The Red Shall Rise From Below

The scorched earth of Tamil Eelam

2009-05-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

By Richard Seymour from http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/05/scorched-earth-of-tamil-eelam.html

The leaders of the LTTE have immolated themselves, and it is reported that chief Prabhakaran is dead. The Sri Lankan army has rounded up the last fighters. Thousands have been killed by the Sri Lankan army, and hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped in internment camps, where they report being raped, abused, and starved by Sri Lankan soldiers. The Tamil Eelam state that LTTE fighters had been building in areas where they controlled has been demolished. A struggle that has lasted for over a generation now looks like it has ended in a decisive victory for the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil separatists. But what manner of struggle is it that is now apparently subsiding into a bloody twilight, and what will replace it? It would be difficult for anyone relying on the mainstream news to tell. In the UK, some awareness has been raised thanks to the efforts of networks of Tamil activists. But these activists have had to operate under scrutiny, because the LTTE was banned in the UK in 2001, and anyone suspected of being a member could end up being arrested.

The main way in which we have come to understand the LTTE and the Tamil secession struggle has been through the prism of counterinsurgency, terrorism, the strategic logic of suicide attacks, funding networks and - so it has darkly been hinted - possible ties with 'Al Qaeda'. History and context are only raised on the rare occasion that someone in the field of 'counterterrorism' thinks it matters. Otherwise we are advised that it is simply an ethnic conflict, between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. The Sri Lankan state, which blames the entire conflict on the LTTE and purports to be 'liberating' Tamils from their rule, is apparently convinced that a military demolition of its opponents means that they have secured a long term victory. In fact, however, their turn to this brutal military solution is a result of failure. It is the inability of Sri Lanka's rulers to accomodate even partially the interests of the Tamil minority within the terms of its sovereignty, as was made clear by the failure of peace accords earlier this decade, that has led to this state of affairs. This is the hallmark of a weak and fractious ruling class, not a strong and confident one. The LTTE may be broken, but that doesn't mean that the people of the Tamil north will simply give way.

As usual, there is a colonial background here, inasmuch as the ethnic divisions are rooted in the practises of rule and exploitation by British colonial powers in what was Ceylon. British imperialism was hardly loyal to one ethnicity over another - its 'race management' strategy changed over time. On the one hand, the British imported indentured workers from Tamil Nadu in southern India to help extract those rich rubber, tea, cinnamon, indigo and sugar resources. These were subject to tough labour legislation and restrictions forbidding them from leaving the plantation. On the other hand, modest advantages were conferred on some middle class layers of the Tamil minority who had already lived there for hundreds of years, as well as on some upper class Sinhalese and particularly on Burghers (descendants of European colonists). Moreover, British ethnology absurdly maintained that the Sinhalese and Tamils were distinct 'races': the former were 'Aryan', while the latter were 'Dravidian' - this on the basis of a divergence between languages spoken in central and southern India, and the Sanskrit-derived languages of the north.

This was an important aspect of imperial power-knowledge, as the British based their administrative units on such ethnology, while the owners of capital used anti-Tamil feeling to break strikes and disorganise workers. Such 'divide and rule' strategies were reflected in the censuses which, after 1911, placed indentured Tamil plantation workers in a separate category as 'Indian Tamils'. Legislation pushed through by Governor Manning in 1924 was used to undermine the unity of the emerging Lankan nationalist movement by introducing more communal representation systems into the Legislative Council. On this occasion, the British chose to under-represent the Sinhalese majority. Later, the Fabian-led Donoughmore Commission would reject communal representation and propose a 'universal franchise' under British rule. The Tamil nationalists had to decide whether to oppose it in the interests of conserving a communal position, or whether to oppose it because it didn't concede self-government, and ultimately chose the latter, but you begin to see how such divisions had become a terrible disabling factor for the independence movement.

That brings us to another crucial background, which is the rise and eclipse of the Sri Lankan revolutionary Left in the 20th Century, and its ultimate inability to overcome the divisions inherited from the colonial period. For, despite the mass communist and trade union movements that fought for independence, when independence was finally achieved in 1948, it was on terms that maintained powerful British interests in Sri Lanka, with large naval and air facilities based there to help the empire defends its holdings in Malaya. Moreover, it was in a way that deepened the extant ethnic divisions. Tamil plantation workers were excluded from the franchise by the new ruling party, the UNFP, and thus the Tamil minority was stigmatised as being in some sense not properly Sri Lankan. A split from the UNFP produced the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) which was even more hostile to the Tamil minority. It claimed that Sri Lanka had a Buddhist identity, despite the fact that a sizeable minority were Hindu. Peaceful protesters, however, were attacked and killed, while the government continued to discriminate against the Tamil minority. They were the target of riots, pogroms, and state repression, and in opposition to this there developed a guerilla movements such as the Tamil New Tigers.

Sri Lanka was unique in developing a mass communist movement based on Trotskyism. The role of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), founded in 1935, was quite extraordinary. Not only was it not a communally based party, but it made a surprising and concrete connection with the British working class with the involvement of its prominent agitator Mark Bracegirdle (the spectacle of a white man rousing Sri Lankan labourers with his speeches against the planters was something that the British administrators absolutely detested). It was instrumental in building the union movement, was one of the few forces that continued to fight the British during World War II, and became the main opposition party after the war. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the party made great strides while resisting the Sinhala nationalism of the ruling SLFP. Moreover, the most powerful trade union movements at that time were aligned to the LSSP. But the party made the mistake of forming a coalition government with the SLFP, first in 1964, then again in 1970. It became part of a ruling administration that actually continued to discriminate against the Tamil minority. And it was also a suicidal move, since the front split in 1975, the LSSP representatives were expelled, and the party later lost all its MPs. It has since been involved in several coalitions with the SFLP, and has never recovered its former standing. But to be absolutely clear about this, the LSSP's early opposition to communalism was, as far as I can discover, most unusual. The majority of left-wing groups - and bear in mind that even the SFLP is nominally a socialist party - had long supported Sinhalese nationalism.

And that brings us to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was formed in 1976 to replace the Tamil New Tigers, and the Tamil independence struggle which was launched in 1983. The rise of the Tigers did reflect the left's historic failure, even if the LTTE adopted nominally marxist politics. It reflected the fact that a non-communal left had been unable to hegemonise the working class, that even explicit revolutionaries and Guevarists had been party to oppression of the Tamils. It also reflected an enormous increase in state repression, with increasing reliance on mass arrests and torture. The tactics of the LTTE in response have been the focus of a lot of study of late. Kidnappings, bombings and, later on, suicide attacks. These were the tactics of a national struggle, one that necessarily didn't recognise any allies among the Sinhala majority.

But the dirty war was overwhelmingly fought by the Sri Lankan army. For example, when Tamil fighters attacked an army convoy in Jaffna in July 1983, the army retaliated by attacking and killing sixty civilians in the city - university lecturers, housewives, engineers, students, all shot dead in their homes. The Colombo-based press, however, focused overwhelmingly on the dead soldiers (does this sound familiar?) and whipped up an atmosphere of hostility to the Tamils. The government then proceeded with an extraordinarily vicious series of pogroms, which began with the burning of huts in Trincomalee and the expulsion of their residents. In Colombo, Sinhalese nationalists organised and attacked Tamil homes, shops, and vehicles, murdering dozens in one evening. Tamil prisoners were systematically murdered in cold blood. For weeks and weeks, similar episodes raged. The streets, empty apart from armed men on the prowl and their victims, were scenes of devastation. One town, the Tamil town of Kandapola, was utterly destroyed. The government began to round Tamils up, ostensibly to protect, and drove them into wretched 'refugee camps'. 90,000 refugees were created in Colombo alone by the first week of August. That wave of violence is known as 'Black July'. It lent awful credence to the argument that the Tamils didn't have Sinhalese allies they could look to. It sparked the war that thundered for more than twenty five years.

I have emphasised that the LTTE struggle can't be reduced to its tactics, but its tactics did flow from its nationalist premises. That is why it chose to pursue a guerilla struggle when it didn't have mass support, and why it eventually sought the help of the Indian government who at first armed the Tigers, then negotiated a peace deal, then sent in a 'peacekeeping' force which ended up attempting to disarm them - thus producing another horrendous bout of conflict, this time with the Indian army who were forced to withdraw in 1990. The Tigers, to make up for their lack of firepower, pioneered suicide bombings and invented the suicide belt. They repeatedly targeted civilians, seeing them as complicit in their oppression. They killed Muslims where they didn't simply extort them for funding. They also engaged in the recruitment of child soldiers. Such callousness was mandated by the argument that the Tamils could never live at peace within Sri Lanka, that they would always be oppressed, and could never look to Sinhalese or anyone else to defend them - but could in Tamil Eelam, they would be free.

Even despite their relative weakness, the Tigers could be a devastatingly effective force, and were very efficient at raising funds through the diaspora. It wasn't beyond them to rout the Sri Lankan army, such as when they took the strategically essential Elephant Pass from the Sri Lankan army in 2000, and then destroyed half the Air Lanka fleet at Colombo airport when the army tried to take it back. They successfully assassinated the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, partially as a response to India's role in northern Sri Lanka. At the same time, because of their inherent military disadvantage, they repeatedly engaged in diplomatic attempts to end the war. Throughout the conflict, there were five separate peace agreements, and several unilateral ceasefires on the part of the LTTE. The Sri Lankan state consistently refused to reciprocate on unilateral ceasefires and generally didn't hold up its end of the bargain in negotiated ceasefires. This isn't to say that the Tigers were angelic in their conduct of negotiations. One doesn't expect that. And nor does it mean that peace held no advantages for the Sri Lankan ruling class. To secure the territory would certainly open new avenues for growth and allow the further penetration of the economic liberalisation programme throughout the country. The question was always whether they preferred a peace with autonomy for the Tamil north or a peace achieved by a comprehensive defeat for the Tigers. Given the choice, and given the prevailing constituencies, they tended to choose the latter.

The last ceasefire started in 2002 and ended in 2004, and it is instructive to see just how it ended. The Sri Lankan army had, since the fall of the Elephant Pass, been actively seeking arms and counterinsurgency training from any source it could. It forged a new alliance with Israel to this end, and raised its defence budget to $1bn. The army engaged in an energetic recruitment drive. The LTTE, evidently not trusting the government and unwilling to reduce its fighting capacity until a political settlement had been reached, sought to mirror the army's build up. The ceasefire was looking fairly shaky by late 2004. A new coalition had come to power involving leading Sinhalese nationalist forces, the SFLP and JVP, with the support of he LSSP. They did not support the federalist idea that both the LTTE and the previous government had been negotiating around. They declared that the negotiations process was tainted at source, and that the ceasefire no longer held. And then the tsunami struck. The army took the advantage of the devastation to restore its position in the Tamil north, just as the Indonesian army was doing in Aceh. It deliberately withheld aid from Tamil areas and started to penetrate refugee camp. Soon after, the war resumed. It resumed with the Sri Lankan army in a far more commanding position than it had been in before. And it ended with the military devastating its opponents and slaughtering civilians as it had always done. It ended the dream of Tamil Eelam.

But what would Tamil Eelam have looked like? The structures of an incipient state were being constructed in the Tiger-run territories, partly out of sheer necessity. Unwilling to be ruled under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, they had to elaborate their own legal system and civil codes. The structures they developed were highly effective. There is a rather simplistic argument over whether the peace and low crime rates that obtained in the Tiger controlled areas were the result of authoritarian policing or social justice. The state structures were indeed highly authoritarian in some ways, which is perhaps unsurprising in the context of war. On the other hand, they were based on welfare and development, codifying womens' rights, criminalised all forms of caste discrimination, and so on. The welfare functions were paid for by a form of taxation that in other circumstances would just be called 'rent'. The Tigers also pioneered the creation of an NGO, the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation which, for example organised tsunami relief aid. As brutal as the Tigers could be in their tactics, they evidently tried to prefigure a more socially just society. And this made sense as a political strategy, since their ability to wield effective force had to be embedded in their political hegemony. Nonetheless, it's important to see the limits of this. The LTTE had traditionally been in favour of a heavily state-run developmentalist economy, but in negotiations in 2004 made it clear that while the LTTE had to urgently mount a humanitarian and development programme, it favoured a long-term strategy based on "an open market economy", and it voiced no opposition to the state's liberalisation measures. The glorious Tamil Eelam would have been a neoliberal state, perhaps no more than an autonomous zone within a federal structure, implementing the same IMF-driven policies that have been pushed from Colombo for some years.

That this, ultimately, is what so many young men and women were prepared to kill an die for, is not the least of the Tamils' tragedies.

ps: see Socialist Worker's archive of articles on Sri Lanka for some useful background.

Freedom of Expression and Palestine Advocacy

2009-05-19T20:22:00.000-07:00

By Rafeef Ziadah

Enormous resources have been marshaled by conservative and Zionist organizations in an attempt to silence criticism of the Canadian government’s unwavering support for Israel. The first few months of 2009 have seen a concerted campaign to shut down Palestine advocacy in Canada. Such examples include:

cutting funding to the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) due to the organization’s outspoken criticism of the government during the war in Gaza;
banning posters for the annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) in several Ontario university campuses; and

a smear campaign against the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) for daring to discuss the issue of an academic boycott of Israel.

This is not an exhaustive list. The Canadian government also banned George Galloway, who was scheduled to speak about his trip to Gaza, in the same period. Artist Reena Katz was recently “disassociated” from the Koffler Centre of the Arts in Toronto, which was exhibiting her artistic work. Koffler “disassociated” with Katz for her activities with Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW): her exhibit was on the Toronto Jewish Community, not related to Palestine at all.

Palestine advocates have always had to live with harassment, false accusations, and smears. All these vastly intensified after the latest Israeli assault against the captive people of Gaza that left over 1400 people dead, including 430 children, and thousands of homes and public infrastructure destroyed in an already devastated and besieged area. This direct response to a growing international solidarity movement in support of Palestinian human rights is an attempt to demonize the movement and curtail its ability to do public organizing and campaigning.

This article answers the false accusations made against Palestine advocates, documents three cases of harassment and violation of free expression (CAF, IAW, and CUPE), and argues that free expression for Palestine advocates is an issue that should be taken up by all who are concerned about free expression.

Defending Israeli War Crimes

Israeli state arguments in defense of war crimes against the Palestinian people are becoming less convincing by the day, as open racism becomes acceptable in Israeli politics (demonstrated by the electoral victories of Lieberman and Netanyahu) and as Israel's treatment of Palestinians becomes more brutal. Supporters of Israel increasingly resort to the argument that attacking Israel is ‘anti-Semitic.’ They have coined the term “the new anti-Semitism” – defined as any criticism of Israeli policies (see, for examples, Phyllis Chesler, The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About it (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003) and Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2003). Accusations of anti-Semitism against those critical of Israeli policies aims at either silencing them or forcing them to spend their time and energy defending themselves against allegations rather than writing or organizing. The accusation of anti-Semitism leveled against all who criticize Israel contradicts claims that Israel is a state like any other. If both of these claims are true, criticizing Israel should not be different from criticizing any other state, and should be protected by free expression, as should discussion of Palestinian human rights. If even discussing the Palestinian situation is a form of anti-Semitism, then Palestinians cannot have full human rights.

Israel's supporters claim that Israel and Canada are western societies that embody ‘freedom.’ While exalting these societies for their freedom, these same supporters shut down freedom for those who speak out against Israel's crimes.

Another offered reason for silencing Palestine advocacy is that calling Israel an Apartheid state is offensive. It certainly is offensive, to Zionists as it would also offend white South Africans who believed in the apartheid system to be challenged, but would this mean that all events that challenge supporters of apartheid should be shut down? Do we shut down pro-choice events because they offend anti-choicers? Since when is the measure for allowing events who they offend? There are many pro-Israel events that take place every day on Canadian campuses – even at times soldiers who participated in war crimes are paraded like heroes, sometimes in front of students whose homes have been bombed by these same soldiers. This is offensive, but nothing has ever been banned because Palestinians find it offensive.

The campaign of repression against pro-Palestine groups is not simply an attack on Arab-Canadians, or even just their allies. They are attacks on the progressive movement as a whole.

They are aimed at limiting our collective ability to criticize government policies, whether on supporting Israel, the war in Afghanistan, or the case of Omar Khadr. They are also aimed at creating migrant communities that are silenced into obedience, using the threat of cuts to government funding. The examples below point to an increasing trend that is clearly coordinated across sectors to silence those speaking for Palestinian human rights.

Community Organizations Penalized for Palestine Solidarity

On 17 February 2009, several media outlets announced that Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was poised to slash federal funding to Canada's largest Arab community organization, the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF). A month later, Kenney followed through on his threats by formally cutting funding for CAF programs that help newcomers (these programs help all newcomers – not only Arabs). Two programs were cut, one that teaches English to newcomers and the second helps them search for jobs once they come to Canada.

The media has portrayed the cuts to CAF funding as a response to its president calling Kenney a ‘professional whore’ for supporting Israel in its war on Gaza (the President of CAF was actually quoting Professor Norman Finkelstein, a well-known critic of Israel). But Kenney himself has clarified on several occasions that funding cuts had nothing to do with the comments made about him. On 7 March 2009, Kenney admitted there was no connection between the insult and the decision to cut funding to CAF and stated:

“When I first became Minister over 2 years ago, one of the very first things I said to my bureaucrats on the very first day in my Department of Multiculturalism was that we would not be funding groups that promote extremism, defend or apologize for terrorism or terrorist organizations and promote hatred, and as I mentioned specifically two groups: the Canadian Arab Federation and the Canadian Islamic Congress” (Jason Kenney interview from AM 770 – Alberta).

Here we have a government minister clearly and openly declaring that he is targeting groups because he perceives them as being ‘extremist.’ Beyond cutting funding, Kenney explained that a ‘change in leadership’ would restore the funding, as reported in the National Post on 14 March 2009:

“Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says the Canadian Arab Federation will have to change its leadership and adopt a more moderate stance or risk losing federal funding…Mr. Kenney said taxpayers should not be footing the bill for an organization whose leader ‘promotes hateful and extremist views.’ Mr. Kenney said there are many moderate organizations that could do the job… He suggested the decision could be reversed if more moderate leaders were in place.”

The irony to Canadian-Arabs is startling, especially when you consider that many of them have ended up in Canada fleeing repressive governments that stifle criticism. Here you have a government minister interfering in a community's choice of leaders, telling the community to change its leadership to restore funding because this leadership is not to his liking. After such extreme action, the Minister tells the community he is doing this because they are not ‘moderate.’

In explaining his case for the cuts, Kenney said on February 26th 2009:

“But my point [in weighing whether to continue funding the CAF], is whether an organization … that distributes videos produced by Hamas and Islamic Jihad that glorifies terrorism [and] indoctrinates children into the cult of anti-Semitic hatred… is not an organization, in my opinion, that should be receiving taxpayer subsidies…I’m simply saying, when we make funding decisions we should take into account the character of the organization and its leadership. And if they’re promoting extremism, or [in the case of the CAF], implicitly promoting anti-Semitism, I think that should be a consideration”
(Minister Jason Kenney in an interview with Canadian Jewish News).

The Canadian Arab Federation has been a vocal critic of the Harper government’s uncritical support for Israel. This began in July 2006 when CAF criticized Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative government for calling Israel’s invasion and devastation of Lebanon a “measured response.”

Because CAF has helped to organize demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon, Kenney is falsely accusing the organization of being “anti-Semitic” and cutting funding on that basis. There has been no formal investigation on any front, no due process to accuse CAF or its leadership of anti-Semitism. Yet based on Kenney’s personal opinions and political biases he can declare what he wants to the media, including statements smearing people and decisions harming entire communities of newcomers, without substantiation or accountability.

While present at a conference against the “new anti-Semitism” in London England on February 18, 2009, Minister Kenney said:

“These [Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) and CAF] and other organizations are free within the confines of our law and consistent with our traditions of freedom of expression, to speak their mind, but they should not expect to receive resources from the state, support from taxpayers or any other form of official respect from the government or the organs of our State (bold added). And I would encourage all other governments to take a similar approach to organizations that either excuse violence against Jews or express essentially anti-Semitic sentiments.”

Minister Kenney's use of the phrase “our state” suggests he is speaking of a state that Arabs and Muslims do not belong to. This in turn suggests a political test for belonging to what Kenney calls “our state.” The message seems to be that Arab-Canadians and anyone else who dares to criticize Israel can do so, but that makes them anti-Semitic, ‘immoderate,’ and unworthy of state funding.

CAF has decided to challenge Minister Kenney’s decision to cut the funding in the courts. On Monday March 30, 2009 CAF asked Justice Kelen of the Federal Court for an interim order so that it could continue to receive the funds it needs to operate its English language training program until its challenge to the cancellation of this funding is heard by the Court. The Court did not issue this order because it concluded that the harm caused by the immediate loss of funding could be recovered later in damages if the CAF ultimately wins its case in court. Interestingly, Minister Kenney chose not to present evidence through government counsel to counter CAF's allegations that the cut in funding was inappropriate and motivated by Kenney's political beliefs. Government counsel did not try in court to defend Minister Kenney's strong allegations that CAF is anti-Semitic and promotes terror.

The courts did find that the evidence reveals that Minister Kenney probably breached his legal duty to act fairly to the Canadian Arab Federation. Justice Kelen made it clear that it would be inappropriate for the Minister to cut CAF's funding because its President had called the Minister a name (as noted above this was never the issue). Justice Kelen said:

“Being a target of public criticism is part of holding public office. If the Minister decided to cancel English as a Second Language funding contract for the Canadian Arab community simply because he was called a name… his decision should not stand. It was not unexpected that the Arab community would be repulsed by Israel’s invasion of Gaza … the Arab community was upset that the Canadian government did not strongly protest this attack. Many reputable Canadian Jews were similarly opposed to… [the] attack.”

Mohamed Boudjenane, CAF’s Executive Director said: “Cleary this was a political decision in an attempt to silence CAF, however, we will continue our court case to clear our name and repair the damage done to the Canadian Arab Federation and the Arab Canadian community at large.” CAF is also leading a broad-based campaign to defend freedom of expression in various sectors.

University Campuses and Palestine Solidarity

There is a similar pattern of unsubstantiated accusations against Palestine advocacy groups on campuses. University campuses have long been seen as a space for critical debate and the building of solidarity with international struggles. Despite the fact that the production of knowledge in North American universities is increasingly linked to the interests of the state and the corporate sector, campuses provide an important space to organize in support of marginalized and oppressed groups. Indeed, it has become increasingly difficult to find such views off-campus within the corporate-controlled media or a political system dominated by various shades of conservatism.

The university has consequently become a contested ground. After a long hiatus during the Oslo ‘peace’ process years (1993-2000), a vibrant student-movement in support of Palestinian self-determination was re-ignited on university campuses across North America with the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. The movement grew as Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights intensified, particularly following the re-invasion of the Occupied Territories by Israeli troops in March-April 2002. Much of the solidarity movement modeled itself on the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa; in a short time petitions were circulating calling for divestment from Israel. By the time the anti-war in Iraq movement began in 2003, many students were equipped with a variety of skills – from organizing large scale demonstrations, public meetings, street-theater to more confrontational direct action tactics – acquired in their Palestine organizing.

This new anti-apartheid movement is extremely troubling for supporters of Israel, due especially to the comparisons that began to be openly made with apartheid South Africa. The memory of the struggle against apartheid South Africa is very much alive in the public consciousness. Broader layers of the population are beginning to understand the mass expulsion of three-quarters of the Palestinian people in 1948 that lay at the heart of the ‘Palestine Question.’ These comparisons damaged the progressive veneer that for many years had built the illusion of a ‘left-Zionism.’

As the Intifada continued the analysis of Israel as an apartheid state was developed further on campuses and was finally cemented with an action plan when the call for Boycotts, Divestments, Sanctions came from Palestine signed by over 170 civil society organizations in 2005.

In order to quash this movement, university administrations began to target student activist groups through repressive and bureaucratic means (establishing codes of conduct is just one example of these measures). Student activists were harassed and public spaces for student demonstrations and teach-ins were labeled “private property” (even though this is the property of a public university) making it “illegal” (in some cases overnight) to hold events. Student organizers have also noticed a pattern of harassment when it comes to room bookings. The same organization will put in a booking for multiple events on campaigns around Venezuela, Bolivia, Indigenous solidarity, among others. Yet, the only room bookings that will be delayed and speakers biographies questioned are those related to Palestine. The students' ability to organize, and indeed their freedom of assembly, is dependent upon access to space. When university administrations are colluding with off-campus pro-Israel organizations to deny space, it is not only the freedom of expression of students doing Palestine solidarity work that is being curtailed, but that of all students and progressives on campuses. This was surely the case at the University of Toronto (see Liisa Schofield’s Bullet #188). These actions by university administrators resonate with a view of students as customers paying for a service, rather than as active participants in the politics that shape the world around them.

Another administrative measure is the charging of security fees. The rule seems to be the more critical of Canadian foreign policy the speaker, the higher the security fees. The procedures for assessing security fees is not transparent. Though Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) activists have asked repeatedly from both administrative and security bodies on campuses to let them know what the procedures and guidelines are for assessing ‘security risks’ there is never a straight answer, no guidelines, no written documents. It could simply be based on racial profiling – for example a speaking event for Tariq Ali, a UK-based author of about a dozen books, organized by OPIRG Toronto and the CUPE 3903 International Solidarity Committee was charged fees for the University of Toronto security personnel to be there. The organizers didn’t request security yet received a bill following the event. This also took place when Students Against Israeli Apartheid organized a talk with long-time South African anti-apartheid and Palestine activist, Salim Vally, in which Vally compared South African Apartheid policies to Israeli policies. These charges are a de facto suppression of free expression since they represent prohibitive costs for activist groups operating without any resources.

Politicians Attack IAW

Since its inception at the University of Toronto in 2005, Israeli Apartheid Week has garnered wide-spread media attention and smear campaigns from various Zionist organizations. This year however, the attack was much more extreme. Beyond the usual B’nai Brith fear-mongering and full page ads urging universities to shut the week down, the novel element was the intensity of attacks by political figures.

Minister Kenney for example, on the March 6, 2009 stated:

“Like many Canadians, I am deeply concerned about the activities associated with 'Israeli Apartheid Week'… It is disconcerting that university student groups would promote these gatherings in a manner that demonstrates a complete disregard for the safety and security of Jewish students and professors and the general well-being of campus life… I call on all Canadians to reject anti-Semitism.”

Minister Kenney again seems to stop short of directly calling IAW anti-Semitic, but as he does against CAF, he makes the case by innuendo. Kenney's “concern” is not accompanied by knowledge: he did not attend a single lecture of IAW and refers to the week without any reference to anything organizers have said or done.

On March 3, 2009, Conservative MP Paul Calandra (Oak Ridge – Markham) declared:

“Mr. Speaker, Jewish students across the country are under siege as anti-Semites unveil their plans for Israel Apartheid Week. Liberal MPs have been quoted in the media and even today in the immigration committee saying that anti-Semitic organizations like the Canadian Arab Federation should receive taxpayer support. Will the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism explain why the government believes that Israel Apartheid Week is anti-Semitic?”

Calandra makes more direct, but no more informed, accusations in this little declaration. Beyond the smears, the disrespect for free expression is striking.

But the surprise of the week was when the head of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff issued a public statement about Israeli Apartheid Week (an annotated version of his statement is available here). One has to look at the situation from some distance to view it with some humour, as Canada plunges into a recession and workers across the country are losing jobs – politicians are busy speaking against a week of lectures on university campuses because this week happens to call Israel an apartheid state. Ignatieff wrote in his public statement that: “Labelling Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself” because international law defines apartheid as a crime against humanity. But Israeli Apartheid Week is not the only place in the world where Israel has been called an apartheid state: South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been saying it for several years now and Ronnie Kasrils of the African National Congress has participated in Israeli Apartheid Week as a keynote speaker.

These two South Africans certainly know more about apartheid being a crime against humanity than Ignatieff does. But the issue isn’t really if Israel is an apartheid state or not – it's that university students have every right to organize lectures, film screenings and debates about the issue!

Ignatieff, fearing not to appear liberal enough, contends in the same statement that “criticism of Israel is legitimate” but that “attempting to describe its very existence as a crime against humanity is not.” Yet, there are very specific political, legal and moral arguments about whether Israel is an apartheid state or not. There are academic books on the matter such as Uri Davis's Apartheid Israel, as but one exapmple. Will those books that describe Israel as an apartheid state be banned? This is all still unclear. What is clear is that Israeli Apartheid week has hit a nerve among supporters of Israel. But if the analysis of Israel as an Apartheid state is wrong, why such fear? Why all the effort to shut the week down? If the facts are on Israel’s side, then Israel's supporters should be able to win the debate on the merits, on the facts and arguments. No one is stopping Zionist organizations from organizing ‘Israel is great’ weeks. Why spend such effort trying to stop pro-Palestinian voices from putting forth arguments?

One of the most objectionable accusations against IAW was the allegation that calling Israel an apartheid state makes Jewish students unsafe. But many Jewish students helped to organize IAW: are they less Jewish because they are not Zionist? Will Ignatieff and Kenney enter the business of deciding who is Jewish now, as well as deciding what is legitimate and illegitimate to say?

Banning Posters

On February 9, 2009 Carleton University became the first to ban the IAW poster. The posters were taken down at the request of Carleton's Equity Services, under the rationale that the posters “could be seen to incite others to infringe rights protected in the Ontario Human Rights code” and are “insensitive to the norms of civil discourse in a free and democratic society.”

The poster was created by noted cartoonist Carlos Latuff and depicts a child being killed by aerial bombardment. This occurred over 430 times in Israel's latest attack on Gaza according to United Nations reports. How this image that portrays a factual situation “incites others to infringe on rights” is unclear and left unexplained by the university administration. One wonders if the poster was a photograph of a Palestinian child killed by Israeli bombardment if that too would be banned.

The troubling aspect of the poster banning is the use by the Carleton administration of ‘human rights’ as an excuse to violate freedom of expression. The process by which the poster was banned is completely unilateral and doesn’t allow for appeal: there is an unsubstantiated accusation and students cannot even defend their work. Are these the norms of “civil discourse in a free and democratic society” that the Carleton administration is referring to?

Ironically, this same administration that banned the poster could not summon enough concern for human rights or the right to education to speak against the bombing of a Gazan university. When 56 Carleton professors asked President Roseanne Runte to condemn Israel's bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza, the President refused. Neither the direct killing of hundreds of children nor the direct bombing of a campus are enough to elicit condemnation: a poster depicting the bombing is.

Following Carleton’s lead, on February 20, 2009, the University of Ottawa became the second Ottawa university administration to ban the posters of IAW 2009. Like Carleton University’s administration, the University of Ottawa’s Communications Office used spurious “human rights” claims to ban the poster. The Communications Office’s short communiqué to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights read:

“A poster from the campus group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights has recently come to the attention of the Communications Office. All posters approved by the Communications Office must promote a campus culture where all members of the community can play a part in a declaration of human rights recognizing the inherent dignity and equal rights of all students. Consequently, we will not place this particular poster on our campus billboards.”

Other universities (Wilfrid Laurier, Trent) also stopped the poster from being circulated using the same type of justification.

Again how this poster does not recognize the “inherent dignity and equal rights of all students” is unclear and unexplained. There is no mechanism for an appeal. In fact, the banning of the poster is a failure to recognize the dignity and equal rights of Palestinian students and those who seek to expose the violations of human rights of Palestinians. This is another innovation: the use of the language of human rights and equity, won through progressive struggle, to justify administrative fiat against students who are trying to practice the politics of human rights and equity.

As this article was being written, the Koffler Centre of the Arts announced it is dissociating itself from an exhibit presented by Reena Katz solely on the basis of her political affiliations, specifically with Israeli Apartheid Week. On May 12th, Koffler and its parent organization United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto (UJA) issued separate public statements of dissociation from Katz. Koffler made the artist a verbal offer to honor the full funding of the project while removing the Koffler's name, logo and URL from any related material. The ironic part about this move to disassociate from the artist is that the off-site exhibit, entitled each hand as they are called, consists of sonic and visual performances, bringing elders from Toronto’s Jewish community into conversation and play with students from Ryerson Public School. The exhibit has nothing to do with Palestine, Palestinians or Israeli Apartheid. The Koffler’s behaviour, besides being an outrageous for an arts institution, sets a dangerous precedent, suppressing art and choosing to support artistic endeavors based on an artists’ political beliefs and affiliations (see Katz’s website: http://www.eachhand.org/).

We are starting to see that the silencing of Israeli Apartheid week spread beyond campuses. Repression, once released, is not easily contained: it inevitably trickles outside to other aspects of everyday life. Why harm an exhibit about Jewish history on the basis of the artist’s affiliation with IAW?

Organizers of IAW are interested in opening up debate and discussion on Israel. As a matter of fact they have been calling for debates on the academic boycott of Israel to take place across Canadian universities. On one side, you have organizers clearly seeking mature debate on a subject of great importance to the public. On the other, politicians, university administrations, and now cultural institutions are trying to shut the debate down.

Labour Unions

If campuses are spaces where the possibility for a wider debate are possible, making them contested ground, labour unions are organizations that press for progressive change, and are often punished for it. Most are familiar with the media smear campaigns against CUPE Ontario, and its President Syd Ryan, when Resolution 50 supporting BDS was adopted by the membership. This resolution was adopted overwhelmingly by the CUPE membership, yet outside organizations, contemptuous of the democratic processes of the union, initiated campaigns of harassment against the leadership. Ryan received death threats, the chair of the international solidarity committee at the time had to change her phone number and email address due to the barrage of hate mail she was receiving. Luckily, CUPE did not back down due to these campaigns and continued to do rank and file education around Palestinian rights. As Ryan explained it: “criticize the State of Israel and face individually targeted and unprecedented criticism, threats and personal attacks – tantamount to a new form of McCarthyism.”

Shortly after the attack on Gaza, the university sector conference of CUPE Ontario adopted a motion calling for research on Canadian University connections with Israeli Universities specifically in the area of military research. It passed a second motion supporting free expression on the issue of Palestine on campuses. As those motions were being discussed inside the conference, the Jewish Defense League (JDL) gathered outside waving Israeli flags, one sign was of Ryan’s picture superimposed on Hitler’s body. The objective is to tell trade unionists solidarity with Palestinian workers will come at the price of fear, harassment, filthy accusations, and physical aggression.

Other unions, such as OPSEU and OSSTF, have active grievances in process because their members have been disciplined for putting up IAW posters or other Palestine-related materials in their workplaces.

Conclusion

A targeted campaign against Arab community organizations, academics that support Palestinian human rights and student activists that organize events such as IAW has been launched to keep the solidarity movement occupied with defending itself. This campaign employs a vast array of methods including threats by donors to stop grants to universities; calls for the dismissal of academics based on media smear campaigns, and the intervention of members of Parliament.

The success of Palestine solidarity activists and other progressive movements led to the launch of these campaigns of intimidation and repression. The level of retaliation an oppositional movement receives is a good gauge of its success and its ability to affect change in the public consciousness. This success is also reflected in the growing confluence of the political right, conservatism and the Zionist movement. Zionism is increasingly losing its ability to divide progressive movements and becoming associated with right-wing politics.

These developments indicate the importance of building cross-linkages and networks of solidarity between various progressive movements. This new round of attacks represents a threat to many of the gains won during previous rounds of struggle, most notably the free speech campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s across North America. It is on all of us to take responsibility to beat back this new McCarthyism. •

Rafeef Ziadah is an organizer with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid.

The War in Sri Lanka and the Left in Toronto

2009-05-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

By Noaman Ali and Fathima Cader

The recent burst of mass mobilizations by sections of the Canadian-Tamil community in Toronto has brought to the fore several contradictions concerning the conflict in Sri Lanka and its presence in and connection to Canada. Mainstream media’s responses to the protests have been overwhelmingly racialist, exposing many of the limits of Canadian multiculturalism. In order for Canadian multiculturalism to accept any given group of people as a cultural community, it must define that group by differentiating it from a supposedly mainstream Canadian identity. This focalising Canadian identity—in effect a non-identity—is white and middle-class. Thus, when the Toronto Star publishes an editorial entitled “Protesters vs. the public”1 it effectively notes that the protesters are not part of the public by pitting (Tamil) protesters against the (Canadian) public. Rather than focusing on the war, media outlets have focused on the inconvenience posed to commuters, thereby shifting attention away from deaths in Sri Lanka to traffic regulations in Canada. Consequently, responses to the protests have largely demonstrated pernicious xenophobia. For instance, in the Toronto Sun, Peter Worthington argues that not using excessive force (e.g., water cannons) against Tamil protesters who block streets is tantamount to “reverse racism” against white Canadians.2

But if the coverage of the protests has made certain contradictions about the performance of cultural politics in public spaces in Canada apparent, other contradictions about the negotiation of those politics within cultural communities have also been rendered largely invisible. The impetus comes, once again, from a multiculturalism that defines ethnic, immigrant identities against a supposedly mainstream, local one. The act of defining a cultural community necessarily ignores the cultural, economic, and political differences that exist within that community. When these differences are ignored, political representation to mainstream political actors (i.e. those in the government, political parties, and state apparatuses) is mediated by non-elected, self-appointed community “leaders” who may not, and often do not, capture all cultural and political differences. In fact, the very articulation of those differences is precluded: a-cultural white English-speaking Canadians may lean left or right as individuals, or as voting blocs based on class and region, but the articulation of such political differences is absent in the representations of the politics of minority communities. The responses of politicians, activists, journalists, police and vocal sections of the public to the rallies protesting the war provide key examples of this.

The responses of politicians and police officials who addressed themselves to “the Tamil community” falsely suggest that all the protesters were Tamil and that all of Toronto’s Tamils supported the protests. The paternalism of Mayor David Miller’s deciding to tell “the Tamil community” what it “needs to hear from us”3 (whoever “us” is) feeds into the blatant racism expressed by other elements of the public. Thus, for instance, in The Globe & Mail Christie Blatchford uses the demonstrations to question not just protest tactics, but also the immigration policies that, according to her, have led to the presence of a worryingly large number of Tamils in Toronto.4

Parallel to Miller’s homogenization, though coming from the opposite direction, veteran dissident leftist Judy Rebick notes on her blog that, “in a brilliant action, the Tamil community [...] climbed the on ramp on to the Gardiner Expressway [...] and sat down blockading traffic for several hours.”5 While the action, as an object lesson in activist tactics, was brilliant, one can say with certainty that “the Tamil community” neither climbed onto nor sat down on the Gardiner. Rather, a more correct terminology would be what Rebick subsequently calls “a group of Tamil activists.” The tenor of her blog post, however, confirms that she views the Tamil community in homogenous terms. She goes so far as to end her post with the note that “we are all Tamils,” a statement that is problematic on two grounds. First, working in solidarity with others requires acknowledging the lived differences that separate us so that we might use those differences for the purposes of justice, rather than discounting them out of an unhelpfully over-forced empathy. Second, that kind of statement presupposes that there is only one kind of Tamil identity, which everyone else can access. Yet if Tamilness is an identity constructed solely on the basis of one’s presence at or support for the protests, not even all Tamils can be called such.

If Toronto’s Tamil population is being flattened into one homogenized entity by politicians and many leftist activists, that process is certainly not being opposed by some sections of Toronto’s Tamil community. The Canadian Tamil Congress, one of Toronto’s more prominent Tamil political groups, notes that it is “the unified voice of Canada’s 300,000 Tamils.”6 Its FAQ page shows that it ascribes to all Sri Lankan Tamils the desire for a separate homeland (Tamil Eelam).7 The history and current reality of a diversity of non-communal and Tamil organizations and individuals within and without Sri Lanka, with varying goals and political objectives—and varying definitions of self-determination for Tamil people—is elided by this construction of Tamil identity. It is impossible for the CTC to be the unified voice of Tamils when Tamils don’t have a unified voice. In other words, to return to Rebick’s rallying cry, we are not all Tamil, if only because there is no one Tamil identity we can be.

At many of the protests, the LTTE-designed national flag of Tamil Eelam (which shares the Tiger emblem) has been a prominent fixture, LTTE soldiers have been venerated as freedom fighters, the prospect of Eelam has been seen as a necessary solution to the war, and LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has been venerated as a national leader. While this set of views may be influential and even hegemonic within Toronto’s Tamil diaspora, it is not universal. Just as the actions of many of the Tamil demonstrators are not and cannot be the actions of “the Tamil community,” so too are the opinions expressed at these demonstrations not those of “the Tamil community.” In fact, those are not even necessarily the views of all of the protesters present at the rallies, but dissenting, non-LTTE views are not being heard.

To signal toward complexity and difference within Tamil communities is not to deny the Sinhala ethnic chauvinism of the government of Sri Lanka; its use of undemocratic and authoritarian practices to crush dissent; or its use of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and internal colonization against Sri Lankan Tamils. Nor is it to deny that militant Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka has largely been a response to the systematized and legislated discrimination of the Sri Lankan state. The LTTE is, in fact, a legitimate national resistance movement and was—until recently— the de facto governing entity in several parts of Sri Lanka. However, in its progress towards and current operation of that position, it too has often represented an ideology of ethno-religious chauvinism; has used undemocratic and authoritarian practices to crush resistant views and movements–including against dissident Tamils; and has used mass murder, ethnic cleansing and internal colonization against Muslims. The point here is not that the LTTE is just as bad as the government of Sri Lanka—which many Sri Lankans, Tamils and otherwise, think it is—but that a critical left view cannot support the LTTE, except tactically in opposition to the oppression of the Sri Lankan state. Nor can it support the LTTE’s ideology or practice. Thus, the assumption should not be made that support for Tamils in opposition to Sri Lankan state oppression is consonant with support for the LTTE.

It is important that critical leftists in Canada take concrete steps, working with members of the Tamil population and the Sri Lankan population more broadly, to bring to an end the oppression being perpetrated by the Sri Lankan state, but without steamrolling the complexities of the conflict and those affected by it. We must stand for an end to Sri Lankan state aggression, but also for an end to the LTTE’s aggression toward dissident and minority groups. Toward these ends, some concrete steps we should seek to take include:

1. Demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

Critical leftists must stand up for the thousands being massacred in Sri Lanka. To this end, we should engage with supporters of the LTTE and others in demanding an immediate, permanent, and confirmable bilateral ceasefire. Protests calling on the Canadian government to take an active role in bringing about such a ceasefire are important and should be supported, though not uncritically.

2. Oppose the complacency and racism of the Canadian state, media and vocal sections of the general public; and oppose police violence.

The Canadian government continues to turn a blind eye to the conflict, tacitly supporting the Sri Lankan state’s actions. Politicians at all levels have spoken to “the Tamil community” in condescending ways. The media has focused more on the plight of commuters inconvenienced by the rallies than on the thousands of dying civilians. Many Canadian citizens have expressed their xenophobia calling upon Tamils to “go back home”.

Meanwhile, at the rallies, protestors have on several occasions been literally caged into tight areas and police officers have often used excessive force on them. Protestors have been arrested merely for speaking out,8 and, at times, have been brutalized with no provocation.9,10

Police violence and the complacence and racism of Canadian foreign politics, the media and vocal sections of the general public must be opposed loudly and forcefully.

3. Push for a political solution.

This conflict has no military solution. Critical leftists must not stop at the call for a ceasefire, but also push for a comprehensive political settlement that involves more than just the Sinhala-dominant Sri Lankan state and the LTTE. There are many more legitimate representatives of Tamil (including Tamil-speaking Muslim) aspirations and political views than the LTTE, whom the LTTE has repressed. Support must be given to them. However, there can also be no political settlement without the involvement of the LTTE.

The Canadian government does not label organizations as terrorist on the basis of objective criteria, but politically opportunistic ones. Moreover, designating certain groups as terrorist does little to clarify conflict situations, but more often obscures issues. Canada’s banning the Tigers as terrorists suggests that the problem of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism is not one of discrimination and disenfranchisement, but of immeasurable violence and terrorism, and that therefore the solution to this conflict must inevitably and solely come through the military elimination of said terrorist group. Critical leftists, however, must remain firm that any long-term and viable solution to the Sri Lankan conflict cannot be military; it must involve a political settlement.

4. Work toward cross-ethnic solidarity.

Following from the support for repressed and marginalized voices, critical leftists must promote cross-ethnic solidarities in Sri Lanka and in the Sri Lankan diaspora. The fictions of ethnic homogeneity constructed by Sinhala nationalism and by Tamil nationalism must be punctured and repudiated. This does not mean an opposition to the principle of self-determination. Yet however the majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka choose to define self-determination, a lasting peace has to be based on the recognition of the vast complexity, intermingling, and transcendence of ethnic boundaries that constantly occurs in Sri Lanka – both in Sinhalese-dominated and in Tamil-dominated areas. Non-communal political formations must be supported.

To that end, critical leftists in Canada should work towards facilitating the kinds of cross-ethnic solidarity movements and conversations that have been mostly foreclosed by the terroristic strategies employed in Sri Lanka by the armed forces and by the LTTE. While acknowledging and addressing the limitations of Canadian multicultural policies here, we need to capitalise on our distance from the conflict, and the relative peace afforded by that distance (however racialised and restricted it is), to facilitate dialogue.

5. Oppose the Sri Lankan state; criticize the LTTE.

Successive Sinhala ethnic chauvinist governments have precipitated the crisis in Sri Lanka. They continue to do so with impunity. Critical leftists must be absolute in their opposition to the ethnic chauvinism and practical depredations of the parties controlling the Sri Lankan state. The Sri Lankan state has been one of the most significant obstacles toward the achievement of a lasting peace.

At the same time, the LTTE has used civilians as human shields and has engaged in forced conscription. It must be therefore also be criticized and its particular human rights violations not excused or glossed over.

6. Oppose the role of international imperialism in the conflict.

The ideology of twenty-first century imperialism is manifest worldwide. In particular, in South Asia, the discourses of “wars on terror” in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are smokescreens for governments and imperial actors like NATO and the United States to obscure real, legitimate and popular grievances by focusing instead on military campaigns. This is precisely the strategy currently being used by the state in Sri Lanka against its local Tamil grievances. Furthermore, the Sri Lankan state receives military aid from, among others, Pakistan and Israel—lackeys of American empire. China, too, in increasing its international political reach, has steadily provided arms and funding to Sri Lanka for several years. India has also played a major role through its intervention or absence of intervention, in line with its hegemonic designs in South Asia.

The international dimensions of the conflict are too complex to be examined in detail here. However, we should engage in further study of the international dimension of the conflict as well, for in resisting the violence of the Sri Lankan state, as critical leftists, we are also taking a stance against certain operations of international imperialism. We must recognize, however, that ultimately the problem is one of Sinhala ethnic chauvinism and the lack of meaningful political representation of national minorities in Sri Lanka.

In conclusion, it is important to note that these six items should be regarded as points of departure for critical leftists. By no means is this a conclusive programme on how activists in Canada, whatever their ethnicity or personal connection to the war, should approach the conflict. That sort of conversation is much more difficult, and must be had in conjunction with all the members of Canada’s Sri Lankan diaspora, including its Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim communities.
—-
Noaman Ali is a teaching assistant at York University and a member of CUPE 3903. Fathima Cader is a Colombo-born Tamil Muslim who spent five weeks in April and May 2009 in Sri Lanka. She is a law student at the University of British Columbia.

The Tamil Protests: Resistance in the Face of Genocide

2009-05-18T10:54:00.001-07:00

By S.K. Hussan

On Friday, 15 May 2009, the Sri Lankan army began a sea, air and tri-directional land assault on a single mile of island still believed to be held by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and considered a “no-fire” zone. Over 80,000 civilians are unaccounted for and believed to be trapped in the sandy region. The army has stated that it attempts to ‘wipe out’ all inhabitants in the “no-fire” zone. This assault, called the “climax” by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government is at the end of a seven month campaign to occupy the autonomous Tamil Eelam region that has been under Tamil control since 2002.

Independent accounts report deaths upwards of 10,000 in the fighting with at least a quarter of a million displaced in camps with no health services. There have been numerous reports of rape and slaughter in these camps by the Sri Lankan army, the most recent by Channel 4 UK.

Global Political Mobilization

Over the last few months, a growing movement against war and genocide in Tamil Eelam has taken to the streets of Toronto, London, Paris, Brisbane and many other cities. In Toronto, these protests have been organized in community centers and by students of all ages. A new generation of organizers has emerged that have been forced to learn the skills of mass political mobilization on the streets with thousands coming out day after day after day.

Eating, drinking, chanting, standing, shouting and screaming, tens of thousands of people of all ages, mostly with family in the affected region, have blockaded roads, and surrounded government buildings and embassies. They have organized mass sit-ins and die-ins, carried out candle light vigils and participated in hunger strikes in Toronto and elsewhere. Though initially without a clear mandate and borne out of frustration, the demonstrations are now unified in their call: “What do we want? Permanent Ceasefire! When do we want it? Right Now!”

Organizers have attempted to meet with Conservative MPs to ask for the recall of the Canadian ambassador to Sri Lanka and have urged that journalists and humanitarian workers be allowed in the quarantined war zone. Ottawa has rejected the demand that Canada call for a ceasefire and condemn the attacks that have caused so many civilian causalities.

The ‘Canadian’ Response

Many radio stations and mainstream media outlets have spewed vitriol, as callers to radio programmes speaking as ‘everyday Canadians’ (read white) have been derisive in their criticisms of the ‘Tamils.’ Canadian media accounts have questioned the logic of using the Tamil Secessionist flag (which is not the LTTE flag), the use of women and the elderly in the protest (as if the women and elderly have no free will to organize) and the role of street demonstrations in ‘holding city residents hostage.’ Little has been said about the demands of the 200,000 Tamil city residents and thousands of their supporters. Nothing has been said to pressure Harper to take an anti-war stance.

On the 4th of May, after the mass demonstration in Ottawa, after the non-stop protest outside the U.S. embassy and the public beatings of solidarity activists by Toronto police, the Canadian Minister of International Cooperation Beverley J. Oda visited Colombo and gave $3-million in untied aid to Sri Lanka. Instead of insisting that Sri Lanka adopt an immediate and permanent cessation of hostilities against a trapped civilian population in return for the aid, Minister Oda (in her own words to the Canadian media) simply ‘asked’ her hosts to do so. When ignored she passed over the money.

Two things come to mind on this point. First, Canada does not give out untied aid – a policy which has been used to attack working people in many countries and to limit democratic control over resources. In one of the rare instances when conditional aid could have been used as leverage to prevent a massacre, Canada shied away. Second, contrary to Minister Oda’s statements to the Canadian media, this is what the Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence website had to say:

“She [Beverley Oda] welcomed the Government moves to reunify families stranded by terrorist atrocities and resettlement of civilians in their original places of residence. She said Canadian assistance to Sri Lanka will continue uninterrupted.”

The original places of residence in this case are the by now infamous “no-fire” zones that the Sri Lankan army confessed to have bombed two days before this visit (on May 2nd). Canadian reassurance of 'uninterrupted assistance' to Sri Lanka was something Minister Oda forgot to mention in her interview with Canadian media and of course something that the mainstream media managed to avoid questioning.

Beverley Oda and Stephen Harper must come clean. They need to explain why Canada is supporting what the UN has called a blood-bath. They need to explain why Canada is supporting the displacement of hundred of thousands of people creating a humanitarian disaster of tragic proportions. They need to explain to Canadians why it is in ‘Canada’s interest’ to let this genocide continue. Until that time, any public resistance or mobilization to create awareness and pressure Canada is the right one.

Now, more than ever before, the pressure campaign needs to be maintained. There are 80,000 people being bombed, shelled and massacred. There is a call to take to the streets, to call, email and fax parliamentarians to stop the genocide. I intend to respond to this call. Do you? •

S.K. Hussan is an organizer with No One Is Illegal – Toronto and in defense of indigenous sovereignty.

Sources

"Sri Lanka expects the visit of Canadian Minister would strengthen bilateral ties", Asian Tribune, May 5, 2009.
"Sri Lanka admits bombing safe zone", Al Jazeera, English, May 02, 2009.
"Policy Statement on Strengthening Aid Effectiveness", CIDA, September 2002.
"Canada gives $3 million in aid to Sri Lanka", The Canadian Press, May 4, 2009.

Israel's not so subtle plan for Palestine

2009-05-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

The poster has been produced by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism as part of an advertising campaign to attract visitors to Israel.

The map on the advertisement portrays Israel as an area which incorporates the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.However, none of these areas are part of Israel, but instead have been subject to military occupation or blockade by Israel since 1967.

UN Resolution 242 calls on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, which are Palestinian territories, but Israel remains in violation of this resolution, and also maintains its illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.

Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip since 2005, making access virtually impossible, resulting in severe shortages of food, medicine and clean water, which has left the Strip’s 1.4 million Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis. Any ‘tourists’ would be unable to visit the Gaza Strip, as Israel prevents even humanitarian aid workers and lawyers from entering.

In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel continues to build settlements in direct contravention of international law, taking land from the Palestinians to do so and demolishing their homes and farms in the process.

In addition, Israel is in the process of building the Apartheid Wall through the West Bank, which, when completed, will expropriate 50% of Palestinian land in the West Bank, depriving farmers and families of their livelihoods and water supply, and making movement for Palestinians almost impossible.

The Wall breaches numerous international agreements, including the Fourth Geneva Convention’s articles on the destruction of land and/or property (article 53) and on collective punishment (article 33).

The Winnipeg General Strike

2009-05-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

By Jim Naylor

The Winnipeg General Strike is a landmark in North America by any measure. From mid-May to late June 1919 – for six weeks – about 35,000 workers – the bulk of Winnipeg’s labour force – walked off the job and risked hunger, blacklisting, and potential police and military repression. The event has often been commemorated by the labour movement in the city as it is this week; and sometimes more widely. There was, for instance, a tremendous exhibit in 1994 at the Manitoba Museum to mark the 75th anniversary, and a long-standing bus tour that many of you will have taken.

My favourite, though, was a small event – the unveiling of a plaque at City Hall in 1986 (not the Steelworkers’ plaque, but one placed there by Parks Canada to mark the event). It was a wonderful example of what the strike means, or doesn’t mean to different people. The speakers were, if I remember correctly, Judy Wasylycia-Leis (now an NDP MP), who spoke about the Gainers meat packing strike that was going on at the same time in Edmonton and suggesting that they were, in essence, part of the same struggle for workers’ rights. This is generically true, I suppose (and raising the banner of solidarity was of course a good thing) but doesn’t really say anything specific about the events of 1919. Next up was Jake Epp, the Manitoba Tory MP and minister of health in the Mulroney government. He suggested that there was a time, long ago, when workers and bosses fought (although he managed to use none of those words), but we live in a more civilized society now. Then was Mayor Bill Norrie, who used the occasion to talk mainly about the rebuilding the Nairn Avenue overpass. Clearly, for these two, the faster the strike was forgotten, the better. The other thing I remember about the event was that they had dressed someone up in a period Mountie costume who stood around looking a bit self-conscious (although I may have been projecting that). Anyhow, I felt this was in considerable bad taste, considering that the RCMP was formed from the NWMP and the Dominion Police in the aftermath of the Winnipeg strike specifically and overtly to fight such uprisings for workers’ rights.

Anyhow, the 1986 event was a clear example of the way the general strike lived on in Winnipeg as a touchstone of class conflict (or the kind of liberal denial of social classes and class struggle), but also without very much clear discussion of what really happened in 1919, and what specifically we might learn.

First of all, 90 years is a long time. As we try to draw lessons, we have to be careful not to take events out of context. The general strike took place at a specific and extraordinary moment in world history, in the aftermath of World War I, at that time the most destructive war in history and by almost any measure, among the most pointless. A combination of factors – rapid industrialization before and during the war, full employment during the war that had given workers bargaining power that they had never had before, and of course the war itself, in which workers were promised democracy but received only greater and greater restrictions on workers’ freedoms, along with mass death on the front lines — were an explosive combination pretty much everywhere.

This was an era of revolutions in Russia, Germany and Hungary, In US, there was a general strike in Seattle, a strike of over 300,000 steel workers (most notably immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who had been largely shunned by the official trade union movement), 400,000 coal miners struck, 120,000 textile workers, 50,000 men’s clothing workers. One in five of all American wage workers struck in 1919.

In Canada, a similar wave of strikes took place in every region of the country. Without wanting to diminish the centrality or the drama of the Winnipeg strike, Winnipeg was hardly alone. At least 20 cities in Canada from Victoria to Amherst, Nova Scotia, experienced general or near general strikes in 1919. And, it is worth noting, these were not simply strikes in sympathy with Winnipeg, but generally were locally rooted struggles parallel to the one taking place here. To the extent that strikes did not develop successfully, it was because demands were often won, or electoral breakthroughs made in municipal elections (or in the case of Ontario, provincially, with the defeat of the Tories and the election of a farmer-labour government) and workers were willing to wait and see what might be achieved on that front. It is worth noting that industrial action and electoral action was not necessarily seen as opposed to each other.

This context is important for many reasons, but it is crucial to understanding the strike itself. The mainstream understanding of the strike is that it was about collective bargaining and helped secure it for Manitoba workers. This is what it says on the Steelworkers’ plaque at City Hall. Well, it was sort of about collective bargaining. What prompted the strike was the refusal of employers to negotiate with federations of metal trades workers and of building trades workers. Interestingly, they had dealt before with individual craft unions, but were balking at the emergence of incipient industrial or general workers’ unions.

I should point out that collective bargaining meant something different then, or at least had a different flavour than it does now. The collective bargaining system that we now have prohibits things like the Winnipeg General Strike. Sympathy strikes and strikes during collective agreements are banned. In 1919, that would have been seen as a restraint on workers’ power that prohibited true collective bargaining.

By the spring of 1919, in fact, Winnipeg had come close to a general strike on three previous occasions over the preceding couple of years. Most importantly, in 1918, about 15,000 Winnipeggers had joined an escalating strike movement in support of the newly organized civic workers. The 1919 strike started after the local Trades and Labour Council (as it was called at the time) organized a referendum in which members of affiliates voted 11,000 to 500 in favour of a sympathetic strike.
What is notable, though, is that well over twice that many, and probably three times, walked out. Most of the strikers were not even members of unions; certainly the possibility of forming a stable union, let alone achieving recognition from employers, was remote for many of them. At the very least, any direct (or even very indirect) benefits for huge numbers of the strikers are hard to glean.

For this reason, I would argue that the event was in many ways more of a local (and potentially regional and national) revolt than a strike. It was both the product of pent up anger, but also of a broad and vaguely defined hope for a better world. This was, in part, rooted in the war itself. As the war progressed, governments and ideologues made increasing reference to the war having some greater purpose. Given the level of sacrifice and suffering, there was a sense that something new and better had to emerge from it. There was a sense, as one worker told a royal commission struck to study the 1919 labour uprising, that Canadian workers “were under the impression that something was promised them but they did not know what.” In part, workers began to take claims that the war was being fought for democracy seriously, but in their own way. To them, democracy meant not just formal processes, but a real (if in many cases vague) reorganization of social relations in the workplace and in communities. And they knew their bosses and war-time profiteering politicians well enough to understand that if democracy was going to come, they had to grab it themselves.

So collective bargaining was an issue, but as much as anything else, it was the catalyst for a much broader struggle. This can be seen by looking at two key groups who stood outside of the officially defined trade union movement for the most part: immigrant workers and returned soldiers. Both, in their own ways, were wildcards in this struggle. They were workers, no doubt, but as we know working-class unity is potentially a fragile thing and could easily have fractured. Indeed, what is astounding about 1919 was the way in which it came together since both immigrant workers and returned soldiers had reasons to be resentful of the trade union movement in the months before the strike. How class identity was able to overcome these fractures might be something we can discuss, since 1919 is an important case.

There is a tendency to think of the Winnipeg Strike as a battle between the working-class North End and the bourgeois south part of the city. This is not particularly accurate. Certainly the leaders of the strike committee, and most members of unions, did not live in the North End. They lived in the British working-class neighbourhoods of Fort Rouge, the West End, and Weston, among others. These neighbourhoods were where many of the incidents of the strike — conflicts over milk and bread deliveries, and so on — took place. There were, of course, organized workers in the North End but, significantly, a huge proportion of those unorganized workers who downed their tools were the largely Eastern European workers from the North End. And they did so in spite of the various exclusions they had faced. The last months of the war, in particular, had seen vicious attacks on immigrants and attempts to exclude them from the better jobs that many of them had moved into during the wartime labour shortage. Many such immigrants, politicized by the long struggle against Tsarism and against anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, and inspired by developments there in the previous two years, were able to look past this and recognize at least a common enemy in the bosses.

This was the case despite the difficulty the strike leadership had in addressing the specific interests and identities of Eastern Europeans immigrants. The strike leaders responded strongly to the overt bigotry of the anti-strike Citizens’ Committee of 1000 and the city’s newspapers although, frankly, they rarely articulated demands that specifically addressed the plight of Winnipeg’s non-British immigrant workers, beyond the somewhat dubious (given the history of the British empire) call for “British justice” for all. Still, in the context of the strike opponents’ attempts to paint anything such immigrants said or did as treasonous, it was a way of saying, in 1919, that “no one is illegal.” As well, we have to note that the fact that few non-Anglo workers were in the official strike leadership was the product of both prejudice and the fact that their official presence would have ensured their deportation (there is some evidence that “ethnic” leaders like Jake Penner were de facto participants in leading the strike). And the rough inclusion of immigrant workers (immigrants from Britain were not considered immigrants at the time) was important since the strike, I think, did help restructure relations between workers of different ethnicities in important and lasting ways. I should add that the role of socialists affiliated, for the most part, to the various “language” organizations attached to the Social Democratic Party of Canada, as well as other leftists, was probably central to the success of the strike in the North End.

The returned soldiers were an even greater unknown. In January 1919 a full scale anti-immigrant, anti-“Bolshevik” riot had broken out in Winnipeg made up largely of returned soldiers. They marched to the Swift meatpacking plant to get them to fire immigrant workers (“enemy aliens”) and they attacked a socialist memorial meeting for Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and then spent two days roaming the streets of the North End, attacking immigrants, smashing windows, breaking into homes and stores, demanding to see naturalization papers, and making people kiss the Union Jack. The local daily papers supported them. Certainly returned soldiers were generally anxious about their jobs and futures and could be potentially set against those who hadn’t fought in Europe and particularly immigrants. However, in the strike, veterans split largely along class lines.

Through the strike there were parades of pro-and anti-strike veterans. A major concern of the strike committee, which was concerned about avoiding excuses for military intervention, was to prevent these parades from ever meeting. It was a silent march organized by returned soldiers that was attacked by the mounted police and irregular “specials” on Bloody Saturday.

The point I want to make is about the significance of class. Despite deep divisions, the common interests of workers were identified and allowed for a degree of unity that surprised, probably, everybody. I think that this is significant now, in an era when many sometimes think of class as simply another social identity, and a focus on class is sometimes seen as avoiding, denigrating, or marginalizing other struggles. But there is no reason to think of this as a zero-sum game. Common participation in a movement for working-class ends demonstrated in practice how diverse and complex class was. While not pretending for a minute that prejudice was adequately addressed, or that deep gender divisions and expectations were undone, the labour movement that came out of the strike was less narrowly Anglo and male that it was going in. An essentially class event enhanced, rather than undermined, the struggles of those who faced other forms of oppression.

This is an interesting and important point because earlier generations of socialists, and particularly Marxists, have been tarred with the brush of working-class essentialism, of seeing only working-class struggles as important and ignoring others. The charge is not entirely unjustified, and is probably true the Anglo male socialists who led the strike. My point here is that real events tend to break out of that narrow box, by putting other issues on the agenda. And, indeed they were downplayed in many ways in 1919.

Speaking of how we remember the strike, this is interesting and important, because in the labour movement our understanding of the strike is shaped, largely, by intervening organizations who, in a sense, remembered it for us. The strike lives today largely because every working-class current in Winnipeg claimed the strike as its own. The plaque I spoke of earlier, at least according to the website, points to the strike as leading to the CCF (and, by extension, I suppose, the NDP). Certainly the Communist Party, along with the picture of the North End as the home of the strike, similarly drew such connections. And, although it died out in the decades after the strike, the One Big Union – a significant union at least in Winnipeg, where it was led by R.B. Russell – has a strong claim for a connection since it, too, was a product of “1919.”

Well, they are all right, and wrong. A clear genealogy can be found in each case, which is hardly surprising in that the Winnipeg General Strike was general, and no working-class political current could exist without a deep relationship to it. And, of course, the period was one of a deep radicalization, reflected in all sorts of ways. Attention is often drawn to several events. In Winnipeg, there were a series of meetings – the most famous was the Walker theatre meeting that took place the December before the strike. It was cosponsored by the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC) and the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council, and one after another leaders of each, and of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as well, denounced the federal government’s suppression of civil liberties during the strike and expressed their solidarity with the Russian revolution. The 1700 people present (made up of both Anglos and Eastern European immigrants) passed a series of revolutions and cheered the Russian Soviet Republic, declared their solidarity with the German Revolution, and spoke of a working-class future.

The other key event was the Western Labour Conference, held in Calgary just two months before the general strike. The Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council had sent two prominent SPCers, R.B. Russell and R.J. Johns, as its delegates (they played central roles at the Calgary Conference). This was a meeting, essentially, of the entire Western Canadian labour movement, which decided to organize general strikes against the imperialist attack on the Russian Revolution and in favour of the 6 hour day, and decided to begin the process of forming a separate revolutionary union movement, the One Big Union.

What is interesting, though, is the connection between all of this and the Winnipeg strike. The strike leadership (including many SPCers) repeatedly played down the connection with radicalism, repeatedly stressing that the aims were quite limited in terms of collective bargaining. The strike’s opponents, the Citizens’ Committee of 1000, on the other hand, termed it a revolution, worse: a revolution led by foreigners. This has led to a rather odd dichotomy in its aftermath: a debate about whether the event was a strike or a revolution. The bulk of an earlier generation of historians of the strike (from the 1950s to the 1970s) came from the CCF-NDP tradition and argued that it was simply a strike for limited social goals. Indeed, the notion that it was an attempt at a revolutionary seizure of power soon disappeared from the agenda.

As I’ve suggested, though, it was neither. During the strike, the strike leadership played down any broader socialist claims. In part this was a defensive reaction to the unrestrained red baiting of the opponents of the strike who attempted to use the foreign Bolshevik claim to delegitimize the claims of the original strikers, and to turn the returned soldiers against the strike. The extreme volatility of the returned soldiers added to the strike leadership’s defensiveness, as did the very real fear of martial law and military action against the strikers. The War Measures Act was still in effect; constructing the event as an uprising led by enemy alien revolutionaries was clearly a means of creating the conditions for repression. Consequently, strikers were told to do nothing.

This, though, is only part of the explanation. The strike was led by socialists of various stripes. Prominent members of the SPC and SDPC played central roles. These parties were revolutionary parties in the sense that they saw capitalism as unreformable and that it was necessary to replace it with socialist society run by workers. It was unclear to them, though, how the general strike fitted into this process. For socialists of this era, the development of socialism was an organic process that required both the development of appropriate social conditions as well as the working-class education. Their goal was “making socialists” through education. The strike was, for them, potentially as much of a hindrance as an opportunity. In any case, there was little evidence to them that Winnipeg workers were ready for socialism. The general strike was perceived as a more narrowly economic struggle, as an ordinary strike writ large.

It is easy to overstate this, though, since this perception was already changing. The SDPC, which surpassed the SPC in size in Winnipeg, rejected the refusal of the SPC to address issues of strategy. The Calgary Convention in March had raised the issue of striking for explicitly political ends, and the Winnipeg Strike was, in itself, a massive event in political education. Whether in Victoria Park, or around the city, an estimated 171 mass meetings took place. It was an exercise, in itself, of a kind of democracy that far outstripped the restrained, drop-a-piece-of-paper-into-the-ballot-box-once-every-few-years kind of democracy. But there seems to have been little thinking about how, strategically, the strike could be built and broadened to provide a real kind of political defeat for Canadian capitalism. The opportunity did, in fact, present itself. With broad strike movements across much of the country, and the possibility that the railway running trades could strike and carry the strike to even the smallest centres, an even broader challenge was quite possible. At times, it was even likely. But it was never clearly posed or discussed by the socialist leadership at the time (to be fair, the political parties, the SPC and SDPC were hardly national organizations). The SPC had never had a national convention and the SDPC was more or less a coalition of groups.

This relates to the political legacy. Although all claimed it, the political organizations that formed in its wake were often formed in an attempt to provide a more effective political strategy. Ian Angus, in the May-June 2009 issue of Canadian Dimension argues, correctly as far as it goes, that the Communist Party was an attempt to provide that leadership. He is incorrect in suggesting that “most of the leaders” of the strike joined the CP, but the connection he suggests is quite real; the CP represented a new socialist strategy developed by those who had, in many cases, been socialist militants before the strike and, no doubt, many who had been radicalized by it.

In fact the left in Winnipeg in the aftermath of the general strike was large, diverse, and fascinating; they drew many different conclusions about the strike. The socialist leadership of the strike ended up, in the short term at least, in the One Big Union and in the Independent Labour Party. It was the latter that made important electoral breakthrough as several of them were elected, from jail, to the Manitoba Legislature. The fact that the ILP was an electoral party and that it eventually joined the CCF when it emerged in the 1930s, does not mean that they should simply be dismissed as social democrats. They still talked about revolutionary change. They ran in elections, but, for a time in the 1930s, disaffiliated from the CCF because of what they considered its non-working-class composition and sentiments. The OBU played an important role politically and culturally. They brought in a speaker – Marshall Gauvin – who gave anti-religious speeches (among other topics) at the Metropolitan Theatre every Sunday night for decades. A Women’s Labour organization formed and debated the role of women and women’s activism in many fields. The CP, of course, had its whole range of activities. All of this was not simply the product of the general strike — Winnipeg had a healthy labour and socialist culture going into it — but this culture was stronger, and more pluralistic, coming out of it.

So the strike didn’t, in some way, create either the CP (the Russian Revolution did that), or the CCF or NDP (contrary to Angus’s comments, current historians of the strike do not argue that it gave birth to the CCF). General strikes and NDP, of course, do not fit easily in the same sentence. And, the radicalism and spirit of revolt present in the strike were directed not just against capital, but frankly against the trade union officialdom of the day. This is not to say there are not connections. The strike lead to many things and its significance was hotly debated in the 1920s and 1930s just as we are doing now.

In the aftermath of the strike, there were show trials that are worth commenting on. Those who were arrested and tried (some immigrants were simply arrested and deported under the new and rapidly passed immigration act), were not in fact tried for any activities during the strike. They were tried for their ideas. The Canadian state put socialism on trial. They were charged for possessing the Communist Manifesto, for having attended the Walker Theatre meeting, etc. The state tried to criminalize their ideas. And it blew up in their faces. Some of the parallels to today – of labeling ideas and organizations as “terrorist” and criminalizing them – are apparent. But the defendants used the occasion of the trial (and their imprisonment) to publicize their ideas. Pritchard’s address to the jury is a wonderful case in point. It was published and very widely distributed. Ironically, despite the socialist strike’s leadership difficulty in connecting the strike to the broader struggle for socialism, the strike was a breakthrough for Marxist ideas in Winnipeg and beyond. And the very example of the strike demonstrated that there was a political subject – labour – capable of taking over a city and perhaps much more.

Jim Naylor teaches History at Brandon University. This is a slightly edited version of a talk presented on May 8, 2009 in Winnipeg at the “Rekindling the Spirit of 1919” event organized by MayWorks.

Capitalism and the flu

2009-05-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

Mike Davis, whose 2006 book The Monster at Our Door warned of the threat of a global bird flu pandemic, explains how globalized agribusiness set the stage for a frightening outbreak of the swine flu in Mexico.

THE SPRING Break hordes returned from Cancún this year with an invisible but sinister souvenir.

The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the fecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the whole world a fever. Initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection rate already traveling at higher velocity than the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

Stealing the limelight from our officially appointed assassin—the otherwise vigorously mutating H5N1, known as bird flu—this porcine virus is a threat of unknown magnitude. Certainly, it seems far less lethal than SARS in 2003, but as an influenza, it may be more durable than SARS and less inclined to return to its secret cave.

Given that domesticated seasonal Type-A influenzas kill as many 1 million people each year, even a modest increment of virulence, especially if coupled with high incidence, could produce carnage equivalent to a major war.

Meanwhile, one of its first victims has been the consoling faith, long preached in the pews of the World Health Organization (WHO), that pandemics can be contained by the rapid responses of medical bureaucracies, independent of the quality of local public health.

Since the initial H5N1 deaths in Hong Kong in 1997, the WHO, with the support of most national health services, has promoted a strategy focused on the identification and isolation of a pandemic strain within its local radius of outbreak, followed by a thorough dousing of the population with anti-viral drugs and (if available) a vaccine.

An army of skeptics has rightly contested this viral counter-insurgency approach, pointing out that microbes can now fly around the world (quite literally in the case of avian flu) faster than the WHO or local officials can react to the original outbreak. They also pointed to the primitive, often nonexistent surveillance of the interface between human and animal diseases.

But the mythology of bold, preemptive (and cheap) intervention against avian flu has been invaluable to the cause of rich countries, like the U.S. and Britain, which prefer to invest in their own biological Maginot Lines, rather than dramatically increase aid to epidemic frontlines overseas—as well as to Big Pharma, which has battled Third World demands for the generic, public manufacture of critical antivirals like Roche’s Tamiflu.

The swine flu, in any case, may prove that the WHO/Centers for Disease Control (CDC) version of pandemic preparedness—without massive new investment in surveillance, scientific and regulatory infrastructure, basic public health and global access to lifeline drugs—belongs to the same class of Ponzified risk management as AIG derivatives and Madoff securities.

It isn’t so much that the pandemic warning system has failed as it simply doesn’t exist, even in North America and the EU.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Mexico lacks both capacity and political will to monitor livestock diseases and their public health impacts, but the situation is hardly better north of the border, where surveillance is a failed patchwork of state jurisdictions, and corporate livestock producers treat health regulations with the same contempt with which they deal with workers and animals.

Similarly, a decade of urgent warnings by scientists in the field has failed to ensure the transfer of sophisticated viral assay technology to the countries in the direct path of likely pandemics. Mexico has world-famous disease experts, but it had to send swabs to a laboratory in Winnipeg (which has less than 3 percent of the population of Mexico City) in order to identify the strain’s genome. Almost a week was lost as a consequence.

But no one was less alert than the legendary disease controllers in Atlanta. According to the Washington Post, the CDC did not learn about the outbreak until six days after the Mexican government had begun to impose emergency measures. Indeed, the Post reported, “U.S. public health officials are still largely in the dark about what’s happening in Mexico two weeks after the outbreak was recognized.”

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –

THERE SHOULD be no excuses. This is not a “black swan” flapping its wings. Indeed, the central paradox of this swine flu panic is that while totally unexpected, it was accurately predicted.

Six years ago, Science dedicated a major story (reported by the admirable Bernice Wuethrich) to evidence that “after years of stability, the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary fast track.”

Since its identification at the beginning of the Depression, H1N1 swine flu had only drifted slightly from its original genome. Then, in 1998, all hell broke loose.

A highly pathogenic strain began to decimate sows on a factory hog farm in North Carolina, and new, more virulent versions began to appear almost yearly, including a weird variant of H1N1 that contained the internal genes of H3N2 (the other type-A flu circulating among humans).

Researchers whom Wuethrich interviewed worried that one of these hybrids might become a human flu (both the 1957 and 1968 pandemics are believed to have originated from the mixing of bird and human viruses inside pigs), and urged the creation of an official surveillance system for swine flu. That admonition, of course, went unheeded in a Washington prepared to throw away billions on bioterrorism fantasies while neglecting obvious dangers.

But what caused this acceleration of swine flu evolution? Probably the same thing that has favored the reproduction of avian flu.

Virologists have long believed that the intensive agricultural system of southern China—an immensely productive ecology of rice, fish, pigs, and domestic and wild birds—is the principal engine of influenza mutation: both seasonal “drift” and episodic genomic “shift.” (More rarely, there may occur a direct leap from birds to pigs and/or humans, as with H5N1 in 1997.)

But the corporate industrialization of livestock production has broken China’s natural monopoly on influenza evolution. As many writers have pointed out, animal husbandry in recent decades has been transformed into something that more closely resembles the petrochemical industry than the happy family farm depicted in schoolbooks.

In 1965, for instance, there were 53 million American hogs on more than 1 million farms; today, 65 million hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities—half with more than 5,000 animals.

This has been a transition, in essence, from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells, unprecedented in nature, containing tens, even hundreds of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems, suffocating in heat and manure, while exchanging pathogens at blinding velocity with their fellow inmates and pathetic progenies.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –

ANYONE WHO has ever driven through Tar Heel, N.C., or Milford, Utah—where Smithfield Foods subsidiaries each annually produce more than 1 million pigs as well as hundreds of lagoons full of toxic shit—will intuitively understand how profoundly agribusiness has meddled with the laws of nature.

Last year, a distinguished commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a landmark report on “industrial farm animal production” underscoring the acute danger that “the continual cycling of viruses…in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmission.”

The commission also warned that promiscuous antibiotic use in hog factories (a cheaper alternative to sewer systems or humane environments) was causing the rise of resistant Staph infections, while sewage spills were producing nightmare E. coli outbreaks and Pfisteria blooms (the doomsday protozoan that has killed more than 1 billion fish in the Carolina estuaries and sickened dozens of fishermen).

Any amelioration of this new pathogen ecology, however, would have to confront the monstrous power exercised by livestock conglomerates such as Smithfield Foods (pork and beef) and Tyson (chickens). The Pew commissioners, chaired by former Kansas Gov. John Carlin, reported systemic obstruction of their investigation by corporations, including blatant threats to withhold funding from cooperative researchers.

Moreover, this is a highly globalized industry, with equivalent international political clout. Just as Bangkok-based chicken giant Charoen Pokphand was able to suppress investigations into its role in the spread of bird flu throughout Southeast Asia, so it is likely that the forensic epidemiology of the swine flu outbreak will pound its head against the corporate stone wall of the pork industry.

This is not to say that a smoking gun will never be found: there is already gossip in the Mexican press about an influenza epicenter around a huge Smithfield subsidiary in the state of Veracruz.

But what matters more (especially given the continued threat of H5N1) is the larger configuration: the WHO’s failed pandemic strategy, the further decline of world public health, the stranglehold of Big Pharma over lifeline medicines, and the planetary catastrophe of industrialized and ecologically unhinged livestock production.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
This article is reproduced from the US Socialist Worker

The Israel Boycott is Biting

2009-05-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

By NADIA HIJAB

On May 4, protesters will greet Motorola shareholders, already disgruntled by the company's losses, as they arrive for their annual meeting at the Rosemont Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

The protest, organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is part of a drive to "Hang Up On Motorola" until it ends sales of communications and other products that support Israel's military occupation of Palestinian land.

Inside the meeting, the Presbyterian, United Methodist and other churches will urge shareholders to support their resolution, which calls for corporate standards grounded in international law. Doing the right thing could also reduce the risk of "consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns and lawsuits."

Although Motorola executives deny it, such risks must have played a part in their decision to sell the department making bomb fuses shortly after Human Rights Watch teams found shrapnel with Motorola serial numbers at some of the civilian sites bombed by Israel in its December-January assault on Gaza.

The US protests are part of a growing global movement that has taken international law into its own hands because governments have not. And, especially since the attacks on Gaza, the boycotts have been biting. There are three reasons why.

First, boycotts enable ordinary citizens to take direct action. For instance, the New York group Adalah decided to target diamond merchant Lev Leviev, whose profits are plowed into colonizing the West Bank. During the Christmas season, they sing carols with the words creatively altered to urge shoppers to boycott his Madison Avenue store.

The British group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine teamed up with Adalah NY and others to exert public pressure on the British government regarding Leviev. The British Embassy in Tel Aviv recently cancelled plans to rent premises from Leviev's company Africa-Israel.

There are other results. Activists in Britain have targeted the supermarket chain Tesco to stop the sales of Israeli goods produced in settlements. In a video of one such action -- over 38,000 YouTube views to date -- Welsh activists load up a trolley with settlement products and push it out of the shop without paying.

All the while, they calmly explain to the camera just what they are doing and why. They talk away as they pour red paint over the produce, and as British Bobbies quietly lead them away to a police van.

The result of such consumer boycotts? A fifth of Israeli producers have reported a drop in demand since the assault on Gaza, particularly in Britain and Scandinavia.

The second reason boycotts are more effective is the visible role of Jewish human rights advocates, making it harder for Israel to argue that these actions are anti-Semitic.

For example, British architect Abe Hayeem, an Iraqi Jew, describes in a passionate column in The Guardian exactly how Leviev tramples on Palestinian rights, and warns Israeli architects involved in settlements that they will be held to account by their international peers.

In the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has led an ongoing campaign to stop Caterpillar from selling bulldozers to Israel, which militarizes them and uses them in home demolitions and building the separation wall.

The third, key, reason for the growing success of this global movement is the determined leadership of Palestinian civil society. The spark was lit at the world conference against racism in Durban in 2001. In 2004, Palestinian civil society launched an academic and cultural boycott that is having an impact.

In 2005, over 170 Palestinian civil society coalitions, organizations, and unions, from the occupied territories, within Israel, and in exile issued a formal call for an international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) until Israel abides by international law. The call sets out clear goals for the movement and provides a framework for action.

In November 2008, Palestinian NGOs helped convene an international BDS conference in Bilbao, Spain, to adopt common actions. This launched a "Derail Veolia" campaign. That French multinational corporation, together with another French company, Alstom, is building a light railway linking East Jerusalem to illegal settlements.

The light rail project was cited by the Swedish national pension fund in its decision to exclude Alstom from its $15 billion portfolio, and by the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in its decision not to consider further Veolia's bid for a $1.9 billion waste improvement plan. There were active grassroots campaigns in both areas.

Other hits: Veolia lost the contract to operate the city of Stockholm subway and an urban network in Bordeaux. Although these were reportedly "business decisions" there were also activist campaigns in both places. The Galway city council in Ireland decided to follow Stockholm's example. Meanwhile, Connex, the company that is supposed to operate the light rail, is being targeted by activists in Australia.

The "Derail Veolia" campaign has been the movement's biggest success to date. Veolia and its subsidiaries are estimated to have lost as much as $7.5 billion.

As one of the BDS movement leaders, Omar Barghouti, put it, "When companies start to lose money, then they listen." Perhaps governments will too.

Nadia Hijab is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies.

May Day 2009: Their Crisis and Ours

2009-04-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

As we mark International Workers’ Day this year, an economic crisis is sweeping the world. It promises to be the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s and it has major implications for workers and oppressed people.

For the minority of wage-earners organized in unions, the limited protections won by past efforts are being eroded. Many corporate employers will try to use the concessions extracted from auto assembly plant workers by the Detroit 3 to pressure workers into opening up contracts in the name of “competitiveness.” Public sector workers will be told that they must give concessions, just like private sector workers. The majority of workers not in unions are in an even worse position, with no protection but pathetically weak employment standards laws.

Workplace pension plans – funded by workers’ deferred wages – were already suffering from employer contribution holidays and have been hit hard. Over 400,000 jobs in Canada have been lost already and the official employment rate stands at 8%, a 7-year high, and rising. For young workers, it’s a staggering 14.8%. The Bank of Canada estimates that another half a million jobs will be lost this year. Since the Bank has consistently underestimated the depth of this crisis, we can bet that the numbers will be higher still.

Faced with this onslaught, resistance is difficult but vital. Unions and community groups must organize and support each other in fighting back against layoffs, demands for concessions, racist scapegoating, deportations of undocumented people, public service cuts, and other regressive attacks.

The economic crisis provides an opening to build support for progressive reforms like meaningful improvements to Employment Insurance, social assistance and CPP and the creation of universal public child care and prescription drug coverage. Mobilizing for upcoming rallies and actions called by the Canadian Labour Congress to demand action on the economic crisis is one way to do this.

But a round of rallies is clearly not enough. To begin to rise to the challenge, unions and social justice groups need to start becoming much more active, militant and democratically member-run. They also need to be explaining how the economic crisis is caused by a profit-driven system and why working people shouldn’t pay for it.

Unfortunately, capitalism’s crisis exposes another crisis: in Canada , supporters of this kind of response have almost never been weaker in numbers and influence than we are at the moment. It’s high time that people who agree on the need to build serious mass struggles for radical social change and who recognize that capitalism is responsible for today’s ghastly social and ecological crises start to come together. Supporters of the New Socialist Group are committed to working with others to help make this happen.

Executive of the New Socialist Group

Reframing the Warin Afghanistan and Pakistanas a Class War

2009-04-25T12:08:00.001-07:00

By Michael Skinner

The fact that the Taliban is a party of the peasant classes, but certainly not the only one, is not news in Afghanistan or Pakistan. It is thus interesting that The New York Times (“Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan,” 16 April 2009) is now exploiting the fact the Taliban do represent significant groups of peasants as if this is news. This indication of a possible reframing of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a class war is significant as the U.S. escalates the intensity and scale of warfare in the region.

My Afghan-Canadian research partner, Hamayon Rastgar, has said many times since we returned from a research trip in Afghanistan that “the West gives the monopoly of anti-imperialism to the Taliban” by crushing and continuing to suppress socialist forces in Afghanistan and by portraying the complex insurgency in the simplistic way Western governments and media do.

Many non-violent resisters as well as various insurgent groups oppose the Taliban, the mujaheddin, and imperialist forces. The complexity of the resistance and insurgent forces remain opaque to most Western analysts. Articles by Afghan intellectuals engaged in non-violent resistance against all the forces of repression – the Taliban, the mujaheddin, and the Western forces – are rarely translated for Western readers. Westerners believe all insurgents are under a Taliban banner. However, as an Afghan Maoist leader told us: “The government credits the Taliban for every insurgent attack; the Taliban like to take the credit; and that works for everyone else at this moment.”

Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan State

It is important to recall that the militaries of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), from the U.S., Britain, Canada, and Australia, set the stage to institute a supposedly ‘democratic’ state in Afghanistan. However, this state is a reconstitution of the theocratic Islamic Republic of Afghanistan originally instituted in 1992. The Islamic Republic was instituted by one of several competing mujaheddin factions who were built up as part of the U.S.'s anti-socialist “freedom fighters.” The later rise of the Talban, facilitated as it was by the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA, the ISI, was in good part a response to the horrors inflicted on Afghans by conflicts between the rival mujaheddin factions after 1992. Several of these factions retreated to the north, in 1996, fleeing from the advance of Taliban military forces. These mujaheddin factions formed the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, which the Western news media sanitised with the title Northern Alliance.

In an article in Briarpatch (March/April 2008) regarding the use and abuse of feminism to sell Canada’s war in Afghanistan, I wrote: “The Taliban are radical Islamists intent on isolating Afghans from the world; the mujaheddin are radical Islamists intent on profiting from their relationship to the U.S. and now Canada. The Taliban are reprehensible, but the mujaheddin are hardly different; both created misogynistic regimes based on erroneous interpretations of Islam.”

The Taliban and mujaheddin also share a hatred of ‘Godless’ socialists. It is still illegal, based on religious grounds, as it has been since 1992, to form a socialist party in the elected theocracy of Afghanistan. Freedom of religion is supposedly guaranteed by the new Afghanistan constitution. But in practice the state acts in a way that all Afghans are considered Muslim by default. This misses the incredible cultural diversity in Afghanistan, and the many religions including several unique indigenous ones, that Afghans practice. Moreover, socialists (which include an important organized Maoist component) are not likely to have suddenly found salvation in Islam. There is, it seems, no Islamic equivalent of Latin American liberation theology or Canadian Christian socialism in Afghanistan.

The kicker is that in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan apostasy is punishable by death. Any Afghan socialist could be ‘legally’ executed on the grounds she or he has converted from Islam. Moreover, the Afghan Supreme Court ruled socialists are legally atheists to ban socialist parties from electoral politics.

Despite this suppression, Afghan Maoists claim they have consolidated disparate Maoist and socialist organisations into a new party. The Maoists also claim they will eventually beat the Taliban in a competition for the hearts and minds of peasants, once the insurgency has exhausted the OEF-NATO occupation, which even Afghan liberals consider as an imperialist occupation.

Even Michael Ignatieff (2003), in his book Empire Lite, which is a collection of his New York Times essays, explicitly identifies the occupation of Afghanistan as imperialist. Ignatieff just happens to think this imperialist occupation is “humanitarian,” because, he argues, imposing a liberal world order in Central Asia is preferable to allowing people he claims are “barbarians” the autonomy to govern their own affairs. The fact that the hierarchical priorities of this liberal world order rank the accumulation of state power and individual wealth far above observation of international laws and human rights is, for Ignatieff, an inconvenient but unavoidable truth. Ignatieff’s complaint is that this empire needs to throw its weight around more forcefully to establish liberal world order – an argument the Obama administration seems to be implementing.

The New York Times and Class War

However, the powerful Western states are finally acknowledging the fact – made rather obvious by the events in recent weeks over applications of law with respect to women – that the ‘Global War on Terror,’ overtly being fought in Afghanistan and covertly in Pakistan since 7 October 2001, was never a war for the liberation of Afghan women. Now they seem to be reframing this imperialist war as a class war.

The prevailing narrative of the press, prior to The New York Times declaration of a class war, on 16 April 2009, was that Taliban leaders either physically or economically coerce peasants to fight as insurgents. Thus the article, written by Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, published online 16 April and on the front page of the New York print edition 17 April, represents a significant shift in the hegemonic narrative. Perlez and Zubair Shah claim the Taliban “have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants.” The writers claim the “Taliban’s ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency.” They cite an unnamed senior Pakistani official who states: “I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan,” which, according to the writers, “remains largely feudal.”

Perlez and Zubair Shah report that Pakistani-American lawyer, Mahboob Mahmood, who they add was a classmate of Barack Obama, states Pakistanis are “psychologically ready for a revolution.” The insurgents are “taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan,” according to the lawyer. He adds that the insurgents promise “Islamic justice, effective government and economic redistribution.”

When we visited Afghanistan in 2007, one of the narratives we frequently heard from Afghans, whether intellectual elites and students or workers and peasants, was that the complex insurgency was an anti-imperialist class war. We were told non-Taliban resistance and insurgent groups existed in parallel to the Islamic insurgency, which is far more complex than Western reports generally indicate. It is curious that it has taken so long for a major Western news source to begin to barely scratch the surface of a story of class conflict so obvious to Afghans.

This new narrative of class war, if it is picked up beyond The New York Times, might replace two faulty narratives previously observed in North American media. The first of these faulty narratives was that the Taliban are the only force oppressing women and a primary goal of defeating the Taliban is to liberate women. The fracturing of this narrative became evident in recent weeks as the truth that the mujaheddin, who Western forces rewarded with political and economic power in 2001, differ little from the Taliban.

Replacing the faulty narrative claiming Western forces are liberating Afghan women, an interim narrative that claims the supposedly backward people of the region are not ready to allow the Western powers to liberate women, has become evident in North American media in recent weeks. This narrative conveniently ignores the fact that many groups resisting misogyny are suppressed by the occupation itself. This narrative also ignores the facts of six decades of slow but consistent progress demanded by women during the peaceful interregnum of 1919 to 1979 between the British-Russian inter-imperialist wars and American-Soviet proxy war. This inter-bellum period of progress was problematic, but it did allow increasing space for women to effect their own liberation. This period culminated in legislation that, among other progressive initiatives, banned dowries for brides, protected freedom of choice within marriages, and enforced compulsory universal education for boys and girls.

However, progressive legislation and some of the ways it was clumsily and coercively implemented by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan government provided some of the sparks for the mobilization of Islamic forces in 1979. Islamic revolutionaries were subsequently supported by the U.S., and eventually sucked Soviet forces into Afghanistan to back the socialist government. Leaders of the Islamic revolution were rewarded for their service to the U.S. during the anti-socialist jihad. They were rewarded for their service to the American, British, Canadian, and Australian forces of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. And many of them continue to be rewarded by the parallel OEF and NATO missions that continue today.

Many of the leaders who now occupy power in the coalition backed Afghan government and positions of economic power were mujaheddin warlords. It is no surprise that they promote the ongoing oppression of women. As the reality that the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) was not fought to liberate Afghan women as part of the legitimation of the ‘War on Terror’ has become too obvious to deny, a new narrative to legitimate escalating the war is desperately needed.

The Obama Military Surge

If the example set by The New York Times is followed, we may soon see state and media agencies in the U.S., UK, and Canada shifting their war propaganda to suggest that the Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO forces fight to usurp the Taliban’s claim as liberators of the poor in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This argument is as threadbare as the propaganda Western forces were acting as liberators of women, and it is equally as likely to fail.

The Obama administration is deploying a military surge in Afghanistan pushing the combined total of OEF and NATO forces in Central Asia close to the 100,000 mark. The OEF forces also seem to be in preparation for an escalation of military activities not only in Pashtun regions of Pakistan, but also in Balochistan. An attack on Baloch Pakistanis could draw Baloch insurgents from Iran and western Afghanistan into the war. This could provide a pretext to attack eastern Iran and establish OEF and NATO forces in the yet impenetrable Baloch province of Nimroz in the far west of Afghanistan.

An invasion of northern Pakistan seems ever more imminent, given the failures of escalating covert actions. State agencies and news media have for some time been fanning fears by suggesting Taliban forces will seize Pakistani nuclear arms. Since the first U.S. presidential debate, Obama has stated he would not hesitate to bomb Pakistan if Pakistani nuclear weapons fell into the wrong hands.

Westerners may be led to fear a class war led by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the way they were previously led to fear the Taliban as misogynist Islamists. However, the real reasons for the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, remain the same as ever, the geopolitical manoeuvrings of a superpower to maximise state power and facilitate the accumulation of capitalist wealth. •

Michael Skinner is studying international relations at York University and is a long-time activist with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( The B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is nationalization of the banks good for us? Is it socialism?

2009-04-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

By Yen Chu

The financial crisis has prompted the nationalization of major banks in the United States and in several European countries. The move to nationalize has sent journalists proclaiming the arrival of socialism. “We Are All Socialists Now” was the cover story in the February 16th issue of Newsweek. The story claims that the nationalization of the banks by the Bush administration back in September is a strong sign of socialism.

Unfortunately, socialism is not just around the corner. While nationalization can be an aspect of socialism, it has also occurred under capitalism. As George Bush said when he moved to nationalize, “These measures are not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it.” But while the government works to preserve the free market, the working class is left to suffer the effects of the crisis. Although no Canadian banks are facing nationalization, the nationalizations in the US and Europe raise the issue of what consequences these measures have on capitalism and what potential it has for the left.

Nationalization occurs when private firms are taken into state ownership. Traditionally, nationalization meant that an enterprise simply became state-owned and operated. The implication is that private interests lose out on the profits. Profitable nationalized industries can generate a lot of revenue for government coffers and some on the Left believe this can benefit the working class if the government distributes that wealth. However, the working class doesn’t always benefit; the political and economic reality of nationalization is far more complex.

Capitalist Nationalization

Under capitalism, nationalization sometimes occurs when the private sector is unable to operate an industry, service or enterprise profitably. But because some enterprises are considered an economic priority, the government runs and operates them, such as VIA Rail. The working class does not have direct input into how these enterprises are operated and as such do not directly benefit from them.
Today, the term nationalization is often used loosely – the current “nationalization” of banks means that the government owns shares in these firms, but the capitalist owners still run them and receive the profits.

In the mainstream press and among capitalist economists, reaction to the recent “nationalization” in the financial sector has been mixed. There is an ideological debate over the role of government in the capitalist system. There are those free market purists who believe that any tiny speck of government interference is a whiff of socialism. They believe that everything from social services to public infrastructure must be left to the free market and that the system will sort itself out on its own without any government intervention. But most feel that the government needs to do whatever is necessary to save capitalism.

President Barack Obama is caught in the middle of this ideological debate. His administration has so far resisted calls for further nationalization and control of the banks. But there is pressure for further nationalization from members of the Democratic Party, some in the Republican Party and finance capitalists, including Alan Greenspan. They see nationalization as a temporary measure to overturn the crisis. Some point to bank nationalization in Japan and Sweden as examples of how bank nationalization can help overcome the crisis in capitalism. Once things stabilized in those countries, the banks went back to private ownership.

The Obama administration has not ruled out more nationalization, but it recognizes some of its dangerous implications for the capitalist marketplace. A New York Times article on January 26, 2009, quotes a political adviser saying that if the government is seen as owning the banks “the administration would come under enormous political pressure to halt foreclosures or lend money to ailing projects in cities or states with powerful constituencies.”

The key word here is political pressure. The government does not act in the interests of working people without significant pressure. With trillions of dollars going to the banks and financial sector, the US government can not avoid the issue of foreclosures without significant political backlash. It has implemented a foreclosure rescue plan that mostly subsidizes the bank into renegotiating mortgages. The plan, however, does not halt all foreclosures and does not address the issue of affordable housing.

Political pressure was used last December by workers in Chicago who occupied Republic Windows and Doors. Bank of America pulled the company’s credit even though the bank was partially nationalized through a $25 billion injection of capital by the government to encourage lending. This partial nationalization of the bank by the government did not automatically mean that the workers would be given what was owed to them. Instead, it was only through the workers taking direct action in occupying the company that Bank of America agreed to restore the credit in order for the company to issue the severance and vacation pay owing to them. The workers’ victory was bittersweet as they have been left unemployed. The trillions of dollars given to the banks is not trickling down to workers and the poor.

The current “nationalization” of the banks is not even a moderate social reform where there is the potential to improve the living conditions of the working class. It is the nationalization of the banks’ losses and not the banks themselves. Working people in the US are paying for the losses but receive no benefits.

Banks’ decrees affect our lives, but we have no control over these decisions. We deposit our money in banks and get very low rates of return. We have no say in how they use our deposits. They charge us inexplicable user fees for every transaction. We borrow money from them at very high interest rates and can become homeless when the banks refuse to renegotiate our loans when we become unemployed. We can become unemployed when the bank refuses credit to the company we work for. If we are workers in a company that goes bankrupt, we lose out to the banks, who get first claims on the company. We’re left without severance and vacation pay. Furthermore the banks refuse to set up branches in lower-income neighbourhoods, where residents end up relying on services such as Money Mart, which charges exorbitant fees to cash cheques and ridiculously high interest on pay day loans.

Democratic nationalization

Credit unions exist as an alternative to banking and offer some ideas and possibilities of what a democratic nationalization of banks could look like if financial institutions were nationalized and turned into public utilities. Credit unions are owned by the members who use the service. Members elect the board of directors who act on their behalf to oversee the operations of the credit union. Profits are used to ensure members get a higher rate of return on their deposits and are used to keep interest rates low.

Another alternative to the current banking system is participatory budgeting, which was first implemented in Porto Alegre, Brazil. There, the public was directly involved through public forums in the decision-making process of how public spending would be allocated and what projects to implement. In banking, the model of participatory budgeting would allow the public to actively participate in the decision making process of allocating credit, setting interest rates and determining the supply of money in the economy.

However, both credit unions and participatory budgeting have their limitations. Neither model address the issue of workers’ control and both highlight the limitations of a democratic nationalization of banks within a capitalist system, as they must operate within the framework of capitalism. Credit unions, for instance, were hurt along with the commercial banks when the value of hedge funds plunged. In Porto Alegre, participants had to make decisions on where to make cuts to social programs. Furthermore, if other industries are still privately owned, workers’
exploitation still remains.

Democratic nationalization does not automatically lead to socialism. Socialism is not simply the redistribution of wealth; it is about building the capacity for workers to run the political and economic life of society. It is only through strong social movements that democratic nationalization and the move toward socialism is possible. The current way in which banks are being rescued through “nationalization” should not be endorsed by people opposed to neoliberalism. But these new circumstances offer an opportunity to challenge the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the free market – and the capitalist system that gave rise to it.

Yen Chu is a member of No One is Illegal-Toronto.

Corporate elite settles an old score

2009-04-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

By Linda McQuaig

By any logic, advocates of unfettered capitalism should be seeking cover from public wrath these days, as the deregulated capitalism they foisted on us continues to self-destruct, bringing calamity into the lives of millions.
Yet I've heard barely a whisper of mea culpa from members of this corporate crowd.
On the contrary, they seem to see the economic meltdown as an opportunity to finally do in their old foes in the labour movement.
After years of demonizing unions and undermining workers' rights, they're now taking advantage of the unpopularity of the auto bail-outs to try to take away gains that the Canadian Auto Workers spent decades achieving, and that set a standard for the labour movement.
In demanding wage concessions of up to $19 an hour, auto company executives and the Harper government are hoping to deflect public anger for the economic meltdown onto those who assemble cars. (If only GM workers hadn't frittered away their time on the assembly line bundling together those Credit Derivative Swaps.)
In reality, it isn't the auto workers, but the economic meltdown, that has plunged auto industries all over the world into a slump. Since these industries are crucial to national economies, they're being bailed out everywhere. But, as the CAW notes, only in North America are the bailouts accompanied by demands for wage concessions – even though German and Japanese auto workers earn more than their North American counterparts.
Meanwhile, debate about how to fix the slump is confined within the same old rigid doctrines. Public ownership remains taboo.
Sam Gindin, a former CAW economist who teaches at York University, argues that public ownership may be the answer in the case of the hundreds of auto supply plants that have been shut down in Ontario (and hundreds more facing imminent closure). Gindin insists Canada can't afford to lose this productive capacity, and proposes that closed plants be expropriated and turned over to a new public corporation.
These plants could become part of an ambitious government-directed project to convert us to a green economy – building the components for expanded public transit systems, redesigned machinery, appliances, electricity grids.
Such ambitious conversions have happened before. Gindin points out that from 1942 to 1944, GM auto plants were overhauled to enable GM to become the world's largest producer of naval aircraft. After the war, they were quickly converted back to auto production.
But now, faced with the worst economic crisis since the Depression, we're led to believe the solution lies not in bold initiatives but in rolling back the gains of the labour movement.
The rest of us shouldn't be acquiescent as the auto workers are vilified for their aspirations to be well paid and secure in retirement. Isn't that what we all want?
The United Auto Workers (U.S. parent of the CAW) helped create the North American middle class. They led the way in the postwar years, winning innovations like annual cost-of-living increases, as they spearheaded the development of a strong union movement that ushered in the broadly shared prosperity of those decades.
The auto workers also provided funding for important social movements of women, students, environmentalists. They even put out a pamphlet back in 1949 arguing for smaller cars, citing the need for fuel efficiency.
No wonder the business elite has long had it out for them – and now want us to believe the only viable economic model is the one that has recently brought the world economy to its knees.
Linda McQuaig's column appears every other week. lmcquaig@sympatico.ca

Colonialism and theEconomic Crisis in Canada

2009-04-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

By Todd Gordon

The Left in Canada has been quick to point out the shortcomings of the Conservative government's official response to the recession. Not surprisingly, the response doesn't mark a departure from their knee-jerk pro-capital and anti-worker reflexes.

Critics have rightly stressed the small size of the stimulus plan; that a significant chunk of the supposed stimulus (50 percent) is actually tax breaks, and thus not really stimulus; that the Tories failed to revamp Employment Insurance rules beyond temporarily extending the length of time a person can receive benefits to a mere 50 weeks, even though less than 40 percent of the unemployed actually qualify for benefits and the most a person can receive is a meagre 55 percent of their wages (capped at $447/week); and that bailout spending, such as that in the auto sector, is being used to roll back working-class living standards and job security that had been built up over a half century of struggle.

These are indeed serious problems with the way in which the Conservatives, with the largely uncritical support of the Liberals, are addressing the economic crisis: putting the needs of capital ahead of the social needs of Canadians.

But we have to be very careful on the Left about how we advance our criticism of the government's strategy. As the recession deepens into the worst global downturn since the Great Depression people will quite rightly demand more from their government. Calls will be made for the government to spend more and create good jobs for people. And organizations of the Left will play a central role articulating those demands and mobilizing people for the inevitable struggle that will be necessary for the demands to become actual policy.

However, the government's response to the recession has a sharply colonial dynamic to it. And if we aren't cognizant of this dynamic we risk reproducing it in our efforts to build an alternative way of dealing with the crisis. The fight for a more socially just Canada will be an anti-colonial struggle in support of indigenous rights, or it won't be at all.

Exploiting Fear

The Conservative government's goal in this recession is clear: exploit the scale of the crisis and the fear and uncertainty it's instilled in people to intensify an agenda it and business leaders would otherwise have to approach more modestly. The attack on auto workers is a good example of this; the expansion of capitalism into indigenous territories is as well.

Indigenous land and resources are central to Canadian capitalism, plain and simple. Reports written by Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Natural Resources Canada and various industry organizations make this point plain enough. Most of the mines being explored or dug, oil deposits being developed, pipelines being constructed and hydro-dams imposed on the landscape are on or adjacent to – and thus impact – indigenous territory. All these resources and other industrial developments besides, furthermore, require infrastructural investments, such as roadways or electricity grids, in order to be operationalized, putting even more pressure on First Nation lands.

The otherwise relentless growth of a capitalism steamrolling any obstacle in its path to making profits has been kept in check in Canada, to some degree, by the efforts of First Nations to defend their land. In some instances they've directly stopped developments, while their cumulative struggle over decades, along with environmental campaigning, has led to an oversight system, however very imperfect, of environmental assessments and consultations with indigenous communities, which has slowed the pace of development down somewhat. These oversights, derided by industry organizations and the Harper Tories as nothing more than “red tape,” have long been viewed by these same critics as a barrier to corporate profitability. The economic crisis has given the Tories and business leaders new ammunition to mount a frontal assault on these policies, while stepping up and expediting infrastructure funding that clearly impacts First Nations.

Cutting “Red Tape”

Infrastructure spending is obviously an important component of the Conservative government's 2009 post-financial-meltdown budget. Canada had already committed $33-billion over several years toward infrastructure development in November 2007 with the Building Canada fund. With the additional money earmarked in the new budget, they're planning $18-billion of infrastructural spending in the next two years.

The government's goal is to fast track new projects and those already planned, arguing that this is necessary in order to keep the recession from worsening. According to Infrastructure Canada, the government “has an opportunity [i.e. peoples' well-grounded fear of recession] to modernize its federal reviews by cutting red tape and increasing federal-provincial cooperation” (emphasis added). Things need to move quickly, in other words, and efficiency (spending lots of money minus meaningful oversight) equals progress.

As part of the effort to expedite spending, the government plans on “overhauling” – in the words of Environment Minister, Jim Prentice – the Environmental Assessment Act. While full details of the government plans haven't been released, a leaked government document reveals a goal of cutting reviews by as much as 95 percent. Infrastructure Canada says the government is planning a “dramatic reduction in the number of federal assessments and regulatory reviews,” adding, to assuage those who might question the wisdom of such a move, that the cuts will be done “without compromising environmental protection.”

Prentice also announced, at a Calgary business luncheon in mid-March, the Tories' plan to simply waive environmental reviews for favoured public projects for the next two years. The waivers will be made regardless of the size of the project.

How fewer reviews or weakened (or “modernized,” as they like to suggest) environmental policy won't compromise the environment and those indigenous communities that rely on it for cultural and material sustenance is a mystery. Tory wizardry, perhaps. After all, this is the government that can apparently turn water into wine: making a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia about improving human rights in the troubled Andean nation, helping the poor by cutting taxes, or supporting immigrants' rights by concentrating arbitrary power in the hands of the Minister of Immigration.

Ottawa claims that it can rely on provincial assessments, but the provinces have different criteria and standards than their federal counterpart. As critics point out, provincial standards in environmental reviews are themselves not necessarily that reliable. In B.C., for instance, indigenous groups have long criticized the provincial government's assessment process as biased in favour of business interests. Moreover, the Ontario Liberal government announced in 2008 in its Open for Business: Guide to Reduce the Burden, that it's cutting regulations in every ministry by 25 percent. Like the federal Tories, the Ontario Liberals describe the rollback as “modernization.” At a time when the condition of our environment is rapidly deteriorating and indigenous land claims continue to grow, reviews should be strengthened not weakened.

Environment Canada's response to a scientific study it commissioned on protecting the endangered woodland-caribou – an important part of the livelihood of many indigenous communities – makes crystal clear the government's priorities. Released in early April of this year, the study, conducted by leading woodland-caribou scientists, recommends tightly controlling development in approximately half of Canada's northern boreal forest. But Environment Canada suggests the science in the study is inadequate, and doesn't offer sufficient information on how much development can be pursued without undermining the sustainability of caribou herds. Instead of acting on the report, it says it will study the issue further until the end of 2010. Much of the woodland-caribou's habitat is sought after by logging, mining and oil and gas companies. Thus even when a serious scientific study is undertaken, Environment Canada simply ignores conclusions that don't fit with the agenda of the resource industry.

Infrastructure Spending:
More Money, More Colonialism

A cursory glance at some of the government's recent infrastructure spending plans – some made before the crisis but likely expedited as a result of it – offers us a clear picture of how stimulus spending will be implicated in the expansion of the domestic Canadian colonial project.

Infrastructure Canada and the B.C. government, for instance, are committing over $115-million to the expansion of a number of sections of Highway 97 in British Columbia. Both levels of government and the Northwest Corridor Corporation, which includes among its members municipal and provincial governments and private companies, tout the expansion as crucial to the economic development of the region. The expansion is aimed at making the 97 a key part of the corridor linking up NAFTA trade flow through Manitoba with B.C.'s Pacific ports (which are also slated to receive federal funds). Making the 97 a major industrial transit way is also expected to spur further developments in the mining and oil and gas industries in the province, cited as key to the latter's economic future by both levels of government and the Northwest Corridor Corporation. Two major pipelines, the Northern Gateway and the Pacific Trails, are in fact being planned for B.C., both of which will cross unceded indigenous land.

A number of indigenous communities are located along or near the various Highway 97 expansion points and in areas resource corporations are hoping to develop with help from infrastructural enhancements. While some First Nations are supportive of oil and gas and mineral development, hoping for a piece of the pie, others are less enamoured by it. In a 2004 press release, the Treaty 8 First Nations, located in northern B.C., declared that “oil and gas development as currently practiced has an unacceptable adverse impact on wildlife, and on the exercise of traditional hunting and fishing rights through environmental degradation.” They also noted “the failure of the government to require cumulative impact assessments in advance of oil and gas development,” which “infringes on our Treaty and Aboriginal Rights.” The Blueberry River First Nation, a Treaty 8 member, launched a lawsuit in 2003 against the B.C. government and Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., demanding redress for gas-related illnesses suffered by community members and a halt to all development activities within 10 kilometres of its reserve.

In another example of the colonial character of infrastructure spending, Infrastructure Canada and Quebec are committing funds to the expansion of Highway 30. But in order to undertake the project Quebec plans to appropriate mainly agricultural land on unceded Mohawk territory along Montreal's South Shore. The plan evoked a strong response from the Kahnawake community, including a threat to blockade the Mercier Bridge, invoking memories of the Oka Revolt when Mohawk Warriors shut the bridge (which runs through Mohawk territory) down after the Suretée du Québec attacked a blockade in nearby Kanehsatake. In the face of potential unrest surrounding Highway 30, the province promised to work with the federal government to provide new crown land as compensation for the appropriation.

While the province's offer appeased the Kahnawake Band Council (Band Councils are the colonially-imposed leaderships officially recognized by the federal and provincial governments), which quickly called off protests, not all community members are happy with it. The Mohawk Traditional Council has opposed the appropriation, asserting that the province has no right to take their land, which is used by the community for hunting and planting. Local farmers, who also face displacement because of the project, have opposed the expansion as well.

This past January Ottawa also offered financial assistance to the controversial Mackenzie Valley pipeline project. The offer was announced by none other than Jim Prentice (apparently funding pipelines is a matter for the minister responsible for protecting the environment) during a meeting with oil company executives. The amount of the offer hasn't been disclosed, but one industry observer estimated it could potentially be as high as $2-billion.

The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline is the largest infrastructural project in Canadian history, with a cost estimated at $16.2-billion and rising. Some indigenous communities have come on board in the desperate hope that it will provide First Nations with meaningful financial benefits without long-term destruction of the surrounding environment. But it continues to face opposition from indigenous activists and communities not sold on the benefits of a pipeline to their cultures and traditional territories.

A dream of government and the oil and gas industries going back decades, the pipeline is expected to spur significant growth in oil and gas and mineral exploration along its route, all of which will inevitably impact First Nation lands in and beyond the Mackenzie Valley delta. As Prentice observed when he announced funding for the pipeline, “it opens up a whole region of the country.” The comment is both racist and telling of the goals of government and industry. It suggests the Mackenzie Valley and the lands adjacent to it are some sort of frontier that have been closed off to people, when in fact indigenous communities have been living there, and interacting with the surrounding environment, for thousands of years. It's only “opening up” the region to large-scale resource development by corporations.

The project has been slowed down by an environmental review and indigenous opposition. But with the recession worsening and the government throwing potentially billions of dollars into the pipeline, the push is on to cut the indigenous “red tape” and get the project going. True to form, Prentice followed up the funding announcement two months later with an attack on the project's review panel in a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

And to be absolutely clear, spending commitments for First Nations made in the budget don't make up for the government's continued colonial assault. At $1.4-billion, the Tory spending promise (and just a promise at this point) is just over one-fifth of what was promised by the Liberal government in the 2005 Kelowna Accord, which itself was not a firm commitment on the spending and still wouldn't have gone far enough to improve living conditions in indigenous communities let alone repay these communities for all the wealth that has been made off of them over the last 150 years through the stealing of resources, the forced labour of children in residential schools or the corrupt practices of Indian Affairs. The Tories quickly scrapped the Kelowna Accord after their election in 2006, and now three years later they present a spending plan that doesn't come remotely close to dealing with the poverty, housing shortage and health needs in First Nation communities.

Which Side Are We On?

The Left needs to respond to the economic crisis and the Tory recession plan carefully and responsibly. Simply calling for more stimulus spending and job creation, without consideration of the impact this may have on indigenous communities, isn't good enough. Indigenous demands for self-determination and protection of their cultures and lands must be central to how the Left organizes in this crisis and to what it envisions for a more socially just Canada. We have to be prepared to take leadership from indigenous activists not in the pocket of government and corporations, while making the arguments with non-indigenous people desiring change that the development of a meaningful anti-recession strategy can't come at the expense of First Nations.

In times of economic crisis racism and xenophobia tend to rise, and governments and business leaders are certainly not above playing these things up and exploiting them to advance their agendas. We've already seen large-scale immigration raids at workplaces in the Greater Toronto Area this April. Anti-indigenous racism is quite strong in Canada in the best of economic times, and as economic instability grows it could intensify. The Left has to be strident in its anti-racism, and must make its fight against the government's and business's reactionary response to the recession an anti-colonial one. Only then will we be on the right path to a more socially just future. •

Todd Gordon is the author of Cops, Crime and Capitalism: The Law-and-Order Agenda in Canada. He's currently writing a book on Canadian imperialism. His articles have appeared on Rabble, Znet, The Bullet and in New Socialist magazine. He is an assistant professor of Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto, and can be reached at ts.gordon@utoronto.ca.

The Patriarchy Principle

2009-03-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

This is posted on a sweet lefty blog called "Lenin's Tomb" (http://leninology.blogspot.com/). You could easily replace England with anywhere in North America I'm sure. I think the important thing is that it stems from a material basis. When we exist in a social society based on commodities (ie the commodity based exchange of labour) it's not surprising we mimmick it in gender relations.

"Just because it isn't said in polite company doesn't mean people aren't thinking it. A Home Office study has found that:

16% of people in England and Wales think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she nags; 13% think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she flirts with other men; 20% think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she dresses in sexy or revealing clothing in public; 11% think it okay to beat if the wife or girlfriend doesn't treat the man with respect; 8% think it okay to beat if she is caught cheating.

Further, 36% think a woman should be held co-responsible for being raped if she is drunk; 26% if she is wearing revealing or sexy clothing; 43% if she flirts heavily beforehand; 49% if she does not clearly say 'no'; 42% if she is using drugs; 47% if she is a prostitute; 14% if she is out walking alone at night. (My summary)

Gender constructions apparently mean so much to so many that literally millions of people (including millions of women) are willing to see physical and sexual violence toward women as being some sort of punishment. As being justified or at least partially excusable if the woman in question does not behave completely as someone else's possession, or as a passive ornamentation for a well-kept house or an outing. I suspect that similar attitudes might be expressed, maybe by fewer people, about men who deviate from a certain paradigm of masculinity, who love other men, who are not violently assertive, who refuse to beat their partners, and who do not in general worship their own phalluses like Norman Douglas' man from Nantucket. Walk around acting like one of 'them', you can imagine it being said, and you're asking for it.

If I may satirise a certain commonplace way of arguing, the scope within which to argue that British values are essentially benign and not a threat to our way of life is diminishing by the day. All very well, but the underlying moral sanction of this horrifying authoritarianism is the empowerment of fathers and husbands in the name of 'family values'. Such values resonate with charm and homeliness, and it is constantly averred that they produce stable communities and disciplined children (as opposed, say, to obedient wage serfs and cannon fodder). There is barely a social problem that has not been blamed on their absence. The underlying political economy, on the other hand, is that patriarchy reproduces the very stratification-by-gender in the sphere of production that reduces the aggregate cost of labour for capital, enhances the surveillance of and control over female labour, and reconciles a number of men to aspects of the system which they might otherwise find onerous. I just mention the vulgar material basis for such ideas because it isn't going to be mentioned anywhere else, and the Home Office for its part will no doubt respond to its findings with a poster campaign or some other hearts-n-minds initiative, if they respond at all."

Memo to Minister Kenney: Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism

2009-03-05T12:23:00.000-08:00

By Judy Rebick and Alan Sears

As Israeli Apartheid Week gets underway, there is a major campaign currently underway to deny freedom of expression on campus to those in solidarity with Palestine on the basis of alleged anti-Semitism.
The Equity Office at Carleton University banned the Israeli Apartheid Week poster and the Provost issued a statement that threatened students with expulsion. B’nai Brith took out newspaper ads calling on University Presidents to “prevent Israeli apartheid week” in order to “take a stand against anti-Semitism on campus.” This builds on a pattern established last year, when McMaster University banned the use of the term “Israeli apartheid” (eventually rescinding the ban) and the University of Toronto cancelled room bookings for a Palestine solidarity student conference.
The argument that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic rests on the notion that Israel is singled out for undue criticism because it is a Jewish state. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney used this logic when he said recently, “We do see the growth of a new anti-Semitism predicated on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland.”
This statement is only legitimate if we completely ignore the situation of the Palestinians, the residents of the land Israel claimed as a “Jewish homeland.” The recent assault on Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, including at least 346 children, is just the latest in an ongoing saga of displacement, occupation and dehumanization dating back to 1948. Critics of Israel are not singling it out for undue criticism, but merely holding it to the same standards as all other nations in such areas as respect for human rights and international law.
Defenders of Israeli policy routinely attempt to direct our attention to abuses happening in other places and insist that a hidden agenda must underlie any focus on Israeli brutality in this unjust world. This argument would lead to paralysis in human rights activism by claiming that one must address all cases at once, or only the “worst” cases. Should we have told Rosa Parks, who refused to go the back of a segregated bus in Alabama in 1955, to quit whining as conditions were even worse in South Africa, or colonized Kenya, or for that matter for Palestinians in refugee camps?
The deployment of anti-Semitism as an accusation to silence criticism of Israel is also a serious setback in genuine struggles against anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. It is based on a claim that the State of Israel is the single outcome of the history of the Jewish people, the final end of generations of diasporic existence. It attempts to make the Zionist project of a Jewish nation the only legitimate project for all Jews.
This nationalist project has largely marginalized Jewish universalism, which argued that the future of a minority, diasporic community depended on winning widespread freedoms that applied to all members of society. That meant that in Canada, for example, the Jewish population was historically very active in struggles for a wide range of social rights and against the idea of Canada as a Christian nation.
The misuse of equity claims to silence Palestinian voices is a setback in the advancement of a human rights agenda. Further, it is a dangerous strategy that makes critics of the State of Israel into enemies of the Jewish people despite themselves. It even casts those of us who are Jewish allies of Palestinian rights as enemies in the battle against anti-Semitism. Further, it disarms us in the face of anti-Semitic incidents, weakening the credibility of organizations that have used the term too broadly and blurred the line between opposition to the State of Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice.
Anti-Semitism has no place in the Palestine solidarity movement and as Jews in that movement we can attest to the fact that the leadership of the Palestinian rights movement and many Arab and Muslim communities are actively addressing anti-Semitism wherever it raises its ugly head. On the other hand, false claims of anti-Semitism from pro-Israeli groups undermines their cause and creates more polarization, fear and anger around these issues than there needs to be.
Judy Rebick and Alan Sears are both university professors and Jews in solidarity with Palestine.
Reproduced from rabble.ca

This is your life

2009-03-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

You're not really mad at Iran or Afghanistan,
You're mad at the fact that your wife can't stand you anymore.
You don't know where she is.
You're going crazy in your basement hole,
clicking your remote control spitting insults at the screen
cause tomorrow you're back at work
where you can't stand being the little man.

Exploit your problems when you can't get ahead.
No one really laughs at your stories anymore.
They're cynical like me so they
Your kids are at the mall,
they just sit and stare at the walls.

You think you tell it like it is?
You say you can't stand bleeding hearts
but every single day you just sit there bleeding for yourself,
you whine and cry in a manly voice.

This is your life.

You do it to yourself, it takes a load off your mind.
Go over to the world and ****

This is your life.

The road to Gaza's killing fields

2009-02-28T12:12:00.000-08:00

By TOUFIC HADDAD

GAZA LIES in ruins. After 22 days of ruthless Israeli aerial bombardment and ground assault, a survey1 of the carnage is as enraging as it is numbing: at least 1,285 Palestinians have been killed; 895 were civilians, including 280 children and 111 women. Another 167 of the dead were civil police officers, mostly killed on the first day of the bombing as they were graduating from a training course. Twenty-four hundred houses were completely destroyed, and 20,000 partially. Other infrastructure destroyed includes 28 public civilian facilities (ministries, municipalities, governorates, fishing harbors, and Palestinian Legislative Council buildings), 29 educational institutions (including Gaza’s Islamic University and American High School), 30 mosques, 10 charitable societies, 60 police stations and 121 industrial, and commercial workshops. There are reliable reports that Israel used the banned chemical weapon white phosphorus, which on contact with skin burns all the way to the bone.2

If one statistic reflects the cruelty of what happened in Gaza, it is this: at least 50 people were killed in various United Nations facilities, where they had gathered to find refuge from the shelling because their own refugee camp was already too unsafe.

The harrowing tales from beneath the rubble are almost too endless and heartbreaking to document—the Abed Rabbo family, who came out of the rubble of their home in Jabalya waving a white flag after the Israelis ordered them to leave, only to have three of their children cut down by an Israeli soldier;3 the doctor in Gaza who called in regularly to an Israeli television station to report on the invasion, whose home was hit by a tank shell and three of his children killed before his eyes while he was on the air4; and the extended Samouni family in Zeitoun, 100 of whom were herded from their houses into one building, after which the building was deliberately strafed and bombed, killing 30 family members.5 The Red Cross, who were not allowed by Israeli forces into the area for four days, found four emaciated children left to starve among their dead relatives.6

But two factors make these atrocities all the more disturbing. First, what happened in Gaza, including its destructive targeting of civilians and their infrastructure, was entirely premeditated, planned, and organized months in advance, and with explicit U.S approval. Second, the Gaza attack is only the beginning of an even bloodier escalation of the violent means Israel plans to employ against the Palestinian people and its national movement. If this new escalation is not steadfastly resisted, the level of destruction Israel will inflict will only grow, both locally and regionally, assuming genocidal proportions.

Now is the time for a patient assessment of how Israel’s campaign came about, before discussing what can be done to stop it from happening again.

Anatomy of a bloodbath

To avoid accusations of selectivity, allow us to begin where the Israeli government argues the campaign against Gaza originated: the unilateral Israeli redeployment from Gaza in August 2005, also known as “the disengagement.” It was then that Israel withdrew 7,000 Jewish settlers and 3,000 accompanying soldiers, ending a failed effort to colonize Gaza.

The Israeli narrative, as reported by its foreign ministry Web site, reads as follows:

Israel hoped that the Palestinians would use the incredible opportunity presented by the disengagement to embark on the path towards peace […] Instead of building the foundations of a peaceful society, the Palestinians allowed Gaza to slide into anarchy. Kassam rockets continued to be fired into Israel; weapons, ammunitions and monies were smuggled into the Gaza Strip in enormous amounts; terrorist activities of every variety were allowed to be carried out freely; and Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction, was elected to lead the Palestinian government.7
Fittingly, “since Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas and since Hamas is using Gaza Strip in order to target us,” noted Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, “we need to give an answer to this.”8
The problem with the Israeli narrative is that it is disproved by the Israeli architects of disengagement. The unilateral Israeli redeployment from Gaza was not “an incredible opportunity to embark on the path towards peace,” but was designed to do just the opposite. Dov Weisglass, the personal adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and an official liaison between Israel and the U.S. State Department disclosed this at the time. He described the disengagement as a kind of “formaldehyde”: “It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”9

Note that Weisglass was talking about “the Palestinians” and not Hamas, which was not even in power at the time. The disengagement served to legitimate the unilateral ending of the peace process—the only framework, however flawed, which provided a political horizon for the Palestinian movement by maintaining that both sides had the right to discuss their claims. This approach was now over. Israel’s hands were freed to do as it pleased, particularly regarding settlement expansion.

Weisglass:

What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns [people from Finland]. That is the significance of what we did. The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.10
With Jewish settlers out of harms way in Gaza, Israel could now control the thin strip of land from key nodes on its borders, and from the skies above and seas around it. The disengagement created a far more efficient occupation regime for Israel, erecting what many call the world’s largest open-air prison. It also eliminated any Israeli military targets for the Palestinian resistance inside Gaza, despite the fact that Israel routinely attacked targets there.
The disengagement signaled the death-knell of Fatah, the historic secular nationalist party that had led the modern Palestinian movement for decades. Fatah had banked on the peace process as its strategy to achieve Palestinian national rights, seeing it as the culmination of more than 25 years of its military and diplomatic activity to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause. When Israel and the U.S. united to prevent the realization of Palestinian national claims through the negotiated process (Camp David II, June 2000), then stopped the process altogether (the Disengagement, August 2005) Fatah’s fortunes were bankrupted.

A mere four months after Israel redeployed from Gaza, Palestinian elections were held in January 2006. Hamas won the elections with a commanding parliamentary majority—57 percent of the seats—handily defeating the incumbent Fatah party which had increasingly been viewed by Palestinian society as corrupt, undemocratic, and cynical in its manipulation of Palestinian historical claims.

The elections had initially been supported by the U.S. as a means to legitimate Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA). But they ended up doing just the opposite. Abu Mazen, and the political trajectory he was supposed to oversee—the transformation of “Palestinians into Finns”—was now delegitimized through the very process which enlightened liberal humanism upheld as sacrosanct—democratic elections.

The elections were a major setback for U.S. foreign policy. This was acknowledged internally by one U.S. Department of Defense official noting, “Everyone blamed everyone else. We sat there in the Pentagon [after the election] and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this [Palestinians elections]?’”11

Israel was equally set back. According to one senior Israeli military commentator for the Israeli daily Haaretz, writing a few days after the elections:

The Israelis warned the Americans that unsupervised Arab democracy will bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power, not pro-Western liberals. But Washington refused to listen and insisted on holding the elections on schedule. The new reality requires both Washington and Jerusalem to reevaluate the situation before the Hamas effect hits Amman and Cairo [the capital of the pro-U.S. client regimes of Jordan and Egypt]. In any case it will be hard to turn back democratic change and resume the comfortable relations with the old dictatorships.12
Turning back the clock is exactly what the U.S attempted to do, however. It first needed to ensure that Hamas could not yield any results for its constituency and set about attempting to overturn the election results, first gradually and indirectly, and when this failed, more directly. U.S. policy after the elections was clear. According to one senior State Department official, “The administration spoke with one voice: ‘We have to squeeze these guys [Hamas].’”13 Democracy was to be sanctioned only if U.S. allies ended up in power.
Israel immediately launched a medieval siege against the Gaza Strip preventing any movement of material in or out, including vital fuels, spare parts, medicines, water and food. It arrested 64 Hamas officials (those it could find in the West Bank), including half of its elected legislators, crippling the parliament before it could even meet. To complement the Israeli maneuvers, the U.S. pressured the rest of the Quartet (in addition to the U.S., they are the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia) to stop any financial assistance to the Palestinian government and public sector—perhaps the only consistent wage earners in Palestinian society.

The measures aimed to put the screws on the Palestinian population that had voted for Hamas and to persuade it to change its orientation. The U.S and Israel were particularly concerned because voting for Hamas essentially meant that the Palestinians had not been successfully cudgeled into accepting the military supremacy of Israel, which had been consistently attacking the national movement since the Al Aqsa Intifada began in September 2000. It also meant that their political horizons had not been reduced to accepting the failed Fatah leadership and its strategy as the only path toward achieving its historic national rights.

To stimulate the process of persuasion, the U.S. resorted to more direct means of influence, reaching its hand into its old bag of Cold War tricks. The most corrupt elements of the displaced Fatah party began to lead a process with CIA training, funding, and arms to foment a coup against Hamas. The plan was later dubbed “Iran-Contra 2.0,” because its architects included Elliot Abrams, implicated in the original Iran Contra affair. David Wurmser, a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, was among those who did not support the plan, and later accused the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.”14

But Hamas caught on quickly to U.S. scheming, forcefully taking control of the government institutions in Gaza that were the bases used by the Fatah coup-makers. The small but recalcitrant faction within Fatah that had openly collaborated with the U.S. plot was killed or forced to flee to the West Bank. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas,” noted Wurmser, “but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.”15

The West Bank and Gaza were now run by two distinct currents of the national movement with different worldviews regarding tactics and strategy vis-à-vis Israel. While the division weakened the Palestinians strategically, it also brought with it a contradiction. The failure of the U.S. and Israel to engage in any political process—even with Abu Mazen—meant that support for Hamas and its resistance-oriented approach would grow. The “Gaza model” could be seen as more dignified, democratic, and potentially successful than the humiliating, tested, and empty Ramallah model.

This became all the more likely in the context of two other significant setbacks for U.S. and Israeli plans: the capturing of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and the results of the 2006 war against Lebanon. These events convinced the U.S. and Israel that only a direct military solution would dislodge Hamas and the political orientation it was trying to steer the national movement.

Hamas was elected on a slate known as the “Change and Reform” list. Its platform advocated an explicit and principled approach to the major Palestinian national demands: a full end to the 1967 occupation, Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state, and implementation of the right of return. It also raised key demands for democratic internal reform within the movement. Finally, it explicitly kept open the option of resistance to Zionism within its political agenda. It is this political trajectory led by Hamas that Israel wished to push back in the Gaza campaign. A frontal defeat of Hamas by Israel would entail Israel having to take de facto responsibility for the Strip and replace it with another authority (their own, the Ramallah PA, or Egypt). But this countered Israel’s larger strategy vis-à-vis Gaza, which seeks to avoid any responsibility for it, particularly since the “disengagement.”16

The Lebanon campaign was particularly significant because not only was Israel forced to negotiate a deal with Hezbollah over the return of its two captured soldiers, but the movement emerged militarily and politically more powerful both in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world.

The U.S. and Israel began closely coordinating how they would amend the mistakes of the Lebanon campaign blamed on over-reach, poor political and military preparation, and unclear operational plans, among other things. The decision to go after Gaza was made soon after the Lebanon campaign ended, as disclosed in a remarkable article written by Haaretz journalist Shmuel Rosner, published 10 months before Israel attacked Gaza. Entitled “America wants an operation in Gaza,” Rosner bluntly describes what was on the U.S.-Israeli agenda. I quote at length from it because it discloses the extent of the close coordination between the U.S and its strategic ally:

As the Second Lebanon War raged, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger paid a visit to [Israeli] Major General Dan Harel….
The Israeli operation in Lebanon had left Kissinger unimpressed, and he made this clear to Harel. Even worse: Kissinger told him that Israel’s erratic progress was undermining U.S. interests.… All those, including President George Bush, who were counting on Israel to teach a definitive lesson to the extremists in the Middle East, were disappointed.

The mysterious Israeli attack in Syria last September and the assassination of Imad Mughniyah in Damascus last week may improve Israel’s operational image, but will not completely restore the American confidence in its ability to complete a more ambitious campaign: occupying the Gaza Strip, crushing the military power of Hamas and restoring the Strip to the trained Palestinian forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas.
This is the only realistic scenario that may bode a better future for the Gaza Strip, and which also aligns with what is relevant to Washington: it is both realistic and meets U.S. aims, namely to avoid dialogue with Hamas and not to weaken Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by rewarding the extremists.17

Rosner’s admissions go further:

The Americans know that change must occur in the Gaza Strip. “The status quo there, I think, cannot hold,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a congressional hearing last week.
According to the American scenario, what is first required is complete Israeli readiness for a military operation, and also for political allowances….

However, the Americans will require assurances, more so than in the past, that this will not be an operation that will commence with a promise [to destroy U.S. enemies] only to end with an investigation [looking into the failures of why Israel didn’t achieve its goals, as was the case in Lebanon]. Like Kissinger said, it undermines American interests….

A broad Israeli operation, with American encouragement, will be able to begin only after the forces of Abbas are trained. But by then, the Americans may have a new president.18

It should come as no surprise that when Israel finally did attack Gaza it did so on December 27, 2008, in the final weeks of George W. Bush’s administration. Everything else becomes a matter of the grisly details as to how calculated and cold-blooded U.S. and Israeli maneuvers really were.
Israel was expected to use overwhelming force in Gaza, including against civilian targets, because the results of the Lebanon campaign—in which Israel killed 1,200 Lebanese in 33 days—were not considered shocking enough for the Lebanese population to make them want to stop supporting Hezbollah during and after the war. United States military strategist Anthony Cordesman explained in 2006 what Israel needed to do to be more successful in its future wars:

From Israel’s viewpoint, you have to use force even more against civilian targets. You have to attack deep. You have to step up the intensity of combat and you have to be less careful and less restrained.19
The Israeli military began conducting smaller scale incursions into Gaza after Lebanon, to train its troops for the “big operation.” One such operation (Autumn Clouds) in which more than 90 Palestinians were killed and 450 homes destroyed, was described by Israeli journalist Alex Fishman:
It is another step in the direction of concentrating military forces in the Gaza Strip…. Operations at the edges of urban areas have now moved into populated areas…. Such operations also have an “accustoming” effect. The operations are getting the area and the military forces used to the IDF presence in the Gaza Strip, each time for a longer period and with larger forces. Meanwhile, the IDF is exercising military tactics in residential areas, and commanders are being trained. … [T]here is no chance of a political settlement whatsoever with Hamas. Therefore, we are in the midst of a gradual process toward a large-scale military conflict in the Gaza Strip.20
Israel also began exploring internal legal advice on the possibility of “cutting all fuel supplies to Gaza, firing single artillery shells against sources of rocket fire, clearing areas in the Strip from which Qassam rockets are launched, evacuating civilians from these areas, and shelling or bombing areas after warning the civilians to leave.”21 It purchased bunker-busting munitions from the U.S. in September 2008—first assumed for Iran, but apparently equally as practical against Gaza’s tunnel and underground resistance infrastructure.22
The U.S. and Arab client states equally upheld their complicit role in what was to happen by maintaining the boycott on Hamas and training Abu Mazen’s troops in Jordanian facilities under the command of U.S. Army General Keith Dayton.23

Israeli papers have even gone so far as to expose exactly when Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave the Israeli army the order to prepare for the operation—more than six months before the war against Gaza began, and as Israel was negotiating a cease-fire with Palestinian factions.24 Like similar incidents in the past, a cease-fire was seen not as a step toward a peaceful settlement, but as a way to cultivate the prime conditions in which Israel could engineer its future attack.25

Israel in fact, never abided by the cease-fire to begin with, maintaining its strict closure (together with Egypt) of Gaza’s border crossings.26 As the pressure cooker of a besieged Gaza increased—with dozens dying of lack of medical care for cancer and dialysis treatment; as Gaza skies became thick with the pollution of cooking oil used to fuel cars, because of lack of petrol; and as 86 percent of its inhabitant became dependent on the UN for food rations27—Israel began to play with matches.

On November 4, it raided the Gaza Strip killing 6 Palestinians, claiming it was destroying a tunnel. Israel chose to deliberately undermine the cease-fire the very same day that the world was fixated on the election of a new American president. It would kill four more Palestinians in two other operations in Gaza, to further unsettle the fragile coalition of resistance factions that had abided by the cease-fire. Despite the provocations, Israeli commentators were forced to acknowledge that a mere three days before Israel attacked, Hamas was upholding its end of the cease-fire and appeared unwilling to break it.28 Hamas chair Mahmod Zahar even went so far as to give an interview to an Israeli television station on December 22—at a time when he was a prime target of assassination—to say his movement would accept renewing the cease-fire, as long as Israel opened up the crossings.29

But Israel wasn’t interested. It knew exactly what it was going to do. Israel was going to “send Gaza decades into the past” while achieving “the maximum number of enemy casualties,” according to the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Southern Command Yoav Galant.30 The time had come to “educate”31 Gaza, the Palestinians, and the entire Arab world, as to what would happen if a movement dared to challenge Israel’s supremacy, and the role the U.S. has ascribed for it.

Articles published in the Israeli press since the operation reveal the lurid details of how the killing spree was planned to deliberately incorporate the infliction of civilian casualties as a way to achieve its goals. It was disclosed for example that the idea to bomb the closing ceremony of a Gaza police-training course was planned months before the attack.32 Despite internal criticism, Israel went ahead with the bombing, massacring dozens of civilian police officers whose limp dismembered bodies were captured in chilling images broadcast the first day of the campaign.

It was also revealed that, “Israel used text messages, dropped flyers from the air and made a quarter of a million telephone calls to warn Gaza residents.”33 Given that 50 percent of Gaza’s residents are under the age of 16 and are unlikely to have independent telephone lines, a quarter of a million telephone calls covers a considerable portion of Gaza’s population. This is a backhanded acknowledgment of the fact that almost everybody in Gaza was threatened in Israel’s campaign.

Israeli politicians also appear aware of the devastation they wrought in Gaza, and the war crimes charges they are likely to face. One minister recently told Israeli military correspondent Aluf Benn, “When the scale of the damage in Gaza becomes clear, I will no longer take a vacation in Amsterdam, only at the international court in The Hague.”34 According to Benn, “It was not clear whether he was trying to make a joke or not.”35

Understanding the carnage, resisting U.S.-Israeli plans

The scope of evidence incriminating the U.S. and Israel in a premeditated bloodbath in Gaza is indisputable. What now needs to be addressed is what the results of the war actually mean and what can be done to stop this murderous campaign from being repeated in the future.

It has already been widely acknowledged that Israel did not achieve its stated goals in the campaign.36 Palestinian factions still control hundreds of rockets, which they can fire at Israeli cities. There are plenty of functional tunnels on the southern border with Rafah, and damaged ones can be repaired. The civilian population did not rise up to blame Hamas, and if anything, there was widespread disdain for Abu Mazen’s impotence and inaction. Palestinian factions likewise do not appear to have been sufficiently deterred from their willingness to attack Israel, though they are likely to be more disciplined in their use of military means.

On the other side, Gaza was indeed “sent back decades.” It is not clear how Hamas will be able to handle the enormous challenge of providing for the Gaza population and its even heavier medical, housing, and economic needs. This at a time when the movement continues to be besieged from all sides, and with threats from Israel that this regime of control will be tightened further (and potentially internationalized) after the war.

Assessing the war in these terms, however, is ultimately insufficient. What happened in Gaza shouldn’t be judged as a question as to who was victorious, because it misses the bigger picture of what has been taking place over time.

Locally, Israel’s destruction of Gaza signifies an entrance into a new stage in its open-ended war to destroy the Palestinian national movement. It has been successful in incrementally raising the level of destruction it metes out to the national movement since the Al Aqsa Intifada began, reaching horrific proportions in recent weeks. Recall that less than 10 years ago, Israel believed it could have a willing Palestinian partner that would accept its historical and continuing act of colonialism—the extension of settlements and its de facto control over all of historic Palestine.

Now, the “partner for peace” approach has been reversed in favor of a policy of direct military confrontation with the national movement in hopes of liquidating it. The national movement had not been cowed sufficiently, whether under Hamas, Arafat, or even Abu Mazen. Instead, Israel has used the return of the national movement to Palestinian soil (the Palestine Liberation Organization’s [PLO] supposed accomplishment through the Oslo process) as an opportunity to crush it, now that it is in its very backyard. The first part of the Intifada (2000–05) was used to do away with Fatah as a serious or credible threat to Israel’s power. Israel has used the years since then to go after Hamas and the remnants of other resistance currents, primarily in Gaza. The West Bank was more or less “pacified” militarily in the first period.

Ultimately, Israel believes that power and violence have cumulative effects. And while it has been killing and imprisoning successive generations of Palestinian resistance fighters in Gaza and the West Bank for more than 40 years, it has also gained more and more time to continue its settlement project on the ground. The cumulative effect of these processes strengthens Israel’s demographic and military positioning to isolate, weaken, and strangle Palestinian livelihoods, in the hopes that the Palestinian people either surrender or are expelled.
Regionally, Israel has also sent a clear message. It intends to reverse the winds of change that have been blowing through the Middle East since the second Intifada began, through Hamas’s rise to power and capped by Hezbollah’s declaration of victory in 2006—Israel’s Gaza campaign is a significant step in that direction, with the promise that there is likely to be more to come both locally and regionally if the message has yet to be “learned.”

Israel’s war cabinet (Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, and Ehud Olmert) has already warned of more “harsh and disproportionate action” against Gaza.37 Meanwhile, the Israeli ambassador in Australia was caught on tape describing the Gaza campaign as a “preintroduction” to attacking Iran, which will supposedly take place in the coming year.38

These threats should be taken seriously considering Israel’s anxiousness to assert its relevance and supremacy in the face of different internal and regional “threats” to its agenda: the rise of a nuclear powered Iran; the rise of a strengthened Arab nationalist/Islamist stream opposed to Zionism and U.S-backed Arab dictators; and the demographic weakening of the ratio of Jews to Arabs (Christian and Muslim) in the territory of historical Palestine, undermining the “Jewish majority” within the “Jewish state”—the very basis of Zionism.

In any case, while the paper trail of Israel’s past and present crimes is long, it is only relevant in so far as it can be used to organize forces that can stop Israeli and American plans.

The international solidarity witnessed in response to Israel’s assault was a reassuring and positive reminder that people around the world do not support their governments’ explicit or often implicit support for Israel, and are willing to struggle to end it. Judging from the size and spread of these demonstrations, these forces appear to be growing, and in some places they are able to raise significant challenges to Israel and their own governments.

At the same time these efforts remain largely the uncoordinated product of self-activating politicized groups and individuals. No doubt a major impediment to a stronger movement remains the divisions within the Palestinian movement itself, primarily between Hamas and the Fatah-run PA in the West Bank. This division is likely to continue for the coming period as both remain entrenched in their positions after Gaza. Hamas head Khaled Mishal has made the daring step of calling for the formation of a new leadership body other than the PLO, because “The PLO, in its current form, has become incapable of serving the Palestinian people and has become a tool to deepen divisions.”39 Such serious and delicate matters are not likely to be resolved quickly by the movement, though the political reality demands it nonetheless.

In this respect it is important to acknowledge that the movement is in the midst of a transitional period as it seeks to align itself politically and operationally around a program and leadership. While the events in Gaza will deepen that process, its results are less significant than the responsibility thrust upon conscientious people of the world in the wake of Israel’s actions.

Now is the time to respond to the longstanding call raised by hundreds of Palestinian civil society groups—inside the 1967 Occupied Territories and Israel—to implement a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign (BDS) against Israel, akin to the one that was successfully used to end South African apartheid.40 It is this strategy, combined with a principled support for the struggle for resistance and self-determination of the Arab peoples against their U.S.-backed dictatorships, that offers a glimmer of hope in preventing Israel from completing its 100-plus years of ethnically cleansing Palestine.

During the height of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, the Greek government was forced to cancel the transfer of a cargo of ammunition from the U.S. to Israel through Greek ports because it was concerned it might reignite the strong social and union protests that recently took place there. If similar resistance could be organized along the chain of supply which funds, nourishes, and empowers Israel—economically, militarily, and politically—it could act as an important lever in stopping the real supply chain behind terror in the region, Western governments’ support for Israel. The calls for BDS are expanding and now is the time to plant the educational seeds throughout Europe and the United States that can play a decisive role in stopping the criminal, premeditated slaughter the world just witnessed in Gaza from ever being repeated again.

Toufic Haddad is editor and co-author, with Tikva Honig-Parnass, of Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. “War on Terror” (Haymarket Books, 2007). He is currently freelance writing in the West Bank, and can be reached at ?tawfiq_haddad@yahoo.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 See Palestinian Center For Human Rights Report, January 15–21, 2009, www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2008/22-01-2009.htm.

2 Ethan Bronner, “Outcry Erupts Over Reports That Israel Used Phosphorus Arms on Gazans,” New York Times, January 22, 2009: “In Gaza, Ms. Abu Halima said that when her family was hit, ‘fire came from the bodies of my husband and my children. The children were screaming, “Fire! Fire!” and there was smoke everywhere and a horrible, suffocating smell,’ she said. ‘My 14-year-old cried out, “I’m going to die. I want to pray.” I saw my daughter-in-law melt away.’”

3 Donald Macintyre, “Gaza: ‘I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls,’” AP, January 21, 2009.

4 Hanna Ingber Win, “Israeli TV airs Gaza doctor’s pleas after children killed,” Huffington Post, January 16, 2009.

5 Taghreed El-Khodary and Isabel Kershner, “For Arab clan, days of agony in a cross-fire,” New York Times, January 10, 2009.

6 Martin Fletcher, “Red Cross finds starving children with 12 corpses in Gaza ‘house of horrors,’” January 8, 2009, Times Online (London); http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5474016.ece.

7 “Israel, the conflict and peace: Answers to frequently asked questions,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 2007, www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/11/Israel-%20the%20Conflict%20and%20Peace-%20Answers%20to%20Frequen.

8 “Transcript: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni,” Meet the Press, December 28, 2008.

9 “The big freeze,” Ari Shavit interviews Dov Weisglass, Haaretz, October 8, 2004.

10 Ibid.

11 David Rose, “Gaza bombshell,” Vanity Fair, April 2008.

12 Aluf Benn, “Wave of democracy pits Israel against ‘Arab street,’” Haaretz, January 29, 2006.

13 Rose, “Gaza bombshell.”

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 For more on the Hamas platform, see: “The Hamas victory and the future of the Palestinian national movement,” Toufic Haddad, Between the Lines, Israel the Palestinians and the U.S. War on Terror (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007), 317–34. Also see Khaled Hroub,“A ‘New Hamas’ through its new documents,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 35, no. 4, Summer 2006.

17 Shmuel Rosner, “America wants an operation in Gaza,” Haaretz, February 22, 2008.

18 Ibid.

19 Anthony H. Cordesman, “A visit to the Israel-Lebanon front: Lessons of the war and prospects for peace and future fighting,” Center For Strategic and International Studies, August 17, 2006.

20 Alex Fishman, “Prelude to war,” Yediot Ahronot, November 3, 2006.

21 Barak Ravid, “Barak seeks legal okay to move Gazan civilians from homes,” Haaretz, March 4, 2008; Barak Ravid, “Barak, legal team to mull artillery use on civilian areas of Gaza,” Haaretz, March 3, 2008.

22 Aluf Benn and Amos Harel, “U.S. to sell Israel Air Force new bunker-buster bombs,” Haaretz, September 14, 2008; Yaakov Katz, “IAF uses new U.S.-supplied smart bomb,” Jerusalem Post, December 29, 2008.

23 David Horovitz, “Dayton: New PA forces are most capable ever,” Jerusalem Post, December 11, 2008.

24 “Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago [June or before June], even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.” Barak Ravid, “Operation ‘Cast Lead’: Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning,” Haaretz, December 27, 2008.

25 Nancy Kanwisher, “Reigniting violence: How do ceasefires end?” Huffington Post, January 6, 2008.

26 It is worth noting that during the cease-fire, Israel killed 16 Palestinians in the West Bank, and did not stop the arrest of Palestinians there, even for one day.

27 For a full study on the affects of the closure on Gaza, see “The suffering of the Gaza Strip under the closure,” Al Zeitun Center for Studies and Consultation, January 30, 2008 (Arabic); There are also several individual reports that can be found at www.pchrgaza.org.

28 “As of press time, Hamas had refrained from firing even a single mortar shell on Israel this week. The rockets and mortar shells that did hit the Negev were launched by smaller Palestinian groups, primarily Islamic Jihad. […] so far Hamas is not taking an active role in escalating the violence; it is simply letting the other groups fire on Israel.” Amos Harel, “Hamas is playing the brinkmanship game in Gaza,” Haaretz, December 24, 2008.

29 “IDF troops kill three Gaza militants at border fence,” Haaretz, December 23, 2008.

30 Uri Blau, “GOC Southern Command: IDF will send Gaza back decades,” Haaretz, December 23, 2008.

31 Thomas Friedman, “Israel’s goals in Gaza?” International Herald Tribune, January 14, 2008.

32 According to Haaretz correspondent Barak Regev, “A military source involved in the planning of the attack, in which dozens of Hamas policemen were killed, says that while military intelligence officers were sure the operation should be carried out and pressed for its approval, the IDF’s international law division and the military advocate general were undecided.” Yotam Feldman and Uri Blau, “How IDF legal experts legitimized strikes involving Gaza civilians,” Haaretz, January 1, 2009.

33 Drew Weston, “U.S. signs peace treaty with Al Qaeda, agreeing to end occupation of Afghanistan and halt the policy of disproportionate force,” Huffington Post, January 19, 2009.

34 Aluf Benn, “Israel fears wave of war crimes lawsuits over Gaza offensive,” Haaretz, January 1, 2009.

35 Ibid.
36 Gideon Levy, “Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel,” Haaretz, January 22, 2009.

37 Mark Lavie, “Israel threatens retaliation for Gaza rocket fire,” AP, February 1, 2009.

38 Angus Hohenboken, “Iran will soon pose N-threat, says Israel,” The Australian, January 31, 2009.

39 Nidal Al-Mughrabi, “Hamas wants new leadership for Palestinians,” Reuters, January 30, 2009.

40 “Palestinian civil society calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights,” Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, July 9, 2005; www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=66_0_1_10_M11.

Exposed: University of Toronto Suppresses Pro-Palestinian Activism

2009-02-23T07:19:00.001-08:00

By Liisa Schofield

The last few months have seen a global surge in support for the movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid. Important solidarity actions have occurred across the globe, including: a wave of student occupations across the UK; union resolutions in Europe, New Zealand and Australia; and, most recently, the historic action of South African dockworkers refusing to unload Israeli ships.

These actions register important steps forward in building solidarity with the Palestinian people and show that popular opinion is beginning to shift toward an understanding of Israel as an apartheid state that must be isolated in the manner of the struggle that was waged against South African Apartheid.

At the same time, pro-Israel organizations have responded to the strength of the BDS movement with the familiar tactics of repression, stifling of dissent and bureaucratic harassment. This article details a remarkable case of repression against student organizing at the University of Toronto (UofT).

What follows is the documentation of a deliberate attempt by the UofT administration to prevent a Palestine solidarity conference from being held, the direct involvement of pro-Israel organizations in determining the use of student space and collusion between a number of Ontario universities to prevent the annual Israeli Apartheid Week – a student led week of events about Israeli Apartheid – from taking place. All of the emails referred to in the article are available online.
The Standing Against Apartheid Conference

Restrictions and harassment are experienced by pro-Palestinian activists on most Canadian campuses; this can take many different forms. At York University, for example, the latest tool of repression is the “Student Code of Conduct,” a draconian document that could potentially be used to ban any form of protest. At McMaster, it was in the form of a blanket ban on the use of the term "Israeli apartheid." The University of Toronto (UofT) has seen a broad range of tactics being used against student organizers, but it seems that the administration has decided to focus its effort on combating pro-Palestinian activism through an old-new tool: denial of space for meeting and holding events.

Securing space for student activists at UofT has always been a hard task for student organizations. But it seems that the University has shifted its tactics from mounting bureaucratic obstacles and technical hurdles, to outright denial of the right to book space. UofT seems to have declared a full fledged war against its Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students. Most recently, this came in the form of denying room bookings for a conference planned by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), a student group and action group of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG), in October 2008.

SAIA, along with student groups at York University and other campuses, had planned a student conference, entitled "Standing Against Apartheid: Building Cross-Campus Solidarity with Palestine," for the first weekend of October 2008. The conference was meant to strengthen the student movement against Israeli apartheid, and to share strategies for the future, including planning the annual Israeli Apartheid Week.

Initially planned to take place in Hamilton, the conference was moved for logistical reasons to UofT. At the last minute, UofT decided to deny SAIA their room bookings, forcing them to look for an alternative venue for the conference in less than two days. In the end the conference did take place in Toronto but, instead of taking place at the university, the students ended up meeting in the basement of a church.

The following paragraphs will describe in detail the sequence of events leading up to the denial of these room bookings and the motivations behind the denial of space on campus. The information was obtained through a Freedom of Information (FIPPA) request regarding the week preceding the cancellation of the room booking. Over 250 pages of documents containing references to SAIA were generated by the UofT administration within that one week alone.
How does an Administration deny a legitimate student group
space on their own campus?

The UofT administration learned about the 'Standing Against Apartheid' conference before SAIA had even booked the rooms for it. The information came from Zac Kaye, Executive Director of Hillel of Greater Toronto, the primary pro-Israel group on campuses in Toronto. In most cases, Hillel has acted as Israel's mouthpiece on campuses. Kaye found out about the conference being moved to Toronto, and knowing that it was going to be a strategy conference to co-ordinate pro-Palestine activism on campus, he was quick to act.

On Sept. 29, before the room booking forms were even submitted, Kaye sent a casual sounding email to Jim Delaney, the director of the Office of the Vice-Provost, Students. Delaney is the person at UofT who deals with the issues of student clubs, and who also has a say in the approval of space for those groups. In the email, Kaye inquired about the conference, and whether the event had "been booked according to procedures." Kaye also raised some concerns about openness and accessibility.

After receiving Kaye's email, Delaney alerted some key people at UofT about the conference. Sheree Drummond, Assistant Provost, who is part of the senior advisory group within the Office of the Vice President and Provost, got word of the conference. Apparently Drummond decided that the right to book space on campus by a student group for a student activity is an important issue, so important in fact, that the Interim-Vice President & Provost, Cheryl Misak, should be alerted. It was then that President David Naylor himself got involved.

Somewhere between appointing professors, setting up policies, fundraising and running the affairs of the 61,000 students at UofT, President Naylor made time to deal with the urgent and serious issue of room bookings. In an email he sent to Misak and Jill Matus, Vice-Provost for Students, Naylor characterized the issue as "urgent," and wanted to discuss it and check the room bookings. In his haste he also included some factually incorrect information, specifically that McMaster had refused the initial booking. He then emailed Matus and Misak again, bringing to their attention the fact that the conference was only open to Palestine solidarity activists. This, in his view, was a problem.

Delaney did not waste any time and he quickly started collecting information or, as he called it, “digging.” One of the first things that he did was to contact the administration at McMaster to see if they had any information pertaining to the conference. Dr. Phil Wood, Associate Vice President of McMaster University replied and provided some information. He said that Delaney was lucky because "Our local Jewish community made us aware of the planned event for Oct. 4-5 about 3 weeks ago," and McMaster was looking for room bookings for the event (presumably to cancel them). He also informed Delaney that McMaster's 'Crisis Management Group' is also planning for the upcoming Israeli Apartheid Week in March. McMaster's Director of Security was copied on this email, since according to Wood's assessment, Delaney might have "intel" (i.e. intelligence) about Israeli Apartheid Week.
Booking pre-emptively denied

At this point, with the threat of room bookings looming, the highest level of administration at UofT entered into crisis mode. At some point on Monday, Sept. 29, the upper echelon of UofT decided to deny the booking. It is very important to note that this decision took place before a request for room bookings had even been made. It would seem that this decision was taken because of both the pressure from Hillel, and because of their own animosity to pro-Palestine activism.

Although it is not clear exactly who made this decision, it would appear, according to this email correspondence, that Delaney and Misak were involved and had the support of President Naylor. Delaney began immediately working on an email that would go out to the organizers of the conference informing them that the room bookings were being denied. It also seems that both Delaney and Misak took this so seriously that they put some overtime work on this; a number of emails were sent past midnight.

Delaney drafted an email to the organizers of the conference saying that the room booking was to be denied. He sent it for approval and editing to Misak and Matus who then "tinkered a bit with it" and approved it. Naylor also approved the email. Then this group of high-ranking UofT administrators discussed who should send this completed letter, whether it should be sent from a generic account without a name signing on to it, or whether it should be sent by Delaney himself. In the correspondence it is evident that they were worried about who the legitimate body should be, and how SAIA would react.

After the email was sent out, Delaney was informed by the Manager of Office of Space Management (Andy Allen) that the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG), had put in a request for room bookings for the conference on behalf of SAIA. Of course, the decision to deny the bookings had already been made, and already had the approval of the Provost and the President. The question now became, what should be the excuse for denying the room booking? In his email to Cheryl Misak and Jill Matus, Delaney suggested two reasons: that the five business days advance notice requirement was not met, or the second reason being that they had 'seen' advertising indicating that it is not an OPIRG event. At 10:34 p.m., Jill Matus replied that the room booking request should be declined because of the advance notice requirement (although the rooms were empty, and this would be contrary to past practice of the Office of Space Management). The question of who should send the email emerged again.

In the meantime, Delaney asked the Office of Space Management if they “have standard language for denying a request,” and who would normally send it. Surprisingly, the manager of the Office of Space Management answered that “[We] don't deny many so we don't have a standard language or procedure. I would to start [sic] with Rose sending it, but I know they will push back so I am inclined to start higher up the food chain, at least myself.”

Delaney decided to consult with his superiors. He sent another email to Misak and Matus, but this time he informed them that the advertisement for the event did mention Students Against Israeli Apartheid, which is an OPIRG working group. This means that he made the claim that the University had seen advertising that indicated that this was not an OPIRG event with the full knowledge that such a claim would be false. Presumably, that is why Matus suggested that they focus on the ‘5 business days notice' as an excuse instead. In the same email he also suggests that the email should come from the Director of the Office of Space Management. The reasoning behind this suggestion is that in case this decision is appealed, it would be appealed to the trio Delaney, Matus and Misak, and they can consider the appeal (on their own decision), and dismiss it. So much for transparency and due process at UofT.

Finally, they decided to go with a combination of the two reasons; the short notice, and the claim that the event is not an OPIRG event, even though Delaney, Matus and Misak knew that the second excuse was false. Canada's top academics, Interim Vice President and Provost, and the Vice Provost of the University of Toronto – people who are expected to be ardent defenders of freedom of expression – conspired, and knowingly used a false excuse, to shut down a simple conference for students about Palestine solidarity organizing.
Canadian Universities restricting freedom of speech:
What’s next?

In addition to the glaring restriction on freedom of speech, the documents that were obtained through the Freedom of Information (FIPPA) Request reveal how the UofT's top leadership treat their own students as suspected criminals who apparently should be under close surveillance. This seems to be a common theme throughout Ontario universities, especially when it comes to the issue of Palestine.

At McMaster, the Associate Vice-President was asking for “intelligence,” and at York the administration has already compiled hundreds of pages of legal advice about the activities of SAIA@York. Events on all campuses are consistently monitored and Campus Security often send personnel to attend Palestine related events.
Universities not neutral

In 2007, UofT has even had the audacity to try to charge OPIRG for security personnel that OPIRG did not ask for. OPIRG refused to pay, and the administration backed down. The fact that Hillel and other pro-Israel organizations were involved in denying the room booking at UofT exposes the myth that universities are neutral and somehow give equal treatment to both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups.

In fact, the impression from the course of action that the UofT chose in this case, the language they used and the close coordination with Hillel shows that when it comes to the matter of the ‘Middle East conflict,' the administration unequivocally sides with Israel, even at the expense of freedom of speech – the very principle without which universities could not exist. The personal involvement of the President and the Interim Vice President and Provost is especially alarming. This is evidence of the unfettered access that the pro-Israel lobby has to the administrations at Canadian universities, and to the fact that the top administrators of the Canadian universities are amenable to pressure from these groups.

The implications are even more severe than the denial of room booking. The fact that for the sake of pro-Israel groups, top academics who are in charge of Canada's largest university are willing to make false excuses and use repressive tactics in order to silence a group of students should cast doubt on the overall commitment to principles such as the autonomy of the university and academic freedom.
Ontario-Wide Campaign Against Pro-Palestine Activism

The denial of space for the October conference seems to be just one part of a concerted campaign by universities all across Ontario against pro-Palestine activism. A body that is called "Ontario Committee on Student Affairs," which includes in its membership the Associate Vice President of McMaster University, Philip Woods, Delaney from the University of Toronto and Frank Cappadoccia from York University, met last October in order to discuss the threat of Israeli Apartheid Week on campuses. It was in this Ontario Committee on Student Affairs meeting that they were planning to use the "intimate knowledge," or "intel," as Philip Wood put it, that Delaney would provide. It is clear that the people in charge of security in various universities are putting together “plans and strategies” for Israeli Apartheid Week.
Double standards at UofT

One has to wonder if the pro-Israel groups would get the same treatment from UofT. It seems that not only does UofT help pro-Israel groups in suppressing Palestinian activism, but it also directly sponsors pro-Israel activities. UofT is one of the sponsors of a conference titled "Emerging Trends in Anti-Semitism and Campus Discourse," which is scheduled to take place in March 2009. The conference is the launching conference for an organization called "The Canadian Academic Friends of Israel," or CAFI.

According to CAFI's website, CAFI is “an organization of individuals from Canadian post-secondary institutions who support Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and who wish to protect civil and scholarly discourse as it pertains to the state of Israel on university and college campuses across Canada.”

CAFI also shares offices with the Canada Israel Committee and the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocay (CIJA). It even shares the same phone number and staff person with the latter. Essentially, it is an organization whose sole purpose is to further support the Israeli state and its apartheid policies, and UofT is one of the sponsors of its launching conference. Although this conference is supposedly an academic conference and its organizers claim that it is an inclusive, interdisciplinary event, it is doubtful whether it will include the voices of academics who challenge the policies of the state of Israel. In fact, the organizers of the academic conference were so "inclusive," that they did not issue a call for papers. UofT's sponsorship of this conference, as well as their continued repression of Pro-Palestinian activism on campus, shows the mode of thinking prevailing at Canadian universities: if it is pro-Israel, embrace it, if it is pro-Palestinian, silence it.

We know that university Presidents across Canada have jumped on the opportunity to unilaterally condemn the debate of the merits of an Academic Boycott against Israeli Institutions that support apartheid policies (as called for by over 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations in the 2005 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions appeal to the International community). This past summer, UofT's President David Naylor, along with many other Canadian University Presidents, visited Israel, touring Israeli Universities, to further show their direct support for Israel. Yet these same Presidents have been strikingly silent about the denial of the basic right to education for Palestinian students who are living under Israeli occupation.

Moving forward, the following questions still remain: will Canadian universities conspire with pro-Israel groups to shut down Israeli Apartheid Week in 2009? Are they going to continue silence any voice of support for the Palestinian people on campus?

Or, are university administrations finally going to listen to the voices of Palestinian and Pro-Palestine students who are demanding an end to the unequivocal support of Israeli apartheid on Canadian campuses? •

Liisa Schofield is a documentary filmmaker, an anti-poverty activist and an activist for Palestinian rights. She is also the Volunteer and Programming Coordinator at OPIRG Toronto. This article was first published on Rabble website.

To CAW Members at Air Canada

2009-01-29T10:13:00.000-08:00

We want to thank the thousands of CAW members at Air Canada who attended the more than 30 ratification meetings we held across the country. It was an opportunity to hear loud and clear the many concerns and challenges you are facing in the workplace. Frustration over years of concessions, obscene corporate compensation and bleak predictions for the future has left people stressed and angry. Much outrage was directed at the financial gymnastics of Air Canada that have rewarded Robert Milton, executives and investors but wholly denied hard-working employees their share of the progress.

We also heard that there were a number of communications failures at both the national and local level in keeping you abreast of recent developments in collective bargaining at Air Canada. Many of you also voiced the need to drastically strengthen the connection so that each member, regardless of workplace, job or status, can feel better represented at the bargaining table come this summer when our contract expires (May 31, 2009).

The Bargaining Committee had a difficult decision to make. Economic indicators convinced us that early bargaining may have been a better strategy than gambling on stability in May 2009. Going into negotiations we had a number of objectives to improve job security and the work lives of CAW members. Securing contract work was a key element of our bargaining agenda. We also wanted to offer Air Canada employees at Aeroplan a transition period to decide their future as well as the opportunity to receive additional travel passes from Air Canada. We were able to make improvements in these areas but clearly not enough to satisfy the expectations of our members.

We were concerned about the state of the Air Canada pension plan at a time when many plans are facing huge losses due to the global financial crisis. We were pleased to secure the defined benefit pension plan and made modest improvements to our wages.

Most members across the country had higher expectations than were met by this agreement. You have voted and turned down the contract by a vote of 78%.

While many of the ratification meetings were difficult, one challenge arose with great clarity – that the union not allow Air Canada to continue to bully its workers, cut back services and undermine job security for our members. In the coming weeks, the CAW will be bringing together workplace representatives from across the country where we will strategize on issues facing our members. A list of priorities will be developed after consultation with the membership at a new round of proposal meetings. Your attendance is necessary so your voices can be heard.

We will also be holding strike votes and forming strike committees, so that everyone will be prepared to take on this employer.

We will be highlighting Air Canada’s obvious accountability gap – where the company has been allowed to sell off the profitable sections of the business and leave the core section (and its workers) to flounder. Air Canada employees cannot be expected to bear the brunt of poor executive decisions, as we have in the past.

Again thank you for your tremendous participation during these recent meetings. We will work hard to join with the entire membership to meet your expectations going forward.

In solidarity,

Leslie Dias
President
CAW Local 2002
Ken Lewenza
National President
CAW-Canada

Which Side Are You On?

2009-01-23T09:55:00.001-08:00

Israeli assault injures 1.5 million Gazans

2009-01-17T10:02:00.000-08:00

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth -- This week the death toll in Gaza passed the 1,000 mark, after nearly three weeks of Israeli air and ground attacks. But surprisingly, no one has reported an even more appalling statistic: that there are some 1.5 million injured Palestinians in Gaza. How is is possible that such an astounding figure could have passed the world's media by?

The reason apparently is that they have been relying on the highly unreliable statistics provided by official Palestinian sources. It appears that the Palestinian health ministry only records as wounded those Gazans who need to stay in hospital because of the severity of their injuries.

That means they only count the more than 4,500 Gazans who have suffered injuries such as severe burns from exploding Israeli phosphorus shells; shrapnel wounds from artillery rounds; broken or lost limbs from aerial bombardment; bullet wounds; physical trauma from falling building debris; and so on.

But in fact there is another, far more reasonable standard for assessing those injured, one that provides the far higher total of 1.5 million Gazans - or every surviving Palestinian in Gaza. The measure I am referring to is the one employed by Israel.

Here is an example of its use. In September 2007, the international media reported that 69 Israeli soldiers had been wounded when Palestinian militants fired a rocket into the Zikim army base near the Gaza Strip. The rocket struck a tent where the soldiers were sleeping.

It is worth noting the details of the attack. Israeli officials related that, of the 69 wounded, 11 had moderate or severe injuries and one was critically injured. A few more had light wounds. The rest, probably 50 or more, were injured in the sense that they were suffering from shock.

So, if we apply the same standard to Gaza, that would mean 1.5 million Gazans have been wounded. Or is there still some doubt about whether the weeks of bombardment of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth, have left the entire civilian population in a deep, and possibly permanent, state of shock?

*********

Talking of Gaza's civilians, where did they all go? Israel's so-called "war" on Gaza must be the first example in human history of a conflict where there are apparently no civilians. Or, at least, that is the impression being created by the world's leading international bodies, from the World Health Organisation to the United Nations. Instead they refer to a new category of "women and children".

Thus, those 1,000-plus dead Gazans are broken down into percentages defined in terms of "women and children" and the rest. The earliest figures stated that about 25 per cent of Gaza's dead were "women and children", and that has steadily climbed close to the 50 per cent mark since Israel's ground invasion got under way.

The implication - one with which Israel is presumably delighted - is that the rest are Palestinian fighters, or "terrorists" as Israel would prefer us to call them. It also suggests that every man in Gaza over the age of 16 is being defined as a non-civilian - as a combatant and, again by implication, as a terrorist. In short, all Gaza's men are legitimate targets for Israeli attack.

This is not very far from the position recently attributed to Israeli policymakers by the daily Jerusalem Post. The newspaper reported that officials had come to the view that "it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas".

On this thinking, Israel is at war with every single man, woman and child in Gaza, which is very much how it looks. Maybe we should be glad that the category of "women and children" is still being recognised - at least, for now.

***********

The myths about the blockade of Gaza are so legion it is almost impossible to disentangle them. But let's try tackling a few.

The first is that the blockade was a necessary response to the election of Hamas.

Tell that to John Wolfensohn, special envoy to the Quartet, comprising the US, UN, Europe and Russia, from May 2005. His job was to oversee the disengagement. Wolfensohn was succeeded by the far less principled Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

In an interview with the Haaretz newspaper in 2007, Wolfensohn explained why he had resigned a year into his job, in April 2006. Shortly after the disengagement in summer 2005, he said, Israel and the US had violated the understandings made to ensure the border crossings into Gaza remained open after the Jewish settlers left. "Every aspect of that agreement was abrogated," he said.

The economy collapsed as a result, as Gaza's farmers saw their produce rot at the crossings, and unemployment and disillusionment among Gazans rocketed. "Instead of hope, the Palestinians saw that they were put back in prison. And with 50 per cent unemployment, you would have conflict."

It was the closure of the crossings that Wolfensohn believes partly explains Hamas' success in the subsequent elections, in early 2006. So, according to Wolfensohn, Israel's blockade pre-existed Hamas' rise to power and began when Fatah were still the rulers of Gaza.

The second myth is that the blockade was an attempt, if a futile one, to get Hamas to recognise Israel's "right to exist".

Tell that to Dov Weisglass, former prime minister Ariel Sharon's fixer in Washington. It was he who suggested the true goal of the blockade, which Israel intensified immediately following Hamas' electoral triumph. The policy would be "like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die."

In short, according to Weisglass, Israeli policy in Gaza was "collective punishment" inflicted on the civilian population for choosing Hamas - a policy that, should it need pointing out, is a grave violation of international law and a war crime.

The hope, it seems, was that Gazans would, as they sank into abject poverty, manage to summon up the energy to overthrow Hamas. It didn't happen.

The third myth is that the blockade was designed to put pressure on Hamas to end the rocket fire into Israel.

Tell that to Ehud Barak, the defence minister, and Matan Vilnai, his deputy. This pair were plotting an invasion of Gaza throughout the six-month ceasefire with Hamas, and in fact much earlier.

In truth, they ignored every diplomatic overture from Hamas, including offers of indefinite truces, while they invested their energies in the coming ground invasion. In particular they worked on plans, noted in the Israeli media back in spring 2008, to "level" Gaza's civilian neighbourhoods and create "combat zones" from which civilians could be expelled.

One aspect of the blockade that seems to have been overlooked is the way it has been used to "soften up" Gaza, and Hamas, before Israel's attack. For three years Gaza's population has been denied food, medicines and fuel.

Every general knows it is easier to fight an army - or militia - that is cold, tired and hungry. Could there be a better description of the Hamas fighters, as well as those "women and children", currently facing Israel's tanks and warplanes?

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book is "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net

A version of this article appeared in Al-Ahram Weekly (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg), published in Cairo.

Solidarity with Palestine: Crisis Responses and Movement Building

2009-01-12T21:51:00.000-08:00

By Kole Kilibarda

As the number of deaths from Israel's carnage in Gaza mounts, more and more people in Canada are being moved to take action. Of course, the question quickly becomes: "What can I do?" Among the countless petitions, creative actions, protests, media alerts, letter writing campaigns, public statements and fundraising drives, how can we make the biggest collective impact on Israeli policies as people living in Canada? How can we build a movement that respects all of our different experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and understandings and at the same time effectively responds to Palestinian calls for solidarity?

Each contribution to stop the killing immediately helps, but as Naomi Klein has recently pointed out in The Nation magazine, there's a way of focusing our energies on a campaign that comes directly from Palestine and that directly addresses Israel's ability to kill with impunity. The fact is that Palestinian students, workers, women's organizations, doctors, professors, teachers, refugees, environmentalists, peasant's groups, and others have already told us what they want us to do: launch boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against any aspect of Israel's apartheid system.

Thinking About the Day After the Ceasefire

Effectively opposing the carnage in Gaza then means not only calling for a ceasefire or a halt to the bombing. A “ceasefire,” though important to prevent the killing, would still only restore (and potentially worsen) the every-day apartheid reality separating Israelis and Palestinians. A “ceasefire” that provides only guarantees of Israeli security, but doesn't lift the siege on Gaza, or that fails to ensure that those responsible for the war-crimes committed by Israel are brought to justice, would only reward the Israeli military for its on-going violations of international law. It would tell Israel that it's okay to resume the current level of mass killing anytime in the future.

When the current fighting stops, Palestinian refugees – kicked out of their homes in 1948 and now numbering over 5-million – will still be denied the right to return to their homes. After the current fighting stops, Palestinians who have “citizenship” in Israel, will still continue to live as second-class citizens in their own country. They will still be legally prevented from owning land or living in large areas of Israel, marrying who they want, or even enjoying the same citizenship rights and privileges as Jewish Israelis. After the current fighting stops, Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will continue facing a brutal military occupation, including arbitrary arrests, torture, killings, detentions, various forms of collective punishment, etc.

The struggle against Israeli apartheid is, therefore, a long-term struggle. If we want to support the Palestinian struggle against this racist regime, we need to commit ourselves to building a Palestine solidarity movement that effectively challenges Israel's apartheid system and that effectively responds to what Palestinians are telling us they expect from supporters. By isolating apartheid Israel, including Israeli government officials, institutions and companies that benefit from the current situation, Israel and its supporters will be given a strong message that violations of basic Palestinian rights will not be tolerated.

No grassroots actions in solidarity with Palestine have worried the Israeli government and its supporters over the years as has the BDS campaign launched by over 170 Palestinian organizations in the summer of 2005. In fact, the Israeli government struck up a high level committee specifically to combat the global “threat” of a solidarity movement opposed to its institutionalized system of racist privilege and domination over indigenous Palestinians. Currently supporters of Israeli policies are working furiously to suppress the 5th annual Israel Apartheid Week on campuses across Canada – though the event will be taking place on campuses across four continents this coming March 2009. Diplomatically, Israeli policy makers are trying furiously to discredit the Durban Review Conference on Racism that is likely to condemn Israel's racist laws.

Unfortunately, for Israel and its supporters, the BDS movement has already reached the UN General Assembly, with the president of this body, Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, calling on civil society to support this campaign as the only moral way forward in ensuring Palestinian rights and dealing with Israeli violations: “More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a nonviolent means of pressuring South Africa to end its violations. Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations.”

What about the Canadian Government?

Many of us are probably really frustrated that the Canadian government, with some power to affect the situation, refuses to hold Israel to account. In fact, as it did during the Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, Ottawa is actively supporting Israel's assault. Canadian companies like Nortel and Bombardier, and smaller military companies like Frontline Robotics and MDA, are all working directly with the Israeli military. Israeli owned firms in Canada like Senstar, a subsidiary of Magal Systems, help outfit Canadian prisons while also developing, testing and producing the surveillance technologies used along Israel's apartheid wall. Mawashi Corp. in Quebec helps develop body armor used by the Israeli Border Police and Army in suppressing Palestinian demonstrations. The majority shareholders of Chapters/Indigo bookstores fund the Heseg Foundation, which gives scholarships to “lone soldiers” to stay in Israel after doing their military service.

Canada also has a free trade agreement with Israel, exchanging over a billion dollars each year with that state in addition to the billions of dollars in direct two-way investments. In 2008, Canada signed a “public security” agreement that commits it to cooperate with Israel on a number of “public safety” issues, although what this entails is hard to specify as there has been virtually no Parliamentary, public or media oversight of the agreement. The benefits of these commercial, military and security links reach only a few people and companies in Canada and Israel. On the other side of these agreements, beyond the glossy investment brochures, countless Palestinians, First Nations people, Afghans, and other racialized groups targeted by both states simply are confronted with newer and more “creative” ways of being killed, of having their lands taken and resources plundered.

Afterall, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised that Canada refuses to recognize the rights of indigenous Palestinians, when it continues to deny the sovereign rights of indigenous peoples here. In fact, Lawrence Cannon, Canada's current pro-Israeli Foreign Minister, sharpened his teeth in negotiating with other nations when as an MP he helped spearhead repression against the Algonquins of Barriere Lake. Settler-states are like “peas in a pod” and those of us living here and concerned with Palestinian human rights need to be moved to ensure that Canada also respects those same rights when it comes to First Nations struggles for land and self-determination. The movement to boycott and disrupt the 2010 Vancouver Olympics is based on those same principles.

Feeling the Impact of BDS,
Israel Tries to Rebrand Itself

Israel has tried to “rebrand” its image as a highly militarized and racist society in response to the growth of BDS campaigns in recent years. It has done so by trying to portray itself as a hub of innovation and high-tech, telling the world effectively: "You can't afford to boycott us!" However, these innovations rely on Israel's control of Palestinian land, theft of Palestinian resources and suppression of Palestinian rights. Recently the Israeli consulate in Toronto launched a $1-million rebranding campaign to fight off the boycotts by focusing on Israeli contributions to science and technology.

Many of these innovations come from the Israeli state's support for research and development in the military field. Even medical innovations championed in the campaign emerge from an Israeli health system that disproportionately underfunds health care for Palestinian citizens of Israel, a network of research institutes and universities that are complicit in maintaining Israeli apartheid and that actively cooperate in blocking Palestinian researchers from the occupied territories from exercising their academic freedom.

Certainly there's a better way of “innovating” and “testing” new technologies than through the repression of another people. Such “innovations” and “achievements” shouldn't be celebrated. Instead they need to be condemned and boycotted. Interestingly, the white minority regime in South Africa attempted to whitewash its record in the face of a growing BDS campaign in the 1980s through a similar marketing effort that celebrated its supposed “achievements” in science, technology and tourism. The Israeli effort, just as the South African rebranding campaign, is bound to fail so long as Israel's discriminatory policies don't change.

Confronting Global Apartheid:
The Support System for Israeli Apartheid

In South Africa, during the 1970s and 1980s, when Western governments were encouraging “constructive” engagement with the racist white minority regime there, thousands of ordinary people across the world took creative actions to isolate it and companies that did business there. The BDS movement was an important part of the effort to defeat South African apartheid. It was a tool used to educate people outside of South Africa on the situation inside the country and a concrete way of providing support to the real struggles of indigenous South Africans against white supremacy.

Apartheid was in the end defeated by the incredible sacrifices of Black South Africans and of liberation fighters in the surrounding countries. The support from the outside helped change the tone of the international response, making it increasingly harder for governments advocating “constructive engagement” with racists to maintain this position. Unfortunately, in today's South Africa, apartheid continues in many ways in privatized form. Like across much of the world today, South Africans continue to be divided by gated communities, razor wires, surveillance cameras and heavy-handed “security” measures designed to keep the privileged (largely white) few feel “safe” in their islands of luxury and separate ("apart") from racialized majorities cramped into increasingly smaller and more heavily policed urban spaces. This is the neoliberal world that has grown from centuries of free-market capitalism built on the foundations of slavery and colonialism.

The struggle against global apartheid and its local manifestations therefore continues. And it is this context that also needs to be confronted if we are to effectively challenge the support system for Israeli apartheid. BDS has been a tool in the arsenal of activists and community organizers to isolate racist regimes when governments fail to do so. It is certainly not a substitute for the broader struggle against racism, classism and sexism in the world and in our own societies. In the case of Palestine, it is meant as a specific strategy that is being pushed as part of a direct call from Palestine for a specific call for solidarity. If we are committed to a long-term struggle against the system of Israeli apartheid that allows things like the current massacre in Gaza to occur, the BDS call from Palestine will be an important way of connecting our various attempts to put an end to this racist regime. It will also help build broader struggles against a highly unequal and racially stratified world order.

Moving Forward After the Ceasefire:
Ending the Siege, Freeing Palestine

People and groups wanting to stand in solidarity with Palestine during the current crisis should therefore be careful not to simply fall into the trap of only reacting to the latest crisis. We need to work instead toward building a movement that can effectively challenge Israeli apartheid over the long-term. Part of this strategy is lifting the siege on Gaza, another part is imposing BDS on Israel until it recognizes fundamental Palestinian human rights.

These rights are spelled out by Palestinian organizations spearheading the BDS campaign, they include: the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes; the right of Palestinians living in Israel to be treated as equals; and the rights of all Palestinians living under foreign military occupation to be free of the racism, fear, repression and the impunity that are all necessary for Israel to maintain its racist foundations. Calling for an end to occupation, while important, only means we're standing in solidarity with a portion of the Palestinian people. It does nothing to back the struggles and demands of Palestinians living in refugee camps or as nominal “citizens” in an Israeli state that refuses to acknowledge fundamental Palestinian rights.

Along these lines it is necessary not to counterpose our immediate, short-term demands with the longer-term strategy of BDS. Rather BDS provides a tool or mechanism through which to win these demands. For example, it makes little sense to raise a demand like “Lift the Siege of Gaza” without a concrete strategy to make this happen. The best and most effective strategy – as the experience of the Palestine solidarity movement has shown over the last few years – is to concretely cut ties with Israel apartheid in spaces where we have influence.

Every step taken toward isolating Israel for its violations of Palestinian rights, even if symbolic, makes it more likely to win short-term demands such as lifting the siege on Gaza. BDS, in other words, is not a demand. It is rather, a course of action designed to ensure that demands are met. Over the long-term the collective impact of pushing these demands through an effective strategy of BDS will ensure that the broad and inclusive vision of justice that Palestinian social movements continue to struggle for. To maximize its impacts those wishing to stand in solidarity with Palestinians should coordinate their actions with the organizations in Palestine that are spearheading this campaign.

As the crisis in Gaza continues any form of opposition is helpful. Everything from direct action, staying visible on the streets, occupying consulates, constituency offices, etc. needs to continue. Fundraising, teach-ins, etc. education, grassroots media work, etc. are all important for those moved in solidarity with Palestine. Each action has the potential to help. However, to magnify the impact of our grassroots individual or group actions, to ensure that after a successful event or action we don't go home and feel defeated by the latest news on our TV screens or inboxes, it is important to find ways of plugging into an already existing global solidarity movement that is responding directly to the BDS call from Palestine. •

In order to find out more about this campaign please visit some of the following websites:

Global BDS Movement www.bdsmovement.net
Stop the Wall Campaign www.stopthewall.org
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) www.pacbi.org
BADIL – Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights www.badil.org
Ittijah – www.ittijah.org
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid www.caiaweb.org
Tadamon! www.tadamon.ca
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights sphr.org
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK) www.palestinecampaign.org
U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation www.endtheoccupation.org

Kole Kilibarda spent ten months in 2004 working in the Balata Refugee Camp near Nablus, Palestine. He is an organizer with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto and can be reached at kole@riseup.net.

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

2009-01-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City.

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power.

The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves.

In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

Up to 257 Palestinian children killed in Gaza: UN - No safe place in crowded enclave, UNICEF official says

2009-01-08T15:19:00.000-08:00

By Ibrahim Barzak Karin Laub THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Tiny bodies lying side by side wrapped in white burial shrouds. The cherubic face of a dead preschooler sticking up from the rubble of her home. A man cradling a wounded boy in a chaotic emergency room after Israel shelled a UN school.

Children, who make up more than half of crowded Gaza's 1.4 million people, are the most defenceless victims of the war between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli army has unleashed unprecedented force in its campaign against Hamas militants, who have been taking cover among civilians.

A photo of four-year-old Kaukab Al Dayah, just her bloodied head sticking out from the rubble of her home, covered many front pages in the Arab world Wednesday. "This is Israel," read the headline in the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. The preschooler was killed early Tuesday when an F-16 attacked her family's four-storey home in Gaza City. Four adults also died.
As many as 257 children have been killed and 1,080 wounded, with about a third of the total casualties since Dec. 27, according to UN figures released today.

Hardest on the children is the sense that nowhere is safe and adults can't protect them, said Iyad Sarraj, a psychologist hunkering down in his Gaza City apartment with his four stepchildren, ages three to 17. His 10-year-old, Adam, is terrified during bombing raids and has developed asthma attacks, Sarraj said.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas in response to its repeated rocket attacks on southern Israel, and is doing its utmost to avoid civilian deaths. However, foreign aid officials note that civilians can't escape blockaded Gaza and that bombing crowded areas inevitably leads to civilian casualties. The Israeli military has used tank and artillery shells, as well as large aerial bombs.

In the Shati refugee camp on the Mediterranean, 10 boys were playing football in an alley today when a shell from an Israeli gunboat hit a nearby Hamas prison.

At the sound of the explosion, one of the older boys whistled, a signal to interrupt the game. Several players took cover with their backs pressed against a wall. After a minute or two, the game resumed.

Samih Hilal, 14, said he sneaked out of his grandfather's house against the orders of his worried father. The house was crowded with relatives who fled more dangerous areas, he said, and he couldn't stand being cooped up for so many hours.

"Do you think we are not afraid? Yes, we are. But we have nothing to do but play," Samih said.
Another boy, 13-year-old Yasser, waved toward the unmanned Israeli drones in a defiant gesture, instead of seeking cover during the shelling. "There is nothing we can do. Even if we run away here or there, their shells are faster than us," he said.

Indeed, all of Gaza has become dangerous ground.

Children have been killed in strikes on their houses, while riding in cars with their parents, while playing in the streets, walking to a grocery and even at UN shelters.

Sayed, Mohammed and Raida Abu Aisheh – ages 12, eight and seven – were at home with their parents when they were all killed in an Israeli air strike before dawn Monday. The family had remained in the ground floor apartment of their three-storey building, while the rest of the extended clan sought refuge in the basement from heavy bombardment of nearby Hamas installations.

Those in the basement survived. The children's uncle, Saber Abu Aisheh, 49, searched today through the rubble, a heap of cement blocks, mattresses, scorched furniture and smashed TVs.
He said Israel gave no warning, unlike two years earlier when he received repeated calls from the Israeli military, including on his cellphone, that a nearby house was going to get hit and that he should evacuate.

"What's going on is not a war, it's a mass killing," said Abu Aisheh, still wearing the blood-splattered olive-coloured sweater he wore the night of the air strike.

The Israeli military did not comment when asked why the Abu Aisheh house was targeted.

In the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, medics found four young children next to their dead mothers in a house, according to the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross. "They were too weak to stand up on their own," the statement said.

The Red Cross did not say what happened to the children, but noted that the Israeli army refused rescuers permission to reach the neighbourhood for four days. Israel said the delay was caused by fighting.

Medic Mohammed Azayzeh said he retrieved the bodies of a man and his two young sons from central Gaza on Wednesday. One of the boys, a one-year-old, was cradled in his father's arms.
In the Jebaliya refugee camp, five sisters from the Balousha family, ages four, eight, 11, 14 and 17, were buried together in white shrouds on Dec. 29. An Israeli air strike on a mosque, presumably a Hamas target, had destroyed their adjacent house. Only their parents and a baby girl survived.

Israel accuses Hamas of cynically exploiting Gaza's civilians and using them as human shields. The military has released video footage showing militants firing mortars from the rooftops of homes and mosques.

"Israel wants to see no harm to the children of Gaza," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. "On the contrary, we would like to see their children and our children grow up without the fear of violence. Until now, Hamas has deliberately prevented that from becoming reality."

Rocket fire from Gaza has disrupted life in Israeli border communities, and with the latest intensified militant attacks, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are in rocket range. Schools are closed and fearful Israeli children rush into bomb shelters at the sound of air raid sirens.

In the ongoing chaos of Gaza, it's difficult to get exact casualty figures. Since Dec. 27, at least 750 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moawiya Hassanain.

Of those, 257 were children, according to the UN's top humanitarian official, John Holmes, citing Health Ministry figures that he called credible and deeply disturbing.

"We are talking about urban war," said Abdel-Rahman Ghandour, the Jordan-based spokesman for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa. "The density of the population is so high, it's bound to hurt children ... This is a unique conflict, where there is nowhere to go."

Successive generations of Gaza children have grown up with violence, part of the accelerating conflict with Israel. In the late 1980s, many threw stones at Israeli soldiers in a revolt against occupation. In the second uprising, starting in 2000, some were recruited by Hamas as suicide bombers.

Sarraj, the psychologist, said he fears for this generation. Having experienced trauma and their parents' helplessness, they may be more vulnerable to recruitment by militants.

In his Gaza City apartment, Sarraj tries to reassure his own children.

His 14-year-old stepdaughter lost her school, the American International School, to a recent air strike, and a girlfriend was killed in another attack. The family lives in the middle-class Rimal neighbourhood and still has enough fuel to run a generator in the evenings, enabling the children to read.

Yet when the bombings start, he can't distract them. "They are scared," he said. "They run to find the safest place, in the hallway, away from the window."

This Kind of War

2009-01-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Justin Podur

The current crisis in Gaza began with Israel's breaking the ceasefire with Hamas on November 4, 2008. The five-month ceasefire was unsustainable for two reasons. First and most importantly, because it condemned the Palestinians of Gaza to a slow and wasting death: part of the ceasefire was the continuation of Israel's blockade of Gaza. As part of this blockade, Palestinians could not leave the territory. This included, in high-profile cases, students who had obtained admission and visas to study abroad, but also people who later died because they could not receive treatment for cancers and other medical problems. Remember that the Gaza strip is 360 square kilometers, with 1.5 million people. The people have skills, strong social cohesion, and traditions of hospitality, but the area is not self-sufficient and the economy cannot function without free movement of people and goods in and out. Leave aside that the moral right and legal right of Palestinians to self-defense was denied by the prevention of arms supplies (to even mention this as a possibility is to break a taboo). Every other aspect of life was also disrupted by the blockade. Education was disrupted as Israel refused to allow paper, ink, books, and other supplies in. Health care was disrupted as Israel refused to allow medical supplies. Nutrition and normal child development was disrupted both by the refusal of Israel to allow food supplies, but also by the use of sonic booms, which the Israeli air force uses to frighten the population, and periodic bombing and assassinations.

At this point, Israel is not even allowing Palestinians to leave, so displacement is not the goal, at least for the time being. On the other hand, when body counts rise into the thousands or tens of thousands, Israel might then allow the Palestinians to flee further massacres, and be lauded for its generousness by the international community.

The second reason the ceasefire was unsustainable was deeper. So long as Israel is unwilling to negotiate a political settlement and share the land, with the US on side and with shedding Palestinian blood being a source of political credibility in Israeli society, Palestinians have no choice but to resist. If they are not starved and bombed, they will be more effective at resisting their own displacement and colonization. With each step Israel takes to try to dismantle Palestinian resistance, a genocidal logic advances. Palestinians have been walled in and blockaded. Now they are bombed and invaded. When they have been thrown off their land and into neighbouring countries, they are attacked in those countries, in their refugee camps. Indeed, the people of Gaza are mostly refugees who were thrown off lands in what is now Israel. If they were displaced from Gaza, into Egypt, what would stop Israel from attacking them there? Would being displaced twice offer more protection than being displaced once?

Once the ceasefire ended, Israel was at war. This was a war of choice, and a war it had prepared for extensively on diplomatic and military levels.

The diplomatic scenario was favourable to Israel in several ways. Palestine had been further divided. The West Bank was controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority collaborates with Israel. The PA is currently maintained in power because the elected Hamas parliamentarians are in either PA or Israeli prisons and because Israeli security forces, as well as the PA, arrest scores of people in the West Bank every week. Gaza was controlled by the elected Hamas leadership. Israel could focus on one enemy and leave the suppression of the Palestinians of the West Bank to the PA. Israel has rounded up hundreds of Palestinian children in the West Bank and shot and killed many demonstrators there in recent weeks, but these violations have become routine and barely register next to the more spectacular massacres of dozens at a time in Gaza. Hizbollah in Lebanon, who in 2006 interrupted a pattern of massacre and strangulation that Israel was conducting in Gaza (“Summer Rains”), have domestic constraints preventing them from intervening, which would bring more thousands of dead to Lebanon in a new Israeli air campaign, against which Hizbollah has no defenses. Egypt has been more co-operative with Israel than ever before, keeping the Rafah crossing sealed and, at the official level, blaming Hamas for bringing the massacres on themselves. According to Hamas, Egypt also told them that Israel was not planning an attack – which gave the Israelis the surprise that helped them to massacre over 200 Palestinians in a single day at the start of their air campaign. As usual, Israel can count on unconditional official US support from all parts of the political spectrum, which seems to be enough to prevent any useful intervention by anyone else in the world. Many progressive governments, including that of Venezuela and Bolivia, have condemned the atrocities, but have not taken any further steps to try to diplomatically isolate Israel or support Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS), which might be part of a strategy that could stop Israel. Street protests have been large, in some parts of the world unprecedentedly so. But without any official political expression, these protests can be dismissed and ignored as the February 15, 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq were ignored.

On the military level, some basic points. Calling the current conflict a 'war' is more of an analogy than a description, because the word 'war' still evokes the idea of armies meeting on a battlefield and contesting territory. Israel has all of the weapons of war, but it does not really have an opposing army to fight. It can take any territory it wants and easily kill anyone trying to contest it. It can hit, and destroy, any target, anywhere Palestinians live, at will. One compilation by the al-Mezan Centre in Gaza from December 31/08 presented 315 killed (41 children), 939 injured (85 children), and 112 houses, 7 mosques, 38 private industrial and agricultural enterprises, 16 schools, 16 government facilities, 9 charity offices, and 20 security installations. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) figures to December 31/08 were 334 killed (33 children), 966 injured (218 children), 37 homes, 67 security centres, 20 workshops, as well as 40 invasions in the West Bank, killing 3 Palestinians and arresting/kidnapping hundreds more.

Skimming the IMEMC site, here is some of what Israel destroyed since the attack started.

December 27-28/08
-Palestinian Police Headquarters
-Rafah Police Station
-Saraya Security Compound
-Beit Hanoun municipal building
-Rafah governorate offices
-A police jeep in Gaza City
-The Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs
-Greenhouses in Alqarrara
-Charity offices throughout Gaza
-A medical storage facility
-A fuel station in Rafah
-A fuel truck in Rafah
-A police station in Gaza City (al-Shujaeyya)
-al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City
-Houses in Gaza City and Jabaliya refugee camp
-Hamas's al-Aqsa TV station in Gaza City
-Hamas's Asda' media office in Khan Yunis
-Tunnels in Rafah
-An apartment in Tal-Alhawa in Gaza City
-A car in Nuseirat refugee camp
-The Islamic University in Gaza (several buildings, including the female students' residence)
-A mosque in Jabaliya
-A fishermen's dock at Gaza shore

December 29/08
-A house in Jabaliya (killing 5 sisters, all children).
-A blacksmith workshop in al-Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City
-A house in Khan Younis
-A house in Abasan town
-The Ministry of the Interior in Gaza

December 30/08
-The Ministries Compound
-The Popular Resistance Committees center in Gaza City
-A house in Beit Lahia
-Another fuel truck in northern Gaza
-The UNRWA school in al-Qarara
-Houses in Rafah
-A house in Jabailya
-A sports club in Tal AL Hawa
-A police station in Beit Hanoun
-Bani Suheila City Council
-Training grounds for the Al Qassam Brigades
-The mosque of Omar Bin Al Khattab Mosque in Al Bureij
-Al Khulafa’ Mosque in northern Gaza
-The governor’s office in northern Gaza
-The Ministries Compound in Tal Al Hawa in Gaza completely destroying it (including the Ministry of Finance, Interior, Education)
-A military camp that was previously used by Force 17, loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.
-A dairy in Gaza City
-A workshop in Beit Lahiya
-Another home in northern Gaza (killing two children)
-The Rafah-Egypt border crossing
-The house of a Fatah leader in al-Mighraqa
-A house in Beit Hanoun (killing two children)
-A house in al-Maghazi refugee camp

December 31/08
-Ambulances in Gaza City (killing a doctor, a driver, and a medic)
-The oxygen refilling plant in Gaza City (used by hospitals in Gaza)

Jan 1/09
-Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City
-The Ministry of Education in Gaza City
-The Ministry of Justice in Gaza City
-A house in Nuseirat refugee camp
-A workshop in Rafah
-A picnic park in Rafah
-Tunnels in Rafah
-A clinic in Rafah
-A house in al-Maghazi
-Nizar Rayan's home, killing him, his wives, and all of their children (16 people total)

Jan 2-3/09
-An apartment building in al-Qarara
-A house in Jabaliya (killing 2 children)
-A house in al-Boreij refugee camp
-A mosque in Jabaliya
-The American School in Gaza City
-A house in al-Shujaeyya
-A house in Gaza City
-Fishing boats in Gaza City
-A car on the Gaza Valley bridge
-A police station in Gaza
-At least 20 homes in Gaza

Israeli bombing strategy has been to bomb the same targets repeatedly. This means not only more thorough destruction of the infrastructure, but also additional killing of medical personnel and residents who try to help the first round of victims.

Israel's actions are not constrained by the opposing army but by two political considerations: First, how much killing can it do before it begins to face the threat of diplomatic isolation? Disallowing journalists and observers is part of Israel's strategy to deal with this, as it was for the US in Iraq. Israel's ground invasion has been accompanied by a total blackout even of Israeli reporters. Given the intensity of its intelligence and the precision of its weapons, Israel is able to choose the death toll, with some precision. At least some of the current killing is likely designed to push the limits and see how far Israel can go before eliciting any serious reaction.

The second consideration is, can Israeli military casualties be kept low enough that the Israeli public continues to support war? To deal with the latter, Israel uses airpower and artillery to destroy from a distance, and opened its ground invasion at night. Since it has long since dismantled Gaza's electricity infrastructure, its soldiers are the only ones who can see at night through their infrared goggles – Gaza's people, civilians and anyone who might want to try to defend them, are in complete darkness.

Israel's active military is estimated to be some 170,000. With universal conscription, it has some 2.4 million people between 17-49 years old fit for military service and everyone has had some training. Its military budget is 9% of its substantial GDP, totaling some $18.7 billion. It receives about $3 billion per year from the US. It has about 1000 main battle tanks, 1500 lower quality tanks, over 1000 artillery pieces, over 500 warplanes, about 200 helicopters, 13 warships, and 3 submarines. It has the latest unmanned aerial vehicles and can gather very precise intelligence using aerial photography and satellites.

Hamas is mainly a political organization, but it has an armed wing that has the capacity to improvise rockets and explosives and to train fighters with small arms. Hizbollah in Lebanon had some success against Israeli ground forces in 2006 partly because of armaments: they were able to destroy Israeli tanks with anti-tank missiles and fight against Israeli soldiers at night with night-vision goggles. Hamas does not have access to such weaponry. In 2002, when Palestinian fighters defended Jenin from Israeli forces, they improvised some explosions but ran out of ammunition and supplies and were ultimately defeated when Israel leveled the central part of the camp with bulldozers.

Because calling it 'war' is basically metaphorical, the notion of a 'military casualty', as opposed to a civilian death, on the Palestinian side doesn't make much sense. If a soldier or even a militant is killed in battle, he is counted as a military casualty. If that same soldier is killed in his house by a missile from the sky or a shell from kilometres away, he is the victim of an assassination. If his entire family and various other people are killed because they were in his proximity, they are victims of murder. There are other words that can describe it, such as 'collateral damage', but murder is the most accurate, something that would be clear if racism against Palestinians were not so pervasive.

Israel invites us to dehumanize ourselves by estimating how many of its victims were 'militants' and how many 'civilians'. In this game, Israel claims everyone it has killed was a militant and those who were not are victims of the militants because they hide among civilians. The United Nations has accepted the broad parameters of the game, estimating at one point that one fifth of those killed were civilians. The details can then be quibbled over. But no one would accept this game if it were not Palestinians who were being killed. No one tries to divide the victims of Hamas's rockets or, in years past, suicide bombings. No doubt many of these were off-duty soldiers, since Israel has universal conscription. But everyone understands that these were civilians and killing them, a crime (an act of terrorism, no less). Most people understand that subdividing the young victims of a suicide bombing at a cafeteria based on whether they were active duty or reservist soldiers would be a pretty disgusting thing to do. But the same simple logic fails when attempted to extend it to Palestinians at a marketplace or school or hospital or university, all of whom are legitimate targets of murder unless proven otherwise (and Israel allows no one to see the evidence to prove anything in any case).

Though there is some uncertainty about Hamas's military capability, the invasion of Gaza will not likely be a replay of Lebanon 2006. Palestinians might be motivated and have little to lose, but they cannot compete with Israel's weaponry. Indeed, the reason the Israelis were surprised in Lebanon was that they had gotten used to fighting lightly armed and helpless opponents. Israel knows how to occupy Gaza. Before the 2005 'disengagement', their forces operated from fortified settlements and cut Gaza in three parts, blocking the three main north-south roads with armor. They used extensive aerial surveillance and cameras from towers to watch every square inch of Gaza and snipe at people, including children, at will. They came out of their bases in massive armored force and with air support to bulldoze houses and neighbourhoods, after first using artillery and air strikes. Helicopter gunships would make short work of any lightly armed militants, who (unlike Hizbollah) have nothing capable of shooting one down. They can create their own no-go zones and minefields using cluster bombs, making even more of Gaza's tiny area uninhabitable – and making the concentration camp that much more concentrated.

If everything goes Israel's way, as it seems to be going, the next question is how Israel will decide if it has won. It can probably destroy many tunnels and, by occupying the area, silence the rockets. It can probably also conduct house-to-house searches and massacres, and will probably attempt to capture or kill the elected Hamas leadership. Since most countries refuse to recognize Hamas's government and many have accepted Israel's request that it be listed as a terrorist organization, there is nothing protecting these leaders' lives any more than the lives of the people who voted for them (or against them). With its soldiers back in Gaza, Israel will be able to return to its noble project of starving the Palestinian population, this time with an even more destroyed infrastructure and from up close. As Alex de Waal pointed out about Darfur, 'starve' is a transitive verb: it is something one people does to another.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. He was in Gaza in 2002. His blog is www.killingtrain.com.

Gaza Rally

2009-01-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_30641.aspx

Conversations with a Zionist

2009-01-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

So this random dude decides to message me on facebook and criticize my beliefs on being critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This is the extended conversation that took place over a couple of days. I am Bloodred. He is Zev the Zionist. Will update should it continue...

Zev the Zionist: me dear friend, it is obvious that you are not watching the news and cetanly havent visited the gaza for the past month, but, if u were, then u could find out that it is not an occupation any more, and that it is a war between two well organized and equiped armies, so for the next time before you getting your head out of your ass, just check what is going on in reality, and maybe if u were that motivated even perhaps vistied the area right now to show your brave support.

unfortunately my friend your words and knowldge do not have any sense, bc u are here.. and it makes you A no one.please keep w your peaceful life and astay away of issues that you are not well aknowledged with.

Bloodred: Gaza is the worlds largest prison camp. Israel has maintained a blockade causing a humanitarian disaster. That to me reeks of an occupation. Not to mention the fundamental right of return to '48 Palestine is not being addressed.

From the UN General Assembly on Human Rights in OPT:
"Terrorism is a scourge, a serious violation of human rights and international humanitarian law. No attempt is made in the reports to minimize the pain and suffering it causes to victims, their families and the broader community. Palestinians are guilty of terrorizing innocent Israeli civilians by means of suicide bombs and Qassam rockets. Likewise...the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are guilty of terrorizing innocent Palestinian civilians by military incursions, targeted killings and sonic booms that fail to distinguish between military targets and civilians. All these acts must be condemned and have been condemned.

Common sense, however, dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al Qaeda, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation. While such acts cannot be justified, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism,"

"Israel remains the occupying Power in Gaza despite its claim that Gaza is a "hostile territory". This means that its actions must be measured against the standards of international humanitarian law and human rights law. ..."

I have been to the West Bank and seen the attrocities for myself. I have seen the illegal settlements, the illegal check points, the illegal apartheid wall, the illegal refugee camps. I have witnessed first hand the dehumanization of the Palestinian people inside and outside of Israel. Collective punishment is a WAR CRIME!! I WOULD have gone into Gaza had I been allowed to but alas, the mighty state of Israel was preventing any humanitarian aid from getting in.

I am in touch with human rights workers who are on the ground in Gaza right now showing exactly whats going on.So for your infinte wisdom: I am "acknowledged" in this and an attack on one persons human rights is an attack on all of ours. Be it in Israel or colonial occupation here in north america of Indigenous lands. Are you seriously saying the Gazans are well equipped? Fuck man, youre as delusional as you are retarded apparently.

Zev The Zionist: keep living in your pink bubble in your rich fat country, believing that you are actually doing something. if u were fighting against the hamas or the hizballa, then u know that they are very well organized and equipped, we are not fighting ppl with burning bottles my friend. moreover, as being not only ans israeli but an immigrant from azerbajan who escaped armanian/jewish jenocide, witnissed and participated in a war, it is always the children, the women, and the elder, who suffer but that is how it alwys was and will be bc it is the human nature. im not trying to change your point ov view, it that your enthusiasm to enforce yours on others is what made me to respond to your non objective answers. happy new years buddy, eat, sleep, live well.

Bloodred: so because of zionist rhetoric im supposed to condone the butchering of women and children? because terrible things happenned to jews, armenians, and races all over the world were supposed to chalk it up to human nature? are you serious?

ill admit as an individual i am pretty helpless, but the point is to build an international movement to fight military and colonial oppression and violence. hezbollah and hamas were able to gain power because people in those areas have no hope. they presented a tangible resistance to oppressed people. well adjusted, non oppressed people generally dont align themselves with fundamentalists. all blood spilled is on the hands of the zionists. theyre the ones who created the resistance because of their racist apartheid policies.

Its easy to tell people to be objective when you are the one who supports the oppressor. my enthusiasm comes from a desire to confront racism and oppression wherever I see it. Apart from going to Palestine and standing in front of soldiers and settlers who shoot children (which ive done) all i can do is support movements that challenge zionism wherever it manifests. so fuck your "pink bubble" theory. last time I checked...israel was one of the richest countries in the world (mainly due to aid from the US but thats neither here nor there).

Im not going to enforce my views on anyone. once presented with the truth any rational person is going to realise that all the zionist, imperial lobbying that gets done is simply there to cover up the racist policies of the state of israel. international pressure worked to eliminate racist apartheid south africa and it will work for racist apartheid israel.

Zev the Zionist: listne man, i dont know what are u smoking but the last time i checked my ppl and the arabs are the same race, semites, therefore the separation is due to ideological reasons and not racial. zionism was created bc jews needed to live in a country without beeing presecuded, since jews and arabs fought sonce biblical times, i think that your ass should stay out of this, plz dont write me back anymore, since your views dont interest us.. i wish u could go back to gaza for my intellegent and brave friend, to meet myself and my brigade from the other side.

Bloodred: Jews and Arabs have NOT fought since Biblical times. There are numerous reports of both religions acting cooperatively in times of persectution. Palestinians provided many safe havens for Jews in times of persecution. This is Zionist rhetoric you are spouting in an attempt to justify the colonization of Judea and Sumeria and ethnically cleanse the land of people who had been there for generations. Now, people who have absolutely NO geneological ties can claim citizenship in Israel strictly because of adherence to a religion, but someone who grew up in Jaffa and now lives 20 miles from where they lived cant return home.

You can argue semantics all you want. It doesn't change the fact that Israel is practicing forced segregation (apartheid) and collective punishment (war crime) on Arabs. Palestinians should be afforded the right of return just as Jews should be able to live in peace wherever they settled. So because Europe persecuted Jews in the early 20th century its ok to do the same to the Palestinians right? Not to mention the racism Palestinian Israelis deal with on a regular basis inside Israel proper.

Wow..you've got guns. Id love to see how well Israel does without the support of the US. This whole "might makes right" is archaic, inhumane and neolithic. Because youve got guns its OK to shoot women and children. Because you've got Tanks its ok to blockade food and medical supplies. And the Israelis wonder why the attacks keep happening. And

Your "brigades" are full of 18 year olds who have been brainwashed and wouldnt know how to think independently if they were afforded the right.

So whatever, you can choose to support murder and the breaking of international law because you buy into this ideology. And you can also choose to have your family in Beer Sheva live in constant fear of rockets. Until basic human rights are observed, and collective punishment ends, there will be conflict.I should have known this would degrade into an "I know people with guns and I will shoot you" argument. I am dealing with a zionist.

Zev the Zionist: 1. ppl in our army are rated higher when they show better ability to make decisions themselves, it appeares from your words u didnt know that

2. jews were persecuted for 2000+ yrs, having no country

3. they still are persecuded

4. for your knowledge, these mother fuckers carry their kids, wives and neightbours with them, as human shields, so that israel would look bad when trying to kill them, plus they get 15 min alert ahead before being attacked by our forces.

5. israel paid forever for their fucking electricity and water6. the right of return was made up be jews to secure other jews and not anyone else7. jews and arabs did fight since biblical times (and lived and peace for a while when it was in both sides interest) mention that jews were always been the underdog

it seems that you are the brain washed one my friend, i dont really understand your ignorant passion, but you are redicilously funny. i must admit that from your writings u are not aweare of a lot of things, behind the news, tv, and even what ppl say on the street in gaza, bc after all their mass majority is ignorant as well. i know it is fraustrating to live when your neighbour's grass and turkey is greener and fatter, but it is not israel's duty to keeps these fucks happy (althought it always did more than everybody else will do).

i was born in a shaid country, and know what a shaid soul is, you would never understand, bc it is not your fight, not in your childhood or blood.

Bloodred: Human shields? Kind of like the Israeli Occupation Force does?

http://www.btselem.org/english/Human_Shields/20060720_Human_Shields_in_Beit_Hanun.aspThe

rocket attacks will stop when the occupation ends. It's really quite simple. Political zionism is a scourge on the Jewish people and I'm glad I work with Jews who are disgusted by the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

The right of return is a fundamental human right "made up" by the United Nations to prevent ethnic cleansing. 700,000 Palestinians left their homes to avoid the fighting and because of rumours of torture and killing. They have the right to return home. Theyre the ones who have actually lived there and can show an actual bloodline dating back hundreds of years. Not an ashekenazi who emmigrated from Germany to Brooklyn.

Israel has continued on a rampant path of colonization in the West Bank, systematically taking the higher ground and securing water resources. Imposing collective punishment on people who have been ripped from their homes.

Again...because Jews were persecuted and oppressed, it gives them the right to do it to others? Thats some seriously backwards thinking dude.

Fighting Imperial agression is the job of anyone with a sense of justice. Home or abroad, opression takes many forms and its the duty of those who feel no human has the right to oppress another to stand up and confront it. In fifty years people will look on Zionism the same way they look on Nazism; in disgust.

The mass majority is ignorant? Ill gladly have a society based on the majority than your proposed one on the wrong side of a barell of a gun. What you speak of is nothing short of facism my friend. Didnt we learn anything from Hitler? And you zionists seem to be so proud of your so called democracy.

And just so you know, according to the United Nations, Israel, as the occupying power IS responsible for providing humanitarian aid (like water and electricity) because theyre the ones who control it. Its international law. Look it up.

The proverbial Grass and Turkey's got greener and fatter on cheap Arab labour pre first intifada....but you were barely a pup so Im sure you dont remember.

From the UN: The test for determining whether a territory is occupied under international law is effective control, and not the permanent physical presence of the occupying Power's military forces in the territory in question.

Judged by this test it is clear that Israel remains the occupying Power as technological developments have made it possible for Israel to assert control over the people of Gaza without a permanent military presence. Israel's effective control is demonstrated by the following factors:

(a) (a) Substantial control of Gaza's six land crossings: the Erez crossing is effectively closed to Palestinians wishing to cross to Israel or the West Bank. The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which is regulated by the Agreement on Movement and Access entered into between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 15 November 2005 (brokered by the United States, the European Union and the international community's envoy for the Israeli disengagement from Gaza), has been closed by Israel for lengthy periods since June 2006. The main crossing for goods at Karni is strictly controlled by Israel and since June 2006 this crossing too has been largely closed, with disastrous consequences for the Palestinian economy;

(b) Control through military incursions, rocket attacks and sonic booms: sections of Gaza have been declared "no-go" zones in which residents will be shot if they enter;

(c) Complete control of Gaza's airspace and territorial waters;

(d) Control of the Palestinian Population Registry: the definition of who is "Palestinian" and who is a resident of Gaza and the West Bank is controlled by the Israeli military. Even when the Rafah crossing is open, only holders of Palestinian identity cards can enter Gaza through the crossing; therefore control over the Palestinian Population Registry is also control over who may enter and leave Gaza. Since 2000, with few exceptions, Israel has not permitted additions to the Palestinian Population Registry.

The fact that Gaza remains occupied territory means that Israel's actions towards Gaza must be measured against the standards of international humanitarian law.

DEMONSTRATE AGAINST THE ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA!

2008-12-31T12:46:00.000-08:00

*WHEN: 2pm on Saturday January 3rd, 2009
*WHERE: Yonge-Dundas Square (buses leave Palestine House 1:15pm sharp)

Join in demonstrating against the latest Israeli assault on the people of Gaza. At least 400 Palestinians have been killed and at least 1600 have been injured in the on-going assault on the Gaza Strip that began on Saturday.

This is the single largest massacre in Gaza since Israel illegally occupied the area in 1967. The numbers of dead are mounting, especially as the already limited medical supplies are running out due to the brutal siege of Gaza since 2005.

While the Western media reports that the raids targeted Hamas 'operatives,' the dead include women, children and men in all areas of life in Gaza. "Operation Cast Lead" has echoes of previous Israeli raids into Gaza that have been characterized by indiscriminate attacks on civilian population centers, mass detentions, violent house demolitions and other forms of collective punishment. Such actions need to be strongly and unconditionally condemned.

This attack comes just days after the so-called 'ceasefire' between Hamas and Israel expired. During this alleged ceasefire, Israel continued to impose its brutal siege on Gaza, restricting the flow of aid, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities of life into the territory. For the past two years Gaza has been undergoing the daily violence of a wide-ranging humanitarian catastrophe triggered by severely reduced access to energy, food, and medicines. In effect, Gaza is the world's largest open air prison. The UN and others in the international community condemned the humanitarian disaster created by Israel's siege during the time of this 'ceasefire'. Israel now claims that this operation is in response to Hamas refusing to renew this sham of a ceasefire. Once again, Israel is imposing collective punishment on the people of Gaza for electing a Hamas government.

Organizers are particularly angered by the Canadian government's on-going support for the Israeli apartheid regime - including the intensification of bilateral military, political and economic links between Canada and Israel. These latest war crimes occur in the context of official Canadian complicity with and support for Israel's illegal siege and starvation of the civilian population in Gaza.

At this moment, we can only reaffirm our commitment in the strongest possible terms to continue mobilizing to respond to the call by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to end Israeli Apartheid. As H.E. Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, President of the United Nations General Assembly state in a recent speech: "More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a nonviolent means of pressuring South Africa to end its violations. Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations."

CONTACT:Palestine Houseinfo@palestinehouse.com

Demonstration Organized By: Palestine HouseCanadian Arab FederationWomen in Solidarity with Palestine (WSP)Not In Our Name (NION): Jewish Voices Opposing ZionismMuslim Association of HamiltonInternational Jewish anti-Zionist Network – TorontoCoalition Against Israeli ApartheidMuslim UnityToronto Coalition to Stop the WarCanadian Druze SocietyCanadian Syrian Social ClubAl HudaIslamic ReliefSteel Workers UnionCanadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE Ontario)Educators for Peace and Justice Please

send further organizational endorsements to: info@palestinehouse.com

Israeli Slaughter, International Culpability: Gaza massacre points to urgent need for viable sanctions

2008-12-30T22:33:00.000-08:00

By Dan Freeman-Maloy

There is every reason to be outraged. But despite the severity of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, we have little right to act surprised. Whatever else can be said, Israel has made it abundantly clear that until its actions are met with credible international sanctions, it will subject Palestinians (and very likely others in the region) to massive, recurring waves of violence.

This was clear when the Obama-Biden campaign helped to lay the political foundation for this assault. It was clear when, amidst threats of such an operation and ongoing colonization in the West Bank, the European Union voted to upgrade relations with Israel earlier this month. For those of us in Canada, it has been clear as the Harper government has sharpened its alignment with Israel in the absence of any sustained parliamentary opposition.

Still, although “Operation Cast Lead” (as the Israeli regime has dubbed its latest assault) extends more or less naturally from longstanding Israeli policies, it is many ways especially despicable. The most obvious issue is its scale. Beginning on the morning of Saturday the 27th, approximately 110 Israeli Air Force (IAF) fighter jets and helicopters bombarded the densely populated Gaza Strip with more than 100 tons of explosives, initiating what may well evolve into an even broader onslaught. By the end of the day, more than 230 Palestinians had been killed, an additional 780+ wounded.

As the death toll from air strikes continues to climb, hundreds of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) infantry and armored corps troops have been deployed on the border with Gaza along with IDF artillery batteries, and several thousands reservists have been called up in preparation for a potential ground invasion.

The assault has been characterized by brazen contempt for civilian life and by crass, cynical diplomacy.

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reports that the IDF, long planning for such an operation, received final authorization the morning of Friday the 26th. That day, Major General Amiram Levin (res.) spoke on IDF Radio and conveyed the flavour of Israeli military doctrine regarding the then impending attack: “The whole issue of fighting against and bringing down the Hamas regime is a mistake and very difficult to achieve. What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide.”[1] Yoav Galant, the head of Israeli Southern Command and a key commander in the attack, has since stated that a key operational goal is pursuing “the maximum number of enemy casualties [while] keeping Israel Defense Force casualties at a minimum.” Recall that Israel has designated the Gaza Strip as a whole an “enemy entity.”

Ongoing Daily Suffering in Gaza

It can also not be emphasized enough that, bombardment or no bombardment, Israel is perpetrating a profound and ongoing crime against the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Gaza who have been stripped of political and residency rights within what is now Israel, pushed from their homes (mostly in 1948), and concentrated in a densely populated coastal territory under effective Israeli control from the borders and the sky. Military assaults such as these, like the more sustained policies of siege and economic suffocation, aggressively build upon this fundamental crime.

As for the diplomatic component of this assault, there is little question that the timing was cynically calculated in an effort to reduce international pressure. Some are happy with the results. Ha’aretz military correspondent Amir Oren, for instance, writes that “Israel's timing of the offensive is actually pretty good: Both the paratroopers and the Golani brigade, which was going to replace them, maintained a high level of preparedness while most of the international inspectors in the region went home for Christmas – only 15 remain in Gaza.” A similar dynamic has compounded the effects of Israeli restrictions in limiting the presence of foreign media correspondents.

Still, there is no way that the international community can plead ignorance or stubborn gullibility, and responsibility for this ongoing slaughter extends far beyond Israel.

Egyptian officials, some of whom met with Israeli counterparts in the lead-up to the attack, reportedly provided explicit endorsement for Israeli military action against Gaza. Just before the assault, Egyptian forces were sent to reinforce the crossing at Rafah, the one land crossing Gaza has that does not border Israel.

The United States, whose Israeli-piloted aircraft are raining death and destruction upon Gaza (following up on the Obama campaign's dangerous rhetoric), has toed the familiar line. Bush Administration officials have blamed the Israeli onslaught on the Palestinians, as the president-elect expresses “appreciation” for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's updates regarding the unfolding crime.[2] Meanwhile, European Union officials have used their upgraded contacts with Israel to issue a toothless call for a ceasefire, persistently packaging the ongoing massacre as a symmetrical conflict.[3]

So-called "Quartet" envoy Tony Blair, for his part, had a week before the invasion already all but openly called for an Israeli assault on Gaza.

Regionally, the effective complicity of some governments and the inaction of others is at least precipitating an outpouring of organized outrage. Whether those culpable in Europe and North America face a sustained domestic backlash will reveal much about the political integrity of civil society sectors and the health of anything worth describing as progressive politics in our societies.

The Propaganda Offensive

Meanwhile, the Israeli military assault has predictably been paralleled by a diplomatic or Hasbara (propaganda) offensive which has been publicly discussed for some time. “We won't win in the suffering stakes,” Yarden Vatikay, head of the Information Directorate of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office, was quoted as warning advocates on December 26, “but we have to try to move the focus to the Hamas terror attacks against our civilians.”[4] Foreign minister Tzipi Livni is stepping up whitewashing efforts in precisely this spirit.

Defense minister Ehud Barak, perhaps betting that association with additional war crimes offers a boost to any candidate in the current Israeli electoral climate (parliamentary elections are slated for February), has also been chipping in on the Hasbara front. In an interview with Fox News, Barak continued to mesh the politics of Israeli aggression with the “war on terror” – indeed, many Israeli columnists are proudly describing “Cast Lead” as Israel's very own “Shock and Awe.” “For us to be asked to have a ceasefire with Hamas is like asking you to have a ceasefire with Al-Qaida,” Barak declared to his U.S. audience, adding a direct threat of ground invasion: “If boots on the ground will be needed, they will be there.”[5]

The idea that any of this is "needed," that any component of this operation is necessary, is nonsense. But it is nonsense with broad Israeli parliamentary backing. At the far "dovish" end of Jewish Israeli party politics, for example, Meretz joined in calling for an assault on Gaza and was kept informed as the plans were put into effect.[6]

Still, anyone with their eyes open must see the vast gap separating Israeli objectives from the Hasbara so dutifully parrotted throughout the West.

Consider the words of Israeli Brigadier General (res.) Shmuel Zakai, former commander of the IDF's Gaza Division, speaking on IDF Radio a few days before the invasion.

“In Zakai's view,” Ha’aretz reported on December 22, “Israel's central error during the tahadiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce that formally ended on Friday, was failing to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip.”

Zakai, stressing that Israel has “made every effort to separate ourselves from the Palestinians,” expressed some bewilderment at the apparent Israeli determination to go beyond concentrating Palestinians in a ghettoized Gaza (the right ethnic cleansing move, from his perspective) in order to actively suffocate their economy while using military assaults as the main instrument to force them to starve in peace.

“It's just like after the disengagement,” Zakai was quoted as saying. “We left Gaza and we thought that troubles were over. Did we really think that a million and a half people living in that kind of poverty were going to mount the rooftops and sing the Betar hymn? That is illogical.” But instead of negotiating a truce based on the limited concessions which Hamas would accept under the circumstances (including opening crossings so that those imprisoned in Gaza can at least subsist), Israel has again opted for escalating violence.

The operative mindset was supportively presented on Saturday by Yaakov Katz, military correspondent and defense analyst for the Jerusalem Post: “The end-strategy is not completely formulated but officials said that if Hamas gets down on its knees and begs Israel to stop, the request will be considered.”

This vile, depraved determination to collectively punish and humiliate defies all but effectively genocidal logic.

Such logic may play well in the Israeli electoral arena. Reports indicate that the far-right Israel Beiteinu is siphoning votes from Likud for its resolute calls for escalating violence.[7] Given his perceived role in the invasion, "Barak is back in the political ring," one Ha’aretz report suggests. Perhaps Kadima, enveloping itself in the legacy of Ariel Sharon and visibily orchestrating the invasion Hasbara, can get itself some of the credit. The Israeli military establishment will meanwhile effectively keep formulating and implementing policy.

But if these latest atrocities do not provoke the sort of rage that can be sustained, defended and directed against those European and North American officials who facilitate these crimes, those of us in the West will have less and less ground to credibly disassociate ourselves from massacres such as these.

Whether Israel escalates this massacre with ground troops or pulls back in order to merely confine and suffocate the population of Gaza for a period, it is frighteningly clear that without forceful external pressure, much worse is yet to come. •

Dan Freeman-Maloy is a Toronto-based writer.

Notes

1. "Israeli general says Hamas must not be the only target in Gaza; Text of report by IDF Radio on 26 December," December 26 2008, BBC Monitoring Middle East.

2. "Obama, Rice discuss Israel's strikes against Hamas," December 28 2008, Xinhua News Agency.

3. "Solana calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza," December 27 2008, Agence France Presse.

4. Anshel Pfeffer, "Israel prepares troops and PR offensive to counter Hamas," December 26 2008, the Jewish Chronicle.

5. "Israel 'cannot accept' ceasefire with Hamas says Barak," December 27 2008, Reuters.

6. Joshua Mitnick, "Israel threatens offensive in Gaza – Government tells Hamas to stop rocket attacks, warning 'we are stronger,'" December 26 2008, The Wall Street Journal.

7. Toni O'Loughlin, "Israeli far right gains ground as Gaza rockets fuel tension," December 27 2008, The Guardian.

Protesters across Canada slam 'terrorist' Israel
as Palestinian toll grows

The raw realities of Middle East politics spilled onto the streets in several cities across Canada on Sunday as pro-Palestinian protesters denounced the bloody Israeli attacks on Gaza and blasted Israel as a terrorist state.

The largest demonstration was in Toronto, where tempers flared and tensions mounted as about 800 protesters outside the Israeli consulate screamed at a few dozen pro-Israel supporters across busy Bloor Street.

"I am here to stand up for the victims of Palestine who are being brutally slaughtered by the Israeli terrorist state," said protester Ali Mallah as he waved a Palestinian flag.

"If there was no occupation, there would be no rockets. Occupation is the worst form of terrorism. People have the right to resist their occupier by any means necessary."

Police had their hands full keeping the two groups apart as the pro-Palestinian group surged across the road, but, apart from some minor scuffles, there was no violence.

At least 290 Palestinians have been killed and about 800 injured in recent days in a series of intensive Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip that Israel says is in reprisal for rocket attacks from Palestinian militants.

Harold Medjuck, who stood holding a pro-Israel banner across the road from the larger protest, said the Israeli air strikes were defensive.

"What would Canada do if somebody wanted to do air strikes against Canada?" Medjuck said. "All they (the Palestinians) want to do is kill Jews."

In Montreal, about 300 protesters showed up on a warm, windy day to show solidarity with people in the Gaza Strip.

Blasting Palestinian music and flying Palestinian flags, the protesters - many wearing the distinctive black-and-white checked keffiyeh - marched through the city's downtown core as shoppers stopped to gawk and take photographs.

"They're living in fear," said Abdul Elsalfiti of his family in the Gaza strip.

"My family is looking for bread, they're looking for shelter, they're looking for water, they're just looking for basic needs."

Lesley Levy, a member of the British-based Independent Jewish Voices, said she "felt ashamed" for what was going on in Israel.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has expressed concern about the escalating violence but has made clear the federal government believes Israel has a right to defend itself.

Protection of civilians was Canada's utmost concern and the deliberate and constant targetting of civilians by Hamas was the main reason for the bloody events, Cannon said.

Ismail Zayid, who joined dozens of protesters at a downtown Halifax park in condemning the "massacre" of Palestinians, was incredulous at Cannon's statement.

"The people who've been subjected to this don't have the right to defend themselves, but Israel has the right to defend," said Zayid, 75, a retired doctor who has lived in Halifax for 36 years but is originally from the West Bank.

"We claim to uphold (international law) and yet here, when human rights are violated, we are not critical of the people who commit these crimes."

Following their protest outside the Israeli consulate in Toronto, hundreds of demonstrators then marched about a kilometre to the U.S. consulate, shutting down University Avenue as police, some mounted, some on bicycles, kept a watchful eye.

Among the protesters was Samer Noureddine, 11.

"I don't like what I'm hearing on the news about the bombs in Palestine," Noureddine said. "I have some family friends in Palestine right now that live in Gaza so I'm here to represent them."

About four dozen protesters also gathered in Ottawa outside City Hall carrying flags and signs reading "Save Gaza."

Organizer Monzer Zimmo calling for international pressure on Israel to stop "this madness of attacking civilians and police stations and women, men, children and elderly people this holiday season." •

"Shut up and stop dancing over shed blood" - Palestinian MK tossed out of Israeli Knesset session

2008-12-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Tempers flared at Israel’s parliament building in Jerusalem on Monday as rightist members of the Knesset one after another made inciting statements against Palestinians.

In response, one of the few Palestinian members of the Knesset, Muhammad Baraka, began a heated argument with several of the rightists in the room, causing the parliament’s speaker to expel Baraka from the session.

Opposition leader Benjamin Natenyahu was the first to offend moderate elements in the room through his vocal support for an aggressive and “bloody” operation against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, applauding atrocities committed by the Israeli army there.

Baraka, unable to restrain himself, told Netanyahu to “shut up and stop dancing over shed blood.”

Immediately, another member Netanyahu’s Likud Party, Gilad Arden, told Baraka to “go to Gaza,” causing the latter to answer, “Of course I would go to show solidarity with my people.”

Another rightist member of the Knesset, Avigdor Liberman, said to Baraka, “Go there and don’t come back.” Baraka fired back, “I and my people will remain a thorn in your and your likes’ throat.”

Following that comment, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itsik ordered Baraka out of the session. On his way out, an extreme rightist Member of Knesset Ardan said to Baraka, “You are a racist.” Baraka replied, “you are a shoe.”

Following that comment, Knesset Member Auri Ariel told Baraka in a challenging manner, “Hit him with your shoe.” Baraka apparently started to oblige, removing his shoe, before Israeli Knesset security removed him from the building.

Israeli Navy pull in towards Gaza Port - Heavy Israeli shelling of Gaza reported

2008-12-28T17:47:00.000-08:00

2:30am 29th December 2008 - Canadian Human Rights Activist Eva Bartlett has reported that the Israeli attacks into the Gaza Strip have escalated again, with the Israeli Navy shelling Gaza.

“The Israeli Navy have pulled in towards Gaza Port and are shelling the coastal area. The shelling is incredibly heavy.” Eva Bartlett - International Solidarity Movement

Earlier Eva Bartlett had reported from Al-Shifa intensive care unit in Gaza;

“Dr Khaled from Shifa hospital’s intensive care unit told me today around 10am that the majority of cases in the ICU are critical, with approximately 80% who will not survive. At that time, the 24 beds in the ICU were the fourth shift of critically injured, the former three having died from their injuries.”

Human rights defenders from Australia, Britain, Canada, Italy, Poland Spain and Lebanon are currently present in Gaza, and are witnessing the current Israeli attacks first hand.

Spanish citizen, Alberto Arce, said on Sunday evening that an international group would be accompanying fire-fighters in the Strip; “People are expecting more Israeli attacks. The fire-fighters here in Gaza have an impossible job dealing with the never-ending fires from Israeli air-strikes.”

Due to Israel’s policy of denying international media and aid agencies access to Gaza, they arrived in the coastal strip on the Free Gaza Movement’s boats. These voyages have broken the Israeli blockade five times now, and a sixth is due to depart from Cyprus on Monday.

The Free Gaza Movement boat “Dignity” will be leaving Monday afternoon on an emergency mission to Gaza, loaded with three or four tons of urgently needed medical supplies.

On board are four physicians, including Dr. Elena Theoharous, a surgeon and Member of Parliament in Cyprus. Also going are Cynthia McKinney, a former US Congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, and Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera reporter and former detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

Frederick Douglass

2008-12-28T17:10:00.001-08:00

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

One family’s fear and heartbreak in Gaza

2008-12-28T16:18:00.001-08:00

One family’s fear and heartbreak in Gaza

Journal by Sharon Lock

Sunday December 28, 5.30am, Jabaliya

In the basement, the family begins the night at their allotted sleeping spaces, but as the hours pass, draw closer together until women and children are huddled together in a pile of blankets. The women have slept little, and look exhausted. There are 5 or 6 children under the age of 5, tousled hair and solemn faces. The oldest boy’s face is pinched and distorted with anxiety.

Explosions are sporadic; sometimes far off, sometimes close. The drone of Israeli aircraft is constant. Fragments of news come by the phone. Attack beside Al Shifa hospital; windows break onto patients. Security and Protection Forces attacked. Al Aqsa TV channel attacked. Plastic factory attacked. Al Asaraya building. The number of dead increases in small leaps.

Multiple reports that Israel is phoning people at home, telling them “any house with weapons in it is a target and should be evacuated.” And the usual calls about “return Gilad Shalit and everything will be just fine”; as if any of these civilians know the first thing about his detention. If they answer “we don’t have any weapons in our house and we don’t have Gilad Shalit either,” will Israel just bomb the next door neighbours instead?

At 4.30am - deafening bang, flare of fire, some of the windows break, the children shriek and each mother grabs her child. One of the young women was on the basement stairs, and she is carried in, sallow with shock and fear, to be cradled by one of the older women. I give her honey sweets, since the more desirable sugary tea appears beyond anyone’s capacity to produce right now, perhaps there is nothing even to heat water with. We cautiously venture up the stairs; an unfeasibly large crater has appeared beside us, courtesy of an F16. Olive trees are the only casualties, but this is a little field in amongst residential houses. There is nothing here that even Israel, whose definition has always been broad, could begin to describe as a legitimate target.

“Where is grandma?”, asks one of the little girls. Grandma represents sweets and other good things, which would be pretty welcome right now. “Grandma is in paradise,” is the weary answer. This past morning no-one could find any bread in the nearby shops. Sara Eid Al Hawajri set off determined to track some down to feed the grandchildren. The first sweep of attacks at 11am caught her in the street, and left her covered in dust, dead from shrapnel. Eva (Canadian ISM volunteer) knew her, she was a friend of her son (who himself has lost both his legs) and of her daughter-in-law, who now feeds her small boy under the blankets beside me.

We came to pay our respects, but fearing an Israeli army incursion as happened to them before, the family asked us to stay. Sara’s teenage daughter is helping care for the children, but when things are quiet her face drifts into blankness.

In that first sweep of attacks, in approximately 10 minutes, we understand that 205 people were killed and more than 700 injured. Most government buildings and other social infrastructure were destroyed. 80 Israeli planes and helicopters were involved in the attack and over 100 bombs were dropped. So before tonight began, the hospitals and mortuaries were full, the staff overwhelmed, the medical supplies exhausted. It will be dawn soon and it is hard to imagine what we will find with the daylight.

Crisis In Gaza

2008-12-28T14:55:00.000-08:00

Trouble in paradise

2008-12-26T00:20:00.000-08:00

By Victor Surge

I've always admired Karl Marx from afar. I was too shy to approach him in person, but I'd read stuff he wrote, sometimes I'd google his name to see what he was up to. Finally, one day I got the chance to meet him directly.

At first it was wonderful. It was like everything he said described my world exactly. But that was easy when he was talking in general. In retrospect, I think I had him on a pedestal. I would look deep into his dark eyes, or watch the movements of his beard when he spoke, and everything that was fuzzy before became clear. His passion, his deep longing for meaning - who wouldn't be taken in?

But the honeymoon period's starting to end, and now I'm noticing his faults. He's always talking about his colleagues at work, but they're never good enough for him, and he makes fun of them constantly. He calls them "romantic sycophants", says they combine "great self-importance with the mouthing of elementary commonplaces." It's funny to listen to, but what if he starts saying similar things about me? He likes to talk to me, but sometimes I feel that's so he can have an audience. He's so clever; at first that was endearing, but now it's getting annoying.

"Karl," I say to him, "Can't you just call a spade a spade? Tell me what it is?"

But no, everything has to be two things at once. "Just as, in every transmutation of a commodity, its two forms, the commodity-form and the money-form, exist simultaneously but at opposite poles, so every seller is confronted with a buyer, every buyer with a seller."

"Whatever," I reply. That just infuriates him, and he starts on his little word games that he knows I can't stand. "At one point money must be attracted as coin, at another time coin must be repelled at money."

"What?" I say. "Talk about one thing at once. Stop mixing up your words." But he just takes another bite of his biscotti (note to Karl: crumbs in the beard are not attractive) and gesticulates with it, telling me, "The buyer converts money back into commodities before he has turned commodities into money."

"Is it commodities or money? Make up your mind!" I tell him. He just says I'm being undialectical, and tries out equations on me. Now, I'm no slouch with numbers. You don't get to be a secretary without knowing how to make a spreadsheet. But I never got equations, not even in grade school. He knows this and talks one out instead:

If we now consider the total amount of money in circulation during a given period, we find that, for any given turnover rate of the medium of circulation and means of payment, it is equal to the sum of prices to be realized, plus the sum of the payments falling due, minus the payments which balance each other out, and, finally, minus number of circuits in which the same piece of coin serves alternately as medium of circulation and means of payment.

As if that makes it any better! He might as well just write:

T = S - D - BoP - C, where C = MoC + MoP

I bet you're thinking, "Huh?" Now, imagine having to have lunch with the guy every day!

There are lots of other theorists out there; I could be hooking up with Bakunin or Dewey or someone. Don't get me wrong, I still love him, and I won't drop him just because he's off in his own little world sometimes. But if this relationship is going to work, he's going to have to start talking to me, not at me.

Parecon and Polity (Participatory Economics)

2008-12-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

As much as I don't agree with Albert's analysis of Leninism, I think it presents some interesting arguments. - Chris

By Michael Albert

This essay is excerpted from the Zed Press published book, Realizing Hope

Current times make an argument that contemporary political structures are decrepit and redundant. Every day hammers home the realization. My own country, the U.S., arguably has one of the most democratic political systems now operating. Yet even if there weren't huge concentrations of corporate wealth and power dominating political outcomes, even if media didn't constrain and manipulate information to distort political preferences, even if the two parties weren't two wings of a single corporate party, even if there weren't diverse idiotic and at best anachronistic structures like the electoral college, even if elections weren't winner take all affairs in which upwards of half the voting population have their desires ignored, even if elections weren't easily hijacked by outright fraud, clearly modern electoral and parliamentary democracy would still diverge greatly from a system that maximally provokes participation, elicits informed opinion, and justly resolves disputes.

So, what do we want instead of current political systems and how will what we politically desire relate to a participatory economy?

To fully address the practical symbiosis between a desirable economy and a desirable polity one would ideally like to first compellingly describe a new political vision and then to examine its interactions with economics. Luckily for us, though positive political vision has not yet been spelled out as fully as participatory economics has, the U.S.-based activist and political scientist Stephen Shalom, among others, has at least begun the process in his preliminary presentation of Parpolity, available on the internet via the Participatory Society subsite of ZNet at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/topics/parsoc

Parpolity is a political vision that seeks to further the same values as parecon. Since parpolity describes many characteristics a good political system would have, we can usefully take it as a touchstone in this essay.

Anarchist Roots

The French anarchist Proudhon wrote, "To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded, all by creatures that have neither the right nor wisdom nor virtue... To be governed means that at every move, operation, or transaction, one is noted, registered, entered in a census, taxed, stamped, authorized, recommended, admonished, prevented, reformed, set right, corrected. Government means to be subject to tribute, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, pressured, mystified, robbed; all in the name of public utility and the general good. Then at first sign of resistance or word of complaint, one is repressed, fined, despised, vexed, pursued, hustled, beaten up, garroted, imprisoned, shot, machine gunned, judged, sentenced, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to cap it all, ridiculed, mocked, outraged, and dishonored. That is Government. That is its justice and morality!

The problem that arises for serious people responding to this and many other inspiring anarchist formulations is that they do not specify how to transcend the regimentation typical of state and government. They don't explain how each citizen and community can organizationally freely determine its own actions. How do we legislate shared norms, implement collective programs, and adjudicate disputes including dealing with violations of sociality? How do we prevent humans from being reduced to atomistic units clashing and jangling and instead compose a society where the actions of each person collectively benefit all other people?

The Need for Political Vision

One thug with a club can disrupt even the most humane gathering. Thugs with clubs, in all variants, whether aroused by liquor, jealousy, arrogance, greed, pathology, or some other antisocial attribute, won't disappear from a good society.

Likewise, a dispute that has no means of resolution will often escalate even in the best of environments into a struggle that vastly transcends the scope of its causes, whether the escalating dispute occurs between the Hatfields and McCoys, northern and south states, rural and urban areas, France and Germany, or Pakistan and India.

What prevents social degradation from thugs? What prevents escalating disputes? More generally, if we lack agreed social norms, people will have to repeatedly start social projects from scratch. We won't be able to benefit from a set of previously agreed responsibilities and practices. We will suffer endless negotiation curtailing desirable implementation.

In a good polity will we have known responsibilities we cannot violate, or will everything we do be up for grabs with each new day? In the former case, we might attain civilized existence. In the later case, we would only have chaos. To have social success, we need political structures.

Put differently, while it is true that even the most desirable mutually agreed roles and responsibilities will, to some degree, limit our range of options, desirable mutually agreed roles will also make the range of all options available to us vastly larger than were these roles absent. Having red and green lights at intersections constrains our driving options but it also keeps us alive. More generally, having diverse rules that we all abide, permits us each to operate far more effectively and diversely even as it also narrows our choices in some contexts. If they limit options agreeably, the coherence that institutional norms can bring more than out ways the limitations they impose.

If I violate my previously agreed upon roles and responsibilities, it likely throws into question and perhaps completely disrupts other people's expectations, actions, and options. We don't want freedom to kill. We don't want freedom to drive through red lights. We want freedom that facilitates further freedom and the means to enjoy it. We want to escape needless restrictions, but we want to do this only consistent with others having the same freedoms we have while also preserving previously agreed role responsibilities.

So we need to establish institutions that let us accomplish political functions in accord with our values. The question for political vision is: what are those institutions?

Failed Political Visions

One failed answer comes from the perspective called Marxism Leninism. As history has verified, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" translates virtually seamlessly into the dictatorship of the party, the politburo, and in the worst case even the megalomaniacal dictator. That this trajectory could ever have been equated with a desirable form of political life will always be a horrible blemish on the political history of "the Left." Outlawing all but a single "vanguard" party ruled by "democratic centralism" subverts democracy.

Democratic centralism systematically impedes participatory impulses, promotes popular passivity, nurtures fear, and breeds authoritarianism, and does so even against the far better aspirations of many Leninists. To routinely outlawed external opposition and suppress or manipulate internal dissent by transferring members between branches does not engender democracy. However positive specific Leninists' motivations may be, Leninist practice does not lead to better polity.

Western-style electoral "democracy" is another answer to the political vision question, and while it is arguably better then the Leninist one-party state and dictatorship, it is nonetheless a far cry from participatory democracy. Highly unequal distributions of wealth stack the deck before the political card game begins. Citizens choose from pre-selected candidates screened for compatibility by society's corporate elites. And even if removing private ownership of productive assets overcame money-related problems within a Western style democracy, participatory democracy requires more than infrequently voting for a representative to carry out political activity that is largely alienated from popular will and often contrary to popular interests.

While electing representatives is a plausible and perhaps even an essential part of a true participatory democracy, frequent and regular referenda on important political propositions and policies at every level of government accompanied by a full airing of competing views would presumably be at least an important addition to voting for candidates. The question arises, what mechanisms can permit and promote engagement, deliberation, and decision making that gives all citizens appropriate say, whether directly or through representatives, and that preserves essential rights while serving justice?

ParPolity

After admittedly very quickly rejecting Leninism and parliamentary democracy, the first important thing to realize is that political life will not disappear in a desirable society. The structure of political life will transform, yes, but its relevance to citizens will intensify rather than diminish.

Politics will no longer be privileged groups perpetuating their domination. Nor will oppressed constituencies battle an unjust status quo whether cynically or as an opposition. But having a desirable polity doesn't mean having universal agreement about social choices. While the goal of social diversity dictates that competing ideas should be implemented whenever possible, many times one program will have to be implemented at the expense of others. The problem of public choice will therefore not disappear. Even more, since a desirable society will kindle our participatory impulses, in a good society debate will sometimes heat up rather than cool down.

Stephen Shalom outlines issues that will still inspire debate and dispute:

"Here are just a few issues that will continue to vex us: animal rights (should meat-eating be outlawed?), pornography (is it inherently oppressive to women or is an expression of individual autonomy?), prostitution (in a society without economic exploitation is it possible for someone to ‘choose' to be a sexual worker?), deep ecology (to what extent should we treat the environment not just as something to be saved so that it can continue to sustain us in the future, but as something of value independent of all human benefit?), drug legalization, multilingualism, children's rights, allocation of expensive or scarce medical resources, like heart transplants, cloning, surrogate motherhood, euthanasia, single-sex schools, and religious freedom when the religions violate other important societal values, like gender equity."

If that list doesn't make the point, Shalom continues:

"On top of this, there are issues that are generally supported by the Left, but not universally so, and about which I can imagine continuing debates in a good society: for example, the extent to which we should recognize abortion rights or preferential policies for members of previously oppressed groups. And then there are issues that would arise from the fact that the whole world may not become ‘a good society' all at once ... how will we deal with questions of foreign policy, trade, or immigration?"

After which Shalom summarizes,

"In short, even in a society that had solved the problem of economic exploitation and eliminated hierarchies of race, class, and gender, many controversies--many deep controversies--would still remain. Hence, any good society will have to address issues of politics and will need some sort of political system, a polity."

The broadest goals, if not the structural means of embodying a new polity, are already pretty well understood and enunciated. A truly democratic community insures that the general public has the opportunity for meaningful and constructive participation in the formation of social policy. A society that excludes large areas of crucial decision-making from public control, or a system of governance that merely grants the general public the opportunity to ratify decisions taken by the elite groups...hardly merits the term democracy. A central question is, however, what institutional vehicles will best afford and even guarantee the public truly democratic opportunities?

Ultimately, political controversies must be settled by tallying people's preferences. Obviously voting will be better informed the greater access voters have to relevant information. One condition of real democracy, therefore, is that groups with competing opinions can effectively communicate their views. Democratization of political life must include democratization of the flow of information and commentary via a new media of the sort discussed in chapter ten of this book.

Participatory democracy requires not only democratic access to a transformed media and the possibility for people to form and utilize single-issue political organizations to make their views known, but also, at least in all likelihood, a pluralism of political parties with different social agendas. There is no reason to think, in other words, that having a good economy or society means that people won't disagree about major matters in ideological ways. An absence of class difference doesn't imply an absence of all difference.

If we reflect briefly on the history of political life within the left and on the consequences of attempting to ban parties, factions, or any form of political organization people desire to employ, it should be clear that bans are the stuff of repression and authoritarianism.

But can we offer more by way of political vision than these broad and very general intimations of possible features of a desirable polity? Well, we can at least reproduce some of Stephen Shalom's thoughts about political vision, which seem to me instructive and valuable.

Values

We might start with values, and, saving a lot of time, parecon's economic values not only make good economic sense, but with a little tweaking make good political sense as well.

Surely a polity should produce solidarity not anti-sociality and should value and generate diversity rather than homogenizing outcomes. So these two economic values transfer easily into politics.

For the economy, equity addresses the distribution of rewards. For polity, the analogue of equity is justice which addresses the distribution of rights and responsibilities, including the need to redress violations of social agreements. So with this minor tweak, equity transfers as well, now called justice.

Self management is arguably even more a political value than an economic one, both in its origins and its logic, and is therefore certainly a worthy political aim. Politics should facilitate actors having influence on decisions in proportion as those decisions impact their lives.

So borrowing and adapting from parecon, for politics we have as guiding values solidarity, diversity, justice, and self management. Moreover, accomplishing these values implies accomplishing other more familiar political values including liberty, participation, and tolerance.

Institutions

In Shalom's conception of a desirable polity there are matters of legislation, adjudication, and collective implementation. For legislation, Shalom advocates "nested councils" where "the primary-level councils will include every adult in the society" and where Shalom suggests, "the number of members in these primary-level councils [might plausibly] be somewhere between 25-50."

Thus everyone in society is in one of these basic political units. Some folks are elected to higher level councils as well, since in Shalom's parpolity vision, "each primary-level council will choose a delegate to a second-level council" where "each second-level council [would again] be composed of 20-50 delegates." And this would proceed again, for another layer, and another, "until there is one single top-level council for the entire society." The delegates to each higher council "would be charged with trying to reflect the actual views of the council they came from." On the other hand, "they would not be told ‘this is how you must vote,' for if they were, then the higher council they were attending would not be a deliberative body."

Shalom suggests that "the number of members on each council should be determined on the basis of a society-wide decision, and perhaps revised on the basis of experience, so as to meet the following criteria: small enough to guarantee that people can be involved in deliberative bodies, where all can participate in face-to-face discussions; but yet big enough so that (1) there is adequate diversity of opinion included; and (2) the number of layers of councils needed to accommodate the entire society is minimized."

Shalom clarifies, perhaps contrary to most people's intuitions, that "a council size of 25, with 5 layers, assuming half the population consists of adults, can accommodate a society of 19 million people; a council size of 40, again would need 5 layers to accommodate 200 million people; a 50-person council could accommodate 625 million people by the fifth level. With a sixth level, even a 25-person council could accommodate a society of about half a billion people" thus making a case that his layered councils are flexible and well within practical possibility.

What happens in these proposed political councils?

Legislation is enacted, which is to say voting on norms and collective agendas takes place. The councils are deliberative and public. The idea is to utilize them to approximate as much as possible within a sensible time frame and in accord with the importance of particular issues, self managed decision making. Sometimes higher level councils vote and decide. Sometimes they deliberate and report back and lower level councils vote and decide. The exact combination or range of combinations of voting at the base versus voting in higher level councils, and of procedures for presenting, debating, and tallying viewpoints, and of how precisely council members are chosen, are all, among many other features, degrees of political detail we don't have to address in a cursory chapter like this. Shalom has begun considering the issues, and no doubt more needs to be done, including, of course, learning from future experiences. For purposes of discussing the relation between parecon and a desirable polity, however, it is enough to say that a worthy legislative branch will likely incorporate face to face nested councils using open methods of information transfer, debate, and voting aimed at providing all actors self managing say over the decisions that affect them.

Shalom's discussions of the role not only of tallying votes but also of contributing time, energy, and funds to political struggles as part of the process of guaranteeing self management, as well as of the dynamics of representation and deliberation, are all highly instructive, as are existing explorations of voting procedures such as instant run off voting, and of decision mechanisms such as consensus, but again, they are all beyond what we need to include here.

What about shared executive functions?

On the one hand, parecon takes care of a lot of what we typically know as executive functions in contemporary politics and, in doing so, helps pinpoint the remaining truly political element. Think of delivering the mail, of investigating and trying to limit outbreaks of disease, or of providing environmental protection. All of these pursuits involve a production and allocation aspect handled by the structures of participatory economics, including balanced job complexes, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, and participatory decision making. The worker's council delivering mail would in these respects not be particularly different from the workers council producing bicycles, nor would the center for disease control worker's council be very different in its economic aspects from a typical hospital, and likewise for the Environmental Protection Agency and a typical research institute.

But in another sense the three examples are different from their parecon counterparts. The Post Office, CDC, and EPA operate with the sanction of the polity and carry out tasks that the polity mandates. Particularly in the case of the CDC and EPA, executive agencies act with political authority that permits them to investigate and sanction others where typical economic units would have no such rights and responsibilities.

It follows that the executive branch is largely concerned with establishing politically mandated functions and responsibilities which are then typically carried out according to the norms of the participatory economy but with a political aspect defining their agendas and perhaps conveying special powers. If it aids understanding this overlap between polity and economy is more or less analogous to the overlap between culture and economy visible when churches function in the economy for their inputs and perhaps some of their outputs, but do so with a cultural/religious definition. The change in economics to having a parecon instead of capitalism is part of what makes a polity or culture or family or other aspect of society new in a new society, but the heart of their alteration is the change in their intrinsic logic.

Presumably the means for an executive branch to politically mandate its agendas and establish lasting mechanisms to oversee them would be largely the deliberation and votes of a legislative branch, on the one hand, and economic planning on the other hand, as well as establishing empowered entities with their own rules of operation like the CDC and other politically empowered agencies.

But then what would be the role of a judiciary in a parpolity?

As Shalom asserts, "Judicial systems often address three kinds of concerns: judicial review (are the laws just?), criminal justice (have specific individuals violated the laws?), and civil adjudication (how are disputes between individuals resolved?)."

For the first, Shalom offers a court system that would operate more or less like the Supreme Court does now, with hierarchical levels adjudicating disputes arising over council choices. Is this the best approach we can imagine, and can it be refined or transformed to further enhance self management? I don't know. It certainly merits close consideration.

For criminal matters and civil adjudication, Shalom proposes a court system modestly different from what we have now, plus a police force that would of course have balanced job complexes and enjoy remuneration for effort and sacrifice.

Regarding having a police function and associated work force in a desirable society - which is actually for many people more controversial than matters of courts - I agree with Shalom and don't really see any alternative or any intractable problems. There will be crimes in a good society, sometimes violent and sometimes even horribly evil, and investigation and capture of criminals will be serious matters requiring special skills. It seems obvious that some people will do that kind of work, with special rules and features to ensure they do it well and also consistently with social values - just as some people will spend some of their work time flying airplanes or treating patients or doing other difficult and demanding jobs that require special skills and have special rules to ensure they are done well and consistently with social values.

The contrary idea that policing would be unnecessary in a humane system is not realistic. Sure, in a good society many reasons for crime would be eliminated and criminal acts would likely be far fewer, but that doesn't mean there will be no crime at all. And the idea that policing will be needed but can be done on an entirely voluntary basis makes no more sense than saying flying planes or doing brain surgery will be needed but can be done entirely on a voluntary basis. It fails to realize that policing, and especially desirable policing, like flying planes or doing surgery, involves special skills and knowledge. It fails to recognize the need for training and likely also special rules to avoid misuse of police (or transport or medical) prerogatives.

Beyond the implications of pareconish workplace structure and decision making for police motivations, might there be a special limited duration for police work? Might there be empowered community review mechanisms to oversee specific rules of police operations and evaluation? Will the different approaches of a good society to determining guilt or innocence and to administering punishment and rehabilitation impact police functions very differently than old approaches they replace? The answers are all conceivably yes, perhaps even very likely yes, but again, the details are beyond our purview here.

It is not the police part of the judicial system, it seems to me, but the courts part, the legal advocates part, and the jury part that may be most difficult to dramatically improve in a better society.

On the one hand, as Shalom argues, the advocate model in which lawyers work on behalf of clients regardless of guilt or innocence makes considerable sense. We don't want people having to defend themselves so that those who are good at it have a tremendous advantage over those who are not good at it. We therefore need well-trained lawyers and prosecutors available to all disputants.

We also want these advocates to try hard, of course. But at the same time, the injunction that prosecutors and defense attorneys should seek to win favorable verdicts regardless of their knowledge of the true guilt or innocence of the accused and by any means that they can muster - because that approach will yield the greatest probability of truthful results - strikes me as about as believable, in certain respects, as the injunction that everyone in an economy should seek selfish private gain as the best means of benefiting society as a whole and engendering sociality. However, as to how to adapt or replace the combination of courts, judges, juries, and aggressive advocacy with different mechanism, other than concerning matters of new norms of remuneration and job definition that economic innovations indicate, I have no good ideas.

The state of shared political vision on the left, for locales, countries, or internationally, whether for legislative, executive, or adjudicative functions, is still modest, in my view, and needs to be developed to justify future advocacy. Nonetheless, many broad guidelines exist, and it is certainly possible to think about the relation of both existing economies and of parecon to political prospects.

Parpolity and the Economy

Milton Friedman, a far right wing University of Chicago-based Nobel prize winning economist of immense repute, argues that "viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power." And this is true enough. And indeed economic institutions are also important for the way they train us either to participate in decisions as equals or to be docile as subordinates, and for the way they help us to attain the social skills and habits of involvement and participatory decision making, or, instead, for the way they diminish those skills and habits.

Friedman went on to add that, "the kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other."

This claim, however, unlike Friedman's prior more general observation, is one of the most absurd utterances to be found in the domain of political or economic thought. In contradiction to Friedman's view, the truth is that capitalist economics produces gigantic centers of concentrated power in the form of its corporations and their ruling elements. It also produces atomized weakened, de-centered, and disconnected workers and consumers. Further, it provides diverse means to translate corporate economic might into political influence by corporations controlling communication, information, and the finances of electioneering, as well as corporations political figures. Finally, capitalist economy even ensures that the isolation and disconnection of workers is further enforced by media manipulation and the alienation that comes from the population knowing that political outcomes are predetermined.

The result of all this is that corporate lobbies and other elites determine political agendas and ensure that elections choose between candidates who differ primarily in how best to maintain elite prerogatives and advantages. Most of the population doesn't even participate in the electoral charades and among those who do participate, most have no other option than to repeatedly favor a lesser evil.

Parpolity, or any desirable political system that movements might advocate, will require an economy that doesn't elevate some to positions of power over others. It will need the economy to immerse the whole populace in an environment of participation, self management, sociality, and solidarity so that all citizens might best fulfill parpolity's requirements and enjoy its possibilities.

Parpolity will need and in turn help produce citizens who have broadly the same power, who have a social inclination to participate, and who have habits of sociality and solidarity - and precisely the same can be said for a parecon.

Likewise a desirable polity will need and help produce citizens schooled to positively enhance and benefit from managing their own affairs in accord with collective well being while respecting diverse needs and outcomes - which is true for a parecon as well.

Parecon and parpolity are, by design, welcome partners in social organization. They share the same underlying logic of seeking to attain equitable outcomes in a solidaritous and diverse environment, under the self-managing auspices of those affected.

If we think of a parpolity and a parecon each as a kind of social system that takes in and also sends out people after impacting their consciousnesses, habits, degrees of fulfillment, talents, knowledge, skills, and inclinations, we see that each requires and produces what the other provides and needs.

And indeed, due to the similar requirements they each offer the other, it is more than plausible that a parpolity and a parecon could mutually combine to become a classless "political economy" that delivers solidarity, diversity, equity/justice, and self management.

Addendum: Parpolity and Political Strategy Today

Parpolity's main implications for political and social strategy have to do with two dimensions of activism - what we demand and how we organize ourselves.

Having a political vision will hopefully tell us a variety of things we might demand in the present. That is, we could try to win changes in government and political practices now that reflect and move toward the logic of parpolity. These might include instant run-off voting procedures, vast extensions of public media and debate, new means of the public choosing executive programs, and still unclear judicial reforms.

When movements fight for such demands in the present, two very broad criteria that arise from political vision ought to inform their activity. First, of course, they should be trying to win improvements in people's lives. Second, they should be trying to make changes that empower people to win still more gains and that educate and inspire people to want to do so.

On both counts, by examining the features of a proposed political vision, we ought to be able to discern present day changes that would benefit, empower, and inspire people, as well as increasing desire for the political future we seek.

But an additional implication of political vision for present practice has to do with movement organization and structure. If we want the politics of the future to have certain features and properties, surely we should try as much as we can to incorporate those features and properties into our current operations.

In other words, our movements should, in their internal political structure and practices, elevate solidarity, diversity, justice, and self management. The conditions under which we operate today are constrained in ways unlike those of a future society, of course. We have to deal with repressive structures all around us. But nonetheless a central implication of political vision is that as soon and as much as we are able to do so we should seek to build movements based on grassroots organization and participation and even on nested tiers of councils for organizational decision making.

As a political vision becomes more compelling and is shared by more people, desirable ways to adjudicate movement disputes, enact shared movement agendas, legislate movement norms, and otherwise arrive at movement decisions, should become clearer and, over time, easier to incorporate in our efforts.

Let me pose just one possible lesson. Typically, contemporary movements have two forms. They are either organized around a single issue and involve a focused organization fighting for wages or health care or women's right to choose, or for some other single issue goal. Or they are coalitions composed of many such organizations teaming up to promote a shared usually quite narrowly defined agenda. What our movements actually seeking to win specific gains are usually not, however, are very broad and diverse agglomerations of people who mutually respect divergent viewpoints who operate effectively together despite and even in celebration of their differences.

The fragmentation of our movements into single-issue efforts or into coalitions that bury differences and that come and go with events bears only minimal resemblance to a good society or polity. It isn't that in the future there won't be people with single primary concerns or even organizations that are narrowly focused or coalitions that come in and out of fashion. It is that a good society itself will not primarily isolate people and groups into narrow concerns. It will, instead, overwhelmingly be a community with diverse views and agendas in which we all respect and incorporate each other's concerns into our overall efforts to maintain social cohesion.

If a movement is to be the harbinger of and a school for a new society, it should not be primarily atomized and narrow. It should instead somehow incorporate differences, deal with them, and in so doing make itself steadily stronger.

Suppose that instead of only creating coalitions organized around a narrow list of agreed demands, an encompassing movement of movements, say, or perhaps we might call it a revolutionary bloc, was also created. This would be an amalgam of all organizations, projects, and movements and their members, and maybe include individual members also, all of whom subscribed to some broad range of values, priorities, and organizational norms including and encompassing a wide range of differences.

This new movement structure would take its leadership regarding aspects of its focus from those of its members most directly dealing in the focused areas - thus from the women's movement about gender issues, from black and Latino movements about race, from the anti war movement about peace issues, and from labor and consumer movements about economic matters. Instead of the whole structure being defined by a little part of the overall priority of each component group that all shared, the whole structure would be the total sum of all the key priorities of all its component groups, contradictions and all, just as a society is. This new movement structure would indeed be a new society in embryo. Its internal organization and operations would presumably reflect our aspirations for the new society we seek, including incorporating the modes of council organization, election processes, means of communication, etc., of our political vision.

While more needs to be said about these matters, for now, the critical claim is that while the problem of envisioning improved political structures is still in process, and while we can't know for sure until we are further down that track what political features we should advocate, it nonetheless seems we can be reasonably confident that participatory economics both produces people and conditions that will contribute to political justice and easily honor a desirable polity's requirements.

Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule Part one

2008-12-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

The Red Shall Rise From Below

The scorched earth of Tamil Eelam

Freedom of Expression and Palestine Advocacy

The War in Sri Lanka and the Left in Toronto

The Tamil Protests: Resistance in the Face of Genocide

Global Political Mobilization

The ‘Canadian’ Response

Sources

Israel's not so subtle plan for Palestine

The Winnipeg General Strike

Capitalism and the flu

The Israel Boycott is Biting

May Day 2009: Their Crisis and Ours

Reframing the Warin Afghanistan and Pakistanas a Class War

Is nationalization of the banks good for us? Is it socialism?

Corporate elite settles an old score

Colonialism and theEconomic Crisis in Canada

By Todd Gordon

Exploiting Fear

Cutting “Red Tape”

Infrastructure Spending:More Money, More Colonialism

Which Side Are We On?

The Patriarchy Principle

Memo to Minister Kenney: Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism

This is your life

The road to Gaza's killing fields

Exposed: University of Toronto Suppresses Pro-Palestinian Activism

To CAW Members at Air Canada

Which Side Are You On?

Israeli assault injures 1.5 million Gazans

Solidarity with Palestine: Crisis Responses and Movement Building

By Kole Kilibarda

Thinking About the Day After the Ceasefire

What about the Canadian Government?

Feeling the Impact of BDS,Israel Tries to Rebrand Itself

Confronting Global Apartheid:The Support System for Israeli Apartheid

Moving Forward After the Ceasefire:Ending the Siege, Freeing Palestine

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Up to 257 Palestinian children killed in Gaza: UN - No safe place in crowded enclave, UNICEF official says

This Kind of War

Gaza Rally

Conversations with a Zionist

DEMONSTRATE AGAINST THE ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA!

Israeli Slaughter, International Culpability: Gaza massacre points to urgent need for viable sanctions

By Dan Freeman-Maloy

Ongoing Daily Suffering in Gaza

The Propaganda Offensive

Protesters across Canada slam 'terrorist' Israelas Palestinian toll grows

"Shut up and stop dancing over shed blood" - Palestinian MK tossed out of Israeli Knesset session

Israeli Navy pull in towards Gaza Port - Heavy Israeli shelling of Gaza reported

2:30am 29th December 2008 - Canadian Human Rights Activist Eva Bartlett has reported that the Israeli attacks into the Gaza Strip have escalated again, with the Israeli Navy shelling Gaza.

Frederick Douglass

One family’s fear and heartbreak in Gaza

One family’s fear and heartbreak in Gaza

Crisis In Gaza

Trouble in paradise

By Victor Surge

Parecon and Polity (Participatory Economics)

Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule Part one

Infrastructure Spending:
More Money, More Colonialism

Feeling the Impact of BDS,
Israel Tries to Rebrand Itself

Confronting Global Apartheid:
The Support System for Israeli Apartheid

Moving Forward After the Ceasefire:
Ending the Siege, Freeing Palestine

Protesters across Canada slam 'terrorist' Israel
as Palestinian toll grows