“John Vorster Square ... four or five men and then hood and then electric shock, everything. I don’t know ... Angry Hood and torture, breasts, everything. Why? I don’t understand. Why torture? Anyway, it’s sad ... And then me angry so no talk. Why torture? So I don’t talk. So angry. Rape or what. I don’t care. I don’t talk.” 
These are the words of South African anti-apartheid activist Joyce Dipale about her detention, torture and rape at the hands of South Africa’s notorious Special Branch in 1976. The torture centre was named after Prime Minister John Vorster, who held office from 1966 to 1978. It was an appropriate name for a violent and blood-soaked building and reflected the political history of the person it was named after. 
Vorster not only oversaw more than a decade of apartheid, including the crushing of the Soweto uprising; he had also been a member of the fascist Afrikaner group Ossewabrandwag during World War Two. Vorster admired the supremacist politics of Hitler’s Germany and, when he became PM, sought to emulate elements of the Nazi program. 
A white supremacist who believed that blacks and whites could not live together, Vorster dressed up his racism as a kind of progressive generosity of spirit. He jokingly welcomed foreign dignitaries to “the happiest police state in the world” while overseeing the implementation of the Bantustan system of segregation, which attempted to quarantine South Africa’s black population into poor, desperate and underfunded zones of control. It was also under Vorster that the South African military participated in a bloody war against the newly decolonised Angola. 
In the year that Joyce Dipale was raped and tortured, Vorster was welcomed to Israel. His Nazi past and his crimes against the black and coloured population of South Africa were irrelevant to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The fascist Vorster was given a special tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, before being honoured at a state dinner. There, Rabin and other Israeli dignitaries toasted “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence”.
Today, amid Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians such history might not seem so surprising. But it is important to note that Israel has not suddenly changed as a result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s belligerence and political alliance with his country’s fascist forces. The country was part of a global archipelago of reaction well before the latest atrocities.
Indeed, despite its declared commitment to equality, Israel was a key backer of the apartheid regime in South Africa—and vice versa. Both countries shared a common predicament: they were minority colonial regimes that had achieved their rule through violence and bloodshed. In 1976, the South African government’s yearbook characterised the two countries as confronting a single problem: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples”.
In South Africa, these “dark peoples” vastly outnumbered the white Boer and British colonial populations; in Israel, the Zionist population ruled (and rules) over an ethno-supremacist Jewish state that expelled much of the Arab population at its founding. 
Atomic love
The year after Vorster’s Tel Aviv love-in, the UN voted for a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa, calling for an end to the sale and shipment of arms, ammunition and military vehicles to the country. Israel quietly defied this prohibition. From the mid-1970s, Tel Aviv helped, <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/12/israel-south-africa-apartheid-weapons">in the words of Alon Liel</a>, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, to create “the South African arms industry”:
“They [South Africa] assisted us [Israel] to develop all kinds of technology because they had a lot of money. When we were developing things together, we usually gave the know-how and they gave the money. After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies. We were involved in Angola [South Africa never recognized the country’s 1975 independence from Portugal] as consultants to the [South African] army. You had Israeli officers there cooperating with the army. The link was very intimate.”
The love affair became nuclear in the late 1970s. Both countries wanted to strengthen their military capacities and become the most significant powers in their own regions. Nuclear weapons were key. South Africa had the uranium, and Israel had the scientists. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that, during this period, Israel purchased 550 tons of uranium from South Africa for its nuclear plant in Dimona. 
In exchange, Israel supplied South Africa with weapons design information and materials to increase the power of nuclear warheads. Israeli arms dealer Ari Ben-Menashe maintained that South Africa helped Israel to test nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean in 1979. The Israeli government later denied this. 
Both countries also required a brutal military infrastructure to police their oppressed populations. By the mid- to late-1970s, a Palestinian resistance movement was gathering strength. Israeli officials travelled to South Africa to learn from the apartheid regime’s counterinsurgency techniques. A Kibbutz called <a href="https://www.972mag.com/the-kibbutz-that-sells-riot-control-weapons-to-war-criminals/">Beit Alfa sold anti-riot vehicles</a> to South Africa and other brutal governments. The vehicles were used against the anti-apartheid movement in the black townships. In 1999, <a href="https://www.icrc.orghttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/external/doc/en/assets/files/other/southafrica.pdf">a former South African soldier recounted</a>, for the International Committee of the Red Cross, the force used against the popular uprising against apartheid:
“I know for myself, each guy was carrying at least three hand grenades and 16 magazines, so you had more than enough firepower and then you’ll have two Caspers [armoured vehicles] rocking up with 500 Brownings on the top. So even if there were 10,000 coming at you, you had enough firepower and there was no way they were going to stampede you and they knew that as well.”
Some of the most notorious and violent figures of the Israeli state spent significant time in South Africa. Ariel Sharon, the defence minister in the 1980s, directed the massacres of Palestinian civilians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during the Lebanon war. For these and other crimes, he was known as the Butcher of Beirut. In 1981, Sharon secretly visited South Africa and spoke to troops along the border of Angola. Former Israeli Ambassador Avi Primor was part of the Israeli delegation and recalled how impressed Sharon was with the repressive apparatus of the apartheid regime and with the developing Bantustan program. Former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema told Haaretz
in 2003 that Sharon had expounded on the merits of the Bantustan model for Palestine. 
The Israeli state has perfected and developed many of the repressive and violent aspects of South African apartheid. The current genocide—the massacres, the starvation, the bombing—has brought levels of brutality that the monsters who ran South African apartheid could only dream of. Indeed, when South African Communist and anti-apartheid fighter Ronnie Kasrils visited Palestine in 2004, he said:
“This is much worse than apartheid. The Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armoured vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.”

Vashti Fox

When apartheids of the world united: South Africa and Israel’s secret embrace

Babies should be chubby. They should be content and well fed. They should be happy and protected. Gaza’s children are none of these things. They are thin, sometimes to the point of total emaciation. Their bones can be seen through their skin. They are often silent with haunted eyes. 
The UN’s child rights agency (UNICEF) recently reported that around 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition since the start of the year. Al Jazeera recently reported on a five-year-old boy who weighed only nine kilograms. This is the result of human decision-making. It is the conscious policy of the Israeli state, which has blocked all food, fuel and medicines from reaching Palestinians in Gaza since 2 March. 
Much has been made of Israel’s “advanced” and “precise” weapons. It is part of what has made it one of the most profitable weapons manufacturing countries in the world. These weapons have, since January, “precisely” targeted families sheltering in makeshift tents in “humanitarian zones”. 
They have also targeted bulldozers and other equipment intended to allow Gazans to rebuild their homes. It is precision barbarism. At least 2,300 Palestinians have been killed over the past six weeks alone—more than 50 people killed every day on average. More than 740 of the dead are children, according to the director of the Information Unit at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Zaher Al-Wahidi. 
At Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, Dr Ahmed Abu Nasir said the situation has become “worse than ever”. It is hard to imagine the situation in Gaza getting worse. Worse than whole neighbourhoods, whole cities flattened. Worse than tens of thousands of human bodies ripped apart by bombs, by bullets, by shrapnel. Worse than forced displacement over and over and over again. 
It’s hard to imagine, but true. Since the end of the ceasefire, the Israeli war machine has ramped up its genocidal efforts. Indeed, since 18 March, Israel has launched what can only be described as a scorched earth campaign. “The massacres do not stop. We are being slaughtered from vein to vein”, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif said in a social media post. 
Now Israel is calling up reservists and has indicated a further escalation with Operation Gideon’s Chariots. The Israeli security cabinet has approved a plan for “conquering” the Gaza Strip. On X, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video declaring that the “population will be moved, for its own protection”. 
Fascist Israeli politician Bezalel Smotrich has finally been let off the leash and is saying what other Israeli politicians have been thinking all along: “We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip. We will stop being afraid of the word ‘occupation’”. The last eighteen months have been leading to this point. The acting head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jonathan Whittall, said in a statement:
“Land is being annexed from the north, from the east, from the south of the strip as forces advance ... Gaza is being starved, it’s being bombed, it’s being strangled. This looks like the deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life.” 
For over a year, Israeli politicians and their supporters across the West have claimed that the Israeli decimation of Gaza has had something to do with “tackling terror” and “defending democracy”. Red Flag and activists in the Palestine solidarity movement have argued that Israel has had a very different agenda. 
We said that Israel would use the pretext of 7 October to murder, punish and humiliate Palestinians. We said that, if they could get away with it, the Israelis would try to conquer the Gaza strip. This has now come to pass. Even Netanyahu is saying the quiet part out loud. 
US President Trump will visit the Middle East over the next few weeks and will no doubt give his blessing to this explicit effort at 21st-century ethnic cleansing. At the same time, Israel is waging an increasingly violent war on Palestinians living in the West Bank. If it can achieve total victory in Gaza, it will no doubt turn its sights to the total defeat of the Palestinians. 
The Australian media have largely remained silent about these realities. Australia’s federal election campaign only further sidelined the issue of Palestine. 
Over the last eighteen months, the ALP has been steadfast in its determination to maintain political, economic and military ties with Israel, despite the depths of the barbarism we have all witnessed. Labor politicians have been deeply complicit in what is happening. Now that they have been re-elected with a majority, they will feel like they can ignore the genocide. We cannot let this happen.
In a campaign meeting recently in Perth, an activist with family in Gaza reported that, while generations of Palestinians have remained steadfast—have held out hope for their own liberation—they are increasingly exhausted. They feel abandoned by the world. 
It is our responsibility to call out what is happening. We need to maintain pressure on our own government and continue to show solidarity with a population suffering from the most extreme, conscious form of imperial barbarity in the 21st century.

The quiet part out loud: Israel announces Gaza takeover

The children of the stones 
have scattered our papers 
spilled ink on our clothes 
mocked the banality of old texts ... 
What matters about 
the children of the stones 
Is that they have brought us rain after centuries of thirst 
Brought us the sun after centuries of darkness, 
Brought us hope after centuries of defeat ... 
The most important 
thing about them is that they have rebelled 
against the authority of their fathers.
Nizar Qabbani—Syrian poet
The First Intifada was one of the deepest and longest-lasting rebellions of Palestinians against Israeli oppression in history. It was known as the “uprising of stones”. 
The emblematic figure of the Intifada was the youth, hurling rocks, head covered by a keffiyeh, standing defiant against Israeli tanks. This figure represented a break from the militarised forms of Palestinian resistance that had dominated in the late 1960s and early ’70s. The Intifada involved hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and even inside Israel, and represented a broad and deep radicalisation of the Palestinian population. It involved resistance, civil disobedience, strikes and protests. 
Stories from journalists at the time reveal the breadth of popular involvement. American Ramallah-based journalist Joe Stork described how a middle-aged working-class woman, after watching demonstrations on television for a month, eagerly joined a group of young boys building a roadblock. 
Another article described a toothless 100-year-old woman admitted to a Gaza hospital after having her hand broken by Israeli soldiers. As she entered the ward, she sat up on the bed and gave a speech of defiance to the applause of other victims in surrounding beds.
Over the course of the six years, there were times when the Intifada managed to achieve something like dual power. Palestinian popular committees took over significant elements of civil society and social infrastructure. This was all in response to increased Israeli control and brutalisation of Palestinians in the preceding decades.
After Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank following the 1967 war, the intensification of military rule became unbearable. These conditions provoked extreme resentment amongst the Palestinians, and, throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, there was an increase in organisation. Students played a leading role, with universities starting community programs and organising protests. Strikes began to occur with greater frequency as all Palestinian factions turned toward organising workers. 
The immediate event that sparked the Intifada occurred in Gaza on 9 December 1987. An Israeli army tank drove into a line of cars of Arab workers who had just passed one of the military checkpoints at the northern entrance to the Gaza Strip. Four were crushed to death and seven were seriously injured. The crime was witnessed by hundreds of labourers returning from jobs in Israel. 
Three of the dead men were from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp. Their funerals turned into a huge demonstration of 10,000 camp residents. From this moment onwards, the residents of the camp referred to it as the “camp of the revolution”. 
The killings sparked waves of similar actions across the refugee camps, home to the poorest and most oppressed Palestinians. One young resident in Gaza said: “We were waiting to do such an uprising. Everyone here has a demonstration inside their heart”. 
The insurgence of the early demonstrations provoked a violent reaction from the Israeli military. Hundreds of young people were arbitrarily arrested. The military picked them up and imprisoned them. Eventually, the Israelis converted an army camp on the edge of Gaza city into a new place to hold young men. Palestinians dubbed it “Ansar II” after the notorious POW camp Israel set up in southern Lebanon. Ansar II became infamous for its sadistic treatment of Palestinians, which included clubbing prisoners while they were shackled to the ground. 
Curfews were introduced; telephone lines, water and electricity were cut. Administrative detention was introduced, and activists were deported. 
By 1988, Israel was sending 10,000 troops every day into the West Bank and Gaza, using more soldiers than in their conquest in 1967. By the end of 1988, more than 30,000 Palestinians had been detained and hundreds killed.
This initial phase of the uprising was primarily a war of the camps versus the army, but by mid-January 1988, the villages also became centres of resistance. Women and the young were at the centre of the rebellion. There were stories about boys, so young that they had to stand on their tiptoes to look through car windows, staffing the Palestinian checkpoints established by the uprising. Women routinely attacked Israeli patrols with pots and pans to release detained youths. Outside one Ramallah prison in late 1988, three women claimed an arrested youth, explaining: “They are all our sons”. This phrase became a refrain throughout the whole of the Intifada. Women even talked about protecting their “sons” as their profession. 
All this resistance would have been significant enough, but the rebellion deepened and expanded in a variety of ways. Tax strikes were organised and Israeli goods boycotted.
Importantly, workers began to mobilise. Over the decades, the numbers of Palestinian workers working low-wage jobs in the West Bank and as day labourers inside Israel had increased. Wage workers became a larger part of the Palestinian population overall, and unions grew. One union official estimated in 1985 that, out of 150,000 workers in the West Bank, around 30,000 were members of a union. 
Strikes became a regular feature of the Intifada. In late December 1987, a general strike of Palestinian workers occurred across all the Occupied Territories. Israeli profits collapsed in a variety of sectors, including hospitality, construction and fruit farming. 
The organisation of workers was not, however, unified. There were several union federations and blocs organised along political lines—many of whom were competing for members. 
Other committees were also established: youth committees, medical committees, popular and neighbourhood committees, and local defence committees.
The neighbourhood and popular committees became responsible for the running of basic infrastructure, including health, education and rubbish collection. When schools were shut down by military order, the committees established alternative schools with a whole new curriculum. 
These committees did more than help organise different elements of society. They started to give political and social confidence in new ways. Many of the generational and class relations were shifting. The class forces that had dominated society, like intellectuals and professionals, began to seem marginal. There were open challenges to old leaders and old hierarchies. 
The idea behind many of these committees was to disengage from existing Israeli structures and lay the basis for Palestinian statehood. Or, according to Salim Tamari, “To prepare the Occupied Territories to receive the national authority.” 
While the early months of the Intifada were led by a combination of local spontaneous action and pre-existing formations, a more formal political leadership coalesced in early 1988. This was called the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU). Outside of the UNLU, and with growing influence, were the Islamist factions: Islamic Jihad and Hamas. 
The UNLU directed the course of the uprising through a series of communiqués. These communiqués, particularly in the early years of the uprising, would give each day of the week ahead a particular focus. They were distributed at night, on the ground or tucked under car windshields or doors. The directives were assiduously followed. 
The UNLU comprised both a political leadership on the ground in the Occupied Territories and also the leadership amongst the diaspora. The diasporic leadership developed a broader strategic orientation. The early articulated goals of the movement were to hold an international peace conference that could push for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The UNLU was mainly run by the organisations affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). This included the increasingly dominant Fateh, led by Yasser Arafat. Fateh was a compromised and conservative nationalist organisation. Its horizons were shaped simultaneously by its cosy relationships with despotic regional powers and a desire for a Palestinian mini-state. The other main factions were the Maoist-influenced leftist organisations of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Later, the Communist Party joined. 
All these factions organised their own committees and trade unions. While there were often sharp disagreements between the factions on a range of questions, all held to a generally nationalist framework. In the unions, this meant that the class struggle should be frozen in the interests of a “nationalist alliance” between workers and bosses in the Occupied Territories. An independent Palestinian state needed to be established before the class struggle could begin. Such a political approach meant that, although the unions were a vital element of the Intifada, the workers movement did not fundamentally shape the political contours of the popular committees. This was a missed opportunity. By the end of the first year of the Intifada, there was such a consensus that the popular committees were the basis for a Palestinian state that there may well have been room to argue that an expanded and deepened version of popular power, workers power, was necessary. 
But even if such a view was in a minority, it was the right argument to make. National independence, while important, does not bring genuine liberation for the nationally oppressed working class. Indeed, twentieth century postcolonial states have often become hell-scapes for workers. Workers needed to fight for the struggle for national independence to become a struggle for socialism.
The Intifada inspired other regional uprisings in Algeria, Jordan and the Gulf States. These rebellions weren’t just in solidarity with Palestine: they challenged the regional order. This was something that the Fateh leadership could not countenance. So much of their existence and power was dependent on funding and support from these regimes. They began to codify a policy of “non-interference” in the affairs of the Arab regimes.
The resilience of the popular movement was also considered potentially problematic by the Fateh leadership. While Fateh understood the popular committees as providing the infrastructure for a future Palestinian state, they did not approve of their radicalising dynamic. Fateh saw the mass movement only as a lever for its own power plays. 
In the wake of the Intifada, the Israeli and US ruling classes felt that they were unable to continue ruling in the old way. Much better to find a collaborationist Palestinian leadership. Fateh happily obliged, thus beginning the disastrous Oslo Accords that ended in the establishment of the traitorous Palestinian Authority. 
Both the DFLP and the PFLP, in differing ways and at different paces, challenged elements of this trajectory, while nevertheless maintaining their fundamental commitment to the PLO and its institutions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, maintained a strident objection to the notion of a Palestinian mini-state, and this objection stood them in good stead for the later betrayals. 
At the same time, between 1991 and 1993, the Israeli arrest and killing campaigns eliminated many leading activists. This repression occurred while Fateh was deliberately fragmenting the movement. Arafat allocated PLO funds to institutions and personnel according to political loyalty, much to the detriment of genuine resistance activities. These two factors ultimately contributed to the decline of the mass character of the Intifada.
Tragically, the promise of the Intifada was lost. It was crushed by an Israeli state that was determined to continue its rule over the Palestinians in whatever way it could, by violence and
negotiation. 
The Intifada was also betrayed by a Palestinian leadership that preferred to chase the dream of a Palestinian capitalist state in which its own power and prestige would be safeguarded. Finally, all that brilliant defiant energy was squandered by a left that refused to try to carve out a different, more radical path: a path that was certainly more difficult, but that centred working-class resistance in the Occupied Territories, that argued for regional revolution and looked to the power of the masses rather than the power of states.

Sun after darkness: The First Intifada

Prominent Democrat and the most senior Jewish figure in American politics, Chuck Schumer, gave a controversial speech to Congress in March. In it he called for fresh elections in Israel and criticised current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel”. “Israel”, he continued, “cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world”. Later, Schumer maintained that these comments were motivated by a desire to “save Israel”. 
Schumer is not alone in this desire. Liberal opinion across the Western world, as well as inside Israel, agrees. The editorial team of Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2024-06-12/ty-article-opinion/final-call-to-gantz-and-eisenkot-join-israels-people-and-protest-against-the-government/00000190-0e0c-db28-a995-4f9d0b840000">argued</a> that Netanyahu must go “[f]or the sake of the country’s existence, status, security, economy, nature and essence, for the sake of the country’s future”. Accordingly, the problem with Netanyahu’s genocidal war against the Palestinians is that it imperils Israel’s legitimacy. Israel has been hijacked; it is becoming a rogue state and needs rescuing from itself. 
An important element of this argument hinges on the nature of the Netanyahu coalition. In 2022, to ensure his own political survival, Netanyahu entered government with two prominent fascist parties: the Religious Zionism Party and Jewish Power. The leaders of these parties, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, are now the finance minister and national security minister respectively. 
The project of these Israeli fascists is unabashed genocide, not just in Gaza but in the West Bank too. The Netanyahu government is broadly committed to this goal. For instance, in December 2022, a day before the new government was sworn in, Netanyahu issued a list of goals and priorities for his new cabinet. “The Jewish people”, it read, “have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the land of Israel”. The project of reconquering the West Bank has accelerated since 7 October. A New York Times investigation revealed that, while much of the world is focused on Gaza, Israeli settlers in concert with the Israeli military are terrorising Palestinians into leaving their homes. Building has commenced in numerous settler outposts defended by militias armed by Ben-Gvir. 
The Times investigation exposes decades of military cover and legal impunity given to settlers stealing Palestinian land. Such investigations reveal something profound. The fascists, far from being an anomaly in Israeli political life, have been created by the Israeli body politic itself. They have taken the general climate of Jewish supremacy to its logical conclusion. The New York Times, however—rather than conclude the obvious, that there is a fundamentally racist, genocidal dynamic at the heart of Zionism—argues that Israel has been “hijacked”. Israel has in fact not been “hijacked” by these forces; it depends on them. 
What’s more, focusing solely on the fascists or the settlers is a distraction. Last December, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced limited visa bans on Israeli settlers responsible for violence in the West Bank. This month, Australia followed suit and banned extremist settlers from gaining entry visas. In neither case were these moves accompanied by a ban on sending weapons to Israel or the breaking of any diplomatic or military ties. The visa bans, as with the emphasis on the settlers and the fascists, serve as cover for the genocidal intent of the Israeli state. 
The individuals and parties put forward as alternatives to the fascists, the settler parties and Netanyahu are no alternative. Take Benny Gantz, who, since his resignation from Netanyahu’s war cabinet, is being touted by the international media as a brave and principled Israeli statesman. In fact, Gantz has long been a war criminal. He was the army’s chief of staff in 2014 when he directed the murderous 50-day assault on Gaza known as “Operation Protective Edge”, which killed more than 2,000 Palestinians. In 2019, he boasted about “sending Gaza back to the Stone Age”. Although many Western leaders have celebrated Gantz as a potential fighter for democratic rights inside Israel, when he was in government, he banned Palestinian NGOs by declaring them terrorist organisations. In 2022, he ordered Israeli troops to raid their premises and weld their doors shut before arresting many prominent Palestinian activists. 
The other “alternatives”, from Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid Party to Yair Golan, the chairperson of the Labor Party, are similarly implicated in the Israeli war machine. As Israeli oppositional journalist Gideon Levy put it in a Haaretz
article in February: 
“Parts of those not on the right support the war from within the government, and another part supports it from the outside, and everyone in the choir sings the same song, conducted by the right. The whole world is calling for an end to the war, and in the Knesset [Israeli parliament] there is not a single Zionist who will do so. Democracy? Opposition? Alternative? Not here, not now.”
Zionism has always been this way. Historically, there have been different strategies for pursuing the colonisation of Palestinian land. They have all—from the early Labor Zionists to the current fascists—sought a Jewish supremacist state established in all of historic Palestine. 
There is nothing to be “rescued” in the Israeli state. The attempts to do so by Western politicians stem from a desire for a postwar scenario in which they can maintain relations with Israel, albeit an Israel with a shiny new government unstained by the atrocities in Gaza. By contrast, the left should fight for the fall of the Israeli state and the establishment of a Palestine free from war, oppression, religious division and exploitation.

There is no saving Israel

Operation Cast Lead was a massacre. Launched against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in late December 2008, the Israeli military bombed apartment blocks, mosques, markets, schools, universities and UN compounds. It used white phosphorous, a chemical weapon that melts flesh. 
More than 1,500 were killed over the course of three weeks. 
Like today, the scenes of horror enraged millions and prompted demonstrations across the world. In Australia, thousands took to the streets in Melbourne, Sydney and other capital cities. Unlike today, however, the demonstrations were dominated by Australia’s Arab and Muslim populations. 
The official parties of Australian capitalism, even the Greens, refused to speak at the initial mobilisations. The ALP, in government at the time, was mealy-mouthed in its response while maintaining trade, diplomatic and military ties with Israel. 
Undeterred by the lack of official support, several Palestinian and socialist students in Victoria decided that we should establish the campuses as sites of Palestine solidarity activism. 
I was a Melbourne University student and had been the education officer in the student union in 2006 when Israel launched its bloody war on Lebanon. At that time, I helped found a group called Students Against War. We had worked with Lebanese and Palestinian students and built relationships with some non-student organisations who supported our activism. 
Those existing relationships meant that even after a ceasefire was declared in Gaza in 2009, we had some basis to push for action when students returned after the summer break. 
At the start of the campus year, Students for Palestine chapters were established at Melbourne, La Trobe and Monash universities. Individuals from Swinburne, RMIT and the Australian Catholic University attended our cross-campus meetings. 
The argument we put to the broader student population was: The immediate intensity of the Israeli offensive might have ended, but justice for the Palestinians is still a long way off. We need to join and build the global solidarity campaign, like the campaign against apartheid in South Africa. 
We also maintained that lobbying politicians was inadequate and that educating and activating young people in the cause was key. 
Students for Palestine groups were established across the country. We worked with many Islamic students’ societies as well as several Malaysian and Arabic student clubs. In Melbourne, we called Palestine Solidarity Weeks, raised the Palestinian flag, toured speakers such as Palestinian leader Haneen Zouabi and held feasts with support from the broader community.
Raising consciousness about Palestine was key to Students for Palestine’s activities. But we also wanted to challenge our own government’s complicity in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. We organised many protests off campus, and participated in many of the early Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions actions in several states. 
We picketed Israeli politicians and military officers when they came to town. Key figures who today carry out the genocide in Gaza visited Melbourne and were picketed by Students for Palestine activists. Their events were invariably hosted in fancy hotels by both Labor and Liberal politicians. They were protected by Victoria’s police, who, at a student-led picket against the then Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, pepper sprayed students. 
Socialist Alternative was central to Students for Palestine’s day-to-day work and helped shape the politics of the group. We were determined to try and push the campaign for Palestine in a more activist and radical direction. While many other Palestine groups were still formally committed to the two-state “solution” (a formulation for the struggle developed by the co-opted Palestinian leadership, and which has provided cover for Israeli land theft), Students for Palestine’s founding aims pushed to the left. 
We declared that we were for the right of return and the dismantling of all settlements, and we called for a solution in which all people of the region could live side by side with no special privileges for one group over another. This opened a more radical space for students to step into. Over time, the position has become more accepted in Palestinian activist circles. But at the time it was an outlier. This was an important political stand to take. 
Campaigning for Palestine was not easy. We were a minority and up against a vigorous and aggressive Zionist movement. I remember one moment very clearly. Australians for Palestine hosted the performance of a play called “Seven Jewish Children”, which was written by British playwright Caryl Churchill. 
Zionist organisations were outraged because the play was critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. They picketed the event and claimed that prominent Jewish actress Miriam Margolyes was anti-Semitic because she agreed to perform in the play. Students for Palestine mobilised to defend the performance, arguing that being critical of the Israeli state was not anti-Semitic. Our activists were vilified in the press, our clubs had their registrations threatened on various campuses and some of us were physically threatened. 
Today, a new generation of students across the world is standing unequivocally for Palestine. They are operating as a moral compass for us all. In Australia, Arabs and Muslims have been joined at the rallies not only by socialists, but by the broader left forces that for so long were absent. The establishment of Students for Palestine helped lay the groundwork for this.

Why we started Students for Palestine 15 years ago, and what we achieved

Moshe Machover is the only surviving founding member of the revolutionary anti-Zionist organisation Matzpen. Matzpen influenced a generation of both Israeli and Palestinian opponents of Israel, and leaves an important theoretical legacy for socialists today. Vashti Fox interviewed Machover about his life, the history of Matzpen and its theoretical insights regarding Zionism and colonisation. 
VF: You were born in Israel in 1936. Could you describe how you got involved in political activism?
MM: At the age of 12 I got involved in the socialist Zionist youth movement called Hashomer Hatzair. It tried to combine Zionism with Marxism in a somewhat Stalinist way. The two components did not fit well together. Interestingly, for some people it functioned as a conveyor belt from Zionism to Marxism. Some very well-known Trotskyists went through this process: Abraham Leon and Ernest Mandel for instance. 
This was a different time of course. By the time I was about 15 or 16, together with a couple of friends of mine, we became disenchanted with the amalgam of Marxism and Zionism. We were impressed with the Marxism we were taught and didn’t see how this fitted with Zionism. We tried to blend the two but couldn’t see our way to a satisfactory solution and we ended up in the Communist Party. 
I wouldn’t regard the position of the Communist Party at that time as properly anti-Zionist. This was the high point of Stalinism. The Israeli Communist Party and the official Communist movement worldwide were not Zionist, but their critique of Zionism was not very deep. Their argument was that Zionism was a tool of imperialism, but that the nature of the Zionist project was not itself a colonial one. 
I want to point that out because there’s a general issue involved here. The Zionist colonisation project is unique in some respects. Unlike most other colonial projects, it didn’t have its own metropole. You see, Australia had a metropole: Britain. Britain sent its own citizens to Australia to colonise the land. It defended them and acted to advance their position with regard to the indigenous people. 
The Zionist project didn’t have its own metropole—it didn’t have the mother country. It needed a surrogate mother, an imperialist power to help it get established and survive. So, it went to whichever imperialist power was dominant at that time. It proposed a deal: you become our surrogate mother in exchange for services rendered. 
The early Zionist movement attempted to make a deal with German imperialism very early on in the nineteenth century. It didn’t work out. Then the Zionist movement made a deal with Britain. The document that sealed this deal was the Balfour Declaration [of 1917]. 
So, to return to the Israeli Communist Party: when we joined, it was critical of Zionism to the extent that it was seen as doing the bidding of the imperialists. It did not understand Zionism as having a colonising project of its own. Of course, what it understood to be the imperialists were its own imperial enemies. The only imperialist countries were the anti-Soviet ones. 
So, you joined the Communist Party when you were 15 or 16. What year was that and what kind of activities were you involved in as a party member? 
It was 1952. It was a united party at that time, with both Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jewish members. Once I had graduated from secondary school and became a university student, I moved to Jerusalem and enrolled in the University of Jerusalem. We did all the usual things—selling the newspaper and having public discussions. 
The year 1956 had a very important influence on the evolution of those of us who would eventually split from the Communist Party and form Matzpen. 
Because of the war over the Suez Canal or because of the Soviet Union crushing the workers’ revolution in Hungary?
Ah, there you have it. You see, the two things had a contradictory effect. Hungary led us to start thinking more critically about the various positions of the Israeli Communist Party and official world Communism. But the Suez war delayed our defection. 
While Hungary exposed the regressive role of Communism, the position of the party on Suez was decent. They opposed the war. In fact, they distinguished themselves as the only party that immediately came out against the war. The Soviet Union helped put an end to the Israeli occupation of Egyptian territory, including the Gaza Strip. These positions delayed our disaffection with the party, but eventually our frustrations grew. They kept growing until 1962, when Matzpen was born. 
Were there other events or political currents that were influencing you during this period? 
The general atmosphere fed into our disaffection. We were aware, not in a very systematic way, but we were still aware that the Communist movement worldwide was in crisis. We came across several New Left publications. 
Other events also influenced us in a critical direction. The events in Iraq, for example. The Communist Party of Iraq had been an enormous force that had preserved itself under conditions of illegality and had a big following in the Iraqi working class. They were in a position to aim for power, but under the obvious instructions of the Soviet Union they were told to not rock the boat. The USSR was more concerned with maintaining their alliances across the region than in supporting an “adventure” of the working classes trying to take power. This was an obvious failure that signified to us that the Communist movement was no longer a revolutionary movement in any sense. It started to indicate that the Israeli Communist Party was not a revolutionary party. It was, as we saw it, a party whose sole role was to do good PR for the Soviet Union. But they didn’t want to aim, in any way, for revolution in Israel, or anywhere. 
The Cuban Revolution also influenced us. We saw that initially the Cuban Revolution had broken out independently of the Cuban Communist Party and the Soviet Union. It seemed to signal something new. These were just a few of the reasons why we started to discuss forming a new organisation outside the Communist Party. 
Of course we had to hold any discussions in secret. It was difficult because the various branches of the party were forbidden to talk to each other. Several of us were in Jerusalem but others were in Tel Aviv. We obviously couldn’t receive permission from the party bureaucrats to have the discussions, so we had to be discreet. Nevertheless, a journalist got wind of our meetings and published an article describing our discussions, and we were summarily expelled. So we were forced out before we were actually ready to form a new organisation. We were presented with a situation where we simply had to start something new. 
So, in 1962 you were expelled from the Communist Party and formed Matzpen. Am I right in thinking it was initially on a fairly loose ideological basis?
Well, we all shared our analysis of Communism. We understood that the Communist movement was not revolutionary: it did not aim for working class power; it was there to defend the interests of the Soviet Union, 
I had spent two years in Poland doing work for my PhD. There, I observed the so-called socialist countries from close quarters and I rapidly came to the conclusion that this was not my idea of socialism. 
Were you reading other anti-Stalinist critiques? 
Yes, some of us were reading Trotsky. His autobiography and his History of the Russian Revolution. We were gradually developing our ideas. 
You see, this period where Matzpen was developing its ideas was after the Suez war and before the war of 1967 [during which Israel fought a coalition of Arab states over six days in June and won, resulting in the seizure of territory in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon and the mass displacement of civilians]. Between these two events was a period when the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians was most quiescent, on the surface at least. It was more in the background. This gave us enough time to organise ourselves and develop our ideas. 
Unfortunately, the core of those of us who formed Matzpen were all Jewish but we wanted to reach out to Palestinian and Arab members of the Communist Party. Even before we left the party, we were looking for contacts in other branches. We were always trying. There was a yearly festival of all members and supporters of the Communist Party on the day of the Soviet victory in WW2. During this festival we tried to form contacts. But we failed. 
When we were expelled, we started publishing a paper, by the name of Matzpen. Once the paper started being published it began to be seen by others. Notably, by a number of Palestinian Arabs in Haifa. 
So, in early 1963, we were joined by a group of people from both national backgrounds. One of these was Jabra Nicola. He was the person who probably had the most significant influence on the development of the ideas of Matzpen. He was probably the most important Palestinian Marxist in the twentieth century. He was very original. Although he was a member of the Fourth International [an international grouping of revolutionaries founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938], he didn’t insist, and in fact didn’t succeed, in making us join the Fourth International. But he influenced our ideas about Zionism and about nationalism in the negative sense, because he was a firm internationalist. But he also educated us in the true nature of the Zionist project. We were very receptive and so we were won over. Particularly to one important insight. That is, that Zionism is a colonial project. Today, you can hear this on every street and in almost every speech. It isn’t always used in the right Marxist sense, but nevertheless. 
So what was your concept of Zionism and colonialism? How did it evolve?
Well just after the Suez War, Akiva Orr and I wrote a book criticising the position of the Communist Party. To some extent it was a halfway house between the position of the CP and the one we eventually came to. But when we were told about Nicola’s position, in reasonable Marxist terms, we agreed. We understood that Zionism was not just an ideology about how deal with the so-called Jewish problem, it was not just a movement, but a project. 
From a Marxist point of view, there are different types of colonisation. For instance, if you compare Australia with South Africa, you can see the differences. Both were cases of colonisation by a European power but they differ in one fundamental respect. Australian colonisation did not require the labour power of the indigenous people. Production was based on the settlers. In South Africa, African labour was vital to the colonising project. 
Our position was that Israel was more like Australia. It did not require the labour power of the indigenous population of the land; the Arabs and Palestinians. More than this. You can see the whole evolution of Zionist colonisation. It has its own inherent logic which is to get rid of the dangerous people, the indigenous population. They are surplus to requirements. This happened in Australia and in North America, except in the slave states where the political economy was based not on the settlers but on the labour power of the slave population. This was also the case in Brazil. 
In all the cases of the Australian and Israel type colonisation, the issue has been settled in favour of the settlers. This gives us not a very optimistic view of what is likely in Israel. There is no precedent in which the indigenous peoples were able to decolonise. Nothing is predetermined by any means, but it is not going to be an easy task. 
There are of course other differences between Zionist colonisation and Australian or North American colonisation. As I said before, the unique characteristic of Zionism is that it required a foster mother. 
Zionist colonisation also came late to the scene. By the time Zionist colonisation started, all other similar models of colonisation had been settled in favour of the settlers. 
There is also the fact that in Palestine, the Zionists were confronted with a single indigenous national group—a single national group which was not organised in an ancient mode of production, but was itself in the process of urbanisation. It was a national group that was also crystallised in response to colonisation. Compare that to the situation in Australia, where the Indigenous people had hundreds of languages. They did not form a single nation, and their mode of production was antique. They were not on the verge of modernisation. 
Other colonies, like Australia, also allowed the immigration of anyone who was considered to be white. So it was able to overwhelm the Indigenous people by this flood of immigration. The Zionists insisted on Jewish-only colonisation. This limited them. So, we are faced with the situation where Zionism’s colonial project is still a work in progress.
And you see how it is progressing if you look at Gaza.
Can you say something about Gaza today? 
The Israeli state is always looking for opportunities to go on the offensive. 7 October, as terrible as the events were, was an opportunity. I predicted that the next wave of ethnic cleansing would happen in the West Bank. But the moment Israel was attacked by its oppressed subjects in this way—which wasn’t very nice, to say the least—it became an opportunity to do not only big style revenge but also to start another wave of ethnic cleansing. What is happening in Gaza if not that? It’s clear that this is what Israel is aiming for. They want to get rid of the Palestinian population, or a major part of it, by land or by sea, boats going to the Mediterranean. There are indicators pointing in this direction. This isn’t an accident. It is the logical outcome of the nature of the colonising project. 
All we can do is be active to try to prevent this project’s success. 
The interview has been edited for length.

Revolutionary anti-Zionism: a discussion with Moshe Machover

The ex-archbishop of Cape Town and prominent leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Desmond Tutu, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/29/comment">wrote</a> in 2002: “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about”.
It has been commonplace for decades in Palestine activist circles to point out the similarities between South African apartheid and Israel. In recent years, several prominent human rights and legal organisations have also declared Israel an apartheid state. 
For example, B’Tselem, the Israeli Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, <a href="https://www.btselem.org/apartheid">concluded in 2021</a>, “The bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians”.
The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association released a <a href="https://hrp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/IHRC-Addameer-Submission-to-HRC-COI-Apartheid-in-WB.pdf">joint statement</a> last year, which argued: “Israel’s deliberate, institutionalized, and explicitly legal subjugation of Palestinians leads to the conclusion that Israel is in breach of the prohibition of apartheid under international law”.
Also last year, Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/">released a 280 page document</a> arguing that Israeli practices of domination and control over Palestinians fall under the international legal definition of apartheid. Amnesty established the following key components of Israeli apartheid:
“[T]erritorial fragmentation; segregation and control through the denial of equal nationality and status, restrictions on movement, discriminatory family reunification laws, the use of military rule and restrictions on the right to political participation and popular resistance; dispossession of land and property; and the suppression of Palestinians’ human development and denial of their economic and social rights.”
The Amnesty document is thorough and unflinching in its description of the many mechanisms of oppression and control that Israel enacts over the Palestinians. To have such injustice so carefully documented is welcome. 
For the Palestinian movement, the use of the word apartheid is also understandable. The global movement against apartheid was powerful and left a legacy. To argue that Israel is an apartheid state helps popularise hostility to it, mobilise support for Palestinians and cut through Israeli propaganda. Nevertheless, the description of Israel as a state whose “discriminatory laws, policies and practices” amount to apartheid doesn’t entirely capture the situation, which is in fact worse. 
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s precise endgame in Gaza isn’t clear, there are members of the Israeli parliament, particularly those from the far right, who are explicit in their goal: to ethnically cleanse both Gaza and the West Bank of all Palestinians. Indeed, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says that ethnic cleansing of Gaza is the “right solution”. While figures like Smotrich are on the extreme edge of the Israeli political scene, there is ample evidence that he is merely putting words to the reality of Israeli practices since 1948, which have been about not simply “discrimination”, but genocide. 
Other articles in Red Flag have argued that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians can be categorised as genocide, according to the criteria outlined in the UN genocide convention. The question is why genocide, rather than apartheid, is the ultimate goal of the Israeli state. 
One answer has been provided by Israeli socialist Moshe Machover, who <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/machover/2004/11/apartheid.html">argued in a 2004 article</a> that Israel is an ethnically exclusivist colonial settler state whose project of colonisation has not been concluded. “The first exceptional feature of Zionist colonization is that it was historically the last colonization project to get off the ground”, he wrote. “And it is the last and currently the only one to remain active—active as in ‘active volcano’, as opposed to an extinct one.”
Machover maintains that there are crucial differences between the South African and Israeli colonial settler projects—differences that have profound implications for understanding the manner in which Israel operates. In particular there are “two distinct species of the (colonial settler) genus”. Both are related to the capitalist dynamics of the countries. 
South African apartheid represented a strengthening and intensifying of many of the most discriminatory features of the pre-existing South African economic, social and political system. The central purpose of apartheid was to control the emerging black working class so as to allow the development of a super-profitable South African capitalism. Racial oppression was tied into the development of the profit system: South African capitalism was based on the super-exploitation of the black workforce; minority white profits rested on the labour of the black majority. 
“Capitalist production in South Africa owes its success to the availability of a regimented cheap labour force”, South African historian Baruch Hirson wrote in his seminal work Year of Fire, Year of Ash: The Soweto Revolt. “In the vast rural slums, known as Reserves, the women and children, the aged, the sick and the disabled eke out a bare existence. All rely on the remittances of their menfolk in the towns. The accommodation in townships, in hostels, or in compounds (barracks) is likewise organized in order to depress African wage levels. At the same time, the vast urban slums ... were planned in order to ensure complete police and military control, were the administrative system ever to be challenged.” 
Israel was also founded as a colonial settler state in one of the most important strategic and economic regions in the world. The most significant difference, however, between South Africa and Israel was that Israel was built to be an ethnically exclusivist state. This resulted in the building of an economy that attempted to be entirely Jewish: Jewish bosses and Jewish workers. In 1982, Jewish Palestinian Marxist Tony Cliff remembered his youthful years in Palestine. He describes the process of the establishment of Zionist separateness:
“The Zionists organised their own trade union, the Histadrut, which raised two political funds. One was called ‘the defence of Hebrew Labour’, the other ‘the defence of Hebrew products’. These funds were used to organise pickets to prevent Arabs working in Jewish enterprises and to stop Arab produce coming into Jewish markets. They did nothing to damage Zionist businesses.
“In 1944 we lived near Tel Aviv market. One morning my wife saw a young man go around talking to all the women selling produce. Some he left alone, but others had paraffin poured on the vegetables and their eggs smashed. My wife, who had just come from South Africa, couldn’t believe it. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. It was simple. The man checked if the produce was Hebrew or Arab, and destroyed Arab produce.”
The desire to establish an ethnically exclusivist state required a monopoly over the land. But whose land? Despite the Zionist mythology that Palestine was a “land without a people” there were in fact millions of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Arabs already living there. The establishment of Israel as exclusivist state therefore required the expulsion of the non-Jewish inhabitants. The Israeli economy does not rely on Palestinian labour, which makes Palestinians expendable at best.
“Zionist/Israeli strategy has always had a twofold aim: maximize Jewish colonization of land, minimize its Arab population”, Machover <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/machover/2006/11/isr-pal.html">argued in another piece</a>. In the lead-up to 1948, this required a war. It required the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic). But the establishment of the state of Israel did not settle the question. Israel is ceaselessly expansionist. This is evidenced by the wars in 1967, the settlement projects and the various skirmishes on the border of Lebanon. Israel is expansionist both because it can be—it is powerful enough to keep up attempts to claim more land and territory—but also because of its failure to finally defeat the Palestinians. 
The Nakba and the subsequent decades of oppression of the indigenous Arab population resulted in the development of a Palestinian national identity. The identity became bound up with territorial demands—that stolen lands be returned. Despite Palestinians living in non-contiguous territories in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and across the Middle East, they have retained a remarkable commitment to their national identity. The Israeli state would prefer them either to die or to disperse and become part of the rest of the Arab world. To the contrary, Palestinians have fought back with determination. They have refused to go quietly into the night.

Israel maintains apartheid in order to better carry out genocide

While Israel, with US and Australian backing, is carrying out a genocide, Anthony Albanese is living it up in Washington. A luxurious three-course dinner is being served tonight at the White House—in the name of global “comfort” and “healing”—including short ribs, meat falling off the bone, while limbs continue to be ripped from bodies in Gaza City.
White House social secretary Carlos Elizondo has promised that decorations for a diplomatic celebration of Albanese’s arrival would “bring that same natural ease of being in someone’s home, with tables featuring blooms in vases large and small, making guests feel as if they are sitting in a field of flowers”. 
Talk of flowers brings to mind a <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/23/raji_sourani_gaza_new_nakba">Democracy Now! interview</a> with Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, whose home in Gaza has been destroyed. He began by describing his villa, with its “very nice garden and flowers”. “Out of the blue”, he said, the bombing began. “I felt the heat of the flame, and I saw the ball of fire. And every time, especially this one, I thought it’s our end.” One bomb landed directly on the house, which was destroyed. Vases of flowers for some, flames and destruction for others.
They won’t have to worry about such devastation at the state dinner Washington. Presumably many of the attendees make a killing out of selling weapons of mass destruction, or by lobbying for those that do. No, the real worry in Washington isn’t the genocide in Gaza. It’s the media optics.
“In a time when so many are facing sorrow and pain ... we made a few adjustments to the entertainment portion of the evening”, first lady Jill Biden yesterday announced. White House event planners have cancelled the appearance of the 1980s pop group the B52s. The presidential press corps felt it might not play well to have Albanese and Biden dancing (or at the very least shuffling) to the music of a band named after a nuclear bomber. The real weapons shipments to the murderous Israeli regime will of course continue, and for long after this almost faux pas is forgotten.
Apart from being a display of how little Biden and Albanese care about the victims of Israeli aggression, the dinner is another indication of the importance of the military, political and diplomatic alliance between Australia and the US. In an age of increasing tensions between China and the United States, and between Russia and the West, Australia is a vital cog in the US imperial machine. 
“The United States and Australia may stand on opposite sides of the globe, different hemispheres, different seasons”, White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre notes. “But despite our distance, we share so much dedication to democracy, a reverence for freedom, a devotion to equality and a love for the natural wonders of our nation.”
Well, that’s the Hallmark gift card version handed out to a pliant Western media, which duly repackages the messaging for Western audiences. 
In reality, far from having a dedication to freedom and equality, the US and Australian ruling classes have a joint interest global domination. Israel plays a crucial role in the bloc of states committed to Western supremacy, being vital to US capitalist hegemony in the Middle East. US support for Israel is based on a cynical assessment of its strategic value in a region home to a significant amount of the world’s oil reserves and arguably the most important trade route through the Suez Canal. 
Political and economic control over the Middle East has historically given the US leverage over its rivals, and Israel has been a stable partner in the area. When country after country was rocked by revolutionary upsurges in 2011, Israel’s ruling class remained secure. But Israel doesn’t play the role of the West’s regional “watchdog” for free—it receives <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel-1949-present">a minimum of $3.8 billion in aid every year</a>. 
The US-Australia alliance is the main reason Australia so unambiguously backs Israel. Indeed, since the signing of the ANZUS treaty in 1951, Australia’s Middle Eastern policy could be described as largely a copy and paste job of US Department of State media releases. 
After the 1967 Israeli military victory over the Arab states, US aid to Israel began to rise significantly. Australian support followed suit. Since the late 1960s Australia almost never voted in favour of resolutions critical of Israel in the UN. This unofficial policy continues, Albanese and Penny Wong repeatedly declaring that Israel is merely “defending itself” in its crushing of Gaza. 
Today’s Labor leaders are part of a long line of ALP governments that have maintained an absolute commitment to Israeli barbarism. In the 2008-09 war on Gaza, when 1,400 Palestinians were murdered, Julia Gillard (who was acting prime minister when Israel began its operations) maintained that the Palestinians were the aggressors. 
In the aftermath of that war, the UN launched a fact-finding mission, headed by Richard Goldstone. The report he produced revealed that Israel had committed war crimes such as targeting civilians and using them as human shields. Australia voted against the report being submitted to the General Assembly. Gillard said that this was because of <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/media/pressrel/TIEV6/upload_binary/TIEV6.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=">a commitment to Israel’s “security”</a>.
There’s no point appealing to the purported humanity of these “leaders”. Their military and political alliances take precedence over any calculation of what is just. Israel could, using US-made weaponry, wipe Gaza from the map, and Albanese and every other politician would still take every opportunity to dine at the White House and repeat endlessly the euphemism about Israel’s “right to defend itself”.

Albanese feasts while Gaza starves

Early twentieth century Hollywood moguls declared themselves to be the bosses of a “dream factory”. They were the heads of an industry in which fantasies were splashed in technicolour glory across the big screen viewed by millions. Much ink has been spilled over the ideological nature of these fantasies. Less has been written on the reality of life in the factory. When the curtain is ripped away, Oz-like, the truth is revealed: Hollywood, and the film and television industry more generally, are sites of class exploitation and, at times, working-class retaliation. 
Across the USA, members of the Writers Guild of America are currently on strike. They are fighting against abysmal conditions in which they are expected to pump out content for very little (if any) pay. This is not the first writers’ strike; in fact, it is the eighth since the 1950s. Writers are not the only part of the dream factory to have taken serious industrial action. Behind the shimmering exterior, the entertainment industries have long been insecure and unsafe employers, which has prompted workers to rebel. 
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) was established in New York in 1893 to represent offstage workers in Broadway’s theatres, cabarets and vaudeville houses. In 1905, it made a push into the burgeoning film industry in Los Angeles and organised small strikes in 1918, 1919 and 1921 before reaching its first agreement for wages and conditions in 1926. Those who worked behind the scenes—the set designers, plumbers, carpenters, painters, make-up artists, grips, scene editors and occasionally the writers—have historically been the most exploited and, at times, the most explosive sectors of the industry. 
By the 1920s, film was one of the most lucrative industries in the United States; billions were made, and the big studio heads were the beneficiaries. The bosses of the “Big Five”—Warner Brothers, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), RKO Radio Pictures and 20th Century Fox—were not going to let unionised workers get in the way of their profit bonanza. They found myriad ways to maintain their dictatorial rule. After reluctantly signing the agreement with IATSE in 1926, Louis B. Mayer, chief at MGM, became concerned that union fever would begin to infect the “talent” (the actors, writers and directors), and after discussions with other moguls, he established the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Not only might the Academy draw actors and writers into the orbit of the studio bosses, but if done right it could provide a fresh coat of paint to an industry racked by scandal. The mere title of the body screamed establishment respectability, and the only people who would be considered for Academy Awards were those who refused to unionise. Thus, the Oscars were born: an anti-union dream to keep the factory running smoothly. 
As the Great Depression hit and impacted profit margins, class struggle intensified; in Hollywood, as elsewhere, many workers began to unionise. In New York in 1937, animators entered the vanguard. Two employees of the animation studio Fleischer (responsible for Popeye and Betty Boop) died of tuberculosis due to working conditions, prompting a five-month strike that resulted in the recognition of the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild (SCG) and a decent contract. 
Perhaps the most famous of the animators’ strikes was against Disney in 1941. Walt Disney was notoriously right wing and anti-union, and his studio was the last to recognise the SCG. Nevertheless, animators, in-betweeners (the workers who drew the transition from frame to frame) and colourists continued to organise. In May 1941, Disney hunted down those heading the union drive and fired them. These figures included Art Babbit, one of Disney’s top animators, who was responsible for iconic characters such as Goofy and Geppetto in Pinocchio. Workers were ropable; they called a strike and organised picket lines. Union leader Herb Sorrell remembered in the PM newspaper: 
“It was particularly picturesque because these artists insisted on depicting everything in their picket lines ... it was their duty when off the picket line to make gags and signs.”
They even constructed a mock guillotine to behead a lifelike mannequin of Disney himself. After five weeks, the strike won the permanent reinstatement of sacked workers, equalisation of pay, a clear system of salaries and classifications and a grievance procedure. All was not forgotten, however, and pro-union sentiment crept its way into some of Disney’s animations. There’s a scene in Dumbo, for instance, where a bunch of circus clowns march off to confront management. 
By 1945, other Hollywood workers had become restive. Unsatisfied by the now compromised IATSE run by mobsters, some began turning to more militant unions. The Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), representing set crews, secretaries, stenographers, guides, cooks, waitresses, dishwashers, carpenters, electricians and set painters and decorators, led by boxer-cum-set painter Herb Sorrell, proved to be such a union. CSU called a strike in March 1945, and 10,500 workers downed tools and set up picket lines to protest unsafe, insecure and badly paid work. Although the CSU was accused of being a Communist-dominated union, the reality was quite different. The Communist Party in fact objected to the strike because it broke the “no strike” pledge it had signed for the duration of World War Two; appallingly, party members even crossed the picket line. The studio bosses were intractable, and the strike became bitter, resulting in one of the most violent moments in the history of Hollywood’s class struggle. On Black Friday, as 5 October 1945 became known, the heads of Warner Brothers studio, local police and scab workers attempted to break a union picket line. Writer Gerald Horne in his book Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950, gave the following description:
“Dozens were injured in a melee at the entrance to Warner Bros. studio in Burbank as strikers confronted scabs and police officers. Some among the hundreds of strikers and their supporters were ‘knifed, clubbed and gassed,’ while others were swept off their feet by spray from fire hoses. The glass of smashed windshields littered the pavement. There were ‘tear gas bomb blasts’ and overturned cars. Periodic fistfights at times engaged a dozen men or more.”
This very bitter dispute ended with a Pyrrhic victory for the workers. After the war, the studio bosses and the right-wing IATSE joined forces and locked out militant workers, breaking the CSU. This was the opening chapter of the McCarthy era in Hollywood, which rooted out high-profile Communist Party writers and actors, and targeted independent union organising. This bleak period in trade union and political history has left a legacy, not just in Hollywood, but across the United States. Nevertheless, as the current writers’ strike indicates, there remains some red thread of consistency, perhaps some memory of the classic union slogan: “If you don’t fight, you lose”. 
What this history makes clear is that, behind the sequinned glamour is an industry built on the labour of the many. If the dreams of the workers who operate the gears and levers of the “dream factory” are ever to be realised, then their fight must continue till the end.

Class struggle in the dream factory 

Palestinians have their backs against the wall. In Gaza, they are subject to a devastating economic blockade and regular Israeli air offensives. In the West Bank, they have every aspect of their lives controlled and regulated by humiliating and often violent restrictions. Within the 1948 borders of Israel, they are routinely harassed, denied basic democratic rights and hounded out of their homes and off their land. In every part of historic Palestine, there are escalating levels of brutality, intimidation and repression. Nevertheless, there are flickers of resistance.
Israel and its backers in the West are not the only forces oppressing the Palestinians. In the West Bank, the population is ruled by the Palestinian Authority. The PA has long ceased to be a body for Palestinian resistance and is now the ruling class of the West Bank, albeit one that is limited by Israel. The PA is run by a corrupt and wealthy class of Palestinians renowned for siphoning funds from ministry budgets. 
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and his family are notorious. Abbas is worth around US$100 million. His family is worth even more. They got this money by creating monopolies over particular goods. For instance, all the American-made cigarettes sold in the Palestinian territories are run through them. What’s more, their role in the PA has allowed them to make millions from public works projects such as road and school construction. 
The PA employs all public servants, organises basic services and runs “security” in the area. In fact, the Israeli state has outsourced much of its policing of the area to the PA, which arrests opponents of Israel and those who speak out against its own rule. There is no story that illustrates this more clearly than that of Nizar Banat. Banat was an outspoken critic of Fatah, the party that dominates the PA. He campaigned against corruption and the mistreatment of Palestinian political prisoners. For his activism he was physically threatened multiple times. 
In May 2021, his home near Hebron was attacked by masked gunmen on motorbikes. After that, he decided it wasn’t safe to stay home. According to a Guardian article, he told his wife he was leaving because he “didn’t want to be killed in front of his children”. The following month, he was woken early in the morning, dragged from the bed in his “safe house” by fourteen men from the Palestinian security service, who were given permission by Israel to enter the area. He was beaten to death. The PA said his death was from natural causes. But according to an autopsy commissioned by his family, the activist died after suffering 42 injuries inflicted with metal pipes.
This is only one story of many. Human Rights Watch recently released a report alleging that Palestinian security forces “use solitary confinement and beatings, including whipping their feet, and force detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including hoisting their arms behind their backs with cables or rope, to punish and intimidate critics and opponents and elicit confessions”.
Such lawless violence against activists has sparked a response. After Banat’s murder, the streets of the West Bank were aflame with weeks of protests against the PA. Demonstrators in Ramallah chanted, “The people want the fall of the regime”.
There has also been some impressive working-class resistance in the West Bank. Palestinian teachers have been on strike for months. The strike, which involves around 52,000 teachers and affects nearly 1 million students, is demanding that teachers be paid their full salaries, as well as a 15 percent payment of outstanding funds owed to them. They are also fighting to have a freely elected teachers’ union. 
Although initially the PA met their demands with silence, teachers are now facing aggression. Police surround and block their protests, and the PA has launched a major media offensive against them. But the teachers have refused to back down. Their defiance is clear. A statement by the teachers’ union said: “No one is able to bring Palestinian teachers to their knees”. 
There is of course also more direct resistance to Israeli apartheid. In the last few years, there have been steps forward and steps backwards on this account. The steps forward overwhelmingly took place in 2021, when there was a major round of popular mobilisations sparked by resistance within the 1948 borders of Israel, which spilled out and inspired further rebellion. 
In Jerusalem, Palestinian students and youth mobilised against efforts to expel Palestinian families from their homes in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. These mobilisations were largely spontaneous and operated outside the auspices of the traditional Palestinian leadership. One local activist offered this description to the Socialist Worker newspaper: 
“Over the years people on some level lost their faith and self confidence in their ability to behave politically. So you need someone to tell you that you have to go to the demonstration, that you need someone to organise for you. The uprising broke this and people started to recognise they have the power to initiate political acts, even if they were never active politically. 
“There were ways of organising that we who are involved in political work didn’t recognise as organising. This is the richness and beauty of what happened. For example, a group of girls in a school that moved from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, making graffiti and distributing flyers they printed at home, wouldn’t have thought about the need to have a name or call themselves a group. 
“I know about a family that decided to issue a booklet for other families, and everyone was reading it. It’s like that family started to work as revolutionary educators. But no one thought of calling it a group or organisation.”
These were important developments in a new youthful form of Palestinian rebellion operating outside of the traditional resistance organisations. Furthermore, a new Palestinian national consciousness began to blossom across the traditional boundaries between Gaza, the West Bank and inside 1948 Israel.
Unfortunately, many of these green shoots have found it difficult to flourish in the face of Israeli offensives. Hundreds of new and longstanding activists have been arrested, beaten and brutalised. In many ways, the lack of organisational structures that gave the rebellion its energy has made it difficult to sustain. Nevertheless, there is a residue. Demonstrations and resistance continue where they can—against the imprisonment of political prisoners, the expansion of the Israeli settlements and the murder of activists. 
The grinding realities of occupation and military bombardment have also spawned a series of new armed resistance groups. These are largely found in West Bank refugee camps, where young people feel they have nothing to lose. They have no faith (rightly) in the parliamentary machinations of the existing Palestinian leaders, but they have also (wrongly) lost hope that any other mass forms of resistance can achieve much. 
There is a deep sense of desperation—one journalist described them as “having a wager with death”. One of these, a young man called Udai Tamimi, expressed these sentiments in a note he wrote before he shot up an Israeli checkpoint: 
“I am Udai Tamimi, a wanted man from Shuafat refugee camp. My operation against the Shuafat checkpoint is a drop in the raging sea of the struggle. I know that I will attain martyrdom sooner or later. I know that I will not liberate Palestine with my operation, but I want to encourage hundreds of youth to pick up their guns after me.”
Tamimi was hunted down. Israeli forces spent weeks trying to find him. But young men all through his refugee camp shaved their heads to look like him and stymie the efforts of the military. Eventually, however, he was found and murdered. He was shot in the headlights of an Israeli military vehicle, in front of his friends. 
Two militant groups, the Jenin Brigade and the Lions’ Den, have been recruiting. They gained support by initially launching defensive operations against Israeli military incursions but have now shifted to hit and run actions against Israeli soldiers. They have had some successes and have achieved a degree of popularity. In one widely publicised incident, they managed to push the Israeli forces out of part of a refugee camp. 
All of this has resulted in an increase in military repression by the Israelis. The reality is that no matter how brave, how headstrong, how determined Palestinian militants are, they are never going to be able to withstand the brute force and firepower of the Israeli military. It is one of the most technologically advanced in the world and it is backed by many major imperial powers. So, while it is understandable that these young people join organisations like the Lion’s Den, the strategy is ultimately a futile one. 
Israeli power is most diminished by mass rebellion: by intifadas, in which workers strike, communities refuse to pay tax and are increasingly self-organised. Such politics was on display in the late 1980s and again in the early 2000s. There was militant resistance, but mass, organised militant resistance. 
Furthermore, Israeli rule can best be put under pressure by broader regional mobilisations. Indeed, it was only twelve years ago that the Arab Spring threatened the rule of all the dictatorial regimes across the region. Then, millions of workers and the poor poured onto the streets and into the squares of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond. They took over their textile factories, set fire to police stations and toppled dictators. 
Solidarity poured across borders. Egyptians marched to Gaza, with the intention of breaking through the checkpoints. Thousands of Palestinians marched to that same border both to show solidarity with the Egyptian uprising and also to challenge their own oppression. They shared the same flags, the same chants, the same red-fisted salutes, the same smiles and laughter and joy at the prospect of the “overthrow of the regimes”. 
Revolutionary struggle and working-class rebellion across the Middle East are the only force that has the capacity to liberate Palestine. Although the situation is currently bleak, the memory of the Arab Spring is not dead. In the last major round of struggle in Palestine, in 2021, demonstrators in one village were heard to chant: “From beneath the rubble we rise! ... From beneath the destruction we are reborn!” 
Such sentiments, we can only hope, will continue to fuel resistance to one of the most barbaric states on the planet.

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