Tag: Palestine

Palestine Protest 15th May 22

I attended a protest for Palestine on the 15th May. The day before, there was a protest in London that had been planned on the anniversary of the Nakba of 1948. I didn’t go to London but some footage can be seen here.

The protest also took place after the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

It was a pretty small protest. It was due to start at 2pm, but at this time there was hardly anyone there.

More people began to trickle in after 2pm, so the crowd became closer to 150 people.

Initially the protest was in the square proper, but it was moved to make it more visible to passers by.

There was both chants being led and some speeches. Some children (I’m guessing under the age of 10) also led chants, which I didn’t film as I don’t want to put that online (I try to avoid filming children if possible).

Footage can be found on my Youtube and Bitchute accounts.

Why The Left is ‘Obsessed’ With Palestine

Introduction

Some people in the mainstream media, as well as certain alternative right wing or right leaning outlets, accuse the left of being ‘obsessed’ with Palestine. This portrayal of ‘obsession’ implies that the focus on Israel is completely irrational. The only way that it can then be explained is to assume that those focusing on criticing Israel are in fact just anti-Semitic. This article will argue that, contrary to this stated view, anti-imperialists have entirely rational reasons to focus on Palestine.

Western Support for Israel

Many states may do things that I personally disagree with. Many countries, including those in the crosshairs of Western imperialism, have homophobic laws (such as Iran). Those who would like to criticise the anti-imperialist focus on Israel often point to such examples. Bringing up such examples is meant to ‘prove’ that anti-imperialists are hypocritical because they mainly criticise crimes in Western client states.

This argument is misguided. This is because the UK and US directly participate in Israeli crimes through funding and arming the country.

The British group Campaign Against Arms Trade contains information about the arms that the UK sells to Israel.

Since the Conservative government was elected in May 2015, the UK has licensed over £400 million worth of arms to Israeli forces, including:

£183 million worth of ML22 licences (military technology)

£104 million worth of ML10 licences (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)

£20 million worth of ML4 licences (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

£4.6 million worth of ML6 licences (Armoured vehicles, tanks)

£1.9 million worth of ML3 licences (ammunition)

£1 million worth of ML1 licences (small arms)

UK Palestine activists have recently targeted UAV Tactical systems factories, which are part owned by Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. For example, a factory in Leicester was occupied by the group Palestine Action for this reason:

Palestine Action members also “barricaded gates, destroyed property and vandalised the premises to prevent any more British-made drones being sent to commit atrocities in Gaza”, according to a statement from Palestine Action.

The same also applies to the US, which is Israel’s main backer. Reuters reported in 2016 that:

The United States will give Israel $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade, the largest such aid package in U.S. history, under a landmark agreement signed on Wednesday.

The US also sells weapons to Israel:

In addition, the United States is the largest seller of weapons to Israel, whose military arsenal now includes 362 U.S.-built F-16 warplanes and 100 other U.S. military aircraft, including a growing fleet of the new F-35s; at least 45 Apache attack helicopters; 600 M-109 howitzers and 64 M270 rocket-launchers. At this very moment [the 2021 assault on Gaza], Israel is using many of these U.S.-supplied weapons in its devastating bombardment of Gaza.

Mint Press News has also reported that US charities fund Israeli settlements. This is relevant due to the fact that tax deductions for charities in the US mean that the state subsidises this funding.

The scale of their support cannot be determined. A 2014 study of over 3,600 Jewish organizations by the Jewish Daily Forward found they sent $1.7 billion, or 11.9 percent of their budgets, to Israel each year. But like U.S. Zionism in general, organizations voluntarily funding Israel are not exclusively Jewish, nor did the Forward claim to have fully reviewed even the Jewish sector.

The US also protects Israel in the UN Security Council, vetoing resolutions that are critical of their war crimes in Palestine.

It follows that there are two reasons why it is reasonable and logical for ‘the left’ to put special emphasis on Palestine.

The first reason is the issue of moral responsibility. As the UK and US sell Israel weapons, they are responsible for how those weapons are used. The UK and US governments are not ignorant of the war crimes being committed by the Israeli apartheid regime. They know that the weapons will be used against Palestinian civilians, but they sell them the weapons anyway. This means that citizens of the US and UK have a moral obligation to put pressure on their governments to stop arming Israel.

On the other hand, focusing on criticising countries who are targets of Western imperialism – such as Iran or Cuba – is at best pointless. At least in theory, I have some influence over what the UK government does, as I am a UK citizen. I am also in a position where I can actively oppose what the UK government does by protesting against it. This is not the case for things that happen in countries like Iran, where I cannot affect the scenario in any way whatsoever, even if it is a case where I passionately disagree with what the Iranian government is doing.

Of course, there are also significant problems with believing and verifying claims made by imperialist governments against their enemies, and these claims – even if true – being used as a justification for bombing or sanctions.

Neither of these reasons have anything to do with Judaism or anti-Semitism. In fact, people making the argument ignore the heavy criticism aimed at Saudi Arabia by the same people criticising Israel. Saudi Arabia gets criticised for much the same reasons as Israel does: they are armed by western governments and use those weapons to bomb civilians, in the Saudi case, against Yemeni civilians.

[There are further reasons that Israel is focused upon as a subject for critique, notably the fact that Israel helps to further imperialist agendas in other countries such as Syria, but this will not be discussed in detail here.]

Conclusion

The narrative that anti-imperialists are ‘obsessed’ with Palestine – implied or stated to be because of some sort of animosity towards Jews – is false. In fact there are entirely rational and moral reasons why Israeli apartheid is a focus of anti-imperialist activism.

Boycott Puma Day of Action

A quick post about the Boycott Puma Day of Action that took place on the 10th of July for Palestine.

The Boycott Puma idea comes from the fact that Puma sponsors the Israeli Football Association.

As one of the world’s top athletic apparel makers and the only international sponsor of the Israel Football Association, Puma’s sponsorship brings international legitimacy to the IFA’s actions. The IFA, as documented by Human Rights Watch, includes football clubs based in illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Puma’s current and past exclusive licensees in Israel have operations in illegal Israeli settlements.

The Boycott Puma action was taking place as part of a set of actions across 8th-10th July. Yesterday there was a student protest in London, going to different universities that support Israeli apartheid.

The Boycott Puma Day of Action was taking place in many different cities around the country.

There was an action in London at the Puma store located there, but most of the other actions were outside retailers that stock Puma products such as JD Sports and Sports Direct.

The Birmingham event was outside the JD sports shop in the town centre.

JD Sports with Palestine protesters outside

The event was very small. There was a table for Birmingham Stop the War coalition and one for the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. It mainly consisted of handing out leaflets to passers by. One of the organisers did try to speak through a loudspeaker on a few occasions. Unfortunately there seemed to be problems with the microphone, as it kept cutting out. Here is some footage:

(Bitchute equivalent)

Free Palestine London 12 June 2021

I went to London to attend the Free Palestine event organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. The event started at 1 o’clock and took place outside Downing Street.

According to an announcement made by one of the organisers, there were 8,000 people at the event. This was a lot smaller than I expected given that the last London protest had around 180,000 people according to media reports. I happened to see Gordon Dimmack at the protest and he told me that the previous protest was far larger.

I arrived about 1 o’clock. I walked down Whitehall approaching Downing Street from Trafalgar Square. On the way there were a few signs of the protest including a banner from the Jewish Socialist Group and also some flags.

When I arrived there it was obvious that every left wing groupuscule was at the event. They generally had tents. The ubiquitous Socialist Workers Party, the International Bolshevik Tendency, Counterfire etc. The group The People’s Assembly were there handing out flyers – left wing Covid narrative believers overlapping with the Kill the Bill movement.

The Palestine events I have been to this year have an interesting demographic mixture. The events attracted Muslim protesters but also some people who would be considered ‘woke’: there were some people with signs like ‘Queers for Palestine’. (Of course, not all Muslims are socially conservative, but as a generalisation, in the UK they are more than average.)

Memorial to children killed by Israel

There were several different speakers, from union activists, Palestinian activists, and politicians. Both John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn were there. Here is John McDonnell speaking with some crowd footage.

(Bitchute Equivalent)

The rapper Lowkey was also at the event, which was awesome. He was at the first event that I went to in London, the Free Assange march on February 2020. He did some of the lines from his song ‘Long Live Palestine’.

(Bitchute Equivalent)

It was very hot on and off (the clouds going over reduced some of the heat). I wandered around the protest several times to the extent it was possible (bollards were put up, so later on it was difficult to get round the back). I have some footage filmed from the back of the event earlier on, of some marchers joining the main protest.

(Bitchute Equivalent)

To be honest I was hoping for more people to turn out at this event, given the size of the previous protest. The movement needs to make sure that it can maintain the momentum to pressure the government to stop selling weapons to Israel (the bare minimum demand). The truth is, it is easy to forget about Palestine because we are not facing the consequences of what is happening there. There are more organised events coming up in early July, so we need to keep up the pressure on this government:

IOn

On the plus side it does seem like more ordinary people are supporting Palestine than there have been previously. I am hoping that the smears of all Palestine activists as anti-Semitic are starting to fail, although many right-wing outlets are trying to maintain that connection. The occupying of factories producing weapons to sell to Israel is also a very positive sign that shows there are people who are willing to take risks to defend Palestine.

More footage is available on Bitchute and Youtube.

The Problem with the Anti-Woke Right: The Demonisation of Anti-Imperialism as ‘Woke’

I have spent a lot of time on this website criticising the modern left. However, I have not as yet written much specifically addressing the modern right. This article will focus on a very notable trend within the modern right, which can be referred to as the ‘anti-woke right’. The argument of this is article is that the framing of ‘woke vs. anti-woke’ cannot convincingly address the anti-imperialist left argument.  

What is the Anti-Woke Right?

The anti-woke right is a modern trend within right wing thought, that is generally more popular among younger people. It has emerged out of the internet age, with Youtube commentators among some of the ‘pioneers’ of the anti-woke right.

The anti-woke right are generally libertarian leaning on economics, but their defining feature is that they put very heavy emphasis upon issues such as cancel culture and free speech and opposing woke attempts to redefine language and reality. The anti-woke right can be religious or non-religious. In the UK, significant examples of this tendency are the media outlet Spiked and the actor Laurence Fox.

The anti-woke right generally focus their critiques on issues that make people on the left look ridiculous. In some cases, those on the anti-woke right focus on genuine cases of left wing nonsense, such as criticising gender identity ideology – the idea that men are women if they say they are women. In fact, certain right wing outlets will publish articles on this issue that the left will not touch. For example, Spiked regularly runs articles by the excellent Jo Bartosch on this issue. Anti-woke right wingers will also criticise the ‘performative gesture’. For example, kneeling for Black Lives Matter.

Imperialism & The Anti-Woke Right

The recent focus on Israel and Palestine in the media has exposed one of the main problems with the anti-woke right. While the anti-woke right seems like a popular option when presented as an alternative to ‘woke liberalism’, in fact the anti-woke right normalises imperialism by portraying those who are anti-imperialist as merely ‘woke’ rather than taking a principled stand against imperialist aggression. While there are other examples of this trend, such as the attempt to shield Winston Churchill from the (factually true) criticism that he was a racist, this article will focus on the Israel-Palestine ‘framing’.

Laurence Fox tweeted out this comment about two Leicester City footballers who held up a Palestinian flag after Leicester’s FA Cup success:

Or give the ball chasing woke babies an atlas and ask them to pinpoint Palestine on a map.

The framing is obvious: opposing Israeli apartheid is not about anti-racism or anti-imperialism, it is ‘woke’.

This article in Spiked by Brendan O’Neill is a bit more complex in its argument. It starts by saying:

It [the modern left] sees prejudice everywhere except where it actually exists. State a biological fact and they’ll brand you transphobic. Criticise the burqa and you’re an Islamophobe. Fail to take the knee to Black Lives Matter and its every potty political belief and you’ll be called racist. Wear a sombrero and you’re cancelled. But chanting death to Jews? No biggie. 

The article then discusses examples of hatred of Jews from Palestine protesters. Whether or not these are genuine examples, or whether they are agents provocateurs I am not qualified to say.

It then equates these examples to opposition to the state of Israel itself:

Meanwhile, the Hamas slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ – widely recognised as a hateful call to wipe Israel off the map – is being used more and more by the woke left.

There are several aspects of pro-imperialist framing in this sentence alone. Firstly, equating the call to free Palestine and pro-Palestinian chants with ‘Hamas’ – the boogeyman of pro-Israel right winger. It is not about the Palestinian people and their cry to be free from oppression, but ‘Hamas’. The idea of ‘wiping Israel off the map’ is framed as anti-Semitic. Of course, stating that states should not be ethno-nationalist and that this includes a Jewish state is simply being consistent in opposing apartheid. This argument also erases Jews that oppose Israel, a group which includes many Orthodox Jews as well as secular left wing Jews.

Crucially for this article, the word ‘woke’ is used to describe this slogan. How precisely it is ‘woke’ to oppose apartheid and imperialism is not explained. For example, the other examples of ‘wokeness’ quoted above are ones that many on the (actual anti imperialist) left criticise. For example, Marxism is an inherently gender critical ideology – as it bases itself on material reality (biological sex) over idealism (gender identity).

Black Lives Matter has also been heavily criticised by leftists, in particular for its funding sources. It received money from the Ford Foundation – hardly an organisation out to advocate the end of imperialism. This article discusses BLM’s relationship with the Democrats and the fact that the key founders are part of the non-profit industrial complex. This is without mentioning their support for transgender ideology.

These ‘woke’ ideas are lumped in with the completely different issue of imperialism. In truth, the promotion of transgenderism, support for Islam, and declaring that Black Lives Matter are really about ideological constructs, whereas imperialism is about material reality. This is also fundamental to the distinction between liberals (the identity politics people) and the left (focused on class & imperialism rather than abstract ‘identity’). This is a distinction the anti-woke right (deliberately or otherwise) refuse to make. These members of the anti-woke right do not distinguish between performative nonsense as promoted by woke liberals and actual anti-imperialist activism as promoted by the left.

‘Woke Imperialism’

A fundamental flaw in this position – framing resistance to imperialism as a ‘woke’ belief – is the promotion of ‘woke imperialism’ by groups such as the CIA, FBI and military. ‘Woke Imperialism’ can be defined as putting a layer of ‘diversity’ upon dropping bombs on the Middle East and promoting coups in Latin America – it’s all good so long as a black trans woman is the one pressing the button.

The CIA have recently released adverts called ‘Humans of CIA’ in which a diverse range of people extol its virtues. These adverts use woke words and ideology. For example, this advert features a Latina woman who talks about her race and sex and refers to herself using the trans ideology buzzword ‘cisgender’. Another advert features a gay man talking about rainbow lanyards.

As we can see from this example, woke ideology is entirely compatible with the values of the CIA, whereas freedom for Palestine is most certainly not. In fact, woke ideology – by putting all of the emphasis on ‘identity’ rather than oppression grounded in material reality – benefits the CIA, as it allows them to pretend to be ‘progressive’ while promoting coups.

Conclusion

Woke ideology and anti-imperialist action are two separate categories – one of which is pseudo-progressive and the other which is actually progressive. The anti-woke right conflates the two in the same category as ‘woke’, which reveals the limitations of this ideological position.

Free Palestine Birmingham (Plus a little bit of Anti-Lockdown protests)

It looks like there have been protests all over Europe in support of Palestine, from Dublin, to Amsterdam, to France. There have also been protests in the UK as well, including in London.

The actions in the UK happened to be on the same date as anti-lockdown protests. I was not aware of any organised anti-lockdown protests in Birmingham, because although the weekend of the 15th May was the regional protests as well as London, there was no Birmingham protest mentioned on the list I saw.

I went into town because I wanted to pick up some stuff, though I was on the lookout for any protest actions. At 2:30pm I started hearing a lot of noise and had a look outside, there was a reasonably large group of anti-lockdown protesters near the Waterstones bookshop.

Protesters were holding banners and signs saying ‘No More Lockdown’, signs defending children and one woman with a sign reading ‘There’s nothing more unattractive than a muzzled up obedient man’. There was also someone with one of those smiley face flags that I saw in the London protest imagery.

I assume the protest took place earlier in the day and dispersed after this because I did not see them about afterwards. I finished what I was doing in town and then decided to look around to see if there were any protest actions still going on, I started walking towards Victoria Square. I could see a large number of Palestinian flags so I moved in that direction.

As I walked towards the square, the crowd began to walk in my direction. The crowd was way larger than I expected.

Crowd of protesters leaving Victoria Square

The march route. I believe it was this. Marked on the Wikimedia commons (ancient) Birmingham City Centre map:

The crowd must have been made up of a few thousand people. This was surprising to me because when I have been to or seen Free Palestine events in the past they have been small.

It took about an hour for the crowd to get round that route and back to Victoria Square. Here are a few more photos.

Colmore Row.
Near Station entrance (old Pallisades)
Approaching Victoria Square.

The crowd reached Victoria Square and there was chanting but there wasn’t any speeches or anything like that. There is thus not much to comment on in that regard.

Here’s Victoria Square.

It was good to see such large protest events in support of Palestine around the country and the world. The size of such protests compared to in the past perhaps warrants further examination as to why but would require further research.