Massacre in Egypt

EGYPT is sliding into a bloody civil war in which the only outcome could be death and suffering for ordinary people, and misery whichever side wins.  According to official figures at least 600 people were killed on Wednesday when the Army opened fire on a Muslim Brotherhood-led protest against the military takeover of the country.

The Brotherhood says the true figure is over 2,000 dead. 

Egypt's ambassador to the UN claimed on BBC News Night that the armed forces were not using live ammunition! But the government has authorised the use of live ammunition today, in defence of government buildings and forces.

US Senator John Kerry has deplored the "violence", and Obama himself has urged restraint on both sides. Maybe the Egyptian military had been paying more attention to the advice in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal recently that Egypt needed another Pinochet.

US joint manoeuvres with the Egyptian forces have been cancelled, but not yet aid and arms supplies. The EU too has reacted, and so has the UN. But not with anything like the response which NATO countries gave to repression and conflict in Libya or Syria.   

There have been attacks and arson, presumably the work of Islamicists, against not only government buildings but Christian churches. But as to the claims that Morsi supporters and the Muslim Brotherhood were responsible for initiating the bloodshed on Wednesday, this is not accepted by objective or foreign reporters. The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv is hardly likely to sympathise with the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly when the Egyptian military appears to be turning its peace with Israel into a de facto alliance against the Palestinians. But its correspondent Nadav Eliav wrote yesterday (15 August 2013 7.04am):

"The Egyptian army rushed yesterday (Wednesday) to make available dimmed images of some individuals, allegedly members of the Muslim Brotherhood, firing weapons during the riots. The photos looked a bit suspicious, the weapons in them reminded some observers of obsolete carbines. What happened yesterday in Cairo was not a battle, but a bloodbath, something a lot closer to massacre than a struggle between two armed sides.

"Yesterday the Egyptian army carried out its own Hama massacre, albeit on a much smaller scale than that carried out in Syria by Bashar Assad's father, Hafez, about 30 years ago. Then and now, the purpose of the massacre was a deterrent, creating a balance of terror and making it clear to the Muslim Brotherhood who is the undisputed ruler. "
https://www.facebook.com/notes/sol-salbe/translation-from-maariv-the-generals-pyrrhic-victory/10151593069271662

Here is a statement by the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt, published today in Socialist Worker:

The bloody dissolution of the sit-ins in Al-Nahda Square and Raba'a al-Adawiyya is nothing but a massacre—prepared in advance. It aims to liquidate the Muslim Brotherhood. But, it is also part of a plan to liquidate the Egyptian Revolution and restore the military-police state of the Mubarak regime. The Revolutionary Socialists did not defend the regime of Mohamed Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood for a single day. We were always in the front ranks of the opposition to that criminal, failed regime which betrayed the goals of the Egyptian Revolution. It even protected the pillars of the Mubarak regime and its security apparatus, armed forces and corrupt businessmen. We strongly participated in the revolutionary wave of 30 June. Neither did we defend for a single day the sit-ins by the Brotherhood and their attempts to return Mursi to power. But we have to put the events of today in their context, which is the use of the military to smash up workers' strikes. We also see the appointment of new provincial governors—largely drawn from the ranks of the remnants of the old regime, the police and military generals. Then there are the policies of General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi's government. It has adopted a road-map clearly hostile to the goals and demands of the Egyptian revolution, which are freedom, dignity and social justice. This is the context for the brutal massacre which the army and police are committing. It is a bloody dress rehearsal for the liquidation of the Egyptian Revolution. It aims to break the revolutionary will of all Egyptians who are claiming their rights, whether workers, poor, or revolutionary youth, by creating a state of terror. However, the reaction by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in attacking Christians and their churches, is a sectarian crime which only serves the forces of counter-revolution. The filthy attempt to create a civil war, in which Egyptian Christians will fall victims to the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood, is one in which Mubarak's state and Al-Sisi are complicit, who have never for a single day defended the Copts and their churches. We stand firmly against Al-Sisi's massacres, and against his ugly attempt to abort the Egyptian Revolution. For today's massacre is the first step in the road towards counter-revolution. We stand with the same firmness against all assaults on Egypt's Christians and against the sectarian campaign which only serves the interests of Al-Sisi and his bloody project. Many who described themselves as liberals and leftists have betrayed the Egyptian Revolution, led by those who took part in Al-Sisi's government. They have sold the blood of the martyrs to whitewash the military and the counter-revolution. These people have blood on their hands. We, the Revolutionary Socialists, will never deviate for an instant from the path of the Egyptian Revolution. We will never compromise on the rights of the revolutionary martyrs and their pure blood: those who fell confronting Mubarak, those who fell confronting the Military Council, those who fell confronting Mursi's regime, and those who fall now confronting Al-Sisi and his dogs. Down with military rule! No the return of the old regime! No to the return of the Brotherhood! All power and wealth to the people

The Revolutionary Socialists 14 August 2013 revsoc.me/statement/ysqt-hkm-lskr-ysqt-lsysy-qyd-lthwr-lmdd Article information News Wed 14 Aug 2013, 16:19 BST Issue No. 2366

The Muslim Brotherhood has today called a Day of Anger against the government and the army. There are fears that Egypt could go through the kind of horrors Algeria underwent in the war between military and Islamists.

The Egyptian working class would suffer the most in such a war and has least to gain from the victory of either the Brotherhood or the Military. The workers' movement has the difficult task of uniting people under conditions of repression, terror and vengeance. We can only voice our solidarity and hope its courage and vision of a happier future is successful against these odds. 

See also:
http://uniteresist.org/2013/08/urgent-solidarity-with-arrested-suez-steel-workers/

Will New Spring follow Islamist Winter?

REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISTS on march in Damietta, northern Egypt

 SOCIALISTS and trade unionists who have taken to the streets against right-wing governments n Egypt and Tunisia are asking for international support.

In Egypt, President Mohammad Morsy tried to use his enhanced status after brokering the Gaza ceasefire as the cover for a deal with the International Monetary Fund and to give himself dictatorial powers such as people thought they had seen off with Hosni Mubarak.

As the tents of protest went up again in Tahrir Square, teachers and textile workers trade unions called strikes against the government. Demonstrators have clashed not only with riot police but with  the president's supporters in the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood. Demonstrators who stormed a Brotherhood office say they found an arms cache there.

Some of the Muslim Brotherhood members who turned out against protesters are not just ordinary supporters but armed squads, also including Salafi thugs such as have carried out sectarian attacks and provocations in several countries in the name of their extreme version of Islam.

In the chaos and excitement of the clashes the Revolutionary Socialists reported:    
 “We are mourning the death of Taha Magdy, who was killed by Brotherhood thugs. We are ready to offer hundreds of martyrs for the sake of our revolution,” they declared on Facebook. A woman member was kidnapped. "Comrade Ola Shaoba was attacked by MB last night and now still in hospital. She was not just beaten but captured also and let go, many are still held by MB as if we are prisoners of war!!" - via Gigi Ibrahim.


Later it was reported that Taha, though wounded, was still alive.
"Apology and correction: The Revolutionary Socialist movement apologizes for spreading the news of the martyrdom of comrade Taha Magdy based on the report of the officiating doctor at one of the government hospitals. The safety of our comrade has been confirmed..." 

Another four people were reportedly killed in the clashes, including a member of the Socialist Progress Party. And from Reporters Without Frontiers comes this report:

Al-Hosseiny Abu Deif, an experienced newspaper reporter, was rushed to hospital after being hit in the head by a rubber bullet fired at close range at around 1 a.m. today and is said to be in a critical condition.

“Witnesses say the president’s supporters deliberately targeted and attacked journalists,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We call on President Morsi to order an investigation into the circumstances of these attacks and to punish those responsible. As president, he must ensure the safety of all of his fellow citizens, including journalists.

“We also call on the president to rescind the 22 November decree granting himself extraordinary powers, and not hold a referendum on the draft constitution in its current form. The Constituent Commission must amend the draft in order to provide more protection for freedom of expression and information.”

A witness told Reporters Without Borders that Morsi supporters deliberately targeted Deif, who works for the newspaper Al-Fagr. Five minutes before he was shot from a distance of just two metres, he showed colleagues photos of the president’s supporters with sophisticated weapons. His camera was stolen after he was shot, as colleagues went to his aid.

 From Tunisia,  where workers are resisting austerity measures and unemployment such as led to the overthrow of the old regime, comes this message:
"Today 06/12/2012 a general strike in Kasserine, Gafsa, Sidi Bouzid and Sfax. We organized a big march protesting against Ennahdha government's militia which attacked unionsts in Tunis last tuesday in head office of Union General de Travailleurs Tunisien. Yesterday the officers of UGTT met and announced a general strike for next Thursday 13/12/12. The decision won't be reviewed unless the gvt admits these militias are illegal and takes the decision to stop them acting in the name of the revolution."
Mohamed Sghaier Saihi UGTT Kasserine

AMONG those joining the struggle in Egypt have been thousands of workers from the giant textile plant of Misr Spinning in Mahalla al-Kubra. 
 Workers rallied as they ended their shift and were joined by townspeople in a march which quickly swelled to more than 5,000 strong.
As the protestors reached Shoun Square in the town centre they were attacked by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, who threw fireworks at them. The demonstrators answered with stones and molotov cocktails.

http://en.rsf.org/egypt-president-s-supporters-06-12-2012,43766.html

One of the Egyptian trade unionists active in the struggle has sent this message to friends in London:

Dear friends,

On 17 November I was invited to speak at the Unite the Resistance Conference in London, and I asked you for your solidarity with the workers’ movement in Egypt. Today we need your solidarity more than ever.
Activists have been fighting to overthrow the Constituent Assembly which represents no-one except the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi then brought out his Constitutional Declaration which makes him like a god or a new pharaoh, who controls all the institutions of the state, and means he cannot be challenged. One of his aims was to protect the Shura Council [the upper house of parliament] from dissolution, as well as the Constituent Assembly, so that he could get the new constitution passed. But he didn’t count on the anger of the Egyptian people, who have come out in their hundreds of thousands to protest in the streets against his Constitutional Declaration, and to show their refusal to participate in the creation of a new dictatorship.
As you are protesting against austerity, unemployment and poverty in Britain, we will be on the streets in Egypt, trying to achieve the goals of our revolution.
We are all united for bread, freedom and social justice.
Hind Abd-al-Gawad

Rush messages of solidarity to the Egyptian independent unions via EFITU (efitu.union@hotmail.com – please copy to menasolidarity@gmail.com)

 

For more  background information and to keep up with events visit the Middle East and North Africa Solidarity Network website: 

http://menasolidaritynetwork.com/

Earlier this year, al Jazeera broadcast a fascinating view of life in the Mahalla factory:
The Factory - Revolution Through Arab Eyes - Al Jazeera English

Al Ahram editorial on decline and fall of Muslim Brotherhood:

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/4/59933/Opinion/The-decline-and-fall-of-the-Muslim-Brotherhood.aspx

 

Was the October War necessary?

WITH Binyamin Netanyahu and Iran's President Ahmadinejad sparring at the UN, keeping people guessing if and and when their countries could be at war, some attention turned this week to a previous conflict.
 
 JUST 39 years after the October 1973 'Yom Kippur War' challenged  Israel's hold on Arab territories siezed six years before and ushered in the famous oil crisis, many documents about what went on in the background have become available, providing fuel for books and articles on how the Israeli military was apparently caught napping and where intelligence failed.

Much criticism focuses on late leaders Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, and the military's failure to mobilise reserves or move its tanks to the front in time for the assault. But veteran commentator and peace activist Uri Avnery says this is still avoiding a much bigger political issue.  Was the war really necessary?

"IT TRANSPIRES that in February 1973, eight months before the war, Anwar Sadat sent his trusted aide, Hafez Ismail, to the almighty US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He offered the immediate start of peace negotiations with Israel. There was one condition and one date: all of Sinai, up to the international border, had to be returned to Egypt without any Israeli settlements, and the agreement had to be achieved by September, at the latest.

Kissinger liked the proposal and transmitted it at once to the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin, who was just about to finish his term in office. Rabin, of course, immediately informed the Prime Minister, Golda Meir. She rejected the offer out of hand. There ensued a heated conversation between the ambassador and the Prime Minister. Rabin, who was very close to Kissinger, was in favor of accepting the offer.

Golda treated the whole initiative as just another Arab trick to induce her to give up the Sinai Peninsula and remove the settlements built on Egyptian territory.

After all, the real purpose of these settlements – including the shining white new town, Yamit – was precisely to prevent the return of the entire peninsula to Egypt. Neither she nor Dayan dreamed of giving up Sinai. Dayan had already made the (in)famous statement that he preferred “Sharm al-Sheik without peace to peace without Sharm al-Sheik”. (Sharm al-Sheik, which had already been re-baptised with the Hebrew name Ophira, is located near the southern tip of the peninsula, not far from the oil wells, which Dayan was also loath to give up.)

Even before the new disclosures, the fact that Sadat had made several peace overtures was no secret. Sadat had indicated his willingness to reach an agreement in his dealings with the UN mediator Dr. Gunnar Jarring, whose endeavors had already become a joke in Israel.

Before that, the previous Egyptian President, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, had invited Nahum Goldman, the President of the World Jewish Congress (and for a time President of the World Zionist Organization) to meet him in Cairo. Golda had prevented that meeting, and when the fact became known there was a storm of protest in Israel, including a famous letter from a group of 12th-graders saying that it would be hard for them to serve in the army.

All these Egyptian initiatives could be waved aside as political maneuvers. But an official message by Sadat to the Secretary of State could not. So, remembering the lesson of the Goldman incident, Golda decided to keep the whole thing secret.

THUS AN incredible situation was created. This fateful initiative, which could have effected an historic turning point, was brought to the knowledge of two people only: Moshe Dayan and Israel Galili.

The role of the latter needs explanation. Galili was the eminence grise of Golda, as well as of her predecessor, Levy Eshkol. I knew Galili quite well, and never understood where his renown as a brilliant strategist came from. Already before the founding of the state, he was the leading light of the illegal Haganah military organization. As a member of a kibbutz, he was officially a socialist but in reality a hardline nationalist. It was he who had the brilliant idea of putting the settlements on Egyptian soil, in order to make the return of northern Sinai impossible.

So the Sadat initiative was known only to Golda, Dayan, Galili and Rabin and Rabin’s successor in Washington, Simcha Dinitz, a nobody who was Golda’s lackey.

Incredible as it may sound, the Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, Rabin’s direct boss, was not informed. Nor were all the other ministers, the Chief of Staff and the other leaders of the armed forces, including the Chiefs of Army Intelligence, as well as the chiefs of the Shin Bet and the Mossad. It was a state secret.

There was no debate about it – neither public nor secret. September came and passed, and on October 6th Sadat’s troops struck across the canal and achieved a world-shaking surprise success (as did the Syrians on the Golan Heights.)

As a direct result of Golda’s Grand Default 2693 Israeli soldiers died, 7251 were wounded and 314 were taken prisoner (along with the tens of thousands of Egyptian and Syrian casualties)."

With other politicians and writers saying nobody spoke out before the war, Avnery feels  understandably justified in reminding them that one maverick did:

"Several months before the war, in a speech in the Knesset, I warned Golda Meir that if the Sinai was not returned very soon, Sadat would start a war to break the impasse.

I knew what I was talking about. I had, of course, no idea about the Ismail mission, but in May 1973 I took part in a peace conference in Bologna. The Egyptian delegation was led by Khalid Muhyi al-Din, a member of the original group of Free Officers who made the 1952 revolution. During the conference, he took me aside and told me in confidence that if the Sinai was not returned by September, Sadat would start a war. Sadat had no illusions of victory, he said, but hoped that a war would compel the US and Israel to start negotiations for the return of Sinai.

My warning was completely ignored by the media. They, like Golda, held the Egyptian army in abysmal contempt and considered Sadat a nincompoop. The idea that the Egyptians would dare to attack the invincible Israeli army seemed ridiculous.

The media adored Golda. So did the whole world, especially feminists. (A famous poster showed her face with the inscription: “But can she type?”) In reality, Golda was a very primitive person, ignorant and obstinate. My magazine, Haolam Hazeh, attacked her practically every week, and so did I in the Knesset. (She paid me the unique compliment of publicly declaring that she was ready to “mount the barricades” to get me out of the Knesset.)

Ours was a voice crying in the wilderness, but at least we fulfilled one function: In her ‘March of Folly”, Barbara Tuchman stipulated that a policy could be branded as folly only if there had been at least one voice warning against it in real time.

Perhaps even Golda would have reconsidered if she had not been surrounded by journalists and politicians singing her praises, celebrating her wisdom and courage and applauding every one of her stupid pronouncements.

THE SAME type of people, even some of the very same people, are now doing the same with Binyamin Netanyahu. Again, we are staring the same Grand Default in the face".

It seems the Yom Kippur was neither necessary nor atoned for.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1348845384/

From Bulgaria to Rafah

BEHIND Salafis' hidden face, from Maghreb to Mumbai, via Egypt and El Arish, we find Saudi's hidden funds.

HUNDREDS of Palestinian Muslims gathered to pray at the Egyptian embassy in Gaza City yesterday and show solidarity with the people of Egypt, after the attack on an Egyptian police station near the border at Rafah, in Sinai, in which 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed.

Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh led Ramadan prayers, and symbolic funeral prayers for the slain officers. Afterwards senior Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar reiterated the party's condemnation of the attack: "In the name of all Palestinian factions and the al-Qassam Brigades we say that Palestine does not target Egyptian people or Egyptian security," he said.

Egypt closed the Gaza border "indefinitely" after the Sinai attack. Rafah crossing, where the borders of Egypt and Israel converge, was the only border open to residents of Gaza due to Israel's blockade. Hamas said yesterday it was shutting down the smuggling tunnels to the Egyptian Sinai, prompting Gaza residents to stockpile petrol and other scarce imported goods.

Meanwhile Egyptian forces in Sinai were reported trying to hunt down remnants of the gang who carried out the attack. Blaming Islamist extremists from Gaza and Sinai, President Mohammed Morsi branded the attackers "enemies of the nation who must be dealt with by force."

Security and military officials said at least two helicopter gunships have arrived in the border town of El-Arish to join the hunt. The attack in Rafeah took place around sunset when troops were having the traditional meal at the end of the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that the attack raised the need for "determined Egyptian action to enforce security and prevent terror in Sinai." The attackers had seized two police vehicles which they loaded with explosives and took over the border into Israel before they were stopped. Israel said its aircraft killed between six and eight militants following the attack but the Egyptian armed forces said 35 gunmen took part in the attack, suggesting that close to 30 attackers may be on the run.

There were reports yesterday that angry border town residents were turning on Palestinians.
"Since yesterday, people in el-Arish, Sheikh Zuwaid and Rafah are forcing Palestinians to return home, and those who are caught are beaten up," said a resident of Sheikh Zuwaid, declining to be named, quoted by the Palestinian Ma'an news agency.

In Sinai, Bedouin leaders said they had been warning about armed groups active in the area.
"Military intervention came late after we warned the Egyptian authorities about extremism and terrorism in Sinai, especially after the revolution," said Sheikh Khalaf al-Maniei, from the Al-Sawarka tribe. Al-Maniei said he had witnessed jihadi groups training in the Sinai, in areas around Sheikh Zuweid in the northern Sinai and Wadi al-Amro in the center of the peninsula.

Over 1,500 armed militia members have been training there since the revolution ended, he said, adding that the groups seemed to be made up of international members. "We warned the Egyptian army as jihadi groups have heavy weapons, and have been training intensively, but nobody listened," al-Maniei added.

Calls are being made in Egypt for restrictions on its military presence in Sinai , under the treaty with Israel, to be reviewed, and there are suggestions in Israel that the Israeli government might agree.

Bedouin are worried that military measures to fight "terrorism and lawlessness" in the Sinai may hit them. "It’s better if they tell us their security plans," al Maniei said, adding that if army raids target Bedouin tents indiscriminately it could cause a problem for the army.

A deputy from the al-Fawakhreyeh tribe, Abed al-Hamid Salmi, told Ma'an's correspondent that Sinai tribes had met Egyptian intelligence officials on Monday. "We know that there are Israeli plans to re-occupy parts of the Sinai as Israeli authorities seek to protect its state from terrorism," Salmi said.

While the Egyptian government and forces were hunting down the perpetrators of Sunday's attack, a Muslim Brotherhood website in Egypt pointed the finger of accusation against Israel's Mossad intelligence service as being behind it.

Iranian authorities have issued a similar statement suggesting Mossad was behind the bomb attack last month on an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria, which Israeli prime minister Netanyahu blamed on Iran. Bulgarian police are still investigating the bombing, and Netanyahu is reportedly angry with them for not blaming the Iranians straightaway. The Iranian statement says Israel has a history of terror, and it would not be the first time its agents were prepared to sacrifice their fellow-citizens or other innocent Jews.

While, to those aware of the history, such accusations may not be entirely far fetched, more feasible explanations may be to hand. As we have pointed out before there are interests in the Middle East and outside who are in a position to assist and influence the jihadis and salafits, and who might consider an escalation of tensions towards war all part of their plan, especially so long as Netanyahu blames Iran.

The Muslim Brotherhood, trying to stabilise its new found place in government in Egypt, probably knows this, but would sooner not say. Both the Brotherhood and the Salafis in Egypt were seen as in receipt of Saudi funds.

Meanwhile in Gaza senior Hamas official Ahmad Yousef, urged the Hamas-led government to closely monitor all activities of Salafist Islamic groups in order to prevent Israel from infiltrating them through its collaborators. He added that such an infiltration pushes these groups to carry out attacks similar to the deadly attack against Egyptian soldiers in Sinai Sunday leading to the death of 16 soldiers.

Yousef stated that such attacks are aimed at sabotaging the relations between the Hamas movement and the newly elected Egyptian government, in addition to sabotaging the security situation in the coastal region. Yousef stated that the attack mainly aims at pushing Egypt into reconsidering its recent decision regarding easing the restrictions imposed on the Gaza Strip.

“These groups are delusional, targeting our brothers in blood and belief”, he said, “Such groups are abusing the freedom of religion in Gaza, and are recruiting unemployed youths in order to carry out such criminal attacks, therefore we must monitor these groups to protect them from any infiltration”.

He said the “ security measures in Sinai fell apart when Mubarak was removed from power” adding that there are currently less Egyptian soldiers and security officers along the border area.

He attributed the sharp increase of Salafist groups in Sinai to the large area across the border with Jordan, the Red Sea, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.

“This allowed members of these groups to infiltrate Sinai and to freely operate there”, Yousef added, “The Hamas movement has nothing to do with such attacks or groups, and always cooperated with Egypt, in addition to handing the Egyptian security forces several Salafists who infiltrated into Gaza through tunnels across the border”.

Yousef added that “a lot of these tunnels are useless, but we cannot completely shut them down as long as the Israeli siege is still imposed on the Gaza Strip”.

• In Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah condemned the attack on Egyptian border guards as a "tragic incident, " adding "I send my condolences to Egypt's president, the Egyptian army, and the families of the martyr officers and soldiers." Nasrallah said the attack had nothing to do with Islam, and could only benefit Israel, adding that there were two major threats to security and stability in the region - Israel and the "takfiri" mentality, referring to groups like the Saudi Wahabbis and Salafis who denounce all other trends they disagree with as infidels in the Arab and Islamic world.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=510617

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=510551

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/9429342/Iran-accuses-Israel-over-Bulgaria-bombing.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/05/us-egypt-idUSBRE8740JB20120805

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/08/201285183958163902.html?utm_content=automate&utm_campaign=Trial6&utm_source=NewSocialFlow&utm_term=plustweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount


http://www.imemc.org/article/64023?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/0/49793/Egypt/Lebanons-Nasrallah-dennounces-Sinai-attack,-calls-.aspx

And yet, still it moves!

SPRING scene from Regueb, 'the land of free people', Tunisia. (photo by Fawzi Chihaoui)

AS the year draws to a close the enemies of the Arab peoples may be assuring themselves that the "Arab Spring' is all over bar the shooting, as reaction clamps down brutally in Egypt, while Islamic parties there and in Tunisa taste the fruits of others struggle and sacrifice. The Saudis have shown willing to put all that Western hardware to use in Bahrain.

In Libya the new regime brought forth by NATO help has promised sharia law, and a "freedom" that could make people nostalgic for the tyrrany of Gaddafi. There, as in Iraq after western "liberation", the oil companies are not the only ones taking advantage of opportunities. Al Qaida is reportedly moving into new quarters nearer Europe, and anyone who believed the imperialist guff about "winning the war on terror" may yet wonder why outfits like MI6 and the CIA are called "intelligence" services.

It is too soon to call what is going to happen in Syria, with or without interference from the West, whose sanctions are making people suffer more, or the Arab League, which send a human rights team headed by a Sudanese general accused of war crimes in Darfur.

In Israel, the movement for social justice inspired by Tahrir Square has folded its tents without, for the most part, its leaders worrying how it could achieve anything without acknowledging the rights of the neighbours Or perhaps the leaders did worry, and decided to settle for more modest advances, such as jobs for themselves in the establishment political parties which, including Labour, have created the mess.

Now, while settlers and ultra-Orthodox battle as to who can best finish Israel's pretence of modern democracy, the military come to the fore again with their panacea; whatever is happening in the rest of the world, never mind the Middle East - "Let's bomb Gaza!". They may think they can get away with it again, especially in an American election year, but counting on the Mid West instead of the Middle East, they may have miscalculated.

The Palestinians are no longer as divided as they were, and nor is the Egyptian border safe. Israel may try to compensate for loss of its Turkish ally by discovering the Armenian Holocause and the plight of the Kurds, but making propaganda is not the same as taking positions on the ground. As for the Arab masses, having shed their blood for changes in their own countries, they are not going to forget the Palestinians, nor forgive any regime, be it nationalist or Islamic in garb, that accepts humiliation in the name of compromise.

As to what is happening in the countries of the 'Arab Spring', we can see that in spite of any setbacks or suppression, this revolution is still moving, and its character is being decided, not by outside pundits or even political leaders, but by the people taking part.

In Tunisia, the combination of political dictatorship and economic neo-liberalism offering no hope led to a young man setting fire to himself and igniting the revolt. The aspiration to work and a future remains, and with it the awakening of women and awareness of minorities are aspects to which some attention has been drawn. Attacks on synagogues, whether perpetrated by Salafis or others, were seen as the work of saboteurs of the revolution, and the new Tunisian leader has urged Jews who left the country during past Middle East tension to return. It may be just a gesture but that does not mean it is insignificant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/20/tunisia-elections-women-grow-anxious
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/27/equality-legacy-arab-spring

If women in Tunisia are anxious, in Egypt they have been enraged by police brutality, which forced US secretary of State Hilary Clinton to take her distance from Washington's allies. Rather than be intimidated, the women turned out in huge, almost unprecedented numbers in solidarity with their sisters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKRe-MONpN0

While an important aspect of democratic revolution in Egypt is the establishment of works committees and free trade unions, it is also interesting to see how the struggle to determine the revolution's character finds a microcosmic echo in a battle within a professional body, in this case the doctors' union.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/24533.aspx

As in Bahrain, it seems the medical professionals in Egypt too are taking blows from the state for asserting their independence and duty to come to the aid of their people injured ghting for freedom.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/1/64/30199/Egypt/Politics-/We-are-targeted-by-police-and-army-for-treating-de.aspx

It was the historical failure of Egypt's bourgeoise to establish a democracy free from corruption and undertake modern development which doomed the country to decades of military rule, from Nasser's "Arab Socialism" through to Mubarak's regime. Replacing khaki with cleric's garb, or a coalition of both, will not deliver social justice. The Egyptian working class, so often brave in struggle, must have a political voice.

One group which has emerged are the revolutionary socialists, and they seem to have aroused the fear and hatred of both the regime and the religious reactionaries. For their part they are refusing to be silenced or intimidated, and this seems to be enlarging the hearing they receive . While we don't know enough yet to comment on their policies, let us hope the fears they arouse among the witch-hunters are justified!

It may even give people on the Left here something to think about.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=27066
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/12/28/184999.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPmmrBF5rSo&feature=share

Murder and Mayhem should not distract from May Day in the Middle East

SO, after invading Afghanistan and Iraq, conducting military operations and bombing civilians on the soil of its ally Pakistan, the US has finally caught up with a former asset, and killed Osama Bin Laden - who it turns out was not hiding in a mountain cave but in a large fortified house in a Pakistan barracks town. Within 100 yards of an officer training school.

At least it looks better than NATO's 'humanitarian' mission accomplishment in killing Colonel Gaddafi's grandchildren.

President Barack Obama says it "'marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaida." Some might say it is so far the only achievement.

Apart from the crowds cheering in Washington, we may guess there are a few Americans, not far from the previous Administration, who will be relieved that Bin Laden has not been captured alive to stand trial and blurt out anything embarrassing about past links and business associates. It may not have been mere incompetence that kept US forces searching and bombing the wrong places so long.

On the other side, it's probably bad news for Trump and the Tea Party Republicans. Getting Bin Laden is bound to trump demanding the president show his birth certificate. And confound all those ignorant Americans who thought it smart to confuse Obama and Osama. Talking about former President Jimmy Carter's willingness to call for a change in US Middle East policy, roving Palestinian ambassador Afif Safieh was regretting recently that the Iran hostages debacle brought Carter's defeat by the Republicans.

Whether Carter might have been as enlightened in office as he has been by defeat, we don't know. But disappointing as Obama has been, in failing to close Guantanamo or to restrain Israeli settlement expansion, the perhaps this victory will make him more confident. The only alternatives available for now are clearly a damned sight worse.

The superstition that killing one bogeyman-figurehead can finish a movement is unlikely to be confirmed. Terrorism, whether of the state kind or al Qaeda's, will continue. But what we should not be distracted from is the more significant fact of these times, the re-emergence of mass struggle, and of the forces that can really challenge imperialism and Islamic reaction, and change society for good.

In Trafalgar Square yesterday it was good to see the Bahraini flags among the crowd for May Day, and to hear from the platform that hundreds of thousands - one Turkish speaker claimed a million - were rallying in Istanbul. From friends in Israel, reports and pictures of the red flags out for May Day in Tel Aviv, no longer kept to a safe mockery run by the Zionist Histadrut.

From the Morning Star this news from EGYPT:

Thousands of workers packed into Cairo's Tahrir Square on Sunday, demanding social justice in Egypt as they celebrated their first May Day in three decades without ousted former president Hosni Mubarak. Speakers representing some of the independent trade unions that have sprung up since Mr Mubarak stepped down on February 11 took to the stage in the square, calling for a minimum wage, better welfare programmes and the trial of corrupt trade union chiefs.

Waving Egyptian, Libyan, Syrian and Communist Party flags, they chanted "social justice" as security forces and military police looked on, clearing the way for traffic.A statement signed by 49 organisations - including the Coalition of Revolution Youth, the Communist Party and other left-wing groups, independent unions, NGOs and rights groups - called for a minimum monthly wage of 1,500 Egyptian pounds (£150) and a wage ceiling to "ensure fair distribution of wealth."

They also called on the ruling junta to freeze the assets of Mubarak-era trade unions.Hussein Megawer, former head of the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation, is currently being investigated for corruption as part of a sweeping probe. Egyptian Communist Party chairman Salah al-Adly said that his long-repressed group is committed to "achieving the revolution's demands by drafting a constitution for a civil state, rather than a religious or military one, which is based on democracy and in which socialism and social justice are achieved."

FROM Iraq it was reported that the Iraqi Communist Party appears to have read the signs, and having moved away from collaboration with the occupation, it is trying to claim credit for recent protests, though many of those taking part " have no faith in the political process or any of the parties taking part in it", according to our correspondent. But anyway here is a report on May Day in Baghdad:
http://en.aswataliraq.info/Default1.aspx?page=article_page&id=142290&l=1

BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) has organized a demonstration for hundreds of workers in central Baghdad’s al-Tahrir (Liberation) Square on occasion of the International Labor Day, taking place today (Sunday).

Aswat al-Iraq news agency’s correspondent, who attended the occasion, said that the demonstrators carried placards, demanding their legitimate rights, the abolishment of the expression ‘employees’ for workers and the issuance of laws that organize their work and vocational life.

“The majority of demonstrators belong to the Iraqi Communist Party, as well as workers of the public sector and representatives of the private sector, who demanded the legislation of new labor laws that open employment chances for unemployed workers,” he said.

The correspondent quoted the trade union Railways cadre, Latif al-Mash’hadany, as saying: “The Iraqi Communist Party calls on all working masses, unions and workers trade unions, the mass protest committee in Iraq and the youth organizations to stand together to the side of the ICP in its struggle, on the occasion of the International Labor Day, in such a way that matches with the working class and its historic movement in Iraq.”

“Iraqi workers demand the Parliament and the government to legislate new labor laws and abolish all decisions that were issued against the workers, granting them their full rights and putting an end for corruption and unemployment,” he said.

A statement, issued by the demonstrators, copy of which was received by Aswat al-Iraq, said: “The demands, raised by the revolutionary masses since Feb.25^th last, were all workers demands, or demands by the working class.”

“The first of May is the day for raising those demands highly by the workers themselves in Iraq’s main streets and squares, along with their strikes and sit-in demonstrations, being an important step to expand the revolutionary situation,” it added.

The statement demanded “the freedom of strikes, demonstration, organization, abolishment of self-financing, achievement of work or guarantees against unemployment, release of all detainees, especially those detained in demonstrations and trial of all criminals who opened fire on the demonstrators.”

Our Iraqi friend also forwarded this message

A message to all members of Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative - مبادرة تضامن المجتمع

إلى : الأخوات والأخوة في الحركة العم

الية العراقية
من : نقابة العمل الامريكى ضد الحرب (USLAW)
رد : عيد العمال -- عيد العمال الدولي لتضامن الطبقة العاملة

أيها الأخوات، أيها الأخوة ، الأعزاء ، أيها الرفاق في النضال : ونحن نشارك معكم اليوم في معركتنا المشتركة لحقوق العمال والكرامة الأساسية للعمال في كل مكان. ونحن نحيي شجاعة وحزم العمال و الطبقة العاملة العراقية في سعيها لعراق ديمقراطي حر من كل التدخلات الخارجية والسيطرة، وخالية من القمع ، ويضمن الحقوق الكاملة للعمال الذي تكفله معايير العمل الدولية.
نحن في نقابة العمل الولايات المتحدة ضد الحرب، التي تتكون من أكثر من 190 فروع وتمثل خمسة ملايين من عمال الولايات المتحدة ، نعلن الوقوف معكم ونتعهد بتقديم دعمنا المستمر للعمل الخاص ووضع نهاية سريعة لاحتلال العراق من قبل جميع القوات الأجنبية والحكومات واستعادة السيادة الوطنية الكاملة للشعب العراقي.
نشعر بالتأثر من حقيقة إن جميع الذين يزورون النصب التذكاري لشهداء العمل 1886 في ساحة هايماركت في شيكاغو ، رمز المجزرة التي أدت إلى إعلان 1 مايو باعتباره اليوم الدولي للتضامن العمال ، يشاهدون رسالة تحية وتضامن من العراقية الحركة العمالية المدرج هناك في 2007 خلال زيارة تاريخية للولايات المتحدة من قبل ممثلي الحركة العمالية العراقية.
ونحن نحتفل معكم في هذا اليوم في ضل صراع الطبقي مكثفة ، ونحن نقف متضامنين معكم في استمرار في مواجهه هذا الصراع الطبقي الذي يهدد حياة ومعيشة الشعب العامل في بلدينا.
عاشت الحركة العمالية العراقية.
عاش التضامن بين شعوبنا.
نقابة العمل الامريكى ضد الحرب (USLAW)

شارك في الاجتماعات كل من : كاثي بلاك ، جيني بروسكن ، بوب موهيلينكامب ، بروكس سونكت ، نانسي وولفروث ،و مايكل زيوج
المنسق الوطني : مايكل ايزنجر
المنظم الوطني : توم كوكان
المنسق الإداري : نيقوسيا ادريان


From: U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)
Re: May Day - Labor's Day for International Working Class Solidarity

Dear Sisters, Brothers, Comrades in struggle:

We join with you today in our common battle for worker rights and basic dignity for working people everywhere. We salute the bravery and resolute action of the Iraqi working class as it seeks a democratic Iraq, free from all foreign intervention and control, free from repression and with full rights for workers as guaranteed by international labor standards.

We in US Labor Against the War, whose 190 affiliates represent over five million U.S. workers, stand with you and pledge our continuing support for your work and a speedy end to the occupation of Iraq by all foreign troops and governments and restoration of full national sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

We are moved by the fact that all who visit the memorial to the 1886 labor martyrs at Haymarket Square in Chicago, whose massacre led to the declaration of May 1 as an international day of worker solidarity, see a message of greeting and solidarity from the Iraqi labor movement inscribed there in 2007 during an historic visit to the United States by representatives of the Iraqi labor movement.

As we commemorate with you that day of intense class struggle, we stand in solidarity with you in the continuing class conflict that threatens the lives and livelihoods of working people in our two countries.

Long live the Iraqi labor movement.
Long live solidarity between our peoples.
U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)

Co-Convenors: Kathy Black, Gene Bruskin, Bob Muehlenkamp, Brooks Sunkett, Nancy Wohlforth, and Michael Zweig
National Coordinator: Michael Eisenscher
National Organizer: Tom Gogan
Administrative Coordinator: Adrienne Nicosia

Also from the USA, and regarding Bahrain, where union offices were seized and hundreds of trade unionists have been sacked since the Saudi tanks came in to enforce "order", a petition launched today by the AFL-CIO unions in the States calls on the Obama administration to scrap its five-year old trade accord with Bahrain, in response to the crackdown on workers' and democratic rights.


Here in Britain, the campaign Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) which united left-wing Iranians and British supporters issued this at the weekend:

May Day statement in support of workers in Iran

posted on May 1, 2011

Over the last year workers in Iran have struggled on several fronts. The subsidy cuts coupled with the crisis in world capitalism are driving living standards down for the majority of Iranians. Basic food stuffs are rising in price at a phenomenal rate, with bread rising a massive 25% and unsubsidised fuel increasing 7 fold. This is in a country with the third largest oil reserves in the world and the necessary refining abilities to produce cheap and affordable fuel for the entire population. The sanctions regime continues to undermine Iranian industry, robbing many workers of their jobs whilst the elite continue to amass great wealth. We stand with the Iranian working class fighting austerity and call for an end to all sanctions. We also call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners.

There have been important centres of working class resistance where the working class has shown its strength. At the Alborz tyre factory in Iran over 800 workers have held protests outside of the presidential office after 9 months of unpaid wages. There has been a recurring struggle over wages being withheld on a regular basis since privatisation of the factory in 1991.

The state-run Haft Tapeh sugar cane factory workers have faced consistent repression and attempts to crush their union. Ali Nejati, the President of the Union, is in prison and in ill health facing further charges of endangering national security. This continued repression, failure to pay wages and the refusal of the management to allow sacked workers to return have forced workers to down tools and strike several times over the last 12 months.

The strikes in the Petrochemical industry starting on March 19 at the Imam Port complex were contagious and spread across the industry. The initial demands focused on ending the current contract system that offers only precarious work and little security. Thousands of workers have been on strike demanding the introduction of the 2005 directives on hiring.

At the Pars Paper Company over a thousand of workers struck in defence of 60 laid off workers who had been at the company for over 10 years. In Qazvin workers at multiple textile plants have struck against unpaid wages, with some workers going unpaid for over a year. They were also joined by workers from the city’s Ziaran slaughterhouse who have unpaid wage claims going back two years.

At Iran Khodro the overworked yet militant workforce has continued to be a beacon of resistance. In January 4 workers were killed and 13 injured as a worker who was ill and tired after repeated back-to-back shifts collapsed at the wheel of the truck he was driving. Workers immediately demonstrated and called on the CEO to resign. Scuffles broke out between security and revolutionary guards.

The protest movement that erupted in 2009 was savagely put down by the security forces with violence not witnessed since 1999. Many leaders and activists remain in jail, many have fled and gone underground and hundreds have been murdered. Yet flickers of open defiance continue and below the surface the Iranian masses have rejected the theocratic regime. It is only a matter of time until mass action will threaten the existence of the Islamic Republic.

The uprisings in the region are a nightmare vision of the future for the regime as the revolts creep closer to the border. The imperialists have also suffered defeats, with Mubarak, a lynchpin of their domination, falling along with Tunisia’s Ben Ali. Yemen’s Saleh is soon to go. In this chaotic atmosphere the war threat has increased as we must not rule out further military action by the imperialists to demonstrate their power and reassert political domination. As part of threatening war with Iran, Saudi troops have gone in to suppress the people in Bahrain. This is what the intervention in Libya is about: not protecting civilians. The current interventions in the region must end and there must be no attack on Iran.

Hands Off the People of Iran reiterates our commitment to oppose the war threat and sanctions whilst supporting the struggle against the theocratic regime.

http://hopoi.org/

Behind the scenes of Egypt's revolution

Striking Misr Spinning and Weaving Company workers in Mahalla al-Kubra. (Nasser Nouri)

SO after the last two days of yes-he's-going, no-he's-not, Mubarak has finally been sent off to the sunset home for retired dictators - well Sharm el Sheikh, for now. I'd not go into the water if I was him. The Guardian's reporters ChrisMcGreal and Jack Shanker met a lifeguard from the Red Sea resort, Mohammed Abdul Ghedi, in Tahrir Square holding up a sign in English that said: "Mubarak you are nothing, you are heartless, without mind, just youkel, worthless, fuck off."

"This is my first day here and he is gone. Mubarak is a liar. When he promised to leave in three or six months we don't believe him. We only believe him when he is gone," he said. "Now Egyptians are free. All of Egypt is liberated. Now we will choose our leaders and if we don't like them, they will go."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/11/hosni-mubarak-resigns-egypt-cairo

It is not the kind of revolution that some naively expected. The people did not storm the presidential palace. The proletariat has not seized power. For now, the Army is taking charge. As it was in the past. Though this time it is promising to safeguard the transition to democratic government. We shall see.

So what has really changed? "We have changed, the Egyptian people have changed", as a man in Tahrir square said, and onlookers have marvelled. People chased off the riot police who were trained and equipped to batter them. They made clear from the start that they would not be distracted or divided by religion or other irrelevances. They stood up to Mubarak's thugs, whether on charging camels, or dropping masonry from overhead, or firing shots in the dark.

When the army came, some people sat down in front of tanks, and some talked to the soldiers. If the army was not ordered to shoot the people, it could be that the officers considered what might happen if the order was given and the soldiers refused to shoot. Better to leave the tanks parked, and the people holding the square.

It was not just happening in Cairo of course, and not just in Tahrir Square. In neighbourhoods where people took control and chased off looters and provocateurs, and in workplaces where workers met freely and organised, on the docks and canal, and in mills and factories, there was your revolution. It must have been brewing beneath the surface before it took the world's intelligence services and media by surprise.

And it has not gone away.

Here's a report that appeared of all places in the Los Angeles Times.
February 9, 2011

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt-mahallah-20110209,0,4302496.story

Egypt uprising has its roots in a mill town

***** El Mahalla el Kubra has long worried the Mubarak government. And the city’s dogged labor leaders now want more than just better working conditions. *****

By Timothy M. Phelps, Los Angeles Times

February 9, 2011

Reporting from El Mahalla el Kubra, Egypt

The revolt shaking Cairo didn’t start in Cairo. It began in this city of textile mills and choking pollution set amid the cotton and vegetable fields of the Nile Delta.

In a country where labor unrest was long thought to be a bigger threat than the demands of the urbanites now flooding the capital’s Tahrir Square, El Mahalla el Kubra has long been a source of concern among officials. The 32,000 employees at government textile mills and tens of thousands more at smaller private factories are the soul of the Egyptian labor movement.

The movement’s leaders have a long history of resisting harassment and enduring jail.

A nationwide protest against high food prices, unemployment and police torture that failed elsewhere exploded into violence on the streets here in 2008, inspiring a youth movement that eventually launched the effort to oust President Hosni Mubarak.

As reports of labor unrest rippled across the country this week, labor leaders here said improved living standards were no longer enough.

“Our slogans now are not labor union demands,” said Mohamad Murad, a railway worker, union coordinator and leftist politician. “Now we have more general demands for change.”

Until recently, a demonstration of several hundred people was considered large for Egypt. Police ensured that they did not get out of hand. But events in Mahalla on April 6, 2008, became famous throughout the country because of videos posted on YouTube, Facebook and other social media websites.

Tens of thousands of people turned out that day in this city of half a million, where shops sell brightly colored blankets and quilts, bolts of striped cloth, wedding dresses and other products of the city’s mills and factories.

After police opened fire, killing two people, crowds rampaged through the streets, setting fire to buildings, looting shops and throwing bricks at the officers.

Perhaps more significant to the regime, protesters tore down and stomped on a giant portrait of Mubarak in the central square, a rare event in a country where respect for the leader is enforced by a security apparatus with tentacles that reach into every block.

“This uprising was the first to break the barrier of fear all over Egypt,” Murad said. “No one can say that Egypt was the same afterward.”

Out of that grew the April 6 youth movement, which spread reports of what had happened in Mahalla. While more-established opposition groups moved cautiously in the wake of the revolt that brought down Tunisia’s strongman in mid-January, the youth movement urged Cairo residents out onto the streets.

Protests returned to the streets of Mahalla too, and only this week started calming down. Rioting broke out Jan. 28 when police used force against a repeat of the April 2008 demonstration.

Demonstrators stormed and burned the main police station and set fire to police cars, witnesses said.

“On that Friday, the crowds controlled the city,” said Murad, who was interviewed behind a ticket booth as rickety trains rolled through on their way to Alexandria or Cairo, about 65 miles to the south.

The next day, he said, police pulled out of the city altogether, as they did in Cairo and other localities, and the army was sent in to restore calm.

On Monday of this week, tanks were posted in front of banks, where people lined up to withdraw money for the first time since the crisis began. There was only a small uniformed police presence, and the usual checkpoints guarding the entrances to the city were nonexistent.

But “government thugs” were said to be lurking throughout the city, looking for troublemakers and foreigners, so journalists’ interviews had to be conducted furtively.

In a preemptive effort to buy the allegiance of government employees, officials on Monday announced a 15% pay raise, at a cost of nearly $1 billion a year.

For the 25,000 workers at Egypt Spinning & Weaving in Mahalla, that would mean a boost of $24 a month from their current pay of about $160.

Hamdi Hussein, 59, a gray-haired labor leader and avowed communist who has been arrested more times than he can remember, acknowledged that the government has frequently been able to placate workers with timely raises or other concessions, or has kept them quiet by playing on their fears of privatization.

A strike called Tuesday at Egyptian Spinning & Weaving to show solidarity with the large demonstration in Tahrir Square drew only about 1,500 workers. But elsewhere in the country, there were numerous reports of strikes. About 3,000 Suez Canal workers were reported to have gone on strike, and hundreds of workers at the government telephone company demonstrated for higher pay in Cairo and Suez.

About 2,000 workers went on strike at a pharmaceutical company in the Nile Delta and 1,300 walked off the job at a steel company in Suez, where hundreds of unemployed young people also picketed a petroleum company demanding jobs. French cement giant Lafarge in Suez was also reported to have been hit by a strike.

Labor leaders here such as Hussein, who runs a labor training and education center, say they are frustrated that they have no voice in the negotiations in Cairo. So far, the government has chosen which groups it wants to talk with.

But Hussein said that may change with the formation here of what is intended to be a nationwide “committee to protect the revolution.” He described it as an attempt to make sure the interests of the poor are represented in any changes and also to target corrupt members of the ruling party, especially government-sponsored union leaders.

Another role, he said, would be to counter the Muslim Brotherhood, a traditional enemy of the left but the largest single voice in the opposition.

But the goals of the labor movement have been transformed by the sweeping nature of the current protests, Murad said. Labor wants much more than higher wages and better working conditions, he said.

“And we want Mubarak to leave.”

timothy.phelps@latimes.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's salute the heroism of the Egyptian masses. Let's salute also the maturity and wisdom they have shown.

Hopefully their revolution will not be usurped or stolen from them, as has happened elsewhere.

And we must also hope that the US-funded and equipped army, with its new authority, is not turned against the workers, as happened in 1952, when troops fired on striking textile workers at the Kafr al Dawar mills near Alexandria, and the "ringleaders", regarded as Marxists, were executed.

But whatever happens, things have changed in Egypt and the Middle East, and my feeling is that they are never going to be the same. A lot of people here are taking inspiration from the Egyptian people's struggle, and I've seen a few offering their ideas as to what should happen. I think we need to learn more about the workers' struggle, and we can learn from it. We are marching together.

Dream of Democracy, Nightmare for Oppressors

THE courageous huge demonstrations that seem to have united the Egyptian people against Hosni Mubrak and his thugs are not abating, and behind them the uprising has depth, in the people taking responsibility for their neighborhoods, and the trade unionists organising at work.

Whatever happens, and whether or not the Western powers can cook up something, or the revolution is temporarily diverted or usurped, the geni is out of the bottle. People have tasted their own power, and things can not be easily restored to as they were.

The same discontents, and the same dreams of democracy and justice, are spreading from Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, across the Arab world from Mauretania in the west to Oman in the East, though naturally the form and degree of protest varies, as does the political awareness.

Needless to say, not everybody in the Middle East is happy about what is happening. Israel's supporters in the West are fond of repeating that it is "the only democracy in the Middle East", and leaving aside that it maintains what must be the longest running military occupation in the world. They even used to pretend that it was only surrounding dictatorial regimes that made their people oppose the Zionist state among them. But that's an old one.

Making clear democracy is not for export to lesser breeds, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has cautioned his US backers not to be hasty in letting the Egyptian people free to hold democratic elections.

"If extremist forces are allowed to exploit democratic processes to come to power to advance anti-democratic goals - as has happened in Iran and elsewhere - the outcome will be bad for peace and bad for democracy," Netanyahu declared.

Well, he should know. ...He is heading the most extreme right-wing government Israel has ever had, with ministers who openly call for ethnic cleansing, and say they can ignore what the rest of the world thinks. Seeing their own rights threatened with restrictions and the methods of Occupation, Israeli peace campaigners like Uri Avnery have warned of the danger of fascism.

Suddenly feeling the seismic tremors from Egypt, Israeli leaders are not their usual confident selves. They are remembering they had peace with Egypt. Labour's Binyamin Fuad Ben-Eliezer, a military man who had to deny accusations of shooting Egyptian prisoners in the 1967 war, has been speaking about his good friend Hosni Mubarak. Less sentimentally, others know that a popular Egyptian government is not likely to be one that helps maintain the siege of Gaza.

According to Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy, "Israel is now hunkering down, frightened of what the future will bring. What if the new government in Egypt revokes the peace treaty? Quick to the draw, as usual, spreading the typical fear of real and imagined dangers, Israel's prime minister has forbidden his cabinet ministers from speaking on the subject - and they are even obeying him. Warning, danger: the peace is about to be torn up.
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=23117&CategoryId=5

There have been small demonstrations within Israel in support of the risings in Tunisia and Egypt, Palestinians and Israeli Arab citizens demonstrating outside the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv. Avnery and others have warned that if Israel wishes to save its peace with Egypt it had better make peace with the Palestinians, now.

"Only one who lost all basic human feeling can oppose the aspiration of young Egyptians to live in a democracy", writes Adam Keller in a statement from Gush Shalom. "To maintain and strengthen the peace with Egypt, we must end the occupation and make peace with the Palestinians".

"Only one who has lost all basic human feeling can oppose the aspiration of masses of young Egyptians, mostly secular, to live in a democracy and enjoy the basic rights which citizens of Israel take for granted - the right to freely express their opinions, to organize politically as they please and to freely elect their government and parliament. It is in the supreme interest of the State of Israel that in its neighboring countries a real democracy will prevail, a democracy growing from below out of the dreams and aspirations and determined struggle by thousands and millions of people".
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1296485687

But it is safe to say that Adam Keller has no illusions in the present Israeli government's thinking like that.

Not that Netanyahu and his government are the only ones afraid.

More detentions in Ramallah at rally for Egypt
Published Wednesday 02/02/2011 (updated) 04/02/2011 12:40

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Palestinian Authority police beat back protesters with clubs and detained at least two at what witnesses described as a spontaneous rally and show of support for the Egyptian people as chaos hit Cairo streets.

"I was sick and tired of sitting at home and doing nothing," one Ramallah resident said, explaining that she had seen on the social networking site Facebook that friends were attending a peaceful protest at 9 p.m. in the city center.

When she arrived shortly after nine, she said one protester was already being dragged away. "There were only 30 people there at the start," she said, adding that after the arrests more gathered.

Palestinian police officials in Ramallah could not be reached for comment by phone, but told Ma'an earlier that officers would be "ready for any problems" that erupted.

Protesters said the event had been peaceful until police broke out batons and started pushing women at the front of the group back and away from the city center.

"Our rally was simply in support of Egypt," one protester told Ma'an by phone, "we said nothing against the PA, we were not even out in the street."

Earlier in the day, dozens of Fatah supporters had gathered in the same spot protesting in support of Mubarak. Protesters were said to have carried signs accusing Egyptian opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei of being a CIA agent, according to a report in Israel's The Jerusalem Post.

The paper cited sources in Ramallah who said the demonstration was initiated by the PA leadership.

Turnout at the protest was low and there were no reports of arrests.

On Sunday, PA security forces shut down a demonstration in front of the Egyptian embassy in Ramallah, after calling in one of the organizers for questioning multiple times a day earlier, organizers of the rally said.

Forces pushed demonstrators and a man who identified himself as a police commander said the demonstrators were in a "security area" and would have to disperse, they said.

============

For the Palestine Authority the upsurge in Egypt comes along with the widespread anger fanned by the recent Palestine Papers leak, exposing how far US-backed President Abbas and his crew were prepared to go to appease Israeli occupation and wage aggression against their own people. But their opponents in Hamas, notwithstanding their link to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, don't seem sure how to respond to developments.

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Police in the Gaza Strip shut down a demonstration Monday in support of the uprising in Egypt.

Activists said six women and two men were arrested at a park in Gaza City, where a few dozen demonstrators had gathered. The women were released after a few hours. It was not immediately clear when the men were freed because they were separated, one of the protesters said.

Asmaa Al-Ghoul, a Gaza-based journalist and writer, was among those detained.
"Hamas police arrested me with group of demonstrators in Gaza in solidarity with Egyptian people," she wrote on Twitter. "Women's police beat me violently" and detained other young women.

They were standing in solidarity with the Egyptian uprising, Al-Ghoul added.
Human Rights Watch slammed Gaza's Hamas rulers for breaking up the rally.
"The Hamas authorities should stop arbitrarily interfering with peaceful demonstrations about Egypt or anything else," said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's Middle East director, in a statement.

"Police committing unlawful arrests and abusing demonstrators should be held to account," she said.


Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and activist, said neither authority tolerated protests. "Fatah and Hamas agree on so little; at the core of that little common denominator lies repression of dissent and suppression of freedoms," Barghouti said Monday in an email.

=====================================

Things seem to have eased in Gaza, whether because of the strength of feeling or a UN human rights observer's impending visit.

Hundreds in Gaza rally in solidarity with Egypt
Published Thursday 03/02/2011 (updated) 04/02/2011 21:28

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip rallied Thursday in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt. Marchers carried banners reading "People want the regime out" and "Down with Hosni Mubarak".

A student group distributed a statement calling on the UN to take action against the regime. "The massacre being carried out against protesters in Tahrir square warrants a decisive stance," the statement said. It called on the international community to "respond immediately" to the crisis.

Police in Gaza broke up a smaller rally this week as did the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch called on the Palestinian Authority to end violence against demonstrators, the latest instance being Wednesday evening in Ramallah. "The Palestinian Authority should immediately make clear that its ‘state-building’ training of security forces does not include beating peaceful demonstrators," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Mideast chief.

Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who has lived in both Gaza and Ramallah to report sympathetically on people's lives and struggles, noted that "The Palestinian leadership has been careful not to support the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and has banned demonstrations in solidarity with the rebelling peoples. Palestinian television has virtually ignored the events in Egypt".

She spole with Dr. Mamdouh al-Aker, a 68-year-old urologist, who was a member of the Palestinian-Jordanian delegation at the Washington-Madrid talks. He treats patients in Ramallah and Jerusalem's Augusta Victoria Hospital. For the past seven years, he has been the general commissioner of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, an organization formed by a decree by Yasser Arafat in 1993. The commission seeks to guarantee that the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization meet the requirements for safeguarding human rights.

How is that so many people like yourself are happy about the developments in Egypt [before the bloody clashes erupted], yet there is no public expression of support in West Bank cities?

[On Tuesday] afternoon I returned from a meeting on another matter with [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas. Appalled, I told him about a young man who initiated on Facebook a solidarity vigil for the Egyptian people. He was detained and interrogated the evening before the demonstration. Abbas expressed dissatisfaction and promised that the young man would be released immediately. I didn't know that he had already been freed.

Demonstrators who went to the Egyptian consulate in Ramallah and were dispersed told me that security personnel in civilian clothes monitored them, threateningly. Two weeks ago, other young people organized a similar solidarity event for Tunisia. They told me they intended to demonstrate even though they had been told this was forbidden. In both cases, young people said they were thankful to the two peoples for their support of the Palestinian cause.

I was impressed by their enthusiasm. But most people don't demonstrate because they know it is not welcomed. We have a pattern of restricting the freedom of demonstration and assembly. Demonstrations of support for our own people, during the attack on Gaza and against the occupation, were suppressed.

What is that Palestinian Authority afraid of when it bans solidarity demonstrations?

There are two reasons. Due to the close relations with the Mubarak regime, the leadership is perplexed by expressions of support for the opponents of a friend. The second reason - when a regime is insufficiently democratic, it fears that popular demonstrations might spin out of control.

There are reasons to suppose that many of the factors that drove people to protest in Tunisia and Egypt are in play here.

There is one huge difference: Here we live under Israeli occupation. We have to focus on the main goal of ending the occupation. And that's the problem: For years we have behaved as though we have turned into a subcontractor of the occupation, so we have to return and make the occupation pay a price. Not necessarily by using arms, and definitely not by harming civilians.

People dare in several places to confront the Israeli army, but not the Palestinian police.

Yes. But that won't continue indefinitely. The main lesson to be drawn from the Al Jazeera documents is that Israel is not ripe for a fair political agreement. So we should concentrate on our internal situation, put our home in order, enhance our steadfastness. A storm of change is soon to happen, and if we fail to change our path, we will be swept up by it.

http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=23118&CategoryId=5

Dr. al Aker, who has been quoted as saying the Palestinian Authority was becoming a police state even though it was not a state, complains of arbitrary arrests and torture of detainees, of the security and intelligence apparatus screening people for jobs, and security bodies ignoring the courts.

And in the Gaza Strip?

"It's a mirror image", he says, going on to refer to the PA's building an army under supervision of the occupier, and to the size of the security apparatus. "Our ratio between security men and civilians is one of the highest in the world. Why?"

Isn't it strange, Amira Hass asked, that the leaders of an occupied people are not supporting a popular uprising?

"That's the result and the price of being dragged to the status of a regime, before liberation, while giving up on the agenda of a national liberation movement. As a regime, they must identify with regimes.

Is the situation reversible? Can the PLO return from its status as a virtual regime to a national liberation movement?

"The same people? No. But there is a new a spirit. The Palestinian Authority's role has to change. The leadership core must return to the PLO, while the PA should remain with powers as a large municipality. Nothing more. The PLO, which has lost its structure, must be rebuilt.

"I can feel the seeds of change. There are demonstrations in the villages, the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel], the boycott on settlement products, defying the PA on the Goldstone report. What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt will expedite the process of change, revitalize the Palestinian cause and bring it back to where it belongs - not to a government or a "state," but as a movement of national liberation."

http://www.miftah.org

"You will never leave Gaza"

AS if Israeli piracy and kidnapping of aid workers was not enough, Egyptian authorities helping maintain the siege of Gaza are not only holding up relief supplies and harassing international volunteers trying to get into the Strip, but have given a new twist to their dirty game, by stopping two people leaving, according to a message received today.

The message, posted in among other places the Just Peace UK group on Yahoo says:

Action alert for Jenny and Natalie – “You will never leave Gaza”

Jenny and Natalie, both British passport holders, and both long term human
rights workers in the Gaza strip, are being prevented from leaving Gaza via the
Rafah Crossing. Please take action on their behalf.

Jenny Linnell is a co-founder of the ISM Rafah group, and an original crew
member of one of the "Free Gaza" boats. For the last year she has been
accompanying Palestinians and documenting events in the Gaza strip, both before,
during and after the war. You can see footage of her work with fishermen and
farmers under fire at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDD8ANFgwtA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTUYivihoTE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ffishingu...

Natalie, from Lebanon (but with a British passport) also entered Gaza via one
of the Free Gaza boats and has been working as part of the International
Solidarity movement within Gaza since November 2008. You can see her work at
http://gaza08.blogspot.com/


Since the end of May Jenny has been trying to leave and return home via the
border crossing at Rafah into Egypt. She keeps getting turned away, most
recently under pretty extreme circumstances, as outlined below. Natalie also
needs to leave Gaza in order to take up her place at a British University. The
Egyptian Border Guards told both women that they were being refused exit because
of their work with the Free Gaza boats. They were told that they would 'never be
let out'.


Natalie has written an account of their treatment, and their inhuman treatment
of so many Palestinians at the Rafah crossing, in ‘The Gates of Hell’

http://gaza08.blogspot.com/
(June 30th post)


For the sake of both women and other peace workers it is vital that this
treatment is not allowed to continue unchallenged. Please help us get them back
by ringing the British Foreign office and the Egyptian Embassy in London.



The Egyptian Embassy in London
phone 020 7499 3304/2401
Fax: +44 (0)20 7491 1542
The British Foreign Office
Middle East Desk
Tel: +44 (0)20 70088784
Email: jill.bayl...@... and trish.wi...@...



Or the Consular team: phone the Foreign office on +44 (0)2070081500 and ask to
be put through to the Consular Assistance team, ( who are there to assist
British travellers when abroad).



If you get a chance to mail me to let me know when you rang, and how it went, it
would be great for helping us keep tabs on how effectively the mobilising going.
Many many thanks on behalf of Jenny, Natalie and their friends and family.


Liz Snook. lizthesnook at gmail.com.
(UK support team for Jenny and Natalie)

Sample letter:

Dear sir/ madam

I am concerned about the continued refusal at the Egyptian Border with Gaza to
let British citizens Jenny Linnell and Natalie Abou Chakra leave Gaza for return
via Egypt to the UK. In the past months they have been engaged in humanitarian
work in Gaza and it is important that as British Citizens they must be given
whatever legal protection and entitlement is necessary for their safe return to
the UK.

They had been assured that their documentation was in order and yet on the 28th
of June it was deemed to be inadequate despite assurances made to the contrary.
There appears to be a missing link in the coordination between the MFA and the
Egyptian Intelligence Services, or between these offices and the officials
working in the crossing, resulting in Ms Linnell and Ms Abou Chakras continued
refused entry into Egypt.

As a matter of urgency, it is essential that a greater level of assurance is
acquired from the MFA that this situation does not arise again, either through
further coordination or documentation, or by the physical presence of a
representatives to ensure the border guards at the Egyptian crossing implement
what appears to have been agreed by more senior Egyptian officials.

The women have every reason to believe that simple reiterations of documentation
and assurances alone will not be sufficient. They have put their faith in these
mechanisms for over a month now, with no effect. They first approached the
British Embassy in Cairo on the 31st of May. On the 9th of June they were told
that they had the required coordination and paperwork from the MFA, this was
faxed through to the British Embassy in Cairo. They took a copy of this fax to
the Crossing when they attempted to pass. They had been told that it was
acceptable for British nationals to leave before the date of the official
opening of the Crossing so they attempted to cross on the 10th of June. After
several hours and several trips backwards and forwards by the by the Palestinian
official responsible for coordination they were told that the Egyptian
Intelligence office at the Crossing had informed him that we were not allowed to
go through at that time and said things would work out once the Crossing opened. Despite several calls to Ms. Hayek from the MFA, they were refused entry.

On Saturday 27th June, 2009, the first day of the officially announced three-day
opening of the Rafah Crossing, 4 British citizens including Ms Linnell and Ms
Abou Chakra passed through six phases of checkpoints, before finally being
allowed onto a bus waiting before the gates to the Egyptian side of the
Crossing. This meant that they were still on the Palestinian side, in a bus in a
queue of around seven buses and dozens of ambulances, stranded waiting for the
Egyptians to open the entry gate to the Egyptian terminal. At 7.30pm local time,
the Egyptians called the Palestinians to return back. The Egyptians then allowed
some ambulances through, although 20 ambulances and the buses were left stranded
again until 11pm, when all were returned back to Gaza.
The following day, Sunday 28th June, the four British nationals headed to the
crossing in the early morning. At 2pm they were asked to get on a bus heading to
the Egyptian gate. At 3pm, the four British nationals had gained entry to the
Egyptian terminal. At 7.30pm, the other two British nationals were allowed into
Egypt, however Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra were told their passports were
being checked and were then questioned by the border officials regarding the
purpose of their stay in Gaza, their arrival, and marital status. An hour later,
Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra's names were called as part of the list of those
to be “returned back” to Gaza. The afore-mentioned protested against this,
thinking that there must have been a misunderstanding, reiterated that they had
"tanseeq", or coordination from the MFA based on the request of the British
Embassy and repeatedly showed the document from the MFA.

They were told by a uniformed officer that the faxed document was in fact a
letter from the British Embassy and what they actually needed was a letter from
the Egyptian Government, despite the fact that the document was written on
letter-headed notepaper from the MFA emblazoned with a governmental emblem and
that it bore a governmental stamp below the text. They were also told that they
weren't being allowed to pass because the British Embassy hadn't approved of
their departure from Gaza.

The officers and Intelligence personnel threw the faxed document on the ground.
Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra attempted to refuse to leave the Crossing,
demanding to know why the permission they had previously been granted was not
now being honoured. No answer was given although an Intelligence officer there,
Mr. Saeid, insisted that they needed “tassdeeq” which constitutes a call by the
MFA to their office at the Crossing. He said the document from the MFA meant
nothing. Ms. Dina Hayek from the MFA had previously explained to Ms. Linnell
that it would have been impossible for her to have sent the fax to the British
Embassy without the approval of the Intelligence Services.

After approaching other Intelligence officers, they were denied entry to the
Government Security office that they'd been recommended. At around twelve
midnight, when one of the women was speaking to the media about the situation at
the Crossing, Mr. Saeid approached her saying “I will make sure you will not
leave Gaza,” and assured her “We are untouchable” (literally, meen hayhasibna).
During these hours, Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra were speaking on the
telephone with family members who contacted the British Embassy in Cairo. “We
are working on it,” was a repetitive answer.. Hours later, they received a
'phone call from Caroline, the Duty Officer at the Embassy saying, “I've seen
this happen before,” “Wait till tomorrow when we can sort things out,” and “You
have everything you need to cross, the problem is from them [Egyptian
Intelligence Services].”

The two British women informed the Embassy that they would remain in the
crossing until an explanation was given as to why they had been denied entry
based on unjustifiable and potentially false grounds. The Egyptian officials at
the border asked how they entered Gaza, and on explaining that they arrived on
the Free Gaza Movement Boats they were told, “So, you don’t need us to answer.
You already know why you’re not being allowed out.”

This would seem to suggest that they were detained as a form of unofficial
punishment for their humanitarian work in Gaza. This is extremely alarming.
Officers then forcibly removed them from the departure hall to where there was a
bus waiting outside. Moments later, Ms. Abou Chakra was also assaulted and lost
sight of Ms. Linnell. Officers again threatened Ms. Abou Chakra with her
continued detention in Gaza saying saying “We will make sure you will never get
out,” and, “You are lucky you are not in Jordan. Our boots would be in your
mouths by now.”

The treatment Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra were subjected to was abusive and
unnecessary. The Egyptian authorities at the Crossing have failed to acknowledge
their right of passage. As is evident from the verbal exchange mentioned above,
this is a ...

As is evident from the verbal exchange mentioned above, this is a direct
challenge from the Egyptian authorities to the democratic rights of any person
who has been working aiding the desperate situation in Gaza.

I would be grateful if you would fully investigate this matter further and urge
you to act on this information to secure an efficient and safe passage from Gaza
for these two humanitarian workers, which they have so far been unjustly denied.
I would appreciate you keeping me informed of the results of your enquiries.
--Yours sincerely