JERUSALEM, September 1 — Dozens of Palestinian-Arab residents of the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem, supported by more than a hundred anti-racist activists, marched against a phony “scientific convention” serving as a cover for a racist land-grab in the neighborhood by upper-class Jewish settlers.

The settlers, backed by the cops and by city hall, use a massive archeological dig in that neighborhood — supposedly revealing the remains of the ancient City of David — to justify their violent takeover of multiple houses in the area while evicting their original, Palestinian-Arab, residents. First they take over a few houses, then harass the local Palestinian-Arab population and make their lives miserable until they have to move away. Then the settlers take over more houses. The same policy is used in Silwan, Shiekh Jarrah and Hebron to seize real-estate assets.

The demonstrators tried to march towards the City of David “archeological park,” where the convention was being held. Their way was blocked by armed riot cops, despite the fact that they were marching in one of their own neighborhood’s main streets. The cops then proceeded to brutally attack the residents and the activists, injuring three activists and arresting six. But the demonstrators did not back down; for three hours they stood up against the fascist cops and shouted slogans such as “King David died a long time ago — cops and settlers go away!” and “Wake up! Fascism is marching against us!”

This land-grab is not an isolated incident, nor is it a local initiative by a few extremists, as some of the liberal activists believe. The ELAD organization, which is behind the settlers, is funded by several real-estate tycoons, including the Miami mogul Irwing Moscowitz and the big Israeli bosses Lev Leviev and Roman Abramov. Irwing Moscowitz funds a number of racist land-grabs all over Palestine, such as in Ras El-Amud and Shiekh Jarrah. Similarly, another U.S. capitalist, Ron Lauder — the heir of Estee Lauder’s business empire — is
behind the fascist demolition of the entire village of Al-Araqib in southern Palestine. Obviously, such skilled investors did not throw all this money into the fascist settler NGO’s out of philanthropy alone: there are business interests involved, and the whole wave of house demolitions and evictions of Palestinian-Arabs from their homes is nothing but a real-estate land-grab by big capital at the expense of local workers.

It is not surprising that the Israeli regime — the same regime that maintains the fascist blockade over Gaza and slaughters its residents — actively supports these land-grabs. Ever since its foundation in 1948, the Israeli state followed the colonialist policy of “Judaization,” that is, as many Jews (especially upper-class) on as much land as possible, and as little Palestinian-Arabs (and Jewish workers) on as little lands as possible. This policy serves the interests of local tycoons and their wealthy U.S. masters, who gain profitable real-estate assets for cheap or for free. It also serves the need of all bosses to separate workers on the basis of racism and nationalism, thus weakening the working class.

Three local PL’ers came to the demonstration, armed with a red PL flag. They distributed leaflets revealing the real-estate business interests behind the house seizures. The PL’ers called for the workers of all nations and “races” to unite against the bosses and the fascist state and smash them once and for all.

PLP fights for the overthrow of the “Zionist” Israeli apartheid regime and its puppets in the Palestinian Authority, who might be getting a few more bribes in the current round of “peace negotiations.” We want the workers of the entire Middle East, Arabs and Jews alike, to unite and replace colonialism and capitalism with the communist rule of the working class. JOIN US!J

If Henry Louis Gates had actually wanted to raise legitimate questions about problems of reparations, he could have discussed the case of Israel, which has received reparations, as opposed to African Americans, who have not. If he wanted to raise questions about collaboration and complicity with Western perpetrators of slavery and genocide, he could have discussed Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.

However, unswerving support for Israel is itself treated as a form of obligatory reparations and atonement for failure to prevent Nazi genocide against Jews during World War II. Gates himself, like President Obama, is a strong supporter of Israel. He offered extravagant praise for his colleague and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz’s
lying plagiarized book “The Case for Israel.” What can an examination of reparations for Jews and Israel tell us about reparations?

The global struggle against Nazism/Fascism during World War II demonstrated that hundreds of millions of people were capable of great courage and self-sacrifice to defeat a common enemy. However, in every country where this struggle took place, there were people who collaborated with the Nazis or fascists.

These traitors were often called the “fifth column,” a reference to those Spaniards who supported fascist General Franco. In Norway they came to be called Quislings, a reference to a Norwegian fascist who helped the Nazis occupy Norway. Among European Jews, some of the traitors were members of the Judenrat, Jewish councils set up by the Nazis to help them administer the Jewish ghettos, conscript slave labor, and organize genocide. Jews who resisted the Nazis called them Judenverrat, meaning Jewish traitors.

Communists led resistance movements against Nazism/Fascism and understood that it was necessary to deal sharply and swiftly with traitors. Most of the three million European Jews who survived the Nazi genocide lived in the Soviet Union and survived because of communism. Nearly six hundred thousand Soviet Jews fought in the Soviet Red Army against the Nazis.

In contrast, the Zionists (Jewish nationalists), who founded the state of Israel after World War II in 1948, often collaborated with the Nazis and imitated their racist ideology. Zionists opposed efforts to organize international economic boycotts of Nazi Germany. Zionists opposed efforts to rescue Jews by resettling them in various countries, because the Zionists were determined to settle Jewish refugees only in Palestine. Zionists declared that many Jews were not worth saving from the Nazis, and they wanted only “the best biological material” to build a Jewish state.

Hungarian Zionist Rudolph Kastner struck a secret deal with Nazi leader Adolph Eichmann in 1944: Kastner would provide Eichmann with thousands of trucks and would not warn 450,000 Hungarian Jews that the Nazis were about to transport them to the death camps. In return, Eichmann would allow Kastner and few thousand Hungarian Zionist Jews to escape to Switzerland. Kastner later became a cabinet member in the Israeli government and was assassinated in 1957.

It was this Zionist movement of collaborators in the Nazi genocide that founded the state of Israel and drove most of the Palestinian population from Palestine. This Zionist leadership received and controlled the billions of dollars of reparations money obtained from European governments. These Zionists created what Norman Finkelstein calls “The Holocaust Industry” as a profitable racket, while distributing only a small fraction of this money to Jews most in need of assistance.

Israeli capitalists have used reparations money to consolidate and expand their state and their exploitation of Jewish and other workers. The U.S. alone has provided Israel with about $100 billion dollars in military assistance since the 1967 Arab/Israeli war. Zionist Israel has been a strategic asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East for more than four decades, helping U.S. rulers control the governments and oil of the region.

The mixture of reparations with nationalism serves the interests of imperialism and is toxic for the working class.

STATEN ISLAND, NY, August 4 — Hundreds of black, white, Asian and Latino workers, students and their families marched and rallied here against the more than 17 known racist attacks against undocumented workers from Latin America. This multi-racial protest was organized by workers from a group that fights for immigrants’ rights, along with PLP. PL’s years of work in a mostly black church united black workers and Latino workers here, in the face of anti-immigrant racism and police terror.

Carrying signs like “fight racist attacks” and “unite against racism,” PL’ers expanded the struggle to more than a narrow fight against violence or solely a citizenship issue that can be “solved” by the liberal bosses’ nightmarish immigration reform (see CHALLENGE July and August). PLP’s leadership sharpened the line of the protest to directly confront racism. Hundreds of CHALLENGES were distributed and were read by onlookers and virtually all the marchers.

Multi-racial Unity is Key

The recent racist attacks in Staten Island by black youth on undocumented workers is an example of how racism divides the working class. Black workers attacking and nearly killing Latino workers reflects the efforts of the bosses to pit workers against workers, and prevent a united multi-racial fight against capitalism. But PL can win workers to communist-led unity against racism.

The racism of the liberal left is highlighted by the mass organization at the forefront of the struggle pushing this solely as a “Latino issue.” This idea is dangerous, as organizing a group of workers based on race only further pits one group against another. Workers must see themselves as part of the working-class, not one “nationality” or “race,” more similar to other workers of the world than to their national bosses. Only with this understanding can workers unite to smash those capitalist bosses. At the rally, our chants, “Asian, Latin, black, and white — to smash racism, we must unite!” and “Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras” were taken up by many marchers.

The city is also increasing its police presence as a response to these attacks; the same NYPD KKKops who attack, jail and kill our class on a regular basis. The NYPD has set up 24-hour surveillance of the neighborhood with a Nazi-style mobile Skywatch tower and a Mobile Command Center truck. These are not measures taken to protect workers — this is part of the ramping up of fascist terror to keep workers, black and Latino, documented and undocumented, in line to be able to maintain the U.S.’s imperialist war needs.

Grow Through Struggle

Workers and students from across the country attending PLP’s Summer Project the following week held another rally in Staten Island. Hundreds more CHALLENGES were taken by black and Latino workers on the street. Bus drivers, steeled by their transit strike of a few years ago and the racism they faced, honked thunderously in support of our anti-racist signs.

Hundreds of leaflets were handed out, stating that the most vicious attack on immigrant workers is coming from Obama and the liberal Democrats who are deporting record numbers of our sisters and brothers. As the bosses dig us deeper into this economic crisis we face more unemployment, budget cuts, fare/tuition hikes, etc. Their media blames immigrants and promotes anti-immigrant lies, but the real culprit for this crisis is the profit system, capitalism.

PLP will continue to work and grow in the struggle. One student who attended the first rally joined the Party on the way home. Marches like this illustrate how by working patiently in a mass organization, PLP can lead workers to struggle against capitalism. By linking our work in these organizations together, a quantity of protests like this can lead to a qualitative shift where PLP eventually leads millions of workers into conflict with the state itself. Capitalists need racism to maintain their system, but the working class has absolutely no need for this destructive ideology. Through a communist revolution, we can build a world where one group of workers doesn’t attack other workers, but works together to meet their needs. (See page 4 article on black and Latino workers' unity in a pharmaceutical plant) 

NEW YORK, NY — The Summer Project showed that PLP is all about trying to create a fighting mass party. Participants came from around the world and boosted the confidence of the youth-led Summer Project, which led up to PLP’s 2010 Convention (see page 3). We sold over 7,550 CHALLENGE’s and improved our tactics of talking to workers when distributing the paper to make contacts and asking workers to pay for the paper. We collected over $2,000 and made dozens of contacts.

We sold CHALLENGE at factories, bus barns, hospitals, schools and working-class neighborhoods. One group spent a day at a military base distributing CHALLENGES and GI Notes and making contacts with soldiers.

Study groups were held on how to build a base for communist revolution and how the fall of the old communist movement affects our fight today.

One of the most significant events of the Project was a demonstration in front of the Council on Foreign Relations where U.S. bosses plan how best to attack workers and wage imperialist war. Another was a demonstration in Staten Island where a few black workers who have been temporarily won to the bosses’ racism have brutally attacked immigrant workers (see article above). PLP is fighting for working-class unity of all workers, immigrant and U.S. born, who have more in common with each other than with the bosses.

We also screened several movies like “Cradle Will Rock,“ a movie about the politics of art and “Salt of the Earth,” an anti-sexist movie about a miners’ strike.

Letters from the Summer Project

As a 28-year-old student from Palestine, I was positively surprised by the readiness of U.S. workers to accept our line. Before I came here I thought that anti-communist
attitudes were prevalent here but now I know that the U.S. working class is very open to our ideas.

We sold a very large number of CHALLENGES at the schools, one hospital and a bus barn. We also held two
rallies. Workers passing by were quite supportive of us and many were ready to buy CHALLENGE. I think that U.S. workers are open to our ideas and that Party clubs should sell CHALLENGE on a routine basis and in regular locations for workers to be able to get our paper every two weeks on the street. I was also impressed with the revolutionary determination of the Party members over here and their comradely spirit as our hosts. I think that the Party has the potential to change the world and establish a better world — the worker’s world — once and for all.

A Comrade from Palestine

The future of PLP is bright. The dedication and commitment of young comrades from many areas is very inspiring. Their desire to get up early in the morning, sell CHALLENGE, and study the Party’s ideas is a testament to the Party developing new leadership. One of the most impressive aspects of the project was the collectivity among comrades.

People of all ages worked together to figure out meals, transportation, housing, CHALLENGE sales, and social events. In addition, the willingness of our young comrades to strike up conversations with workers during our paper sales shows tremendous potential in our efforts to build a base in the working class. For the future, we could do a better job in discussing ways in which contacts could be made with some of the workers during these conversations.

Finally, an important lesson for all of us was how CHALLENGE can truly become a mass paper. In one location, we were able to distribute over 400 papers in 45 minutes and 250 in 20 minutes in another location.

Project volunteer

I sold CHALLENGE for the first time, which was amazing because I got money. I got to meet new people in the Party and got to reunite with friends I met at the John Brown march in West Virginia. I got to learn what it means to be a comrade and what it means to be in the Party. I received $20 selling CHALLENGE, which I thought was amazing for one day. I learned how many people are not informed with what is going on and how some people know and agree with us, which is awesome and feels good that you have some support. Overall, I think that this Summer Project was a wonderful experience that I learned a lot from and will always remember.

Project volunteer

When I sold CHALLENGE I learned that the bosses are taking away people’s money because the bosses want more money. When I sold CHALLENGE I made $3.56. I also gave the bus drivers CHALLENGE because the bosses were taking the MTA jobs away from the bus drivers.

10-year-old Project volunteer

Generally, it was incredible and overwhelming to see how the Party operates on a huge scale,
especially for us, comrades from a remote club. I could see the U.S. working class very open to communist politics especially in very oppressed
areas like Bushwick in Brooklyn and at the CHALLENGE sales in front of high schools which were also located in working-class areas such as in Queens and the Bronx. For me it was a unique visit to see New York not as a tourist but as a worker who lives in the city. It was also impressive to see the dedication and devotion to the revolutionary communist cause in the heart of the imperialist beast. It was incredible to meet comrades from all over the world and to get inspired by their sacrifice in order to build the international revolutionary communist party.

In conclusion this visit emphasized the need for proletarian internationalism and the correctness of the line of the workers’ communist revolution and how the old slogan is still relevant.

Workers of the World Unite!

A comrade from the Middle East