Migration

Not all deaths at sea are equal

Wednesday 28 August 2024, by Dave Kellaway



Dave Kellaway reports from Italy, and reflects on the media coverage of the sinking of the luxury yacht Bayesian off the coast of Sicily compared to the way the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean are usually reported

Over the past week the tragic sinking of tech magnate Mike Lynch’s yacht has been front page news in the papers and on TV every day in both in Britain and in Italy. By now, we all know about the lives and backgrounds of all the passengers. We know for instance that the youngest person lost, Lynch’s daughter, was all set to go to Oxford and that Lynch was ready to play a similar tech advisory role with the Starmer government, as he did with Sunak. His lawyer, who successfully won the case against Hewlett Packard, died. Jonathan Bloomer, the international boss of Morgan Stanley, was also lost. These were people who moved at the highest level of capitalist society and had the ears of government ministers.

Mass media attention

The actual sinking has been endlessly replayed in video clips. There have been detailed graphics explaining the dynamics of the accident. The inside pages of the press have been filled with special dossiers about the tragedy. Experts have been brought in to talk in detail about the design of the vessel and the quality of the captaincy in those vital minutes before it sank. The tens of millions of pounds invested in the yacht have been tabulated for us. Both the Italian and the British authorities mobilized its specialized services to help out straightaway. British diplomats dashed to the scene.

There are likely to be court cases about the causes of the sinking and whether the ship’s captain could have done things differently. It appears an adjacent yacht, albeit a lot smaller, survived the waterspout without any major difficulty. Given the assets represented by the yacht and the wealth of the people who have died there will be legal processes involving the insurance companies too for months if not years to come.

Now let us think not about the horrible consequences for the seven people who were tragically lost in the Bayesian but the 66 people, including 26 women and children, who drowned not that far from there just weeks before. Most people would not even know that had happened since it received such scant coverage in the press. Since 2014, it has been calculated that 20,000 migrants and asylum seekers have been drowned in the Mediterranean trying to get to a safe country or to find the same sort of life and security that we all enjoy.

Refugee deaths

We do not know the names of most of these drowned people. Some lists are kept by refugee agencies and charities but are mostly ignored by the mass media. Even these agencies have to end up registering many as unknown. In Lampedusa and other places, the bodies that are washed up are laid in many unmarked graves. We know these drowned people had exactly the same drive and motivation as Lynch’s daughter to work for a better life and to fulfil their dreams. We have to rely on a few survivors’ accounts that do make the mass media, or fictionalized accounts like the film Il Capitano (reviewed here), to get some sense of their story.

There will be no teams of lawyers or insurers haggling over the net worth of individuals or establishing the causes of their deaths. No compensation will be made to them or their families. Instead, they will be treated as “illegals” for exercising their asylum rights as established under international law or the right of movement for their labour – as exists for the capital that Mike Lynch moved around the world without restriction. Their fate will be ascribed to the villainous people smugglers who “manipulate” these ingenuous people. Very few people will publicise the fact that the small boats trade exists primarily because governments like Britain’s refuse to provide safe and legal routes for asylum and spend huge amounts of resources on border security.

Instead of governments rushing all its high tech and specialist resources to the scenes of small boat sinkings, we have the evidence of Greek or Italian coastguards actively trying to avoid taking emergency action. They spend more time trying to argue that the tragedies do not fall within their jurisdictions rather than actually doing their job and saving lives.

Government complicity

Just this week Yvette Cooper, the Labour Home Secretary has stepped up deportations and increased the numbers in detention centres. People are drowning in the English Channel while the British and French authorities conveniently blame each other. It seems that the military technology they use in war cannot be put at the service of preventing any drowning at all in a relatively small sea.

Here in Italy, this week there has been a big controversy on whether immigrants’ children born or brought up in Italy should have the automatic right of citizenship as is the case in many countries. One of the hard right government coalition parties, Forza Italia, (Berlusconi founded party) has broken ranks, and its leader Tajani has indicated it supports such a minimal progressive measure. Salvini, the racist leader of the Lega, a coalition partner, is particularly incensed by Tajani’s new line. Salvini’s new best friend, Vannacci a reactionary ex-general headed up the Lega slate for the last Euro elections.

He has been busy questioning how “Italian,” Egonu, the star player of the Italian women’s volley ball team that won gold in Paris, really is. Paola Egonu happens to be black, she was born in Italy, of Nigerian parents. A few days ago yet another migrant worker died from the heat in the fields of the agribusiness area of Latina. He is the second in three months to die.

Of course, we do not crudely counter pose the tragic deaths of Lynch and his friends with the thousands of migrants. All such unnecessary deaths, whether through freak weather conditions caused by global warning and human error or facilitated by European countries’ migration policies, should be mourned. Some idiots on social media, supposedly proclaiming their leftist credentials, have tried to revel in the deaths of these “representatives of the bourgeoisie.” There have been tasteless jokes and attempts to erect conspiracy theories. Socialists should reject such anti-humanist and childish rubbish.

Our focus is on how the mass media interprets and portrays these two sets of events. We want the mass media to report the tragedy of the migrants drowning from the small boats in the same intensity and detail as it covered the Bayesian sinking. We want an honest analysis of what causes the small boat phenomenon and policies discussed and proposed that could stop the drownings within weeks.

We want deaths at sea to be treated equally.

Anticapitalist Resistance

P.S.

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• Dave Kellaway

  Dave Kellaway is a Socialist Resistance and Fourth International supporter within Anti*Capitalist Resistance.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

The Failure of Militarized Diplomacy: Egypt’s Coup and the Decline of Continental Hegemony

By Hossam el-Hamalawy

August 28, 2024

Source: African Arguments

Mural from the Egyptian Revolution depicts popular sentiments on army rule. Credit: Ho Hossam el-Hamalawy

In the run-up to the July 2013 coup, supporters of the Egyptian military regularly circulated poorly photoshopped posters depicting then-defence minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as a lion, looked upon by the late president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Meanwhile, the elected Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, was accused of weakness that led to the degrading of Egypt’s stature in the continent. In contrast, the army propagandists declared it was only el-Sisi and his officers that could regain Cairo’s glory as a hegemon in the Middle East and Africa, secure the country’s borders and protect its perceived rightful share of the Nile water resources threatened by an ambitious ruler in Addis Ababa.

This has hardly been a success story.

Militarization of Egypt’s Foreign Ministry

The relationship between Egypt’s Foreign Ministry and the General Intelligence Service (GIS) has always been close and characterised by overlapping mandates. From its early days, the GIS managed to carve out a more substantial sphere of influence in the diplomatic service, dominating foreign policy vis-à-vis Egypt’s neighbours and elsewhere. Such a trend would only be enforced under the tenure of Major General Omar Suleiman, sometimes to the diplomats’ dismay, which was expressed clearly in the memoir of former Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Ghayt.

After the 2013 coup, however, the repressive apparatus institutions (GIS, military, and police) scrambled to extend their grip on all state organs, including the Foreign Ministry, as part of el-Sisi’s vision to militarize the civil service and society. The overtaking of the ministry was not only via staffing its ranks with security officials but also through sending junior diplomats, starting in 2017, to a six-month ideological indoctrination boot camp at the Military Academy. The diplomats are treated as conscripts, humiliated, broken, and receive seminars in the pseudoscience of Fourth Generation Warfare conspiracy theories.

From the river to the sea, failures are all we can see

The drive for militarisation and change in the ministry’s administrative dynamics have not led to an elevation of the regime’s status in Africa, let alone in Cairo’s traditional spheres of influence. On the contrary, one can argue that the most populous Arab nation is currently at its lowest point regarding regional power projection and has failed to prevail diplomatically in every challenge it faced.

Despite frantic attempts over the past decade by Egypt to obstruct Ethiopia from building the Grand Renaissance Dam, which Cairo perceives as a strategic threat to its Nile water resources, it could not prevail. After many rounds of extended negotiations, the Egyptian government announced in December 2023 that talks over the dam had failed. The dam is now in operation.

Despite consistent attempts by Cairo to bring South Sudan into its sphere of influence, the latter’s legislatures ratified the Ethiopia-backed Entebbe Agreement this month, making it the sixth Nile River state to do so, in opposition to Egypt and Sudan.

Moreover, landlocked Ethiopia surprised Egypt and the rest of the world at the beginning of this year by signing an agreement with the breakaway statelet of Somaliland to gain access to the Red Sea. Egypt vehemently opposed the agreement, but its response did not exceed some empty verbal threats and denunciations.

This month, the Somali central government signed a joint defence pact with Egypt, yet “it’s a hallow symbolic move,” says Abdurahman Warsame, a Somali journalist. “This is about Sisi trying to show he’s relevant and the isolated [Somali president] Hassan Sheikh Mohamud – who doesn’t control much of his country, including parts of the capital itself – trying to show he has friends. But practically on the ground, nothing changes. And it’s difficult to see Egypt militarily attacking Ethiopia and Somaliland, both of whom enjoy close relations with the UAE, Sisi’s main sponsor.”

Securing the vital Suez Canal has always meant Egypt strived to build its strategic domination of the Red Sea. In the 1973 war, the Egyptian navy, for instance, imposed a blockade on Israel by closing the Bab el-Mandab strait. In the ensuing decades, Egypt worked diplomatically and militarily to ensure smooth maritime navigation through this critical sea route.

The Yemen Houthis’ campaign, following the outbreak of the latest Gaza war, triggered a crisis in global trade and depleted the hard currency revenues of the Suez Canal, which are much needed amid Egypt’s ongoing economic crisis. Despite the massive expansion in foreign arms purchases (including submarines and frigates from Germany), the Egyptian navy has zero role in containing the threat and unclogging the maritime traffic flow.

A lost backyard

In Sudan, historically dominated by its northern neighbour – whose fingerprints were always seen in coups, military interventions, domestic political feuds, and GIS operations – Cairo stood by, watching Omar Bashir’s fall in 2019. Egypt was unable to influence the political outcome of the revolt, which saw Addis Ababa, Cairo’s archrival, instead intervening to broker a settlement between the Sudanese opposition and the military.

Two years later, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) staged a coup against the civilian government, reportedly with an Egyptian greenlight, only to fail miserably at pacifying the country.

In April 2023, Sudan was embroiled in a civil war between the army and the RSF. The SAF, backed by Cairo, suffered devastating losses. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict are taking place in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Djibouti rather than Egypt, which has little influence on the process. Cairo’s only attempt to host Sudanese talks this month resulted in nothing.

At the start of the civil war, RSF soldiers captured Egyptian jets and abused Egyptian soldiers at Merowe airbase. Egypt had aimed to establish an advanced strategic position in Sudan to threaten Ethiopia, only to lose such military presence in a humiliating manner that was recorded on video and circulated online, adding insult to injury.

Cairo, again, has been exposed as a declawed old lion.

Military dictatorship and eclipse of regional hegemony

The only place where the Egyptian army flexed its muscles was in neighbouring war-torn Libya, with an air campaign. And even those air raids hardly tilted the balance on the ground in favour of el-Sisi’s allies.

Contrary to the simplistic assumption that a hyper-militarised regime is bound to have an aggressive foreign policy, Egypt’s case is a stark example of how lack of domestic political legitimacy impacts the state’s ability to project regional power. After squandering billions of dollars on white elephant projects and being deprived of local support, el-Sisi’s regime became dependent on foreign economic and political aid. This eventually limited its capacity to pursue an assertive foreign policy lest it angers its backers.

The Egyptian army, no matter the volume of its arms purchases, which are financed mainly by loans from Europe, or the size of its troops, is essentially geared towards domestic policing and entrenching the dictatorial regime that serves the officers’ class privileges. Any quixotic diplomatic or military adventures outside the country’s borders will likely result in an embarrassing catastrophe, which in turn will further erode the military’s stature inside Egypt and threaten the foundations of the regime.

Prospects in Jammu and Kashmir: Will the People Matter?

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA

By Badri Raina

August 28, 2024

Source: The Wire

A voter in Budgam, Srinagar. Photo: Election Commission

How consequential will the up coming Jammu and Kashmir assembly election be?

Clearly, should the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) pull off a stunning victory and form the government, alone or with some congenial allies, there will be no need to restore statehood, full or not, to the Union territory.Since the BJP will be in the governing seat with a friendly governor firmly in place, it would be foolish to expect the arrangement to be disturbed in the larger political interest of the Hindutva right- wing.

And, perish the thought, should the old guard make a comeback: the very thought of returning statehood would be an ab initio nullity.

What might put the powers-that-be at mental and political ease is the reluctance the peace-loving Kashmiri masses have shown to trudge the street in pursuit of restoring democratic rights to themselves or to recuperate a cultural identity that, however deep or proud, stands for now squished into a nationalistic thepla.

The one factor that may cause some meaningful curiosity will pertain to how a revived and assertive Indian National Congress might play its federal cards.

Will it find itself in ‘fait accompli mode’ over the demand for the restoration of ‘special status’, or will it make bold to struggle with the regional parties for obtaining not just full statehood but also legislating measures that once again secure to the Kashmiri domiciles the right to free and assured education, to state-level jobs and to the ownership of land?

Failing such an agenda, the grand old party may be risking its credentials vis a vis Kashmiris for a long time to come.

It is well to recall that, after all, the accession of the erstwhile princely state to the dominion of India was primarily owing to the progressive and historic modus vivendi between an enlightened Muslim leadership in J&K and a triumphant Congress imbued with the ethical energy and emancipatory, secular momentum of the freedom struggle.

Let it not be forgotten that the Hindu Maharaja was most reluctant to throw his lot with India, coveting an “independent” status,” whereas Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, a devout Muslim, saw it fit to reject sectarian appeal and join hands with a ‘Hindu-majority’ India.

That he was to be disillusioned in double quick time is of course the tragic part of the story of Jammu and Kashmir, but one from which sanguine lessons may be drawn, especially at this fraught hour in the life of Kashmiris.

Equally pressingly, there would be no greater nationalist folly than to take the knowledgeable and politically articulate Ladakhis for granted. Why they should be denied the right to elect an assembly to govern themselves – a right they enjoyed as part of an undivided state – is a question the BJP has no answer to.



Badri Raina

Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.

 

Not Losing Sight of Imperialism

Venezuelanalysis member Ricardo Vaz discusses the "big picture" of imperialist attacks against Venezuela and international solidarity.

By Ricardo Vaz

August 28, 2024

Source: Venezuelanalysis.com

The July 28 presidential elections saw Venezuela thrust once again into the global spotlight. Amid renewed political violence, street protests, media misinformation and especially ramped-up imperialist aggression, we return the focus to the big picture as Venezuelans brace themselves for even harder battles to come.

The question of democracy

Right off the bat, it is important to get something out of the way: the Venezuelan elections were not “free and fair.” There is no way for that to happen in a country under a brutal blockade, incessant economic terrorism that punishes a project that refused to bow to Washington’s neocolonial diktat. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Venezuelans went to the polls with a gun to their heads.

Fighting back against US-led imperialism and its corporate media artillery begins by recognizing this vastly uneven playing field. Though the recent vote did leave questions to be answered, to zero in on the electoral controversy while ignoring or downplaying the context of US hybrid warfare is an intellectually and politically dishonest exercise.

Secondly, the Bolivarian Revolution at its core is all about democracy. But a deeper, more substantive concept of democracy, one that extends way beyond casting votes for representatives at different levels every so often.

Instead, over the past 25 years, Venezuela has been home to a number of revolutionary experiments of grassroots, assembly-based democracy, with the commune being its most advanced expression. In Hugo Chávez’s conception, communes are the “unit cells” for the construction of socialism as self-governments in the territories.

Though popular power has faced plenty of challenges and setbacks in recent years, it has also showcased impressive advances and remains full of potential for the transformation of society.

Washington’s reaction

After the CNE declared Maduro as the winner, the reaction from the United States was all too familiar, with officials feeling entitled to speak on behalf of “the Venezuelan people.”

Once the hardline opposition proclaimed its own triumph, Secretary of State Antony Blinken could not help himself from recognizing far-right candidate Edmundo González as “president-elect,” recalling Juan Guaidó’s infamous “interim presidency.” Subsequent statements partially walked back the recognition, but nevertheless emphasized a “transition” and endorsed the regional mediation efforts from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

From overt coup attempts and economic sanctions to media disinformation and NGO financing, US regime-change efforts have been a constant over the past 25 years, especially since the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013. In the run-up to the election, the corporate media had already declared González the victor while anonymous US officials talked about “calibrating” sanctions depending on the outcome, a traditional euphemism for a policy of mass murder that has claimed tens of thousands of civilian deaths every year since 2017.

Nevertheless, with its attention focused on actively facilitating Israel’s genocidal war in West Asia in addition to prolonging its NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Washington might prioritize energy market stability in the short term. Stemming Venezuelan migration, which has dramatically increased in recent years largely due to US economic terrorism, will be another priority for the Biden administration in the run-up to November. As such, it appears that Washington is not in an optimal position to escalate its regime change campaign, at least before next year.

The road ahead

The Maduro government and the Chavista movement more broadly face no shortage of challenges in the times to come.

July 28 saw a very significant portion of the electorate vote for arguably the farthest-right presidential candidacy in Venezuelan democratic history. Though María Corina Machado was not on the ballot, she was openly pulling the strings of the actual candidate Edmundo González.

Machado needs no introduction. A faithful US ally since the George W. Bush era, her rap sheet includes support for virtually every previous coup attempt of the past quarter of a century, enthusiastic endorsement of US-led sanctions and even calls for a foreign invasion, for which she was only banned from holding public office. 

Machado’s program is unfettered neoliberalism – including selling off strategic state enterprises like PDVSA – coupled with pledges to “eradicate socialism,” all but promising a dirty war against Chavismo. There is little doubt that Machado – and by extension, her proxy, González, – was the chosen candidate of the Biden administration, which consistently favored her over other opposition hopefuls more inclined to negotiate with the Maduro government such as Zulia Governor Manual Rosales. 

Much like Argentina’s Milei and Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Machado must be viewed as the local Venezuelan manifestation of peripheral fascism, which has metastasized across the South amid the devastating social fallout of income deflation, sanctions, wars of encroachment, and other modalities of “accumulation by waste” pursued by an ever more rabid, if senile imperialism. 

These forces, representing the most retrograde neocolonial classes and settler fractions, make no secret of their subservience to the democratic fascists ruling in Washington and other Western capitals and proudly wave the blood-stained banner of the genocidal Zionist colonial entity in Palestine. It is no wonder the Bolivarian grassroots movements are entrenching themselves against this existential threat.

At the same time, the Maduro government faces the prospect of ramped-up sanctions or even a return to “maximum pressure” should Trump return to the White House in November. 

This means an increasingly difficult balancing act to promote economic growth in the wake of one of the world’s worst “peacetime” GDP contractions without further increasing poverty and inequality. The present liberalization strategy that extends benefits to capital, so as to attract badly needed investment, while asking for patience and sacrifice from the working majority, may prove increasingly untenable in the face of growing threats from inside and outside.

Furthermore, the election’s results have been surrounded by questions, even by people who have been sympathetic to the Bolivarian Revolution, as the National Electoral Council (CNE) has not published detailed tallies by voting center. In the past, these publicly available totals have dispelled all doubts about the process and exposed the absolute lack of evidence behind the opposition’s perennial “fraud” allegations. Instead, the CNE’s silence has allowed the opposition and its media backers to make victory claims based on a dubiously parallel results page.

International solidarity

What is nonetheless clear is that the liberal hand-wringing from outside Venezuela, above all from the global North, is consummate bad faith. Imperialist functionaries and their intellectual assets of all political stripes are in absolutely no position to speak in the name of “democracy.” Their hands and pens are thoroughly stained by the blood of not just Palestine’s Shuja’iyya and Tel al-Sultan but also Bolivia’s Senkata and Sacaba, among countless other heinous crimes against Third World sovereignty from Haiti and the Congo to Libya and Syria, perpetrated with the support of sections of the Western left.

The frequently overlooked reality is that Venezuela is a country besieged by US-led imperialism, which shapes every aspect of the Bolivarian Revolution’s internal contradictions. This is as true the morning after the election as it was the day before.

Beyond the vast natural resources and strategic location, Venezuela will remain in Washington’s crosshairs because its revolution – notwithstanding the errors, setbacks, and deviations over the years  – still represents a beacon of hope that racialized and immiserated working people of the global South can build a sovereign alternative to the Western imperialist order, founded on over 500 years of colonial and neocolonial barbarism. This radical potentiality was already apparent in the 1989 “Caracazo” popular insurrection and subsequently found its most mature expression in the Bolivarian movement led by Hugo Chávez, who played a leading role in establishing the emerging South-South alliances and resistance axes alongside China, Iran, and other major anti-systemic actors.

It is evident that Venezuela today represents one of the key battlefronts in the class war waged against the peoples of the global South. There is no middle ground. 

As the rising tide of US-sponsored fascism threatens working people not just in Venezuela but the world over, our internationalist solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution must be as unconditional as ever.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND LABOUR

The RICH Want To Divide The Working Class

By Mick Lynch, Nour Samaha 

August 28, 2024

Source: Novara Media

screenshot
Novara Media spoke to Mick Lynch at Massive Attack’s Climate Action Accelerator

‘The Most Important Antidote to Anti-Semitism is to Show That Jews Are Diverse’:

Richard Kuper on Challenging Stereotypes and Supporting Palestinian Justice

By Richard Kuper, Jack Clarke 

August 28, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



As the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East continues to capture global attention, it is crucial to recognise the diversity of perspectives within the Jewish community regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. To shed light on this complexity, I recently spoke with Richard Kuper, a prominent figure in the movement for Palestinian justice.

Kuper, a founding member and longtime chair of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, is also the web editor for Jewish Voice for Labour, a university lecturer, published writer, and founder of Pluto Press. His extensive background in advocacy and activism provides a nuanced perspective on the situation. I reached out to Jews for Justice for Palestinians to arrange this conversation, seeking to explore the lesser-known voices that challenge the prevailing narratives often associated with Jewish and Israeli support for Netanyahu’s government.

Could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about Jews for Justice for Palestinians? What inspired you to help found the group, and what are its main goals?

I was born in South Africa into a Jewish community; roughly a third of the world that I knew, i.e., the white world, was Jewish in Johannesburg, at my school, primary and secondary school. I was very much part of that world. My grandfather was president of the Federation of Synagogues in South Africa, but my father was an atheist, and I was brought up in a secular household but observing Jewish traditions at my grandfather’s—Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach and all of that. I had an Orthodox bar mitzvah, but I never really believed, and my Jewishness was part of an ethnicity, if you like, rather than part of the Jewish religion. In that, I shared it with large numbers of people in South Africa. When I came to England at the age of 20, I found much the same here. I moved in a world in which being Jewish was something you were, but not something you particularly talked about or noticed most of the time. When it did come to the fore, it was obviously over the question of Israel. In South Africa, I was a Zionist. I went to Israel on a Zionist youth training program for a couple of months. I believed in Israel; it just felt a natural solution to the discomfort of apartheid, if you like, to think that there was somewhere else in the world where I would be welcome and would be living in an egalitarian society. My visit to Israel disabused me slightly. I still came away a Zionist but felt uncomfortable. Too much of what I heard and saw in Israel was reminiscent of the way in which blacks were talked about in South Africa. There was a kind of cultural racism and assumption of superiority, which I couldn’t articulate at the time, but which left me with some discomfort. It came to a head in 1967 with the war, and I had to try and make sense of it. In doing so, I kind of felt that it was just obvious that Palestinians were having a pretty rough time of it, and that the similarities between the oppression they were suffering and the oppression I had grown up with in South Africa were now too much to ignore. We formed Jews for Justice for Palestinians in 2002. Originally it was simply a statement of opposition to what Israel was doing, saying “it’s not in our name,” a mixture of secular and religious Jews, Zionist and non-Zionist Jews, just saying enough, you know, the occupation. In effect, this is not what Israel ought to be about, and we just felt we had to stand up and be counted. It was literally that we had to say Jews are a diverse range of communities; there is no single Jewish community. The Board of Deputies of British Jews does not speak for me, does not speak for us.

Turning now to the recent escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine, can you give us some historical context? For many in the West, this conflict only seemed to begin on October 7th. Why has it escalated so dramatically now?

Well, you’re absolutely right—it didn’t start on October the 7th. This is a conflict that’s been going on for a hundred years and more ever since the development of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century and the decision that Israel should be a homeland for the Jews. In and of itself, I see nothing wrong with that; there is a deep Jewish tradition and connectedness to Israel, but none of that gives a mandate. God was not a property agent dealing our territory to various peoples around the world, and I think it’s obscene the way in which people use biblical claims as a justification for their right to live in Palestine. The Zionist movement, when it went to Palestine, became fanatical in excluding Palestinian Arabs from its society, from working for its enterprises and so on, wanting a closed-off Jewish world, and not unnaturally it excited hostility immediately from the people who lived in the territory. Zionism was a reaction to anti-Semitism, and in that sense a movement for the liberation of Jews, but when it went to Palestine, it became something different. It became experienced by the people on the ground, the Palestinians, as imperialism and colonialism, as experienced anywhere else in the world as an oppressive outside factor coming in, taking away their land, which is particularly what caused immediate conflict in Palestine. They were being expropriated, and of course, they rebelled against it. After the Second World War, again many Jews in displaced people’s camps throughout Europe had nowhere to go because no one wanted to take them in, and Israel became a refuge for them. So from that point of view, you can understand the connection to Israel or Palestine as a place of safety. The dire effect of that, however, on the people who were already there was to be played out, particularly in the war of 1947 to ’48, where some ¾ of a million Palestinians were forced to flee or fled for safety, intending to come back. People always flee from war zones. The Israeli state was declared in May 1948. Before that, almost half the Palestinians had fled in response to attacks on their villages. The massacre of Deir Yassin occurred before the declaration of the state of independence, and there was a significant factor in forcing Palestinians to leave, persuading them to leave. Many of them left for other places within Palestine and found themselves within the new state of Israel, and for the first 20 years of Israel’s existence, they were under military rule. So Israel was never an egalitarian society.


There seems to be a common perception—and I’ve seen it at a couple of protests I’ve been at up here in the Northwest—mainly surprise that there has been a Jewish presence at some of the demonstrations. This perception seems to be that all Jewish people or Israeli people automatically support Netanyahu’s policies. How accurate is this, and what should the public understand about the diversity of opinion within the Jewish communities?

People are surprised to see us; it’s true. Many of them probably haven’t seen a Jewish person before, let alone a Jewish activist taking the side of Palestinians. And we always say the Jewish community is not unified. This perception that there is one view and all Jews support the same view—it’s a stereotype. It’s the basis of anti-Semitism, actually, you know, stereotyping and homogenising whole communities and whole populations. So we have always strived, from its inception, Jews for Justice for Palestinians found ourselves treated like pariahs by the official bodies of the Jewish community. We weren’t allowed to attend events like Jewish Book Week if we were seen distributing leaflets of protest about Palestine outside, and so Jews for Justice for Palestinians rapidly became an organisation pushing for pluralism within the Jewish community—the right to dissent internally. The organised bodies of the Jewish community speak mainly for those who are organised in synagogues and other organisations which affiliate, but they absolutely do not speak for all Jews.


On the topic of Israeli violence seeming the only, almost inherent, response and solution that they see, do you believe a peaceful or two-state solution is still possible, given such things as recent statements and actions from Israeli leaders, like Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who referred to Palestinians as ‘human animals’ and called for denying them basic necessities? Such comments and actions don’t just go away overnight. Is peace still a possibility after everything that has occurred since October 7th?

Will the world accept an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory between the river and the sea? I don’t believe it, and I sincerely hope not. But that is what the diehards in the Israeli government are now driving for, or Palestinians who will live in not even Bantustans within the greater Israel that these Mashuganas on the right-wing in Israel envisage establishing—an ethnonationalist state, destroy the Dome of the Rock, rebuild the Third Temple, introduce ritual slaughter back as we had it 2,000 years ago, you know, it’s back to the future with a vengeance. And I hope that the world will not accept it. In the end, Israel could not be doing what it is doing without America’s support. Biden arms Israel; it’s as simple as that. And the idea that opposing what Israel is doing in Gaza is anti-Semitic—I mean, there have been people who say calling for a ceasefire is anti-Semitic. And then, by a tortured logic, it kind of assumes there’ll be a ceasefire. Iran will arm Hamas; they’ll use this opportunity, but then they’ll attack Israel again. The way to stop any future attacks on Israel is to come up with some genuine solutions which offer Palestinians a way to Palestinian statehood, to recognition as a people, not as you mentioned, subhumans, animals. I mean, the parallels with other societies which have eliminated people because they were not really people, it’s absolutely terrifying. I mean, it’s not just what’s happening there; Western liberal values are at stake. Do we really believe in any of these, talked about so avidly as the real foundation of our civilisation?


I’ve read in such things as the Haaretz newspaper and other liberal papers recently, to try and get a wider view of the situation, that there’s a significant divide within Israel between the government and the general populace. How does this divide play out, especially with what I was reading about the recent court ruling on drafting the ultra-Orthodox into the IDF?

It’s been said for many decades that Israel as a society is deeply fragmented and on the verge of civil war, and the only thing that holds it together is the common enemy. It needs the Palestinians to stop its own society from falling apart. It needs Lebanon and Hezbollah; it needs Iran, because without them, the divides within Israeli society are too deep to contain within the institutions they have.

Richard, as we wrap up, how can people get involved with groups like Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and what role do you see these groups playing in resolving the ongoing conflict?

I would say to any Jew who is in any doubt, contact one of the Jewish organisations: Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Voice for Labour, Na’amod, Young Progressive Jews, Jews Against the Occupation, Jews Against Genocide, Black Jewish Alliance. There are all these groups growing up. We need a strong Jewish voice to speak out and say Jews do not speak with one name. I said it before and I’ll say again: I think the most important antidote to the spread of anti-Semitism is to show that Jews are diverse, that not all Jews think the same, that that stereotyping, which is encouraged by the communal institutions of the Jewish community who talk about “we stand behind Israel,” our Chief Rabbi—he’s not mine—the Chief Rabbi Mirvis spoke almost immediately after October the 7th about our Gallant soldiers in Gaza. If that isn’t inviting an accusation of dual loyalty and inviting an anti-Semitic response, I do not know what is. I think the loose talk from leaders of the Jewish community is dangerous to Jews in Britain, I’ll put it like that. We have to have a whole range of diverse responses and encourage people to do what they feel comfortable with, but don’t feel comfortable doing nothing. There was a very important statement made soon after October the 7th, saying if you ever wondered what you would do if you were living under slavery or living in conditions of civil war or you were living when there was a genocide, you’re doing it now. We are witnessing, on our televisions, in our living rooms, on our phones, we are witnessing a genocide. If you don’t want to call it a genocide, we’re witnessing a slaughter of unparalleled dimensions. Don’t think it doesn’t affect you. You must do something. Through your individual actions, you build communal strength and solidarity, and that is our weapon: solidarity. And we stand, as I said before, always with the oppressed, never with the oppressors. Thanks very much.

I encourage those seeking a deeper understanding to visit Jews for Justice for Palestinians for valuable insights and engagement.

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