Solidarity 052, 27 May 2004

The horrifying events in Rafah, the display by the Israeli state of naked ferocity and indifference both to human life and public outcry, can seem paralysing. And the plight of the Palestinians appears utterly helpless. But there is opposition even with the Israeli state; its own army is in ferment. Young conscripts, appalled at what they are being asked to do in the occupied Territories are refusing to serve. By 2003, over a thousand had declared their refusal to take part in the repression of the Palestinians. Proportional to the country's population, that is like 10,000 British troops or 40...

On Wednesday 12 May the Israeli army began an incursion into the Gaza Strip, with air strikes on the Rafah camp in the south of the territory near the Egyptian border. It followed the killing of 13 Israeli soldiers. The next day 10 homes were destroyed in Rafah. It emerged that the Israeli government planned to destroy perhaps hundreds more homes in due course. The Israelis said they wanted to widen the "Philadelphi route", an Israeli-controlled wedge separating the Palestinian Gaza Strip from Egypt, and they wanted to destroy tunnels under the border which are used to carry weapons into...

By Uri Avnery The official purpose is to "destroy the tunnels" under the "Philadelphi Axis". But tunnels have been there for years. The army boasts of destroying 98 such tunnels in the past, but only one single tunnel has been discovered in this operation. Even if the army destroys more and more Palestinian homes in order to widen the axis - the new tunnels will just be longer. The tunnels are a pretext. So, what were the real reasons for this brutal invasion of a pitiful little town? The first reason is the simplest: thirst for revenge. Dozens of Palestinians are killed for 13 of our soldiers...

By Joan Trevor Parents and teachers of Northcliffe School, serving Conisbrough and Denaby near Doncaster, are fighting to keep their school… and to keep it from Christian fundamentalists. The school, a secondary school in an ex-mining area, had been declared a failing school in 2003 and was in special measures at the start of 2004. This makes the school eligible for bids from private or voluntary bodies or religious organisations to run it as a city technology college or city academy. In such situations, the school is taken out of control of the Local Education Authority and answers to the...

By Nick Holden On 19 May, posters began to appear near where we live in Wigston, Leicestershire. They announced that, from the following day, the police would be applying a curfew at 9pm every night for under 16 year olds, in two-thirds of the borough in which we live. The posters, giving us 24 hours notice of the curfews, were the first that most residents knew of the plan. The police claim that there is "evidence of a persistent problem with anti-social behaviour", by which they mean that groups of teenagers hang around outside the chip shop, or in the park. The curfew isn't the worst of it...

"Support groups are beginning to assume the status of one of the positive lessons of the 1984-85 strike in much the same way that mass picketing was seen as the lesson of the 1972 strike". Paul Mackney The great miners' strike of 1984-85 was a historic defeat for the British working class - a defeat that continues to haunt and enervate our movement to this day. But it was not simply a negative experience. Many valuable lessons were learned by the 150,000 miners out on strike for over a year and by the tens of thousands of working class people who actively supported them. The support committees...

At the end of last month residents of run-down Hackney estate Marcon Court awoke to find their estate getting a really decent clean-up. Could it be that Hackney Council had finally listened to our demands? No. The truth was that we were due a visit from some people from Ken Livingstone's office. The Council has: removed graffiti; jet-cleaned the walls, roadway and paths; deployed extra road sweepers; deep-cleaned the urine-soaked walls on the ground floor; had lift engineers attend; mowed the estate's lawns for the first time this year; and even sent a team to clean up the roof. Residents were...

Lorna Reid of the Independent Working Class Association is standing for London Mayor on 10 June. The IWCA has one sitting councillor in Oxford, and has conducted a number of very local campaigns in other areas, mostly in London. Solidarity cannot agree with much of the IWCA's localist approach and their exclusive stress on community issues. We have very a different, we think broader, vision of independent working class politics. Cathy Nugent interviewed Lorna, who is based in Islington. What do you hope to achieve by standing in the Mayoral election? Standing for Mayor may seem a bizarre thing...

By Martin Thomas On our way to leaflet a new batch of streets for Alison Brown, the socialist candidate in Sheffield City Council's elections, we passed the Yemeni mosque. A group of men were standing outside, so I gave them leaflets. "I'm supporting Respect", said one of them. "That's the Euro-elections", I replied. "We're supporting the Alliance for Green Socialism there. Will you vote for Alison in the council elections?" Friendly but firm, the man told me: "I'll have to ask someone else about that". Just round the corner, I met another group of young Asian men and handed them leaflets....

The leaflets for the 10 June election from the Respect coalition (George Galloway and the SWP) include leftish words in the small print. But those do not mark it off sharply from the Greens, or even the Lib-Dems, and are not the cutting edges of its campaign. The cutting-edges are not left-wing. Respect promotes George Galloway as its hero. On his own account Galloway is a long-time friend of Saddam Hussein's deputy Tariq Aziz. For ten years he visited Baghdad monthly, running his political operation on money from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and a Jordanian businessman rich from a percentage...