Statement by Socialist Action US, November 14, 2024
The eyes of the world are riveted on Palestine. After 13 months of a genocidal bombardment and invasion of Gaza, and now Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran and Iraq, the Zionist state has killed at least 50,000 people, two-thirds of whom are women and children, leaving over 100,000 injured, and at least 10,000 more buried beneath the rubble of a destroyed Gaza, the world’s largest prisonhouse.
The respected medical journal Lancet reports (several months ago ~jb) a more accurate genocide figure of 186,000 due to disease, unsanitary conditions and malnutrition as well as outright slaughter. Zionist pogroms in the West Bank have slaughtered multiple hundreds more since Oct 7, 2023. The Israel Occupation Force, with full US complicity and tens of billions in US aid this year alone, is waging an ever-intensifying mass murder campaign wherein a million trapped Palestinian refugees are targeted for extermination.
This horror did not begin with the October 7 Gaza prison break. The current slaughter and famine were preceded by 76 years of brutal Occupation and mass incarceration of Palestinians. The US corporate obsession with Palestine arises from the vast reserves of oil in the Middle East. Capitalist energy giants seek to control these along with the fundamental fossil fuel resources of the world. Hence, the declared and undeclared US wars waged against Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Venezuela as well as the present US-backed war in Ukraine. All aimed at subordinating these nation’s fossil fuel resources to the largely monopolized US oil giants.
Any nation that stands in the way is crushed by overt war or deadly sanctions. The twin parties of US imperialism aim to destabilize or overthrow any government that resists.
In the Middle East the racist, Zionist, apartheid Israeli entity serves as US imperialism’s central agency. Yet, the heroic resistance of the Palestinian masses, at a terrible price indeed, has inspired the world’s people that the freedom struggle cannot be repressed.
To that we emphatically say NO! Free, Free Palestine! We hail the student encampments at universities across Canada and the USA bravely denouncing academic and corporate complicity with genocide. The Yemini Ansar Allah show how Arab states, indeed all governments, can and should block commerce with the Zionist state and its economy. Hezbollah and Ansar Allah projectiles are penetrating the Israeli Iron Dome.
The Palestinian people are in the forefront of resistance to world imperialism. They did not choose this role. It was thrust upon them. The Western powers carved up the Middle East following WWII, just as they did Africa and Asia earlier. In the face of rebellion by the Arab masses, they sponsored Israel as a military fortress in the region. They exploited the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust for their ends. But the fact remains: Israel is a colonial settler state. It is an outpost of imperialism in the Arab East.
Zionism began as an extreme bourgeois nationalist minority movement among Jews. It ran counter to the strong socialist and internationalist traditions of Jews in the Diaspora. Theodore Herzl, a non- religious Jew, and founder of Zionism, gained the sponsorship of French, British and Czarist Russia’s imperialism for the formation of the Zionist state. Later, Canada, the USA, and Christian Zionists embraced the colonial project. The Stalinist- ruled USSR voted at the United Nations in 1947 for the partition of Palestine that led to the establishment of Israel and the expulsion of nearly one million Palestinians from their historic homelands. The Zionist state was founded on a big lie: that Palestine was a land without people for a people without land. Today the Palestinian people visibly refute that lie.
Socialist Action rejects the so-called two-state solution – a cruel cover-up for permanent racism and ethnic cleansing.
We demand: Zionist Ceasefire Now! Increase the funding of the UNRWA. End the Occupation! Smash the Zionist Apartheid state! For Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. For the right of all refugees to return to their homes. Lift the Siege of Gaza! For a Democratic and Secular Palestine for all its residents: Muslims, Jews, Christians, and atheists! For a socialist federation of the Middle East. Disarm the nuclear powers, starting with the US and Israel. Abolish NATO. From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!
Build the US and worldwide antiwar movement. Unity! For independent, united front, democratically organized massive mobilizations demanding and end to all US aid to Zionist Israel. US Out of the Middle East Now!