Stop the imperialist war in the Middle East! Protest against the imperialist aggression of Israel!

The Central Committee of the MLPD published a new statement today, 2 November 2023: “Stop the imperialist war in the Middle East! Protest against the imperialist aggression of Israel! Solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle! For a new, revolutionary Intifada! No to fascist forces like ‘Islamic Jihad’ or Hamas! For international working-class unity and genuine socialism!”

1. With the start of the ground offensive by Israel, the Gaza war reaches a new stage. Gaza, with its more than 2.2 million inhabitants, has been almost completely sealed off for three weeks, even from the supply of water, energy and medicine. This is a violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime! 8,500 people, two-thirds of them children and women, died in the hail of Israeli bombs and shells. 1.5 million people have been forced to flee. Even refugee camps and hospitals are targets of Israeli bombardment. Israel’s imperialist aggression is increasingly developing into genocide against innocent civilians. The military structures of the fascist Hamas, which is mainly responsible for the inhuman massacre of 1,400 Israelis on 7 October, still seem largely intact. An immediate ceasefire in Gaza is the order of the day!

2. Whereas at the UN General Assembly 120 states demanded a “humanitarian truce”, this is strictly rejected by the German government and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. They almost hysterically denigrate any kind of criticism of the reactionary Israeli Netanyahu government as anti-Semitic, whether it comes from UN Secretary-General Guterres or environmental activist Greta Thunberg. However, the manipulation of public opinion is less effective than in the Ukraine war. The majority of Germans reject the ground offensive. In contrast, all bourgeois parties, including the CDU and the proto-fascist AfD, affirm their “unconditional solidarity” with imperialist Israel. The highest priority of the “value-based foreign policy” of the coalition government is not its highly-invoked humanitarianism, but the expansion of the role of the Western imperialists in the Middle East. The German government constantly refers to Germany’s special obligation in view of the Holocaust. Of course it exists, and the MLPD stands up for Israel’s right to exist and rejects all anti-Semitism. However, the most important lesson from the Holocaust is to fight every kind of fascism, reaction and genocide, regardless of whether it is directed against Jews, Palestinians or Kurds. In contrast, War Minister Pistorius is calling for Germany to be made “fit for war”, i.e. imperialist war preparations and militarization are to be expanded. A clear NO to the German government’s support of Israel’s imperialist aggression! The resignation of Foreign Minister Baerbock is overdue!

3. The MLPD protests against the fact that the German federal government, as counterpart to its imperialist foreign policy, criminalizes and suppresses solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. Solidarity actions with the Palestinian liberation struggle are banned in many places. On 2 November, the Palestinian prisoner aid organization Samidoun was banned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. In contrast, merely a ban on activities was imposed on the fascist Hamas. The ban on Samidoun is motivated by anticommunism and not a contribution to the fight against fascism. This is also shown by the fact that the smear campaign of ultra-reactionaries from the AfD to the Springer propaganda sheet Welt focuses on the Marxist-Leninist character and the earlier cooperation between MLPD and Samidoun or friends of the PFLP. In Halle, Berlin and Magdeburg, rallies were broken up by the police, explicitly because of the MLPD’s contributions. The Magdeburg police even dare to defame and ban the flyer with the MLPD statement of 10 October 2023 – “Conflagration in the Middle East? Protest Israel’s imperialist aggression! Solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle! Not an inch to the fascist Hamas!” – as “incitement of the people”. International solidarity is the exact opposite of fascist incitement of the people! This policy is an expression of the intensified rightward development of the federal government and the bourgeois parties. The MLPD stands up for the preservation and extension of democratic rights and liberties on an anti-fascist basis. Don’t give anticommunism, fascism, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism a chance!

4. This has long ceased to be “only” a Gaza war. Israel is not only bombing Gaza, but also targets in Syria and Lebanon. The USA dispatches aircraft and guided missile carriers to the region. The US already flew a first air strike on targets in Syria. Through its fascist Hezbollah militia, new-imperialist Iran is having Israel shelled from Lebanon. From Yemen first drone attacks were flown against Israel by pro-Iranian forces. The beginning Middle East war is developing into a conflagration that is dangerously contributing to the acute danger of a Third World War. Stop the imperialist war in the Middle East!

5. In the current war, above all regional and global inter-imperialist contradictions are being fought out on the backs of the masses and nature.
   What is supposed to appear as a war against Hamas on the part of Israel pursues in reality the goal of a “New Middle East” (Netanyahu’s own words). The aim is that, among others, the “Gulf states join an American-Israeli camp.” (FAZ, 31 Oct. 2023) Most of the new-imperialist countries in the region such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and even more so Iran, had developed ever closer relations with social-imperialist China in recent years and partly with new-imperialist Russia, and the dominating influence of the USA had declined considerably.
   To counter this, the US, under the fascist President Trump, and based on the so-called Abraham Agreement of autumn 2020, tried, and partially succeeded, to pull back new-imperialist Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia more closely to its side. The agreement stands for reactionary “relations between Israel and its neighboring states without demanding the establishment of a Palestinian state and withdrawal from the occupied territories.” (elnet-deutschland) Western-imperialist-oriented forces of the bourgeois PLO leadership and the corrupt autonomy authority of the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas were also to be involved. This is clearly directed against the legitimate Palestinian liberation struggle.
   In order to sabotage this, the new-imperialist fascist Iran, which is allied to China, is deliberately using dependent terrorist organizations such as Hamas, the “Islamic Jihad” or Hezbollah. Hamas wanted to thwart the Abraham plans with its attacks and make open collaboration between various Arab countries with Israel and the USA impossible.
   As we know, war is the continuation of politics by other means. The battle for the imperialist reorganization of the Middle East is increasingly being fought militarily. The struggle against the beginning Middle East war is therefore a cause of all peace-loving people in the world and must be firmly directed against all imperialists.

6. The fascist Hamas in Islamist guise is as much on the defensive as the bourgeois PLO leadership and the Israeli government. Among Palestinians, criticism and discontent with Hamas grew. In a recent survey, 67% of the surveyed Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza stated that they do not trust or hardly trust Hamas. (Foreign Affairs, 25 Oct. 2023) Hamas is using the war to seemingly put itself at the lead of the Palestinian people and suppress any criticism in Gaza. In Israel, a largely antifascist and democratic popular movement has fought against the Netanyahu government's fascist tendency for months. Now martial law is in effect in Israel. But even that cannot stop the protests, and a majority of the interviewees are against the current ground offensive (49% against it, 29% for it; ntv, 27 Oct. 2023).
   It is often presented in the bourgeois media as if there were only two alternatives: either to side with Israel or to side with the fascist Hamas. These are reactionary sham alternatives. Justified criticism of imperialist Israel is not anti-Semitism, and justified criticism of Hamas is not Islamophobia. There is a positive alternative: solidarity with the progressive Palestinian liberation struggle, but also with democratic and anti-imperialist forces in Israel and, above all, international working-class unity and the prospect of the international socialist revolution.

7. Millions of people worldwide are protesting the war on Gaza and out of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement. In the main, this is a progressive to anti-imperialist mass movement. In Germany, tens of thousands already participated in the growing protests. At the same time, vigilance is required, because reactionary and fascist forces also want to take advantage of the situation. Turkey’s fascist president Erdogan, for example, staged himself at a state-led rally on 28 October as a champion of freedom rights, while he brutally oppresses his people and especially the Kurds and wants to expand Turkey’s sphere of influence and power in the Middle East. The MLPD rejects this, as well as actions by the German government in support of Israel’s invasion, or actions in support of Hamas.

8. From the very beginning, the MLPD condemned the fascist massacre by Hamas and “Islamic Jihad” on 7 October. The murder of civilians has nothing to do with liberation struggle. Palestinian organizations including secular, progressive and revolutionary organizations such as the PFLP and the DFLP took part in the military action on 7 October. Military objects and Israeli occupation forces were also attacked. Before 7 October there were worker protests against work bans imposed by the Israeli government. The intensified Zionist policies in Gaza and the West Bank enraged the Palestinian masses more and more. A general societal crisis developed in the occupied territories in Palestine. 58% of Palestinians declared in recent surveys that an armed struggle for national and social liberation must be waged. (mena-watch, 25 Mar. 2023) Hamas knew how to steer this in its direction. To do so it hypocritically took up the masses’ justified criticism of the PLO leadership. (mena-watch, 25 Mar. 2023) Especially in such a situation, cooperation with fascist forces fundamentally opposes the interests of the working class and proletarian internationalism. The fact that Hamas is at least militant in its resistance is often used to justify cooperation with that organization. However, “militancy” is not an end in itself. We saw in Iran after the fall of the Shah at the end of the 1970s what happens when you ally yourself with fascist Islamists in the struggle for national liberation. Tens of thousands of revolutionaries were subsequently killed or thrown into prison, and a fascist dictatorship still rules there today. Then as now, revisionist forces play an ugly role in this, and in Germany, too, they are increasingly opening up to cross-front politics. The unity of the Palestinian people needs an anti-imperialist basis, which can only prevail in the struggle against the fascist ideology of a “national community”. Cooperation with fascists is not an alternative for the masses in Palestine. A revolutionary new Intifada, also as an armed people’s uprising, is necessary! The Palestinian people have every right in the world to fight with arms against the occupation and for their liberation. This is the generally held view in relation to Ukraine and is legitimate under the international law of war.

9. The prospect for the Palestinian people, but also for the working population and the working class of Israel, lies in genuine socialism. In genuine socialism based on the proletarian mode of thinking, national reservations and disagreements will also be overcome. The spirit of friendship among peoples and international solidarity will overcome nationalist influences. A socialist Palestine in which Israelis and Palestinians live together as equals is the strategic goal of the liberation struggle there. A democratic two-state solution based on the UN partition plan of 1947, with the evacuation of the occupied territories by Israel and the withdrawal of the settler-occupiers, can be an intermediate stage if it is fought for with a socialist perspective. The forging of working-class unity between Israeli and Palestinian workers has a key role to play here. It is necessary to make this struggle a part of the preparation of the international socialist revolution against imperialism, which is willfully putting the existence of humankind at risk with the threat of world war and the global environmental catastrophe that has begun.

10. Organize! Organize to jointly develop solidarity with the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people. Organize to fight here in Germany for work, peace, against rightward development and environmental destruction, for genuine socialism. Strengthen non-party self-run organizations of the masses, the Internationalist Alliance, the MLPD and the Youth League Rebell.

Long live the international unity of the exploited and oppressed with the International United Front against Fascism, War and Environmental Destruction (“United Front”) and the revolutionary world organization ICOR!