Stop the genocide of the Palestinian people! Defeat Israel! Kick the US/UK forces out of the Middle East! Victory to the resistance!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 16 January 2024, www.thecommunists.net
1. Since January 11, US and British warships and jets have fired 150 missiles against the Houthis (officially called Ansar Allah). Furthermore, the White House decided to send 1,500 additional troops to Iraq and Syria. This marks an important escalation because, until now, these two Western powers confined themselves to indirectly support Israel – their main ally in the Middle East – with military and financial aid. Now, the Anglo-Saxon imperialists are entering the war directly. We can therefore speak about the transformation of the conflict from a Zionist War on Gaza to an Israeli-American War against Arab peoples. It has become a regional conflict between the supporters and the opponents of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
2. While Washington and London were, on its own, not eager to start another war in the Middle East – they still remember their humiliating defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan – they felt obligated to launch these attacks against Yemen for three main reasons:
a) Soon after the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, Ansar Allah started a series of courageous attacks in solidarity with the resistance – both against the territory of Israel as well as against Israel-linked cargo ships. Since Asian imports and exports account for about a quarter of Israel’s total foreign trade and transit mainly via Red Sea routes, these actions have been highly effective. They resulted in a substantial decrease of Israel’s maritime trade in the Red Sea with revenues of Israel’s port of Eilat dropping by more than 80%.
b) Furthermore, the Houthis’ solidarity activities have also substantial repercussions for global trade as the Red Sea and Suez Canal are key trade routes. Nearly 15% of goods imported into Europe, the Middle East and North Africa are shipped from Asia and the Gulf by sea. Nearly 21.5% of refined oil and more than 13% of crude oil go through the waterways. However, because of the insecure situation, the world’s largest shipping companies have either paused activities in the Red Sea or rerouted their cargo ships, increasing costs for container from $1,500 in November to $4,000 in December 2023. As a result, shipping via the Red Sea has declined from 500,000 containers per day in November to about 200,000 currently.
c) In addition, there is also a political-strategic reason for the Western escalation of the conflict. The small forces of the Palestinian resistance – a broad coalition of petty-bourgeois Islamist, nationalist and left-wing forces, led by Hamas – have successfully fought the Zionist invaders for more than 100 days. This in itself is a victory given the fact that they are numerically as well as military-technologically inferior to the Israeli army which was considered the fourth strongest army in the world. This heroic struggle of the Palestinian resistance has destroyed the image of Israel’s “invincibility” and freed the Arab masses from fear from the Zionist monster. This is a turning point in history, all the more because this development is combined with the emergence of an unprecedented anti-imperialist and pro-Palestine mass movement in the heartlands of Western imperialism itself. This development scares the Anglo-American imperialists and pushes them to a war against the Arabs.
3. At the same time, tensions are also increasing at Israel’s northern front as Hezbollah has waged a low-intensity war against Israel since the Zionists started their genocidal war in Gaza. This conflict has substantially escalated in the last two weeks as Israel targeted and killed two high-ranking commanders of the Lebanese militia.
4. Add to this the regular bombardment of U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria by pro-Iranian militias in protest against Washington’s support for the genocide in Gaza. In response, the U.S. killed a commander of the Harakat al Nujaba group. This has intensified Iraq’s opposition to the presence of U.S. troops in the country and Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani promptly announced that his government would end the presence of American troops in Iraq and close all US military bases.
5. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) reiterates its unconditional support for the heroic Palestinian resistance. Likewise, we fully side with other forces fighting the Israeli or the Western imperialists. Such an approach should be also applied to Iran in case of a direct confrontation with the Zionist enemy or its Western allies. In all these conflicts we advocate the military victory of the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian forces and the defeat of the Zionist and imperialist enemies.
6. The RCIT has always emphasized that such support for the practical struggle does not mean that we lend political support to the program of these forces. This is particularly true in the case of the Lebanese Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. The former was and still is a key ally of the tyrant Assad who – with support of Russian imperialism – brutally suppresses the Syrian people. And the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq played an ultra-reactionary role in repressing the mass protest in Bagdad, Basra and other cities in 2019.
7. Hence, while we side with all these forces in their confrontation with the Zionist and the Western enemy, we also continue to support the Syrian rebels in Idlib or the Iraqi youth protesting against the government. Likewise, we are in solidarity with the workers, women, youth and national minorities in Iran who suffer from oppression by the Mullah regime.
8. The current situation is characterized by the following glaring contradiction. While all Arab states denounce Israel’s genocide, their rulers refuse to take any meaningful action like boycott, sending weapons to the Palestinians or waging war against the Zionist monster. Even Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian forces in Iraq have only reluctantly and with limited forces entered the war against the Zionist state. Contrast this with the opinion of the “Arab street”: a recently published poll found that 69% of Arabs stand with the people of Gaza and Hamas. A further 23% stand with Gaza but oppose Hamas. The survey also showed that 92% believe the Palestinian cause is an issue for all Arabs and not just the Palestinian people, up from 76% in 2022. Likewise, a majority wants the Arab governments to stop normalization with Israel and to impose a boycott on the Apartheid state.
9. Socialists must call on the Arab governments to cut all relations with Israel, to boycott the Zionist state and its Western allies, and to send weapons to the Palestinian resistance. As we are moving to a regional war against Israel and the U.S., the Arab regimes must be pressured to mobilize its military to stop the Israeli and Western aggression and to support the Palestinian resistance by any means necessary. However, it is clear that workers and oppressed can not trust the Arab regime in any way since they are interested only in money and power and implement any progressive steps against Israel only under massive pressure from below.
10. The struggle against Zionism and imperialism therefore goes hand in hand with a struggle against the Arab regimes – a revolutionary struggle that started already in 2011. Hence, the RCIT combines its support for the resistance struggle and putting demands on the Arab regimes with calls for the independent mobilisation of the popular masses. When the Arab workers and oppressed rise up, organise themselves in popular councils, arm themselves and overthrow the corrupted rulers, they will shatter the Middle East with an anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist tornado which will sweep away the Israeli Apartheid state and kick out the American military bases. It such a revolutionary process that can destroy the Zionist state and create a single democratic and secular Palestinian state from the river to the sea with cultural and religious rights for the Jewish minority. Such a revolutionary process – a new and successful wave of the Arab Revolution – needs to result in the creation of workers and poor peasant republics in the Arab countries as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. As part of such a revolutionary upheaval of the Arab masses, it will be possible to break a progressive section of the Israeli-Jewish workers and youth away from Zionism. The RCIT calls all socialists to join us in building a Revolutionary World Party committed to the cause of the liberation of the Palestinian peoples and all other oppressed peoples!
Victory to the Palestinian resistance! Defeat Israel!
In any confrontation: Support the Houthis and other resistance forces against Israel and the Western imperialists!
Expel the U.S.-led naval force from the Red Sea! Close all imperialist military bases in the Middle East!
For a global boycott movement against the Terror and Apartheid state Israel!
International Bureau of the RCIT
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We refer readers to a special page on our website where all RCIT documents on the 2023 Gaza War are compiled, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/compilation-of-articles-on-the-gaza-uprising-2023/.
For our latest statement on the solidarity actions of the Houthis in the Red Sea see: UN Security Council Legitimizes US-Led Naval Force in Red Sea to Attack the Houthis, 10 January 2024, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/un-security-council-legitimizes-us-led-naval-force-in-red-sea-to-attack-the-houthis/