Thin the Palestinian population “to a minimum.
I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it.”
Which of these was said in 1938 by Israel’s first Prime Minister and which was said by the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu recently? Well, Netanyahu’s is first, but you can see that the plan has not changed. In fact, as far back as 1895, the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, said: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border…discreetly and circumspectly.” An Israeli intelligence document on 10/13 stated: “The evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai…will yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel, and is an executable option. It requires determination from the political echelon in the face of international pressure, with an emphasis on harnessing the support of the United States.” And the support of the U.S. they certainly have, to the tune of $14.3 billion extra dollars.
When the Israeli state was founded in 1948, with the support of Britain, it was to gain a pro-Western ally to control the newly important oil in the Middle East. The first Israeli government already had a plan to dispose of the nearly one million Arabs then living there – Plan D: expel them all. They succeeded in forcefully removing 5 out of 7 Palestinians and destroying 530 villages on 55 percent of the land Israel controlled. In 1967 Israel fought a war to conquer the rest of Palestine, which they have illegally militarily occupied since – the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. is now the main funder of Israel for the same reasons that Britain first supported it – a base to protect oil and to protect U.U. interests against Iran, Russia, and China.
It is abundantly clear that Israel is now carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza, forcefully homogenizing an ethnically mixed population. Genocide is the deliberate killing of people from an ethnic group to destroy them. Over 18,000 Gazans have been killed to date, plus countless others buried under rubble, and countless thousands wounded. 85 percent of the 2.2 million inhabitants have been forced from their homes, and much of the surviving population is on the brink of death from starvation and dehydration according to aid agencies. Attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank are also increasing, with many killings by Israeli settlers as soldiers look on and the seizure of land and homes continues.
The justification for the current slaughter is the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, in which 1200 Israelis were killed. And there is no justification for this murder of civilians. However, it has recently been revealed that Israeli intelligence knew about Hamas’ plan a year in advance but claims that the leading politicians were never told. This seems highly unlikely, less likely than that they welcomed an excuse to enact their genocidal plan. In truth, Israel helped found Hamas in 1987 to counter secular nationalism, and the NY Times documents (12/10) that Israel has been giving millions to Hamas for years to keep two Palestinian leadership groups afloat – the other being Fatah in the West Bank – to prevent Palestinian unity.
The majority of Israelis and many Zionist Jews around the world have been won to applauding this massacre because they are raised on a diet of lies: that all Arabs inherently hate Jews and wish to kill them, that the Arabs left in 1948 voluntarily purely because they hate Jews, that there is no way to prevent another mass slaughter of Jews such as the Holocaust without having a fortress state. Zionists even think that Israel is a democracy despite giving rights only to Jews. Most Israelis also have little conception of what life is like in the Occupied Territories – that it is an ordinary civil society beset with brutalization by soldiers, massive imprisonment without charge, and severe restrictions on work, housing, travel, and health care. Nonetheless, most Palestinians are anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic, and welcome Jewish allies.
This Zionist nationalist hatred serves the Israeli ruling class well, for Israel is a capitalist state with a very small ruling elite and a shortage of adequate services for much of the population. But workers in Israel vent their anger on Palestinians, not the ruling class. Nationalism in Palestine, which although occupied is also a capitalist society, has also prevented the growth of a working class movement even though most Palestinians do not like Fatah or Hamas. The only hope for Palestinian or Jewish workers is to band together, indeed with other workers of the world, in a fight for an anti-racist, anti-nationalist communist society. Thousands are now protesting around the world as this pitiless genocide unfolds on our TV screens, but all of us too must join together in the long-range fight against imperialism and racism and for communism.
On the auto workers’ picket line
I traveled to Michigan during the auto strike and a couple of us headed out to the auto workers’ picket lines to talk to workers about class struggle, fighting racism, and the communist revolution. We had some great conversations. One worker from the Dominican Republic has been working there for ten years. He has had several surgeries in that period, including his knee and hip, due to job-related problems. He emphatically denounced the multiple-tier system and proceeded to explain several aspects of our communist line to us! He said, "When you've got people doing the same job for different pay, some are struggling while some are not. That's nothing but division and it just shouldn't happen!" I told him how coal bosses in Kentucky pulled the same racist tactics because they thought bringing immigrants into the coal camps would prevent miners from organizing. I pointed out how such anti-worker ideology seeks to divide workers and create a justification for paying some even less. He exclaimed, “Right, they even used it to justify slavery! The capitalists take as much as they can convince us to allow.” We talked about the media slander the union has been getting, using the same talking points from 100 years ago. "Yeah”, he said, “it's corporate media for a reason -- that's who they work for. They say prices will rise if we get a raise. Well, prices have already been rising!"
The workers I talked to believe that strikes are necessary or else living standards will continue to deteriorate."It's just unsustainable,” declared another worker. Another worker mentioned that he had family from Germany, and I said, "Don't ask the media what Ford and GM were doing during WWII to support the Nazis!" He responded by calling out Ford's anti-Semitism, noting how the Nazis awarded Henry Ford with the highest award a foreigner could receive for collaborating with them. Another worker declared, "You put your body on the line here for 30 years and the boss doesn’t even wanna give us healthcare? No way! Health care shouldn’t be a boss’s bargaining chip, we workers should own the whole economy, state, and society. It's only common sense!"
The workers we talked to are clear -- they will fight hard not to be sold out like in 2008 – and they’re optimistic!
*****
What a small world
In 1995 I was in a San Francisco hospital and was in conversation with another patient. We started talking about authors, and I said one of my favorites was Tillie Olsen, the beloved writer of working-class women’s lives. We talked a little about her and he finally said “It sounds like you really like her. She’s my aunt, and she’s visiting me this afternoon. I’ll introduce you.”
When we met, I mentioned my father had been in the Communist Party in San Francisco in the 1930s, and she said “You look just like him!” They’d worked on the CP newspaper together, and during the 1934 general strike, they’d moved the printing press for leaflets from house to house every night to prevent the cops from smashing it.
We visited her friend in the hospital, Bill Bailey, a longshore worker whose lungs were so bad he could hardly speak, from corrosive cement dust in the holds of ships he was unloading. During the 1930s, he led a big group of CP members who crashed a party on a nazi luxury liner anchored in New York City and tore down the nazi flag.
According to a 3/23/2019 New York Post story, I read much later, Bailey quit the CP in 1956 saying Stalin was a “paranoid, sick SOB.” This must explain why, after the visit, Tillie Olsen said seemingly out of the blue, “I never believed Khrushchev’s lies about Stalin!”
The fight for against genocide of Palestinian workers on a college campus
As a new college student, it was motivating to see activism on my campus coming from a high school in which many weren’t politically involved. On November 8 and 9, I joined many in the fight for Palestine: students led speeches and chants such as “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”
Even after walking and chanting, these students only grew with fervor and the chants became louder. One of the rallies culminated with students beating pinatas of Netanyahu and Biden, with only more enthusiasm from the students. Another rally delivered a coffin to the administration building in protest of the school’s holdings in investment firm BlackRock, the world’s largest investor in military hardware.
This wasn’t taken lightly by the school chancellor and board, who sent out a letter one day later condemning “Anti Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab hate,” but it was very targeted toward the peaceful protests against racism and genocide in Gaza, mentioning an instance of “Anti Semitic language.” He however, did not mention many of the instances of harassment and intimidation that occurred against Muslim students.
While school leaders claim to be against all forms of bigotry, they turn a blind eye towards that affecting the already oppressed – their only aim is to further the capitalist, fascist agenda, by intimidating students and protesters. The true nature of their financial and political interests is being revealed, reflecting the interests of wealthy business tycoons and political pawns that run the board. The primary goal of their funding of the Zionist government of Israel is to gain control over Mideast oil, furthering their financial assets through such a valuable resource.
While chants such as “from the river to the sea” have been viewed as anti semitic by some, they advocate for nationalist ideals that further divide the working class. Even during many of the speeches at these rallies, Hamas was not criticized for its slaughter of Israeli civilians on October 7 and nationalist ideals were further pushed to students by the leaders of the rally.
For the working class to be truly united, and for the true liberation of Palestine, it is important for us to acknowledge how we should unite and reject both anti-Palestinian racism and nationalism.
Columbia and NYU are landlords that happen to offer classes
NY Times, 12/10–State lawmakers will unveil legislation on Tuesday that would eliminate enormous property tax breaks for Columbia University and New York University, which have expanded to become among New York City’s top 10 largest private property owners. The bills would require the private universities to start paying their full annual property taxes and for that money to be redistributed to the City University of New York, the largest urban public university system in the country…The amount the schools save annually has soared in recent decades as the two have bought more properties, and the value of their properties has also increased…the city’s wealthiest universities were bigger and richer than ever before, amassing vast real estate portfolios that have drained the city budget…Columbia has grown its physical footprint to become the city’s largest private landowner.
KKKops murder one man and arrest protesters as anger builds in Decatur, AL
SPLC, 11/17–“Over the course of the times we’ve had rallies and demonstrations to protest there’s been nine arrests,” said Aneesah Saafiyah…Her father, Danny Saafiyah Sr… “Our protests haven’t been violent. None have been. No one has been attacking the police or anything like that. It’s just the intimidation tactics that the police use.”
Stephen Clay Perkins, 39, was shot to death in the early hours of Sept. 29 in front of his home…Perkins was hit seven times. He was declared dead at a local hospital…Despite early assurances that the bodycam footage would be released in mid-October, that did not happen. As of today, the family has still not seen it.
Oil in Guyana means profits for ExxonMobil
Der Spiegel, 11/24–"There's the new Guyana! Guyana with oil!,” Nicholas Deygooo calls out as the boat heads towards his artificial island. "It wouldn’t be possible without Exxon!”…Within just a few months, floating dredgers created some 44 acres of new land, roughly the size of 24 football fields. Such a thing has never been seen before in Guyana, the sparsely populated country on South America’s Atlantic coast, sandwiched between Venezuela and Suriname…Enormous oil reserves were discovered off the coast here in 2015, shortly before 200 countries agreed to the Paris Climate Agreement, which was to herald the end of the fossil fuel era. Huge quantities of first-class "light sweet crude” are buried below the ocean floor, highly valued for its low sulfur content and the relative ease with which it can be refined…According to the plans forged by ExxonMobil and Guyana’s government, the country will produce more crude oil per capita than any other country on the planet within five years. Despite the fact that the climate crisis poses a greater threat to Guyana than almost any other country in the world.
Capitalists weigh their anti immigrant racism with their need for workers to exploit
Washington Post, 11/9–National Population Projections estimate that the population will peak at almost 370 million in 2080 before receding to 366 million in 2100, an increase of only 9.7 percent between 2022 and 2100. That is far below the rate the country has grown each decade for most of the nation’s history…Immigrant adults tend to be younger and have higher fertility rates than their native-born counterparts. Demographers say they are key to providing enough people to fill the labor force and balance out the swelling population of older Americans, and avoid the fate of countries such as Japan and Germany, which have among the world’s highest share of people over 65. “These projections make clear that immigration is absolutely essential to the nation’s future population growth,” said William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the data. “It is also necessary to counter the extreme aging we will otherwise experience with the youthfulness of immigrants and their children.”
Biden kept “baby-killers" propaganda in speech
Al Jazeera, 11/27–US President Joe Biden reportedly rejected the advice of staff to refrain from repeating unverified reports that Hamas had beheaded babies during its attack on Israel on October 7. Some White House advisors appealed to the president to “cut a line about Hamas beheading babies because those reports were unverified,” according to a report by The Washington Post. An Israeli news outlet made the original claim, which was picked up by media outlets across the globe. However, no such beheadings have been verified by any Israeli or international source. Not long after Biden’s speech, the White House said in a statement that it had not confirmed the veracity of the reports.
Times economists fret that workers are pessimistic about the economy
New York Times, 11/23–Americans seem very grumpy about the economy lately, despite what looks like some pretty good news…To an economist, inflation is the change in prices…But to most people, inflation is high prices. So they look at high prices in the supermarket (for example) and say, “That’s inflation!”...Another thing bugging people is housing. Home prices and mortgage rates are up, and affordability is way down. Rents are also up. This is no problem if you already own it, but it’s awful if you’re a young person trying to buy your first place. That’s why you see TikTok talking about a Silent Depression; that might also explain why 93 percent of people 18 to 29 in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll said the economy was poor or only fair…In an NBC News poll released last weekend, only 19 percent of respondents said that they were confident the next generation would have better lives than their own generation. NBC said it was the smallest share of optimists dating back to the question’s introduction in 1990…That kind of pessimism might be easier to understand if the economy were in the tank.
Zapatistas dissolve autonomous municipalities
AP, 11/6–The Zapatista indigenous rebel movement in southern Mexico said in a statement posted Monday it is dissolving the “autonomous municipalities” it declared in the years following the group’s 1994 armed uprising…“In upcoming statements, we will describe the reasons and the processes involved in taking this decision,” the statement said. “We will also begin explaining what the new structure of Zapatista autonomy will look like, and how it was arrived at.”...Anthropologist Gaspar Morquecho, who has studied the movement for decades, said the Zapatistas — known as the EZLN, after their initials in Spanish — have become increasingly isolated, leading many young people to move out of the townships in search of work or more formal education opportunities…Chiapas has seen the rise of migrant smuggling, drug cultivation and trafficking, and bloody turf battles between the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels...The Mexican government has sent thousands of soldiers and quasi-military National Guard troopers to Chiapas…“The only reason they are here is to stem migration. That is the order they got from the U.S. government,” the statement read.
Arms race expands throughout Asia
NikkeiAsia, 11/28–By the 2030s, the Indo-Pacific region will be filled with thousands of new missiles as the U.S., China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan race to expand their arsenals, Ankit Panda, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow, said Monday. The danger, Panda told Nikkei Asia, is the "intersection between advanced conventional missile systems and the risk of nuclear war." The greatest fear is that countries such as China and North Korea may be more likely to resort to nuclear use if these conventional missiles are perceived to target their national leadership, he said. Since arms control talks are unlikely in the current geopolitical context, one idea is for the U.S. and its allies to publicly "forswear any preemptive" attacks on national leaders, he proposed in a recent Carnegie report, "Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals -- Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Escalation Risks."
No shackling of patients
November 14 was a busy day for U.S. PLP members and friends at the American Public Health Association (APHA) meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. We joined protests against Cop City in Atlanta and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians abroad. We were also instrumental in getting a policy passed by the APHA against shackling prisoners in health care settings (like handcuffing them to the metal rails on a hospital bed).
We worked for over a year with friends and PLP members to craft this resolution, just as we have done before on successful resolutions against police brutality and for prison abolition. This strong anti-racist policy statement gives us a new tool to demand humane treatment of prisoners at our local institutions. Two of us engaged in this policy work also hit the streets as a security team at the Cop City rally, openly advocating against capitalism and for communism. These actions opened the door to deeper political conversations at a later social event. A fellow rally security member was excited to meet a communist and to learn more about the PLP.
Handing out our newsletter, APHA Challenge, at sessions where we presented or spoke from the floor was another way we got into good conversations, including one with an interested activist who remembered us from our campaign last year around global vaccination access.
While PLP has provided consistent leadership in struggles at APHA for decades, today’s multiple crises for the global working class mean that the party group in the APHA must grow as class struggle intensifies!
*****
We will remember Claude
We live in a world where it’s “normal” to commit genocide, but it’s “unreasonable” to remember the dead.
In one New York City high school, on what would’ve been his 18th birthday, students wanted to memorialize Claude.* After what happened in March, in fear of retaliation, students wanted permission before putting up a memorial again.
Claude was a son, brother, friend, thinker, creator, student—and a victim. He was doubly targeted by the capitalist violence in the street and the racist education system in the schools. Following his killing, students had fought to memorialize Claude. In response, the administration had taken down the memorial not once, but twice! And each time, we rebuilt it bigger. (See CHALLENGE 4/12 and 4/26 for the full backstory.)
When I met with the principal this week to submit the students’ request, she eventually said yes. I quickly informed the students of the small win. I also asked staff to join me in wearing Black in memory of Claude.
Twelve hours later, before the school day, I received an email revoking permission to post the memorial.
When I arrived at school, I saw many workers in Black. Students and I began our morning with a circle in the hallway in front of the memorial. One student led us through a speech and ten seconds of silence. We then wrote messages on the poster.
After morning check-in, I was told by the administration to take down the memorial.
I replied, “No, I’m not doing that. I won’t be the one to remove it.”
She did a double take and said, “Okay, I’ll take it down myself. I’m not scared.”
The simple act of remembering a Black working-class student is defiance in this Black-run school. The fact that a memory of a child’s killing is so threatening exposes the racist anti-student nature of schools under bloody capitalism. One purpose of capitalist education is to recreate all the inequalities that make this profit system run. Capitalism’s schools censor and repress anti-working-class ideas. Bringing attention to Claude shatters the image of this “good school.” His memorial is a reminder that this whole system is disproportionately rigged against Black, Brown, and immigrant students. Such a system doesn’t deserve to exist.
Well, the principal finally backed down for now: “I don’t want to fight…we’ll keep it.”
Taking small risks like these helps build working-class confidence for the bigger battles ahead. Our next battle is fighting anti-Muslim racism (more next time).
Throughout the day, students from all grades signed the poster. Hundreds were careful to not let it wrinkle as they passed through the hallway. For now, the memorial is up.
Our principal was trying to bury Claude’s memory like how Israel buried 14,000 of our working-class siblings.
Students and education workers here have yet to see it, but the very group of people who kill kids overseas are the same people who kill kids in the streets.
Be it Brooklyn or Gaza, this profit system tries to bury us, but the working class remembers. We will remember Claude. We will remember the genocide. In their memory, we will fight for the kind of world they deserve.
*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
*****
Canada: worker organizer solidarity with our class in Gaza
A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member organized a solidarity event with workers in Palestine in his rural Maritime-Canadian community. The event was part of a national day of action demanding that the Canadian government support an immediate ceasefire in Israel-Palestine and call for an end to the blockade of Gaza.
More than 250 workers and their families showed up, a substantial turnout in a town of 5000. The highlight was a “complicity tour” that involved marching to various sites in town at which designated speakers critically connected the location to Canadian support for the ongoing genocide. The stops included the local university, where the speaker called out the administration’s cowardly unwillingness to condemn Israeli state violence and made the case for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. Then it was on to Scotiabank, whose logo blazes the same shade as the blood of Palestinian children, with the institution’s massive investments in Elbit Systems, an Israeli death merchant.
The gap between a ceasefire demand and PLP’s call to turn the guns around appears wide indeed, but by working in a reform-oriented organization Party members will continue striving to keep the revolutionary horizon in view, testing our line among an expanding coalition of community members.
*****
Response to Gaza genocide: teacher stops business as usual
As the bombs were falling on our working-class brothers and sisters in the Levant (Gaza and surrounding area), the New York City Department of Education dropped a bomb on NYC teachers. The Chancellor put out an email saying that teachers could be fired for anything they post on social media. This is a clear escalation, and an example of liberal fascism increasing, due to the need for the ruling class to silence any criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Not a word of criticism was broached by the Teachers’ Union thus their silence is complicity. Upon seeing the letter, my club of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teachers began formulating a plan to respond. One teacher shared a template that some teachers were using to write a letter to the teachers union’s president. We then decided that the club would take this course of action.
In addition, I decided that I wouldn’t be teaching my usual classes and would, instead, have a class discussion on Israel/Palestine. I was able to have a sharp conversation in the classroom and had several students — including some Muslim students — thank me. This also opened up the ability to have conversations with teachers, in which I consistently brought up the Party’s analysis thatU.S. support of Israel’s genocide is all part of inter-imperialist rivalry.
While sitting in the teacher’s center during my off period, I quickly wrote a letter and asked for input from a young Latin teacher with whom I’d had a few political conversations. She was happy to help, and shared that not only was the Israeli genocide fueled by the Leviathan Oil fields off of the coast of Gaza, but that there were plans to create a canal that would rival Egypt’s Suez Canal and be totally under the control of the U.S. and Israel.
I then sent the letter to our entire staff. Several teachers thanked me, especially one teacher with a Muslim name who said he was afraid of speaking out due to racism. Many good conversations with students and teachers and much base-building occurred by following and carrying out the plans that my club had made. Of course, as part of our plan, we decided to share our experiences with CHALLENGE to help the Party grow and learn.
