International Socialist League
As Israel extends its bombing and genocide into Lebanon 1.2 million people lost their homes, more than 2,000 people have been killed and nearly one-quarter of them are women and children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
At least 41,689 people have been killed and 96,625 wounded in Israeli military attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (2 October). According to Oxfam more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months.
In early October Israel announced their plan for total destruction of northern Gaza. That will mean the deaths of many 10,000s of Palestinians. The Zionist-Israeli genocide and expansion was a test for British, US and other imperialisms. They never stopped selling weapons of mass destruction to kill Palestinians or militarily supporting the genocide.
Hunger, diseases and widespread famine, destruction of at least 70% of the buildings, return of diseases that were eradicated such as polio represents a humanitarian, ecological and health catastrophe, of enormous proportions. The West Bank is also suffering the largest military offensive by Israel, they want the complete annexation of that territory.
While Starmer says Israel has the right of self-defence, he never says the Palestinian and Lebanese people have the right of self-defence, that is the right to life. Starmer’s government is an integral part of Zionist genocide and continue to export arms and components directly or indirectly to Israel.
Civilians are no longer ‘collateral damage’ the killing fields of Palestine and Lebanon is a strategy of continual killing and destruction by Israel. Israel carries out arbitrary arrest, torture in the prisons, bombing hospitals, schools tent encampment and refugees fleeing violence. The West call for a ceasefire for domestic and international consumption, and continue to support mass deaths and destruction to Israel.
US wants control of the Middle East
US and British imperialism will continue to maintain their support for their best ally in the region. Starmer likes to repeat Biden, that Israel is a country and a “democratic state”. It is not. It is a military enclave at the service of strategic interests of American imperialism, such as control over oil and key trade routes in the heart of the Middle East. So, while Israel is supported in expanding from an Apartheid colonial settler state in Palestine to much wider control of the region, the need of USA imperialism to rebuild its influence is very great.
The Middle East is one of the centres of inter-imperialist conflict between the USA and Chinese imperialism. By 2023, Saudi Arabia was China’s second-largest oil supplier, after Russia. In 2022, trade between China and the Middle East was $507 billion, doubling the 2017 figure and outpacing growth rates of Chinese trade with other global regions.
Where Iran is China is. British and other imperialisms are pushing to destroy Iran’s influence because they want to help Israel expand and they want to push back Chinese and Russian interests – not because these imperialisms give a fig about the Palestinians but they are keen to keep building their trade, and exploitation of the Middle East and North Africa. That China holds back Iran is for the USA and Israel a sign of weakness and a sign that Israel can continue to bomb and expand.
Russia continues to sell oil to Israel and supports the Abraham Agreements signed in 2020 by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which normalise diplomatic relations with the racist and Zionist enclave of Israel. China uses diplomacy, with the objective of preserving its investments in the region.
As for the bourgeois governments in the area, they are obedient to the international order and repress and starve their people. Although the masses of those countries are mostly with the Palestinian people, these governments only mobilised militarily in a measured way, until now, to defend themselves from the attacks of Israel.
Above all, governments defend the geopolitical interests of their own bourgeoisie. This is why the negotiations are still ‘stagnant’. And if they keep trying, it’s not so much because they care about the lives of the Palestinians or the ongoing catastrophe, but because the imperialist powers are worried about a greater escalation in the Middle East that will lead to an expanded war that they cannot control.
Unions must act for Palestine
The British government, with the complicity of the majority unions, like Unite leadership ignore Israel’s drowning of Palestinian people in blood. Labour continues support for Israel and the large unions and many unions continue their support for Labour.
British universities attract investment for research that involves Israeli universities and that goes to its arms industry, while Palestinian universities are bombed and staff killed. Israel also produces and exports weapons and intelligence tools, used by Western police forces in the repression of fighting in their respective countries.
Union and workers mobilisations
The immense mobilisations that we have seen in recent months and the student camps around the world, facing on many occasions the repression and violence of governments, have served to unmask them and have also been very important so that the rejection of the masses to Zionism – not the Jews – is increasing.
The only way to stop genocide is to make the complicity of governments with Israel involve such a high political and economic cost, that they are forced to force a ceasefire on Israel and even more, to break diplomatic, commercial and military relations with this racist enclave.
The Spanish country wide struggle of 27 September, in which 200 trade union, political and social organisations convened a day of fight against the genocide of Israel was a day to for UK union branches and rank and file to build on. Because if it is successful, it can prepare the conditions to put the government against the ropes and encourage the working class of other countries to follow the example: either they stop the genocide or we stop the country!
Our mobilisations must be aimed to mobilise the students, schools and workplaces and fill the streets with solidarity with Palestine. Workers must demand union leaders fight the Starmer government to break commercial, military and diplomatic relations with Israel.
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is the cause of all the oppressed and exploited of the world.
This heroic struggle, against apartheid and ethnic cleansing, is part of the anti-imperialist struggle that the working class carry out around the world, against the oppression and exploitation of this decadent imperialist system. No one will be free until Palestine is free, from the river to the sea!
Stop arming Israel!
Break all relations with the genocidal and apartheid Israeli state!