War, conflict, and genocide are all consequences of capitalism. Periodically it means indiscriminate massacre of men, women, and children like those recently committed in Israel by the terrorist organisation Hamas. It brings with it retaliatory violence by the Israeli government with punitive air strikes and the shelling of the Northern Gaza Strip which was already a desperate and poverty ridden slum housing some 1.1 million people.
The response by the Israeli government to the Hamas massacre of 1400 men women and children was predictable. Israel drew upon the support of the United States and other western governments to take as much brutal retribution as they saw fit even if it meant killing the elderly and children, displacing millions already in poverty before entering the Gaza strip causing more death and destruction.
A biblical “Eye for and Eye”? On the 28 October the Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu invoked the Old Testament tale of the Amalek, a rival nation that the Israelites were told to exterminate in an act of revenge (“slay both men and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”- Samuel 15:3 quoted in Mother jones 3 November 2023)). And on 5 November, the Israeli government minister Amichai Eliyahu was suspended by Netanyahu for suggesting using a nuclear strike on Gaza (Politico 5 November 2023. In Israel’s imposition of “collective punishment” more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry (Guardian 14 November 2023). A powerful military force continually firing missile and bombs at an impoverished strip of land containing 2.3 million people, nearly half of them children.
Not that Israel are alone in using the strategy of bombing cities. Russia did so in Syria. Following Russia’s entry into the Syrian war in 2015, Russian fighter jets bombed both military outposts and civilian areas. Russia launched a sweeping bombardment campaign to help al-Assad eradicate nearly all the opposition forces and turn the tide to regain control of much of the country. Of the United States air strikes in Iraq, Patrick Cockburn reminds us:
“During the siege of Raqqa by the US-led coalition, the then US defence secretary promised a “War of Annihilation” against IS, but it turned out that the ones who got annihilated were the civilian population whichnumbered about 300,000…”
(the i newspaper October 28, 2023)
Under capitalism there is no safe space from war and violence. Israeli workers cannot find a safe place under capitalism. Jacobson writing in the ‘Observer’ (15 10 2023) said that Israel should be considered a lifeboat in a sea of antisemitism picking up those in distress. It is the wrong metaphor. Israel can be likened to an aircraft carrier in a sea of hostile nation states whose landing strip accommodates the interest of US capitalism who considers Israel as a useful buffer in the protection of oil routes against countries like Iran and those states with whom it shares borders. It can also provide an alternative trade route to Europe in competition with China Belt and Road initiative.
When Biden visited Israel, it was to show support to a country who is important strategically to the oil interests of the United States. He gave the green light for more death and destruction as did the Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Already the US has carried out air strikes against two weapons and ammunition storage facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Biden draws upon “the Carter Doctrine” a policy against the Soviet Union proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. Iran, backer of Hamas, has now replaced the Soviet Union.
And this is exactly what the US are doing. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the strikes were in response to recent attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups. There is a real threat that the war in Gaza will spill over to adjoining countries.
The Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and his shadow government also gave support to the Israel government to do what they liked in the Gaza strip even if it meant breaking “international law” and leading to the death of thousands of Palestinian children. The Labour Party has always been the Party of war and Starmer is no different to his predecessors like Atlee and Blair. Starmer wants to cravenly follow the US and the EU by not calling for a “cease-fire” but he desperately needs Muslim votes. He is faced by resignations in his own party and defied by several shadow ministers. How can a craven political opportunist square the circle?
The Palestinians, on the other hand, drew on support from the capitalist left in the West like Jeremy Corbyn on time supporter of Irish Nationalism, Iran, and the Palestinian diaspora. Demonstrations took place supporting Palestine, flags were waved, nationalist fervour displaced class interest and cases of antisemitism increased dramatically. Speakers at a demonstration in London blamed Israel and “United States Imperialism”. Some claimed that Hamas was a “resistance movement” giving it “unconditional support” (see article by Mostafa Omar in the SWP pamphlet “Palestine: Resistance, Revolution and the Struggle for Freedom”) being sold at the demonstration. Nothing was said about capitalism and capitalism’s cause of war. Nothing was said about oil interests, strategic interests, and trade routes. There was no criticism of Iran and its theocratic dictatorship nor of Syria or Qatar. Socialists do not want to see established a Palestinian state but world socialism.
The conflict in the Middle East, displayed the usual poison and politically ignorant display of nationalism either in the form of Zionism or the struggle for a Palestinian state.
Poison because nationalism divides the working class. It pits worker against worker. It nullifies class consciousness and an awareness that the problem is not other workers but capitalism; a world divided into conflicting nation states in which war is a natural outcome of competition for raw materials, trade routes spheres of strategic interest and the private ownership of the means of production, land, raw resource, factories, distribution point communication and transport systems. This also includes the oil under the Gaza Strip. These are all issues over which the world’s working class has no interest.
And ignorance because while workers wave nationalist flags, chant out inane slogans and support the governments of another class, they will not be able to organise politically and democratically to replace the profit system with socialism. Socialists have solidarity with the working class in Israel and Gaza. This solidarity come out of a shared class interest where workers are exploited as a class and have an urgent necessity to replace capitalism with socialism. We take no sides in capitalism’s disputes. We say to the Israeli government and to Hamas and its backers like Iran “A Plague on both your houses”.
Under capitalism the working class are excluded from access to what they need in order to live lives as human beings. The class struggle and poverty exists in both Israel and in the Gaza strip. According to the National Insurance Institute’s 2021 data, 21% of the Israeli population lives in poverty. In Gaza the poverty is worse. According to UNICEF, more than half of Gaza’s just over 2 million people live in poverty, and nearly 80 per cent of the youth are unemployed. “This year, humanitarians need US$510 million to provide food, water, sanitation and health services to 1.6 million people.”
Poverty is something associated with being working class, not the wealthy who own the means of production and distribution. We have no interest in the capitalist class of either territory nor the governments who serve their interests. According to Israeli daily business newspaper ‘The Marker’, Israel has seventy-one billionaires as of 2021, with one of the highest per capita rates in the world, at 6.7 billionaires for every million people. If the wealthy are well known in Israel, then what of the ruling class which is Hamas? Here is a picture of the Hamas leadership painted by Matthew D’Aancona in the New European (19. 10. 2023”):
“Many of the leaders of Hamas live in affluent exile in Qatar. The video clip las week of Ismail Haniyek, the organisation’s political leader, and 12 of his henchmen in their smart suits in his air-conditioned office in Doha, celebrating the murder of children and rape of young Israelis, spoke for itself.”
Hamas imposed authoritarian rule on the Palestinians in Gaza, preventing dissent and opposition to their rule. They are also a “death cult”. As Ghazi Hamad, a member of the terrorist group’s leadership, said on Lebanese television on October 24, the initial massacre was “Just the first tome and there will be a second, a third, a fourth. Israel is a country that has no place on our land” (The European 17 November 2023). Hamas will never remove Israel from the Middle East and Israel will never eradicate the violent terrorist response to its occupation. Socialists oppose the terrorism of Hamas and the state terrorism of Israel. Only the establishment of socialism by a united world working class can guarantee the end of national conflict through the abolition of nation states, removing artificial borders and making the means of production and distribution in common under democratic control. There is no other way.
