We are now in the eight month of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. To date it has led to the deaths of more than 40,000 people, the vast majority of them women and children; the displacement of over a million people; the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and all hospitals and medical services in Gaza. It has also seen the steepest increase in malnutrition ever recorded, with the people of Gaza, particularly in the North, now in the midst of an Israeli manufactured famine.
While the wilful short-termism of mainstream politicians and media outlets pins the “cause” of the current genocide on the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas and other elements of the Palestinian resistance on Israeli military and civilian sites, the reality is that the cause(s) run much deeper. It is not the case that prior to 7 October there was some peaceful bliss in occupied Palestine, rather the Palestinian people have suffered under almost 100 years of settler colonial violence, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.
In a report in 2012 the UN had already concluded that, due to Israel’s blockade and aggression, Gaza would be unliveable by 2020. So, long before the 7 October attack, Palestinians, in Gaza, the West Bank, and inside Israel’s borders, were already subjected to the systematic violence, apartheid and injustice that is the logical consequence of a state founded on the racist, genocidal doctrine of ethno-supremacy that is Zionism.
Mass protests have been organised around the world in opposition to Israel’s criminal war, and to the complicity of Western states in it, and we have seen an unprecedented growth of pro-Palestinian sentiment, in spite of the entire political and media apparatus pursuing a broadly pro-Israeli line. These protests are crucially important, and they must continue with the core demand of an immediate ceasefire now. This is important because in our systems of low-intensity democracy, strong, consistent, public shows of solidarity with Palestine, and calls for peace in Gaza, will put pressure on the political class, and lend some modest succour to the Palestinians suffering under Israeli terror.
However, we should also be aware that the scale of the protests is provoking a telling response from the ruling classes and states that support Israel’s criminal war. In Britain for example, both the Conservative and Labour parties have been fully behind Israel and its “right to defend itself” (Israel has no such right). In spite of this, mass protests against the war in Gaza have continued, and polls show the majority of the British public want a ceasefire now. But because the political classes are so insulated from popular opinion, and committed to the maintenance of the global status quo, they are responding to this public anger by attempting to cast it as threatening, subversive or terroristic.
Under the veil of this confected threat, the government, with the complete support of Labour, is pushing further constraints on the already anaemic right to protest in Britain, and ramping up the role of the security services, police and MI5, to intimidate, infiltrate, and undermine the pro-peace/pro-Palestine movement. As such, while the war is taking place in Gaza and occupied Palestine, it reveals a lot about our domestic political and media institutions. Their inhumanity, systemic dishonesty, racism and abhorrence of democratic accountability, gives us a portent of the sort of tactics and threats we will face as we organise on a broad range of issues, from anti-austerity, to workers rights and climate breakdown, going forward.
But returning to the central issue of Gaza and Palestine. It is right that the immediate focus of all people of conscience should be on campaigning for an immediate ceasefire. But the longer goal must be Palestinian liberation. The cause of the current horrors in Gaza is not the attacks of 7 October, but rather the very fact of Israeli occupation and apartheid. Israel has, since its founding with the support of the British empire, been a central bulwark for global imperialism in the Middle East. This is why states and politicians in “the West” support Israel to the hilt – not because of some conspiracy or lobby (although Israel does undoubtedly have an extensive lobbying apparatus), but because Israel serves the interests of global imperialism, with the US at its centre.
Given the nature of Zionism, which is an ideology of racial and religious superiority, the Israeli state will always be on the offensive against the Palestinian people. This happens with the routine violence meted out by the state, the land grabs by settlers, the institutionalised system of apartheid, and the all too frequent military campaigns of extermination, such as the one we are seeing in Gaza now. Israel pursues these heinous policies knowing that it acts with impunity, because of the important role it plays for imperialism in the region.
As such, there is no possible peace in Palestine, without the dismantling of the existing Israeli apartheid regime, and full Palestinian liberation. Rise works with existing groups in Britain, and comrades in Palestine and around the world to advance this in whatever way we can. In the short term we call on people to support and get active with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to work within their unions to push the cause of Palestine, by, for example, getting their union to adopt the Workers in Palestine call. Beyond that we call for people to organise in their workplaces and wider community to advance the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and to organise events in solidarity with Palestine and to educate people about Palestine.
At a certain point, hopefully sooner rather than later, the horror of Israel’s current criminal assault on Gaza will come to an end, but the injustices that produce the conflict in occupied Palestine will continue until the structures of apartheid and colonialism are dismantled. There will be peace, but only when Palestine is free, from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Rise will work tirelessly to hasten the day.
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The Origins and Importance of May Day. On this May Day we send fraternal greetings and solidarity to the struggling working classes around the world and re-commit ourselves to the pursuit of working class liberation, socialism and world peace.
Capitalism, which dominates every aspect of our lives, is in terminal decline, it will limp from crisis to crisis, each one more devastating than the last.
It is clear to everyone that our society does not work for us all. Working class people, who produce the wealth, and without whom nothing works, have seen their wages, living standards and quality of life collapse. At the same time, the wealth of a tiny minority in society grows without restraint.
