Subscribe to Spartacist Canada

View archives

	Spartacist Canada No. 168	Spring 2011

Down With Anti-Palestinian Witchhunt at UBC!

(Young Spartacus pages)

We reprint below a January 9 statement from the Vancouver Spartacus Youth Club published in the University of British Columbia student newspaper The Ubyssey on January 13. Joining with Zionist witchhunters, the Alma Mater Society (AMS)—UBC’s student government—had blocked a donation to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) for the Canada Boat to Gaza. On January 26, the AMS reversed itself, allowing SPHR’s donation.

In defending groups like SPHR, we make clear our stance not only against the murderous Zionist rulers of Israel, but against the immensely more powerful imperialist states, centrally the U.S., which stand behind them. We also combat illusions that Canadian imperialism, junior partner to Washington, can be anything other than the deadly enemy of the Palestinians. In contrast, in their worldview, politics and activities groups like SPHR refuse to look beyond the framework of this oppressive capitalist system. Their campaign for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) against Israel is, at best, an ineffectual appeal to the “public opinion” manipulated in thousands of ways by the imperialist rulers (with help from their Zionist allies). Calls to pressure corporations and governments in countries like the U.S. or Canada to take the side of the Palestinians against the Israeli government reinforce the very illusions in “democratic” imperialism from which young activists and working-class militants desperately need to break.

Along with pro-Palestinian campus activists, trade unions that stand in defense of the Palestinians have also faced witchhunts. We support time-delimited actions of labour solidarity like union boycotts called around concrete demands in defense of the Palestinians. We also support standing boycotts of military shipments to Israel. But open-ended boycotts and campaigns for divestment and sanctions are counterposed to the international working-class struggle on which the liberation of the Palestinians is premised (and could prove harmful to the working class in the boycotted countries). Our purpose is to strengthen the fighting power and class consciousness of the working class in solidarity with the exploited and oppressed of the world, and in opposition to capitalist class rule in the imperialist centres.

Today, the explosion of mass revolts in the Arab world cries out for a revolutionary, proletarian leadership fighting for the perspective of permanent revolution. In the face of these historic events, young activists must surely give themselves a reality check—what does BDS have to offer the masses of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan? Not much, to put it politely. Ending the oppression of the Palestinians requires nothing less than a series of workers revolutions in the Near East—including in the garrison-state of Israel, where Hebrew-speaking workers will need to be broken from deeply-held illusions in their Zionist rulers—and the expansion of those revolutions to the imperialist powers.

The Spartacus Youth Club protests the witchhunting, censorship, and repeated intimidation of pro-Palestinian students at the hands of the Israel Awareness Club (IAC) and Hillel House. Aided and abetted by student bureaucrats at the AMS, the Zionists have launched a vicious campaign against the Social Justice Centre (SJC) and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), vilifying them as “terrorists” and “anti-Semites.” Equating criticism of the Israeli state with anti-Semitism is the standard Zionist smear of pro-Palestinian activists. As defenders of all the oppressed and opponents of racist, capitalist injustice, we say: Defend the Palestinians! Hands off their supporters!

Late last fall, the SJC attempted to make a $700 donation to SPHR for the Canada Boat to Gaza, which is to sail to Gaza this spring in defiance of the Israeli starvation blockade. The AMS has sought to block the SJC donation and, outrageously, AMS officials called on CSIS to “investigate” so-called “links to terrorism” of the pro-Palestinian groups.

Serving as toadies for the Zionists, the AMS is in perfect synch with the Conservative Harper government, which stands out for its belligerent support for the Israeli Zionists’ murderous campaign against the Palestinians. In this, they overshadow even previous Liberal administrations as well as the historically pro-Zionist NDP. Under Harper, the campaign of harassment, slander and threats against pro-Palestinian activists has greatly increased, and is especially intense on the campuses. The events at UBC also take place in the context of ongoing anti-Muslim bigotry, which is underpinned by the capitalist rulers’ continual “war on terror.” This phony “war” serves to intensify capitalist state repression against the entire population.

We communists of the Spartacus Youth Club call on students and youth to ally with the power of labour in class struggle against the racist imperialist rulers of the U.S., Britain, Canada and elsewhere. The working class is the only social force capable of sweeping away capitalism worldwide and ending once and for all the genocidal terror against the Palestinians and all forms of oppression worldwide. Down with the blockade of Gaza! Israel out of the occupied territories! For a socialist federation of the Near East! Down with the witchhunt against pro-Palestinian students!