In
Commemoration of the Gaza Massacre of 2008
Operation "Molten Lead"
Today we commemorate one year to the Israeli
war on the people of Gaza. The Zionists are calling this war "Operation
Molten Lead." On December 27th 2008 the Israeli Army attacked the
city of Gaza in an attempt to overthrow the elected government of the Palestinian
people led by Hamas and break the people's resistance to the continued
occupation and oppression. After 22 days of massacre in which the State of
Israel murdered around 1400 residents of the besieged Gaza and caused serious
damage to the social and economic infrastructure (including mosques, schools
and ambulances), Israel was forced to declare a unilateral ceasefire. In the
same manner as it did in the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel has failed in achieving its
political goals.
During this war the Internationalist
Socialist League issued leaflets through which it explained that the interests
of the Palestinian people and the interests of the world working class lies in
a military defeat to Israel being an imperialist state.
The name "Molten Lead" was taken
out of a Zionist song written by the nationalist and racist poet, Haim N. Bialik, as a Hanukkah
song. This holiday stands for the victory of religious fanatics over the Greek
rule which resulted in a theocratic regime that invited the Romans to rule
Palestine.
The excuse for the Gaza massacre was the
Palestinian retaliation attacks, using the primitive Qassam
rockets, which caused very little Israeli casualties, against the Israeli
attacks on the residents of Gaza using sophisticated weaponry.
The abduction of Gilad
Shalit and the prisoner exchange deal
On June 25th 2006, Hamas and the
Popular Resistance Committees' guerillas attacked an Israeli military post near
'Sufa' crossing. As a result of this attack two
Israeli soldiers were killed and a third, Corporal Gilad
Shalit was taken prisoner. These soldiers were besieging
1.5 million Palestinian residents of Gaza who practically live in a ghetto. The
last thing that can be said about Shalit is that he
was innocent. If he was innocent, then the troops who guarded the Warsaw Ghetto
were innocent to. We reject this claim of innocence. The State of Israel is the
last one who has the right, taking into account its abduction policy which
includes Palestinian MPs and Lebanese citizens, to complain about the abduction
of soldiers engaging in oppression.
Two years before this massacre another
massacre took place under the name "Summer Rains" that began on June
28th 2006 and ended on November 26th that year. During this
operation Israel has murdered 394 Palestinian residents of the Gaza strip.
Even prior to three years ago Shalit could have been released for about one thousand
Palestinian POWs out of twelve thousand Palestinian prisoners rotting away in
Israeli prisons. Some were taken in without trial and some were sentenced by
martial courthouses of the oppressor. However, Israel refuses the prisoners
exchange deal offered by Hamas. It opposes the release of key prisoners such as
Ibrahim Hamed, Abdallah Baraghuti, Abbas A-Sayyid, Hasan Salameh,
Jamal Abu El-Hijla, the Fatah official, Marwan Baraghuti, and the
secretary-general of the PFLP, Ahmed Sa'adat. Israel
insists that about one hundred of the prisoners, if release, would be exiled, and
refuses to commit itself to not trying to assassinate them after their release.
We ask what would have been the response of
the Israelis if Hamas had insisted that Shalit should
be exiled to Europe as a part of the deal? How loud
would the screams have been for the cruelty towards his family? As if the
Palestinian prisoners don't have families of their own.
Israel screams that it won't release any
prisoners with "blood on their hands." However, if all the Israelis
with blood on their hands were sentenced to jail, a large portion of the
Israeli population would have been locked up behind bars to this very day.
Israel has committed more then 100 massacres against
Palestinians, Lebanese and Egyptian POWs after the massacre of 1947-8. Who were
PMs Ben Gurion, Rabin, Shamir and Sharon other then
killers with blood on their hands?
The Internationalist Socialist League demands
the release of all political prisoners. We do not support the killing of
Israeli citizens since it does not promote the Palestinian people's struggle for
national and social freedom. It only gives the Zionists the excuse to engage in
further massacres. However, the Palestinian political prisoners are rotting
away in jail because they dared to fight against the oppression of the
Palestinian people which started from the first moment of the Zionist
colonization of Palestine. Therefore, we support not only the breaking of the
siege over Gaza, but also the release of all the political prisoners.
The solutions offered by the Left
While Israel uses self-defense as an excuse
for its murderous behavior, we do not recognize the right to self-determination
of a society of colonialist settlers who managed to establish an imperialist
state on a land they robbed from the Palestinian people driving most of it into
exile. All of Israel is occupied territory. In the same manner we do not
recognize the claims of the white colonialists in South Africa, the French in
Algeria, the Europeans in Rhodesia, or the Protestants in N. Ireland to the
right of self determination.
This is why we reject the reformist idea put
forth by the Communist Party and Hadash which rely on
imperialism and not the revolutionary mass struggle to bring an end to the
conflict. Their solution is called "Two States for Two Peoples", which
means one imperialist state on most of historic Palestine, and another state, a
Palestinian Bantustan, on parts of the West Bank and Gaza. This program negates
in practice the possibility of the return of the refugees to their land.
Israel was established by imperialism as a
mean to block the development of a democratic revolution in the area. The roles
of this revolution include achieving independence of imperialist rule and the
unification of the region. Not only the British and the American imperialists
stood behind the Partition Plan, but also the USSR that became an imperialist
state already in the eve of World War 2. Through the Communist Party of Israel
it provided weapons to the Zionists which they used to expel the Palestinian
masses from their land. All of these elements were acting to suppress the
revolutionary wave of the workers all over the world after the great massacre
of the second imperialist world war, the continuation of the first.
History teaches us that the roles of the
democratic revolution could not be achieved by the monarchist movement (the Hashemites), the Arab bourgeoisie (Mubarak's Egypt), or the
petty-bourgeois (the Nasserites, Ba'athists, and
Fatah). These misleaderships, which received mass
support due to the masses' illusions in them, sought and still seek a solution
within the confines of the imperialist order and that is why they are willing
to use this or the other imperialist against the masses.
Not only the imperialist, including Israel,
are responsible for the crimes against the Palestinian people, but also their
junior associates. We reject the solution put forth by the leftist popular
fronts which include a two-stage revolution – first a democratic revolution,
and in the next historical stage, the formation of a socialist society. This
road leads to subjugating the masses to the Arab bourgeoisie. The results of
such a path can be seen in South Africa where the capitalists continue their
rule through the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa while the masses
continue to suffer.
Our position regarding the Islamist elements
Hamas, despite its anti-imperialist rhetoric,
will establish, in the case of its victory, a theocratic state very similar to
the one in Iran, which exploits the working class, oppresses women and the Arab
national minority. The theocratic capitalist Iranian state was established to
prevent a socialist revolution. That is why its establishment cannot be called
a revolution but a counterrevolution. The French imperialists who supported Humeini are not the only element responsible for it, but
also the reformist movements and parties in Iran such as the Tudeh and the Mujahidin Khalq, as
well as other groups who assumed the title 'Marxist' but in practice subjugated
the working class and the masses to the clerical reactionary misleadership.
Iran is a 3rd world country, and
that is why we oppose any sanctions imposed on it by the imperialist states.
Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons in a world in which imperialist
countries, including Israel, have already obtained such
weapons and are using it as a threat against 3rd world nations. In
the same time we do not support the Iranian regime and advocate its overthrow through
a workers' revolution.
We understand the motives which lie behind
the international movement to boycott Israel. We support boycotting the Israeli
military industry, the goods produced by Zionist settlers and the diamond
industry which supports them. Our position is that the way to impose an
effective boycott is through independent actions by the world working class by
preventing the shipping and receiving of such products.
We do not support a blanket boycott of all
Israelis since it will harm not only the Palestinian workers who still work for
Jewish employers, but also the Palestinian students who study in Israel. It
will become a collective punishment against all Israelis whether they were
supporters or in opposition to Zionism or the occupation. Such a boycott will
certainly be used by the Israeli rulers.
We live in the epoch of capitalist decay,
when only the working class can lead the masses and the oppressed to fulfill
the roles of the democratic revolution and then continue to take power and
establish workers' states on the path to the emergence of the socialist
society. There are countries such as China, in which peasant-based anti-proletarian
misleaderships have managed to carry through partial
democratic revolutions. However, this resulted in a working class that is being
super-exploited by the large capitalists while the communist party serves as a
policing force for the imperialists. The working class does not need a society
like those in China, South Africa or Iran.
We support the Palestinian mass struggle,
even when it is led by reactionary elements. In the struggle between
imperialist Israel and Hamas and other resistance organizations, the world
working class's interests stand with the defeat of Israel. However, we do not
support any petty-bourgeois or bourgeois party or movement politically, since
they are unable to unite the masses and overthrow the imperialist rule. Their
fear of the masses gaining control prevents the victory of the mass struggle.
Our proposed
solution
The only solution which will enable the
refugees to return to their land while the Jews who live in Palestine will
enjoy peace and security is a socialist revolution that will establish a
Palestinian workers' state from the sea to the river as a part of a socialist
federation of the Middle East.
Only the super-exploited working class in
this region can bring about such a revolutionary solution. This super-exploited
working class does not include most of the Jewish workers who support the State
of Israel to ensure their privileges, much like the South African white
workers. We certainly do hope that a portion of the Jewish working class will understand
that only through standing boldly with the workers of the neighboring countries
and the Palestinian workers in a revolutionary struggle, will it be able to
break free from the decaying capitalist system.
In order to win the working class needs a
revolutionary leadership that only it can establish out of the experience it obtains
through its struggles against the ruling classes and their minions. Currently
there is no such revolutionary leadership organized in a revolutionary party.
The Second "Socialist" International serves the bourgeoisie since
1914. The Third "Communist" International has been destroyed as a
revolutionary party by the Stalinists in the 1930s. The Fourth International
has betrayed the workers' revolution in the 1950s, but the program upon which
it was established is still relevant today.
We understand that the mass struggle will
begin through partial democratic demands. That is why we call for the
establishment of a constituent assembly in which all the Palestinian refugees
and all of those who reside in Palestine (from the river to the sea) will
participate.
We are prepared to engage in temporary action
fronts (strikes and demonstrations) with any political element that supports
the following demands:
Break the Siege on Gaza!
Release All the Political Prisoners!
All the Refugees Should Have the Right to Return!
Our propaganda slogans are:
For a Constituent Assembly!
For a Palestinian Workers' State from the
River to the Sea as a Part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!
Re-Create the Fourth International!