Everyday Palestinians recognize that the US and Israel can't
be fair arbiters of peace across the bargaining table of historical
oppression. Now after Sept. 11, the entire Palestinian mass
movement called the Second Intifada is being criminalized as
"terrorist" by both the US and Israel. It is our wish that
true friends stand now and embrace the Palestinian people's
courage. What we are seeing now is a War of National Liberation
and We Must Support the Freedom Fighters!!

We reject US imperialism and its support of the colonial settler
state of Israel. It is true that Israel can only be maintained by US
tax dollars, that Israel has executed many human rights
violations, that Ariel Sharon is a butcher and that Benjamin
Netanyahu is a comedian of the modern political world for
lecturing anyone on how to fight terrorism. But empire is not
smashed by lobbying its ruling class, documenting immoralities,
or having a charitable attitude toward Palestinians as
"victims" from a place of privilege. We must take
responsibility for the social relations in our own country.

In response to the character assassination of the Palestinians as
terrorists, we say the following. All criticism of the political and
military practices of the Palestinians should be seen within the
framework of the paramount desperation of their struggle with an
emphasis on what methods will bring about the autonomy of the
rank and file. While we maintain and defend that all agents of the
state of Israel are expendable in this war (high level politicians,
military, police, and judicial officials), the policy of suicide
bombings is a failure for many reasons. It trains Palestinian
young people to be expendable at the call of political elites when
they should be convinced of fighting to survive for a just and
attainable future without them. It helps create an environment
where new popular association and discussion can not flourish,
including the creation of non-violent direct action civil
disobedience campaigns, alliances with anti-racist Israelis and it
largely contains the political participation of women, elderly and
youth. We recognize that a national liberation struggle needs to
be an armed liberation struggle—but this is one of many tactics
which can bring the Zionist state to its knees. We are sympathetic
to the jeopardy Israeli citizens face but their security will only
begin to be maintained by them organizing a mass movement
within Israel to oppose the Zionist state and ruling class. We are
in solidarity with those which have already begun this difficult
task.
Israel = White Supremacy!

We believe a free Palestine is one of a popular self-managed
society where economic, military, and judicial affairs are
administered through direct democracy. We believe the ultimate
goal in Palestine (and elsewhere) should be a society of equal
rights for all peoples and religions, without a state or ruling class.
But in our view a society such as this can not be achieved by just
wishing for it or by refusing to work with others struggling for
their own democratic goals. We see most advocates of the two
state solution as selling out the "right of return" and the
commitment to smash the Zionist state and ruling class
altogether—which can happen democratically through a
movement for civil rights, birth rates, and mass migration. This is
only extreme if one believes in long term co-existence not with
Jews of good will, but with the Zionist oppressors. Advocates of
two states are most often really advocates of one. They just see
the Zionists and the US, not a mass direct action movement, as
the best partners for granting sovereignty to a Palestinian ruling
class.

We want a broad popular front in the Middle East, and in
America, where secular and religious can work together, where
official leadership is held accountable and if necessary discarded.
With the help of the CIA and the Mossad, Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority have suppressed independent political,
trade union, journalistic, and (not suprisingly) militia type activity.
They have killed and put folk in prison when it is politically
expedient, which amounts to the whims of the Israeli and U.S.
states. They attempt to use Arafat and the PA as a tool in the
maintenance of Palestinian oppression—even by labeling
Arafat as a terrorist and worthy of death they prop up his
legitimacy.

While being touted as "the Jewish Homeland," the state of Israel
actually undermines the effort for a sustainable Jewish future by
sacrificing Jewish lives, ethics, culture and history in their quest
for imperial domination. They sacrifice lives by creating such a
desperate situation for Palestinians that extreme groups feel
forced to attack public places in order to gain attention for their
struggle. Ordinary Israeli civilians live in fear of random violence
on a daily basis, making the supposed safe haven one of the most
dangerous places in the world for a Jew to live today. Israel
sacrifices Jewish ethics, which urges consideration for all
members of a society including the most disenfranchised. By
massacring Palestinian men, women and children, the state is
rejecting millennia-old religious and legal codes of respect and
survival. Israel is sacrificing Jewish history. Palestinian struggles
are eerily similar to those Jewish people have faced historically in
terms of displacement, imprisonment, subjection to brutal
military and police forces, and of course genocide or "ethnic
cleansing". It is critical for conscious Jewish people to reject the
Zionist vision in favor of a just one.
Smash the U.S. and Zionist Empire

Many still think it possible to lobby the likes of Bush or Sharon in
order to obtain a just peace. These so-called "leaders" discourage
participation in the creation of a mass movement that demands
justice in Palestine and fights the bankrupt ruling classes of the
entire Middle Eastern region. We stand in solidarity with the
democratic aspirations of the Arab and Muslim people who reject
the notion of pleading for their freedom in favor of seizing it. It is
time for a mass direct action movement that is uncompromising
in defense of the Palestinians and which will bring Muslim and
Arab Americans home from prison where they have been unjustly
detained.
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Burning River Revolutionary Anarchist Collective - www.burningrivercollective.org
Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives - Great Lakes Region - www.frac.ws