South Africa is bringing a case, at the UN's International Court of Justice, against Israel, on charges of genocide against Palestinians. There is no doubt that the Zionist state is guilty of such genocide, and its own leaders have admitted it, from their own public pronouncements. Of course, it should not be just the leaders of the Zionist state hauled before the court on charges of genocide and other war crimes. So too, should Biden, Sunak, Von Der Leyen and others that have continued to support them, and facilitate that genocide by the provision of the weapons to carry it out. But, if South Africa believes that such genocide is being carried out, is it sufficient to just wait for the long process of the courts to stop it? Shouldn't South Africa, as a part of the BRICS+ imperialist alliance, follow in the footsteps of NATO, and institute a No Fly Zone over Palestine, now? Russia, China, and other members of BRICS+ certainly have the military capability to do that, and have the precedent of NATO's actions in implementing No Fly Zones in Iraq, and Libya to support such action.
And, of course, when NATO did implement those No Fly Zones, they were supported by social-imperialists in the West, who clamoured for the killing to be ended by such intervention. Some of them have even called for a No Fly Zone over Ukraine, which would almost inevitably lead to WWIII, to enter the final phase of all out fighting between the two main imperialist camps, and nuclear Armageddon. Of course, the same social-imperialists have been silent demanding a No-Fly Zone to protect Palestinians from the holocaust unleashed on them by the Zionist state, just as they have not called for Palestinians to be provided with arms to defend themselves against it, as they demanded for the corrupt, imperialist, Ukrainian state.
If you view the world as simply a bystander, or cheerleader for one of these global imperialist camps or the other, based upon a set of moral imperatives, then, of course, you would support such measures in support of whichever camp you have tied your colours to. From the perspective of the BRICS+ imperialist camp, there would, indeed, be a good reason to, at least, follow up their actions at the UN with a proposal to implement a NO Fly Zone over Palestine, if only to boost their own global pretensions as the saviour of less developed countries in the global South, and to expose the hypocrisy of US imperialism, and its NATO imperialist camp. After all, no only is the US and other NATO allies supply the Zionist state with weapons, but is also directly involved in the fighting, having sent warships to the Red Sea, where they are, now attacking and killing Houthis trying to prevent war supplies reaching the genocidal, Zionist regime.
But, this simply illustrates the point made some time ago, that just as with WWI and WWII, what they are is, actually, a series of regional wars, which become congealed into a, more or less, global conflict, as the contending imperialist states, form alliances based upon their own contingent immediate interests. Across the globe we have the old imperialist/colonialists powers trying to project their military power as they have always done. The US sends warships to the South China Sea, as well as the Mediterranean and Red Sea, and Britain acts as lap dog, making its own pathetic contribution, whilst also sending a warship to the waters off Venezuela. Across the globe these deployments are a reflection of those growing regional conflicts, and on the other side to the US imperialist alliance, now stands a growing alliance of newer imperialist and sub-imperialist powers, asserting their own interests.
But, as in WWI and II, the working-class has no reason to simply act as a passive bystander, reduced to acting as merely a cheerleader for one or other of these imperialist camps, each of which is the immediate enemy of the workers. When the social imperialists lined up with NATO in the Balkans, in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, they simply exposed their own bankruptcy and opportunism. That is no reason for Marxists to respond to it, by simply placing a plus sign wherever they place a minus sign, as Trotsky explained in “Learn To Think”. Just because their bankruptcy and opportunism leads them to act as cheerleaders of the genocidal regimes of NATO, is no reason to support BRICS+, or to match the craven policies of demanding they impose No Fly Zones, or provide arms to the enemies of the working-class, by demanding it do the same.
If BRICS+ intervenes in Palestine to stop the genocide being carried out by the Zionists, it would be just as much done for their own global strategic interests, as the same policies carried out by NATO elsewhere. It would, also, be just as likely to spell the start of a global conflagration as would such a zone imposed by NATO in Ukraine. Such a war is not in the interests of the working-class. We must oppose it, using our own proletarian methods to oppose the genocide via global general strikes, the blacking of war supplies to the Zionist regime, and its allies, the occupation of all firms producing weapons, and introduction of workers control of production, and workers plans of production for socially useful products.
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