Workers World, Vol. 19, No. 44
November 15 – The very idea that Egyptian President Sadat is willing to go to Jerusalem and plead his case before the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, is so utterly repulsive as to be almost unbelievable. Such an action on his part, should it take place, an only be regarded as a very deep and profound humiliation of the Arab masses and the Palestinians in particular.
Why – why this abrupt turn, particularly in the light of a supposed forthcoming Geneva Conference? And particularly at a time when the Arab ministers in Tunis have roundly condemned Israel’s latest blatant aggression in southern Lebanon?
Why at a time when the Israeli regime has earned the universal condemnation of the international community, when it has been practically divested of almost all diplomatic relations save for a few imperialist countries and their stooges? And, why, when Israeli standing has reached its lowest point of support, even in the U.S., should Sadat undertake this “bold initiative”?
The answer that seems to come most easily from a large body of progressive forces is that the reason lies in the overwhelming military might of the U.S., of which the Israeli state is a military extension, a client garrison state, an appendage of the Pentagon. True enough.
But force, no matter how overwhelming, is never alone the answer to fundamental questions involving the reciprocal relations between imperialism and oppressed nations.
The U.S. was a much more formidable military, diplomatic, and economic force two decades ago. Since then its international position has consistently deteriorated. This explains why the Carter administration agreed, at least formally, to its new stand on “Palestinian rights” as embodied in the joint U.S.-Soviet statement of early October.
Nor does the answer lie in the heavy defeats which have been inflicted on the Palestinians at the hands of the Assad regime in Syria and earlier by Jordan during the Black September days of 1970. The heroic Palestinian people have shown resilience and recuperative powers unmatched in contemporary times. This is despite the fact that their struggle differs in many respects from that of the Vietnamese. The Palestinians, unfortunately, have never had a secure base area or hinterland as the Vietnamese had in the northern half of their country after 1954.
The answer to the question lies in the historical evolution of the anti-imperialist struggle which began in this century in the Arab lands with the Nasser Revolution. The Nasser Revolution, which started with a military coup, soon evoked a tidal wave of revolutionary ferment in the Middle East. It was capped by Egypt’s seizure of the Canal, its nationalization, and the virtual ouster of the imperialists from some of the basic instruments of political and economic control of the country. The nationalization of the Canal was followed by other nationalizations, while the victory with Soviet help over the joint British-French-Israeli conspiracy to recolonize Egypt in 1956 tremendously accelerated social reforms at home.
The class character of the Nasser regime should never, however, have been in doubt. It was a bourgeois regime. But the anti-imperialist achievements of President Nasser were considerable and in the struggle against the yoke of foreign capital Nasser justly achieved heroic proportions, particularly among the oppressed workers and peasants. He was the man from the “other side of the street” who championed their cause and defended their gains against the bourgeoisie.
Both the rising momentum of the anti-imperialist struggle in the Middle East and the intensification of the class struggle against the propertied classes came in the wake of the Nasser Revolution. Nasser was universally regarded as the Arab hero in the struggle against imperialism.
When the 1967 war broke out and Egypt along with other Arab countries suffered a humiliating setback, the glee in all the imperialist circles seemed utterly uncontrollable. Abroad, of course, this could easily be anticipated.
At home, however, the situation in Egypt at the time of the defeat was altogether different so far as relations of the classes were concerned. It was one of those rare moments in history when the oppressed masses, the exploited ones, the workers, the peasants, and the lower petty-bourgeoisie, instinctively felt that the bourgeoisie, that is, the Egyptian ruling class, would utilize the defeat to topple the government and above all oust President Nasser. Just as instinctively, the masses poured out into the street by the hundreds and thousands if not millions, hailing Nasser and urging him to stay on when it seemed at that historical juncture that he might resign to the delight of the bourgeoisie.
The imperialist press characterized these historic demonstrations as “fanatical,” unruly,” and “maniacal” forms of adulation. The imperialists explained that the “mobs” were merely being “manipulated” by a crafty political demagogue who was responsible for the battlefield defeat.
However, this was pure imperialist humbug. It was truly one of the great moments in history when the masses on their own, sensing what might have been imminent catastrophe for them, spontaneously intervened in the political process and occupied the stage of history. That outpouring silenced, for a few years, the grasping, crafty possessing classes who as a whole had really gained the most from the Revolution.
By 1970, statistics released by the Egyptian government showed that the bourgeoisie had indeed become fattened by the revolution and that the masses remained the exploited and the oppressed – in spite of very significant and deep-going reforms in land, industry, and social and political affairs generally.
But the Nasser phase of the anti-imperialist revolution came to an abrupt end with his death. While this was not immediately seen, it soon became patently clear to all who were watching developments in that part of the world. Sadat, who had succeeded Nasser, within a short period carried out a virtual political counter-revolution.
This took place in May 1971 when he announced that he had thwarted a coup d’état. He arrested virtually all the significant members of the Cabinet and threw them in jail. All sorts of hints and analyses in the capitalist press abroad said it was the pro-Soviet elements who were ousted, which was true enough, but it was much more than that. It was the beginning of the dismantling of the social, economic, and political reforms made during the Nasser era.
A political counter-revolution, such as that carried out by the Sadat clique, differs from a social revolution in that it doesn’t go beyond the existing class structure. The Nasser regime was bourgeois, but as we said, the progressive reforms were deep-going and meaningful to the masses and his anti-imperialist struggle, while limited by the class character of the regime, was nonetheless wholly progressive.
The Sadat phase opened up political reaction throughout all the Arab lands. This reaction, while it has not been consistently victorious and has had its ups and downs during Sadat’s tenure, has nevertheless enveloped most of the Arab countries. It has made them bulwarks of imperialist conciliation and penetration.
If Sadat’s projected visit to Jerusalem does take place, it must be seen against the background we have sketched above. Should his visit, which certainly amounts to some form of de facto recognition of the state of Israel, take place and should some sort of bilateral deal with Israel be worked out, either openly or in secret, it would demonstrate even more than treachery to the Palestinians and to all the oppressed and exploited Arab masses.
It would also demonstrate that in the final analysis “class” has triumphed over “nation.”
We mean here that it would prove that the Egyptian bourgeoisie as a class, as a property-owning, exploiting, possessing class, has only secondary, tangential, and peripheral interests contradictory to the imperialist bourgeoisie – and a lot in common with them.
In their view, the nation, that is, the overwhelming bulk of the mass of the people – workers, peasants, and so on – exists only when they are raw material to serve the interests of the ruling class, which, depending on historical circumstances, can well-nigh adjust itself, connive with, coexist, and bargain with the imperialist bourgeoisie and thereby endanger the very existence of the Arab people as a whole.
This is the true lesson of the two different phases of the anti-imperialist revolution in Egypt. It throws a powerful searchlight on the reasons why Sadat would, if he could, strike a bargain with the Israelis that is wholly detrimental to the Arab people and the Palestinians in particular, although it may well fill the coffers of the enriched bourgeoisie in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other repressive Arab regimes.
Petrodollar corruption is the instrument of U.S. foreign policy which is counted on to accomplish this all throughout the Arab lands. At the same time it has turned the Sadat regime in particular into a hopeless captive of the Pentagon and the multinational corporations.
This is what lies at the core of the shameless capitulation by Sadat and others and it will continue to be so unless the masses intervene once again as they did so magnificently in the dark days of 1967 – this time not to save the head of state but to overthrow and abolish the whole kit and kaboodle of bourgeois reaction and imperialist enslavement.
No one, of course, can foretell what will happen following Sadat’s projected Jerusalem visit, if it ever takes place. The contradictions within each of the Arab regimes are so sharp and the situation so unstable that the possibilities for imperialism, unlike the days immediately following the Second World War, are terribly constricted.
Each day brings news of revolutionary developments all over the world where imperialism is attacked and forced to give ground, as it is surely being forced to do in South Africa. But imperialism is very strong by virtue of its alliance with Arab reaction. And this brings us to a consideration of an aspect of the African and Arab anti-imperialist struggle which is, for the moment, focused on Somalia.
Like other countries that have experienced an anti-imperialist struggle, Somalia has also undergone two phases of the struggle which are mutually contradictory. President Siad Barred contains within his political biography the symbolism of both the Nasser phase of the revolution and that currently of Sadat. Like Nasser he led a military coup that overthrew the regime of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke in October 1969. Like Nasser he introduced vital reforms of a domestic character and in May 1970 nationalized all foreign banks and oil companies.
Of particular importance was the reform which abolished the very archaic and reactionary laws regarding women. It has been correctly said that since Somalia has become an independent state, more reform has taken place than in the thousand years before.
But Somalia is a semi-nomadic country and has been, as we have stated elsewhere, about where the Mongolian People’s Republic was several decades ago. However, its prospect of development, that is, of socialist construction along the same lines as the Mongolian People’s Republic, which has achieved a splendid record in that respect, has been inhibited by two fundamental factors.
First, a fundamental change in class relations, which was begun in Somalia after the 1969 revolution, has come mainly from above without mass participation, without the intervention required to overthrow all the old, archaic social relations and above all to either break up the old, weak, and decrepit state machinery or overwhelm it and transform it by newly developed organs of mass participation and struggle.
Neither happened. The collectivization which has taken place in Somalia is more akin to the kibbutzim in the Israeli state than to that in the socialist countries, such as Cuba, the USSR, or China.
Nevertheless, considering that an earnest effort was made by Siad Barre following the 1969 victory, one cannot categorically state that a Sadat phase of the struggle was inevitable. The efforts to construct a revolutionary socialist party may have been the very best that could have been made under the circumstances.
But it was erroneous for the Soviet Union and for the Soviet CP and Brezhnev in particular to hold it up as an authentic Marxist party when in fact it was a bourgeois radical mish-mash of Marxism and the Koran, going under the name of scientific socialism.
However, the more serious, that is the objective, factor which thrust Siad Barre into the Sadat phase of his stewardship over the Somali people was the pressure of imperialism.
According to the 1975 edition of the Associated Press Almanac, the U.S. government “halted its technical assistance and also its food, educational and agricultural aid to Somalia because ships flying the Somali flag were trading with North Vietnam.” This is a version of the same type of economic, diplomatic, and political warfare that imperialism carries on against all progressive countries to varying degrees depending upon circumstances. It was a particularly hard blow to Somalia, which is a very poor country.
The great fuss made over the Russian “naval base” at Berbera in Somalia was also a form of pressure against the Siad Barre government, and had its Vietnam implications. Berbera was a Soviet transit point to the Indian Ocean to transport materials to Vietnam, particularly during the days following the mining of Haiphong harbor. Due to earlier difficulties with China, the easier route between the USSR and Vietnam became much more restricted as relations between the USSR and China deteriorated, although the route was never closed.
Today the imperialist press has let out a big cheer for Somalia because it has broken diplomatic relations with Cuba and formally ousted the Soviet military mission. Not a word is said in the press about how the U.S. has been engaged in a struggle against the Somali government for all the years it was conducting a progressive struggle.
When in 1975, for instance, the terrible drought which struck large areas of northern Somalia took place, you could scarcely find a word of mention of it in the press here. It was the Soviet Union, however, which in that year carried out a truly spectacular feat on behalf of the Somali people. It executed a giant airlift of 120,000 stricken Somali nomads from the northern drought area to the southern region. This was the largest resettlement program ever accomplished in Africa and was wholly unpublicized in the United States, except in footnotes here and there, like the one on this very point on page 618 of the CBS Almanac of 1977.
Would the U.S. press mention this now?
The turning point in the transformation of Somalia’s Nasser period into the Sadat reactionary phase come with the sweep of petrodollar corruption and culminated in extravagant promises by imperialism probably made in secret as long ago as 1974 when the Ethiopian monarchy was overthrown and the possibility loomed large that Ethiopia would take a revolutionary turn. The turn, while coming somewhat later than anticipated, did come and the U.S. military mission was kicked out this past April. More importantly, Ethiopia’s dependency on U.S. imperialism underwent a radical transformation.
It was then that the U.S., through its Arab reactionary puppets, encouraged and in fact connived with all the Arab regimes to undermine and destroy the possibility of a genuine socialist revolution in Ethiopia. The instrument for undermining was the encouragement of the Somalis, as well as the Eritreans, to dismember and if possible destroy the Ethiopian Revolution.
Both Sadat and Siad Barre have a big stake in seeing the Ethiopian Revolution destroyed and the country dismembered. The revolutionary transformation of Ethiopia and the victory of the socialist revolution there could have the most profound implication for all of Africa and could sound the death knell for both the Sadat and Siad Barre regimes.
This more than anything explains why the Somalis rejected the proposal made by Premier Fidel Castro for a federation of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and South Yemen. At the minimum such a federation would have been a tremendous demonstration of anti-imperialist solidarity and a terrific boost to the socialist aspirations of the masses. But the CIA and the State Department were apparently well aware of what was in the offing long ago, and have relentlessly pursued their destructive objective ever since.
Last updated: 11 May 2026