Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 21.01.2024
On January 14 Socialist Struggle, the section of the ISA in the Zionist state published an article titled :”Strike for “everyone for everyone”, the end of the war and against the bloody government”. This article by Ben Horin was published after the hearing of the petition of SA accusing the Zionist Apartheid state of genocide. However, the article does not mention in one word the trial against Israel instead of supporting the petition. Instead of it they say:
“The shock of the many hundreds of Israelis killed in the massacre led by Hamas forces on 7/10 was used cynically for a nationalist incitement campaign, based on security demagoguery, to build political support for a “war on Hamas”, which was not intended and will not bring a safer reality for millions of Israelis through extreme repression, destruction and mass bereavement for millions of Palestinians. Moreover, the horrors created by the Israeli right-wing government’s decisions in Gaza not only provoked a global protest in themselves, but also tilted public opinion around the world towards hostility towards Israeli society as a whole” [1]
Why should not the masses be hostile to a society based on settler colonialism against the entire social structure of Israel? No doubt by saying, “but also tilted public opinion around the world towards hostility towards Israeli society as a whole”. Indirectly and cowardly defend Israel against the accusation of genocide.
To prove genocide, it is necessary to prove intention to commit genocide and the Petition of SA has proven the intention by quoting Netanyahu and Galant -the minister of war of Israel. However, Socialist Struggle denies the intention.
“The horrors of the attack in the Strip include glaring and increasing elements of genocide, even when the political logic of the Israeli right-wing government at this stage does not seek to maximize the systematic extermination of the population, the scale of killing and destruction among the Palestinian population is not an “accident”. Against this background, the mass protest wave continued throughout the region and the world” [2]
As it is well known Biden is pressuring the Israeli government to agree to the two states solution. The Zionist state armed to the teeth on 80% of Palestine and less than 20% for a Palestinian disarmed Bantustan and what Socialist Struggle has to say?
“A radical solution requires an end to the blockade, occupation, and national oppression controlled by millions of Palestinians, and an end to the rule of Israeli capital and imperialist wars – an alternative of socialist change, which will allow a horizon for regional peace, based on equal rights to existence, self-determination, and living in personal security and well-being”.
Since when Trotskyists are calling for the self determination of Imperialist and apartheid society? Lenin and Trotsky called for self- determination only of oppressed nations.
Lenin wrote:
“The right of nations to self-determination means only the right to independence in a political sense, the right to free, political secession from the oppressing nation. Concretely, this political, democratic demand implies complete freedom to carry on agitation in favor of secession, and freedom to settle the question of secession by means of a referendum of the nation that desires to secede. Consequently, this demand is by no means identical with the demand for secession, for partition, for the formation of small states. It is merely the logical expression of the struggle against national oppression in every form. The more closely the democratic system of state approximates to complete freedom of secession, the rarer and weaker will the striving for secession be in practice; for the advantages of large states, both from the point of view of economic progress and from the point of view of the interests of the masses, are beyond doubt, and these advantages increase with the growth of capitalism. The recognition of self-determination is not the same as making federation a principle. One may be a determined opponent of this principle and a partisan of democratic centralism and yet prefer federation to national inequality as the only path towards complete democratic centralism. It was precisely from this point of view that Marx, although a centralist, preferred even the federation of Ireland with England to the forcible subjection of Ireland to the English” [3]
Trotsky wrote:
“… The South African Republic will emerge first of all as a “black” republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites, or brotherly relations between the two races – depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. But it is entirely obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain imprint on the state” [4]
So, while the masses are chanting: “Palestine free from the river to the sea” the Socialist Struggle is saying no you are wrong we must grant the Zionist a state (to repress the Palestinians)
Down with the Zionist apartheid state!
The Zionist leaders and soldiers are guilty of genocide!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] https://socialism.org.il/maavak/2024/01/%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%AA-100-%D7%93%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%AA
[2] Ibid
[3] V. I. Lenin The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination THESES
[4] Leon Trotsky Letter to South African Revolutionaries (April 1933)