Stop fuelling Israel

Here we print a talk from the rs21 All Member Assembly in September 2024, from Leila Shafiee, a comrade in Energy Embargo for Palestine, detailing research and strategy to stop Britain fuelling the Zionist Israeli settler state.

One year into the genocide, Zionism is in crisis beyond the point of no return. Palestine has deepened every contradiction within the current order and the resistance in Palestine and across the region is succeeding in their strategic front to isolate and break material support for the Zionist project. They have brought the national question back on the table for people fighting for liberation from imperialism including colonialism globally. We see this in Jenin, in Tulkarem and Nablus where despite heavy raids, mass imprisonment and targeted assassination of resistance leaders, the Israeli military cannot eliminate the steadfastness and commitments to liberation. We also see this in Gaza where nearly one year ago they broke out of Zionist blockade and faced a genocidal onslaught ever since, facilitated and supported by the West.

I want to give a grounding on why energy is such an important target and the ecological side of imperialism that is often minimised in the general analysis of the region. Usually when people think of Palestine through a climate justice lens it’s about the severance of the land from indigenous people, which is obviously important. However, militarisation is also intrinsically connected to both imperialism and the ecological devastation to our planet. US and British militarism are some of the biggest threats to our planet, because they ensure continued reliance on fossil extraction and accumulation of waste. Beyond the fact that Britain’s military is used to constrain the sovereign power of southern states, it also emits tonnes of CO2 and produces uncounted quantities of waste. 

This waste is characterised by the jet fuel that fuels war and then also contaminates drinking water; the white phosphorus left behind by the US in Fallujah and Gaza that has led to birth defects; military bases that pollute their sites with hazardous materials. We know that the US and British military has to be eliminated as it’s a major producer of waste both for physical waste and the waste of human lives. As we usually think of militarism for weapons and tanks we also need to think about and connect it to how energy fuels militarism and in this case the settler colonial Zionist project. As Marxists we know that in any historical moment imperialism is always working through social relations which are mediated through objects, and when we look to British industrial development in the 20th century the transition from coal to oil was made possible through the extraction of oil from the Middle East and an oil industry that European and US energy companies facilitated and profited from. 

This background is significant because when we think of British factories, vehicles, our standards of living, it was already dependent and premised on cheap Arab and Iranian oil extracted from the region and this also was used to fuel Britain’s violent imperial rule in South Africa, Ireland, Kenya, Palestine, etc. Historically we see how energy – particularly continued extraction of fossil fuels – has been a key component to imperialism and maintaining capitalist-imperialist order. As we know, Israel since its foundation has been an imperial outpost for the US. It’s vital for the security of Western interests in the region and during the latter half of the 20th century whilst Britain and the US face lots of national struggles in Latin America, Asia and Africa with countries demanding national sovereignty and their right to their own resources, Israel directly functioned as a counter-revolutionary force and sometimes this gets missed out in discussions of the region but also in discussions of liberation struggles in the Global South. 

To give a few examples, throughout Latin America, Israel armed and trained genocidal counterinsurgent forces from the Fascist junta in Argentina to Pinochet in Chile. In Africa, Israel supported Portugal against popular liberation forces in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau, and trained forces of oppression in Somalia and the Central African Republic. In the Middle East, Israel propped up the Shah in Iran against communist activists and also worked against the Lebanese national movement during the civil war. I’m giving all these examples so we see how Israel has played a key role in securing the flow of fossil fuels and safeguarding capital accumulation through the repression of national liberation struggles and they still play this role today.

In Energy Embargo for Palestine, we’ve been campaigning against British Petroleum (BP) and their role in fueling the zionist genocide. We recently released research on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that pumps crude oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey, which is then shipped to Israel and refined into military grade oil products, including jet fuel. This crude oil is not only used to fuel military forces but it’s also used to fuel settlements. Here we see the blurring between the distinction of the settler and the military forces. I mention this also because Azerbaijan is a country that fuels Israel with 28% of its oil, and is given arms by Israel to invade Artsakh, and to also monitor the threats of Iran and Russia and is also hosting COP this year. Oil and militarism go hand in hand to facilitate the dispossession and ethnic cleansing. 

Dismantling Zionism means the liberation of not only the region but for communities resisting the brunt of imperialism and neocolonialism. Since Israel is intrinsic to US and British imperialist interests we recognise that imperialism is in crisis because Zionism is. It’s our duty from the imperial core to support national liberation struggles in the South and also build power in our communities to dismantle imperialism. We must research and target supply chains such as logistics, fuel and arms, and build power as workers. 

Since establishing the Energy Embargo for Palestine, we’ve targeted the social licences of BP with mass mobilisations including the British Museum, and also researched the supply chain of BP and contextualised the gas licences that were made in October off the coast of Gaza. We are organising campaigns with workers and students and thinking about how we can target licences across institutions. We’re also working with comrades in Turkey who are targeting another operator of this oil pipeline. Our solidarity with Palestine is premised on a support for resistance of colonised people. 

We know that clearly the resistance has not and will never be eliminated. Israel is losing any semblance of an international moral platform. They’re losing the world public opinion and we have seen contradictions deepen internationally and within the settler state, and yet as we shift towards a multipolar world we have also seen states move away from Israel and the Western capitalist imperialist order, with South Africa launching the ICJ case and countries like Colombia effectively ending trade of coal to Israel. We have also seen masses on the streets in Britain, many of those politicised by this moment and developing a deep commitment to the liberation of the cause they see as connected to the liberation of themselves. So even as Israel provokes war on a regional front through their attacks on Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran they are increasingly becoming a pariah state.