The racist and colonial Israeli State has stepped up its genocidal assault on the people of Gaza. The supremacist ideology of the Israeli ruling class has been on full display. Israeli politicians have called Palestinians “animals” and “savages”, while declaring that they want to “turn Gaza into a carpark”.
As they drop white phosphorus and bomb hospitals, Netanyahu posts: “This is a struggle between the children of darkness and the children of light, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” Disgracefully, this dehumanisation of Palestinians has been aped by Western politicians and the media.
No escape routes
The ferocity of the Israeli State’s onslaught has quickly surpassed all its previous massacres of Gaza; at least 3,478 Palestinians have been killed in 13 days, one-third of whom are children. Casualties are mounting by the hour as buildings are levelled by the military hardware of the world’s fourth-largest army.
All escape routes remain closed off – the Rafah Crossing, the border with Egypt, was bombed to ensure this. The noose of the siege has been tightened, with no food, electricity, water or medical supplies allowed through – hugely exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe in the Strip.
US, EU and co. back Israeli atrocities
President Biden paid a visit to Israel, embracing Netanyahu and legitimising the murderous onslaught on Gaza’s civilians. He has uncritically and shamefully repeated the propaganda of the Israeli government that Islamic Jihad carried out the bombing of the al-Ahli hospital.
He’s not alone in backing the Israeli State and its atrocities. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Rishi Sunak have visited Netanyahu, and Macron is on the way. These governments have sought to demonise and even criminalise protests and actions against Israeli State terror.
Building solidarity
At the same time, millions have taken to the streets of cities and towns across the world to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine; many more will do so in the coming days and weeks. We must take this righteous anger and solidarity into our workplaces, schools and colleges.
This should involve workers’ action to target the Israeli war machine; we should follow the example of Italian dockworkers in May 2021 who refused to handle armaments destined for Israel. We need to build mass pressure to demand the expulsion of the British and Irish Israeli Ambassador.
Palestinian liberation
The Socialist Party and our sister organisation in Israel / Palestine, Socialist Struggle Movement, fully support the right of the Palestinian people to engage in armed resistance against Israeli State terror and the systemic, racist oppression they live under.
To make this resistance as effective as possible, it should be democratically organised and controlled from below, involving the masses of working, poor and young people in democratic councils of struggle organised on both sides of the Green Line, in towns, villages, workplaces, schools and universities; and it should be based on the methods of previous struggles of the people of Palestine – strikes and mass demonstrations, like the First Intifada in 1987 or the Strike of Dignity in May 2021, the last time the Israeli State inflicted its terror on Gaza. The Israel Builders Association was forced to admit that the strike paralysed building sites, when only 150 out of 65,000 workers came to work.
In the face of even greater repression in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, Palestinians have shut down workplaces, shops and services against the settler pogroms and Israeli Military atrocities. This approach contrasts with Hamas’s brutal, indiscriminate attack, including on civilians, on 7 October, which only helped strengthen the hand of the Israeli State. Such methods must be opposed.
We give full support to the mass protests taking place in the Occupied West Bank against the Israeli State and the puppet regime of the Palestinian Authority. The racist, supremacist settlements must be ended.
Revolutionary socialist change
The most powerful struggle for Palestinian national liberation is one linked with revolutionary system change in this region, uniting with the working class and poor throughout the Middle East in a struggle against the common enemy of capitalism and imperialism. Such an uprising of the masses contains transformative potential power.
This includes the Israeli-Jewish working class, who live under an increasingly authoritarian capitalist state which is clamping down on democratic rights and suffers massive inequality – with 21% living below the poverty line. This is a state whose systemic oppression of Palestinians has created a vicious cycle of conflict, making Israel the most dangerous place in the world to be a Jew.
The rule of imperialism, oppressive regimes, and capitalism generally, promises a future only of poverty, violence and oppression – and is incapable of meeting national aspirations and guaranteeing the rights of minorities. This rule must end.
This means taking the region’s vast wealth out of private hands and bringing it into public ownership and democratic control. It means building a socialist Middle East, with an independent, socialist Palestine and a socialist Israel based on free and open borders, with the full rights for minorities guaranteed. It means the democratic rule of the working class in solidarity, cooperation and peace.
