Israel/Palestine

A month ago, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Dr. George Habash, died in Jordan. Dr. Habash died of a heart attack. He was 82 years old. Under the leadership of Dr. Habash, the PFLP constituted the radical wing within the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The Front has been standing for a socialist, secular and democratic republic of Palestine, was influenced by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and advanced pan-Arabic politics which was aiming at uniting the Arab masses along nationalist-secular lines. However, Habash was not only a...

The serious and long-lasting strike of the teachers, which was ended up in a compromise with the Education Ministry, and the long strike of the lecturers in that was also finished in a compromise, were a serious factor in the militancy of many workers and youth, mainly within academia. In addition, young workers in were building their own union in a famous cooperative of coffee shops (the Coffee Bean, like Starbucks) and made a serious impression. The class struggle in becomes sharp from one day to another and people who were not involved in politics are becoming politically active. In Jaffa...

I'll start with one needed clarification: Zionism should be considered not only as theory but also as practice. Lenin and Trotsky were against Zionism as a program of building an exclusive national state on the land of Palestine, a program that denies the existence of an Arab people and wishes to get national independence by relying upon imperialism, e.g., world capitalism. Thus, Zionism is a reactionary theory in the sense of carrying forward nationalistic agenda; however, like any other national liberation movement, Zionism should be supported in the sense that it stands for liberation of...

The left devotes much of its efforts to campaigning against imperialism, which is no surprise given the present foreign policy of the American and British governments. However, in order to effectively combat imperialism and war, it is necessary that we understand what ‘anti-imperialism’ means, who is anti-imperialist, and what relationship that has with working-class politics. Unfortunately, the dominant conception of ‘anti-imperialism’ on the British left today, as schooled to thousands of young new activists by organisations such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, is wholly inadequate. As I...

Seven people were killed on 27 January as the Lebanese army clashed with rioters in southern Beirut in the wake of a Shia demonstration. The incident has drawn the army into Lebanon’s political crisis, which has seen three months of impasse as parties close to PM Fouad Siniora squabble with Syrian-backed parties such as Amal and Hezbollah over the election of a new president. The 27 January demonstration in Mar Makhaeil was called to protest about the chronic power cuts which take place in predominantly Shia districts of the Lebanese capital. The army attempted to break up the demonstration...

A footnote to Pat Longman’s review of The Shock Doctrine (Solidarity 3-126). Capitalism has always been full of “hard-faced men who did well out of the war” — or out of whatever recent disaster may have thrown society off balance. It may well be that since the early 1990s the governing circles of capital have been become more triumphalist, less concerned for stability, more confident about plunging into crises with the belief that the gains in terms of subsequent “restructuring” will outweigh the losses. George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq — a project plainly deemed a crazy excess by the top...

That this AGM condemns the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and denials of Palestinians' human and national rights. This AGM condemns the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, including Israeli military air strikes and the economic blockade of Gaza, as well as the arbitrary murders of Israeli citizens by suicide bombers and rocket attacks. We note both the Israeli and Palestinian victims of the conflict are usually working-class people, targeted by political and military forces that seek to de-humanise Arab and Jewish workers using anti-semitism, Jew-hatred and anti...

Submitted by Guy's and St Thomas's Unison. We are for the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli state from the Occupied Territories. We condemn recent actions by the Israeli Government in blockading the Gaza strip leading to food shortages and electricity cuts We condemn bloodshed both by the Israeli military, and by Palestinian suicide bombers. We oppose Hamas and Islamic Jihad who are fighting not just against Israeli occupation, but for the destruction of Israel and the creation of a theocratic state. We support a fully independent Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem...

While many, perhaps most, Jews globally do feel some sense of identification with the Israeli-Jewish nation (if not the nation-state of Israel itself), and while many Jews are understandably a great deal more sensitive to the threat posed by Hamas' 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. The “Israel solidarity rallies” orgainsed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (the most significant and influential communalist organisation...

Jerusalem, January, 2008 - Al-Qaws, the Palestinian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) community project of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance (JOH), has achieved a milestone development in which it decided to become an independent entity, constituting the first-ever official Palestinian LGBTQ organization. The Al-Qaws ("Rainbow") project was initiated in December 2001 by the JOH in order to address the special needs of the Palestinian LGBTQ community in Jerusalem. The project was specifically designed to reflect the special nature of one of the most traditional...