Tag Archives: Gaza

Anti-Imperialism, China, Palestine, U.S.

U.S. and Australian Militaries:
Get Out of the Red Sea!

Photo Above: Houthi fighters on board a helicopter seize the Galaxy Leader, when the ship owned by Israeli capitalist billionaire, Abraham Ungar was passing through the Red Sea. It is in the service of Israel’s rich capitalist exploiting class, whom Ungar is part of, and their counterparts in the U.S. ruling class that the Netanyahu regime is waging its genocidal assault on the people of Gaza.
Photo credit: Houthi media centre

Support the Pro-Palestine
Actions of Houthi Rebels!

U.S. and Australian Militaries:
Get Out of the Red Sea!

Close the Pine Gap Spy Base that’s
Helping Direct Israel’s Genocidal Hellfire

10 January 2024: Israel’s rulers would not be able to massacre Gaza’s people without the support of the U.S. and Australian capitalist regimes. Even while pretending to care about “minimising Palestinian civilian deaths”, the U.S. is sending Israel huge new weapons caches. For its part, the Australian regime greatly assists Israel to direct its air and artillery strikes through helping operate the NT-based Pine Gap ground station for U.S. spy satellites. Most recently, the U.S. and its allies are insisting on “stopping the conflict from widening”. Their lying media make this seem like a “peace” initiative. But it is the very opposite! The Western powers want to protect the Israeli onslaught by preventing actions in support of the Palestinian people. The “widening of this conflict” through non-Palestinian forces supporting the Palestinian resistance is precisely what is needed! We say: Urge the intensification of attacks on the Israeli military by the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi pro-Palestine groups! Welcome socialistic North Korea’s supply of weapons to the resistance! Hail the acts in solidarity with Palestine by Houthi rebels!

Houthi attacks demanding an end to Israel’s onslaught have disrupted Israel’s trade. When the Israeli rulers are massacring Palestinian people, such economic sabotage is 100% justified. For although they hurt ordinary Israeli people, they also block supplies to the Israeli military and hit the profits of Israel’s capitalist class – the class behind the genocidal regime in Israel. It is possible that some Houthi actions have inadvertently targeted ships not travelling to or from Israel. And it is bad that the resistance acts do put at risk the lives of workers on ships. However, such unwanted consequences are what inevitably happens when brave but poorly-armed resistance forces take on a much more powerful oppressor. Moreover, by forcing several Western shipping firms to redirect shipping from the Red Sea to the much longer route around the tip of Africa, Houthi actions are causing Western company owners to lose big profits. When the regimes that serve these Western capitalists are participating in the Gaza genocide, such blows against Western capitalist profits are what is needed.

To crush Houthi resistance, the U.S. has sent military forces to the Red Sea. The ALP government is dispatching eleven soldiers to back this anti-Palestinian action. We must demand: U.S./Australian military, get out of the Red Sea! We call on all maritime workers unions to refuse to load or crew any ships that shipping lines schedule to traverse through the Red Sea. This is necessary both to support the pro-Palestinian Houthi acts and to protect workers aboard the ships.

The Norwegian-flagged tanker, Strinda. On 12 December 2023, Houthi fighters damaged the tanker with an anti-ship missile after the vessel rejected several warning calls from the rebels. No crew were injured but the ship suffered significant damage. The Strinda was passing through the Red Sea to unload its cargo and then pick up oil or chemicals from a Mediterranean port for scheduled delivery to the Israeli port of Ashdod on January 4. Four days after the attack on the Strinda, the Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line, owned by one of China’s socialistic state-owned enterprises, COSCO Shipping, announced that it “will stop cargo acceptance to and from Israel with immediate effect until further notice”. The Houthi actions have affected the import of some supplies for the Israeli military and by making Israel’s imports more expense and disrupting Israel’s trade have hurt the profits of Israel’s capitalist class – the class behind the country’s mass murdering regime.

What the Australian Government’s Refusal to
Send a Warship to the Red Sea Means and Doesn’t Mean

Although the ALP government is sending troops to the anti-Houthi operation, it declined Biden’s request to send a warship. Some have welcomed this as a sign of the government asserting “independence” from the U.S. and retreating from support for Israel. However, as it explained itself, the government only declined to send the warship because it wanted to concentrate its forces in this region – especially in the South and East China Seas. In plain speak, the Australian regime wants to focus on squeezing socialistic China. This is hardly a noble agenda! Nevertheless, it is good that the warship was not sent. That weakens the anti-Palestinian operation. But Albanese deserves no credit! The credit should go to Red China. For, inadvertently, socialistic China has drawn the fire of the Australian military and that has weakened the Red Sea operation. This is a symptom of a momentous change that is taking place in the world. That is that the rise of a socialistic power in China is challenging the global tyranny of the Western imperialists. Although China’s compromise-seeking rulers do not themselves want to overthrow imperialism and although China’s transition to socialism is wobbly, the successes of her system based on public ownership of key sectors and working-class state power inevitably threatens the hegemony of the Israel-supporting capitalist powers. And the imperialists know this! That is why all those on the side of the people oppressed by the Western capitalists – from the masses of the Global South to the Palestinian people to the working classes and subjugated First Peoples within the West – must unconditionally defend socialistic China. We must demand: U.S and Australian imperialists, stop your provocations against China and get out of the South and East China Seas! Down with the propaganda against China that is used to justify the war drive against her – from the slanders against her highly successful COVID response to the lie that she is persecuting Uyghurs.

Rafah, 14 December 2023: Palestinian children look through the rubble of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. On that day alone at least 111 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza. Israel would not be able to carry out this genocidal terror without the massive support it is getting from the U.S., Australian, British and other Western capitalist ruling classes.
Photo credit: Khaled Omar/Xinhua

For Class War against the Australian Capitalist Ruling Class
That is Participating in Israel’s Genocide!

The greatest force that can topple the imperialist “order” that is massacring Palestinians is the world’s working class. Here, the working class has the power to undermine the Australian regime’s participation in Israel’s massacre through waging class war against the ultra-rich capitalist class that is behind the regime. Mobilising such struggle is possible because the Israel-supporting capitalist class is driving many workers into poverty by slashing real wages, jacking up prices and putting up rents. The fact that many trade unionists and other wage workers have been energised by the huge pro-Palestinian marches – a movement that has brought together Palestinians and other Arabs with Aboriginal people, Asians, Africans, anti-Zionist Jews and anti-racist whites – provides an important platform for building the type of actions needed.

However, for our pro-Palestine movement to be able to push the Australian regime back, we must change its direction. To be sure, there have been terrific speeches at the events – especially by Aboriginal activists – that have indentified Australia’s capitalist rulers as an enemy that needs to be defeated. However, other speeches and slogans have instead sought to win over Australia’s ruling class. Although this latter agenda is still very critical of the rulers, it blames the regime’s stance on the particular stripe of the government or on the government’s lack of courage to resist the U.S. rulers and the pro-Israel lobby. Therefore, according to this latter political line, through either appealing to the humanity of the rulers and beseeching them to show greater resolve to resist harmful influences, or through threatening to change the stripe of the government, the Australian regime can be pulled over to a more humane stance. It is this latter political line that is overall dominant at the pro-Palestine protests. The problem with this agenda is that it is not based on reality. The truth is that Australia’s capitalist ruling class – and all the parties bidding to administer their system – is inherently loyal to Israel. Hence the capitalist rulers cannot be won over. Rather, they must be compelled to retreat. However, as long as the Palestine movement appeals to them as if they could be future, at least partial, allies, the ruling class will not feel threatened by the movement … and hence will not be forced to step back from their pro-Israel stance.

Let us examine some of the flaws in our movement that need correction. Some slogans have appealed to Albanese to “grow some balls” or “get a spine”. The message is that he should follow his own “conscience” rather than being pressured by Washington or the Israel lobby. However, although those pressures exist, the reason that Albanese supports Israel is because that is what is in the interests of Australia’s capitalist class. Australia’s capitalists back Israel because Israel is the USA’s enforcer in the oil-rich Middle East. And Australia’s capitalists need U.S. dominance to be protected because they need U.S. power to both underwrite their imperialist exploitation of PNG, East Timor and other South Pacific and Southeast Asian countries and to lead the charge against socialistic China. Although the ALP has a working class base, the Labor party’s program is to bow to the capitalists on key questions. When Albanese backs Israel’s tyranny, he is merely doing what he does on all other crucial issues – serve Australia’s capitalist exploiting class.

After Canberra voted at the UN for a “humanitarian ceasefire” four weeks ago, some hailed this as the government being dragged into finally taking a more humane stance. Especially pushing this narrative is Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi – who takes a more pro-Palestine position than the Greens’ overall line which is to (despicably) equally condemn Hamas and Israel. But the truth is that the government’s December UN vote does not represent any shift towards a more humane line. Not while the regime has not pulled back one bit from directing Israeli strikes on Gaza through the Pine Gap spy base! And not while Australian troops are taking part in the Red Sea operation! The government’s UN vote was rather an attempt to protect the regime’s “human rights credentials”. They worry too that an escalation of Israel’s massacre could further expose the true colours of Western capitalism and, moreover, provoke such resistance that it destabilises Zionist rule. As both their words supporting Israel’s agenda to drive out Hamas and their actions in Pine Gap and the Red Sea show, in as much as the Albanese government actually wants a ceasefire, they want it to be on Israel’s terms.

Some speakers at the Palestine rallies have vowed to oppose Labor at the next elections. We sure agree with that! At the last elections, unlike the rest of the Left, we in Trotskyist Platform opposed a vote for any of the parties currently in parliament – whether it be the Liberals or the ALP or Greens. But many now rejecting the ALP suggest supporting the Greens. But the Greens, who embrace capitalists amongst their ranks, are just as committed to upholding the rule of the capitalists – the class whose interests lie with supporting Israel. Thus, just like their German counterparts, if the Greens were actually in government they would likely also end up backing Israel. Moreover, when the Australian ruling class sees the Palestine movement today advocating support for the Greens, it reassures them that the movement will not resist their class rule. And that gives them confidence that they do not need to retreat from their support for Israel.

Pro-Greens influence is part of the reason why the Palestine movement has thus far not made opposing the Pine Gap base a central slogan of the protests. Subconsciously in part, leading activists know that highlighting how Australia’s rulers are actually participating in Israel’s genocidal war undercuts their current agenda of trying to win over through pressure sections of the ruling class. They would rather be appealing to the regime to “stand up for humanity” than condemn it as the enemy. However, as we have stressed, as long as Australia’s ruling class do not see the movement opposing them as their enemy, they will not be compelled to retreat. Moreover, if we are not taking a stand on Pine Gap and the Red Sea operation, we are failing to oppose the regime here’s main role in the war on Gaza. Therefore, we make the following appeal to our fellow pro-Palestinian activists: Come to the protests bearing signs demanding the closure of the U.S.-Australia Pine Gap spy base and the removal of all U.S. and Australian forces from the Red Sea! Convince others to also carry such signs! Advocate support for the rise of socialistic China that is threatening the Israel-supporting imperialist order! Expose the Australian government’s con job with its UN “humanitarian ceasefire” vote! Expose illusions in the Greens! Work hard to turn our pro-Palestine movement into a pro-working class movement of irreconcilable opposition to the Australian ruling class that is participating in Israel’s genocide! Support the downfall of murderous Zionism by relentlessly shaking the Western imperialist branches on which it is perched!

Anti-Imperialism, China, Palestine, U.S.

Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!

Photo Above: Tens of thousands of people again marched in Sydney on 3 December 2023 to protest Israel’s genocidal attack on the Palestinian people of Gaza.
Photo credit: Dean Sewell

Long Live the Palestinian Resistance! Don’t Be Fooled by the Powerless UN Vote! The Australian Regime is Still Participating in Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza. 

Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!

Resist Imperialism through Workers Struggle and
Supporting the Rise of Socialistic China!

13 December 2023: Israeli forces are continuing to massacre children and other Palestinian civilians. They have already seized large parts of Gaza. Yet the far-right Israeli regime and their Washington senior partners want to subdue through terror Palestinian people even further. That is why the U.S. vetoed last week’s UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. Now, the UN General Assembly has just voted overwhelmingly for a ceasefire in a non-binding resolution. The only governments to oppose or abstain on the vote were those of the U.S. and some of its most obsequious allies, like Britain, Lithuania and the Ukrainian regime that is waging the U.S.’s proxy war to subdue Russia. Also refusing to back a ceasefire are a majority of those regimes that are so servile to imperialism that they recognise the rogue, Western-propped up Taiwanese regime rather than the Peoples Republic of China as the legitimate rulers of China. These include the regimes ruling Paraguay, Guatemala and Nauru as well as those running Palau and Marshall Islands, both of which are Pacific countries where the U.S. has control of their defense arrangements under a colonial-style “Compact of Free Association”, as they do with Micronesia, which also failed to vote for a ceasefire. Also refusing to support a ceasefire are most of the openly far-right governments, like those running Italy, Hungary and Argentina.

Among those that voted for last night’s ceasefire resolution were not only governments known to have a pro-Palestine position – like those of Russia and socialistic China – but even some of Israel’s staunchest backers. This includes the liberal government of Canada, the right-wing government of New Zealand and the Labor government of Australia. With much of the world horrified by Israel’s heinous cruelty, these governments knew that maintaining public opposition to a ceasefire would expose their own brutality and the hypocrisy of their claims to be guardians of “human rights.” With Australia’s capitalist rulers (and “like-minded” ruling elites) only too aware that dishonestly wielding the club of “human rights” is a vital component of their strategy to achieve their main foreign policy goal – to crush socialistic rule in China – they felt compelled to gloss up their soiled “human rights” credentials by voting for a ceasefire. However, although the Australian government had previously opposed a ceasefire, their recent vote should not be seen as a weakening of their support for Israel’s occupation. Indeed, the Australian regime also voted for a failed U.S. amendment that put the blame for the suffering on Hamas. After the vote, Australian regime representatives decried that the U.S. amendment – that aimed at whitewashing the brutality of Israel’s 75 year-long occupation – was not included in the resolution.

What most makes the Australian government’s UN vote such a cynical, window-dressing ploy is the fact that the Australian ruling class continues to militarily back Israel. Not only does the Australian regime maintain military ties with Israel, the Pine Gap U.S.-Australia joint spy base is playing a MASSIVE role in Israel’s assault on Gaza. Operated by U.S. and Australian military personnel, the base near Alice Springs downloads information from U.S. spy satellites about targets in Gaza which are analysed and passed on to Israel. This enables the Israeli military to pinpoint its missiles and artillery so that they strike actual human targets rather than empty land or structures. In other words, the Albanese Labor government is doing more than supporting genocide. Through hosting and jointly operating Pine Gap, they are actually committing genocide! And they continue to do so! No symbolic vote for a non-enforceable UN resolution will change that! Just like Netanyahu and Biden, Anthony Albanese and foreign minister Penny Wong are war criminals.

Above: The U.S.-Australia joint spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs. Receiving data from U.S. spy satellites monitoring the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, U.S. and Australian personnel at the base then analyse the data and pass on to Israel the geolocations of targets. This enables Israel to pinpoint air and artillery strikes to ensure that Israeli missiles, rockets, shells and bombs hit human targets rather than vacant space or empty structures. Below: Apartment blocks – and no doubt many of the Palestinian people living in them – are destroyed by yet another Israeli air strike on Gaza City.

Photo credit (above photo): Felicity Ruby
Photo credit (below photo): Adel Hana/Associated Press

Stand with the Palestinian Resistance!

The huge pro-Palestinian rallies have had some impact in making even Israel’s staunchest backers want to appear like they are concerned for Palestinian civilians. In Sydney, the weekly protests have had some powerful Palestinian and progressive Jewish speakers. The highlight has been many of the speeches given by Aboriginal activists. At last Sunday’s (December 10) Sydney protest, the Aboriginal speaker was especially impressive as he insightfully connected the oppressions of Aboriginal and Palestinian people and attacked capitalist rule in Australia and its window-dressing schemes. We in Trotskyist Platform encourage people to join in these weekly Sydney pro-Palestine marches organised by the hard-working Palestine Action Group (in which the Socialist Alternative group plays a prominent role). We also condemn those nominal defenders of Palestinians who are discouraging participation in the protests. After all, those seeking to demoralise activists by saying that their participation is “meaningless” are only playing into the hands of the likes of Albanese, Peter Dutton and premier Chris Minns, who have all sought to sabotage the PAG-organised actions.

At the same time, the longer that this Israeli onslaught goes, the more that the current flaws in the political strategy of the PAG limits the impact that the protests can have. Thus, while many of the slogans that rally organisers have promoted  correctly take an unambiguous stance in support of the Palestinian resistance – like “Intifada, Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!” – some take an “even-handed” position. Chief among the latter is the call for “Ceasefire Now!” To be sure, many defenders of the Palestinian people call for a “ceasefire” because what they are seeing now is a one-sided slaughter. When they demand “ceasefire”, they mean that Israel should stop firing. However, as last night’s UN vote by the likes of Australia and France shows, when Western imperialist regimes call for a “ceasefire” they mean something very different. This was made clear after the vote. Foreign minister, Penny Wong, reiterated Australia’s support for “Israel’s right to defend itself” and Australia’s UN representative, James Larsen, ranted that “Hamas must be defeated and dismantled.” In plain speak that means that they are calling for supporting the Israeli military, which is precisely what the Australian ruling class are doing! Australia’s capitalist rulers want a “ceasefire” on Israel’s terms and are working to strengthen Israel’s military campaign so that any “ceasefire” will end up as favourable to Israel as possible. They, however, worry that further Israeli murder of civilians could provoke such broad resistance that Israel and its occupation ends up weakened. Indeed, a big part of why the Australian – and several other imperialist – regimes are now calling for a ceasefire is because they believe that Israel has already sufficiently strengthened its occupation over these last two months: by landing blows against the Palestinian resistance and by annihilating Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. We must not shout slogans that can accommodate such anti-Palestine agendas! And we certainly must not pressure the Palestinian resistance to “ceasefire”! Instead, we must give 100% support to the Palestinian resistance. Hail the courage of Palestinian resistance forces and their Yemini Houthi allies! Socialistic North Korea and other countries providing arms to the resistance: increase your supply of arms! Other non-Western countries: start sending arms to Palestinian fighters – especially to those secular and leftist groups that are taking part in the Hamas-led resistance! Let us demand: Israel out of Gaza! All Israeli troops and racist settlers out of all of the West Bank. For the complete right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants!

Take Mass Action against the Australian Ruling Class
that is Participating in Israel’s Onslaught!

Another problem with the “Ceasefire” chant is that it makes pro-Palestinian rallies come off as half-neutral. That makes the actions less offensive to the Israeli regime and its backers and thus far less likely to compel them to retreat. It will actually take an enormous amount to compel the regimes that facilitate Israel’s terror to back off. The U.S. imperialists prop us Israel in order to have a reliable enforcer of their predatory interests in the strategically-located and oil rich Middle East. Australia’s capitalist rulers in turn back the Israeli attack dog of the USA, because they want U.S. power to be upheld. For it is U.S. power that underwrites Australian capitalists’ plunder of South Pacific and southeast Asian countries. And it is U.S. might that Australia’s rulers hope will squeeze socialistic China so tightly that she will no longer be able to obstruct imperialist exploitation of poorer countries through mutually beneficial cooperation with them. Against such over-riding self interest, we can only compel Australia’s ruling class to retreat from their participation in the Gaza slaughter if we can seriously threaten their class interests. The PAG-organised rallies are not yet doing this. For the overall line of the actions – some particular excellent speeches excluded – while rightly very critical of the Australian government, do not brand the Australian ruling class as an enemy. Thus, when the Australian ruling class see rallies mainly opposing their Israeli and U.S. allies they are angered but not politically frightened. However, if they were to instead hear tens of thousands of people saying not just “Down, Down Israel, Down, Down USA” but shouting, “Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!”, they would be truly alarmed. And, thus, far more likely to back off!

What will especially frighten the Australian ruling class is workers’ political strike action in support of the Palestinian people. With working class people suffering under falling real wages, soaring rents and unaffordable prices, there is a definite opportunity to combine opposition to capitalist profiteering by the ruling class with opposition to its participation in the massacre of Palestinian people. We support the attempted port blockades – with union approval – of Israeli Zim shipping. At the same time, we say that blockades and industrial action would be far more effective if they directly target the interests of the Australian capitalists and their regime. After all, Israel is far away. The amount that its ruling class would be frightened by action in Australia targeting Israeli companies is limited. In contrast, if actions hurt the profits of big-time Australian capitalists at home or caused their regime’s operations to be disrupted, Australia’s ruling class would be terrified. Let’s build workers industrial action – supported by pro-Palestine pickets – to target the Australian ruling class and demand: Stop Pine Gap’s participation in the Gaza massacre – Close Pine Gap! No Australian arms exports to Israel. End Australian military ties to Israel! The fact that huge numbers – including many compassionate, intelligent youth spurred into political activism for the first time – have joined the weekly rallies can provide a crucial stepping stone for building the type of actions needed. But the step up must be made! Through the placards that we carry and the leaflets that we distribute at the protests, Trotskyist Platform has been working hard to turn the rallies into a Palestine movement that is unequivocally opposed to the Australian ruling class – the type of movement that has the potential to compel the Australian capitalists to retreat from their role in the Gaza slaughter.

The reason that the PAG leadership has not sought to turn the movement in such a direction is because, no doubt with many misgivings, they are currently betting on an alternative strategy – one that seeks through pressure to win over the Australian regime. While rightly denouncing the Albanese government’s stance, PAG leaders promote the notion that that through pressure the ALP government can be partially won over; or that greater numbers for the Greens in parliament could change the regime’s stance. However, the reality is that the Australian regime’s support for Israel’s terror flows naturally from its own essence. Capitalist Australia was formed out of genocidal massacres of this country’s First Nations peoples. No amount of window dressing can cover up the fact that Australian regime forces continue to kill Aboriginal people in custody and continue to remove Aboriginal children from their families. Moreover, while today facilitating Israel’s crimes, the Australian military, earlier, directly committed war crimes during its participation in the occupation of Afghanistan. There, Australia’s elite SAS troops massacred onion farmers, executed civilians and slit the throats of children. The problem is that no matter which particular parties control parliament, the current Australian regime has been designed to serve the capitalist class. In wealthy Australia, this class – which consists of wealthy business owners of all ethnicities but in Australia is mostly made of white Christians with just a small percentage of Jewish capitalists – not only exploits workers in this country but exploits workers and plunders natural resources at an even greater rate in the South Pacific and beyond. This class has calculated that its interests lie very much with supporting its U.S. godfather’s Israeli henchman. Therefore, this Australian capitalist class, which is the ultimate power in this country that all governments must serve, will always support Israel as long as the capitalists rule this country.

Even if the Greens win office, the Australian regime will continue to support the subjugation of Palestinian and Aboriginal people and will continue to enforce the exploitation of workers. This is especially true given that the Greens include capitalists in their ranks and refuse to stand for class struggle against the capitalist class. To be sure, the Greens appear a lot better on Palestine than the ALP and the right-wing Coalition. They at least condemn Israel’s war crimes. But their support for Palestine is limited. Feeding into the imperialist narrative that downplays the impact of Israel’s brutal 75-year-long occupation of Palestine and denying the fact that Hamas’ October 7 attack included heroic blows against the Israeli military (alongside some wrong attacks on civilians that were, however, dwarfed by the Israeli military’s killing of its own civilians through carpet bombing of contested sites during the Hamas-led incursion), the Greens harmfully equate the October 7 attack with Israel’s war crimes. Thus, an October 16 Greens statement, stated that:

“We all watched in horror at the brutality and callousness of Hamas’ October 7th attacks on innocent civilians. The State of Israel’s siege and destruction of Gaza continues the cycle of violence. It is civilians in both places paying the price.

“The Greens reject and condemn all forms of violence, especially against civilians. We again call for an immediate ceasefire between the State of Israel and Hamas, an immediate halt to the forced removal and transfer of Palestinians in Gaza, a release of hostages, and an end to the military siege.”

Of course, as sly politicians looking for votes, Greens politicians make sure that they sound a lot more pro-Palestinian than their official position when they speak at pro-Palestine protests. But if one wants an idea of how the Greens in government would actually act, one should look at the governments that their overseas counterparts are part of. In Germany, Greens foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is a hardline supporter of Israel’s onslaught and is part of a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party that has banned pro-Palestine protests. In Austria, the Greens, in coalition with a conservative party, are part of a government that voted against last night’s UN ceasefire resolution from an extreme pro-Zionist standpoint. It is telling too that, reflecting the interests of Australia’s capitalist class, the Australian Greens, for their part, only call to “renegotiate” the U.S.-Australia alliance rather than to scrap it.

What we need to do to support Palestinian and Aboriginal peoples and all the downtrodden of this country is to wage mass struggle against Australia’s capitalist rulers with the aim of forcing them into retreats. Any illusions that the regime can be persuaded to take a more progressive stance or that it will fundamentally change if the Greens gain a greater stake in parliament obstruct such struggle. PAG leaders are hardly alone in having such illusions. False hopes in the potential future benevolence of the Australian regime and in the Greens in particular are also widespread amongst the ranks of those joining the protests. Given the weight of propaganda and nationalism, the hardest ruling class to oppose in any imperialist country is always the ruling class in one’s own country. It is far easier to brand only the Israeli and U.S. regimes as enemies, while referring to the Australian regime as a currently deviant entity that can, however, be won over. Yet such a strategy will not be effective in restraining the Australian regime’s participation in the Gaza bloodbath. The change in direction in the movement must be made! The leap in the political consciousness of the activists participating in the movement must be achieved. With the horror of Israel’s terror and the depth of Western imperialist support for it pushing many to rethink their political perspective, such a leap in consciousness is possible. Therefore, at this time, those that understand the need to turn the pro-Palestine movement into one that is unequivocally opposed to Australia’s imperialist rulers have an extra special duty to bring that understanding to their fellow activists. 

Australia’s Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese meets U.S. president Joe Biden at the White House in late October 2023 as Israeli missiles and bombs are massacring the people of Gaza. Albanese reiterated the Australian regime’s support for its U.S. ally’s Israeli henchmen in its genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people.

Photo credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA

“Threaten” the Global Tyranny of the
Imperialists who Prop Up Israel –
Support the Rise of Socialistic China!

Israel’s subjugation of Palestine is set to become even more brutal. That is why supporters of Palestine must learn key lessons from these last ten, intense weeks. One lesson arises from the reality that the capitalist rulers of various Arab and Muslim majority countries – like those of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – have at this crucial moment refused to do more than lip-service to stand by Palestinian people. Indeed, especially in the case of Egypt, with its restriction of supplies to the resistance, they have even been complicit in the Israeli onslaught. All this proves the Marxist doctrine that exploiting classes ultimately act in their own material interests rather than complying with notions of ethnic or religious solidarity; and, moreover, the political imperatives of these ruling classes are what shapes religious doctrines … and not the other way around. These countries will start standing by the Palestinian people only when their toiling classes take state power and totally free these countries from the grip of Western imperialism.

The most vital lesson for activists in Australia to learn from these last weeks is that Israel is only able to get away with its terror because it has the support of the U.S. and US imperialist allies like Australia. Therefore, truly standing with the Palestinian people means opposing the Western imperialists in every battle that they are engaged in. That means that we must stand for the defence of Russia – despite its reactionary, also-capitalist rulers – against the U.S., NATO and Australian imperialists and their Ukrainian proxies. Indeed, an indication of the, at-bottom, pro-imperialist nature of the Greens is that the Greens rabidly support the U.S.-led imperialists in their proxy war against Russia. These avowed “pacifists” even support Australian arms transfers to Ukraine! Harmfully, so do two left groups that far more sincerely support the Palestinian struggle than the Greens – Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance.

The biggest state challenge to imperialism comes from socialistic China. This is despite the currently unfinished and precarious nature of China’s transition to socialism. The U.S. and Australian imperialists know that if China continues to succeed in socialistic development, this will not only obstruct their subjugation of the Global South but could eventually encourage their own masses to fight for socialism and thereby topple them from power. If this were to happen, Israel’s tyranny over Palestine will collapse. That is why all supporters of Palestine and all anti-imperialists must defend socialistic rule in China. In doing so we must draw another crucial lesson from the events of the last ten weeks: that is that the Western capitalist rulers and their media are masters of deceit. And given that while protecting Israel is an important tactic that the U.S. and its allies have for buttressing their power, crushing socialistic China is their main strategic goal, it follows that the imperialist rulers and their media are even more biased against Red China than they are against Palestine! This is indeed the case! For example, their claim that China is persecuting her more European-looking, Muslim Uyghur population in China’s northwest is a lie cut out of whole cloth. This claim has been rejected by almost every Muslim-majority country and is largely only promoted by the regimes that today support Israel’s terror.

That imperialist propaganda against the Chinese workers state is even more intense than it is against Palestine makes it much harder to stand by socialistic China than it is to stand by Palestine. Indeed, several of the groups active in building solidarity with Palestine – including the Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity groups – ape Western propaganda against China, even while opposing some of the anti-China military build up. In 2019, these groups stood with Union Jack-carrying, pro-British colonial Hong Kong expatriates in anti-communist rallies encouraged by the Australian ruling class. A year ago, these same groups hailed the small, Western-backed, “A4 protests” in China over her COVID response that were incited by overt anti-communists. In contrast, we insist that to truly oppose the imperialists, one must have the fortitude to defy the propaganda vilifying the main “threat” to their global tyranny – socialistic China. Let us demand: U.S., British and Australian imperialists (and their lackeys in the far-right, Ferdinand Marcos Junior government in the Philippines), stop your provocations against China in the South and East China Seas! Down with Western support to the anti-communist Taiwanese regime! Down with all the Western-backed forces threatening socialistic rule in China – from anti-communist, Hong Kong rich kids to the “A4” COVID conspiracy-mongers.

Hebron, 21 October 2023: Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron protest in support of the people of Gaza. Protesters carried portraits of the leader of socialistic North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. This was in honour of North Korea’s provision of arms to the Palestinian resistance and her verbal support for the Palestinian liberation struggle. Many Palestinians see North Korea as a symbol of defiance of the Western imperialists who so brutally subjugate the Palestinian people. North Korea and especially her socialistic neighbour and ally, the Peoples Republic of China are the main targets of the imperialist powers.

When the working classes and all the downtrodden of the U.S., Germany, Australia, Britain, Japan and other imperialist countries seize state power and join China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos on a socialist path, brutal national and colonial oppression – like that of Palestinian, Aboriginal, Tamil, Kashmiri and Kanak peoples – will have no powerful backers. Indeed, it will have no reason for existence. We look forward to such a world. Let’s work tirelessly and unflinchingly towards its realisation. In doing so, we will never forget the horrific suffering that Palestinian people have borne over the last 75 years and especially over the last ten weeks. We look forward to the day when Netanyahu, Biden, Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Annalena Baerbock and Rishi Sunak will face war crimes tribunals and be given the appropriate decisive punishments. We look forward to the day when the Palestinian people will be truly free and living happily in a socialist Palestine together with their Jewish sisters and brothers.

Gaza-December-2023Download
Anti-Imperialism, DPRK, Palestine

Close the U.S./Australia Pine Gap Spy Base That Is Directing Israel’s Genocidal Attacks

Photo above: Residents of a Gaza neighbourhood look through the rubble on 31 October 2023 after yet another Israeli bombardment.
photo credit: Xinhua

Close the U.S./Australia Pine Gap
Spy Base That Is Directing Israel’s
Genocidal Attacks on Gaza’s People!

1 November 2023: Israeli forces have killed over 3,500 Palestinian children in Gaza in just the last 24 days. Indeed more than two out of every five people that Israel has killed in its latest onslaught are children. This is not “self-defence” – this is a massacre! Defending their people against Israel’s invasion, Palestinian fighters are putting up heroic resistance. Let us work with all our energy for the defeat of Israel and the victory of the Palestinian resistance and their allies! That means that here in Australia we need to build towards workers industrial action and other militant, mass actions that will demand: End the Australian regime’s support for the Israeli military! End the Israeli assault! Lift the blockade of Gaza! All Israeli troops and settlers out of the West Bank! For the complete right of return of all Palestinians!

The reason that Israel is able to unleash this terror is because of the support that it gets from the U.S. and its allies. In the last 24 days, the U.S. has sent Israel huge amounts of weapons. This includes bombs and artillery shells – the very weapons that have killed the most Palestinians. Moreover, U.S. president Joe Biden has even sent high-ranking U.S. military officials to “advise” Israel’s attack. U.S. rulers are not just supporting Israel’s invasion, they are directing it!

It would be very politically difficult for the U.S. to support Israel if no other power backed this stance. That is why the other Western ruling classes play a criminal role in providing diplomatic cover for Washington. Last week, when prime minister Anthony Albanese met Biden, he lavishly praised Biden’s support for Israel’s assault: “Mr President, we applaud the personal resolve you have brought to this troubled part of the world.” This diplomatic backing is especially crucial to Washington as Australia is one of the very few non-NATO powers that are supporting Israel’s attack. Make no mistake about it, Albanese is a war criminal complicit in the U.S./Israeli massacre! Do not be fooled at all by his gentle calls for Israel to minimise civilian deaths. The Australian regime does not care about Gaza’s people – they are only trying to minimise damage to their completely fake, self-created image of being “human rights” defenders.

Above: War criminals Anthony Albanese and Joe Biden at their recent meeting in Washington. Albanese reiterated to Biden the Australian regime’s support for Israel’s attack on Gaza. Below: Palestinian children wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza City on 11 October 2023 receive treatment. By the end of October, Israeli forces had killed over 3,500 children in Gaza since October 7.
photo credit (above photo): Drew Angerer
photo credit (below photo): Madhyamam

Australia’s Capitalist Regime is a Direct Participant
in the Massacre of Palestinian People

The Australian regime does more than provide crucial political backing for the U.S. and Israel. They also have military links that support Israel’s war. Their biggest contribution is through the joint U.S./Australia Pine Gap base just south of Alice Springs. This base is used to position U.S. spy satellites that cover a vast stretch of land from Africa to the Middle East to all of Asia. The highly secretive facility was built in the 1960s to aid the capitalist powers’ Cold War against the then socialistic, Soviet Union. In the 21st century, its capability has been greatly expanded. Apart from intercepting people’s phone calls and E-mails, Pine Gap receives from spy satellites the geolocation data of weapons systems, radio communication devices and cell phones. This information is then transmitted to the U.S. and allied militaries. Pine Gap has been actively used in the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and other countries that have killed thousands of civilians. The base’s unique and crucial role in the U.S. and its allies’ war drive comes from its remote location far from any coastline. As a result, Pine Gap has been used in every single U.S. war in the 21st century. This fact combined with Biden’s announcement that the U.S. was providing full intelligence support to Israel means that it is 100% certain that the U.S./Australia spy base would be participating in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

Pine Gap’s main function in Israel’s invasion is to locate Palestinian targets. By precisely locating cellphones, the spy base ensures that Israeli’s missile and artillery strikes kill the maximum number of people rather than land in uninhabited areas. Especially through hosting and operating Pine Gap, the Australian regime is not only a supporter of Israel’s genocide but an active participant in it. Every supporter of the Palestinian people must demand the immediate closure of the spy base. This must become a key demand of the large pro-Palestinian protests in Australia.

The U.S./Australia Pine Gap spy base.
 photo credit Kristian Laemmle-Ruff/@kristianlaemmleruff

Turn the Pro-Palestinian Protests Against the
Australian Imperialist Regime That’s
Participating in Israel’s Genocide!

Australia’s ruling class backs Israel because Israel is its U.S. ally’s attack dog that enforces U.S. domination of the oil rich and strategically located Middle East. To understand why Australia’s rulers back their U.S. counterparts, one has to examine the nature of this ruling class. This rich capitalist class not only extracts profits from exploiting Australian wage workers but seizes huge profits from plundering the South Pacific and parts of Asia. The Australian ruling class relies on U.S. power to underwrite this tyranny. In other words, Australia’s rulers back their U.S. counterparts – including in strengthening its Israeli attack dog in the Middle East – in the same way that a local mafia thug always stands by the mafia godfather that guarantees their despotism over their bit of turf. With socialistic China’s mutually beneficial cooperation with countries in this region enabling these countries to start to free themselves from Australian imperialist subjugation, Australia’s rulers are counting on Washington to drive out such “Communist Chinese interference”. That is why they have become even more reliant on their U.S. counterparts and thus even more unequivocal in backing Israel.

Given the self interest that Australia’s ruling class has in backing Israel, how are we going to make it retreat from this? Encouragingly, huge numbers have joined pro-Palestinian protests. People of Palestinian and other Arab heritage have been joined by other people of colour, white Australians and progressive-minded Jewish people. However, the direction of the rallies is not yet one that can force the Australian ruling class to back down. Although protesters have rightly chanted, “Albanese you can’t hide – you’re supporting genocide”, the rallies’ main target has not been Australia’s rulers. The problem is that while Australia’s rulers won’t be happy with rallies opposing their allies, they also know that such actions won’t do too much damage to allies located so far away. But what if protesters instead of only saying “Israel, USA, How Many Kids Have You Killed Today” were saying “Israeli, U.S., Australian Regimes: How Many Kids Have You Killed Today”? What if when criticising the Australian rulers it is not done from the futile point of view of appealing to them as if they are potential allies but by denouncing them as enemies. What if instead of only saying “Down, Down Israel, Down, Down USA”, tens of thousands are passionately shouting, “Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!” Then Australia’s rulers would be truly worried! They would consider retreating from their support for Israel in order to stop hostility to their political order spreading. This is especially if the movement was able to link its opposition to Israel’s terror with the broader masses’ grievances. So it is great that Aboriginal activists addressing the rallies have connected Palestinian people’s oppression with the Australian regime’s brutal subjugation of Aboriginal people.

What would also make Australia’s ruling class think twice about backing Israel is if they suffered economic damage from union political industrial action. Encouragingly, some union contingents have joined the Palestine protests. However, to turn this into actual industrial action requires a political struggle within our unions to challenge the loyalty of current union tops to the very Labor government that is supporting Israel’s massacre. To win union ranks to taking the big step of launching industrial action also requires steering the pro-Palestinian protests onto a path that can appeal to workers’ class interests. The movement must loudly point out that opposing the U.S. rulers’ Israeli proxies would weaken the Australian ruling class that is driving more and more working class people into poverty through raising prices, driving down real wages and jacking up rents. Of course, those pro-Palestinian people from amongst the 5% to 8% of the population that form the capitalist class (and its henchmen) will not like the movement being reoriented in a pro-working class, anti-Australian-capitalist-regime direction. So be it! Their support for Palestine will ultimately be inconsistent because they profit from the political order that supports Israel. Turning the pro-Palestine movement in a pro-working-class, anti-Australian-ruling-class direction is what we need for this movement to make a real difference.

Oppose Western Imperialism’s “Rules-Based
Democratic Order” That Underpins Israel’s Terror!

The ultimate targets of the Pine Gap base that is today pinpointing Israeli attacks are socialistic China and North Korea. Indeed, the U.S. and its allies’ support for Israel and its opposition to socialistic states are closely intertwined. Washington backs Israel in part to enable Israel to threaten Middle Eastern countries that pursue friendly ties with China and North Korea. Little wonder then that, to her great credit, North Korea is providing arms to Palestinian resistance forces. China for its part is the major power that most stands by Palestine. However, as a socialistic state, its stance should become far more intransigent. For starters, we say that when China’s president Xi Jinping meets with war criminal Albanese in five days time, Xi should publicly condemn the Australian regime for its complicity in Israel’s slaughter.

China’s impact on the Palestinian struggle is far wider than its direct stance on the question. Her cooperation with developing countries is enabling them – including some Arab ones – to slowly squeeze out from under Western imperialism’s boot. The ultimate fear of the U.S. and Australian imperialists is that China’s successes will not only undercut their subjugation of the Global South but will eventually encourage their own masses to fight for socialism and topple them from power. If either of these things were to happen, Israel’s tyranny over Palestine is doomed. That is why all supporters of the Palestinian struggle and all anti-imperialists must defend socialistic rule in China. Resist all military and political attacks on China by the Western capitalists and their “pro-democracy” proxies within China.

Outrage at Israel’s crimes and the Australian rulers’ support for them has compelled many young people to participate in their first political actions. Events are pushing them to rethink their own politics and engage in lively debates. These compassionate people need their energy to be channeled into a direction that can force the Australian regime to retreat from its participation in Israel’s massacre. Let’s turn the pro-Palestinian protests into a pro-working class movement against the Australian imperialist regime that is joining Israel’s genocide! Let’s fight for the immediate closure of the Pine Gap spy base! Let’s build toward union industrial action against the Australian regime’s support for Israel! Let’s fight against the world domination of Western imperialism that underpins Israel’s tyranny over Palestine!

Anti-Imperialism, Palestine

WAGE POLITICAL WAR AGAINST BIDEN, ALBANESE & ALL THE IMPERIALISTS ENABLING ISRAEL’S WAR ON GAZA’S PEOPLE!

Photo Above: A man evacuates a crying girl from a building in the southern Gaza city of Rafah that was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on October 9.
Photo credit: Khaled Omar/Xinhua

WAGE POLITICAL WAR AGAINST
BIDEN, ALBANESE, DUTTON & ALL
THE IMPERIALISTS ENABLING ISRAEL’S
NAZI-LIKE WAR ON GAZA’S PEOPLE!

11 October 2023: Israel is massacring the people of Gaza through indiscriminate air strikes. Seizing on Saturday’s attacks by Palestinian groups, Israel’s far-right government is waging all-out war on Gaza’s people. Already, Israel has stopped all food, electricity and water from entering Gaza. Defending this siege, Israeli defence minister Yoav Galland sounded exactly like a Nazi Holocaust-justifying, racial supremacist when he declared that: “We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.” Given the Israeli regime’s racism, the especially fanatical nature of its present ultra-rightist government and the fact that Gaza is so densely populated, the current Israeli attack could end up killing literally tens of thousands of Palestinian people! Workers movements worldwide and all antiracists must build mass actions to demand: Stop the Israeli assault! Lift the blockade of Gaza! All Israeli troops and settlers out of the West Bank! We must stand with the Palestinian resistance against Israel’s mass-murdering onslaught.

Israel’s assault follows Saturday’s Palestinian raids. Cornered by rapid Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, the intensification of mass-murdering Israeli West Bank raids and the savage Gaza blockade, Palestinian resistance forces struck back. With brilliant preparation and ingenuity, they overcame barriers hemming them inside Gaza to launch a surprise attack that killed hundreds of Israeli troops and police. The resistance forces inflicted more military casualties on the occupying forces in one weekend than Israel took during its entire failed 2006 war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah. We hail this Palestinian resistance against the murderous Israeli military. This is 100% justified!

Wrongly, the Hamas fighters also killed many civilians. Apart from aping the Israeli oppressors, such crimes play into the latter’s hands. They are being used by Israel’s unpopular Netanyahu government to restore support for its extreme racist stance. And they have been seized on by Western regimes to justify their support for Israel’s terror. Yet these attacks are the by-product of an occupation that has slaughtered Palestinian civilians in numbers that are dozens of times greater than Saturday’s civilian toll. It is true that the religious factions that attacked on Saturday are far less committed to protecting Jewish civilians than the secular – and especially the leftist-based–Palestinian resistance. However, some of these latter factions have lost credibility by submitting to the occupation. Yet such capitulation is itself an adaptation to the reality that Palestinians are heavily outgunned by an Israeli juggernaut built up by the West’s capitalist rulers.

Proving how much the Israeli regime is propped up by the Western rulers, Biden announced today that not only is he sending Israel new weapons but that U.S. “consultants” are “advising” Israel’s war. Moreover, the US has dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group to threaten Israel’s opponents. It is the U.S., Australian and other U.S.-allied rulers who are the root cause of both the terrible suffering of Palestinian people and the dangers faced by Israeli Jews – who must live in fear because of the inevitable response provoked by the horrific crimes of their Western-propped-up rulers.

DEFENDING THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE MEANS
OPPOSING WESTERN IMPERIALISM’S
“RULES-BASED” WORLD ORDER

As the Israel regime began annihilating Palestinian civilians by bombing Gaza’s residential towers, Joe Biden, Anthony Albanese and other Western leaders declared their support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Then, when Israel imposed a deadly siege on Gaza, Australian foreign minister Penny Wong slimily justified this by stating that Israel’s military response is difficult to judge from afar. In other words, the Australian government is joining their U.S. allies in giving the Israeli regime the green light to use whatever genocidal methods it chooses to crush the people of Gaza.

To understand why the Western rulers prop up Israel, one must understand that these capitalist classes not only exploit their own workers but also gain huge profits from plundering the resources and superexploiting the workers of the ex-colonial countries of Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Israel is a proxy of these U.S.-led imperialist ruling classes that acts to undermine forces within the Middle East that refuse to fully accept Western despotism. This is shown by Israel’s attacks on anti-Western forces in Lebanon, its threats against Iran and its air strikes against Syria. Israel has been built up by Western imperialism to perform these tasks. Israel’s terror against the Palestinian people is the true face of Western imperialism’s supposedly “rules-based” world “order”.

Anyone opposed to Israel’s terror must resist Israel’s Western enablers in every battle that these imperialists are waging to enforce their global tyranny. That means standing for the defence of Iran against U.S. threats – threats that have escalated over the last four days. This is even though Iran is ruled by a capitalist, women-oppressing regime. We say that the liberation of workers and women in Iran can only be made by her own masses. And especially given imperialism’s drive to bring a subservient regime to power in Iran, we insist that leftist forces there resist all Iranian opposition forces that accept support from Western regimes, while ensuring that they continue to fight for an Iranian workers state that would be more consistently opposed to imperialism than the current regime – not less.

While facilitating Israel’s terror, Western rulers are pouring huge amounts of arms into their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The more economically powerful Western powers want to reduce Russia – which is also capitalist-ruled – to the subordinate position that she was pushed down to in the 1990s and early noughties. Everyone opposed to imperialism should stand with Russia for the defeat of this proxy war. However, two left groups prominent in Palestine solidarity – Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance – are on the opposite side. They even support U.S. and Australian arms supplies to their Ukraine proxies! If the side that they are backing wins, the U.S.-led imperialists will be greatly strengthened and Israel’s rulers will have a more secure foundation from which to attack the Palestinian people.

The biggest danger to Western imperialist hegemony is the rise of socialistic China. Whereas the entire West is supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, China has called for an end to hostilities and insisted that the “fundamental way out of the conflict lies in … establishing an independent State of Palestine.” Yet this is short of the position that she should take. We call on China to do her socialist duty and unequivocally take the Palestinian side. However, China’s threat to imperialism is far greater than her direct position on Palestine. Her cooperation with the ex-colonial countries enables these countries to achieve greater independence from their imperial overlords. For one, this has encouraged many Arab states to move away from their previous support to imperialism’s proxy war against Syria – resulting in Syria’s readmission into the Arab League. More fundamentally, the success of China’s socialistic system in lifting her people’s living standards could eventually encourage the unhappy masses in the West to also take the socialist path by deposing their own rulers. That is why the capitalist powers are waging an intense Cold War against China. And that is why everyone suffering because of the tyranny of the Western rulers – the Palestinian people, the masses of the Global South and the working class masses in the West itself – must stand resolutely with socialistic China, despite her imperfect and still unfinished transition to socialism. Let us demand: Down with the U.S./Australian military build-up against China! Down with the lying propaganda attacks against China over “human rights”, Taiwan and Uyghurs!

BUILD WORKERS ACTION AGAINST THE
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT’S SUPPORT FOR
ISRAEL’S WAR ON PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

Given Australian rulers’ brutal subjugation of Aboriginal people, it is expected that they would support Israel’s occupation of Palestine. And given the horrific atrocities committed by the Australian rulers’ forces in Afghanistan it is little surprise that this ruling class would support its Israeli allies also committing war crimes. However, the Australian regime’s support for Israeli terror is not just due to such “shared values”, it is also based on its own self-interest. The Australian ruling class defends Israel because it wants the U.S.-dominated world order that Israel enforces to be protected. It is the U.S. godfather that enables Australian corporations’ plunder of the Pacific and beyond. Moreover, enraged that socialistic China’s cooperation with Pacific countries is making it harder for them to ride roughshod over these countries in the way that they previously did, Australia’s capitalists are counting on their U.S. senior partner to squeeze socialistic China to death. However, for these very same reasons, it is in the interests of the Australian working class to oppose both the Israeli regime and the U.S.-dominated world
order that underpins Israel’s terror. For any weakening of Australia’s capitalist ruling class makes it easier for the working class to resist the capitalists’ increasing exploitation of workers’ labour and the forcing of workers into ever more insecure jobs. This truth makes it possible to win workers to unleashing the desperately needed industrial action against Canberra’s support for Israel’s terror.

However, the ALP government’s fervent support for Israel’s war on Gaza shows the big obstacle we face to building such action. For this same ALP currently leads the workers movement. Many supporters of the Palestinian cause have painstakingly worked within the ALP for decades to try and shift its Palestine policy. The last few days shows how futile such efforts are. For any minor tinkering “achieved” is meaningless, because, at the critical moments, the ALP is right behind Israel’s war on the Palestinian people. The ALP takes this stance because that is what is in the interests of the Australian capitalist class which the ALP ultimately kowtows to. The struggle to build workers solidarity with the Palestinian people – just like the fight to mobilise the working class behind Aboriginal people’s struggle for liberation and its own struggle against capitalist exploitation – requires squeezing out the ALP from the leadership of the workers movement in favour of a new internationalist leadership that is implacably opposed to imperialism and capitalism.

COMPLETELY FALSE CLAIMS OF “ANTI-SEMITISM”
THROWN AT THE PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

The likes of Albanese and Liberal leader Peter Dutton are not only unequivocally supporting Israel’s massacre of Gaza’s people but are also opposing all pro-Palestinian protests in Australia. They especially targeted Monday’s demonstration organised by the Palestine Action Group (PAG). That protest rightly marched on the Sydney Opera House to protest the deeply offensive decision to light the sails of the building with the Israeli flag just when the military fighting under that flag was bombing to death hundreds of children in Gaza. Now the NSW Police and NSW Labor premier, Chris Minns, are seeking to sabotage a Palestine solidarity protest called by the PAG for Sunday. Minns said that he will take action against the protest and will not allow the planned rally to “commandeer Sydney streets”. Acting Police Commissioner David Hudson threatened to shut down the protest saying, “In our opinion, it won’t be happening — it’s unauthorised at this stage.” This shows the bogus nature of the capitalist regime’s claims to stand for “democracy” and “free speech.” It is important that Sunday’s planned pro-Palestinian protest succeed at this critical time. We appeal to our readers to join the protest at 1pm on this Sunday, October 15 at Sydney’s Hyde Park Town Hall Square (note change in venue) to Stop the War on Gaza! We call on people to raise slogans at the rally in opposition to the U.S. and Australian rulers who prop up Israel’s tyranny and in opposition to the Western imperialist domination of the world that underpins Israel’s subjugation of Palestine.

To help them undermine any actions in support of the Palestinian people, Albanese, Dutton, Minns, the mainstream media and the pro-Israel lobby have, completely falsely, accused the Opera House protest of being “anti-Semitic.” They were abetted by the fact that a small number of idiotic people – mostly teens – who were around the Opera House for another reason entered the rally and started shouting disgusting anti-Semitic chants. To their credit, the PAG (which is dominated by the Socialist Alternative group that we criticised earlier for their stance on the Ukraine War) issued a powerful statement after the rally that denounced this tiny fringe and demolished the attempts to tarnish the overall action as being “anti-Semitic”:

“They were quickly condemned for their chants and asked to leave. Long-standing Palestinian organisers
and activists, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim elders attending the protest were disgusted and deplored by the
action. This is not what our movement stands for. We oppose Zionism, an ideology distinct from Judaism. We
oppose Israel, a racist state which has waged genocide on Palestinians. We are an anti-racist and anti-colonial
movement and we refuse to fight racism with racism.”

For the Australian rulers to claim to be concerned about anti-Semitism is rank hypocrisy. They are right now funneling huge quantities of military equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces that not only include particular neo-Nazi battalions – like the Azov Regiment – that seek the slaughter of Jews but avowedly stand on the traditions of World War II Ukrainian Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera. Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists massacred tens of thousands of Polish and Jewish people and took part in the Holocaust in Ukraine and Poland.

Moreover, the Zionist project that the Western ruling classes back is hardly the sanctuary for Jews that the Zionist rulers claim it to be. As we explained in our article five months ago when Israel demolished a Palestinian school at the Jabbet al-Dhib village in the West Bank:

“The Israeli occupation is hell for Palestinian people. But life in Israel is not that great for the Jewish masses either. Zionist rulers promised that Israel would create a sanctuary for Jews to escape discrimination and racist oppression in Europe – an idea that only gained wide appeal following the Holocaust. However, the idea of building a nation in a land by expelling its existing inhabitants will necessarily breed resistance by the dispossessed people of that land. And so while Palestinians are overwhelmingly the victims of violence in their homeland, the Zionist project incites attacks on Jewish inhabitants too. Moreover, a state where Jewish youth must endure a compulsory military service of up to three years and where residents are frequently running into bomb shelters is hardly a `peaceful sanctuary’. Far from protecting Jewish people, the Zionist project, based as it is on ethnic cleansing, has made Israel’s Jews the objects of hatred on the part of their neighbours.”

Last Saturday’s events have tragically proven the correctness of these points. The only people that the Zionist project does actually serve are the U.S. imperialists and their allies – who need a reliable deputy sheriff in the strategically located Middle East – and the Israeli capitalist class. These latter capitalists exploit the workers of their country just like capitalists everywhere else. As our article insisted:

“A section of the Jewish working class must be won to the understanding that the only way that they can put an end to their own exploitation and create a truly peaceful home is by linking up with neighbouring Arab workers and with the Palestinian people’s resistance in a joint struggle to smash the racist Israeli capitalist regime and create a secular, socialist Palestine where Palestinians and Jews can live together in equality.”

What keeps Israel’s Jewish working class loyal to the Jewish capitalist rulers that exploit them is the intense racial/religious supremacist ideas that Zionism is based on. Given the intensity of this chauvinism, it will take workers’ uprisings in other parts of the Middle East to finally bring class-struggle sentiments to the fore amongst the Israeli working class. However, given the massive Western support for Israel (including economic aid that brings the Israeli working class a fairly privileged position relative to their Arab neighbours and that in turn contributes much to their current subservience to the Zionist project), the imperialist meddling in the Arab world that shores up the current social order and the fact that the mass killings of Israeli civilians last weekend has only magnified Zionist chauvinism in Israel many times over, the liberation of Palestine is inconceivable right now without mass struggle within the Western countries against the imperialist backers of Israel.

That means that leftist supporters of Palestine in U.S.-allied Australia have a huge responsibility. We can make a great contribution to the Palestinian people’s liberation by building mass workers’ actions to oppose the Australian rulers’ support for Israel’s subjugation of Palestine and oppose the entire Western domination of the world that underpins Israel’s tyranny over Palestine. Helping us to mobilise such struggles is the fact that large parts of the population distrust Australia’s ruling elite as their reign is only bringing the masses unaffordable living costs, steeply rising rents and economic insecurity.

Top Left: U.S. president Joe Biden greets far-right Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of September’s UN General Assembly meeting. Top Right: Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese. Without the decisive support of Biden, Albanese and other Western imperialist leaders, Netanyahu would not have been able to get away with unleashing his heinous war on the people of Gaza. Below: Palestinians remove a dead body from a destroyed building after an October 9 Israeli air raid on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp that killed dozens of civilians. Bottom: Children injured in Israeli air strikes at a hospital in Gaza city on October 9. In just the first fix days of air raids in its attack on Gaza, Israel has killed 447 children. Netanyahu, Biden and Albanese have a lot of blood on their hands!

Photo credit (below photo): Ramez Mahmoud/AP
Photo credit: (bottom photo): Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua

FIGHT FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE
BY WORKING TO TOPPLE WESTERN IMPERIALIST
TYRANNY OVER THE WORLD

Western imperialism’s domination of the world is far from secure. Western capitalist economies are lurching from crisis to crisis, their populations are cynical about their so-called “democracies” and capitalist rule in the West itself is facing an eventual existential threat from the inspirational effect of socialistic China’s successes. Under all these stresses, the capitalist ruling classes in the West are deeply divided. However, these imperialist ruling classes will not fall by themselves. In fact, what we are seeing is that these capitalist classes are doing everything possible to preserve their power. In many countries, they are turning to evermore vile, far-right parties to administer their systems – something that their Israeli proxies have done too. In the end, they will even be prepared to implement the horrific, fascist form of capitalism, as the German capitalists did in the 1930s, to keep themselves in power. Moreover, the savagery of the Israeli war on Gaza that they are avidly backing shows the brutality that the Western imperialists are capable of when that is what is needed to protect their tyranny. It is a sign that they will be prepared to kill millions of people by unleashing a catastrophic war on socialistic China if they feel that this is what it takes to crush a threat to their capitalist domination of the globe.

So let us work with all our energy to build struggles against the increasingly dangerous, Western imperialist ruling classes. Let us stand by the socialistic China that “threatens” Western imperialist domination of the world! Let us build actions in Australia, the U.S. and other Western countries against each of our own rulers’ support for Washington’s Israeli proxies! Let us stand with the people of Gaza by waging political war against the Australian, U.S. and other Western rulers that enable Israel’s Nazi-like war. Let us mobilise vigorous class-struggle resistance that will shake the foundations of the Australian, U.S. and other Western regimes so intensely that the Israeli regime that they uphold will topple over! That is the best way that supporters in Australia of the oppressed Palestinian people can fight for the liberation of Palestine.

Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Racism, China, U.S., USSR

Stand with the Palestinian People! Defend Their Resistance!

Above photo (Reuters): Israeli police attack brave Palestinian protesters and worshippers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque complex, Islam’s third-holiest site. These despicable Israeli attacks using rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades was the prelude to their launching of murderous air strikes against the people of Gaza.

Stand with the Palestinian People! Defend Their Resistance!

RESIST THE U.S. & AUSTRALIAN REGIMES
& THEIR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL’S TERROR!

Socialistic China: More Assertively Condemn Israel’s Brutal Violence!

13 May 2021: Israel’s military is slamming missiles into the already embattled population of Gaza. They have destroyed several civilian housing blocks. Already, in just a few days, Israeli forces have killed 83 people in Gaza – including 17 children. The workers movement around the world and all opponents of racism must stand with the Palestinian people against the Israeli terror machine. Israeli military, cops and right-wing colonising settlers get out of all of the West Bank and Gaza!

The immediate prelude to Israel’s latest air strikes was Israel’s push to evict Palestinian people from a Jerusalem neighbourhood to make way for Israeli settlements. When Palestinians protested they were met with brutal attacks by Israeli police and a fascist Israeli settler group. Israeli police then repeatedly unleashed rubber-coated steel bullets into Palestinians gathered in worship and protest at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites of Islam. These despicable assaults left hundreds injured. Many worshippers are now fighting for their lives. Palestinian people then retaliated. Palestinians are resisting not only in the Occupied Territories. Palestinians who live within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries have bravely defied police and far-right mob attacks to protest and raise Palestinian flags over buildings. Now the Israeli regime, headed by the corrupt butcher Netanyahu, is threatening Gaza with a full-scale assault like the genocidal attack of 2014.

Israel gets away with massacring Palestinian people because of the massive support it receives from the Western capitalist powers, especially the USA. New U.S. president Joe Biden is carrying on from where rabidly anti-Palestinian Donald Trump left off. Today, Biden defended Israel’s murderous attacks on Gaza, proclaiming his “unwavering support for Israel’s security.” To make Israel retreat, we must force the U.S. and the other imperialists, like the Australian regime, to back off from their support for Israel. Down with all U.S. and Australian military and economic support for Israel!

OPPOSE THE U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN REGIMES THAT
SUPPORT THE SUBJUGATION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

We need to stop Australia’s capitalist rulers from doing harm to the Palestinian cause. However, we should not be looking to them to make a positive intervention. They never will! The U.S. built up Israel to be a Cold War ally against the socialistic USSR in the Middle East and as an enforcer of U.S. domination of the region’s oil wealth. From invading Lebanon, to unleashing attacks on Syria, Iran and other neighbours, to assisting the CIA to overthrow “disobedient” governments, Israel sure has played that role! Today, as socialistic China’s mutually beneficial engagements with some Middle Eastern countries “threatens” to allow these countries to gain a degree of independence from the U.S., Washington needs Israel more than ever. Hence it is willing to allow its Israeli attack dogs to operate on a longer leash. Australia’s ruling class, whether served by Liberal or Labor governments, supports this, because they want to maintain U.S. domination of the world. It is U.S. might that underwrites the Australian imperialists’ exploitation of the South Pacific and beyond.

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Moreover, Australia’s rulers have a special affinity with their Israeli counterparts. For they have much in common. While Israel’s rulers benefit from being Washington’s deputy sheriff in the Middle East, Australia’s rulers enthusiastically play a similar bullying role in the South Pacific. Furthermore, while Israel was built on the murderous ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, White capitalist Australia was built through the even more genocidal dispossession of Aboriginal people. Today, the Australian regime continues to brutally oppress Aboriginal people. Closer to Palestine, the Australian regime has participated in both invasions of Iraq. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Australian troops have been committing such horrific acts of torture and murder of Afghan children, peasants and prisoners that it has shocked even soldiers from the U.S. military. Then when people try to flee the carnage resulting from such imperialist marauding, the Australian regime imprisons them for years in hell-hole refugee detention camps. Such a racist, imperialist regime can never be a friend of the Palestinian people! Moreover, even if the Australian regime and “like-minded” powers did intervene into Palestine under the guise of “bringing peace” they would do far more harm than good.

The biggest problem with appealing to Australia’s imperialist rulers to help the Palestinian people is that this undermines opposition to these imperialists. By depicting Australia’s racist rulers as a potential saviour of one people facing genocidal oppression, it undercuts Aboriginal people’s struggle against the barbaric oppression that they are copping from these very same rulers. Moreover, any allusion to a possible progressive role for the Australian regime makes the Palestinian solidarity movement dial back its opposition to this capitalist regime in the hope that it can be won over to their side. Such a half-opposing, half-appealing movement will not trouble the capitalist rulers. They will simply ignore it! What we need is a movement that will be irreconcilable in its opposition to Australia’s imperialist rulers. In other words, we need a movement that will scare the regime with the threat that if it continues to back Israel this will lead to greater and more militant social struggle against it. What can most frighten the Australian regime is if workers take industrial action against the capitalists whom this regime serves as part of demanding an end to support for Israel. Such action can be built because it is in the very interests of the working class to undermine the U.S. imperialist godfather – and hence America’s crucial Israeli ally – that protects the power of the capitalist class that exploits workers here.

STOP IMPERIALISTS DISTRACTING FROM ISRAEL’S REAL GENOCIDAL OPPRESSION
BY FALSELY ACCUSING CHINA OF “GENOCIDE”

In equal proportion that they hide and excuse Israel’s crimes, the U.S. and its Five Eyes partners have hysterically accused China of committing “genocide” against its Muslim Uyghur minority in China’s northwest. This claim is a complete lie! It is only backed by the same Western imperialist powers that are propping up Israel. Not one Muslim-majority country has endorsed this accusation. Instead, most Muslim-majority and Arab countries have positively praised China’s treatment of Uyghurs, including Palestine’s UN representatives. The small minority of anti-China Uyghurs that Washington is backing are led by filthy rich capitalists who want to overturn China’s socialistic system. They want to establish in China’s northwest a regime servile to Western imperialism like the UAE and Bahraini regimes that collaborate with Netanyahu. If we are to focus the world on the real genocidal subjugation of Palestinian people and the racist oppression of Aboriginal people and also Muslims, Asians and other people of colour in Australia, then we must completely rebuff the West’s lying accusations against China. There is another reason that we must reject these lies. The growing strength of Red China could allow some Middle Eastern countries that choose to befriend her greater room to support the Palestinian struggle. During the period of the existence of the USSR, that socialistic country similarly enabled countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq to have greater independence from the imperialists and that allowed them to provide some backing for Palestinian resistance. This was always inconsistent and very partial as these countries remained under capitalist rule. However, it allowed the Palestinian resistance to be in a much stronger position than it is in today. Similarly, a rising socialistic China will be good for the Palestinian people – just as it is a good thing for the working class and all others hurt by capitalist rule in Australia and worldwide. That is why all supporters of the Palestinian cause and all working class people must stand with socialistic China against the Cold War drive of the U.S. and Australian capitalist regimes.

Indeed, as the world’s only non-capitalist power, China’s rulers are one government that Palestine supporters should seriously appeal to. Unlike Washington and Canberra, Beijing has somewhat sided with the Palestinians. However, its support is way too mild. China’s rulers pursue a policy of “friendly coexistence” with imperialism in the hope that the capitalist powers will not undermine China. This is a failed policy – the imperialist powers are doing everything possible to crush socialistic China. We say to the Chinese people: the only way to protect your great achievements won through socialism is to wake up from the dream of “coexistence” with imperialism and to, instead, build solidarity with the toilers and oppressed also targeted by imperialism. This means, China must more aggressively support the Palestinian cause!

STOP ISRAEL’S TERROR THROUGH STRUGGLE
BOTH OUTSIDE AND WITHIN ITS BORDERS

Even when not unleashing bombs, Israel brutally subjugates the Palestinian people. It evicts ever more Palestinians from their homes and even destroys their water infrastructure. It consigns most Palestinians to a hellish life. But even for many working class Jewish people, Israel is not great. They face high unemployment and non-European Jews, especially from Africa, face racist discrimination. The growth of extreme right-wing groups incited by the regime’s ever more vicious oppression of Palestinian people threatens non-white Jews still further and endangers trade union activists and women’s rights activists too. In the end, the only people who clearly benefit from the Zionist project are the U.S., its allies and Israel’s capitalists who use racial supremacist notions to keep the masses that they exploit loyal to them.

Today, a small number of Israeli Jews courageously refuse to endorse the subjugation of Palestinian people. In the end they must prevail. For the fact that alongside the huge number of Palestinian people killed in the last few days, seven Israelis have also died proves that the Zionist project is not sustainable. Like a bullying resident who constantly impeaches on all their neighbours’ land but then finds out that being hated by all their neighbours is no fun at all, a chunk of the Jewish working class in Israel will eventually realise that living in a racialist state, built on ethnic cleansing Arabs from land in a region surrounded by 350 million Arabs, is a stupid idea. Yet the massive support that Israel receives from the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialist regimes presently allows the Israeli ruling class to dupe most of the masses that they exploit with the fallacies of Zionism. That is why it is so crucial that we resist the U.S. and Australian regimes that support Israel’s terror. Let us make the nest of Zionist expansionism fall by vigorously shaking the imperialist branches on which it is perched and which give it support! For workers industrial action to oppose U.S. and Australian backing for Israel! Encourage the brave Palestinian resistance and any brave acts of solidarity by pro-Palestinian, leftist Jews in Israel!

Anti-Imperialism

Israeli Terror Machine Supercharged by Trump’s Jerusalem Statement

Israeli Terror Machine Supercharged by Trump’s Jerusalem Statement

Oppose the U.S. and Australian Regimes that Support the Subjugation of Palestinian People

 

Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian youth during protests against Trump’s Jerusalem decision.

 

9 December 2017 – Israeli Air Force jets pounded Gaza overnight. They killed two Palestinian people and injured dozens of others. Several children were among those hurt. Hours earlier, Israeli troops shot dead two other people as they unleashed live fire ammunition on Palestinian protesters. The Israeli terror machine has been supercharged by Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Trump’s statement openly legitimized Israel’s seizure of East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank (and Gaza) in 1967. Within America, Trump has been busy inciting a wave of violent fascist and redneck attacks against Muslims, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, gays, Jews and Hispanics. That’s what his racist, ultra-right wing rants against Muslims, Mexicans and other oppressed minorities have served to do. Now this capitalist billionaire has charged up the Israeli terror machine to churn out yet more savage crimes against the oppressed Palestinian people.

Palestinian people have responded with typically brave resistance. There have also been large protests across the Arab world as well as in Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. Meanwhile, opponents of racist oppression have joined Palestinian and other Arab migrants in protests in Western cities too.

Fake Criticism of Trump’s Decision by Enemies of Palestinian Liberation

Netanyahu meets Turnbull in Australia
Netanyahu meets Turnbull in Australia

U.S.-allied governments in Australia, Britain, France and elsewhere have, rather cynically, made some criticisms of Trump’s decision.  But what the ruling class of Australia and co. really only object to is that Trump has so openly shown the Western imperial powers’ contempt for Palestinian people. Successive Australian governments – whether Liberal or ALP – have joined their Washington senior partner in steadfastly supporting Israel no matter how ghastly that regime’s crimes. They have proven their true stance on the Jerusalem issue by giving Israel the nod and the wink to implant hundreds of thousands of right-wing “settlers” in East Jerusalem and to divide up the West Bank with heavily fortified highways that Palestinians are not allowed to use.  Six weeks ago, prime minister Turnbull went to Israel to sign an agreement for still greater Australia-Israel defence co-operation. Today, all that he and other Western rulers have to worry about in Trump’s statement is that by being so brazen he will stir up Palestinian resistance, reduce Western influence in the region and trigger rebellions against Western-subordinated Arab governments.

Similarly, most capitalist governments in Arab countries have criticized Trump’s decision only in order to avoid ending up being targets of the anger of “their own” people. However, much of the masses of those countries can see right through this. They know that these governments have no intention of taking any real action in solidarity with Palestinian people. These governments are firmly tied to the imperialist bullies who they depend on not only for access to markets and technology but in order to help protect them from their own restive masses. The main, U.S.-backed Arab power, Saudi Arabia has been secretly co-operating on intelligence matters with Israel for years. Last month its aggressive, young leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dropped a bombshell. Acting for the Trump regime, he secretly sought to pressure Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas to accept an insulting “deal” which would see Palestinians get a “state” with only limited sovereignty, which would be geographically divided by the Israeli settlements in the West Bank – nearly all of which would remain – and where there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/world/middleeast/palestinian-saudi-peace-plan.html).

Yet, the PA leadership itself is under the grip of the Western imperialist powers. When Abbas met Trump in May, long after Trump had declared support to Israeli PM Netanyahu’s moves to further subjugate Palestinians, Abbas gushed to Trump that: “I believe we are capable under your leadership, courageous stewardship, and wisdom … to be true partners to bring about a historic peace treaty”! Today, Abbas is doing his best to hold back Palestinian resistance and restrict protest to formal statements of condemnation. However, the overwhelming calls from the Palestinian masses for a new Intifada may be too much for PA leaders to resist.

Cutting off Supply to the Israeli Killing Machine and Jamming It Up from Within

The bitter reality is that despite the courage of their resistance, the Palestinian people are heavily outgunned. They face an Israeli military that has been armed to the hilt by its imperialist backers. And they have been repeatedly stabbed in the back by the Arab capitalist governments that claim to support them. The force that can potentially decisively tip the balance in favour of the Palestinian people is the international workers movement – including the working class movements in the Arab countries. As a force that stands against its own exploitation, the working class naturally has an interest in supporting all those – like the Palestinian people – who are downtrodden by the same capitalist world order that oppresses them. The working class around the world must demand: No moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem! No theft of Jerusalem by the Zionist occupiers! All Israeli troops and settlers out of all of the West Bank and Gaza! Working class protest action must ramp up to industrial action targeting the imperialist ruling classes in the U.S., Britain, Australia and elsewhere that are fueling the Israeli terrorist machine.

2011 Israeli Leftists Protest
Over 300,000 in Israel back in 2011 protested against social inequality and high costs of living.

The working class within Israel itself could act to undermine the fanatical Zionist agenda. Although the Zionist ruling class claims to stand for all Jewish people, it like every other capitalist class exploits its own workers. To be sure, the massive subsidies that the U.S. and other Western governments have provided to Israel have allowed the Israeli working class to obtain a significantly higher standard of living than their neighbors. This is of course a conservatizing force and makes it harder to win significant sections of the Israeli working class to take the side of the Palestinian resistance. Yet the Jewish masses in Israel still suffer most of the hardships of capitalism. Israel has one of the highest levels of inequality. Even excluding the subjugated Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, Israel has more than 1.7 million people officially living in poverty (see: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/More-than-1-in-5-Israelis-live-in-poverty-highest-in-developed-world-475444). Three in every ten Israeli children live in poverty as do nearly half of all Ultra-Orthodox Jews – almost the same rate of poverty as Palestinian Arabs living in Israel’s pre-1967 borders.  Meanwhile, dark-skinned Jewish people suffer terrible racism. Resentment at all these forms of oppression can potentially be harnessed to break a section of the Jewish working class from loyalty to the Zionist capitalist order.

Orthodox Jews protest against conscription
Orthodox Jews protest against Israeli army conscription, in Jerusalem, on March 28, 2017

There is another reason why Israeli working class people’s interests lie with junking their current allegiance to the racist order. The Zionist rulers’ selling card has always been that they would provide security to the Jewish people. Israel was sold as a sanctuary where Jewish people would be free from ever again having to suffer the daily discrimination that they had endured in Western Europe, the pogroms that they faced in Tsarist Russia and the genocide meted out to their people by the Nazis. Yet the history of Israel has proven that building a state based on driving another people out of their land with Nazi-like terror – no matter how much religious quackery it is justified by – does not bring security at all. Instead the racial-supremacist Zionist project has brought great hostility towards the Jewish people of Israel from their neighbors.

The rise of the fascist-supported Trump has highlighted an additional aspect of this question. Trump is a fervent supporter of Israel but his hard right-wing agenda has simultaneously emboldened anti-Semitic, fascist forces within America and around the world. This was evident in the far right rallies in Charlottesville four months ago, which Trump legitimized. There, Nazi and KKK filth not only marched with slogans against blacks, Muslims and other people of color but also had anti-Semitic slogans like, “Jews will not replace us” and “Jews are Satan’s children.” In Australia too, decaying capitalism is spawning the growth of violent far-right outfits. A few of these fascist groups like the Party For Freedom are actually avowedly pro-Israel. Mind you, some of these fascists are pro-Israel only because they want to “purify” White Australia of Jews by having them go off to Israel – in the same way that Hitler’s Nazis collaborated with some Zionist leaders. Most Australian fascist groups, however, basing themselves on the vile tradition of Nazism, are openly and fanatically anti-Semitic. And although their main targets have been Muslims, Aboriginal people and Chinese people and other Asians, Jewish people and synagogues have been among the secondary targets of their violence. The American imperialist-dominated order that props up Israel, far from keeping the Jewish people secure, is actually creating the conditions for far-right terror attacks on Jewish people.
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The fact that a small number of Israeli citizens have bravely refused to serve in the military as a matter of conscience shows that some Israelis can see past the false promises of Zionism and the extreme racial supremacist propaganda that they are fed. When the Middle East region is radicalized by a revolutionary working class upsurge, it will be possible to break a section of the Jewish working class from Zionism and unite them with the brave Palestinian masses in a movement that can smash the genocidal, Israeli capitalist order from within. Together, they will establish a multi-ethnic workers state that will necessarily be secular and anti-racist and which will provide all Palestinian refugees the right of return to the pre-1948 lands that they resided on. A socialist Palestine will finally both free the Palestinian people from barbaric Zionist oppression and provide the Jewish people with the real security that they have longed for.

Palestinian people bravely protest against Trump’s Jerusalem decision in the face of brutal Israeli repression.

 

International Balance of Forces Shapes the Fate of Palestine

Trump’s kick in the guts of the Palestinian people has been made possible by prior aggressive imperialist intervention in the Middle East. The savage U.S., British and Australian war against the much hated ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria has given these imperialist powers a renewed military presence in the region, greater political influence and the allegiance of key local military forces. Further south, with the backing of these Western powers, the Saudi military – and its allies in the UAE, Egyptian and Sudanese regimes – have unleashed a brutal war against Houthi rebels in Yemen. This intervention has enhanced the power of the U.S.-Saudi-Israeli axis in the region. Meanwhile, Trump’s directing of this Axis towards war with Iran has drawn the two most reactionary local powers in the region – Saudi Arabia and Israel – closer together.

This Axis, alongside Britain, France, Australia, Turkey and Qatar have been waging a years-long war – via FSA and openly religious fundamentalist “Rebel” proxies – to impose regime change on Syria. As well as causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrian people, this proxy war has greatly weakened Syria. That has, in turn, hurt the Palestinian resistance. For, although the capitalist Syrian government’s support to the Palestinian cause has been inconsistent and limited, they did provide sanctuary and bases for key Palestinian resistance groups. Today, through the heroism of the Syrian masses and soldiers – and with the support of their external allies – the original crop of imperialist proxies have been close to defeated in Syria. Yet the U.S., Australian and other allied imperialists now have a new proxy force in the form of the Kurdish YPG. Allied with the PKK in Turkey, the YPG had been waging a just struggle for the national rights of the oppressed Kurdish people of Syria. However, they have now subordinated themselves to the most powerful force for social oppression in the world – the Western imperialists. They are set to be used as a force or bargaining chip to increase imperialist influence in Syria – and, thus, in the whole region.  It is an urgent task for all genuine supporters of Palestinian liberation to oppose all the Middle East interventions that boost the power of the Western imperialist and Israeli enemies of Palestinian liberation! Let’s fight for: All U.S./Australian/British/French forces to get out of all of the Middle East! Defend Syria against all the imperialist-allied “Rebels” – from the FSA to the religious fundamentalists to the YPG! Saudi, UAE, Egyptian and Sudanese forces get out of Yemen! U.S./Australia, Israel and Saudi Arabia: Hands Off Iran!

Although driven by its own capitalist agenda, Russia’s military might in Syria has been crucial to holding back the imperialist regime change drive there. Today, president Putin is using the increased stature this has brought Russia and the loss of U.S. prestige following Trump’s Jerusalem announcement to engage in energetic diplomatic interventions. Given the horror that the American-dominated order has brought to the people of the Middle East it is tempting to think that any other power trying to nudge them aside can hardly be any worse. However, it would be very naive for supporters of Palestinian liberation to put their faith in yet another capitalist power. The fact that Putin has called Netanyahu one of his favorite world leaders and is rapidly improving ties with crucial Israel ally, Saudi Arabia, should be reason enough to make us wary (http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/strange-love-affair-putin-and-netanyahu-1736252238).

In addition to the brave resistance of Palestinian activists and the Syrian people, there are, however, other genuine forces that are opposing – or can potentially oppose – the imperialist world order that has brought such suffering to the Palestinian people. Most crucial is the working class within the imperialist centers like the U.S. and Australia, whose interests lie with opposing the rulers that oversee their exploitation. Then there are the people of North Korea. Today, they are defending their socialistic system and desperately trying to avoid meeting the same fate as the people of Iraq and Libya by defiantly building a nuclear deterrence in the face of U.S. and Australian war threats. All opponents of this brutal imperialist world order must stand by the people of North Korea.

Similarly, we must defend the rise of socialistic China that is challenging the capitalist-imperialist dominated world order. To be sure, the compromising Chinese leadership pursues a selfish foreign policy of “non-interference” in the affairs of other countries. It also accommodates a degree of capitalism within China. Nevertheless, the workers state created by China’s 1949 anti-capitalist revolution remains in place and the backbone of China’s economy remains the public sector of socialistic state-owned enterprises. This has laid the basis for China’s stunning economic development and poverty alleviation successes. This strengthening of socialistic China is already providing a support point for ex-colonial countries to start to lift themselves up from under Western neocolonial subjugation. Meanwhile, regardless of the intentions of China’s leaders, the emergence of a large, successful socialistic society provides inspiration to rebel to those masses of the world still suffering under the capitalist order. The imperialist powers know this all too well. That is why, from sending menacing naval forces to the South China Sea, to threatening China’s socialistic neighbour and ally North Korea to backing pro-capitalist, “dissidents” within China, the imperialists are doing everything in their power to undermine socialistic rule in China. The Turnbull government’s scare-mongering about “Chinese interference” in Australian politics is meant to justify to the population this anti-China, anti-communist drive. So, too, the right wing’s successful Cold War style witch-hunt of, now former, ALP Senator Sam Dastyari for merely stating the patently obvious fact that the South China Sea is China’s internal matter (for more on this issue see: https://www.facebook.com/TrotskyistPlatform/posts/1515409871846563 ). However, if these efforts to destroy socialistic rule in China are beaten back, if capitalist forces within China are decisively defeated and if China more proudly advocates on the world stage its socialist course then the U.S.-dominated world order would really be threatened. And that can only be good news for the Palestinian people and all the downtrodden of the planet.

Unfortunately, many of the Australian left wing groups that state solidarity with the Palestinian cause (including the Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups), simultaneously join the imperialist crusade against China by supporting the various Western-backed “pro-democracy activists” seeking to overthrow socialistic rule there. Similarly bowing to imperialist propaganda campaigns, these groups also support the pro-imperialist “Rebels” in Syria. A small number of leftists, of which we in Trotskyist Platform are amongst, did have the fortitude to oppose the imperialist drive to impose regime change on Syria. However, many of those involved in the Hands Off Syria groups then became badly disoriented and lapsed into becoming apologists for Trump or worse.

Mobilise Working Class Opposition to the U.S. and Australian Capitalist Regimes That Support Israel

The Trump regime and the U.S. ruling class it serves is more rabidly supporting its deputy sheriffs in the Middle East – primarily, Israel and Saudi Arabia – because it needs them to be more aggressive. It needs more from its regional enforcers because the more that the capitalist economic system is mired in crisis, the more that it must make up for it by more ruthlessly plundering the resource-rich Middle East and seizing control of markets and sources of labour to exploit everywhere.

Similarly, Australian governments – whether Liberal or ALP or ALP/Greens – have always, ultimately, supported Israel’s subjugation of Palestinian people because that conforms to the interests of the Australian capitalist class whom these governments all serve. It is a mistake to think that you can lobby the Australian government to change its position on Palestine by appealing to it to take a more independent policy from the U.S.A. For the Australian government supports U.S. power only because that is what is in the interests of Australia’s capitalist rulers. In particular, the Australian rulers need U.S. power to guarantee Australian imperialist plunder of South Pacific countries from PNG to East Timor to Fiji; and to have the back of Australian corporations participating in the neo-colonial exploitation of workers in Indonesia, the Philippines and beyond. These imperialist looters of the South Pacific, genocidal oppressors of Aboriginal people and brutal imprisoners of refugees can never be friends of the Palestinian people – or any other oppressed people!

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia: Australian police pepper spray Aboriginal people protesting against the soft treatment that authorities gave to the racist, white man who killed 14 year-old Aboriginal boy, Elijah Doughty, in August 2016. The Australian racist rich people’s state that so brutally oppresses Aboriginal people, cruelly imprisons refugees and which enforces the looting of the South Pacific by Australian business owners can never be friends of the Palestinian people – or any other oppressed people!

 

However, while supporting the subjugation of Palestinian people is in the interests of Australia’s rich capitalist class, opposing U.S. and Israeli tyranny against the Palestinian people is very much in the interests of the working class and all oppressed of this country.  For one, it is in the interests of movements fighting for the downtrodden to stand by others facing oppression. Moreover, it is in our interests to weaken the ruling class that attacks our trade unions, consigns us to perpetual job insecurity, drives up our rents by selling off public housing, punishes us when we get retrenched from work,  murders Aboriginal people in state custody and vilifies Muslim, Chinese and other non-white ethnic communities.  So, while we cannot appeal to the Australian rulers to change their position on the Palestine issue we can through powerful action force it to back off from its support for Israel. To do this we must build actions that are strong enough to harm the interests of the Australian ruling class – in particular its economic interests. That means workers industrial action against the Australian capitalist rulers. Let’s build up towards such action! Let’s shake the imperialist branches that are holding up the Zionist’s nest!

 

 

Anti-Imperialism

Support the Palestinian Struggle for Self-Determination!

Thousands participated in marches throughout Australia such as this one in Sydney against Israel’s brutal July-August 2014 attack on Gaza.
Thousands participated in marches throughout Australia such as this one in Sydney against Israel’s brutal July-August 2014 attack on Gaza.

For Working Class Action Against the U.S. & Australian Rulers
BACKING Israel’s Genocidal Terror
Support the Palestinian Struggle for Self-Determination!
Defend Syrian Self-Determination Against NATO’s Proxy armies!

16 July 2014 – A child, his brother and an elderly woman – murdered by the latest Israeli strike on the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis. The incessant Israeli air strikes over the last eight days have devastated Gaza and many of the Palestinian people who have been killed are children. There must be mass mobilisations of the international working class, leftists and all opponents of racist oppression to demand: Down with the genocidal Israeli onslaught on Gaza! Lift the blockade of Gaza – Open all border crossings! Israeli troops and settlers out of all the Occupied Territories!

Hamas has responded to the siege of Gaza with rocket attacks on Israel: desperate attempts at self-defence by the vastly outgunned people of Gaza. Only one Israeli has been killed since July 8 – a person hit by mortar fire while handing out food to the murdering Israeli troops. In contrast, the Israeli onslaught has already killed 208 Gazans, mostly civilians. This is not war but a one-sided slaughter of the subjugated Palestinian people by the bloodthirsty Israeli rulers. Yet, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the leaders of other imperialist countries including Australia, Middle East “peace envoy” Tony Blair (that despicable former Labour British PM) and the mainstream media have all cynically sought to blame Hamas for the carnage: political support that, alongside the massive U.S. military and economic aid, has enabled the bloodshed and subjugation to continue.

Why do the Western capitalist rulers so resolutely back Israel’s rulers? Whacko, right wing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claim that “Jews control America.” But the truth is if anything the other way around. Israel has since its inception been a deputy sheriff for the U.S. and other imperialists in the Middle East. A crucial anti-communist ally of the imperial powers during their Cold War against the then USSR, Israel today continues to be an attack dog for U.S.-led imperialism. Thus, several times over the last two years Israel has unleashed attacks against Syrian government forces to assist the “rebel” “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) and the religious extremist proxies of Western Imperialism. Only yesterday, Israeli warplanes again attacked Syria killing up to 12 people at a Syrian military base and in the town of Baath City.

However, within the imperialist countries, large demonstrations have erupted against Israel’s onslaught against Gaza. Last Sunday, up to 6,000 people from diverse origins stretching from Latin America to China gathered at short notice in Sydney to march against Israel’s bloodbath. For this global movement to make a difference it must be directed onto a perspective of building working class opposition to the imperialist rulers that back Israel. Already the International Transport Workers Federation – of which the Maritime Union of Australia is a member – has denounced the Israeli onslaught. Such opposition must be turned into union industrial action against the U.S., British and Australian imperialist rulers in opposition to their backing for Israeli tyranny – action that, if sufficiently strong, could force the imperialists to pull back from providing the support that holds up the Zionist terror machine. At the same time, the international workers movement must firmly defend all military struggle by the subjugated Palestinian people against the murdering Israeli military while opposing attacks on Israeli civilians which only play into the Zionist hands. Arms to the Palestinian resistance! In particular, military supplies should go to the secular, left-leaning resistance groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

DOWN WITH AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALISM AND ITS BACKING OF ISRAELI TERROR!

At last Sunday’s Sydney rally, among protesters’ chants was “Down, Down USA!” This represents understandable hatred of the regime that is both Israel’s main backer and the globe’s greatest oppressor. However, following the lead of their U.S. ally, the capitalist rulers here also always resolutely back Israel: under this Liberal regime, the previous Labor and Labor/Greens governments and all the rest as well. Last month, the Australian government changed its description of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem making it the only government other than Israel itself that does not recognise that area as being occupied. For their part the ALP, through a statement issued two days ago by shadow foreign affairs minister Tanya Plibersek, heinously downplayed Israel’s terror by placing responsibility “on both sides” for the suffering caused by the Israeli onslaught.

Australia’s rulers follow Washington’s agenda not because Australia is under the thumb of America. The Australian ruling class are themselves aggressive imperialists that subjugate the South Pacific masses. Last December, demonstrators in East Timor chanting “Australia is a thief of world oil” stoned the Australian embassy after it was revealed that Australia had bugged Timorese officials in 2004 during “negotiations” in which the Australian government arm twisted the Timorese to accept its theft of their oil. Australia’s capitalist rulers support Israeli tyranny because they want to defend the U.S.-dominated world “order” that protects their own imperialist marauding in this region. Furthermore, the racist Australian ruling class has much in common with the Zionist rulers. Thus, while Israel wages genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people, the Australian rulers have already committed near genocide of its first peoples and continue to brutally oppress Aboriginal people. Israel’s brutality against Palestinians is matched by the cruelty of the Australian imperialist forces which while occupying Afghanistan threw grenades into houses with children, participated in the horrific invasion of Iraq and in the late 1980s orchestrated a genocidal war and blockade of the people of PNG-controlled Bougainville Island that killed 20,000 people. The notion that the present Australian ruling class could be made to speak out for Palestinian rights is ludicrous. The Greens – who in contrast to the Liberals and ALP have at least had the decency to oppose the Israeli onslaught – in particular promote this notion. However, this is worse than futile. For if supporters of the Palestinian struggle are convinced that the Australian rulers could become their allies then it will deter them from taking mass action against these same rulers. On the other hand, when the Palestine solidarity movement reaches the level of political clarity that motivates demonstrators to chant something like, “Down, Down, Aussie ruling class!” then it will open the road to the type of working class action that has the potential to actually force the imperialists to withdraw the support that holds up Israel’s terror. Such action would resonate worldwide and would encourage the U.S. working class to follow suit against its own rulers.

Palestinian children injured by Israeli bombardment. Israel killed over 500 Palestinian children in its murderous July-August 2014 onslaught on Gaza.
Palestinian children injured by Israeli bombardment. Israel killed over 500 Palestinian children in its murderous July-August 2014 onslaught on Gaza.

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MEANS FIGHTING FOR A CLASS STRUGGLE, ANTI-IMPERIALIST PERSPECTIVE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
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Israel’s ability to crush the Palestinian people has been strengthened by the imperialists’ violent interventions to crush any Middle Eastern country that refuses to fully accept the U.S.-Israeli-Saudi dictated “order.” In 2003, the U.S, Britain, Australia and other

U.S. allies invaded Iraq. Now, after having backed the ISIS religious fanatics, the U.S. is cynically using the pretext of stopping ISIS to again intervene in Iraq. Meanwhile, in 2011, NATO countries killed tens of thousands of Libyans in airstrikes to depose the Gaddafi government that was one of only two Arab governments still outside the NATO fold. Now, the last remaining Arab country outside NATO control, Syria, has been devastated by an imperialist war on it waged through “rebel” proxies. From massively funding and arming these “rebel” forces – directly and through its Turkish, Saudi and Qatari allies – to sending its special forces to assist them, the U.S. and its allies have done everything to weaken Syria. Needless to say this has emboldened Israel. For although the capitalist rulers of Syria have been far from consistent supporters of the Palestinian struggle, they have been the Arab government that has most backed the Palestinians and given support to several Palestinian resistance factions. Yet, many nominally pro-Palestinian groups here from the Greens to left groups like Solidarity, Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance have shamefully supported the imperialist- subordinated Syrian “rebels.” We in Trotskyist Platform are, unfortunately, the only Australian left group to take an active stand for the defence of Syria against NATO’s “rebel” proxies. We say to all supporters of Palestinian rights: defending the Palestinian people against the Israeli proxies of Western imperialism also means defending Syria against Western imperialism’s FSA/fundamentalist proxies. We must also demand: U.S. and all other imperialist forces get out of Iraq and all of the Middle East!

Aboriginal people in chains in 1906 enslaved by the White, capitalist ruling class.
Aboriginal people in chains in 1906 enslaved by the White, capitalist ruling class.

Aboriginal man Kevin Spratt was barbarically tortured by racist police at the East Perth watch house on 31 August 2008. In just over a minute police shot Spratt with a stun gun nine times. In both its past and present brutal oppression of Aboriginal people, the Australian ruling class has much in common with the Israeli rulers. Australia’s capitalist rulers will never be allies of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The Australian Left and workers movement must unite opposition to the Australian ruling class backing for Israel’s racist war against Palestinian people with the struggles against the Australian ruling class’ own racist wars against Aboriginal people and refugees, along with its racist treatment of non-white “ethnic” and Muslim minorities and its exploitation of the working class.
Aboriginal man Kevin Spratt was barbarically tortured by racist police at the East Perth watch house on 31 August 2008. In just over a minute police shot Spratt with a stun gun nine times. In both its past and present brutal oppression of Aboriginal people, the Australian ruling class has much in common with the Israeli rulers. Australia’s capitalist rulers will never be allies of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The Australian Left and workers movement must unite opposition to the Australian ruling class backing for Israel’s racist war against Palestinian people with the struggles against the Australian ruling class’ own racist wars against Aboriginal people and refugees, along with its racist treatment of non-white “ethnic” and Muslim minorities and its exploitation of the working class.

Currently, the Israeli terror machine may seem invincible. However, not only is there the potential for mass opposition to Western support for Israel within the imperialist countries but within Israel itself hundreds have bravely defied Nazi-like media propaganda and violent attacks from fascist thugs to protest against the onslaught on Gaza. Furthermore, contrary to the myth promoted especially by “liberal” Zionist groups that Israel is a harmonious, egalitarian society for all Jews, Israel not only murderously represses the Palestinian people but harshly oppresses many of its own citizens. African migrants are violently attacked by fascist forces, Israeli Arabs who make up 20% of the population face systematic discrimination and there is a widening gap between rich and poor that has led to Israel having one of the highest rates of poverty amongst developed countries. All this oppression has sparked mass protests. Most notably the second half of 2011 saw hundreds of thousands of Israelis participate in huge protests against high rents, privatisation and neo-liberal policies. The protests started to be backed by workers’ strikes and also involved thousands of people erecting tent cities that dwarfed the Occupy Sydney actions. A communist party must be built that can lever a component of the Jewish-background workers angry at the effects of capitalism up to a perspective of uniting with the Palestinian people around a program of opposing the Zionist state that both enforces capitalism and subjugates the Palestinian people. Such a party would be irreconcilably opposed to Zionism – it would firmly defend the Palestinian military resistance and would stand for the right of return of all Palestinians. It would also clearly delineate itself from bankrupt Palestinian nationalism whose most prominent representative today, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, is a servile apologist for imperialism who cannot even bring himself to unequivocally blame Israel for the latest carnage in Gaza. The revolutionary workers party that must be built would also oppose the ideology of politically religious forces like Hamas who, whilst many members of its military wing have often courageously resisted the Zionist butchers, have an anti-secular, anti-women’s rights ideology that is counterposed to liberation and thus obstructs the struggle to unite the working class.

The intense racism of Israeli society makes the perspective of uniting Jewish-background workers and the Palestinian masses difficult. Just as the relatively higher standard of living of workers in imperialist Australia relative to those in neighbouring countries generates an arrogant, racist strain within the Australian workers movement, the higher standard of living of workers of Jewish background in Israel – thanks to massive imperialist aid – relative to their Arab neighbours reinforces the exclusivist, racist ideology that the Israeli rulers promote. On the other hand, the Palestinian masses have suffered so cruelly under the horrific Zionist occupation that it is hard for Palestinians to break from nationalism and trust any Israelis. But eventually the deepening crisis of capitalism, which is already causing rising discontent within Israel itself, will bring opportunities to break some section of the Jewish working class from Zionism and win them to championing the Palestinian struggle as an indispensable part of their own fight for liberation from capitalist decay and poverty. The impetus for this will likely come from the eruption of revolutionary class struggle in the surrounding Middle Eastern countries. The Middle East uprisings over the last few years showed the level of mass discontent with the corrupt, poverty-stricken, high unemployment status quo. However, in the case of Libya and Syria, opposition forces were quickly subordinated to the predatory interests of the Western imperialist powers and became totally reactionary. In other cases, as in Egypt and Tunisia, the uprisings led at best to steps sidewards from one form of imperialist-dominated capitalism to another. What was missing in those cases was a strong political force that could split the energised toilers away from pro-capitalist opposition forces and direct the movements onto a clearly pro-working class, anti-imperialist and pro-women’s rights agenda. When the working class people in Jordan, Egypt and Turkey take power in a revolutionary wave, this will bring the class question to the fore in Palestine-Israel and spur the development of a united communist party of Palestinian toilers and workers of Jewish background. The revolutionary smashing of the Zionist state would finally liberate the long suffering Palestinian people and create a necessarily secular and anti-racist workers state – one where people of all religious and ethnic backgrounds who accept socialist rule and an anti-racist society would be protected and respected.

Palestinians inspect damage in the Gaza town of Khuza’a. Israel’s 2014 assault killed over 2,000 Palestinian civilians and devastated Gaza.
Palestinians inspect damage in the Gaza town of Khuza’a. Israel’s 2014 assault killed over 2,000 Palestinian civilians and devastated Gaza.

For pro-Palestinian activists living in Australia and other imperialist countries, the main and most urgent task right now is to unite the opposition movement against the local capitalist rulers’ backing for Israel with mass opposition to their own exploitation of workers and oppression of the poor. What makes it possible to motivate such struggle in Australia is the reality that many working class people are angry at the capitalist bosses for slashing their jobs after making fortunes from their workers’ toil. They are seething too because the governments that serve these exploiters are attempting to make people pay for doctor visits and to deny unemployed people under 30 access to the dole for six months a year. All this makes workers question everything the capitalist rulers do – including their foreign policy, a policy which includes fervent support for Israel. Let’s also unite opposition to the Australian ruling class’ backing for Israel’s racist war against Palestinian people with the struggles against the Australian ruling class’ own racist wars against Aboriginal people and refugees, along with its racist treatment of non-white “ethnic” and Muslim minorities. Mobilise mass opposition to the U.S., British and Australian rulers that back Israel’s tyranny! Shake the imperialist branches that hold up the Zionists’ nest so that it falls and the branches themselves weaken! Down with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza!

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Tel Aviv, July 26: Up to 8,000 Israeli leftists brave threatened police repression to protest against Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.
Tel Aviv, July 26: Up to 8,000 Israeli leftists brave threatened police repression to protest against Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.

Israel, mid-2011: Hundreds of thousands of Israelis take part in massive, Occupy-style protests against the lack of affordable housing and poor public services. A communist party must be built in Palestine/Israel that can lever a component of the Jewish-background workers angry at the effects of capitalism up to a perspective of uniting with the Palestinian people around a program of opposing the Zionist state that both enforces capitalism and subjugates the Palestinian people.
Israel, mid-2011: Hundreds of thousands of Israelis take part in massive, Occupy-style protests against the lack of
affordable housing and poor public services. A communist party must be built in Palestine/Israel that can lever a component of the Jewish-background workers angry at the effects of capitalism up to a perspective of uniting with the Palestinian people around a program of opposing the Zionist state that both enforces capitalism and subjugates the Palestinian people.

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