Egypt
Victory for strikers at Egypt’s Mahalla factory
Thousands of workers at Egypt’s Mahalla Spinning and Weaving Company have won pay rises after a week-long strike.
The government’s business sector minister conceded a rise to 6000 Egyptian pounds ($185 a month).
Egypt’s repressive President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi recently announced a rise in the minimum wage for state workers to 6000 Egyptian pounds. Many workers are paid less than this and Mahalla workers headed up a drive to win a wage rise.
Women workers began the strike on 22 February and it then spread to large sections of male workers at the company that employs 14,000 people.
Bosses thought the cost of living squeeze and the fear of job losses would shatter the walkout. Six workers were arrested and face charges of terrorism. But strikers stood firm and refused to give in.
One worker said, “Instead of responding to our legitimate requests, the company deprives us of our salaries and uses the weapon of starvation as if we were in Gaza.”
The Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists group said, “The Mahalla strike clearly announces that Egypt’s workers reject the current starvation policies, and that if these policies have been passed by the sword of repression during the past period, then remaining silent about them is no longer possible.
“Huge salaries are paid to senior state employees in the presidential office, governors, judges, army and police officers.
“A maximum limit must be set for the wages of these pashas (elites) to provide the financial resources necessary to set a minimum wage of ten thousand pounds a month.”
Inflation in Egypt is close to 40 per cent, plunging many Egyptians near or under the poverty line.
Mahalla was the detonator of a major wave of strikes which fed into the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.
Ruling classes everywhere will fear economic and political revolt against the Arab regimes.
If Egypt’s workers and poor were in command and unleashed as a real solidarity force alongside the Palestinians, they would tear down the wall with Gaza.
They could inspire insurrection in other countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Iran and Syria.
This could make it impossible for imperialism to sustain its Israeli watchdog.
By Charlie Kimber, Socialist Worker UK
Sign and circulate the petition here calling for the release of strikers who are facing charges after arrests during the strike
The post Victory for strikers at Egypt’s Mahalla factory first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Locked Out of Development: Insiders and Outsiders in Arab Capitalism – review
In Locked Out of Development: Insiders and Outsiders in Arab Capitalism, Steffen Hertog critiques mainstream development models in the Middle East, focusing on state intervention and segmented market economies. Although Yusuf Murteza suggests the book under-examines neoliberalism’s prevalence, he finds its analysis on the state’s role in establishing the insider-outsider division in the economy nuanced and valuable.
Clusters of economic and political theorists have long been discussing how different actors prioritise and frame their understanding of “development”. Post-development and degrowth scholars such as Arturo Escobar, Gustavo Escobar, Wolfgang Sachs, and Jason Hickel announced the death of the mainstream development model as a project. They argued “the project of development” may not be equally beneficial to all societies, since the project carries ethnocentric and universalist dimensions which contribute to the hegemony of the West.
The ‘one size fits all’ idea of neoliberal development, which utilises finance and corporate capital, has gradually been replaced by alternative forms of development
The “one size fits all” idea of neoliberal development, which utilises finance and corporate capital, has gradually been replaced by alternative forms of development. Growing disillusionment with the Anglo-Saxon economic model increased the importance of examining alternative political and economic configurations both inside and beyond developed Western states. Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) theory’s significance can be grasped with its emphasis on existing similarities and differences within the institutions of developed economies. Recently, scholars have taken these insights seriously and benefited from the VoC framework to explain the reasons why political and economic institutions differ across societies. Discourse on the MENA region in terms of democracy and development may suffer from orientalist explanations that directly link religion and culture to the region’s political and economic stagnation. Steffen Hertog’s Locked Out of Development takes issue with what mainstream development scholars consider the political and economic inability of societies in the Middle East to take the Western route and realise neoliberal reforms in order to ensure economic development, productivity and innovation.
Neoliberal narratives suffer from a partial outlook. They trace the failures of development attempts by focusing on policymakers’ level of adherence to marketisation and privatisation.
Hertog’s main arguments throughout the book are threefold. First, neoliberal narratives suffer from a partial outlook. They trace the failures of development attempts by focusing on policymakers’ level of adherence to marketisation and privatisation. They consider ensuring faith in the market mechanisms of production and distribution systems as paramount. However, non-economic, country-specific problems matter. In the case of the Arab world, the deep dividing line of insider-outsider segmentation across societies has more explanatory power than classical narratives of having too much or too little market (81). Second, Hertog believes a comparative perspective situated within a global context carries crucial insights. The selected countries cannot be examined solely by focusing on within-region differences but should be considered within the global development trajectory and compared with developed countries (7). Third, the role of the state has a somewhat ambiguous position in development theory. The concept of a “developmental state” has added a further twist. The characteristics of the state and its symbiotic relationship with labour and the private sector need to be addressed when explaining factors contributing to the persistence of the Arab world’s development problem (8).
The role of the state has a somewhat ambiguous position in development theory
Hertog begins with a detailed examination of academic literature on the political economy of the Middle East, the varieties of capitalism approaches, and his conceptualisation of segmented market economies (SEME). The second chapter adopts a historical perspective and presents the case selected countries’ political and economic transformations after World War II. In the third chapter, Hertog reveals his argumentation of the SEME framework by bringing the state, labour market, business sector and skill composition to light. Detailed analysis of the country case studies follows, accompanied by SEME and future research directions. Lastly, Hertog sums up the reasons for the political and economic inability of the region to take the Western route.
Hertog argues that the VoC approach, with its emphasis on the heterogeneity of existing capitalisms, is useful to explain the unique characteristics of Arab capitalism. Different compositions of firms, the finance sector, networks, and the skill system create ideal-type interactions (those which typify certain characteristics of a phenomena) and lead to diversification within capitalism. The original VoC approach analysed several OECD countries from the developed world. In time, scholars used the explanatory power of VoC to explain the development performances of non-Western countries with specific modifications. Taking insights from recent accounts of VoC literature, Hertog believes the approach fits the Arab world well (8).
In broad terms, the state [in the Arab world] functions as the voice of insiders’ interests to quash any outsider’s attempt to reconfigure access to key resources.
There are two key dynamics in the region. As the second chapter discusses, the state has been a key actor in structuring the playing field between different interests to operate in the region (9). The interventionist and distributive characteristics of the state go hand in hand with the other dynamic, namely the persistence of insider-outsider division in the economy. In broad terms, the state functions as the voice of insiders’ interests to quash any outsider’s attempt to reconfigure access to key resources. Hertog warns that the nuanced structure of the SEME model applies only to the core members of the region, such as Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen. The key filter behind this selection of countries is their state-building projects between 1950 and 1970 (4-5).
Strategies of keeping public sector employment high with military jobs, large redistribution policies, food subsidies, and price controls are still prevalent in the region, demonstrating its nationalist and statist legacy.
Hertog finds the roots of his SEME model in Arab nationalism in the post-independence era. The state-building projects of the selected countries fused with nationalist and statist ideologies at the time. Discussion on the region’s long history brings up the question of path-dependence, which is used to describe the limiting power of past decisions over later trajectories. Hertog avoids engaging with these long-term theories, believing them unsuitable for a short book, and the key characteristics of the SEME model originated recently. Nationalisation policies and active intervention in the economy were characteristics of Arab nationalism (15). In state-building projects, Egypt and Syria set the parameters, which were later copied by other states. Strategies of keeping public sector employment high with military jobs, large redistribution policies, food subsidies, and price controls are still prevalent in the region, demonstrating its nationalist and statist legacy (28).
The detailed empirical discussion of the SEME is at the heart of the book. The framework is constituted by the state, labour market, business sector and skill system (9). The distributive character of a state can be located by examining the share of public employment, which remains high from a global perspective. Also, the state extensively regulates labour markets, holding key strongholds to access land and credit (29-30). Hertog argues these factors lead to segmented labour and private sectors, while keeping the skill level low. The presence of the state in the labour market ensures insider-outside division. Since there is little mobility, insiders rarely lose their position. Outsiders cannot reach to the welfare protection schemes by the state. This leads to social exclusion and an unproductive environment (32-48).
Hertog claims state intervention in the private sector creates unique opportunities for crony networks, whereby politically connected companies benefit from credits and licences.
Similar dynamics take place in the business sector, where large firms and clusters of small firms coexist (55). Hertog claims state intervention in the private sector creates unique opportunities for crony networks, whereby politically connected companies benefit from credits and licences. Business actors with outsider status engage in unproductive small-scale activities (58-60). The skill system needs to be thought of in relation to the segmented labour and business sectors. Low skill levels prevent mobility and limit innovation and technological development (69).
Overall, Hertog argues that state intervention in the region establishes the insider-outsider division in the economy. Hertog’s emphasis on bringing the state back into the analysis is beneficial. In the field of comparative politics, the idea of the state as an autonomous actor remained on the margins until the 1980s. The book’s limitations come in two forms. First, it doesn’t mention how global capitalist relations fit into the SEME. Hertog’s defence with the limitation of economic globalisation in the region may not offer a solution, since the dynamics of global capitalist accumulation depend on drawing materials from peripheral countries without contributing to them. Second, Hertog’s claim of neoliberalism’s low presence in the Arab world is dubious. Several scholars (Jason Hickel, Philip Mirowski) argue that states with strong capacity can implement the necessary reforms for deregulation and privatisation. Thus, the presence of neoliberalism and strong state capacity is not mutually exclusive. In the Middle East, we see a unique mixture of neoliberal policy reforms with strong state capacity. Even though Hertog constructs his own case, adapting earlier approaches to VoC and development topics and to explain the MENA region, policymakers, development specialists, and academics will find dry economic analysis alone is not enough. More nuanced analyses that consider the symbiotic interactions between the state, the business sector, and labour force are necessary. Only by doing this is it possible to acknowledge how politics mingle with economics, and to design alternative development programmes in response.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: AlexAnton on Shutterstock.
Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge – review
In Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge, Maged Mandour challenges simplistic views of the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution in 2011, when mass protests against the government forced then-president Ḥosnī Mubārak to step down. Mandour examines power shifts and the military’s consolidation of authority over the past decade of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s presidency, offering a nuanced intervention on post-revolutionary Egypt’s socio-political dynamics, writes Hesham Shafick.
Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge. Maged Mandour. Bloomsbury. 2024.
It takes me by surprise that we have already passed the 13th anniversary of Egypt’s revolution on January 25th 2011. Many theories and scholarly prints have been produced that try to make sense of how things unfolded after that day. The rise and fall of a structural “revolutionary situation”, the interplay between key local power centres, changing global dynamics, the or simply the work of talented tricksters are some of the many explanations proffered. Notwithstanding their differences, they all have one thing in common: singling out an external villain, a counterrevolutionary force(s), which mustered enough authority to override a once hopeful revolution.
In Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge, Maged Mandour refutes such a presumption of a dramatic distinction between victims and villains, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries. In doing so, he joins a cluster of critical thinkers, led by Gramscian political economists Brecht de Smet and Roberto Roccu, who stress the analytical necessity of understanding revolutions as “war(s) of positions” in which multiple actors exchange seats – be these ideologies, cultural codes, or political power – to formulate a new hegemonic, or “semi-hegemonic”, order. This reading paves the way for an understanding of the “post-revolution” collapse as a product of the revolutionary repertoire itself.
Mandour joins a cluster of critical thinkers […] who stress the analytical necessity of understanding revolutions as ‘war(s) of positions’ in which multiple actors exchange seats […] to formulate a new hegemonic, or ‘semi-hegemonic’, order.
In my own work, I took a cue from such thinking to co-author a series of articles that reconceived of the January 25th movement as a moment that brought together a working class motivated by their socioeconomic grievances, a middle class motivated by liberal aspirations, and a military elite motivated by their greed (see “A fascist history of the Egyptian revolution” I, II, & III). These were all temporarily assembled to push back against a malignantly growing police state. The first day of protests was thus selectively chosen to be the policy holiday – January 25th.
After three days of street fighting, the police were forced to retreat. And since then, Tahrir and other protest squares turned into physical assemblies of the three participating sections of society. But it did not take long for the middle class and military to override the working class. The workers’ demands were sidelined, even vilified, as “fractional” and “divisive”, facilitating a popularly backed military crackdown on factory protests. That was in the very early days of the revolution, a few months after the police retreat. Immersed in the utopian moment of overthrowing the police state, the middle class failed to observe the emergence of an even more dangerous armed regime, one which is far more powerful and, ironically because of their backing of the revolution, or more precisely its middle-class pillar, more popular.
Immersed in the utopian moment of overthrowing the police state, the middle class failed to observe the emergence of an even more dangerous armed regime
This re-conception of the post-revolution military regime – led by former minister of defence and head of military intelligence President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi – as a product of the revolutionary repertoire, rather than an independent counterforce, is, we argued, a game changer to analysts and activists alike. For if Sisi’s regime is a counterrevolutionary junta that overthrew the revolutionary movement by force, then the revolutionary response should be straightforward: keep pushing! It is therefore crucial to understand the nature of such a regime in relation to the revolution, not only to make sense of the startling concurrence of seemingly contradictory popular chants like “ya geshna enzel ehmina” [Oh our Army, rise and protect us] and “Yasqot Yasqot hom el ‘askar” [down, down with the military regime] in the same protest, but also to determine the strategies that can produce revolutionary outcomes in such a peculiar context.
Mandour does not focus on the January 25th revolution, but rather Sisi’s regime as a product of a prolonged of which January 25th and its ensuing coup regimes of 2011 and 2013 were mere symptoms.
It is from this lens that I welcomed Mandour’s account with excitement. Mandour does not focus on the January 25th revolution, but rather Sisi’s regime as a product of a prolonged of which January 25th and its ensuing coup regimes of 2011 and 2013 were mere symptoms. Passive revolution refers to an ongoing sociopolitical process where dominant elites keep maintaining their control through selective and temporary co-optations with variant classes, each of which eventually wind up pacified and sidelined. In this account, the revolution, the military regime, and their temporary coalition under Sisi’s rule, were a continuity of social reshuffles that attempted to constitute a political order in the vacuum created after the collapse . (For more on post-Nasser hegemonic vacuum, see Sarah Salem’s Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt, reviewed here.)
In 1967, Mandour explains, Nasser not only lost his war with Israel on the Sinai Peninsula; he lost the package of ideological promises of Pan-Arabism, Arab-Socialism and postcolonialism that built his mandate. However, some of this regime’s structural legacies remained intact: military supremacy, a police-hijacked state, and a de-politicised middle class. Emptied of their ideological enablers, three social clusters found themselves in a power scramble, in which “soldiers, spies, and statesmen” – as Hazem Kandil eloquently puts it – would every now and then “solicit mass popular support” to leverage one of the three actors over the others (85).
Fast-forward to Egypt Under El-Sisi: the same actors remain at play, now producing a different type of regime. In 2013, Sisi rose to the fore with a promise to bring back the “unity” of the Egyptian middle class, popularly perceived to be disrupted by the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of January revolution. Here, “unity” is conceived of as “sameness” and hence disrupted by the appearance of that was for so long forcefully kept at the margins, even officially abandoned from political participation – the Muslim Brotherhood (55). Utilising the popular frustration caused by this disruption, Sisi garnered the support of the middle class through a very simple promise: returning the national identity; in other words, getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The first post-coup regime was headed by middle-class technocrats with the military pulling strings behind the scenes.
The first post-coup regime was headed by middle-class technocrats with the military pulling strings behind the scenes. This arrangement was, however, far from stable. As Niccolo Machiavelli has stated: “there is nothing proportional between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed.” Realising that, the military apparatus, spearheaded by Sisi himself, administrated a crackdown on its middle-class power-sharers, crushing contenders and allies alike. It did so through multiple means, articulately described in Egypt under El-Sisi, which fall under three mutually reinforcing policy categories – legalisation of repression, displays of bloodshed, and the military capture of the economy. Repressive laws were passed with a violent state crackdown on any public dissent. This facilitated further violence by granting it a legalised status. In turn, this dynamic granted the military both the legal and the armed control over the most lucrative markets within the Egyptian economy, which further enhanced the officers’ loyalty to the regime, facilitating further violence. Such a vicious cycle eventually led to the middle-class becoming, once again, sidelined; this time with no other significant regime actors at play, and hence no need for co-opting any social class whatsoever. The result was, Mandour describes, a first of its kind military dictatorship that feels no political obligation towards any other actor; neither security partners nor any social class – no spies, no statesmen, just soldiers.
Egypt Under El-Sisi claims to be a narrative of the rise of a military dictatorship and the demise of the traditional post-Nasserist liberal autocracy. But the book’s relevance goes far beyond that, especially to students of Gramsci and post-Marxist critical thought.
Egypt Under El-Sisi claims to be a narrative of the rise of a military dictatorship and the demise of the traditional post-Nasserist liberal autocracy. But the book’s relevance goes far beyond that, especially to students of Gramsci and post-Marxist critical thought. The book’s analysis of post-January 25th politics in Egypt points to an exceptional form of “passive revolution” which has no class of beneficiaries other than the military itself. Its structural arrangement looks like a product of a typical military coup, except that it is not. In fact, the regime outset, always relied on popular mobilisation, despite the absence of the mobilised class and its agenda from all aspects of policymaking.
That is the main question the book leaves us with, one that encourages further empirical research, but also conceptual enquiry into the possibility of a semi-hegemonic arrangement that lacks not only ideological underpinnings, but even structural foundations. No doubt, the starting point for such an analysis would be Gramsci’s “passive revolution”, but how could this revolution be possible without a class of beneficiaries? Perhaps the answer lies beyond the structural analysis Gramscian paradigms proffer, and one should rather look into superstructural instruments by which the masses could be deceived to recurrently act against their best interest.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: mehmet ali poyraz on Shutterstock.
Miko Peled: The Predicament Of Palestinian Refugees Amid Genocide
To fully understand the genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip, we need to look at how Israel has strategically distanced itself from any responsibility for the fate of the Palestinian refugees. Israel has consistently used lies and fabrications to lay the blame for the Palestinian refugees on others.
Initially, it was the fault of the “Arabs” for promising the Palestinians they could leave while the Arab armies kicked the Jews out of Palestine, after which they would be able to return. The Palestinians fell for this, so the Zionist story goes, and now it is too bad for them they cannot return. Even if this was true, it does not explain why, from the end of 1947, the Zionist terror groups were violently displacing Palestinians, nor does it explain why the refugees were not permitted to return.
Following the creation of the State of Israel, the Gaza Strip, parts of the West Bank and large areas within the countries that border Palestine became homes to refugee camps. From that point on, Israel claimed that it was the responsibility of the host countries to solve the refugee crisis by integrating Palestinians. In other words, it was not the responsibility of the party that committed the crime of ethnic cleansing but of the countries that were forced to host them.
Because Israel occupied Gaza, it is faced with a problem it cannot solve. Doing the only thing that makes sense and allowing the refugees to return to their land and their homes is out of the question because Israel is a genocidal racist regime. Leaving Gaza as it is isn’t working either, so killing as many Palestinians in Gaza as possible and blaming it on them has been the policy for decades, and it has been successful.
Since the early 1950s, when the Gaza Strip was created, Israeli forces have been committing massacres there and then blaming it on the Palestinians, claiming they present an existential threat. This strategy of killing has been so successful that even now, in 2024, the world is willing to allow Israel to commit acts of genocide uninterrupted.
Furthermore, as these acts of genocide take place, Israel has succeeded in accomplishing yet another facet of its strategy to undermine the rights of the Palestinian refugees. It managed to get the world to reduce its support of UNRWA. The resources that were once available to UNRWA were barely enough to provide the services that its mandate demands. Now, the need is greater than ever, and many of the resources have dried up thanks to Israel’s undermining of the organization.
Last but not least, Israel and its allies are accusing Egypt and even Jordan of not “taking” any of the survivors of the genocide in Gaza. It is these countries, say the Zionists, who should take the Palestinians and save them. Once again, the responsibility is shifted from the perpetrators of the crimes to parties that have nothing to do with it, while Israel enjoys diplomatic cover and material support that allows it to continue the genocide in Gaza and the brutal oppression throughout all parts of Palestine.
Miko Peled is a MintPress News contributing writer, published author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. His latest books are”The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”
The post Miko Peled: The Predicament Of Palestinian Refugees Amid Genocide appeared first on MintPress News.
How Arab States Are Helping Israel Commit Genocide
Palestine’s Arab neighbors seem to have taken a bold stance on Israel’s genocide of Gaza in a public show of solidarity with Palestinians. But behind those strong words, states like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE are quietly assisting Israel.
These four nations are working together to circumvent the actions of one of the few regional actors who are challenging Israel concretely: Yemen’s Ansar Allah. In a bid to alleviate pressure on Israel from the Ansar Allah (a.k.a the Houthi) blockade of the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan have established land corridors, ensuring cargo destined for the apartheid state arrives safely in Israeli hands.
According to Hebrew Channel 13, Israeli-linked cargo ships arrive in the UAE to unload goods. Trucks then transport these goods through UAE and Saudi highways to Jordan. They eventually reach Israel via the Jordan River Crossing.
German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd announced that it was working with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to create a land route “bypassing the Houthis,” which connects ports in the UAE and the Saudi port of Jeddah facilitating cargo movement to Israel through the Suez Canal.
Egypt has also joined the effort, operating container ships from its ports to the Israeli port of Ashdod, further supporting the land bridge initiative and assuring Israeli commerce is not interrupted amid its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
But that is just the start of their complicity.
Take Turkey, for example. Around 40% of Israel’s energy needs are met by an oil pipeline running through Turkey. President Erdoğan could simply shut the flow of oil off to Israel, which would shut down the economy and the military assault in days. But he continues not to do so, despite offering strong condemnation of Israel in words.
Morocco, meanwhile, is building a military intelligence base for Israel near its border with Algeria. The site will be utilized for collaboration for military training, intelligence and security.
Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems also recently announced the establishment of two weapons factories in Morocco, helping to diversify Israel’s weapons production capabilities, as activists in other countries shut the factories down.
In 2021, Morocco also signed the Abraham Accords – a normalization treaty with Israel that Bahrain and the UAE had already agreed to. The Emirates has long been a hub for Israeli intelligence, and it is now well established that the two nations aid each other on intelligence matters.
Moreover, last year, Edge Group, a UAE state-owned corporation, invested $14 million in Israeli drone manufacturer Highlander Aviation. So the Israeli police employ their airspace management system, which was tested by the Israeli Air Force.
The relationship between the UAE and Israel has grown now that Elbit Systems established an entire subsidiary organization – Elbit Systems Emirates – in order to establish what it called “long term cooperation” with the UAE military.
Meanwhile, despite its rhetoric, Saudi Arabia has been quietly collaborating with Israel for some time. The Saudi-backed group Affinity Partners owns a stake in the Israeli company Shlomo Group.
During the conflict in Gaza, the Shlomo Group contributed trucks and military equipment to the Israeli military’s Shaldag and Maglan units, as well as food packages to the IDF.
Saudi Arabia is well-known to be one of the Israeli intelligence industry’s best customers. Saudi security forces have used Israeli tech provided by NSO Group and Cellebrite to spy on people and hack their phones, including for the infamous murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
These states could do so much besides empty rhetoric to help the people of Palestine and blunt the Israeli attack on Gaza, including arms embargoes, sanctions on trade and travel, and halting the military and intelligence collaborations.
The people of the Arab world are dead against the genocide in Gaza and collaborating in it. They have come out in mass across their countries protesting Israel’s war and have even vowed to march through their borders to Gaza to defend their Palestinian brethren.
But it is clear, for these leaders – their actions speak louder than their words.
Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh.
The post How Arab States Are Helping Israel Commit Genocide appeared first on MintPress News.
Government funding pro-Israel ‘charity’ to fight support for Palestinians in schools
‘Solutions not Sides’ literally ‘both-sidesing’ Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing – but has been linked to pro-Israel lobby and receives most funding from UK government and lobby groups
The UK government and pro-Israel lobby groups are funding a UK-registered charity to indoctrinate schoolchildren against recognition of Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
‘Solutions not Sides’ (SNS) has received increasing amounts of cash to carry out literal ‘bothsidesing’ of the grossly asymmetrical situation in Palestine, treating Israel’s occupation, apartheid, oppression and now mass-murder of Palestinians as equivalent to Palestinian resistance.
The charity’s website claims to run a ‘non-partisan programme’ to ‘prepare students to make a positive, solutions-focused contribution to debates on Israel-Palestine’. However, its ‘Mission & Values’ page states that it opposes ‘advocacy’ and ‘partisan solidarity'(!) a value that rules out support for the Boycott Divestment and sanctions campaign, rejects ‘blame culture’ and believes that:
both sides bear responsibility for bringing about a resolution to the conflict.
Israel is currently engaged in mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians and is making plans for the deportation of Gazan Palestinians to Egypt, the Congo and other African destinations. It faces allegations brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa of what experts consider to be a ‘textbook case’ of genocide. The victims of war crimes clearly do not ‘bear responsibility’ for ending the crimes – and minimising Israel’s guilt for its illegal actions and Palestinian suffering while treating Palestinians’ acts of resistance as equivalent is inherently partisan. In this context, the group’s claim to be fighting Islamophobia as well as antisemitism looks like mere window dressing.
According to Palestine is still the issue and 5Pillars, SNS has its origins in – and receives around thirty percent of its funding from – ‘One Voice’, a billionaire-funded pro-Israel lobby group. SNS has been backed by pro-Israel groups, as well as figures well-known from their eager participation in smears of the left.
An attempt by Palestine Declassified to visit the SNS office to obtain comment on analysis of SNS’s activities found that no one was based at the charity’s registered address. It did not respond to the programme’s requests for comment.
Campaigners are asking teachers and parents to complain to schools urgently if this group is brought in.
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Unite activists sign letter to Graham after ban on union banners at Palestine demos
Alleged management ban on exec members marching under Unite banners leads to angry letter denouncing lack of action and solidarity with slaughtered Gazans
Unite banners at a Manchester Gaza demo – but executive members say they have been banned from formal representation
Unite members and activists have issued an outraged letter to union general secretary Sharon Graham, after members of the elected executive were told not to attend, under a Unite banner, demonstrations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The letter reads:
Dear Sharon Graham,
As a result of our letters of 30 October and 1 November and other representations, including from London and Eastern Region, you finally agreed, after nearly 4 weeks of an ongoing genocide by Israel, to issue a statement on November 3 calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The statement was however pitiably weak. There was no mention of genocide or ethnic cleansing. There was no mention of the war crimes perpetrated by Israel – the bombing of hospitals, the targeting and murder of journalists, academics and doctors to say nothing of the bombing of residential areas or the murder of children, which now stands at over 8,000.
There was no mention of the fact that Israel has imposed a food, water and fuel blockade on the Gaza strip resulting in starvation according to the United Nations. Collective punishment of a civilian population is a egregious breach of international law yet the statement treats the Palestinians and the Israeli state as equally responsible.
It is not Hamas which possesses an air force but Israel. It is the Israeli state which is carrying out the carpet bombing of Gaza with the intent of forcing Palestinians out altogether.
The statement treats the genocidal attack on the people of Gaza as equivalent to the break-out from the world’s largest open air prison on October 7. Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip for 56 years imposing a suffocating siege on it since 2007.
This report from Vatican News of 16 December gives just one example of Israel’s war crimes:
‘Israelis have opened fire on Gaza’s Christians. Following heavy bombardment overnight of the area around Holy Family Latin parish in Gaza City, dozens are reported dead… and reports continue to arrive that shooting by Israeli snipers continues during these hours. A statement released by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem confirmed that an Israeli sniper murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish where the majority of Christian families have taken refuge since the start of the war.’
An even more horrifying massacre took place on 17 December. Al Jazeera reported that Israeli bulldozers have crushed Palestinians who were taking shelter in tents outside Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Dozens of Palestinians are reported to have been buried alive. These are Nazi-style massacres and yet you have said nothing and done nothing since issuing your statement. You were happy to wave the Ukrainian flag but you haven’t waved the Palestinian flag or expressed any sympathy with the thousands of murdered Palestinian civilians, not least children.
UN Secretary General António Guterres accepted that there was a context to October 7. Many Israeli civilians died at the hands of the Israeli military. See Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says.
Unite at its 2023 Policy Conference passed motions supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and affirmed that Israel is practising the crime of apartheid. That should have informed Unite’s statement.
The statement treats one of the world’s most powerful militaries and the resistance of the Palestinians as equal. Your claim that Israel’s goal is to eliminate Hamas is untrue. Why bomb homes, schools and ambulances if this was the case? Were the dead children also Hamas ‘terrorists’?
The statement says nothing about what Unite intends to do. You have done nothing to publicise all the previous national demonstrations. Are you going to ignore the one on January 13 too? There has been no national Unite presence on the marches to date.
We demand that you publicise all future demonstration, that you provide the resources necessary for Unite members to attend, that Unite nationally is present on the march together with its banner and that Unite has a speaker at the rally.
A leaked Israeli intelligence document makes it clear that Israel’s intention is to repeat the Nakba in 1948 when ¾ million Palestinians were expelled.
If Israel succeeds this will be a prelude to ethnic cleansing on the West Bank where there has been a reign of terror in the past 6 months. Over 250 people have died since October 7. Vast areas of Area C have been ‘cleansed’ as Israeli settlers and the army attack farmers.None of this is recognised in your statement. Netanyahu has compared the Palestinians to ‘Amalek’ whom God instructed the Israelites to exterminate yet Unite’s statement ignores this. Open calls in Israel for the extermination of the Palestinians are being made and Israel’s army is doing just that.
By blocking fuel, babies on incubators and people on dialysis machines have already died.
It is time for Unite to show that the situation in Gaza is an urgent one and to mobilise its members. We give the Labour Party over £1m a year. We should be demanding that Keir Starmer makes way for someone who is not a ‘Zionist without qualification’. At the moment he is nothing more than Sunak’s echo chamber.
Yours sincerely
Sharon Graham had already infuriated supporters of Palestinian rights by remaining silent for many weeks at the start of Israel’s latest genocidal assault on Gaza – then making a grossly asymmetrical statement appearing to treat Israeli deaths more seriously than Palestinian and allegedly having the exec railroaded into accepting only her preferred wording when the statement was eventually issued.
Graham was also exposed using proxies to order the cancellation of showings of the film ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn/The Big Lie’, which exposes the political abuse of antisemitism accusations against left-wingers in the Labour party, and discussion of Asa Winstanley’s forensic book Weaponising Antisemitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. Proxies were similarly despatched to try, unsuccessfully, to cancel a Unite ‘fringe’ event at Labour’s conference earlier this month in support of Palestinians.
At the time of writing, the letter is still open for Unite members to add their signature via Google Docs. It will be submitted shortly after new year.
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Video: Webbe ‘I will not be accomplice’ to war crimes, signs call for ICC Gaza investigation
Leicester East MP issues no-holds-barred speech; over 66,000 sign letter to International Criminal Court
Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe MP has signed a formal call to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
And in a no-holds-barred Westminster Hall speech to MPs explaining her decision to put her name to the formal letter of complaint, she said that she ‘will not be an accomplice’ to the daily atrocities against Palestinian civilians:
Webbe was one of the first of more than 66,000 international lawmakers, civil society representatives and civilians to sign the official complaint asking on the ICC to investigate, prosecute and arrest Israeli government figures, including Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, for war crimes against the people of Gaza including genocide and crimes against humanity.
“‘Never again’ must mean never again for anyone”
In a statement today, Ms Webbe MP said:
I have signed a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court for Justice calling on them to investigate and prosecute the Israeli government for war crimes against the people of Palestine, including genocide and crimes against humanity.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has destroyed or severely damaged 60-70% of homes and public buildings – some estimates say 80-90% – and has killed more than 20,000 civilians, including at least 10,000 children, as well as maiming countless others, who are now forced to undergo amputations and other serious surgery without anaesthetic, in impossible conditions.
The death toll from bombs and missiles is horrifying, but the toll from starvation and disease is set to be even worse, with Israel only allowing a fraction of the aid into Gaza that its people need and the UN unable to distribute it effectively because so many of their trucks have been destroyed. More than 150 UN personnel have been killed.
Yet the Israeli government is blaming the UN for the situation and is using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war, while Israel’s ministers have even suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza and talk openly of ‘Nakba 2023’ – a repeat of the violent mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 – and Israeli troops have planted flags in the centre of flattened residential districts to stake their claim.
I have received well over 6,000 letters and emails from constituents calling for an immediate ceasefire and I am comforting too many who have lost family under the rubble and others desperately worried about their loved ones and friends in Gaza and I will not be silent. Collective punishment is a war crime, forcible transfer of the population is a war crime, indiscriminate bombing and the use of white phosphorus on civilians – now confirmed by Amnesty International – is a war crime. I will not be an accomplice.
I have signed the formal complaint to the International Criminal Court because there must be accountability for those responsible, and I have urged my colleagues in Parliament to do the same.
Never again must mean never again for anyone.
The formal letter of complaint to the ICC, which has been signed by hundreds of politicians globally as well as more than 66,000 others, is still open for readers to add their names here. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Podemos Social Rights minister Ione Belarra Urteaga and a host of other global lawmakers have signed. Details of signatories can be found here.
Despite the huge number of signatures, the UK media appear determined to ignore the war crime prosecution call.
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Video: Hotovely claims Mowasi is ‘shelter’ for Gazans – just as footage reveals wasteland
Reality of Israel’s propaganda as it claims 1km-wide strip of land in southern Gaza is a safe haven for Palestinians to justify its bombing of the rest of the south
Far-right Israeli ambassador to the UK Tsipi Hotovely has claimed ‘Mowasi’ is a safe haven for the two million-plus Palestinians it has driven into southern Gaza – telling them it was safe in the south as it bombed thousands into oblivion in the north, flattened most buildings and targeted schools and hospitals.
More than a million were driven into the south – and Israel is bombing them there too. But as its disastrous propaganda efforts collapse around their ears and the truth that Israeli forces killed many of the Israelis who died in the kibbutz raid gains traction, Israeli spin-merchants clearly feel the need to somehow justify the fact that Israel is now driving the Palestinians of Gaza into an even tinier area.
There is no ‘Mowasi’ in Gaza, but there is al-Mawasi – a 1km-wide strip of land hard against the coastline of southern Gaza. But as Hotovely claimed ‘Mowasi’ is a safe place for more than two million people, half of them children, Sky cut to footage of the area – and revealed a wasteland:
Journalist Rami Jarrah, who spotted the Sky clip, went on to expose more of the propaganda – and the tininess of al Mawasi – in a short Twitter thread:
Palestinians are going out of their way to expose Israel’s fabricated safe havens that are just bustling with aid organisations.
Israel wants 2.2 million Gazans to build sand castles in the desert & disturbingly close to the Egyptian border
I wonder why?pic.twitter.com/RuNUa4QiND— Rami Jarrah (@RamiJarrah) December 4, 2023
See this tiny strip labelled 'Humanitarian Zone'?
That's Mowasi, that's where Israel wants 2.2 Million Gazans to fit, with no water, shelter or electricity.
They really mean it when they call Palestinians "Human Animals" pic.twitter.com/ihq4DmAUEM— Rami Jarrah (@RamiJarrah) December 4, 2023
Israeli ministers and advisers have been exposed planning the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, either killing its Palestinian residents or driving them into a new, permanent ‘tent city’ refugee camp in the Egyptian desert. But that is not yet the narrative that Israeli is presenting to the wider world, so ‘Mowasi’ is the interim.
And the farce of the claim has been exposed within seconds, as the gross incompetence of the Israeli propaganda machine came back to bite the apartheid-mongers yet again.
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Video: former US Israel adviser arrested after disgusting Islamophobic hate-speech tirades
Stuart Seldowitz’s foul and shameless verbal assaults on street food vendor finally have consequences. He now offers to apologise
Pro-Israel former US government adviser Stuart Seldowitz has been arrested after a shameless and disgusting series of tirades against a Muslim street food vendor.
Seldowitz was filmed – and knew he was being filmed – smiling as he asked the man whether he had raped his daughter, threatened to send details of his family to the Egyptian secret police so they could pull out his father’s fingernails and, appallingly, said that four thousand Palestinian children slaughtered in Gaza wasn’t ‘enough’.
And he went back repeatedly to do it, as videos of him in different outfits show:
Seldowitz was Deputy Director in the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003. It’s not hard to imagine whose side he was on during his ‘service’ – and his lack of hesitation as he was filmed suggests he thought he was above consequences for his racism and actions.
However, while New York Police reportedly originally said they could take no action because he was exercising his freedom of speech, Seldowitz has now been arrested for aggravated racial harassment and four counts of stalking – and in an embarrassing climbdown that his actions suggest has everything to do with avoiding prosecution, has offered to apologise to the man he abused:
Seldowitz’s arrogance is all too typical of the attitude of supporters of Israeli violence and apartheid, who treat scrutiny as antisemitic and even as ‘holocaust denial’.
Israel has slaughtered more than 15,000 civilians, around half of them children, and has bombed schools, hospitals and the homes of doctors and journalists in its campaign to empty Gaza for its own purposes, committing widespread war crimes. Its pretext – that it is ‘defending itself’ after supposed atrocities by Hamas, is falling apart daily as its ‘evidence’ for Hamas’s presence in hospitals is rightly mocked and its admissions continue, unreported by the so-called ‘mainstream’ media in this country, that Israeli forces killed hundreds of their own people on 7 October.
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