>>So, what do you think of the armed struggles of Palestinians,
>>Colombians, and Filipinos today?
>
>Palestinians targeting the IDF or Pal collaborators - that's fine
>with me. Targeting civilians, as in bombing busses and cafes, is not.
(1) What do you think of the breakdown below reported by B'Tselem? Supposing that it is accurate, do you think that it is really finer than what's going on in Iraq?
***** According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesperson, 942 Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians on suspicion of collaboration between December 9, 1987, when the Intifada erupted, and November 30, 1993. The Associated Press puts the number at 771.
According to data supplied to B'Tselem by the Ministry of Defense, between 35 and 40 percent of those killed were employed by the government, or were in some other way connected to one of the branches of the Israeli administration. The remainder of those killed had no connection to the government. Ten to 15 percent of these were killed for criminal activity, "especially in drugs and prostitution" and a small number were killed "because they violated the directives of the uprising," or, for example, sold pornographic video films in defiance of the orders of the Islamic organizations.
(Saleh Abdel Jawad & Yizhar Be'er, "Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations," B'Tselem, February 1995, <http://www.birzeit.edu/crdps/intro.html> -- cf. <http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Summaries/Collaboration_Suspects_1994.asp>) *****
(2) Also, analyze the B'Tselem statistics at <http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Al_Aqsa_Fatalities.asp> & <http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Al_Aqsa_Fatalities_Tables.asp> and see the proportions of military and civilian casualties at Palestinian hands.
(3) Then compare (1) and (2) to the guerrilla war in Iraq: "Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt . . . reported daily averages of 24 attacks against coalition military targets, just fewer than three attacks against Iraqi security forces and just over one attack against Iraqi civilians" (Jim Garamone, "Military Operations, Political Track Continue to Move Forward," American Forces Press Service, February 7, 2004, <http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2004/n02072004_200402071.html>).
>I don't know enough about FARC to judge, but I don't think they
>represent the Colombian masses.
At what point does any guerrilla movement's popularity become "enough" to qualify for international solidarity? FARC has not been as successful in Colombia as the July 26 Movement in Cuba and the Bolivarian Movement in Venezuela, but it's been more popular -- including in electoral coalition politics -- than, say, EZLN in Mexico:
***** The UP [leftist Patriotic Union] emerged as part of a peace accord reached in March 1984 between the government of Belisario Betancur (1982-1986) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main rebel group involved in Colombia's civil war.
It was to serve as the tool for the members of the FARC to lay down arms after 20 years of waging war against the state, and to be reinserted into civilian life and legal political activity.
The coalition, which included the rebels and the Communist Party, created alliances with regional movements of a range of ideological leanings.
The new coalition was successful in its first elections, in 1986, placing 14 representatives in Congress, including two FARC commanders. The UP also won 18 seats on 11 regional legislatures, and 335 seats on 187 city and town councils.
But the peace experiment was cut short by a campaign to eliminate the UP, through mass killings, extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances, which led the FARC to break the truce in late 1987. The guerrillas refused to demobilise and withdrew from the UP.
The leader of the UP, former judge Jaime Pardo Leal, was murdered in October 1987, and his successor as the party's presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo, met the same fate in March 1990.
By 1993 Reiniciar had documented 1,163 extrajudicial executions, 1,234 disappearances, 43 failed murder attempts, and 225 people receiving death threats.
Altogether, some 3,000 members of the UP have been killed.
(Constanza Vieira, "Colombian State, UP Survivors Seek 'Friendly Settlement," February 11, 2004,<http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=22372>) *****
But for US-backed state repression (last year, "U.S.-trained government forces captured rebel commanders, destroyed half the coca crop that bankrolls the guerrillas and retook most of the Switzerland-sized territory ceded to the rebels" <http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wolati253640520jan25,0,1256787.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines> under a 1998 peace plan), FARC might have become even more successful than it has been.
>Filipinos, sorry, don't know enough to answer.
I recommend that US leftists study comparative military and civilian casualties of anti-colonial and/or socialist revolts and revolutions since 1492. Then, they would have a reasonable framework of analysis and standard of comparison by which they could evaluate new revolts and revolutions that develop.
>>What will be John Kerry's policy toward them?
>Opposed, no doubt.
>>And Kerry's policy toward Iraqis?
>Which Iraqis?
>If you're trying to get me to say that Kerry would be an imperialist
>thug, I've already said that.
Shouldn't "critical" DP supporters like you and John define and hold onto some domestic and foreign policy demands, which you are going to make Kerry pledge to implement, rather than exhibiting contempt for Americans who are not going to vote for DP in 2004, which is to say, the majority of the voting-age population in the USA?
Doug wrote:
>I also liked this portion of John Lacny's post very much:
>
>>Finally, there's the attempt on the attempt on their apart to
>>engage in grade-school moralizing about how the Iraqi armed actors
>>are no less repugnant than John Kerry. Chiefly because Doug has
>>asked people to refrain from desist from discussing the elections,
>>I will not say much on this, save that it's further indication that
>>these people are too far out of touch with the problems of their
>>OWN people in THIS country -- something which is a prerequisite for
>>effective international solidarity, of the kind that takes people
>>as they are and does not romanticize struggle either here or
>>anywhere else. I should say that I have not encountered a single
>>organizer engaged in base work among the oppressed and exploited in
>>this country -- poor people's organizing and advocacy, union
>>organizing, what-have-you -- who denies the absolute necessity of
>>defeating the current regime. So my question to the people who DO
>>deny it is, isn't it possible that the people are the real heroes,
>>and that we "revolutionaries" are often foolish and ignorant?
>>Shouldn't we at least sometimes take the lead from them,
>>particularly when the sentiments they express are so overwhelming?
>>Are they perhaps trying to tell us something?
Are you and John supporting the Iraqi Communist Party or the Communist Party USA or both? :-> -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>