Conflagration in the Middle East?

In Israel/Palestine the danger of world war is flaring up at yet another point. The fascist Hamas overran the border fence with Israel, invaded towns, and killed 900 people, including many civilians, some of whom were brutally massacred. Imperialist Israel immediately issued a declaration of war, called up 300,000 civilians for military service, and cut off access to water, electricity, and food for the people of Gaza. Its bombs have claimed at least 700 lives. A bloody ground war threatens. The USA, as the world’s main warmonger, sent an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean to support Israeli military strikes.

For decades, the Zionist state of Israel has pursued a policy of oppression, occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people. Netanyahu’s plans for a “long and difficult war” have long been prepared by the ultra-right government, in which fascists are involved. The main responsibility for the situation lies with imperialist Israel.

The MLPD defends Israel’s right to exist and resolutely opposes anti-Semitism. It is equally resolute in opposing Israel’s aggression. Recently, Benjamin Netanyahu announced a new map of the Middle East at the UN. In the same breath, Israel closed the Erez border crossing and prevented thousands of Palestinian workers with work permits from taking up their work. For decades, the Zionists have been seizing ever larger areas of Palestinian land with a cruel regime of occupation. In Gaza, 2 million people eke out a miserable existence in cramped quarters. In 2022 alone, 190 Palestinians, including 33 children, were killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

The MLPD already took a clear position in 2011: “Violating international law, the Israeli regime occupies the largest part of Palestine and harasses, expropriates, displaces and kills its people. … Reactionary Zionists justify the politics of the State of Israel with the racist ideology that the Jews are ‘God’s chosen people.’ … It is an internationalist, anti-imperialist obligation of the revolutionary working-class movement to oppose the aggression of the Israeli state and the Zionist terror.” (Dawn of the International Socialist Revolution, pp. 234f.)

The Islamist-fascist Hamas cannot be part of the Palestinian people’s national and social struggle for freedom. Hamas harms it and provides a pretext for dragging the just struggle for freedom of the Palestinians into the dirt. The MLPD rejects any kind of “cross-front” as a fascist tactic of apparent reconciliation of Right and Left. The Hamas spokesman boasts on the BBC about direct support from Iran. The anti-Semitism of Hamas and Hezbollah aims at an Islamic fascist state like Iran. This cannot be a prospect for the Palestinian people in their quest for freedom!

The German government calls for uncompromising support of Israel. Not a word of criticism of state terror and reaction! The EU and Germany threaten to cancel development aid to Palestinian organizations. The right of the Palestinian people to self-defense is defamed. Schuster from the Central Council of Jews already calls for “prohibiting” activities of all organizations in Germany with connection to Palestinian liberation struggle. The MLPD protests against this in the strongest terms!

The MLPD also stands in solidarity with the anti-fascist and democratic protests of hundreds of thousands of Israeli people who have been taking to the streets against the Netanyahu government for months. Rightly so! Now Netanyahu wants to suppress these protests, too, by means of martial law and an emergency government.

The Ukraine war ushered in an open crisis of the imperialist world system. The aggressive rivalry between new imperialist and old imperialist countries extends to more and more regions. In this conflict, new-imperialist Iran acts aggressively. Israel is equally imperialist and an important bridgehead in the Middle East for the superpower USA. For their world power aspirations, these warmongers walk over dead bodies. This hotbed of war can quickly develop into a conflagration and involve many countries in the Middle East, including states such as Turkey, Russia, China, the EU, or the USA. This contributes to the acute danger of a Third World War!

The racist AfD, of all people, now speaks out against supposed “leftist anti-Semites”. There is no “left anti-Semitism”, just as there is no left racism! Since Karl Marx and August Bebel all socialists have spoken out clearly against anti-Semitism. Whoever is anti-Semitic is not leftist, but reactionary!

The challenge for the Palestinian liberation struggle and the anti-fascist, democratic mass movement in Israel is to develop the common struggle. For this, the working class and the masses on both sides must overcome reservations and influences of petty-bourgeois nationalism. The MLPD sees the prospect for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples in a common democratic state in which equality, mutual respect and trust without discrimination prevail. Ultimately, this can only be a socialist state. A transitional stage could consist in a two-state solution, which can also only be won in the struggle against imperialism, racism, anti-Semitism, Zionism, and anticommunism.

The Palestinian liberation struggle has its strongest allies in the international working class and the masses of all countries, in the international revolutionary movement, in proletarian internationalism. But those who have the wrong friends quickly lose the right ones. The revolutionary world organization ICOR calls again worldwide for a movement of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle on an anti-fascist basis!