By Michael Karadjis

Following the Israeli bombing of Iran’s Syrian consulate in April, Iran responded with a drone and missile attack on Israel with 72 hours notice, to ensure Israel and its allies were in place to shoot them all down. This highly choreographed response aimed to show the regime was both able and willing to stand up to Israel, but also able to act responsibly to avoid escalation. Iran’s UN mission then announced: 

“Conducted on the strength of Article 51 of the UN Charter pertaining to legitimate defense, Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus; the matter can be deemed concluded.”

This was a clear message to the US and Israel that Iran has no interest in escalation. What was missed in most commentary was that it was also a clear message to Palestine: that despite decades of bluster about “destroying Israel,” in reality Iran acts to look after itself. Indeed, over the weekend that these theatrical fireworks were taking place, the death toll from Israel’s Gaza massacre increased by 160, but was barely news, while Zionist gangs launched one of their largest attacks on the West Bank for years.

For decades, discussion of Middle East politics has purported an ‘Axis of Resistance’ around Iran’s theocratic dictatorship. These Muslim or Arab states and movements allegedly were more ‘resistant’ to Israel and US imperialism than ‘non-resistant’ (or ‘accommodationist’) states. Who are members of this alleged ‘Axis’, what have they done in relation to the Gaza genocide, are they in fact more resistant, and if not, what is behind the rhetoric?

Contents

Introductory Section

• Who are alleged members of the ‘Axis of Resistance’?
• Test for the ‘Axis’: Israel’s Gaza genocide
• Does any coherent ‘Axis’ alliance exist at all?
• The other ‘resistant axis’? – Emerging united fronts for Palestine
• Thesis

Section 2: Who’s doing what?

• Syria’s Assad Regime: Continuity of decades of doing nothing
• Iran: Chasm between bluster and passivity bigger than ever
• ‘Resistance’: Iran uses wonky compass to attack Iraq, Syria and Pakistan!
• Iran-backed Iraqi militia: ‘Sideways’ tit-for-tat with US bases escalates; and ends
• Hezbollah: Limited, but significant, action on Israel-Lebanon border
• Yemen’s Houthis: Major front opens in the Red Sea

Section 3: Analysis: Motivations of action, inaction or bluster from ‘Resistance Axis’ members

• Syria: Analysis
• Iran: Analysis
• Iraqi Shiite militia in Iraq and Syria: Analysis
• Hezbollah & southern Lebanon: Analysis
• Yemen: Analysis

Conclusion

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Who are alleged members of the ‘Axis of Resistance’?     

The ‘Axis of Resistance’ usually refers to:

• the Shiite-theocratic dictatorship in Iran
• the Hezbollah militia based among southern Lebanon’s Shiite population
• Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias operating in Iraq and Syria
• the Zaydi-Shiite Houthis in Yemen

In a looser sense, the ‘Axis’ is sometimes said to also include:

• the Shiite-dominated Iraqi regime – the umbrella grouping of Iraqi Shiite militia, the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), is officially part of the Iraqi armed forces, reducing the ‘space’ between regime and militia; yet the regime remains a US-Iran joint-venture (itself a challenge to the existence of any real ‘camps’), an official out-of-area ‘NATO-partner’ 
• the Iran-backed, Alawi-led (but secular) Assad dictatorship in Syria, which however has a markedly non-‘resistant’ history, has slaughtered its own Palestinians, has strong relations with various ‘non-resistant’ Arab regimes, and the backing of Russia, which has strong relations with Israel and is anything but ‘resistant’ on Palestine
• more shakily the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, despite the mutual hostility between Hamas and the Assad regime; and despite the fact that Hamas is the only alleged ‘Axis’ member with a Sunni-Islamist identity, with strong ties to a different group of states (Turkey and Qatar) and the regional (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood (MB); Palestine being under occupation, Hamas is the only alleged ‘Axis’ member that actually “resists” Israel by definition (regardless of one’s views of Hamas and its actions).

Being capitalist regimes which suppress their working people as violently as do their ‘non-resistant’ neighbours, obvious questions arising are “why would they be more resistant to Zionism and US imperialism, or interested in the liberation of Palestine, or of anyone?;” “are they in fact more resistant, or is it just bluster?,” leading to, “then why the bluster?”

Test for the ‘Axis’: Israel’s Gaza genocide

These questions have always been entirely theoretical. Every Israeli war against the Palestinians since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, through all the Gaza massacre operations, has been confronted by a solid wall of Arab and Muslim regimes doing nothing, regardless of differences in rhetoric, or membership of whatever ‘resistance’ or ‘rejection’ front existed.

But even if we ignore this history, Israel’s openly declared, “textbook” case of genocide against the Palestinian people today, is an undeniable ‘test’ of the reality of an ‘Axis of Resistance’. 

So how has the ‘Resistance Axis’ reacted to the Gaza genocide? If we mean the kind of action required to help the Palestinians resist genocide, the answer is nothing. This is not meant as a demagogic critique: there are real restraints (for both ‘Axis’ and ‘non-Axis’) to doing anything major, real reasons why ‘escalation’ is not in anyone’s interests, especially if it brought the US into the war on Israel’s side. However, these dangers are not new, so the purpose of decades of ‘resistance’ bluster, now exposed as hollow, needs to be understood.

However, if we mean any action, then the record is mixed.

To summarise:

• the states not in the ‘Axis of Resistance’, eg Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Jordan etc, including the more ‘resistant’ non-Axis states Turkey and Qatar, have done nothing to aid the Palestinians.

Reactions of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ can be differentiated thus: 

• first, the repressive states Iran, Iraq and Syria have also done nothing, ie they have acted no differently to their ‘non-Axis’ neighbours and friends (indeed, the Assad regime reserves its attacks for the people in northwest Syria, the Golan ‘border’ quiet, while Iran has attacked targets in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan!) 

• secondly, the Iraqi Shiite militia intensified their low-level attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria, a tit-for-tat ‘sideways’ conflict already existing independently of Gaza with different causes; and this ended in early 2024 under Iranian pressure; 

• third, actual fronts, at a low yet significant level, have opened on the Israel-Lebanon border by Hezbollah and allies, and by Yemen’s Houthis in the Red Sea.

Any detailed discussion of what occurred on October 7 and the role of Hamas in it is outside the scope of this essay. But however one assesses that day, clearly a gruesome massacre of hundreds (itself a symptom of decades of Israeli massacre, occupation and dispossession of vastly greater numbers of Palestinians, a mass prison break in which the brutalised turned brutaliser), cannot justify an exponentially greater massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians, a full-scale genocide. Therefore, any concrete aid, no matter how ugly some of the forces supplying it may be, would be welcome. Neither the Hezbollah nor Houthi actions have had any impact on Israel’s ability to carry out genocide, indeed are largely of a nuisance value; nevertheless the symbolic solidarity is probably appreciated by many Palestinians in contrast with the moribund passivity of all states in the region, ‘resistant’ or otherwise. 

The failure of the ‘Axis’ to act in response to genocide raises the question of whether Hamas based its decision to launch the October 7 counter-offensive, provoking Israel into this new Nakbah, on the assumption that the ‘Axis’ would join it in real action against Israel. Hamas’ military commander Mohammed Deif’s October 7 call to “Our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, this is the day when your resistance unites with your people in Palestine,” suggests this. If so – and this remains unclear – such illusions were inconceivably misplaced and catastrophic for the Palestinian people.

Does any coherent ‘Axis’ alliance exist at all?

Before moving onto the main thesis explaining the ‘Axis’ mythology, a digression will be taken into the question of whether the ‘Axis’ exists as a coherent formation at all.

Iran’s Shiite fundamentalist theocracy is no more progressive than the Sunni fundamentalist theocracy partnering with the Saudi monarchy; they share, for example, top spots among the world’s leading executioners. And following decades of geopolitical-sectarian rivalry, the two recently restored diplomatic relations via Chinese mediation and have since maintained strong relations; both Iran and Saudi Arabia, alongside Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which both have relations with Israel, recently joined the BRICS alliance of imperial and sub-imperial regimes headed by Russia and China. Unclear what ‘blocs’ or ‘camps’ or ‘axes’ have to do with anything in this paragraph!

Likewise, Assad’s secular tyranny in Syria is fundamentally similar to (though vastly more repressive than) its fellow secular tyrants in Egypt and the UAE, which share not only strong friendship with the Syrian regime but also the same anti-Islamist, ‘anti-terrorist’ justification for repression; Egypt and the UAE have supplied military support or intelligence training to Assad’s regime. Yet ‘campist’ thinking would decide Syria is ‘Russia-camp’ and Egypt/UAE ‘US camp’, despite Russia’s very strong relations with both.

Syria’s Assad regime and Hamas have hated each other since Hamas supported the uprising against Assad in 2012. Hamas forces in Syria fought alongside the rebels, Hamas condemned Assad’s chemical attacks and it called Assad’s destruction of Aleppo ‘genocide’. The mutual contempt continues despite Iran pressuring them to restore relations in 2022; in August 2023, Assad accused Hamas of “treachery and hypocrisy”, falsely asserting that Hamas “waved the flag of the French occupation of Syria” (Assad meant the flag of the Syrian revolution, Syria’s independence flag). Assad’s alliance with Egypt’s al-Sisi and the UAE’s MBZ is partially built on common hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which includes Hamas and sections of the anti-Assad rebellion. The Egypt-UAE alliance with Israel has the same basis; the fact that the UAE and Bahrain restored relations with Israel and Assad in the same period further problematises ‘Axis’ mythology. Who is ‘allied’ to whom, in which ‘axis’? 

Just after October 7, Assad’s regime expelled the Houthis from Yemen’s embassy, restoring the internationally-recognised (Saudi-backed) Yemeni government, a blow to the Houthis as Syria had been the only government in the world – other than Iran – to recognise them as the Yemeni government. By contrast, Hamas in 2015 expressed support to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government against the Houthi coup, essentially supporting Saudi intervention; even the small more overtly Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rejected Iran’s diktat to support the Houthis. Later, PIJ capitulated, while Hamas position evolved into “non-interference in the internal affairs of countries.”

To further complicate ‘campist’ interpretations, Egypt – the most ‘non-resistant’ regional state given its decades-long relations with Israel – initially adopted a pro-Houthi line, the Houthis even receiving military supplies from Cairo; the Saudis temporarily cut off oil supplies to Egypt. This is despite the Saudi and UAE role in al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against Morsi’s MB Egyptian government – Egypt’s reasoning was precisely that Islah, the Yemeni MB, is a major part of the southern anti-Houthi resistance; Egypt sees the MB as a worse enemy than Iran-backed forces. As does the UAE; indeed, despite joining the Saudi war on the Houthis in 2015, just previously the UAE had aided the Houthi takeover of Sanaa; and despite being ‘on the same side’ as Islah after the intervention, UAE operatives carried out 160 assassinations in Yemen mostly against Islah cadre! 

All these friendships, rapprochements, conflicts and contradictions listed here not only demonstrate the futility on ‘campist’ thinking generally, but also call into question whether the alleged ‘Axis’ constitutes a coherent group in any sense.

The other ‘resistant axis’? – Emerging united fronts for Palestine

Moreover, Erdogan’s Sunni-Islamist regime in Turkey, where many Hamas leaders live, is as prolific as Iran’s in terms of rhetoric, Erdogan telling a gigantic state-organised march that Hamas is a “national liberation movement”, calling for a genocide trial for Netanyahu, claiming there is “no difference between Netanyahu and Hitler” (despite maintaining significant trade with Israel!). Its ally Qatar is where the Hamas headquarters are located. Are Turkey, Qatar and the regional MB another ‘resistance axis’?

Let’s summarise some of the role of components of this ‘other axis’:

• The population under the anti-Assad Syrian rebels in northwest Syria (which include MB-backed forces, though not only) have been constantly demonstrating in support of Gaza (much more than those under Assad’s decrepit regime);

• An MB-aligned Sunni militia in Lebanon (Jamaa al-Islamiya) has joined its Hezbollah opponents in south Lebanon in militarily confronting Israel;

• Jordan’s MB (Islamic Action Front Party) leads opposition mobilisations against Jordanian trucks trading with Israel and other forms of collaboration by the regime;

• The Yemeni MB (Islah), on the frontlines resisting the Houthi siege of Taiz, is energetically pro-Gaza.

These facts demonstrate the centrality of Palestine to Mideast politics; while also making further nonsense of “Resistance Axis” and campist mythology. They also highlight the fact that different levels of action or inaction by ‘Axis’ members are connected with specific local realities in each case, rather than Iran pulling strings.

Thesis

To explain the different levels of action, inaction or ‘sideways’ action within the ‘Axis’, a common theme, both in western imperialist/Zionist discourse, and pro-‘Axis’ discourse, is that Iran pulls the strings, pushing Hezbollah, the Houthis and others into action as ‘proxies’. The western/Zionist discourse casts Iran as a villain in order to delegitimise Palestinian resistance, placing a big evil state behind it; the pro-Axis discourse casts Iran as anti-imperialist liberator, rationalising its inaction by casting it as the backbone of others’ actions.

Here a different thesis will be offered.

1. Far from pulling strings, Iran’s main role since October has been attempting to hold back the more active ‘Axis’ components to prevent ‘escalation’.

• Each case of action (Lebanon, Yemen), inaction (Syria, Iran) or ‘sideways action’ (Iraqi militia) has been rooted in the concrete realities of each country, region and state/movement, rather than by membership of any ‘Axis’, still less due to being ‘proxies’ of Iran. For example, the back and forth relationship of Iraqi Shiite militia with the US military presence in Iraq; the existence of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon, and the still not fully demarcated Israel-Lebanon border, after decades of Israeli occupation; and the Houthi movement’s desperate need for legitimacy, being globally and regionally unrecognised.  

• While all other cases of brutal repression in the region – often carried out by these allegedly ‘resistant’ forces – are of equal moral importance to Palestine, the Palestinian question maintains a certain centrality, due to the longevity of the crime against Palestine, but also because Israel, a western-established colonial-settler First World economy, is a continuation of direct colonialism in the region.

• The connection between points 2 and 3: even enemies of ‘Axis of Resistance’ have joined the front in support of Palestine in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan etc; and their relationship to Palestine and Palestinians has been a factor in cases of both action and inaction of ‘Axis’ members, in combination with other local realities, in each case.

• One might say: OK, but though Iran is (sensibly) restrained itself, it arms forces like Hezbollah and the Houthis who have taken some action. However, Iran, like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey etc, is a sub-imperialist power trying to cut out its ‘sphere of influence’ in the region; therefore it has supported and armed movements or states to build its sphere, regardless of their actions in relation to the US, Israel or Palestine. For example, the Assad regime and Iraqi Shiite forces have slaughtered Palestinians; the Yemen conflict where Iran armed the Houthis was unrelated to Palestine until now; Iran now arms Sudan which has recognised Israel as part of the Abraham Accords; Iran has a close relationship with Oman, a country that Netanyahu can openly visit; Iran itself invaded Iraq for six years while Israel was arming Iran! The only case that gave Iran some ‘resistance’ credentials was arming Hezbollah, which however was simply resisting actual Israeli occupation southern Lebanon, where Shiites happen to predominate.

• What then is the purpose of the rhetoric? First, playing harder ‘anti-Zionist’ has helped Persian, Shiite Iran ideologically compete with its sub-imperial rivals in the largely Sunni Arab world; geographic distance has kept harsh rhetoric ‘safe’.

• But just as importantly, ‘anti-imperialist’ bluster plays a homogenising role as the capitalist classes in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon mobilise certain plebeian elements to crush any genuine popular, democratic or anti-sectarian uprisings (ie, disembowelled ‘anti-imperialism’ plays a similar role to ‘socialism’ in Nazi ‘national socialism’). The decisive role played by the Iran-backed Shiite militia in crushing Iraq’s ant-sectarian uprising of 2019; of Hezbollah in crushing Lebanon’s similar anti-sectarian movement that year; of Iraqi militia, Hezbollah, Iranian ‘revolutionary’ guard and even Afghan Shiite sectarian forces in crushing Syria’s glorious uprising; of the Houthis in plunging the Yemeni Spring into civil war and Saudi intervention; alongside Iran’s crushing of its own ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement; have all made the region safer for Israel’s own racist, sectarian project; the victory of democratic, non-sectarian forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran etc would be a far worse threat to Israel than harsh but hollow words from ugly regimes, which only facilitate Zionist siege ideology. Not surprisingly, Israel has always preferred Arab dictators to democracy in the region.  

• The existence of Israel in its current apartheid form is itself a factor in the continued existence of the region’s dictatorial regimes; their mutual existence if symbiotic. Not coincidentally, the Middle East contains the largest number of dictatorships since the Cold War ended, when most African, Asian and Latin American capitalist dictatorships transitioned to imperfect parliamentary systems. A victory for a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democracy in Palestine, the PLO program, would be anathema to the region’s dictatorships; Israel’s horrific oppression of the Arab and mostly Muslim people of Palestine provides a foreign ‘enemy’ that is useful for the region’s dictators to rationalise their repressive rule.

The essay will be divided into two sections. First, we will review what the components of the ‘Axis’ have or have not done in relation to Gaza. Following this there will be an extended analysis of each specific region/Axis component attempting to explain their actions, inaction, sideways action or rhetoric.

Section 2: Who’s doing what?

Syria’s Assad Regime: Continuity of decades of doing nothing

We might begin our review of action and inaction with Syria’s Assad regime, the most misplaced member of the ‘Axis of Resistance’.

In the first days after Israel launched its war on Gaza, “a number of mortars were launched toward northern Israel from Syria, falling in an open area” (“northern Israel” here refers to Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan region). Israel retaliated with artillery strikes. According to the Washington Post, such attacks “are widely viewed as symbolic, rarely cause damage,” and “mostly fall in open fields.” This and similar incidents later in October were attributed either to a Palestinian faction, or to Hezbollah or Iranian-backed forces, not regime forces.

Following these first rumblings, the Golan demarcation line “remains conspicuously calm compared to the Israel-Lebanon front,” according to Syria-watcher Arun Lund. The Syrian regime, according to the Lebanese al-Modon, instructed its forces in the Golan “not to engage in any hostilities, including firing bullets or shells toward Israel.” Following this, Orient Net noted “a concerted effort”  by Iranian militias, Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions “to reduce their military presence in … the southern Syrian regions”, transferring personnel and equipment to “other fronts in the eastern region and the Badia”

In late October, the London-based Al-Quds al-Araby claimed the regime “conveyed its commitment not to expand the ongoing conflict in Gaza beyond its borders” to Russia, Iran, the UAE, Egypt and Hezbollah. Assad’s security advisor Ali Mamlouk “communicated the necessity of halting attacks” to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. On November 8, pro-opposition Syria TV reported the regime had arrested three Palestinians in Yalda, south of Damascus, for organising a protest in solidarity with Gaza by some 100 Palestinians.

In early November Russian patrols returned to the Golan. Russian troops had arrived there to enforce Assad’s victory over the southern rebels and protect Israeli occupation in 2018, a deal involving Trump, Putin, Netanyahu and Assad, whereby both Syrian rebels and Iranian-backed factions would be distanced. They had recently left due to demands of the Ukraine war; the Syrian opposition site Enab Baladi notes “Russia’s abandonment of its positions in the region left a security vacuum that Iran later exploited.” Their return aims to reinvigorate the deal and keep pro-Iranian forces away, pushed by the UAE which has close relations with Israel and Assad. According to Syria TV, “Russia perceives the regional escalation as an opportunity to reclaim its role as a guarantor of Israel’s security,” partly to maintain Israel’s neutrality on Ukraine, where it has refused to follow US pressure to arm Ukraine.

According to Syrian analyst Ibrahim Hamidi, “the Syrian regime did not publicly endorse Hamas … did not host any public meetings with representatives from the movement. Damascus has ensured that regime-held areas have remained neutral in the escalating conflict between Iran-backed Iraqi militia and US forces in Syria … there haven’t been huge demonstrations in support of Palestine and Gaza in Damascus or other government-controlled areas, in stark contrast to other Arab capitals.” This also contrasts with widespread demonstrations in support of Gaza throughout opposition-held parts of Syria, where Netanyahu’s terror in Gaza is identified with Assad’s similar destruction of Syria. Assad’s thinly veiled “resistance” rhetoric has been used as cover to step up the slaughter of opposition-controlled Idlib in the northwest, even as Idlib demonstrates for Gaza, a stunning example of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ lacking a compass. The later section of this essay will provide an analysis of the Syrian position.

Iran: Chasm between bluster and passivity bigger than ever

Now let’s look at Iran, which, like Syria, is a state which has done nothing, but as the alleged centre of the ‘Axis’, may have gained some credibility for the actions of alleged junior members in Lebanon and Yemen.

From the start, Iran has denied prior knowledge of Hamas’ October 7 action; in his first speech, Khamenei “denied Iran’s involvement three times within 90 seconds.” Both the US and Israel claim to have no knowledge of any Iranian role, US intelligence assessing that Iran was “caught by surprise.”

The International Crisis Group assesses, “neither side, the U.S. and Israel, on one hand, and Iran and the groups it supports, on the other, appears to want a major regional escalation.” Analyst Samuel Ramani cites former foreign ministry official, Qasem Mohebali, claiming escalation would “endanger the security and national interests of Iran.”

Despite Iranian leaders initially promising to back Palestinian resistance “until the liberation of Palestine and Al-Quds,” Ramani claims “the chasm between Iran’s bellicose rhetoric and relatively restrained actions,” which mirrors its past responses, “is even sharper in the current Gaza war.” In October, deputy head of the IRGC, Ali Fadavi, laughably claimed Iran would launch a missile at Haifa “without hesitation,” even fantasising that “the resistance front’s shocks against the Zionist regime will continue until this ‘cancerous tumor’ is eradicated from the world map.” Iran initially warned that an Israeli ground invasion would be a red line for ‘Axis’ responses; Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf claimed this would “open that gates of hell.” The ground invasion started late October, with no changes whatsoever from Iran or the ‘Axis’. On October 15, Iran’s UN mission more coolly admitted Iranian armed forces wouldn’t intervene unless Israel attacked Iranian interests or citizens.

[Israeli regime circles do now appear to be pushing for escalation; they believe provoking Iran into a military response might draw the US in against Iran. This is not because Israel fears Iran – the laughable Iran bogey merely homogenising propaganda for the Zionist regime – but because a region-wide conflagration would provide cover for Israel to complete its genocidal aims in Gaza and the West Bank. More cautious Israeli circles are on the same page as the US and Iran on this question, but some extremely provocative Israeli actions – eg the April attack on Iran’s consulate in Syria – indicate the option remains on the table.]

Iran has sought to use the October 7 atrocities and Hamas’ lack of warning to justify inaction in the face of genocide following decades of “destroy Israel” bluster. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian implicitly criticised Hamas, stating “Iran has never approved the killing of civilians” despite “our political support” for Palestinian liberation. A manifesto by Iranian religious scholars in October condemned killing of civilians by both Hamas and Israel. In November, Iranian leader Ali Khameini told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh that, since Hamas “gave us no warning, we will not enter the war on your behalf,” allegedly demanding Haniyeh silence Palestinian voices calling on Iran or Hezbollah to join the battle.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with Iran dissociating itself from atrocities against civilians (despite the stunning hypocrisy coming from the girl-killing and Assad-aiding mullahs), or from denying any role in October 7, which is undoubtedly true – just that these are mere excuses for inaction. But nor should we demagogically critique Iran’s lack of ‘escalatory’ action, which would be dangerous; but since such danger has always existed, the fact that Iran acts no differently to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria etc in the face of genocide demonstrates that decades of ‘resistance’ discourse was only ever homogenising bluster.

Moreover, it is not merely inaction: Iran has continually tried to restrain its more active allies. For example, in October, a commander of the Iraqi Shiite militia front, the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), claimed Iran does not want any armed factions involved in anti-Israel action as “the damage resulting … would be far greater than its benefit.” Following a series of suspiciously precise Israeli strikes killing a dozen leading Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria in December and January, Iran’s response was to pull back the Guards from Syria to avoid getting pulled into the conflict.

Following its January attack killing 3 US troops in Jordan, the pro-Iran Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah declared it would cease targeting US forces, noting pressure from both the Iraqi regime, and from Iran, “and wasn’t happy about it.” KH stated that Iran “often objects to the pressure and escalation” against US forces in Iraq and Syria. Iran had sent direct messages to KH to desist; the (likely accidental) killing of US troops was a line too far – the tit-for-tat attacks were supposed to be theatre. When the US responded by launching 85 strikes against Iraqi militia or Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities and command centres in early February (“without aiming to decapitate the force’s leadership” by “telegraphing of the hit” in advance), Iran described this as a “strategic mistake” which will “increase tensions” in the region, “a threat to regional and international peace and security” which doesn’t address “the roots of the tension.” Not much room for “death to America” here!

Iranian pressure worked; there have been no further attacks by Iran-backed Iraqi militia on US forces since early February.

Reports likewise suggest that Iran has counselled restraint on Hezbollah. According to the Washington Post, one Hezbollah member summarised Tehran’s message as “we are not keen on giving … Netanyahu any reason to launch a wider war on Lebanon or anywhere else.” When the idea arose in January that the Hezbollah-Israel confrontations might lead to border demarcation talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian responded that “it is a domestic thing for Lebanese. We are not going to have any kind of interference.” There is also evidence that Iran is apprehensive about the scope of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, in particular given its impacts on two key allies and trading partners, India and China, not to mention the fact that Houthi strikes even hit a ship bringing food to Iran.

Just pragmatism? Fine, but Iran and its allies had no such qualms for a decade slaughtering Syrian civilians for Assad’s genocide-regime. The contrast with its total inaction regarding its “great enemy” Israel during the current genocide is stunning. Meanwhile, we get an idea of these uses of “resistance” bluster as the Iranian regime used the cover of Gaza to execute 176 prisoners in just the two months following October 7. Moreover, Iran has shown that it can be very non-pragmatic regarding attacking virtually any country other than Israel.

“Resistance”: Iran uses wonky compass to attack Iraq, Syria and Pakistan!

Somewhat comically, Iran’s statement on the January US attacks on Iraqi militia called them a “violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria,” despite having just launched attacks on three of its neighbours, none with any relation to Israel or Gaza.

On January 15-16, Iran attacked sites in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. In Syria, it claimed it hit ‘ISIS’ in Idlib, in response to the ISIS terrorist attack killing 100 Iranians on January 3; in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, it claimed it hit a ‘Mossad base’; and in Pakistan a site controlled by a Baloch militant organisation, Jaish al-Adl, which has carried out attacks in Iran’s oppressed Baloch region.

The reality was all quite different. The Syria attack – the first time Iran had attacked Syria with long-range missiles from its own territory – had nothing to do with ‘ISIS’. According to Enab Baladi, the Iranian missiles “fell in the village of Taltita in the northern countryside of Idlib, resulting in the destruction of a building formerly used as a medical point.” Here is a video of the site. According to the White Helmets, the building had been out of service for some time, and the attack only caused minor injuries to two civilians. The last militia in control of the area was the Turkistan Islamic Party (which had long abandoned it), which has nothing to do with ISIS; there has been no ISIS in opposition-controlled Idlib since the Syrian rebels drove ISIS out of Idlib, and all of western Syria, in early 2014 (during which time the Assad regime bombed the rebels, not ISIS). Naturally the Assad regime did not object to Iran’s attack, but regime air defences were triggered, indicating Iran did not even inform it.

The attack on Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, was on the personal property of Iraqi Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee, not a ‘Mossad base’. The strike killed Dizayee, his baby daughter, a visitor, and a housekeeper. Both Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdish authority rejected the assertion a Mossad base was there. The Iraqi regime – dominated by pro-Iran Shiite parties – condemned the attack, withdrew its ambassador from Iran, and filed a complaint with the UN Security Council. The Arab League also condemned the attack, supporting Iraq’s “legitimate right to affirm respect for its security and sovereignty.”

The attack on Pakistan may have hit Jaish al-Adl; Pakistan claims it killed two children, injured three others, and struck a mosque; Pakistan responded with a mirror-image attack on Iran targeting another Baloch militant organisation, the Baloch Liberation Army, which operates inside Pakistan’s oppressed Baloch region! Iran claimed the Pakistani strike also killed civilians. Iranian and Pakistani leaders then kissed and made up, stressed “brotherly relations,” and promised to better coordinate with each other to keep the oppressed Baloch people under their jackboot.

The point here is that, like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, Iran is a sub-imperial capitalist power trying to cut out its own area of regional dominance, prepared to use violence against its neighbours, while protesting when they or their allies cop the same, just not much interested in using violence against the Zionist regime. Decades of ‘anti-Zionist’ bluster however can be useful in justifying attacks on its weaker neighbours.

Iran-backed Iraqi militia: ‘Sideways’ tit-for-tat with US bases escalates; and ends

The array of Iranian-backed Iraqi-Shiite armed militia, operating in Iraq and Syria, mostly arose following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (though some descended from long-term Iranian-backed groups opposing to Saddam Hussein); initially many were in league with the US-installed occupation authorities.

These militia later fought a brutal sectarian war against the Iraqi Sunni population, which was part responsible for the rise of ISIS from al-Qaida in Iraq, which also carried out numerous crimes against the Shiite population. When US troops returned to fight ISIS in mid-2014, they were once again allied with these Iran-backed militia. Meanwhile, as thousands of Iraqi Shiite militia poured into Syria to support to Assad’s dictatorship, the US began bombing ISIS there too in 2014, but in Syria the main US ally was the Kurdish-led, leftist Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). But once ISIS was defeated, the US-Iran arrangement turned into rivalry, leading to low-level attacks and counter-attacks between US forces and Iraqi Shiite militia in Iraq and eastern Syria.

The Iraqi militia justified the significant upturn in the number of attacks on US bases in late 2023 as punishment for US support to Israel’s Gaza genocide, but the tit-for-tat game already existing was unelated to Palestine previously. This helps explain why, until the probably mistaken killing of 3 US troops in Jordan in early February, these strikes and counterstrikes had remained non-lethal and well-calibrated on both sides, the US responding “with relative restraint, launching a handful of punitive airstrikes, without apparent effect.”

Interviews with various militia leaders by al-Monitor in late October revealed “anger with Hamas over starting a unilateral conflict” – similar to the annoyance expressed by Iranian leaders. At this stage, these forces were “split in the decision to target US military bases,” only three factions joining an operations room set up by the powerful Kataib Hezbollah. According to one commander, “Hamas sought to drag all factions of the resistance axis into the battle and embarrass them, but all are aware of this and they are not ready for this.” Claiming an Israeli ground invasion would be a red line (which made little difference when it came), he said that even then “we will be at the command of Hezbollah, not Hamas.” 

Kata’ib Hizbullah’s immediate announcement following the killing of three US troops – before US retaliation – that it was pausing its attacks on US forces further suggests this was unintended; yes, it was pressured by Iran and Iraq, but the particular action also crossed a line aimed at avoiding escalation. The major US reaction, attacking 86 Iraqi militia command control centres in Iraq and Syria, was considered inevitable. Factions such as Harakat al-Nujaba, which had rejected Kataib Hezbollah’s pause before the US retaliation, responded by joining the ceasefire.

Since then, all attacks have ceased; this alleged “front” is no longer. The fact that the only attack on a US base following US retaliation killed six Kurdish SDF fighters rather than US troops, further highlights that this “resistance” has little to do with Gaza, as will be discussed in the analysis section.

Hezbollah: Limited, but significant, action on Israel-Lebanon border

“Hezbollah too, was taken by surprise by Hamas’ devastating assault … its fighters were not even on alert in villages near the border … and had to be rapidly called up.” As one Hezbollah commander stated, “we woke up to a war.”

Nevertheless, unlike the Syrian and Iranian dictatorships, or the Iraqi militia’s ‘sideways’ battle, Hezbollah did begin small-scale attacks across the Israeli border from October 8, Israel initially responding at a similar level. Hezbollah “has calibrated its attacks in a way that has kept the violence largely contained to a narrow strip of territory at the border.” Andrea Tenenti, from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), said both Israel and Hezbollah “unfailingly accepted messages passed through UNIFIL in procedures designed to deescalate potentially dangerous misunderstandings.”

However, although the US has tried to persuade Israel to avoid escalation on its northern border, Israel’s responses became far bloodier: by March 2024, some 20 Israeli troops and civilians had been killed, compared to 240 Hezbollah cadre and 40 Lebanese civilians, while Israel has also devastated much agricultural land and displaced 90,000 Lebanese.

Like Iran and Iraqi militia, Hezbollah’s initial red line for more serious action was an Israeli ground invasion; yet even before that came and went, Hezbollah had swapped this to Hamas being “on its last legs.” This gave Hezbollah lots of wiggle room; a former Israeli general assessed that Israel’s alleged aim of “destroying Hamas” could take 6-8 months, and given Israel’s real aim is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, most analysts believing “destroying Hamas” to be meaningless, this could mean forever. Randa Slim at the Middle East Institute claims “as long as Hezbollah assesses that Hamas will be able to survive Israel’s onslaught,” it will avoid opening a serious front, but “it’s not clear if this Israeli objective is achievable.”

Despite the limits of conflict, it has forced Israel to keep some of its armed forces on the northern border (though it’s unlikely some troops wouldn’t have always remained there), and Israeli civilians have had to be temporarily relocated (to hotels with swimming pools).

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s October 16 statement thanking Hezbollah but noting “the battle requires more” indicated frustration that Hamas’ October 7 call for “resistance” on all Israel’s borders was being ignored. According to some sources “Hamas wanted Hezbollah to strike deeper into Israel with its massive arsenal of rockets.”  

One early enigma was the absence of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Expectations were high when he finally spoke on November 3, which however merely produced a series of platitudes and “80 minutes of excuses.” Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, boasted that “no one has come to [Hamas’s] aid – neither the Iranians nor Hizbullah.”

Nasrallah also noted that Hamas had kept its October 7 attack a secret; more diplomatic than Iran or Iraqi factions, Nasrallah claimed this had ensured its success, but the statement nevertheless served the same purpose, an excuse for not using its rockets to aid Gaza.  

Hezbollah’s January attack on Israeli army headquarters in Safed in northern Israel was specific, in response to Israel’s targeted assassination first of Hamas deputy Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, and then of Hezbollah commander Wissam Tawil a few days later. Israel’s targeted assassinations of Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders, many inside Syria, appear aimed either at provoking a harsh response to create escalation, or simply demonstrating the emptiness of their rhetoric.

Following this brief flare-up, things returned to normal – except for another Nasrallah speech implying an Israel-Lebanon border deal may be in the offing, indicating other possible Hezbollah objectives, as will be discussed in the analysis section below.

Yemen’s Houthis: Major front opens in the Red Sea

Hezbollah’s significant but restrained activity was unexpectedly overshadowed by the Houthi quasi-authorities in north Yemen, who on December 9 announced they would target commercial ships in the Red Sea bound for Israel with drone and missile strikes (though ships not connected to Israel have also been hit). As of March, some 50 ships had been attacked.

As 10 percent of world trade passes through the Suez Canal, these attacks were highly significant. Israeli shipping costs increased by 250 percent, some insurers refusing to insure their vessels; revenues of Israel’s Eilat port were cut by 85 percent. Actually, Eilat only handles some 10 percent of Israel’s foreign trade, but imports of Chinese manufactured cars, accounting for 70 percent of Israel’s EV sales, go through Eilat.

This last point makes it ironic that the Houthis announced that Russian and Chinese ships would be spared, despite their strong trade relations with Israel. Russian trade with Israel does not go through the Red Sea, so this is not an issue. Russian ships use the Red Sea to trade with Asia, and reportedly shield ships of their ally India, despite India’s strong relations with Israel. China is much more affected; until January 7 Chinese ships were still going to Eilat, but then suspended trade through the Sea; major Chinese shipping lines such as COSCO are instead sending their ships around Africa to Europe, like countless other countries. Both Russia and China have called for an end to attacks on shipping, China also calling on Iran to pressure the Houthis to stop.

Trade through the Red Sea is down 40 percent, hence the biggest impact is not on Israel directly but on the profits of global shipping, oil and other companies. The route around Africa to Europe is adding 10,000 miles onto trips, to avoid not only attack but also galloping insurance costs. Following BP’s mid-December decision to re-route around Africa, four of the five biggest shipping companies followed suit, representing 53 percent of global container trade. Here is a list of companies avoiding the Red Sea. This is also causing hold-ups in supply chains, European car companies suspending production due to shortages of parts.

While none of this is having any impact on Israel’s genocidal resolve, their significance can hardly be doubted, especially in the face of a region otherwise doing nothing.

The US, UK and several other countries assembled a fleet to protect ships from these attacks; notably, many European countries did not take part (not even Germany), nor did any Gulf states except Bahrain. The US and UK launched dozens of attacks on Houthi bases in January, and many more since, but the Houthis have continued to strike vessels, expanding their targets to US and British vessels as a result. The Houthis say they will stop their attacks when Israel ends its genocidal campaign.

Section 3: Analysis: Motivations of action, inaction or bluster from ‘Resistance Axis’ members

The following sections will provide some analysis of these differing levels of action or inaction among purported members of the ‘Resistance Axis’. Too often, this alleged ‘Axis’ is treated by mainstream and campist-left media as inherently more ‘resistant’ to Israel and US interests. Iran is either the “head of the snake” according to neocon US and Israeli analysts – motivated by the need for a large ‘enemy’ state to justify imperial warmongering – or the head of “resistance” according to left campists. These discourses treat the lesser forces as Iranian proxies; therefore, even if Iran does nothing, the actions of Hezbollah or the Houthis are Iran-directed, meaning that Iran is engaged in ‘resistance’ to Israel’s genocidal war via its various tentacles. A different analysis will be offered below, based on the motivations of different forces in relation to their specific contexts in each case.

Syria: Analysis

This analysis will again begin with the least likely ‘Axis’ member, Assad’s Syrian Baathist dictatorship. When Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, seized power in 1970, deposing a more left-wing version of the bourgeois-nationalist Baath Party, he immediately pulled back Syrian support from the Palestinian resistance in Jordan, giving them up to King Hussein’s Black September slaughter. The regime then joined Jordan and Egypt recognising UN Resolution 242, which rightly demanded Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 – West Bank, Gaza, the Syrian Golan and the Egyptian Sinai, but treated Palestinians as a mere refugee problem, with no reference to self-determination, and was therefore rejected by the Fatah leadership of the PLO (and by the previous Syrian leadership and a ‘rejection front’ of ‘radical’ Arab states). Assad’s Syria began as a member of the ‘accommodationist’ Arab front, not the alleged ‘resistant’ wing.

Of course, the ‘accommodationist’ Arab regimes wanted their own territory back, even attempting reconquest of their occupied territories in 1973. Israel defeated them, so they then focused on trying to recover their territory diplomatically. Henry Kissinger played a major role in encouraging Assad in this, with the unilateral Israel-Syria disengagement agreement of May 1974. By invading Lebanon in 1976 in support of the Phalangist rightwing in the Lebanese civil war, against the Palestinian-Muslim-leftist coalition, the Assad regime – backed by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel – aimed to show its usefulness to regional counterrevolution. The Syrian regime’s role in the huge massacre of Palestinians at Tel al-Zataar demonstrated its total lack of any pro-Palestinian character.

In 1979 Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, while Egypt recognised Israel and abandoned Palestine at the Camp David Accords; but having secured its southern border, Israel felt no pressure to do the same deal with Syria over the Golan; on the contrary, after these services rendered by Assad, Israel formally annexed the Golan in 1981, forcing the Syrian regime into an unfamiliar ‘resistance’ persona.

To understand the actions of the Assad dynasty (father and son), this inherent contradiction has always existed: on one hand, rightly wanting to regain its occupied territory, therefore lending its name to various ‘resistance’ blocs and allying with Iran’s mullahs; on the other, continually showing Israel and the West that it meant business and would happily betray the Earth for a Sadat moment if the Golan were returned.

The 1980s saw continual Syrian aggression against the PLO and Palestinians in Lebanon, as in its joint siege (along with Israel) of the PLO in Tripoli in 1983, and its decisive backing of the Lebanese Shiite ‘Amal’ militia which launched its year-long war in 1985-86 against the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut; followed by Syria’s participation in the US war against Iraq in 1991, in exchange for US-backed Saudi partnership in co-running Lebanon (the Taif agreement); Assad’s participation in the US “war on terror” torture “renditions” of Islamist suspects in the 2000s; and negotiations with the US and Israel over the Golan in 1999-2000 and 2009-2011. Only Israeli intransigence has kept the vile regime posing as ‘resistant’.

Following the onset of the Syrian uprising against Assad since 2011, Israel continually stated its preference for Assad to prevail against his opponents; Israeli leaders expressed appreciation of the Assad dynasty maintaining quiet on the Golan for 40 years; the Syrian opposition (which is also dedicated to recovering the Golan) never asked for Israeli support and Israel never offered it; and in 2018, Israel actively facilitated Assad’s reconquest of the south, alongside Trump and in coordination with Putin. Israel later stepped up attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah forces, which had helped rescue Assad, after Assad had reconquered much of the country, making their aid less essential, but Israel welcomed the onset of Russian terror bombing to save the regime, hoping for a Russian-dominated rather than Iranian-dominated regime. Putin and Netanyahu then met more than any other two leaders over the next half-decade, Russian-controlled air defences in Syria allowing these Israeli attacks.

When the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain restored relations with the Assad regime and Israel concurrently (while Israel’s Egyptian ally had already turned pro-Assad following al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against the post-April Spring MB government), the question arose of Syria joining its allies in recognising Israel. Assad’s response noted only the Golan, avoiding mention of ‘resistance’ or Palestine: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, it is possible when Israel is ready, but it is not and it was never ready …  Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.”

This history and limited motivation explains the regime’s stance now. But is there any possibility of Assad’s passivity being rewarded? Syrian journalist Ibrahim Hamidi asks whether Assad is about to have his ‘Sadat moment’, not referring to Camp David, but to Sadat’s 1972 expulsion of Soviet troops to pave the way for his American alliance. In this case, Hamidi is referring to the Iranian forces in Syria. 

Hamidi’s speculation draws from the strong relations Syria has with various Arab states (Egypt, UAE etc) which expanded to Saudi Arabia in 2023, followed by Assad’s invitation to the Arab League conference in April, the implication being these states could replace Iran in Syrian regime ‘security’. These states are also close to Russia, Assad’s main patron. The idea involves “al-Assad preventing Tehran from using Damascus Airport for the transport of Iranian arms and dismantling Iranian military depots situated alongside the facility. In exchange, Israel would stop targeting the airport.”

Hamidi notes that “relations between the Syrian and Iranian militaries have been strained after Israel’s targeted assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders in Damascus,” including five guards on January 20. “Iranian “experts” and former officials [claim] that these assassinations could only have succeeded if Israel had infiltrated Syria’s security apparatus.” A February 1 Reuters report claims Guard leaders “had raised concerns with Syrian authorities that information leaks from within the Syrian security forces played a part in the recent lethal strikes,” suggesting an “intelligence breach.” Som alleged the breach came from Assad’s top security chief and liaison with regional Arab states, Ali Mamlouk.

However, a ‘Sadat moment’ is unlikely at present. Firstly, this would require Israel to return the Golan, but in its current triumphalist state, it does not feel pressured into returning anything, the “gift” of Assad’s passivity notwithstanding. Second, even if it were offered, the context of Israel’s Gaza genocide would not be conducive to anyone dealing with Israel at present. As such, the regime maintains its contradictory stance: keeping Iran and its allies as an implied pressure on Israel regarding its occupied territory, while ensuring they do nothing near the Golan, while strengthening its Saudi-UAE-Egyptian and Russian ties to balance Iran.

And the more support from regional reaction of all stripes the better, as reconquest of Syria’s northwest and northeast from anti-Assad forces is far more Assad’s immediate aim than the Golan. Therefore, the regime’s major ‘response’ to Gaza has been to use it as cover to turn its guns the opposite direction and intensify the ongoing massacre in the rebel-held northwest.

Iran: Analysis

What then of Iran: like Syria, its response has been to do nothing, while attempting to hold back its allies to avoid ‘escalation’. Nevertheless, even its cultivation of these forces, and its louder “anti-Zionist” rhetoric than neighbouring reactionary regimes, deserves some analysis.

In the 1979 Iranian revolution the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah was overthrown and the mullahs, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, elevated to power. Popular hatred of the US for backing the Shah’s tyranny was overwhelming; and reflecting the popular rejection of the Shah’s pro-Israel policy, the new regime handed Israel’s embassy to the PLO.

One interpretation of Iranian policy is that anti-American and anti-Zionist mass wave still impacts the reactionary regime, that “the revolution still lives” at base, keeping the ruling class in line. However, such a time has long ago passed; if anything, today the situation is reversed, popular rejection of the regime often leading to mistaken pro-Israeli views among sections of the population; state-sponsored demonstrations in support of Gaza have been modest in size (unlike the enormous gatherings of the 1980s); in one incident, Iranian football fans booed during a minute’s silence for Gaza. While Palestine may have corresponded to the feelings of the revolutionary masses, who remained in a mobilizational state for several years after 1979, the Islamist regime crushed the revolutionary masses in rivers of blood in the 1980s, so a different explanation is needed. This explanation is two-fold.

First, while the symbolism of Palestine was associated with revolution it was also used by clerical counterrevolution. Smashing the Iranian workers, women, leftists, liberals, Kurds and other oppressed nations required the mullahs using the mobilised ‘Islamist’ petty-bourgeoisie as a fascist-like weapon against the revolutionary masses; as with European fascism, to mobilise plebeian layers to do their dirty work of the bourgeoisie requires some populist ideological ‘glue’, with symbolic concessions to the masses. The ‘socialist’ element in ‘National-Socialism’ (Naziism) was entirely bogus, but by identifying ‘the Jews’ with rich capitalists stealing from ‘good German workers’ the Nazis shielded big German capital (overwhelmingly non-Jewish) while giving confused, disoriented German petty-bourgeoisie, battered by the Great Depression, the illusion they were fighting the rich and powerful while slaughtering workers and the left in street battles. For Khomeiniism, ‘anti-imperialism’ (the US as ‘Great Satan’) and the harmless quest for distant Jerusalem replace the Nazis’ ‘socialism’ as this populist glue.

The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 demonstrated how meaningless this was. Saddam Hussein’s Baathist tyranny (another anti-Israel ‘resistant’ regime) started this war by invading Iran, but from 1982 to 1988 the war became an attempted Iranian invasion of Iraq, Hussein suing for peace on the border in mid-1982. The mullahs’ six-year war, aimed at seizing the Iraqi port Basra, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranian and Iraqi workers, was pushed as a war against the US ‘Great Satan’ to ‘liberate Jerusalem’. Yet Israel was so unconcerned that it provided arms to Iran throughout the war – arms sent in trucks across Assad’s Syria and NATO-member Turkey – and openly advocated Iranian victory; the US armed both sides (US arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra Affair facilitated by Israel), wishing, according to Kissinger, for both sides to “lose.” Although the ability to mobilise vast reactionary forces has diminished, to maintain even the core of this ‘mobilised’ support still requires the bluster.    

Secondly, the virulent ‘destroy Israel’ rhetoric also became useful to the new strategy of Iran – a sub-imperial capitalism emerging from its shell – competing with regional sub-imperial rivals like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The Shah regime’s point of distinction with right-wing Arab regimes was its alliance with Israel, which made it the key ally of US imperialism. But while arms and money flowed as a result, this put it at odds with the Arab world, and the potential economic inroads in the region; the new Iranian regime reversed this by becoming rhetorically “the most” anti-Israel, competing with powerful Arab regimes for regional hegemony by trying to expose their timidity (a somewhat similar process began two decades later in Turkey with Erdogan and the ‘pro-Palestinian’ AKP). Meanwhile, the fiery rhetoric could remain safe and untested due to Iran’s geographic distance from Israel.

Iran’s need for some special quality is further heightened because the dominant nation in Iran is Persian, rather than Arab, and are mostly Shiite Muslim, while the vast majority in the Arab world are Sunni. While this cannot explain everything, capitalist ruling classes base their rule on the ‘nation’ (or religious community), for ideological and economic cohesion. It was not difficult for Iran to exploit sectarian Shiite identity in the Arab world, especially given the oppression Iraq’s Shiite majority faced under Hussein and the marginalisation of the Shiite plurality in Lebanon’s sectarian system, for example. But such a limited base of support within the vast Arab world would not satisfy Iran’s expansionist capitalism; expressing a vocally radical ‘support’ for the largely Sunni Palestinians, to rhetorically outdo Sunni-majority Arab regimes, was one ‘way in’.

Israel’s virulent anti-Iranian stance can be explained in similar terms. The fact that it armed Iran while ‘revolutionary’ firebrand Khomeini was in power yet has upped ‘Iranian threat’ rhetoric as more pragmatic Iranian leaders arose since the 1990s, suggests Israel does not actually feel ‘threatened’ by Iranian bluster. Rather, the Zionist project, based on the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people, finds the presence of a powerful ‘enemy’ state, a ‘Fourth Reich’, an ‘existential threat’, a useful tool for ideological homogenisation of the Israeli working class, in the same way as Iran’s theocratic project uses ‘liberate Jerusalem’ rhetoric. In the 1980s, this was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, explaining Israel’s support to Iran, as Ariel Sharon declared; but following the US destruction of Iraq in 1991, Israel adopted Iran as its necessary demon. Once again, geographic distance means the rhetoric goes untested. Obama’s attempt to remove Iran from ‘enemy’ status via the JCPOA (Iran nuclear accord), while entirely rational from the perspective of US ruling class interests – the region’s biggest population, a great market for western capital, a regime playing its role in regional counterrevolution – was anathema to Israel’s need for a Fourth Reich.

Trump’s irrational decision to scrap the JCPOA was not motivated by US capitalist interests (except perhaps arms companies who profit from having a regional ‘enemy’) but by ideological interests similar to Israel’s – US imperialism’s use for a mythical ‘enemy’. Iran had served that purpose well since the 1979 starting point, and this corresponded to the views of Israel’s far-right Netanyahu regime which Trump was tightly allied to. But this move, leading to the reimposition of sanctions, froze Iran out of what it considered its rightful place as a major regional capitalist power, reincentivising ‘resistance’ rhetoric.

This double edge – fiery anti-Zionist rhetoric and safe geographic distance – is key to understanding Iran’s alleged ‘resistance’ role till today. But distance is an insufficient excuse when the Zionist regime conducts genocide; the question arises of what decades of fiery rhetoric were actually about. Hence both continual attempts to ‘avoid escalation’ while basking in credit by association for the actions of others – which, however, are rooted in their local realities. This puts a capitalist state – which has no interest in confronting imperialism, which rather wants its “rightful” place in the regional capitalist order recognised, but which does not wish to see its ‘credibility’ vanish – in quite a contradictory position.              

Within this general scenario, there are also some specific factors in the current period which have encouraged Iran’s do-nothing approach.

First, while Biden’s attempts to restore the JCPOA were half-hearted, the US imperial interest in restoring some kind of working relationship with Iran in the interests of capitalist business and ‘stability’ remained. Over the year before October, the US and Iran had engaged in quiet negotiations for an ‘Iran deal lite’. In early August, they reached a deal for the US to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues (which the US had been preventing international banks from transferring to Iran) in exchange for Iran freeing five detained Americans.

According to the New York Times, “attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria diminished significantly” following the deal. The Economist reported that, in the half-year before October 7th, Iran “cut by two-thirds production of uranium enriched to 60% u-235,” stopped “harassing American shipping in the Strait of Hormuz” and “discourage[d] proxy attacks on American targets.” The US “turned a blind eye to trade in Iranian oil, which it subjects to sanctions,” Iranian oil exports soaring “from 300,000 barrels a day (b/d) in 2022 to more than 1.2m b/d today.”

However, following October 7, the US has withheld the $6 billion it agreed for Iran to access, implying Iran was responsible for Hamas’ action; despite since claiming to have no evidence of Iranian involvement, the funds have not been released. On the other hand, in November the US allowed Iraq to transfer $10 billion it owed Iran in electricity payments in another sanctions waiver. According to The Economist, this was a reward to Iran for holding back its proxies after Hamas’s attack. Clearly, Iran has an interest in continuing along this track.

Secondly, in the year preceding October 7, Iran had re-established ties with long-term regional rival Saudi Arabia, under Chinese auspices. Both remain committed to détente, the first meeting of the Saudi-Chinese-Iranian Tripartite Joint Committee taking place in Beijing in December at which both delegations “pledg[ed] their commitment to implementing the Beijing Agreement.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s first visit to Riyadh was in November. Iran therefore has less incentive to ‘expose’ Saudi Arabia on Palestine, indeed, escalation may threaten relations, especially if it impacts their new arrangements in Yemen (ceasefire), Syria (Saudi recognition of Assad), Lebanon or Iraq.

The Gaza genocide also means the rhetorical Saudi position is ‘harder’ on Israel. While western leaders entertain the idea of Saudi Arabia replicating its Iran détente with Israel, Saudi leaders emphasise this can only happen if a sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is established; the Saudis forcefully re-stated this in February following US hinting they would settle for less. So rhetorically the two regimes are closer. While Saudi Arabia has done nothing to aid Gaza, it refused to join the US-led, anti-Houthi naval force; in response to US-UK strikes on the Houthis, it called for ‘de-escalation’; and it refused to allow the US-led coalition to use its airspace to attack the Houthis.

This Saudi-Iranian détente reflects mutual exhaustion in their regional rivalry. On Syria, Saudi Arabia long ago gave up its attempt to influence the anti-Assad uprising, soon after launching its intervention in Yemen in 2015, and the Russian intervention to save Assad the same year, which Saudi leader MBS silently supported (motivated more by rivalry with Qatar, Turkey and the MB than genuine opposition to Assad, the Saudis cautiously drew behind the Egypt-UAE pro-Assad/Putin position to ‘share’ Syria with Iran). Meanwhile, by 2022, both the 7-year Houthi attempt to conquer southern and eastern Yemen, and the Saudi attempt to reconquer north Yemen from the Houthis, had come to nothing, leading to ceasefire; the different governing bodies held on where they had their base of support.

This Saudi-Iran détente may involve other areas of convergence, given the rise of new sub-imperial rivals such as the Saudis’ erstwhile UAE ‘allies’ who back south Yemen secession against the Saudi-backed government! Iran has begun supplying arms to the repressive Sudanese military regime, engulfed in horrific conflict with its former ally, the paramilitary RSF, engaged in the genocidal subjugation of Darfur. While the UAE has been arming the RSF, its erstwhile Saudi and Egyptian allies support the regime. Now Iranian planes bringing arms to Sudan fly through Saudi airspace!

The Iranian-Saudi aim of mutually recognising separate spheres of influence (and some areas of shared influence) reduces Iran’s incentive to use ‘resistance’ rhetoric to compete with the Saudis; it may even incentivise pacifying the region so that as a respectable capitalist power it can properly dominate business in its sphere. The Economist, in an unauthored article likely representing editorial opinion in this flagship of British capitalism, suggests:

“Over time, some analysts hope, the regional restraint the country has shown since October 7th might become the norm. Iran might begin to prefer maintenance of the status quo to revolutionary chaos. Its regional satellites already have dominant roles in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen; it might seek to consolidate rather than expand further.”

Such stabilisation would aid its vision of an ‘Iranian Silk Road’ from Iran to Lebanon, involving a railway connecting ports in southwestern Iran to Mediterranean Sea ports in Syria and Lebanon. This is “a strategic avenue for Iran to broaden and solidify its influence along the transportation route, essentially reshaping its political axis with Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon into a cohesive ‘geographical axis’,” according to Syria TV.

So much for Iran; what of the actions of its Shiite-based quasi-state allies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen? As shown above, Iran has tended to hold them back from the danger of “going rogue” by taking on Israel or the US “in ways that could severely damage the deterrent architecture” that Iran needs from them – while accepting the credit for them actually doing something. Those who see them as Iran’s “proxies” therefore believe Iran is fomenting at least limited action against Israel. But rather than “proxies,” as Sara Harmouch and Nakissa Jahanbani explain, “Iran provides resources and coordination, but each group maintains its own agenda and local support base, functioning more as partners than proxies,” and its relationship each member “is unique.”

Iraqi Shiite militia in Iraq and Syria: Analysis

The array of Iranian-backed Iraqi-Shiite militia operating in Iraq and Syria must be understood in the context of the devastating 2003 US invasion of Iraq, replacing Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship with a US-controlled colonial regime. Naturally, this created an enormous armed resistance to US occupation; as US armed forces are still present in Iraq, it is hardly surprising that they come under attack, independent of anything happening in Gaza.

However, the relationship between resistance to US occupation and the Iranian-backed forces is not as straightforward as this introduction suggests.

These militia arose following the US invasion, though some descended from Iranian-backed paramilitary groups long opposed to Hussein. Initially many were in league with the US-installed occupation authorities, which reflected Iran’s position: while not thrilled at the US presence on its border, it was thrilled that the US had ousted its arch-enemy. This gave space for Iran to influence Iraq’s political regime, since Shiites are the majority in Iraq but had been frozen from power by Hussein’s dictatorship, based among a section of the Sunni minority. The most pro-Iranian forces – eg the Badr Brigades of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – were then the most supportive of US occupation authorities; while “moderate” opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi, who the US had groomed for power, was exposed to be concurrently an Iranian asset. The US-Iran joint-venture regime in Iraq was established, a mind-boggling problem for ‘Resistance Axis’ discourse.

Overwhelmingly, the anti-US resistance was led by Sunni-based forces, the Sunni now feeling frozen from power by the Iranian-backed Shiite authorities; but a more nationalist wing of the Shia, led by Moqtada al-Sadr, feeling the occupation jackboot, also began fighting the occupation from Basra, even carrying out joint actions with Sunni resistance, but al-Sadr’s ‘Mahdi’ movement was also the most independent of Iran.

Shiite-led collaboration with the US occupation led the Iraqi resistance into an increasingly Sunni-sectarian dead-end; amidst this chaos, al-Qaida in Iraq arose, and its horrendous crimes (eg bombings of Shiite mosques) helped lead to sectarian civil war by 2006, Iranian-led factions carrying out horrific crimes against the Sunni population.

Due to this sectarianisation, the Shiite leadership’s collaboration with US occupation, and Hussein’s symbolic support for the PLO, Hussein’s fall led to a surge in violent attacks against the 34,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq by Shiite militia, reducing their numbers to a few thousand. This raises questions about today’s weaponisation of Palestine by these forces while carrying out an unrelated battle.

In 2008, the US signed a strategic agreement with pro-Iranian Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; in 2010 both the US and Iran backed Maliki against a non-sectarian challenger. Maliki’s repression against an April Spring-influenced civil Sunni-based democracy movement was the context of the rise of the Sunni extremist ISIS. When the US returned to fight ISIS in 2014, it again found itself in league with these Iran-backed Shiite militia, who organised themselves into a coalition called the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU).

Meanwhile, thousands of Iraqi Shiite militia poured into Syria to engage in the slaughter as part of Iran’s support to Assad’s genocidal dictatorship. While the US sided neither with Assad nor the rebels, it began bombing ISIS in Syria in September 2014, but here its main ally was not Iran but the leftist, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who were also essentially neutral in the conflict between the regime and the rebels. So while the US was not specifically allied to the Iranian militia in Syria, once the Assad regime and its allies finally entered the war against ISIS in 2017-18 (after the US and SDF had done the hard work), they were again loosely allied, sometimes fighting in the same battles.

Later, following the 2018-19 defeat of the Syrian rebels (by Assad/Russia), and of ISIS (by the US/SDF in Syria, and US/Iran in Iraq), the arrangement between the US and Iran-backed forces exploded into rivalry over the turf. Thus, while it is true that these attacks on US bases greatly intensified after the Gaza war began, and the militia have linked this to Gaza, at base, this conflict is not about Palestine, but is a ‘sideways’ conflict with its own logic.

In Syria, the conflict today partly stems from Iranian support to Assad’s aim of retaking the northeast from the SDF, especially as this region contains Syria’s main oil fields. This puts Assad, Iran and Turkey in league against the US in the northeast (despite Turkey’s backing of anti-Assad rebels in the northwest).

In October 2023, the SDF-aligned North Press reported that the Iranian-backed Usud al-Uqaydat militia had crossed the Euphrates River “with other militants to fight the SDF.” SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi claimed the Iranian-backed militias “are not only attacking US bases” noting that “an Iranian kamikaze drone attacked an SDF ammunition depot in Deir Ezzor,” causing injuries and significant damage.

In Iraq, the US-Iran understanding died with Trump’s cancelation of the JCPOA and imposition of harsh anti-Iran sanctions to please Netanyahu, followed by his 2020 assassination of IGRC head Soleimani when he was on his way to negotiate détente with the Saudis. Thus begun the tit-for-tat strikes between US forces and these Iraqi Shiite militia.

Yet the Iraqi regime remains a fulcrum containing US-Iran conflict within their joint-venture. Following the assassination of Soleimani (and deputy PMU commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis), the Iraqi parliament voted for US troops to leave Iraq; but the vote was non-binding and the government never enforced it. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, in January 2023, stated that Iraq still needs US troops. To complicate matters further, in 2017 the PMU became part of the Iraqi armed forces, meaning US troops are in Iraq at the behest of a government whose army includes militia attacking US bases! This in turn places limits on the actions these militia will take; hence the largely theatrical nature of the conflict.

Notably, following US retaliatory strikes on 86 Iraqi militia bases in mid-January for the Jordan mishap, all attacks ceased; this alleged “theatre” of “resistance” to Gaza genocide is no longer. But US assassination of militia leaders in Baghdad is an affront to sovereignty, leading the Iraqi government to renewed discussion of plans for US withdrawal.  Interestingly, this corresponds to indications of US plans to withdraw from Iraq and Syria, for its own reasons, further highlighting the theatrical nature of the conflict, while suggesting another reason the attacks have stopped (aside from pressure from Iraq and Iran); the nationalist goal of removing US troops is more fundamental to this conflict than Gaza.

Before ceasing attacks, the main response to the US strikes was an attack in Syria killing six Kurdish SDF fighters but no US troops, further underlining how little this “resistance” is related to Gaza. They hit the US al-Omar base, where SDF commando units are trained. This Iran-backed attack on the SDF coincides with a larger-scale Turkish offensive against the SDF in northeast Syria – just as Assad spouts “anti-Zionist” rhetoric while using Gaza as cover to heavily bomb Idlib, Erdogan spouts louder “anti-Zionist” rhetoric to use Gaza as cover to heavily bomb the Kurds.

In similar vein, whatever the ‘anti-imperialist’ bluster spouted by Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite parties and militias, they played the decisive role in brutally crushing the anti-sectarian 2019 Iraq uprising, urged on by Khameini who reminded his Iraqi (and Lebanese) allies how Iran had crushed its own recent uprising; we need to understand that those who recently played tit-for-tat ‘pro-Gaza’ theatre with US troops are the murderers of the Iraqi people..

‘Anti-Zionist’ bluster, from Iran, Iraq, Turkey alike, can be useful for non-anti-Zionist purposes; counterrevolution, oppression and genocidal bombing ‘bounce off’ each other.

Hezbollah & southern Lebanon: Analysis

We now come to the Lebanese border and Yemen, where components of the alleged “Resistance Axis” have actually done something, in contrast to the passivity of repressive states and the Iraqi militia’s ‘sideways conflict’.

To understand both why Hezbollah has actually acted, and the limited, calibrated nature of it, we need to consider context: southern Lebanon was under Israeli occupation from 1978 until 2000; the south is mostly Shiite-populated, i.e. Hezbollah’s natural base. The Shia were not traditionally pro-Palestinian – in Israel’s 1982 invasion many welcomed the invaders to free themselves from alleged ‘PLO oppression’; in June 1982, Amal – the major Shiite communalist militia – “watched the Israeli tanks and troops roll up the coast.” Regardless of colourful discourse, the PLO was then heavily entrenched among the Sunni population, while the Shia were the most marginalised in Lebanon’s sectarian system. Many marginalised Shiites may have also experienced the large Palestinian refugee population as competition for informal sector jobs; and their presence invited Israeli bombing.

However, the brutal reality of Israel’s larger occupation after 1982 changed the minds of the Shia; together with Sunni pockets in the south, they launched a resistance war against the occupation, led by two Communist Parties, Nasserite Sunni militia, the PLO, Amal, and the new Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah. Having driven Israel from substantial parts of the south by 1985, however, the disparate forces had space to turn on each other. Above all, Amal, still mobilising the anti-Palestinian Shiite viewpoint despite also resisting Israel, launched a year-long murderous attack, backed by Syria’s Assad regime, against Palestinian camps in Beirut. At this point, the Iranian regime seized the opportunity to bypass Assad and Amal to promote Hezbollah as pro-Palestinian; Hezbollah did not fight Amal, but condemned its aggression. Combined with violence by both Amal and Hezbollah against the Lebanese left, Hezbollah eventually emerged as the leading force in the resistance to Israeli occupation.

This benefited Iran’s “resistance” credentials; even while using Israeli arms to invade Iraq using “resistance to Zionism” bluster, now a genuine resistance against actual Israeli occupation existed in a Shiite-dominated region; almost by luck, Iran was positioned to gain from resistance led by its new Lebanese ally.

However, in 2000 Hezbollah won; Israel quit Lebanon. But in 1990, the US-backed Taif Accord had subjected Lebanon to a Saudi-Syrian condominium that forced all militia which had engaged in the 1975-1990 civil war to join the Lebanese army; only Hezbollah could keep its own militia due to its resistance role. Now that the job was done, why should it have rights not available to others, which effectively allowed Iran to control a militia in Lebanon?

Therefore, the myth arose that a “Resistance Axis” between Iran and Hezbollah, running through Iraq and Syria, was necessary to “resist” Israeli occupation, but with Israel gone, what defined this “resistance”? Few take seriously the pathological Zionist and Iranian discourse, that Iran builds Hezbollah so as to one day invade Israel to “liberate Jerusalem.” Leaving aside the question of whether these forces would “liberate” anything, and the sheer impossibility of such a fantasy, the obvious question, in class politics, is “why would they want to do that?” Either an oppressive Iranian regime, anathema to liberation everywhere, just happens to be truly dedicated to liberating Palestinians; or Iranian imperialism is so irrational that it imagines it can add Palestine to its empire. Perhaps better to accept the third option: that this is just homogenising ideological nonsense on both sides, with no reality to it.

So again, what now does “resistance” mean? And since Iran has no intention of “liberating Jerusalem,” what are its aims in bolstering Hezbollah? And to what extent does Hezbollah have its own aims, independent of Tehran?

Until October 8, the answer to the first question was nothing. In 2006, Hezbollah killed some Israeli border troops, allegedly aiming at ‘unfinished business’, namely a tiny piece of land, the Shebaa farms, which Israel still occupied. Israel laid waste to Lebanon, killed 1300 civilians, injured a million, destroyed years of post-war construction. Even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that if he’d known Israel would react this way, he would not have undertaken the operation. It was a disaster for Hezbollah, until Israel saved it by launching a ground invasion, enabling Hezbollah to impose a defeat upon the invader, momentarily rescuing its “resistance” credentials. 

But this meant that Hezbollah could never do this again; Lebanese society does not accept having their children killed for Hezbollah games. From 2006 until 2023, the Israeli-Lebanese border remained stone quiet, yet Iran built Hezbollah into a force with some 150,000 missiles. But with the absence of any practical mission, the existential crisis remained.

In 2013, Hezbollah, at Iran’s behest, sent troops into Syria to help Assad crush the Syrian uprising. For years, Hezbollah, alongside Iraqi-Shiite and Iranian forces, aided Assad’s butchery, sometimes playing a decisive role, e.g. in the starvation siege of the liberated southern town Madaya in 2015-16. Thousands of Hezbollah cadre returned dead. This did significant damage to Hezbollah’s image: doing nothing to fight for Palestine while killing fellow Muslims on behalf of a tyrannical regime. Nasrallah told Russian minister Mikhail Bogdanov to “tell the Israelis that Lebanon’s southern borders are the safest place in the world because all of our attention is focused on” Syria, as Hezbollah “does not harbor any intention of taking any action against Israel.”

In 2019, Hezbollah’s counterrevolutionary role was exposed in Lebanon itself; the Lebanese people had risen up against all sectarian warlords – Christian, Sunni, Shiite – and the system itself, and Hezbollah (and Amal) thugs attacked the protest camps. Meanwhile, the recent precipitous collapse of the Lebanese economy adds another reason for Lebanese people to not want war; even if one had illusions that Hezbollah aimed to “liberate Jerusalem,” the Lebanese reality makes any such adventure even more impossible than previously.

Why then does Iran build Hezbollah and keep it independent of the Lebanese armed forces? There are two main aspects.

The first is that Iran wants a Hezbollah with rockets that can hit Israel as an insurance policy against Israel’s forever threat to attack Iranian nuclear assets, a kind of ‘forward defence’; it is imperative that “Hezbollah’s capacity to launch a retaliatory or pre-emptive attack on Israel” is assured. If that happened, Israel would also visit horrific destruction on Hezbollah’s missile sites, while Hezbollah wasted these missiles on Israel. Therefore, Hezbollah’s role in the ‘Axis’ “is to preserve its deterrent capacity by avoiding an all-out war with Israel,” as Iran will not want “to sacrifice Hezbollah on the altar of Hamas.” Former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin claims Nasrallah’s behaviour suggests “he still cares more about Lebanon and the need to protect Iran — and deter Israel from attacking its nuclear program — than he does about saving Hamas.” He will not “sacrifice Lebanon and destroy Beirut for the sake of Sunni Palestinians that started this war without consulting him.”

The second is broader, related to the Iran analysis above. We need to recall the reasons behind Iran’s rhetoric; the desire of a sub-imperialist regional power to cut out its own sphere of influence, where its leading role is recognised. Lebanon is access to the Mediterranean Sea; it is not difficult to understand why Iran would want a piece of Lebanon’s sectarian system as ‘its own’.

But now we must also consider is Hezbollah’s own objectives, separate to the Iran factor, related to Lebanon’s reality. Whatever it once was, Hezbollah has long ago become the main leadership of the Lebanese Shiite bourgeoisie, aiming to consolidate its place in Lebanon’s sectarian system. This position, combined with geographic and demographic factors, leads to specific kinds of action and inaction. Once again, there is more than one aspect.

Firstly, while 2006 demonstrated that full-scale war with Israel is not a good way to finalise the border issues with Israel, this unfinished business nevertheless remains. It is not only a Hezbollah issue, but Hezbollah dominates the south bordering Israel due to demography. In 2022 the US-negotiated Israel-Lebanon maritime agreement – with a Lebanese government that includes Hezbollah, led by Hezbollah-allied president Aoun – enabled demarcation of drilling rights in the Mediterranean Sea gas fields. It was welcomed by Iran, some analysts claiming it was essentially an Iranian deal with Israel. It led to a significant decline in Israeli attacks on pro-Iranian targets in Syria for some months. Could the calibrated conflict today result in a deal on the land border as well?

Following a brief January flare-up when Israel assassinated two leaders in Lebanon, Nasrallah’s speech added little, but hinted at negotiations on demarcating the border. Amos Hochstein, Biden’s energy adviser, had already been exploring border demarcation with Israel and Lebanon. Nasrallah’s language – “We are now faced with a historic opportunity to completely liberate every inch of our Lebanese land” – had a militant tone, but indicated the possibility of a deal focused on specifically Lebanese issues, that Hezbollah would be able to claim resulted from its “resistance.” Iran also stressed that this “is a domestic thing for the Lebanese.”

The second aspect specific to Lebanon’s reality is the presence of up to half a million Palestinian refugees, especially throughout southern Lebanon. If there was once a somewhat conflictual relationship between impoverished Shiites and Palestinians, and this turned to cooperation against occupation, this ongoing complexity remains a reality either way. Hezbollah kept the border quiet throughout 2006-2023, but the elephant in the room remains the large presence of Palestinians who aim to return to Palestine, who at times attempt attacks on Israel regardless of Hezbollah.  

For example, following the Israeli attack on the Al-Aqsa mosque in April 2023, Hamas militants in Lebanon launched rockets on northern Israel. Hezbollah allegedly “passed messages to Israel through several international mediators that it wasn’t part of the attack and didn’t know about it,” which was accepted by Israeli intelligence. Israel responded with attacks on the Palestinians, not touching Hezbollah. Clearly, the Palestinian issue will not leave southern Lebanon as long as an enormous refugee population remains; they would not have remained quiet after October 7. In this situation, Hezbollah’s “resistance” credentials would have looked hollow if it did not take some initiative.

A final point is that resistance to Israel’s vastly disproportionate counter-attacks on Lebanon and solidarity with Palestinians has its own Lebanese logic. Alongside Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance forces, the resistance has been joined  by the Al-Fajr Forces of the Sunni organization Jamaa al-Islamiyah (Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood). Based in Sunni pockets in the mostly Shiite south, Al-Fajr has also been firing rockets across the border. Al-Fajr is not an ally of Hezbollah in the Lebanese context, indeed it is aligned to Islamist forces in Syria’s anti-Assad uprising, but is closely connected to Hamas. According to Ali Abou Yassine from Jamaa al-Islamiya, this “does not mean that it is aligning itself with a foreign axis;” rather, as secretary-general Sheikh Mohammed Takkoush explains, they joined the battle “as a national, religious and moral duty … to defend our land and villages” and also “in support of our brothers in Gaza.” Their operations are “in coordination with Hamas, which coordinates with Hezbollah,” but direct cooperation with Hezbollah “is on the rise.” When Israel assassinated Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on January 2, it also killed several Jamaa al-Islamiyah cadre, and more have been killed since.

This highlights the problem of seeing south Lebanon as an “Resistance Axis” issue. In its monstrous role in Syria Hezbollah acted as a tool of Iran’s counterrevolutionary regional role, but its current action (and its limitations) on the Israeli border cannot be adequately explained as acting as Iran’s pawn. When we take into account the border issue and the huge Palestinian presence, Hezbollah becomes a more contradictory formation than the Iranian regime.

Yemen: Analysis

While the actions of Yemen’s Houthi movement have been the most dramatic in this conflict, there is massive confusion about who the Houthis are, their relationship to Iran, whether they are synonymous with ‘Yemen’ – and we can add, why such a reactionary movement ends up showing the most active solidarity with Palestine.

Their actual name is AnsarAllah, a Zaydi Shiite communalist movement founded in the 1990s. The Zaydi account for about one third of Yemenis, most of who are Sunni Muslims; their main concentration is in the old republic of North Yemen, their main base around the city of Saada in the far north. The Houthis are a Zaydi family that founded and leads AnsarAllah. They claim descent from Mohammed, and AnsarAllah’s political ideology claims that only blood descendants of Mohammed (‘Sayyids’) can rule. This connects the Houthis to the ideology of the old Zaydi Imamate, which ruled Yemen as a religious monarchy for 1000 years until overthrown in the 1962 revolution in North Yemen, which established a civil republic. The Houthi family belongs to the same caste as the old Imams, also alleged Sayyids. AnsarAllah’s founder, Hussein al-Houthi, penned the Malazim, a 2000-page “blueprint for religious dictatorship – an updated version of the Imamate.”

The Houthi rulers celebrate September 21, the date of their 2014 coup that overthrew the Yemeni Spring government, as a public holiday “exceeding the festive displays on the anniversary of the September 26 republican revolution.” This connection between the two reactionary theocratic regimes separated by 52 years was highlighted by the Houthis’ attack and mass arrests on the September 26 celebrations in 2023.

Yet the militia which spearheaded the counterrevolution against the Yemeni Spring, ideologically descended from the monarchy overthrown by the 1962 revolution, is in the forefront of solidarity with Palestine.

The 1962 revolution was followed by a 5-year civil war in North Yemen between the Shiite Imamate (backed, ironically, by Saudi Arabia) and the republicans, backed by Egyptian nationalist leader Nasser. Concurrently, British ruled South Yemen, centred on the port of Aden, was undergoing an anti-colonial revolution; when the British quit in 1967, the Marxist Peoples Democratic Republic emerged, led by the Yemeni Socialist Party. So even though revolutionary republicans defeated the reactionary Imamate in North Yemen in 1968, they emerged as the more right-wing Yemen regime compared to Marxist South Yemen.

Republican North Yemen centre of power shifted to secular Zaydi and Sunni elites based in the capital, Sanaa; “the northern Sayyids were scorned as relics of a benighted theocratic era, and many fell into poverty,” their Saada base in the far north an economic backwater. Under growing Saudi influence, the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh used Sunni Salafism as a weapon against ‘communism’ in the Cold War, and against militant Shiism following the Iranian revolution, despite Saleh himself being Zaydi; Salafists came to control North Yemen’s education system even in Zaydi regions. Thus when the Houthis arose in the early 1990s, despite their reactionary heritage, they were the voice of a now marginalised population.

In 1990 the two states merged, the North Yemeni elite dominating the old south and Saleh continuing to rule. From 2004, the Houthis fought six wars against Saleh’s regime, aimed at autonomy for the far north. Saleh responded with indiscriminate and brutal air and artillery strikes, allowing the Houthis to recruit from northern tribes beyond their base; his murder of their leader Hussein al-Houthi alienated many Zaydi beyond their ranks.

In 2011, Saleh was overthrown in the Yemeni Spring uprising. The coalition which overthrew him included the Houthis, the civil democratic movement, a reform wing of Saleh’s party (the General National Congress Party, GNCP), the Muslim Brotherhood (Islah), the Nasserites, the Yemeni Socialist Party, and the southern movement (Hirak), which wanted autonomy for the south. To curb the revolutionary dynamics, the Saudis and Gulf states pressured Saleh to hand power to his deputy, Mansour Hadi, while preserving the old state apparatus, the famous ‘Yemeni solution’.

While little changed at the top, the overthrow of dictatorship opened up politics for the masses, leading to struggle against Hadi’s unpopular IMF-imposed abolition of subsidies in 2014, bringing together most forces involved in the 2011 uprising. Some progressive changes ensued, for example, in 2013, women obtained 30 percent of the seats in the National Dialogue Conference (NDC), tasked with drafting a new constitution; they won agreement for a 30 percent quota in new government bodies or institutions.

The Houthis, however, had other ideas, as did Saleh. Despite being granted immunity for his 2011 killings of protestors and asylum in Saudi Arabia, Saleh aimed to regain power. Despite their past conflict, Saleh and the Houthis formed an alliance to overthrow Hadi’s government. In September 2014, the Houthi militia marched into Sanaa and seized power, enabled by the officer corp of the armed forces, still loyal to Saleh, who ordered them to stand aside. In February 2015, they ejected Hadi and formed a 10-person Supreme Political Council (5 appointed by the Houthis, 5 by Saleh). A large-scale crackdown on opposition ensued, with jailings, torture, disappearances and executions.

The alliance with Saleh gave the Houthis control over “entire brigade sets of tanks, artillery, and anti-aircraft weapons,” ballistic missiles, launchers, and national intelligence agencies. This enabled the Houthi-Saleh alliance to push south into Sunni territory where they had no base. The entire south and east (ie old South Yemen) and southern parts of old North Yemen (especially Taiz) rejected the coup and continued to support Hadi, as did most major parties, eg the Nasserite Unionist People’s Organisation, Islah (Muslim Brotherhood), Yemeni Socialist Party etc; Hadi took up residence in Aden, South Yemen’s old capital. The Houthi-Saleh invasion of the south faced large-scale resistance from the population, organised into Popular Resistance Committees (PRC’s).

As the Houthis besieged Taiz and Aden, and Saleh’s airforce bombed the city, Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in March 2015, with devastating bombing throughout Yemen, killing tens of thousands of civilians and massively destroying vital infrastructure. Despite the initial impetus of rescuing Aden and the south, where the intervention then had popular support, Saudi war aims involved the reconquest of the north from the Houthis. The devastating bombing of Sanaa drove its population – no fans of Houthi oppression – into nationalist rejection of the Saudis; the most heavily bombed part of Yemen was the Houthis’ natural base in Saada further north, distant from the southern frontlines; in May the Saudis declared the entire city of Saada a military target.

Two reactionary forces confronted each other – the sectarian Houthis trying to subjugate the non-Zaydi and non-sectarian populations of the south, aligned with the overthrown ancien regime, and the reactionary Saudi and UAE monarchies, stung by Saleh-Houthi messing up their ‘Yemeni Solution’, and fearful of Iranian influence. While the Houthis had every right to defend their homeland from Saudi terror-bombing – which they increasingly did with rockets targeting Saudi Arabia – the peoples of Taiz, Aden, Marib, the south and east also had every right to resist being subjugated by repressive Houthi-Saleh rule (whose rockets also slaughtered civilians). Aden was liberated, and Taiz soon after, but the Houthis have since maintained a blockade on roads leading into Taiz, an 8-year starvation siege, while the Saudis impose a starvation blockade on Yemen via the Red Sea, causing one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

Later, a third reactionary force emerged as the UAE armed the southern secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC), undermining the government they officially supported. Despite support among many southerners for South Yemen’s restoration, this implied abandoning parts of ‘North Yemen’ resisting the Houthis, eg Taiz and Marib; given the strength of Islah in that resistance, this suited the anti-MB UAE. This idea of leaving the north to the Houthis meant the UAE had little invested in the war, which it quit in 2019. While ending its role in the bombing was positive, the UAE’s aims were far from pacifist. UAE-backed forces waged a large-scale assassination campaign against political opponents in Yemen – overwhelmingly Islah cadre, supposed allies against the Houthis! Once the UAE had cut out a section of the coast near Aden and the island of Socotra, it had achieved its goal of extending its coastal empire, reaching from Yemen into Ethiopia and further in Africa. Meanwhile, other southern autonomists opposed to the UAE exploiting their cause formed the Southern National Salvation Council in 2019.

By 2022, the war was clearly stalemated; the Houthis could not conquer the south and east, and the Saudis could not drive the Houthis from the north; their bases held solid. A ceasefire has held since early 2022, and no-one wants renewal of war. In December 2023, amidst the Red Sea crisis, both sides re-stated their commitment to ceasefire and to a UN-led peace process. This ceasefire corresponds to the 2023 Saudi-Iranian detente; the two re-stated their commitment in December.

The point is that Yemenis are not facing the Gaza genocide at war with themselves, but in the midst of a strongly supported ceasefire. The Saudis may be nervous about Houthi actions, but they have not joined the US/UK-led anti-Houthi armada and have rejected allowing US-led attacks on the Houthis from Saudi airspace.

This is very important, because while the Houthis have initiated the strikes on ships, powerful solidarity with Palestine is a Yemen-wide cause with a long tradition which the Houthis are acting on. According to one Yemeni journalist, “Yemenis have put aside thinking and talking about their woes” to unite around Gaza. In October, the Foreign Ministry of the recognised (Saudi-backed) government condemned “the war crimes and genocide committed by the Israeli occupation against civilians in the Gaza Strip,” slamming the bombing of the Al Ahli Hospital as “a crime against humanity.” The journalist notes that “the Palestinian flag has been ubiquitous in multiple Yemeni cities over the past ten days. It can be seen over houses, government buildings, shops and cars.”

The oft-heard claim that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy is wide of the mark. Iran-Houthi links before 2014 had not been decisive; as we saw, it was the alliance with Saleh’s army that allowed the conquest of Sanaa, not small-scale Iranian arms. Iran advised the Houthis against seizing Sanaa in 2014-15 but they defied it. In early 2016, Houthi commander Youssef al-Fishi lashed out demanding Iranian officials “remain silent” and “stop exploiting” Yemen’s war for their own interests, following a prisoner exchange with Saudi Arabia and an Iranian leader’s claim that Iran is ready to help Yemen “in any possible level.” Iranian support for the Houthis did increase markedly after the Saudi intervention for geopolitical reasons, yet even now, US intelligence assesses that Iran is not directing the Houthis and played no role in their decision to attack shipping. Houthi leaders scoff at the idea they are acting at Iran’s behest, claiming to be acting on behalf of Yemen; they even scoff at Iran, Houthi spokesperson Abdelmalek al-Ejri telling The Atlantic that “our stance on Gaza is more advanced than anyone, even Iran. Iran was shocked that Ansar Allah had the guts to do what we did.”

Regarding Yemen’s long tradition of support for Palestine, we might say that about any Arab country, but Yemen’s anti-colonial war against British imperialism in the 1960s is only comparable to Algeria’s anti-colonial war against France; most Arab states didn’t go through such prolonged independence wars, which gave these peoples a special identification with Palestine regardless of political stance.

Left-wing South Yemen (ie, centre of anti-Houthi resistance today) developed a strong alliance with the PLO; but rightist North Yemen was also strongly pro-Palestine. In MERIP Report, Stacey Philbrick Yadav writes: “In 1971 … South Yemen allowed a Palestinian militant organization to attack an Israeli ship from its territory. During the 1973 October War, it closed the Bab al-Mandab strait to fuel bound for Israel. After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the two Yemens hosted more than one thousand displaced Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters and established military camps for them in Sana’a and Aden.” When Yemen united in 1990 under Saleh’s rightist North Yemen leadership, Yemen (alongside only Cuba) voted in the UN Security Council against the US-led war on Iraq, leading to hundreds of thousands of Yemeni workers being driven out of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (alongside Palestinian workers).

To South Yemeni leftists, North Yemeni right republicans and the Houthis, we can add Islah (Muslim Brotherhood). Despite being the main ongoing victim of Houthi aggression with the blockade of Taiz, their major base, Islah’s website is covered with pro-Palestine articles. For example, in an article comparing the Houthis to Israel, Ali Al-Jaradi writes that “Gaza and Palestine are a sacred issue for every Muslim and Arab,” while condemning the Houthis for mobilising fighters “in the name of Al-Aqsa Flood” in order to send them “to the fronts of the Coast, Al-Dhalea, Taiz, Marib and Shabwa” to fight Yemenis. Islah member Mukhtar Al-Rahbi, advisor to the Information Minister in Yemen’s recognised government, condemns “any Yemeni who stands with America, Britain, and the countries of the coalition to protect Zionist ships,” who “must review his Yemeniness and Arabism” as “these countries protect and support the terrorist Zionist entity.” While “we disagree internally on many issues” with the Houthis, “Palestine is our first issue and will remain so.”

While pro-Gaza demonstrations have been by far the biggest in the capital Sanaa, cities all over Yemen, in Houthi- and government-controlled regions, including Taiz, Aden, Hadramout, Marib, Saada, Ibb, Al-Hudaydah, and Almahra have seen massive protests against the bombing of Gaza. Regarding the gigantic Sanaa demonstrations, a great many will be Houthi supporters, but it is mistaken to assume the Sanaa population as a whole is pro-Houthi; after the Houthis seized Sanaa, there was a widespread crackdown on the civil movement; it is unlikely that the people who overthrew Saleh (and whom he massacred) were thrilled when he re-took power alongside a hard-line theocratic militia.

The Houthis’ Red Sea attacks help renew the compliance of Sanaa’s (and north Yemen’s) population, which was wearing thin during the two-year ceasefire. The Saudi bombing had given the Houthis some legitimacy to those under their rule as Yemeni fighters against the daily devastation meted out by hated Saudi Arabia, who thereby grudgingly tolerated their ghastly and well-documented repression. Amnesty International has “documented the cases of at least 75 journalists, human rights defenders, academics and others perceived as opponents or critics subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearance, and unfair trials with recourse to the death penalty” since 2015. Well-known human rights defender, Fatima al-Arwali, was sentenced to death in December; she had no legal representation. In January 2024, Houthi courts condemned nine men to execution (by stoning or crucifixion), for homosexuality. Women’s rights are systematically violated. Thousands of child soldiers have been pressed into war. 

Two years of ceasefire was not favorable for the Houthis; the malevolence of their rule stood naked, allowing opposition to raise its head. On September 26, thousands of Yemenis celebrated in the streets of Sanaa and other cities on the anniversary of the 1962 revolution, chanting pro-revolution slogans. The Houthis attacked them, confiscated flags and arrested hundreds. So the Red Sea attacks may have come just in time to save Houthi legitimacy; the US-UK strikes further boosted the Houthis with a new foreign enemy bombing them.

The Red Sea attacks also bring the Houthis widespread popularity throughout the region, a stark contrast to regional Arab and Muslim regimes. The logical counterpoint – “then why don’t others do something for Gaza to boost their credibility?” – has validity, but misses the issue that no government in the region (or the world) except Iran recognise the Houthis as the Yemeni government, despite ruling two thirds of the population (but less than one third of the area), so they are in dire need of a legitimacy-boost. As one imperialist analyst put it, the Houthis grabbed the opportunity of Gaza to make “a quite effective rebranding exercise,” transforming themfrom a “terror group destroying Yemen into an effective military outfit inflicting pain on the US in support of the Palestinians.” 

This increased regional credibility also increases the Houthis bargaining power with the Saudis in peace talks, improving their “position in regional and domestic negotiations over the future of Yemen.” Houthi spokesperson Abdelmalek al-Ejri told The Atlantic, to the question of sharing power with the opposition, that “Abdulmalik al-Houthi will remain the supreme political authority in Yemen under any future government.” Whatever happens, it will be far more difficult for the Saudis to resume their bombing campaign.

Conclusion

At present, only the ongoing, almost super-human, Palestinian resistance is preventing the completion of Israel’s full genocidal new Nakbah. While any small-scale support, such as on the Lebanese border or in the Red Sea is welcome, it largely has a nuisance effect on Israel; its ability to wage genocide has been untouched. The conclusion that none of the regional repressive capitalist regimes, whether they fancy themselves as part of an ‘Axis of Resistance’ or otherwise, has anything to offer the Palestinian struggle, is both self-evident yet also wanting: given this reality, who can the Palestinians hope for as allies?

Obviously Palestinians have no illusions in the US, which, despite occasional hand-wringing, has demonstrated total commitment to Israel with endless billions in weaponry; Biden’s talk of ‘two-state solution’ in opposition to Netanyahu’s vision of an emptied Gaza means several non-sovereign bits of land, about half the 22 percent of Palestine that the internationally accepted two-state formula the state, not including the Palestinian capital Jerusalem (the illegal recognition of which as Israel’s “capital” by Trump has not been reversed by Biden), divided between massive chunks of territory colonised by murderous ‘settlers’ – a version of the Oslo fiasco that makes Oslo look good, a ‘Palestinian state’ where “carpet bombing is replaced by a matrix of surveillance, separation and control.” While beyond the scope of this piece, neither Russia nor China have anything to offer the Palestinians either.

The global pro-Palestine movement is the largest the world has seen ever, signalling a change in consciousness, especially among youth. The struggle to break US and western support for Israel, via this movement, via BDS and so on is crucial; however, this takes time, and many of the gains from such a movement will be in the future, while Gaza’s needs are immediate. 

If a combination of the impacts of the global solidarity movement, Palestinian resistance in Gaza and small-scale actions from forces in the region manages to prevent the completion of the current Nakbah, that at least offers hope. Discussion of Palestinian “victory” and Israeli “defeat” in the context of the world’s worst genocide, already worse than that of 1948, is delusional; however, that does not in any way reduce the necessity of limiting Israel’s current victory as much as possible; a continuing Palestinian presence at any level among the smoking ruins still offers the potential to struggle for better.

However, there is a big difference between the military prevention of total Israeli victory and Palestinian liberation. There is good reason to see the vision of Palestine with equal rights for all people and the return of refugees as further away than ever since October 7. These assessments will be made in the coming period, no doubt with much debate.

The presence of a large number of brutally repressive capitalist regimes, including a number of sub-imperialist rivals, is not an environment conducive to liberation of Palestine, or of anywhere. Palestine’s fate is bound up with the fate of the region, and only a return of popular democratic revolution against these regimes offers hope for emancipation. The crushing of the April Spring revolution was much more fatal to Palestine than is widely appreciated; and key ‘Axis’ components played the decisive role in crushing it in Syria, and in the 2019 ‘second wave’ in Iraq and Lebanon (while Saudis/UAE the decisive role in Egypt and Bahrain, both ‘Axis’ and non-Axis did so in Yemen, and many are responsible for the chaos in Sudan and Libya). But change can be as rapid as it is at times slow; today’s popular upsurge in Jordan against the monarchy’s collaboration with Israel is an example of something that has the potential to change the equation. That may not seem immediately obvious, but Palestinian liberation cannot be achieved by military means alone, where the oppressor always has military superiority; while military resistance is essential, and even help from the devil may be necessary at times, there is no simple military strategy for full liberation, which requires political, emancipatory, revolutionary change in the region.

by Michael Karadjis

Israel’s current genocide-operation against the Palestinian population of Gaza (and potentially the West Bank if it can get away with it) recall the horrors of the neighbouring Assad dictatorship’s decade-long war of extermination against the rebellious Syrian people, where some 470,000 had been killed already by January 2016 (a figure which does not account for the last 7 years of killing!), Vladimir Putin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia’s monstrous bombing of Yemen and a number of similar conflicts.

One can have a greater interest or connection to one or another, or a view that one may have more global significance than another, but none of that should cloud our responsibility to condemn all such wars replete with massive crimes against humanity, and to resolutely take the side of the populations doing what they can to resist these oppressors.

A typical Gazan ‘landscape’ today (or during any of Israel’s other half dozen or so monstrous ‘mowing the lawn’ operations in Gaza over the last 20 years) looks identical to a typical Syrian ‘landscape’ in Homs, Aleppo, Damascus suburbs and elsewhere in towns and cities throughout the country bombed into a moonscape by the Assad regime. As Daanish Faruqi writes in al-Jazeera, Israel is using the same tactics in Gaza as al-Assad employed in Syria, and indeed the same “anti-terrorist” propaganda arsenal.

Here are some examples. Which is Gaza and which is Syria?

_{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Damage_in_Gaza_Strip_during_the_October_2023_-_32.jpg Wafa (Q2915969)}

Despite the common humanity of the victims and the common malevolence of the exterminators, the fact that two of the extermination wars noted above are or were backed by the United States while the other two are/were backed by (or carried out by) Russia has often led to the phenomenon of ‘campism’.   

‘Campism’ sees the world divided into ‘camps’ of capitalist and imperialist powers and chooses which ‘camp’ they consider preferable. In doing so, ‘campists’ aim all their fire at the oppression and crimes carried out by the side they condemn, and actively engage in vile apologetics for the side they support. Internationalism by contrast always resolutely takes the side of the oppressed whenever they are in conflict with their oppressors no matter which ‘camp’ they allegedly belong to. Campism is not only morally and politically bankrupt, but as will be explained below, also based on a myth – because these alleged ‘camps’ do not actually exist, rather, global capitalism is one camp with a myriad over overlapping and contradictory rivalries which render campism meaningless even on its own terms.

One kind of ‘campist’ is the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ campist. They have decided that US imperialism is the only or worst imperialism, and therefore, while they rightly condemn crimes against humanity carried out by the US or its allies (or what are deemed its allies) – Israel’s long-term genocidal campaign to erase the Palestinian people, the Saudi bombing of Yemen, the US invasion of Iraq and previous US wars and invasions throughout the world, US support to bloody juntas and so on – they tend to hold the complete opposite opinions when other imperialist countries (eg Russia), or states deemed, rightly or wrongly (usually wrongly), to be ‘anti-imperialist’, for example Milosevic’s Serbia in the 1990s or Assad’s Syria in the 2010s, fall out of US favour, becoming spokespeople for their genocidal crimes.

While all campaigns against war and oppression are necessarily united front campaigns – ie, campaigns where we march together with people we may disagree with on other issues – it is obviously disconcerting to be marching condemning Israel’s crimes against humanity and then noticing the participation of those you know have spent the last decade shilling for or denying the similar crimes against humanity of the Assad regime. Even if you do not think it is a big deal, consider how a Syrian refugee in the march feels watching this spectacle.

Many of the names of prominent shills are well-known, yet most marching for Palestine will know nothing of this history as they share their writings or soundbites on this issue: examples include British charlatan George Galloway, Max Blumenthal and the ‘Grayzone’ collective, Roger Waters, Caitlin Johnstone and countless others. Regarding the latter two, no-one should expect consistent analysis from a rock star or someone whose main ‘background’ appears to be astrology, but some like Blumenthal have done much serious work on the Palestine issue (and indeed Blumenthal was previously in the anti-Assad camp on Syria until the famous Moscow dinner he shared with Trump’s first National Security Advisor Michael Flynn).

The opposite campist is the liberal campist, and here we are not concerned with obvious right-wing liberals that are part of the western imperialist ruling class, but rather leftist and progressive liberals. They are rightly very concerned about crimes against humanity when carried out by a Putin, a Milosevic, an Assad, but get all bogged down when the crimes are being carried out by western imperialist states and their allies. This has blown up now with Israel’s horrifically genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza – some progressive minded people who have been working to provide a left-wing understanding of support to Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s horrific invasion have either critically taken Israel’s side or, more commonly, taken a ‘plague on both your houses’ view. And mainstream Ukrainian society, starting with president Zelensky, has swung strongly behind Israel.

However, this phenomenon is much less the case with the anti-Assad revolution in Syria, and its leftist supporters, who tend to equate the crimes against humanity of Assad and Israel. In the later part of this essay, some analysis on the stark contrast between the Syrian and Ukrainian cases will be offered, as well as the third, somewhat different again, case of the women-led Iranian uprising against the murderous mullah regime in that country.

But first we will begin with the most positive case of solidarity between the oppressed, rather than the absurdity and perfidity of both wings of campism: the solidarity with Palestine being expressed all over revolutionary Syria in opposition-controlled regions and among anti-Assad protestors in regime-controlled regions. 

The Syrian revolution in solidarity with Palestine!

“Bashar and Netanyahu, the butchers of our time” reads the banner in this protest in Sweida, is one of the common themes of the demonstrations in revolutionary Syria in support of the people of Gaza. “Netanyahu is bombing hospitals and children following the school of Bashar” – another slogan raised in Sweida as shown below:

More protests shown in this video in Karama Square in Sweida in solidarity with Gaza.

The significance of Sweida is that it has been the epicentre of the new upsurge of the Syrian revolution over the last few months, which has spread around the country. In particular, Sweida is home to the Druze religious minority, belying the Assad regime’s propaganda that it is the protector of “minorities” against “Sunni Islamic terrorism” as the regime attempts to define the opposition.

Solidarity in Sweida with Gaza has not prevented the people from continuing their uprising against the regime as we see in the image below and in this Video.

Meanwhile in neighbouring Daraa province, a key centre of the 2011 revolution until Assad’s reconquest (backed by the Netanyahu-Trump-Putin alliance) in 2018, which has also erupted in solidarity with Sweida, we likewise see solidarity with Gaza, as with these protests by Palestinians in Daraa camp:

Demonstrations in support of Gaza have spread throughout revolutionary Syria. For example, here in Idlib in the opposition-held northwest, protesting the Israeli hospital bombing in Gaza, raising Palestinian flags, as can be seen in this video; and in this demonstration of solidarity with Gaza from doctors of Idlib University Hospital, which was shelled by Assad some weeks earlier; or like these Idlib demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza:

And here; and in this video here, following Israel’s hospital massacre; or check out this massive TV screen in the heart of Idlib city in support of Gaza.

And then there’s the demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza throughout the rebel-controlled northwest, in towns throughout Idlib and Aleppo provinces, such as in the town of Atmeh in rural Idlib province, with Syrian revolution and Palestine flags, burning Israeli flags:

And in the town of Darkoush in Idlib:

Protest in the town of Ariha in Idlib:

Angry demonstration in Atareb in western Aleppo province, in the very heart of the revolution in the north, condemning Israel’s terror attack on the hospital.

And in another iconic revolutionary centre, the city of Marea in northern Aleppo province:

And Azaz in northern Aleppo:

And in this video from al-Bab in northern Aleppo, video:

And more from al-Bab, another video.

And solidarity with Gaza also over in the east of the country, in Raqqa, the first full city taken by the Syrian rebels back in 2013 (before ISIS/Daesh seized it from them, and later the US and Kurdish-led SDF crushed ISIS). 

This is only a sample of the pro-Palestine upsurge in anti-Assad Syria. Anyone who followed the Syrian revolutionary process knows the names of these towns and cities well; all well-known centres of the revolution.

This is not new. Syrian revolutionaries have identified with Palestine since the outset.  The similarity between Assadist and Israeli genocidal bombings that leave entire cities a smoked ruins is too obvious. Here for example are some examples of protests against Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s “capital” in December 2017,  demonstrations condemning this move and in solidarity with the Palestinians broke out all over opposition-controlled Syria, from Daraa through East Ghouta and south Damascus to Homs and Idlib and northern Aleppo. Here protesters in camps for displaced Syrians in northern Idlib hold signs stating “Sanaa, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus are occupied by Iran, Jerusalem occupied by Israel”; and here Syrians and Palestinians are demonstrating in besieged southern Damascus against the Jerusalem decision, chanting “Oh shame, oh shame, We won’t sacrifice the Golan” and “We’ll sacrifice our blood & soul for Aqsa.”

_{Syrians and Palestinians are demonstrating in besieged southern Damascus against Trump’s Jerusalem decision}.

And here are the Palestinian and the Syrian revolution flags painted on a wall in Kuftkharim in Idlib during May 2018, to show solidarity with Gaza during Israeli attacks at the time; the phrase “From Syria to Gaza, we share the same wound” is written on it.

_{Idlib: “From Syria to Gaza, we share the same wound”. Photo by Abu al-Bara al-Shami.}

And here is a mural in the town of Kafr Nabl, one of the key centres of the revolution in Idlib province, from back in 2015, with the Palestinian and Syrian revolution flags:

Clearly, these are not the kinds of people Israel was ever going to form an alliance with.

Declarations in support of Gaza by Syrian revolutionaries and the White Helmets

Back to the present, on November 11, 2023, 130 prominent pro-revolution Syrians released a statement in support of the Palestinian people that reflects these widely-held views in revolutionary Syria:

“We, Syrians united in the revolutionary struggle against the Assad regime and its imperialist sponsors, stand firmly and unequivocally with the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and across historic Palestine, in their fight for liberation from Israeli colonisation, occupation and apartheid.”

The statement included a little historical review:

“Whilst the Syrian people have always stood with the Palestinian cause, the Assad regime has used it as a rhetorical tool which, far from liberating Palestine, has instead led to increased oppression within Syria’s borders.

“During the 1967 war, as defence minister, Hafez al-Assad ordered the Syrian army to retreat from the Golan Heights before any Israeli troops had arrived. The Syrian Golan has been subject to brutal Israeli occupation and colonisation, severed from the Syrian homeland and intentionally marginalised by the Assad regime and wider region. The Golan Heights remain confined by Israeli colonisation, the genocidal Assad regime and geo-political schemes.

 “When the Lebanese civil war erupted, Hafez al-Assad loudly declared Syria’s support for the Palestinian-Muslim-Leftist alliance against the pro-Israel Falangists. But when the Falangists appeared at risk of defeat in 1976, Assad ordered the Syrian army to intervene against the pro-Palestinian alliance. The Assad regime slaughtered up to 1500 Palestinian civilians in camps in Lebanon, most notably at Tel Za’atar.”

The statement noted that “when our revolution erupted, Syrians and Palestinians in Syria stood shoulder to shoulder. We worked together to supply food and medicine to besieged communities, to organise strikes and marches, and to build democratic alternatives to the murderous regime.” As a result of this cooperation, “the Assad regime attacked Palestinian camps as fiercely as it assaulted Syrian cities,” giving examples of the the Palestinian camp in Daraa and the Raml camp in Lattakia, alongside the devastating Assadist siege and destruction of the Palestinian Yarmouk camp. The statement cites the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) which has documented 4,048 Palestinians killed in Syria since 2011. “Of these, 614 died under torture in regime prisons and 205 died due to the siege on Yarmouk camp. Others were killed by regime bombing or execution by regime loyalists.”

The statement stresses the interconnectedness of our struggles, noting that Syrian solidarity with Palestine “comes from the shared experience of resistance to tyranny, a desire for freedom and self-determination, and the trauma of war.”

On October 19, the Syrian volunteer first-responder organisation, the White Helmets, released a statement “strongly condemn(ing) the egregious act committed by the Israeli occupation forces in bombing the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip. This attack resulted in a horrifying massacre, claiming the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Such actions blatantly violate international law, international humanitarian law, and the most fundamental human principles.”

The statement also condemned “the deliberate targeting of civilian and medical facilities, along with first responders, medical personnel, rescue teams, and civil defence units” and “the policy of collectively punishing the people in the Gaza Strip, including their ongoing siege and the denial of basic necessities like water, food, medicine, healthcare, and fuel,” which “poses an imminent humanitarian catastrophe,” and “urgently call(s) upon all nations across the globe especially those actively involved in addressing this situation to intervene immediately to halt these violations and the collective punishment of the population.”

It should be noted that these heroes, who rescued thousands of people from the rubble following Assad’s and Putin’s bombing, losing hundreds of their own members in the process, were continually subject to the most despicable and baseless slanders by members of the Assadist “left” and far-right, including some of those now marching for Palestine. The slanders claimed they were either “CIA” or “al-Qaida.” The White Helmets clearly have more honour in their fingernails than all of these liars put together.

Assad “responds to Israel” … by bombing Idlib

What does the Assad regime, which tries, awkwardly, to posture as pro-Palestine, do in the face of all this? You probably guessed, it has used the cover of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza to step up its slaughter of the Syrian people. Obviously not to the extent of the years 2011-2019, when it bombed most towns and cities in Syria to Gaza-like ruins, because, after all, by 2019 it had completed most of its reconquest.

Nevertheless, we are seeing some of the heaviest bombing in several years, since Assad secured his throne. As the Syrian poster Rami Safadi put it, “Assad’s idea of fighting back at Israel is to bomb Syrian civilians in Idlib who he calls “Israeli agents,” as in this video:

According to an early November report, regime and Russian bombing had killed 66 civilians, including 23 children and 13 women, and left more than 270 people injured, with 79 children and 47 women among the casualties, during October, while 120,000 people had been newly displaced. The shelling “targeted dozens of public facilities and civilian homes in more than 70 cities and towns in northwestern Syria. This included the direct targeting of over 13 schools, more than seven medical facilities, five mosques, five camps, five popular markets, and four centers for the White Helmets. In addition to these, a center for women’s and family health, a power station, three water stations, and threee poultry farms were also affected by the shelling.”

Well-known Syrian revolutionary Rami Jarrah expresses his great pride in his people:

“Even with all the bombs raining down on the people of Idlib by Assad & Russia’s forces, even with all the silence, thousands of Syrians come out in solidarity with the people of Gaza. You who are safe, what is your excuse?

“It must be mentioned that the Syrians here in solidarity with the people of Gaza, are astonishingly rallying on the same side as the murderers who are bombing Idlib. I’m proud because it takes a lot of integrity to put your own cause at risk, only to support someone else’s.”

Of course, “the murderers bombing Idlib,” meaning the Assad regime, are hardly “on the same side” as Idlib, despite rhetoric. The Assad regime, after all, has killed more Palestinians than any other Arab regime, and until the current Gaza genocide, probably more in absolute numbers than Israel; while keeping the ‘border’ with Israeli-occupied Golan so quiet that it has been consistently praised by Israeli leaders. Even now, the contrast between the clashes on the Israel-Lebanon border and the quiet on the Golan ‘border’ is stark.

Nevertheless, the Iranian and pro-Iranian Hezbollah forces backing Assad have made more consistent pro-Palestine rhetoric than Assad has, without his murderous anti-Palestinian record, and hence do give the impression of being “on the same side.” As Jarrah says, this is consistent solidarity shining through from Syrian revolutionaries, despite other enemies of humanity appearing to be on the same side.

The bonds between the Syrian people and Palestine

But what are the bonds between the Palestinian and Syrian revolutions that bind to such an extent that anti-Assad Syria is “rallying on the same side as the murderers who are bombing Idlib” as Jarrah puts it, “on the same side” as Assadists and Khameinists loudly proclaiming their alleged solidarity with Palestine and even their laughable “resistance” credentials?

The first point to make is that Syria was a popular revolution, not simply a government with a problem with Israel, or in Ukraine’s case, a government with a problem with Russia. Revolutions by definition throw millions of people into active politics, in a way that leads to organic solidarity with other oppressed people. Their solidarity with Palestine, and their refusal to ever call for Israel’s “help” against Assad, was entirely natural. So was Israel’s refusal to ever offer help, and the great many statements by Israeli leaders and think-tanks that they preferred Assad remain in power compared to the victory of the revolution.

There are a number of points that can be made here regarding the long-term background:

• The Assad regime has always been anti-Palestinian, from the invasion of Lebanon in 1976 to back the right-wing Phalange, leading to Syrian regime facilitation of the huge massacre of Palestinians at Tel al-Zaatar, to the regime’s intervention into the PLO in the early 1980s in an attempt to seize control of the organisation, leading to the joint Syrian-Israeli siege of the PLO in Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon in 1983, and then Syrian regime facilitation of the one-year long war on the Palestinian camps south of Beirut by the Syrian proxy Amal militia in 1985-86.

• The Assad regime’s “resistance” credentials are entirely bogus, even if measured by the already bogus standards of the Iranian theocracy’s alleged “resistance.” In 1971 the Assad regime joined Egypt and Jordan in recognising UN resolution 242, which while calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied by Israel in 1967, made no mention of Palestinian self-determination, treating the Palestinians as a mere refugee problem (and for that reason was rejected by the PLO). The problem however was that once Israel had withdrawn from the Sinai and returned it to Egypt in exchange for the treacherous peace of Camp David in 1978, Israel now felt no pressure to also withdraw from the Golan – on the contrary, in the face of all Assad’s services, Israel annexed the Golan in 1981. With this slap in the face, the regime was forced into a “resistance” persona against its will.

• The Golan is a Syrian issue, not an Assadist issue. One reason (among many) that Israel never offered support to the anti-Assad uprising was that there was never any political force within the Syrian revolution willing to trade the Golan; on the contrary, they made continual statements on Syria’s right to use all legitimate means to regain the Golan. Israeli leaders, for their part, have continually thanked the Assad regime for keeping the ‘border’ with the occupied Golan quiet for decades after 1973.

• Following the move by the consistently counterrevolutionary United Arab Emirates (UAE) to restore relations with both the Assad regime and Israel concurrently (followed in both cases by Bahrain, while Israel’s long-term ally, the Egyptian dictatorship, had already become pro-Assad following al-Sisi’s bloody coup in 2013, and the Jordanian monarchy was on the same dual wavelength), the obvious question arose of Syria joining these allies in the counterrevolutionary bloc. Assad’s response was that it would be entirely possible if Israel returned the Golan, with no mention of “resistance” or Palestine at all: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, it is possible when Israel is ready, but it is not and it was never ready…  Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.” Indeed, the Assad regime was involved in US-sponsored ‘land for peace’ negotiations with Israeli leaders in 1999-2000 and again in 2010-11 over the Golan.
• Israel actively facilitated Assad’s reconquest of the south in 2018, alongside US president Trump and in direct coordination with Russian president Putin.

Regarding the period since the 2011, much has been written about the solidarity between Palestinian refugees in Syria and ordinary Syrians engaged in struggle for dignity and human rights and meeting horrific repression from the regime; the facts of the matter were that they were neighbours, friends, family, and so solidarity was organic. This led quite naturally to the regime treating Palestinian camps like Yarmouk in the same way it treated neighbouring centres of resistance throughout south and east Damascus. The Action Group for Palestinians in Syria has documented some 4000 deaths of Palestinians at the hands of the Assad regime.

What else do they have in common?

• The Palestinian Nakbah has now been joined by a Syrian version; the millions of Palestinian refugees spread around Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, elsewhere in the region and the world now match the millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, northwest and northeast Syria, and elsewhere in the region and the world. In fact, the Assad regime only controls some 40 percent of Syrians – of a pre-war population of 23 million, 6.6 million are refugees; while an equivalent number are internally displaced, including nearly 3 million among a population of 5 million in opposition-controlled northwest Syria and 700,000 among a population of 3 million in SDF-controlled northwest Syria.

• The Assad regime has passed laws (eg Law No. 10, 2018) to legally steal the property of refugees so that if they do return they will have nothing, while making return almost impossible anyway; this is equivalent to Israel stealing the property of Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1948. Some regime leaders openly declare that Syria is better of having been cleansed of these millions, including a leading general who declared Syria would be better off with just 10 million supposedly “loyal” citizens rather than 30 million “vandals.”

• The scale and nature of the genocidal bombing; it is hardly surprising that Israel and Syria have been the numbers one and two in the world for attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities.

Campism past and present

One may think it is straightforward that a leftist, a socialist, an anti-capitalist, would always be on the side of the people, of the oppressed, against the oppressors, the exploiters, the tyrants. Unfortunately, this is not so; since the end of the Cold War, an important wing of the western left began taking the side of tyrants, oppressors, regimes which carry out ethnic cleansing, regimes which represent ultra-wealthy capitalist plutocracies, even rising imperialist powers, as long as they had some kind of perceived conflict with US imperialism. While the internationalist left sees the two sides as oppressed versus oppressors, working people versus capitalist oligarchies, those fighting for liberation versus imperialist, sub-imperialist or neo-colonial oppressors, this campist left see the two ‘camps’ as those allied with US imperialism and everyone allegedly against US imperialism, even if often only rhetorically so, even rival imperialisms.

While in some ways this is a continuation of Cold War campism, in other respects it is worse. During the Cold War, many western socialists identified with the repressive regimes in the USSR, China and elsewhere who claimed to be ‘socialist’ and were ruled by parties called ‘Communist’. Many others, including the political tendency I was part of, rejected any identification of the ideals socialism with such vile anti-socialist dictatorships. However, one could argue there were ‘aspects of socialism’ – the nationalised economies did on the whole mean these societies had less socio-economic inequality, the irrationality of unemployment, endemic to capitalism, was largely absent, health and education were officially free and so on. This certainly did not justify the repressive rule of an unelected clique, let alone the times when it resulted in crimes against humanity. But for hundreds of millions suffering extreme poverty and exploitation in the capitalist ‘Third World’ brutally exploited by western imperialism, it often looked better; and even for those western leftists suffering from delusions, we should remember they lived before the age of the Internet; many honestly believed that the bad stories were just western propaganda, especially a layer of older socialist workers who grew up during the Great Depression and the subsequent role of the USSR in defeating Nazi Germany.

Regardless of how we judge all this, these factors became irrelevant following the collapse of bureaucratic state ‘socialism’ in the early 1990s. None of the regimes that modern-day campists have gone apologist for have even the slightest relation to socialism in theory or in practice; most in fact have a close relationship to fascism ideologically, and internally their repressive regimes defend new ruling classes which are every bit as vile, as exploitative, as any other, in some cases arguably more so. And their crimes against humanity are taking place in the world of the Internet where illusions in tyranny have essentially become irrelevant to common sense. To be feigning support with Palestine and other forms of resistance of to US-backed regimes while finding every excuse in the world for a genocidal tyrant like Assad or for Putin’s monstrous invasion and destruction of Ukraine means not only to abandon all principles, but also to do damage to the Palestinian cause.

Liberal campism and the Ukraine case

But this now brings us back to the liberal form of campism. It should go without saying that opposition to “anti-imperialist” campism must be just as resolutely opposed to any tendencies to abandon internationalism by becoming ‘reverse campists’, and to effectively turn themselves into a left shadow of western liberal imperialism.

When Israel launched its horrific Gaza operation following Hamas’ gruesome attack on October 7, Ukrainian president Zelensky went well beyond merely condemning the atrocities, responding with an absolutely effusive declaration of support for Israel, identifying Ukraine and Israel because “the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine” – as if the Israeli occupation of Palestine and all the decades of terror that have gone with it did not exist. Electronic billboards in Kyiv were lit with the Israeli flag. He even offered to visit Israel to declare support from there (which Israel turned down with a curt “not the right time”).

Zelensky claimed the world must unite “whenever someone takes women hostage and condemns the children of another nation.” However, he has had no words since then for the slaughter of 10,000 Palestinian children of the 23,000 killed as of December 9 in Gaza; according to the Save the Children charity, the number of children killed in Gaza in the first three weeks of Israel’s massacre surpassed the number of children killed in all global conflicts since 2019. While the greatest numbers of children were killed in Syria – the horrific figure of 30,000 over a decade – these figures for Gaza are for the last two months.

As for Zelensky’s care for women, the UN claims that two thirds of all those killed in Gaza have been women and children, and that “every day, 180 women are giving birth without water, painkillers, anaesthesia for Caesarean sections, electricity for incubators or medical supplies, … Mothers, meanwhile, mix baby formula with contaminated water — when they find it — and go without food so that their children can live another day.” 

All this was despite Ukraine’s actually very correct voting record on Palestine since 2015, which has continued since the onset of the Russian invasion, (a stance which Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine called “abnormal”), and has also continued in UN votes since October 7; and also despite Israel’s 18-month resistance to US demands to aid Ukraine’s defence against Russia – which Israel had many years of very close relations with until the current Gaza conflict.

But the issue is not Zelensky – we defend the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression regardless of their political representatives, just as we defend the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation and dispossession regardless of the Fatah and Hamas misleaders. Zelensky was elected by the Ukrainian people and is their legitimate leader, but politically he is a representative of a neoliberal wing (and not a “fascist” wing as often claimed by campist leftists) of Ukrainian capitalism.

The problem was however that a significant number of pro-Ukraine progressives swung behind Zelensky and likewise claimed Israel and Ukraine were similar because both were “attacked.” But this was not just about following Zelensky – this was the result of illusions that had been built up over a period of time among many left progressives and liberals who had correctly condemned the crimes of Assad, of Putin, of the Iranian mullahs, perhaps earlier of Serbian nationalism. Some had begun to see the world through the prism that now Russian and Chinese imperialism were the big bad guys, who supported fellow authoritarian rulers everywhere (as if authoritarianism were an export) and violated international law; and conversely, that while US imperialism had a violent ‘past’ and was ‘inconsistent’, it now mostly supported ‘democracies’ since the end of the Cold War; and while its illegal invasion of Iraq was widely condemned, the US defeat there had led to its global weakening; so therefore the worst enemy was now the other ‘camp’.

This campism tended to accept US president Biden’s claim regarding Ukraine that the US is leading a global struggle for ‘democracy’ against ‘authoritarianism’. It is not, indeed it is not even ‘liberal’ imperialism given the number of reactionary autocracies or apartheid regimes US imperialism supports – fewer than during the Cold War when the US supported virtually every non-Communist dictatorship on Earth, but still a substantial number. Or to accepting the US claim that it is defending an imaginary ‘rules-based international order’ which countries like Russia or China want to violate – this is absurd as anyone knows who is only slightly familiar with issues such as unconditional US support for every Israeli violation of international law for decades, let alone its own constant violations and those of other allies.

It is impressive for example that while the US (like Russia, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other such paragons of ‘legality’) has refused to sign the Rome Statute which would make its illegal actions liable in the International Criminal Court (ICC), it has also used intense pressure to force governments which have signed it – eg, the government of Bosnia – to make an exception of US troops on its territory as part of the post-Bosnian war international peace-keeping force. “Rules-based order”? The US has never heard of one.

Israel’s monstrous war on Palestine since October 2023 should have given a rude shock to such illusions, but in some cases the opposite occurred. Initially, some who leaned towards Israel (not only Ukraine supporters) may have just been responding the Hamas massacre on October 7, but in most cases the fully genocidal nature of Israel’s “response” brought people back to balance. In some cases, liberal campists justify their stand because they rightly abhor some of Israel’s alleged enemies, such as Iran – a position morally as bankrupt as the opposing set of campists who support Palestine while shilling for the repression unleashed by that Iranian regime.

Why the difference between the Syrian and Ukrainian cases?

It is important to stress that this issue is not about “all Ukrainians,” of course, and we should acknowledge the brave stance of so many Ukrainian leftists who have insisted on solidarity with Palestine and on recognising the commonality of the struggles for justice and self-determination in Ukraine and Palestine. But while the similar declarations by Syrian activists coincide with the mood in revolutionary Syria, Ukrainian declarations seem to be largely at odds with mainstream Ukrainian society.

The first point to make is that while in Syria we are talking about a revolutionary upsurge from below, with all the organic solidarity that is endemic to it, in Ukraine’s case we are simply talking about a liberal capitalist government, thrust against its will into having to defend its territory from its rapacious neighbour. While that does not make their struggle any less just, it means the element of natural solidarity in a revolution tends to be eclipsed by more pragmatic concerns.

And the second point flows from this pragmatism; most people, whatever country they live in, are mainly motivated by wanting to stay alive, and hence to give support to whoever is giving support to them, whatever their reasons. And for Ukraine, this contrasts sharply with the case of the Syrian rebels. Since the horrific Russian invasion, it has been western countries, led by the US and the EU, who have provided billions in essential military and economic support, enabling Ukraine to defend itself; it is entirely “rational” therefore to identify with these powers.

While left analysts may well find this tasteless given our knowledge of what the US does elsewhere, and may even find it naïve given the possibility that Ukraine may be sold out by these very powers, it would be the height of the arrogance of comfort to “condemn” this rationality from afar. It does not necessarily mean that average Ukrainians have no sympathy for the plight of Palestine or no criticisms of Israeli conduct, but that on the whole they will tend to interpret this through a particular western-centric lens. It is not the fault of ordinary Ukrainians being bombed by Russia’s invading military that they are dependent on western support; no-one but Putin is responsible for any growth in support for the US or NATO among Ukrainians or other East Europeans.

While Israel’s pronounced lack of support to Ukraine may appear to make Ukrainian support for Israel seem irrational, it is the greater ideological orientation of the Ukrainian leadership of seeing itself as part of “the West” that leads to this support for Israel, which is also seen as part of “the West,” which is after all aggressively supporting Israel. Identifying with the western project called Israel is seen as a means of ensuring ongoing western and US support to Ukraine – something by no means certain.

In addition, while Israel has refused to arm Ukraine or sanction Russia, the Ukrainian government has an interest in pushing Israel into a more pro-Ukrainian position. This is above all because Ukraine desperately needs Israel’s ‘iron dome’ ant-missile technology, for protection against Russian missiles. Israel has banned other countries from sharing Israeli iron dome technology with Ukraine, but Ukraine obviously wants Israel to change this policy. It sees an opening now, when Putin, despite his long-term alliance with Israel and especially with Netanyahu, has since October 7 seen an opening to “play politics” by showcasing Russia as having a more “balanced” view of the Mideast crisis in comparison to the total US support to Israel. While Putin’s target is the US rather than Israel as such, the result has been to damage Russia’s relationship with Israel that Putin has cultivated over so many years.

There is simply no comparison with the situation in Syria. While the Assad regime had often posed as anti-West (mainly due to the Israeli occupation of the Golan) and, two years into the Syrian uprising the US did begin supplying a small trickle of light arms to select groups of Syrian rebels, the differences with Ukraine were stark. The clearest example is that, while Ukraine has been supplied with thousands of anti-aircraft missiles from the first months of war, including even “risky” shoulder-held manpads, which have enabled it to clear the skies of Russian warplanes, and later even modern anti-missile systems, in the case of Syria the US placed CIA agents on the Turkish and Jordanian borders from 2012 onwards to prevent regional states from sending anti-aircraft weapons to the Syrian rebels. This is in a war that had overwhelmingly become a murderous air war launched by the Assad regime against its rebellious populations. This prohibition on anti-aircraft weaponry continued throughout the entire war, and is arguably one of the most decisive causes of Assad’s victory.

Even the light arms the US did eventually allow to get to the rebels were, quite deliberately, far too few to change the balance in their conflict with Assad, and were therefore aimed primarily at co-optation; they eventually came with a price, namely that the US demanded the rebels it armed only use the arms to fight ISIS as part of the US “war on terror” in Syria, and quit the fight against the Assad regime. Of course the Syrian rebels were happy to fight ISIS, which they had already been doing on a large scale with no US support, but they refused to drop the fight against the regime, which was not only the main enemy, but which they also saw as the cause of the rise of ISIS as a symptom of the murderous Assadist reality.

Furthermore, even if all this meant that a little aid came the rebels way via the US, the strongly pro-Assad position of Israel, as has been well-documented above (and below), meant there was simply never going to be any convincing ‘pro-West’ orientation within the Syrian rebellion, other than routine appeals, which mostly fell on deaf ears, to alleged western support to democracy and the like.

The main states supporting the Syrian rebels therefore were regional states, in particularly Qatar and Turkey, and for a time Saudi Arabia. Qatar and Turkey throughout this period were also among the strongest supporters of the Palestinian struggle, even if their aims were also a kind of co-optation, as both saw Syria and Palestine as two legs of their regional Muslim Brotherhood-based moderate Islamist strategy (they also supported for example the post-revolution Morsi government in Egypt, until overthrown by the military dictatorship of al-Sisi, who was backed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel and the Assad regime).

As such, the Syrian revolution, whatever guarded vocal western sympathy it may have attracted, was always connected to regional realities, especially given is place within the region-wide upsurge of the Arab Spring.

The case of Iran: ‘Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I’ll give my life for Iran’?

To these contrasting Syrian and Ukrainian cases, we may add the case of the magnificent Iranian ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ (Jin Jiyan Azadî) uprising against the clerical dictatorship which has rocked Iran over the last year since the regime murder of Mahsa Amini, who regime thugs was not wearing her veil properly. On November 14, 250 Jin Jiyan Azadi activists released a statement in solidarity with the Palestinian people resisting Zionist slaughter. This is despite the fact that the regime killing them loudly proclaims its anti-Zionist credentials.

Likewise, from her prison cell, Iranian dissident and Nobel Prize winner, Narges Mohammadi, called for a ceasefire on November 2, denouncing “attacks on innocent people, hostage taking, killing of women, children & non-combatants ,targeting of hospitals, missile strikes on residential areas.”

However, the view of ordinary Iranians and the majority of the protest movement is less clear. On the one hand, like Syrians they are tied into the region in a way that Ukrainians are not; and like Syrians, they have been engaged in revolutionary activity which often opens people to solidarity with other struggling peoples. On the other hand they do not have the immediate connection to Palestine that Syrian people do and hence their main connection is via the discourse of the hated regime. In addition, the Iranian regime has made loud and aggressive-sounding “destroy Israel” noise central to its dominant “revolutionary” discourse for decades (a stand possible due to significant geographic distance from Israel) in a way that poses ‘Iran versus Israel’ as the dominant regional paradigm in popular understanding – despite them never having fought a war – which contrasts sharply with the more demonstratively bogus “anti-Zionism” of the Assad regime.

This has led to a significant degree of cynicism about the regime’s position and often therefore to a reaction against it among ordinary Iranians opposed to the regime. Pro-regime journalist Nasser Imani recently acknowledged that many Iranians “stand against whatever the Islamic Republic favors, and support whatever the Islamic Republic opposes.” We should be cautious in assuming that such stands are necessarily anti-Palestinian rather than simply anti-regime. However, it must be stressed that there is an additional problem in the Iranian case: attempting to ride on the back of the popular upsurge in Iran are a gaggle of supporters of the reactionary Iranian monarchy which was overthrown in 1979, and these pro-Shah forces are explicitly pro-Israel, aiming to revive the Israel-Iran alliance against the Arab world the dominated the decades of 1953-1979. Most of the Iranian protest movement reject any alignment with these monarchist forces, but they may exert a certain insidious influence.

“Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon: I’ll give my life for Iran” was a slogan raised in some earlier episodes of anti-regime uprising in Iran. While this sounds anti-internationalist, and no doubt for many the cynicism of the regime has led to such rejection of solidarity, for others it may more simply indicate rejection of the regime’s use of alleged solidarity with the struggles of those far away to justify its own repression at home. Notably, the regime has used the fog of its supposed Gaza solidarity to execute 176 prisoners in just the two months following October 7. In late November, this included “a Jin Jîyan Azadî protester, a Kurdish political prisoner, a political prisoner from the 1980s and another protester arrested during the mass protests of 2019.”

It is also important to point out that the slogan was first raised not during the current Gaza genocide nor even during the Mahsa Amini uprising since 2022, but during the mass uprising of 2017-18 (Iran has experienced continual periods of civil uprising since the 2009 ‘Green Revolution’). And at that time, the full slogan was “not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran” and “leave Syria, think about us.” This is very important because in calling on the regime to “leave Syria” they were raising an internationalist slogan, as the Iranian regime was directly playing a murderous counterrevolutionary role in aiding the Assad regime’s mass butchery in Syria, so akin to Israel’s Gaza operations. It could not be difficult for Iranian people to associate the regime’s monstrous actual role in Syria with its other symbolic “causes.”

This monstrous regime is no ally. Indeed, Iran has made very clear in any case that it will not come to the aid of Gaza, preferring to ideologically capitalise through the small-scale actions of Lebanese or Yemeni proxies or allies, knowing that any Israeli revenge will fall on them rather than Iran. More generally, the regime has gone out of its way to emphasise it does not want “escalation,” that it had no connection to Hamas’ actions on October 7, that it views attacking civilians negatively (quite a sensational claim for a regime that slaughters its own civilians, and Syrian civilians in huge numbers), and so on – all quite sensible things to say actually, but which also call into question what decades of “resistance” rhetoric were about if the Gaza genocide changes nothing; yet at the same time the regime manages to combine this with occasional bouts of sensationally hollow rhetoric, like its recent “threat” to block the Mediterranean Sea! But if a bloody dictatorship mainly uses someone else’s struggle and suffering to cover up its own killing at home, it is not an ally that the oppressed should ever expect anything of (and if, in an alternative reality, such an oppressive regime did enter the conflict, who would that help?). 

As such, the cynicism of many Iranians towards the regime’s discourse cannot necessarily be dismissed as anti-Palestinian – but in any case, statements such as the one above are important in helping orient the Iranian anti-dictatorship movement. 

Notably, despite Iranian rhetoric, Palestinians’ positive views on Iran remained stuck at around 30 percent in October 2023, no higher than in 2022, in contrast to 63 percent who viewed Iran either somewhat or very negatively, and then rose only to 35 percent by late November in the midst of Israel’s genocidal war.

The absurdity of campism: ‘Camps’ do not exist

A final note: even on its own premises, campism has no logic; as noted above, the alleged ‘camps’ do not exist, and therefore campism is nonsense as well as politically bankrupt. Some rulers who eventually fell out with US imperialism for tactical reasons, such as Milosevic, Assad and Putin, were at other times on excellent terms with it, and extensively collaborated; this even continued at a certain level when relations had soured; and too many states simply cannot be classified as being on any one ‘side’, even assuming these ‘sides’, meaning major powers, are always in conflict, itself a huge fallacy. Let’s consider some examples:

• US ally Israel’s extensive collaboration with Russia in Syria, and more than decade-long Putin-Netanyahu love-fest in particular; Russia, in control of Syria’s air defence system, explicitly allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets for years. Yet Russia and Iran were considered to be in the same ‘camp’ backing Assad.
• Israel’s continually stated preference for Assad to remain in power, something it had in common with its Iranian enemy
• Israel’s past alliance with Serbian chauvinist leader Slobodan Milosevic and Serbian nationalism, when the US verbally opposed Milosevic; Israel was one of the few countries that kept the Bosnian Serb reactionaries armed
• the strong support for the reactionary Russian-backed Assad regime from pro-US reactionary Arab regimes such as Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, who, incidentally, along with Jordan, welcomed the onset of Russian bombing of Syria to save Assad, as did Israel, of course
• the close collaboration of the UAE with Russia and the Wagner paramilitary in a series of imperialist ventures in Africa
• the fact that it is the exact same group of reactionary Arab states – UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Sudan, Jordan – which have been leading Arab rapprochement with both Israel and the Assad regime in the same period
• the close Saudi-Russian relationship in OPEC, which has continually resulted in production cuts, keeping prices high, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite continual US pressure on the Saudis to do the opposite
• the burgeoning Gulf state-China relationship, symbolised by the lavish welcome to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Riyadh followed some months later by China’s sponsorship of the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement
• the fact that China’s Monroe Doctrine-style aggression in the South China Sea has as its main victim Vietnam, the very country that fought US imperialism to a standstill
• the alliance of far-right rulers of sub-imperialist states India and Brazil, Modi and Bolsonaro, with both Russian and US imperialism, and in particular with both Trump and Putin; and the similar position of Hungary’s far-right Orban regime, Putin’s best friend in NATO, which, as an unwavering Israel ally as well, was also one of only four European countries and of 14 countries globally to vote No to the October 27 UN ceasefire vote.

The list is endless; it could make up an entire article, or even book; campism is as false in its own logic as it is morally and politically repugnant. But we will just end this with a note about Palestinian views. Surveys have shown that majorities in countries all over the world sympathise with Ukraine rather than Russia, including in countries throughout the Global South where many of the reactionary elites adopted a pro-Russian or ‘neutralist’ position due to their sub-imperial positioning. I have dealt with this here. Yet Palestinians might be one nation where we could expect the pervasive hypocrisy of western governments to be so overwhelming that a majority may adopt a pro-Russian position simply out of somewhat justified spite. It would be even more understandable given Zelensky’s pro-Israeli statements. Yet in a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in April 2022, the greatest number of Palestinians – 40.2 percent – believed that “Russia is waging an unjust war against its neighbour” (compared to the lower, but still understandably high, figure of 32.3 percent of Palestinians who believed Russia had a right to invade). This demonstrates the humanity of Palestine’s anti-colonial struggle is able to shine through and identify with another victim of colonial dispossession and extermination, despite the pervasive western hypocrisy. Western leftists need to remember that Palestinians are people, not just their ‘project’; they are just as capable as other people of weighing complex issues.

And a comparison with issues raised in Australia’s recent referendum

By Michael Karadjis

_{The slogan in the photo on the top means the same as that on the bottom.}

This slogan, raised at pro-Palestine demonstrations around the world, has attracted a great deal of ignorant criticism. In media commentary, on talk shows, the slogan is attacked as a call for “the destruction of Israel,” evidence that the Palestinians do not want peace and reject any compromise with Israel, or even more colourfully, a call for “genocide”, for “driving the Jews into the sea.”

The only Palestinian in the US Congress, Rashida Tlaib, was condemned in a vote by the majority of US “law”makers for using the slogan, while they actively encourage and facilitate an actual genocide against the Palestinians, as Tlaib had earlier noted. The censure resolution called the phrase “a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” [my emphasis]. Tlaib responded eloquently to this disgraceful slander here.

Similarly, Australian rightwing commentator Peta Credlin falsely asserted in the November 12 Daily Telegraph that “tens of thousands of Australians have been marching in favour of what would amount to a new Holocaust, the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of millions of Jews ‘from the river to the sea’.”

From the river to the sea refers to the entire historic area of Palestine, ie, from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. This entire area is currently ruled by Israel, either as ‘Israel proper’, as the occupied Palestinian West Bank, or as the besieged and sealed off Gaza concentration camp for Palestinians, currently being bombed to ash.

In other words, right now, the state of Israel, which is a state of the Jewish people (according to the ‘Declaration of Independence’, the Basic Laws and the nation-state law), rules ‘from the river to the sea’ as an apartheid state, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem and even former Israeli ambassadors to Apartheid South Africa. Moreover, the view that Israel must rule everywhere from the river to the sea and not allow any Palestinian mini-state is engraved into the charter of prime minister Banjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Likud Party and all the other parties of the dominant Israeli right.

So, the first question is, do those critics of the slogan when raised by Palestinians also condemn the actual racist imposition of Israeli rule everywhere ‘from the river to the sea’, and do they recognise that long-term, incremental genocide against the Palestinian people has been the actual practice in this region for 75 years, and not a mere slogan?

And the second question is, given that the Palestinian people are Indigenous to this entire region between the river and the sea, and still live, despite Israeli efforts, in all parts of it, why are you offended by a slogan that calls for Palestinians living everywhere from the river to the sea to be “free”? Do you believe that Palestinians should only be free in some parts of Palestine, and slaves in other parts? Where do you recommend Palestinians not be free?

Is it really a difficult or genocidal concept that in no part of Palestine should Palestinians continue to be unfree, occupied, dispossessed, locked in bantustans, daily humiliated, starved, daily killed with impunity, and every couple of years massacred in large numbers and buried under rubble?

If you think that Palestinians everywhere being free requires Jews going “into the sea,” then you ought to both read up on the actual long-term program of the Palestinian liberation movement, as well as broadening your political horizons and imagination.

At the same time, if you merely think that Palestinians everywhere being free means “the destruction of Israel,” then perhaps you might want to define what you mean by “Israel” and what it is about Israel that may be “destroyed” by Palestinian freedom, because in a sense you are right – freedom for Palestinians from the river to the sea, equal rights for all inhabitants – Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, Israelis and Palestinians – would indeed “destroy” a sectarian state based explicitly on Jewish supremacy.

When black South Africans fought for freedom in South Africa, they did not specify that they should only be free in certain bantustans as defined by the apartheid authorities. Their victory for black freedom throughout every part of the land did indeed lead to the “destruction” of the white-supremacist apartheid state of South Africa, with the establishment of equal political rights for all; it did not require “genocide” of white South Africans by “driving them into the sea.”

The context of the discussion

Alright, I hear. But that is just some ideal, surely the reality is that when the Palestinians raise that slogan, they “really” mean Palestine all for themselves. “Where would the Israelis go?” I often hear, from so many who are not well-read on the last half-century’s history. And even if some admit that Israeli leaders are “just as bad,” that doesn’t matter; whether used by right-wing Israelis or Palestinian freedom fighters, the slogan rejects the holy grail of the … “two-state solution,” which, apparently, is “the only game in town.”

A few pointers on this, to be elaborated on below:

• The “reality” is that it is the Palestinians who have always called for an equal democratic state everywhere ‘from the river to the sea’, since the 1960s, and it is Israeli leaders, of all political stripes, who have always rejected it.

• The “two-state solution” – ie a division of the region ‘from the river to the sea’ into ‘Israel’ with 78 percent of the land and ‘Palestine’ with 22 percent of it – when the populations living there are roughly equal now, and even this does not include the millions of refugees from the 1948 Nakbah – is so self-evidently far from a just solution that I don’t see why it needs explaining; yet, despite that …

• … it has been the Palestinian leadership that has long ago accepted the two-state scenario, in some form since the 1970s, whether as a stepping stone to the optimal solution, or a “solution” in itself, while it has been Israel that has always rejected it and actively worked to destroy any possibility of it.

• Because even though it is a manifestly unfair proposal to Palestine, if combined with the right of return of Palestinian refugees to the ‘Israeli’ 78 percent of the land, and full equality for Palestinians who reside there (they are currently second-class citizens), it could still be a modified version of Palestinian freedom ‘from the river to the sea’; and any sovereign state of the Indigenous population with the name Palestine (as opposed to a string of semi-autonomous bantustans), even on a small area, still politically threatens the idea that the land belongs to Israel.

We also need to remember: there is no equality in all this discussion: Palestinians are the Indigenous people of all Palestine; Israel exists as a result of the colonial dispossession of the Palestinian people since 1948. Surely, it should not be up to the Palestinians to continually be forced to “accept” Israel’s, their coloniser’s, “right to exist” as a condition for Palestinian freedom or even as a condition for merely opening discussion of the possibility of an emasculated Palestinian mini-state; rather, it should be the colonising power prevailed upon to recognise the sovereignty of the Palestinian people in Palestine.

In the 1947 UN plan to partition Palestine, the one third of the population who were by then Jewish immigrants (alongside a small Indigenous Jewish population) were awarded 56 percent of the land; the two-thirds Palestinian majority were awarded 43 percent; and so naturally the Palestinians rejected this outrageous proposition. It is worthwhile noting that in 1946 the Arab governments had proposed an alternative plan: a united democratic state where “all citizens would be represented in the guarantee of civil and political rights” where Jews would have a “permanent and secure position in the country with full participation in its political life on a footing of absolute equality with the Arabs.”

Israel reacted with the 1948 Nakbah, or Palestinian catastrophe, carried out via massive ethnic cleansing, a string of horrific massacres and expulsions, and the destruction of 400 towns, during which the new state of Israel expanded its rule to 78 percent of Palestine, while of the remaining 22 percent, the West Bank went under Jordanian control and Gaza under Egyptian control. The 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed were never allowed to return, despite UN Resolution 194 of 1948 which demands it; they and their descendants now number nearly 10 times that figure.

‘For a democratic, secular Palestine’ for Christians, Muslims and Jews – al-Fatah, 1969

After Israel attacked all its neighbours in 1967 and seized the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza (as well as the Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian Golan), it created a new situation, by bringing all of historic Palestine together under one government – a government that did not represent them.

In the face of this, Yassir Arafat’s al-Fateh organisation, which had become the dominant faction within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), in January 1969 put forward the historic Palestinian program “for a progressive, democratic, secular Palestine in which Christian, Moslem and Jew will worship, work, live peacefully and enjoy equal rights.” This was adopted by the 5^th Palestine National Council (PNC) in February 1969 as “an independent democratic society in Palestine for all Palestinians, Moslems, Christians and Jews.” These formulations meant for all of Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’. Counterposed to the Zionist program of Israeli Jewish supremacy for the river to the sea.

_{From the Address by the al-Fateh delegation to the Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples, Cairo, January 1969.}

Then in May 1969, another of the PLO’s major organisations, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, put forward a slightly different version of the same: ‘dismantling the Zionist entity and establishing a popular, democratic Palestinian state in which Arabs and Jews would live together without discrimination,” ie from the river to the sea, emphasising the two national groups rather than the three religions. Whichever way you look at it, a profoundly democratic solution.

This is the historic Palestinian program, never renounced; it is not recent, it is well over half a century old. The slander about Palestinians wanting to “drive the Jews into the sea” simply has no relation to anything. Try not to parrot it, unless you want to look like an ignoramus.

Given the brutal Israeli military occupation, armed struggle to achieve this democratic, secular Palestine was the natural recourse of the Palestinian resistance, as has always been the case in anti-colonial struggles, and is a right recognised by the UN.

However, in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, PLO leader Yassir Arafat offered the “olive branch” as an alternative the “gun” as a road to achieve this vision, using the language of invitation to the Israeli Jewish population to walk together down the path of peace:

“ … Why therefore should I not dream and hope? For is not revolution the making real of dreams and hopes? So let us work together that my dream may be fulfilled, that I may return with my people out of exile, there in Palestine to live with this Jewish freedom-fighter and his partners, with this Arab priest and his brothers, in one democratic State where Christian, Jew and Muslim live in justice, equality and fraternity.

“Let us remember that the Jews of Europe and the United States have been known to lead the struggles for secularism and the separation of Church and State. They have also been known to fight against discrimination on religious grounds. How can they then refuse this humane paradigm for the Holy Land? How then can they continue to support the most fanatic, discriminatory and closed of nations in its policy?

“In my formal capacity as Chairman of the PLO and leader of the Palestinian revolution I proclaim before you that when we speak of our common hopes for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination.’

“In my formal capacity as Chairman of the PLO and leader of the Palestinian revolution I call upon Jews to turn away one by one from the illusory promises made to them by Zionist ideology and Israeli leadership. They are offering Jews perpetual bloodshed, endless war and continuous thraldom.

“We offer them the most generous solution, that we might live together in a framework of just peace in our democratic Palestine.”

He ended this Martin Luther King style speech announcing that “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

Origins of the Palestinian mini-state strategy

But of course, power in today’s imperialist world being what it is, sometimes the oppressed learn that a degree of pragmatism is required, whether just or not. Israel and the United States rejected this idea of a democratic state with equal rights for all peoples of Israel/Palestine; and it was a tough sell to convince the majority of Israeli Jews, who were already privileged with an ethno-supremacist state to themselves in 80 percent of Palestine, to share it with the Palestinian people on a democratic basis as proposed by the PLO.

As a result, we saw the rise of the concept of a Palestinian mini-state established in any part of Palestine that could be liberated first. This was heralded by the DFLP, which in July 1971 called for the setting up of “a dependable, liberated fulcrum in the occupied territories that would ensure the continuity of the Palestinian revolution.” The PLO’s ‘10-Point Program’, accepted at the 12^th Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting of June 1974, on the one hand, continued to reject UN Resolution 242 (signed by Egypt, Jordan and Syria) which treated the Palestinian issue merely as a refugee problem rather than one of national self-determination. However, some of the language did begin to hint that a mini-state could be accepted in part of Palestine as a phase in the struggle for the whole.

In particular, Point 2 reads:

“The Palestine Liberation Organization will employ all means, and first and foremost armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian territory and to establish the independent combatant national authority for the people over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated. This will require further changes being effected in the balance of power in favor of our people and their struggle.”

Point 3 did emphasise that the PLO would reject any deal that forced it to recognise Israel or forfeit the right of return of Palestinian refugees or their right to self-determination; and Point 4 emphasised that “any step taken towards liberation is a step towards the realization of the Liberation Organization’s strategy of establishing the democratic Palestinian State specified in the resolutions of the previous Palestinian National Councils,” ie, a democratic, secular Palestine from the river to the sea.

However, since Point 2 noted that the struggle would be conducted by “all means,” even if armed struggle was then considered “first and foremost,” there was much to play with. The idea of establishing a Palestinian authority over any part of Palestine that can be liberated first was generally understood to mean the 22 percent of Palestine newly occupied by Israel  in 1967, ie, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza; and it was clear that armed struggle was necessary to evict the illegal Israeli occupation from these territories; while the implication that other forms of struggle could be used came to be understood to mean that, if a Palestinian authority were established in the 1967 territories, then the ongoing struggle for the democratisation of the 78 percent ‘1948 Israel’, and for the right to return of Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed in 1948 to all of Palestine, could take the road of civil and political resistance, negotiations, diplomatic struggle, over a longer period. So while full “peace” with Israel, “recognition” of Israel, was out of the question, effectively a long term truce could be established.

While all this is only implied in the 1974 program, the wording was necessarily a compromise between various PLO organisations. In practice, Arafat’s dominant al-Fatah organisation and PLO organisations allied to it (eg at that time, the DFLP) were interpreting this in the most generous way by the late 1970s (while a ‘Rejection Front’ of more radical PLO organisations opposed to any compromise also formed). The DFLP again pioneered the change in 1975 with its call for “a fully sovereign Palestinian nation-state under the leadership of the PLO” in the occupied territories, coupled with the right to return of refugees to all parts of Palestine. The 13^th PNC of 1977 upgraded the “fighting authority” of the 12^th PNC with Palestinians establishing “their own independent national State over their national soil.” In addition, the PNC emphasised “the importance of connecting and coordinating with the Jewish progressive and democratic forces inside and outside the occupied homeland, that struggle against Zionism.”

The PLO manoeuvrers with the ‘two-state solution’

But if even the most ‘moderate’ wing of the PLO still had its very strict red-lines (right of return, mini-state only a stage to full liberation and hence no recognition of ‘Israel’), soon after the mini-state direction was seized on by the Arab states, the Soviet Union and its allies and later by west European countries, and hardened into the two-state “solution”, which implied a permanent situation. In this view, if Israel allowed a Palestinian state to be set up in the 22 percent of Palestine legally deemed “occupied territories,” this should lead to mutual recognition between this large Israel and small Palestine, and the right of return of refugees to Israel itself was gradually downgraded – either to the return of “some” and “compensation” for others, or omitted altogether. This full-scale “two-state solution” could indeed be viewed as abandonment of Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea.”

In between these two positions, the PLO-Fatah leadership knew it needed to diplomatically manoeuvre. Its position was essentially that if the Palestinian armed and diplomatic struggle could establish a democratic secular mini-state along with winning the right to return of refugees to the ‘Israel’ state, and a civil struggle within ‘Israel’ to end the ethnocratic, racist state and replace it with a democratic secular state succeeded, there would be no point having two democratic, secular states, so perhaps they would eventually form one; the return of refugees to Israel and “equality for Palestinian Arabs in Israel” will “eventually lead to an ultimate resolution of the Palestinian national question through the establishment of a single unified, democratic state on the entire land of Palestine, where equality will prevail between all citizens regardless of their ethnic, religious, or national backgrounds, including equality between the sexes.”

The co-existence of the two states with a truce but with civil struggle for democracy may even be a necessary stage to win sufficient numbers of the Israeli working classes away from the paranoia that Zionist ideology is based on.

Looking back, many liberals claim that the PLO’s gradual acceptance of some kind of two-state scenario was a welcome abandonment of ‘from the river to the sea’, so if anyone raises that slogan today they must be extremists aiming to ‘wipe out Israel’ etc; likewise, many left critics, including within the PLO, also saw it as a capitulation and a rejection of liberation from the river to the sea.

However, looked at in the way described above, the PLO’s gradual acceptance of a two-state transition phase was not an abandonment of Palestinian freedom From the River to the Sea; but the essential component is the maintenance of the right to return of refugees from 1948.

In January 1976, a resolution (S/11940) was put to the UN Security Council by a number of Global South states calling for an independent state in Palestine in the occupied territories following Israeli withdrawal and recognition of “all states in the area.” The PLO expressed support for this motion, which was vetoed by the US (France supported the resolution while the UK abstained). Likewise, the PLO looked favourably at UN General Assembly Resolution 35/207 in 1980, which alongside its annual calls for full Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967 and return of refugees, added support for the “establishment of its [the Palestinian people’s] independent state in Palestine.” The PLO also expressed support for similar proposals by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1981, which included that Israeli withdrawal and the establishment of a Palestinian mini-state should result in “the safeguarding of the right of all States in the region to security, independent existence and development; the termination of the state of war and the establishment of peace between the Arab States and Israel.” These formulations left the 78 percent of Palestine to Israel (albeit with ongoing non-military struggle for democracy and refugee return). So this potentially massive concession sounds even less like “driving the Jews into the sea.”

Of course, Israel has always refused to withdraw from the occupied territories, and rejected any Palestinian state even in one inch of Palestine; and since the 1970s has gradually filled the West Bank with gun-toting, fanatic religious “settlers” (Israeli colonists) who steal large chunks of Palestinian land and murder with impunity, signifying Israel’s maximalist claim to the whole of Palestine. Indeed, it calls the West Bank ‘Judea and Samaria’, names for these regions from ancient Israeli history thousands of years ago. In 1980, Israel committed an act of international banditry when it formally annexed (as opposed to merely ‘occupying’) Palestinian East Jerusalem, which it had illegally seized in 1967 (it also annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, which is sovereign Syrian territory).

And since that time, Israel has been fully backed by the US in this arch-rejectionist position, even as most EU states have gradually adopted a two-state position; and both Israel and the US rejected any dealing with the PLO, which had been recognised by all Arab states (and by the UN General Assembly) as the “sole, legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people. While no country in the world recognised Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, or recognised it as Israel’s new “capital,” the Trump administration in the US finally made this highly illegal move in 2017, and the current Biden administration has not rescinded this gross violation of international law.

To re-state: since the late 1970s, Israel and the US have been the rejectionist states in relation to what became the international consensus, voted for overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly every year, ie, that there should be a sovereign Palestine state with Jerusalem as its capital on 22 percent of Palestine – as if allowing the Indigenous people of their land a state on only one fifth of their land were some great generous concession to the Palestinians!

The Fez peace plan and the Palestinian Declaration of Independence

In 1982, following Israel’s horrifically murderous 3-month war against the Palestinians in Lebanon, the 12th Arab League Summit took place in the Saudi city Fez and put forward the Fez peace plan, for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital, in exchange for implicit Arab recognition of Israel in its legal borders (ie, 78 percent of Palestine), the statement including “guarantees of peace between all States of the region, including the independent Palestinian State.” It called for the “inalienable and imprescriptible national rights” of the Palestinians without explicitly calling for return, but added a call for “the indemnification of those who do not desire to return,” implying those who did desire to must be allowed to. The PLO, and every Arab state except Gaddafi’s Libya, signed on to the plan.

Of course, this was met with Israeli and US rejection, and Israel made this graphic by immediately organising and facilitating the Sabra-Shatilla massacre of 3000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, via its proxy far-right Lebanese Phalange (the massacre was led by Elie Hobeika, later head of the pro-Assad wing of the Phalange).

The Palestinian Declaration of Independence (written by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish) was proclaimed by Yasser Arafat on 15 November 1988 in Algiers, at the conclusion of the 19^th Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting which had adopted this declaration by overwhelming majority. Significantly, the declaration cites UN resolution 181 of 1947 which had originally partitioned Palestine into a 56 percent Jewish state and 43 percent Arab’ state, thereby implicitly recognising Israel. This could actually be interpreted as an advance on the mini-state idea in today’s conditions, a claim for 43 percent of Palestine (including right of return to the rest) would be a far more just solution than the mere 22 percent given the relative population numbers between Israelis and Palestinians from the river to the sea; in practice though it tended to mean a more forceful attempt to achieve recognised Palestinian sovereignty on the 22 percent deemed “occupied.” Notably, in the spirit still of 1969, the declaration referred to Palestine being the “land of the three monotheistic faiths.”

In the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian declaration of independence was acknowledged (Resolution 43/177) by the overwhelming majority of member-states, with just two voting against: the US and Israel.

This was a hopeful time: in late 1987, the first Palestinian Intifada had broken out; thousands of Palestinian youth confronted the Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza with stones, but no guns; Israel of course reacted with mass murder. The world began to see a different Israel and Palestine. However, two world-historic events – the collapse of the East bloc and the USSR in 1989-1991, and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the US-led war to defeat it in 1991, had catastrophic impacts on Palestine for reasons beyond the scope of this essay.

The fateful Oslo Accords

The result was further accommodation, despite the bold declaration of 1988; in 1993, the PLO/Fatah leadership accepted the Oslo process, involving recognition of Israel in exchange for a powerless Palestinian authority in just a fraction of the occupied territories from which Israel withdrew its troops (but not its overall control). Of course, this assumed this was only the first step, and that it would be followed by negotiations with Israel and the US over final borders, the status of Jerusalem, the question of refugees and so on, with the expectation that Israel would gradually withdraw from more and more of Palestine. In other words, the official PLO position was still for a Palestinian state in the full 22 percent; but whichever way one looks at it, it was a further massive concession to recognise Israel based entirely on trust.

While all former PLO support for the two-state scenario included the right of return of refugees to all Palestine/Israel – hence not necessarily contradicting ‘from the river to the sea’ – Oslo may be described as the first time the PLO/Fatah leadership effectively forfeited this. Of course, they continued to insist this was their policy, but by recognising Israel while the refugee issue was simply relegated to some future ‘final status’ talks, they were effectively relying on Israel’s good will on an issue Israel had always rejected.

Therefore those claiming now that the PLO had abandoned ‘from the river to the sea’ with the two-state ‘solution’, and that today it is only an ‘extremist’ or ‘Hamas’ slogan, are thereby glorifying the Oslo total capitulation as the model for peace. Importantly, Oslo was not only rejected by all other PLO components, but also met rejection from within Fatah, even from within the Fatah leadership. There is no doubt that the overwhelming consensus within the broader Palestinian liberation movement rejects the Oslo capitulation and continues to see Palestine as stretching from the river to the sea, whatever form it may take.

Of course, as many warned, Israel simply took full advantage, refusing to ever discuss any of these final status issues, and instead filling up the West Bank and Jerusalem with hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli colonisers (now some 700,000) who have stolen half the territory and live like kings surrounding the separated, locked-in Palestinian bantustans where the Palestinian ‘Authority’ has zero real authority, where the people have zero rights within apartheid Israel, are constantly dispossessed, expelled, humiliated at checkpoints, and killed with impunity. It was this total and absolute Israeli betrayal of the false promises of Oslo that led directly to the outbreak of the second, much more violent, Intifada in 2000, and the rise of Hamas, a radical ‘Islamist’ formation outside of the PLO whose ideology and actions (initially its suicide bombings) would act to erode the PLO’s message of peace and co-existence since 1969 – to the advantage of the Israeli regime who used this as an ultra-hypocritical excuse to proclaim that it has no “partner in peace” from Palestine!

The ’Generous Offer’ charade of 2000

One important incident should be dealt with here: the claim often made by Zionists and their supporters that the PLO was offered “95 percent” of what they wanted by US president Clinton and Israeli Prime minister Ehud Barak in 2000, but Arafat “walked away” from this “generous offer” and instead instigated the second Intifada.

The first issue is whether Arafat would have had any right to accept “95 percent” of what was only 22 percent of Palestine, when half the population of the region were now Palestinians, and – as made clear by Barak – with no right of return of the millions of refugees from the 1948 Nakbah. Surely, by any sense of fairness, any territorial compromise should be from the side that owns 78 percent of ethnically cleansed Palestine.

Secondly, the 95 percent figure did not include East Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley or the Israeli settlements, meaning it was more like 70 percent of the occupied territories, or about 15 percent of Palestine.

Third, the omission in the eyes of the illegal occupation regime of annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem is crucial. Israel had proclaimed this city to be its eternal “undivided” capital, rejecting either dividing or even sharing East Jerusalem (the idea of East Jerusalem as a shared capital of two states has been raised in many peace proposals). For anyone who has read about the situation beyond surface level, or has been there, it is clear that East Jerusalem is not optional to a Palestinian state, it is the geographic, economic and cultural heart of the West Bank; all roads lead to Jerusalem. Omitting Jerusalem simply means bantustanisation. Besides, annexed East Jerusalem had been expanded by Israel to some 70 square kilometres, with surrounding Israeli settlements choking the city considered also off-limits to Palestine. 

In fact, as Naseer Aruri, chancellor professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, explains, “the myth of the “generous offer” consisted of four enclaves, bisected by illegally built colonial settlements and bypass roads for Jews only, that would have prevented the Palestinians from ever establishing a viable, independent and contiguous state in any area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Although the four cantons (northern West Bank, central West Bank, southern West Bank and Gaza) may have been called a “state”, the requirements of nation-states were sorely missing. It would have been a state without sovereignty, without geographic continuity and lacking control over its borders, airspace and economic and water resources. In fact, it would have consisted of 64 clusters as islands in the midst of Israel — a “state” existing within Israel, but not alongside Israel.”

Clearly, Clinton and Barak had aimed at Palestinian rejection of this appalling “offer.”

_{The reality of Israel’s “generous offer” at Camp David in 2000.}

The Arab Peace Plan

The Saudi-launched Arab Peace Plan of 2002, again endorsed by the entire Arab League including the PLO, essentially re-stated the Fez Plan, but this time made recognition of Israel explicit and declared the Arab-Israeli conflict would be “over” if Israel withdrew from the territories it occupied in 1967 (including the Syrian Golan Heights) and allowed a Palestinian state there with East Jerusalem as its capital. On refugees, it merely called for “a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.”

Of course, this was rejected by Israel and the US.

So clearly, decades later, Israel and the US are still the rejectionist states; the Palestinian leadership still officially aims for Palestinian freedom from the river to the sea in the most accommodating way possible; and in practice this is much worse, as the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority evolved under Oslo into little more than a tool of the Israeli occupation within the bantustans it is empowered to run, launching ‘security’ crackdowns on more militant Palestinian activists.

Hamas

But what then of Hamas? Surely Hamas – Islamic Resistance Movement – aims for an “Islamic Palestine’ and is therefore also a rejectionist force? A rejectionist force born of Israeli colonisation, dispossession and brutality and PA accommodation, but rejectionist nevertheless, and in a way that threatens the Israeli Jewish population. Its early rhetoric and actions and its charter certainly suggest this.

While this would need a separate article to deal with, it is important to note in this context that Hamas would hardly be the first resistance organisation on Earth which began ‘extreme’ and then accommodated to reality. Notably, when this Arab Peace Plan was put up at the next Arab League Summit at Riyadh in 2007, and again re-endorsed by all states, Hamas, which had been elected to head the Palestinian Authority, abstained but did not vote against (Israel again rejected it as a non-starter).

This vote was not in isolation. Hamas renounced its suicide bombing in 2003, then more decisively in 2005, defeated Fatah in nationwide elections in 2006 for the Palestinian Authority, and put forward the famous ‘Hudna’, or ceasefire, proposals. Basically the Hudna is the same as the two-state proposal, but with long-term ceasefire replacing full peace with recognition. Hamas stated that the armed struggle was necessary to liberate the West Bank and Gaza, but if a Palestinian mini-state were established there with Jerusalem as its capital, Hamas would institute a 10-year ceasefire with Israel which could be extended to decades if Israel kept the peace, during which time civil struggle would continue for Palestinian freedom (including return) in Israel. This went hand in hand with statements by major Hamas leaders that their struggle was with Zionism and occupation, not with Jews, who they did not want to “drive into the sea,” and this was later instituted into their new political program. Even the question of recognising Israel was declared “a decision for the Palestinian people” in Hamas’ 2006 draft government program.

But that was a problem for Israeli leaders; Hamas was only useful for Israel as an ‘extremist’ pole which could justify continued Israeli rejectionism; a more pragmatic Hamas was a disastrous problem for Israel; Israel was so terrified of peace that it assassinated Hamas mediator Ahmed Jabari just after he received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire, which he had been negotiating with Israeli mediator Gershon Baskin. Israel’s larger scale reaction was to lock up Gaza, where Hamas dominated, in a 16-year land, sea and air blockade, which reduced Gaza to conditions the UN described as “unliveable,” while regularly bombing the extremely densely packed sealed ghetto to ash and killing thousands of civilians. All this aimed, among other things, at the political regression of Hamas to what extremist Israeli leaders preferred as a ‘war partner’, an aim apparently achieved; and maintaining the division of 1967 Palestine between Gaza ruled by Hamas and the West Bank ruled by the pathetic PA. This nightmare situation also facilitated a more repressive Hamas-led internal regime in Gaza.

And the impacts of this reduction of Gaza to a bombed out concentration camp were evident in the gruesome violence that exploded into southern Israel on October 7, which has allowed Israel to attempt to carry out its actual long-term program: the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank and achievement of the Likud program of Israeli supremacism from the river to the sea. Was this inevitable?

Gaza, the centrality of refugee return, and March of Return turning point

A likely turning point was the famous ‘March of Return’ movement in Gaza in 2018-2019. To understand this, it is important to revisit the key question of the right to return of Palestinian refugees. Perhaps Palestinians are “asking too much” to expect the right to return to 1948 Palestine (Israel) as well as a sovereign state in 22 percent of Palestine? In fact, the tiny figure of 22 percent can only be justified if the right to return is included. It is this above all allows acceptance of the two-state arrangement to still exist in the context of Palestinian freedom from the river to the sea (there is also the issue of the second-class citizenship of the Palestinian 20 percent of the population inside 1948 Israel).

And it is Gaza that highlights this more than anything. Even if we were, for arguments’ sake, to accept abrogation of UN resolution 194 and of elementary human rights according to which the right of refugees to return is non-negotiable, even if we were to ignore millions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere, the issue cannot be ignored in Gaza where it is central to understanding the disaster.

Talking about a Palestinian state in the West Bank “and the Gaza strip” represents a sharp imbalance. The West Bank is 5860 square kilometres; Gaza is 360 square kilometres; Gaza is therefore only around 6 percent of the occupied territories. Yet there are some 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2.3 million in Gaza. The West Bank, if we include East Jerusalem, can be said to have some sense of viability as part of an independent state; but the Gaza “strip” does not.

_{Left, towns now in Israel that most Palestinians residing in Gaza were uprooted from in 1948; right, Gaza section of UN Partition of Palestine 1947, which, while unjust in principle and unfair percentage-wise, nevertheless still allowed for a Gaza region 2-3 times its current size and encompassing a large part of the main population centres.}

This is not due to some accident; it is due to the fact that 80 percent of “Gazans” are not “Gazan”; they are refugees and their descendants who were expelled from what is now Israel in 1948. The towns and villages they were expelled from are largely those across the ‘border’ to the north and east of Gaza (indeed most within the borders of the proposed ‘Arab state’ in 1947 before Israel violated it). Such as those that were attacked on October 7. Palestinians in Gaza see the Israeli settlements in these regions as squatters on their stolen land. I don’t make this point to justify the horrific violence of that day, but it surely is one aspect of the causes of its fury, when those expelled from these regions broke out of the concentration camp.

Whatever one thinks of that fateful day – which in my view has been an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinian people, whatever the initial euphoria of ‘breaking the prison wall’ – it surely underlines the fact that return of refugees is not an added extra to the solution of the Palestine issue, but an essential component of it, unless the Palestinian state was to comprise some 50 percent of the land.

And this is where the March of Return comes in. In 2018-2019, thousands of Palestinians marched, with no guns in hand, against the wall that separates their prison from their lands inside Israel. These entirely peaceful mass demonstrations continued for a year, with the aim of telling the world, and the Israeli people, that ‘we are still here’. The response of the Zionist regime was to shoot to kill and maim; 266 Palestinians were massacred, including 50 children, while over 30,000 were wounded, including 3000 children. According to the UN, “in 2020, an estimated 10,400 people will suffer severe mental health problems in connection to the GMR demonstrations, and nearly 42,000 people will have mild to moderate problems. These figures include over 22,500 children.” It is stunning that this massive episode of Zionist terrorism has gone ignored.

It was almost certainly the point of no return. 

Indigenous sovereignty in Australia ‘from coast to coast’

‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ thus expresses the view that ‘Palestine’ exists in all parts of Palestine; the sovereignty of the Indigenous population cannot simply be abolished. Regardless of what ‘state’ arrangements are made in the interim or even permanently, a ‘border’ locking 2 million Palestinian refugees into the Gaza ‘strip’ or ‘enclave’ (ie ghetto) is not a border for Palestine. Palestine lives in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Israel (1948 Palestine) and in the diaspora, in their right to return, mostly to Israel.

Does that abolish the right of the Israeli nation, which despite its violent origins, also exists there now (especially since the majority of the population were born there after 1948)? Well, not according the PLO position since 1969 or to any of the international agreements Palestine has ever signed, as has been well demonstrated above. But there is also another way of looking at this, when we consider the struggles of Indigenous peoples in other colonial settler states.

I will use the example of Australia where I live. Just as the Zionist colonisation of Palestine was based on the myth that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land,” so likewise the British colonisation of Australia was based on the myth of ‘terra nullius’, ie, empty land, not owned by anyone (a doctrine finally shot down by the Mabo High Court ruling of 1993).

The Aboriginal First Nations of Australia consider themselves to be ‘sovereign’ throughout Australia. Most left and progressive minded Australians and even much mainstream liberal opinion accepts this concept as meaning that ‘sovereignty was never ceded’, as we state in Acknowledgements to Country, and that the First Nations’ connection to their land is to all parts of their land, regardless of who now lives there and what political formations exist. Other than truly obscurantist reactionaries, no-one seriously believes the recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty means that they aim to “drive non-Indigenous Australians into the sea.”

Not that White Australia is particularly enlightened; in the recent referendum, 60 percent of Australians voted against a proposal from the Aboriginal nations to establish a purely advisory Indigenous ‘Voice’ to parliament in the constitution to partially represent their sovereignty. In any case, the struggle continues, with First Nations pushing for something better than the rejected, meek ‘Voice’ – for a Treaty between the sovereign First Nations and the sovereign Australian nation that arose from the colony. Many Aboriginal Australians were also opposed to the ‘Voice’ for the opposite reason to most white voters: because it was such a weak proposal; they see a Treaty guaranteeing more serious representation and self-determination over their own affairs.

The nationwide First Nations dialogue that took place at Uluru in central Australia in 2017, that called for the process of ‘Voice-Truth-Treaty’, put the question of sovereignty this way in its famous ‘Statement From the Heart’:

“Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. … This sovereignty is spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.”

For those reading from outside Australia: sovereignty of “the Crown” is the quaint white colonial Australian way of saying the current Australian state, which is still, despite 122 years of independence, officially under the grotesque feudal leftover that presides over a country on the other side of the world.

The sovereignty of the First Nations “co-exists” with that of “the Crown” everywhere in Australia, from coast to coast; their sovereignty does not only exist in some largely arid regions where they have won land rights struggles or in some regions with major concentrations of Aboriginal people.

The Uluru Statement From the Heart ends: “We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”

Yassir Arafat’s 1974 statement to the UN likewise includes “We offer them [Israeli Jews] the most generous solution, that we might live together in a framework of just peace in our democratic Palestine.”

From coast to coast; from the river to the sea.

Myths concocted by Putin shills, but widely believed even by well-intentioned peace activists, anti-imperialists and fence-sitters. This is a compilation of the various Myths in my Ukraine Myth series, all with their own links.

by Michael Karadjis

Below are a series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014. All of them are complete myths, as this review will demonstrate. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better. Because although they may have been invented by apologists for Putin’s war of neo-Tsarist conquest, unfortunately many of them are believed by a large number of western leftists, peace activists and fence-sitters, including many who are well-intentioned and who oppose Putin and simply want the war to end; believing myths that show that ‘both sides’ are at fault often provides some kind of psychological sustenance to these positions. While the Ukrainian government can certainly be criticised for many things, like any government can, there is simply no ‘two sides’ story in a blatant and horrifically brutal act of 19th century style imperialist conquest.

This list of myths is an ongoing project and new ones will be added as time permits. All suggestions welcome. To date, this is the list of myths that will be dealt with below, along with their specific links on this site:

Myth 1. The Maidan uprising of 2014 was a “US-orchestrated coup” – https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/ukraine-myth-series-myth-1-the-maidan-uprising-of-2014-was-a-us-orchestrated-coup/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 2 – The new government in 2014 “banned the Russian language” https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/ukraine-myth-series-myth-2-the-new-government-in-2014-banned-the-russian-language/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 3 – The Crimean people voted in a referendum to join Russia, which was an act of national self-determination, and Crimea rightfully belonged to Russia historically https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/09/ukraine-myth-series-myth-3-the-crimean-people-voted-in-a-referendum-to-join-russia-which-was-an-act-of-self-determination-and-it-rightfully-belonged-to-russia-historically/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 4: There were popular uprisings of the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas, who established their own republics in an act of national self-determination https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-4-there-were-popular-uprisings-of-the-ethnic-russian-population-of-the-donbas-who-established-their-own-republics-in-an-act-of-national-self-determination/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 5: “The Ukrainian army killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in Donbas between 2014 and 2022.” https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-5-the-ukrainian-army-bombed-the-donbas-for-8-years-before-the-russian-invasion-killing-14000-ethnic-russians-between-2014-and-2022/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 6: The Minsk Accords offered a just way out of the crisis, Russia wanted to implement them, but the Ukrainian government refused to implement them, encouraged by the US – https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-6-the-minsk-accords-offered-a-just-way-out-of-the-crisis-russia-wanted-to-implement-them-but-the-ukrainian-government-refused-to-implement-them-encouraged-by-the/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

Myth 7: Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace agreement in April 2022 whereby Ukraine would not join NATO, but then British prime minister Boris Johnston visited Kyiv and told Zelensky not to go ahead with it, after which Ukraine withdrew from the negotiations, scuttling this chance for peace. https://theirantiimperialismandours.wordpress.com/2023/09/13/ukraine-myth-series-myth-7-russia-and-ukraine-were-ready-to-sign-a-peace-agreement-in-april-2022-whereby-ukraine-would-not-join-nato-but-then-british-prime-minister-boris-johnston-visited/?customize_changeset_uuid=39695c27-4336-4e7f-8e50-0dea4f0bf85a

_{Hundreds of thousands of people peacefully protesting in the streets against a malignant government is described, incredibly, as a ‘coup’}

Myth 1: The Maidan uprising of 2014 was a “US-orchestrated coup.”

There was no “coup” in Ukraine in 2014, except in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. When hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians marched in the streets in a sustained mobilisation over many months from November 2013 through February 2014 – against the uber-corrupt ruler, Victor Yanukovych – this is not the conventional definition of a ‘coup’, which normally refers to a conspiratorial action of a small but powerful group (eg, a section of the armed forces or other state forces) carrying out a rapid and violent ousting of a government; there are dozens of examples to choose from, for example the US-backed coups that ushered in bloody dictators like Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu in Zaire, the Shah in Iran and the list is virtually endless – none of which look remotely like the popular uprising that took place in Ukraine.

Incidentally, since I called Yanukovych’s regime ‘uber-corrupt’, let’s just make an aside to back this up; we read that after his overthrow, “Ukrainian citizens who stormed his Mezhyhirya mansion discovered a palace of cartoonish opulence with guilded bathrooms, a private zoo, and a floating restaurant in the shape of a pirate ship. A good illustration of this extravagance is the $11 million he allegedly paid for a chandelier and his seven tablecloths worth a staggering $13,000.” Interesting the kinds of thieving capitalist rulers that some ‘socialists’ have come to defend in this era of ‘geopolitical’ rather than class analysis.

Yanukovych, like many unpopular despots, reacted first by bashing protestors with iron bars, then with a raft of anti-democratic anti-protest laws, then with guns, and hundreds were shot – but of course each upturn in repression only made the popular movement more determined to get rid of him, despite attempts by some of the opposition leadership in January-February 2014 to do a deal to allow him to stay as president until December 2014. In the end he made their deals pointless anyway, when he fled to Russia with his stolen billions (some estimates as high as $37 billion), following which on February 22 the entire Ukrainian parliament – every member, including every member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions – voted to oust him as president.

If such a profoundly democratic process involving mass popular uprising and unanimous votes by a democratically-elected parliament constitute a “coup,” then logically we should be in favour of more ‘coups’.

For an excellent blow by blow account of the Ukrainian popular uprising of 2013-14, ‘Ukraine Diaries’ by Andrey Kurkov is a must. Some of it can be accessed at https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fbuUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false but buying the book would give you a fuller picture. Or better still, watch the amazing film, Winter on Fire at https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80031666,  which covers the full 3 months of the uprising, the enormity of the demonstrations, the ongoing brutal repression – if after watching it you still think the events were a ‘coup’ rather than truly massive genuine revolution, then we’re speaking a different language.

It is a sad moment when “leftists” decide that massive popular street protests against reactionary capitalist rulers are a bad thing; they thereby reject everything they have claimed to stand for throughout their lives. Unless they think that people have no agency (and no rights to agency) and that these kinds of numbers can all be manipulated the CIA, Victoria Nuland, Hunter Biden etc. Were all these hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and every member of parliament, personally bribed? That the US (or others) will always attempt to influence, to co-opt, a movement, is of course a given, but that is not a reason to oppose a popular uprising or mass mobilisation and hence essentially give support to a corrupt and repressive regime being overthrown.

‘Coup’ in this case seems to be just an updated version of the infamous term ‘colour revolution’, a nonsense concept invented by tankies who did not like watching the heroic Serbian working class overthrow bourgeois-nationalist butcher Milosevic in 2000, and so then extended its use to entirely different circumstances in Georgia in 2003 and different again in Ukraine in 2004. It is simply a term used for ‘popular uprising’ when it is one disapproved of by this sub-set of western lefties who assume they know what’s best for other peoples, and/or when the regime it is directed against is allied to Russian or Chinese (rather than US) imperialism or otherwise engages in some hollow “anti-imperialist” bluster.

The idea that the popular uprising was “US-orchestrated” stems from attempts by US rulers to co-opt it. One might say, ‘what business do US leaders have turning up to meet with protest leaders in another country?’ I agree – they should keep their noses out of it, just as should the Russians – but the point here is not the political morality of this – it is naïve to think powerful states don’t always try to coopt movements – but rather the fact that they had remarkably little to do with what eventuated, and simply did not have this power.

The main charge is that US advisors like Victoria Nuland played some role in choosing the caretaker who would temporarily become prime minister, after Yanukovych’s prime minister from his Party of Regions, Mykola Azarov, resigned on January 28 amidst the upsurge. Whether or not US advice was decisive in this choice of caretaker is hard to say; the idea is based on leaked correspondence involving Nuland and US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, where they did say they preferred the candidate (of three options), Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was indeed the one subsequently chosen by the Ukrainian parliament as interim prime minister. Is it not possible that the Ukrainian parliament made its own decision that they preferred him of the three options?

Just out of interest though, for those with short attention spans who think jumbling together “coup”, the US, “fascists” and “banning Russian language” explains anything, it is worthwhile briefly looking at the interim leaders chosen. It is clear from Nuland’s leaked correspondence that that candidate she preferred as prime minister, Yatsenyuk, was one of the more liberal ones, as opposed to Oleh Tyahnybok, from the far-right fringe; as Pyatt notes, “we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys.” For some reason, they also prefer Yatsenyuk over the other “moderate democrat,” Vitaly Klitschko; Nuland says “I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. … I don’t think it’s a good idea,” and “what he (Yatsenyuk) needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.” Clearly, they want to keep the far-right out, but as for ‘Yats’ over ‘Klitsch’, the only clue is that Yatsenyuk was probably seen as more of a compromise candidate by Moscow, because Yanukovych had offered Yatsenyuk the prime-ministership on January 25 (before his own pm resigned!).

Indeed, in the same leak, Nuland and Pyatt also speak of the need for “some kind of outreach to Yanukovych.” So, far from the Nuland chat being part of a far-right, anti-Moscow coup, it appears that they preferred as interim pm the candidate who could best build bridges with Moscow. The only way I can read all this is that the famous ‘Nuland leak’ is about Nuland and the US government preferring to hatch a deal with Yanukovych, some kind of compromise government. After all, what most left conspiracists miss in all this is that Ukraine has both a president and a prime minister: Yanukovych was the president; the Nuland discussion did not concern his position at all, but rather who was going to be HIS interim prime minister! Unfortunately for Nuland, the US and the ‘moderate democrats’, the deal stitched together to keep Yanukovych in power till December with a new prime minister was rejected by the Ukrainian masses. US interference! Nuland advocates same interim prime minister for Yanukovych as does Yanukovych to aid the deal to him in power!

As for the interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov was appointed by the Ukrainian parliament on February 23 after it ousted Yanukovych the previous day, and there is no ‘Nuland story’ about this appointment. But did the ‘coup’ leaders (ie, the entire elected parliament) choose some rabid Russophobe to heighten tension with Moscow and with Russian-speakers in Ukraine? Well, when the post-Maidan interim government attempted to overturn the language law which Yanukovych had introduced in 2012, which gave Russian equal status to Ukrainian, this was vetoed by none other than interim president Turchynov. So, very much the moderate, the bridge-builder, trying to hold back the more virulent strains of west Ukrainian nationalism raising their head. Really, these pieces are not falling together very well for tankie fiction stories.

After all, the brief interim period was followed by presidential elections in May in which Ukrainians freely elected Petro Poroshenko; and parliamentary elections in October, in which a government was freely elected by Ukrainians, and chose Yatsenyuk, once again, to continue as prime minister (his party, the Peoples Front Party, received the highest number of popular votes, so I don’t think Victoria Nuland had anything to do with that). Tankies thus can make up stories about the US choosing the Ukrainian government, but what they really mean is that these fine people living in faraway lands disapprove of the choices democratically made by Ukrainians, and believe they have a right to demand they choose otherwise.  

Regarding the parliamentary elections, the parties of Yatsenyuk and of Poroshenko received nearly half the votes between them and the majority of seats; the Opposition Bloc (ie, the renamed Party of Regions, which tankies will tell you was banned from standing) received 9.43 percent of the vote and 27 seats; while neither the fascist right (Svoboda and Right Sector, with 4.71 percent and 1.8 percent of votes respectively), nor the Communist Party of Ukraine (with 3.8 percent of votes) cleared the electoral threshold and thus got no seats. 

As for Yanukovych, MPs from his own Party of Regions released a statement asserting “Ukraine was betrayed and people were set against each other. Full responsibility for this rests with Yanukovych and his entourage;” as for the allegedly ‘pro-Yanukovych’ populations of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, on the question of whether they consider Yanukovych “to be a legitimate President of Ukraine,” in an April 2014 survey only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said “rather” or “certainly yes” (and these were by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said “rather” or “certainly no.” Western tankies are well alone on this one, of defending the born-to-rule rights of a murderous, hyper-corrupt multi-billionaire oligarch.

Myth 2: The new government in 2014 banned the Russian language

This is quite an entrenched myth. Claiming that Ukraine changed its language law to downgrade Russian language in 2014, or more colourfully that it banned the language, is a common tankie claim used to justify the Russian quasi-annexation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. Of course, the Russian language was not banned in 2014 nor any time since, and further, there was zero change in the language law in 2014; that did not occur until 2019.

_{Maps showing that Ukrainian president Zelensky was elected by Russian-speakers, whose language, we are told, he wants to ban (if not commit genocide against them). Source: Zoltan Grossman, Counterpunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/02/ukraine-maps-tell-a-different-story-than-putins-claims}

As background, Ukrainian president Zekensky is a Russian-speaker, as are a significant proportion of Ukrainians, and indeed Zelensky was elected in 2019 largely on the votes of Russian-speakers. Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine have been the main victims of Russian mass-killing since February 2022, and have dominated the resistance to it. The famous/infamous Azov Regiment of the National Guard (often confused with the fascistic Azov Battalion which existed in 2014) is largely composed of Russian-speakers. According to a 2017 poll, 67.8% of Ukrainians “consider Ukrainian to be their native language, 13.8% claimed it to be Russian, whereas 17.4% declared that both languages are their native tongues.” However, while in western Ukraine, 92.8% are Ukrainian speakers and only 1.9% are Russian speakers, in eastern Ukraine 36.1% consider Ukrainian their language compared to 24.3% who declare Russian to be; in central regions, the figures are somewhat in between, but generally much closer to the western figures.

The 1996 constitution makes Ukrainian the only state language, indeed it says “state ensures the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of Ukraine.” However, there were strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, which can play an official role alongside Ukrainian in regions where these minorities are prominent. The constitution thus also states “the free development, use and defence of Russian and other languages of national minorities is guaranteed in Ukraine.”

All the language laws until 2012 were based on this well-balanced constitution. But in 2012, Yanukovych introduced a new language law which made Russian a ‘regional language’ with equal administrative status to Ukrainian wherever Russian was the language of at least 10 percent of the population, and other minority languages could have the same status. Since Russian is the language of over 10 percent in half the regions of Ukraine, this was quite wide-ranging. Many Ukrainians felt this tipped the balance too far.

So what did happen in 2014? Initially, after the fall of Yanukovych, the parliament attempted to rescind this new language law that Yanukovych had introduced just two years earlier, in 2012. The parliament’s aim in overturning this was to return to the previous law which had held sway ever since Ukrainian independence in the early 1990s, based on the 1996 constitution. As we saw, returning to the 1994-2012 linguistic framework was hardly a radical anti-Russian language step; it was merely the reversal of a recent radical change in the other direction. However, even this change did not take place, because it was vetoed by the caretaker president. Yanukovych’s radically pro-Russian 2012 law thus remained the law until 2019.

Therefore, leaving aside the blatant lie that Ukraine banned the Russian language and thus provoked a reaction from Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, in fact nothing at all happened to the rights of Russian-speakers in 2014, making the lie even worse. Now, of course, it may well be that just the attempt to change the law back to the original could have been a factor promoting mistrust of the new government by many Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine; often it is not the actual content of a proposed change but the broader context, and this was the context of the newly assertive Ukrainian nationalism post-Maidan in reaction against Russian backing of Yanukovych and the immediate Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention into Donbas straight after his fall; this Ukrainian nationalism did include a virulent strain which was indeed alienating to many in the east. However, this point can be made without blatantly dishonest lies about what did happen.

It could well be argued that the Yanukovych law of 2012-14 was a better one, based on an abstract notion of complete equality of languages – even a broken clock can be right twice a day, and possibly for the wrong reasons. As a non-Ukrainian, I prefer not to get into that debate. The Ukrainian argument is based on the fact that Ukraine was a colony of Russia for hundreds of years, and the Ukrainian language was actively suppressed and discriminated against throughout that period (both under Tsarism and under Stalinism). There is also an important class aspect: Russian, the language of the colonial administration, came to dominate urban centres, even Kiev, while the villages were overwhelmingly Ukrainian-speaking; it was even considered shameful to speak Ukrainian in late Tsarist Russia, being a sign one was from the village, as rural-dwellers crowded into cities during industrialisation in the early 20^th century. Therefore, Ukraine now has a right to promote its language as the national language; Russian-speakers should have the right to use their language, but it is the language of the coloniser which became dominant via colonisation and suppression. Which argument is correct? Both arguments have validity, and much depends on context and manner in which such laws are introduced and implemented. What can be said for certain, however, is that the Ukrainian constitution, and the pre-2012 law, are hardly unusual by global standards; on the contrary, they are the norm. They are even less unusual for former colonies – what of the attempts over many decades in Ireland to promote the Irish language at the expense of English, for example?

The new Language Law of 2019 did partially downgrade Russian, at the time against Zelensky’s opposition (Zelensky was just elected in 2019 with votes of Russian-speakers). This new law was pushed by the outgoing Poroshenko government as it more and more turned opportunistically to the nationalist right (ironically in 2014 Poroshenko, elected then with the votes of Russian-speakers and appealing to unity, claimed the parliament’s attempt to rescind the 2012 law was a grave mistake). This new language law made Ukrainian the only language of state throughout Ukraine. While the law is consistent with the Ukraine constitution which makes Ukrainian the official language, the constitution also has strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, especially in areas where they are the majority. The new law arguably downgrades the status of some of those protections. In schools, for example, Ukrainian is the language of instruction throughout the country; Russian can be learned in school as a language subject. However, in pre-school and primary school, Russian or other minority children can study in their own language, as the language of instruction, in addition to Ukrainian, but they cannot in high school. From an internationalist standpoint, this change is certainly regressive, but it is hardly unique for most of the world.

The new law makes Ukrainian the language of all official communication, ie in government operations, including local government. In itself, this is hardly unusual by world standards. Regarding the media, however, the law is highly regressive and certainly can be seen to violate the Ukrainian constitution. The law stipulates that any publications in Russian or other languages must be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content and volume, a draconian and impractical regulation. There are exceptions for Crimean Tatar language, and for languages of the EU, but not for Russian. While a former colony certainly has the right to promote the national language, doing so in a way that makes everyday life more difficult for speakers of other languages at a practical level violates their rights and divides the working classes.

However, it is the very essence of hypocrisy for Putinite shills to try to use this argument, even after 2019. What they miss is that this law only came in after years of its implementation in reverse in Russian-annexed Crimea. In 2015, Crimea made only Russian the language of school instruction, while allowing students to learn Ukrainian or Tatar as elective languages; in pre-school and primary school, instruction could also be in Ukrainian or Tatar in addition to Russian, but not in high school. It is almost as if the Ukrainian government plagiarised the Russian occupation government of Crimea’s law four years later! But the reality in Crimea is much worse than even this official downgrading; in reality, Ukrainian has been comprehensively eliminated from all Crimean schools and from all official society. One of the first acts of Russian-owned rulers in both Crimea and the Donbas was to replace multilingual signs with Russian only ones.

Likewise, in the Russia-owned Donbas statelets, almost immediately following their quasi-annexation in 2014, “the curricula have been altered to exclude the teaching of Ukrainian language and history, which makes it problematic to obtain State school diplomas,” according to a November 2014 report by the UN High Commission on Human Rights; in 2015, the curriculum was overhauled, with Ukrainian language lessons decreased from eight hours to two hours a week, while Russian language and literature lessons increased. Russia’s five-point grading system replaced Ukraine’s 12-point scheme. School leavers from then received Russian certificates with the Russian emblem, the two-headed eagle. In 2020, Russian was declared the only state language.

That does not justify the Ukrainian law of 2019 (which current president Zelensky opposed), but it is important to recognise that the chronology is in reverse: no change in 2014 in Ukraine, regressive change in late 2014 and 2015 in Donbas and Crimea under Russian occupation, followed years later by copy-cat regressive change in Ukraine – which however in no way ‘bans’ the Russian language’.

Myth 3: The Crimean people voted in a referendum to join Russia, which was an act of self-determination, and it rightfully belonged to Russia historically

_{Indigenous Crimean Tatars – victims of centuries of Russian colonialism and genocide – protest annexation by Russia in 2014}

Russia’s flagrant annexation of the sovereign Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014 was the first annexation inside Europe since the (globally unrecognised) Turkish quasi-annexation of northern Cyprus, and in a league with only very few outright annexations globally – Israel’s annexation of Palestinian Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara, Indonesia’s annexation of Irian Jaya and later east Timor (until 1999) spring to mind. Yet Putin apologists have attempted to justify this act of Russian imperial expansionism as an act of self-determination by the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea (which frankly reminds one of Hitler’s claim to Sudetenland), or claim it was ‘always Russia’ and so on. 

On February 27, 2014, just five days after the Ukraine parliament’s vote to oust Yanukovych, masked Russian troops invaded Crimea – sovereign Ukrainian territory – attacked government buildings, raised the Russian flag over them, forced out the democratically-elected Crimea autonomous state government, replaced it with stooges from the ultra-right ‘Russian Unity’ party, which had received 4 percent of the vote in the previous elections – surely all this is a coup, isn’t it? It is a textbook coup, combined with invasion. This foreign-installed junta in Crimea then carried out, under Russian military occupation, the illegal “referendum” to leave Ukraine and join Russia, within ten days after calling it. Only two options were presented in the fake “referendum,” neither of which included the status quo. Ukrainian media was closed down.

Of course, the junta declared that 97 percent had voted for joining Russia – the usual figure plucked out of the air by dictators who throw “election” circuses. Yet Putin’s own Human Rights Council claimed the real turnout was 30-50% of voters, and that only 50-60% of those voted to join Russia. Notably, in a February 8-18 2014 Ukraine-wide poll, only 41 percent of people in Crimea favoured joining Russia – and that was far higher than anywhere else in Ukraine; we are supposed to believe that this jumped from 41% to 97% in a month!

International observers – of course, the Russian-installed junta invited various far-right/fascist parties from Europe for this show, indeed the invitees list – the French National Front, Jobbik (Hungary), Attaka (Bulgaria), Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense – reads virtually like a roll-call of the European far-right. Fascist parties throughout Europe declared their support for Crimea being “reincorporated” into Russia, its rightful place in their view, believers in the restoration of empires after all.

In contrast, the Mejils (parliament) of the Crimean Tatar nation, internationally recognised as the Indigenous people of Crimea (and likewise recognised as such in Ukraine), and a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation, declared the referendum illegitimate and called for boycott, just in case anyone on the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ left happens to think the views of Indigenous peoples should count for something. The Russian occupation regime of post-referendum Crimea then banned the Mejils, their representative body first set up by the Crimean Tatars after the Russian revolution, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented ongoing human rights violations, including detention and torture, against the Tatar population. Today, the Mejils, in exile, demands the return of Crimea to Ukraine as an essential condition in any peace talks with Russia.

_{From 100% of the population at Russian conquest in 1783, the Crimean Tatars became a minority 100 years later, but then were 100% deported by Stalin in 1944}

The Crimean Tatars were the majority population of Crimea since the 11^th century, and remained so long after Russian settler-colonialism began with Catherine the Great’s invasion in 1783. Not until around 1900 did these Russian settlers begin to outnumber the indigenous Tatar population, who also fled Russian oppression in their hundreds of thousands. However they remained some 40 percent of the population until 1944 when Stalin expelled every man, woman and child Tatar from Crimea – hundreds of thousands of people – into central Asia, a torturous journey during which one in three died along the way. While they have been allowed to return in recent decades, such mass displacement tends to have a semi-permanent effect, and numbers were only re-growing slowly,  but continually, before this process was halted by annexation. In other words, the “left” (and far-right) assertion that, since 58 percent of the population of Crimea are ethnic Russians, annexation by Russia is an act of self-determination, is a declaration of support for the results of centuries of Tsarist colonialism and the Stalinist genocide.

An interesting comparison could be made to the current debate in Australia about an Indigenous ‘Voice’ to parliament, which will be subject to referendum later this year. While the tepid and powerless ‘voice’ on offer can well be criticised for its limitations, and indeed many Indigenous leaders prefer a ‘treaty-first’ approach which would recognise their sovereignty and cede some actual power to the Indigenous nations, the main opposition is coming from the right who are vigorously opposed to any even symbolic increase in Indigenous representation. From being once the sovereign owners of the whole of Australia, Indigenous Australians have been reduced, through colonisation and genocide, to only a few percent of the population.

So, using the same simple ‘majoritarian’ principles that many Putin apologists are now using to justify the result of the staged Crimea ‘referendum’ (even if we pretend for a moment that it was legitimate and not staged under military occupation) – that 58 percent of the Crimean population are ethnic Russians and so, if that’s what they want, so it should be – what would we say if the large Anglo-Australian majority here one fine day voted to be re-annexed to ‘Great’ Britain, and the 3 percent Indigenous Australian population were opposed? Should we say, well, the (former colons) Anglo-Australians are the majority, so it should be, like the (former colons) Russians in Crimea? Or would we say that Indigenous Australians should have some special constitutional right to not have their lands returned to some foreign colonial power? I suggest that the kind of constitutionally empowered real Indigenous voice via treaty that most on the Australian left are in favour of would indeed empower the Indigenous minority to reject such a move, and rightly so.

And, more generally, when there exists more than one constituent nation in a mixed region – in this case Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars – is ‘winner take all’ the democratic solution? Take Cyprus (a place I know something about …), with its 80 percent Greek Cypriot majority and 20 percent Turkish Cypriot minority. So if the majority of the majority Greek Cypriot community vote to be united with Greece, so that should be, right? Oh, wait a minute, they tried that, with the movement against British colonialism led by the right-wing and the Orthodox church, calling for ‘Enosis’ (union) with Greece (rather than an independent bi-national federation) … thereby alienating the Turkish minority, driving them into the hands of Turkey’s military regime which eventually invaded in 1974 and the rest is history. No solution in the divided island 50 years later. Or take Bosnia, with its 44 percent Bosniak (‘Muslim’), 30 percent Serb, 18 percent Croat and 8 percent ‘Yugoslav’ (ie too mixed to be anything else) population – no majority, but if the Serbs and Croats voted together for Bosnia to be divided between Serbia and Croatia and got a slight majority of votes, so that should happen despite the views of the other communities? Indeed, since Serb and Croat fascist leaders actually tried to do that militarily in 1992-95, they were in the right, were they? The Crimea ‘solution’, in other words, is the most utterly reactionary solution possible.   

On a minor point, one of the justifications often heard from Putin shills is that Russia had to seize Crimea because it has a naval base in Sevastopol (and heaven forbid that an imperialist power should lose a military base in another country, say many on the western ‘left’). Yet the Russian military’s lease on Sevastopol does not expire until 2042.

Myth 4: There were popular uprisings of the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas, who established their own republics in an act of national self-determination

_{Putin offering to save Russian-speakers in Ukraine from the barbaric assault he is carrying out against them}

In answering this, I just want to clarify where I’m coming from: I support the right of nations and peoples to self-determination, and see this as superior to any obsession with “sovereign borders,” which have always changed throughout history, both for good and bad reasons. For example, I support the struggle of the Chechen people for self-determination, including independence, from Russia if that is their choice; I don’t care about the “sovereign” borders of the inheritance of the Russian colonial empire. Ditto for Puerto Rico or Hawaii if they chose to break up the US empire’s “sovereign” borders. I supported the national liberation struggle of the Kosovar Albanians against Serbian oppression, of the Kurds against oppression in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and so on: so why don’t I support the same self-determination of “the Russian people in Donbas”? Well, apart from the fact that even if there were such a struggle, it would currently be an irrelevant pawn for Russian imperial conquest, the more fundamental problem is that no such reality exists.

As we saw, almost immediately after Yanukovych fled to Russia (February 22, 2014), Russian forces invaded Crimea (February 27). Just as quickly after this, the first Russian forces, from the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity party, turned up in Donbas, alongside other far-right Russian paramilitary forces who had just helped conquer Crimea; the seizures of government buildings began almost immediately, launching coup d’etats against the very governments Donbas residents had recently elected, bringing to power Russian stooges and fascists in the two oblasts (provinces) Donetsk and Luhansk; indeed, the first coup was the six-day seizure of the Donetsk State Administration Building on March 1, when “a group of activists bestowed the titled of ‘People’s Governor of Donetsk’ on a local nationalist-socialist activist named Pavel Gubarev,” an RNU leader. Such a rapid march of events in itself belies the idea that Russia was only responding to grass-roots movements in these regions staging a popular movement against the new post-Maidan authorities in Ukraine; it looks much more like a planned Russian conquest.

_{The swastika of the Russian National Unity Party, the first fascist mob to seize power in the coup in Donetsk in March 2014}

Let’s look at the three connected myths that make up this grander myth narrative.

Sub-Myth 1: ‘Ethnic Russian Donbas’

First, it is difficult to establish exactly what an ‘ethnic Russian’ is, as opposed to a Ukrainian who speaks Russian as a first language. Think of Irish, Welsh and Scottish who speak English as their first language, and try calling them ‘English’. See what happens. This is what occurs after centuries of colonialism, in both cases. Which in terms of ruthless Russification and physical destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, was probably even worse under Stalin than under the Tsars, though there is not much to choose from between them.

If we go by people’s identity, according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians formed 58 percent of the population of Luhansk Oblast and 56.9 percent of Donetsk Oblast. Those identifying as ethnic Russians formed the largest minority, accounting for 39 percent and 38.2 percent of the two oblasts respectively. In other words, Ukrainians were the same size majority in Donbas as Russians were in Crimea – yet this (post-colonisation and genocide) Russian majority in Crimea is given as a reason by the same Putin apologists to justify Russian annexation there! Furthermore, much evidence suggests a marked decline in the population identifying as ethnic Russians rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainians: in a 2019 survey carried out by the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, only 12 percent and 7 percent of the residents of the Russia-owned and government-controlled parts of Donbas respectively identified as ‘ethnic Russians’, while 21 percent and 12 percent respectively declared themselves ‘mixed Ukrainian and Russian’. The impact of Russian aggression since 2014 is likely the cause of this declining identification as ‘Russian’ – how ironic given that this Russian intervention is falsely justified as protecting these ‘ethnic Russians’! Indeed, the impact of the current war seems to be even greater, with even use of Russian language among many Ukrainians markedly declining as a political choice due to revulsion against the aggression. 

Therefore, to claim that the setting up of ‘independent’ republics in 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk, and their annexation by Russia in 2022 following fake ‘referenda’ under brutal military occupation, was “the right to self-determination of the ethnic Russian population of Donbas,” is a statement of extraordinary ignorance. The population of Donbas is divided between ethnic Russians, Ukrainians who speak Russian, and Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian.

Before moving on we should clarify: from 2014 to 2022 the Russian-owned forces only controlled some 40 percent of ‘Donbas’ (approximately the same in both Donetsk and Luhansk) while some 60 percent remained under Ukraine government control. So Russia has not just annexed the parts it formerly controlled, but the entire two oblasts, plus two others that it never had any control of (Kherson and Zaporizhzhya) and where there was never any support for Russia.

Sub-Myth 2: The population of Donbas, regardless of ethnicity, wanted self-determination for the region and were oriented more to Russia than to Ukraine

It is certainly true that neither ethnicity nor language tells us anything necessarily about the views of the Donbas residents; neither being an ethnic Russian nor Russian or Ukrainian speaking does not equal a particular political opinion; the opinions of people in all three groups, in both government-controlled and Russia-controlled parts of both oblasts, are mixed. But the data does not support the myth, but rather the opposite.

Two surveys carried out in April 2014 reveal very important information, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and by the Pew Research Centre. In the KIIS survey, to the question ‘Do you support the idea, that your region should secede from Ukraine and join Russia?’, 27 percent in Donetsk and 30 percent in Luhansk answered either ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ yes – while some 52 percent in both oblasts answered ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ no. These minority ‘yes’ votes in Donetsk and Luhansk were the only of any significance in all of Ukraine. The Pew research showed similar results, with the question whether regions should be allowed to secede answered in the positive by only 18 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 4 percent in west Ukraine), and only 27 percent of Russian-speakers. The KIIS survey also asked if they were in favour of Russian troops entering the region, to which under 20 percent in both oblasts said yes while substantial majorities said no.

On the question ‘Do you consider Viktor Yanukovych to be a legitimate President of Ukraine?’, only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said rather or certainly yes (by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said rather or certainly no. So much for the idea that the people of Donbas were angry that “their president” was deposed.

Larger numbers support some kind of autonomy or ‘special status’ within Ukraine, but with sharp differences in the two parts of Donbas. Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies found that in the Russia-owned regions, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia. Of the majority opposed, 30% supported some kind of autonomy and a quarter no special status. But in the government controlled two-thirds, while a similar 30% favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just Ukraine with no special status; hardly any supported joining Russia. Therefore it is difficult to say whether the overall majority necessarily even favour autonomy. Even this does not necessarily mean that the chunks seized are the regions most in favour of autonomy or separation; given the dispossession of half the Donbas population (some 3.3 of the original 6.6 million people), it more likely means a degree of subsequent relocation between the two zones, while the millions in refuge simply don’t get a say in such surveys.

Therefore, both in Donetsk and Luhansk, in both government and Russian-controlled regions, and among the dispossessed, both ‘ethnicity’ and political opinion are very mixed, there is no ‘Russian’ region or specifically even ‘pro-Russia’ region; so the regions violently seized are entirely arbitrary and correspond to no movement for ‘self-determination’ or necessarily for anything.

Truth 1. There was a degree of alienation from the new government in parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014

This is not to deny that there was broadly a sense of alienation among many in eastern Ukraine from the direction taken by the new post-Yanukovych government, regardless of ‘ethnicity’ or language; there were also geographic and other factors, including more economic connection to Russia in the east. Specifically, the new Ukraine authorities, and even more so the empowered far-right minority, projected an assertive Ukrainian nationalism, and various largely symbolic actions drove this alienation. According to the Pew survey, while 60 percent in western Ukraine thought the new government had “a good influence on the way things are going in the country,” only 24 percent in eastern Ukraine agreed, and 67 percent there assessed this influence as “bad.” Similarly, 66 percent in western Ukraine thought only the Ukrainian language should have legal standing, while 73 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 86 percent of Russian-speakers) said both Russian and Ukrainian should be official languages, underlining the centrality of the language question – my Myth 2 details the comically false assertion that Russian language was downgraded or “banned” in 2014, but even the unsuccessful attempt to revise the language law in this context would have been a factor in this alienation.

But in itself, this is not remarkable: the dominance of certain political tendencies in different regions of a country due to complex combinations of history, culture, economics etc is not uncommon: think of northern and southern England, northern and southern Italy, regions of the US, Aegean Turkey and Anatolia etc. That does not mean that the peoples of such regions would welcome a foreign military intervention because a party perceived to favour a different region’s political proclivities were in power.

Sub-Myth 3: The Russian-backed seizure of power in parts of Donbas represented this alienation of the region’s population from the new government

There was certainly a valid political struggle that could have been waged by many people in the region against certain policies of the new government; the fact that the Maidan was initially confronted by an ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east was in itself a valid expression of popular dissent. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed, funded, trained and armed militia and direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries, tanks and other heavy weaponry, political operatives and fascists, arbitrarily seizing control of town halls and chunks of eastern Ukraine. Simon Pirani argues that while neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary, in fact the “social aspirations” of the two were similar, “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”

The idea that this militarisation, seizing of buildings and coup d’etats were a natural reflection, extension, of the civil ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east is belied by the 2014 KIIS survey. On the question ‘Do you support actions of those, who with arms capture administrative buildings in your region?’, only 18 percent in Donetsk and 24 percent in Luhansk answered rather or certainly yes, while 72 percent and 68 percent respectively in those two allegedly ‘pro-Russian’ oblasts answered rather or certainly no!

I have heard it claimed that Donbas residents were alienated because the government they elected had been overthrown in Kyiv (as if the parliament, which deposed the president – one person – wasn’t also elected by them). But how does this sit with small armed groups launching coup d’etats in Donbas overthrowing the very regional government that Donbas residents had elected?

Nor can militarisation be justified as an act of self-defence against some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan, as nothing of the sort had taken place: the coup d’detats, took place immediately after the deposing of Yanukovych; the armed conflict later. 

John Reiman, in his excellent review of the Ukraine Diaries, cites some passages describing this very early intervention (ie, months before the generalised war):

“On March 9 for the first time Kurkov reports on the entry of Russian agents in Ukraine. And not just any Russians – members of the fascist Russian Unity Party (RNE). ‘The members of RNE, swastikas tattooed on their necks and arms, have no qualms about negotiating with Ukraine’s regional governments and making ultimatums…’ … On April 4, Kurkov reports that 15 Russian citizens had been arrested in Donetsk with 300 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a grenade launcher, ammunition and other military equipment. … On April 7, Kurkov reports the arrest of a Russian GRU agent, Roman Bannykh. The Ukraine government seized his telephone records, which revealed that he had been coordinating the actions of the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk. … pro-Russian activists … walk around in combat uniform, with no badges or other signs of identification, carrying AK-100 assault rifles. The Ukrainian army does not possess those rifles but the Russian army does … Of the 117 Russian citizens arrested for having taken part in disturbances, at least ten are Russian secret service agents. … On April 21 … the separatists in Slovyansk attacked and pillaged the homes of gypsies in that city. Simultaneously, Nelya Shtepa was kidnapped. She was the former mayor of that city and had originally supported the separatists but broke with them because they were being manipulated by Russian secret service agents’.”

Indeed, Russian FSB colonel Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, one of the leaders of the first gang of far-right Russian paramilitaries in Donbas, admitted that he pulled the first trigger that led to war, stating that “if our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv and in Odesa.”

Finally, regarding the so-called “referendums” that the coup authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk carried out in May 2014, Cathy Young writing in The Bulwark provides a useful anecdote which, as she says, by itself pretty much “tells the tale”:

“On May 7, Ukrainian intelligence released the audio of an intercepted phone call between Donetsk insurgent leader Dmytro Boitsov and far-right Russian nationalist Aleksandr Barkashov (the head, as it happens, of the aforementioned Russian National Unity). In the obscenity-laden exchange, Boitsov complains that the rebels are “not ready” to hold the referendum on May 11 as planned. Barkashov responds testily: “Just put in whatever you want. Write 99 percent. What, you’re going to fucking walk around collecting papers? Shit, are you fucked in the head or something?” “Ah. All right, I got it, I got it,” replies an audibly relieved Boitsov as it dawns on him that he and his pals are not expected to hold an actual referendum, just to produce results. Barkashov continues: “Just write that 99 percent—no, let’s say 89 percent, fuck it, voted for the Donetsk Republic. And that’s it, shit, we’re fucking done.”

I mean, it may as well have been a discussion between blood-drenched Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and some ‘election’ henchman who thought the ‘election’ circus had to be taken at least partly seriously; hell, some western ‘lefties’ are so thick they even agree with their far-right allies that those ‘elections’ were genuine!

Young continues:

“By amazing coincidence, on May 11, the separatist “election commission” of Donetsk announced that 89 percent of the voters had chosen self-rule. As I have noted earlier, the first prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, “political consultant” Aleksandr Borodai, was not only a citizen of Russia but a reputed officer in the FSB (the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s successor) with a long history of involvement in far-right, ultranationalist circles.”

Conclusion

By intervening and militarising a movement, swamping it from the get-go, forcibly seizing territory, Russia completely changed the nature of Ukrainian politics. From a Ukrainian perspective, Russia, the former colonial power and neighbouring superpower had engineered a violent military conflict, slicing up Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas, thereby completely overwhelming whatever democratic voices could have arisen among Russians or Russian-speakers and supporters, while likewise hardening the right-wing nationalist views of many Ukrainians now seeing a fight for their country’s very existence. This militarisation also strengthened far-right forces in Ukraine at the time because the Ukrainian armed forces were in disarray, and the far-right took the initiative on the military front.

Whatever original support the civil anti-Maidan may have had, it is hard to know what survived the Russian-led military intervention and coups. We know that 3.3 million people of the original 6.6 million have fled Donbass since then, the majority into other areas of Ukraine. We also know that many of the irregular Ukrainian militia on the frontlines in the Ukraine-government controlled two-thirds of Donbas are residents uprooted as a result of the conflict and blame the Russian intervention. The more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any expression of opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies.   

Finally, one might rightly ask, does this even have any relevance now, with Russia heavily bombing and destroying Russian-speaking towns and cities in Donbas, including the complete decimation of Russian speaking Mariupol, and the massive rejection of Russian rule by these populations – has anyone seen a single welcoming party in eastern Ukraine for conquerors in the last year? It is almost certain that whatever lingering pro-Russia feeling that may have existed before 2022 has now largely collapsed. Indeed, the problem with this entire discussion, even as I write it, is the danger of implying that Russia’s monstrous war has anything to do with the rights of Russians or Russian-speakers in Donbas: if that were the case, there would have been no reason for Russia to advance an inch from the control it already exerted over 40 percent of Donbas where they perhaps had more support – what would have been the purpose of annexing the more anti-Russian parts of Donbas that had been in government control, let alone annexing the other two oblasts, let alone invading and savagely bombing the whole of Ukraine?

_{Before February 2022: Russian-backed forces only controlled about 40 percent of each of the two Donbas oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk.}

_{What Russia controlled in Ukraine by October 2022}

Myth 5: The Ukrainian army bombed the Donbas for 8 years before the Russian invasion, killing 14,000 ethnic Russians between 2014 and 2022.”

As I have already fully dealt with this before, this will merely be a summary of main points; the article provides the detail.

The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have overreacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.

Is any of this true?

Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 were killed in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number were wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.3 million people fled the region (ie before the millions who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion). But what of the rest?

“The Ukrainian army killed.”

Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, alongside various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.

For example, according to a January 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “On January 24, unguided rockets, probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 29 civilians and 1 soldier in Mariupol and wounded more than 90 civilians. One rocket struck the courtyard of a school. On January 13, unguided rockets, also probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 at a checkpoint near Volnovakha.” Don’t these 41 civilian lives count? What of the fact that, following the first Minsk Accord in September 2014, the ‘separatist’ militia immediately violated it by launching a 6-month battle, with hundreds of deaths, to seize the Donetsk airport from the government? How was that the Ukrainian army’s fault? What of the 298 people killed when the ‘separatists’ shot down a civilian airline in July 2014?

“ethnic Russians”

Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.

But the other problem with the assertion is the implication that these were 14,000 “ethnic Russian” civilians – after all, when you are fighting a military force, you don’t usually describe the ethnicity of the troops killed. For example, now, when the Russian and Ukrainian armies are in combat, no-one refers to the numbers of ‘ethnic Russians’ or ‘ethnic Ukrainians’ dying, when referring to military deaths. So it clearly means ‘ethnic Russian civilians’.

In reality, according to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the numbers killed in Donbas from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021were:

4,400 Ukrainian troops

6,500 Russia—owned separatist troops

3,404 civilians (of whatever ethnicity)

So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2021. And these 3,404 civilians would have included ‘ethnic Russians’ and ‘ethnic Ukrainians’, who both live in Donbas.

However, what about the last part:

“between 2014 and 2022.”

Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.

But the implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level; a reaction to it, even if perhaps an overreaction.

In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the open conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. According to the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that perhaps half if not the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides, here are the numbers of deaths in the years before the Russian invasion:

2016 – 88 deaths

2017 – 87 deaths

2018 – 43 deaths

2019 – 19 deaths

2020 – 23 deaths

2021 – 16 deaths, including:

– 11 deaths (Jan-June)

– 4 deaths (June-Sep)

– 1 death (Sep-Dec)

2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).

As we can see, the rate of death continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.

The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.

But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.

_{Up to half of civilian deaths in Donbas in 2014-22 were from landmines}

Myth 6: The Minsk Accords offered a just way out of the crisis, Russia wanted to implement them, but the Ukrainian government refused to implement them, encouraged by the US.

These assertions are entirely fictional as will be shown, but they also raise a number of sub-points; first, there were two Minsk agreements, so what happened to the first?; what is the actual content of the Minsk II agreement?; how was it imposed on Ukraine?; and what is the evidence that it was Ukraine that blocked its implementation?

Following the first few months of armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Russian-backed militia in Donbas in mid-2014, the first Minsk agreement was signed between Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as by the Russian-backed junta leaders who had seized power in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), on 5 September 2014.

The main provisions were for

• an immediate ceasefire to be monitored by OSCE,

• “decentralisation of power, including through the adoption of the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,”

• the permanent monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian border by OSCE,

• release of all hostages and illegally detained persons,

• a law preventing the prosecution and punishment of people in connection with the conflict,

• “early local elections in accordance with the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,” and

• the withdrawal of “illegal armed groups and military equipment as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian government immediately carried out its side of the bargain by adopting the “Law on the Special Order of Local Self-Government in Certain Districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions” on September 16. According to this law, this special status of self-government will be implemented in the districts of Donetsk and Lugansk controlled by the separatists at the time of the ceasefire. The law provides for the freedom of any language to be used and cross-border cooperation with Russia. Local elections were scheduled for the region in December.

However, the Minsk I Protocol was almost immediately violated in a massive way by the Russian-orchestrated ‘separatist’ militia, which launched an attack aimed at seizing the Donetsk airport, which was in the government-controlled part of Donetsk at the time of the ceasefire. This led to a 5-month battle in which the side launching the aggression was in open violation of the Protocol, and as it was a battle to control infrastructure, cannot in any way be excused as a battle to protect hypothetically endangered pro-Russian communities. They further violated the Minsk Protocol by holding their own “elections” in November outside the new Ukrainian special status law, under Russian military occupation, and without any of the other provisions of Minsk adhered to (eg, withdrawal of illegal armed groups, OSCE monitoring of the border etc). In January, the separatists took control of the airport, and also launched attacks on other government-controlled regions, including Mariupol, Debaltseve and Krematorsk, killing dozens of civilians.

So there is no ambiguity regarding Minsk I: Ukraine carried out the political requirements, but the Russia-owned militia massively violated both the political and above all the military agreements.

With large-scale support from direct intervention by Russian forces, the separatists and Russia were able to force a new Minsk agreement, Minsk II, on Ukraine. Minsk II, mediated by France and Germany, was signed on February 12 by Russia, Ukraine, OSCE and the separatist leaders.

Again, it was immediately violated by the Russian-orchestrated militia, who continued their attack on Debaltseve, unilaterally declaring it to be outside the agreement! Hundreds of Ukrainian troops had been holed up and besieged in the town for weeks. It fell to the separatists on February 18, a week after the agreement.

Was Minsk II a good agreement for Ukraine? Well, the first thing that must be noted is that it was imposed on Ukraine by military force, given the large scale and relatively open intervention of Russian forces (as opposed to just Russian-backed forces and Russian heavy weaponry) in the second phase of the Donbas war. Therefore, the way Ukraine “agreed” to it was an act of international injustice, imperialist imposition, so those blaming Ukraine for not implementing it are in effect siding with imperialist bullying.

That said, was Minsk II so much worse than Minsk I for Ukraine, and was it a fair and just agreement anyway, despite the way it was imposed?

Let’s again look at the main points of the Minsk II agreement:

1, 2, 3 ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons by both parties at equal distances, security zones for heavy weaponry, monitoring and verification by OSCE

4. On the first day after the withdrawal, to begin a dialogue on the procedures for holding local elections in accordance with Ukrainian law and the Law of Ukraine “On a temporary order of local government in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” … no later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, to adopt a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with the specification of a territory subject to the special regime in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in some regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” based on the line set in a Minsk memorandum of September 19, 2014

5, 6 Pardons and amnesties, law prohibiting prosecution and punishment in connection with the conflict, release and exchange of hostages and illegally detained persons

9. Restoration of full control over the state border of Ukraine by Ukraine’s government throughout the whole conflict area, which should begin on the first day after the local elections and be completed after a comprehensive political settlement (local elections in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the basis of the Law of Ukraine, and a constitutional reform) by the end of 2015, on condition of implementation of paragraph 11.

10. The withdrawal of all foreign armed forces, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under the supervision of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups.

11. Conducting constitutional reform in Ukraine, with the new constitution coming into force by the end of 2015, providing for decentralization as a key element (taking into account the characteristics of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with representatives of these areas), as well as the adoption of the permanent legislation on the special status of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions

12. On the basis of the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in individual areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” the questions regarding local elections shall be discussed and agreed with the individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in compliance with the relevant standards of the OSCE with the monitoring by the OSCE ODIHR.

Minsk II appears more comprehensive than Minsk I, but in certain respects can be considered more disadvantageous to Ukraine; after all, Russia and its proxies did not continue the war for another 6 months for no gain. In addition, there is arguably confusion in the timeline, which allowed both sides to stall. It is generally thought that Ukraine stalled on the political aspects of Minsk, while Russia and proxies stalled on the military-security aspects.

For example, while Ukraine had already agreed to the special status provisions in Minsk I and had immediately passed the relevant legislation (and again, following Minsk II, the Rada (parliament) voted in the ‘special status’ laws for Donbas, Minsk II goes beyond in mandating Ukraine bring into force a “new constitution,” with “decentralisation as a key element.” Understandably, Ukrainians may well wonder why Russia, via military intervention inside Ukraine, has the right to impose a “new constitution” of a specific nature on Ukraine as a whole, as opposed to the provisions already agreed to regarding Donetsk and Luhansk.

If the United States had sent troops into Russian territory to “aid” the Chechens during Putin’s grizzly slaughter in Chechnya over 1999-2001, and then forced Russia to sign a ‘Minsk’ agreement according to which, not only would Chechnya have special status, but Russia had to write a whole new constitution based on the ‘decentralisation’ of the entire territory of Russia, I wonder how many of today’s ‘leftist’ Putin apologists would be demanding Russia ‘sign Minsk, the only road to peace’, and be praising the US for its desire for peace?

In addition, Minsk II says that Ukraine can only regain control over its sovereign border after the local elections have been held in Donbas, and can only be completed after this imposed “new constitution” comes into being. There is nothing remotely as sweeping as this in Minsk I.

However, Minsk II also says that all foreign armed forces, military equipment and mercenaries must leave Ukraine “under the supervision of the OSCE” and that all “illegal groups” must be disarmed. Yet this manifestly never happened. It definitely never happened “under the supervision of OSCE,” because OSCE continually reported over the years ahead evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine.

Indeed, at this point, we should probably demolish this particular sub-myth, because any reasonable person would have to admit that Ukraine could not carry out acts of ‘local self-governance’ in a region occupied by the army of a hostile neighbouring superpower; yet Russia denies its troops were there.

Sub-Myth: There were no Russian troops in Ukraine between the 2015 ceasefire and the 2022 invasion

OSCE had become quite open about its evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine by 2016. By the end of that year, the OSCE observer mission had observed “more than 30,000 individuals in military-style dress crossing just at the two checkpoints to which it has access. … Twenty uniformed persons crossed the border in a single bus with tinted windows in mid-October, according to Observer Mission reports. … On at least 27 different occasions, the Observer Mission has reported seeing funerary vehicles returning to Russia with a sign reading “Cargo 200” or “200,” a well-known code for Russian military casualties. … on June 10 [the Mission] observed the exhumation of a soldier in a Russian military uniform. … On October 17, at the Uspenka border crossing point, the SMM saw one black minivan with tinted windows and black military license plates enter separatist-held Ukraine from Russia, with two men in military-style dress on board.” In 2018 an OSCE drone even recorded footage of Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine.

Indeed, the evidence is simply overwhelming. For example, Paul Gregory writes that as of September 2016, the organization Cargo 200 had published “names, photos, addresses, and military records” of 167 troops “killed,” 187 “MIA,” 305 mercenaries “killed” and 796 “MIA.” But these are likely underestimates, as, for example, he continues, the Committee of [Russian] Soldiers’ Mothers “gather information from grieving families to arrive at casualty figures of up to 3,500 KIA [killed in action]” by 2016; the Committee was labelled a ‘foreign agent’ by the Russian Justice Ministry.  Furthermore, “Young Russian soldiers in Ukraine routinely post pictures on vKontakte (a Russian version of Facebook) of themselves in Ukraine and identify their unit.”

Bellingcat further demolished the myth by demonstrating “that thousands of Russian soldiers have been awarded the highest honors of the Russian Federation for bravery/distinction in combat,” by gathering images of these medals that the soldiers posted on social media. “Bellingcat’s analysis shows 4,300 medals “For Distinction in Combat” awarded between July 11, 2014 and February 2016,” but this is only one of four kinds of medals awarded.

Unlike the issue of Ukraine regaining control of its border, there is no prior condition in Minsk II for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, mercenaries, equipment etc; therefore, Ukraine quite understandably interprets this refusal by Russia and its proxies to implement these provisions of Minsk as reason not to implement the local elections, despite having passed the legislation for it. Because no sovereign state would be prepared to hold local elections in a region of its country under the control of a hostile foreign military power, which also controls the local militia running the region.

_{Russian soldiers and their medals for fighting in Ukraine, from Inform Napalm (https://informnapalm.org/en/identified-servicemen-of-19th-mrb-awarded-for-fighting-in-ukraine/)}

………………………………………………….

Furthermore, how do we define “illegal groups” as described in this same article of Minsk II? To the Ukrainian government, the Russian armed and financed and often staffed armed militia in control of the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk not in its control are “illegal groups,” but they obviously don’t consider themselves to be, which is a problem of the text. Not that Ukraine has used this as a pretext, however.

The text also says that the regions where this ‘special status’ and hence local elections would be held would correspond to the ceasefire lines of September 2014, ie, when Minsk I was signed. But now the Russian proxies were in control of more territory, including the airport, Debaltseve etc. So while Minsk II calls for immediate ceasefire (ie, on the lines of February 2015), these lines are beyond those of September 2014, on which special status is to be based. So how does Ukraine carry out local elections when the separatist militia control areas beyond the assigned region?

Furthermore, Minsk II says that the local elections are to be held “with the monitoring of OSCE,” but it is unclear how OSCE can monitor a situation in which OSCE itself says a key provision of Minsk, namely withdrawal of all foreign forces and weapons, has not been carried out. In addition, it is unclear how Ukraine can carry out these local elections under its new special status law, as required by Minsk II, when both Russia and its proxy leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk rejected this new law. Finally, just two months after Minsk II was signed, the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk under Russian control held their own local “elections” anyway, neither under Ukrainian government law nor with OSCE monitoring, in outright violation of Minsk II.

For all these reasons, Ukraine not proceeding with the political side of Minsk (local elections under its special status legislation) is arguably completely justified; local elections carried out in such conditions would result in Russia essentially having a permanent place inside the Ukrainian polity. Or, at the very least, even if one accuses Ukraine of not carrying out Minsk II, they must at the same time accuse Russia of also not carrying out Minsk II. For its part, Russia simply claims it is not a signatory to Minsk II and is therefore not bound to it, claiming only the separatist leaders were signatories, but this is simply a lie: the signature of Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, can be clearly seen on the Minsk agreement, indeed on the Russian version of it. Check the last page with the signatures.

So, while both sides arguably stalled, and, in my view, the Ukrainian side justifiably so for the reasons above, what of anti-Ukrainian or pro-Putin writers who claim either that Zelensky began with a peace platform to implement Minsk II when elected in 2019 but “backed down” due to intimidation from the Ukrainian far-right, or that, even more blandly, Ukraine ultimately “rejected” it (often with the very colourful addition that Russia “wanted to implement it”)?

According to the first charge, after being elected in 2019 on a peace platform, Zelensky signed an agreement for the mutual pull-back of armed forces in order to facilitate the conditions for proceeding with Minsk (based on the new Steinmeier formula which Zelensky had signed onto), but when confronted by the refusal of the far-right and the Azov Regiment to pull back, so the story goes, he “backed down.”

Yet actually, the opposite occurred. As Taras Billous explains:

“There had been an agreement [in late 2019] that there would be a troop disengagement at three points of what was then the line between Ukrainian forces and Russian/separatist forces in Donbas. Then people from around the Azov movement, and from the National Corps Party, staged a campaign there, at one of these points, presenting this disengagement as if it represented some kind of gain for the Kremlin, as if Ukrainian troops alone were called upon to withdraw and leave their positions. But this wasn’t what the disengagement required; it required both sides to pull back. But even in this case, which was so crucial for the right, where they tried to achieve their maximum mobilization for this activity, they didn’t succeed in achieving their point of view because Zelensky intervened personally. He traveled to that line of forces and engaged in heated discussions with some Azov members, and eventually Ukraine did carry out this disengagement, which was a prerequisite for resuming the meeting in the “Normandy Format” with France and Germany as mediators between Ukraine and Russia. So even in this case the right was unable to block governmental policy.”

Curiously, the pro-Putin voices often show a video of Zelensky being confronted by the far-rightists at the disengagement lines as evidence of him “backing down” and that the far-right call the shots in Ukraine despite their tiny size. In this video tweet, the pro-Putin clown Denis Rogatyuk writes “The fighter refuses [to lay down arms]. Zelensky is NOT running the show. The neo-nazis are.” I say curiously because the video shows the complete opposite: it shows Zelensky stood his ground. They backed down; as Billous explains, Zelensky did carry out the disengagement; and on December 19, the Ukrainian parliament yet again extended the Donbas special status legislation for another year.

Furthermore, if Zelensky had “backed down” to the far right, and instead decided on “NATO-backed” war to reclaim the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas as the tankie discourse goes, then wouldn’t we have seen an upturn in the fighting? Yet, as I demonstrated in my ‘Myth 5’, the numbers of people dying on the Donbas front quite sharply declined in 2019-2021 under Zelensky (and of course it was already well down in 2016-2018 compared to the hot war of 2014-15 when nearly all the 14,000 deaths (including 3404 civilian deaths) occurred. The total deaths in this conflict dropped to 19 in 2019 (from 43 in 2018) then 23 in 2020, 16 in 2021 (11 in the first half year and 5 in second half) and zero in 2022 before the invasion – and all this taking into account that the Russian-backed side are also responsible for these deaths, and that around half these figures are from landmines rather than shooting and shelling – the evidence suggests Zelensky did largely carry out his peace program. Sure doesn’t suggest much of a ‘NATO-backed offensive’.

On the final charge, that Ukraine actually “abandoned” or “rejected” the Minsk agreement, it is unclear if those making this common charge are simply saying the same, that Ukraine has yet to carry out certain provisions of it, for the reasons described above, but saying it in a more colourful and dishonest way; or if they really are claiming that at some point Ukraine formally renounced the agreement. Since I wouldn’t want to accuse Putin apologists of dishonesty, I will read it to mean what it does mean in English.

In which case, they should provide the source of the statement by the Ukrainian government. Anyone that watches or reads the news might remember that the ‘Normandy’ framework discussions between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany had continued right up till the eve of Russia’s recognition of the “independence” of the two ‘republics’ it controlled just a few days before the invasion; these were discussions based on trying to negotiate Minsk II. Russia’s recognition and invasion buried the accords. So in its literal meaning, this continual charge is simply a lie.

In order to seem less of a liar, Jacques Baud, the former NATO military analyst turned Putin troll who was widely cited by the tankie left around the time of the invasion, put it this way: “But on February 11, in Berlin, after 9 hours of work, the meeting of the political advisers of the leaders of the “Normandy format” ends, without concrete result: the Ukrainians still and always refuse to apply the Accords of Minsk, apparently under pressure from the United States.” As “evidence” for this claim, he “cites” this article. But of course the article “cited” says no such thing; it reads “Reiterating Ukraine’s commitment to a political and diplomatic settlement of the ongoing tensions, Yermak said the country would continue to take measures to intensify the work of all existing negotiation formats in order to facilitate the peace process.”

Baud, in other words, just made it up. Those of us who are used to this are not surprised; those who are not, try to understand that pretty much all pro-Putin propaganda is of this level.

Finally, this simple description of the reality inside the Russia-owned parts of Donbas in the years before the 2022 invasion should suffice to demonstrate how comprehensively Minsk II was already fully violated in spirit and letter there:

“The “People’s Republics” also formally adopted constitutions which claimed sovereignty over areas under Kiev’s control – again, in breach of Minsk 2. Over 800,000 inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” have been issued with Russian passports, i.e. Russian citizenship. Higher education institutions have adopted the curricula used in Russia. The Ukrainian language has been banned in schools. In addition to the replacement of Ukrainian television broadcasting by state-controlled Russian television channels, the Kremlin version of current affairs (and world history, in the form of the “Russian world”) is promoted by outlets of the Russian Centre organisation (Russian-state-funded) and the Russia-Donbass Integration Committee (also Russian-state-funded). Russian political parties are now active in the “People’s Republics” and contest elections there, especially the Just Russia Party, the Russian Communist Party, and Putin’s United Russia Party. Those inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” who have Russian citizenship also take part in Russian elections. Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 are dead.”

Myth 7: Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace agreement in April 2022 whereby Ukraine would not join NATO, but then British prime minister Boris Johnston visited Kyiv and told Zelensky not to go ahead with it, after which Ukraine withdrew from the negotiations, scuttling this chance for peace.

This myth has taken on such a life of its own it has probably been re-published in almost every conceivable left and alt-right publication, not only the anti-Ukrainian ones. The tankie and conspiracist etherworld has been full of it, for example Jacobin’s pro-Putin propagandist Branco Marcetic here. Yet there is not an ounce of truth to it.

Of course, the Ukrainians have no agency; they just jump to the alleged commands of some foreign leader that shows up. Yet we don’t even know for sure what Johnston said; it was just a claim by one Ukrainian newspaper, allegedly from some unnamed sources close to Zelensky. Hell, anyone can say anything.

It is certainly true that there was a peace proposal on the table that involved Ukraine scrapping its bid to join NATO. In fact, that proposal was already on the table before the war even began. Ukraine accepted the proposal, but Putin rejected it, because, after all, Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and restore the Russian Empire, as he openly stated that Ukraine had no right to exist as a separate entity to Russia; the NATO stuff as just a smokescreen, so he saw Ukraine’s acceptance of no NATO as a threat rather than an opportunity.

It is also true that there was a more detailed peace proposal on the table in late March-early April 2022, about a month into the war. Importantly, this was Ukraine’s 10-point peace proposal to Russia on March 29 2022; it was not just some ‘proposal’ floating around in the atmosphere, that some are accusing Ukraine of rejecting (rejecting its own proposal).

The 10 points included that Ukraine would no longer seek to join NATO, would not join any military alliance, that instead it would get sovereignty guarantees from a number of nations instead (including Russia), the statement that there was no military solution to the question of Crimea and the 40 percent of Donbas already occupied by Russia before February 2022, and therefore Russia would withdraw to these pre-February lines, the sovereignty guarantees would not even cover these regions until a solution was eventually arrived at via negotiations, and in the case of Crimea, the negotiations could last 15 years!

For what happened next, I am going to cite US Greens Party leader Howie Hawkins who put together a very clear outline based on easily available sources; above all what this shows is that Russia had already rejected the proposals two days before Johnston’s visit, and that despite horrific Russian massacres in the meantime, Zelensky remained open for negotiations. These facts may not fit with lots of peoples’ favourite conspiracy theory, but they are clearly on the record, so please argue against the facts, not against me or Howie Hawkins. Here is Howie:

…………………………………………………..

“The peace settlement on the table at the end of March provided for Russia to return to the pre-February 24 lands it held in the Donbass and Crimea, for Ukraine to be a neutral non-NATO country without nuclear weapons or foreign troops (the latter two provisions are already in the Ukrainian constitution) in return for a security guarantee treaty signed by the big powers, and for the status of the Donbas and Crimea to be determined over a number of years diplomatically, not militarily.

“According to a Reuters report, that basic proposal was on the table in the days before and just after the invasion, but Putin rejected it because he wanted to annex Ukraine, not just make it militarily neutral.

“On April 7, two days before Johnson’s visit to Zelensky on April 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the proposed settlement was “unacceptable.”

“Whether Johnson’s April 9 no negotiations message, attributed to unnamed sources in the Zelensky administration only by a single Ukrainian news source, represented the Collective West, as the report said he claimed, has never been confirmed by the US or other Western countries.

“In any case, three days later on April 12, Putin said the negotiations were at a “dead end.” “On April 27, the Financial Times reported in a story entitled, “Vladimir Putin abandons hopes of Ukraine deal and shifts to land-grab strategy,” that Putin had “lost interest in diplomatic efforts to end his war,” citing sources briefed on conversations with Putin.

“Meanwhile, Zelensky remained open to peace talks. At an April 25 press conference, Zelensky had said he is ready to hold peace talks and wishes to do so face-to-face with Putin. “He followed up on May 12, again calling for negotiations. “And again on June 8: Asked about talks with Russia which have been suspended since late March, Zelensky said that Ukraine has not changed his position. He said he maintains the view that war should be ended at the negotiating table. The Ukrainian President also stated that he was ready for direct talks with Vladimir Putin, adding that there was “nobody else to talk to” but the Russian president, news agency AFP reported.
 

“I think these statements by Putin and Lavrov show it was Russia that didn’t want a peace agreement that would make them retreat to the pre-Feb 24 contact line in late March. Russia was at its peak of territory held, although it was being defeated and about to retreat from Kiev and other northern oblasts.”

…………………………………………………

I would also add another aspect: even though it is clear from this that Zelensky didn’t abandon Ukraine’s own plan, but Lavrov and Putin rejected it, Ukraine would have been fully in its rights to reject it by mid-April, because Russia had given its own response to Ukraine’s generous offer in practice: by organising the Bucha massacre of some 400 Ukrainian civilians as it withdrew from the Kyiv region, and by continuing to besiege and level the city of Mariupol, from where it was then deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Yet, amazingly enough, the sources here suggest it still remained open to a negotiated settlement.

It is also worth noting that in the months ahead, Zelensky continually insisted Ukraine would fight on until Russian forces were forced back to the pre-February 2022 (ie pre-invasion) lines, and then negotiate. For example, here in May he is still saying there can be negotiations, if Russia withdraws “from areas that it seized during the invasion,” as well as intends to negotiate on Crimea and Donbas, while noting that:

“With each new Bucha, with each new Mariupol, with each new city where there are dozens of dead people, cases of rape, with each new atrocity, the desire and the possibility to negotiate disappears, as well as the possibility of resolving this issue in a diplomatic manner.”

“To stop the war between Russia and Ukraine the step should be regaining the situation as of 23 February,” Zelensky told the BBC on May 7.  

If by later in 2022 Zelensky’s statements hardened – since then Ukraine has insisted that all of Ukraine, including Crimea, must be liberated before a ceasefire – then this seems to me to be a sensible negotiating position after continuous Russian rejection, both on paper and more importantly in practice, of all and every Ukrainian proposal before then, including the March-April 2022 peace process.

As for Russia, since illegally annexing four Ukrainian oblasts (as well as Crimea) later in 2022, including two where there was never any support for joining Russia, its ‘negotiating position’ has been that Ukraine must first recognise this theft of five oblasts, of a fifth of its territory!

A further Ukraine Myth to be dealt with next is the big NATO question, ie, the idea that Russia was ‘provoked’ into a genocidal invasion of its neighbour, a non-NATO member, due to its ‘provocative’ unrequited wish to join NATO. But for now, it is obvious from Russia’s rejection of both the pre-invasion proposal for Ukraine to quit its NATO ambitions, and Ukraine’s more developed proposals for the same and more one month into the war, that Russia invaded Ukraine not because of any fear of NATO but rather, as Putin tells us himself, because he believes Ukraine has no right to exist.

Besides, imperialism is a real thing; Russian imperialism wants strategic control of the Black Sea, its resources and its sea lanes; ‘NATO’ is just a good excuse (and useful to bullshit gullible western leftists with), while restoration of the Russian Empire is the ideology to bullshit the Russian masses and consolidate the ruling class with.     

To be continued.

By Michael Karadjis

This myth has taken on such a life of its own it has probably been re-published in almost every conceivable left and alt-right publication, not only the anti-Ukrainian ones. The tankie and conspiracist etherworld has been full of it, for example Jacobin’s pro-Putin propagandist Branco Marcetic here. Yet there is not an ounce of truth to it.

Of course, the Ukrainians have no agency; they just jump to the alleged commands of some foreign leader that shows up. Yet we don’t even know for sure what Johnston said; it was just a claim by one Ukrainian newspaper, allegedly from some unnamed sources close to Zelensky. Hell, anyone can say anything.

It is certainly true that there was a peace proposal on the table that involved Ukraine scrapping its bid to join NATO. In fact, that proposal was already on the table before the war even began. Ukraine accepted the proposal, but Putin rejected it, because, after all, Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and restore the Russian Empire, as he openly stated that Ukraine had no right to exist as a separate entity to Russia; the NATO stuff as just a smokescreen, so he saw Ukraine’s acceptance of no NATO as a threat rather than an opportunity.

It is also true that there was a more detailed peace proposal on the table in late March-early April 2022, about a month into the war. Importantly, this was Ukraine’s 10-point peace proposal to Russia on March 29 2022; it was not just some ‘proposal’ floating around in the atmosphere, that some are accusing Ukraine of rejecting (rejecting its own proposal).

The 10 points included that Ukraine would no longer seek to join NATO, would not join any military alliance, that instead it would get sovereignty guarantees from a number of nations instead (including Russia), the statement that there was no military solution to the question of Crimea and the 40 percent of Donbas already occupied by Russia before February 2022, and therefore Russia would withdraw to these pre-February lines, the sovereignty guarantees would not even cover these regions until a solution was eventually arrived at via negotiations, and in the case of Crimea, the negotiations could last 15 years!

For what happened next, I am going to cite US Greens Party leader Howie Hawkins who put together a very clear outline based on easily available sources; above all what this shows is that Russia had already rejected the proposals two days before Johnston’s visit, and that despite horrific Russian massacres in the meantime, Zelensky remained open for negotiations. These facts may not fit with lots of peoples’ favourite conspiracy theory, but they are clearly on the record, so please argue against the facts, not against me or Howie Hawkins. Here is Howie:

…………………………………………………..

“The peace settlement on the table at the end of March provided for Russia to return to the pre-February 24 lands it held in the Donbass and Crimea, for Ukraine to be a neutral non-NATO country without nuclear weapons or foreign troops (the latter two provisions are already in the Ukrainian constitution) in return for a security guarantee treaty signed by the big powers, and for the status of the Donbas and Crimea to be determined over a number of years diplomatically, not militarily.

“According to a Reuters report, that basic proposal was on the table in the days before and just after the invasion, but Putin rejected it because he wanted to annex Ukraine, not just make it militarily neutral.

“On April 7, two days before Johnson’s visit to Zelensky on April 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the proposed settlement was “unacceptable.”

“Whether Johnson’s April 9 no negotiations message, attributed to unnamed sources in the Zelensky administration only by a single Ukrainian news source, represented the Collective West, as the report said he claimed, has never been confirmed by the US or other Western countries.

“In any case, three days later on April 12, Putin said the negotiations were at a “dead end.” “On April 27, the Financial Times reported in a story entitled, “Vladimir Putin abandons hopes of Ukraine deal and shifts to land-grab strategy,” that Putin had “lost interest in diplomatic efforts to end his war,” citing sources briefed on conversations with Putin.

“Meanwhile, Zelensky remained open to peace talks. At an April 25 press conference, Zelensky had said he is ready to hold peace talks and wishes to do so face-to-face with Putin. “He followed up on May 12, again calling for negotiations. “And again on June 8: Asked about talks with Russia which have been suspended since late March, Zelensky said that Ukraine has not changed his position. He said he maintains the view that war should be ended at the negotiating table. The Ukrainian President also stated that he was ready for direct talks with Vladimir Putin, adding that there was “nobody else to talk to” but the Russian president, news agency AFP reported.
 

“I think these statements by Putin and Lavrov show it was Russia that didn’t want a peace agreement that would make them retreat to the pre-Feb 24 contact line in late March. Russia was at its peak of territory held, although it was being defeated and about to retreat from Kiev and other northern oblasts.”

…………………………………………………

I would also add another aspect: even though it is clear from this that Zelensky didn’t abandon Ukraine’s own plan, but Lavrov and Putin rejected it, Ukraine would have been fully in its rights to reject it by mid-April, because Russia had given its own response to Ukraine’s generous offer in practice: by organising the Bucha massacre of some 400 Ukrainian civilians as it withdrew from the Kyiv region, and by continuing to besiege and level the city of Mariupol, from where it was then deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainians. Yet, amazingly enough, the sources here suggest it still remained open to a negotiated settlement.

It is also worth noting that in the months ahead, Zelensky continually insisted Ukraine would fight on until Russian forces were forced back to the pre-February 2022 (ie pre-invasion) lines, and then negotiate. For example, here in May he is still saying there can be negotiations, if Russia withdraws “from areas that it seized during the invasion,” as well as intends to negotiate on Crimea and Donbas, while noting that:

“With each new Bucha, with each new Mariupol, with each new city where there are dozens of dead people, cases of rape, with each new atrocity, the desire and the possibility to negotiate disappears, as well as the possibility of resolving this issue in a diplomatic manner.”

“To stop the war between Russia and Ukraine the step should be regaining the situation as of 23 February,” Zelensky told the BBC on May 7.  

If by later in 2022 Zelensky’s statements hardened – since then Ukraine has insisted that all of Ukraine, including Crimea, must be liberated before a ceasefire – then this seems to me to be a sensible negotiating position after continuous Russian rejection, both on paper and more importantly in practice, of all and every Ukrainian proposal before then, including the March-April 2022 peace process.

As for Russia, since illegally annexing four Ukrainian oblasts (as well as Crimea) later in 2022, including two where there was never any support for joining Russia, its ‘negotiating position’ has been that Ukraine must first recognise this theft of five oblasts, of a fifth of its territory!

A further Ukraine Myth to be dealt with next is the big NATO question, ie, the idea that Russia was ‘provoked’ into a genocidal invasion of its neighbour, a non-NATO member, due to its ‘provocative’ unrequited wish to join NATO. But for now, it is obvious from Russia’s rejection of both the pre-invasion proposal for Ukraine to quit its NATO ambitions, and Ukraine’s more developed proposals for the same and more one month into the war, that Russia invaded Ukraine not because of any fear of NATO but rather, as Putin tells us himself, because he believes Ukraine has no right to exist.

Besides, imperialism is a real thing; Russian imperialism wants strategic control of the Black Sea, its resources and its sea lanes; ‘NATO’ is just a good excuse (and useful to bullshit gullible western leftists with), while restoration of the Russian Empire is the ideology to bullshit the Russian masses and consolidate the ruling class with.     

by Michael Karadjis

These assertions are entirely fictional as will be shown, but they also raise a number of sub-points; first, there were two Minsk agreements, so what happened to the first?; what is the actual content of the Minsk II agreement?; how was it imposed on Ukraine?; and what is the evidence that it was Ukraine that blocked its implementation?

Following the first few months of armed conflict between the Ukrainian government and the Russian-backed militia in Donbas in mid-2014, the first Minsk agreement was signed between Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as by the Russian-backed junta leaders who had seized power in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), on 5 September 2014.

The main provisions were for

• an immediate ceasefire to be monitored by OSCE,

• “decentralisation of power, including through the adoption of the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,”

• the permanent monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian border by OSCE,

• release of all hostages and illegally detained persons,

• a law preventing the prosecution and punishment of people in connection with the conflict,

• “early local elections in accordance with the Ukrainian law “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts”,” and

• the withdrawal of “illegal armed groups and military equipment as well as fighters and mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian government immediately carried out its side of the bargain by adopting the “Law on the Special Order of Local Self-Government in Certain Districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions” on September 16. According to this law, this special status of self-government will be implemented in the districts of Donetsk and Lugansk controlled by the separatists at the time of the ceasefire. The law provides for the freedom of any language to be used and cross-border cooperation with Russia. Local elections were scheduled for the region in December.

However, the Minsk I Protocol was almost immediately violated in a massive way by the Russian-orchestrated ‘separatist’ militia, which launched an attack aimed at seizing the Donetsk airport, which was in the government-controlled part of Donetsk at the time of the ceasefire. This led to a 5-month battle in which the side launching the aggression was in open violation of the Protocol, and as it was a battle to control infrastructure, cannot in any way be excused as a battle to protect hypothetically endangered pro-Russian communities. They further violated the Minsk Protocol by holding their own “elections” in November outside the new Ukrainian special status law, under Russian military occupation, and without any of the other provisions of Minsk adhered to (eg, withdrawal of illegal armed groups, OSCE monitoring of the border etc). In January, the separatists took control of the airport, and also launched attacks on other government-controlled regions, including Mariupol, Debaltseve and Krematorsk, killing dozens of civilians.

So there is no ambiguity regarding Minsk I: Ukraine carried out the political requirements, but the Russia-owned militia massively violated both the political and above all the military agreements.

With large-scale support from direct intervention by Russian forces, the separatists and Russia were able to force a new Minsk agreement, Minsk II, on Ukraine. Minsk II, mediated by France and Germany, was signed on February 12 by Russia, Ukraine, OSCE and the separatist leaders.

Again, it was immediately violated by the Russian-orchestrated militia, who continued their attack on Debaltseve, unilaterally declaring it to be outside the agreement! Hundreds of Ukrainian troops had been holed up and besieged in the town for weeks. It fell to the separatists on February 18, a week after the agreement.

Was Minsk II a good agreement for Ukraine? Well, the first thing that must be noted is that it was imposed on Ukraine by military force, given the large scale and relatively open intervention of Russian forces (as opposed to just Russian-backed forces and Russian heavy weaponry) in the second phase of the Donbas war. Therefore, the way Ukraine “agreed” to it was an act of international injustice, imperialist imposition, so those blaming Ukraine for not implementing it are in effect siding with imperialist bullying.

That said, was Minsk II so much worse than Minsk I for Ukraine, and was it a fair and just agreement anyway, despite the way it was imposed?

Let’s again look at the main points of the Minsk II agreement:

1, 2, 3 ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons by both parties at equal distances, security zones for heavy weaponry, monitoring and verification by OSCE

4. On the first day after the withdrawal, to begin a dialogue on the procedures for holding local elections in accordance with Ukrainian law and the Law of Ukraine “On a temporary order of local government in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” … no later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, to adopt a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with the specification of a territory subject to the special regime in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in some regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” based on the line set in a Minsk memorandum of September 19, 2014

5, 6 Pardons and amnesties, law prohibiting prosecution and punishment in connection with the conflict, release and exchange of hostages and illegally detained persons

9. Restoration of full control over the state border of Ukraine by Ukraine’s government throughout the whole conflict area, which should begin on the first day after the local elections and be completed after a comprehensive political settlement (local elections in individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the basis of the Law of Ukraine, and a constitutional reform) by the end of 2015, on condition of implementation of paragraph 11.

10. The withdrawal of all foreign armed forces, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under the supervision of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups.

11. Conducting constitutional reform in Ukraine, with the new constitution coming into force by the end of 2015, providing for decentralization as a key element (taking into account the characteristics of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with representatives of these areas), as well as the adoption of the permanent legislation on the special status of individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions

12. On the basis of the Law of Ukraine “On temporary order of local government in individual areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” the questions regarding local elections shall be discussed and agreed with the individual areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in compliance with the relevant standards of the OSCE with the monitoring by the OSCE ODIHR.

Minsk II appears more comprehensive than Minsk I, but in certain respects can be considered more disadvantageous to Ukraine; after all, Russia and its proxies did not continue the war for another 6 months for no gain. In addition, there is arguably confusion in the timeline, which allowed both sides to stall. It is generally thought that Ukraine stalled on the political aspects of Minsk, while Russia and proxies stalled on the military-security aspects.

For example, while Ukraine had already agreed to the special status provisions in Minsk I and had immediately passed the relevant legislation (and again, following Minsk II, the Rada (parliament) voted in the ‘special status’ laws for Donbas, Minsk II goes beyond in mandating Ukraine bring into force a “new constitution,” with “decentralisation as a key element.” Understandably, Ukrainians may well wonder why Russia, via military intervention inside Ukraine, has the right to impose a “new constitution” of a specific nature on Ukraine as a whole, as opposed to the provisions already agreed to regarding Donetsk and Luhansk.

If the United States had sent troops into Russian territory to “aid” the Chechens during Putin’s grizzly slaughter in Chechnya over 1999-2001, and then forced Russia to sign a ‘Minsk’ agreement according to which, not only would Chechnya have special status, but Russia had to write a whole new constitution based on the ‘decentralisation’ of the entire territory of Russia, I wonder how many of today’s ‘leftist’ Putin apologists would be demanding Russia ‘sign Minsk, the only road to peace’, and be praising the US for its desire for peace?

In addition, Minsk II says that Ukraine can only regain control over its sovereign border after the local elections have been held in Donbas, and can only be completed after this imposed “new constitution” comes into being. There is nothing remotely as sweeping as this in Minsk I.

However, Minsk II also says that all foreign armed forces, military equipment and mercenaries must leave Ukraine “under the supervision of the OSCE” and that all “illegal groups” must be disarmed. Yet this manifestly never happened. It definitely never happened “under the supervision of OSCE,” because OSCE continually reported over the years ahead evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine.

Indeed, at this point, we should probably demolish this particular sub-myth, because any reasonable person would have to admit that Ukraine could not carry out acts of ‘local self-governance’ in a region occupied by the army of a hostile neighbouring superpower; yet Russia denies its troops were there.

Sub-Myth: There were no Russian troops in Ukraine between the 2015 ceasefire and the 2022 invasion

OSCE had become quite open about its evidence of Russian troops and military equipment entering Ukraine by 2016. By the end of that year, the OSCE observer mission had observed “more than 30,000 individuals in military-style dress crossing just at the two checkpoints to which it has access. … Twenty uniformed persons crossed the border in a single bus with tinted windows in mid-October, according to Observer Mission reports. … On at least 27 different occasions, the Observer Mission has reported seeing funerary vehicles returning to Russia with a sign reading “Cargo 200” or “200,” a well-known code for Russian military casualties. … on June 10 [the Mission] observed the exhumation of a soldier in a Russian military uniform. … On October 17, at the Uspenka border crossing point, the SMM saw one black minivan with tinted windows and black military license plates enter separatist-held Ukraine from Russia, with two men in military-style dress on board.” In 2018 an OSCE drone even recorded footage of Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukraine.

Indeed, the evidence is simply overwhelming. For example, Paul Gregory writes that as of September 2016, the organization Cargo 200 had published “names, photos, addresses, and military records” of 167 troops “killed,” 187 “MIA,” 305 mercenaries “killed” and 796 “MIA.” But these are likely underestimates, as, for example, he continues, the Committee of [Russian] Soldiers’ Mothers “gather information from grieving families to arrive at casualty figures of up to 3,500 KIA [killed in action]” by 2016; the Committee was labelled a ‘foreign agent’ by the Russian Justice Ministry.  Furthermore, “Young Russian soldiers in Ukraine routinely post pictures on vKontakte (a Russian version of Facebook) of themselves in Ukraine and identify their unit.”

Bellingcat further demolished the myth by demonstrating “that thousands of Russian soldiers have been awarded the highest honors of the Russian Federation for bravery/distinction in combat,” by gathering images of these medals that the soldiers posted on social media. “Bellingcat’s analysis shows 4,300 medals “For Distinction in Combat” awarded between July 11, 2014 and February 2016,” but this is only one of four kinds of medals awarded.

Unlike the issue of Ukraine regaining control of its border, there is no prior condition in Minsk II for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, mercenaries, equipment etc; therefore, Ukraine quite understandably interprets this refusal by Russia and its proxies to implement these provisions of Minsk as reason not to implement the local elections, despite having passed the legislation for it. Because no sovereign state would be prepared to hold local elections in a region of its country under the control of a hostile foreign military power, which also controls the local militia running the region.

_{Russian soldiers and their medals for fighting in Ukraine, from Inform Napalm (https://informnapalm.org/en/identified-servicemen-of-19th-mrb-awarded-for-fighting-in-ukraine/)}

………………………………………………….

Furthermore, how do we define “illegal groups” as described in this same article of Minsk II? To the Ukrainian government, the Russian armed and financed and often staffed armed militia in control of the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk not in its control are “illegal groups,” but they obviously don’t consider themselves to be, which is a problem of the text. Not that Ukraine has used this as a pretext, however.

The text also says that the regions where this ‘special status’ and hence local elections would be held would correspond to the ceasefire lines of September 2014, ie, when Minsk I was signed. But now the Russian proxies were in control of more territory, including the airport, Debaltseve etc. So while Minsk II calls for immediate ceasefire (ie, on the lines of February 2015), these lines are beyond those of September 2014, on which special status is to be based. So how does Ukraine carry out local elections when the separatist militia control areas beyond the assigned region?

Furthermore, Minsk II says that the local elections are to be held “with the monitoring of OSCE,” but it is unclear how OSCE can monitor a situation in which OSCE itself says a key provision of Minsk, namely withdrawal of all foreign forces and weapons, has not been carried out. In addition, it is unclear how Ukraine can carry out these local elections under its new special status law, as required by Minsk II, when both Russia and its proxy leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk rejected this new law. Finally, just two months after Minsk II was signed, the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk under Russian control held their own local “elections” anyway, neither under Ukrainian government law nor with OSCE monitoring, in outright violation of Minsk II.

For all these reasons, Ukraine not proceeding with the political side of Minsk (local elections under its special status legislation) is arguably completely justified; local elections carried out in such conditions would result in Russia essentially having a permanent place inside the Ukrainian polity. Or, at the very least, even if one accuses Ukraine of not carrying out Minsk II, they must at the same time accuse Russia of also not carrying out Minsk II. For its part, Russia simply claims it is not a signatory to Minsk II and is therefore not bound to it, claiming only the separatist leaders were signatories, but this is simply a lie: the signature of Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, can be clearly seen on the Minsk agreement, indeed on the Russian version of it. Check the last page with the signatures.

So, while both sides arguably stalled, and, in my view, the Ukrainian side justifiably so for the reasons above, what of anti-Ukrainian or pro-Putin writers who claim either that Zelensky began with a peace platform to implement Minsk II when elected in 2019 but “backed down” due to intimidation from the Ukrainian far-right, or that, even more blandly, Ukraine ultimately “rejected” it (often with the very colourful addition that Russia “wanted to implement it”)?

According to the first charge, after being elected in 2019 on a peace platform, Zelensky signed an agreement for the mutual pull-back of armed forces in order to facilitate the conditions for proceeding with Minsk (based on the new Steinmeier formula which Zelensky had signed onto), but when confronted by the refusal of the far-right and the Azov Regiment to pull back, so the story goes, he “backed down.”

Yet actually, the opposite occurred. As Taras Billous explains:

“There had been an agreement [in late 2019] that there would be a troop disengagement at three points of what was then the line between Ukrainian forces and Russian/separatist forces in Donbas. Then people from around the Azov movement, and from the National Corps Party, staged a campaign there, at one of these points, presenting this disengagement as if it represented some kind of gain for the Kremlin, as if Ukrainian troops alone were called upon to withdraw and leave their positions. But this wasn’t what the disengagement required; it required both sides to pull back. But even in this case, which was so crucial for the right, where they tried to achieve their maximum mobilization for this activity, they didn’t succeed in achieving their point of view because Zelensky intervened personally. He traveled to that line of forces and engaged in heated discussions with some Azov members, and eventually Ukraine did carry out this disengagement, which was a prerequisite for resuming the meeting in the “Normandy Format” with France and Germany as mediators between Ukraine and Russia. So even in this case the right was unable to block governmental policy.”

Curiously, the pro-Putin voices often show a video of Zelensky being confronted by the far-rightists at the disengagement lines as evidence of him “backing down” and that the far-right call the shots in Ukraine despite their tiny size. In this video tweet, the pro-Putin clown Denis Rogatyuk writes “The fighter refuses [to lay down arms]. Zelensky is NOT running the show. The neo-nazis are.” I say curiously because the video shows the complete opposite: it shows Zelensky stood his ground. They backed down; as Billous explains, Zelensky did carry out the disengagement; and on December 19, the Ukrainian parliament yet again extended the Donbas special status legislation for another year.

Furthermore, if Zelensky had “backed down” to the far right, and instead decided on “NATO-backed” war to reclaim the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas as the tankie discourse goes, then wouldn’t we have seen an upturn in the fighting? Yet, as I demonstrated in my ‘Myth 5’, the numbers of people dying on the Donbas front quite sharply declined in 2019-2021 under Zelensky (and of course it was already well down in 2016-2018 compared to the hot war of 2014-15 when nearly all the 14,000 deaths (including 3404 civilian deaths) occurred. The total deaths in this conflict dropped to 19 in 2019 (from 43 in 2018) then 23 in 2020, 16 in 2021 (11 in the first half year and 5 in second half) and zero in 2022 before the invasion – and all this taking into account that the Russian-backed side are also responsible for these deaths, and that around half these figures are from landmines rather than shooting and shelling – the evidence suggests Zelensky did largely carry out his peace program. Sure doesn’t suggest much of a ‘NATO-backed offensive’.

On the final charge, that Ukraine actually “abandoned” or “rejected” the Minsk agreement, it is unclear if those making this common charge are simply saying the same, that Ukraine has yet to carry out certain provisions of it, for the reasons described above, but saying it in a more colourful and dishonest way; or if they really are claiming that at some point Ukraine formally renounced the agreement. Since I wouldn’t want to accuse Putin apologists of dishonesty, I will read it to mean what it does mean in English.

In which case, they should provide the source of the statement by the Ukrainian government. Anyone that watches or reads the news might remember that the ‘Normandy’ framework discussions between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany had continued right up till the eve of Russia’s recognition of the “independence” of the two ‘republics’ it controlled just a few days before the invasion; these were discussions based on trying to negotiate Minsk II. Russia’s recognition and invasion buried the accords. So in its literal meaning, this continual charge is simply a lie.

In order to seem less of a liar, Jacques Baud, the former NATO military analyst turned Putin troll who was widely cited by the tankie left around the time of the invasion, put it this way: “But on February 11, in Berlin, after 9 hours of work, the meeting of the political advisers of the leaders of the “Normandy format” ends, without concrete result: the Ukrainians still and always refuse to apply the Accords of Minsk, apparently under pressure from the United States.” As “evidence” for this claim, he “cites” this article. But of course the article “cited” says no such thing; it reads “Reiterating Ukraine’s commitment to a political and diplomatic settlement of the ongoing tensions, Yermak said the country would continue to take measures to intensify the work of all existing negotiation formats in order to facilitate the peace process.”

Baud, in other words, just made it up. Those of us who are used to this are not surprised; those who are not, try to understand that pretty much all pro-Putin propaganda is of this level.

Finally, this simple description of the reality inside the Russia-owned parts of Donbas in the years before the 2022 invasion should suffice to demonstrate how comprehensively Minsk II was already fully violated in spirit and letter there:

“The “People’s Republics” also formally adopted constitutions which claimed sovereignty over areas under Kiev’s control – again, in breach of Minsk 2. Over 800,000 inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” have been issued with Russian passports, i.e. Russian citizenship. Higher education institutions have adopted the curricula used in Russia. The Ukrainian language has been banned in schools. In addition to the replacement of Ukrainian television broadcasting by state-controlled Russian television channels, the Kremlin version of current affairs (and world history, in the form of the “Russian world”) is promoted by outlets of the Russian Centre organisation (Russian-state-funded) and the Russia-Donbass Integration Committee (also Russian-state-funded). Russian political parties are now active in the “People’s Republics” and contest elections there, especially the Just Russia Party, the Russian Communist Party, and Putin’s United Russia Party. Those inhabitants of the “People’s Republics” who have Russian citizenship also take part in Russian elections. Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 are dead.”

by Michael Karadjis

As I have already fully dealt with this before, this will merely be a summary of main points; the article provides the detail.

The purpose of this claim is to argue that, while Putin may have overreacted by going all the way to invading, it was the Ukrainian army most at fault before the invasion. Even if it is admitted that Putin’s invasion is criminal and may have imperialist goals and is only using the plight of the Donbas Russians as an excuse, the claim is that this excuse is genuine.

Is any of this true?

Yes – the 14,000 figure. Yes, 14,000 were killed in the conflict in Donbas between 2014 and 2022. That’s a terrible figure, and of course many times that number were wounded, the entire region is a dead zone covered by landmines, and some 3.3 million people fled the region (ie before the millions who have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion). But what of the rest?

“The Ukrainian army killed.”

Wrong – two sides were involved in the armed conflict – the Ukrainian army, alongside various irregular Ukrainian militia (often composed of people uprooted from their homes) on one side, and the Russia-backed and armed separatist militia of the two self-proclaimed ‘republics’ in eastern Donbas on the other, backed by Russian troops and mercenaries. Both sides shoot; both sides kill.

For example, according to a January 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, “On January 24, unguided rockets, probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 29 civilians and 1 soldier in Mariupol and wounded more than 90 civilians. One rocket struck the courtyard of a school. On January 13, unguided rockets, also probably launched from rebel-controlled territory, killed 12 civilians and wounded 18 at a checkpoint near Volnovakha.” Don’t these 41 civilian lives count? What of the fact that, following the first Minsk Accord in September 2014, the ‘separatist’ militia immediately violated it by launching a 6-month battle, with hundreds of deaths, to seize the Donetsk airport from the government? How was that the Ukrainian army’s fault? What of the 298 people killed when the ‘separatists’ shot down a civilian airline in July 2014?

“ethnic Russians”

Ethnic Russians are a minority of around 38-39 percent of the population in Donbas, so it is unlikely that all or most killed are “ethnic Russians,” but that is not the point of this part of the assertion. The reason this fiction is inserted is to imply that people were killed “by the Ukrainian army” simply for being ethnic Russians, in a war of targeted ethnic extermination, rather than being victims of the cross-fire between the two sides shooting at each other.

But the other problem with the assertion is the implication that these were 14,000 “ethnic Russian” civilians – after all, when you are fighting a military force, you don’t usually describe the ethnicity of the troops killed. For example, now, when the Russian and Ukrainian armies are in combat, no-one refers to the numbers of ‘ethnic Russians’ or ‘ethnic Ukrainians’ dying, when referring to military deaths. So it clearly means ‘ethnic Russian civilians’.

In reality, according to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the numbers killed in Donbas from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021were:

4,400 Ukrainian troops

6,500 Russia—owned separatist troops

3,404 civilians (of whatever ethnicity)

So, let’s be clear: we are talking about 3,404 civilians, killed by both sides, over 2014-2021. And these 3,404 civilians would have included ‘ethnic Russians’ and ‘ethnic Ukrainians’, who both live in Donbas.

However, what about the last part:

“between 2014 and 2022.”

Well, yes, if we make the small change to 2014-2021, then this is correct in the abstract.

But the implication here is that there was a continual, ongoing bloody conflict (allegedly all caused by the Ukrainian army incessantly “shelling ethnic Russians”) right up to the Russian invasion. The invasion, in a sense, is simply the continuation of the ongoing bloodshed, at a perhaps slightly higher level; a reaction to it, even if perhaps an overreaction.

In reality, almost all the 14,000 deaths, including almost all the 3,404 civilians, were killed when the open conflict was raging from 2014 till the ceasefire in mid-2015 – that is, during a time when no-one seriously denies the direct involvement (ie, invasion) by the Russian army. According to the OSCE Status Reports from 2016-2022, even taking into account that the Russian-owned armed forces shoot and shell as much as do the Ukrainians, and that perhaps half if not the majority of deaths were due to landmines and unexploded ordinance, laid by both sides, here are the numbers of deaths in the years before the Russian invasion:

2016 – 88 deaths

2017 – 87 deaths

2018 – 43 deaths

2019 – 19 deaths

2020 – 23 deaths

2021 – 16 deaths, including:

– 11 deaths (Jan-June)

– 4 deaths (June-Sep)

– 1 death (Sep-Dec)

2022 – 0 deaths (before Russian invasion).

As we can see, the rate of death continually declined until it reached zero. The Russian invasion, which resulted in thousands of deaths and untold injuries, destruction and dispossession, was “in response” (allegedly) to the zero deaths in Donbas in 2022.

The total number of civilian fatalities from 2016-2022 was therefore 276, about half due to landmines. Of course any number of deaths is far too many, and neither the Ukrainian side nor the Russia-owned side should be excused for violations and war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths.

But as there were 3,404 civilians killed from 2014 to 2022 before the Russian invasion, that means that 3128 of these (92%) occurred in 2014-15, when no serious observer denies the direct intervention of the Russian armed forces, mercenaries and heavy weapons in the conflict.

_{Up to half of civilian deaths in Donbas in 2014-22 were from landmines}

by Michael Karadjis

_{Putin offering to save Russian-speakers in Ukraine from the barbaric assault he is carrying out against them}

In answering this, I just want to clarify where I’m coming from: I support the right of nations and peoples to self-determination, and see this as superior to any obsession with “sovereign borders,” which have always changed throughout history, both for good and bad reasons. For example, I support the struggle of the Chechen people for self-determination, including independence, from Russia if that is their choice; I don’t care about the “sovereign” borders of the inheritance of the Russian colonial empire. Ditto for Puerto Rico or Hawaii if they chose to break up the US empire’s “sovereign” borders. I supported the national liberation struggle of the Kosovar Albanians against Serbian oppression, of the Kurds against oppression in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and so on: so why don’t I support the same self-determination of “the Russian people in Donbas”? Well, apart from the fact that even if there were such a struggle, it would currently be an irrelevant pawn for Russian imperial conquest, the more fundamental problem is that no such reality exists.

As we saw, almost immediately after Yanukovych fled to Russia (February 22, 2014), Russian forces invaded Crimea (February 27). Just as quickly after this, the first Russian forces, from the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity party, turned up in Donbas, alongside other far-right Russian paramilitary forces who had just helped conquer Crimea; the seizures of government buildings began almost immediately, launching coup d’etats against the very governments Donbas residents had recently elected, bringing to power Russian stooges and fascists in the two oblasts (provinces) Donetsk and Luhansk; indeed, the first coup was the six-day seizure of the Donetsk State Administration Building on March 1, when “a group of activists bestowed the titled of ‘People’s Governor of Donetsk’ on a local nationalist-socialist activist named Pavel Gubarev,” an RNU leader. Such a rapid march of events in itself belies the idea that Russia was only responding to grass-roots movements in these regions staging a popular movement against the new post-Maidan authorities in Ukraine; it looks much more like a planned Russian conquest.

_{The swastika of the Russian National Unity Party, the first fascist mob to seize power in the coup in Donetsk in March 2014}

Let’s look at the three connected myths that make up this grander myth narrative.

Sub-Myth 1: ‘Ethnic Russian Donbas’

First, it is difficult to establish exactly what an ‘ethnic Russian’ is, as opposed to a Ukrainian who speaks Russian as a first language. Think of Irish, Welsh and Scottish who speak English as their first language, and try calling them ‘English’. See what happens. This is what occurs after centuries of colonialism, in both cases. Which in terms of ruthless Russification and physical destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, was probably even worse under Stalin than under the Tsars, though there is not much to choose from between them.

If we go by people’s identity, according to the 2001 census, ethnic Ukrainians formed 58 percent of the population of Luhansk Oblast and 56.9 percent of Donetsk Oblast. Those identifying as ethnic Russians formed the largest minority, accounting for 39 percent and 38.2 percent of the two oblasts respectively. In other words, Ukrainians were the same size majority in Donbas as Russians were in Crimea – yet this (post-colonisation and genocide) Russian majority in Crimea is given as a reason by the same Putin apologists to justify Russian annexation there! Furthermore, much evidence suggests a marked decline in the population identifying as ethnic Russians rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainians: in a 2019 survey carried out by the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin, only 12 percent and 7 percent of the residents of the Russia-owned and government-controlled parts of Donbas respectively identified as ‘ethnic Russians’, while 21 percent and 12 percent respectively declared themselves ‘mixed Ukrainian and Russian’. The impact of Russian aggression since 2014 is likely the cause of this declining identification as ‘Russian’ – how ironic given that this Russian intervention is falsely justified as protecting these ‘ethnic Russians’! Indeed, the impact of the current war seems to be even greater, with even use of Russian language among many Ukrainians markedly declining as a political choice due to revulsion against the aggression. 

Therefore, to claim that the setting up of ‘independent’ republics in 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk, and their annexation by Russia in 2022 following fake ‘referenda’ under brutal military occupation, was “the right to self-determination of the ethnic Russian population of Donbas,” is a statement of extraordinary ignorance. The population of Donbas is divided between ethnic Russians, Ukrainians who speak Russian, and Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian.

Before moving on we should clarify: from 2014 to 2022 the Russian-owned forces only controlled some 40 percent of ‘Donbas’ (approximately the same in both Donetsk and Luhansk) while some 60 percent remained under Ukraine government control. So Russia has not just annexed the parts it formerly controlled, but the entire two oblasts, plus two others that it never had any control of (Kherson and Zaporizhzhya) and where there was never any support for Russia.

Sub-Myth 2: The population of Donbas, regardless of ethnicity, wanted self-determination for the region and were oriented more to Russia than to Ukraine

It is certainly true that neither ethnicity nor language tells us anything necessarily about the views of the Donbas residents; neither being an ethnic Russian nor Russian or Ukrainian speaking does not equal a particular political opinion; the opinions of people in all three groups, in both government-controlled and Russia-controlled parts of both oblasts, are mixed. But the data does not support the myth, but rather the opposite.

Two surveys carried out in April 2014 reveal very important information, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and by the Pew Research Centre. In the KIIS survey, to the question ‘Do you support the idea, that your region should secede from Ukraine and join Russia?’, 27 percent in Donetsk and 30 percent in Luhansk answered either ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ yes – while some 52 percent in both oblasts answered ‘rather’ or ‘certainly’ no. These minority ‘yes’ votes in Donetsk and Luhansk were the only of any significance in all of Ukraine. The Pew research showed similar results, with the question whether regions should be allowed to secede answered in the positive by only 18 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 4 percent in west Ukraine), and only 27 percent of Russian-speakers. The KIIS survey also asked if they were in favour of Russian troops entering the region, to which under 20 percent in both oblasts said yes while substantial majorities said no.

On the question ‘Do you consider Viktor Yanukovych to be a legitimate President of Ukraine?’, only 32% and 28% respectively in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively said rather or certainly yes (by far the biggest numbers in Ukraine), compared to 57-58% who said rather or certainly no. So much for the idea that the people of Donbas were angry that “their president” was deposed.

Larger numbers support some kind of autonomy or ‘special status’ within Ukraine, but with sharp differences in the two parts of Donbas. Surveys carried out in 2016 and 2019 by the Centre for East European and International Studies found that in the Russia-owned regions, some 45% of the population were in favour of joining Russia. Of the majority opposed, 30% supported some kind of autonomy and a quarter no special status. But in the government controlled two-thirds, while a similar 30% favoured some kind of autonomy within Ukraine, the two-thirds majority favoured just Ukraine with no special status; hardly any supported joining Russia. Therefore it is difficult to say whether the overall majority necessarily even favour autonomy. Even this does not necessarily mean that the chunks seized are the regions most in favour of autonomy or separation; given the dispossession of half the Donbas population (some 3.3 of the original 6.6 million people), it more likely means a degree of subsequent relocation between the two zones, while the millions in refuge simply don’t get a say in such surveys.

Therefore, both in Donetsk and Luhansk, in both government and Russian-controlled regions, and among the dispossessed, both ‘ethnicity’ and political opinion are very mixed, there is no ‘Russian’ region or specifically even ‘pro-Russia’ region; so the regions violently seized are entirely arbitrary and correspond to no movement for ‘self-determination’ or necessarily for anything.

Truth 1. There was a degree of alienation from the new government in parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014

This is not to deny that there was broadly a sense of alienation among many in eastern Ukraine from the direction taken by the new post-Yanukovych government, regardless of ‘ethnicity’ or language; there were also geographic and other factors, including more economic connection to Russia in the east. Specifically, the new Ukraine authorities, and even more so the empowered far-right minority, projected an assertive Ukrainian nationalism, and various largely symbolic actions drove this alienation. According to the Pew survey, while 60 percent in western Ukraine thought the new government had “a good influence on the way things are going in the country,” only 24 percent in eastern Ukraine agreed, and 67 percent there assessed this influence as “bad.” Similarly, 66 percent in western Ukraine thought only the Ukrainian language should have legal standing, while 73 percent in eastern Ukraine (and 86 percent of Russian-speakers) said both Russian and Ukrainian should be official languages, underlining the centrality of the language question – my Myth 2 details the comically false assertion that Russian language was downgraded or “banned” in 2014, but even the unsuccessful attempt to revise the language law in this context would have been a factor in this alienation.

But in itself, this is not remarkable: the dominance of certain political tendencies in different regions of a country due to complex combinations of history, culture, economics etc is not uncommon: think of northern and southern England, northern and southern Italy, regions of the US, Aegean Turkey and Anatolia etc. That does not mean that the peoples of such regions would welcome a foreign military intervention because a party perceived to favour a different region’s political proclivities were in power.

Sub-Myth 3: The Russian-backed seizure of power in parts of Donbas represented this alienation of the region’s population from the new government

There was certainly a valid political struggle that could have been waged by many people in the region against certain policies of the new government; the fact that the Maidan was initially confronted by an ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east was in itself a valid expression of popular dissent. What was not valid was the almost immediate militarisation of the anti-Maidan by Russian-backed, funded, trained and armed militia and direct intervention of Russian armed forces, mercenaries, tanks and other heavy weaponry, political operatives and fascists, arbitrarily seizing control of town halls and chunks of eastern Ukraine. Simon Pirani argues that while neither the Maidan nor the anti-Maidan should be stereotyped as reactionary, in fact the “social aspirations” of the two were similar, “it was right-wing militia from Russia, and the Russian army, that militarised the conflict and suppressed the anti-Maidan’s social content.”

The idea that this militarisation, seizing of buildings and coup d’etats were a natural reflection, extension, of the civil ‘anti-Maidan’ in the east is belied by the 2014 KIIS survey. On the question ‘Do you support actions of those, who with arms capture administrative buildings in your region?’, only 18 percent in Donetsk and 24 percent in Luhansk answered rather or certainly yes, while 72 percent and 68 percent respectively in those two allegedly ‘pro-Russian’ oblasts answered rather or certainly no!

I have heard it claimed that Donbas residents were alienated because the government they elected had been overthrown in Kyiv (as if the parliament, which deposed the president – one person – wasn’t also elected by them). But how does this sit with small armed groups launching coup d’etats in Donbas overthrowing the very regional government that Donbas residents had elected?

Nor can militarisation be justified as an act of self-defence against some violent wave of government repression of the anti-Maidan, as nothing of the sort had taken place: the coup d’detats, took place immediately after the deposing of Yanukovych; the armed conflict later. 

John Reiman, in his excellent review of the Ukraine Diaries, cites some passages describing this very early intervention (ie, months before the generalised war):

“On March 9 for the first time Kurkov reports on the entry of Russian agents in Ukraine. And not just any Russians – members of the fascist Russian Unity Party (RNE). ‘The members of RNE, swastikas tattooed on their necks and arms, have no qualms about negotiating with Ukraine’s regional governments and making ultimatums…’ … On April 4, Kurkov reports that 15 Russian citizens had been arrested in Donetsk with 300 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a grenade launcher, ammunition and other military equipment. … On April 7, Kurkov reports the arrest of a Russian GRU agent, Roman Bannykh. The Ukraine government seized his telephone records, which revealed that he had been coordinating the actions of the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk. … pro-Russian activists … walk around in combat uniform, with no badges or other signs of identification, carrying AK-100 assault rifles. The Ukrainian army does not possess those rifles but the Russian army does … Of the 117 Russian citizens arrested for having taken part in disturbances, at least ten are Russian secret service agents. … On April 21 … the separatists in Slovyansk attacked and pillaged the homes of gypsies in that city. Simultaneously, Nelya Shtepa was kidnapped. She was the former mayor of that city and had originally supported the separatists but broke with them because they were being manipulated by Russian secret service agents’.”

Indeed, Russian FSB colonel Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov, one of the leaders of the first gang of far-right Russian paramilitaries in Donbas, admitted that he pulled the first trigger that led to war, stating that “if our unit had not crossed the border, everything would have ended as it did in Kharkiv and in Odesa.”

Finally, regarding the so-called “referendums” that the coup authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk carried out in May 2014, Cathy Young writing in The Bulwark provides a useful anecdote which, as she says, by itself pretty much “tells the tale”:

“On May 7, Ukrainian intelligence released the audio of an intercepted phone call between Donetsk insurgent leader Dmytro Boitsov and far-right Russian nationalist Aleksandr Barkashov (the head, as it happens, of the aforementioned Russian National Unity). In the obscenity-laden exchange, Boitsov complains that the rebels are “not ready” to hold the referendum on May 11 as planned. Barkashov responds testily: “Just put in whatever you want. Write 99 percent. What, you’re going to fucking walk around collecting papers? Shit, are you fucked in the head or something?” “Ah. All right, I got it, I got it,” replies an audibly relieved Boitsov as it dawns on him that he and his pals are not expected to hold an actual referendum, just to produce results. Barkashov continues: “Just write that 99 percent—no, let’s say 89 percent, fuck it, voted for the Donetsk Republic. And that’s it, shit, we’re fucking done.”

I mean, it may as well have been a discussion between blood-drenched Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and some ‘election’ henchman who thought the ‘election’ circus had to be taken at least partly seriously; hell, some western ‘lefties’ are so thick they even agree with their far-right allies that those ‘elections’ were genuine!

Young continues:

“By amazing coincidence, on May 11, the separatist “election commission” of Donetsk announced that 89 percent of the voters had chosen self-rule. As I have noted earlier, the first prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, “political consultant” Aleksandr Borodai, was not only a citizen of Russia but a reputed officer in the FSB (the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s successor) with a long history of involvement in far-right, ultranationalist circles.”

Conclusion

By intervening and militarising a movement, swamping it from the get-go, forcibly seizing territory, Russia completely changed the nature of Ukrainian politics. From a Ukrainian perspective, Russia, the former colonial power and neighbouring superpower had engineered a violent military conflict, slicing up Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas, thereby completely overwhelming whatever democratic voices could have arisen among Russians or Russian-speakers and supporters, while likewise hardening the right-wing nationalist views of many Ukrainians now seeing a fight for their country’s very existence. This militarisation also strengthened far-right forces in Ukraine at the time because the Ukrainian armed forces were in disarray, and the far-right took the initiative on the military front.

Whatever original support the civil anti-Maidan may have had, it is hard to know what survived the Russian-led military intervention and coups. We know that 3.3 million people of the original 6.6 million have fled Donbass since then, the majority into other areas of Ukraine. We also know that many of the irregular Ukrainian militia on the frontlines in the Ukraine-government controlled two-thirds of Donbas are residents uprooted as a result of the conflict and blame the Russian intervention. The more the far-right and fascist Russian-backed, or indeed actual Russian political figures and militia came to dominate these ‘republics’, imposing essentially totalitarian control and massively violating the human rights of the local population, the less this had anything to do with any expression of opposition to the Ukrainian government’s policies.   

Finally, one might rightly ask, does this even have any relevance now, with Russia heavily bombing and destroying Russian-speaking towns and cities in Donbas, including the complete decimation of Russian speaking Mariupol, and the massive rejection of Russian rule by these populations – has anyone seen a single welcoming party in eastern Ukraine for conquerors in the last year? It is almost certain that whatever lingering pro-Russia feeling that may have existed before 2022 has now largely collapsed. Indeed, the problem with this entire discussion, even as I write it, is the danger of implying that Russia’s monstrous war has anything to do with the rights of Russians or Russian-speakers in Donbas: if that were the case, there would have been no reason for Russia to advance an inch from the control it already exerted over 40 percent of Donbas where they perhaps had more support – what would have been the purpose of annexing the more anti-Russian parts of Donbas that had been in government control, let alone annexing the other two oblasts, let alone invading and savagely bombing the whole of Ukraine?

_{Before February 2022: Russian-backed forces only controlled about 40 percent of each of the two Donbas oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk.}

_{What Russia controlled in Ukraine by October 2022}

by Michael Karadjis

This is the third in an ongoing series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014, all of which are complete myths. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better; and I just felt I needed my own so that I can easily grab one as an easy whenever I see each piece of nonsense once again repeated on social media.

_{Indigenous Crimean Tatars – victims of centuries of Russian colonialism and genocide – protest annexation by Russia in 2014}

Russia’s flagrant annexation of the sovereign Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014 was the first annexation inside Europe since the (globally unrecognised) Turkish quasi-annexation of northern Cyprus, and in a league with only very few outright annexations globally – Israel’s annexation of Palestinian Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara, Indonesia’s annexation of Irian Jaya and later east Timor (until 1999) spring to mind. Yet Putin apologists have attempted to justify this act of Russian imperial expansionism as an act of self-determination by the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea (which frankly reminds one of Hitler’s claim to Sudetenland), or claim it was ‘always Russia’ and so on. 

On February 27, 2014, just five days after the Ukraine parliament’s vote to oust Yanukovych, masked Russian troops invaded Crimea – sovereign Ukrainian territory – attacked government buildings, raised the Russian flag over them, forced out the democratically-elected Crimea autonomous state government, replaced it with stooges from the ultra-right ‘Russian Unity’ party, which had received 4 percent of the vote in the previous elections – surely all this is a coup, isn’t it? It is a textbook coup, combined with invasion. This foreign-installed junta in Crimea then carried out, under Russian military occupation, the illegal “referendum” to leave Ukraine and join Russia, within ten days after calling it. Only two options were presented in the fake “referendum,” neither of which included the status quo. Ukrainian media was closed down.

Of course, the junta declared that 97 percent had voted for joining Russia – the usual figure plucked out of the air by dictators who throw “election” circuses. Yet Putin’s own Human Rights Council claimed the real turnout was 30-50% of voters, and that only 50-60% of those voted to join Russia. Notably, in a February 8-18 2014 Ukraine-wide poll, only 41 percent of people in Crimea favoured joining Russia – and that was far higher than anywhere else in Ukraine; we are supposed to believe that this jumped from 41% to 97% in a month!

International observers – of course, the Russian-installed junta invited various far-right/fascist parties from Europe for this show, indeed the invitees list – the French National Front, Jobbik (Hungary), Attaka (Bulgaria), Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense – reads virtually like a roll-call of the European far-right. Fascist parties throughout Europe declared their support for Crimea being “reincorporated” into Russia, its rightful place in their view, believers in the restoration of empires after all.

In contrast, the Mejils (parliament) of the Crimean Tatar nation, internationally recognised as the Indigenous people of Crimea (and likewise recognised as such in Ukraine), and a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation, declared the referendum illegitimate and called for boycott, just in case anyone on the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ left happens to think the views of Indigenous peoples should count for something. The Russian occupation regime of post-referendum Crimea then banned the Mejils, their representative body first set up by the Crimean Tatars after the Russian revolution, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has documented ongoing human rights violations, including detention and torture, against the Tatar population. Today, the Mejils, in exile, demands the return of Crimea to Ukraine as an essential condition in any peace talks with Russia.

_{From 100% of the population at Russian conquest in 1783, the Crimean Tatars became a minority 100 years later, but then were 100% deported by Stalin in 1944}

The Crimean Tatars were the majority population of Crimea since the 11^th century, and remained so long after Russian settler-colonialism began with Catherine the Great’s invasion in 1783. Not until around 1900 did these Russian settlers begin to outnumber the indigenous Tatar population, who also fled Russian oppression in their hundreds of thousands. However they remained some 40 percent of the population until 1944 when Stalin expelled every man, woman and child Tatar from Crimea – hundreds of thousands of people – into central Asia, a torturous journey during which one in three died along the way. While they have been allowed to return in recent decades, such mass displacement tends to have a semi-permanent effect, and numbers were only re-growing slowly,  but continually, before this process was halted by annexation. In other words, the “left” (and far-right) assertion that, since 58 percent of the population of Crimea are ethnic Russians, annexation by Russia is an act of self-determination, is a declaration of support for the results of centuries of Tsarist colonialism and the Stalinist genocide.

An interesting comparison could be made to the current debate in Australia about an Indigenous ‘Voice’ to parliament, which will be subject to referendum later this year. While the tepid and powerless ‘voice’ on offer can well be criticised for its limitations, and indeed many Indigenous leaders prefer a ‘treaty-first’ approach which would recognise their sovereignty and cede some actual power to the Indigenous nations, the main opposition is coming from the right who are vigorously opposed to any even symbolic increase in Indigenous representation. From being once the sovereign owners of the whole of Australia, Indigenous Australians have been reduced, through colonisation and genocide, to only a few percent of the population.

So, using the same simple ‘majoritarian’ principles that many Putin apologists are now using to justify the result of the staged Crimea ‘referendum’ (even if we pretend for a moment that it was legitimate and not staged under military occupation) – that 58 percent of the Crimean population are ethnic Russians and so, if that’s what they want, so it should be – what would we say if the large Anglo-Australian majority here one fine day voted to be re-annexed to ‘Great’ Britain, and the 3 percent Indigenous Australian population were opposed? Should we say, well, the (former colons) Anglo-Australians are the majority, so it should be, like the (former colons) Russians in Crimea? Or would we say that Indigenous Australians should have some special constitutional right to not have their lands returned to some foreign colonial power? I suggest that the kind of constitutionally empowered real Indigenous voice via treaty that most on the Australian left are in favour of would indeed empower the Indigenous minority to reject such a move, and rightly so.

And, more generally, when there exists more than one constituent nation in a mixed region – in this case Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars – is ‘winner take all’ the democratic solution? Take Cyprus (a place I know something about …), with its 80 percent Greek Cypriot majority and 20 percent Turkish Cypriot minority. So if the majority of the majority Greek Cypriot community vote to be united with Greece, so that should be, right? Oh, wait a minute, they tried that, with the movement against British colonialism led by the right-wing and the Orthodox church, calling for ‘Enosis’ (union) with Greece (rather than an independent bi-national federation) … thereby alienating the Turkish minority, driving them into the hands of Turkey’s military regime which eventually invaded in 1974 and the rest is history. No solution in the divided island 50 years later. Or take Bosnia, with its 44 percent Bosniak (‘Muslim’), 30 percent Serb, 18 percent Croat and 8 percent ‘Yugoslav’ (ie too mixed to be anything else) population – no majority, but if the Serbs and Croats voted together for Bosnia to be divided between Serbia and Croatia and got a slight majority of votes, so that should happen despite the views of the other communities? Indeed, since Serb and Croat fascist leaders actually tried to do that militarily in 1992-95, they were in the right, were they? The Crimea ‘solution’, in other words, is the most utterly reactionary solution possible.   

On a minor point, one of the justifications often heard from Putin shills is that Russia had to seize Crimea because it has a naval base in Sevastopol (and heaven forbid that an imperialist power should lose a military base in another country, say many on the western ‘left’). Yet the Russian military’s lease on Sevastopol does not expire until 2042.

by Michael Karadjis

This is the second in an ongoing series of well-known assertions that have been spread about the situation in Ukraine since 2014, all of which are complete myths. Of course, this is not the only place these myths are demolished, but they are so widespread that the more they are shot down, the better; and I just felt I needed my own so that I can easily grab one as an easy whenever I see each piece of nonsense once again repeated on social media.

_{Maps showing that Ukrainian president Zelensky was elected by Russian-speakers, whose language, we are told, he wants to ban (if not commit genocide against them). Source: Zoltan Grossman, Counterpunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/02/ukraine-maps-tell-a-different-story-than-putins-claims}

This is quite an entrenched myth. Claiming that Ukraine changed its language law to downgrade Russian language in 2014, or more colourfully that it banned the language, is a common tankie claim used to justify the Russian quasi-annexation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014. Of course, the Russian language was not banned in 2014 nor any time since, and further, there was zero change in the language law in 2014; that did not occur until 2019.

As background, Ukrainian president Zekensky is a Russian-speaker, as are a significant proportion of Ukrainians, and indeed Zelensky was elected in 2019 largely on the votes of Russian-speakers. Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine have been the main victims of Russian mass-killing since February 2022, and have dominated the resistance to it. The famous/infamous Azov Regiment of the National Guard (often confused with the fascistic Azov Battalion which existed in 2014) is largely composed of Russian-speakers. According to a 2017 poll, 67.8% of Ukrainians “consider Ukrainian to be their native language, 13.8% claimed it to be Russian, whereas 17.4% declared that both languages are their native tongues.” However, while in western Ukraine, 92.8% are Ukrainian speakers and only 1.9% are Russian speakers, in eastern Ukraine 36.1% consider Ukrainian their language compared to 24.3% who declare Russian to be; in central regions, the figures are somewhat in between, but generally much closer to the western figures.

The 1996 constitution makes Ukrainian the only state language, indeed it says “state ensures the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of Ukraine.” However, there were strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, which can play an official role alongside Ukrainian in regions where these minorities are prominent. The constitution thus also states “the free development, use and defence of Russian and other languages of national minorities is guaranteed in Ukraine.”

All the language laws until 2012 were based on this well-balanced constitution. But in 2012, Yanukovych introduced a new language law which made Russian a ‘regional language’ with equal administrative status to Ukrainian wherever Russian was the language of at least 10 percent of the population, and other minority languages could have the same status. Since Russian is the language of over 10 percent in half the regions of Ukraine, this was quite wide-ranging. Many Ukrainians felt this tipped the balance too far.

So what did happen in 2014? Initially, after the fall of Yanukovych, the parliament attempted to rescind this new language law that Yanukovych had introduced just two years earlier, in 2012. The parliament’s aim in overturning this was to return to the previous law which had held sway ever since Ukrainian independence in the early 1990s, based on the 1996 constitution. As we saw, returning to the 1994-2012 linguistic framework was hardly a radical anti-Russian language step; it was merely the reversal of a recent radical change in the other direction. However, even this change did not take place, because it was vetoed by the caretaker president. Yanukovych’s radically pro-Russian 2012 law thus remained the law until 2019.

Therefore, leaving aside the blatant lie that Ukraine banned the Russian language and thus provoked a reaction from Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, in fact nothing at all happened to the rights of Russian-speakers in 2014, making the lie even worse. Now, of course, it may well be that just the attempt to change the law back to the original could have been a factor promoting mistrust of the new government by many Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine; often it is not the actual content of a proposed change but the broader context, and this was the context of the newly assertive Ukrainian nationalism post-Maidan in reaction against Russian backing of Yanukovych and the immediate Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention into Donbas straight after his fall; this Ukrainian nationalism did include a virulent strain which was indeed alienating to many in the east. However, this point can be made without blatantly dishonest lies about what did happen.

It could well be argued that the Yanukovych law of 2012-14 was a better one, based on an abstract notion of complete equality of languages – even a broken clock can be right twice a day, and possibly for the wrong reasons. As a non-Ukrainian, I prefer not to get into that debate. The Ukrainian argument is based on the fact that Ukraine was a colony of Russia for hundreds of years, and the Ukrainian language was actively suppressed and discriminated against throughout that period (both under Tsarism and under Stalinism). There is also an important class aspect: Russian, the language of the colonial administration, came to dominate urban centres, even Kiev, while the villages were overwhelmingly Ukrainian-speaking; it was even considered shameful to speak Ukrainian in late Tsarist Russia, being a sign one was from the village, as rural-dwellers crowded into cities during industrialisation in the early 20^th century. Therefore, Ukraine now has a right to promote its language as the national language; Russian-speakers should have the right to use their language, but it is the language of the coloniser which became dominant via colonisation and suppression. Which argument is correct? Both arguments have validity, and much depends on context and manner in which such laws are introduced and implemented. What can be said for certain, however, is that the Ukrainian constitution, and the pre-2012 law, are hardly unusual by global standards; on the contrary, they are the norm. They are even less unusual for former colonies – what of the attempts over many decades in Ireland to promote the Irish language at the expense of English, for example?

The new Language Law of 2019 did partially downgrade Russian, at the time against Zelensky’s opposition (Zelensky was just elected in 2019 with votes of Russian-speakers). This new law was pushed by the outgoing Poroshenko government as it more and more turned opportunistically to the nationalist right (ironically in 2014 Poroshenko, elected then with the votes of Russian-speakers and appealing to unity, claimed the parliament’s attempt to rescind the 2012 law was a grave mistake). This new language law made Ukrainian the only language of state throughout Ukraine. While the law is consistent with the Ukraine constitution which makes Ukrainian the official language, the constitution also has strong protections for Russian and other minority languages, especially in areas where they are the majority. The new law arguably downgrades the status of some of those protections. In schools, for example, Ukrainian is the language of instruction throughout the country; Russian can be learned in school as a language subject. However, in pre-school and primary school, Russian or other minority children can study in their own language, as the language of instruction, in addition to Ukrainian, but they cannot in high school. From an internationalist standpoint, this change is certainly regressive, but it is hardly unique for most of the world.

The new law makes Ukrainian the language of all official communication, ie in government operations, including local government. In itself, this is hardly unusual by world standards. Regarding the media, however, the law is highly regressive and certainly can be seen to violate the Ukrainian constitution. The law stipulates that any publications in Russian or other languages must be accompanied by a Ukrainian version, equivalent in content and volume, a draconian and impractical regulation. There are exceptions for Crimean Tatar language, and for languages of the EU, but not for Russian. While a former colony certainly has the right to promote the national language, doing so in a way that makes everyday life more difficult for speakers of other languages at a practical level violates their rights and divides the working classes.

However, it is the very essence of hypocrisy for Putinite shills to try to use this argument, even after 2019. What they miss is that this law only came in after years of its implementation in reverse in Russian-annexed Crimea. In 2015, Crimea made only Russian the language of school instruction, while allowing students to learn Ukrainian or Tatar as elective languages; in pre-school and primary school, instruction could also be in Ukrainian or Tatar in addition to Russian, but not in high school. It is almost as if the Ukrainian government plagiarised the Russian occupation government of Crimea’s law four years later! But the reality in Crimea is much worse than even this official downgrading; in reality, Ukrainian has been comprehensively eliminated from all Crimean schools and from all official society. One of the first acts of Russian-owned rulers in both Crimea and the Donbas was to replace multilingual signs with Russian only ones.

Likewise, in the Russia-owned Donbas statelets, almost immediately following their quasi-annexation in 2014, “the curricula have been altered to exclude the teaching of Ukrainian language and history, which makes it problematic to obtain State school diplomas,” according to a November 2014 report by the UN High Commission on Human Rights; in 2015, the curriculum was overhauled, with Ukrainian language lessons decreased from eight hours to two hours a week, while Russian language and literature lessons increased. Russia’s five-point grading system replaced Ukraine’s 12-point scheme. School leavers from then received Russian certificates with the Russian emblem, the two-headed eagle. In 2020, Russian was declared the only state language.

That does not justify the Ukrainian law of 2019 (which current president Zelensky opposed), but it is important to recognise that the chronology is in reverse: no change in 2014 in Ukraine, regressive change in late 2014 and 2015 in Donbas and Crimea under Russian occupation, followed years later by copy-cat regressive change in Ukraine – which however in no way ‘bans’ the Russian language’.