Palestine and the Blogosphere

I’ve been following the latest in Gaza for a couple of days now. It is truly disgusting and quite enraging. Similarly enraging though is the state of the media covering the situation, though it should come as no surprise.

The mainstream media seem to put far greater emphasis on the couple of Israeli casualties and the more than one hundred Palestinians killed are demoted to a mere footnote.

Also, they are in complete cohesion with the lie created by the U.S. that Fatah is the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas won the election democratically in 2006, but you can only have democracy in the Middle East if you vote the way the United States wants you to. So, Fatah, backed by the U.S., attempted a coup of Gaza and Hamas drove them out. The media portrays this as Hamas taking over Gaza from the Fatah government. It’s a blatant lie used to cover up the fact the vast majority of Palestinians support Hamas, an organisation commited to resisting Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

It is a shame that in the absence of truthful media coverage, the alternative is far too weak to make an impact. Bloggers within Palestine and Palestinian bloggers abroad are providing some decent coverage of the current situation as well as in the past. One highlight is of course, Electronic Intifada, though I am on the hunt for more.

During the Lebanon war, in Australia, tens of thousands of Muslims and Arabs came out in mass protests against the war and while inspiring, the link missing was the notable absence of non-Arab and Muslim people opposed to the war. It was unfortunetely seen as “their issue” and seen to not affect Australians. Of course, with aid going to Israel and funding being dedicated to defence more and more, it clearly was a world issue. But please point out to me if I’ve missed a chunk of the non-Arab Blogosphere, but there is a notable absence of left-wing commentary on the situation in Gaza.

Whilst I disagree with the notion that the role of socialists is to educate people, and indeed blogging is not the best place to do it, but I feel the trend within the Blogosphere over the last couple of days reflects some real life political problems with the Left and the situation in Palestine needs to be put in the centre of our minds at the moment.

Linking online war to real war

For me, blogging and getting interested in politics came about the same time. My ideas and outrage at the way the world was going seemed to find an outlet in a blog that was originally meant to be a news source for my writer’s website. And as such, I have a soft spot for online activism.

The Internet is a rapidly growing medium and the media is seeing a shift in the way we read news. Slowly, the profit-hungry media corporations are losing a grip on the monopoly of news and knowledge that they hold so important to keeping the political current flowing in their direction. Blogs and independent online journalists seem to be gaining a hearing amongst those looking for alternative sources of news and increasingly, online gaming has even been tapped into by a dedicated band of activists looking to get their message heard.

One such activist is Joseph DeLappe, who has intervened into a multiplayer military simulator, America’s Army with the pseudonym ‘dead-in-iraq.’ America’s Army is an online multiplayer game funded by the U.S. Pentagon with the aim of recruiting gamers into the army to fight a war DeLappe is against.

As soon as he enters the game, he enters a command to drop his weapon and as an allusion to the cannon fodder that civilians are turned into in Iraq, he offers himself to be killed with no means of defence. Then, as the session continues, he begins to type names of the 3,500 American soldiers that have been killed in Iraq since Bush invaded on the basis of lies. He has taken screen shots and posted them to his website to record his protest.

The unique intervention manages to piss off a lot of right-wing gamers as they’re confronted with the names of people who’ve been economically drafted to die for their fucked cause. But it also confronts those who’ve been sucked into the idea that this is all just a game and sucked into going into the real deal, killing real people and risking their real life.

It’s the ability of reaching people online and making a connection to the real world that makes DeLappe’s intervention so powerful. Also, for other anti-war activists and those against the war, it’s inspiring to hear that activism can find outlets in so many creative ways and that it might inspire others to get active.

Blog Against War and Racism

It’s clear that the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the racism that surrounds it, are key issues at the moment. The majority of people in most countries, including Australia, the United States and Britain oppose the war in Iraq. The FLBU is calling on all bloggers to express this opposition by posting a picture of you holding a placard/sign expressing your opposition on your blog. Trackbacks should picked up your post but just to be sure, email me – benjamin [at] benjaminsolah [dot] com – your link and I’ll add it to a list at the bottom of this post. Include the details of your local anti-war or anti-racism rally and encourage others to take a stand against the war.

Rally details can be found at the following websites:
United States: A.N.S.W.E.R.
United Kingdom: Stop the War Coalition
Australia: Stop the War Coalition – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane

Join the bloggers who have already taken a stand against war and racism!
Benjamin Solah – Sydney, Australia

Stop the war

Far-Left linkage: Bloggers speak out against the war

It’s been four years since the invasion of Iraq and to mark this horrendous anniversary, there’s been rallies in major cities around the world this weekend. Of course, bloggers were there and catching the events on film. So, as part of the first ‘Far-Left linkage,’ I’ve got a selection of posts of the demonstrations from around the world.

In Sydney, a few hundred converged on Town Hall to call for the troops out as well as the release of David Hicks, an Australian locked up in Guantanamo Bay.

Washington DC played host to thousands of Christians holding a candlelight vigil outside of the White House to express their opposition to a war that was justified by Christian rhetoric.

Albuquerque was full of powerful and creative placards as around 1,000 people turned out to oppose the war.

Tens of thousands of protesters, including Cindy Sheehan turned out at the Pentagon to oppose the war.

Thousands marched in Los Angeles to compliment the rallies in other parts of the States.

Admin note: If any blogger out there has a post about the protests this weekend, let me know and I’ll see if I can add you to the links. I’ll be making this feature more regular in order to publicize the Far-Left’s presence in the Blogosphere, and also, Bloggers presence amongst the Far-Left.

Distinguishing the various Left positions on the current conflict.

Israelis clash with Hezbollah guerrillas – Yahoo! News

As the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate and continues to mount casualties, it is important for Marxists to disguish themselves from other Left positions on the Palestinian struggle. Not doing so can result in confusion because make no mistake, opinions are divided and rather radically. I will try to explain three main positions – from a Marxist perspective, of course.

The Marxist position on Israel and Palestine has been quite clear from the creation of the Zionist state following the end of the second world war. The state of Israel does not have the right to exist. The state was founded on the dispossesion of Palestinians, the creation of an ethnically pure state and the backing and support from Western imperialist countries.

Marxists around the world, including many Jews, call for a one-state solution. The dismantling of the Israeli state in favour of a secular state where Jews and Arabs can live together, as they have done for hundreds of years before Israel existed. Under the current capitalist climate, this solution is very hard to acheive, and it is why the liberation of Palestinians can only be acheived through the creation of Socialism – in an international sense, and not the Stalinist distortion.

Another position among the Left, and probably the most popular, is the reformist, two-state solution. Let me make this clear, this is in no way, a solution. The source of the conflict comes from the Israeli state, and as long as it exists, there will be conflict. Even with the success of a cease-fire in the near future, there can be no long term solution via this position. There is also no redeamable solution in the incursion of UN troops. The UN, a farce in itself, has major influence from the U.S. and other major powers. These powers all see an advantage in having a watchdog, such as Israel in the Middle-East.

The final major position from the Left is an utterly insane one, and one that needs to be debunked and it is often confused with the Marxist position. This is the anti-semitist position. These are people who claim to be Left-wing. These racists are parties to more of the conspiracy theory, rather than a postion. They claim that Jews control the World Bank and various corporations. This nut job theory is actually not Left-wing at all. In fact, it is more suited the Nazis and fascists, and yet, many in the Left subscribe to this insane position, and it needs to be attacked with full-force.

This issue, and the various positions surrounding it, are complex and confusing. We cannot predict where this situation will go, and when it will come to end. We will keep you posted.

Egypt: neither Mubarak nor the Muslim Brotherhood

Egypt is – second only to Iraq – the country where many current theoretical debates in the anglophone blogosphere play out in real life, with real consequences for tens of millions of real people.

It’s also a country I can claim to know, at least a little, having visited it a couple of times on journalistic assignment.

Tonight we read that at least 22 people have died, with perhaps 150 injured, in a triple bomb attack in the resort town of Dahab. Although no group had claimed responsibility at the time of writing, the operation bears the familiar hallmarks of al Qa’eda inspiration.

One section of the far left – the one that sells papers uncritically hailing this brand of terrorism as ‘the new anti-imperialist ideology‘ – will strike its usual posture of ‘refusing to condemn’ the atrocity, just as they refused to condemn 9/11.

Meanwhile, foreign policy realists will stress the need for continued support of the de facto dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. The US already does that big time. Egypt receives $2bn a year of American economic and military aid, more than anybody else save Israel.

Mubarak goes through the motions of holding elections, of course, albeit elections subject to ballot-rigging, intimidation, censorship and violence. Then he goes and jails the main opposition presidential candidate, simply for calling Mubarak a ‘loser’ at a campaign rally.

So much for US claims consistently to be promoting democracy in the Middle East. The hypocrisy of Washington’s stance will be more than apparent to most politically-aware Arabs.

Surely the answer must be a free and fair vote, then? But there’s a little snag here. There is little doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood would walk any properly democratic contest. And as the electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine underlines, many democrats don’t like it when democracy produces the wrong results.

Will either the neoconservatives or the Euston Manifesto group have the courage of their convictions, and advocate putting their theoretical prescription to the test if the inevitable outcome is an anti-Israel Islamist regime in Cairo? We shall see.

And even if the likes of Ayman Nour could be built up into a serious contender, he would simply prove another corrupt third world bourgeois politician, interested chiefly in implementing neoliberal policies so long as they do not contradict the real imperative of lining the pockets of his family and associates.

The only consistent leftwing policy is to support the stuggles of Egyptian socialists as they seek to build themselves within the working class. I know of small groups bravely attempting to do just that, often in conditions of clandestinity and repression. Sadly, the dominant politics of the British left – in either SWP or Euston Manifesto variants – will be of no assistance to them whatsoever.