Palestine Will Be Free!
Socialists have always viewed the creation of the state of Israel as a project of Western colonizing countries. The capitalist states of Europe and the United States that supported the creation of Israel did so for two reasons: to establish a political foothold in a region rich with oil they wanted access to build their capitalist machinery, and to create a homeland for Jews they did not really want in their own countries to begin with. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, it has served as a watchdog for the United States.
It was Palestinians who paid the price for this colonizing project and imperial arrangement. Their indigenous homeland was taken from them. They were denied a state. They were forced to live under a United Nations partition they did not support. Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced during the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation; many thousands more were murdered.
Since the Nakba of 1948, western countries have continued to back the state of Israel and disenfranchise Palestinians in order to protect their economic and military interests. Zionism as a political movement of Jewish racial supremacy has only grown stronger. Today, the Netanyahu government that calls for settlement expansion, and the Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals,” do so in the name of racial supremacy and economic profit for the Jewish majority of Israel.
The current Palestinian resistance is a strike and a major blow against these existing circumstances. Operation Al Aqsa Flood has successfully broken through historic barriers meant to isolate Palestinians trapped in Gaza from their homeland. It is a guerilla war aimed to reclaim land and villages stolen and plundered by Israel. Its primary targets are mainly Israeli institutions that have historically oppressed Palestinians: police stations, Israeli Defense Force soldiers and outposts, and military installations. As leaders of Hamas have said of the operation, it is meant to show the world that the 75-year colonization and occupation of Palestine must be held “accountable.”
The Palestinian guerilla operation threatens the western capitalist and colonial world order that helped to create Israel in the first place. That is the reason virtually all of the Europeans states, the United States, and Canada, for example, have described Hamas as “terrorists” and promised to increase military aid to Israel. Already, the U.S. gives more aid to Israel—3 billion per year—than to any other country. Since 1946, the US has given $158 billion in military aid alone, to build up the Zionist state as a military instrument to impose US-led imperial dominance in the Middle East.
This aid has enabled the massive encroachment and expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestine meant to assure that Palestinians can never return to their homeland. It pays for the ongoing murder of hundreds of Palestinians who attempt to resist the Occupation. It enables construction of the massive Apartheid Wall that cuts across historic Palestine and separates Palestinians from each other, from their land, from their water. It has funded the enclosure of Gaza into the world’s largest prison camp.
The greatest hope for socialists and radicals who support Palestinians is that the current Palestinian uprising will spread across the region. Possible emancipation for Palestinians from occupation lies in the strength of massive numbers of the Arab working-class in countries like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia. The Arab Spring of 2011-2012 saw a gigantic upturn in support for Palestinians by many of these people. It is one reason that the Arab revolutions were so violently repressed by US and Israeli-backed autocratic and repressive regimes. Only the Arab working-class of the region has the cumulative power to strike against both Israel and its supporting regimes like the United States.
Such an uprising would expose the sheer hypocrisy of those states who support Ukrainian self-determination against the Russian occupation, but not Palestinian self-determination against that of Israel. This double-standard is the legacy of colonialism, racism, and Islamophobia. Even as it seeks to destroy all of Hamas, Israel has made special targets of Palestinians mosques, also knowing full well that these sites are used as sanctuaries during Israeli bombings. Western media have parroted Israel’s narrative that the Hamas-led resistance is equivalent to an Israeli “9/11.” This formulation makes clear the link between Israel and the U.S. as long-time political allies in settler-colonial violence.
Those who support Palestinians should also support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The BDS movement seeks to return stolen Arab lands, sanction Israel for its illegal occupation, and isolate Israeli apartheid in the world community:
Socialists everywhere stand with Palestinians and reject Zionism and western capitalist colonialism. Socialists demand equal democratic rights for Palestinians and an end to the illegal Occupation of Palestine. Socialists support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel, the return of stolen Palestinian lands, and the recognition of the right of self-determination for Palestinians—including the right of self-defense.
From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free.
Further Recommended Reading:
https://electronicintifada.net/content/just-another-battle-or-palestinian-war-liberation/38661
https://gilbert-achcar.net/on-hamas-october-offensive
