The Famous Palestine Guernica

Gordon Brown wrote  in the Guardian on Monday, 29 April:

 “Ultra-nationalist demagogues and populist-nationalists are now leading the polls in Italy, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, and running second in Germany and Sweden. There are two hard-right groupings in the European parliament – Identity and Democracy and European Conservatives and Reformists. Between them, they could secure as much as 25% of the June vote. But even more ominously, in almost every part of Europe including Britain, these factions are forcing the hand of the traditional centre-right parties – which, one by one, are capitulating to ever more extreme anti-immigration, anti-trade and anti-environment positions.”

He contrasts this with the situation in the US, where the Mega Trumpists are indeed looking likely to win in November, but the economy is booming, contrasting with the EU, which is stagnating and verging on recession. He does not attribute this situation to the continued if declining global domination of the US dollar as the world’s trading and reserve currency.

Nor to the drive to WWIII inherent in the international struggles by the Global South, and Europe to a lesser extent, to escape this domination as seen in the expansion of BRICS bloc and the ability of Russia to evade even the most severe sanctions by the US over the war in Ukraine. Brown’s conclusion from this is:

“The pollsters also tested the classic zero-sum proposition that you can only get rich at the expense of others. In every major European country, the results are dramatic: 59% of British respondents believe they can only enhance their personal wealth if others do badly, and just 17% disregarded this notion. Similarly, in Germany and the Netherlands, 60% and 58% respectively hold this view, compared with only 16% and 15% who rejected it. In almost all countries, more than 50% displayed a zero-sum mentality.”

Of course his solution to all this is a liberal reformist one, “If progressives want to prevent an election campaign dominated by anti-immigrant propaganda, they will have to stand up to protectionism and xenophobia by showing the benefits of cooperation.”

    The UK is different to the rest of Europe in that the Labour party seems to be the inevitable outcome from the next looming general election. But the honeymoon for that government will be very short and the far rightists in the Tory party, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg etc are savouring their turn. As one Tory MP, Lee Anderson, defects to Reform UK, another, Dan Poulter, defects to Labour. The politically nationalist reactionary politics that is the Labour leadership will quickly fail all progressive expectations, immigrants and people of colour will became the targets for the right and far-right/fascists formations within a short six months of election.

That is why the great inspiring mass marches for Gaza are posing the internationalist class solidarity solutions we need. But Marxists must learn how to intervene with our internationalist programme that poses the main enemy of the global working class as the US global hegemonic power and not Israel, or the Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie or any other formula that can be uses to hide this essential truth. So we defend Russia, China and Iran against the US/Nato despite the reactionary character of these leaderships.

We would strongly aver that the only way to avert the looming fascist threat internationally is the perspective of the international socialist revolution, with due regard to what is unique about every national struggle and what is commonly internationalist about all of them.

$95B for Genocide in Gaza, US Nato Proxy War in Ukraine and on Iran and China

Biden and Blinken hypocritically claim to want to minimise civilian casualties in Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza and to stop the attack on Rafah but continue to provide them with all the armaments and credit to do so, without which they could not continue. The war chest that was passed by the US House and Senate includes $60.8bn to Ukraine, which is losing the war to Russia, $26.3bn to Israel and $8.1bn basically to prepare war against Iran China in the Indo-Pacific region.

It is clear that the aim of the fascist-infested Israeli regime and its imperialist backers is to maximise civilian casualties by punishing and terrorising  them for having democratically elected Hamas as their leadership in the first place so as to prepare the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Hamas was initially supported by Israel and the US to undermine Yasser Arafat and the PLO; any leadership the Palestinians have who make any attempt to defend them was and is unacceptable to Zionist Israel.

    The 13th 200,000 strong national Gaza march took place in London on March 27 in a growing polarisation of class forces internationally. Everywhere ‘democratic’  western states are wielding the false charge of anti-semitism against all those who defend the Palestinians and condemn the irrefutable evidence of genocide committed by Israel.

Shamefully they are joined by trade bureaucrats like Unite the union’s Sharon Graham and many others who absolutely refuse to call for their members who work producing the armaments that are wrecking the genocide to  stop doing so. We are inspired by the potential of the  actions of workers in stopping weapons and other war materials from being manufactures and transported to Israel. We salute the Palestine Action who shut down the Leicester factory of Israeli drone supplier Elbit hours after the massacre at al-Ahli Arab and the workers in Belgium, the US and elsewhere stopping weapons for Israel. Workers everywhere should black all weapons heading for Israel, for Ukraine and the coming WWIII.

 But surely also greatly inspiring are occupations of the University campuses by  the students in the US. Beginning with Columbia, they have occupied campuses demanding their universities break all financial and academic connections with Israel and firms trading with Israel in war materials and everything else. The brutal police crackdown on the Colombia occupation produced an immediate response states-wide. Dozens of campuses throughout the US have now followed suit, just a few are cited in the list opposite. During the war in Viet Nam Columbian students led and anti war movement. Students in the UK, the EU and elsewhere in the imperialist lands are sure to follow.

Writing in Forward Jewish independent Non-profit, on April 26, 2024 Tom Hurwitz wrote:

“Both now and in ‘68, attacks of name-calling seek to stop the public from taking the protests seriously. The cries of antisemitism have been militarized by those speaking about them on national television. It is the old red-baiting pattern that uses a fear-producing buzz-word as a smokescreen to obscure real issues and justified protests. 

Now, here we are. Rejecting officials’ condemnation, the student protests have spread like a storm across the United States and around the world. Just like in 1968, Columbia University has become the seed of a vast outpouring of student feeling that gives voice to an even more vast sentiment among the youth that a terrible injustice must be redressed. In our day, our protests hastened the end of the Vietnam War and continued to raise the issue of racism. We will see if these students also help to change the world that they have inherited. I was arrested protesting at Columbia in ‘68. Today’s student encampments carry on a proud, brave tradition. Like the Vietnam War was nearly six decades ago, to many students, Israel’s assault on Gaza feels deeply personal.”

We will not ‘condemn’ Hamas

The ongoing Israeli and far right attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque inflamed the situation and has done so again in April 2024. Aljazeera reported on 6 Apr 2023:

“The Bureau of the UN General Assembly’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People has condemned Israeli police’s raids on Palestinian worshippers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque… The bureau calls for respect the freedom of all worshippers to access the religious sites in accordance with established parameters”.

So today we will not ‘condemn’ Hamas for its invasion of southern Israel or for its reactionary acts like the reported shooting of ravers at the Supernova festival and the Kfar Aza kibbutz. Most killed were IDF and many died in Israeli crossfire. Israelis have reported they killed hostages and Hamas fighters rather than allow them to be taken.

We do not ‘condemn’ the native American massacres in Jamestown-1609 to 1622— 350 white settlers, or Nat Turner’s 1831 slave uprising in Virginia, killing nearly 60 white civilians. We never equate the violence of the oppressed with the violence of the oppressor.

A Multi-Ethnic Workers’ State

Although Hamas is no less reactionary and more so on social issues than US/Israeli stooge Mahmoud Abbas’ bogus Palestinian Authority nevertheless it is fighting Israeli terror now. It expresses the anger of the oppressed, in a very distorted way it is true, so it deserves unconditional but critical support against Israel now.

    The two state solution is utterly reactionary. This would be a constantly-bombed Bantustan for the Palestinians and  Israel would remain the unsinkable US aircraft carrier there. We are for the destruction of the apartheid settler-colonial state of Israel and for a multi-ethnic workers’ state of Palestine from the river to the sea.  Of course we need a revolutionary Trotskyist party to lead that revolution in Occupied Palestine/Israel to fight for a socialist federation of the Middle East leading to a global socialist federation led by a regenerated Trotskyist Fourth International. ▲