Statement by the Workers and Socialist Party Executive Committee
Bombs raining from the sky, crushing homes, infrastructure and human beings, the supply of electricity, water, medicines, food, fuel, and everything needed to sustain life, cut off – this hell has now for over nine weeks been the reality of Gaza’s 2,3 million population – half of whom are under 18. And this nightmare has only intensified, with IDF ground raids, the systematic assault on hospitals, with healthcare in northern Gaza now totally destroyed, and with the north now razed to the ground, the occupation forces are escalating their attacks on the south. There’s nowhere safe and nowhere to run.
The temporary ceasefire, while too late, was the direct result of the actions of the relatives of the Israeli hostages and especially the international mass protests. We must continue and escalate them combined with strike movements against the Gaza slaughter. These are the methods of the working class, they are the key not only to ending this bloodbath but also to eradicating its root causes – occupation, imperialism and capitalism.
Israel’s escalating massacre in Gaza following Hamas’ attack on 7 October also marks a major turning point in the Middle East, with huge global effects on the economy, politics and workers’ global struggle for liberation from capitalism. There is a risk of expanding war, as regimes in the region are shaken and so are the imperialist blocks led by the US and China. The hypocrisy and brutality of US imperialism have been laid bare by its support for the attacks on Gaza. As a result, the US and governments in Europe have increased repression against their own people trying to nip solidarity with Palestinians in the bud. However, the horrific scenes in Gaza are pushing more people into the streets.
There have been massive mobilisations of workers and young people in different countries – including 800 000 marching in London, one of the city’s biggest demonstrations ever, and 300 000 in Washington DC. Trade unions in Belgium, Catalonia, and Australia, have acted to block arms shipments to Israel, and workers together with other protestors have blocked Israeli-linked arms manufacturers in several countries including in South Africa.
Workers and youth are protesting against the slaughter in Gaza. This stands in sharp contrast to governments, the UN and other politicians now asking for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza, only out of fear of the mass protests. All of them, including regimes such as in Egypt that signed deals with Israel, have supported and accepted the oppression of Palestinians, the occupation and the siege. All imperialist powers – the US, the EU, China or Russia – only act in their own interests.
As the imperialist bloc around the US – the supposed champions of human- and democratic rights against “autocracy” – have given the green light for the Israeli state to commit mass murder of civilians and a range of war crimes, it has exposed its utter hypocrisy and the barbarism of the new era of increased inter-imperialist tensions. Meanwhile, the dutiful condemnations by Russia’s war criminal leaders and China’s capitalist dictatorship, both clamping down on national rights within and around their empires, amount to posturing with no benefit for the Palestinian masses or the global South it claims to side with. Also, their BRICS partner India’s far-right government supporting the bloodbath against the Palestinians underlines the disorder of this period.
Massacre and state terror in Gaza
The brutality unleashed by Israel in the last nine weeks has surpassed all other attacks in the last 75 years. Palestinians in Gaza who have been living in the world’s largest open-air prison are now trapped in a kill zone, and water, electricity, aid supplies, and internet have been cut or blocked by Israel. Indiscriminate bombings have resulted in the deaths of thousands along with the destruction of hospitals, schools, and entire neighbourhoods meaning that survivors are left helpless. Furthermore, ground troops have carried out raids into Gaza, killing at will.
Already (December 7), over 17000 people have been killed, with many more missing and presumed dead under the rubble, and 1.9 million people have been forced from their homes without any safe refuge. The aggression has also increased in the occupied West Bank, with army raids, bombings, and Israeli settlers assaulting and murdering Palestinians.
Mass working class struggle to defeat occupation and capitalism
Working class people must reject the state terror of the far-right-wing Israeli government and its attempts to divide people along racial and religious lines. A socialist federation in the Middle East presents a path towards liberation from capitalism in the region, which would bring the ultimate freedom from oppression.
The working class should be unequivocal in its support of the Palestinian masses, and the right to resist Israeli state terror, occupation and oppression, including using arms. However, Hamas’ futile and reactionary individual terrorist attacks on civilians, its methods, as well as its reactionary politics will not succeed in defeating the Zionist Israeli state.
The brutal Hamas attack on 7 October resulted in the killing of 1,200 people, mainly civilians including Palestinians living in Israel, and 240 people, including children, were taken hostage. This handed the far-right Netanyahu government, which was ridden by crisis, facing mass opposition and hatred from vast numbers of Israelis, the opportunity to rally Israeli society behind it in launching its genocidal campaign of bombing and ethnic cleansing. This is not how to defeat Zionist settler colonialism and its imperialist-backed Israeli state apparatus, which includes the most powerful, nuclear-armed, military in the Middle East.
A genuine socialist strategy for the liberation of Palestine must instead widen political polarisation along class lines and win over significant sections of the Israeli working class, who suffer exploitation and growing oppression inside Israel itself. The mass demonstrations against Netanyahu’s attacks on the judiciary this year, against austerity (2021), the nation-state law (2018), homophobic bigotry (2018) and racism (2015) expressed this widening polarisation.
While class consciousness and solidarity have been overtaken by mass support for the onslaught on Gaza, the situation has also exposed the Zionist myth that Israel would be the safest place for Jews — a promise that, as the Marxist left has always warned, leads not only to disaster for the Palestinians but also to a cycle of bloodshed for the Jewish working class. Socialists must now patiently show that it is the mass struggles of the working class that can stop the ongoing bloodbath, end the blockade and the occupation, and create peace on the basis of fighting for the right to just national self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis as part of a struggle for socialist change in the region.
The region’s struggle for national and social liberation is first and foremost a political struggle against capitalism. That is not to suggest we are pacifists. On the contrary, we uphold and actively support the right of oppressed people to defend themselves and resist occupying forces with arms. Importantly, access to these and the strategy and tactics on how to use them should be democratically discussed, and leaders democratically elected. Such a struggle has to be combined with and subordinated to the requirements of mass struggles such as general strikes and occupations, and backed by global support and solidarity from working class forces. The struggle for a free Palestine must also aim to build links with Israeli workers to try and break the hold of fear that the ruling class has on them and grow into struggles for socialist change.
The heroic mass movements of the Palestinian intifada have shown boundless possibilities on this route, and that to succeed the masses of the working class must have full democratic control of the revolutionary struggle.
Protests in South Africa – No trust in ANC government
Thousands of working class people in South Africa have joined in various demonstrations in support of a ceasefire and liberation for Palestinians. These demonstrations have varied in size and approach. For example, students at the University of Pretoria held a night vigil on October 13, several groups joined in a national day of action on October 28, and tens of thousands of people joined in demonstrations in Cape Town since the start of November alone. Workers and Socialist Party members have played an active role in building many of these and upcoming actions.
WASP and International Socialist Alternative (ISA, our international) are arguing for independent working class and trade union action to demand an end to the mass murder – it’s the workers who make the world run. If they stop the wheels, everything stops. Political strikes would be the strongest weapon against this onslaught. South Africa is an important point of reference because of its successful mass struggle against Apartheid and a worker-led day of action can be an important inspiration to workers across the world. This solidarity must be mobilised with an appeal for class solidarity against all oppression and exploitation, as well as shared experiences and lessons of struggles in South Africa. Key among these lessons are the impotence of the ANC’s armed struggle and terrorist methods as opposed to the enormous power of the united working class in mass action, and the zero space for true liberation from exploitation, poverty, racism and humiliation within the bounds of the capitalist system (proved in the negative in South Africa).
While it may seem far off in these dark times, these remain important reminders to Palestinian workers to trust in their own class organisations, political programme and capacity to struggle to end national oppression and class exploitation.
Working- and young people radicalised by the surge of solidarity with Palestine should be warned too. The ANC is betraying Palestinians for the same reasons it betrayed the black working class that elevated it to power in this country. Although the ANC continues to claim solidarity with Palestinians, this is part of their usual talk left, walk right approach also on the South African economy, working class conditions, housing etc. The ruling party is tied to the system of global capitalism and has not shied away from doing business with companies from Israel for almost three decades. It was thus unwilling to block the takeover of Clover by Milco, an Israeli company marked by its operations in areas even the colonialist Israeli state and its pro-Zionist Western imperialist supporters consider illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land they have not formally claimed. By this treachery, they betrayed not only Palestinians. They betrayed Clover workers who were retrenched en masse despite take-over conditions against that, and remaining workers who face an Apartheid-style super-exploitation including 62% wage cuts, 12-hour working shifts, and compulsory work during weekends and holidays, amongst others. They also betrayed many communities and farmers whose local economies were laid to waste when this company closed many factories.
Another example is how the ANC joined the xenophobic wave after the Marshalltown fire in Johannesburg, blaming migrants for the blaze that killed 77 people. At the same time, the ANC supports the illegitimate ZANU-PF regime in Zimbabwe that constantly rigs elections, loots the country’s resources, and torments the population leading to an exodus of Zimbabweans to South Africa. It should be clear to the working class that the ANC has no real solutions or genuine interest to uplift the working class in South Africa, Zimbabwe, or Palestine.
This means that the ANC’s move to report Israel to the ICC is an empty gesture for domestic use. The ANC’s diplomatic posturing against Israeli apartheid elements is also a smoke screen to hide its own failure to undo the legacy of apartheid in South Africa. While the formalities of apartheid were removed – above all by working class struggle, not by boycotts or sanctions, as the ANC’s diplomatic hype attempts to suggest – the violence and dehumanisation inherent in the capitalist economic system, the racism and other forms of oppression upon which it depends, remain in full force nearly 30 years into their “reign”.
The violence and oppression that the Palestinians are subjected to are clearly far worse than what black South Africans faced before 1994. The settler colonialism in Palestine has a genocidal ethnic cleansing logic that was not posed for Apartheid South Africa which never sought to replace the native labour it hopelessly required for ruthless exploitation. These qualitative differences, however, do not change the key lesson: History clearly illustrates that there are no capitalist solutions to this conflict and the struggle for Palestinian liberation can only succeed on the basis of socialist revolution that leads to the overthrow of capitalism in the Middle East. Unfortunately all other roads will lead to defeat or turn into a nightmare far worse than the current horrors of the black working class, with unimaginable suffering under a highly repressive and reactionary theocratic, Bantustan state, negotiated on the basis of the dead-end of the strategy of current leadership of the Palestinian resistance.
The ANC is being pushed towards tokenistic acts of opposition to the Israeli state’s genocidal war because it fears unleashing the inherent mass support that exists for the Palestinian struggle amongst the majority of the black working class. An example is the ANC’s amendment to the EFF motion calling for the suspension of diplomatic ties only until a ceasefire is granted! The ANC’s interests align squarely with those of capitalists across the world.
Roots of war and crisis
Palestinians have been promised their own state for over 100 years. Instead, they have been met by military force by first British imperialism and then the state of Israel, and forced from their homes to become refugees. Israel has become the strongest military state in the Middle East, the most reliable proxy and closest ally of US imperialism in that region. In 1967, Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian areas, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. Since 2006, Gaza has been a de facto outdoor prison, under siege by Israel in collaboration with Egypt. In the West Bank, over half a million are living in Israeli settlements established by force. Palestinians living in Israel are subject to constant discrimination and oppression.
The roots to the war and war crisis are decades of occupation, blockade and oppression. They in turn are caused by capitalism, and imperialism, which require foreign markets it establishes through neocolonial spheres of influence or outright colonialism and its occupations and war mongering. It means a sharp division between rich and poor countries, as well as within countries, between the ruling class and the working masses.
For a socialist Palestine and a socialist world
In 1987, the first intifada (uprising) of the Palestinians showed the strength of mass struggle. It was a democratically organised revolt, with local committees taking the decisions, including on the right to armed self-defence. Strikes, mass demonstrations and protests organised by the masses themselves took both Palestinian leaders in exile and the Israeli state by surprise. Through this mass campaign, they forced through concessions and won sympathy in the region, including from workers and youth in Israel, as well as internationally. The answer from imperialism and Israel, with the assistance of the PLO leaders, was to derail this process, into what became the Oslo Agreement in 1993. It established a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza and held promises of a coming Palestinian state.
The Oslo Agreement, however, left all economic and military power with the state of Israel. The Palestinian Authority became a sub-power, also using repression against protests and striking workers. The economy was in the hands of imperialism and Israel and deteriorated every year. The right-wing Islamist Hamas exploits the discontent with the PA but offers no way forward for the Palestinian masses.
The struggle for national liberation is closely linked to social and class struggles. Capitalists and governments everywhere prefer to be close to imperialism and multinational companies at the expense of workers and the poor within their countries. The working class in all countries has common interests and common class enemies. The struggle for a Palestinian state is therefore a struggle for a Socialist Palestine. Capitalism has to be abolished to achieve real liberation, as we also know from the South African experience. This struggle is an internationalist struggle, with appeals to workers in the region, including in Israel, to fight against their governments and the capitalist system. Workers in Israel must fight their government and capitalism, to replace the terror-state of imperialism with a Socialist Israel.
We stand for
- Stop the genocide, and immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. End the occupation, blockade and oppression of Palestine.
- Union actions and strikes to stop all delivery of arms to Israel – for a political strike in solidarity with the Palestinians.
- For mass boycott campaigns and worker sanctions targeted at the Israeli state and corporations complicit in its crimes.
- No to war and terror against all civilians. Yes to workers’ and poor people’s struggle for peace, against oppression on both sides.
- Showing a way out on the basis of fighting for the right to national self-determination of Palestinians and Israelis, based on equal rights and justice, the right of return of Palestinians currently in refugee camps and diaspora.
- For a disciplined revolutionary, mass and armed resistance for a free, socialist Palestine, with its capital in Jerusalem, as part of a voluntary socialist confederation of the Middle East – including a socialist Israel and other new worker states in the region.
