Smash Zionist Genocide and Apartheid!

Socialist Action

The eyes of the world are on Palestine.  After 7 months of a genocidal bombardment and invasion of Gaza, the Zionist state has killed over 35,000 people, including 22,000 children and women, leaving 78,500+ injured. Zionist pogroms in the West Bank massacred hundreds.  Currently, the Israel Occupation Force is bombing and waging a ground assault in Rafah where over a million refugees are huddled. This horror did not begin with the October 7 Gaza prison break. The current slaughter and famine were preceded by 76 years of brutal Occupation and mass incarceration of Palestinians. The corporate obsession with Palestine arises from the vast reserves of oil in the Middle East. Capitalist energy giants seek to control the resources of the world. They try to crush any nation that stands in their way.  Washington tried to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela, and it moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, proclaiming that the Zionist Occupation is permanent. To that scenario we emphatically say NO!  Free Palestine!  Student encampments at universities across Canada and the USA bravely decry academic and corporate complicity with genocide.  The Yemini Houthis show how all Arab and Muslim states, indeed all governments, can and should block commerce with the Zionist state and its economy.

The Palestinian people are in the forefront of resistance to world imperialism. They did not choose this role. It was thrust upon them. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Western powers carved up the Middle East, just as they did Africa and Asia earlier. In the face of rebellion by the Arab masses, they sponsored a military fortress in the region. They exploited the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust for their ends. But the fact remains: Israel is a colonial settler state. It is an outpost of imperialism in the Arab East. Zionism began as an extreme bourgeois nationalist minority movement. It ran counter to the strong socialist and internationalist traditions of Jews in the Diaspora. Theodore Herzl, a non-religious Jew, and founder of Zionism, gained sponsors in France, Britain, even Czarist Russia. Later, Canada, the USA, and Christian Zionists embraced the colonial project. The Stalinist-ruled USSR voted at the United Nations in 1948 for the partition of Palestine that led to the establishment of Israel. The Zionist state was founded on a big lie: that Palestine was a land without people for a people without land. Today the Palestinian people visibly refute that lie.

Socialist Action, as part of the world Trotskyist movement, opposed the creation of the Zionist state over 76 years ago. We oppose the so-called two-state solution – a cruel cover story for permanent racism and ethnic cleansing. Likewise, the fanciful, utterly reactionary notion of a socialist federation of Middle Eastern states would keep an exclusivist Jewish fortress intact. The truth is: freedom for Palestine is impossible if it is occupied and divided. And as for the Jewish Question, there is no solution under capitalism. The only solution is world socialist revolution. The precondition is support for national liberation struggles, which only the working class and poor farmers can lead all the way to victory. The ruling class in Canada is covered in blood, allowing weapons and technology manufactured here to flow to Israel, investing in Israeli Apartheid, severely limiting the immigration of Palestinian refugees. Most Canadians recognize Israel is guilty of systematic oppression and war crimes, and call for sanctions. But party leaders and major media obscure this. Shamefully, Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh equates the waving of a Palestinian flag in front of a Toronto hospital with anti-Semitism.  Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles shamefully expelled Sarah Jama from the NDP caucus of Ontario MPPs for demanding a ceasefire without denouncing the Palestinian resistance. We demand: Zionist Ceasefire Now!  Increase the funding of the UNRWA. End the Occupation! Smash the Zionist Apartheid state! For Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. For the right of all refugees to return to their homes. Lift the Siege of Gaza! For a Democratic and Secular Palestine for all its residents: Muslims, Jews, Christians, and atheists! Disarm the nuclear powers, starting with the USA and Israel. Abolish NATO. From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!