On The Question Of Cease Fires

Commentary


As the reader is probably aware of by now the Israeli government, under whatever prodding from its international allies and pressure from worldwide outrage, has called a unilateral military cease fire (as of this writing) in its dispute with the Hamas-led government in Gaza. Given, the military and political realities, or for that matter the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza no one can be unhappy to see the slaughter stopped (over 1200 Palestinians killed, including many women and children, and thousand more injured and homeless. This, however, begs the question about the radical anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist position on cease fires. In short, where or when do we call for them and to whom do we address the question.

A cease fire, in the final analysis, reflects one option of many in a military situation. In the present case while we welcome a cease fire we did not call on Israel to do so. All of our sympathies here are with the beleaguered Palestinians, despite their Hamas political leadership. We called for military defense of the Hamas-led forces against Israel. We would have supported a cease fire called by those forces, if the military called for it as is apparent here with the disproportion of forces.

The real question for those of us who called for the defense of the Palestinian people is whether we contract out the question of a cease fire to one of more of the imperialist allies of Israel or some imperialist-dominated international agency, like the United Nations. No, we do not do that. As even a brief look at the sordid history of imperialist-brokered cease fires and other military maneuvers demonstrates, at the end of the day this neither does anything for the beleaguered forces we support nor does it resolve any of the questions that are on the historic agenda. All such efforts on the part of militants, well meaning or not, and there have been more than a few socialists who have called on these imperialist agencies, is a rather touching faith in these institutions. Some defense of the Palestinian people! More on this later, as this is hardly a fully worked out exposition on the matter.

U.S. Stop Military Aid To Israel Now!!

Commentary

Repost of December 29, 2008 Entry

Israel Hands Off Gaza!-Military Victory To Hamas!

At this moment there is no need for some greatly detailed analysis of who or what went wrong in the Middle East that has caused Israel to rain hell down on the Palestinian people in Gaza. Now is the time to outline an anti-imperialist policy toward this unfolding struggle. As I write this entry Israeli bombs are falling on Gaza causing several hundred deaths, many injuries and much physical destruction, as can be expected when an advanced capitalist country puts the hammer down militarily on essentially defenseless people. Israel, moreover, appears to be preparing to launch ground forces into Gaza. I believe that that military possibility is only a matter of time. Israel Hands Off Gaza! Meanwhile American policy continues, as it has been throughout the Bush Administration, to let Israel run the show on its own terms (except, as was shown in Lebanon in 2006, on that little issue of America providing military materials to Israel on the fast track when things got tight).

I have mentioned before that a just solution to the Palestinian questions today seems far beyond any possible solution. That understanding, however, does not mean we have no policy when, as today, the Palestinian people are under the gun. Today we call, as we did in Lebanon with Hezbollah, for military victory to Hamas, even if we do so holding our noses. We have some things to settle with the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas but that is for another day. Today, let’s be clear, the main enemy of the Palestinian people is Israel. An Israeli military victory, especially in the context of a new American presidential administration coming into power in a few weeks, only postpones a just solution to the national question in that area of the world. Military Victory To Hamas! More later.

Posted December 30, 2008

I should add a slogan here for anti-imperialist militants worldwide to take up. This is an episodic slogan appropriate now that Israel appears to be going full bore toward invasion of Gaza. U.S. Stop Military Aid To Israel Now! I would also add that our trade union friends should be raising the question of ‘hot-cargoing’ military shipments to Israel.

Note: As always when the question of Palestine takes center stage the local Zionists here in America are plowing ahead with their uncritical support for any and all Israeli military actions in Gaza (and elsewhere). Of particular notice is a comment made by one such supporter. When asked by a local reporter what his solution to the festering Palestinian question should be he answered-“I would drop an atomic bomb on Gaza and get rid of those bastards”. Well, that is plain enough. Not only does it tell us how far away a just solution is to the question but that yesterday’s former oppressed population, the Jews, are capable, or at least one of them is and I fear he is not alone, of working out their own xenophobic nationalist “final solution”. I would only add that the person interviewed should check his geography and, perhaps, a little physics, because an atomic bomb dropped in Gaza is going to have “blow back” into Israel. Big time. Of course, nationalists of every stripe can never be accused of rational thought when they are on their little hobbyhorses. More later.

THE (IL)LOGIC OF THE NATION-STATE

COMMENTARY

‘GLOBALIZATION’ THEORY TAKES A BEATING

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!


The recent events in the Middle East and elsewhere have highlighted the irrational nature of trying to confine economic, social and political developments to the nation-state system in the age of imperialism. Every conflict from the sectarian civil war in Iraq to the Israeli- Lebanese border war to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle cries out for a socialist solution. That is a fight to the finish, not between ethnically divided populations, but a working class based solution. Today’s political configurations, including the prevalent of religious fundamentalism on all sides in every struggle, make that proposition seem utopian at best and irrelevant at worst. This writer will concede that it is entirely possible that just solutions to these conflicts may proved ultimately intractable nevertheless it is equally obvious that the capitalist nation-state system provides no way out of this dilemma. Sometimes one must fight for what is necessary as well as what is right.

Ironically, Marxists have historically had mixed feelings about the role of the nation-state in history. In the age of the rise of capitalist development at a time when the capitalist system as a whole was a truly progressive historical development, that is until about World War I, Marxists welcomed the formation of nation-states against the particularist , provincial nature of the feudal system. Since World War I, that is since the rise of the full blown imperialist age, Marxist have generally opposed the nation-state in the metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, even today Marxists extend support to national liberation struggles and defend the right to national self-determination for oppressed and neo-colonial peoples. The right to national self-determination has been an integral of the revolutionary program since the early days of the Communist International. The support for struggle of the Palestinian peoples for their own, even if truncated, state falls under that premise. Why? To take the national question off the agenda and place the class question to the fore.

While this little note makes no pretense to do anything but pose the question, to be taken up in future blogs, of the strategies necessary to replace the nation-state with other forms of political organization it does take issue with the notion, currently fashionable, that the process of ‘globalization’ will solve the problems of the nation-state by making borders irrelevant. Well, this writer for one would be more than happy if that were to be the case. However, who is the utopian here? If anything the process of globalization-let us call it by its right name, the international capitalist system- has intensified the tensions in the nation-state system. This ‘globalization’, by the way did not start recently. The whole development of the capitalist system from its progressive beginnings to its imperialist decay has been the struggle to internationalize the market. In short, the capitalists have had their chance - it is time to move on over and let others solve the question of international economic, social and political development. More, much more, later.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!