Since the heroic Al-Aqsa Flood took place 21 months ago on Oct. 7, 2023, the Zionist state of Israel — with the military backing of the U.S. — has carried out an unprecedented racist genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza, played out daily in real time on social media. No one — including children — has been spared in this catastrophic war of horrific ethnic cleansing, which has included the mass destruction of all infrastructure — housing, hospitals, schools, electricity, places of worship, water, sewage and much more.
And then there is the slow, excruciating death by forced starvation of the Gazan population.
How Palestine became Israel
No real humanitarian aid, including food, has been allowed into Gaza for months. And when a trickling amount of aid is allowed in, hungry people are used as machine gun targets by the Israeli occupying forces, killing dozens every day under the aegis of the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Some members of the occupying force revealed that they have been ordered to shoot to kill as many hungry Gazans, including children, as possible, according to the Israeli-based July 3 Haaretz publication.
This ongoing phase of genocide since Oct. 7 is enough of a reason to declare that Israel is a terrorist, criminal state. Even the International Criminal Court stated that Israel is guilty of war crimes and that its leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should be arrested as war criminals wherever they may travel.
According to the latest figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, over 57,000 Gazans have been martyred and over 136,000 injured since Oct. 7. (Resistance News Network, July 6)
Israel rooted in racist Zionism
As this author wrote in a previous article on the roots of Zionism: “Theodor Herzl, known as the founder of Zionism, was an imperialist who greatly admired the despicable British colonizer of Africa, Cecil Rhodes. Herzl strived to become a member of the ruling class rather than identifying with poor Jewish people. Herzl was, in essence, a class collaborationist and a vehement racist.
The article continued: “Herzl’s ‘dream’ of a Jewish homeland was elaborated on by Chaim Weizmann and backed by British imperialists, including ‘Christian Zionist’ A.J. Balfour, who wanted a permanent European wedge in the region of Islamic nations. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, signed by British imperialists, declared Palestine a ‘national homeland’ for Jewish people. This was a cover to bring in Zionist settlers to set up an armed state and forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.” (workers.org/2022/04/63580/)
As a result, Israel declared its “independence” on May 14, 1948. The Nakba (or the catastrophe) exploded on April 9, 1948, when hundreds of Palestinians were massacred in the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, by armed Zionist gangs. This heinous crime against humanity forced an estimated 700,000 Palestinians to flee their ancestral lands and go to other countries as refugees.
A year and a month after this massacre, Israel was approved by the United Nations General Assembly as a member state on May 11, 1949.
As we can see today, the Nakba continues for the Palestinian people who still both suffer and resist this fascistic, settler-colonial occupation that could not survive one day if not for the backing from every U.S. administration, Democratic or Republican, since Israel’s founding and which grew enormously after the 1967 and 1973 wars.
Israel more isolated today than ever
The current genocide in Gaza has resulted in Israel becoming the number one global social pariah. Millions of people in the Global South and Global North have mobilized in the streets, workplaces and on college campuses demanding a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” and for the U.S. and other imperialist countries to stop arming Israel’s genocide.
Workers World Party salutes groups like Palestine Action in Britain, who organized clandestine campaigns to disable Israeli weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems. Dock workers from Italy to France to Greece have blocked arms shipments to Israel.
Along with the heroic united Palestinian armed resistance led by Gaza-based Hamas and the Axis of Resistance — most notably Yemen and Iran — this global solidarity with Palestine has resulted in a crumbling, demoralized Israeli economy and society.
Fascist settlers are fleeing Israel in the thousands by air and sea, tens of thousands of Israeli businesses have collapsed, a growing number of soldiers are dying or suffering from PTSD, and $3 billion worth of damage was caused by Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Tel Aviv last month.
Does Israel have the right to exist?
Outside of the United States, if one attends a mass concert or even a sports event like soccer, huge Palestinian flags can be seen waving in the air, as young fans chant, “Free Palestine.” Many performers and athletes have expressed their solidarity with Palestine.
But this solidarity was taken to a whole new level when a popular duo of color, Bob Vylan, began a chant on stage of “Death, death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts held in Somerset, England on June 28. IDF refers to the Israel Defense Forces, often referred to as the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF). Concert promoters are now threatening to ban the duo from performing in other areas, falsely accusing them of being antisemitic.
Bob Vylan stated: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine.” (Rolling Stone, July 1) The group gained an additional 300,000 followers on Spotify since their Glastonbury performance as of July 7.
Based on all that has unfolded before and since Oct. 7, who can rationally dispute this duo’s demand? Every Israeli government has instituted an apartheid-like policy of using every inhumane tactic of massacres, violent displacement, indiscriminate detentions, torture and sheer humiliation against the Palestinian people based on a white supremacist, settler-colonial, pro-imperialist ideology. The main “defense” Israel has wielded since its founding is a false claim of being a victim of “antisemitism.”
Israel has also served as an imperialist garrison state that has consistently carried out military aggression in neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Egypt in efforts to expand its illegal settlements as well as safeguarding Western corporate oil and gas profits.
There is little to no separation from Israel being an illegal, terrorist machine with no regard for human life and from being a settler-colonial regime that should be totally dismantled. Therefore, Workers World Party says: Make Israel Palestine again.