The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 31st March 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 31st March 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
New fascist laws to curb the power of the judiciary were put on hold in Israel this week following another weekend of mass protests and demonstrations all over the country.
Police attempts to curb the protests have failed whilst anti-protest violence from Zionist settler gangs has only enraged the demonstrators, who say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was deliberately fuelling the flames by refusing to rein in his followers or clearly condemn violence directed at the demonstrators.
But Palestinian citizens – some 20 per cent of the Israeli population – have generally remained aloof from the protests. Ahmad Tibi, the leader of the Arab Movement for Renewal Party (Ta’al) in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, told Yediot Aharonot (Latest News) that he admires the protesters and that he will join them on the street: “I admire their perseverance. They are the only opposition today,” but “the agenda of the demonstrations is focused on the judicial system” and “the Arab public has no love neither for the judicial system as a whole nor for the Supreme Court. A study conducted at the University of Haifa proved that sentences against Arabs are 30 per cent more severe than sentences against Jews, for the same crimes. The Supreme Court approved the settlements, the expropriations, the Nationality Law, the Admissions Committee Law, the Kaminitz Law. Arabs who submitted petitions were thrown out the door.”
This week Netanyahu announced the pause to “allow dialogue” and avoid a “civil war” as hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets to demand a halt to plans that would give the Knesset the power to overturn Supreme Court rulings and limit the ways a sitting prime minister – such as Netanyahu, who is facing an ongoing corruption trial – can be declared unfit for office.
Cracks are even appearing in Netanyahu’s coalition following the dismissal of the Defence Minister after he publicly warned that the proposals had affected the military and were threatening national security.
After immense public pressure that has seen 12 weeks of massive demonstrations, and the announcement of a general strike by the Histadrut, the country’s largest labour federation, Netanyahu said he was allowing for “a delay to provide a real opportunity for real dialogue” but stressed that “either way” the fascist ‘reform’ would be passed.
On Monday morning, Histadrut Secretary General Arnon Bar-David called an immediate general strike until the judicial overhaul is halted. “This is an historic strike in which workers and employers will together halt the judicial overhaul,” he said.
The strike quickly snowballed. All take-offs have been stopped at Ben Gurion airport, the biggest and busiest in the country, and many shopping malls have shut down. Many businesses, especially in the tech sector, have joined the strike, and banks and local authorities are also striking.
“What the government wants to do is not to correct or to fix or amend the judicial system, so that it will be more just. Exactly the opposite. They want to take control over the judicial system,” says Ofer Cassif, a member of the communist-led Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) bloc in the Knesset.
“I think that we should refer to the situation not as a judicial overhaul, but as a regime coup,” he told the Arab TV channel, Al Jazeera. “Netanyahu wants to turn Israel from an ethnocracy – because Israel in my view has never been a democracy, because this state is based on a Jewish supremacy, so it cannot be regarded as a democracy from the first place. But it’s going to be under the coup that the government wants to pursue, Israel is going to turn into a full-fledged fascist dictatorship.”
On Monday, protesters blocked roads with rocks in Tel Aviv whilst others rallied in Jerusalem with over 100,000 demonstrating against the fascist ‘reforms’ in front of the Knesset building.
Protest leaders say they will continue to fight until the legislation is mothballed and the government vows not to legislate unilaterally. “The statements by the prime minister and his extremist partners are an admission that they intend to continue to legislate the dictatorship laws in the next Knesset session,” and “This is another attempt to weaken the protest,” they said.
The mainstream Zionist opposition parties and Israel’s communists say they’ll keep up the fight until the proposed changes are dropped. Joining the protest near the Knesset in Jerusalem, Ayman Odeh, another Hadash MP, said: “We will do everything, in the Knesset and on the streets, to stop fascism.” He asked “all citizens, Jews and Arabs, to take to the streets”.