by the Editorial Board
The state of Israel has once again exposed itself before the world as a vicious dog, soaked snout to tail in the blood of Palestinians, over 10,000 killed so far, snarling and poised to murder many more. While the question of putting such a dog down is painfully apparent, it is necessary to talk about who holds the leash—who trained, fed, and rewarded this monster. The responsibility for 75 years of occupation, war, and genocide carried out by the Israeli state against the people of the entire region lays at the feet of mainly
US imperialism.
There are those who have mustered up the minimum humanity needed to oppose the genocide being carried out by Israel but do so half-heartedly, simultaneously decrying Palestinian violence. It is arrogance in the extreme for those living without occupation, in relative luxury, to dictate the terms by which the world’s oppressed deliver their counter-offensive blows. There can be no moral outrage for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The moral position is to uphold it as an example of a people fighting against their own extermination.
Al-Aqsa Flood, and more generally the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people and their best fighters, have exposed the main contradictions in the world today through action. Let us begin looking at these.
The Contradiction Between Imperialism and Nations Oppressed by Imperialism
Palestine is a nation oppressed by imperialism, dominated and occupied by the state of Israel, which itself is dominated by the imperialists, mainly by the United States. Israel’s economy is dominated by “foreign aid,” which is anything but aid, and is in fact the manner in which the imperialists prefer to dominate a people. Aside from “aid,” the role of US finance capital is prevalent in the Israeli economy. Since Israel was formed by British and US imperialism in the age of imperialism it never developed as a capitalist democracy, but instead as a deformed military compound strategically set to terrorize the region.
This stunted development as a semi-colony is reflected in its lack of bourgeois democratic constitution and freedoms. Of particular note are the recent mass protests against the ruling government’s judicial reform aimed at further reactionization and concentration of power in the executive branch and the current economic shock imposed on the people with the unfolding of the genocidal war. There is also an ongoing crackdown on Israeli citizens who oppose the war, with a proposal to strip people of their citizenship for their political opinions. This is in addition to mass arrests and firings of teachers and workers in Israel and persecution of students for allegedly stating support for “Hamas terrorism.”
For their part, the Palestinians have been at war against imperialist oppression since it was forced upon them by their British colonizers. The Palestinian people have engaged in over 75 years of war, mass rebellions, and organized resistance that have inspired the world. The Palestinian struggle for national liberation is the expression of the oppressed nations rising up as the base force in the world proletarian revolution. Al-Aqsa Flood has proven to the world a simple fact: no matter how much you surveille the people, no matter how much you turn their cities into a ghetto, into an apparatus of despair, drown them in blood and crush them with poverty, you are not safe to enjoy your ill-gained comforts. The oppressed can and will rise to strike incredible blows; they will plan in spite of being in the most surveilled place on earth, and have the courage to die fighting rather than live in chains. This is a lesson that is always taught by the masses and the fighters in the oppressed nations. It was taught in Vietnam, it was taught in Afghanistan and many other places—the military might of the tyrant only appears strong and impervious if it is not hit. Al-Aqsa Flood is the material of the most courageous ghetto uprising, of the most relentless slave revolt. All people of an honest heart can relate to it. In the propaganda sense, it has already proven a moral and political victory. It has inspired the world’s people to stand with Palestine.
On the military level, the Flood is also a victory. The neutralizing of several military bases, conquering settlements, and the taking of hundreds of prisoners sends a clear military message and exposes the lies of Israeli protection for its settlements. At the same time, the resistance understands well that Israel values one Israeli more than 1,000 Palestinians, and has leverage now to obtain the release of the nearly 10,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The popularity of this demand, as well as the growing dissent, prove that the Israeli occupation and its imperialist overlords are not as united as the resistance itself.
It is mainly the threat of block by block and room by room resistance of the Palestinian people, old and young, men and women, sick and healthy, which promotes a ceasefire on Israel and increases the pressure raised by even Israelis for a prisoner exchange. This cannot be seen as the end of the war, but the turning of sequence within it.
Finally, the solidarity shown to the Palestinian people has been overwhelming, most notably in the third world nations oppressed by imperialism. Hundreds of protesters in Turkey attempted to storm a US military base on November 4. Resistance fighters in Yemen have launched long-range missiles at Israel with a technical prowess surprising to the imperialists. Armed resistance in Lebanon has steadily exchanged fire across the border with Israel. Armed groups have attacked US military bases in Syria and Iraq dozens of times since October 7, leading to the death of at least one US military contractor. In the West Bank, Palestinian resistance groups have attacked Israeli military checkpoints and provided armed defense for mass protests from settler and Israeli army attacks.
recognize US imperialism to be the main enemy of the world’s people. Photo: AP
While reactionaries make apology for Zionism, seeking to sanitize it to some level of global acceptability, the International Communist League issued a powerful call to progressives, democratic people, and revolutionaries: “Raise a great support and solidarity campaign to the armed struggle of national resistance of the Palestinian people, by broadly mobilizing the masses in its defense, and to carry out forceful actions against the diplomatic, commercial, and other representations of the state of Israel and of Yankee imperialism.”
The Flood was not a suicidal act, or an act of a caged animal lashing out madly. This is the demagoguery of the imperialist states. In reality, the operation met several military and political objectives: the staving off of further diplomatic ties between the Arab countries and Israel; resisting the process of normalization for occupation that the imperialists desire; uniting millions of people around the world to raise the banner of Palestinian liberation; shattering the myth that imperialism and their lackeys are invincible, proving that, despite their facade, reactionaries bleed and die like anyone else; and shattering the myth that high tech weapons and surveillance make armed struggle a thing of the past or a radical illusion. These must be counted among the invaluable contributions that the Palestinian resistance and struggle for national liberation is making to the world revolution at this time.
The Contradictions Among the Imperialists
The events transpiring since October 7th have sown division among the imperialists themselves. This fact makes itself clear when “experts” in the United Nations denounce the targeting of civilians in Gaza, the use of chemical weapons, and the illegal blockades carried out by Israel. Imperialist in Chief Biden panders to the sentiment among other imperialist powers when uttering platitudes about “uphold[ing] the laws of war” in spite of the fact that Israel has never once upheld international laws regarding war crimes. Like Biden, the imperialist leader Putin began by denouncing the Palestinian resistance, only going a bit harder on the Israeli response. He traffics in the blood of Palestinians in order to point out the mud on his rival’s face, all while sitting on a pile of corpses himself.
The Chinese social-imperialists talk about a “two-state solution” while jostling for hegemony in the Middle East. China is among the top imperialist investors in Israel, behind the US. It has called Hamas “a resistance group,” breaking from the trend of the other imperialists, while positioning itself to increase its influence in the Middle East and North Africa.
The US imperialist ruling class remains united in funneling gigantic amounts of funding for genocide, but nonetheless quarrel among themselves over how to do it. The Democrats, who must seriously be understood as the party for war, wish to expand the financing of war in the Ukraine as well. This should surprise no one who can remember that Biden’s biggest supporters in his presidential campaign were the heads of the arms and war industries—they picked the right horse.
More important than the minor secondary disagreements between the factions of the US ruling class is the fact that events since October 7th have caused the political grip that the US has on its third world “allies” to diminish, which further exacerbates contention with the other imperialists. Turkey, which often acts as the other US watchdog in the region was the only NATO member to recall its ambassador to Israel. Bolivia, Honduras, Colombia, Chile, Bahrain, Jordan, and South Africa, all nations oppressed by imperialism, have also withdrawn their ambassadors from Israel.
The Contradiction Between the Imperialist States and Their Own Populations
The contradiction between the people and the imperialist countries has intensified as a direct result of the Palestinian resistance. In the US, mass street protests had seldom been seen under Biden’s term as president, and this has been rapidly transformed by the hundreds of thousands who took up solidarity with the Palestinian people. The imperialists own ideological apparatus has found itself in a crisis situation regarding the student movement. Especially universities in the US, relying on a postmodern curriculum, have been confronted by the very hypocrisy inherent in that decomposed ideology. Students are being taught about “decolonization” by universities that have direct financial ties to the colonization of Palestine.
Students have unleashed a torrent of anger in support of ending the occupation. In response, the institutions have, as servants of US imperialist interests, begun collaborating on blacklists, blocking students from getting jobs in their field of study if they have been active in Palestinian solidarity. The imperialist state has doubled down on its insistence that anyone fighting for solidarity with Palestine needs to capitulate to denouncing the resistance, a political position clearly in the interests of US imperialism. The student movement has come into contention with the decomposition of liberal “free speech” as democratic rights are regularly being eroded in the interests of the US imperialist project known as Israel.
It is not only students in the US but also workers who have risen to the call. In response, agents of Zionism and imperialism have created networks of exposure in which they slander workers with pro-Palestinian views in hopes of costing them their jobs and limiting future job options.
Workers at Amazon and Google have pressured their bosses to take a stance in denouncing the genocide, while Starbucks has sued Starbucks Workers United for their issuance of a solidarity statement with the people of Palestine. Starbucks has a long record of supporting Zionism and was recently targeted by pro-Palestine demonstrations in Turkey. Any time that Labor speaks up politically in defense of its class abroad there are steep consequences.
In Washington state, unionized workers voted in favor of a resolution blocking weapons meant for Israel and raised struggle for the AFL-CIO to do the same, which the union bureaucrats denounced. In Texas, the Austin local 520 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers passed a resolution in support of signing a letter demanding a ceasefire. In Philadelphia, doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals have joined the protest movement, pointing out that Palestinians “have been facing violence on a daily basis for 75 years” as well as highlighting how Israel targets hospitals and children.
Massive demonstrations have taken place across the country, with a recent demonstration in Washington D.C. said to be the largest demonstration in favor of Palestine in US history, attracting over a hundred thousand people. In many cases, the masses engage in disruptive action against clear targets complicit in or directly connected to imperialism, attempting for instance to shut down arms shipments at the ports of Oakland and Tacoma. In response, the police have in numerous cases unleashed violent crackdowns on protests, in essence suspending free speech and the right to assembly.
The tyrannical and anti-democratic response of Germany and France have been even more glaring. In Germany, revolutionaries and the masses have on multiple occasions defied the ban on pro-Palestinian gatherings, have come under attack by the police, regrouped and returned the attack. The same played out in France, where police arrested dozens of people for supporting Palestine and fined over 1,000 more. The draconian laws passed by these states do nothing but foment the rage of the people who embody the slogan “It is right to rebel against reactionaries!”
In the imperialist countries of Denmark, Norway, Austria, UK, and others, the masses have likewise taken to the streets in great numbers to rebel and resist the genocide of the Palestinian people. Workers in the UK blockaded arms trucks of an Israeli arms firm, and Belgian airport workers are refusing to handle arms destined for Israel.
The masses of the imperialist countries still lag behind the level of organization and resistance demonstrated by the masses in the third world, notably in Middle Eastern countries as well as Brazil, India, Turkey and the Philippines, which have much stronger Communist and democratic leadership over the mass struggles.
Palestine and the Contradictions Among the People
The genocide of the Palestinian people, the justified rebellion and use of violence by the Palestinian resistance, and the question of tactics have opened vital debates and struggles among the people. The handling of disagreements between those who oppose Israel must be organized in a rational way to win more and more people to support the armed struggle, and to isolate the backward and imperialist elements that masquerade among them.
The order of first importance for the protest movement is answering the burning question of who are the friends and enemies of the Palestinian people, and who among them are principal. It is the position of The Worker that the number one enemy of the Palestinian people—and the people of the world—is the US imperialist ruling class. The basis for drawing support for the just rebellion of the Palestinian people against their ruthless Israeli occupiers is nothing less than organizing opposition to US imperialism, which is the armorer and master of Zionism and the reactionary Israeli state.
The contradictions among progressive democratic and revolutionary people in the US has manifested in splitting apart revisionist organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, where their left has recently scored a victory in demanding support for Palestine without apology. This has caused an uproar, with bourgeois media platforming leaders of the right who promote a sanitized Zionism in service of US imperialism, departing the organization and crying about so-called “Marxist-Leninist” plots and fractions.
All manner of debates have arisen between those who encourage support for armed struggle and those who seek a false and unprincipled peace in which the oppressed have violent means of resistance removed from their grasp. The big thing here is the role of revisionism, how it manages to pass criticism of those who resist while only formally denouncing the Zionist occupation.
There are large sections of the people who truly desire an end to the occupation who have yet to link imperialist oppression to the genocide in Palestine and as a result have confusion on the question of support for armed struggle. It serves nothing and no one to seek the respect and acceptability of the Zionists and imperialists; to pander to their respect means to pardon their atrocities. It is only through joint action in the pro-Palestinian solidarity movement that these comrades will learn why we communists and revolutionaries hate concealing our views and refuse to do anything less than showing support for armed struggle against reaction.
It has long been the position of the left that no struggle for national liberation can accomplish its goals without becoming a servant of another imperialist master unless it is lead by the communist party and carrying out new democratic revolution. This is still the case today, and it is easy to admit that in many cases groups like Hamas represent feudal and reactionary ideology. It is harder, and requires more maturity and understanding, to support them when they are leaders in the struggle against an imperialist aggressor and its armed lackey. Everything has two aspects, the main thing is this: armed struggle against imperialism must be supported because the national liberation struggles form the base of proletarian struggles internationally.
Armed struggle is the sole path of conquering power for the people; there is no other way. The issue is not simply “a humanitarian matter” but a matter of power, of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. In the absence of Communist leadership, groups will form and lead the struggles for national liberation which maintain a reactionary aspect in their character. Active elements among the people in the US opposing genocide must unite around opposition to imperialism, holding the government and the whole ruling class accountable for its role. In this struggle for unity, support for the right to armed struggle of all oppressed people is learned and enhanced.
We remind all comrades and fellow travelers that repression only calls forth greater resistance, that the world is boiling over, that the storm centers of the world revolution are the third world, and that resistance and rebellion will intensify—faced with all this, we can support it, organize ourselves to take our posts in it, or oppose it and be rendered a bad memory as the world marches forward.
photo: Hani Alshaer – Anadolu Agency
