Israel: Anti-Netanyahu Protesters blame PM for Gaza Escalation
Statement by the Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), 24 May 2021, http://the-isleague.com
In a new provocation, aimed at showing the Zionist public that Israel won the war, Netanyahu's government decided to open 'al-Ḥaram al-Šarīf', "the Noble Sanctuary", (الحرم القدسي الشريف)(Al Aqsa) or as the Zionists call it “Temple Mount” complex to Jews beginning on Sunday amid simmering tensions at the holy site that led to clashes across Israel and the war with Gaza. “Some 50 Jewish settlers, flanked by heavily armed Israeli special forces, stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem in the early morning, hours after Palestinian worshippers were beaten and assaulted by Israeli police, according to the Islamic authority overseeing the site.” (1)
On Saturday night, the head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, Moshe Gafni, urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to reopen the Temple Mount to Jewish visitors. “Not ascending to the Temple Mount is the deepest proof of our belonging to this holy place to which we direct our prayers,” said UTJ chairman Moshe Gafni, a close ally of the prime minister. “I ask you to keep the Temple Mount closed to Jews!”
Expel the Zionist Ambassadors
In Ireland a motion to expel Israel’s ambassador from Ireland is expected to come to a vote in Ireland’s parliament this week. Eleven legislators from four parties submitted the motion early last week. The motion states that “over 60 children have been murdered by the [IDF,]” and that “the current escalation of violence was instigated by the attempt to ethnically cleanse 28 Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah area of Jerusalem.”
We do not know of course whether this motion will pass but one of the demands of the pro-Palestinian camp must be the expelling of the Zionists ambassadors and other operators from all Arab countries and all other non-imperialist countries. We also do not object to sanctions on Israel even by imperialist countries, as they were forced to at the end of the South Africa's apartheid regime.
The Zionist Liberal Nonsense
The liberal Jews say that their hearts are bleeding for Goldin and the other missing bodies that are in the hands of Hamas. But the color of their blood is not red but blue and white. Tzur Goldin, the brother of Hadar Goldin, a soldier who was killed and whose body was taken by Hamas during "Operation Protective Edge'' in 2014 that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, demands Hamas disarmament, breaking Hamas's spirit, and returning the missing bodies held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is willing to return the bodies but has its own demands: releasing the political prisoners and the fishermen Israel kidnapped. Israel is not ready for a prisoner’s exchange. On 11 December 2012, the office of then Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank stated that since 1967, 800,000 Palestinians, or roughly 20% of the total population and 40% of the male population, had been imprisoned by Israel at one point in time. About 100,000 had been held in administrative detention.
One of the proofs that the Palestinians have won in this round is the fact that there is an Arab-Jewish protest movement against the Israeli government. Thousands of people demonstrated in central Tel Aviv on Saturday night, calling for Jewish and Arab coexistence and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Chanting “This is all of our homes,” “We stand together without hatred and without fear,” and “The answer to the Right is Israel and Palestine,” the demonstrators marched from Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to the Habima Theater Square. There, the crowd heard speeches from Itamar Avnery and Sally Abed, as well as from author David Grossman and Joint List leader Ayman Odeh.
We tell these people: Grossman is a liberal Zionists who laments the war’s toll on children, Israelis and Palestinians. He said: “Allow me to dedicate my words this evening to the children of the Gaza border [communities in Israel] and to the children of Gaza,” he said. “We are the hostages of the various extremists. We sit with mouths agape and watch how human beings become targets, how mothers lie on top of their children on the street to protect them, how multistory buildings fall like a house of cards and whole families disappear in the blink of an eye,” said Grossman, whose son was killed in Second Lebanon War in 2006 during his military service." (2)
While it is of course a better line then lamenting only the Israeli children, it is a truly bourgeois pacifist line leading to nowhere as it equates Hamas, an organization of the oppressed people, with the Netanyahu's government of the imperialist settler-colonialists’ oppressors. Not to speak of the fact that while Hamas killed 2 children, Israel killed at least 63 children.
Sally Abed, who together with Avnery heads the organization “Omdim Beyachad” (We Stand Together) financed by the New Israel Found a liberal Zionist organization, said “I am Sally, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. I refuse to return to the routine of institutional discrimination, of police violence and political arrests. I refuse to have second-class citizenship, and a racist government that is threatening all our lives for the benefit of an economic and settler elite. This government has no interest in serving our interests.” (3)
It is an even better speech but without any programmatic conclusion, while at the same time the pro Palestinians demonstrations around the world called for: "Palestine free from the river to the sea".
The Stalinist Front – The Same Reformist Garbage
MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of the predominantly Arab Joint List party in the Knesset, said: “People are speaking about the darkness that is descending on this country,” he said. “I see light. I see a strong light. Jews and Arabs together will dispel the darkness. You are the light. We do not accept the dichotomy of nationalism. Our path forward is together. Jews and Arabs together… There are two nations here. Both of them have a right to self-determination. Both deserve peace and equality. We respect the national identity of the Jews and the national identity of the Arabs, we respect both nations. We have a path forward,” he said.“ (4)
Once again like the liberal Zionists, Odeh puts on the same level the nationalism of the oppressed fighting for their freedom and the nationalism of the oppressors that fight for an apartheid state from the river to the sea. Only social-imperialists support the right of self-determination for the oppressors!
Not surprisingly in his speech he did not call for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, nor to the destruction of the walls around Gaza, nor for self-defense of the Palestinians and neither for the end of the law of return for the Jews. With his line, Hadash still may support a government led by Lapid and his partners from the right-wing parties who supported the police and the army against the Palestinians including during the last two weeks.
Odeh and Hadash, a Stalinist front, have learned nothing from their betrayals of the Palestinian cause, from helping the Zionists in 1948 to the supporting the illusion that an Arab-Jewish solidarity can be achieved in the framework of the existing Apartheid state. A mini-Palestinian state on less than 20% of Palestine is the nature of the Apartheid system, similar to the Bantustans in South Africa during the Apartheid.
Most Palestinians today stand for a Palestine free from the river to the sea – not for the phony line of two states, which is a pie in the sky, used by the Zionists to steal more land and build more Zionist settlements in the West Bank. A program that has turned the Palestinian Administration of Abbas into a collaborator with the Zionist armed forces.
Odeh has not learned also from the fact that protestors in Al Aqsa shouting slogans in support of Hamas, denounced the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, for his affiliation with the Palestinian Authority. Hadash cannot lead the struggle of the Palestinians as it is a pro-Zionist fraction like Sheikh Mohammed Hussein.
The Road to Jewish-Palestinian Solidarity
For the Israeli Jews to live as brothers and sisters with the Palestinians a state that does not define itself as a Jewish state is necessary.
A state that welcomes the Palestinian refugees driven away from their country by ethnic cleansing.
A state that its national anthem is not:
“As long as in the heart within,
The Jewish soul yearns,
And toward the eastern edges, onward,
An eye gazes toward Zion.
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope that is two-thousand years old,
To be a free nation in our land,
The Land of Zion and Jerusalem.”
A state that its police and army defend the workers and the oppressed not the filthy racist capitalists and their friends.
A state that all places of work will be open to all workers and controlled by the workers that today are the most exploited.
Yet this vision of Red Democratic Palestine from the river to the sea is unacceptable to the Zionists whether they are right-wing or left-wing Zionists. That is why they do not support equal rights but a racist state. That is why their vision of co-existence is no more than an illusion, a pie in the sky.
Now that there is a cease fire Israel has returned to the flea circus, namely what right-wing block will form the next racist government, the one led by Lapid or the one led by Netanyahu, which government will drag Israel to a possible war with Iran faster.
The Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine) fights for:
* Support the right of return of the Palestinian refugees!
* Smash the walls around Gaza!
* Organize self-defense of the Palestinians against the police and the settlers!
* Expel the Zionist ambassadors!
* Israel hands off the Noble Sanctuary (الحرم القدسي الشريف) Al Haram Al Sharif and al Aqsa!
* Israel hands off Sheikh Jarrah!
* For a free Red Palestine from the river to the sea!
Footnotes
2) https://www.timesofisrael.com/dispel-the-darkness-thousands-of-jews-and-arabs-rally-for-coexistence/
3) Ibid
4) Ibid
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The RCIT, jointly with our comrades of CS (Argentina), has published a number of documents on the Fourth Gaza War which compiled on a special sub-page on our website: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/collection-of-articles-on-fourth-gaza-war/