Israel and Gaza – holding 3 things at once

1. Attack on Israeli civilians is a crime against humanity. 2. Attack on Palestinian civilians is a crime against humanity. 3. Both are products of Apartheid and forced displacement which are crimes against humanity.

Crimes against humanity committed anywhere by anyone are punishable in the courts of each State anywhere in the world.

Australian Courts could issue arrest warrants for the criminals in Israel and Gaza without any government decision. Australian lawyers could and should file those charges, under division 268 of the Crimininal Code Act 1995 (vol 2).

That would cut through the “debate” about “who started it” and focus attention on ending it before it becomes actual genocide.

Insisting that Australian courts proceed would be a step towards implementing the “Responibility to Protect” the people of Gaza from further crimes. An EU protection force could be sent more quickly instead of negotiating with the indicted criminals.

Journalists and teachers who have taken some initiatives could help provide a focus by working with lawyers to prepare campaign materials, to collect petition signatures from every household in Australia.

In particular there is an international law obligation to “prevent and punish” the crime of Genocide, including incitement to Genocide.

Here’s a message from an Israeli journalist describing the “direct and public incitement of genocide” that is now routine in Israel.

“Kill today the terrorists of tomorrow” is a direct and public incitement of genocide of children. It is now routine language in Israel but a crime punishable by Australian courts.

Please pass on this post to any contacts, and ask others to do so and especially please add addresses you contacted in comments here and include details of what you sent.

  1. Lawyers assisting the Palestine protests (and other lawyers who might). https://lawyersletter.au/ This is the most important. That letter does not call for the most urgent thing -actually filing charges to issue arresst warrants from Australian courts right now.
  2. Teachers groups organizing in the schools. https://www.aeufederal.org.au/news-media/news/2023/aeu-statement-conflict-israel-and-palestine
  3. Journalists who organized the petition: https://www.meaa.org/
  4. Other groups who might be able to help organize policy discussions and action within the solidarity campaign.

This post also links to all the earlier posts in this series, please read them all, starting from:

Then follow the right pointing article at bottom of post to get the next in series till you get back to this one.

This arrest warrants should have been issued weeks ago and the campaign explaining started then. It is very urgent now. The ceasefire could end at any moment.

Tunnels under hospitals

I had an interesting encounter two days ago with a bloke who had worked for 37 years in hospital administration at a major hospital in an Australian city. He said he was puzzled by all the fuss about the tunnels under the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. 

He explained that all major hospitals in Australia have elaborate and extensive tunnel systems and networks under their buildings. I asked him why they had these tunnels and he explained in some detail the various roles they played that were essential to a large hospital’s functioning. You can hear his explanation in the ten minute audio clip below.

The hospital in which he worked in Australia had to link several different hospital buildings and the tunnel network even ran under a major road in order to connect them underground. He said the footage on TV of the tunnels under the al-Shifa hospital was unexceptional, just standard tunnels in any ‘British built’ hospital. (Al-Shifa was originally built by the British). 

I recorded him on my mobile phone, elaborating on the many different functions of the hospital tunnels. I’m attaching the audio, which goes for ten minutes.

Perhaps you knew all this already – but I certainly didn’t. 

Lessons from 3CR – Jews Against Zionism and Anti-Semitism, late 1970s

I’m reproducing the first few sections of an important document called Nazi-Zionist Collaboration from the late 1970s in Melbourne as it is relevant to, and has lessons for, the current Palestinian solidarity campaign. The document was a submission to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal. It was first republished in 1981.

The background to the document was a complaint made by the Jewish Board of Deputies which accused community radio station 3CR of being anti-Semitic because of claims of such collaboration. 3CR broadcast a regular program called ‘Palestine Speaks’. The document draws on Zionist and other sources to prove that the claim is historically accurate.

Radio station 3CR is still going strong and exists to give voice on the airwaves to community and progressive activist groups who do not normally have one.

The sections from the document below cover Jewish community reactions, Anti-semitisim and anti-Zionism, how Zionists stirred hostility to 3CR and how they were effective.

The entire document is here.

********

(There is) some interest in describing how a typical Zionist ‘campaign’ works and why many Jews and others are deceived into supporting them. So this submission to the Australia Broadcasting Tribunal is reprinted here unchanged except for minor sub-editing and the addition of reference notes. Community Radio 3CR in Melbourne, Australia is a federation of many affiliates with varying political views. It is biased towards the working class and opposed to imperialism and racism. Therefore, Zionist organizations are refused affiliation or air-time.

Anti-Zionist affiliates such as the Palestine-Australia Solidarity Committee and the Palestine Arab Club are allowed to broadcast their views uncensored. Unable to accept this open reversal of the usual situation, the Zionist movement through the ‘Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies’, (VJBD ) launched an extremely vicious smear campaign against 3CR. This centered on allegations of anti-Semitism, but also ‘terrorism’ and all the rest of it.

Since 3CR is entirely self-supporting and has a public and democratic decision-making process, the normal means of pressure and manipulation did not work, although they did do a great deal of damage and exacerbated the Station’s internal problems.

Consequently, an all-out campaign was launched in the Australian media which resulted in a public enquiry by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal into whether the Station’s license to broadcast should be revoked. The Zionist ‘Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies’, (VJBD) claimed at this enquiry that allegations of ‘Nazi-Zionist collaboration’ during the Holocaust were the most offensive material broadcast by 3CR affiliates, being simply a paranoid antiSemitic conspiracy theory intended to bait the Melbourne Jewish Community.


The only ‘evidence’ submitted by the VJBD to refute such broadcasts was a brief statement by a Melbourne University academic, Dr. John Foster. We have reprinted this statement in full in Appendix A., (Address deleted for digital reproduction) since reference is made to it in this booklet, and readers should be able to judge for themselves what weighty arguments for censoring radio broadcasts were being replied to.


Although evidence by Rabbi’s Levi and Gutnick, Mr. Bloch and other VJBD witnesses has been referred to in passing, they are not reprinted here as they were simply expressing general outrage and did not even attempt to refute specific allegations. To substantiate the broadcasts ‘Jews Against Zionism and AntiSemitism’, (JAZA) another 3CR affiliate, prepared a detailed study on ‘Nazi-Zionist Collaboration’.


This submission was prepared rather hurriedly, and specifically for the public enquiry into 3CR, rather than as a comprehensive survey of the question. Nevertheless, we are reprinting it here unchanged except for minor sub-editing and the edition of reference notes. Although by no means comprehensive, the evidence submitted by JAZA was apparently sufficient for the VJBD to decide it did not want a public enquiry into these allegations at any cost.


As explained in Appendix B, the VJBD withdrew from the enquiry with none of its demands met, after a unilateral declaration by Radio 3CR, which reaffirmed its original position. (Appendix C).


For more than a year since then, anti-Zionist broadcasts by 3CR affiliates have continued unchanged and Zionists have been given no right of reply. So far, the Zionists have done nothing to resume their media campaign against 3CR, and VJBD President, Arnold Bloch has resigned his position. Since the same allegations have been repeated on the air many times, there is no doubt that Zionists still find them ‘offensive’. But they no longer want a public enquiry into them. Anyone reading this book will understand why.


In addition to the ‘Nazi-Zionist Collaboration’ material, JAZA and other 3CR affiliates presented a good deal of material on other aspects of Zionism, substantiating broadcasts alleging that it is a racist movement and so forth. This included some material on the history of Zionism, and how it came to
dominate Jewish communities, and particular reference to the role played by ‘leftwing Zionism’ in confusing the issues.


Some of this material is being prepared for publication by BAZO-PS and will appear as a separate book.
Many people, both in JAZA and outside it assisted in preparing this material and commenting on it. Most will have to remain nameless for various reasons (including Zionist terrorism).


Mention should be made of the assistance of Frans Timmermann in subediting and preparing the reference notes and, of course, BAZO-PS for re-typing, publishing and distributing. A further edition is planned for wider circulation and dealing with Nazi-Zionist Collaboration in its own right, quite apart from the 3CR enquiry. Any comments and suggestions should be sent to JAZA, Melbourne.


Finally, questions have been raised about reference to Jews as an ethnic or national minority group rather than simply as adherents of a particular religion. These questions come from PLO supporters as well as the usual queries from Zionists as to how some JAZA members can call themselves Jews if they are not
Zionists and not religious. This is an important issue which has a bearing on the future status of Israeli Jews in a democratic solution to the Palestine problem.

Space precludes a proper analysis here, but a few words are necessary. Most of the people in countries like Australia and the USA who are generally called ‘Jews’ are more accurately ‘people of Jewish origin’. Most are already quite fully assimilated into the nations in which they live but they still retain some specifically ‘Jewish’ cultural characteristics which have very little to do with religion. What they have in common is not membership of the mythical Zionist ‘worldwide Jewish Nation’ but parents, grandparents or great grandparents who once spoke the Yiddish language and were part of recognized national minorities in Eastern European countries like Poland and Russia (this, of course, has nothing to
do with ‘race’).


A comparison could be made with people of Gypsy origin (another European minority people who were wiped out by the Nazis). But it is quite misleading, and plays into the hands of Zionism, to define Jews by ‘religion’ as the only alternative to Zionism.

The Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies has emphasized accusations of Nazi-Zionist collaboration as the material it finds most offensive and has claimed that 3CR broadcasters take delight in driving the Jewish community, into frenzy, by making such allegations. We in Jews Against Zionism and Anti-Semitism have made a detailed study of this question and wish to present our findings to this inquiry.


Although we do not even speak the necessary foreign languages to be able to survey the primary sources, we do claim to know a lot more about it than Dr. Foster does, having carefully studied the secondary sources on both sides instead of only one side.


Our evidence will show that claims of Nazi-Zionist collaboration broadcast on some 3CR programs are well founded and thoroughly documented in a substantial literature accessible to non-experts with a bit of hard work. They are not fantasies, let alone anti-Semitic fantasies.


Broadcasts about Nazi-Zionist collaboration are a reflection on the airwaves of Australia of written material long accepted as part of the serious literature on the subject, and which has long been legally available in the State of Israel. Any apparent strangeness and ‘extremism’, of these broadcasts, is not
because they reflect the views of a lunatic fringe, but because this serious literature is not readily available in Australia and is therefore unfamiliar to listeners.


In passing, we should mention that allegations of Nazi-Zionist collaboration do not originate, as is often claimed and widely assumed, from Arab answers to Israel’s use of the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon. Nor, as should be obvious from 3CR’s hostile attitude to the Soviet Union, are they a result of Soviet propaganda on this subject. Nor are these allegations meant to excuse Palestinian Arab collaborators with Nazism, such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.


Only Zionists, with their fundamentally racialist outlook, imagine that collaboration is an accusation one can level against a whole ethnic group, or that one can refute such accusations by proving that people of the same ethnic origin as the accuser are also guilty of the same crime.


Since Israel’s exploitation of the Holocaust for propaganda is so blatant, the assumption, that accusations of Zionist collaboration must be a propaganda reply, seems fairly natural. But in fact most of the available English language literature on this subject was written by Jews long before the modern Palestinian revolution got going.


The issue was first raised on 3CR, in the second edition of Palestine Speaks that went to air, by two Palestinian Jews, one of whom happened to have worked in the law office that handled the most famous Israeli court case concerning Nazi collaboration. The debate has since escalated, with increasingly hysterical Zionist accusations against 3CR, being used to provoke more comments on this subject in
reply.


Presumably the Zionist assumption was that no hard evidence would be available to back these allegations up. If so, we will now refute that assumption.


In doing so, we have deliberately avoided relying much on the substantial amount of material recently published by the Soviet Union and its supporters for their own reasons. Among the sources we have relied on are the publications of the ‘Guardians of the City’ or ‘Neturei Karta’ – orthodox religious Jews who live strictly according to Torah. These include the book: The Holocaust Victims Accuse by Reb Moshe
Shonfeld, (1) which was first published as a series of articles in the Israeli Hebrew magazine Digleinu in the years 1961 to 1964, and the article ‘Some of my Best Friends are Nazis’ by N. Glaser2, published in the New York Jewish Guardian, Volume 2, Number 2. (2)


We have also used the book Perfidy by Ben Hecht, (3) an extreme Zionist of the Menachem Begin (‘Revisionist’) variety. (4) This was originally published in English in New York in 1961, and has since been reprinted in Hebrew in Israel in 1970. It is now available in an English reprint edition from the Neturei Karta. This material is virtually inaccessible in Australia due to active Zionist suppression, and does not circulate at all, either within the Jewish community or outside it.


We have also made some use of Eichmann in Jerusalem by Dr. Hannah Arendt, (5) who also supports the existence of the State of Israel, and a number of other serious works, generally written from a pro-Zionist standpoint.


None of these writers could be even remotely described as ‘left-wing’, and their books have nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli dispute. So far as Ben Hecht and Rabbi Shonfeld are concerned, there are probably no other subjects we could agree on, except the fact that the top Zionist leadership did collaborate with the Nazis and that this fact should be known to the public.


We have provided copies of these and other related works to the Tribunal and we ask that they be read carefully before any decision is contemplated that might inhibit 3CR from permitting its affiliates to continue broadcasting these allegations.


Before documenting the allegations themselves, we would like to comment on the reactions to them within the Jewish community, based on our own experiences, talking to relatives and friends.

1 Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War
Criminals Part 1, Neturei Karta of USA, New York, 1977.

2 N, Glaser, Some of my best friends are Nazis, Jewish Guardian Vol.2, No. 2 (Nov. 1978), p. 22-24.
3 Ben Hecht, Perfidy, Julian Messner, Inc., New York, 1961.
4 This does not refer to a departure from Marxism. The Union of Zionists-Revisionists was founded in the early 1920s as an extreme right-wing split-off from the official Zionist movement.
5 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. The Viking Press, New York, 1965.

********

JEWISH COMMUNITY REACTIONS

There is no doubt that Zionists have become rather frenzied about these allegations of Nazi collaboration and do consider them offensive. Any Zionist who believes the allegations to be false is naturally offended about a movement he or she supports being accused of collaborating with something so vile as Nazism.
Most people who call themselves Zionists see Zionism as just a sort of Jewish cultural and philanthropic movement friendly to the State of Israel, and have very little idea of what it really involves.


The very small number of hard core Zionists who know anything about Zionist-Nazi collaboration also find it offensive to be reminded about this, and are naturally in a frenzy to prevent others finding out about it, although why they imagine that a public hearing will help suppress the information remains a
mystery. Thus there is no doubt that Zionist indignation about these particular broadcasts is quite genuine, even though a great deal of their outrage about other aspects of 3CR programs is somewhat synthetic.


As for the Jewish community as a whole, there is also no doubt a widespread hostile reaction on this question. However, it is not all that widespread, and even more important, it is not a hostile reaction to what is actually broadcast on 3CR, but to what Jews have been told is being broadcast on 3CR.


Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism
There are two major anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which are well known within the Jewish community and give particular offence to Jews. One is that the holocaust never happened and is essentially a ‘Zionist Hoax’, as for example put forward by the neo-Nazi Professor Butz in his book The Hoax of the Twentieth
Century. (6)[note by aaargh: of course, Prof. Butz is not neo-nazi anymore than the leftist authors of the present pamphlet. ] The other is that the Holocaust was deliberately arranged by the Zionists who more or less tricked the Nazis into it in order to win sympathy. This theory, based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (7) has been put forward by the notorious [Australian] anti-Semite Eric Butler in his book The International Jew. (8) Both these conspiracy theories use the term ‘Zionist’ primarily as a code word, or else a euphemism, for ‘Jew’, if they use it at all. Both draw sustenance from reference to some actual facts about connections between Jews, or Zionists and Nazis, but intertwine them with various fantasies, and are quite clearly examples of anti-Semitic paranoia rather than any genuine analysis of Zionism as a specific political movement.


People in the Jewish community are very conscious that the use of ‘Zionist’ as a code word for ‘Jew’ is now quite common in anti-Semitic literature, whether done subtly as, by Professor Butz, and the modern Eric Butler, or crudely as in the old Eric Butler; or in modern neo-Nazi publications such as the newspaper ‘Attack’ which is freely distributed without legal interference in Australia.


This common use of the term ‘Zionist’, has been used, for example in ‘The Australian League of Rights’, (9) by Andrew Campbell, an intelligence officer in the ‘Civil Service’, to suggest that left wing anti-Zionism is strikingly similar to the anti-Semitic views of the League of Rights. In fact some of Eric Butler’s material is strikingly similar, for the simple reason that it is copied directly from anti-Zionist publications, even to the point of enthusiastically endorsing the views of anti-Zionist Jews. No doubt our evidence at this inquiry will also be used by Eric Butler in that way, but this cannot be helped.


The point is that if one wants to discredit Jews as an ethnic group, it makes a good deal of sense to talk about Zionism and the savage atrocities it has committed, just as it would make sense to talk about Nazism if one wished to discredit Germans.


An examination of League of Rights publications shows quite clearly that there is no flow of anti-Semitic ideas into genuine anti-Zionist material, but simply an adoption of some anti-Zionist arguments by anti-Semites. There is a flow the other way in some propaganda from the more reactionary Arab governments a decade or so ago. We have included in our evidence a sample from Israel’s good friend of today, the Egyptian Government, in order to highlight the contrast between this sort of material and the purely anti-Zionist, not antiSemitic material published by the Palestinian liberation forces and used in 3CR broadcasts.


Nevertheless, considerable emphasis has been given in Zionist propaganda, to the existence of such Arab anti-Semitic literature, even years after it stopped coming out. For example see Isi Liebler’s book The Case for Israel, which is virtually a text book at Mount Scopus College. (10)


This does create an atmosphere in which broadcasts apparently attacking ‘Zionists’ rather than ‘Jews’ will be viewed with some suspicion, rather than simply being taken at face value, within the Jewish community. It would not be surprising if some anti-Semites did try to attach themselves to genuine anti-Zionist activities as an opportunity to have a go at Jews, just as anti-Catholics may have tended to line up with the left-wing of the Australian Labour Party (ALP) in the 1955 split.


In fact no such tendency has been observed in Australia to our knowledge, and it would not be tolerated if it ever did emerge. On the contrary, it has always been noticeable that people with anti-Semitic inclinations have tended to favour Zionism, which confirms their prejudice that Jews are somehow alien ‘to Australia and belong elsewhere. Mr. B.H. for example, reflected a much more anti-Semitic attitude than is common in Australia, when as a child he got into a fight with another school student simply because the latter was Jewish, and he also reflects a much more pro-Zionist attitude than is common in Australia. He has admitted publicly that his earlier anti-Semitism is connected with his later pro-Zionism. But most Australians who are not particularly interested in bashing Jewish school students are not particularly interested in sponsoring
Jewish emigration to the State of Israel either.


Another factor relevant to Jewish reactions to 3CR is widespread concern within the Jewish community about allegedly ‘anti-Zionist’ campaigns in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which appear to have little to do with Middle East politics and have been characterized as essentially anti-Semitic. Despite 3CR’s exclusion of the Australia Soviet Friendship Society in the same way that it excludes ‘Paths to Peace’, there is a lot of Zionist propaganda within the Jewish community about a sort of ‘Soviet, Arab, Left-Wing Conspiracy’, rather like the ‘International Zionist, Communist Conspiracy’. This lends plausibility to Zionist efforts to picture attacks on Zionism in 3CR broadcasts as a form of anti-Semitism similar to the ‘anti-Zionist’ campaigns of Eastern Europe.


In fact, anti-Semitic use of the term ‘Zionist’ as a code word for ‘Jew’, has nothing whatever in common with the correct use of this term on 3CR programs dealing with the activities of the State of Israel, and its supporters in Australia, just as normal references to ‘Nazism’ on 3CR and in other media has nothing to do with anti-German hate propaganda.


‘Zionism’, and ‘Zionist’ are simply the only correct terms that can be used in the context 3CR programs use them, and they cannot be avoided simply because anti-Semites also use these terms in a quite different way. All 3CR programs can do about it is repeatedly state that they do not mean ‘Jews’, or ‘Judaism’, which is precisely what those programs do in fact repeatedly say.

6 Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Historical Review Press, Warwickshire, 1976.
7 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic tract falsely purporting to uncover an international Jewish conspiracy aimed at world power. It was written in the 1890s by an agent of the Russian secret police.
8 Eric D. Butler, The International Jew: The truth about the Protocols of Zion, Adelaide, New Times, 1947
.

9 Andrew Campbell, The Australian League of Rights, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1978. 10 Isi Leibler, The Case for Israel, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Melbourne, 1972.


How Zionists stir up hostility to 3CR
The whole difficulty is that this situation is being deliberately exploited by Zionists, who themselves believe that a Jew is or ought to be automatically a Zionist, and who repeatedly confuse the issue by spreading deliberate lies within the Jewish community, saying that this is also the way 3CR programs use the term Zionist. The responsibility for that clearly lies with the people who are doing it, not with 3CR.
Indeed, there is a problem that 3CR broadcasters tend to bend over backwards not to talk about Jews at all when it would be perfectly legitimate to discuss the fact that most Jews tend to be strongly pro-Israel, and to discuss the influence of the Jewish community in Australia, as an important factor biasing public debate against the Palestinian viewpoint.


The distinction between ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jew’ is perfectly clear when the pro-Palestinian broadcasts talk about Zionism in connection with the activities of the state of Israel and its supporters in Australia, while anti-Semites also talk about Zionism in connection with the fluoridation of water supplies and other related matters.


The distinction is also clear when pro-Palestinian broadcasts talk about the pro-Zionist and anti-Palestinian bias of the media in Australia and the various attempts by Zionists to manipulate and control the public debate on Palestine. Nevertheless, this does leave the way open for Zionists to pick isolated phrases out of context and misrepresent the situation to the Jewish community as though 3CR programs were referring to the familiar anti-Semitic fantasies about ‘Jewish owned press’ etc.


This does stimulate some reaction against 3CR, but not a great deal because most people, whether Jewish or not, have at least heard of allegations about the pro-Israeli bias of the media and can understand the distinction between this question and fantasies about ‘Jewish ownership’. Thus, when Rabbi Levi points, out that ‘not one Jew owns or controls a daily newspaper or TV or radio station in Australia’, most people hearing him, are not likely to take it for granted that this is really a refutation of anything said on 3CR.


But when 3CR programs talk about ‘Zionist-Nazi collaboration’ during the Holocaust, they are NOT using the term ‘Zionist’ in a similar context to its use in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories well known within the Jewish community, and in a context which has nothing directly to do with the Palestine question, but, which is well known to be a common theme in the propaganda of the Soviet Union, a country whose policies are now widely believed to be anti-Semitic.


Since most people, whether Jewish or not, have never even heard of accusations that there was collaboration between Nazis and Zionists during the Holocaust, except in the context of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories or Soviet propaganda, this is a situation where people are far more likely to readily accept that 3CR programs are saying what Zionists claim they are saying, and it is an almost ideal situation for Zionists to exploit.


Naturally Zionists do not wish to have to actually answer accusations of collaboration, and have in fact scrupulously avoided doing so – preferring to set up the ‘expert witness’ Dr. Foster as fall guy instead. They have every reason to wish to create confusion as to what allegations have actually been made on 3CR, and have done so in their usual expert way by quoting isolated accusations without quoting
the supporting evidence. Not only have Zionists managed to create a widespread impression that 3CR
is in some way associated with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Professor Butz, in a way documented in Nation Review of 7 June, but within the Jewish community at least, Zionists have been able to create an impression that 3CR is in some way associated with the theories of Eric Butler.

What is really striking however, is that it is the very people who have been quite deliberately confusing this issue in order to stir up hostility within the Jewish community, who now appear before the Broadcasting Tribunal claiming to be offended! Moreover, they are ‘offended’ mainly by broadcasts which have quite clearly been made in direct response to a debate provoked by them, and which are
mainly angry responses to the vicious accusations of anti-Semitism that have constantly been made.
Thus, when Rabbi Levi says, ‘the anti-Semitic content of the 3CR programme has included the theory that the Jews murdered themselves in World War Two’, he is not commenting on the content of 3CR programs, as can be seen from the transcripts, but is simply repeating what he has been telling members of the Jewish community over and over again.


When such lies, supported by quotations taken out of context are circulated widely within the Jewish community over a long period of time, it is not surprising that they can provoke some real indignation which would never have resulted from the actual broadcasts themselves.


Zionists may not be quite as respected within the Jewish community as they like to think they are, but when they loudly and repeatedly claim that 3CR programs are ‘exterminatory anti-Semitism, similar to Nazi propaganda during the holocaust’, that the Station ‘spews forth anti-Semitic material’, and has a ‘ban on Jewish groups affiliating’ and so on; and when these claims are taken up in the national press, people in the Jewish community, like most others, will not readily assume that those making these statements are simply telling breathtaking lies.


We have submitted as evidence some genuine examples of Nazi propaganda and other examples of what Rabbi Levi calls ‘exterminatory anti-Semitism’ so that the Tribunal can see for itself just how much truth there is in his accusations. The extreme viciousness of this accusation may also help the Tribunal to
understand why some 3CR broadcasters have been provoked, unwisely perhaps, into replying with such terms of abuse as ‘lying Zionist’ etc.


How Zionist Misrepresentation of 3CR Can Be Effective
Our main point is that these accusations of Rabbi Levi and company go far to explain whatever hostility there is towards 3CR within the Jewish community. The plain fact is that Rabbi Levi and company have a very much wider audience within the Jewish community than 3CR does, and most people who have heard the accusations against 3CR and signed petitions etc have never even heard the allegedly offensive programs.


Repeated and well advertised statements that 3CR continually ‘spews forth’ anti-Semitic material will not be taken literally by most Jews, any more than it will by most other Australians. But there are substantial numbers of Jewish people in Melbourne, as Mr. Bloch, Rabbi Levi, Rabbi Gutnick, Sam Lipski and company well know, who have lived through a time when radio stations and newspapers really did spew forth
such material, and who will not take such accusations with the necessary grain of salt and will not feel particularly inclined to tune into the station to check it out.


Quite a few such people do not speak English as a first language and are doubly vulnerable to this kind of cynical political manipulation. On tuning in to a pro-Palestinian 3CR program and finding that it does attack ‘Zionism’ and ‘Zionists’ in a very hostile and uncompromising way, which unfortunately is sometimes not very sophisticated or persuasive, and is always totally opposed to the thoughts and feelings towards Israel of the large majority of Jews in Melbourne, it is not surprising if many Jewish people in Melbourne assume that they are not being lied to by messieurs Bloch, Levi, Gutnick, Lipski
and company, and that other broadcasts they have not actually heard really do contain the juicy anti-Semitic sentiments they allege.


Since many people cannot distinguish clearly between being strongly opposed to the views someone else is expressing, and being personally insulted and offended by something ‘offensive’, it is really rather surprising that the campaign by Rabbi Levi and company, the ‘well orchestrated campaign’ described by Mr. Bloch, has not been more successful.


Some insight into the way indignation can be provoked by a dishonest campaign of this sort is provided by the evidence of Kim Beazley, of Perth, (Update-2005-leader of the ALP opposition) who would presumably be reliant on the VJBD rather than a radio receiver, for information as to what 3CR broadcasts in Melbourne have been saying, (from some 4500 km away).
According to Mr. Beazley:
‘By the strange perversion of fact which makes the station suggest that Hitler was an instrument of Zionism they would logically have to suggest Arab governments were instruments of Zionism, if persecutions and expulsions are Zionist strategy. With a twisting of fact which is purely startling, they turn the undoubted fact that persecution of Jews has built up the migration flow to Israel into a plot by the persecuted, as if they were responsible for their own persecution.’


Of course, no 3CR program has ever suggested that Hitler was an instrument of Zionism, just as there has been no claim that Zionists welcomed the Holocaust, let alone organized it. That Mr. Beazley should believe these are issues raised by 3CR is testimony to the efficiency of the Zionist propaganda machine rather than the transmitting power of that radio station. Mr. Beazley, may be pleased to note however that Palestinian supporters have denounced reactionary Arab governments for persecuting and expelling Jews, pointing out that this does aid Zionism and has been actively promoted by Zionists.


Let us get it quite clear. The accusation that has been made in some 3CR programs is that some Zionists, including the top Zionist leadership, actively collaborated with the Nazis even to the point of assisting them to exterminate European Jewry. That is a very strong accusation and there is no need to confuse it
with any stronger ones.

****************

Gaza – posturing won’t help

A “Joint statement by Palestine activist groups in Australia” says two things clearly:

  1. A temporary ceasefire is no solution.
  2. Our protests will continue.

Having said the blindingly obvious, it offers no strategy and no proposal to discuss having a strategy.

Instead it claims that:

Our demands are clear:

  1. Israel must end its Genocide in Gaza, stop the bombing, withdraw from the strip and lift the siege.
  2. Israel must release all Palestinian political prisoners.
  3. Israel must end the occupation of all Palestinian territory.
  4. Palestinian refugees must have the right to return to their homeland.
  5. The Australian government should cut off all political, economic and military ties with Israel until these demands are fulfilled.

Ok, at least “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” is a step beyond the previous inspirational posturing:

Ceasefire now!

End US military aid to Israel!

Build an international movement to end the occupation!

But there really isn’t time to wait for people who think such “demands” are “clear” to get to the point of even being able to participate in discussion about strategy.

Only item 5 could conceivably be imagined to be relevant to actually changing reality.

In principle, Australia joining the boycotts etc that have produced so little results for so many decades could eventually contribute to adding some real pressure that results in some actual change.

But does anyone seriously suggest that such long term pressure will make much difference to the catastrophe unfolding right now that has resulted in such a large protest movement?

Items 1 to 4 don’t even pretend to be anything more than posturing.

What is to be Done?

  1. Admit we have not got a strategy.
  2. Open serious discussions on policy and tactics at every protest and other activity.
  3. Exchange written proposals and circulate them widely.
  4. Pay more attention to proposals you don’t agree with than to your own. Take other ideas seriously.

I don’t agree with the 5 demands and am taking them seriously by responding.

What are we up against?

There is no point addressing “demands” to either Israel or the USA. They are the enemy. We are looking for ways to prevent them doing what they are doing.

Protests are intended to result in action that effectively prevents what would otherwise happen and results in something better happening instead.

That should not need saying. It is taken for granted by anybody joining in. Unfortunately it isn’t the way some “veterans” of protest movements think. Some of them don’t see a connection between protesting and winning, so they just posture.

There are several possible outcomes that Australian protests, as part of a global movement could help prevent:

  1. Genocide. As documented in links at end of this article, experts who do not use that word lightly believe the loud expressions of genocidal intent could become actual genocide. The destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and health system has already made it difficult to update the death toll. Many more than the 14,000 listed deaths could be under the rubble. It would not take long for Israel to kill 10% of the 2.2 million population if they decide to do so and there is no force in place ready to actually stop them.

  2. Ethnic cleansing. This is now openly advocated by much of the current Israeli government – for Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Arab citizens of Israel. The most serious danger is in Gaza where the population forced south could now be forced into Egypt. The danger of Genocide arises primarily in the course of the measures that might be taken to force expulsion.

  3. Months, not weeks of mass murder. That is the publicly declared policy which may or may not slide innto Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide. It is clearly explained by former US Centcom commander General Petraeus and confirmed by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu backed by US President Biden:

US General Petraeus: Israel’s war on Gaza to last for ‘months, not weeks’

Former CIA Director David Petraeus says Israel will resume the war on Gaza if it doesn’t want Hamas to rebuild itself.

Israel has not explained what it seeks to accomplish in its war on Gaza beyond the destruction of Hamas, according to US General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and former commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Petraeus tells host Steve Clemons that the US has no choice but to remain a “steadfast ally” of Israel, lest China and other countries point to Washington’s abandonment of its friends.

In this wide-ranging conversation, the former CENTCOM commander added that “there are no hands going up in the region” to volunteer to manage Gaza after the war.

Who will manage Gaza after the war?

Even if we complacently assume that “pressure” from the global protest movement will “somehow” prevent the current catastrophe sliding into Ethnic cleansing, Genocide or a wider regional war there is simply no reason to expect that “protests” will prevent Israel, backed by the USA, from continuing the slaughter in Gaza for “months, not weeks”.

Ending the slaughter requires that somebody capable of providing an interim government of Gaza volunteers to do so. Israeli and US waffle about the Palestinian Authority or Arab governments or anybody “in the region” doing so are just to shift the blame. There is no such possibility.

Likewise Hamas and its allies are not going to be capable of governing Gaza.

Only an interim authority from outside the region that has no interest at all in remaining there could credibly govern while Gaza recovers. The humanitarian aid that is being mobilized needs such a government to replace the Israeli occupation force. Otherwise it will be compelled to act subject to directions from the Israeli occupying force whether on orders from occupiers outside the strip or within it.

So any strategy to actually stop the current catastrophe has to include a strategy for persuading somebody to volunteer for the job of interim government of Gaza.

Empty posturing will not persuade anybody to take on that job.

My tentative view on who could do it and how pressure from the protest movement could be effective is explained in the previous two posts:

Briefly:

  1. Only the EU has the resources to do it, whether or not the USA vetoes a UN Security Council resolution to “authorize” it.
  2. Demands, denunciations and UN General Assembly resolutions cannot compel them to do it. They need to understand that it is in their own interest to volunteer.
  3. They know that only a well armed force could exercise a “Responsibility to Protect” in Gaza. Israeli armed forces will give orders to anybody that does not arrive well armed and they will have no choice but to act according to those orders.
  4. The only EU member with an expeditionary capability that could be mobilized rapidly to the Eastern Mediterranean to break the blockade by sea is France.
  5. But non-EU members Britain and Turkey also have serious deployment capabilities that could form a joint military escort for the necessary humanitarian intervention.

Is it possible?

Not if there is no movement fighting for it.

Has anybody got a proposal that offers better prospects?

How could the protest movement contribute?

My suggestion is that instead of pointless “demands” we should have a very clear focus on ending Israel’s sense of impunity and highlighting the positive international duty to intervene.

In Australia’s case the biggest contribution the Australian government could be compelled by public opinion to make would be to actually let charges of crimes against humanity proceed in Australian law courts.

Along with other countries generally friendly to Israel that could have a real impact in speeding up an EU decision to do what must be done.

An inability to even prosecute implies an inability to do anything else. There is no point asking a government that won’t even prosecute crimes against humanity to do anything more serious to prevent them.

Gaza – act now!

Türkiye hosting Eastern Mediterranean-2023 Invitation Naval Exercise

Week-long naval exercise aims to assess operational capabilities of Turkish Navy, civilians teams, NATO units, other nations, says Turkish colonel

Esra Tekin  |19.11.2023 – Update : 19.11.2023

MUGLA, Türkiye 

The Eastern Mediterranean-2023 Invitation Naval Exercise organized by the Turkish Navy, began in the Eastern Mediterranean, hosted by Türkiye.

Ships, personnel, and observers from nine countries participate in the naval exercise that began Saturday.

A briefing was provided to observers and press members on the Turkish landing ship TCG Sancaktar anchored at Aksaz Naval Base in the Marmaris district of the country’s Mugla province.

Rear Adm. Huseyin Tigli, the fleet commander, recalled devastating earthquakes that hit southern Türkiye earlier this year, underlining that the exercise would involve training and execution in search and rescue missions and the transportation of humanitarian aid.

Tigli also pointed out that the TCG Anadolu would play an active role in the exercise.

Turkish Col. Osman Diler also spoke during the briefing about the definition, participants, and objectives of the exercise.

Diler said Eastern Mediterranean-2023 would continue in the Eastern Mediterranean until Nov. 25 under the command of Türkiye Navy.

He emphasized that the drill aimed to simultaneously assess operational capabilities in the Turkish Naval Forces, as well as civilian and public institutions, NATO’s Permanent Task Force units, and other countries under the command of the Turkish Maritime Force (TURMARFOR) Headquarters.

Diler also said that the naval exercise, planned in accordance with NATO Exercise Planning Procedures, would be directed and managed by a 115-person Exercise Command Center at the Naval Warfare Center.

“NATO Standing Mine Countermeasures Group 2 (SNMCMG-2) elements will also participate in the exercise,” he said, adding that Türkiye’s participating forces would include 24 ships, 10 helicopters, five unmanned aerial vehicles, three maritime patrol aircraft, and four submarines.

Türkiye will also be fielding a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) defense team, as well as two submarine defense teams, an amphibious marine infantry battalion, three submarine attack teams, three army helicopters, three airborne early warning and control aircraft, 20 F-16 jets, and coast guard boats.

The country’s Interior Ministry, Health Ministry, Transport and Infrastructure Ministry, Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, and the Turkish Red Crescent, will also be attending, he added.

Diler explained that the exercise scenario consisted of main and secondary events, including asymmetric threats, CBRN, regional maritime control, evacuation of non-combatants, humanitarian aid, natural disaster support, maritime piracy, and collaboration and guidance activities for maritime transport.

“From Nov. 19 to Nov. 21, training for asymmetric threat, photex, surface gunfire, land bombardment, surface warfare, submarine warfare, mine countermeasure operations, amphibious operations, and search and rescue, including actual live-fire exercises, will be conducted,” he further said.

Diler added that following the preparation training, from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23, a free-play phase would take place in the Eastern Mediterranean, including scenarios for humanitarian aid and natural disaster support.

*Writing by Esra Tekin in Ankara

​​​​​​​https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkiye/turkiye-hosting-eastern-mediterranean-2023-invitation-naval-exercise/3058764

Also here:

https://www.trtworld.com/turkiye/turkish-navy-hosts-eastern-mediterranean-2023-invitation-naval-exercise-15893190


ANKARA, Oct 19 (Reuters) – U.S. officials told their Turkish counterparts that aircraft carriers moved closer to Israel in the eastern Mediterranean were sent there for the possible evacuation of civilians, a Turkish defence ministry official said on Thursday.

The U.S. has deployed two aircraft carriers – and their support ships – to the eastern Mediterranean since a surprise attack by Hamas militants on Israel this month.

President Tayyip Erdogan criticised the U.S. for the move, saying that they would commit “serious massacres” in Gaza.

He also said the deployment of U.S. aircraft carriers to the region hindered Turkish efforts to establish calm in the region.

“When we raise this issue with our U.S. counterparts, they tell us that those aircraft carrier groups were sent there as part of non-combatant evacuation operations for civilians in the region,” a Turkish defence ministry official told reporters.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier said that the deployment of aircraft carrier battle groups to the region was “not meant as a provocation, it’s meant as a deterrent”.

Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Daren Butler and Nick Macfie

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/aircraft-carriers-sent-near-israel-possible-evacuations-us-tells-turkey-official-2023-10-19/


1,000 boats said set to leave Turkey for Gaza waters in new ‘Freedom Flotilla’

Reminiscent of infamous 2010 Mavi Marmara protest, large maritime convoy plans to remain in international waters off Ashdod and disrupt sea trade route to Israel

By Gianluca Pacchiani 21 November 2023, 1:07 am

Approximately 1,000 boats will gather in Turkey on Wednesday before heading toward Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade and disrupt maritime trade coming into Israel during the war with Hamas, in an apparent repeat of similar attempts from over a decade ago.

In an interview with Turkish news website Haber7, Volkan Okçu, one of the organizers of the protest, indicated the boats will carry 4,500 people from 40 countries, “including anti-Zionist Jews.”

However, Okçu said in a later tweet that he expected the number of Turkish vessels to be much higher, at least 1,000, and insisted that the initiative is not associated with the Turkish government. He did not explain the discrepancy in numbers.

The activist indicated to Haber7 that the flotilla is scheduled to leave Turkish coasts on Thursday. The maritime convoy is set to make a first stop in Cyprus before continuing toward the Israeli port of Ashdod. Some participants in the flotilla will also reportedly take their spouses and children on board.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/1000-boats-said-set-to-leave-turkey-for-gaza-waters-in-new-freedom-flotilla/


A couple of weeks have passed since the conference described below. Events are moving very rapidly.

The agreement to exchange women and children prisoners could result in far more people in Israel understanding that “all for all” is a realistic possibility and insisting on the government accepting it.

But what happens afterwards? There is a fork in the road.

Israel could just withdraw, but not without exacting more revenge first.

Or Israel could continue to expel the Palestinians already forced into Gaza and recently driven from Gaza city in the north to the south further into Egypt and could step up the same process of expulsion in the West Bank that is already being accelerated.

Or it could shift from direct and public incitement of genocide to actual genocide.

Many possibilities are open. But the only sane outcome requires the presence of a large international armed force.

Humanitarian relief requires a functioning government with armed forces that Israel stops bombing. It is still not clear whether anybody will actually take responsibility for governing Gaza.

Or will they just hold war crimes trials afterwards?


Maritime corridor, floating hospitals for Gaza in focus at Paris conference

By Michele Kambas, John Irish and Gabriela Baczynska

November 8, 20232:00 AM GMT+11Updated 15 days ago

  • Summary
  • *About 80 countries, organisations invited to Paris Gaza meeting on Nov. 9
  • * Aim to co-ordinate aid, help for besieged enclave
  • * Cyprus proposes maritime corridor to get aid into Gaza
  • * France sees opportunity for naval ships off Gaza coast

NICOSIA/PARIS/BRUSSELS, Nov 7 (Reuters) – World powers meet in Paris on Thursday to coordinate aid and help for the wounded in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, with the possible creation of a maritime corridor, naval medical facilities and field hospitals to be considered, European diplomats said.

A month after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas Islamists that killed 1,400 people in Israel, concern is growing over civilian casualties that have soared under Israel’s retaliatory bombardments, with more than 10,000 Palestinians killed, and many more wounded and forced to flee their homes.

The conference brings together regional stakeholders such as Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Arab countries as well as Western powers and G20 members – excluding Russia. International institutions and non-governmental organisations operating in Gaza are also due to attend.

The Palestinian Authority will be present but Israel has not been invited, although it will be kept informed of the developments.

The broad aim is to mobilise financial resources and find ways to get aid into the enclave, while also getting those seriously wounded out given Gaza’s medical infrastructure is fast collapsing.

Cyprus, the closest EU member state to Gaza, has put forward an idea to get more aid into Gaza via a maritime corridor.

It would expand the limited capacities beyond the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, but the concept is tricky, four diplomats said.

Israeli officials would also want to check all goods coming from Limassol port in Cyprus, the diplomats said.

Who would receive the aid would also need to be clarified as there are concerns it could fall into Hamas’ hands, two diplomats said. Israel would also want to vet what aid was going into Gaza and opposes supplying badly-needed fuel to the enclave, they said.

There are also technical issues. Port infrastructure off Gaza was started in 2016, but has since been abandoned.

“Gaza doesn’t have a harbour fit for such purpose,” said a senior EU official. “It would require building a floating marina by a country with proper navy experience.”

Should it even go ahead, the mission’s safety would need to be ensured and would be likely to need a pause in fighting.

FLOATING HOSPITALS

On top of the Cypriot proposal, diplomats said France has also suggested taking the idea further and expanding the corridor to evacuating people who are severely wounded onto hospital ships in the Mediterranean off the coast of Gaza.

French officials have said they are discussing the issue with Israeli and Egyptian authorities, but the idea would be to get critical masse from several countries willing to send ships with the necessary medical capacity.

Paris is preparing a helicopter carrier for that purpose including beds, surgical capacities, medication and personnel. It is not expected in the region for another 10 days.

“Regarding the humanitarian corridor with France, there is an idea to bring a ship with some medical capabilities.” Col. Elad Goren, head of Israel’s Civil Department of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), told reporters on Tuesday.

“We are working with the French and with the Egyptians in order to try to build up a mechanism to evacuate wounded people, but it’s still ongoing.”

In a letter sent to European counterparts on Nov. 3, Italy’s defence minister has also said his country is ready to send a ship equipped with an intensive care ward and surgical capacities as soon as possible, two diplomats said.

“But the question is how you would get evacuated from land to ships?” said one of the diplomats. “On the ground first through Egypt or Israel? Directly from Gaza by sea? It’s very complex.”

Either way, three diplomats said that hospital ships were essentially only a temporary solution and that the aim would be to eventually set up field hospitals either close to the border in Gaza or on the Egyptian side.

“The Egyptians do not want multiple field hospitals on their side because it could be used as a pretext to push the Palestinians into the Sinai,” said one diplomat.

Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem; Writing by John Irish; Editing by Angus MacSwan


A conference to which Israel was not invited was a necessary first step. But two weeks later the medical system in Gaza cannot even keep track of the numbers of deaths.

It would be nonsensical to keep pretending that humanitarian aid can operate along with Israeli occupation and bombing. The “Responsibility to Protect” requires an armed force able to provide an interim government for a “Failed State”. As soon as governments are actually willing to take that responsibility they should of course inform the Israeli government so that it has an adequate opportunity to claim victory and get out.

But they have to offer protection. Not just “aid”.

The first step in making it clear that the responsibility is accepted and draw a sharp line as to who is governing Gaza is to indict those responsible for “crimes against humanity” that have made it necessary to send an armed force capable of protecting the civilian population against further such crimes.

Responsibility to Protect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/about-responsibility-to-protect.shtml

Gaza – Send Lawyers, Guns and Money – the shit has hit the fan

The fan is rotating rapidly and the shit is spreading fast. Old policies have collapsed and policy makers are still talking incoherent nonsense.

Events are moving too rapidly to keep up and I need to catch up before keeping up.

But here’s a quick preview of my tentative opinions on what must be done, right now.

  1. Somebody has to run Gaza, not just for humanitarian relief, but exercising a “Responsibility To Protect” in what is currently a “Failed State”.
  2. Whoever does take responsibility will need both money and guns. Lots of money and lots of guns.
  3. The only plausible candidate is the European Union, and in particular the two former colonial powers that still have a military capability to launch an expeditionary force and govern an interim civil administration in a foreign country – France and Britain.
  4. They will need to use their navies to break the blockade of Gaza and protect humanitarian workers entering both by sea and by land from Egypt. The Gaza coast does not have adequate ports so floating docks will need to be used. They are not going to fight their way in against Israel. So it has to be from the coast and from Egypt. It is up to the fascist regime in Egypt and the ultra-Zionist apartheid regime occupying Palestine whether they want to fight the military escorts of a humanitarian relief intervention.
  5. Both Egypt and Israel have blockaded unarmed relief convoys. That is a war crime and a crime against humanity. There is no point negotiating with the war criminals. Dealing with it requires a well armed escort. Those forces must be assembled now and must be sufficiently large that their opponents choose to just complain instead of fighting.
  6. The costs will have to be shared widely. Negotiations about that will take time. So Britain and France are stuck with having to act immediately and collect compensation later. Delay will cost each of them more as well as costing the rest of the world more.
  7. They are currently bogged down in negotiations with other countries that are basically irrelevant. Whatever discussions are held with the US and Israel may or may not eventually prove useful but obviously cannot speed up assembling a functional intervention force. Likewise for Egypt and other Arab states.
  8. A short, sharp decision is required to break through the fog and make it clear to the world that the cavalry is actually on the way.

Lawyers?

  1. Not my preference for making things happen quickly. But necessary in the current confusion.
  2. The UN and EU will be central to long term funding and progress from the interim administration of Gaza towards a democratic administration of both Gaza and the West bank and later, for long term solutions affecting the entire region. France and Britain will require a legal framework for their operations.
  3. But instead of delaying things while sorting out the legalities, lawyers should be used to cut through the confusion.

Indict the war criminals NOW

  1. The systematic mass slaughter of civilians is not just a “war crime” it is also a “crime against humanity”. That is a legal term of art which confers “Universal Jurisdiction”. The domestic courts of any country can exercise jurisdiction to prevent and punish such crimes, without regard to the territory or nationality of either the victims or perpetrators.
  2. Lawyers in countries like Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands and Spain could file charges within days. Getting to trial could take years. But the charges could and should be filed NOW.
  3. Charging both the leadership of Hamas and the Israeli war cabinet with the notorious war crimes the whole world knows they have flagrantly committed could cut through the confusion.
  4. While Britain and France get on with interim administration and protection of Gaza from both lots of war criminals, people delaying things with “noise” about who started it and elaborate explanations of why the mass slaughter of civilians is justified can just be told to submit their arguments to the courts that are trying the cases against the people they are defending.

As background information for above I am relying heavily on the following source, which I strongly recommend to others and should already be familiar to Australian journalists:

For a more balanced approach and some light relief, here’s some arguments for the defendants.

Here’s former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal interviewed in Qatar October 19, by Al-Arabiya TV host Rasha Nabil.

For deeper analysis and an understanding of how rapidly and deeply public opinion has already shifted I strongly recommend this long interview with a former Israeli Government negotiator, Daniel Levy:

Cut through the waffle

There is no obligation to condemn either side for anything. Such arguments only delay carrying out the clear obligations every country is under.

The obligation is to prevent and punish. That requires armed intervention NOW.

The defences must be heard at fair trials – after the crime has been stopped. The charges must be laid immediately to speed up stopping the crime. The shouting merely confirms there is a case to be tried.

Enough with the wimpy calls for a ceasefire.

Protests must explicitly demand armed intervention. The charges must be filed now to speed that up.

Here’s the Palestinian response to the UN Security Council’s pathetic resolution, pointing out that Israel Foreign Ministry had immediately announced it would not comply anyway:

At end, 1h18’40” of 1hr35’21” full session of doing nothing much

More legal background:

GENEVA (16 November 2023) – Grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October, particularly in Gaza, point to a genocide in the making, UN experts said today. They illustrated evidence of increasing genocidal incitement, overt intent to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation”, loud calls for a ‘second Nakba’ in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, and the use of powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.

Statement from UN rapporteurs warning risk of genocide requires immediate prevention – November 16

Statement of ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan KC from Cairo on the situation in the State of Palestine and Israel | International Criminal Court – October 30

1948 Convention imposing duty to intervene and prevent genocide in force as international law binding on all States since 1951

Article I The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

Article III The following acts shall be punishable:

( a ) Genocide;

( b ) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

( c ) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

( d ) Attempt to commit genocide;

( e ) Complicity in genocide.

Article III ( c ) is key to the obligation to prevent, by imposing punishment before the direct public incitement becomes an actual attempt.

Any competent criminal lawyer should be able to collate the direct and public statements by Israeli cabinet ministers and military commanders that are punishable by the courts of any country. Their consuls and other representatives abroad may be more cautious in their language but that should be carefully checked. There is no diplomatic immunity from charges under the Genocide Convention.

I think it is likely the trials would be transferred to the International Criminal Court under the Rome Statute

But the charges should be filed in local courts of as many countries as possible, NOW.

While falling short of genocide, the existing levels of systematic mass slaughter of civilians and other crimes are also sufficient to invoke “universal jurisdiction” as “crimes against humanity”.

Charging both sides immediately could significantly speed up the necessary and inevitable intervention.

In Australia the Criminal Code Act 1995 confers external jurisdiction for “Offences against humanity and related offences” in Chapter 8 of the Criminal Code (in Volume 2), especially Division 268.

Actual prosecution in Australia requires a decision by the Attorney-General:

268.121 ( c ) However, a person may be arrested, charged, remanded in custody, or released on bail, in connection with an offence under this Division before the necessary consent has been given.

If the Attorney-General gets in the way of complying with Australia’s obligations under international law, the rather limp attempt at a privation clause in s268.122 to exclude judicial review would not inhibit the:

Original jurisdiction of High Court

In all matters:

  1. arising under any treaty;
  2. affecting consuls or other representatives of other countries;

Constitution of Australia, s75

The Westminster Declaration – struggle for free speech against censorship

The Westminster Declaration

We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.

Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.

This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.

Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.

Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’

This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India[1] and Turkey[2] have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany[3] and the Supreme Court in Brazil[4] are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill[5], Scotland’s Hate Crime Act[6], the UK’s Online Safety Bill[7], and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill[8] threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect.

But the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance. They have done so with the full support of ‘disinformation experts’ and ‘fact-checkers’ in the mainstream media, who have abandoned the journalistic values of debate and intellectual inquiry.

As the Twitter Files revealed, tech companies often perform censorial ‘content moderation’ in coordination with government agencies and civil society. Soon, the European Union’s Digital Services Act will formalise this relationship by giving platform data to ‘vetted researchers’ from NGOs and academia, relegating our speech rights to the discretion of these unelected and unaccountable entities.

Some politicians and NGOs[9] are even aiming to target end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.[10] If end-to-end encryption is broken, we will have no remaining avenues for authentic private conversations in the digital sphere.

Although foreign disinformation between states is a real issue, agencies designed to combat these threats, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States, are increasingly being turned inward against the public. Under the guise of preventing harm and protecting truth, speech is being treated as a permitted activity rather than an inalienable right.

We recognize that words can sometimes cause offence, but we reject the idea that hurt feelings and discomfort, even if acute, are grounds for censorship. Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society, and is essential for holding governments accountable, empowering vulnerable groups, and reducing the risk of tyranny.

Speech protections are not just for views we agree with; we must strenuously protect speech for the views that we most strongly oppose. Only in the public square can these views be heard and properly challenged.

What’s more, time and time again, unpopular opinions and ideas have eventually become conventional wisdom. By labelling certain political or scientific positions as ‘misinformation’ or ‘malinformation,’ our societies risk getting stuck in false paradigms that will rob humanity of hard-earned knowledge and obliterate the possibility of gaining new knowledge. Free speech is our best defence against disinformation.

The attack on speech is not just about distorted rules and regulations – it is a crisis of humanity itself. Every equality and justice campaign in history has relied on an open forum to voice dissent. In countless examples, including the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, social progress has depended on freedom of expression.

We do not want our children to grow up in a world where they live in fear of speaking their minds. We want them to grow up in a world where their ideas can be expressed, explored and debated openly – a world that the founders of our democracies envisioned when they enshrined free speech into our laws and constitutions.

The US First Amendment is a strong example of how the right to freedom of speech, of the press, and of conscience can be firmly protected under the law. One need not agree with the U.S. on every issue to acknowledge that this is a vital ‘first liberty’ from which all other liberties follow. It is only through free speech that we can denounce violations of our rights and fight for new freedoms.

There also exists a clear and robust international protection for free speech. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)[11] was drafted in 1948 in response to atrocities committed during World War II. Article 19 of the UDHR states, ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ While there may be a need for governments to regulate some aspects of social media, such as age limits, these regulations should never infringe on the human right to freedom of expression. 

As is made clear by Article 19, the corollary of the right to free speech is the right to information. In a democracy, no one has a monopoly over what is considered to be true. Rather, truth must be discovered through dialogue and debate – and we cannot discover truth without allowing for the possibility of error. 

Censorship in the name of ‘preserving democracy’ inverts what should be a bottom-up system of representation into a top-down system of ideological control. This censorship is ultimately counter-productive: it sows mistrust, encourages radicalization, and de-legitimizes the democratic process. 

In the course of human history, attacks on free speech have been a precursor to attacks on all other liberties. Regimes that eroded free speech have always inevitably weakened and damaged other core democratic structures. In the same fashion, the elites that push for censorship today are also undermining democracy. What has changed though, is the broad scale and technological tools through which censorship can be enacted. 

We believe that free speech is essential for ensuring our safety from state abuses of power – abuses that have historically posed a far greater threat than the words of lone individuals or even organised groups. For the sake of human welfare and flourishing, we make the following 3 calls to action.

  • We call on governments and international organisations to fulfill their responsibilities to the people and to uphold Article 19 of the UDHR. 
  • We call on tech corporations to undertake to protect the digital public square as defined in Article 19 of the UDHR and refrain from politically motivated censorship, the censorship of dissenting voices, and censorship of political opinion.
  • And finally, we call on the general public to join us in the fight to preserve the people’s democratic rights. Legislative changes are not enough. We must also build an atmosphere of free speech from the ground up by rejecting the climate of intolerance that encourages self-censorship and that creates unnecessary personal strife for many. Instead of fear and dogmatism, we must embrace inquiry and debate.

We stand for your right to ask questions. Heated arguments, even those that may cause distress, are far better than no arguments at all. 

Censorship robs us of the richness of life itself. Free speech is the foundation for creating a life of meaning and a thriving humanity – through art, poetry, drama, story, philosophy, song, and more. 

This declaration was the result of an initial meeting of free speech champions from around the world who met in Westminster, London, at the end of June 2023. As signatories of this statement, we have fundamental political and ideological disagreements. However, it is only by coming together that we will defeat the encroaching forces of censorship so that we can maintain our ability to openly debate and challenge one another. It is in the spirit of difference and debate that we sign the Westminster Declaration.

Signatories

  • Matt Taibbi, Journalist, US
  • Michael Shellenberger, Public, US
  • Jonathan Haidt, Social Psychologist, NYU, US
  • John McWhorter, Linguist, Columbia, Author, US
  • Steven Pinker, Psychologist, Harvard, US
  • Julian Assange, Editor, Founder of Wikileaks, Australia
  • Tim Robbins, Actor, Filmmaker, US
  • Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, NYLS, US
  • Glenn Loury, Economist, USA
  • Richard Dawkins, Biologist, UK
  • John Cleese, Comedian, Acrobat, UK
  • Slavoj Žižek, Philosopher, Author, Slovenia
  • Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, US
  • Oliver Stone, Filmmaker, US
  • Edward Snowden, Whistleblower, US
  • Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, USA
  • Stella Assange, Campaigner, UK
  • Glenn Greenwald, Journalist, US
  • Claire Fox, Founder of the Academy of Ideas, UK
  • Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, Psychologist, Author, Canada
  • Bari Weiss, Journalist, USA
  • Peter Hitchens, Author, Journalist, UK
  • Niall Ferguson, Historian, Stanford, UK
  • Matt Ridley, Journalist, Author, UK
  • Melissa Chen, Journalist, Spectator, Singapore/US
  • Yanis Varoufakis, Economist, Greece
  • Peter Boghossian, Philosopher, Founding Faculty Fellow, University of Austin, US
  • Michael Shermer, Science Writer, US
  • Alan Sokal, Professor of Mathematics, UCL, UK
  • Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology, Oxford, UK
  • Jay Bhattacharya, Professor, Stanford, US
  • Martin Kulldorf, Professor of Medicine (on leave), Harvard, US
  • Aaron Kheiriaty, Psychiatrist, Author, USA
  • Chris Hedges, Journalist, Author, USA
  • Lee Fang, Independent Journalist, US
  • Alex Gutentag, Journalist, US
  • Iain McGilchrist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher, UK
  • Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Activist, Author, Netherlands
  • Konstantin Kisin, Author, UK
  • Leighton Woodhouse, Public, US
  • Andrew Lowenthal, liber-net, Australia
  • Aaron Mate, Journalist, USA
  • Izabella Kaminska, Journalist, The Blind Spot, UK
  • Nina Power, Writer, UK
  • Kmele Foster, Journalist, Media Entrepreneur, USA
  • Toby Young, Journalist, Free Speech Union, UK
  • Winston Marshall, Journalist, The Spectator, UK
  • Jacob Siegel, Tablet, US/Israel
  • Ulrike Guerot, Founder of European Democracy Lab, Germany
  • Heather E. Heying, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
  • Bret Weinstein, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
  • Martina Pastorelli, Independent Journalist, Italy
  • Leandro Narloch, Independent Journalist, Brazil
  • Ana Henkel, Independent Journalist, Brazil
  • Mia Ashton, Journalist, Canada
  • Micha Narberhaus, The Protopia Lab, Spain/Germany
  • Alex Sheridan, Free Speech Ireland
  • Ben Scallan, Gript Media, Ireland
  • Thomas Fazi, Independent Journalist, Italy
  • Jean F. Queralt, Technologist, Founder @ The IO Foundation, Malaysia/Spain
  • Phil Shaw, Campaigner, Operation People, New Zealand
  • Jeremy Hildreth, Independent, UK
  • Craig Snider, Independent, US
  • Eve Kay, TV Producer, UK
  • Helen Joyce, Journalist, UK
  • Dietrich Brüggemann, Filmmaker, Germany
  • Adam B. Coleman, Founder of Wrong Speak Publishing, US
  • Helen Pluckrose, Author, US
  • Michael Nayna, Filmmaker, Australia
  • Paul Rossi, Educator, Vertex Partnership Academics, US
  • Juan Carlos Girauta, Politician, Spain
  • Andrew Neish, KC, UK
  • Steven Berkoff, Actor, Playright, UK
  • Patrick Hughes, Artist, UK
  • Adam Creighton, Journalist, Australia
  • Julia Hartley-Brewer, Journalist, UK
  • Robert Cibis, Filmmaker, Germany
  • Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies, UK
  • Dirk Pohlmann, Journalist, Germany
  • Mathias Bröckers, Author, Journalist, Germany
  • Kira Phillips, Documentary Filmmaker, UK
  • Diane Atkinson, Historian, Biographer, UK
  • Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck, University of Buckingham, Canada
  • Laura Dodsworth, Journalist and Author, UK
  • Nellie Bowles, Journalist, USA
  • Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law, Swansea University,  UK
  • Julius Grower, Fellow, St. Hugh’s College, UK
  • Nick Dixon, Comedian, UK
  • Dominic Frisby, Comedian, UK
  • James Orr, Associate Professor, University of Cambridge, UK
  • Brendan O’Neill, Journalist, UK
  • Jan Jekielek, Journalist, Canada
  • Andrew Roberts, Historian, UK
  • Robert Tombs, Historian, UK
  • Ben Schwarz, Journalist, USA
  • Xavier Azalbert, Investigative Scientific Journalist, France
  • Doug Stokes, International Relations Professor, University of Exeter, UK
  • James Allan, Professor of Law, University of Queensland, UK
  • David McGrogan, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK
  • Jacob Mchangama, Author, Denmark
  • Nigel Biggar, Chairman, Free Speech Union, UK
  • David Goodhart, Journalist, Author, UK
  • Catherine Austin Fitts, The Solari Report, Netherlands
  • Matt Goodwin, Politics Professor, University of Kent, UK
  • Alan Miller, Together Association, UK
  • Catherine Liu, Cultural Theorist, Author, USA
  • Stefan Millius, Journalist, Switzerland
  • Philip Hamburger, Professor of Law, Columbia, USA
  • Rueben Kirkham, Co-Director, Free Speech Union of Australia, Australia
  • Jeffrey Tucker, Author, USA
  • Sarah Gon, Director, Free Speech Union, South Africa
  • Dara Macdonald, Co-Director, Free Speech Union, Australia
  • Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive, Free Speech Union, New Zealand
  • David Zweig, Journalist, Author, USA
  • Juan Soto Ivars, Author, Spain
  • Colin Wright, Evolutionary Biologist, USA
  • Gad Saad, Professor, Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist, Author, Canada
  • Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, USA
  • Jill Glasspool-Malone, PhD., USA
  • Jordi Pigem, Philosopher, Author, Spain
  • Holly Lawford-Smith, Associate Professor in Political Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Australia
  • Michele Santoro, Journalist, TV Host, Presenter, Italy
  • Dr. James Smith, Podcaster, Literature Scholar, RHUL, UK
  • Francis Foster, Comedian, UK
  • Coleman Hughes, Writer, Podcaster, USA
  • Marco Bassani, Political Theorist, Historian, Milan University, Italy
  • Isabella Loiodice, Professor of Comparative Public Law, University of Bari, Italy
  • Luca Ricolfi, Professor, Sociologist, Turin University, Italy
  • Marcello Foa, Journalist, Former President of Rai, Italy
  • Andrea Zhok, Philosopher, University of Milan, Italy
  • Paolo Cesaretti, Professor of Byzantine Civilization, University of Bergamo, Italy
  • Alberto Contri, Mass Media Expert, Italy
  • Carlo Lottieri, Philosopher, University of Verona, Italy
  • Alessandro Di Battista, Political Activist, Writer, Italy
  • Paola Mastrocola, Writer, Italy
  • Carlo Freccero, Television Author, Media Expert, Italy
  • Giorgio Bianchi, Independent Journalist, Italy
  • Nello Preterossi, Professor, University of Salerno, Scientific Director of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies, Italy
  • Efrat Fenigson, Journalist, Podcaster, Israel
  • Eli Vieira, Journalist, Genetic Biologist, Brazil
  • Stephen Moore, Author and Analyst, Canada

Footnotes

  1. Pahwa, Nitish. ‘Twitter Blocked a Country.’ Slate Magazine, 1 Apr. 2023, slate.com/technology/2023/04/twitter-blocked-pakistan-india-modi-musk-khalistan-gandhi.html.
  2. Stein, Perry. ‘Twitter Says It Will Restrict Access to Some Tweets before Turkey’s Election.’ The Washington Post, 15 May 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/13/turkey-twitter-musk-erdogan/.
  3. Hänel, Lisa. ‘Germany criminalizes denying war crimes, genocide.’ Deutsche Welle, 25 Nov. 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/germany-criminalizes-denying-war-crimes-genocide/a-63834791
  4. Savarese, Mauricio, and Joshua Goodman. ‘Crusading Judge Tests Boundaries of Free Speech in Brazil.’ AP News, 26 Jan. 2023, apnews.com/article/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-government-af5987e833a681e6f056fe63789ca375.
  5. Nanu, Maighna. ‘Irish People Could Be Jailed for “Hate Speech”, Critics of Proposed Law Warn.’ The Telegraph, 17 June 2023, www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/1  7/irish-people-jailed-hate-speech-new-law/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_psc_ppc_us_news_dsa_generalnews.
  6. The Economist Newspaper. (n.d.). Scotland’s new hate crime act will have a chilling effect on free speech. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2021/11/08/scotlands-new-hate-crime-act-will-have-a-chilling-effect-on-free-speech
  7. Lomas, Natasha. ‘Security Researchers Latest to Blast UK’s Online Safety Bill as Encryption Risk.’ TechCrunch, 5 July 2023, techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/uk-online-safety-bill-risks-e2ee/.
  8. Al-Nashar, Nabil. ‘Millions of Dollars in Fines to Punish Online Misinformation under New Draft Bill.’ ABC News, 25 June 2023, www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-25/fines-to-punish-online-misinformation-under-new-draft-bill/102521500.
  9. ‘Cryptochat.’ Meedan, meedan.com/project/cryptochat. Accessed 8 July 2023.
  10. Lomas, Natasha.’Security Researchers Latest to Blast UK’s Online Safety Bill as Encryption Risk.’ TechCrunch, 5 July 2023, techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/uk-online-safety-bill-risks-e2ee/.
  11. United Nations General Assembly. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). New York: United Nations General Assembly, 1948.

If you thought the pseudoleft has a legacy from the sixties you weren’t there

This is a placeholder for notes I should have written in time for the Platypus Forum on “The Legacy of 1968” today, Saturday 2023-06-24 from 1pm to 4pm.

Livestream will become a video at youtube. Youtube account holders can post questions during the livestream, although most questions taken will be from the audience at Trades Hall.

Hope to discuss my two concrete proposals and how to organize for them at the Curtin pub opposite Trades Hall after the forum. Add a comment to this post and tick the box to subscribe to other comments if you want to be notified when I update this post with details. I was given plenty of time to write up, but failed to do so in time and will finish after the forum and will then add a comment when done so you will be notified if you subscribed to comments.

Here’s the prompt for forum panel members. The short version of my responses is in the title of this post.

The 1960s were a period of social upheaval that spanned the entire globe. The “New” Left that emerged reached for Marxism to help it navigate the politics of this decade. Platypus asks: How was this Marxism inherited and transformed? Did it succeed, or discover new problems?

Today, with activists fighting in the streets and calling for liberation along the lines of race, gender, and sexuality, the Left’s every attempt to discover new methods and new ideas seems to invoke a memory of the political horizons of the New Left. We can perhaps more than ever feel the urgency of the question: what lessons are to be drawn from the New Left as another generation undertakes the project of building a Left for the 21st century?

Questions that might provoke reflection in your opening remarks:

How were you aware that you were doing something ‘new’ compared to the old left, how was this task transmitted and understood? Which forms of theory and practice did you reach for in this period of upheaval and why? Did the following decades vindicate your choices? Or were you proven to be mistaken? How are today’s left still tasked by the unfinished work – or the new work – handed on by the New Left? Does the task of social emancipation today appear more or less obscure than it did in the 1960’s and 70’s? 

My two concrete proposals are:

  • A research group on Maksakovsky’s “Theory of the Capitalist Cycle” (available for free download from “Library Genesis”)
  • An action group to help end the Russian fascist regime by greater military support for Ukraine

How to organize them:

  1. Use https://meet.jit.si/ immediately for free voice and video conferencing for national and international discussions of initial drafts by invitation to small online meetings similar to zoom, skype etc without registration. Can later add private facilities.
  2. Use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub immediately for interim convenors exchanging draft proposals and then continue to use it for free fully backed up and version controlled web sites, email lists etc. Any active participant can join the 100 million others registered as active users (without publishing their email addresses and with no spam from github). Technical Subcommittee will consist of people who already know how to use the technical features of github for development of internet presence but anyone can easily use the basic facilities to draft documents, including web content, in version controlled “repos” and exchange messages about them as “Issues”.

International Women’s Day – a lesson from Nina Simone

Nina Simone was influenced by two actvists who were themselves influenced by Marxism and who she knew personally, Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes. She was a fighter, who used her music as a weapon in struggle.

Multipolarity, the Mantra of Authoritarianism (reprinted from ‘The India Forum: a journal-magazine on contemporary issues’ (December 2022)

I just wish the term ‘pseudo-left’ would be used instead of ‘Left’. Those who support the autocrats and fascists against the people struggling for democracy can never be regarded as on the left, no matter how they might self-identify.

******

Multipolarity,

the Mantra of Authoritarianism

The Left’s advocacy for ‘multipolarity’ against a US-led unipolar order has, in effect, defended authoritarianism across the world. The Left must reflect on how its language enables such regimes.

KAVITA KRISHNAN

DECEMBER 20, 2022

Multipolarity is the compass orienting the Left’s understanding of international relations. All streams of the Left in India and globally have for long advocated for a multipolar world as opposed to a unipolar one dominated by the imperialist USA.

At the same time, multipolarity has become the keystone of the shared language of global fascisms and authoritarianisms. It is a rallying cry for despots, that serves to dress up their war on democracy as a war on imperialism. The deployment of multipolarity to disguise and legitimise despotism is immeasurably enabled by the ringing endorsement by the global Left of multipolarity as a welcome expression of anti-imperialist democratisation of international relations.

By framing its response to political confrontations within or between nation states as a zero-sum option between endorsing multipolarity or unipolarity, the Left perpetuates a fiction that even at its best, was always misleading and inaccurate. But this fiction is positively dangerous today, serving solely as a narrative and dramatic device to cast fascists and authoritarians in flattering roles.

The unfortunate consequences of the Left’s commitment to a value-free multipolarity are illustrated very starkly in the case of its response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The global and the Indian Left have legitimised and amplified (to varying degrees) Russian fascist discourse, by defending the invasion as a multipolar challenge to US-led unipolar imperialism.

The freedom to be fascist

On 30 September, while announcing the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, Russian President Vladimir Putin spelt out what multipolarity and democracy meant in his ideological framework. He defined multipolarity as freedom from the attempts by Western elites to establish their own ‘degraded’ values of democracy and human rights as universal values; values ‘alien’ to the vast majority of people in the West and elsewhere.

Putin’s rhetorical ploy was to declare that the concepts of a rules-based order, democracy, and justice are nothing more than ideological and imperialist impositions by the West, serving merely as pretexts to violate the sovereignty of other nations.

As Putin played to the justifiable outrage at the long list of crimes by Western countries – including colonialism, imperialism, invasions, occupations, genocides, and coups – it was easy to forget that his was not a speech demanding justice and reparations and an end to these crimes. In fact, by asserting the self-evident fact that the Western governments did not have “any moral right to weigh in, or even utter a word about democracy,” Putin skilfully cut people out of the equation.

People of the colonised nations are the ones who fought and continue to fight for freedom. People of the imperialist nations come on the streets to demand democracy and justice, and protest racism, wars, invasions, occupations committed by their own governments. But Putin was not supporting these people.

…[B]y asserting the self-evident fact that the Western governments did not have “any moral right to weigh in, or even utter a word about democracy”, Putin skilfully cuts people out of the equation.

Rather, Putin has signalled “like-minded” forces all over the world — far-right, white-supremacist, racist, anti-feminist, homophobic and transphobic political movements — to support the invasion, as part of a project advantageous to them all: of overturning the “unipolar hegemony” of universal values of democracy and human rights and “to gain true freedom, a historical perspective.”

Putin uses a “historical perspective” of his own choice to support a supremacist version of a Russian “country-civilisation” where laws dehumanise LGBT persons and where references to historical events are criminalised in the name of “strengthening (Russia’s) sovereignty.” He asserts Russia’s freedom to deny and defy the democratic norms and international laws defined “universally” by bodies like the United Nations. The project of “Eurasian integration,” which Putin projects as a multipolar challenge to the “imperialist” EU and western unipolarity, can be properly understood only as a part of his explicitly anti-democratic ideological and political project. (It is another matter that the aspect of competition between the US and Russia as Big Powers, is complicated here by the shared political project represented by Trump in the US and Putin in Russia. 

A common language 

The language of ‘multipolarity’ and ‘anti-imperialism’ also finds resonance in Chinese hyper-nationalist totalitarianism. 

joint statement by Putin and Xi in February, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, stated their shared rejection of universally accepted standards of democracy and human rights, in favour of culturally relativist definitions of these terms: “A nation can choose such forms and methods of implementing democracy that would best suit its […] traditions and unique cultural characteristics […] It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one.” These ideas were explicitly credited by the statement to “the efforts taken by the Russian side to establish a just multipolar system of international relations.”

For Xi, the “’universal values’ of freedom, democracy, and human rights were used to cause the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, the ‘colour revolution,’ and the ‘Arab Springs’, all caused by the intervention of the US and the West.” Any people’s movement that demands widely accepted human rights and democracy, is treated as an inherently illegitimate imperialist colour revolution.

The demand for a democracy meeting universal standards, raised by protesters in the China-wide movement against repression in the name of “Zero-Covid”, is significant in light of the culturally relativist standards favoured by the government of China. A White Paper in 2021, on “China’s Approach to Democracy, Freedom and Human Rights” defined human rights as “happiness” thanks to welfare and benefits, not as protections from unbridled government power. It conspicuously omits the right to question the government, dissent, or organise freely.

Defining “China-specific” democracy as “good governance” and human rights as “happiness” allows Xi to justify the suppression of the Uyghur Muslims. His claim is that concentration camps to “re-educate” these minorities and remould their practice of Islam so that it is “Chinese in orientation”, has provided “good governance” and greater “happiness”.

Even amongst the Hindu-supremacist leadership in India, there are strong echoes of the fascist and authoritarian discourse of a “multipolar world” – where civilisational powers will rise again to reassert their old imperialist glory, and the hegemony of liberal democracy will give way for right-wing nationalism.

Mohan Bhagwat, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said admiringly that “in a multipolar world” that challenges the US, “China has now risen. It is not bothered about what the world thinks about it. It is pursuing its goal… (returning to the) expansionism of its past emperors.” Likewise, “In the multipolar world now, Russia is also playing its game. It is trying to progress by suppressing the West.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has repeatedly attacked human rights defenders as anti-Indian even as he declares India is the “mother of democracy.” This is made possible by viewing India’s democracy not through a “western” lens but as part of its “civilisational ethos.”A note circulated by the government links India’s democracy with “Hindu culture and civilisation,” “Hindu political theory”, “Hindu state”, and traditional (and often regressive) caste councils that enforce caste and gender hierarchies.

Such ideas also reflect attempts to incorporate Hindu-supremacists into a global network of far-right and authoritarian forces. The Russian fascist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin (much like Putin) states that “Multipolarity […] advocates a return to the civilizational foundations of each non-western civilization (and a rejection of) liberal democracy and human rights ideology.”

Modi has repeatedly attacked human rights defenders as anti-Indian while declaring that India is the “mother of democracy”, and India’s democracy must been viewed not through a “western” lens but as part of its “civilisational ethos.”

The influence goes both ways. Dugin favours the caste hierarchy as a social model (Dugin 2012). Directly incorporating the brahminical Manusmriti’s values with international fascism, Dugin sees “the present order of things”, represented by “human rights, anti-hierarchy, and political correctness” as “Kali Yuga”: a calamity which brings with it the blending of castes (a miscegenation which in turn is brought about by women’s freedom, also a calamitous aspect of Kali Yuga) and the dismantling of hierarchy. He has described Modi’s electoral success as representing a victory for “multipolarity”, a welcome assertion of “Indian values,” and a defeat for the hegemony of “liberal democracy and human rights ideology.”

Yet the Left continues to use “multipolarity” without betraying the slightest awareness of how fascists and authoritarians couch their own aims in the same language.

Where left meets right

Putin’s language of “multipolarity” is meant to resonate with the global Left. Its comforting familiarity seems to prevent the Left – which always did an excellent job laying bare the lies underpinning the “saving democracy” claims of US imperialist warmongers – from applying the same critical lens to Putin’s anti-colonial and anti-imperialist rhetoric.

It is odd that the Left has made the language of polarity its own. The discourse of polarity belongs to the Realist school in international relations. Realism sees the global order in terms of the competition between the foreign policy objectives, assumed to reflect objective ‘national interests’, of a handful of ‘poles’ – Big Powers or aspiring Big Powers. Realism is fundamentally incompatible with the Marxist view which is premised on the understanding that ‘national interest’, far from being an objective and value-neutral fact, is defined subjectively by the “political (and therefore moral) character of the leadership strata that shapes and makes foreign policy decisions” (Vanaik 2006).

The CPI [ML] welcomes the rise of non-western Big Powers even if they are internally fascist or authoritarian, because it believes that these powers offer a multipolar challenge to US unipolarity.

For instance, Vijay Prashad, one of the most prominent enthusiasts and advocates on the global Left for multipolarity, approvingly observes that “Russia and China are seeking sovereignty, not global power.” He does not mention how these powers interpret sovereignty as freedom from accountability to universal standards of democracy, human rights, and equality.

A recent essay by Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI [ML]) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya presents similar problems as it explains the party’s decision to balance solidarity with Ukraine with its preference for multipolarity and its national priority of resisting fascism in India. (Disclosure: I had been a CPI [ML] activist for three decades and a member of its Politbureau till I left the party earlier this year, due to differences that came to a head in the wake of the party’s lukewarm solidarity for Ukraine.)

Bhattacharya’s formulation is that “Regardless of the internal character of competing global powers, a multipolar world is certainly more advantageous to progressive forces and movements worldwide in their quest for reversal of neoliberal policies, social transformation and political advance.” To restate, the CPI [ML] welcomes the rise of non-western Big Powers even if they are internally fascist or authoritarian, because it believes that these powers offer a multipolar challenge to US unipolarity.

Such a Left formulation offers no resistance at all to the fascist/authoritarian projects which describe themselves as champions of anti-imperialist “multipolarity”. In fact it offers them a cloak of legitimacy.

Bhattacharya perceives whole-hearted support for Ukrainian resistance as difficult to reconcile with the “national priority” of “fighting fascism in India.” The understanding that the Left’s duties of international solidarity must defer to its perceived ‘national priority’, is a case of Marxist internationalism being muddied by Realist ‘national interest’, applied this time not only to nation states but to the national Left parties themselves.

But how is unstinting solidarity with Ukraine against a fascist invasion at odds with fighting fascism in India? Bhattacharya’s reasoning is forced, roundabout, and oblique. He takes a puzzling detour into the need for communist movements to beware of the dangers of “prioritizing the international at the expense of the national situation.” Bhattacharya inaccurately 1  attributes the Communist Party of India’s 1942 mistake of remaining aloof from the Quit India movement to its having prioritised its international commitment to the defeat of fascism in World War II, over its national commitment to overthrowing colonialism by Britain, which was then an ally in the war against fascism.

The only plausible purpose of this detour seems to be to make an analogy with the Indian Left’s current predicament vis a vis the invasion of Ukraine. Since the Narendra Modi regime’s primary foreign policy alliance is with the US-led West, it is suggested, the fight against Modi’s fascism would be weakened if Russia, a ‘multipolar’ rival of the US, was routed by the Ukrainian resistance.

Tyrannical regimes construe support for people resisting them, as support for foreign/imperialist “interference” in the “sovereignty” of those regimes.

This convoluted calculus obscures the simple fact: a defeat for Putin’s fascist invasion in Ukraine would embolden those fighting to defeat Modi’s fascism in India. Likewise, a victory for people resisting Xi’s majoritarian tyranny would inspire those resisting Modi’s majoritarian tyranny in India.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We weaken our own democratic struggles when we choose to view the struggles of others through a distorting campist lens. Ours is not a zero-sum choice between unipolarity versus multipolarity. In every situation, our choices are clear: we can either support the resistance and survival of the oppressed – or we can worry about the survival of the oppressor.

When the Left takes upon itself a ‘duty’ to support the survival of ‘multipolar’ regimes (in Russia, China, and for some on the Left, even Iran), it fails in its actual duty to support people fighting to survive genocide by these regimes. Any benefit the US might get from its material or military support to such struggles, is outweighed by far by the benefit of survival for people who would otherwise face genocide. We would do well to recall that US material and military support to the USSR in World War II played a part in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Tyrannical regimes construe support for people resisting them, as support for foreign or imperialist ‘interference’ in the ‘sovereignty’ of those regimes. When we on the Left do the same, we serve as enablers and apologists for those tyrannies. Those in life-or-death struggles need us to respect their autonomy and sovereignty to decide what kind of moral/material/military support to demand/accept/reject. The moral compass of the global and Indian Left needs an urgent reset, so that it can correct its disastrous course that finds it on speaking the same language as tyrants.

Kavita Krishnan is a Marxist feminist activist and author. 

This article was last updated on December 23, 2022

The India Forum

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References

Dugin, Aleksandr. The Fourth Political Theory. London: Arktos 2012.

Vanaik, Achin. “National Interest: A Flawed Notion”. Economic and Political Weekly 41 (49). 9 Dec 2006.