This “Comradely Critique” goes out to the newly rebranded opportunist group, “The Communists” (formally Socialist Appeal) as a response and counter-critique to an article on their website in which they target a local Newcastle group, “Shut Down Rafael”, who regularly protest the Israeli-owned weapons factory on the banks of The Tyne River, of which it churns out parts for the IDF’s Makarva Main Battle Tanks used today in a genocide against the Palestinians in order for the Zionist state to reach their colonisation objectives.
The article is phrased as an innocent and progressive statement of good intent, however, I will clarify it’s deep-seeded ignorant, reactionary statement of opportunism as a revolutionary British communist and veteran Palestine activist..
The header on the piece states:
“The Shut Down Rafael campaign aims to shut down an Israeli-owned arms factory in Newcastle. Our comrades, who have been involved in the campaign, offer a critique of its methods, underscoring the need for a revolutionary, class-based approach.”
However, this is not enough context as to who and what Shut Down Rafael is.
Their earliest social media post on Instagram for example is the 8th October 2023. They are a relatively new group in Newcastle who rather than exclusively parading in their City Centre’s in the hope of helping Palestine, they stay focused on the source of the crimes against the Palestinians which are on their doorstep.
5 days prior to the seeming creation of SDR (Shut Down Rafael), Activists of Palestine Action occupied the factory site for two days after first scaling the factory on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba in the early Monday morning [1] [2], and in that time took the site apart, with extensive damage caused to the windows, equipment, and property both inside and outside of the factory walls ensuring that the Israeli government will not be able to operate its weapons manufacturing from Newcastle for some time.
The factory and the brand Pearson Engineering was, in September 2022 [3], purchased by Rafael as part of a ‘strategic expansion’ into Britain by the weapons company wholly owned by the Israeli state. The Pearson factory itself specialises in producing armoured military vehicles, and is now under significant control of the Israeli Ministry of Finance [4].
Palestine Action is a direct-action network that aims to end British complicity with the Israeli arms trade. In the 3 years of their existence in Britain, they have permanently shut down 3/10 sites for Israel’s largest & number one weapons manufacturer to Israel, Elbit Systems. They have forced Elbit to lose 280 million pounds worth of defence contracts in Britain – Palestine Action has disrupted thousands of production hours and even more in profits – achieving more than 10,000 books and protests on colonisation and pro-Palestine marches can in 50 years – even often achieving more on behalf of the Palestinians in one day than any British “communist” party ever has, despite their claims of being ‘internationalist’. Elbit’s recruiters, landlords and associates have also cut ties with the Israeli arms company after hundreds of arrestable actions and coverts – all of this only achievable with and because of the support from locals who don’t want a Zionist weapon factory on their doorstep.
I bring Palestine Action into the equation, because they are in it – though I don’t think ‘The Communists’ were aware of it.
Palestine Actionist’s on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba went to that Israeli arms factory and in the time they were there, took the site apart, with extensive damage caused to the windows, equipment, and property both inside and outside of the factory walls ensuring that the Israeli government will not be able to operate its weapons manufacturing from Newcastle for some time.
Not even a week later, the locals in Newcastle discovered that 1) there is a local Israeli arms factory & 2) something can be done about it.
The first Elbit site to be permanently shut down (sold at a loss, actually) in Oldham, Manchester was achieved not only by the arrestable actions of brave actionists, but the equally righteous locals who came out day-in-day-out to demonstrate outside of the Oldham site (that also makes parts for tanks) shown very clearly that it wasn’t a few odd radicals who like smashing windows that opposed the weapons factory, but it was indeed the masses.
The locals who came outside the gates were as instrumental in Palestine Action’s campaign to shut these sites down – the local Manchester group that emerged were demonstrating not just an opposition to a local arms factory, but outright support for Palestine Action and their noble actions are how Palestine Action shut their first site down and had proven their practice is effective.
To put it in terms dogmatist Marxists might understand: Palestine Action was the vanguard & the masses (locals) saw the work through to the end – Palestine Action’s theory worked in practice and visa-versa.
I am of the position that when Palestine Actionists go home, it is the local’s responsibility in any community to carry on the work that effectively opposes arms dealers on our doorsteps and to fundamentally steer local pro-Palestine groups to these murder factories to where they would be most effective, outside Israeli arms factories.
So when I see Shut Down Rafael pop up and carry on the work of Palestine Action in any form they are able, with a similar (but more focused) slogan than Palestine Action’s ‘Shut Elbit Down’, I see the dialectic unlike ‘The Communists’.
As a historical materialist, I know the essence of their work is the same as Palestine Action’s – Palestine Action being nothing but a network – a network SDR is subjectively & objectively a part of.
They are not isolated in their work – they too are pulling on the same noose around the Israeli arms trade’s neck along with everybody else coherent enough to fight for Palestine through disrupting it’s arms trade.
My historical context goes far beyond the limited individuals who stabbed their comrades in the back who wrote this article.
They go on,
“We hope to continue this friendly relationship in future, and wanted to explain our thinking regarding the SDR campaign in this open letter.
We hope our letter is received in the spirit it was intended: healthy debate on tactics for how we can free Palestine, and the whole of the world’s working class, by overthrowing capitalism and building a communist society in its place.
We want to make clear from the off that we respect the bravery and commitment of those activists seeking to shut down the factory. They are driven by a burning desire to do something to help the Palestinian people.”
“Healthy debate tactics for how we can free Palestine” they said.. How does debate free Palestine? What is there to debate? Palestinians are being murdered, not by sectarianist beliefs, but by steel & gunpowder composed in Britain and exported into the hearts, minds and limbs of Palestinians for detonation.
This is the practical, material reality. It is also a practical, material reality that Elbit has gotten weaker as their means of production/destruction have came under direct assault by the most successful direct action campaign in all of British history.
Palestine will be free when we end Israeli arms trade wherever it exists & Israel no longer has the monopoly of violence to subdue the Palestinians in small areas while dominating life-needed resources and materials by fully-loaded magazines.
Who do you think you are, to have the results of Palestine Action’s network infront of you then have the shameless audacity to say “debate me until I agree and therefore we have the correct solution to this problem nobody has seriously attempted to solve?” That’s how it reads – with an intellectual and social superiority complex when you’ve achieved nothing of any significance.
You should be lining up to learn how 3 sites were shut down – perhaps if you had done that, you would be able to recognise the importance of local groups like SDR and rather than throw them under the bus, you would sit in it as a passenger while they drive.
They then write
“There has been an increase in police repression against the campaign recently, and we wholeheartedly condemn the police and their role in suppressing the Palestine solidarity movement.”
Clearly, with their tails between their legs; that’s when the writer got afraid and realised that they weren’t out just for photo’s and to feel good about themselves, but actually they would be met with opposition from the pigs.
I’m sorry but I found that sentence to be very illuminating by ‘The Communists’ – especially considering their idealist vision of a different strategy follows after this admission of fear of the pigs. Ask yourself something: Why would a ‘revolutionary’ ‘communist’ party feel the need to state that they condemn police in their role supressing protestors? To me it’s just a way to mention they’re scared of the police and so they wanted to try a more passive strategy that didn’t involve the scary police pigs and dogs.
From the beginning, we argued that the campaign should aim to reach the workers in the factory, to engage them in the campaign.
Instead of attempting to shut down the factory from the outside, the campaign should seek to persuade the workers to go on strike on a political basis – to refuse to allow weapons to be manufactured in Newcastle that could feed the Israeli war machine.
We argued for campaign members to pass motions about it in our own unions.W e were involved with the Shut Down Rafael campaign from its inception.
Interest within the campaign for agitating amongst the workers was scant, however.
In a speech at a January SDR demonstration, a leading campaigner suggested the Rafael workers were complicit in genocide.
On more than one occasion, protestors chanted ‘shame on you’, seemingly aimed at workers trying to enter the factory.
When we challenged this method, a prominent activist responded by likening the workers in the factory to scabs in a strike.
Blockades of the factory started to occur involving, on occasion, the workers’ vehicles being climbed on.
“From the beginning” they argued to focus on bringing weapons-making workers into the Shut Down Rafael campaign? By their own admission, their results shown futility in this idealistic vision.
As communists, we must ask ourselves “Where do correct ideas come from”? Do they fall from the sky? No. They come from practice. And practice alone.
The idea of trying to convince an arms factory’s workers to produce something else is peak liberal idealism. What practice is this based on? None! It’s never happened! Now, because “The Communists” have a functioning website with a soviet colour-pallet we’re supposed to take seriously the ideas of some random person with a fetishism of Russian Revolution times trying to apply it to the Zionist project?
Where is the scientific socialism? This is fantasy!
“In a speech at a January SDR demonstration, a leading campaigner suggested the Rafael workers were complicit in genocide.
On more than one occasion, protestors chanted ‘shame on you’, seemingly aimed at workers trying to enter the factory.”
Personally, with my own eyeballs, I’ve seen a worker of one of these sites try to run over a 14 year old lad with his car, I’ve seen inside of one when I was on it’s rooftop, taking bricks out of the factory’s wall to further destroy the site (brick-by-brick in practice) and they had the drone’s that killed Palestinians on the walls glorified – the workers of these weapons factories see themselves as civilian military personnel!
“The Communists” seem prepared to die on the hill, that the people who screw in the triggers for Israeli weapons are somehow better than those who pull them – or do they at all? Will they one day attempt to give British soldiers massages, or even wanks, pitying their poor pay as underpaid workers for the Government? Or would that be too bad for their PR, so they somehow came to the conclusion to oppose the shutting down of factories – that are right now facilitating genocide! – because the complicit workers might have to be unemployed for a little bit?
How can you call yourself an internationalist? How can you besmirch the name of communism?
“Our issue is that there has been no attempt to reach the workers within the factory to explain what is happening or try to engage them in the struggle.”
What ‘The Communists’ want, is effectively a task comparable to asking Coca-Cola workers to stop producing coke, and instead produce pineapple and mango smoothies. What imagined la-la-land are you living in? They don’t own the means of production, they are actually organic extensions of the means of production to the capitalist – or is an engineer in uniform repairing Israeli tanks somehow more of a combatant than the person who put the tank together in the safe haven of Britain?
“When we challenged this method, a prominent activist responded by likening the workers in the factory to scabs in a strike.”
That prominent activist was right, but you’re too high and mighty up your ass to listen and learn – you think you know better because you’ve read some Marxist theory – but I’ve read more, and my left nut alone has done more practice than you ever have, so I don’t expect you too. The worst part is picturing your group having plans outside of SDR, to ambush them at meetings with your shitty ideas as if you have all the answers.
“Instead, from day one, there has been an ‘us and them’ dynamic, where the campaign comes in from outside, and where the brunt of the antagonism is directed at the workers.
When the building is blockaded, for example, the workers are on the receiving end. This could be a golden opportunity to hand them some literature. However, they have been met by chants of ‘shame on you’.”
The Israeli weapons are produced by the workers. They aren’t passive. The capitalists, the Israeli officials aren’t producing the weapons – the workers are.
“When the building is blockaded, for example”
So here you recognise SDR are effective enough to blockade an arms factory, which is a HUGE deal if you actually support Palestine, but you don’t appreciate that victory because to you, your ‘golden opportunity’ is handing out “”literature””? You don’t even have an idea as to what literature – what literature would make them down tools?! Again, you’re being idealistic – you’re being opportunistic because you think your role is to give out literature like a trot rather than the golden opportunity being each and every moment the factory is shut down and it’s workers are exposed to the local public outrage of their work.
What happened to listening to the masses? You are, in black and white, standing on the side of Zionist arms makers and opposing the people’s will whom are disrupting the flow of weapons to Israel to be used against Palestine. How can you take such a position as a communist? This is a liberal centrist point of view.
You fetishise imperialist arms manufacturers over the desires of locals in your own community. Shame on you.
“The campaign’s key demand and name is to shut down the factory. This would mean putting all the workers out of a job. With families to feed, and mortgages or rent to pay, it is unlikely that workers would be receptive to such an idea.”
Yes. Good. I’m an anti-imperialist and decolonisation is crucial – their houses and possessions are simply proceeds of crime. Also, other jobs exist. They’re not being banished from working altogether, get a grip now – you’re sensationalising people who’s fingerprints on this equipment put them at the scene of so many crimes against humanity.
“We demand that the factory should be repurposed, and the workers guaranteed their jobs.”
I demand to have a billion pounds to fund the revolution. I demand to be able to fly. I demand communists in this Country start acting like them!
Something tells me that stating demands out into the void of space doesn’t achieve anything.
“If the campaign had communicated with the workers, won them to our cause, and encouraged them to strike, not only would this particular producer have been shut down, it would also have sent shockwaves throughout the Palestine solidarity movement – showing the potential power workers hold through their role in production everywhere, and enormously raising their confidence.”
Palestine Action has demanded an end to British complicity with the Israeli arms trade – but the did more than that, knowing demands aren’t enough: they practiced it. They have seized & destroyed the means of production, while opportunist parties like this only masturbate to the thought of it in some abstract idealist vision. Then they have the audacity to act like they know better, having proving nothing but scamming people into paying membership fee’s to support reaction and cowardice.
Again, they are telling you what the future would have been like if only you had listened to them, based on absolutely nothing but vibes. They are going against the grain not because they care for Palestinian liberation, or shutting down the Rafael site, but only because they want to prove they are better than SDR.
“Clearly there is no way a factory owned by the Israeli state will shut itself down on such a basis. The only force that can call a halt to work at the factory is the workers on the inside.”
Three Elbit Systems sites, including their HQ has been shut down permanently because of sustained work by groups like SDR. This is just wrong. Anti-dialectical and anti-historical & material. This whole article should be deleted with a public apology.
The article mentions historical precedent, though a fetishised lens in completely different political conditions than Palestine, of which Britain mandated the existence of Israel – meaning the British ruling class are a lot more sensitive for Israel than they were for Russia at the time and what’s more is many of these factory workers are infact Zionists themselves.
If you’re so dedicated to the strategy of (somehow) giving the Israeli workers a speech so good it changes their life, or literature that (somehow) changes their material conditions and consciousness then by all means, waste your time doing that but don’t dare post smear-campaigns like this in the guise of a “comradely critique” when you can’t even see the big picture – when you revert to a century ago for historical precident when there’s one this week of a major weapon factory Palestine Action has targeted being bought off and is now producing parts for trains – public transport.
Actually, your self-gratification and this whole article is void. While you fantasise how to turn arms factories into producing things with public use-value, Palestine Action achieved this, this week!
This article is as void as “The Communists” is as a party.
If you were a true communist internationalist, you would be dismantling the war machine with your bare hands, or contribute to it’s network. Instead you’ve taken the position that the proper practice in incorrect, because it’s not compatible with your ancient historical dogma. This is a signal to reevaluate your entire life and consciousness. Ask instead of telling. Don’t oppose effective work – that’s what the pigs do. That’s why I implore everybody to not allow a reactionary group of couch communists to commandeer the term ‘Communist’. Refer to them now, only as “The Pig Party.”
