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ASAYAKE

Friday, September 12, 2008

Bad News, Good News and Reading Material

Bad news.


Assassination of Iraqi writer Kamil Shayya Abdallah

Unknown gunmen assassinated the Iraqi writer Kamil Shayya Abdallah, adviser to the minister of culture, on Muhammad al-Qasim Street in central Baghdad on Saturday 23 August, 2008. Security sources explained that "unidentified gunmen opened fire using pistols with silencers on his car, the source added that "the accident occurred at about 15:00 local time (12:00 GMT), and Shayyaa was transferred to the hospital before he died there." And the sources confirmed that "his driver was seriously wounded" and was rushed to hospital.

Shayya was a well known researcher and writer and literary critic; he was appointed an adviser in the Ministry of Culture since 2003 after the changes which affected the country and worked with the three ministers who occupied the post of Minister of Culture and they are respectively: Mufeed Al-Jazaeri, Nouri Al-Rawi, Asa'd Hashemi and Finally, with Maher al-Hadithi.

Shayya who was resident in Belgium before the fall of the regime, is one of the most prominent supporters of establishing a new cultural trend in Iraq to be in accordance with open secular aspects.

The deceased was born in the city of Nasiriya (375 km south of Baghdad) in 1951 and worked in the field of translation and writing of literary and cultural researches. He was a member of the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party and one of the most prominent writers and editors of the (Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadeeda "New Culture") magazine issued by the Communist Party. He worked for it 1970s, before leaving the country for political reasons.


IraqSlogger.com reported that Shayya's death has had consequences in the Iraqi intellectual world:
A few weeks ago, an assassination in Baghdad took the life of a high-level official
in the Ministry of Culture: Iraqi academic Kamil Shayya'. Little interest was given
to Shayya's assassination in the Western media, but his life and death have become
the center of a heated debate between Arab intellectuals, involving difficult
questions on war, occupation, collaboration,resistance; questions that are likely
to be central for Iraqis and Arabs for years to come, regardless of the eventual
fate of the US enterprise in the country.

The first flare in Shayya's controversy began when Pierre Abi Sa'b, the cultural
editor of al-Akhbar newspaper, penned an obituary for his fallen friend,
describing him as "our martyr, all of us. The martyr of contemporary Arab utopia
(in reference to Shayya's academic interests.)"
Abi Sa'b did not hide the fact that he disagreed with Shayya' when he decided,
in 2003, to return to Iraq and be part of the new US-sponsored government."
However, Mithal Al-Alusi has avoided assasination.
Liberal Iraqi MP Mithal Alusi’s family home in West Baghdad's Hai
Al-Jam’ia neighborhood was reduced to rubble this morning after
terrorists had rigged the structure with explosives in an apparent
assassination attempt. Alusi, a Sunni, had been leading in recent weeks
the drive to repatriate internally displaced Shia and Sunni families
back to their neighborhoods in Western Baghdad.

A couple of days ago, Alusi visited the house that his late father, a college
professor, had built in the 1970s but did not enter the premises. There is a ‘Sons
of Iraq’ checkpoint manned by ex-insurgents directly across from the
house. An investigation as to the causes of their negligence (surprise,
surprise) is underway by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior.

Today’s event is a reminder that men such as Alusi, whose two sons were killed
in a previous assassination attempt in February 2005, are still active
in Iraqi politics and had never given up on the country despite being
embattled and unfunded. He always stood for a secular and non-sectarian
patriotic agenda, one that is being emulated by many Iraqi politicians
now. It is even being parroted by the Consensus Bloc that rejoined
Maliki's cabinet a couple of days ago. They have come a long way since
their previous candidate for the Ministry of Culture fled Iraq over a
year ago--with U.S. official connivance--ahead of an arrest warrant
charging him with the murder of Alusi's sons.
He has even appeared at an anti-terror conference in Herzilya, Israel last week!
Iraqi parliament member Mithal al-Alousi delivered the opening statements
at the Herzliyah Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) Conference Wednesday,
in which he called for stronger relations between Iraq and Israel.

Al-Alousi also called for stronger cooperation between Iraq and
Israel in fighting terror, and issued a harsh condemnation of Iran,
which he accused of meddling in Iraqi affairs.

The Iraqi parliamentarian has spoken at the ICT conference two
previous times. His visit in 2004 elicited harsh criticism in Iraq and
several attacks were launched against them, including one that left his
two sons dead.
----------------------------------

Recently, there has been a great deal of research published on the Iraq situation,
especially after the Sinjar raid in which Al-Queda in Mesopotamia documents were
captured by Iraqi and American troops. The following are some of the studies put
out recently that shed light on how the conflict is developing. All three of these
documents (with the possible exception of the Brookings report below) are heavily
indebted to the American war effort and thus will reflect quite obvious bias. Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout is for instance written by West Point military men!

Nevertheless, for sheer statistics as well as for their insight into American imperial policy and the
internal Iraqi situation, I believe they are worth the read. Now the critical question with regards to Iraq is not whether the Americans will withdraw (they will), but what are the forces of the ground that may push for a more progressive society in the wake of withdraw? What are the forces that will push for civil war? And has the last five years of mayhem diminished the stature of the fundamentalists and sectarians?

The Iraq Index by the Saban Center for Mid-East Policy

A compilation of statistics and facts on Iraq researched and published by the Brookings group, updated in late August.

Includes:
Estimated Number of Iraqi Civilian Fatalities by Month, May 2003-Present…………………………………………………………………………………4
Detailed Explanation of Iraqi Civilian Fatality Estimates by Time Period…………………………………………………………………………………….5
Multiple Fatality Bombings in Iraq………………………………………………..………..…………………………………..……………..……..…….9
Killed and Wounded in Multiple Fatality Bombings………………………………………………………………………………..…………………………...9
Multiple Fatality Bombings by Type Since January 2007…………………………………………………….………………………………………………..10
Detailed Breakdown of Deaths Associated with Multiple Fatality Bombings in Iraq……………………….…………………………………………..…...10
Number of Multiple Fatality Bombings Targeting Civilians by Sectarian Group and Month………………………………………………………………11
Number of Newly Displaced People Per Month in Iraq, Externally and Abroad…………………………………………..………………………………...11
Number and Current Status of Concerned Local Citizens (CLC’s) in Iraq…………………………………………………………………………………..12
Status of the Sons of Iraq by Location (With Monthly Pay)………………………………………NEW……………………………………………………..12
Weapons Caches Found and Cleared in Iraq, by Year………………………………………………………………………………………………………...12
Progress of Political Benchmarks Agreed upon by the bush Administration and the Iraqi Government………………………………………………….13
Journalists Killed in Iraq…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………..……………21
Nationalities of Journalists Killed in Iraq….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..21
Circumstances of Journalist Deaths……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..21
Iraqis Kidnapped……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………..….…21
Iraqi Civilians Killed by US Troops……………………………………………………………………………………………………….………...…………..21
Fuel………….……………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….39
Oil Revenue from Exports……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..…………….……………..40
Electricity………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………….……….….…………….41
Nationwide Unemployment Rate………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………..……42

Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout
...not only expands on the analysis of the Sinjar Records conducted in the first report, it also introduces a host of new data, including:

* Statistics on the exact number and nationality of foreign fighters held by the US at Camp Bucca in Iraq.

* Contracts signed by AQI's foreign suicide bombers

* Contracts signed by AQI fighters entering and leaving Iraq

* Accounting sheets signed by various fighters that indicate funding sources and expenditures

* Several narratives describing AQI’s network in Syria, personnel problems, and ties to Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon

* Weapons reports, etc.

Findings

The report has several major new findings:

* Foreign Fighters were an important source of funds for AQI; Saudi Fighters contributed far more money than any other nationality

* Far more Syrians and Egyptians are held at Camp Bucca than were listed in the Sinjar Records, which likely reflects the demographic shift away from those nationalities

* Approximately 75% of suicide bombings in Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007 can be attributed to fighters listed in the Sinjar Records.

* “Bleedout” of fighters from Iraq is occurring, but in relatively small numbers. Nonetheless, these individual fighters will likely be well-trained and very dangerous. The primary threat from these fighters is to Arab states, Af-Pak, and perhaps Somalia.

* Smuggling of all kinds across the Syrian/Iraqi border has long been linked to corruption in both Syria and Iraq, which limits both government’s ability to crackdown.

* Fighters that contributed money to AQI were more likely to become suicide bombers.


Special Groups Regenerate in Iraq by the Weekly Standard

Most Dangerous Course of Action

The Special Groups and Iranian-retrained
JAM can take a less immediately violent,
but more strategically dangerous course
of action: namely, to reintroduce a bettertrained
and well-commanded militia in 2009 or
later, as U.S. forces draw down. The training and
reorganizational period might compensate not
only for tactical weaknesses, but for the brittleness
of the command structure that accounted for
its inadequacy. Ties between commanders of
different geographical areas and echelons could
be strengthened in Iran, if the organizations are
not excessively fractious or if leadership there
has the capability to overcome disagreements
quickly. Alternatively, it is possible that the
IRGC-QF could create an elite and responsive
force – weeding out divisive members and leaders
and retraining them over a six-month to a year
period– in order to have a small but effective
militia capable of fomenting attacks against the
government of Iraq over the long-term. The most
likely form of this militia would be an adaptation
of the Hezbollah model suitably modified for
Iraq, which could be reintroduced whenever or
wherever the government is suitably weak. The
organization might be ready to function during
the 2009 national election or in 2010 as the new
Parliament, Prime Minister, and Cabinet take
office—a moment that was central to the creation
and use of Special Groups in 2006.


Friday, August 29, 2008

Scattered Observations

Kazuya Itou was a volunteer working with the Peshwar no Kai group in Afghanistan. The Peshwar-kai is an NGO that has deeply embedded itself in the Afghan countryside and has delivered medical treatment, dug wells, built irrigation channels, and contributed to reviving the ecosystem of the countryside among other concrete human development. Kazuya Itou volunteered, and risked his life to join the mission of reviving Afghan society after nearly 30 years of civil war. His means were peaceful, and he describes his intentions in this way:

"Judging my current abilities, honestly I'm terrible at languages. I also can't deny that I have no experience or knowledge in agriculture. However I want to learn together with the people of Afghanistan.
My aim is to help restore Afghanistan to the rich and green country that it should be. This is not something that can happen in two or three years."


For these quite noble goals instead, Mr. Itou was shot and killed by a Taliban group. This was not a random attack, his attackers have made their motivations clear: ransoming Mr. Itou for money and creating chaos for the Afghan government. And so his life, and his mission have been ended.

Did this order come from on high? It seems unlikely since Afghanistan's Taliban have over the past six years split into several different organizations, more likely this was a crime of opportunity. And yet this did not stop a Taliban organization from issuing a statement declaring that "the killings will not stop until all foreigners leave Afghanistan," and that "although this organization makes itself useful to Afghans, they are spies who bring in western influence." Thus, even the Peshwar kai, an organization dedicated exclusively to the peaceful reconstruction of Afghan society (and adamantly against the American and NATO occupation) is targeted not only at the ground level, also at the political level by Taliban fundamentalism. These brutes have announced that "We will kill members of any aid organization, even if their country has not sent troops to Afghanistan."


The killers.

There is more to this story. I have personally seen the main representative of Peshwar-kai, Tetsu Nakamura, speak at Kyoto University in 2006, and I remember being very disenchanted with his speech. Of course he layed out the various activities that the group was undertaking in the country which are all very laudable and worthy of emulation. He also described how he saw these activities as directly linked to article 9 of the Japanese constitution. However, when the discussion turned to politics, he repeatedly denounced the presence of the American and NATO-led occupation of Afghanistan. When an audience member asked him what we can do about the situation in Afghanistan, he said "I think we can only wait until America collapses as a country." This struck me as a profoundly reactionary declaration. And yet everyone around me, NGO workers and audience members alike gave him a standing ovation after this, his final statement.

I do not mean to question the important work that the Peshwar-kai undertakes in Afghanistan, their bravery, nor the events that they have seen which lead them to their conclusions. However it is obvious enough that the organization and its adherents subscribed to a reactionary ideology and eventually fell victim to it. How?

Take for instance this interview that Magazine 9 did with Tetsu Nakamura, the Peshwar-kai's representative, on April 30th where his views on progressive social change become clear.

"In Afghanistan, the amount of people who are dying is growing. Of 25 million people in the country, 12 million will be affected by drought, 5 million are at the starvation line and 10 million are right below the starvation line. And then you've got these people trying to realize male/female equality, or put in communication networks around the country, really now what's that about?"

....

"Q: So the Peshwar-kai has managed to embed itself quite deeply in Afghanistan it seems.

Nakamura: Yes. Afghans are very pro-Japanese. Plus we have always respected religion.

Q: Religion? I guess you mean Islam...

A: Largely there has been a lot of activity that has no understanding of Islam. For example, female equality programs which want to assert womens rights and whatnot. Look, if you try to do that out there, the women will reject it first of all. They'll think like: what is this, some Christian prosletyzing?"

So Nakamura at least takes an antagonistic view towards gender equality.

Even worse, in this article, written right at the start of the Afghanistan war, he emphatically defends the Taliban regime and the right of councils of elders to accept Taliban leadership in villages. He talks about how in 2001, although women are not allowed to go to school, the Taliban government will look the other way when they go to 'secret schools'. He would spend the next seven years denouncing the occupation and the aid efforts of most NGOs. And now these same Taliban, wrested from power, are burning down women's schools across the country, in fact just last week in Peshwar, of all places.

I could do a lot more to expose the contradictions of the Peshwar-kai's ideology. Friends have told me that the organization at one time boasted of 'being Taliban', not in the armed sense, but in 'belonging' to the countryside. To 'be Taliban' how many times must someone look the other way when women are stoned to death, and informal Islamic courts sentence people to execution? Still, one thing is undeniable. When Mr. Itou was murdered, more than a thousand villagers took to the countryside to find the killers and arrest them. Just from that mobilization we can tell that the Peshwar-kai's activities are widely respected and deserve greater attention. And yet in the end, their efforts are mostly for naught, since they are being evacuated from the country along with most NGOs given the collapsing security situation.

Mr. Nakamura and those who sympathize with him say a lot about the hopeless ideologies that people will turn to when real social progress seems unattainable. The Peshwar-kai holds something like 10 conferences and discussions a month across Japan, it is fair to say that the organization is one of the most influential Japanese aid organizations in the country, and are depended on for an understanding of the Afghan conflict.

I can't help but remember the murder of Margaret Hassan, the anti-war volunteer working in Baghdad since before the war, who was killed and left in a bag on the roadside, her arms and legs severed and her throat slit. That was definitely the point, after so many Iraqi leftists, reporters, and other aid workers had been killed, where I realized that I could no longer see eye-to-eye with the anti-war left, who would accept anything over the flawed bourgeois democracy that the coalition was trying to achieve. Given the brutal murder of Kazuya Itou, perhaps there will be others in Japan who realize that compromising with religious fascists is the first step in getting killed by them.

****************************

Which leads to....

Seen at the protest agains the DNC rally (warning: vile right-wing link) organized by the broad anti-war left. Someone should perhaps inform these idiots that it is the Sadrists that are probably most responsible for the near-extinction of progressives and socialists from Iraq. Their Islamic courts were arresting and executing communists once the insurgency got underway in 2004. And their organization has stayed consistent to its original mission: reactionary opposition to occupation in the service of sectarian Shi'ism.

In other words, they would literally kill you. And others like you who live in their country.

Those who dig their own graves cannot complain when the dirt starts filling in.

****************************


And in Gaza, again teachers are on strike, this time expressly against the Hamas regime. Which the gutless writers at Electronic Intifada can only describe as "Palestinian political tensions impacting (the) education sector". Why not call it what it is? A working class struggle against fundamentalism and dictatorship.

The General Secretariat of General Union of Palestinian Teachers, which is aligned with the Fatah movement, declared a five-day strike at public schools throughout the Gaza Strip to be launched on 24 August, the first day of the new school year, in protest to what it described as "arbitrary decisions" taken by the Ministry of Education of the Gaza government. These decisions have included transferring school directors and teachers to other schools, arresting a number of directors and teachers, attacking janitors and confiscating keys to schools.

According to information gathered by PCHR field workers, on the first day of the new school year, Sunday 24 August 2008, a partial strike was reported at all public educational institutions in the Gaza Strip. The commitment of teachers to the strike was estimated at 45 to 55 percent. Consequently, the first day of school was largely disrupted as many school directors, teachers and administrative staff committed themselves to the five-day strike declared by the General Union of Palestinian Teachers. In a subsequent development, the Internal Security Service belonging to the Ministry of Interior of the Gaza government circulated communiqués to directors of public schools, in which it threatened to take what it called "necessary legal actions" against whoever disrupts the educational process.
And from another article:
Hamas...installed hundreds of new teachers almost immediately after the walkout began. Education Minister Mohammed Askoul estimated 2,000 of the 9,000 public school teachers had been replaced

"Anybody who left their job will not be allowed to return," Askoul said. "They have become irrelevant and cannot be trusted anymore as educators."

Don't forget the last time there was a public workers strike in Gaza.

So what scions of the internationalist left can we expect to stand in solidarity with the strike-breaking government of Gaza after the firing of over 2000 teachers? Is there any need to revisit the myriad ways in which the repression of working class antagonism works not only to aggravate the fundamentalist hot house but teaches the rest of the dispossesed not to speak up? Ask yourself how long it will be until Hamas finds that it must divert energies that chafe against its internal dictatorship by launching another rocket war against Israeli civilians.




Saturday, May 10, 2008



Beirut

Follow along:
http://sursock.blogspot.com/
http://marxistfromlebanon.blogspot.com/


Thursday, December 13, 2007

Beer and communism is the way of the phuture

Readers of the asayake blog, thanks for your support over the years. My comrade Jesse Blue and I have decided to start a group blog at Beer and Communism with the somewhat obnoxious theme of inebriants and communist critique (plus a heavy critique of anti-imperialism). Expect discussions of class struggle, Israel, Palestine, Europe, the Middle East, Japan and more. Please have a look, bookmark the page, add it to your links, send it to your friends etc. etc. And be in touch! Hasta la victoria siempre...


Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Against the Anti-Globalization Critiques

Added by Mira Vogel on November 05, 2007 01:30:46 PM.
Why Your Revolution Is No Liberation - a readerThe dominant anti-globalisation grievance against capitalism goes something like this. Money- and market-orientated processes have reduced human beings to commodities, robbing them of any means of existence except the sale of their own labour-power in exchange for tokens of commodity-value: money. Value therefore comes to be overwhelmingly predetermined by the concrete terms of money. Money comes to dictate social relations with human and environmental degradation as an inevitable consequence. Money is therefore the essence of capitalism and capitalism's overthrow will hinge on the rejection of money and money-grubbing and the adoption of more natural, authentic, humanising forms of capital - craft and agricultural. Here the discourse becomes personalised.

Why Your Revolution is No Liberation is a reader critiquing this analysis of capitalism. From the introduction:
"A criticism of capitalism limited to big players bypasses the totality of societal relations and disguises these by presenting a concrete scapegoat that can also serve as the object of violence for the anti-capitalist revolution."
"... the personalisation of the capitalist socialization creates the structure of modern anti-Semitism. Value, money and trade as abstract homeless and exploitative forms are being ascribed to particular persons: Bankers, Fat Cats and capitalists. The step then to the personalisation of anti-Semitism, to the Jew, which most globalisation critics have not taken yet, is only a small one."
Containing writings of Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, Jean Amery, Stephan Grigat and Moishe Postone, Why Your Revolution Is No Liberation was compiled in response to a debate between German and Austrian anti-facist groups
and anti-globalisation activists in the run-up to the 33rd G8 summit last June.

It's also available in French and German.


Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Goldner's latest on capitalist crisis

Back from the mideast...



















For now, read this.

Fictitious Capital For Beginners: Imperialism, 'Anti-Imperialism', and the Continuing Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg

By Loren Goldner

The liquidity crisis currently wiping billions off global stock markets is just the tip of a very big iceberg. Beneath the credit crunch and incipient insolvency crisis lie the economic and political crisis of the USA’s global reign, claims Loren Goldner. But will this mean global depression, wars and intensified authoritarianism, or a renewed opportunity for communism? Goldner returns to the theories of Marx and Luxemburg to examine today's financial and military imperialism, and its left wing ‘anti-imperialist’ mirror

In February of this year the Chinese stock market, which had long been suspected of being in a runaway bubble phase, took a plunge. In the following days that tremor was felt in stock markets around the world. China in recent months has reached the ‘shoe shine boy’ phase of popular stock speculation (a major American investor famously decided to get out of the stock market just before the 1929 crash when a shoeshine boy gave him advice on stocks), and after the (not so welcome) correction, the Chinese market resumed its upward rush to new highs, followed with relief by investors everywhere.

With the slightest historical perspective, we can see that the world shock set off by such a hiccup in a still relatively small market (in terms of what savvy people call ‘total market capitalisation’) is something quite new, unthinkable only a few years ago. China’s stock market can have such an impact because people are aware that any pause, not to say downturn in the country’s economic boom (averaging over 10 percent GDP growth for years on end, whereas Britain in its 19th century heyday was considered quite impressive at 3 or 4 percent) could bring the contemporary worldwide financial euphoria to an end. Increasingly insiders and pundits talk openly of the ‘when, not if’ of a global downturn, or even (for some) cataclysm.



Saturday, June 16, 2007

REGIONAL WAR IN THE MID-EAST CALLS FOR CLASS STRUGGLE AND SOLIDARITY WITH ISRAEL

The Takeover

In a discussion with a German comrade awhile back, I brought up the appeal of Marwan Barghouti, jailed former leader of the Tanzim, and his political faction Al-Mustaqbal. Barghouti had abandoned the Tanzim after a series of suicide bombings, and has a history of collaboration with Israeli left groups such as: Women in Black, Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, Ta’ayush etc. My German friend wrote me back saying: "Yes, his politics sound good, but how many guns does he have?"

At the time I was skeptical of his response. The Palestinian intifada had proven (in its best moments) that popular resistance to occupation could overcome a more powerfully armed adversary. What relevance to emancipation would the side with the most weapons really have?

This question was in a way answered rather brutally two days ago in Gaza. By now the basic course of events should be well known: after Hamas' election and refusal to engage with the terms of the Quartet, i.e. ongoing negotiation based on the Oslo accords, tensions developed to explosion between Fatah and Hamas, leading to a state of civil war. What are less clear is what events precipitated this. To understand the current moment we have to return to the period directly after the Hamas election. The boycott of the Hamas government by the west had not gone on for very long when public sector workers in Gaza reacted against the new austerities imposed upon them by Hamas' rejectionism, staging strikes and demonstrations against the government late in 2006. Proving their democratic credentials, Hamas attempted to break the strike, firing on the demonstrators and encouraged students to scab against their teachers.
"As a protest against the attempts by the banks to confiscate part of the emergency money paid out to workers for loan repayments, demonstrators stormed offices of banks in the occupied territories. The industrial action taken by the workers resumed the the same day and rumours of an impending all out strike began to circulate
....
The strike included at its start, 37,000 teachers, 25,000 health workers, and 15,000 other public-services workers
.....
In front of the parliament there were continuous demonstrations with thousands demanding payment of wages, unemployment benefit and the creation of more jobs. They shouted slogans, threw stones at building and stormed the gates until they were brutally repressed by the riot police.

In Ramallah on the 30 August, a crowd of 3,000 people demonstrated outside a venue were Abass was meeting UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan. The demonstrators shouted “From today there is no government anymore. From this day on, there is no parliament anymore!” and “We have no money in our pockets.”
...
Less than a year ago the local Hamas leadership spoke about the possibility of an Intifada against the PNA. Now it is starting to understand that they themselves could be the target of such an event. The government is in negotiations with the strikers and it looks possible that the conflict will come to a negotiated end. The political direction is towards the formation of a unity government.

(Socialist World)
By the time tension between Hamas and Fatah was building towards explosion in the Gaza strip, Hamas had again to cope with the large-scale walkout of 15,000 public sector workers this April. How could Hamas slow this potential Intifada against its government? We could ask Rasem Al Bayari, Palestinian trade unionist of the PGFTU, one of many workers whose life was targeted by Palestinian security forces (led by Hamas). But sheer violence and repression were not adequate to contain the unrest. Hamas found other means more familiar to its activists. By firing or permitting the firing of rockets into southern Israel, Hamas could continue to make the eliminationist case for claims on Israeli territory, creating a focal point of 'national resistance' through which the population could be distracted with the fantasy of evicting the Israeli population. These rockets also double as bait for Israeli counterattacks, which in the event of a large-scale reoccupation of Gaza, Hamas would be in a position to unify the Palestinian factions on its own terms (since this interplay has been one of Hamas' major strategies after disengagement, it is obvious why Olmert has refused to hit Gaza in any major way so far). The focal point of the rocket launches more importantly allowed the party to compete with rival factions in Gaza, where Hamas struggled to increase its influence in streets that it did not fully control.

One of Hamas' major focuses in the Gaza strip since the disengagement has been an effort to recoup the political forces that have held power in the strip after disengagement. The eruption of working class struggle and the challenge of the Fatah faction made these efforts even more important. In Gaza, many of the forces patrolling the ground are clan forces, who may not have an essential loyalty to either Fatah or Hamas. This was made clear in the abduction of Alan Johnston by what are speculated to be Gaza clan forces (whom Hamas cannot crush outright), and his recently announced impending release subsequent to the Gaza coup. In this way Hamas plays a power game with the clans. This NPR segment sheds more light on clan influence in Gaza:
"WESTERVELT: ...in the security vacuum, well-armed clans have stepped in and appear to be consolidating control over key neighborhoods, as well as smuggling operations in Gaza commerce, legal and illegal. Professor Iyad Barghuthi, who runs a Palestinian human rights group, now counts more than 50 unofficial armed groups in Gaza.

Professor IYAD BARGHUTHI (Palestinian Human Rights Activist, Gaza City): You are talking about families. You are talking about, you know, groups with political movements. There's some mafias. And each one of the 53 wants to show that he has the power and he can do whatever he likes.

WESTERVELT: One of the most dominant local factions in Gaza today is the Dogmush clan. Palestinian security officials are extremely reluctant to even talk about the clan, but a senior Israeli security official who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned of growing weapons smuggling in Gaza and said, quote, "the Dogmush clan tells the story of Gaza today. It's clan business and no one in the Palestinian authority has the guts to stand up to them. There is no accountability," end quote.

A few of the many examples of Gaza chaos: masked gunmen recently shot up the convoy of the Gaza director of the U.N. agency that provides emergency food aid to nearly one million local people. The attackers remain at large; no one has been arrested. Last week, the new interior minister tried to survey the damage after sewage flooded a North Gaza village, killing five people. When the minister arrived, well-armed local families tried to kill him."
Since the channels of real local control in the strip were not fully open to Hamas, and in fact in some respects threatened a counter power, Hamas made its decision to seize political power. Hamas spokesmen like Hamdan Osama came up with a motive, describing clans patrolling in Gaza as 'lawless forces', and 'fiefdoms in Gaza'. Nevermind that Gaza is itself now a lawless fiefdom. The attack that came on the Fatah security forces was therefore at the same time an assertion of dictatorial rule over these clans, and clearly the Gaza working class, since during these melees Hamas forces fired on demonstrators demanding the cessation of hostility between factions. Just yesterday Hamas killed two unarmed peace demonstrators (to no international outcry). 26 people died in the ongoing street struggle in the same day and at least 600 have died in the period since the factional militias began feuding.
"The morgue was overflowing, with four bodies lined up on the floor, and some of the wounded were sleeping on cardboard on the floor.

Two men were killed in revenge slayings Friday, including a Fatah gunman thrown from a roof in what Hamas described as a family grievance - the gunman, they said, had killed a member of a Hamas-allied family. Another Fatah loyalist was shot dead in southern Gaza.

Since Hamas' victory late Thursday, about a dozen Fatah gunmen had been killed in gangland-style executions, Fatah said."
Now that Hamas has effectively split Palestine into two different enclaves it is critical to look at the wider implications and background of forces which made this possible.

Context of the Crisis

The insurgency against the US armed forces in Iraq has completely changed the coherency of American imperialism in the middle East and these changes are visible in the recent events in Gaza. In the midst of the largest crisis of American foreign policy in its history, Washington is increasingly trying to shelve not only the management of the Iraqi state in crisis, but also its stake in the proxy war waged by Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria in Iraq onto American allied Arab states in the region. This 'disengagement' could take the form of withdrawal with a political settlement negotiated among regional powers (including Iran) or an escalation into a wider regional Middle East war involving a mobilization of Saudi Arabia against Iran (the Iraqi civil war is an anticipation of this conflict). The results of the latter would be particularly grave for humanity. Washington has gone so far as to look the other way as Turkey invades Kurdistan to attack Kurdish nationalist militias like the PKK, with the Machiavellian logic that perhaps this pressure could produce a compromise on the bitterly contentious city of Kirkuk. Within this, the American ruling class is trying desperately to shore up its position in the Middle East in order to maintain a potential threat in the region.

That has meant in the context of Hamas' putsch in Gaza that the strip could be abandoned to Hamas while the West Bank and even camps in foreign countries like Lebanon are brought under the control of Fatah and the new PA. It is under these conditions that the US would release funding for the newly established PA and Israel will release tax revenues withheld from the Hamas government. The ending of the sanctions will in some ways be an improvement, but only for those in the west bank. In this way, America tries to prop up a new Palestinian Authority, loosely federated with the remaining American-allied ruling classes in the region: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Lebanon and Iraq (both shaky).

The reinforcement of Fatah is primarily an effort by the Western ruling class to reinforce its credible threat against the emerging opposition belt from Lebanon to Iran to Syria. There have already been many arguments in the media for bringing both Fatah and Hamas into the 'Sunni orbit', which refers to the American-allied states in the region. Hamas on the other hand is largely viewed as a lost cause due to its engagement with Iran and Syria.

By now much of the left is able to identify the ruthlessness of Hamas in the Gaza takeover. Some on the far left even take a clear position against both Hamas and Fatah, whom they argue will to varying degrees repress struggles within Palestinian society. In a discussion recently a comrade summarized this position succinctly:

"...it's a conflict between two completely reactionary forces and ideologies."

I would agree with this statement in many ways. However, it does not acknowledge that in Fatah and Hamas we are dealing with two ideologies (and therefore forces on the ground) which have very different goals and implications. The goals of the US, the quartet and the PA etc. are quite clear: territorial compromises in the West Bank to Israel and an ominous segmenting of Palestinian territory in exchange for a Palestinian state that can effectively control its population. There are larger themes at work here but I would argue that their motivations are based in the classical interest of state control over territory. In contrast it has long been clear that Hamas is part of a wider spectrum that includes forces calling for the complete elimination of Israel. Not only Ahmedinajad, but Syria, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood etc., in Europe elements of the right and some on the left who while making disclaimers are only too quick to apologize for the efforts of Hamas and Hezbollah. All of these parties are strictly speaking 'rational actors' on bourgeois terrain: they want to extend their influence just like America and NATO does, the difference is that they use eliminatory rhetoric, which dehumanizes Israelis. This sort of irrational discourse against Israelis has become quite common. By now it is cresting in industrial action by British unions against all Israeli academics (instead of a specific critique and hostile engagement with those who have supported the occupation), which isn't a lot different from the logic that drives the eliminatory factions. Britain's UNISON union and the largest trade union in South Africa, the Casatu, have jumped on this train and are seeking to spearhead their own boycotts. Rapidly the left (but more importantly, popular opinion) is losing analytical specificity for the texture of the entire conflict. I have argued in my piece 'When the Grass is cut, the Snakes will Show' that this is a direct result of the collapse of American imperialism in the mid-East and that while it has potentially good implications in terms of a slow end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, that the easy discourse which managed to blame the brutality of capitalism on Arabs themselves (and justify suspicion towards them domestically) will now be turned against Israel and in turn, Jews, in the absence of a popularized communist critique capable of exposing the capitalist crisis beneath.

Anti-Israel pathos of course shares many characteristics of anti-semitism, but not all of them. One similarity is the universal appeal of both trains of thought, that people anywhere who may have even no contact with Jews, are able to convince themselves that there is an all-powerful Jewish conspiracy working out of Geneva or Jerusalem directing American domination of the middle East. More and more thought like this substitutes for class struggle and in the worst ways, becomes an ideological inversion bent on its own defeat.

The question is what steps can be taken not only to attack the economic relations which we animate (class struggle), the same relations which empower the imperialist regional war in the middle East, but also how a political break with the existing war discourse can be produced. The former must be the priority since there are no forces waiting in the wings so to speak which could tip the scales in our favor, i.e. forces which could embody or popularize a better society. In the middle east for instance, one by one, the competing militias inherit the torture chambers of the regimes they supposedly opposed.

As far as a political break with the war discourse, I do not think that the communist indictment of both sides of the regional war has made many inroads. If anything alienation from the entire subject has grown epidemic and the influence of liberatory ideas in these frameworks has not expanded by much (1). Increasingly, people turn to any savior that appears to have even an ounce of integrity (see the popularity of presidential candidate Ron Paul for one example). But in particular, it is action and discussion around Israel that has entered a spiral of misinterpretation.

Where obvious idiots like the anti-semites of the libertarian right (anti-war.com etc.), and 'left' anti-imperialists like George Galloway, Sue Blackwell and so on pave the way for a hollowed out discussion of Israeli history, more concretely, Islamic Jihad and others give life to an ideological identification of all Israelis with the occupation government, by dumping missiles into Southern Israel, demonstrating the appeal of killing, or terrorizing any Israeli for 'their' crimes. Although Hamas is a different organization, it shares these tactics, differing only in that as a ruling state party it is obligated to channel (and outright oppress) class struggle in the classical sense.

Given this, and the struggle to produce eliminationist spectacles on Gaza's northern border, the nationalist factions more and more find their audience in the attack upon Israel as a body (partially because suicide bombing is now less of an option). That is, where a real class struggle would necessarily come into conflict with the occupation forces, even this is discarded towards a more general nihilistic assault on Israel as a place, Israel as an idea. I think this is at least a major difference between the first intifada and the second and this change has of course been consciously driven by elements in Palestine, Damascus, Tehran, Hezbollah etc. In the same way we see the growing influence of these actions reflected in worldwide popular opinion.

The attacks against Israel on the plane of history and ideology present a particular danger in my view. Popular opinion is generally drifting towards the idea that Israel is a nation that deserves either abandonment, dissolution or, in the extreme, elimination. I'm prepared to argue the exact opposite: that Israel is the only nation with a good reason to exist. That is, along with some on the German left, I think that an opposition to capitalism, imperialism and nationalism must include a solidarity with Israel, a nation whose creation was an inevitable result of the failure of the first revolutionary wave which could not prevent or defeat Europe's lapse into anti-semetic barbarism. The subsequent history of Zionism and Israel is as much a history of liberation as it is a history of imperialism and colonialism.

Since Israel is itself a participant in the imperialist conflict in the mid-east now, this solidarity does not include support for its military adventures. I would argue along with some on the Israeli left that there could be an Israeli nation that both defends itself against elimination and refuses the wars that the west requests of it (for instance, Olmert was requested by France to 'regime change' Syria during the second Lebanon war). Making an exception for Israel does not excuse in every way the manner in which the nation came about, its imperialism nor its treatment of its neighbors, I'm arguing only for the necessity of a Jewish nation after Auschwitz, not its use as a warhead against its Arab neighbors.

Israel has enough of its own contradictions in regards to its own population to make obvious that in many ways it fails its own mandate (the oppression of the Mizrahi Jews, or the past employment by the state of Nazi war criminals are some examples that speak to the depth of Israeli contradictions). Like any nation, for whatever ideal it is created for, it will act as an incubator for the state and capitalism, and thus deserves to be overcome by a wider human community. Israel itself is far from an embodiment of liberatory or even classic bourgeois ideals, and in many ways reflects their failures. Nevertheless, these smaller contradictions do not amount to an argument for prioritizing its abolition above others. Nor do they justify unrealistic expectations on Israelis to dissolve themselves into a single society with their neighbors (the position of many of those who voted to boycott Israel in the UCU) which is not a demand placed on any other people in the world. The chief motor of the imperialist malaise lies in the developed countries (specifically the west) and that's where our opposition should be; within that opposition I think we have to stand against the slide into negationist history by expressing a critical solidarity with Israel.


(1) One good example (and there are many others) of a struggle across borders has been provided by the Fire Brigades Union of Britain, who lugged two fire engines through Europe and Turkey into Iraq to fight the fires of war.


Scream Quietly or the Neighbors will Hear

From Layla Anwar...
I remember reading a book some years back. I cannot remember the name of the author though. I did warn you that I am bad with names. But the exact title is well lodged in my mind: "Scream quietly or the neighbors will hear".
The book was about female battering. You know what woman battering is don't you?

It is basically when a man beats, strikes, punches, kicks, pounds...a woman and sometimes severly enough that she ends up in hospital and sometimes severly enough to bring about her death.

It is interesting to note that the verb "to batter" is also used in cooking i.e to make a dough. The French have similar anologies between battering a woman and food. They would say he turned her into a "compote".(compote is cooked fruits). Ditto for Arabic expressions. They would say he broke her bones, they became like "soup"...
Am sure other "cultures" have more analogies of the same sort. I will leave it to you to dig up some expressions that you are familiar with, along the same lines...

Did you notice something here? A common trait in the use of words, in the use of language?

It is as if they allude to render that "thing" liquefied, easily moulded, soft to the palate...
In sum, easily mixed and easily digestible. I will also leave it to you to make further associations on the same theme.

No society is immune from woman battering. I will not dwell on figures now. All societies are guilty of it. East and West, equally guilty. And R.Kipling was wrong when he said that East and West shall never meet. They do meet. They met. They met in Iraq.

They met in Iraq, the land, the earth, the Mother...
They also met and agreed on her daughters bodies - Iraqi Women.

That body which, since the "liberation", has become a public commodity. A public thing. A thing to be veiled, a thing to be controlled, a thing to be ordered about, a thing to be disposed of, a thing to be battered, moulded, shaped into a liquefied, soft, yielding thing. A digestible thing.

Yes, batter, pound, strike, punch, beat, rape, torture, imprison...that "thing" and ultimately dispose of it, annihilate it.

Both "East and West" are bent on the destruction of Iraqi women.
It is as if, plundered, occupied Iraq has become the center point, the "lieu" where these forces can pour out their venom, their deep hatred, their frustrated instincts, their perversities...In sum their collective misogyny.

And those who know me a little by now, know what I mean by East & West. Just in case you are new to this blog. East is metaphorically used for Iran and West for none other but the "greatest democracy on earth", America.

Continued...


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