The ISL's Land
Day Statement
Long Live Land Day!
Long Live the Struggle of the Masses in the Middle East!
The Middle East is on fire. In every country in our
region, the masses are struggling to overthrow the tyrannical oppressive
regimes they have been suffering under for decades. In Egypt, the epicenter of
the modern day revolutionary struggle in the Middle East, the masses
have overthrown the rotten Mubarak regime, which collaborated with the Zionists
in the oppression of the Palestinians in the Gaza ghetto. In Jordan, the mass struggle
forced the king to sack his government. In Libya, the rebel army is fighting
against Qaddafi’s forces, and the imperialists are taking advantage of the
disorder in order to intervene in the struggle and subordinate it to their
interests. In Tunisia, the mass struggle forced Ben-Ali, the corrupt ally of
the Zionists, to flee the country and leave his former partners in power.
Similar struggles broke out in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco and
Algeria.
Everywhere – except in Israel. If in the 1967
territories, the demonstrations for solidarity with the protestors were
suppressed by Hamas and Fatah, in Israel demonstrations were few and small, and
participation by Jewish workers was limited to the brave few as usual. The
reason for this is the colonialist nature of the Israeli society, which holds
in its grip of death not only the Palestinians, but the Jewish working class as
well, which receives privileges from it and hence, the majority of the Jewish
workers find it extremely hard to struggle against for its overthrow.
Land Day was born as a day of
struggle against racist Zionist colonialism. Land Day is not
only a memorial for the protestors murdered in 1976 by the Zionist state as
part of Zionist colonization, but also a day of struggle against the
systematic discrimination of the Palestinian residents of Israel: against the
exploitation, poverty, inequality in services, rising unemployment and
political oppression of the Palestinian masses. It is also an expression of
continuing struggle against the occupation of 1967, and for the right of return
for the refugees expelled in 1947-8. Like Apartheid-era South Africa, the
Zionist Apartheid state stole the majority of Palestinian land. This land theft
did not start in 1967, as the Zionist and pro-Zionist left claims, since all of
Israel is built on land stolen in 1948.
The most important question in this historical moment is
how to ensure that new corrupt dictators won’t replace the old ones as the
masses continue to suffer exploitation and oppression. The answer is supplied
by Trotsky’s theory and strategy of permanent revolution. This strategy flows
from the fact that in countries that haven’t been through the
bourgeois-democratic revolution yet, the local bourgeoisie is scared of a
working class revolution, and therefore seeks to collaborate with imperialism
against the workers, peasants and poor.
But the imperialists are also afraid. Their fear of a
proletarian revolution is expressed in the increase in Israel’s “security”
budget and in the White House’s stand against revolutions, insisting on only
reforming the existing regimes at best. Therefore, the tasks of the democratic
revolution – expelling imperialism, uniting the region, the agrarian
revolution, industrialization, ensuring equality before the law – lie on the
shoulders of the working class.
The struggle of the working class in Tunisia and Egypt is
the key to the revolution in the region. But the fact that the soldiers in
these countries were on the side of the working class was key to their success.
This fraternization has a basis in reality: the bourgeois army in Egypt and
elsewhere suffers from an internal contradiction. While the simple soldiers are
sons of workers and peasants, the officer casts comes from the bourgeoisie. In
order for the revolution to be victorious, the army must be split, with the soldiers
supporting the proletarian uprising. To that end, revolutionaries must work in
the army and raise demands such as full pay, the right to organize, and the
right to elect officers, and tie these demands with the revolutionary struggle
for a workers’ state.
A victorious uprising of the working class at the head of
the masses of peasants and soldiers will lead to the crushing of the bourgeois
state apparatus and its replacement with a workers’ state apparatus. The
working class in powers will carry out the tasks of the democratic revolution
and will continue with the socialist ones, in accordance with the development
of the world revolution. The victory of this heroic struggle against the local
bourgeoisie and its imperialist masters will also lead to the victory of the
heroic Palestinian struggle, the downfall of the Zionist state and the solution
of the Palestinian national question by creating a Palestinian workers’ state
from the Jordan to the Sea, as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East.
Jewish citizens of the Palestinian workers' state will be able to live free
from any ethnic or religious discrimination.
The Palestinian people needs a revolutionary working
class leadership, as the existing Palestinian Authority leadership has proven
that it is willing to stand by Israel while it attacks the Gaza masses, and the
populist Hamas can offer no way forward as it looks for a place in the existing
imperialist order.
As a strategic step in the revolutionary struggle, the
demand for a constituent assembly is correct in both the Arab countries and in
Palestinian (where amongst its voters will be the refugees), but it cannot
replace councils of workers, peasants and soldiers, or a workers and peasants
government based on the armed working class masses.
Left-wing groups in Israel treat the mass struggle in the
region as if it expresses a change of regime alone. MAKI and Hadash only raise democratic-bourgeois slogans, and the CWI
does not raise demands clashing with the structure of capitalism like splitting
the Egyptian army along class lines. It also ignores the fact that the majority
of Israeli workers are unable to participate in the struggle due to the
colonialist nature of Israeli society. Unlike them, we say openly that the only
solution is socialist revolution.
Down with imperialism and its servants!
For a socialist federation of the Middle East
as part of a world socialist revolution!
