Socialist Resistance

This video is one of the most coherent accounts in English of Sinistra Critica’s recent experiences in Italy. Angelo Cardone delivered this talk at the Socialist Resistance dayschool on broad parties.

The next video from the Socialist Resistance dayschool features Willem Bos. Willem is a long-standing activist of the Dutch left and a member of the Socialist Party. He spoke in a personal capacity about his experiences in this important and successful party of the left.

July’s Socialist Resistance London forum looks at the sixty years since the state of Israel was proclaimed.

You can download the flyer here.

Its foundational myths are that the Zionist colonisers were Davids fighting a Goliath, compelled by the Holocaust to carve out a haven of safety, with no desire to force out the indigenous Palestinians who departed voluntarily.

But that falsity has been exposed. The opening up of official records has revealed that 1948 was in fact a brutal act of mass ethnic cleansing.

The Palestinians call 1948 the Nakba (catastrophe)

Indian YMCA, 41 Fitzroy Square,
London, W1 (Warren St tube)
Wednesday 9 July @ 7.30pm

This article by Phil Hearse will appear in the Summer 2008 edition of Socialist Resistance which is out soon.

A counter-revolutionary offensive in Latin America is gathering pace as the left-wing tide of the early and middle parts of the decade falters. In 2002-5, diverted by the war in Iraq, US imperialism took its eye off the ball and was outflanked by the leftward development of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and by the election of the Evo Morales’ MAS (Movement towards Socialism) government in Bolivia. However since 2006, the revanchist right, backed up by huge amounts of US money and political support, has been fighting hard for the overthrow of Evo Morales and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. In both countries crucial questions of left-wing strategy are posed by these developments.

Bolivian referendum

On 8 May Evo Morales declared a referendum on the future of the government for August 10. The prefects of the country’s regional departments will also have to submit themselves to a popular vote on that day. This is a make-or-break strategy in which Morales is hoping to reinforce his position as well as deal the right-wing opposition – who hold several regional prefectures – a major blow.

But taking the struggle onto the terrain of a referendum or bourgeois democracy in general is an extremely dangerous tactic for it is normally the strongest terrain of the right and the ruling class. It is also the one most open to manipulation by right-wing forces who control most of the means of mass communication. This was a major mistake of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua that led to their overthrow in 1992. That the referendum gambit is an uncertain one is shown by the defeat of Hugo Chávez’s referendum on constitutional reform on 5 December last year.

Morales and the MAS-led government have adopted the referendum tactic because of the pressure imposed by the pro-autonomy vote in Santa Cruz, a virtual declaration of unilateral independence by this gas-rich and white-dominated province. The rightist leaders of Santa Cruz organised this illegal referendum on the back of a racist campaign against Morales and the indigenous population. Claiming ‘they want to dominate us’ the campaigners demanded the right to dispose of the Santa Cruz gas profits for their own exclusive use.

Santa Cruz is one of several ‘Media Luna’ (half moon) states that surround the centre of the country in a semi-circle. In all of them the rightist leaders advance the demand for autonomy. If their campaign succeeds it is easy to foresee a similar demand being raised in the oil-rich Venezuelan province of Zulia as a means to attack the Bolivarian revolution.

The political space for the right-wing offensive has been created by the stalled transition in Bolivia. This centres on two major questions. First, the Morales government has ruled out any move towards socialist transition in favour of the creation of ‘Andean capitalism’. This means that the 2006 ‘nationalisation’ of the country’s hydrocarbon resources amounted only to a renegotiation of the tax revenues of the transnational corporations that retain effective control of those resources.

Second, the attempt by Morales and the MAS government to effect progressive constitutional change through the constituent assembly came to nothing. The government buckled to right-wing opposition and conceded a veto on major changes to the right-led regional departments.

What is being tested in Bolivia is an attempt to carry out major reforms in the interests of the poor and indigenous majority within the framework of capitalism, in the epoch of neoliberalism. The danger is that the MAS has aroused the monster of counter-revolution while lacking the means to kill it.

Bolivian vice-president Álvaro Garcia Linares has accused the US government of funding the secessionist movement and there is little doubt that organisations like the National Endowment for Democracy and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are deeply involved in the promotion of the Latin American right – spending for example, $26 million on the 2006 presidential election in Venezuela.

Bolivarian revolution under attack

On May 23 the likely next president of the United States, Barack Obama, accused Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez of ‘degrading’ Venezuela’s democratic institutions and said he would ‘fully support’ the counter-revolutionary war being waged by the Colombian government against the left-wing FARC guerrilla movement. Thus, once again, Obama signalled to the US ruling class his loyalty to their interests and his intention to stay within the political mainstream.

His statement comes at a time when the Bolivarian revolution is going through a very difficult period. This difficulty was most dramatically signalled by the defeat of the December 2007 referendum on constitutional reform. Most analyses of this defeat point to the ‘stay-at-home’ factor – the refusal of hundreds of thousands of previously pro-Chávez voters in the poor areas to come out and vote. An analysis of that problem is crucial to understanding the weaknesses of the Bolivarian process (see below).

The contradictory pressures facing the revolution can be summed up in three key areas: a) the self-organisation and political confidence of the workers movement and the poor b) the class struggle and the reactionary offensive of the right c) the strategy, or rather lack of it, in the government and workers movement for a transition to socialism.

In an important recent article Kiraz Janicke and Frederico Fuentes (1) point out that the movement for workers control or co-management has been rolled back and the union movement is significantly weaker than three years ago, with the very promising UNT (National Union of Workers) weakened by internal conflicts. At the root of these were debates over the attitude towards the Chávez government and class independence. These debates go through the Bolivarian movement as a whole.

Against these negative signs, popular participation in the PSUV (Venezuelan United Socialist Party) continues at a high level. Some 80,000 participated in the elections for the party’s new leadership, elections which saw the defeat of some important rightist or ‘moderate’ figures. Moreover Hugo Chávez has recently taken some important steps. On March 15 he announced the nationalisation of a dairy processing plant and a large chain of slaughterhouses, actions that gave the state sector control of 40% of milk processing and 70% of meat processing. In addition the whole of the cement industry has been nationalised.

On April 3 Chávez announced the nationalisation of the SIDOR steel plant, the scene of a 15-month struggle between the workers and the plant owners Tachint, a joint Italian-Argentinian transnational. In this struggle the workers were brutally attacked by the national guard, and the bosses were supported by the minister of labour and the local ‘ Chávista’ state governor Francisco Rangel Gomez. The former accused the workers of being ‘counter-revolutionary’. Only with the intervention of Chávez and vice-president Ramon Carrizalez did the government clearly take the side of the workers.

This is symbolic of the strategic problems of the Venezuelan revolution as a whole. The Bolivarian movement is not united; it has a reformist and bureaucratic wing, deeply entrenched in the national and state governments, that does not want to go beyond reforms within capitalism. At the same time neither within the unions nor the PUSV is there a clearly elaborated strategy for socialist transition, a plan to deepen workers control or a plan for anti-capitalist structural reforms within the economy that would radically change the position of the poor.

According to Fuentes and Janicke, “…another feature of the union movement, particularly striking in the context of the radical social changes in Venezuela, is the lack of a strategy aimed at deepening the Bolivarian process towards the construction of socialism and genuine workers control.

“This is reflected by the overwhelmingly economist nature of their demands. As Canadian Marxist academic Michael Lebowitz puts it, ‘their whole orientation towards higher wages and a tendency to act like a labour aristocracy in a society where so many people are poor.’

“The UNT, like the CTV before it, has largely avoided any attempt to organise workers in the informal sector, focusing overwhelmingly on the demands of the most privileged layer of Venezuelan workers. This has led to a disjuncture between the organised trade union movement and the masses of poor Venezuelans who form the backbone of the Bolivarian revolution.”

The heart of the matter

The position of the poor is the heart of the matter for the Bolivarian process. One recent estimate put the number of workers in the informal sector at 47% of the total. That is symptomatic of a country riven with poverty and class divisions. The most optimistic projections say that something like 27% of the people in the country still live in poverty, despite important gains in health and literacy and the effects of poverty-reduction programmes. It is the poor in the informal sector who are the main victims of the sabotage of the oligarchy and the right, for example the food shortages engineered by hoarding, unmasked by the government early this year.

The government’s poverty-reduction programmes have been undertaken with oil revenues at a time of very high oil prices. Revolutionising the position of the poor would mean breaking the power and wealth of the oligarchic elite, whose position is based on revenues from the oil industry and on services industries that ultimately depend on the oil sector.

No successful strategy can be worked out without answering fundamental questions. For example, which class is in power and what is the nature of the government? These are questions that many sectors of the international left struggle with. Socially the dominant class is the capitalist class and, paradoxically, under Chávez they have been enjoying boom conditions as the oil price rockets.

Poverty reduction and health care as well as literacy campaigns are important but they do not address the heart of the matter and they cannot radically change the situation of the poor. The Chávez government is a radical reforming government that fights under the banner of socialism but lacks a strategy to conquer power. It is not what Marxists have referred to historically as a ‘workers government’ – it could only become such a government by mobilising the workers, the poor and the peasants for the conquest of power.

But that means a level of mobilisation and self-organisation that has not been achieved today, despite the hundreds of thousands of Bolivarian faithful who turned out in Caracas on May day. It could only be turned around by dynamising the Bolivarian process with a direct appeal to break the power of the oligarchic bourgeoisie, economically and socially.

The present situation of a stalled transition is very dangerous. A failure to transform the situation of the poor leads to resignation and demoralisation – and it was this factor that ensured Chávez’s defeat in last year’s referendum. The reactionary mobilisation of the right aided by imperialism feeds off this demoralisation and apathy and can even create cynicism and make direct political gains in popular sectors.

The defeat of the Bolivarian process would be a traumatic and probably very bloody affair, with terrible consequences for the left, the working class and the poor – and demoralising consequences for the left internationally. Only by a radical change in direction can this danger be overcome.

Regional dynamic

The harbinger of the regional counter-revolutionary offensive was the US-aided electoral fraud in Mexico in July 2006, which kept out the ‘centre-left’ presidential candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador. This was rapidly followed by the brutal military suppression of the protest movement in the state of Oaxaca, which had occupied the state capital in protest at the corruption of the state’s right-wing governor. The fraudulent election of the right-wing Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) was important for the US, as it stemmed the tide of left and leftish governments rising in Latin America.

Venezuela and Bolivia have broken the regional isolation of Cuba and created a new dynamic in Latin America and internationally. Whichever candidate becomes the next US president, the reactionary offensive will continue. A key part of that offensive will be aid to military operation in Colombia against the FARC, especially along the border with Venezuela.

As in much of Latin America the oligarchic bourgeoisie and important sections of the middle class in both Bolivia and Venezuela are driven by reactionary hatred of the poor, the workers, the indigenous and the peasants. In the next period they will pose the question of government, probably violently. The poor and the oppressed need to return the compliment by posing the question of power.

(1) Kiraz Janicke and Federico Fuentes, Venezuela’s labour movement at the crossroads, www.venezuelanalysis.com

Last weekend in Paris there was a meeting called by the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire of European anti capitalist parties. This is a translation of the statement that was issued from it.

There were about a hundred representatives of about thirty organisations from sixteen countries present. Among them were the principal organisations of the revolutionary left in Europe which represent thousands of activists and sympathisers.

Also present was an observer from the ISO ((International Socialist Organisation) in the United States .

This international conference of the radical, anti-capitalist and revolutionary European left was undoubtedly a big success. For the first time since May 68 nearly all the anti-capitalist left was brought together.
It was remarkable that this first meeting took place. The fact that it decided to continue and meet for a second conference in 2009 shows that something new is happening for Europe’s radical left.

This success is first of all connected with both the support for and the curiosity about the LCR’s initiative and the new anti-capitalist party. But there is something else.

It is a change in the historic period which has unsettled the workers’ movement and organisations for several years, a process which is perhaps coming to maturity in a number of countries. The combination, in the framework of capitalist globalisation, of the current financial, banking and food crises of capitalism - of the redoubling of attacks against social and democratic rights, and the social-liberal evolution of the traditional left opens a space for the radical left.

These questions were dealt with in a first discussion introduced by François Sabado, a member of the LCR’s leadership. He indicated a series of points of convergence on the nature of the capitalist offensive on the evolution of the social-democratic and communist parties on the dynamic of the class struggle. This debate also confirmed the points of agreement about the principal anti-capitalist measures in the face of neo-liberal capitalism and the need for a clear independence from social democracy. All the organisations present reaffirmed the necessity of rejecting the politics of parliamentary or governmental coalitions with the social liberalism of social democracy or the centre left.

These main reference points for rebuilding a new workers’ movement and an anti-capitalist alternative don’t exhaust all the indispensable debates for rebuilding a socialist project, debates which we must have on the different experiences in Europe , questions such as the formulation of an European anti-capitalist programme, the war, an ecosocialist response to the ecological crisis and of course about the content and forms of socialism in the 21^st century.

So we have to work and debate. The next conference in 200 will be focused on the struggle against the war, NATO and military politics in Europe .

There was something else positive about this conference. It is not only a questions of debating but also of acting. There were three discussions after the main discussion. The first, which was introduced by LCR leadership member Yvan Lemaitre, about the war, in which returning to the warmongering policies of the ruling classes and the role of NATO to organise a large international demonstration in Strasbourg and Kiel next spring.

For the first time a conference of this type looked at the question of global warming. It was introduced by Laurent Menghini. This second debate showed that all the anti capitalist organisations are developing an ecological dimension.

There was a third debate, introduced by Emmanuel Siegelman, on the importance of the struggle against racism and xenophobia. Following the example of the Lega Nord in Italy, which is waging a real campaign against foreigners, the attacks against immigrants are a central element of the attack of reactionary governments against social and democratic rights. Anticapitalists must make this a central axis of their activity in Europe .

After a short summary of the proceeding by Galia Trépère all the participants have decided to have a joint intervention at the next social forum in Malmo in Sweden, and especially to consider common activities at the time of the next European elections in 2009. What is at stake when the far right, the socialist and communist parties have European structures is to begin to build a European anti capitalist pole of attraction. This is one of the most difficult questions for each organisation has a different history, there are specific relationships of forces in each country. Some organisations have already responded positively. Others are going to discuss it, and some, without taking part in a European campaign, are open to common initiatives.

In short – the new anti-capitalist party is getting things moving in Europe !

The organisations represented were:

Denmark : Red Green alliance
Switzerland : Solidarités, Gauche anticapitaliste, Mouvement pour le socialisme
Germany : ISL, RSB, BASG, Marx21, Interventionist Lef, Anticapitalist Left
Austria : SOAL
Sweden : Socialist Party
Poland : Polish Labour Party
Belgium: LCR-SAP
Norway : Socialist Unity
British state : Respect, Socialist Resistance, Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party
Spanish state- : Espacio Alternativo
Turkey : ODP
Portugal : Left Bloc
Italy : Sinistra Critica
Netherlands : SAP
United States : ISO
Greece : ARAS, Kokkhino, Syriza, KOE, Synapismos, New Left Current (NAR), Left Recompostion, DEA, OKDE, Ecologist Alternative, SEK, AKOA
France : LCR

Convention of the Left - Debate ‘08

Planet, Peace, People

Manchester 20-24th September

What is the true cost of Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?

An invite for academic, research papers and investigations.

We would like to invite researchers, students and campaigners to investigate and research the true costs of Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to then present their findings at a key session during the Convention of the Left which is taking place Manchester in September 2008. This idea is inspired by the economists Joseph Stigliz and Linda Bilmes book. "The Three Trillion Dollar War". 

Stigliz & Bilmes’ book brought together for the first time the ‘facts we need to understand the financial, economic and social consequence of the Iraq conflict".  The main focus of the book was on the USA.  The authors devote a small section in their book on the cost of the Iraq war to Britain. Stigliz and Bilmes put forward an estimated cost to the UK of the Iraq war (table 6.1) of £20.9 billion.  It this area that we believe needs further research, investigation and exposure.  What is also not been subject to any rigorous and meaningful examination is the true cost of Britain’s involvement, up to now and in the future, in Afghanistan.

We would like to encourage research and investigation in all or of any part of the financial, economic or social cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We would envisage the results of any research being produced to published on a website and to become freely available as a resource for campaigners, journalists and the general public

If you are interested or want further information, please contact us

Richard Searle - 07760 224 580 / gearie@aol.com

Linda Clair - 07985 624 968 / lindaclair@btinternet.com

For the Convention of the Left

&

Jacqui Burke. Greater Manchester & District CND

(0161) 273 8283 / gmdcnd@gn.apc.org

Please forward this message to anyone you think may be interested in participating in this project

—————————————————————————————–

The Convention of the Left will take place during the Labour Party conference which is being held in Manchester in late September.  The Convention of the Left is a counter conference that seeks to unite left and progressive forces in developing alternatives and co-operative working.

For more information about the Convention please visit. www.conventionoftheleft.org.

The Convention of the Left will consist of four days of themed debates and discussions

A range of international speakers have now been confirmed for Socialist Resistance’s day school on broad left parties on Saturday 28 June. Recent developments in the Workers Party (PT) Brazi, the Italian Rifondazione Comunista and Respect in England and Wales have once again sparked debate about the strategy of building broad anti-capitalist parties and their relationship to the tactics of revolutionaries.

Speakers confirmed include Miguel Reis from the Left Bloc in Portugal as well as speakers from Die Linke in Germany, the Dutch Socialist Party and the LCR in France, currently in the middle of a highly successful campaign to found a new, broad socialist party. Speakers from Britain will include Joseph Healy, from Green Left, and Alan Thornett from Socialist Resistance. The conference starts 10.30am, June 28 at ULU, Malet Street, London.

New government – old faces

Elections in Pakistan last February put an end to the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharaf - but not, it seems, to its policies. The new coalition government of radical Islamists and bourgeois nationalists maintains close relations with the military, is continuing a neo-liberal agenda and still supports the alliance with US imperialism.
Farooq Tariq of the Labour Party Pakistan told a recent Socialist Resistance Forum that this turbulent period had nonetheless opened up possibilities for the left in Pakistan.

The socialist Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), with 3000 members and 100 elected councillors across the country, has led high-profile campaigns on land rights, privatisation, women’s rights, child labour and other issues afecting workers and the poor. It boycotted the elections of 18 February because it opposes neo-liberalism and any alliance with pro-military parties.

Farooq Tariq was asked how much had really changed in Pakistan since the elections. “This is a new government with old faces,”he replied. “Musharaf had to withdraw martial law and take off his military uniform but he is still in a powerful position as president.”

The three capitalist parties in the coalition government are the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of the murdered Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz and the Awami National Party.

“The present so-called democratic government is discrediting itself, happy to bring in the most corrupt people to the top jobs,” Farooq Tariq explained. These people collaborate with the generals who continue to dominate all aspects of economic life. The military still owns 12% of all agricultural land and it’s other interests include huge holdings in dairy farms, fertilizer factories, banks, contruction and insurance.

The government is even trying to reinstate the judges who supported the military in last year’s movement to bring down Musharaf.

Neo-liberalism is alive and well with privatisation the cornerstone of the government’s programme. The price of flour has doubled, petrol has increased by 20% and rail fares have shot up by 15%. The PPP has talked of raising the minimum wage but has taken no steps to propose a new law on this to parliament. The majority of workers, meanwhile, are not even receiving the original minimum.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007 brought the state to a complete standstill for five days. Such was the chaos and public outrage, said Farooq Tariq, that Bhutto’s party could have successfully demanded Musharaf’s resignation there and then. “But before her death Benazir had agreed to work with Musharaf.”

There has been no let-up in the repression of oppositionists (Farooq Tariq himself has been imprisoned five times in the last year) and thousands of those who disappeared during the miltary dictatorship - most of them religious fundamentalists - are still missing. Yet because of the massive anti-Musharaf consciousness before the election and the emergence of a young radicalised middle class Farooq Tariq reported ‘all left parties are growing’.

The Labour Party Pakistan initiated the peasant movement that started in the Punjab in 2001 after the military tried to take over 68,000 acres for agribusiness. Against the background of a small and weak trade union movement it is trying to nurture a radical trade union formation in Karachi and Lahore. The party’s strongest support comes from the north west frontier province and from Baluchistan in the south west where the massive exploitation of gas has been threatening people’s land and livelihoods.

The LPP has also recruited over 100 new members from Pakistan’s militant movement of lawyers. The anti-Musharaf movement sprang up last year after Chief Justice Iftikar Muhammad Chaudry defied Musharaf and after many judges and lawyers who protested at the repression were themselves arrested and beaten.

The LPP sees scope for building a small mass party of the left. It is calling for new elections under the auspices of an independent electoral commission and with proportional representation. That would give left parties a chance to be represented in parliament, Farooq Tariq explained.

“Right now”, he argued, “anything can happen. I don’t think Musharaf can survive but other parties may back the military as they have in the past and there is the possibility of the military retaking power… That’s why we have to strengthen the mass movement and build an alternative.”

 Piers Mostyn looks at the bloody truth behind the creation of the Israeli State and its legacy of war, racism, ecological devestation, national oppression and poverty. This article will be in the next issue of Socialist Resistance due out next month.

On the 14^th of May 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed. Its foundational myths are that the Zionist colonisers were Davids fighting a Goliath, compelled by the Holocaust to carve out a haven of safety, with no desire to force out the indigenous Palestinians who departed voluntarily.

But that falsity has been exposed. The opening up of official records under the 30 year rule led to a thorough re-examination by Israel’s “revisionist” historians - like Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris - who revealed that 1948 was in fact a brutal act of mass ethnic cleansing.

The Palestinians call 1948 the Nakhba (catastrophe). Its roots stretching back to the end of the 19^th century, it involved driving the Palestinian people off their land, to make way for a colonial settler state acting as a regional agent for imperialism. That war continues today.

The first Zionist migrants arrived in Palestine in 1882 and the first Zionist Congress was held 15 years later. But Zionism before World War I was a very small movement, marginal even among Jewish refugees fleeing the wave of anti-Semitism sweeping across Eastern Europe; the vast majority settling in the West where they helped energise the rising tide of the left.

Aware of their weak position, Zionist leaders sought sponsorship from the imperial powers, initially the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Czar and the German Kaiser. Britain became the preferred option when it filled the vacuum left by the break up of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. After World War II the USA took the mantle.

Two key events triggering the Nakhba were the formation of a special committee by the United Nations (UNSCOP) in February 1947 to formulate recommendations on future status and a British announcement in September 1947 that Britain’s “Mandate” to run Palestine since 1923 would end on the 15^th of May 1948.

The majority of UNSCOP recommended partition into two states. It conceded that this contradicted the principle of self determination; a cornerstone of international relations and widely held as applicable to Palestine following the disintegration of Ottoman rule.

At the time Jews comprised one third of the population, owning 7% of the land. Despite this UNSCOP proposed that the Jewish state occupy 58% of the British mandate territory with the Palestinian two thirds majority, owning 90% of the land, getting the rest.

Not surprisingly the Palestinians rejected partition as totally unacceptable. The UNSCOP minority, favouring one federal state, warned of the long term dangers.

The main movers behind partition at the UN were the USA and USSR. Their cynical support for Zionism was motivated by cold war jockeying for position and a desire to hegemonise the oil rich region. Despite abstaining, Britain soon became a stalwart supporter. The support of the social democratic and Stalinist leaderships significantly undermined the prospects for building international solidarity with the Palestinians in the decades that followed.

Zionist militias, active for nearly two decades, had been preparing. Within a fortnight of UNSCOP’s recommendations being adopted by the UN in November 1947 the first expulsions of Palestinians began. By March 1948 the Zionist military campaign had begun in earnest.

In the first phase urban Palestine was targeted. Militias occupied Jaffa, Haifa and nine other mixed Arab-Jewish towns, expelling the Palestinian population. The second phase, beginning in May 1948, focussed more on rural areas. Aerial bombardment and heavy shelling of civilian areas combined with the destruction of hundreds of villages by the Zionists led to further deaths and ethnic cleansing.

Most notorious among the atrocities was the April 1948 massacre of 120 inhabitants of Deir Yassin by the Stern Gang. Such events served notice on Palestinian villagers thinking of resistance, many of whom fled in terror at the advance of the militias.

Ilan Pappe recounts events in Tantura, an old Palestinian village, “On the night of 22 May, the village was attacked from four sides . . . The captives were moved to the beach. There, the men were separated from the women and children, who were expelled to nearby Fureidis (Some families were reunited eighteen months later). Two hundred men between the ages of 13 and 30 were massacred by the Alexandroni and other Jewish forces. . . . There were similar incidents in many other locations, the details of which still await the research of future scholars.” (A Modern History of Palestine)

More than 531 Palestinian villages (out of 1000) were destroyed, depopulated and taken over. Some three quarters of a million Palestinians became refugees - 90% of those who had been living on what was designated as the Jewish state.

In December 1948 the new Israeli government retrospectively legalised land seizures and forbade victims from claiming any compensation. And the “Law of the Lands of Israel” stated that lands acquired by Zionist purchase would be leased in perpetuity on the condition that such lands would only be given to Jews. On this basis Israel’s remaining Arab citizens and their descendants were denied access to 95% of its land.

Zionist war success was such that by its end Israel had blatantly flouted even the UN partition plan by seizing 78% of Palestinian territory. What had been a Jewish minority of one third had driven out the majority and occupied over three quarters of the territory.

Nonetheless in May 1949 the UN General Assembly approved Israel’s membership of the UN, resolving that “Israel is a peace-loving state which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations”.

Since then, a state backed settlement expansion programme on top of the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has left Palestinians with a miserable 8% of the former Palestinian territories. This territory is supposed to comprise the Palestinian side of the “two-state solution” currently hawked by Israel and the West.

Sixty years on, almost 75% of the Palestinian people are displaced - three quarters in forced exile and one quarter in the West Bank and Gaza. The 4.2 million dispersed across the Middle East and other parts of the world are the world’s largest and longest standing unresolved refugee case.

The Arab minority within Israel is subject to a regime of legal, political, social, economic and cultural state racism. And hundreds of thousands of Bedouins have been expelled from the Negev and other parts of the country adding to the displaced refugee population.

What’s left of the Palestinian population has been crushed into poverty stricken Bantustans surrounded by the Israeli army, laced with roads reserved for Zionist settlers, peppered with hundreds of settlements that take the water and best land and carved up by the “apartheid wall”.

The drive to contain resistance has involved killing tens of thousands with many more being detained, often without charge. In 2006, the Palestinians elected a Hamas government that sought to resist this set up - its MPs and ministers were jailed. The main Hamas stronghold, in Gaza, has been subject to two years of military assaults and economic blockade, leaving its 1.4 million inhabitants on the verge of famine.

Far from confronting these strategies, the USA and Britain have used them as a model for the occupation of Iraq. And Britain’s political establishment has celebrated the sixtieth anniversary. But this is nothing new.

In the McMahon-Hussein correspondence in 1915-6, a senior British diplomat promised British support for Arab independence in exchange for support for the allied war effort to bring down the Ottoman regime.

The USA, under Woodrow Wilson, announced a doctrine of self determination for the post World War I order. This was endorsed by the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918 whose goals included “the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations”.

In 1919 the Covenant of the League of Nations enshrined the doctrine of self determination. The establishment of the “mandate” system under which Britain ruled Palestine was then presented merely as a temporary stepping stone to independent statehood in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres between the Allied Powers and Turkey.

But these commitments were duplicitous. In 1916 the Sykes-Picot Agreement, secretly signed between Britain and France, had divided the Ottoman Empire between the two states, with Palestine reserved for British control. And in 1917 Britain endorsed the Balfour Declaration - a letter from the Foreign Secretary to the British Zionist Federation granting recognition of and support for a Jewish “national home” in Palestine.

The British encouraged Zionist colonisation and suppressed a series of Palestinian uprisings, including the “Great Revolt” of 1936-9 in co-operation with Zionist militias. The first phase of the Nakhba occurred whilst Britain had responsibility for security and its officials looked on.

So what is the balance sheet of the Israeli state sixty years on? An out-runner for neoliberal capitalism, Israel has the biggest gap between rich and poor in the industrialised world. 1.25 million people, 40% of them working, are below the poverty line.

It has created an environmental disaster story, particularly in the Occupied Palestinian Territories - with water levels plummeting, toxic waste abounding, fields and olive trees destroyed.

And rampant racism against the so-called “Oriental” Jews - the backbone of the Israeli working class - has exposed the fallacy behind claims of a “home for the Jewish people”.

Israel’s much vaunted image of military prowess has been undermined. The spectacular failure of the Lebanon invasion in 2006 has been followed by the current resurgence of Hezbollah and the failure to crush Hamas.

Seemingly endless wars and invasions have sparked mass internal opposition. Whilst this is mainly tied to support for the Zionist state, it has brought to the surface decades of division over the nature of the project and how it relates to those it oppresses and expropriates.

Thousands of young people have become “Refusniks” - conscripts refusing to take part in the oppression of the Palestinians. Over 280 have been court-martialled and jailed for up to 35 days.

One consequence has been a substantial emigration of Jews. As of mid 2004 760,000 Israeli Jews were living abroad. An increase of 40% since 2000.

A primary factor in this crisis has been the unrelenting opposition of the Palestinian people. A resistance largely based on grass roots activism and in spite of a bloated, corrupt leadership; betrayal by the reactionary Arab states and disunity fomented by the imperialist states.

In the circumstances, it is unlikely Israel would be contemplating a 60^th anniversary but for its complete dependence on the imperialism whose regional interests it serves. Since the 1950s 18% of Israel’s GDP has derived from individuals, organisations and states abroad (chiefly the USA). Official figures valuing US aid since 1973 at $100 billion (a third of its foreign aid budget) are reckoned to be as little as a sixteenth of the true figure.

This financial, military and political underpinning and the historic responsibility of the USA, Britain and the EU in their support for Israel needs to be exposed and opposed. On its foundations is built the “legality” of the 1948 state - through their domination of UN and other international institutions. A far more difficult task than that of opposing apartheid, 1948 teaches us that the ruling ideology of the imperialist age and its state backers have to be confronted, not simply its reactionary outposts.

If you want any of these books, please make out a cheque to Socialist Resistance, and post it to: PO Box 1109 London N4 2UU, with details of your request, including your return address and a phone number.

1) Carre Rouge magazine, No. 2 6€/£5

2) Ecole Emancipe magazine, mai 2008 3€/£2.50

3) Revolution - Olivier Besancenot, 250p, 5,60€/£4.50p

4) Evo Morales et la gauche au pouvoir en Bolivie – Herve Do Alto & Pablo Stefanoni, 120p, 6€/£5

5) 1968 Fins et suites - Krivine et Bensaid, 190p, 12€/£9.50p

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14) La pensee de Trotsky – Mandel, 170p 7€£5.50p

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