The Red Review | Issue #4 (December 2023)
Editorial: Heroic Palestine Gives Rise to a Powerful, Global Anti-War Movement
On October 7, a shocking rebellion of Palestinians erupted in Gaza under the leadership of Hamas, its elected government. The Gaza Strip is a walled prison-like zone surrounded by multiple layers of Israeli spying technology, well-armed and ruthless Israeli occupation troops, and military check points. It is supported by murderous Israeli settlers prepared to attack, beat and murder Palestinians with impunity, whenever they wish.
After 75 years of Israeli occupation, apartheid, brutality and suppression, the Palestinians reacted, forcing their way out of Gaza into settler-colonial territory, killing and wounding as many Israeli soldiers and police as they could (civilians too, regrettably) and carrying over 250 captives back to Gaza. The attack was preceded by the launch of thousands of unsophisticated missiles, some of which pierced the famous Iron Dome missile defense system. The failure of Israeli forces to prevent the attack, and their slow response revealed that the vaunted Zionist military machine was far less effective than the world had been led to believe. Why did Hamas do it?
Commencing under Trump, and continuing under Biden, the United States has worked steadily to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab countries. They made progress with the UAE and Qatar, and were on the verge of a deal with Saudi Arabia -- a major gain. One prime purpose of these deals is to isolate the oppressed Palestinians, to leave them without hope of Arab support. Hamas leaders have said, since October 7, that their aim was to make such isolation and abandonment of their struggle for freedom impossible.
The vicious, racist reaction of the Netanyahu Zionist government was predictable. Their US imperialist allies, including Canada, back them without stint in the campaign to seize northern Gaza, and perhaps the entire Strip, and implement a bloody final solution to the Gaza-West Bank cauldron. By murdering Palestinian civilians, including masses of children, denying them food, water and fuel, by bombing schools, hospitals and refugee camps, the Zionist state hopes to force the Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai desert. Gaza, already flattened by indiscriminate bombing, will then be available for more illegal settlement by Zionist extremists.
Israel, fearfully aware that there are 7.3 million Jews in Palestine and 7.3 million Palestinians and that the birth rate of Palestinians is higher, has no intention of granting equal rights to Palestinians, ever. They see Israel as a theocratic homeland of god’s chosen people, with no room for “human animals “ (Palestinians). This master race view is fascistic at its core.
Hezbollah, Iran, Turkey and others are being forced, by their outraged populations, to consider coming to the aid of Palestine. The Saudi deal is dead. Russia has warned Israel and the US away from Syria.
But the violence organized by the US and Israel against the unarmed civilian population of Gaza is so severe, so brutal, so completely in violation of international law, so shockingly disgusting that a massive international anti war movement, in solidarity with Palestinian struggle for liberation, has erupted with mass actions around the world, almost every day. The propaganda machine of the Zionist entity and of western imperialism has cranked up with even greater frenzy than it did at the outbreak of the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
Israel and its powerful US imperialist ally try to portray the settler colonial aggressor as the victim in this fight. The large, well-equipped military of Israel faces the much smaller liberation forces in Gaza with far fewer and less technologicaly developed weapons and supplies. But relatively few people are fooled by the lies of Israel, nor do they care who lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago. The Zionists have for decades tried to justify their aggression and brutality by using the Nazi holocaust against the Jews as justification, which is an obscenity to the suffering of the holocaust victims. We reject the claim that Israel has a right to “defend” itself. No occupier or aggressor has the right to defend the itself against the oppressed.
Urgently, the global anti-war movement should structure itself by forming non- exclusionary united fronts, on the local, national and international level, making democratic decisions on slogans and by organizing coordinated global mass actions. By including labour organizations, many of which have already declared support for the Palestinian struggle, the fight can be extended to the obstruction of the manufacture and shipment of weapons and supplies to Israel, blockading Israeli products and services, and by demanding the imperialist governments stop fueling the Zionist state in any way. Tear down the Apartheid Wall. Free the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of Palestinian children. Allow all the post-1947 refugees to return home. Demand that Netanyahu, Biden and their accomplices be arrested and tried for war crimes. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Freedom and Necessity: A Marxist Approach
By Gary Porter - “Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.”
“Freedom is the recognition of necessity,”
Reality imposes limits on both the freedom of individuals and the freedom of groups. Your freedom to swing your fist stops just before my nose begins. Otherwise your “freedom” becomes my oppression.
For the bourgeois apologists, the words freedom and liberty mean the right of the individual to do whatever they want. This includes the right to alienate the means of production from all others (private property) and to operate them solely for their own enrichment. This concept necessarily is not a right of all. Otherwise, there would be no class whose only way to survive is to sell their labour, their ability to create value, which is the source of all the riches of the owning class.
Pierre Poilievre, the "Common Sense" Bigot
By Hugh Pedersen - Pierre Poilievre seems very sure that he will be Prime Minster after the next election, just as Andrew Scheer and Erin O'toole were in their time. You can never count Justin Trudeau out of the race, especially with the NDP ready to support his every imperialist move
But one day, given the complete lack of will in the NDP leadership to mobilise the workers, indigenous, national minorities and queer folk in a true fight for their needs against the greed of the ruling classes, the Conservatives will win. So what is the superficial and smarmy Pierre Poilievre really all about?
The NDP, a Bourgeois Workers' Party
This article inaugurates a new feature in The Red Review. Occasionally, we will publish extended elaborations of the views of Socialist Action on key political issues of confusion or disagreement across the Canadian left. These will be presented under the rubric “a Socialist Action View”.
by Gary Porter - Our current political analysis of, and tactical approach to, the mass labour-based party in Canada—the New Democratic Party—draws heavily on a report presented to the January 1974 Plenum of the Central Committee of the League for Socialist Action/Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière by myself. The report represented the majority view of the Political Committee. It was adopted by the plenum and published in the LSA/LSO Internal Information Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 4, February 1974. Our work in the NDP and its antecedent, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, began much earlier in the 1940s. This report represented a major clarification of our position, and a further development and elucidation of our line. It remains pertinent today.
BC NDP Convention: Pushed hard by delegates inside the hall and loud demonstrations Outside
By Gary Porter - 745 delegates from across BC met in Victoria to consider policy and elect a leadership as we approach 2024 and a Provincial election. The entire 56 NDP MLAs were in attendance for all, or part of the convention. They got an earful.
They heard about the desperate effort to find affordable homes, the renovictions, the high rents. They heard about the inability to find a family doctor, the high price of gas to get to work , painful decisions to buy lower quality food just to feed the kids, homes lost to massive fires and the cattle, hogs and pets lost to terrifying floods. A doctor stood in a white coat and described children with asthma unable to breathe because of forest fire smoke. Delegates from remote parts of BC explained there was no public transportation at all to where they lived and often 250 miles, or more, to the nearest medical clinic. All this after 6 years of NDP government in Victoria.
Apostle of Genocide Rules Israel from the Grave
by Cliff Conner - Meir Kahane, a fanatic ultra right wing zealot, was assassinated more than thirty years ago, and yet his spirit is in full control of Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza. When he was alive, his racist and antidemocratic political movement, the Kach party, was banned in Israel and officially designated a terrorist organization, both in Israel and the United States. Today his disciples and admirers are at the head of the state of Israel and direct its political energy toward implementing ethnic cleansing policies. Their avowed goal is to eliminate the Palestinian population in its entirety from the territories claimed by Israel.
OFL Embraces the Palestinian People
by Barry Weisleder - It was nearly a fashion make-over. Many top labour officials sported “End the Occupation – Free Palestine” buttons. Some even draped themselves with keffiyehs at the biennial convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour, held November 20-24 at the Sheraton Center in Toronto.
The colourful display was a testament to the power of rallies and marches of millions around the world since the Zionist state stepped up its genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Likewise, the resolution adopted overwhelmingly by OFL delegates (numbering over 944 registered, representing some one million affiliated union members) was the product of decades of education and agitation by socialists and progressives. The latter popularized demands to End the Occupation, Lift the Siege of Gaza, Remove the “Separation” Wall, and implement Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid Israeli state.
Socialist Action 2023 Fund Appeal – Invest in the struggle for a better world!
Now that another year of pandemic is behind us, it is time to reflect, and to replenish our resources. Inspiring are the first signs of a revival of the workers’ movement, including new union-organizing efforts, the specter of a general strike in Ontario, and the many young workers who are joining the revolutionary socialist movement. The aim of this New Year’s Fund Appeal is to raise over $7,000 between now and February 28, 2023, to enable Socialist Action to rise to the challenges ahead. We seek to enlist your support for our efforts to build a larger, more effective, non-sectarian, socialist working class party.
It is no small irony that the opportunity to build a better future stems from the rising threat of nuclear annihilation and a persistent global health crisis. Toxic, high intensity agribusiness practices put profit before public safety. Capitalist politicians claim to care about people — even as they buy oil pipelines, trample the rights of Indigenous people, and sell weapons of mass destruction. Their response to hyper-inflation is high interest rates to induce recession with attendant job loss. Inequality surges. Vile demagogues stoke fears. They intensify racism, sexism and homophobia. They promote authoritarian rule. They wage wars of imperialist plunder. Human civilization is at risk. Now the choice is Socialism or Extinction. If we are to survive, revolutionary change must be won on an urgent basis. But it won’t happen spontaneously; it won’t happen without clear, principled revolutionary leadership.
Socialist Action does not have a magic blueprint. But we do stand proudly on 170 years of global political experience and sound principles. The first is workers’ self-organization and mass mobilization, independent of the capitalist parties and their state. Another is unity in action, via the workers’ united front tactic.
For many years SA has demonstrated in practice its commitment to these ideas. SA led the way in demanding proper PPE in all work places, paid sick leave, full-time employment with a big pay raise for personal care workers, and the nationalization of the for-profit, private Long Term Care corporations. SA pushed for a Green New Deal based on a planned economy under workers’ and community control, starting with restitution for Indigenous people who continue to suffer corporate plunder of their ancestral lands. Uniquely, we called on environmentalists in the Green Party and in the labour-based New Democratic Party to unite and form a Revolutionary Eco-socialist party. SA vigorously advances the cause of socialism and democracy by building the Workers’ Action Movement in unions, and the Socialist Caucus in the NDP. WAM and the SC had a major positive impact at labour and NDP conventions in 2022. We are dedicated activists in the Canadian Network for Cuba and in campaigns for the Palestinian people, including the Canadian Coalition for Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment. We actively oppose the inter-imperialist war between NATO and Russia, and rising western hostility towards China. SA is a partner in the No Fighter Jets campaign, in support of the pro-Indigenous Land Back movement, in Queer Ontario, the No Pride in Police Coalition, feminist campaigns for equal pay and demand an end to sexist violence. SA helped to launch the Municipal Socialist Alliance in Ontario, Vote Socialist in Vancouver, and was at the forefront of efforts to De-fund, Disarm and Disband the Police, in tandem with tenants’ rights bodies, ODSP survivors, and the Labour May Day Committee. SA defends free speech against those who would curtail it by conflating Anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. We join with many others in confronting racism, sexism, homophobia, and fascism.
What will SA do with the money that you generously donate? We will strengthen SA social media platforms. Tens of thousands of people visited www.socialistaction.ca this year. Higher visibility will enable us to build new branches across the Canadian state, publish more booklets, create more banners, flags and placards, and field more candidates in municipal elections.
Are we in a hurry? Frankly, yes! Time is short to save humanity and nature from capitalist catastrophe. But with your help, there is a much better chance of survival – even to make a better world. What do you say?
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