Between 7 October 2023 and 15 August 2024, the zionist murder squads – the Israeli armed forces (IDF) – had slaughtered (at the lowest estimate) 40,634 Palestinians, of whom 40,005 were in Gaza. Of those victims, 11,445 (30 percent) were women and 16,251 were children. Ninety-two thousand have been injured, some of them very badly. Ten thousand more lie under the rubble, presumed dead (4,900 of them women and children).
The world-leading and highly prestigious medical journal, the Lancet, applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths for every direct death, has reported that it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000, or even more, deaths could be attributable so far to the conflict in Gaza. This amounts to over eight percent of Gaza’s population, which stood at 2.3 million before the present phase of Israel’s genocide began.
For most of the conflict, women and children have accounted for 70 percent of the deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40 percent. Two thousand babies have been killed, and 1.9 million people have been displaced. At least 45 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons, and probably many more.
Torture, abuse and rape are common occurrences in the regime’s dungeons and torture chambers. The decadence of the IDF (supposedly the “most moral army” in the world!), and of the zionist establishment, may be gauged from the recent case of a male Palestinian prisoner who was gang-raped and taken to hospital with a ruptured bowel, severe injuries to his rectum and lung, and broken ribs. The soldiers’ lawyer claimed they were acting in ‘self-defence’ when they sodomised the bound Palestinian prisoner.
The soldiers responsible were arrested but were freed by an armed mob of settlers while the police and guards stood by. A member of the Israeli parliament (Hanock Milwidsky) publicly defended the principle of raping Palestinian prisoners.
Addressing the US Congress, where this notorious war criminal was given 58 standing ovations during a speech lasting less than an hour, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had the temerity to say that the conflict in Palestine was between civilisation and barbarism. He merely forgot to add that it was he who represented barbarism, while the Palestinian victims of his regime’s crimes stood on the side of civilisation.
He had the audacity, while addressing a gathering of the choicest useful idiots, to characterise a crowd of approximately 100,000 protesting at his presence outside the Capitol building as Iran’s “paid agents” and “useful idiots”. While those sitting in the chamber, applauding this war criminal, were the most immoral creatures on earth, the protesters, including such people as Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate and Colonel Wilkerson, were the ardent lovers of humanity, representing the very best of the American people.
No two-state solution
The most shameful and shameless zionist leaders now openly announce that they have no intention of putting an end to the occupation of Palestine, nor of ceasing to steal the remaining bits of land from the Palestinians and ethnically cleansing that land of its lawful Palestinian owners.
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank, stated recently: “We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground. This is my life’s mission, and I will continue it as much as I can.”
On the same day, the Israeli government approved municipal boundaries for a new settlement in the West Bank. The intended area of this settlement has formerly been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. The plan to build there is a wholesale attack on an area “renowned for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity”, said Unesco, to which Israel is a signatory.
The Israeli prime minister himself has openly stated that there will be no two-state solution. All this took place within sight and hearing distance of the leaders of the leading imperialist countries, from ‘Genocide Joe Biden’ to Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron – while they continue to proclaim ad nauseam the mantra of a two-state solution, while actually facilitating and participating in the Gaza genocide by supplying weapons, giving financial aid and diplomatic protection to the criminal Israeli regime, and ignoring the fascistic terror launched by Israel against the people of Gaza, without any sense of human decency, all while characterising Palestinian legitimate resistance as ‘terroristic’.
They look the other way, refusing to see Israeli torture chambers, like the Sde Teiman centre of torture, rape and sexual assault.
Israel is losing the war
After nearly a year of Israeli slaughter of the Palestinian people, it is clear that Israel has lost the war.
It has failed to achieve victory over the resistance, which is very much alive and putting up a fierce struggle against the occupation.
Israel has failed in achieving its publicly declared objects of defeating the resistance and freeing Israeli hostages detained in Gaza by the resistance, as well as its undeclared objective of ethnically cleansing the territory of Palestine. Even the IDF has stated openly that it cannot defeat Hamas (a euphemism for the resistance which is used by Israel, its imperialist backers and the thoroughly corrupt imperialist media).
The Israeli economy is in a shambles, with investment and tourism drying up, hundreds of thousands of Israelis with dual nationality leaving the country, and the army exhausted and demoralised and unable to fight, since it is a cowardly force capable of murdering women and children from a safe distance rather than engaging in a fight with the resistance. Israel was forced to evacuate over 100,000 of its citizens from its southern border because of Gazan resistance, and from its northern border with Lebanon on account of its continuing fight with Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement.
Its evacuees cannot go to their houses or businesses, living in accommodation away from the border, in hostels, resulting in a heavy burden on the Israeli treasury.
As was made clear by the events of 14 April, Israel is entirely dependent for its defence on US armed might. Finally, it has become a pariah state, connected by the masses, including those in imperialist countries, with the genocide of innocents and with a lack of all human decency, looked upon as Nazi Germany was during the 1930s and 1940s. No longer is Israel able to weaponise the holocaust, since people are seeing it committing crimes against Palestinians of the kind that were perpetrated by the Nazis against jews and communists, among others.
As the war against the Palestinian people has gone badly wrong, this has opened wide fissures in the Israeli power structures and society at large – between the IDF and the government; between the religious zealots and those with a slightly secular outlook; between the judiciary and the executive. Each side of the divide is digging deeper.
One thing, however, is certain: it is not Benjamin Netanyahu that is the problem but zionism. Israeli society in its overwhelming majority has been converted to this poisonous, racist, supremacist and colonialist ideology, which is now driving it to self-destruction.
Widening the conflict
Not able to win against the Palestinian resistance, the policy of the Israeli government is to widen the war by attacking Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, in the desperate hope of drawing the USA to intervene militarily on its side, for no way otherwise could it win against the combined forces of these countries. Doubtless such a war would inflict tremendous devastation on its opponents, but they will survive such a war while Israel would not. So this gambler’s last throw of the dice will not prove helpful to zionism.
That was the motivation behind Israel’s murder of Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander struck by an Israeli air strike in Beirut. It was exactly the same motivation behind the murder a day later of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh by an Israeli missile. This was a most provocative act by Israel, as Mr Haniyeh was in Tehran as the guest of the Iranian government for the inauguration of the newly-elected president.
Both Hezbollah and Iran have promised retaliation, which has not materialised thus far, but it will at a moment of their own choosing, while the Israelis lie in fear in the meantime.
Just as these lines were being written (on 25 August), news came in that Israel had launched strikes in Lebanon, in response to which Hezbollah fired 300 Katyusha rockets at Israel, in the biggest exchange of fire between the two sides since they fought a 34-day war in 2006, which did not turn out well for Israel. Now Hezbollah is far more powerful in terms of hardened fighters, as well as weaponry.
Not unexpectedly, the imperialist powers have urged the Axis of Resistance to exercise restraint, while sending ships and fighter aircraft to the region to assist Israel’s war against the peoples of the area. We shall have to wait and see how this dangerous situation unfolds.
Israel murdered Fouad Shirkr on 30 July. Since then, Hezbollah drones have hovered over Haifa, slipping past Israeli defences and mapping out targets in a simmering conflict that is on the edge of all-out war. Israel’s largest port, the navy’s brand new INS Komemiyut vessel, the Iron Dome batteries and even individual offices of military commanders have been charted. The twin murders in Beirut and Tehran threaten to shatter the delicate balance. The USA has deployed warships, aircraft and other military assets to the area in readiness to support Israel’s war.
Between October and mid-July, Hezbollah deployed only a fraction of its arsenal, launching some 6,700 rockets and 340 drones at northern Israel, igniting some 710 fires, burning about 105 square kilometres of land in areas stretching from the Galilee to the Golan Heights. Military bases in the region have been heavily targeted.
The Israeli settlement of Kiryet Shmona, a bustling small town (established on the site of razed Palestinian village al-Khalisa in 1949) had a population of 24,000 before the war, but has now become a ghost town. Its traffic lights blink permanently pink; almost all its businesses have closed down; its roads to the border are blocked by checkpoints, and its population has been reduced to 2,000-3,000 people.
Hezbollah fighters have fired more than 700 rockets at the town, using weapons they have never used before in previous bouts of fighting, such as drones, falaq rockets and anti-tank guided missiles. They have scored direct hits on 66 buildings, while 1,100 have suffered lesser damage including from shrapnel impact.
Hezbollah’s rockets have created fear and terror among Israelis. Thirty percent of start-up businesses in eastern Galilee have closed since 8 October. The health, both physical and mental, of the Israelis has likewise deteriorated, and they have been deprived of the joy of life – a small taste of the condition Israel routinely imposes on the Palestinians.
People in imperialist countries stand up against genocide
Israel could never carry out the genocide against the Palestinian people without the active assistance of imperialism, especially US imperialism. Since 7 October, Israel has dropped 70,000 US-made bombs on Gaza.
According to the Jewish Voice for Peace: “With the USA as its collaborator, the Israeli military is carrying out the goal of zionism, the complete and total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land,” wrote Emma West Rasmus, a US justice department employee.
Considering the imperialist propaganda, it is amazing that there are people who are prepared to risk their careers and resign from their lucrative and influential posts in protest against their government’s complicity in the genocide. Emma West Rasmus wrote an extremely powerful op-ed criticising the Biden administration over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
She went on to say: “I used to see myself as part of the future of the Democratic party, but I just got back from Palestine, and I will now work to ensure it never wins again.” (I’m a life-long Democrat, but Biden lost my vote because of Gaza, The Hill, 8 March 2024)
British diplomat Mark Smith resigned from the foreign office over Britain’s continued arms sales to Israel for use in Gaza, which, he said, have no justification:
“It is with great sadness that I resign after a long career in the diplomatic service,” he wrote. “However, I can no longer carry out my duties in the knowledge that this department [the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office] may be complicit in war crimes.
“Each day we witness clear and unquestionable examples of war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza perpetrated by the state of Israel.”
Mr Smith went on to highlight how “senior members of the Israeli government and military have expressed open genocidal intent, and Israeli soldiers take videos, loot property and openly admit to rape and torture”.
Imperialist governments and their flunkeys are totally decadent and lacking in human decency. British-Australian pianist Jason Gillham premiered a five-minute piece called Witness, which he performed after a brief comment on Israel’s murder of journalists in Gaza, which he referred to as a “war crime”. After that, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra cancelled Gillham’s upcoming performance. Following huge protests from the staff and the public, the orchestra admitted its error, saying it was working to programme a new concert with Mr Gillham shortly.
Stella Maris, rector of St Andrews university, was removed from her position after she called for a ceasefire in Gaza in an email to all students last November: “It is clear that I have been removed from the university court because I called for a ceasefire.”
Imperialist military and diplomatic support for Israel
The USA, Britain and France all vetoed Russia’s resolution in the United Nations security council concerning the murder of Palestinian leader Ismail Haniyeh. Iran’s envoy to the UN, Saeed Iravani, while demanding Israel’s accountability, asserted Iran’s inherent right to self-defence in accordance with international law for an action which, he said, could not have happened without authorisation and intelligence support from the USA.
Russia and China strongly condemned Israel’s attacks on the Iranian and Lebanese capitals, as well as the latest sabotage of ceasefire talks and its determination to push the region into an all-out war.
Feda Abdelhady, the deputy permanent representative of the state of Palestine to the UN said: “Israel has been the oppressor, torturer and murderer of the Palestinian people for decades, and is the longstanding destabiliser of the region.”
President Biden, meanwhile, has pledged to support Israel against any retaliation by Iran or Hezbollah. According to a White House statement, Biden spoke with Netanyahu on Thursday 1 August and “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis”, and discussed efforts to support Israel’s defence against such threats as ballistic missiles and drones, to feature new defensive weapons.
As a sick joke, that statement also claimed that “the president stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region”(!)
Disease stalks the people of Gaza
As a result of the Israeli siege of Gaza, and the denial of food, fuel and electricity to its inhabitants, along with the destruction of its water and sewage infrastructure, hygiene conditions in Gaza are dire. The first polio (a disease eradicated over two decades ago) cases in Gaza have surfaced. With sewage water freely flowing in the streets and a desperate lack of personal hygiene products thanks to the Israeli blockade, the conditions are ripe for the re-emergence of the Polio virus (and many others) in the territory.
“It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over Gaza,” UN secretary general Antonio Guterres told reporters, as he called for humanitarian pauses in the war to conduct a polio vaccination campaign.
West Bank terror
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, the settlers continue to terrorise the Palestinians. On 15 August, more than 70 settlers invaded the Palestinian town of Jit, firing bullets and tear gas at residents and setting several homes and cars on fire, CNN reported.
Between 7 October 2023 and 12 August 2024, settlers launched 1,250 attacks against Palestinians, of which 120 led to Palestinian fatalities. On 12 August, settlers assaulted two 15-year-old boys, attacking them with knives, breaking their legs and throwing them into an open area from where they were taken to hospital for treatment.
Between 7 October and 12 August, 1,380 Palestinian structures were demolished or confiscated across the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem, displacing 3,100 Palestinians.
While all this was going on, the so-called ‘Palestinian Authority’ continues its shameful role as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. At the Arab summit in Manama (Bahrain) on 16 May, flanked by imperialist stooge monarchies, the despicable Mahmoud Abbas, ‘president’ of the Palestinian Authority, blamed the resistance for the zionist genocide, saying that “the military operation carried out by Hamas by a unilateral decision on that day, 7 October, provided Israel with more pretexts and justifications to attack the Gaza Strip”.
Among widespread condemnation at Abbas’s unspeakable treachery against the cause of Palestinian liberation, a representative of the Palestinian resistance pointed out: “Since 1948, the zionist enemy has never waited for excuses to commit crimes against our people.”
A similar statement to Abbas’s, which was deleted subsequently, was made by the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, on the spurious ground that support for armed resistance alienates supporters of BDS in Europe and the USA. Following strong protests, this statement was deleted from the campaign’s website.
Growth of the anti-zionist movement
One of the positive aspects of the horrific Israeli genocide and its unreserved support and facilitation by the various imperialist governments is that it has given rise to a powerful anti-zionist and pro-Palestinian movement, especially in the USA and Britain, the most decadent supporter countries of Israeli genocide. Students and young people, including large numbers of young jews, have taken part in the ongoing struggle against the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians by weapons supplied to Israel by the USA and Britain.
A remarkable development, which should bolster the anti-imperialist struggle, has been the rise of mass student protests at universities, demanding the end of genocide in Gaza, an end to arms sales to Israel, an end to investment in Israeli companies, and an end to academic and scientific exchanges.
The first university encampment took place in Columbia University, New York, on 17 April 2024, inspiring similar encampments and protests at 130 college and university campuses in 45 states.
In the self-proclaimed ‘leader of the free world’, and ‘home of free speech’, nearly 3,000 arrests were made; security forces in riot gear, wielding automatic weapons, ranged through the campuses, dragging students, pepper spraying and tasering them, storming university buildings with guns at the ready.
Zionist thugs with metal pipes, acting as police auxiliaries, beat students while the police turned a blind eye.
Under rich zionist pressure, presidents of three prestigious universities – Liz Magill of U-Penn, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Columbia’s Minouche Shafiq – were forced to resign. Dozens of students face expulsion.
Inspired by the US students, the protests spread beyond the USA to Britain and Australia and some European countries. One cannot but have an enduring admiration for the selfless acts of these student protesters, who braved police violence and risked their academic and future careers.
In Britain, hundreds of thousands, on occasions more than half a million, have been regularly taking part in protests against the Gaza genocide and the support given by British imperialism to the ongoing mass slaughter of Palestinian people. Despite the petty-bourgeois leadership, tied hand and foot to the imperialist Labour party, the protests continue to take place, as they have done since the beginning of October, notwithstanding the intimidatory tactics of the ‘peace-loving’ British police, refusing to be cowed down by the use of the Public Order Act or the Terrorism Act.
Palestine spearheads the liberation movements in the middle east
The events in Palestine since 7 October 2023 have shown the powerful ramifications of the Palestinian struggle to shape, not only the politics of the middle east, but also of the USA and other imperialist countries. President Biden has been forced to step down, not merely because of his cognitive challenges, which were there when he was elected four years ago, but also because of his infamy as ‘Genocide Joe’.
There are growing rifts between imperialist countries, and also within each of them, even if they pretend to be united. Their failure to win a quick victory in Palestine and Ukraine, staring defeat in the face both in the middle east and in their proxy war against Russia, they are fast disintegrating.
Confining ourselves to the middle east, we boldly assert that the Palestinian struggle is the spearhead of the Arab people’s democratic and revolutionary movement, which cannot be quashed by imperialism nor by its middle east flunkeys.
Victory to the Palestinian resistance!
Death to zionism!
Death to imperialism!
