Socialist Outlook : SO/02 - Winter 2003

Debate

Letter to Socialist Outlook

“I cannot fully agree with David Coen when he states in an otherwise very good article (Why Terrorism Is Not The Answer) that the Left must not/cannot support individual attacks by Palestinians, specifically suicide attacks, within Occupied Palestine.

Firstly, I do not think it is up to us in the comfort zone of the West to advise anti-imperialist movements in the developing world how to resist occupation and oppression.

Secondly, individual attacks on an occupying or colonial force have proven successful in the past - I am thinking in particular of the Algerian National Liberation Front, though we may also consider the current Iraqi resistance, and in a slightly different context the guerrilla warfare of various Latin American movements such as the FSLN in Nicaragua.

Thirdly, and for me this is the most important point, it is surely the job of us in the Left and the Palestine solidarity movement to offer unequivocal support to anti-imperialist/national liberation struggles.

I agree with Tom Paulin that targeted attacks on Zionist settlements would be effective in making life literally unliveable for the settlers, and in dissuading settlers - who are not ’civilians’, they are ultra-right fundamentalist paramilitaries - from expansionism. Such attacks would have to be supported.

When a huge number of people are unemployed and are dispersed around camps, it is not possible to protest through strike action or other collective activity. Palestinians engage in the only meaningful political activity available to them, legitimate political violence against illegal occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.

Let’s remember that the Palestinians have seen their land stolen from them, their homes demolished, their political organisations proscribed; they face torture, harassment and humiliation on a daily basis, and are fighting back in the only way they realistically can. We adopt the slogan "Victory to the Intifada" because we applaud the courage and tenacity of a colonised people that will not give in.

What is Israel? To all intents and purposes it is basically an offshore US military base. Israelis are targeted because they vote for far right Zionist parties, applaud the Apartheid Wall, enthusiastically endorse the isolation and proposed elimination of Yasser Arafat.

Hamas/PFLP/Islamic Jihad/DFLP target Tel Aviv nightclubs because they find it sickeningly offensive that Israelis dance, celebrate, and indulge their imitation of US consumer society while the people whose land they occupy suffer the degradation of refugee camps, border controls, giving birth while an Israeli soldier stands over them with a gun, their water and electricity supplies cut off, their brothers and fathers imprisoned and tortured.

Until there is any other avenue through which the people of Palestine can effectively resist occupation and ethnic cleansing, I would encourage everybody on the Left to refrain from condemning the armed struggle and to unconditionally support ALL Palestinian resistance.”

Paul Brown – Holloway - N19

A reply

It may be that the original article was not clear. I did not say the left could not support individual attacks by Palestinians…within Occupied Palestine: I did say attacks on civilians in Israel were counter productive.

I think you are right about ‘left’ advisers in the imperialist heartlands telling anti-imperialists how to conduct their struggles. Too often, sections of the British left were only heard joining in the condemnation of an IRA attack rather than what gave rise to it: British occupation of part of Ireland.

A key part of your letter concerns the distinction between ‘individual’ attacks such as suicide bombings and ‘collective’ action such as strikes and mass protests. You are right to point out that armed resistance may be the main option. But armed resistance is every bit as dependent on collective mobilisation of the population in support of the struggle – the sea in which the guerrilla swims to quote Mao.

Guerrilla warfare is mostly armed propaganda: its main objective is not the military defeat of the occupying power but forcing it to pay so high a price that political support at home (and internationally) ebbs away and it is forced to leave. The Resistance must therefore carefully calculate the effects of its actions on this audience and on its own population. Killing Israeli civilians has not so far led to a mass movement demanding Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories in the same way that IRA bombs in English pubs did not lead to a big withdrawal movement here.

So the case against such attacks is not based on liberal humanism. TV images of civilian deaths on either side can be useful tools in the battle for ‘hearts and minds’ and have devastating military consequences, as the IRA often found after actions that went wrong. In fact, the political results of armed actions are usually more important than their military consequences.

Everybody on the left should give unconditional support to the Palestinian Resistance. We should certainly not join in the hypocritical condemnation of the bourgeois media but seek to explain why attacks occur. However, unconditional does not mean ‘uncritical’ and we reserve the right to criticise, in appropriate forums, any actions that undermine the struggle. This is especially important because of the diverse forces involved in the liberation struggle, many of whom are extremely hostile to socialism. Likewise, Israel is composed of different classes and it would be a big mistake to lump them all together as merely ‘an offshore US military base’.

Finally, your tone is somewhat moralist in your comment on the targeting of nightclubs: ‘Israelis dance, celebrate and indulge their imitation of US consumer society…’. The Left should also distance itself from the kind of sermonising Puritanism beloved of imans, rabbis and priests of every hue.

Regards,

David Coen

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