Today we commemorate nine years since the murder of thirteen Palestinian citizens of Israel by the Israeli oppression forces. This murder was but a link in a long chain of massacres committed by the Zionist armed forces. They started even before the establishment of the state of Israel, continued with dozens of massacres during the establishment of the state of Israel (the most well known is the DirYassin Massacre), and after the establishment of the state of Israel in Qibiya, Kafr Qasim, Land Day, refugee camps Sabra and Shatila (by Israel’s accomplices) and in Gaza last January when the Israeli army has massacred 1400 Palestinians.
These massacres are not coincidental but characteristic of the nature of the state of Israel as a settler colonialist society, which expropriated the natives, robbed them of their land and property, turning millions of them into refugees.
These massacres will continue and Israel’s wars against the peoples of the region will not stop as long as the state of Israel – the front post of imperialism in this region – exists. Israel very much resembles South Africa during Apartheid, former Rhodezia, and Algeria under colonialist rule. However, it is worse than those countries because other settler colonialist societies were exploiting the local super-cheap labor, while the Zionists expelled the majority of the Palestinians in 1947-8 in order to establish a Jewish majority state and they are willing to preserve this majority at the cost of oppressed Palestinian lives and the blood of other peoples in the region. Much like the Crusaders of old, the Zionists find themselves knee-deep in blood.
Israel’s rulers are capable of committing their crimes because of the political, military, diplomatic and financial support they get from other imperialist forces, especially the U.S. and Europe.
The Palestinian people has the right to self-determination in all of its land from the sea to the river, which includes the right of return to all of the refugees and their descendants. With the return of the refugees the Palestinian people will become the majority in occupied Palestine and the Jews will become a minority. Thus, under the banner of Zionist democracy, the very principles of democracy are being negated. Unlike them, our demand, among others, is the establishment of a general assembly which will include all the residents of Palestine, including the ’67 occupied territories, the refugees and their descendants.
The right of the settler colonialists to self-determination cannot co-exist with the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. One must choose between siding with the oppressors or the oppressed. The Internationalist Socialist League, which is the nucleus of a revolutionary working class party in Israel/Occupies Palestine, has chosen to side with the right of the oppressed people to self-determination.
We are well aware to the significant obstacles standing in the way of the victory of the Palestinian people. Firstly, the state of Israel is very powerful militarily. It is armed with the most advanced tools of massacre. Secondly, it is massively supported not only by imperialists but also by Arab rulers who collaborate with the imperialists so that they could maintain their position in the hierarchy of exploitation and oppression.
Thirdly, the Palestinian people does not have the appropriate leadership capable of defeating the Israeli war machine. The Palestinian Authority is collaborating with Israel against the Palestinian masses. Hamas’ leadership, despite its militant rhetoric, has declared numerous times that it is willing to accept the ’67 borders of Israel and in fact has given up on the Palestinian right of return. It is forced to fight Israel only because the Israeli rulers are trying to eliminate it.
In order to save Israel, the ruling classes of the imperialist states and their minions in the region, both bourgeois and reformist leaderships, are advocating the establishment of a Palestinian Bantustan mini-state alongside imperialist Israel.
In order to maintain the Zionist Apartheid state, distract public opinion from the Gaza massacre and the incapability of the Israeli war machine to defeat the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance (in Gaza), the Israeli rulers, supported by other imperialists, are planning to impose severe sanctions and military action against the 3rd world country of Iran. A military action could lead to a devastating war in the region, while the Israeli rulers are hiding safely in the underground bunkers they dug for themselves, in which they trust to protect them from nuclear fallout.
We are opposed to sanctions against Iran. Everything should be done to stop this war. However, should it break, the interests of the world working class would lie in the military defeat of the imperialist side and the defense of non-imperialist Iran. Every military defeat imperialism suffers is a boost to the power of the world working class. We took this position also during the second War of Lebanon, the Fatah Israeli-backed offensive against the elected Hamas government, and during the recent Gaza massacre. Today we see that imperialist Israel’s failures are boosting the hostility of the working class throughout the world towards the state of Israel.
However, one must differentiate between siding with oppressed peoples during an imperialist war, and supporting its bourgeois leadership that will sooner or later betray the masses. We, as a nucleus of a revolutionary organization of the most conscious working class, continue our opposition to the entire super-structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This republic was established as a result of a counter-revolution lead by the Mullahs supported by reformists like the Tudeh party, which abducted the workers’ revolution of 1979. We support the masses who fight against this regime, calling at the recent demonstration of September the 18th (Quds day) in Tehran: “Stop the killings in Iran and Palestine, Iran has become Palestine.” At the same time we do not support Mousavi and his reformist bourgeois partners who are a non-divisible element of the Islamic republic. In order for the Iranian masses to win the war planned for them by Israel, their working class must overthrow the bourgeois state of Iran through a socialist revolution. In order to do that, the working class must build its own revolutionary leadership.
The working class is a massive force with a revolutionary interest even when it lacks a revolutionary leadership. In Egypt the working class has shown a fraction of its strength during the cotton industry strikes. Today in Iran the working class is developing a political consciousness molded by the despotic rule of Ahmedinijad. Whenever the state’s forces of oppression show up to break their strikes they respond with the call: “Death to the dictator!”
We have noticed that trade unions from South Africa, through England and Greece, to Australia, are calling, under rank-and-file pressure, to struggle against Israel. The Jewish workers in Israel, however, support their state even though they are exploited by it. This is because they are privileged in comparison to the workers of the region and especially the Palestinians on whose land they had settled. Unlike workers in other countries, there is no possibility that the Jewish working class as a whole will develop a revolutionary proletarian consciousness through economic struggles. However, we are hopeful that a portion of the Jewish working class will understand that it should side with the Palestinian and the regional working class, since Israel is nothing but a death-trap to the Jews.
We believe that the only solution which will grant the Palestinians their right to self-determination, is a working class revolution in the entire region which would establish a federation of workers’ states including a Palestinian workers’ state from the river to the sea. The Jews residing in this state will enjoy security, the right to advanced Hebrew culture and the freedom from discrimination. They will not enjoy the right to self-determination which they will use to establish a new imperialist state.
In order for the working class to win it must establish revolutionary parties in every country, organized in a world revolutionary party, i.e. the International. These parties could only be established through the accumulated political experience of the working class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and its minions.
For humanity to live imperialism must die!
Stop the U.S./Israeli threats and provocations against Iran, now!
Re-create the Fourth International – the world party of the socialist revolution!
Imperialists, out of Iraq and Afghanistan!
For a Palestinian workers’ state from the river to the sea!
For a socialist federation of the Middle East!
The only solution is a working class revolution!