The Enemy of My Enemy is My Enemy

This war needs to be understood in a broader perspective, beyond its stated aims of destroying Hamas and/or Hezbollah. Historically, every resistance movement that has emerged—from leftist and nationalist to Islamist and religious—have been labeled as “terrorist organizations” before being targeted by Israeli violence. This war is no exception and can be understood as a deadly turn in a long and violent history of Zionist settler colonialism in the region—this time fully and openly backed, funded, and armed by the United States of America.

There is also no doubt that Israel’s technological advancement and supply of the most sophisticated and lethal weaponry (provided by the United States and many European countries) made this war clearly disproportionate in terms of military power. Similarly, the unprecedented open political backing of Israel during its televised genocide by most Western governments and, importantly, by the Arab states that have signed the Abraham Accords, has tilted the power dynamics.

Today, fighters in the south—the inhabitants of the villages that are being shelled and invaded by the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces]—are resisting on the ground with all they have to defend their land, their histories, and their futures. This historical articulation of the struggle for liberation took the shape of political Islam with Hezbollah; if the party does not survive, the next articulation might take another shape, as has been the case with previous secular, leftist, and nationalist articulations of resistance.

Like everywhere else in the world, the most vulnerable always pay the highest price in times of war and crises. This is obviously a matter of class, but also gender, race, disability, and so on. Wars do not fall equally on everyone, and it is often poor women, queer people, disabled people, migrant workers, and refugees that suffer the most.

In such a situation, the position of the revolutionary forces in Lebanon should be clear: the enemy of my (internal) enemy is also my enemy and cannot be my friend! Any reactionary positions that try to minimize the Israeli (and US imperial) danger, or that attempt to dissociate Lebanon from Palestine in time of genocide in order to focus on Hezbollah (and Iran), are missing the point.

Spectre’s long interview with Rima Majed

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The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...

"If you don't attack the economic power of the elite, soon or later it will attack you." That's what the Arab uprisings, for instance, were unable/failed to do. K for Karl – Revolution (episode 3)

Cairo C. 1900-1934 The accurate translation for Arabic meaning of Cairo is "the invincible".

"A second position argues against transition, which is transitology itself. It is well known—especially among economists—as the sudden mobilization of a considerable mass of experts who are generally foreigners,generally Western, who come to preach the good word and to propose ready-made models of democracy. The science of the transition has become a financial windfall, a market. And the word transition has of course become a reflex of language, a term of reference, a call for tenders ( appel d’offres ) to which the whole society was supposed to respond. Consequently, the reticence that one can express is the following: our history is framed, transition is a heteronomy. Every democratic revolution is henceforth supposed to take a unique, imposed path, which is, at the same time, indistinctly democratic and liberal (or neoliberal). A more or less non-“negotiable” package. It is necessary to highlight the imposed character (and imposed from the outside) of this coming to t...

"In the same way that Robinson [Crusoe] was able to obtain a sword, we can just as well suppose that [Man] Friday might appear one fine morning with a loaded revolver in his hand, and from then on the whole relationship of violence is reversed: Man Friday gives the orders and Crusoe is obliged to work. . . . Thus, the revolver triumphs over the sword, and even the most childish believer in axioms will doubtless form the conclusion that violence is not a simple act of will, but needs for its realization certain very concrete preliminary conditions, and in particular the implements of violence; and the more highly developed of these implements will carry the day against primitive ones. Moreover, the very fact of the ability to produce such weapons signifies that the producer of highly developed weapons, in everyday speech the arms manufacturer, triumphs over the producer of primitive weapons. To put it briefly, the triumph of violence depends upon the production of a...

"Egypt is no longer the heart of the Arab world"

Putting a Racist in Their Place

UK

"We are all in it together" A letter from a doctor to Boris Johnson published a few months ago: ' Johnson has contributed to thousands of deaths ' Related 'The greatest global science failure for a generation' 'Herd immunity' or lockdown

US

Written in June: The candidate who emerged from this jumble of discontent was the man who promised to do the least. His party is now preparing to give us a national election that will be little more than a referendum on the hated Donald Trump. Finally we have a climate in which the American public would unquestionably choose dramatic change were it offered to them, and the party of change has contrived to ensure that it will not be offered. Instead our choice is between two elderly and conservative white men, both with a history of stretching the truth, both with sexual harassment accusations hanging over them, and neither representing any possibility of energetic democratic reform. The old order has been miraculously rescued once again. Such is the climate of opinion in America that, with the right leader, remarkable things would be possible. Instead we are presented with Joe Biden, an affable DC veteran with a hand in many of the defining disasters of the last 30 years: worker-c...

Against Authoritarianism and Neoliberalism in Venezuela

“The current confrontation in Venezuela today is not between left and right.” “We are witnessing the transition from a government with authoritarian tendencies to a dictatorial regime.” “This is not a government ‘backed’ by the military, but, as Maduro himself has said, the government is led by a ‘civilian-military-police alliance’. “Those who continue to support Maduro, including parties and movements of the Sao Paulo Forum or the spokespersons of Podemos in Spain, are causing severe damage to the left in the region and the world. They are damaging anti-capitalist struggles in the broadest sense.” The US embargo is ‘in violation of international law’. This is a useless statement repeated a million times, and it has come back again during the ongoing Israel’s genocidal war. “[A]fter the failure of the current, self-defined “socialist” governments, Venezuelan society tends to associate any reference to socialism or the left with the corruption and authoritarianism of the Maduro governme...

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