Sudan General Strike swells on second day May 30 - 2019 SUDAN

Sudan general strike swells on second day

May 30 - 2019 SUDAN

Workers strike at Aain centre in Sudan (Picture: Social media)

https://bit.ly/2XjQwSK

The second day of the mass strike called for May 28-29 by the Alliance for Freedom and Change (AFC), on Wednesday expanded into new vital sectors in Khartoum and the states.

Witnesses said the Khartoum Land Port was completely empty of passengers because of the 100 per cent strike of all travel buses drivers.

The meteorological department staff and a number of carriers continued to strike while the internal flights continued to be cancelled at Khartoum airport.

Omdurman National Bank joined the list of striking banks as the rest of the ministries, government institutions, electricity and private sector companies continue to strike.

Red Sea ports

In Red Sea state, work at the ports was completely paralysed for the second day in a row on Wednesday, by a commitment to the strike announced by the Alliance for Freedom and Change.

A port worker told Radio Dabanga that the chairman of the military committee of the council [?] tried to prevent the strike but the port workers refused  and emphasised their commitment to the declared strike and demanded the expulsion of the Philippine company, prosecution of corrupt authorities, and continue to strike in various governmental and private facilities such as hospitals, banks, university and private sector institutions.

Journalist Amin Sinada told Radio Dabanga “The port corporation, which is the most important economic resource of the Red Sea state, has seen a wide response to the strike”. He explained that the localities of Jebeit, Sinkat and Suakin witnessed a successful strike for workers in the health sector as well.

El Gedaref

In El Gedaref, the acting governor, the police chief and a number of military officials stormed the Savings Bank to force the staff to break their strike on its second day. Jaafar Khidir told Radio Dabanga that the bank's staff did not respond to the governor's threats and continued their strike.

Khidir said that the rate of implementation of the strike in different sectors in El Gedaref exceeded 80 per cent.

He pointed to a wide response to the strike among schoolteachers in the state’s localities at rates ranging from 100-80 percent.

In South Kordofan and Blue Nile, the second day of the strike was marked by wide participation from all sectors of professionals, the private sector and government institutions.

The Alliance for Freedom and Change in Blue Nile estimated it to be 100 percent. As for the South Kordofan, AFC estimated the participation rate by 65 percent while the strike rate in banks and among lawyers was 100 percent.

The Alliance for Freedom and Change in West Kordofan estimated participation in the strike by more than 70 percent.

Darfur, Kordofan

In the capitals of the five Darfur states and North Kordofan, the Sudanese strike in their various sectors and professionals continued.

El Obeid in North Kordofan, El Fasher in North Darfur, Nyala in South Darfur, Ed Daein in East Darfur, Zalingei in Central Darfur, and El Geneina in West Darfur witnessed strikes by different from the professional sectors, government institutions and private sector entities, while the strike was 100 percent in banks and professional sectors such as doctors and lawyers.

Nyala and Ed Daein power plants also witnessed a strike.

Hemeti

The deputy chairman of the Transitional Military Council, Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan (aka Hemeti) accused countries he did not name of targeting Sudan, referring to the general strike witnessed by the country, pointing out that “competent agencies are recording large-scale intelligence activities in the country”.

He told native administration leaders at a Ramadan iftar (breaking of the fast) on Tuesday “The strike is causing problems in electricity, water, communications, aviation, and land travel”.

He considered the strike humiliating to the people.

Hemeti accused unknown parties of paying money to bus owners to persuade them to participate in the general strike. “We know the sources of the funds and we will report them in due course.”

He sharply criticised the strike by local airlines personnel, pointing out that some of the participants in the strike are corrupt and belong to the old regime, trying to improve their image in order to escape accountability, and stressed not to close the door to negotiate with the requirement of participation of all.

Game of Thrones: An Interpretation of The Series by George Milionis, member of the department of culture of KKE (Greek CP)

The following article first appeared in the Culture Section of The KKE (Communist Party of Greece) newspaper, Rizospastis on Sunday November 24th 2013. It is reproduced here for the edification of all social classes within and without Westeros. Minor plot spoilers are revealed from the first and second seasons of the series.

Game of Thrones: An Interpretation of The Well-Known Series

by George Milionis, member of the department of culture of KKE 

https://bit.ly/2W5Lp79 

A major television production, unquestionably exciting and “provocative” - as the need for sensationalism must be fulfilled - the series Game of Thrones is a global televisual “event.”

As such it is to be expected that it will provoke discussions, the majority of which however merely place the series on the “shelf” of “fantasy” stories.

However through a different reading, Game of Thrones can lead to the acquisition of substantive knowledge. 

The series condenses an entire epoch of serious upheavals in the feudal system - which in turn would play a catalytic role in the development of those material conditions that would lead to the later upending of the feudal system and its replacement by a superior socio-economic system: capitalism.

Game of Thrones consists of the struggle between different feudal lords as they each seek the throne of the absolute monarchy and the subjugation of the others under the sword. This subjugation means unification of the “country,” and therefore the accompanying unification and multiplication of the disparate means of production, foremost among them being human labour.

At the same time all of the feudal lords have built an enormous wall in the north of the “country” which divides the “civilized” world from the “barbarians” that live north of the wall.

Criminals and outcasts, who are not active participants in productive enterprise, man the Night’s Watch, the so-named force guarding the wall, ready to die in the bitter cold in order to defend civilisation.

However, the guard is not made-up entirely of such people. In the series Jon Snow is inducted into the Night’s Watch; even though he has an aristocratic upbringing, he is illegitimate, a fact that means that he has no legal right to an inheritance from his feudal lord father’s estate.

The feudal lord who has under his rule the most advanced means of production leads in the “race” for the absolute monarchy with the trophy being the “Iron Throne,” which itself is excellently portrayed as being forged from the swords of defeated feudal lords by the first king, who managed to raise his banner over the country before he in turn was murdered by rivals.

The viewer may begin to discern advancements in the means of production in each fiefdom if one first carefully observes the forged weapons. The phrase, “a sword made from Vallyrian steel” which is recurring in the series, is a clear indication of the development of a certain level of sophistication in metallurgy which is clearly not restricted to making swords. 

Development is seen not only through the weaponry, but in the buildings, the books and the level of literacy of the feudal lords.

The most important indication of the level of development and maturity of the feudal socio-economic system - which heralds the transition to a new system - is the increasing frequency of transactions using money. 

In those times, the necessary preconditions for this to occur was an increase in populations on the one hand, and on the other for those populations to neighbour each other to an ever greater extent, such that simple barter trading of products produced by individuals was insufficient. This led to surpluses in production on all sides and the development of a market. 

This activity necessarily then led to the invention, spread and establishment of monetary transactions as the basis for market trades. The next necessary historical step was market driven production. 

With these preconditions the lord with enough money to first acquire an army, and then human labour, would lead in the fight for absolute supremacy.

The “economy” however is only the material basis for major changes that are also reflected in social affairs. The fact that the Dothraki - a horde of horsemen and fierce warriors who speak a language only they can understand - are socially isolated from the rest of the country because they lack an organisational structure based on materialism, is a case in point.

The role of women: Women play a leading role in the Game of Thrones. From prostitutes (the female body as a tradeable good) to noblewomen, from Lord Ned Stark’s young daughters to the dazzling Daenerys Targaryen, they too - if one’s gaze doesn’t linger too long on the “bodies” and the “sex” - illustrate the transitional phases of the socio-economic system.

In the “more ancient” societies, from the “barbarians” north of the wall to Daenerys Targaryen, they represent women from the older societal order; a matriarchal organisational model. That is why they have opinions that they still express.

The “barbarian” who fell in love with Jon Snow fought equally alongside her tribal companions. Daenerys, when her fearsome warrior companion Khal Drogo fell ill, did not hesitate to kill him and take the reins of the Dothraki tribe herself and launch her own campaign for the throne. 

In the “civilized” world, where material surplus is a prerequisite - that is more material goods are produced than are required - society has moved to an ownership model of the means of production which is reflected in the patriarchy, where women are no longer at the forefront. 

Their former power, which was however based on an overall lower level of societal development, is barely kept alive in the form of “feminine tricks” which due to millennia of female alienation in the class system have come to be thought of as “normal.”

The “work” of the noblewomen is to give birth to boys destined to become kings, while the fact that the red-haired prostitute’s movements are linked to those of the armies and the market they create, clearly illustrates the role of the market economy in defining women’s roles.

The role of the myth: the series Game of Thrones has many mythological elements, particularly when referring to the “barbarians.” The inclusion of such elements may give the impression of a “fairytale” however it would be wrong to ignore the role of myths as the first form of social consciousness, as the first formation of an overarching view of the world, which gradually leads to the development of more sophisticated forms of social consciousness, such as the birth and development of Philosophy.

How will Game of Thrones end? It has been reported that the author, George R.R. Martin, has not decided how his major work, begun in 1996, will finish. Independent of whatever conclusion the author will provide, society’s own evolution points towards the story’s ending: that a specific socio-economic system will be replaced by a superior one. This conclusion can only be reached through the methodological approach of historical materialism.


Sources:
1. “K” Magazine, issue 541 - “Kathimerini” / 13th of October 2013 - Game of Thrones: Why is it so popular?

Bibliography:
1. Karl Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy 
2. Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels - The German Ideology
3. Friedrich Engels: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
4. Friedrich Engels: The Part Played By Labour in the Transition From Ape to Man

In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism, haaretz, Zeev Sternhell | 19.01.2018

Opinion // 

In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism

They don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression

Zeev Sternhell | 

 118 9.01.20

I frequently ask myself how a historian in 50 or 100 years will interpret our period. When, he will ask, did people in Israel start to realize that the state that was established in the War of Independence, on the ruins of European Jewry and at the cost of the blood of combatants some of whom were Holocaust survivors, had devolved into a true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants. When did some Israelis understand that their cruelty and ability to bully others, Palestinians or Africans, began eroding the moral legitimacy of their existence as a sovereign entity?

The answer, that historian might say, was embedded in the actions of Knesset members such as Miki Zohar and Bezalel Smotrich and the bills proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The nation-state law, which looks like it was formulated by the worst of Europe’s ultra-nationalists, was only the beginning. Since the left did not protest against it in its Rothschild Boulevard demonstrations, it served as a first nail in the coffin of the old Israel, the one whose Declaration of Independence will remain as a museum showpiece. This archaeological relic will teach people what Israel could have become if its society hadn’t disintegrated from the moral devastation brought on by the occupation and apartheid in the territories.

The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people. The interviews Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht held with Smotrich and Zohar (December 3, 2016 and October 28, 2017) should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.

Like every ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It’s possible that without World War II the “Jewish problem” would have ended only with the “voluntary” expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany’s Jews made it out in time. It’s possible that this is the future facing Palestinians.

Indeed, Smotrich and Zohar don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians, on condition that they don’t rise against their Jewish masters. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression, or equal rights in case the territories are officially annexed to Israel. For these two representatives of the Knesset majority, the Palestinians are doomed to remain under occupation forever. It’s likely that the Likud’s Central Committee also thinks this way. The reasoning is simple: The Arabs aren’t Jews, so they cannot demand ownership over any part of the land that was promised to the Jewish people.

According to the concepts of Smotrich, Zohar and Shaked, a Jew from Brooklyn who has never set foot in this country is the legitimate owner of this land, while a Palestinian whose family has lived here for generations is a stranger, living here only by the grace of the Jews. “A Palestinian,” Zohar tells Hecht, “has no right to national self-determination since he doesn’t own the land in this country. Out of decency I want him here as a resident, since he was born here and lives here – I won’t tell him to leave. I’m sorry to say this but they have one major disadvantage – they weren’t born as Jews.”

From this one may assume that even if they all converted, grew side-curls and studied Torah, it would not help. This is the situation with regard to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers and their children, who are Israeli for all intents and purposes. This is how it was with the Nazis. Later comes apartheid, which could apply under certain circumstances to Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Most Israelis don’t seem worried.

Zeev Sternhell

Venezuela: Norway Talks End as Pence Telephones Guaido By Lucas Koerner May 30th 2019

Venezuela: Norway Talks End as Pence Telephones Guaido

Maduro praised “constructive dialogue” while the opposition reiterated appeals to the armed forces, 30 May 2019
(venezuelanalysis.com) – The second round of dialogue between the Maduro government and the opposition concluded in Oslo on Wednesday.

The Norwegian government issued a statement praising the “willingness” of both parties to “move forward in the search for an agreed-upon and constitutional solution for the country, which includes political, economic and electoral matters.”

Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide did not comment on the progress of the talks and urged the participants to “show utmost caution” in public statements on the process.

Speaking on Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro applauded the dialogue, which he hoped would lead to a “peace agreement.”

“I am proud that we are in a phase of constructive dialogue with the Venezuelan opposition,” the head of state emphasized, claiming that the current negotiations are the fruit of “two or three months” of secret discussions and that dialogue with the opposition would continue.

Maduro has in recent days proposed bringing forward elections for the National Assembly, originally scheduled for 2020, as a path to resolving the country’s political standoff. The opposition-held legislature has been in contempt of court since 2016 due to a dispute with the judicial branch.

The Venezuelan opposition, for its part, struck a sharply discordant chord, affirming that the “face to face” talks had “ended without an agreement.”

In a public statement, the office of self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido stressed that any agreement must include the ouster of Maduro, the formation of a “transition government,” and the convening of new presidential elections, which has been rejected by the Venezuelan government as a non-starter.

The opposition also reiterated its calls to the Venezuelan armed forces to remove Maduro from office. On April 30, Guaido led a failed military putsch that saw opposition supporters accompanied by a small group of soldiers attempt to take over the Carlota air base in Caracas and march on Miraflores Presidential Palace. More recently, the opposition-led National Assembly approved a bill this Tuesday supporting Venezuela’s reentry into the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), a mutual defense pact involving sixteen countries in the hemisphere which has been cited as a possible legal justification for US military intervention.

Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday afternoon, Guaido vowed his supporters would “remain in the streets” until Maduro is ousted. The parliamentary president has, however, come under fire from other opposition figures for participating in the negotiations, with hardline Vente Venezuela party leader Maria Corina Machado penning a public letter to Colombian President Ivan Duque warning that the talks could see the opposition “lose its political momentum.”

The opposition statement was followed by a phone call placed by US Vice President Mike Pence to Guaido on Wednesday afternoon.

“Told him America will continue to stand with Venezuela until freedom is restored!” Pence tweeted, adding that “Nicolas Maduro must go.”

The phone call came on the heels of a communique issued by the US State Department on Monday alleging that past talks had been used by the Maduro government to “divide the opposition and gain time.”

“The only thing to negotiate with Nicolas Maduro is the conditions of his departure,” the statement continued, echoing previous comments by Trump administration officials dismissing negotiations with Caracas.

Despite the opposition from Washington, the latest round of talks has been endorsed by the International Contact Group, which brings together a dozen European and Latin American governments along with the European Union in search of a resolution to Venezuela’s crisis.

“The International Contact Group (ICG) welcomes the continuation of the Norwegian facilitated negotiation process between the Venezuelan political actors,” the body said in a joint statement on Sunday.

The ICG held its third meeting in Costa Rica in early May, and the next meeting is scheduled to take place in Lima, Peru, on June 3.

Lessons from Winnipeg General Strike still relevant - By: David Camfield | Posted: 05/3/2019

A century ago, the Winnipeg General Strike shut down what was then Canada’s third-largest city. Today, the strike is usually remembered as a moment when workers demanded the collective bargaining rights and living wages that are defended by today’s unions.

While we might be tempted to see the strike as an event that belongs strictly to the past, how we understand the past influences how we see the future. And the Winnipeg General Strike is no exception.

L.B. Foote / Archives of Manitoba

Protesters overturn a streetcar on Main Street in front of the old city hall building during the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.

More important, what workers did in Winnipeg a century ago may be more relevant to our future than most people think. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 provides important lessons of worker solidarity and action that we may need to pay close attention to as workers’ struggles are likely to intensify in Canada.

Nothing quite like the General Strike has happened in Canada since 1919. Although the Common Front strikes that shook Québec in 1972 resembled it in some ways, the framework of labour law that’s been in place since the 1940s has restricted workers’ actions.

So the Winnipeg General Strike wasn’t a strike of the kind we’re familiar with today. Most historians tell us that Winnipeg’s construction and manufacturing workers were fighting for basic union rights in the difficult circumstances after the end of the First World War and that their efforts boiled over into a general strike because of the intransigence of employers.

However, this story doesn’t fully capture what happened in Winnipeg.

Historian James Naylor has argued that what happened was "in many ways more of a local (and potentially regional and national) revolt than a strike."

When union members in 1919 demanded collective bargaining with their employers, what they wanted wasn’t what collective bargaining is today. They would have opposed today’s extremely tight legal restrictions on when, how and for what workers are allowed to strike. The issue of collective bargaining, Naylor says, "was an issue, but as much as anything else, it was the catalyst for a much broader struggle."

Aspirations for a better city

In remarkable solidarity, the strike brought together union members with non-unionized workers. Workers also infused the strike with aspirations for a better society that they would help create by their own efforts.

Workers rejected the domination of their city by capitalists at a time when many people across Canada and around the world were questioning the social order that put profit before people and had caused the First World War.

That’s why employers conspired with the federal government to break the strike. Police killed two strikers. In the aftermath, a small number of people were deported and many more strikers lost their jobs.

However, this defeat didn’t lead to union rights as they exist today. Those were instituted starting in 1944 to quell a massive wave of law-defying strikes during the Second World War.

The next upsurge could be coming

The way the struggles of unionized workers in Winnipeg grew into a citywide strike isn’t the only way ordinary people can launch a local revolt.

Could some popular upsurge happen in Canada in the next century? I think this is a real possibility because of the economic and ecological crises we face.

We are currently experiencing what economist Michael Roberts calls a "long depression" — similar in some ways to the economic slump of 1873-97 and the Great Depression that started with the 1929 stock market crash and was only brought to an end by the Second World War.

More recently, the Great Recession of 2008-09 ended the period of global economic expansion that started in the early 1980s. A new wave of investment has still not begun.

It will take deep economic restructuring to reboot global capitalism. These changes will surely bring more severe job losses, work intensification and austerity. When a new period of economic expansion eventually begins, we could see more employers decide to invest in advanced technologies that will make work worse for many workers and eliminate more jobs.

The impact of climate change

Climate change and other aspects of the global ecological crisis are going to have significant effects on society. We don’t know just how catastrophic climate change will be. But the environmental crisis caused above all by capitalism’s addiction to burning fossil fuels will get worse. We are on course for global temperature increases dangerously higher than the maximums agreed to in the Paris Accord.

Many Earth system scientists are warning that human activity is destabilizing "the only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies."

A new climate regime  will have far-reaching effects on society. It will be expensive for governments to respond to damage caused by more extreme temperatures and precipitation, more severe storms and flooding, and more droughts and wildfires.

There will also be costs connected to the effects of climate change on water supplies, agriculture, urban life and more. These costs will increase the pressure on governments to slash spending on education, health care and other public services.

The combination of economic restructuring and how governments respond to the ecological crisis could create a major social crisis in Canada. In such conditions, a popular revolt would be entirely possible. We may find clues for what it might look like in anti-austerity struggles in Greece, the gilets jaunes movement in France, and teachers’ strikes in the U.S. – all recent experiences where the usually-muted antagonism between the working class and the dominant class has flared into class struggle.

In such a situation, the lessons of the Winnipeg General Strike about the power of far-reaching solidarity and the danger of state repression would be directly relevant.

David Camfield is an associate professor of labour studies and sociology at the University of Manitoba.

This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.

Declassified: Israel Lifted Military Rule Over Arabs in 1966 Only After Ensuring They Couldn’t Go Home -Totem Berger, Haaretz May 27 2019

Declassified: Israel Lifted Military Rule Over Arabs in 1966 Only After Ensuring They Couldn’t Go Home

Trove of archival documents reveals how Israel prevented Arabs from returning to villages they had left in 1948 – chiefly, by razing structures and planting dense forests

Totem Berger Haaretz May 27 2019

Israel lifted its military rule over the state’s Arab community in 1966 only after ascertaining that its members could not return to the villages they had fled or been expelled from, according to newly declassified archival documents.

The documents both reveal the considerations behind the creation of the military government 18 years earlier, and the reasons for dismantling it and revoking the severe restrictions it imposed on Arab citizens in the north, the Negev and the so-called Triangle of Locales in central Israel.

These records were made public as a result of a campaign launched against the state archives by the Akevot Institute, which researches the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After the War of Independence in 1948, the state imposed military rule over Arabs living around the country, which applied to an estimated 85 percent of that community at the time, say researchers at the NGO. The Arabs in question were subject to the authority of a military commander who could limit their freedom of movement, declare areas to be closed zones, or demand that the inhabitants leave and enter certain locales only with his written permission.

The newly revealed documents describe the ways Israel prevented Arabs from returning to villages they had left in 1948, even after the restrictions on them had been lifted. The main method: dense planting of trees within and surrounding these towns.

At a meeting held in November 1965 at the office of Shmuel Toledano, the prime minister’s adviser on Arab affairs, there was a discussion about villages that had been left behind and that Israel did not want to be repopulated, according to one document. To ensure that, the state had the Jewish National Fund plant trees around and in them.

Among other things, the document states that “the lands belonging to the above-mentioned villages were given to the custodian for absentee properties” and that “most were leased for work (cultivation of field crops and olive groves) by Jewish households.” Some of the properties, it adds, were subleased.

In the meeting in Toledano’s office, it was explained that these lands had been declared closed military zones, and that once the structures on them had been razed, and the land had been parceled out, forested and subject to proper supervision – their definition as closed military zones could be lifted.

On April 3, 1966, another discussion was held on the same subject, this time at the office of the defense minister, Levi Eshkol, who was also the serving prime minister; the minutes of this meeting were classified as top secret. Its participants included: Toledano; Isser Harel, in his capacity as special adviser to the prime minister; the military advocate general – Meir Shamgar, who would later become president of the Supreme Court; and representatives of the Shin Betsecurity service and Israel Police.

The newly publicized record of that meeting shows that the Shin Bet was already prepared at that point to lift the military rule over the Arabs and that the police and army could do so within a short time.

Regarding northern Israel, it was agreed that “all the areas declared at the time to be closed [military] zones... other than Sha’ab [east of Acre] would be opened after the usual conditions were fulfilled – razing of the buildings in the abandoned villages, forestation, establishment of nature reserves, fencing and guarding.” The dates of the reopening these areas would be determined by Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Shamir, the minutes said. Regarding Sha’ab, Harel and Toledano were to discuss that subject with Shamir.

However, as to Arab locales in central Israel and the Negev, it was agreed that the closed military zones would remain in effect for the time being, with a few exceptions.

Even after military rule was lifted, some top IDF officers, including Chief of Staff Tzvi Tzur and Shamgar, opposed the move. In March 1963, Shamgar, then military advocate general, wrote a pamphlet about the legal basis of the military administration; only 30 copies were printed. (He signed it using his previous, un-Hebraized name, Sternberg.) Its purpose was to explain why Israel was imposing its military might over hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Among other things, Shamgar wrote in the pamphlet that Regulation 125, allowing certain areas to be closed off, is intended “to prevent the entry and settlement of minorities in border areas,” and that “border areas populated by minorities serve as a natural, convenient point of departure for hostile elements beyond the border.” The fact that citizens must have permits in order to travel about helps to thwart infiltration into the rest of Israel, he wrote.

Regulation 124, he noted, states that “it is essential to enable nighttime ambushes in populated areas when necessary, against infiltrators.” Blockage of roads to traffic is explained as being crucial for the purposes of “training, tests or maneuvers.” Moreover, censorship is a “crucial means for counter-intelligence.”

Two-year campaign

Despite Shamgar’s opinion, later that year, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol canceled the requirement for personal travel permits as a general obligation. Two weeks after that decision, in November 1963, Chief of Staff Tzur wrote a top-secret letter about implementation of the new policy to the officers heading the various IDF commands and other top brass, including the head of Military Intelligence. Tzur ordered them to carry it out in nearly all Arab villages, with a few exceptions – among them Barta’a and Muqeible, in northern Israel.

In December 1965, Haim Israeli, an adviser to Defense Minister Eshkol, reported to Eshkol’s other aides, Isser Harel and Aviad Yaffeh, and to the head of the Shin Bet, that then-Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin opposed legislation that would cancel military rule over the Arab villages. Rabin explained his position in a discussion with Eshkol, at which an effort to “soften” the bill was discussed. Rabin was advised that Harel would be making his own recommendations on this matter.

At a meeting held on February 27, 1966, Harel issued orders to the IDF, the Shin Bet and the police concerning the prime minister’s decision to cancel military rule. The minutes of the discussion were top secret, and began with: “The mechanism of the military regime will be canceled. The IDF will ensure the necessary conditions for establishment of military rule during times of national emergency and war.” However, it was decided that the regulations governing Israel’s defense in general would remain in force, and at the behest of the prime minister and with his input, the justice minister would look into amending the relevant statutes in Israeli law, or replacing them.

The historical documents cited here have only made public after a two-year campaign by the Akevot institute against the national archives, which preferred that they remain confidential, Akevot director Lior Yavne told Haaretz. The documents contain no information of a sensitive nature vis-a-vis Israel’s security, Yavne added, and even though they are now in the public domain, the archives has yet to upload them to its website to enable widespread access.

“Hundreds of thousands of files which are crucial to understanding the recent history of the state and society in Israel remain closed in the government archive,” he said. “Akevot continues to fight to expand public access to archival documents – documents that are property of the public.”