We totally condemn and abhor the indiscriminate bombing of the Gaza
strip just as we totally condemn the atrocities recently committed byHamas against civilians, not just Jews but Christians, Bedouin, andothers from around the world. ---- As we said back in 2021 when therewas another murderous assault on Gaza, "as ever, the working classpopulation of Gaza are those who suffer most beneath the phosphorusexplosives and the 'death from above' of Israeli rockets and jetfighters who meet with little resistance from a Palestinian governmentwhich, whilst armed to the teeth with small arms, has no air force orair defence. Hamas continue to hurl surface to surface missiles insomething between impotent rage and a desperate attempt to maintainthemselves as defenders of the Palestinian people. Hamas cannot afford adefeat in front of its own population. The proletarians on both sides ofthe conflict suffer most from the escalation, while the respectiveleaderships can divert attention from their own problems." Little haschanged in the latest attacks on Gaza.Hamas was originally supported by the Israeli State to undermine themore secular Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). It has its originsin Mujama al-Islamiya which was founded by the Palestinian cleric SheikhAhmed Yasin, seen as an organisation involved in charity and welfarework for the Palestinian community of Gaza. The Israeli state regardedit as preferable to the PLO, as was its successor Hamas. Hamas wasalways right wing, Islamist and nationalist, with hostile attitudestowards women and LGBQT people and to the Palestinian working class.However, this changed when Hamas killed two Israeli military personnelin Gaza in 1988. In a situation similar to that of the Mujahideen inAfghanistan, supported by the USA and its allies, against Russia and theAfghan regime it supported, where the Taliban evolved to become agreater danger to US imperialism, the Israeli regime began to regret itsinitial support.Hamas took advantage of the peace process between Yasser Arafat and thePLO, and the Israeli state, despite hundreds of Palestinians killed inthe first Intifada mass uprising. Hamas thus gained popular support in Gaza.Various Israeli officials went on record to express their regrets aboutsupport for Hamas. Avner Cohen, who had been an official in Gaza duringdirect Israeli occupation admitted that "Hamas, to my great regret, isIsrael's creation." He went on to say that "instead of trying to curbGaza's Islamists from the outset, Israel for years tolerated and, insome cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secularnationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominantfaction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled,half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying thefoundations for what would become Hamas."Another Israeli official in Gaza, Andrew Higgins, said "When I look backat the chain of events I think we made a mistake but at the time nobodythought about the possible results...Israel also endorsed theestablishment of the Islamic University of Gaza, which it now regards asa hotbed of militancy... Yassin's Mujama would become Hamas, which, itcan be argued, was Israel's Taliban: an Islamist group whose antecedentshad been laid down by the West in a battle against a leftist enemy."Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who had been Israeli military governorin Gaza in the 1980s, admitted that he had helped fund Hamas as a"counterweight to the secularists and leftists of the PalestineLiberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (whohimself referred to Hamas as 'a creature of Israel')."Hamas gained control of Gaza from the PLO. It imposed sharia laws,forcing women to wear the hijab and imposing an alcohol ban, althoughboth of these have been hard to enforce. Armed clashes broke out betweenHamas and the PLO. This suited the Israeli state which felt thatfighting between the Islamist Hamas and the secular PLO would divertthem from attacking Israel.No statist solutions!Because a solution to the conflict can ultimately only be a common,classless and stateless society in which people of different religious(and non-religious) and ethnic backgrounds can coexist peacefully. Andthe way to achieve this can only be through class struggle, with workersuniting on both sides to improve their situation and thereby overcominglong-held resentments. It is the task of the libertarian communistmovement to push for exactly this.On both sides of the conflict there are actors who see thingsfundamentally differently, who either want to see one side eradicatedfrom the area or pushed back by the settlement policy and are preparedto sacrifice the lives of non-combatants in the fight for their owninterests.We reject both, as it is at the expense of the proletarians and onlyserves to deepen the divisions within the class. Resistance is neededagainst both the Israeli state and the Palestinian leadership.Resistance against the Israeli settlement policy is necessary andjustified, but this can often be accompanied by anti-Semitic resentmentand attacks on the non-combatant population. We must reject this.Similarly, in other countries, sympathy for the plight of ordinaryPalestinians and opposition to the Israeli State's attacks on them cansometimes attract anti-Semitic fellow travellers, or slogans such as 'Weare all Hamas.' These elements must be shunned.We reject the Two State solution, backed even by some socialists, wherethere would be an Israeli and a Palestinian state co-existing. Thiswould mean a few shabby Palestinian enclaves, with those Palestiniansstill living in Israel living as at the best second class citizens, andthose living in Jordan, Lebanon and other Middle East countriesabandoned altogether.Neither do we support a One State solution, which would threaten Jewswithin a united Palestinian state.For us, all nation states should be rejected. As our comrades of theMelbourne Anarchist Communist Group have written: "The liberation of thePalestinian people, without merely reversing the terms of oppression,can only come about through a workers' revolution to abolish capitalismcompletely, to make the land and all social resources the commonproperty of all, abolishing inequality and all forms of oppression.Given the present situation in Israel/Palestine, this is not on theimmediate agenda, but it does not deny the necessity of the solution. Inpractical circumstances, the initiative will have to come from theoutside, through workers' revolution in the surrounding Arab countries,most importantly Egypt, which has a large working class already. It isessential, however, for those workers' revolutions to transcend thenationalism of the countries in which they occur, since it is onlyinternationalism which will allow the workers to defeat their owncapitalist rulers; it is only internationalism which will allow Arabworkers to reach out in friendship to the workers of Israel; and onlyinternationalism which can break the Israeli working class from itsZionist rulers. The task before the workers of Palestine and Israel isthus no different from the task here. It is only to be conducted in moredifficult circumstances. We must build a working class movement, basedon liberty, equality and solidarity, and fight for a revolution whichwill re-make society on the same principles. We must abolish capitalismand its State, and we must recognise the folly of building another Statein its wake. We must build Libertarian Communism."Israel looks set to launch a full scale invasion of Gaza over the nextfew weeks and months with the intention of destroying Hamas completelyand to drive most Palestinians there into Egypt. If Hezbollah in theLebanon intervenes, Israel will attack there too and then both Iran andthe USA may be drawn into a conflict. Together with the Russian-Ukrainewar, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh,and the growing tensions of China, Taiwan, and the US in the pacific,this most recent conflict in Israel-Palestine feeds into the threat toaccelerate into a world war.The USA and its allies, including in the UK, with both the increasinglyauthoritarian Tory regime and the Labour Party, are openly backingIsrael. Biden has given carte blanche to Israel for its siege andattacks on Gaza. The USA has sent war ships including an aircraftcarrier to the region in a show of strength to support Israel and tothreaten Hezbollah. Netanyahu, leader of a coalition government thatincludes far right parties in Israel, threatens to turn Gaza into "adeserted island."The brutal attacks by Hamas resulting in many hundreds of dead havecreated a feeling of national unity and has temporarily shored up theweak position of the Netanyahu government. This has faced nine months ofagitation, including a general strike, over unpopular judicial reforms.Similarly, Hamas only had minority support in the Gaza Strip, but therecent events may also temporarily boost this.We see hundreds slaughtered in both Israel and Palestine. Thesehorrendous scenes that we see in the media may just be an appallingopener to even worse bloodshed and destruction.Against the barbarism of capitalism and the march towards world war wecall for working class unity, internationalism and preparation for massmovements that can implement social revolution and create libertariancommunism.NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR!https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2023/10/11/neither-israel-nor-hamas/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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