Greens win big in Brighton  Report From One Green World

Just had this press release, amazing stuff....Lib Dems wiped off of the map in Brighton by Green Party and gains from Tories and Labour, shows the effect of Caroline Lucas becoming the first Green Party MP, 23 Green councillors making us the biggest group on the council (total councillors 54) however short of a majority.
"A huge vote of confidence in the Greens" Brighton and Hove Greens become largest party on council with 23 seats

News from Brighton & Hove Green Party 6 May 2011

Greens are now the largest party on Brighton & Hove City Council after election results today. This is the first time a local council in the UK has elected the Greens as the largest party.

Green convenor Bill Randall said, "The city has listened to the Greens and we have listened to the city. "

Greens would now sit down and plan how to take the city forward in these difficult times. "This is the first time the Greens have been the largest party on any council in the UK and people seem to be genuinely enthused by the option of a Green-led council.

"It's a great result for the city and a huge vote of confidence in the Greens. People went Green across Brighton & Hove. We held all our seats and gained 10 more."

"We now have 23 Green councillors, making us the largest Green group of councillors in the country. "The next step is for us to talk to other parties about how we will work with them and implement our manifesto pledges at a very challenging time for local government budgets.

"We can't say how this will work until we have entered into discussions."

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Well done to the Greens with their electoral success. However entering into discussions with whom? Certainly not the Tories and Lib Dems. The employees, trade unions, service users, local community groups one assumes should be the people the new administration will be talking to, listening to and consulting with, involving them in the decisions that have to be made.

As far as the first challenge they will face is what to do with the budget and council cuts? If they reverse the present cuts and refuse to implement the Con Dem cuts being passed down by this failed coalition gov't then they will have all our support. If they refuse to carry out redundancies and protect workers' pensions then fine with us. There can be no compromises when it comes to workers living standards. Make the bankers pay, not council staff.

However if the Greens merely introduce a few cycle paths and carry on with " business as normal" type approach, based on pragmatism and short term gains then the honeymoon will be short lived. We do not expect this to happen, hopefully. The Green Party conference opposed cuts, with many of the new councillors taking that position and supporting the Coalition of Resistance anti-cuts campaign. Let us see Brighton and Hove now lead that fightback. They promise us new politics and we welcome eco-socialist policies.

The Greens can not do this on their own though and it will require a united front with those in the Labour Party, trade union movement and the Left to ensure the success of such a campaign. Those in the Labour Party who pinned their hopes on a New Labour victory based on cuts but over a slightly longer time period, will have to review where they stand. Milliband has left them high and dry.

The attacks on the democratic right to demonstrate in Brighton will no longer get an easy ride by the new councillors and this may make the Sussex police think twice about how they abuse their powers. It may also mean the EDL and their fascist friends will not in future find Brighton such an easy place to march through. Perhaps the police may not rush to use the Public Order Act . The Green Council should insist all charges are dropped against anti-fascists and anarchists who have recently been arrested.

TUSC candidates promoted Socialist policies in this election campaign and the struggle for Eco - Socialism continues. The anti-cuts campaign groups will expect the Greens to show a new approach in this.

As for the rest of the results of the council elections:
Lewis went Tory and Lib Dems lost seats.
BNP came last where ever they  stood in Arran.
Labour candidates, Mike Faddon and Sue Marsh  improved their vote in Worthing and opposed cuts.

The election may be over but the campaign against cuts and defending public services continues. The Con Dem coalition now has a huge crack in it, with Lib Dem's defeats all over the place. So much for betraying policies. Let this be a lesson to others and get on with the fightback. Public sector workers plan industrial action and we need to build support for these struggles.

Our right to protest - under attack!

 

Consider the evidence -

In the last few weeks we have seen -

- Blatantly partisan policing in Brighton to protect the racist EDL whilst attempting to criminalise and demonise the anti-fascist groups trying to oppose them. This included the arrest of anti-fascist activists and the imposition of a "bail condition" banning them from Brighton!

- Saturation policing of this weekends May Day protest.

- Raids and arrests in Brighton and London late last week of people who MIGHT have been planning protests around the royal wedding.

- Numerous arrests of people in London on the day of the wedding for the smallest displays of dissent from the mood of national joy which we were all supposed to be feeling.

- The revelation that police have been compiling a secret intelligence file on local peace activist John Catt, although he has never been prosecuted for any offence. Catt is now taking legal action. The intelligence-gathering in this case resembled the tactics of the Stasi.

We have seen police tactics of selective arrests of leaders, filming and photographing of protestors, violent mass arrests such as that of the UKUncut occupation of Fortnum and Masons on 26 March, and kettling of demonstrations.

The verdict in the Tomlinson inquest gives us a chilling reminder of where this state violence can end.

We have also seen this approach coupled with a slick media strategy in which a compliant media simply soaks up the police side of the story. Locally the Argus simply regurgitates Sussex Police press releases with no attempt to investigate what is really going on.

All activists should be concerned about these developments.

There is no doubt that Britain is not (yet!) a police state in the sense that I would understand the term. We have seen ruling classes in many countries being prepared to engage in mass murder of their own people to cling to power. This is clearly not where we are in the UK.

But we should not just "be grateful" as some suggest. We need to be saying that we are not going to put up with it.

As someone once said......

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

http://hoverepublic.blogspot.com/

Fascist BNP come last in Arun in every single ward they stood in.

Good news from West Sussex UAF

Excellent news in the local elections in Arun: the fascist BNP came last in every single District Council ward they stood in!

Their votes of between 3.3% and 7.7% compare very badly to some of their results there of the last 3-4 years including 24% in 2007 and 20% in 2008.

And the BNP's worst Arun Council result? The 3.3% of John Robinson in Barnham - who was recently elected unopposed to Barnham Parish Council, showing he'd have got nowhere near getting on to that body if anyone had stood against him. A campaign to oust Nazi Robinson from even this modest democratic platform is needed in the coming months.
Closer analysis is needed, but the West Sussex Coast UAF leafletting campaign in Bognor over the past few weeks has surely helped turn out anti-fascist voters and deterred some would-be BNP voters.  A big well done to everyone who joined in with our recent street stalls and ward leafletting.  A huge thanks also to the local CWU, PCS and NUT unions for their generous physical and financial support for the campaign.  
The Arun results mirror the BNP's fortunes across the country where they have fared very badly indeed.  Just as with Barking & Dagenham last year, the fascists have been completely wiped out in a former stronghold - Stoke-on-Trent - where now have zero seats.  
For more coverage and analysis of the BNP's and other fascists' 2011 local election performance go to the national Unite Against Fascism site http://www.uaf.org.uk/

ACTION FOR ACCESS RAMBLE & RALLY, ARLINGTON & ABBOTS WOOD-SATURDAY MAY 7TH, meet 11.20 am

ACTION FOR ACCESS RAMBLE & RALLY, ARLINGTON & ABBOTS WOOD

SATURDAY MAY 7^TH, meet 11.20 am, north side of Berwick Station

Join us for our 3^rd Forest Walk & rally co-organised with Keep Our Forests Public (member of National Forests Campaign), to celebrate our Sussex public forest estate.

Bring a picnic, or you can probably buy food at the shop by Berwick station.

On this walk we will explore the beautiful Abbots Wood and nearby woods, If the bluebells are as late as they were last year we will catch the last of a wonderful display. 

En route to Abbots Wood we will walk on paths recently re-opened as the result of action by the Ramblers Association and see examples of the way landowners attempt to deny access to the public. We are likely to see blocked paths, paths that have been ploughed up and signs that have been removed or changed.

There will be a rally at 1pm at the main car park in Abbots Wood.  We will then walk to Polegate station to return.

Trains leave Brighton at 10.52, Lewes at 11.09, London Victoria 9.47, Haywards Heath 10.35, Hastings 10.26, Eastbourne 11.04 Unless you are coming from Hastings or Eastbourne buy a return ticket to Polegate because that is where we will be ending up.

If you want to come by bus the Cuckmere Community bus leaves Seaford library at 10.42, with a connecting bus(12) from Brighton Churchill  Square at 9.53. There are frequent buses from Polegate to Eastbourne

Abbot’s Wood returns to its past glory - notes by Dave Bangs

Now, Abbot’s Wood is a hopeful place for nature. Sensitive large scale ancient woodland restoration work is being carried out by the Forestry Commission, whose flagship project has brought back Pearl-bordered Fritillary butterflies in grand numbers. This is, I think, one of only two sites where this butterfly survives in Sussex, though it used to be found in every ancient wood and many recent ones, too, till a few decades ago. We should see them on our walk. They are as pretty as their name implies.  Commission staff and contractors have worked hard, too, for Nightingale and Dormice populations and for the conservation of the rare Spiked Rampion flower in one of its best national locations. (It is confined to a scatter of East Sussex Wealden sites). The Wood’s display of Bluebells and Wood Anemones in spring and fungi in a good autumn are superb. 

It is a good place to be – and is getting better and better under its enlightened public management.

Back in 2004 whilst on a Mycological Society fungal foray there we heard a loud and joyous yelp from deep within some wet and tangled willows. After a few minutes an ecstatic expert fought his way out to tell us that he had just made the first national discovery of the Laquered Brittlecap, Russula laccata, for 20 years – and only the second British record…and it was a gorgeous thing, with an “amazingly glossy lacquered cap” like the stickiest blood-red lipstick.

Cuckoos were cuckooing and Green Woodpeckers yaffling on my last springtime visit, and Wood Ants were busy on the flowery and humid rides.

It made a depressing visit, though, as recently as twenty years ago, having suffered a truly dreadful half century of clearance and conifer planting from about 1941 to 1993, which destroyed the great majority of its semi-natural woodland cover. In its early years the Forestry Commission even sprayed the Hornbeam coppice with herbicide to facilitate clearance.  These horrors earned the Wood the ironic label of “a monument to the softwoods industry”.  Top Sussex lepidopterist Colin Pratt mournfully described it as “one of this country’s foremost woodlands, and its destruction (as) the greatest single tragedy that befell our woodland sites in the twentieth century”. Indeed, its recognition as a nationally important site – by designation as an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) in 1953 - pathetically lasted a mere 13 years, for, by 1966, its relentless coniferisation had made a no-go area for all its famous rarities…Lunar Double-stripe, Red-headed Chestnut, Scarce Dagger, The Alchemist, Dingy Mocha, Triangle, and many more fantastic moths and butterflies, such as Heath, High Brown and Marsh Fritillaries, and the now-nationally-extinct Black-veined White.

It didn’t get much worse than that.

We can’t blame the Forestry Commission for more than a part of this tragedy though, and it’s worth casting back across a millennium to see that previous feudal and early capitalist regimes wrought wave after wave of super exploitation upon these woods. It’s a miracle that enough survives to make restoration so worthwhile.

Back in the middle ages the Wood was called “Lindhersse”  - Lime Stubbles - indicating both that Small-leaved Lime was prominent, and that there was cultivation. Lime survives in the area, but only just, for it provides a very sweet bite, and centuries of woodland cattle browsing have rendered this once abundant tree very rare in Sussex nowadays.

It was a commoned wood back in those times, providing pasturage and autumn ‘pannage’ (of beech mast and acorns) for monks and commoners of Battle Abbey (hence the name ‘Abbot’s’) and other manors.

Later, in Tudor times, the wood was very heavily cut over, presumably at least in part to provide charcoal for the new iron industry. The sixteenth century was a time of much rapacious speculation, enclosure and clearance of woodland cover. Indeed, it is recorded that Abbot’s Wood was felled or cleared three times in one man’s lifetime. After 1560 there is no further mention of pannage in the court books of Alciston Manor, which owned the Wood. Abbot’s Wood was clearly at risk of suffering the same fate as St Leonard’s Forest, stripped of its woody cover.

It survived, though, as a mosaic of Hornbeam and Hazel coppice with Oak and Beech standards, and much Birch, together with more open, heathy areas . The pond in the middle is presumably the site of the chain of fish ponds which were managed for Battle Abbey.

When Victorian naturalists – brought by train - discovered the Wood it was a gorgeous, magical place. “Red Squirrels scampered across the treetops”. A maze of winding forest paths took one into all its secret places. Charcoal burners camped in its glades, amongst huge spreading Oaks. Ling and Bell Heather, Cow-wheat and Orpine were common, especially in the sunny open areas. Moths and butterflies were as abundant as on the plains of heaven. Using just the old technique of ‘sugaring’ (painting a sugary alcoholic treacle on the trunks of trees) one lepidopterist counted 20,000 moths of 134 species over just 8 consecutive nights !! Moths in their hundreds would congregate on single trunks. This record has never been exceeded in Sussex and is likely never to be repeated. Such abundance even drew one naturalist to speculate that the name White Fields (for the meadows in the Wood’s centre) came from the myriad Marbled Whites that fluttered there.

Let us not be too sad, though, for it will stop us recognising the need to defend the new and hopeful reality which the Wood now enjoys.

The Forestry Commission’s recent metamorphosis into a socially and ecologically responsible public agency demonstrates sharply the distinction between a form of nationalisation which primarily benefits the needs of private industry and one that meets the public’s needs. Very often under capitalism the potential of a publicly owned resource lies dormant for a long period before public pressure forces the state to release some of the resource’s latent public potential. Those countryside lovers from Brighton who successfully fought off the attempt by its Labour Council to privatise its 13,000 acres of public downland back in 1995 will recognize this. They had to keep up the pressure for more than ten further years before they secured a more progressive management policy, which realised part of the estate’s amenity and conservation potential. 

The Forestry Commission belongs to us all.

We must fight and stay vigilant to make sure that the gains we have finally made at Abbots Wood are truly permanent.

The Wood has seen a thousand years of attrition of its rich wildlife heritage. Let’s make sure that the government knows how determined we are to hold on to the progressive changes of the last twenty years, pioneered by our public forest estate.

Dave Bangs

 LITERARY NOTE. Those who have laughed at Cold Comfort Farm will recognise that Stella Gibbons nicked the name “Robert Poste’s child” from Robin Post Lane, the ancient swine pasture drove that traverses the Wood south to north. Ogg’s Wood, in the south eastern corner of Abbot’s Wood, is taken from the nickname that Victorian public school boys used for their headmaster at Eastbourne College.

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ACTION FOR ACCESS
walking and working for a people's countryside
Facebook  - "Downlanders -Action for Access"--
ACTION FOR ACCESS
walking and working for a people's countryside
Facebook  - "Downlanders -Action for Access"

 AFFILIATED TO THE OPEN SPACES SOCIETY

 AFFILIATED TO THE OPEN SPACES SOCIETY

Occupied Palestine, 4 May 2011 – In commemoration of the first of May – a day of workers’ struggle and international solidarity – the first Palestinian trade union conference for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS) was held in Ramallah on 30 April 2011, organized by almost the entirety of the Palestinian trade union movement, including federations, professional unions, and trade union blocks representing the entire spectrum of Palestinian political parties. The conference marked a historic event: the formation of the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS) as the largest coalition of the Palestinian trade union movement. PTUC-BDS will provide the most representative Palestinian reference for international trade unions, promoting their support for and endorsement of the BDS Call, launched by Palestinian civil society in 2005, guided by the guidelines and principles adopted by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), of which PTUC-BDS has become a key component.


The global trade union movement has always played a key and inspiring role in its courageous commitment to human rights and adoption of concrete, ground-breaking, labour-led sanctions against oppressive regimes in a show of solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world. The trade union boycott of apartheid South Africa stands out as a bright example of this tradition of effective solidarity. Trade unions today are taking the lead in defending the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, justice, freedom, equality and the right of return of our refugees as stipulated in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. Many of them have heeded the call from Palestinian civil society, and its labour movement in particular, to adopt BDS as the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinians in our struggle to end Israeli occupation and apartheid.
Ending Israel’s multi-tiered system of oppression against the Palestinian people — comprising occupation, colonialism and apartheid — has become a test for humanity. For decades, Israel has enjoyed impunity while continuing its gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, particularly in occupied East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Naqab (Negev) desert; its 44-year-old occupation; its theft of land and natural resources; its colonization and construction of illegal colonial settlements and walls, its siege of Gaza;  its relentless denial of refugee rights; its endless wars of aggressions and incarceration of political prisoners; and its wanton killings of civilians and demolition of infrastructure. Israel’s systematic destruction of the Palestinian economy, expropriation of the most fertile agricultural land, as well as humiliation of and racist discrimination against Palestinian workers have all become part of its apartheid reality that should never be tolerated by the world today.

Given the complete failure and unwillingness of hegemonic powers to hold Israel accountable to international law, it is up to people of conscience and international civil society, especially the trade union movement, to take concrete action to end international collusion with decades of violations of international law and human rights by Israel, its institutions and international corporations.

The support of the entirety of the Palestinian trade union movement for a full boycott of Israel,[1] as the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian people, was the overarching message of this historic gathering.

The Conference was honoured to welcome Joâo Felicio, International Relations Secretary of CUT, the Brazilian trade union representing more than 20 million workers, who expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights, and reiterated CUT’s endorsement of BDS. The conference received numerous messages of solidarity from a large number of trade union federations, including the International Federation of Arab Trade Unions, COSATU (South Africa), ICTU (Ireland), and a large number of individual trade unions in Canada, Scotland, Italy, France, Spain, Turkey, Australia, USA and other countries. All major Palestinian political parties also enthusiastically supported the conference and the formation of PTUC-BDS.

The Conference decisively condemned the Histadrut and called on international trade unions to sever all links with it due to its historic and current complicity in Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights. The Histadrut has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination by:

1. Publicly supporting Israel’s violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other tenets of international law
2. Maintaining active commercial interests in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise[2]
3. Allowing Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank to join the organization[3]
4. Supporting Israel’s war of aggression on besieged Gaza in 2008/9;[4] it has later justified Israel’s massacre of humanitarian relief workers and activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla on 31 May 2010[5]
5. Illegally withholding over NIS 8.3 billion (approximately $2.43bn) over decades of occupation from wages earned by Palestinian workers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory,[6] deducted for ‘social and other trade union benefits’ that Palestinian labourers from the OPT have never received.

Recalling the trade union maxim “an injury to one is an injury to all”, and given the global trade union movement’s historic role in effective international solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world, PTUC-BDS:

• Cordially salutes all global trade unions for their solidarity with the Palestinian people, especially those that have endorsed BDS against Israel,
• Calls on trade unions around the world to actively show solidarity with the Palestinian people by implementing creative and context-sensitive BDS campaigns as the most effective way to end Israeli impunity. For example by:
  • boycotting Israeli and international companies (such as Elbit, Agrexco, Veolia, Alstom, Caterpillar, Northrop Grumman, etc.) and institutions that are complicit with Israel’s occupation and violations of international law,
  • reviewing pension fund investments with the purpose of divesting from Israel Bonds and all Israeli and international companies and institutions complicit in Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid,
  • pressuring governments to suspend Free Trade Agreements, end arms trade and military relations with Israel with the intention of eventually cutting all diplomatic ties with it,
• Calls on port workers around the world to boycott loading/offloading Israeli ships, similar to the heroic step taken by port workers around the world in suspending maritime trade with South Africa in protest against the apartheid regime, and
• Calls on trade unions around the world to review and sever all ties with the Histadrut.

Such non-violent measures of accountability must continue until Israel fulfils its obligations under international law in acknowledging the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination, and fully complies with international law by:

• Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied since 1967 (including East Jerusalem), as well as dismantling of the illegal wall and colonies,
• Recognizing the fundamental right of the Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equity, as well as ending the system of racial discrimination against them, and
• Respecting, protecting and supporting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UNGA Resolution 194.

The Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS) is the broadest and most representative body of the Palestinian trade union movement and includes the following organisations: General Union of Palestinian Workers, Federation of Independent Trade Unions (IFU), General Union of Palestinian Women, Union of Palestinian Professional Associations (comprising the professional syndicates of Engineers, Physicians, Pharmacists, AgriculturalEngineers, Lawyers, Dentists and Veterinarians), General Union of Palestinian Teachers, General Union of Palestinian Peasants and Co-ops, General Union of Palestinian Writers, Union of Palestinian Farmers, Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE), Union of Public Employees in Palestine-Civil Sector; and all of the trade union blocksthat make up the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU): Central Office for the Workers Movement, Progressive Labor Union Front, Workers Unity block, Progressive Workers Block, Workers solidarity organization, Workers Struggle Block, workers resistance block, Workers Liberation Front, Union of Palestinian Workers Struggle Committees, National Initiative (al-Mubadara) Block.
Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS)

Alan Thornett picks up the cudgel on behalf of AV again.

Counterfire is the latest far left organisation to declare for a NO vote in the referendum next week. Whilst they rightly attack First Past The  Post (FTTP) and advocate PR, they argue (wrongly in my view) that AV would be worse for small parties than FPTP! This, they argue, is because the requirement under AV for a candidate to win at least 50% of the vote would have disqualified both George Galloway and Caroline Lucas in recent elections!

But this is the wrong approach to the issue. Surely the 50% requirement is a modest progressive reform which should be supported in principle — even if it would occasionally prevent a left-wing candidate being elected on a minority vote! Though whether such candidates would actually lose out under AV would depend on the distribution of other preferences.

Caroline Lucas, for example, would be likely to pick up a lot of second preferences in Brighton and might well have won under AV. She is campaigning for a YES vote.

In any case the way to redress injustice against small parties in the is not to defend an undemocratic system but to fight for more democracy.

The comrades stress that AV is not a proportional system, which is true of course. It only deals with the constituency vote and therefore has no mechanism for creating a proportional Parliament. That does not mean, however, that it is not a significant improvement over FPTP — it clearly is.

This is because it allows supporters of small parties to vote for them as a first preference and still express a view on the main parties. It avoids (partially at least) the problem of the wasted vote and means that the votes for small parties can be fully reflected in the election. It also reduces the need for tactical voting.
The article also argues that the issue of voting reform is a distraction from the struggle against the cuts. But it is wrong to counterpose these two issues. Electoral reform has been thrown up by the last election results and it has to be taken seriously by the left. If not now when! FPTP outrageously distorted politics in Britain to the advantage of the ruling class for the whole of the 20th century. If it gets a thumping endorsement in this referendum, as looks likely, it will be set to do so for the foreseeable future.

A YES vote, on the other hand would have a chance of leading to further reform. It would show an appetite for change whilst a NO vote would show an appetite for the status quo. Most of those supporting a YES vote (including most Lib Dems) see AV as inadequate and want to go further towards a PR system.
In the event of a NO vote those who have won it (and in that sense own it) will be supporters of FPTP and will regard it and use it to defend the existing system. Any mention of electoral reform would in future be met with the stock response that “we have had a referendum and that is the end of it”.

The other point which the comrades stress is that the referendum should be used to give the Lib Dems a good kicking. This, in my view, is both wrong as a method of approach and wrong in its assessment of the effects of a NO vote.

Whichever way the vote goes it will cause a crisis in the coalition — it is already doing so. Whilst a NO vote would precipitate a crisis for the Lib Dems a YES vote would be totally unacceptable to a swathe of Tory MPs, who see FPTP as akin to a religion, and could provoke an even bigger crisis in the Tory Party. If you want to use your vote to damage the coalition, therefore, use it to damage the puppet master not the puppet.
At the end of the day, however, the issue of AV, however, should not be judged on the conjunctural effect the outcome might have on the coalition partners but whether it is an improvement (even a very small one) over the existing system and does it have the propensity to open the door to further reform towards a proportionate system

Collective Resistance Blog

A welcoming statement of solidarity by young Mizrahi Israelis.

Young Mizrahi Israelis’ open letter to Arab peers

Translated from Hebrew;  English edited by Chana Morgenstern | Arabic version here

In a letter titled “Ruh Jedida: A New Spirit for 2011,” young Jewish descendants of the Arab and Islamic world living in Israel write to their peers in the Middle East and North Africa

We, as the descendents of the Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world, the Middle East and the Maghreb, and as the second and third generation of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, are watching with great excitement and curiosity the major role that the men and women of our generation are playing so courageously in the demonstrations for freedom and change across the Arab world. We identify with you and are extremely hopeful for the future of the revolutions that have already succeeded in Tunisia and Egypt. We are equally pained and worried at the great loss of life in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and many other places in the region.

Our generation’s protest against repression and oppressive and abusive regimes, and its call for change, freedom, and the establishment of democratic governments that foster citizen participation in the political process, marks a dramatic moment in the history of the Middle East and North Africa, a region which has for generations been torn between various forces, internal and external, and whose leaders have often trampled the political, economic, and cultural rights of its citizens.

We are Israelis, the children and grandchildren of Jews who lived in the Middle East and North Africa for hundreds and thousands of years. Our forefathers and mothers contributed to the development of this region’s culture, and were part and parcel of it. Thus the culture of the Islamic world and the multigenerational connection and identification with this region is an inseparable part of our own identity.
We are a part of the religious, cultural, and linguistic history of the Middle East and North Africa, although it seems that we are the forgotten children of its history: First in Israel, which imagines itself and its culture to be somewhere between continental Europe and North America. Then in the Arab world, which often accepts the dichotomy of Jews and Arabs and the imagined view of all Jews as Europeans, and has preferred to repress the history of the Arab-Jews as a minor or even nonexistent chapter in its history; and finally within the Mizrahi communities themselves, who in the wake of Western colonialism, Jewish nationalism and Arab nationalism, became ashamed of their past in the Arab world.

Consequently we often tried to blend into the mainstream of society while erasing or minimizing our own past. The mutual influences and relationships between Jewish and Arab cultures were subjected to forceful attempts at erasure in recent generations, but evidence of them can still be found in many spheres of our lives, including music, prayer, language, and literature.

We wish to express our identification with and hopes for this stage of generational transition in the history of the Middle East and North Africa, and we hope that it will open the gates to freedom and justice and a fair distribution of the region’s resources.

We turn to you, our generational peers in the Arab and Muslim world, striving for an honest dialog which will include us in the history and culture of the region. We looked enviously at the pictures from Tunisia and from Al-Tahrir square, admiring your ability to bring forth and organize a nonviolent civil resistance that has brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets and the squares, and finally forced your rulers to step down.

We, too, live in a regime that in reality—despite its pretensions to being “enlightened” and “democratic”—does not represent large sections of its actual population in the Occupied Territories and inside of the Green Line border(s). This regime tramples the economic and social rights of most of its citizens, is in an ongoing process of minimizing democratic liberties, and constructs racist barriers against Arab-Jews, the Arab people, and Arabic culture. Unlike the citizens of Tunisia and Egypt, we are still a long way from the capacity to build the kind of solidarity between various groups that we see in these countries, a solidarity movement that would allow us to unite and march together–all who reside here–into the public squares, to demand a civil regime that is culturally, socially, and economically just and inclusive.

We believe that, as Mizrahi Jews in Israel, our struggle for economic, social, and cultural rights rests on the understanding that political change cannot depend on the Western powers who have exploited our region and its residents for many generations. True change can only come from an intra-regional and inter-religious dialog that is in connection with the different struggles and movements currently active in the Arab world. Specifically, we must be in dialog and solidarity with struggles of the Palestinians citizens of Israel who are fighting for equal political and economic rights and for the termination of racist laws, and the struggle of the Palestinian people living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and in Gaza in their demand to end the occupation and to gain Palestinian national independence.

In our previous letter written following Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009, we called for the rise of the democratic Middle Eastern identity and for our inclusion in such an identity. We now express the hope that our generation – throughout the Arab, Muslim, and Jewish world – will be a generation of renewed bridges that will leap over the walls and hostility created by previous generations and will renew the deep human dialog without which we cannot understand ourselves: between Jews, Sunnis, Shias, and Christians, between Kurds, Berbers, Turks, and Persians, between Mizrahis and Ashkenazis, and between Palestinians and Israelis. We draw on our shared past in order to look forward hopefully towards a shared future.
We have faith in intra-regional dialog—whose purpose is to repair and rehabilitate what was destroyed in recent generations—as a catalyst towards renewing the Andalusian model of Muslim-Jewish-Christian partnership, God willing, Insha’Allah, and as a pathway to a cultural and historical golden era for our countries. This golden era cannot come to pass without equal, democratic citizenship, equal distribution of resources, opportunities, and education, equality between women and men, and the acceptance of all people regardless of faith, race, status, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic affiliation. All of these rights play equal parts in constructing the new society to which we aspire. We are committed to achieving these goals within a process of dialog between all of the people of Middle East and North Africa, as well as a dialog we will undertake with different Jewish communities in Israel and around the world.

We, the undersigned:
Shva Salhoov (Libya), Naama Gershy (Serbia, Yemen), Yael Ben-Yefet (Iraq, Aden), Leah Aini (Greece, Turkey), Yael Berda (Tunisia), Aharon Shem-Tov (Iraq, Iranian Kurdistan), Yosi Ohana (born in Morocco), Yali Hashash (Libya, Yemen), Yonit Naaman (Yemen, Turkey), Orly Noy (born in Iran), Gadi Alghazi (Yugoslavia, Egypt), Mati Shemoelof (Iran, Iraq, Syria), Eliana Almog (Yemen, Germany), Yuval Evri ((Iraq), Ophir Tubul (Morocco, Algeria), Moti Gigi (Morocco), Shlomit Lir (Iran), Ezra Nawi (Iraq), Hedva Eyal (Iran), Eyal Ben-Moshe (Yemen), Shlomit Binyamin (Cuba, Syria, Turkey), Yael Israel (Turkey, Iran), Benny Nuriely (Tunisia), Ariel Galili (Iran), Natalie Ohana Evry (Morocco, Britain), Itamar Toby Taharlev (Morocco, Jerusalem, Egypt), Ofer Namimi (Iraq, Morocco), Amir Banbaji (Syria), Naftali Shem-Tov (Iraq, Iranian Kurdistan), Mois Benarroch (born in Morocco), Yosi David (Tunisia Iran), Shalom Zarbib (Algeria), Yardena Hamo (Iraqi Kurdistan), Aviv Deri (Morocco) Menny Aka (Iraq), Tom Fogel (Yemen, Poland), Eran Efrati (Iraq), Dan Weksler Daniel (Syria, Poland, Ukraine), Yael Gidnian (Iran), Elyakim Nitzani (Lebanon, Iran, Italy), Shelly Horesh-Segel (Morocco), Yoni Mizrahi (Kurdistan), Betty Benbenishti (Turkey), Chen Misgav (Iraq, Poland), Moshe Balmas (Morocco), Tom Cohen (Iraq, Poland, England), Ofir Itah (Morocco), Shirley Karavani (Tunisia, Libya, Yemen), Lorena Atrakzy (Argentina, Iraq), Asaf Abutbul (Poland, Russia, Morocco), Avi Yehudai (Iran), Diana Ahdut (Iran, Jerusalem), Maya Peretz (Nicaragua, Morocco), Yariv Moher (Morocco, Germany), Tami Katzbian (Iran), Oshra Lerer (Iraq, Morocco), Nitzan Manjam (Yemen, Germany, Finland), Rivka Gilad (Iran, Iraq, India), Oshrat Rotem (Morocco), Naava Mashiah (Iraq), Zamira Ron David (Iraq) Omer Avital (Morocco, Yemen), Vered Madar (Yemen), Ziva Atar (Morocco), Yossi Alfi (born in Iraq), Amira Hess (born in Iraq), Navit Barel (Libya), Almog Behar (Iraq, Turkey, Germany)