15 October 2023
The following short leaflet was first distributed in London at a demonstration on 14 October 2023 against the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza. For more on our perspectives in Israel/Palestine see “Israel-Palestine: Apartheid, Imperialism & Class” (1917 No.44).
Israel’s military assault on Gaza is a deadly intensification of the imprisonment, starvation and murder that has been inflicted on the Palestinian people for generations. In response to the Hamas operation that began on 7 October, the Zionist ruling class has carried out airstrikes against the residents of Gaza, cut the supply of electricity, fuel, goods and water, and is organizing a brutal ground operation to exact an “unprecedented price” from the population.
The apartheid regime run by Tel Aviv is the inevitable result of the Zionist project to establish an ethno-religious state for Jews. Some 75 years ago this led to the violent expulsion of about 750,000 Palestinians and the confiscation of over 90 percent of their land. The current attack on Gaza is a direct continuation of that unfinished campaign of ethnic cleansing.
We stand firmly in solidarity with the Palestinians and Gaza against the Israeli state and the vicious reprisals of the IDF, but this by no means implies support for all of Hamas’ actions within the current operation. Although Palestinian militants have limited options, targeting civilians can only alienate potential allies of the Palestinian cause within the Jewish-Israeli working class and further cement the hold of reactionary Zionism.
While Israel’s slaughter of civilians and its other crimes are far greater, there is a tragic logic to national polarization which can only be transcended through joint Arab/Jewish working-class struggle to smash Zionism from within. This is only possible under the leadership of an internationalist revolutionary party that links the democratic and economic demands of working people and the oppressed with implacable struggle against imperialism, the racist Zionist state and the reactionary Arab regimes to project a bi-national workers’ state within a socialist federation of the region. This may seem a distant goal given the current conflict, but it is the only path forward.