Transcript from CounterVortex podcast of June 8:

Welcome to the CounterVortex with your ranter Bill Weinberg, ranting at you in the wee hours of June 8, 2025, as always from my apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which fortunately is not under aerial bombardment, not under military occupation, and where there is plenty of food, even if it is often rather absurdly overpriced...

...unlike Gaza, and unlike that 20% of Ukraine that is under military occupation by Russia, and the remaining 80% of the country under ongoing Russian bombardment. Kharkiv is coming under drone attacks tonight, and just this past day there was yet another massacre of Palestinians at the Orwellianly-named “Safe Distribution Point” established by the Israeli military ostensibly to distribute aid, as we discussed on last week’s podcast. I believe this was now the fourth such massacre at the aid distribution point.

Both situations, Gaza and Ukraine, that urgently demand our protest and our active solidarity with those under bombardment. Yet, I frequently find myself in the slightly uncomfortable position of having to criticize my own side, so to speak. And there is a growing tendency among Ukrainians and those who support them to portray Russians in monolithic terms and ignore or contemptuously dismiss Russian anti-war protest. Now, I understand that these protesters are few and marginalized, but it should be kept in mind that the consequences for protest are, as we shall see, very serious in Russia. And in such a closed atmosphere, protest means more than in the US, where so-called repressive tolerance, in the famous phrase of Herbert Marcuse, has long been the norm—although as we see from the current events in Los Angeles, the US under Trump is rapidly moving away from tolerance and toward plain old repression. So the costs of protest are rising here too.

I want to begin by noting some recent news from Russia that you may have missed.

On May 25, police in Yekaterinburg stormed an event hosted by the pro-democratic opposition party Yabloko, aimed at supporting political prisoners. The authorities detained 10 attendees, who have been subsequently released, with legal action against them by the prosecutor’s office now pending.

Days earlier, Yabloko announced that it would be hosting several so-called “evenings of letters,” for attendees to carry out correspondence with imprisoned activists. The party reported that to date, 952 individuals in Russia have been imprisoned because of their political beliefs and affiliations.

During the event in Yekaterinburg, hosted in the party’s local office, Yabloko reported that 10 “masked men,” under the command of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, raided the venue and detained the participants. Among the detained was the chairman of the regional party branch, Maxim Petlin.

After the raid, Petlin stated that “the police acted based on a denunciation from our political opponents; it is a great pity that such a practice is becoming a part of Yekaterinburg life.”

Pro-government media channel UralLive alleged that the list of prisoners to whom the activists wrote “included real terrorists and radicals convicted of attempting a coup d’etat.” The channel reported that a member of the State Duma, Anatoly Wasserman, has called for “the prosecution of terrorist fans from Yekaterinburg,” outraged that such events are held during the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Another media channel, run by the pro-Kremlin influencer Katyusha Ivanova, proclaimed after the raid that Yabloko figures are guilty of promoting “non-traditional relationships,” and welcomed the arrests, stating that the correspondence gatherings have turned into “a hotbed of ideological and moral rot.” We should note that “non-traditional relationships" refers to LGBT practices, “promotion” of which is criminalized in Russia pursuant to recent changes to the penal code.

Yabloko expressly stated that the prisoners to whom the activists wrote “do not and cannot include citizens convicted of terrorism.”

Particularly since the start of the war on Ukraine, members of Yabloko have been prosecuted for their anti-war positions.

Similar “evenings of letters” are planned throughout major cities across Russia from Moscow to Vladivostok, and so far have not been cancelled despite the authorities’ intervention in Yekaterinburg.

So that’s one to watch. Yes, arrested for letter-writing. An activity akin to that of Anarchist Black Cross, whose meetings I have attended here in New York, where we write letters to imprisoned Black Panthers and Puerto Rican independentistas and animal rights activists, generally those with anarchist politics, to try to keep their spirits up behind bars. And speaking of anarchists...

Anarchist anti-war saboteurs in Russia are facing military tribunals.

A Russian military court in Yekaterinburg on May 20 sentenced 27-year-old anarchist Alexey Rozhkov to 16 years in prison for what prosecutors classified as a “terrorist act”—throwing Molotov cocktails at a military recruitment office in March 2022, causing minor damage. The incident, which occurred shortly after the start Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, was one of the earliest in a brief string of such actions across Russia in protest against the war.

Initially charged with attempted murder, Rozhkov fled to Kyrgyzstan after being released under a travel restriction order. There, he was detained by local security services, allegedly tortured, and forcibly returned to Russia. Upon his return, prosecutors added charges of “justifying terrorism” and spreading “fake news” about the Russian military, based in part on interviews he gave to exiled media outlets while in Kyrgyzstan.

He is to serve five years in a conventional prison, followed by 11 in a penal colony.

Rozhkov did not deny setting fire to the military office but rejected the terrorism charges. He stated in court that he acted according to his “conscience and moral principles,” to oppose the war in Ukraine, emphasizing the nobody was hurt in the attack.

Also May 20, another young anarchist, Ruslan Sidiki, took the stand in his trial at a military court in Ryazan, accused of destroying railway tracks, leading to the derailment of 19 carriages of fertilizer. Arrested in November 2023, Sidiki is also accused of the attempted destruction of military aircraft, on both occasions using GPS-guided drones. He said he undertook the actions to halt the movement of munitions toward the border with Ukraine, and that he took measures to avoid harming humans. He said he rejected the “terrorism” charge, since his “goal was sabotage, not the intimidation of the population.”

Returning to less militant and more symbolic activism....

A 68-year-old veteran opposition activist was arrested after displaying a sign reading “PUTIN HITLER” from the side of a prominent bridge over the Moskva River in the center of the Russian capital May 6. Grigory Saksonov, also known as Uncle Grisha, climbed over the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge holding the sign and clad in wetsuit before lowering himself into the water below with a rope. He was pulled out of the river by police and taken away in an ambulance. Saksonov, who has been arrested before in actions in support of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and had maintained a citizen’s memorial on the bridge for slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, faces charges of “taking part in an unauthorized action” and “disobeying a police officer.”

Saksonov’s action came three days before Vladimir Putin presided over the 80th anniversary Victory Day parade in Red Square, a massive spectacle marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, attended by the leaders of several of Russia’s allied and client states—such as Burma, now carrying out its own campaign of aerial bombardment against its own people with Russian-supplied warplanes. So this May 9 spectacle in Red Square was certainly an exponent of what we call fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. And good for Uncle Grisha for calling it out

In a case speaking to the potential subversive power of poetry, a district court of St. Petersburg on April 18 sentenced 19-year-old activist Daria Kozyreva to two years and eight months in prison for “discrediting the armed forces” by publicly posting a verse of 19th-century Ukrainian poetry in protest of the war in Ukraine.

Kozyreva began her anti-war activism in 2022, the year that Russia’s full-scale invasion began. That December, she was detained for spray-painting the words “Murderers, you bombed it, Judases” on a sculpture representing the historic ties between St. Petersburg and the Ukrainian city of Mariupol—which Russia had heavily bombarded that year, and seemingly carried out massacres in. In early 2024, she was fined and expelled from university for criticizing the “imperialist nature of the war” in a social media post.

On the second anniversary of the start of the invasion last February, Kozyreva taped a piece of paper bearing a quote from Testament, by Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko, onto his statue in a St. Petersburg park. The excerpt read: “Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants’ blood / The freedom you have gained.” We can imagine Vladimir Putin wasn’t too happy about that.

Kozyreva spent nearly a year in pre-trial detention before her sentencing. Amnesty International condemned the court’s decision, calling it “another chilling reminder of how far the Russian authorities will go to silence peaceful opposition to their war in Ukraine. Daria Kozyreva is being punished for quoting a classic of 19th-century Ukrainian poetry, for speaking out against an unjust war, and for refusing to stay silent. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Daria Kozyreva and everyone imprisoned under ‘war censorship’ laws.”

And finally this, from Public Radio International on June 2...

In a Moscow suburb, locals have been battling against city officials and the Russian Orthodox Church to stop construction of a new church in a city park. This construction project is part of a plan to build at least 500 new churches in Moscow... Over the past 15 years, thousands of new churches have gone up across the country, pointing to a tightening relationship in Russia between the church and state.

And the story goes on to report local residents standing in front of bulldozers to prevent parkland from being destroyed to build a new church, just as we stood in front of bulldozers here on the Lower East Side to prevent community gardens from being destroyed to build upscale housing complexes.

Now, again: Do I wish that these protesters were explicitly anti-Putin and anti-war and in solidarity with Ukraine? Absolutely. But this is still an encouraging development... bringing together issues of urban space and secularism. And Orthodox hegemony is increasingly a pillar of Putinism and the war effort, so... this is a start. These are the Russians we should be supporting.

And now some news from Israel you may have missed. This from the Jerusalem Post, June 4....

Israelis set out from Tel Aviv and walked towards the Gaza border Wednesday, as part of a protest against the continuation of the Gaza war organized by Standing Together. “We are marching because the destruction, starvation, and abandonment must stop,” the grassroots peace organization said.

The group, made up of a few dozen people, set out from near the Kirya IDF military headquarters and marched South. The march is expected to take place over the course of three days, ending near the Gaza border, where those marching will join a protest organized by the It's Time coalition of peace organizations.

There was a similar such march last month. Israeli police and border guards arrested nine protesters May 18 during a hundreds-strong march along the Gaza border calling for a halt to Operation Gideon's Chariots, the new Israeli war plan in the Gaza Strip. During the march, some protesters attempted to block a road, leading to the arrests. Among the detained was Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the joint Jewish-Arab group Standing Together. An Israeli court the next day moved to extend the detention of seven of the nine, including Green, who are charged with obstructing police and participating in an illegal gathering.

And I believe that Alon-Lee Green remains under house arrest.

The main slogan at the march was “Stop the horrors in Gaza,” but more Israeli protesters are now calling Israel's actions in Gaza “genocide,” as we shall see.

On May 24, some 1,500 gathered for the weekly rally at what has been dubbed Hostages Square, in front of the Tel Aviv art museum—now no longer calling merely for a hostage release deal, but explicitly for a ceasefire in Gaza. And if Israeli flags are in evidence at these rallies so, increasingly, are signs decrying the genocide in Gaza.

Naama Levy, one of five IDF woman soldiers released in the hostage deal back in January, told the crowd that the thing she feared most in Gaza was the Israeli air-strikes:

They come by surprise. First you hear a whistle, pray it doesn’t fall on you, and then—the booms, a noise loud enough to paralyze you, the earth shakes. I was convinced every single time that this was my end, and it’s also what put me in the most danger: one of the bombardments collapsed part of the house I was in. The wall I was leaning on didn’t collapse, and that’s what saved me.

Naama Levy, interestingly, before being taken as a hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, was already a peace activist, a member of Hands of Peace, a co-existence advocacy group that organized dialogue programs for Israeli, Palestinian and American youth for the past 20—and very sadly, was shut down after October 7 due to a lack of “funding, volunteerism and leadership,” according to their now archived website.

What’s not so sad but pretty damn good is that dozens of Israeli protesters stormed the ruling Likud party headquarters in Tel Aviv on May 28, demanding a deal to free the hostages. The demonstrators breached the building and chained themselves in front of Netanyahu's office, in a protest marking 600 days since the war began. At least 16 were arrested.

Amid all this, more protests against Hamas have broken out in Gaza. There were three days of protests in Khan Younis starting May 19. Hundreds of Palestinians were seen in videos posted on social media calling for an end to the war and for the removal of Hamas from power in Gaza, with residents chanting “Out! Out! Out! All of Hamas, out!”

So that’s very interesting, and it points to the potentiality that we noted in our podcast of March 30, of Israeli and Palestinian protesters building conscious solidarity with each other to demand both an end to the war and a much-needed change of leadership on both sides—and begin to arrest the process of mutual dehumanization in the propaganda of both “sides.”

And note that the marches to the Gaza border have largely been organized by a group called Standing Together. I read from their website:

Standing Together is a progressive grassroots movement organizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality, and social justice. The future we seek—peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for everyone in this land, and true social, economic, and environmental justice—is possible. To achieve it, we must stand together as a united front: Jewish and Palestinian, secular and religious, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, rural and urban, and people of all genders and sexual orientations. As the largest Jewish-Arab grassroots movement in Israel, we are committed to creating an alternative to our existing reality by building the political power to make it happen.

I must point out that I have taken some criticism for promoting the activities of Standing Together. I read from the website of the BDS movement—that’s the movement calling for a boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel, which I support.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the BDS movement, calls on conscientious people, organizations, and unions around the world not to engage with Standing Together, an Israeli normalization outfit that seeks to distract from and whitewash Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

By trying to paint Israel as a tolerant, diverse, and normal state, and focusing on “hatred” rather than oppression as the problem, this organization is intellectually dishonest and outright complicit. It is serving a key role in Israel’s international propaganda strategy at this time.

I submit that perhaps this statement and this position should be rethought. First, there are Israeli Palestinians, not only Israeli Jews, in the leadership of Standing Together. The aforementioned Alon-Lee Green and a Palestinian Arab woman, Rula Daood, are the co-directors of Standing Together. And I will note that the mission statement from them that I read did not use the word “hatred,” but did use the word “occupation.”

Now I understand the criticism that co-existence efforts can (note emphasis) serve as propaganda for an unjust status quo, I am definitely down with the notion of No Justice, No Peace. And what is needed in the context of Jews and Arabs in historic Palestine is co-resistance rather than a co-existence that accepts an unjust status quo. But I will also say that with the Israeli state moving rapidly away from pluralism and tolerance, with Benjamin Netanyahu saying explicitly that Israel is “not a state of all its citizens” (quote-unquote), explicitly excluding that 20% of the population that is Palestinian Arab—calls for co-existence do in fact become inherently subversive. And secondly, when Standing Together is organizing these marches on the Gaza border and getting arrested to protest the siege and bombardment, they are in fact moving toward (at least) co-resistance. So I support BDS, but if it is extended to include explicitly dissident Israelis, I’m not sure I go along with that.

On a related point, there is a difference between the notions of collective guilt and social responsibility. Israeli Jews do need to take responsibility for their social position—as do white people in the United States, for instance. But the notion of collective guilt, which inherently legitimizes the notion of collective punishment, which paints over all differences and contradictions and struggles within the privileged population, is problematic in the extreme.

And implicit or explicit defenders of the notion of collective guilt in the case of Israel have recently been pointing to a poll conducted by Pennsylvania State University and reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz May 22, finding that 82% of Israeli Jews support the forced expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Which is certainly alarming. However, not getting nearly as much circulation from the collective-guilt crowd is a follow-up story that ran on Haartez June 4, which I will here read from:

That Alarming Poll Showing 82% of Israelis Back Gazans' Expulsion? It's Wrong

A recent shocking poll suggested overwhelming support for expelling Gazans, but a deeper dive into the data reveals a far more complex and divided public opinion.

A recent poll among Israeli Jews, as reported in Haaretz, produced truly shocking results: 82 percent of respondents reportedly supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, while 56 percent supported expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel. The poll suggests an extreme reality and has garnered significant attention.

We, too, were alarmed by these findings, for an additional reason: we believe they are wrong.

At around the same time this poll was conducted, Tel Aviv University fielded a comprehensive, large-scale survey as part of its ongoing Israel National Election Studies research project. In that study, participants were asked whether they would support a solution for Gaza that includes transferring its population to another country or countries. Among Jewish respondents, agreement stood at 53 percent, and among the entire Israeli population—including Arab citizens—it was 45 percent.

In other words, while support for population transfer is indeed appallingly high, it is far from a public consensus.

How, then, did the Haaretz-reported survey yield an expulsion support figure that was nearly 30 percent higher than that found in the Tel Aviv University study? The first explanation lies in the sample itself. An analysis of the raw data (which the poll's authors shared with us in full transparency) revealed several sampling issues that largely account for the inflated support levels.

So this just confirms my skepticism about polls, which I do not believe are capable of being objective. But this is the critical point.... To the extent that a pro-genocide consensus is emerging or has emerged among the Israelis, that increases the imperative to support those who are attempting to resist the consolidation of that consensus. Recent violent and deadly attacks on perceived Israeli or pro-Israel human targets in the US, meanwhile—Boulder, Colorado; the Capital Jewish Museum—point to the dangers of the notion of collective guilt. Just over the past days, a Holocaust memorial and two synagogues in Paris were defaced with green paint—green being the color of Hamas and of Islam. And then, just a few days later, June 3, a mosque in Austin, Texas, was defaced with blue Stars of David—blue being the color of the star on the Israeli flag. Do we have to do this, humanity? Let’s not, OK?

And those who dismiss dissident minorities and embrace, implicitly or explicitly, notions of collective guilt will inevitably say that these dissident minorities are either not radical enough or too marginal to matter.

Now, that fist criticism can have some merit, as acknowledged. But also as stated, the Israeli peace camp, small and marginal though it is, does seem to be radicalizing at this moment. And... you’ve got to start somewhere. Like those folks in Moscow who are protesting the seizure of municipal parklands to build churches... now, they don’t appear to explicitly oppose the war in Ukraine, but I am still glad they are protesting, and I hope that they will come to explicitly oppose the war in Ukraine. It’s a start. And over the past months we have seen the Israeli protesters moving from merely demanding a hostage release deal to opposing the genocide, in those terms.

Bot that second criticism, that they are too marginal to matter, I have never understood. If the people who are standing up and saying and doing the right thing, or at least moving toward saying and doing the right thing, are small in number and marginalized, that increases not decreases our responsibilities of solidarity to them.

That was my position when I supported the anti-war and pro-coexistence forces in all of the ex-Yugoslav republics in the ‘90s, and then 10 years later the Iraqi progressives and secularists and feminists and Marxists who opposed both the US occupation and the jihadi insurgents. And then with the Arab Revolution starting in 2011, actual mass-base pro-democracy movements emerged, and yet progressives in the West continued to balk at supporting them. And now in Ukraine and Gaza alike, the stakes for all of humanity are far higher. And if recognizing mutual humanity, even among citizens of the aggressor and occupier nation, has become an unpopular notion—it is one I am going to continue to advocate and work for.

And having addressed my comrades in both the Palestine solidarity and Ukraine solidarity efforts, I must also say note the very small degree of overlap between these two efforts, between those who are concerned with Gaza and those who are concerned with Ukraine. So in the spirit of supporting dissident minorities, I want to give a shout-out to my comrades in groups such as the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign, who are indeed working to unite the struggles.

This has been Bill Weinberg with the CounterVortex.

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