WADI AL-NAAM, ISRAEL-PALESTINE, March 30 — Hundreds marked the Land Day in memory of violent land theft engineered by the Israeli government since 1976, in this “unrecognized” Bedouin village in southern Israel-Palestine. Eight thousand working-class families live in this village, with no basic infrastructure such as electricity, running water and proper roads.
Another village in southern Israel-Palestine is al-Arakib, also not recognized by the Israeli government. Its residents hold title for their lands since the days of the Ottoman Empire. This does not bother the Israel Land Administration, which makes fiery speeches about “the right of private property” but hypocritically forgets this “right” completely when it comes to the rights of workers in general and Arabs in particular.
Racist War vs. Bedouin Workers
The racist Israeli regime attacks the Bedouin workers in the south in “unrecognized” villages and violates their right, despite the fact that this government collects full taxes from them and even drafts them into the military. This is a violent war of attrition waged against workers considered second-class citizens for racist reasons, in the name of spreading the jewish population in the South.
What stands behind this Zionist rhetoric? The financial interests of the NYC billionaire Ronald Lauder, who greatly profits from building an exclusive town for wealthy religious Jews called “Hiran” on the lands of al-Arakib.
The women of al-Arakib chanted: “al-Arakib is in our hearts and we will stick to it!” Since July 2010, this village was demolished again and again, and always re-built by its residents. Arabic, Jewish and international activists came to show solidarity with the villagers and fight against the eviction of these Bedouins from their ancestral lands.
The regime’s goal, attempted through the Jewish National Fund (JNF), is to “forest the Land of Israel and make the Wilderness Flourish” and “Judaize” the South. These are code names for land theft by real-estate tycoons. This is why peasants, who make a meager living from small-scale agriculture (olive trees and sheep), are being evicted from their land in favor of trees which would soon be up-rooted and replaced with fancy houses for the rich.
A million trees, which will “bring about the Second Coming,” as the U.S. evangelical donors claim, are more important than people who have lived there for over a century! Each tree costs $25, totaling $25,000,000, not including the money spent by the Israeli government on demolishing the village multiple times with heavy police support.
For such a hefty sum they could’ve connected al-Arakib with electricity, running water, paved the roads, built a school and a medical clinic. This is the essence of capitalism: the bosses and their regime prefer to invest in trees to grab prime real-estate and in racist evictions from this land than to invest money in the lives of poor workers and peasants.
The spokesperson of al-Arakib’s Popular Committee, Awad abu-Farikh, was once interrogated for three hours at the Rahat Police Station on charges for “inciting violence.” This meant fighting for the rights of his Bedouin people. We ask: why don’t they interrogate the riot cops and their masters for violence and racist slander? Or is a worker who defends his home from demolition “inciting violence,” while racist thugs who “enforce the law” can practice violence against workers? This is capitalist “justice!”
The war plan of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Minster of Internal Security Aharonovich — a colleauge of politician Libermann who preaches deporting all Arabs from Israel-Palestine — is to send hundreds of riot cops to demolish villages, starting from al-Arakib. They have invested vast sums of money in a new unit of 200 cops, which will be organized in August, tasked solely with enforcing eviction and demolition warrants in the South.
Meanwhile, a worker who goes to the police for protection from crime gets a sleepy response at best and is ignored at worst, under the excuses of “manpower and resources.” This is an example of how, under capitalism, the role of the state apparatus, including the cops, solely serves the capitalists and their profit interests.
This is a colonialist policy aimed at robbing Arab workers, destroying their sources of income and social fabric. The Isreali state is trying to force this dispossession in order to make way for “Pioneers” (rich Zionists) from the U.S. and Western Europe who will be brought there by the JNF. Prime Minister Netanyahu even says that “changing the South to an area without a Jewish majority is a real threat [to national security]” (Yisrael HaYom, July 25th, 2010).
The same paper, owned by the U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a big supporter of Netanyahu, reported on June 23, 2010, that “the nation goes to war against the takeover [by Bedouins] of its lands.” How can people “take over” their own land? This is also the opinion of Knesset (parliament) member Michael Ben-Ari. Netanyahu and Aharonovich want to “defeat the Bedouin takeover of lands in the Be’er-Sheva regeion as a first stage” and then implement the same program of racist land grab in the entire country.
This is reminiscent of dark times in history when minorities were put in ghettos by fascists. This, of course, prepares the ground for a second “Nakba” (ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948), this time a “creeping Nakba” under the guise of planning and land-ownership laws.
This is apartheid, pure and simple. Netanyahu, an open racist, wants to prevent something he calls “land grab by minorities and criminals.” Meanwhile his administration hands out lands and building rights to the criminal capitalist minority (19 big capitalist families in Israel — far less than 1% of the population — as well as their super-wealthy friends in the U.S.).
Faced with this racist robbery by Zionism, we, the workers and unemployed of all nations, ethnicities and religions in historical Palestine, must unite and fight back. What happens today to the Arab worker will happen tomorrow to Jewish workers as well; and, indeed, starts happening to them even today, especially in the public housing sector. The growing fascism has already showed its hostility to workers, both Arab and Jewish, such as the brutal arrest of “Zochrot” activists on Israel’s Independence Day last month. They “dared” to try and hold a vigil reminding the residents of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa about all the Palestinian villages which were destroyed to make room for the city; of the violence against Jews and Arabs who protested against the apartheid in Silwan, East Jerusalem; and of the arrests and harsh violence against Jewish and Arab workers who showed solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike in front of the Ramle jail.
Capitalism means repression, poverty and fascism on the backs of most workers in order to enrich the tiny ruling class. We, the workers and unemployed, must take charge of our destiny, overthrow the capitalist regime and replace it with communism, both in Israel-Palestine and in the rest of the world. Workers of the world unite!
