Intolerant, dangerous, political censorship which has more in common with the poison of stalinism than anything else.

"No, don't criticise them now because they are dying and injured. I don't support the taleban either but I should feel free to criticise their supporters being loaded into cargo containers and left to die. "

did you stop criticising US foreign policy after 9-11? stop criticising Israel every (rare) time a rocket kills a Sderot resident? or back when suicide bombings were semi-regular? of course the leadership of hamas are safely in exile, so they're not dying and injured anyway. some of their fighters are, but overwhelmingly the dead and injured are ordinary palestinian civilians, to whom the supposedly "insensitive" internationalists have extended solidarity from the off.


"That particular banner does imply equality of blame. You have had to be prompted to make this belated differentiation. Shameful."

it's unfortunate of the standard of comment here that i can't tell if you're a good troll or a genuine leftist idiot. if by "belated differentiation" you mean "in our very first leaflet we produced on the attack" you'd be right. by now i don't expect you to actually read anything you criticise, but for the benefit of anyone else it read: "This is not to say there is a symmetrical situation - Israel is in control and could stop the onslaught at will, Hamas is much weaker. However, our enemy's enemy is not our friend." [1]

now stop the misrepresentation and slander, which you've admitted is to suppress criticism of hamas. this is support, every bit the mirror image of zionist attempts to suppress criticism of the IDF (not that the atrocities are mirrored, for the benefit of the hard of thinking).


""No to George Bush, No to Saddam Hussein" is a "perfectly sensible slogan that makes a pertinant point" on a Falluja demo? For fucks sake. "

Ok, he explicitly said "on some of the early anti-Iraq war demos", so you must be trolling. nobody could be THAT impossibly retarded yet manage to operate a computer.


[1]  http://www.libcom.org/library/against-war-warmongers

"Is it? Add to the currently published death toll the thousands more who are dying for lack of medical supplies, medical care, food, and the living victims of the carcinogenic DIME weapons. Never mind the thousands who will never be born. Your surface acceptance of a Western media casualty count is not to your credit."
Every "Western media casualty count" I have read is cited as coming from "Palestinian sources". Either way, I'm not really interested in quibbling over exactly how many human beings the IDF has murdered, I just wanted to qualify what I was saying because your claim that "thousands" have died is contrary to anything I've read, even from the most pro-Palestinian sources.

On the "George Bush/Saddam Hussein" thing, it would be a sensible slogan *while Saddam was still in power* it'd be a somewhat silly and irrelevant thing to say now that Saddam is dead (and good riddance). Saddam Hussein may not have killed as many as the coalition forces have since their invasion began, but he was a genocidal cunt and I'd be proud to stand in solidarity with those that he has targetted. Like the IDF/Hamas placard, it's about making it clear who we're supporting against what, I wouldn't formulate it the way that the AWL did, because it's likely to be misunderstood, I'd be more likely to carry a placard expressing support for the victims of the war, or calling for an immediate end to the bombing, indepth analysis is best left to longer written stuff, where it can be explained fully.

Ouch. Typo or maybe fraudain slip, maybe I am living in the past since I took direct action against that too. I guess that makes me Hezbullah. At least I admit my mistakes. The term 'two faced cunt' isn't used enough imho, it applies to lots of posters on this thread.

Little less conversation a little more action - anyone?

1. IDF have committed war crimes
2. Hamas have committed war crimes.. bear with me here!

3. Israel has killed at the very least ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED people most civilians in a few weeks, Hamas rockets have killed about 14 in seven YEARS.
4. Sure Hamas have done bad shit but..
5. Hamas are not the 12000 civilians in Gaza
6. and this is the clincher so I'll shout it for the hard of thinking:

TURNING UP TO A DEMO PROTESTING THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENT GAZANS APPORTIONING BLAME TO HAMAS IS NOT ONLY IRRELEVANT BUT IT CARRYING ON THE ZIONIST PROPAGANDA THAT HAMAS IS TO BLAME OR EVEN EQUALLY AS CULPABLE= TOTAL FUCKING LIES!

If you don't get that, you never will, and kindly shut teh door when you fuck off back to whatever Zionist Student Group you sprung from.

P.S. I do not support Hamas. But I believe Gaza has the right to elect who it wants. And let's face it, all this slaughter has been about is trying to install Fatah who will grease the tracks for Israel continuing illegal theft of Palestinian territory... can you believe anything else without being clinically stupid???

"4. Sure Hamas have done bad shit but..
5. Hamas are not the 12000 civilians in Gaza "

Yes. Exactly. If someone had turned up with a placard saying "No to the civilians in Gaza", it would've been totally appropriate to destroy it. But everyone in this discussion is against what the IDF are doing, which is why we've all been going to demos against what they're doing, and why the offending placard started off "NO TO IDF". Now, given all that...do you think it's appropriate to censor other anti-IDF demonstrators, just because their (admittedly poorly-worded and simplistic) placard had a critique that you didn't agree with? Or do you think that a healthy anti-war movement should be able to contain various different tendencies, united in their opposition to Israel's atrocities, but openly and freely expressing their points of view without being stomped on? Which is it?

Permission to speak sir!?

Well, It's the IDF & IAF that are the aggressors, and their murders quite frankly dwarf anything Hamas has ever done.

Israel is pouring tonnes of US munitions on civillians deliberately* Hamas are fucking setting off glorified fireworks. So, Hamas is- once more- a red fucking herring, a fake pretext.

The Hamas obsession as you well know is Israel's one and only propaganda piece to justify this slaughter; so again, I think it is entirely appropriate to find it offensive (in every sense of the word).

Either you are a Zionist fuckwit or perhaps just a common or garden variety fuckwit.

* An IAF officer briefing the press completely oblivious to the fact he has just admitted to war crimes under the Geneva Conventions:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3CUw0ILUkU&NR=1

"Israel is pouring tonnes of US munitions on civillians deliberately* Hamas are fucking setting off glorified fireworks. So, Hamas is- once more- a red fucking herring, a fake pretext. "

the objection to hamas is what they do to palestinians, namely repress and murder them for things like organisaing as workers or being prostitutes. yes israel's killed far more, but since when was ethics determined by relative body counts? nobody's suggesting there's equal responsibility for the latest round of slaughter, they're simply saying criticising hamas is not grounds to get assaulted on a demo.

"Either you are a Zionist fuckwit or perhaps just a common or garden variety fuckwit."

oh yes i forgot, the logic of the left. "either you're with me, or you're with the zionists" - despite repeatedly condemning israeli atrocities. fucksake some leftists make george bush look nuanced.

I should have gone down to the demo i could have brought my new banner it reads:
no to zionism
no to the AWL
no to the SWP
Yes to the VHEMT.org

afterall if i didnt bring that banner then someone might see me stood next to leftist sect and presume i am a part of them.

I was on the Sheffield Gaza demo last Saturday and argued with the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) member with the placard equating the IDF and Hamas. A member of Permanent Revolution was making the same point. I am not now (nor have I ever been) a member of Permanent Revolution (PR) - though I pretty much agree with their position on Palestine and on building solidarity with people in Gaza.

It made me very angry to see that placard on the demo - for the last few weeks I've had to listen to the onslaught of the IDF and the feeble military resitance of Hamas being equated - by the BBC, by liberals, by right wing newspapers and naive pacifists. To see Marxists do the same thing raised a question. Did they realise what effect it would have? Daniel from AWL is honest enough to say that "in a certain sense" the AWL knew that it would "cause trouble". In other words, it was a marketing ploy to differentiate the AWL from the SWP's (and maybe the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's) unwillingness (wrong in my view) to politically criticise Hamas. This was sectarian behaviour. The term "sectarian" isn't used as an insult here - it's a precise description. On a demo held to condemn the IDF's massacres and build support for the survival of people in Gaza, the AWL turned up to "differentiate" (their word) themselves from the SWP etc.

I didn't (and wouldn't on principle) attack another socialist physically. That's why I argued with the AWL comrade holding the placard equating the IDF and Hamas. I equated the placard's slogan with "equal handedly" condeming the violence of the striking miners with that of the police during the 84 strike. Politically that would have been a scab position, in the most violent conflict that I've ever experienced. In the context of the Gazan massacre it's at least that. I said that I thought she should leave the demonstration if she refused to lower the placard. I stand by that view. I find the AWL's position on Palestine appalling - it reminds me of Socialist Organiser (forerunner of the AWL) echoing Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" comment about the Soviet Union back in the 1980's. Some things don't change but I've never seen anything so deliberately provocative and insensitive as that placard on that demonstration at this point in the war on Palestinians.

The argument (heated, for sure) that myself and a PR member were having with 4 or 5 AWL members was ended by the chair of Sheffield PSC physically destroying the offending placard. Not my way of dealing with the situation but then I haven't had members of my family killed by Israeli rockets in the last few days.

One more thing. There's some history to this: on previous Gazan solidarity demos in Sheffield there has been anti-semitic chanting. The chair of Sheffield PSC (backed by the vast majority of demonstrators)has made it clear that this is not welcome. What should we do if a few people continued with these racist slogans? I understand that the AWL were asked by the PSC (on a previous demo) not to bring the placard equating the IDF and Hamas. What reaction would they expect to receive if they came next time waving an Israeli flag (as an AWL supporter did at a Gaza solidarity demo in London!)? It would certainly "cause trouble", "in a certain sense".

"I didn't (and wouldn't on principle) attack another socialist physically. That's why I argued with the AWL comrade holding the placard equating the IDF and Hamas. I equated the placard's slogan with "equal handedly" condeming the violence of the striking miners with that of the police during the 84 strike. Politically that would have been a scab position"

That's not a very good analogy, the police are an institution of state violence, used to protect the interests of capital, in attacking striking workers, they reaffirm their role as the means by which the state defends capital. There are clear grounds for socialists to take a side here. Conversely, Hamas are themselves a ruling elite (and/or their representatives) in Gaza, by attacking Israeli civilians, they reaffirm their role as a bourgeois nationalist political party.

We should be siding with working class people on both sides of the border in their struggle against capitalism and imperialism, this is not "neutrality" with regards to the Israeli state's barbaric actions, it is fundamental to any consistant socialist class analysis. Nor is this an "abstract" position, it gives us a clear idea of who we should be targetting with our actions (companies and institutions that support the Israeli state, either monetarily or by supplying arms) and who we should be supporting, both politically and materially (Palestinians under millitary attack, Israelis struggling to end the war, Israeli refuseniks, arabs struggling against Israel's racist social and immigration polcies).

jhaaglund
"Conversely, Hamas are themselves a ruling elite (and/or their representatives) in Gaza, by attacking Israeli civilians, they reaffirm their role as a bourgeois nationalist political party."

So, if they resist they affirm themselves in this role, and if they don't resist, according to the PFLP they also confirm themselves in this role.

"We have continually opposed the politics of "calm," because it presents an opportunity and yet another false justification for Israel to attack our people and increases the pressure on the resistance from all of the forces in the enemy camp "
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/419504.html

jhaaglund
"We should be siding with working class people on both sides of the border in their struggle against capitalism and imperialism"

The Israelis struggle against imperialism seems to be taking the form of cheering on the slaughter and killing Gazans - apparently they think their interests as a working class is to see as many dead Gazans as possible.

You wouldn't be the first westerner who told the Palestinians that you have superior thinking and values and that they are wrong. They didn't believe any of your predecessors either.

Hamas stands accused (by AF/AWL) of using dead Palestinians for political gain. jhaagland, the AF and AWL have of course been respectful of Palestinians in their choices and have not sought to use the slaughter to seek political gain. True/False?

"The Israelis struggle against imperialism seems to be taking the form of cheering on the slaughter and killing Gazans - apparently they think their interests as a working class is to see as many dead Gazans as possible."

Somebody better tell that to the young Israeli Jews risking imprisonment and/or social isolation by refusing to serve in the IDF:
 http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/2978

Or the thousands of Israeli activists who demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the IDF's attack on Gaza:
 http://www.alternativenews.org/news/english/demonstrations-in-tel-aviv-east-jerusalem-against-israeli-attacks-on-gaza-20081228.html

Or the Israeli anarchist group, Anarchists Against the Wall:
 http://www.awalls.org/

Or perhaps you could tell it to the 500 residents of Sderot (which has been repeatedly hit by rocket attacks from Hamas) who signed a petition demanding that the IDF cease the bombing:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jan/08/gaza-israel

Or you could continue to demonise a civillian population largely made up of ordinary people in defiance of the evidence that many of them are as against the IDF's actions as you are (and taking far greater risks as a result), your choice.

It's certainly true that the examples I cite represent a minority current in a highly militarised society in which extreme nationalism is considered normal and religious fundamentalism goes largely unchallenged, but this is yet another reason that we should be supporting these groups and tendancies. To try to write them off or deny their existence is to actively participate in exactly the sort of bloodthirsty war mongering that you would rightly condemn were it to come from the US or UK governments.

"You wouldn't be the first westerner who told the Palestinians that you have superior thinking and values and that they are wrong. They didn't believe any of your predecessors either."

Who is the one acting superior here? Those of us who seek to support the Palestinians under attack while being honest about our political point of view, or those who treat the Palestinians like children, incapable of engaging in rational debate?

Sorry, meant to post this link:
 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3646184,00.html

Rather than the link to the Gaurdian article that links to the original story.

Camila asked, in a round-about way, what my views are of what is happening and Jane said, "What appalls me is that the writer of this article feels it acceptable to use the tragic circumstances of Musheir (organiser of PSC) to somehow deplore a banner written by AWL.".

I mentioned what Musheir had said about his relatives the night before to try to get across what stress and pressure Palestinians in Sheffield have been going through -- have you got any idea what it is like to hear that close relatives of yours, children out playing with their bike, are being hunted down and blown to bits by imperial gunships?

Last October Musheir talked in Sheffield about his trip to Gaza, it's a very moving talk, and if people don't know Musheir then I suggest you spend some time and listen to it.

In terms of what I think, I think that the work done by the ISM and Free Gaza is outstanding and shows what solidarity action can achieve. I think that the best news coverage comes from Flashpoints, The Electronic Intifada, and The International Middle East Media Center. I thought that Ilan Pappé's meeting on The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine was very good. I think that the best Marxist analysis and coverage I have heard comes from Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone, see their audio archive. However I don't consider myself a Marxist anymore, Nafeez Ahmed's analysis, Gaza Catastrophe: Resource Conflict? is very good, though he missed out the role of end of Bush's reign -- the blood of the children of Gaza is Obama's red carpet to the Oval Office.

I'm wasn't aware that I'm not "upfront with my 'politics'", or that I "hide behind a keyboard" and I'm not really interested in having "a row" with you.

I have attended some of the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign events in Sheffield and apart from the 10th January 2009 and the 17th January 2009 protests I have never seen the AWL at their events, were you at the protests against the slaughter on 29th December 2008, or 3rd January 2009 or on the 7th January 2009?

Looking back at the first page of the Sheffield Indymedia Palestine Topic page I can see reports of a small number of the events that the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign have organised but no evidence of the AWL being at any of them, the AWL was not at the well attended Ilan Pappé meeting on The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine on 13th March 2008, or the Vigil on 1st March 2008 or the End the Siege of Gaza Vigil on 16th February 2008 or the 29th November 2007 Vigil for Palestine or the Release Alan Johnston Vigil on 30th May 2007 or the very big Northern Rally for Palestine on 12th May 2007 or the Vanunu Freedom Ride or the Vigil on 3rd March 2007...

I am not fond of Hamas and never a supporter of them but when it comes to innocent lives being squandered for the sake of the Israeli ambitions in the area I would say anybody that stands if the face of Israel deserves my support.

Palestinians do not need your sympathy they need your support and if you are not supporting them do not come to any of our events. if you cannot make your mind up, stay at home and watch Dad's army or even Allo Allo. I think non of us wishes to listen to silly lines such as
“we do feel for the Israeli soldiers that are serving in the occupied territories" and all this nonsense lines that reflect the apologetic nature of some people.

How on earth can an Israeli solider be a victim of his own government. As a solider if you do not believe in Zionism, go and live with the Palestinians otherwise you brand yourself an enemy of humanity and deserve no sympathy.


There was an event for Peace in Israel and Gaza in London 2 weeks ago, please let me know what would have happened to that lady had she taken her placard there.

Thanks for not answering

Thanks for your response and the time you took in cutting and pasting various web links (I will follow them in due course), I am pleased you are reading the postings in what has become (whether intended or not) an important debate. Still, I don't see any further point in discoursing with you on the subject of personal suffering. All I can say is that a) you don't know anything about my personal circumstances or those around me and b) by using someone elses you seem to want to fuel a politics of resentment: "I (or someone) suffer(s), therefore I support those (regardless of their politics or whether they really care about my suffering) who attack my persecutor or main enemy". I do not follow this politics and never have regardless of my own suffering or anyone elses. So I maintain my stance great photos (although I am intrigued why you - or whoever took the photos - have only just decided to photograph AWL at a PSC event. They strangely get missed usually !? I notice this even as the photographer goes round - what blatant censorship! I am also interested that you have decided not to show the blocking of their other banner which said something like "Israel out of the occupied territories: two nations, two states")

I don't have any photos of the "blocking of their other banner" -- this happened before I arrived, however you will notice that I do have a photo of their banner *not* being blocked at this protest and the same banner at the protest the week before.

The article above is *only* about this incident -- it was intentionally posted as a separate article because a large (though not this large) number of comments were expected and I didn't want the main report I did of the protest to be derailed -- this is the other report:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2009/01/418895.html

I'm probably not going to post to this thread again, there are lots of other more important things to be done.

Thanks for your reply Chris. In it you state: "I'm wasn't aware that I'm not 'upfront with my 'politics'', or that I 'hide behind a keyboard' and I'm not really interested in having 'a row' with you." Well, a conversation would do... Alas, I don't think you're up to that sort of face-to-face interaction. Ok.

On the gist of your response posting, i.e.: 'here's the pathetic lack of things AWL Sheffield comrades do to support the Palestinians' Gosh Chris, given you don't even want to have conversations with us, how do you know what we do or not do? Besides from three people you know are in AWL Sheffield, well, there are seven more younger comrades you've never even met before. E.g. you state we have attended two PSC rallies this year (in January). Wrong. Two of my comrades, Gemma and Ed were present at the first this year too.

You also judge Palestine solidarity work as just that (what about, as well, Israeli refuseniks, anti-war activists, etc?) and as solely activity in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Are the AWL Sheffield comrades welcome in PSC with our politics? Does the destruction of one of our placards by the PSC chair (btw I salute Jane's comments) or the blocking of our 'two nations, two states' banner by a PSC banner suggest we are welcome?

See you soon Chris. Comradely, Camila

Here is the true story of what happened with regards to your banner as I saw it.

I was standing close to the speakers; the chair of Sheffield PSC asked for volunteers to carry the banner in front of the march. Two women volunteered and brought the banner forward, close to the speakers and coincidentally in front of AWL banner. There was no attempt to block your banner; it is only in your stupid imagination. I have been a member of Sheffield PSC for 3 years; call me ignorant but up until 10.01.2009, I did not know that AWL even existed in Sheffield!!!!!!

I know for sure that the PSC welcomes all people who support the Palestinians but most certainly not Zionists or their sympathisers.

I hope that you can read between the lines and realise that you are not welcomed in any of Sheffield PSC events; go and express your support some where else where you belong; Pro Zionist events !!!!!

I do not speak on behalf of Sheffield PSC but I could feel the disgust at your politics among all our members.

Steve

... please see the following link, and the 2nd and 3rd photo down:
 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/19/attempt-silence-anti-hamas-voices-17-january-sheffield-gaza-demonstration-more-phot

Steve - how much of this rally were you actually there for? Thanks for the post btw. I'm happy to debate politically and, for the record, I never need to lie.

Comradely, Camila

Steve, you state: "I was standing close to the speakers; the chair of Sheffield PSC asked for volunteers to carry the banner in front of the march. Two women volunteered and brought the banner forward, close to the speakers and coincidentally in front of AWL banner. There was no attempt to block your banner; it is only in your stupid imagination. [...] I hope that you can read between the lines and realise that you are not welcomed in any of Sheffield PSC events; go and express your support some where else where you belong; Pro Zionist events !!!!! [...] I could feel the disgust at your politics among all our members."

There was plenty of space to put the banner somewhere else, i.e. not to block anything. The tone of your posting doesn't suggest that it's my "stupid imagination".

BTW how do you define "Zionism"?

Comradely, Camila

OK in summary:

Workers Liberty admit they deliberately set out to cause trouble to draw attention to themselves (See Reader above). And despite the fact they did this in the most tasteless way imaginable the outcome for them has been very successful. This post has 98 comments. They also seem to have managed it with no negative repercussions.

This is likely to lead them toward similar tactics in the future, if not immediately, then after the hubbub of this action has been forgotten.

It seems to me that there's two things that could be done to stop such tactics being used. First don't publish articles like this one since debating and drawing attention to their politics is the reason they did it in the first place.

Secondly maybe simply ripping down and stamping on on their banner is not going far enough. Maybe they need a stronger disincentive, preferably undertaken away from the glare of those on the demo where so they can't go bleating on about their 'rights'. This wouldn't have to necessarily be violent. I remember a story about SWPers having the bundles of newspapers confiscated and set on fire when they were trying to piggyback a demo in London to promote themselves too.

It seems clear they need something to teach them the acceptable rules of behaviour.

"It seems clear they need something to teach them the acceptable rules of behaviour."
"maybe simply ripping down and stamping on on their banner is not going far enough"
"don't publish articles like this one since debating and drawing attention to their politics is the reason they did it in the first place"

.......do you stand by these comments?

It sounds to me that you are threatening violence and calling for an end to debate & critical thinking because you think it's unacceptable to express pro-Palestinian but anti-Hamas views at a Palestinian solidarity rally.

That's a bit extreme.

Is your argument with the wording of the placard, the AWL's apparent intent, or the politics that it expresses?

For me, I don't care much for the wording - but I've seen far more insensitive / unpleasant / plain stupid placards in the last 2 weeks.

I can't speak to the AWL's intent, but think that it's up to everyone to express support in their own way.

As for the politics - that comes down to whether you believe in what Hamas stand for (I hope not, because their politics are shit), whether you think that they should be supported while / because they are the main political / military force in Gaza, or whether you see them as another wannabe government who, like all governments, don't have the best interests of "their" citizens at heart.

I'm clear in my head that I support the Palestinians under attack, I don't support their leaders.

If Sheffield was under attack, I wouldn't start chanting "Hail David Blunkett" or suppressing all criticism of the Labour Party. I'd be calling for an end to the killing of people in Sheffield.

..."No" to Hamas is what the imperialists say. Saying "No" to Hamas because they are conservative, clerical, sexists and homophobic is the excuse the imperialists use; when the AWL start attacking the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people and their resistance fighters they sound like the BBC that insists on referring to them as "Militants" or the right wing media that suddenly develop a progressive political analysis and hijack the 'moral high ground' by belligerently parroting that the west must intervene in Afghanistan for the sake of Muslim women and referring to all the resistance fighters in Afghanistan as 'the Taliban'; they will not or do not accept that they are a resistance force, same with Iraq. The Palestinian people voted for Hamas, they saw them as the only organised political and military option available in order to combat imperialism. The imperialist/Zionist "NO" to Hamas and its murder of the Palstinian people represents not just double standards but multiple standards; they only want Palestinian leaders that will capitulate as opportunistically as the corrupt kings and puppet presidents throughout the client regime Arab world - which is what Fatah did. Is that what the AWL want? How can an organisation with close ties to the Labour Party self righteously lecture anybody about the wrongs of Hamas?

Let's remind ourselves of the Labour party and its affiliates:

...And let's also remind ourselves that for real revolutionaries and communists, the establishment of the Labour Party was a profound setback for the British working class and the oppressed of the British Empire. It consolidated the political domination of the mass of the working class by a tiny privileged upper layer whose chief political characteristics were those of reaction and support for imperialism, racism and sexism. Since then the Labour Party has been a millstone round the neck of the British working class, preventing it from achieving anything of any consequence. From the day of its inception, the challenge for socialists has been to build a movement that could break Labour's stifling grip on British working class organisation and politics and give a lead to the mass of the working class.

Many on the left will say that Labour today is very different creature from Labour in 1900, that Blair and Brown's New Labour project is a decisive break with the party that was once a home for Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan. But they have created a myth. Labour in 1900 was no more radical or socialist that it is today. Blair and Brown's Labour Party is in substance no different from the one founded on an alliance of imperialist socialists with middle class leaders and reactionary trade union leaders 100 years ago.

Unquestioning defence of British imperialism; contempt for the rights of the oppressed; abhorrence for the poor, these were the hallmarks of Labour in 1900 as much as they are today. Yet the left both within and without the Labour Party has spun illusions in and around the Labour Party for as long as it has existed. Fearing the mass of the real working class, those whom are excluded from the official labour and trade union movement, they have pretended that the election of a Labour government would make a difference. They said this in 1983, in 1987, in 1992, again in 1997. They have fooled only themselves. Blair and Brown's government is what they promised it would be – capitalist (pro-big business), imperialist, Zionist, racist and deeply oppressive.

Labour has always been a capitalist, imperialist, Zionist, racist and war-mongering party.

Labour's list of slaughter includes:

Between 1925 and 1931:
It sanctioned the use of the RAF to bomb unarmed Kurdish villagers in 1925;
It used the RAF once again in the brutal suppression of the Indian freedom struggle between 1929-31;

Between 1945 and 1951 Labour:
Committed British troops to aid the restoration of French colonial rule in Viet Nam and Dutch rule in Indonesia;
Continued military intervention in Greece against the ELAS;
Blockaded Iran following the nationalisation of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company;
Ruthlessly exploited the British empire in Africa to aid post-war reconstruction in Britain – The NHS for example;
It saw no offence to its socialist principles in using head-hunters in a murderous war against Malayan freedom fighters in 1949-51;

Between 1964 and 1970, it:
Defended apartheid South Africa, blocking calls for sanctions in the UN;
Capitulated to the racist settler regime in the former Rhodesia;
In 1969 it sent troops into the north of Ireland to bolster the tottering Loyalist statelet;
Between 1975 and 1979 supervised a regime of torture and criminalisation directed against the nationalist minority;
Terrorised the Irish community in Britain, (as it does now with the Muslim community);
Was responsible for the routine torture of suspected freedom fighter detainees in Aden;
It gave slavish support for the US war against Vietnam from 1964-70;
It gave slavish support for Zionist aggression against the Arab people in 1967;
Under Tony Benn’s (Labour left celebrity) guidance, it approved RTZ’s illegal plunder of Namibian uranium in 1968;

Between 1974 and 1979, it:
Implemented a ruthless regime of torture against republican prisoners in the North of Ireland;
It supported the Shah of Iran right to the last days of his regime in 1979 because his regime was the biggest purchaser of British arms;
In 1978 it sold Hawk jet fighters to the Indonesian Suharto dictatorship which were then used in the genocide of the people of East Timor.

Throughout its periods in government in the 1960s and 1970s it supported all forms of immigration controls.

Whilst in opposition from 1979, ‘Real Labour’:
Supported the Tories against the Irish hunger-strikers in 1981;
In the same summer, it supported the racist police against the uprisings of black and white working class youth;
The following year, it supported war against Argentina over the Malvinas;
In 1984-85, it betrayed the struggle of the miners and helped destroy their working class communities;
In 1990, tin pot generals such as Kaufman and Kinnock bayed for blood in the first war against Iraq.

In August 2008 two members left the AWL. Their resignations were part of a wave of discussion triggered by an article by Sean Matgamna which argued that, "The harsh truth is that there is good reason for Israel to make a precipitate strike at Iranian nuclear capacity" from an Israeli ruling-class point of view..." The AWL National Committee has expressed that is "against" albeit not "opposed" to such an attack. WHAT KIND OF WEASEL WORDED MEALY MOUTHED TOSH IS THAT? "Against" but not "opposed"?

There is good reason for Israel to attack Iran? Israel, the rogue terrorist state with over 200 nuclear war heads pointed at every major Arab city? Matgamna argues that Hamas is waging war in southern Israel? Waging war? Hamas's home made inaccurate rockets are symbols of defiance; they have killed about 8 people in 7 years + a women broke her toe a couple of months ago, (seriously). He ridicules the idea that Israel is apartheid. What is apartheid?

"A state becomes apartheid when it has official policies of racial segregation involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against another race of people."

Is that what Israel does?

"Since the [Zionist] occupation of Palestine from 1948, Israel has employed many apartheid and ethnic cleansing policies in order to to drive out the native Arab population and attempt to create a pure Jewish presence in the whole of Palestine. This racists ideology is being achieved through mass discrimination against Palestinians, intended to make their living conditions so unbearable that Palestinians are forced to leave their homeland."

Israeli apartheid policies include:

Collective punishment (particularly of the Gaza Ghetto - a NAZI tactic); House demolitions and destruction of property; Removal and relocation of people or "transfer" away from their homes; Mass torture and internment of family members; Closures of entire villages and towns and Check points.

Apartheid policies against Israeli Arabs include:

Not having the right to buy land; no equal access to to social services and assistance despite paying the same taxes as all Jewish Israeli's; Jews only job adverts.

As i alluded to in an earlier post, who exactly do the AWL think are going to build a revolutionary movement (and what exactly are they doing)? The unions that are still affiliated to the Labour Party? John McDonnell - some of whom wore "Vote McDonnel" badges during the Labour leadership contest a couple of years back - individuals and unions that still support and are members of the above Labour party, spinning the same myth about "old" and "new" Labour, selling the working class the fantasy that revolutionary change in this country can be achieved through Parliament? The AWL talk of a workers movement, what about asylum seekers, refugees, the unemployed, and when they are employed the non union affiliated lower working class or what about students? Although of course not many working class people are students because of the attacks on free education by the Labour Party.

What right have groups like the AWL from the safety of England got to tell the Palestinian people they are not going to support them because they don't agree with who they voted for when 1) as mentioned, that is what western imperialists do and 2) when we consider the blood splattered imperialists and Zionist history of the imperialists and Zionist Labour Party and the unions that support them, one could say that the AWL reek of imperious middle calls arrogance.

Let's not forget that the AWL have been members of the Labour Representation Committee since it was founded in 2004, the LRC is a pressure group within the Labour Party.

The Representation Committee has a number of officially affiliated MPs, those being:
Michael Clapham MP
Katy Clark MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
David Drew MP
David Hamilton MP
Kelvin Hopkins MP
Dr Lynne Jones MP
John McDonnell MP
Bob Wareing MP
The group also receives support from unaffiliated MP Michael Meacher, as well as the Labour veteran Tony Benn.

Affiliated Unions:
The LRC maintains support from a number of trade unions, the most prominent of these being:
ASLEF
BFAWU
Communication Workers Union
Fire Brigades Union
NUM
RMT

Affiliated Constituency Labour Parties:
Ashton-under-Lyne CLP
Brentford and Isleworth CLP
Chingford and Woodford Green CLP
Delyn CLP
Ilford South CLP
Isle of Wight CLP
Islington North CLP
Leeds Central CLP
Leyton and Wanstead CLP
St Helens South CLP

Affiliated Branch Labour Parties:
Bloomsbury and Kings Cross BLP
Brislington East BLP
Henleaze BLP
Hastings and Rye East BLP
Kensal Green BLP
Newport and West Wight BLP
Sutton BLP

Other Affiliated Organizations:
Alliance for Workers' Liberty
Battersea and Wandsworth TUC
Cambridge Morning Star Readers' Group
Camden Trades Council
Education for Tomorrow
Hands Off Venezuela
Labour Against the War
Labour CND
Lambeth TUC
Leftout Socialists
Milton Keynes Trade Union and Labour Party Partnership
Ministry for Peace
Network of Socialist Campaign Groups
New Communist Party
Newrad Communist Collective
PCS Labour Left
Socialist Appeal
Socialist Education Association
TGWU Broad Left
Torbay and District TUC
United Alliance for Labour

Compass (think tank)
Progress (organisation)

You seriously could not make this stuff up.

Of course, while groups like the AWL are affiliated to the Labour Party, they play in to the hands of the fascists BNP that tell the white working class that Labour has deserted them in favour of the middle class and/or asylum seekers/refugees and economic migrants. While groups like the AWL spin the old/new labour myth they fail to point out Labours historic role in protecting British imperialism and it's opportunistic role within the working class - dividing the English working class with the international working class by simultaneously waging war on lower working class people in this country and those abroad. The Labour Party is a thoroughly racist party and it is they, not the BNP that are waging war on asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants. With the lies and myths constantly perpetuated by racist gutter snipe middle class journalism at the behest of the privileged silver tongued Labour politicians they choose to support, a division can be created between working class people in England and the working class internationally - which is precisely what these ruling classes want; they do not want a politically aware and unified working class opposition to their thievery, profiteering and ponderous looting of the very countries from which many asylum seekers are attempting to escape. If this were to happen then by doing so working class people in this country would begin to recognise that the same economic system and the same state that is waging war on the working class internationally is the same one that is attacking them. Working class English people and many working class asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants have the same needs; decent schools for their children, clean hospitals, affordable housing etc. Labour are absolutely complicit in attacking the working class at home and internationally and so are groups like the AWL as long as they spin old/new labour myths.

In August 2008 two members left the AWL. Their resignations were part of a wave of discussion triggered by an article by Sean Matgamna which argued that, "The harsh truth is that there is good reason for Israel to make a precipitate strike at Iranian nuclear capacity" from an Israeli ruling-class point of view..." The AWL National Committee has expressed that is "against" albeit not "opposed" to such an attack. WHAT KIND OF WEASEL WORDED MEALY MOUTHED TOSH IS THAT? "Against" but not "opposed"?

There is good reason for Israel to attack Iran? Israel, the rogue terrorist state with over 200 nuclear war heads pointed at every major Arab city? Matgamna argues that Hamas is waging war in southern Israel? Waging war? Hamas's home made inaccurate rockets are symbols of defiance; they have killed about 8 people in 7 years + a women broke her toe a couple of months ago, (seriously). He ridicules the idea that Israel is apartheid. What is apartheid?

"A state becomes apartheid when it has official policies of racial segregation involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against another race of people."

Is that what Israel does?

"Since the [Zionist] occupation of Palestine from 1948, Israel has employed many apartheid and ethnic cleansing policies in order to to drive out the native Arab population and attempt to create a pure Jewish presence in the whole of Palestine. This racists ideology is being achieved through mass discrimination against Palestinians, intended to make their living conditions so unbeearable that Palestinians are forced to leave their homeland."

Israeli apartheid policies include:

Collective punishment (particularly of the Gaza Ghetto - a NAZI tactic); House demolitions and destruction of property; Removal and relocation of people or "transfer" away from their homes; Mass internment and torture of family members; Closures of entire villages/towns and Check points.

Apartheid policies against Israeli Arabs include:

Not having the right to buy land; no equal access to to social services and assistance despite paying the same taxes as all Jewish Israeli's; Jews only job adverts.

Let's not have anymore blabber about the targetting of M&S being tactically inept. It is a ZIONIST company, " Aiding the economic development of Israel is one of our main objectives" Said lord Sieff, Long time Chairman of M&S. M&S is not just interested in trading with for profit like other companies, it is, and has always been an unequivical supporter of Zionism and by explaining that in response to slander about being anti-semetic - when engaging with people - the message can be communicated clearly - not by running away from the argument because some might accuse you of being anti-semetic or because ant-semites might jump on the bandwagon, (I wouild have thought they'd have their own bandwagon anyway).

Let's not have anymore piffle about forging links with the Israeli working class - a working class than benefit from Israel's war crimes. What do you want the Palestinians to do, sit around and wait for the Israeli working class to get its act together? Don't be so insulting.

The British ruling class, its multinational companies and its Labour government support Israel because Britian is an imperialist country. Britain depends on the exploitation of other countries for its massive wealth. Israel plays a crucial role in maintaining this exploitation, by acting as the attack-dog of Britain and the US in their attempts to dominate the middle east. It is the duty of all of us in Britain to stand alongside the Palestinian people in their heroic opposition to imperialism.

"Secondly maybe simply ripping down and stamping on on their banner is not going far enough. Maybe they need a stronger disincentive, preferably undertaken away from the glare of those on the demo where so they can't go bleating on about their 'rights'. This wouldn't have to necessarily be violent. I remember a story about SWPers having the bundles of newspapers confiscated and set on fire when they were trying to piggyback a demo in London to promote themselves too."

See ya down there then. I'll be the 6'4 one with a beard, built like a monolith and carrying an AF banner.

I look forward to it.

How dare 'Steve' threaten people who have every right to beo n the streets of Sheffield as much as the PSC, I don't share the AWL's politics, but they are also much more fully paid up 'human beings than the swivel eyed fanatics of the rest of the far left, SWP, etc.


Anyway, the size of the recession/slump will soon mean that all the comrades will start having to focus on the mass unemployment, cuts, etc that are undoubtedly coming. This obsession with Isreal/Palestine is also becoming increasingly bizzarre:, if you want to help Palestine , raise money for aid, (as i think the PSC does), not filling the coffers of the SWP/STWC.

Steve - calm down. Or at least have the decently to declare yourself to me face-to-face prior to you attempting a violent act against me or one of my items of belonging.

Dean - are you the same Dean who was very briefly in the Newcastle AWL?

Steve/Dean - Sheffield AWL comrades weren't being opportunistic. We were bravely standing by critically important socialist politics in a very, very hostile milieu.

The recent, brutal bombing campaign by Israel on Gaza represented a mini colonial war, and is part of prolonged siege. Gaza is an “open air prison”. The bombing was inhumanely disproportionate. It forms part of long term attack on the Occupied Territories (for example, it’s carving up into bantustans so as to deny Palestinians any kind of effective, meaningful nation-state). Israel is a sub-imperialist power (btw so is Iran). Kadmina/Labor (in run up to elections likely to be won by Likud) were demonstrating their toughness, and sought revenge for the 2006 defeat.

Also, “war is a continuation of politics by other means”. And solidarity with the Palestinian people must not mean solidarity with Hamas. Hamas is not in favour of a democratic two-state settlement, it is against the existence of Israel. It is an enemy to the democratic rights of workers, women, LGBT people, religious and national minorities, secular and ex-Muslims. When Palestinian workers have striked, Hamas has suppressed them. When Palestinian women have refused to wear the hijab, Hamas has suppressed them. That Hamas was democratically elected is no more reason for us to support Hamas, than the corrupt, ineffective Fatah, or any reactionary ruling government for that matter. Both the Israeli ruling class and military wing and Hamas must be condemned politically.

The only democratic resolution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict long-term is a two-state settlement – an independent Palestinian state in areas where the Palestinians are the majority, Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem. This means immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlements and the dismantlement of the checkpoints. A future Palestinian state must be fully independent, not a series of bantustans, with international reparations from Israel and aid from EU, US etc. A two-state settlement contravenes PSC's and large sections of the organised left's, e.g. the SWP's, call for one democratic secular state of Palestine. One cannot go back in history and undo parts of it one doesn't like. In 1948 an Israeli nation-state was formed. Palestinians were concurrently denied a nation-state of their own. Then and now in 2009, Israel is a fait accompli. Justice for the Palestinians, something I would desperately like to see, cannot mean the dissolution of Israel.

Comradely, Camila

"In 1948 an Israeli nation-state was formed. Palestinians were concurrently denied a nation-state of their own". End of quote from Camila which sammarises her and the AWL politics; not a word about the devastation that the Palestinians suffered as a result of the establishment of the Zionist state; not a mention of 100's of Palestinian villages and towns which were wiped off the map in the process; nothing about the Palestinian refugees who are still cramed in refugee camps and denied the right of return; just "an Israeli nation-state was formed. Palestinians were concurrently denied a nation-state of their own".

I am a Sheffield PSC member and I second what the forst Steve said "You are not welcome in our events unless you side with the victims not equate them with the occupier". If you really support the Palestinian then I appeal to you to stop damaging the fantastic efforts that Sheffield PSC have been doing over long years to support the Palestinians and their struggle for freedom and justice.

Let's not get diverted over the symbolic act of trearing up
a stupid, reactionary and in the context a provocativ slogan, The letter below
signed by over 300 people explains why the resistance of Hama should not be equated
with the actions of the IDF.

The Guardian, Friday 16 January 2009



The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been
waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of
this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to
eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting
Israel's ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel's war
against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of
gigantic political prisons. There is nothing symmetrical about this war
in terms of principles, tactics or consequences. Israel is responsible for
launching and intensifying it, and for ending the most recent lull in
Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more
humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue
and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we
believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right
to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are
obliged to take sides... against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West
Bank.

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

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

Yes Camila, it is the same Dean that was briefly a member of the Newcastle AWL branch in '99; I no longer live in Newcastle, I live in Dewsbury.

I agree with much of what you say in your previous post addressed to Steve and me.

However, I disagree with you on the two nation: two states. I would like to see a secular, socialist one state Palestine in which Jews could live. If the Palestinian diaspora were granted the right to return then democratic demographics could lead to that; the thought might be utopian or even reactionary etc to some people but that is how I feel. In just the same way that the UN un-did history by wiping Palestine off the map (and let's remember in all this talk of wiping one place or another off the map as Zionists and their apologist's do - that only one has been wiped off the map and that is Palestine) then history can be undone again, if it is done so democratically. Surely the right to return of the Palestinian diaspora is something you would want?

Also, as I point out at some length in my previous post, how can the AWL with its ties to the Labour left, when one considers Labour's blood thirsty history, wag their fingers at those that support the Palestinian choice of elected government? I am curious about the hypocrisy - or have I got the AWL completely wrong?

The national liberation question and who we choose to support is a very import question. It was a question I tried to raise in an organisation (at branch level) I was a member of a couple of years ago and it was squashed. This is a very interesting debate.

Just to be clear, I would not have tried to censor you or anyone carrying that placard; I would have seen it as an opportunity to engage in full and open democratic debate/discussion etc. I myself in recent years have had to operate under extremely hostile and intimidating circumstances when attacking the opportunist Labour Party, middle class liberals and so on and have felt that those in opposition have come just short of physical violence at trying to shut me and others up.

PS
Chris, have a meet with Camila for a 'face-off'; if memory serves me correctly, Camila can be quite tasty in a ruck.

"You are not welcome in our events unless you side with the victims not equate them with the occupier"

Unfortunately you don't have a monopoly over who can and cannot attend the demonstrations in support of the Palestinians. You can give it a good go but you'll fail.

Secondly, if you're going to ignore all the comments and refutations and keep banging on about us equating Hamas with the Israeli state then really there's nothing more that can be said. You clearly are not going to listen and instead you'd just rather to attribute opinions to us for convenience.

The facts however, are that we recognise Hamas and the Israeli state are different yet at the same time are an enemy to the Palestinian working class and as internationalists we support nothing other than the working class over both the Israeli state and Hamas who both seek to subjugate them.

"If you really support the Palestinian then I appeal to you to stop damaging the fantastic efforts that Sheffield PSC have been doing over long years to support the Palestinians and their struggle for freedom and justice."

We DO support the Palestians struggle for "freedom and justice", that is precisely why we oppose Hamas as well as the Israeli state. What kind of freedom and justice will Hamas offer the Palestinians? One of repression, oppression and suppression. They consistently attack workers democracy and enforce social reactionary policies against women and homosexuals and at the same time suppress dissent.

The Palestine of Hamas will not be free or just and that is a fact. That is why we must support expressions of working class struggle and organisation that both seek to fight the Israeli state and Hamas. Supporting a reactionary, anti-working class organisation or indeed state (with Israel) is pointedly absurd.

I've watched this entire debate unfold on here firstly with shocking disbelief at how much some can mischaracterise and twist not only mine and the AWL's politics (not only on the issue at hand but on other things - Dean I think your reading on our position on the Labour Party needs less tweaking more major correction), and secondly with anger at the way in which many here have stooped to methods lifted wholesale from stalinism to qualify removing and tearing up a political placard on a demo, threats of further violence and action against us (Steve - what you say actually disgusts me that anyone on the left could think in such a way, I would seriously think of the implications of what you are saying).

I have no wish to answer most of the ridiculous mixture of lies, mischaracterisation, stalinist threats and sheer ignorance that most of this thread is so I've linked to and copied here a comment I wrote on a similar discussion on our website below which I think answers the actual political issues here.

I would however like to clarify a few things: I OPPOSE ISRAEL FOR ITS ASSAULT ON GAZA! enough for you? Or do I have to go into how I've sat every day dreading the next death toll or getting the next email from comrades in contact with gaza throughout it. I was on the sheffield demonstrations (since the 3rd of january) called by the PSC to show solidarity with the palestinians having to live this day in day out, not just in the current seige but through the blockade beforehand. @ Nick, I'm sorry you have been led or have yourself mischaracterised our politics as equating the 'sides' here, I felt it was clear from our banner and literature that we do not, I have no intention whatsoever of saboutaging the work the PSC has done - in fact I think you'll find that the people saboutaging anything here are those willing to sink deep into stalinist positions and tear up anything which breaks the hegemony of one set of politics at a demo.

Comradely,
Gemma
Sheffield AWL

 http://www.workersliberty.org/placard#comment
I think Stuart is keen to deliberately mislead, as have been others on the indymedia discussion and on the demo; therefore a few points to clarify.

We were there to show solidarity with the palestinians: the idea that myself and my comrades turned up to the latest demo in sheffield with some high thought out plan of sectarian havoc wreking with our 'provocative' placard is ridiculous. Yes we turn up with different slogans - because our politics are different! And if we find people who agree (the email addresses) that is no bad thing - see I dont know if you missed something along the way but a lot of what socialists do on a day to day basis is make propaganda for our ideas, if comrades from the SWP, PR or fellow travellers wish to soft peddle their own politics and hegemonise a demo they are going down a very slippery slope. As I said we were there to show our solidarity with the palestinians on a demo called for people to show their support, and trust me I have sat listening to the news from gaza everyday, dreading the next death toll figure. This notion that because I am not palestinian and have not had relatives die in the siege that I am not 'qualified' to speak out politically that simmers under some of your posts Stuart and has been rife on the indymedia article is total bullshit. That same argument could be rolled out to say 'you cannot criticise Israel, you dont know anyone who was killed by a rocket', or in any number of international situations on which socialists have a polical view. I of course sympathise with Mushier and with the many who have lost relatives, but to translate that into mutely standing their not taking a political stand on the issue because palestinians have died and I'm not one of their relatives is ridiculous!

Others have covered it but to say it again, as I did when I was holding the placard, and as I explained to Mushier on the 10th jan demo and he understood - *we do not equate the IDF and Hamas*, how else can I say it? Israel has the vast military power and has killed thousands in this offensive alone, let alone talking about the blockade leading up to this.

Hamas were democratically elected? they are the only resistance?: Well the BNP end up being 'democratically' elected and I hope you still oppose them! The main point here is that we are socialists, not only do we have an alternative view on what is really democratic for the working class, but we oppose even bourgois democratic forces which attack the working class - and I'm sure I dont need to explain to anyone the politics of Hamas on women, trade unionists, LGBT rights, secularism ... although it seems you might need reminding on their policy on working class israelis - including those currently in military prison for opposing the occupation - ie: they should be 'driven out'! Equating 'palestinian resistance' with Hamas negates any autonomous, secular or even shock horror - working class - resistance in palestine something these demos have been doing.

So a few truths about the situation on the sheffield demonstration then:
AWL comrades have been on ALL of the demonstrations called so far, as well as AWL students in sheffield going along to the emergency meeting on the situation called by the students union. 1 comrade was at the 29th december demo, 2 comrades at the 3rd Jan demo (I was there so don't tell me I wasn't) and then more to the last two. Absence of placards on the first two? We simply hadn't made any yet.

PR, SWP and fellow travellers supported the ripping up of the placard?: PR and Stuart were quite clear to my face that they felt I should be chucked off the demo, I shouldn't have the placard and sickeninly clapped when it was torn from my hands. SWP members clapped and joined in the chants of 'get them off get them off'. That to me seems like uncritical support of the action.

The sheffield PSC also 'banned' anti-semitic slogans from the demo?: you think so? really? So what the placards refering the new holocaust were invisible to everyone else but me where they? The end of the 3rd of Jan demo where the entire thing was taken over by islamist chats of 'down down israel, destroy israel' ect ect was only seen by me? I don't think so.

Saboutage of a placard is in no way a justified reaction to political views, its a reaction lifted wholesale from stalinism and shows just how degenerate the british left has become.

The Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) feels hard done by because of its reception on the Gaza solidarity demonstrations. It is no surprise they have been received with hostility writes Stuart King

The AWL is making a big political issue out of the fact that a placard on a Sheffield demonstration bearing the slogan “No to the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), No to Hamas” was torn up by a PSC supporter. There was also an incident in London where demonstrators objected to the AWL turning up with an Israeli flag alongside a Palestinian one. The Israeli flag, not surprisingly, was quickly trashed. The AWL has implied that Permanent Revolution, the SWP and other far left groups were somehow responsible for these events – actions in fact carried out by outraged Palestinians.

If you set out to be provocative you shouldn’t complain when people are provoked. Indeed one of the complainants on the AWL website, Daniel Randall gleefully declares at the end of his full picture horror story of the Sheffield incident “We got a few email addresses out of it.” This tells us everything we need to know about the purpose of these “interventions” and the hollowness of the AWL’s appeals against the trampling of their democratic rights.

Lets put the AWL’s complaints in context. Sean Matgamna has declared on their website and in their paper that the massive January 10 demonstration against the Israeli attacks on Gaza was politically a “clerical-fascist demonstration” (Solidarity 15 Jan). According to Matgamna it was dominated by “Islamic chauvinists” who support Hamas, support Arab and Islamic war on Israel and want to “conquer and destroy Israel”. These positions have, according to Matgamna, also been “echoed and insisted upon” by the rest of the left – except the plucky little AWL of course.

Now why would the AWL attend such a fascist and chauvinist demonstrations? Clearly the main aim was to draw attention to itself, to cause “an incident”. It is sectarian antics reminiscent of the International Spartacist League before they went defunct.

AWL member, Robin Sivapalan, turns up on a demonstration with an Israeli flag and wonders why it is torn from his hands – it is “unity attacked” he says in the AWL Solidarity paper. This is in the middle of the indescribable slaughter and barbarity being carried out by the Israeli state whose flag he wants to wave around. The fact that he had a Palestinian flag as well is no excuse – the Israeli flag is the flag of a bourgeois state, a warmongering and expansionist one at that, the Palestinian flag, in contrast, is an aspiration, flown by a people dispossessed of their land by the Zionist state of Israel – there is a difference between the flags that most socialists understand.

Internationalists fly the red flag, the flag of socialism and revolution. It is symptomatic of the degeneration of the AWL that it now chooses to fly, and also adorns its website, with the flag of the Zionist bourgeois state of Israel.

On the Sheffield demonstration the AWL turned up with a placard “No to the IDF, No to Hamas”. What would any normal political person take this to mean in the middle of a one sided war where Israel is pounding Gaza and killing women and children in the hundreds? That the AWL is refusing to support the only major defence force and resistance that the Gazan population has – the Hamas militia. It is equating the Israeli army, armed with its US supplied F14s, tanks and phosphorous shells, with the resistance fighters. We make no bones about it – this is a scab position.

The AWL did not support the resistance fighters in Gaza (which extends to all Palestinian factions in Gaza not just Hamas) because of their support for the Zionist state of Israel. Of course the AWL says it is against the Israeli war on Gaza but it is also against the Palestinian resistance. Apparently it intends to wait for a “pure working class” resistance before it takes sides – in the meantime it waves the Israeli flag. We are not in favour of political censorship on demonstrations, but I for one would certainly not fight to defend the AWL’s staged provocative placards and flags against outraged Palestinians.

Permanent Revolution is clear on its political criticism of Hamas and we have given out hundreds of leaflets on the recent demonstrations that contain those criticisms without being screamed at or attacked. But then we support the right of Palestinians to resist, for Hamas, the PFLP and all other factions to fight the Israeli onslaught and defeat it if possible. The AWL refuses to support the oppressed Palestinian people and as a result it is rightly “branded with infamy”.

The AWL have embedded the photos above on their site with no credits and no link to the source of the photos, this is rather rude.

So I posted a polite comment pointing out that they had overlooked linking to the source of the photos. My comment was deleted. So I posted a second comment along the same lines. It was deleted. I then posted a third comment, see screen shot. It was deleted. And I have now posted a fourth comment, see screen shot, how long will this one last?

It seems somewhat ironic that their web site claims that "We welcome debate and encourage free discussion.... you can add comments to the debates on this site. We operate no political censorship...".

If you think it's OK to use all the photos I took of this event why is it not OK to have a link to the text I wrote or the comments that many people have posted here about this incident?

If people want to see if the comment is still there this is the article in question:

AWL people attacked on Sheffield anti-Gaza war demo (with photos)
Submitted on 18 January, 2009 - 16:43
Author: Daniel Randall
 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/18/awl-people-aaarttacked-sheffield-anti-gaza-war-demo

Thanks for your post Chris - well, I followed your link and your comment appears to be there on the AWL website stating the photos' source... Your photos are on all sorts of other sites too, are you following this up as well?

Finally, why does a Permanent Revolution article get a high profile position now on your overall posting? Can an AWL article on the incident get an equally high prominence? Or are your musings about censorship etc somewhat disingenuous...?

Comradely, Camila

....the only people that possess an obsession with Palestine are Israel and their supporters.

Don't you see, don't you get it? What a repugnant post by you; and your response to the conflict - sit at home and/or donate money.

Of course i agree when you infer that capitalism is in crisis but that does not mean we turn our backs on the people of Palestine while we get our own affairs sorted - what kind of socialism is that? National Socialism?

This is a time to be making links between Palestine, capitalism, imperialism, zionism, & racism - the same system/ideologies that are attacking Palestine and the same one's that are attacking all oppressed people everywhere - does this really need to spelt out?

The addition at the top of the page by PR was excellent.

Camila said: "your comment appears to be there on the AWL website stating the photos' source" -- yes, the *4th* version of it is there, the first 3 were deleted, why is this?

I don't have a screen shot of the first comment that was deleted from the AWL site but here is the 2nd one you removed.

You state: "I don't have a screen shot of the first comment that was deleted from the AWL site but here is the 2nd one you removed."

Eh! Me? I have no editorial access to the AWL website Chris, but what I do know is that you are fully credited at the top of the following webpage as taking the relevant photos. No-one in the AWL is censoring you. I regret that your imagination leads you to think otherwise.

 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/18/awl-people-aaarttacked-sheffield-anti-gaza-war-demo

Comradely, Camila

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7843633.stm
End quote: "Yusef, a farmer from Jabaliya, was burning old kitchen cupboards to keep himself warm, as nightfall brought the winter's cold. Israeli bombs destroyed his house, he said, but they were not the only ones to blame. "I blame Israel and Hamas both," he said. "I just want to live.""

Thoughts? (Or do some feel this news source is not at all trustworthy? I seem to remember the barmy Stalinists in Newcastle saying to me that the BBC were making up the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Kovoso.)

Comradely, Camila

the following is a quote from the AWL website
"Members of Permanent Revolution gather around my younger comrades shouting that they are disgusting equivalents to scabs in the Miners’ Strike"
What a stupid thing to say as a former member of the NUM who knows quite a bit about internal NUM politics and NUM corruption during that turbulent year its idiotic to hear that sort or slogan banded around by people who were maybe not even born in 1984/85.History teaches some people nothing.

“An open letter to Sheffield’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Left and socialists committed to Palestinian solidarity” by Sheffield AWL Branch

The AWL is a socialist organisation which is completely opposed to the ongoing siege on Gaza. The recent, brutal bombing campaign by Israel on Gaza represented a mini colonial war, and is part of this prolonged siege. Gaza is an “open air prison”. It forms part of long term attacks on the Occupied Territories (for example, it’s carving up into bantustans so as to deny Palestinians any kind of effective, meaningful nation-state). Kadima and Labor (in the run up to elections against their main rival Likud) were demonstrating their toughness, and sought revenge for the 2006 defeat. This was done in a grossly disproportionate, inhumane war. We are for solidarity with the Palestinian people, and for full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. We support a viable and consistent democratic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which in our view means an independent Palestinian State alongside Israel (and with the same rights as Israel). This political position is highly unpopular with some on the British left. Groups such as the SWP advocate a different political perspective and are opposed to the continued existence of Israel. Within the wider Palestinian solidarity movement and within the labour movement there are many varied political perspectives on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We support the view that debate and discussion of these differences is a necessary part of our solidarity work. We also consider it important to highlight the struggles that do take place of working class organisations in both Israel and within the Occupied Territories. We support those in Israel who oppose the actions of the Israeli state, for example, the Refuseniks and the anti-war movement.

We believe our main job at present is to make solidarity with the Palestinians against the Israeli siege. We also believe that solidarity with the Palestinians should not mean solidarity with their Hamas leaders. Hamas rejects a democratic solution on the lines set out above. Their goal, instead, is to destroy Israel and deny the Israelis national rights. Hamas is an Arab chauvinist, Islamist chauvinist, anti-Semitic movement. Hamas are part of an extreme rightwing movement that has played a highly reactionary role throughout the Muslim world, threatening the democratic rights of workers' movements, women, gay people, secular and ex-Muslims, national and religious minorities and others. We believe that to support them, or fail to criticise them, is a betrayal of the Palestinian workers whose strikes they have suppressed; the Palestinian women they have attacked for refusing to put on the hijab, and so on. That is why we included our opposition to Hamas on the placard that was ripped up at the demonstration outside the Sheffield Town Hall on Saturday 17th January 2009. There was no intention to imply any sense of proportionality in the Israeli government's brutal bombardment of Gaza. It was simply to make clear that we continue to criticise Hamas.

There must be no political censorship of the Left by the Left on demonstrations.

We realise that many people will not share our political perspective. There are also many who do have sympathy both with our 'two states' position and our opposition to Hamas. We brought placards and a banner which demonstrate our solidarity with the Palestinians and our opposition to Hamas. We did not in any way disrupt, or attempt to disrupt, the demonstration which we were there to participate in. We do however feel obliged as socialists to be true to our political perspective and raise criticisms even if they are unpopular. We accept that not everyone will agree with everything we say just as we do not agree with the politics of all the other placards present. We are not opportunists that simply and crudely desire to stand apart from the crowd - we are committed to our politics, and will (if necessary) bravely enter a politically hostile milieu uncompromised in our politics.

Members of the AWL have been involved in demonstrations and actions for years and never have we experienced what took place on Saturday 17th January 2009 in Sheffield. A placard which read "No to the IDF. No to Hamas" was forcibly removed from a young woman's hands and torn up and stamped on in front of the crowd, a majority of whom cheered and clapped (including members of the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the SWP and Permanent Revolution, who are all very hostile to any 'two states' position). This is a disturbing level of intolerance and censorship. Some argued disingenuously that we were equating the two, but it was very clear to anyone who chose to speak to us or read our literature that, we oppose the two for critically important political reasons but in no way consider the two equal. We hope that activists in Sheffield will take a serious look at this incident. This is no way to deal with political disagreements amongst us. This kind of censorship and the intolerance it breeds is unacceptable. We are not asking you to agree with our political perspective but we are asking you to support our right to raise criticism of Hamas on demonstrations. This is a basic democratic principle and we would uphold it for others. Already one anonymous posting on Indymedia has said we were "lucky not to be beaten up" and another, they would join in "chasing us off". Someone claiming to be a member of Sheffield's Palestine Solidarity Campaign called "Steve" has written: "maybe simply ripping down and stamping on their banner is not going far enough. Maybe they need a stronger disincentive, preferably undertaken away from the glare of those on the demo where so they can't go bleating on about their 'rights'. This wouldn't have to necessarily be violent." This needs to stop now.

We are for solidarity with the Palestinians and will continue to participate in actions and demonstrations in Sheffield and elsewhere.

Some Permanent Revolution person on the internet claimed that AWL members went on a London demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians carrying Israeli national flags?

Is this true? If it is, why would they do that?

"On 8 January, at the nightly picket of the Israeli embassy, AWL comrade Robin Sivapalan was removed by police from the demonstration after waving two small flags, one Palestinian, the other Israeli."

 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/09/workers-liberty-activist-thrown-israeli-embassy-demo-islamists-and-police

Hi Joe,

Sounds like someone's been distorting facts again. Oh well.

An AWL comrade who has been very active in the protests outside the embassy took two small flags (one palestinian, one israeli) as a physical representation of the Gush Shalom (Israeli peace group who organised the demo of 100,000 in Tel Aviv on 27th December) symbol which shows both flags together as a symbol of peace. Brief report from website reads;

"On 8 January, at the nightly picket of the Israeli embassy, AWL comrade Robin Sivapalan was removed by police from the demonstration after waving two small flags, one Palestinian, the other Israeli.

The flag-waving attracted the attention of Islamists who attempted to wrest the flags away. Other protesters intervened one both sides, one person trying to rescue Robin into the crowd, until the Islamist men brought in the police. The police complied with the Islamists' requests, and physically removed Robin from the protest."

You can find Robin's account of his time on the demonstrations and how he saw waving the waving of a Palestinian and Israeli flag as a symbol of potential unity here:  http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/14/17-days-solidarity-palestinians-london

If anyone wants to know more about Gush Shalom  http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html

Camila, if you want a debate you can have one.
Workers Liberty is not a socialist organisation and can always be found supporting the latest depredations by the American Empire and its allies.
Sean Magamna, its guru, similarly has been involved in
some very dodgey enterprises.
It can only be described as a cheer leader for the policies of American power-elite policy makers.
I don't know of any operation by them where the left has tried to organise protests against it where this has not been so. Essentially the AWL tactics are to disrupt and divide the protests.

The question is whether they should be allowed to attend protests of this type at all.

It is clear that Bush and co. gave the nod for the assault on Gaza and this is entirely consistent with the policies of the American power-elite to dominate the region and ensure there is no opposition to their dominance. Also these policies will carry over to the Obama administration.

Following on from your reply to the open letter (btw, did you actually read it? which bit was pro-imperialist?) let's sort a time/date/venue as I would be more than willing to debate you. I'll call you on your work number next week.
Comradely, Camila

The AWL say in their "open letter":

"We support a viable and consistent democratic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which in our view means an independent Palestinian State alongside Israel (and with the same rights as Israel)...

Hamas rejects a democratic solution on the lines set out above. Their goal, instead, is to destroy Israel and deny the Israelis national rights." [1]

And Camila has said on the AWL web site:

"Hamas is still formally for the dissolution of Israel, i.e. in its constitution and via its ideological teaching to cadre members. However, Hamas leaders have indeed hinted to a possible two-state settlement, but the wording of the actual, longer quotes of what has been said implies 'temporary' recognition of Israel. Hamas may at some point in the future change their position unambiguously." [2]

Elsewhere on the AWL web site they make reference [3] to an article, "America's Hidden Role in Hamas's Rise to Power" by Stephen Zunes which contains:

"were it not for misguided Israeli and American policies, Hamas would not be in control of the territory in the first place...

Israel initially encouraged the rise of the Palestinian Islamist movement as a counter to the Palestine Liberation Organization...

While supporters of the secular PLO were denied their own media or right to hold political gatherings, the Israeli occupation authorities allowed radical Islamic groups to hold rallies, publish uncensored newspapers and even have their own radio station...

In 1988, Israel forcibly exiled Palestinian activist Mubarak Awad, a Christian pacifist who advocated the use of Gandhian-style resistance to the Israeli occupation and Israeli-Palestinian peace, while allowing Yassin [the founder Hamas] of to circulate anti-Jewish hate literature and publicly call for the destruction of Israel by force of arms...

De Soto's report to the U.N. Secretary-General... noted that "Israeli policies seemed perversely designed to encourage the continued action by Palestinian militants."...

Some Israeli commentators saw this strategy as deliberate. Avnery noted, "Our government has worked for year to destroy Fatah, in order to avoid the need to negotiate an agreement that would inevitably lead to the withdrawal form the occupied territories and the settlements there." Similarly, M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Center observed, "the fact is that Israeli (and American) right-wingers are rooting for the Palestinian extremists" since "supplanting ... Fatah with Islamic fundamentalists would prevent a situation under which Israel would be forced to negotiate with moderates.”" [4]

Further insight into the long-term aims of Israel can be gained from the "Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" by Oded Yinon:

"Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us...

The autonomy plan ought also to be rejected, as well as any compromise or division of the territories for, given the plans of the PLO and those of the Israeli Arabs themselves, the Shefa'amr plan of September 1980, it is not possible to go on living in this country in the present situation without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security.

Within Israel the distinction between the areas of '67 and the territories beyond them, those of '48, has always been meaningless for Arabs and nowadays no longer has any significance for us. The problem should be seen in its entirety without any divisions as of '67. It should be clear, under any future political situation or mifitary constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan river and beyond it, as our existential need in this difficult epoch, the nuclear epoch which we shall soon enter. It is no longer possible to live with three fourths of the Jewish population on the dense shoreline which is so dangerous in a nuclear epoch.

Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today. Taking hold of the mountain watershed from Beersheba to the Upper Galilee is the national aim generated by the major strategic consideration which is settling the mountainous part of the country that is empty of Jews today..." [5]

And Israel Shahak's analysis of the strategy contains:

"It is assumed that the Israeli military forces, in all their branches, are insufficient for the actual work of occupation of such wide territories as discussed above. In fact, even in times of intense Palestinian "unrest" on the West Bank, the forces of the Israeli Army are stretched out too much. The answer to that is the method of ruling by means of "Haddad forces" or of "Village Associations" (also known as "Village Leagues"): local forces under "leaders" completely dissociated from the population, not having even any feudal or party structure (such as the Phalangists have, for example). The "states" proposed by Yinon are "Haddadland" and "Village Associations," and their armed forces will be, no doubt, quite similar. In addition, Israeli military superiority in such a situation will be much greater than it is even now, so that any movement of revolt will be "punished" either by mass humiliation as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or by bombardment and obliteration of cities, as in Lebanon now (June 1982), or by both. In order to ensure this, the plan, as explained orally, calls for the establishment of Israeli garrisons in focal places between the mini states, equipped with the necessary mobile destructive forces...

the whole plan... depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than they are now, and on the lack of any truly progressive mass movement among them." [5]

Israel and the US sponsored Hamas, with the policy "for the dissolution of Israel", to ensure that there was no chance of a "two state" agreement with the PLO/Fatah, it seem clear that the AWL formulation:

"Hamas rejects a democratic solution on the lines set out above. Their goal, instead, is to destroy Israel and deny the Israelis national rights."

Could be written as:

"Israel rejects a democratic solution on the lines set out above. Their goal, instead, is to destroy Palestine and deny the Palestinians national rights."

...

[1]  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2009/01/418996.html?c=on#c213863

[2]  http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/18/awl-people-aaarttacked-sheffield-anti-gaza-war-demo#comment-17815

[3]  http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/01/04/americas-hidden-role-hamass-rise-power

[4]  http://www.alternet.org/audits/116855/?page=entire

[5]  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/361532.html

Look at the email address, Richard R is not Dick P.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2009/01/418996.html?c=on#c213973

The Workers’ Liberty group is notorious on the Britsh left for its support for Zionism. It seeks to marry the right of the Palestinians to their own state with the right of Israel to exist within “secure borders”.

Like most of the Zionist left in Israel they start not from the Palestinians’ need for peace with justice but from Israel’s need to have peace with security. Their latest pamphlet thus argues for a “two states” solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. [1]

It says this is the “only solution that takes account of the rights of both sides in the conflict, and therefore it is the only rational, just and progressive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

The authors support “an independent Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel”, and emphatically defend the right of Israel to exist in areas where the Israeli Jews are a majority.

There is an immediate problem with this argument. The Israelis created a majority Jewish population in Palestine by forcibly expelling Palestinian Arabs in 1947-49 and denying them and their families the right to return to the territory of their origin.

At the same time, under the Law of Return, Jewish people of any nationality are entitled to Israeli citizenship upon arrival in Israel, even if they have never been there before.

This racist citizenship law is fundamental to the maintenance of a Jewish majority population in Palestine. If the Palestinians were allowed to return, then under any democratic system they would understandably and justifiably vote against being consigned to the status of second-class citizens and therefore against the state defining itself as specifically Jewish.

This historical reality has to be the starting point for any socialist response to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians is not simply the product of a bad policy pursued by reactionary right-wing governments. It arose directly as a result of the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The only way Israel could create a Jewish majority population on its territory was to drive out millions of Palestinian people, prevent them from returning, strip them of land ownership, and wage a series of bloody wars against any Palestinians that resisted.

It is the continuation of this policy that leads to the forcible settlement of Palestinian land on the west Bank today, complete with bulldozings of Palestinian homes, discrimination in access to water supplies and a regime of permanent military repression.

This is not some bloody aberration but the logical and necessary extension of the principles that underlay the foundation of the Israeli state.

The only just solution must encompass equal citizenship rights for Jews and Arabs and the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their land of origin. This means a state in which Jews and Arabs are equal, not a state that defines itself specifically as “Jewish” or “Arab”.

The continued existence of an Israeli-Jewish state, even alongside a Palestinian state, would depend on the maintenance of racist citizenship laws and the exclusion of millions of Palestinians from the territory. Far from providing the basis for a lasting peace, this could only condemn the region to further cycles of repression and war.

As if to prove the point, the workers’ Liberty pamphlet quickly finds that support for a Jewish state in Palestine requires it to defend Israel’s racist citizenship policy. The author of most of the articles in the pamphlet, Sean Matgamna, accepts that the return of the Palestinians would challenge the foundations of Israel’s Jewish identity - so he rejects the right of return. In the pamphlet’s introduction, written on 19 October this year, he describes the demand for the Palestinians’ right to return to Israel as “collective resettlement in the territory now occupied by the Israeli Jews, most of whom were born there”.

In a subsequent article, “The Origins of the Conflict” he explicitly rejects the Palestinians’ right to return: “The ‘right to return’ in its straightforward sense is the demand that the events of the 20th century in Palestine be undone, that the film of history be rolled backwards. It is inconceivable that the Israelis will voluntarily agree to this. The demand that it should is at best the demand that the Jewish state should cease to conceive of itself as a Jewish state – not just get out of the west Bank and Gaza, and cease discriminatory or chauvinist practices, but cease to be the state of the distinct Israeli-Jewish nation. It is no more realistic than the call that the British, French, German or Irish states should cease to be British, French, German or Irish, a call quite distinct from the justified one that they should let in far more refugees and migrants. The ‘right of return’ therefore, in practice, comes down to the ‘demand’ for the conquest and destruction of Israel.”

This is an extraordinary passage to have been written by anyone claiming to be a democrat, let alone a socialist.

In the first place, Matgamna admits here that the democratic right of the Palestinians to return to the territory they lived in fifty years ago stands in contradiction to the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine. How then can he expect a lasting peace on this basis? How can there be a “rational, just and progressive” solution or a lasting peace if millions of Palestinians are excluded? This argument merely proves that the whole idea of a two-state “solution” is utopian and reactionary.

Also clear from this passage is that workers’ Liberty actually prefer the rights of one group over the other - the “right” of the Israeli-Jewish people to preserve a majority secured through war, land seizures and racist laws takes precedence over the right of over three million refugees living in squalor in Lebanon, Jordan west Bank and Gaza to return.

The reason given for this is that every nation, like France, Germany, Ireland etc, has the right to national self-determination and that this must encompass the right to a state of its own. The pamphlet says that to refuse this right to the Israeli Jews is to single them out as having lesser rights than other nations. It says, “the hidden assumption is that the Israeli Jewish nation is an illegitimate nation, and therefore does not have the same rights as other nations.”

This is a dangerous and dishonest argument. Of course there are no “illegitimate nations” - the very idea could only be raised by a national chauvinist or racist. But there is a difference between a nation and a nation-state, and the state of Israel was created in very specific circumstances - the driving out of millions of Palestinians and the conquest of their land. Revolutionary socialists are not proposing to invert that crime and drive out the Israeli Jews, just to allow the Palestinians to return.

Instead of starting from this legitimate democratic national right of the Palestinian people, workers’ Liberty starts from the idea that the right to a nation-state is an abstract good, one to supported in all situations. By contrast, revolutionary socialists support the right of self-determination only where it is not exercised at the expense of the rights of another nation.

The “right” of white South Africans to a state did not take precedence over the right of the majority black population to vote. why should the right of the Israeli Jews to a state take precedence over the rights of millions of Palestinians?

Even the example about Britain, France, Germany or Ireland used by Matgamna backfires. France is not Israel. But if “France” had been created 50 years ago by the dispossession and driving out of millions of its original inhabitants who were of a different nationality, if those original inhabitants still lived just beyond its borders in refugee camps, if those people were in permanent rebellion and insurrection demanding their rights, then socialists in “France” and elsewhere would certainly advocate their right to return.

And if some of the “French” settler majority complained that this would violate their “right” to a nation-state, revolutionaries would expose this argument as a justification for racism and colonial conquest, not as some expression of “French” democracy.

Just how far workers Liberty is prepared to pursue this argument is revealed in a breath-taking passage in an article entitled, without apparent irony, “Unravelling the Issues”. Here the demand for the right to return of the Palestinians is presented to the pamphlets mainly British readers in the following terms:

“...the real equivalent would be if many tens of millions of people, almost as many as the population of Britain, just across the Channel, were claiming a collective right to ‘repossess’ Britain.” This example is obviously supposed to frighten us out of sup- porting the Palestinians’ rights by placing the reader in the posi- tion of Israelis who view the Palestinians with hatred and fear? It tries to appeal to the reader’s sense of national insecurity - a despicable thing for any socialist writer to do. Above all, it shows how shallow the writer’s sense of internationalism really is. For what if it were a valid comparison?

If Britain had forcibly expelled and dispossessed “tens of millions” fifty years ago, and they were living in refugee camps just across the channel, then revolutionary socialists emphatically would support their right to return, and if that meant this island could no longer describe itself as a “British” state, we wouldn’t care.

Genuine internationalism means supporting an end to all oppression on the grounds of nationality, not declaring that recent national and colonial conquests should be treated as final accomplished historical facts just so the victors can maintain their supremacist nation-states.

Workers Liberty’s “killer argument” in support of the two states solution is that the largest Palestinian organisation, the PLO, also supports it. This is true - but it is a result of the PLO leadership’s fatal policy of compromise with Israel and their abandonment of the historic rights of their own people.

The PLO under Yasser Arafat has persistently accommodated to Israel, handing over the names and addresses of Palestinian radicals to the Israelis even during their campaign of assignations, allowing the Israelis to wriggle out of every one of their obligations under successive peace treaties, demanding an end to Palestinian resistance in favour of continued talks that yield nothing and utilising their position within the Palestine National Authority to demobilise mass resistance while the leaders enrich themselves and persecute their opponents.

A Palestinian state existing alongside Israel would be like the PNA today - a powerless Bantustan, leaving all the real control and might in the hands of Israel. That is why the task of revolutionary socialists is not to devise ever more “Marxist” excuses for Israeli domination of the region, but to fight for a genuine, lasting solution.

This is not, despite workers Liberty’s insinuations, a policy of “driving the Jews into the sea”, but a socialist republic with no single religious or national allegiance, one in which Arabs and Jews live together as equal citizens. The only force that can bring it into being is the working class, peasantry and urban poor of the Middle east.

The longer the Palestinian left equivocates on this issue, the more likely it will be that the PLO’s failings will drive the heroic youth of the Intifada into the arms of the Islamists like Hamas, who do indeed propose the reactionary solution of driving out the Jews.

As Karl Marx said, a nation which oppresses another can never itself be free. For as long as there is a racist and discriminatory Jewish state in the Middle east, the consequences will be disastrous for the Palestinians and the Jews alike.


[1] Two Nations, Two States – Socialists and Israel/Palestine, a workers’ Liberty pamphlet, October 2001.


April 2002