(Reading time:3 mins.) (Reprinted with gratefully-received permission of author of article1 originally published in the Electronic Intifada, a non-profit online publication covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflictfrom a Palestinian perspective)
Nadav Zafrir – a guru in Tel Aviv’s tech scene – offers a textbook example of how spies can make a killing.
Zafrir has gone from commanding Unit 8200 – an elite division in Israel’s military focused on electronic espionage – to leading Check Point,2 a big success story in the business known as cybersecurity.
One element of his rise which has received scant attention is that he has been helped along the way by the European Union.
In 2020, the Brussels bureaucracy issued a research grant worth more than $2.5 million to Illusive Networks, a firm then chaired by Zafrir.
Illusive Networks had developed what it called a “solution that allows early detection of cyber attacks” and the grant was explicitly aimed at enabling the firm to “expand into the EU market.”
As “ethics checks” for EU-funded research projects involve little more than box-ticking, it is a safe bet that Brussels officials did not raise objections to Unit 8200’s activities before approving the grant.
The sinister nature of those activities was summarized in a 2014 letter signed by a few dozen of its veterans.
“The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence,” the letter reads. “While there are severe limitations on the surveillance of Israeli citizens, the Palestinians are not afforded this protection.”
A state which discriminates based on race or ethnicity is by definition an apartheid state. Although the 2014 letter did not use the word “apartheid,” the practices it described certainly fit the definition of apartheid.
Those practices did not materialize overnight. As Nadav Zafrir was head of Unit 8200 from 2009 to 2013, he had definitely practised apartheid – a crime against humanity, according to the International Criminal Court.
By issuing a research grant to his firm, the EU was rewarding a spy chief who had served an apartheid system.
Ireland’s dereliction of duty
Profiles of Zafrir in the mainstream press do not call out his crimes. Rather, they celebrate how he has an “X factor” and how he has been offered a “compensation” package worth more than $15 million for 2025.
Since he joined Check Point as CEO last year – a time when his old buddies in the Israeli military were busy inflicting a genocide on Gaza – he has garnered numerous favourable headlines.
Checkpoint leader Zafrir
Check Point is consolidating its position by either snatching rivals or teaming up with them.
A partnership accord has been inked, for example, between Check Point and another Tel Aviv firm Wiz. “Check Point’s cloud network security tools will be merged into Wiz’s cloud security platform,” The Times of Israelinformed its readers in February.
Technology reporters may get excited by what’s happening in the clouds. Back on the ground, activists are raising awareness about Check Point’s inextricable links to Israel’s military.
In Ireland, a protest against Check Point last month grabbed some media attention.
It involved a disruption of a promotional event organized by Check Point and featuring a speech from the former rugby international Brian O’Driscoll, who is regarded as a hero to many following that sport.3
The group behind the protest – Your Tech = Their Deaths – is rightly sounding the alarm about Irish companies and public authorities that use Check Point’s software.
I contacted the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Dublin following reports that it had renewed a contract relating to Check Point technology over the past few weeks. The DPP’s office replied that it “does not comment on any arrangements related to cybersecurity.”
Ireland is a country still grappling with the effects of colonization. Overcoming those effects requires not only the unification of the island but a willingness to stand up for oppressed peoples around the world.
The other kind of Israeli checkpoint, this a temporary one in the West Bank in April 2024. These are in addition to the fixed ones and Palestinians driving or walking may have to go through many in one journey. Israeli checkpoints are some of the areas of confrontation and arbitrary arrest of Palestinians. (Photo: Times Israel Jaafar ASHTIYEH/ AFP)
Defending Palestinian rights – through action, not just rhetoric – is surely a moral duty for Ireland. Handing over money to Check Point is a dereliction of that duty.
End.
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2An ironic name, given that the IOF and even settlers set up checkpoints to harass Palestinians on towns’ entrances and exits and many points along the roads and that their checkpoints are where Palestinians are routinely arrested and sometimes killed. (Rebel Breeze editorial comment)
3According to reports the protest received rough handling by Gardaí and by security personnel and one participant was subsequently threatened by Driscoll’s lawyers but the promotional event nevertheless had to be abandoned (Rebel Breezeeditorial comment).
Clare Daly stood for election in the 2024 elections of the Irish State, in the Dublin Central parliamentary constituency, one with a tradition of independent representation going back to Maureen O’Sullivan and Tony Gregory before her.
Daly was standing as one of the loose Left coalition of Independents for Change in a heavy competition for the four-seat constituency.
Clare Daly has a track record as elected public representative and socialist political activist, also as a prominent Socialist Party activist, with which organisation she partedcompany in August 2012.
She was elected MEP for the Dublin constituency from July 2019 to July 2024, TD1 for Fingal from Feb. 2016-July 1999 and TD Dublin North Feb. 2011-2019; in recent years Daly has been better known outside Ireland due to her public interventions in the European Parliament.
Daly and her partner Wallace were both vilified by pro-imperialist liberals and ‘Left’ for publicly opposing US/NATO/ EU imperialist campaigns against Islamic regimes and the Russian Federation, being subjected to a host of unfounded allegations contrary to their actual record.
Tik Tok clips of Daly’s biting attacks on the EU’s complicity in the US-backed ‘Israeli’ genocide provided relief for many around the world from the Zionist sycophancy and insincere and ineffective concern for the victims of that daily genocide prevalent in the EU Parliament.
And who can forget Daly’s calling German politician and EU Commission President Ursula Van Der Leyen out as ‘Frau Genocide’ in the European Parliament in December last year!2
While an MEP, Daly also intervened in the discussion around the Irish Gombeen3 class’ attempt to push us towards NATO, further undermining a quite tattered Irish neutrality. And while a TD, she and her partner Mick Wallace TD were arrested protesting the foreign militarisation of Shannon.
To their credit both risked jail by refusing to pay the fines imposed but the Gombeen ruling class decided to restrict the damage of its exposure of collusion with US imperialism by also reducing the punishment of both to a few hours in captivity.
Daly has been one of the few TDs prepared to speak in public against the repression of Irish Republicans and to visit some of the consequent victims in jail.
In the EU Parliament, Daly also denounced the Spanish State’s police invasion of Barcelona and violence against voters there on 1st October 2017 during the referendum on Catalunya’s independence.
2024 Dublin Central election poster for Clare Daly.
In Ireland today
In her election flyer here Daly highlighted representation independent of political party for her electoral area, housing, health service, cost of living, Palestine, the endangered climate and Irish neutrality without any indication of how these issues might be effectively addressed.
Daly’s election flyer did not mention capitalism or imperialism, nor did she campaign on a platform of overthrowing the current neo-colonial and neo-liberal capitalist system in force, instead indicating her wish to “hold to account the people who’ve got us into this mess.”
“Holding to account” is something to which Daly is accustomed doing and does it well, eloquently, with passion and fluently, scarcely having to refer to her notes while doing so. But like ‘speaking truth to power’, it has little effect on those who are in control of the political-social system.
It can indeed have an effect on the victims of the system but we are left with the question of what to do about the situation. Refreshing as it may be to hear her again in Leinster House, neither voting Daly in — nor fifty Dalys — is going to change any of the conditions under which we suffer.
BY THE WAY,
in case anyone’s interested, I gave my first preference vote to Daly and hope she does get elected.
End.
1Teachta Dála, the title of a public representative elected to the parliament of the Irish State.
2Imperialist politician and proven plagiarist in her doctoral thesis.
3Vernacular term in Ireland for huckster, carpet-bagger-type capitalists, derived from the Irish language gaimbíneachas, profiteering, nowadays used to describe the neo-colonial Irish capitalist class.
The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps those of us living among the Western powers.
PART TWO: LESSONS FROM THE ISRAELI ZIONISTS
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time:5 mins.)
The Nature of Zionism
The Zionists have taught us the nature of Zionism as an ideology upholding a people allegedly chosen by religion to occupy a land and to repress or expel the indigenous occupants of that land.
Nature of settler states
As Zionism is a variant of occupier-settler ideology we have, by extension, learned to recognise the nature of all settler states. To be fair, the evidence of that nature was clearly before us but we had perhaps learned to push it to the backs of our minds.
The European settler states of USA and Canada practiced genocide against their native indigenous peoples, of which only discriminated fractions remain from “California” to “Newfoundland”, from Pacific to Atlantic coasts. Both those states have diligently supported the Zionist settler project.
Lithograph image of aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre of Indigenous people, USA, 29 December 1890 (Image sourced: Internet)
Those Northern American territories were primarily English colonies1 as were Australia and New Zealand, both also practicing genocide and discrimination against their indigenous populations and both those states too have supported the Zionist settler project.
European coloniser collection of New Zealand Indigenous heads 1895 (Photo source: Khamen.ir)
Less unanimous have been the mainly Spanish and Portuguese settler colonies of what is now called “Latin America”, from Brazil to Argentina to Mexico. Their indigenous populations too were ethnically cleansed and subjected to genocide, although to varying degrees of intensity.2
The Caribbean islands have all been settler and imported slave colonies of the states of England, Spain and France3, all now having nominal independence but, with the exception of Cuba,4 remaining within the imperial ambit of the USA (mostly) and France and have responded accordingly.
Nature of the zionist state
The Zionist State has demonstrated to us the true outcome of the Israeli zionist ideology, expansionist and prepared to inflict any horror upon the indigenous people in order to achieve its aims, descending to depths of inhumanity unimaginable only if Nazism were forgotten history.
An early mass grave of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza back in November 2023 as the cemeteries were already full (Photo cred: Mohammed Salem/ Reuters)
Currently the Israelis’ toll of Palestinians is at least 34,049 dead and 76,901 wounded, with an estimated further 8,000 under rubble in Gaza, nearly 2 million displaced (many several times), all medical, educational and social facilities and infrastructure degraded if not totally destroyed.5
And with at least 9,500 prisoners (i.e hostages) reportedly ill-treated, humiliated and even tortured, of which an Israeli-admitted 27 have died during these six months alone and 3,660 are held without trial or release date in “administrative detention”.6
Brazen Truth and Lies
We have also learned from the Zionist state its brazen genocidal intentions towards the Palestinians, expressed for internal Israeli consumption, alongside its outlandish lies for the international public about October 7th: beheaded babies, mass rapes, disfigurements, burning alive, etc.
All of those have been debunked and the recorded statistics alone (but also backed by evidence of other agencies) expose the lies that the Israeli army is attacking only7 the Palestinian resistance, that it is not applying collective punishment and using starvation as a weapon.
False Israeli Zionist propaganda about the Palestinian resistance “beheading babies” repeated by US President Joe Biden in press statement, claiming he had seen photos. His aides later ‘clarified’ that he was relying on reports from the Israeli state and had not seen actual photos. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Not bothering to give excuses for its demolition of universities and museums, schools and places of Muslim and Christian worship, ‘Israel’ has claimed the existence of tunnel entrances in them as excuses for the total elimination of Palestine’s main hospitals and degradation of all others.
It has done this despite its lack of evidence of such use of the hospitals, despite denials of hospital staff and organisations and without having to explain how such claims, even if they were true, could justify siege of hospitals, killing patients and staff and their destruction as functioning hospitals.
What Israel and the western imperialist states have shown us to date is that Israel has impunity to carry on its genocide. Not only will it not be boycotted, much less blockaded, not to even mention invaded, it will continue to be supplied with weapons, money and political support.
Even after the ICJ judgement in favour of S. Africa that Israel was “plausibly committing genocide” and restrictions imposed on Israel by the court, the genocide continued without pause and without any serious international repercussions by any western state.
Israel has given us a clear demonstration in practice of the hollowness of western institutional democracy and liberalism, not only in its continued support for the genocidal state but in the repression by western states of those who have supported the Palestinians in word or deed.
Demonstrations and pickets have been forbidden8, protesters threatened and arrested9, academics hounded and sacked,10 artists and public speakers cancelled, social media profiles hampered or blocked. In fact, all the kinds of undemocratic actions of which some other states are often accused.
Exposure of the world order of legal democratic institutions
The exposure of these institutions was almost complete. The United Nations of 193 states was shown powerless to act without the authorisation of the five Permanent Members11 of the Security Council — which itself was shown nullified by a veto of even one Member.12
United nations
United Nations building with approach flanked by national flags of member states(Photo sourced: Internet)
The International Court of Justice, a sub-institution of the UN itself, with a history of never even trying a western power, though judging Israel plausibly guilty of genocide,13 failed in its judgement on 26th January to order an immediate cease to the state’s attacks on the Gaza population.
The ICJ failed even to take action on Israel’s non-compliance with the interim measures it ordered, viz: “to take all measures to prevent any acts that could be considered genocidal according to the 1948 Genocide Convention”, other than to issue another non-complied order on 28th March.14
The United Nations failed to defend its own aid organisation for the relief of Palestinians (both in Palestine and as refugees in other parts) from unsupported Israeli allegations of the participation of 0.04% of its staff in the Palestinian resistance operation of October 7th 2023.
The UNWRA chiefs responded by failing to stand up to Israeli bullying and by sacking nine of their own workers without any evidence presented against them and without a right to a hearing or appeal. It also for a time failed to denounce Israel for reported torture of the agency’s employees.15
The UN failed to defend the staff of UNWRA from unproven allegations, unfair internal treatment and Israeli intimidation and murder or to maintain the essential funding of UNWRA essential for the Palestinians, or to insist on the regular and protected entry of aid trucks safe from Israeli attack.
The European Union refused to even call for a ceasefire; continued to act as Israel’s biggest export market; some of its members withdrew UNRWA funding and continued to supply the genocidal state with arms, while many states repressed their own citizens acting in solidarity with Palestine.
The need for revolutionary resistance
The Zionist state and its imperialist backers and, to be fair to it, our own Irish state too, have demonstrated to us the fragile and temporary nature of western liberalism and democracy on the one hand and the need, by implication, of revolutionary resistance and organisation on the other.
IN CONCLUSION
It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.
End.
Part of Gaza after Israeli bombardment back July 2014; now of course it is much, much worse. (Image sourced: Internet)
1The Dutch also colonised the north-east of what is now the USA and the French particularly Louisiana, in what is now the USA and Quebec in what is now Canada. What is now SW USA was part of the Spanish colonial empire, subsequently part of the Mexican Empire and gained by the USA in two wars with Mexico.
2The disparity in approach of these states is underlined by for example on the one hand El Salvador unreservedly supporting the zionist state and by Nicaragua on the other hand taking Germany to the International Court of Justice in accusation of being complicit in the Israeli genocide by supporting the state with weapons and finance.
3Without overlooking the fact that each of those states (England now as the United Kingdom) contains other dominated nations within it.
4During the existence of the USSR Cuba was often described as being under Soviet colonial influence but remains today the only truly independent (though part-occupied) state in the whole of the Caribbean.
6 At the time of writing Adameer, the Palestinian prisoner and human rights organisation reports 9,500 Palestinian prisoners of which 3,660 are “administrative detainees”, 200 children and 80 women. Seventeen of the prisoners are elected Legislative Council members (similar to MPs or TDs) https://www.addameer.org/statistics. These figures have changed regularly during the 6 months of zionist genocide and the trend is always upward except for a brief period during the truce and exchange of hostages.
The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps to those of us living among the Western powers.
The Palestinians have taught us the strength and value to an occupied and oppressed people of resistance, from generation to generation, maintaining and developing culture and nurturing historical memory while the occupier tried to erase it all and make the endeavour seem hopeless.
Palestinian woman in Gaza defiant, January 8, 2009 (Photo cred: Eric Gaillard/Reuters)
Without a navy, air force, tanks, armoured vehicles or standard artillery (apart from home-made rockets and missiles), they faced what is often called the “strongest military power in the Middle east”. Despite periodic massacres they have regularly risen against the oppressor.
In truth, it was a lesson that at one time we hardly needed in Ireland, learned even earlier than the Palestinians. But we needed reminding of it.
It is also important for the morale and dignity of the resistance that it shows itself capable of striking at the enemy.
We’ve been reminded of the importance of long-term preparation. The Palestinian resistance built kilometres of tunnels underground in which they also set weapon production factories, developing their own weapons and repurposing existing weapons, including unexploded Israeli Army bombs.
In their Al Aqsa Flood attack on October 7th and fighting since, the Palestinians taught us the value of not only of daring and prior preparation but of coordination and unity, as a number of resistance organisations cooperated in struggle, some secular and some Islamic fundamentalist.1
Palestinian resistance fighters from different organisations displaying their unity in struggle in this photo (Photo sourced: Internet)
In meeting the subsequent genocidal rage of the occupier, the Palestinian resistance have taught us that all the technological might and expertise of the enemy was incapable of crushing a prepared, courageous, united and determined resistance.
The Israeli domination of the air from which it rained down genocidal bombing on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or targeted assassinations of the families of resistance fighters, was not sufficient to defend its ground troops from attack and is itself under attack from GTA missiles.2
The occupier was effective only in genocidal actions against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure for which it will forever be reviled in historical memory. It achieved neither of the objectives it declared as it unleashed its war against Gaza: the wiping out of the resistance and release of captives.
Imperialism
We been shown – if we were willing to see it – the unity of western imperialism in supporting the ‘right ‘of a European settler group to establish itself on the land of the indigenous, creating an ethnocentric and theocratic state founded with an act of ‘ethnic cleansing’.3
We have been taught the willingness of the western imperialist states to tolerate the proliferation of acts and policies which it claims go against its fundamental liberal values: oppression, apartheid, discrimination and repression, while lauding the ‘European liberal values’ of the occupier state.
Betrayal
Another lesson which we should have learned too within the necessity of unity in a broad front is that it needs to be on a principled basis and the dangers in unity without such safeguards, leading to treachery, betrayal and collusion with the occupier.
The secular left-wing Fatah4 organisation may have seemed at one time the ideal one to follow though some would have favoured the further-left People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine.5 But it was Fatah, as leading element in the PLO alliance, that signed up to the Oslo accords.6
In return for limited autonomy in a fraction of Palestinian land and without consideration of the right of return to the expelled Palestinians, the Fatah leadership with Yasser Arafat at its head agreed to this “peace process” while its officials scrambled for the gains of official corruption.
Hence the Palestinian Authority, corrupt, unrepresentative, undemocratic and repressive, working in collusion with the occupying authority. Again, our own history should have taught us that lesson but again, it is good to be reminded.
The Palestinians taught us how to deal with such a poisonous fungal growth with the Second Intifada and their last elections, those of 20067 and the carrying through of the electorate’s wishes in 2007, along with the ongoing resistance since.
Western Mass Media and alternatives
In reporting the events in Palestine over the decades but in particular over the last six months, we have learned the heavy anti-Palestinian and pro-Israeli bias of the WMM, that accepted without question the transparent lies of the Israeli regime and even questioned the massacre statistics.
Never once has the unjust claim of the occupiers to their stolen gains been questioned, never once the fundamentally just claim of the indigenous even mentioned. The Palestinian resistance has been reduced to one organisation in reporting, to be held up as a bogeyman monster.
(Image sourced: Internet)
If atrocities from across the Palestinian people were reported in the media, they were framed as of dubious provenance, while the most outlandish and illogical claims of the occupier were reported as reasonable fact.
We have, in fact, been taught not to trust the western mass media when reporting on international events and, by extension, not to trust it on domestic issues either. Conversely we have learned to rely more on alternative Internet media but also on the need to navigate those with some caution.
We have also learned that some of the most prominent alternative sources on the war between NATO/Ukraine and Russia, attacked by liberals and sections of the Left as “Russian-controlled” or “Putinistas” turned out to be the most reliable in reporting the realities of the Israeli genocide.
Internationalist solidarity
We have relearned the importance of international solidarity, both as we expressed it ourselves and saw its outpouring across the globe. We have been taught the existence of an alternative world of human solidarity in opposition to one based on expropriation, exploitation and competition.
We saw Hizbolah in Jordan and Syria come to the assistance of the Palestinians and pay the price for doing so, as did Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) in Yemen and as has also Iran — what the Electronic Intifada has called “the Axis of Resistance”.
Chilean football team players May 2021 (Photo sourced: Internet)London, January 2024 (Photo cred: PA)
And we have learned to use internationalism as a measuring stick also in evaluating institutions, political parties and politicians in our own countries. We have seen the meaning of anti-semitism twisted and employed in repression with a stifling censorship across public life – academic, political and social.
Downing Street (containing home of the UK Prime Minister) 29 December 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)
Political parties and politicians have revealed either their complicity in and collusion with the criminal Israeli genocide or alternatively their inability to resist and effectively oppose it. That has exposed their lack of fitness to lead us in our domestic struggles too.
Teachers and others in Palestine solidarity demonstration in Dublin, March 2024 symbolically carrying infant school chairs in protest against the Palestinian children murdered by the Israeli armed forces. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
IN CONCLUSION
The need for revolutionary resistance
The Palestinian resistance has taught us important lessons, including the need of revolutionary resistance in addition to revolutionary organisation and preparation.
It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.
End. (Read alsoPart B – What the Israeli Zionists have taught usfollows.)
FOOTNOTES
1Hamas – Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades; Palestinian Islamic Jihad – Al-Quds Brigades; Popular Resistance Committees Al-Nasser Salah ad-Din Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command Jihad Jibril Brigades; Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – National Resistance Brigades, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades; Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its Mujahideen Brigades.
3The expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians and massacres such as the one in the village of Dir Yassin.
4Fatah wasfounded in 1957 and was the majority party in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
5The PLO was founded in 1964 and the PFLP in 1967, next in size of organisation in the PLO to Fatah (Islamic organisations were excluded from the PLO; Hamas recently proposed the reconstruction of the PLO open to all resistance organisations).
6The Oslo Accords were the result of a number of conferences, overseen by the USA and was part of the second of the current“peace processes” which include Ireland, the Basque Country and Colombia.
7Hamas won the elections throughout the accepted Palestinian territories but Fatah tried to continue to keep control, being dislodged from Gaza in 2007 by Hamas, which held back from doing the same thing in the West Bank which has remained under the undemocratic, repressive and colluder control of the Palestine Authority.
It has been said that with one phone call from Joe Biden to Netanyahu the genocide in Gaza could be halted.
Comparisons have been made to Reagan doing just that with the Irgun terrorist, Menachem Begin, who was the Israeli Prime Minister during the siege of Beirut in 1982 or Obama in later years.
Little has been said of the European Union’s equal capacity to make a similar call and bring an end to the slaughter. The EU is not a minor player in the region, and Israel is as much dependent on the EU as it is on the USA, though in a slightly different manner.
From the start the EU decided to support Israel, come hell or high water, and hell it was to be, for the Palestinians. Ursula von der Leyen stated that Israel had the right to defend itself against what she termed terrorism and that “Europe stands with Israel”.1
Ursula von der Leyen, taken at a time when EU staffers complained about her bias in favour of Israel (Photo credit: EPA-EFE/JULIEN WARNAND)
A month later, as the gravity of Israeli plans were clear for all to see, she continued to talk about the Hamas attack on October 7th, much of which has now been proven to be false (there were no decapitated babies, many of the dead were Israeli military not civilians and furthermore Israel itself killed many of the civilians).
She made no condemnation of Israeli bombings of civilians. She and the EU still stood by Israel.2
But on October 20th 842 staffers at the EU signed a letter condemning her position and pointing out she was legitimising a war crime in Gaza, and pointed to her support for the blockade of food and water in Gaza.3
But Von der Leyen continued as before and still stands by Israel and its “right to self-defence”, despite the evidence that what Israel is engaged in, is genocide and multiple war crimes.
Some have made reference to the Nazi past of her family, and though interesting, it is not the reason for her support nor that of the EU, though it may affect the tone of her statements.
In evaluating her behaviour we should, of course, bear in mind her aristocratic and Nazi past, of which she is apparently very proud of and has made reference to.
But they are just anecdotes, others with a clean family tree have also supported Israel.
The reason why the EU supports Israel is one of naked self-interest. Like the USA, the EU has decided that Israel is also its very own Forward Operating Base to keep in check the Arab masses and ensure the flow of oil.
The EU was in a position to halt the genocide from the word go. Von der Leyen could have told Israel to back off and it would have. Without the EU, the Israeli economy collapses.
A ban on exporting to or importing from Israel would see the modern-day Babylon collapse overnight with little effect on Europe itself. Israel is the EU’s 25th largest trading partner, way behind Turkiye which is the EU’s sixth largest trading partner.
However, the reverse does not hold. The EU is a significant trading partner for Israel.
According to the European Commission’s Office in Israel (Von der Leyen & Co.) 31.9% of Israeli imports come from the EU and 25.6% of Israel’s exports go to the EU with total trade amounting to €46.8 billion in 2022.
Israeli imports of services amounted to €16.7 billion in 2021 with exports representing €9.8 billion. Further the EU invested €60.5 billion in 2021. Israel depends on the EU.4 One phone call is all it would have taken to put Netanyahu in his place and stop the genocide.
European complicity in the genocide is not limited to its economic role. Between 2012 and 2022, Israel received just over 5.4 billion US dollars in arms transfers, from three sources. Unsurprisingly, the USA was the primary supplier.
But Germany supplied Israel with $1.475 billion and Italy supplied a further $261 million. In the same period, Israel exported $7.458 billion to a range of countries, including the UK, bastions of democracy such as Azerbaijan ($854 million), Turkiye ($60 million).
But by far the biggest recipient was India which received $2.879 billion.5
The type of weaponry received is important. Israel received $2.734 billion in aircraft, $609 million in armoured vehicles, $752 million in missiles, just the type of weaponry it has used to reduce Gaza to rubble and carry out its genocide.
Israeli Merkava 4 tank in exercise on occupied ground in the Golan Heights 2016; it and other armoured vehicles carry German engines, according to arms watch organisation SIPRI which believes them to be in operation in Gaza now. (Photo: Ariel Schalit/AP)
All of those regimes who supplied Israel with weaponry are as guilty as the Israelis. After Operation Cast Lead (December 2008 – January 2009) it was obvious what type of regime held sway in Tel Aviv.
They have repeated this type of operation on many occasions since then, with major interventions and also a number of smaller, though still deadly attacks.
The nature of the Zionist regime was laid bare to the world, and yet the EU continued to export the type of weapons needed to carry out a genocide.
The nature of the Zionist regime was laid bare to the world, and yet the EU continued to export the type of weapons needed to carry out a genocide.
Hopefully, some day in the future we can hold a Nuremberg-style tribunal to judge those responsible. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, places obligations on states and gives them the authority to try people for the crime of Genocide.6
To be clear about what genocide is, the convention to which most states are signatories defines it in Article II as:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.7
Israel was one of the first signatories to it and has made no reservations on any aspect of it, unlike the USA which has placed some caveats on its jurisdiction in relation to the USA.8
Photo of Nuremberg defendants during the Nuremberg Trials. Will there one day be such a tribunal sitting on the Israeli war criminals and their international accomplices? (Photo sourced: Internet)
Following WWII not only were the Nazis tried at Nuremberg, other Nazis were tried by individual states in the subsequent years. Countries such as France, Germany, Israel, Norway and others brought Nazis to trial after the Nuremberg Trials.
In Hungary alone, around 26,000 people were tried for treason, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Czechoslovakia around 32,000 people met a similar fate. Some 100,000 Germans and Austrians were tried in Western Europe and in the Soviet Union another 26,000 were also tried.9
Any nation can place those accused of genocide on trial. To date it has been a question of power. The US won the war in the East and so were not charged for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nearly all those tried for crimes against humanity have been on the losing side of a conflict in which the US and Europe wished to punish one side.
It is entirely conceivable that the powers that make up the BRICS10 could detain war criminals and place them on trial in a national or supranational court convened by them. It is possible though unlikely.
It is however necessary. International law is dead, buried under the rubble of churches, mosques and hospitals in Gaza.
Netanyahu and the entire High Command of the IDF should stand trial like Göring and others did and should face the same consequences as Eichmann who the Israelis tried and executed by hanging.
Ten top ranking Nazis were executed, with Göring committing suicide the night before his scheduled execution. Others should meet another fate as did those lower ranking Nazis in subsequent trials. Various EU leaders should also be tried.
Von der Leyen is a key case and should meet the fate her Nazis family escaped from. Keir Starmer, Macron, Merkel, Rushi Sunak and others should all be put on trial and at the very least imprisoned. Europe is as much to blame for the current genocide as the USA and Israel itself.
6 See Article IV Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals. Article V The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III. Article VIII Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
The news that there has been corruption at a high level in the EU will have shocked no-one except the most ignorant and credulous. It is endemic in the capitalist system for large organisations to become corrupt.
We’ve heard of corruption in police forces, in domestic international sports and culture boards, even in management of charities and, of course, in governments. Those high places occupied by elites bring to their occupants a sense of entitlement beyond even the usual rewards.
WHICH CULPRIT STATE – OR STATES?
When the news first began to break, the reports were saying that the responsible state was unknown, though some speculated on Qatar. We certainly knew was that it wasn’t Israel, since that state gets access to the EU and other bodies without difficulty – but that’s political corruption, which is different.
The speculation is now solidifying around Qatar as the foreign power buying influence but increasingly Morocco is getting mentioned too. What results exactly Qatar is trying to buy is not clear at the moment and the same can be said for Morocco.
The latter state has been trying to normalise its occupation of Western Sahara despite Saharawi political and guerrilla resistance and the EU agreed to exploit Saharawi natural resources as “Moroccan” – until the EU Court of Justice ruled that agreement illegal last year.
Difficult to see what other gain Morocco can get from EU politicians with regard to Western Sahara – unless it’s going to buy some judges which, if it could, it would surely have done before now.
Meanwhile the USA has recognised Moroccan occupation in exchange for its recognition of Israel1.
“UNDERMINING EU DEMOCRACY”
Among the expressions of concern and shock that were expressed from within the EU was the amusing one that the corruption was in danger of undermining democracy in the EU, which would presuppose that the organisation is a democratic one.
Some years ago, the Ministers of Labour of each member of the EU voted to extend the working age before pension entitlement. Of course, that was unanimous and therefore democratic – except that not a single one of those ministers took the question to their own electorate.
Of course not, knowing that the vote would be a resounding NO. Already too many people die before receiving their pension and those statistics are worse as one goes ‘down’ the social scale to manual workers and people in the ‘lower’ social groups2.
Eva Kaili, Greek MEP suspended under allegations of corruption in the EU (Photo cred: AP)
CONCERN ABOUT LOBBYING
It was also amusing to see the concern about money being spent on lobbying, which ALL big capitalist companies do – anywhere they hope to reap benefits, the EU being one of them. In 2017, Google spent nearly $ 7 million on lobbying in the EU, Microsoft tipping on $6 million.
But in lobbying terms, these sums would be considered small.
In the USA, an estimated 3.73 billion U.S. dollars was spent in 2019 -an increase from the 3.53 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 on lobbying its parliament, the House of Representatives.3
Much larger quid pro quo arrangements are made gaining access to markets and facilities through USA state politicians or, in the EU, through individual national states.
Irish politicians may for example offer a good factory site in Ireland, low tax, rent-free years, tax evasion in the company’s home state and of course access to an English-speaking highly-educated workforce. Would those politicians then vote against the company in the EU?
Since just about everything except air (so far) is a market commodity under capitalism, which is the world system, can it ever be possible to eradicate corruption anywhere in the world? It cannot and legislators know this; they seek merely to control it at an “acceptable” level.
Which means that even a socialist country is going to have corruption as long as it exists in a capitalist world.
EU Parliament building, Strasbourg (Photo accessed: Internet)
CORRUPTION IN CURRENT AND PROSPECTIVE EU STATES
Finally, discussing corruption and the EU reminds us that some European states have been criticised by the EU higher circles because of their endemic corruption. One of those is Hungary, which of course rejoiced in the ongoing scandal, declaring that the EU is no position to lecture them.
But it should remind us too that some years ago another European state was judged more corrupt than Hungary – in fact the most corrupt state in Europe. That was the Ukraine, whether under the control of pro-Western or pro-Russian oligarchs.
One of Zelensky’s election platform positions to depose Petro Poroshenko, the West’s choice for Ukranian President in the 2014 coup was to be anti-corruption. Has he cleaned up Ukraine? Hard to say since he controls the media and the opposition groups and individuals are banned or in jail.
But on the other hand, we do know from a number of sources that large amounts of western arms supplied to the Ukrainian regime are believed to be finding their way on to the black market. Yet opposition to Ukraine’s membership of the EU has suddenly melted away.
Which might be an appropriate point at which to remind ourselves again that there is another kind of corruption, other than financial, usually linked to the latter but not always directly — and that’s political corruption.
Corruption is inevitable in fruits of the system because the very seed is contaminated.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1One of Trump’s last decisions on his way out in 2020 but not rescinded by Biden.
2 “Research for former pensions minister Malcolm Wicks has shown that 19% of men from the lowest social classes, including cleaners and manual labourers, die before the age of 65 compared to just 7% of men from the highest social group. It also highlighted that 10% of women from poorer backgrounds die before they reach 60 compared with 4% of women from a better off demographic.” Fifth of men die before state pension age – Investment Sense
3 “In 2021, the total lobbying spending in the United States amounted to 3.73 billion U.S. dollars. This is an increase from the 3.53 billion U.S. dollars spent on lobbying in 2020.” Total lobbying spending U.S. 2021 | Statista
Conspiracy theorists get laughed at which, since some of the theories are indeed laughable, seems fair enough. Conspiracy deniers, on the other hand, get an easy time of it, which is a pity – because there are conspiracies going on. All of the time.
People wearing reptile masks — one of the more laughable conspiracy theories but believed by many in the US is that they are being ruled by lizard people. (Image source: Internet)
Then there’s simple convergence of interests, which give rise to conspiracies but can also operate independently.
A current example of convergence of interests: The EU and all its constituent governments decide that the struggle between Catalonia and the Spanish State is an internal matter for the Spanish ruling class and can they please sort it out without dragging most of Europe into the mess? In fact, if they don’t sort it out, it endangers a number of key players in the EU and, inevitably, the EU itself.
As the current President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Junker reminded everyone on the question of Catalonian independence in 2017, there are member states of the EU other than the Spanish one that are vulnerable to the same kind of ‘problem’, i.e that of a bid for separation and independence of some part (or parts) of the state in question.
And if we look at Europe outside the Spanish State, we can see what he might have meant. There’s the French state, which contains within it three provinces out of the seven of the Basque Country, a part of Catalonia, also Brittany, Occitania and Corsica. Each of those regions was at one time an independent kingdom or part of a kingdom other than that of France; each also has its own language and each has struggled against French domination at some time or other.
Italy is a state with huge differences between its north and south, a composite of many different parts that did not come under one state rule even formally until 1871, at which time the spoken language of one region could hardly be understood in another. And there is Sardinia, still with its own language and currently engaged in another struggle for independence.
The UK is in the process of ceasing to become part of the EU now but it is still a part of the pattern of alliances (and hostilities) that forms part of modern Europe. And the UK contains the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, not long out of the three-decades guerrilla war, also Scotland with a strong popular movement for independence. In addition the Celtic nation of Wales was subjugated but still has a strong language movement and there are some stirrings of nationalism in the Celtic nation of Cornwall.
Belgium is a united state but containing the French-speaking Waloons and the Dutch-speaking Flemish and, although both languages are officially recognised, as polities, the two groups don’t get on very well together.
Even the separation of Catalonia from the Spanish State’s territory on its own would be bad enough from the point of view of EU leaders – but it could also precipitate the separation of the four southern Basque provinces, also of Galicia and Asturies. Which would certainly attract the interest of the southern regions of the French state.
In summary then, a successful bid for independence by Catalonia would start an “infection” (which is what Borrell, the Spanish Foreign Minister to the EU called Catalan independentism) which has the potential to cause the breakup of a number of major and medium states of the EU. And Junker also said that he didn’t want “an EU of ninety-nine states”. Of course not, such a union would be very difficult for the big European states to dominate and, in fact, those same European states would not be so big any more.
Conspiracy? Probably not – just convergence of interests. The ruling elites would have no need to get together, decide what they wanted their politicians to do, then have their various ministers sit down, formulate the policy of each state, have the foreign ministers of each get together and then inform the managers of the EU. The politicians have been trained and schooled, they know in general what their ruling elites want, without having to be told. They would react to Catalonian independence almost instinctively – with rejection. They view nationalism and independence, if it breaks up a rival power (such as the Eastern Bloc), as a good thing – but not in their own group!
President Reagan of the USA lied when he denied any truth in the allegations of arms being sold to Iran to fund the Contra war against the Nicaraguan state. (Photo source: Internet)
THE USA IRAN-CONTRA CONSPIRACY
However, conspiracies do indeed happen, of course they do – and often. We have just passed by the anniversary of a key point in one huge one, the point when the “Iran-Contra” scandal began to break, in early November 1986. And President Reagan of the USA said that “the speculation that the US has sold arms to Iran has no foundation”, which was of course a lie. Basically, the US sold arms to the fundamentalist theocratic regime in Iran but, due to a US Congress embargo on such exports there, had to do it through Israel. They did so for two reasons, one for money to fund a military terrorist campaign against the government of Nicaragua which the US Congress would not approve, second in order to seduce the Iranian military (as they have done with the Egyptian military) and having them overthrow the Iranian regime. And the US wanted the Nicaraguan revolutionary government overthrown because it was not aligning itself with US foreign policy in what the USA considers its back yard (and a major source of raw materials) and also because a successful state of the type which Nicaragua was (then) would provide a ‘bad example’ to the other states of Latin America.
The Israeli Zionist ruling elite went for the deal because they too hoped the Iranian military would overthrow the theocratic regime and bring Iran back under the western-imperialist umbrella, as it once had been so secure that the CIA had its HQ for the whole Middle East located right there (and got caught with its pants down, or its secret documents in the process of shredding). And besides, the USA is the No.1 supporter of the Israeli Zionist regime in the world (another example of convergence of interests).
But despite the convergence of interests between the ruling elites of the USA and Israel, along with former Nicaraguan military, right-wing groups (for terrorist personnel) and US client regimes such as Honduras (for Contra bases) and Panama (for drug money to also fund the Contras, apparently through the CIA to sell in California – another conspiracy theory), a conspiracy was necessary to execute the operation. This was because of the unusual nature of the arms deal, its illegality according to US (and presumably Israeli) law and the number of partners involved. And the silent complicity of the US mass media was necessary, at least until a CIA plane delivering weapons was shot down by Nicaraguan forces over their territory and an operative, Eugene Hasenfus, captured alive.
A COMMON KIND OF CONSPIRACY
Another example of conspiracy is that of price-fixing between big companies on given products. There have been a number of these exposed over the years. A conspiracy is necessary in this case because normally, the interest of big companies is to increase their share of the market over that of the competition. But at times, they perceive that it is in their joint interests to cease cutting one another’s throats and to regulate the prices of their products by agreement among themselves. Not only is this illegal in most administrations but it runs counter to the philosophy of capitalism, i.e that competition, instead of the cooperation advocated by socialists, is good for society. The fact that price-fixing is out of the norm of capitalism requires coming to formal agreement between the participants and the fact that it is illegal and undermines capitalist propaganda, requires secrecy – hence conspiracy.
However, most of what goes on in the world when government or other reactionary elements cooperate is probably just the result of convergence of interests, easily recognised by the participants.
(Image source: Internet)
A CONVERGENCE OF VERY DIFFERENT INTERESTS
Generally speaking, it is when their partnerships are put under pressure that the established convergence begins to crack; when one partner or another decides that the price of remaining in it is too high or that it’s time for sauve qui peut (everyone for himself). What can achieve that level of pressure is another kind of convergence of interests, that of the masses of wage-earners, small business people, peasants and indigenous people, recognising that by acting together, they can overthrow the existing system and set up an alternative that corresponds to their needs.
Another spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of an EU state’s fragmentation and the possible disintegration of the EU itself. It may begin with the breakup of a European state but could ultimately affect most of southern, south-eastern and south-western Europe.
Huge pro-Catalan Independence demonstration fills the streets of Barcelona on Catalunya’s national day. (Photo source: Guardian, on line).
A street demonstration in Barcelona on Catalunya’s national day filled the streets with an incredible number (over one million according even to the police) and awash with the “Estelades”, the Catalan revolutionary flag of the Senyeraestelada from the 1930s with the blue triangle enclosing a white star, in homage to Cuba and Puerto Rico (see video link below). From above, apart from the flags, the demonstration appeared lime-green as participants wore T-shirts of that colour with the Sí (“yes”) for independence printed on them.
The demonstrators formed a huge “X” in the city to signify a “yes” vote for independence and somewhere near the middle, three human towers put their topmost members displaying a clenched fist in the universal sign of resistance to oppression.
The political crisis surrounding the current bid for a referendum on independence for Catalunya (their nation in Catalan) serious consequences for the Spanish state but as the crisis matures may also deeply affect two other European states: France and Italy.
As the Parlement of Catalunya has now declared by majority that it will defy the Spanish State and hold a referendum on independence from the Spanish state on October 1st, the Spanish ruling class grows increasingly desperate and
Had its Constitutional Court declare the referendum unconstitutional and illegal,
Has the paramilitary police force, the Guardia Civil, searching for ballot boxes with the intention of confiscating them,
Summoned 700 town Mayors to answer to charges of facilitating an illegal referendum by allowing their council buildings to be used as polling stations
Threatened to charge Parlament pro-independendists with disobedience and abuse of power
Closed down the official Catalan referendum website
It also demanded weekly accounts on expenditure from the Parlament to try and ensure it was not funding the referendum.
ALTO! HALT! (Cartoon by DB)
In response, the leader of the Parlement says the Spanish can arrest him if they want but he is going ahead with the referendum. Many among the 700 town Mayors of Catalunya have said they will not attend court while others have said they will as they believe they have done nothing wrong. Many organisations and institutions have offered their premises as polling stations if necessary. Hundreds of Catalans have volunteered to help organise the referendum and to staff the polling stations.
To many observers, it will seem that the actions of the Spanish state are hysterical and excessive. On the other hand, to those who understand the history and nature of the Spanish state, it is hard to see how the Spanish ruling class can concede Catalan independence. That is on ideological and political grounds alone; and if those grounds were not enough, there are also the financial, economic and territorial ones.
“SPAIN: UNITARY, GREAT AND FREE”
The fascist Spanish slogan: “Espaňa – Una, Grande y Libre”, the claim that their state is unitary as well as “Great and Free”, explains in part the problem for the Spanish ruling class in a Catalonian secession. The creation of the Spanish kingdom was based on alliances for war against the Moorish Iberian kingdom of El Andalus, that religiously-tolerant kingdom of great learning and culture and it brought all other Iberian kingdoms under its rule. Subsequently, the Spanish Kingdom forced Christianity on the Jews or expelled them (creating the Sephardic Jewish refugees) as they did also not only to the defeated Moors of El Andalus but also to those other Arabs who had fought as allies of the Christian Royals. In later years the Spanish Empire lost conquered territory abroad but never gave any up on the Iberian Peninsula since the breakaway of the Kingdom of Portugal in 1143.
Unlike most of Europe, there was no successful revolution against the feudal system in the Spanish state, which retarded its economic and political development. However, the revenue from the kingdom’s exploitation of its vast territories in America kept the State powerful (while also acting as a negative counterbalance against the development of its industry).
SPANISH CIVIL WAR AND INVASION
Modernising and liberalising movements did struggle for change within the State but the First Spanish Republic only lasted under two years (11 February to 29 December 1874). The Second Republic (1931-1939) went through a right-wing repressive phase but then turned to a liberal-socialist phase, at which point the Army mutinied under the leadership of the Four Generals, of which Franco became the best-known.
The Second Republic conceded autonomy to Catalunya and Galicia and later, perhaps reluctantly, to the southern Basque Country (excluding Nafarroa/ Navarra, where the reactionary Christian-monarchist Carlists seized control and sided with the military insurgency). Aided by German Nazi and Italian fascist air transport, war material and troops, as well as by the complicity of Britain and France, the military defeated the Second Spanish Republic after a fierce struggle and a Christian-fascist dictatorship under General Franco took over the country.1
The Esteladas flying in a Catalan demonstration for Independence. (Photo source: Internet)
All claims to separate nationhoods were suppressed, all the nations being considered merely “regions” of the Spanish state, with picturesque traditional costumes and feasts. Castillian (Spanish) was to be the only language permitted in use, with particular repression inflicted on those of the strongest and most widely-used tongues, Catalan and Euskera (Basque).
Adolf Hitler and General Franco reviewing German occupation troops in Hendaye, Northern Basque Country, 1942 (Photo source: Internet)
Armed resistance of a guerrilla-type continued for awhile after the end of the Civil War/ Anti-Fascist War, and in the 1960s the Basque left-nationalist group ETA commenced armed struggle after nearly a decade of persecution by the Spanish State. For a while too there was an armed group in Catalunya.
After the death of Franco in 1975, the Spanish ruling class, under internal pressure from the Christian technocrat movement Opus Dei and external pressure from the USA, attempted a modernising and liberalising change of regime which is now widely referred to as the “transition to democracy” (sic) or just plainly as La Transición.
As part of this process, the Monarchy was re-imposed on the people when Juan Carlos de Borbón, who had been groomed by Franco, was declared King of Spain in 1975 and also named as Franco’s successor. No vote was held on the reimposition of a King on the Spanish state which had been without a reigning monarch for 34 years. A Constitution was drawn up which included the Spanish state being a constitutional monarchy and with much talk of democracy and changes, including regional autonomy, the Constitution gained 88% votes in favour. Among the 22% negative votes were the majority of the southern Basque Country.
General Franco in his declining years with his protege, Juan Carlos, later crowned King of Spain. (Photo source: Internet)
After Juan Carlos’ abdication in June 2014, Juan Carlos’ son Felipe VI was declared King, a majority of the representatives in the Cortes (Spanish Parliament) voting to approve — which included not only the hard right-wing Partido Popular (PP) but also the helpful abstention of the social-democratic Partido Socialista Obrero (PSOE).
THAT WAS THEN – BUT NOW?
After Franco’s death, Catalunya was created an “autonomous region” and was ruled by a right-wing majority in the Parlament2; nevertheless struggles with the Spanish State have broken out from time to time, in particular about the use of the Catalan language and the primacy which Catalans, both right and left-wing, wish it have in Catalunya.
Another bone of contention has been the disparity between the tax revenue the Spanish state gains from Catalunya, on the one hand, and the funding the Spanish state gives to the autonomous region.
Some years ago the Parlement declared their intention of holding a referendum on independence but the Government and the Spanish National Court declared that this would be illegal, going against the Constitution (the same thing happened in the Basque Country). In addition, an Army General declared that the Constitution could be enforced with tanks, if necessary. The Spanish Government, although distancing itself from the General’s comments, did not have him disciplined.
Every year since then has seen large national demonstrations for Catalan independence, including a huge human chain in 2003.
The historic ideological and political grounds, as noted earlier in passing, are not the only ones which make the surrender of Catalonia unthinkable for the Spanish ruling class. In terms of population (2016 figures), Catalunya’s 7,522,596 is 2nd in size for a region within the State and 16% of the State’s total. Catalunya’s land area of 32,108 km (12,397sq.mi) is 6.5% of the Spanish State’s Iberian land mass. But even worse, from the Spanish ruling class’ perspective, is that 23% of the state’s industry is in Catalunya, and in 2013 the region’s product was 203.62 billion euros (¢228 billion), according to the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia — about 20 percent of the Spanish state’s 2013 GDP of 1.04 trillion euros (¢1.17 trillion) and 25% of its exports.
And should the regions of the wider Paisos Catalans (“Catalan Countries), i.e Valencia, Balearic Islands, Rosello and Andorra, join Catalunya in independence, the Spanish state stands to lose 13% of its land mass and a huge part of its coastline and islands, along with 28% of its population.
THE SIGNS BLOWING IN THE WIND
It is not today or yesterday that this crisis began maturing – it’s been coming for a long time. The Spanish ruling class, for the most part, knows only one way to respond to pressure – and that’s to push back. If they can. And since they run the State ….
The much vaunted Transición after Franco was merely a change of clothes for the State and the ruling class. They hated the change but felt forced into it. First they had to legalise the hated social-democratic party, the PSOE and its trade unions, the Comisiones Obreras. Then they had to legalise the Partido Communista and their union, the UGT (over some objections, including that of the PSOE). But if those elements continued to oppose them, they couldn’t carry through their conjuring trick of becoming a “democracy”. So they ruling class legalised them and they were not let down by their new partners: collusion and collaboration was the order of the day, by both parties and their associated trade unions, right up to the present.
Then they had to gain the complicity of the local capitalist and middle classes of the imprisoned nations and in particular of the Basques and the Catalans. Regional autonomy was the obvious answer (and they took the precaution of splitting the southern Basque Country into two autonomous regions, under different political control) and, with the former opposition leaders of the PSOE and PCE batting for them, they passed the new Constitution with a majority (everywhere but in the Basque Country).
But enough! What is the matter with those Basques and Catalans? Will they never be happy to just be part of the “united, Christian and free” State? Apparently not. So no more concessions. Time to squeeze now, as their fathers mothers and grandfathers had done before them!
Last year they Spanish state tried to push the primacy of the Spanish language on to the Catalan education curriculum. Much of the Catalan political class and the teaching professions resisted – they already included Spanish as an official language along with Catalan (and Occitan and Catalan sign-language); what is it with those espaňolistas?
In 2015 the Catalans put together a right-left nationalist coalition for the elections, asking the electorate to vote on the issue of independence and, despite the opposition of the new Spanish populist party Podemos and the Izquierda Unida3, took 48% of the vote. In the Spanish State as a whole, the election results gave no party an overall majority and in fact resulted in the most fragmented results since 1977 during the Transición.
The 2016 elections made the PP the winners but without an overall majority (and later subject to corruption charges), saw a fall in the vote of the Podemos-Izquierda Unida vote and a crisis within the PSOE, which took the lowest vote of its existence. And the IMF demanded further austerity measures in the economy.
But Catalonia was simmering. After the 2015 elections, the financial services company JP Morgan predicted, in a research note following the vote, that the “conflict between Catalonia and the central government will not lose intensity. … In our view, a material offer to reframe the role of Catalonia within the national state … is needed to soften the rising radicalism in the pro-secession camp and restore the premises for a more constructive approach.”(see link below).
The ruling class in the Spanish state does not do “reframing” or “softening” very well. Unreformed and slightly-altered fascists who have corrupted their possible moderate partners4, they feel more at ease with the iron fist than the velvet glove.
Its threats and other measures cannot be carried out in time to prevent the referendum going ahead on October first. The town Mayors cannot be put on trial in time, much less convicted. The referendum site the State closed down has now shifted to a server outside the control of the Government. The Guardia Civil can disrupt the voting and seize ballot boxes but that will escalate the crisis even further, not to mention present a terrible picture of Spanish “democracy” to the world. The ballot box, after all, is the Holy Grail of the bourgeois democratic system.
BREAKUP OF THE SPANISH STATE?
The Spanish state has long been the one in Europe most vulnerable to fragmentation. It includes regions which are actually distinct nations, of which Catalunya is only one, with their separate cultures and languages.
Regions/ nations of the Spanish state (image source: Internet). Note the northern band of possible independist nations from Galicia in the west to Catalonia in the east. Note also the Paisos Catalans regions taking up most of the western coast of the Peninsula from North to South. (Image source: Internet)
Euskal Herria, the Basque Country, has four provinces within the State’s borders and the native language is not even close to Castillian (Spanish) – in fact, unlike most others in Europe, it does not even belong to the Indo-European group of languages. A long struggle for independence has been taking place there too, with hundreds of political prisoners as a result serving time in jails across the the State. We can be sure that the Basques are watching developments in Catalunya with bated breath. The combined population of the two Basque autonomous regions exceed 2.83 million.
The nearly 1.5 million people of the Asturies region (Asturias in Castillian) consider themselves Celts and although their native vernacular is a Latin-based language, it is different from Castillian Spanish. More significant perhaps than the linguistic and musical difference with the “Spanish” is the history of resistance: their mining communities rose up against employers and the Spanish State during the early days of the Second Spanish Republic, the then Government of which sent General Franco to repress them (including shaving the hair of women supporters of the strike). In the Spanish Civil War the Asturians fought against the military-fascist uprising, rose up again in resistance against the victorious Franco regime and in very recent times fought against the closure of mines and miners’ unemployment.
Galicia is also a region of Celtic ancestry within the State with a well-developed traditional culture of music and dance and also has its own language, Gallego (56% speaking it as their first language) as well of course as Castillian. There is a movement for independence in Galicia which, although not major, is significant nevertheless and has its own trade union. The population is over 2,718,000.
Other regions with distinct languages and movements for independence from the Spanish state to one degree or another include Cantabria, Leon, Cadiz, Murcia, Andalucía and even Aragon and Castille, the two medieval kingdoms that led the defeat of the Moorish kingdom of El Andalus and went on to form the heart of the Kingdom of Spain. In addition, many of these regions or nations are contiguous to one another.
POSSIBLE EFFECTS ON EUROPE OUTSIDE THE SPANISH STATE
A rash of state break-ups followed the fall of the Soviet Union and it is not impossible that Catalonian independence could have a similar effect.
France:
A part of the Catalan nation is inside French territory, although it holds only 1% of the population of the French state. More seriously for the French state are the other nationalities which might also take into their heads to secede.
The three Basque provinces, for example, are connected by culture, ethnicity and to an extent ideology with the other four Basque provinces on the southern side of the Spanish border. Biarritz and Bayonne are the main towns and the total area of the three provinces is 2,869 km², with a low-density population of 295,970.
Brittany,with 4.23% of the total territory of the French state (excluding its colonies), is a Celtic nation within the state, with a national language of Breton (related to Welsh). The population of the nation is 4,550,400. Brest, Saint-Nazaire, Nant
The Langue D’Oc area has a population of 3,650,000 people (as of 1999 census), 52% of these in the Languedoc-Roussillonrégion, 35% in the Mid-Pyrénées région, 8% in the Rhone-Alpesrégion, and 5% in theAuvergnerégion. Although this area is no longer administered as a province, it has a historical and cultural (including linguistic) identity, with Toulouse widely recognised as its capital.
Then there is Corsica, speaking Corse and never entirely reconciled to being a part of France. The Mediterranean island is not strong economically nor large in population (330,000) but it does occupy a position of strategic importance between France and Italy and near both the larger islands of the Italian state.
What makes the scenario of a wide range of independence-seeking of nations within the French state more painful to contemplate for that State is that many of those nations are contiguous to one another, forming a wide swathe from east to west across the southern bart of the present state and taking in much of its seaboard on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. It also potentially wipes out its border with the Spanish state, forcing all land traffic to pass through a number of other states before reaching either Spain or France.
Italy:
What we know today as Italy was a mass of provinces and city states that were united finally only in 1871 (some date it to 1918), after a period of many uprisings and wars. Already in Italy today there is a huge difference between the industrial north and the agricultural south with its unemployment and poverty, a difference so great that some have described the regions as two different countries.
And there is Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, whose people have long thought of themselves as different to the rest of Italy and in particular the north. The population of Sicily is 5,048,553 (8.3% of the total of the Italian state), the majority of them speaking Siciliano, a separate language to Italian. Sicily also has a huge diaspora.
The second-largest Mediterranean island is Sardinia, where languages different to Italian are spoken and whose people have always considered themselves distinct from Italy. The population there is 1,650,003. a relatively low figure out of a total for the State of 60.5 million; nevertheless this island too is of strategic importance.
The United Kingdom cannot be left out of consideration either. Scotland already has its own Parliament and a somewhat different legal system to that of England & Wales but that has not totally satisfied Scottish nationalist aspirations. Other Celtic nations within the UK include Wales and Cornwall and of course the 6-County colony in Ireland, the scene of a 30-year war against British rule less than two decades ago.
Of course, the effects will not be felt only on European multi-nation states. An ongoing conflict with Catalunya, with the addition of perhaps other national struggles within the state, allied to internal struggles against evictions and austerity, in an atmosphere of financial scandals, could bring the state down. The Spanish State is an important NATO ally in terms of bases and strategic location. Even if it did not collapse, the instability arising out of a state of siege in two significant areas of the statewould be great and ripples – or perhaps giant waves — would reach throughout Europe.
WILL IT COME TO THAT?
No-one can answer that question for sure. The Spanish state is determined to prevent Catalonian independence and the majority Catalan political class have already gone beyond where many expected them to in resistance. They have stated that if the necessary majority votes “Sí” to independence, that they will move immediately to give effect to that decision. In addition, the political class for independence is acting with huge popular support and there are signs of independent popular mobilisation – the last time that happened on a major scale in Catalunya was during the 2nd Spanish Republic when there was popular socialist and anarchist workers’ uprising.
Cartoon by DB
If the people push the issue against Spanish intransigence, it is hard to see how it can end in any way but in armed conflict – street resistance against Spanish repression with tanks, soldiers and the paramilitary Guardia Civil. The Mossos d’Escuadra, the 16,800-plus repressive police under the Catalan autonomous region’s council, the Generalitat, might split. Urban and rural municipal Catalunyan police are likely to retire from the conflict or to side with the Catalan resistance.
The population of the rest of the Spanish state might then stand back and watch …. or uprisings could break out in other areas, including left-wing working class areas of Madrid suffering austerity and where the Spanish ruling parties are seen as corrupt and in league with the bankers against the people.
Could the rulers of the EU afford to stand back in such a scenario? Would their own populations allow them a free hand to intervene, or not?
We live in interesting times that might, contrary to the Chinese curse, have very beneficial outcomes.
3 A Communist Party-Trotskyist alliance, often fragmenting and shifting; it is generally despised by the rest of the Left within the State and by the pro-independence parties, the latter because the IU is always against national independence, calling instead for “the unity of the Spanish working class.”
4 It was the social-democratic PSOE government that ran the GAL assassination squads against the Basque pro-independence movement, carrying out operations of both sides of the French border. Carrillo, leader of the Communist Party who took it through the Transición, was expelled from his party after his collusion with Spanish fascists and coup plotters was exposed.
rebelbreeze 