Statement 27/10/2023

 On October 7th, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the armed uprising of Palestinians, burst out of the blockaded Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison. Despite the seventy-five-year occupation by the imperialist backed Zionist Israeli state, Palestinian resistance cannot be extinguished. Class Conscious unequivocally stands in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians in their fight for freedom.

Since its creation, the Zionist Israeli state has been built on violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. On September 22nd, only weeks before Operation Al-Asqa Flood,  Netanyahu held up a map of Israel at the UN with both Gaza and the West Bank erased. His Government is now attempting to fulfill this plan by launching a second “Nakba”. In the weeks since October 7th, Gaza has been carpet bombed. A third of its buildings are uninhabitable. Over seven thousand are dead, many more lie under the rubble. Churches, schools, refugee camps and hospitals most devastatingly the Al-Ahli Hospital, have all been bombed. Over half of the residents of Gaza are children under 18 and the world has been confronted by endless images of their broken, bloodied bodies. The Israeli defense minister declared a total siege of Gaza stating “We are fighting human animals”. The two million residents of Gaza are now going thirsty and hungry. There is no fuel. Medical care is collapsing. The scenes recall the worst crimes committed by German imperialism/Nazism in World War 2 such as the siege of Leningrad and the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. All of this is before Israel even launches a ground assault on Gaza. Violence has also been stepped up by both the Israeli state and fascist settlers in the West Bank who act with impunity and are being given weapons to terrorize the Palestinian population. 

The streets erupt to chants of “Free Free Palestine”!

The world’s working class has not been silent in the face of this crime. Millions have taken to the streets across every continent to wave the red, green and white national flag of Palestine and to cry “Free, free Palestine!”. The Arab world has seen the largest demonstrations since the Arab Spring. Israeli Embassies have been targeted including in Jordan, forcing some to be evacuated. People within the imperialist centers have defied both outright bans on solidarity demonstrations and a propaganda onslaught to march. The slander of “terrorism” thrown at Palestinian resistance has failed to dampen the growing movement. Palestinian Trade Unions have issued a call for workers around the world to block wherever they can arms shipments to Israel to shut down the Israeli war machine.

The protests ignited by Israeli barbarism in Gaza have also ignited fear in the hearts of bourgeois ruling classes. In the imperialist centers there is a growing realization from working people that to advance any of their interests they must fight their own rulers. The anti-war protests threaten to intersect with growing strike waves brought on by a cost of living crisis itself worsened by the proxy war on Russia. Just as the imperialists are using fascist proxies to fight their wars in Ukraine and Israel, they will increasingly turn to authoritarianism and even fascism at home. France, Germany and the US itself have sections of their ruling classes openly toying with installing fascist regimes.

In countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Jordan where their own capitalist rulers have all sold their souls to imperialism they fear these protests will once again lead to chants “’the people want to bring down the regime”.

The imperialist “Stand with Israel” and plan for war!

Whilst the streets have been flooded with pro-Palestine protests, the rulers of the Imperialist countries have been united in their nauseating public displays of “standing with Israel”. Biden traveled to Israel to literally embrace Netanyahu. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited and German Chancellor Schultz and France’s Macron are to follow. Junior imperialist powers like Australia and Canada pledge their fealty from afar but with no less fervor.

What can explain the pilgrimages of the heads of the major imperialist powers to Israel? It surely is not a concern for civilian life as they are blood drenched powers, who are responsible for the deaths of millions of civilians in wars to protect profits and oppress the global working class. Rather it is cold hard imperialist self-interest that draws them to Israel. Joe Biden in 1986 stated bluntly “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region”. He repeated this comment in Tel Aviv on October 18th. The US now intends to utilize its billions of dollars of “investment” in Israel by using their fascist proxy to once again try and redraw the map of the Middle East.

  Despite launching several wars over decades the imperialists have failed to dislodge the regimes that cut across their interests. Most importantly they failed to topple the theocratic regime in Iran and Russia thwarted their efforts to dislodge Assad in Syria. Now the imperialists are preparing for another war fought by its fanatical nuclear armed Israeli proxy. Israel has already exchanged fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and has bombed Syria’s airports. The US has sent more than its decrepit President to stand with Israel but is rushing to send warships, weapons and potentially even troops to fight alongside it. West Asia (Middle East), sits atop the world’s most profitable oil reserves. As if to emphasize this the UN recently announced that the Palestinian occupied territories themselves sit atop sizeable oil and gas reserves! The US simply must control it to maintain its failing hegemony against its rivals.

The deepening crisis of imperialism

It is not an accident of timing that the US seeks to escalate war in West Asia in the wake of the failed “Spring Offensive” by Ukraine forces against Russia. The US and its NATO allies attempts to use its fascist proxy in Kiev has turned into a bloody quagmire for Ukrainian forces and even the bourgeois press has had to acknowledge the obvious that the war has failed in its military aims to weaken and even break up Russia.France as the representative of Western imperialism has faced a similar disaster with a string of anti-French coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

The continued growth in the size and sophistication of the economy of the People’s Republic of China and its growing ability to trade and influence the world’s economy is ever present in the mind of Western imperialists. It offers both an alternative path to development and access to funds for the world’s oppressed nations. By joining with Russia, it is opening up the political and economic space for developments such as the expansion of BRICS.

Down with Zionism!

The Apartheid state of Israel, like all settler colonial states, has since its founding required the violent and ongoing dispossession of Palestinians. The “right of return” of any Jew in the world to citizenship combined with the denial of any rights for displaced Palestinians to their former homes and lands ensures that the Zionist state can only be maintained as an Apartheid state, enshrining Jewish supremacy in law. Part of the current crisis for the Zionist state is that many Jews in the diaspora, particularly in the large population in the US are starting to question or outright reject Zionism as a political ideology. This was evident in the thousands of Jewish American protestors who occupied the capital building demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. The days of the Zionist state being able to claim to speak on behalf of “world Jewry” are gone never to return.

However, within Israel Zionism still has a hold on the Jewish working class. The Israeli Jewish workers must break from the lie that their security can and should come at the expense of oppressing Palestinians. Whether a one or two state solution is won by the Palestinian resistance in the short term, the violence will continue unless the Zionist ideology and state is dismantled and a form of national identity is formed which rejects Jewish supremacy and racism. In the long term, in Palestine as elsewhere, true liberation from exploitation for the working class can only be found with the creation of a  multi-ethnic workers state of Palestine.

For the victory of Palestine and all anti-imperialist forces.

All Communists should welcome the continued Palestinian resistance and the broad support it finds in the world’s masses as another manifestation in the deepening imperialist crisis. We do not look to the UN or “international law” or other pacifist illusions to free Palestine. Class Conscious supported the victory of Russia in the war in Ukraine against NATO and its allies. We said that such a victory would strengthen the hand of the international working class in its life and death struggle against imperialism. Likewise the victory of Palestine and the other oppressed countries in the cross hairs of imperialism in the region such as Iran, Syria and Yemen would be a major advance for the global working class. As Communists we are of course aware neither Russia or the Palestinian resistance are led by communists! However whilst not supporting the politics of either the capitalist Putin or the Islamacist Hamas we support the right of peoples and oppressed nations to resist imperialism no matter who leads them.

Communists must come together to cooperate internationally to help ensure the movement for Palestinian freedom is waged consciously by the working class as part of the fight against imperialism. We must do all we can to see the power of labor used to shut down this war through building action in unions against the Israeli war machine.

Just as the Nazi bombing of Guernica in Spain in 1937 gave a prelude to the violence that capitalism and imperialism was preparing to unleash, the carpet bombing and siege of Gaza is a prelude to much larger imperialist crimes. We must fight to stop the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza as part of the drive to prevent a Third World War.

Down with Imperialism! Down with Zionism!
Victory to Palestine!
Liberation and Equality from the river to the Sea!
No to World War 3!