Fascists Look to Zionist Victory

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€6000 fund This week we have f50 from Oxford carworkers, bringing our total to £2732.50 towards the £6,000 total. Area by area, the amounts collected and the percentages towards local targets are: ISRAELI troops remain stacked around west Beirut, ready to blitz the city if the Palestinians do not withdraw.

Behind them, the rightwing Lebanese Maronite armed gangs rush to extend cheir contro over warshattered southern Lebanon. Falangist leader Bachir Gemayel especially wants to consolidate his position in preparation for winning the forthcoming presidential election.

What he hopes for - and Israel hopes for too - is a reconstructed • Lebanese state, dominated by the Maronite right wing, allied to Israel, and able to keep out the Palestinians and crush the mainly Muslim Lebanese left. Glasgow Edinburgh Stirling Carlisle Durham York Bradford Leeds Hull Sheffield Merseyside Manchester Winsford Stoke Birmingharr Coventry According to the Paris daily Le Monde (July 16) the PLO still retains 60% of its military strength in Lebanon. But its 6,000 or so fighters, together with their Lebanese allies, are still massively outgunned by the Israelis.

The Arab states are little help to the Palestinians. They make protests but do nothing. PLO leader Yasser Arafat at the weekend 26:40 22% 40.00 22% 110.00 68.00 68% 102.50 120.00 38% 148.00 38% 20.00 67% 413.00 83% 574.80 Nottingham Leicester Northampton Cardiff Bristol Oxford Southamptc Basingstoke Brighton London Miscellaneous denounced the "utter silence" of the Arab regimes.

It is, he said, "as though the Arab nation has fallen into a deep slumber, dreaming happy dreams, blind, deaf and dumb to the world.

"It is the right of the masses to ask questions today, and to punish those responsible tomorrow"

Syria has announced that it will not let the Palestin114.00 86.00 22% 45.00 407.00 45.00 274.00 Send donations to. Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL. ians in if they withdraw from Lebanon - though it seems that it might shift on this in exchange for economic and other concessions.

Still less help to the PLO are the capitalist big powers that have issued protests against the Israeli invasion. France, one of the most outspoken, has offered to send troops along with the US to supervise a PLO withdrawal. The US government concerns itself with 'liquidating' the Palestinian presence in Lebanon - by negotiated means.

In the negotiations, the PLO has been trying to get agreement for some armed Palestinian presence - a few hundred or a few thousand - to remain in Lebanon. Without this, OVER 70 people - workers, students and Labour activists - supported a public meeting against the Zionist invasion of Lebanon called on July 15.

Speakers included Tony Greenstein from the Labour Committee on Palestine, a Palestinian speaker, and local Labour councillor David Whitfield. Those present were urged to fight for blacking action by trade unions and for Labour Party support to the Palestinian off July 23 - Public meeting: The War in Lebanon: the Logic of Zionism forganised by Labour Committee on Palestine). Speakers: Ken Livingstone, Stuart Holland MP, Peter Tatchell, Leban ese, Palestinian and anti-Zionist Israeli speakers, County Hall, 7.00pm. July 31- Demonstration and Rally organised by Palestine Solidarity Liaisor Committer). Meet Speakers •Corner, 12.30. March 1r. Trafalgar Square. Rally -2.30pm.

August 2 - Organising Corn. mittee of Labour Committer on Palestine. County Hall, 7.00pm. All suppr ers wel come. th PLO could be deprived of any military base at all.

But the PLO as a military force has not been the only target of the Zionist onslaught. The whole of the Palestinian population in Lebanon - some half a million - and their mostly Muslim left-wing Lebanese allies, are also targets.

About 400,000 people have had their homes destroyed. The Lebanese police reckon over 10,000 people have been killed -Lebanon's prime minister says 15,000. Several thousand have been herded into Israeli prison camps.

this, remember, according to the official Zionist account, is all for the sake of guaranteeing peace for Galilee! Such atrocities flow from the nature of the Zionist state. Founded on the dispossession and driving out of the Palestinians, it constantly seeks new 'buffer zones' to bolster its security. The mass of oppression and denial of rights on which it is erected increases; and so also increases the need for 'security' against the rebels who-fight back against that Among the most valuable assistance for the . beleaguered Palestinians has been from an increasing number of Jews who. -without necessarily questioning or renouncing the fundamentals of Zionism -have protested against Begin's war. Although majority opinion in Israel is still firmly with Begin, the demonstrations of 20,000 and 100,000 against the war have been massively larger than anything similar before.

In the usually unconditionally pro-Israel American Jewish community, louder and louder voices of dissent have been raised.

Labour and socialist movements internationally should be adding their voices, asserting explicit solidarity with the Palestinians and a commitment to assist the struggle for a socialist Middle East in which Arabs and Jews can live as equals.

Despite the break in the momentum of Begin's war machine, an all-out assault on West Beirut is still not excluded. Nothing that is possible to halt or hinder that should be left undone.