[Note from April 2024: As I noiced this kind of mischeaved interview from 2013 becomes popular again at some anarchist news sites I’d like to make some things clear. Well, you’re interested in the topic, but you also might have recognized the faked Fauda-interview the Black Rose Federation made in October 2023? You thought of course there might be something wrong with the anarchists takling about the horrible situation in Ghaza and mentioning only the Israeli military but not one single bad word Hamas and the islamist fascists, even denying the October pogrom, haven’t you? Then you should know you cannot dicsuss the situation without having a notion of genuine eliminatory antisemitism in the region, radicalized by the German Nazis and reenamped later by the Soviet Union. So could’t Ahdut as you can see below. The group supposedly consisted of some students radicalized to stupidity at their univercities by the usual postcolonial studies which don’t have a slightliest notion of antisemitism and some young folks from the russian/ukrainian aliyah who didn’t consieder the country as theirs (nothing new here so far). However, Ahdut doesn’t exist by now, some of their prominent representatives left the country and don’t want to be associaed with anarchism. Y’all love some exotic anarchist movements, I know, but face the fact that anarchism doesn’t have a realist solution for this situation, the Israeli anarchists know they will be dead by dawn after a revolutionary uprising, even after an unstable situation as we saw last October. As Joachim Bruhn once said the Zionism was the wrong answear to the worldwide antisemitism, but the only one possible in current historical situation. Greet from me all your Chomskys, Butlers, Finkelsteins and UNRWA. All the “humanist” things they say became morally corrupt, obsolete and even obscene after 7th October 2023, call it the dialectics of Enlightenment if you want to. May be there is a hope emerging from such initiatives as Standing Together, it will cetrainly not come from some dogmatic leftists. Nevertheless, I’m glad someone still reads this. Enjoy! – liberadio]
[Huch, jetzt tue ich es: ich stelle das Interview mit Ahdut/Unity, das ich irgendwann mal letztes Jahr (2013) für die GaiDao geführt habe, online. Man sehe und staune, wie die israelische radikale Linke tickt… Zugegeben, das Interview ist grottig, ich hatte zum Einen nicht den Arsch in der Hose, einen Israeli aus der Ferne zu belehren, das schien und scheint mir immer noch ziemlich absurd; zum Zweiten – ich war so blöd, auf die Ratschläge von blöden “AnarchistInnen” zu hören und die “Antideutsche-Frage” zu stellen, also ihnen einen weiteren Blankoscheck für ihre “Debatten” mit den “Antideutschen” zu besorgen. Mea culpa. Wie dem auch sei, es gibt jede Menge Interessantes: Gewerkschaftenlanschaft, die Krise und die sozialen Proteste, die Geschichte des Anarchismus und der Black Panther Bewegung im Land, Kriegsdienstverweigerung usw. Trotz alledem – enjoy! – liberadio]
1) I’d like to ask you to introduce the Unity. What is your self-conception? Still organized in the IUA? What were the causes of your splitting from the RKAS?
“Unity” is an anarcho-communist organization active in Israel-Occupied Palestine. “Unity” was founded in 2010 as part of the international east-Europe based anarchist organization RKAS (“Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists”). In 2011 RKAS was split over a dispute with the executive committee and most of the member organizations reorganized in a new federation called the IUA (“International Union of Anarchists”) as a temporary measure. Recently the IUA ceased functioning as virtually all member organizations joined with other organizations. We are considering whether to seek international affiliation with another international anarchist body.
While anarchist activists are relatively common and prevalent in Israel, there has been no tradition of organized, class-struggle anarchism in the last decades. We see “Unity” as an attempt to organize anarchist activists in a serious political organization with a class-struggle point-of-view, and to make anarchism relevant for everyone struggling for their rights: workers, Palestinians, women, LGBTQ, minorities and refugees, etc. As far as we know “Unity” the only anarchist organization with a clear social agenda currently active in Israel/Occupied Palestine.
2) Are there more anarchist groups in Israel and Palestine? Whats the state of the Israeli left at all?
We are not aware of any similar anarchist organizations in Israel and Palestine. There are however a number of anarchist or anarchist-inspired initiatives worth noting.
The best known self-described anarchist initiative is Anarchists Against the Wall, which is most accurately defined as a direct action affinity group of various left activists, not necessarily anarchists, who oppose the construction of the Apartheid wall and the Israeli occupation. Continue reading “Interview with Unity/Ahdut from Israel/Palestine” →