The Guardian (13 October)  is one of many news outlets reporting on the demand made by Israel that Palestinians in Gaza leave within 24 hours.

‘The Norwegian Refugee Council, which works in Israel and Palestine, has described Israel’s demand that 1.2 million people in Gaza leave their homes as a war crime.

Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, released the below statement

“The Israeli military demand that 1.2 million civilians in northern Gaza relocate to its south within 24 hours, absent of any guarantees of safety or return, would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer. It must be reversed.

“The collective punishment of countless civilians, among them children, women, and the elderly, in retaliation for acts of horrible terror undertaken by armed men is illegal under international law.

“My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire.

“The loss of civilian lives caused by deliberate or indiscriminate use of force is a war crime for which the perpetrators will have to answer. We fear that Israel may claim that Palestinians who could not flee northern Gaza can be erroneously held as directly participating in hostilities, and targeted.

“The United States, the UK, the European Union, and other Western and Arab Nations who have influence over the Israeli political and military leadership must demand that the illegal and impossible order to relocate is immediately rescinded.”

The Israeli military claims the order to Palestinians “is for your own safety”.’

 The Royal Commission’s proposal to solve the Palestine troubles by partition has met with a mixed reception.

The recommendation is to split Palestine up into three pieces, an Arab State, a Jewish State, and a portion which will remain under the British Mandate.

At the recently concluded Zionist Congress opinion was sharply divided. A two-thirds majority, headed by the Zionist Chairman, Dr. Weizmann, voted in favour of the principle of partition, largely on the grounds that it was the best that could be expected from the British Government under the circumstances. The decision was only come to after long and heated discussion, and the news of it called forth protest from some leading Zionists in America and elsewhere.

Among the professed spokesmen of working-class interests there is also a conflict of views.

Communist writers, who claim that the Jews in Palestine have been building up a flourishing business under the protection of the British Government, back the Arabs. They urge resistance to the partition proposal and the establishment of an independent Arab State in Palestine, of which the Jews are to be members on an equal basis. The Communists put this forward on two grounds: The right of the Arabs to self-determination and the need to curb British Imperialism.

On the other side, opponents of the Communists, like Abramovich and Orenstein, favour the continuance of the mandatory system and oppose the Arab viewpoint. In doing so they overstate the Jewish case, though probably unconsciously, painting a beautiful picture of Palestine under the Jews, where Socialist ideas will flourish.

The state of affairs in Palestine is not clear cut. There is an old social system side by side with a new, and both subject to an over-ruling Imperial power. Within each again there are class interests that cut across racial and national feelings. And, to still further complicate matters, there is the peculiar international position of the Jew.

The Arab lives under a semi-feudal regime with the land-owner despoiling the peasant of nearly everything. The coming of the Jews introduced modern industrial methods which threaten the incomes of land-owners, partly by offering the peasants a way of escape from fleecing, and partly by competition. Hence the influential Arabs are opposed to the continued immigration of Jews and strive to stir racial hatred among the poor by using the religious bogey. They are opposed to partition and want an independent Arab State.

The Jew, hunted out of various occupations in the East and the victim of pogroms, has been drifting into Palestine for decades. The immigration  of the Jew has been vastly increased since the War, until at present it has reached from fifty to sixty thousand a year. How the Jews are permeating Palestine may be appreciated from the fact that, in spite of Arab immigration, the Jewish section rose from 17 per cent. of the population in 1930 to 30 per cent. in 1936. This antagonises the Arab, who foresees himself being swamped in the rising flood. On the other hand, the growing Jewish section pays the bulk of the tax revenue but receives the least benefit from it, which is a permanent source of complaint.

To the Jew, interference with immigration would have serious consequences. Palestine is perhaps the only place to which he has free access. A large proportion of the immigrants are representatives of families that have been left behind in other countries in dire straits, penniless and denied almost any opportunity of earning a living. To these the immigrant sends back contributions that enable the relatives to buy the necessaries of life. Thus, as one writer puts it, if the Arabs succeed in stopping Jewish immigration into Palestine it will mean starvation to millions of Jews.

The Jewish migration has brought with it to Palestine the capitalist system with its antagonistic classes. While, on the one hand, it is making the desert flower and bringing into existence flourishing towns, on the other hand it is replacing the feudal method of fleecing by the capitalist exploitation of wage-workers. To quote Mordekai Orenstein: —

  You will find in Palestine a highly organised capitalist class, a vigorous and aggressive Jewish clericalism, and a modern Jewish Fascism with all the usual characteristics from strike-breaking to the base murder of a distinguished working-class leader.

—(Page 10, “ Jews, Arabs and British in Palestine.”) 

He also adds that you will find there a strongly organised working class. But, towards the end of the pamphlet, he laments that: —

   Considerable sections of Jewish workers in Palestine have not as yet reached the realisation of the vital urgency of forging this supernational weapon [Jewish-Arab proletarian unity] in the political struggle in Palestine.—(Page 21.)

It may be added that partition, by restricting the area open to Jews, must have a considerable effect on their immigration, which is some explanation of Zionist opposition.

The attitude of the British Government is based on simple principles: The safeguarding of British capitalists’ interests, as represented by such things as the oil pipe between Mosul and Haifa; security of Imperial air routes, communications through the Suez Canal, and so forth. Their policy of divide and rule leads them to favour different sides at different times, and to keep racial animosities alive as long as they do not become too dangerous.

The support of both Jews and Arabs during the War was bought by promises that have not been kept, and cause irritation to both sections.

The Mandate has evidently outlived its uses to British capitalism, and the partition system is to take its place. This will give Arab and Jew (like the North and South of Ireland) something to quarrel over for years to come, to the hindrance of propaganda for working-class solidarity against the international capitalist class.

Gilmac

From the Socialist Standard  September 1937.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/01/divide-and-rule-in-palestine-1937.html

DID YOU SEE THE NEWS? (ZOOM)

A large news agency reports that, ‘Shares of the largest military and defence corporations of NATO member states and major EU contractors surged on Monday as arms makers stand to benefit from Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Stocks of major US defence contractors jumped amid the conflict with Lockheed Martin, the maker of HIMARS rocket launchers, and Northrop Grumman Corp adding 8.3% and 10.6%, respectively. RTX formerly known as Raytheon Technologies Corp gained almost 4% “amid expectations of increased defence spending”, according to Victoria Scholar, the head of investment at stockbroker Interactive Investor.

In the EU, among leading defence stock gainers were shares of the Swedish aircraft manufacturer Saab, which surged in price by more than 8%. As of Monday afternoon, shares of the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall were up 5.7%, the British weapons maker BAE Systems gained 4.2%, while stock of Italy’s military helicopter producer Leonardo was up 5.7%.

The latest escalation began early on Saturday, when armed Palestinian groups launched a surprise attack on multiple locations along the Gaza border, with Israel launching a counteroffensive in response.

Israeli officials have estimated that over 700 people have been killed in the Hamas assault, over 2,200 have been wounded and 100 have been kidnapped, including citizens of European countries and the US. Following Israel’s retaliatory air strikes, over 400 people have been killed and some 2,200 wounded in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials.’

‘The latest escalation of the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict is not projected to pose immediate risks for the global oil market, crude traders told Bloomberg on Sunday as they prepare for the market to open.

On Saturday, Palestinian armed group Hamas launched thousands of missiles at Israel and deployed its militants to infiltrate Jewish settlements near the country’s border with Gaza. In response, Israeli authorities launched the ‘Iron Swords’ operation.

According to the latest updates, more than 600 Israelis have been killed since the launch of the surprise attack by Hamas.

Meanwhile, Israel has destroyed or damaged more than 400 sites in Gaza. Over 300 Palestinians have been killed, many of whom were civilians. Almost 2,000 have been wounded.

The “oil-disruption scenario would be if conflict spread to Iran,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official, told the agency, adding that such sequence of events looks unlikely.

Iran, a major oil producer and also an OPEC member, is seen as one of the key backers of the Hamas group that launched this weekend’s offensive on Israel.

“It is unlikely to impact oil supply in the short term,” hedge fund trader Pierre Andurand of Andurand Capital Management said, as cited by Bloomberg. “But it could eventually have an impact on supply and prices.”

Iran, for its part, has publicly expressed support for the Palestinian attack.

According to McNally, “crude prices would immediately spike on the perceived risk of a disruption,” if Tel Aviv responds by striking any infrastructure in the Islamic Republic.

Shipments of Iranian crude have rebounded to a five-year high, becoming increasingly important to the market. The latest hostilities could prompt Washington to deal more aggressively with Iranian cargo flows, which are moved –with the tacit blessing of the US– mostly to China.

“I think this development will mean stronger enforcement of Iranian sanctions, so less Iranian oil going forward,” Andurand told the agency, adding that the domino effect in the region is impossible to predict.

The Islamic Republic could respond by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway in the north of the Arabian Sea that sees nearly 17 million barrels of crude passing every day.’

Is Roland Hill, originator of the Penny Post, turning over in his grave at the new increase in Royal Mail postal rates where a first class stamp now costs £1.25.

Prior to an increase in April first class stamps were £0.95 each. The price increase in 2023 is, up to now, thirty four per cent. Outraged of Tunbridge Wells has no doubt written an incensed letter to The Times or The Telegraph, or their five followers on Twitter, demanding to know whether there has been a corresponding increase in the level of service. It’s all, no doubt, the fault of those bolshie workers wanting and nothing to do with wanting increased dividends from the shares!

‘Postal rates sky-rocketed on 30 April as a prelude to the privatisation of Royal Mail, but how will the workers there be affected?

The AGM of the postal workers trade union, the Communication Workers Union (CWU), in south-west London on 25 March was a very clear example of the reformist nature of much trade unionism, the limits on its power and the differences (or lack of)  between state capitalism and private capitalism in an operation like the Royal Mail. We should also not be surprised by the cosy relationship between Royal Mail’s Chief Executive Moya Greene and the Union Deputy General Secretary Dave Ward that showed at the meeting



The Postal Workers Union has a history of Labour right-wing leadership which has been useful to the capitalist class who need ‘respectable’ labour leaders to maintain industrial peace and to help them push through their ‘reforms’. This was not contradicted by the 1971 national strike by Postal Workers who went “on the cobbles” for 47 days! In 2009, in London, Postal Workers went on strike for 20 days over a 4-month period and the CWU took Royal Mail to the High Court because they were about to hire 30,000 casual workers to break the strike. At the eleventh hour Royal Mail and CWU came to an ‘agreement’. The union sold out the workers which is an old story in working-class trade union struggles with the capitalist class. The CWU is a major financial contributor to the Labour Party, the same Party who wanted to privatise the mail a few years ago. (It was Thatcher’s government that first mooted the selling off of the Royal Mail to private capitalists.)  It is all rather ironic considering that the Labour Party originated as a trade union pressure group. The Labour Party is just an alternative party to administer the capitalist system and exploit the working class.



The 2012 Postal Services Act is now in force and the Royal Mail pension deficit of £8.4 billion has been transferred to the state: i.e. the Government will take on the liabilities. The deficit was caused by previous Royal Mail management taking a “pensions holiday” when capitalism was booming in the 1990s and 2000s but it all came unstuck with collapse of western financial capitalism in 2008.



Moya Greene has been Chief Executive of Royal Mail since 2010 and is a hatchet-woman for the capitalist class. Her CV is not salutary reading for a postal worker. Greene was in charge of the ‘privatisation’ of the Canadian National Railway, the ‘de-regulation’ of the Canadian airline industry, and at Canada Post she trebled profits although revenues dropped, and injuries to Postal Workers went up 15 percent, days lost to strikes went up to 36, and workers’ grievances against their state capitalist bosses at Canada Post went up 60 percent under her regime. She is at Royal Mail to prepare the company for privatisation.



At the CWU AGM Greene said that we should welcome privatisation as it would mean “access to capital from an investor who wants the company to be successful,” and she stressed “We need capital”. She criticised the (state capitalist) system which currently operates Royal Mail with its “wrong-headed regulatory framework”, which restricts the amount of profits the Royal Mail can make. More profits will be made if the Royal Mail is owned by a private capitalist company. She offered financial carrots to the workforce by promising “a share in the success of the company” or “a stake in the year-on-year success of the company”, which is all that the CWU are asking for. The CWU campaign of ‘Keep the Post Public’ now has a lower profile as Dave Ward made no reference to it at the AGM.



Whether Royal Mail is a nationalised industry operated in the state capitalist manner or is run as private capitalist company ultimately makes no difference to the postal workers. They are being exploited by the state on behalf of capitalism or else by a private capitalist.’

SC

From Socialist Standard May2012

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/10/what-about-workers-2012.html

It is reported that, ‘Shares in the UK’s Metro Bank were briefly suspended from trading twice after the stock plunged nearly 30% over reports of urgent fundraising efforts to shore up the bank’s balance sheet.

Metro Bank shares have now fallen more than 60% since September 12, when it revealed that UK regulators had failed to approve a plan that would allow Metro to run its mortgage business at a lower cost.

The London Stock Exchange confirmed to CNBC that the brief suspensions were triggered by its circuit breaker mechanisms because of Metro Bank’s stock crash.

The bank, which was reportedly attempting to raise £600 million ($727 million) in debt and equity, said in a statement on Thursday that it is currently considering “how best to enhance its capital resources.” 

The options include asking investors to help refinance $424 million worth of debt before it falls due in 2025, as well as raising hundreds of millions of pounds through the sale of debt, shares, or assets.

“No decision has been made on whether to proceed with any of these options,” Metro Bank stated.

Rating agency Fitch placed Metro on negative watch citing increased risks to its business model, capital position, and funding.

Founded by US billionaire Vernon Hill in 2010, Metro Bank became the UK’s first new high-street bank in more than a century. In 2019, it was hit by a misreporting scandal that led to the exit of its chair and chief executive.’

‘The Magic Money Myth. A Guide to Banking’. The Socialist Party. 30 pages.

Since the Crash of 2008, blamed rightly or wrongly on the banks, there has been a renewed interest in how the banking system works, and not just among regulators. At the Occupy Camps that sprung up in 2011 this was a major topic of discussion as those there looked for an alternative to capitalism, at least in its present form. Leaflets circulated reviving money theories of yesteryear and criticising ‘fractional reserve banking’. The Green Party too discussed the matter and committed itself on paper to the theory that banks can create money out of thin air. Money theories and denunciations of ‘banksters’ are all over the internet and get a hearing from those trying to understand why the present economic system doesn’t work in the interest of the majority.

Some of these theories are just plain wrong, factually mistaken about what banks do and can do. All assume that banking or monetary reform can improve the position of the majority class of wage and salary workers. But it can’t as these problems arise from the capitalist system of minority ownership of the means of life and production for the market and profit rather than to meet people’s needs. Monetary reform is a red herring sending in the wrong direction people who are looking for a way out of capitalism. If implemented it would not solve the problems that the majority face as it leaves their cause unchanged.

In this pamphlet we set out, as part of explaining how the capitalist economic system works, to expose factual errors about what banking is and how banks work. There is nothing especially bad about banks compared with other profit-seeking capitalist enterprises. They are merely in a different line of business. Banks are not the cause of the problems that the majority class face. It’s capitalism and its production for profit. The way-out is not to reform banks or the monetary system but to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. There would then be production directly to meet people’s needs and distribution in accordance with the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” and banks and money would be redundant.

From Socialist Standard April 2019

Price £3 including postage. Send cheque, made out to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”, to 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN. Or order and pay online at: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product-category/pamphlets/

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/04/pamphlet-review-magic-money-myth-guide.html

LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY (ZOOM)

‘Tory Party grandee and former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost has suggested that the state pension age in the UK be raised to 75 in a bid to reduce public spending. The pension age has already risen twice in the last five years.’

“Lord Frost yesterday (2nd October) suggested that the state pension age should be raised to 75 to shrink public spending and the state.

The Tory grandee, who was former PM Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, made the remarks at a party conference fringe meeting on the Future of Conservatism.

Urging ministers to make cuts to public spending and taxes and go for growth, he acknowledged that this would require making changes to the state pension.

He said: ‘I do think that the honest truth is that the pension age is going to have to go up quite a long way to solve this problem [of reducing public expenditure].

‘That seems to me the best way of getting out of it in the medium term.’

Asked whether it should go up to 70 years old, he said: ’75, it’s quite a lot higher.’

He added: ‘People are much healthier than they used to be and I think it does need to go up. The big blocks of spending are health, pension and benefits. If you don’t tackle those you’re not really tackling anything.

‘I do think you need to do something also like freezing – or coming close to freezing – the public sector health budget and finding a sort of socially just and accepted way that future spending needs to go to the private sector in some way otherwise it’s just going to absorb sort of half of the budget before too long.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12586719/Lord-Frost-suggests-state-pension-age-raised-75-shrink-public-spending.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

‘Britain has had a Conservative government since 2010, and despite some initial cutbacks by the normally spendthrift party, the government’s outlay has ballooned in recent years. Its annual spending on services – which includes healthcare, welfare benefits, and pensions – soared to £784 billion ($953 billion) in 2022-23, from £713.1 billion ($866 billion) the previous year, according to government statistics.

Meanwhile, the UK’s national debt has risen from 75% of the country’s GDP in 2010 to 100.5% earlier this year.

Between 1948 and 2010, Britons could expect to draw a state pension at 60 for women and 65 for men. This was equalized to 65 for both sexes in 2018, and increased to 66 in 2020. A further increase to 67 is planned by 2028, and to 68 by 2046, although these dates are currently being reviewed and could be brought forward.

At present, there are 28 people aged over 65 for every 100 people of working age in the UK. However, this is to hit predicted to hit 36 per 100 by 2050.’