Sunday, October 20, 2024

Nothing Israel does will serve Syrians’ struggle for freedom

Friday 18 October 2024, by Joseph Daher

Joseph Daher explains why celebrating Israel’s assassination Hezbollah’s Nasrallah is short sighted when it comes to Syrians’ struggle against Assad’s regime.

Israel’s escalation of violence in Lebanon and its assassination of several Hezbollah military and political leaders, including long time secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, has led to many debates on Hezbollah’s nature and political trajectory. This has also raised the important question of the right of resistance, particularly in the current context.

The vastly differing views of Hezbollah were starkly reflected in the scenes that followed Nasrallah’s assassination. On one side, the party’s members, supporters, and allies, expressed sadness and sorrow, while at the same time images were shared across social media of Syrians from the opposition-controlled north-western areas distributing sweets in celebration. Some supporters of the Syrian revolution also expressed joy over the massive Israeli bombing of Dahiyeh (southern Beirut).

These reactions can be largely attributed to Hezbollah’s role in having assisted the Syrian regime in crushing the uprising, laying siege on cities like Madaya, forcibly displacing civilians and various other violations of human rights against civilian populations. In addition to this, a lot of Syrians recalled when it was Hezbollah’s members and supporters who distributed sweets in Dahiyeh in the summer of 2013, following the capture of the city of al-Qusayr in Homs province by the Syrian army and Hezbollah against Syrian armed opposition groups.

While one can understand that the positive reactions to the assassination by Syrians opposed to the Syrian regime are a form of revenge because of Hezbollah’s complicity, the context surrounding the current moment, matters. We have to be clear, Israel’s war against Lebanon is not to promote the freedom of Syrians or any other population in the region suffering from authoritarian states.

A new Middle East

Israel’s recent bombing campaigns in Lebanon, supported by the US, have been taking place amidst its continuous genocide in Gaza and annexation of the West Bank, and have spared no one. More than 2000 people have been killed, thousands more are injured, and considerable destruction has been caused. Not to mention, 1.2 million people have been displaced in less than a month. In an attempt to re-occupy territories of southern Lebanon through ground offensives, Israel’s occupation army is also provoking wide scale destructions.

Additionally, Israeli officials from the Netanyahu to Spokesperson Avichay Adraee, who serves as the head of the Arab media division of the Israeli occupation army, have attempted to create and promote sectarian tensions among Lebanese people to potentially provoke a civil war. For example, just a few days ago Israel struck the village of Aito where mostly Christian populations live, and where internally displaced people coming from majority Shi’a areas were being welcomed. At least 22 people were killed by the bombing. This was a way to fuel more sectarian tensions amongst the Lebanese population.

More widely, Netanyahu’s plans are clear: a new Middle East that bows down to US and Israel, forced to submit under harsh violence. This strategy does not include any prospect of democracy and justice for Syrians or the wider region’s popular classes, quite the opposite.

In reality Israel was not in favour of the Syrian regime being overthrown, and in July 2018 Netanyahu declared no objection to Assad taking back control of the country and stabilising his power. He said Israel would only act against perceived threats, such as Iran and Hezbollah’s forces and influence, explaining, “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights”.

Furthermore, Israel has continuously justified these merciless bombing campaigns against civilian areas in Gaza and Lebanon by stating that Hamas or Hezbollah members or infrastructures were present. However, for Israel, all civilians in these areas are considered supporters and by extension, labelled “terrorists”. In fact, Western media, which has aided and abetted this war, echoes Israeli propaganda by continuously describing these areas as Hezbollah or Hamas strongholds.

Similarly, the Syrian regime extensively bombed opposition held areas to cause massive destructions, including human casualties, and displace the local population who were opposed to the regime in order to force them into regions under their control. They destroyed the opposition’s infrastructure and cut their supply lines, including through the deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools, markets, and civilians.

Preventing civilian access to basic goods and services, including humanitarian aid, was another widely employed tactic to guarantee forcible displacement, or the eventual surrendering of territory and population by the opposition. The regime also justified their campaign as fighting “jihadist terrorists”.

Right to resist

Israel’s war on Palestine and Lebanon is not to promote “peace” or “liberate” local populations from Hezbollah or Hamas, but to pursue its historical objectives as a settler colonial state of eliminating Palestinians through a continued Nakba and consolidating a regional order serving US imperial interests. These objectives are a mortal threat to the whole region, with no exception.

With this in mind, Palestinians and Lebanese people have the right to resist Israel’s racist, colonial apartheid state violence, including through military resistance. This includes the right of Hezbollah and Hamas, which are the main actors involved in the armed confrontation with the Israeli occupation army, to resist.

After all, did Syrians not have the right to defend themselves against the military campaign led by pro-regime forces accompanied by thousands of foreign fighters led by Iran and Hezbollah, and aided by Russia aviation, to re-occupy eastern Aleppo in 2016 ? They did, because the issue at hand was opposing a war against civilians in Eastern Aleppo, and elsewhere, regardless of the reactionary nature of some parts of opposition armed groups.

However, defending the right of people to resist oppression should not be confused with support for the political projects of Hezbollah or Hamas, or the belief that these parties will be able to deliver Palestinian liberation. Just as all critiques of these political parties shouldn’t be confused with “promoting” Israeli propaganda or siding with US allies.

If support is uncritical, it becomes a passive form of solidarity limited to celebrating Hezbollah, and often its main sponsor Iran. Rather, such a narrow perspective becomes an obstacle to building a wider popular resistance against Israel’s war on Lebanon and/or attempts to establish regional and international solidarity.

Indeed, one of the reasons for Hezbollah’s growing isolation is its defence of the sectarian and neoliberal political system in Lebanon, and serving in the interests of Iran, including through supporting the survival of the Syrian regime.

Finally, the dividing views over Nasrallah’s assassination have demonstrated the glaring absence of an independent democratic and progressive bloc that is able to organise and clearly oppose Israel’s wars as well as Western imperialist interests, whilst also affirming solidarity with all oppressed peoples in the region against all authoritarian regimes and political orders.

New Arab

The gold curse in Ghana

Saturday 19 October 2024, by Paul Martial

Demonstrations against illegal gold mining in Ghana are becoming a major political issue, highlighting the corruption of the country’s ruling elites. With just two months to go before the country’s presidential elections, the environmental issue is entering the debate as citizens mobilise against illegal gold mining.

Increased mobilisation

An initial demonstration initiated by the Democracy Hub movement brought together around a hundred activists protesting against the activities of illegal gold miners known in Ghana as galamsey, a word derived from ‘gather them and sell’. The police intervened violently and imprisoned around fifty demonstrators. This repression, far from weakening the struggle, strengthened it. As a result, the three days of mobilisation called for at the beginning of October brought together a much larger number of people. Most were dressed in red and black, demanding the release of the demonstrators and an end to illegal gold mining. Several placards were held up saying "Your greed fuels our crisis ’.

Illegal mines

Most of the mines are concentrated in the south of the country, and illegal gold panning could involve almost a million miners, providing a livelihood for 4.5 million people. This activity has many harmful consequences for the environment. It destroys forests, pollutes rivers with mercury and cyanide, and degrades the land through the use of high-pressure water, which eliminates nutrients. What’s more, the holes are often not filled in, leading to accidents. Miners and their families suffer from health problems linked to exposure to chemicals. The use of mechanisation is also cutting into the agricultural land used for cocoa plantations.

Government accused

The repression of the demonstrators was aimed at stifling this issue, which remains perilous for the government. Although some measures have been taken against illegal mining, they are above all symbolic because the stakes are so high. There are social issues at stake - the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people - as well as economic ones, since Ghana is Africa’s second largest gold producer, with companies that do not hesitate to buy gold produced in illegal mines at very low prices.

Finally, this controversy sheds a harsh light on the system of clientelism and corruption in the country’s two main parties. The report by Professor Kawabena Frimpong Boateng, a former Minister of the Environment, implicates a number of senior members of the government involved in galamsey activities.

Translated by International Viewpoint from l’Anticapitaliste.

The solution would be a radical rethink of the extractivist model imposed by multinationals on African countries, offering young people prospects other than polluting their country and endangering themselves and their families.

Martinique: ‘Our economy is based on a colonial model’

Sunday 20 October 2024, by Marcel Sellaye

For the past month, the popular movement against the high cost of living in Martinique has been gathering momentum. Marcel Sellaye, an activist in the GRS (Groupe révolution socialiste) and a former leader of the Respé (Résistance ESPoir, Émancipation) list, explains the reasons for the anger and how the movement is continuing.

How did the movement against the high cost of living come about?

There have been some impressive mobilisations by the people of the French West Indies against the high cost of living in recent years: in 2009, they were initiated by the LKP in Guadeloupe and the K5F in Martinique, then, more recently, in the context of the covid pandemic and the less spectacular one of 2021. The movement launched on 1 September 2024 by RPPRAC (Rassemblement pour la Protection des Peuples et des Ressources Afro-Caribéens - Rally for the Protection of Afro-Caribbean Peoples and Resources) specifically targets food prices, which have soared by 40% according to INSEE.

In reality, the high cost of living in the French West Indies, in this case Martinique, is entirely due to the structure of the ‘Martinique economy’, which has been part of the global economy since 1957 (as part of the European Common Market). The structural high cost of living is aggravated by changes in the global inflationary context.

Martinique’s economy is dependent on the French market - a legacy of the colonial economic model based on the principle of exclusive trade with ‘metropolitan France’ to the detriment of local production. So not only are 80% of foodstuffs imported, but they also pass through the hands of fourteen intermediaries concerned about their profits!

This economic model is very costly for the population, particularly for the working and popular classes (35% of whom live below the poverty line). This market is dominated by the oligopoly GBH (Groupe Bernard Hayot), the leader in mass retailing since 1960 and whose owner is one of the 500 richest people in France. This same dependence also benefits the multinational CMA CGM (which has a monopoly on maritime transport), which contributes to the increase in the cost of purchasing products, which officially stands at around 7%.

What are the demands of the movement?

It all goes back to 2012, when measures were taken to regulate this market through a system of permanent promotions on basic products (the Price Quality Shield). A system managed exclusively by suppliers and distributors under the benevolent eye of the state.

In 2023, in the face of ever-rising prices, a ‘commission of enquiry into the cost of living in the territorial regional authorities governed by Articles 73 and 74’, led by Martinique MP Johnny Hajjar (Parti Progressiste Martiniquais, a Césairist party), revealed the opacity of the system and the exorbitant margins built up by supermarkets. It was against this backdrop that the RPPRAC, whose equivalent in France would be the Gilets jaunes, emerged.

Launched on social networks, its ambition was to mobilise simultaneously, on 1 September, the peoples of the colonies (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Réunion) and West Indians living in France. But it is in Martinique, alongside its leaders (Rodrigue Petitot and Aude Goussard), that it is gathering the largest number of people (nearly 800 responded to the call on 1 September) and has since been leading blockades of supermarkets - in particular those belonging to the GBH group (Carrefour).

The movement has undoubtedly succeeded in highlighting this legitimate concern of the population, but it is a pity that, in the name of ‘efficiency’, it has sidelined the issues of low wages and pensions, health, public services and so on.

It was able to provoke several official ‘negotiation’ meetings on price cuts, notably at the prefecture and the Territorial Assembly. After more than a month of mobilisation, the leaders officially acknowledged that they had been unsuccessful. In any case, this temporary failure has led its leaders to amend their hegemonic discourse and review their relationship with the trade union movement, which they initially claimed to do without, on the pretext in particular of its ‘failure in the 2009 movement’ and its responsibility for the current situation.

How have the authorities, including the French government, responded?

The government could not pretend to ignore the issue of the high cost of living, especially after the proven failure of previous measures - in which it was complicit - and especially after the publication of the report by the parliamentary commission of enquiry led by MP Hajjar.

What’s more, the prefect was careful not to invite the MP to any of the meetings held in the prefecture on the subject. He was firm in his opposition to the demand for transparency made by the RPPRAC, which wanted live coverage of the debates.

He was quick to impose a curfew, following the night-time violence perpetrated on the fringes of the movement and the exchanges of fire between police and demonstrators in the popular neighbourhood of Sainte-Thérèse in mid-September.

But the most significant development was the return to France of the CRS (French riot police), who had been deemed undesirable after their misdeeds in Fort-de-France in December 1959. Against a backdrop of high living costs, unemployment, forced emigration, demands for autonomy and popular urban uprisings, three young people were shot dead by the CRS.

What action is the movement planning to take in the near future?

What seemed unthinkable until then, because of the anti-union stance, happened on 28 September, at a rally organised by the CDMT (Martinique Workers’ Democratic Federation) against the backdrop of a general strike called by the CGTM union at the Maison des syndicats: the ‘official’ meeting between the leaders of the RPPRAC and the activists and leaders of the two trade union federations, the activists of the UFM (Union des femmes de Martinique), the activists of the Respé list (Résistance ESPoir, Émancipation) during a meeting held in the same place in front of a hundred people. The structural high cost of living is aggravated by changes in the global inflationary context.

The meeting launched at the initiative of 3 unions (CGTM, CDMT and UNSA) on 4 October was a first attempt to initiate a collective and in-depth discussion on the relationship with the RPPRAC, but also and above all to think about the reconstruction of deteriorated relationships (at the top of the inter-union organisation) and to prepare a popular mobilisation, commensurate with the social and environmental stakes, with a guarantee of effectiveness.

 

California Law Mandates That Public School Children Be Taught About State’s Genocide of Indigenous Peoples

From the time the Europeans arrived on American shores, the U.S. government authorized more than 1,500 wars and attacks on Indigenous people and at the conclusion of the “Indian wars” in the late 19th century, of the estimated 10 million to 15 million native peoples, fewer than 238,000 remained. In the past I’ve written about these efforts in the Great Plains and upper Midwest. I’m now spending some time  in Santa Barbara, California which has prompted my looking into that state’s role in the great American genocide. The Santa Barbara region was inhabited by Chumash people for at least 11,000 years and before the European invaders arrived the population was some 18,000. By 1900 it had declined to less than 500 and today it’s leveled off at about 5000.

A new California law, which takes effect on January 1, 2025, requires that public schools begin teaching about the state’s treatment of Indigenous peoples. The State Department of Education must consult with tribes when updating the social studies curriculum and several tribes are advocating the inclusion of material contained in UCLA professor Benjamin Madley’s  book, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. This is the first comprehensive account of the state-sanctioned murder of California’s Native People. Madley documents how state and federal governments employed their legitimizing authority for the genocide and Congress financially underwrote California’s extinction campaign.

The new legislation was set in motion five years ago when California Gov. Gavin Newsome publicly apologized for the “war of extermination” pronounced by Peter Burnett, the state’s first governor in 1851.  Newsome said that at time, state law required that Indigenous peoples be removed from their land, children separated from their families, native people stripped of their language and culture and a system of indentured servitude was begun. Under Gov. Burnett, California’s Indigenous population was reduced by 80 percent.

In 1846, U.S. troops took control of California from Mexico and in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war with Mexico. Mexico ceded California and its other northern territories for 15 million dollars. On January 6, 1851, the new governor of California said the following about the “Indians” in his inaugural address: “That war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian is extinct. While we cannot anticipate this result with painful regret, the inevitable destruction of a race is beyond the power of wisdom of man to avert.” California Senator John B. Weller declared of the Indigene, “Humanity may forbid, but the interests of the white man demands their extinction.” This “myth of inevitable extinction”  fueled the ideology that Indigenes were destined to vanish, that it was simply their fate and unstoppable.

And in case there remains any doubt that this was not official policy, we know that the men who “killed thousands of Indians from the 1840s to the 1870s were paid by the state of California and the federal government…they filed expenses and were reimbursed.” (Tom Fuller, “Hastings Law Grapples with the Founder’s Involvement with Native Massacres,” NYT, (pay wall, updated November 4, 2021). It should be noted that with the outbreak of the Civil War,  California sent 15,725 volunteers to serve in the Union Army. However there so many volunteers that enough remained at home to serve as the primary agent of the killing machine. Furtherduring the Civil War the Union government’s treasury was running perilously low but Congress still allotted major funding to the California Volunteers for their  Indigene-hunting operation. Madley calculates that at the end of the Civil War, only 34,000 Indians remained from from 150,000 in 1845. Limited attacks continued until 1871 when it was beginning to find any more Inidigenes left to kill. The decline was caused by killings, disease, starvation and massacres. Madley estimates that the “state spent 1.7 million — a staggering sum in its day — to murder some 16,000 people.”

My hope (perhaps a fantasy) is that Indigenous and non-Indigenous public school kids in California will be deprogrammed and learn that genocide, like slavery, was part of the inherent capitalist logic of dispossesion.   Will they be exposed to the truth that there exists a glaring contemporay parallel to this history in Israel’s “plausible genocide” (ICJ) in Gaza and the future ethnic cleansing of the West Bank? Young Indigenous peoples understand that they are the descendants of genocide as the banner  flown by the Oglala Lakota’s Youth Council in South Dakota reads, “From Pine Ridge to Palestine.” Will school chidren learn, as Middle East Eye‘s Jonathan Cook points out, that Israel is now finishing the job it began in 1948? At least as important, will they be encouraged to understand that, as in the 1840-1871 period in California, the U.S. government is not only backing this modern day war of extermination but its actions are wholly consonant with the objective of U.S. imperialism in its efforts to maintain America’s global empire? Will they learn that both Israel and the United States were settler-colonial state projects and not as the official narratives proclaim, “nations of immigrants.”FacebooTwitterRedditEmail

Gary Olson is Professor Emeritus at Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA. Contact: garylolson416@gmail.com. Per usual, thanks to Kathleen Kelly, my in-house ed. Read other articles by Gary.