Do Israeli protests signal a shift toward class-struggle politics?

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July and August have seen an unprecedented number of mass demonstrations in Israel. These mobilizations are similar, in many ways, to protests in the Arab world and in Europe. The demonstrations have raised demands against high prices and against privatization, and for increased minimum wages, but the main thrust has been high rents and a shortage of housing. Protesters themselves made comparisons to mobilizations in Egypt, and during marches Israelis chanted, “Mubarak, Assad, Bibi Netanyahu.”

Beginning on July 14-15, protesters erected about 50 tents in central Tel Aviv. By the end of the first week of August, the protest had grown to over 400 tents and hundreds of protesters. Tent cities have been put up in other parts of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and several smaller cities. On July 23, a mass protest march of over 20,000 took place in Tel Aviv. There were minor clashes with police and 43 were arrested; including 11 members of Anarchists Against the Wall.

In the days following the Tel Aviv march, there were protests and road blockades in a number of other cities. Netanyahu’s response was to announce a new housing plan that was immediately dismissed as inadequate by protest organizers. On July 30, about 150,000 marched across the country, including 80,000 in Tel Aviv. On Aug. 7, over 300,000 protesters marched in Tel Aviv—a city of less than 500,000.

... Palestine (continued from page 1: “Imperialist victory is no gain for Libyan people”) estinian National Council (PNC), the legislative body of the PLO. It is the PNC that holds the mechanism by which Palestinians can collectively determine the strategy the PLO must execute in our name. ... Indeed, democratization of our movement must reach into all aspects of our political work.”

And they situate the struggle in the regional revolt: “To our beautiful brave Arab people, from Tripoli to Cairo to Homs to Sana’a to Amman to Manama, we salute you and stand with you. In devoting ourselves to our liberation, we honor your sacrifices and struggle for our Palestine and for our Arab future. Stand with us, open the gates and crossings that besiege us, and rest assured: we will not stop until the banner of freedom flutters above the skies of our Jerusalem.”

USPCN called for attendance at the Sept. 15 rally, and for stepping up the already-launched nationwide campaign for direct elections to the Palestinian National Council, a campaign organized through the Palestinian Movement Assemblies and Community Meetings for Democratic National Representation being held around the U.S.

This focus on grassroots participation and leadership of the movement couldn’t come at a more crucial time. For while the UN events will likely lead to mass action by Palestinians around the world for genuine liberation, Israel has already warned it will meet a 6 Socialist Action SEPTEMBER 2011 On Aug. 18, protest organizers suspended planned weekend demonstrations following Israeli retaliation attacks on Gaza. Earlier in the week, in an attack at Eilat, six Israeli civilians and one soldier were killed. Israel’s retaliation attacks included air strikes on Gaza—with nine Palestinians killed and dozens wounded. IDF forces also killed three Egyptian police officers. After initial claims that Palestinian terrorists from Gaza had carried out the attack, the government later admitted that they were unsure of the real identities or origins of the attackers.

Subsequent Israeli social-justice demonstrations were smaller in scale than ones preceding the Eilat attack. On Aug. 27, about 10,000 protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, with a similar number protesting in Jerusalem. However, the movement came back to life on Sept. 3, with an estimated 450,000 taking part in demonstrations across Israel—including 300,000 in Tel Aviv and 50,000 in Jerusalem. Rally speakers blasted the Netanyahu government’s economic and defense policies. Calls for cuts in defense spending are increasing amongst demonstrators as the movement progresses.

Significantly, the protest on Sept. 3 in Haifa drew a mixed Palestinian-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli crowd of 40,000 and specifically raised the issue of discrimination against Arabs. According to Ha’aretz, one speaker, Shahin Nasser, representative of the Wadi Nisnas protest tent in Haifa, said: “Today we are changing the rules of the game. No more coexistence based on new intifada with mass murder.

A foretaste of that came with the regime’s murder of 19 civilians in Gaza in bombing raids after an attack on a bus carrying Israeli soldiers from a military base in Eilat. After the attacks, Palestinian doctors seeing children with hands and feet amputated reported that new, unknown weapons had been used with effects surpassing even the dreaded white phosphorus. These attacks were feared to be the opening of even greater slaughter, but at a meeting of the Zionist cabinet several officials had to admit that Israel’s increasing international isolation made such an attack difficult.

However, the regime has already warned that a mass revolt in September will be met with live fire. The Zionist army has begun training settlers in the West Bank and inherently limited. The fact that the movement stepped back when Israel was attacking Gaza speaks volumes about the limited nature of the social-justice movement there.

Palestinian Israelis face discrimination in education and jobs. There are whole sectors of the economy in which Arab labor is banned for “security” reasons. Poverty inside Israel for Arabs is 52 percent, while it is 16 percent for Jewish Israelis. In Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians are subject to land confiscation, home demolition, destruction of crops, and the violence of settlers and the military against communities. The military regime in the occupied territories amounts to an apartheid system, with separate roads and legal systems for settlers and the indigenous Palestinian people.

It remains to be seen whether this protest movement represents a major shift toward class-struggle politics in Israel. It’s possible that these protests will topple the rightist Netanyahu government, but what will happen next?

This is a critical question for Israeli workers and for those who want to build a just society. The continued oppression of the Palestinians and the occupation of Palestinian lands is the main obstacle to both multinational working-class unity and to full attainment of class-consciousness by Israeli Jewish workers. The liberation of the Israeli working class cannot be achieved separately from the liberation of the Palestinian people.

As long as the Israeli working class maintains its support for Zionism, it will be unable to move towards socialism. The ultimate solution is the building of a multinational revolutionary socialist party and a unified Palestinian workers state from the river to the sea, with full rights and equality for all. n (Left) Palestinians carry wounded woman into hospital after Aug. 19 Israeli attack on Gaza.

for joint IDF-settler attacks on Palestinian protesters.

The settlers, the vast majority of whom already carry guns, received tear gas and grenades from the army, which also announced (but kept secret the exact location of) two lines in the sand: If protesting Palestinians cross the first, tear gas and other “riot control” measures will be used. If they cross the second, the Zionist army will fire “at their legs” (in IDF investigations of murders by its soldiers, the latter were always said to have aimed at Palestinians’ legs when the bullets entered the chest or head).

We can be sure too that the report of the UN Secretary General’s Commission investigating the Mavi Marmara massacre, which gave its blessing to Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza in complete defiance of international law and even the denunciation of the blockade by other UN bodies, will further embolden the Zionist regime. On the other hand, it will likely lead to a revival of the movement against the siege of Gaza, which has already gotten back in action around a campaign to open the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

And Palestinians have taken heart in the mass demonstrations in Egypt demanding the closing of Israeli embassies, and the replacement of Zionist flags with Palestinian ones by wall-climbing protesters in Cairo and Alexandria. We urge all supporters of Palestinian rights to mobilize Sept. 15 at the UN, and to hit the streets in solidarity with renewed Palestinian mass action and in response to every Zionist attack. n

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Chicago meeting plans NATO/G8 protests CHICAGO—On Aug. 28, over 160 activists, representing 73 organizations, met at the Kent College of Law here to take the first steps toward building a national coalition capable of mounting sizeable peaceful, permitted marches on the occasion of the NATO/G8 summits to be held next May. Speakers from many Chicago communities spoke alongside leaders of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), all of whom reminded the audience that much of the world is in revolt against the wars and austerity packages recently imposed by NATO aircraft and G8 bankers.

“The entire world will be watching us,” said UNAC co-coordinator Joe Lombardo. Given that the U.S. is dominant in both NATO and the G8, Lombardo continued, U.S.-based antiwar and social justice movements have a special responsibility to act in solidarity with the victims of these institutions by building the largest demonstrations possible. attacks on Blacks, Latinos, immigrants and Muslims;” assaults on the environment; and new controls on energy, food, water and mineral resources.

Kathy Kelly of the Center for Creative Non-Violence brought home the continuing human costs of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan by telling the story of one of the child victims of a recent drone attack. Mark Johnson, executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest and oldest interfaith peace organization in the U.S., explained that failing to take on the fight against NATO/G8 would leave both the movement and all individual activists seriously weakened.

A panel titled “From the Wars Abroad to the Wars at Home” featured Chicago community activists who have committed to building the NATO/G8 permitted marches. Keenaga Taylor, from Communities United Against Foreclosures and Evictions; Mark Clement of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty; and N’dana Carter of Southside Together Tony Savino / Socialist Action Proposals to build and broaden the NATO/G8 march by Mujahid and others were tied throughout the day to the knowledge that the government was going to use all the powers at its disposal to thwart political protests during the summit. On July 15, in response to the news that antiwar organizers had submitted applications for march permits, Chicago Police Dept. Superintendent Garry McCarthy told a Chicago Sun Times reporter that he was preparing 13,000 cops for “mass containment.”

The initial response of the antiwar movement was a July press conference at which Christine Boardman, president of SEIU Local 73; Jokarhi Shakur, student leader, Save City Colleges coalition; Bob Clarke, Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights; Joe Lombardo, United National Antiwar Committee; and others asserted the right to protest and a guarantee from Mayor Rahm Emmanuel that civil liberties would be respected during the summit. The Aug. 28 meeting charted a nine-month