A GLIMPSE AT PALESTINE

Proletarians of all countries, unite!

“After World War II, U.S. and British imperialism used Zionism as a tool of Expansion in the Middle East. In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly, manipulated by the United States, adopted a resolution to set up an Arab state and a Jewish state in Palestine. Israel was formally created in the following year. More than one million Arabs were driven out of their homes. From then on the United States has used Israel ceaselessly to carry out aggression against and threaten the Arab countries.”

“Facts on File: The United Nations – Tool of U.S. Imperialist Aggression”, Peking Review, No. 3, January 15th 1965

The reactionary Israeli armed forces carried out a “pre-emptive” series of air strikes onto Gaza in early August, claiming to stop a retaliation attack, an “immediate threat” after the arrest of an Islamic Jihad commander. At least 49 people, among them 17 children, have reported to be dead, after the Israeli armed forces targeted apartment buildings, streets and a mosque, full of people, children, elderly, going about their day. Shortly before the attack, Israel cut the transportation of fuel into Gaza, causing long power outages and endangering the functioning of hospitals, a truly genocidal act. Once again, the people in Gaza are left with their homes and livelihoods in ruins, with the reactionary state of Israel carrying out anti-people attacks to “defend” itself, attacks, that go against the international laws of the bourgeoisie itself, to quench the blood-thirst of Yankee imperialism, who is crying crocodile tears for peace and democracy while soaked in the blood of the oppressed nations. Due to these latest cowardly assaults by the reactionary Israeli armed forces we will hereby present some initial analysis of the situation.

The world has been witness to a resurgence in turbulence in Palestine, which is only the latest sequence of events in what has been decades of agonizing occupation and genocide against the Palestinian people. To have a correct position on the question, we must base ourselves on the scientific ideology of the proletariat, almighty because it is true: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism. By reaffirming the law of contradiction as the only fundamental law of all things, we see that in order to truly understand the question of Palestine, it is also necessary to understand the other side of the contradiction, that is Israel. Therefore, we intend with this article to provide some insight into certain aspects of the character of Israel.

Israel is a relatively young state (it’s foundation was declared in 1948) and so it was founded in the age of imperialism, an age in which the bourgeoisie as a class no longer is a progressive force, but a retrogressive one. Moreover, we reaffirm that imperialism is rotten to it’s core and today it is in an advanced stage of decomposition, in its final crisis. Due to the nature of imperialism and subsequently it’s own character, which it has proven to universal history, the bourgeoisie is no longer capable of waging, leading, and completing the bourgeois democratic revolution, and so – in the countries where it did not take place, where it has not been completed – the task and duty has fallen upon the proletariat as the leading force with the peasantry as the base, to carry out the democratic revolution of a new type; the revolution of New Democracy. This, uninterruptedly succeeded by the Socialist Revolution, followed by Cultural Revolutions, all the way with People’s War until Communism.

In their spheres of influence, their colonies and semi-colonies, the imperialist states prey on relations stemming from backward modes of production (the delayed capitalism and feudalism that existed in those countries), and on this basis develops a particular backward kind of capitalism: bureaucratic capitalism – dependent and subordinated to foreign imperialist capital. Marxism teaches us that upon the economic base arises the superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, systems of government, laws, etc. In conjuncture with the thesis of Chairman Mao of bureaucratic capitalism, we understand that the semi-feudality of big-landlord-bureaucrat states and it’s correlating incompletion of the democratic revolution comes to expression in the superstructure in a myriad of different ways. The most striking of which in the case of Israel is: a lack of constitutionality (i.e. the absence of a constitution), an absence of multiple basic demo-liberal rights, as well as an incomplete or improper tripartition and balance of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the state.

The creation of a constitution is a task uncompleted, or “postponed”, since 1950 – that is, for over 70 years. Israel has passed what it calls a set of “basic laws”, but these are merely a hollow substitute. In these “basic laws”, several basic demo-liberal rights are absent, namely: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Religion, and Freedom of Press. Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Speech are recognized by the Supreme Court, but regardless – all of these share a common problem. They are not of the same quality as that of demo-liberal constitutionalised rights, as they are subject to change or abolition within the framework of judiciality, i.e. without extra-judicial measures. This lack in the realm of basic, cardinal bourgeois-democratic rights and freedoms is also characteristic of corporativism. Chairman Gonzalo explains: “We understand corporativism as the setting up of the state based on corporations, which implies the negation of parliamentarism.”ⁱ These corporations are in a sense feudalistic, or feudal-like; they are reminiscence of, or de facto modelled after the feudal guilds. Depending on the general qualitative degree of corporativism, this can also be indicative of fascism (together with a fascist political direction). Alike is the Histadrut, officially titled “General Organization of Workers in Israel” presenting itself as the national federation of trade unions in word. Pinhas Lavon, General Secretary of Histadrut back in the days, defined Histadrut: “Our Histadrut is a general organization to its core. It is not a workers’ trade union”ⁱⁱ As a corporation it used to have a greater, more fundamental role in the organization of Israeli society, in coordination with the state – at its height it encompassed 75-85% of the workforce. Essentially all the major legal trade unions are still subordinated to the Histadrut.

Israel has two coexisting legal systems; civil courts and religious courts. The rabbinic courts has exclusive jurisdiction over matters of marriage and divorce of those recognized as Jewish, and through this role the patriarchal rabbinate pertains the character of state agency. In the rabbinic courts, the cases are in addition to civil law also subjected to ‘Halakha’ (Jewish religious law). Additionally, there is a prevalence of ‘Shidduch’ among an unknown portion of Israeli society (particularly among, but likely not limited to, the orthodox). Shidduch is a system of matchmaking, in which a religious matchmaker inquires about status and religious aspects of two potential partners, consults parents, and sets up a handful of meetings as part of a process of (at least on paper) voluntary arranged marriage.

The economy of Israel is characteristic of that of a semi-colony, of a bureaucrat capitalist economy. This is evident in multiple ways, but one can get an impression of this fact even by a simple glimpse at bourgeois statistics. The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow of Israel is more than double that of the outflow, meaning, the investment by foreign capital in Israel is more than double that of investment by Israeli capital (that is bureaucratic, meaning created by foreign imperialist capital) in other countries. In 2019, the FDI outflow was $8.5 billion, while the FDI inflow was $18 billion. The principal so-called export and import partner of Israel is Yankee imperialism (26% of exports, 12% of imports) followed by Chinese social-imperialism (9% of exports, 11% of imports).

The readily available bourgeois statistics already indicates this fact, but when we look deeper, it becomes solidly clear that the economy of Israel is heavily dependent on Yankee imperialism, today the world’s sole hegemonic superpower. Of the five major banks in the country, one has a significant presence of Yankee capital among its shareholders, while the two of the others are outright dominated or controlled by Yankee capitalⁱⁱⁱ The presence of Yankee capital is however not limited to banking. The largest company in the country is Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which is a subsidiary of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The third largest is the Yankee company Intel. In fact, of all the countries in the Western Asia and Northern Africa, Israel has the largest presence of Yankee capital, and moreover, no other country in the region comes close^iv. Some of the richest citizens in Israel are in fact Yankee monopolists, which is not surprising given that Israel is one of the world’s “most generous tax havens” – the words of Israel Tax Authority Director General Moshe Asher.^v

Until 1979, Yankee imperialism employed the Commodity Import Program (CIP) on Israel, a program that funds the purchase of U.S. commodities – ensuring further dependency. In 1979, the CIP was replaced by a direct cash transfer in return for the establishment of the Israeli “Agency for International Development” with the guarantee “that the dollar level of Israel’s non-defense imports from the U.S. would exceed the level of economic assistance granted Israel in any given year.”^vi Moreover, Israel is in fact the world’s largest recipient of Yankee “grant funding” since World War II. In the period from 1948 until 2019, the state of Israel was propped up by a staggering $243.9 billion by Yankee imperialism.

Today, Yankee imperialism funnels to Israel $3.8 billion in military funding annually. On top of that, Yankee imperialism provides additional funding on request, like an additional $1 billion over the span of three years for Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defence system^vii. This way, Yankee imperialism maintains the military capability of Israel as a bastion of Yankee military presence in the “Middle East”, and ensures that its lackey is sufficiently capable of running it’s military errands in the region. Israel is of vital importance strategically for Yankee imperialism, which plays the role of the counter-revolutionary world gendarme. As it is written in the article “China Backs Arab People’s Just Struggle” in the Peking Review, of March 19^th, 1965: “Israel is a tool of aggression created by U.S. imperialism and a dagger pointed at the heart of the Arab world.“

In Israel the Yankees has an early missile warning radar station on Mt. Keren, known as the Diamona Radar Facility^viii. In 2017, the Yankees established their first public permanent military base in Israel – an air defence base inside the Israeli Air Force’s Mashabim Air Base west of the towns Dimona and Yerucham^ix. Additionally, the Yankees allegedly has six or more secret military bases throughout Israel, including one at Ben Gurion Airport and another at Herzliya Pituh^x. The exact location of these bases, five of them being called Sites 51, 53, 54, 55 and 56, are however strictly classified and are de jure secret. In these bases, the Yankees allegedly has ‘prepositioned’ vehicles, military equipment, a military hospital, air force fighters and bomber aircrafts, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ammunition^xi.

The Israeli port of Haifa is the main port of call in the eastern Mediterranean for the Yankee Sixth Fleet, and moreover, Israel provides logistical and maintenance support for Yankee forces in the region^xii. U.S. Senator Jesse Helms rightly called Israel “America’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East”, and said that the strategic military foothold they have in Israel alone justifies the annual military aid of the Yankees^xiii. Additionally, it obvious but important to note nonetheless, that Israel is far from the only country with Yankee military facilities in region, as there are others at least in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the Gulf States.

It is noteworthy that the Zionist agencies are all over the world used to train and assist the anti-people regimes in what kind of repressive measures or white terror could be applied and how to conduct it. Here we just mentioned the case of Peru.

There is one more imperialist, the FRG, that has to be handled in this context. It has been and still plays a decisive role. This has been denounced by the Peking Review:

“Bonn’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with Israel is not only a question of enabling West Germany to claim to be “the sole representative of the German people”, as the Bonn authorities and the U.S. Government allege. It is a serious move by U.S. imperialism in intensifying its aggression against the Arab countries.

[…]

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk recently admitted that “we [the U.S.] have a very important interest in the security of Israel.” For this reason, the United States has always strongly fostered Israel politically, economically and militarily. West Germany is providing Israel with arms and munitions at U.S. bidding. As the U.S. paper Christian Science Monitor reported. U.S. “pressure” was the “determining factor” in the West German decision.

[…]

In supporting West Germany’s further collusion with Israel, the United States wants to openly step up arming Israel by means of West Germany and set up a triple force of aggression consisting of U.S. imperialism, German militarism and Zionism, thus posing a great threat to the independence and security of the Arab states.”^xiv

To conclude, it is evident that Israel is a semi-colony principally dominated by Yankee imperialism. It is especially dependent on Yankee imperialism and in it’s sly designs as the worlds sole hegemonic imperialist superpower and as the world counter-revolutionary gendarme, it serves a special role. Subsequently, the Palestinian territories subject to Israeli occupation are therefore areas subordinated to Yankee imperialism. The masses in Palestine and Israel are oppressed by imperialism, feudality, and bureaucratic capitalism, and the Arab population is faced with the Zionist genocide for ¾ of a century.

The settlers-character of Israel and that the population of European origin therefore live under very different circumstances than the Arabs do creates a big unevenness. This division of the popular masses is very important.

Palestine faces oppression for centuries. Since the early new ages until the first quarter of the last century Palestine was subjugated to the reign of the Ottoman Empire. British imperialism became greedy and in the First World War local Jews were therefore enlisted in the British army, the Zion Mule Corps was established in 1915 and they made the Balfour Declaration in 1917, in which the British government announced support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, thereby prompting a wave of Jews to join the imperialist war on the side of the British, and the formation of the Jewish Legion in the British army. The British and French after the war colluded and divided the region among themselves, with the British subjecting Palestine under their colonial control as “Mandatory Palestine”. British imperialists establishing the “Jewish Auxiliary Police”, the “Jewish Settlement Police” and the “Special Night Squads” at the dawn of what is known as “The Great Revolt” (1936-1939), in which the Arabs of Palestine rose against British Imperialism. The British colonial authority, true to their nature, brutally suppressed the uprising and killed uncounted. By one estimate, 10% of the adult male Palestinian Arab population between 20 and 60 was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled. David Ben-Gurion expressed the relationship between the British and the Zionist settlers: “For political reasons we should not act like the Arabs … The Arabs are fighting England, and their political interest is to fight England because they want to banish it from the land they believe belongs to them. We do not wish to banish England, on the contrary, we want to get it closer to this land, attract it, make it purchase this land and help us return to the Land of Israel.” The Palestine Communist Party, Section of the Communist International, correctly characterized Zionism as “a movement of the Jewish bourgeoisie allied to British imperialism”. Second World War led to the end of the British empire and the Yankees becoming the sole hegemonic superpower. In this sense the British imperialists announced their intention of withdrawal from Palestine in February 1947. In May, a special session was held in the UN on the question of Palestine and the dissolution of the British Mandate for Palestine. The representative of the Soviet Union stated clearly: “interests of both the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine can be duly safeguarded only through the establishment of an independent, dual, democratic, homogeneous Arab-Jewish State.” and agreed upon “the partition of Palestine into two independent autonomous States” only under specific conditions. Anyway the Soviet Union was the first to – de jure – actually recognize the State of Israel, three days after its independence. This has to do with different aspects. One is the feudal Arab clan society on the one hand and on the other hand quite a number of progressive Jews living in Palestine who participated in the Spanish Civil War and in the Second World War. Another point is the international situation, handling what has been the anti-fascist world front in a way to avoid the isolation of the Soviet Union after the war, not allowing an atmosphere that enables the imperialists to attack and explicitly it was clear to each and everyone that state-policies of the Soviet Union was not binding for the Communist Parties.

The Palestinian people struggles. Across the world, particularly in the oppressed nations, few other words harbour such firm and strong connotations to rebellion in the face of injustice and oppression as the word Palestine. Through decades of occupation, the Palestinian people has persisted despite intolerable conditions, and through great uprisings, intifadas, demonstrated their courageous and rebellious spirit, and moreover, permanently made their mark in history and in the minds of people all over the world as a people who refuses to be broken. That the Palestinian people are subjugated to the most cruel and unscrupulous occupation and genocide at the hands of the State of Israel, and that the struggle of the Palestinian people is a just one, so much is obvious.

Likewise obvious is the total lack of a correct leadership but traitors everywhere at hand. For example in late 2001 the Palestinian Authority (PA), not as an exception but as a lackey regime of imperialism, had arrested over 60 PFLP-members across the West Bank, including the new alleged leader of the PFLP (after the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa), Ahmad Sadaat. On may 1^st 2002, President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, made an agreement with Israel to hand over Sadaat and five other imprisoned PFLP-members.^xv But still the PFLP did not broke up completely with the “Palestinian Liberation Organisation” (PLO) or the PA. In general the comrades who are in favour of the PFLP shall be aware of that they developed as an appendix of the social-imperialist Soviet Union and how these sinister revisionists acted:

“[…] in October 1973 when the Arab people broke through the state of “no war, no peace” imposed upon them by the two superpowers and rose in resistance to the Israeli aggressors, the Soviet revisionists not only refused to supply the Arab nations with munitions, but also gave the green light to the Jews who wanted to ·emigrate from the Soviet Union, with the result that the immigration of Soviet Jews into Israel reached an all-time high. Many were recruited into the aggressor army as soon as they set foot on Israeli soμ. The Israeli aggressors were deeply gratified by this generous aid from the Soviet revisionists and praised it profusely. After the October War, a large number of third world countries broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and pledged support for the Arab people’s just struggle. The Israeli aggressors found themselves in -dire straits and in a worse state of isolation than ever. Just at that time. The Soviet revisionists increased their contacts with the Israelis, both secret and open, which culminated in face-to-face talks between the Soviet and Israeli foreign ministers.”^xvi

Yasser Arafat, as opposed to promoting resistance, signed the Oslo peace accords, negotiated by the Yankee and Norwegian imperialists. In return, Norwegian imperialism awarded him the “Nobel Peace Prize” in 1994 for his treason.

Just last year, the PA arrested multiple people for participation in protests against the eviction of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza^xvii.

Although Hamas likes to portray itself as more militant in its resistance to Israel, it too is treacherous and opposed to the struggle of the masses. It reaffirmed its true character very clearly in 2019 as it enacted harsh repression, arrest and torture against the masses as they protested against the economic situation and the living conditions.^xviii Even more so when we see their disengagement against the recent slaughters, where they cowardly denied to participate in the resistance.

The struggle of the masses, in the absence of genuine communist leadership, is and will be fought under reactionary banners, like we have seen Afghanistan, in Western Asia and in Africa, and like we have seen in Palestine, and like we see today. Just recently, on the 27^th of March, two shooters presented as having allegiance to the “Islamic State” attacked Israeli police in the city of Hadera, North of Tel Aviv, killing two and injuring six.

Some comrades use terms like ‘the Palestinian people is resisting tanks with stones’ and sure there is this kind of resistance, but these comrades forget about the much more advanced kind of armed actions, like suicide-bombings, mortar-attacks, missiles – handmade or “scud” – that passes the “iron dome”, as well as stabbings or shootings as mentioned above. What they unintentionally do is to negate in a way the all-round military resistance that exists, this underestimation is expression of a chauvinist attitude that is broadly spread in the imperialist countries.

That the masses who clamour for leadership and struggle turn to the “Islamic State” or similar organisations does not come as a surprise, given the treacherous nature of the Fatah, Hamas and the whole participants in the “PLO”, but more importantly, the absence of communist leadership, explicitly neither the PFLP nor the DFLP is a force that could be acknowledged as such. Although the combativeness of the masses is subject to ebbs and flows influenced by a multiple factors, the fact that they will struggle is an irresistible historical law. The persistency in their struggle, and the degree in which their struggle is able to attain and achieve emancipation, depends on our presence and leadership. We see that the masses clamour for it and the ICM has to answer that cry.

This calls for and reaffirms the urgent necessity of constituting or reconstituting the Palestine Communist Party as a militarized Marxist-Leninist-Maoist communist party, because only such a party, armed with – and applying – the almighty ideology of proletariat, has the competency required to be able to lead the class and the masses to victory in the new-democratic revolution in Palestine and thereby fulfil the formation of the nation by overcoming the absurd and unbearable situation of the existence of two states or state-like entities, Israel and the PA-territories. The specific analysis of their society and the definition of the specific road the people’s war has to undergo are tasks that must be left to the communists of Palestine to fulfil.

iPCP, “Interview with Chairman Gonzalo”, 1988

ii“Moed, published by the Department of Culture and Education of the Histadrut (in Hebrew), 1960, p.3” as cited from “The Histadrut: Union and Boss” by Haim Hanegbi, 10/02/72

iiiIn chronological order: 1. Bank Hapoalim (Significant presence of Yankee capital), 2. Bank Leumi (In 2005, Yankee “Barnea Investments” secured the controlling majority) 3. Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, 4. Israel Discount Bank (In 2006 after the Bank was privatized, Yankee “The Bronfman-Schron group” acquired 26% of the shares. Additionally, the largest shipment of supplies to the bank is from the US.), 5. First International Bank of Israel

ivBureau of Economic Analysis / U.S. Department of Commerce

vThe Times of Israel: “Israel is ‘one of the world’s most generous tax havens,’ complains tax chief”, 06/03/2018

viJewish Virtual Library: “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: History & Overview”

viiCongressional Research Service: “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel”, Updated February 18^th 2022

viiiTime Magazine: “How a U.S. Radar Station in the Negev Affects a Potential Israel-Iran Clash”, 30.05.12.

ixThe Times of Israel: “In first, US establishes permanent military base in Israel”, 18.08.17

xArutz7 News: “Top Secret American Military Installations In Israel”, 28.01.04

xiIbid.

xiiUnited States: External Affairs”, in Jane’s Sentinel: North America 2007. Jane’s Information Group, 2007.

xiiiArutz7 News

xiv“China Backs Arab People’s Just Struggle”, Peking Review, No. 12, March 19th 1965

xvInstitute for Palestine Studies: “Interview with Ahmad Saadat: Leading from Prison, Ending Negotiations, and Rebuilding the Resistance”

xvi“What Is Behind Increasing Soviet-Israeli Collusion?”, Peking Review, No. 44 October 31th 1975

xviiMiddle East Eye: “In wake of Gaza conflict, Palestinian Authority cracks down on West Bank activists”

xviiiCNN: “Hamas accused of violent crackdown on Gaza protests”, 19.03.19