Germany's tormented 20th century history is rich in dramatic and terrible themes, and in her latest film, a biopic of the German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, the producer Margarete von Trotta deals head-on with the profound and difficult moral issues raised by Arendt in her report on the Eichmann trial at the beginning of the 1960s.

The film represents a daring attempt to illustrate the evolution of a philosopher's ideas - ideas which at the time provoked an enormous controversy over anti-fascism and the understanding of Nazism's nature.

Whatever its specifics, strategies and rationales - and there are certainly plenty of those - the Israeli-Palestine conflict is first and foremost the expression of a decomposing capitalism that holds an enormous threat for the working class and the whole of humanity. This particular conflict, increasingly along with the whole geopolitical situation of the Middle East, represents the tendency towards greater militarism, imperialist war, instability and chaos. Its absurdity, intractability and irrationality perfectly sums up the future that this crisis-ridden system offers to us and the generations to follow.

The massive street protests in Israel seem, for the moment at any rate, to have gone into retreat; the social question, which they raised so noisily around issues of housing, inflation, and unemployment, is once again being sidelined by the national question.

In less than a month at the time of writing, a second border clash left at least 14 dead and scores of wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of Palestinian protesters trying to break into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from Syria. Barely one month before, hundreds of people broke through a border fence and clashed with thousands of Israeli troops mobilized in anticipation of possible unrest as Palestinians prepared to protest the anniversary of the Arab defeat in the 1967 Mideast war. This is just a ‘skirmish’ compared to the history of violence and bloodletting that stains the region...

This article was originally published on Israel's Indymedia site and on Libcom.org. It was written by a comrade in Israel who, despite being in an extreme minority, felt the need to respond to the patriotic war fever sweeping Israel/Palestine in the wake of the Israeli assault on Gaza.

The escalation of barbarism in the Middle East is part of the escalation of military conflicts across the whole planet. Following the September 11th attacks the USA launched a long term crusade against 'terrorism', starting with the war in Afghanistan, an intervention which had been planned well before the destruction of the Twin Towers. This was followed by the increase in tensions between India and Pakistan. Then came the build-up towards a new attack on Iraq, supposedly to make it accept UN weapons inspectors again, or even to depose Saddam. And to emphasise the seriousness of the USA's intent, the Pentagon 'leaked' US plans to use nuclear weapons, if necessary, against anyone else alleged to possess weapons of mass destruction, such as China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Libya or Iraq.

Once again, the Middle East is ablaze, although in truth there has been no real pause in bloody conflicts in this region for over fifty years.

Peace is not possible under capitalism. The ICC has always said this loud and clear. Thus, in October 1993, after the first ‘historic’ handshake between Arafat and Rabin, we wrote: