Category Archives: Palestine

Anti-Imperialism, China, Palestine, U.S.

Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!

Photo Above: Tens of thousands of people again marched in Sydney on 3 December 2023 to protest Israel’s genocidal attack on the Palestinian people of Gaza.
Photo credit: Dean Sewell

Long Live the Palestinian Resistance! Don’t Be Fooled by the Powerless UN Vote! The Australian Regime is Still Participating in Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza. 

Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!

Resist Imperialism through Workers Struggle and
Supporting the Rise of Socialistic China!

13 December 2023: Israeli forces are continuing to massacre children and other Palestinian civilians. They have already seized large parts of Gaza. Yet the far-right Israeli regime and their Washington senior partners want to subdue through terror Palestinian people even further. That is why the U.S. vetoed last week’s UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. Now, the UN General Assembly has just voted overwhelmingly for a ceasefire in a non-binding resolution. The only governments to oppose or abstain on the vote were those of the U.S. and some of its most obsequious allies, like Britain, Lithuania and the Ukrainian regime that is waging the U.S.’s proxy war to subdue Russia. Also refusing to back a ceasefire are a majority of those regimes that are so servile to imperialism that they recognise the rogue, Western-propped up Taiwanese regime rather than the Peoples Republic of China as the legitimate rulers of China. These include the regimes ruling Paraguay, Guatemala and Nauru as well as those running Palau and Marshall Islands, both of which are Pacific countries where the U.S. has control of their defense arrangements under a colonial-style “Compact of Free Association”, as they do with Micronesia, which also failed to vote for a ceasefire. Also refusing to support a ceasefire are most of the openly far-right governments, like those running Italy, Hungary and Argentina.

Among those that voted for last night’s ceasefire resolution were not only governments known to have a pro-Palestine position – like those of Russia and socialistic China – but even some of Israel’s staunchest backers. This includes the liberal government of Canada, the right-wing government of New Zealand and the Labor government of Australia. With much of the world horrified by Israel’s heinous cruelty, these governments knew that maintaining public opposition to a ceasefire would expose their own brutality and the hypocrisy of their claims to be guardians of “human rights.” With Australia’s capitalist rulers (and “like-minded” ruling elites) only too aware that dishonestly wielding the club of “human rights” is a vital component of their strategy to achieve their main foreign policy goal – to crush socialistic rule in China – they felt compelled to gloss up their soiled “human rights” credentials by voting for a ceasefire. However, although the Australian government had previously opposed a ceasefire, their recent vote should not be seen as a weakening of their support for Israel’s occupation. Indeed, the Australian regime also voted for a failed U.S. amendment that put the blame for the suffering on Hamas. After the vote, Australian regime representatives decried that the U.S. amendment – that aimed at whitewashing the brutality of Israel’s 75 year-long occupation – was not included in the resolution.

What most makes the Australian government’s UN vote such a cynical, window-dressing ploy is the fact that the Australian ruling class continues to militarily back Israel. Not only does the Australian regime maintain military ties with Israel, the Pine Gap U.S.-Australia joint spy base is playing a MASSIVE role in Israel’s assault on Gaza. Operated by U.S. and Australian military personnel, the base near Alice Springs downloads information from U.S. spy satellites about targets in Gaza which are analysed and passed on to Israel. This enables the Israeli military to pinpoint its missiles and artillery so that they strike actual human targets rather than empty land or structures. In other words, the Albanese Labor government is doing more than supporting genocide. Through hosting and jointly operating Pine Gap, they are actually committing genocide! And they continue to do so! No symbolic vote for a non-enforceable UN resolution will change that! Just like Netanyahu and Biden, Anthony Albanese and foreign minister Penny Wong are war criminals.

Above: The U.S.-Australia joint spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs. Receiving data from U.S. spy satellites monitoring the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, U.S. and Australian personnel at the base then analyse the data and pass on to Israel the geolocations of targets. This enables Israel to pinpoint air and artillery strikes to ensure that Israeli missiles, rockets, shells and bombs hit human targets rather than vacant space or empty structures. Below: Apartment blocks – and no doubt many of the Palestinian people living in them – are destroyed by yet another Israeli air strike on Gaza City.

Photo credit (above photo): Felicity Ruby
Photo credit (below photo): Adel Hana/Associated Press

Stand with the Palestinian Resistance!

The huge pro-Palestinian rallies have had some impact in making even Israel’s staunchest backers want to appear like they are concerned for Palestinian civilians. In Sydney, the weekly protests have had some powerful Palestinian and progressive Jewish speakers. The highlight has been many of the speeches given by Aboriginal activists. At last Sunday’s (December 10) Sydney protest, the Aboriginal speaker was especially impressive as he insightfully connected the oppressions of Aboriginal and Palestinian people and attacked capitalist rule in Australia and its window-dressing schemes. We in Trotskyist Platform encourage people to join in these weekly Sydney pro-Palestine marches organised by the hard-working Palestine Action Group (in which the Socialist Alternative group plays a prominent role). We also condemn those nominal defenders of Palestinians who are discouraging participation in the protests. After all, those seeking to demoralise activists by saying that their participation is “meaningless” are only playing into the hands of the likes of Albanese, Peter Dutton and premier Chris Minns, who have all sought to sabotage the PAG-organised actions.

At the same time, the longer that this Israeli onslaught goes, the more that the current flaws in the political strategy of the PAG limits the impact that the protests can have. Thus, while many of the slogans that rally organisers have promoted  correctly take an unambiguous stance in support of the Palestinian resistance – like “Intifada, Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!” – some take an “even-handed” position. Chief among the latter is the call for “Ceasefire Now!” To be sure, many defenders of the Palestinian people call for a “ceasefire” because what they are seeing now is a one-sided slaughter. When they demand “ceasefire”, they mean that Israel should stop firing. However, as last night’s UN vote by the likes of Australia and France shows, when Western imperialist regimes call for a “ceasefire” they mean something very different. This was made clear after the vote. Foreign minister, Penny Wong, reiterated Australia’s support for “Israel’s right to defend itself” and Australia’s UN representative, James Larsen, ranted that “Hamas must be defeated and dismantled.” In plain speak that means that they are calling for supporting the Israeli military, which is precisely what the Australian ruling class are doing! Australia’s capitalist rulers want a “ceasefire” on Israel’s terms and are working to strengthen Israel’s military campaign so that any “ceasefire” will end up as favourable to Israel as possible. They, however, worry that further Israeli murder of civilians could provoke such broad resistance that Israel and its occupation ends up weakened. Indeed, a big part of why the Australian – and several other imperialist – regimes are now calling for a ceasefire is because they believe that Israel has already sufficiently strengthened its occupation over these last two months: by landing blows against the Palestinian resistance and by annihilating Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. We must not shout slogans that can accommodate such anti-Palestine agendas! And we certainly must not pressure the Palestinian resistance to “ceasefire”! Instead, we must give 100% support to the Palestinian resistance. Hail the courage of Palestinian resistance forces and their Yemini Houthi allies! Socialistic North Korea and other countries providing arms to the resistance: increase your supply of arms! Other non-Western countries: start sending arms to Palestinian fighters – especially to those secular and leftist groups that are taking part in the Hamas-led resistance! Let us demand: Israel out of Gaza! All Israeli troops and racist settlers out of all of the West Bank. For the complete right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants!

Take Mass Action against the Australian Ruling Class
that is Participating in Israel’s Onslaught!

Another problem with the “Ceasefire” chant is that it makes pro-Palestinian rallies come off as half-neutral. That makes the actions less offensive to the Israeli regime and its backers and thus far less likely to compel them to retreat. It will actually take an enormous amount to compel the regimes that facilitate Israel’s terror to back off. The U.S. imperialists prop us Israel in order to have a reliable enforcer of their predatory interests in the strategically-located and oil rich Middle East. Australia’s capitalist rulers in turn back the Israeli attack dog of the USA, because they want U.S. power to be upheld. For it is U.S. power that underwrites Australian capitalists’ plunder of South Pacific and southeast Asian countries. And it is U.S. might that Australia’s rulers hope will squeeze socialistic China so tightly that she will no longer be able to obstruct imperialist exploitation of poorer countries through mutually beneficial cooperation with them. Against such over-riding self interest, we can only compel Australia’s ruling class to retreat from their participation in the Gaza slaughter if we can seriously threaten their class interests. The PAG-organised rallies are not yet doing this. For the overall line of the actions – some particular excellent speeches excluded – while rightly very critical of the Australian government, do not brand the Australian ruling class as an enemy. Thus, when the Australian ruling class see rallies mainly opposing their Israeli and U.S. allies they are angered but not politically frightened. However, if they were to instead hear tens of thousands of people saying not just “Down, Down Israel, Down, Down USA” but shouting, “Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!”, they would be truly alarmed. And, thus, far more likely to back off!

What will especially frighten the Australian ruling class is workers’ political strike action in support of the Palestinian people. With working class people suffering under falling real wages, soaring rents and unaffordable prices, there is a definite opportunity to combine opposition to capitalist profiteering by the ruling class with opposition to its participation in the massacre of Palestinian people. We support the attempted port blockades – with union approval – of Israeli Zim shipping. At the same time, we say that blockades and industrial action would be far more effective if they directly target the interests of the Australian capitalists and their regime. After all, Israel is far away. The amount that its ruling class would be frightened by action in Australia targeting Israeli companies is limited. In contrast, if actions hurt the profits of big-time Australian capitalists at home or caused their regime’s operations to be disrupted, Australia’s ruling class would be terrified. Let’s build workers industrial action – supported by pro-Palestine pickets – to target the Australian ruling class and demand: Stop Pine Gap’s participation in the Gaza massacre – Close Pine Gap! No Australian arms exports to Israel. End Australian military ties to Israel! The fact that huge numbers – including many compassionate, intelligent youth spurred into political activism for the first time – have joined the weekly rallies can provide a crucial stepping stone for building the type of actions needed. But the step up must be made! Through the placards that we carry and the leaflets that we distribute at the protests, Trotskyist Platform has been working hard to turn the rallies into a Palestine movement that is unequivocally opposed to the Australian ruling class – the type of movement that has the potential to compel the Australian capitalists to retreat from their role in the Gaza slaughter.

The reason that the PAG leadership has not sought to turn the movement in such a direction is because, no doubt with many misgivings, they are currently betting on an alternative strategy – one that seeks through pressure to win over the Australian regime. While rightly denouncing the Albanese government’s stance, PAG leaders promote the notion that that through pressure the ALP government can be partially won over; or that greater numbers for the Greens in parliament could change the regime’s stance. However, the reality is that the Australian regime’s support for Israel’s terror flows naturally from its own essence. Capitalist Australia was formed out of genocidal massacres of this country’s First Nations peoples. No amount of window dressing can cover up the fact that Australian regime forces continue to kill Aboriginal people in custody and continue to remove Aboriginal children from their families. Moreover, while today facilitating Israel’s crimes, the Australian military, earlier, directly committed war crimes during its participation in the occupation of Afghanistan. There, Australia’s elite SAS troops massacred onion farmers, executed civilians and slit the throats of children. The problem is that no matter which particular parties control parliament, the current Australian regime has been designed to serve the capitalist class. In wealthy Australia, this class – which consists of wealthy business owners of all ethnicities but in Australia is mostly made of white Christians with just a small percentage of Jewish capitalists – not only exploits workers in this country but exploits workers and plunders natural resources at an even greater rate in the South Pacific and beyond. This class has calculated that its interests lie very much with supporting its U.S. godfather’s Israeli henchman. Therefore, this Australian capitalist class, which is the ultimate power in this country that all governments must serve, will always support Israel as long as the capitalists rule this country.

Even if the Greens win office, the Australian regime will continue to support the subjugation of Palestinian and Aboriginal people and will continue to enforce the exploitation of workers. This is especially true given that the Greens include capitalists in their ranks and refuse to stand for class struggle against the capitalist class. To be sure, the Greens appear a lot better on Palestine than the ALP and the right-wing Coalition. They at least condemn Israel’s war crimes. But their support for Palestine is limited. Feeding into the imperialist narrative that downplays the impact of Israel’s brutal 75-year-long occupation of Palestine and denying the fact that Hamas’ October 7 attack included heroic blows against the Israeli military (alongside some wrong attacks on civilians that were, however, dwarfed by the Israeli military’s killing of its own civilians through carpet bombing of contested sites during the Hamas-led incursion), the Greens harmfully equate the October 7 attack with Israel’s war crimes. Thus, an October 16 Greens statement, stated that:

“We all watched in horror at the brutality and callousness of Hamas’ October 7th attacks on innocent civilians. The State of Israel’s siege and destruction of Gaza continues the cycle of violence. It is civilians in both places paying the price.

“The Greens reject and condemn all forms of violence, especially against civilians. We again call for an immediate ceasefire between the State of Israel and Hamas, an immediate halt to the forced removal and transfer of Palestinians in Gaza, a release of hostages, and an end to the military siege.”

Of course, as sly politicians looking for votes, Greens politicians make sure that they sound a lot more pro-Palestinian than their official position when they speak at pro-Palestine protests. But if one wants an idea of how the Greens in government would actually act, one should look at the governments that their overseas counterparts are part of. In Germany, Greens foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is a hardline supporter of Israel’s onslaught and is part of a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party that has banned pro-Palestine protests. In Austria, the Greens, in coalition with a conservative party, are part of a government that voted against last night’s UN ceasefire resolution from an extreme pro-Zionist standpoint. It is telling too that, reflecting the interests of Australia’s capitalist class, the Australian Greens, for their part, only call to “renegotiate” the U.S.-Australia alliance rather than to scrap it.

What we need to do to support Palestinian and Aboriginal peoples and all the downtrodden of this country is to wage mass struggle against Australia’s capitalist rulers with the aim of forcing them into retreats. Any illusions that the regime can be persuaded to take a more progressive stance or that it will fundamentally change if the Greens gain a greater stake in parliament obstruct such struggle. PAG leaders are hardly alone in having such illusions. False hopes in the potential future benevolence of the Australian regime and in the Greens in particular are also widespread amongst the ranks of those joining the protests. Given the weight of propaganda and nationalism, the hardest ruling class to oppose in any imperialist country is always the ruling class in one’s own country. It is far easier to brand only the Israeli and U.S. regimes as enemies, while referring to the Australian regime as a currently deviant entity that can, however, be won over. Yet such a strategy will not be effective in restraining the Australian regime’s participation in the Gaza bloodbath. The change in direction in the movement must be made! The leap in the political consciousness of the activists participating in the movement must be achieved. With the horror of Israel’s terror and the depth of Western imperialist support for it pushing many to rethink their political perspective, such a leap in consciousness is possible. Therefore, at this time, those that understand the need to turn the pro-Palestine movement into one that is unequivocally opposed to Australia’s imperialist rulers have an extra special duty to bring that understanding to their fellow activists. 

Australia’s Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese meets U.S. president Joe Biden at the White House in late October 2023 as Israeli missiles and bombs are massacring the people of Gaza. Albanese reiterated the Australian regime’s support for its U.S. ally’s Israeli henchmen in its genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people.

Photo credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA

“Threaten” the Global Tyranny of the
Imperialists who Prop Up Israel –
Support the Rise of Socialistic China!

Israel’s subjugation of Palestine is set to become even more brutal. That is why supporters of Palestine must learn key lessons from these last ten, intense weeks. One lesson arises from the reality that the capitalist rulers of various Arab and Muslim majority countries – like those of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – have at this crucial moment refused to do more than lip-service to stand by Palestinian people. Indeed, especially in the case of Egypt, with its restriction of supplies to the resistance, they have even been complicit in the Israeli onslaught. All this proves the Marxist doctrine that exploiting classes ultimately act in their own material interests rather than complying with notions of ethnic or religious solidarity; and, moreover, the political imperatives of these ruling classes are what shapes religious doctrines … and not the other way around. These countries will start standing by the Palestinian people only when their toiling classes take state power and totally free these countries from the grip of Western imperialism.

The most vital lesson for activists in Australia to learn from these last weeks is that Israel is only able to get away with its terror because it has the support of the U.S. and US imperialist allies like Australia. Therefore, truly standing with the Palestinian people means opposing the Western imperialists in every battle that they are engaged in. That means that we must stand for the defence of Russia – despite its reactionary, also-capitalist rulers – against the U.S., NATO and Australian imperialists and their Ukrainian proxies. Indeed, an indication of the, at-bottom, pro-imperialist nature of the Greens is that the Greens rabidly support the U.S.-led imperialists in their proxy war against Russia. These avowed “pacifists” even support Australian arms transfers to Ukraine! Harmfully, so do two left groups that far more sincerely support the Palestinian struggle than the Greens – Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance.

The biggest state challenge to imperialism comes from socialistic China. This is despite the currently unfinished and precarious nature of China’s transition to socialism. The U.S. and Australian imperialists know that if China continues to succeed in socialistic development, this will not only obstruct their subjugation of the Global South but could eventually encourage their own masses to fight for socialism and thereby topple them from power. If this were to happen, Israel’s tyranny over Palestine will collapse. That is why all supporters of Palestine and all anti-imperialists must defend socialistic rule in China. In doing so we must draw another crucial lesson from the events of the last ten weeks: that is that the Western capitalist rulers and their media are masters of deceit. And given that while protecting Israel is an important tactic that the U.S. and its allies have for buttressing their power, crushing socialistic China is their main strategic goal, it follows that the imperialist rulers and their media are even more biased against Red China than they are against Palestine! This is indeed the case! For example, their claim that China is persecuting her more European-looking, Muslim Uyghur population in China’s northwest is a lie cut out of whole cloth. This claim has been rejected by almost every Muslim-majority country and is largely only promoted by the regimes that today support Israel’s terror.

That imperialist propaganda against the Chinese workers state is even more intense than it is against Palestine makes it much harder to stand by socialistic China than it is to stand by Palestine. Indeed, several of the groups active in building solidarity with Palestine – including the Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity groups – ape Western propaganda against China, even while opposing some of the anti-China military build up. In 2019, these groups stood with Union Jack-carrying, pro-British colonial Hong Kong expatriates in anti-communist rallies encouraged by the Australian ruling class. A year ago, these same groups hailed the small, Western-backed, “A4 protests” in China over her COVID response that were incited by overt anti-communists. In contrast, we insist that to truly oppose the imperialists, one must have the fortitude to defy the propaganda vilifying the main “threat” to their global tyranny – socialistic China. Let us demand: U.S., British and Australian imperialists (and their lackeys in the far-right, Ferdinand Marcos Junior government in the Philippines), stop your provocations against China in the South and East China Seas! Down with Western support to the anti-communist Taiwanese regime! Down with all the Western-backed forces threatening socialistic rule in China – from anti-communist, Hong Kong rich kids to the “A4” COVID conspiracy-mongers.

Hebron, 21 October 2023: Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron protest in support of the people of Gaza. Protesters carried portraits of the leader of socialistic North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. This was in honour of North Korea’s provision of arms to the Palestinian resistance and her verbal support for the Palestinian liberation struggle. Many Palestinians see North Korea as a symbol of defiance of the Western imperialists who so brutally subjugate the Palestinian people. North Korea and especially her socialistic neighbour and ally, the Peoples Republic of China are the main targets of the imperialist powers.

When the working classes and all the downtrodden of the U.S., Germany, Australia, Britain, Japan and other imperialist countries seize state power and join China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos on a socialist path, brutal national and colonial oppression – like that of Palestinian, Aboriginal, Tamil, Kashmiri and Kanak peoples – will have no powerful backers. Indeed, it will have no reason for existence. We look forward to such a world. Let’s work tirelessly and unflinchingly towards its realisation. In doing so, we will never forget the horrific suffering that Palestinian people have borne over the last 75 years and especially over the last ten weeks. We look forward to the day when Netanyahu, Biden, Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Annalena Baerbock and Rishi Sunak will face war crimes tribunals and be given the appropriate decisive punishments. We look forward to the day when the Palestinian people will be truly free and living happily in a socialist Palestine together with their Jewish sisters and brothers.

Gaza-December-2023Download
Anti-Imperialism, DPRK, Palestine

Close the U.S./Australia Pine Gap Spy Base That Is Directing Israel’s Genocidal Attacks

Photo above: Residents of a Gaza neighbourhood look through the rubble on 31 October 2023 after yet another Israeli bombardment.
photo credit: Xinhua

Close the U.S./Australia Pine Gap
Spy Base That Is Directing Israel’s
Genocidal Attacks on Gaza’s People!

1 November 2023: Israeli forces have killed over 3,500 Palestinian children in Gaza in just the last 24 days. Indeed more than two out of every five people that Israel has killed in its latest onslaught are children. This is not “self-defence” – this is a massacre! Defending their people against Israel’s invasion, Palestinian fighters are putting up heroic resistance. Let us work with all our energy for the defeat of Israel and the victory of the Palestinian resistance and their allies! That means that here in Australia we need to build towards workers industrial action and other militant, mass actions that will demand: End the Australian regime’s support for the Israeli military! End the Israeli assault! Lift the blockade of Gaza! All Israeli troops and settlers out of the West Bank! For the complete right of return of all Palestinians!

The reason that Israel is able to unleash this terror is because of the support that it gets from the U.S. and its allies. In the last 24 days, the U.S. has sent Israel huge amounts of weapons. This includes bombs and artillery shells – the very weapons that have killed the most Palestinians. Moreover, U.S. president Joe Biden has even sent high-ranking U.S. military officials to “advise” Israel’s attack. U.S. rulers are not just supporting Israel’s invasion, they are directing it!

It would be very politically difficult for the U.S. to support Israel if no other power backed this stance. That is why the other Western ruling classes play a criminal role in providing diplomatic cover for Washington. Last week, when prime minister Anthony Albanese met Biden, he lavishly praised Biden’s support for Israel’s assault: “Mr President, we applaud the personal resolve you have brought to this troubled part of the world.” This diplomatic backing is especially crucial to Washington as Australia is one of the very few non-NATO powers that are supporting Israel’s attack. Make no mistake about it, Albanese is a war criminal complicit in the U.S./Israeli massacre! Do not be fooled at all by his gentle calls for Israel to minimise civilian deaths. The Australian regime does not care about Gaza’s people – they are only trying to minimise damage to their completely fake, self-created image of being “human rights” defenders.

Above: War criminals Anthony Albanese and Joe Biden at their recent meeting in Washington. Albanese reiterated to Biden the Australian regime’s support for Israel’s attack on Gaza. Below: Palestinian children wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza City on 11 October 2023 receive treatment. By the end of October, Israeli forces had killed over 3,500 children in Gaza since October 7.
photo credit (above photo): Drew Angerer
photo credit (below photo): Madhyamam

Australia’s Capitalist Regime is a Direct Participant
in the Massacre of Palestinian People

The Australian regime does more than provide crucial political backing for the U.S. and Israel. They also have military links that support Israel’s war. Their biggest contribution is through the joint U.S./Australia Pine Gap base just south of Alice Springs. This base is used to position U.S. spy satellites that cover a vast stretch of land from Africa to the Middle East to all of Asia. The highly secretive facility was built in the 1960s to aid the capitalist powers’ Cold War against the then socialistic, Soviet Union. In the 21st century, its capability has been greatly expanded. Apart from intercepting people’s phone calls and E-mails, Pine Gap receives from spy satellites the geolocation data of weapons systems, radio communication devices and cell phones. This information is then transmitted to the U.S. and allied militaries. Pine Gap has been actively used in the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and other countries that have killed thousands of civilians. The base’s unique and crucial role in the U.S. and its allies’ war drive comes from its remote location far from any coastline. As a result, Pine Gap has been used in every single U.S. war in the 21st century. This fact combined with Biden’s announcement that the U.S. was providing full intelligence support to Israel means that it is 100% certain that the U.S./Australia spy base would be participating in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

Pine Gap’s main function in Israel’s invasion is to locate Palestinian targets. By precisely locating cellphones, the spy base ensures that Israeli’s missile and artillery strikes kill the maximum number of people rather than land in uninhabited areas. Especially through hosting and operating Pine Gap, the Australian regime is not only a supporter of Israel’s genocide but an active participant in it. Every supporter of the Palestinian people must demand the immediate closure of the spy base. This must become a key demand of the large pro-Palestinian protests in Australia.

The U.S./Australia Pine Gap spy base.
 photo credit Kristian Laemmle-Ruff/@kristianlaemmleruff

Turn the Pro-Palestinian Protests Against the
Australian Imperialist Regime That’s
Participating in Israel’s Genocide!

Australia’s ruling class backs Israel because Israel is its U.S. ally’s attack dog that enforces U.S. domination of the oil rich and strategically located Middle East. To understand why Australia’s rulers back their U.S. counterparts, one has to examine the nature of this ruling class. This rich capitalist class not only extracts profits from exploiting Australian wage workers but seizes huge profits from plundering the South Pacific and parts of Asia. The Australian ruling class relies on U.S. power to underwrite this tyranny. In other words, Australia’s rulers back their U.S. counterparts – including in strengthening its Israeli attack dog in the Middle East – in the same way that a local mafia thug always stands by the mafia godfather that guarantees their despotism over their bit of turf. With socialistic China’s mutually beneficial cooperation with countries in this region enabling these countries to start to free themselves from Australian imperialist subjugation, Australia’s rulers are counting on Washington to drive out such “Communist Chinese interference”. That is why they have become even more reliant on their U.S. counterparts and thus even more unequivocal in backing Israel.

Given the self interest that Australia’s ruling class has in backing Israel, how are we going to make it retreat from this? Encouragingly, huge numbers have joined pro-Palestinian protests. People of Palestinian and other Arab heritage have been joined by other people of colour, white Australians and progressive-minded Jewish people. However, the direction of the rallies is not yet one that can force the Australian ruling class to back down. Although protesters have rightly chanted, “Albanese you can’t hide – you’re supporting genocide”, the rallies’ main target has not been Australia’s rulers. The problem is that while Australia’s rulers won’t be happy with rallies opposing their allies, they also know that such actions won’t do too much damage to allies located so far away. But what if protesters instead of only saying “Israel, USA, How Many Kids Have You Killed Today” were saying “Israeli, U.S., Australian Regimes: How Many Kids Have You Killed Today”? What if when criticising the Australian rulers it is not done from the futile point of view of appealing to them as if they are potential allies but by denouncing them as enemies. What if instead of only saying “Down, Down Israel, Down, Down USA”, tens of thousands are passionately shouting, “Down, Down Israeli, U.S. and Australian Regimes!” Then Australia’s rulers would be truly worried! They would consider retreating from their support for Israel in order to stop hostility to their political order spreading. This is especially if the movement was able to link its opposition to Israel’s terror with the broader masses’ grievances. So it is great that Aboriginal activists addressing the rallies have connected Palestinian people’s oppression with the Australian regime’s brutal subjugation of Aboriginal people.

What would also make Australia’s ruling class think twice about backing Israel is if they suffered economic damage from union political industrial action. Encouragingly, some union contingents have joined the Palestine protests. However, to turn this into actual industrial action requires a political struggle within our unions to challenge the loyalty of current union tops to the very Labor government that is supporting Israel’s massacre. To win union ranks to taking the big step of launching industrial action also requires steering the pro-Palestinian protests onto a path that can appeal to workers’ class interests. The movement must loudly point out that opposing the U.S. rulers’ Israeli proxies would weaken the Australian ruling class that is driving more and more working class people into poverty through raising prices, driving down real wages and jacking up rents. Of course, those pro-Palestinian people from amongst the 5% to 8% of the population that form the capitalist class (and its henchmen) will not like the movement being reoriented in a pro-working class, anti-Australian-capitalist-regime direction. So be it! Their support for Palestine will ultimately be inconsistent because they profit from the political order that supports Israel. Turning the pro-Palestine movement in a pro-working-class, anti-Australian-ruling-class direction is what we need for this movement to make a real difference.

Oppose Western Imperialism’s “Rules-Based
Democratic Order” That Underpins Israel’s Terror!

The ultimate targets of the Pine Gap base that is today pinpointing Israeli attacks are socialistic China and North Korea. Indeed, the U.S. and its allies’ support for Israel and its opposition to socialistic states are closely intertwined. Washington backs Israel in part to enable Israel to threaten Middle Eastern countries that pursue friendly ties with China and North Korea. Little wonder then that, to her great credit, North Korea is providing arms to Palestinian resistance forces. China for its part is the major power that most stands by Palestine. However, as a socialistic state, its stance should become far more intransigent. For starters, we say that when China’s president Xi Jinping meets with war criminal Albanese in five days time, Xi should publicly condemn the Australian regime for its complicity in Israel’s slaughter.

China’s impact on the Palestinian struggle is far wider than its direct stance on the question. Her cooperation with developing countries is enabling them – including some Arab ones – to slowly squeeze out from under Western imperialism’s boot. The ultimate fear of the U.S. and Australian imperialists is that China’s successes will not only undercut their subjugation of the Global South but will eventually encourage their own masses to fight for socialism and topple them from power. If either of these things were to happen, Israel’s tyranny over Palestine is doomed. That is why all supporters of the Palestinian struggle and all anti-imperialists must defend socialistic rule in China. Resist all military and political attacks on China by the Western capitalists and their “pro-democracy” proxies within China.

Outrage at Israel’s crimes and the Australian rulers’ support for them has compelled many young people to participate in their first political actions. Events are pushing them to rethink their own politics and engage in lively debates. These compassionate people need their energy to be channeled into a direction that can force the Australian regime to retreat from its participation in Israel’s massacre. Let’s turn the pro-Palestinian protests into a pro-working class movement against the Australian imperialist regime that is joining Israel’s genocide! Let’s fight for the immediate closure of the Pine Gap spy base! Let’s build toward union industrial action against the Australian regime’s support for Israel! Let’s fight against the world domination of Western imperialism that underpins Israel’s tyranny over Palestine!

Anti-Imperialism, Palestine

WAGE POLITICAL WAR AGAINST BIDEN, ALBANESE & ALL THE IMPERIALISTS ENABLING ISRAEL’S WAR ON GAZA’S PEOPLE!

Photo Above: A man evacuates a crying girl from a building in the southern Gaza city of Rafah that was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on October 9.
Photo credit: Khaled Omar/Xinhua

WAGE POLITICAL WAR AGAINST
BIDEN, ALBANESE, DUTTON & ALL
THE IMPERIALISTS ENABLING ISRAEL’S
NAZI-LIKE WAR ON GAZA’S PEOPLE!

11 October 2023: Israel is massacring the people of Gaza through indiscriminate air strikes. Seizing on Saturday’s attacks by Palestinian groups, Israel’s far-right government is waging all-out war on Gaza’s people. Already, Israel has stopped all food, electricity and water from entering Gaza. Defending this siege, Israeli defence minister Yoav Galland sounded exactly like a Nazi Holocaust-justifying, racial supremacist when he declared that: “We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.” Given the Israeli regime’s racism, the especially fanatical nature of its present ultra-rightist government and the fact that Gaza is so densely populated, the current Israeli attack could end up killing literally tens of thousands of Palestinian people! Workers movements worldwide and all antiracists must build mass actions to demand: Stop the Israeli assault! Lift the blockade of Gaza! All Israeli troops and settlers out of the West Bank! We must stand with the Palestinian resistance against Israel’s mass-murdering onslaught.

Israel’s assault follows Saturday’s Palestinian raids. Cornered by rapid Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, the intensification of mass-murdering Israeli West Bank raids and the savage Gaza blockade, Palestinian resistance forces struck back. With brilliant preparation and ingenuity, they overcame barriers hemming them inside Gaza to launch a surprise attack that killed hundreds of Israeli troops and police. The resistance forces inflicted more military casualties on the occupying forces in one weekend than Israel took during its entire failed 2006 war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah. We hail this Palestinian resistance against the murderous Israeli military. This is 100% justified!

Wrongly, the Hamas fighters also killed many civilians. Apart from aping the Israeli oppressors, such crimes play into the latter’s hands. They are being used by Israel’s unpopular Netanyahu government to restore support for its extreme racist stance. And they have been seized on by Western regimes to justify their support for Israel’s terror. Yet these attacks are the by-product of an occupation that has slaughtered Palestinian civilians in numbers that are dozens of times greater than Saturday’s civilian toll. It is true that the religious factions that attacked on Saturday are far less committed to protecting Jewish civilians than the secular – and especially the leftist-based–Palestinian resistance. However, some of these latter factions have lost credibility by submitting to the occupation. Yet such capitulation is itself an adaptation to the reality that Palestinians are heavily outgunned by an Israeli juggernaut built up by the West’s capitalist rulers.

Proving how much the Israeli regime is propped up by the Western rulers, Biden announced today that not only is he sending Israel new weapons but that U.S. “consultants” are “advising” Israel’s war. Moreover, the US has dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group to threaten Israel’s opponents. It is the U.S., Australian and other U.S.-allied rulers who are the root cause of both the terrible suffering of Palestinian people and the dangers faced by Israeli Jews – who must live in fear because of the inevitable response provoked by the horrific crimes of their Western-propped-up rulers.

DEFENDING THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE MEANS
OPPOSING WESTERN IMPERIALISM’S
“RULES-BASED” WORLD ORDER

As the Israel regime began annihilating Palestinian civilians by bombing Gaza’s residential towers, Joe Biden, Anthony Albanese and other Western leaders declared their support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Then, when Israel imposed a deadly siege on Gaza, Australian foreign minister Penny Wong slimily justified this by stating that Israel’s military response is difficult to judge from afar. In other words, the Australian government is joining their U.S. allies in giving the Israeli regime the green light to use whatever genocidal methods it chooses to crush the people of Gaza.

To understand why the Western rulers prop up Israel, one must understand that these capitalist classes not only exploit their own workers but also gain huge profits from plundering the resources and superexploiting the workers of the ex-colonial countries of Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Israel is a proxy of these U.S.-led imperialist ruling classes that acts to undermine forces within the Middle East that refuse to fully accept Western despotism. This is shown by Israel’s attacks on anti-Western forces in Lebanon, its threats against Iran and its air strikes against Syria. Israel has been built up by Western imperialism to perform these tasks. Israel’s terror against the Palestinian people is the true face of Western imperialism’s supposedly “rules-based” world “order”.

Anyone opposed to Israel’s terror must resist Israel’s Western enablers in every battle that these imperialists are waging to enforce their global tyranny. That means standing for the defence of Iran against U.S. threats – threats that have escalated over the last four days. This is even though Iran is ruled by a capitalist, women-oppressing regime. We say that the liberation of workers and women in Iran can only be made by her own masses. And especially given imperialism’s drive to bring a subservient regime to power in Iran, we insist that leftist forces there resist all Iranian opposition forces that accept support from Western regimes, while ensuring that they continue to fight for an Iranian workers state that would be more consistently opposed to imperialism than the current regime – not less.

While facilitating Israel’s terror, Western rulers are pouring huge amounts of arms into their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The more economically powerful Western powers want to reduce Russia – which is also capitalist-ruled – to the subordinate position that she was pushed down to in the 1990s and early noughties. Everyone opposed to imperialism should stand with Russia for the defeat of this proxy war. However, two left groups prominent in Palestine solidarity – Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance – are on the opposite side. They even support U.S. and Australian arms supplies to their Ukraine proxies! If the side that they are backing wins, the U.S.-led imperialists will be greatly strengthened and Israel’s rulers will have a more secure foundation from which to attack the Palestinian people.

The biggest danger to Western imperialist hegemony is the rise of socialistic China. Whereas the entire West is supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, China has called for an end to hostilities and insisted that the “fundamental way out of the conflict lies in … establishing an independent State of Palestine.” Yet this is short of the position that she should take. We call on China to do her socialist duty and unequivocally take the Palestinian side. However, China’s threat to imperialism is far greater than her direct position on Palestine. Her cooperation with the ex-colonial countries enables these countries to achieve greater independence from their imperial overlords. For one, this has encouraged many Arab states to move away from their previous support to imperialism’s proxy war against Syria – resulting in Syria’s readmission into the Arab League. More fundamentally, the success of China’s socialistic system in lifting her people’s living standards could eventually encourage the unhappy masses in the West to also take the socialist path by deposing their own rulers. That is why the capitalist powers are waging an intense Cold War against China. And that is why everyone suffering because of the tyranny of the Western rulers – the Palestinian people, the masses of the Global South and the working class masses in the West itself – must stand resolutely with socialistic China, despite her imperfect and still unfinished transition to socialism. Let us demand: Down with the U.S./Australian military build-up against China! Down with the lying propaganda attacks against China over “human rights”, Taiwan and Uyghurs!

BUILD WORKERS ACTION AGAINST THE
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT’S SUPPORT FOR
ISRAEL’S WAR ON PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

Given Australian rulers’ brutal subjugation of Aboriginal people, it is expected that they would support Israel’s occupation of Palestine. And given the horrific atrocities committed by the Australian rulers’ forces in Afghanistan it is little surprise that this ruling class would support its Israeli allies also committing war crimes. However, the Australian regime’s support for Israeli terror is not just due to such “shared values”, it is also based on its own self-interest. The Australian ruling class defends Israel because it wants the U.S.-dominated world order that Israel enforces to be protected. It is the U.S. godfather that enables Australian corporations’ plunder of the Pacific and beyond. Moreover, enraged that socialistic China’s cooperation with Pacific countries is making it harder for them to ride roughshod over these countries in the way that they previously did, Australia’s capitalists are counting on their U.S. senior partner to squeeze socialistic China to death. However, for these very same reasons, it is in the interests of the Australian working class to oppose both the Israeli regime and the U.S.-dominated world
order that underpins Israel’s terror. For any weakening of Australia’s capitalist ruling class makes it easier for the working class to resist the capitalists’ increasing exploitation of workers’ labour and the forcing of workers into ever more insecure jobs. This truth makes it possible to win workers to unleashing the desperately needed industrial action against Canberra’s support for Israel’s terror.

However, the ALP government’s fervent support for Israel’s war on Gaza shows the big obstacle we face to building such action. For this same ALP currently leads the workers movement. Many supporters of the Palestinian cause have painstakingly worked within the ALP for decades to try and shift its Palestine policy. The last few days shows how futile such efforts are. For any minor tinkering “achieved” is meaningless, because, at the critical moments, the ALP is right behind Israel’s war on the Palestinian people. The ALP takes this stance because that is what is in the interests of the Australian capitalist class which the ALP ultimately kowtows to. The struggle to build workers solidarity with the Palestinian people – just like the fight to mobilise the working class behind Aboriginal people’s struggle for liberation and its own struggle against capitalist exploitation – requires squeezing out the ALP from the leadership of the workers movement in favour of a new internationalist leadership that is implacably opposed to imperialism and capitalism.

COMPLETELY FALSE CLAIMS OF “ANTI-SEMITISM”
THROWN AT THE PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

The likes of Albanese and Liberal leader Peter Dutton are not only unequivocally supporting Israel’s massacre of Gaza’s people but are also opposing all pro-Palestinian protests in Australia. They especially targeted Monday’s demonstration organised by the Palestine Action Group (PAG). That protest rightly marched on the Sydney Opera House to protest the deeply offensive decision to light the sails of the building with the Israeli flag just when the military fighting under that flag was bombing to death hundreds of children in Gaza. Now the NSW Police and NSW Labor premier, Chris Minns, are seeking to sabotage a Palestine solidarity protest called by the PAG for Sunday. Minns said that he will take action against the protest and will not allow the planned rally to “commandeer Sydney streets”. Acting Police Commissioner David Hudson threatened to shut down the protest saying, “In our opinion, it won’t be happening — it’s unauthorised at this stage.” This shows the bogus nature of the capitalist regime’s claims to stand for “democracy” and “free speech.” It is important that Sunday’s planned pro-Palestinian protest succeed at this critical time. We appeal to our readers to join the protest at 1pm on this Sunday, October 15 at Sydney’s Hyde Park Town Hall Square (note change in venue) to Stop the War on Gaza! We call on people to raise slogans at the rally in opposition to the U.S. and Australian rulers who prop up Israel’s tyranny and in opposition to the Western imperialist domination of the world that underpins Israel’s subjugation of Palestine.

To help them undermine any actions in support of the Palestinian people, Albanese, Dutton, Minns, the mainstream media and the pro-Israel lobby have, completely falsely, accused the Opera House protest of being “anti-Semitic.” They were abetted by the fact that a small number of idiotic people – mostly teens – who were around the Opera House for another reason entered the rally and started shouting disgusting anti-Semitic chants. To their credit, the PAG (which is dominated by the Socialist Alternative group that we criticised earlier for their stance on the Ukraine War) issued a powerful statement after the rally that denounced this tiny fringe and demolished the attempts to tarnish the overall action as being “anti-Semitic”:

“They were quickly condemned for their chants and asked to leave. Long-standing Palestinian organisers
and activists, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim elders attending the protest were disgusted and deplored by the
action. This is not what our movement stands for. We oppose Zionism, an ideology distinct from Judaism. We
oppose Israel, a racist state which has waged genocide on Palestinians. We are an anti-racist and anti-colonial
movement and we refuse to fight racism with racism.”

For the Australian rulers to claim to be concerned about anti-Semitism is rank hypocrisy. They are right now funneling huge quantities of military equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces that not only include particular neo-Nazi battalions – like the Azov Regiment – that seek the slaughter of Jews but avowedly stand on the traditions of World War II Ukrainian Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera. Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists massacred tens of thousands of Polish and Jewish people and took part in the Holocaust in Ukraine and Poland.

Moreover, the Zionist project that the Western ruling classes back is hardly the sanctuary for Jews that the Zionist rulers claim it to be. As we explained in our article five months ago when Israel demolished a Palestinian school at the Jabbet al-Dhib village in the West Bank:

“The Israeli occupation is hell for Palestinian people. But life in Israel is not that great for the Jewish masses either. Zionist rulers promised that Israel would create a sanctuary for Jews to escape discrimination and racist oppression in Europe – an idea that only gained wide appeal following the Holocaust. However, the idea of building a nation in a land by expelling its existing inhabitants will necessarily breed resistance by the dispossessed people of that land. And so while Palestinians are overwhelmingly the victims of violence in their homeland, the Zionist project incites attacks on Jewish inhabitants too. Moreover, a state where Jewish youth must endure a compulsory military service of up to three years and where residents are frequently running into bomb shelters is hardly a `peaceful sanctuary’. Far from protecting Jewish people, the Zionist project, based as it is on ethnic cleansing, has made Israel’s Jews the objects of hatred on the part of their neighbours.”

Last Saturday’s events have tragically proven the correctness of these points. The only people that the Zionist project does actually serve are the U.S. imperialists and their allies – who need a reliable deputy sheriff in the strategically located Middle East – and the Israeli capitalist class. These latter capitalists exploit the workers of their country just like capitalists everywhere else. As our article insisted:

“A section of the Jewish working class must be won to the understanding that the only way that they can put an end to their own exploitation and create a truly peaceful home is by linking up with neighbouring Arab workers and with the Palestinian people’s resistance in a joint struggle to smash the racist Israeli capitalist regime and create a secular, socialist Palestine where Palestinians and Jews can live together in equality.”

What keeps Israel’s Jewish working class loyal to the Jewish capitalist rulers that exploit them is the intense racial/religious supremacist ideas that Zionism is based on. Given the intensity of this chauvinism, it will take workers’ uprisings in other parts of the Middle East to finally bring class-struggle sentiments to the fore amongst the Israeli working class. However, given the massive Western support for Israel (including economic aid that brings the Israeli working class a fairly privileged position relative to their Arab neighbours and that in turn contributes much to their current subservience to the Zionist project), the imperialist meddling in the Arab world that shores up the current social order and the fact that the mass killings of Israeli civilians last weekend has only magnified Zionist chauvinism in Israel many times over, the liberation of Palestine is inconceivable right now without mass struggle within the Western countries against the imperialist backers of Israel.

That means that leftist supporters of Palestine in U.S.-allied Australia have a huge responsibility. We can make a great contribution to the Palestinian people’s liberation by building mass workers’ actions to oppose the Australian rulers’ support for Israel’s subjugation of Palestine and oppose the entire Western domination of the world that underpins Israel’s tyranny over Palestine. Helping us to mobilise such struggles is the fact that large parts of the population distrust Australia’s ruling elite as their reign is only bringing the masses unaffordable living costs, steeply rising rents and economic insecurity.

Top Left: U.S. president Joe Biden greets far-right Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of September’s UN General Assembly meeting. Top Right: Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese. Without the decisive support of Biden, Albanese and other Western imperialist leaders, Netanyahu would not have been able to get away with unleashing his heinous war on the people of Gaza. Below: Palestinians remove a dead body from a destroyed building after an October 9 Israeli air raid on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp that killed dozens of civilians. Bottom: Children injured in Israeli air strikes at a hospital in Gaza city on October 9. In just the first fix days of air raids in its attack on Gaza, Israel has killed 447 children. Netanyahu, Biden and Albanese have a lot of blood on their hands!

Photo credit (below photo): Ramez Mahmoud/AP
Photo credit: (bottom photo): Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua

FIGHT FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE
BY WORKING TO TOPPLE WESTERN IMPERIALIST
TYRANNY OVER THE WORLD

Western imperialism’s domination of the world is far from secure. Western capitalist economies are lurching from crisis to crisis, their populations are cynical about their so-called “democracies” and capitalist rule in the West itself is facing an eventual existential threat from the inspirational effect of socialistic China’s successes. Under all these stresses, the capitalist ruling classes in the West are deeply divided. However, these imperialist ruling classes will not fall by themselves. In fact, what we are seeing is that these capitalist classes are doing everything possible to preserve their power. In many countries, they are turning to evermore vile, far-right parties to administer their systems – something that their Israeli proxies have done too. In the end, they will even be prepared to implement the horrific, fascist form of capitalism, as the German capitalists did in the 1930s, to keep themselves in power. Moreover, the savagery of the Israeli war on Gaza that they are avidly backing shows the brutality that the Western imperialists are capable of when that is what is needed to protect their tyranny. It is a sign that they will be prepared to kill millions of people by unleashing a catastrophic war on socialistic China if they feel that this is what it takes to crush a threat to their capitalist domination of the globe.

So let us work with all our energy to build struggles against the increasingly dangerous, Western imperialist ruling classes. Let us stand by the socialistic China that “threatens” Western imperialist domination of the world! Let us build actions in Australia, the U.S. and other Western countries against each of our own rulers’ support for Washington’s Israeli proxies! Let us stand with the people of Gaza by waging political war against the Australian, U.S. and other Western rulers that enable Israel’s Nazi-like war. Let us mobilise vigorous class-struggle resistance that will shake the foundations of the Australian, U.S. and other Western regimes so intensely that the Israeli regime that they uphold will topple over! That is the best way that supporters in Australia of the oppressed Palestinian people can fight for the liberation of Palestine.

Aboriginal Struggle, Anti-Imperialism, China, Palestine

Oppose the U.S. and Australian Rulers’ Violent Imperialist
“Rules-Based Global Order” Propping Up Israel’s Terror!

Photo above: Palestinian people survey the rubble of a house in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip. The house was destroyed on 12 May 2023 by yet another deadly Israeli airstrike on the people of Gaza.
Photo credit: Fatima Shbair/AP

SUPPORT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE!

OPPOSE THE U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN RULERS’
VIOLENT IMPERIALIST “RULES-BASED GLOBAL
ORDER” PROPPING UP ISRAEL’S TERROR!

SUPPORT SOCIALISTIC CHINA AGAINST THE
AUKUS REGIMES’ POLITICAL AND MILITARY PRESSURE!
DOWN WITH WESTERN IMPERIALISM’S PROXY WAR AGAINST RUSSIA!

7 May 2023: Today, Israel demolished a Palestinian school at the Jabbet al-Dhib village in the West Bank. With ministers in its new extreme, right wing government openly vilifying Palestinian people, Israel’s authorities are emboldened to intensify what they have long been doing: destroying Palestinian people’s homes, schools, fruit gardens and water sources. The Israeli state aims to violently create “facts on the ground” so that Palestinians never regain their national rights over the West Bank and its key city of Jerusalem. It has moved half a million Jewish settlers into the West Bank.

Already, in this year alone, Israeli forces have killed 111 Palestinian people, including at least 20 children. They have done this through the terror bombing of Gaza, murderous raids on Palestinian activists in the West Bank and attacks on Palestinian protesters. All this racist state violence has in turn encouraged increasingly powerful, fascist gangs amongst Israeli settlers and others within the country, thereby adding to the terror that Palestinian people must face.

This oppression is outrageous to most of the world. In a UN session last December, a resolution standing against Israel’s actions in the West Bank was supported by a majority of the world’s most populous countries, including socialistic China, Pakistan, Russia, Nigeria and Mexico. The only countries that opposed the resolution were most of the Western powers and their most hopelessly dependent neocolonies. Also refusing to stand by the Palestinian people were several Western-allied regimes that either abstained or did not vote on the resolution including Ukraine, Japan, India, South Korea, the Philippines and Fiji. It is only because of the support of the Western imperialist powers that dominate the world that Israel is able to get away with its murderous occupation. In particular, the U.S. superpower and its AUKUS allies, Australia and Britain, are ardent supporters of Israel’s terror. Canberra’s opposition to the December UN resolution shows that the new Labor government is as committed to upholding Israel’s tyranny as was its conservative predecessors.

That Australia’s rulers strongly back Israel is little surprise. Capitalist rule was established here through the dispossession of Aboriginal people in a manner that had all the brutality of Israel’s later 1948 Nakba ethnic cleansing of Palestinians … and then some! The Australian ruling class continues to subjugate Aboriginal people. Anti-colonial activists must, therefore, both support Aboriginal people’s struggle for liberation and back the Palestinian resistance. Let us: Oppose the state murder of Aboriginal people in custody! Welcome any flow of arms to Palestinian people carrying out armed resistance against Israeli forces and fascist settler gangs! Let us demand: Israel and far right settlers, get out of the West Bank and Gaza! For the right of return of Palestinian refugees to all parts of Palestine!

13 May 2023, Nablus, Palestine’s occupied West Bank: The Balata refugee camp following a deadly assault by the Israeli army. The Israeli forces opened fire on the residents of the camp after they objected to the troops raiding the camp and surrounding a house. The Israeli military killed two Palestinians by shooting them in the head – 32 year-old Saed Jihad Masheh and 19 year-old Adnan Wasim – and injured three others, including an elderly woman.
Photo credit: Ayman Noubani/Palestine News & Info Agency

BRING DOWN ETHNIC/RELIGIOUS ULTRA-CHAUVINIST, ZIONIST RULE
THROUGHOUT ALL OF PALESTINE!

The Israeli occupation is hell for Palestinian people. But life in Israel is not that great for the Jewish masses either. Zionist rulers promised that Israel would create a sanctuary for Jews to escape discrimination and racist oppression in Europe – an idea that only gained wide appeal following the Holocaust. However, the idea of building a nation in a land by expelling its existing inhabitants will necessarily breed resistance by the dispossessed people of that land. And so while Palestinians are overwhelmingly the victims of violence in their homeland, the Zionist project incites attacks on Jewish inhabitants too. Moreover, a state where Jewish youth must endure a compulsory military service of up to three years and where residents are frequently running into bomb shelters is hardly a “peaceful sanctuary”. Far from protecting Jewish people, the Zionist project, based as it is on ethnic cleansing, has made Israel’s Jews the objects of hatred on the part of their neighbours.

That Israel is now administered by a chaotic, extremist government – and, moreover, one that is grabbing dictatorial powers for itself while being hated by much of its own population – is a symptom of just how crisis-ridden the Zionist “order” is. The Zionist regime is squeezed between the resistance it faces from the Palestinian people and the fact that its “order” does not serve the Jewish working class either but only truly serves a small class of capitalist Jews. The economic system that this capitalist class runs is based on the theft of Palestinian agricultural land and crops. These capitalists make huge profits, too, by super-exploiting Palestinian labourers who enjoy few rights. Although relatively privileged compared to their Palestinian counterparts, Jewish workers are also exploited by Israel’s bosses just like in any other capitalist state. Israel’s capitalist rulers infect their masses with virulent ethnic supremacist notions to keep the Jewish working class subservient to their capitalist interests. However, when the neighbouring Arab toiling classes rise up against their imperialist-dependent rulers and fight to take over power, this will inevitably inspire a portion of the Israeli Jewish working class to break from Zionism. There is plenty of social tinder for such an explosion. Arab toilers are seething under Western neolonialism and ground down by poverty and unemployment. Women workers face women’s oppression on top of all that. Meanwhile, Israel has one of the highest poverty rates in the OECD. In real terms, Israel’s minimum wage has dived by around 5% over the last five years. A section of the Jewish working class must be won to the understanding that the only way that they can put an end to their own exploitation and create a truly peaceful home is by linking up with neighbouring Arab workers and with the Palestinian people’s resistance in a joint struggle to smash the racist Israeli capitalist regime and create a secular, socialist Palestine where Palestinians and Jews can live together in equality.

2 May 2023, Ramallah, Palestine’s occupied West Bank: Large numbers of Palestinians marched in several West Bank cities to protest the death of Palestinian activist, Khader Adnan, who died after an 86-day hunger strike in protest at his detention without charge. The Israeli regime imprisons over a thousand other Palestinians without charge in such military detention.
Photo credit: Palestine News & Info Agency

RESIST THE U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN REGIMES THAT UPHOLD
THE SUBJUGATION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

Why do U.S. rulers and their allies support Israel’s conquest of Palestine? The imperialist rulers of the U.S. and those of Germany, Japan, Australia, Britain and France make profits not only from exploiting their own workers but from even more ruthlessly exploiting the workers of the ex-colonial countries of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific and Latin America and through plundering natural resources and seizing markets there. To enforce this tyranny, the strongest imperial power, the U.S., enlists deputy sheriffs to police particular regions. Israel is its deputy sheriff in the oil-rich and strategically-located Middle East. As Israel’s attacks on anti-Western forces in Lebanon, its threats against Iran and its air strikes against Syria prove, Israel acts to undermine forces that refuse to fully accept the U.S.-led West’s violent despotism over the world – what Western powers cynically refer to as the “rules-based global order”. Israel also serves in the West’s Cold War against socialistic China by intimidating regional countries that dare to become close to the Peoples Republic of China.

Yet, precisely because it is in the interest of America’s capitalists and their allies ruling Australia and Britain to back Israel, it is in the interests of the exploited masses of these countries to take the very opposite stance. For any weakening of Australia’s capitalist rulers through blows against their local or global interests can only be a good thing for the downtrodden masses of Australia. It would strengthen the struggles of workers facing plunging real wages, insecure jobs and skyrocketing rents and of Aboriginal people being hit with racist state oppression and ever more intense vilification in the capitalist media. That is why it is not only a matter of moral imperative but also in the clear interests of the working class of the U.S. and Australia to oppose Israel’s tyranny. The Australian workers movement must take industrial action to demand: End all U.S. and Australian military and economic support for Israel!

Right now there is a major battle in Ukraine whose outcome will affect the strength of the imperialist powers that prop up Israel’s occupation. Although the conflict started as mostly an inter-capitalist battle for territory, the Western powers intervened so aggressively that it quickly became a proxy war of the U.S.-led imperialist powers against Russia. Although Russia is also ruled by capitalist rulers, Russia’s ruling class lacks the capital to lord it over the “Third World.” It is not Russia that destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and it is not Russia that props up Israel’s occupation. That is why it is in the interests of all those suffering directly and indirectly from the tyranny of Western imperialism – including the Palestinian people – and the workers of the world to stand for the defeat of the U.S., British and Australian regimes’ proxy war against Russia. However, the Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance groups which proclaim their solidarity with Palestine are on the side of the U.S.-backed imperialist powers in their Ukraine proxy war. They even support Western arms supplies to Ukraine. In doing so, they are taking the side which, if victorious, will reinforce Western imperialist tyranny over the world and with it the strengthening of their brutal Israeli deputy sheriff.

There is a far more serious threat to Western global domination (the so-called rules-based order) than Russia. And that is the rise of a giant socialistic power in China. China’s cooperation with developing countries is slowly enabling the latter to achieve greater independence from the imperial powers. Today’s decision by the Arab League to rebuff Western pressure and readmit Syria into the League and China’s successful efforts to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia towards rapprochement in defiance of the USA’s divisive schemes are early signs of this. If China’s strength were to continue to grow and she was able to further offer developing countries access to technology, capital and markets in her mutually beneficial way, Palestine’s neighbours would be less dependent on the imperialists and more willing to resist Washington’s demands that they acquiesce to Israel’s occupation. Most importantly, should China’s rapid development continue until her per capita income approaches that of the richest countries, her poverty alleviation successes will encourage workers all over the world to also demand socialism. The Western capitalist rulers would face being overthrown at home. The Zionist occupation will topple with them. That is why every true supporter of Palestine must stand for the defence of socialistic rule in China from not only imperialist military threats but also from Western-backed anti-communist forces within China. We must also oppose the lying anti-China propaganda attacks that are launched by Western imperialist politicians, NGOs and pro-Western media – the very same people that vilify the Palestinian struggle.

Let’s weaken the Western imperialist props that uphold Israel’s tyranny! Let’s combine opposition to Washington and Canberra’s military, political and economic aid to Israel with resistance to the brutal oppression of Aboriginal people and class struggle action against the exploitation of workers and all the poor in this country!