Protests are continuing in Israel, in the largest display of popular opposition in the country’s history.
Demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands, of a population of just over nine million, have been held for the last 12 weeks against the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to stage a coup against the judiciary. His plans, pursued alongside his fascistic coalition partners, are part of a broader project to dramatically escalate the Israeli state’s persecution of the Palestinians, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and to clamp down on growing social and political opposition in the Israeli working class.
Police uses water cannon to disperse anti government protesters in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, March 27, 2023. Over Sunday and Monday up to 600,000 people turned out to protest and strikes spread across all sectors, closing universities, grounding flights and shutting ports.protested. [AP Photo/Oded Balilty]
The protests reached a new peak of intensity Sunday night and Monday, after Netanyahu’s firing of defence minister Yoav Gallant. Up to 600,000 people turned out to protest and strikes spread across all sectors, closing universities, grounding flights and shutting ports.
Late Monday evening, 10 hours after he was originally scheduled to make a statement, Netanyahu announced that the legislation would be “paused” to prevent “civil war”. But he did so only after negotiations with the far-right parties in his government, granting them a National Guard controlled by the interior ministry, led by Jewish supremacist Itamar Ben-Gvir.
President of Israel IsaacHerzog and the umbrella organisation of most of the country’s trade unions Histadrut used the “pause” to intervene to prop up the government.
Herzog issued a statement which began, “Stopping the legislation is the right thing. This is the time to begin a sincere, serious, and responsible dialogue that will urgently calm the waters and lower the flames.”
It concluded, “The President’s Residence, the People’s Home, is a space for dialogue and the formation of as broad agreements as possible, with the aim of extracting our beloved State of Israel from the deep crisis that we are in.”
On Tuesday, Herzog hosted talks between representatives of Netanyahu’s coalition and of opposition parties Yesh Atid and National Unity.
Arnon Bar-David, chairman of Histadrut, had been forced to sanction a general strike Monday as workers all over the country began taking action independently. He did so with the aim of stopping “the madness across the country,” saying “employers and workers” would “join hands together” to do so. After Netanyahu’s statement, he declared the strike cancelled.
But protestors have not been swayed. Many have pointed to the fact that the ruling coalition tabled on Tuesday a final reading of a bill giving Netanyahu greater control of the selection of judges.
Demonstrators out in the streets in Tel-Aviv Monday night were attacked by police with water cannon and dozens of stun grenades. Thirty-eight protestors were arrested. One was hurt by a police horse and another by a police grenade.
A participant told Haaretz that she saw the man being hit: “I saw a man lying, bleeding, who suddenly fell in front of me on the floor after a loud boom. It was scary, I’ve been shaking.”
The Umbrella Movement of Resistance against Dictatorship described the prime minister’s announcement as “another attempt of Netanyahu trying to gaslight the Israeli public in order to weaken to the protest movement in order to enact a dictatorship,” adding, “We will not stop the protest until the judicial coup is completely stopped.”
More rallies are planned for Thursday and Saturday, with Al-Jazeera’s Bernard Smith reporting, “Organisers said [former prime minister] Benny Gantz and [opposition leader] Yair Lapid don’t represent them, they want people to still come out and protest until this law is completely abandoned.”
The line of the protests so far has been to criticise Netanyahu for destabilising the Israeli state. Palestinians have been effectively excluded.
Gantz and Lapid have been essentially arguing that the government is unnecessarily compromising the image of the Zionist project when the courts are no real block to their shared programme of apartheid and occupation. If Netanyahu were prepared to modify his agenda, they would happily order the protests dismissed and join in the denunciations of those who stayed out on the streets.
Lapid responded to the prime minister’s statement Monday evening by saying he would be “willing to enter discussions if legislation is truly halted,” his only condition being that “there’s no trick, only if the legislation will be truly stopped.”
Gantz spoke with Netanyahu Monday evening, welcoming his announcement and urging him to keep Gallant in position—saying it was “essential for national security and to calm tensions at this time,” according to Haaretz.
Aides of Gallant claim that he has received no formal notification of his dismissal, with spokespeople for Netanyahu and his Likud party refusing to comment. The former general is an unindicted war criminal, head of Southern Command for the Israel Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead, the murderous 2008-9 assault on Gaza.
But whatever the intentions of Lapid, Gantz and the rest, the split in Zionist forces is an expression of a deeper crisis of the Israeli state and world capitalism which has blown apart the myth of a common Jewish people unaffected by the deep class divides and social tensions which scar the country. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote Monday, it has “brought Jewish workers and youth face to face with the historical necessity of a political reckoning with Zionism.”
Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar and generally dismissive of the protests like all Arab nationalist commentators, published an article Monday drawing attention to the growing dissent among Israel army reservists—cited by Gallant as a reason for his opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial coup.
Tal Sagi, a member of the Breaking the Silence group of ex-soldiers (Israel drafts 18-year-olds for at least two years) which collects testimony from military occupations in the Occupied Territories, told how “the anti-occupation bloc has felt growing acceptance from other anti-judicial reform protesters as the protests progressed over the past months, particularly since the pogrom in Huwara,” in Al-Jazeera’s words.
Sagi explained, “At first, in the anti-occupation bloc, there were a lot of attacks on people who held Palestinian flags. Now I see less and less violence. It’s like the protest became more comfortable with the fact of the flag’s presence.”
Another anti-occupation protester, Jacob Abolafia, told the broadcaster, “Over the course of three months, and especially after the pogrom in Huwara, the consciousness is growing that what is going on in the occupation, the occupied territories and the Israeli streets are tied.
“You would hear at least 10,000 people chant: ‘Where were you at Huwara?’”
While Netanyahu and his coalition play for time, they are mobilising far-right forces like those who rampaged through Huwara to intimidate protestors.
Likud distributed a poster through WhatsApp groups on Monday calling on supporters “Emergency—Going up to Jerusalem! They won’t steal our election!” and providing details of transport available across the country. Hevron Regional Council, representing 10,000 settlers in the West Bank, funded busses to Jerusalem.
WhatsApp and Telegram groups of fascist organisations like The Unapologetic Right, the Jewish Defence League and La Familia, football ultras linked with Beitar Jerusalem, circulated calls to “run them [anti-Netanyahu protestors] over with a jeep”, bring “gasoline, explosives, tractors, guns, knives” and attack “these shits… blocking the road. We will keep them in their kibbutz.”
At the far-right rally, the fascistic Finance Minister Bezalal Smotrich told protestors, “The left has taken over the centres of power of Israel. The time has come for us to return the country to the nation.” Ben-Gvir added, “We are a right-wing government, and we will demand the reform now.”
Demonstrators chanted “treacherous leftists” and threw objects including flag poles at anti-Netanyahu protestors. Journalists for Channel 13 News and Walla News were spat at and assaulted with sticks. One suffered a broken rib. A Palestinian taxi driver was also attacked, escaping in his car.
Japan and South Korea are rapidly moving to repair bilateral relations following recent years of trade and diplomatic disputes. The purpose is to increase coordination between the two governments and their militaries, both allies of the United States, in preparation for launching a war against China.
Seoul officially announced on March 21 that it had “normalized” a 2016 intelligence sharing agreement with Japan. Known as the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), it allows for the bilateral transfer of sensitive military information between South Korea and Japan, which have no formal military alliance.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shake hands following a joint news conference in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, March 16, 2023. [AP Photo/Kiyoshi Ota]
South Korea’s right-wing President Yoon Suk-yeol pledged to normalize the agreement at a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on March 16. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, nearly cancelled GSOMIA in November 2019 following disagreements with Tokyo over trade and historical issues. Under pressure from Washington, Moon agreed not to suspend GSOMIA, but tensions continued, raising fears among military planners that the agreement was not being fully utilized.
Yoon and Kishida presented their summit and its results as necessary to address the so-called North Korean “threat.” Yoon stated at a press conference following the summit, “We also agreed that in order to respond to the North’s nuclear and missile threats that are getting more sophisticated by the day, cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan, and between South Korea and Japan, is extremely important, and that we should continue to actively cooperate.”
In reality, Tokyo and Seoul are lining up behind Washington’s war preparations as the US builds a series of alliances throughout the Indo-Pacific region aimed at China. US ambassador to South Korea Philip Goldberg praised the summit’s results in comments made March 20, stating, “We greatly value Korea’s commitment to promote trilateral and bilateral ties with Japan as witnessed in the ROK-Japan summit.”
The US considers Tokyo and Seoul’s bilateral relations and agreements like GSOMIA as key components of its military planning and the ballistic missile system it is building throughout East Asia. South Korea and Japan are being placed on the frontlines of a future US-instigated war while the war preparations are being consciously hidden from public view. Both the Yoon and Kishida governments, however, are promoting anti-Chinese sentiment.
The coordination of the vast military apparatus in East Asia requires close collaboration between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul. The US bases approximately 28,500 troops in South Korea as well as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery. There are numerous air bases from which US aircraft are capable of launching strikes on China or Russia. South Korea has its own military of approximately 500,000 troops.
Japan also hosts numerous US bases and personnel, including approximately 56,000 troops, nearly half of which are in Okinawa Prefecture, neighbouring Taiwan. Japan also has two US X-band radar systems in the north and south of the country—vital components of US anti-ballistic missile systems.
On March 24, US Forces Korea announced it had carried out its first deployment training exercise of a THAAD “remote” launcher in South Korea. The drill took place during the massive US-South Korean Freedom Shield/Warrior Shield joint war games that ran for 11 days from March 13-23.
THAAD, which includes an AN/TPY-2 X-band radar capable of spying deep into Chinese territory, is also being integrated with the US’s Patriot missile system. These surface-to-air missiles are capable of attacking advanced aircraft and incoming missiles. The target is not North Korea’s fleet of decades-old fighter jets, but Chinese fighters in the event of war.
Yoon’s trip to Japan to meet Kishida was the first bilateral summit there in 12 years. In addition to Yoon’s pledge to normalize GSOMIA, the two countries will resume reciprocal diplomatic visits. Seoul’s Foreign Ministry stated that it is currently arranging for Prime Minister Kishida to visit Seoul later this year.
Kishida has also invited Yoon to the upcoming G7 summit set to begin on May 19 in Hiroshima. As the host nation, Japan can invite additional attendees. Undoubtedly in coordination with Washington, invitations have been extended to South Korea, Ukraine, India and Australia, among others. The basis for the invitations is the supposedly shared “universal values”, a thinly veiled jab at China and Russia.
The Yoon administration paved the way for improved relations with Tokyo by announcing on March 6 that it would essentially nullify a 2018 South Korean Supreme Court decision against Japanese firms Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel that used forced labour during Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. The companies were ordered to pay compensation to 15 Korean plaintiffs or risk having their assets in South Korea seized. Since the original ruling, 12 of the plaintiffs have passed away, with their families representing their cases.
Japan responded in 2019 by imposing export restrictions on certain products to South Korea and removing the latter from a list of favoured trading partners. This led to the Moon administration nearly suspending GSOMIA. At the time, Moon and his Democratic Party of Korea (DP), currently the main opposition party, worked to whip up anti-Japanese sentiment to distract from worsening economic and social conditions domestically.
In nullifying the 2018 court decision, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry announced that it would compensate the forced labour victims through a fund established domestically in 2014 without the involvement of Tokyo or the companies in the lawsuit.
The Democrats are continuing to resort to anti-Japanese chauvinism to create a political scandal for the Yoon administration. The DP stated on March 24 that it would open a parliamentary investigation into the Yoon-Kishida summit. While President Yoon comes from the ruling People Power Party, the DP remains the largest party in the National Assembly with 169 seats of out 300.
At least 40 refugees were killed in a fire that broke out Monday night in a crowded detention center in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. The deadly blaze, which left 28 more hospitalized in serious condition, erupted during a protest by refugees from Central and South America, who had learned they were to be deported from Ciudad Juarez as a result of the Biden administration’s policy banning immigrants from applying for asylum at the US-Mexico border.
Fearing death and persecution in their home countries, the desperate group of immigrants lit a fire in the men’s wing of the detention center. Operated by the Mexican government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), this immigration jail is located directly adjacent to the US border. The refugees hoped the fire would draw attention to their plight. Instead, it spread into an inferno, fed by the facility’s cheap, flammable mattresses and with not a single fire extinguisher available to put it out.
The dead and injured include 28 Guatemalans, 13 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans and 12 Venezuelans, as well as immigrants from Colombia and Ecuador. The bodies of the dead were unceremoniously dragged into a parking lot as relatives wept and demanded answers.
It is cruelly symbolic that these immigrants, who had traveled over a thousand miles in search of safety, were left to burn to death within sight of the US border. Video now confirms the victims were locked in a cell and that guards refused to open the door.
Other videos show guards fleeing the facility as flames leapt around the detainees, who were locked behind bars and screaming to be let out. One guard was heard saying, “Let those who started the fire burn,” according to a survivor.
López Obrador issued a perfunctory statement calling the incident a “terrible misfortune,” while blaming the migrants for their own deaths. But what took place in Ciudad Juarez was a crime, the direct product of the policies pursued by both the US and Mexican governments. The chief culprit is the Biden administration, with AMLO’s government serving as its enforcer and accomplice.
The immigrants who perished were barred from entering the United States under Title 42, an obscure public health provision of US law employed by Trump and then Biden to ban immigration at the US-Mexico border under the false pretense that immigrants spread COVID-19. With Title 42 slated to expire in May, Biden announced a new policy last month to fill the gap. Under the new asylum ban, immigrants at the southern border would not be allowed to enter the US to apply for asylum, regardless of the fact that such a right is guaranteed under international law, on the grounds that they should apply for asylum in Mexico instead.
The Mexican government has played a critical role in helping the Biden administration violate the rights of Latin American workers and peasants fleeing violence and poverty caused by a century of imperialist exploitation.
AMLO has deployed the Mexican military to serve as an auxiliary of the US border police, arresting and often brutalizing Central and South American immigrants passing through his country on the way to the United States. The detention facility in Ciudad Juarez was tense and overcrowded because police had combed the city’s streets Monday, picking up immigrants who had been left destitute after being thrown back across the border.
AMLO’s administration was praised by the Democratic Socialists of America and the pseudo-left as “progressive” or even “revolutionary.” In reality, his government is no less subservient to its American masters than its predecessors under the PRI and PAN.
Now the Biden administration is preparing even more ruthless attacks on immigrants. In early March, the New York Times reported that “The Biden administration is considering reviving the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the border illegally.”
Leading officials in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been meeting secretly to discuss options for detaining parents and children despite court orders prohibiting them from doing so. Even the Times admitted that “the move would be a stark reversal for President Biden, who came into office promising to adopt a more compassionate approach to the border after the harsh policies of his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump.”
In the hours after the fire, Biden’s DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in what became a three-hour bipartisan rant against immigrants. Mayorkas made no reference to the fire in his opening statement and referred to immigration as part of the “heightened threat environment,” saying the US borders must be militarized to protect against “increasing economic and political instability” around the world, as well as “to ward off aggression by the People’s Republic of China.”
During the hearing, Democratic senators praised Mayorkas for slashing immigration, while Republicans demanded even more violent and anti-democratic measures be taken to effectively block all immigration into the country. Earlier this month, Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said it was a “mistake” that Trump did not bomb Mexico to eliminate drug cartels during his presidency. Both Democrats and Republicans praised “our partners in Mexico” for facilitating mass deportations.
The ruthless bipartisan attack on the rights of immigrants can only be understood in the context of US imperialism’s war against Russia and plans for war against China. During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, senators from both parties said that further border restrictions, an expansion of mass surveillance, and the removal of undesirable foreigners is necessary to challenge Russia and China and establish total state control over the US “homeland.”
Above all, this requires the suppression of the class struggle in the United States as well as across Latin America, which has historically served as US imperialism’s primary source of natural resources and cheap labor. Today, the suppression of immigration is an integral part of maintaining order across the entire hemisphere, and the border is seen as the “one yard line” of US imperialism’s efforts to dominate all of Latin America.
As former DHS Secretary John Kelly put it in 2017, “homeland defense does not begin at the ‘one yard line’ of our Southwest border, but instead extends forward, throughout the hemisphere, to keep threats far from our nation’s shores.” It is highly significant that Mayorkas referenced economic instability as a primary motivator of the present border crackdown.
The defense of the rights of immigrants must therefore be rooted in a fight to mobilize the international working class against US imperialism, the expanding US-NATO war against Russia and its plans for war against China.
Throughout American history, world war has been accompanied by the most vicious attacks on immigrant workers, and such attacks have always been based on a desire to suppress antiwar sentiment in the American working class.
During and after World War I, laws facilitating the deportation of immigrants were passed within weeks of the Espionage Act, which outlawed antiwar speech and led to the jailing of socialist leader Eugene V. Debs. These laws gave Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer the legal tools to deport thousands of socialist immigrants in the Palmer Raids of 1919-20, and the Espionage Act has continued to serve as the basis for persecution of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.
In the lead-up to World War II, Congress passed the Smith Act, which created an “alien registry” system used for internment of Japanese American citizens, while also illegalizing antiwar speech, leading to the jailing of 16 Trotskyists in 1941. Since the initiation of the “war on terror,” the suppression of free speech and the erection of a mass surveillance state have been inextricably linked with attacks on immigrants, as evidenced by the 2002 founding of the Department of Homeland Security itself. In every case, both parties have prepared their attacks on the rights of the entire working class by fostering a climate of extreme nationalism and jingoism directed against immigrants.
Speaking at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee Tuesday, the US Navy’s operations chief said the United States Navy is currently building 56 new warships and has contracted the building of 76 more, as part of a massive military buildup in preparation for conflict with China.
“We have 56 ships under construction and another 76 that are under contract,” said Admiral Michael M. Gilday.
The move is part of a plan by the US navy to have a total of 373 manned and 150 unmanned ships, up from 296 this year.
USS Ronald Reagan leads the Ronald Reagan Strike group during a photo exercise for Valiant Shield 2018. [Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Erwin Miciano]
Opening the hearing, Democratic Committee Chairman John Tester declared that “China remains our number one pacing threat, we must continue to modernize our military to stay ahead of that threat.”
Earlier this month, Congressman Mike Gallagher said the United States’ “competition” with China will not be “polite,” describing the US conflict with China as an “existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century.”
He later added, “If you think about what a coherent grand strategy vis a vis China would be, hard power would be the most important part of that and the Navy would be the most important component of your hard power investments.”
China currently has two operational aircraft carriers, both of which are diesel-fueled. In contrast, the United States has a fleet of 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, which can carry more than 1,000 attack aircraft, exceeding the combined number of attack aircraft carried by all other nations’ navies.
The Navy’s budget for the fiscal year 2024 exceeds $250 billion, representing an increase of $11 billion from the previous year. It sets aside $32.8 billion in Fiscal Year 2024 for the acquisition of nine ships. These ships include one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Virginia-class attack submarines, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, two Constellation-class frigates.
In fiscal year 2025, the Navy plans to purchase seven more vessels, which includes two submarines, two destroyers, one frigate, one ocean surveillance ship and its initial Landing Ship Medium.
“We are modernizing our capabilities, ensuring that our forces today stay combat ready now and into the future… we're continuing to build our capacity, ensuring that we have relevant lethal platforms to achieve warfighting advantage,” Gilday said at the hearing.
General David H. Berger, Commandant Of the Marine Corps added, “We’re not waiting for 2030 or 2027 or 2025. Our Marines are ready to handle any crisis anywhere now.”
As the United States actively builds up its navy for a conflict with China, US military officials are openly discussing what a naval war with China would look like.
In an interview with “60 Minutes” last week, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, head of the US Pacific Fleet, said that if China were to invade Taiwan, “the bulk of the United States Navy will be deployed rapidly to the Western Pacific to come to the aid of Taiwan. If the order comes to aid Taiwan in thwarting that invasion is the US Navy ready?
He added, “the Navy is always on alert. 1/3 of the Navy is always deployed and operating at all times. The Navy's mustering right now about 300 ships, and there are about 100 ships at sea right now all around the globe.”
Beyond merely expanding and modernizing the Navy, the Biden administration has used the war in Ukraine as a pretext for the implementation of multi-year, no-bid arms procurement contracts that will massively expand the US arsenal.
“Ukraine’s war has taught us that we must transition from just in time stockpiles of weapons and munitions to just in case stockpiles,” Republican Senator Susan Collins said at the hearing.
A signal is “being sent by the department of defense that we will be purchasing these missiles for a long period of time,” said Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro.
“Our industrial base can’t be just in time, if we have to go to a conflict. We got to… have the depth in that industrial base to account for a big surge,” Berger said.
“In January, Air Force Gen. Michael Minihan told his command that he anticipates the US to engage in warfare with China by 2025. He stated, “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” and recommended that airmen under his command prepare themselves for war by getting their “personal affairs” in order.
On March 11, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, said that President Biden's declaration that the US would go to war with China over Taiwan was not simply the president’s individual belief, but rather an actual policy of the United States.
Universities are being drawn ever more directly into the US war preparations against China. A central battleground in these war preparations is the semiconductor industry. Semiconductors are critical to the production, use and maintenance of planes, tanks, ships and other weapons systems.
In an effort to offset the decline of the US position in the global semiconductor industry, the US government has ramped up its investments in US-based semiconductor manufacturers for military production and the enrichment of defense company shareholders.
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 is a critical part of these efforts. It was passed with bipartisan support and committed $280 billion over five years to the American semiconductor industry and scientific research in several strategic high-tech disciplines.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, right, speak to reporters after a bill designed to encourage more semiconductor companies to build chip plants in the United States passed the Senate, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, July 27, 2022. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]
As part of the bill, tens of billions of dollars in research funding will flow into academia. Commenting on the impact of the legislation on academia in the September 13 article “Not Just Chips,” Inside Higher Ed rejoiced that the “scale of new funding opportunities for universities is seismic.”
As of 2023, the Department of Defense already accounts for 60 percent or more of total Research and Development funding at universities in fields such as aerospace, aeronautical and astronautical engineering. It also provides over 50 percent of federal funding for university research in electrical, electronic, communications and mechanical engineering, and nearly half of federal funding in computer and information science. Now, the proportion of funding for university research that is directly tied to the war machine will increase even further.
The Act, much like many of the universities that its funding is going towards, embraces identity politics. Inside Higher Ed reported that “many of the act’s provisions are designed to ensure that some funding is routed to historically Black colleges and universities, minority-serving institutions, community colleges, and institutions in states that historically have not benefited from this type of federal support.” In other words, the efforts to cultivate support among more affluent sections of African Americans and other minorities are directly tied to funding on behalf of the imperialist war machine.
A number of universities are now involved in the CHIPS and Science Act, helping develop key components of the imperialist war machine. Arizona State University made a press announcement that was explicit about ASU’s intention to work for “national security enterprises” as part of the Act:
Responsive to action initiated by the Department of Defense, Arizona State University President Michael Crow has appointed two senior leaders to guide the university in creating a world-class center of excellence for microelectronics research, development education and training. … The CHIPS and Science Act includes $2 billion for DoD to establish the Microelectronics Commons, which aims to close the innovation “lab-to-fab” capabilities gap in the United States. By building enduring partnerships across emerging technology research and development, manufacturing and government stakeholders at all levels, the Microelectronics Commons will work to scale the semiconductor technologies necessary for the U.S. national security enterprise, and develop the skilled American workforce needed for this essential sector.
Also involved is Purdue University in Indiana, which is leading the Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle Engagement program. On its website, Purdue described the program as “the preeminent U.S. program for semiconductor workforce development in the defense sector.” Its aim is to to train “highly-skilled U.S. microelectronics engineers, hardware designers, and manufacturing experts, ensuring U.S. leadership in this important area.”
In total, the program involves 17 US universities, including Vanderbilt University, Georgia Tech, Ohio State University, SUNY Binghamton and Indiana University, with 67 faculty and staff spread across them and over 200 students enrolled at present. The institutions receive a total of $30 million in funding from the Department of Defense for their participation in the program.
The Naval Surface Warfare Center
The program is managed by the Crane division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), which is under the Naval Sea System Command (NAVSEA), headquartered in Washington D.C. According to NAVSEA’s website, it is “the force behind the fleet.”
NSWC Crane is a shore command of the US Navy located in Crane, Indiana, under the NSWC that develops, maintains and upgrades numerous key weapons systems for the Navy and other armed forces sections. NSWC Crane focuses on “expeditionary warfare,” including developing and deploying “sensors and communications technologies that enable the most advanced intelligence gathering, and surveillance capabilities for ground, surface and air support” and special weapons systems.
The NSWC has also been working with the fascist-ridden Special Operations Command (SOCOM)—which is headquartered in the Pentagon—since its inception in 1987 and is playing a “vital role” in it. SOCOM is the unified command for US special forces, and as of 2021 was deployed to 154 countries covering 80 percent of the world’s nations. SOCOM is charged with carrying out the most secretive and illegal military operations and works closely with, and sometimes under, the direct authority of the CIA.
NSWC Crane also focuses on “strategic missions,” including radar surveillance, integrated missile defense (IMD), and Global Strike, which focuses on nuclear warfare including Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM), and land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM).
Notably, NSWC Crane’s archived March 2022 Global Strike fact sheet states that, “Teaming with academia is an important element to the depth of work the Strategic Mission Center provides to the Warfighter.” It lists partners with Global Strike as Indiana University, Vanderbilt University, Purdue University, Texas A&M University and Penn State University—that is, many of the institutions now involved in the SCALE program. The fact sheet was drawn up before the passage of Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act. This pattern persists through most of its programs as will be shown below.
NSWC Crane Global Strike Fact Sheet
NSWC Crane’s other focus is electronic warfare (EW) in ground, air and naval forces. Its Electronic Warfare Center is set up for this purpose. Crane has provided full technical support and development in partnership with private industry, including Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin and ITT Corp., for the AN/SLQ-32(V) electronic warfare suite. Since 1984, AN/SLQ-32(V) has been built by Raytheon (initially by Hughes Aircraft), which an archived fact sheet lists as being “installed on every combat surface ship in the Navy.” It has developed test equipment for conducting “Operational Readiness Certification” for the AN/SLQ-32. The system is used for threat detection and countermeasures against anti-ship missiles, providing for detection of missiles before they are even fired by detecting high frequency targeting and fire-control radars, and electronic jamming of missile guidance, among other features.
The Ground Electronic Warfare (EW) component of NSWC Crane focuses on so called Counter RCIED Electronic Warfare (CREW) systems. These are designed to counter Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Devices (RCIED) systems. This expertise is provided to the US Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Army, as well as “coalition partner forces.” In addition to working with numerous organizations that are affiliated with the Department of Defense (DoD) and private industry, the ground EW component of Crane collaborates with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University.
The Air EW component deals with systems airborne jamming systems such as those found on aircraft like the EA-18G, C-130 variants, and EP-3 Aries II and P-3 Orion. It also deals with information collection for these aircraft and training for crews. The fact sheet also states that Crane “is a leader in IRCM (Infrared Counter Measures) solution development and testing for multiple airborne platforms for all of the DoD.” The Air Electronic Warfare component partners with the government and private industry, including Northrop Grumman, Exelis Inc. and Science Applications International Corp. In academia, its partners include the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Purdue University as well as the Penn State Electro-optics Center whose aim is to “research and develop innovative solutions” for NSWC Crane.
The University of Texas at Dallas
Another university that plays an important role in US war strategy to dominate the semiconductor industry is the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), a public university with a student body of 29,500. The university is particularly well equipped for semiconductor research and had initially been established by semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments in 1961 in order to train more employees for the company due to a lack of qualified personnel in the Dallas-Fort Worth area at the time.
University of Texas at Dallas. Engineering and Computer Science Complex.
According to a university news release, the university has created a new center called the Center for Harsh Environment Semiconductors and Systems (CHESS), which is an initiative under the newly created North Texas Semiconductor Institute (NTxSI). The press release notes that NTxSI “positions UTD to contribute to the goals of the recently enacted federal CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) Act provides $52.7 billion in incentives over five years for American semiconductor research, development, manufacturing and workforce development.”
The pro-war character of NTxSI is exposed by the statements of the director of CHESS. The news release reads:
Dr. Manuel Quevedo-Lopez, director of CHESS, said microelectronic devices capable of operating in harsh environments are vital for national defense in applications such as quantum computing; resilient networks and communication systems; resilient electrical grids; autonomous vehicles; space exploration; and hypersonic weapons, which travel beyond Mach 5, five times faster than the speed of sound (Mach 1).
That is, these are technologies explicitly designed for warfare.
The NTxSI held a “Harsh Environment Electronics Workshop” on November 1, which is a representative event of the collaboration of the university apparatus with the military industrial complex, as is shown by the speakers list.
The Department of Defense has a list of “trusted integrated circuit fabricators” that are scrutinized by DoD auditors for compliance with security requirements set up by the DoD, as well as with quality requirements for military hardware. The program was launched in 2003 to 2004. Only 16 foundries are considered “trusted” by the DoD, in addition to one broker foundry. As the imperialist think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies notes, while these foundries account for a small minority of devices used in military systems at only about 2 percent as of 2021, these are “generally chips used in secret programs or for application-specific uses such as radiation-hardened devices for use in space or nuclear conflict.”
The speakers list on the agenda of the “Industrial Session” of the workshop illustrates the character of NTxSI as a nexus of the military industrial complex at the University of Texas in Dallas. What made the event stand out as one centered around warfare production is that it had a number of DoD trusted integrated circuit fabricators as well as other military-related semiconductor manufacturers presenting. The presentations fixated on electronics primarily for use in warfare. Notably, unlike the workshop held afterward on December 7, no workshop presentations were available on the university’s website.
These are some of the speakers:
Helmut Puchner, Vice President Fellow Aerospace & Defense at Infineon Technologies AG, High Reliability Group, which produces computer memory for use by the military, and is a leading company in the semiconductor in military and aerospace market. These include high reliability radiation hardened electronics, which are used in outer space, typically in satellites for military and commercial applications.
Kenneth Decker, Director of TX Advanced Reliability at Qorvo gave a presentation on Qorvo Texas LLC’s radiation hardened Gallium Arsenide and Galium Nitride transistors. Qorvo is one of the foundries trusted by the DoD and manufactures communications, electronic warfare equipment, radar, and space related technology. It is, one of seven DoD trusted sourcesof Gallium Nitride transistors and one of six trusted sources of Gallium Arsenide transistors. According to a press release by the company, Qorvo was awarded a DoD contract “to proceed with the Advanced Integration Interconnection and Fabrication Growth for Domestic State of the Art (SOTA) Radio Frequency Gallium Nitride (GaN) program, also known as STARRY NITE, as part of the Office of Undersecretary of Defense Research & Engineering’s (OUSD R&E) microelectronics roadmap.” A presentation by S2MARTS lists some of the applications of GaN in a presentation from July 1, 2021. These include electronic warfare jammers, ground, air, and naval radar, and military communication systems.
RF GaN in Defense by the NAVSEA Warfare Centers Crane
Babu Chalamala, Energy Storage Program Manager of Sandia National Laboratories, another one of the DoD’s16 trusted foundries, gave a presentation on the Role of Energy Storage and Power Electronics in Grid Modernization. Sandia National Laboratories is one of six silicon on insulator (SOI) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistors and one of three RH (radiation hardened) SOI CMOS trusted fabrication suppliers. Sandia manufactures “radiation-hardened trusted components for Nuclear Weapons,” including for the B61 thermonuclear gravity bomb, and the W87 and W88 ICBM thermonuclear warheads.
An image from the presentation given at UTD by Babu Chalamala of Sandia National Laboratories
Ron Dusterhoft, a Technology Fellow for the defense company Halliburton, was scheduled to give a presentation on an unknown topic (announced as “TBD”). Halliburton is an American multinational corporation responsible for most of the world's hydraulic fracturing operations and is deeply implicated in war crimes of US imperialism. During the war in Iraq, in particular, the company reaped tremendous profits from no-bid contracts in the war zone awarded by its former CEO and then vice president and corporate-military gangster Dick Cheney. Halliburton also bears responsibility for the poisoning of the Texas coast in the Deepwater Horizon Explosion in 2010 alongside British Petroleum (BP) and Transocean.
A. Matt Francis, President and CEO of Ozark Integrated Circuits, gave a presentation on electronics in extreme environments. According to the US Small Business Administration, Ozark has been awarded over $4 million in contracts by the Department of Defense, which is the leading source of government grants for the company, comprising around 37 percent of the total award amount. Some of the contracts include “supersonic capable single conditioning electronics for turbine engines” for use in the Air Force’s F35 for around $50,000; High-Temperature Instrumentation for use in Hypersonic Engine Development for the DOD and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for $1.5 million; and packing methods based on Silicon and SOI components for advanced control of turbine engines for the DoD and Missile Defense Agency.
NTxSI is by no means the only connection of the university to the military. Other examples could be pointed to. Thus, the National Association of Black Engineers of Lockheed Martin awarded the 2022 Community STEM Impact Award to the assistant director of outreach in the Multicultural Center at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). The university also has a crosstown agreement with University of North Texas (UNT) so that UTD students can take Reserve Officer Training Cadets (ROTC) classes at UNT. Moreover, there are numerous research grants provided to university researchers from the Department of Defense.
NTxSI represents a new stage in the university’s integration into the military industrial apparatus. This development is paralleled at universities across the country as US imperialism ramps up its war preparations against China and is engaged in a war against Russia in Ukraine.
These war projects at the universities are discussed and negotiated by university administrations and privileged, pro-war layers of the professoriate behind the backs of students and the overwhelming majority of academic workers. No doubt most students would oppose these pro-war machinations of the university administration if they knew about them and understood their political significance.
Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan outside the parliament in Jerusalem on Monday, March 27, 2023. [AP Photo/AP]
Late Monday, Jerusalem time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was temporarily suspending action by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, on his plan to carry out what amounts to a coup against the country’s judicial system, the only arm of the state that his ultra-right coalition does not control.
Netanyahu made this tactical retreat in the face of the largest outpouring of popular opposition in the history of Israel, with massive street protests Sunday culminating in a full-scale walkout Monday by vast sections of the Israeli working class. Airports, shipping, transport, manufacturing, utilities, schools, day care centers, universities and virtually all government operations were affected. Israeli embassies all over the world were closed, and the Israeli consul general in New York City resigned.
The immediate trigger for this political explosion was Netanyahu’s firing of his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who on Saturday called on him to abandon the plan to straitjacket the judiciary because the political conflict over it was splitting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Gallant, a top leader of Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, cited statements by thousands of reservists that they would refuse their regular call-ups because they did not want to serve under a government that was destroying democracy.
The crisis in the military is only one expression of a conflict that has profoundly shaken Israel and blown up the fundamental myth of Zionism, that Israel represents the unity of all Jews against the world. Instead, Israel is riven by enormous social, political and class conflicts. As Netanyahu himself admitted, the country is on the brink of “civil war.”
The self-proclaimed leaders of the protest movement, mostly officials of the previous government that gave way to Netanyahu after elections last year, like Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, are themselves committed defenders of the Zionist state and its oppression of the Palestinian people, as is the judicial system which they defend. They do not represent a “progressive” alternative, objecting to Netanyahu’s measures only because they fear that he will destroy the democratic fig leaf of the state of Israel.
Nonetheless, the massive popular movement shows that far deeper issues are involved. Long suppressed social contradictions are exploding through the opening provided by the conflict in the ruling elite, bringing broad masses of the Israeli population and, above all, the working class onto the political stage. The postponement or even the resolution of the conflict over the Supreme Court will not suppress the further development of this social movement, fueled by immense economic inequality within Israel and the impact of the global capitalist crisis.
Despite its enormous scale, however, this mass movement has a weakness that will prove fatal if not combatted: It has not so far embraced in any way the struggles of the Palestinian people. There has been a sea of Israeli flags, with not one attempt to mobilize support from Israeli Arabs, let alone the Palestinian population of the occupied territories.
To have any chance of success, Jewish workers and youth must cast off the blinders of Zionist ideology and adopt a socialist strategy, based on the revolutionary unification of Jewish and Arab workers in a common struggle against capitalism.
There exists a powerful objective basis for the development of such a movement. For months, there have been large protests in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities, huge for a country the size of Israel. The events of this weekend were a qualitative leap, however. Masses of people took to the streets, and a crowd estimated at 100,000 blocked the main road through Tel Aviv, fighting police attempts to clear it. Thousands demonstrated in front of Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem.
Strikes began on Sunday, a normal work day in Israel, and became so widespread that the Histadrut, the official union federation which has long been a direct arm of the Israeli state, was compelled to call a nationwide general strike. Many employers announced closures Monday, bowing to the strength of the strike movement. All departing flights from Ben-Gurion International Airport were grounded, and the country’s two main seaports, Haifa and Ashdod, shut down.
Netanyahu’s statement announcing the temporary suspension of Knesset action on the judicial coup acknowledged the power of the popular opposition. “Out of national responsibility, from a desire to prevent the nation from being torn apart, I am calling to suspend the legislation,” he said. “When there is a possibility to prevent a civil war through negotiations, I will give a time-out for negotiations.”
While Netanyahu promised talks with the opposition, he has actually been negotiating with the openly fascistic elements in his own extreme-right coalition because they initially opposed making any retreat, even a tactical one, in the face of the mass movement. Their agreement to accept the postponement came with an ominous concession: The government will establish, fund and equip a new National Guard, under the control of the interior ministry, which is headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the main leaders of the fascist settlers on the occupied West Bank.
The time during which the judicial coup is suspended will be used by the fascists and the government to prepare the systematic use of violence against renewed political opposition. Their aim is to create a paramilitary force that, unlike the military, is politically vetted to include only the most rabid racist and religious Zionists and therefore can be more easily used for internal repression against the Israeli working class and youth.
Ben-Gvir, the last cabinet minister to give his approval to the temporary suspension of the judicial “reform” bill, gloated to his supporters in a tweet: “The reform will pass. The National Guard will be established. The budget I demanded for the Ministry of National Security will be passed in its entirety. No one will scare us. No one will succeed in changing the people’s decision. Repeat after me: de-mo-cra-cy!” The last was a mocking reference to the main chant of the anti-government demonstrators.
Moreover, now that Netanyahu has bought himself some breathing space, he may well use that time to launch a military provocation against Iran, seeking to create national “unity” on the basis of an explosion of militarism. In this he would be following the example of his imperialist patrons in Western Europe and the United States, who have incited the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, in large part to divert their mounting internal tensions towards a foreign adversary.
Netanyahu put forward the plan to place the courts under direct control by the cabinet and Knesset at least in part to save his own skin. He is being prosecuted on a series of well-founded corruption charges, and the courts could declare him ineligible to remain in office if convicted.
But the issues are far more fundamental than this. The real substance of the judicial measures is to eliminate all legal and procedural obstacles to the unrestrained dictatorship of the religious Zionists and the settler fanatics, who are a minority of the Jewish population but increasingly dominate the political system.
The turn toward violent repression and dictatorship in Israel is part of a global process. As demonstrated in recent months in France and Sri Lanka, in both imperialist powers and impoverished and oppressed countries, the ruling class sees no way out of the social and political crisis of world capitalism except through such methods. The safety switches of democracy are burning out, and the two major classes in modern society, the capitalists and the working class, are confronting each other in open struggle.
The events of the past months mark the end of a long period of political reaction in Israel, in which the class struggle has been systematically suppressed and the ideology of Zionism employed to justify the subordination of the working class to the garrison state erected to maintain the continued oppression of the Palestinian people. Now the forces mobilized against the Palestinians—above all, the fascist settler elements—are being turned against the Jewish workers and youth as well.
These attacks have provoked a mass movement that has brought masses of Israelis into the streets, where they have begun to measure their strength against the ultra-right. At the same time, they have brought Jewish workers and youth face to face with the historical necessity of a political reckoning with Zionism.
The Zionist presentation of Israel as a classless state, one where all the Jewish people could be united under one flag, where social divisions would be erased, was always a lie. The foundation of the state of Israel came about through the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people and their forced expulsion through violence and terror. Then followed the series of wars waged to expand the territory of Israel and build it up as a powerful, nuclear-armed spearhead for American imperialism in the Middle East.
In 1948, the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, condemned the establishment of Israel based on religious identity as reactionary, a tragedy for both the Arabs and Jews living in Palestine. It declared:
The Fourth International rejects as utopian and reactionary the “Zionist solution” of the Jewish question. It declares that total renunciation of Zionism is the sine qua non condition for the merging of Jewish workers’ struggles with the social, national and liberationist struggles of the Arab toilers.
This perspective of the unification of the working class of the Middle East—Jews, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Armenians and other peoples—in a common struggle against capitalism, resonates more powerfully today than ever. It is the only basis for a revolutionary struggle against dictatorship, national oppression and imperialist war.
It is impossible for Jewish workers and youth to defend their democratic rights under conditions where the Palestinian population of Israel and the occupied territories remains under savage military repression and increasingly brazen vigilante and settler violence. There cannot be military dictatorship in the West Bank and Gaza and democracy within Israel.
All groups which reject the possibility of uniting Arab and Jewish workers in a common struggle are politically bankrupt and in the final analysis share the perspective of Zionism, albeit in an inverted form, accepting the state of Israel as permanent and unalterable and writing off the Jewish working class.
This includes both the bourgeois national groups among the Palestinians, such as the corrupt PLO and the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas, and international “solidarity” movements like Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which effectively blame Jewish workers for the crimes of the Zionist ruling class.
