Zionism/Imperialism Is Winning Militarily and Losing Politically

Zionism is winning, as I always expected it would, its military offensive against the Palestinian people.  It is a military superpower in its own right, and backed by the world's largest military superpower, the US, and by the next biggest military superpowers the EU and UK.  That it could wipe out the Palestinians militarily was never in doubt, even without resorting to the use of its nuclear weapons as proposed by one of its politicians, and at least one US Republican politician.  As I wrote recently, it is, now, well on its way to completing its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, leaving it free to occupy that land, and to move on to a similar military assault on the West Bank, and to continue its increasing offensive against Lebanon and Syria.

The fact that it is carrying on with great efficiency in that genocide, backed by US, EU and UK imperialism, which arms and finances it, and acts as its attorney and publicist on the world stage, is precisely why the bourgeois "democracies", in those states have had to massively ramp up their propaganda, and to remove the velvet glove that hides the iron fist of the bourgeois class dictatorship.  The clash between appearance, as they seek to present it, and reality, has increasingly been exposed, especially as modern technology allows the actions of imperialism to be documented as never before, breaking the monopoly of the bourgeois media.  Hence the use of Zionist and other fascist irregulars to violently attack the peaceful student encampments on universities across America, as the attempt to brand opponents of genocide as being "anti-Semitic" supporters of Hamas, violent terrorists, or even "agents of Putin", collapses in its own hysterical absurdity.

As Owen Jones describes, Zionism is winning militarily in Gaza, and its same violent methods have now been transferred to the US.  In the same way that in the West Bank, fascist Zionist settlers attack Palestinians, and ae backed by the Zionist military, so, now, on US university campuses, we see peaceful protests violently attacked by fascist Zionist irregulars, in a way that was clearly planned, organised, and orchestrated with the forces of the state, which allowed them to engage in their violent assault using weapons, fireworks, pepper-spray, cable ties and so on, for a prolonged period, before the police turned up.  And, of course, as anyone familiar with such methods in Britain in the 1970's is aware, when the police do, then, intervene, it is not against the violent fascists, but against those they are attacking!

All, of this shows that whilst the Zionists and imperialism have the military might to win, they are losing politically, and all of this ramped up use of force, increased hysterical lying via its media and politicians, is because they know they are losing politically.  Unfortunately, just because they are losing politically, does not mean that socialists are winning.  In the US, Biden has, now, clearly lost the election, not just for himself, but for the Democrats in general, and deservingly so.  But, in the absence of a socialist party, and socialist candidate to rally around, the winner will be Trump, and his reactionary Republicans, just as in Britain, as Sunak goes down to a massive defeat, he will be replaced by the petty-bourgeois, reactionary Starmer and his ultra-nationalist/monarchist, Blue Labour, which is no better.

Moreover, the fact that Zionism/Imperialism is losing politically, at the moment, contrary to Owen Jones' argument, does not mean that they have to lose politically, in the longer term, precisely because, without a progressive alternative to them they will simply bring about their own stabilisation, and, in the short-term, the consequence may be even worse, as the election of Trump, and so on would demonstrate.  It shows the need to build a socialist alternative to them, and to fight for it, now.

Owen Jones says that even if Zionism wins against the Palestinians it can bring no positive solution for Israel.  Wrong.  If the Zionists wipe the Palestinians from history, as the Europeans did against Native Americans, Australasian Aborigines and so on, although there will be a lot of moralistic hand-wringing, for a time - much, indeed as there was following the initial Naqba - then the Zionists, with US and EU imperialist backing, will quickly establish normalised relations with the surrounding bourgeois Arab states in Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states, creating a powerful imperialist base from which to turn their attention to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and eventually Iran.

For workers, in the end, that will also open significant opportunities, just as the more rapid capitalist development in the Americas, and Australasia did, following similar genocides.  Ironically, it would also spell the end for Zionism itself, just as the more rapid economic development in Ireland, in recent decades, and its membership of the EU, undermined the material basis both of Orangeism in the North, and Catholic Confessionalism in the South.  But, it again, shows that these grotesque means of bringing about such objectively progressive, historical development used by imperialism, require socialists not only to oppose those methods, but also to show how the progressive results can only be effectively achieved by proletarian means, by a class struggle of the global working-class.  As Trotsky put it,

"Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the great powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome, of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps...

Whether Germany or England wins – in either case the question to be determined is who will be the direct master over the small nations. Only charlatans or hopeless simpletons are capable of linking up the question of the freedom of the small peoples with the victory of one side or the other...

In its struggle against imperialism, the proletariat cannot set up as its political aim the return to the map of old Europe; it must advance its own programme of state and national relations, corresponding to the fundamental tendencies of economic development, corresponding to the revolutionary character of the epoch and the socialist interests of the proletariat...

Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle."

(The Programme of Peace)