Maya Wind’s book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (2024), is having a big impact on the campus movement against the genocide in Gaza. It charges Israeli universities with complicity in Israel’s genocidal policies. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) professors and grad students discussed the book last month with thirty members of the reading group of the Radical Caucus of the MLA (Modern Language Association). Our comrades are working in this caucus to build the Party with our co-workers. Many of them are also involved on their campuses in the movement against genocide. Some are in faculty unions, with  others involved in  defending California farmworkers from Border Patrol raids. We are trying to get to know them better personally, in spite of being separated by distance and communicating on screen; and we discuss the Party’s ideas with them as we choose books for the group. The professor who told us about the farmworker raids around Fresno suggested for our next book No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border, by Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis. One of our comrades had actually taken part in that kind of action in Tijuana with the Al Otro Lado organization. This would be a good book for us. We plan to step up getting CHALLENGE to them and talking more directly and personally with them about why it’s important to build up PLP among professors and students as we come under sharper attack.  

The Israeli university: ideology and repression

We started with what the book is about. It treats Israeli universities as fully part of the war machine and the violent settling of historic Palestine by the Zionist state of Israel. It goes well beyond the idea that universities are partners in crime with the Israeli government. Maya Wind argues that the settler university is an integral part of the state structure itself. 

First, she shows how the university perpetuates the Zionist ideology—the Jewish nationalist, Jewish supremacist ideas supporting the seizure of Palestinian land and the expulsion of Palestinians by a European Jewish capitalist class. This is its function as a “tower of ivory” (a traditional phrase for the university), in every discipline from legal studies to archaeology.  

Second, she proves that the Israeli university is a major administrative and military section of the Israeli state: it functions as a “tower of steel.” A concrete symbol of this death-dealing institution is Hebrew University, “the first and leading university of the Zionist movement.” Sitting on stolen land, it dominates, from its Mount Scopus hilltop in East Jerusalem, the physical space of the occupied city like a military outpost in hostile territory, which in part it actually is (Chapter Two, “Outpost Campus”).  

Settler-Colonialism and global capitalism

Wind’s theoretical frame is settler-colonialism rather than global capitalism. She does not point out that the Israeli state is run by a capitalist class, nor does she stress Israel’s function as an outpost of U.S. imperialism. PLP calls instead for seeing Israel not simply in its obvious appearance, as the occupier of Palestine by racist settlers who believe in the political ideology of Zionism (which it is), but also in its less-obvious essence, as a profit-seeking enterprise run by a capitalist class, backed by Western imperialism since its founding as a crucial outpost of empire in a strategic region. 

Wind may well largely agree with this Marxist view of Israel. Her findings are certainly compatible with it. Moreover, what she proves empirically about universities in Israel also provides a model for universities under capitalism in the U.S. and globally—the academic-military-industrial complex. Embedding the university in the security state is the rule, not the exception, under capitalism. Wind’s detailed proof in the case of Israel can be extended to other countries.

Stop university complicity in genocide!

The book has helped fuel action at professional associations like the AHA (American Historical Association) and the January convention of the MLA. The AHA passed a resolution against the destruction of the Gazan education system, calling it “scholasticide,” or the killing of schooling (New York Times, 1/9. The MLA has arbitrarily ruled out even any discussion of a BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) resolution at its convention, and the Radical Caucus including PLP members is joining with the larger MLA for Palestine group to challenge that ban at the convention. At the AHA and MLA, we are answering the call from the bombed-out schools of Gaza, their students and teachers dead or shivering in tents: stop the genocide!

Towers of Ivory and Steel thus enters a turbulent political struggle against the conscription of scholars into the security state.  Historians have made the same analysis of U.S. universities, as in Upton Sinclair’s scathing book The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education (1923). In 1969 SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), with leadership from PLP including our late comrade Ira Wechsler, occupied a “tower of steel” at Stony Brook University on Long Island, where military research was being carried on for the imperialist invasion of Vietnam. Twenty-one students went to jail for it as the capitalist state defended its academic/military branch.(https://stonybrookworker.com/issues/sbw-issue-2/1969-a-year-in-campus-activism-at-stony-brook-university). 

Fight for a communist university, from every river to every sea!

What does “Free Palestine” mean, in relation to the university? Clearly, an end to the kind of university Wind describes in the Israeli case. But what then? PLP fights for a university serving workers in a state that is a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” a dictatorship against capitalists (of all races) and an empowerment of workers (of all nations) to transform the whole of society. A communist university, a red tower of sciences and arts fully a part of the workers’ state power. Every dead school under the dictatorship of capital spurs us on to achieve that vision. Maya Wind’s book will stand as a record of what it was like in all the universities of a dying global imperialism. Fight for communism, from every river to every sea!

Gang violence and chaos has taken an upturn since the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse, who along with Haitian rulers, backed and united the G9 federation of existing gangs in order to suppress working class anger and demonstrations against his rule. (Al Jazeera, 3/13/24) Gang violence generally affects areas where industries are located and places where informal activities are the main sources of income for the masses in Haiti, for example the lower part of the city, the Croix des Bossales market, Carrefour airport and the Route de l’aéroport, Cité Soleil, Bas Delmas, Croix-des-Bouquets, to name just a few places. It is in these places that the working class went every day to chache lavi (literally, look for life). Workers here eke out a living and survive on a daily basis. Therefore, each time a street is paralyzed, life is no longer possible for the majority. Factories in the Sonapi free-trade zone have been shuttered. Odd jobs on the streets (gas stations, vehicle repairs, small businesses, repairs and sales of electronics and household appliances, etc.) that were the source of income for millions of Haitians have disappeared. Many institutions that provided services and jobs, such as hospitals, were burned down. The current unemployment rate is difficult to calculate but most families now depend solely on money transfers from the diaspora.

In 2023 alone, $3.8 billion in remittances were made (Haitian Times, 1/7), and 2024 is undoubtedly… even higher. Workers in Haiti are on the brink of starvation. The annual inflation rate is 46 percent (trade.gov). In the capital, the presence of gangs makes it nearly impossible to go to the market; in the country overall, there are hardly any goods on the shelves, including needed medicines. The ports are blocked and the roads inaccessible to transportation. Workers have long depended on cheaper imported goods (98 percent), especially food (50 percent) from the Dominican Republic, which discourage local agricultural production (Dominican Today, 9/13/22).

Mass political action is difficult at this time, with day-to-day survival being the primary focus of so many. However, the Progressive Labor Party here, trying to be faithful to communist practice, continues with building ideological awareness. Our comrades and friends study communist ideas and history to prepare ourselves to debate the events in political discussion forums. We organize politically significant activities—revolutionary self-help—to build and maintain the trust of the masses. On January 1, for example, the PLP worked with our base to prepare and distribute the traditional pumpkin soup in four neighborhoods in a provincial town, as we have been doing for more than eight years. Many working-class families can no longer prepare soup as before: pumpkin (joumou) is rare and expensive, as are other ingredients and meat.

The following is a preview of the introduction to an upcoming pamphlet,formatted for CHALLENGE. In this pamphlet, we will examine how capitalist/imperialist competition led to the creation of Israel; why the alliance between the U.S. bosses and Israel highlights the growing weakness of U.S. imperialism; and how nationalism has continuously proved deadly for the working class. The only solution to the dead-end of capitalist wars is communist revolution. This pamphlet will be available on our website and in print next month.

The ongoing horrendous, genocidal destruction of Gaza by the bosses of Israel continues to horrify workers all over the world. As indiscriminate bombing of residential areas, schools, hospitals, and refugee camps by the Israeli Defense Forces relentlessly drives the death toll far beyond 50,000 adults and children, workers across the world cry out in solidarity with the people of Gaza. In demonstrations large and small, signs and chants condemn the Israeli bosses and their U.S allies who refuse to cut off the supply of arms and bombs to Israel. 

Even as Netanyahu unilaterally orders assassinations, terrorist explosions of cell phones and airstrikes on Lebanon, Syria, and across the Middle East,  Trump and his new cabinet of horrors will continue the U.S. imperialist plan of enabling Israel’s right to “defend” itself and will continue to send billions in military aid. The unwavering patronage that Biden and Harris provided to Israel indict them in the history books as genocidal collaborators. Netanyahu – and the rest of the world – knows that Israel is key to the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. But where a U.S./Israeli alliance used to project strength and power, it is quickly isolating the U.S in world opinion and threatening to pull the U.S. military into the quagmire of war. 

Whenever and however World War III begins, capitalist bosses, large and small, will call on workers to line up behind one national flag or another to kill and be killed in battles to determine which capitalist bosses will control which lands and resources. In many of the demonstrations against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, people wave Palestinian flags and chant for a free Palestine. There can be no freedom for workers in Palestine or any place in the world under capitalism. We support workers’ fightback against genocide, fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. But we reject nationalist misleaders like Hamas and Hezbollah who, like the Zionist bosses after WWII, cynically divert workers’ fury into nationalist fervor. Like the communists in Russia during World War I and the communists in China during World War II, the working class of the world today can and must turn imperialist war into revolution.

Imperialist competition creates Israel

For several hundred years before WW I, present day Palestine and many other Middle Eastern countries were part of the Turkish Ottoman empire. When oil, first discovered in the region in the early 1900s, became the world’s major industrial and military fuel, capitalists in Europe and in the U.S. took increasing interest in control of the area and its vast resources. During World War I, the most powerful Western imperialist, Great Britain, encouraged nationalism among various Arab groups previously exploited by the Ottoman empire and enlisted them to fight with Britain against Turkey and Germany. In exchange, Great Britain held out the promise of a Pan-Arab independent state after the war.

Before Palestine became a British Mandate, it was occupied by diverse groups of Arab and Jewish farmers and herders. Some of the Jews living in Palestine had emigrated from Russia and Europe to escape the brutal anti-Jewish racism of tsarist pogroms and intense marginalization of Jewish workers throughout Europe. Some were inspired by a nascent Zionist movement. During the 19th and early 20th century, capitalists encouraged nationalism to solidify the development of bourgeois nation-states and colonial and imperialist control of resources around the world.

Within this context, the Zionist movement grew. The leadership of the Zionist movement came from the petit bourgeoisie (small bosses) and the educated elite. The British bosses supported the Zionist leaders’ call for mass emigration of Jews to Palestine because they believed that a large group of middle-class Europeans could provide military and political support against the demands of Arab nationalism. 

History is full of examples of heroic resistance on the part of the working class to capitalist oppression, displacement, and violence. But as a class, we must fight harder to gain the confidence we need to rely on each other rather than on a seemingly lesser-evil capitalist also doing battle with a bigger, more powerful capitalist. We must reject all forms of nationalism and fight now for communism – a society where the land and other resources are protected and cultivated for the survival of the world’s working class.

On January 6, health care workers and allies gathered in front of hospitals in cities such as Boston, New York, Minneapolis and San Francisco to demand an end to the destruction of hospitals in Gaza, the arrest and abuse of doctors and other providers, and the ongoing genocide. So far at least 885 healthcare workers in Gaza have been killed and 128 remain in custody. Israel is preparing to kill off as many Gazans as possible with even more urgency, attempting to deny the entry of any food or water or any medical care. Some U.S. health workers called in sick in order to participate. 

In New York City, a few comrades joined with the hundreds gathered outside NYU Tisch hospital, a pro-Zionist institution that has fired and harassed health workers for just mentioning support of Gaza. The demonstrations were organized by Within Our Lifetime, Doctors Against Genocide and Health Care Workers for Palestine.  But there is little hope for Palestinians without a mass movement that calls for class based international unity to rid the world of capitalism and imperialism, an idea that several comrades regularly put forward in these organizations as we join their actions. It is not enough to choose between the collaborators of the Palestinian Authority or the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas who call for martyrdom. Workers of the world must unite for a society we run for ourselves, a communist world.