How often have we heard from the supporters of Ukraine that we should listen to the words of the Ukrainian left, as if their nationality or proximity to the war privileged their political views and pre-empted our own?  Should we contract-out our politics to every nationality?  What is this other than identity politics gone mad?

The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (USC) has one such author we should apparently listen to, writing not about Ukraine but about Palestine (is this not a breach of the decree?)  Or do the Ukrainian leftists who support their own state have some special insight into all struggles that claim to be ‘anti-imperialist’?

Let’s look at what this article says: ‘Side with progressive forces in Israel and Palestine for a lasting peace’.

It declares that:

‘On October 7 a new round of the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation began with rocket fire by Hamas. The whole world turned its attention with horror to the atrocities of terrorists against peaceful citizens of Israel and other countries. However, for now, while everyone is debating the need to strike back as hard as possible, progressive forces around the world should focus on a plan to achieve lasting peace.’

Just as the war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022, so did the conflict in Israel and Gaza not start on October 7 2023, as everyone knows, or should know, because it is literally impossible to understand either by reference to these dates, by regarding them as providing the context for comprehension of what is going on.

The whole world did not turn ‘its attention with horror to the atrocities of terrorists against peaceful citizens of Israel and other countries’; for a start the attack by Hamas also included attacks on the Israeli military.  This is not to ignore or excuse or support or defend the killing of Israeli civilians.  Among many people there is an understanding of where these desperate (in every sense of the word) attacks came from.

Neither is ‘everyone . . . debating the need to strike back as hard as possible’.  Certainly not the targets of this ‘strike back’, not those who are genuine socialists, and not those hundreds of millions who understand the circumstances of the Palestinians in Gaza and who sympathise and solidarise with them and their struggle.  Only from the point of view of Zionism and western imperialism is there a debate about how hard to strike back.

‘For now’, the progressive forces around the world should not ‘focus on a plan to achieve lasting peace’ but should focus on how they might stop the pogrom and ethnic cleansing of Gaza that can only entail a murderous catastrophe.  To think that right now we need a plan for lasting peace is to indulge in cynical pretence, putting one’s head down while death is dealt all around.

The article states that ‘Israel has the right to self-defence and can retaliate against terrorists’, while Its concern with Israeli tactics seems mainly to lie in their being counter-productive, not their purpose or consequences. Even the failure of previous negotiations is blamed mainly on the Palestinians.

It declares that ‘the international community should support progressive forces willing to make concessions for the sake of peace’, the same international community that has sat back while Israel has expanded while ensuring the expansion through massive financial and military support.  The same ‘international community’ that any self-regarding socialist would immediately recognise as imperialism.

It states that ‘the international community should promote the creation of new progressive political movements in Palestine that would not involve either the corrupt Fatah or the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists.’  Imperialism is called upon to intervene to ensure that the Palestinians get the leaders and representation that they deserve – what imperialism thinks is appropriate.

No such exclusions are put on the far right, racist and fascist representatives of the Israeli state.  These so-called ‘new progressive political movements in Palestine’ should then ‘be willing to make concessions for the sake of peace.’  One has to wonder just what more concessions the Palestinians are expected to make to remedy their exile, their poverty, prevent their ethnic cleansing and make themselves acceptable both to imperialism and Zionism. 

What is the point of a solidarity campaign that claims to be anti-imperialist but cannot agree what imperialism is and so cannot agree on when or why or how it should be opposed?

A separate article on the USC site denounces ‘the anti-social ferocity of Ukrainian neo-liberals’ and states that ‘the recent statements of Minister of Social Policy Oksana Zholnovych about “destroying everything social” and “taking Ukrainians out of their comfort zone” have caused significant public outcry and a wave of criticism.’  But this is the same government and state that the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign supports, that defends its right to determine the future of its population!  The State and regime it wants to see armed to the teeth and have its writ run over millions more citizens.

The pro-Israel article is probably inspired by the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) component of the USC, while its Anti-Capitalist Resistance (ACR) ally has stated that ‘The root cause of the violence is the occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state. Palestinians have borne the brunt of the death and destruction of the last 75 years.’  Yet this organisation supports the western powers without which its favourite capitalist state would already have been defeated.  It supports the intervention of these powers that have for the ‘last 75 years’ helped ensure the continuing destruction of the Palestinian people.  It needs the military support of the United States that is also siting off the coast of Gaza. No doubt the AWL, in turn, thinks the ACR is defending reactionary terrorism.

While the pro-imperialism of the AWL is more consistent this hardly makes the inconsistency of the ACR any better and neither is capable of a principled socialist approach.  How they can maintain a united campaign against ‘imperialism’ is not really hard to understand. If articles defending the Zionist state are acceptable for the USC then this is entirely appropriate to the politics of such a campaign and both components.

They deserve each other.