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15th May 1948 – The Palestinian Nakba

This week in working class history


15/05/2025

77 years ago today, Zionist militias ethnically cleansed 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. The event, known as the Nakba (catastrophe in arabic) is commemorated every year by Palestinians and their supporters. As Israel’s current destruction of Gaza has showed, the Nakba did not just happen on one day, but is a continuing experience, both for the Palestinians whose families were expelled, and those who continue to live in a state of apartheid.

The Nakba was preceded by a number of massacres, such as in Deir Yassin village on April 9th, when 93 Palestinians (including 30 babies) were murdered by Jewish forces, and many were raped. One week after the Nakba, on May 22nd, Jewish soldiers occupied the village of Tantura and shot between 110 and 230 Palestinians. Ilan Pappe reports: “The Jews gathered all the women and children, in a place where they dumped all bodies, for them to see their dead husbands, fathers and brothers and terrorize them.” Many other acts of terror were used to force the Palestinians out.

One of the ironies of the Nakba is that most Jews fleeing the Holocaust did not want to go to Israel, which their leaders told them was an uninhabited desert. They wanted to go to countries like the USA and Britain, but these countries were implenring racist laws to restrict migration. The first of these laws was the British Aliens Act of 1905, introduced by AJ Balfour, the same man whose Balfour Declaration led to the formation of apartheid Israel.

By 1949, about 500 Palestinian villages and towns, and tribes had been destroyed and nearly 1 million Palestinians were forced to leave. The Israeli Absentees Property Law of 1950 expropriated their homes. There are now around 7 million Palestinian refugees, many of them in the 58 refugee camps in surrounding countries. Show your solidarity with them at the events which have been organised, including a demonstration today (4pm at Südstern).

 “Eurovision is about getting very impassioned about something that does not matter”

Interview with Ciarán Dold from Corner Späti and Gyrovision


14/05/2025

Hi Ciarán, thanks for talking to us. Can you start by just briefly introducing yourself?

I’m a comedian and researcher and probably better known as a podcaster with Corner Späti. We attempt to cover European politics from a left-wing and less serious perspective. We’ve been doing this for about 6 years now.

And now for the fifth time, you’ll be doing Gyrovision. Let’s start with the question I keep hearing, and will not work in a printed interview. How do you pronounce Gyrovision?

That is debated. One of Corner Späti’s co-hosts is Greek, and he gives out to me about pronouncing gyrovision with that hard English “G.” He’s informed me that it is actually pronounced “Eurovision.”

But I like calling it “geero-vision.” So, the official pronunciation of Gyrovision is with a hard G.

And what is Gyrovision?

When we started Corner Späti, we had a focus on Europe. And I’ve always felt that the unifying aspect of “European culture”––with heavy quotation marks––is actually Eurovision.

A lot of people on the right will say that it’s Philosophy and Christendom and Architecture and all that very dodgy stuff, when, in reality, I still think it’s Eurodance, and Cascada, and teenage binge drinking in front of your local rinky dink funfair. And Eurovision, I think, represents that quite well. I wanted to show my co-hosts Eurovision through my eyes.

We had to wait a year, because when we started the podcast in 2019, and BDS had called a boycott because Israel was hosting. And as much as I love Eurovision, it’s not more important than solidarity with the Palestinian people. The following year was the pandemic year, and we had to cancel last-minute.

Finally, in 2021, we started doing our own commentary on the Eurovision. That’s how Gyrovision started. We always made this joke that Gyro was the substitute word for a cheap knockoff version. I think the joke started originally as GyroDisney instead of EuroDisney, but then expanded to this.

Then last year, we did a boycott-friendly version. We try to make something as close to Eurovision as possible, without giving the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) any money or attention.

Before we talk about the boycott, there is a difference between Gyrovision and other comedic coverage of Eurovision in that you actually enjoy this shit. What is it about Eurovision that you like?

Part of it is definitely that I am Irish, and we have a, er, relationship with Eurovision. Ireland is currently, although probably not for long, joint first place with Sweden in most of the Eurovision wins of.

I have very nostalgic childhood memories of people in my street getting together to watch Eurovision. In Ireland, it would always be the first sunny day of the year. People would have barbecues in the garden, and then you’d go inside to watch the telly and see this contest happening.

People usually say it’s rubbish, but end up watching it regardless. It’s one of the most-watched live events in the world, more watched than the Super Bowl. Yet no one likes talking about it, which I find fascinating.

It scratches all the itches of music, pageantry, geography, and a fair amount of politics, even though they try to deny that’s there.

And yet most of the coverage talks less about the songs and more about who votes for whom and who doesn’t vote for whom.

People will say: “oh, Greece and Cyprus always vote for each other, it must be corruption.” And yeah, corruption has happened, especially with Azerbaijan, but it’s more because there’s a lot of Cypriots in Greece, and there’s a lot of Greek people in Cyprus who watch it at home.

You can also explain that with the UK and Ireland. The UK often gives points to Ireland, but Ireland doesn’t give points to the UK. People say “that must be the history,” but it’s more that there’s probably just more Irish people in the UK than there are British people in Ireland.

For a lot of countries, it’s very high stakes. This is the only international representation they have. A lot of countries like, famously Moldova, are not successful at sports. They take Eurovision very, very seriously, because it’s the only time Moldova is really represented on an international stage.

This means that they often have an outsized performance at the competition. I would describe Moldova’s characteristic at Eurovision as being drunk at the opening scene of a Wes Anderson movie. That’s the vibe their music usually gives. And it’s a lot of fun.

Every year, there’s always been some low level calls to boycott Eurovision because it features Israel. And these calls have been largely irrelevant. Last year, it was different. How did Gyrovision deal with the genocide?

A lot of these calls fall on deaf ears, because Eurovision has a very intense casual viewership. People usually just watch. Most people who watch Eurovision are watching it because there’s nothing else on telly that night.

There are super fans, but most people are very casually engaged, including the people who call for boycotts, who usually call for a boycott way too late. I usually see calls for kicking Israel out in March or April. But Eurovision 2025 was set in stone in September 2024. It’s a very slow moving and bureaucratic process.

The usual rule for BDS is they’ll only call for a boycott when Israel hosts Eurovision. As far as I understand, there isn’t an official boycott this year, probably because BDS is asking a lot of people right now or they think they are.

Last year, I knew a boycott was coming for obvious reasons. We listened to people saying what they wanted to do, and we said, “Fuck it. We can do this without the EBU getting any money”. We were able to get the songs in a way where EBU doesn’t get any money and we did the Eurovision ourselves. People voted. Obviously, we don’t include Israel and Azerbaijan for their various war crimes.

What are your criteria for who you don’t include? You exclude Israel and Azerbaijan. But you let people vote for Britain who are responsible for their fair share of war crimes. 

Israel and Azerbaijan have used Eurovision for soft power reasons. Last year, the Israeli president intervened to make sure that Israel went to the competition. They take this stuff very seriously.

I think people recognize that for all the crimes the various other countries commit, I don’t think they would care all that much if they weren’t in Eurovision anymore, but Israel really seems to care.

This is probably the only thing where Israel is really relevant on the international stage. It’s the only thing where they’re represented as a country. They’re not big World Cup players. I never hear anyone talk about Israel in the Olympics, because it’s usually just America and China getting all the medals.

Irish-South African professor Patrick Bond makes pretty much the same argument, saying that the sports boycott was really important for South Africa, but if you want to hit Israel you’ve got to hit Eurovision.

Yeah. And unfortunately, I see that cynically deployed by Eurovision super fans who feel a little bit guilty, but they still want to watch the Eurovision. They say that no-one’s calling for a FIFA boycott of Israeli clubs.

But this is not relevant. You have to direct your energy somewhere. And unfortunately, Eurovision is the place. All this can also be said for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is also not very relevant in various sports, but they are relevant in Eurovision.

Plus there is a call for a FIFA boycott, even if it won’t hit Israel as much. Coming back to the way in which Israel tries to weaponize Eurovision: can you say something about last year’s and this year’s Israeli entries?

Last year’s entry was Eden Golan. It was less about the artist and more about the song itself. The song was originally titled October Rain, and as soon as that title was leaked, everyone on Eurovision fan media was saying: “Oh, fuck no. We know exactly what this is”.

I believe that they were initially trying to provoke the European Broadcasting Union into kicking them out, like they had done with Belarus. Then, when it looked like Iceland was about to send a Palestinian musician, Israeli President Herzog went to the national broadcaster Kan and said, “Change the lyrics.” That’s how we got the song Hurricane. When it was performed, it was booed live at the arena.

Now, I boycotted last year. That was a very easy decision for me. I’ve had these politics around Israeli Apartheid for a very long time. But I also heard a lot of reports of people going to Eurovision 2024, saying: “Music is music. Let’s leave politics out of it”, then leaving the competition saying: “Oh God, fuck Israel.”

So it served as a weird, radicalizing event for a lot of people. There was also a lot of shenanigans backstage, which goes into a whole other set of drama.

This year there’s Yuval Raphael. She was at the Nova music festival on October 7th 2023. She is considered a survivor. Her song is called A New Day Will Dawn. And they’re very much trying this year to once more redirect the conversation onto Israeli victims of this conflict at the expense of Palestinian victims, of whom there are many more

That’s how the song is being instrumentalized this year. Both are trying to elicit sympathy from a European audience, which, from what I’ve seen, is failing. But unfortunately, institutions are just putting up with Israel’s presence in this competition.

But there is more of a vocal call for boycott, for example from over 150 former Eurovision contestants including an Irish winner. Do you get a sense that something is changing?

Unfortunately, I don’t think anything has changed. Last year, the comparison that was often made was that Russia was kicked out after their invasion of Ukraine. But the EBU only banned Russia after ten national broadcasters in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and I believe the Netherlands, threatened to pull out of the competition unless Russia was kicked out. It got a lot of institutional support.

Kicking Israel out has had a lot of support from fans, casual viewers, musicians, and people who are just staff at these events. Also songwriters, but who remembers the songwriters? Unfortunately, there’s still not enough institutional support.

If anything is changing, the unsung hero leading the charge is actually the Slovenian national broadcaster. They’re being the most vocal about this, and dragging in other countries like Spain, Norway, and Ireland.

The Slovenian national broadcaster started asking: “Why is Israel here? Can we talk about that? It doesn’t feel right.” The national broadcaster in Israel has broken a lot of EBU rules, and for this reason alone, they should be kicked out, regardless of any moral conversation about Palestine. They have been given a green light on a bunch of other rules that they’ve broken, such as independence from government propaganda, or promoting military things.

Do you have any tips for Eurovision? I know you’re very fond of the Australian entry.

This year I’m enjoying how horny the Australian entry is. I love how explicit you have to be when you do innuendo in a Eurovision Song. You understand that most of the audience don’t speak English as a first language, so you are very direct.

In Eurovision, these are 20 something songs that you will never listen to in your spare time. They do not reflect your actual music taste, but you are going to pick your favorite song from the bunch, and then you are going to start yelling at everyone who disagrees with you. It’s about getting very impassioned about something that does not matter and shouldn’t matter and should just be a bit of silly television.

How can people listen to songs and still observe the boycott?

There are two ways to do this. One, unfortunately, is Spotify. You can listen to all the songs in Eurovision this year but the money goes to the artists’ record label. And when we say money, we mean a fraction of a cent. We know how Spotify works. But that money does not go to the EBU.

The second way would be to use an online platform called Invidious, which is a no-tracking mirror of YouTube. None of the advertising revenue is counted by YouTube, because it hasn’t tracked you.

Let’s move on to Gyrovision. What will happen at Gyrovision and why should people go?

I and other hosts of Corner Späti will be doing commentary over the songs. We make our own opening ceremony. We make our own postcards, which is Eurovision terminology for the little bit that happens before the song plays showcasing the country.

We do all this to show you Europe through our somewhat sardonic lens. We do the usual stuff like dressing up, drinking, and dancing, all in the name of donating money to the Palestinian charities Heal Palestine and The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund.

It’s for people who don’t take Eurovision very seriously. As much as I am a fan, I learn about it so that I can just kind of joke along with it in a knowing manner. It should be a lot of fun.

And this year, Gyrovision isn’t on the day of Eurovision, it’s the day after. 

Yes, this year it is on the Sunday, because since we’re boycotting it doesn’t actually matter when we host it. It’s from 6pm till 10pm at Lark Berlin. Because it’s on Sunday, we are ending a little earlier.

You can come along and vote for your own songs, just like a real Eurovision, and we’ve got someone who’s made a little app for us to tally the votes.

Because it’s on the Sunday, people can also come to Palivision on Saturday, and we’re not competing like last year.

Absolutely, the feud that happened last year, we were just circling each other, staring daggers.

Is there anything else you want to say that we haven’t said,

Just that I am a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest, and I represent the type of person who could watch Eurovision again if the European Broadcasting Union actually kicked out Israel. I am the market they are missing out on.

I hear a lot of people talk about Eurovision from a perspective of “I never watched anyway”. I don’t think that’s the kind of voices that the EBU needs to hear. They need to hear from more people like me who say: I would watch, but you fucked up, so fix it.

Let’s organize. Let’s resist.

The Left Berlin Speech at the Demo Against German Militarism (10th May 2025)


13/05/2025

Dear Comrades, Berliners of every background and fellow resisters —

We gather today in Berlin — not just any city, but a city built on the ruins of war.

From the devastation of World War II to the walls that divided its people, Berlin is a living memory of what militarism does.

And yet — here we are again.

Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest weapons manufacturer, has announced plans to convert its plant in Humboldthain — right here in the Wedding neighborhood — into a military production site.

What used to make car parts will now produce components for tanks and armored vehicles — tools of war, machines of death.

Let’s be clear: this is not just one factory.

This is part of the largest rearmament campaign in Germany since the Second World War.

More than €100 billion will be funneled into the military by 2028.

And it’s happening fast — in budgets, in public discourse, in laws, in political decisions and in the propaganda of the media.

And we must remember what German militarism has meant in history.

It meant colonial massacres in Namibia and Tanzania.

It meant two World Wars, genocide, and entire cities turned to ash.

It meant tanks rolling into Poland, Yugoslavia, Russia, North Africa — death in the name of empire and order.

And currently it means fuelling and supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

With German military equipment!

With our tax money!

We have learned this lesson once. We will not let it be forgotten.

Right now, the media and political class are busy selling us a new fear:

“Russia might invade Germany.”

“We must be ready for war.”

Let’s be clear: This is pure propaganda and warmongering. 

There is no scenario in which Russia — exhausted by its war in Ukraine, economically isolated, diplomatically weak — invades Germany, a central NATO state surrounded by U.S. military bases, nuclear weapons, and the most powerful alliance in the world.

But this fantasy of invasion is useful.

It justifies skyrocketing military budgets.

It justifies arms exports.

It justifies expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) reach from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific.

It keeps the weapons factories full, and the public scared.

This isn’t about defending democracy.

This is about defending Western imperial dominance — U.S. power, NATO control, and profits for arms manufacturers like Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin.

And who pays the price?

Not the politicians.

Not their children.

It is all of us!

It is our youth who will be sent to die in wars they didn’t start and never chose.

It is the working class, the migrants, the poor, the racialized — who are always told to fight while elites get rich.

It is the population of Ukraine and Poland, always caught in between the imperial power game.

We will not let our populations be used as pawns in their wars and geopolitical aims.

Our responsibility as people of any citizenship status in Berlin is NOT to blindly obey political decisions such as the current militarization just to “integrate” to German society or avoid “standing out”.

Our responsibility is to stay informed, think critically, take action against the processes that lead to war and destruction. And to remind Germany of its criminal military past.

We say no to NATO. No to brainwashing. No to war. No to militarization.

Today, Rheinmetall profits while people fleeing war — from Afghanistan, from Sudan, from Palestine, from Syria — are met with walls, prisons, and silence.

Refugees are criminalized. Deportations intensify.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

With that money, we could:

Build a Berlin of welcome — and we mean for all, not just for white Europeans.

But that future will not be handed to us.

It must be fought for.

Because militarization is not waiting.

It is moving quickly — into schools, into law, into policy, into culture.

And the longer we stay silent, the louder the war drums get.

So we must act. And we must act now.

We — the people of this city —

Germans and internationals.

Workers, renters, students, refugees.

We have a responsibility in this historic moment.

To stand up.

To speak out.

To organize from the ground up — in our neighborhoods, our classrooms, our cafés, our mosques, churches, synagogues, our unions and workplaces.

We must expose Rheinmetall.

Pressure the politicians.

Interrupt the war economy with people power.

And make one thing clear:

Berlin will not build war machinery.

Berlin will not fund genocide.

Not in our name.

Not in Wedding.

Not in Berlin.

Berlin is not a weapons hub.

Berlin is a city of memory and solidarity. This is our city! And we will not be silent!

Let’s organize. Let’s resist.

Thank you. Danke. Shukran. Teşekkür ederim. Gracias.

Solidarity forever.

On Gaza and Our Allegiance to the Human Family

A Palestinian poet on the importance of centering humanity during a genocide


12/05/2025

There are moments in history when silence becomes not only a failure, but a form of violence. We are living in one of those moments now.

For more than a year and a half, we have watched a people systematically dispossessed, starved, bombed, and buried beneath rubble. And much of the world watches in cold complicity—or worse, justifies it.

As a poet of Palestinian descent, I do not speak as a partisan. I speak as a human being, and as someone who believes, stubbornly, that truth matters and words carry weight. Bearing witness remains a moral act, especially when facts themselves are under assault.

What is happening in Gaza is not a mystery. It is not complicated. It is horror playing out in plain sight. Tens of thousands of children have been murdered. Hospitals shelled. Aid convoys turned away. Every safeguard of international law has been shredded. What name shall we give to this, if not genocide? In one of my recent poems, I put it this way:

‘‘If you’re uncomfortable saying Genocide, say mass murder… say boneyard… say unmarked graves…say pity the children… say humanity under the rubble…say Lord, forgive us the enormity of our sins.’’

In another poem from my book, Palestine Wail, I say that even “a quiet moan or sighing is preferable to false words or worse: a loud and wounding silence.”

And yet, in the face of these crimes, too many equivocate—pleading for “balance” as if this were a mere dispute. But neutrality in the face of brutality is betrayal. It flatters the aggressor and abandons the victim.

We must be clear: to condemn Israel’s actions is not to deny the suffering or humanity of Jews. On the contrary, it is to insist that no people’s trauma can ever justify the trauma of another. To grieve for Palestine is not hatred. It is conscience.

The poet Mohammed El-Kurd writes of the impossible expectations Palestinians face; that they be graceful in their dispossession, polite in their pain, saintly in their resistance. In Perfect Victims, he exposes the cruelty beneath these demands—and the dehumanization they conceal. I echo him here: the oppressed should not have to earn their dignity. It is theirs by birthright.

In my own Wail, I did not write to explain Palestinian suffering to the West. I wrote to honor its sacred witness. Art, I believe, can still humanize what has been rendered faceless. It can say, I see you. You are not forgotten.

Poetry, at its finest, is a flame. It burns through euphemism. It refuses polite erasure. It speaks the realities others dare not name.

Israel’s assault on Gaza is not self-defense. It is a campaign of erasure. And the United States, through its unflinching support, is deeply complicit. Billions in military aid. No red lines. No accountability.

And so I write. Because I must. Because silence would betray my heritage, my humanity, and whatever remains of my faith in words.

The time for hedging is over. Let us mourn without apology. Let us reject the false terms of debate. Let us ask the only question that matters now: what does it mean to be human in a time like this?

Enough is too much. Palestinians do not need our pity. They need our solidarity—desperately, and now.

Reform UK and the cost of looking away

Keir Starmer has paved the way to the success of Reform UK’s insidious racism


11/05/2025

Nigel Farage just had the weekend he’s spent his life rehearsing for. Not in the shadows, not on the margins, not even in the smoking area of a middle England pub, five pints deep, fawning over Trump. But centre stage, in a political reckoning too many pretended would never quite arrive.

Reform UK, the far-right party led by Farage, is no longer a flag-waving nuisance on the sidelines of British politics. After slipping into Parliament last year, it has now won two mayoralties and seized control of ten councils across the UK, including, with a particular twist of symbolism, Durham, a place deeply embedded in the mythology of Labour’s past.

Durham was the first county council ever run by Labour, and the birthplace of the miners’ gala, a historic celebration of workers’ solidarity. Labour lost control there in 2021, but it wasn’t the Conservatives who tightened their grip this week. It was Reform—Farage’s xenophobic, division-spreading, spite engine—seizing the cradle of working-class political consciousness. He has since declared his party the “main opposition,” and disturbingly, the claim carries a certain coherence. Reform is not yet a party of government, but it has become the party of resentment, of rupture, of consequence.

But what does Reform stand for? Beneath the talk of DOGE-esque efficiency, free speech, and a “war on woke” (ooops), lies something more familiar: the steady churn of blame. Migrants. Outsiders. Anyone deemed not quite British or “normal” enough. It is a party fluent in both the language and the logic of nationalism. And in places where people feel that everything has already been taken, that language begins to sound like a plan.

It is tempting to cast this as a shock, to speak of a sudden lurch, a rogue current, but there’s nothing sudden about it. The conditions were laid carefully over decades: industries shuttered, communities dismantled, services stripped to the bone. The promise of something better replaced by the reality of nothing at all, and then anger. Reform didn’t invent that anger. They simply arrived at the right time, to cash in on an outstanding political debt accrued slowly, painfully, and without apology since the 1980s.

You can see the consequences not only in the councils that flipped, but in the towns and cities that came dangerously close. Places where loyalty has worn thin, and trust has quietly left the room. Doncaster, where I grew up, came within 700 votes of tipping over. A result close enough to shake those still in power into breaking ranks.

A clear rebuke to Keir Starmer—delivered not in private but in her own re-election speech—the sitting Labour mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones, criticised Labour’s recent scrapping of winter fuel payments for pensioners, the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions, and the tightening of disability support. She knows that in Doncaster, these aren’t abstract policy tweaks. They land sharply, and shape how people live, or whether they can live at all. 

Like Durham, and countless other towns and cities now leaning towards Reform, Doncaster’s story is one of abandonment. These places once thrived on industry—coal, steel, railways—not simply as sources of income, but as cornerstones of identity. Work shaped community, and community shaped purpose. Then neoliberalism arrived, dressed in the language of modernisation and inevitability. In the 80’s, the mines were closed, public assets sold, unions dismantled. Investment, talent, and belief drained away. And what replaced it?

From my experience of growing up in Doncaster in the 90’s, it was replaced by a slow, visible unravelling: boarded-up high streets, rising violence, widespread addiction, prostitution, and a pervasive malaise that crept in like mould. You could feel it in the quiet of a once-bustling market, in the dusty stillness of empty shop fronts and in the way ambition was slowly sucked out.There was no single collapse or headline moment. Just the cumulative effect of being overlooked, year after year. Decade after decade. Politics rarely arrived except to promise, and those promises rarely came with delivery dates. Eventually, though, what did arrive was a sense that no one was coming. And in that absence, people looked elsewhere or gave up on politics altogether.

For some, turning to Reform is less about belief than about absence. It’s a response to the growing sense that Labour and the Conservatives no longer speak to them, or for them.

And this isn’t just about jobs and services. It’s about dignity. It’s about who is spoken for, and who is sacrificed. Labour’s ambivalence on Palestine, its retreat on trans rights, these too are part of the silence and part of why some chose to stay home. What we’re witnessing now isn’t chaos. It’s the cost of looking away.