Workers of All Countries, Now More Than Ever, Solidarity with Palestine!

January 20, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French

Last Sunday, for the first time in 470 days, Israel did not bomb Gaza. We can only share the relief of the Palestinian population affected by hunger and epidemics. This ceasefire was conceded by Israel. But there is no doubt that its policy of colonization, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, from Gaza to the West Bank, from southern Lebanon to the Syrian Golan Heights, will not stop. Less than two days after the ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli army launched a military operation on the Palestinian camp of Jenin in the West Bank, and Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages with the blessing of the Israeli army.

Israel’s dirty war against the Palestinians goes on

When the imminent signing of a truce was announced, the Israeli air force bombed just as Palestinians took to the streets to express their relief, killing 80 people. Yet another terrorist act to demonstrate that the truce is only a fragile respite, and that the Palestinians remain refugees on their own land.

The Gaza Strip is utterly devastated, with 70% of homes damaged, most schools and hospitals destroyed, and at least 48,000 Palestinians dead. Israel’s war is a war against the entire Palestinian people, to drive them out or exterminate them. It’s a genocide that didn’t start as a retaliation for the October 7th attack: the State of Israel was born out of this apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and it continues to this day.

This dirty war has spread throughout the region: the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran have all been occupied or bombed this year. Israel has emerged stronger militarily, but at the cost of massacres that morally disqualify it.

The responsibility of the major Western powers

Joe Biden recently revealed that when he voiced his concerns about the “carpet bombing” strategy to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, he replied that it was inspired by the [U.S.’s World War II] intensive bombing of Berlin, Dresden and Hiroshima. American imperialism has never skimped on massacres to terrorize civilian populations. And not just in Germany and Japan, but also in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. As did its French ally in Algeria.

Israel’s colonial war is another in this line of imperialist crimes. Without the active support of the United States and secondary powers such as France, Israel would not have been able to carry out its genocidal operations.

In the most cynical way, this ceasefire comes just hours before the transfer of power in the United States, so that Biden and Trump can present themselves as its architects. Proof if any were needed that they could have forced Israel to stop the massacre at any time. But they didn’t, too interested in flattering their regional watchdog and encouraging it to weaken their adversaries like Iran and its allies.

Putting an end to the capitalist law of the jungle

The great Western powers present themselves as the side of democracy and international law. But in Palestine, as in Iraq, Vietnam and Algeria, they appear to the world for what they are: the side of genocide and the law of the strongest. But the strongest will not forever be the one with the most modern bombs. The strongest are those who produce everything on this planet – including weapons. They are the workers, who, unlike their exploiters, have no interest in pitting people against each other, no interest in unleashing endless wars to dominate an oil-rich region. All over the world, let’s amplify mobilizations for the Palestinians’ right to exist, an end to the Gaza blockade, an end to apartheid and colonization. So that the moral shipwreck of the Western powers in Palestine becomes a political shipwreck, and so that 2025 is the year when the working classes stand up to the dictatorship of the billionaires!

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