from arab spring to israeli summer

Adam Ford writes on the wave of protest sweeping across Israel, where hundreds of thousands of people are standing up to high rents and low wages

In years to come, the entry of the Israeli working class into independent action may well be seen as a pivotal moment in world history. While the ‘Arab Spring‘ has seen governments toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, another key US ally now finds itself confronted by its masses – and the event raises the objective possibility of class alliances stretching across Egypt, into Israel, and even into what remains of Palestine.

Young people are demanding affordable housing

Rent protests began two weeks ago, in response to an average 27% rise in rents over the last three years – far in excess of wage rises. Protest camps have been erected throughout the country – from the salubrious Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard to cheaper but just as unaffordable areas in Jerusalem and at least twenty-five towns.

what is NATO doing in libya?

Joe Thorne looks at the evidence, and draws some conclusions

The calamity of a people is beneficial to others 

Libyan Proverb [1]

The NATO powers are not intervening in Syria or Bahrain, where pro-democracy movements are also subject to brutal suppression.  They did not intervene in Gaza during Cast Lead, or in Tamil Eelam during the offensive which wiped out thousands of Tamils.  While millions of dollars are spent on cruise missiles and aerial bombing, UNICEF, the same powers in their guise as protectors of children, say they are worried that because of insufficient resources to deal with famine “65,000 children in Kenya alone are at acute risk of dying.”  Indeed, “Britain trained and equipped some of the Libyan special forces who inflicted such horrors on cities like Misrata. Western states continue to train Saudi forces, and this may well have much the same effect.”

We don’t need to labour the point: the NATO powers are not ‘humanitarians’, their motives are not ‘humanitarian’, and what they do has nothing to do with the defence of human life.  Could it be the case that their malign motives are a given, but the objective outcome of their policy may nonetheless be welcome?  It was not the case in Kosovo or Iraq.  The point of reminding ourselves of NATO’s hypocrisy is not just that they are hypocrites: it is to understand how the specific, very much non-humanitarian, objectives of the NATO powers will play out in their actual policy in the coming weeks, months, and years.