The Largest Minority

August 20th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country.

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis — even peaceniks — aren’t signing on. A global boycott can’t help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one’s own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews — whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel — are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.

There are only two moral ways of achieving this goal.

The first is the one-state solution: offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a bi-national democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel. Given the demographics, this would amount to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state; for most Israeli Jews, it is anathema.

The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state.

Geographically, the one-state solution appears much more feasible because Jews and Palestinians are already totally enmeshed; indeed, “on the ground,” the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality.

Ideologically, the two-state solution is more realistic because fewer than 1% of Jews and only a minority of Palestinians support binationalism.

For now, despite the concrete difficulties, it makes more sense to alter the geographic realities than the ideological ones. If at some future date the two peoples decide to share a state, they can do so, but currently this is not something they want.

So if the two-state solution is the way to stop the apartheid state, then how does one achieve this goal?

I am convinced that outside pressure is the only answer. Over the last three decades, Jewish settlers in the occupied territories have dramatically increased their numbers. The myth of the united Jerusalem has led to the creation of an apartheid city where Palestinians aren’t citizens and lack basic services. The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost nonexistent, and Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right.

It is therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure. The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories.

I consequently have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and has since garnered widespread support around the globe. The objective is to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination.

In Bilbao, Spain, in 2008, a coalition of organizations from all over the world formulated the 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign meant to pressure Israel in a “gradual, sustainable manner that is sensitive to context and capacity.” For example, the effort begins with sanctions on and divestment from Israeli firms operating in the occupied territories, followed by actions against those that help sustain and reinforce the occupation in a visible manner. Along similar lines, artists who come to Israel in order to draw attention to the occupation are welcome, while those who just want to perform are not.

Nothing else has worked. Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians — my two boys included — does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

July 21st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Got international solidarity? Capitalists are vampires - parasites who view us as nothing more than livestock to feed off of and have dominion over.

Corporations have used the government and media as instruments to destroy the US labor movement. We must rebuild it. Organizing is not easy in a capitalist society. Since a capitalist system pits workers against each other, we’ll need to learn how to cooperate rather than compete. Forming an organization, union, or cooperative is a first step.

During the height of our concern over the Iranian elections, Peruvians were being massacred in the name of US free trade interests. In what’s been called “The Amazon’s Tiananmen,” Hundreds of indigenous people blocking Shell Oil from raping the Amazon were murdered by police. However, we were instead focused on Iran because they’re the declared enemy of our capitalist overlords.

Still, I will give credit where it’s due. If the traditional media was correct about one thing during their frenzy over “Iran’s Twitter Revolution”, it was their own insufficience. Unlike the dying corporate media, twitter and the internet in general have proved to be useful, democratizing tools. Never in the history of the world have the proletariat been so connected to each other, AND YET we still lack a strong global movement. The internet can either help us escape reality or transform it.

We must recognize our unique role as individuals within the international movement. As Marx said, “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” When individual workers thrive in the belly of the beast, they can enable that prosperity to translate to the entire global collective. As Americans, we hold a higher level of responsibility since our actions have the potential to dramatically transform the rest of the world.

We live in the Americas where the greatest disparity between rich and the poor exists, yet we are not class conscious. Americans feel more solidarity with Obama than with a so-called insurgent in Iraq.

However, when people push reform to the limit and government won’t concede any further, they realize revolution is needed to dismantle that roadblock. Workers in America must come to that realization soon if international movements of the Left are to succeed. The head vampire must be killed once and FOR ALL.

July 13th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Max Blumenthal and Jesse Rosenfeld interview young Tel Aviv residents about Iran, Obama and right-wing laws limiting the speech rights of their Palestinian-Israeli neighbors. The shocking responses reflect the deepening of racist and authoritarian trends in Israeli society. This is the sequel to “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem,” the video banned by YouTube, Vimeo and the Huffington Post after topping 400,000 hits.

Max Blumenthal’s video “Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama’s Cairo Address” was deleted by YouTube after topping 400,000 views. Apparently, documenting the frightening Nazi-esque racism of entitled Zionists is a terms of use violation. Yes, these people currently have nuclear warheads pointed at Iran.

As you might expect, Blumenthal was berated by your typical Israeli apologists for being a “self-hating Jew” who was spreading Antisemitism with the most horrid of left-wing tools - journalism. So as a response to his reality-denying detractors, Blumenthal interviewed Israelis during the day in a more “metropolitan” part of the country your tax dollars built. Enjoy it while you can.

July 3rd, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Alan Woods, editor of marxist.com, speaks to a meeting in London on June 25, 2009.

June 21st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

When you combine two legends in their respective genres - Communist rapper Boots Riley and anarchist guitarist Tom Morello - you’ve got a dangerous mixture of passion and creativity poised to reclaim American youth culture from the bourgeois entertainment industry and their one dimensional focus group creations. Get Breckin Meyer to play the antagonist for your video and things are guaranteed to get awesomely weird.

After following up his role in Rage Against the Machine with the more mellow Audioslave and a subsequent solo career, Morello once again takes up his beloved role in Street Sweeper as the front and center DJ who uses a guitar rather than turntables. To compliment that foundation, Boots delivers the ammunition like only a genuine rapper who’s perfected his craft can, spitting thoughtfully condensed imagery with every line.

This is the soundtrack of the revolution. Bump it loud enough for the walls of capitalism to come crashing down (lyrics available below the fold).
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June 19th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University, Khamenei backed the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president after the June 12 election.

“Candidates were put forward into public eye, everyone could judge for themselves … they have identified the person they wanted,” he said.

Khamenei refuted accusations of vote rigging, and insisted the poll was an “absolute and definitive victory”.

Ruling out fraud behind Ahmadinejad’s victory, he said “the Islamic establishment will never manipulate people’s votes and commit treason.

“The legal structures and electoral regulations of this country do not allow vote rigging.”

He said that any doubts concerning the results must be investigated through legal channels and called on supporters of defeated candidates to cease street protests, adding, “otherwise they will be responsible for its consequences, and consequences of any chaos”.

Farzad Agha, an Iranian analyst, told Al Jazeera: “This clearly is a threat to the demonstrators and supporters of the opposition candidates … He is saying that if you continue we will deal with you.”

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June 16th, 2009 by Guest

originally posted at Lenin’s Tomb

I think it’s a consensus on the liberal-left in the US and UK that the Iranian elections were fixed. If they are right, we are watching a bloodless coup turn into a bloody one, as protesters have been beaten and are now being shot at and killed by cops. One of Mousavi’s supporters alleges he was told that a coup was coming. If they are not right, we are still faced with a state busily beating and killing the opposition. The Iranian state is still detaining ‘reformist’ MPs, censoring newspapers, shutting down access to social networking sites (although people are still finding ways to Twitter), and behaving as if for all the world it had every reason to act guiltily. It is not inherently implausible that Ahmadinejad got 63% of the vote, and it has to be shown that there was a fix. The fact that Ahmadinejad used state oil revenues to fund programmes for the poor can be approved or derided, but it arguably gave large numbers of people an interest in voting for Ahmadinejad against his more explicitly neoliberal rival. It gave him a base among some of the working class and bazaaris. Still, it is hardly implausible either that some vote-rigging went on, if only to make the win decisive enough to avoid a run-off.

So, the first question that occurs is, why should the ballots be rigged? This is skated over in a lot of the commentary as if the answer were obvious - Mousavi advocated reform, duh! However, Mousavi is hardly a dangerous candidate for the Iranian ruling class: rather, he represents a powerful faction of it. True, he was once on the ‘Islamic Left’ back in the 1980s, and it was due to the support of the left-leaning majles that he was made prime minister against Khomeini’s preferences. Today, however, he is a centrist allied to the ‘Modern Right’. His solutions to Iran’s problems of accumulation and development are impeccably neoliberal. This is why he got the backing of the old crook, cynic, capitalist and Iran-Contra arms dealer, Hashem Rafsanjani. He supports privatization, and wants to reform Article 44 to assist the process. He supports strong counter-inflationary policies. Of course, he would like to take a slightly less ‘hard line’ with respect to the US. Indeed, like other would-be ‘reform’ candidates, his campaign tried to channel Obama - with some success since his wife, who spearheaded some important reforms in the late 1980s, was cast as the Michelle Obama of the campaign. Still, he isn’t an outsider by any means. His candidacy wasn’t struck off, while those that offend the Council of Guardians usually are. He wasn’t excluded from the debates, as far as I can find out. He wasn’t excluded from the polls, some of which put him ahead, and some behind. Why should he have suddenly become so dangerous that the Iranian state, or powerful sectors within it, would risk a stupid fix? The answer could only be that by tapping a popular demands for reforms, the candidacy might have unleashed a movement that seriously frightened some factions in the ruling class.

The next question is, what can come of the protests? Whatever the motivations of Mousavi, we have an enormous number of people on the streets, with a clear demand for political reform. They took to those streets, reportedly ignoring warnings that the police were carrying live ammunition. This means they are brave, certainly, and also confident in their numbers. Already, Khamenei has ceded the question of investigating the elections, which it seems clear he didn’t want to do. The Iranian state may kill people, but these protesters are already starting to win. They can make gains far beyond the very limited promises that Mousavi made in order to excite progressive layers. (As far as I can tell, Mousavi was mildly critical of some state repression of television channels, and promised to ‘review’ legislation that could be harmful to women - hardly a tribune of the oppressed). So, whatever the truth about the claims of a fix, these protests can do nothing but good. They may, in addition to getting rid of some particularly onerous forms of oppression, open up a space in which the left can operate more freely, and in which the labour movement can assert itself more forcefully.

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June 14th, 2009 by Manila Ryce