Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC Dear Friends,
A few of you have asked for a report of the Harvard Law School event. Thanks to Eve for writing it, and to Anat for forwarding it, the report is item 1. Surprisingly, hostility to the speakers was almost absent, as was Harvard’s strong supporter of Israel, Alan Dersowitz. Eve tells all. Just in case you do not recall what affair I am talking about, the invitation follows the report.
Apart from that, I want to apologize to those of you who might have already received any of the articles below. Given the circumstances, there is a lot of writing going on. Seems that events as those happening now in the Middle East bring on the desire to analyze and express opinions. I have avoided the inclination to send you everything that I have read. Only the final 2 items deal with the present upheavals—and even of these two, one actually deals only with the Muslim Brotherhood as an entity, rather than as part of what is now occurring.
Item 2 is a report by a participant of a televised version of a weekly Friday protest demonstration in the village of Bil’in, which by now you probably are all familiar with. The author, Haggai Matar, is disappointed in the result of the account, and explains why. I would add, however, that with all its faults (and I agree with Haggai on every point he makes) it did at least raise a question about how costly it was to have the soldiers there every week, and also about the wisdom of stealing Palestinian land.
Item 3 relates that Bar Ilan university appears to be anti leftist-staff, refusing to advance them.
Item 4. informs us that more colony construction has been given the go ahead.
Item 5 is particularly interesting in the light of what is happening these days in Egypt, Yemen, Bahran, Algeria, Iran, Jordan, et al. Whereas the populations of these countries are seeking freedom and democracy, in Israel the tendency is precisely the opposite. Item 5 is a commentary on the likely-to-become-law against bds and its supporters. I suppose it would be too much to say that Israel is likely to become the sole country in this area that is not democratic, but for the moment that seems to be a distinct possibility.
Item 6 tells us not to fear the Brotherhood, and why not to fear.
Item 7 relates that the Egyptian population will not entrust the transition to democracy to the generals who were the backbone of the dictatorship. Hope, oh I hope, that the writer is correct, and that this succeeds without more bloodshed. Indeed, the Egyptian generals’ excuse for sending the people home and attempting to stop the protest and desire for change gives the generals away. They use ‘security’ as their excuse. Well, this is something that we in Israel know something about. I guess that all militaristic and nationalist governments use ‘security’ as justification for using force to disrupt peaceful protest.
All the best,
Dorothy
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1. [forwarded by Anat Biletzki]
A Harvard Law School event that needs you there, if possible
Dershowitz did not show up.
And there was only one hostile question (actually, a comment “I notice that you did not talk about terrorism”) directed to Diana Buttu by an Israeli who is studying at Harvard Law School. Roy K. actually stepped in to respond by saying that this was irrelevant to the topic at hand and would take the conversation “backwards. ” That was the end of that.
Seidman got one sharp question from a woman who identified herself as the daughter of Iraqi Jews now living in Israel and asked “where would you want us to go?” This was in response to a speculative remark he made that many Jews may indeed leave (or be forced to leave) Israel as part of a resolution of the I/P conflict. This same woman also challenged Seidman to acknowledge that the “Jewish heritage” – which he identifies, at least for himself, as Spinoza, Marx, Freud – should be broadened to include the history of Jews in the Muslim world.
A bit of history is useful, I think, for contextualizing this event. Two and three years ago, events like this – i.e. anything focused on Israel/Palestine that had even the slightest concern for Palestinian rights – drew a heavily “AIPAC” audience and the speakers would be peppered with hostile questions (I don’t think any were actually shouted down or unable to complete their presentations). In the last year or so, similar events fill up large lecture rooms and there is typically not even ONE hostile question – this includes a talk Finkelstein gave at Harvard on the Goldstone report.
So, all in all, I think I’m not being insanely optimistic to say there’s a sea-change in public opinion.
At this particular event, which is quite typical in its composition (an American Jew, an Israeli, and a Palestinian), the audience really seemed to want to hear and talk with the Palestinian. And the conversation was mostly about our mental models for how the boycott might work. Diana seemed to focus on the direct economic impact of the boycott in Europe (Israel’s major trading partner). Duncan Kennedy argued that the usefulness of the boycott in America was unlikely to be in its economic impact, but rather in its potential to be used as an educational opportunity to change universities and churches and thence American political support for Israel.
Justice for Palestine at Harvard Law School presents:
Boycotting the Israeli Occupation?
Louis Michael Seidman,
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Roy Kreitner,
Tel Aviv University Law School
Diana Buttu,
Former legal advisor to Palestinian negotiators
Moderator and discussant:
Duncan Kennedy,
Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Harvard Law School
Friday, Feb 11th, 5-7 pm
Austin North, Harvard Law School
Pizza and Refreshments
How does one respond to human rights violations? Is divestment a proper or a required reaction to Israel’s actions and policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians? Is it counter-productive? What kinds of divestment are appropriate and effective? How will it impact Israeli society and politics? How will it impact US policies?
Co-sponsored by the Human Rights Program at HLS, International Legal Studies at HLS, Unbound: Journal of the Legal Left, The National Lawyers Guild, HLS Chapter, Middle East Law Students Association at HLS, the Harvard Islamic Society, and the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Harvard College.
“With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”
— Max Ehrmann, Desiderata
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2. Monday, February 14 2011
Independent commentary from Israel & the Israeli news covers Bil’in, Palestinians are nowhere to be seen On Saturday night Israel’s most-watched news program on Channel 2, aired a 10-minute “Special Report” on the weekly demonstrations in the Palestinian village of Bil’in. Every Friday, Palestinians of the village demonstrate against the separation fence which was built on their lands, and are joined by Israeli and international activists. Haggai Matar, of Anarchists Against the Wall, was a key figure in the news piece. This is his reaction.
You could say I’m nit-picking, that maybe Palestinians just happened not to fit the concept of this particular story. You could say that had this issue not already become so routine.
This time again it began with a phone call made by a producer at Channel 2 news to an activist with Anarchists Against the Wall, offering to accompany and film one of the group’s members at a weekly protest held every Friday in Bil’in. This time the activist passed them on to me. Both she and I made it clear to the producer several times that these demonstrations are a Palestinian initiative, that Israelis are there as guests and partners – but that we are not the main story. We got her to promise that the news crew would also film Muhammad Khatib, one of the leaders of the popular struggle in the village, and we made sure they spoke.
Friday comes around, along with the filming. Channel 2’s senior reporter Danny Kushmaro and his team arrive at my house and film me throughout the day – from the morning when I prepare a sandwich at home and hit the road, and through the end of the demonstration in Bil’in. They also coordinated with the IDF spokesman’s video crew, who in parallel filmed a day in the life of the unit commander who is in charge of dispersing demonstrations in Bil’in. During the demonstration Kushmaro wandered between the two sides. And the cameraman who was to accompany Khatib? Nowhere to be found.
I decided to take initiative, and bring Khatib into their footage on my own. I made sure the crew was filming when he gave a speech to the protesters at the outset of the demonstration, in the heart of the village, when he spoke about Bil’in’s solidarity with Jonathan Pollak. I explained to the researchers and the film crew who were with me for the march that it’s important they talk to him, and they did in fact interview him afterwards. Later, at the end of the demonstration, a veteran activist, Wajee Burnat, who was filmed as he received medical treatment, found the film crew and gave a heart-felt speech about his family’s lands which lay on the other side of the fence, explaining that even if the fence is moved as is planned, it will not return all of their lands.
But somehow, Khatib, Burnat, and all the other Palestinians just fell aside in the news piece, when it was broadcast last night. The full news item can be viewed here [Heb].
Kushmaro came up with a concept of a battlefield between two Israelis: Me and the officer, and between us the fence. And if that’s the concept, what does reality matter? What does it matter that those who cut the fence that day, those who were hit the hardest by the gas, those who gave the most powerful speeches to the soldiers and the cameras – were Palestinians? What does it matter that the lands – on both sides of the fence – are fully theirs? That the demonstrations and the creative ideas they employ are theirs too? The most important thing in the eyes of Channel 2, apparently, is to present an internal Israeli (Jewish) drama for the viewers at home.
As mentioned, this is not the first time that mainstream media chooses to portray the conflict this way – without the Palestinians. Only two Jews, one right and one left, or one religious and one secular, or one demonstrator and one soldier. It’s much easier to talk about the occupation as our own internal political problem, an argument that’s almost theoretical. This is, for example, the logic behind the opposition to a boycott of settlement products. After all, if you think there’s only two Jewish groups, one that boycotts, and the other that’s innocent, then it really doesn’t look too good. Just as if you portray a soldier who represents law and order, and against him a demonstrator – you could easily see the demonstrator as criminal or a traitor.
But this way of thinking is made possible only when from the start we are forget that there’s a few more million people in the picture, transparent people in the margins of our story. Kushmaro demonstrates this blindness to them with an absolute lack self-awareness right in the middle of the piece when he says: “The demonstration begins with calls supporting the Palestinians.” The video footage shows Palestinians, who are the majority of the demonstrators, calling out against the fence in Arabic. But what Kusharo sees is Israelis who are “supporting the Palestinians.”
It’s exactly for this reason that we insisted in advance that if Kushmaro’s crew films me, then they must also show the story of one of the leaders of the village. Because only when the media starts doing its job, portraying Palestinian suffering the same way it portrays Jewish suffering, and giving Palestinians names and faces on putting them in front of the camera – only then will people will be able to understand what the conflict is actually about. The problem is that that’s when the Israeli establishment will suddenly not look so good. And, what can you do, that doesn’t bring ratings.
A few notes on what you’ll see in the story:
1. Despite what Kushmaro says, the village will not get back the majority of the territory taken from it. Of 1700 hectares belonging to the village that are captured by the fence, only 700 will be returned when it is moved to its planned route.
2. Saying that “the fence has prevented terrorist attacks” completely ignores the issue of the illegal location of the fence, against which, and against the very existence of the fence itself, the demonstrations are targeted.
3. The piece shows children who earn 2 shekels by selling bracelets or a cup of coffee. Against this background, Kushmaro and the IDF office explain that Palestinians make money off of the demonstrations. Firstly, 2 shekels is not that much, and there is no such industry in the village where people are earning a living off of the throwing of stones, which the piece implies. Secondly, since when is there something wrong with earning a livelihood? The army prevents people from accessing their land and cultivating it, robs them of their last means of livelihood, prevents workers from entering Israel to work there, and then complains that they even manage to sustain themselves in part from the sale of bracelets?
4. In one instance the editing becomes very manipulative: While I’m shown speaking to the soldiers and explaining that there’s no reason to attack the demonstrators – words I said while the soldiers were preparing to shoot tear gas and no stones had been thrown at all – the footage juxtaposed is of a much later stage in the demonstration, after the soldiers had already shot the tear gas, the end of the demonstration had been declared, and several youth remained behind to confront the army.
5. Towards the end, Muhammad Khatib and the officer are shown, both declaring the end of the demonstration. In reality, after Khatib announced the end of the demonstration, the army crossed the separation fence and began its most intense attack, with massive amounts of gas, after most of the protesters had already retreated to the village. The officer’s announcement that the demonstration had ended actually came much later. Besides, Khatib tells protesters: “The demo is over.” The translation to Hebrew in the story: “Game over.” Another thought on how the media portrays these people’s struggle.
Haggai Matar is a journalist in the Hebrew media, an activist in Anarchists Against the Wall, and a former conscientious objector who spent two years in prison.
This article first appeared on MySay. Translation by Shir Harel.
Comments1|
TagsAnarchists Against the Wall, bil’in, israeli media, Mohammad KhatibFile UnderAnalysis
Please, no more peace plansIs it time to move on to the…
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3. Haaretz Monday, February 14, 2011
Latest update 01:24 14.02.11
Israeli lecturers urge state to probe university’s alleged anti-leftist policies
Bar-Ilan University faculty members urge Council For Higher Education to examine claims by lecturers that they were denied promotion because of leftist political activities and opinions.
Faculty members at Bar-Ilan University yesterday urged the Council For Higher Education to examine claims by two of its lecturers that they were denied promotion because of their leftist political activities and opinions.
The university recently decided not to begin the procedure of promoting Dr. Menachem Klein, of the university’s political science department, to professor. Five years ago, his request for promotion was also denied.
Dr. Ariella Azoulay, who has been teaching at Bar-Ilan’s Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies program since 1999, and who has also been denied promotion, said: “There is no logical reason for the university not to grant me tenure and promotion, except my open political opinions.”
Azoulay has published books and articles against the occupation.
In another case, about two years ago, a member of the administrative staff at Bar-Ilan wrote an article on an Internet blog against Operation Cast Lead. She signed her name but did not mention her workplace. Following complaints to the university, she was warned that she would be fired if she continued to publish such articles.
The university said Sunday that the woman had written an article “which could only be defined as slanderous and that expressed support for Hamas and was written by an employee in the university’s computer department during working hours. The university opposes all political activity at its facilities during working hours and certainly opposes political activities supporting the enemies of the state.”
An official at Bar-Ilan said the case of the administrative worker “is just one example of the current atmosphere at the university.”
According to a professor at Bar-Ilan: “The Council on Higher Education must investigate Azoulay’s and Klein’s claims. The university is hiding behind arguments that its considerations are professional, but that is difficult to accept in light of the professional standing of these two individuals. Clearly, the university will oppose any such investigation.”
Another lecturer said the council would examine the matter if it were persuaded that no clear criteria exist for promotion and that the faculty members were discriminated against for political reasons.
The university said yesterday that its reasons for not promoting Klein were purely academic and that “Klein’s political opinions are of no interest to the committee.”
Klein was quoted in Haaretz last Thursday as saying: “Right-wing and conservative forces have taken over key positions in the university. Some of these people believe it is their duty to cleanse the place of ‘subversive’ elements and they are taking all the necessary measures to do just that.”
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4. Ynet Monday, February 14, 2011
18:06 , 02.14.11
Construction of 124 flats beyond Green Line approved
Decision comes on eve of Ashton’s visit to Israel, PA. Meretz faction says decision proves municipality has ‘no faith in peace process’; Likud councilman says past construction delays were unjustified
The Jerusalem Municipality’s planning and construction committee approved on Monday three construction plans beyond the Green Line, including 120 housing units in the neighborhood of Ramot and four more in Pisgat Ze’ev.
Just last week the committee approved the construction of 13 housing units in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
The 120 apartments in Ramot, which will be built near the Palestinian village of Beit Hanina, are part of a broader plan for the construction of 180 housing units in the neighborhood. The plan was approved in 2004.
“It’s not good news,” Pepe Alalu of the opposition Meretz party said. “If the City of Jerusalem continues to expand neighborhoods beyond the Green Line – with or without the government’s approval – it has apparently reached the conclusion that there is no way to advance the (peace) negotiations. This decision is wrong, because without negotiations it will not be possible to further develop the city.”
Elisha Peleg, chairman of the Likud faction in the Jerusalem City Council, welcomed the decision. “There was never any justification to the delays in issuing of construction permits in these neighborhoods,” he said.
‘Obstacle to peace’
The vote came on the eve of a visit by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who has said that Israeli construction in east Jerusalem settlement harms the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Ir Amim, a group that promotes coexistence in Jerusalem, accused Israeli authorities of boosting settlement construction in the city.
The organization said that since the expiration in September of an Israeli moratorium on West Bank settlement building, Israeli authorities have been “going full speed ahead with an aggressive policy of construction in east Jerusalem.”
“This policy makes Jerusalem a political battlefield, and undermines its stability,” it added.
Ashton is expected to hold separate talks on Tuesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as part of a Middle East tour.
“The EU position on settlements is clear,” Ashton said in a statement in December. “They are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace. Recent settlement-related developments, including in east Jerusalem, contradict efforts by the international community for successful (peace) negotiations.”
The Municipality said the “construction policy in Jerusalem has not changed in the past 40 years. The City of Jerusalem continues to promote construction for Arabs and Jews alike. New construction is vital for the city’s development and to offer young people and students the opportunity to purchase a home here.”
AFP contributed to the report
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5. Haaretz Monday, February 14, 2011
Latest update 01:24 14.02.11
Protecting Israel from its citizens
The parliamentary investigative panel to examine organizations’ funding sources actually have no interest in questions of legality and constitutionality. All they want is to delegitimize protest and political opinions, and to scare us.
On Tuesday, a Knesset committee is due to approve on second and third readings the bill combating boycotts against Israel – another hysterical proposal by the right wing and Kadima MK Dalia Itzik designed to protect our weak and tiny country, which is being attacked from within and without.
“This law,” explain the architects of the proposal, “is designed to protect the State of Israel in general and its citizens in particular from academic, economic and other boycotts that are imposed on the country, its citizens and corporations, due to their connection to the State of Israel.” The law is designed to protect “the area under Israeli control, including Judea and Samaria.” According to the bill, “It is forbidden to initiate a boycott against the State of Israel, to encourage participation in it or to provide assistance or information in order to promote it.”
There is no problem, therefore, with a boycott by ultra-Orthodox consumers against supermarkets that open on Shabbat, or against a merchant whose sons serve in the Israel Defense Forces, even if it leads to their economic collapse. There might also not be a problem in boycotting fur exporters, for example. The only offense is “a boycott against the State of Israel,” and in effect against the settlements, whose products are the object of most boycotts in Israel and the world over.
That being the case, the bill – which is certainly not constitutional (we can make an endless list of freedoms that it undermines ) – opposes even international agreements that Israel has signed. First among them is the agreement to join the OECD and the agreement with the European Union. These require that products be marked, distinguishing the Israeli economy from that of the territories.
But even someone who believes that a consumer boycott is legitimate while an academic boycott is a despicable tool that harms Israeli education’s soft underbelly – someone who doesn’t move a single stone from the wall of the occupation – can’t support legislation that involves a consumer boycott directed only at the settlements, or silences anyone who demonstrates or speaks against them.
This is what will happen if the bill passes – and its chances are considerable despite the protest of many organizations, headed by the Coalition of Women for Peace and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. A “talkbacker” on the Internet who complains, for example, about the economic burden caused by the settlements can expect a lawsuit from a settler who can claim that the comment promoted a boycott of his products. The writer will be fined at least NIS 30,000 and the plaintiff won’t have to prove the link between what is written and the damage. Not to mention writers of articles and people who express opinions on radio and television.
Bizarre? Not compared to the next article: “If the interior minister sees someone who is not a citizen or a resident of Israel acting in contradiction to Article 2, or if the cabinet has decided by a majority of its members that such a person is imposing a boycott against the State of Israel, the interior minister is allowed to request the district court to deny that person the right to enter Israel for a period of at least 10 years.” So what? Will Ken Loach beg to be allowed to attend the Haifa Film Festival and be denied entry?
In other times we could depend on the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee to reject such embarrassing texts out of hand. Not now. Questions of legality and constitutionality, freedom of expression and human rights are now dwarfed in light of the goal, whose distorted definition “protection of the State of Israel” justifies the means.
Behind this declared objective hides a more problematic one. The initiators of the glorious legislation of recent years – the Nakba law, the loyalty law, the community-admission-committee law, the denial of citizenship law (“the Bishara Law” ), the parliamentary investigative panel to examine organizations’ funding sources – actually have no interest in questions of legality and constitutionality. All they want is to delegitimize protest and political opinions, and to scare us.
Although Israelis find it hard to see the connection among the laws, which ostensibly refer to different issues and communities, the violent rape of the law book caused by this legislation has destructive results. And these results – which are collapsing the foundations of Israeli democracy – will harm everyone in the end, without distinction.
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6. [Thanks to Rupa for forwarding]
Don’t Fear the Brotherhood
Running away from the Islamic party is exactly what the entrenched Egyptian ruling class wants America to do.
When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking last week at a security conference in Munich, alluded to “forces at work” in the protests in Egypt — or “in any society” — “that will try to derail or overtake the process to pursue their own specific agenda,” she didn’t have to spell out whom she had in mind: the Muslim Brotherhood. Those spoilers, she went on, were the reason it was so important to support “the transition process” initiated by Egypt’s new vice president, Omar Suleiman, even though it wholly excludes both the protesters themselves and their principal demands.
Not to be outdone, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denounced President Barack Obama’s administration for going soft on “extremists” like the Brotherhood, who “must not be allowed to hijack the movement toward democracy and freedom in Egypt.” No matter how Egypt’s transition unfolds, one thing is likely to remain constant for Egypt’s defensive and endangered ruling class: The Muslim Brotherhood will be a gift that keeps on giving.
Egypt’s rulers have long understood that they can’t persuade the West that secular reformers pose a danger to Egypt or the world. The Islamists, however, are another story. And while the secularists have been a minor nuisance to the regime (at least until just now), the Brotherhood — well-organized, disciplined, and widely admired — really did constitute a political threat. So the regime and its defenders harp relentlessly on the Brotherhood’s “real” intentions. When I was in Cairo in early 2007, Hossam Badrawi, the man who was just named Secretary-General of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), told me that allowing the Brotherhood to freely run for office would be like legalizing the Nazi party in Germany. Another cautioned that, while the Brothers were not “necessarily” terrorists, they certainly hoped to impose Saudi-style sharia on Egypt.
And it worked. After making a rousing 2005 speech at the American University in Cairo calling on President Hosni Mubarak to open up the political process, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice answered a question by saying, “We have not engaged the Muslim Brotherhood, and…we won’t.” Mubarak’s security forces subsequently beat and killed Brotherhood supporters in parliamentary elections, and the White House issued only the mildest protest. George W. Bush’s administration maintained a conspicuous silence as the regime carried out mass arrests of the opposition group’s leaders in 2007.
It’s not only the regime’s apologists who profess to fear the Muslim Brotherhood; I had no trouble finding secular Cairenes who took an equally dim view. The group’s slogan is, after all, “Islam is the solution,” and the appeal its political leaders make to the rank and file is long on religious orthodoxy. Still, I spent two weeks talking to members of the Brotherhood — something the secular critics rarely do — and though I did feel they were putting their best foot forward for a Western journalist, I was struck by their reluctance to impose their views on others and their commitment to democratic process. They had been drawn to the Brotherhood not only by piety but also by the group’s reputation for social service and personal probity.
Many of these men were lawyers, doctors, or engineers. But I also spent several evenings with an electrician named Magdy Ashour, who had been elected to parliament from a dismal slum at the furthest edge of Cairo (he’s now an independent, after being ousted from the Brotherhood in December). He was at pains to counter what he assumed were my preconceptions. “When people hear the name Muslim Brotherhood, they think of terrorism and suicide bombings,” Ashour conceded. “We want to establish the perception of an Islamic group cooperating with other groups, concerned about human rights. We do not want to establish a country like Iran, which thinks that it is ruling with a divine mandate. We want a government based on civil law, with an Islamic source of lawmaking.”
And just what is an “Islamic source of lawmaking?” Muhammad Habib, then the Muslim Brotherhood’s deputy supreme guide — its second-ranking official– explained to me that, under such a system, parliament would seek the advice of religious scholars on issues touching upon religion, though such views could never be binding. A democratically elected parliament, he asserted, would still have the “absolute right” to pass a law the Brotherhood deemed “un-Islamic.” And the proper redress for religious objections would be a formal appeal process in the constitutional court.
Maybe they were lying. But I didn’t think so. More to the point, the Muslim Brotherhood’s then 88-member caucus in the legislature studiously avoided religious issues and worked with secular opposition members on issues of democracy and human rights. They all lived together in a hotel, showed up for work every day, and invited outside experts for policy briefings. It was widely agreed that the Brothers took parliament far more seriously than members of the ruling party ever had.
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7. The Guardian Monday 14 February 2011 16.00 GMT
Egypt protests continue in the factories
Egypt’s striking workers won’t entrust the transition to democracy to the generals who were the backbone of the dictatorship
Egyptians hold a banner reading in Arabic ‘injustice has an end’ as they protest near the health ministry in Cairo on 14 February 2011. Photograph: Mohamed Omar/EPA Since Hosni Mubarak fled from Cairo, and even before then, some middle-class activists have been urging Egyptians, in the name of patriotism, to suspend their protests and return to work, singing some of the most ridiculous lullabies: “Let’s build a new Egypt”, “Let’s work harder than ever before”. They clearly do not know that Egyptians are already among the hardest working people in the world.
Those activists want us to trust Mubarak’s generals with the transition to democracy – the same junta that provided the backbone of his dictatorship over the past 30 years. And while I believe the supreme council of the armed forces, which received $1.3bn from the US in 2010, will eventually engineer the transition to a “civilian” government, I have no doubt it will be a government that guarantees the continuation of a system that never touches the army’s privileges, that keeps the armed forces as the institution that has the final say in politics, that guarantees Egypt continues to follow the much hated US foreign policy.
A civilian government should not be made up of cabinet members who have simply removed their military uniforms. A civilian government means one that fully represents the Egyptian people’s demands and desires without any intervention from the top brass. I think it will be very hard to accomplish this, if the junta allows it at all. The military has been the ruling institution in this country since 1952. Its leaders are part of the establishment. And while the young officers and soldiers are our allies, we cannot for one second lend our trust and confidence to the generals.
All classes in Egypt took part in the uprising. Mubarak managed to alienate all social classes in society. In Tahrir Square, you found sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite, together with the workers, middle-class citizens and the urban poor. But remember that it’s only when the mass strikes started on Wednesday that the regime started crumbling and the army had to force Mubarak to resign because the system was about to collapse.
Some have been surprised to see workers striking. This is naive. The workers have been staging the longest and most sustained strike wave in Egypt’s history since 1946, one that began in the textiles city of Mahalla. It’s not the workers’ fault if the world hasn’t been paying attention. Every single day over the past three years there has been a strike in some factory in Egypt, whether it’s in Cairo or the provinces. These strikes were both economic and political in nature.
From the first day of the January 25 uprising, the working class has been taking part in the protests. However, the workers were at first taking part as “demonstrators” and not necessarily as “workers” – meaning, they were not moving independently. The government had brought the economy to halt, not the protesters, with their curfews, and by shutting down the banks and businesses. It was a capitalist strike, aimed at terrorising the Egyptian people. Only when the government tried to bring the country back to “normal” on 8 February did the workers return to their factories, discuss the current situation and start to organise en masse, moving as an independent block.
In some locations the workers did not list the regime’s fall among their demands, but they used the same slogans as those protesting in Tahrir and, in many cases, the workers put forward a list of political demands in solidarity with the revolution.
These workers are not going home any time soon. They started striking because they couldn’t feed their families any more. They have been emboldened by Mubarak’s overthrowal, and cannot go back to their children and tell them that the army has promised to bring them food and their rights in I don’t know how many months. Many of the strikers have already started raising additional demands, including the right to establish free trade unions away from the corrupt, state-backed Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions.
On Saturday I started receiving news that thousands of public transport workers were staging protests in el-Gabal el-Ahmar. The temporary workers at Helwan Steel Mills are also protesting. The railway technicians continue to bring trains to a halt. Thousands of workers at the el-Hawamdiya sugar factory are protesting and oil workers announced a strike on Sunday over work conditions. Nearly every single sector in the Egyptian economy has witnessed either strikes or mass protests. Even sections of the police have joined in.
At this point, the Tahrir Square occupation is to be suspended. We have to take Tahrir to the factories now. As the revolution proceeds, an inevitable class polarisation will take place. We have to be vigilant. We hold the keys to the liberation of the entire region, not just Egypt. Onwards we must go, with a permanent revolution that will empower the people of this country with direct democracy from below.