TEL-AVIV-JAFFA, ISRAEL-PALESTINE — Thousand of workers, dressed in red and carrying red flags and banners, marked May Day today in central Tel-Aviv-Jaffa with an energetic march. Slogans and chants called for a revolution. PL’ers in Palestine joined these workers and handed out leaflets explaining why a communist revolution is the only way forward.
We distributed CHALLENGEs and leaflets in Hebrew, which were welcomed by the marching workers who were open to our political analysis.
Phony leftists who are “revolutionary” in words and reactionary in actions dominated the bulk of the march. They called for “price controls,” “public housing” and “socialism,” essentially meaning to keep most of the capitalist system in place with minor reforms, or, at most, returning to 1950s Israeli state capitalism.
We, on the other hand, explained the need for an egalitarian communist system based on the principle of “from each according to commitment, to each according to need.”
When the march reached its rally point, however, two groups of anti-communists attacked us. The first one, a libertarian capitalist group raising the symbols of the U.S. Tea Party, attacked us only verbally by claiming that “communists, especially Stalin and Mao, killed 100 million people”; in reality, unlike the brazen lies these bosses’ spokesmen were spouting, Stalin’s Red Army saved the entire human race from the Nazi butchers in World War II; Mao transformed China from an imperialist colony to a workers’ state.
The second group of anti-communists, however, were far more violent. These were the Kahane gang (the Israeli equivalent of Neo-Nazis) who waved Israeli flags and shouted ultra-nationalist slogans. When the demonstrators, including ourselves, shouted them out, the riot cops stormed us — they wouldn’t touch their fascist buddies — detaining several leftists and beating them viciously.
All in all, while small in numbers, we made an impact on the May Day activities here. With hard work we will organize a much larger contingent next year.