The ISL Responds to CWI Charges that It Lied about Their Israeli Group [Archive]

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RedTrackWorker

25th August 2011, 12:46

http://www.lrp-cofi.org/statements/isl_responds_to_cwi_082411.html (best viewed there for proper links to pictures and such)

A Statement by the Internationalist Socialist League (Israel/Occupied Palestine)
August 24, 2011

Facts Against Fictions
The ISL Responds to CWI Charges that It Lied about Their Israeli Group

In our recent statement on the Israeli housing price protest movement,[1] the ISL made some serious criticisms of the role played by the Maavak Sozialisti group (MS), the Israeli section of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI). “Maavak,” we alleged, “has capitulated to the movement’s dominant ‘social justice for Israelis’ chauvinism.” In response, supporters of the CWI rallied to their comrades’ defense, accusing us of spreading “utterly despicable” “out and out lies”[2] about their comrades.

It’s understandable that the CWI comrades were so anxious to attack our statement. Comrades should defend one another from attacks, especially when they think they’ve been the target of dishonest criticism. And CWIers are understandably sensitive to the charge that their Israeli comrades have capitulated to Zionist chauvinism – after all, the Palestinian masses’ courageous struggles against their oppression has won them a place in the heart of every revolutionary around the world. But the defense of one’s comrades should be based on confirmed facts and in this case we will show, with complete and graphic evidence, that the facts are on our side. Our criticisms of Maavak Sozialisti were perfectly truthful.

However in refuting their charge that we lied, we won’t rush to judge the CWI comrades too harshly: they could perhaps be excused for believing that their comrades in MS are more consistent defenders of the Palestinians than they really are. After all, statements by MS expressing unflinching solidarity with the Palestinians against Zionism have appeared on the CWI’s English-language international website, so it would be reasonable for CWI comrades to assume that the same statements appear on MS’s Israeli website, and if they don’t read Hebrew or Arabic, how could English-speaking comrades check? Below, we’ll do the checking for them and expose the truth. Furthermore, even comrades proficient in Arabic inside Israel/Palestine could also be forgiven for thinking that MS comrades are more uncompromising champions of Palestinian liberation than they really are if they haven’t also checked Maavak’s statements. Again, we’ll do the checking for them and expose the truth.

But first, did the ISL tell “out and out lies” about MS?

This is what we wrote:

“Maavak has capitulated to the movement’s dominant “social justice for Israelis” chauvinism, never once criticizing the movement’s failure to defend the Palestinians. Its statements on the struggle use vague calls for opposition to racist legislation to avoid taking a specific stand against any particular attack on Palestinians and their rights ... Indeed, while finding space in the special edition of its newspaper for a whole page of discussion about the protests concerning the high price Israelis must pay for cottage cheese, it found no room for a single article devoted to the concerns of Palestinians.”

No CWIer has produced a quote from their comrades where they criticize the movement for not defending the Palestinians. None have even suggested that such a criticism exists.

So, what of the special newspaper that Maavak Socialitzi published for the housing price protest? We reproduce images of its 8 pages below. Readers can download it here: maavak.org.il/maavak/pdf/201107.SSM.Tents.pdf. And indeed in the paper’s 8 pages, while there is on page 3 a full page article on the price of cottage cheese in Israel, including a statement of concern for Israeli capitalist farmers and their need to be protected from foreign competition, there is not a single article devoted to the concerns of Palestinians. Shame!

In fact, our original criticisms of MS’s special Tent City publication could have gone a lot further. For example, we did not point out that starting on page 4, there is a two-page article entitled “From Tunisia to Syria, the Struggle Against the Dictatorships Continues.” There, one can read about the Tunisian masses rising up against their dictators; about the Egyptian masses rising up against their dictators; and about the Syrian masses rising up against their dictators; but nowhere is there any mention of the Palestinian masses’ struggle against the Israeli dictatorship! Seriously! The lengths MS went to avoid offending the Zionist sensibilities of the Tent City protesters are at once funny in their incompetence as well as disgusting.

But let us repeat, for the sake of clarity: in an 8 page newspaper published especially for a protest movement focused on housing in Israel, MS did not, even once, mention the Zionists’ ongoing campaign of evictions, house demolitions and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians taking place in Jaffa, Sheikh Jarrah, the Galilee and the Negev. NOT ONCE!

Perhaps MS was worried that the up-beat feel of their newspaper would be ruined if they had an article focused on the plight of the Palestinians. After all, instead of the cute tent graphic that appears on every paper of their newspaper, they would have to place a picture of a home being demolished by an armor-plated bulldozer, the blood of Palestinians pooling around it. Perhaps MS were worried about ruining their readers’ appetite for cottage cheese?

Now, we in the ISL don’t engage in the petty competition that sees some left groups unable to acknowledge when others do good work. For example, despite our political differences with anarchists, we don’t hesitate to hail the courageous acts of solidarity with the Palestinians that the Anarchists Against the Wall group performed in the Tent City in Tel Aviv from its very beginning. They raised their banner against the Zionists’ apartheid wall, only to have it immediately torn down.[3] They put up a photographic exhibit of the Palestinians’ plight, only to have it destroyed. When ‘Tent 1948’ was set up to disseminate information about the Palestinians’ oppression, the occupants were beaten up![4] We salute these courageous comrades!

More recently, to Maavak’s credit, at a demonstration in Tel Aviv on the 20th of August, Maavak refused the Tent City leadership’s demand that they remain silent in honor of those who died in recent clashes between Palestinian militants and the IDF. They raised chants like “In Israel and the Territories, the People Demand Social Justice,” “the Answer to the War - R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N,” “No to the War that Will End the Protest,” “No Peace, No Welfare - Overthrow the Government”, for which they were denounced and even physically attacked.

We applaud their courage in doing this and condemn the attacks, but must note that this episode exposes their perspective that the working class in Israel can be won over to the socialist revolution as a whole – and even worse, that this can be done on an economist basis – is utterly detached from reality and leaves them unguarded against such dangers.

We have never doubted that many MS members have a sincere concern for the Palestinians. That concern in fact points MS members toward joining with the Palestinians’ struggle for liberation. But MS’s leaders and program act as a barrier to the realization of that potential. That they have not broken from Zionism in principle is clear from MS’s insistence on the right of a “socialist Israel” to exist on land stolen from the Palestinians. That this leads to the sort of capitulations to Zionist chauvinism like MS’s disgraceful publication for the Tent City protests is undeniable.

At the same time, MS could not exist as a group with socialist pretensions if it did not raise some opposition to some aspects of the Palestinian people’s oppression some of the time. Indeed in several places in Tent City publications, MS did call for opposition to racism and for an end to “the occupation.” But they never got specific about what forms of racism they are opposed to and just what occupation they want to end or how. Since this allowed the Israeli reader to fill in the missing specifics with a content of their own choosing, it is crucial to understand current Israeli views on such issues.

For example, one must recognize that many of the current Israeli protesters want the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank to end, not primarily out of concern for the Palestinians, but rather, because they think that the occupation is too expensive and they want the money spent on Israelis at home. That is not a pro-Palestinian position; it is an almost-pathological Zionist selfishness wrapped in Palestinian-friendly garb. Similarly, many of the protesters think that Israel should settle for the land it had stolen from the Palestinians by the time of the 1967 war. That is also not a pro-Palestinian position; it is the position of colonialists who have grown tired of fighting. Maavak Sozialisti’s call for an end to the occupation and for a “socialist Israel” merely lends these positions an energetic militancy and a “socialist” cover.

Likewise, most Zionists will agree to oppose racism and racist laws so long as the question is posed abstractly. Most Israelis can certainly be expected to oppose racist policies that target Jews, like the segregation of Orthodox Sephardic (Southern European and Middle Eastern) Jews enforced by Ashkenazi (Northern and Eastern European) Orthodox Rabbis in schooling. Also, some will oppose the current racist proposals to make Israel an officially Jewish state – so long as other laws ensure that non-Jews are stopped from becoming a majority.

But what about the racist laws which are the very foundation of the state of Israel? Zionists will swear that they are opposed to racism while they defend the perfectly racist, anti-Palestinian “Law of Return” upon which the State of Israel is founded and which gives Jews from across the world the right to Palestinian land, even if they are a tribal people from Peru recently converted to Judaism (yes, this has happened).[5] And Zionists will swear that they are not racists while denying the right-of-return to the Palestinians and their descendants who were ethnically cleansed from their homeland when the state of Israel was created. In other words, Zionists can be expected to declare themselves opposed to all sorts of racism so long as they remain willfully blind to the essentially racist nature of the very idea of the state of Israel.

Tragically, Maavak Sozialisti’s comrades remain trapped in this Zionist worldview. Thus, while MS do not say so in their program,[6] they do occasionally admit that they are for Palestinians’ right-of-return. At the same time, however, they maintain that Israel has a right to exist and ignore the fact that if the Palestinians and their descendents who were driven from their homeland by the Zionists’ founding of Israel gain their right of return, they will be the overwhelming majority, from the river to the sea, in all of “Mandatory Palestine”. This means that Israel could only continue to exist by means of apartheid minority rule. Some sellout reformist organizations like the Israeli Communist Party’s front-group Hadash at least recognize this contradiction, and try to hint that while they recognize the right of return in “principle”, they will be willing to sell it out in practice.[7] MS don’t take the Palestinian people’s demands nearly so seriously. Instead, their leaders play hide-and-seek with the rights and struggles of the Palestinians.

Indeed, as we foreshadowed in our introductory remarks, Maavak Sozialisti’s game of hide-and-seek regarding the Palestinian people’s struggles extends to their international audience and could explain their CWI comrades’ passionate, if mistaken, defense against our criticisms. For example, consider MS’s coverage of the Palestinians’ Nakbah Day protests this year on the CWI’s international website.

Commemorating and protesting the expropriation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the course of the establishment of the state of Israel, Nakbah Day is one of the most important days on the Palestinian political calendar. This year, Palestinians marched on Israel’s borders from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, only to be murderously attacked with tear gas and live ammunition. The ISL’s leaflet for this year’s Nakbah Day events, in Arabic, Hebrew and English can be read on our website[8] and a report on our participation by the ISL’s Yossi Schwartz is available on the League for the Revolutionary Party’s website at www.lrp-cofi.org/statements/yossi_nakba_day_2011.html. Those events are also well-described in an article by Maavak Sozialisti’s Shahar Ben-Khorin and the CWI’s Jan Kowalski entitled “Nakbah Day sparks mass protests,” that appears on the CWI’s English-language website.[9] While the article ends with MS and the CWI’s miserable call for a two-state solution, it forthrightly advocates the Palestinians’ demand for the right of return and condemns the Zionist “Law of Return.” Illustrated by many excellent photos of Palestinians fighting the Zionist state, the article even goes so far as asserting the Palestinians’ “right to self-defense and armed struggle”!

Now consider the coverage of Palestinians’ massive protests on Nakbah Day that appear on Maavak Sozialisti’s website in Israel:

.

.

.

That’s right: Nothing! Neither in Hebrew nor in Arabic, did MS say a word about the Nakba Day protests.

Shame!

Comrades of the CWI, perhaps you will believe us now when we tell you that your comrades in MS play hide-and-seek with the Palestinian struggle? Perhaps you will even conclude that their game is more hide than seek!

It is difficult to imagine any explanation for such a discrepancy between what MS publishes in Israel and what they have published in their name on the CWI’s international website, other than a conscious attempt by CWI leaders to defraud the international left-wing public. The CWI’s leaders have been caught engaged in worse acts of fraud in the past.[10] Indeed we in Israel are used to going to demonstrations and finding MS members handing one leaflet in Arabic to Palestinians, and a very different, less stridently pro-Palestinian leaflet in Hebrew to Jews. But it should be easy for Maavak Sozialisti to cast a little doubt on our interpretation: immediately translate your English-language article on Nakba Day into Hebrew and Arabic and feature it on your homepage and in your next newspaper or magazine!

But CWI comrades may honestly object: OK, our comrades’ failure to publish an article on Nakba Day on their website is a bad mistake, and their publication for the Tent City was lousy, but that doesn’t mean that MS hasn’t taken a stand for the Palestinians! For example, there is a video on youtube of a CWI comrade giving a speech as part of the Israeli housing price protest movement in which she opposes discrimination against Palestinians and the demolition of their houses, as well as the occupation. You can watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNXJb8X6xQU&feature=player_embedded.

Indeed, to the extent that MS has started to speak out for the Palestinians in the movement, we support them for this and encourage them to go further. But it is important to note that this does not contradict what we said of their initial approach to the movement, which was to be uncritical of its dominant “social justice for Israelis” chauvinism: MS’s turn to raising some Palestinian concerns is consistent with tailing the leadership of the Tent City movement. As our statement explained, “After weeks of refusing to say anything about Palestinians, the Tent City leadership started to become embarrassed by the movement’s obvious racism” and so it began to invite moderately pro-Palestinian speakers onto their platforms. Thus it invited Uda Basharat of Hadash to speak to its massive Tel Aviv protest and then a week later invited MS’s Suheir Daksa to speak to a protest in Haifa, where protests were not as strongly dominated by mainstream Zionists as in Tel Aviv. There, the MS’s comrade did raise the question of housing demolitions and discrimination against Palestinians as well as the need to oppose “the occupation.” But then to make clear that she was not threatening the Zionist project, but speaking as its left wing, she absurdly ended her speech with a patriotic declaration that Israel “is a state of workers, not of slaves. We will not be slaves! We will lead this state, we will solve the conflict!” – although she did not mention the apartheid wall, the starvation blockade of Gaza or the refugees’ right of return.

That Daksa followed statements of concern for the Palestinians with a ridiculous vision of the Zionist state of Israel being ruled by workers only shows the mess of contradictions MS can get themselves into when they start addressing the concerns of Palestinians. No wonder they so often avoid addressing the question of Palestinian oppression. Indeed, as if to show how little we have to search for evidence of the way Maavak Sozialisti plays hide-and-seek with the Palestinian struggle and their own program, consider recent written statements by Daksa. When the Palestinians of Umm al-Fahm started pitching tents to join the movement, she went on their Facebook page and posted messages in both Arabic and Hebrew (we’ve included screenshots of her postings below). Writing in Arabic, she declared:

“Real unity of the workers is social and political and with it the legitimacy of this state will be void of content and our program as a movement for establishing a new socialist society in this land from the river to the sea!”

Palestinian readers of this posting’s description of “a new socialist society in this land from the river to the sea” would no doubt have been shocked to read Daksa expressing herself very differently when writing in Hebrew on the same page, referring to a federation of future socialist states between the river and the sea, including an Israeli one:

“MS does believe in a socialist federation in the Middle East and we do believe in the return of the refugees! The solution of an independent democratic socialist Palestine next to a democratic socialist – and not Jewish socialist – Israel, are a situation behind a federation...”

At least this time, the support for the right of return is made explicit. But a passing reference to that support on a Facebook post is still miles away from any sort of consistent defense of Palestinian rights. And how an Israeli state could exist democratically while having a majority-Palestinian population after the refugees’ return remains unanswered because it is inexplicable.

We have given the CWI comrades the benefit of the doubt concerning their mistaken impression that their comrades in Maavak Sozialisti are consistent defenders of the Palestinians. So too, we can empathize with Comrade Daksa: it would be difficult to speak to Palestinians and not want to offer a perspective in which they win their full liberation from Zionist oppression, from the river to the sea. But if she thinks that compromising on that struggle has anything to do with Marxism and the Trotskyist tradition, she is mistaken.

The genuine tradition of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, contends that working-class unity across lines of national and racial division can only be forged by an uncompromising insistence on the rights of the oppressed. The ISL seeks to stand in that tradition. In the case of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, we do not recognize Israel’s right to exist because to do so can only mean perpetuating the Palestinian people’s oppression. We fight for a Palestinian workers’ state from the river to the sea in which Jews will have the right to live free of any form of ethnic or religious oppression. Unlike Maavak Sozialisti and the CWI’s “two states” perspective, our unhesitating advocacy of a state in which the oppressed masses will realize their unimpeded democratic and national aspirations is the genuine Trotskyist tradition. As Trotsky said of the very similar South African colonial settler state:

“Three-quarters of the population of South Africa (almost six million of almost eight million) is composed of non-Europeans. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the awakening of the native masses; in its turn it will give them what they are so lacking today, con*fi*dence in their strength, a heightened personal conscious*ness, a cultural growth. Under these conditions the South African Republic will emerge first of all as a ‘black’ Republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for whites or brotherly relations between the two races (which depends mainly upon the conduct of the whites). But it is entirely obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain imprint on the State.

“Insofar as a victorious revolution will radically change not only the relation between the classes, but also between the races, and will assure to the blacks that place in the State which corresponds to their numbers, so far will the Social Revolution in South Africa also have a national character. We do not have the slightest reason to close our eyes to this side of the question or to diminish its significance. On the contrary the proletarian party should in words and in deeds openly and boldly take the solution of the national (racial) problem in its hands.”[11]

To comrades of the CWI, we say: it is not too late to join this genuine revolutionary tradition of Trotskyism, whose program is the unqualified liberation of the oppressed, and whose watchwords are: say what is, tell the truth to the working class!

You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Sincerely,

The Internationalist Socialist League

Notes
1. Israelis Demand Social Justice – But What of the Palestinians?.
2. http://theredbadger17.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/israelis-demand-social-justice-but-what-of-the-palestinians/#comment-2.
3. See the informative article “Tahrir Envy: An Anti-Occupation Activist’s First Thoughts on the Tent Protests in Israel” .
4. See Abir Kopty, “Tent 1948”.
5. See Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of a Thousand Years, Chapter 1.
6. See MS’s program, and its scandalous silence on some of the Palestinian people’s most basic demands like the right-of-return at maavak.org.il/maavak/?content=10 (English), maavak.org.il/maavak/?content=23 (Hebrew).
7. Dov Khenin: “There is a basic recognition of rights on the one hand, and there is a practical political solution based on agreement between the political leaderships of the two peoples on the other hand.” “Israel: And Interview with Hadash MP and communist Dov Khenin”, links.org.au/node/968.
8. See “For the Return of all the Palestinian Refugees to their Lands and Homes! Socialist Revolution is the Only Solution!” at www.the-isleague.com/nakbah-day-2011-english.php (English), www.the-isleague.com/nakbah-day-2011-arabic.php and www.the-isleague.com/nakbah-day-2011-hebrew.php.
9. http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5074http://www.the-isleague.com/nakbah-day-2011-arabic.php
10. Consider the example of the CWI’s Ukrainian section, whose leading figures posed as members of other left-wing organizations for the purpose of defrauding the international left. For full documentation of this shocking case, see the LRP’s coverage at LRP/COFI Statement on the Ukrainian “RWO”, CWI Group Guilty of Ukraine Fraud, Photos of the Perpetrators and Open Letter to the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI).
11. Leon Trotsky, Remarks on the Draft Theses of the Workers Party of South Africa.

BIG BROTHER

25th August 2011, 21:14

Very good, it was actually because of the national question that I ended up withdrawing from the CWI, hopefully the CWI learns from this polemic and corrects its program.

25th August 2011, 21:42

Wahhhh two groups talking shit about one another get the fuck over it. Another great representation that the left is just a bunch of delusional crybabies.

BIG BROTHER

25th August 2011, 22:02

There is nothing delusional about polemics, that is actually a good way of correcting our theory using reason instead of violence.

freepalestine

25th August 2011, 22:30

Published 03:02 24.08.11Latest update 03:02 24.08.11

Israel's left now has a chance to awaken the public

Yachimovich frankly enunciated our position as Israeli Jews: We are profiting from the occupation even as we groan under regressive taxation.

By Amira Hass

Were Shelly Yachimovich the only one to raise the banner of selective justice, there would be no need to state here that the settlements are no sin in exactly the same way that traffic in women is no crime and concentrating Jews from Arab lands in weakened towns on the periphery is no injustice. There would be no reason to recall that once, there was a consensus over slavery, and that there is ever only one Master; he merely changes his name from time to time: men in a patriarchal society, whites in South Africa, Jews in the state for Jews-above-all.

Unfortunately, however, many activists in and supporters of the Israeli protest movement accept the logic of social-nationalist justice. Were Yachimovich in the minority, at least 10 percent of the quarter-million demonstrators would have protested against the wall of sin in Walaja, Bil'in, Na'alin and Ma'asara. They would have marched en masse to the stolen Nebi Saleh spring and liberated it. Then, they would have returned home with the soldiers, together prevented the destruction of houses in Lod and demonstrated in front of the Interior Ministry until its bureaucrats were ordered to immediately prepare a master plan for every unrecognized village, starting with Al-Araqib. It's so simple.

Because Yachimovich represents the many, does that mean that leftists (both Jewish and Palestinian ) ought to desist from their internal debate over whether to participate in a protest movement whose justice is selective and simply walk away? If this new social movement were a final paper awaiting a grade, the answer would be "Yes. This is a movement that launders the dispossession of Palestinians both past and present with superficial yuppie charm. We do not belong in it, so we'll return to the tear gas, the rubber-coated steel bullets and the arrests."

But the social movement that sprung up in Israel this summer is not a final paper. Nor is it a political party. It is a process, a new and developing situation that reinvents itself frequently, an intensive course in developing political understanding. It must not be left to the new-old social right.

In effect, the challenge goes much deeper than merely conflicting opinions. Yachimovich frankly enunciated our position as Israeli Jews: We are profiting from the occupation even as we groan under regressive taxation. Whether our families came from Katrielevka or Baghdad, we are profiting from the structural discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and from the very fact that they have become a minority in their own land.

So is the solution to this troubling existential dilemma simply to leave? To emigrate to countries free of injustice and dispossession, like the United States of America, Germany or South Africa, in which apartheid based on class is competing successfully with its predecessor, apartheid based on race?

Internal contradictions are the daily fare of liberation struggles, and purist excuses for not participating don't resolve them. As the female activists of every national liberation struggle know quite well, patriarchy is not a secondary, negligible mechanism of oppression compared to colonialism. Sexism was present in the Solidarity Movement in Poland and the African National Congress in South Africa. Nevertheless, women joined these movements and were active in their ranks.

The role of the left - for whom the value of equality is its Ten Commandments - is not to look on from the sidelines and make do with handing out grades. The left must try to influence this new, dynamic process. Its role is to learn from other people's struggles and to teach, without lowering itself, while abandoning the arrogance of the past and bearing in mind the terrible wrongs committed in its name.

Leftist activists are educated to make use of their excess privileges insofar as possible to fight the whole system of privileges. Now, when, there is a collective awakening from long years of apathy, the left can and must use the experience, knowledge and human and cultural capital it has accumulated. For there is now a great chance of proving to at least parts of this awakening public that the benefits of occupation today are the strategic danger of tomorrow.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-s-left-now-has-a-chance-to-awaken-the-public-1.380355

RedTrackWorker

25th August 2011, 23:21

Wahhhh two groups talking shit about one another get the fuck over it. Another great representation that the left is just a bunch of delusional crybabies.

So what's your alternative?

Do you think the working class can make a revolution and free humanity with working out a theory of the need to do so and how to do so? Or do you think that this particular piece doesn't contribute to that process? If that's the case, and you don't feel like explaining how the piece doesn't address the real issues facing the fight for Palestinian liberation as part of socialist revolution, would you point me to a piece that you think does do that?

Aurora

25th August 2011, 23:48

Wahhhh two groups talking shit about one another get the fuck over it. Another great representation that the left is just a bunch of delusional crybabies.

What are you on about? Hardly 'talking shit' the piece,which personally i'm not sure is with foundation, was written in a comradely manner about an important issue, which in that respect i would like to see a lot more of.

Jolly Red Giant

26th August 2011, 19:08

The CWI’s leaders have been caught engaged in worse acts of fraud in the past.[10]

10. Consider the example of the CWI’s Ukrainian section, whose leading figures posed as members of other left-wing organizations for the purpose of defrauding the international left. For full documentation of this shocking case, see the LRP’s coverage at LRP/COFI Statement on the Ukrainian “RWO”, CWI Group Guilty of Ukraine Fraud, Photos of the Perpetrators and Open Letter to the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI).

I was actually going to waste my time responding to this until I got to this part -

Once you make a false claim (i.e. claiming that the CWI engaged in fraud in relation to the Ukraine) then your entire argument goes out the window and doesn't warrant a response -

The entire piece oozes with rampant sectarianism (and a group with a major chip on their shoulder) that is par for the course for a ultra-left grouplet that learnt its methods in Healy's WRP.

26th August 2011, 19:19

Aaaaaaand it's rebounded by a CWI hack! The shit talking continues! Who would have expected such a turn of events hmmm......

RedTrackWorker

26th August 2011, 21:54

Once you make a false claim (i.e. claiming that the CWI engaged in fraud in relation to the Ukraine) then your entire argument goes out the window and doesn't warrant a response -

1. Care to present a single piece of evidence that it's a false claim? A link to an article arguing the point? Anything? Why did the CWI suspend and expel some of its members for fraud if this is a false claim?

2. One false claim means an entire argument is invalid? Really?

The entire piece oozes with rampant sectarianism (and a group with a major chip on their shoulder) that is par for the course for a ultra-left grouplet that learnt its methods in Healy's WRP.

So instead of responding to anything in the piece, instead of presenting a single problem with any part of the argument or a single piece of evidence that something is untrue, you accuse it of "sectarianism" and then claim it's based on ultra-leftism and Healyism without a single bit of evidence. Who is the sectarian, the one with scrupulous documentation and reasoned arguments about issues which should be of concern to every revolutionary (how to liberate Palestine), or the one who slings mud in hope some will stick?

DaringMehring

27th August 2011, 00:02

1. Care to present a single piece of evidence that it's a false claim? A link to an article arguing the point? Anything? Why did the CWI suspend and expel some of its members for fraud if this is a false claim?

2. One false claim means an entire argument is invalid? Really?

So instead of responding to anything in the piece, instead of presenting a single problem with any part of the argument or a single piece of evidence that something is untrue, you accuse it of "sectarianism" and then claim it's based on ultra-leftism and Healyism without a single bit of evidence. Who is the sectarian, the one with scrupulous documentation and reasoned arguments about issues which should be of concern to every revolutionary (how to liberate Palestine), or the one who slings mud in hope some will stick?

Bro I'm not a partisan in this argument, and if anything I lean towards your position, but when you start writing long manifestos against other insignificant groups, instead of spending that time and energy working or at least trying to work in the working class, you verge on the territory of the Spartacists (and their splinters).

To put it bluntly

1) does it matter at all what the CWI do or don't do in Israel?

2) if what they do sucks, why don't you use the superior line to actually make a group that can perform better there, instead of *****ing to an audience of like 30 people on the net about it?

Jolly Red Giant

27th August 2011, 00:10

1. Care to present a single piece of evidence that it's a false claim? A link to an article arguing the point? Anything? Why did the CWI suspend and expel some of its members for fraud if this is a false claim?
The CWI expelled those responsible for the fraud because the CWI itself was the subject of fraud - the people in the Ukraine who engaged in fraud were not operating in any way in the interests or on behalf of the CWI - they could just as easily have joined the ISL (if they had a group there) or any other left group and engaged in the same activity - indeed given they fact that they affiliated to several other left internationals the exact same allegations of fraud could be made against all of them - the CWI did not engage in any fraud

2. One false claim means an entire argument is invalid? Really?
When the ISL make so prominent a claim based on a blatant falsehood it casts an absolute doubt over everything that is claimed in the piece. If the ISL were actually interested in debating something then there would have been far more validity in their statement if they had not surrounded it with well-known falsehoods. The reality is the the claim about CWI fraud in the Ukraine demonstrates that the piece is nothing more than a piece of rampant sectarianism.

So instead of responding to anything in the piece, instead of presenting a single problem with any part of the argument or a single piece of evidence that something is untrue, you accuse it of "sectarianism" and then claim it's based on ultra-leftism and Healyism without a single bit of evidence. Who is the sectarian, the one with scrupulous documentation and reasoned arguments about issues which should be of concern to every revolutionary (how to liberate Palestine), or the one who slings mud in hope some will stick?
The piece does not merit a single word of a response from any member of the CWI on this forum for the reason stated above. Why would any CWI member respond to something that is so blatantly based on lies? If you want to politically attack another group then you better make sure you are on solid ground. Your claim of scrupulous documentation is nonsense when one of the references is the false (and accepted by the vast majority of the left as false) allegations about the CWI engaged in fraud in the Ukraine.

RedTrackWorker

27th August 2011, 00:14

Aaaaaaand it's rebounded by a CWI hack! The shit talking continues! Who would have expected such a turn of events hmmm......

But shit talking about shit talking has a proven track record KC? I know you're capable of doing more than slinging mud but you've yet to prove that on this thread.

The ISL statement makes an attempt to clarify questions about an important issue. Your contributions to this thread do not help anyone--anyone at all. Perhaps you think I'm so sectarian nothing you could say would help me, I don't know what your basis is for that, but say you're right, what about the people reading the thread, should you not at least try to explain to them? Or could you perhaps even dirty yourself to respond to something in the ISL statement, to explain for us sectarians how it is not an attempt at clarification? Do you disagree with their position on Palestinian liberation? Do you think the issue isn't important? What is it?

RedTrackWorker

27th August 2011, 00:34

The piece does not merit a single word of a response from any member of the CWI on this forum for the reason stated above. Why would any CWI member respond to something that is so blatantly based on lies? If you want to politically attack another group then you better make sure you are on solid ground. Your claim of scrupulous documentation is nonsense when one of the references is the false (and accepted by the vast majority of the left as false) allegations about the CWI engaged in fraud in the Ukraine.

I have a hard time understanding your argument in your post. The ISL footnote says: "Consider the example of the CWI’s Ukrainian section, whose leading figures posed as members of other left-wing organizations for the purpose of defrauding the international left." Your response is that the CWI international knew nothing of this. If true, that doesn't disprove the ISL's claim. More to the point, the CWI refused to exchange information on the fraud and continued to publish articles by one of its leaders? (http://lrp-cofi.org/PR/CWIPR69.html).

You say the vast majority of the left rejects these allegations as false. Links, citations, etc. The CPGB wrote: "Clearly the CWI is not saying everything it knows about the various money-making schemes."(http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no26/no26cwi.htm) and the BT didn't buy the CWI explanation either (http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no26/no26cwi.htm). Where is this "majority" that rejects the allegations? I couldn't find a single group that defended the CWI--point me to your majority.

As for all the stuff about "surrounded [the statement] with well-known falsehoods", what are the falsehoods and where's your proof?

black magick hustla

27th August 2011, 00:36

RedTrackWorker

27th August 2011, 00:54

Bro I'm not a partisan in this argument, and if anything I lean towards your position, but when you start writing long manifestos against other insignificant groups, instead of spending that time and energy working or at least trying to work in the working class, you verge on the territory of the Spartacists (and their splinters).

To put it bluntly

1) does it matter at all what the CWI do or don't do in Israel?

2) if what they do sucks, why don't you use the superior line to actually make a group that can perform better there, instead of *****ing to an audience of like 30 people on the net about it?

This is really a separate and very big discussion that there is no simple answer to.
A few points:
* Part of working in the working class is exposing those groups who aspire to the political leadership of that class.
* These groups are not "insignificant" (see this article (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/laborSV5.html) for an argument of the significant role of centrists groups despite their size).
* The working class can only overcome such "insignificant" centrists groups through a conscious understanding of what they are and what role they play--not by ignoring them.
* A superior line is worked out and clarified through polemics with "inferior" lines--putting forward polemics allows people to argue with and to correct us, debate, etc.
* Having a superior line doesn't necessarily mean one will recruit, that depends first of all on the general nature of the period (which is finally changing for the better after decades) and of course on all sorts of historical accidents. See this interview (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/stream.htm) with Trotsky.
* Groups (like the former external fraction of LO in France) that focus on work in the working class and generally ignore polemics have neither recruited a significant number of workers nor worked out important political ideas that contribute to clarifying the way forward for the movement.

I doubt that will convince you but I hope it helps you see where we're coming from. The two articles I linked, especially the first, probably do a better job of answering the question.

RedTrackWorker

27th August 2011, 01:06

to hell with the "right of self determination" and long live international communism. this might seem an "ultraleft" slogan but its indeed not less "utopic" than the dumb calls of a "palestinian socialist state" in the side of the isl. there will never be a palestinain "socialist state" from the river to the sea because by the time the palestinians gain enoguh class consciousness (if it ever happens, palestine has the most defeated working class) to consider the question of the abolition of capital, calling for a nationally palestinian "socialist state" will indeed be ridiculous.

I will address only one problem with the above comment, which is the claim that when the Palestinians can enough consciousness to make a revolution, then there will be point to nationalism.

If you think a revolution waits for the majority, much less more than a small minority, to become fully class conscious, I doubt we'll ever see a successful revolution. The working class can take power based on proving in practice that only it can offer a solution for the rest of the masses' social problems. Confer the Bolsheviks, the working class and the question of the war and of the land in Russia. To wait till the masses all become fully conscious would have been to wait for the counterrevolution to kick in the skulls of the most conscious elements. Consciousness comes from struggle but that does not mean the struggle will wait for all to become conscious, the most decisive, resolute elements have to prove their leadership to the working class as the Bolsheviks did, and that class will have to prove its leadership to the rest of society. Otherwise, bloody counterrevolution.

Fighting for the liberation of Palestine is key to that struggle. Making the formally correct position on the limitations of nationalism a precondition of the struggle there would be to separate the vanguard from the masses permanently and would give the vanguard no opportunity to engage in a process of learning through action-dialogue with the rest of the class.

27th August 2011, 01:45

But shit talking about shit talking

See, I can shit talk because I am:

1. Not claiming to be a serious organization, I'm just some dude posting my thoughts.
2. Don't have delusions of grandeur
3. Making fun of your delusions and the same tired crap that the "socialist left" has been doing for the past 100 years.

The fact of the matter is that you're all just wasting your time with your little revolutionary role playing, writing "polemics" about each others' miniscule and completely useless organizations under a false cloak of diplomacy. This shit is about as sad as a reality TV show. You even have your very own gossip mag - the Weekly Worker.

At least Jersey Shore is entertaining, this shit is just stale.

I know you're capable of doing more than slinging mud but you've yet to prove that on this thread.

Hypocrite. You're the one slinging mud with your shitty polemic.

The ISL statement makes an attempt to clarify questions about an important issue.

Oh? Important to whom? You and your roleplaying buddies in your pointless organization? Who cares

Your contributions to this thread do not help anyone--anyone at all.

That's because I'm on some next level shit that you can't even comprehend.

Within your own little fairy tale world sure my posts are irrelevant but they're very relevant to the real world that the vast majority of people live in.

what about the people reading the thread, should you not at least try to explain to them?

What about them? I've aired my criticism of your shitty organizations enough on this board that everyone should already know where I'm coming from.

Or could you perhaps even dirty yourself to respond to something in the ISL statement

I have been: your organization is shit, you're wasting your time, just quit being members in these shitty organizations already. There's so much shit to do and you all sit around jerking each other off over your dumbass polemics.

It's the same fucking story with all of them. ISO takes position A on some issue regarding something going down in some random country that they have absolutely nothing to do with. PSL take position B, with the same irrelevance. Then they spend all their time writing polemics and attacking each other and explaining why the other is wrong when in reality none of it even matters because both organizations are so irrelevant in general but especially in relation to what they're arguing about that it's a complete waste of time. Then the cycle continues ad infinitum.

Do you disagree with their position on Palestinian liberation?

I don't think their position on Palestinian liberation matters because both of your groups are so tiny that you have absolutely no effect on the issue.

Maybe instead of wasting your time whining at each other and doing all this work for pointless organizations that will never matter, you actually do something productive like work on thinking for yourself and not being a shitty Trotskyist/Anarchist/Marxist/Stalinist/whatever. Put out some original theory/analysis. Go tackle the important questions that nobody seems to care about or assume are already answered. Just stop wasting your fucking time and do something productive for once, Christ.

RedTrackWorker

27th August 2011, 02:18

The answer to shit talking is more extreme shit talking? I'm going to ignore the unsubstantiated accusations (and see my above reply to daringmehring on the size issue--we disagree there obviously on how to politically interpret the size of groups).

Maybe instead of wasting your time whining at each other and doing all this work for pointless organizations that will never matter, you actually do something productive like work on thinking for yourself and not being a shitty Trotskyist/Anarchist/Marxist/Stalinist/whatever. Put out some original theory/analysis. Go tackle the important questions that nobody seems to care about or assume are already answered. Just stop wasting your fucking time and do something productive for once, Christ.

What are those important questions nobody seems to care about or assumes are already answered? What are the productive things we're not doing that we could be doing?

The LRP has done extensive work on many questions. Two things that stand out are economic theory (our stuff on the 2008 crisis the anarchist Wayne Price said was the best thing written on the subject) and how the working class can split the military (something extremely important in Tunisia and Egypt right now). Or how about the question of how to do revolutionary work in the trade unions? A topic we have something to say about and have some practical experience with. Are these not important topics to you? You think our work has no value? What is it?

I want to give the best of my time and energy to the socialist cause. The best way I've figured out is building the LRP. Yeah, we're small--I agree with you on that, but has someone out there figured out a better way? Is there some group or network or whatever putting out this original analysis you're calling for that the LRP isn't? Who is doing this productive stuff you're talking about--or if no one is, where is it explained how it will work whereas what the LRP is doing won't?

Martin Blank

27th August 2011, 02:22

Formal warning to KC for trolling. Don't do it again.

27th August 2011, 02:25

What are those important questions nobody seems to care about or assumes are already answered? What are the productive things we're not doing that we could be doing?

Use you're brain, they're all around you. The problem is you dogmatically believe they've already been answered. Everyone on this forum has answers, almost nobody asks questions.

The LRP has done extensive work on many questions.Yeah, I've seen how organizations do "extensive work". Most of it is sophomoric, shallow and worthless.

(our stuff on the 2008 crisis the anarchist Wayne Price said was the best thing written on the subject)Wow Wayne Price no way! :rolleyes:

Or how about the question of how to do revolutionary work in the trade unions?How about a penetrating analysis of the changing role of unions over the course of the last hundred years? How about an indepth study as to their relation to the American working class nowadays? How can you even begin to approach the question as to "how to work with unions" when you don't even know what they are or how they fit into the broader picture?

You think our work has no value?Yes.

Yeah, we're small--I agree with you on that, but has someone out there figured out a better way?I keep shitting all over my feet. Every time I shit, I shit right on my feet. Yeah, it sucks, but I know of no better way!

Is there some group or network or whatever putting out this original analysis you're calling for that the LRP isn't?Why do you need a group or network so fucking badly? Have you ever thought that getting away from groupthink would actually do you some good?

Who is doing this productive stuff you're talking aboutI am, a few people I know are, I'm sure there are plenty others out there. Needless to say there is a veritable mountain of work to do to make up for the shortcomings of the past few decades and a whole lot of people not realizing it.

where is it explained how it will work whereas what the LRP is doing won't?

If your group disappeared completely, just straight up dissolved, how many people outside the left do you think would notice?

The past 100 years of history have proven this crap wrong, maybe you could start there.

RedTrackWorker

27th August 2011, 03:09

I am, a few people I know are, I'm sure there are plenty others out there. Needless to say there is a veritable mountain of work to do to make up for the shortcomings of the past few decades and a whole lot of people not realizing it.

Where is this work?

Crux

27th August 2011, 03:33

And again it boils down to the fact that we do not agree for the slogan "free palestine, from the river to the sea" and any claims of "left zionism" is easily eroded within the article itself.

RedTrackWorker

27th August 2011, 04:19

And again it boils down to the fact that we do not agree for the slogan "free palestine, from the river to the sea" and any claims of "left zionism" is easily eroded within the article itself.

The main political point does boil down to that, but there's also the facts and fictions surrounding the debate--none of which the CWI comrades have been able to refute.

As for left Zionism, you did not understand the statement if you think the article itself undercuts that claim. Your position, however left, is still a Zionist position because you support the right of Israelis to a piece of the Palestinians' land, as I said in the other thread:

You're avoiding the question in bold. One can say "red is green" and one can say "we're against apartheid, ethnic cleansing, etc. and we're for an Israeli state" but the claim the ISL and LRP make is that in fact (not in words or in theory) you cannot have an Israeli state without apartheid or ethnic cleansing. If the right of return and end of occupation is granted in fact, what would be the legitimate basis for an Israeli state as the Palestinians would be the clear majority from the river to the sea?

Jolly Red Giant

27th August 2011, 12:24

I have a hard time understanding your argument in your post. The ISL footnote says: "Consider the example of the CWI’s Ukrainian section, whose leading figures posed as members of other left-wing organizations for the purpose of defrauding the international left."
You quote the footnote -

This is what the article said -

The CWI’s leaders have been caught engaged in worse acts of fraud in the pastThis is an utter and blatant falsehood - The ISL has absolutely no evidence what-so-ever that the CWI’s leaders have been caught engaged in worse acts of fraud in the past (what happened was a number of left groups, including the CWI who actually suffered more than anyone else, got caught in was a case of theft by a handful of individuals). The article demonstrates that the ISL spreads falsehoods about other left organisations by repeating this nonsense. If an organisation has a propensity for spreading falsehoods then it cannot expect anyone to engage with their sectarian rantings.

The main political point does boil down to that, but there's also the facts and fictions surrounding the debate--none of which the CWI comrades have been able to refute.
And the blatant fictions are coming from the ISL - as I have demonstrated above.

black magick hustla

27th August 2011, 17:49

If you think a revolution waits for the majority, much less more than a small minority, to become fully class conscious, I doubt we'll ever see a successful revolution.

i don't really think that. in fact i am probably one of the staunchest "anti-democratists" in the board.

The working class can take power based on proving in practice that only it can offer a solution for the rest of the masses' social problems. Confer the Bolsheviks, the working class and the question of the war and of the land in Russia. To wait till the masses all become fully conscious would have been to wait for the counterrevolution to kick in the skulls of the most conscious elements. Consciousness comes from struggle but that does not mean the struggle will wait for all to become conscious, the most decisive, resolute elements have to prove their leadership to the working class as the Bolsheviks did, and that class will have to prove its leadership to the rest of society. Otherwise, bloody counterrevolution.

i don't disagree with this. but when the class fights for itself has very little to do with being dragged around by the scum and rats hiding their tails in damascus.

Fighting for the liberation of Palestine is key to that struggle. Making the formally correct position on the limitations of nationalism a precondition of the struggle there would be to separate the vanguard from the masses permanently and would give the vanguard no opportunity to engage in a process of learning through action-dialogue with the rest of the class.

lets state this clear. the ISL is a tiny insignificant group, its not a "vanguard". i sometimes feel those who call themselves the heirs of lenin make his contributions a caricature, nor we are in a revolutionary period so there is no "marriage" between a nonexistent vanguard and the masses. there is almost no "process" of dialogue because the palestinian working class is one of the most utterly defeated and atomized classes in the middle east, however funnily the brief moments when the class acted for itself (the strikes of public workers) the nationalist bosses put their boots on them. there is no "process" because there is no historically active class, being dragged around by nationalist slogans is not a sign of class activity but a symptom of utter defeat.

Calling for a palestinain socialist state from the river to the sea is an artifcial and canned slogan. It will never happen, ever. The trotskyists have a penchant for really bad, impossible slogans.

electro_fan

29th August 2011, 13:39

The main political point does boil down to that, but there's also the facts and fictions surrounding the debate--none of which the CWI comrades have been able to refute.

As for left Zionism, you did not understand the statement if you think the article itself undercuts that claim. Your position, however left, is still a Zionist position because you support the right of Israelis to a piece of the Palestinians' land, as I said in the other thread:
lol, ffs, we are not zionists. i fucking despise zionism, before i joined the cwi i was heavily involved in the palestinian solidarity campaign and other campaigns, but the fact is that if you think that you can just force the israelis to leave the land you are a fucking idiot and will alienate the vast majority of the jewish working class, which essentially comes down to what you're saying. you're saying that no israeli has a right to live in israel/palestine, and no right to participate in its government or democratic structures, despite the fact that poverty is running at about 20% in Israel, despite the fact that they are a CONSCRIPT ARMY, they don't get a choice in whether they enlist or not, and the fact that israel as a regime, despite its appearance of democracy, is actually not a democracy for anyone with all the heavy censorship that goes on. they are told, constantly, that the rest of the world wants to kill them, and the token left wing newspapers like ha'aretz that report facts are mostly read by the upper class and aren't even that left wing any more. so what do you expect the israelis to do? to leave?

what would you to do to sort out the problem of zionism, would you expect all of the israelis to leave israel? can you not see a slight problem with this especially if they then refused to go - and if they refused, then what would you do then? is it not better to try and unite the whole working class around a socialist programme?

i am aware of problems with the cwi position on this, but i think that the key to solving the whole conflict is to get the israeli working class onto our side because that's the only way it can be stopped for ever. are you just going to abandon these people to right wing reaction and say that they are all scum and that they all have to leave israel? what sort of message is this going to send out to the jewish diaspora in the rest of the world? do you not think your position is slightly illogical?

electro_fan

29th August 2011, 13:44

as for the fraudsters, the people who committed fraud have now left the organisation, and they are not coming back , and as jrg says they stole from our organisation as well as giving it a bad name in that area. if you can provide any evidence of the cwi's leaders committing fraud (evidence that doesn't come from your paper) or knowing about the fraud and facilitating it in any way, then go ahead, knock yourself out.

electro_fan

29th August 2011, 15:20

If your group disappeared completely, just straight up dissolved, how many people outside the left do you think would notice?

hardly anyone inside the left would notice, let alone outside it :D

A Marxist Historian

29th August 2011, 18:08

1. Care to present a single piece of evidence that it's a false claim? A link to an article arguing the point? Anything? Why did the CWI suspend and expel some of its members for fraud if this is a false claim?

2. One false claim means an entire argument is invalid? Really?

So instead of responding to anything in the piece, instead of presenting a single problem with any part of the argument or a single piece of evidence that something is untrue, you accuse it of "sectarianism" and then claim it's based on ultra-leftism and Healyism without a single bit of evidence. Who is the sectarian, the one with scrupulous documentation and reasoned arguments about issues which should be of concern to every revolutionary (how to liberate Palestine), or the one who slings mud in hope some will stick?

And JRG strikes again... Whatever criticism one might have (and I have a number) of the LRP, calling them Healyites is peculiar to say the least. Apparently JRG felt motivated to strike out at somebody and got his targets confused.

As for Ukraine, one should say that indeed as JRG says the CWI was far from alone, virtually the entire ostensibly Trotskyist world got taken in by those Ukrainian con artists.

Except the Spartacists, who had a following in Kiev till the government kicked them out in 1994 I think it was, and knew exactly who those people were.

However, since the CWI, unlike most Western Trotskyists, actually had a real presence there, for them to have been caught up in the affair does say something about them.

-M.H.-

Lenina Rosenweg

29th August 2011, 18:23

And JRG strikes again... Whatever criticism one might have (and I have a number) of the LRP, calling them Healyites is peculiar to say the least. Apparently JRG felt motivated to strike out at somebody and got his targets confused.

As for Ukraine, one should say that indeed as JRG says the CWI was far from alone, virtually the entire ostensibly Trotskyist world got taken in by those Ukrainian con artists.

Except the Spartacists, who had a following in Kiev till the government kicked them out in 1994 I think it was, and knew exactly who those people were.

However, since the CWI, unlike most Western Trotskyists, actually had a real presence there, for them to have been caught up in the affair does say something about them.

-M.H.-

As opposed to the Sparts heckling from the sidelines as a way of recruiting "ones and twos" off of "ostensibly revolutionary organizations". At one time I was a SL sympathizer but, with all due respect, all I've seen of the Sparts is ultra-sectarianism, non-participation disguised as revolutionary purity.

As I understand the fraudsters in Kiev were scamming off of a large number of mostly British HQ'd radical left groups (even writing opposing polemics for each group they were ostensibly a member of)by pretending to be starting a branch.The CWI can't be blamed for this.

A Marxist Historian

29th August 2011, 18:26

to hell with the "right of self determination" and long live international communism. this might seem an "ultraleft" slogan but its indeed not less "utopic" than the dumb calls of a "palestinian socialist state" in the side of the isl. there will never be a palestinain "socialist state" from the river to the sea because by the time the palestinians gain enoguh class consciousness (if it ever happens, palestine has the most defeated working class) to consider the question of the abolition of capital, calling for a nationally palestinian "socialist state" will indeed be ridiculous.

In he peculiar circumstances of Israel/Palestine, this is essentially correct. You can't have self-determination with two interspersed peoples on such a small swatch of land.

Meanwhile, back to the original, important issue, which JRG tried in his usual fashion to divert to a secondary relative triviality by accusing RTW of being a liar.

The ISL has made an excellent case here that the CWI group in Israel is quite soft on Zionism in practice, whatever anti-Zionist statements may be written for overseas consumption. This certainly seems a very important issue, not some sectarian irrelevancy only of interest to hobbyists. The CWI group in Israel seems to have played a real role in this upsurge of working class protest in Israel, so what they do there is important and worth discussing. They are not just irrelevant Internet Hoxhaites or whatnot.

And that JRG is trying so hard to distract attention from this shows that they can't answer the criticism.

Now, OTOH, the LRP critique is shot through with New Left liberal moralism, with the Israeli working class supposed to give up their Zionist "white skin privilege" and learn Arabic or get out. A ridiculous idea that will never happen.

Of course the Israeli workers are out on the streets to protect their own asses, not the Palestinians. What else would you expect? That is how the world works.

They will learn that Zionism is their enemy not their friend through joint struggle with the Palestinians vs. the Israeli and Arab ruling classes.

Or not, in which case Palestinian oppression will continue indefinitely, as Israel has a huge military upper hand over the Palestinians, something not likely to change any time soon. Israel does have nuclear weapons after all.

Israel is different from South Africa in at least one utterly vital way.

In South Africa, the vast bulk of the working class was and is black.

In Israel, the working class is mostly either Jewish or non-Palestinian foreign immigrants.

Therefore the increasingly lumpenized, ghettoized and demoralized Palestinian population will not play the central role in a socialist revolution.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

29th August 2011, 18:33

lol, ffs, we are not zionists. i fucking despise zionism, before i joined the cwi i was heavily involved in the palestinian solidarity campaign and other campaigns, but the fact is that if you think that you can just force the israelis to leave the land you are a fucking idiot and will alienate the vast majority of the jewish working class, which essentially comes down to what you're saying. you're saying that no israeli has a right to live in israel/palestine, and no right to participate in its government or democratic structures, despite the fact that poverty is running at about 20% in Israel, despite the fact that they are a CONSCRIPT ARMY, they don't get a choice in whether they enlist or not, and the fact that israel as a regime, despite its appearance of democracy, is actually not a democracy for anyone with all the heavy censorship that goes on. they are told, constantly, that the rest of the world wants to kill them, and the token left wing newspapers like ha'aretz that report facts are mostly read by the upper class and aren't even that left wing any more. so what do you expect the israelis to do? to leave?

what would you to do to sort out the problem of zionism, would you expect all of the israelis to leave israel? can you not see a slight problem with this especially if they then refused to go - and if they refused, then what would you do then? is it not better to try and unite the whole working class around a socialist programme?

i am aware of problems with the cwi position on this, but i think that the key to solving the whole conflict is to get the israeli working class onto our side because that's the only way it can be stopped for ever. are you just going to abandon these people to right wing reaction and say that they are all scum and that they all have to leave israel? what sort of message is this going to send out to the jewish diaspora in the rest of the world? do you not think your position is slightly illogical?

This is all absolutely true and very well put.

Bu the fact remains that in practice the the CWI group in Israel has been accommodating itself to Zionism during these mass protests to a very high degree, as the ISL statement does an excellent job of demonstrating.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

29th August 2011, 18:46

As opposed to the Sparts heckling from the sidelines as a way of recruiting "ones and twos" off of "ostensibly revolutionary organizations". At one time I was a SL sympathizer but, with all due respect, all I've seen of the Sparts is ultra-sectarianism, non-participation disguised as revolutionary purity.

As I understand the fraudsters in Kiev were scamming off of a large number of mostly British HQ'd radical left groups (even writing opposing polemics for each group they were ostensibly a member of)by pretending to be starting a branch.The CWI can't be blamed for this.

Heh. This is at least one place and time where criticizing the Sparts for heckling from outside is totally out to lunch.

The Spartacists were the first left group to make themselves known in Ukraine, and attracted a definite following. Which is why the Ukrainian government actually passed a law making it *illegal* to be a Spartacist in Ukraine, you can go to jail for this! A law still on the books by the way.

It was not just Brit groups by the way, Americans too, including even the BT and IG splitoff groups from the SL. Yes, they were all taken by these con artists, but at least they all had the excuse that they knew nothing about Ukraine and got conned. (A pretty weak excuse for the IG, but let's not go there...)

The CWI, uniquely, didn't have that excuse. The "Rabochaya Demokratiya" group, who are Grantites, were the only actual indigenous Soviet Trotskyist group, not an import from outside, and the CWI splitoff from them was and is also indigenous, and has some real following here and there. As of the time of the scam, you had a genuine and functional CWI group in Russia next door, with no doubt lots of contact with the Ukrainian fraudsters, sharing a common culture, language and heritage.

And, according to the LRP, or rather more accurately from the other Trotskyoid groups that got conned, the CWI rather than being the first to expose the con artists, was the very last to break with them. A very dubious record, even if some of the LRP charges are slightly overstated.

Anyway, this should all really be in a different thread altogether, as it has little or nothing to do with the mass protests in Israel and the role of ostensible revolutionaries thereto, which is what we should be discussing.

-M.H.-

Jolly Red Giant

29th August 2011, 21:39

And JRG strikes again... Whatever criticism one might have (and I have a number) of the LRP, calling them Healyites is peculiar to say the least. Apparently JRG felt motivated to strike out at somebody and got his targets confused.
I bow to your greater wisdom - it is difficult at times to keep up with the splits from the splits from the splits from the miniscule sects around the planet.

Meanwhile, back to the original, important issue, which JRG tried in his usual fashion to divert to a secondary relative triviality by accusing RTW of being a liar.
And quite accurately - If you want someone to respond to political criticism then you must ensure that your original criticism were accurate - in the case of the statement published here they clearly were not.

The accusation of being pro-zionist or accomodating/capitualting to zionism is nonsense and nothing more than a sectarian swipe.

The ISL has made an excellent case here that the CWI group in Israel is quite soft on Zionism in practice, whatever anti-Zionist statements may be written for overseas consumption.
This is utter rubbish - and about as accurate as your nonsense about the Black Caucus in Liverpool or the Lindsey strike.

The CWI group in Israel seems to have played a real role in this upsurge of working class protest in Israel, so what they do there is important and worth discussing. They are not just irrelevant Internet Hoxhaites or whatnot.
It is interesting that no one has asked the ISL what role they have played in the upsurge of protest in Israel.

Therefore the increasingly lumpenized, ghettoized and demoralized Palestinian population will not play the central role in a socialist revolution.

and here we have the other extreme - simply writing off the Palestinian working class as lumpenised.

And, according to the LRP, or rather more accurately from the other Trotskyoid groups that got conned, the CWI rather than being the first to expose the con artists, was the very last to break with them.
The CWI had put significant effort into building in the Ukraine - and invested significant resources in the process. It wasn't until the efforts by a handful of individuals to defraud others came to light that the CWI found out what was going on. Furthermore, a number of good activists were recruited to the Ukranian group and the CWI conducted a thorough investigation to find out who was and who was not involved in the theft of money. Those involved were booted and an attempt was made to re-establish a group with those who were not. Are you ctitical of the fact that the CWI didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater?

electro_fan

29th August 2011, 21:56

RedTrackWorker

30th August 2011, 02:22

(Note been working a lot due to Irene, will probably not reply to a lot of things.)

you're saying that no israeli has a right to live in israel/palestine, and no right to participate in its government or democratic structures

You clearly have not read the statement. From http://lrp-cofi.org/statements/isl_israeliprotests_081111.html:

On the charge that we say they cannot participate in the government, the statement says "Jews who join with the Palestinians in a revolutionary struggle, will also become a part of the ruling class – the workers and the poor, Palestinians and Jews alike." If you think the majority of the Jewish working class there will side with the revolution, then that means the majority can participate in the ruling class.

On the charge that we say "leave" and they have no right to live there, the statement says "Israeli Jews, having surrendered any rights to property seized from Palestinians, will have the right to live in Palestine, without any racial privileges, but free of any form of ethnic or religious discrimination."

RedTrackWorker

30th August 2011, 02:30

Except the Spartacists, who had a following in Kiev till the government kicked them out in 1994 I think it was, and knew exactly who those people were.

And warned no one but instead basically gloated about not being caught up in it. Charming.

However, since the CWI, unlike most Western Trotskyists, actually had a real presence there, for them to have been caught up in the affair does say something about them.

Exactly.

It wasn't until the efforts by a handful of individuals to defraud others came to light that the CWI found out what was going on. Furthermore, a number of good activists were recruited to the Ukranian group and the CWI conducted a thorough investigation to find out who was and who was not involved in the theft of money. Those involved were booted and an attempt was made to re-establish a group with those who were not.

You might want to learn to distort facts better when you accuse other organizations of lieing. You just said anyone involved in theft of money was booted. According to the CWI's own statement, Ilya Budraitskis took money, was not booted from the organization, and continued to work for it (link (http://www.bolshevik.org/ukrscandal/CWI%20IEC%20statement%20on%20Ilya%20Budraitskis%20 (Nov%202003).html)). He never returned any money.

RedTrackWorker

30th August 2011, 02:35

as for all the stuff about how the cwi doesn't mention anything about the palestinians in its paper, not only does the statement contradict itself later on, but as far as i know papers don't have to mention everything. for example, the cwi doesn't always mention rupert murdoch in its papers, that doesn't mean that we suddenly support him just because we aren't talking about it.

You think not mentioning the Palestinian struggle over land and housing during a protest in occupied Palestine over housing is comparable to not mentioning Murdoch?

Nothing Human Is Alien

30th August 2011, 03:44

electro_fan

31st August 2011, 00:47

you didn't answer the other parts of my post.

and of course we wouldn't pander to reactionary elements who were prejudiced against black people and mexicans ffs. that's why we put a class position and call for the workers to unite across national boundaries. however, you can't overcome these prejudices by calling them scum, you have to explain to them why they are wrong, and turn these views around somehow, like what happened in the lindsey oil refinery strike and many other actions where we have been involved.

also, the LRP-COFI even admit in their own statement what we have done to challenge the occupation. basically all the accusations against the cwi are really vague, and they can't name a single time when we supported zionism.

i know that there are problems with the cwi's approach sometimes and i don't agree with it on everything. but so much of what's written on this forum is just inaccurate and wrong.

also, regarding participation in bourgeois parliaments, if i am not mistaken so did the bolshevik party and many other groups down the years. it's not like representing the views of the CWI to the public is the same as serving in a government

electro_fan

31st August 2011, 00:52

also- redtrackworker, the fact is, as you know, that all of israel used to be palestinian land. how would you define what land was "seized" and therefore to be given back to the palestinians and what wasn't? are you talking about just the settlements (in which i agree), or are you talking about everywhere in israel? if you are talking about the whole of israel, then where do you propose the ordinary israelis who are working class should then go? i'm not saying you're wrong. i would just like to know your answer. i don't know - i don't have an answer to this - and i am not saying the cwi is necessarily right on this, but i would just like to know what your organisation would say about it.

ultimately, the israeli palestinian conflict cannot be solved by capitalism, and my feeling is that those countries would have to be incorporated into some sort of larger country taking in most of the surrounding region, because israel and palestine are too small on their own. hopefully with socialism and freedom of movement though this would become irrelevant

electro_fan

31st August 2011, 00:59

western liberal nonsense...
and some of you call your selfs leftists...

i think you'll find that's the people who think trying to persuade bourgeois governments to place blanket sanctions on food, on medicines and the like that directly hurt working class people - including palestinians - is a good idea

RedTrackWorker

31st August 2011, 02:37

also, the LRP-COFI even admit in their own statement what we have done to challenge the occupation. basically all the accusations against the cwi are really vague, and they can't name a single time when we supported zionism.

You support Zionism by calling for an Israeli state. On the ground in the special edition of your newspaper, you did not challenge Zionism or stand up for the rights of Palestinians. You say the accusations are "vague" but no one has refuted a single one.

also- redtrackworker, the fact is, as you know, that all of israel used to be palestinian land. how would you define what land was "seized" and therefore to be given back to the palestinians and what wasn't? are you talking about just the settlements (in which i agree), or are you talking about everywhere in israel? if you are talking about the whole of israel, then where do you propose the ordinary israelis who are working class should then go? i'm not saying you're wrong. i would just like to know your answer. i don't know - i don't have an answer to this - and i am not saying the cwi is necessarily right on this, but i would just like to know what your organisation would say about it.

The details of this are complex but the outline is simple: Palestine must be free, from the river to the sea. This does not mean the Israeli Jews have no right to live there--it means they would not have the right to be in control when they are in the minority, which is what the CWI position is which calls for an Israeli state. The main point isn't what happens to each piece of the land but the character of the rule over the whole of the land.

Jolly Red Giant

31st August 2011, 17:23

You support Zionism by calling for an Israeli state.
And here once again we have the plying of fundemental falsehoods -

The CWI does not call fo an 'Israeli state' - the CWI campaigns for a socialist Israel working in a free and voluntary federation with a socialist Palestine as part of a wider socialist federation of the Middle East.

The establishment of a socialist Israel would require the fundemental destruction of Zionism.

This does not mean the Israeli Jews have no right to live there--it means they would not have the right to be in control when they are in the minority,
This is nothing more than blatant right-wing nationalism - the Jewish people are in the minority - they can live their but the must toe the line to Palestinian rule.

Anyone who remotely would call themselves a socialist would be arguing that the basis of any demands must be made on behalf of working class people - Israeli and Palestinian - not a cross-class demand on behalf of Palestinian nationalism.

The main point isn't what happens to each piece of the land but the character of the rule over the whole of the land.
Absolutely correct - and while the CWI argues for socialism to rule over the whole land, the ISL call for Palestinian nationalism to rule over the whole land.

electro_fan

31st August 2011, 17:29

but you said that all land that was seized was to be given back to the palestinians, and now you're saying that it's actually not important what happens to the land? i'd say that it is important, because that's what your party calls for, isn't it? and are you saying that no israelis would be allowed to participate in its government - even if they were israeli workers who had no part of any of this? can you not see a few problems with this approach? if israelis had no governmental representation how would you stop them being discriminated against, and surely overthrowing capitalism is more important than who is ruling the state? i mean the palestinian authorities, when they've had any autonomy, haven't exactly been very good for the palestinians have they? they haven't stopped israeli attacks and they're hardly friends of the working class are they?? i'm not saying that i agree with zionism or what the israeli state is doing ffs, but can you not see some problems with what you're saying?

also, about the two-state solution, we also call for israel/palestine to be part of the socialist confederation of the middle east. i agree there may be some problems with the cwi approach, which is why there have actually been many debates about it in the cwi itself and different people have different views on it.

freepalestine

31st August 2011, 17:45

but you said that all land that was seized was to be given back to the palestinians, and now you're saying that it's actually not important what happens to the land? i'd say that it is important, because that's what your party calls for, isn't it? 'and are you saying that no israelis would be allowed to participate in its government - even if they were israeli workers who had no part of any of this? can you not see a few problems with this approach? if israelis had no governmental representation how would you stop them being discriminated against, and surely overthrowing capitalism is more important than who is ruling the state? i mean the palestinian authorities, when they've had any autonomy, haven't exactly been very good for the palestinians have they? they haven't stopped israeli attacks and they're hardly friends of the working class are they?? i'm not saying that i agree with zionism or what the israeli state is doing ffs, but can you not see some problems with what you're saying?

also, about the two-state solution, we also call for israel/palestine to be part of the socialist confederation of the middle east. i agree there may be some problems with the cwi approach, which is why there have actually been many debates about it in the cwi itself and different people have different views on it.
ivenoticed you presume much on what the isl say.
the one state solution is hardly an idea of the isl.
ofcourse in a one state of Palestine,it would be democratic.

A Marxist Historian

31st August 2011, 18:13

I bow to your greater wisdom - it is difficult at times to keep up with the splits from the splits from the splits from the miniscule sects around the planet.

And quite accurately - If you want someone to respond to political criticism then you must ensure that your original criticism were accurate - in the case of the statement published here they clearly were not.

The accusation of being pro-zionist or accomodating/capitualting to zionism is nonsense and nothing more than a sectarian swipe.

This is utter rubbish - and about as accurate as your nonsense about the Black Caucus in Liverpool or the Lindsey strike.

It is interesting that no one has asked the ISL what role they have played in the upsurge of protest in Israel.

and here we have the other extreme - simply writing off the Palestinian working class as lumpenised.

The CWI had put significant effort into building in the Ukraine - and invested significant resources in the process. It wasn't until the efforts by a handful of individuals to defraud others came to light that the CWI found out what was going on. Furthermore, a number of good activists were recruited to the Ukranian group and the CWI conducted a thorough investigation to find out who was and who was not involved in the theft of money. Those involved were booted and an attempt was made to re-establish a group with those who were not. Are you ctitical of the fact that the CWI didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater?

I do not planned to get sucked in to another long squabble with JRG over all the many things wrong with almost every sentence in the above posting, but will stick to the only really relevant issue to this thread.

JRG claims that the ISL charge that the CWI group in Israel is accommodating and capitulating to Zionism in the course of these protests is "utter rubbish." However, he has provided no counterargument other than bare assertion against the ISL's well documented charges, instead trying to divert the attention of readers to everything else under the sun.

If he wants to claim that the ISL charges are "utter rubbish," he needs to answer them, which he has not.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

31st August 2011, 18:28

you will never get a group that does not "accommodate itself" to some extent though, we are in capitalism and we have to adapt to the conditions. there are countries, such as thailand, where CRITICISING the king can earn you a jail sentence, or worse. given this, i don't think it would be sensible to put on our leaflets, openly, that we want, for example, the overthrow of the monarchy, although anyone joining the group would discover quite quickly from the undertones of what was being said and connect the dots together .

im not saying israel is the same, but you have to remember that in the israeli population, for various historical and social reasons, there are often some extremely reactionary views, and the hope is that these people would learn through struggle, would learn by experience. if you straight away castigate them and attempt to make them feel guilty for something they've had no choice in, you are not going to win support. and we DO talk about the occupation despite the claims of sects that we don't.

even the sparts wouldn't openly put a call on their leaflets for the workers to, say, march into buckingham palace and kill the royal family and then take over, because they could be arrested for that, and even if they weren't, they'd probably be beaten up for it. you dont water stuff down, but you also have to be sensitive. anyone joining the cwi is not going to be some massive racist are they?

and i have read that statement, and in it, they even go on to admit that the cwi have challenged the occupation, and in fact been violently opposed for refusing to observe a minutes' silence for the victims of "palestinian militants". they are also unable to provide a single example of the cwi saying anything that anyone would consider "zionist", of support for the israeli government, support for the israeli government's state terrorism, or opposing palestinian rights in any way. for an organisation that is supposedly this evil and terrible, this shouldnt be a tricky feat should it?

as for all the stuff about how the cwi doesn't mention anything about the palestinians in its paper, not only does the statement contradict itself later on, but as far as i know papers don't have to mention everything. for example, the cwi doesn't always mention rupert murdoch in its papers, that doesn't mean that we suddenly support him just because we aren't talking about it.

we are not told anything about what the previous edition of the paper said, or what the one afterwards said, or the one after that, so we only have their word for it

And indeed guilt-tripping Israel workers for being Zionists is exactly what the LRP advocates, undercutting the force of the ISL criticism.

But Israel is a bourgeois democracy more or less, for Jews at any rate, so it should not be necessary to write material in the way the Bolsheviks did under the Tsar. I'm not saying that half the statement or more should be devoted to Palestinian oppression, presumably what the LRP would be happier with. But you seem to have damn near failure to mention that such creatures as Palestians even exist in the major statement produced at the height of the protests, the one most likely to be read by large numbers of people.

The ISL made a pretty damn good case for a blindspot as to the Palestinians in the whole orientation of the CWI group in the mass protests. I particularly thought their point that it is strange not even to mention the Palestinian "housing situation" in a housing protest in Israel was worth noting.

In general, in a situation like this what you don't say is just as important as what you do, sometimes more so.

As for the possibility of the CWI having taken a different tune beforehands or afterwards, that I think is for CWI supporters to demonstrate, not LRP supporters. If in fact (which I very much doubt) the LRP was dragging the statements they critique out of context, well, you guys should prove it.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

31st August 2011, 18:33

And warned no one but instead basically gloated about not being caught up in it. Charming.

Oh please. Any warnings from the Spartacists to absolutely any of the groups involved (with the possible exception of the IG, who needed no warnings, as IG leader Norden had been closely involved in the SL Ukrainian work himself, so really should have known better) would have been taken as vicious sectarian saboteurish assaults and, at best, ignored.

Now if anybody had thought to ask the Spartacists opinions of these people, on the other hand...

-M.H.-

Exactly.

You might want to learn to distort facts better when you accuse other organizations of lieing. You just said anyone involved in theft of money was booted. According to the CWI's own statement, Ilya Budraitskis took money, was not booted from the organization, and continued to work for it (link (http://www.bolshevik.org/ukrscandal/CWI%20IEC%20statement%20on%20Ilya%20Budraitskis%20 (Nov%202003).html)). He never returned any money.

RedTrackWorker

31st August 2011, 18:44

The CWI does not call fo an 'Israeli state' - the CWI campaigns for a socialist Israel working in a free and voluntary federation with a socialist Palestine as part of a wider socialist federation of the Middle East.

The establishment of a socialist Israel would require the fundemental destruction of Zionism.

A "socialist Israeli" is an "Israeli workers' state" no? So how do you not call for an Israeli state?

How does a socialist Israel represent the end of Zionism? Zionism is a colonial enterprise--the control of the land of another people. On what land would this socialist Israel exist? If you say it will be "democratically" determined by the Palestinians and Jews and the Palestinians would be the clear majority through the whole land, are you saying a minority would control the state power in certain areas or that the Palestinians would not have the right to return to certain parts of Israel? Or what?

This is nothing more than blatant right-wing nationalism - the Jewish people are in the minority - they can live their but the must toe the line to Palestinian rule.

Anyone who remotely would call themselves a socialist would be arguing that the basis of any demands must be made on behalf of working class people - Israeli and Palestinian - not a cross-class demand on behalf of Palestinian nationalism.

So the Trotsky quote on South Africa at the end of the statement is "blatant right wing nationalism"? If not, how is it different from what the ISL says about Palestine?

And JRG, don't forget: where's your "majority of the left" that rejects the claim against the CWI in the statement? Where's your proof that all those who took money were booted--even though the CWI itself said differently? You started off saying one false claim means the whole thing should be ignored--does that mean everyone here should ignore you if you can't pack these claims up?

but you said that all land that was seized was to be given back to the palestinians, and now you're saying that it's actually not important what happens to the land?

I did not say it's not important. I meant that it's not they key question that distinguishes our parties what happens to any particular *piece* of land. I mean, do you think that if a Palestinian family can show they were kicked out of a particular house in the Nakba that they should not get it back as a general rule? If that's the case, then that's a whole nother argument but as I replied to JRG above the issue is after the Palestinians return, they would be the clear majority from the river to the sea, unless you deny them the right to return to certain areas. So the debate between our organizations is not what happens to this or that house (unless you think the Palestinians have no right to land seized from their families) but what determines the nature of the rule over the whole land.

and are you saying that no israelis would be allowed to participate in its government - even if they were israeli workers who had no part of any of this?

Again, I did not say this, the ISL statement did not say this. I already re-quoted the section for you. It says those who participate in the revolution can be part of its ruling class. Are you for letting those that oppose the revolution or sit by neutrally to be part of the workers' state's government?

Crux

1st September 2011, 23:31

No CWIer has produced a quote from their comrades where they criticize the movement for not defending the Palestinians. None have even suggested that such a criticism exists.
Is of course patently false. I've quoted the necessary parts myself enough times and even the article itself contradicts it. But I have to wonder if this is a response to debate being held on revleft, which it seems to be, why make an "offical statement" of it? What at all makes this "official statement" worth responding to? If you have questions about Mavaak I can pass those questions along, but eh given that you do have members in israel why not ask mavaak directly? For who is this piece intended?

Nothing Human Is Alien

1st September 2011, 23:58

ofcourse in a one state of Palestine,it would be democratic.

What kind of "democracy" would that be? Bourgeois democracy? Even that is on the way out (in the parts of the world where it actually existed).

Take a look at the countries formed since 1960. Many flourishing bourgeois democracies? Why do you think that is?

Nothing Human Is Alien

2nd September 2011, 00:00

The CWI does not call fo an 'Israeli state' - the CWI campaigns for a socialist Israel working in a free and voluntary federation with a socialist Palestine as part of a wider socialist federation of the Middle East.

And those who want to see the formation of a real human community are for the abolition of all national frontiers.

black magick hustla

2nd September 2011, 00:53

And those who want to see the formation of a real human community are for the abolition of all national frontiers.

The funny thing is that the trotskyist more "realistic programs" as a form of weird minimum/transitional porgram are in reality much more utopian than the simple calls for the formation of a world human community. A socialist federation of a Palestinian and Israeli state lol give me a fucking break. Why not ask for my canadian province, Alberta, to become a socialist nation-state fueled by its excessive oil, its about as realistic as the artificial programs of some trotskyists.

Yehuda Stern

2nd September 2011, 08:49

The establishment of a socialist Israel would require the fundemental destruction of Zionism. Well, I don't think a socialist Israel can be established just as much as I don't believe there can really be socialist Zionists. But still, comrade, very good for calling for the destruction of Zionism - but as we in the ISL already showed, your comrades in Israel have refused to call for an end to Zionism, for the working class to break with it, for a struggle against, or anything of the sort. Explain that if you want anyone to believe that your comrades aren't pandering to chauvinism.

Crux

2nd September 2011, 10:53

Well, I don't think a socialist Israel can be established just as much as I don't believe there can really be socialist Zionists. But still, comrade, very good for calling for the destruction of Zionism - but as we in the ISL already showed, your comrades in Israel have refused to call for an end to Zionism, for the working class to break with it, for a struggle against, or anything of the sort. Explain that if you want anyone to believe that your comrades aren't pandering to chauvinism.
Only the ISL failed to do so. Do you wish to have an actual discussion, or just to throw around sectarian slander?

Yehuda Stern

2nd September 2011, 13:17

Crux

2nd September 2011, 21:05

We actually said in the text that we scanned Maavak's propaganda and failed to find any reference to anti-Zionism or to the need for Israeli workers to struggle against it. In response you and your comrades had to say - nothing. I'd hardly call that a failure to show anything: if we were lying or were just wrong, you'd be able to produce some evidence. And yes, we do want to have an actual discussion, but for that to be possible, both sides have to be able to be honest, and your side is a bit lacking in that field.
I have already quoted the relevant parts from the most recent article (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5218) from Mavaak on socialistworld.net several times. The ISL were, and remain, obviously wrong in their slander. RedTrackworker admitted asmuch, that indeed it boils down to a diffrence on the slogan of "Free Palestine from the River to the sea". If you would like to discuss that please do so, but do not expect me to take your charges against Mavaak seriously. If you wish to discuss with Mavaak you can easily do so other places than revleft. Here is the Hebrew version of the article. (http://maavak.org.il/maavak/?article=801)

And here is further refutation from a comrade in Mavaak:

what they are "quoting" is our 1st supplement that we produced when the movement burst

and even in that we had a very clear stand against the occupation inside the articles:

(http://www.facebook.com/shay.galy)

ust regarding our 8-page supplement:

The LSR arguers that it has no reference to the occupation and hardships of the Palestinians:

Just some quotes:

PAGE 1(front page):

"… the protests aloud only to a certain, but by the end of the day everything is under ban not only by threats to remove tents and suspend strikes but mainly demagogic security threat that is used by the ruling elite as their most effective sping card.

Nevertheless struggles do erupt: struggles for the right of housing, health, jobs and food, and in parallel struggles against anti democratic laws, against discrimination, oppression, racism and occupation…"

PAGE 2:

"The attempts to de-legimet the protest by nationalist intimidation only shows that opposition to the nationalist racist argumentativeness, including opposition to the occupation is vital to build wide movement for social change…"

PAGE 4: (recent slanders says that this particular article didn't speak about the occupation)

At the end of the opening paragraph: "… the revolutions [in the mid-east] gave serious back wind to the struggles and protests against the occupation"

END PAGE:

In the "what we stand for column"

- yes to welfare security and peace, real and eqal to both Israelis and Palestinians. Return the soldiers home and end the occupation. Yes to the establishment of socialist, eqal righted and independent Palestinian state on the side of socialist and democratic Israel

They do read Hebrew… and that's why they try to explain in the new article the words, racism, occupation etc didn't mean much etc…

And additional videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNXJb8X6xQU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTvk4U01cvQ&feature=player_embedded

This ought to at least put an end to that part of the debate.

RedTrackWorker

2nd September 2011, 22:07

Crux

2nd September 2011, 22:34

This is what I have quoted before:

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Significantly, a few Arab-Palestinian tents were set up in Israel, using the momentum to raise demands for decent housing and against the nationalist-racist discrimination which inflicts the worst housing problems upon the Palestinian and Arab population of Israel. This happens despite the fact that many of the Palestinian residents of Israel feel that it is not ‘their’ protest – partially a reflection of the strongly-supported idea of ‘unity between right and left’, which in reality on the ground means no mention of resistance to the occupation, and so the hidden yearning for peace is not surfacing at the moment alongside the shouts for "social justice". It stems on one hand from an understanding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has served the ruling class by weakening all previous social protests. However, an approach which ignores the national conflict is a dangerous trap, precisely because it plays into the hands of the Israeli ruling class, and works to isolate this upheaval on living conditions from all the rest of the struggles in the region, particularly the Palestinian struggle for rights and independence.

So far, no attempt by the ruling establishment to de-legitimize the movement itself has succeeded (one of the organizers in central Tel-Aviv was even accused by an anonymous far-right video of being a member of the Socialist Struggle Movement, which they falsely and absurdly claim to be controlled by a leftist Non-Governmental Organization fund). But as long as this movement and the ones that will definitely follow do not embrace a solidarity approach with the Palestinian masses and against the occupation and settlements, they will tend eventually to sharply spilt when facing escalation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians or Israel and the countries in the region. The deceptive security alerts by the Israeli ruling class to the Jewish population will serve to fracture the movement, and to use parts of it to oppress the Palestinian struggle, which is on the road of heroic escalation as well.

A warning sign has been given with the infiltration of far-right elements that disguise and leech upon the movement, whip up nationalism, promote the settlements enterprise, and viciously incite against Arab-Palestinians, African refugees and immigrant workers. A joint Jewish-Arab protest march by impoverished neighbourhoods from Southern Tel-Aviv, Jaffa and other locations was cancelled following threats by the far-right Kahanists. Joint Jewish-Arab tents in Tel-Aviv were subjected to physical attacks. These far-right elements are recognized as a danger by a minority of the most radical layers of the movement, who are looking for a way to kick them out. For example, some militants have burnt tents of the far-right. But effective cleansing of such elements could be successful only through the open adoption of the ideas of a united solidarity struggle between all the exploited and oppressed, Jews and Palestinians, and of opposition to racism and the occupation. For the meantime, the head of the Students Association has felt confident enough to warmly welcome the main Settlers’ organization for "joining the protest", even though it is another chief servant of reaction.

Yehuda Stern

3rd September 2011, 00:14

And this article, which was published weeks after the movement started, on your English language international website, shows what exactly? It actually just proves once more that what we said is true: that while Maavak raises all sorts of abstract anti-racist slogans - unity of Jews and Palestinians, struggle against the occupation, etc., which any left-Zionist group could raise (and usually does raise far more consistently than your comrades) - it refuses to raise any concrete demands.

Where do your comrades discuss the siege of Gaza? The Apartheid Wall? The struggle against ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarah and Jaffa, right next to the tent cities in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv? Where do they discuss the need for Israeli workers to break from and struggle against Zionism and for the rights of Palestinians, including the right of return? The answer, as one can infer from how you avoid these questions in such an obvious way - nowhere. The fact that you had to scramble to get quotes from the supplement from your comrade in Maavak, which we already addressed (and explained why it expressed a capitulation to chauvinism), really says quite a lot.

Sometimes group made mistakes. If your comrades were to come forward and say "look, you're right, we didn't raise those issues and we were clearly wrong not to do so", they could earn some credit - not only with us but with the rest of the left and many Palestinian activists. These little tricks you're trying to pull - misrepresenting our criticisms and quoting articles we already criticized (correctly) - shows that these capitulations to Zionism are a policy and not an isolated mistake. This is already much more grave than our original criticism, but it is the picture that is emerging from this debate.gl

Crux

3rd September 2011, 00:19

Yehuda Stern

3rd September 2011, 00:25

Ah, a perfect example - like I said, it doesn't address the siege, the wall, ethnic cleansing in either Sheikh Jarah or Jaffa, anti-Zionism or the right of return. Are you trying to prove us right? You're doing a fantastic job then.

I agree I can't criticize you as if you appeared yesterday, but then again, that just sounds like a meaningless sentence that is in no way relevant our discussion.

freepalestine

3rd September 2011, 12:33

I have already quoted the relevant parts from the most recent article (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5218) from Mavaak on socialistworld.net several times. The ISL were, and remain, obviously wrong in their slander. RedTrackworker admitted asmuch, that indeed it boils down to a diffrence on the slogan of "Free Palestine from the River to the sea". If you would like to discuss that please do so, but do not expect me to take your charges against Mavaak seriously. If you wish to discuss with Mavaak you can easily do so other places than revleft. Here is the Hebrew version of the article. (http://maavak.org.il/maavak/?article=801)

And here is further refutation from a comrade in Mavaak:

[LIST]
what they are "quoting" is our 1st supplement that we produced when the movement burst

and even in that we had a very clear stand against the occupation inside the articles:

(http://www.facebook.com/shay.galy)

ust regarding our 8-page supplement:

The LSR arguers that it has[/b] no reference to the occupation and hardships of the Palestinians:[/b]

Just some quotes:

PAGE 1(front page):

"… the protests aloud only to a certain, but by the end of the day everything is under ban not only by threats to remove tents and suspend strikes but mainly demagogic security threat that is used by the ruling elite as their most effective sping card.

Nevertheless struggles do erupt: struggles for the right of housing, health, jobs and food, and in parallel struggles against anti democratic laws, against discrimination, oppression, racism and occupation…"

PAGE 2:

"The attempts to de-legimet the protest by nationalist intimidation only shows that opposition to the nationalist racist argumentativeness, [b] including opposition to[b] the occupation is vital to build wide movement for social change…"

PAGE 4: (recent slanders says that this particular article didn't speak about the occupation)

At the end of the opening paragraph: "… the revolutions [in the mid-east] gave serious back wind to the struggles and protests against the occupation"

END PAGE:

In the "what we stand for column"

- yes to welfare security and peace, real and eqal to both Israelis and Palestinians. Return the soldiers home and end the occupation. Yes to the establishment of socialist, eqal righted and independent Palestinian state on the side of socialist and democratic Israel

They do read Hebrew… and that's why they try to explain in the new article the words, racism, occupation etc didn't mean much etc…

This ought to at least put an end to that part of the debate.
you are using that as evidence that the cwi's branch in isreal is not left zionist
the wording to those who know the situation in palestine is a sign of leftwing zionism.
the occupation..that means westbank/gaza... not river to sea..nothing on apartheid,boycott,ROR etc.surprisingly.

and if youre 'comrades' under the cwi name in isreal are not with the state....another example

"Return the soldiers home and end the occupation. "

"Yes to the establishment of socialist, eqal righted and independent Palestinian state on the side of socialist and democratic Israel"

left zionists

RedTrackWorker

19th September 2011, 20:35

FYI posted a thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/palestinian-authority-s-t161430/index.html) with the LRP-ISL statement on the Palestinian statehood UN bid.