27-05-2024: On the 18th of May in Melbourne, organisers of Never Again Is Now (NAIN) held a pro-Israel “Stop the Hate” rally outside the state parliament house. NAIN claim to be a grassroots Christian movement organising against anti-Semitism following the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7 last year. Around 6000 people gathered, but they were confronted by around 1000 pro-Palestine supporters, some of whom attempted to prevent people from attending the “Stop the Hate” action. Six pro-Palestine demonstrators were arrested. Free Palestine Melbourne took part in the counter-rally but urged its supporters to “avoid the Zionists possible attempt to provoke violent confrontation”.[1] In reality, it was the pro-Palestine supporters who were the ones likely to engage in confrontations as they shouted insults at attendees arriving for the pro-Israel action. State Liberal MP (member of parliament) David Southwick attended the pro-Israel rally, and a video message from federal Liberal Party opposition leader Peter Dutton was played to the crowd.[2]
NAIN
NAIN claim to be a grassroots Christian movement which stands for social cohesion and against anti-Semitism. NAIN organisations appear to have stemmed from the Never Again is Now documentary from the US,[3] about the supposed rise of anti-Semitism and the need to “never again” experience the horrors of Nazi exterminations of Jewish people. The claim for the Australian NAIN organisation to be a “grassroots” movement is dubious, given that some of the organisations endorsing NAIN would have some substantial money behind them. They include Labor Friends of Israel, Liberal Friends of Israel, Evangelical Zionism, Christians for Israel and Indigenous Friends of Israel.[4] NAIN claim that students and staff are not safe on University campuses, who have to come into contact with pro-Palestine encampments which have sprung into existence following the lead of US college students. This is a vague claim, but there is no doubt that supporters of Israel may feel uncomfortable walking around campus, and that others may be obstructed from their usual studies.
In response to the student occupations on University campuses around Australia, as well as the now 7 months of pro-Palestine demonstrations, NAIN are planning more “Stop the Hate, Mate” rallies in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth. NAIN claim that the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a death chant, and the call by the pro-Palestine crowd to “globalise intifada” is a call for a violent uprising. They also claim that the flags of ISIS are being flown at the University encampments.[5] The irony is that many of the so-called left parties who are today part of the pro-Palestine actions gave de-facto support to ISIS for ten years during a US imperialist led regime change war on Syria, and that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) were on the same side – along with Hamas. So while the pro-Zionist organisations stridently oppose what they assume are far left organisations, both the “left” and the pro-Israeli advocates join hands when it comes to Western imperialist led regime change war against the Syrian Arab Republic.
Peaceful protests?
Syria is not the only issue which causes the pro-Israeli Zionists to link arms with their supposed far left adversaries. Both the “left” and the pro-Zionists are at one when it comes to US sponsored regime change war on the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, the “Stop the Hate” rally in Melbourne attracted a contingent of people waving the pre-1979 flag of the Iranian monarchy.[6] Despite their apparently opposite ideologies, the faux left and the conservative right march together to wage war on Tehran. The “Stop the Hate” rally was also infused with Australian flags and heavy doses of nationalism. Along with backing from the Liberal Party and media outlets such as Sky News, the overall politics built were conservative and pro-capitalist. Despite this, these actions did make the valid point that the “left” have been sowing hatred and division in the community for the last seven months. In large part, the pro-Palestine actions have fuelled enmity and animosity and have driven apart sections of society.
The purported left led pro-Palestine demonstrations since October 7 have remained silent about, or have even justified, the appalling terrorist murder of Israeli citizens on that day. Out of empty liberal solidarity, which does not question the leadership of any national movement, Hamas has been excused. Yes, it is the case that the IDF, with the backing of imperialism, has committed limitless crimes against Palestinian people for the last 76 years. Also, it is the case that the Israeli state has committed a genocide against Palestinians since October 7, as evidenced by the South African governments’ case in the International Court of Justice.[7] Yet one could argue that the “left” are calling for another genocide of Israelis in response. After all, the United Nations (UN) definition of genocide does explicitly state that a genocide means any acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.[8] One could make the case that the unhinged Hamas cutthroats did just this on October 7, even though its victims numbered “only” 1200.[9]
The fact that the so-called left mobilised a counter-demonstration against a rally calling for more social cohesion (despite the right-wing nationalism displayed) speaks volumes about their distinct lack of anything approaching progressive politics. This counterfeit left is in a trap of its own making – the “good” nationalism of Palestine versus the “bad” nationalism of Israel. This approach can only lead to hatred and violent conflict and is the polar opposite of what socialists should be doing. Socialists should also know much better than others that terrorism, in the form of the willful taking of innocent lives, is not only abhorrent, but immediately derails any genuine political struggle.
In fact, some of the self-described socialist parties heading the pro-Palestine actions in the West do acknowledge that terrorism cannot be supported – but very quietly. Their opportunist appetites are so large that they dare not say so at public rallies. This failure to condemn terrorism leads to the natural conclusion that they are calling for more of it, and once again repels workers away from the “left”. It also fuels the fires of right-wing reaction, and even more Zionism, as the “Stop the Hate” rallies attest. In short, the reformist left parties (who claim to be revolutionary) are in fact creating the very foe they imagine they are fighting. In a similar way, the woke left virtually created Donald Trump by failing to distinguish themselves from the Democrats, which may well lead to another victory this November.
Occupation tactic
The putative left has used the tactic of University camp-outs and occupations to augment the pro-Palestine demonstrations, and then have claimed that their free speech rights are being suppressed when the police are called in to remove them. This takes some chutzpah, as this alleged left were the very same people who willingly merged with the capitalist states in the West during the period of fascistic Covid repression from 2020 to 2022. During that time the supposed left and the imperialist governments of Australia, the US and Europe marched in lockstep with the Israeli government with the brutal and pitiless enforcement of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Not only did the assumed left say nothing while these states virtually eliminated the most elementary of bourgeois democratic rights such as free speech and the right to protest, but they also actively assisted these states in policing and physically countering the various freedom movements that arose in response. Now, when the same states move in to suppress pro-Palestine rallies or campus occupations, they cry foul with barely a memory of their own actions during the police and army (!) led repression of workers during “Covid”.
There are bucketloads of irony in the fact that many of the campus pro-Palestine students are being removed by the same state they politically helped build during Covid – while wearing Covid facemasks! Yet they also appear to be oblivious to how the occupation tactic has been used by progressive activists throughout the 20th century and in the 21st century prior to “Covid”. During those times, the occupation tactic has been used, with varying degrees of success, to build support for progressive causes or demands. For example, they have been used by university students to protest decades of government funding cuts to higher education. The temporary occupation tactic has been used to successfully raise awareness of the horrific environmental record of billion-dollar oil corporations, and indeed, against some weapons manufacturers supplying arms to any number of imperialism’s countless wars and insurgencies. Yet on each of these previous occasions, the participants were aware that an occupation was but a temporary action, sometimes for a few days or less, after which there was an awareness that they would soon be forced out.
Unless you have the forces to take on the capitalist state, i.e., there is a veritable pre-revolutionary situation, the police have the power to remove occupations. What is more, blocking access to public facilities while claiming the moral high ground has the eventual effect of turning working people against you, and against your cause – even if they would otherwise be sympathetic. For example, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) blockades of roads and general traffic sooner or later generates hostility from those seeking to get to work or other important events, even while many would agree the environment is being desecrated by vast corporations. In both the case of XR and the “Stand with Palestine” protests, it is the distinct lack of politics and lack of strategic awareness which drives these counter-productive actions. They reflect the dead-end of liberalism, which was a partial ally for the working class in the 20th century. However, liberalism today is the strongest ally of imperialism itself.
Faux left backs terror
Most of Australia’s so-called left organisations are encouraging the ostensibly pro-Palestine occupations. Socialist Alternative, the main left party behind many of the actions, claim that students are being disciplined for protesting genocide.[10] In reality, a semi-permanent occupation for any issue would, sooner or later, be removed by police – this side of a revolution. Solidarity, the more rational version of “state capitalist” politics in Australia, do recognise that direct action tactics (occupations and blockades) when taken by smaller numbers, can only be temporary and should only feed in to a mass direct action which is connected to a wider movement.[11] The Socialist Alliance claims that the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free” is not anti-Semitic and should be used by pro-Palestine demonstrators.[12] This may have been the case before October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out its mass terror assault. After this, many have interpreted this and other slogans as a call for the destruction of Israel as a whole – which could be read as anti-Semitism. At the least, it has provided a pretext for the capitalist state to use its own “hate speech” laws for the suppression of protest.
Some self-described “Trotskyist” organisations are only a marginal improvement on the more mainstream left parties, if at all. The Spartacist League (SL) do put out a call for a united front on Palestine, though with the main demand of “breaking the American Connection” – the Australia/US alliance.[13] Yet a complete break with Anglo/US imperialism can scarcely be done without at some level defending its main adversaries – the Eurasian powers of Iran, Russia and China. And the SL have a self-defeating “defeatism on both sides” approach to the NATO organised proxy war on Russia via Ukraine. Mercifully, the Trotskyist Platform (TP) do recognise the embarassing contradiction of Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance demanding imperialism end its bombardment of Palestine – while at the same time approving weapons shipments to Nazi battalions in Ukraine.[14] The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) also recognise that that de-facto Socialist Alternative/Socialist Alliance leadership of the pro-Palestine actions fails to put the Gaza massacres in the context of imperialist preparations for a global war of imperialism against Russia and China. Yet they also claim that the removal of student campus occupations for Palestine are a pure issue of “democratic rights”,[15] which they dismissed as irrelevant (!) during the period of extreme Covid repression.
Alas, ALL of these faux left organisations capitulated to imperialism during a fraudulent “pandemic”, but that was not by any means their first yielding to the forces they claim to oppose. During the ten-year regime change war on Syria, none of these parties were consistent in opposing US led imperialism – even when the Australian Defence Force (ADF) itself was involved in bombing Syria.[16] TP at first opposed the regime change war on Syria, but then fell silent when the Russian Federation intervened at the invitation of the Syrian government. This failure to oppose imperialism during the largest war of the 2010s set the stage for their graphic capitulation to world capitalism in March 2020. For many of them it is also the reason why they today have very few qualms about the innocent life taking terrorism of Hamas. For ten years, Hamas and ISIS and Al Qaeda and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) worked together on behalf of Anglo/US imperialism for regime change against the secular Syrian state. For key periods during this time, it appeared as if the “left” was standing with ISIS (!) at the height of its atrocities against Syrians who attempted to resist arguably the West’s worst proxy war in history. This shocking development fuelled the growth of the far-right, by those who were aghast at the appalling behaviour of the “left”. Today, the right grows off the back of “left” support for the crimes of Hamas.
For a genuine anti-war movement
The world is closer now to world war than at any other time, when such a war could entail nuclear destruction. This dangerously precarious situation is being ignored by the “Stand with Palestine” movement, which postures and virtue signals about Gaza in order to cover their political subordination to imperialism itself. Despite their proclamations, they are at one with the Israeli state on the overthrow of Iran and Syria, not to speak of Covid repression – which cannot be forgotten. In addition, this supposed left does not really stand for Palestine. If they did, they would welcome support for Palestine from wherever it came. Yet they reject or ignore the material support for Palestine which arrives from Iran, Syria, Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran even has given some support to Hamas, which is wrong, but even this is dismissed. The Syrian government has hosted Palestinian refugees for decades, and the Russian government works with its BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – which has now been joined by Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) counterparts to support Palestinian statehood in the United Nations (UN) and other international bodies. The government of the PRC continually pushes for a two-state solution at every opportunity. Egypt has now joined South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), charging it with genocide.[17]
Yet all this material, political and diplomatic support for Palestine is blackballed by the Western faux left, which further demonstrates their sky-high levels of hypocrisy. They spurn the BRICS bloc, the rise of Eurasia, the Russia-China alliance and even the Axis of Resistance (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, anti-ISIS/US militia in Iraq, Ansar Allah in Yemen) because that is precisely what the ruling classes of the West are struggling to combat. Aside from this, as long as this self-imagined left does not condemn terrorism and violence, they will be forever unable to lead any section of the working class. Yes, the crimes of the Israeli state against Palestinians must be stridently opposed. But to do this requires consistent opposition to imperialism, which is the puppet master behind Israel. What is more, the current Israel/Palestine conflict is being used as a pretext to draw Iran into a regime change war, which must also be opposed. And the global context of Anglo/US imperialism pushing for catastrophic war against Russia and China simply cannot be sidelined. It is perhaps the main danger, which must be linked to the deliberate cost of living crisis imposed on workers in the West – the war at home.
The “Stand with Palestine” movement must be transformed into an authentic anti-imperialist anti-war movement. Such a movement may well involve strikes, demonstrations and occupations – but as part of a movement against a world war. It would demand an immediate end to weapons shipments to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. It would demand the abolition of NATO (no war on Russia) and the abolition of AUKUS (no war on China). It would defend Palestine, while condemning and distancing itself as far as possible from terrorism. Real Marxists would call for the unification of Arab, Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian workers against capitalism in Israel and Palestine. The rise of the non-imperialist BRICS bloc and all of its allies would be welcomed as a counter to the deterioration and decline of the West. This would be linked to combatting the drastic cost of living pressures for working people – food, housing, rent and utilities. The danger of a world conflagration and the multiple catastrophes of half the globe being misruled by collapsing finance capital could then be replaced by the opening of a path towards socialism via the rise of the East and to a world without war.
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[1] www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/pro-palestine-supporters-clash-with-police-as-rival-protests-converge-on-cbd/ar-BB1mErGp (22-05-2024)
[2] www.thenightly.com.au/australia/protesters-clash-with-police-amid-heated-stand-off-in-melbourne-cbd–c-14721697 (22-05-2024)
[3] www.joinneveragainisnow.com/about/ (22-05-2024)
[4] www.neveragainisnow.com.au/whoarewe (22-05-2024)
[5] www.neveragainisnow.com.au/universities (22-05-2024
[6] www.aap.com.au/news/protesters-clash-with-police-amid-heated-stand-off/ (22-05-2024)
[7] www.icj-cij.org/case/192 (22-05-2024)
[8] www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml (22-05-2024)
[9] www.timesofisrael.com/israel-revises-death-toll-from-oct-7-hamas-assault-dropping-it-from-1400-to-1200/ (22-05-2024)
[10] www.redflag.org.au/article/disciplined-for-protesting-genocide-why-the-universities-are-doing-israels-bidding (25-05-2024)
[11] www.solidarity.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Soli183.pdf (25-05-2024)
[12] www.greenleft.org.au/content/river-sea-not-antisemitic (25-05-2024)
[13] www.iclfi.org/pubs/sla/2024-palestine-uf (25-05-2024)
[14] www.trotskyistplatform.com/stand-with-the-palestinian-people/ (25-05-2024)
[15] www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/09/pers-m09.html (25-05-2024)
[16] http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1718/SyriaMilitaryOps (25-05-2024)
[17] https://www.africanews.com/2024/05/13/egypt-joins-south-africa-in-icc-case-against-israel-over-gaza-conflict/ (25-05-2024)
Image: The May 18 “Stop the Hate” rally outside Parliament House in Melbourne. Israeli flags and flags of pre-1979 pro-monarchist Iran were displayed alongside Australian flags. http://www.skynews.com.au
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