The Peace Of The Cemetery

The Sunday politics shows were, of course, full of self-righteous blather about the role of Trump in bringing peace to the Middle East. Starmer, inevitably, as he acts as Trump's attorney, has claimed that Trump's role has been irreplaceable. That may be true, but not for the reason Starmer, and much of the chattering classes want to suggest. After all, the “deal” agreed is the same that was on offer a year ago, but which Netanyahu rejected. That “deal” is, of course, not a deal at all, but simply an ultimatum given to Hamas. Where Biden provided the weapons for the genocide, but limply set supposed red lines on their use, which were ignored, Trump provided the weapons and said to Netanyahu, “Have at it!”

What “Trump's peace” amounts to is just this. Two men are engaged in a prolonged quarrel. I come along and give one of them a gun, and Carte Blanche to use it. They shoot their opponent. There is peace. On that basis, every arms dealer in he world is a peacemaker, and should be immediately nominated for a Nobel Prize for their efforts. What should happen is that Trump, his regime, and that of Biden and his regime, along with all of those across Europe, such as Starmer, that have armed and facilitated the genocide in Gaza should be arrested, and put on trial for war crimes, alongside the Zionist regime.

What is required is an equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials. The concentration camp guards in Nazi Germany, once the war was over, went to great lengths to hide their role in the industrial scale murder of Jews, and others. But, there has never been a greater, openly documented genocide than that carried out by the Zionist regime, in the huge concentration camp that is Gaza. Not only have the leaders of that regime set out, in clear statements, their intention to carry out genocide, but they have, at each stage, documented their commitment to it. Unlike the concentration camp guards, the individual IDF soldiers have gone to great lengths to place their own individual roles in that genocide on video, distributed for all to see, across the internet. What is more, the leaders of the regimes in the US, and its allies were fully aware of those war crimes, and continued to arm and facilitate the genocide.

The difference is, for now, that Nazi Germany lost the war, whereas the Zionist regime, with its US/NATO backing has succeeded, as it inevitably would, given the hugely superior firepower, in destroying Gaza, just as it has, also, imposed its control over wider areas of the Middle East, as it once again engages in its colonialist expansion, fundamental to Zionist ideology, and the need of the Zionist state to ever increase the size of its geographic territory. Despite the fact that Netanyahu and others have been indicted for war crimes, and the Zionist regime is charged with genocide by the UN and the ICJ, Netanyahu is unlikely to ever face trial, as the US, which has already sanctioned judges for daring to even charge him, will press for all those actions to be dropped. At best, it looks like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are being lined up as patsies, whilst Netanyahu will get support from more “centrist” parties, to get the votes required to push through the “peace deal”.

How long even that lasts, once the hostages are returned, we will have to wait and see. The Gazans face months, over the Winter, of living in a devastated wasteland, in which famine, disease and pestilence will continue to ravage their war torn bodies. There is little prospect of Gaza being rebuilt until Trump believes a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem has been achieved. The surrounding Arab states, also, have no reason to pump the estimated $500 billion into Gaza required for its reconstruction, necessitated by the destruction wrought by Zionism, and its imperialist backers. For one thing, they know that Netanyahu was advised to just sign the peace deal to get the hostages back, because, as was said, they can easily manufacture a new pretext for starting the bombing and shelling again. After all, they have unfinished business in the West Bank, and in the other real estate they have in their sights in Lebanon and Syria.

Zionist/Imperialist Politicians and Media Expose Themselves

The attempt, by Zionist/imperialist politicians and media, to use the appalling murder of Jewish worshippers, by an anti-Semitic jihadist, to ban pro-Palestinian protests has simply exposed their own hypocrisy. The feats of semantic gymnastics they have performed have been Olympian.

Firstly, as I wrote a couple of days ago, we had the condemnation of the jihadist as undertaking an egregious and abominable act against Jewish worshippers, in Britain, who have no connection to the acts of genocide being committed by the Zionist state in Israel, against Palestinians. It was quite rightly pointed out that this was, therefore, an anti-Semitic attack, against Jews for being Jews, and which sought to equate all Jews with Israel, and with Zionism. All absolutely, correct. But, then, we had, immediately after that, demands that demonstrations – called not against Jews, but against the Zionist state's genocide in Palestine – be cancelled, or postponed, in deference to British Jewish communities! Why?

The first absolutely correct premise that British Jews are not synonymous with the Zionist state, and, therefore, in no way connected to the genocidal actions of that state, precludes any connection of demonstrations against that Zionist state being deemed to be protests against British Jews. You cannot argue the former without accepting the latter, without placing yourself in a fundamental contradiction, a reductio ad absurdum. Yet, that is what the Zionist/imperialist politicians and media have tried to argue. Are they really wanting to say that pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and/or demonstrations against the genocide being committed by the Zionist state are, de facto, anti-Semitic demonstrations against British Jews? If so, they can only do so by, also, claiming that British Jews are, indeed, somehow synonymous with the Zionist state, and, therefore, also responsible for its actions!

That is the inevitable logic of their argument, and, of itself, is a thoroughly anti-Semitic argument. Indeed, throughout its history, Zionism, by its own attempts to claim that Judaism and Zionism are synonymous, has been a thoroughly anti-Semitic ideology, and a major contributor to the development of anti-Semitism across the globe. (Some of the most militant Zionists are not Jews, but are Christian Zionists, whose own vile anti-Semitism is explicit.) It implies that you can only be a real Jew if you are, also, a Zionist, and that, wherever you live in the world, as a Jew, you are Israeli, and your allegiance lies primarily with Israel.

There are, of course, those that have difficulty separating one thing from another. For example, in Britain in the 1930's, opposition to Nazism, led some to simply equate Nazism with being German, even though it was millions of Germans who were the first and most affected by it. That didn't stop some, in Britain, simply adopting a hatred of all Germans just for being German! But, would anyone have argued not to hold demonstrations against Nazism, and in support of the victims of Nazism, on that basis? Of course not, though, it is why, it would be better to refer to fascism, rather than Nazism. Its why its better to refer to the actions of the Zionist state, rather than the Israeli state.

The most obvious manifestation of this anti-Semitic, Zionist logic is the fact that, in Britain, thousands of Jews oppose Zionism, and oppose the genocide being committed by the Zionist state against Palestinians. Many of them, indeed, took part in the demonstrations that the Zionists/imperialists sought to ban. The implication is that, these Jews are not, therefore, really Jews at all. It seeks to equate being a real Jew with being a Zionist, and with being, thereby, synonymous with the Zionist state, and its genocide! What greater piece of anti-Semitic ideology could there be than that, as a means of stoking hatred of Jews as Jews?

For the last century, imperialism and supporters of the Zionist state have claimed that they favour a two bourgeois states solution. That is the creation of a Jewish state, and a Palestinian state. Setting aside the reactionary nature of demands for the creation of new bourgeois states, let alone nation states based upon religious or ethnonationalism, what do the arguments over the weekend, actually tell us? We are told that the pro-Palestine demonstrations were, inherently, anti-Semitic, and so should have been cancelled or postponed. But, you can only argue that a pro-Palestinian demonstration is “anti-Semitic”, if, first you equate being Jewish with being Zionist, and if, secondly, you see the existence of a Palestinian state as being inevitably contradictory to the existence of a Jewish state in Israel. Now, as it happens, and as I argued 40 years ago, and ever since, I do believe that, so long as capitalism/imperialism exists, the reality is that a two-bourgeois states solution is a dangerous and reactionary delusion, but that is not what the imperialist politicians and media have claimed.

But, if they were genuine in their belief that a two bourgeois states solution is the way forward, and not simply a diplomatic lie used to pacify the gullible, and enable the colonial rule of the Zionist state to continue, whilst denying political rights to Palestinians, they cannot possibly argue that a “Pro-Palestinian” demonstration is de facto, an “anti-Israel” demonstration, let alone an “anti-Semitic” demonstration, and even less a demonstration aimed against Jews living in Britain! A “pro-Palestinian” demonstration, i.e. a demonstration demanding that a politically independent Palestinian state should be allowed the right to self-determination, and that the occupation of that state by the Zionist state be ended, can only be deemed to be “anti-Israel” if you actually believe that the creation of an independent Palestinian state is irreconcilable with the continued existence of the state of Israel. In other words, it requires that you abandon the pretence that you support a Two-bourgeois states solution. Even, less, as set out above can a pro-Palestine demonstration, then be equated with being a demonstration against British Jews, or Jews per se, especially as many British Jews have participated in those demonstrations.

Netanyahu, of course, has no difficulty in simply saying that he rejects the idea of a two bourgeois states solution, and admitting that he sees the creation of an independent Palestinian state as being antithetical to the existence of the Israeli state. Only at the point that the Zionist state has killed all prospect of an independent Palestinian state, or, indeed, any kind of Palestinian state, and increasingly continued existence of Palestinian people, as it proceeds with its genocide, has Britain recognised Palestine, which amounts to a totally meaningless, face-saving gesture, as it turns its attention to the possibility of future war crimes trials, in which it may be implicated. Yet, for the hard-line Zionists even that formal recognition of Palestine, is too much. When the deplorable Lammy went to Manchester, a group of hard line Zionists, took the opportunity to shout him down complaining that, in some inexplicable way, this recognition of Palestine, was itself a contributory factor in leading an anti-Semitic, jihadist to carry out their attack! With that flawed logic, it would be at least as rational to conclude that such a person was motivated to carry out their attack as a result of the Zionist state undertaking a genocide against Palestinians!

The flawed logic and hypocrisy continued with the response to the actual demonstrations. As stated above, the descriptions of the demonstrations have varied, sometimes referring to them as being “Pro-Palestinian”, and sometimes “anti-Genocide”, as well as those dealing with the opposition to the ridiculous banning of “Palestine Action”. What none of those descriptions have been able to claim is that the demonstrations were “anti-Israel”, let alone “anti-Semitic”. That has been left to be tacitly implied with the commentary surrounding the description and reporting, and overtly implied in the demands that the protests be cancelled or postponed. But, the implication whether tacit or overt has no basis in fact or logic. If you purport to support a two bourgeois states solution, then an independent, free Palestine, is a prerequisite for it, and so, why would you oppose a protest in support of such a development, especially as the British government, along with the majority of other other states in the world, now recognises a Palestinian state?

If that is what you believe, you cannot logically argue that a protest in favour of Palestine is de facto, a protest against Israel, let alone a protest aimed at Jews. Similarly, most civilised people across the globe oppose genocide and war crimes, even if an increasingly right-wing polity in Britain seeks to abandon all such civilised behaviour, for example, in abandoning the European Convention on Human Rights. So, how can you, then, oppose a protest against an actual genocide that is continuing day after day, conducted by the Zionist regime? Opposing that genocide, does not equate, even, to opposing the continued existence of the Zionist state that is undertaking that genocide. It only equates to insisting that that state desist in its actions, just as demands that the Russian state desist from its war against Ukraine does not equate to a demand that Russia continue to exist. Even less can it be argued that a protest against an ongoing genocide is in any way a protest aimed at Jews, let alone Jews living in Britain.

Seeming to recognise that they had been caught out in this flawed logic and hypocrisy, the Zionist/imperialist politicians and media changed to a different tack. They moved from demands that the protests be cancelled because of being seen to be threatening to British Jews, to demands that they be postponed, because they would drain police resources that would otherwise be utilised to protect Jewish communities. But, none of the protests have been violent protests. For the number of people taking part, during the whole period of the last three years, fewer people have been arrested than at an average football match. The logic would rather be that to save police resources, all current football matches be postponed! Good luck trying to argue for that one.

Moreover, most of the arrests that have taken place, are not for any kind of violent behaviour, but have been arrests of people for carrying flags or placards. Oddly we do not see the same kind of zealous pursuit of racists and fascists for carrying flags and placards, in a threatening manner, nor for vandalising property by illegally erecting flags, or daubing paint on road signs. If the police and politicians were worried about a real extensive threat to Jewish communities over the weekend, then they would have prioritised their scarce resources to that task, and not to policing and arresting a load of peaceful protesters, opposing genocide.

When it comes to the protests opposing the banning of Palestine Action, the logical gymnastics have been even more absurd. Firstly, it was claimed that because Palestine Action is a proscribed “terrorist” organisation, it was already illegal to protest in favour of it. That is simply not true. It is illegal to support Palestine Action, as an organisation, but it is not illegal to protest against the government's decision to proscribe it, which itself is being challenged in the courts, nor to protest in favour of that ban being lifted, nor is it illegal to protest in favour of the aims of Palestine Action, i.e. to prevent the genocide in Gaza, and the government's facilitation of that genocide by the supply of military equipment. On the contrary, it is the responsibility of all, under the Genocide Convention, to which Britain is a signatory, to prevent such genocide. It is the British government that is acting illegally.

So, if the argument is that police resources are being used to arrest a bunch of peaceful grannies sitting holding placards, and interfering with no one other than a few pigeons in Trafalgar Square, rather than protecting Jewish communities, the question is, do they not have a brain so as to decide which is the most pressing use of those resources? If police resources, week after week, are being used to police and arrest hundreds of grannies and vicars, who have only turned out because the British government, as it becomes aver more authoritarian, has passed a piece of ridiculous legislation declaring Palestine Action to be a terrorist organisation, then, the responsibility for that lies, primarily with the government, which should lift that ban, and secondly with the police for using their resources to implement that ridiculous ban, rather than protecting Jewish and other minority communities.

Protesting against the government's ridiculous ban, does not equate to supporting Palestine Action as an organisation. I do not support Starmer's reactionary Blue Labour, but I would oppose it being banned by some future government. As a Marxist, I do not support Palestine Action, and its petty-bourgeois, individualistic acts of sabotage. Rather, I support the mass action of the working-class to achieve those ends, as with the general strike being organised in Italy. But, that does not mean that I am indifferent to the actions of the state to ban Palestine Action, and that same state if allowed to continue unchallenged, would soon turn its attention to banning any actual mass action by the working-class.

All around the hypocrisy and contradictions of Zionism/imperialism are being exposed more clearly by the day.

US & Britain Revert To Colonialism

Colonialism was the form that imperialism took in the age of mercantilism. Mercantilism was based upon a symbiotic alliance of the landed aristocracy, and the antediluvian forms of capital, i.e. merchant capital and usurers capital. All of these forms appropriate surplus-value via unequal exchange, as against industrial capital, which acts to produce surplus-value, on an unprecedented scale, via the employment of ever greater masses of wage-labour. It was the dominance of this large-scale industrial capital, by the latter part of the 19th century, which created the conditions for an end to colonialism, and the start of modern imperialism. It went together, with the end of the ownership of private industrial capital, as it was expropriated by large-scale socialised capital, and the evolution of bourgeois-democracy from liberal-democracy, to social-democracy.

But, as conservative social-democracy has collapsed, noticeably in the US and UK, in the last 20 years – often termed the collapse of the centre-ground – at least, in terms of the political regimes, which have, now, been dominated by the forces of petty-bourgeois nationalism, in the form of Trump, Toryism and Starmerism, they have, also, now, reverted to those pre-social-democratic forms of imperialism, characterised by colonialism. The ultimatum given to the Palestinians is emblematic of it.

The ultimatum given to the Palestinians, and that is what it is, rather than any kind of “offer”, or peace plan, is to roll over and be taken over by a colonial state. The only choice they have is whether, in the short-run, that colonial state is administered by Donald Trump and Tony Blair, both of whom have big plans to redevelop Gaza as prime beach front property providing them with large amounts of rent, and commercial profit, no doubt, also, with large amounts of interest from loans that will be foisted on the Palestinians to finance any such reconstruction, or, instead, to continue to be starved, shelled and slaughtered for several more weeks/months, by the Zionist state, which will, in any case, at the end of that, occupy their land, and again drive out the Palestinians.

This is what the farcical two bourgeois states solution was always going to result in. As David Ben-Gurion wrote to his son, in response to its proposal by the Peel Commission,

“partition would be a first step to "possession of the land as a whole".

Not even the pretence of even the two bourgeois states remains in the ultimatum given to the Palestinians. The Palestinians are to accept colonial rule by the US and UK, much as was the case a century ago, under the British Mandate. The first time around that resulted in the violent creation of the Zionist state on Palestinian land, and the killing and driving from the land of 700,000 Palestinians, by the terrorists of the Irgun, and Stern Gang etc. The current ultimatum seeks to repeat that process, and finish the job, as Ben-Gurion foresaw. The Palestinians themselves have been given, and are to be given no role in this process, or in even the discussions around the ultimatum they have been given. It contrasts starkly with all of the moralistic nonsense from European politicians and journalists about demanding that Ukraine had to be a participant in any peace negotiations with Russia.

If you are gullible enough to believe that Netanyahu and the Zionist state will, in any case, abide by the terms of this deal, any more than they have abided by any other, than I have an Eiffel Tower to sell you. Once the Israeli hostages are released, Netanyahu is likely to just unleash even more death and destruction on Gaza, and to step up the occupation and settlement of the West Bank. The ultimatum says that no Gazans need leave Gaza, whilst reconstruction takes place. That says nothing about them leaving in wooden boxes as they continue to starve to death, or die from rampant diseases. But, even if that were not the case, its like saying, you can stay here, in this rat infested, swamped tent, whilst all around you Trump and Blair's property developers erect spanking new, luxury buildings where your homes used to be, and which, of course, you will have not a chance in hell of being able to afford to live in yourselves. You might be able to continue to live in some shack, however, because those living in the new properties will need cleaners and other skivvies. It will be a repeat of the kind of gentrification projects that occurred in the dockland areas of Britain under Blair.

To the extent that the Palestinians continue to exist, as a people, in the area, it will only be in the same way that the Native Americans, in the United States, continue to exist. But, Marxists, in the 19th century, had a duty to argue that there was no point in the Native American tribes continuing to fight against a hugely superior force. We certainly did not agree with the reactionaries who, during the 1980's, proclaimed that it was “better to be dead than red”, as they justified the potential for nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It is far better that Palestinians, today, are able to live, even if, all prospect of an independent state is gone, than that they should continue to die in their millions in search of a goal that is beyond their reach anyway.

The other bourgeois Arab states have, of course, welcomed Trump's ultimatum, because their hope has been, ever since the Abraham Accords, to benefit from the investment of US capital in the region, and creation of an economic zone, under the tutelage of US imperialism. Trump's insistence that Netanyahu apologise to Qatar for having bombed it, and infringed its sovereignty is part of that process. Meanwhile, Ben-G'vir and Smotrich appear to be being set up as patsies for Netanyahu, Trump, Biden, and the other war criminals. They are the ones that have already been sanctioned by western governments, even though it is Netanyahu that sits at the top of the genocidal regime, and who could not have implemented the genocide without the support of Biden, Trump, Sunak, Starmer et al.

Ben-G'vir and Smotrich have already condemned Netanyahu's apology to Qatar, and look set to potentially leave the government. But, they are likely to simply be replaced by centre-right politicians, facilitating a continuation of Netanyahu's rule, backed by Trump and other western leaders. Ben-G'vir and Smotrich may well, then, be sacrificed on the altar of the War Crimes tribunal in The Hague, whilst its not at all inconceivable that Trump and Netanyahu could be given that illusive Nobel Peace prize! All morally reprehensible and gut wrenching, but the world does not function on the basis of morals, but on the basis of power.

Moreover, if the lives of millions of Palestinians are saved by such a process, it opens the potential for the only real solution to the problems of the Palestinians, and everyone else in the Middle-East. That is a solution based upon class struggle, and not the illusory and reactionary basis of nationalism.

Starmer Recognises Existence of A Still-Born Corpse

Starmer's Blue Labour government has recognised a Palestinian state. He has done so, in conditions where the Zionist state, in Israel, has destroyed Gaza, and continues its policy of genocide against Palestinians, now, also, in the occupied West Bank. The Zionist state has made clear its intention of annexing, at least, the majority of the West Bank, which, in reality, means it will annex all of it, simply formalising its existing rule over it, and the continued violent eviction of the Palestinian population by Zionist settlers, backed by the IDF. In other words, Starmer's recognition of a Palestinian state, is merely, a grotesque, performative action, designed for domestic consumption, to recognise the existence of a still-born corpse.

At any point, in the last 78 years, following the creation of the Zionist state, in Palestine, and, thereby, the creation of the Israeli nation state, British and other governments could have recognised the existence of a Palestinian state. They chose not to do so so, despite, for at least the last 50 years, many of them claiming to be in favour of a two-state solution! A Palestinian nation state did, after all, already exist, unlike the Israeli nation state, which came into existence, only in 1947, by itself, seizing a large chunk of that Palestinian nation state, and violently evicting 700,000 Palestinians. A Palestinian nation state existed, prior to that, as numerous Al Jazeera documentaries have detailed. But, it was not an independent nation state. It was already a colonial state, under the control of some colonial power, notably the Ottoman Empire, prior to WWI, and, then, Britain.

As with most colonies, the question is not whether a nation state existed, or not, but whether that state was politically independent. A nation state exists, where there is a nation existing, within defined national borders, possessing a common language and customs, and an administrative infrastructure. All of that applied to Palestine, both under the Ottomans, and under the British mandate, just as much as it applied to, for example, India, under British rule. The existence of this nation state, however, does not imply its political independence, and the anti-colonial struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries, were precisely about the struggle for the independence of those existing bourgeois states, and not, about the creation of new, bourgeois nation states themselves. It is why Lenin, and the Comintern, distinguished between the national question, and the colonial question.

In terms of the national question, what was being discussed was the creation of new bourgeois states, as national minorities, within existing nation states, sought to separate. The position of Marxism, in relation to that, has always been clear, going back to Marx and Engels. We see it as a reactionary demand, which undermines the unity of the working-class as an international, not national class, and does so, by aligning the workers in each nation with their own rulers, against the workers of other nations. Whilst Marxists in the dominant nation, emphasise that they support the right of any oppressed national minority, to secede, freely, they, nevertheless, continue to argue against them doing so, i.e. argue against them exercising that right. In fact, as Marx set out in his 1850 Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, we oppose, also, the weakening of the political unity of the existing state, in the form of the introduction of federal structures, too, because that is the first step to the break up of the state itself, and is used by reactionary nationalist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces to divide the workers.

“The democrats will either work directly towards a federated republic, or at least, if they cannot avoid the one and indivisible republic they will attempt to paralyze the central government by granting the municipalities and provinces the greatest possible autonomy and independence. In opposition to this plan the workers must not only strive for one and indivisible German republic, but also, within this republic, for the most decisive centralization of power in the hands of the state authority. They should not let themselves be led astray by empty democratic talk about the freedom of the municipalities, self-government, etc. In a country like Germany, where so many remnants of the Middle Ages are still to be abolished, where so much local and provincial obstinacy has to be broken down, it cannot under any circumstances be tolerated that each village, each town and each province may put up new obstacles in the way of revolutionary activity, which can only be developed with full efficiency from a central point. A renewal of the present situation, in which the Germans have to wage a separate struggle in each town and province for the same degree of progress, can also not be tolerated. Least of all can a so-called free system of local government be allowed to perpetuate a form of property which is more backward than modern private property and which is everywhere and inevitably being transformed into private property; namely communal property, with its consequent disputes between poor and rich communities. Nor can this so-called free system of local government be allowed to perpetuate, side by side with the state civil law, the existence of communal civil law with its sharp practices directed against the workers. As in France in 1793, it is the task of the genuinely revolutionary party in Germany to carry through the strictest centralization.”

In his polemic with the Luxemburg and Pilsudski, in relation to Polish independence from Tsarist Russia, Lenin made clear the reactionary nature of that demand, in dividing the working class.

“See to what monstrous conclusions this monstrous logic leads, even from the viewpoint of the programme demand for Poland’s restoration. Because the restoration of Poland is one of the possible (but, whilst the bourgeoisie rules, by no means absolutely certain) consequences of democratic evolution, therefore the Polish proletariat must not fight together with the Russian proletariat to overthrow tsarism, but “only” to weaken it by wresting Poland from it. Because Russian tsarism is concluding a closer and closer alliance with the bourgeoisie and the governments of Germany, Austria, etc., therefore the Polish proletariat must weaken its alliance with the proletariat of Russia, Germany, etc., together with whom it is now fighting against one and the same yoke. This is nothing more than sacrificing the most vital interests of the proletariat to the bourgeois-democratic conception of national independence. The disintegration of Russia which the P.S.P. desires, as distinct from our aim of overthrowing tsarism, is and will remain an empty phrase, as long as economic development continues to bring the different parts of a political whole more and more closely together, and as long as the bourgeoisie of all countries unite more and more closely against their common enemy, the proletariat, and in support of their common ally, the tsar.”

(The National Question In Our Programme)

And, that point was made even clearer, by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in setting out that, as far as Marxists in the nation seeking to separate was concerned, they should emphasise their opposition to any such separation.

“The Social-Democrats will always combat every attempt to influence national self-determination from without by violence or by any injustice. However, our unreserved recognition of the struggle for freedom of self-determination does not in any way commit us to supporting every demand for national self-determination. As the party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations. We must always and unreservedly work for the very closest unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it is only in isolated and exceptional cases that we can advance and actively support demands conducive to the establishment of a new class state or to the substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the complete political unity of a state.”

(ibid)

With the colonial question, however, what is being discussed is not the creation of some new class state, but simply the political independence of an existing class state. Other than in the case of the French colonies, colonial empires did not incorporate the colony into the state of the colonial power. The state in India, for example, operated within India, under British colonial rule. There were no elections of Indian politicians to the British parliament, and so on. So, the question of the existence of a Palestinian nation state, is quite different to the question of whether this state was ever an independent state, which, clearly, it was not. The Palestinians, never reached that level of development to establish such an independent state, and, after, 1947, as the Zionist state arose, as itself, a colonialist and expansionist state, backed by powerful imperialist states, it took over that role.

The two-state solution was always a reactionary, bourgeois delusion, as I described 40 years ago, and was, in fact, used by imperialism to distract from any real solution to the problem. Ben-Gurion was clear what the acceptance of the wording of a two-state solution, proposed by the Peel Commission, actually amounted to for the Zionists. In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to "possession of the land as a whole". That is what has now played out. At the point that all prospect of an independent, Palestinian state has, now, been clearly demonstrated to be impossible, Starmer, and others, who have continued, and continue to back the genocide and destruction of Palestine, recognise its existence!

The Zionist Genocide And The Media

For 18 months, the Zionist state, in Israel, has been systematically carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians, on an industrial scale, using the latest weapons of mass destruction, provided, not just by its own huge military-industrial complex, but those of the even bigger imperialist states in the US, Britain, Germany, and other countries in the EU. There has been no secret about that genocide for those prepared to simply open their eyes and ears. The trouble is that many in the media, as well as the politicians in those western imperialist states chose to keep their eyes and ears firmly shut, and simply lie, when it came to the actions of their ally, just as many of them did, in the 1930's, when Hitler came to power, and, as well as smashing the German workers movement, also, unleashed the pogroms against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled.

Of course, not that you would know it, from the rewriting of history, since, but many of those, like Churchill, who welcomed the likes of Mussolini and Hitler, as the means for putting down the workers movement in Europe, and providing a buffer against the USSR, were themselves long-standing anti-Semites, and racists, so its no wonder that they didn't look too hard for the evidence of a developing genocide against Jews and others, taking place. At least, not until such time that they had already decided to go to war with Germany, for their own imperialist motives, and so, duping the workers into believing that it was a war against fascism, was greatly facilitated by suddenly recognising that Hitler and his Nazis were not at all nice people!

Anyone who cared to look at what Hitler was saying before he came to power, let alone after the German conservatives put him in power, as Chancellor, could have had no doubt about the racist, anti-Semitic nature of the Nazis ideology, and what they would do. But, for Churchill, and others in the western ruling class, that was not a major concern, at a time, when, in Italy, the workers had risen up, during the 1920's, to begin occupying the factories, and establishing workers councils, much on the lines of the soviets in Russia, before Mussolini smashed them; when, in Germany there had already been failed workers uprisings in 1918 and 1923, and where the Communist Party, backed by the USSR, mobilised hundreds of thousands of workers, and secured the votes of millions more, whilst the Social Democratic Party, which nominally still considered itself to be “Marxist”, mobilised nearly twice as many again; where Britain itself had seen the General Strike in 1926; where revolution had erupted in China, in 1927; where France had seen General Strikes and a Popular Front government containing Communists; and where a revolution was underway in Spain.

Indeed, when Hitler and Mussolini, together with Japan established the “Anti-Comintern Pact”, in 1936-7, the western ruling class must have seen their dreams coming true, of their battles against the working-class, and its still only bastion, in the USSR, being fought for them. Indeed, not only did Britain sign a naval agreement with Nazi Germany, but, when Hitler and Mussolini took an active role in supporting Franco against the elected Popular Front government in Spain, Britain, France and other western powers stood by, as German bombers flattened Guernica and other towns and cities. Only, when Nazi Germany, having achieved these advances, and, then signed its deal with Stalin, before moving on to initiate its plans to create a unified European state under the tutelage of the German Third Reich, did France and Britain begin to have concern over their own imperialist positions, and the US, began to see the potential for its own imperialist ambitions being challenged by a unified European state, also, in alliance with Japanese Imperialism.

So, there is considerable precedent for the imperialist powers, and their media turning a bling eye to the racist, and, indeed, genocidal actions of their allies, before suddenly discovering what everyone else could see, when it suits their own imperialist interests. As Owen Jones has documented from day one of the Zionist genocide against Palestinians, the Zionist regime has been extremely candid about its intentions to carry out systematic, war crimes and genocide, but what is more, its politicians, most of its media, and its own soldiers, via social media, have even documented the carrying out of those war crimes, the deliberate slaughter of Palestinian civilians, and the implementation of that genocide.

There has never been any excuse for anyone not knowing that the Zionist regime intended to undertake a genocide against Palestinians, and that, for the last 18 months, that is precisely what it has been doing. Yet, anyone that simply pointed to the readily available facts was branded an “anti-Semite”, in line with the Zionist interpretation of that term, enshrined in the IHRA definition. Thousands of Labour Party members were expelled on that basis, including, of course, Jeremy Corbyn, its former Leader, respected candidates were prevented from standing, and so on. In the US, even before Trump, the Biden administration sent in its own goons, often alongside Zionist thugs, to break up peace camps on university campuses protesting the genocide. Trump has only taken Biden's policy to its next step, by calling for foreign students, and even US citizens to be deported, now leading to his attacks on Harvard.

In Britain, Starmer himself argued that the Zionist regime “had the right” to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against Palestinians, by cutting off water and energy supplies and so on, and that position was supported by Emily Thornberry when challenged. So, why, now, has western media suddenly become critical of the Zionist regime, and its genocide against Palestinians? Why have even pro-Zionist politicians like Starmer, Lammy and others, now, suddenly, discovered what everyone else has known for 18 months, that the Zionist regime is committing war crimes and genocide? The simple answer is that Zionism has done the dirty work that was set for it, by imperialism.

As I set out more than a year ago, the grisly truth is that there is, now, no future for Palestine. The cruel deception that imperialism perpetrated, for more than half a century, supported by the social-imperialists, of the chimera of the Two Bourgeois States Solution, had finally been exposed for the fiction it was. Even more starkly, the even more delusional idea, put forward by petty-bourgeois nationalists, that the Palestinians were somehow going to get the support of other bourgeois Arab states, in the region, to be able to defeat the Zionist state, raze it to the ground, and create, in its place, a secular state of Palestine, which would have been a thoroughly reactionary project, even were it credible, has also collapsed, along with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Syrian state, and the power of Iran.

Set aside all of the Old Testament gobbledegook used by the Zionists to cover their desire to establish a Greater Israel, the real basis for such a desire is the quite simple, 21st century, materialist and economic reason that, in the age of imperialism, small states are no longer tenable. For more than a century, the minimum scale of production for capital has grown so large that it requires large single markets to sell into. The US, China, the EU are such large single markets, and its no coincidence that, across the globe, where smaller nation states exist, they have been forced to come together to form similar trading blocs, which are just a precursor, as with the EU, to forming a single political unit, a single, multinational state. The Middle-East is no different, and the role assigned to Zionism has been to forge such a bloc, combining with other pro-US states such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and so on, as set out in the Abraham Accords.

More than a year ago, I set out what the course of events was likely to be, and so it has been. The Zionist state has flattened Gaza, making it uninhabitable. It did that with the full blessing and backing of western imperialism, which, as seen earlier, in the case of the statements of Starmer and Co., fully legitimised, in advance, the implementation of that genocide. Similar supportive statements came from the Biden regime, and from politicians in the EU, and its member states, along with the weapons to do so. Alongside it, the Zionist regime has stepped up its pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank, and its further seizing of Palestinian land. Its latest statements on occupying Gaza, and annexing the West Bank simply confirm what they have been doing, and will continue to do. A few weasel words, and sanctions against some settlers in the West Bank, as against the Zionist regime itself, which the West continues to arm, is just window-dressing.

The Zionist regime, as I set out, would, also expand into Lebanon, where the much vaunted resistance of Hezbollah was also, seen to be a mirage. Finally, as I set out at the end of last year, and start of this year, the theatre of war would then move to Syria. That happened faster than I expected, as Assad's gruesome regime collapsed, allowing the Islamists to seize power, and also allowing the Zionist state to occupy further land in Syria, right up to Damascus. All of that has weakened Iran, and its remaining proxies in Iraq, and Yemen.

None of this can be seen separately from the growing global inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China/Russia, the other part of which is the inter-imperialist war in Ukraine, and the simmering tension in Taiwan and the South China Sea, where the US is using Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and others to perform a similar role, as that of Ukraine, but without, yet, open warfare.

In the Middle-East, China has made great advances in its relations with the Gulf States, and given the long historical relation between Russia and Iran, which, itself, now exerts influence in Iraq and Yemen, represents a challenge to US imperialism. The great power of China, as the US economy has declined in the last half century, is the ability of China to offer considerable economic advantages to those with whom it forms alliances. On the one hand, it sucks in vast amounts of materials and other primary products, and on the other, it can not only provide vast amounts of manufactured products, but it also offers large amounts of real investment in infrastructure, and industrial capital, whereas, the United States has only been able to offer the potential of increasing paper wealth in its expansion of fictitious capital, via inflated financial and property assets.

To catch up, the US has had to promote the idea of a Middle-Eastern economic bloc. In fact, prior to the Iraq War, many of the states of North Africa, were already being drawn in towards the EU, on a path similar to that which saw the accession of former Stalinist states in Central and Eastern Europe. Its not hard to see why the US would, again, see that kind of expansion of the EU, as a large, developed, single economy, now drawing in the oil and gas resources of the Middle-East, which it had seen as its own global reserve, for decades, as being a threat. The Iraq War, and the actions of Saudi backed Islamists in Syria, Libya and elsewhere, in 2011, put an end to those closer relations and economic developments in North Africa. Now, it is the US's proxy, the Zionist state in Israel that is the spearhead to forming such an economic bloc.

The main thing that stood in the way of that was the continuing conflict with the Palestinians. It was not the objections of the other bourgeois Arab states that presented a problem, they had shown themselves happy to reconcile not only with US imperialism, but also with the Zionist state itself. The problem was with the Arab masses in those states, many of whom are themselves grossly oppressed by the existing ruling classes. So long as the conflict with the Palestinians continued, and flared up, periodically, it would stand in the way of such normalisation. It also meant that, in those conditions, Iran would gain ground, further undermining the US friendly Arab regimes. So long as Hamas could launch another set of, ineffective attacks on Israel, to which the Zionist state could be counted on to over-respond, the Arab masses would demand that their rulers make no peace with Israel.

The Two Bourgeois States delusion had run its course, and the Palestinians had become even weaker, the divisions between Palestinian and Jewish workers much greater, as I had described forty years ago. The rational course of action, for Zionism and US imperialism, was to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, and that is what the Zionist regime has done. All those deluded petty-bourgeois nationalist, “anti-imperialist” souls that kept telling us that Zionism was losing, who looked to one group of petty-bourgeois nationalist saviours to rescue the Palestinians, saw their hopes dashed, though many of them continue to delude themselves in that way, as I wrote a few months ago. They are now clinging to the hope that the same western media that has covered up the genocide for the last 18 months, is, now, beginning to report it, and to more actively criticise the Zionist state, and that even some of those politicians like Starmer, Lammy etc., are now criticising the Zionist state rather than expelling members for having done so.

It is another forlorn hope. The western media and politicians are only offering up their criticism and crocodile tears, now, because Zionism has more or less completed the task set it. They are not even stopping the supply of weapons. Gaza is going to be occupied, and will not be rebuilt until the Palestinians have been physically removed from it. Trump's video, circulated a while ago, is only a ghoulish caricature of what lies ahead. The PA is already simply a puppet of the Zionist state, and of US imperialism used to quell any resistance of the Palestinians in the West Bank, against further settlements and annexation. The fate of the West Bank is also sealed. The only role of criticism of the actions of the Zionist state, is to further distance the West from any consequences of the war crimes and genocide cases being undertaken, and to exert leverage over the Zionist state in the forthcoming negotiations with the Gulf states and others, in relation to the normalisation of relations between them.

Zionist Football Thugs Riot In Amsterdam, Imperialism and Its Media Lie About It

Western mainstream media has been full of stories over recent days about “anti-Semitic” pogroms in Amsterdam. The King of the Netherlands came out to make a public statement about it referring back to the Holocaust, and the terrible role that the West European, bourgeois, ruling-class played in cooperating with the Nazi occupying forces in the slaughter of millions of Jews in their countries. Though, of course, he did not phrase it in that way!

All of this outpouring came at a time that Germany has just passed a law making any criticism of the Israeli government illegal, and defining it as being “anti-Semitic”. But, of course, as everyone now knows, who looks at social media, the reports of these “anti-Semitic” pogroms in Amsterdam, are all a lie, and the truth is the total reverse! It was Zionist football thugs, there to “support” Tel Aviv Maccabi, who engaged in well documented pogroms against local Palestinians and Muslims, attacking individuals, tearing down Palestinian flags from buildings, chanting their support for the genocide in Gaza, as well as disrupting the one minute silence in recognition of the victims of the flooding in Valencia.

That imperialism, and its media, should so overtly distort the truth is of no surprise. The Zionist state in Israel is the construct of western imperialism, and the puppet of US imperialism, without which it could not exist. Just as with Ukraine, and with Taiwan, it acts as the proxy of US imperialism, in the current phoney war between US imperialism and its subordinates, against Russia~China, and their subordinates. So, of course, that western imperialism is going to lie about the nature of the genocide being committed by its Zionist proxy, and cannot allow any criticism of it, even when its actions are, there, for all to see across the globe, in lurid living colour, and all its gore.

When that is reflected on the territory of that western imperialism, it is even more forced to lie about it, as happened with its attacks on protests by students on US campuses, against the genocide, for example, and as with the claims about “two-tier policing”, first raised by Zionists and their supporters in relation to the regular marches against genocide, months before the same refrain was raised by the likes of Farage, in relation to the racist riots that took place on an orchestrated basis. The flagrant lies told about the pogroms undertaken by the Zionist thugs in Amsterdam, last week, are simply a continuation of that.

It has been something long in the making, as the latest German legislation illustrates, which is the logical conclusion of the equation of Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism, and which, also, flows from the demand that the IHRA definition of Anti-Semitism be accepted. As part of that process, it was claimed that the IHRA definition did not prevent criticism of the actions of the Israeli government, but the reality is that the definition, with its examples, always did make any such criticism impossible, as has been repeatedly seen, even when that government has been engaged in the most obvious genocide against a people in living memory!

That genocide, and intensified attempts to exterminate the Palestinians over recent months is not inexplicable, but is part and parcel of the drive of the Zionist state, acting as the proxy of US imperialism and its NATO subordinates to create a viable Zionist state, “from the river to the sea”, as Netanyahu has proclaimed, which can act to, then, normalise relations with the other bourgeois Arab states, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and so on, who are already, themselves, clients of US imperialism, as set out in the Abraham Accords, to act as a regional politico-economic bloc, and to act against the growing influence of China~Russia/BRICS, and their proxies such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The levelling of Gaza, accelerated occupation and clearing of the West Bank, the flattening of Lebanon, are the visible expression of that strategy. In the coming months, as I wrote a while ago, the Zionist state, will move on to an invasion of Syria, annexing further territory to that it has held for decades in the Golan Heights.  In the last week, it has already started bombing Damascus.

Over the last few months, we have seen US imperialism, and its UK lapdog actively support Zionist genocide, and its annexationist drive, not just in the provision of weapons and armaments, but also in its involvement in the fighting, attacking the Houthis in Yemen, for example, and increasing its military presence, on a large scale, as well as shooting down Iranian drones and missiles fired in response to the Zionist attacks on Iran, and its embassy in Damascus.

So, of course, that imperialism, and its media will lie with alacrity when it comes, not just to the actions of its Zionist proxy and its genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, but also, when it comes to the actions of Zionists in undertaking pogroms in Europe and North America, even when those pogroms are undertaken against the citizens of those countries. Such is the idiocy of talking about “the people”, when it comes to nations that are actually comprised of different classes, with antagonistic class interests. The ruling class, and its state, in every country is not primarily concerned with the interests of its “people”, but only with their own naked class interest.

In 1982, the British government proclaimed that it was engaging in the Falklands War in defence of the interests of the few hundred Falkland Islanders. It was, of course, nonsense. They showed no such similar concern for the interests of the Chagos Islanders, for example, who they cleared from their homes, in order to establish the US military airbase on Diego Garcia! When it comes to the rights and interests of citizens in every bourgeois state, they always come second to the interests of its tiny ruling class, and, in the age of imperialism, those interests are, themselves, always inseparable from the interests of the global ruling class.

Indeed, the same applies in relation to the interests of Jews, which are subordinated to, and sacrificed in order to defend the interests of Zionism. Zionism is, itself, one of the principal sources of anti-Semitism. Zionism could not exist without Anti-Semitism, and so, Zionism has always had a need to ensure the perpetuation of it. Even so, the central argument of Zionism that Jews required their own bourgeois state, in order to avoid anti-Semitism, and a repeat of the Holocaust, has visibly failed to convince Jews themselves, across the globe. Only 40% of Jews live in Israel, as many live in the US. That is in contrast to every other nation, where around 90% live within the particular nation state. Across the globe, Jews have found that their interests are served, not by moving to Israel, despite all of the incentives provided by Zionism, and its allies to do so, but by integrating into the society in which they reside, and particularly, for Jewish workers, by allying themselves with the working-class, and labour movement, in those societies.

That poses an existential threat to Zionism, whose ethno-nationalist ideology, requires an acceptance of the idea that no such alternative is credible. So, when Jews do not accept that racist ideology, as increasingly Jews across the globe, including the US, have done, they are defined as being not really Jews! Zionism insists upon the identity of Zionism and Judaism, and is consequently Anti-Semitic, towards all non-Zionist Jews, denying them, even legitimacy. Indeed, Zionism has more in common with fundamentalist Christian Zionists than it does with world Jewry, and it is amongst those Christian Zionists, not just in the US, but in Europe too, that it has exerted its greatest influence, as with the support for Trump et al.

It is no surprise, therefore, that amongst the Zionists and pro-imperialists in the labour movement, such as the AWL, this is also reflected. At no time in the past would it even have been considered that socialists would support the idea of demanding that workers stand shoulder to shoulder with fascists and open racists, as they confront some other group of fascists and racists. Yet, that is what the AWL have done, as they demand that workers, including Muslim workers, whose family members are being exterminated in Israel/Palestine, by Zionists, must stand with Zionists in Britain, to oppose the fascists that engaged in the riots of the last few months! They wrote,

“If ‘Zionist’ here means ‘anyone who sees a connection with Israel, or identifies with the Israeli state in some manner’, then this graphic failed to encourage ‘community self-defence’ – in fact, it was actively opposing it.”

Well, if ever there was a case of making Palestinian or Muslim lives matter less than even the chance that Zionists, or those that continue to support the genocidal acts of the Zionist state, and feel a connection with it, as it undertakes that genocide, might simply be offended, that is it. It not only epitomises the AWL's Zionism, and pro-imperialism, but is also the natural consequence of the policy of lesser-evilism, and of the descent of the left into the liberal/social-democratic/Stalinist politics of the Popular Front, as against the Marxist-Leninist policy of the United Front in action.

So, its not only the pro-imperialists of the AWL, for example, that adopt that same position of standing by and allying with the fascists of the Azov Battalion, and Right Sector, but the rest of the Ukraine Solidarity Committee. The same is seen in the AWL's stance in respect of the US Presidential Elections, which pitted two reactionary, anti-working, class candidates against each other, both of them supporting the genocide in Gaza, both of them having supported the attacks of the US state, alongside US Zionists, on students and others peacefully protesting that genocide.

In 1979, the AWL's predecessors in the International Communist League, argued that socialists could not simply call for a vote for Labour in the election of that year, given its own bourgeois politics, and yet, recognised that many millions of workers would want to oppose the Tories. They established the
Socialist Campaign for Labour Victory, on precisely that basis, calling on workers to oppose Labour's actual election manifesto, and instead to support Labour candidates standing on its alternative platform. Yet, the bourgeois politics of Labour in 1979, look progressive compared to the reactionary politics of Harris/Biden and the US Democrats in 2024. Nevertheless, in stark contrast to 1979, the AWL called on US voters to back the anti-working class, Harris, and , thereby, her continued support for the genocide in Gaza, simply on the basis of a lesser-evil alternative to Trump.

They wrote,

“Socialists should from now until November support the Harris-Walz ticket, not because they represent a significant progressive alternative, but because it gives us four more years in our democracy — such as it is — to organize social and political movements to fight for the working class and the oppressed and raise the ideal of democratic socialism.”

And, indicating the extent to which they have abandoned the revolutionary tactic of the United Front, in favour of the Stalinist Popular Front, they even perform their usual trick, as epigones, of distorting the words of Trotsky to justify that position. They wrote, quoting Trotsky's opposition to the madness of the Third Period, and suggesting that US socialists should, thereby, have voted for Harris,

“The wiseacres who claim they see no difference between Bruning [the conservative who led Germany before the Nazis took power] and Hitler are in fact saying: it makes no difference whether our organisations or whether they are destroyed … If fascism comes to power, it will ride like a tank over your skulls and spines … Only a fighting unity with social democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, communist workers; you have little time to lose.”

As usual, just a look at what Trotsky writes, here, exposes the lying nature of the AWL's politics. What Trotsky says here, is not that German workers should have VOTED for Bruning as a “lesser-evil” to Hitler, far from it. What he argues is that fighting the fascists required not dropping your own revolutionary politics and calling on workers to support their class enemies, in the election, but sharply demarcating yourself from them!! Elsewhere, Trotsky wrote, setting that out,

"Fascism is a form of despair in the petit-bourgeois masses, who carry away with them over the precipice a part of the proletariat as well. Despair as is known, takes hold when all roads of salvation are cut off. The triple bankruptcy of democracy, Social Democracy and the Comintern was the prerequisite for fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism."

(Phrases and Reality, in Writings 1938-9, p 19)

In the quote that the AWL epigones give, Trotsky, even spells it out, not a passive, lesser-evilist capitulation, and throwing in your lot with the electoral fortunes of the imperialist bourgeoisie, but, an active “fighting unity with social democratic workers”. That is the tactic of the United Front of march separately, strike together. It is the position that Trotsky set out in The Action Programme for France, for fighting fascism, not by supporting or giving any credibility to the sham of bourgeois-democracy, but of building a fighting working-class opposition to the fascists, and their attempts to destroy even those bourgeois rights and freedoms that bourgeois-democracy claimed to provide for workers.

“In the struggle against fascism, reaction and war, the proletariat accepts the aid of petty-bourgeois groupings (pacifists, League for the Rights of Man, the Common Front, etc.), but such alliances can be only of secondary importance. Above all, the task is to secure the united action of the working class itself in the factories and the workers’ neighbourhoods of industrial centres. The alliance of the important workers’ organizations (Communist Party, Socialist Party, CGT, CGTU, Communist League) will have no revolutionary value unless it is oriented toward the creation of:

1. Committees of struggle representing the mass itself (embryo soviets);

2. Workers’ militia, always united in action, even though organized by various parties and organizations.

To reinforce the struggle of both the workers and peasants, the workers’ committees should establish close collaboration with the peasant committees. Constituted as organs of popular defence against fascism, these workers’ alliance committees and these peasant committees must become, during the course of the struggle, organisms directly elected by the masses, organs of power of the workers and peasants. On this basis the proletarian power will be erected in opposition to the capitalist power, and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Commune will triumph.”

US/NATO imperialism, and its agents in the labour movement, such as the AWL, is engaged in a phoney war against the rival imperialist bloc of Russia~China. In Ukraine, that war is not even at the stage of phoney war, but of an active shooting war. In the Middle-East, Zionism is conducting a war against the clients of Russia~China, on behalf of US imperialism, whilst fulfilling its ideological commitment to create a Zionist state “from the river to the sea”. Consequently, US imperialism, and its agents within Europe and the labour movement can brook not even the slightest criticism of the actions of the Zionist regime, as it pursues its genocide. Hence the insistence on the IHRA definition, and on the German legislation, the fake anti-Semitism, witch hunt in the Labour Party, the blanket use of charges of “anti-Semitism” against any criticism of the genocide, and the outright lies told by politicians an the media, both in relation to that genocide in Gaza, and in relation to its transfer on to European and American soil, by the supporters of Zionism, and their pogroms against Muslims, as seen in Amsterdam.

It is forced into not just lying by omission, in its reporting of the genocide, but active lying and distortion, as the deletion of the Sky News report indicated, and as has been even more blatantly seen in the use of the video footage of pogroms conducted by the Zionist thugs in Amsterdam, which were then presented as being attacks on them, and for which, they have had to make apologies when challenged by the teenage videographer!

US/NATO Is At War With Iran and Russia

The US and its subordinates within the NATO imperialist bloc is already at war with Iran and Russia. As Von Clausewitz noted, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” This is, also, another means of saying that, war, like everything in the real world, has a birth, maturity and death, and is not just some single event, occurring at a given moment, even if we could define what a moment is. Every such “moment”, is, itself, a process. Just ask a Mother, about the “moment” of birth, for example, which can last for hours of painful labour.

The current genocidal war being undertaken by the Zionist state, in Israel, against the Palestinians and other Arab populations in Lebanon and Syria, can only be viewed as either that Zionist state being the tail that wags the US imperialist dog, or else that the US imperialist dog is wagging the Zionist tail, whilst pretending that the tail has a mind of its own. The former version of events, is, of course, the familiar, anti-Semitic trope that, somehow, a small number of Jews, control the levers of power across the globe. It is nonsense, and has always been nonsense.

For one thing, when Ronald Reagan was President, and the Zionist state invaded Lebanon, a single phone call from Reagan to the Zionist Prime Minister, the former terrorist, Menachem Begin, telling him to stop, was enough to have the Zionist state end its operations within 24 hours. Of course, on that occasion, it was not some pang of moral conscience that led Reagan to act, but was the fact that, the Saudi King had, in turn, rang him to say that he needed to end it, as the pictures appearing on screens of Arab civilians in the refugee camps being slaughtered by the Zionists, was leading to their own populations rising up, and demanding they act. That was at a time when the US, and its imperialist allies were still highly dependent on the oil flowing from the Gulf, and the memory of what happened in 1973, when that flow was stopped.

What is different this time, is that no such calls are coming from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, and the US, as with other imperialist states is much less dependent on that oil, anyway. Technology has massively increased the efficiency of energy use, so that oil plays a much smaller role in relation to the growth of economies; the US has, also, again as a result of technology, increased its own oil production, to again become an oil exporter. So, the Gulf states have less leverage over the US, even if they wanted to use it, which, they do not seem to want to do, anyway. But, more importantly, and connected to the last point, as I have set out before, the reality is that the Zionist state is acting, in this current war, as the instrument of US/NATO strategic policy.

The idea that the US/NATO has not sanctioned, and helped plan, the current genocide in Gaza, and its extension into the West Bank, and, now, into Lebanon is laughable. At each stage, every time the Zionist state has breached the supposed “red lines”, set out purely for public consumption, by Biden, the response has been not only to retrospectively sanction and support those actions, but to further endorse them by providing the Zionist war machine with even more weapons to “get the job done”, as Trump so honestly and openly described it. When the “international community”, and so called “rules based order”, in the form of the United Nations, and its courts, the ICJ and ICC, ruled against the actions of the Zionist state, and its genocide, the response of US/NATO imperialism was not to back it up with a demand that its rulings be upheld, but was, instead, to attack the UN, the ICC, and ICJ, and, indeed to impose sanctions upon them, and their judges!

The Zionist state, in its genocide in Gaza, is implementing, directly, the wishes of US/NATO imperialism, and no other rational conclusion can be drawn, given the dependence of the Zionist state on US imperialism. To argue otherwise is simply to repeat those old anti-Semitic tropes, about a mysterious power of Jews to control the US.

One argument that has been used is that, even if the US did stop its arms supplies to the Zionist state, it has a large stockpile, and its own arms industry. Even were that a legitimate argument, it is no reason for the US not having, then, stopped those supplies months ago, when its publicly pronounced red lines were breached. The very fact, of announcing the ending of such supplies would have sent a powerful message to the Zionists. Indeed, even the pathetic, token suspension of just 8% of UK military supplies to the Zionist state, was enough to have the Zionists protesting vociferously, even though the UK supplies only a small proportion, compared to the US.

Moreover, the argument is false, anyway, because the US has had to continually increase its supplies to the Zionist state, over the last year, as it has been rapidly depleting its stocks, and, although it does have its own advanced arms industry, that still relies on the supplies of components and so on. Finally, that argument is false, when considered from the standpoint that, if the US really wanted to uphold international law, in the way it claimed to do, when it intervened in Serbia, Iraq, Syria and Libya, it would, also, have put military teeth into the UN resolutions, rather than itself vetoing the resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire, and so on. In fact, so far from doing that is it that it will not allow the Lebanese state to have its own air defence systems to defend itself, let alone allow the Palestinian state any such means of defence against Zionist aggression. So much for its much vaunted two bourgeois states solution.

The Zionist state has continually been prodding Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran with the support of US/NATO imperialism standing behind it, as part of a conscious strategic plan. In all these countries, Iran has proxies such as Hezbollah. The strategic plan of US imperialism, implemented by its Zionist proxy is to force Iran itself to engage in a direct attack on the Zionist state in Israel, which will provide the justification for an all-out war between the Zionist state and Iran, which will provide, also, the justification for US/NATO imperialism to attack Iran openly. It is the same strategy used in Serbia/Kosovo, where the US used channels, via its, then, ally Osama Bin Laden, to promote the criminal gang of the KLA into an insurgent group stirring up ethnic violence between Serb and Albanian Kosovans, so as to force Serbia to intervene, which then gave the pretext for the US/NATO to attack Serbia.

It is the same strategy used in Eastern Europe, and, now, also in Ukraine, and through which US/NATO imperialism, in the words of former NATO Secretary-General, George Robertson, goaded Russia into invading Ukraine, just as it had previously done, in 2008, in Georgia, with its attacks on ethnic Russians in South Ossetia, as part of the continual expansion of NATO Eastwards, in order to surround Russia. Another current example, is the use of Taiwan by the US/NATO against China.  The strategy is, again, the same. Either Russia responded to the goading, or it allowed itself to be surrounded by the hostile forces of US/NATO imperialism, opening it up, immediately, to further interventions, amongst its own ethnic minorities, to destabilise it, and stir up separatist tendencies, and communalism, and, in the longer-term, to its salami slicing and dismemberment.

Similarly, the Zionists have continually stepped up their goading of Iran, attempting to draw it into a significant attack on Israel that would justify a qualitative increase in the conflict into a regional war, and justification for overt US/NATO intervention. But, at each stage, Iran has limited its responses to Zionist aggression, such as its bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, with very measured attacks.

The US/NATO/Zionist strategy is salami slicing the Iranian proxies in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon and Syria away from it, goading it into coming to their support, and a significant strike on Israel itself. If it does not come to the defence of its proxies, it will appear weak, and will, indeed, become weaker, but, nor will it save itself either. At some point, no matter how much Iran sits on its hands, the US/NATO and its Zionist proxy is coming for it. They will engineer some event, real or as a false flag operation, that they will pin on Iran, and use it as justification. One reason for that, now, is not only that set out previously, of the need to eliminate the Palestinians to establish a Greater Israel, but is, also, the fact that Iran seeing the current developments, is likely to step up its nuclear programme, and may test a nuclear weapon in the next three months. At that point, all plans for invading Iran are off.

A Measure of Justice

Joe Biden has described the murder of Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah, by the Zionist state as “A Measure of Justice” for the many people killed by Hezbollah. These four words are extremely revealing. It again, illustrates the thoroughly hollow and sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and its commitment to the rule of law, and an international rules based system. It required, perhaps, the US, as a society that, itself, arose on the back of religious intolerance on the part of the Pilgrim Fathers, and progressed by violence against Native Americans, and the stealing of their land, and which for much of its history has been based on gun law, and which, today, still routinely murders its own citizens by legal execution, to be so forthright.

But, let us set aside the US's penchant for murdering its own citizens, via legalised execution – a barbaric practice, long since abandoned by most civilised societies in Europe – which, of course, results in a disproportionate number of its poorer citizens, and black and Latino citizens, being executed, because, not only do they not have access to the fancy, expensive lawyers that the rich do, but also that their conditions of life are far more likely to place them in the kinds of violent situation, and desperation that will leave them sitting in the dock in the first place. Yet, even if we set aside this barbaric practice of legalised murder by the state, bourgeois-democracy, and the rule of law requires the idea of “innocent until proved guilty”, at least in legal systems based upon English Law, such as exists in the US.

Biden seems to be confusing “Retribution”, the concept of “an eye for an eye”, contained in the Old Testament, with “Justice”, the concept that everyone should have their day in court, and be proved to have committed a crime. Of course, the notion of “Justice”, of “The Rule of Law”, is itself a sham, even if we, also, set aside the points above, about the fact that it is always disproportionately the poor and oppressed that are placed in the position of breaking the law, and so on.

A look, for example, at the way the law worked in Britain, in the 19th century, showed a clear class bias, even in the way it was framed. Take the contract of employment. If an employer broke such a contract, this was treated as a civil matter, requiring the worker to take the employer to court, and sue for breach of contract. If the worker broke the contract, this was treated as a crime, and the worker was prosecuted by the state, and sent to jail! This kind of class bias is contained in the operation and formulation of the law in every bourgeois society, and legal system.

And, of course, although, in theory, bourgeois democracy, and its rule of law, claims to operate on this basis that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and is entitled to their day in court, so that justice can be seen to be done, that never happens, in practice either. The most obvious example of that is the many poor people, often black and ethnic minority people, who are routinely treated as being guilty until proven innocent. Just look at the way bourgeois society and politicians deals with the question of immigration, for example. Not only does the narrative in support of immigration controls, place all immigrants in the condition of, in some way, being a problem, who must, therefore, be kept out of the country, rather than, the reality, which is that immigrants are a fundamental means of societies meeting their needs for labour, and who also, enrich the cultural development of the society, but, also, this same narrative, then, makes all those in the society, who look like “immigrants”, the target of suspicion.

That is codified in laws, which lead to disproportionately larger numbers of black and ethnic minority citizens, being subject to repeated stop and search by the police, for example. And, of course, at its worst and most blatant, it means that large numbers of black people and other ethnic minorities are simply shot dead by the police, guilty or innocent, without any trial, any concept of justice, or of being innocent until proven guilty, any concept of the right to a fair trial. That is rampant across the US, but it is also seen in Britain, as with the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, for example. But, Britain was also guilty of implementing such policies of state murder on a systematic basis, against members of the Provisional IRA, for example, despite claiming that the IRA were simply criminals, rather than that they were engaged in a war.

In the period since then, especially as drone technology has developed, both the US and UK, have routinely murdered their political and military opponents, without any recourse to the idea of a fair trial, even a fake, bourgeois fair trial, or the idea of being innocent until proven guilty. When Russia does that, by using poisoned umbrellas, and so on, it is, of course, branded as barbarous, and flouting the norms of the international order, which just shows the extent to which both are guilty of the same crimes, and yet, in the West, those crimes are justified, as being, somehow, “a measure of justice”!!

When the British state murdered those members of the IRA, it did so up close and personal. That is not the case when the US and UK, or its proxies, such as the Zionist state, in Israel, now, carry out such actions. The use of drones to murder opponents, let alone the use of high-powered bombs and missiles, do not target and kill just those they are aimed at. Biden's claim that the murder of Nasrallah, which involved the widespread bombing and destruction of large swathes of not just Beirut, but also other cities such as Tyre, by its Zionist proxy, is like Britain had gone after Martin McGuinness, by dropping huge amounts of bombs on Belfast, and justified it by claiming it had intelligence that he was there, and that, taking him out brought “a measure of justice” to those killed by the IRA!

What is the corollary of that? Well, if we look at what actually happened both in Northern Ireland, and in Lebanon, its instructive. Before 1969, when Britain sent in its troops to the streets of Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA was an insignificant force. Its predecessor, the Official IRA, had abandoned armed struggle, in favour of bourgeois-democratic politics. When, that same bourgeois-democratic politics, undertaken in the form of the Civil Rights Movement, demanded equal political rights for Catholics, something that should not even have to be demanded given the basis of bourgeois-democracy, the Protestant community, which had been given privileges by Britain, in order for it to act as its own agent in Ireland, much as Britain envisaged the role of Zionism in the Middle East, when it set out The Balfour Declaration, rebelled, violently.

The British troops on the ground, in 1969, were supposed to be there to prevent that violence, and were welcomed by Catholic communities, in that light. But, it did not take long for the real purpose of their presence to be felt, which was to suppress the Catholic community itself, and its demands for equal political rights. It was that, emphasised by events such as Bloody Sunday, of again, the cold blooded murder of unarmed Catholics by the British Army, which soon drove Catholics into the arms of the petty-bourgeois nationalists of PIRA, which they saw as their defenders, and whom they provided support for within their communities. 

This of course, is the inevitable consequence of nationalist ideology, and national struggles, as against class struggle. A national struggle, be it one to establish some new bourgeois nation state, fought against some existing oppressor nation state, or a straight forward war between two opposing nation states, inevitably, breeds even greater nationalism, and nationalist antagonism between the masses of the two opposing states. It is why Lenin, argued that, as Marxists, we are opposed to such struggles for the creation of new bourgeois states, we are generally, opposed to the idea of national self-determination, and rather in favour of the abolition of national borders, as part of our struggle for the self-determination of the working-class, and its maximum class unity across borders.

"As the party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations. We must always and unreservedly work for the very closest unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it is only in isolated and exceptional cases that we can advance and actively support demands conducive to the establishment of a new class state or to the substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the complete political unity of a state."

The same is seen with Hezbollah, and Zionism. The narrative being given by Zionism and its imperialist sponsors is that the Zionist state was led to invade Lebanon, because of the role of Hezbollah, much as later, Britain, claimed that its military occupation of Northern Ireland, its use of concentration (internment) camps, where people were imprisoned, for years without trial, was in response to the actions of PIRA, whereas, PIRA only grew, because of the actions of the British Army in Ireland after 1969. The reality is that, prior to the invasion of Lebanon by the Zionist state in 1982, when it intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, in order to try to install a right-wing, Maronite-Christian, regime, Hezbollah did not exist. It was created, in a similar manner to the PIRA, in response to the external invasion, and as a means of defence of a local community.

As Marxists, we neither support the petty-bourgeois nationalism of groups like Hezbollah or PIRA, but nor do we give any ground or support to the forces of imperialism and Zionism in their hypocritical attacks on them, because it is the actions of that same imperialism, and of Zionism that creates the conditions in which those petty-bourgeois nationalist organisations spring up in response to them, and their brutal oppression of the communities who turn, in desperation, to such groups.

Of course, the further hypocrisy of US imperialism is that its own history is one in which it resorted to the same terroristic methods, in its struggle for independence from British Colonialism, in the 18th century. And, even more obviously, and recently, the Zionist state, itself, was created by the terrorists of the Irgun and Stern Gang. Irgun terrorist, Menachem Begin, as Prime Minister of Israel, was the one that organised the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, that led to the siege of Beirut, which was only turned back a a result of the creation of Hezbollah, as a resistance movement to it.

Similarly, prominent Stern Gang terrorist, Yitzhak Shamir, was Prime Minister of Israel, between 1983-4 and 1986-92. US imperialism, as with British imperialism has no problem with terrorists, so long as they are “their” terrorists, or, as in the case of people like Nelson Mandela, after they have ceased being a part of the threat to imperialism, and have been absorbed by it.

Whilst Marxists have no reason to support petty-bourgeois nationalism, or terroristic acts by such organisations, which are generally counter-productive, ineffective, and also act to drive divisions between workers, we do understand, why, in the absence of large, revolutionary workers parties, to lead such struggles, the natural response of oppressed peoples is to lash out by whatever means, and to be driven into the hands of these reactionaries. In considering, our sense of justice, we do not at all equate the violence of the oppressor, particularly the violence of a huge well armed oppressor such as the Zionist state, with its even bigger sponsor US imperialism standing behind it, with the violence of the oppressed that responds to it.

But, if we take Biden's words, what might we then conclude. To murder Nasrallah, US imperialism, using its Zionist proxy has flattened a large swathe of Beirut, and is continuing with that slaughter across Lebanon, as it has done in Gaza. In Gaza, the official figures show more than 40,000 people killed, whilst the real figure, even before we consider those about to die from disease, famine and so on, is more like 100,000. No serious person is in any doubt that the vast majority of those killed are innocent civilians, with the figures themselves showing around 70% are women and children.

The same kinds of figures are being seen in the attacks on Beirut, by the Zionist state. So, what, then, could Biden say, if the families of those innocent civilians in Beirut, and in Gaza, were to look at the murder of their relations at the hands of Zionist state terror, backed by and made possible by US, UK and EU imperialism that provides the bombs, missiles and planes, and were to draw the same conclusion. What Biden's statement means, is that those Palestinian and Lebanese families could look at any assassination of Netanyahu, Biden/Harris/Trump, Starmer and so on, and conclude that, at least, it gave them too, “a measure of justice”. That is what the sham of bourgeois-democracy, and of its rules based order really comes down to, not order and justice at all, but simply an application of mafia-style vendetta.