JERUSALEM, September 1 — Dozens of Palestinian-Arab residents of the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem, supported by more than a hundred anti-racist activists, marched against a phony “scientific convention” serving as a cover for a racist land-grab in the neighborhood by upper-class Jewish settlers.
The settlers, backed by the cops and by city hall, use a massive archeological dig in that neighborhood — supposedly revealing the remains of the ancient City of David — to justify their violent takeover of multiple houses in the area while evicting their original, Palestinian-Arab, residents. First they take over a few houses, then harass the local Palestinian-Arab population and make their lives miserable until they have to move away. Then the settlers take over more houses. The same policy is used in Silwan, Shiekh Jarrah and Hebron to seize real-estate assets.
The demonstrators tried to march towards the City of David “archeological park,” where the convention was being held. Their way was blocked by armed riot cops, despite the fact that they were marching in one of their own neighborhood’s main streets. The cops then proceeded to brutally attack the residents and the activists, injuring three activists and arresting six. But the demonstrators did not back down; for three hours they stood up against the fascist cops and shouted slogans such as “King David died a long time ago — cops and settlers go away!” and “Wake up! Fascism is marching against us!”
This land-grab is not an isolated incident, nor is it a local initiative by a few extremists, as some of the liberal activists believe. The ELAD organization, which is behind the settlers, is funded by several real-estate tycoons, including the Miami mogul Irwing Moscowitz and the big Israeli bosses Lev Leviev and Roman Abramov. Irwing Moscowitz funds a number of racist land-grabs all over Palestine, such as in Ras El-Amud and Shiekh Jarrah. Similarly, another U.S. capitalist, Ron Lauder — the heir of Estee Lauder’s business empire — is
behind the fascist demolition of the entire village of Al-Araqib in southern Palestine. Obviously, such skilled investors did not throw all this money into the fascist settler NGO’s out of philanthropy alone: there are business interests involved, and the whole wave of house demolitions and evictions of Palestinian-Arabs from their homes is nothing but a real-estate land-grab by big capital at the expense of local workers.
It is not surprising that the Israeli regime — the same regime that maintains the fascist blockade over Gaza and slaughters its residents — actively supports these land-grabs. Ever since its foundation in 1948, the Israeli state followed the colonialist policy of “Judaization,” that is, as many Jews (especially upper-class) on as much land as possible, and as little Palestinian-Arabs (and Jewish workers) on as little lands as possible. This policy serves the interests of local tycoons and their wealthy U.S. masters, who gain profitable real-estate assets for cheap or for free. It also serves the need of all bosses to separate workers on the basis of racism and nationalism, thus weakening the working class.
Three local PL’ers came to the demonstration, armed with a red PL flag. They distributed leaflets revealing the real-estate business interests behind the house seizures. The PL’ers called for the workers of all nations and “races” to unite against the bosses and the fascist state and smash them once and for all.
PLP fights for the overthrow of the “Zionist” Israeli apartheid regime and its puppets in the Palestinian Authority, who might be getting a few more bribes in the current round of “peace negotiations.” We want the workers of the entire Middle East, Arabs and Jews alike, to unite and replace colonialism and capitalism with the communist rule of the working class. JOIN US!J