Once again Israeli bombs are raining down on the Palestinian people of Gaza, and Israeli tanks and soldiers are killing and maiming people on the ground. With the end of the brief cease fire, the assault is focused on southern Gaza. This is the area that the Israeli government forced the Palestinians living in northern Gaza to go to, supposedly to avoid being bombed.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza serves as a painful reminder of the wars, both past and present, faced by countless peoples all over the world. It is a reflection of a bigger problem the world over – the domination of the world by the major world powers.
In recent decades, many of the wars have been focused on the Middle East. Living in a region with vast oil and gas fields, the peoples of the region have suffered the consequences of imperialist rivalry for as long as oil has greased the wheels of the capitalist economy. Historically, the U.S. and its European allies have imposed, supported and maintained alliances with dictators throughout the Middle East. They have waged and funded wars to ensure that their economies would continue to be able to access and exploit the oil of the region, pushing the populations of these countries into poverty and despair.
To exert its control, the U.S. government has given more than $300 billion in military aid to Israel since the 1950s. Israel serves as imperialism’s policeman in the Middle East. Today we can clearly see what these U.S. dollars are funding – the occupation of Palestine and the subjugation of the Palestinian people. The current massacre in Gaza of more than 15,000 Palestinians and the displacement of at least 1.7 million more, is a horrific display of that oppression.
These military assaults are not the only wars we confront today. We face a war on every living thing on the Earth. There is a daily attack on our environment through the burning of fossil fuels and the total disregard for the environment by those who control the world’s productive forces.
Currently, the same world leaders, whose policies lead to these nonstop wars, are gathered at the United Nations climate conference, COP28 (Conference of the Parties), in Dubai. They will come up with hollow resolutions, pretending to address the climate crisis they are responsible for. What this conference is really about couldn’t be clearer. The current president of COP is the head of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) massive state-owned oil company. To top it off, in a recent interview, he stated that there is no science backing the claim that reducing fossil fuels is necessary to slow the current climate disruption. In addition, a leaked memo exposed plans to use the COP gathering to negotiate oil and gas deals. Currently, the future of the world is in their hands!
A war is being waged on the people of the world and the living things that surround us. Sometimes it is high-tech bombs targeting civilian populations. The other daily war waged against us, and against the Earth’s ecosystems, is the massive release of carbon into the atmosphere. We are witnessing unprecedented environmental catastrophes that are wreaking havoc on communities across the globe. The impacts range from extreme weather events to rising sea levels to crop failures that displace people around the world. Those who hold power are targeting the poorest and most vulnerable communities of the world with continued catastrophic destruction. And the rest of us are next on their list.
We all face this system every day, but usually not in these most extreme forms. But it is the same war, of a capitalist system, organized to produce one thing – profits. These profits can come from billions of dollars of arms sales, from the crops grown on factory farms that destroy the soil, from factory production, and all the other uses of our labor that keep the capitalist system making huge profits.
But their brutal attacks have been met with resistance. The people of Palestine have fought back in many different ways. Workers around the world have gone on strike and mobilized their forces to defend themselves. Farmers have organized to protect their farms. Our challenge is to unite all our forces – the 99% against the 1%!
The first step is to organize together – to build up the trust and confidence among our co-workers, our neighbors and others. Collectively we have the power to defend ourselves. Nothing happens in this world without the labor of the working class. It’s time we use that power to end their vicious greedy rule with its wars of destruction.
