Israel's Zionist monsters, wholly enabled by the U.S., are now attempting the final annihilation of all Gazans. Since ending the ceasefire six weeks ago, nearly 1700 more Gazans, largely women and children, have been killed by U.S. made bombs, more hospitals obliterated, and all food, water and medicine denied entry. Those that are not killed by bombings are dying of untreated wounds, thirst, malnutrition and diseases without remedies.
While the world's rulers do nothing, hundreds of thousands of workers around the globe are protesting this genocide. In the U.S., comrades and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are organizing with many in various ways. Some of us belong to Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jewish anti-Zionist groups. Last week hundreds held a liberation Passover seder on the street in front of ICE headquarters in downtown New York City. Some of us belong to HealthCareWorkers4Palestine in various cities, who frequently demonstrate and act to protect those targeted for protesting Zionism. Many health worker comrades are active in the American Public Health Association, where we campaign along with the Palestine Caucus to force the organization to officially reject genocide. Many students, teachers and professors are organizing to defend those threatened with job loss or deportation for defending Palestinians.
Our struggles are the same
The weaknesses in the pro-Palestine movement are several. There continues to be a separation between the movement to defend Gaza and that to defend immigrant workers, fired workers, and cutbacks in government services in the U.S. This is as much the fault of trade union and Democratic Party hacks as anyone else, but all the major protests, from the Hands Off marches of April 5 to the planned May 1 demonstrations in NYC have kept these issues entirely separate. It is imperative that we recognize that capitalism, rapidly devolving to fascism in the U.S. as well as in the Middle East and Europe, is to blame for all these disasters. United together, and with bolder tactics like strikes and walkouts, our movement would be much stronger.
Much of the Palestine movement also suffers from nationalism. The rhetoric is all for self-determination, when virtually all national liberation struggles of the past century have simply led to continued capitalist exploitation, only with oppressors of the same ethnicity as the workers. What Palestinian workers need is a communist society in which their interests are united with all workers, including Israeli workers, in a society they lead for themselves in their own interests.
Other conflicts that are killing thousands of civilians, as in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are receiving much less pushback. This may reflect the fact that the U.S. is less overtly involved and that fewer U.S. residents have ties to these countries than to Israel and Palestine, but doubtless anti-Black racism is also a major factor. But in both areas in Africa, U.S. capitalists are interested in obtaining more mineral wealth for themselves, just as they back Israel to keep their hold on Mideast oil and gas.
As communists in PLP, our role is to oppose and expose nationalism, racism and capitalist greed and build an international multiracial working class struggle to overthrow capitalism and imperialism around the globe. NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR!
