Praised for it (and probably pressurised) by the Blair-Brown government, the British press has unanimously refused to let its readers see the "Muhammad cartoons" in the row which fills its front pages. We do not believe that religious authorities should decide what can or can't be published, and so republish the cartoons.
To see the cartoons, click here.
To Muslim workers and young people who are not admirers of the Saudi hierarchy or of the political Islamists like Al Muhajiroun (who have organised the anti-cartoon demonstrations in London), we say: free speech is vital for democracy, for social change, for the possibility of challenging what has been laid down by established authorities.
It is also vital for clearly-defined minority opinions of any sort.
Freedom, as Rosa Luxemburg put it, is always and exclusively the freedom of the one who thinks differently. Freedom only for those who think much the same as the authorities - or freedom only for those who do not offend, annoy, and irritate entrenched authorities - is no freedom at all.
We protest against the suppression of these cartoons on the same grounds as we protested against the suppression of the play Bezhti (written by a Sikh, but offensive to conservative Sikh authorities) or the attempts of some Christians to suppress "Jerry Springer - the Opera".
By publishing these cartoons, we are not by any means endorsing the content of all of them. Some of them are from a reactionary viewpoint, and at least one of them - the image of the turban/bomb - suggests that all Muslims are terrorists, a vile view which can only fuel racism. We want to make it very clear that we strongly reject the notion that all Muslims are somehow responsible for Islamist terrorism, and that we militantly oppose anti-Muslim racism. But we are printing the cartoons in order to reiterate the basic idea that freedom of expression must include freedom to be offensive - and our conviction that, in refusing to reprint them, the British press is undermining free debate on these issues.
We defend the freedom of Muslims to practise their religion. We oppose any persecution of Muslims for being Muslims.
Only, we demand the same freedom for all religions, and for the anti-religious too.
To return Europe to the times when Christian authorities had a very big, sometimes decisive, say in what could be said and published, would be very bad (for Muslims, too!) In many countries those times are not so long ago. In Britain, where the hold of the religious authorities on politics has been weakening for centuries, there is still a law banning "blasphemy" against the Christian religion.
It would scarcely be better to have the big religious authorities in each country - Christian, Muslim, maybe Hindu - helping each other get sufficient power that they can jointly prohibit whatever is uncongenial to any one of them, thus marginalising minority religious views and the anti-religious.
We recommend readers also to look at:
This blog by a secular-minded Saudi, in which he argues that the whole "scandal" is a beat-up by the corrupt Saudi authorities. (Images of Muhammad are offensive? Then why aren't the boycotts directed against... the Islamic Republic of Iran, where pictures of Muhammad are commonplace).
Article in the Guardian explaining how the row has been deliberately built up by conservative Islamists and the Saudi authorities since the cartoons were published last September (and why they were published in the first place).
Wikipedia's detailed account, with many links.
Nico Dessaux's site on the controversy (mostly in French).
Comments
1) It was extremely offensive
1) It was extremely offensive to publish the cartoons and i would not have done so.
2)Islamists have made it into the issue it is by spending 4 months trying to raise the temperature , inserting several false cartoons.
3)The reaction against the cartoons in terms of its threat to freedom of speech etc has been totaly beyond anything reasonable.
4) I've just seen the cartoon of Hitler in bed with Ann Frank that's doing the rounds and it makes me sick.
5) If it wasn't the cartoons that Islamists had hijacked it would have been something else
cartoons from the USSR
I am amazed that some people who claim to be on the Left claim that cartoons against islam are racist.
The journal of the Soviet League of Militant Atheists published a number of anti-religious cartoons. Such as http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/bezbozhnik/b1924-5-cv.html
Would anybody seriously call that racist?
Jews demonized = 'free speech', Muslims demonized = 'hate speec
[From Anja Partanen on Sweden]
Thanks for very good article and specially thanks for publishing if those cartoons.
In Sweden, the country where i live, one website which published cartoons has been shut down yesterday (without any legal proceeding !)
by coward swedish authorities.
It's remind me political opression in former USSR.
Is new worldwide religious GULAG will be our future?
I wonder why no similar outcry and apologies have come after viciously anti-Semitic cartoons are published on an almost DAILY basis throughout the Arab world.
The Palestinian Authority State Information Center regularly posts ugly anti-Jewish cartoons, including this reiteration of the anti-Semitic blood libel that Jews kill non-Jewish children.
see
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm
Where is violent protest?
Not just in the Arab world. We still have Radio Islam, blatant jew-hating website, which run by far-right winger Ahmed Rami.
There are thousand and thousand neo-nazi sites, which never shut down.
Even in some swedish mainstream newspapers I can read that Jews 'run swedish media', they are 'christ.killers', 'wealthy and powerful' etc etc.
When Jews demonized - this is a 'free speech' (or 'Israel critic') , (there wasn't any violent protest with embassy-burning , deadthreating etc)
When Muslims demonized - this is 'racism' and 'hate-speech' + violent demonstrations all over the world...
Why double standard ?
[posted on Anja's behalf because she was finding technical difficulties with the website].
Reply To Anonymous - "All These Questions"
“All these 'questions' are have the character of 'have you stopped beating your wife yet'.”
No they don’t they have the point of determining whether the statements I and others have made that the SWP has formed a Popular Front with clerical fascists are true or not. Up to yet all you have done is denounce the fact that the charge has been made. What is far more important is whther it is actually true that the SWP has in fact entered a Popular Front with political islamists, and has supported the election of political islamist groups such as Hamas, whether it has invited such people to this country to SWP events and so on. You do not actually now deny that these charges are true. So at least on that we are agreed.
”No, the Muslims and Muslim organisations mentioned are not 'fascist' or anything like it.”
Really???? So you want to tell us that an organisation that routinely issues the most vile racist, anti-semitic propoganda, which has as its aim the destruction of the State of Israel which could only be achieved through a genocidal war against Jews, which calls for gays and lesbians to be executed, which bans any material which might criticise this attitude to gays and lesbians, which assigns for women the role merely of servants to men, which calls for the whole world to be made into a Caliphate under the barbaric Sharia law, which is the immediate enemy of the working class and Labour Movement in many parts of the world through its systematic and violent attacks on socialists and workers as with the Tehran busworkers at the moment or the daily attacks on workers organisation in Iraq, which opposes the principles of democracy and freedom which socialists and democrats have fought and died for over several centuries – you want to tell us that such organisations are not clerical-fascist????
If so then you clearly do not know your arse from your elbow.
“If they were, you should have been advocating that the Labour movement counterdemonstrate and even organise the physical dispersal of Saturday's anti-Islamophobia demonstration, or for that matter the smashing up of Respect meetings in a similar manner.”
I would certainly and have advocated as any socialist should that workrs and socialsist organise workers defence squads in Iraq, Iran or anywhere else including in Europe to defend workers and socialists against attacks from political Islamists. The demonstration on Saturday was aimed as much if not more at those sections of Political Islam that called for censorship, beheadings, and other vilent and terroristic attacks as it was a protest against blasphemy. As someone who, unlike you is in favour of free speech, I am totally in support of people having the right to protest and express their views so there would have been no reason for me to oppose the demonstration on Saturday. Had the protest been seeking to impose censorship, or had been advocating violence against those that published the cartoons, or had been openly promoting racist or fascist ideas, then yes I would have been in favour of a counter-demonstration. That was not the case. As for smashing up Respect meetings a similar point could be made. I think that you have clearly misunderstood the slogan of No Platform for Fascists, and would refer you to the post I have made on this, and the post Cathy Nugent made in that regard.
”I presume you now regard the bulk of Palestinians, who voted for Hamas, as 'fascists'. I dont.”
No, I don’t anymore than I regard all those people who voted for the Nazis as fascist, that I regard the SWP as fascists. It is you that seems incapable of drawing distinctions, and understanding categories. As I said before you are clearly politically primitive.
”I regard them as an oppressed people”
Me too.
“who have tired of being sold down the river by 'secularists' who collaborate Vichy-style with the Zionist regime in its systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,”
Total crap. Yasser Arafat achieved his position as a result of organising and leading a long struggle against Israeli occupation. Arafat refused even, and quite rightly, to “collaborate” or “sell down the river” the Palestinians over the deal brokered by Clinton, and initiated the second Intifada. The Palestinian people rejected Fatah in favour of Hamas partly out of desperation, and in large part not because of Fatah collaborating with Israel, but because Fatah was thoroughly corrupt. It is one of the reasons that Marx and Engels argued during the 19th century against supporting the demand for self-determination for some small nations that could not achieve it through their own internal strength and solidaity. It always leads in such circumstances to the people becoming dependent upon, and resorting to all kinds of reactionaries to achieve their goal, and leaves htem dependent upon such reactionaries for their continued survival.
“In context, the election of Hamas is considerably less reactionary, for instance, than the Zionist project itself, which right from the very start had as its aim the massive theft of Arab land and the expulsion of Arab inhabitants from that land in order to create a Jewish ethnic-defined state.”
Whether its less reactionary (and you are right to phrase it that way because at least you are recognising that what we have in Hamas is something that is reactionary and not progressive) than Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is besides the point. Ted Heath was perhaps less reactionary than Margaret Thatcher, would you have advocated workers support Ted Heath??? The job of socialists is not to send workers to their doom by recommending that they support reactionaries just because they are marginally less reactionary than someone else. It is to oppose all reactionaries, and advocate independent organisation of the workers against them all on the basis of socialist ideas. As for the state of Israel it is an historical fact. It exists, and has existed for 60 years. It isn’t going away, and even if it were it would require a genocidal war in the Middle East which would be ruinous to the working class of the entire area for decades to come. You may just as well call for the return of the United States to the Native Americans, or Australia to the Aborigenes. That does not mean that socialists are in favour of Israel occupying the Palestinian territories, or any of the oppression of Palestinains that that occupation entails. That is why the AWL opposes that occupation and oppression both in its propoganda, and in its practical activiies. But as socialists our goal is not national self determination on the basis of even at best bouregois democratic principles – and that would ot even be the case with a Hamas led state. Our goal is international socialism, and that requires forging the greatest possible unity of workers across borders including between Jewish and Palestinain workers. You seem to have completely lost sight of socialism being a goal, and hitch your wagon to whatever reationary might be fighting for reactionary nationalist ideals.
”You can scream about the 'fascist' character of Islamic political currents till you are blue in the face - that politics, as a mass phenomenon, is a flawed response to savage national and ethnic oppression.”
Even were that true, which it isn’t, why should socialists accommodate to it, rather than pointing out precisely that it is flawed, that it will lead workers to disaster, and almost certainly won’t even achieve the limited objective of national liberation, where that is still to be achieved, and that really just amounts to the Palestinian territories and possibly Iraq. But of course it isn’t true anyway. Egypt achieved independence after the Second World War. The fight against national oppression ended there more than 50 years ago. The oppression in Egypt is not national or ethnic oppression, but class oppression. The answer to that class opression there as elsewhere is not reactoinary religion, but independent working class organisation and a fight for socialism. But the political islamists you are so keen on are the bitter enemies of that. In Egypt the political islamists are not fighting national or ethnic oppression they are fighting to establish an Islamic state which would oppress workers there far more than they are oppressed by the Egyptian bourgeoisie. The same is true in Syria, in Saudi Arabia, in Lebanon and of course in Iran the political Islamists are already in control, and rule over a regime that is as much a gaol house for workers as was Stalin’s Russia.
”and socialists have a duty to work with those who support such ideas (where openings exist for such common work) to attack that oppression in order to reconquer authority for the left.”
Complete and utter, and dangerous rubbish. Have you no understanding of socialist principles? Have you not read any of the literatiure by Lenin and the Communist International on the role of socialists in the fight against bourgeois nationalism, clerical nationalism and Pan-Islamism? Do you have no knowledge of the disater your proposed course has led the working class to in the past? Socialists have a duty in those cases where such a struggle is progressive to advocate national liberation, but in large part that struggle ended long ago, colonialism was defeated. But as lenin and the Communist International pointed out socialists even in such struggles, and it could be argued that such struggles still aplly in Palestine and Iraq, maintain their own separate organisation – which the SWP has not done by liquidiating itself into Respect – and criticse the limited nature of nationalist forces. Indeed, Lenin argues that any collaboration with other forces in such cases is conditional on these other forces accepting that the communists will organise the workers (at the time Lenin referred to the peasantry as they were the dominant class in such countries) as a military unit which would fight not just for national liberation but for socialism. If no agreement was forthcoming then Lenin argued even against social-democratic forces, the communists would treat them as the enemy. Yet you want to join up with the clerical-fascists, the Pan-Islamists, the very people who Lenin argued a determined fight under any circumstances must be waged!!!!
As for reconquering authority for the left, the quickest way to destroy the left is to support thoroughly reactionary forces, and to abandon independent working class organisation, and the most thorough criticism of the enemies of the working class both the bourgeois enemies, and those that act as the agents of the bourgeoisie – the reactionary Islamists.
”Not ally with the oppressors in some kind of crusader alliance based on the myth that in opposing Arab/Muslim 'fascism' one is re-fighting the Second World War, or some other social-chauvinist myth.”
But who are the oppressed that socialists side with? The workers that will create socialism and in some instances the peasants that will be drawn in behind them. The AWL is siding with those oppressed workers is siding with those for example in Iraq, that are trying to build independent, socialist organisations, and trade unions. It is the SWP that is supporting the reactionary Islamist forces that daily attack those workers, students, women, gays and socialists.
Wake up, your backing the wrong side.
Arthur Bough
the cartoons
Let's not forget that a lot of the outrage around the cartoons was fuelled by 3 extra cartoons that some Danish Muslim extremist went on a tour of the Middle East showing. He made those up and claimed those were in the paper. That sounds fairly sinister. As the poster above points out, some islamists have been spending 4 months raising the temperature on this issue.
Fundamentally, as France Soir stated "On a le droit de caracaturer Dieu" (one has the right to caracature God). This is a right that must be defended - whether exercised by right-of-centre Danish newspapers or by the Left.
Cartoons from the USSR
The subtext, and indeed on some occasions explicit intent, of several cartoons and caracatures in the Soviet Union were anti semitic under the cover of political arguments. These modern cartoons are similar to the extent that they purport to be funny while at the same time showimg a sterotyped arab including a turban, which as somebody has already pointed out is a mistake. The Soviet cartoon quoted has the same possibly racist overtones and could indeed be used by right-wingers to fuel anti arab feeling but only in a modern setting and without the associated text. The original 1924 context made this unlikely.
Really????
Really???? So you want to tell us that an organisation that routinely issues the most vile racist, anti-semitic propoganda, which has as its aim the destruction of the State of Israel which could only be achieved through a genocidal war against Jews, which calls for gays and lesbians to be executed, which bans any material which might criticise this attitude to gays and lesbians, which assigns for women the role merely of servants to men, which calls for the whole world to be made into a Caliphate under the barbaric Sharia law, which is the immediate enemy of the working class and Labour Movement in many parts of the world through its systematic and violent attacks on socialists and workers as with the Tehran busworkers at the moment or the daily attacks on workers organisation in Iraq, which opposes the principles of democracy and freedom which socialists and democrats have fought and died for over several centuries – you want to tell us that such organisations are not clerical-fascist????
That really is your bottom line, isnt it, safeguarding the 'state of Israel'. A racist state that was founded by means of the expulsion of the Arab majority, and the creation of a new 'majority' through ethnic cleansing. A state that is no less racist than Apartheid South Africa, and in is in some ways worse, as the apartheid regime never actually expelled the black majority from the territory of 'its' state (though that was mooted).
There is nothing 'anti-semitic' about supporting the destruction of the apartheid, racist state of Israel and the right of its expelled inhabitants to return there. The first demand is arguable - ther is more than one way to achieve justice, just possibly. But regarding the latter, anyone who doesnt support this elementary demand for justice against racism is a 'socialist' all right -- in the mould of Slobodan Milosevic.
Free to wear a 'fuck Israel' t-shirt , but not to piss on koran
If anyone dared to attack the symbols of Islam in the same way as those of Judaism have been attacked, that rise to burning of embassies, violent actions and hysterical furore.
go look at the standard cartoons in the (state-run) Arab press. They frequently include the same anti-Semitic stereotypes used in Nazi Germany. Where's all the shrieking?
Bottom Line
"That really is your bottom line, isnt it, safeguarding the 'state of Israel'."
Actually, no it isn't if you read what I said. I said that the state of Israel isn't going away. It doesn't require me to assist it to stay in existence its done that very successfully on its own, including annhihilating several attempts by surrounding Arab regimes to destroy it. I have no particular reason to protect the state of Israel anymore than protecting the copntinued existence of any other bourgeois state. On the contrary I want to get rid of them all. That's the difference between us. I am a socialist and you are a nationalist - the enmy of socialism.
And as a socialist what I pointed out was that even were it possible for the state of Israel to be destroyed it would in fact be an extremely reactionary event. Firstly, it would involve a genocidal war. Generally, speaking socialists are opposed to genocide whoever it is aimed against. For you it seems quite acceptable, but then you have clearly demonstrated that you are a racist because for you genocide against Jews is fine, just as it was for Hitler. Secondly, the result of this genocidal conflict would be the rise of all kinds of reactionary elements within the Middle East, and as always happens in wars the victims would be the workers sent off to die in their thousands. It would also be the pretet under which these reactionary regimes clamped down on any independent working class or socialist acivity. In short as I said it would be disastrous for the working class of the Middle East. As a socialist that is my main concern. For you obviously it doesn't matter because you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist prepared to side with whatever reactionary nationalist cause is flavour of the day today.
To argue that Israel is equivalent to South Africa just again demonstrates that you do not know your arse from your elbow, and that perhaps you should check on some basic facts first. Fir example, blacks did not even have the right to vote in South Africa, whilst Arabs in Israel not only have the right to vote, but also have MP's. That Arab rights in Israel could be advanced is not in doubt, but that does not require a racist genocidal war against Jews. Moreover, as I pointed out to you if your argument were sound then why don't you call for the settlers to be thrown out of Australia, or New Zealand, and give the country back to the Aborigines and Maoris. Or perhaps all the European settlers in the US should be forced out by a genocidal war against them by Native American tribes. Why don't you call for that?
I note that you have not defended any of the other points detailing the reactionary, clerical-fascist nature of the organisations you champion. At least in Israel their are legal equal rights for women, and gays and lesbians do not face judicial murder, and of course workers are organised in Trade Unions,a nd political parties. But what would you care you have no interest in workers rights, women's rights, or the rights of gays and lesbians. After all you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist.
Arthur Bough
Arthur...
...just to reply to a point you made near the start of this debate.
There would be no reason for the AWL to publish a picture of a naked woman in a story about Page 3 because we all know what a naked woman looks like.
The cartoons, however, are one-off drawings, alleged by some to be racist or otherwise offensive, and if we are to make a judgement on them we need to be able to see them. If it was a particular image of a woman that feminists were protesting about, we would need to be able to see that too.
I wonder if the cartoonists will come after the AWL for royalties, incidentally. Now that *would* be funny.
That Was Partly My Point
The point I was trying to make in that analogy - obviously not very well - was that the argument you should publish in order to assert the right to publish, as an act of solidarity, is not altogether solid because for example I doubt the AWL publish a picture of a Page 3 girl in solidarity with the Sun if it was facing a similar campaign of bombings, and murder to censor it.
The argument that you should publish in order to know what you are talking about is stronger in that respect. But the cartoons are different from another perspective to a Page 3 girl. There is an argument over the nature of the cartoons. The AWL, and I would dissociate from any racist connotation that might be put upon them, but that connotation seems to be peculiar to certain sections of the "Left" in Britain. Mostly, and by Muslims they are seen as offensive not because of being racist, but because of being irreligious. As the AWL is in favour of criticism of religion - though would not necessarily choose this form of religious criticism in other circumstances then defending the right to religious criticism and publisghing irreligious cartoons is not incompatible.
For an organisation that opposes the portraying of women as sex objects there would be an incompatibility in showing a Page 3 girl just for the sake of it.
Arthur Bough
Actually, no it isn't if you
Actually, no it isn't if you read what I said. I said that the state of Israel isn't going away. It doesn't require me to assist it to stay in existence its done that very successfully on its own, including annhihilating several attempts by surrounding Arab regimes to destroy it. I have no particular reason to protect the state of Israel anymore than protecting the copntinued existence of any other bourgeois state. On the contrary I want to get rid of them all. That's the difference between us. I am a socialist and you are a nationalist - the enmy of socialism.
"Annihilating several attempts by Arab regimes to destroy it" he says approvingly. An apologia that in a slightly different context, David Irving himself could be proud. Let us examine these 'defensive' wars. In 1948, Israel was brought into existence by a war in which 67% per cent of the Arab population of the territory it would subsequently comprise were forcibly driven out. That is the only way a Jewish majority could be created where there was previously an Arab majority. From your statement above, you evidently approve of that. that approval is because you are a rabid anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist.
In 1956, Israel conspired with British and French imperialism to attack Egypt because of its entirely progressive and supportable measure, which was not even by the way aimed against Israel, of nationalising the Suez Canal. You evidently approve of that, because again you are a rabid anti-Arab racist and pro-imperialist. In 1967 Israel attacked its neighbours in order to humiliate them as a pre-emptive strike because its leading circles felt Arab nationalism was getting too powerful and resonant in its mass support. In 1982 Israel attacked and invaded Lebanon in such a brutal manner that even many Israelis likened its activities to Nazism - it also massacred Palestinians in alliance with the overly fascist, historically pro-Hitler Christian Falangist movement.
Only in 1973 could Israel claim to have been attacked - and even then, the main aims of its enemies were defensive - to seize back territory, in Sinai and Golan mainly, that had been siezed in 1967. Or rather to make a show of trying to do so, in order to break a political log-jam and force Israel to negotiate the return of these territories.
And as a socialist what I pointed out was that even were it possible for the state of Israel to be destroyed it would in fact be an extremely reactionary event. Firstly, it would involve a genocidal war. Generally, speaking socialists are opposed to genocide whoever it is aimed against.
This statement is itself deeply racist against Arabs. Why could Israel only be dissolved as a racially-exclusive entity by a genocidal war? Why could a war for liberation by the victims of ethnic cleansing, for the right to live in the territories they were born in, only be genocidal? Answer - because our friend considers Arabs and Muslims to be Nazi monsters. That is why he approves of these cartoons - because for him they ring true. He is like a anti-semite who sees nothing wrong with caricatures of Jews as parasitic money-lenders - because he has analogous views of Arabs and Muslims, and their historically evolved culture.
For you it seems quite acceptable, but then you have clearly demonstrated that you are a racist because for you genocide against Jews is fine, just as it was for Hitler.
He is also a crazy liar. He can nowhere quote me as saying that any racist abuse against Jews is acceptable or supportable, let alone genocide. This is an hysterical lie plucked out of thin air.
Secondly, the result of this genocidal conflict would be the rise of all kinds of reactionary elements within the Middle East, and as always happens in wars the victims would be the workers sent off to die in their thousands. It would also be the pretet under which these reactionary regimes clamped down on any independent working class or socialist acivity. In short as I said it would be disastrous for the working class of the Middle East. As a socialist that is my main concern. For you obviously it doesn't matter because you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist prepared to side with whatever reactionary nationalist cause is flavour of the day today.
The bizarre process of reasoning that produced this hysterical gibberish is similar to the means by which he earlier accused me of 'anti-semitism' for saying that Searchlight had dodgy connections with the British state. There is no rationality in it, they are the product of a too-fertile imagination and a particularly foul kind of bigotry.
To argue that Israel is equivalent to South Africa just again demonstrates that you do not know your arse from your elbow, and that perhaps you should check on some basic facts first. Fir example, blacks did not even have the right to vote in South Africa, whilst Arabs in Israel not only have the right to vote, but also have MP's. That Arab rights in Israel could be advanced is not in doubt, but that does not require a racist genocidal war against Jews.
Yes, the Arab minority has the right to vote. Since the Arab majority has been expelled from its own land and is denied the right to live there, it is not necessary to deprive the remaining Arabs of the franchise in order to maintain a semblance of formal democracy. However, even this has limits, Israeli Arabs are banned from owning land, from marrying exiled Palestinian spouses (if they do they have to leave to be together), and whole number of other basic human rights. Whereas Jews who have never set foot in Israel have the right to 'return' to it. These are openly racist laws.
In South Africa, the black majority was still resident and therefore had to be deprived of the franchise in order to maintain white minority rule. But it is the fact that the Arab majority has been expelled, and therefore Jewish minority ethnic rule maintained by even worse means, that makes Israel even worse that apartheid South Africa in its treatment of Arabs. Our friend evidently thinks that exclusion is just. In other words, the ethnic cleansing of Arabs is completely just. Arkan would be very proud of this reasoning.
Moreover, as I pointed out to you if your argument were sound then why don't you call for the settlers to be thrown out of Australia, or New Zealand, and give the country back to the Aborigines and Maoris. Or perhaps all the European settlers in the US should be forced out by a genocidal war against them by Native American tribes. Why don't you call for that?
The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.
And actually, were it not for the fact that enormous numbers of the aboriginal peoples of the former British dominions were simply wiped out, that would be the right approach there also. Indeed, for the remnants of these peoples it still is the right approach - fight against all racism and exclusion, for full social equality. But the Palestinian Arabs are not mere remnants of a genocide, but a living mass of people, a nation, in a diaspora. They have the right to full social and economic equality in the land of their origin. If you have a problem with that it is because you are an anti-Arab racist, Islamophobe and ethnic cleanser.
I note that you have not defended any of the other points detailing the reactionary, clerical-fascist nature of the organisations you champion. At least in Israel their are legal equal rights for women, and gays and lesbians do not face judicial murder, and of course workers are organised in Trade Unions,a nd political parties. But what would you care you have no interest in workers rights, women's rights, or the rights of gays and lesbians. After all you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist.
No, you are a racist who would make Goebells blush. I did not respond to your stereotypical rant because I saw no need to - it says more about you than it does about me. The many different Islamic currents are not monolithic and homogenous, nor is the psychological root of their mass support uniformly reactionary. They are the product of oppression - as Marx put it 'the heart of a heartless world'. Take away that oppresion, and many of these things will simply wither and die. But you have to take away the oppression. You, unfortunately, support the oppression.
A Lot Of Words, Not Much Thought, & No Answers
""Annihilating several attempts by Arab regimes to destroy it" he says approvingly."
Not said approvingly at all, said factually. The reason I amde the point that they won these wars decisively is precisely to point out that any idea that you might have of the Israeli state simply disappearing is delusional. It would require a phenomenal war to destroy it, a war so destructive that it would be devastating for the working class of he Middle East for decades to come. As a socialist I am concerned at the effect that would have on the Arab working class, you seem to have no concern for them at all, but see them just like the Arab ruling classes and Political islamists you support see them - as cannon fodder to be used to achieve your anti-semitic, nationalistic aims.
" In 1948, Israel was brought into existence by a war in which 67% per cent of the Arab population of the territory it would subsequently comprise were forcibly driven out."
Actually, the state of Israel was brought into existence as a result of a UN decision to turn over part of the British mandated territory of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state. From the beginning the Jews faced attacks from Arabs set on preventing the establishment of such a state. The Jews not only fought those attacks back, but as you rightly state went on to the offensiive and drove out Palestinian Arabs. You might also want to tell us what the actions of the Arab regime in Jordan was in respect of the Palestinians. As part of this the Israelis came into conflict with the British forces who they also forced to withdraw.
But what does any of this have to do with 2006, anymore than the Battle of the Little Bighorn and annihilation of millions of Native Americans has to do with the existence of today's United States, or the massacre of thousands of Aborigines in Australia has to do with the modern state of Australia. Would you perhaps also like to see Britain returned to the Celts?
"From your statement above, you evidently approve of that. that approval is because you are a rabid anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist.
No I don't approve of it, I simply accept it as being an accomplished historical fact, just like the establishhment of the United States and Australia on the back of some pretty horrible things done to the previous inhabitants are accomplished facts. I prefer to deal with reality not some fantasy. Moreover, how someone who argues in favour of democratic rights for Palestinians and some resolution of their demand for national rights, who has been an active anti-racist all his adult life in a country where most racism is targetted at Asians and Arabs can be accused of being a racist at all let alone a "rabid" racist beggars belief. As for being anti-Muslim, no I am an atheist and therefore anti-religious. Peoplec an believe what they like provided they don't want to impose it on me, and as long as I can continue to try to convince them they are wrong.
"You evidently approve of that, because again you are a rabid anti-Arab racist and pro-imperialist."
Could you show me where I said I was in favour of that? I don't recall ever having mentioned it. I think your just raving a bit like a loony now aren't you? As for pro-imperialist, agains show me some evidence of that. I have even argued against the AWL's position of not calling for Troops Out Now from Iraq, so I will be most interested to see how you justify that wild accusation, but then of course you won't will you just as you've avoided answering any questions put to you from the beginning.
"This statement is itself deeply racist against Arabs. Why could Israel only be dissolved as a racially-exclusive entity by a genocidal war?
Are you completely naive or what? The state of Israel exists it is a fact. Like any other state it has the right to defend itself, and to protect its own existence. Jews in Israel are not going to simply give up their state, as you have yourself pointed out they have fought several wars to establish it, only an idiot could believe they are simply going to turn round and say okay we'll liquidate ourselves and our state. That being the case the only way that the State of Israel as a Jewish state is going to cease to exist is if it is forced to cease to exist by a war being waged against it. As previous wars and your own testimony have shown such a war is not going to be some small skirmish, especially as Israel is probably the sixth biggest nuclear power in the world. So yes a war to destroy the state of Israel will be a genocidal war - it will be thoroughly reactionary because of the consequences it will have for the working class in the region. How is pointing out that fact, which is obvious even to a casual observer, "deeply racist against Arabs"? On the contrary it is your approach which sees the Arab workers who would have to do the fighting and dying in such a war as mere pawns with which to vent your own hatred and anti-semitism, which is racist, not just racist against Jews but racist towards Arabs.
"Answer - because our friend considers Arabs and Muslims to be Nazi monsters."
No genocidal for the reasons given above that the isrealis will not give up their state after the first gunshot as previous wars and your own account testifies.
"That is why he approves of these cartoons - because for him they ring true.
But I have not said that I approve of the cartoons, I have said that I oppose attempts by clerical fascist, political islamists to censor them by the threat of violence in the same way that they tried to censor Salman Rushdie. Unlike you I think freedom of speech is very important for workers, without it we have no chance of challenging the reactionary ideas of capitalism, imperialism, or indeed clerical-fascism.
"He is also a crazy liar. He can nowhere quote me as saying that any racist abuse against Jews is acceptable or supportable, let alone genocide. This is an hysterical lie plucked out of thin air."
But you have repeated above that you are in favour of a war to destroy the state of Israel. You said, "Why could a war for liberation by the victims of ethnic cleansing, for the right to live in the territories they were born in, only be genocidal?
In other words you accept that in order to bring about the situation you desire the dissolution of the state of Israel it requires a war. Given the history you have set out above of the determination with wwhich Jews have already fought for their state in the past how on earth could anyone you least of all believe that they would simply give up in such a war with little or no fight? You know and the world knows they won't. The only conclusion any honest or sane person could draw then is that any such war as that you propose would be fought to the last drop of blood - in other words it would be genocidal. But I repeat you seem to find this of no consequence. Your hatred of Jews it seems is so great that no cost is too high to pay in human life Arab or Jew to achieve your personal aim of the destruction of israel.
"The bizarre process of reasoning that produced this hysterical gibberish is similar to the means by which he earlier accused me of 'anti-semitism' for saying that Searchlight had dodgy connections with the British state. There is no rationality in it, they are the product of a too-fertile imagination and a particularly foul kind of bigotry."
How this realtes to the quote you had preceded by is anyone's guess. That quote was,
"Secondly, the result of this genocidal conflict would be the rise of all kinds of reactionary elements within the Middle East, and as always happens in wars the victims would be the workers sent off to die in their thousands. It would also be the pretet under which these reactionary regimes clamped down on any independent working class or socialist acivity. In short as I said it would be disastrous for the working class of the Middle East. As a socialist that is my main concern. For you obviously it doesn't matter because you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist prepared to side with whatever reactionary nationalist cause is flavour of the day today."
Let's take that bit by bit, and given that as usual you haven't and can't actually dispute any of it, let me challenge it for you, and see if it fits your rather odd diatribe in response.
1. In the event of a genocidal conflict there would arise all kinds of reactionary elements. Don't we have more than enough evidence of that from past such conflicts. Hitler arose in Germany partly on the back of the crushing defeat of germany in WWI and the humiliation it suffered after. And wherever the working class have been decimated as a social force reactionaries step in to take advantage of that weakness.
2. Do you deny that it is workers who are always the ones sent off to die in such wars?
3. Haven't bourgeois governments always used conditions of war as pretexts on which to clamp down on the rights of workers. Isn't that what Blair and Bush are doing now, isn't that what the clerical-fascist regime in Iran is doing at the moment?
4. Isn't it true that in everything you have said you have shown no consideration for the interests of the working class or socialists whatsoever, indeed the words working class and socialism have not once been mentioned by you as having any importance whatsoever in the curent situation, but you have on every occasion shown plenty of support for narrow minded reactionary nationalistic ambitions, plenty of interest in racially motivated wars in which workers will die in their tens of thousands, and plenty of support for the reactionary enemies of he working class, the clerical-fascists, and reactionary Arab bourgois regimes.
"However, even this has limits, Israeli Arabs are banned from owning land, from marrying exiled Palestinian spouses (if they do they have to leave to be together), and whole number of other basic human rights. Whereas Jews who have never set foot in Israel have the right to 'return' to it. These are openly racist laws."
Quite true, and both I and the AWL condemn those limitations and call for an extension of democratic rights for Arabs within Israel. Indeed I did so again in that last post. But as socialists both I and the AWL beleive that the way to achieve the extension of those rights is by forging class solidarity between Jews and Arabs within Israel (and without if possible). You as a nationalist have no such interest, You would drive a further wedge between Arab and Jewish workers by calling as you have done again above for a war against the state of Israel to bring about its destruction.
"Our friend evidently thinks that exclusion is just. In other words, the ethnic cleansing of Arabs is completely just. Arkan would be very proud of this reasoning."
I have pointed out earlier that it is not a matter of me thinking it is just anymore than me thinking the genocide against Aborigines or Native Americans was just. It is a matter of historical fact, it happened 60 years ago, not yesterday. Like any socialist I am opposed to Immigration Controls. I would be in favour of the State of Israel not having such controls. But part of the right to self determination for nation states is to make their own laws even laws which socialists dislike. Many nation states have immigration controls, socialists oppose them, but we don't say a nation state should cease to exist just because it has them.
"The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew."
How a reference to Australia or the US can be linked to Zionist reasoning I really don't know, or even what Zionist reasoning is for that matter. I think your anti-semitism is showing. But you are again being disingenuous. On the one hand you pretend that this could all be achieved peacefully, all the Jews have to do is open the doors allow their state to be taken over by a majority of Arabs, and then everything will be fine. But you know that isn't going to happen which is why you talk about a war by Arabs against Israel above to bring about your desired result. Moreover, given the anti-semitic filth poured out even on children's TV in the Arab states surrounding Israel such as that shown on BBC recently in Iran and Lebanon of Jews turning into dogs, or a Rabbi looking for the a young Christian boy to murder in order to obatin blood to make unleavened bread, or when they hear the president of Iran call for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map, and deny that the holocaust ever happened, is it any wonder that ordinary Jewish workers feel they would like to keep control of their state, thank you very much, and doesn't the right of self-determination mean they have every right to do so?
"No, you are a racist who would make Goebells blush. I did not respond to your stereotypical rant because I saw no need to - it says more about you than it does about me."
There is only one person ranting here and its you. Time and again I have given a reasoned argument and asked you to defend your wild statements, and have put perfectly normal questions to you that could be answered with a yes or no answer, but on each occasion you have failed to respond. Why? Because if you answered honestly your entuire position collapses, and if you answer dishonestly, because every one knows the facts, you would make yourslef look even more ridiculous and ignorant than you have done already.
"The many different Islamic currents are not monolithic and homogenous, nor is the psychological root of their mass support uniformly reactionary."
Nor have I said that it is. My argument is against the clerical-fascist political islamists that you have aligned with.
" They are the product of oppression - as Marx put it 'the heart of a heartless world'. Take away that oppresion, and many of these things will simply wither and die. But you have to take away the oppression. You, unfortunately, support the oppression."
All religion is a product of the suffering of the masses a palliative that is "the opium of the people" as Marx put it. Yes before religion can die, the suffering and the cause of the suffering has to be removed. But religion like opium has the effect of numbing the pain and dulling the mind, it stands in the way, therefore, of what is necessary to bring about the end of that suffering, which is why Marxists oppose religion, whilst not condemning those still trapped by it. But political islam is not the product of oppression it is a distinct current of political thought aimed not at removing oppression, but of replacing one oppression with an even worse one as winess the curent situation in Iran, the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the attacks on workers and socialist in iraq by political Islamists. For millions of workers around the world political islam is the real immediate source of oppression. Socialists side with workers, women, gays, and other oppressed sections of society against it - you side with it.
Arthur Bough
Actually, the state of Israel
Actually, the state of Israel was brought into existence as a result of a UN decision to turn over part of the British mandated territory of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state. From the beginning the Jews faced attacks from Arabs set on preventing the establishment of such a state. The Jews not only fought those attacks back, but as you rightly state went on to the offensiive and drove out Palestinian Arabs. You might also want to tell us what the actions of the Arab regime in Jordan was in respect of the Palestinians. As part of this the Israelis came into conflict with the British forces who they also forced to withdraw.
The only way a Jewish state could be established was by driving out the Palestinian Arabs, since they were a majority. The war of the Arab population, notwithstanding the treacherous conduct by the bourgeois Arab regimes, was a justified war of self-defence against that. The colonialist 'mandate' of the UN had no legitimacy for a socialist. And as for the conflict of the Zionist forces with British imperialism, that was a genuine example of a reactionary colonialist force coming into conflict with a colonial power, deserving no support from socialists.
But what does any of this have to do with 2006, anymore than the Battle of the Little Bighorn and annihilation of millions of Native Americans has to do with the existence of today's United States, or the massacre of thousands of Aborigines in Australia has to do with the modern state of Australia. Would you perhaps also like to see Britain returned to the Celts?
If a population of several million diaspora Australian aboriginal refugees were living in miserable camps in New Guinea or the numerous other islands close to Australia, denied the right to return to Australia because their return would 'swamp' the white population of Australia, then the duty of socialists in Australia (and elsewhere) would be to support the right of the Aboriginals to return to Australia. Of course history turned out differently - the population was wiped out rather than driven out - but in such circumstances the principles would be identical. Anyone who did not so support such demands would deserve to be branded as a white supremacist. Such endorsement of racist exclusionism has nothing to do with socialism - it is its negation.
Moreover, how someone who argues in favour of democratic rights for Palestinians and some resolution of their demand for national rights, who has been an active anti-racist all his adult life in a country where most racism is targetted at Asians and Arabs can be accused of being a racist at all let alone a "rabid" racist beggars belief.
I could say the same thing about your branding of lifelong socialists who disagree with you as anti-semites, as fascists, as supporters of Hitler. You can dish it out, but when it blows back at you you squeal in a most undignified manner.
I think your just raving a bit like a loony now aren't you? As for pro-imperialist, agains show me some evidence of that. I have even argued against the AWL's position of not calling for Troops Out Now from Iraq, so I will be most interested to see how you justify that wild accusation...
So you have some platonic disagreements with the social-imperialism of your allies and co-thinkers? Your criticism of them means very little, since you side with them even against the more decent of their own members on questions like these cartoons.
The state of Israel exists it is a fact. Like any other state it has the right to defend itself, and to protect its own existence. Jews in Israel are not going to simply give up their state, as you have yourself pointed out they have fought several wars to establish it, only an idiot could believe they are simply going to turn round and say okay we'll liquidate ourselves and our state.
Fine, so you believe not only that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis in terms of their aspirations towards the Jews, but also that Jewish working people in Israel are irredemiably committed to racial exclusivism and can never be won to the idea of co-existence with the Palestinian Arabs according to the norms of elementary democracy, to which all forms of racial exclusion and segregation are anathema. In my view you have not only a bigoted view of Arabs, but also a bigoted view of Jews also. This segregationist worldview has nothing to do with socialism.
I have pointed out earlier that it is not a matter of me thinking it is just anymore than me thinking the genocide against Aborigines or Native Americans was just. It is a matter of historical fact, it happened 60 years ago, not yesterday. Like any socialist I am opposed to Immigration Controls. I would be in favour of the State of Israel not having such controls. But part of the right to self determination for nation states is to make their own laws even laws which socialists dislike. Many nation states have immigration controls, socialists oppose them, but we don't say a nation state should cease to exist just because it has them.
I don't support immigration controls either. But I am doubly or triply opposed to the 'right' of any state to exclude people from its territory en masse who were originally born on its territory. This has nothing to do with opposition to immigration controls, this has to do with opposition to ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that you oppose immigration controls in theory, but support them in practice when they are linked to a programme of ethnic exclusion that you consider fundamentally just. In that sense, you are not a socialist, but a reactionary cheerleader for apartheid (albeit one with contradictions in his own head about this.)
(Myself, earlier) However, even this has limits, Israeli Arabs are banned from owning land, from marrying exiled Palestinian spouses (if they do they have to leave to be together), and whole number of other basic human rights. Whereas Jews who have never set foot in Israel have the right to 'return' to it. These are openly racist laws.
Quite true, and both I and the AWL condemn those limitations and call for an extension of democratic rights for Arabs within Israel. Indeed I did so again in that last post. But as socialists both I and the AWL beleive that the way to achieve the extension of those rights is by forging class solidarity between Jews and Arabs within Israel (and without if possible). You as a nationalist have no such interest, You would drive a further wedge between Arab and Jewish workers by calling as you have done again above for a war against the state of Israel to bring about its destruction.
Whatever you may think, the AWL supports the reactionary 'law of return' for all Jews to Israel (how can you 'return' to somewhere you never lived in your life - a reactionary nationalist piece of doublespeak if even there was one?). And the AWL opposes the right of return of diapora Palestinian Arabs to present-day Israel: even those who were born there or whose parents were.
The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.
How a reference to Australia or the US can be linked to Zionist reasoning I really don't know, or even what Zionist reasoning is for that matter. I think your anti-semitism is showing.
No, you dont know what 'Zionist reasoning' is. That is because being an ethnic nationalist and spewing forth lying accusations of anti-Semitism is as natural to you as it was to the late Menachem Begin. And anyone who does not support Jewish racial exclusionism is to you, as to most Zionists, an anti-semite. This is the cry of the charlatan, crying 'wolf'.
Incidentally, you dont have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. Not at all. The Christian-Zionist phenomenon in the US is proof of that - these people's conception is that the emergence of Israel is a sign of fufillment of the prophesy of Revelation - at the end of which all the Jews will supposedly go to the (Christian) hell. But they are ardent supporters of Israel.
And it is perfectly possible to be both a Zionist and and anti-semite. Richard Nixon, who came within a whisker of starting a nuclear war in Israel's defence in 1973, putting US strategic nuclear forces on alert, was also a gutter anti-semite, as the White House tapes (e.g. his continuous vile references to Kissinger as 'jewboy') reveal.
But you are again being disingenuous. On the one hand you pretend that this could all be achieved peacefully, all the Jews have to do is open the doors allow their state to be taken over by a majority of Arabs, and then everything will be fine. But you know that isn't going to happen which is why you talk about a war by Arabs against Israel above to bring about your desired result.
Moreover, given the anti-semitic filth poured out even on children's TV in the Arab states surrounding Israel such as that shown on BBC recently in Iran and Lebanon of Jews turning into dogs, or a Rabbi looking for the a young Christian boy to murder in order to obatin blood to make unleavened bread, or when they hear the president of Iran call for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map, and deny that the holocaust ever happened, is it any wonder that ordinary Jewish workers feel they would like to keep control of their state, thank you very much, and doesn't the right of self-determination mean they have every right to do so?
When in 1982, the Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, stood up in the Knesset and said that Arabs were 'beasts who walk on two legs' in order to justify the Nazi-like rampage of his troops in Lebanon, the Zionist rulers of Israel laid the basis for the demoralisation that leads to such symetrical reactions. And this was only the most blatant example of the racism that has been enforced, in deeds not words, against the Arabs by Israel since 1948. Unlike the degenerate crap you are referring to which is a product of powerlessness, the Israeli state has put its own vicious racism into practice as a political programme in numerous aggressive wars against its neighbours.
So there is cause and effect - historically the relations between Muslims and Jews were much better than those between Jews and the Christian polities of Europe - if anything has poisoned that, it is the Zionist colonial project of cleansing Arabs from the lands where they were born.
You can lie that I am 'anti-semitic' till you are blue in the face. The fact is that I have not supported the publication of any racist caricatures of Jews, whereas you support the publication of racist images of Muslims - these images of the prophet Mohammad as a terrorist and barbarian and thereby the epitomy of all Muslims. You have defended these racist posters (for that is what they are) against the allegation of racism, and generally apologised for them in the most nauseating manner. And you attempt to accuse others of being racist as a smokescreen to confuse people and hide your own racism.
No people has the right to 'self-determination' if their 'self-determination' can only be carried out by the expulsion or continued exclusion of millions of other people from the land where they were born. If it is OK for Israeli Jews to do this, why then cannot the Kosova Serbs 'self-determine' by expelling the majority of Albanians from Kosova? If you concede the one, and effectively say it is just (or 'natural'), then you must concede the other.
All religion is a product of the suffering of the masses a palliative that is "the opium of the people" as Marx put it. Yes before religion can die, the suffering and the cause of the suffering has to be removed. But religion like opium has the effect of numbing the pain and dulling the mind, it stands in the way, therefore, of what is necessary to bring about the end of that suffering, which is why Marxists oppose religion, whilst not condemning those still trapped by it. But political islam is not the product of oppression it is a distinct current of political thought aimed not at removing oppression, but of replacing one oppression with an even worse one as winess the curent situation in Iran, the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the attacks on workers and socialist in iraq by political Islamists. For millions of workers around the world political islam is the real immediate source of oppression. Socialists side with workers, women, gays, and other oppressed sections of society against it - you side with it.
Some currents of political Islam are indeed grotesque. But they are a flawed response to imperialist and Israeli crimes against Muslim peoples in the Middle East, in their worst manifestations a mirror image of imperialist crimes. In some of these worst manifestations (e.g. the Taliban) they were in fact products of imperialist meddling and manipulation. Its is really strange that you attach such odium to a secondary effect of imperialist and Israeli crimes, and excuse the primary cause.
Reply to A.Nonymous
”The only way a Jewish state could be established was by driving out the Palestinian Arabs, since they were a majority. The war of the Arab population, notwithstanding the treacherous conduct by the bourgeois Arab regimes, was a justified war of self-defence against that. The colonialist 'mandate' of the UN had no legitimacy for a socialist. And as for the conflict of the Zionist forces with British imperialism, that was a genuine example of a reactionary colonialist force coming into conflict with a colonial power, deserving no support from socialists.”
Was the decision to establish an Israeli state on land settled by Palestinians morally reprehensible? Yes? Should socialists have defended Palestinian Arabs against an attempt to impose it on them? Yes, and they should have fought for the Palestinians to have self-determination in the British mandated territory and against British colonialism. Would it have been better if a state could have been created in which both Jews and Arabs could have lived alongside each other peacefully? Undoubtedly. But none of that happened, and we have to deal with the world as it is now, not how we would have liked it to have been. Once the Jewish state was established, and became settled by Jews it became as much a real political entity as any other state, most of which have also come into existence as the result of a lot of bloodshed and the stealing of land from other peoples. The State of Israel exists it is a real living political entity, and as such whatever you might wish to be the case, and however much you would like to turn the clock back 60 years, it has all the rights of any other nation state, including the right to determine who it allows across its borders. We may as socialists diagree with its policies just as we disagree with Britain’s Immigration polices but fundamentl to the right of self determination is the right to make such policies.
“If a population of several million diaspora Australian aboriginal refugees were living in miserable camps in New Guinea or the numerous other islands close to Australia, denied the right to return to Australia because their return would 'swamp' the white population of Australia, then the duty of socialists in Australia (and elsewhere) would be to support the right of the Aboriginals to return to Australia. Of course history turned out differently - the population was wiped out rather than driven out - but in such circumstances the principles would be identical. Anyone who did not so support such demands would deserve to be branded as a white supremacist. Such endorsement of racist exclusionism has nothing to do with socialism - it is its negation.”
But again you are being disingenuous. I have no problem with arguing for the right of Palestinains to return to Israel. I am completely in favour of arguing for an extension of democratic rights for Palestinians living in Israel and other Arabs living there. But it is beside the point isn’t it? Israel is not going to agree to that, are they? You know that they are not, which is why you have again called above for a war to force Israel to basically be destroyed as a Jewish state, and for it to be taken over by Arabs. Moreover, if we take your case of Aborigines living in New Guinea, if what was being proposed was a war by the Aborigines in order to force Australia to let them in, and if the Aborigines had basically said that once back in they would take property away from the current inhabitants, let alone force them to accept some ancient Aboriginal law and religion, then socialists certainly would not support that, both because it would be reactionary, and secondly because the likely result would be that the Aborigines would die by the thousand at the hands of the superior force of the Australian armed forces. The same consequence would befall your proposed war against Israel. It is a thoroughly reactionary venture.
”.I could say the same thing about your branding of lifelong socialists who disagree with you as anti-semites, as fascists, as supporters of Hitler. You can dish it out, but when it blows back at you you squeal in a most undignified manner.”
But when people call for the destruction of the state of Israel and side with people who daily publsih the most foul racist, anti-semitic propaganda that is anti-semitism, you can find no instance whatsoever of me supporting racist abuse of muslims, of calling for any Muslim state to be destroyed (other than in the process of its own workers establsihing a socialist state), and so on as you have done against Jews. Moreover, I have not called the SWP fascists as I have demosntraed several times, and you are lying in repeating that accusation, as for calling people supporters of Hitler where have I said that either agaisnt political Islamists, or against the SWP????
”So you have some platonic disagreements with the social-imperialism of your allies and co-thinkers? Your criticism of them means very little, since you side with them even against the more decent of their own members on questions like these cartoons.”
What is imperialist about these cartoons, please explain? I have heard people describe some of them as racist, which at a severe push you could interpret some of them as being, the majority of muslims who are bothered, complain that they are irreligious, but how any of this has anything to do with imoperialism is beyond me. I think its another one of those terms you have picked up, and throw around as a piece of abuse without knowing what it means.
”Fine, so you believe not only that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis in terms of their aspirations towards the Jews, but also that Jewish working people in Israel are irredemiably committed to racial exclusivism and can never be won to the idea of co-existence with the Palestinian Arabs according to the norms of elementary democracy, to which all forms of racial exclusion and segregation are anathema. In my view you have not only a bigoted view of Arabs, but also a bigoted view of Jews also. This segregationist worldview has nothing to do with socialism.”
I have not said that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis, I would like to see your justification of that allegation. I have said that political islamists, such as the President of Iran, and the reactionary Arab leaders of some Arab states wish to destroy Israel, and in your statements you appear to support them in that ambition. Nor am I committed to the idea that Jews are irredeemably committed to racial exclusivism. On the contrary for the last 20 years I have argued against the two-states solution, and in favour of the Palestinaians being an autonomous region within a larger state. Oriiginally, I thought that the best solution would be a Democratic Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, with the most thoroughoing democratic rights for both Palestinians and Jews, and control within their own areas. I still believe that would be – short of the creation of a Socialist United States of the Middle East – the best solution, but it isn’t going to happen, any more likely than after the election of Hamas a Two-States solution is going to happen, though far more likely that Israelis doing what you want them to do, and effectively commit suicide.
I now think that the best solution may well be for Palestinains to seek a federal solution with Jordan, or the same kind of arrangement that say Andorra has with Spain and France. On that basis Opalestinains could have their own autonomous region as part of a federal state, and begin to develop normal politics. Out of that attempyts to build unity amongst Arab workers and Jewish workers would provide the basis for a widerr anging solution to the problems of the area. Any solution which seeks to enforce an Arab state on Israel will, and can only result in a massive and destructive conflict which will be disastrous for the working class of the area. Anyone who does not recognise that is either very foolish or being politically dishonest.
”I don't support immigration controls either. But I am doubly or triply opposed to the 'right' of any state to exclude people from its territory en masse who were originally born on its territory. This has nothing to do with opposition to immigration controls, this has to do with opposition to ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that you oppose immigration controls in theory, but support them in practice when they are linked to a programme of ethnic exclusion that you consider fundamentally just. In that sense, you are not a socialist, but a reactionary cheerleader for apartheid (albeit one with contradictions in his own head about this.)”
But as I have said I would prefer that Israel opened its doors and reached an accommodation with Palestinains, but I certainly know that is not going to happen, and I suspect you know it isn’t going to happen too, which is why you favour a war to force Israel to let pople in. If Israel were ethnically cleansing people now of course socialists should oppose it, of course socialists should call on Israel to get out now from Gaza and the West Bank, but to oppose ethnic cleansing that happened 60 years ago, and call for it to be reversed is not only utopian, but it is in reality reactionary because it could only be achieved by a very destructive war. So again your accusation is completely wrongheaded. It is not a matter of me supporting Israel’s policies at all, it is simnply me recognising the reality of the current situation – something you refuse to do – and realising that a)Israel has very good reasons not to want to liquidate itself as a Jewish state given the daily foul anti-semitic outpourings of neighbouring Arab States b) Changing Israel’s mind on that would require some pretty astounding changes in those surrounding states c)in the absence of that the only way of bringing about your desired goal is a thoroughly reactionary and destructive war that would be ruinous for both Arab and Jewish workers and peasants.
”Whatever you may think, the AWL supports the reactionary 'law of return' for all Jews to Israel (how can you 'return' to somewhere you never lived in your life - a reactionary nationalist piece of doublespeak if even there was one?). And the AWL opposes the right of return of diapora Palestinian Arabs to present-day Israel: even those who were born there or whose parents were.”
I thought you said you were opposed to immigration controls??????? Once again your anti-semitism shows through. Immigration into Israel by Jews is to use your words above “reactionary”. So what you want Israel to introduce immigration controls against Jews. I think you will find that immigration requires that you migrate to somewhere other than where you were born. I wouldn’t want to speak for the AWL on whether they oppose the right of return for Palestinian Arabs, but for my part I do not oppose it. I just realise that Israel is not going to agree to it, so unless you are going to say that Israel cannot make laws on who it allows to cross its borders like any other state does, and that you want to fight a war to force it to accept Palestinaian Arabs – and then what are you going to force Jews out of their houses so that they can be taken over by Palestinians? – then it is a pretty redundant piece of demagogy.
”The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.”
But again you are being disingenuous as well as engaging in another one of your silly rants. It is not a matter of advocating tit – for – tat expulsions of Jews, quite true it is a matter of you calling for a war against Jews to force them to do something they do not want to do – open their borders to Arabs. Moreover, as I have pointed out above, what happens when these Arabs return? Are they next then going to say I want my farm back, or I want my house back, or simply where am I going to live? Won’t the obvious result be – especially given the rabid anti-semitism displayed by Hamas and the other political Islamists that would be at the head of such a war – that Jews are thrown off their land and out of their houses? Deny it if you wish, but any honest person knows that is what will happen. In other words the ethnic cleansing you rightly complain about that happened 60 years ago will become a modern day reality. Who knows in 60 years time after that the SWP might be trying to recruit from a mass movement demanding the right of Jews to return to the land and property sytolen from them by political islamists, after all the SWP will jump on any bandwagon if it thinks it can pick up a few new members.
”No, you dont know what 'Zionist reasoning' is. That is because being an ethnic nationalist and spewing forth lying accusations of anti-Semitism is as natural to you as it was to the late Menachem Begin. And anyone who does not support Jewish racial exclusionism is to you, as to most Zionists, an anti-semite. This is the cry of the charlatan, crying 'wolf'.”
Well again I really have no clue what you are trying to say here, because it seems once again lacking even grammatical sense leave aside political sense. I do recognise that once again you have avoided answering any of the points I put, by instead going off on yet another psychotic rant. It is not your lack of support for Jewish racial exclusionism that makews you anti-semitic, I am opposed to racial exclusionism too, and that does not make me anti-semitic, it is your support denial of national rights to the state of Israel that are enjoyed by every other state, and your willingness to enagge in a race war against the State of Israel to force it to accept laws that you want or more particularly Arabs want that makes you anti-semitic.
”When in 1982, the Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, stood up in the Knesset and said that Arabs were 'beasts who walk on two legs' in order to justify the Nazi-like rampage of his troops in Lebanon, the Zionist rulers of Israel laid the basis for the demoralisation that leads to such symetrical reactions. And this was only the most blatant example of the racism that has been enforced, in deeds not words, against the Arabs by Israel since 1948. Unlike the degenerate crap you are referring to which is a product of powerlessness, the Israeli state has put its own vicious racism into practice as a political programme in numerous aggressive wars against its neighbours.”
But it’s a straw man. Neither I nor the AWL endorse the state of Israel and certainly not reactionary neo-fascist bigots like Begin. But just because Begin is a bigot is no reason to jump into bed with some other equally nasty set of bigots as you seem prepared to do. The job of socialists is to say a Plague on both your houses. It was something the SWP at least once used to understand and advocate.
”You can lie that I am 'anti-semitic' till you are blue in the face. The fact is that I have not supported the publication of any racist caricatures of Jews, whereas you support the publication of racist images of Muslims - these images of the prophet Mohammad as a terrorist and barbarian and thereby the epitomy of all Muslims. You have defended these racist posters (for that is what they are) against the allegation of racism, and generally apologised for them in the most nauseating manner. And you attempt to accuse others of being racist as a smokescreen to confuse people and hide your own racism.”
Disingenuous again. You have not condemned publicly the publication of anti-semitic material by political islamists or reactionary Arab regimes have you? Here’s your chance go on, condemn the president of Iran for calling for the Israel to be wiped off the map, condemn Iran and Lebanon for producing TV programmes for kids showing Jews turning into dogs, or Rabbis after the blood of Christian children, and perhaps you could condemn the Danish Muslim cleric who produced the three really fould cartoons which he tried to pass off as being produced by the Danish journal while you are at it. Go on here’s your chance to do it publicly.
Moreover, neither I nor the AWL have defended the publication of racist material as I have argued on numerous occasions. I do not believe that the cartoons are racist, and nor apparently do most Muslims whose complaint has been not that they are racist, but that they are irreligious. The only people using the racist argument are the SWP and certain other sections of the British Left who do so out of cowardice in defending religious criticism. Both myself and the AWL have said we dissociate ourselves from any racist connotation that could be placed on these cartoons. The argument over racism is in fact simply a smokescreen to cover the refusal to stand up for free speech against a virulent reactionary religious intolerance, in this instance from Islamists, but as likely to fuel similar calls by Christians and other religions against criticism of their religious mumbo jumbo.
”No people has the right to 'self-determination' if their 'self-determination' can only be carried out by the expulsion or continued exclusion of millions of other people from the land where they were born. If it is OK for Israeli Jews to do this, why then cannot the Kosova Serbs 'self-determine' by expelling the majority of Albanians from Kosova? If you concede the one, and effectively say it is just (or 'natural'), then you must concede the other.”
First neither I nor the AWL have said that it was alright for Israel to expel millions of Palestinian Arabs 60 years ago. At the time certainly I would have opposed it. But what we both say is that it happened 60 years ago it is not happening now. Yes israel refuses to allow people back now, but that is an expression of its right of self determination whether you like it or not. Israel has as much right to control who comes across its borders as any other nation, and the obnly reason anyone can want to treat Israel differently from any other country is anti-semitism. At one time Britain ruled part of France – Brittany, and lots of British people lived there. The French drove the British out. Will you next be calling for the right of return of millions of Britons to Brittant?
As for Kosova the answer is above its happening now not 60 years ago. Personally speaking I’m not sure I agree with the AWL’s position on Kosova anyway, but that’s a different debate.
”Some currents of political Islam are indeed grotesque. But they are a flawed response to imperialist and Israeli crimes against Muslim peoples in the Middle East, in their worst manifestations a mirror image of imperialist crimes. In some of these worst manifestations (e.g. the Taliban) they were in fact products of imperialist meddling and manipulation. Its is really strange that you attach such odium to a secondary effect of imperialist and Israeli crimes, and excuse the primary cause.”
I think you will find that Islam like Christianity has been around for a lot longer than imperialism. To argue that Islam’s attitude to women, gays, and other minorities is the result of imperialism is apologism, therefore, beyond belief. I have no problem with people following such beliefs if they so choose, though as a socialist I would of course try to convince them that they were wrong. What I do oppose is the attempt by political islamists to inflict these reactionary ideas on to everyone else through the establsihment of Islamic states, and through the use of terror and violence such as that occurring in Iran, and in Iraq, and in many Muslim communities throughout the world. I am equally opposed to imperialism as I am to political islam which is why I am in favour of the working class in Iraq building its own organisation and strength on the basis of a fight against both the occupation and the political islamists, and for the defeat of both as soon as possible. You make the claim that political islam is the product of imperialism without any evidence once again to support that allegation. Certainly it seems a difficult case to argue when the most powerful and concentrated forces of political Islam are in states already controlled by Arabs themselves, and in the case of Iran even by the Political Islamists. What I find strange is that you should show such little regard for the interests of workers and socialist in those countries oppressed by Politicial Islamists, and reactionary bourgeois Arab regimes.
Reply To A.Nonymous
”The only way a Jewish state could be established was by driving out the Palestinian Arabs, since they were a majority. The war of the Arab population, notwithstanding the treacherous conduct by the bourgeois Arab regimes, was a justified war of self-defence against that. The colonialist 'mandate' of the UN had no legitimacy for a socialist. And as for the conflict of the Zionist forces with British imperialism, that was a genuine example of a reactionary colonialist force coming into conflict with a colonial power, deserving no support from socialists.”
Was the decision to establish an Israeli state on land settled by Palestinians morally reprehensible? Yes? Should socialists have defended Palestinian Arabs against an attempt to impose it on them? Yes, and they should have fought for the Palestinians to have self-determination in the British mandated territory and against British colonialism. Would it have been better if a state could have been created in which both Jews and Arabs could have lived alongside each other peacefully? Undoubtedly. But none of that happened, and we have to deal with the world as it is now, not how we would have liked it to have been. Once the Jewish state was established, and became settled by Jews it became as much a real political entity as any other state, most of which have also come into existence as the result of a lot of bloodshed and the stealing of land from other peoples. The State of Israel exists it is a real living political entity, and as such whatever you might wish to be the case, and however much you would like to turn the clock back 60 years, it has all the rights of any other nation state, including the right to determine who it allows across its borders. We may as socialists diagree with its policies just as we disagree with Britain’s Immigration polices but fundamentl to the right of self determination is the right to make such policies.
“If a population of several million diaspora Australian aboriginal refugees were living in miserable camps in New Guinea or the numerous other islands close to Australia, denied the right to return to Australia because their return would 'swamp' the white population of Australia, then the duty of socialists in Australia (and elsewhere) would be to support the right of the Aboriginals to return to Australia. Of course history turned out differently - the population was wiped out rather than driven out - but in such circumstances the principles would be identical. Anyone who did not so support such demands would deserve to be branded as a white supremacist. Such endorsement of racist exclusionism has nothing to do with socialism - it is its negation.”
But again you are being disingenuous. I have no problem with arguing for the right of Palestinains to return to Israel. I am completely in favour of arguing for an extension of democratic rights for Palestinians living in Israel and other Arabs living there. But it is beside the point isn’t it? Israel is not going to agree to that, are they? You know that they are not, which is why you have again called above for a war to force Israel to basically be destroyed as a Jewish state, and for it to be taken over by Arabs. Moreover, if we take your case of Aborigines living in New Guinea, if what was being proposed was a war by the Aborigines in order to force Australia to let them in, and if the Aborigines had basically said that once back in they would take property away from the current inhabitants, let alone force them to accept some ancient Aboriginal law and religion, then socialists certainly would not support that, both because it would be reactionary, and secondly because the likely result would be that the Aborigines would die by the thousand at the hands of the superior force of the Australian armed forces. The same consequence would befall your proposed war against Israel. It is a thoroughly reactionary venture.
”.I could say the same thing about your branding of lifelong socialists who disagree with you as anti-semites, as fascists, as supporters of Hitler. You can dish it out, but when it blows back at you you squeal in a most undignified manner.”
But when people call for the destruction of the state of Israel and side with people who daily publsih the most foul racist, anti-semitic propaganda that is anti-semitism, you can find no instance whatsoever of me supporting racist abuse of muslims, of calling for any Muslim state to be destroyed (other than in the process of its own workers establsihing a socialist state), and so on as you have done against Jews. Moreover, I have not called the SWP fascists as I have demosntraed several times, and you are lying in repeating that accusation, as for calling people supporters of Hitler where have I said that either agaisnt political Islamists, or against the SWP????
”So you have some platonic disagreements with the social-imperialism of your allies and co-thinkers? Your criticism of them means very little, since you side with them even against the more decent of their own members on questions like these cartoons.”
What is imperialist about these cartoons, please explain? I have heard people describe some of them as racist, which at a severe push you could interpret some of them as being, the majority of muslims who are bothered, complain that they are irreligious, but how any of this has anything to do with imoperialism is beyond me. I think its another one of those terms you have picked up, and throw around as a piece of abuse without knowing what it means.
”Fine, so you believe not only that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis in terms of their aspirations towards the Jews, but also that Jewish working people in Israel are irredemiably committed to racial exclusivism and can never be won to the idea of co-existence with the Palestinian Arabs according to the norms of elementary democracy, to which all forms of racial exclusion and segregation are anathema. In my view you have not only a bigoted view of Arabs, but also a bigoted view of Jews also. This segregationist worldview has nothing to do with socialism.”
I have not said that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis, I would like to see your justification of that allegation. I have said that political islamists, such as the President of Iran, and the reactionary Arab leaders of some Arab states wish to destroy Israel, and in your statements you appear to support them in that ambition. Nor am I committed to the idea that Jews are irredeemably committed to racial exclusivism. On the contrary for the last 20 years I have argued against the two-states solution, and in favour of the Palestinaians being an autonomous region within a larger state. Oriiginally, I thought that the best solution would be a Democratic Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, with the most thoroughoing democratic rights for both Palestinians and Jews, and control within their own areas. I still believe that would be – short of the creation of a Socialist United States of the Middle East – the best solution, but it isn’t going to happen, any more likely than after the election of Hamas a Two-States solution is going to happen, though far more likely that Israelis doing what you want them to do, and effectively commit suicide.
I now think that the best solution may well be for Palestinains to seek a federal solution with Jordan, or the same kind of arrangement that say Andorra has with Spain and France. On that basis Opalestinains could have their own autonomous region as part of a federal state, and begin to develop normal politics. Out of that attempyts to build unity amongst Arab workers and Jewish workers would provide the basis for a widerr anging solution to the problems of the area. Any solution which seeks to enforce an Arab state on Israel will, and can only result in a massive and destructive conflict which will be disastrous for the working class of the area. Anyone who does not recognise that is either very foolish or being politically dishonest.
”I don't support immigration controls either. But I am doubly or triply opposed to the 'right' of any state to exclude people from its territory en masse who were originally born on its territory. This has nothing to do with opposition to immigration controls, this has to do with opposition to ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that you oppose immigration controls in theory, but support them in practice when they are linked to a programme of ethnic exclusion that you consider fundamentally just. In that sense, you are not a socialist, but a reactionary cheerleader for apartheid (albeit one with contradictions in his own head about this.)”
But as I have said I would prefer that Israel opened its doors and reached an accommodation with Palestinains, but I certainly know that is not going to happen, and I suspect you know it isn’t going to happen too, which is why you favour a war to force Israel to let pople in. If Israel were ethnically cleansing people now of course socialists should oppose it, of course socialists should call on Israel to get out now from Gaza and the West Bank, but to oppose ethnic cleansing that happened 60 years ago, and call for it to be reversed is not only utopian, but it is in reality reactionary because it could only be achieved by a very destructive war. So again your accusation is completely wrongheaded. It is not a matter of me supporting Israel’s policies at all, it is simnply me recognising the reality of the current situation – something you refuse to do – and realising that a)Israel has very good reasons not to want to liquidate itself as a Jewish state given the daily foul anti-semitic outpourings of neighbouring Arab States b) Changing Israel’s mind on that would require some pretty astounding changes in those surrounding states c)in the absence of that the only way of bringing about your desired goal is a thoroughly reactionary and destructive war that would be ruinous for both Arab and Jewish workers and peasants.
”Whatever you may think, the AWL supports the reactionary 'law of return' for all Jews to Israel (how can you 'return' to somewhere you never lived in your life - a reactionary nationalist piece of doublespeak if even there was one?). And the AWL opposes the right of return of diapora Palestinian Arabs to present-day Israel: even those who were born there or whose parents were.”
I thought you said you were opposed to immigration controls??????? Once again your anti-semitism shows through. Immigration into Israel by Jews is to use your words above “reactionary”. So what you want Israel to introduce immigration controls against Jews. I think you will find that immigration requires that you migrate to somewhere other than where you were born. I wouldn’t want to speak for the AWL on whether they oppose the right of return for Palestinian Arabs, but for my part I do not oppose it. I just realise that Israel is not going to agree to it, so unless you are going to say that Israel cannot make laws on who it allows to cross its borders like any other state does, and that you want to fight a war to force it to accept Palestinaian Arabs – and then what are you going to force Jews out of their houses so that they can be taken over by Palestinians? – then it is a pretty redundant piece of demagogy.
”The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.”
But again you are being disingenuous as well as engaging in another one of your silly rants. It is not a matter of advocating tit – for – tat expulsions of Jews, quite true it is a matter of you calling for a war against Jews to force them to do something they do not want to do – open their borders to Arabs. Moreover, as I have pointed out above, what happens when these Arabs return? Are they next then going to say I want my farm back, or I want my house back, or simply where am I going to live? Won’t the obvious result be – especially given the rabid anti-semitism displayed by Hamas and the other political Islamists that would be at the head of such a war – that Jews are thrown off their land and out of their houses? Deny it if you wish, but any honest person knows that is what will happen. In other words the ethnic cleansing you rightly complain about that happened 60 years ago will become a modern day reality. Who knows in 60 years time after that the SWP might be trying to recruit from a mass movement demanding the right of Jews to return to the land and property sytolen from them by political islamists, after all the SWP will jump on any bandwagon if it thinks it can pick up a few new members.
”No, you dont know what 'Zionist reasoning' is. That is because being an ethnic nationalist and spewing forth lying accusations of anti-Semitism is as natural to you as it was to the late Menachem Begin. And anyone who does not support Jewish racial exclusionism is to you, as to most Zionists, an anti-semite. This is the cry of the charlatan, crying 'wolf'.”
Well again I really have no clue what you are trying to say here, because it seems once again lacking even grammatical sense leave aside political sense. I do recognise that once again you have avoided answering any of the points I put, by instead going off on yet another psychotic rant. It is not your lack of support for Jewish racial exclusionism that makews you anti-semitic, I am opposed to racial exclusionism too, and that does not make me anti-semitic, it is your support denial of national rights to the state of Israel that are enjoyed by every other state, and your willingness to enagge in a race war against the State of Israel to force it to accept laws that you want or more particularly Arabs want that makes you anti-semitic.
”When in 1982, the Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, stood up in the Knesset and said that Arabs were 'beasts who walk on two legs' in order to justify the Nazi-like rampage of his troops in Lebanon, the Zionist rulers of Israel laid the basis for the demoralisation that leads to such symetrical reactions. And this was only the most blatant example of the racism that has been enforced, in deeds not words, against the Arabs by Israel since 1948. Unlike the degenerate crap you are referring to which is a product of powerlessness, the Israeli state has put its own vicious racism into practice as a political programme in numerous aggressive wars against its neighbours.”
But it’s a straw man. Neither I nor the AWL endorse the state of Israel and certainly not reactionary neo-fascist bigots like Begin. But just because Begin is a bigot is no reason to jump into bed with some other equally nasty set of bigots as you seem prepared to do. The job of socialists is to say a Plague on both your houses. It was something the SWP at least once used to understand and advocate.
”You can lie that I am 'anti-semitic' till you are blue in the face. The fact is that I have not supported the publication of any racist caricatures of Jews, whereas you support the publication of racist images of Muslims - these images of the prophet Mohammad as a terrorist and barbarian and thereby the epitomy of all Muslims. You have defended these racist posters (for that is what they are) against the allegation of racism, and generally apologised for them in the most nauseating manner. And you attempt to accuse others of being racist as a smokescreen to confuse people and hide your own racism.”
Disingenuous again. You have not condemned publicly the publication of anti-semitic material by political islamists or reactionary Arab regimes have you? Here’s your chance go on, condemn the president of Iran for calling for the Israel to be wiped off the map, condemn Iran and Lebanon for producing TV programmes for kids showing Jews turning into dogs, or Rabbis after the blood of Christian children, and perhaps you could condemn the Danish Muslim cleric who produced the three really fould cartoons which he tried to pass off as being produced by the Danish journal while you are at it. Go on here’s your chance to do it publicly.
Moreover, neither I nor the AWL have defended the publication of racist material as I have argued on numerous occasions. I do not believe that the cartoons are racist, and nor apparently do most Muslims whose complaint has been not that they are racist, but that they are irreligious. The only people using the racist argument are the SWP and certain other sections of the British Left who do so out of cowardice in defending religious criticism. Both myself and the AWL have said we dissociate ourselves from any racist connotation that could be placed on these cartoons. The argument over racism is in fact simply a smokescreen to cover the refusal to stand up for free speech against a virulent reactionary religious intolerance, in this instance from Islamists, but as likely to fuel similar calls by Christians and other religions against criticism of their religious mumbo jumbo.
”No people has the right to 'self-determination' if their 'self-determination' can only be carried out by the expulsion or continued exclusion of millions of other people from the land where they were born. If it is OK for Israeli Jews to do this, why then cannot the Kosova Serbs 'self-determine' by expelling the majority of Albanians from Kosova? If you concede the one, and effectively say it is just (or 'natural'), then you must concede the other.”
First neither I nor the AWL have said that it was alright for Israel to expel millions of Palestinian Arabs 60 years ago. At the time certainly I would have opposed it. But what we both say is that it happened 60 years ago it is not happening now. Yes israel refuses to allow people back now, but that is an expression of its right of self determination whether you like it or not. Israel has as much right to control who comes across its borders as any other nation, and the obnly reason anyone can want to treat Israel differently from any other country is anti-semitism. At one time Britain ruled part of France – Brittany, and lots of British people lived there. The French drove the British out. Will you next be calling for the right of return of millions of Britons to Brittant?
As for Kosova the answer is above its happening now not 60 years ago. Personally speaking I’m not sure I agree with the AWL’s position on Kosova anyway, but that’s a different debate.
”Some currents of political Islam are indeed grotesque. But they are a flawed response to imperialist and Israeli crimes against Muslim peoples in the Middle East, in their worst manifestations a mirror image of imperialist crimes. In some of these worst manifestations (e.g. the Taliban) they were in fact products of imperialist meddling and manipulation. Its is really strange that you attach such odium to a secondary effect of imperialist and Israeli crimes, and excuse the primary cause.”
I think you will find that Islam like Christianity has been around for a lot longer than imperialism. To argue that Islam’s attitude to women, gays, and other minorities is the result of imperialism is apologism, therefore, beyond belief. I have no problem with people following such beliefs if they so choose, though as a socialist I would of course try to convince them that they were wrong. What I do oppose is the attempt by political islamists to inflict these reactionary ideas on to everyone else through the establsihment of Islamic states, and through the use of terror and violence such as that occurring in Iran, and in Iraq, and in many Muslim communities throughout the world. I am equally opposed to imperialism as I am to political islam which is why I am in favour of the working class in Iraq building its own organisation and strength on the basis of a fight against both the occupation and the political islamists, and for the defeat of both as soon as possible. You make the claim that political islam is the product of imperialism without any evidence once again to support that allegation. Certainly it seems a difficult case to argue when the most powerful and concentrated forces of political Islam are in states already controlled by Arabs themselves, and in the case of Iran even by the Political Islamists. What I find strange is that you should show such little regard for the interests of workers and socialist in those countries oppressed by Politicial Islamists, and reactionary bourgeois Arab regimes.
Arthur Bough
Was the decision to establish
Was the decision to establish an Israeli state on land settled by Palestinians morally reprehensible? Yes? Should socialists have defended Palestinian Arabs against an attempt to impose it on them? Yes, and they should have fought for the Palestinians to have self-determination in the British mandated territory and against British colonialism. Would it have been better if a state could have been created in which both Jews and Arabs could have lived alongside each other peacefully? Undoubtedly. But none of that happened, and we have to deal with the world as it is now, not how we would have liked it to have been. Once the Jewish state was established, and became settled by Jews it became as much a real political entity as any other state, most of which have also come into existence as the result of a lot of bloodshed and the stealing of land from other peoples.
So tough-shit, Palestinians. Eat it. Learn to live with it. That's what you are saying. The stealing of land from other peoples may be the norm in class society, but we are in an epoch where socialist revolution makes it possible to overcome such barbarism. But not for you. One cannot do anything about historical examples of 'the stealing of land from other peoples' where all the protagonists are long dead, but you are for passively accepting it where it is still going on and the protagonists are very much alive and still struggling.
The State of Israel exists it is a real living political entity, and as such whatever you might wish to be the case, and however much you would like to turn the clock back 60 years, it has all the rights of any other nation state, including the right to determine who it allows across its borders.
You are here defending, not the right to self-determination, but the 'right' to mass expulsions as a contemporary reality and instrument of politics. When did Israel become a 'living political entity' that in its essentials could not be changed? Five minutes after the expulsions were complete? Or when?
I have no problem with arguing for the right of Palestinains to return to Israel. I am completely in favour of arguing for an extension of democratic rights for Palestinians living in Israel and other Arabs living there. But it is beside the point isn’t it? Israel is not going to agree to that, are they?
Interesting logic. If 'Israel' is not going to agree to either the right to return of Palestinians, or even full social equality for its current Arab minority, then socialists should not fight for either. "I have no problem with this, but it is pointless because the Israeli Jews will never agree" is the essential argument here. The kind of wretched argument that could be (and is) used to justify capitulation and acceptance of racism anywhere in the world!
Moreover, if we take your case of Aborigines living in New Guinea, if what was being proposed was a war by the Aborigines in order to force Australia to let them in, and if the Aborigines had basically said that once back in they would take property away from the current inhabitants, let alone force them to accept some ancient Aboriginal law and religion, then socialists certainly would not support that, both because it would be reactionary, and secondly because the likely result would be that the Aborigines would die by the thousand at the hands of the superior force of the Australian armed forces. The same consequence would befall your proposed war against Israel. It is a thoroughly reactionary venture.
As opposed to the ancient law and polity that the whole Israeli project was meant to re-create from over 2000 years ago! Relative to the Zionist project, political Islam is progressive in historial terms by almost two millenia. Of course, such 'backward' peoples must be given no room to impose their 'backward' religion on anyone, must they? But ethnic cleansing and exclusion of whole peoples who are very much alive is to be accepted as historical fact.
What is imperialist about these cartoons, please explain?
Perhaps it has something to do with the Danish ruling class proclivity to participate in the invasion of Iraq (pity more of their troops are not coming home in boxes!), things like that. No to mention the systematic abuse of immigrants from 'backward' countries in their privleged imperialist enclave. Nothing to do with imperialism, is it. You really are an instinctive apologist for every vile, reactionary scumbag who hates Arabs.
It is not your lack of support for Jewish racial exclusionism that makews you anti-semitic, I am opposed to racial exclusionism too, and that does not make me anti-semitic, it is your support denial of national rights to the state of Israel that are enjoyed by every other state, and your willingness to enagge in a race war against the State of Israel to force it to accept laws that you want or more particularly Arabs want that makes you anti-semitic
You are not opposed to racial exclusionism. By supporting the right to self-determination of Israel, you are supporting racial exclusionism in this particular case, because right at the core of the Israeli polity is racial exclusionism. Israel, unlike most states in the world, cannot exist without excluding the majority of the inhabitants of its territory in the historical present, not the deep historical past. Incidentally, most nations were not created by ethnic cleansing - in many cases of conquest for instance the conquerers merged with the older populations to form a new synthesis. Mass expulsions of the pre-existing majority population are historically quite rare.
If you call me anti-semitic, that is because you seek to divert attention from the fact that you are a racial exclusionist in practice, even if in abstract words you console yourself that you 'oppose' such things.
(myself, earlier) ”When in 1982, the Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, stood up in the Knesset and said that Arabs were 'beasts who walk on two legs' in order to justify the Nazi-like rampage of his troops in Lebanon, the Zionist rulers of Israel laid the basis for the demoralisation that leads to such symetrical reactions. And this was only the most blatant example of the racism that has been enforced, in deeds not words, against the Arabs by Israel since 1948. Unlike the degenerate crap you are referring to which is a product of powerlessness, the Israeli state has put its own vicious racism into practice as a political programme in numerous aggressive wars against its neighbours.”
But it’s a straw man. Neither I nor the AWL endorse the state of Israel and certainly not reactionary neo-fascist bigots like Begin. But just because Begin is a bigot is no reason to jump into bed with some other equally nasty set of bigots as you seem prepared to do. The job of socialists is to say a Plague on both your houses. It was something the SWP at least once used to understand and advocate.
Disingenuous again. You have not condemned publicly the publication of anti-semitic material by political islamists or reactionary Arab regimes have you? Here’s your chance go on, condemn the president of Iran for calling for the Israel to be wiped off the map, condemn Iran and Lebanon for producing TV programmes for kids showing Jews turning into dogs, or Rabbis after the blood of Christian children, and perhaps you could condemn the Danish Muslim cleric who produced the three really fould cartoons which he tried to pass off as being produced by the Danish journal while you are at it. Go on here’s your chance to do it publicly.
I have no problem condemning such things, utterly and completely. If it is true that some cleric manufactured some extra cartoons to underline the case against the original cartoons, then he should be treated as a provocateur and punished for it. I have no problem with that. But you have a problem with condemning the original cartoons of Mohammad as a terrorist with a turban bomb or as a barbarian warlord -because you approve of that content.
I challenge you also to note the similarity between Begin's racist words quoted above, and the Hitlerite charcterisation of Jews as sub-humans. I challenge you to condemn Begin and his acolytes and collaborators as morally no better than the supporters of Adolf Hitler. I challenge to note that Begin's attack-dog and current comatose Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was eminently suited by temperament and psychopathology for serving as an officer in Hitler's Waffen SS, being unsuited only by the accident of being of the wrong nationality and age. If you do so, you will be denounced by the AWL as an anti-semite.
Not a diversion at all.
The job of socialists is to say a Plague on both your houses. It was something the SWP at least once used to understand and advocate.
Not in a conflict between an oppressed people and their oppressors it is not. Anyone who refuses to take sides between the oppressed and the oppressor is in Trotsky's words 'a contempible eunuch', or more simply, an apologist for the oppressor.
(Myself earlier)”Whatever you may think, the AWL supports the reactionary 'law of return' for all Jews to Israel (how can you 'return' to somewhere you never lived in your life - a reactionary nationalist piece of doublespeak if even there was one?). And the AWL opposes the right of return of diapora Palestinian Arabs to present-day Israel: even those who were born there or whose parents were.”
I thought you said you were opposed to immigration controls??????? Once again your anti-semitism shows through. Immigration into Israel by Jews is to use your words above “reactionary”.
So you are not opposed to the 'law of return'. Thank you for clarifying that. The 'law of return' is a racially discriminatory immigration law/control. It is as openly racist as the pass laws in South Africa, or Hitler's Nuremburg laws against the Jews. What an incredible piece of sophistry - saying that opposing the 'law of return' means supporting immigration controls. THE LAW OF RETURN IS AN EXPLICITLY RACIST IMMIGRATION CONTROL!
So what you want Israel to introduce immigration controls against Jews.
No, I want them to abolish immigration laws that discriminate in favour of Jews and against Arabs. I have no problem with Jews having the right to immigrate to the territory currently known as Israel on the same basis as Arabs, or for that matter Chinese or Peruvians. Which means full rights, unfettered by any controls.
I think you will find that immigration requires that you migrate to somewhere other than where you were born.
Or in the case of the Palestinian Arabs, the right to migrate back to where you were born and were expelled from, or where your parents were expelled from, etc. This is truly 'beyond chutzpah'.
I wouldn’t want to speak for the AWL on whether they oppose the right of return for Palestinian Arabs, but for my part I do not oppose it.
Good for you. But what does it say about your AWL allies that they do oppose it? And why do you ally with them given they hold this reactionary, racist position?
I just realise that Israel is not going to agree to it, so unless you are going to say that Israel cannot make laws on who it allows to cross its borders like any other state does, and that you want to fight a war to force it to accept Palestinaian Arabs – and then what are you going to force Jews out of their houses so that they can be taken over by Palestinians? – then it is a pretty redundant piece of demagogy.
So whether or not you 'oppose' it somewhere in the depths of your cortex makes no difference. In practice, since Israel (i.e. the racist Zionist state) will not agree to it, then it is 'redundant demagogy' to actually argue for it. And actually no: there is no need to force Jews to live on the streets while Arabs reclaim their houses. Israel has enough productive capacity to build adequate housing for both Jews and Arabs. What is needed to do this is to break down racial exclusion - which means destroying 'Israel' as a racially-exclusive Jewish state. Actually I have no problem if what succeeds the current Israeli state has 'Israel' as part of its name, signifying its Jewish component - 'The non-racial democratic/socialist* republic of Palestine-Israel' (*delete as applicable) or somesuch. But that racial exclusivity must be smashed - if necessary by force.
Israel has as much right to control who comes across its borders as any other nation, and the obnly reason anyone can want to treat Israel differently from any other country is anti-semitism. At one time Britain ruled part of France – Brittany, and lots of British people lived there. The French drove the British out. Will you next be calling for the right of return of millions of Britons to Brittany?
Idiotic comical stuff - worthy of an Asterix cartoon perhaps, but not to be take seriously. I don't know of large numbers of British refugees demanding to be re-admitted to North-Western France. In any case, any British/EU citizen who chooses to do so can go and live in Brittany or anywhere else in France. Such trivialisation of the plight of the Palestinians is itself a sign of disgusting contempt for that people.
I think you will find that Islam like Christianity has been around for a lot longer than imperialism. To argue that Islam’s attitude to women, gays, and other minorities is the result of imperialism is apologism, therefore, beyond belief.
Funny, I thought we were supposed to be talking about political Islam, as a modern phenomenon and a mass movement today, not Islam as a timeless entity, that of the days of Mohammad, or Abu Bakr, or Suleman the Magnificent, or whoever. The mask of the Islamophobe slips - the attitude of 'Islam' over the last fourteen-hundred odd years to such questions has varied enormously, if you would care to read a bit of history.
I maintain that the mass, Islamic revivalist movements of today, which are themselves varied both in their politics and psychlogical roots, are not monolithic and in their most potent mass-based manifestations a product of imperialist oppression and the actions of the Israel state in carrying out 'ethnic cleansing' of mainly Muslim Arabs with full approval of the 'free world'. A crime that you counsel passive acceptance of, and slander those who refuse to do so as anti-semites. It is you who are the anti-semite, having managed in this debate to insult both Jews and Arabs.
Reply
Reply To Anonymous on Israel
” So tough-shit, Palestinians. Eat it. Learn to live with it. That's what you are saying. The stealing of land from other peoples may be the norm in class society, but we are in an epoch where socialist revolution makes it possible to overcome such barbarism.”
Forgive me but I must have missed this socialist revolution. Could you tell me where it was? Or perhaps what you mean is that the answer to the problems of the Palestinians is a socialist revolution. Well on that I would agree, but the problem is that such a socialist revolution does not look likely at the moment dos it? And who would you have lead this Palestinian Socialist revolution the reactionary clerical-fascists of Hamas, who are in fact the gravediggers of socialists? Come on even you must realise you are scraping the barrel with that argument. Of course the answer to all problems for socialists in the long-term is socialism, but as CB points out below that doesn’t answer current problems. You put it crudely, but the reality of the situation actually is yes, the establishment of the State of Israel happened 60 years ago its an accomplished fact tough shit, move on. The important question for socialists is not trying to address a situation that existed 60 years ago, but addressing the situation that exists today, and addressing it in a way that assists the development and solidarity of he working class – a precondition for the socialist revolution, which is the ultimate answer to all such problems. It is very unlikely you will build the kind of unity between Arab and Jewish workers required for such a solution by siding with anti-semitic, political-Islamist or Arab bourgeois nationalist forces, and calling on them to launch a reactionary war against Israel. For that reason alone your position is reactionary. Add in the fact that such Popular Fronts have always in the past been graveyards for workers, and that there is little chance of such a war being successful and your suggestion becomes completely foolhardy, reckless and yes racist because it implies a lack of concern for the Arabs that would die in their tens of thousands in such a war just to satisfy your desire to destroy Israel.
” You are here defending, not the right to self-determination, but the 'right' to mass expulsions as a contemporary reality and instrument of politics. When did Israel become a 'living political entity' that in its essentials could not be changed? Five minutes after the expulsions were complete? Or when?”
The exact date does not matter Marxists do not believe in exact dates we believe in dialectical change. What matters is that Israel is now a living political entity. Your statement that mass expulsions are a contemporary reality is clearly false they are not. Sixty years ago is not contemporary reality.
” Interesting logic. If 'Israel' is not going to agree to either the right to return of Palestinians, or even full social equality for its current Arab minority, then socialists should not fight for either. "I have no problem with this, but it is pointless because the Israeli Jews will never agree" is the essential argument here. The kind of wretched argument that could be (and is) used to justify capitulation and acceptance of racism anywhere in the world!”
My grammar was at fault here. What I was arguing was that Israel is not going (at least under present circumstances and for the foreseeable future) to agree to the right of return for Palestinains, and as CB writes below this is not even demanded by the majority of Palestinians, it is foisted upon them as a demand by the SWP. I do, however, believe that it is possible for Arab workers and socialists, and Jewish workers and socialists to join together within Israel to demand an extension of democratic rights for all citizens living in Israel, and it is right that socialists should call for such an extension. But again I come to the point made above such unity is hindered by support for those that seek to destroy Israel.
” As opposed to the ancient law and polity that the whole Israeli project was meant to re-create from over 2000 years ago! Relative to the Zionist project, political Islam is progressive in historial terms by almost two millenia. Of course, such 'backward' peoples must be given no room to impose their 'backward' religion on anyone, must they? But ethnic cleansing and exclusion of whole peoples who are very much alive is to be accepted as historical fact.”
I don’t think anything is added by this rant that has not already been covered. Whatever the Zionist project, it does not invalidate the existence of Israel as a nation state. Whether Zionism is more or less reactionary than Political Islam is open to debate, but is besides the point I have no interest in defending either, no interest in siding with a lesser evil, and nor should any socialist worth the name.
” Perhaps it has something to do with the Danish ruling class proclivity to participate in the invasion of Iraq (pity more of their troops are not coming home in boxes!), things like that. No to mention the systematic abuse of immigrants from 'backward' countries in their privleged imperialist enclave. Nothing to do with imperialism, is it. You really are an instinctive apologist for every vile, reactionary scumbag who hates Arabs.”
You have yet to explain what cartoons poking fun at Mohammed have to do with imperialism. The cartoons were not produced by the Danish State they were produced by a privately owned journal. Actually, I would guess that rather like the British State the Danish State would have preferred that these cartoons were not published because of the effect they may have on heir troops in Iraq. So if there is any connection with imperialism at all, and I think that it is stretching it, it is in completely the opposite direction to that which you imply. As for Arab workers being exploited in Denmark as cheap labour that has nothing to do with imperialism, and everything to do with the normal operation of capitalism. Go to Kuwait, and you will find Palestinian workers being exploited by Arab capitalists as cheap labour, the same is true in Saudi Arabia and other bourgeois Arab states. As I said I think that unfortunately you are reather politically primitive and throw around these terms like imperialism as expletives without really understanding what they mean.
” You are not opposed to racial exclusionism. By supporting the right to self-determination of Israel, you are supporting racial exclusionism in this particular case, because right at the core of the Israeli polity is racial exclusionism.”
Complete and utter bollocks. I am in favour of self-determination for nation states full stop. Self determination means that such nations have the right to make their own laws whether those laws are ones I agree with or not. Defending the right of self determination therefore does not at all imply support for the laws such states formulate at all. I am in favour of self determination for Ireland, if Ireland decided to pass a law imposing a ban on all contraception punishable by death for those that broke it, would my support for Irish self-determination mean I also must then support this reactionary law??? Of course not. If it were possible to establish a viable Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza and he Palestinians possessed the internal solidaity and resources to bring it about and sustain it, I would be in favour of self-determination for such a state, even if this state passed laws preventing the immigration of Jews, or imposed Islamic Law. It certainly would not mean I supported those laws either.
” Israel, unlike most states in the world, cannot exist without excluding the majority of the inhabitants of its territory in the historical present, not the deep historical past.”
The Falkland Isles protects itself against Argentinian sub-imperialism by restricting immigration. Most countries in the world have immigration policies. Socialists do not condone them, but nations have the right to use them as part of their self-determination. Israel does not exclude the majority of its inhabitants of the present at all. Sixty years ago is not the present by any stretch of the imagination.
” If you call me anti-semitic, that is because you seek to divert attention from the fact that you are a racial exclusionist in practice, even if in abstract words you console yourself that you 'oppose' such things.”
I have called you anti-semitic for the reasons outlined above, that you would deny Israel the right enjoyed by every other nation state on the planet the right to self-determination and to make its own laws, and that you would fight a racially motivated war to destroy the state of Israel, a war which as CB writes below not even the majority of Palestinians have any interest in. Your support for such a war, therefore, cannot possibly be motivated by any concern for the plight of the Palestinians whose wishes you ignore, nor for the tens of thousands of Arabs that would die in such a war, but is motivated by your own hatred of Israel.
” But you have a problem with condemning the original cartoons of Mohammad as a terrorist with a turban bomb or as a barbarian warlord -because you approve of that content.”
No I don’t. If that particular cartoon was intended to convey the message all Muslims are terrorists then yes it would be a racist stereotype and I would condemn it as such. However, as even Muslims have said the most common interprretation of that particular cartoon is that Islam has become associated with the actions of a minority of political islamists that do engage in such activity, and justify that activity on the basis of texts within the Koran. Such an interpretation is not racist it is a comment on reality, and a criticism of those political islamists. Even then that is just one cartoon out of 12, and I have yet to hear you or anyone else justify the accusation that these cartoons are racist other than what they are which is religious satire.
” challenge you also to note the similarity between Begin's racist words quoted above, and the Hitlerite charcterisation of Jews as sub-humans. I challenge you to condemn Begin and his acolytes and collaborators as morally no better than the supporters of Adolf Hitler. I challenge to note that Begin's attack-dog and current comatose Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was eminently suited by temperament and psychopathology for serving as an officer in Hitler's Waffen SS, being unsuited only by the accident of being of the wrong nationality and age. If you do so, you will be denounced by the AWL as an anti-semite.”
I think you should read my post above more carefully where you will find that I have already given the condemnation of Begin you seek. Nor would I have any qualms about condemning the reactionary politics of Netanyahu. If the AWL criticise me for that fine, but I doubt it because I challenge you to find in he whole of the AWL’s website or literature anything other than severe criticism both of Begin and Netanyahu. That is the difference between us myself and the AWL maintain our independent politics and criticise such reactionaries even at the same time as defending the right of Israelis to have their own state and self determination, the SWP on the other hand always drops its own politics and adopts those of the movement it is temporarily allied with in its attempts to recruit new members. The first is called principled, independent working class socialist politics, the latter is called unprincipled, centrist opportunist politics. As someone has said elsewhere if a new mass movement arises defending Iranian workers develops the SWP will jump on its bandwagon, and all the noises it makes today in support of the mullahs will be dropped like a stone.
” Not in a conflict between an oppressed people and their oppressors it is not. Anyone who refuses to take sides between the oppressed and the oppressor is in Trotsky's words 'a contempible eunuch', or more simply, an apologist for the oppressor.”
But who is talking about not siding with the oppressed here, actually its you. I am in favour of siding with the oppressed workers and peasants in Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait etc. whilst you are the one siding with their bourgeois Arab rulers and oppressors and with the reactionary political Islamists who would oppress them even more if they had the chance such as in Iran. If you want to apply Trotsky’s statement above apply it to yourself. I have no problem allying with the oppressed workers and peasants its you that is on the side of the oppressors.
” So you are not opposed to the 'law of return'. Thank you for clarifying that. The 'law of return' is a racially discriminatory immigration law/control. It is as openly racist as the pass laws in South Africa, or Hitler's Nuremburg laws against the Jews. What an incredible piece of sophistry - saying that opposing the 'law of return' means supporting immigration controls. THE LAW OF RETURN IS AN EXPLICITLY RACIST IMMIGRATION CONTROL!”
The person engaged in sophistry here is you. You argued that the law of return was racist because it allowed in Jews, and to quote your words they could not be returning because they had never lived there in the first place. Your argument here was clear you opposed the Jewish State allowing Jews to migrate their. The argument over allowing Arabs to migrate into Palestine or even to return if they had previously been expelled is a separate argument which I have responded to extensively already. The point of your argument was clear, you opposed Jews migrating to Israel. In short you want immigration controls against Jews.
” No, I want them to abolish immigration laws that discriminate in favour of Jews and against Arabs. I have no problem with Jews having the right to immigrate to the territory currently known as Israel on the same basis as Arabs, or for that matter Chinese or Peruvians. Which means full rights, unfettered by any controls.
So you insist on Israel having a different set of immigration laws to many other countries around the world. Australia for instance has controls on the number of people it will allow in from different countries. Do socialists support such controls? Absolutely not. Are such controls racist? Yes they are. Does the fact that many countries have such laws invalidate their right to self determination and therefore the right to pass such laws. No of course not.
” Good for you. But what does it say about your AWL allies that they do oppose it? And why do you ally with them given they hold this reactionary, racist position?”
I am not allied with anyone I am arguing my own case. I think if you read CB’s post below you will in fact find that the AWL do not oppose the right of return either because they recognise that there is a problem with state’s based on such racial exclusion. The point is not whether I or they support or oppose such a right of return it is whether it makes much sense raising it as a demand when the state it is aimed at clearly isn’t going to take any notice, and when the majority of those for whom the demand is being raised have expressed no desire to return. As CB says, what might in fact be a far more constructive call would be a demand for compensation for those that were dispossessed. Certainly, support for such a demand does not lead to the conclusion you have drawn that what is required is a reactionary war to enforce it in which thousands of Jews and Arabs would die.
” So whether or not you 'oppose' it somewhere in the depths of your cortex makes no difference. In practice, since Israel (i.e. the racist Zionist state) will not agree to it, then it is 'redundant demagogy' to actually argue for it.”
Correct now you are beginning to understand.
” there is no need to force Jews to live on the streets while Arabs reclaim their houses. Israel has enough productive capacity to build adequate housing for both Jews and Arabs.”
Get real, how quickly do you think that would happen, and short of a socialist revolution how do you think this building work is going to be financed. Moreover, again you are being either disingenuous or very naïve. In every instance of returning populations such as in Kosova, or in the Kurdish region of Iraq to take recent examples the returning population have pointed to houses, farms etc. and said that is mine, I want it back, and the consequent pogroms and ewthnic cleaning have ensued.
” What is needed to do this is to break down racial exclusion - which means destroying 'Israel' as a racially-exclusive Jewish state. Actually I have no problem if what succeeds the current Israeli state has 'Israel' as part of its name, signifying its Jewish component - 'The non-racial democratic/socialist* republic of Palestine-Israel' (*delete as applicable) or somesuch. But that racial exclusivity must be smashed - if necessary by force.”
But that is never going to happen without unity between the Jewish and Arab working classes. As long as opposition to Israel is organised by bourgeois Arab regimes and political Islamists of the type you support that unity is not going to happen because Jewish workers will quite rightly fear the opression that would follow, and given the rise of political islamist organisations such as Hamas would even more rightly fear the possibility of being subjected to all the reactionary consequences of living in an Islamic state under Sharia law.
” Idiotic comical stuff - worthy of an Asterix cartoon perhaps, but not to be take seriously. I don't know of large numbers of British refugees demanding to be re-admitted to North-Western France.”
Nor as CB states below are the majority of Palestinians demanding the right to return to Israel. It is something the SWP wants to foist on them because of its hatred for Israel and because it gels with the politics of the political islamists it has cosied up to.
” I maintain that the mass, Islamic revivalist movements of today, which are themselves varied both in their politics and psychlogical roots, are not monolithic and in their most potent mass-based manifestations a product of imperialist oppression”
We are still waiting for some proof for this assertion. Political Islam existed in Iran during the 1950’s when Iran had its own bourgeois democratic government. It certainly existed in Iran under the Shah. For all that time Iran was a nation state with self determination, and had long since shaken off colonial oppression. Egypt became a nation state after the Second World War and has also been free of colonial rule for all that time, yet it is home to the Muslim Brotherhood. The same is true of most of the other Arab States where Political Islam is a powerul force. There is absolutely no evidence then to support your claim that this has anything to do with imperialism. Bin Laden’s original mission was aimed not at the West but at the rulers of Arab states. But whatever its roots it is a thoroughly reactionary movement. You may just as well say that fascism in Germany grew out of a desperation, and the effects of the imperialist robbing of Germany by the Versailles Treaty. It would be no reason for socialists to support Hitler would it?
” A crime that you counsel passive acceptance of, and slander those who refuse to do so as anti-semites. It is you who are the anti-semite, having managed in this debate to insult both Jews and Arabs.”
I do not counsel passive acceptance at all as I have outlined several times I merely propose solutions that do not involve a genocidal war against Israel of the type you propose. Nor have I insulted either Arabs or Jews in any way, and certainly I have not called them forth to fight a reactionary racially motivated war in which thousands of them would die as you have done, and appear to do so merely in order to satisfy your blood lust against the State of Israel.
Arthur Bough
Whoa....
"I now think that the best solution may well be for Palestinains to seek a federal solution with Jordan...On that basis Opalestinains could have their own autonomous region as part of a federal state, and begin to develop normal politics."
Steady on Arthur! This was in effect the situation between 1948 and 1967 wasn't it? It wasn't particularly satisfactory then and given the subsequent Black September massacre of Palestinians by the Jordanian state I doubt it would be satisfactory now. I've not seen it suggested anywhere else. And I don't think the election of Hamas necessarily means the end of 2-states. There are plenty of examples of radical rhetoric out of power and pragmatism in, let's face it.
Regarding your antagonist's rather strained Australian parallel, to make this apposite, Australia would need to be surrounded by aboriginal states who refused to grant their refugee brethren citizenship of their own countries, harassed out 1/2 million of so of their own Australian citizens who had been living there for millenia, and the Australians would have to have been fleeing genocidal persecution elsewhere
In fact, not that many Palestinians want to go and live in Israel so the right of return is a little moot. Financial compensation along the lines of the Jews dispossessed by the Nazis would probably be more welcome. It is very clear that most Palestinians are in favour of a 2-states solution, they do not want to share a state with the Israelis, they want their own state in the West Bank and Gaza. It is hard to see why the SWP wants to force them into a unified Palestine.
I do think there are serious problems with a state predicated on religious or racial identity and a secular democratic state in all of historic Palestine is a desirable project for the future, but the vital task now is a workable solution which satisfies both sides' minumum aspirations. Advocating that Palestinians fight for an unrealisable maximum programme and nothing less is condemning them to a life of permanent conflict.
CB
One more thing...
...if anyone thinks that anti-semitism is a purely historical phenomenon, (as one contributor here suggested) try the following:-
1. Open Google
2. Type in "Jews", "World" and "Control"
Peruse the results.
Jewish organisations can provide long lists of attacks on synagogues, cemetary desecrations etc if anyone cares to ask them... Taking Finkelstein's comments on the situation in the USA and extrapolating them is unhelpful at best.
Two States v Federal Solution
I seem to recall we started this discussion 20 years ago. I agree the idea of a federal state with Jordan is not ideal. The trouble is that I do not believe that any solution short of a Socialist United States of he Middle East is an ideal solution, and I think there would be problems even then.
My basic point is this. I have yet to be convinced that a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza is viable. Given the continued settlement of the West Bank, and if as seems likely the election of Hamas gives a boost to Netanyahu who will head an even more reactionary Likud after the departure of Sharon and the "Moderates" (if that term is even remotely appropriate) those setllements are likely to increase rather than diminish. Within a very short time if not already the possibility of the West Bank being anything other than a series of Bantustans for palestinians seems remote, and the viability of any Palestinaian state even less likely.
My second point is that the Palestinians have been fighting this battle for national rights now for a long time. However, valiant their struggle it seems to me that they simply lack the internal cohesiveness, and strength as a nation to achieve their aim, or to be able to sustain a nation state on their own. In order to establish such a state, and to sustain it they will be dependednt upon some external force. UNless you can show me an example that contradicts it I beleive that every other such circumstacne has led to peoples in this position looking for support from wherever they can get it, and often that means from reactionary foes. The xternal dependence in itself means that self-determination is a sham, and is reactionary.
In similar circumstances during the 19th century Marx and Engels simply said that such small nations had simply been passed by by the course of history and that trying to fight battles for their establishment as nation states however morally defensible were not battles socialists should support.
Under those circumstances I think that another solution has to be found. My preferred solution as I set it out twenty years ago would be a Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, but given the events of the last twenty years that isn't going to happen. But if we should and do call for extended democratic rights for Palestinains in Isreal with some hope of success, is it to unreasonable to suggest that a federation between a Palestinian Region with say Jordan, (where there are still even after Black September a lot of Palestinians)is out of the question? Such a solution is not ideal nor is it something that would be likely to be in prospect in the near future, but I suggest at least as likely as a Palestinian State in the foreseeable future.
Arthur Bough
What does Peter Andre think about this plan?
No doubt a Palestinian state would require outside assistance. In effect it is already economically interdependent with Israel because many Palestinians work there, Israel collects taxes on behalf of the PA (which it is presently witholding, on I'm not sure what legal basis) etc. That would not change entirely if a proper state were created. Economic co-operation with Jordan (West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza) would also be vital but I don't think that necessitates political federation. The Palestinians have been fighting rather hard since the 60's to establish political independence from the surrounding Arab states, and I think with very good reason.
Almost everyone on the Israeli or Palestinian left who has studied this seriously seems to have come down to one of the following:- (1) Return to the pre 1967 borders (2) failing that agitate for the people in the West Bank and Gaza to elect deputies to the Knesset (The "South Africa paradigm"). Trying to introduce a third option thought up by someone in a small left group in England doesn't seem particularly viable to me.
And moving the goalposts because of continued Israeli settlement activity seems to me a terrible idea. Settlements can be removed if the political situation demands it, as we have seen in Gaza and previously the Sinai.
Gush Shalom incidentally appear unfazed by the Hamas victory and say the Israelis need to negotiate with whatever leadership the Palestinians elect (they point out that by participating in an election based on Oslo, Hamas have implicitly recognised the ligitimacy of the process and hence Israel). I think UK socialists, as far as we have any voice at all in the matter, should support the Gush Shalom line.
I dare say we're wandering way off-topic here though....
Chris
Options
"Almost everyone on the Israeli or Palestinian left who has studied this seriously seems to have come down to one of the following:- (1) Return to the pre 1967 borders (2) failing that agitate for the people in the West Bank and Gaza to elect deputies to the Knesset (The "South Africa paradigm"). Trying to introduce a third option thought up by someone in a small left group in England doesn't seem particularly viable to me."
20 years ago I argued that in the same way that the AWL argues for a federal solution in Ireland with minority communities having the maximum control over their own areas, combined with the fullest protection of minority rights was just as applicable to Palestine/Israel. A wholly Protestant state in Ireland based on the 4 counties is not viable, yet socialists argue for the protection of the interests of Protestants. I similarly believe that a Palestinian state is not viable (actually far less viable than 20 years ago) yet socialists want to both address the needs of the Palestinain people and to defend in the best way possible their rights as a people.
I believed 20 years ago the best way to do that was a Federal Republic of Palestine and Israel given the choice and the intermingling of populations I still believe in the best of all possible world's that short of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, that would be the best solution. But the reality is that under present conditions there is no chance of such a solution. Resentment between the two communities makes it impossible. But for the reasons I have given I believe that a two states solution is neither likely or desirable. You say that settlements can be reversed as winess the settlements in Gaza. Yes those settleemnts were withdrawn and effectively destroyed Sharon in the process. Netanyahu certainly would not have proceeded with them, and he looks the most likely to be the dominant player after the elections. But even aside from that we all know why the Gaza settlements were withdrawn. It took the heat of Bush who had promised a Palestinian State, but done nothing about it, and will do nothing about it. Sharon and Bush did a deal that Israel would withdraw from Gaza and instead step up its settlement prgramme in the West Bank, which is now at such a level that withdrawal seems almost impossible to conceive. A Palestinian State would amount to basically Gaza (which Israel is now more free to bomb in retaliations with no settlres there to suffer revenge attacks) and a few neutered bantustans on the West Bank.
But my question remains as above, who would bring such a State into existence? The only power capable of doing it in reality is the US, and it has no interest in doing so. Even less with a Hamas led government. Despite its supposed support for democracy in the Middle East its first action following a democratic election is to try to undermine the elected government. If they wouldn't do business with Arafat they aren't going to do business with Hamas. In every progressive struggle for national independence and self-determination the struggle has been fought and won by the nation seeking independence and statehood. As I said above the Palestinian people have fought an heroic struggle, but I see no prospect that they possess the resources to wage this struggle to a successful conclusion, and simply encouraging them to continue to do so makes those who do little better than those who encourage young Palestinians to become suicide bombers.
Of the options you set out above I would, therefore, favour the second that Palestinians demand the right to send representatives to the Knesset. It is certainly a democratic demand around which not only socialists but democrats could also rally, but without such a struggle being seen as merely a staging post to Palestinians having control over the areas in which they form a majority it would not address the national and democratic rights of Palestinians. Moreover, if within this context Palestinians returned from exile - even to live in Palestinian territories - and that would seem a basic democratic right htrey should have, there is no more likelihood that Israel would agree to such a move than that they would agree to a secular state of Israel within which Palestinians had a right to return.
Consequently, I feel that especially with a large number of Palestinians already living in Jordan, and espite the very real problems such a solution poses, and despite the history of Black September and the consequent good reasons why palestinains have sought autonomy from other Arab States, out of a range of options ranging from bad to worse, it is the most likely to offer a solution that is achievable without recourse to some external power such as the US - which isn't going to happen anyway.
I think we should also remember the background to Black September when considering this too, and the attacks that Palestinians were launching from Jordan against Israel.
As for a "member" (which I am not) of a small British left-wing group putting forward a solution different from those developed elsewhere I would point out that this thread began as a discussion about free speech.
Arthur Bough
Palestine
"But my question remains as above, who would bring such a State into existence? The only power capable of doing it in reality is the US, and it has no interest in doing so."
Is that true though? Is continued instability in the Middle East and the hatred of the Arab street for the US really in US interests? ("External enemy" theories aside). And there is an economic argument that Israel is as much of a non-starter as a truly independent state as Palestine would be.
"In every progressive struggle for national independence and self-determination the struggle has been fought and won by the nation seeking independence and statehood."
It's surely not so simple. External factors played a part in most struggles - WW2 with the British Empire, revolution at home in Portugal - boycotts and economic factors in South Africa. Even now most Israelis say they support a 2-state solution based on the pre-67 borders. The reason they vote Likud is out of fear and distrust of the Palestinians, not because they support the settlers. Sharon was far from destroyed by the Gaza pullout.
"The Palestinian people have fought an heroic struggle, but I see no prospect that they possess the resources to wage this struggle to a successful conclusion, and simply encouraging them to continue to do so makes those who do little better than those who encourage young Palestinians to become suicide bombers."
There are plenty of voices within the Palestinian movement calling for a recasting of the struggle using non-violent means. There is a lot to be said for this, principally that by reducing the fear of ordinary Israelis it will enable them to vote for progressive parties who will actually negotiate a solution. But I would not underestimate Palestinian determination or Israeli fatigue.
"Of the options you set out above I would, therefore, favour the second that Palestinians demand the right to send representatives to the Knesset. It is certainly a democratic demand around which not only socialists but democrats could also rally..."
It certainly is, which is why the Israelis would not welcome it. Essentially it is the political route to a secular democratic state - Palestinians are already close to a majority in "Greater Israel" and have a much higher birthrate. Faced with an international mass movement calling for this democratic demand, Israel would have three options - 1. ethnically cleanse Palestinians ensuring a Jewish majority 2. agree to an effective 2-state solution 3. impose the sort of bantustan solution you have discussed (their present policy). But the South Africans tried that one first...
Op-Ed from the Jordan Times here: http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=9626&CategoryId=5
Chris (who isn't a member either and can't be bothered to log in)
Reply
"Is that true though? Is continued instability in the Middle East and the hatred of the Arab street for the US really in US interests? ("External enemy" theories aside). And there is an economic argument that Israel is as much of a non-starter as a truly independent state as Palestine would be."
I think its debatable what best serves US interests in the Middle East from this perspective. I don't think the "external threat" argument should be underestimated. It is the foundation of neo-con philosophy, the basis of developing a strong state, and the way for example Blair has used that in the UK to deliberately hype up the potential for terrorist attack in order to push through such measures I think demonstrates that the reason for wanting a strong state must be substantial. My guess is that the real reason is fear that if the economies of western countries really do hit the skids they want measures in place to quell civil unrest. Moreover, state's have always used external threat as a means of bolstering the ruling ideology in one form or another - it is the bedrock of nationalism. Empire's in particular have always felt the need to find some external threat or external venture to become embroiled in.
On the one hand a stable Middle East, as with a stable anywhere is in the interests of capital wishing to invest in such societies. But in part this depends upon the type of investment. Investment in manufacturing, for example, requires an economic infrastructure, it requires, some degree of a domestic market, it requires the basis for training and educating the domestic workforce etc. But investment in the main thing the US is interested in in the Middle East - oil - does not require that in the main. The small number of highly skilled technicians are provided by western companies, all that is required is to pump the oil and then ship it. Even most of the refining is done in the West not in the Middle East which would make more sense from an economic perspective. For that there is in some ways advantages to having a powerful ruling eleite who can be bribed and controlled by the US rather than a democratic government, which might decide to take much greater control over production and refining. Instability, and a lack of ddemocracry make it far easier to get the type of government you want i.e. one that is weak, and looking for external support. But even setting that aside, despite a lot of verbiage the actual Arab states have shown no real enthusiasm to come to the rescue of rhe Palestinians, and as no oil resides in Palestine the US has little requirement to resolve the matter either way. It has done very nicely for all this time without one despite continued conflict.
As far as Isreal being economically as much of a non-starter as Palestine, I don't think that is true given its much larger size and its resources. Not natural resources - though it has those in terms of agriculture and tourism, but the fact that it has a pool of highly educated and trained workers, and some advanced industries. In many ways it is like Japan in that respect. But in a way your argument makes my point. If Israel is rrestricted in its capacity for independent economic viability it is largely due to the limitations placed upon it by the political situation, and that has meant that it is reliant upon the US. Although, the anti-semites try to portray the realtionship as Israel controlling the US, hte relationship is clearly the other way around. A Palestinian State established under the tutelage of the US would be even more beholden to its benefactor.
"It's surely not so simple. External factors played a part in most struggles - WW2 with the British Empire, revolution at home in Portugal - boycotts and economic factors in South Africa."
I think that understates the role played in each of these cases by the actual national liberation movmeents. In the case of India that struggle was going on before the war, and would have forced the British out sooner or later for example. But I am not suggesting that socialists should not support the Palestinians struggle, and they have been for a long time, and Arab States did launch wars against Israel, and pressure has been applied in other ways. The fact remains that unlike all those other struggles the palestinains are in my opinion further away from having their own nation-state now, than they ever have been.
"Even now most Israelis say they support a 2-state solution based on the pre-67 borders. The reason they vote Likud is out of fear and distrust of the Palestinians, not because they support the settlers."
And can you give me a likely decade in which that fear and distrust might disappear, particularly following the election of Hamas, the deecalaration in public by the Iranian President that he wants to wipe Israel off the map at the same time as trying to develop nuclear weapons to do it with, and at a time when anti-semitism is on the rise in the Middle east, and even on the rise amongst the pseudo left in places like Britain as recent events have demonstrated.
" Sharon was far from destroyed by the Gaza pullout."
Yes he was, that was why he was forced to create a new party. Yes he had popular support within the electorate, but even if Kadema win the elections they will require the support of Likud. The dominant politician after the elections will be Netanyahu, who will set the agenda.
"There are plenty of voices within the Palestinian movement calling for a recasting of the struggle using non-violent means. There is a lot to be said for this, principally that by reducing the fear of ordinary Israelis it will enable them to vote for progressive parties who will actually negotiate a solution."
Which socialists should support, particularly where those making the argument are socialists, and are seeking to recast that struggle in terms of building deeper and wider unity between Palestinain and Jewish workers, but the reality is that whatever "plenty" means, "plenty" more voted for Hamas, an organisation dedicated to the exact opposite of all of that.
"Israel would have three options - 1. ethnically cleanse Palestinians ensuring a Jewish majority 2. agree to an effective 2-state solution 3. impose the sort of bantustan solution you have discussed (their present policy). But the South Africans tried that one first..."
Especially under the present circumstances I can't see anyway the Israelis are going to give Palestinains in the occupied territories the vote for the Knesset I wish that were the case, because it would be the first step towards the solution I proposed 20 years ago. They in fact do not have to accept any of the three solutions you propose. They could simply continue as at present, and ignore whatever international campaign was launched demanding they did differently. Only if such a campaign were backed by some ability to force them to choose would your options become applicable, and that would require at least a UN resolution on which the US did not exerise a veto.
Assume that were the case. If Israel then did accede to a two-state solution, this would be some years down the road. As Rosalind Robson has written in the latest Solidarity Israel is looking to basically annex the existing settlements on the West Bank, and will have extended them even further. The difference between this and the Bantustan solutions in South Africa wa that in South Africa the Black population formed an overwhelming majority of society and would have to have been physically reloctaed to the proposed Bantustans. On the West Bank the Bantustans already exist - they are the areas in which the Palestinians live. In reality israel has already succeeded in that plan, all it would need to do would be to seal off the respective areas.
In short if a two-states solution comes about it will happen not as the result of a succesfful struggle, but because it will be a solution that is handed to the Palestinians after Israel has aquired the territory it requires, and after it has set the parameters which effectively neuter the Palestinian state. It will be an abortion from the beginning which neither meets the national aspirations of the Palestinians, nor creates the basis for lasting peace, because it will lay the basis for continued communal conflict as Hamas and other organisations continue a struggle against Israel confirmed in their belief that only a single Palestinian State can meet their needs. Economically crippled a palestinian state will look for support from wherever it can obtain it, a recipe for domination by whatever reactionary force is prepared to offer some financial assistance to support its cause.
Arthur Bough
More off-topic meandering...
the reality is that whatever "plenty" means, "plenty" more voted for Hamas, an organisation dedicated to the exact opposite of all of that.
I don't think we should interpret the election of Hamas as a vote for war. Quite apart from the issue of corruption in the PA, Hamas have maintained a cease-fire for a year now, more effectively than Fatah. They have indicated their willingness to negotiate, albeit in very coded terms, and they have participated in elections which are part of the Oslo agreement. Our sharp opposition to Hamas on ideological grounds shouldn't lead us to demonise it across the board as the Israeli Right do.
In short if a two-states solution comes about it will happen not as the result of a succesfful struggle, but because it will be a solution that is handed to the Palestinians after Israel has aquired the territory it requires
I find it hard to believe that the solution which is desired by both the majority of Israelis and the majority of Palestinians (attested to in numerous opinion polls) - that is, two states on marginally adjusted pre-67 boundaries - can be entirely unrealisable. We know what the project of the Israeli Right is, but we also know that most Israelis regard the settler movement as deluded nutcases. The key to a solution is harnessing that mood, and removing obstacles.
I think for us here, a targetted divestment campaign (Gush Shalom call for boycotts of settler-produced goods)and constructive agitprop are the required steps.
Reply
I am not suggesting the vote for Hamas is a vote for war. I think the main reason for the Hamas vote is against Fatah corruption, but there is also an element of seeing Hamas as the most determined "defenders" against Israel. That in itself is an index of incrased tension and hostility rather than a lessening of that situation.
The majority of Israelis may see the settlers as nutcases, but that does not mean that they are likely to act on that belief. Its likely the feeling comes from a natural desire for a quiet life, and that the settlers unnneccessarily disturb it. But trhe same motivation means they are likely not to want to actually do anything to remove settlers either. I think the West Bank settlements are qualitatively different in this regard from the settlements in Gaza. I doubt they will be removed, I think it likely they will sprread and get larger.
Moreover, these kinds of sentiments have been widespread amongst the Israeli population for a very long time - a desire for peace, to give up land for peace etc. It has never translated into either votes for political parties that were going to act decisively upon it, or in any meaningful action by Israeli governments. UNless there is some big shock in the forthcoming elections which brings in a Labour Government or gives labour a role in Governemtn that allows them to lever change, I think that is not going to change. If anything I think the likelihood is that the man with the plan is going to be Netanyahu.
Arthur Bough
"Anti-islamist cartoons"
The phrase 'anti-Islamist cartoons' is a revolting piece of spin. In what way does a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad wearing a turban-bomb specifically attack "Islamism"? Answer: it doesn't - it attacks all Muslims and equates their entire corpus of historically evolved cultural/religious beliefs and practices with terrorism.
The purpose of the right-wing Danish publication that commissioned and published these cartoon was not to attack 'Islamism', but to attack and vilify Muslim immigrants in Denmark. So what is your purpose - to attack the racist media in Britain for being 'too soft' on Muslims and immigrants in not republishing this racist garbage?
racist?
..every hostile reaction to the cartoons has been religious in nature. The focus of the cartoons seems to be religion as well.
The AWL's defence of its extr
The AWL's defence of its extraordinary position as a secular opposition to racism simply won't fly. Again, Judaism is a religion but attacks on Jews are understood as racism, because we all understand the context in which they take place.
It's exactly the same here. The editors who launched this pre-planned provocation were not interested in a theological debate. They were associated with anti-immigration parties, and they were targetting Arabs. I don't know how that could be any clearer.
In that context, the AWL's position can be exactly captured with a simple analagoy. Everyone knows that most newspapers would (rightly) refuse to publish a Nazi era cartoon showing a rabbi engaged in ritual murder. Will the AWL -- in the name of free speech -- now adorn its web site with such cartoons? If not, why not? After all, it would be perfectly possible (though entirely crazy) to argue that they were just about religion.
The comparison with Nazism is absurd
'Attacks on Jews are understood as racism', really? Attacks on all the religious tenets of Judaism? Attacks on those variants of fundamentalist Judaism that say that God has promised Judea and Sumeria to the Jews? Of course we attack such ideas.
We have had long arguments on the left to try and get them to recognise that anti-semitism exists behind much of what defines itself as anti-Zionism, but we would never say it is wrong to attack religious Jews, or even the views of a majority of Jews, because it would be racist to do so!
And again, as in my reply to another contribution of eekamouse, the subject and nature of Nazi cartoons was very different to these. When did Rabbis engage in ritual murder. That was a well documented racist lie! But political Islamists do use terror, usually on other muslims. As I heard one explanation of the most controversial of the cartoons, political Islam hides within the cloak of religion. That may not justify that cartoon, as no doubt it can be interpreted in other ways; but it doesn't make it equivalent to Nazism.
we've got to the core of it now
News just in: it's just as much of a racist lie to show the founder of Islam as a suicide bomber as it is to show a rabbi as a ritual murderer. Pete Radcliff has got himself into very murky water indeed. Say an ant-semitic cartoon showed a rabbi sexually assaulting a woman or amassing money in a synagogue (two very traditional images). Would Radcliff publish it on the basis that some rabbis have assaulted women or are greedy (which is undoubtedly true)? If not, why not? Where is the difference?
From the last post, the basis position now seems to be that the AWL actually agrees with these cartoons. So we're not talking about free speech but something quite different.
Core of it - your refusal to criticise political Islam
We have already said in the main commentary on the cartoons that the one cartoon you referred to, might be interpreted in the way you imply, and, if so, it is racist. We acknowledge racism and reaction, and caution against it, where it may be in existence.
But your view is that all of these cartoons should be banned, yes? For you, all criticisms of Islam or Islamism are racism.
Cartoons are inevitably ambiguous and crude. We prefer to make clear socialist criticisms against political Islam. But most of the left here has not even argued for what they allegedly believe in, and against the ideas of political Islam. And now they, and you, support the banning of cartoons because they offend Islam. You hide behind the furore in order to refuse to discuss the nature of political Islam.
You can huff and puff about hypothetical scenarios and absurd comparisons with Nazism but that is what is what you are doing.
core of it -- implicit racism
We are reaching the point of diminishing returns but anyway...
I am still astonished at your previous point, defending the cartoon on the basis that some Islamists do use terror. Some rabbis doubtless have big noses, just as some black men probably have thick lips. But no one who hadn't entirely lost their political bearings would defend cartoons of big nosed rabbis or thick lipped blacks on that basis. It's not some far fetched hypothetical but a real political analogy, one which you have been entirely unable to wriggle out from.
It's got nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to do with banning anything or attacks on free speech. There's an elementary distinction between opposing state bans on racist speech and making racist utterances yourself. What is difficult to understand about that?
As for your much vaunted secularism, I fail to see how anyone could think that baiting an oppressed religious minority (as the cartoons clearly do -- and were intended to do) is likely to encourage members of that minority to become atheists. Indeed, for all the reasons Marx explains, it will have precisely the opposite effect. The more people life you provide a left cover for anti-Muslim racism, the more Muslims will shun the left. Again, what's difficult to understand about that?
You really don't know what is racist about Nazi cartoons
You really just do not get it, do you?
Caricatures that exaggerate physical features in order to dehumanise a whole people are hugely different from caricatures that refer to an ideological current, the extreme terror organisations of political Islam. That reference may be interpreted as racist. It may even have been drawn with a crude 'all muslims are terrorist' intent. It may have been drawn with a 'terrorism hides behind Islam' intent. I don't know and I suspect you don't know.
You simply however assert that all the cartoons should all be dismissed as racist, ignoring the many people from 'Muslim' countries and communities who say they aren't.
We believe that they should be discussed. And if discussed, it is stupid to discuss without seeing them.
Do the cartoons bait an oppressed religious minority? It undoubtedly has given an issue for the political Islamists to campaign on. But how do we respond to their campaign within the 'Muslim' countries and communities? By partially agreeing with them and calling for banning of images of Islam if not the murder of the cartoonists? Or do we try to discuss with them the real nature of the cartoons. Most people are discussing the cartoons without knowing what is actually in them. We chose to publish the cartoons because we believe in informed debate and not buckling to demands for religious censorship.
it can't get much clearer
By describing a caricature of Mohammed as a depiction of 'the extreme terror organisations of political Islam' you have just identified Islam, a religion espoused by millions of people, most of whom are entirely peaceful -- with terrorism, just like every other garden variety bigot.
I don't think I could add anything to make your position any clearer. Readers can decide themselves whether your crude prejudices have anything to do with socialism.
Let honest readers decide for themselves
What is clear is that you are not engaging in honest debate. Read what I said in the comment you refer to i.e. that the simplification of that particular cartoon could be interpreted as racist.
But no matter, instead pretend that we champion that cartoon. Such distortion is essential to your argument but I also leave readers to judge for themselves.
Why publish?
Pete's right. AWL don't endorse the cartoons. Nor do any of us although one or two are quite funny. I mean if you don;t think the one of the prophet or god telling the suicide bombers to stop because there aren;t enough virgins for them as supposed martyrs is funny I suspect you have difficulty ever having alaugh. The thing is AWL published these so that people could see fior themselves. That;s the whole point no-one can or should be able make your mind up for you - ypou have to look anbd decide for yourself. You aloshave to understand that the islamists added 3 cartoons and then spread them around as if the whole thing was one packege published by Jyllands. Don;t you get the whole point? Its a put up job by the Islamists to stir up religious hatered and bigotry and exploit the ignorance of those who don't have access to the debates or the facts. The proof of who is right however rests withthe overwhelming majority of Moslems who have looked on bemused. They may not be amused but then they haven't called for anyone to be massacred or mutilated. The SWP should bear that in mind. And the factthat more moderate opinion than thers has turned out to be more courageous in the face of fanatical bigorty and bullying that they could ever be.
'Anti-Islamist'?
I don't agree that the use of the phrase is "a revolting piece of spin", but I do think it is inaccurate and unhelpful.
The way in which the cartoons can be said to be 'anti-Islamist' is that they can be read as attacks on those who bomb in the pursuit of Islamist goals. However, but (a) 'Islamism' is much broader than that - the vast majority of Islamists, let alone of Muslims, do not support suicide bombing, and (b) they could also be read in other ways, including ways that the AWL does not endorse.
You say, 'We protest against
You say, 'We protest against the suppression of these cartoons'
I think you'kll find they weren't suppressed.
Are you protesting against the protests? That would be odd.
Irony and negative politics
Isn't the third camp supposed to be for 'independent' working class politics? This article and in particular the decision to publish the cartoons takes the side, not of free speech as you somewhat disingenuously claim but of the right-wing Danish and Franch papers who have deliberately set out to provoke the reaction they got.
And the title is rich with irony. Don't let religious leaders decide what we publish is, as Gandhi said of western civilisation, a great idea. But you have published these cartoons only because religious leaders have said you shouldn't. It's the politics of the playground, attention-seeking anarchism not real third-camp politics.
Oh and Muslims don't wear turbans, that's Sikhs. Than again I suppose they all look alike from Copenhagen
Patrick Murphy (Leeds AWL)
Oh, for God's sake
And the Little Green Footballs award for services to community relations goes to... the AWL for publishing the Jyllands-Posten cartoons and thus deliberately offending every practising Muslim who ever reads this site. Because you can, and because the Muslim community don't want them published. So nyah nyah.
How utterly bloody-minded and juvenile can you be? Republishing deeply offensive, borderline-racist cartoons, a) because it pisses off religious leaders, and b) In the interests of defending the "rights" of a rightwing Danish paper to publish said material.
What precisely do you suppose the reaction of an ordinary Muslim (especially a young Muslim who might on many levels be receptive to a civil discussion about the AWL's politics) will be? Do you think it will encourage any to engage in constructive discussion with the AWL on this issue, or any other? And all for the fact that you fancy thumbing your noses at the Imams.
Congratulations guys, you must be sooo proud of yourselves.
Alan Thomas
Birmingham
For Heaven's sake
The title of your comment, Alan, is ironic? Or juvenile? Or what?
answer
Answer his points janine, don't just go posting clever little remarks which don't relate to anything...
Did that
Even before you asked me too - look below.
Obviously, using a comment heading "For God's sake" *does* relate to the issue under discussion here.
*&$*£"$%
IT IS A SAYING!
More seriously
I think that the AWL is right to publish these cartoons on this website.
As I type this, the Danish embassy in Lebanon is in flames. Yesterday, something similar happened to the Danish embassy in Syria. Last year, there were the demands that Bezhti and Jerry Springer: the Opera be banned. Religious censors are becoming more and more confident, and are mobilising not just to express their opinions but to silence others.
The AWL could have said: "OK, we'll express our opinions, but we won't go so far as to actually publish the things, cos that will get us into a row and it might offend people." That would have amounted to avoiding making a stand just when a stand needs to be made. The more that political organisations try to avoid a row about this sort of thing, the more confident the religious censors will get, the more they will mobilise, the more scared the media - any media - will get to publish anything that might offend.
Oh, and you would not have been able to even form an opinion that the cartoons are "deeply offensive", "borderline racist" or whatever, without having been given the chance to actually see them, would you? The opening of the article warns you that the cartoons are republished at the end of it, but you still clicked 'read more' and read to the end, didn't you?!
Gutter journalism
Yes Janine, my title was ironic and possibly a little juvenile. However I didn't conclude it with a picture of a swarthy-looking Arab with a bomb-shaped turban, so I think I still win in the gravity-and-moral-high-ground stakes.
Who do you *actually* think you're making a stand against? The people who attacked the Danish embassies in the Lebanon and Syria? They'll attack western targets on one or another pretext regardless of what some Danish tosser publishes in a magazine, or what the AWL republishes here. They, and such influence as they hold, will not be affected one way or the other by the publication of these cartoons, except possibly that many who would not previously have shared their clash-of-civilisations worldview, will begin to have second thoughts. At best on this count, therefore, the republishing of these cartoons is at best ineffectual, and at worst will drive people into the arms of extremism.
Further, the idea that you're standing up to "censorship" in the UK where in fact *nobody* has censored these cartoons in this country (and nor are they illegal), is the most incredible blind alley. Nobody's banned anyone from publishing these images in the UK - what has happened is that people have chosen not to do so, of their own volition. Show me a paper that makes any of its publishing decisions on the basis of "oi lads this'll piss off the (insert minority group here) and I think we can get away with it too" and I'll show you the lowest form of gutter journalism.
The reality is, the AWL did this just because it can, and if it pisses off a few Imams then so much the better, apparently. The fact that it is both alienating and offensive to ordinary Muslims across the UK and beyond, just doesn't seem to bother you or anyone else that I have talked to about this. Which is simultaneously juvenile, bloody minded and short-sighted, with a fair bit of self-righteous piety thrown in for good measure.
Quite an achievement by any standards.
Alan Thomas
Birmingham
Censorship
You assume that censorship has to be backed by the State. The censorship imposed on Beshti was not state censorship, the attempted censorship of Salman Rushdie was not state censorship. Moreover, there is a difference between protest, and violence as a means of trying to sut people up. For example, The Sun and other gutter newspapers print pictures of half naked women. In the past feminists have protested against those pictures. The predecessors of the AWL took the position in those cases, quite rightly in my opinion, that they were not in favour of censorship of those pictures, and supported pickets and other forms of protest against them. (Incidentally, I think that I do disagree with the AWL's position on this point - we never showed a copy of a Page 3 girl to back up our insistence that we opposed censorship.) However, I doubt we would have supported calls for the Editor of the Sun to be beheaded or castrated would perhaps be more appropriate in the circumstances for having shown the pictures. We supported the protests because the pictures were reactionary, and the opposition to them was justified.
Do the pictures of Mohammed fall into this category? I don't think so. I cannot see any way that these cartoons incite hatred against Muslims, any more than some of the depictions of Jesus Christ or the Christian God incite attacks on Christians. The comparison with some of the anti-semitic cartoons, which are rife in the Middle East (and which make the current reaction of Muslims there rather hypocritical) are different. The depictions are not caricatures of Jaweh the Hebrew God or El the God of the ancestors of the Hebrews from which Isra-el comes from. They are depictions of Jews themselves, and are not intended as satire or mocking of the God or religion, but at evoking a response towards Jews themselves.
WE should oppose censorship whether it be by the state, or by powerful organisations such as religions whether that censorship is by statute or by physical force. We should at the same time insist upon the equal right of those who feel they have been wronged by any publication, performance or whatever to express their own views in response, and to try to convince on the basis of rational argument. I don't think this meant that the AWL had to reproduce these cartoons to get over that point, and I think to an extent it has a hint of showboating, and as I said before we didn't reprint Page 3 girls to defend the Sun's right to publish, so there was no principles reason to do so here.
I do think there is another point. This site is extremely open for different views, and that is good. However, it has a bit of a hint of the criticism that was made in the past of H.M. Hyndman. Hyndman ran the SDF as his personal fiefdom as a result of his control of the organisation's printing press. I wonder whether the AWL might have thought given the facility now with electronic communciations, or even through a discussion on this board, to have asked its members first whether they believed that the pictures should be reproduced?
Arthur Bough
censorship
Surely Alan there are more ways of censoring these cartoons than by using the law (you're right- they are not illegal). What's going on in the UK is not about responsible journalism but about self-censorship. The cartoons aren't 'banned' in any formal sense but in practise the vehemence of the reactionary religious campaign against them makes self-censorship highly likely, hence the sacking of newspaper editors in France and Jordan for publishing. Death threats and so on (of which there have already been several) do have an impact!
Do you extend all the things you say above about the AWL for publishing to others (e.g. secularist and leftist individuals or groups) in predominantly Muslim countries? Should they be condemned for publishing?
In your earlier posting you question why we should want to defend the Danish right-wing press but this is about defending *everyone's* right to caricature and mock religions and religious figures. That's the thing about this freedom - either we defend it for everyone or we lose it for everyone.
Caroline