TEL AVIV (Occupied Palestine), January 27— “Trump has his eyes set on Greenland, and Netanyahu dreams of annexing Egypt. They both have restive populations defying fascism,” Adam said in our regular ICWP meeting.
Adam’s neighbor, who has started reading the Red Flag, saw heroic scenes of tens of thousands of multi-racial masses in Minneapolis. He saw the protests against ICE terrorism in Minnesota spreading to many other US cities. He concluded that both the US and Israel are in rapid decline. “The Hilltop Youth and ICE are a sign of a dying capitalism,” he said. “They terrorize the working class, hoping that their terror will divide the working class.”
The Hilltop Youth is a fascist organization in Israel that tries to forcibly occupy Palestinian neighborhoods in the West Bank. They resemble the Proud Boys in the US. The similarity between Trump and Netanyahu is striking. Last year, the Israeli Defense Minister started recruiting the Hilltop Youth to the paramilitary group Desert Frontier and to the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF, not “Defense” forces as they call themselves). ICE in the US recruits Proud Boys, giving them impunity to carry out murders, kidnappings, and to put workers in concentration camps. IOF is continuing the genocide in Gaza as the masses die of hypothermia and ‘Wet Tent Syndrome.’
ICWP has been distributing Red Flag to many people who organize against the forcible occupation of the West Bank. Now we have regular activist readers in B’Tselem. More Red Flag readers now call themselves communists. They believe in a “two-state solution” where the Jews and Palestinians can live separately but peacefully.
“Many of my comrades were severely assaulted by the IOF and the Hilltop Youth while we were trying to defend the Palestinian olive growers,” reported a former member of Standing Together who reads Red Flag. “I know many Palestinians. When I read Red Flag, I started to doubt the two-state solution. When so many Jewish people are fighting for Palestinians, why do we need to be separate nations?”
In our meeting, we rejected the liberal idea that Jewish and Palestinian workers need to be separated. This idea is dangerous. Even if it could be implemented, it would create a new class of capitalists in Palestine. That would trap the workers in a perpetual cycle of wage slavery, as has happened in South Africa and everywhere else.
Masses of workers are ready to fearlessly confront the most fascist forces from the US to Palestine. “I can see here in Tel Aviv that the US imperialists are ready to launch a massive strike in Iran,” said a comrade. “They need soldiers armed with guns and ammunition to de fend oil interests. These soldiers who are victims of racism, sexism, and lack of jobs must turn the guns around on the capitalists. Similarly, in Israel, thirty percent of IOF soldiers are refusing to fight. If they organize to fight against the capitalist system, and for communism, the world will change forever.”
We have resolved to look at the questions our new readers have raised. Basically, they are all saying, “communism is good, but we are not yet in ICWP.” The comrades who are already ICWP members have a huge responsibility to expand this work.
Read Genocide in Palestine Demands Communist Revolution here