New Democracy Middle East Flyer

What's the truth in the Middle East? There are claims and counter-claims. We need to step back and look at the big picture.

U.S., Israeli and Arab elites deliberately incite ethnic conflict to control ordinary Jews and Arabs. Every Palestinian humiliated or murdered by Israeli forces, every parcel of land stolen, every innocent Jew killed by suicide bombers, divides Jewish and Arab workers and diverts people from their real enemies. The US presides over this conflict like a great puppet master.

Israel was established in 1948. Before WWII the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland appealed to few Jews, who instead joined revolutionary parties and organizations like the Bund (General Jewish Workers' Union) to fight for socialism in Europe. Zionism was funded by wealthy Jews to divert Jewish workers from revolution. Then two historic disasters – the Holocaust and the ugly failure of Communism – made Israel seem to many Jews their only salvation.

US and British rulers supported Israeli statehood to establish a loyal garrison state in the Middle East. The US has supplied the Jewish state with the fourth most powerful military in the world, stronger than any Arab army, to keep the oil fields safe for US interests.

Israel is based on the removal by terror and force of as many as 700,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes, guaranteeing conflict between Arabs and Israel. This conflict is vital to US purposes. Arab regimes rule over a powder-keg of poor and oppressed workers who pose a serious revolutionary threat. The US uses Israel as a lightening rod to divert the anger of Arab workers away from Arab despots and keep them in power.

Until the recent Palestinian uprising, there was tremendous class struggle in Israel — Jewish workers against the Jewish elite. In 1997, 700,000 Israelis mounted a 10-day general strike. The Israeli Finance Minister denounced the strikers as "exploding bombs more dangerous than terrorists."

Arab leaders control their people only when they mobilize them against Israel. Israeli leaders truly control their people only when they mobilize them against Arabs.

Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Since then it has established settlements there for 216,000 Jews, while forbidding Palestinians to return to their homes. Israel has separated Palestinian areas into Bantustans with "Jews-only" highways; often confined them with 24 hour curfews; humiliated them daily with checkpoints; stolen their water (Jewish settlers consume 876 gallons of water to every one by Palestinians); tortured thousands; and reduced most to terrible poverty.

Most Israelis, polls show, want to leave the Occupied Territories. The government acts against their will – to fulfill the Zionist dream of a "Greater Israel" and provoke Palestinians into terrorist acts which allow the elite to tighten their grip on Israel.

Arafat and the PLO are a privileged elite who control the Palestinians on behalf of the US and Israel and bestow legitimacy on a fraudulent "peace process." The PLO and the Israeli government cooperate in building "industrial zones" to exploit cheap Palestinian labor. Rich Palestinian businessmen live in opulent houses on land in Gaza City supplied by Arafat, who legitimizes the Arab dictators and exploiters who support him.

When a 60 year old Israeli Jewish cab driver, Amos Tagouri, was killed by terrorists in the Palestinian village of Ni'elin, his Arab friends spoke out: "Amos was one of us... he drove the farmers to sell their cactus fruit and figs in Israel, and if they didn't have enough money to pay until after the market, he accepted that...The whole village is angry. The people of this village spit on this.” Mustafa Amira, a vegetable stand owner, said,“He helped us. He respected us, we respected him...Hamas, Fatah I don't know" who killed him. "I know they are a gang." "The extremists do not want peace," said Sakhi Hayun, 34, owner of the Sandwich Bar in Modi'in and former employer of Amira and his brother. "That's why they kill Arab and Israeli civilians in the road. Ninety percent of the people, both Israelis and Arabs, do not support this." [Boston Globe, September 1, 2001]

Ordinary people, whether Jew or Arab, want the same things – to live as equals in democratic societies where they can provide for their families in peace. The Jewish state is designed to control Jews in the name of ethnic solidarity. A Palestinian state would do the same to Palestinians. There will never be peace in the Middle East as long as it is controlled by brutal ethnic elites and the US.

The only real solution in the Middle East is democratic revolution to destroy the power of the ruling elites – Israeli, Arab, and US – and create secular, fully democratic societies in which people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds have full equality. We call for an immediate end to the settlements and the Occupation. An immediate end to suicide bombings. Establish solidarity ties between Palestinians and Israelis. Reject the idea of a Jewish state or a Palestinian state. Call on Arabs to overthrow the Arab regimes and Israelis to overthrow the Jewish state. Build working class solidarity of all peoples throughout the Middle East. Work in the US to overthrow the great puppet master itself.