Iran & Hamas

Pro Hamas demonstration in Berlin
(Source)

Two Left Voice posts about the recently concluded Iran War:

Author Juan Chingo writes a reasonable summary of the US/Iran/Israel conflict as of about 24 hours ago. Of course it is already out of date. The piece is entitled Trump’s Attack on Iran Resonates Beyond the Middle East.

While generally fair-minded, his post has an antisemitic, pro-Islamist slant. Not least, he insists on the Islamist framing of the Gaza war as "genocide"--a lie that reveals his true sympathies.

Mr. Chingo's lede paragraph (links in original):

Donald Trump has taken the riskiest and most potentially devastating step of his second term: a full-scale air strike against Iran’s major nuclear facilities, described by his advisors as “limited and contained.” The White House is seeking to sell the operation as a surgical strike aimed at neutralizing a growing threat, not launching an all-out war in the Middle East.

The attack — which hit the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan sites — constitutes a high-stakes gamble on Trump’s part.

He's right about the risk! The TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) moniker never fit the man--in both business and politics he was never afraid of risks. Usually he wins; sometimes he loses.

As has become apparent over the past 24 hours, Trump has likely won the gamble with his Iran bombing. As Mr. Chingo puts it,

Tehran is perhaps most likely to go a third way: a calibrated, symbolic but noisy retaliation that allows it to save face without crossing Washington’s red lines.

The other two possibilities Mr. Chingo lists are a literal surrender, or a reprisal intended to draw the US into an all-out war. As Mr. Chingo predicted, the purely performative "attack" on a US base in Qatar was, in fact, this third way. So all the panicking about the US being drawn into another endless conflict as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan seems moot.

A prolonged war is not very likely, no matter what happens. There is no chance the US will launch a ground invasion of Iran, and for one very good reason--we'd lose! Iran, a country with 90 million people, sits on a high plateau surrounded by mountains. Any invasion will require hundreds of thousands of troops and be fought on terrain that heavily favors the defenders. Unlike Iraq, Iran is a coherent polity that has existed for centuries, and unlike Afghanistan, it has a strong central government. In short, Iran could and would put up a fight.

It's with Mr. Chingo's further analysis that some problems emerge. He writes

It’s further proof that Tel Aviv is no longer acting simply as an ally of Washington, but as an actor seeking to manipulate its protector. This represents a dangerous reversal of the traditional division of roles between the imperialist center and its client states, with unpredictable consequences in the various global geopolitical scenarios, where the United States intended to delegate its former role as global policeman.

This is correct--Israel is not (and never was) a mere puppet of the US. Disagreements began in 1956 with the Suez Crisis when Israel, allied with France & the UK, invaded Egypt upon Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal. President Eisenhower strongly objected, and eventually forced the invaders to withdraw. There have been other incidents since, eg here.

Mr. Chingo's weasel word is "imperialist," perhaps the most meaningless word in the English language. "Imperialist" suggests that there is some spiritual authority above both the US and Israeli governments that mysteriously guides the policies of the two nations. Such a mythical enterprise does not exist. For a guide to policy it's best to take Trump and Netanyahu at their words.

For example, Trump clearly is not interested in regime change: "I don’t want it. I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible... Regime change takes chaos, and ideally, we don’t want to see so much chaos, so we’ll see how it does.” Conversely, Netanyahu was all-in on assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei: "It's not going to escalate the conflict, it's going to end the conflict."

This represents a fundamental disagreement between the two allies--and not even the all-powerful "imperialists" can remove it. The security interests of the US and Israel diverge on this point. By strength of arms, the US won the argument.

Mr. Chingo says something funny.

The bombing of Iran not only marks a turning point for Trump’s presidency, but could redefine the global security architecture for decades to come. The message it leaves is brutal in its clarity: deterrence is no longer based on treaties or negotiations, but on the ability to strike first and strike hard.

Deterrence was never based on treaties or negotiations. Those peaceful processes were never more than the velvet glove covering the fist. At the end of the day, global politics is about force--it has always been thus and always will be so. I'm surprised that Mr. Chingo--a so-called materialist--doesn't see this.

The second article that offends, by Left Voice author Nathaniel Flakin, is entitled Berlin’s Biggest-Ever March for Palestine. He claims that "50,000 people protested against the genocide in Gaza."

First, he claims that a "genocide" is happening in Gaza, which is obviously false--and reflects a hidden agenda.

Second, he conflates "pro-Palestinian" with "pro-Hamas." I have no problem with somebody being pro-Palestinian--Palestinians are human beings too, and deserve all the human rights the rest of us have. But Hamas is definitely not pro-Palestinian! What have they ever done that's benefitted the Palestinians? Indeed, Hamas needlessly started a war that has reduced their compatriots to abject poverty.

No. Hamas isn't "pro-Palestinian." Instead it's pro-Iranian. The Ayatollahs have been chanting Death to Israel for over 50 years now--and they mean it quite literally. It's that agenda, the whole Death to Israel thing, that Hamas has signed up for. It's not at all about the Palestinians--it's about exterminating all the Jews. That's all it's about. Free Palestine means nothing less than a Judenrein Palestine.

It is surely obscene that a demonstration should be held in Berlin demanding a final solution to the Jewish question. Have the Germans learned nothing? Though I take some comfort in hoping that there weren't too many Germans in the crowd. Instead it was likely populated by recent immigrants from the Middle East who have brought their age-old hatreds with them to Germany.

Germany has laws (which I oppose on free speech grounds) that prohibit dissemination of Nazi propaganda. Yet for some reason the Germans are now tolerating a fascist sect that openly advocates for the extermination of all Jews.

Though I guess we can be thankful for one thing. It's Hamas' attack on October 7th that set in motion the chain of events that led to the collapse of Iran as a regional power. Hamas' sugar daddy isn't gonna be helping them anymore--and perhaps the war in Gaza will end sooner than anyone thinks.

Further Reading:

• Sam Karlin Makes a Mess of the Middle East
• Left Voice and the Intifada
• Nazis

Left Voice Antisemites Speak Out

 

(Source: Hunger Strike for Palestine Launched at CUNY)

Professor James Dennis Hoff, on the English faculty at CUNY and a prominent contributor to Left Voice, champions the slogan Free Palestine. Hamas, the murderous death cult responsible for the current war in Gaza, also proclaims Free Palestine. Elias Rodriguez--the person arrested for murdering a recently engaged, young Israeli couple while attending an event in DC--outdid them both, yelling Free Free Palestine upon completing the deed.

Free Palestine is a very thinly disguised exhortation to kill all the Jews living in Israel. Another of Hamas' favorite slogans is Globalize the Intifada, which can only be read as demanding the extermination of all Jews worldwide. Mr. Rodriguez took the slogans literally and got a head start on said extermination--he murdered two Jews in cold blood.

Professor Hoff obviously agrees with both Hamas and Mr. Rodriguez--the only good Jew is a dead Jew. In his article entitled Don’t Blame the Palestine Movement or the Left for the Jewish Museum Shooting, he justifies Mr. Rodriguez's act in two ways:

Professor Hoff calls this "genocide"
(https://www.anera.org/how-big-is-gaza/)

First, he claims that because "more than 60,000 people were murdered by Israel in Gaza," Mr. Rodriguez had some cause for exacting revenge. The only people murdered in the Gaza war were the 1200 Israelis slaughtered during the surprise attack on October 7th. All other victims are war casualties--the number of which Hamas certainly exaggerates. Israel is not trying to kill civilians, but it is working hard (and successfully) to wipe out Hamas.

War is terrible and all deaths are tragic. But there is a world of difference between war casualties and gratuitous murder. There is also a big difference between war casualties and genocide. There is no genocide taking place in Gaza--Professor Hoff and his comrades are just lying about that.

Second, he claims any sympathy for the DC victims is just hypocrisy, exaggerated by media outlets such as the New York Times. The goal of the media is "to actively propagate the lie that the movement for Palestine is a violent and antisemitic threat to domestic peace."

Really!? Is Professor Hoff claiming that Hamas is nonviolent, and that Oct. 7th was just a peaceful walk in the park? He apparently also believes that purposely killing Jews isn't antisemitic! His justification is silly (links omitted).

The New York Times, for instance, has repeatedly stated, without evidence, that the shooting was an act of antisemitism, despite the fact that both of the victims were employed by the Israeli state, and that reports suggest Rodriguez chose his targets deliberately. Furthermore, as his manifesto makes plain, his actions were clearly driven by his outrage at the ongoing genocide in Gaza and had nothing to do with hatred of any ethnic or racial group. Such knee-jerk conflations of anti-zionism and antisemitism have by now become standard practice for most of the U.S. media.

Cruelly murdering two Jews only because they're Israeli seems obviously antisemitic--what other evidence do you need? Mr. Hoff says the murderer wasn't really killing Jews, but rather only "Zionists." Among Israelis this is a distinction without a difference. For Hamas (and for anybody else who uses Hamas slogans) there is no daylight between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Does our professor really believe that Zionists in the United States should just be gunned down for no other reason? Apparently Yes, he does.

Because the murderer is connected to the communist Party for Socialism and Liberation grouplet, his act is seen as a black mark against all socialists. Professor Hoff complains

Such obvious red-baiting clearly has nothing to do with protecting Jewish people or stopping real antisemitism of the kind promoted by people like Elon Musk and the Far Right. Instead it is designed to encourage more repression and violence against those who support the movement for Palestine and the entire Left.

Except demanding the extermination of all Jews in Palestine (and worldwide) as Hamas and its followers do--is definitionally antisemitic! I don't know what comments Elon Musk has made that cause the professor to think he's an antisemite, but unlike Hamas and Professor Hoff, Mr. Musk has never, ever called for the murder of all Jews (whether or not they're Zionists).

Professor Hoff is a raving antisemite, and American antisemitism is today a disease of the Left-- including many in the Democratic Party. The professor has a right to free speech, despite the fact that what he says is vile. But nobody who advocates for and defends the slaughter of Jews should be employed as a professor at a public university.

While Professor Hoff's piece reveals the deeply illiberal and murderous intentions of Left Voice, the other article we consider today better belongs as an SNL skit. These antisemites (depicted above) are nothing if not a self-parody.

The lede paragraph reporting on their hijinks reads,

As the Israeli genocide of Gaza intensifies and a famine is declared, a group of eight faculty, students, and staff from across the City University of New York (CUNY) have launched an indefinite hunger strike outside the Graduate Center in Manhattan. They will be at this location from 12 to 6 pm every day and are demanding that, “Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez and the CUNY Board of Trustees immediately divest from the zionist state and from all weapons and technology manufacturers equipping the israeli-US genocide in Palestine.” The hunger strikers are launching a fundraiser to support families in Gaza and hosting political education, art, and mutual aid events for the local community in New York.

I'm not sure what the point of a hunger strike is. Are they trying to prove how stupid they are? Do they want us to feel sorry for them? Is it an act of virtue-signaling directed at fellow antisemites? I suspect the latter--you and me are not part of their intended audience.

Though one has to wonder how serious this is. They're in public from noon to 6pm--and for all I know afterwards they go to McDonalds for a good dinner.

Their demands are as kooky as the project itself. They want 1) CUNY to divest from Israel, and 2) to divest from all "weapons and technology manufacturers" equipping the "genocide." These are impossible.

Israel is fully integrated into the global economy, and "divesting" from Israel means sticking all your money under a mattress. This won't happen. Similarly divesting from specific industries is equally impossible--Israel produces much of the software that is built into Silicon Valley technology.

Our antisemitic comrades are all pro-poverty. Their best solution for Palestinians between the River & the Sea is to completely destroy the Israeli economy, driving all residents of whatever nationality into dire poverty. It's worse than absurd. These people are just a joke.

Further Reading:

• Professor Hoff & Harvard
• Iranian-American Demands Death to Israel
• Whiners & Complainers

Hamas Lost The War!

 

By Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138775619

Left Voice journalist and leading antisemite, Maryam Alaniz, pens an article entitled Ceasefire on the Brink: Trump and Netanyahu Push for Renewed War in Gaza. She is right that the "ceasefire is on the brink." Otherwise almost everything else in the article is just wrong.

She seems to think that Hamas still has some bargaining power. She writes,

The situation has opened up a diplomatic crisis and jeopardizes the second stage of the deal — scheduled for March — which calls for the release of all remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and a permanent ceasefire. Netanyahu, under pressure from his far-right allies, has vowed to continue military operations until Hamas is eliminated, calling the second phase into question.

The "situation" refers to the aftermath of Trump's remark describing Gaza as a "demolition zone" unfit for human habitation, and that the population needs to be removed into better housing. This seems on its face to be undeniably true--as the picture above (and also the one accompanying Ms. Alaniz's article) illustrates. Does she really think 2.3 million people can happily live amidst the rubble?

The quoted paragraph suggests she believes Israel and Hamas are embarking on a lengthy negotiation process which will end (ideally) with Hamas remaining in control of the Strip. She claims that 

Despite Israel’s overwhelming military advantage, Netanyahu’s government has failed to achieve its stated goal of eradicating Hamas — much like previous U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to eliminate their political adversaries. This failure is not just a military embarrassment but a political disaster for both Israel and its imperial patrons. Even with U.S. backing, Israel has proven incapable of achieving decisive victory, further exposing the bankruptcy of its apartheid policies.

Ms. Alaniz is just wrong: Israel has categorically, unambiguously won the war in Gaza. Hamas has been wiped out as a military organization. It has no infrastructure left, no access to food, water, electricity or armaments, and no place to hide. The only remaining military asset are a few teenagers marching around with AK-47s pretending to be an army.

And the hostages? Yes, Hamas still has hostages, and that's all that stays Israel's hand. But not for long, because, as Trump says, on Saturday "all hell" is gonna break loose. The only negotiation left open for Hamas is when and how the hostages will be released. That's it. That's their last bargaining chip, and now it comes with an expiration date.

There will be no negotiation. Israel will dictate the terms of the peace. As Trump's comments make clear, Gaza as it existed on October 6, 2023, will NOT be rebuilt, and most of its existing residents will have to find a new place to live. The where, how and when of such resettlement remains to be determined, but it will happen--and for humanitarian reasons it must happen soon.

Ms. Alaniz complains about "ethnic cleansing." Yes--but that's what happens when you lose a war. Had Hamas won, would they have behaved any differently? Of course not! Their explicit agenda was the murder/exile of all of Israel's Jews. Their goal has always been a Judenrein Palestine. It is a crusade that Ms. Alaniz has ardently supported.

Moral of that story: if you start a war, you'd better make sure you win it. Hamas started the war on October 7th, and Israel's actions since then have been entirely predictable. Why Hamas thought they could defy the laws of military gravity is beyond me. Their actions on that date seem in retrospect to be inexcusably stupid. They will now suffer the consequences.

So the question becomes where the Palestinians will be resettled, and who will pay for the facilities to house them at their new address. Neither Egypt nor Jordan want to host them, and for good reason. Egypt correctly views Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood--a sworn enemy of its current government. Housing a million Palestinians would be seriously disruptive. The Egyptians have adamantly refused to accept refugees from the war--their Rafah crossing has been hermitically sealed shut. They're not of a mind to open it now.

Jordan already houses a huge refugee population, including Palestinians (most of whom are now Jordanian citizens), Syrians, Lebanese and Iraqis. They don't need any more Palestinian refugees--and certainly not the sort that come from Gaza! Again, such an influx would be hugely destabilizing.

So I don't know what the solution will be. Probably Egypt--in exchange for large dollops of aid from both Israel and the US.

Ms. Alaniz does accurately lay out the motives of the neighboring states. None of them want Gazan refugees. Meanwhile, they're happy to see the end of Hamas, which they regard as a proxy for their archenemy: Iran.

So what explains Ms. Alaniz's completely unreasonable hatred of Israel? This paragraph may offer a clue (links omitted).

At the same time, the so-called “two-state solution,” the proposed liberal alternative to the total subjugation of the Palestinians, remains a mirage. For decades, this “solution” has been used to delay and deflect from the reality that Israel has always been a capitalist settler-colonial state created to defend the interests of imperialism.

She is right about the two-state solution. It is now impossible. But she is wrong that it represents the "total subjugation of the Palestinians." No, it was an effort to find a way for the two peoples to live together. Obviously failed, thanks to Oct. 7th.

The last sentence is a clue to her antisemitism. She describes Israel as "a capitalist settler-colonial state created to defend the interests of imperialism." Let's take these terms one at a time.

"Imperialism" is a meaningless weasel-word. There is no conscious body on the globe that expresses the "interests of imperialism." "Imperialism" has no interests and they don't need defending. "Imperialism" doesn't even exist. How the "interests of imperialism" map on to the Israel-Gaza conflict is an unknowable mystery.

But Israel is "capitalist." All this means is that it has a viable economy and can engage in global trade. It produces exports from which proceeds it can buy imports. Indeed, the country boasts a small trade surplus. Israel generally permits free trade within its borders, which is why it has a high standard of living. Contrast this with any of its Arab neighbors.

Then she describes Israel as a "colony." Of whom? Who is the colonial master (besides non-existent "imperialism")?

More precisely, she describes it as a "colonial-settler" state. She is right about the settlers--Jewish settlers began arriving from Eastern Europe (mostly from Russia/Ukraine) in the late 19th Century, fleeing from pogroms. By the 1880s there were 80,000 Jews in Palestine. By 1948 the Jewish population had grown to 630,000, despite the British Mandate's efforts to keep Jewish immigration to a minimum. In the four years after independence, 687,624 Jews moved to Israel--mostly survivors and refugees from the Holocaust, who had no place else to go. Over the next two decades, 630,000 Mizrahi Jews moved to Israel from the Middle East and North Africa.

So yes--they were settlers. Of that there is no question. But which colonial power did they represent? Russia? Iraq? Yemen? Morocco? Or any number of other countries from which Jews fled under varying degrees of duress? Today about 70% of Israel's Jewish population were born in Israel. They are no longer settlers, but instead natives--with as much right to live there as any Palestinian.

Israelis, being human, are not more (or less) moral than any other group of people. But they are more civilized than any of their Arab neighbors, and certainly more than Gazans. By "civilized" I mean a richer, more prosperous economy, a bigger, more powerful military, and a more stable and democratic form of government.

Israel won the war and owns the peace. Gazans, in their majority, are likely to be rehoused somewhere else.

Further Reading:

• Sam Karlin Makes a Mess of the Middle East
• Left Voice and the Intifada
• Nazis

Iranian-American Demands Death to Israel

The above photo is taken from an article by Maryam Alaniz entitled Trump Escalates Attack on Pro-Palestine Movement with Plans to Deport Students and Workers, which appears on the Left Voice website. In the article she makes a number of claims that are manifestly not true. In fact, they are so not true that I can't help but think she's a liar.

The lede paragraph (links omitted here and in subsequent quotes):

Just a week after his inauguration, Donald Trump has already put into motion an attack against the historic movement of workers, students, and community members of universities across the country who protested the genocide in Gaza and defended fundamental democratic rights, such as free speech and the right to protest.

There are at least two lies in this one paragraph. First is that there is a "genocide" in Gaza. We'll get back to that. Second, she claims that fundamental rights such as "free speech and the right to protest" are violated. The picture contradicts her words.

A prominent sign advertises a "Gaza Solidarity Encampment." An encampment is not free speech--it is trespassing on private property. I assume (from both the context and the picture) that the setting for this encampment was Columbia University. Camping out on a campus lawn while yelling insults at passers-by is not exercising a "right to protest."

Ms. Alaniz must know this. Therefore she is simply lying in her first paragraph.

Then there is the "genocide" charge. Hamas claims that 46,000 Gazans have been killed in the war. This number is almost certainly exaggerated, but it's the only number we've got so let's run with it. Gaza had a pre-war population of 2.3 million, which means the casualty rate is about 2%. That's terrible--that 2% of Gazans have been killed in a war. All wars are tragic. But it is definitely not "genocide." That would require a death rate of at least 80% or 90%, along with an intention by the Israelis to kill as many people as possible. That was obviously not the Israeli's intention.

Again, Ms. Alaniz must know this. She is definitely lying about the "genocide."

Ms. Alaniz also writes,

Trump is worried that the broad sectors of U.S. society that began to question the lie that  “anti-zionism can be equated with anti-semitism” will rise up again.

I'll grant that there is a small distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. But it's so small that it doesn't really matter--at least not in Israel. Approximately 10 million people live in Israel, of which 7.2 million are Jewish. Almost all of those Jews (if only by virtue of where the live) are "Zionists." With perhaps a few exceptions, nearly 100% of the Jewish population in Israel should therefore be exiled or slaughtered.

Frankly, in this context there is no significant distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Perhaps others can cut Ms. Alaniz a little slack here, but personally I think she's lying. I think she's an antisemite. Obviously, as seen in the photo below, some of Ms. Alaniz's best friends are avowed anti-Semites.

Rafael Hasid, Israeli owner of Miriam Restaurant in Brooklyn. He left up Jan. 25 antisemitic graffiti so that people can “see that things like that happen.” Tehran-backed Hamas war to destroy Israel has sparked rise in anti-Jewish violence worldwide, a deadly threat to all workers.

(Photo & Caption from The Militant; Photo Courtesy Miriam Restaurant)

Ms. Alaniz tells us here that she is "the daughter of immigrants from Iran" So she apparently brings that whole Death to Israel vibe with her, which she apparently inherited from her friends the ayatollahs. Actually, I'm not sure if she sympathizes with Iran's clerics. Perhaps she'd acknowledge that life for every day Iranians was better under the Shah? Somehow I doubt that--though for all his sins the Shah looks like a saint in comparison.

I assume that (like me) Ms. Alaniz was born in the US of immigrant parents. That makes both her and me American citizens--regardless of where our parents came from. This means she can't be deported--she has exactly the same rights that I and all other American citizens have. This is the way it should be. Like Ms. Alaniz, I strongly object to Mr. Trump's efforts to deny birthright citizenship. Presumably she'd grant the same rights to children of immigrants born in Germany and oppose the proposal of some in the German AfD to deport "foreigners" born in Germany. Birthright citizenship seems like a principle widely accepted in most Western countries.

But somehow, in Ms Alaniz's world view it doesn't apply to Israel. While 80% of Israel's Jews were born in Israel (and likely, also, most of their parents), they are not to be credited with citizenship in their own country. They are, instead, "occupiers" and are to be either exiled or murdered. How can this be interpreted as anything other than antisemitism?

Then Ms. Alaniz tells us she's "pro-Palestinian," yet she still supports Hamas--or at least all of Hamas' slogans (which is the same thing). Hamas conducted the massacre on October 7th, killing 1200 Jews and taking a couple hundred hostages. This, they claimed, was to "end the occupation."

Of course Israel was going to see October 7th as an existential threat to their country and respond accordingly. The all-out war was as predictable as the day is long--no serious person in Gaza could have drawn any other conclusion. Can Ms. Alaniz tell us--with a straight face--that the people who carried out the Oct. 7th raid were acting in the best interest of Palestinians? Of course they weren't! Their sole motivation was a death-cult allegiance to some death-cult form of Islam. 

There is no way that Oct. 7th and the resulting war was "pro-Palestinian!" No--all it was is pro-Hamas--a murderous, fascist group that needs to be militarily and politically eliminated from the face of the earth.

The goal for those of us who are genuinely pro-Palestinian should be for the residents of Gaza to have a thriving economy that provides it's residents with a modern-world income, and offers Palestinians an opportunity for political expression that does NOT require the extermination of Israel's Jews. Clearly, by this definition, neither Hamas nor Ms. Alaniz can in any way be described as "pro-Palestinian."

They're anti-Semites, pure and simple.

Further Reading:

• Sam Karlin Makes a Mess of the Middle East
• Malik Miah Defends Harvard
• Left Voice and the Intifada

 

 

Sam Karlin Makes a Mess of the Middle East

 

Left Voice calls this "genocide"
(https://www.anera.org/how-big-is-gaza/)

Left Voice author Sam Karlin contributes a piece entitled The Demand for a Ceasefire Has Met Its Limits. He's got it all wrong. The article is a mess from top to bottom.

The major thesis is that the primary demand of leftist radicals--Ceasefire Now--is no longer useful. It is inconceivable, says Mr. Karlin, that Israel will ever agree to a ceasefire (by which he means unilateral Israeli surrender).

He may have written his piece a day or two early, but the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has recently announced that Hamas is destroyed as a military entity. Hence there already is something of a ceasefire in Gaza, and Israel has moved its forces to the Lebanon front. There is still some fighting in Gaza, but it is now reduced to individuals and small groups acting without any coordination.

Of course the huge civilian project remains: reconstructing Gaza and creating a political environment that will allow the enclave to thrive. That means defeating the ideology that requires the murder of all Jews, and replacing it with some win/win arrangement that serves the interests of both peoples. This will take a very long time--and may not succeed at all. In the latter case Gaza will remain an open-air prison as it has been for past decades.

But that's not Mr. Karlin's goal. His goal is

An end to the genocide, a full withdrawal of the U.S. military from the Middle East, the dissolution of the settler-colonial Zionist state, and full right of return for Palestinians and a free, secular, socialist Palestine from the River to the Sea are still achievable goals. They must be achieved, however, not through appeals or pressure on imperialism, but on international class struggle against imperialism.

The genocide has never happened--Gaza's population has been growing by over 2% annually--a birth rate higher than almost anyplace in the world. Prior to the war, life expectancy in Gaza was 75.7 years, which is above the global average (73.3 years). When it comes to genocide, the Israelis are pathetic failures. 

His goal of a "free, secular, socialist Palestine" is manifestly impossible. No party to the conflict wants a secular state: the Jewish rabbinate in Israel doesn't want that, and neither does Hamas, which insists on an Islamic state. Mr. Karlin needs to tell us who (beyond the 50 people in Left Voice) regard secular as a plausible outcome? Socialist is equally unpopular and desired by precisely nobody.

Then Mr. Karlin has this cockamamie picture of global politics.

Israel serves the vital role of an enforcer of U.S. interests in the Middle East. While the U.S. benefits from having Israel as a regional attack dog, Israel benefits from its relationship with the United States; an ally in the world’s main imperialist power allows it to project strength well beyond its size and population. For this reason, neither country can afford to seriously abandon the relationship, even in the current context, in which Israel is creating conditions that greatly harm U.S. imperialism’s broader interests.

The boogeyman in this scenario is something called "U.S. imperialism," an entity that doesn't exist. It's a meaningless word, and it explains precisely nothing about the relationship between the US and Israel. Israel is important to the US primarily for cultural and religious reasons, but also because it is a vital link in global trade, contributing much of the software for Silicon Valley. For those reasons it's more important to the US than any other country in the Middle East.

Consider the competition: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, and increasingly also Egypt, are all failed states, with unstable governments and rapidly declining economies. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are absolute monarchies, which lends them a patina of stability and good governance, but absent the oil wealth it's all a house of cards. The only politically stable countries in the region are Turkey and Iran--both of which exist on high, unassailable plateaus that have protected them from invasion throughout the centuries. But "stable" doesn't mean successful, and neither of those countries has a solid economic future.

The USA, especially as expressed by presidential candidate Donald Trump, just wants to wash its hands of the whole mess. We don't need the oil. We don't need the cotton. We don't lack for sand or camels. The Middle East (outside of Israel) is worth nearly nothing to us. Not even the oil is important--that's problem for Europe, China and Japan, not the USA.

The only thing we import from the Middle East are problems and terrorists.

Gaza is of no economic or strategic value to any country, least of all the United States. Israel would gladly transfer ownership of it to Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Neither country wants it, and Egypt would be hopelessly destabilized by taking it. So Israel--for both practical and humanitarian reasons--will now be responsible for rebuilding Gaza.

Apart from the temporary deployment of the US Navy in the region, the US has about 34,000 troops in the Middle East. If you believe Mr. Trump, that's about 33,999 too many. The presence of the US military there will only shrink. Not because of the demise of "US imperialism," but rather because of the demise of the region's countries as partners in a global economy.

The problem in Lebanon is that Hezbollah has made much of northern Israel uninhabitable, and the Israeli government needs to get those citizens back in their homes. Not all northerners are Jewish; recall the Hezbollah rocket that killed 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights. Israel rightly regarded that as an attack on its citizens and responded appropriately. Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets that it fires indiscriminately at Israeli civilians--and not just in the north.

As even Mr. Karlin must realize by now, Hezbollah (along with Hamas) is a cat's paw of Iran. For whatever reason Iran has a thing against Israel--they've been chanting Death to Israel for decades now, and they obviously mean it quite literally. Israel has to defend itself from Iran, and also from Hezbollah. Unlike the indiscriminate rocket fire from Hezbollah, Israel has very cleverly and successfully eliminated Hezbollah's officer corps. Now it has to eliminate the rocket stash--and then people on both sides of the border can return to their homes and live peacefully.

Mr. Karlin makes some implausible claims:

As anyone with a shred of credibility has pointed out for a year now, Netanyahu has everything to gain from prolonging the Israeli offensive in Gaza; he literally faces the possibility of going to prison as soon as he leaves office.

Mr. Netanyahu may or may not have legal problems, but the defense goals of his government have near universal support within Israel. There is no way the prime minister's legal issues have any influence.

This has fully emboldened the Israeli Far Right to pursue their long standing goal of expanding their settler-colonial regime to the West Bank and now Lebanon.

The "settler-colonial" phrasing is just an antisemitic slur. And nobody suggests Israel is going to annex southern Lebanon--that makes no sense at all. They just need to destroy Hezbollah's rockets.

Our author greatly exaggerates the importance of the Biden administration's efforts at a ceasefire. I think there are two possible reasons for their efforts, neither of which are particularly serious.

1) The administration wants to help Kamala win the election, for which she desperately needs the Arab votes in southeastern Michigan. Many of these voters are descendants of Maronite Christian immigrants from Lebanon and Syria--I wonder how much sympathy they have for Hamas? 

2) Antony Blinken--probably the most incompetent secretary of state this country has ever had--is lusting after a Nobel Prize, which would be his if only he could negotiate a unilateral Israeli surrender. To Mr. Netanyahu's credit, that has not happened.

It's got nothing to do with "US imperialism," whatever that is. Mr. Karlin has no clue.

Further Reading:

• The Trotskyist Faction on Haiti
• Left Voice and the Intifada
• "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

 

Socialism, 2024

The Socialism Conference, apparently an annual event, was held this year in Chicago and attracted 2,000 participants. I was not present, but fortunately Left Voice's intrepid reporter, Ben Marenlensky, was there and covers all the details. The article is Socialism 2024 Conference: We Need to Address the Donkey in the Room. Which is a clever title given our author's concerns about the Democratic Party.

While there may be a donkey in the room, I can't help but notice the elephant in the room--namely the oversized Hamas flag decorating the dais. I don't know for sure how the conference participants interpret this flag, but it's unambiguous what Hamas means by it: that all Jews in Israel/Palestine should be killed and/or driven into exile. And if you take another of their slogans seriously--Globalize the Intifada--then all Jews around the world should be murdered.

Our conference participants--to avoid being accused of antisemitism--have watered this down slightly. For the word Jew, they substitute the term Zionist. The idea is that Jew is an ethnicity or religion, while Zionism is a political belief. Therefore--in their mind--the murder/exile of all Zionists in Palestine/Israel is A-OK. Go for it. No more ballots. Only bullets. Zionism is a capital offense.

Of course within Israel, 95% of all Jews are also Zionists, so this seems to be a distinction without much difference. In the US the populations don't overlap as exactly--while most Jews are Zionists, so are a large number of other Americans. But no matter--they all deserve to die.

But don't you dare accuse any of the participants of antisemitism. Quite the contrary--they love the Jews, and claim to have their best interests at heart. Bullshit.

Mr. Marenlensky opening paragraph reads, (links in original

The Socialism Conference is an annual event hosted by Haymarket Books in Chicago. This year, it brought together about 2,000 left-wing activists and academics of various tendencies, especially social democrats and Trotskyists, but also Stalinists, Maoists, anarchists, national liberationists, and social justice groups. This year’s conference took place in the context of the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and a U.S. election in which both major parties repeatedly declare their unwavering support for Israel. Attendees of Socialism, in contrast, were united in support for Palestine, and there was a genuine desire for ideas about how to best combat Zionism and U.S. imperialism.

Fortunately, the dishonest term "genocide" appears only twice in Mr. Marenlensky's piece. Unfortunately, "genocide" was a major topic of discussion at the conference--practically every speech was about that. I've taken it on in many posts, eg, here, so I'm going to ignore it for now.

So enough about the elephant; let's get back to the donkeys, ie, the Democrats.

Mr. Marenlensky follows the standard Trotskyist position, namely there is a sharp class line running through society. There are bourgeois organizations, and then there are labor organizations--and never the twain should meet. The picture is muddied a bit (actually, a lot) by the existence of petty bourgeois groupings, that at bottom are really just stalking horses for the bourgeoisie. The Socialism Conference appears to be one of those.

A fundamental Trotskyist principle is to Never Cross the Class Line, ie, under no circumstances should one support bourgeois organizations or parties. Therefore it is fine to team up with unions--those are working class groups. But the Democratic Party is (in Trotskyist sociology) a bourgeois party and one should never support it no matter what.

Forming a coalition with working class organizations is called a united front. Forming a coalition with a bourgeois party is called a popular front. The Stalinist communist parties were big on popular fronts--and that is why (in the Trotskyist imagination) they lost so many battles (eg, the Spanish Civil War). So Mr. Marenlensky, being a Trotskyist, is adamantly opposed to any alliance with any part of the Democrat party. That's a popular front that crosses the class line, and is therefore doomed to failure.

The problem for Mr. Marenlensky is that the Socialism Conference is, inherently, a popular front. The comrades in that movement want to work with Progressive Democrats, including voting for Progressives Democrats in elections. That crosses the class line and is an absolute no-no.

So his first task is to criticize the way the conference is organized. He writes, referring to the Democratic party,

So much energy on the U.S. Left is wasted trying to galvanize support for a party that presents itself as the most responsible manager of capitalism. That energy could be spent campaigning for a workers’ party that fights for socialism. The Socialism Conference should have been an opportunity for both sides of this debate to confront the question in a constructive, comradely way. Unfortunately, this opportunity was largely squandered for a combination of political and structural reasons.

The "political and structural" reasons reduce to this: the Conference's participants want to have some impact on the real world. In the real world, Progressive Democrats have money and power and the ability to win elections. Trotskyists have none of that. Despite (or more likely, because of) their stand on high principles, Trotskyists never have any power or influence at all. All they do is kibbutz from the sidelines. So teaming up with Progressive Democrats just makes nothing but sense.

At least that's the way the conference organizers see it, and probably also a large majority of the participants. For these people the whole point of the conference is to tighten the alliance with segments of the Democratic Party, and to win over as many as they can to their ideas. What Trotskyists see as crossing the class line is seen by Conference attendees as practical politics.

And the attendees are not wrong. Progressive Democrats do occasionally win some real victories, notably in Blue States. All sorts of progressive policies are in place in California and New York, eg, rent control, prevailing wage laws, decriminalization of marijuana, social welfare efforts and social justice efforts. One can criticize them for only winning half a loaf--but the Trotskyists have never won any loaf--they've never succeeded in winning even a few crumbs.

As a political movement, Trotskyism is a proven failure. It's never been a success anywhere in the world, which is why the Socialism conferees don't have time for Trotskyists. For example, compare the Socialism Conference (2000 attendees) with Left Voice's recent convention (50 attendees; my review here). Would Left Voice--at their convention--allowed outsiders to discuss the virtues of forming popular fronts? Not likely--that conversation would not be allowed.

Likewise the Conference leaders and attendees are not interested in "forming an independent labor party," which is the rallying cry of all Trotskyists, including Left Voice. And for good reason: it's never happened, and it never will. There's no point in putting it on the agenda.

In his final paragraph, Mr. Maralensky puts it this way, claiming that Lenin (1870 - 1924) offered a useful guide to modern American politics.

In his seminal pamphlet, What Is To Be Done, Lenin describes a “marsh” of collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and that our task is to “fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!” In other words, it’s not enough to struggle against collaboration with the class enemy, but also against those who want to turn toward, accommodate, or coddle the collaborators. The Socialism Conference needs to be organized in a way that facilitates this struggle, and Marxists need to be willing to wage it.

He is spitting into the wind. 

Further Reading:

• Is Trotskyism Dead?
• Nazis
• Unions and Work From Home

Left Voice and the Intifada

(Source)

Left Voice author Nathaniel Flakin tells us that intifada is a soft and cuddly teddy-bear term. He writes, in an article entitled No, Intifada Does Not Mean Genocide Against Jews, 

The term “Intifada” has nothing to do with killing Jews. Rather, it is an Arabic word meaning roughly “shaking off.” The term was used for the first Palestinian uprising that began on December 9, 1987. This first Intifada was defined by mass resistance: demonstrations, strikes, and organizing across the occupied territories. This struggle forced Israel to make some concessions — at least on paper — that led to the Oslo Peace Accords.

Of course it has nothing to do with genocide, except for a few examples such as

This eventually led to a second Intifada, which began on September 28, 2000 after yet another provocation by a far-right Israeli government. This uprising again consisted of mass protests — but this second intifada is when Palestinian groups began the tactic of suicide bombings on a wide scale. 

Then, of course, there is the absurd non sequitur,

“Intifada” has been used for different popular uprisings across the Arab world. The people of Western Sahara, fighting against occupation by the U.S-backed monarchy in Morocco, also refer to their struggle as an “Intifada.” Socialists have always supported the Sahrawis against imperialism and Moroccan colonialism. Would Stefanik claim this is also a call for genocide against Jews?

He never gets around to mentioning the events of October 7th, when 1200 Jews were murdered and over 200 kidnapped as hostages. All, presumably, in the name of intifada.

The problem with Mr. Flakin's transparent evasions is that he doesn't get to define the word intifada. Today the word is defined for us by Hamas. And they are quite explicit--in both word and deed--that intifada does mean killing Jews. All of them. From the river to the sea. The term has nothing to do with some past, irrelevant conflict in Morocco, nor with an ancient dictionary definition of the word before Hamas got hold of it.

Anyone who champions intifada today advocates the mass murder of Jews. Why? Because that's what Hamas says the word means, and they get to define it. Not Mr. Flakin.

Mr. Flakin tries to let himself off the hook by claiming Hamas doesn't understand its own language.

In a similar way, the slogan “from the river to the sea” means that all people living in historical Palestine — Jews, Palestinians, and others — must enjoy equal democratic rights. It is not a call to end Jewish life on the territory. Rather, it is a call to end Apartheid.

When Hamas uses the phrase "from the river to the sea," they're not talking about "equal democratic rights." They want a Judenrein" Palestine--cleansed of Jews, who ideally will all be killed, or at very least driven into exile. This is as clear as daylight--that Mr. Flakin tries to twist their language into teddy bears and sunshine is despicably dishonest on his part.

Note Mr. Flakin's gratuitous use of the word "apartheid." This is just a swear word--there is no serious reason why Israel is like South Africa of the 1970s. A more apt analogy is Rwanda in the 1990s.

Rwanda (along with Burundi, and neighboring parts of Congo and Uganda) is inhabited by two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. The former are a Bantu people, agriculturalists, who have lived in Central Africa for millennia. The latter are of Hamitic ancestry (often considered racially distinct) who migrated to Rwanda beginning in the 14th Century. The Tutsis are pastoralists--famous for Ankole cattle. Like most pastoral people, the Tutsi are known for their military prowess, and despite being a minority soon came to dominate political life in Rwanda.

The Hutu--especially Hutu militants--regarded the Tutsi as "colonizers," which is the language that Mr. Flakin uses to describe Israeli Jews. And of course we know what happened to said "colonizers"--there was an attempt at a final solution, resulting in the deaths of up to 800,000 people.

The Hutu militants were eventually defeated and fled to neighboring Congo. There lived a Tutsi tribe known as the Banyamulenge--who had long been denied citizenship because of their immigration status, having arrived in the Congo only in the 17th Century. The Banyamulenge--afraid of being slaughtered--formed the corps of an army led by Laurent Kabila that eventually overthrew the Mobutu regime in 1997. That same conflict--a war of all against all, or kill our neighbors before they kill us, resulted in the Second Congolese war that did kill a lot of people--more than five million. (An excellent book about the Congo wars is here.)

This is the promise that Hamas holds for the Palestinians. And people who support Hamas are aptly dubbed génocidaires, named after the Hutu mobs responsible for the genocide.

Mr. Flakin, all of his comrades in Left Voice, and most of the progressive wing of the Democrat Party are génocidaires. The cowardly and clueless college presidents are at very least apologists for génocidaires, if not génocidaires themselves.

Of course génocidaires accuse Israel of committing genocide--what else would you expect them to say? There is an asymmetry between Hamas and Israel. Hamas explicitly in word and deed aspires to commit genocide, but they don't yet have the means to carry out the act. Israel is now fighting what it sees as an existential war for survival, to prevent Hamas from ever acquiring such means.

On the other hand, Israel has the means available to wipe out the entire population of Gaza. They have nuclear weapons for heavens' sake--they could kill all 2.3 million Palestinians in about 10 minutes. Or almost as bad, they could drive the entire population across the border into Egypt in about half a day--wouldn't take long. Yet here we are--two months into the war--and Israel has only killed 18,000 Palestinians, many of them not civilians but Hamas soldiers. That's less than 1% of the Palestinian population!

It's obvious that, despite having the means, Israel does not aspire to kill Palestinian civilians. Indeed, it is to their obvious political advantage to minimize civilian deaths as much as possible. Israel is not committing genocide. Civilian deaths in Gaza are war casualties. That's still bad, but it's not genocide.

The génocidaires think they are fighting for the Palestinian people. I don't get it. I don't understand how murdering ten million Jews is going to improve the lives of Palestinians. 

The Militant reports that an Israeli, Ariana Pinsker-Lehrer, studying at Columbia University, spoke to a Palestinian Rights rally at that school.

Pinsker-Lehrer has been active inside Israel in support of Palestinian rights. “I want Israel to be a better country,” she noted, but “you guys think that you have some right to decide whether Israel has a right to exist or not.”

“There are 14 million people ‘between the river and the sea,’” she said, referring to the Jews, Muslims, Christians and others who live in Israel and the Palestinian territories, “and none of them are going anywhere. We need to find a solution that involves all of them and that is not what you are doing.”

She is not a génocidaire. Neither am I, but she has way more courage than I do.

Further Reading:

• Addendum: Trotskyist Antisemitism
• Nazis
• Elise Stefanik

Addendum: Trotskyist Antisemitism

Left Voice's new allies (source)

Reader John B. commented on my last post (Trotskyist Antisemitism) suggesting that I include this quote from the Left Voice's Declaration. The full quote from John is here:

"...However, the course of action pursued by the Hamas militias, which attacked military posts and civilians alike, has been easily instrumentalized by Netanyahu and the imperialist states to try to legitimize their declaration of war. It has allowed the Israeli government to rally the opposition and critical sectors behind support for a military offensive against the Gaza Strip. We reject the attacks on the civilian population. We do not share the methods of Hamas, which impede the necessary unity in struggle between the Palestinian population, Arabs who live in Israel, and sectors of the Jewish working class who break with Zionism and its criminal policies; this unity must be built around the denunciation of the state of Israel and its systematic apartheid in Palestine. We do not share Hamas’s program and strategy, which proclaims its objective to be the installation of an Islamic fundamentalist state throughout the territory of the state of Israel. If the “two-state” policy promoted by the PNA through the Oslo Accords proved to be a resounding failure, Hamas’s proposal also does not represent a progressive alternative..."

He is certainly correct that I should have included--or at least cited--this paragraph in my previous post. Thus I add this addendum.

John offers his opinion here:

If I had written that article, I would have put that paragraph toward the top of it, but it clearly indicates that the Left Voice comrades don't "support" Hamas. Politically, that is.

I disagree with John's conclusion. Left Voice has enthusiastically marched under Hamas' banners, including:

• From the river to the sea--Palestine must be free.
• End the occupation.
• Resistance is justified.

These are thinly disguised commands to kill all the Jews. Palestine is the word they use for a Judenrein ("cleansed of Jews") Holy Land, where Jews have lived for 3000 years. The occupation refers to any Jew living in so-called Palestine, who "occupy" the land by walking on it with their filthy feet. Resistance is justified because the Jews are so awful that anything you can do to get rid of them is a heroic act to be championed.

Left Voice signs off on the Hamas program in every important particular. They are straight-out anti-Semites. But as a fig leaf to protect themselves they include the paragraph John quoted.

It's a very small fig leaf. First, they oppose the civilian deaths only for tactical reasons. Left Voice has no complaint about killing Jews on general principle. They just think that this particular incidence of mass murder was "easily instrumentalized by Netanyahu." Only when Hamas has the capability of murdering 100,000 Jews or perhaps a million Jews--then might be the best tactical time to get on with it.

Then they claim to oppose the "Islamic State." This is reserved for an as yet hypothetical time in the future when all the Jews have been wiped out and Hamas has to figure out what happens after that. That's the only time Left Voice will dare to disagree with them on any principle. Until then the number of Jews to be killed is a purely tactical concern.

I have a professor friend--a former colleague before I retired--who is a religious Muslim but not Palestinian. He is clearly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and argues that dropping 1000 pound bombs on Gaza is killing innocent children along with Hamas generals. He has a point. His advice is that Israel should stop dropping 1000 pound bombs.

But he is not antisemitic. He rejects the slogans that Hamas promulgates. He condemns the barbaric attack on Jewish civilians. He just thinks the best way forward is a ceasefire. I disagree with him because I don't think it will work--I think Hamas will just stage a new attack to kill more Jews and the only viable strategy moving forward is to eliminate Hamas. But on this reasonable people can disagree--and my colleague is both a reasonable and an honorable man.

He's not antisemitic and I'm not anti-Palestinian. I think Palestinians should have at least a middle class lifestyle and their full civil rights, either within Israel or in a separate Palestinian state. I strongly disagree with that (small) segment of Israeli opinion that supports the expulsion of Palestinians from the Holy Land. From the river to the sea, there are approximately 10 million Jews and 6 million Palestinians--and there is no good reason why either one of them has to leave or be murdered.

Oh--I guess there is at least one reason: Hamas, along with their antisemitic allies in the US, including Left Voice.

Even absent any humanitarian motives, it is obviously in Israel's best political interest to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties as much as possible. This is why Hamas, their US allies, and the UN are all busily trying to inflate the number of Palestinian dead--literally by using their own civilians as human shields, and figuratively by just lying about the death toll. Of course the Hamas brass hides under the biggest hospital in Gaza City--where else would they hang out?

If Israel didn't care about civilian casualties, then why did they send in ground troops? Surely, a few dozen 2000 lb bunker buster bombs over al-Shifa hospital could take out all the tunnels, brass, militia, and tens of thousands Palestinians to boot. No Israeli soldier would have to die.

Here's the truth (h/t Arnold Kling): The only reason Israel is sending in ground troops is to protect Palestinian civilians. A 2000 lb bomb can't distinguish between a child and a terrorist--but a soldier can, at least some of the time. Since dropping bunker busters on a hospital is unconscionable, Israel is putting its own soldiers at risk so it can take out Hamas while injuring as few civilians as possible. Or, put another way, Israel won't be dropping any bombs on top of their own soldiers. The more Israelis there are on the ground, the fewer civilians will be killed.

There is no other reason for those soldiers to be there.

John also dings me for this:

Given the main focus of this blog, I'm surprised you didn't mention the SWP's full-throated endorsement of Zionism and the Israel slaughter in Gaza. Indeed, The Militant's coverage of this most recent crisis is indistinguishable from the Murdoch media or the press releases of the Israeli Defense Force.

He is correct--the Socialist Workers Party is the only Trotskyist grouplet on my beat that rejects antisemitism. I'm happy to point that out--as I did in the Further Reading segment following the previous post. That link is The SWP Defends Civilization. Which is nothing less than the truth.

Further Reading:

• The Professor's Congress: The International Situation
• The Lumpens Hate Eric Adams
• Socialist Action's Political Report

Trotskyist Antisemitism

(Source)

My Trotskyist friends are fond of fine distinctions. To wit: they insist that anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism.

And of course they're right on some level. One can legitimately criticize Israel for any number of things: the settlements on the West Bank, the status of its own Arab citizens, its policies with respect to Syria or Saudi Arabia, etc. None of these positions are intrinsically antisemitic. Though not only will anti-Zionists share these criticisms, but so also will anti-Semites. The latter outnumber the former.

But what an anti-Zionist can't do is support Hamas. Hamas' principle agenda is to kill all the Jews, thinly disguised with a bunch of code words.

• Occupation is the term Hamas uses to describe any Jew living in Israel. Their demand to End the Occupation is a demand to kill/exile all Jews in Israel.
• From the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be Free advocates a Palestine that is Judenrein, ie, cleansed of all Jews. The Jews who live there now should be either killed or exiled.
• Resistance is the actual act of killing Jews, as illustrated by the events of Oct. 7th.

The ADL, quotes the Students for Justice in Palestine, 

In a statement published after the October 7 invasion, SJP described Hamas’ massacres of Israelis as “a historic win for Palestinian resistance,” and called for “Not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”

Of course--simply by living in Israel--Jews are oppressors, despite the fact that they oppress nobody. The true oppressors of Gaza are Hamas, who in furtherance of their murderous goals keep Gaza locked up and in dire poverty.

Hamas is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, an avowedly fascist organization founded in 1928, and modeled after Franco's Spain, except instead of championing the Catholic Church, it instead substituted Islam. Its leading intellectual/theologian was Sayyid Qutb (1906 - 1966), an Egyptian who spent a couple of years in the United States, which experience molded him into an implacable enemy of secularism. His most famous book is In the Shade of the Quran, a book written while he was in prison in Nasser's Egypt. He died by execution.

My friends over at Left Voice posted a Declaration: Stop Israel’s Airstrikes and Military Intervention Against the Palestinian People. The lede paragraph reads (emphasis mine)

In the early hours of October 7, militias led by Hamas, the organization that governs the Gaza Strip, carried out the most important armed incursion into Israeli territory in the last 50 years. It launched nearly 5,000 missiles and hundreds of soldiers attacked villages close to the Strip. The military operation resulted in the taking of more than a hundred hostages and the deaths of nearly one thousand people, including young people attending a music festival, families living in kibbutz, and others unconnected to the military.

The adjective "important" is truly strange. Surely other adjectives are more suitable: horrific, barbaric, criminal, etc. (Since that was written the Israeli death toll has risen to 1400, and there are over 200 hostages.)

So what is Israel supposed to do about this? Our Left Voice friends don't say, but they roundly criticize Israel for what it is doing.

Israel has already bombed entire buildings and health facilities in the Gaza Strip, as well as other locations that the Zionist army has supposedly identified as centers of operation for Hamas militias. In the first 48 hours of Israel’s offensive, at least 700 Palestinians have already been killed. The new offensive phase will include new, more deadly attacks, and the IDF has not ruled out sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip. With each passing hour, the situation is escalating rapidly. Israeli attacks have now spread to Lebanon, and U.S. imperialism has announced that it will send further military support to Israel to reinforce its presence in the area.

The paragraph is factually wrong: Israel is not attacking Lebanon, but is responding to Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon. Beyond which there have certainly been Palestinian deaths, but the numbers coming from the Hamas government have to be treated with serious skepticism. For example, they blame Israel for bombing a hospital and killing 500 people; it is now known that Israel didn't bomb the hospital, and nowhere near 500 people were killed in what was a misfired, Palestinian rocket.

It's amazing how Left Voice and their close allies in the Democratic Party are so overjoyed to hear about Palestinian deaths! Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Hamas) reportedly broke down in tears when informed that 500 Palestinians were NOT killed in the hospital explosion. Nobody celebrates Palestinian deaths more than my Trotskyist friends and their comrades in the Democrat's Progressive caucus.

Hamas is working hard to create as many civilian casualties as possible--using their own citizens as human shields. Meanwhile, the Israelis are trying hard to prevent civilian casualties, eg, warning residents to leave buildings before they are destroyed, and asking residents in Northern Gaza to leave the area before the invasion starts.

There is another party to the dispute who cheers on Palestinian deaths: the Iranian Ayatollahs. Like Hamas, the Ayatollahs want to kill all the Jews. They've been shouting "death to Israel" for decades now--and they're not joking. But killing all the Palestinians is an additional benefit--a feature, not a bug. For if there is one group of people that the Ayatollahs hate almost as much as the Jews, it's the Palestinians.

In the Ayatollahs' view, the Palestinians are Sunni, stupid losers, and (I'll say it again) Sunni. Palestinians are only good for cannon fodder, and the more of them that get killed while slaughtering the Jews, the better. It's a two-fer.

No wonder the Ayatollahs collaborated with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (who conveniently lives a luxurious, peaceful life in Qatar) and arranged training and materiel support for what was a suicide mission to kill as many Jews as possible. Only Iran benefits from the inevitable Israeli response, which will unfortunately result in the deaths of many Palestinians.

So here are some questions for my Left Voice comrades:

• Why are you siding with the Ayatollahs in championing the slaughter of both Jews and Palestinians?
• Do you really believe the world will be a better place if all the Jews are killed?
• What positive outcome do you expect from Hamas raids into Israel killing as many Jews as possible?
• Will Palestinians really be better off if Israel is destroyed and Palestine is Judenrein?
• Why is Left Voice--a group that supposedly hates fascists--siding with an open and avowedly fascist group like Hamas?

Obviously, any solution to the Israel-Palestine problem has to substantially improve the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and within Israel. Toward this end a constructive Palestinian nationalism is both desirable and appropriate. But constructive does not mean "killing all the Jews." Hamas--far from advancing the cause of Palestinians, is destroying it.

A constructive Palestinian nationalism realizes that the conflict between Palestinians and Jews is not a zero-sum game. It is certainly possible--indeed, necessary--for Israel and Palestine to live on the same land and get wealthy together.

Hamas is the enemy of that vision. Hamas' vision is to kill all the Jews. Left Voice surely knows that, and therefore they are as antisemitic as any Nazi.

Further Reading:

• The SWP Defends Civilization
• Oppression!
• Left Voice and the SWP

News From the SWP

I've been ignoring the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) because their paper--The Militant--has not caught my fancy recently. They're following some labor issues that haven't interested me; they waste a lot of pixels on Cuba; they tout ancient books that don't look to be very relevant today. This week's issue, for example, has a long excerpt from American Labor Struggles 1877-1934--surely of purely academic interest.

For all their interest in labor struggles, it was weird that they waited until this week to comment on the defeat of the Amazon union effort--an event that happened on April 9th. I purposely postponed my own account (dated May 1) so to include their response, but I gave up on them. As it turns out author Susan Lamont adds nothing new to the conversation, so no update from me is needed.

The big news is that the pandemic-postponed Active Workers Conference will happen this year from July 22 - 24. Historically these have occurred in Oberlin, OH, and are known informally as "Oberlin Conferences"--a very long tradition in the Trotskyist movement. Some reminiscences of my time at Oberlin are here. 

But these days the Oberlin brand is hopelessly tarnished given the eponymous college's failed and dishonorable crusade against a small-town bakery. So this year's "Oberlin Conference" will instead take place at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH. Springfield is a mid-sized, struggling, rust-belt town 26 miles east of Dayton International Airport. I, being a geography buff, find it an odd place to hold the affair--so please let me indulge my geography itch to explain why.

I surmise that the Oberlin site was originally chosen because it was close to the Cleveland branch. Indeed, I recall at one such shindig we adjourned to a big hotel in that city for a large campaign rally. The Cleveland comrades played a key role in organizing the event every year. Further, Oberlin was within a couple hours drive of branches in Detroit and Pittsburgh, and not that far from Chicago. Folks from further afield could fly into Cleveland airport (though we Portland comrades drove).

Today the Party has no branches in Ohio, the Detroit branch also no longer exists, and Pittsburgh is a four hour drive from Springfield. The closest branch is Louisville--a three-hour ride. So Springfield seems remarkably inconvenient. Further, while Dayton airport is close by, it is smallish and rather expensive to fly in to. I checked connections from the West Coast (SEA, SFO, LAX--this is how I waste my time) and they're horrible. The layover time in Chicago is as long as five hours.

The closest large airport is Cincinnati (CVG), a bit under two hours away. That's a Delta hub, and nonstop flights are available from LAX, though from SEA or SFO a connection is still necessary. The fares are lower as well. While I didn't check, being a Delta hub CVG is probably easier to reach from Atlanta, Miami, or Texas.

So were I in charge, Wittenberg wouldn't be my top pick. The criteria are: 1) a small-campus setting, 2) near an existing branch, 3) not too far from a major airport, 4) in the Midwest--because that's centrally located wrt SWP branches. There are four branches that meet the Midwest criterion: Chicago, Louisville, Pittsburgh, St. Louis.

• Chicago is a logical choice--definitely centrally located and certainly a big airport. There are a bunch of colleges in the suburbs or further afield that would be an easy reach. Lots of options here, but Chicago is a big city and doesn't really have the "vacation" vibe that is essential to the Oberlin experience.
• Louisville doesn't have a major airport, though CVG is only about 90 minutes away. Otherwise it's a fine choice. The city is charming and the surrounding countryside is lovely. There are lots of colleges both in town and out of town. St. Meinrad's--a Catholic seminary in Indiana--is glorious. Hanover College--halfway between Louisville and Cincinnati--is gorgeous.
• Pittsburgh has a big airport, and the region doesn't lack for colleges. Allegheny College in Meadville has a beautiful campus--but there are many others to choose from. The scenery is spectacular, and the airport offers many nonstop flights. But it's too far east to be easy for comrades driving from places like Minneapolis, Lincoln, St. Louis, or even Chicago.
• St. Louis is literally in the middle of the country, and has the best location. The airport is major. It's an easy drive from Louisville, Chicago, Lincoln, or even Minneapolis. There are plenty of colleges around.

Were I geography czar, I'd pick a college within 50 miles of Louisville. There are plenty to choose from.

In a campaign statement by Roger Calero, The Militant advocates for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. They distinguish themselves from their Trotskyist brethren in not being antisemitic--to their everlasting credit. They rightly describe Hamas as "the reactionary Islamist group that rules Gaza" --certainly true as far as it goes. I'd be less diplomatic and use the f- word banned from this blog.

Mr. Calero also criticizes the Israelis, writing

The spark for today’s crisis is the refusal of the Israeli government to halt attempts to evict 300 Palestinians from 13 households in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem. Regardless of who “owns” the homes, Palestinians have lived in them since the 1950s.

While the Israeli government portrays this as a private landlord-tenant dispute, Palestinians rightly fear that allowing the evictions would open the floodgate to more, and to Israeli government refusal to ever accept East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

Fair enough--it is not antisemitic to note Israeli sins. But as The Militant points out, the Hamas leadership, by launching hundreds of militarily-useless rockets randomly aimed at Israeli cities and towns with the intention of killing civilians, obviously is not representing the best interests of their own people. Of course the Israeli army has to respond in force--any government would do that. For good or ill, the Israelis are acting rationally. Hamas is just a bunch of irrational, semi-suicidal crazies.

The other papers on my Beat are spouting the same-old the Jews are evil, imperialist, colonial-settler, apartheid-mongering, out to gratuitously murder Palestinian children for no reason other than that they enjoy it crap. I've responded many times--by now my answer is predictable. A good example is here.

My friend and former comrade Brian Williams pens a piece entitled Witch hunt against Trump, political rights continues. It's a rousing defense of former President Trump's civil liberties--so rousing in fact that I'm beginning to wonder if they're joining the Republican Party. If so, welcome aboard--but you'll have to cut back on the Cuba enthusiasm.

Mr. Williams even goes a half-step further than I would, defending Rudy Giuliani against the likely unjustified search warrant on his home. And they're probably right--the warrant was unjustified. But I'm mad at Mr. Giuliani right now, for a more incompetent legal team a presidential campaign has never had. Trump's electoral college loss in 2020 was due in significant part to the lawsuits that his lawyers never filed in a timely fashion. Mr. Giuliani only got around to it after the election was over, when it was too late.

I understand the injustice of it all, but I can't work up too much sympathy for Rudy Giuliani. Sorry.

Further Reading:

• Oberlin, 2018
• Oberlin, 2016
• The 47th SWP Convention