Following the massacre of Israelis by the terrorist organisation known as Hamas on October 7, 2023, the Israeli government set about a systematic destruction of the Gaza strip killing thousands of men, women and children under the pretext of destroying Hamas and rescuing hostages.
The comprehensive obliteration of homes, hospitals and infrastructure carried out by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), has led to hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza (47% of the population are estimated to be under 18 – http://www.npr.org) facing this summer the deliberate prospect of famine, malnutrition and disease. With poor or non-existent health facilities children with loss of limbs, shrapnel wounds and internal injuries will die. Hospitals have been deliberately targeted and left in ruins. Genocide by any other name.
And capitalism’s history is punctuated with genocide. Gaza will not be the last act of genocide caused by the profit system. The United Nations supposedly exists to prevent genocide but it is a toothless organisation, Countries like the United States, China, United Kingdom and Russia carry their political machinations to further their interests and their interests alone. And the US use the UN to give Isreal the free hand to maim, kill and destroy.
It is ironic that the word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphaël Lemkin in 1944 in his book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe” in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jews and others during the Holocaust.
The United Nations propagates the myth that there is something called International Law imposed on all nations when the reality under capitalism is “might is right”. This has been proven by both the actions of Russia in its war with Ukraine and by Isreal with its systematic destruction of Palestinians. And if international law like the Geneva Convention cannot be enforced, it is not worth the paper it is written on. Powerful capitalist countries just do what they want.
While the IDF were killing women and children in Gaza, the Israeli government took the chance of attacking Iran’s nuclear programme under the guise that it was an “existential threat” to Isreal. Isreal defended their action by stating that they did not want Iran to have a nuclear bomb and as a consequence tip the political and military balance in their favour.
Israel has nuclear war capability and like those other countries who possess the nuclear bomb, the United States, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, they all enjoy a powerful deterrent against being attacked. In the Russian-Ukraine war, Russia’s nuclear capability has checked much NATO would like to do militarily in the region, as it did in the wars in Serbia and Afghanistan. In Serbia, for example, Nato’s campaign involved 1,000 aircraft with 10,000 air strikes while against Russia in the Ukraine conflict, nothing.
In the attack on Iran, Israel was joined by the United States who targeted its 14-ton GBU-57“bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s three nuclear facilities: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Whether it was a successful operation no one really knows. It is probable that it may have put the Iranians back a few months despite trump’s assertion that it was a “spectacular military success (‘Only one in three nuclear sites were severely damaged’ by US air strikes, – the i Newspaper 18 July 1925). If Iran developed enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, Isreal and the United States would have to think twice about attacking the country. The nuclear bomb would act as a practical deterrent for Iran as it does for other capitalist countries who have nuclear weapons.
In July of this year Isreal extended its military operations to include attacking Syria “justifying” its actions as protecting the Druze minority on its border. Isreal’s aim is to create weakened countries adjoining its border like Syria and Lebanon, in order to ensure the balance of power in the Middle East is tilted in the favour of Isreal and no one else, a convenient proxy state for the United States and other Western countries.
And it is not hard to find the reason why the West is so supportive of Isreal. The region has oil necessary for commodity production and exchange for profit. While oil is important for capitalist production, Western countries will use Isreal as a convenient proxy state. The West need the oil and Isreal, armed to the teeth with Western armaments and technology, is a willing insurance policy. It is not in the interest of the West to see Iran tilt the balance in its favour. While oil and oil routes is needed for capitalist production so we will have the “forever wars” in the Middle East.
The Middle East’s history of oil and the foundations for war for “black gold” began with the discovery of oil in Persia (now Iran) in 1908. After the Second World War Western companies initially secured exploration and extraction rights with Middle Eastern Nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia thus regaining control over their oil resources. Ever since the end of the Second World War the Middle East has been a war zone with proxy states afforded protection from countries like the United Stats and Russia. The region holds more than half the world’s proven oil reserves. The United States favoured Ireal and has built up one of the strongest military units in the region; a useful proxy state to protect its oil interests in the Middle East. It is not in the United States interest for Iran to develop nuclear capability.
Capitalism’s wars with its death and destruction on the working class are all about protection of resources, trade routes and spheres of strategic importance. They are of important interest to the capitalist class and its political representatives. What they are is of no interest to the world’s working class who own nothing but the ability to sell their ability to work for a wage or salary. Workers have no country, they have no ownership of resources like oil and they have no private property and means of production and distribution to protect.
The interest of all workers, whether they live in Israel or Iran or in the Gaza Strip is to realise that they have a common interest to replace the profit system with socialism. Socialists have no interest in either Israeli or Palestinian nationalism. Only the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society will end war in the region. And this requires the world’s working class to take political and democratic action as a growing global socialist movement.
