Daesh support dwindles as workers see them in action

Islamic State getting weaker, not bigger

 

BY EMMA JOHNSON

 
Do the recent terrorist attacks by Islamic State show that the reactionary group is getting stronger and becoming more attractive, particularly to Muslims around the world? Using this pretext, rulers from Paris to Washington, from Moscow to London have unleashed a witch hunt against working people of the Muslim faith and expanded and intensified bombings in the Middle East.

The reality is the opposite. Islamic State is a tiny sect that is getting weaker. Its victims are overwhelmingly Muslims. Hundreds of thousands who hate the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad have fled the country rather than fall under Islamic State rule.

IS extended the area it controlled in eastern Syria and swept into western Iraq in June 2014, as the Iraqi army fell apart and fled. Since then, IS has lost as much as one-third of its territory in Iraq, most recently the city of Sinjar.

After Kurdish forces halted Islamic State's advance at Kobani in Syria in January, it has lost key areas along the Syrian border with Turkey, including important transfer hubs for fighters and materials. In both countries Kurdish militias have been the strongest fighters pushing IS back.

Daily brutality, onerous taxation

An estimated 5-8 million people live in areas controlled by Islamic State. Residents who have fled, others living there and groups like Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which opposes both the Assad regime and Islamic State, have described the rule of the terrorist jihadi group.

Detailed regulation of personal life combined with brutal punishments for any violations amount to a daily reign of terror. Morality police patrol the streets.

Smoking and drinking are punished with flogging, theft by amputation of a hand. Men accused of adultery are thrown from a high building, women are stoned to death. Public executions are a daily occurrence.

Islamic State funds its military and bureaucracy through myriad taxes and fees and some $500 million from oil sales. "Only the air people breathe is not taxed," Abu Mujahed, who recently fled with his family from Islamic State-controlled Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, told the Atlantic.

IS exacts tolls and traffic tickets; taxes income, crops and cattle; levies fines for smoking, drinking, wearing the wrong clothes and keeping a shop open during prayer hours. It collects car registration fees, utility payments and a cut of small business revenues.

Last year Islamic State issued an urgent appeal for "experts, professionals and specialists." As support for the reactionary groups has dwindled, money is drying up. Many construction projects have stopped because workers are not paid, there are frequent blackouts, and water is only available a couple days a week.

The National Hospital in Raqqa, paraded as the pride of health care in the caliphate, hardly functions now because many doctors have fled. There are shortages of medicine for chronic diseases. The cost of food in Deir al-Zor is up as much as 1,000 percent.

Pressure is increasing on families to deliver their sons as cannon fodder for Islamic State's military. The lure is permission to leave the area. Some youth, facing high unemployment and dwindling job openings, feel they have no choice but to sign up.

Half of Syria's prewar population is internally displaced or has fled the country's civil war. Virtually none have sought refuge in IS-controlled areas.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center in countries with mainly Muslim populations shows the vast majority have an unfavorable view of Islamic State. In Lebanon less than 1 percent view it favorably, in Jordan, 3 percent. After the terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, protests against Islamic State by Muslims took place in France until the government banned demonstrations.

The terror group is now seeking to set up shop in the Libyan city of Sirte, where there is no government. This isn't a sign of expansion or strength, but an attempt to compensate for losses in Iraq and Syria. Residents are forced to witness executions and lashings, but get no basic services. "No services, just punishment," said a resident who fled recently. 
 

http://themilitant.com/2016/8001/800162.html

Ukraine ban on Communist Party blow to workers’ rights

"....The CP backed the regime of Viktor Yanukovych, which was overthrown in February 2014 by popular mobilizations seeking Ukraine's independence from Moscow's boot. Since then the party has faced physical and legal assaults on its members, offices, newspapers and its right to exist. These attacks are a threat to the working class and labor movement in Ukraine and the political rights of all working people there...."

http://themilitant.com/2016/8001/800159.html

Former Workers World Party leader suggests "Israel Lobby" supports ISIS

....The Israel lobby, which openly promotes the interests of a foreign, ISIS-supporting government, should be investigated and dismantled. It is bad enough that while hospitals, schools, post offices, and other important services are being shut down, the US continues to give billions of tax dollars to a serial human-rights violator. Now that Israel is documented to be supporting ISIS with airstrikes and medical aid, it is a matter of national security that Israel-connected lobbyists and activists not be able to influence government policy.

http://m.journal-neo.org/2015/12/25/defeat-isis-and-their-friends-on-wall-street-a-three-point-plan-to-end-terrorism/

Attacks on right to free speech are blow to the working class

....Violence has no place in the working-class movement. Shouting down speakers, shutting down meetings or banning the expression of opinions you don't agree with prevents the debate necessary to reach political clarity, build a mighty proletarian movement and fight for political power.

....Only by considering all ideas in an atmosphere of free debate and discussion can working people decide how to effectively oppose imperialism and war; fight for higher wages and unions; push back police violence; win affirmative action in hiring for African-Americans, women and all victims of discrimination; and build a labor party based on the unions. 

http://www.themilitant.com/2015/7946/794605.html

"Gun violence"

....working people are not safer with a monopoly of firearms in the hands of cops and other armed bodies whose job is to protect property and prerogatives of the capitalist exploiters. Defending all workers' rights against stepped-up encroachments by the bosses and their government become more, not less important today, as the employing class mounts assaults on our wages and working conditions.

The Second Amendment is among the constitutional protections that working people wielded as part of the mass proletarian fight for Black rights in the 1960s. Groups like the Deacons for Defense and Justice and Robert Williams' NAACP chapter in Monroe, N.C., maintained their right to bear arms and used them to stay the hand of racist thugs and cops, protect social protest actions and Black communities and prevent bloodshed.

At the same time, the working-class movement has nothing in common with the gun-rights politics of rightist militia outfits or with vigilante "justice" and so-called Stand Your Ground laws that promote them. But the working-class political battle against such reactionary movements and laws cannot be advanced by calls for government restrictions on any rights of working people.

Anti-social violence and senseless murder do not come from video games or legal rights to own guns. They are not a product of too many constitutional rights or too few armed cops at every corner. They are first and foremost a by-product of social relations under capitalism—buttressed by cop brutality, deaths and maimings on the job, and bloody wars of conquest abroad.

And violent crimes within the working class can be exacerbated by the myriad social pressures that mount under the grinding effects of the capitalist crisis.

At the same time, the rise of mass working-class struggles to come will replace capitalism's dog-eat-dog values with social solidarity, just as they always have in the past. It's this solidarity and the transformation of working people and their view of themselves that develops in the course of struggle against capitalist exploitation that is the most powerful weapon against anti-social behavior of all kinds.

http://www.themilitant.com/2013/7701/770101.html

__

........While radical rightists harangue about what they are against, working-class revolutionists are guided by what we are for. Communists are not primarily against the government or capitalists, but for the fight by working people to create a socialist society and to begin to transform themselves in the process.

Communists share no common ground with the rightists' hatred of the FBI, taxes, government wiretapping, gun control, or repressive legislation. The revolutionary movement doesn't form a bloc with fascists, as Meredith seems to advocate, in order to "focus our main fire on the government for now" until the moment when "the fascists openly attack the workers' organizations."

Instead, class-conscious workers and working farmers are distinguished completely from such right-wing groups and individuals by their everyday political activity. They are publicly known as proponents of equal rights for immigrants, affirmative action quotas, women's rights, and gay rights. They are identified as partisans of the Cuban revolution. They are known for their opposition to the death penalty, America First propaganda, and all kinds of prejudice. In other words, they are known as people whose views are incompatible with any right-wing formation. The communist movement can only be built in uncompromising opposition to the politics of right-wing groups like the one in which Meredith is active.

http://www.themilitant.com/1995/5935/5935_9.html

December 4

“Zionist” has become a code word for Jewish

Jew-hatred, attacks on free 
speech threat to working class

 

SETH GALINSKY

 
Left and liberal groups on campuses and elsewhere have carried out a series of thuggish actions aimed at crushing free speech and debate, combined with-not-so subtle anti-Semitism, justified in the name of support for the Palestinian struggle. This is a deadly threat to the interests of the working class, the struggle for Palestinian national rights and the fight against Jew-hatred.

On Nov. 3 two dozen protesters at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis shouted down guest lecturer Moshe Halbertal, a law professor from Israel, delaying the program by more than half an hour. The disruption was organized by Students for a Democratic Society, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Anti-War Committee. They claimed that Halbertal is a "war criminal" because he helped write the Israeli army code of ethics.

Halbertal has often criticized Hamas, the reactionary Islamist group that rules Gaza, for using civilians as human shields when attacking Israel. He has also criticized the Israeli government for military attacks he considers "immoral and illegal instruments of deterrence."

"Professional combatants should err on the side of protecting noncombatants from casualties," even if that means increasing "risks to themselves or to their cause," Halbertal told the crowd after the lecture finally began.

Refusal to debate

"We use disruption for the same reason that Palestinian children use rocks — it's our only option," two of the protest organizers wrote to justify their refusal to debate the issues, unlike other supporters of Palestinian rights who spoke in the discussion period.

Similar efforts to shout down those they disagree with have been taken by supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which seeks to make a pariah of Israel. The campaign has gained support on college campuses from left and liberal students and professors, who label Israel an "apartheid state." They advocate boycotting Israeli goods and shutting down artistic, musical and academic exchanges with Israel.

At the City University of New York's Hunter College Nov. 12, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee and Students Without Borders organized a rally that was billed as part of the national Million Student March for tuition-free universities, cancellation of student debts and a $15 minimum wage for campus workers. But they turned it into an anti-Semitic rally.

A leaflet by Students for Justice in Palestine publicizing the event attacked the university's "Zionist administration" which, it said, "invests in Israeli companies, hosts birthright programs and study abroad programs in occupied Palestine, and reproduces settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY through Zionist content of education."

During the rally speakers led chants including, "What do we want? Zionists out!" directed at the university administration and at several Jewish students holding signs that said "We support lower tuition, not terrorism against Israel" and "Pro-Israel, pro-affordable tuition."

Palestinians, Jews will live together

"I don't agree with all the government's policies. But Jews are going to continue to live in Israel. Palestinians are going to live in Israel. We are going to live together," one of the Jewish students can be heard saying in a video of the confrontation posted on the Internet.

Seeking to cut off debate, some at the rally chanted, "From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free," which was also chanted at the University of Minnesota disruption. The slogan is taken from a speech by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

"Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of land," he said in December 2012 in Gaza City. "There is no legitimacy for Israel."

"With their money, they took control of the world media," Hamas' 1988 covenant states, slandering and scapegoating the Jewish people. "They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate [the Ottoman Empire], making financial gains and controlling resources."

"Zionist" has become a code word for Jewish, used by those who put an equal sign between the current brutal and oppressive Israeli capitalist rulers and the Jewish population. They paint Israel as the most reactionary country on earth.

Zionism is the name of the movement that was formed over a century ago to fight for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Israel was established following the Nazi Holocaust and the annihilation of some 6 million Jews during World War II. The country has existed for 67 years. Despite the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, more than 20 percent of Israel's population is Arab. There is no Zionist movement today.

In a world of deepening capitalist economic and social crisis the boss class will more and more seek to give the green light to those who blame the crisis on Jews. Growing attacks on Jews in Europe have led to a significant rise in emigration to Israel.

The European Union moved Nov. 11 to further demonize Israel and Jews there by requiring special labeling identifying goods from Jewish-owned businesses and farms in the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. The Obama administration backed the move.

The Socialist Workers Party presents a strategy that can put an end to the cycle of violence between the Israeli state and reactionary forces like Hamas. A revolutionary Palestinian leadership would denounce Jew-hatred, recognize the existence of Israel and support the right of Jews anywhere in the world to live there, while fighting for a contiguous Palestinian state, for dismantling Israeli settlements in the West Bank and for combating discrimination and the second-class status of Arab citizens of Israel. Doing so it would win allies inside Israel.

This can open the road to building a mass movement of Jewish, Palestinian, Druze, Christian, Muslim and immigrant workers capable of taking power out of the hands of their common enemy, the Israeli capitalist ruling class, and the ruling rich in the West Bank and Gaza.

Shouting down political opponents and physically preventing people from speaking are a deadly threat to building such a movement. Workers and defenders of Palestinian rights require political space and wide room for discussion and debate.

Lea Sherman contributed to this article. 
 

http://themilitant.com/2015/7944/794450.html