As Netanyahu continues to escalate the conflict in the Middle East, backed to the hilt by Western imperialism, it is vital that communists study the history leading up to these events, as well as the way forward.
The new edition of our highly popular ‘Israel-Palestine: A Revolutionary Way Forward’ booklet has therefore been updated and expanded.
The second edition comes with a new introduction covering the world situation since the October 7 attacks and the commencement of Israel’s slaughter, as well as additional material on the history of Israel’s creation.
In total, this edition contains 50% more content than the previous one. This release is intended to arm RCP members, supporters, and the wider Palestine movement with the revolutionary perspective and programme needed to fight imperialism.
Contents
- Introduction – Khaled Malachi
- Down with hypocrisy! Defend Gaza! – RCI statement
History
- Palestine before 1948: How imperialism created Israel – Francesco Merli
- From the Nakba to Oslo: A century of resistance and betrayal – Francesco Merli
- Stalin’s responsibility in the creation of Israel and its disastrous consequences – Fred Weston
Programme
- Reformist ‘solutions’ and their discontents – Khaled Malachi
- Why the communists call for ‘Intifada until victory!’ – Khaled Malachi
- Did boycotts, divestment, and sanctions overthrow the Apartheid regime in South Africa? – Ben Morken
- For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East – Khaled Malachi
Order your copy today at Wellred Books Britain – the Marxist bookstore.
For our most up to date analysis on the crisis in the Middle East, and Israel’s ongoing attack on Lebanon, head to marxist.com.
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Introduction
Khaled Malachi, 23 September 2024
In the aftermath of October 7 2023, the Western imperialists signed off on Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’, which meant in practice Israel’s right to massacre and inflict collective punishment on the Palestinians.
They gave a blank cheque to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to murder as many Palestinians as he saw fit, with the backing of the ‘international community’.
Whilst the bodies of murdered Israeli citizens were still warm, the Israeli state turned the internal security crisis caused by Hamas’ incursion into an opportunity.
October 7 was to become the pretext for an almighty war. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant stated that the Israeli Defence Force would “eliminate everything”: there was to be “no electricity, no food, no fuel.” Gallant continued: “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Not to be topped, Netanyahu proclaimed that the Israeli response would be of Biblical proportions: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” In this tale, God commands Moses to annihilate the Amalekite. The allegorical lesson was a failure to do so later posed an existential threat to the Jewish people.
These words were never intended as empty threats. Since October 7, the Israeli war machine has turned the Gaza Strip into a veritable hellscape. Collective punishment has been wrought on the civilian population of Gaza by the Israeli military machine.
At the time of writing, the official Gazan death toll stands at 41,000. But the figure is most likely well over this, with the world-renowned medical journal The Lancet estimating a death toll exceeding 186,000 due to the destruction of basic infrastructure, such as hospitals. That would amount to 8% of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.
Israel has dropped 70,000 tonnes of bombs since October 7. This surpasses the amount of bombs dropped during the Second World War in Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined. Designated ‘safe-zones’ have not been kept from the Zionists’ wrath. Bombs blew apart the children seeking safety at the al-Mawasi camp.
In Gaza, the basic pillars for civilised life – schools, hospitals, shops, apartment blocks – have all been reduced to rubble. It is now expected that more Palestinians will die of famine and preventable diseases than they will from the Israeli bombardment.
At the time of writing, half a million are currently at risk of starvation, with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) colluding with the extreme right-wing Zionists to obstruct aid from entering the Strip.
That is not to mention the ‘silent war’ taking place in the West Bank. Settler violence has spiked, with armed gangs marauding around the Nablus region terrorising Palestinians. Jewish fundamentalists have flown in from the US to settle in the occupied West Bank, flouting international law in the process. But the settlers have no repercussions to fear. Netanyahu, and his extreme right-wing cabinet, have granted them full impunity.
What we have seen since October 7 is not a ‘conventional’ war. It is more akin to a slaughterhouse.
We have seen the Israeli state displace Palestinians from their homes, instructing them to go to ‘humanitarian’ spaces or be destroyed, only for them to meet certain death in places they believed to be safe.
Schools and hospitals are targeted, with medical professionals especially under attack. A defenceless civilian population is being butchered by the most powerful state in the Middle East.
There is no parity between the sides: one flees from F-35 fighter jets stalking the skies, whilst the other rains down hell from above. Israel boasts nuclear weapons; armed to the teeth with bombs, bullets, and bulldozers.
The Israeli regime is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
Western imperialism’s hypocrisy-based ‘order’
Israel does not act alone.
Without the unswerving support of Western imperialism, Israel would not have been able to blaze the trail of destruction that it has.
The Bidens, Starmers, and Scholzs of the world used October 7 to underline their unconditional support for the State of Israel. Singing from the same hymn sheet, they condemned Hamas for the ‘unconscionable’ attack and wrote a blank cheque to Israel.
This has become a familiar refrain. ‘Condemning Hamas’ has always meant condemning any form of Palestinian resistance against the occupation. This bogeyman has often been invoked by the Western imperialists to portray the Palestinians as the perpetrator, and the Israeli state as its victim.
Their framing of the ‘conflict’ in this way is increasingly failing to connect with ordinary people, who are not as gullible as politicians assume. People increasingly see the talk of ‘peace’ by the West as little more than hypocritical sermons. For all their talk about ‘Western values’, we have seen the real values of the Western imperialists.
The US Congress passed a bill in April for Israel to receive an additional $14.5bn in ‘aid’. By ‘aid’, what is meant is military assistance to the Israeli war machine. Bombs, artillery, and aircraft carriers for Israel; alongside disease, famine, and poverty for the people of Palestine: such is the real substance of US ‘humanitarianism’.
Following in step with its master, British imperialism has used the war to prove its credentials to its boss in Washington. Since October 7, Britain’s air force base in Cyprus has been a key conduit for US armaments getting into Israel. Britain has repeatedly carried out ‘spy missions’ over Gaza. No doubt, British surveillance drones have supplied intelligence to the Israeli Air Force.
Despite the partial ‘arms embargo’ of Sir Keir Starmer on Israel, Britain continues to manufacture key components in the F-35 stealth bombers. These combat aircrafts have been essential to Israel’s operations. This is the real face of Western imperialism. It is no wonder that millions do not believe a single word uttered by pro-Zionist politicians.
For decades, Britain and the US have nurtured Israel into the strongest military power in the region. They have created a formidable friend, with Israel considered the most reliable ally they can count on in the region.
The past year has shown they will go to excruciating lengths to justify the actions of the Israeli state to protect their own material interests in the Middle East. As Biden, without a trace of irony, recently remarked: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.”
Our class enemies, the British capitalists and their representatives in government, have always sided with the oppressor over the oppressed. They have not only tolerated Israel getting away with murder, but at points spurred the Zionists on. This is the real nature of Western imperialism’s hypocrisy-based ‘order’.
Propaganda mills
If you believed what you read in the news, you would come away thinking that Israel is exerting its “right to defend itself”.
For the past decades, any flare-up, bombardment, or full-blown assault the Israeli state has carried out against the Palestinians has been explained away with that familiar phrase. With the wave of this magic wand, Israel is absolved from its crimes and blame is moved elsewhere.
What is never asked, however, is how Israel acquired this inalienable right to ‘defend itself’ from the Palestinians whose territory it occupies and controls. For if Israel’s genocidal war is mere ‘self-defence’, the conflict must have begun with October 7. Indeed, that is what is being pumped out of the propaganda mills of the so-called ‘free’ press.
Hired journalistic hacks of the establishment instead have spent their time insinuating that anyone who is opposing the monstrous oppression of the Palestinians must have some kind of connection with Hamas, and by extension, with the murder of Israeli civilians on October 7.
It is rather ironic that these ladies and gentlemen do not put Israeli officials through this round of fire, since it is Netanyahu’s regime that has, in fact, propped up Hamas for decades for its own cynical purposes.
From their lavish studio tables, news anchors have been hard at work converting fiction into fact, and allowing discredited and debunked Zionist accounts of the events of October 7 to go unchallenged.
They have joined in a witch-hunt of pro-Palestine voices being ‘terrorist sympathisers’, whilst ignoring the daily acts of terror the Israeli state is unleashing in Gaza and beyond. October 7 has been used as a fig leaf to obscure the countless provocations of fanatical settlers and the Israeli ruling class that have made war, once again, inevitable.
The Israeli state, alongside the complicit Arab regimes, has jailed 2.3 million people in an open air prison and thrown away the key. Through regular raids and carpet bombing, life had become near intolerable far before October 7.
The brutality of the IDF during the 2018 Great March of Return – where IDF snipers gunned down children from the military checkpoints that tower over Gaza – showed that there is no ‘peaceful’ means for return. It burned into the minds of the Gazan population that, in the eyes of the Zionists, they are better off dead.
Bitter fruits of Zionism
Though western imperialism has spent decades (and billions of dollars) carefully curating the image of Israel as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’, the entire history of the State of Israel tells a very different story. Zionism, by its very logic, has driven at eliminating all Palestinians from historic Palestine, through waves of ethnic cleansing, systemic abuse and bouts of bloodletting.
Zionism never aimed to bring ‘democracy’ or ‘peace’ to the supposed Holy Land. As was candidly explained by Ariel Sharon, former Israeli general and Prime Minister:
“The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Israel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and the Jewish people alone”.
This messianic mission has taken the form of war, ethnic cleansing, forced expropriation and occupation, alongside the economic strangulation of the Palestinian population. Though the means have varied throughout the last 76 years, the end goal has always been the same.
The practical philosophy of the Zionist project was spelt out by Menachem Begin, leader of the Jewish terrorist Irgun before Israel was proclaimed, and later Prime Minister: “We fight, therefore we are”.
Crusaderlike in aspiration, the fanatical Zionists have engaged in a permanent state of warfare against the oppressed Palestinian masses. Israel was a nation born by the sword in 1948 – through the historic crime of ethnically cleansing over 700,000 Palestinians from their land – and it has lived by it ever since.
‘Greater Israel’ has always been the watchword amongst the hardline Zionists. Moshe Dayan, the celebrated Israel military leader of the six-day war, commented following Israel’s military victory: “We are doomed to live in a constant state of war with the Arabs and there is no escape from sacrifice and bloodshed. This is perhaps an undesirable situation, but it is a fact.”
Dayan foresaw that the Zionist’s expansionism would always cut across the Palestinians’ aspirations for a homeland and a dignified life.
And as for a practical solution to the conflict, Dayan’s infamous words spelt things out quite clearly: “we [Israel] have no solution, and you [the Palestinians] will continue to live like dogs, whoever wants will go”.
To be blunt, October 7 was a dream-come-true for the hardline Zionists, who have used the attack to push for another Nakba, a repetition on a higher scale of the crimes committed in 1948.
And thanks to the blessing of their allies in the West, the Israeli ruling class have been able to carry out a genocidal rampage against the Palestinians.
The final blame for the bloodshed in the region lies with the Zionist state, alongside its western imperialist sponsors.
Generational movement
The genocide in Gaza has provoked an almighty backlash in country after country, with millions flooding the streets in support of the Palestinian struggle.
Despite the best attempts by the capitalists and their political hangers-on, workers and youth have united behind the banner of a free Palestine. The issue of Palestine has become an eye-opener for millions, exposing imperialist hypocrisy and the need to struggle for justice.
Widespread anger has spilled out onto the streets, with millions marching from New York to London; from Toronto to Paris. These protests acted as a catalyst in destabilising the political situation in many countries across the globe.
Starting in the belly of the beast, students at the Columbia university campus in the US started a pro-Palestine encampment, calling for not a cent, not a bullet to be provided to the Israeli war machine.
This militant example led to ‘Gaza solidarity encampments’ spreading like wildfire across the world, in spite of heavy repression. Demands for a ‘ceasefire’ were being superseded by more militant slogans.
The most advanced layer of students globally turned to the inspiring example of the First Intifada; calling for a mass grassroots uprising to bring down all the criminals responsible for the bloodshed in historic Palestine.
This galvanised the Palestine solidarity movement, with students and workers looking to take matters into their own hands in fighting their own imperialist governments.
Not only have complicit Western regimes been exposed in this process, but so too has the ‘international community’ and its institutions.
As the International Court of Justice (ICJ) debated whether or not ‘genocide’ was more or less plausible, the Israeli ground campaign was ramping up in Gaza. The very day the International Criminal Court (ICC) requested an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant, an Israeli airstrike into Syria killed eight Hezbollah fighters.
As the United Nations now pleads with Israel to leave the occupied territories, the Israeli state has just committed an unprecedented act of terrorism against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in an escalation aimed at justifying a fresh invasion of Lebanon.
‘International law’ has once again been brushed to one side as the rabid Israeli regime aims to push through its aims under the cover of war. A striking double standard can be seen in the way in which Russian war crimes (real or invented) are spoken of, in comparison to the genocidal actions of the Israeli state.
When the Israel Air Force bombs a Gazan school, or carries out airstrikes into Syria, Biden and Starmer appeal for ‘restraint’ and ‘calm’ – directed most of all at the Arab leaders themselves!
When Russia is accused of similar actions, Biden and Starmer proclaim the severest words of condemnation. A comparison between the two shows that in the Western imperialist’s ‘rules-based order’, international law is used to condemn their enemies, but is never applied to their friends.
One year on, however, the Western imperialists are increasingly nervous as their ‘strategic ally’ becomes more and more a strategic liability. The actions of Netanyahu have begun to delegitimize their prized project in the Middle East, and the bloodshed in the region is beginning to destabilise the political situations at home.
Main enemy at home
As communists, we stand in full solidarity with the oppressed over the oppressor.
We denounce the criminal role that our government continues to play in the ongoing massacre.
We denounce the hypocritical role of the ‘free’ press, which has attempted to paint the oppressor as the oppressed, and vice versa.
And we denounce the Israeli state, and the poison of Zionism that is built in its foundations.
Those protesting in Britain want to see an end to the massacre of desperate and defenceless peoples – all carried out with bombs and bullets that have been funded by money that could, and should, instead be spent on healthcare and education. In times of war, just like in times of peace, the main enemy remains at home.
We can have no illusions in Starmer and co. bearing the torch of ‘peace’ and ‘progress’ in the slaughter they have been complicit in creating.
We cannot rely on international courts to solve the conflict with the stroke of a pen. That is what the Palestine movement has learnt from the past year of enormous mobilisations across the world.
For the millions who want to see an end to Britain’s complicity in this slaughter: the struggle begins here.
Workers and students possess the power not just to shut down arms companies and campuses. Organised and mobilised, we have the ability to fundamentally transform society – to build a world free of war and want; free from imperialist meddling and bloodshed.
The question of Palestinian liberation is radicalising an entire generation. It is our duty to the Palestinian cause to raise the call for socialist revolution, as the only means of achieving peace between the peoples worthy of the name.
It is our task to organise against the main enemy at home, and fight to bring down all the warmongers in Westminster. We have a world to win!
