The Left and Support for Islamist Anti-Colonial Resistance
Speech delivered by Nadine Rosa-Rosso
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The massive demonstrations in European capitals and major cities in
support of the people of Gaza highlighted once again the core problem:
the vast majority of the Left, including communists, agrees in
supporting the people of Gaza against Israeli aggression, but refuses to
support its political expressions such as Hamas in Palestine and
Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Left not only refuses to support them, but also denounces them and
fights against them. Support for the people of Gaza exists only at a
humanitarian level but not at the political level.
Concerning Hamas and Hezbollah; the Left is mainly concerned with the
support these groups have amongst the Arab masses, but are hardly
interested in the fact that Israel's clear and aggressive intention is
to destroy these resistance movements. From a political point of view we
can say without exaggeration that the Left's wish (more or less openly
admitted) follows the same line as the Israeli government's: to
liquidate popular support for Hamas and Hezbollah.
This question arises not only for the Middle East but also in the
European capitals because, today, the bulk of the demonstrators in
Brussels, London and Paris are made up of people of North African
origin, as well as South Asian Muslims in the case of London.
The reactions of the Left to these events are quite symptomatic. I will
cite a few but there are dozens of examples. The headline of the French
website 'Res Publica' following the mass demonstration in Paris on the
3rd of January read: "We refuse to be trapped by the Islamists of Hamas,
Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah!" The article continued: "Some activists of
the left and far left (who only turned out in small numbers) were
literally drowned in a crowd whose views are at odds with the spirit of
the French Republican movement and of the 21st Century Left. Over 90% of
the demonstrators championed a fundamentalist and communitarian
worldview based on the clash of civilizations which is anti-secular and
anti-Republican. They advocated a cultural relativism whose harmful
tendencies are well known, particularly in England.
Res Publica is neither Marxist or communist, but one would be hard
pressed to find even the most remotely positive words about Hamas on
Marxist websites. One does find formulations such as "Whatever we think
about Hamas, one thing is indisputable: the Palestinian people
democratically elected Hamas to lead Gaza in elections held under
international supervision. " Looking further at "what we can think of
Hamas" one finds on the websites of both the French Communist Party and
the Belgian Labour Party an article entitled "How Israel put Hamas in
the saddle." We learn little more than the assertion that Hamas has been
supported by Israel, the United States and the European Union. I note
that this article was put online on January 2nd after a week of
intensive Israeli bombardment and the day before the ground offensive
whose declared aim was the destruction of Hamas.
I will return to the quotation of Res Publica, because it summarizes
quite well the general attitude of the Left not only in relation to the
Palestinian resistance, but also in regard to the Arab and Muslim
presence in Europe. The most interesting thing in this article is the
comment in parentheses: 'the Left and far Left (who only turned out in
small numbers)'. One might expect following such a confession some
self-critical analysis regarding the lack of mobilisation in the midst
of the slaughter of the Palestinian people. But no, all charges directed
against the demonstrators (90% of the whole protests) are accused of
conducting a "war of civilizations. "
At all the demonstrations I participated in Brussels, I asked some
demonstrators to translate the slogans that were chanted in Arabic, and
they did so with pleasure every time. I heard a lot of support for the
Palestinian resistance and denunciation of Arab governments (in
particular the Egyptian President Mubarak), Israel's crimes, and the
deafening silence of the international community or the complicity of
the European Union. In my opinion, these were all political slogans
quite appropriate to the situation. But surely some people only hear
Allah-u-akbar and form their opinion on this basis. The very fact that
slogans are shouted in Arabic is sometimes enough to irritate the Left.
For example, the organizing committee of the meeting of 11 January was
concerned about which languages would be used. But could we not have
simply distributed the translations of these slogans? This might be the
first step towards mutual understanding. When we demonstrated in 1973
against the pro-American military takeover by Pinochet in Chile, no one
would have dared to tell the Latin American demonstrators "Please, chant
in French!" In order to lead this fight, we all learnt slogans in
Spanish and no one was offended.
The problem is really in the parentheses: why do the Left and far Left
mobilise such small numbers? And to be clear, are the Left and far Left
still able to mobilize on these issues? The problem was already obvious
when Israel invaded Lebanon in the summer of 2006. I would like to quote
here an anti-Zionist Israeli who took refuge in London, jazz musician
Gilad Atzmon, who already said, six months before the invasion: "For
quite a long time, it has been very clear that the ideology of the Left
is desperately struggling to find its way in the midst of the emerging
battle between the West and the Middle East. The parameters of the
so-called "clash of civilizations" are so clearly established that any
"rational" and "atheist" leftist activist is clearly condemned to stand
closer to Donald Rumsfeld than to a Muslim."
One would find it difficult to state the problem more clearly.
I would like to briefly address two issues which literally paralyze the
Left in its support to the Palestinian, Lebanese, and more generally to
the Arab and Muslim resistance: religion and terrorism.
The Left and Religion
Perplexed by the religious feelings of people with an immigrant
background, the Left, Marxist or not, continuously quotes the famous
statement of Marx on religion: "religion is the opium of the people".
With this they think everything that needs to be said has been said. It
might be more useful cite the fuller quote of Marx and perhaps give it
more context. I do this not to hide behind an authority, but in the hope
of provoking some thought amongst those who hold this over-simplified
view, "Religion is the general theory of this world, (…), its logic
in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of
consolation and justification. (…) The struggle against religion is,
therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual
aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the
expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the
people."
(Translation of Prof. W. Banning, Life, Learning and Meaning, 1960, The
Spectrum (p.62-63)
I have always been and remain an atheist, but the rise of religious
feelings is hardly surprising. In today's world most politicians,
including those on the Left, do little more than display their weakness
on this issue: they do nothing against the military power of the US,
they do nothing or almost nothing against financial speculation and the
logic of profit that plunges billions of people on this Earth into
poverty, hunger and death. All this is due, we are told to "the
invisible hand" or "divine intervention" : where is the difference
between this and religion? The only difference is that the theory of the
"invisible hand" denies people the right to struggle for social and
economical justice against this "divine intervention" that helps to
maintain the status quo. Like it or not, we cannot look down on billions
of people who may harbour religious feelings while wanting to ally with
them.
The Left does exactly the same thing as what it accuses the Islamists
of: it analyses the situation only in religious terms. It refuses to
disclose the religious expressions as a "protest against misery", as a
protest against Imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. It cuts
itself off from a huge part of the masses. Gilad Atzmon expresses it
best when he states: "Rather than imposing our beliefs upon others, we
better learn to understand what others believe in". If we continue to
refuse to learn, we will continue to lament the religious feelings of
the masses instead of struggling with them for peace, independence and
social and economic justice.
But there is more. The treatment of Islam is very different from that of
Christianity. I have never known the Left to hesitate when showing
solidarity with the Latin American bishops, followers of liberation
theology and the struggle against Yankee Imperialism in the 70s, or the
Irish Catholic resistance to British Imperialism. Nor have I known the
left to criticize Martin Luther King for his references to the Gospel,
which was a powerful lever for the mobilisation of the Black American
masses that did not have political, economic or social rights in the U.S
in the sixties. This discriminatory treatment by the Left, this
systematic mistrust of Muslims who are all without any distinction
suspected of wanting to impose sharia law on us, can only be explained
by colonialism that has profoundly marked our consciousness. We will not
forget that the Communists, such as the Communist Party of Belgium
(KPB), praised the benefits of colonization that were enthusiastically
spread by Christian missionaries. For example, in the 1948 program of
the KPB, when the party had just emerged from a period of heroic
resistance against the Nazi occupation, it stated the following about
the Belgian Congo: "a) Establishment of a single economic unit
Belgium-Congo; b) Development of trade with the colony and realization
of its national resources; c) Nationalization of resources and trusts in
Congo; d) Development of a white colonists class and black farmers and
artisan class; e) Gradual granting of democratic rights and freedoms to
the black population."
It was this kind of political education of workers by the Party which
meant that there was hardly any protests from these Belgian workers
influenced by the KPB when Patrice Lumumba, Pierre Mulele and many other
African anti-imperialist leaders were assassinated. After all "our"
Christian civilization is civilized, is it not? And democratic rights
and freedoms can only "gradually" be assigned to the masses in the Third
World, since they are too barbaric to make good use of them.
On the basis of exactly the same political colonialist reasoning, the
Left is rather regretful in having supported democratic elections in
Palestine. Perhaps they should have adopted a more gradualist approach
towards the Palestinians since the majority of Palestinians have now
voted for Hamas. Worse, the Left bemoans the fact that "the PLO was
forced to organize parliamentary elections in 2006 at a time when
everything showed that Hamas would win the elections". This information
is available on the sites of the French KP and Belgian PVDA.
If we would agree to stop staring blindly and with prejudice at the
religious beliefs of people, we would perhaps "learn to understand" why
the Arab and Muslim masses, who today demonstrate for Palestine, are
screaming 'Down with Mubarak', an Arab and Muslim leader, and why they
jubilantly shout the name of Chavez, a Christian-Latin American leader.
Doesn't this make it obvious that the Arab and Muslim masses frame their
references not primarily through religion but by the relation of leaders
to US and Zionist Imperialism?
And if the Left would formulate the issue in these terms, would they not
partly regain the support of the people that formerly gave the Left its
strength?
Another cause of paralysis of the Left in the anti-imperialist struggle
is the fear of being associated with terrorism.
On the 11th of January 2009, the president of the German Chamber of
Representatives, Walter Momper, the head of the parliamentarian group of
'Die Grüne' (the German Greens), Franziska Eichstädt-Bohlig, a
leader of 'Die Linke', Klaus Lederer, and others held a demonstration in
Berlin with 3000 participants to support Israel under the slogan 'stop
the terror of Hamas'. One must keep in mind that Die Linke are
considered by many in Europe as the new and credible alternative Left,
and an example to follow.
The entire history of colonisation and decolonisation is the history of
land that has been stolen by military force and has been reclaimed by
force. From Algeria to Vietnam, from Cuba to South-Africa, from Congo to
Palestine: no colonial power ever renounced its domination by means of
negotiation or political dialogue alone.
For Gilad Atzmon it is this context that constitutes the real
significance of the barrage of rockets by Hamas and the other
Palestinian resistance organizations: "This week we all learned more
about the ballistic capability of Hamas. Evidently, Hamas was rather
restrained with Israel for a long while. It refrained from escalating
the conflict to the whole of southern Israel. It occurred to me that the
barrages of Qassams that have been landing sporadically on Sderot and
Ashkelon were actually nothing but a message from the imprisoned
Palestinians. First it was a message regarding stolen land, homes,
fields and orchards: 'Our beloved soil, we didn't forget, we are still
here fighting for you, sooner rather than later, we will come back, we
will start again where we had stopped'. But it was also a clear message
to the Israelis. 'You out there, in Sderot, Beer Sheva, Ashkelon,
Ashdod, Tel Aviv and Haifa, whether you realise it or not, you are
actually living on our stolen land. You better start to pack because
your time is running out, you have exhausted our patience. We, the
Palestinian people, have nothing to lose anymore". (Gilad Atzmon -
Living on Borrowed Time in a Stolen Land)
What can be understood by an Israeli Jew, the European Left fails to
understood, rather, they find 'indefensible' the necessity to take by
force what has been stolen by force.
Since 9/11, the use of force in the anti-colonial and the
anti-imperialist struggle has been classified under the category of
'terrorism'; one cannot even discuss it any more. It is worth
remembering that Hamas had been proscribed on the list of 'foreign
terrorist organizations' by the United States in 1995, seven years
before 9/11! In January 1995, the United States elaborated the
'Specially designated terrorist List (STD)' and put Hamas and all the
other radical Palestinian liberation organisations on this list.
The capitulation on this question by a great part of the Western Left
started after 9/11, after the launching of the Global War on Terror
(GWOT) by the Bush administration. The fear of being classified
'terrorists' or apologists of terrorism has spread. This attitude of the
Left is not only a political or ideological question, it is also
inspired by the practical consequences linked to the GWOT. The European
'Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on combating terrorism' and
its attached terror list who was a copy-and-paste version of the
American terror list that has been incorporated into European
legislation, which allow the courts to prosecute those who are suspected
of supporting terrorism. During an anti-war rally in London, some
activists who sold a publication which included Marxist analysis on
Hamas were stopped by the police and their magazines were confiscated.
In other words, to attempt to inform people on the political program and
the action of Hamas and Hezbollah becomes an illegal enterprise. The
political atmosphere intimidates people into distancing themselves from
these resistance movements and to denounce them without reservations.
In conclusion I have a concrete suggestion to make: we must launch an
appeal to remove Hamas from the terror lists. At the same time we must
ensure that Hezbollah are not added to the terror list. It is the least
we can do if we want to support the Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab
resistance. It is the minimal democratic condition for supporting the
resistance and it is the essential political condition for the Left to
have a chance to be heard by the anti-imperialist masses.
I am fully aware of the fact that my political opinions are a minority
in the Left, in particular amongst the European communists. This worries
me profoundly, not because of my own fate, I am not more then a militant
amongst others, but for the fate of the communist ideal of an end of
exploitation of man by man, a struggle which can only happen through the
abolition of the imperialist, colonial and neo-colonial system.
Nadine Rosa-Rosso is a Brussels-based independent Marxist. She has
edited two books: "Rassembler les résistances" of the French-language
journal 'Contradictions' and "Du bon usage de la laïcité", that
argues for an open and democratic form of secularism. She can be
contacted at nadin...@gmail. com
