Letters

Hamas to blame

Moshé Machover at least earns points for being honest. “I don’t remember the situation being so dire,” he says in last week’s issue about the debacle in the Middle East (‘Redrawing the map’ January 9). And he’s right. Hamas is suing for peace, Hezbollah has been decapitated, Assad has fallen, Syria is being recolonised, and the Islamist regime in Iran is hanging by a thread. Although the Houthis, the most backward and primitive of the lot, are still fighting on, the ‘axis of resistance’ stands exposed as a paper tiger. It is the worst anti-Zionist defeat since 1967.

But what’s missing from Machover’s analysis is discussion of the CPGB’s role in the disaster. Presumably, this is not a topic he’s eager to address, since the party’s role has been a disgrace.

Machover got the ball rolling a day after the atrocious October 7 assault by declaring at an Online Communist Forum that “we side with Hamas”. When I spoke up to say that we should side with the Palestinian masses rather than neo-fascist Islamists acting in their name, he flew into a rage. A few days later, he offered the astonishing view that the “most probable” Israeli response would be a “land incursion into the Gaza Strip with a view to destroying as much as possible, killing as many Palestinians as possible, and then withdrawing and declaring that revenge has been exacted” (‘Oppression breeds resistance’ October 12 2023). This was like saying that the US would respond to Pearl Harbor with a token raid or two and leave it at that. A week later, the Weekly Worker specifically rejected joint working class action in Israel-Palestine as a way out of the impasse. The reason: “Israel is a colonial-settler state ... it is closely allied with the US global hegemon and the Israeli working class constitutes a labour aristocracy” (‘What you need to know about Hamas’ October 19 2023). The Leninist strategy of uniting the proletariat against nationalist oppression thus went out the window.

A week after that, Machover offered the specious view that “Most people ... do not understand the causality, the root cause [of Hamas’s atrocities], which is the Israeli occupation itself.” It goes without saying that the Israeli occupation is a crime against humanity. But for years the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a part, has been wreaking havoc throughout the region, from Algeria to Egypt, Syria and Yemen. Is the Israeli occupation the root cause of those atrocities too? In the same issue of the Weekly Worker, Jack Conrad offered the view that it is not the CPGB’s job to “run a health check on the resistance”, since (according to a report by James Harvey) “The best support we can give the Palestinian resistance is to fight against our own government.” Thousands of people were dying, yet Conrad’s advice was to hold our tongue about the catastrophe in Gaza that Hamas was helping to unfold.

The missteps went on and on. Yassamine Mather described October 7 as “an act of desperation - a revolt born of hopelessness and despair” (‘A potent cause’ November 2 2023) - an odd way of describing an operation whose express purpose was to compound such hopelessness and despair by turning Palestinians into “a nation of martyrs”, as a senior Hamas official named Ghazi Hamad helpfully explained on Beirut TV. In the same issue, Eddie Ford praised Hamas’s “militarily stunning” operation and predicted that the Israel Defence Forces “will have to fight inch by inch ... underground - a grim prospect, which explains why, in this case, the weak might just overcome the strong” (‘Digging to resist’). Needless to say, bunker-buster bombs would obviate the need of having to go underground at all. Jack Conrad conceded that October 7 was “an act of terrorism”, but added: “So what? The word does not scare us. Far from it” (‘ABCs of Muslim Brothers’ November 23 2023. This was very brave, even though it was not Jack who would have to face the consequences, but ordinary Palestinians.

“Israel’s provocations on other fronts” will go nowhere, Machover added, due to “the same obstacle as in the past: US reluctance to be dragged into a new major regional war”. He went on: “But without US direct involvement Israel alone would be too vulnerable to retaliation by Iran and, even more so, by Hezbollah. On top of this, Israel is undergoing an unprecedented internal crisis that could cause it to implode under the pressure of a difficult war” (‘Gambling on all-out war’ September 5 2024). As everyone knows, it was not Israel that was imploding, but Hezbollah. “Hezbollah fighters thrive in martyrdom,” added Mather, “and the assassination of the group’s leader has unleashed unprecedented anger among the organisation’s rank and file, who will continue to fight in south Lebanon” (‘Itching for war on four fronts’ October 3 2024). So Hezbollah would go on fighting despite all those booby-trapped pagers? Er, not quite.

Not that the CPGB was alone in this regard: other groups were worse. But Machover and co should not be allowed to wriggle off the hook. They made excuses for Hamas’s crimes, they failed to explore its role in a critical fashion and they consistently underestimated Israeli military capabilities. They sadly note that disaster has occurred, yet they show no interest in figuring out why. Any socialist party worth its salt would have immediately warned Palestinian workers of the horrors that Hamas was bringing down upon their heads, yet the CPGB failed to sound the alarm.

If the party still had a spark of Marxism left in its tired old bones, it would call a conference to try to work out how the episode had gone so wrong. But the chances of that happening, in my opinion, are nil.

Daniel Lazare
New York

United front

There is a strange conclusion to Yassamine Mather’s article, ‘Mounting dangers and fears’ (January 9), which also fails to clearly call for Nato imperialism to take its hands off Iran.

It reads: “However, there remains a sizable group of individuals and smaller groups of the left, inside and outside Iran, who have taken a principled position, opposing unconditionally all US-Israeli operations in the Middle East, while reminding everyone that a corrupt religious capitalist dictatorship, Iran’s Islamic Republic, would become an even worse hell for the majority of its population, once it was fully allied to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.”

Is this suggesting that Iran should not seek Russian and Chinese support to resist an attack by the USA/Israel? Or that Iran should leave Brics and not challenge the world domination of the dollar? Surely the positive support from Iran to the Palestinian resistance is something to be critically supported by communists - likewise any support from Russia and China to those fighting US hyper-imperialism in west Asia.

As the declining American empire promotes aggressive war to maintain its domination of the planet, communists must call for the victory of those fighting imperialism. We need an anti-imperialist united front that brings together the working class of the imperialist centres with the masses of the imperialist-oppressed global south. That is the way forward to a socialist world. The fight against imperialism is key to any working class advance both in the imperialist heartland and in the global south.

In struggle the masses will learn that they can’t trust any pro-capitalist force to pursue that struggle to a victorious conclusion.

Sandy McBurney
Glasgow

Disappeared

I read a piece online recently; it was from Middle East Eye but I got it via Jewish Voice for Labour (January 3). It was by Jonathan Cook, who’s written a lot of good stuff, and it was entitled ‘Another expert report finds Israel is committing genocide. The west yawns.’

He looks at reactions to the events of Palestine/Israel/Gaza from the mainstream media and towards the end he identifies some of these reactions. First, Israel was merely reacting to “terrorism” and was defending itself. When this became a little hard to support, they moved on to the terribly difficult attempts to reach a “ceasefire” - with both sides at fault in falling short.

More recently, as he says, “the media have largely lost interest. If there is no way to ‘both-sides’ the genocide, then it must be disappeared.” I had this in mind for a few days, it was clearly true. But I thought I’d check. So, I looked in The Guardian from January 6 to January 11, plus The Observer of January 12.

On January 6, there were two stories, one of them about the Palestinian Authority raiding Palestinians on the West Bank (that’s OK then), the other being a warning from a UN official about the impact of the withdrawal of cooperation by Israel. These took about one and a half pages, around half being pictures. They were on pages 26 and 27, so not so hot news.

On January 7, there was a story about “truce hopes” - a step back to the second line as above but, three quarters of a page - half being a picture - and on page 27. On January 9, good lord: it’s on page 17. But don’t worry: it’s just a single column about the argument between the Met police and the organisers of the pro-Palestine march on January 18.

On January 8, 10, and 11 - nothing, nothing, nothing. But, on January 12 there’s a single paragraph in a column about Biden’s “legacy”. I may have missed another paragraph or something buried in a review or letter, but I don’t think so. So, ‘disappeared’.

But the carnage goes on, and it is thoroughly reported in the left online press. Just a few recent headlines: “The children of Gaza are freezing to death.” “We’re still breathing and we don’t want to die.” “Israeli soldiers force Palestinians south - without their belongings.” “Indiscriminate killing as ‘There are no civilians in Gaza’ …” “Israeli attacks on fertility clinics destroy dreams.”

Horror on horror, but these are just headlines; there are loads of stories, with interviews, desperate phone calls, eyewitness reporting, photographs, tragedy after tragedy and crime after crime. But not in the mainstream media. There is still room for Ukraine, and even Sudan, but not Gaza or, for that matter, the West Bank and Jerusalem. The owners and editors, sometimes despite the complaints of their journalists, have ‘no room’.

They must thank the lord for Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the Los Angeles wildfires. The death toll of the latter has nearly reached that of a day in Gaza. But. Palestinians? Disappeared.

Jim Nelson
email

Key allies?

We are at a boiling point of history. As far as I’m concerned, the western capitalist states are fighting a rearguard action to stop their position from worsening on the world stage. They do still have considerable resources, but are dragging down their home populations to maintain their wealth and privileges.

It is making for much political instability, which worsens their position on the world stage. They are faced with both internal and external resistance, as there are no benefits to be had for our home population or the rest of the world in throwing in their lot with self-serving gangsters. We can’t change the world until we’ve dealt with the biggest enemies of the world first and as the main priority.

This gives us common currency with China, Russia and Iran, etc, and in that context we must applaud their resistance, even if it is forced upon them. Anything that weakens these western capitalist states from the external front strengthens our resistance at home. And anything that weakens them at home strengthens those external allies. Unlike the US, EU and UK regimes we can cut deals with the growing powers and take the first steps towards building a peaceful and harmonious world.

We cannot make the progression to a world communist state as long as the world is living on the edge of annihilation. Peace first, which must mean dealing with the biggest gangsters in the world, the monsters who rule key European states and the US. We can’t do that alone: we need allied assistance and above all else this means Russia and China. Together we can crush the axis powers. Then we can begin a sensible conversation about the world with all nations, big and small, included.

The CPGB-PCC is, along with many other socialist/communist parties in Britain, doing the theoretical spade work for the future world to come. That’s why the tens of thousands of discussions within this framework are vital and must be considered highly important. We are the working class and the future is ours.

Elijah Traven
Hull

Symptom

I watched the Inside story debate on Al Jazeera. Three ‘experts’, Mouin Rabban, Dan Smith and Ravi Agrawal, were debating the current state of the world and the problems facing us.

They mentioned world leaders being able to do nothing about climate change; the increase in global conflicts and military spending; the failure of the international community and the world order; America and Israel acting with impunity; an institution like the United Nations being ineffective and difficult to reform; war being profitable, with more spending on war rather than peace; neoliberalism developing into something more extreme, money being a driving factor.

By the time the presenter mentioned the elephant in the room, they’d convinced me he was going to say ‘capitalism’. But, no, it was a symptom of capitalism: military spending.

Roger Day
Gravesend

Ombudsman

The poverty of thought (I use the word ‘poverty’ as an excessively polite euphemism) of Moshé Machover should concern your thoughtful readers more than his opponents.

Of the abducted Israelis he writes: “Some of them are soldiers, prisoners of war really.” Really? If the mafia capture policemen or soldiers, are they “prisoners of war”? Or Isis, Hezbollah, the IRA, Boko Haram or the brothers Kray, or devotees of the Hannibal Lecter Fine Dining Society? So that is OK - no further elaboration needed - or permitted?! And “some” are soldiers? Indeed, some are, but (non-Machover reality not to be mentioned) most are not. And if these groups do not treat their captives according to the accepted rules for POWs, that is OK - no further analysis required? Really? You mean it?

Machover’s observations on the Al-Ahli hospital incident illustrate the classic failure of leftwing thought conventions constricting situational analysis. The multiple pieces of evidence provided by Israel (photos of the impact site in the car park, video of matched timing and direction of the missile fall, a recorded phone conversation between Islamic Jihad operatives, false casualty reports from Gaza) are not referred to, but quickly dismissed as “lies”.

Such thought processes and constrained approved language are so deeply embedded as to make discussion, not to mention historical analysis, quite impossible.

A Thought Ombudsman (advisory duties only) is sorely needed.

John Davidson
email

In the open

It is fantastic that the CPGB, Talking about Socialism and Prometheus are now in an active process that will hopefully lead to the fusion of all three groups. Having helped to initiate the discussion between the groups, it is worthwhile explaining why Why Marx? is not part of this fusion process - though the organisers are very supportive of it.

After Prometheus published its call for contributions on the question of ‘What kind of party?’, the organisers of Why Marx? approached them with a view to launching a joint education and discussion series on ‘How to build a Communist Party?’ We proposed a short initial programme of discussion around issues like ‘What is democratic centralism?’, ‘Why do we argue for a min-max programme?’ and ‘What is the non-ideological party?’

Prometheus quickly replied positively, but suggested that such a programme might be too ambitious for them and that instead we should study the reader produced by our comrades in the Marxist Unity Group in the USA. We were a bit hesitant about that, not because it’s a bad document - it contains many good original texts, including by Mike Macnair and Karl Marx (always a nice combination). But we thought a more structured, focused programme on party and programme would be preferable.

Having argued our case, one of Prometheus’s main representatives in our meetings was quite insistent that Prometheus had decided that it wants to study the MUG reader, so we agreed to the proposal, so as not to prevent our two groups working together - on the proviso that we could adapt the programme once the discussion became more serious. After all, it is not a matter of principle what kind of material you study. We thought the key thing was to get the ball rolling.

We then agreed to invite other groups to co-sponsor the joint series, specifically Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, Talking About Socialism and the CPGB, all of whom agreed to participate in a first organising meeting on December 14. The plan was to try and bring them on board as co-organisers of such a joint series and then approach other groups and individuals to participate.

Within minutes of the start of that first meeting, however, it transpired that the reps of TAS and the CPGB wanted to go beyond a joint discussion series. Both proposed to work towards concrete unity of the groups involved. This came as a genuine surprise, at least to the organisers of Why Marx? - a happy surprise. All groups quickly agreed to ditch plans to study the MUG reader, as well as plans to contact other groups. Instead, the meeting agreed to focus on how such unity between the groups present could be achieved (with the exception of RS21, which played more of an observer role).

Then TAS’s letter of January 4 moved the process up another gear, by concretely proposing a process of fusion between the organisations. It became clear to the organisers of Why Marx? that we could not be part of such a fusion process, because our organising group is made up of people from very diverse political groups (some of whom are, for example, involved in the attempts to launch a Collective party).

Why Marx? initially proposed that there could be a series of regular, public events organised by all the groups participating in the fusion process, but it became clear that (a) Prometheus was still discussing its attitude to a process of fusion, and (b) that TAS and CPGB were not in favour of such a series being organised by the groups themselves.

Why Marx? took that on board, but decided that we will continue with the plans we have been pursuing since November 2024 - ie, to launch a discussion series on the important question of ‘How to build a Communist Party’. Of course, we want to invite speakers from the participating groups as and when, but also others who have important and interesting views on these questions.

We want to discuss, for example, what we can learn from the past (good and bad); what are some of the key political concepts involved and how we can make sure we are building a democratic, transparent and principled Communist Party. It is great, for example, that Lawrence Parker has agreed to give three introductions on the history of the process of launching the original CPGB in 1920.

We think such a discussion and education series could also positively influence the fusion process. For a start, there is an ongoing discussion within Prometheus and the prospect of communist fusion remains controversial. This is even more the case in RS21, which sent a representative to the first organising meeting, but not the second one on January 11. While there is a growing trend within RS21 that has a partyist perspective, that does not go for the majority of members. There are also certain ‘hesitations’ about the CPGB and not few comrades within RS21 will labour under the assumption that it is a sect.

Both RS21 and Prometheus are politically in flux, in other words, and in the process of discussing and arguing about their perspective. They have not been won over for the need to build a Communist Party, let alone fusing with the CPGB and TAS.

In this situation, we believe that a series of well-publicised, interesting and democratic discussion and education meetings, running alongside the fusion process, could play a very useful role in bringing some of their members on board.

We should stress that this is not an alternative to the fusion process, or an attempt to delay or derail it. It is also not a proposal to be the ‘public face’ of Forging Communist Unity. In fact, the series would have very little to do with the actual fusion process. It would accompany it and might well increase the general interest in it, helping it to become successful.

Tina Becker
email

Occam’s razor

I found Sky Atlantic’s recent series, Lockerbie: the search for the truth (based on the book by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was among the 270 victims of the Lockerbie disaster), oddly unbalanced, focusing on just one person’s theory of what really happened - and, despite that, also unconvincing.

Of course, the bombing of Pan Am plane 103 in December 1988 was a terrible act of (potentially state) terrorism. As was the American shooting down of Iran Air Flight 255, killing 290 people a few months earlier. Readers may recall that two Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, were, years later, put on trial by a Scottish court - al-Megrahi found guilty, Fhimah not guilty. An alleged third conspirator, Abu Agila Masud, ​ is due to go on trial in the United States in May 2025.

The alternative theory put forward by Swire and the Sky series was that Iran commissioned the attack on Pan Am 103 to take revenge for the downing of the Iranian plane by the USS Vincennes in July 1988. Further, it effectively ‘contracted out’ the task to its ally, Syria, who in turn looked to the armed group, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a breakaway from the more mainstream PFLP.

Certainly, all the initial investigations appeared to point to the Iran/PFLP-GC connection, and subsequent Wikileaks data of secret intelligence cables, including intercepts of PFLP-GC communications, appeared to corroborate this line of inquiry for US intelligence officials.

Part of the alternative theory includes the raid by West German police on a PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt just two months before Lockerbie, and the discovery of bomb-making and associated equipment, not dissimilar to that used on Pan Am 103. However, the fact of the cell’s breakup could indicate the opposite.

The sole claim for the Swire thesis that Libya was innocent was that a tiny fragment of a detonator timer found in the wreckage could not have been part of a batch previously sold to Libya, as its coating had a slightly different composition. Whether this tiny fragment did or did not have different characteristics is clearly not capable of being verified by independent witnesses - only by intelligence spooks and forensic scientists, who owe their living and loyalty to the secret states. But if a fragment had been falsely laid in the wreckage, (as is Swire’s claim), does that automatically prove the innocence of the two Libyan intelligence operatives? US intelligence may have had nefarious motives in ensuring Libya got the blame (rather than, say, Syria, Iran or an armed Palestinian group), but that doesn’t automatically prove Libya was not responsible.

We know that ‘democratic’ capitalist states and law enforcement agencies are themselves not beyond adding ‘evidence’ to ‘prove’ individuals are definitely guilty, who might otherwise be acquitted through a lack of formal evidence.

Since the fall of Gaddafi a number of former Libyan top officials have confirmed Libyan intelligence did carry out the attack on Pan Am 103, including Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s top intelligence chief and ‘right hand’ at the time in question. There may be an argument that there is some motive for them to blacken the former Libyan regime, but by doing so they implicate their own roles in the bombing.

Libya itself formally admitted responsibility for the actions of its officials in the Lockerbie bombing in 2003: ie, well before the fall of Gaddafi. Libya and the Libyan leader clearly had their own motives for seeking revenge on the US over a number of military clashes and bombings in the 1980s, which included the death of Gaddafi’s adopted daughter, Hana.

Gaddafi presumably did not think either of the two intelligence operatives put up for public trial would be found guilty; by putting them up, he obtained significant concessions from the west, including from the then Blair government. After al-Megrahi’s conviction, the Libyan regime subsequently showed exceptional keenness to obtain his release and return to Libya - even threatening the Blair government with the cancellation of a multimillionaire oil contract, should al-Megrahi die in prison. On his return to Tripoli in 2009, he was feted as something of a state hero. Gaddafi clearly needed to shore up his base in the intelligence-security forces apparatus.

It is in the nature of the murky world of intelligence operatives and actual terrorists that it is often not possible to establish all the facts with 100% certainty. This opens the door to some quite outlandish conspiracy theories. In cases like these, we often have to go on the balance of probabilities and where the majority of evidence is taking us. Applying the principle of Occam’s razor, that the likeliest true explanation is that which is simplest and most straightforward, can also be useful.

It seems to me the composite journalist character in the series, Murray Guthrie, probably got it about right when he said to Swire in the final episode that, in ‘his’ view, initially Iran and Syria did try to commission the PFLP-GC to do the bombing. But, after its cell was broken up by West German police, the job was subsequently contracted out to Libya, which had its own reasons for revenge on America and its own capability for enacting it. This theory accords with the great majority of the known facts and evidence, explains the initial PFLP-GC connection, the sudden switch in the investigation to Libyan intelligence, and the testimony from former Libyan high officials.

Andrew Northall
Kettering