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The Romanian Elections That Weren’t

An explainer and critique of a country’s failure to deal with the far right’s success


09/12/2024

A few weeks ago, very few people knew anything about Călin Georgescu. Besides the few times his candidacy for prime minister was floated, there was no indication that his run as an independent candidate for the Romanian presidency had any traction whatsoever. Then came the first shock: with almost 23% of the vote, Georgescu won the first round of one of the most contested elections in Romanian history after barely registering on pre-election polls.

This dark-horse result threw Romania along with the entire Euro-Atlantic media and policy apparatuses for a loop, scrambling for explanations and solutions for the rise of yet another far-right, anti-Western statesman in Europe. The explanation that they came up with is facile: Russia. And the solution came as the second shock: the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the presidential elections and ordered that they be redone from scratch. This unprecedented ruling may have addressed the immediate trigger of the Georgescu surprise but does little about the causes of the rightward swing, leaving the future of Romanian democracy uncertain.

The actors

In the weeks since the November 24 elections, Romanian politics, media, and civil society have all moved extremely fast. The right is taking advantage of a highly fragmented political landscape, and to make sense of its rise, a brief overview of the main relevant parties and their central figures is useful. Here they are:

PSD (Partidul Social Democrat, the Social Democratic Party): seen by many as the inheritors of the Romanian Communist Party, PSD has been the main force in Romanian politics. It leans left on some matters, regularly raising pensions or social benefits, but it is a party of crony capitalism, always embroiled in scandals of corruption and abuse of power, and deeply conservative on social issues.

  • Marcel Ciolacu: presidential candidate (third place, 19.15%), current prime minister in a PSD-PNL grand coalition. A former provincial politician/fixer, he appeared center stage after PSD’s defeat in the 2019 presidential elections. His own loss would have caused the first presidential run-off without a PSD candidate.

PNL (Partidul Național Liberal, the National Liberal Party): the other dominant political party, PNL presents itself as the center-right alternative to PSD. It has been similarly plagued by corruption scandals, however, and its coalition with PSD has tainted it as part of “the establishment.”

  • Nicolae Ciucă: presidential candidate (fifth place, 8.8%), retired army general, and former prime minister in the PSD-PNL coalition. Completely lacking charisma or political flair, his humiliating results caused his resignation from PNL’s leadership, being replaced by Ilie Bolojan.
  • Klaus Iohannis: president for the last two terms, technically independent, as the sitting president is not allowed to be a party member. He won elections as the Western foil to PSD’s Balkan corruption, but his haughty, incommunicative presidential style, his interventions in coalition politics, and his high expenses in office have brought his approval rates to a historic low.

USR (Uniunea Salvați România, the Save Romania Union): young and socially progressive, but at the same time, neoliberal and right-wing, USR arose as the country’s hope to fight corruption and the establishment by appealing to entrepreneurs, students, and urban youth. Internal scandals and splinters, a failed coalition government with PNL, and the radicalization of some of its central figures toward nationalism and libertarianism have extinguished the hopes of many USR supporters.

  • Elena Lasconi: presidential candidate (second place, 19.18%), former journalist, currently mayor of a small city. She lost her position as the head of USR’s European elections list after declaring that she had voted yes in a 2018 anti-LGBT referendum but made a comeback after USR’s disappointing results in the European and local elections.

AUR (Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians): entered the Parliament in 2020, on a far-right, Covid-skeptical platform. The name references the union of Romania and Moldova, a key rallying cry for Romanian nationalists. Two parties that entered the Parliament in the 2024 elections, S.O.S. Romania and POT (Partidul Oamenilor Tineri, the Party of Young People), are splinters from it, but all three coalesce into a yet-informal “sovereigntist pole.”

  • George Simion: AUR presidential candidate (fourth place, 13.86%), a former ultras gallery leader who made his career in ultranationalist, unionist social movements.
  • Călin Georgescu: independent presidential candidate, but supported by POT (first place, 22.94%). He held positions at the UN and at the Club of Rome, working on issues of sustainability. Proposed by AUR as prime minister in 2021, he later left the party when Simion criticized his openly pro-fascist statements.

Special guest: The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR), one of the highest courts in Romania, ruling on issues of constitutionality. Its nine members are nominated politically by the President and the Parliament. Its current line-up: four PSD nominees, three Iohannis, one PNL, and one UDMR (the political party of the Hungarian minority).

The action

The battle lines of the Romanian elections were both clearly drawn and muddled. The dominance of PSD and PNL and its contestation by multiple other parties created the appearance of two camps: the establishment (or “the system,” as Romanians tend to call it) and the anti-establishment. PSD banked on its incumbency and took its traditional base for granted, while PNL tried to center the hopeless Ciucă’s military laurels (the promotion of his 2024 memoir, A Soldier in the Service of the Country, ran up a €2-million bill).

On the other side of the divide, USR and AUR tried to find an identity that appealed to the negatively defined anti-establishment bloc by breaking out of their respective bubbles. Lasconi upped her conservative profile by wearing two ostentatious crucifixes around her neck, symbols of her attempt to overcome the limitations of a party targeting students and entrepreneurs. Simion moderated his far-right messaging to appeal to more than an ultranationalist niche. The other far-right candidate with a public profile, MEP Diana Șoșoacă (S.O.S. Romania), fell prey to narrative foreshadowing: in a decision decried by many as undemocratic, the CCR banned her candidacy due to her anti-Western discourse.

After Georgescu’s win, it became obvious that the clarity of this two-sided contest had always been an illusion. With both PSD and PNL candidates at historic electoral lows, the vague category of “anti-establishment” came on top but lost any unitary meaning. Lasconi’s success in qualifying for the run-off, celebrated by neoliberal, pro-European groups, was balanced by the victory of an independent, far-right, pro-Russian minor politician. Anxieties about where Georgescu’s 23% would go in the parliamentary elections on December 1 were only partly alleviated: the sovereigntists gained around 32% of the vote, with AUR coming second overall, but PSD, which came first with 22%, will probably be able to etch out a highly unstable coalition with PNL, USR, and UDMR.

Political reactions were mixed. Although he himself lost, Simion celebrated a sovereigntist victory. Bolojan, whom Lasconi had put forth as prime minister under her potential presidency, endorsed the USR candidate and declared his support against anti-democratic forces. Ciolacu delayed his own endorsement (unsurprisingly, given that USR campaigns have always demonized PSD and its voters) but came through after investigations into Georgescu’s campaign picked up steam.

This patchy popular front, however, is far from an antifascist show of strength. In the wake of the parliamentary elections, both Ciolacu and Bolojan reacted by reaffirming their commitment to traditional and national “values.” Their history shows that their support for heteronormative families, Orthodox Christianity, and anti-LGBT policies is not only empty words. In the meantime, the far-right was emboldened, as a commemoration of an interwar fascist leader just outside of Bucharest took place with open Nazi salutes.

But the mainstream parties’ electioneering quickly became obsolete when intelligence agencies came into play. After an emergency session of the Supreme Council of National Defense, its president, Iohannis, decided to declassify intelligence reports alleging that Georgescu’s campaign received funding and social media support from foreign state and non-state actors. The evidence is circumstantial and the only mentioned name is Sputnik, although even this is a mere “potential” connection. But there is no doubt that Russia is the main suspect, and Georgescu himself has not hidden his Russian sympathies. The allegations might also be true—Georgescu had registered his campaign funding as zero, which, even as his reach was primarily on TikTok, is an obvious, brazen lie.

Things escalated quickly after the declassification. The CCR had denied a challenge to the first round of the presidential election, although it ordered a recount, a hastily organized logistical mess that loomed over the parliamentary election and ultimately only confirmed the results. The reports, however, led to new challenges on the Thursday before the December 1 run-off, admitted by the Court on Friday, when the early voting for Romanians living abroad had already started. Ciolacu praised the reestablishment of order and Ciucă called for calm. But the anti-establishment candidates, Lasconi and the sovereigntists, cried foul – and went crawling to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The decision, however, is final; the elections have been annulled, and will have to be redone from scratch, starting with collecting signatures and validating candidacies.

The fallout

Is this the end of Romania’s descent into far-right chaos? No. The CCR decision might have stopped Georgescu’s election, as he is unlikely to be allowed to run again. The intervention of intelligence services and courts into the electoral process, however, weakens democratic accountability and only stokes the anti-establishment fire. The ruling itself is highly contestable, as it refers strictly to financing and intervention that went on during the electoral campaign. One does not have to be a far-right nationalist to paint an ugly picture: a politically nominated court relied on vague intelligence reports to invalidate an uneventful election (which had already been confirmed by the same court) literally overnight. All at the initiative of an unpopular president who will now get a few more months in office.

The morning after the annulment, large-scale investigations against Georgescu’s network started forcefully. This is undoubtedly an absolute positive. Georgescu has run on a platform of conspiracy theories, ultranationalist messaging, and economic promises. He is not a random far-right lunatic, but embedded in international and domestic networks of fascist armed groups and capitalists who, yes, have business connections to Moscow and to various Romanian nationalist movements. The fact that organized right-wingers are arrested in Romania is not bad news.

But, again, one does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask an obvious question: why so late? Georgescu’s declarations praising the Legion of the Archangel Michael, Romania’s larger interwar antisemitic fascist movement, and Ion Antonescu, the country’s WWII military leader, Hitler ally, and Holocaust perpetrator, have been so obvious that even AUR forced him out for courting legal trouble. Nonetheless, he was never prosecuted for his statements. And that was only the most visible manifestation of his far-right radicalism. The organized networks he is a part of did not just appear overnight, and the elections were certainly not the first time that intelligence services heard about them.

One theory is that PSD secretly supported the far right in the hope that it would eat into Lasconi’s own anti-establishment base, a strategy that obviously backfired. Regardless of whether this is true, there is a bigger picture here: Georgescu is the tip of a societal iceberg that reaches into the establishment itself (the far-right parties had the highest share of retired intelligence and military officers among their parliamentary nominees). The conservatism of the mainstream parties is not an electoral strategy, but the light version of the nationalism that has been brewing across the political elites and society of large and gives rise to ultranationalist groups and parties.

Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime, communist as it may have been, was deeply nationalist in a way that continued after 1989, with an added twist—the glorification of interwar culture, society, and anti-communist fighters. The same interwar that created the Legion and other fascist organizations, from which much of the anti-communist resistance was drawn. Popular culture, newscasts and highbrow publishing houses have all legitimated Romanian interwar society and made Holocaust perpetrators, Orthodox fascists, and war criminals palatable as symbols of a better, pre-communist past. AUR and Georgescu are simply the most extreme expressions.

This fascist lineage and nostalgia is legitimated by their willingness to criticize Romania’s capitalist present. This does not make them in any way left-wing: their social base are the petty bourgeoisie, expropriated by transnational capital, and Georgescu’s economic proposals are the same mixed bag of some welfare measures, protectionism, and corporatism we see everywhere on the populist right. But his simple message of “food, water, energy” appealed to an immiserated population that continues to pay the cost of the transition to capitalism while capital runs wild. No surprise, as well, that his message gained the support of the part of the diaspora that has been used and abused in European factories and warehouses and who have been building a nationalist understanding of themselves since Romania’s post-communist mass outmigration began.

The people who voted for him are not dupes. They are not fooled by false economic promises, but simply support a person who tells them that the transition has failed them, and not that they have failed to become the proper capitalist entrepreneurial subjects needed in the Western world. They are no innocent angels either, as Georgescu’s explicitly fascist messaging resonates with values and behaviors of much of Romanian society. The simple truth of the matter is that Georgescu and the far-right have a broad base among Romanians, one with material interests and a coherent ideology.

That base will not disappear if Georgescu is arrested after winning an election. And that base will also not disappear if they are forced to make an abstract geopolitical choice between the West and Russia. That choice has been made for them, and it did not go in their favor. The Romanian left needs to wrestle the critique of this choice and the critique of capitalism back from the far right. As real as Russian intervention in the electoral campaign might have been, it’s only possible consequence is that it was Georgescu, and not Simion or another right-winger who won the election. Undemocratic crackdowns and geopolitical browbeating will only continue to legitimate and hide the extent to which, in direct continuation of its history, the right is gaining ground across all groups of Romanian society.

Statement on my expulsion from die Linke

My expulsion is a politically motivated response to my activity for Palestine


08/12/2024

Today [Saturday, 7th December 2024] the Landesschiedskommission (District Administration Commisson) of die Linke expelled me from the party with immediate effect upon request by Katina Schubert and Martin Schirdewan.

I would like to reply to this decision with the following statement:

Although the charges levied against me were refuted in the hearing, the same unsubstantiated allegations were once more used as justification for my expulsion, and their refutation was ignored.

One of the main arguments for my expulsion was that there had been a media campaign waged against me because of my activities in support of Palestine solidarity, which resulted in institutions questioning cooperation with die Linke.

While the oral argumentation of the decision certified that no accusations of antisemitism had been made and that I had inflicted no intentional damage to die Linke, I was expelled with immediate effect.

The oral argumentation shows the political motivation of the Landesschiedskommission. My conviction that all people should have the same rights, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, or atheist, was dismissed as a “beautiful dream”.

The Landesschiedskommission is thus following the logic of unconditional support for the State of Israel, in accordance with German Staatsräson, which it has put above the right to existence of and equal rights for Palestinian people.

The current development of the mass killing of the Palestinian civil population, which has also been confirmed by Amnesty International as a genocide, was given no import in the judgement of the context of my statements.

My expulsion cannot be justified, either factually or politically.

The failure of the verdict to acknowledge the most recent decision of the International Criminal Court is a damning indictment of a left, internationalist party. It inflicts damage upon everyone who is fighting for universal human rights.

I thank everyone within and external to die Linke who have shown solidarity with me in recent weeks, and who have exposed themselves to the danger of media defamation. Their presence at the rally that took place at the proceedings showed me that I am not alone. Many thanks for this.

I will continue to do everything possible with comrades within and external to die Linke to build the solidarity movement with Palestine. The delivery of weapons for Israel’s genocide in Gaza must be ended. Human rights are indivisible – that is more than a “beautiful dream”. Let us stand up for them together:

This statement first appeared in German. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission

Book Review – “Environmental Warfare in Gaza”

From Colonial Ecology to Weaponized Ecocide


Shourideh Molavi’s latest book, released earlier this year, is a historical journey through the wars and incursions on Gaza aiding us in developing our understanding of their impacts on Gaza’s built and cultivated environments.. Molavi serves as the lead researcher for Palestine at Forensic Architecture (FA) at Goldsmiths, University of London. The field of forensic architecture works on “spatial evidence within legal, political, and cultural contexts, and takes architecture to include not only buildings, but shaped environments of cities and territories.”

The research agency’s work has been used as evidence in courts and in citizens’ tribunals across the world, combining techniques such as spatial modeling and audio and video documentation of state violence and violations of human rights. In its investigations of states and corporate entities, Forensic Architecture says it wants to aid the legal and public struggle against “historical and contemporary colonial violence, including the destruction of traditional environments and life worlds.”

In “ Environmental Warfare in Gaza”, Molavi builds on her previous investigations along Gaza’s Eastern “border”, which she extends to cover the colonial history of Palestine’s environment.

Over years, Israel widened the “protective” zone along its borders, progressively reducing the arable land by flattening the land through airstrikes and bulldozers. In recent years, this process has been extended through the deliberate targeting of lands with high concentrations of pesticides, sprayed alongside the fence onto Gazan farmlands, creating the perfect “buffer zone.”Molavi concludes that this so-called “no-go zone,” ranging from 300-1000 meters, turns Gaza’s border into the ideal “one-sided” border, allowing for permeation from one side only. This constantly affects the livelihood of Palestinians in proximity to the border.

To clear the view on protestors and agriculturalists alike, specific types of plants were criminalized due to their height or banned from the environment altogether. . Whereas crops up to 80 cm height were permitted in earlier years, the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights reported that by 2018 farmers were forced to reduce the height of their plants to only 40 cm (~15 in) (Molavi 2024, 33).

These enforced changes to the agricultural environment include citrus orchards, central to Gaza’s role as a coastal trade hub. Molavi notes that the role of the orange in the “formation of Gazan identity, including local knowledge production, socio-economic relations and migration patterns, domestic and international cultural exchange. . . is largely under-studied” (p. 27). we do know, however, that Gazan traditional citrus cultivation is closely linked to the Palestinian Nakba or “catastrophe”. Thousands of families lost access to fruit orchards and vegetable plots that lay beyond today’s militarized borders. After they became refugees and settled in Gaza, many Palestinians had to adapt to an urban lifestyle. Only a small percentage of Gazans today cultivate farmland, much of which is owned by a small percentage of large-scale landowners.

Similarly, Gaza lost many of its olive groves, often near the “buffer zone” due to clearing processes by Israel or the prohibition of taller plants. Oxfam estimates that Israel uprooted roughly 112,000 olive trees between 2000 and 2008. In addition to their symbolism, olive trees have provided Gazan grove keepers and their families with an income, and served as a critical food source during curfew-times imposed by the Israeli army in the form of oil and olives.

Early in Israel’s ongoing genocide on Gaza, many Gazans had to cut down trees for firewood to survive the winter. Gazans stress the loss they felt and the role these trees, many of which were inherited, had in their lives.

From 2017 to 2019, Gazans protested for their internationally recognized Right of Return (UNGA Res. 194 (III)). In these years the cleared and flattened area near the fence enabled the targeting and injuring of thirty six thousand Gazans, who resorted to burning tires and utilizing the toxic smoke to take cover from snipers. Roughly 29% of these injuries were brought on by live ammunition and rubber bullets, leading to many Gazans undergoing amputations. Especially for small-scale farmers, this can mean the loss of their livelihoods.

Investigations of the pesticides sprayed by Israel onto Gazan lands have resulted in the conclusion that the while plants subjected to the deliberate spraying of herbicides along Gaza’s borders showed traces of insecticides and pesticides, “damaging levels of herbicides were not detected” (Molavi 2024, 72) by the consulting Katif Center Laboratories. Contrary to these findings, farmers reported severe losses of crops, and resorted to planting different crops, often resorting to cultivation in greenhouses to shield them from herbicides. This shift changed the landscape and removed Gazan people’s access to ancestral foods and traditions, such as foraging Khobeiza (Palestinian Common Mallow) and grazing animals on the land.

Palestinian filmmaker and artist Emily Jacir questioned FA’s approach in her film Letter to a Friend (2019), dedicated to FA founder Eyal Weizmann. Given often repeated crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, ranging from extrajudicial executions to war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with global arms exporting firms, Jacir raises the question: why does her friend’s focus remain on proving that a crime has been committed instead of working to prevent it from being repeated or exacerbated?

Jacir’s Letter to a Friend can nourish movements for social and ecological justice and calls for the proactive protection and defense of lives and livelihoods. This call could form the basis of more strictly enforced policies determining what will harm the environment and local populations and inform new ways of preventing the crimes. This very necessity of protecting the soils and livelihoods from being weaponized to create scarcity can connect movements for a joint cause and a more just future.

In Verfassungsblog: On Matters Constitutional, Saeed Bagheri, Lecturer in International Law at the University of Reading School of Law, writes that “the natural environment remains the silent victim of Israel’s war on Gaza.” He highlights the Israeli military’s stance towards the environmental destruction it is causing in Gaza: while there is a military necessity to clear areas, “there appears to be little evidence of ‘widespread, long-term, and severe environmental damage’ from Israel’s air strikes on the heavily civilian-populated Gaza.”

Bagheri argues that Israel is using the “widespread, long-term, and severe” standard — an ambiguous international standard of humanitarian law — in combination with the inability of scientists to undertake careful studies of air, water, and soil quality, to screen its enormously damaging impacts in Gaza.

Even though Palestinian and Lebanese farmers, as well as international researchers have provided evidence of widespread environmental destruction over decades, we must not wait until the accepted evidence of an already destroyed environment surpasses military need. Under the precautionary principle, the burden of proof lies with the party profiting from the actions. That is why some researchers advocate for the use of the precautionary principle in armed conflict. They assert that although under International Humanitarian Law the focus rests on “all feasible precautions,” the precautionary principle provides protective guidelines and takes parts of the decision out of the hands of military personnel.

Some, like Bagheri, do not think that this is enough. Already in April 2024, six months after the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza, Bagheri said that “the UN, in general, and the ICC in particular, should have done more to attenuate the substantial risk of mistreatment of the natural environment, concerning more particularly the ecology, health and survival of Palestinians.”

This sentiment is shared by many and goes far beyond the ongoing genocide—those who read Shourideh Molavi’s research closely will see that an intervention should have long preceded the currently ongoing destruction, given the vast amount of evidence provided.

Environmental Warfare in Gaza is an essential book to understand the ongoing war on Gaza. Following the acknowledgements that reflect Molavi’s many years of collaboration with her local colleagues, she pays tribute to her collaborator Roshdi Yahya Al-Sarraj, co-founder of the investigation’s journalistic partner organization, Ain Media Gaza, who was killed in an airstrike on his home.

Since the book’s release early this year, much has changed. Molavi, has re-edited her book to include the newest developments, but she could not have predicted the destruction that has been brought upon Gaza since. As she continues to investigate Israel’s crimes in Gaza and the continued ecocide in Gaza that enhances the famine, one section of the book brings us closer to the people and the future of Gaza:

“Refusing to limit her output to low-growing fruits and vegetables, Mona would strategically place olive trees among her crops. […] Responding to the forced biopolitical modifications of [the] otherwise familiar landscape, such acts of resistance interrupt the colonial and imperial gaze, also emphasizing the inextricable role of the environment in modern warfare.” (p.43)

Like the farmers interviewed by Molavi in 2018, the people of Gaza still refuse to be helpless in the face of a man-made famine. Initiatives such as Thamra have resorted to planting amidst the ruins to have access to food independent of the arrival of aid. Before evacuating, Yousef Abu Rabea, a Palestinian farming engineer and co-founder of Thamra, collected seeds from his family’s farm in Beit Lahia.

Thamra’s aim is to promote food stability, but Abu Rabea remained concerned: “The genocide has left the farmland all but devastated by artillery-borne white phosphorus, a potent carcinogen that lingers in the soil, poisoning farmers and making their crops unsafe to eat.” On October 7, 2024, new evacuation orders for Gaza’s North were issued, and bombing of densely populated areas of the North increased. Yousef Abu Rabea was killed by an Israeli drone strike on October 21, 2024.

While most research on effects of discharged ordnance focuses on the effects of white phosphorus on the human body, investigations by the American University of Beirut are also underway to better understand the result of soil contamination in South Lebanon’s targeted areas.

Although white phosphorus is officially an incendiary agent., it is clear that in the case of Gaza and Lebanon it is used beyond its official purpose of illumination. Nonetheless, white phosphorus is not yet deemed a chemical weapon, even thoughthe United States’ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health already states that absorption of white phosphorus by means of ingestion is possible for humans and grazing animals because of soil and plant contamination.

Many insist that conclusive investigations can only be done after the end of Israel’s attack on Lebanon and Gaza, but Lebanese farmers have already lost thousands of trees due to white phosphorus fires. Previous attacks with white phosphorus have led to diminished harvests and contaminated streams. Earlier research has linked white phosphorus particles in Alaska’s Eagle River Flats to the death of thousands of waterfowl.

In a recent blog post published by the Earth Law Center, an ecocentric legal organization based in Durango, Colorado, Elena Tiedens concluded that where the precautionary principle fails to prevent damage done to the environment, ecocide is a path through which the destruction of the environmentcould be persecuted and punished. Subsequently, co-violations to human rights could – and should – be approached from this angle too, bringing justice to those whose livelihoods and health have been destroyed in the near and far future.

Ecocide in Gaza is not just a local issue. Most recently, Reuters’ reported on how the release of asbestos through urban bombing will affect the health of generations to come. In the words of Cenk Tan, ecocide is “a phenomenon that has serious international impact. It represents humanity’s toll on Earth.”

 

Book details: Environmental Warfare in Gaza, , Shourideh C. Molavi Pluto Press February 2024

“The Netherlands is following Germany in its increasing oppression”

Interview with Daan de Grefte and Juul Seesing about why the ELSC is taking the Dutch government to court


07/12/2024

Thanks for talking to us. Could you each briefly introduce yourselves?

Daan de Grefte (DdG): I am based in Amsterdam, and I am a Senior Legal Officer at the European Legal Support Center (ELSC). It’s a non-profit organization that protects and empowers the Palestine solidarity movement in Europe through legal means. My specific role is to lead the Crimes and Complicity team. The buzzword term would be strategic litigation, but it also encompasses other work, like advocacy and building coalitions.

Juul Seesing (JS): I work as the advocacy and communications officer for the Netherlands at ELSC. When people are faced with any form of repression while advocating for Palestinian rights, we ask them to report this to us. This can vary from facing police violence to an employer wanting to silence you, for example. We can connect people to our networks of lawyers if need be, but we also gather evidence to expose and challenge the oppression in Europe. When any communication or outreach is required, then that is my job.

We mainly want to talk about your latest piece of strategic litigation. You’re taking the Dutch government to court. Could you explain why you’re doing this?

DdG: The Dutch government has been complicit in Israel’s colonization of Palestine and the oppression of the Palestinian people for a very long time. This does not only relate to political support, but also economic support, military support and political cover and backing, especially to shield Israel from criticism on the international stage.

After October 7th, it became apparent that Israel was not only committing more basic war crimes and violations of Palestinian human rights, but also the crime of genocide, which is of a much more severe nature. The Dutch government has continued to unconditionally support the Israeli government, even when its ministers are under investigation by the International Criminal Court.

The recent F35 motor parts case involved the Dutch government exporting F35 parts to Israel that could then be used in its genocidal assault in Gaza, even though there was a very clear risk of serious violations of international law and potentially the risk of being complicit in the actual commission of the crime of genocide. The government has never conditioned any kind of economic or military support on Israel’s respect for international humanitarian law.

Besides this, there’s the long standing problem of what the Dutch government calls the “ontmoedigingsbeleid”, the discouragement policy, where the official line of the Dutch government has always been, “we discourage companies from doing business with illegal Israeli settlements, but we do not take an active role in it”.

If you are a company and you come to the Dutch government with a request for information on the legality of Israeli settlements, then they would advise you about what it actually means under international law, but they do not preclude you whatsoever from doing business with settlements. Even though, in July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that third states, including the Netherlands, have a legal obligation to take steps to prevent trade with settlements.

Our interpretation of this advisory opinion is extremely clear. We think that the Dutch government is now under an obligation to actively stop any trade with Israeli settlements because they are clearly conducive to the illegal situation that has unfolded in Palestine at the hands of Israel.

Our case of strategic litigation has the primary goal of doing whatever we can here in the Netherlands to stop the genocide from continuing to take place in Gaza. On the other hand, we are also trying to challenge the Dutch government’s discouragement policy, which effectively still allows trade with settlements, even though the world’s highest court has clearly banned it.

JS: The Dutch state argues that there’s no international or domestic legislation that prohibits Dutch corporations from doing business in Israeli settlements, disregarding its own International Crimes Act. The Dutch government isn’t even complying with its own laws.

DdG: In our proceedings against the Dutch state, which is broader than that F35 case, the Dutch government alluded to their policy having changed, saying that they actually do not export any weapons that can be used in Israel’s assault on Gaza any more. That was news for us. They never said that before, even though we repeatedly asked for any kind of updates on their policy about delivering weapons to Israel.

But it seems very strange, because in the meantime, they are still appealing this decision that tells them to do exactly that.

When the Dutch government says that they’re not sending weapons to Gaza, do you believe them?

DdG: To be very honest with you, I don’t. The Dutch government is making every effort to make it as un-transparent as possible for us to know exactly what kind of arms are being sent to Israel, and especially which kind of arms might be used in Gaza. They do publish overviews of the type of export licenses they give, but it is not really certain if they encompass all licenses because, for example, the F35 parts are not even on any of those lists.

There are other issues with the list because it’s quite unclear where any of the dual-use goods are used. These are goods that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. It is completely unclear whether or not there is a risk that they end up being used in Gaza, even though the term dual-use means that there should be at least a risk of them being used for military purposes.

My personal opinion is that I don’t think we should believe what the government is saying.

JS: In the F35 case the Court of Appeal ordered the government not to send F35 parts to the occupation. However, it became clear that F35 parts were still being exported to the occupation but via the United States. That says it all. You can’t trust the government, even after a court order.

DdG: Our case differs from the F35 case in a very important aspect. We do not think that only offensive weapons that can be used in Gaza should be banned. Of course, we think that those weapons should also not be exported to Israel. But we think that the ICJ advisory opinion made it very clear that third states, like the Dutch state, cannot be involved in any way in the illegal situation that Israel has created in Palestine, which means the occupation, the settlements, or anything that is related to them.

On that basis, we think that defensive weapons can also contribute to the occupation. That’s not a very difficult argument to make. But even on top of that, it is very clear that states can in no way be involved in the commission of the crime of genocide and should do whatever is in their power to prevent it from happening when there is a risk.

What are your chances of winning the case?

DdG: This case is politically very sensitive. It touches upon the Dutch foreign policy, where it has to operate through alliances, and there are many geo-strategic and geopolitical considerations that the Dutch government has to take into account. That makes it difficult for judges, especially in the first instance, because it’s just one judge, who potentially upsets Dutch foreign policy.

In the appeal court, it’s different. It’s a three judge system there. They also have a little bit more authority to make decisions that touch upon Dutch foreign policy, but we know that it is very scary for judges to make a decision like this. That, in combination with the fact that it is a case about Palestine, which is always very difficult to win in court.

However, all our research, all our expertise from the people in the coalition and independent advisors have pointed towards the fact that legally, it is extremely clear what the Dutch government has to do, and those are adequately described in our demands.

During the hearing last Friday, it became very clear that the Dutch government actually does not really have a clear policy on this, and that they don’t really have a strong argument to present to the courts to say, what they are doing is adequate to prevent genocide and to prevent other violations of international law.

So I think that there is a very strong chance that in an appeal, and potentially before the Highest Court, we would actually win this case. But it’s very hard to predict. These cases take a long time. It really depends also on what the judge themself thinks. It depends on all kinds of other information that we do not have.

And if you do in either the case or the appeal, what are the implications for countries outside the Netherlands?

DdG: The potential impact of this case for other jurisdictions could potentially be quite big. Of course, the Dutch court does not have any authority over the German legal system or the French legal system. But it does indicate that there is a development happening in the legal system that, under current international law, it is legally impossible for European governments to act as they are currently acting.

You’re not the first people to take the Dutch government to court. There have been environmental actions. Is there something specific about the Dutch legal system or Dutch activism, which makes this more common?

DdG: It’s important to understand that there is this provision in Dutch law. Our tort legislation gives us the opportunity to establish unlawfulness of the conduct of the Dutch state, not only because it is violating certain prescribed legislation, but also because it could violate a certain unwritten norm of fundamental societal value. This allows for international norms to be used to explain those societal values.

This is what happened in the case against Shell, which was litigated recently in the Netherlands. The judges upheld the fact that international norms, like the Paris Accords, can be used to explain this unwritten societal norm.

Article One of the Genocide Convention says that states should do whatever is in their power to prevent genocide when there’s a risk of it occurring. Also, Article One of Geneva Conventions states that third states should do whatever they can to ensure respect for international law.

I think that it’s a very strong argument that since these norms are so fundamental to the functioning of the international legal system and the international rule of law, coupled with the fact that the Dutch state is, of course, home to the ICC and the ICJ. It is a very fundamental value to Dutch society as a whole to respect those norms. That is where I think the Dutch legal system is unique, as it offers that opportunity.

Do you think that the fact that the Netherlands doesn’t have a constitutional court, and so doesn’t test their laws against a standard, is also part of this?

DdG: The fact that we don’t have a constitutional court is one of the reasons that judges actually get to test the constitutionality of certain laws and policies in the first place. It is always a very difficult and sensitive thing for a judge to rule that a certain act or policy of the government is unconstitutional, because it will always have quite significant effects in society.

But our Constitution says very clearly that the Dutch government has to take a proactive role in the progressive development of international law and the international rule of law.

The Dutch government’s argument at this point is that they can go against an ICJ advisory opinion and not link any consequences to the fact that Israel is in active violation of ICJ rulings, when their constitution says that they should be vanguards in the development of international law and the international rule of law.

Going back to the Shell case that you mentioned, this has been recently overturned. Is this something that could happen to you as well?

DdG: The reasons for overturning the first instance decision on Shell were related to both practical and factual considerations. For example, the court ruled that it was not made sufficiently clear that the effects of Shell taking action on climate change would be one to one translatable into a reduction of CO2 emissions.

It therefore said that the 45% norm cannot be made to directly apply to Shell, because there is a chance that if Shell does not do it, other companies will do it. I think this is bizarre reasoning, by the way. This is what people usually call the drug dealer justification: if I don’t deal these drugs, someone else will do it. It’s bizarre that the court would make that argument.

But what is very positive about this reasoning is that the courts very explicitly upheld the principle that these international norms can be transposed into a Dutch court.

Let’s get into wider Dutch politics. Recently, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans rioted in Amsterdam. We had some bizarre reporting in Germany. How was the media response in the Netherlands?

JS: It was just as bad as in Germany, I’m sure. The mainstream media in the Netherlands is a far cry from the watchdog journalists are supposed to be. They follow the framing of the racists in the Dutch government usually without question.

On the night of November 7–8th, Netanyahu already spoke of a pogrom in the city of Amsterdam, and even compared it to Kristallnacht. This was at 3am, while the authorities in Amsterdam were still collecting facts and figuring out what happened.

With that first statement, Israel set the frame of a pogrom night in Amsterdam. The mayor of Amsterdam fell for that trap, the Hasbara trap. All of this was a huge gift for the racist wannabe-fascist Dutch government, unofficially led by the convicted racist Geert Wilders, who has been convicted for discrimination against Moroccan people. They were looking for weapons to discriminate against the Muslim population and people with a migrant background in general in the Netherlands anyway, and now they found it. Then the mainstream media followed that frame without any critical thoughts, as most state media do.

DdG: Our prime minister held a press conference after all this unfolded, and said that this shows that in the Netherlands, we have an integration problem. This is a very weird way of spinning what happened when people came to the Netherlands shouting “we want to kill Arabs”, and the Arabs got angry about that.

Our politicians in power also said that what happened in Amsterdam was done at the hands of ‘multicultural scum’. I’m translating literally. I don’t want to make sensationalist comparisons, but this kind of rhetoric is usually the prelude to an insane amount of repression against minority populations.

We can already see that there is much more violence against people from a Muslim or immigrant background. We can see that racists are emboldened by what the Prime Minister has said. There are so many indications for this.

JS: When it comes to antisemitism, both the politicians and the media in the Netherlands keep equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, and I am pretty sure that at the very least for politicians, that is an intentional choice.

When it comes to mainstream media, they are just following the statements without any critical journalistic eye. This makes the mainstream media complicit in manufacturing consent for the genocide that’s going on, and for the descent into fascism which the Netherlands is experiencing now.

In the middle of this witch hunt, the Amsterdam mayor, who had initially talked about pogroms, retracted her statement. What made her change her mind?

JS: I can’t look inside her head, but I think that she saw how the word pogrom was weaponised against Amsterdammers, both by the Israeli government and by the Dutch government. She is still a liberal mayor and didn’t want to openly discriminate against people in her own city. I think that that’s why she retracted that word specifically.

DdG: A lot of pushback was given to her from civil society and other organizations, including anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, who really do not like their protection being abused for political purposes to create this atmosphere of hostility towards another minoritised people.

JS: Obviously, it is not just the mayor of Amsterdam who spreads Israeli propaganda; it is a common thing for the ruling class to do. What she should have done in that first press conference on November 8th was to keep it very factual.

It was very clear right from the start that there was a huge group of genocide supporters, and even perpetrators, who were unleashed on the streets of Amsterdam and terrorized the streets without the police doing anything about it. Amsterdammers basically defended their own city.

Do you think that the incident with the Maccabi fans will have any impact on your case against the government, either positive or negative?

DdG: I don’t think it would have a direct influence, but it could have a small, maybe significant, indirect effect.

JS: If the legal system works as it’s supposed to work, the judge is not influenced by external events. It doesn’t really have anything to do with our case except that it relates to Palestine. Those are two separate events. But you never really know. Judges are people as well at the end of the day.

What are the next steps in your case?

JS: The ruling will be on December 13th. Then we will know what the outcome is of the preliminary injunction.

DdG: After December 13th, the clock starts running to file the appeal. If the judge does not agree with us, we will file an appeal. And I’m quite sure that if the judge does not agree with the state, it will also file an appeal. In mid-February, maybe March, there will be another hearing, and after that, another judgement.

How can people in Germany follow what’s happening and support you?

JS: We have a fundraiser, and we publish updates on our social media channels. We are most active on Instagram. So keep an eye on our Instagram and website.

The case is also covered by mainstream media. But it is best to hear about it firsthand haha. So I would say just go to our channels.

Is there anything you’d like to say before we finish?

JS: In the aftermath of November 7-8yh there was a demonstration ban which was in direct violation of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which resulted in vicious police violence. It is really important to counter the narrative in terms of the criminalization of the Palestine solidarity movement in the Netherlands. We have to push back against this. 

We see that the Netherlands is following Germany in its increasing oppression. We see the same playbook to some degree. For example, Samidoun was criminalized here two months ago, and the government wants to ban it. It is banned in Germany already.

On Friday 22 November the Dutch government released a report on fighting antisemitism, which basically is a tool to discriminate against people of migrant background and Muslims. In 2025, they will try to push through legislation that is very discriminatory and fascist. They want to be able to take away somebody’s Dutch citizenship if they are antisemitic, where “antisemitic” means being critical of Israel. Germany has already gone down that path and the Netherlands is following now.

DdG: The failure to challenge Israeli oppression of Palestinians and to take adequate action results in fascism being imported into Europe. Taking away the nationality of people who are convicted of antisemitic offences is a very good illustration of that. It would never happen for any kind of other offence. But it is extremely clearly linked to the fact that Europe is highly complicit in what’s happening in Palestine.

It’s also not a surprise that all the right-wing politicians in the Netherlands, who would rather see the Dutch rule of law deteriorate in order to further their racist goals, are also very close friends and very politically aligned with those in Israel who are trying to do the exact same thing when it comes to the oppression of Palestinians.

Because of our complicity, because of our reluctance to act, we are now importing fascism from Israel to Europe. And it’s a very worrying trend. It should be more visible to people that this is happening and that we are on the verge of copying the things that Israel is doing in Europe.

Questions by Phil Butland and Jitske Grift

Macron has Strengthened Fascists, but Barnier’s Fall Opens Space to Fight Back

Three months after Macron chose a Prime Minister from a party which lost the elections, The Left brought his government down with a no-confidence vote


06/12/2024

France’s July 2024 elections gave us a parliament split into three big blocs: the centre-right around Macron, the fascists of the Rassemblement National (RN), and the left alliance of the New Popular Front (NPF). This last group is dominated by the radical left France Insoumise (FI). The Left bloc had more MPs than either of the other two blocs, but Macron’s main aim was to avoid a government with a radical programme. He named Michel Barnier from the traditional French right as Prime Minister, hoping the fascist MPs would give enough support for the government to survive since the French constitution does not allow new parliamentary elections until next July. You can read a further explanation of the situation until then in this interview from October.

The Barnier government has been dominated by accelerating austerity plans, aiming to slash public spending by a further €60 billion. Macron’s manoeuvres allowed the fascists of the RN to gain respectability and establishment sympathy for their supporting role. Barnier appointed hard right anti-immigrant ministers such as Bruno Retailleau to appease the RN. And his government continued to stoke Islamophobia, for example confirming the ban on long “Abaya” dresses which are considered to look Muslim, from high schools. But in early December, the RN decided to vote in favour of the no-confidence motion put forward by the left alliance.

Once he realized his government was likely to fall, Barnier desperately tried to talk MPs round, squealing about how Brussels would be upset and how international bankers would punish France. President Macron, meanwhile, was in Saudi Arabia on the day of the vote, modelling designer sunglasses and selling fighter jets. Macron has been pretending to be above the storm; in recent months he has squeezed every last bit of sparkle he could from the Olympic Games and the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral, hoping that this will hide his role as salesman for the grubby forces of profit. 

A few voices on the Left are saying it was a mistake to support a parliamentary motion which the fascists were also going to vote for. This is a dangerous error, since fascist parties are not honest or principled, such a position would leave us to be bounced around by their whims. Of course, Macronist leaders in parliament this week were eager to pretend that the fascists and the radical left were now bosom buddies. 

What actually happened was that the fascists were forced to vote for a no-confidence motion which included a clear denunciation of last year’s racist immigration law, described in the text as “vile” and “morally bankrupt”. In his opening speech for the motion, Eric Coquerel of the FI denounced the concessions made to the RN, insisting that taxing the rich has to be at the centre of politics, expressing his support for the strike movements starting up, and called for Macron to be impeached. Marine Le Pen, in her speech immediately following that of Coquerel, defended entrepreneurship, cutting taxes, and attacked immigrants while opposing the impeachment of Macron.

The fall of Barnier is a victory for the Left. The NPF alliance, as the biggest group of MPs, should be allowed to form a government, and this is what FI is demanding. The alliance has a radical programme and a compromise candidate for PM, Lucie Castets, ready. 

The day after the no-confidence vote, Macron made a solemn speech to the nation which may go down in history as the emptiest speech of the century. He simply insisted that the far Right and the Left do not care about ordinary people, but he does.

Macron is now faced with a choice of three options, since he refuses to resign. He could respect democracy and allow the Left to form a government. He could name a new right wing PM even more open to working with the fascists than the previous one was. Or he could try one more time to split the left alliance and draw some Socialist and Green Party MPs into a Left-Right joint government.

Fragile unity

The left alliance is holding for the time being, but is fragile. The right wing of the Socialist Party is looking for a way out. In September, the party’s national committee voted 38 to 33 to stay in the alliance. But polls show that a third of Socialist Party voters did not want Barnier to fall, and 5 of their 62 MPs refused to vote him down, so the party’s right wing feels they have room to manoeuvre. Continuing the huge smear campaign against Mélenchon and FI, accusing them of being antisemitic and supporters of terrorism, is an important part of their tactics, and this campaign is cheerfully supported by most of the media.

In the Green Party and the Communist Party there are also groupings which are unhappy with the radicalism of the NPF compromise programme, and fearful that the FI will continue to grow in size and influence. They are looking for ways of moving rightward. Yannick Jadot, one of the most influential Green leaders, announced on national radio on Thursday that he did not want Macron to resign. Unwilling to openly criticize the left programme, these groups are saying that another prime ministerial candidate, less opposed to Macron than Lucie Castets is, would be a good move. But these various manoeuvres are very unlikely to produce a viable Left-Right government any time soon.

And the centre of gravity of the Left remains the France Insoumise. In recent months its MPs have been aiming to keep in debate the major issues concerning working people. For example they presented a bill to reverse last year’s raising of the standard retirement age (Macron’s MPs had to resort to obstructive tactics to prevent a vote taking place). Another bill would have abolished the crime of “making statements in support of terrorism”, an offence which in reality has been mostly used against environmental activists, pro-Palestine leaders and trade unionists.

On the ground, some claim there are now over 400,000 people in the local FI action groups. This is probably an exaggeration, but it is certainly the biggest activist network for a number of decades. Since it is a left reformist grouping, much emphasis is of course placed on elections, but FI action groups are very much involved in the movement against the genocide in Gaza. Each local group has a large amount of autonomy. FI activities near me include mobilizing in support of homeless migrant groups occupying buildings for shelter, organizing a “know your rights” caravan to tour housing estates, collecting for foodbanks, and so on. In a nearby town, FI groups initiated leafleting of schools in order to marginalize a far right group of “vigilant parents” who were fomenting hatred against trans people and other LGBT+ groups. 

In voting for the no-confidence motion, the RN insisted they were defending ordinary people from the budget cuts which would reduce retirement pensions, as well as from the rise in electricity prices. But recent months have only confirmed their horrifically reactionary core ideas, as they argued to suppress all sex education in schools, and as a “right-wing feminist” group called Nemesis with links to the RN hit the news for their campaign to claim that immigration is the main cause of sexual violence.

Combativity and the need for spectacular change

Whoever Macron chooses to replace Barnier, resistance to austerity is ongoing. On Thursday 5th of December a one-day strike in the public sector saw at least two thirds of primary school teachers walk out, as well as waste workers, local authority staff and more. Two hundred thousand demonstrated around the country. From the 11th of December, rail strikes are planned. Even university presidents are in revolt against budget cuts in higher education. Meanwhile the private sector has seen a wave of redundancy announcements in recent weeks. Tyre manufacturer Michelin, hypermarket chain Auchan, and car company Valeo are among those who announced factory closures. 

The crisis in France is entering a new phase. It is necessary both to insist that Macron respect democracy and allow a Left government, and to build the strike movements. The anti-austerity strikes (teachers are opposing attacks on the right to sick leave; rail workers are fighting the privatization of freight trains) are crucial. Ways need to be discussed to link this combativity to a political vision and strategy for “spectacular change” (to use Mélenchon’s expression). Marxists should have plenty of ideas to bring to these debates.