Palestine

September 5, 2024

Reading Rosa Luxemburg in an Era of Barbarism

At the outset of the unprecedented carnage and destruction of the first World War, Rosa Luxemburg, the German-Polish revolutionary leader and thinker wrote:

Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.’ … Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. … Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war.

June 13, 2024

by Wolly V

The Movement of College Encampments for Palestine: an introductory analysis

The mass mobilization of pro-Palestine students over the last couple months has truly been a sight to see. Spreading like wildfire in the states & eventually spanning the globe, this wave of student encampments has called Power out by its rightful name: genocide enabler.
Student-activists have been occupying their schools and demanding the divestment of these various foundations from the settler-colonial project of Israel. A handful of other demands have been put forth as well, responding to each locale’s varying needs. Students at our UW-Madison also demanded a cop-free campus, for example.
Of course, any earnest challenging of the state & its interests in the military industrial complex will be met with a vicious response. Brute force

June 7, 2024

by Puntorojo Editorial Collective

People’s Conference Unites in Struggle for a Free Palestine

The People’s Conference for Palestine was held from May 24th-26th in Detroit, Michigan, home to one of the largest Arab communities in the country. Over 3,400 activists from around the world attended the conference, including a large representation of multi-generational Palestinians from the diaspora. The Steering committee of 15 different organizations, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, Students for Justice in Palestine, The People’s Forum and The ANSWER Coalition among others, described the goal of the conference as being “to serve as a space to assess, strategize and prepare for what is required for us in the next phase of the struggle”. And they achieved these goals.

April 30, 2024

by Izzy Tellin

We Need Mass Organizing to Defeat State Violence

Marx, Lenin, and other theorists of socialism are teaching me how the state and capitalism function, which in turn has helped me to understand imperialism, colonialism, oppression, and my own lived experiences.
Additionally, Marxist history has taught me the power of the working class. When discussing and deciding democratically with clear intention and action, the outcomes have better results—but of course not without repression from the state. The immense and powerful state violence is an essential topic for us to discuss. How do we protect ourselves? How do we hold ground? How do we support, and gain support in numbers?

April 21, 2024

by Puntorojo Editorial Collective

Zionism is Now The Highest Stage of Imperialism

In 1922 the League of Nations issued its Mandate for Palestine which gave the British formal ruling power of the country. The Mandate was part of the carving up of the Middle East territories by western capitalist states after World War I in the so-called Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Mandate was issued at a time when about 78 percent of the indigenous population was Arab or Muslim, and about 9 percent Jewish.
The Mandate also made good on the “Balfour Declaration” of 1917. Lord Balfour, an antisemitic British imperialist, promised the Jewish Zionist movement that Britain would support a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. The Middle East was strategically chosen to further Britain’s dominance in the oil-rich region. As scholar Rashid Khalidi notes, the League of Nations Mandate was an “extraordinary gift to the Zionist movement…the clear implication…is that only one people in Palestine is to be recognized with national rights: the Jewish people.”
These two events effectively made the Jewish Zionist movement a junior partner of Western imperialism. Zionist colonization of historic Palestine was given the full blessing of western capitalist ruling classes who sought to push Jews out on their own nations, while creating a foothold of western power and influence in the Middle East.

April 16, 2024

by Puntorojo Editorial Collective

DEFEND THE PEOPLE OF IRAN! FIGHT FOR PALESTINIAN LIBERATION!

The Marxist theory of imperialism argues that capitalist states necessarily seek to conquer and expropriate people, territories, states and nations outside of their own. From that premise, Marxists defend the right of self-defense and self-determination for all countries under imperialist attack. Thus, “Defend Iran” must now be the rallying cry of Marxists everywhere.

Israel and the United States are the imperial aggressors in a war against the people of Iran. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that saw the popular overthrow of the US-installed and backed Pahlavi monarchy of “Shah of Iran” Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the US has been waging undeclared war against the state and people of Iran. After the attacks of 9-11-2001, then President George W. Bush declared a new era of “generational” imperial warfare starting with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–deeming the three nations the “Axis of Evil”.

March 1, 2024

by Lorena Zayas

De Oaxaca a Palestina, el mismo dolor nos hermana

Más de 500 años de conquista y colonización han pasado sobre estas tierras sureñas, desde que los gachupines de ayer y hoy iniciaron una guerra de exterminio contra los pueblos originarios. Desde la era de las encomiendas, los tributos, el despojo y el exterminio, en estás tierras sureñas, los colonizadores de ayer y hoy, han encontrado una férrea resistencia. El día de hoy, nos solidarizamos, como magisterio democrático con la lucha del heroico pueblo palestino, que ha resistido desde hace más de 74 años, la guerra de exterminio del Estado nazi de Israel. Mientras esto ocurre, el presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, se ha negado públicamente a romper relaciones con un Estado fascista y genocida, a pesar de que la barbarie ha cobrado más de 14 mil vidas.

February 9, 2024

by Puntorojo Editorial Collective

Towards a New Year’s Revolution: Fighting for Our Lives in 2024

Today, we are living in an historic moment. All over the world, and here in the United States, people are rejecting their government’s support for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Millions in the Arab world, in the Global South, and in the West have taken to the streets to say No More War/End the Israeli Occupation/Free Palestine. But the leaders are not listening to the majority voices. When 60% of Americans are calling for a ceasefire and only a dismal few representatives have come forward to actually introduce and support legislation calling for a ceasefire, the system is beyond broken. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is even accusing people who support Palestinians of being agents for Russia, and President Genocide Joe Biden has proudly declared himself a Zionist while sending billions of dollars to Israel to kill more Palestinians. It is time for us, the people, to refuse once and for all, to be the silenced majority.

January 21, 2024

by Atlee McFellin

No Justice in Imperialist Courts

The ICJ, like the International Criminal Court (ICC), was born as a response to the Nazi Holocaust in an attempt to stop it from ever happening again. This doesn’t mean international law is going to come to anyone’s rescue, but Netanyahu’s genocidal hypocrisy becomes especially apparent when one compares him to the late Ben Ferencz.

Ferencz, who was also Jewish, had been the last living Nuremberg Trial prosecutor until his death in April 2023 at the age of 103. Ferencz was among those who led the charge for the ICJ and was responsible for the creation of the ICC too, believing it to be necessary in the fight for global justice. Unfortunately, even in the scores of obituaries after his death, only one mentioned his opposition to the crimes against humanity committed by the USA.

In a 2019 documentary called “Prosecuting Evil,” Ferencz pointed out that he and Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara co-authored an article in the New York Times mid-December 2000 urging that then President Bill Clinton have the United States join the ICC. McNamara knew full well that in the US becoming a signatory, he could be tried for crimes against humanity because of his role in the US anti-communist war in Vietnam. Clinton signed on, but then George W. Bush quickly withdrew in 2001.

January 18, 2024

by Puntorojo Editorial Collective

Israel is Guilty of Genocide but the Law Won’t Save Us

South Africa’s presentation of a case for genocide against the state of Israel before the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands last week shed a crucial spotlight on the horrific conditions Palestinians continue to endure. Since Israel began its war against Gaza in October, more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 50,000 injured, and 1.8 million people have been displaced from their homes. More than 9,000 Palestinian children have been killed. Gaza is on the brink of famine. Disease in Gaza runs rampant.