A Highly Unfashionable Bit of Reflection

Today, November 7th is election day in the United States One almost hesitates to mention that November 7th is a red-letter day for another more momentous reason. On this date, 83 years ago, the workers, peasants and soldiers of Czarist Russia set out on a long and arduous journey to change the face of their society, and ultimately, the very nature of human society. The twists and turns, the successes and failures of the specific path taken in the Soviet Union are, of course, part and parcel of this ‘century of extremes.’

For a brief period the received wisdom was that the return to capitalism in Soviet Russia and its allies would guarantee the joys of middle class existence to the people. After ten years of social decay, criminalization of the economy, and rising mortality rates we learn, according to the Western press, that fifty million children may not survive the hardships of the coming winter. We were earlier informed that the fall of the Soviet system would permit a flowering of the Russian economy by breaking down the artificial barriers to the action of human nature. Now the standard explanation is that it is a question of the right “culture” which it appears is lacking in Moscow, Kiev, Bucharest and other ‘backward’ countries.

At the same time, the lessons of capitalist globalization suggest that suffering and deprivation borne by the vast majority of the people on this planet are not accidental. The phenomena associated with super exploitation, sweatshop labor, uneven exchange, the debt crisis, the rape of the environment and the other international mechanisms that ensure the sway of capital pose the very same question that the people of Russia faced back in 1917. The liberation of society depends on a basic change in the relations of production. In the final analysis it is a question of the ruling system and the interests of the ruling classes.

As we struggle for justice for the Palestinian people and a just peace in the ME, it may be of some use to remember that we are dealing with one of the more stubborn remnants of the colonial system. It is certainly of importance to understand that Israeli military and economic superiority delve from a regional status quo designed to protest the interests of capital and the exploitation of the region for its own selfish needs. These considerations would suggest, that despite current fashion, it is still quite a good idea to reflect on the October revolution and its significance.

How Everything Hangs Together

The United States recently issued a new list of terrorist organizations. One can assume that this is an initiative of the Candaleezza Rice- Paul Wolkowitz group which does not want to let Bush forget that he has lots and lots of enemies in the Middle East. The cold-war right in the United States remains primarily interested in diverting the war against terror to Iraq in order to settle some old debts and probably to incur some new ones…

It is rather quaint but the Kahana organizations in Israel also appear on the U.S.list which designates them officially as terrorists. If the Kahana (or Kach, as they are presently known) groups are terrorists, why do they openly operate in Israel? They publicly and openly utilize every chance to incite against the Arabs and demand their expulsion from all of Eretz-Yisrael (Palestine). In stickers and signs all over the country they spew their fascist and racist filth. They are also active in settlement centers, expecially Hebron, where spearhead provocations against the local Arab population. The Kach people most probably have links with underground forces that have been murdering local Palestinians, supposedly in reprisal for Palestinian attacks. There have been tens of ‘underground’ attacks by the Jewish ‘underground’ marauders and not a single arrest. One can envisage see the brilliant Israeli anti-terrorist operatives scratching their scalps in despair for not having any leads on the settlement based marauders…”who might be doing all this?.” The only reason that we cannot be 100% certain that these are pure Kach operations is the fact that there so many Jewish, racist settlement-based groupings which are all out to teach the Palestinians a lesson in preparation for the final solution of the Palestinian question.

In video shots on the life and times of (the newly declared) Saint Ghandi, the affectionate army pet name for Mr. Zeevi, we were treated to a collections of shots of the late minister touring the Jewish settlement in Hebron. Every single frame showed Hebron resident Baruch Marzel, one of the more notarious Kach thugs, showing Zeevi around the place.
If you are a terrorist group and you want to know how to live comfortably and avoid the wrath of the government or even signs of its official dispeasure, contact the Kach group and they will tell you how to do it. They are highly visible and apparently totally untouchable, despite the U.S. listing.

Influence in High Places

The current Israeli Chief of Staff, Shaul Mofaz, has trampled every vestige of the democratic principle that holds that the military must stay out of politics and be subservient to the civilian, political arms of the regime. Mofaz, know as the most political CoS that Israeli has ever had, was officially censured just last week by the Minister of Defence, Ben Eliezer, for bucking an explicit cabinet decision to retreat from several recently occupied Hebron hills. The static behind this blow up revealed that Mofaz is in cahoots with former prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu and is slated to become Netanyahu’s candidate for Minister of Defence as part of the Netanyahu comeback campaign, based on an attack against Sharon from the right!. All the leaked information – and that’s more reliable than official output here in Israel - shows how Mofaz outhawks the hawks in demands for an all out war to eliminate Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. Ha’aretz journalist, Uzi Benziman, reports in his column today that ‘Shimon Peres was heard remarking to one of his aides that the Chief of Staff holds views similar to those of the Kach movement.”

Texts and Trends – The Joint Palestinian-Israeli Declaration

There are different ways to analyze any political message and event. You can apply a rigorous textual analyses and show how the text or the event reflects the text producers and their production – and if they have a shady past, you will not have any difficulty finding its traces in the text. This is what Yehudit Harel has done and almost everything she says about the document and its Israeli initiators is true. Another method is to look at the event – the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Declaration of Principles (IPJD) in its general and overall political context. Here, we have to ask if the movement is forward, backward, and in short, are we better off if the event had not occurred. I prefer the analysis via the political context.…

The Joint Declaration is a positive event that reflects the weaknesses and the hesitations of the Israeli Zionist doves as a political formation, but at the same time expresses a welcome tendency for that community to come out of a stage of total shock into which it sank after Camp David, the Intifada, the electoral defeat of their leader Ehud Barak. Ehud Barak [and Clinton] did fool them, but now a year after Camp David they are back to square one – returning, shamefacedly and a bit subdued – to the understanding that Israel does have a partner for peace. There are a lot of elements that went into this return to their senses and a lot could be said about how this formation has a tendency to dismiss and delegitimize the Palestinian people and their representatives whenever the going gets tough.

However, Beilin, for example, is an establishment politician who plays a progressive role in Israeli politics today in that he has resisted the right wing groundswell represented by Peres (national unity government under Sharon) and Ben Ami (Arafat is to blame). The IPJD is a product of Beilin’s leadership of the dove formation and the willingness of that formation to recognize its own contribution to the general disorientation after the Barak fiasco. As weak and pale as the IPJD, it signifies forward movement for the dove section of the Israeli establishment.

On the day-to-day political level, I do not want and am unwilling to attack the Palestinian leadership for its efforts to prove to the Israeli public and world opinion that they have not turned their back on peace. The slanders and the libel of the hegemonic Western media have made every effort to portray them in this role for their crime of saying no to Clinton – so as to prove that nobody gets off easy for that kind of transgression. If, as Yehudit Harel senses quite acutely, the Palestinian leadership has renewed a dialog with the moderate sections of the Israeli establishment in an effort to make war a bit more difficult for Shaorn – this is basically an ‘internal’ Palestinian matter of tactics. I do have a few questions of my own for the Palestinian leadership, but they will have to wait. Life is complicated and demands compromises. Peace Now, one of the favorite boogey men of the ultra-militants is holding a demonstration next Saturday in Tel Aviv, under the main slogan: No to an unnecessary war! In the given circumstances, the turn out might be far from what we could hope for. We can boycott the demo, we sure do have a ‘thick file’ on Peace Now. But any responsible activist on the Israeli scene knows that she or he should be there.