Since this article was written earlier this month, the Israeli state has approved and started undertaking plans to “finish the job” in Gaza by escalating things further, fully occupying the area. Stay tuned on marxist.com for our analysis of the situation.
Famine is ravaging Gaza. Over the past weeks, the most horrific images have come out of the occupied territory, showing men, women and children reduced to skin and bones.
One million children in Gaza – half the population – are at risk of starvation. At least 180 Palestinians, including 93 children, have already died from malnutrition with dozens now starving to death every day.
Everyone knows that the famine is wholly manmade. Outside of Gaza, hundreds of trucks loaded with food, baby formula and medical equipment stand idle for the fifth month in a row – there is enough aid at the gates of the border, ready at a moment’s notice, to feed all 2.1 million Gazans for three months.
The measly amount of aid that is getting in is entirely insufficient. Since the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ took over, the number of aid sites has dropped to 1 percent of the number run by the UN before the blockade.
Aid points have been turned into killing fields in which at least 1,400 Palestinians have been murdered – shot by Israeli soldiers or foreign security guards.
This is not aid, but engineered starvation.
Western hypocrisy
The imperialist western governments have begun panicking about the political consequences of the escalating famine. Macron, Merz, and Starmer have all now said that the situation has gone too far. Even Trump has commented that images of starving children are “real” – as if there was ever any doubt.
Having backed Israel fully in its genocide, politicians in the West are scrambling to mask their own roles with token gestures.
Now they have started haphazardly airdropping a few tonnes of aid into Gaza – a drop in the ocean of what is necessary – in order to be seen to be doing something. These potentially place thousands of Palestinians’ lives in danger, since they have to scramble for aid in zones where the IDF has made clear they will shoot Palestinians on site.
In their most cynical move of all, France, Britain and Canada are now threatening to recognise Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September.
Their own statements show how cynical they are.
The UK government statement, for instance, presents the possibility that they could withdraw the threat of recognition, which they will go ahead with “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza and commits to a long term sustainable peace, including through allowing the UN to restart without delay the supply of humanitarian support to the people of Gaza to end starvation, agreeing to a ceasefire,” etc.
In other words, Palestinian statehood is not a principle for them, it is not an inalienable right of the Palestinian people, it is just a fig leaf to deflect from their own complicity, and a way of applying a bit of diplomatic pressure on Israel.
For 30 years, since the Oslo Accords, the leaders of the West have claimed to be for Palestinian statehood and have kept talking about a ‘pathway’ to a two-state solution.
And in all that time they turned a blind eye to Israel’s unabated expansionism, which has systematically undermined the possibility of any such state.
The Israeli ruling class itself has long since dropped the slightest pretensions about allowing the existence of an independent Palestinian state.
Just last week, the Israeli Knesset approved a motion endorsing the complete annexation of the occupied West Bank.
Palestine has never been further from independence than now. The blame for this must be put squarely on the ruling class of the West.
Western governments now talk about recognising ‘an independent Palestinian state’, but they themselves are the ones responsible for the fact there is nothing left to recognise. Dangling the rotten carrot of formal ‘recognition’ in front of the Palestine movement after backing nearly two years of genocide and amid a raging famine, is a sick joke.
At every step they have done nothing of substance to stop the genocide. In fact, Netanyahu has been free to escalate the genocide under the thinnest of ‘humanitarian’ pretences. He knows that any threats will have no real consequences. At the end of the day, the dollars and guns will keep flowing.
The West gave full backing to Israel, claiming that then they were defending its ‘right to self-defence’. Now they hold their hands up in horror and pretend that the present situation has come as a surprise to them. They knew all along what was happening.
The present famine has been foretold – even boasted about – by the Israeli government itself since 7 October 2023. Far from a ‘change’ in their genocidal policy, it is the horrifying culmination of the logic of Zionism, and almost two years of indiscriminate bombing.
Just days after 7 October, Yoav Gallant, former Minister of Defence, spoke unashamedly of “fighting against human animals”. Their allies in the West didn’t bat an eye. Instead, they emboldened Netanyahu by supporting Israel’s ‘inalienable’ right to drop an endless amount of bombs on Gaza in the name of ‘self-defence’.
Now the leaders of the West plead ignorance that the war begun in October 2023 would end in famine. But take the words of Major General Giora Eiland – the adviser to the Israeli Defense Minister – who just one month after 7 October blustered about exploiting food and aid as a means to kill, and welcomed humanitarian disaster:
“We must not shy away from [humanitarian disaster and epidemics], as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”
Western leaders were fully cognisant of what Israel intended. The only reason the leaders in the West put on a show is because they feel the pressure building against them among the mass of society – they are afraid!
No way back
Take Keir Starmer and the British Labour government. During Trump’s recent visit to Scotland, Starmer said that he was “unequivocal” in his concern over the “unspeakable and indefensible” scenes in Gaza and was “horrified” at the images of starving children and babies.
But to any person with even the most scant knowledge of Labour’s actual deeds, these statements come across as bare-faced lying.
Not only does Britain assist Israel in their military operations in Gaza with reconnaissance flights (of which they have conducted hundreds), they sell them weapons and train IDF soldiers.
In fact, Labour approved more weapons to Israel in three months than the Tories did in four years!
At home too, Labour has clamped down on the Palestine movement, designating the direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. Supporting it can now get you up to 14 years in prison.
It’s the same with the rest of these war criminals – Merz, Macron, Trump and their predecessors.
These ‘democratic’, ‘humanitarian’ leaders have permitted an unbroken flow of aid to Israel in spite of everything because, whatever they might say, Israel is indispensable for maintaining western imperialism’s grip on the Middle East. It will always be worth more to them than the fate of the Palestinians.
Israel has depended on this assistance since it was created. The western imperialists are not just complicit: this genocide could not occur without their financial, diplomatic and military support.
Unrest on the horizon
We have to make it absolutely clear that they are the ones who have caused this famine, and that this move is a product of panic and fear of the revolutionary repercussions.
Netanyahu’s political survival depends upon keeping this war going. But his actions are increasingly putting his backers in an impossible position. Not because it hurts their conscience, but because the undeniably horrifying scenes of genocide are stirring up the only force that could force the West to withdraw support for these war crimes: the masses.
In the Middle East too, anger could boil over at any moment.
Egypt is simmering with discontent, with Sisi clamping down on anything with the potential to spark a mass movement against the genocide. This week in an unprecedented move he forced Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb – the highest authority in Sunni Islamic thought – to withdraw a statement condemning Israel’s starvation campaign.
Whatever can catalyse the fury in society is met with forceful repression, whether coming from the top or the bottom of society. Just days ago, protests erupted north of Cairo after a young man died from torture while in police custody. Thousands came out onto the streets, clashing with police. Very significantly, the masses raised the slogan of the 2010-11 revolution, “the people want the downfall of the regime.”
In another incident that says a great deal about the mood among the masses, to the south of the Egyptian capital late last week two pro-Palestine activists stormed the State Security headquarters with fake guns, taking multiple police hostage. Videos show them demanding that the Rafah border crossing with Gaza be opened and castigating the captives for the arrests of those desperately trying to get aid to the starving Palestinians.
The footage was viewed millions of times before the Telegram channel was shut down. The two men are now missing with the government claiming the story was fabricated as part of a conspiracy by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, there have been mass protests outside Egyptian embassies around the world, including in Iraq, as rage builds towards the Sisi regime.
This popular anger is being felt across the world, and has even forced Trump to change his tone.
At the conference with Starmer at his golf course in Turnberry, he seemed to be trying to play both sides at the same time, on the one hand saying – contrary to Israel’s claims – that there is “real starvation”, while also saying that pressuring Israel into any long-term peace plan would be “rewarding Hamas”.
His hypocrisy will only make things worse. Whatever tough rhetoric governments try to grab onto in an attempt to quell popular anger and disgust, their two-faced imperialist policy only becomes clearer to ordinary people. When actions don’t follow words – when there is a veritable void between the two – their statements will be seen for what they really are; deceit and complicity.
Thousands are drawing these conclusions every day, and support for Palestine has never been higher. In the US, a Gallup poll from this week shows that approval of Israel’s actions in Gaza has reached a record low since the beginning of the war.
In Britain, the Labour party has, in the space of a week, been overtaken in support and membership by Jeremy Corbyn’s new party, launched on a programme of stopping arms sales to Israel.
The events in Gaza will plunge the killers of Westminster and the White House into a deeper crisis still, and millions will draw the conclusion that for the famine and killing in Gaza to end, the imperialists responsible must be brought down.
