Workers' Liberty

In his speech to this year’s conference of the public services union Unison, in Brighton in mid-June, general secretary Dave Prentis called on the “Labour Link” section of the union to stop funding constituency development plans, and to work only with Labour MPs who abide by the union’s values and objectives.

So long as the Jewish and Arab workers in the Middle East remain subordinate to the forces of Israeli and Arab (or Islamic) chauvinism — as they are now — the only hope for Palestinian progress towards their own state is from intervention on their behalf from outside governments.

Of those, the USA is the decisive one.

Continuing a series on misunderstandings, misrepresentations and lies about the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.

The RMT rail union has called a protest outside the Israeli embassy in London on 11 May to support Arab workers threatened with the sack from Israeli railways. More details here.

East Jerusalem workers appeal for support

Twenty one Palestinian workers from East Jerusalem who have been employed by the Israeli Antiquities Authority have lost their jobs in a bid by the employer to get around the law. They are victims of the kind of outsourcing many of you will be familiar with in your own countries. They've launched an international appeal for support.

Students at Sheffield University have been in occupation of space in the Hicks Building since Monday 16 March; on 23 March the occupation spread to the university's new, extremely posh, flagship exhibition centre.

Between 5 and 13 March, I had the privilege of touring round the UK with Tamar Katz, a 19 year-old women from Tel Aviv who was jailed for three months at the end of last year for refusing to serve in the Israeli Defence Force as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians.

I write to you from inside a student occupation.

Japan

Thousands of workers have rallied in Tokyo demanding job security and wage rises.

Following massive demonstrations and a wave of student occupations against Israel’s war in Gaza, British activists have been hosting a speaker tour with Tamar Katz, one of the Shministim, Israeli high school students jailed for refusing to fight in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Shministim - A Dubious Cause !
By Ian Sternberg

Israel’s bloody attack on Gaza in December and January left over 1,000 Palestinians dead, including hundreds of children.

Solidarity with the Palestinians — but don't line up behind Hamas!

ON 13 APRIL [2002] there was a big London march "for Palestine". What happened was shocking from a socialist standpoint, and harmful to the Palestinian cause.

About 60 people, mostly young, crammed into a Green Park social centre on 15 January for a forum on the war in Gaza held jointly by Workers' Liberty and the Worker-communist Party of Iraq.

Students at nearly 20 universities across the UK have staged occupations in protest at Israel’s war on Gaza.

While many, perhaps most, Jews globally do feel some sense of identification with the Israeli-Jewish nation (its people, at least, if not the State of Israel itself), and while many Jews are understandably a great deal more sensitive to the threat posed by Hamas’s anti-semitic project than many on the British left, it is by no means the case that world Jewry is united in support for the colonialist adventures of the Israeli government in the Occupied Territories.

On 28 January Israel launched its heaviest attack yet on Gaza since its official ceasefire, sending in bombers in retaliation for a Hamas attack on an Israeli army patrol. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said that the bombing, and an earlier ground incursion, would be followed by a heavier response.

The Shministim speak: Israeli student jailed for refusing to serve in army tours Britain, 5-14 March 2009

A debate from the website (in full here).

GUADELOUPE: The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe has been rocked by a general strike — a total shut-down of shops, supermarkets, schools and public services.

As we go to press, both of Israel’s main centre-right parties — Likud and Kadimah — were claiming victory in the general election. Most exit polls gave 30 seats to Kadimah and 29 to Likud.

As Solidarity went to press, students at the University of East Anglia, Edinburgh University and Goldsmiths College in London had just gone into occupation in solidarity with Gaza — bringing the tot

• Editorial from Solidarity 3/145, 29 January 2009

• The story of what happened on 17 January 2009, with photos
• Another account, with photos
• Comment from Sheffield AWL
• Open letter from Sheffield AWL.

On Saturday 17 January, a contingent of Workers’ Liberty members in Sheffield attended a demonstration to oppose the Israeli assault on Gaza, as we had done for the previous two Saturdays.

In the last issue of Solidarity, we called for a campaign to make solidarity with the Palestinians on a rational, internationalist basis, fighting for a two-state settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and making solidarity with working-class and democratic forces against political Islam as well as the Israeli ruling class.

Among those who criticise AWL for openly proclaiming our policy on the Middle East — Israel out of the Occupied Territories; two states, i.e. a Palestinian state alongside Israel; hostility to political Islam and Islamic clerical fascism — on the Gaza demonstrations have been members of the Socialist Party.