Workers' Liberty

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

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

Lets put the AWL’s complaints in context. Sean Matgamna has declared on your website and in your paper that the massive January 10 demonstration against the Israeli attacks on Gaza was politically a “clerical-fascist demonstration” (Solidarity 15 Jan). Why would the AWL attend such a fascist and chauvinist demonstration? Clearly the main aim was to draw attention to itself, to cause “an incident”. It is sectarian antics reminiscent of the International Spartacist League before they went defunct.

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

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

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

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

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

What is Stuart teaching the young people around him about democracy? Luckily there aren't very many; but in any case, my experience of the younger members of Permanent Revolution is that they tend to be much more reasonable than the old-time Workers Power cadre.

We haven't "set out to be provocative"; we have set out to put forward our politics on the demonstrations, in a sharp and clear manner. You'd think from what Stuart et al write that we are just turning up very occasionally in order to cause a stir; in fact, particularly in London, our young members have been a consistent presence on the pickets and demonstrations and actions, certainly far more than Permanent Revolution. We have been able to have numerous conversations and make a lot of contacts, even if the great majority still disagree with us and a small minority are viciously hostile.

Moreover, let us consider what is involved here. You never hear, really, of people's placards getting snatched and torn up on demos; not even ones saying things like "Israel = Hitler" or "Zionism = the New Holocaust" - real examples from Saturday's Trafalgar Square rally. As far as you could tell, the people carrying such placards on Saturday were not even challenged much! And yet the simple mention of opposition to Hamas is regarded as so illegitimate that it requires placards to be destroyed, as if they were BNP placards? Even if you think we're totally wrong, Stuart, doesn't this concern you from a democratic point of view? Are your communist instincts really that worn out?

Yes of course the Israeli flag is the flag of a bourgeois state, and yet it's also the flag of a national entity that thousands have recently shouted on the streets of London (not to mention many Arab cities) that they want to destroy. We think that view is radically wrong; and therefore carrying it alongside a Palestinian flag is not, from a revolutionary socialist point of view, the same as carrying eg a British flag. Particularly since we are not Israelis ourselves! To a certain degree, we can echo Trotsky on China and Japan: the Palestinians' patriotism is legitimate and progressive, while Israel's is a cover for imperialist robbery. *But only to a degree*: since, unlike Japan, Israel's existence is potentially (not currently, but potentially) under threat, and its people have a consciousness of this.

The AWL has replaced the red flag of socialism with the flag of Israel? Don't embarrass yourself.

In Sheffield, the slogan "No to the IDF, no to Hamas" was one among a wide variety of slogans, most of them focused on opposing Israel's war and its oppression of the Palestinians. My comrades carried a big banner saying "Israel out of the Occupied Territories". Similarly, the posters we have produced (in the middle of our paper, with smaller glossy versions also available) are focused on opposing Israel, with no mention of Hamas as it happens. You are just desperate to take the placard out of context.

In fact, we have no objection and are quite explicit about backing Palestinian armed resistance *within* the Occupied Territories, which of course means, in a certain sense, that we support the Hamas militias against the Israeli army. *We are not neutral; we back the Palestinians against Israel.* Hence our call for immediate Israeli withdrawal. But, firstly, there is no need to glory in the fact that it is Hamas playing this role in our slogans; and secondly, Hamas are not *just* fighting to drive Israel out of the Palestinian territories - they are also fighting to destroy Israel. They have fused together the progressive role of Palestinian national liberation force with the highly reactionary role of Arab/Islamic chauvinist force seeking to subjugate the Israeli nation, harming the former in the process.

In any case, even if Hamas were simply a national liberation movement, socialists would still be bound to sharply oppose and condemn its highly reactionary politics - and make solidarity with the workers' organisations, women, political opponents etc it is suppressing in Gaza. Easier, of course, to put this in the small print as Permanent Revolution has chosen to do; but we prefer to be upfront and get a hearing for unpopular ideas when those ideas are right.

Finally: I am for the defeat of Israel by the Palestinians. The tragedy is that, in this struggle, the Palestinians are led by a chauvinistic force that fights not for liberation, but to reverse roles and become the oppressor. In doing so, it cuts off any possibility of a merging of the Palestinians' national struggle with the social struggle of the Israeli proletariat - the dynamic synthesis that the Communist International saw as the key to world revolution in the 1920s. Since you think Israel doesn't have a real working class, I don't imagine you care very much. But I think Hamas, who have subordinated the Palestinian cause to their reactionary and chauvinist agenda, are traitors to the Palestinians, and that any socialist who soft peddles this is an idiot.

Sacha Ismail

Stuart

In my view your position is a 'scab position' too, if you want to put it like that; or anyway I object to it very strongly. And I believe a movement in solidarity with the Palestinians can be broader, and open to many more people who don't want to buy into your pseudo-Second Congress-of-the-Comintern take on it, if it doesn't demand 'solidarity with Hamas', or whatever, as a precondition for participation.

But it literally has never occurred to me that you, or anyone else who wants to express solidarity in whatever way they choose, should have their placards torn up. This is, I think, an absolutely new development in British left politics. You are perfectly entitled to your view of the AWL's position. But what happened to 'march separately' (in the sense, obviously, of having our own slogans), 'strike together'? And what do you think you are teaching the young people around you about democracy? For shame.

If I could understand what Clive was saying I would reply to it. Perhaps he could re-write it in plain English.

Stuart,

So you weren't directly supporting the placard being ripped up then? Just not 'fighting to defend our staged provocative placards'? I've been told that members of PR were positively advocating the placard be torn up and the AWL be kicked off the demo - is that not correct?

The placard wasn't 'staged' or intended to be 'provocative'. Comrades from Sheffield AWL have attended all the protests in Sheffield against the assault on Gaza and we've disagreed with the political tone of pro-Hamas contingents and some of the placards.
So we make and take a banner and placards which reflect our opposition to the Israeli bombardment, our solidarity with the Palestinians *and* and our opposition to the murderous reactionaries of Hamas. We also carried slogans that said "End the seige on Gaza" and "End the occupation - two nations, two states".
That's not provocation Stuart, that's a group of revolutionary socialists with different politics to you expressing those politics. You sound like the SWP who see any political criticism as 'provocation' and as an excuse to exclude us from meetings or worse. I'm guessing you've experienced that over the years as well.
So it's 'provocation' when you disagree? Just so happens that your politics on Israel/Palestine (which I find abhorrent) are the majority view on these protests. What happens when you find yourself in a minority on a demonstration with angry opponents ripping up your placard? You won't find the AWL supporting that kind of undemocratic, stalinist censorship even if we disagree with you. It's Permanent Revolution who've degenerated, not the AWL.

You really don't understand me? Even more disturbing, frankly, since re-reading it, it seems perfectly clear to me.

But okay.

Ripping up people's placards is not very democratic. Is it. People don't normally do that on demonstrations. Do they. Ripping up placards because they don't have what you think are the right slogans might put some (normal) people off coming along.

And if you teach (young, for instance) people it's okay to rip up placards because you don't think they've got the right slogans, this might have, well, a bad effect.

Caroline “has been told that members of PR were positively advocating the placard be torn up and the AWL be kicked off the demo”. Who by Caroline? Name names, because they are lying in their teeth. Your whole reporting has been the politics of the amalgam – “our placard was torn down; PR members argued with us and waved their fingers at us, ergo they are to blame along with the SWP etc, etc”. It wont wash.

I have said quite clearly we are against censorship, against tearing up of placards. But yes, the AWL has behaved in a provocative manner. You were selling a paper, Solidarity 144, that denounced the very demonstrations you claim to support as “clerical fascist” and “undisguisedly anti-semitic” (Sean Matgamna’s words). The same paper accuses the entire left, the ‘kitsch left’ you call it in your bizarre way, of doing “everything it can to boost Islamic clerical fascism, promote it and render it politically respectable”. You then turn up waving Israeli flags and placards equating the Hamas resistance with the Israeli army. Do you really expect love and kisses?

With such politics you better toughen up and get your defence squads together. We have had to do it in the past, protect our banners against Labour bureaucrats and police on the anti-Malvinas war demonstrations, against Serbian nationalists when we defended Kosovan rights to self determination on anti-NATO demonstrations. We joined with other socialists who had similar positions to ours. You should do the same, but with your politics just don’t ask us to join.

Sacha justifies waving the Israeli flag despite it being the flag of a bourgeois state because “Israel's existence is potentially (not currently, but potentially) under threat, and its people have a consciousness of this.” Really? Who is it potentially under threat from? A state that has the fifth largest army in the world, is backed to the hilt by the worlds only super-power, has hundreds of nuclear weapons and probably biological ones as well. Where does this threat come from?

This is a reactionary argument. Every oppressor state thinks its “national identity” is under threat, it is always at its “most threatened” when it is smashing the hell out of some other state or oppressed people. The Serbs defending their “historic cradle of Serbian civilization” in Kosovo, the Zionists defending their biblical territory, the German Nazis, for that matter, defending their “national German identity” against the Jews, Roma etc. Is this the best argument you’ve got for adorning your website articles with a bourgeois state’s flag?

On the question of supporting the Palestinian resistance against Israeli attacks Sacha tells a wopper “In fact, we have no objection and are quite explicit about backing Palestinian armed resistance within the Occupied Territories, which of course means, in a certain sense, that we support the Hamas militias against the Israeli army. We are not neutral; we back the Palestinians against Israel.” Strange then that the current Solidarity, brought out in the midst of the war, with 7 pages devoted to it, and a one and a half page editorial outlining your political position DOES NOT MENTION supporting the armed resistance. It certainly has plenty of attacks and denunciations of Hamas, but not ONE WORD of support.

Maybe Sacha believes what he says, maybe he is just cynically trying to provide left cover for the rotten positions developed by Matgamna, Thomas, Nugent et al in Solidarity. But lets give him another chance. Come on Sacha give us the reference where your paper is quite explicit about backing the Palestinian armed resistance and where it supports the Hamas militias against the IDF.

And why don’t you write an article for Solidarity explaining your position as to why the AWL should be “for the defeat of Israel by the Palestinians”? We await it, and your leaders responses to it, with some interest.

There is some confusion here: I am not "Stuart" (from London PR) who has posted above but Stuart C who was on the Sheffield Gaza demo last Saturday and argued (along with Alison from Sheffield PR) with the AWL member with the placard equating the IDF and Hamas. I am not now (nor have I ever been) a member of PR - though I pretty much agree with their position on Palestine and on building solidarity with people in Gaza.

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

I didn't (and wouldn't on principle) attack another socialist physically. That's why I argued with the AWL comrade holding the placard equating the IDF and Hamas. I equated the placard's slogan with "equally handedly" condeming the violence of the striking miners with the police during the 84 strike. Politically that would have been a scab position, in the most violent conflict that I've ever experienced. In the context of the Gazan massacre it's at least that. I said that I thought she should leave the demonstration if she refused to lower the placard. I stand by that view. I find the AWL's position on Palestine appalling - it reminds me of Socialist Organiser echoing Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" comment about the Soviet Union back in the 1980's. Some things don't change but I've never seen anything so deliberately provocative and insensitive as that placard on that demonstration at this point in the war on Palestinians. So, I don't equate all the anti-SWP maneouveuring which results in the "anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism" position or the refusal to call for UK/US troops out of Iraq with that placard. Despite 25 years of being (largely) appalled by the AWL's view of most international issues I've worked with them (usually in the face of SWP steamrollering) during that time in the Socialist Alliance and various campaigns.

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

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

Do you think it was okay for the placard to be ripped up?

Do you think someone could have intervened to stop it happening - perhaps try to calm down someone who was very upset, apparently?

Do you think it was right for the left - the SWP, at least, if not PR - to cheer the tearing up of the placard?

Do you think the issue of whether people can come on these protests with their own slogans and attitudes to Hamas is of any significance or weight at all in developing a movement (not just a movement on this question) with healthy democracy?

Do you think it is acceptable in a would-be democratic movement a) for the PSC to dictate what placards can be brought on demos, and b) 'react' to people asserting their right not to be dictated to?

"To back Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation of the lands where they live. To demand Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. To support those in Israel who oppose the occupation, and those who refuse to serve in the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories."

Picked at random via the search engine. We have used this formula or similar ones many times over the years.

Caroline said:

"Comrades from Sheffield AWL have attended all the protests in Sheffield"

Really? They must have been keeping a low profile then... I haven't been to all the protests but I didn't see them on 29th December 2008, or 3rd January 2009 or on the 7th January 2009, of course I didn't think this was unusual since I don't think I have ever seen AWL supporters at Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign events before the protest on the 10th January 2009 and the 17th January 2009.

Looking back at the first page of the Sheffield Indymedia Palestine Topic page I can see reports of a number of their events but no evidence of the AWL being at any of them, the AWL was not at the Break the Siege meeting on 12th October 2008 at which Musheir gave a very moving report about his trip to Gaza or the well attended Ilan Pappé meeting on The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine on 13th March 2008, or the Vigil on 1st March 2008 or the End the Siege of Gaza Vigil on 16th February 2008 or the 29th November 2007 Vigil for Palestine or the Release Alan Johnston Vigil on 30th May 2007 or the very big Northern Rally for Palestine on 12th May 2007 or the Vanunu Freedom Ride or the Vigil on 3rd March 2007...

Hi comrades, I had to remind myself that we support a culture of discussion, so I should perhaps contribute to this debate, in spite of the irony that PR 'comrades' support dicussion in the warm, behind screens, but not on Palestine solidarity demonstrations.

Thankfully, the two PR comrades on the London picket were willing to have such discussion. Admittedly it was on the night of the Israel counter demo, and it was punctuated by responding to different events, PR comrades heckling people attending the other demo, me having to break off and de-arrest someone I think is a young Islamist (for which I was later arrested).

The conversation itself was depressing. A comrade who on labour movement issues is reasonable, and generally coherent, even where we disagree, was on this issue more unreasonable than the most ignorant of the young people I've been speaking to for the last few weeks.

I think the AWL is right to foreground, at this juncture, the democratic issues at stake here for our movement; I have commented on the AWL lists that I wouldn't raise the slogans No to the IDF/ No to Hamas for some of the same reasons you identify, for the slogan being misunderstood, or implying equation literally. I suggested No to the Israeli State / No to Hamas to try and make it clearer that it was the political forces that we oppose who dictate how this war is fought, that a war is being fought at all. Two comrades pointed out a further problem with my slogan, which is that we defend the right of self-determination of Israeli's, their right to a state (I know you don't). They came up with no to Israel's war, no to Hamas. Ok, but the point is, slogans and gestures are imperfect, sometimes it's best to avoid them. But we are certainly not for people being physically harassed by the demonstration in general, essentially witch-hunted, and still less when they are comrades you work with on other fronts, and know hold a position that they are prepared to explain, indeed come to explain, that the slogans are a crude condensation of. i defend our politics. I would happily debate any of you war-mongering anti-semites, and indeed even march with you from time to time.

Please read my article on the demonstrations, which covers briefly my thoughts and motivations. I chgallenge you to criticise and oppose any of my thought processes, perspectives, politics and the actions that flowed from them. And I ask how have your comrades related to the young radical section of these protests from a Muslim background. What do you know first-hand of their ideas, politics, motivations. I have made clear, that by and large these would-be Islamists, are my comrades for the moment, and it has been our work in London to provide that pole of socialism. Thankfully, they have higher stands of human decency, political reason and solidarity than your comrades.

When the Islamist strong men were bringing in the police to throw me off the demo,possibly by arresting me, the instincts of the young Muslim people around were to help me retain my flags (which I did), keep me in the protest and to try and steal a moment of conversation to find out what was going on, why I was doing what I was doing. As it happens the police are very happy for such things to happen and very happy to throw a socialist off the demo, who had been giving legal advice to the young people, de-arresting them physically, offering tactics, talking, talking politics, changing the tone of the demonstrations. For sure the police hate the Muslims, but I'd wager they hate some who plays our kind of role more deeply.

Answer some questions, pack dogs, about your own politics. What do you say about Hamas, what do you think this war is a continuation, part of. Have Hamas now morphed entirely into a noble force of national liberation. Do you know what is going on in Iran at the moment, under the cover of Palestine. I presume you do. Am I politically mad to see Iranian clerical-fascist agecny taking out our comrades in Iran while promoting a broader war over the corpses of Palestinians. YOu know, I could be so drastically wrong. If workers' liberty is wrong, I think I would take it more seriously than you.

But in fact, this week has confirmed to me and a lot of our younger comrades, exactly why we're in a group such as the AWL. We have for sure made lots of contacts this week, for me mainly young people, mainly from a Muslim / Arab background. For these comrades, our presence has perhaps prevented some long-term political disaster for them personally. It has been to our credit that we have managed to win indidivual people away from Islamist politics and persuade them that our socialist project is a far better fight to rally behind in meaningful solidarity with the Palestinians. They are not too far gone, and it is genuinely sad to see long-standing 'Trotskyists' sunk so low. These weeks, more than most others, have I felt the small-ness of our forces. We're changing that, and to be honest, the behaviour of the rest of the left, that of the Islamists they tail, has helped us show our colours, and justify and convince people of our immediate and broader political strategy.

Please can you spell out to me, a naive litle thing, so corrupted by the malign axis of the AWL leadership, what your programme is for the Palestinians.

Robin
NW London Workers' Liberty organiser

Actually, someone did try and calm down the irate chair of the local PSC as he was ripping up our placard; he was also Palestinian, so the idea that the conflict on the demo was between us and "the Palestinians" is nonsense. As is the claim, made by Stuart (London), that PR are blameless in the incident; I'm not going to give out people's full names over the internet but one PR member (who Stuart has named as 'Alison') and Stuart C (who I'll name because he's already posted here identifying himself) were very clear in shouting at us to leave. The verbatim quote from Stuart C was "you're scabbing, go on - leave. Off you go. Off you go." The PR members and two fellow travellers (Stuart C and one other person) clapped when the placard was ripped down.

I reiterate all of Clive's questions about what kind of democratic culture you think this builds in the movement; the fact that Stuart C felt "very angry" about our placard is neither here nor there. I feel "very angry" about having to demonstrate alongside people who support Hamas, an organisation that wants to kill me, but I don't go around ripping up their materials or telling them they should leave the demo.

I also reiterate one of the questions I asked PR members on the day - if simply expressing opposition to two forces in the same slogan implies "equating" them, why were PR members giving out leaflets bearing the headline slogan "no to US imperialism, no to the Islamic regime"? At a time when Iran is threatened with invasion, surely this is a scab position that amounts to backing imperialism against its victims??!! (It isn't, of course, but undoubtedly this is what PR would claim if we were giving out leaflets bearing the same slogan...)

On some of the substantive issues, I think I have dealt elsewhere with exactly why expressing opposition to more than one political force at a time doesn't mean you think they're exact equivalents. If PR comrades can't get their heads around that then I feel sorry for you, frankly.

As for Stuart's outrage about our non-support for Hamas's armed resistance (he puts it in CAPITAL LETTERS, no less; he must be really pissed off. Imagine how irate Hamas must be? I bet they thought they could rely on the British left for unstinting loyalty, and there we go breaking ranks; shame on us) - I don't see what his problem is. I support the right of the Palestinian people to militarily resist colonial occupation but that doesn't compel me to positively endorse or support ever force engaged in acts of "resistance". I disagree with Sacha about supporting Hamas military actions against the Israeli army; we don't support the "resistance" of bourgeois, theocratic militias funded by a regional-imperialist power whose project is not a bourgeois-democratic project for Palestinian independence (like the mid-1980s PLO, whose resistance I personally would've supported) but a clerical-fascist project for the establishment of a theocratic state and the destruction of the Israeli-Jewish nation (not just the "Zionist state", but Israeli-Jews as a national group; read their charter). That's what they're "resisting" for. If Stuart's going to try and guilt-trip us for not supporting that, I don't think it's going to wash (although I must say, the capital letters really did make me stop and think for a moment there...)

Stuart's comparison of the Israeli-Jews to the Nazis is obscene but unsurprising. There's a grotesque comedy to the fact that he can make such a comparison in one breath and express righteous indignation that we have commented on the (tactitly or explicitly) anti-Semitic politics hegemonising much of the political space on Gaza demonstrations around the country, particularly in London.

On the Israeli flag issue, against Stuart's attempt to distort what actually happened let me clarify a few things. Stuart tries very, very hard to make out that our comrade was simply "waving an Israeli flag" to try and sabotage the demonstration when in reality, he took both an Israeli and Palestinian flag (which Stuart mentions ever-so-briefly and then skips over), echoing the logo of the leftist Israeli anti-war group Gush Shalom (who, as a group made of up people he compares to Nazi colonialists, Stuart probably doesn't have much time for). He was accosted by Islamists who got the cops to remove him from the demo; presumably Stuart would've cheered them on, just as his comrades cheered on the ripping up of our placard in Sheffield.

Finally on the question of "causing trouble". Much has been made of this sentence from my initial report and I don't retract it. People's outrage (mock outrage, I suspect) to this is another indication of how abjectly low the democratic and political culture of the left has become. I reassert our right - and pretty much anyone's right, frankly, barring all but organised fascists - to attend these demonstrations and express a particular political position on the conflict in the Middle East without fear of being silenced, even if it swims against the stream of the lowest-common-denominator, tactic-or-explicit support for Hamas that PR want to make a prerequisite for participation in the movement. To express any dissent will undoubtedly "cause trouble", and undoubtedly, we want to educate the young people brought into politics by this war that the hegemonic ideas of the movement they're rightly attracted to offer neither them nor the Palestinians any hope of liberation. If that makes us "troublemakers" then fine - we're troublemakers.

The Gaza solidarity movement in this country is hegemonised by politics that, from any basic socialist point of view, are deeply problematic. For anyone who wants to make meaningful solidarity with the Palestinians, much less win radicalised Asian youth to Marxsim, "making trouble" for those hegemonic politics should be a matter of principle.

I think Stuart is keen to deliberately mislead, as have been others on the indymedia discussion and on the demo; therefore a few points to clarify.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gemma Short
Sheffield AWL

... just to say, in all seriousness, no one who knows anything about the politics of the region thinks Hamas can be understood in relation to their 1988 Charter. Of course, substantial swathes of Hamas are anti-semitic, and reactionary in a number of other ways, but to represent them as monolithic genocidal maniacs utterly bent on total war for the destruction of Israel and the massacre of Jews is totally afactual. They are more or less pragmatic nationalist elites, backed up by a large paramilitary cadre (funded more by wealthy Saudis than Iran - I don't know why people always focus on Iran?). De facto, though grudgingly, Hamas accepts the idea of a two state settlement. Read the International Crisis Group report on Hamas for example. It's from 2004, and those tendencies - toward accomodation with Israel - have only accelerated since then.

http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/middle_east___north_africa/21_dealing_with_hamas.pdf

This is also worth reading, and following the links for any references you're interested in: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20269

There are numerous books on Hamas if you really want to understand them. Whether you read Israeli authors like Sela and Mishal or Palestinians like Khaled Hroub, you'll get a picture totally unlike the 'demonized' version that Dan presents above. Trying to understand Hamas in terms of its Charter is like trying to understand the early '90s Labour Party in terms of Clause Four. I can see why it would make sense to someone who had no understanding of British politics in the period, but it's not a serious analysis.

I probably shouldn't have to say this, but I guess I do. I hold no brief for Hamas. I have more sympathy for Dan's complete refusal of support than (what he implies is) Sacha's military/political Draper-esque schema. (Would Sacha or other AWLers say they "support Hamas militarily, but not politically"?)

My issue with demonising or essentialising the organisation is similar to my issue with demonising or essentialising Israel (often in equivalent terms). It's hysterical, and in this case, plays into the hands of Zionist hawks who want to present a vision of an enemy incapable of compromise in order to validate their military adventures.

So I'm quite happy to say "No to Hamas". But I know what I'm saying "no" to!

I also think that Robin is right, above, when he suggests that arguably the phrase "No to the IDF, No to Hamas" could be taken to imply equivalence. Of course, it's not the cequivalence ase that it necessarily means that a position of is being taken. But we have to remember that the language of 'casualties on both sides are tragic', and 'both sides need to take responsibility for a durable ceasefire' (etc.) is the language of the international bourgeois elite which are squarely on Israel's side. As someone reasonably familiar with the far left, and its internal debates, I see that sign and I know what you're trying to say. But I wouldn't necessarily expect someone not familiar with those debates to recognise that you're not just tailing the language of equivalence used by, for example, Barack Obama.

I wouldn't say I "support Hamas militarily, but not politically"; I wouldn't even say that I "support Hamas military actions against the Israeli army". However, it does seem to me that, if we want the Palestians to drive Israel out of the Occupied Territories, which is what "Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank" implies, then we not simply neutral between the two combatants, even though one of them is Hamas. Given both Hamas' attitude to Israel and its stance towards progressive forces within Palestine, this may simply come down to being sharp and clear and emphatic in saying "Israel get out" (cf Russia in Afghanistan); but still, there's an imbalance.

On the other hand, there is also another imbalance, which is the fact that Hamas is far more reactionary and chauvinistic than the Israeli government - ie if it was strong enough it would do worse to Israel than Israel is currently doing to the Palestinians. Not much of the left seems to take this into account.

Sacha

Tom

I largely agree with you. I think two main factors have forced Hamas, or rather tendencies within it, to moderate. 1. The knowledge that they obviously do have to negotiate with Israel, and 2. the need to maintain support among Palestinians who aren't nuts.

Two other points worth making, though. First, that the pragmatism about the national question isn't the same as moderating the Islamist ideology. And second that for much of the anti-Zionist left, the *un*pragmatic wing of Hamas, the one that doesn't want to compromise or negotiate, is *better* (see for instance Chris Harman's article/pamphlet, The Prophet and the Proletariat, or whatever it's called, reviewed somewhere on this site.)

Tom, Clive, that's fine, as far as it goes, when you zoom in on Palestine; and points about Saudi funding to Hamas too.

Does this diminish the overall political rhetoric in the region by Islamist forces that use Palestine to rally their forces and support behind them. Clearly there is Islamist agency and the broad outlines of an overall prograame, however expedient.

But aside from that,if you have, as we have as some our starting points, the now existing national rights of Israelis, the fact that Israel is a class society, then you are for working-class unity as a resolution to this conflict, as I know you both are. Our attitude 'on both sides' changes as a result, which is why we reject certain analogies like apartheid South Africa, or the pied-noirs in Algeria.

Neither the Iraqi or Iranian comrades have refuted our characterisation of Hamas as playing a wider role for the Middle East, with political-religious leadership from Iran, if with a measure of independence. For sure, this is not set in stone, but neither am I convinced that they have been pressed in to the supportable form of a national liberation movement, though Hamas itself now claims it is, in these exact terms.

the key question for me is what forms of Palestinian resistance do we support; and for this amounts to something quite pacifist, perhaps more on a tactical level. This has been an uncomfortable reality in some sense, but perhaps only surrounded by people who seem to be blood-thirsty from a distance. I've grown up with this as a Tamil, where now that their children are safely at university, then the blood money can flow again, to shore up a war, none of them were prepared to stay and fight, given the choice.

...the fact that Hamas is far more reactionary and chauvinistic than the Israeli government - ie if it was strong enough it would do worse to Israel than Israel is currently doing to the Palestinians.

This is not true, and contains an important omission.

If Israeli hawks were stronger than they are - i.e. if they could get away with more, taking into account domestic public opinion, international support, military realities (all of which Hamas is sensitive to) - then they certainly would do more in the way of settlement expansion, transfer, killings, etc.

Here's Ben Gurion: "We must expel Arabs and take their places."

Begin: "[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs." Begin again: "The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized ... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever."

Shamir: "The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliyah, and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."

Sharon: "There is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."

This is no less damning than the sorts of things you could pull up from Hamas leaders, and note that these statements are real reflections of the historical policy of the Israeli state. Add to this that the concrete record of Israel in keeping to ceasefire agreements and acting like a sincere 'partner for peace' is much worse than that of Hamas, who have broadly been an honest party to negotiations, and at every stage have been prepared to make more and more extensive offers of peace than the Israeli state. (Sure, due to power relations, not ideology. Edited to remove incorrect statement here - Tom.)

So I think it's false to assume that the Israeli state (OK, it's pretty politically homogenous) expresses in action the essence of its ideology, while Hamas is only moderate because of external circumstances. Both the Israeli state and Hamas moderate their positions due to factors beyond their control. Both contain relatively moderate elements, and hawks. Once again, I think analytical standards are being applied to Hamas that aren't being applied to non-"Islamist" actors such as the Israeli state, as if "Islamists" were pathological. A very problematic sort of "Islamic exceptionalism".

I would agree that Hamas are to the right of the Israeli state on what some people call "social issues" (I'm talking above about relations to the other party), but that's broadly a reflection of Palestinian/Israeli public opinion. Once the most secular, libertarian and democratic in the entire Arab world (apart from possibly Lebanon), although behind what we would want, that public opinion has been distorted by the years of occupation and violence. So... I think blaming Hamas for this sort of thing misses the point. Their social-conservatism is not the cause of social conservatism amongst Palestinians, or even the repression of certain social behaviours. They don't need to legally enforce the mendeel for example, or even homosexuality: family and 'the street' (snot necessarily Hamas members) take care of that. On most social issues, they're not that different from Fatah anyway.

I'm not arguing for some kind of exceptionalism. But surely, the 'external constraints', or factors compelling more moderate action, on the Israeli hawks and on Hamas are not quite the same. In Israel there are regular elections, a body of opinion which isn't mobilised en masse now, but often does mobilise as wars continue and get worse and their supposed objectives slip from sight. Hamas' pragmatism comes from a different kind of consideration. It's not monolithic; but the range of political views within it - as an Islamist organisation - are obviously narrower than within the whole of Israeli society. (And the hawks are a heterogeneous bunch. One of the weird things about Israel is that hawks on the national question are sometimes better on social questions than doves - or at least this always used to be the case)

I agree about how nasty the Israeli hawks are, of course.

I think Clive's characterisation of the two reasons for Hamas' moderation of its positions are accurate. But it is very important that recognising this does not necessarily imply that Hamas is simply 'being sneaky', and 'hiding its true beliefs'. That is not how ideology, particularly ideology in bureaucratic organisations, works. The factors that Clive mentions work functionaly, to select individuals and produce an ideology that - generally - will be sincerely held. It would be wrong to think that Mandelson and Blair, for example, were simply cynically hiding their real ideas in order to grasp at power. No. The external pressures on the LP i) forced them to genuinely change their ideals in order to be able to go about life in a way that made sense to them, whilst also fulfilling their drive to power, and ii) as an interlinked process, ensured that they were the ones (they who were good at recognising, giving in to and expressing these external pressures) who were selected to move to the top. Similar processes operate in Hamas. I guess some of it will be media savvy, but I imagine that's a relatively minor factor.

I've yet to properly investigate what I see to be the substantial AWL claim regards the apartheid comparison - i.e. that there was no, or practically no, white working class in SA which would be alienated by the boycott. But I would say that it is flatly false to say that the occupation of the West Bank and EJ in particular is nothing like apartheid. In terms of its physical/military infrastructure and racist ideology, it's very similar - even the strategy of creating a seperate nominal 'state' is one used in SA. I think maybe the opposition to the boycott sometimes spills over into an overly broad claim that "the occupation is nothing like apartheid", when in a number of important respects, it clearly is.

In the article I linked to above, Stephen Shalom suggests estimates that Iran has less leadership of Hamas than the US has of Israel. I'd imagine that's true; certainly it would reflect the relatively smaller role that Iran has in terms of military support for its partner. And... I don't think the leadership is *all* one way (as it isn't with Israel/US). Both Iran and Hamas consider themselves part of something called the "blocking front" (Hamas is the only explicitly Sunni partner), which aims to resist US imperialism in the Arab world.

I know what you mean, Robin, about struggling to work out what sort of resistance can be advocated or supported. I don't feel like I could say to a Palestinian soldier that they shouldn't shoot back at Israeli troops. And part of me did desperately want Israel to be 'defeated', in whatever way that would have meant. But I know that both of those things mean more dead Israeli soldiers, and as an internationalist I don't feel that this is something I can 'advocate' - certainly not, as you say, from a distance. But then, non violent (or non-armed) direct action is desperately difficult, and in Gaza it's virtually impossible - look what happened to Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall. Even in the West Bank, unarmed demonstrators regularly get shot dead (there was another one a couple of weeks ago, in Nil'in); and it's not like that provokes any surge of moral sympathy from the Israeli or gloabl working class analagous to what you would have got in the US during the civil rights era... just kids in body bags. So what's the point?

I'm not arguing for some kind of exceptionalism. But surely, the 'external constraints', or factors compelling more moderate action, on the Israeli hawks and on Hamas are not quite the same. In Israel there are regular elections, a body of opinion which isn't mobilised en masse now, but often does mobilise as wars continue and get worse and their supposed objectives slip from sight. Hamas' pragmatism comes from a different kind of consideration. It's not monolithic; but the range of political views within it - as an Islamist organisation - are obviously narrower than within the whole of Israeli society.

Yes, it's true that there are differences on what external contraints operate on the two sides...

But if you read about Hamas, one thing that's always stressed is the care they take to consult amongst their own rank and file, and how sensitive they are to broader Palestinian public opinion. They don't just need electoral support, they need ordinary Palestinians not to grass to Shabak spies who ring them up on their mobiles in the evening. They need the cross-partisan groups, like major families and outfits like the Popular Resistance Committees, not to move their support back toward Fatah. If they did so, they know as well as we do that there will be another Dahlan-type adventure backed by the US and Israel - last time they relied partly on the Al-Aqsa Fatah types standing aside or switching sides. And of course there have been regular elections. If there will be again in the near future is an open question, and I suppose it will be an important one.

And it's true that there's a broad spectrum of Iraeli opinion, broader than in Hamas, but that public opinion doesn't filter through to the level of the state. Israeli policy outside the Green line has been more or less totally consistent across party boundaries. And, sadly, Meretz backed Cast Lead. The two Arab parties were banned last week. The small right wing religous/settler parties often hold the coalition balance of power. Anyway, I guess the proper opposite to Hamas would not be the Israeli state, but one of the three major parties, any of which might have an internal spectrum of opinion which is just as narrow.

The Israeli public has mobilised in the past for wars, but mostly under the pressure of dead IDF soldiers. That's a sad fact, and one that Hamas and Hezbollah recognise.

Hi Robin - what form would that be for you? Any examples?

I don't want to labour this, and we need to be clear exactly what we are arguing about. I'm sure it's true Hamas are sensitive to their base, up to a point - other Islamist movements certainly are. But that's within a certain framework. And whatever the narrowness of the major Israeli parties, you can hardly compare their approach to those they don't agree with... Surely. Hamas has a long history of violence in its dealings with other - especially secular, etc - tendencies.

And yes it's true that anti-war movements in Israel tend to follow Israeli soldiers' deaths (actually there's a video doing the rounds of Uri Avnery making this point on a demo in Tel Aviv, I think). But still, sometimes those movements have been quite forceful - Lebanon 1982, especially. And whatever the cross-party official policies regarding the occupied territories and so on, my point is that there are limits imposed on how far the hawks can go - for instance now in Gaza - by Israeli public opinion. For sure those limits look pretty broad at the moment!

But this matters, in the bigger picture, because it *is* possible to mobilise some part of Israeli society for peace, it will be possible to do so in the future. They are not all gung-ho chauvinistic sadists, either. This needs to be said, against Leftish public opinion, which tends not to be interested at all, and it's vital to the very *possibility* of a solution to the national conflict.

I'm not underestimating the scale of the task, or how small the anti-war movement in Israel is at the moment. But at least a factor in the hegemony of hawkish policy in Israel is the strategy of Hamas.

In reply to Clive. The main point I see that you're making is that there is the potential for the Israeli working class to be mobilised for peace. And however abstract that seems, or is, in the here and now, it is true that we do have to hold on to that, and stress it. (Though even the movement against the first Lebanon war was very conservative in its politics, especially as regards Palestine.)

It's true that Hamas are sensitive, at least in the short term, only within a certain framework. But that framework is broad enough to countenance a long term peace, based on the green line. And it certainly doesn't exclude treating Jewish people as equals, "people of the book" and all that. This has been true for years.

I think the perception of Hamas is certainly an issue in Israel. It's a debate how far that relates to the reality (a reality structured by constraints on Hamas more than its ultimate political wishes). From a general Palestinian point of view, the argument about Israeli public opinion has almost ceased to matter, because whatever they do they are lied about and misrepresented in the Israeli and international media. Most Israelis wouldn't accept, for example, that it was Israel, not Palestinians who broke the June agreement, and wouldn't know that there's no evidence that Hamas was involved in rockets going into Israel during the period to November 4th. But both these things are true. International media didn't cotton onto the first point at all until more than 800 Palestinians had died, and never foregrounded it. This pattern has more or less been the same for the last thirty years - Israel breaking the agreements, pulling back from negotiations, refusing to discuss final status issues - but Palestinians have never been able to get any understanding or sympathy of this. So - and I say this without excusing the rockets, etc. - Palestinian strategists must be tempted to question whether there is any relation between what they do and how they are perceived. And again, arguably Fatah is not much different to Hamas - the Second Intifada was just as bellicose as anything Hamas has done, and obviously that was initiated by Fatah (with popular support).

I'd hope that a sufficiently thoroughgoing shift in language and behaviour to the terrain of internationalist class unity approach would be a sufficiently big pardigm shift that it would make a difference. But I can't claim to be certain, I don't think anyone can. What must it be like, as a Palestinian, to believe that 90% of Israelis supported the air bombardment, that killed 280 people in one day, mostly innocent? I don't think this episode would strengthen their faith that this sort of shift would be possible.

Umm, with respect to whether you can "compare their approach to those they don't agree with"... Obviously it's true that Likud don't send activists round to beat up activists for other parties, but I see that as being mostly due to the political realities of Israel versus those of Palestine - in the case of the latter, the prevalence of weapons, informal militias, lack of reliable democratic processes, military interference by the US and Israel (including using Fatah activists as spies), Israeli destruction of standard criminal 'justice' institutions (prisons, police stations, etc. As far as I know, Fatah have got a worse record than Hamas when it comes to thuggery and violence in Palestine - both political and personal - if you leave out Fatah activists acting as proxy US soldiers in the Dahlan coup (which seems fair enough, given that the Fatah soldiers intended to do the same thing to Hamas). Obviously Fatah has been in a position to mete this out, having been the stronger faction everywhere until recently, and still is in the West Bank. Hamas activists have been arrested and beaten in the West Bank in the past few weeks for example. If someone was to show me a source which showed that the balance of the violence was carried out by Hamas, I'd be surprised, but I'd like to see it. I guess you could also make the point that "those they don't agree with" includes the government on the other side of the green line. And like I say, whatever the reasons, Hamas has clearly been a more moderate negotiating partner, more respectful of agreements, than Israel.

Would AWL "support" a Fatah led military resistance to a Cast Lead type invasion? PFLP led (as if they were remotely capable)? PRC led?

No time to respond comprehensively on this now, so just a few quick points.

I think the answer to Tom's concluding question depends a lot on what "support" means. I've personally always found the political/military support formula a bit problematic; for a small British Trot group to say it gives "military support" to a particular organisation means nothing beyond an abstract expression that, in a military conflict between that force and another, they'd prefer the victory of that force. I certainly wouldn't "prefer" the victory of the IDF over Hamas (which would necessarily entail the slaughter of many more innocent Palestinians), but I don't think I'd prefer the victory of Hamas over Israel, either, which would necessarily involve a massive expansion of Hamas's military capacity and - however far they've moved since the old charter - wouldn't be good news for the Israeli-Jews as a national minority within the Arab world.

Am I in favour of the Palestinian militarily resisting Israeli invasion and occupation? Yes, of course. But personally I'm not sure I feel comfortable saying a great deal beyond that in terms of concretely "supporting" the only force currently engaged in carrying that out.

If a FLN-style organisation had mass support in Palestine (something more equivalent to the mid-1980s PLO, perhaps) I might well feel differently, because the consequences of the victory of such a force would be, I think, democratic. The consequences of a Hamas victory would be far from democratic - not just for the Israeli-Jews but for the Palestinians forced to live under the theocratic rule that would inevitably result.

The huge ambiguities and complexities here suggest to me that, to a certain degree, hypothesising about who we "support" in military conflicts in which we cannot possibly have any current impact is a bit pointless. We shouldn't turn wars into football matches.

We should focus on the impact we can have, and for me that comes down to building practical solidarity with any democratic, working-class elements in Palestine and Israel. Our activity can genuinely help them grow and develop and carve out an independent, working-class resistance to both Israeli colonialism and Hamas theocracy. That's not to say we shouldn't have a programme for the region or a comprehensive political response, but it is to recognise that getting hung up on deciding whether to express "support" for a bourgeois war party is a bit of a waste of time.

It's nice, by the way, to have a debate about the Middle East on this site which is rational, reasonable and characterised by serious political substance rather than sectarian slander. Thanks Tom.

Seconded - it's good to see a thoughtful contribution on Israel/Palestine that doesn't descend into hysteria and slander.

I think that, as Robin has suggested, the question of how you characterise Hamas has to go beyond an analysis of the present moment and take in the question of how Hamas would respond to a changing situation in Israel/Palestine, in particular in terms of their relation to Palestinian civil society and organised labour; and the role that Hamas plays in regional politics in terms of the strategic position of Islamism in the Middle East.

I take Tom's two points - that the situation in Palestine is conducive to a generally high level of 'background political violence' - so thuggery against political opponents doesn't necessarily mean that a party is out-and-out fascist; and that Hamas' situation forces them into a pragmatic position, on the question of rank-and-file democracy (i.e. that they physically can't extract the support of sane Palestinians through mass coercion) and on Israel (i.e. they're prepared to talk about a Two-State solution).

But once the situation in Palestine improves, and a state is allowed to emerge and Hamas comes to possess greater stability and improved means of coercion, how will their current 'pragmatic-democratic' position change? And to what extent will the working class find itself with room to organise? For me, that's a question of working-class self-defence. I don't think that, once the current constraints on violent coercion are removed, Hamas will restrict itself to "Fatah" levels of political violence: I think that once they are able, they will not be squeamish about strangling or hegemonising all organs of civil society and worker organisation, as Islamists do in Iran, for example. Whether they are able to do that, I think, will be decided by the extent to which a coherent political opposition to Hamas is already in place when Hamas's current 'shackles' come off. Hamas is forced to compromise with Palestinian civil society and labour now - but workers need to start building their organs of self-defense against Hamas, because once Hamas get any breathing space, they will likely revert to co-ercion. Are we prepared to gamble that their current 'conciliatory' (i.e. no more brutal than Fatah was) outlook is earnest and heartfelt?

Who's to say that they're on a consistent "leftward" trajectory, especially when that trajectory was effectively forced upon them? Why shouldn't a 'conciliatory' period of thaw be followed by an aggressive 'ultra' zigzag, as NEP was followed by the Five Year Plan? After all, most of Hamas' cadre were formed in a brutal war...

I think that this question, of how Hamas will conduct itself vis-a-vis the working class and civil society once Israel allows it to rebuild its infrastructure, is more important than Hamas' 1988 commitment to destroying Israel. I think that, given the impossibility of Hamas 'crushing Israel', it is very unlikely that they will ever really return to that perspective in earnest, and instead stick to some version of Two States. But if the Palestinian labour movement is imprisoned within the shell of Hamas, just as Eastern-bloc unions were imprisoned within the shell of Stalinism, how will they be able to foster cross-border solidarity, which must be the real guarantor of a functioning Two-State peace?

And seen in the context of Islamism in the region, the need for a hard line on Hamas comes into a clearer, sharper view. Hamas's fight to co-opt or strangle Palestinian civil society/labour is part of a broader regional narrative, of populist Islamism competing with secular, working-class organisations for political leadership of mass movements. The SWP will sometimes argue that the fact that they don't have a programme for the Palestinians is irrelevant, because "the revolution in Egypt will solve the problem". Well, maybe, but what kind of revolution in Egypt? It will only be a socialist revolution if the Islamists are defeated - they won't 'morph' into socialists by themselves. We need to go after the politics of the would-be Islamist leaders of popular movements, in every country: and a clear line on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will imply an equally hard line on Hamas. The issue is class independence.

Hamas' pragmatism on Two States will likely endure. Their pragmatism on internal democracy will probably not. The international solidarity movement needs to contribute to the emergence of a clear pole of working-class attraction in Palestine - in terms of physical worker self-defence and forthright political criticism of Islamism. We see the solution to the conflict in terms of independent working-class organisations, and regardless of Hamas's "geo-political diplomacy" orientation to Israel, they definitely will stifle real, independent working-class organisations, in a radical way that secular bourgeois parties won't.

Tom, you say that Hamas is not that different from Fatah, but why would you suppose that, if they consolidated their power in an independent state, Hamas would not crush the workers' organisations just as thoroughly as their friends in Iran have? Fatah is highly authoritarian and reactionary, but it seems to me there is most certainly a difference. Would be interested to hear your thoughts though.

(Ed, when you say "Why shouldn't a 'conciliatory' period of thaw be followed by an aggressive 'ultra' zigzag, as NEP was followed by the Five Year Plan?", you seem to be missing the point. The NEP was a *retreat*, but a retreat within the framework of exhausted and bureaucratically distorted workers' power; the Five Year Plan was the organising framework of the bureaucracy as it wiped out the remnants of workers' power and converted itself into a ruling class. The two cannot be straightforwardly compared. What was need at the end of the 1920s was not 'more thaw', but industrialisation within the framework of revived workers' democacy and a fight for international revolution.)

Sacha

I don't think the placard should have been torn up but I also think that AWL should have been excluded from the demonstration. There is no equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli OCCUPATION Forces. One is an instrument of genocidal murder, the other is an organisation leading the resistance to the IOF. It really is that simple and to turn up on another demo with an Israeli flag really takes the biscuit. Perhaps you would choose a swastika for an anti-fascist demonstration (bearing in mind that this was originally a Budhist/Hindu symbol before the Nazis and other anti-semites got their hands on it?).

Yes Hamas should be criticised but there is a time and place and when children are being burnt alive by phosphorous bombs and the Israeli population is urging on yet further acts of mass murder (90%+ inc. the 'peaceniks AWL loves to praise) then that clearly isn't the time. There are many criticisms I would make of Hamas, not least its sectarian nature, its Islamic ideology indeed the incompatibility of national liberation movements and religious movements. Its reactionary social character etc. Unsurprisingly Hamas was virtually the creation of the Israeli state (Shin Bet in the 1980's as a counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism).

And now the Boycott Israel movement has renewed vigour we can expect AWL to go out of their way to oppose the most effective means of solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians on the grounds that their killers are Jewish. That is what makes people angry - AWL's social chauvinism.

Tony Greenstein

And how, precisely, do you propose "excluding" us from demonstrations, Tony? This would necessarily involve us being carted off by heavies or getting the cops involved (which is what happened in London). Is this what you're proposing? Getting the police to politically purify your demos for you?

Nice.

For the record (although it is becoming tiresome having to response to these pathetic slanders), we have said many, many times that there is no equivalence between the IDF and Hamas and that this was not was the slogan was designed to express. It's also entirely unsurprising to see Tony recycle the distortion now doing the rounds on the left that we simply "turned up" at a London demo "with an Israeli flag" - in reality, our comrades took small Israeli and Palestinian flags onto the demonstration to echo the logo of Gush Shalom. Islamist activists united with the cops to attack our comrades on that occasion; I imagine that this is the sort of united front that would get Tony salivating when it comes to dealing with the AWL.

If Tony really thinks Israel is comparable with Nazism, I wonder how he explains the fact that the 10,000 people who marched against war in Tel Aviv weren't rounded up and shot? What kind of self-respecting fascist regime would tolerate that level of public dissent in one of its biggest cities?

Perhaps Tony believes that the whole thing was an orchestrated Zionist conspiracy to delude the world into thinking that not everyone in Israel is a bloodthirsty hawk. After all, the Tony Greenstein Bureau of Unsubstantiated Statistics With No Context informs us that "90%+" of all Israelis, "including" the peace movement, are positively "urging on further acts of murder."

Maybe I misread all those placards they were carrying. I thought they said "stop the war", which - in fairness - is an easy slogan to confuse with "we urge on further acts of murder!"

Anyway, Tony; I think I'll leave it there for now. Good luck assembling a squad to "exclude" us from future demos. Islamists and the British state have already proved themselves potential allies for you.

Ed: once the situation in Palestine improves, and a state is allowed to emerge and Hamas comes to possess greater stability and improved means of coercion, how will their current 'pragmatic-democratic' position change? And to what extent will the working class find itself with room to organise? For me, that's a question of working-class self-defence. I don't think that, once the current constraints on violent coercion are removed, Hamas will restrict itself to "Fatah" levels of political violence: I think that once they are able, they will not be squeamish about strangling or hegemonising all organs of civil society and worker organisation, as Islamists do in Iran, for example. Whether they are able to do that, I think, will be decided by the extent to which a coherent political opposition to Hamas is already in place when Hamas's current 'shackles' come off. ...

Hamas' pragmatism on Two States will likely endure. Their pragmatism on internal democracy will probably not.

Sacha: why would you suppose that, if they consolidated their power in an independent state, Hamas would not crush the workers' organisations just as thoroughly as their friends in Iran have?

I say this with a high degree of circumspection, but... I think neither Hamas nor Hezbollah would do away with the forms of bourgeois democracy. In fact, they're both explicitly committed to keeping them. (Khaled Meshaal talks about an elected President of Palestine after independence as 'She or he'). I think that overly simple comparisons with Iran aren't likely to be accurate, even in the case of Hezbollah. Both Palestine and Lebanon have a history of formal bourgeois democracy, and it is unlikely that this would be wilingly given up by members of either party, or by the population in general. Even in Iran, there is a level of bourgeois democracy, and that's in a country that didn't have any for more than 20 years before the revolution. Anyway, Islamic politics doesn't mean the end of bourgeois democratic forms - look at Turkey for example. And in Palestine you've got 20% of the population that are Christian (also true in Lebanon), and a strong sense of social solidarity, compacted by years of war (one of the things which helped European workers win democracy after WWI). Furthermore, remember that both Fatah is still dominant in the West Bank, and both they and Hamas are likely to see a democracy which will allow them to contest for overall authority in a unified Palestine. And any Israeli or Western negotiated peace is likely to make bourgeois democracy a requirement, as it will be seen as less conducive to more radical sections. So like I say, with a degree of circumspection, I'd say that formal bourgeois democracy is highly likely to stay - and if the current system stays in place, it would be the most democratic in the Middle East alongside Israel.

Again, we have the comparison of Iran, rather than Saudi. Why? One reason might be that it fits into the discourse of 'Islamism' better than Saudi, even though Saudi is the source of more material support. Another might be that this is how Israel likes to talk it. Saudi and Israel are both in a lash up with the US, whereas Iran is outside their club, and regarded as a potential threat. Our media picks up on Israel's language and priorities, and transmits them to us. I'd say Iran's aid to Hamas is mostly practical - part of the 'blocking front' agenda. Sunni and Shia politics are traditionally very different, I don't see the Iranian ulama class being able to influence Palestinians very strongly. At least not if anyone else - such as Saudis - continue to be willing to financially support an independent Palestine. Which I think they would, as a bulwark against Iran if nothing else.

What about their relation to the workers' movement? At the moment, there is hardly a workers' movment, and there aren't even many workers. Most Palestinians are farmers on family smallholdings, UN sponsored refugees (3 in 4 Gazans for example), subsidised by the 3/4 of Palestinians living abroad, run a small family shop, or work for NGOs as fieldworkers of some sort. There are some government employees - adminstration, education, health, but they're mostly paid by aid money coming from outside Palestine, which you can see gives a different political dynamic from usual because the government doesn't control its own income through tax. There aren't really any factories any more, though there used to be around Ramallah. They got bombed. In the past, the workers' movement such as it is has been pretty much entirely beholden to Fatah and national/regional politics. (The public sector strikes in Gaza were an inter-factional weapon, not an expression of independent working class action, however much they reflected real concerns.) I am not convinced that there is a material base for a classical independent workers' movement at present. Though I guess it is possible that one would emerge in a construction boom after independence, it is fairly abstract to talk at present of a movement of a social category which barely even exists. I'm saying this in response to Ed's point about the need to build such a movement prior to the end of the occupation. I don't see that happening. If a genuine left outside Gaza had been able and prepared to fund a secular socialist alternative in Palestine for 30 years to the tune of tens of millions a year (for the social infrastructure), and deal with all the contradictions that would involve, there would be an alternative to Hamas now in Gaza. But we weren't, so there isn't. And we can't pretend otherwise...

Then there is the important point of principle: if a fledgling labour movement were to emerge later, would Hamas be less kind to it than Fatah? I don't know, I wouldn't be that surprised if this were true. But Turkish "Islamists" are no more harsh on the labour movement in Turkey than the secular parliamentary "left", let alone the nationalist right. I think a more important factor would be how far each party perceived the unions as a threat. I mean, conceivably, Fatah could end up being a sort of comprador faction for the labour power of Palestinians desperate for work, and possibly the water in the West Bank aquifer (assuming two state solution). That's how Abbas talks now. In that case, the workers' movement might come under the wing of an opposition Hamas. I don't know. At present, while these things are unclear, I would urge no faith in either faction. And I would certainly not say 'no victory to Hamas' if I wasn't also prepared to say 'no victory to Fatah'. Under Arafat, I might have said something different, because he was both a real fighter for the Palestinians and a determined securalist. Abbas and co might be the latter, but they aren't the former, they're opportunists, and I don't know what would weigh more heavily with workers' interests. Look how they reacted to WB demonstrations in support of Gaza... with clubs and tear gas. Do we think they'd treat workers any better? I don't know, I'm sceptical. And, let me say again, the Fatah leadership at present is more or less a cat's paw for the US, who supply and train their soldiers in Jordan to mount coups in Gaza. It's absolutely impossible for us to support them while the leadership is an imperialist puppet. (Though again, it's complicated. The Kutub Shuhud Al Aqsa appears to still have some independence.)

Yet another issue, now I think about it, is that there is no real domestic Palestinian bourgeois class. There are elites, but they are largely political elites at present. It's not like Hamas is anti-worker from a capitalist point of view. Their current base is the poorest in society, in the refugee camps. This is very different from Iran, where the revolution was turned away from democracy by an indigenous bourgeois class that had grown dissatisfied with the Shah - that class now sponsors the regime. While it is probably true that after peace a few relatively wealthy Palestinians with duel residency or citizenship would come back to rebuild and take advantage, they'd have difficulty with a lack of political capital.

Ummm, as you'll have seen, I keep saying 'I don't know'. I don't, and I don't think anyone else does either, and I'm wary of formulations like "Hamas are part of a regional Islamist tradition..." etc, therefore it follows that they are basically in favour of an Iranian type regime (which more or less does essentialise the thought of muslim people in the middle east). Also, Fatah are not just archetypal secular/democratic national liberationists, either now or in the past. I think it's a lot more complicated.

There is a book by Ghassan Kanafani, the PFLP leader, journalist and poet, called The 1936-39 Revolution in Palestine which I hope to read at some point: http://www.newjerseysolidarity.org/resources/kanafani/kanafani4.html - maybe there is some evidence historic workers' movement independence in that.

And all this said, I spoke to a friend in Gaza last night. He seemed to be critical of Hamas politically, though I'm not sure on exactly what terms (possibily freedom of speech etc.) because he didn't want to say more on the phone - I guess because the Israelis might be listening to calls into Gaza. Hopefully at some point soon, he'll be over here, and we can talk about it properly. Hopefully I'll arrange a meeting for him to speak at.

Dan - I think it is true that more than 90% of Israelis objectively supported "mass murder". There were several polls, see here for a report of a recent one: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055564.html. According to comrade Solomon, Israelis are/were broadly aware of the reality of the war - http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/the-mindset-of-israelis-in-the-gaza-war/. Arguably therefore, they subjectively supported it as well. I suppose that you could say that this <10% is the 'real peace movement', but traditional peace movement stalwarts like Meretz supported the operation as well. Have we seen the Peace Now base come out? Judging by numbers on the streets, I don't think so.

Also, I'd be interested to know what distinguishes the mid-1980s PLO for you. When they were in Tunis after 82? Was the 1988 Declaration of Independence some sort of deal-breaker for you - I'd have thought it would be the reverse since it cemented the two states commitment?

And I don't think a victory of Hamas over Israel in Gaza would threaten Israeli Jews' security. All a victory for Hamas means in this context is relatively high numbers of IDF soldiers going home dead, just what the victory in Lebanon meant for Hezbollah in 2006. Basically making quite a specific point, that the IDF can't invade surrounding countries with impunity, that's what victory was. No one ever thought that Hezbollah was therefore capable of launching a ground war on Israel. While I'm still not sure what I think about saying I'm positively in favour of large numbers of Israeli soliders being killed, I don't think it would make Jews in Israel any bit less secure.

Tom

All interesting points. I've only got time to make one in response. I don't think an assessment of the consequences of a Hamas victory is just about whether they can wage a ground war, threaten Israeli security, and so on. And I'm not convinced the aftermath of the last Lebanon war is a good parallel. Because of the specific weight and regional significance of Palestine, I think a Hamas military victory could well have much more far-reaching implications - spur on other Islamist movements, etc. - which would not be progressive or to the benefit of developing a labour movement or democratic and secular politics.

(Obviously on one level, right now, any sort of Israeli defeat, is de facto a Hamas victory. I'm talking here about something more than symbolically so).

One and a half points. I accept, on the whole, the case you're making for Hamas being more moderate, or whatever, than in the stereoptype. But my guess is that the picture is actually very complex, there are lots of things going on, and you might be being too sanguine,.

Tom,

I've been thinking about your comparison of Hamas' charter with the Labour Party's Clause 4. Two things to note:

1. It's not the case that the Labour Party leadership previously believed in Clause 4 and then gradually abandoned this view. They never believed in it or had any intention of putting it into practice - not in 1918, not in 1929, not in 1945. Even the post-45 nationalisations, *which went nowhere near implementing the Clause*, were pushed on the Labour government by a rank-and-file revolt at the 1944 conference. Of course, the neoliberal hijackers of New Labour moved radically further away from the sentiments contained in Clause 4, to such an extent that they felt they had to ditch it (there was also a large element of making a demonstration to the bourgeois media and Tory voters); but Labour was never going to act on it.

In contrast: you think Hamas, both leadership and rank-and-file, didn't believe in destroying Israel in 1987?

2. The Hamas charter is fascistic in the extreme - a theocratic state, world Jewish conspiracies, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Freemasons, the French revolution etc. In so far as Hamas has moved (in only two decades), it has clearly moved within this general framework. I don't know why you wouldn't think they favour an Iranian-type regime. After all, Khomeini too said that he was in favour of the restoration of the 1906 Iranian constitution - shortly before unleashing mass terror and drowning the Iranian revolution in blood.

Sacha

OK, so my caveat again. My basic position is that it is not possible to know what Hamas would do in any given circumstance, and that in any case external historical factors will predominate over its internal ideology. The information we have is incomplete, there are no cast iron sources which tell us what relation the Hamas of today has to its convenant. The best we can do is look at all the suggestive sources which we do have, and the historical behaviour of Hamas. In the above, I have focussed on factors which mitigate against the view which posters were promoting before I - as it were - 'arrived'. For instance, Dan described Hamas as "an organisation that wants to kill me" (and presumably, therefore, all Jews in the world, let alone Israel). Once the dialogue has reached this point, it is clear that it is tinged with unreality. I interjected to counteract that.

So I'm not here to say "Hamas are democrats", or "Hamas would not crush the labour movement". I am here to say "it is not as simple as that, they might very well not - just as they might". And I am making clear the need to criticise Fatah. Above all, these things, I am here to say: Hamas must not be demonised, or presnted as incapable of compromise with a fair peace plan (with one state or two): this only works to support Israel's attempts to crush them militarily, and all the death that this involves. I think when you do this when say "Hamas rejects a democratic solution on the lines set out above. Their goal, instead, is to destroy Israel and deny the Israelis national rights." This presentation is innaccurate and misleading. But if it were true, it would follow that Hamas was not a 'partner for peace'. And from this it would follow that the Israeli government's attitude of military repression toward the organisation was justified, and it is not.

http://justworldnews.org/archives/003284.html (and follow links)
http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/middle_east___north_africa/21_dealing_with_hamas.pdf
http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein06122006.html
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~metheses/FlournoyThesis.pdf

Anyway, on Sacha's points.

1 - I don't think the question of whether Labour's leaders ever believed Clause Four is the important one. I'm sure that if we both set about thinking and researching for long enough, we could think of some organisations: i) whose leaders did believe some element of their founding charter at the time of founding; ii) but whose leaders now do not, although the charter is still wholly in place. If you really don't think this is possible, say, and I'll do some digging... unions, national liberation movements, political parties of every description... I'm sure we can find some examples. So the particular example is not the point. Neither is the point really, do...

you think Hamas, both leadership and rank-and-file, didn't believe in destroying Israel in 1987?

To give an answer anyway - I think that the Hamas leadership and rank and file were probably in favour of a one state solution (in which Jewish citizens would have citizenship), and mass armed struggle to achieve that. I think jurists close to Hamas would have envisioned that state in a theocratic/undemocratic way, in the way that contemporary Fatah leaders would not have done. I think Hamas rank and file would have been more likely than the average Palestinian to harbour dangerous, millenarian, anti-semitic fantasies (and this is probably still true); but I don't think Hamas as such was in favour of driving the Jews out - indeed, if we're going by the charter, it indicates that the Jews should be allowed to stay (article 11). Personally, I don't have a problem with One State as an aspiration. It seems to me that the questions of democracy, secularism, and method are all more important - these are the issues, not the aspiration for One State.

But like I say, I think this is not the point. I think the important questions are: what are the politics of Hamas today, and what is its political trajectory? A question for you, on this.

Do you think Fatah is committed to the One State solution, and conquest of that state by armed struggle ('destruction of Israel')? No. But that's what their Charter says... http://www.mideastweb.org/fateh.htm - so why do we apply different analytical standards to Hamas? What does the fact that Fatah once thought that say about Fatah now?

Now, when the Fatah gained control of the PLO in 1969, did they do anything about the clauses (5 & 6) in the PLO charter, agreed the previous year, which advocate expelling Jews not born in Palestine before 1947? No. They left it in place. No one suggests Fatah then, or now, did advocate such expulsion. Again, different standards. (http://www.iris.org.il/plochart.htm)

There have been moves by Hamas to alter the Charter, and acknowledge that conspiracy theorist etc. bits are wrong. I would imagine they have not been completed because Hamas is paranoid about being seen to back down on anything before international or Israeli pressure. Perhaps there are also internal factional disagreements, I don't know. See here, from the Jerusalem post of all sources: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395429041&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

"The charter doesn't speak about the Jews," insisted Jamila Shanty as she sat behind a desk at the Emad Aqel Women's center she runs in Jabalya. The professor of psychology at the Islamic University is No. 3 on the Hamas list, making her the faction's highest-ranking woman. "It says we don't have a problem with the Jews," she told the Post. "Our problem is with the Israelis who took our land."

Now, on a detailed reading, Ms Shanty is clearly wrong. But it is nonetheless clearly what she thinks. Do people relate to documents like the Charter in literal terms, or do they project their own views, assumptions and prejudices on them? I think it is the latter, and I think people like Ms Shanty have been in Hamas, with the same beliefs she has, since its foundation.

For a very different example on how people relate to official documents, according to a recent thread on this site, someone had managed to join AWL without ever believing themselves to be a "revolutionary socialist"...

2 - What sort of regime would Hamas favour? If I were to guess, I'd say they probably haven't thought about it that much. I don't imagine it's a big debate within Hamas at any level. The Hamas conviction is that the priority now is resistance, and that when Israel is forced to the table by resistance, other questions can easily be resolved.

Have they moved within the 'general framework' you describe? Depends what you mean by 'general', I guess. They're certainly not irreconcilably opposed to two states, let alone achieving it by invasion of Israel. There appear to be moves to remove the antisemitic bits of the Charter, which in any case is held by almost all serious observers to no longer be important. They participate in democratic processes, and talk about a democratic Palestine post-independence. Are they dissembling when they talk about democracy? I don't know, and I'd sure as hell advise no faith in Hamas on the question of democracy. But I do think the logic of: one Islamic political movement did something, therefore they all will, is a bit crude. Especially given the example of Turkey I gave, which is arguably more appropriate since it would be a case of coming to power through bourgeois democracy, rather than through a coup (as things stand). There are different national realities, and I think these historical factors will have more importance. I can't see Hamas being able to establish an independent Palestine without bourgeois democracy unless something fundamental changes, whether they want to or not.

At the moment, Hamas' support is not sufficient for that. Its support is very conditional, and relative to the available alternatives. Every day the occupation continues and Fatah are seen to acquiesce in that, loyalty to Hamas, and its likely power post independence, will grow. Apart from those two factions, there are no serious political poles to which Palestinians can turn. Nor is there any prospect of any such poles emerging under occupation, short of Hamas' funding somehow coming to an end. The main prospect of weakening Hamas is the end of the occupation.

..."is the end of the occupation".

Yes, clearly. And I think I'm right in saying, Tom, that you do believe that "weakening Hamas" is something revolutionaries should aim for. Unfortunately, a great many people on the "left" don't agree, which might explain (if not excuse) some of the more bent-stick assessments of Hamas that myself and others have made (although I don't retract the description of them as an organisation that would kill me if it had the opportunity).

In answer to your question about my view of the PLO, I might've more accurately said "late-1980s" rather than "mid-1980s", but they were on their way to a two-states position before the formal change in 1988.

Your point about an organisation's official documents/charters/whatevers not being the only determining factor in what that organisation represents politically is obviously true on a certain level (as the PLO example - who, as I say, were effectively two-statist before they formally changed their line - shows), but they are still a factor. I don't think Hamas has undergone qualitative change since their Charter was written. A degree of two-states pragmatism on the part of some of its leadership isn't enough to convince me.

On a different note, how do you conceive of the "one state" you say you "aspire to" coming about? And what do you do about the fact that, as far as it's possible to tell these things, big majorities within both the national groups in the area (Israeli-Jews and Palestinians) don't want "one state" but rather independent states of their own?

About PLO. Note the point was not just that they have changed their position, which they have, but that their charter does not reflect this. Like the Fatah one, it is still for one state and armed struggle to achieve it. The point is that no one imputes to Fatah or the PLO the beliefs expressed in their charter, but they do for Hamas. Even though the actions of Hamas contradict elements of their charter as much as the actions of Fatah contradict theirs.

About the One State idea. I don't necessarily conceive of it coming about at all - and rather than saying I aspire to it, I said I don't have a problem with it as an aspiration. That is why I say that Two States, for me, is a pragmatic thing I hope will happen - it is the same as wanting the occupation to end. If One State were to happen, there would be two driving forces. One would be the Palestinians changing the language and direction of their own struggle to a civil rights struggle. Remember that it has been conceived in that way before, and could be again, if people want to think of it that way. One impetus for that would be if all the Palestinian military groups were defeated, and the grassroots had to take up the struggle again. (I think if they could pluck either of two option from the air, most Palestinians would have One State, but I think they believe it won't happen, so identify support for One State with invasion of Israel, and that as impractical... but I could be wrong about that.) The second driving force would be Israel deciding that it would be more politically/economically expensive to remove the settlers from the West Bank (and relocate them in Green Line Israel), and leave the West Bank aquifer in the control of a foreign power, than it would be to have One State. They would also have to analyse that the demographics were on their side, about which there is a scholarly debate among Israeli statisticians and demographers. There is a book by Ali Abunimah in which he advocates the One State solution in detail. At the moment, I think both these two forces are very remote, I don't see them as having much movement.

Here is Ehud Olmert, in Haaretz.

"We don't have unlimited time," he says. "More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against `occupation,' in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=360533&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

I don't know if he's right, but that perspective is out there. Aside from this quote, the article is worth reading because it shows the extraordinary, up front, pro-ethnic cleansing, racism of the Israeli state establishment - which I also demonstrated with quotes from earlier leaders above. Can you imagine the furore if Ismail Haniyeh were to call for any sort of programme based on the principle of "minimum Jews, maximum Palestinians"? But Olmert, with his soft open-collar shirt gets away with it without even a comment. So much for the idea that the Israeli establishment is more moderate than Hamas.

I think looking for 'qualitative change' in Hamas is the wrong analytical paradigm. The point isn't being able to characterise them formally with this or that slogan; or to ask if a set of adjectives applicable then could be applied now, if you were determined to apply them. The point should be to thoroughly research the organisation, examine it in its movement, and formulate the most accurate, comprehensive set of statements possible about it.

Would Hamas kill you if it had the opportunity? Plenty of Jews have lived in Palestine with the ISM or other solidarity groups. When a Fatah faction tried to run an ISM group out of Gaza, why did Hamas sign a statement in support (promising lethal reprisals on the group making the threat if necessary), knowing full well that the ISM group was around 30% Jewish? Why did Hamas not kill those Jews when it had the chance? Just because they were being sneaky? It seems to me you're implicitly characterising a vast swathe of people as being almost inhuman, utterly bent on irrational racial murder? (Or perhaps I'm missing something about why they'd specifically want to kill you?!) This is unrealistic, and very problematic. This sort of dehumanisation of the opposing side is one of the main problems in the area.

As to the relation between pragmatism and sincere ideology, I've said what I have to say about that above. I think there is a dialectical, functional relation.

I want Hamas to be weakened by Palestinian public opinion, nothing else, and I am not "in favour" of that taking place by public opinion moving to support Fatah, who I think will sell their people down the river. The only thing I am "in favour" of in the here and now is the generation of a new political pole, but that is totally abstract. I think if Israel is unable to weaken Hamas militarily, that would be a good thing, because it would make military adventurism less likely.

Edited to add: I would also say that I also appreciate the comradely spirit of engagement on the issue displayed in this thread.

"For a very different example on how people relate to official documents, according to a recent thread on this site, someone had managed to join AWL without ever believing themselves to be a "revolutionary socialist"..."

Just a quick reply on this:
a) the person in question was never an AWL member, he just used to come to AWL branch meetings in Oxford (until a row about Palestine alienated him, funnily enough);
b) I'm pretty sure, in fact, that he did used to call himself a revolutionary socialist. I certainly remember that he regularly used to wear one of our Marx t-shirts with 'The emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself' on it (not the same thing I realise).

Sacha