Panta Rhei: Exchange of email letters – Dov Schoss and Moshé Machover
Exchange of email letters, Dov Schoss and Moshé Machover, following Machover's article "The 20th century in retrospect"
Following Matzpen – Eran Torbiner
In 1997 I decided, as a student at Tel Aviv University, to write a seminar on Matzpen. At the end of that year a conference was held to mark 35 years since the organization was formed. I went there to document the conference with a camcorder, and found myself launched into a journey to follow people and ideas that until then I didn't know much about.
The Contaminated Paradise – Nira Yuval-Davis
The memories of the summer vacations she spent as a child with her family in Tantura were shattered when when she realized how the village had been conqered, destroyed and emptied of its inhabitants in 1948.
Who Am I? – Oded Pilavsky
Towards any anti-Semite, I am a Jew To adherents of Greater Israel, a Palestinian
The 20th century in retrospect – Moshé Machover
Published in Platform, Workers’ Liberty #59 (December 1999).
Fear Has Parents – Khalil Toama and Rafik Schami
In the Israeli-Arab conflict, no side will be able to achieve a "clear” victory over its opponent, without bringing about the destruction of its own house.
Saffuriyeh Fell Twice – Ali Al-Azhari
I was three or four years old in that morning, when the village of A-Reineh, where we were living at the time, woke to the sounds of mighty explosions from the direction of Saffuriyeh, some five kms away. I clung to my father and clutched his gown in terror. All around stood the members of my family and the neighbors, rooted to the ground by the fearful sights and sounds. Columns of smoke and dust rose to the heavens above Saffuriyeh. In the evening came the news: there would never be a return. The Jews had blown up the houses with dynamite.
Jordan’s Road to “Democracy” ‒ by Akram Kand and Jayne Peters
With the worsening economic situation in Jordan, the population is being and will be pushed into one of two camps: Islamic fundamentalism or socialism. So far, Islamic fundamentalism is the more popular of the two. Such is the traditional stronghold of Islam in Jordan, that without even questioning the viability of this solution, people blindly accept the so-called Word of Islam.
For a Democratic, Secular State of Palestine; a Reply to Moshe Machover ‒ by Tony Greenstein
The fact that Zionism continues to posit the Hebrew speaking Jewish people of Israel as part of a world Jewish nation testifies to the unique nature of both the Zionist project and the essentially artificial nature of Israeli nationhood. Politically and economically the basis of Israeli nationalism is the sponsorship by imperialism and the consequent attempts by Israel to dominate and subjugate the Palestinian people within and the Arab peoples without. This is the material basis of Israeli Jewish nationalism.
Iran after Khomeini ‒ by Maryam Poya
Revolutionary or progressive ideas cannot be derived from dogmas that claim divine origin and include so many reactionary and oppressive tenets, not least those concerning women. Religious ideology is therefore a false consciousness, which mystifies the potential revolutionary consciousness of the oppressed and has often provided a cover for the manoeuvres of the ruling classes.
Holding the Green Line: Israeli Ecological Imperialism ‒ by Les Levidow
In 1982 the West Bank's entire hydrological system was integrated into the Israeli national water company Mekorot. A suppressed report, prepared a few years ago, saw this integration of water systems as an obstacle to Palestinian independence: "It may thus become practically and politically impossible to sever the water administration of the Occupied Territories from those of Israel".
From Family Dispersal to Family Reunion: How Suffering Reproduces Itself
Eight young women had been arrested that night and deported to 'Amman the following morning. Eight women, representing eight families in a village of 60 families. A great suffering for the women, for their men and children and for many of their relatives.
An Israeli Opponent of the “Peace Camp” Replies to ‘Ali J ‒ by Israel Shahak
The policies of the great majority of the Israeli-Jewish society are influenced neither by Palestinian restraint nor by lack of it, but by Palestinian force, by the Palestinians' effectiveness in causing harm to Israel ‒ be it military or financial, through other countries such as the USA.
Iran after the War ‒ by Maryam Poya
The left and other secularists failed to mount a serious challenge to Islamization. The acceptance of Islam by the bulk of the population does not signify callous indifference to the slaughter of individual leftists; rather, it is an expression of despair. The population feels powerless.
The Political Economy of the West Bank 1967-1987 ‒ A Book Review by Toby Shelley
"The Political Economy of the West Bank" not only develops and stimulates a number of important debates, it also constitutes a useful compilation of data, rendering it a valuable read for those concerned with the Palestine of today and the Palestine of tomorrow.
Left Without Arabs – Ehud ‘Ein-Gil
In this article, published in place of an editorial in the first issue of Meha'ah (see Introduction to the previous item), the writer, member of the radical and anti-Zionist Socialist Organization in Israel (Matzpen) polemicizes against an article by Ari Shavit in the left-Zionist journal Politika (Politics).
Economic liberalism and the sharpening of class contradictions in Algeria – Alain Hertzmann
This article is based on an interview with Comrade Lafif Lakhdar as well as on articles in Le Monde Diplomatique (December 1982, October 1986 and November 1988) , Le Canard Enchainé (2.11.88) and a booklet 'Immigration and French Imperialism' by Combat Prolétarien (1980).
Introduction
The articles published in this book analyse various aspects of the context in which the (first) Palestinian Intifada has developed.
The political economy of the West Bank 1967-1987: from peripheralization to development – Adel Samara
The relation between the Israeli economy and the West Bank is a relation between two separate economies: between a developed capitalist mode of production dominant in one, and a controlled peripheral capitalist mode in the other. In this case, the relation is an external and settler-colonial one.
Palestinian migrant workers in Israel: from repression to rebellion – Toby Shelley
The Apartheid-like conditions under which the Palestinian migrant workers are employed in Israel, the obstacles that the Israeli occupation puts on their ability to organise and their attempts to overcome it. One of the obstacles is the zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut.