Masses Need Communism here ♦ Bringing Communist Ideas to Palestinian Protest in South Africa here ♦
HEBRON (Palestine), May 18 —Masses in the West Bank protest continued Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s two million residents are nominally self-governed, but Israel (with US support) controls Gaza’s airspace, coastline, and six of its seven land crossings. It asserts its military’s right to enter Gaza at will. Only communist revolution can smash colonialism and occupation.
TEL AVIV (Israel), May 20—Jewish protesters support Palestinian struggle. Under Israeli apartheid, Jews and Palestinians rarely work side by side as coworkers. Only a revolutionary communist party, not nationalist trade unions, can unite the working class to defeat capitalism and racism.
Rebellion in Palestine: Masses Need Communism
May 31—The fascist Israeli government provoked a lopsided 11-day conflict with Hamas in Gaza by escalating its attacks on the Palestinian masses in the West Bank. It didn’t anticipate the strength and fury of the mass response! These protests continue while supporters rally in solidarity worldwide.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is fighting for his political life and to avoid jail. He engineered the mass murder of civilians in Gaza and the destruction of homes, hospitals and more in an unsuccessful attempt to stay in power. Israeli workers’ lives were endangered, too. Racist mobs rampaged through both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods. Israeli rulers target Palestinian workers through state terrorism, just as US rulers target Black workers with murder and brutality.
This crisis revealed the increasing isolation and desperation of US imperialism, which sends $4 billion annually to the Israeli rulers. The US blocked a UN Security Council statement calling for “restraint” (four times!). It even prevented a timely discussion. One diplomat called this “a gift to China and Russia.” President Biden got the message. He issued a weak, belated plea for a cease-fire.
Eviction Crisis: Rulers’ Racist Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
Israeli government policy makes cheap housing available for Jews in the Palestinian West Bank in order to destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state. Some Jews, motivated by racism and religious nationalism, intentionally carry out this policy.
Since April, Israeli police have been evicting Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarra (in Jerusalem) to expand illegal settlements. The families mobilized supporters, especially youth, across the West Bank. Many Palestinians drove hours to join sit-ins in Jerusalem. They organized solidarity marches throughout Israel/Palestine.
The Israeli military assaulted these protests. On April 22, the armed Israeli racist group Lehava marched through Jerusalem, shouting “Death to Arabs.”
Israeli forces banned Palestinians from gathering in public spaces. Jerusalem’s Old City became a daily battleground. Israeli troops shot at Palestinian protesters, injuring hundreds and killing many. The protests grew.
Israeli troops then invaded the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Ramadan worshipers fought back. Busloads of Palestinians came to pray at Al-Aqsa in solidarity. Protesters shut down the major Israeli highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Hamas (based in Gaza) responded with homemade rockets. The Israeli military rained down terror on Gaza with US-provided jet fighters and missiles. About 20 times as many Palestinians as Israelis died.
Palestinian Masses Fight for Survival
Palestinian workers, like many others around the world, struggle to stay in their homes, put food on their tables, and avoid being killed.
The fight against Israeli apartheid has much to learn from the South African struggle. Over 25 years after Apartheid ended, most Black South African workers live in the same slums. They are unemployed or super-exploited in the same grueling jobs. It’s little comfort that their oppressors are now Black capitalists, including former anti-Apartheid leaders.
That’s why so many Black and other workers and youth in South Africa are eagerly reading literature from the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP). They have learned, and the fight against Israeli apartheid must learn, that to be victorious and overthrow the racist state, the struggle must be multiracial and for communism.
Communism means the abolition of racism, nationalism and nations. It means the end of imperialist terror and murder by oppressive armies of occupation. It means collective support for those fighting to end any form of capitalism in order to create communism.
Nationalism, Arab and Jewish, serves as a lightning rod to divert the masses’ anger at capitalism into a fratricidal war against our one working class. It keeps workers from seeing that their enemy is the capitalist ruling class and its imperialist backers (US, European, Chinese or Russian).
A Palestinian correspondent lamented that Jerusalem has no “Palestinian leadership that can quell anger and address local concerns.” Most Palestinians have no allegiance to Hamas, Fatah, or the increasingly irrelevant Abbas of the U.S.-supported Palestinian Authority.
Young protesters are forming networks and connections where there have been no organized protests for decades. Their anger is justified. Their concerns are both global and local.
The fight against Israeli apartheid must become a united revolutionary struggle of Palestinians and anti-racist Jews for communism. The common interest of all workers in ending exploitation is the material basis of this unity.
We invite everyone, and especially young grass-roots anti-racist leaders in Palestine, Israel and elsewhere, to read and write for Red Flag newspaper. To join and build collectives of the International Communist Workers’ Party.
Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Early on, the Israeli government supported it, along with Islamic Jihad, as a Palestinian opposition to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its largest political faction, Fatah.
Hamas is an Islamic organization infused, like Fatah, with nationalism and anti-communism. Ali Abunimah, from the Electronic Intifada, describes their policies as neo-liberal. However, they have gained support from many of the two million Palestinian residents and refugees in Gaza through extensive social services.
Unlike the Palestinian Authority, Hamas is not attached to the US government. Their main external financial supporter is Qatar. They also have obtained some military know-how, though not actual weapons, from Iran. That is why their homemade, unguided rockets have gotten better. But they are still no match for Israel’s state-of-the art US-supplied jet fighters and missiles that attack largely civilian targets in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas came to power through the 2006 Palestinian elections orchestrated by the George W. Bush administration. Hamas won this election in Gaza. Then the US-linked Palestinian Authority in the West Bank unsuccessfully attempted to overthrow Hamas and extend its rule to Gaza. Since then, the Israeli military has maintained a complete siege on the Gaza strip, blocking the flow of goods and people This is why Gaza is called the world’s largest open-air prison.
South Africa: Bringing Communist Ideas to Palestine Protest
“Give me five copies of Red Flag, I will distribute to comrades.” This was an enthusiastic response of two comrades who were part of several hundred protesters in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth). One comrade cursed fascist Modi and said he was the same as Netanyahu.
Almost everybody took Red Flag, saying, “This is a communist newspaper, I will take it”. An older worker who took the paper came back looking for us. He said, “Paris Commune, 150 years ago, it needs to happen now.” After taking his contact information we said we had an article on Paris Commune in our Red Flag. He was overjoyed.
Hundreds of people, some as young as 5 or 6 years old, joined with comrades in their 80s. There was an outpouring of anger and determination to fight in Gqeberha on the ocean side. People came from Lebanon, Palestine, Somali, Bangladesh, the Middle East along with colored people, blacks, and some white workers. Workers and others came to support from high-rise buildings.
Our response was in sharp contrast to the pacifist and nationalist line pushed by the leaders of the march. “The Communist struggle to smash fascism” was our message wherever we reached the masses. We got many contacts. As soon as the march ended, we started contacting people we met at the demonstration. Our comrades have the task of building a communist relationship with the new contacts. We are taking this very seriously because we can replace this fascist dictatorship, which is deadly in its wake but extremely weak. Our job is to organize masses to end this forever with communist revolution.
Comrades in Gqeberha
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