Presentation by Class War (TŘÍDNÍ VÁLKA):
We hereby share two appeals from the Centro di documentazione contro la guerra ["Documentation Center Against War", based in Milan, Italy] collective, which you can find on its website: https://centrodidocumentazionecontrolaguerra.noblogs.org
The first is entitled "Mobilizations against war: defeatism and antimilitarism" and expresses the clear positions of revolutionary defeatism that we share and subscribe to! There's nothing to add, except that we very much appreciate the fact that the authors stress the importance of solidarity with deserters on both sides of the conflict!
The second appeal, entitled "On the side of the Palestinian masses: against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine", is a statement and call for mobilization against the massacre of the proletariat taking place in the territory of "Gaza", and highlights a few important points:
# It highlights the context of the horrific living conditions of the "Palestinian" proletariat under military rule, as well as the existing social separations and hierarchies in "Israel/Palestine" between "Jews" and "Arabs" that are at the root of so many social confrontations in the region.
# It appropriately denounces the deployment of the "Western bloc" behind "Israel" and its warmongering propaganda (directed mainly against the proletariat of "its" countries).
'The position of revolutionaries in the face of capitalist war is always the same: oppose social revolution to war, fight against "one's own" bourgeoisie and "one's own" national state.'
Class War
Mobilizations against war
Defeatism and anti-militarism
Friday October 20: general strike called by base [Trade] unions, Saturday October 21: anti-war demonstrations in Ghedi (BS), San Piero a Grado (PI) and Palermo.
We obviously call for mobilization and participation, but we support the need for defeatism in the ongoing war in Ukraine, against Russian imperialism and against the US/Europe/NATO imperialist bloc, against the prospect of a global, inter-capitalist war, starting from this war.
Today, more than a year after the start of the war in Ukraine, there is no permanent mass mobilization against the war, in Italy, or in other Western countries. Moreover, Italy and other nation states have in fact been at proxy war for some time (providing weapons, training and bases for activities linked to war operations in Ukraine), but antimilitarist intervention is not focused on defeatist opposition to the ongoing war.
In mobilizations and initiatives, a series of objectives are raised, such as the rejection of new (and old) military bases, the denunciation of growing militarism in schools, opposition to rearmament and the arms trade, opposition to the militarization of territories... all activities to be supported, but to be linked within the general framework of a defeatist rejection of the war in Ukraine and the Italian government's policy of participation in it.
That's why we're calling on you to take part, supporting internationalist defeatism and anti-militarism, and demanding automatic political asylum for those fleeing war in Russia and Ukraine — asylum that is not granted by any European country.
WE'LL BE IN GHEDI ON 21ST FROM MILAN
Concentration in piazza Roma, Ghedi, 2 p.m.
On the side of the Palestinian masses
Against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Western hypocrisy these days has reached levels and tones of genuine war propaganda. With the word given by Zionism and Israel, the Western "democratic world" is collaborating in the erasure of the very existence of the Palestinians. It feigns concern about the consequences for "civilians" of the Israeli army's entry into Gaza, when in reality it is alarmed at the not inconsiderable possibility of the conflict spreading beyond Gaza and Palestine, becoming a further disruptive factor in the "new world disorder".
The call to arms against Hamas, launched by both the "left" and the right (1), would like to conceal 75 years of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians by Zionism and the Israeli state.
It would like to hide 75 years of apartheid, repression, expulsion from the territory, theft and/or destruction of land and homes, imprisonment and detention often without trial, checkpoints, walls, double legislation (one for the Israelis, one for the Palestinians, the latter under the military boot [military conscription of all Israeli youth is not the "military boot"?]), murders and executions at home, in the street, regardless of gender, age, armed or unarmed; armed settlers who, in violation of the same Israeli laws, occupy Palestinian areas by force, immediately supported by the army; international agreements signed and immediately trampled on and ignored; systematic violation of UN resolutions, etc.
But today, all Palestinians must also pay because Hamas, through its attack, has defied the Israeli oppressor and demonstrated that it is not invincible; it has reminded us that the Palestinians are there, that they exist, and that there is no solution without them other than their genocide.
The exclusion and denial of the Palestinians is the fundamental characteristic of international diplomatic initiatives for peace in the Middle East in recent years, including those led by Arab countries "friendly" to the Palestinian cause.
To the "beautiful souls" who defend democratic values only for some, who are indignant at the barbarity of others, but above all to those who care about the cause of Palestine and the exploited, we say that we make no secret of the fact that Hamas, with the attack of October 7, is also responsible for the same, complementary barbarity as that of the Israelis, for example in the assault on the "Nova Festival" rave.
Hamas is a reactionary political organization, opposed to social emancipation, but which represents and organizes Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere against Israeli colonial oppression. [Does it fuck! Hamas snatches people from their homes and work places, brutalises, tortures and kills them, just as the IDF and all other police forces do. All on behalf of the local/international bourgeoisie.] It would be foolish to ask Hamas to be communist and internationalist, to fight to establish a very difficult link between Palestinian proletarians and oppressed and Israeli proletarians, for a common liberation, which is the Gordian knot of the Palestinian question. [There is no Gordian knot! Proletarians whatever nationality or religion attributed to them are linked by the fact that we work along side each other in the same factories, the same offices and the same fields. We are irrevocably knotted together and opposed to our enemy, the bourgeoisie. At times we are confined and isolated in cells but only for a time].
Islamic nationalists, like Zionist nationalists, are the bitter enemies of this revolutionary, solidarity-based and internationalist perspective. And it is in this class perspective that the choices and strategies of those fighting to promote a more advanced front for all the oppressed must be assessed and addressed.
What matters to us today is to reaffirm the need to stand resolutely and unconditionally by the side of the Palestinian masses, in the full knowledge that Zionism and the capitalist state of Israel are leading Israelis and Palestinians to ruin, in a spiral of death and bloodshed. It's time to put an end to it.
Announcing the preparation of a public initiative on Palestine, both face-to-face and online, and the publication of a number of positions taken by Israelis and Jews against Israel and its policies, which go in the same direction as what we advocate, we end by quoting the post of an Israeli, commenting on an article by Gideon Levy published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The October 14 post is by an Israeli called Hirsch. We can't know if its author has actually been where he says he has, but the meaning is nevertheless deeply acceptable, if a different perspective isn't established in Israel and an end is not put to colonialism, Zionism, the oppression of the Palestinians.
'The unfolding flattening of the Gaza Ghetto calls to mind the flattening of the Warsaw Ghetto 80 years ago. It happened while I was a sitting duck with a yellow star in the Dachau KZ. I survived only to to come to the same conclusion as Gideon Levy in this article: “We haven’t learned a thing”. And I’d add: “And we never will”. It looks like we’ll have to resign from the human race. That’s it, that’s all.' (2)
Capitalism, its states, its leaders (of all colors) are leading humanity to catastrophe, if the international proletariat doesn't stop them, by rebelling against them. Let's not forget that if bombs are falling on Gaza today, they are directed against all the oppressed.
From Gaza to Tel Aviv and all over the world... No to war except class war!
Notes :
(1) Even the heirs of the anti-Semitic and fascist magazine La Difesa della razza ("The Defense of the Race"), a racist magazine published from 1938 to 1943, of which Giorgio Almirante, founder of the MSI, was editorial secretary, are involved in the campaign; among them, anti-Arabism and anti-Islamism are today far more deeply rooted than anti-Judaism.
(2) https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-10-09/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israel-cant-imprison-2-million-gazans-without-paying-a-cruel-price/0000018b-1476-d465-abbb-14f6262a0000
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Footnotes:
(a) "Palestinian masses" must be understood as a reference to the working class that reside in the historic region of Palestine and its satellite camps, not as an ethno-racist term, in order to avoid falling into petty bourgeois and leftist pitfalls.
(b) '...social separations and hierarchies in "Israel/Palestine" between "Jews" and "Arabs" that are at the root of so many social confrontations in the region.' TŘÍDNÍ VÁLKA: These social separations are not the root of the social confrontations but are a result of the antagonism between capital and labour. Results, not causes!
(c) Whilst the main body of the text refers to "the erasure of the very existence of the Palestinians", our understanding of the situation is that "the Palestinians" will be erased in the same manner as the Morrocan Jews, the Yiddish nation, the Falasha of Ethiopia, etc. were erased, by means of incorporation into a Greater Israel. This matter is determined by the requirements of such concentration of capital in Israel and the contradictory absence of labour power.
Notes on footnotes:
(a) These word acrobatics of ours to juggle the terms to mean otherwise is just confusing matters.
(b) These social separations, Jew and Arab, Palestinian and Israeli, are not the root of the social confrontations but are a result of the antagonism between capital and labour. Results, not causes.
(c) This is just a speculation on our part that reflects our own bourgeois prejudice. We hope that workers of the country can live on an equal footing in the future but it is just that, hope.
Proletarian Revolution
Post-publishing editorial note:
After both internal discussion and critical comments received from some comrades, we have to reevaluate publishing of the second appeal "On the side of the Palestinian masses".
Although it raises some valid points, it's overall meaning is in support of a common struggle of the "Palestinian people" or "masses" against the common "oppressor", which (as we pointed out in our introduction) we totally reject, as there can never be any common interests between the exploited and their exploiters, regardless of any "ethnic characteristics" that might be ascribed to them by the bourgeois ideology.
It also directly clashes with the need of both the "Palestinian" and "Israeli" proletariat to develop the real class solidarity across the trench lines, to refuse to kill and be killed for the interests of their "own" exploiters and to turn their weapons against them. As such, this appeal contributes more to the blurring of the revolutionary defeatist position, than to its clarification.
We keep it here only in order not to falsify our own publishing history.
Třídní Válka/Class War