On Saturday, November 18, I attended the above meeting
called by The Socialist Equality Party(UK). It was my first major meeting in
five years, and I picked a good one. The meeting was safe professionally
organised with a good bookstall.
SEP Assistant National Secretary Tom Scripps chaired
the event. This was the second meeting held by the SEP to discuss what
political fight is necessary to stop the slaughter in Gaza.
The lecture was given by David North, the chairman of
the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and national
chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States. North is a
leading expert on Leon Trotsky.
The meeting was originally called to launch the UK
North’s recently published book, Leon Trotsky and the Struggle for Socialism in
the Twenty-First Century. However, given the gravity of the situation in Gaza
North correctly departed from his original subject matter to give a complex and
detailed report on the events in Gaza from a Marxist perspective.
North pointedly said that this was not so much a war
but a one-sided massacre. North’s lecture was complex and well-researched. He provided
a detailed account of the current situation, which included the brutal murder
by the IDF(Israel Defence Force) of thousands of men and women and the deaths
of 4000 children.
North’s lectures on the Gaza massacres have been
complimented by the extraordinary articles from the World Socialist website (wsws.org),
many of which have been put into pamphlet form.[1]
North, while noting that the war/massacre has produced a significant amount of emotional outpouring, his lecture series have sought to place the event in a more objective context, saying: “We have been asked why we have not condemned Hamas for the violence of October 7. The answer is that we will not participate in or lend any legitimacy to the reactionary cynicism and hypocrisy that condemns resistance to oppression or draws an equal sign between the episodic violence of the oppressed and the far greater, relentless and systematic violence of the oppressor.
The death of so many innocent people is a tragic
event. But the tragedy is rooted in objective historical events and political
conditions that made such an event inevitable. As always, the ruling classes
oppose all references to the causes of the uprising. Their massacres and the
entire bloody system of oppression over which they preside so ruthlessly must
go unmentioned.
Why should anyone be surprised that decades of
oppression by the Zionist regime led to an explosive eruption of anger? It has
happened in the past, and as long as human beings are oppressed and brutalised,
it will happen in the future. Those who suffer oppression cannot be expected
during a desperate rebellion, when their own lives hang precariously in the
balance, to treat their tormentors with tender-hearted courtesy. Such
rebellions are often marked by acts of cruel and bloody vengeance.”[2]
From a personal standpoint, I thought North’s
research into the anti-working class and anti-socialist origins of Zionism to
be very important as North writes, “The creation of the Zionist state was the
direct outcome of the defeats of the working class in the 1920s and 1930s
because of the betrayals of Stalinism and Social Democracy. Without the mass of
displaced persons, survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and without the
political demoralisation and loss of confidence in the perspective of
socialism, the Zionist leaders would not have had at their disposal the numbers
of people required to conduct a terrorist war against the Palestinian people,
expel them from their homes and villages, and create, through essentially
criminal methods, a Jewish national state.”
North spent a considerable time opposing the vile
slander that criticism of the Zionist-led war in Gaza constituted antisemitism.
North, in his previous lecture, cited the attack on the musician Roger Waters,
saying, “Throughout his recent world tour, the legendary musician Roger Waters
has been under relentless attack and accused of antisemitism because he has dared
to defend the Palestinian people. Everyone who knows the work of Roger Waters
knows very well that he is one of the most significant artists at the forefront
of the fight for human rights and that his opposition to the policies of the
Israeli regime has absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism.”
North took questions from the floor. Only two were noteworthy.
The first came from someone who did not declare their political affiliation. At
the same time, ignoring most of what North spoke about, he accused the lecturer
of carrying out over “30 minutes of hate.” His remarks were a little insulting
and quite bizarre. His jibe about hate came from the novel 1984 by George
Orwell.
Orwell wrote, “The horrible thing about the Two
Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary,
that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds, any pretence
was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire
to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow
through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even
against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that
one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one
object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”[3]
North rejected that there was anything hateful about
his lecture and countered by saying the remarks echoed those who have the audacity
of attacking the Zionists as anti-semitic.
My question was about Daniel Goldhagen. North had written
a brilliant critique of Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners. I asked him
if he had heard what Goldhagen had said about the war/massacre in Gaza.
[1] Stop
Israel’s Genocide-£2.00 Mehring Books UK
[2] Socialist internationalism and the struggle against Zionism and imperialism- The lecture was given by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, October 24.
[3] Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell : chapter1.
