by Barry Sheppard and Malik Miah, published on Socialist Action, May 19, 2024
U.S. intelligence agencies have now openly recognized that the war Israel is ostensibly waging, to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, cannot be won.
This is a virtual recognition what the pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been saying, and most of the world knows, that the war is a war against the Palestinian people as a whole — a genocidal war.
On CNN May 12, pro-war Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which is regularly briefed by these agencies, said, “I want Hamas gone. I don’t want them to ever have the ability to hit Israel again. [But] I worry that the number of civilians that are dying are ultimately going to provide permanent recruiting material to Hamas, and it will be a threat for years to come.”
He added, it is “the conclusion of intelligence agencies that it would be all but impossible to totally eradicate Hamas.”
When a whole people are being massively attacked, those who can — in Gaza mainly young men — seek to join groups fighting back, whether those are eventually called the Hamas fighting wing Quassam Brigades, Islamic Jihad, or something else, irrespective of whether they politically supported Hamas before the Israel invasion or not.
The pro-war pro-Zionist newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, who are well informed by these agencies, echo this assessment.
The Journal wrote,“Taking Rafah is unlikely a decisive tactical blow to Hamas, analysts say. The resumed fighting in Gaza City and other areas of the north shows that Hamas has retained the ability to fight and is trying to reconstitute its capabilities in areas vacated by the military, they say.”
In an article on the Hamas leader Yahoo Sinwar, the Times wrote, “After Hamas attacked Israel in October, igniting the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders described the group’s most senior official in the territory, Yahoo Sinwar, as a ‘dead man walking.’ Considering him an architect of the raid, Israel has portrayed Mr. Sinwar’s assassination as a majorgoal of its devastating counterattack.
“Seven months later, Mr. Sinwar’s survival is emblematic of the failures of Israeli’s war, which has ravaged much of Gaza but left Hamas’s top leadership largely intact and failed to free most of the captives taken during the October attack.”
Nature of Israel’s War Clarified
Given this assessment, known by Israel’s leadership, the only explanation of Israel’s continuing war, deepened by its full blown invasion of Rafah, is that its objective is the crushing of the Palestinian people of Gaza to the extent they will accept Israel’s total indefinite military domination of the strip.
All the measures Israel is using to accomplish that, including mass killing by bombs, artillery, tanks, machine guns, etc. and mass starvation are being stepped up. The forced displacement of people over and over again is another weapon.
Most of the people in Rafah, about 1.9 million, have been moved from their homes and many have been forced to move from place to place many times, up to 10, and are again being told to move again.
Israel will fail in its objective in the long run because of the resistance of the people buttressed by the growing antiwar movement in the U.S. and the condemnation of the world’s majority.
Israel is becoming more and more a pariah country. One example was the recent vote in the U.N. General Assembly to overwhelmingly propose to the Security Council to recognize Palestine as a state, which the U.S. says it will veto, giving the lie to Biden’s phony proposal for a two-state solution.
Biden says his proposed “state” for Palestinians would have no army. The U.S. and Israel have long said that any Palestinian “state” would also have its borders and foreign policy controlled by Israel, and now the Israeli leadership as a whole rejects even that.
South Africa has now expanded its case against Israel’s genocidal war it has brought before the International Court of Justice to ask the ICJ to demand Israel stop its new bloody invasion of Rafah, and call for a cease fire.
The U.S. is intent on continuing to give full support to Israel’s war. Biden’s “red line” warning to Israel of not invading Rafah has been exposed as so much hot air. As the full blown invasion of Rafah began, Biden announced another billion dollars worth of arms to Israel.
The whole American capitalist ruling class is intent to back Israel (with some tactical differences that may emerge), because that is in the interests of the U.S. imperialist objective to dominate the Middle East, and Israel is key to that.
But Biden is leading the charge for his class. Concerning Israel’s war he is not the “lesser evil” but the greater evil.
That is a lesson mobilized pro-Palestinian students, and other sectors that will be drawn to the opposition to Washington’s complicity in the genocide, are learning, along with greater understanding of the role of the police and mainstream media.
Unprecedented Movement
The pro-Palestine campus encampments by students in the U.S. have helped spark a broader antiwar movement that has spread to Europe, Australia and other areas of the world. Nothing like this has occurred before concerning Israel’s long held objective to ethnically cleanse all of the territory of Biblical Israel of Palestinians, “from the river to the sea” and somewhat beyond.
This historical development is new, affecting international politics.
The student’s struggle was galvanized by the mass killings of people in Gaza and destruction of much of its infrastructure, even including hospitals, schools and universities, in addition to most homes.
These young people have rejected the pro-Israel stance and lies of the mainstream media in the U.S. and its lack of coverage of what’s happening in Gaza. Outlets like CNN and MSNBC only report from inside Israel. They do not tell their viewers that Israel refuses to allow their reporters to go to Gaza.
An article in the New York Times which interviewed many of these students reported they are looking to especially Al Jazeera, based in Qatar,which does give graphic depictions and news about the reality of Israel’s war.
“Israel’s recent ban on the local operations of Al Jazzera has only elevated the network’s status among many student protesters. They prize coverage of reporters on the ground and Al Jazeera has more extensive operation in Gaza than any other publication. Students also noted the sacrifices it has made to tell the story there. Two Al Jazeera journalists have died since the start of the war,” said the Times.
In addition, students are turning to other alternatives, including “Jewish Currents, The Intercept, Mondoweiss and independent Palestinians on social media…” the Times says. Consortium News and Counterpunch should be added. This information then gets spread far and wide on social media.
While 2,800 and growing arrests of students — with some expelled and denied diplomas and even charged with felonies — have been made by police at the behest of campus administrations and some city governments, the protests continue, including at commencement events as the academic year draws to a close, and will at summer classes. The repression doesn’t stop them.
At some academic institutions, administrations have chosen a different path of negotiations with protesters, including agreements to divest from investments in the war industries backing Israel at some.
Not all the police raids have been brutal, but some have. An example is New York City, where the Black Democratic mayor, who is a retired police captain, unleashed a brutal attack at the City College. The police were not as violent at the Columbia University encampment which has students from wealthier families. Students have noted this class differentiation in other cities and states
At UCLA, with university administration complicity, Zionists attacked a peaceful encampment with clubs and other weapons on April 30, while police stood by. They were joined by far rightists, including the anti-Semitic Proud Boys. There are other similar reports. [See: For Whom Is the UCLA Campus to Be Safe? socialistaction.org, May 14, 2024.]
Other forces on the campuses have joined the pro-Palestinian protests including professors, and also graduate students who have teaching duties.
Two Examples Are the UAW and Jewish Academics
Many student academic teachers are unionized. The largest union of these workers are in the United Auto Workers (UAW). The UAW represents 48,000 graduate student workers in the University of California system (including UCLA), who are holding a strike authorization vote in response to how these universities have cracked down on students’ Gaza protests.
“The use and sanction of violent force to curtail peaceful protest is an attack on free speech and the right to demand change, and the university must sit down with students, unions, and campus organizations to negotiate, rather than escalate” read an announcement of the strike vote by UAW Local 4811.
Earlier this year the national UAW, which is on a drive to organize the foreign auto companies in the anti-union South, following a victorious strike against the American auto companies, adopted a resolution calling for a cease fire in Gaza.
While Biden leads the accusation that the campus protests are all anti-Semitic, including a large segment of Jewish students in his smear campaign, the Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council issued an “Open Call to Fellow Jewish Academics.”
It reads, “As Jewish academics, researchers, and higher education professionals, we are appalled by, and refuse to accept, the deliberate mischaracterization, and weaponization of persisting fears about Jewish safety and well-being on campuses across the United States as the singular excuse for a series of misguided and dangerous policies by university administrators. These include attempts to destroy one of the largest and most significant student and social movements of the last half century, efforts to crush academic freedom and freedom of expression, encouragement for brutal invasions of peaceful student-led encampments, attacks and arrests by police forces, and facilitating the wholesale takeover of universities by the most illiberal and revanchist forces in the United States today….
“As Jewish academics, researchers, and higher education professionals, we strongly condemn this violent, punitive, and increasingly militarized approach to resolving conflicts on our campuses. While this wave of repression pales in comparison to the destruction by the Israeli military of Palestinian universities and its massive killing of scholars and students in Gaza, it nonetheless demands a strong response from those concerned with equity, education, and justice.
“We unequivocally reject the cynical and mendacious claim that the violent suppression of student activism serves the cause of Jewish safety.”
The expanding mass movement for justice for Palestine and against the US-backed war by Israel is putting pressure on the imperialist rulers of the U.S. and Israel to end the war.
Wars end in two ways: near total annihilation (for example, Indian tribes in North America by white colonial settlers) by the oppressor (even though underground resistance never stops) or a massive antiwar peace movement that backs those leading the ground resistance to the occupiers. That popular power is what causes the oppressors to retreat.
Washington’s defeat in Vietnam and withdrawal from Afghanistan reflects that latter outcome.
Joe Biden will never change his unconditional support to the Zionist war and project. He will never demand full democratic rights and freedom for Palestine.
His “red lines” he says Israel must not cross but then they are crossed and are made for electoral reasons.
Independently and democratically organized coordinated and united front type protests are a key factor than can change Biden’s and his U.S. warmakers’ equation. Free Free Palestine! From the River to the Sea! For a Democratic Secular Palestine With the Right of Return of All Dispossessed Palestinians – a New Nation Where All Can Live As Equals! For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!