AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL-PALESTINE, December 15 — Several local and international working-class activists, including a PL’er, visited the “unrecognized” Bedouin village of al-Arakib and helped rebuild its demolished shacks and sheds. On Tuesday, the racist Israeli authorities demolished the village for the 42nd time since the summer of 2010! Israel likes to showcase itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” But this “democracy” demolishes the homes of impoverished Bedouin workers and subsistence peasants because they are in the way of the real-estate capitalists’ steamroller.
In front of this criminal bosses’ state and its terrorist police, the villagers of al-Araqib fight back and stick to their ancestral land. They will not move, as the regime wants, to the nearby mis-planned Bedouin town of Rahat, where there are no jobs. The village’s leader, Sheikh Sayakh, once again thanked the Jewish, Arab and international working-class activists who come to help the villagers in their struggle.
The Zionist movement, the “Jewish” colonial nationalists, and the State of Israel it created 64 years ago try to “bring order” to the Bedouin settlements in the Negev (southern Israel-Palestine). This “order” means robbing the Palestinian-Bedouin worker or peasant of his ancestral land, which is his main source of livelihood, in order to let U.S.-based real-estate tycoons such as Ronald Lauder and Inving Moscowitz grow rich from land-theft. The Bedouins, who are, officially, Israeli citizens, are treated as second-class citizens and face racism. Many Bedouins serve in the Border Patrol with the hope of getting decent jobs afterwards, yet at the end of the day are still treated as nothing by these racists. This is the same way the racist U.S. treats Native American, Latino and black workers.
But we Jewish and Arab workers and activists came to al-Araqib in private cars (as Israel lacks public transit on weekends) and helped re-build five shacks. The message should be brought to all corners of the world: the racist, capitalist Israeli state is at war with Arab workers, including the Bedouins, as well as with Jewish workers. The basis of Zionism is racist land robbery. But we, workers of all ethnicities, “races” and creeds, are determined to stand firm with the villagers of al-Araqib in their just struggle.