The ‘Palestinian Problem’ is really the Israeli Problem

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The ‘Palestinian Problem’ is really the Israeli Problem

The biggest problem of the ‘Palestinian Problem’ is that the world doesn’t really give a toss what happens in Palestine until the Zionist, Israeli Settler State enjoys another period of slaughter of the Palestinian people. And even then criticism of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ is muted.

The fact that Palestinians, on a daily basis, are treated like second class citizens, who really don’t have a right to live in their own land is forgotten. The fact that they are probably being treated in a manner which makes the white supremacist South African apartheid regime pre-1990s seem quite ‘civilised’ is ignored. The fact that Palestinian land is being stolen from those whose families have lived there for generations – against all international ‘laws’, supposedly adopted to prevent such activity – happens on a daily basis with impunity. The fact that Palestinian children are dying and being injured at the hands of the Israeli military and police in numbers which would be received with shock and horror in those countries who seek to determine what happens in the Middle East and passes by without comment. The fact that Zionist fascist thugs roam the streets of the Palestinian occupied land, reminiscent of what occurred in Germany in the 1930s, isn’t even considered newsworthy.

It’s shameful that it was only shortly before the 73rd anniversary of the Nabka that two reports were published (one by the Jewish organisation B’ Tselem, This is apartheid, published in January 2021 and the other, A threshold crossed – Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, published by Human Rights Watch in May 2021) which openly condemned Israel as being an apartheid state.

For decades the Zionists had cynically hidden behind the Holocaust whenever their activities were challenged. They had become so confident (probably over-confident) in their propaganda exercise that they had started to conflate, and equate, criticism of the Settler State of Israel with anti-Semitism. This has had the effect, in the last year or so, of stifling debate about the rights of the Palestinians. That charade is starting to look slightly thin now when the forced evictions in East Jerusalem (highlighted by the Palestinian refusal to let it happen quietly) has made it difficult for the Zionists to deny the accusation that their racist state has been applying a policy of apartheid and ‘ethnic cleansing’ for decades.

It took the world a long time, far too long a time, to universally criticise and ostracise the racist South African regime. For the capitalist and imperialist countries (most of whom were racist in many respects) the existence of a tame attack dog in Africa which was willing to fight against any national liberation movements and stem the move toward Socialism was worth more than the local, national inconvenience of supporting a racially, unjust society. When the apartheid regime had run out of its usefulness changes in the society were accepted by the capitalists – although they did so in a manner which meant that capitalism wasn’t seriously challenged in the most industrially developed country on the African continent. (It should also be remembered that at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa Israel was that country’s closest military and diplomatic ally.)

Now Israel plays the slavish (but willing) role of imperialism’s attack dog in a part of the world that is politically and economically crucial for the short term existence of imperialism The more the Zionists crow about their right to live on stolen land; the more they spout about independence as a State; the more they prowl around the Middle East like an over-confident bully and gangster the more the reality they only exist due to the grace of the imperialist powers, mainly the United States of America, becomes evident.

How long will it be before the world opens its eyes to the crimes of the Zionist Settler State of Israel?

One of the other consequences when the simmering war goes on the boil is that there are a lot more articles from those who support the Palestinians in their fight for freedom and from injustice. Not that they’re not out there generally but when peoples’ concentration is directed to the situation in Palestine then more comments and information is forthcoming.

Below are links to some articles which have been published in the last week or so with salient comments to make on the reality of the past 73 years, on how the world sees Palestine and the biased manner in which Israel is treated by capitalist politicians and media.

However, although it is reasonable to condemn the approach of the leaders of the capitalist countries that doesn’t mean the people of the world, workers and peasants, equally maltreated by the economic and political system they live under, are totally blameless. Those politicians are in positions of power due to the action or inaction of the populace. Whether by crimes of commission or omission we are all guilty of what has happened, is happening and likely to continue happening if something is not done to prevent it for the foreseeable future in Palestine.

Long Live Palestine!

For further background information (mainly material from the 1960s-1980s) on Palestine you can click here.

(Notwithstanding the recent ‘cease fire’ the issue will not just go away. All those matters addressed below won’t disappear because the guns have fallen silent. A long term solution will have to be found and it will mean the State of Israel having to substantially change. The so-called ‘two state’ solution has been dead in the water for a long time.)

Sheikh Jarrah Shows that Palestine’s Nakba Never Ended

Two residents of Sheikh Jarrah write about their community’s fight against eviction – and why this month’s Palestinian uprising is just the latest chapter in a decades-long struggle against dispossession.

Another Nakba: ‘This Is My House, This Is My Door, You Are a Thief’

In the days leading up to the 73rd anniversary of the Nabka the aggressiveness and arrogance of the Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem was such that it would have been a surprise if matters did not reach a head close to the time of the date of the establishment of the Israeli Settler (and apartheid) State. (Note the contempt expressed in the faces of the young Zionists in the top picture.)

The Palestinian Body Is Whole Once Again

Palestinians disconnected from each other have struggled immensely to maintain a national project with clear objectives. Now, struggling together across the entire geography of historic Palestine, the Palestinian body is coming back together.

A Nightmare of Terror Across the Landscape of Palestine

As Israeli lynch mobs roam the streets attacking Palestinians, and as Israeli war planes drop bombs on Gaza, it’s essential to understand how we arrived at this moment.

On Palestine, the Media Is Allergic to the Truth

This article looks at how the media in the vast majority of capitalist countries falls over itself in support of the Israeli Settler State by always addressing matters as if the ‘both sides’ in the battle were on an equal footing – and forgetting the history of the conflict in general and always looking at matters as if they were all short term flare-ups.

Nine children killed in Gaza Strip as violence escalates

Although events got worse before they got ‘better’ – an uncertain cease fire – this article documents the cavalier attitude the Israeli Defence Forces have towards the lives of Palestinian children.

How the United States helps to kill Palestinians

U.S. policy has perpetuated the crisis and atrocities of the Israeli occupation by unconditionally supporting Israel in three distinct ways: militarily, diplomatically and politically.

Israeli forces kill 17-year-old Palestinian in Arroub refugee camp

The Israeli Defence Forces have been killing children on a regular basis for years. This is just yet another example where extreme and deadly force is being used against young people.

Gaza conflict: no matter how powerful Israel’s military becomes it still can’t win

‘ …. an apt summary is of a state that is impregnable in its insecurity. It is impregnable in the sense that it cannot be defeated, but insecure in that the underlying threats will not go away – as is evident in the current violent confrontations.’

Peaceful Coexistence in Israel hasn’t been shattered – it’s always been a myth

‘As a Palestinian from within Israel I have long been a second-class citizen, denied basic rights.’

Life inside Gaza during 11 days of bombardment

Guardian journalist Hazem Balousha describes living in, and reporting from, Gaza, under heavy bombardment until a ceasefire began on Friday, while historian Rashid Khalidi discusses the history of the Palestinian struggle for statehood. (Podcast)

Israeli social fabric is ripping at the seams

Israel has reached apartheid, the antithesis of Judaism’s long tradition of social justice.

Palestinian youth are leading a Popular Uprising to end Israeli Apartheid

The latest Palestinian uprising firmly rejects the conquest and division of our people legally and geographically, into separate, besieged, apartheid parcels of land similar to the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa.

Why is accountability for alleged war crimes so hard to achieve in the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

‘The failure of the international community to bring about a resolution in the decades-long conflict reflects the highly politicised nature of international law.’

Likud Must Pay for Its Criminal Culture

The ruling party’s rap sheet is too long to be tolerated any longer.

And taking another historical perspective on Palestine;

What we did: How the Jewish Communist Left failed the Palestinian Cause

Although this article concentrates on the attitude of the Jewish Left in the United States in the late 1940s – at the time of the establishment of the Settler Sate of Israel – a similar approach would have been taken by many Communist parties throughout the world when the Soviet Union changed its approach to the ‘two state’ ‘solution’ of the situation in Palestine. Although a long term supporter of Comrade Stalin (and still am) this is one policy decision I have been unable to reconcile with his world view in general.

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Palestine – the background to the US-backed Zionist settler state

A Palestinian child in 1970

A Palestinian child in 1970

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Palestine – the background to the US-backed Zionist settler state

On this page we present an eclectic group of pamphlets, journals and reports that were published from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. These are reproduced in the hope of providing an historical background to the situation that we are witnessing in Palestine (in 2021) more than a couple of generations later.

What is striking in many of the images presented here is that the situation in Palestine has been dire, with the fascist Israeli forces implementing ‘ethnic cleaning’ in all their dealings with the Palestinian population from the very beginning and consistently ever since. (Note the date of the image at the head of this post.)

The situation before 1967

Israel – according to Theodore Herzl (1904) and Rabbi Fischmann (1947), nd.

Do you know – Twenty basic facts about the Palestine Problem, Facts and Figures Series, No 1, Research Centre, Palestine Liberation Organisation, Beirut, April 1966, 5 pages.

The UN and the Palestine Question, April 1947 – April 1965, Fayez A Sayegh, Facts and Figures Series, No 2, Research Centre, Palestine Liberation Organisation, Beirut, September 1966, 24 pages.

United States and West German Aid to Israel, Facts and Figures Series No 6, Asa’d Abdul-Rahman, Research Centre, Palestine Liberation Organisation, Beirut, October 1966, 53 pages.

The Partition of Palestine, Institute for Palestine Studies, Monograph Series No 9, Beirut, 1967, 55 pages.

Edwin Montagu and The Balfour Declaration, Arab League, London, 1969, 23 pages.

Deir Yassin, 1948 Zeita, Beit Nuba and Yalu, 1967, Palestine National Liberation Movement, Fateh, 1970, 18 pages. A twenty year span and the rise of terrorist gangs to statehood cannot change the Israeli-Zionist mentality, bent on destruction and terror.

The Soviet Union and the creation of the state of Israel, Prof. Gabriel Gorodetsky, Social Science Open Access Repository, December 2001, 28 pages.

What we did – the American Jewish Communist Left and the Establishment of the State of Israel, Dorothy M. Zellner, 2019, 40 pages.

The situation after 1967

Imperialism and the Middle East Conflict – Some Left Wing Viewpoints, No 1, Ad Hoc Committee for Peace in the Middle East, London, 1967, 34 pages.

Raphael’s ‘Virgin and Child’, Jerusalem Committee, London, 1969, 4 pages.

River without Bridges – A study of The Exodus of the 1967 Palestinian Refugees, Peter Dodd and Halim Barakat, Institute for Palestinian Studies, Monograph Series No 10, Beirut, 1969, 107 pages.

The June War – In the Light of its Aftermath, June 1967-Summer 1969, Vada Hart Nabky – Morssett Press, London, 1969, 32 pages.

To whom does Palestine belong? Henry Cattan, Institute for Palestine Studies, Monograph Series No 8, Beirut, 1969, 18 pages.

What if it happened to you? Jerusalem Committee, London, 1969, 15 pages.

World Public Opinion and the current aggression in the Middle East, No 4, United Arab Republic Ministry of National Guidance State Information Service, 1969, 34 pages.

World Public Opinion and Israel, No 5, United Arab Republic Ministry of National Guidance State Information Service, 1969, 75 pages.

World Public Opinion and the current aggression in the Middle East, No 7, United Arab Republic Ministry of National Guidance State Information Service, 1969, 18 pages.

World Public Opinion and the current aggression in the Middle East, No 15, United Arab Republic Ministry of National Guidance State Information Service, 1969, 25 pages.

Background Notes on Palestine, Report No 3, An Eyewitness in Jerusalem Spring 1969, John Carter, Jerusalem Committee, London, 1969, 21 pages.

Background Notes on Palestine, Report No 4, Visit to Palestine Summer 1969, Tom Fielding, Jerusalem Committee, London, 1969, 16 pages.

The Tragedy of Palestine from the Balfour Declaration to today, Anthony Nutting, The Arab League, London, 1969, 15 pages.

Tragedy of the Palestine Arab Refugees, 1969, 32 pages.

Israeli air attack on the National Metal Products Factory at Abu Zaabal, Cairo, February 12 1970, United Arab Republic Ministry of National Guidance State Information Service, 20 pages.

Israeli air raid on the Bahr El-Backar Primary School, Sharkia Governorate, UAR, April 8 1970, United Arab Republic Ministry of National Guidance State Information Service, 16 pages.

The Jarring Mission, The Arab League, London, 1970, 24 pages.

Four stages in the Zionist usurpation of the land of Palestine – map showing the evolution of Zionist intentions about the land of the US-backed settler state – following the war in 1967.

Zionism

Zionism – the obstacle to peace, Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, London?, ND., late 1960’s?, 6 pages.

Zionism and Racism – a case to answer, European Co-ordinating Committee of Friendship Societies with the Arab World, Paris, 1976, 26 pages.

Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, Faris Yahya, Palestine Research Center, Beirut, 1978, 85 pages.

Jews, Zionism and South Africa, David Herman, Union of Jewish Students, London, 1989, 16 pages.

The Arab League, London

The Arab, Volume 2, Nos 31/32, The Arab League, London, August/September1969, 16 pages.

The Arab, Volume 2, No 33, The Arab League, London, October 1969, 12 pages.

The Arab, Volume 4, No 30, The Arab League, London, April 1970, 12 pages.

Jerusalem – El kuds al Sharif – The Rock of Faith, The Arab League, London, 1969, 8 pages.

A letter to the Holy Sees, The Arab League, Morssett Press, London, 1970, 24 pages.

Israelis versus Israel, The Arab League, London, 1970, 32 pages. The treatment of Arab Israelis – fifty years ago.

Solidarity with Palestine in Britain

Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Fedayeen, Volume 1, No 2, October 1969, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, London, 1969, 8 pages.

Fedayeen, Volume 2, No 1, January 1970, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, London, 1970, 8 pages.

Fedayeen, Volume 2, No 2, March 1970, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, London, 1970, 10 pages.

Fedayeen, Volume 2, No 3, May 1970, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, London, 1970, 8 pages.

Fedayeen, Volume 3, No 1, February 1971, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, London, 1971, 6 pages.

American Imperialism – Palestine to Vietnam, Palestine Solidarity No 1, Liverpool University Palestine Solidarity Campaign, early 1970s, 12 pages.

Revolution – journal of the London Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation

Palestine, Special ‘Revolution’ Supplement, 1969, 4 pages.

Committees for Solidarity with the Palestinian Revolution

Palestinian Revolution, Committees for Solidarity with the Palestinian Revolution, Manchester University Students Union, March 1970, 16 pages.

Israel Palestine Socialist Action Group (UK)

I don’t know how long this publication (or the organisation) lasted after issue No 5/6. It’s possible it lived and died when a small group were in university at the beginning of the 1970s.

Flashpoint, No 3, Autumn 1970, Israel Palestine Socialist Action Group (UK), Reading, 13 pages.

Flashpoint, No 4, Spring 1971, Israel Palestine Socialist Action Group (UK), Reading, 20 pages.

Flashpoint, double issue Nos 5 and 6, Summer 1971/Winter 1971/2, Israel Palestine Socialist Action Group (UK), Reading, 23 pages.

American Solidarity with Palestine

The Middle East Newsletter was the journal of the Americans for Justice in the Middle East.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 2, No 9, November 1968, Beirut, 1968, 12 pages.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 3, No 4, May-June 1969, Beirut, 1969, 12 pages.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 3, Nos 5-6, September 1969, Beirut, 1969, 16 pages.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 4, Nos 1-2, March 1970, Beirut, 1970, 16 pages.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 4, No 3, April 1970, Beirut, 1970, 16 pages.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 4, Nos 4-5 July 1970, Beirut, 1970, 16 pages.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 4, Nos 4-5 July 1970 – Supplement, Beirut, 1970, 4 pages.

Butting in, butting out, The National Observer, Monday June 22, 1970, Supplement to Middle East Newsletter Volume 4, Nos 4-5, 1970, 1 page.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 4, Nos 6-7 August-September 1970, Beirut, 1970, 12 pages.

Middle East Newsletter, Volume 5, No 1, January 1971, Beirut, 1971, 16 pages.

General

Information Bulletin, No 10, 1968, Communist Party of Israel Central Committee – Tel Aviv, October 1968, 44 pages. Theses for the Sixteenth Congress of the Communist Party of Israel: Communism – Democracy – The Jewish People by Moshe Sneh.

Grim reports of repression in Israel-occupied lands, EC Hodgkin, 1969, 4 pages. This article was first published in ‘The Times’ on October 1968. It was then reproduced as an official document of the United Nations Security Council (number 5/9501, dated November 10 1969).

Hands off our people in Jordan, Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Palestinian People, London, 1970, 1 page.

Israel’s Threat to Judaism – In Palestine, Zionism v Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Rabbi Elmer Berger, A speech delivered to the Irish Arab Society, Dublin, 5th February 1970, Irish Arab Society, Dublin, 1970, 22 pages.

Nayef Hawatmeh, General Secretary of the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Interview with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Beiraq on 17th April 1974, Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Palestinian People, London, 1974, 28 pages.

Palestine, Yusef Sayegh, Free Palestine, London, nd, 22 pages.

Programme for National Palestinian Unity, Naim Ashhab, Political Bureau Member of the Central Committee of the Jordanian Communist Party, early 1970s, 8 pages.

One Jerusalem, Yael Guiladi, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1983, 75 pages.

Israel – The Political System, Israel Information Centre, Jerusalem, 1988, 31 pages. How Israel saw itself at the end of the 1980s.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2006), 384 pages.

What we did: The American Jewish Communist Left and the establishment of the State of Israel, Dorothy M. Zellner, 2019, 40 pages. [This is a lament about the role played by the Soviet Union and the CPUSA in the creation of the Zionist state of Israel, and especially about the Jewish nationalist enthusiasm within the CPUSA for this historical disaster. The original source of this article or pamphlet is unknown, though it was probably not published by the CPUSA.]

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP, originally published in 1969. This edition, (Utrecht: Foreign Languages Press, 2017), 160 pages, includes a new introduction by the PFLP, and also the brief Founding Document of the PFLP (December 11, 1967).

The decline of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine: A Historical Analysis, by Terry James Buck, n.d. but from about 2012, 121 pages. This interesting volume appears to be a thesis for an advanced degree, but the school and other information is not included here.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)

Three Essays by the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [Original name for the organization]: On Terrorism; Role of the Party; and, Leninism vs. Zionism. In a single pamphlet, c. 1970, 17 pages.

May 12, 2021 Statement: DFLP condemns the heinous Israeli crime that targeted unarmed citizens, including children, and mourns the martyrs of the aggression on Gaza, 1 page.

Statement by Fouad Baker on October 3, 2023: Full [U.N.] Membership of the State of Palestine: Problems and Solutions, 4 pages.

September 12, 2023 Statement: What is happening in Ain al-Hilweh Camp? [in Lebanon], by Fouad Baker, 2 pages.

Statement from Mid-2023 (not dated): Forced and Mass Displacement of the Palestinian People; an Essential Pillar of the Zionist Project, 2 pages.

On Israeli Fascism

Einstein Letter on Israel, a public letter from Albert Einstein and others to the New York Times, published December 4, 1948, 3 pages.

Palestinian Refugees

Palestinian refugees right to return and repatriation, Mazin Qumsiyeh, n.d. (but 2002 or a bit later), 40 pages.

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A threshold crossed – Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

Dawn queue for Palestinians at Israeli checkpoint

Dawn queue for Palestinians at Israeli checkpoint

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A threshold crossed – Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

On 27th April 2021 Human Rights Watch published a report entitled A threshold crossed – Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. This documents many examples of where the policies followed by successive Israeli governments over the years merit the definition of Israel as an ‘Apartheid State’.

From it’s inception the State of Israel has been an artificial creation, it’s only legitimacy coming from it being sanctioned by an imperialist power (Britain, through the Balfour Declaration of 1917) where the state was created on land already occupied by another people.

From its earliest days (even before the official declaration of the formation of the State on 14th May 1948) Zionist invaders of the territory of Palestine sought to maintain their control of the area by the use of force and terror. An example (but only one of many) of this is the massacre of Palestinians at the village of Deir Yassin which took place on 9th April 1948 where at least 107 Palestinian men, women and children were slaughtered by members of the Israeli terrorist groups Irgun and the Stern Gang – with the total complicity of the ‘official’ Israeli armed forces.

The word ‘apartheid’ is normally associated with the institutionalised racism against the indigenous population of the regime that existed in South Africa from 1948 until 1994. (It’s a strange quirk of history that the ‘official’ beginning of apartheid – racism had been endemic in South Africa since the arrival of the first settlers in the 17th century – coincided with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.) However, the separate development that occurred in Palestine in the 1950s and 60s was an apartheid policy in all but name. The process has only been accelerated in recent years, especially after years when whatever the Israelis inflict upon the Palestinian population results in no repercussions from the so-called ‘international community’ and any, and all, resolutions of the United Nations are just ignored with equal impunity.

It is as this arrogance and entitlement grew that Israel’s original attitude to the South African Apartheid regime changed. After initially being a ‘supporter’ of the Black African population when both countries became international social pariahs (apart from their imperialist friends) their relationships became closer. By the early 1980s Israel was South Africa’s closest military ally and the Apartheid regime’s most important foreign arms supplier. Against whom those arms were going to be used if not the Black population of South Africa itself or in support of those opposing the national liberation movements in Southern Africa then where?

By the time the regime in South Africa had changed in the early 1990s Israel was well on the road to replacing South Africa as the world’s most blatant ‘apartheid’ regime.

What is surprising about this report is that it has taken so long to be produced and disseminated. Even the most casual observer of the situation of the Palestinians in those small parts of Palestine they are being forced to live in could have told you that decades ago.

For an online version of the report, which includes a short but concise video, click here.

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