October 17, 2023

U.S., Israel: Stop the genocide!

Bulletin: Oct. 17: Israelis bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, killing over 1,000 people.

An Israeli participant in the Kibbutz Be’eri festival said that many of the people who died were killed by Israeli troops who opened fire and shot at everyone present.

Stop the bombing of Gaza! Pull back all Israeli troops! End the blockade and siege of Gaza and its 2.3 million Palestinian people!

Even before Oct. 7, the Israeli regime’s murders, seizures of territories, illegal settlements and occupation made a response from the Palestinian people and their liberation organizations as inevitable as it was justifiable. By executing what amounted to a prison break and in turn taking prisoners, Palestinian resistance organizations provided a heroic example for people longing for liberation from imperialism around the world.

Instead of opening talks for the possible exchange of captured Israelis for some of the 5,500 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, the Israeli regime launched a vicious bombing of civilian targets in Gaza. In just its first week, this assault killed more than 2,300 people — including at least 1,000 children. The air invasion displaced nearly a million people and was in preparation for a military invasion of Gaza.

It is no exaggeration to characterize the Israeli attack as genocidal. An imminent Israeli land invasion threatens a new, vast “ethnic cleansing.” With the 1948 Nakba, the new Israeli settler state had pushed more than half of the Palestinians out of historic Palestine into Gaza or exile in other lands.

The Zionist regime has been blockading Gaza since 2007, turning the narrow strip into the world’s largest open-air concentration camp holding 2.3 million Palestinians. For Israeli warplanes, the strip is a shooting gallery with Palestinian civilians their human targets.

The governments of the U.S. and the other major NATO powers have already lined up to support the Israeli siege of Gaza because the Zionist state is a military outpost facilitating their own imperialist plunder of West Asia.

It is thus up to all people who want justice to oppose these regimes and demand that the Israeli regime stop the bombing of Gaza, stop any land invasion, and end the blockade and siege of the territory and its people.

Especially those who live inside the imperialist countries must demand that the regimes directing these oppressor states stop their support for the Israeli regime and its army.

Those who raise the banner of justice in Palestine must expect that the imperialist governments and their corporate media will use all available weapons and devices to try to stop our actions of solidarity with Palestine. Already the German government has banned pro-Palestine demonstrations and the French and Spanish regimes’ police have attacked protesters, but protests still continue.

Struggle of the oppressed distorted throughout history

Gaza’s territory is roughly the same size and holds the same population as Chicago. One can hardly imagine what sort of horror the current bombing means for the people who are themselves mostly refugees or their descendants, where there is no functioning economy, where half the population are children, and where the Israeli blockade makes it near impossible to leave. There are good reasons that not only Palestinians but also some Western political leaders have called Gaza the largest open-air prison in the world.

Those in solidarity with Palestine should remember that in every historical battle of oppressed people for freedom or of workers fighting against exploitation, the oppressors resorted to the worst lies and distortions in an attempt to dehumanize the oppressed and exploited people. The goal of these lies is to prepare for the cruelest repression and to break popular solidarity with the struggle of the oppressed. Study the history of the lies slandering revolts of enslaved people, of the Paris Commune, of the Warsaw Ghetto and the 1971 uprising of the prisoners in Attica in New York state.

Considering the imperialist domination of the media, it is no surprise that they have spread the rulers’ lies. There is no reason to believe a word or a picture the corporate media publish about Palestine.

As an oppressed, occupied and imprisoned population, the Palestinian people have every right to strike back in whatever way they choose and, to quote the great Malcolm X, “by any means necessary.”

It is no surprise that U.S. imperialism has promised more weapons to Israel and has ordered aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where they can threaten to rain rockets and bombs on any potential allies of the Palestinians, including Iran. Thus the Israeli escalation of the battle threatens a new, wider war in the region and demands resistance from all people who want peace.

Again, stop the war on Gaza! Long live the struggle of the Palestinian people!