Seth David Tobocman, “Gaza Genocide”

A stark yet accurate portrayal of Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza from Seth Tobocman, anarchist artist and illustrator of World War Three, among many other radical commitments and collaborations.

Second Friday Action in New York for Gaza: #NYC2Gaza, Our Liberation is Bound Together

On Friday 25 July, hundreds of activists in solidarity with the Palestinian people participated in an action in midtown Manhattan, #NYC2Gaza: Our Liberation is Bound Together.  This was the second demonstration organized on a Friday this month to protest the fascist Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which began on 8 July.  Israel’s attack has now claimed over 1000 Palestinian lives and forcibly displaced over 130,000.  The action began at the New York Public Library on 42nd St., proceeding to become a protest-tour of various banks that profit from and help finance the Zionist settler-colonial project–particularly the Israel Discount Bank (IDB), which was painted red by activists who staged a die-in in commemoration of the martyrs of Shujaiyya neighborhood in Gaza.  We also marched through the Diamond District on 47th St., where we were confronted by throngs of rabid Zio-fascists.  A much larger mobilization involving thousands of people then took place later that day in Midtown.

Apart from this action, a recent Gallup poll (22-23 July) investigating US attitudes toward Israel’s current bombardment of Gaza shows youth, women, people of color, and the less formally educated to be in the lead for humanity–a result that should surprise no one.  It is equally unsurprising that white U.S. males should be so supportive of Israeli fascism.

In terms of analyzing Israel’s crimes in Gaza, it has recently come to light that the military leadership of the Jewish State itself admits that the abduction and murder of the three settler youth outside Khalil last month–the event which sparked the intensification of conflict that ultimately led to the current massacre of Gazans–was not the work of Hamas, despite the fact that the Israeli military arrested over 600 presumed affiliates of the organization in the West Bank following the disappearance of these youth.  Moreover, and significantly, the 8 July report published by the Meir Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Center, a renowned Israeli security “think tank,” notes that Hamas’s rocket-fire began only after Israel killed 6 resistance operatives on the night of 7 July, thus breaking the previously existing ceasefire that had held for 19 months, since the end of Israel’s prior bombing campaign in Gaza (November 2012).  In the weeks between the disappearance of the three youth and the commencement of open hostilities, furthermore, Israel struck some 60 targets in the Gaza Strip.

Friday Funeral March for Gaza in New York

Today, hundreds of individuals mobilized in New York City to express their repudiation of the present Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.  Organizing around a “Friday Funeral March” to commemorate the more than two hundred and fifty people in Gaza who have been murdered by the Israeli military in the past 10 days, this vastly diverse multitude occupied 42nd St. and protested with rage and dignity in front of the Israeli and Egyptian consulates.  Here are some photos of today’s action.

Rage Against the Machine: “Renegades of Funk”

“We’re the renegades of funk
We’re the renegades of funk

From a different solar system many many galaxies away
We are the force of another creation
A new musical revelation
And we’re on this musical mission to help the others listen
And groove from land to land singin’ electronic chants like
Zulu nation
Revelations
Destroy all nations
Destroy all nations”

Continuation of Algerian Revolution in World Cup team’s offer to donate prize money to Gaza (WITH UPDATE); counter-revolutionary independence of U.S. observed, with Prof. Gerald Horne

Islam Slimani, striker for the Algerian World Cup team, reportedly announced on 2 July that the country’s team-members decided to give away the totality of their monetary prize from their successes in this year’s Cup–some $9 million (£5.25 million)–to people in Gaza.

Update 20 July: the Algerian team has now clarified that it plans to donate $100,000 to the children of Gaza, and that its players “express their full solidarity” with the embattled populace.

2014 Algerian World Cup team

Given now that the team has in fact committed itself to donating a significant sum of its prize money to Gaza, it can be said that this represents a critical act of solidarity and revolutionary support on the parts of the Algerian players for Palestinians livings under Israeli military control.  It is to be hoped that the provision of this gift, will accelerate the increasing isolation of Israel on the world stage.  Self-evidently, Israel perpetuates its own pariah status through its numerous abuses, arrests, and killings of Palestinians under occupation–it was just recently engaged for weeks in the most intensive repression of West Bank Palestinians since the beginnings of the Second Intifada, this on the pretext of searching for the three settler youth abducted in Khalil (Hebron), when Zionist authorities had every indication that they had been outright killed rather than kidnapped.  Israeli occupation forces have killed six Palestinians and arrested more than six hundred forty in the West Bank  since 12 June.  Over 170 have been injured in anti-police riots to protest the kidnapping and murder of 16-year old Muhammad Abu Khder by Israelis this week.

It is unclear precisely which factors led the Algerian players supposedly to promise their earnings to the people of Gaza–whether a basic humanism, a closeness developed through connection among the Muslim Umma, a combination of these, or what.  It is nonetheless clear that rebellion and compassion drive the call.  Given this, it can be said that the Algerians’ decision represents a continuation of the revolutionary processes that have marked Algerian history, particularly as seen in the armed independence struggle against French imperialism, the concurrent anarchistic self-management of factories and lands formerly owned by French settler-colonialists, and ongoing Kabyle (Berber) autonomous movements.  Please see here for my June 2012 review of David Porter’s marvelous volume Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria (AK Press).

Far less revolutionary than Algeria’s are the origins of the U.S. State, celebrated on this 4 July, given its basis in slavery and genocide.  Indeed, Professor Gerald Horne argues in his recent books The Counter-Revolution of 1776 and Race to Revolution that fear of legislation mandating the abolition of slavery from the British Parliament played an important part in motivating the “revolution” taken by the settler-colonial “founding fathers” of the U.S. against the British Crown in 1776.  See his excellent interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now! here.

As Prof. Horne points out in the interview,

“It’s well known that more Africans fought alongside of the Redcoats—fought alongside the Redcoats than fought with the settlers. And this is understandable, because if you think about it for more than a nanosecond, it makes little sense for slaves to fight alongside slave masters so that slave masters could then deepen the persecution of the enslaved and, indeed, as happened after 1776, bring more Africans to the mainland, bring more Africans to Cuba, bring more Africans to Brazil, for their profit.”

He explains,

“on the one hand, there is little doubt that 1776 represented a step forward with regard to the triumph over monarchy. The problem with 1776 was that it went on to establish what I refer to as the first apartheid state. That is to say, the rights that Mr. Obama refers to were accorded to only those who were defined as white. To that degree, I argue in the book that 1776, in many ways, was analogous to Unilateral Declaration of Independence in the country then known as Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in November 1965. UDI, Unilateral Declaration of Independence, was in many ways an attempt to forestall decolonization. 1776, in many ways, was an attempt to forestall the abolition of slavery. That attempt succeeded until the experiment crashed and burned in 1861 with the U.S. Civil War, the bloodiest conflict, to this point, the United States has ever been involved in.”

The Professor and I share a similar view of the association between the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the UDI performed in Southern Rhodesia in 1965; see the 4 July note on intlibecosoc from 2011.

NYC Event for Perspectives on Anarchist Theory no. 27: Strategy (9 July)

Next Wednesday, 9 July, I will be speaking alongside Jackson Smith and Maia Ramnath at Bluestockings Bookstore and Activist Center in New York City on the newly released issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, no. 27, which focuses on the question of strategy.  The event is at 7pm; a description follows:

Come discuss the viewpoints expressed in the latest issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, which has been published by the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) since 1997.  This issue is dedicated to revolutionary anti-authoritarian strategy.  Beyond reflecting on the pieces provided by other writers to the issue, contributors to the journal will discuss their essays regarding gentrification on the Lower East Side and the social health work of the Black Panthers and Sandinistas, among other matters.

Hope to see you there.