In Gaza, Palestine, as workers and children fight desperately to survive, our class siblings around the world fight for an end to Israeli and U.S. imperialist genocide. U.S. aid to Israel paid for much of the 12,000 tons of bombs that have hit a densely populated strip of land about the size of Philadelphia (MEMO, 10/25/23). As of October 29, the death toll from this criminal and indiscriminate bombardment stood at more than eight thousand people, nearly half of them children (apnews.com, 10/29). Hundreds more are dying by the day.

Workers’ anger has filled the streets from Cape Town to Dublin, from Caracas to New York City, from Istanbul to Kuala Lumpur. Their rage is driven by the atrocities committed by Israel’s military, which has turned an open-air prison into a death camp. While Palestine-Israel is plagued by misleaders, from Netanyahu to Hamas, the workers of the world, and especially those in Gaza, show the revolutionary potential that we need to build an internationalist communist future led by Progressive Labor Party (PLP).

In imperialist wars, workers die and only bosses win. We need one international working class, one world, and one Party to smash the bosses who are the root cause of these conflicts, from Palestine/Israel to Ukraine and Yemen.  It is the task of every CHALLENGE reader to build PLP to advance class consciousness, and to put an end to imperialist war with internationalist, communist revolution. Fighting for communism means abolishing nationalism and racism because they lead workers to the same deadly path laid out by Israel and Hamas. While Israel’s capitalist leaders have far more blood on their hands, both sets of rulers use religion and nationalism to mislead workers to their doom. The idea of separate and warring nations, races, and ethnicities comes from the sick minds of the billionaire bosses. They will be abolished when workers of the world unite to smash the blood-soaked profit system once and for all.

Workers save workers
Essential workers in Gaza are showing our class in real time what communism can look like, even under siege. Rescue workers and volunteers are collectively rescuing children and families from under the rubble of Israel’s bombs. Others continue to labor in grocery stores and bakeries as buildings around them fall and crush their neighbors.

Health care workers in Palestine have gone days without sleep as they struggle to care for our class siblings. On October 21, medical workers at Al-Shifa hospital were  treating 3,000 injured people in a facility with beds for 700 (Doctors Without Borders, DWB). Medical workers are performing operations in hallways, in front of family members, with little or no sedation or painkillers. (Doctors Without Borders, 10/24).

Reformist bandaids and capitalist bandits
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was opposed by masses of Israeli workers until shortly before the October 7 massacre by Hamas, uses anti-Arab racism and toxic identity politics to divide Jewish from Arab and Muslim workers. (More than two million Arab workers live in Israel.)The Israeli ruling-class ideology of Zionism rests on the racist idea of Jewish supremacy to justify a “Jewish state”—no matter how many Palestinian workers must be oppressed, exploited, or butchered to sustain it.

The key to resolving this conflict lies in multiracial unity and working-class solidarity. In the U.S., hundreds of Arab, Jewish, Asian, Latin, Black and white workers staged sit-ins at the Capitol in Washington to demand a ceasefire and an end to the slaughter. But members of the U.S. Congress, including fake-left Democrats like Bernie Sander and Aleandria Ocasio-Cortez, have goose-stepped in line behind Imperialist-in-Chief Joe Biden to support even more funds for  the Israeli genocide. When asked about Israel’s relentless collective punishment of Gaza’s population, Biden callously acknowledged that “innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war” (Reuters, 10/25).

In the face of such deadly misleadership, workers must call out the racist Zionist bosses in talks with coworkers at their jobs. Teachers must struggle with their students to reject anti-Muslim racism–and anti-Jewish racism, as well. We must all take to the streets to share our internationalist, anti-imperialist, communist ideas–and to refuse to let these nationalist murderers–Democrats and Republicans alike–off the hook. That is how we will forge a brighter future.

Only bosses win when workers feud  
Even before the latest Israeli invasion of Gaza, the U.S. was funneling $3 billion a year into Israel’s military. The U.S. Defense Department also has $2 billion worth of weapons and bombs at Israel’s disposal for times of crisis. Israel’s killing machine went into overdrive after the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians–including dozens of Arab Bedouins (NYT, 10/8/).
Hamas and other Palestinian nationalist bosses offer only death and destruction to the workers of Gaza. But as bad as Hamas may be, let us be clear: The blood on the rubble of Gaza is primarily the fault of Israeli bosses and their U.S. imperialist patrons.

The roots of genocide
The origin of Israel’s occupation of the land previously called Palestine (by British and French imperialists) goes back to the early 1900s. The development of distinct national identities among both Arab and Jewish workers, coupled with the rise of the nationalist movement of Zionism, laid the foundation for the state of Israel. But the country founded in 1948 would never have been established without the U.S. imperialists’ desire for a reliable watchdog to counter Soviet influence in the oil-rich region.

Once the U.S. bosses threw their weight behind a “Jewish state,” the stage was set for the mass genocidal displacement of Palestinian workers. Three wars – the Arab-Israeli War (1947-1949), the Six Day War (1967), and the Yom Kippur War (1973)—killed thousands of workers and fueled racist movements led by bosses on both sides. Today, without a communist alternative, workers in Gaza have no place to turn but the dead end of nationalism and the ruthless clutches of the likes of Hamas.

Nationalism is a dead end;fight for communism!
Bordering Palestine is Egypt, a country led by a group of notoriously corrupt junior capitalists. Though they once allied with Palestinian nationalists, Egypt’s bosses are now starving workers in Palestine out and blocking them from escaping the Israeli bombardment (Foreign Affairs, 10/25). Egypt is stalling until they can make a self-serving deal with Israel. This is nothing less than cold-blooded murder. Workers’ lives can’t wait!
To be in a position to end these imperialist bloodbaths, Progressive Labor Party must grow.Members and friends must build internationalist fightback with urgency. As the U.S., China, and Russia move toward open fascism and world war, today’s violence in Gaza and Ukraine could be tomorrow’s worldwide conflagration. Anywhere imperialism reigns is a potential flashpoint for war. It’s time to turn the bosses’ war into class war. We have a communist world to win!

In September, Trudeau formally accused his brother-in-fascism Narendra Modi’s government in India of having orchestrated the murder of a Canadian Sikh leader. Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered outside of a Sikh temple in Surrey, BC, in June, and now Trudeau’s cabinet announced that it has obtained intelligence that the murder was a political assassination related to the Indian government’s ongoing persecution of Sikh people and those they suspect of participating in separatist movements in India and abroad.

Besides parliament, Trudeau also briefed the “Five Eyes” alliance members (Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand), and all have put out statements “urging” India to participate in any and all international probes.

Indian officials have called the accusation “absurd,” despite their proven record of persecuting and retaliating against the Sikh population, and Chinese media have choked the allegations up to ‘Western hypocrisy’ (CBC, Al Jazeera, Global Times).

Liberals honor Nazi war criminals
All this posturing shouldn’t fool anyone: the racist Canadian state has never much cared for the welfare of Sikh workers, only now with India joining forces with China in the BRICS formation does Canada seem moved to care about Hindu fascism and political suppression, and no justice for workers in China and India is possible while its rulers pursue imperialist ends.

Later this same month, Canada attempted to follow up its bold stand against India with more political theater, only this time it backfired. To welcome Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on his first in-person visit to the House of Commons, Speaker of the House, Anthony Rota, announced the presence of another honored guest in attendance. The speaker called 98 year old Yaroslav Hunka a Canadian “hero,” describing him as a Ukrainian nationalist that fought bravely against Russia in World War II (Guardian). All of parliament and  Zelensky gave Hunka a standing ovation.

In truth, those fighting against the Soviet Union in World War II would have been fighting on the side of Nazi Germany. It was quickly revealed that Hunka was a nazi member of the 14th SS Waffen, 1st Galician Division, responsible for the massacres of ethnic Jewish  and Polish workers.

The event sparked an international controversy. Canadian liberal fascists like Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh pleaded ignorance, despite the fact that the Prime Minister’s own right hand, Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, has multiple degrees in 20th century Ukrainian and Russian studies.. Like Hunka, Chomiak escaped Soviet punishment for nazi crimes by fleeing to Canada. Canada resettled more Ukrainian nazis than anywhere else in the West after the war, including 600 of Hunka’s compatriots in the 1st Galician division of the SS.

Even if the rest of the Canadian parliamentarians like Singh and Trudeau feign ignorance, Freeland, with her lineage and education, cannot. She is part of a well-established diaspora of Ukrainian fascists in Canada, who have been usefully re-cast by the Canadian state as refugees of communism, despite the fact that only approximately 10,000 to 12,000 Ukranians fought with the nazis during the war, while millions fought bravely against naziism as communists in the Soviet Union’s Red Army.

After pressure from Jewish ethnic organizations, Anthony Rota apologized for inviting the nazi to parliament and resigned, while slimy Trudeau called the ovation a “mistake” and warned against “Russian propaganda” about World War II, and the current presence of naziism in the Ukrainian national army.

This kind of revision serves to perpetuate anticommunist myths, despite Putin and modern Russia being imperialist, while inoculating the Canadian public to its government’s continued support for Ukraine in the war.
Zelensky’s current tour is looking for increases beyond the 6 billion in money, training, and weapons Canada has already provided (BBC). These kind of farcical political stunts are how the ruling class wins us to endorse and participate in their bloody agendas, and to reject the only path to liberation we have: communist revolution!

What’s BRICS got to do with it?
The war in Ukraine and Western posturing against India are not unrelated, nor are they demonstrations of the ruling class’s care for justice or workers’ lives. BRICS, the economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa is a direct threat to U.S. hegemony and global economic control. BRICS’ proposal to trade oil outside of the U.S. dollar is not only a huge blow to the U.S., but to the rest of the world that was under the sphere of U.S. imperialism. Canada’s major exports primarily go to other nations in the West, and its economic dependence on gold and oil in these flows is greatly threatened by BRICS’ moves to shift those industries into their control.

Let’s be clear: no movement of capital amongst the ruling class and their fascist governments will benefit workers anywhere, and the resulting wars they will start to resolve the economic contradictions will kill us before we ever see any trickle-down crumbs like higher wages or better access to healthcare.

In both events, the normally divided political class in Canada has been surprisingly united. No member of parliament, not even the phony social democrats, openly questioned the celebration of someone who they knew fought against their own historical alliance in World War II. Celebrating Nazis and fighting “foreign interference,” are ultimately working toward the same destructive end. This hypocrisy is even more blatant now, as countries like Canada and the United States have lined up to denounce antisemitism by arming and funding Israel’s ongoing genocide on Palestinian workers in Gaza and the West Bank.

The truth is that each nation’s ruling class will discipline each other into more and more unity as inter imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China continues to sharpen. The prospect of World War means not even social democrats will oppose the fascist efforts to save capitalism in crisis. All of the bourgeois politicians are committed to the enrichment of capitalist pigs, as well as the ongoing suppression of communism. That, however, is one war they are set to lose.

As class consciousness grows, and more join Progressive Labor Party worldwide, our class will be strong  enough to turn the guns around, and end their war-mongering exploitation of us once and for all.

BROOKLYN, October 1—On a sunny Sunday afternoon, after a rainstorm paralyzed the whole city of NYC, nearly 30 workers in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and our friends from our local community organization held a rally in solidarity with migrant workers, fighting back against liberal fascist Mayor Eric Adams’s new ordinance to evict migrant families after just 30 days, forcing them to restart the housing process all over again.

Our small but mighty multiracial and multigenerational contingent met at a busy park nearby before the rally to make signs that reflected our internationalist and antiracist politics: Smash all Borders and Evict racist capitalists were among the dozen signs we towed as we marched across the park, handing out CHALLENGES to the dozens of multiracial workers, chanting “Workers united will never be defeated” and “Immigrants yes and evictions no” in English and Spanish. From the Park we marched through the streets of Bushwick en route to the migrant shelter, where we learned that our class siblings were put out in the street during a torrential rain storm. This putrid racism displayed today is what capitalism has to offer to families already terrorized by the profit system. A system that literally puts families into the streets in the middle of storms and floods deserves to be drowned. Smash all borders!

PL’ers have a proud history of antiracist fightback in the Bushwick neighborhood for more than two decades.''Workers readily received our communist politics, and many took both the CHALLENGE and leaflets, and some young people briefly joined the march and chanted with us. This shows that no matter the condition, no matter the location, there are antiracists everywhere.

Marching through liberals’ racist lies
The march was a welcome change from the politics reflected by the liberal community organizations in Bushwick where our friends and PL’ers organize.

The organization supports liberal politicians (including Adams, who conducted electoral campaigns in this neighborhood for many years), and their inability to respond to the crisis is just another example of how slickly the capitalists’ agents hide the racism they use to pit workers against workers. Even some Latin members of the community organization and the neighborhood are being misdirected into racist ideas against this new wave of migrants, blaming them for the rise of crimes and the lack of jobs.

The bosses have even managed to pit other undocumented migrants against Venezuelan migrants, now that the bosses have  exploited  the latter’s presence to spread anti-communism. The bosses have now turned their backs on Venezuelan migrants, and there are talks of massive deportations of Venezuelans back to their country to allow other and new migrants to take their place as the new super-exploited. There are now recent migrants (for example, from Ecuador, another country which is now suffering the effects of U.S. imperialism, Haiti, and Sudan) who are arriving in  the U.S. and are last in line for work permits. It is clear that the sell-out politics of liberal capitalist organizations are incapable of helping workers fleeing the effects of imperialism and climate change.

Bushwick locals show solidarity with migrants
Once at the shelter, we gave speeches and chanted in front of the shelter, calling out the savage capitalist system as the cause, which needs to be destroyed and replaced by communism.

We also got harassed by a security guard, who claimed Bushwick locals would resent our presence and call the police. In fact, two locals who lived across from the shelter heard our chants, approached us, and asked to see our literature — proving that solidarity with migrants workers exists regardless of how hard racist bosses and their politicians pit us against each other. At first, some migrants were scared to show their faces in the window because of the harassment they often experience from cops. But a few of them did show their faces, and we waved to them.

Mayor Adams has been seeking to suspend the “right to shelter” law at a time when the City has the most need to house people. These politicians’ decisions—Republicans and Democrats—are driven by profit needs, not workers’ needs.

A Black woman PL’er gave a speech in Spanish that struck hard against this racist imperialist system and explained why communism is the only alternative:

We’re here today to say we need each and every one of you to join us to find a real way out of this nightmare. To fight for communism where no worker or child be forced to flee their homes because of war or poverty; a world without profits, money or borders. If we had communism no worker would need to seek refuge or be discarded.

We marched back to the starting point of our rally, receiving many nods and claps from workers along the way, distributing dozens more CHALLENGES. Our friends from the mass organization were older and struggling to walk but the strength of our solidarity and politics made it easier. By the end of our rally our friends were tired but still boosted by revolutionary energy, and were excited to continue the struggle to support migrant workers. The struggle to win our working class brothers and sisters to fight for a communist world continues. Onward!