By Dov Winter 29 March 2019

Israel is an equally a holy cow for both the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans and the Democrats give astronomical amount of money and weapons to the Zionists to impose US and Zionist interests in the Middle East. And I really mean astronomical:

“Congress, citing ‘shared values’ and Israel’s strategic importance, among other things, votes to give military aid to Israel, which is currently $3.8 billion per year: $500 million in missile defense and $3.3 billion in foreign military financing, more military financing than the United States provides to the rest of the world combined.” (NYT, March 29, 2019)

The “more military financing than the United States provides to the rest of the world combined” tells the relations between US imperialism and Israel better than a thousand articles. The amount to money the US in the Zionists’ lap is staggering. This is so, because Israel is US’s boots on the ground to insure imperialism’s control of the Middle East, that remain a key area for exploitation and extraction of oil for US imperialism. Israel is used to police the Arab masses, and to make sure that any “Arab Spring” will be smashed by Israel. This particularly the case, when the local bourgeoisie in the Arab world does not collaborate with imperialism because of the masses’ pressure. Israel is de-facto the 51 state for the US, but a state with an agenda and a mind of its own, when it comes to the level of brutality against the Palestinians.

The recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the US, is likely to follow, at some point, by the recognition of the West Bank as part of Israel by the US. This is likely to happen as Israel routinely forces Palestinians at a gun point to leave their villages in the West Bank, that is to be occupied by right-wing and fascist Zionists settlers.

Of course, the US does nothing about it. The US (or at least the section of the bourgeoisie that Trump represents) just waits for the time when the Zionists settle over vast areas of the West Bank, to declare jointly with Israel that it is a part of Israel. Unless the Palestinians heroically drive the Israeli army out of the West Bank, Israel is likely to annex the West Bank.

The latest declaration by Israel that Israel is solely a Jewish state, to further diminish the few rights that the Palestinians have, only confirms the horrific levels of oppression that the Palestinians undergo every day in a country that gives them only the right to be super-exploited (the use of cheap Palestinian labour is common in Israel).

Many Palestinian workers must travel to Israel from the West Bank for work. They must return to the West Bank from work every day.

Thus, they have only few hours to eat and sleep before traveling back to Israel to work. This is clearly the life of oppressed working class slaves. The Palestinians villages are surrounded by the Israeli army. They receive no money for basic needs. It is not unusual to see sewages flow next to the village streets.

The Palestinians have no rights. It is not very well known that Israel uses the British imperialist rules from before 1948, to arrest Palestinians without charging them with anything; and subjecting them to indefinite imprisonment, where they are tortured and humiliated. Not any different than the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The Zionists cry “anti-Semitism” every time Zionism is criticized. They manipulate the fact that Anti-Semitism is on a rise because of significant rise of fascism in Europe. But Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism. It is “Anti-Oppressor”. The objective truth is that for the Palestinians to be liberated from their oppression, Zionism, as the most reactionary tool of the Zionists and US imperialism in the Middle East, must be smashed and destroyed.

This is the starting point for real peace and co-existence between Jews and Palestinians. It is debatable whether the “two states solutions”, or the “one state solution” in which Jews and Palestinians can live peacefully together as equals, are viable. I think that to a large degree these are pipedreams as long as imperialism controls the area with its needs for a strong and a brutal state to control the Arab masses.

But that does not mean that Socialists should not support such democratic demands, even though they are very unlikely to be implemented successfully without a socialist revolution in the Middle East. But any democratic demands in Palestine cannot be seriously fought for and implemented without smashing Zionism and its reactionary ideology in Palestine.▲

Palestinians alone cannot defeat one of the most     powerful army in the world

Now, after Netanyahu “won” the election, the oppression of the Palestinians is likely to accelerate. Netanyahu already announced his intention to officially annex the West Bank. So the Zionist state’s borders will span from the Mediterranean sea to the Jordan river. This is the grand Zionists dreams that the right-wing Zionists wanted to make a reality for a long time. The consequences for the Palestinian masses will be massive atrocities and a possible genocide. Up till now the Zionists routinely took Palestinian land in the West Bank, and they gave the stolen land to right-wing/fascist Zionist settlers. Now, as Israel officially annexes the West Bank, the Zionist settlements, and possibly towns and even cities, are going to grow dramatically– as mushrooms in the forest after the rain.

To make the West Bank part of Israel, the Zionists are likely to oust as many Palestinians as they can from the West Bank. As we know the Zionist’s project is to make Israel a pure racist and reactionary country, not any different than the White project in South Africa. For this the Jews in the West Bank must be the clear majority. To make this happen the Zionists must kill many Palestinians and try to expel the majority of the Palestinians from the West Bank, so that the Jews will be a clear majority in the new version of the colonial project of Israel. They have done it in 1948, when they drove the Palestinians out of what is called Israel today. There is no reason to believe that they will not do it again. This is indeed, the essence of Zionism, whose aims are to make a pure Jewish state in ALL of Palestine.

With the total support of US imperialism, that has one of the most reactionary presidents in US history, Israel can purge the Palestinians from the West Bank with impunity. We should expect the fiercest Intifada to stop the annexation of the West Bank by Israel. But the Palestinians alone cannot defeat one of the most powerful army in the world. They need the support of the Arab countries. But the treacherous Arab bourgeoisie is not likely to help them. The Palestinians can only rely on the Anti-Imperialist surge of Arab masses, and the Anti-Zionist Jews in Israel. The recent discontent of Left-leaning Israeli soldiers with the Zionists project is an encouraging sign. Let’s hope that the brutal annexation of the West Bank by Israel will generate a crisis in Israel and a bigger discontent within the Israeli army.