The wife,  two children and grandson of Aljazeera Palestinian journalist Wael Dahdouh were all targeted and deliberately murdered in an Israeli air bomb attack in Gaza on 12 October. 

WWIII threatens if Israel goes ahead with its ground invasion of Gaza. Despite Iran’s fears of a US attack from its Fifth and Sixth fleets now in the region it will be impossible to hold back Hezbollah in Lebanon, the West Bank Palestinians, Syria and Jordan, such is the outrage on the Arab street at the obvious intention to ethnically cleanse and mass slaughter; a second Nakba. China will have to respond if Iran is attacked. Biden’s $100 billion request to Congress is the preparation for this.

Biden’s $106 billion request to Congress is the preparation for this. The Kiev regime in Ukraine is basically fronting a US/Nato attack on Russia but is clearly losing that war, their Spring/Summer/Autum Offensive has miserably failed. So WWIII is their pressing agenda now. Israel is the US aircraft carrier in the Middle East.

Israel could not continue to exist for long if the US stopped its almost $4 billion annual subsidy. We reject with contempt the proposition that is shoved down out throats by the mass media like the ‘liberal’ Guardian and Observer that the US has sent its Sixth Fleet to join its Fifth Fleet in the eastern Mediterranean to make sure the conflict does not spread

As Class Consciousness (Australia) correctly observes:

“It is not an accident of timing that the US seeks to escalate war in West Asia in the wake of the failed “Spring Offensive” by Ukraine forces against Russia. The US and its NATO allies attempts to use its fascist proxy in Kiev has turned into a bloody quagmire for Ukrainian forces and even the bourgeois press has had to acknowledge the obvious that the war has failed in its military aims to weaken and even break up Russia. France as the representative of Western imperialism has faced a similar disaster with a string of anti-French coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.”

The IDF bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, having previously targeted it twice, telling them to evacuate or be killed. We reject Israel’s  blaming a misfired launch by Islamic Jihad. Even BBC journalist Jon Donnison was forced to point out on air that, “we have never seen anything on the scale of the explosion on the video I was watching” from Islamic Jihad. Aljazeera proved this beyond doubt. They bombed the Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church (built in 1150) on Oct 20, killing 40.

Biden, Sunak, Starmer, Scholz and Macron immediately accepted the lie. But the masses in the Arab world and consistent anti-imperialists in the West rallied to the Palestinians, as did 150,00 in London on the 14th, 300,000 on 21 and the 28th had 5000,000, the biggest ever demonstration for Palestine..

We will not ‘condemn’ Hamas

Whilst hypocritically claiming to want to minimise civilian casualties in its relentless bombardment of Gaza 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 is and was unacceptable.

We salute the Palestine Action who shut down the Leicester factory of Israeli drone supplier Elbit  hours after the massacre at al-Ahli Arab. Workers in the US, Britain and elsewhere should black all weapons heading for Israel, Ukraine or other wars as Italian airport workers did, and South African, San Francisco dockers and others have done in previous wars. 

The Al-Aqsa Mosque crisis in April inflamed the whole conflict. Aljazeera reported on 6 Apr 2023:

“The Bureau of the United Nation 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 mass shooting of the 260 ravers at the Supernova festival and the Kfar Aza kibbutz (though many here were killed in Israeli crossfire, killing hostages rather than allowing them to be taken); all are provocatively just three miles from the Gaza concentration camp on stolen Palestinian land.

We do not ‘condemn’ the excesses of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave uprising in Virginia, killing nearly 60 white people, mostly women and children.  Or the Weenen Massacre of 100 Boers in 1838 and others by the Zulus. Or the Algerian FLN or the Mau Mau in Kenya despite their excesses.

The IRA and Palestinians too committed similar appalling acts but these were small compared to outrages committed by state-sponsored neo-Nazis in Ireland and Israel since the early 20th century. The Glenanne gang, which consisted of British soldiers from the UDR, police officers from the RUC, and members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF assassinated some 200 random Catholic civilians in the 1970s and 80s. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings and the Miami Showband massacre was the work of this group, directed by MI5, as the refusal to release the state papers to the Irish Government prove beyond doubt.

In July 1946 the fascistic militias Irgun, led by Menachem Begin and the Stern Gang bombed the King David hotel, killing 91. In the 1948 Nakba the Haganah drove at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands, killing over 15,000 and stole 78% of historic Palestine. They razed 530 villages including infamously Deir Yassin where David Ben-Gurion (the ‘father of the nation’) justified the slaughter of 100-250 men, woman and children. The Haganah itself massacred up to 200 in the village of Tantura and in many other places.

A New Warsaw Ghetto Slaughter

The UN says since 2008, there has been 6,407 fatalities on the Palestinian side compared to 308 Israeli (20+ to 1) But in the present conflict on 10/10/23 Israel counted  900 dead and only 794 Palestinian fatalities, the first time there was such an imbalance. But by 3/11/23 Israel had 1,405 dead—346 military—but Gaza had 9,000+ 4,000+ children dead, 2,000+ vaporised or under inaccessible ruins. Israel has murdered 130 on the West Bank since 7 Oct and doubled the number of detained to over 10,000. 45% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.

Gaza’s population cannot escape the bombardment. The aid trucks allowed in at the Rafah crossing are crumbs whilst unrelenting bombing goes on. The order on 1.5 million to evacuate the north of Gaza in 24 hours signalled genocide intent similar to the Nazi Holocaust; those who fled south “for safety” are still slaughtered. Shades of the 19 April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising when SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop ordered the destruction of the Ghetto, block by block. He murdered 13,000 by 16 May and the Holocaust followed; another one is now looming in Gaza.

Tony Greenstein, who father was  Rabbi Solomon Greenstein, writes:

“Netanyahu has already promised, as if a Nazi General, to raze Gaza to the ground. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Defence Minister has already called the Palestinians ‘human animals’ thus betraying the racist nature of Zionism and its treatment of the Palestinians… In 2015 Deputy Defence Minister Eli Dahan also called Palestinians ‘animals’”.

Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg dehumanised Jews as “human animals” to prepare the Holocaust. The fascist Gallant said “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly… We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.”

Sky News reported:

“In the widely shared clip, the Labour leader was asked what a “proportionate” response would look like, to which Sir Keir replied that responsibility “lies with Hamas” and that Israel “has the right to defend herself”. Presenter Nick Ferrari interjected: “A siege is appropriate? Cutting off power, cutting off water?” The Labour leader replied: “I think that Israel does have that right. It is an ongoing situation.”

Over 20 Muslim and other councillors have resigned from Labour and even shadow ministers are now demanding a ceasefire, as against his appalling “Israel has a right to defend itself”. Including Amna Abdullatif, the first Arab Muslim woman elected to Manchester City Council, Russell Whiting in Colwick, Nottinghamshire, and Mona Ahmed, a Labour councillor in Kensington and Chelsea.

A Multi-Ethnic Workers’ State

Although Hamas is potentially 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 US aircraft carrier in the region. We say that the only progressive outcome of the conflict in the region is a multi-ethnic workers’ state in Occupied Palestine/Israel. 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 in a Socialist Federation of the Middle East leading to a global socialist federation is the only solution. ▲