Since 10/7/23, the Israeli state has continued genocidal bombardment on the Gaza strip. This disproportionate retaliation has killed more than 20,000, including at least 6,000 children. Whistleblowers in the Israeli Defense Force’s own ranks report using artificial intelligence named “The Gospel” to airstrike densely populated areas, “’Nothing happens by accident. When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed” (+972 Magazine, 11/30/23). This carnage has been fully backed by a Democratic president and a ruling class of liberal fascists.

On the US side, children are also being targeted by liberal fascist Democratic mayors like Eric Adams in NYC. The NYC schools chancellor, David A. Banks, has made it clear that “politics” are to be barred from schools, except of course unless one speaks unconditionally in favor of Israel.

I know firsthand the fascism that teachers are dealing with. Since 10/7, Muslim students at my school have been afraid to come to school and to participate in after-school activities. With the murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian in Chicago and the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont, the students at my school are understandably afraid. I attempted to solicit support for a student letter asking that my school take a stance against genocide.

In response, I was removed from my own classroom without ever being told any charges. I “disappeared” from school which sends a signal to students that those who stand against racism are targets—that the students that I can no longer teach are acceptable collateral if it chills dissent.   

But we will not be silenced! A hundred letters of support across parents, students, and alumni have reached my school. Faculty have begun to organize. Consciousness is being raised. PLP is ready to fight back. The ruling class must not be allowed to make teachers and students disposable. As we organize under conditions of rising fascism, internationalism is necessary more than ever. No worker from Gaza to NYC should ever be an acceptable casualty of fascism. We must resolve to unify and fight for communism, a future in which the international working class finally has the schools that they deserve.

As the Israeli rulers’ bloodbath in Gaza reaches new depths, it’s no accident that inter-imperialist conflict is widening around the world’s largest strategic reserves of oil and gas. The latest capitalist disaster began with a ruthless, anti-worker terror attack by Hamas and a genocidal response by the state terrorist Israeli “Defense” Forces (IDF). Now it has spread into IDF violence in the occupied West Bank and bloody fights in at least four neighboring countries: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen (Guardian, 12/26/23). This knife’s-edge volatility marks the snowballing decline of the old U.S.-led world order and the rise of competing imperialist bosses in China and Russia. Along with Ukraine, Taiwan, and the South and East China Seas, the Middle East is a prime potential flashpoint for World War III.

In Syria, months of airstrikes against pro-Iran militias have failed to stop drone attacks on U.S. bases there (National Public Radio, 11/9/23). In Lebanon, Iran’s proxy forces in Hezbollah are firing rockets and drones at military posts and border towns in Israel, forcing the evacuation of 60,000 residents. Not to be outdone, the IDF has bombed Lebanon daily, displacing 74,500 people and killing 160 (ABC News, 12/28/23). Israel’s rulers say they are ready to open a second front in a war that could soon get much bigger (New York Times, 12/27/23).

If anything, the tempo of these clashes seems to be quickening. On Christmas Day, U.S. airstrikes targeted Iran-backed forces in Iraq. On December 31, U.S. Navy helicopters sank three Yemeni Houthi boats in the Red Sea after reports of an attempted maritime hijacking (abcnews.go.com, 12/31/23). On January 2, a top Hamas official was assassinated by a drone strike outside Beirut. One day later, in a rare terror attack inside Iran, explosions massacred more than one hundred mourners on the anniversary of the U.S. assassination of General Qassim Suleimani.

Worldwide, the imperialists’ battle for supremacy is reshaping alliances and escalating their struggle to control markets, resources, and labor—a struggle at the hideous heart of the capitalist profit system. According to the Carter Doctrine, as proclaimed in 1980 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests” of the U.S., and “will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” More than forty years later, we are witnessing the legacy of the president who supposedly championed “human rights”:  the horrific suffering in Gaza.

Joe Biden: war criminal in chief
Make no mistake—it’s the U.S. bosses’ “vital interests” in oil and gas that compel their cold-blooded support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip. Back in October, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s goose-stepping defense minister, made the Zionist regime’s plans clear: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel….We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” The predictable results: the internal displacement of more than 80 percent of Gaza’s population, looming mass starvation, and the slaughter in plain sight of more than 22,000 people, two thirds of them women and children—or about “twice as many women and children in two months…as Russian forces have killed in Ukraine in nearly two years” (cbc.ca, 12/30/23). According to a former United Nations war crimes investigator, "the density of Israel’s first month of bombardment in Gaza” has no parallel since the U.S. genocide in Vietnam, nearly half a century ago (cnn.com, 12/22/23).

Many civilians have been slaughtered by monstrous 2,000-pound bombs dropped on Gaza City south of Rafah, where the IDF steered families to find safe shelter. The bombs have a “lethal fragmentation radius” of about 1,200 feet, an area equivalent to 58 soccer fields (cnn.com, 12/22/23). They are so blatantly criminal that the U.S. military death machine used only one of them in its no-holds-barred war against ISIS (cnn.com, 12/22/23). But since October 7, more than five thousand of these “bunker-busters” have been furnished to Israel by the same Joe Biden administration that’s now publicly advising the Zionist baby killers to “minimize” civilian casualties (cnn.com, 12/22/23). They’re the same pack of shameless liberal liars who vetoed a December 8, 2023 cease-fire resolution at the UN Security Council.

Workers everywhere must fight back against U.S. imperialist’s atrocities. At the same time, we must call out the regional gangsters who run Israel and Iran, along with “national liberation” misleaders like Hamas. Under capitalism, wars are fueled by the rulers’ need for maximum profit. There can never be world peace as long as the bosses are grasping for their next dollar. Only the international working class, organized for communist revolution by Progressive Labor Party (PLP), can end imperialist war by smashing the bosses and their states. Only our class can cure the fatal diseases of nationalism, racism, and sexism for all time.

Imperialists sharpen knives for oil
Of the ten countries with the largest proven oil reserves, five are in the Persian Gulf region: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, with close to a trillion barrels of oil among them (Oilprice.com, 4/24/23). Four of those countries are also among the top ten for proven reserves of natural gas (www.worldometers.info, 2023). It’s worth noting that significant oil and gas deposits were recently discovered off the coasts of Lebanon, Israel, and Gaza.

Despite U.S. rulers’ warnings to stay out of the Gulf, Russia and China are infiltrating the region. In 2018, Russian military support led torture king Bashar al-Assad to a civil war victory over his equally brutal U.S.-backed enemies. Last year, China Premier Xi Jinping brokered a “peace” summit to restore diplomatic ties between long-time rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. The October 7 attack by Hamas, possibly orchestrated by the vicious mullahs of Iran, shattered U.S. plans to reconcile Israel’s Zionist bosses with the Saudi rulers (CNBC, 10/12/23).

With backing from both Russia and China, Iran has funded and armed the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq—all sworn enemies of U.S. interests. After nine years of devastating civil war, the Houthi bosses control a strategic area of northern Yemen that borders the Red Sea, the gateway to the Suez Canal—“a vital artery for container ships and fuel tankers,” including major oil interests (New York Times, 12/19/23). Despite a U.S.-backed Saudi bombing campaign that wiped out tens of thousands of civilians, the Houthis remain defiant.

Join the fight for communism
With no end in sight to Israel’s mass murder in Gaza, weakness in the U.S. ruling class has been exposed for all to see. Anti-Zionist sentiment and condemnation of Israeli apartheid rule in its occupied territories are at all-time highs around the world. Notwithstanding the trap of Palestinian nationalism, honest workers’ eyes are opening to the hypocrisy of liberal U.S. misleaders. Workers are turning against the Democrats and threatening not to vote for Biden this November. As U.S. politicians keep funding Israeli genocide, a militant anti-war movement is sprouting. Workers in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago shut down holiday access to airports. Others disrupted the lavish Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day.

As communists, we need to be in this struggle to combat the leadership’s dead-end nationalism with internationalism. But street protests won’t be enough to end the bosses’ butchery. We need to organize soldiers in all capitalist-led armies to turn the guns around for communist revolution. Only a revolutionary communist party, PLP, can lead this fight to smash imperialist war. Only a united international working class can create a world run by and for workers, where the bosses’ profit-driven wars will be a distant memory. Join us!

UPPER MARLBORO, MD, December 4, 2023-For 10 days, members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), Prince George’s County Police Accountability Team, Coalition of Concerned Mothers, and West Wednesday Coalition joined family members in filling the courtroom for the trial of Michael Owen, Jr., the cop who had killed William ‘Boo Boo’ Green. William was no threat to the cop, who shot him six times at point-blank range while he was handcuffed behind his back in the front of a police cruiser. William had been detained after passing out in his car and hitting some parked cars.

Racist kkkourt exonerates killer kkkop
The Prince George’s County State Attorney had charged cop Owen with 2nd-degree murder and he had been kept in jail since 2020. The family received a $20 million settlement from the County through a civil suit and had continued to push for justice by demanding that the state not offer a plea deal but take the case to trial. During the trial, there was no evidence that William had been a threat, but the officer’s dishonest testimony about the events in the car claimed that the handcuffed man had hit him with a shoulder, that the cop’s gun came out of his holster, and that in a supposed fight for the gun, he had no choice but to shoot because he was “afraid I could die.” The jury returned a NOT GUILTY verdict in 90 minutes.

Enraged by the verdict, the family and friends immediately set up a press conference to express their anger that a killer cop is now free. PLP members from Baltimore and Prince George’s County mobilized and made up about half of the crowd of 50 people. Palpable anger about a long history of police murderers surged through the group. The names are familiar even as details vary. Tawanda Jones from West Wednesday in Baltimore called out the system that murdered her brother and said, “Capitalism has to go.”

No justice under racist capitalism
How did the criminal injustice system work its magic to exonerate yet another killer? Several technical issues of unfairness were raised. The jury selection was not done in public, and even though the jury was predominately Black it was also true that  Owen is Black. Second-degree murder requires intent, which was never suggested by the prosecution. Owen’s history of killing another county resident along with multiple complaints of excessive force was never introduced. The prosecution’s cross-examination of  Owen (who took the stand, an unusual, usually desperate defense tactic) did not question his story despite the absence of William’s DNA on the gun and the state’s evaluation of the police car showed no evidence of any struggle. Unnecessarily repetitive instructions to the jury about self-defense were part of the judge’s charges to the jury just before they filed out to deliberate. Despite organizers’ pressure on the prosecution to seriously prosecute over several years, it looks like the State’s Attorney’s prosecutors deliberately threw the case. There is no legal way to appeal the failure of prosecutors to prosecute competently  –  we saw institutional state power in action here!  
The family is now looking to the U.S. Department of Justice to consider civil rights violations by  Owen at the Federal Level.

Members of PLP have been actively engaged at each step of the way and during the trial, several of us had good lunchtime conversations with family and friends about the role of prosecutors, the criminal legal system, and capitalism. CHALLENGE was widely distributed at the press conference and welcomed by many with whom we have joined over the years in Prince George’s County.

The real story here is that, like the Freddy Gray trials in Baltimore in which multiple police were charged but freed by the court, justice is absent from the capitalist system. The court system of the capitalist class is functioning just as intended – pretending to care about justice but actively working to strengthen the hand of the police in carrying out racist and fascist actions on behalf of the ruling class. These cases also show that Black cops are the same as white cops and all do the ruler’s bidding. We must build PLP to destroy this racist capitalist system, even as we fight each case, from Archie Elliott III in 1993 to William in 2020.

NEW YORK CITY, January 2—When a public school teacher was removed for taking a stance against genocide, students led the way in organizing against this fascist attack. Incidents like this illustrate the capitalist crisis: amid growing volatility and war tensions, the bosses are losing ideological control of the classrooms. An attack on teachers is an attack on student learning conditions, signaling to young people that they are disposable if they do not parrot racist ruling-class ideas. This is an opportunity to expose the bosses’ system and build a movement for an antiracist world.

The attack and response
After weeks of unspeakable carnage visited on the working class of the Gaza strip by the forces of the racist, Zionist Israeli state, a strong letter signed by dozens of student clubs representing hundreds of angry youth was delivered to the principal of one of New York City’s largest high schools. This letter blasted the administration for homicidally deleting Palestinian life from its public registration of grief and memorialization, a cornerstone of the ideological architecture that has been facilitating Palestinian genocide for the better part of a century.

To repress dissent, the Depart​​ment of Education (DoE) bosses ejected an antiracist teacher from their NYC public high school building and placed them under investigation all because this educator vocally supported this courageous mass student movement against genocide. They were escorted out without charge, supposedly to protect youth, but  political dissidents are more quickly than teachers accused of physical violence or racism.

The response from students, alumni and co-workers was immediate in defense of the dedicated antiracist educator. An email campaign began a flood of statements of support that continues to grow in strength.
This educator joins an expanding number of workers and youth on the job and on campuses across the world who have faced repression for taking a stand against U.S.-backed genocide in the Gaza strip. In NYC, a pre-K teacher was targeted for using children’s books to explain Palestinian history in her class. Another teacher has faced calls for his removal for pro-Palestine social media posts. Bay Area teachers have also faced reprisals for holding teach-ins against genocide. Meanwhile in Maryland, four teachers have been placed on indefinite administrative leave for so much as emailing their support of the working class of Palestine.

Education, a battleground
The bosses need schools to produce workers that will produce and have the necessary nationalism for future wars. Fascist responses are a sign of the bosses’ weakness, not strength. In this context, all teachers have a role to play in equipping students to develop a clear understanding of the world. We must teach and model the practice of interrogating what we hear. That the ruling class has succeeded in building a school culture where some educators agree that it is “inappropriate” to struggle alongside students for politically and ethically principled positions that critically interrogate the role their institutions play in extermination is a clear indicator of growing fascism.  

Nazi leaders worked to influence young people in youth groups, in their families, and on the streets. Schools also had a key role to play. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they quickly passed new laws to make public education reflect and teach their nationalist and racial ideologies. Jewish teachers were fired from their posts, and other teachers were encouraged to join the National Socialist Teachers League; by 1936, over 97 percent of teachers were members. Nazi leaders also created new curricula and textbooks to be used throughout the country. (“Schooling for the National Community” Facing History, 8/2016)

Taking a page from the Nazi playbook, DOE Chancellor David Banks has repeatedly issued a policy that supposedly prohibits all political speech in schools. This is despite Banks hypocritically sending mass emails to all DOE staff full-throated defending the actions of Israel. The DOE’s bloodthirsty rallying around the flag has greenlit the targeted murder of a hundred United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teachers, mass displacement of students, and the bombing of every single university in the Gaza Strip. Indeed, since October 7th the indiscriminate slaughter of the workers and youth of the Gaza strip (see box) has not elicited one peep of condemnation from NYC education bosses.

The ideological veil wrapping its gag order around the throats of student outcry is as predictable as it is shameless. While the NYPD counter-terrorism squad has been sicced on Hillcrest High School students who mobilized in late November against their teacher’s public participation in a series of pro-Israel rallies calling for–among other things–“No Cease Fire!”, that teacher has not been investigated despite openly causing a disruption at school. In fact, the principal of that school, on December 22, received a promotion to work in the central offices of the NYC public schools. Meanwhile antiracist educators are swiftly disciplined.
It is no accident that the bosses have recently unveiled that they will soon roll out a uniform, top-down curriculum throughout all of the NY school system to further repress dissent and to create a further hedge against working class antiracist and anti-imperialist action.  

What’s to be done?
Bosses who proclaim the need for ‘trauma-informed’ and ‘culturally sustaining’ education have traumatized students organizing against genocide. The removal of teachers aims for a fascist chilling effect, but the righteous anger of youth and workers will defeat these attempts to silence anti-war voices.
Student anger is not going to simply melt away. Every day without a committed antiracist teacher is a slap in the face to their aspirations to live in a world free from the scourges of racism and genocide. A follow up-email blasting the principal for ignoring the student letter against genocide and racism was sent recently indicating strong resolution to pick up the struggle against imperialist war in the new year.

Stitching together disparate instances of repression into a strong, internationalist, antiracist movement will be at the forefront of anti-fascist organizing in 2024. Some jobs and positions will be won, others will be lost. Ruling classes of incomparable bloodthirst hold sway. Lives lost to the bombs of US imperialism are forever gone. If you are angered by this, you are an internationalist. The ruling class illusions of “free speech” are eroding as capitalists continue to repress workers who step out of line. Workers sense that a better world is possible, rooted in science and justice. They are organizing against this outright mutilation of reality to create a world in which youth are not repressed but are leaders of the revolution.

If you want to fight…
If you want to take action against genocide and fascist repression of those who take a stand against it you have a choice—to join the Progressive Labor Party. Our class will feel its strength as masses move beyond the borders of nationalism to defend targeted friends and comrades. In the crucible of class struggle the growth of a revolutionary communist party from hundreds to thousands and eventually to millions means that communism itself is transformed from an idea into a material force with the power to defeat all bosses, erase all borders, and inaugurate a classless society that is the only true basis for peace and justice for the working people of the world.