Disillusioned Israeli Soldiers Speak Out here ♦ How Can Communists Organize Inside Capitalist Militaries Today? here ♦ Revolution or Resistance here ♦
Port of Tacoma, USA
Disillusioned Israeli Soldiers Speak Out, Show Potential to Organize a Red Army
TEL AVIV (Israel), November 14— “Amid mass hysteria to support IDF, a viral video of four Israeli soldiers speaking in Arabic is circulating everywhere,” said a comrade here. “They denounce the Israeli army, saying God is with Palestine, f*** Israeli Army. Such a blatant attack on the Israeli Defense Forces usually brings harsh punishment. But the brass only warned them that their behavior contravenes the principles and values of the Army.”
Masses in Israel are questioning their support of the Israeli rulers and their genocidal slaughter in Gaza. The parents of two peace activists killed by Hamas on October 7 blamed the IDF for creating unbearable conditions for 75 years in Gaza. In 2014, IDF killed over 2200 Palestinians in Gaza. Most were civilians. And Israeli rulers continued to fund Hamas with millions of dollars after 2014.
Every time the Israeli rulers send young soldiers off to fight, many come back angry and disillusioned with Zionism.
A soldier formerly in the elite Golani training bitterly complained that he constantly gets nightmares from his combat duty. He gets no therapy. “I killed them all (Palestinians), anything that moved. I did not spare even small children. I was part of the ‘mow the lawn’ campaign. Now I shout, I complain, and I pee all night from post trauma. I see the innocent children’s faces and I hear, ‘Why did you kill me?’
“My whole family contributed to the army,” he continued. “They told me lies about the Suez Canal. I was selected for the Havatzalot intelligence project. I had the highest motivation. Only to find out they were feeding me lies.”
The documentary “To see if I am smiling” tells about IDF in 2006 in the West Bank. It is narrated by six women soldiers. “Our unit threw a hand grenade at a crowd of Palestinians,” one said. “Several died. I saw a young girl limping in pain. My natural instinct was to run to the girl to help her. The Palestinian woman who saw me thought I was going to kill the little girl. I will never forget the rage in her eyes. I will never forget those eyes of anger and agony. It gives me nightmares.”
These women’s story is the story of Israeli society. Young men and women at the age of 18 are conscripted. They are told lies about how they are going to create security. In reality, soldiers are forced to terrorize the population to serve the Israeli capitalists.
Their story shows explosive potential to recruit soldiers from the capitalist army to build a communist red army for revolution.
Thousands of Israeli ex-soldiers have seen that their life was spent not on the security of the working class but on the security of the capitalist oppressors. They have formed a mass organization called Breaking the Silence.
“I was a tank commander between 2010 and 2013,” said one. “We have been Breaking the Silence for 18 years now and have been collecting evidence of soldiers in occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Our task as the army was to keep them down, to subjugate them, to make them worthless, humiliate them. Now thanks to the brave soldiers, they are disobeying these orders. They don’t want to serve in these mass murders and create massive refugee camps.”
“I was a part of a terror organization,” said a former Israeli Air Force pilot. “This occupation is an ongoing criminal act, war crimes after war crimes. And we are not going to continue in these war crimes anymore.”
Thousands of ex-soldiers in Israel are seeing the class nature of the war. It only serves the ruling capitalist class. While rulers like fascist Netanyahu carry out genocidal attacks in Gaza, his son lives luxuriously in Miami. The top leadership of Hamas also live luxuriously in Qatar.
The imperialist genocide in Gaza shows that the Israeli ruling class is both extremely weak and lethal. It relies on the US, another declining power. War has created millions of angry masses around the world. The most important lesson we can draw is the necessity of organizing soldiers in the bosses’ armies.
Red Flag adds: A soldier in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, distributes Red Flag to his unit. He says that the Gaza genocide is making more soldiers see our line of recruiting communists. “The bosses are powerless if we refuse to fight for them.” Let’s follow his lead by recruiting more soldiers from the bosses’ armies everywhere. We must build one united Red Army. Neither Hamas nor IDF can bring peace. They are enemies of the working class. Let’s build a mighty ICWP of red soldiers to free the working class from wage slavery and genocide.
How Can Communists Organize Inside Capitalist Militaries Today?
A comrade in Oregon (USA) has been discussing the situation in the Middle East (and around the world) with friends. Some of them work in schools there. Many of these friends see that the imperialists are pivoting to war.
The comrade thinks it is very important that our paper should talk about what communists can do now to organize in the military. Also, what members and friends of our party have done in the past. Actual examples and stories are key for people to believe we really can do this.
The comrade formulated these questions:
*What are the material conditions that move capitalist/imperialist nations into war?
*Capitalist propaganda tells us 24/7 that war is in our interests. How do we show that these imperialist wars are never in the interests of workers, students, and soldiers?
*How can we combat the nationalist messages that aim to get us to support and engage capitalism’s desperate wars for their profits and survival, when these wars are never in our working-class interests?
*How and why do we advocate for communism and working-class solidarity as the only response to imperialist competition and war?
*Why must we organize for communism in the military when the purpose of the military is to train us to fight for capitalism and its survival in each nation?
*What is the history of organizing for communism in the military?
*How do we build party collectives within the military?
Comrades and friends from around the world, many of you have experience (or friends with experience) in organizing for communism in the military. We have historical examples from many places including Russia and China. But we are looking for more current (and first-person) examples from the late 20th century to now.
This is key work for making a revolution. We all need to know that it has been done and can be done. What mistakes were made? How can we improve our work?
Please contribute stories and examples and ideas for answering these questions.
Red Flag/Bandera Roja Collective
Read Our Pamphlet:
Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution
Let’s Turn Resistance to Capitalism into Revolution for Communism
“If we can pull off this level of global solidarity, then the revolution starts now,” said a friend whom we met at anti-APEC events this summer. They referred to holding up an arms shipment to Israel leaving the Port of Tacoma. A high school friend we met distributing Red Flag was also enthusiastic about the potential of these actions.
These discussions revealed the contradiction between strategies that aim for communist revolution and those that rely on resistance while maintaining capitalism.
In them, comrades emphasized the need to win industrial workers like longshore workers and Boeing workers, as well as soldiers, to communism.
We gave two historical examples. First, during the 1917 Russian Revolution, Seattle longshore workers noticed large shipments of sewing machines being sent to areas around Russia. The longshore workers found it odd that sewing machines would be a priority during a civil war.
A waterfront worker “accidentally” dropped a sewing machine crate. Lo and behold! The crates held rifles. They were destined for the anti-communist white army supported by imperialists including the US. Left-wing longshore workers made sure the guns never made it to the Russian battlefield.
Second, we described the first battle of the revolutionary civil war. It took place outside Petrograd. In the factories, production of war materiel for the revolution went on day and night. The contribution of factory workers did not end at the factory gates.
Over five hundred workers from the Putilov Works and fifty carpenters rushed to the trenches with their tools. They wanted to be sure the soldiers got them quickly! They trained revolutionary soldiers how to use them. They repaired vehicles and weapons on the front lines. Masses of factory workers from all over the city did the same.
Global unity based on resistance alone cannot end imperialism because it leaves capitalism intact. Only international communist revolution can free us from the clutches of capitalist genocide. This requires winning masses of industrial workers.
Revolutionary communist strategy requires that these workers take the fight beyond the factory gates. There can be no talk of revolution without large sections of the military convinced to turn the guns around.
We stand with the hundreds who blocked the immediate delivery of weapons for genocide. Nonetheless, the revolution really starts when industrial workers and soldiers around the world embrace communist insurrection.
Communist organizers will not spring up spontaneously. We are confident that today’s struggles, like the debates with our friends, pave the way for recruitment to ICWP during mass global rebellions.
—Comrades in Seattle (USA)