International Socialists

Dougal McNeill

We agree with George W. Bush about one thing: there is a “rogue state” in the Middle East. But, no, it ain’t Iraq, it’s the US’s main friend, ally, crony and bully-boy Israel. With (unacknowledged) nuclear capability, one of the largest military powers in the world and the backing of America to the tune of several billion dollars a year, Israel is wrecking the lives of millions of Palestinians. Their excuse? The “war on terror,” of course.

Ever since the September 11 attacks, Israel has used the screen of a “war on terror” to step up its own terror campaign on the Palestinians. Sharon’s government has stepped up its brutal repression of the Palestinian Intifada, vastly expanded settler programmes and carried on with its policies of land theft, military rule, apartheid and terror.

The US pretends to be concerned with “peace” in the Middle East, but this is only because they are – rightly – frightened of the mass unrest and rebellion that will sweep the region as they start a war on Iraq. The Bush administration made this connection clear last year by sending Special Envoy Anthony Zinni to try to restart peace talks in Israel at the same time that Vice- President Dick Cheney was touring the Middle East lining up support for war against Iraq.

We cannot afford to have illusions in any “peace talks” where Israel or the US are involved. Time and time again – whether at the “Palestinian Versailles” of Oslo or any other deal – negotiations have been used to steal more and more from the Palestinian people. The Israelis used the 1993-2000 period of the Oslo accords to carve up the West Bank and Gaza with Jewish-only settlements, military checkpoints and Jewish-only bypass roads. The Palestinian economy has been strangled, with the majority now living in poverty. The bloodthirsty, racist scum of the Israeli establishment are interested only in one thing: expanding their power and control of the region. Any peace deal is just another strategy for weakening Palestinian resistance and defiance. The message of Israel’s massacre in Jenin last year: resist and Israel will crush you with all the bloody means at its disposal.

But this isn’t just a tale of defeat and oppression. For over two years now the Palestinians have waged a heroic struggle – the Infitifada – against Israeli aggression and for their rights. Where the Israelis have used US fighter planes and automatic guns, the Palestinians have fought back with sticks and stones.

Their struggle is justified. Its opponents focus on the tactic of suicide bombing as a way of dehumanising the Palestinians – “they don’t care about human life, not even their own.” But why are suicide bombings worse than blowing up Palestinians with US made missiles and bombs?

You don’t need to support suicide bombing to make a distinction between the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed. If Israel, set up on the military dispossession of the Palestinians in 1947-8, continues to kill and maintain that dispossession, the Palestinians have a right to use violence in their defence. As socialists, we support their struggle.

If the anti-war movement in Aotearoa is to grow, it must make the struggle for Palestinian freedom a central part of its demands. It’s not enough to talk about “peace” – we need to say what sort of peace and what sort of justice we’re struggling for. US imperialism is a menace to Iraq, the Palestinians and all the workers of the world. Backing Israel with guns and starving Iraq with sanctions and bombs are part of the same grand strategy to assert US control over a strategic part of the world (and its oil and geopolitical interests).

Of course our own government, with Helen Clark’s cowardly and self-serving fake fence-sitting over Iraq, occasionally mumbles polite nothings about Israel but will never take a principled stand against US/Israeli terror for fear of losing free-trade deals with Washington.

In news footage of international protests against the war it is common to see the Palestinian flag flying. Peace, democracy and justice in the Middle East are essential for world peace: the fight against war in Iraq is the same fight as the struggle for Palestine. As socialists, we have no faith in war criminal Ariel Sharon, the Bush regime or any other imperialist power to bring peace. As we build the protests against Iraq we also chant “Victory to the Intifada!”