Letter from Tel Aviv
The Gaza genocide is continuing more vigorously than before. IOF (the Israeli Occupation Force) has been regularly bombing Gaza. The relentless winter rains, hunger, cold, and the lack of the most basic healthcare are killing more than during the active war in Gaza. At the same time, fascist settler violence in the West Bank has increased in intensity and brutality.
Our comrades have been reading and using Red Flag for both organizing and agitating. We have a bigger base of readers, and we are trying to see who we can recruit more urgently. A close friend of ICWP has come forward in our efforts to get to know Arab and Palestinian workers.
Micah is in his mid-40s. Micah and his wife, Sarah, have no children, so they can spend lots of time after work in a group called B’Tselem. This organization documents violence in the West Bank. It has about two hundred Palestinian volunteers and dozens of Arab Israelis and Jewish Israeli citizens.
Micah and Sarah have gotten to know some people in B’Tselem who read Red Flag. One is a photographer who gets footage of olive pickers. The photographer recently documented a physical attack on the olive pickers. Pickers had to leave their olives behind so they could escape violence.
The photographer said that immediately after the attack, Arab Israeli gang members stole the olives. The Zionist settlers, the Palestinian Authorities, the IOF, and the Arab Israeli gang members work together to assault, steal, and confiscate the properties of Palestinian farmers and workers.
B’Tselem is a liberal organization that advocates ‘liberty, justice, and equality’. However, some believe that we need to transform this brutal capitalist society. The photographer friend is one of them. He sees that just documenting violence and exposing the settlers is not going to change the very foundation of Zionism and capitalism. We are spending quality time with him, and he is open to an honest struggle with Red Flag.
Our outlook is to establish Red Flag readers in the West Bank. We are facing some obstacles. First, Micah and Sarah read Red Flag regularly, but they have not yet joined our party. The other practical difficulty is that, unlike Gaza, where the English literacy rate is very high, in the West Bank, workers read only Arabic.
We believe we can resolve these contradictions by involving more comrades who see communism is the only solution. There are many bilingual Arabic/Hebrew translators in Tel Aviv. We have to expand our work. More comrades joining ICWP will be a tremendous victory for our class.
—ICWP collective
Zionism is a Fascist Imperialist Creation here