War and Terror

“The change will come from us, sons and daughters of the two nations”

An 18 year old Israeli, Tal Mitnick, has gone to prison after refusing to join the military in protest at the Israeli assault on Gaza. (Pictured above holding a placard of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, murdered by an Israeli soldier in May 2022.) You can donate to support Mesarvot , the network for youth military “refusers” of which Mitnick is part, here . And the wider Refuser Solidarity Network here . Mitnick is the first public military refuser since the 7 October Hamas atrocities in southern Israel and Israel’s launching of the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. Such left-wing...

Rape and terror on 7 October

Rape and terror on 7 October By Gerry Bates On 4 December, the United Nations hosted a special session to hear about rape and sexual violence during the 7 October massacre in Israel by Hamas. Meni Binyamin of the Israel police Crime Investigations Unit has told the New York Times , from testimony from survivors of the massacre and from soldiers and emergency medical workers coming in after, that: “There were violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen, of both women and men... dozens”. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who leads a Civil Commission of investigation, says that thanks...

Israeli activists call for a "return to a politics based on humanistic and universal principles"

Picture shows a protest organised by Standing Together, many of whose leaders have signed the statement. In the photo, Uri Weltmann, one of Standing Together's Jewish leaders, holds the megaphone for Ghadir Hani, one of Standing Together's Palestinian leaders. Both have signed the statement. This statement was co-signed by dozens of Israeli peace activists, mostly Israeli Jews but including some Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is reposted from the website of Yachad, here . We, Israel-based academics, thought leaders and progressive activists committed to peace, equality, justice, and human...

One year on: Ukraine's feminists and left still fighting

Michael Baker spoke with Olenka and Brie, two activists from the Ukrainian socialist organisation Sotsialny Rukh (Social Movement), about how the war is affecting the struggle for women’s liberation in Ukraine, and how the international feminist movement can help. Olenka and Brie visited the UK for a speaker tour organised by Workers' Liberty, 4-16 March 2023 (more details here ). Published in our socialist feminist magazine Women's Fightback : issue 28, Spring 2023 . Can you both introduce yourselves and Sotsialny Rukh? Brie: . I came to the left in about 2014, when I joined the independent...

National struggles and inter-imperialist struggles: Lenin answers Stop the War

In defiance of the facts, the Stop the War Coalition, the Socialist Workers' Party, Counterfire, etc, claim the war in Ukraine is primarily an inter-imperialist conflict between Russia and NATO, not a war of Ukrainian self-defence. (Some of Stop the War's supporters are straightforwardly pro-Russia, as was on display at its 25 February demo .) Couldn't the Ukraine conflict be transformed into an inter-imperialist war? Of course. That doesn't mean it is one now. In his response to Rosa Luxemburg's 1916 Junius Pamphlet , excerpts below, Vladimir Lenin addressed precisely this kind of issue. (At...

"The time of protest is over, now is the time of resistance"

This article was originally published by Russian student magazine DOXA . Translated by Michael Baker. Although tens of millions of Russians oppose the actions of their government, it is no longer possible to protest legally or to build legal organisations in Russia; private discontent and the actions of individuals are not going to achieve a serious political effect. Now that we need to rebuild the opposition movement from scratch, we have an opportunity to reflect once more on the goals it sets for itself, what it hopes to achieve, and the approaches they choose based on these considerations...

The Stop the War trade union conference and Ukraine

I only made the second half of the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) trade union conference on 21 January, but I think I got a pretty good sense of the event’s politics. It was broadly what I expected. What was said about opposing war and militarism in general, and increased militarisation and military spending in the UK, was mostly good. What was said about Ukraine was mostly bad, by implication and in some cases very explicitly. Stop the War makes a great play of its anti-imperialism: but it won't back Ukraine against Russia's brutal imperialist war . There were maybe 150 people in the closing...

Call for solidarity actions with anti-war activists in Russia (week of 19 January)

"No war" For over a decade, Russian antifascists have commemorated January 19 as their day of solidarity. This is the date when in 2009, in the center of Moscow, the human rights and leftist activist Stanislav Markelov and the journalist and anarchist Anastasia Baburova were gunned down by neo-Nazis. The murder of Markelov and Baburova became the culmination of the ultra-right terror of the 2000s, which killed hundreds of migrants and dozens of anti-fascists. For many years, while it was still possible, Russian activists held antifascist demonstrations and rallies on January 19 under the...

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