Gaza Youth Break Out (GYBO)
Submitted by Android on Thu, 2010-12-30 16:48
Hi,
A Palestinian youth group ('Gaza Youth Break Out') have published a 'Manifesto for Change', which is quite interesting:
"GAZAN YOUTH’S MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE
Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom. We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world."
Anyway, just posing it to see what ICT comrades make of it.
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Thanks for posting this
Thanks for posting this Ronan. It deserves wider publicity. These courageous youngsters not only demonstrate that "workers have no country" but they also give the lie to all those who argue we should line up with the "Palestinians" in their fight against oppression before we fight for class positions. The fight for class emancipation for the Palestinian working class encompasses the fight against oppression not vice versa.
In the states all we see is
In the states all we see is support for Israel from the bourgeois right and center and slogans like "we are all Hamas and Hezbollah" from the bourgeois left. I wish the GYBO the best in the struggles they face and success in their further political development.
(No subject)
I've looked further into this group since I posted last. To be honest, I was a bit naive and over-enthusiastic when I first read this statement and more caution was warranted considering what I now know. Just to update the thread...
They've been descended upon by the international press and it seems they going to tricks for the do-goodery fo the human rights groups. Ajornalist from the Observer talked to them.
More importantly though, a post ('don't distort our speech') has appeared on their blog who clarifies where they are coming from. They are coming at their situation from the point of view of liberal pacifism ('call for PEACEFUL ACTION;') and Palestinian nationalism ('we have ONE enemy which is the Zionist Occupier', what we want is UNITY, and NO MORE DIVISION,).
All this put quite a different colouration on the statement, which I admit I was taken in by. Even having said all that, I still think if it is possible to engage with those involved it would be done, since the sentiments they express are not really that suprising given the situation they've emerged from and weakness of the working class.
Sorry about misleading people, should have investigated it more thoroughly before posting.
I don’t think you should
I don't think you should regret posting this since it is clear that the road to proletarian emancipation is along one and we will be faced with all kinds of confused expressions on the way. Obviously the statement about the one enemy being the "Zionist occupier" means that all the "Fucks" don't add up to a positive anti-imperialist vision but given the context these young people are coming from it might be too much to expect to start with. And is this stament included to avoid getting gunned down by Hamas? I agree with you that we should engage with them and don't condemn them. I don't know what others think on this.
I did check out some of the references to them after you posted. Obviously the global liberal press are going to take up their pacifist vision and use it as propaganda for the "peace process" (which does not exist) and it is also easy to see that their frustration at being inthe prison camp of Gaza and not able to lead a fuller life is the chief motivation for their statement. And why not? Capitalism in different ways and different forms is stifling the life out of millions of people around the planet. As i Algeria and Tunisia today revolt begins when people can no longer go on livivng in the same way. The current Tunisian strikes and resistance started when the police stopped an unemployed graduate selling fruit on the streets so he poured petrol over himself and burned to death. This is a sign of the desperation people are facing and 2011 promises only worsening living standards and conditions for all.
P.S.
Spamfilter knocked this reply out 5 times!
ICC article on GYBO: A
ICC article on GYBO:
A Radical Manifesto from Gaza?
A recent manifesto published in Gaza by a group of eight students has captured the attention of the Western media and gone viral on the internet. Gaza Youth's Manifesto for Change was described as “an incendiary document” by the UK Observer newspaper. Their Facebook page had attracted 5,000,0000 friends before Facebook stopped them from posting on it, and their manifesto has been translated into over twenty languages.
The manifesto itself starts “Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!”, and proceeds to denounce the terrorism of the Israeli state, and the dictatorial rule of HAMAS in Gaza. Of course, these are sentiments that all internationalist communists can relate to, and given the situation in Palestine today, the anger which flows from the words of the manifesto is something that can only arouse feelings of solidarity, and respect on a personal level for the bravery of these young people who are obviously putting themselves at risk by these actions.Nevertheless, when looking more deeply at the document, and surrounding discussions, it seems to us that despite the rejection of HAMAS and Fatah, it is still firmly on the ground of Palestinian nationalism, nor does it even hint at the idea that the only solution to the situation in the Middle east lies in the hands of the working class.For us this is unsurprising. Over sixty years after the foundation of the state of Israel on ethnic cleansing, the brutality used by Israel in the occupied territories since 1967 and after seven wars, the Palestinian working class is virtually completely tied to the ideology of nationalism. For those in Gaza and on the West Bank, as well as those in the refugee camps of Lebanon, and scattered across the world, the Palestinian national movement seems to offer dignity, and hope for a better future.
Of course these hopes are illusory. Today the goal of a Palestinian state seems further away than ever. Fatah now plays its role as Israel’s policeman on the West Bank, even, according to Wikileaks urging the Israelis to attack HAMAS in Gaza; Gaza itself has been turned into the biggest prison camp in the world, and HAMAS, have taken on the role of the prison guards. This is what GYBO rails against when they talk of being ‘sick of being beaten by HAMAS.GYBO still places its hopes in the Palestinian national movement though. They write “regarding Israel, it[HAMAS]’s just as it should be and any group fighting Israel has our full support”, and that “we have ONE enemy which is the Zionist Occupier. Hopefully this call will shake our political leaders, wake them up and remind them that they are responsible of us! Hopefully they will realize that what we want is UNITY, and NO MORE DIVISION,”. This is hardly surprising. When looking from the prison that is Gaza, it must seem that there is very little alternative.The left (ie the left wing of capitalism) often talks about the Palestinian working class being undefeated. For us the working class in Palestine is the most defeated in the region, and is barely capable of asserting its own interests. Of course that doesn’t mean that it is non-existent, or that it doesn’t struggle at all. However, even when it does manage to struggle such as in the teachers’ strike of August 2006, which was joined by many other public sector workers who hadn’t been paid their wages for seven months, the demonstrations ended up turning into gun battles between the rival Palestinian factions. Incidentally HAMAS’ attitude to these strikes was very clear. They firmly denounced them, and called for workers to break the strike, which they said had “no relation to national interests”. This is, of course, a line heard by workers all over the world.Unlike the Trotskyists, Maoists and others we don’t cheer on the war against Israel from afar. We don’t think that it offers any future for the working class in Palestine except getting them murdered in defence of HAMAS’, or Fatah’s ‘national interests’. For us, we don’t see that there is a solution to the problems within either Palestine or Israel. It is not, for us, a question of endless arguments about whether the Palestinians should be fighting for a one state, or two state solution. The answer lies somewhere else completely.
At the moment there is much talk in the Arabic media of a new Intifada in Tunisia, and not only in Tunisia alone as it seems to be spreading across the border into Algeria. Here we have working class people fighting not for the interests of the nation, but for their own class interests. For us this offers a glimpse of where the solution to the Palestinian question lies, in workers uniting across international boundaries to fight for their own interests, not ‘national interests’. These struggles go beyond just the Arab world and are exactly the same struggles against austerity and job cuts faced by workers everywhere.
DevrimSorry, I sort of messed up
Sorry, I sort of messed up the formatting on that. Could somebody please edit it so I don't look a loony who writes in bold letters and doesn't know what paragraphs are.
Thanks,
Devrim
Thank you. Devrim
Thank you.
Devrim
Thanks for that. I hope
Thanks for that. I hope the gremlins in the post were sorted out but at least it does not have the myriad of typos my last contained!
You have widened the issue with your post into the general issue of how we deal with the Palestinian question and we have absolutely no disagreements on this. I quote below from our last statement on Gaza to underline this
"Contrary to what many on the left are saying this is not a struggle for national self-determination on either side. Israel could not survive a single week without the massive US arms shipments it receives, whilst Hamas is financed by Syria and Iran. These two states have their own agendas for domination in the area. Some argue that Hamas is the lesser evil, in that it is the weaker of the protagonists, and therefore whatever the reactionary political nature of its Islamic fundamentalism it should be supported. This means abandoning the Palestinian workers whose interests are by no means the same as Hamas, as the strikes by like the public sector workers recently showed. Equally we condemn the utter ruthlessness and barbarism of the Israeli state but support the Israeli workers who also oppose this war, and have struck against their own state. Such actions are the beginning of what we call “revolutionary defeatism” which calls not just for peace but for its achievement through the overthrow of the regimes on both sides. This is what workers did at the end of the First World War to finish that imperialist slaughter. This is what we will have to do again to save the planet from the descent into capitalist barbarism which has been made even more certain by the global economic crisis.
Many will argue that in current terms this is utopian but after 60 years of imperialist struggle over Palestine-Israel what other solutions do the capitalists have to offer? Some argue that once the Palestinians have “a land of their own” then the conflict will end. But what kind of two state solution is this when Israel will control all the water and other natural resources? Having one state in the territory is even less likely as both the mullahs and the rabbis want an exclusive and religious state. The only solution is a “no state” solution i.e. a totally different world in which private property is abolished along with standing armies and national frontiers. As Marx said “workers have no country” but we do “have a world to win”. Increasingly we have a world to save and only the global working class united beyond trades, religious, ethnic and national boundaries can do it. Now that is worth fighting for."
On one thing the ICC document refers to the Tunisian "intifada" and we did the same (in a deliberately ironic way as it just means "uprising") the first time we mentioned it but most of our comrades now think that this term has definite associations (with the nationalist movement in Palestine) so we have decided not to use it in any other context. A small point perhaps but have you given it any thought?
“On one thing the ICC
"On one thing the ICC document refers to the Tunisian “intifada” and we did the same (in a deliberately ironic way as it just means “uprising”) the first time we mentioned it but most of our comrades now think that this term has definite associations (with the nationalist movement in Palestine) so we have decided not to use it in any other context. A small point perhaps but have you given it any thought?"
It is used in the phrase, "there is much talk in the Arabic media of a new Intifada in Tunisia", which there certainly is. I don't think that in Arabic it has any direct associations with the Palestinian movement. I can even remember reading an article in a Lebanese newspaper talking about the 'poll Tax intifada'. Perhaps it does have these associations in the West though and should be avoided.
Devrim