Israel has officially declared war on Palestine, in response to a series of guerrilla raids by Hamas fighters on Israeli positions near to the border with Gaza. Israel's neo-Nazi Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, has announced, “We are at war, and we will win.” Given the overwhelming military superiority of the Zionist state, backed by US imperialism, he is, no doubt, correct in his prediction. Indeed, as with previous wars against its neighbours, it will undoubtedly prove to be yet another opportunity for the racist, colonialist state to again, expand its borders, by annexing yet more territory.
As with all such conflicts, one immediate consequence has been a strengthening of reaction on all sides. The Palestinians who have been fundamentally divided between Hamas and Fatah, both, reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist formations, offering no way forward, have been driven further into the arms of Hamas, the more reactionary of the two, with, now, as Al Jazeera has shown, Palestinians in the West Bank, where Fatah has dominated, coming out, into the streets, openly branding the flag of Hamas.
Hamas has also called on Hezbollah, in Lebanon, to come to its assistance, and given repeated raids by the Zionist state across the Lebanese border, an expansion of the war into Lebanon is entirely possible, as Israel, in the past, has taken such opportunities to occupy Lebanese territory, consistent with its colonialist, annexationist ideology. On the other hand, Israel has recently signed a deal with Lebanon on maritime routes, which is significant to Lebanon, given its shattered economy. That may not stop Israel from launching pre-emptive strikes against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.
Israel has also been undertaking almost daily air strikes into Syria, where it continues to illegally occupy the Golan Heights. With both Hezbollah and Iran having fighters in Syria, supporting the Assad regime against the continued operations of the jihadists who are backed by Saudi Arabia and NATO imperialism, Israel may also launch similar pre-emptive strikes against Syria. The arc running from Iran through Iraq and into Lebanon, opens the possibility of an expansion of hostilities across a wide part of the Middle-East, as yet another manifestation of the rapidly intensifying drive to global imperialist war. In such conditions, as Trotsky noted, the shifting of alliances occurs at a rapid pace too.
Currently, Saudi Arabia is in the camp of US imperialism, and has also normalised its relations with the US's main military outpost in the region, Israel. But, Saudi Arabia has been, also, moving away from the US, and towards the opposing imperialist camp of China-Russia. China negotiated a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example, and an end to hostilities between them in Yemen.
Of course, not only is this just another manifestation of the growing drive to World War III, adding to the existing arenas in Ukraine, and in the Pacific, but cannot be divorced from it either. In the same way that the actions of NATO in snatching Kosovo out of Serbia, provided a basis for the similar action of Russia in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and, later, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, so the actions of NATO in Ukraine, provide a model for the Palestinians and their backers in opposing the continued occupation of Palestine by the racist, colonialist state in Israel.
In Ukraine, the petty-bourgeois, nationalist “Left”, for example, in the Ukraine Solidarity Committee, have argued that the corrupt regime of Zelensky, and the Ukrainian capitalist state, should be armed to the teeth, and seek support from wherever it can get it to fight against, and expel Russian troops from Eastern Ukraine. The logic of that position, applied to Palestine, is that Hamas should be able to do the same thing in expelling Zionist troops from Palestine, including not only from neighbouring Arab states, but also from China, Russia, Turkey or wherever, all of whom, of course, have their own reactionary and imperialist axes to grind, using the workers bones as grist.
The actions of Hamas, in particular, are insane. Its like the actions of someone who repeatedly taunts someone much bigger and more powerful than them, and, then, complains when they get their ass kicked. That is not to deny that Palestinians have every right to be angry about their treatment by the Zionist state, but its precisely the actions of moralists, as against Marxists, that takes such justifiable anger, and concludes that “something must be done”, no matter how futile, or counter-productive that something might be. Indeed that same petty-bourgeois moralism was used by some on the “Left”, to justify Zionism, and the creation of the Zionist state, in the first place, from which, most of the current divisions and strife in the region, now, derives.
The actions of the Zionist guerillas, such as the Stern Gang, involved in the creation of the Zionist state, as much as the actions of Hamas, or Hezbollah, or indeed, of Fatah, have nothing to do with the principles outlined by Lenin and Trotsky, and the Communist International, as the basis of a progressive struggle against annexations, or colonialism, based upon permanent revolution. They are, instead based upon the ideas of the Narodniks, and petty-bourgeois nationalism, of Maoism and Guevarism, as I have described, in my posts on “Lessons of The Chinese Revolution”. They are based on the idea set out by Mao Zedong that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." That, of course, as Marx and Engels describe, in “Anti-Duhring”, is the typical approach of the petty-bourgeois, and not the Marxist.
Those Zionist guerillas, were themselves reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalists. Their ideology was that of totalitarianism and Nazism. In line with the ideas of the USC that such forces should be free to seek support from wherever they can get it, they sought an alliance with both Nazi Germany and with Mussolini's Italy. The support for such forces as the basis of creating the Zionist state, is one of the first main examples of the principles of what later became termed “idiot anti-imperialism”. Unlike the support given to similar petty-bourgeois forces, by Stalinism and Menshevism, as in China, it was the first collapse into that approach by people that traced their lineage, instead, to Trotskyism.
But, the response to that result, simply mirrored it. Justification of the reactionary Zionist adventure was based upon the horrors of the Holocaust, and has continued to be so ever since. For those on the “Left” that supported that argument, it necessarily involves a continued support for the principles of bourgeois defencism – defence of the fatherland – as against the principles of revolutionary defeatism, and socialist internationalism.
Of course, if you then become a bourgeois-defencist for the Zionist state, as is the case with the AWL, which is the main force behind its front organisation, the Ukraine Solidarity Committee, you must logically become a bourgeois-defencist for every other capitalist state! You inevitably end up in the same social-patriotic politics as those that adopted that position prior to WWI and II. Of course, the AWL take that a step further, not only advocating defence of the fatherland, but also pronouncing themselves to be Zionists, i.e. racists and colonialists. So, its no big step for them to also pronounce that the capitalist state and NATO imperialism is the defender of workers' interests, as they rush headlong down the path trod by their mentors Burnham and Shachtman, to becoming rabid Cold War Warriors.
Indeed, its notable the extent to which such groups pick up an argument to justify their current position, and then reject it when it contradicts some later position. In justifying the organised mass colonisation of Palestine by Zionist organisations, for example, one of the AWL's predecessors, Al Glotzer argued against the position of Trotsky and Ernest Mandel,
“Some of our readers may be aware that one of the main differences between us and the official Fourth International and the SWP is on the question of the right of the Jews to free immigration to Palestine. In advocating the right of free immigration to all countries, and in the first place to the United States, we advocate, at the same time, that democratic right for Palestine. The Fourth International and its adherents, however, are in favour of free immigration of Jews to all countries, the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia, etc., but ... not to Palestine — the one country to which they want to go! Mandel’s article seeks to give the theoretical and historical justification for this obviously contradictory position.”
Yet, today, the inheritors of Glotzer's position, in the AWL, argue adamantly against the right of Palestinians to migrate to Israel, whilst defending the racist laws of the Zionist state of giving a right to any Jew to move to Israel, from where, of course, the Zionist state facilitates them in a further annexation of Palestinian land and property. If we were to paraphrase Glotzer, we would say that the AWL supports the right of Palestinians to migrate to anywhere in the world, except the one place they want to move to – Israel.
And, given the openly Zionist and pro-imperialist position of the AWL, and so, its front organisation, the USC, we can definitely expect that whilst it will issue empty words of sympathy for Palestinians, and others that the Zionist state now unleashes its full military power against, it will not adopt the same position it has in Ukraine, and defend the right of Palestinians to seek military support from wherever in the world they might be able to get it.
Of course, nor should they support such a position, any more than that should be the case in Ukraine. We are not bourgeois nationalists, but international socialists. We support only the truly revolutionary, proletarian forces, and seek to build workers solidarity across borders, and across ethnic and other divides, against our common enemy, the bourgeois ruling class, on the basis of the principles of permanent revolution. We call on workers in Israel to oppose their own ruling-class, and its war and annexations, and for workers across the globe to take whatever action they can to stop the supply of arms to the enemies of workers, wherever they might be.
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