Campuses Nationwide Erupt in Solidarity with Palestine; What Way Forward?

Faculty at UC Berkeley support the student activists.

On April 17, students at Columbia University set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university’s main lawn. Organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of 80 Columbia and Barnard student organizations, the protestors called on Columbia to divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies that support Israel’s government and militar

The vision of the encampment at Columbia and the university’s reactionary response to it sparked the largest student uprising in the United States since the Vietnam war. Within a couple of weeks, student protests expanded to every state except Alaska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. But even that may change soon. On April 30, students at the University of South Dakota planted a Palestinian flag to “support the right of students and other activists” to protest against Israel.

These protests are getting a fraction of the media coverage that the Vietnam protests received. Capitalism is good at learning from its mistakes. The coverage started slow, and it is still focused primarily on the false claims of violence and anti-Semitism. Yet, the story that leaps off the page is the brutal militarized crackdown upon the students, faculty, and community supporters as soon as they asserted their free speech rights and opposed the Israeli genocide unfolding before their eyes. The arrest count which rises rapidly day by day is over 2,300 as we go to publication.

The report above is reprinted from the weekly Workers Tribune of France.

Demanding Divestment and Justice for Victims of State Repression!

At the City College of New York (CCNY), students, alumni, faculty, and others affiliated with the coalition “CUNY for Palestine” established a pro-Palestinian encampment on the CCNY quad on April 25th. The encampment featured tents, banners, and a Palestinian flag raised on the flagpole at the center of the quad. The organizers called for divestment from companies that produce weapons used by Israel, an academic boycott, the removal of NYPD and Israeli Defense Forces presence from CUNY campuses, a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and a push for “a free CUNY” which would return to a tuition-free model and adopt fair contracts for staff and faculty.

Within days police in riot gear stormed the Columbia University and CCNY campuses and arrested over 300 activists.

At California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, protests began with students occupying Siemens Hall, refusing to leave until the university agreed to divest from companies associated with Israel. The university responded by moving classes online and closing the campus. Hundreds of police officers dressed in full riot gear arrested about 35 protesters, including one member of the press and a professor. Meanwhile in Southern California, the LAPD arrested 93 protesters, and the university canceled its main graduation after students set up an encampment at Alumni Park at the University of Southern California (USC), to demand that the university cut ties with Israel and support a ceasefire in Gaza.

At SUNY New Paltz and SUNY Purchase, relatively small state colleges that are part of the vast State University of New York, 113 activists were arrested at SUNY New Paltz and 70 at SUNY Purchase, where students had set up tent encampments, while more than 30 people were arrested at Portland State University after demonstrators twice occupied the school’s main library.

Across the United States, on more campuses than not, police and state troopers, loaded for war with battering rams, water cannons, tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets have been sent to use brute force against unarmed students. 

These examples represent just a tiny fraction of the over 150 U.S. colleges and universities with similar protests and encampments. Nor is the destruction of a student encampment the end of the story. New ones spring forth and other forms of protest are organized.

On May 2, at a joint Columbia University and CUNY rally, following on the heels of the massive police campus invasions, Cameron Jones, City College ’26, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, called upon students and faculty worldwide to continue and “escalate their protest. With Gaza as our metric,” Jones said, “we call on you to resist this militant, war-making status quo. You must create your own campus agitations. University business cannot continue as usual amidst a genocide.”

The youth of the United States can be a powerful force against injustice when they become active, and they are making their voices heard now — they will not be complicit in a genocide! The brutal onslaught against the Palestinian people is reaching a dangerous crescendo. Conditions in Gaza are rapidly deteriorating and have been described as “unlivable.” As of the latest reports, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and mass starvation is imminent.

In four months, more children have been killed in Gaza than in four years of global conflicts combined. Infrastructure damage in Gaza is extensive: over half of the residential homes, 73% of school buildings including all universities, and significant portions of healthcare facilities are damaged or destroyed. Over 1.3 million Palestinians have been displaced, often with only a tent or tarp for cover.

The health sector is overwhelmed, with hospitals like Al-Shifa in Gaza described as a “horror scene,” with patients receiving care on floors, and dying due to the lack of facilities and medical supplies. The world now waits for the Israeli military to launch its planned all-out invasion of Rafah, the last refuge of some 1.5 million Palestinians. UN officials warn that an Israeli ground attack on Rafah will be catastrophic, with more than 600,000 children at risk.

Austin, Texas, police arrest student activist.

Biden’s authoritarian response to the student protest underscores the reactionary character of the Democratic Party. In remarks from Biden about the protests, he stated that “vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations — none of this is a peaceful protest.” What? Since when is trespassing or shutting down the campus not peaceful? And who is really breaking windows and vandalizing? All evidence suggests it is the violent police presence on campus responsible for these acts. 

“We are a civil society, and order must prevail.” Biden stressed. “As President, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong in standing up for the rule of law.” Excuse me? What would Biden say to the Black student youth who sat at lunch counters to desegregate the South? To Rosa Parks who refused to go to the back of the bus? To Harriet Tubman and others who organized the Underground Railroad to get slaves from oppressed conditions north? All these were “illegal” actions!

Democrats claim that we must elect Biden or slide further towards fascism … well the statement from Biden is a huge step in that same direction.

Columbia faculty support student activists.

The ability of university students to exercise their speech freely is a cornerstone of democracy. The brutal crackdown by police, under the flimsy façade of “fighting anti-Semitism,” and “trespassing” is nothing less than a direct attack on students’ first amendment rights

We call for an immediate halt to the breaking up of the encampments, and for complete and total amnesty for those arrested! These protests and encampments are not to be disrupted — this is protected speech! As Amnesty International said in their statement on the recent student protests, “Academic freedom is central to the right to education — and campus activism is a crucial component of that freedom.

We call, as well, for the reinstatement of all banned campus organizations, including Jewish Voices for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. 

Having started on college campus, the students’ current demands are understandably aimed primarily at the universities themselves. The groups are demanding that their tuition dollars and university endowments not be used to fund the brutal violence that has long been unleashed against the people of Palestine. And while the demands are just, sensible, and achievable, we strongly encourage the student groups to broaden both their demands and their participation, if they have not done so already. Divestment, boycott and sanction can be a powerful tool against an Apartheid regime such as Israel, as was demonstrated by similar movements against South Africa in the 90’s.

However, we must keep foremost in our minds that the immediate urgency of preventing the continued mass slaughter of Palestinians in the current conflict must take precedence. The only way to quickly affect the outcome on the ground in Palestine is to push for an immediate cessation of the bombardment of Gaza and an immediate troop withdrawal. Above all, the U.S. must stop arming Israel.

The call to Stop Arming Israel is being echoed the world over. In nations, including the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, port workers are refusing to unload or handle military supplies intended for Israel. Meanwhile, labor activists in the UK have shut down operations temporarily at factories that manufacture parts for F-35 fighter aircraft. Seven U.S. national unions and more than 200 union locals have formed the coalition calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

We have called on those unions to take the next step in pushing for an immediate end to the conflict by calling for the U.S. to Stop Arming Israel and for the union leadership to mobilize labor actions. The student movement could join with labor around this demand and become an unstoppable force — one capable of affecting U.S. policy and moving the struggle for Palestinian self-determination forward. 

With the end of the academic year approaching, we support student leaders who are reaching out to broaden and strengthen this movement. A combined force of students, professors, unions, and community groups, all calling on the U.S. government to Stop Arming Israel, could have the power needed to affect this immediate and important change.

This antiwar issue could be a main focus of local committees formed from labor unions, community organizations and student groups. These groups could then also work together to create an independent working-class party rooted in labor and oppressed communities that ultimately cuts the purse strings that tie our country to this brutal genocide. The power of the youth is staggering. The combined power of youth and labor can transform the world.

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“The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever [they are], as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.” – Ghassan Kanafani

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MONEY FOR JOBS AND HUMAN NEEDS, NOT WAR!

“The $1.6 trillion the federal budget allocates for the military could be used to house every person in the U.S.?”

By Millie Phillips

[NOTE: Following is the presentation by The Organizer Editorial Board member Millie Phillips to the March 24 National Conference on Independent Working-Class Politics sponsored by Labor and Community for Independent Politics / LCIP.]

I know statistics aren’t that useful for inspiring people to action, but please bear with me as I cite a few anyway.

According to policy analyst Rob Moore, if the U.S. government paid rent at the median rate for every unhoused person in our country, the cost per year would be around $11 billion. Of course, housing must already be available, and most unhoused people are going to need additional social services to get back on their feet. So, the cost would be greater than the rent itself. But, to give some perspective, would it be three times as much? That is what it would cost to put the same people in prison.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent $115 billion on the war in Ukraine. By law, the U.S. routinely gives $4 billion a year to Israel with the condition that most of it must be spent purchasing U.S. weapons and military services, in other words, the money comes right back to the U.S. as a guaranteed subsidy to military contractors, and, since October 7, $15 billion more has been granted. 

The U.S. budget this year allocates 1.6 trillion on the military, over ½ of all its discretionary spending. What if we could use this money to house every person in the U.S. by protecting tenants against unaffordable rent, harassment, and unfair evictions and by buying, renovating, and building publicly subsidized housing?

Providing everyone with a single payer healthcare system which would actually save money, offering free education from preschool through college, building an excellent public transportation system, and taking serious measures to mitigate the climate crisis? Every dollar spent on killing or coercing the rest of the world is theft from “we the people.”

At least 2/3 of us want a permanent ceasefire in Gaza – we don’t want our money spent on genocide – and similar percentages support all the issues I just listed, plus significant reductions in military spending, and this despite constant propaganda arguing the opposite.

If we lived in a democracy, logically, our budget would reflect majority views. But we don’t. Instead, we have two major parties funded by the tiny percentage who benefit from denying our needs and desires, the capitalist class of weapons manufacturers, corporate landlords, big pharma, health insurance companies, polluting energy providers, etc.

We are saddled with federal, state, and local laws with corrupt or toothless agencies and legalistic doublespeak designed to prevent us from having a say in what impacts us, be it protecting tenants by building affordable housing, passing democratic election laws, organizing unions, or protecting reproductive rights.

Worse, justice is more than “just us.” Frankly, humanity may not survive the next 50-100 years, if we don’t do something to turn around the U.S.’s global impact in promoting war and fueling the climate crisis. Thankfully, lots of us are rejecting the twin parties of capital. Last year, 43% of voters belonged to neither. Sadly, though, without viable electoral alternatives, most will continue to vote for these parties or not vote at all. And, disillusioned and frustrated by the Democratic Party’s liberal elitism and broken promises, some are moving to the right, even among those who would suffer the most from Republican policies.

As Khalid so eloquently pointed out earlier, the concepts of “lesser evil” voting and “the spoiler effect” still influence public perception, but really, is there much of a choice between genocide, fascism, nuclear war, and uncontrolled heating of the planet? At the national level, those are the choices offered by the twin parties of capital who tell us we must support one or the other to avoid risking something worse. At the local level, it equals tent encampments and parents working two jobs to pay rent for an apartment barely habitable. This is where lesser evil and worrying about spoilers has got us.

We must turn this around. Ultimately, we have to get rid of the source – capitalism. But to do that we need the working class – the vast majority of this country –  to come together more than it ever has before.

What better way to do that than by combining a revitalized labor movement with leadership from the most oppressed sectors of society? That’s LCIP’s vision, starting at the local level and building up from there, and not just electorally. [For more information about LCIP. Go to www.LCIPcommittee.org.]

There is no better time to start than right now! Let’s do it!

CNN Reports on College Campus Democrat Organizations

The county’s ruling circles are worried by the growing movement from below among today’s youth.

CNN just ran a news story that highlights the growing disaffection with the Democratic Party by today’s youth – even by some of its more mainstream layers.

Clearly these young Democrats need to break with the Democrats and find their way to LCIP [Labor and Community for an Independent Party]. Following are brief excerpts from the CNN report.

[excerpts] 

The dire situation on the ground in Gaza, which many young Americans are routinely exposed to in real-time through social media apps like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, has emerged as a significant concern for many Democratic organizations, liberal outside groups and other Biden allies worried about youth voter turnout in the 2024 election.

Those anxieties came into view again last week when the traditionally modest College Democrats of America sounded the alarm, saying in a statement, “The White House has taken the mistaken route of a bear hug strategy for (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and a cold shoulder strategy for its own base and all Americans who want to see an end to this war.”

“It should be made abundantly clear that calling for the freedom of Palestinians is not Anti-Semitic,” the group wrote, “and neither is opposing the genocidal acts of the far-right radical extremist Israeli government.”

The decision by leaders of the CDA – which for many years operated under the wing of the Democratic National Committee – to take such a bold stand and potentially endanger its standing with senior party leaders drew immediate attention across ideological lines. But the College Democrats insist their worries are also rooted in what they see as the Biden campaign’s unwillingness to grasp the scope of how difficult it is becoming to engage young voters. …

Polling of young voters on the Israel-Hamas War, specifically about its effect on Biden’s campaign, presents a mixed picture.

A Harvard/Institute of Politics poll conducted in March showed that young Americans supported a permanent ceasefire in Gaza (51% versus 10% who were opposed). An Economist/YouGov poll from April found that 32% of adults younger than 30 sympathized with Palestinians (compared with 13% who sympathized with Israelis). Only 18% of young voters approved of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Harvard/IOP poll.

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LETTER FROM A READER

Dear Editors;

Benjamin Netanyahu has responded to Biden’s threat to revise U.S. policy toward assistance to Israel by recklessly escalating the war in Gaza into a wider regional conflict that could quickly ignite World War III in the event that Israel directly attacks Iran.  

Iran constitutes a strategic choke point for Chinese maritime operations and commerce that could provide all of China’s adversaries with the ability to interdict China’s vital supply lines of oil from the Middle East*. 

Therefore, any attack upon Iran is likely to provoke China’s intervention into any such war, just as FDR provoked Japan into bringing the U.S. into World War II by imposing an embargo on oil shipments to Japan.

Furthermore, it is clear that Iran was the essential target in the original decision to provide Israel with F35 stealth fighter planes. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/2017/April%202017/0417_Grudo_Israeli.pdf

Solidarity,

Hal S.,

Pensacola, Florida

Editors’ Note: China purchases 90% of Iran’s current oil production and provides funding for oil infrastructure development.

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Proposed map of Eretz Israel presented by Rabbi Fischmann during the U.N. partition discussions; Theodor Herzl described the boundaries in his diary (vol. II, page 711) as “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”

The Myth of Security as the Motor Force of Israeli Foreign Policy

By Mya Shone

President Joe Biden has been resolute. His support for Israel is not just “unwavering”, it is an “ironclad commitment.” “We’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security,” Biden asserted in anticipation of an Iranian response to Israel’s attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, April 1, in which two senior Iranian generals and seven advisors were among the 11 people killed.

Biden was backed by the Democratic Party – including most of those who express concerns about the genocide unfolding in Gaza and the restriction on humanitarian aid. As The New York Times reports: “Democrats who are leading the push against the Israel aid bill said they strongly supported the Jewish state and its right to defend itself and would vote in favor of sending military aid that supports Israel’s defense capabilities, such as replenishing the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Iron Beam defense systems.” but not offensive weapons, such as those used in Gaza.

We “support a safe and secure Israel,” said Representative Becca Balint, Democrat of Vermont, who was the first Jewish member of Congress to call for a ceasefire. “I understand the need for defensive weapons for Israel, particularly in light of the attack by Iran,” added Representative Ro Khanna of California.

Joe Biden, as well as other Democrats, often speaks of “values” shared with the Israeli state. As Biden stressed to Israeli President Chaim Herzog (October 22, 2022) — “I’ll say this 5,000 times in my career” — “the ironclad commitment the United States has to Israel is based on our principles, our ideas, our values. They’re the same values.”

Let us briefly consider the “values” that they are defending:

•      That Israel is an Apartheid state is incontrovertible. The Basic Law, Israel’s quasi-constitutional set of laws which govern the State, enshrine Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people.”

•      That throughout its history Israel has demonstrated its intent to dispossess the Palestinian people and disperse them throughout the world through massacres, occupation, draconian laws regulating Palestinian life, assassination, and territorial annexation.

•      That Israel is an expansionist state that has attacked continuously surrounding nations with the intent to destroy their sovereignty and suppress their revolutionary struggles.

Today, however, we address one prevailing myth: that of security as the motor force of Israeli foreign policy as well as the relationship of Israel to U.S. imperialist control of the Middle East and its resources.

What Joe Biden said about the new $26 million military package is revealing:

“Today, members of both parties in the House voted to advance our national security interests and send a clear message about the power of American leadership on the world stage.”

Joe Biden, to say the least, has been consistent since 1986 when as Senator he spoke fervently in Congress in favor of a $3 billion ($8.55 billion today) military appropriation for Israel. He said then: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one to protect our interests in the region” and Joe Biden — who counted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his “close personal friend of over 33 years” — is saying the very same thing today.

The $26.4 billion supplemental military appropriation for Israel while it wages a genocidal war in Gaza reflects the steady stream of military aid provided by the United States since the presidency of John F. Kennedy. [$184 billion in today’s dollar in military aid and missile defense.]

The recent larger grant by Congress, — seven times larger than the already huge annual appropriation of $3.8 billion — is similar to that of October 1973 when the U.S. stepped in to help Israel defeat Egypt and Syria after Israel had run out of munitions.

This was the fourth conflict since Israel’s surprise attack on Egypt in 1967 during which it destroyed the Egyptian air force — while Egypt’s planes were still on the ground — drawing other Arab countries into a war as they came to Egypt’s defense. Israel used the opportunity to attack Syria, Jordan, and as far away as Iraq, seized the Sinai, Gaza, and Golan Heights.

Nixon at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir announced $2.2 billion in emergency aid to Israel – which would be $14 billion today.  Still, despite the military advantage this gave Israel, what actually ended the war was the oil embargo imposed by OPEC against the United States. At the time, the U.S. was dependent upon Middle East oil and turning off the spigot created a major gas crisis across the country. [The U.S. no longer relies upon oil from the Middle East since fracking for shale oil was introduced. In fact, the U.S. has become the world’s biggest oil producer and the third largest oil exporter after Russia and Iraq.]

What we see today and what has unfolded historically is an imperialist war for hegemony in the Middle East. Aside from the military actions and wars that the U.S. has waged directly in the Middle East, just look at where U.S. has military bases with thousands of troops stationed today:

Bahrain home to U.S. Naval Central Command and where the U.S. 5th fleet is based which patrols the Arabian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Sea including the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Strait of Bab al Mandeb. Additionally, there are U.S. bases in Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Qatar (U.S. Air Force Centcom headquarters), Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE as well as troops stationed in Djibouti as part of Africom.

Ralph Schoenman devoted two chapters of The Hidden History of Zionism to the myth of security as the motor force of Israeli foreign policy. Schoenman relies completely on what the Zionists themselves have to say. Following are some excerpts.

Prime minister Golda Meir and defense minister Moshe Dayan meeting with troops on the Golan Heights, on November 21, 1973. (Ron Frenkel/GPO)

Chapter 7: The Myth of Security

“Security” has been the catch-phrase deployed to screen widespread massacre of civilian populations throughout Palestine and Lebanon, for the confiscation of Palestinian and Arab land, for the expansion into surrounding territory and the establishment of new settlements, for deportation and for sustained torture of political prisoners.

The publication of the Personal Diary of Moshe Sharett (Yoman ishi, Maariv, Tel Aviv, 1979) demolished the myth of security as the motor force of Israeli policy. Moshe Sharett was a former Prime Minister of Israel (1954-55), director of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department and Foreign Minister (1948-56).

Sharett’s diary reveals in explicit language that the Israeli political and military leadership never believed in any Arab danger to Israel.

They sought to maneuver and force the Arab states into military confrontations which the Zionist leadership were certain of winning so Israel could carry out the destabilization of Arab regimes and the planned occupation of additional territory.

Sharett described the governing motive of Israeli military provocation: To bring about the liquidation of all … Palestinian claims to Palestine through the dispersion of the Palestinian refugees to distant corners of the world.

The Sharett diaries document a longstanding program of Israel’s leaders from both Labor and Likud: to “dismember the Arab world, defeat the Arab national movement and create puppet regimes under regional Israeli power.”  Sharett cites cabinet meetings, position papers and policy memoranda which prepared wars “to modify the balance of power in the region radically, transforming Israel into the major power in the Middle East.” [100] Sharett reveals that far from Israel “reacting” to Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal for its war of October 1956, the Israeli leadership had prepared this war and had it on their agenda from autumn 1953, one year before Nasser came to power. …

A timetable for conquest was decided at the highest military and political level. The occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was prepared in the early 1950s. In 1954, David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan developed a detailed plan to instigate internal Lebanese conflict in order to fragment Lebanon. This was sixteen years before an organized Palestinian political presence occurred there in the aftermath of the expulsions from Jordan in 1970, when King Hussein slaughtered Palestinians in what came to be known as “Black September”. Sharett described “the use of terror and aggression to provoke” in order to facilitate conquest:

On October 26, 1953, Sharett writes: 1) The Army considers the present border with Jordan as absolutely unacceptable. 2) The Army is planning war in order to occupy the rest of Eretz Israel.

In May 1954, Ben Gurion and Dayan formulated a war plan for the absorption of Lebanon:

According to Dayan, the only thing that’s necessary is to find an officer, even just a Major. We should … buy him … to make him agree to declare himself the savior of the Maronite population.

Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, will occupy the necessary territory and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel. The territory from the Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel and everything will be all right.

The CIA gave Israel the ’green light’ to attack Egypt. The energies of Israel’s security establishment became wholly absorbed by the preparations for the war which would take place exactly one year later.

Ben Gurion and Dayan proposed that Israel create a pretext to seize the Gaza Strip. [Sharett opposed the idea considering the 200,000 Palestinians who resided in the Gaza Strip not all of whom would flee.]

The plans exposed by Moshe Sharett did not originate with David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. In 1904, Theodor Herzl described the territory over which the Zionist movement laid claim as inclusive of all the land “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”.  The territory embraced all of Lebanon and Jordan, two thirds of Syria, one-half of Iraq, a strip of Turkey, one-half of Kuwait, one third of Saudi Arabia, the Sinai and Egypt, including Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo.

In his testimony before the United Nations Special Committee of Enquiry which was preparing the Partition of Palestine (July 9, 1947), Rabbi Fischmann, the official representative of the Jewish agency for Palestine, reiterated Herzl’s claims:

The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates. It includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.  [as cited in the Bible: Genesis 15:18 – the Lords covenant with Abram about the land for his descendants …]

Chapter 12: Strategy for Conquest

In 1982, while advance preparations were being completed for the invasion of Lebanon and the massacre of Palestinians in the camps around Beirut, Sidon and Tyre, a remarkable document was published in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Its author, Oded Yinon, was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry and reflects high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment.

The article, A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, outlines a timetable for Israel to become the imperial regional power based upon the dissolution of the Arab states. In discussing the vulnerability of the corrupt regimes of the Middle East, Yinon inadvertently exposes the full measure of their betrayal of the needs of the population and their inability to defend themselves or their people against imperial subjugation. …

Yinon revives the idea of former Labor Foreign Minister Abba Eban that the Arab East is a “mosaic” of ethnic divergence. The form of rule, therefore, appropriate to the region is the Millet system of the Ottoman Empire, wherein administrative rule was based upon local functionaries presiding over discrete ethnic communities. …

Yinon contends that the Arab nation is a fragile shell waiting to be shattered into multiple fragments. Israel must follow through with the policies it has pursued since the inception of Zionism, seeking to purchase local agents among factions and communal groups who will assert themselves against other such communities at Israel’s behest. … The “new” strategy of the eighties is the old imperial dictum of divide and rule, which depends for its success upon the securing of corrupt satraps to do the bidding of an aspiring imperial order.

Lebanon was the model, prepared for its role by the Israelis for thirty years, as the Sharett diaries revealed. It is the expansionist compulsion set forth by Herzl and Ben Gurion even as it is the logical extension of the Sharett diaries. The dissolution of Lebanon was proposed in 1919, planned in 1936, launched in 1954 and realized in 1982.

“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The subsequent dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas, as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run. The dissolution of the military power of these states serves as the primary short-term.”

Ralph goes on to describe the fragmentation of Syria, the assault on Iran, targeting Iraq, the ongoing undermining of Egypt, the dislocation of Sudan, the expectations for Saudi Arabia [Let us note that this expectation is unfulfilled as the U.S. depended upon Saudi Arabia, aside from the oil exports originally, for funding the insurgency in Afghanistan, for keeping the lid on Palestinian expectations, and as an ally against Iran], Jordan, which the U.S. depended upon to stifle the Palestinian resistance, and most of all the plans for depopulating Palestine.

Not only must Palestinians be driven out of the West Bank and Gaza, but from the Galilee and pre-1967 Israel. They are to be scattered as they were in 1948.

“Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today.

“Labor and Likud alike:

“Y’ben Poret, a ranking official in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, was irritated in 1982 by pious criticisms of the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza: “It is,” he declared, “time to rip away the veil of hypocrisy. In the present, as in the past, there is no Zionism, no settlement of the land, no Jewish state, without the removal of all the Arabs, without confiscation.”  The 1984 political platform of the Labor Party was promoted in full-page ads in the two leading Israeli dailies, Ma’ariv and Ha’aretz.

The ads highlighted the “Four No’s”:

•         No to a Palestinian state

•         No negotiations with the PLO

•         No return to the 1967 borders

•         No removal of any settlements.

The ad advocated an increase in the number of settlements on the West Bank and Gaza, their full funding and protection.

Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan is on the phone while Defense Minister Ariel Sharon is center giving battle instructions for the 1982 Israeli attack on and occupation of Lebanon.

The question above all for the Zionists is Palestinian Population Transfer

Yinon’s ideas were also echoed in an important story carried by The Washington Post on its front page on February 7, 1988, under the headline Expelling Palestinians: It Isn’t a New Idea and It Isn’t Just Kahane’s.

Whatever may be the tactical divergences which emerge from time to time between Israel and the United States, there is no Zionist campaign that can sustain itself without the backing of its principal sponsor. The US government between 1949 and 1983, provided $92.2 billion in military aid, economic aid, loans, special grants and tax deductible “bonds and gifts”. [186] As Joseph C. Harsh, put it in the August 5, 1982, issue of The Christian Science Monitor.

Few countries in history have been as dependent on another as Israel is on the United States. Israel’s major weapons are from the United States – either as gifts or on long-term, low-interest loans, which few seriously expect to be repaid.

Israel’s survival is underwritten and subsidized from Washington. Without American arms, Israel would lose the quantitative and qualitative advantage which President Reagan has promised to maintain for them. Without the economic subsidy, Israel’s credit would vanish and its economy would collapse.

In other words, Israel can only do what Washington allows it to do. It dares not conduct a single military operation without the tacit consent of Washington. When it does undertake a military offensive, the world assumes correctly that it has Washington’s tacit consent.

The Israeli state is not coextensive with the Jews as a people. Zionism, historically, has been a minority ideology among Jews. A state is but an apparatus which enforces specific economic and social relations. It is a structure of power and its purpose is, however guised, to coerce and to impose obedience

.And so, Ralph Schoenman concludes in this section: “Even if the apartheid Israeli state were anchored on a ship off of Haifa, it would be an outrage. Like the South African state, Pinochet’s Chile or the state in America (run by 2% of the population who control 90% of the national weal

th), we owe it no allegiance.”

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The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Schoenman is available online at the Marxist Internet Archive:

<https://www.marxists.org/history/eto/document/mideast/hidden/index.htm>

Print copies are available for a contribution to Socialist Organizer. Contact us at theorganizer@earthlink.net

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“Which Side Are You On?”

“Which side are you on?” Florence Reece sang out in 1931 during the coal miners’ strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, a struggle in which the mine owners were so violent that it was called the Harlan County War.

They say in Harlan County

There are no neutrals there

You’ll either be a union man

Or a thug for J. H. Clare

Which side are you on, boys?

Which side are you on.

Today, it is undeniable that the Zionist assault against the Palestinian people is genocide. Not just the war of extermination in Gaza, but the dispossession underway to effect annexation of the West Bank.

Today, it should be undeniably obvious who is the oppressor and who are the oppressed.

Today, students in the U.S. and across the world warrant our solidarity as they shout out boldly: “There are no neutrals there … Which side are you on?”

Let us work together to advance the struggle for socialism. Contact us at theorganizer@earthlink.net to learn more about Socialist Organizer, join one of our study groups, and become involved in our campaigns.