Middle East

Last week the workers of Iran Khodro were successful with their glorious strike which started in the assembly hall and continued in the shuttle (body) hall and ended with the press hall strike. The workers’ immediate demands were payment of their unpaid wages (productivity and last year’s production record bonuses) and to switch workers on temporary contracts to contracts of the Iran Khodro Company itself.

We received these short news items on significant labour struggles in Iraq in the oil industry in Basra, and a gathering of the Electricity workers in Nasiriyah. We publish them for the interest of our readers. They show that the Iraqi labour movement is beginning to recover from the devastation of recent years and achieving important victories.

We received this small news item from the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, which highlights how so-called "anti-terror" laws are used in Iraq to harass trade union activists, whose only crime is to defend the interests of Iraqi workers.

At 5pm on May 1 2009 workers and their families gathered in Sanandaj's Amiriyeh Park to commemorate International Labour Day. The May Day celebration was disrupted after 15 minutes when police and plain-clothes security officers attacked those gathered, beating them and arresting 12 people.

Recently there was an attempt to organise a so-called Facebook strike in Egypt. The attempt failed abysmally as it had no connection to the real movement of the working class, such as what we witnessed last year. There is no alternative to real life organisation on the ground, at the factory gates, in the working class neighbourhoods.

Since Nir Barkat was elected mayor of Jerusalem last November, a sharp increase has been noted in the destruction of homes in East Jerusalem. He has ordered the destruction of 34 homes and plans to demolish 90 more. The international labour movement must condemn these barbaric acts.

We have received this appeal from workers in Iraq against the victimisation of an Iraqi trade unionist in the oil industry. Please send message of protest to the Iraqi authorities and copies to the address provided here in the appeal.

The student leader, Sefi Samueloff has written to us to inform us that Samieh Jabbarin and Ibrahim Machajne have been put under house arrest, as they await trial, for which there is no date. He also thanks Marxist.com for publishing the appeal.

We have been contacted by a student leader in Israel, asking us to protest about the arrest of Samieh Jabbarin of the Abnaa elBalad movement and hundreds of Palestinian youth. We publish here the letter appealing for help together with a brief article explaining the situation.

Those responsible for the massacre of the Palestinians in Gaza have turned this to their advantage in the national elections, exploiting the fear of ordinary people in Israel. The new government will have to be a coalition of reactionary parties like the previous one but will prove to be totally incapable of solving any of the real problems of ordinary working people in Israel. What is required is class based politics.

Last week an unofficial strike broke out on the railways in Israel, paralysing the network for one day. The strike was called by an unofficial union, which the courts quickly moved against. In spite of this it gives a taste of what is to come once the Israeli workers begin to move decisively in defense of their own class interests.

As the dust settled over Gaza, the scale of the devastation became clear, with much of Gaza's infrastructure in ruins, with power stations, water networks and sewage systems destroyed; homes, mosques and even schools reduced to rubble. Although Israel severely weakened Hamas militarily, the hatred that it has instilled into the Palestinian masses is only preparing even bigger problems in the future.

Once again the Middle East is engulfed in the flames of war. Alan Woods explains at the IMT Winter School last weekend in Berlin the reasons for Israel's invasion of Gaza and analyses the wider implications for relations between the powers in the Middle East and on a world scale.

The so-called Peace Process is dead. It will be not be revived until the Israeli army has done its bloody work in Gaza thoroughly. Ultimately, both Jews and Arabs must have the right to live in peace and control their own destinies in a homeland of their own. It is easy to state this aim, but not so easy to say how it can be achieved. In the concluding part of his article Alan Woods shows the relation between war and revolution and explains that the prior condition for solving the Palestinian question is the overthrow of the reactionary Arab regimes in the Middle East.

Just over one year after the Annapolis Conference that was supposed to produce a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, the Israeli ruling class has concentrated all its military might to pulverise Gaza. Once again the Middle East is engulfed in the flames of war. Alan Woods explains the reasons for Israel's invasion of Gaza and analyses the wider implications for relations between the powers in the Middle East and on a world scale.

We are publishing here two leaflets against the war in Gaza. Click here to download the leaflet produced by Socialist Appeal in Britain and here for the flyer of Socialist Appeal in the U.S. Download, print and distribute widely!

A statement of the Iranian Marxists on the recent Israeli attack on Gaza, that explains the need to build a genuine Marxist leadership throughout the Middle East in opposition to the Zionist regime in Israel, the reactionary Arab regimes, and also Islamic fundamentalist movements that offer no real way out to the masses.