Tag Archives: Zionism

What future for Palestine?

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What is going to happen to Palestine?  The sense that the catastrophic situation is almost hopeless and that nothing can be done is reflected in the short video by the Scottish blogger Craig Murray. The question was addressed from a Marxist viewpoint in Boffy’s Blog and we are obliged to consider whether he is he right about the future of the Palestinian cause.  We can start to do this by looking at what is currently happening and what the past has to tell us about how we got here.

The invasion of Gaza was for months defended as ‘Israel’s right to self-defence’, with no one appearing on television being allowed to open their mouth before it being demanded that they agree and condemn Hamas.  This ‘right’ was said to involve targeted strikes against Hamas and avoidance of civilian casualties, still claimed today by Zionist apologists but now with zero credibility.

It took no time at all before it became clear that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) invasion was an exercise in mass murder, with the specific targeting of journalists who could report on it, aid workers who could feed the besieged population and medical staff who could treat the sick and wounded.  It was claimed that hospitals were not being attacked and were not going to be attacked until now there are effectively none left.  The targeting of journalists, aid workers and medical staff had its rationale in defending lies, starving the population and targeting the sick and injured so that nothing was out of bounds and no hope would remain.

Civilians, particularly children and women, became the main casualties in the ‘war against Hamas’. Advised by the IDF to move to ‘safe’ areas, they were then bombed.  Millions were forced to leave their homes that had been totally destroyed and made to move further and further south in what had all the appearance of ethnic cleansing.  Each atrocity merged into the next and the intensification of the viciousness of the IDF was made more cynical by the lies that accompanied each one of them.

The International Court of Justice found that there was a plausible case of genocide although the majority of world opinion had already arrived at this conclusion some time before and had demonstrated this though thousands of protests across the world.  The speed of the killing and the callousness of the Zionist state left no room for illusions as to what was being carried out.  

There was incredulity and horror when the death toll rose and rose to dwarf that of the Hamas attack on October 7th, while no crime seemed too atrocious for it not to be followed by something worse.  Liberal illusions that an ICJ judgment might stop or even moderate the killing were swiftly dashed as were vague expectations that the pogrom might expend itself. Many hoped that there would be some sign of it ending but such hopes were repeatedly dashed by each new greater atrocity.

The reaction of Western governments was to repeat Zionist lies about forty beheaded babies and systematic rape etc. and continue to plead ‘Israel’s right to self-defence’.  Biden went out in front by claiming to have seen the evidence and calling into question the number of dead Palestinians, the total of which is now many times the number he denied.  The Western media sought to sow distrust of the scale of the killing through mandatory reference to the source of the numbers coming from the ‘Hamas-run’ Health Ministry.

The Zionist state was clearly breaking international law, as is all Western state support for it.  This includes not only political cover but continued supply of weapons and ammunition; posting a naval armada around Gaza and beyond to defend it, and attacks on those such as the Houthis who carried out armed actions against Western shipping going to and from the Suez canal.

Far from attacking the forces that were committing genocide, a course of action no one in the world remotely expected, the US and British attacked those trying to stop it,  Upon unproven allegations by the Israeli state, already repeatedly shown as pathological liars , a dozen Western powers stopped their aid going into Gaza.  Now the inevitable famine is accelerating, food aid is blocked by the IDF and this week seven aid workers have been killed.  The acme of cynicism can be seen by the US dropping tiny amounts of aid from aircraft while supplying the bombs that the IDF drops to kill the same people. 

Each atrocity causes more dismay and outrage and each Zionist lie more anger and frustration as they are propagated by the Western media.  The majority of the world knows that what is happening in Gaza is genocide and that each atrocity leads not to a step back but to a new level of barbarity so that the word is no exaggeration.

No step has been too barbaric for the western powers to row back and sanction the Zionist state while ‘international law’ is exposed to be whatever these powers decide.  Reliance on the UN, always a liberal illusion, is exposed as so much handwringing. Who is going to impose sanctions and punishment?

The Arab regimes that were set to come to terms with the state of Israel before October 7th are dogs that have barely barked with no intention to bite.  Iran is keen to stay out of war and for its own state interests is wise to do so; its conflict with the US has been subject to agreed limits but Israel increasingly shows that these are not theirs and is attempting to provoke a wider conflict. Those with the mistaken belief that the Israeli state is somehow losing the existing ‘war’ might consider all this.

So, who else is going to stop the genocide because it is not over yet, and any pause–like every other Zionist imposed ‘peace’–will simply set the scene for the next war.  Even the declared objective of destroying Hamas is a project to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as in any way politically relevant, leaving nothing to prevent whatever next steps the Zionist state decides to take.  In the West Bank the repression of the Palestinians has accelerated as more land is expropriated and the Zionist settlers are allowed to do the IDF job for it, egged on by a Government of rabid racists and fascists.  The remaining Palestinians within Israel will suffer more discrimination and oppression. 

Knowing this, the answer to the question – what is going to happen to Palestine? – is that the objective of politically crushing Palestinian resistance of any sort will continue and all and every measure will be employed as the Zionist state, supported by the US, to achieve this objective.  The population of Israel has moved sharply to the right and is now dominated by rabid racism, leaving even ‘liberal’ Zionism and those calling for peace small and isolated.

With the continued support of Western imperialism the Zionist state will continue its policy of erasure of the Palestinian people so that no state of their own can be realistically conceived. The so-called ‘two-state’ solution has been dead since it was first proposed by the United Nations in 1947 and then buried by the Zionist movement alongside the occupations by Egypt and Transjordan. The current genocide is perfectly consistent with the Zionist project and its enactment going back to this time and before.  The extreme brutality and targeting of civilians is nothing new, as is the disproportionate violence inflicted following any form of Palestinian resistance.  The supremely cruel and brutal response after October 7th could not be unexpected.  It has stretched the previous murderous violence of the Zionist state but it is not qualitatively different from the policy of ethnic cleansing upon which the Zionist state was first constructed.

That this state has been able to so openly flout the pretences of the Western powers to defend human rights and lawful behaviour is because the Zionist state is an outpost of Western imperialism itself; it is its son of a bitch.  Israel relies on this imperialism, especially the US.  Who can the Palestinians rely on that can weigh against the overpowering position of the Zionist state when it has this support?

It is obvious that by themselves the Palestinians cannot win an independent state and that the solidarity movement cannot make the difference unless it were able to neuter the intervention of the Western powers. This might allow the workers and poor of the Arab world to join together to overthrow their own regimes and the Zionist state. Is there any sign that the support of Western imperialism has been in any way significantly damaged?

Let’s take the example of our own county: Ireland is supposed to be a beacon of support for the Palestinian cause but what is its contribution to the prevention of genocide?  The UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese put it plainly and honestly:

‘There’s this tendency to be very supportive with rhetoric, as Ireland has, but when it comes to taking concrete actions, there is zero. Not a little. Zero. The countries that have been most outspoken, like Ireland, what have they done in practice? Nothing. And this is shameful. It is disgraceful.’

Talk is cheap and the talk from many political forces in Ireland is very cheap, and they have not been challenged.  Without challenge the cheap talk will continue until it is realised that those speaking it are part of the problem, not simply some inadequate or unsatisfactory opposition.

Socialists have an aphorism that the main enemy is at home, and this applies to those in solidarity with the Palestinian people, because the states that ensure Zionism can get away with genocide are the same states in which they live.  The task therefore is not to plead with these states to stop Israel or to believe that some sort of pressure will do the job but to oppose their own states and build towards their own revolution.

If the solidarity movement really believes that genocide is being carried out, then it must face the reality of what has happened and accept all the consequences the word entails for its victims: ‘the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group’.  In the West the potential alternatives to two of the main supporters of this genocide are President Trump and Prime Minister Starmer, just as rabidly pro-Zionist, if not more so, than Genocide Joe and Sunak.  This is more or less the case across the Western capitalist world.  

In Ireland Sinn Fein sups with the devil on St Patricks day while being treated as part of the solidarity movement. Everyone is to boycott Israel but Sinn Fein is permitted to party with those providing the weapons through which the massacre is carried out. A solidarity movement that accepts such actions is not a solidarity movement at all. We don’t need a movement that accepts the hypocritical claims of concern from those responsible for genocide and excuses those who similarly express weasel words of sympathy while being careful not to challenge those behind the slaughter.

If a genocide supported by every bourgeois political force in Western capitalism does not teach the movement that this alliance as a whole is the enemy then expressions of solidarity will go no further than demonstrating opposition and an inability to do anything about it. What is required is not pressure, because what is the price to be paid for ignoring it? it is not simply disavowal of the current leaders, because the alternatives standing by as replacement are no better. And it is not BDS, because imperialism has made it clear that far from boycotting Israel it is supporting it and will continue to do so. It is not the working class that controls the societies and economies of imperialism, its investment and trade, so it is not we who will determine what relationships imperialism will have with the Zionist state. Such victories as the BDS movement might have can only be steps towards the organisation of something more fundamental that points towards taking control out of the hands of the capitalist class.

Building a working class alternative to all these forces is required in order for pressure to be threatening, for displacement of current political leaders to be meaningful, and for actions against links with the Zionist state to become an instrument towards the working class taking control.

All the liberal institutions of this world have been exposed, and so have the spurious claims on behalf of an alternative capitalist alliance formed around China and Russia; as if they represent something radically different that will stop what is happening.

If there is another road besides organising a working class movement for socialism that defeats imperialism and its allies then what is it? And if it does not yet exist do we build it or accept the consequences of genocide?

Solidarity with Palestine

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Thousands of Moroccans take part in a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, in Rabat, Morocco on October 15, 2023. [Mosa’ab Elshamy/AP Photo]

Immediately after the Hamas attack the political leadership of the Israeli state made it clear that the rules of war were to be ‘abolished’ and their fight was against “human animals.”  The bombing of Gaza and the blockade on fuel and water entering it is a clear war crime, involving collective punishment on a whole population that can have only catastrophic results.

While Netanyahu threatened that “what we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations”, Western leaders sanctioned the unfolding ethnic cleansing by endorsing Israel’s ‘right to self-defence’, writing it a blank cheque that would be written in blood.  The language of the West was scarcely less uncompromising than that of Israel itself.

In the last couple of days these western leaders have recovered their composure and have reverted to their customary lies and hypocrisy, still supporting the Israeli offensive but calling for it to respect international law.  In doing so they still stand by the Israeli demand that half the Gaza population move south so that its army can occupy the North. Its fig leaf of concern is expressed in the call for Egypt to open up the border crossing into its territory to allow Palestinians to escape the pogrom.  There is no call for Israel to open up the border crossings into Israel itself, exposing their newly found humanitarianism as a cover for ethnic cleansing.

Their shift to sanctimonious and empty rhetoric from open and eager endorsement of war crimes does not stem from a sudden awareness of the scale of Zionist revenge but from the revulsion of many in the West and in the rest of the world to the Israeli pogrom.  They thought that abhorrence at the Hamas slaughter and the propaganda of the mainstream media would allow them to subdue and intimidate opposition to Israeli revenge, which many understand is simply an extension of the existing policy of destruction of the Palestinian population.

In Britain, Germany and especially France, governments took steps to threaten and ban demonstrations in support of the Palestinian cause, which over the weekend have failed.  Almost the whole spectrum of bourgeois political opinion showed itself out of touch with much of its population – open endorsement of the brutality of the Zionist state was not acceptable.  A too open display of hypocrisy could not be allowed to congeal and become hardened into real comprehension of their rulers’ policy and the bias of its propaganda vehicles.  European workers were already paying for the war against Russia in Ukraine and the promotion of support for the war and sacrifices imposed by it might be further weakened if the Israeli invasion was portrayed as legitimate and ‘good’ while the Russian was indefensible and ‘bad’.

The change of language however has not involved a change in policy, except in one respect.  A further reason for the row back from open endorsement of the Zionist pogrom is the fear expressed by some security figures in the West that the invasion of Gaza is a Hamas trap, one that the Israeli military is not prepared for.  However, the far-right Zionist government has a policy of destroying any threat posed by the Palestinian population and has rejected concessions or even negotiations.  It therefore has its own imperative to destroy all Palestinian independent capacity for resistance and will consider that the history of the Zionist state shows what it can get away with, while its current political credibility and integrity requires its own massive level of retribution.

Western imperialist interests undoubtedly align with the settler colonial Zionist state, but the US political leadership had also thought that it had achieved remarkable stability in the region because it had been making some success of the more open alignment of the reactionary Arab regimes with Israel.  The fear expressed by it now is that the war will escalate and spread if the Zionist state provokes resistance sufficient either to endanger a quick victory, or to encourage or involve other fronts in the war, in Lebanon or Syria for example.

The stability of imperialism in the region, including also of the Zionist state, requires the stability of the reactionary Arab regimes; the too open and violent destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza may provoke their populations to action and weaken the whole authoritarian structure across the Arab world.

The future of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people does not therefore ultimately rest in the ‘Palestinian resistance’ (by which in today’s context means Hamas), but in the working classes of the whole Arab world plus Iran.  The Arab Spring and the mass demonstrations in Iran show the potential and the reality of their power.  They are the primary force that can destroy the reactionary Arab regimes that base their political stability on the subjugation of their own people and the quiescence and submission of the Palestinian population.

The Palestine solidarity movement should not politically endorse the ‘Palestinian resistance’, as code for Hamas or Fatah, but should oppose their own countries’ protection of the Zionist state and their threats to the Arab populations of other countries.  Not only should it oppose the blockade and invasion, but in the US and Britain it should demand that their escalation of the war-drive, under the hypocrisy of ‘de-escalation’, should be ended and that their war ships get out of the Mediterranean Sea.  Having exposed themselves for their too-open support for Zionist terror it should be understand that their purpose is to further support the Zionist state.

Solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere requires support not simply with them, but with the working class in the whole region, the only force which has not collaborated with western imperialism and the Zionist state and which will have to overthrow its own states in the process of overthrowing the Zionist one.

Solidarity with the Palestinian people

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“Shock” was the first word in ‘The Economist’ article following the Palestinian armed uprising in Gaza and Israel.  “Hamas must be made to pay for its atrocities” it exclaimed.

‘The Irish Times’ editorialised about the “appalling atrocities committed by Hamas” while stating that Israel is “not known for being proportionate or well-targeted”, which isn’t actually true.  The point of the violence of the Israeli state is complete suppression of the Palestinian population through violence and terror in which routine oppression is merely a background condition.  Its actions are proportionate to this objective and its targets are well suited to its aims.

The immediate question for the BBC was ‘how could Israel have let this happen?’  Not ‘How did it make this happen?’  How did its renowned intelligence services fail to predict it?  Not, how did they not understand that something like this was almost inevitable?

Immediately the viewer and reader is placed in the shoes of the Israeli citizen with the Palestinians as the ‘other’– one element of the stench of hypocrisy that hangs over Western commentary.  No ‘shock’ is ever recorded over the daily humiliation, oppression and murder of Palestinians by the Israeli state.  We never hear that ‘Israel must be made to pay for its atrocities’. In reality, the claimed failures of the Israeli security state to be sufficiently on top of the Palestinian people, and the “shock’’ of the “appalling atrocities committed by Hamas”, presage only more not very “proportionate or well-targeted” attacks on the open prison that is Gaza.

All the handwringing and dismay from imperialist politicians and commentators simply lay the ground for another round of Israeli terror, accompanied by sanctimonious and ineffectual declarations of ‘lack of proportionality’ and ‘targeting errors’– by those who have supported the Zionist State and its previous many ‘errors’ and ‘lack of proportion’.  The response by this state will be vicious and widespread but the media will not record this as the inevitable intensification of an existing policy that they have previously sanitised, by a state based on sectarian exclusivity and suppression of a whole people that is treated as almost less than human.  It will be considered only as unfortunate, not least for the democratic pretensions of the sectarian and racist state itself.

The US sponsor of the Israeli state, and its imperialist policing role in the region, has said it will send a carrier strike group in solidarity.  This too is a signal that the Israeli state can take the same response as the US did to what it calls its 9/11 – widespread demonisation of everyone it considers its enemy and inflicting overwhelming power against them.

The disparity of forces between the Israeli state, backed by imperialism, and Hamas and the Palestinian population means that a veritable massacre is inevitable.  Whatever about the audacity and bravery of those Palestinians who have joined Hamas and shaken the arrogance of the Israeli state, they cannot win.  It has been speculated that the uprising is a result not only of the growing desperation of the Palestinian people faced with increased dispossession and repression, but is also aimed at thwarting the moves to normalise relations between the Israeli state and some Arab regimes, particularly Saudi Arabia.  

However, whatever difficulties the uprising will create for this process, Saudi Arabia will not protect the Palestinian people from the Israeli onslaught. Saudi Arabia has interests separate and opposed to the creation of a democratic state, one that could promise an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people and of the deepening sectarian reaction among the Jewish population.

This population must learn that freedom and democracy for the Jewish people cannot be created by a state structured on imprisonment and oppression of the Palestinians.  The shift to extreme reaction and racism, including fascist-type figures in the government, is not accidental but the logic of an exclusionary state that will oppress not only those it seeks to exclude but police and repress democratic voices within. 

The first task for socialists across the world is to demonstrate against the mounting Israeli pogrom and show solidarity with the Palestinian people.  The uprising cannot succeed but its power will ultimately derive not from its temporary military successes but from the confidence given to the Palestinian people, exposure of the causes of the uprising and demonstration of the impossibility of peace or security in the region built upon Palestinian suppression.

This is the task of those seeking democratic advances in the region; not reliance on reactionary Arab regimes that have time and time again revealed themselves to be enemies of their own people never mind also of the Palestinians.  At some stage, when Israel has completed its immediate retaliation, the call will go up for negotiations, negotiation’s that have previously covered up for continued implementation of a settler colonial solution.

Solidarity must oppose the continued imposition of this ‘solution’ and argue for a democratic and secular state that can freely include Palestinian and Jewish populations.   This can only arise from opposition to Zionism and the Zionist state, which manifest the racist policy that justifies and implements Palestinian oppression.  Neither can it come from the reactionary Arab states or from Iran, which promote a politicised Islam in various forms in order to oppress their own people.  This is also true for the fundamentalist forces within the Palestinian people themselves: support for the democratic rights of the Palestinian people does not require that we endorse or support reactionary forces within them.

Neither Zionism or Islamism can unite the Jewish and Palestinian people, which cannot be done through the chimera of a separate state for both – the two state solution – but can ultimately only be achieved by the resurgence of a working class movement across the region.

The first step to this is opposition to the repression of the Israeli state, most immediately its mounting all-out war on the population of Gaza.  The Jewish population of Israel must be addressed by pointing to the results of years of repression by the Zionist state that has failed to protect them but has become more and more undemocratic within.  They cannot oppose the slide to authoritarian rule within the Israeli state while supporting it against the Palestinian people.