ISL – RCIT Section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 22.04.2024
We live in the age of imperialism, which is the age of capitalism’s decay. As the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg said, this age will lead to socialism or barbarism. However, since history has moved on since she said this, and we face the danger of WWIII when nuclear weapons can be used, we say either socialism or back to the Stone Age.
In this period of decay, the capitalist class and its governments are attacking our democratic and social rights. In this age, we must defend and connect these rights to the socialist revolution by making transitional demands to the socialist revolution. Democratic rights were under vicious attack when the COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, broke out in 2019 and became a global pandemic of coronavirus disease. The capitalist class used this pandemic as a rationale to attack the right to demonstrate.
The capitalist class is using the genocide of the Palestinians by Israel to attack the right to speech and demonstrations by the mass movement that opposes the genocide. Israelis who stand for the right of the oppressed Palestinians to use armed struggle in the struggle for their self-determination may be charged with incitement to terror.
According to the Ynet news site, police are considering a criminal investigation, on suspicions of support for a terrorist act, into a Tel Aviv University lecturer who publicly eulogized Walid Daqqa.
“In a Facebook post, Anat Matar, a senior lecturer in Tel Aviv University’s Philosophy Department, called Daqqa, who died at age 62 from cancer, a “dear and beloved friend” and “an endless source of inspiration.”She also offered condolences to Daqqa’s family and the Palestinian people over the loss of “one of its most fantastic sons. Daqqa, an Israeli citizen, was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for commanding a cell linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which killed an Israeli soldier, Moshe Tamam, in 1984.”.[i]
International law recognizes peoples’ right to self-determination and affirms the legitimacy of peoples’ resistance against foreign domination and subjugation, including armed struggle. Because they violate the inalienable right to self-determination, asymmetric power structures such as colonization, apartheid, alien domination, and conquest are prohibited.
“In the context of the South African occupation of Namibia, the UNGA repeatedly supported the exercise of the Namibian people’s right to self-determination by all means at their disposal, including armed struggle.”[ii]
The states that support the Zionist genocide by state terror forbid and try to smash any manifestation of support for the Palestinian’s armed struggle that they call terrorism.
“Israeli police have defied a magistrate court’s rulings regarding the release of Palestinian Professor Nadera Shalhoub, who was arrested on Thursday on charges of “incitement”, Anadolu Agency reports. “The judge decided to release her on the condition of 10,000 shekels ($2,640) bail and a third-party bail in the same amount,” the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said in a statement.
The police informed the magistrate judge to appeal to the Central Court against the decision. Therefore, the execution of the decision will be suspended, and Shalhoub will not be released until a session is held in the Central Court to consider the police request for an extension of detention pending investigation.
Professor Shalhoub, a lecturer at the Hebrew University, was on charges of “incitement” after she accused Israel of committing “genocidal crimes” in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Channel 12 reported.
Shalhoub doubted Israeli claims of “sexual assaults” during Hamas’s 7 October attack, a claim repeatedly denied by the Movement, according to the Channel.
Following the publication of a petition accusing Israel of perpetrating genocide in Gaza, the lecturer faced suspension from the university, according to Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
They started with babies, they continued with rape, and they will continue with a million other lies. We stopped believing them, I hope the world stops believing them,” the daily cited a petition by Shalhoub.”[iii]
In the US, “one day after Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., questioned Columbia University administrators about the mistreatment of students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, the school suspended Omar’s daughter and two other students for participating in a campus protest. Omar’s questions to the administrators during a Wednesday congressional hearing on antisemitism at Columbia touched on the school’s response to students being sprayed with a chemical at a campus rally for Gaza and its policy surrounding professors harassing students online.
University President Nemat Minouche Shafik announced that two students were suspended in connection with the January protest and that a professor was under investigation for complaints about his social media posts about students.
Columbia Suspended Two Students for Assault on Gaza Rally, School Says in Antisemitism Hearing
During a hearing premised on the idea that there is rampant antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, Omar also got Shafik to say that there had been no protests targeting specific ethnic or religious groups — Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, or Jews.
I think that the line of questioning which my mother asked was definitely a pressure for Columbia University,” said Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, who is a junior at Barnard College, Columbia’s women’s school.
Hirsi, who has actively participated in campus protests over the war and said she hadn’t received any prior disciplinary warning, noted that other factors may have been at play too. “And then added pressure from me also giving interviews and people knowing that I am her daughter simultaneously,” she told The Intercept.”[iv][v]
In France already in October last year, “The French police have used tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters who took to the streets in support of the Palestinians, shortly after the government moved to ban all such rallies. Police broke up a rally in the capital, Paris, on Thursday, following orders from Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin to ban all pro-Palestine demonstrations in the name of “public order”. Critics called the order an attack on civil liberties.”[vi]
In Britain, “the government has said the backlash against Israel’s war in Gaza is stoking a climate of fear among lawmakers and is in danger of subverting the democratic process by making them too scared to express their views. The government is urging protesters to back off and is weighing expanding the definition of extremism to give officials more power to crack down on intolerance“[vii].
Down with all the imperialists!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-said-mulling-probe-of-tel-aviv-u-lecturer-who-eulogized-terror-convict/
[ii] https://badil.org/cached_uploads/view/2023/12/15/resistance-paper-1702636476.pdf
[iii] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240419-israel-police-contest-court-decision-to-release-palestinian-academic-on-incitement-charges
[iv] https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/u-k-government-to-pro-palestinian-protesters-youve-gone-too-far-8e23f2b4
[v] https://theintercept.com/2024/04/18/columbia-suspends-ilhan-omar-daughter-gaza-encampment/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
[vi] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/france-bans-pro-palestine-rallies-cracks-down-on-protesters-amid-gaza-war#:~:text=The%20French%20police%20have%20used,to%20ban%20all%20such%20rallies.
[vii] https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/u-k-government-to-pro-palestinian-protesters-youve-gone-too-far-8e23f2b4