AnarchoBolshevik

I remember one boring afternoon in the 2000s when I looked up ‘Jewish Nazis’ online because of the sheer absurdity of the concept. (I had a worse sense of humor as an adolescent.) To my surprise, I found out about something called Patrol 36: a gang of pro‐Axis neofascists who were nevertheless citizens of the Zionist neocolony.

As the bourgeoisie devastated the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s and throughout the ’90s, neofascism exploded in popularity. Neoliberalization along with harassment from neofascists caused approximately one million Russian Jews to settle in occupied Palestine hoping for a better life. Many of the earlier settlers loathed these newcomers as ‘unworthy’ competitors. Since anybody (except for Palestinians) with at least one Jewish grandparent is eligible for citizenship under the so‐called ‘law of return’, many people who were only legally ‘Jewish’ became citizens, too.

Some legally ‘Jewish’ youths felt more gentile than Jewish; the harassment that they faced from Jews disgruntled them. Hence, in 2005, Patrol 36 was born:

Kuzmin’s family migrated to Israel 10 years ago hoping for a better life free of discrimination. But Ivan still didn't fit in. “There they called me things like dirty Jew... And here they called me stinky Russian.”

Despite having a grandmother who survived the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, Kuzmin joined other young immigrants in a neo[fascist] gang called Patrol 36, which regularly bashed people senseless. They were so proud of their actions they videotaped their attacks.

Pictured: One of the gang members performing a Fascist salute.

As laughworthy as the concept of ‘Jewish neo‐Nazis’ may seem, it is real, and they can be no less dangerous than their gentile counterparts:

The eight suspects, aged 16–21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They were arrested a month ago [August 2007], but the news only emerged on Saturday. Police say searches of their homes yielded [Fascist] uniforms, portraits of Adolf Hitler, knives, guns and TNT.

[…]

The arrests follow a year‐long inquiry which began after a synagogue in Petah Tikva, a city east of Tel Aviv, was desecrated with graffiti of [Fascist] swastikas and the name of [Fascist] leader Adolf Hitler.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his horror at what he called “violence for the sake of violence.”

“I am sure that there is not a person in Israel who can remain indifferent to these scenes, which indicate that we too as a society have failed in the education of these youths,” he said.

Tattoos

The eight accused, who include the group’s alleged leader, are all from Petah Tikva.

The gang members sported tattoos popular with white supremacists — including the number 88, code for Heil Hitler because “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

“We believe that this is the main gang working in the area… the main gang that exists [under Zionism] that attempts to use Hitler’s ideology,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP news agency. Police say the gang members would target homosexuals, Jews who wore a skull cap and drug addicts, often video taping their attacks. “It is difficult to believe that Nazi ideology sympathisers can exist in Israel, but it is a fact,” Revital Almog, the police official who led the investigation, told Israeli public radio.

Video tapes

The suspects have admitted assaulting a number of people in Tel Aviv, most of them foreign workers. Ms Almog said the gang would pick on someone who appeared unable to defend themselves and then attack. They often filmed or photographed the violence. Footage of the attacks show people lying on the ground whilst being kicked by more than one assailant. In one clip a man is hit around the back of the head with a bottle.

According to the […] daily newspaper Haaretz one video shows gang members surrounding a Russian drug addict as he admits to being a Jew. The youths then order him onto his knees to beg for forgiveness for being Jewish and a drug addict before viciously beating not only him, but also another man who tries to intervene.

(Emphasis original.)

Aside from assaulting innocents, some of the things that these youths said were just plain creepy:

During the investigation, police revealed chilling email correspondences between the cell members. In one message, Buanitov wrote: “Do you celebrate the Fuhrer’s birthday? On his birthday we will read out a few lines, swear allegiance to Hitler and to all the white people. We will guard the white race until the last drop of our blood.”

When one of the members was worried that the event might be spotted by a “[insert slur here]” who may report it to the police, Buanitov replied, “Let him see us, we’ll kill him.”

In a separate conversation Baniatov said, “I will never give up, I was a Nazi and will remain a Nazi. I won’t rest until we kill them all.” In another chat he stated, “I won’t have kids. My grandfather is half [insert slur here], so that this piece of trash doesn’t have ancestors with even the smallest percent of Jewish blood.”

Here is a recording of the gang members going to court, many with their shirts over their faces to hide their identities. (Another suspect, a twenty‐one‐year‐old soldier, fled before somebody could arrest him.) Then, a judge sentenced the accused to 1–7 years in jail. Since that was in November 2008, this means that they are all free now.

Many neocolonial officials and other apologists have glossed over Patrol 36 as nothing more than an isolated case. That may be, but Zalman Gilichinski, an activist who tried to draw attention to pro‐Axis neofascists in the neocolony, was unconvinced:

“There are several hundred neo‐Nazis in Israel, maybe more. Perhaps 100 perpetrate violent attacks,” says Zalman Gilichinski, a Torah instructor in Jerusalem who is not only the leading authority, but probably the only authority on the extent of neo‐Nazism in Israel.

“It’s hard to think of a city with a substantial population of [halachically] non‐Jewish Russian immigrants where there isn’t neo‐Nazi activity,” he says, adding that the leading venues for Nazi graffiti and street attacks are the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, Haifa and its Krayot suburbs, and the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Armon Hatziv, Neveh Yaʻacov and Pisgat Zeʻev.

“We’re now getting about 250 calls a year about neo‐Nazi activity, and a third or more of these complaints have to do with violence,” he adds.

[…]

After Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005, when a Russian immigrant youth was arrested for spraying [Fascist] graffiti in Beersheba, and an IDF soldier from Ariel was discovered to be wearing swastika tattoos, Gilichinski spoke about the problem on the radio, and Avital’s office contacted him. He showed the MK the material Damir had amassed on neo[fascist] activities here, and Avital convened the first of three Knesset committee hearings on the issue, all of which were attended by police representatives.

“I wanted the police to start dealing with the issue, but they came up with nothing at the meetings, they said there's nothing to the issue, they know nothing, they've heard nothing,” says Avital. She instructed police to put together a report on the extent of neo‐Nazi activities, but this was never done, despite Gilichinski having provided them with “written evidence, names of Web sites, all the material imaginable,” she continues.

As late as last month, Avi Dichter, minister of internal security, sent a letter to Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, with a copy to Avital, in which he insisted that neo‐Nazism in Israel “was not important, that the police did a little research and nothing was happening, it wasn’t a trend, it wasn’t serious,” Avital adds.

In Gilichinski’s files is correspondence with various local police stations over complaints of neo‐Nazi and anti‐Semitic attacks. The police response often refers to the case being closed, with no explanation given; in most of these cases, the likelihood is that the perpetrators weren’t caught. At times, though, the police response is that no investigation was even opened. “Many times I made complaints to the police and got no response from them at all,” he notes.

While the occupation may have no citizens today who are European neofascists (not to be confused with Hebrew neofascists), Zionists have good reasons for ignoring the possibility: various reports in the media about European neofascists harming Jews would ruin the image of the ‘State of Israel’ as a Jewish utopia. Thus, we may never know the real extent of the problem. Whatever the case may be there, three facts remain indisputable: the occupation has welcomed Eurofascists repeatedly, has repeatedly supported Ukrainian neofascists and offers jobs to European neofascists.

It may be tempting to dismiss Patrol 36 as nothing more than a historical curiosity, but comparing how the occupation handled it with how it mishandles Palestinians remains useful: a neofascist gang that assaulted people for being Jewish, drug‐addicted, homosexual, or of colour was entitled to a trial, some anonymity, and only a few years in jail. It took the authorities two years to do anything about them. In contrast, a Palestinian child who never came close to harming anybody has no right to food, shelter, potable water, electricity, or even oxygen. The IOF waste no time massacring Palestinians of any age. Yet according to many Herzlians, Palestinians and Eurofascists are supposedly one and the same!

Let nobody deceive you: the occupation does not treat Palestinians like antisemitic neofascists. It treats neofascists much better than Palestinians!

Colonel Ehsan Daqsa, 41, was killed after his tank and another tank were hit by explosive devices during military operations in Jabalia refugee camp.

Another Israeli soldier was seriously wounded during the same incident.

Daqsa has been described in Israeli media as one of the most senior officers to have been killed since the war on Gaza began over a year ago.

He became commander of the 401st brigade in June.

The 41-year-old is from Daliyat al-Karmel, a Druze town in Israel's Haifa district. He enlisted in Israel's armoured corps in 2001.

Haaretz reported that he was considered to be a prominent and respected field comamnder within the […] army.

In the 2006 Lebanon War, Daqsa commanded an independent armoured force under the Paratroopers Brigade.

The Israeli military has published the names of over 750 troops killed since the war began in October last year, including more than 350 who were killed during ground operations in Gaza.

At least 43 Israeli troops have been killed in attacks and ground operations on the northern front of the war along the Lebanese border.

No comment.

Prepare to be unimpressed.

(Mirror.)

Flug, the former Bank of Israel governor and now vice-president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute, says there is a risk the […] government cuts investment to free up resources for defense. “That will reduce the potential growth (of the economy) going forward,” she said.

Researchers at the Institute for National Security Studies are similarly downbeat.

Even a withdrawal from Gaza and calm on the border with Lebanon would leave Israel’s economy in a weaker position than before the war, they said in a report in August. “Israel is expected to suffer long-term economic damage regardless of the outcome,” they wrote.

“The anticipated decline in growth rates in all scenarios compared to pre-war economic forecasts and the increase in defense expenditures could exacerbate the risk of a recession reminiscent of the lost decade following the Yom Kippur War.”

Related: Occupation’s GDP growth revised down to 0.3% as war on Palestinians takes economic toll:

Israel’s economy grew slower in the second quarter than previously thought, data showed on Tuesday, as [the] war in Gaza […] continued to weigh on growth.

Gross domestic product (ILGDP=ECI), opens new tab rose by an annualised 0.3 in the April–June period, the Central Bureau of Statistics said in its third estimate, down from 0.7% reported a month ago and from an initial 1.2% published in August.

The economy was supported by gains in consumer and state spending and in investment in fixed assets, while exports fell.

Last week, the Bank of Israel trimmed its […] economic growth estimate in 2024 to 0.5% from a prior estimate of 1.5%.

Along with a weakening economy, inflation has spiked and central bank officials have warned of possible interest rate increases. It held rates steady last week for a sixth straight policy meeting.

First-quarter GDP growth was unrevised at 17.2%, as the economy bounced back from a steep contraction in the fourth quarter of 2023 when the war began.

Oh no.

Once [the Fascists] completed the military occupation of Ethiopia, a large stele from the city of Aksum was plundered by [Fascist] colonial troops and transported to Rome. In antiquity, the Kingdom of Aksum (100 BC – 700 AD) represented the earliest form of Ethiopian civilisation.¹⁴

The city hosted (and still does so in its rôle as a UNESCO heritage site) an impressive number of stelae originally carved and erected to mark the location of underground burial chambers. The theft of the stele and its re‐erection in Rome in 1937 allowed the fascist régime to proclaim itself as the successor of Ancient Roman conquerors.¹⁵

The placement of the stele at the ancient heart of the city was meant to create vistas and axes that would connect the Circus Maximus to the Colosseum and the pyramid of Cestius, as well as creating an artery that would link the city to the newly built EUR42 imperial quarter and the nearby port of Ostia, permitting access to the Mediterranean Sea.¹⁶ The construction, facing the Aksum stele, of a new building to host the Ministry of Italian Africa, was therefore meant to celebrate Italy’s imperial geography.

[…]

The […] 1947 Paris Peace Treaties set the terms for the return of the stele to Ethiopia. Article 37 stipulated the restitution of looted works of art, objects of religious, and historical value to their legitimate owners. But, despite these obligations, Italy kept the restitution on hold until 2002.¹⁷

By then new bilateral agreements were signed between Italy and Ethiopia, focussing around business, infrastructural projects, and development aid. These agreements, and through UNESCO mediation, eventually led to the complete restitution of the stele in Aksum in 2008, thus leaving the square empty and the FAO headquarters in Rome standing alone.

However, after the removal, the apparent sense of emptiness led to a new mutation. On 11 September 2009, the Mayor of Rome, the right‐winger Gianni Alemanno, inaugurated a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York eight years earlier.

The memorial, placed nearby the original location of the stele, consists of a plaque placed between two columns taken from the fountain of Curia Innocenziana in the Piazza di Montecitorio in Rome. This new spatial intervention clearly reproduces the profile of New York’s Twin Towers. Paradoxically, on the plaque are carved the words of the philosopher George Santayana: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.¹⁸

[…]

The […] substitution in the late 2000s of the Aksum stele with a 9/11 memorial has reinforced the coloniality of power, making room for other memorialisations and new civilisational messages. This latest intervention has triggered the attempted making of new global historical memories that are not necessarily bound to the sense of belonging to the nation or an ethnos, but, on the contrary, they inform the identity of those communities who did not directly experience specific traumatic historical events.⁴⁷

The experience of catastrophe following the Holocaust and the Second World War came to create a global political and moral space where collective trauma is held hostage by an exclusive Western interpretation, providing inspiration and justification for military and non‐military interventions to prevent outbreaks of major threats to the global hegemonic order.

Within this context, 9/11 acted as a historical turning point for the West out of which a transnational sense of ‘vulnerability’ started spreading. This has generated, and continues to generate, justifications of military aggression and war on a global scales a way to protect Western interests and concerns.

(Emphasis added.)

“Jedi,” whose real name is Serhii Rotchuk, or Serhii Grushin, led the delegation. He was one of the Azovites invited to play golf at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington earlier this year. “Jedi” is one of the leaders of the NGU Azov brigade’s medical service. He emphasized that Azov trains according to NATO standards. In his oldest Instagram post, from 2019, he is wearing a “Rock Against Communism” shirt produced by a National Socialist Black Metal brand affiliated with the hardcore neo[fascist] group “Wotanjugend,” which originated in Russia. Last year, he expressed interest in a book by Léon Degrelle, the [Axis] collaborator who led the far‐right Rexist Party in Belgium.

[…]

It’s been said that “if you happen to watch Finnish television now, and are looking at any coverage of the Russian war in Ukraine, you’ll probably see Major General Toveri.” He has argued that “the only way to have lasting peace in Europe” requires the integration of Ukraine “to our economic and defence systems through membership in EU and NATO.” But even if that never happens, Ukrainian neo[fascists] are still on track to be integrated in the U.S.‐led military‐industrial complex and western intelligence services.

The day before the Azov delegation received a warm welcome at the NATO headquarters, the commander of the Azov Brigade paid tribute to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), as far‐right nationalists do every year on October 14. The UPA, the 1940s paramilitary arm of the OUN‐B, or “Banderite” wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, hunted Jews in the forests of western Ukraine and waged a massive ethnic cleansing campaign against the region’s Polish population.

By the early 1950s, the CIA tried and failed to utilize the UPA as a “stay‐behind army,” but it whitewashed Ukrainian [Axis] collaborators throughout the Cold War. “I am sure that the UPA fighters, looking at your daily service, are proud of you and smiling because the defense of Ukraine is in good hands,” Azov commander Denys Prokopenko said in an online post that he wrote in English. “They couldn’t have dreamt of better descendants.”

Dissanayake’s victory is significant, as he is the first Marxist to be elected president in Sri Lanka’s history. He has strong support from young voters in particular. His success in the election reflects the growing popularity of leftist ideas in Sri Lanka. The JVP led two armed revolts against the government in the 1970s and 1980s.

This electoral victory for the left comes after Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt and went into bankruptcy. Current social and economic unrest in Sri Lanka has been motivated by the rapid decline of economic possibilities for the population, which faces shortages of essential goods, including food, fuel and medicines.

Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party took Sri Lanka to the International Monetary Fund in 2023 to secure a $2.9 billion bailout, which has further trapped the country in a cycle of high-interest loans with corporate creditors in the [neo]imperialist West. Wickremesinghe continued to arm the government against the Tamil people’s resistance in the North and East of Sri Lanka.

Dissanayake campaigned on transitioning Sri Lanka away from the IMF and resolving ethnic disputes in the country, specifically the ongoing genocide of the Tamil people.

The election results represent the demands of the people but do not by themselves change the class character of the state. The capitalist class still controls the state, property and means of production in Sri Lanka, and the superrich maintain their ties to the military, courts, corporate media and police.

The global working class must be in solidarity with Sri Lanka’s efforts to develop independently of world imperialism and to advance towards socialism.

We affirm that these sacrifices will continue to illuminate our path and drive us to more resilience and steadfastness. Hamas remains committed to the promise of its founding leaders and martyrs until the aspirations of our people are fully realized: the complete liberation and return, and the establishment of the Palestinian state on the entire national soil with Al-Quds as its capital, by Allah’s will. This will become a curse upon the invading occupiers who are strangers to this land.

Our great people, our Arab and Islamic nations and the free people of the world: The martyrdom of Brother Leader Yahya Al-Sinwar, along with all the leaders and icons of the movement who preceded him on the path of honor, martyrdom and the project of liberation and return, will only strengthen Hamas and our resistance, making us more determined and steadfast in following their path, honoring their blood and sacrifices. A movement that offers its leaders and members as martyrs in defense of the rights of its people is a noble, genuine movement deeply rooted in its people.

To those lamenting the captured occupiers held by the resistance, we say: They will not return except with the cessation of aggression on Gaza, its withdrawal and the release of our heroic prisoners from the occupation’s jails. We continue in the path of Hamas, and the spirit of Al-Aqsa Flood will remain a living flame in the hearts of our people. We remain faithful to your pledge, Abu Ibrahim, and your banner will never fall but will remain high and proudly raised.

Peace be upon you, Abu Ibrahim, the humble, devout and pious man. Peace be upon you, the prisoner. Peace be upon you, the fighter. Peace be upon you, the martyr. Peace be upon you, for history will record that you wrote the first line in the war of liberation and the end of the occupation. May Allah have mercy on you and grant you the highest place in paradise with the prophets, the truthful ones, the martyrs and the righteous, and what excellent companions they are. And it is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.

Following the reading of these demands and the statement that preceded them, the community heard from three more speakers. The first speaker represented SUNY Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and she connected her experience as a student activist in the 1980s pushing for divestment from South African apartheid to the current struggle to push for divestment from Israel.

The second speaker represented the No CAS Cuts movement (budget cuts to the College of Arts and Sciences) and connected the crackdown on the humanities — including the firing of staff and cancellation of classes — to the current crisis of end-stage capitalism.

The final speaker represented the Buffalo branch of Workers World Party and spoke about his time as a member of YAWF (Youth Against War and Fascism) fighting against Vietnam war recruitment activities on campus. He closed his speech by pointing out a connection between the U.S. military and how college campuses are complicit in [neo]imperialism.

China does not want war. China wants peace. It wants to continue its development in peace. It wants to help the world develop in peace, especially the people of the Global South who have been the big victims of imperialism and colonialism. It wants to help them, but [neo]imperialism does not want peace. It doesn’t want China to develop in peace. It doesn’t want the world that it does not control to develop, and this is the problem.

And what this murder in Beirut tells us — and there have been almost 1,000 people who have been murdered in Lebanon over the past couple of weeks — and the genocide in Gaza, what it tells us is that [neo]imperialism is willing to go to almost any length, unimaginable lengths of violence and terror to maintain its empire, which is crumbling.

They are willing to flirt with World War Three, which could mean the end of all life on the planet Earth. And you know, when an empire is crumbling, that’s when it’s most desperate and dangerous. That’s when it’s most likely to resort to violence. And this is what we are witnessing, comrades.

There are some in the ruling class here who are afraid of war, a wider war, a world war. They don’t think the U.S. will win. As a matter of fact they think it would hasten the demise of [neo]imperialism. And we think that they are right about that, and they’d like to maintain U.S. hegemony by other means. But whatever that is for the ruling class, they are losing. They’re not in the driver’s seat.

It’s the warmongers who are in the driver’s seat. So we see the people rising up all over the world against the empire. We see the people demonstrating in the streets over the murder of the leader of Hezbollah. Actually, as I was leaving home, I saw on social media that there was a demonstration of thousands of people in Baghdad. They had entered the Green Zone and were trying to get into the U.S. Embassy.

There are people demonstrating everywhere, around the world and particularly in West Asia. It shows you that — this is a hunch — they’re not going to take it by lying down. As a matter of fact, it’s going to wave off the mere resistance and, of course, the countries that are under attack, in particular China, that are in the crosshairs of [neo]imperialism, are going to fight back to defend themselves. They can defend themselves.

But we have to ask ourselves this. Are we going to just leave it up to people in other places, to China, they’re willing to do it, they’ll do what they have to do, but are we just going to leave it up to them? Especially those of us who happen to be at the center of world imperialism, particularly here in the U.S. which they used to call the belly of the beast. We can’t do that. That’s not right.

We have to seriously consider what our responsibilities as anti-imperialist revolutionaries are, and we have to show them those responsibilities, and then […] we gotta do whatever it takes. You see, the people of the world, they’re demanding this of us. History is demanding us. Save this planet if it could talk, is demanding this of us, that we do whatever is necessary, however we need to do it. However long it takes, and it doesn’t have to take too long for the anti-war and anti-imperialist forces to get so big and so strong that we can shut the world down to stop war. What real choice do we have?

We’ve got to get away from complacency if that’s an issue. I know that there are those of us who do whatever we are doing on a day-to-day basis, whenever we can. We’ve got to get away from our routine — what they call routinism. It’s almost like a semi-conscious feeling that, yes, that needs to be done, but somebody else can do it.

Sometimes, I think we have a partial kind of disconnect, a partial, you know, denial of what’s happening. Perhaps we can feel somewhat powerless, but all things we’ve got to push aside now, we got to push them aside, and we got to figure out what we are going to do.

I think, I’m not sure, that comrade Maduro in Venezuela, a couple of months ago, called for an international united front against [neo]imperialism. Not sure if it’s just something that he floated, or whether it’s real and how he’s following up on that. But I’ll tell you comrades, if there was ever a time for that, and I’m not talking about just a name — he seems to have a name — I’m talking about something flesh and blood and strength and power that’s real. If there was ever a time for that, it’s now.

I’m thinking about our own plan. The BRICS countries are meeting in Russia in the last week of October. And that’s good. People have talked about … and we can talk about that. But again we can’t just leave it up to the BRICS to push [neo]imperialism back, to marginalize it, to diminish its hegemony. We’ve got to do something! The masses have to do something. The working class has to do something decisive. And a lot of us are convinced that they can. And those who are not convinced, better get with it.

For the first time, the criminal U.S. government is deploying a THAAD air defense system to the zionist entity to assist in defense “against an Iranian attack.” Along with the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery, dozens of U.S. soldiers will be deployed to install and operate it.

Despite unlimited U.S. support, the deployment of such a system reveals a weakness in the zionist entity; its existing and extensive air defense systems deployed throughout occupied Palestine are not enough to counter seemingly limitless missiles and drones that rain down on all fronts.

It is evidence that the Iranian operation was effective and precise and had that not been the case, the system would not have been delivered, as “israel” is incapable of repelling a larger attack.

Lea Kayali, a Palestinian Youth Movement organizer said: “I come to you all in a state of mourning, but not in a state of despair. Because to be Indigenous is to embody the word ‘sumud,’ a word in Arabic that means steadfastness. To be sumud is to insist with our bodies and our spirits that we will resist colonialism with every moment of our lives. […] It is the strength of this movement of five centuries of anticolonial struggle that is a promise of liberation. […] From Turtle Island to Palestine, we demand Land Back and nothing less!”

To close the rally, demonstrators joined hands to participate in a traditional round dance to commemorate Indigenous Peoples Day and give expression to the ongoing resistance and resilience of Indigenous peoples around the world.

Jean-Luc Pierrite said, in his closing remarks on the strike line: “We are here for all our [Indigenous] relations. We are here for our workers. We are here! Make them pay! Land back!”