This October 7th marked a year since Israel turned its open-air prison in Gaza into mass graves, genociding tens of thousands of workers with weapons supplied by U.S. bosses. At a time when many workers in Israel have been won to extreme Jewish nationalism (zionism) and anti-Arab racism that has hardened into fascism, rightfully angry workers are turning to Arab nationalism as the only path to liberation. But Progressive Labor Party calls for workers on both sides of the fake “Israel-Palestine” divide to reject the bosses' nationalism, which claims that workers in Palestine and Israel, have the same interests as their respective elites. To see how fake the divide is between workers in Palestine and Israel, one need only look at the historical and present examples of solidarity and comradeship between Arab and Jewish workers in the region:

Living together

During the British Mandate (1920s to 1948), Arab and Jewish residents lived together despite nationalist pressure from their respective elites. The port city of Haifa was a major site of cohabitation. There were equal numbers of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim people, and immigrants from Europe and Syria who settled there. Jobs where workers with different nationalities worked instilled class consciousness and promoted friendships, but the ruling classes built an apartheid system that prevented cooperation. The Zionist and Palestinian elites appealed to nationalist ideology and created the separate Jewish Histradut and Arab labor federations, respectively.  

Joint labor organizing and strikes

During the 1920s, Arab workers began organizing and joining trade unions, especially in the railroad industry.
Communists joined and organized the early trade unions. In 1925, the Palestinian Communist Party (CP) applied to join the Comintern, the international organization of communist parties established by the Soviet Union. The CP urged unified strikes and included Arab workers as leaders. 

Railway

The railway industry employed large numbers of Arab and Jewish workers. They experienced bad working and living conditions, abuse, and low wages at their hands. In 1920, the employees organized the first union in Palestine to demand an end to such practices. The Jewish-run Histadrut opposed joint membership. The union adopted a policy of Hebrew-only labor. 

Arab workers appealed to Jewish railway association members:

Such separate organizations are dangerous…We must unite and present common demands to the government, which ignores its obligation to the worker, and instead sends in the police and puts him in jail (Comrades and Enemies, 1996, p 105).
Increasing conflict between Palestinian and Israeli elites developed during the mid-1930s. Yet, Jewish and Arab railway workers sustained their spirit of class consciousness that paved the way for future joint struggles. 

Drivers and truckers strikes

Against initial opposition from the Histadrut and wealthy Palestinian families, Arab and Jewish drivers united and pressed for reforms, striking together for a week in 1931 that shut down transportation and forced the government to reduce taxes. 

Quarry workers

The Nesher Quarry, near Haifa, employed Jewish and Arab workers from Egypt and Palestine. Conditions were bad for all but especially for the Arab workforce. Wages differed by 10-fold, working hours were longer for Egyptians, and all were forced to buy from company stores and live in company hovels. In the 1920s, the workers struck. While nationalism ended up ruining this fightback, joint organizing occurred in other jobs. Arab and Jewish workers ran the salt plants, unionized bakeries, and organized in government and military offices, and the citrus and oil industries.
Palestinian Arab workers differentiated Jewish people from Zionism. 

In 1944 during another railroad strike, a union leader reported that the slogan, “long live Arab-Jewish unity was enthusiastically received.” During the turbulent late 1940s, joint strikes erupted among 22,000 postal workers, telegraph workers, and government clerks. Even agricultural workers in the countryside formed joint co-operatives, and urban workers formed joint commercial boards.

This historical movement of worker-led solidarity seeking to cross nationalist and racist divides between workers in the region still exists. Here are some examples below:

Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian protests and solidarity

A few dozen weeks after Israel attacked Gaza, Jewish Israelis organized demonstrations calling for a cease fire and an end to the war on Gaza. They began with several dozen people at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv. As the war continued, more Israelis rallied against it, risking jail, beatings, shame, and isolation. 

These are other examples of resistance organizations:

The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) organizes in Israel and other countries to defend and rebuild Palestinian property slated for destruction. It uses grass roots, direct action and international advocacy to safeguard Palestinian property.

Protecting olive orchards and farms

The olive industry on the West Bank is one of the most important. In 2015, it accounted for the livelihood of 100,000 Palestinian families and 25 percent of the area’s gross agricultural income. The IDF and settlers have destroyed the trees, and killed and injured the growers. The residents of Budrus with their Israeli partners successfully repelled Israeli troops with a 10-month campaign against a wall that would cut through the orchard inside the West Bank. They demonstrated daily with militant confrontations, holding signs saying Jews and Arabs Unite.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel documents attacks on health in Israeli prisons and war zones through collaborations with medical organizations in Israel and around the world. It recently released a statement calling for the end of Israeli bombings of hospitals and medical personnel.

Standing Together mobilizes Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel to work for peace, equality, and social and climate justice. 

Women in Black, Israel originated in Israel in 1988 to oppose the occupation. Every Friday, women stand vigil on the street in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to hold discussions and teach about Israeli history and Palestinian liberation. 

Combatants in Peace is a grassroots movement of Palestinians and Israelis, working together to end the occupation and bring sustainable peace, equality, and freedom.

The Refuseniks are young people who refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. When a reporter asked what army a refusenik would join, he answered, "I would gladly enlist in the Red Army to fight the Nazis." The film, Tantura, presents interviews with elderly veterans who conducted the 1948 expulsions and killings of over 700,000 Palestinians. 

Rebuilding internationalist & multiracial solidarity

Communists in the region and all over the world must reject the bosses’ nationalism and racism and lay our crosshairs firmly on the elites in both Israel Palestine, and all over the world rather than seeking to pit one group of workers against another. We must push anti-racist and internationalist messaging at every protest through chanting, literature and the personal connections we build with workers. Workers in Palestine and all over the world cannot afford for us to wait! Join the PLP and together we can smash the racist system once and for all!

BALTIMORE, MD, 9/6 — This evening a number of local workers angrily protested the racist police murder of Donnell Rochester. Three years ago, Donnell was unarmed, but Baltimore police nevertheless gunned him down in cold blood, shortly before he would have graduated high school. Comrades from the Progressive Labor Party have been active in this struggle, to fight for a system where Donnell would have still been alive–communism.

Prosecutors back killer cops

The reform demand is for Governor Wes Moore to move the case from the Baltimore City State’s Attorney to the statewide Attorney General’s office. This is because the City State’s Attorney, Ivan Bates, has refused to prosecute the killer cops that horrifically stole Donnell’s life.

Face off in the streets 

Led boldly by Donnell’s mother, we faced off with police for about an hour. During that confrontation, one of the supervisory white-shirt cops was in contact with racist Police Chief Richard Worley. He was in charge of the Northeast District, when cops under his command killed Tyrone West. Apparently, Worley figured it wouldn’t be a good look for his cops to arrest us.

Liberal governor friendly to finance capital 

However, we need to keep in mind that the U.S. system of so-called democracy is, in actuality, a dictatorship of the capitalist class. For example, Maryland’s first Black governor, liberal Wes Moore – just like all the governors before him – has a background of “friendships and board relationships with America’s super-wealthy corporate elite” (Baltimore Sun Commentary, 8/8). 

For five years, Moore was an investment banker at Deutsche Bank in London and at Citigroup in New York. In 2017 his big corporate break arrived when he became CEO of the “anti-poverty” Robin Hood Foundation. That organization, in essence, is a tax shelter for hedge funders. “It’s still run by financial masters of the universe” and “its board members” - such as David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs (Sun Commentary).

Is Maryland Governor Wes Brown likely to change the jurisdiction of Donnell’s case to the Attorney General’s office? Probably not (even if he does, the courts will never bring the justice Donnell truly deserves).

Let’s keep in mind that murders in the U.S. - during 2023 - went down by more than 11 percent. However, in sharp contrast, police killed more workers in 2023 than during any other year in more than a decade [MappingPoliceViolence.us].

Can't rely on capitalism for justice

Capitalism needs racism. The lower wages paid to Black and Latin workers account for about a fifth of total corporate profits. And racism, even more importantly, is used by the capitalist class to divide and weaken the working class. Police murders are part of this racism.

If Governor Moore were to turn over Donnell’s case to the Maryland Attorney General, it would be theatrics. We must keep in mind that Moore would simply be posturing, pretending that the capitalist state will end its violent and racist suppression of our class.

We must smash racism and the capitalist state, and build a new, fully egalitarian communist world of sisterhood and brotherhood. We must honor Donnell Rochester. Dare to struggle. Dare to win!

Nassau County in New York, the state of North Carolina, and the University of California campuses have been the first in the U.S. to pass laws outlawing the wearing of masks in public. Other jurisdictions have proposals for such laws, including one in the legislature in New Jersey (northjersey.com, 09/12). This new fascist offensive attacks both political marches and people who wear masks for medical reasons. Bringing both groups together in the fight against racism and capitalism is an opportunity to broaden the revolutionary communist movement. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been engaged in the fight for safer working conditions, disability justice, and COVID-19 safety as well as the fight against the genocide in Gaza and the long-term struggle for communist revolution. Resisting mask bans is a newer fight.

The push for mask bans started as a way to intimidate anti-genocide protestors. It makes it easier to identify them with facial recognition and to target them for suspension, firing, and harassment for opposing U.S. imperialism.

The disability justice community has called for masking in medical facilities and other public places as a public health issue and is also under attack. At the Nassau hearing, Zionists berated disability organizers who called out mask bans as an attack on immunocompromised individuals. At the same time, many disability justice groups have also opposed the genocide of Palestinians. 

Communists in the disability justice struggle

PLP members have joined with disability justice organizers who have waged campaigns for universal masking with N95 masks in health care settings and for stricter isolation procedures when workers and students have a COVID-19 infection. At the Long COVID Awareness protest in DC in March, 2024, a PLP member spoke about capitalism’s drive for profit at the expense of workers’ lives. We have worked with Mask Blocs in our cities and distributed free test kits to our schools and neighborhood groups.

As communists we believe in contributive justice, the idea that all workers should have the opportunity to contribute to society as much as possible. This means practicing good public health measures like air filtration, mask wearing, and testing to find out if your symptoms are from COVID-19 and if you have fully recovered with negative testing. Tests are not perfect but combined with other measures help decrease risks. This summer’s surge has shown that the virus is not seasonal like the flu but is airborne year round and constantly changing. Death and the development of Long COVID are reasons we need to protect ourselves.

Racism and eugenics 

Disregarding the risks of COVID-19 to disabled workers is a form of eugenics in which some people are viewed as less valuable than others. Placing the current mask bans in this context reveals another fascist aspect of these policies. Discouraging mask wearing increases the risk to everyone but especially people who are immunocompromised. Further, letting the police stop people who wear masks to find out if the masks are for a health reason gives the police another racist excuse to harass Black and Latin workers --another version of “stop and frisk.” Black and Latin workers have suffered more from COVID-19 than others (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10147367/). Discouraging mask wearing for fear of police interaction will increase the risk of infections. 

These steps toward fascism: increased surveillance, harsher intimidation, and racist eugenics mean that students and workers must unite the disability justice, antiracist, anti-genocide, and communist movements. Capitalism is the enemy of all these movements and building PLP is critical to destroy this system.

WASHINGTON, DC, September 21-“Who are the terrorists? U.S. Imperialists” was the cry as 100 students and workers marched to the Philippines Embassy at the end of a conference entitled “Reject the Fascism and Plunder of the U.S.-Marcos Regime.” Over 150 people attended the conference, part of a tour calling for “Justice for Brandon Lee” and featuring an interview with this young man who was nearly killed by soldiers under President Rodrigo Duterte in 2019 and left a quadriplegic. Showing the heroic qualities of a revolutionary fighter, he continues to speak out against the fascism of the Philippine government and U.S. imperialism.  He previously organized with the Ifugao Peasant worker Movement against large scale destructive mining, dams, and energy projects by imperialist corporations. These projects destroy the environment and displace indigenous people. 

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined the conference to share our communist ideas and learn more about the conditions of the Philippines. PLP members were received warmly while engaging in comradely discussion about the need to focus revolutionary activity on achieving communism rather than national liberation. Several participants in the conference asked to be contacted by PLP members based on receiving CHALLENGE and having robust discussions with us.

Philippines under martial law

The Philippines have been under martial law for 52 years. Intensifying this oppression, the government imposed a deliberately ambiguous anti-terrorism law in 2020 that “red tags” all opponents of the government. Speakers and performers shared their anger at this fascist regime, shouting militantly “Payt Latte“ (Fight to the End) and singing songs of armed struggle. 

The U.S. government’s counterinsurgency in the Philippines has worked hand in glove with the local bosses and landlords to divide workers for decades. Two young workers from the Philippines spoke of the reality of martial law forcing communist organizers to work underground. The U.S. government has been consistent in backing dictators for 52 years of martial law in support of landlords and mining companies at the expense of workers and indigenous farmers. It has paid $1 billion to the Philippines’ rulers since 2015 to support fascist repression there while using its nine military bases to intimidate its imperialist rivals.

Mass movements against capitalism

The Cordillera Peoples Alliance includes Brandon Lee’s Ifugao Peasant organization and has been under constant military oppression. Their bold struggles against the corporations do not call for communism but nevertheless they are “red tagged” and accused of being rebels in the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. This party follows the mistaken strategy of first fighting for national liberation and at a later time for socialism and then finally for communism.

Many students from the University of Maryland came to the conference as members of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, known on campus as TERPCHRP. The campaigns in the Philippines have attracted groups of multiracial students across the country. This bodes well for the rise of an internationalist mass movement against capitalism. PLP is trying to provide more leadership to this mass movement so that it keeps its “eye on the ball” of fighting for communism directly.

Inter-imperialist rivalry in play

China like the U.S. has a strong interest in the Philippines and had been investing in projects especially under the previous President Rodrigo Duterte. Currently the new Marcos regime is allying itself more with the U.S. Not surprisingly, military incursions by China in the Philippines waters have increased, as China challenges the U.S. for control of the South China Sea and its bases and shipping lanes. 

We in the PLP struggle for a communist revolution as the only solution for workers in the Philippines, the U.S., and the rest of the world’s working class. Engaging with the students and members of human rights organizations we met at the conference is an opportunity not to be missed in advancing this goal!