Solidatiry to the regions of Palestine | Insubordinates to the slaughters of state and bosses
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You write to me that this war is crushing you, that you would accept to die but you cannot suffer this universal stupidity […] I understand you, but I cannot follow you when you claim that you will turn this despair into a rule of life and, because you consider everything pointless, you will stand down behind your disgust. Because despair is an emotion and not a condition. You cannot stand in it. Emotion must give way to a clear view of things. […] You must understand that you can despair about the meaning of life in general, but not about its specific forms. About existence, yes, since you have no power over it, but not for history as well, where the individual is all-powerful. […]
You must therefore understand that war is made with the enthusiasm of those who want it and with the desperation of those who wholeheartedly deny it.
Albert Camus, 1939
“Letter to a desperate man”
SOLIDARITY TO THE REGIONS OF PALESTINE
INSUBORDINATES TO THE SLAUGHTERS OF STATE AND BOSSES
A new cycle of massacre, displacement and impoverishment of Palestinian communities by the Israeli state is unfolding in the territories of Palestine. The severity of which is such that, among other things, it attempts to sink resistances into a feeling between despair and impotence. This time, the motive – or the pretext – is an event that speaks directly in the language of war. A militarily organized attack by Hamas and other palestinian organizations on israeli communities and military areas outside of the fences of the largest open prison in the world, Gaza, with hundreds of hostages taken and more than 1,000 dead under fire exchange with the israeli army. But in war, there are rules: civilians of all ages must be systematically and massively murdered, raped, abducted and terrorized in obscurity or in public view, having been dubbed “terrorists” or “collateral damage”. So as the US and NATO military teach (e.g., with operation “shock and awe” in Iraq and the “anti”-terrorist war in Afghanistan), the israeli military (e.g, with the organized massacre of thousands of palestinians in the refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in the 1980s with the assistance of the lebanese army and paramilitaries, with the daily routine of military check-points and repressive doctrines such as “break their bones” in the West Bank, with its successive bombings of inhabited areas in Gaza since 2008), etc.
The Israeli state’s unprecedented military reaction against the entire Gaza Strip was more than expected. After all, from its establishment up to the present day, it has possessed, developed and spread the language of war incessantly, primarily against the local palestinian communities which are defined as the “national enemy” of its zionist ideology. From the outset, it has made the subjugation, extermination and uprooting of the millions inhabitants of Palestine its stipulation of existence and of “national conclusion”. The entire ideological and repressive apparatus of a purely militarist state undertook to disseminate a propaganda that would prepare and legitimize an unseen before and planned massacre in the region. With a victimized rhetoric that falls into the “war on terror” doctrines, normalizing decades of israeli terrorism, oppression and occupation, with the “right of self-defense” as the sanctification of the attempted ethnic cleansing, with the blatant attribution of “collective responsibility” to the palestinian populations and with the pretext of “the total dismantling of Hamas” (behind which there are aspirations to change borders, conquest or control of the Gaza Strip, maritime access to it, etc), the israeli army has been razing the entire Gaza Strip since 27 October until today, killing not only armed groups but above all tens of thousands of noncombatants of all ages, one third of whom are underaged (not including those dead still lying under tons of rubble) and displacing 90% of its inhabitants. Forming a new “migrant/refugee stream”, which is already impoverished, starved, “bargained” and suppressed by state staffs, international organizations and military anti-immigration doctrines.
The social/class dystopia imposed by the israeli state is neither a “response to the attack of Hamas” (until recently its “only” and “necessary” institutional partner in Gaza) nor an “operation to rescue hostages” (who are bombed and instrumentalized by their own state) but an escalation of the constant effort to fulfil zionist nationalism since its inception. A nationalism tailor-made by western notions and colonial prejudices of “white supremacy” towards the “uncivilized east”. A state ideology that was realized in a nation state in 1948, aided by the state-capitalist powers that a few years earlier had organized, contributed or tolerated the planned extermination of millions of europeans of jewish origin. Offering the survivors not a rehabilitation in their homelands but a voluntary self-deportation outside Europe, under the necessary ethno-patriotic and religious drumbeat of returning to the “unforgotten homelands” in the “state-uncharted” region of palestine. Displacing and refugeeing 800,000 of its inhabitants –about 80% of the population then, mostly of Arab origin– from the areas that were then turned into “israeli territory” during the so-called Nakba (Catastrophe) of the palestinians. Building an unapologetically chauvinistic and militaristic state within itself, especially by the standards of “western civilization” which it espouses against the supposed “arab barbarism” which it propagates. Maintaining in institutional obscurity its military armaments (including nuclear weapons), refusing over time to declare its borders and in constant readiness or implementation of military conflicts with other states in the region. With successive settlements and displacements of entire palestinian communities, with repeated military operations and military occupation of towns and villages, with the levelling and definitive disappearance of historic communities. With the subsequent “peaceful condition” of the largest “open” prison in the world in the Gaza Strip and a Wall hundreds of kilometres long in the West Bank, accompanied by military check-points. With the humiliations and degradation of a legal apartheid that divides its “citizens” into various sub-categories. With torture and incarceration, misery and impoverishment, with unemployment accompanied by scarce and intermittent supplies of electricity, water and food.
Various states, organizations and capitalist institutions around the world take positions of defense or condemnation, not just ignoring but premiumising the devaluation of life and death of the “expendable” and “surplus” palestinian populations. After all, the stakes behind war and peace of the rulers are nothing more than their political and economic interests. On the basis of which, intra-dominant antagonisms and balances operate, as well as a wider war process and a dispersed social reflection in an ideological mash of anti-semitism and anti-muslimism. Where, among other things, a theatre of the absurd is unfolding by patent anti-semites, holocaust deniers and pro-arabs who defend and tolerate israeli atrocities, while fanatical anti-arabs and anti-sunni rush to defend palestinian powers.
In this context, one of the first states that rushed to officially support zionist plans was the greek state. The same state that collaborated with the nazi troops in displacing and exterminating almost the entire jewish community of Thessaloniki, then seizing the homes of the few crematoria survivors who saw their homes “legally occupied” by shithead anti-semites. Giving a blank check and political legitimacy to one of its “strategic partners in the Mediterranean”, just two weeks after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, to launch a sweeping war in a densely populated area, targeting the area itself and its inhabitants. While continuing, in the midst of the massacre, not only the repression of migrant(s) on its borders –including palestinians– but also the “admirable” inter-state cooperation with the israeli state in multiple sectors that presuppose and legitimize the displacement and extermination of palestinian communities (war industry, arms trade and repression/surveillance/control technologies, energy market, agricultural sector and food technology, military and academic cooperation, etc). It is no coincidence, moreover, that the current restructuring of the compulsory military service of the greek army –which has also been quick to assist the hegemony of the western bloc of dominance in the Red Sea– is based not only on the model of the “advertised” finnish army but also on that of the “allied” israeli armed forces (IDF).
The inconceivable brutality of the atrocity of the israeli state and its international acceptance is more than a reminder of how nation-states and nationalisms are created and function globally, is more than a demonstration of the concept of modern state warfare that targets inhabited areas and entire populations rather than an opposing army. It is the transition of the language, character and spectacle of modern war to new levels of global displays of power and brutality. It is yet another dominant model of social/class subjugation, not only on the part of the israeli state but of every state planet-wide. Yet another military model on the basis of which the forthcoming doctrines of warfare, military repression and management of “surplus populations”, “asymmetric threats” and “internal enemies” are produced. An upgraded framework of state terrorism, where the bombing of hospitals, the razing of schools, the destruction of neighborhoods, mass displacement, the siege and torture of entire populations, the suppression of “migratory flows”, the dispersal of famine, starvation and disease (which is an officially formulated and basic israeli strategy through the prohibition, denial or destruction of any assistance to besieged populations), are no longer treated as “collateral damage” or “necessary evil”. Instead, they are normalized and institutionalized as “enforced and just acts of self-defence” by the rulers against anything/anyone that disrupts or detracts from their plans. It is another reminder that –among other areas– the territories of Palestine foreshadow the future of warfare know-how, of repression and “security” doctrines by state and bosses.
At the same time, the unspeakable destruction of the war in Palestine and its spectacular reproduction in the media put its causes and agents in the background. By providing that kind of “information” that normalizes war conduct, it launders the killers in the state of israel and its allied states while inverting reality. A reality in which the “subordinate classes” in Palestine are systematically and chronically homogenized, discredited, murdered under modern and past, orientalist or anti-islamic, projections: “terrorists”, “muslims”, “backwards”, “obscurantists”, “barbarians”, etc. A reality of ethnic cleansing by the zionist ideology, which would not have existed if for more than 200 years various nationalisms –mainly of the “civilised west”– had not actively advocated the annihilation of the so-called “non-historical peoples”, exterminating millions of people and dismantling various social formations worldwide. A reality of capitalist plunder and the transformation of entire communities into plebs. A reality of mass extermination and violent displacements of the ‘others’, on which national identities, commodity relations and ideologies of “progress”, “civilisation” and “development” are built. Of the reality of white –and any other– “superiority” and “human rights”, which once again blind and blind themselves in front of a new bloodbath for the perpetuation of their privileges and their power. This reality is encapsulated by the incessant hammering of an all-armed army against humans, fauna and flora, the sea, the land and inhabited zones.
Behind the ideologies of “security”, “development” and “peace”, the reality of national ideals, capital, religions and the social graveyards they produce, is projected. For the first time since their inception, the IDF sweeps the “coveted” Gaza Strip and the israeli state puts almost the entire area under its indefinite occupation, deserted by its inhabitants. This narrow strip of land, where for years more than 2 million locals –but also internally displaced persons since 1948– have been living in a “peaceful regime” of international isolation and social exclusion, poverty and lack of basic survival needs (water, food, electricity, health care, etc), of barbed wire fences and state-of-the-art technological systems of control, surveillance and repression, of air and ground bombardment by the israeli state. Combined with “those below” in the West Bank, who find themselves increasingly isolated, not only under the usual bullying and armed attacks by israeli settlers and soldiers, but also under the full military-political control, surveillance and repression of the israeli state against any expression of solidarity in Gaza. At the same time, any suspicion of “internal enemy” in the israeli territories that might open even a small crack in the dominant zionist chauvinism and militarism is targeted for repression. With prisons and censorship awaiting every resisting voice or action, from expressing solidarity with the palestinians up to refusing by 18-year-olds –regardless of gender–to enlist in the israeli army and be “obliged” to a long military service in a belligerent and occupying army. And all of the above, with various palestinian hierarchical organizations embodying a nationalist “counterweight” to zionist power (from the secular national-liberation visions of the PLO, the bureaucratic nationalism of the Palestinian Authority, to the nation-religious models of Hamas). Aspiring state powers which reproduce social class-racial-gender divisions, manipulate and exploit the everyday life of “those below” (in combination –and often in collaboration– with israeli oppression), assimilate or repress social-class resistance to the prospect of new nation-state “solutions” as “the only possible solutions”. Calling off any radical direction of social revolt and liberation, outside and against the logic of states, capital and social-class divisions. Canceling the revolutionary possibilities of the intifada in favor of war and peace of state-capital-patriarchy. Validating that the only “liberation” that any nationalism of any form can offer is that of its own authority.
For 75 years, the social-class struggles in the territories of Palestine –but also in Israel– have insisted on opening up roads of resistance and solidarity against the divisions of any power. Against the visible and invisible walls of racism, nationalism and religion, challenging nation-state and supranational staffs, local and non-local bosses, armies and political guardianships. Demonstrating in practice that the only real possibilities of emancipation of “those below” and destruction of the war machine lie in the collective untethered processes of the oppressed and exploited. In those collective resistances that remain alive even when they are marginalized, suppressed or assimilated by any kind of power apparatus that attempts to annihilate or transmute the prospect of social liberation in the vise of national identity.
Solidarity with every oppressed person in Palestine is intertwined with opposition to war and peace of domination. Every bomb and every bullet in Gaza and the West Bank comes from within an international political, economic and military web of power, from within a globalized war industry and know-how of repression of subordinate classes. In this matrix, the greek state maintains and increases its own active participation in the global slaughter from various positions: from its anti-immigration policy at the borders and the mainland, the production or trade of weapons and weapon systems, its growing military armaments, the deployment of troops in wars and operations in other regions (the latest case being the NATO operation “ASPIDES” in the Red Sea, in which the Larisa headquarters are upgraded as a central operations headquarters, with the greek navy actively participating with its own frigate), the established and attempted hegemony in the Balkans and the Mediterranean respectively, the provision of military bases for military exercises and missions (including the israeli army), the military and academic war processes, the restructuring of compulsory service and of the armed forces towards a more “battle-ready” model, the forwarding of the war in Ukraine, up to the direct and indirect participation in the massacre in Gaza and the West Bank. Every resistance, every insubordination, every total refusal to enlist in the compulsory military service and every sabotage against militarism, nationalism, racism and the world of capital is an integral part of an overall opposition against war and peace of the bosses, from Athens to Gaza. For a world of freedom and solidarity without social-class divisions, against nations, states, religion, capital and patriarchy.
SOLIDARITY TO EVERY OPPRESSED,
RESISTING, DISPLACED IN PALESTINE
SOLIDARITY TO ARMY REFUSERS
AND TO ANYONE RESISTING WITHIN ISRAEL
LET’S SOW INSUBORDINATION TO THE CRANES
AND THE PLANS OF THE GREEK STATE AND ARMY
TOTAL ARMY REFUSAL TO WAR AND PEACE OF THE SOVEREIGNS
April 2024
Initiative for total army refusal
