Israel/Palestine: Gaza Genocide Deepens Zionist Crisis

Israel: Zionist Bosses’ Crisis Expands Opportunities to Build ICWP here ♦ Gaza: Is It Genocide? here ♦

ISRAEL, July 7– Mass protests mark the nine-month anniversary of the war on Gaza.

Israel:  Zionist Bosses’ Crisis Expands Opportunities to Build ICWP

July 7 — Over fifty thousand adults and children in Gaza are dead.  Ninety percent of Gazans have fled their homes – many more than once.  Half a million face starvation.  Health and educational institutions are in ruins.  But the will to live is strong.  And the Israeli ruling class, guilty of these crimes, is itself in trouble.

After October 7th, the Israeli rulers, led by Netanyahu, declared they would wipe out Hamas.  This meant a sustained vicious, brutal attack on Gaza. It also meant organizing and arming fanatic Jewish settlers to attack Palestinian farmers and workers in the West Bank.

“Now, after nine months, Hamas is still entrenched,” says a new ICWP member in Israel.  “And the Israeli working class finds itself in an unlivable condition.”

Mass demonstrations across Israel call for a ceasefire, a negotiated return of hostages, and immediate elections.  Now Israelis are also learning that the IDF (Israeli “Defense” Forces) implemented tactics on October 7 that caused an uncounted number of the Israeli deaths that day.

Israel was already in decline by 2022.  Prolonged infighting among political parties had created an obvious, serious, crisis. The audacious attack by Hamas highlighted this crisis.  Hamas operatives also compromised Israeli strategic intelligence. The IDF was unable to recover its assets for months.

Hamas fully expected a long war and did not care about the masses getting killed. Their long-term aim, backed by the Iranian rulers, was to expel the Israel/US axis from the Middle East. Chinese and Russian imperialists, who stand to gain, supported this objective.

The so-called “axis of resistance” includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas.  It has a strategy of slowly ‘bleeding’ Israel. This has been more effective than a full-fledged all-out war.

For example, Israel depends heavily on electricity generated from imported coal.  Over half that coal came from Colombia – which now refuses to sell it to Israel.  South Africa is another major supplier, though the best South African coal goes to Germany.  Houthi control of access to the Red Sea means that South African coal can only get to Israel the long way, up Africa’s west coast and through the Mediterranean.

All-out war with Hezbollah could take the whole system down within days. Prolonged power outages would render Israel unlivable. Transportation, water supply, communications, banking, commerce, and food refrigeration would all be impacted.  Israel’s “Iron Dome” probably couldn’t stop this.

Israel has never seen a war this long. To continue it, IDF had to mobilize 300,000 reservists, mostly from Israel’s critical IT sector. This contributes to a deepening slump.  Many Israeli IT and travel industry workers are leaving the country.

There is a complete collapse of the construction industry, resulting in skyrocketing prices. Hostilities with Hezbollah have also led to the withdrawal of 100,000 workers in the North. Israeli rulers try to hide the outflow of Israeli workers. But an estimated half a million had already left Israel and the trend has accelerated. Possibly 2.5 million Israelis have permanently left.

Israeli bosses no longer hire Palestinian workers, creating mass unemployment and simultaneously a critical labor shortage. The settler fascists are trying to fill the long-term gap by having a lot of babies. It will be a long time before they become new workers to match the skills of displaced construction and agricultural workers.

Meanwhile, Israeli capitalists are recruiting workers in India.  These workers probably aren’t told they will be deployed in high-risk areas. Nor that Israel has a history of mistreating and super-exploiting Thai and other immigrant workers.

Israel’s Defense Minister has said publicly that Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas cannot be attained.  But if the Army is ordered to continue fighting in Gaza, and to prepare to confront Hezbollah head-on, it needs more soldiers.

The IDF itself has a recruitment and enlistment crisis. Growing numbers of reservists are refusing to return to Gaza. Some say publicly that the Israeli government is “endangering our lives and the lives of innocents in Rafah.”  Israeli hospital waiting rooms are overflowing with recent veterans suffering from PTSD. Other veterans are dying by suicide.

The IDF is trying to organize a new brigade of 40,000 fighters.  They plan to draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who were exempted until a recent High Court ruling.   This has sparked protests and threatens to fracture Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, which relies on the ultra-Orthodox parties.

The US Biden administration, now comatose, has continued to enable genocide in Gaza by supplying the weapons Israel uses there.  It plans a warm welcome for the butcher Netanyahu. But as early as 2022, the Israeli ruling class was looking for a different partner.  Netanyahu had built a solid relationship with the Chinese imperialists. China is Israel’s second-largest trading partner after the European Union and a major supplier of coal.  Netanyahu also called Putin his “great friend.”

“Israeli and Palestinian workers are showing early signs of massive resistance leading to rebellion,” said the Israeli comrade.  “The prospect of building the International Communist Workers’ Party is brighter. Now it is time to seize the opportunity.”

ISRAEL, July 7– Mass protests mark the nine-month anniversary of the war on Gaza.

Gaza: Is It Genocide?

Hind Rajab, 6, was trapped in a car with family members who had been shot dead by Israeli troops. Two paramedics went in an ambulance to try to rescue her.  Israeli soldiers murdered all three.

They are among nearly 40,000 Gazans reported dead. An estimated 10,000 or more are still buried, uncounted, in the rubble.

The British medical journal Lancet notes, “Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence.

“Even if the conflict ends immediately,” it continues, “there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases.”

Lancet says that, in recent conflicts, indirect deaths are three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths. It estimates that the actual number of deaths in Gaza could ultimately add up to 186,000 or far more.

That would be over 8% of Gaza’s prewar population. Already some families have lost 150 or more members.  Obviously, it’s not in the interest of the Israeli rulers to publicize these numbers. Nor of Hamas, which did nothing to prepare the Gaza masses for what was coming.

In 2017, Hamas declared its goal of liberating Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Forty years earlier, the Zionist Likud party had used that very phrase: “Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”  Israeli politicians repeat it today, while libeling anti-Zionist protesters as “antisemitic.”

The facts on the ground are clear. The Israeli rulers are deliberately blocking food from Gaza. They are targeting health workers. Funded and supplied by the US Biden administration, with full bipartisan support, they are conducting a genocidal war on the Gaza masses.

Read our pamphlet:

Genocide in Gaza Demands Communist Revolution here

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