Editorial: Smash imperialism and nationalism in Gaza

After more than 100 days and 29,000 bombs, the genocidal Israeli “Defense” Forces have leveled the Gaza Strip to an uninhabitable concrete graveyard. This U.S.-backed military is killing more than 250 civilians in Gaza every day, a higher rate than in any other conflict in this century (Aljazeera, 1/11). The death toll now surpasses 24,000, including over 10,000 children—more than one percent of Gaza’s population.

Genocide is the physical destruction of a group of people and the communities that knit them together—the classrooms where their children learn to read, the bakeries that make their daily bread. The families in Gaza who fight for survival each day are surrounded by rubble. More than two thirds of homes, schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, and olive groves have been decimated by the nonstop Zionist bombardment. Drinkable water, electricity, fuel, and medicine are scarce commodities (Wall Street Journal, 12/30/23). Since October, Israel’s criminal invasion has caused nine terrifying communications blackouts (New York Times, 1/12). Nine of ten people in Gaza, nearly half of them children, go without food for whole days. The United Nations is predicting famine—widespread starvation—by February (aljazeera.com, 12/23/23).

Israel’s devastation of infrastructure is an act of ethnic cleansing—to push all or most Arab workers out of Gaza altogether. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be entirely different” (msn.com, 1/5). The Israeli rulers’ most powerful argument for “resettlement” is to make Gaza uninhabitable. It’s a vicious, racist strategy enabled by arms and political cover from baby-killer Joe Biden and the capitalist rulers who run him. The U.S. bosses, led by the likes of ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, are the world’s most deadly state terrorists. Their heinous attack on workers in Palestine makes our task of organizing for communist revolution even more urgent.

U.S. bosses kill to protect profits
The catastrophe in Gaza is part of a larger battle between the U.S., European, and Israeli bosses, on one side, and rival imperialists in China and Russia, which back regional power Iran, on the other. The three-month-old conflict in the oil-rich Middle East is steadily expanding. In response to Iran-backed Houthi attacks on ships in the commercially and strategically vital Red Sea, the U.S. Army and its allies have bombed more than 30 sites inside Yemen. On January 16, Iran jumped directly into the simmering fray with missile strikes on neighboring Pakistan and Iraq, ostensibly in response to terrorist attacks within its borders. Iran-backed militias have also repeatedly targeted U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. interests in the region are so crucial to the bosses that they’re clamping down on their liberal stooges with a blunt message:  No criticism of Israel will be tolerated. Claudine Gay was forced to resign as president of Harvard University after her weak support for genocide offended wealthy Zionist donors. Like “the good Germans” who looked the other way in the face of the Nazis’ rise in Germany in the 1930s, liberal misleaders have stayed largely silent on the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. From Democratic Party politicians to union bosses and clergy, the overwhelming majority have fallen in line in support of genocide, if only by their silence. They have exposed their true allegiance to U.S. capitalism and the war and fascism that the profit system demands.

Hamas nationalism is poison for workers in Palestine
In Gaza, workers and their families are heroically resisting death and destruction. Medical workers go days without sleep to tend to the sick and injured. Families share whatever shelter they have. Relatives and friends take in orphaned children. Adults go without food and water to keep their children alive as they dodge the latest 2,000-pound bomb from Israeli planes.

Their suffering has not gone unmarked by the international working class. Millions of workers and students around the world are demanding an immediate cease-fire. Aid workers are imploring the UN to remove Israeli blockades on humanitarian support (AP, 1/16). On January 13, in mass demonstrations around the world, workers marched under Palestinian flags for a “free Palestine.” Meanwhile, top political figures in Hamas, the de facto leaders of this national liberation movement, are mostly missing in action in Gaza. They are busy brokering weapons deals in Beirut or with their patrons in Iran as they maneuver for more power.

Workers must reject the misleadership of Hamas just as we reject the U.S. liberals who demand our silence on the crimes of Israel. The Hamas leadership calls for the creation of an Islamist-capitalist state. For all workers who deplore the atrocities of capitalism, the Hamas vision is just more of the same nightmare.

The history of Iran is a cautionary tale for the future of Gaza and the West Bank. For decades after World War II, the U.S backed the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Beginning in the late 1960’s, communists in the Tudeh Party and other leftist movements led resistance to the Shah and his ties to U.S. imperialism. At the same time, Islamists led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought for an Islamist-capitalist state. In 1979, the left joined forces with the Islamists to overthrow the Shah. But immediately upon securing control over Iran’s new government, Khomeini denounced the communists and soon banned the Tudeh Party and imprisoned over 10,000 members (https://merip.org/, March-April, 1982). In 1988, the Iranian ruling class executed tens of thousands of leftists (France 24, 10/8/21). Though left-wing forces in Iran were instrumental in defeating U.S. imperialism, their terrible error in backing “progressive” Islamist nationalists has left the workers there in capitalist misery to this day.

The only solution is communist revolution
The communist revolutions that put the working class in power in the Soviet Union and China should continue to inspire workers of the world today. At the same time, we must also learn from and overcome these revolutions’ mistakes, including the embrace of nationalism. [See Road to Revolution III at plp.org.]

Workers in South Africa, Vietnam, Congo, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and many more have fought courageously to oust imperialist colonial forces. But over and over again, we have seen wars for national liberation replace one set of capitalists with another. They ultimately benefit only the new set of bosses. Meanwhile, workers continue to suffer. The movement for communism—for a society run by and for the international working class—is set back.

The mass murder in Gaza is an attack on workers everywhere. To defend our class, we cannot be lulled into silence or make popular concessions to nationalism. When we say that the only solution is communist revolution, we know we have a long struggle ahead. We also know that nothing short of communist revolution will end imperialist war, racism, sexism, and exploitation. The historic victories in the Soviet Union and China are evidence that workers—ourselves, our coworkers, our families and friends—can change the world. Progressive Labor Party calls for unity with our class sisters and brothers to denounce the genocide in Gaza, to reject capitalist misleadership, and to fight on for communist revolution. Join us!