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Month: June 2023

The New Alliance Between India and Israel

Interview with author Azad Essa


04/06/2023

Azad Essa is a leading anti-imperialist journalist and senior reporter for Middle East Eye. His recent book “Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel” is out now with Pluto Press, and he will be doing a book presentation in Berlin on June 9th, to which all are welcome.

To start, can you introduce us to your book, why you wrote it and what the general theme of the book is.

Thank you, Rowan, for speaking with me. I’m a journalist from South Africa. I grew up in the 1980s, during a time when the fight against apartheid was reaching a peak. The country was burning, especially in the townships, and it came alongside an international movement and boycott campaign against the apartheid regime. I was always enamoured by this idea of solidarity, of people somewhere else thinking about you and acting on your behalf. I am a South African of so-called Indian origin. And so, I also grew up with the idea that India had played a leading role in the anti-apartheid movement. For instance, India was part of the non-aligned movement, and it is often said that India was the first country to have imposed a boycott on South Africa. Then you think about Gandhi and Nehru, and all of these moralistic ideals they are meant to represent. I was always enamoured by all of that. But my idea of India changed when I learned about Kashmir as a graduate student. Then I thought, how does a country purportedly pro-Palestine, and such a supporter of the anti-apartheid movement have an occupation of its own? 

Thus the book is born out of that encounter between my idea of India, and then my encounter with India and Kashmir, and the idea of India as anti-colonial and pro-Palestinian. How do these contradictions exist? 

In 2014 when Modi came into power, the mask fell off from the pretences of Indian foreign policy, and India drew openly closer to Israel. That forced me to think about how India so purportedly pro-Palestine for decades had suddenly become a close ally of Israel. I entered a journey to interrogate what we knew about India’s past policies and how they explained the present. 

You also talk a lot about the similarities between Zionism and Hindutva. Readers here will most likely be familiar with Zionism. But can you explain to us what Hindutva is, and what those commonalities and relationships are?

Hindutva emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. It means “Hinduness” or “ways of being Hindu”. It is a political ideology of Hindu nationalism and supremacy. The project believes that India was always Hindu for thousands of years, and was contaminated by foreigners, particularly Muslims. It therefore, became weak. So for Hindutva, India has to reclaim its Hinduness and become a Hindu state. Everyone within it should bow down to the Hindu nationalist rhetoric. If you don’t, you are a second class citizen at best. This is similar to Zionism — the element of exclusion. 

Another similarity is the expansionist idea of Zionism and Hindutva. Zionism has the “Eretz Israel”, or “Greater Israel”. Recently a blog came out in the Times of Israel newspaper, calling for the obliteration of Palestine and about reclaiming the biblical lands of Lebanon and Syria as well. Hindutva has a similar expansionist settler colonial identity. They believe in Akhand Bharat, or “undivided India”. In their imagination, Pakistan is just “Muslim occupied India”, and the greater India expands from Afghanistan to Myanmar. 

On top of the ideological connections, you also point out more material connections, especially the military industrial complex. What’s the relation here, and how does it foster these joint occupations?

India’s military relationship with Israel begins in the 60’s, with India buying weapons from Israel in 1962 in the war with China in the Himalayan Mountains. India did not have diplomatic ties with Israel then. But Prime Minister Nehru wrote to several leaders asking for help and Ben Gurion responded. Nehru then asked that weapons be sent in unmarked ships. Ben Gurion refused and Delhi had no choice but to accept them.This was the start of their military relationship and illustrates that while India said they were pro-Palestine, their foreign policy was marked by duplicity. They were quite happy to work with Israel secretly. When you don’t have proper diplomatic channels, or formal channels of communication, things happen undercover. This suits Israel, because Israel uses military trade as a second arm of its diplomacy. They wanted India to become an ally. But they know India is reluctant because there was a certain currency in being seen as pro-Palestinian and anti-colonial — as a leader of the so-called “Third World”. So Israel works with a state militarily, hoping that state becomes dependent on them and will change its mind. That happened in ‘62 for India, and it happened again in ‘65 and ‘71 in India’s wars against Pakistan. 

Another aspect to this Israel-India relationship is the ‘67 War in which the Arab armies were decimated. Suddenly many countries understood that Israel’s military industrial complex might be better than they imagined. We often think it’s only the US that got on board with Israel in ‘67. But then you had Mossad and Indian foreign intelligence working together straight from the Prime Minister’s Office in India. In the 70s and 80s, Israel’s military industrial complex started becoming a lot bigger and privatizing. Simultaneously India wanted to join the global capitalist economy. So they began operating together in secret, until normalization took place in the 90s. Today, India buys around 46% to 50% of all Israeli arms produced, making it the biggest buyer of Israeli arms in the world. It’s now between $1 billion to $2 billion a year. In comparison, in 2021, the entire African continent bought 3%, and the Middle East bought 7%. Another nefarious aspect is that India is not just purchasing arms, but co-produces weapons with Israel. And that is incredibly dangerous, when you realize that India has such a hold on the global imagination and access to markets that Israel does not have. So, weapons that Israel could not ordinarily sell to certain places, India can sell. But, when you buy Israeli weapons, you also purchase a technology and a methodology. You’re not just buying a weapon, you’re buying a way of doing things. And it’s about how you handle protesters, citizens, civil society, and the media. You’re buying into an idea. 

This is beyond the specific topic of your book, but when you say that Islamophobia is the glue that binds these two projects, I am struck by the similarity to white nationalist movements here in Europe, including in Germany. Do you see connections taking place to white nationalist or fascist movements in other places as well?

In August 2019, the Indian government revoked Article 370 that had allowed Kashmir to have semi-autonomy. Days before they went ahead with this, the Indian government placed Kashmir under a communications lockdown and cut all communications including the internet; they criminalized activists, suppressed the press and sent additional troops to Kashmir to add to the  700,000 troops already there. This outraged Kashmiris in the diaspora, who could no longer even call home. Journalists had to smuggle memory cards and USBs with tourists or family members flying out of Kashmir. This is how they [India] operate — the world’s largest so-called democracy. It drew a lot of criticism in the US especially, and some lawmakers made a bit of a fuss about it. India had to protect its brand and defend itself in the media. Who do you think they met to help them defend their actions? The then Indian ambassador to Washington met with Steve Bannon — to market what India was doing in Kashmir. So, yes, there are links with the far right wing movements over in the west. Modi is very close to both the Republican Party and Democratic Party and those far-right neo-con policymakers. By sharing the west’s “concerns” over Muslims and China, India has thrived as a partner and ally.

Another thing that strikes me is the role of street movements, which has become especially prominent within the last few years in the Israeli case, but in India has a longer history. Can you speak about the role that street movements or mob violence plays?

Now that these far right movements are in power in both India and Israel, the groups conducting vigilante justice or intimidating communities do so with the blessing of the state.

In the past, the impression was that these were fringe movements and not the basis of society or the state. But now they have carte blanche to do the things the state has always wanted to do and with more regularity.

So, laws are being passed and hateful statements are being published that energize and push mobs to do the work of the state. People are going into the occupied West Bank, and planting Israeli flags, or conducting vigilantism and pogroms, all under the protection of the army. It’s all very brazen. 

You also noted this emphasis on masculinity, as seen in the idea of the new Israeli man who can conquer the desert. But there’s also this striking narrative within Hindutva discourses of ‘love jihad’. What role does this remaking of this hyper masculine man play within both colonial projects of Hindutva and Zionism? And, to maybe counter that point, what is the image of women within these projects? 

Hindu nationalists say that Muslim men seduce Hindu women into a relationship, and then convert them to Islam. They call this “Love jihad” and it has become another way to demonize Muslims, especially Muslim men, and has resulted in mobs and vigilantes attacking Muslim men across various parts of India.

So by this logic, Muslim men are depicted as the enemy of the nation, while Hindu women double for “the nation” who must be protected and defended. So it’s another way of criminalizing Muslims.

And naturally, it had also led to even more ludicrous accusations, like “Corona jihad” — in which groups accused Muslims of spreading the Coronavirus in 2020. 

This is part of framing Muslims as outsiders contaminating the nation. The Muslim man contaminates the nation by taking ‘our’ women and contaminates the nation by converting them as well. Such demonization has led to a lot of difficulties over what it means to Muslim in India; the extent to which you have to hide your identity to survive in the country. This is similar to how Jews in Europe and Germany were changing their names in the 1880s and 1890s. We are at that stage. I’m not saying there’s going to be a mass genocide in India. But with the institutional framework being set up and the vigilante culture and obedience to the state, Indian Muslims are in a very vulnerable position and the state is not beyond organizing massacres or pogroms. 

My last question then, you talked at the beginning about ideas of solidarity, and so what do you see happening currently? What do you hope your book will contribute to, in terms of opening paths of solidarity between the different groups at play? 

You know, it all feels like doom and gloom, with the climate crisis and ongoing “amazonification” of our lives. 

One of the things I’m hoping that this book achieves is de-centering the West, or America, as the primary or the only player in this mess. There are multiple actors, some of whom act under the guise of a decolonial or a progressive agenda, but nonetheless stand for the same values of hyper capitalism and even authoritarianism: The world is a lot more complicated now; corporations have the upper hand. The hope is that we have seen these colonial tactics before and we can recognize them. 

Kashmir has become a classic settler colonial project and occupation. India copies Israeli tactics, they use Israeli machinery and military technology. It means that the work of activists becomes easier — not necessarily easy — but easier, and they can work more closely together, because they’ve seen it before. 

The second thing I’m hoping to unmask is what India has done over the last 70 years as a state, through understanding it as a hegemon in South Asia. It was used by the West as a bulwark against communism first, and then against the Islamist threat, and now to expand the neo-liberal arm of imperialism. And we better catch on to that, because the third element to this is that India is now the most populous state in the world. And being the most populous state in the world, with the added label of being a democracy, means it has the potential to shape the way “democracy” is understood around the world. If India doesn’t allow foreign journalists to come in easily, if it crushes civil society, if its Prime Minister has never held a press conference, then that is what democracy can become elsewhere.

Azad Essa will be in Berlin this week to promote the book. On Tuesday, 6th June, from 8pm, the Berlin LINKE Internationals and the India Justice Project are organising an informal reception for Azad at Café Karanfil, Weisestraße 3 (U-Bahn Boddinstraße). On Friday 9th June, Azad will be presenting his book at the Hopscotch Reading Rooms Wedding office, Gerichtstraße 45 (between Leopoldplatz and Wedding). After the presentation, there will be time for discussion. 

The rise and fall (and rise and fall) of the Egyptian Left: Part 2

Egypt’s 1968 and the aftermath


03/06/2023

Editor’s Note: Phil Butland and Helena Zohdi recently interviewed Hossam el-Hamalawy about the history of the Egyptian Left. You can read Part 1 of the Interview here.

Hi, Hossam. We finished our last installment by focusing on the events of 1961 when the Egyptian Left was in a bad state. Did things get any better afterward?

The third communist wave started in 1968, a year after the war with Israel. Usually in leftwing literature, whenever events that took place during the year 1968 are mentioned, the focus is usually on the West. Quite legitimately, people have focused on important events such as the uprisings in May 1968 in France, or the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, anti-Vietnam War protests, the martyrdom of Che Guevara, or the student occupations that were taking place across Europe.

But the Arab world also had its own 1968. It was not separate, and events were partially inspired by what was happening around the globe. I wrote my master’s thesis on this period, and it’s available online.

The year 1968 was marked by student dissent across Egypt. In February 1968, there were serious student protests taking place for the first time since 1954. Students took to the streets. The trigger for these actions was the sentencing of Air Force generals during mock trials. After the disaster of the Six-Day War, Nasser had to have a scapegoat. The generals were to blame, and they deserved to be prosecuted – but they nonetheless were given light sentences.

The protests were started by Helwan factory workers, and during the events, police opened fire on the workers. The workers also sent delegations to university campuses, in particular the Ain Shams University in Cairo. This was the first time there was a joint students’ and workers’ focus within the Egyptian Left.

Nasser realized he needed to retreat and offer the movement some concessions. He presented what was called the 30 March program, one month after the protests. In this, he acknowledged that there were problems with the country’s socialist project, and that there should be more room for self-criticism. Nasser also presented some democratic reforms.

Simultaneously, the so-called War of Attrition began. This conflict started in 1968 and ended in 1970. During this time, as part of anti-occupation operations, Egypt launched commando raids into Sinai while Israeli forces retaliated, often by bombing civilian targets.

There were several horrible massacres, including when a primary school was bombed in Egypt’s northern Sharqia province. This is an event that Egyptians remember still today. We also commemorate the bombing of oil refineries in Suez.

The state had to move residents of the Suez Canal cities to Cairo and elsewhere to protect them. These cities turned into ghost towns. I grew up in Nasr City, an eastern suburb of Cairo. We had a district which was known as the “Suez people” area, to which some displaced people were moved.

At the same time, Egypt’s social movements continued to grow. And a tiny minority of Communists who had refused the dissolution of the party in 1965 began to build bridges with newly radicalized students. More Communist organizations started to develop.

One of the most important groups was at the time was the Egyptian Communist Party – 8th of January. The party’s name refers to the events of 8 January 1958, when 40 Communist factions came together and formed the Egyptian Communist Party.

Another organization which was also important in the 1970s was the Egyptian Workers’ Communist Party. They critiqued Nasser and the Egyptian Stalinists, but they were coming more from a Maoist perspective, Maoism generally being a more radical version of Stalinism.

There is one thing about 1968 that we haven’t talked about, when Russian troops went into Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring. Suddenly, Stalinism didn’t seem as radical as it used to be. Amid Western student movements, at least, one witnessed the rising influence of both Trotskyism and Maoism. Was something similar happening in Egypt?

Not with regards to Trotskyism. Historically, the Trotskyists were always a tiny minority, on the fringes of the movements. In the 1940s, there was a small Trotskyist group called Art and Freedom, which later changed its name to Bread and Freedom, and was mainly composed of surrealist artists. Later in the 1970s, another small Trotskyist group formed called the League of Communist Revolutionaries, a small Fourth International Trotskyist group.

Separately, from the stories that I’ve read about Tony Cliff, who was later a leading Trotskyist in the United Kingdom, when he was trying to flee Palestine, he was initially thinking of coming to Egypt as he had always regarded Egypt as the center of the Arab working class. When he realized the situation of the Trotskyists in Egypt, however, he said he’d be better off someplace else.

The Maoist situation was different. In Egypt, relations between Nasser and China were excellent. There wasn’t any censorship on Chinese literature. My father, for example, could get hold of Mao’s writings in Arabic from the Chinese cultural center.

Around the world at this time people were talking about China’s Cultural Revolution, seen positively as a student rebellion against bureaucracy. No one really knew about the massacres or the power struggles, in which Mao cynically used student mobilizations to destroy his enemies.

So, for many leftists of this generation, China represented the answer. In addition, part of the Maoist package was armed struggle. At the time, the models of success and inspiration included Cuba, Che Guevara, the Palestinian struggle, and Vietnam.

After Nasser died in 1970, the student movement was revived in 1971. Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, promised the liberation of Sinai, yet nothing happened. Tahrir Square in Cairo was famously occupied in 1972. Students were saying: “Look at the Vietnamese, they are confronting the Americans, we need a people’s war.” The ideas of Maoism at the time struck a chord with the newly radicalized students.

Left-leaning students’ societies on university campuses led the movement, calling themselves the Society of the Supporters of the Palestinian Revolution. This was telling about who has historically been a source of inspiration for Egyptian dissidents. The Palestinian cause has always been important for Egyptian activism.

And then there was another war with Israel.

In 1973 war broke out, and Sadat quickly proclaimed victory. But the Egyptian national question, which was perceived to be solved, only added fuel to the social question. The student movement however temporarily lost steam as for three years, all mobilization addressed the war with Israel to liberate Sinai.

Then in 1974, the social questions were relit with the government’s so-called open-door policy. Sadat and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet were the two pioneers of neoliberalism in the Global South. Sadat began neoliberal reforms with the help of the United States in 1974, and also entered into peace talks with the Israelis.

In the same year, there was a revival of industrial action with an important strike at the steel mills in Helwan, south of Cairo. In 1975, there was a strike at Mahalla, which was a hotbed for industrial militancy in the textile mills. According to reports, Sadat sent in helicopters at low altitudes to terrorize the striking workers. The revolts were put down by force.

In 1976, a huge strike by public transport workers brought Cairo to a standstill. These are the highlights, but basically, strikes were erupting everywhere during these years.

All of this culminated in the January 1977 bread riots. For two days, Egyptians participated in a national strike, triggered by Sadat’s neoliberal strategy to remove subsidies from basic commodities, including bread. Bread is a very important daily food staple for Egyptians, and the Arabic word for “bread” is also a synonym for “living.”

The uprising ended after two days, for two reasons. First, Sadat sent in the army after local police forces proved themselves ineffective. Secondly, Sadat also performed a U-turn and retracted all his “reforms.” Following these riots, the regime didn’t have the courage to implement its neoliberal reforms until the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s. This is how shocking the uprising was for the regime.

But the failure of the Left to lead this uprising into a full-fledged revolution also signaled the beginning of the end for the Left. Already in the early 1970s, Sadat maintained an unofficial alliance with Islamists. He released their leaders from prison. And the regime’s security services gave them more room to operate, to act as a counterweight to the Left. This was a tactic, by the way, that has been used in several other countries in the region.

As we now know, the Islamists became a Frankenstein’s monster, created by Sadat. Their development followed two trends. One was a reformist route, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood. The other was more radical, represented by Islamic Jihad and Gama’a Islamiyya. The latter two briefly united in 1979, and then split again after the assassination of Sadat.

Discussions among more radical members took place while they were in prison, about why an Islamic revolution hadn’t yet happened. The plan was to kill the president, and the masses would rise up. But after Sadat’s assassination, mainly nothing happened.

There is a brilliant book in Arabic by Hisham Mubarak. You may have heard the name, for example, from the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre. Mubarak is a former Communist who passed away in the 1990s. He was also briefly a member of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists.

Hisham Mubarak wrote a book called, “The Terrorists Are Coming,” in which he brilliantly explains the fights between Islamic Jihad and Gama’a Islamiyya inside prison, including over theological issues. But he explains how these issues were not actually theological, as they more reflected organizational and political matters.

This was the beginning of the end of the Egyptian Left, the failure of the revolutionary uprising following the end of the Sadat regime. And by the 1980s, the Left was more or less declared clinically dead. And once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Left was officially dead, marking the end of Egypt’s third communist wave.

Further parts of this interview will be available on theleftberlin soon.

You can subscribe to Hossam’s blog on contemporary Egyptian politics here.

After the elections is before the elections

The Spanish Left must respond to recent electoral defeats


02/06/2023

Last Sunday, May 28, many parts of Spain held regional elections alongside municipal elections (about 8,000 municipalities and 3,000 minor local entities).

It is 12 o’clock in the morning and I sit as representative of Izquierda Unida — Podemos in my local polling station in the center of Palencia, a city of 80,000 inhabitants in so-called “Empty Spain”, in Castilla y León. It’s time to leave 11 o’clock mass. Now, many people will arrive to vote. The same thing happened coming out of 10 o’clock mass. The city centers are dominated by conservative voters in Castilla. Here, we have few votes to win for the left-wing parties.

At 8:00 p.m. the voting ends and the counting begins: “Partido Popular, Partido Popular, VOX, Partido Popular, Vamos Palencia (businessmen’s candidate)”, etc. Not bad after all, 4% for Izquierda Unida — Podemos at this polling station. I leave the polling station, go to the headquarters of Izquierda Unida Palencia and wait for better news from the suburbs.

It’s not coming through. “In the neighborhoods they are voting for us much less,” says one comrade. She comes from the neighborhood of Pan y Guindas, where many low-income working people live, where our results were supposed to be good. “At one polling station, 7 votes”. “But in the center there were 21!” I say. “They didn’t come to vote,” she answers.

This situation seems to be part of the problem of the regional and municipal elections in much of the country. The results have led to the loss of left-wing coalition governments or PSOE (social democrat) governments in Aragón, País Valencià, Extremadura, La Rioja, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. Only in Navarra, Asturias and Castilla — La Mancha are left-wing governments still viable. The same in the big cities. In Barcelona, Ada Colau and Comuns became the third party (very close to Junts, right-wing nationalists and the PSC, PSOE’s Catalan equivalent), in Valencia the right-wing will govern. The same in Seville, Cadiz, Cordoba, Zaragoza and Valladolid. The map is tinged blue for PP (conservatives) and green for VOX (extreme right). In Madrid, the PP obtained an absolute majority in the capital of Spain and in the Madrilenian regional elections.

Within the left, few joys. Basque left-wing pro-independence (Bildu) and Galician left-wing nationalists (BNG) improved their results. Also slight gains by the left-wing regionalists of Aragon (CHA) and Madrid (MM), especially at the municipal level. The coalitions of Izquierda Unida and Podemos (with different names) are left out of the Madrid City Council and the Madrid Assembly, as well as the Valencia City Council and the Parliament of the Canary Islands. In the Balearic Islands we almost disappeared completely, and the results remained consistent with the past only in Extremadura, Navarra, La Rioja and Murcia.

In the case of the places where Izquierda Unida and Podemos have run separately, the results are disparate. In Asturias, Podemos drops from 4 deputies to 1, while Izquierda Unida rises from 2 to 3. In Aragón, Podemos drops from 5 to 1 deputies, while Izquierda Unida keeps 1 deputy. For its part, Izquierda Unida loses part of its voters, but keeps its most famous mayorships: Rivas in Madrid which, unless there is a surprise in the second recount in Barcelona, will be the largest city with a left-wing mayoress; and Zamora in Castilla y León, the only provincial capital governed by the left. Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Cádiz is a surprise addition.

The case of the division of the left is paradigmatic in Andalusia, where the anti-capitalists of Teresa Rodriguez presented themselves separately, and where Podemos broke up coalitions at the last minute like in Cadiz. Rodriguez’s party got 8 councilors, Podemos did not reach 30, while Izquierda Unida received 803 councilors and around 100 possible mayorships. The map is similar in other parts of Spain, especially in cases such as Asturias.

This tour through the geography of Spain and the results at the regional and municipal level seems necessary for me to jump to the next point. The day after the regional and municipal elections, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), who governs in coalition with Unidas Podemos, called general elections.

His decision was based on three pillars: the first, to avoid six more months of government erosion before the elections that should have been held in December; the second, to silence the results of the municipal and regional elections through the shock doctrine; the third, to try to crush the left-wing parties, which have been focused on reconfiguring themselves for the last few months.

Recently the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Diaz (with a Communist Party card), founded the space “Sumar”, to unite a left-wing front. The launching of “Sumar” was backed by Izquierda Unida, the Communist Party of Spain, the left regionalists of Madrid, Valencia and Aragon, Equo-Los Verdes, Alianza Verde and some other smaller parties. Podemos did not attend the launch and, after the May 28 elections, long negotiations were expected to try to unite the entire left.

The sum of the regional and municipal elections, in addition to the call for general elections on July 23, means the left only has a week to decide whether to create a united front or not. The last big stronghold of Podemos, both politically and economically, is its large parliamentary group in the Congress of Deputies, where it has the majority of the deputies of Unidas Podemos. However, that group was founded on the results of the 2019 regional and municipal elections, when Podemos negotiated in a position of strength with respect to the rest of allies.

The May 28 elections made it clear that the situation has changed. However, from some perspectives Sumar is a betrayal of Podemos, which is still the main left-wing force in the country. This is fed especially by Pablo Iglesias from his TV channel “Canal Red” and his podcast “La Base”. It is true that Podemos was the main left-wing force. It is doubtful that they still are. Negotiations cannot be done on the same terms as 2016 and 2019. It must be taken into account that in Sumar there are also Podemos splinter groups. The paradigmatic case is that of Más Madrid, founded by the former number 2 of Podemos, Íñigo Errejón. These days there is much talk of “betrayal” and “revenge”, an unflattering scenario for building a broad front of the left.

It would be a mistake if Podemos did not consider its new situation for the configuration of the left-wing alliance and attempted to maintain itself as the head of the coalition, but it would also be a serious mistake if the rest of the left-wing forces sought to “punish” or “humiliate” Podemos. That is what Pedro Sánchez wants, in part, by calling early general elections: to force either the suicide of the left if it goes separately, or to force hasty negotiations that would leave many people dissatisfied.

Sumar, a space made up of communists, social democrats dissatisfied with the PSOE, as well as ecosocialists and regionalists, requires a minimum program where each party also has its own room for maneuver. The fundamental pillars would be the defense of workers’ rights, stopping the ecological crisis, expanding peace policies and international solidarity, deepening the rights of women and LGTBIQA+ people, as well as mitigating the effects of the market with limitations on food, energy and housing prices. Republicanism and federalism as well. It will not be a communist program, but it will be a program to win the cultural battle against the current reactionary wave, which goes beyond the previous neoliberal wave. While neoliberalism tried to crush the rights achieved, the reactionaries now want to deny the right to exist of many people, mainly women, LGTBIQA+ people, migrants and poor people.

It is a temporary electoral program and, as such, it must remain temporary. The socialist and communist parties within Sumar have to continue developing their own agenda beyond parliamentary work. If not, in the long run, we have lost the battle. It is an electoral program to defend rights, but we must go on the offensive, because both social inequalities and the climate crisis require it. Elections are a means and not an end, so it would be a mistake to settle for getting a good electoral result. It is about transforming society, not about winning elections. For this, we need joy to fight and organization to win.

Letter from the Editors: 1 June 2023

No Deportations from BER airport, benefit concert for Palestine, and author of book on Modi and Israel visits Berlin


01/06/2023

Hello everyone,

Today is the first day of the Stop Deportation! Protest Camp. At the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, the government plans to build a massive deportation prison. Already now, mass deportations via charter flights silently take place there every month. To help break the silence, the “Stop Deportation! Protest Camp” is being organised in Schönefeld from June 1-6 2023. You can find a full programme of Events here. The Stop Deportations Protest Camp is our Campaign of the Week.

On Saturday, theleftberlin supporter Rohit will be organising 2 Events – a Decolonising Yoga session at 9am, and a BIPOC only Rest as resistance workshop at 2pm. Readers of theleftberlin have also set up a Telegram channel so that they can visit the Camp together. You can join the channel here.

Tomorrow (Friday), at 6:30pm, there will be a free screening of the film Dictionary of Waste. This year marks the 30-year anniversary of the garbage explosion in Ümraniye (Istanbul) that left 39 people dead. Rather than focusing on the political leaders and their play that is unfolding in Turkey the director shed light on the lives of those that are most affected by the politics of the ruling class. After the screening, there will be an open microphone for exchange and discussion with the audience. Alper Şen, the filmmaker, is also planning to join us via Zoom. The Event is organised by the POC ART Collective and will take place at Bona Peiser, Oranienstraße 72.

Also tomorrow night, from 8pm there will be a No Justice No Pizza Concert and DJ Set for Palestine. This year the repression against solidarity with Palestine in Berlin reached a new level: a month before and a week after the 75th anniversary of the Nakba on 15 May, the right of assembly was suspended, demonstrations were banned, arrests were made. This is the second year that the bans hit the Palestinian community in the city and those who support it. Once again, police and many media have worked hand in hand and created a campaign of criminalisation and delegitimisation of a movement in which Palestinians, Jews and internationalists fight side by side. This benefit concert will take place at the Rote Insel, Mansteinstr. 10, near S-and U-Bahn Yorckstraße.

On Monday, there will be a demonstration- Abolish Deportations. As part of the Stop Deportation! Protest Camp, we will march together upon the infrastructure of deportation that is spread around Berlin airport. The demo will start at the Protest Camp at “Kiekebusch See” at 1.30 pm, and there will be shuttle transport arriving at City Hall Schönefeld for 2pm. The demo will then visit the Planned Site of the Deportation Center.

On Tuesday, at 6.30pm, there will be a screening of All Eyes on You, a film based on and exploring the topic of the use of artificial intelligence in CCTV surveillance. Mannheim is the first German city that experiments with this technique and more than 60 new cameras all over the city center, installed to detect ‘suspicious movements’. What is a suspicious movement, how do Mannheimers feel about this new technology and does being watched all the time really help? The film will be shown at the TU Halle 4, Institut für Architektur, Straße des 17. Juni 152. It will be followed by a discussion with director Michaela Kobsa-Mark.

Also on Tuesday evening, the LINKE Berlin Internationals and the India Justice Project are organising a reception for Azad Essa, senior reporter at the Middle East Eye. Azad Essa is be in Berlin to promote his new book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, and will be speaking at a Book Presentation next Friday (more information in next week’s Newsletter). Tuesday’s reception is at Café Karanfil, Weisestraße 3, and will start at 8pm.

Remember that the Berlin LINKE Internationals Summer Camp starts in 9 days’ time. If you are going to Summer Camp, please fill in this form. even if you think you have registered. If you don’t fill in the form, there may not be enough food available – you can also use the form to register for free accommodation. You can see a full programme for Summer Camp here. There will be much more information in next week’s Newsletter.

There are many more activities this week in Berlin, which are listed on our Events page. You can also see a shorter, but more detailed, list of Events which we are directly involved in here.

In News from Berlin, more Turks in Berlin voted Erdogan than in other European capitals, and the source of the data leak at Tesla is still unclear.

In News from Germany, police throughout Germany raid Last Generation activists, 3.5 million people in Germany have at least 2 jobs, strikes cause a rise in union membership, politicians commemorate the fatal arson attack at Solingen, and affordable changes to make heating environmentally friendly need new practises in industry.

Read all about this week’s News from Berlin and Germany here.

New on theleftberlin this week, we interview Udi Raz from the Jüdische Stimme about press representation of their Nakba protest. Hossam El-Hamalawy writes the first of several articles on the Egyptian Left – this time from the 1919 Revolution to Nasser, Ivan Fradejas de la Vega writes about racism in Spanish football, Mimi Magill asks who profits from deportations from Berlin’s new detention centre, and Partho Sarothi Ray looks at worrying results from recent elections in India.

Today’s Video of the Week is the English language version of the recent Jewish Bund video about attacks on commemoration of the Nakba.

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Keep on fighting

The Left Berlin Editorial Board