Middle East

Over the weekend Israeli aircraft have been involved in bombing the Gaza Strip. Israel has withdrawn its troops on the ground but it can bomb the area any time it wants. It shows how false were the ideas of those who claimed withdrawal from Gaza was a step towards a solution to the conflict.

The recent elections in Egypt were in no way democratic. What they reflect is the pressure of imperialism that wishes somehow to stop the unstoppable, that is the inevitable movement of the masses from below. But the change is only cosmetic and the masses can see through this.

Two days ago Mussa Arafat (the cousin of the late Yasser Arafat) was assassinated after a 45-minute shoot out. While all this was going on no police turned up, which indicates that someone at the top wanted his removal. Who and what is behind this killing?

On Wednesday August 17, a US-style campaign began for the upcoming elections in Egypt. 32 million Egyptians are eligible to vote on September 7, but how many will vote is a big question.

The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip began last Wednesday and has deeply divided both Israelis and Palestinians. Yossi Schwartz in Jerusalem looks at the Israeli pullout and what it means.

We publish this article by Yossi Schwartz on the War of 1967 to provide some background information to the recent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Roza Javan is a young Iranian activist. She discovered the ideas of Socialism, of Marxism and has never looked back since. She comes from a humble working class family, and suffers the double oppression of being both working class and a young woman. She is determined to change all this and believes that the only way out is a socialist revolution. She has taken her pseudonym Roza Javan from Rosa Luxemburg. “Javan” means young: therefore she is the “the young Rosa”.

Dostoyevsky wrote, “That a country should be judged by its prisons”, and that unfortunately still holds today. But nowadays one should also add, “And its health service”.

“The enemy is cunning. A cunning enemy must not be spared. The whole people rose to its feet as soon as these ghastly crimes became known. The whole people is quivering with indignation and I, as the representative of the state prosecution, join my anger, the indignant voice of the state prosecutor, to the rumbling of the voices of millions! 
“I want to conclude by reminding you, comrades judges, of those demands which the law makes in cases of the gravest crimes against the state. I take the liberty of reminding you that it is your duty, once you find these people, all sixteen of them, guilty of crimes against the state, to apply to them in

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Dear Editor,

I read the following on the BBC’s web site: “An Israeli soldier accused of shooting a British cameraman dead has been cleared by a judge of any wrongdoing. James Miller was killed in 2003 at the age of 34, as he filmed a documentary in the Rafah refugee camp. Israel had already said the soldier – known only as Lt H – would not be prosecuted over the death.” Having read the article it made my blood boil so I had to say something.

In what was probably the largest demonstration in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis marched in Baghdad this past Saturday to demonstrate against the US occupation. While most bourgeois news agencies were focused on the wedding of Prince Charles and what’s-her-name, The LA Times did report that some 300,000 people filled the streets of Baghdad (most other news agencies, if they reported the demonstration at all, claimed that there were “thousands”). The demonstration, organized by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and held on the second anniversary of the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime, filled the capital’s al-Fardous square with chants of “No

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While the number of Palestinians killed in the present Intifada reaches nearly 300, Arafat is attempting to change the aims of the struggle. He is hoping for some form of compromise with the Israeli government that will allow him to bring the Intifada to an end. But the conditions on the ground do not allow for a quick solution. Now Arafat is placing his hopes in the United Nations. Decades of experience show that this is not a solution. The Palestinian masses can only have confidence in their own ability to struggle, together with the support of the workers of the whole of the Middle East.

As we approach the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the US and British led occupation of the country is falling apart. Some 1500 US soldiers have been killed in the conflict, and tens of thousands of Iraqis. Everything that the Bush administration said about the war has been exposed as a lie. Far from improving the lives of Iraqis, things are even worse than under the hated regime of Saddam Hussein.

On Sunday March 6, Turkish police forces commemorated International Working Women’s Day in their own way – by using truncheons and tear gas on demonstrators. Around one thousand people took part in the gathering organised by revolutionary left groups to mark the International Working Women’s Day, which took place at the Beyazit Square, Istanbul. The demonstrators were then tear-gassed, kicked and beaten by the police. Many people were left injured. There were so many cops and the attack was so sudden that the demonstrators were not able to resist the attack.