U.S.-Backed Israeli Fascists Bring Genocide to Gaza

Israel’s racist U.S.-backed rulers have murdered or maimed thousands of Palestinian children and civilians with aerial bombs and tank shells. One attack struck a UN school. On January 11, Israeli storm troopers began even more deadly face-to-face urban warfare in densely populated Gaza City. The current blow-up in the Middle East is part of the battle for control of oil that has been going on between the capitalists for the last 80 years. Israel has been doing its part as an arm of U.S. interests since its formation in 1948. Their indiscriminate butchery has already killed nearly 1,000 people including hundreds of women, children and elderly, and wounded 3,340 others in the first two weeks.

Israel’s murderous invasion of Gaza is particularly brazen. After Hamas won control of Gaza in the 2006 elections, Israel responded with a military blockade cutting off all supplies to the 1.5 million Palestinians living there. The Israeli strategy was to starve the Gazans into turning away from Hamas and towards the Palestine Liberation Organization, the group Israel prefers to deal with now. Using food and medical supplies as a weapon against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas was originally nurtured by the Israeli secret service Mossad, as a  weapon against the PLO, controlled then by Yasser Arafat.  This backfired on the Israeli ruling class in  much the same way the the U.S. ruling class’s building of the Taliban as a weapon against the Russians came back to haunt them. Hamas went from an invention of the Israeli military to an armed ally of Iran’s rulers.

Israel’s crimes against humanity have sparked protests across the Middle East and beyond. The sight of young workers taking on the tanks and planes of the U.S.-funded Israeli military, as well as the many thousands who have demonstrated around the world against this genocide,  is an inspiring sight,  but the capitalists are leading workers down political dead-ends. The lack of a mass communist movement has made it easier for the bosses to do this. As a result, many Arabs and Muslims are supporting Hamas or other forms of militant Islam, and in the West, workers are counting on liberals like Obama to solve the crisis.

Hamas does not represent the class interests of Palestinian workers. Whatever its financial ties to Iran’s mullahs, Hamas is, in effect, doing the dirty work of these energy barons masquerading as religious leaders, who seek to replace U.S. dominance of the Middle East’s vast oil and gas reserves. Hamas shares Teheran’s long-term goal of destroying the U.S.’s hired gun, Israel. Hamas’s reaction to Israel’s vicious onslaught mainly serves Iran by stirring anti-Israel sentiment among workers in supposed U.S.-allied states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. A perceived Hamas victory over Israel would not liberate Palestinians but “bolster Iranian influence and ambitions in the Arab world” (Council on Foreign Relations, 1/8/09). Consequently, it would make the oft-repeated U.S. threat (Obama, too, uttered it) to confront Teheran militarily all the more likely.

U.S. LIBERALS FEAR LOSING ARAB ALLIES

U.S. rulers are just as eager as the Israeli fascists to see Hamas destroyed, but there is an important difference. Israeli bosses worry about their survival. U.S. rulers have a world they want to run. So the dominant wing of U.S. capitalists, fearing Iran 1979- style defections from their empire, dons a liberal guise and wants Israel to “tone it down.” Max Boot, a fellow at the Rockefeller-run Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, urges Israel not to cease, but to calculate cold-bloodedly the number of working-class Arabs it murders. “Brutality can be counterproductive. Killing too many people, especially if they are the wrong people, risks jeopardizing popular support for elected governments that are likely to be important American allies in the future” (Wall Street Journal, 1/4/09). The U.S. will need the Arab allies Boot speaks of in a wider Mid-East war with Iran, China or Russia, or an even broader conflict that includes Europe.

The liberal establishment had installed Gates in the palace coup that ousted Rumsfeld. Covert action and diplomacy, the Times says, are better ways to confront Iran, until, that is, the U.S. can build a coalition and raise its own troop strength to confront Iran militarily. The New York Times (1/11/09) revealed that the Pentagon had refused Israel’s request for a bunker-buster bomb to take out Iran’s growing nuclear facility unilaterally. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, a protégé of Robert Gates, whom Obama is keeping on as defense boss, played the key role.

OBAMA PEACEMAKER? DON’T BUY THE HYPE

So Obama, whose advisors includes a host of past, present, and would-be mass murdering war criminals, is trying to project a worldwide image as peacemaker. The following, from Britain’s liberal Guardian newspaper (1/11/09) reflects this phony effort. “Obama has selected people whose doveish credentials seem impeccable. They will be responsible for reversing the political unilateralism of the Bush years and opening direct negotiations with hostile states, potentially ranging from Syria to Cuba and Venezuela and maybe including Iran and even Islamic militant group Hamas.”

The Guardian mentions unambiguously those who counseled Clinton on his genocidal bombing of Serbia: Dennis Ross, understudy of James Baker, the Exxon Mobil heir and Bush buddy who helped orchestrate both Iraq wars; and Kurt Campbell, a Clinton Pentagon figure who penned a militaristic book unambiguously titled Hard Power.
Obama’s pledge to withdraw from Iraq is a similar lie. His establishment handlers represented by the liberal Brookings Institution remind him (Memo to the President, 1/5/09) that forcibly controlling petroleum profits trumps campaign promises, “Oil-rich Iraq’s long-term stability remains a vital U.S. interest. Everything else your Administration seeks to accomplish in the Middle East will require Iraq’s stability.”

In the face of the greater genocide that the Gaza carnage only hints at, we need to build a working-class anti-war movement with the outlook of communist revolution. Every other kind of organization — nationalist, religious, pro-liberal — ultimately serves one camp or another of capitalist war-makers.

Unite with Israeli, Palestinian Workers

Several comrades joined thousands of people in Lafayette Square outside the White House on Saturday, January 10th to demand an end to the siege of Gaza. We distributed CHALLENGES and communist leaflets to the demonstrators. Hundreds of Palestinian families traveled from the East Coast to rally against U.S. support of the war and against Israel’s genocidal policies.

We argued that if people didn’t try to forge working-class unity now, there would never be an end to war and genocide in the Middle East. One man carried a sign attacking all the Arab leaders in the Middle East and talked about his childhood in Palestine when his family lost their home in 1948. He had no illusions about the betrayal of nationalist leaders!

A long-time Palestinian friend of the Party helped distribute the PLP leaflet. She stressed international worker solidarity when we distributed the communist leaflet. All of us had good conversations with people about our long-term goals and our opposition to nationalism.

Asking people for some contribution for the paper when we are in large crowds like this is important, given the Party’s financial crisis. Expressing ideas about the economic crisis and pointing out that our Party is made up of workers hit home; and I collected about $15 for 25 papers. One man gave $5 and took another copy to give to a friend.

I hope that everyone in the Party takes their international responsibility to express solidarity with our brother and sister workers in Palestine and Israel quite seriously. I was thrilled to hear that over 10,000 Arab and Jews demonstrated in Tel-Aviv and tens of thousands more demonstrated worldwide!
D.C. Red

Jewish, Palestinian Workers Must Unite Against Israeli Fascists

(Part one of this article, based on a visit by an international medical team to Israel/Palestine, discussed the horrendous apartheid-like conditions imposed by the Israeli rulers on the Palestinians in Gaza).
Modern Israel was born over 100 years ago, as Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe began to immigrate there. This accelerated greatly after World War II when England and the U.S. refused to admit Jewish refugees from the holocaust. The Zionists’ view of racism as a particular evil used only against them made them believe that only a Jewish state would guarantee safe harbor for Jews. This allowed the Zionists to invoke racism against the Arabs living in Palestine, claiming it was a “land without people for a people without land.”

They bought up land and by the late 1940s had hatched a plan to forcibly remove Palestinians from as much territory as possible. Over 500 Arab villages and urban areas were destroyed and about 900,000 Palestinians were murdered or displaced (see “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe). Many modern towns, parks and forests are built on top of these destroyed areas. This history is unknown to nearly all Israelis. It is forbidden to teach about it in the schools.

Most Palestinians, whose population about equals the Jews, live on 22% of the land of Palestine as defined before 1948, divided between the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. A system of passes keeps them confined to one of these three areas, a tall separation wall surrounds them, and check-points dot the roads. Families are divided from one another, farmers are separated from their land, students from their schools, and patients from health care.

Israel controls 90% of the water, each Israeli using 15 times more water than a Palestinian. In Gaza, the Israelis have cut off most supplies, leaving the hundreds of dangerous tunnels dug from Egypt as the major supply routes for all goods. Hunger, malnutrition and unemployment affect the majority of Gazans.

The Israeli government continues to build more settlements in the West Bank, which is dividing the territory into three disconnected areas. This makes any proposed two-state solution impossible. Now more Palestinians and dissident Israelis are calling for one state.

As long as Israel continues to receive more foreign aid from the U.S. than any other country, about $3 billion a year, it is unlikely to change its policies. The U.S. needs Israel as a bastion of strength against the other countries of the Mid-East, who have the oil the U.S. covets or who oppose U.S. policies.  Anyone who had hopes that Obama would change this should witness his groveling before the Israeli lobby and his appointment of Chief of Staff, Rahm, who had an Israeli terrorist father and is hard-line for Israel.

Palestine is also a class society, with a few wealthy families and the rest living very poorly (see Communist magazine, summer ’08). Its leadership is divided between the corrupt Fatah party, which represents the ruling elite and is all too willing to make deals with Israel, and Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic nationalist party which controls Gaza. No Palestinians we met had any use for either of them, but there is little alternative leadership.

The opposition “leftist” parties call for more democracy and one or two states, but do not discuss the structure of the society, classes, racism or critique nationalism. There appears to be little organized opposition to occupation of any kind, except the few rockets from Gaza and regular anti-wall actions in two villages. Many predict a third spontaneous intifada,  or rebellion, when some atrocity sparks mass anger.

It is difficult to devise strategies in this apartheid situation, but certainly the need to understand the role of Israel, racism and nationalism in the context of world imperialism is primary. Then the task of building a movement of Palestinian and Israeli workers based on the call for an egalitarian, multi-racial society is at least clearer. Hopefully the contacts we made on both sides of the divide will advance this goal.

Mexico May Day Inspires Re-commitment to PLP

MEXICO CITY,  May 1st— A group of members and friends of PLP participated in the mass May Day March in Mexico City where hundreds of thousands of workers come to show their anger against the capitalist system and its government. We distributed 15,000 leaflets and 300 CHALLENGES in which we exposed the capitalist system including the privatization of oil and the need for a communist revolution in order to build a society that meets the needs of the working class.

Our contingent marched with banners and chanted slogans like , “LONG LIVE COMMUNISM! DEATH TO CAPITALISM!’’ AND “ONE CLASS ONE PARTY, WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!” We also sang songs like “Bandera Roja” and “Bella Chao” and of course the INTERNATIONAL. We were a small militant group but we captured the attention of many marchers.

After the march we had a gathering where we talked about the day’s activities. One of the things thatinspired many comrades was that many new youth participated with us who hadn’t before. One of them said that he’d participated in other organizations and that none of them had convinced him as PLP had.

That’s why he asked that we keep inviting him to future meetings. We decided to have a meeting this same week to plan some activities and to maintain constant communication.

Another thing that inspired many was the participation of someone who had been inactive in the last few years. At the end of the march, this friend gave a small speech in which he talked about why it’s important to celebrate May Day and the need to continue organizing the working class, thus announcing his recommitment to the Party. Some suggested that he help organize a cadre school about political economy and help in continuing to deepen the political understanding of more comrades.

We hope that next year we’ll have a bigger contingent with more political leadership.

Marine Vet: U.S. Imperialists Are War Criminals

SOUTHWESTERN CAMPUS, April 3 — “War crimes? Heck, the whole war is a crime!” exclaimed a student and Marine veteran of the Iraq war, summing up his contempt for the U.S. imperialist agenda.
Over 175 students, teachers and campus staff applauded enthusiastically. Foregoing classes, many stayed over three hours to hear testimonials from four members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and one from Military Families Speak Out (MFSO).

One army veteran/student quoted from Nazi butcher Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg Trials, exposing how all the rulers think: “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in England, nor America, nor in Germany….But…it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along….Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

He should have said, “any capitalist country” because Soviet workers were won to fight the Nazis in their own class interests. This vet said Göring’s statement brought a “chilling familiarity to our experience since 9/11.”
This vet quoted Marine General Smedley Butler: “War is just a racket….It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.”

Urging soldiers to abandon blind pride, the vet noted the growth of anti-imperialist war activism, citing “the growing number of active-duty IVAW chapters.”

Vets revealed their painful understanding of war crimes and the contradictions that soldiers fighting an imperialist war face daily. One ex-Marine in charge of detainees explained how he attempted to protect them from casual abuse by other soldiers. Another witnessed a whole town storm his platoon’s position.
Current reports of corruption and of Iraqi recruits refusing to fight and turning over their weapons to Shiite insurgents mirrored one Marine’s description of outright corruption of Sunni commanders who sold weapons to insurgents. This Marine was disgusted with the “dog and pony show” of the Iraqi military, which is clearly not motivated to defend U.S. imperialism. These experiences provoked him to ask, “What the hell am I doing here [in Iraq].”

The MFSO parent noted how his son couldn’t make a decent living after high school and thus enlisted. This anti-racist MFSO member expressed dismay that after boot camp his son was trained to “hate people he never met.” He said 85% of those killed in Iraq are civilians. His son suffers from PTSD after one tour in Iraq where, on burial detail, he had to collect body parts of deceased soldiers with whom he had trained. This parent stressed the need for everyone to actively oppose the war by reaching out to active-duty soldiers.

The Q and A session revealed the uneven development among these vets. One panelist opposed the war in Iraq but not Afghanistan. Asked about the draft, one vet answered, “Draft all college-age Republicans,” which drew a laugh. Several vets supported a draft as a “wake-up call.” That position is based more on frustration than a real commitment to national service of any kind that’s promoted by the current presidential candidates. A few vets attacked imperialism as a system and opposed any wider wars or military call-up.

The potential for a revolutionary worker/soldier/student alliance was evident during these three brief hours. The panelists are part of the movement against imperialist war, which will ultimately require the fight for a world devoid of profiteers and exploitation. Such forums for political struggle are steps toward that goal.

Gazans Break Out of Their Prison

On January 23, Palestinians in Gaza blew up a section of the wall that separates them from Egypt and poured out of their prison — created by Israeli rulers — to buy desperately needed goods in Egypt. The flood of people seeking food, medicine and fuel was there for all the world to see, and neither Israel nor Egypt has dared to rush in to stop it.
After 38 years of occupation and settlements, Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip in September 2005, claiming to have ended its occupation and any responsibility for the 1.4 million Palestinian residents. In reality, Israeli rulers turned Gaza into a giant concentration camp, controlling all passage of goods and people, money, access to the sea and air space.

Before the “disengagement,” 65% of Gazans lived in poverty and 35% were unemployed. Since then conditions have deteriorated markedly, with the cutoff of all trade and severe limitations on the import of fuel, medicine and other necessities. Sanitation, housing, public health and all public services are now at a disastrous level.

Palestinians’ anger at Israel and the corrupt Palestinian Fatah party allowed the electoral victory of Hamas, an Islamic nationalist party, and its takeover of Gaza in 2006. Israel used this event and the abduction of an Israeli soldier as the excuse to launch a constant air bombardment of Gaza, killing over 400 Palestinians, militants and civilians alike. Gazans have fired homemade rockets into Israel border towns, killing less than 20 Israelis. However the Western capitalist press and politicians have branded “Palestinian terrorism” as the reason a “peaceful solution” cannot be reached.

However, the real reason there’s no solution is that since 1948 Israel has seized more than 80% of Palestinian land, expelling 750,000 Arabs from their homes and subjecting them to 60 years of brutal occupation. Israel has been able to maintain this oppression only because of massive U.S. military aid, more than sent to any other country. This helps the U.S. control the flow of oil, and its profits, in the Persian Gulf area, using the powerful Israeli military to deal with any rival bosses who might threaten Exxon-Mobil’s empire.
Within Israel the status quo is justified by bitter anti-Arab racism which is drilled into all its citizens, who seem not to have learned the lesson of the holocaust about racism’s evil and murderous nature.

Unfortunately currently there is no leadership in Israel or Palestine which champions the unity of Palestinian and Jewish workers and students and recognizes the need to oppose both imperialism and nationalism. Neither secular nor religious nationalism will deliver either Jewish or Palestinian workers and youth from the grip of leaders who use them to benefit one or another group of power- and wealth-seeking ruling classes. In the recent past such multi-racial groups have existed, some with the help of our Party. We must strive to rebuild the fight for multi-racial unity and communism in this region.