“We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinians] never do return … The old will die and the young will forget.” – David Ben Gurion, First Prime Minister of Israel*
I. THE WAR ON GAZA
Genocide of the Palestinians
On October 7, Hamas, in coordination with numerous other armed Palestinian groups launched the Al-Aqsa flood operation. Within hours, the Palestinian fighters had seized swaths of Israeli territory surrounding Gaza, captured IDF military equipment, breached the border fence, and captured numerous hostages. The mood amongst many supporters of the Palestinian liberation cause was jubilant – such a coordinated and precise strike by the oppressed Palestinians of Gaza and their apparent rapid success fed into a feeling of triumph and excitement. This elation quickly dissipated as the IDF rapidly regained all the territory Hamas had captured, followed by a full blockade of Gaza including the cutting off of electricity and the restriction of aid shipments. [1] Then the bombing began.
In the month since October 7, Israel has dropped 18,000 tonnes of bombs [2], largely on civilians. The staggering and heart-shattering death toll as of November 6 has passed 10,000 – 4,800 of them children.[3] The bombings have continued unabated, with Israel launching airstrikes on hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and residential centers not only indiscriminately but as an objective. Horrific sights of rubble, blood, and seemingly endless corpses have been broadcast for the world to see the sheer brutality of Israel’s imperialist genocide on the Palestinian people. There is no indication as to the end of Israel’s bombings, each night in the nearly month since the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation has seen rampant, intensifying airstrikes. Darkly, Israeli officials have adopted the language of genocide: the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated on October 9 “We are fighting human animals” [4]; Prime Minister Netanyahu characterized the conflict as a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” [5] This current act of genocide against the Palestinian people represents the most severe step Israel has taken in its imperialist conquest in decades.
Israel has called for 1.1 million residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south of the Gaza Strip, a scale of displacement of Palestinians that goes beyond even the Nakba in 1948 where 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced. The scale of the brutality, the wanton destruction and the barbaric Zionist project have been laid horrifyingly bare for the world to see since the bombing began.
Source: By Al Araby, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138778645
The Knife’s Edge
The IDF began its ground invasion of Gaza in the final days of October, fully encircling Gaza City in the northern part of the Gaza Strip by November 3. Intense fighting continues on the ground in Gaza between Hamas and other Palestinian liberation fighters such as the PFLP, DFLP, and PIJ. The IDF is moving further into Gaza City, likely initiating a full-scale occupation and annexation of northern Gaza. Coupled with the outrageous atrocities being committed by Israel, the ground invasion has led to a breakdown in relations between Israel and other states. Bolivia, Honduras, South Africa, Colombia, and other countries have withdrawn their ambassadors from Israel. The “Axis of Resistance” – made up the Houthi government in Yemen, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon – and even Jordan have issued various threats of war against Israel should they expand their ground invasion. The US has moved multiple battleships to the region as the tensions between the Euro-Atlantic bloc (largely NATO member states) and the emerging Eurasian bloc reach a fever pitch in the region that has been a nexus of the competition between the imperialist powers for the past century.
Coupled with the ongoing inter-imperialist war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza threatens to boil over into a broader conflict in the region as the larger powers vie for hegemony over resources and trade routes in the region. As the Middle East and indeed the world teeters on the edge of an escalated conflict, the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are having their right to national self-determination vanquished and their people slaughtered by the Zionist genociders.
Source: https://www.farsnews.ir/photo/14020725000684/عکسهای-اختصاصی-فارس-از-غزه
II. ISRAEL IN THE IMPERIALIST SYSTEM
The Middle East has increasingly become a focal point for the imperialist powers seeking dominance over trade routes and access to valuable resources. In the aftermath of World War I the UK, in its post-war imperialist designs, sought to take full advantage of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. To secure their interests in the region, a pivotal step was taken with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 with which the UK established a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” This declaration marked a major milestone towards the eventual establishment of the Israeli state in 1948 – from the very inception of the Israeli state, the Zionist project was funded and militarily supported by the larger imperialist powers seeking to assert their dominance in the region.
Over the following decades, both the UK and the US have fervently supported the building and expansion of the Israeli state. Following the decline of the British Empire post-WWII, the US took over the role of Israel’s primary supporter. The geopolitical significance of Israel as a crucial ally to the US has been particularly evident in its active involvement in supporting US military campaigns against nations like Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Israel, in this context, becomes a key player in the broader imperialist agenda pursued by the Western powers. The United States has demonstrated its unwavering commitment to supporting Israel by supplying the country with upwards of $3.8 billion annually in military annually. [6]
The abundance of natural resources in the region and the centrality of the Middle East to key trade routes justifies the US backing Israel to the hilt. Without a permanent and powerful military and economic ally in the region, the US and EU could not fully safeguard their imperialist machinations: investments, raw materials, shipping routes. Joe Biden communicated clearly as far back as 1986, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”[7]
In our present moment, the imperialist competition in the Middle East is the result of growing tensions between the rising power of China and the waning power of the US. The Middle East is a centerpiece in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which challenges the dominance of the US-EU axis in Afro-Eurasia. In response, the US and the EU have sought to counter China’s expanding influence, demonstrated most evidently by the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). The success of the IMEC plan for the US-EU hinges on maintaining amicable relations between the major players in the Middle East, particularly between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel’s barbaric, genocidal response to the October 7 attack by Hamas put immense strain on relations in the region, impacting the delicate geopolitical balance. The normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia which had achieved significant progress in recent years must now reach an abrupt and indefinite pause.
Belt and Road Initiative, Source: https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/the-belt-and-road-initiative.html
The India-Middle East Economic Corridor, Source: https://apcoworldwide.com/blog/the-g20s-imec-initiative-an-alternative-trade-corridor-to-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative/
The US perceives Israel as a strategic outpost for economic and military interests, positioned at a critical juncture in the imperialist system. Situated at the center of the Afro-Eurasian continent, adjacent to key assets like the Suez Canal and oil-rich states such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Israel is therefore instrumental in the imperialist struggle for control over vital shipping routes, oil pipelines, and other essential resources. In this geopolitical chessboard, the US and its allies vie against the China-Russia-Iran axis, underscoring the intricate interplay of imperialist interests in the Middle East.
Underneath these machinations of all the imperialist powers involved in fighting one another for dominance over the region, the Palestinian people suffer the most devastating consequences – their lives, their culture, their homes, their children. As communists, we stand resolutely on the side of the Palestinian people in their struggle for national liberation against the genocidal Israeli occupation and their backers in the US-NATO-EU.
III. THE CWPUSA STANDS RESOLUTELY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
The CWPUSA Stands with Palestine
Our ultimate aim is the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist dictatorship, the installation of the working class as the new ruling class for the construction of socialism-communism. A central component of this larger struggle, in the context of Palestine, is our support, as communists, for national liberation. The Palestinian people have for decades now had their right to self-determination trampled over by the genocidal Zionist project of the Israeli state. Their resistance has taken a variety of forms and has been led largely by the PLO beginning in the late 1950s (with the founding of Fatah, the largest faction within the PLO) to the present and Hamas from the 1980s through today in Gaza.
As communists, we must support the righteous struggle of the Palestinian people for their liberation from Israeli conquest. Further, as communists, we must recognize that Hamas cannot represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people and cannot carry the liberation struggle to a complete end. For one, Hamas is a reactionary Islamist organization which does not aim to establish a secular socialist state and do away with private property relations, in fact Hamas’ financial and military support comes from the ruling classes of neighboring states with an interest in a weakened Israel – namely Iran, Lebanon and Syria. Moreover, the Israeli military-intelligence apparatus played a major role in the creation of Hamas. Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, Israel’s military governor in Gaza told a NYT journalist how he had provided finances to the Muslim Brotherhood movement (from which Hamas emerged) as an explicit counterweight to Palestinian Communists and the PLO. [8] This was not an error on the part of Israel decades ago, but an ongoing strategy, The Times of Israel reported as recently as 2020 that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dispatched Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and IDF Officer Herzi Halevi to Qatar to plead with Qatari leadership to continue sending funds to Hamas. [9] This is no secret, in 2019 Netanyahu stated to fellow Likud party members “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” [10] Hamas also is inconsistent in its aims, stating in its 2017 charter “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.” while also stating as their goal the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders – an endorsement of a two-state solution which has proven entirely unviable from since the genesis of the occupation. [11]
Nonetheless, our responsibility as communists is not to condemn Hamas or participate in shedding crocodile tears for their alleged atrocities on October 7 (for which evidence mounts daily of the IDF having been the main perpetrators of firing on their own citizens [12]). Rather, we communists must correctly analyze Hamas, its class character, and its role in the conflict within Palestine as well as the broader inter-imperialist conflicts as being ultimately detrimental to the cause of Palestinian liberation. The lack of unity in the movement that Israel has strategically pushed and that the Palestinians have yet to effectively overcome must be addressed if a successful, revolutionary strategy is to develop.
As Lenin stated in Socialism and War, “The Socialists of oppressed nations must, in their turn, unfailingly fight for the complete (including organizational) unity of the workers of the oppressed and oppressing nationalities. The idea of the juridical separation of one nation from another (so-called “cultural-national autonomy” advocated by Bauer and Renner) is reactionary.” The Israeli working class also suffers under the yoke of capitalist domination and their imperialist wars of conquest. Clearly, the disregard with which Israel treats its own citizens – killing their own civilians during their response to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7 and the unwillingness of the government to accept the hostages captured by Hamas – demonstrates that the Israeli ruling capitalist class treats its workers with great disregard as pawns in their game to climb the imperialist ladder. As communists, we must also point to the fact that the working class of Israel does not have its interests represented in the current capitalist government, and in fact their long term interests and desires for a dignified human existence free from the threat of war. Indeed, the struggle for a free Palestine from the river to the sea cannot be realized without linking the Israeli and Palestinian working class in a common struggle to overthrow their common enemy: the ruling capitalist class of Israel.
Only Socialism-Communism Can Bring an End to the Ongoing Genocide
In the US and around the world, masses of people have responded to the events in Gaza with righteous rage and fervent action. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands in London and Washington, millions in Indonesia and Pakistan, and so many more around the world have flooded the streets. Trade union workers in Spain and Belgium have refused to load weapons shipments to Israel. In India, tens of thousands of trade union workers have refused to be complicit in agreements that would replace Palestinian workers with Indian workers in Israel. [13] Strikingly, in the US thousands of activists have escalated their tactics by occupying media company lobbies, blocking entrance to weapons contractor’s offices, stopping traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, and most notably attempting to block a boat carrying arms shipments to Israel from leaving port in Tacoma, WA.
The energy of this exploding movement is clearly deeply felt by the working class the world over. However, such spontaneous actions – no matter how great in number or seemingly radical in their aesthetic as they may be – simply cannot threaten the capitalist class’ interests or force them to move an inch. As detailed before, the capitalist-imperialist classes in both camps (US-EU and China-Russia-Iran) have competing interests which they can only resolve at the expense of the Palestinian people and the working class of Israel and surrounding countries. The United States out of naked self-interest must support Israel’s genocide to completion to guarantee the Israeli state’s unwavering loyalty in the region that is absolutely critical to US monopolies accessing cheap oil and vital trade routes. The ruling class will happily permit a march of 300,000 people in their capitol as this does not threaten the flow of capital, does not interrupt the generation of profits. There is only one way to bring the capitalists to heel: organized working class power. The capitalists derive their power not from their ability to walk through a street without being bothered by protests, their power is not in the least affected by their ability to go on social media without being bombarded by pro-Palestine messaging. While these tactics are crucial and important, those who truly believe in the righteous cause of Palestinian liberation must recognize that without working class power, without the leadership of a revolutionary communist party – these actions cannot threaten the power of the ruling class.
Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza heightens the urgency with which we in the United States must build a revolutionary communist party which will organize and lead the working class in mounting an offensive to combat the evils of the ruling capitalist class and their genocidal plans. Had the boat and port workers at Tacoma been organized with the organizational discipline and political consciousness a revolutionary communist party provides, the shipment of bombs may have been halted – how many Palestinian lives would have been saved then? The courageous Palestinians are standing up against Goliath – not only Israel but its backers in the US and EU. We as communists must support the Palestinian people in word and deed, and advocate for their struggle for national liberation which can only be achieved by the establishment of socialism. Our responsibility, our duty to this noble struggle in our country is to carry forward the fight for socialism. For the ruling capitalist class the answer to the question “How many more Palestinians must die?” is in fact “All of them.” So long as there is a capitalist class in the US, the US will have a material interest in the decimation of Palestine. Only the establishment of socialism-communism, the revolutionary seizure of state power by the working class, can halt military aid to Israel.
We must not limit our demands to a ceasefire, but demand an end to the occupation and ethnic cleansing, the ceasing of all military and financial aid from the US to the genocidal state of Israel, and the recognition of Palestinian statehood. We reiterate our call to the working class especially those employed in logistics industries involved in military shipments to boycott the supply of these armaments. We encourage all students to discuss, agitate, and organize actions on their universities to combat Israeli presence on campuses. We call on all members of the working class to mobilize in their workplaces and unions to support the Palestinian cause. Most crucially, the Communist Workers’ Platform USA calls on the working class to join the effort to build the communist party, guided by the revolutionary theory of Marxism Leninism!
FOR A FREE PALESTINE!
THE RESISTANCE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE WILL WIN!
BUILD THE COMMUNIST PARTY!
Footnotes
*https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/12/israel1
- https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/fact-sheet-israel-and-palestine-conflict-9-october-2023
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/3/analysis-israels-gaza-bombing-campaign-is-proving-costly-for-israel
- Gaza: Death toll surges to over 9,770 as Israel’s genocide persists
- https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-defence-minister-orders-complete-siege-on-gaza
- https://www.businessinsider.com/netanyahu-deleted-children-of-darkness-post-gaza-hospital-attack-2023-10
- https://sgp.fas.org/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
- https://theconversation.com/biden-says-the-u-s-would-have-to-invent-an-israel-if-it-didnt-exist-why-210172
- Shipler David K., Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land; Chapter 4, Religious Absolutism: Isaac and Ishmael
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-chief-top-general-visited-qatar-begged-it-to-pay-hamas-liberman-says/
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjamin-netanyahu-hamas-israel-prime-minister#:~:text=In%20March%202019%2C%20Netanyahu%20told,Palestinians%20in%20the%20West%20Bank.%E2%80%9D
- https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
- https://new.thecradle.co/articles/survivor-of-hamas-assault-says-israeli-army-undoubtedly-killed-their-own-civilians
- https://bdsmovement.net/Palestinian-Trade-Unions-Call-On-Indian-Workers
