A-Infos (en) US, Boston, Anarchist journal - BAAM #17 - Anti-Zionist Protest at Israeli Consulate by Sublett

As news came out recently that the "United States" would be sending a new shipment of bombs to 
"Israel" from the Greek port of Astakos at some point between the middle and end of January, the 
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) sent out an urgent call to organizers in 
Greece to stop the shipment. Within a day, several organizations and individuals in Greece 
responded to the call. Perhaps most significant in the current context was that of the Greek 
Anti-Authoritarian Movement, centrally involved in weeks of rebellion against the repressive forces 
of their own government: ---- "The Anti-Authoritarian Movement calls for a Pan-Hellenic gathering 
on Thursday, Jan. 15th at Astakos at 1:00 p.m. to block the departure of boats with American 
weapons which are destined for Israel. DON'T LET THE CARGO OF AMERICAN WEAPONS LEAVE THE PORT. 
SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. RESISTANCE TO GLOBALIZED STATE TERRORISM."

Anti-Authoritarian Movement

   Greece Defies US and Stops Israeli Arms

    As pressure began from below, even mem-
bers of the parliamentary left began to raise
questions. On January 12th, the "US" an-
nounced that it had canceled the shipment of
arms through Astakos because of "concerns"
expressed by the Greek government.
    The prefect of Aitoloakarnania (where the
port lies) announced that they would instead
be sending a ship with material aid to Pales-
tinians and expressed the sentiments of the
local people: "The people of Aitoloakarnania
do not accept that Greek ports, and especially
this port of Platygiali, constitute places for the
transfer of weapons and ammunition which
are used in belligerent circumstances and in
the slaughter of the peoples of our region. ...
we are sending medicines and medical mate-
rial instead of weapons [to Israel] to the be-
sieged people of Gaza..."

Resistance to Globalized State Terrorism

    "Resistance to globalized state terrorism" is a call
that relates the rebellion of youth and anti-authoritarians
in Greece over the last several weeks to the slaughter of
people in Gaza. Their opposition moves beyond the usual
limits of "solidarity:" stopping a "US" arms shipment to
"Israel" becomes a part of their own struggle.
    State terrorism is globalized. The "US," Greece and
"Israel" collaborate not just against Palestinians, but
against Greeks. It was the "US" that set up Greece's
repressive police structures: the MAT (Monades
Apokatastis Taxis)--"riot" police--are a spe-
cial branch of political police that have their
origins in "US" police training programs.
Through the "Public Safety Program" in the
1960s and 1970s, the "US" supplied Greece
with weapons and trained police in methods
of repression--including torture--as part of
the global "war against communism." Just
before Christmas 2008, it was revealed that
"Israel" was supplying Greece with a new,
harsher form of teargas to use against demon-
strators. Protestors have described it as "as-
phyxiating."
    People in rebellion find their solidarity in a
struggle against injustice which they have ex-
perienced directly. It is solidarity in resistance.
One can see this when reading the statement
of high school students from the Coordinated
Struggle of High-Schools in Athens, who
chose to reorganize their national mobiliza-
tion on education rights in Greece on January
9 into a mobilization for solidarity with Gaza:
"...Everyone must take a position:--either
with the victim or the executioner--either
with the Palestinians or with their murder-
ers--either with the peoples who fight or with
the imperialists....We are on the side of our
student comrades in Palestine who have been
murdered over these last days by Israeli fire.
Victory to the Palestinian people!"

Fighting Zionism

    The ties are concrete that link the police
murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos in Greece,
the murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland, and
the genocidal zionist assault on Gaza. The
central role of the "US" and "Israel" in devel-
oping a global system of police repression has
everything to do with their common history
as colonial settler-states. As Cesaire Aime,
Frantz Fanon and others have written, it is in
the colonies that the methods, apparatus, and
ideology of fascism developed. Concentra-
tion camps, special laws that exploit whole
populations based on "race," and the system-
atic annihilation of peoples: Europe did this
to Africa, the Arab world, and the Americas
before turning to the interior. It's in the set-
tler colonies that whole new classes emerge
whose livelihoods depend on repression: the
various military and paramilitary formations
of the settler garrison become the police, mer-
cenaries and prison guards of the totalitarian
state. Germany, Italy and Spain recruited their
own most repressive forces from the colo-
nies. The Algerian settlers became the most
fascistic bloc of political power within France
and threatened to seize control of the country
and impose a military dictatorship as France
began to back away from its colony.
    Wherever the "pioneering frontier" is most
active, so also is the development of geno-
cidal repressive power. The "US" contracts
zionist mercenaries and companies to devel-
op its own domestic security state. Elbit Sys-
tems--the "Israeli" company that designed
and built the wall that is intended to starve
communities in Palestine--was contracted to
develop the "US" border wall with Mexico
and flight security systems in airlines. Instinc-
tive Shooting International--now renamed
Security Systems International--provided
"Israeli" mercenaries for "security" in New
Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, and now
regularly organizes trainings in "Israel" for
"US" police and Homeland Security. Repres-
sion is now "Israel's" most important global
industry--all it really has to export.
    The failure to confront zionism as ideology and as
material power is a failure to confront a bloc of
repressive, white-supremacist power within our own society.
This has been a major weak point of social justice, anti-
racist and anti-war organizing. To take the most obvious
example, the strength of zionism within labor unions has
been a major force for turning them into pro-imperialist in-
stitutions.

Solidarity

    The Greeks have understood that solidarity means
recognizing the concrete points of intersection where
the fight becomes serious.
    The "US" is dead center in the system of genocide and
global repression. The physical apparatus is
here in every major city and across the coun-
try in small towns: munitions factories, mili-
tary bases, recruiting centers. Virtually every
major university has its research institutions
develop instruments of mass murder, and its
theoretical institutes develop strategies of re-
pressive power.
    But this extensiveness is also its weakness.
The main strategy of security is depolitici-
zation: there is simply no way to defend so
many nodes of violence from a movement
that is serious about interfering with them.
    The Greeks have given a small example of
what such a movement might look like. Let's
stop the flow of weapons at the source.
_________________________________________
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