“Your blood is my blood. Your enemy is my enemy. Your struggle for freedom is my
struggle for freedom. Your dreams and hopes echo in my heart and mind. The borders that separate us will not divide us. We will win as one. We have the power to make this world into the world we want to live in. We can, if we act, create a new society in which the needs of humanity come before the enrichment of a few and for the first time in human history, human beings can finally think, love and socialize as equals while protecting and realizing the great potential of both human beings and all that inhabit this earth.”
From the BAMN Pledge
(bamn.com/bamnpledge)
Our movement is on the rise, in strength, boldness, and in consciousness. The
increased repression of campus struggles by University administrations, who have
relied on police brutality, coordinated attacks by far right and fascist pro‐Trump and pro‐Netanyahu thugs, and threats of severe reprisals to suppress any pro‐Palestinian speech and to crush campus‐based, youth‐led, independent mass anti‐war actions, are not winning. In fact, the actions of the Columbia University President to militarize her own campus and oversee the police beatings and arrests of her own students backfired.
The movement for victory to the Palestinian struggle movement has continued to grow and get stronger. We are learning the lessons of how to fight and win from our own experiences in militant, bold, direct actions. We are experiencing rapid changes in our political consciousness. Our commitment to end U.S complicity in genocide and to get our University leaders to actually act on their purported humanitarian concerns is being tested in action. We are proving to ourselves, to the Palestinians fighting every day for their land and freedom, and to our parents, professors, peers, and people everywhere that we will do whatever is necessary to win this worldwide struggle for Palestine and all the oppressed.
Movements Mean Move
In the heat of mass struggles there is very little time to reflect on what we did that succeeded and what failed. Struggles to win are dynamic. A quick change of tactics at certain key turning points occurs. Opportunities to advance the struggle must be seized when they present themselves. There is rarely much time for discussion. People who have never met seem to act instinctively to protect each other, to act in unison, to follow the calls to action of the leaders whose tactics make sense. The movement’s activists’ and leadersʹ own consciousness of why they are doing what they are doing lags behind their will and determination to keep moving forward.
So it is critical to use moments when the immediate actions subside to reflect on, analyze, and understand what worked and what failed. It is often impossible for movements to even decide whether they are winning. What constitutes a victory is undefined. On the one hand, we have been fighting to maintain our encampments and defend free speech. But we seem to be losing on both those fronts. On the other hand, because we are fighting for so much, modest victories can be overlooked.
Our movement is winning in two decisive ways. The student encampments and the courage of thousands of students and community members to defend the encampments finally forced President Biden a.k.a. Genocide Joe to pause sending some large‐scale massively destructive bombs and artillery to Benjamin Netanyahu. For seven months, the Biden administration has colluded in genocide and the massive destruction of Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians living on the West Bank have been murdered by American/Israeli settlers on the West Bank. And the Biden administration has done nothing meaningful to stop this. After months of unseemly blubbering and empty promises, Biden has actually been forced to make the first modest but significant break with the Netanyahu government. In case any of us doubted the role our struggle played in getting this to happen, Biden actually said he was responding to the student actions.
Our second victory is that we have inspired people in Palestine to keep building their new insurgency. We know how much our actions have meant to them. The new Intifada the Palestinians are building will give us more courage and determination than we ever knew we possessed. Students who have been activists in the international movement fighting for a Palestinian victory are following our lead and building encampments on their campuses. Any contribution that we can make to the worldwide pro‐Palestine anti‐war movement is worth getting some bruises for.
We are not done fighting. Gaza is still under constant bombardment and occupation by Israeli forces, armed by Biden and the U.S. government. We need to stop all military and economic aid going to Israel. We must fight for a Palestinian victory, not just a ceasefire. We need the Rafah crossing opened to get food, humanitarian aid, arms, and pro‐Palestinian volunteer soldiers into Gaza. We must continue to build our movement. We must build a national mobilization for the Democratic Party Convention. The pro‐Palestinian, anti‐war free speech encampment movements at USC and UCLA provide valuable lessons for young leaders of our movement eager to learn and determined to win.
The Centrality of the Campus Struggles in California
The University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California (USC) became the focal point for the national movement, as the campus encampment movement spread from Columbia University westward.
The activists who built the encampments and the much larger crowds who rallied to protect the encampments were standing in solidarity with the students at Columbia and City College of New York. While the struggles initially focused on defending free speech, divestment, and ceasefire, they quickly became a new embodiment of the George Floyd movement. At UCLA in particular, the student struggle expanded into a movement opposed to a host of different forms of oppression. The UCLA encampment was also a defiant stance against the police.
The USC Struggles: The Start of the Turning Point in California for
the Pro-Palestine Movement
On April 15, the USC administration announced it was canceling the commencement speech of the 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, a pro‐Palestinian, Egyptian American USC student. This blatantly racist and Islamophobic decision by USC President Carol Folt prompted immediate student, faculty, and staff protests in support of free speech and lifting the gag order on Asna Tabassum. Student anger and mass actions grew until April 24, when students built a pro‐Palestinian encampment on the campus. About 100 students sheltered in the encampment, while thousands of students and community members turned out to protect the encampment.
The encampment faced two enemies: USC President Carol Folt and the campus police and LAPD who Folt ordered to arrest and brutalize USC students. The mass defense action of students and community members was prepared to take on both opponents. At one point, mass student defense guards surrounded a campus police squad car demanding the release of an arrested organizer. The chant “Let him go, let him go!” filled the plaza. Eventually the police had to release the student from their police car. Video of the un‐arrest went viral, leading to an even larger outpouring of support from students and the community.
In the end, 93 students were arrested. President Folt canceled the traditional commencement program altogether. Dozens of faculty members demanded the resignation of President Folt. It is imperative for the student movement to take up this demand. Our campus will never be safe or open to a free exchange of ideas unless we demand that President Folt resign or be removed immediately.
THE STRUGGLE TAKES A QUALITATIVE STEP FORWARD AT UCLA: The Struggle for Power Replaces Passive and Pacifist Appeals to Non-Existent Morality
On April 25, a day after the LAPD assault on USC students, UCLA students set up their pro‐Palestine encampment. The battle to maintain the UCLA encampment went on for a week. Each day, the encampment faced escalating attacks from a sordid group of pro‐Netanyahu and pro‐Trump thugs. The violent, dangerous thugs grew into a violent, well‐armed mob which had the protection of the UCLA administration, and it coordinated attacks on pro-Palestinian demonstrators with the police. This meant that, as the week progressed, the pro‐Palestinian demonstrators—both those sheltering in the encampment and the thousands more who defended the encampment—were having their illusions in the neutrality of the UCLA administration, the value of peaceful protests, and the police constantly challenged, and in some cases stripped away.
The battle between the students opposing genocide and racism, fighting for equality, saving the environment, and standing with the oppressed on one side, and the pro‐imperialist defenders of Netanyahu and Biden’s genocidal policies on the other side, took the student struggle and pro‐Palestinian resistance movement in the United States to a higher level. UCLA played a decisive role in getting the Biden administration’s change in policy on sending weapons to Israel. It was the one struggle that chose openly militant armed self‐defense over pacifist victimization.
The pro‐Israel thugs attacked the encampment from day one. Each time, a call was made for the community to come support the encampment, and they did. The ragtag grouping of self‐styled supporters of Israel was held together by their support for white authoritarian rule and their hate of progressive students. The pro‐Trump and fascist elements were obviously anti‐Semitic, but this fact did not seem to trouble any of the mobʹs members.
Their ranks grew when it became obvious that they had the tacit support of the UCLA administration and a direct line with the police to coordinate attacks on the pro‐Palestinian protesters. On April 28, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block agreed to let the mob set up its own protest site about 100 feet away from the encampment.
By Tuesday, April 30, Chancellor Block released a statement declaring the encampment unlawful and threatening to suspend and/or expel students who chose to stay at the encampment. The chancellor’s declaration served as an open invitation to escalate mob violence. Starting that Tuesday night and going into the early hours of Wednesday, May 1, a group of 200 well‐armed right‐wing thugs attacked the encampment. They were better organized and confident they would not be arrested. They arrived carrying metal pipes, tasers, wooden planks, poles, bear spray, fireworks, and other weapons. They were given the unencumbered right to attack the encampment and the movement activists who were defending it for hours with no interruption from security or police. Twenty‐five students were hospitalized from the attack. To this day, no arrests have been made of any of the thugs who attacked the encampment.
By the morning of May 1, it was clear to the people inside the encampment and those protecting it from the outside that Chancellor Block had declared war on the encampment and would go to any lengths to destroy it.
Support for the thousands of Pro‐Palestinian student activists mushroomed. Stripped of their illusions in the administration, in the police, and in the Democratic politicians who did not condemn the bloody right‐wing assault and supported the repression and silencing of the Pro‐Palestinian movement, the students, standing for a Palestinian victory, decided it was time to militantly defend their right to be seen and heard.
There was never an open, democratic, mass meeting to decide the tactics for that night, which meant it was impossible to set specific priorities or work out a set of objectives. The student anti‐war movement against the war in Vietnam learned early on that democratic discussion and decision‐making was key to building a movement and critically assessing the aims and tactics of the movement. Security is always raised as a reason to restrict planning meetings to a small, select group of people with shared experiences. But the police always have spies and informers
and have the military training to assess what contingencies are likely to arise.
If there had been a mass meeting, at least one crucial decision could have been made: was it more important for the people in the encampment to go down fighting and ultimately take arrests, or was it more important to find a way to stand our ground and enlarge the number of people allowed into the encampment to slow down the arrests by enlarging our side of the battle while trying to get more reinforcements. In the end, the outcome may have turned out to be unchanged, but more activists would have learned the right questions to ask.
The Battle Between Two Diametrically Opposed Class Representatives: the Representatives of the Huge Majority of Oppressed People Throughout the World, and the Standard-Bearers for Imperialism, Human Slaughter, and the Destruction of the Earth
Throughout the day of May 1, the encampment was massively fortified. Thousands of pro‐Palestinian protesters arrived at the encampment that evening carrying helmets and goggles and wearing masks to protect their identities. Safety equipment was given to anyone who was prepared to be a front‐line fighter in or out of the encampment. Everyone knew that a massive confrontation with the police would take place that evening. The vast majority of the pro‐Palestine students and community members in the encampment had decided to take the next step in defending their convictions in action: better to go down fighting than give up an inch of ground to our enemies.
The defense guards on the outside of the encampment were also prepared for a physical confrontation. They saw their role in the division of labor to be stopping arrests and freeing arrestees from police custody. This battle at UCLA that occurred on International Workingmenʹs Day marked a turning point in the student movement. The chant “peaceful protest” was heard on so many campuses when the police were approaching the crowd to brutalize the protesters, and it was going to be our declaration of impotence and surrender. The chants at a UCLA football rally captured our sentiments far better.
Late on the evening of May 1, a double column of fifty or so LAPD officers in full riot gear in single file began to move from the staging area in the Murphy Hall parking lot towards the south side of the perimeter. Two hundred students rushed to the south Side, forcing the two columns of officers to retreat and attempt to enter the encampment from the north side of the perimeter. Once again, blocked by protestors, the police retreated and disappeared through a nearby building, Bunche Hall. The excitement of the first successful defense of the encampment was palpable; chants and cheers of pure joy and triumph rang in the air.
Pro‐Palestinian militants outside and inside the encampment battled the police for 17 hours. The police repeatedly attacked the crowd with stun grenades, tasers, pepper spray and different variations of brute force. But we stood our ground, trying to stop every arrest, every act of destruction of the encampment until all the 200 protestors who were arrested were taken away, and our encampment was completely destroyed. We lost our encampment but won a much bigger victory. After months of aiding the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, President Biden finally took a first step to withhold some military aid to Israel.
We are becoming a new generation of movement leaders capable of guiding our movement in the streets and on our campuses—where our real power is. The Palestinian struggle continues in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The plan of the Netanyahu government to use genocide, starvation, torture, and the massive destruction of housing and infrastructure to depopulate Gaza so that it can never be a part of an independent Palestine, is failing. The courage, resolve, and commitment to building independent committees of action to counter Israel’s death machine is a call to action for all the oppressed. We can proudly say our movement has answered this call.
Learning From Our Own Experience in the Dynamics of Struggle
We learned a series of important lessons from the UCLA and USC encampment struggles. With every new development, the movement faces a new set of opportunities and challenges. The movement is young, but people are learning quickly from each other and are growing from our collective experiences.
The university administrations also try to learn how to quell struggles from the experience of other university administrators. The UCLA administration had the advantage of seeing from the struggle at USC that an outmoded civil disobedience action could quickly transform into a militant action against the police.
At USC, the students outside of the encampment dictated the tactics of the day, and not the designated pre‐determined arrestees. This was a new and important development because it showed that the huge number of students and community members who turned out could not be controlled by the students in the encampment. It also demonstrated that relatively privileged college students would have no hesitation to put their bodies and careers on the line to stop the horrific genocide they witnessed every day.
Every young person in America hears the question what type of person witnesses genocide and does nothing to stop it. Well, the student and pro‐Palestinian activists in the movement across the country want to make damn sure that our names never end up on that list.
Transforming Our Identities As Leaders
The tools and methods developed to overcome today’s obstacles and advance the struggle can quickly become outdated and be more of a hindrance than a help.
Our problem on May 1 was that a hard‐fought defense of the UCLA encampment from the assault of the alt‐right/pro‐Israel vigilante mob became something the encampment occupiers were relatively well‐prepared for. The encampment steadily built up an impressive barricade fortification. However, these same fortifications ended up providing a tactical advantage to the police operation for the forced removal and mass arrest of the encampment because it created a physical separation between the encampment participants and the student and community support mobilized for its defense. The crowd on the outside was determined to try to find a way to insert itself in between the police and the encampment, but these efforts were limited in important ways by the overall terrain. Once the police had secured access to the adjacent buildings, they had largely cut off the encampment, or at least 3 sides, from the mobilized support, and they could attempt to wait the crowd out while preparing for their offensive.
The disadvantage our movement faced with the tactical layout of the barricades and police lines during the fight to defend the UCLA encampment was the physical manifestation of terrain and the inexperience of our movement. But our movement’s illusions in the UCLA administration and the evolution of its political objectives changed through the struggle.
When the encampment was set up on April 25, it was a small but respected action. The point of the encampment was to create a divestment dialogue with the administration. This relatively‐modest aim assumed that the administration itself could be convinced to divest based on a combination of moral, practical, and economic sound arguments. The administration has diametrically different priorities, including protecting Biden and the Democrats from an independent anti‐war movement that is, at its base, anti‐imperialist. If the student struggle for divestment became successful, then the equivalent demand on the Biden administration to stop sending arms to Israel would gain traction. In fact, it has not only gained traction, but has begun to shift U.S. policies in the Middle East.
A movement premised on setting up respectable and responsible discussions with a university administration on where to invest their capitalist largesse can be relevantly small and insular. But when that movement evolves into a struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, to end direct U.S. involvement in genocide, and for the victory of the Palestinian struggle, it grows in numbers, resolve, and audacity. Our aims, demands, and movement expanded tremendously, but we were caught somewhere in between thinking like leaders of a small movement with a single demand, to leaders of militant mass movement that understood that the administration was our enemy.
This problem was reflected in the political problem of drawing a false distinction and separation between the activist cadre participating from inside the encampment and the larger, student, and community base of the anti‐war, pro‐Palestinian movement as a whole on the outside. Again, while the self‐enforced, vouching system to limit encampment access arose as a reasonably effective defensive measure taken in response to police and racist provocateurs, it simultaneously had the unintended consequence of creating and reinforcing an artificial separation between the encampment and the broader base of student and community support. It could be said of our efforts that evening at UCLA, that to defend our encampment, some of our own walls needed to come down.
While the police were ultimately successful in clearing the encampment by the morning, the fact that the movement was fighting to win, self‐organizing, and taking independent mass action throughout the entire police operation, testing out where to go, what to do, how to advance the struggle, and how to intervene in a way to shift the balance of power, meant the people themselves were learning through their own experience how to be the fighters and leaders the movement needs.
In the days following the May 1–2 clearing of the UCLA encampment, we have already seen examples of demonstrations and marches learning from the movement’s collective experience, taking independent action to breach police barricades encircling encampments and responding to arrests by surrounding police cars and buses demanding the release of detained student protesters—with notable success in some places, as in USC. Wherever the movement can overcome the artificial divisions imposed, psychologically and physically, is and will be an opportunity to change the whole dynamic and outcome of a given conflict or struggle.
The completely unhinged, zero‐tolerance policies of the UCLA university administrators and their like‐minded counterparts is a sign of fragility and weakness. The continued crackdown is not only against anti‐ racist, anti‐war, pro‐Palestinian student demonstrations and activists, but is taking the form of a near‐universal ban on any and all “free speech” by students, faculty, and staff so long as the content of that speech is telling the obvious and plain truth about the genocide, atrocities, and war crimes being committed in Gaza, asserts Palestinian equality, and supports the Palestinian struggle for freedom. These policies are untenable, and the new student movement can and will make them unenforceable.
The strike authorization vote being put to the membership of UAW 4811 (the graduate student and academic workers in the University of California system) in response to the police crackdown on the encampment and brutality used against pro‐Palestinian student protesters at UCLA, UCSD, and other campuses is an important development for the movement and has the potential to draw more forces from organized labor into struggle. At the same time, this opportunity to expand the movement and assert more of our own strength comes with its own set of new potential dangers.
The movement has to be especially vigilant not to turn over its own independent organizing, actions, demands, and methods of struggle to a union leadership whose aims and methods and demands will be necessarily constrained by existing legal agreements with the University. However, a dynamic, fluid relationship between the broader student movement as a whole and the forces the union can mobilize for the upcoming upcoming actions or demonstrations will be an important arena to build the struggle further, continue our process of learning and development, and continue the fight to stop the genocide in Gaza, end the U.S.’s military aid to Israel, defend free speech and academic freedom in defense of Palestine, and force every single one of these university presidents and chancellors who have called in the riot cops to suppress student protest to resign or be removed.
Long live the student intifada! Victory to the Palestinian struggle!
May 15, 2024
Defend free speech at the University of Southern California for supporters of the Palestinian struggle!
USC President Carol Folt must resign or be removed!
>Reinstate Asna Tabassum as USC Valedictorian speaker! – Reconvene the 2024 commencement ceremony!
>No criminal charges or student conduct violations for anyone who participated in the National Day of Action for Gaza on Wednesday, April 24 at USC!
>Victory to the Palestinian struggle! – By any means necessary, end the Israeli genocidal invasion and occupation of Gaza!
If you support these demands, please sign and help circulate the petition here:
https://www.change.org/p/defend-free-speech-at-usc-for-supporters-of-the-palestinian-struggle
On April 24, students and community at USC joined a national upsurge on college campuses across the country demanding an end to the genocidal invasion and occupation of Gaza, taking our movement to a new level of action and determination. Students and community filled the center of campus to participate in the events of the day. Many of us first became a part of this movement on our campus to defend the right of Asna Tabassum to speak at the 2024 commencement. Moved to action by President Folts’ campus police early in the morning who assaulted students and attempted to forcefully take down our banners and tents, we made clear that we were prepared to use any means necessary to defend our right to free speech and assembly to defend the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
The most inspiring moment for many was freeing a young organizer from a police squad car by surrounding it, chanting “let him go, let him go!” For anyone ever a victim of police harassment or abuse, we were filled with joy at our movement’s ability to win his freedom and to keep fighting through all obstacles. This new sense of our own power is a victory in and of itself. There must be no charges and no student code violations brought against anyone arrested in Wednesday’s action. President Folt and the police alone are responsible for the violence on that day.
>End President Folt’s policy of censorship and repression of the anti-war movement to defend the Palestinian struggle<
President Folt must not be allowed to continue her policy of censorship and repression of speech that is in defense of the Palestinian struggle. The genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza happening now has engulfed the consciousness of our nation, and any President of USC, an institution of international renown, who can only deal with the issue by attempting to silence it and anything associated with it has no place as President of our university.
President Folt’s removal of Asna as the rightful Valedictorian speaker at commencement and her cancellation of the entire graduation ceremony because she cannot justify Asna’s removal is a national embarrassment that shows a disdain for USC students and our families. Her invitation to the LAPD to occupy our campus, clear our protest, and arrest, brutalize, and shoot rubber bullets at students and members of our surrounding communities-who stood together to defend our right to protest-is unacceptable. The Latina/o, black, other minority and immigrant communities of South Central are a rightful part of our community and must be treated with respect and dignity.
Asna Tabassum has earned the right to give her Valedictorian speech. Asna should receive nothing but praise for what she has been willing to do thus far to tell the truth about the genocide in Gaza. Across the world, countless numbers of young people in the last 6 months have marched, posted information online, or spoken to friends and others; they have raised their voices against the outrage that is this invasion and occupation. Asna Tabassum is a leader and a symbol of the student movement to free Palestine. Reinstating Asna as the Valedictorian speaker is necessary as part of ending the administration’s policy of repression and censorship. It would be a victory for the movement for the Palestinian struggle and for the principles of free speech as a reality, not just a hollow phrase.
For 6 months now, the Palestinian people have maintained their struggle in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. This has been possible because they know that there is an international mass movement, most importantly in the United States, that continues to act. Their action has served as a call to action. When we fight to win Asna’s right to speak, we answer that call. When we fight for President Folt’s resignation or removal, we answer that call. Our victories make our movement grow and gain consciousness of our power.
Our movement is young and highly integrated and active, with women and Muslim communities in the forefront. We have more to do. Netanyahu’s fascist coalition government is still in power, and the Biden administration continues to make the arming of Israel’s genocidal military a primary objective, making the United States the most important country to the conduct of the Israeli government policy. The struggles that have broken out here as well as in Columbia University are spreading across the country and show a movement that is strong and continuing to grow.
At USC, Palestinian, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Jewish, and students, faculty and staff of all races coming together, marching, gathering petitions, and passing resolutions are exactly what we must do to win. We are the only force on our campus willing to do what is necessary to defend our education, free speech, and every progressive principle our university claims to believe in.
The continued violence of the Israeli military has only been matched by the deafening silence of nations around the world who claim to be opposed to violations of human rights but have stood by and done nothing or even enabled the flagrant violations of human rights perpetrated by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Our movement must keep moving and looking for ways to tell the truth about what is happening in Gaza. If we keep fighting we can win.
Click image for full statement
Victory to the Palestinian struggle! By any means necessary, end the Israeli genocidal invasion and occupation of Gaza!
>For massive international humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza now
>Condemn all US, European, and Chinese imperialist support for Israel’s genocidal occupation of Gaza – including phony, “pacifist”, look-the-other-way policies
>The people of Gaza have the right to stay in their homes and defend the right of existence of a Palestinian state
>Egypt must open its border with Gaza NOW
>Stop the genocide: bombing, starving, invading Gaza is ethnic-cleansing and a war crime
>The Biden administration and every government in the world should demand Israel withdraw all its military forces and stop the invasion of Gaza now
>Renew the Palestinian intifada!
>Victory to the Palestinian youth fighting West Bank ethnic-cleansing and the Israeli settler movement
>For a new Arab Spring to overthrow the Arab and Middle Eastern allies of US imperialism and the Netanyahu regime
>For a new, international, independent movement of the progressive forces of the workers, oppressed, and youth against imperialism, genocide, and war to defeat the global rise of fascism and the united front of the capitalist powers against socialism, equality, and democracy
>The aim of the Netanyahu regime is the suppression of all Palestinian rights in Gaza and the West Bank and the suppression of democracy in Israel for the Arab and Jewish population of Israel opposed to Netanyahu’s authoritarianism, racism, and genocidal policies-in reality, the majority of the people of Israel
>Because there can be no democracy in Israel and no peace in the Middle East as long as the Netanyahu regime remains in power:
• Bring down the Netanyahu government or any other government like it by any means necessary!
• For the alliance of the progressive workers and oppressed of the Middle East
• For the alliance of the mass Israeli Jewish movement defending democracy and peace with the Palestinian struggle against Netanyahu’s neo-fascist coalition and its attack on democracy and all human rights
• Condemn and end all the Israeli government’s genocidal policies in the name of Zionism
• Condemn and end all genocidal, racist, and authoritarian policies wrapped up in the slogan and symbols of Zionism
• Condemn and end all use of Zionism to defend the oppressors against the oppressed
• Zionists must either stand with the oppressed and defenders of democracy, or be recognized as oppressors and enemies of democracy
The alarm bells are ringing louder and the warning lights are flashing. War criminals are on the loose and committing genocide in Gaza. An unstable world has become even more dangerous – the result of the cynical, racist divide-and-conquer policies that American and the Western imperialists played historically to divide and dominate the Middle East and the Arab world.
This is the State of Israel’s deepest crisis since its foundation in 1948. It is a crisis within Israeli Jewish society and it’s an intensified crisis in the oppression and subjugation of the Palestinian Arab population by the Zionist state. Israel was facing that crisis BEFORE the military forces of Hamas broke out of the Gaza Strip on 7th October. The attacks by Hamas were a response to that crisis – an essentially defensive reaction, in part based on past experience, against the growing Israeli attacks on Palestinians wherever they were, and the all too clear threat that the consolidation of a fascist dictatorship in Israel posed to a continued Arab presence in Palestine.
The imperialists, who are the world’s greatest oppressors and exploiters, did not create and arm Israel out of sympathy for Jewish victims of anti-semitism – Britain in particular had denied entry to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. They exploited the plight of the Jews and exploited the horror of the Holocaust to trap one oppressed people (the Jews) in the role of oppressing another (the Palestinian Arabs). The Arab population has an absolute right to resist that oppression and to call on the Arab people across the Middle East and North Africa to rise up in their support.
The imperialists’ cynical policy is unravelling. That is the cause of the crisis in Palestine/Israel and it is a crisis for the imperialists themselves, one which they can’t resolve. Without a solution Biden, Sunak, Starmer, the leaders of the EU and the Pope can only repeat the mantra “Israel has a right to defend itself” – regardless of Israel’s 75 year history of US & British backed repression, dispossession, and slaughter of Palestinians, and despite the obvious fact that if prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the dictator of some poor country in Africa or South America, Britain or the EU would have got an international arrest warrant out by now and he would be on his way to the Hague to be put on trial for war crimes.
The roots of Israel’s crisis
From the time Israel was created, there were two different Zionist visions of what Israel should be that seemed not to be mutually exclusive. Progressive Zionists believed that Israel should be based on socialist principles and could be a vanguard of democracy in the Middle East. Right-wing Zionists believed that Israel should be a colonial settler state dependent on the US for its survival and therefore prepared to be the consistent supporter and agent of US domination of the Middle East. The Zionist supporters of building a socialist society believed they should and could live in peace with their Arab neighbors. The Zionists tied to US imperialism preferred the expansion of Israel at the expense of their Arab neighbors and an Israeli policy of exploiting the workers and resources of the Arab peoples around them. For a time, Israel had elements of both visions. But inevitably it could not be both. Today the survival of Israel as a settler state require the crushing of democracy in Israel and the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Right-wing Israeli Zionist leaders are facing mounting problems to maintain the goal of a Jewish state on the land of Palestine and thereby maintain their usefulness to Western imperialism. The State of Israel was established with an ostensible right of return for all Jews who wanted to settle there. Following World War II, Israel saw a continuing increase in its Jewish population, driven mainly by a desperate hope for safety more than by Zionist ideology. Over the following period, there have been periodic waves of Jewish immigration from other countries including countries in the Middle east and North Africa, and later a wave of Jewish refugees from the collapsing Soviet Union. In reality, however, there has always been a problem of sustaining a relatively large Jewish population in Israel, while the Israeli capitalist economy has required maintaining an ever-growing, second-class, underpaid and super-exploited Palestinian Arab labor force. Since the establishment of the Palestinian authorities on the West Bank and in Gaza, the Israeli capitalist economy has treated the Palestinian Arab populations of those territories as a constant source of low paid labor, in reality, essential to the profitability of Israeli capitalism.
Since the 1990s, however, Jewish right-of-return migration to Israel has declined and remains at a very low level. There are no likely sources for a significant wave of new Jewish immigrants, while the political and military situation in the Middle East makes that an unattractive prospect for all but the most zealous Zionists.
At the same time the Arab population is increasing, not just in Gaza and the occupied West Bank but within the borders of Israel. Palestinian Arabs who have Israeli citizenship under a 1950 law now amount to 25% of the citizen population and, despite their second-class status, still have the right to vote.
Moreover, recently the Zionist aim of creating a Jewish economy for the Jewish state has led to a policy of attempting to drastically reduce the use of Arab labor, but without more Jewish immigration, that means relying on short-term migrant labor from non-Arab & non-Muslim countries. In addition, Israel’s geographic position has made it a natural route for growing numbers of refugees, mostly from Africa. Like most countries in today’s world, Israel is becoming increasingly multi-national. Under the circumstances, of course, right-wing Zionism has become more and more openly racist.
Fascist rule in Palestine/Israel
Fascism is a response to the growing contradictions that Zionism faces, which have led to a general move to the right, increased divisions in Israeli Jewish society and greater political instability. There were five general elections in the four years 2019 to 2022. Netanyahu returned to power following the last general election in November 2022. He created a government essentially dominated by its most fascistic elements, including certain of the most fanatical parties of the ‘religious right.’ Many of Netanyahu’s current ministers are disciples of the notorious fascist Rabbi Kahane, whose Kach party was actually banned by the Israeli government in 1988.
We describe the present Israeli government as fascist for objective reasons, not as empty name-calling or just because of the background of its members but based on its policies and actions.
- Netanyahu’s current government has used its control of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) to change the constitution and take control of the law courts, ending the independence of judges who not infrequently had been a restraining influence on the extreme policies of governments. Netanyahu imposed this policy despite massive protests by Israeli Jews who believe that their state should be a democracy.
- The government is intensifying the current state of war. Netanyahu has even issued a ‘declaration of war’ against Hamas. They are using this to complete the creation of their dictatorship and silence any Jewish dissent. They have brought Benny Gantz (a former general who leads the ‘opposition’ National Unity alliance) into the ‘war cabinet.’ That move strengthens the fascists’ hold on power and undermines Gantz’s independence.
- The current Israeli government holds that Palestinian Arabs – including those who currently have Israeli citizenship – have no place in Israel and should have no right to vote. They have stated that the whole historic land of Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan (and perhaps beyond) must be part of Israel and exclude Arabs.
- The principal base of these Israeli fascists is the huge armed force of Israeli citizens living in the settlements in the occupied West Bank region. These settlements have repeatedly been declared illegal in international law but successive Israeli governments have continued to support them, and successive US, British, and EU governments have done nothing to stop them. This armed force is the agent of genocide and expulsion on the West Bank, launching increasing attacks on the Arab populations, destroying homes, communities, farms, businesses etc. It is officially separate from the state and the actual army, though it is inextricably connected to them.
The most important, extensive and effective Palestinian resistance to this fascist regime is precisely there, in the Israeli occupied West Bank. The so-called ‘Palestinian Authority’ of Mahmoud Abbas has no authority and no democratic mandate – Abbas lost the last election, in 2006, but Israel and the Western powers ignored that and there hasn’t been another one since. It is hated and despised by the great majority of Palestinians as a corrupt tool of the Israeli government. It is the Palestinian youth who are acting independently to organize fighting units in towns and villages, to defend their communities from Zionist settler attacks and take the fight to the enemy.
Defending democracy
Liberal Zionists in Israel and their supporters in Europe and North America like to describe that state as the only democracy in the Middle East. They can’t say that now, but the liberal Zionists declare that is their aim and demonstrated their commitment on the streets, in mass protests against the dictatorship’s control of the courts.
The Kahanists say bluntly that a Jewish state in Palestine cannot be democratic. Israel’s history indicates that is true in the existing context, though not entirely for their reasons. The ‘social-democratic’ reputation of Israel in the 1950s could only be maintained once the Zionist militias had used very undemocratic methods to take the Palestinian population and their destroyed homes out of the picture.
In 1993 and 1995, the Oslo Accords 1 and 2 were entered into by the Israeli government, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the US. A United Nations resolution accompanied those Accords calling for Israel to withdraw back to the 1967 borders. Those Accords led to the creation of Gaza and the West Bank as an independent Palestinian mini-state. Today, the Palestinian people are defending their right to maintain and build on that supposedly guaranteed promise. We support the struggle of the Palestinians to defend their fundamental right to self-determination. That right should be defended.
Every progressive force in the world should support the Palestinian struggle to defend the Palestinian state. The Palestinian leadership in both Gaza and the West Bank, together with the Palestinians living in Israel should declare the independence of the Palestinian state and demand the recognition of this Palestinian state by every government in the Middle East and every other government in the world, placing a demand on the international community to keep its promises to the Palestinian people made at the time of the original Oslo Accords. For the Biden Administration, the European governments, China, and the other governments of the world, to either support the current Israeli actions or to do nothing to reverse them is for the entire international community to break their promise to the Palestinian people, and in reality , to the entire peoples of the Middle East. That is, and should be, universally regarded as a profound moral and political crisis of the entire international community and a de facto declaration by the US and other governments that they have no capacity to keep even their most important and “sacred” promises.
We call for the Israeli Jewish movement in defense of democracy and peace to defend the full implementation of the promises made to the Palestinian people to defend their right to create a nation. It is only on this basis that it is possible for a perspective of democracy and peace in the Middle East to survive. It is only on this basis for any notion that Zionism is anything other than a force for oppression to survive this moment in history.
Bitter conflicts fostered by the imperialists’ divide-and-rule strategy over the last 75 years have inevitably built up deep, dehumanizing animosities. We are seeing with the Netanyahu regime how quickly that can become genocidal. It is, in fact, essential to oppose the genocidal messages sent out by certain extremist leaderships on both sides.
Bitter conflicts are not easily erased. Nevertheless, the only feasible road to democracy and equality starts with the defeat and removal of Israel’s fascist regime. Then the promise to the Palestinian people of an independent state of their own must be kept, and the right of the Palestinian people to defend and build that state must be recognized. This is only a first step in the direction of a solution to the historic crisis of the Middle East. But it is essential for a movement uniting the two peoples to fight for the full victory of this limited first step for there to be any real hope of a genuine solution to that crisis.
On the basis of this historic alliance and its determination to fight to win, the struggle for a genuine solution would become a real possibility. The two peoples would then be in a position to create, on the basis of mutual respect, a single bi-national state with freedom of religion, equal political and economic rights, equal language status and guaranteed protections for both communities. The necessity of genuine economic rights and opportunities in that state would require a government of the workers and oppressed and the transition to a socialist economy.
A previous draft of this leaflet contained important political mistakes which have been corrected in this 15 October 2023 final statement. As this text says, the organizations issuing this leaflet unequivocally reject and condemn all messages expressing or implying racism or genocide coming from any side.
>Stop the Genocide – Victory to the Palestinian Struggle
>Stop the bombing and slaughter in Rafah
>Open the Egyptian border by any means necessary
>All possible & necessary supplies for the survival of Palestinians in Gaza
>Mass action throughout the Arab world to get aid directly to the Palestinian people to protect & advance their struggle for freedom
>The enemies of the Palestinians are our enemies
We have achieved a lot in four and a half months. The Palestinians have maintained their struggle, in many different forms. In Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and in Israel itself Palestinians are continuing their resistance, knowing they have inspired a mass anti-war, anti-imperialist movement on a global scale. They know there are huge pro-Palestinian demonstrations and other actions here in the USA and in Britain – the same imperialist powers that established and maintained the Israeli state as their agent to divide and dominate the Middle East.
Our movement is young, highly integrated and active, with women and the Muslim communities in the forefront. We have won the support of a growing majority for the rights and freedom of the Palestinian people.
As the struggle becomes more intense there is more to accomplish. Netanyahu’s fascist government is still in place, its army is still in Gaza, and its fascist supporters are killing Palestinians in the West Bank and blocking aid convoys from entering Gaza.
Biden & Blinken in the USA, along with Sunak & David Cameron and Labour’s Keir Starmer in Britain, have asked the Israeli government not to slaughter so many people in Gaza. These miserable little pleas are chiefly for their domestic audiences. Netanyahu knows that while the US, Germany and Britain are sending weapons and war planes to Israel he can continue the slaughter, and that while they are refusing to fund UNWRA (the most important aid organization) he can leave many more Palestinians to die.
Those western powers are responsible for the current crisis point. Their policy has allowed the Israeli army to push around 1.5 million Palestinians (more than half of Gaza’s population) into Rafah, which is the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, right up against the border with Egypt, with nowhere to go. The Rafah Crossing is the only entry & exit point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Israel has been bombing Rafah day after day with heavier casualties. It is planning a full-scale military operation that would inevitably be an even bigger massacre.
The Rafah Crossing to Egypt must be opened as a matter of urgency for the Palestinians in Rafah and in Gaza as a whole, so they can get the supplies they so urgently need to stay alive and protect their community in the face of Israel’s genocidal military campaign, with adequate means to clothe and shelter themselves, safeguard their health, and defend their lives and their families.
That can’t be left to interminable negotiations between governments. Opening the border will only be achieved by the power of mass action by the oppressed people of Gaza, probably initiated by the Palestinian youth in Rafah, and they will have to call for mass action in Egypt.
The Egyptian government of former General Sisi is a brutal, corrupt and unpopular dictatorship. It depends on American support and is a partner in crime with Israel against the Palestinians. Direct action by Palestinians to open the border would be sure to wake a response in Egyptian society, including in the army. If that leads to new demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square (where there was a pro-Palestine demonstration in October) or at the border itself, it would increase the confidence of Egyptian soldiers that they have public support to co-operate with Gaza’s Palestinians in defiance of their government.
Such a huge blow to the authority of the Netanyahu government and western imperialists would transform the situation and encourage the anti-war and pro-Palestinian forces in Israeli Jewish society.
There are already young Palestinians in Rafah challenging Egyptian soldiers at the border. There are many people in the movement in the U.S. who can talk about this perspective with family and friends in Gaza. Everyone who shares this view should join BAMN. And when the border is opened by Palestinian youth or Egyptian soldiers, or if there is even an attempt to open it, the whole anti-war movement must support it and organize material assistance to achieve its aims.
Saturday 17th February 2024
Defeat UC Regent Jay Sures’ Censorship Proposal!
Defend free speech rights for supporters of the Palestinian struggle!
Defend freedom of speech and academic freedom for faculty, staff and students in the University of California!
>University of California Regent Jay Sures’ proposal to ban political speech by faculty, departments, and staff on UC websites and other official UC channels flies in the face of the University of California’s mission. It is a dangerous attack that will have a chilling effect on free speech, free expression, and academic freedom across the UC System.
>UC Regent Sures’ proposal was openly acknowledged in the January 2024 UC Regents meeting as being a way to censor speech on the issue of Palestine/Israel. The proposal is set to be discussed and potentially voted on at the next UC Regents meeting in March. UC students, alumni, and the broader communities surrounding our campuses must take a stand to oppose this kind of censorship and repression of speech and academic freedom by UC Regent Sures’ resolution.
>With the increasing privatization of higher education, there have been increasing attacks on the right of free speech on campuses across the country as campus administrations allow their policies to be dictated by big corporate and alumni donors. An academic atmosphere where the UC Regents and campus administrations get to determine what is acceptable speech is the definition of censorship. This would set a negative precedent for public and private educational institutions nationwide.
>Across the country, students, student organizations, faculty, and even whole school districts are facing targeted censorship and repression over speech. Over 50 universities and other school systems, including but not limited to: San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), Yale, Brown, Temple, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and UW‐Madison are being investigated by the Department of Education over pro‐Palestine statements, education, and protest action.
>The activity on the part of the supporters of the Palestinian struggle is part of an international movement of millions against the ongoing genocide in Gaza being committed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with the aid of the U.S. government and military.
>The University of California is a public institution and, as such, must defend the broadest freedoms for all students, staff, and faculty. The ability of faculty, departments, students, and staff to express their views on UC websites and other public platforms is a matter of the independence of the faculty, departments, students, and the pursuit of their intellectual activity in a public institution.
>The University of California campuses have been home to the great social issues of our time, including UC Berkeley’s free speech movement. UC Regent Sures’ proposal is an attack on this proud tradition
Therefore, we the undersigned:
1) Oppose and call for the defeat of UC Regent Jay Sures’ proposal to censor UC faculty and students.
2) Defend the right to free speech and academic freedom in support of the Palestinian struggle for all UC students, student organizations, faculty, and staff.
3) Oppose all forms of Islamophobia, anti‐Semitism, other forms of bigotry, ethnic‐cleansing, and genocide.
4) Oppose all political censorship in colleges, universities, and other school campuses.
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