“During the early morning hours of March 27th, a Portland, Oregon anti-racist activist was shot in what appears to be a well orchestrated attack. It is suspected that the attackers were members of the neo-Nazi movement…
The March 27th shooting occurred within a backdrop of growing Right wing, racist, and emerging fascist organizing and activity. There has been a dramatic escalation of rhetoric and action from the broad Right. While all sectors of the working classes and poor face economic and social uncertainty, the racists, the Right wing, and the smaller but significant sections of the neo-Nazi and fascist movements are looking to divide our class and peoples…
We propose Saturday July 31, 2010 as a Call to Action Against Racism and Fascism. We want to use the CA to both engage the broad, independent, and radical anti-racist/anti-fascist movements… we argue for a maximum of creative and independent initiative… to use the CA as a means to increase collaboration between our forces and work in a popular manner to highlight the need for a mass, radical response to racist and fascist organizing.”
Continue Reading Here…
[Hat tip: Three-Way Fight]
On a weekend in January 2009, Oslo was shaken: Massive protests against the war in Gaza degenerated into the most violent riots Norway had seen for three decades. Despite massive media attention, few seem to have grasped the real significance of the events. What were their political messages? How did the Left respond to the protests and the ensuing riots? To what extent did the riots fall into age-old patterns of anti-Semitic hatred?
The Anti-Jewish Riots in Oslo is a personal narrative of the events, as one Norwegian anti-fascist activist experienced them. This book is a must-read; both as a reminder and as a warning.
About the author:
Eirik Eiglad is a social ecologist. He has been involved in radical politics for nearly two decades, as both a writer and an activist. Eiglad is the editor of the journal Communalism.
Available here
From Palestinian human rights activist Nigel Perry, of the website Electronic Intifada, on Israel Shamir:
In late 2000/early 2001, in the period following the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada, articles began appearing on the Internet by a previously unknown Israeli-Russian writer called “Israel Shamir”. With a powerful command of the English language, compelling anecdotes, dramatic metaphors, and a spirited opposition to the Israel’s military occupation, Shamir was rapidly and warmly accepted into the pro-Palestinian activist scene, and by Spring 2001 had embarked on a speaking tour of the United States, speaking at many public events alongside leading lights of the Palestinian scene.As his articles kept coming, however, an increasing amount of the tone and content was observed by more than a few to fall into what could — if this hadn’t been an Israeli Jew writing it — best be described as a classic anti-Semitic repertoire. Shamir’s identity as a Jew initially enabled people to excuse this, until the whole mess began to unravel as more and more questions were asked. Eventually, these questions began to be answered, and the issue errupted into a controversy. This page is an archive for some of the material that circulated, and is offered to the Palestinian community in particular as a warning to check the backgrounds and content of the message of people who claim to speak on their behalf. However worthy the cause, the end does not justify the means.
Continue reading here…
And from Socialist Viewpoint:
Shamir is apparently a right-wing Russian journalist, who pretends to be an Israeli Jewish leftist.
….
He appeared in Israel, as if from nowhere, at the beginning of the Intifada, writing well-received articles, in which his hidden agenda became more and more overt. From the beginning, it was clear to those who could read critically that he was a Christian evangelist rather than a left activist.
Last year, he announced his “conversion” to Greek Orthodox Christianity; I’m sure he was a Christian long before this, but found it useful to pose as a Jew. I stress his Christianity because it is key to his positions. He subscribes to the most anti-Jewish strand of Greek Orthodoxy, and regularly denounces “the Jews” (or “the Mammonites,” as he sometimes calls us) as Christ-killers.
….
I’m not given to looking for anti-Jewish racism under every stone; but I think that, in this case, it is shouting from the roof-tops! Like many U.S. racists, he refers to the forces of ZOG (Zionist Government) to explain the behavior of the U.S.
[H]is comment on Le Pen’s success in the first round of the French elections was “Le Pen is a bad guy in my books, but bad guys will be called to undo the excessive Jewish power if the good guys fail to do it.”
Continue Reading here…
Also, December 2010: WikiLeaks and Israel Shamir. From The Guardian.
And Dec. 30, 2010: Wikileaks’ Russian Representative: What I said is “Kill a Jew within thyself”
1 – Etienne Balibar: Marx and the Jewish Question. July 22, 2010. London. European Leo Baeck Lecture Series.
2 – 16th Annual Anti-Racist Action Network Conference. July 22-25, 2010. Portland, Oregon (U.S.). Anti-Racist Action Network.
3 – Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity. August 23-25, 2010. New Haven, CT (U.S.). Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism and The International Association for the Study of Antisemitism (IASA)
4- Jews and Revolutions. Feb 28 – Mar 1, 2011. Jerusalem. Leo Baeck Institute and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
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Two things to read:
Kellie Strom on “anti-imperialism”, taking as a point of departure Judith Butler on the Berlin Christopher Street Day Parade, but moving on to “anti-imperialism” in general. Continue Reading »
64 years ago today, the largest post-war pogrom took place in the Polish city of Kielce.
Funeral Procession for the Victims of the Kielce Pogrom, 1946
From The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The Kielce pogrom erupted on July 4, 1946 after local residents accused a group of Jewish survivors and repatriates from the Soviet Union of kidnapping a Polish child for the purpose of using his blood for making matzah (a revival of the medieval, anti-Jewish blood libel). In early July, Henryk Blaszczyk, a nine-year-old boy, wandered away from his home in Kielce. Upon his return, he claimed to have been detained by Jews living at the Zionist collective, known as the Kibbutz, on Planty Street. On July 4, one thousand Ludwikow factory workers, wielding crowbars and other weapons, joined an angry mob that had gathered near the Kibbutz. Local police responded by confiscating the few weapons in Jewish possession. They also ordered Kibbutz residents to leave the building, thus exposing them to the wrath of the mob. Before an army detachment was sent to restore order, forty-two Jews were bludgeoned to death, and forty or more were injured. Appeals to Catholic officials fell on deaf ears. The Primate of Poland, Cardinal August Hlond, blamed the pogrom on Jewish support of communism and the suffering of the Polish people. The Jewish community of Poland responded by sending Antek Zuckerman, a former leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and Chief Rabbi David Kahane to Kielce. Three days after the pogrom the victims were buried in a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery. The government ordered Polish military units and local residents (including the Ludwikow factory workers) to attend the funeral. Subsequently, it was learned that right-wing political groups had staged the kidnapping and coached the child before his disappearance. Though the Polish government speedily executed nine of the pogromists on July 14, the impact of the Kielce pogrom on the postwar Jewish community could not be mitigated. Shocked by the ferocity of the pogrom, the revival of the blood libel, the unsympathetic response of the church, and the inability of the government to curtail the violence, they concluded that Jews had no future in Poland. Thus, in the course of the three months following the pogrom, 77,000 Jews streamed out of Poland on Bricha routes to German and Italy.
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