Crossroads for the International Working Class here ♦ Israeli Rulers have Sown the Wind. They will reap a Whirlwind here ♦ Zionism, Racism and Fascism here ♦
Crossroads for the International Working Class: Genocide and World War…. Or Communist Revolution
“The world is at a crossroads,” said US President Biden on November 1. “What happens in the next two to three years will determine what the world looks like for the next five or six decades.”
He’s right. Two imperialist blocs confront each other—in Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Taiwan, and beyond. We are in the early stages of World War III. Now is the time to mobilize the masses of workers, soldiers, and youth to turn imperialists’ wars and genocides into communist revolution.
Securing energy sources for industry and the war machine is a life-and-death question for both imperialist blocs. So is denying energy to their rivals. The mainstream press won’t tell you this, but it’s a key reason for the Gazan genocide.
The Israeli government has had its eye on the Leviathan gas field discovered off Gaza’s coast since 2010. They describe it as “off the coast of Israel.” But most of the gas and oil is in the waters off Palestinian Gaza.
That’s part of why the genocidal Israeli rulers aim to drive Gazans out of Gaza. The outright military occupation of northern Gaza is to confiscate the multi-million-dollar Gaza offshore natural gas and oil reserves.
Germany, France, and other European imperialists desperately need this oil and gas. They no longer get energy from Russia—after the US imperialists blew up the Nord stream pipelines. They had to break the EU’s addiction to Russian energy to get them on their side to fight China-Russia-Iran. So far, it seems to be working.
Thus, Israeli control of Gaza’s oil and gas becomes very important for US and European imperialists. That’s why the main NATO heads of state rushed to visit and support Netanyahu. They included rulers of France, Greece, Italy, the UK, Germany, and the US. They all endorse the genocide in Gaza and Israeli access to offshore Gazan oil. France’s President Macron even called on NATO to send troops to fight Hamas.
But the genocide in Gaza is solidifying the Arab/Muslim world against the US/Israel/NATO. Intense meetings are taking place in Moscow between Russian leaders, Hamas, and Iran. China has brought former arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia together. Iran’s President Raisi visited Saudi Arabia. This means the European capitalists will have a harder time getting gas and oil to run their industries profitably. This will accelerate the drive to global war.
Some analysts, including Pepe Escobar, assert that Iran, Russia, and China set a trap for the US in Israel, a “second quagmire.” The US was already in a no-win situation of its own creation in Ukraine. If Escobar is right, the Russia-Chinese-Iran bloc is cynically willing to fight the US-led bloc to the last Gazan worker. Just like the US/NATO bloc is callously fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.
The whole Middle East could be engulfed in flames which could quickly spread globally. For example, Hezbollah could act at any time against Israel. Israel could open a second front in Lebanon. The US nuclear submarines could attack Iran. This is a very dangerous period.
Facing World War III, Let’s Mobilize Masses for Communism
This is the time to mobilize in the armed forces for communism. No soldier, sailor, Air Force personnel, or marine from the US or any other country should support the genocide in Gaza. We should not shed one drop of anyone’s blood for the capitalist-imperialist rulers’ profits and empires. We need to build collectives of ICWP to mobilize them for communism and to turn their guns on the bosses, instead of on other workers.
Industrial workers, many of whom produce for war, also need to build ICWP collectives to mobilize for communist revolution. They can use the weapons they make against the capitalists and imperialists, as Russian workers in the Putilov works did in 1917.
Students, who are future workers and soldiers, should join the fight for communism too.
Communist revolution will end competition for maximum profit. That is the material basis of imperialist war, and all other attacks on our one international working class. The masses need one international communist party with one goal: Communism. Join us!
Israeli rulers have sown the wind. They will reap a whirlwind. Gaza: The world’s Largest Open-air Prison for 75 years
Palestinians in Gaza have lived in the world’s largest open-air prison since Israel became a state in 1948.
Before capitalism dominated the Middle East, Palestinians, Jews, and Christians lived peacefully side by side in Palestine. They lived under the domination of the Ottoman Empire, whose chiefs and feudal army taxed and oppressed them heavily.
The Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I. British and French imperialists divided its spoils. The UK and US imperialists encouraged and used the Zionist movement to build a “Jewish homeland” in what had been mainly the home of Palestinians.
Since then, the Israeli government and the US/UK imperialists have built an apartheid state. Palestinians have been divided, imprisoned, and killed. Their every move is monitored. And Jewish workers (even those won to fascist Zionist ideas) are exploited wage slaves.
The imperialists have used Israel as their policeman in the Middle East, trying to control the region’s plentiful oil. They and the Israeli ruling class, like all capitalists and imperialists, have total disdain for the Palestinian masses and the Jewish masses too.
Netanyahu funded ultraconservative Hamas for over ten years to weaken the influence of the Palestinian Authority. He aimed to divide Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, preventing a (capitalist) Palestinian state. He has encouraged Qatar to fund Hamas and to create a class of very rich Palestinians who exploit the Palestinian masses.
Hamas is also supported by an opportunist alliance of Turkey, Iran, and Qatar. They do not care about the Palestinian masses. They aim only to be the capitalist rulers of a Palestinian state that exploits them.
Fascist propaganda and lies used to justify genocide
About 1200 Israelis were killed amid the Hamas raid on Israel. Independent sources now say that many of these deaths resulted from the Israeli Defense Forces.
People who live in the kibbutzim where hostages were taken and people were killed say that many died when the IDF, surprised and unprepared for the Hamas raid, opened fire indiscriminately, shooting from helicopters.
The Hamas fighters were armed with Kalashnikovs and on motorcycles and small trucks. Big craters are visible in the areas of the attack. These could only have come from IDF bombs and heavy weapons. Youths killed at a rock concert were caught in the crossfire between IDF and Hamas forces.
Netanyahu and the entire western media have used horror stories about this attack to justify Nazi-style collective punishment. The IDF has murdered over 11,000 Palestinians, including at least 5000 children. They have deprived people of food, water, medicine, and forced them to evacuate.
Occupation and oppression can only lead to more resistance. Genocide will lead to broader war. The whirlwind of a united communist movement will blow this deadly system away with a revolution that builds communist society.
Zionism: Nationalism Leads to Fascism
Zionism is a racist, fascist ideology based on nationalism. It says that the Jews, as victims of antisemitism, deserve their own homeland. It been used to justify and carry out occupation and genocide against Arabs and Palestinians. It is being used today to carry out genocide in Gaza.
Starting in the 19th century, pogroms violently attacked Jewish people in Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. In response, many tried to flee to western Europe, the US, and elsewhere. Others joined the growing revolutionary movement in Russia. Many became Bolsheviks. Some joined a Jewish socialist group called the Bund. There was a struggle for people to leave the Bund and join the united fight for revolution. Many left the Bund to join the Bolsheviks. Pyatnitsky, a Bolshevik leader, was among them.
In 1919, after the Russian Revolution, an estimated 100,000 Jews were killed in racist pogroms in Ukraine and Poland. They were accused of being Bolsheviks. Many were.
Some Jews became Zionists. Theodor Herzl established modern Zionism as a political organization in 1897. Herzl, a Jewish journalist from Austria, claimed that the Jewish population couldn’t survive without its “own” nation, Palestine. Jewish capitalists gave Herzl money and publicity. In truth, NO capitalist nation helps any worker anywhere.
The British imperialist Balfour Declaration of 1917 pledged to work for the establishment in Palestine of a “national home for the Jewish people.” Chaim Weizmann, president of the British Zionist Federation, supported it. In 1922 the League of Nations gave Britain the “mandate” to govern Palestine with the mission of creating a “Jewish National Home.” From then on, Zionism was officially an arm of British colonial power.
Zionism was always a nationalist ideology that represented the interests of Jewish capitalists and British and later US imperialists.
Nevertheless, many Jewish workers fleeing fascist Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were inspired by the ideal of going back to their roots (by then many generations removed). They hoped to start a new life in Palestine.
There they lived alongside Palestinians and Christians. Many had no notion of starting a “Jewish state.” Jewish workers often united with Arab workers in struggles against Arab and Jewish capitalist exploiters. Some Jewish workers were killed by thugs of the Zionist bosses for fighting alongside their Arab brothers and sisters.
Among Jews, as among every other “ethnic” or religious group, there are workers and bosses. They have the opposite interests. Jewish bosses in Israel attacked Jewish communists and anti-racists who insisted on uniting with Arab workers. Arab rulers did the same.
After World War II, in 1948, the UK imperialists backed the founding of a Zionist-led state of Israel. They displaced 700,000 Palestinians. They put them in the world’s largest open-air prison, which is being wiped out through genocide today! All of this was justified by Zionism.
They did this for the imperialist interests of Brittain and later the US. Zionism is against the interests of any workers, Jewish, Palestinian, or anyone else. However, Netanyahu has won some Jews, especially the current batch of fascist settlers murdering and displacing Arabs in the West Bank, to his fascist position of murdering Palestinians and taking over their homes.
The Soviet Union mistakenly supported the founding of Israel as a “national liberation” movement. This came from the old communist movement’s wrong line on nationalism. Nationalism is the opposite of internationalism. It divides the working class and creates a new group of capitalist exploiters. There is no progressive nationalism. Today Zionism stands exposed as fascism.
Our interest as the workers of the world is to fight to build one ICWP to destroy capitalism and imperialism, along with borders and nations, with communist revolution.