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Support Iran against the Israeli Terrorists and the U.S. and Australian Imperialist Rulers Behind Them!

Photo Above: Huge crowds rally in Iran’s capital, Tehran on 20 June 2025 to oppose Israeli attacks
Photo: Xinhua

20 June 2025 – Israel is one week into its massive military attack on Iran. While continuing to murder and starve to death the Palestinian people in Gaza and unleash terror against the Palestinian people of the West Bank, the Israeli military is now raining death upon the people of Iran. With the support of her allies in Yemen, Iran is bravely fighting back. She and her Ansar Allah (commonly referred to in the West as Houthi) allies have launched 100% justified drone and missile strikes on Israel. But they are facing extremely difficult odds because Israeli forces are receiving huge support from the U.S. imperialists and their Australian and other allies. U.S. president, Donald Trump, has demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and threatened to unleash direct U.S. strikes against Iran. However, even now, the U.S. is greatly assisting the Israeli attack. U.S. officials have admitted that the U.S. military is shooting down Iranian retaliatory missile strikes. A U.S. official also stated that the U.S. provided “exquisite” intelligence to Israel to enable its attack on Iran. Moreover, in the days before Israel’s assault, the U.S. quietly delivered to the Israeli military hundreds of Hellfire laser-guided air-to-ground missiles that have been crucial to the attacks. Additionally, the U.S. helped modify the F-35 stealth fighters that it had earlier provided Israel so that they would be able to reach Iran without the need for mid-air refuelling on the way.

This is a war between, on the one hand, the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists and their Israeli attack dog and, on the other, Iran, a country that while under capitalist rule is resisting the imperialist bullies that economically oppress her and aim for her total subjugation. In such a war, we must stand with the trodden-on country fighting to maintain its independence from imperialism – we must stand for the defence of Iran! The Israeli-Western imperialist attack on Iran – the country that alongside Yemen’s Ansar Allah government has been supporting the Palestinian resistance – is part of their broader war against the people of Gaza. Standing with the Palestinian people means standing with Iran against the Zionist butchers and all the imperialist ruling classes behind them.

Our resolute support for Iran against Israel and its imperialist masters does not mean that we approve of the Iranian government. Far from it! Iran is ruled by a capitalist exploiting class whose domination of society is enforced by an anti-secular regime that subjugates women and brutally persecutes leftists. However, the imperialist Western powers and their genocidal Israeli attack dog are much greater enemies of the working class masses of the world, the peoples of the Global South and the toiling classes of Iran. The final and most ruthless stage of capitalism, imperialism, involves the ruling classes of a handful of richer capitalist countries – principally the U.S., Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Australia, Italy, Canada and Spain – exploiting and robbing the masses of the poorer capitalist countries at an even more extreme rate than that with which they exploit workers in their own countries. Imperialist regimes enforce this plunder by unleashing against those who defy them a combination of military attacks and starvation economic sanctions. They also fund and train the military and political activist campaigns of various proxy movements in these countries. In the 21st century, such Western imperialist operations within the Middle East, North Africa and West Asia alone have killed millions and millions of people. This includes through the U.S./British/Australian invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO’s 2011 regime change attack and subsequent meddling in oil-rich Libya, the Western powers’ successful proxy war against the former, more independent, Syrian government, their proxy war against Yemen, their support for their Israeli attack dog’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people and their murderous sanctions on Iraq and then Iran. They have caused even more suffering by the poverty, division and corruption that they have created through their plundering and associated neo-colonial interference operations. Assisted by their two direct military interventions that sought to beat into shape a pliant regime in that country, Australia’s capitalist rulers have plundered tens of billions of dollars from neighbouring East Timor’s rich oil and gas resources resulting in that country having the fifth highest rate of child undernourishment in the world (and the highest in Asia next to war-ravaged Yemen). Put another way, Australia’s exploiting class have killed thousands upon thousands of East Timorese infants over the last two and a half decades by causing them to starve to death.

If the Israeli regime and their U.S. masters succeed in severely weakening Iran – the more so if they achieve their more ambitious goal of precipitating a pro-Western regime change there – then it would embolden the imperialists to intensify their oppression of other Global South countries and more aggressively attack others who defy them. On the other hand, every blow that Iran can land against Israel and their imperialist backers can only encourage the masses in the countries oppressed by imperialism to rise up against neo-colonial tyranny. Moreover, any setback or embarrassment that the imperialist Western rulers and their Israeli attack dog suffer in their campaign against Iran will open up greater opportunities for the working class, dispossessed First Peoples and embattled racial minorities within the Western countries to resist their own oppression. That is why it is in the very interests of the working class, Aboriginal people, Asian, Middle Eastern and African-based minorities and all the other oppressed of this country to stand 100% with Iran in this conflict.

Israel’s largest oil refinery burns after the complex in Haifa was struck by a precise and powerful Iranian missile strike on 15 June 2025.
Photo: The Gaza/Facebook page

As the guiding hand behind Israel, the U.S. regime is unashamedly cheering on the Israeli assault. For their part, Australia’s imperialist rulers, like their counterparts ruling Western Europe, Japan and Canada, are also publicly backing Israel. Although they speak of “de-escalation”, they have made it clear that such “de-escalation” must be entirely on Israel’s and the Western powers’ terms. Thus acting prime minister, Richard Marles stressed that “we specifically call on Iran to exercise restraint in their actions so as not to risk any broader conflict.” In other words the Australian government want Iran to simply cop the Israeli aggression and not hit back! Moreover, both extreme war-monger Marles and foreign minister Penny Wong have sided with the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran by speaking of “Israel’s right to defend itself”. They have also sought to legitimise Israel’s aggression by labelling Iran’s efforts to build a ballistic missile (and allegedly in the future a nuclear) deterrent “a threat to international peace and security.” As if the possession of nuclear weapons by the maniacal Zionist regime that is conducting a genocide of the people of Gaza is not the actual, real “threat to international peace and security”! Or that the possession of a huge nuclear arsenal by the Australian imperialists’ U.S. senior partner, which is not only the only regime to have ever dropped nuclear bombs on humans before but has directly killed up to ten million people in countless military attacks ever since – is not an even more terrifying “threat to international peace and security”! It is only because the Albanese Labor government and its counterparts ruling Western Europe, Japan and Canada are worried that Israel’s brazen attack on Iran will provoke such resistance and anti-Western sentiment that it will “destabilise” Western imperialist domination of the world that they speak of the need to “prioritise dialogue and diplomacy”.

The Australian ruling class’ verbal support for Israel’s aggression is exceeded by their military, economic and ideological support. With the backing of all the parties currently in parliament – from the far-right parties, to the Liberals, to the ALP to the Greens – Australian governments have imposed a myriad of sanctions on Iran over the years. These prevented her from acquiring the weapons that she so badly needs to defend herself today. The Australia regime’s sanctions, which include a prohibition of the export to Iran of “certain kinds of graphite, raw metals, semi-finished metals, and software for integrating industrial processes”, have also hurt Iran’s economy, thus making her less able to resist U.S./Israeli aggression. These punitive measures and the hype around them have helped manufacture the ideological “justification” for today’s full-scale assault on Iran. Just last October, the Labor government added further sanctions on Iran.

Australia’s capitalist ruling class is aiding the U.S./Israeli assault in still more direct ways. The joint U.S./Australia Pine Gap spy base near Alice Springs downloads information from two U.S. spy satellites. This base has been transmitting the spy data to Israel to pinpoint its air, missile and artillery strikes on Gaza – thus ensuring that the strikes kill people rather than fall in empty space. Given that U.S. officials have boasted that they have given Israel “exquisite” intelligence to enable its attack on Iran, there is little doubt that the Australia-hosted Pine Gap base is also being used to aid the U.S./Israeli assault on Iran. The Australian regime has also participated heavily in attacks against the Yemeni Ansar Allah allies of the Palestinian and Iranian peoples. Several Australian troops are stationed in the Middle East assisting the U.S.-led operation against Yemen. Meanwhile, an Australian air base in the Northern Territory has been used by aircraft providing air-to-air refuelling of U.S. B2 stealth bombers on their way to bomb Yemen. Just as consequentially, the Australian regime has listed Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansar Allah as “terrorist” organisations. That means that people in this country are unable to make the donations that these groups require to buy the weapons that they so desperately need to wage their resistance against the Zionist terror machine. Additionally, Australian companies sell weapons and supplies to the Israeli military.

What we must do is build workers’ political strikes to oppose each of the methods by which the Australian ruling class is backing the U.S./Israeli war on Iran and Gaza. To lay the basis for such struggles, we need to win over to the cause the most politically advanced and respected worker activists; and then invigorate their commitment to this fight by involving them in rallies calling for support for both Iran and Palestine. To help build such demonstrations, we call on our readers to raise placards at the mass pro-Palestine rallies that emphasise the need to combine defence of Palestine with defence of Iran. Let us also raise slogans demanding: Lift all sanctions on Iran! Close Pine Gap! Australian military get out of the operation attacking the Yemeni allies of Iran and Gaza – troops out of the Middle East! No air-to-air refuelling from Australian bases of U.S. bombers attacking Yemen! Remove Ansar Allah, Hamas and Hezbollah from the “terror” listing! Stop Australian arms sales to Israel!

What has greatly assisted the U.S./Israeli assault on Iran is the takeover of Israel’s neighbour, Syria, last December by far-right-dominated, pro-imperialist “Rebels”. The former Ba’ath Party government led by Bashar al-Assad, although presiding over a state that served the interests of a section of the capitalist class and Syria’s privileged military and state bureaucracy, had tried to maintain independence from the imperialist Western powers. The Ba’athist government facilitated the flow of arms to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, was allied with Iran and Russia and maintained a close friendship with socialistic China. Although the Assad government’s concrete support to the Palestinian struggle did not reach the levels of its strongly pro-Palestine rhetoric, it nevertheless hosted the bases of several Palestinian resistance groups and refused to maintain any relations with Israel. By contrast, the new imperialist-subservient Syrian regime has proclaimed its wish for friendly ties with Israel and has begun talks with Israel aimed at normalising relations. Most significantly, the new regime has driven out Palestinian resistance groups from the training bases that the former government had allowed. This includes driving out Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second strongest resistance group, from their base in Syria and arresting two of their leaders. The new regime is also impeding the flow of weapons to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Thus the new Syrian regime led by “former” Al-Qaeda in Syria leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (who now calls himself Ahmed al-Sharaa) has not only harmed Palestinian resistance forces but is helping Israel to protect its northern, Lebanese, flank. In all these ways, combined with the confidence that Netanyahu can now have that Israel’s Syrian neighbour will not take action against it in solidarity with Iran, last December’s takeover of Syria by the pro-Western “Rebels” greatly emboldened the Israeli government to attack Iran and intensify its genocidal onslaught against Gaza.

These “Rebels” were only able to triumph because of the massive support that they received from the U.S., British, French, German, Australian and other Western imperialists and their Turkish, Israeli, Qatari, Saudi, Jordanian and Emirati regional allies. These countries imposed such severe economic sanctions on Syria when it was ruled by the previous, more independent, government that it ended up squeezing the previous government and grinding down the Syrian people’s will to resist the imperialist proxy forces. The imperialist powers and their regional allies also poured huge amounts of arms, training, intelligence, supplies and money to their “Rebel” proxies. At crucial times, including through direct U.S. and Turkish participation in their “Rebels” final offensive, the meddling powers also backed their Syrian proxies with direct military action. The regime that the imperialists installed, which is dominated by Al Qaeda-derived anti-secular fanatics, has begun to implement its long-promised, extreme “free market” agenda. It is carrying out a Donald Trump-Elon Musk-style mass firing of public sector workers and has vowed to “open up” Syria to domination by Western capital and that of the imperialists’ Turkish, Saudi and Qatari regional allies. Most notably, the new regime is massacring Syria’s minorities, imposing mandatory dress codes on women and otherwise crushing women’s rights. However, opponents of the new Syrian regime’s slaughter of minorities and subservience to imperialism and Zionism have launched an armed resistance. All supporters of Palestine and all opponents of the U.S./Israeli assault on Iran must support this insurgency and any opposition to the new regime’s attacks on workers and women. Weakening of the pro-imperialist, new regime will allow Palestinian resistance forces an opportunity to establish underground bases in Syria and will enable arms to get through to Iran and Gaza’s Hezbollah allies. We must demand that the Australian regime ends its training and technology cooperation with the Turkish military , which both through direct occupation of northern Syria and arming of the Syrian regime keeps the pro-imperialist Syrian regime in power.

Holding the world’s third largest oil reserves, imperialist powers have long sought to ensure that a puppet regime rules Iran. When Iran’s then Mosaddegh government moved to nationalise Iran’s oil wealth that was being plundered by the British predecessor to BP, the British and U.S. regimes engineered a coup to overthrow this government in 1953. Although Iran’s current theocratic government oversees the capitalist exploitation of Iranian workers, it does not allow Iran’s resource wealth to be sufficiently plundered by the imperialists for the latter to tolerate it. Moreover, the imperialists’ agenda extends beyond grabbing Iran’s resource wealth. Through either bringing to power a subservient regime in Iran, or at minimum greatly weakening her, the U.S. seeks to ensure its stranglehold over the oil wealth of the entire Middle East. It also seeks the domination of a region that is strategically located at the intersection point of the world’s three most populous continents. After the overthrow of the former Syrian government, Iran – other than for brave but tiny and war-ravaged Yemen – is the last remaining Middle Eastern country that maintains political independence from the Western powers. This and Iran’s efforts to protect her independence by backing imperialism-resisting forces in the region is not acceptable to the U.S. ruling class and its Zionist henchmen.

Australia’s capitalist class does not have significant economic interests in the Middle East. However, it is siding with the Israeli-US forces against Iran not out of subservience to the U.S. but out of its own predatory interests elsewhere in the world. Australia’s capitalist bigwigs are the main neo-colonial plunderers of the South Pacific and also engage in imperialist exploitation in neighbouring southeast Asia and beyond. However, they need the U.S. as the great power guarantor of this imperialist looting and thus want U.S. power to be protected – including in the Middle East. Moreover, there is a particular aim of the Western imperialist campaign against Iran that the Australian rulers are particularly sympathetic to. To understand this we need to note that Iran is the last remaining country in the region – other than Yemen – that is significantly closer to socialistic China than it is to the imperialist Western powers. For the imperial powers this is a big problem given both Iran’s oil wealth and the fact that she is the second most populous country in the strategic Middle East after Egypt. In seeking to greatly weaken Iran, the U.S. and its allies are simultaneously striking a blow against Red China. Ideally, they would install a subservient regime in Iran that would allow them to establish military bases targeting China near her southwestern flank.

Although Australia’s capitalists gain fat profits from their exports to China’s still-booming economy, they want socialistic rule in China crushed as much as their fellow imperialist counterparts do – and for identical reasons too. The mutually beneficial cooperation between China’s giant, socialistic state-owned enterprises and countries in the Global South is undermining the ability of the imperialist ruling classes to continue to super-exploit those countries. Already, China’s economic cooperation with countries in the South Pacific and beyond is causing Australian corporations to lose profits in the region – and they not happy about it! Even more significantly, the capitalist powers are terrified that especially given the disgruntlement amongst their own people, if average incomes in China were to continue to catch up with those of the richest countries and reach those levels in say two or three decades time, then the masses in their own countries will be demanding socialism too. Therefore, even though China’s cautious, national-centred rulers do nothing to consciously encourage the struggle for socialism abroad, the stunning successes of socialistic China in improving the lives of her people is a ticking time bomb that threatens to blow up capitalist rule worldwide if it is not first defused or contained. And the imperialist rulers are only too aware of this threat! That is why they are doing everything possible – from overt military pressure on China in the South China Sea and elsewhere to propaganda campaigns to backing of anti-communist groups within China to anti-China economic measures to targeting China-friendly countries for regime change – to undermine socialistic rule in China.

Most of the U.S. ruling class backs the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in large part because they know that victory over Iran would advance their campaign to crush socialistic China. However, some of the MAGA far-right factions are less enthusiastic about U.S. involvement in this war because they believe that the U.S. should not be distracted by wars unless they are directly aimed against Red China or Cuba or other workers states. Sharing some of the Far Right’s logic, sections of the Australian ruling class, while still backing the war on Iran, are quietly concerned that the U.S. is getting distracted from what they want their mafia godfather to be solely focussed on: squeezing socialistic China – or as they like to euphemistically put it “maintaining American engagement and leadership in the Pacific”. However, although there are differences in strategy, all the different ruling class factions of the various imperialist countries want the destruction of socialistic rule in China. But for the very same reasons that their own rulers are hostile to socialistic China, the working classes of Australia and the other imperialist countries must stand for the unconditional defence of the Chinese workers state. Despite the fragile, deformed and incomplete nature of China’s transition to socialism, the existence of a workers state in the world’s second most populous country is a great conquest for the worldwide struggle against capitalism and imperialism. We must mobilise in action here to demand: U.S./Australia military get out of the South China Sea! Resist Australia’s rapid, anti-China military build up! No to anti-China tariffs and export bans! No to restrictions on Chinese Apps and Chinese companies! Down with the lying propaganda attacks on China over Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and treatment of Uyghurs!

Any regime change in Iran brought about by the imperialist-Israeli attack would not only be bad for the whole world, it would be a disaster for the Iranian masses. The resulting regime would be a subservient one that would facilitate the theft of a large part of Iran’s resource wealth by her new imperial masters. And as the last imperialist-facilitated regime change in the Middle East proves – the one in Syria – it would hardly spell good news for Iran’s women and minorities either! Indeed, in order to enforce the impoverishment of the country’s toiling classes by the imperialist looters, a new pro-Western regime would need to incite all manner of social reaction. In particular, it would need to divert the masses’ frustrations by whipping up extreme ethnic chauvinism against Iran’s various smaller communities.

On the other hand, a victory for Iran in this conflict would boost the morale of Iran’s toiling classes. They would say to themselves: now that we have defeated the imperialist tyrants let us make short work of our local oppressors too. A victory for Iran over the imperialists and their Israeli attack dog could thus open the door to the type of regime change that the Iranian masses actually need: the triumph of the working class on a militantly anti-imperialist agenda. That is why genuine leftists in Iran must work hard to support Iran’s defence. At the same time they must agitate for measures that would, while strengthening Iran’s war effort, advance the struggle towards a socialist system. For example, they should advocate for expropriating the capitalists in key sectors to strengthen the operation and coordination of the war economy. Iranian leftists should also use the political space that they will be able to carve out through being part of the anti-imperialist forces to advance the struggle towards an anti-imperialist, pro-working class, pro-women’s rights transformation of Iran. For example, they could hold rallies under the banner of “pro-working class secularists for the defence of Iran against imperialism and its Zionist henchmen”; and include in the demonstrations the active participation of women defying the theocratic government’s dress code. Given the needs of the war effort and the masses’ determination to defeat the imperialist-Israeli attack, the government would find it very hard to get away with cracking down on such mobilisations. Genuine Iranian leftists should also form anti-imperialist defence guards to mercilessly crush any groups or individuals who engage in agitation supporting the imperialist-Israeli attackers, or who otherwise obstruct Iran’s war effort. In this way, they will not only contribute to the defence of Iran and win the hearts of the anti-imperialist minded masses but will be able to start to establish organs of workers-leftist power.

In short, Iran’s leftists must prove themselves to be the most resolute and determined defenders of Iran against the U.S.-Israeli attack. However, they should do so in a way that simultaneously advances towards the goal of a working class takeover of Iran. The latter struggle cannot be postponed, because unless the masses know that they are fighting for a future that’s more than simply the maintenance of the current oppressive, capitalist order, sizable parts of the Iranian masses will not fight with the energy and courage needed to defeat their imperialist attackers. This was proven last December in Syria. There, although the toiling masses had bravely resisted the imperialist proxies for years and although they largely continued to fear what a pro-imperialist victory would bring, they did not end up fighting to the bitter end, because they did not feel that they were fighting for their own social liberation as well. In the face of the overwhelming power of the imperialist Western powers and their heavily armed Israeli attack dog, the Iranian masses can only triumph by fighting with the greatest of heroism and courage. That is why the Iranian masses need to know that while fighting for their national independence against imperialism and its proxies, they are also simultaneously advancing towards their own class liberation and the associated liberation of women. It is this perspective that made the Vietnamese toilers fight with the most incredible heroism to triumph in the Vietnam War against U.S. and Australian imperialism, despite facing odds far more unfavourable than what Iran faces today.

The cover for Israel’s attack was provided by the Western-dominated UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The day before Israel launched its strikes, the IAEA “found” that Iran was non-compliant with the “obligations” that the capitalist powers had imposed on her to declare her nuclear fuel stocks and uranium enrichment activities. These “obligations” were imposed on Iran with the stated aim of preventing her from acquiring nuclear weapons. Thus under the cover of “disarmament” and “opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons”, Israel and the imperialists are committing mass murder against the people of Iran. This shows how the slogan of “disarmament” can be twisted to serve any agenda. It should therefore never be used by leftists as a general non-specific demand. This is what Russian revolutionary leader, V.I. Lenin, emphatically insisted in his crucial work written during the height of World War I, The Disarmament Slogan. In sharp contrast to general appeals for “disarmament”, we say: Disarm the imperialists and arm those resisting them!

In truth, it is likely that Iran remains some distance away from acquiring nuclear weapons. Moreover, her rulers insist that they do not seek nuclear weapons. However, for us, whether they do or not is not the point. As a country in the Global South targeted by the imperialists, Iran has a right to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, if she already had a strong nuclear deterrence capability, the U.S. and Israel would have been much less willing to attack her. Given that unfortunately Iran does not have nuclear weapons, she needs all the conventional weapons that she can get. In particular we appeal to China, which has verbally condemned the attack on Iran, to do its socialist duty and send Iran the most potent weaponry available – including China’s advanced J-20 stealth fighter aircraft, surface to air missiles and other anti-aircraft warfare systems and ballistic missiles. Given that the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran is in good part ultimately aimed against China, this would be an act of self-defence for the Chinese workers state. China’s masses must press their leaders to abandon their futile dreams that the capitalist powers will “peacefully co-exist” with socialistic China. They must demand that their leaders instead do everything possible to resist the imperialists before they are emboldened enough to directly attack China.

The most powerful force for resisting the imperialist-Israeli onslaught against Iran are the exploited and oppressed masses of the world – including the working classes and oppressed minorities within the imperialist countries. The inspiring resistance in Los Angeles of the most militant elements opposing Trump’s deportations of undocumented workers and their efforts to form self-defence patrols obstructing the immigration cop raids gives a taste of the power of the working class and downtrodden peoples in the bellies of the imperialist beasts. Here in Australia, we must combine opposition to the exploiting class attacks on renters, workers’ real wages, the militant CFMEU workers union, and on Aboriginal people and other people of colour with opposition to this self-same ruling class support for Israel’s war on Gaza and Iran. Let’s leverage the disgruntlement of wide sections of the masses over unaffordable rents, steep power prices, lack of secure jobs, falling real wages, racist state killings of Aboriginal people in custody and racist scapegoating of non-white migrants and international students!

While the Australian regime assists Israel’s wars on Gaza and Iran and the Labor government and Liberal opposition make clear that they side with the U.S. and Israel, the Greens rightly “condemn these latest Israeli attacks on Iran”. However, the Greens have contributed to laying the political groundwork for this attack by repeatedly calling over the years for Australia and other Western imperialist regimes to take action against the Iranian state to bring “human rights”. But whether military, economic or political, any intervention by imperialist ruling classes in any country of the Global South is always driven by their predatory goals. Such actions can never serve the interests of the masses of those countries. Instead, whether military, economic or political, such actions always do harm. Yet, two and a half years ago, the Greens  went so far as to criticise the Australian government for not taking enough action against Iran. They demanded that the Australian imperialist regime impose new sanctions on Iran and declare Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “terrorist organisation”. A year later, at a parliamentary committee, Greens senator David Shoebridge attacked the Australian Federal Police (from the far right!) for not making enough “foreign interference” arrests of people who make spirited social media comments criticising opponents of Iran and China!! The truth is that, although the Greens do not agree with the current war on Iran, Netanyahu and Trump have merely taken the agenda that they share with the Greens, for Western action to “express to the Iranian regime that they, and countries like them, will face consequences from the international community”, to the military level. By having been the most extreme advocate of Australian sanctions on Iran, the Greens have helped weaken Iran and make her less able to withstand today’s U.S.-Israeli attack.

Like the Greens, Socialist Alliance, Solidarity and Socialist Alternative have rightly opposed the Israeli aggression against Iran and opposed the role of Pine Gap in facilitating the attacks. Yet, while making powerful criticisms of the U.S.-Israeli aggression, none of these groups made a clear call to actually, as we do, take the side of Iran in her resistance against the Israeli-U.S. attack. Moreover, the Solidarity and Socialist Alternative groups backed the takeover of Syria by pro-imperialist “Rebels” that has done so much to enable the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Their position was a capitulation to the stance of the ALP and especially the Greens, who were the most rabid supporters in the Australian parliament of the pro-imperialist and fanatically misogynist “Rebels”. Furthermore, bending again to the Greens and its years of fervent campaigning for Australian sanctions on Iran, Solidarity, Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative have thus far failed to call for a lifting of the Australian sanctions on Iran since the start of the war on her. Nor have their statements on the war demanded that the Australian military get out of the operation attacking the Yemeni allies of Iran and Gaza, or called for the lifting of the Australian regime’s “terror” listing of the Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansar Allah groups that stand with Iran and Gaza. Taking such stances are well within the scope of these left groups’ programs. That they have nevertheless chosen not to emphasise these crucially relevant demands when Iran is being attacked is an accommodation to the Greens and the ACTU leaders who both refuse to make these demands.

We call on sincere leftists to break free from the influence of the Greens and other representatives of the “progressive” wing of Australian imperialism so that we can together build actions opposing every single one of the ways that the Australian ruling class is participating in the U.S.-Israeli wars on Iran and Palestine. Let us build mobilisations demanding: Lift all Australian sanctions against Iran! Close Pine Gap! Australian military get out of the operation attacking the Yemeni allies of Iran and Gaza! Remove Ansar Allah, Hamas and Hezbollah from the “terror” listing!

Sisters and brothers: history is moving fast. Now, more than ever, is the time for opponents of imperialism, exploitation and racism to stand up and fight. The capitalists’ system is decaying and causing much suffering and disgruntlement within the imperialist countries. The response of the imperialist rulers is increased union-busting, repression and racist reaction at home and ever more violent efforts to plunder and bully the Global South. The brutal assault that the imperialist Western powers and their Israeli proxy have unleashed upon Iran today gives a small taste of what they will be prepared to unleash against socialistic China in order to preserve their tyranny over the world. We truly need to sweep away the imperialist ruling classes from power through socialist revolution. Let us advance towards this goal by working hard for the defeat of the imperialist Western powers and their Israeli attack dog and the victory of Iran and the Palestinian resistance.

Unleash Aggressive Opposition to the Australian Ruling Class That Backs Israel’s Genocidal Terror! Escalate Now!

Photo above: Up to fifteen thousand people march through the streets of Sydney on June 1 to oppose Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Gaza.
Photo: Central News

7 June 2025 – Palestinian people are facing a calamity even more horrific than what they have suffered over the last 20 months. The Netanyahu regime is trying to kill as many of Gaza’s people as they can and then forcibly expel the rest. The far-right government had shrouded this agenda in lies that their war was just about crushing Hamas. Now, the Zionist regime is increasingly open about their goal and more directly executing their agenda. They are murdering Gaza’s people by stopping aid agencies from delivering food. Instead, they have enabled a sinister U.S. outfit to “provide” a pittance that is totally inadequate for the region but just enough to incite divisive competition for the food amongst the starving people.

Israel is only able to prosecute this genocide because of the CONTINUING support it is receiving from the imperialist Western rulers. Far-right U.S. president Trump has openly urged Netanyahu to “finish the job” and has resumed shipping Israel its terrifying 2,000-pound bombs. The U.$. ruling class has long backed their I$raeli counterparts, because they are the enforcers of the predatory interests of the U.$. capitalist class in the strategic, oil-rich Middle East. Now, Trump is being driven by an additional motivation too. He wants to drive Palestinians out of Gaza to turn it into a lucrative, real estate and tourism strip for rich Westerners. The U.S. administration is today trying to force the Palestinian resistance into a ceasefire in order to release the Israeli hostages so that Netanyahu can then “finish the job” with less domestic opposition.

Second to the U.S., it is the German imperialists that are Israel’s biggest military backers. The previous Social Democrat-Greens government in Germany, with Greens foreign minister Annalena Baerbock leading the pro-Zionist policy, poured huge amounts of weapons into the Israeli killing machine. Now the new conservative government is following suit, while trying to cover its backside with some limp criticisms of Netanyahu. Having committed one genocide themselves, the German capitalist class – and its Greens, right-wing and social democrat representatives – are now supporting another!

And who is the next largest supporter of the Israeli military? None other than the Labor government-administered regime ruling this country! Australia’s capitalist rulers back Israeli terror far more than any country with a similar population size. That means that supporters of Palestine here have a huge responsibility. We must unleash militant mass actions to oppose all the means by which the ruling class here is backing Netanyahu’s terror! Let us escalate our resistance now!

Pressured by pro-Palestine protests, some European governments have “threatened” a few miniscule “sanctions” on Israel. Their new-found willingness to criticise Israel is partly due to their heightened inter-imperialist competition with their ally-cum-rival the U.S., making them feel that they can be less supportive of Israel, which is after all Washington’s attack dog and not directly theirs. However, Au$tralia’s rulers still fully back the U.$.’s I$raeli attack dog. For they want the power of their U.S. ally to be upheld since it is U.S. might that underwrites the Australian capitalists’ imperialist plunder of countries in the South Pacific and beyond. So Albanese’s attempts to reduce damage to the regime’s image by making some mild criticisms of Israel’s crimes has been even limper than his European counterparts. Moreover, even more than these European regimes, the Australian regime has maintained its huge support for the Israeli war machine. The Australia-hosted Pine Gap spy base is still pinpointing Israeli attacks on Gaza’s people. Australian troops are still in the Middle East in an operation against Yemen’s Houthis – the most effective armed force standing with Gaza. And the regime still lists as “terrorists” the pro-Palestine resistance groups, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, thus preventing Australians from providing the donations that these groups need to procure badly needed weapons. Meanwhile, Australian defence companies sell weapons to the Israeli military. In light of all this, it was infuriating that at last Sunday’s Sydney pro-Palestine rally, the Greens speaker claimed that governments are finally moving towards a better stance. Especially when talking about the government here, that is absolute rubbish! Let us not moderate our opposition to Australia’s rulers but instead greatly intensify it! We need rallies, pickets, occupations and workers strikes to demand: Close Pine Gap! Australian troops get out of the Middle East! Lift the “terror” listing of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis! No Australian arms sales to Israel! In support of these demands, those unions that have stated solidarity with Palestine must take industrial action. Let us wage a political struggle against the pro-ALP leaders of our unions to build such action.

In addition to direct support, Western powers have boosted Zionist forces by installing a subservient regime in next-door Syria. This Al Qaeda-derived regime is not only a rabidly pro-“free-market” lackey of imperialism that is massacring minorities and crushing women’s rights, it has also driven out Palestinian resistance groups from the training bases that the former government had allowed. Most notably in Syria, the new regime drove out Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second strongest resistance group, from their base in Syria and arrested two of their leaders. The new regime has impeded the flow of weapons to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, thus protecting Israel’s northern flank. Opponents of the new Syrian regime’s slaughter of minorities and subservience to imperialism and Zionism have launched an armed resistance. All supporters of Palestine must support this insurgency and any opposition to the new regime’s attacks on workers and women. Weakening of the pro-imperialist, new regime will allow Palestinian resistance forces an opportunity to establish underground bases in Syria and will enable arms to get through to Gaza’s Hezbollah allies. We must demand that the Australian regime ends its training and technology cooperation with the Turkish military which both through direct occupation of northern Syria and arming of the Syrian regime keeps the pro-imperialist, anti-Palestine Syrian regime in power.

Many Palestine supporters, including parts of the Palestine Action Group (PAG), hoped that the elections would usher in Australia’s “most progressive government ever”. Instead, the genocide-supporting ALP government was returned. Yet even if the Greens entered into a coalition government with Labor there would not, unfortunately, have been major change. Fearful of the capitalist class ownership of the media, the Greens refused to make Palestine an issue during their election campaign. If they capitulate to the rest of the ruling class even before taking office, imagine how much more the Greens would bend when they are part of a government! Actually, we don’t need to imagine! During Israel’s November 2012 war on Gaza, when the Australian regime was, as now, giving military support to Israeli terror, the Greens were in a de facto coalition government with Labor. Indeed, in the period when the Greens were signalling their conditions for a hoped-for coalition government with Labor, Palestine just did not figure. That is why Greens politicians kept on lying that “Labor has finally been dragged kicking and screaming into a better position on Gaza”, while adding that it “still has not done enough to stop Israel” and “failed to impose sanctions”. Those latter seeming criticisms are actually a whitewash of the fact that the Labor government is actually doing a lot – a lot to support Israel’s genocidal military that is! However, a Greens party seeking to justify collaboration with the ALP – and which is as protective of the capitalist order’s image as the ALP, the Liberals and the Far Right are – would rather not focus on the extent of the Australian regime’s criminal support for Israel. There is an additional reason why the Greens do not want to focus too much on what the government is actually doing to support Israeli terror – the Greens themselves do not oppose all the means by which the Albanese government backs Israel. The Greens have never opposed the Australian regime’s participation in the attacks on the Yemeni allies of Palestine and do not call for the lifting of the terror listing of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Although there are many decent people in the Greens, the party is incapable of being a reliable force for the liberation of the Palestinian people. For they uphold Australia’s capitalist order; and, indeed, include some capitalists and many pro-capitalist, upper middle-class elements within their ranks. And it is in the interests of Au$tralia’s own capitalist exploiting class that governments here support I$rael. What we need is a party committed to mobilising the working class masses against the entire capitalist class in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Some respond that “the masses are just interested in issues like the unaffordable cost of living”. However, not only is that natural, it is not a big problem! For working class people can be mobilised for their own immediate economic needs against the very same class that is supporting the Gaza genocide. Let us combine the fight to resist the capitalist rulers’ support for Israel’s military with the struggle against the ruling class attack on the militant CFMEU union, opposition to the pro-speculator housing policies that have led to exorbitant rents, the struggle against state killing of Aboriginal people in custody and the fight against the ruling class incitements to race hate against Chinese, other Asian, Muslim, African and Arab minorities. 

We must reorient the pro-Palestine movement to follow this agenda for weakening the genocide-supporting ruling class. The movement has many things going for it. The PAG is excellent at organisation and there were great numbers at last Sunday’s Sydney march. But at the moment, the marches are merely annoying the ruling class. To make Australia’s rulers back off from their support for Israel, we need to instead terrify them. For starters, that means PAG must stop bowing to the Greens agenda of minimising the regime’s crimes by saying it is only “not doing enough”. Instead, the marches must place Australia’s ruling class as enemies equal to their Israeli and U.S. counterparts. When tens of thousands of people are marching through Sydney chanting not just “Down Down Israel, Down Down USA” but “Down Down Israel, Down Down USA, Down Down Australian Regime”, the ruling class here will really start to rethink their continued support for Israeli terror.

The ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people is an attack on humanity itself. The fact that the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialist regimes are facilitating it shows what lengths they will go to in order to enforce their predatory interests in the future. If they need to, they will try and impose the nightmarish fascist form of capitalism on us – as they are, indeed, preparing to do in many countries – or throw us as cannon fodder into an apocalyptic war against socialistic China – the greatest state obstacle to their tyranny over the world.

We really need to sweep away the Western capitalist classes from power. Let us advance towards this goal in the course of building mass action to oppose their support for the Gaza genocide. Build political strikes, pickets and occupations to demand the closure of Pine Gap and for Australian troops to get out of the Middle East! Unite this with struggles against the ruling class attacks on militant unions, renters, Aboriginal people and other people of colour! Workers of all countries unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains and the bombs raining hellfire down upon our sisters and brothers.

How We Can Resist the Australian Regime’s Participation in Israel’s Terror

Photo above: The suffering of Gaza’s people caused by Israel’s genocidal terror. Displaced Palestinian children are seen among temporary tents next to large piles of garbage in Gaza City on March 21 2025.
Photo: Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua

14 April 2025 – The Israeli military’s cold-blooded March 23 murder of 15 Palestinian medics and emergency workers who were travelling in two convoys of clearly marked ambulances says everything about the genocidal aims of its war on Gaza’s people. Every day, the Zionist butchers commit new gruesome crimes. Yet Israel would not be able to wage its war on the Palestinian people without the massive support that it receives from the U.S., German, British and Australian regimes. It is not only in Palestine that these regimes are causing immense suffering within the Middle East region. Over the last four weeks, the Donald Trump-led U.S. regime, with the assistance of its British and Australian counterparts, has been relentlessly bombing Yemen. These forces have killed a large number of Yemeni civilians, killing at least 31 of her people, mostly women and children, in just the first day of this latest wave of attacks on March 16. This operation not only seeks to stop Yemen’s brave actions in support of the Palestinian people but also aims to crush one of the only two remaining governments in the Middle East that are not under the thumb of the Western imperialists. The other remaining relatively independent state is Iran. But Trump is now threatening war against Iran too. There had been one other relatively independent government in the region – in Syria. But that government was ousted last December by a collection of “Rebel” proxies of the U.S., British and French imperialists and their Turkish, Qatari, Israeli, Saudi and Jordanian allies. The forces that the imperialists and their allies have brought to power in Syria are dominated by Al Qaeda-derived anti-secular extremists who are fanatically determined to subjugate women. This new Syrian regime’s forces have already massacred thousands of members of Syria’s Alawi minority. They have also attacked the country’s Christian and Druze communities, constricted the rights of women and subverted the country’s previously secular education system. The regime has also begun a Trump/Elon Musk-style mass firing of Syria’s public sector workers, while stating (actually re-stating) its intention to privatise most of Syria’s state-owned enterprises. This will “open” up the Syrian economy to much greater super-exploitation by Western investors and their counterparts in the Gulf states.

What the imperialists and their proxies are doing to re-shape Syria is closely connected to their limitless support for Israel’s tyranny over Palestine. For the ruling classes of the capitalist powers support Israel precisely because the Zionists are its most reliable attack dogs in the region who enforce their hegemony over the oil-rich and strategically located Middle East. Thus, Israel played a major role in the imperialists’ operation to bring its proxies to power in Syria. The Israeli military not only relentlessly attacked the previous government’s forces with air and missile strikes, it also armed and paid the salaries of at least twelve different armed “Rebel” factions based in the south of Syria. Today, Israel is its U.S. masters’ main attack dog to try and subjugate oil-rich Iran under U.S.-led Western domination.

We need to wage a powerful struggle to resist the Australian regime’s support for Israel’s genocidal terror against the Palestinian people and to resist the hegemony of the Western imperialists and their Zionist and other junior partners over the broader Middle East. Leftists in Australia have a big role to play in this regard. For the Australian regime is a major contributor to the military operations of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East. The joint U.S./Australia satellite ground station at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, is used by the U.S. to help its own military and that of its allies to locate targets for their missile, artillery and drone strikes. Today, the Pine Gap spy base is used to direct U.S. attacks in Yemen and Iraq. Pine Gap’s target data is also passed on real time to Israel to ensure that the bombs and missiles that the Zionist military unleashes on Gaza kill Palestinian people rather than fall on open space or empty buildings. It is likely too that through U.S. membership of NATO, Pine Gap spy data is also passed on through NATO to NATO member Turkey. Meanwhile, Australia’s air bases in northern Australia have been used to host aircraft conducting air-to-air refuelling of U.S. B-2 bombers attacking Yemen. When the Joe Biden-led U.S. regime bombed Yemen last October, the Australian regime bragged about the role played by Australian air bases in the attack. In addition to the undoubted role of Australian-hosted Pine Gap, it is likely that Australian air bases are also supporting the new Trump-led U.S. administration’s even more brutal bombing campaign against Yemen. However, given local anger at Trump’s tariffs that have hit Australia among other countries, the ruling class did not consider it opportune to boast about its role in facilitating this new wave of U.S. attacks on Yemen. In any case, in a mission dubbed Operation Hydranth, the Australian military has several personnel in the Middle East directly participating in the U.S. and British led assaults on Yemen. Meanwhile, Australian companies sell military equipment and supplies to Israel and continue to seek to expand this provision of support to the genocidal Zionist military. Earlier this year, Australian defence company EOS had its advanced weapon system trialled by the Israeli military as part of a bid to win a contract to supply it with counter-drone weapons. The Australian regime for its part boosts Israel’s arms providers. In February last year, the Australian military awarded a nearly $917 million contract to Israel’s biggest arms producer, Elbit Systems – known for supplying Israeli forces with killer drones and mortars. Australia’s capitalist rulers also support the U.S.-led drive to subjugate Iran. Thus, with the support of all the parties and “independents” currently in parliament, the Australian government has hit Iran with sanctions. Sometimes, Canberra disguises these as measures against the Iranian government’s repressive and anti-women policies. But Australia’s rulers care nothing for the Iranian masses. Their real goal is to support the U.S. and Israeli drive to bring Iran to heel. This was proven last October, when the Australian government unleashed new sanctions on Iran in response to her 100% justifiable, retaliatory missile strike on Israel. 

The Left and politically advanced sections of the workers movement must mobilise in mass actions to demand: Close Pine Gap! No refuelling or hosting of U.S. warplanes from Australian bases! Australian troops involved in the operation against Yemen: Get out of the Middle East! Lift the Australian regime’s “terror” listing of Hamas and Hezbollah! No military sales to Israel! Cancel Australian contracts to Israeli arms suppliers! Lift the sanctions on Iran! Down with the Australian regime’s attacks on pro-Palestine activists! It is possible to win sections of the Australian working class to fight for this agenda because doing so is in the very interests of the working class. When the power and authority of the capitalist rulers is strengthened, like it was when their side took over Syria, they are more able to get away at home with attacking militant unions, curbing leftist dissent, demonising Aboriginal youth and scapegoating refugees and immigrants. On the other hand, any setbacks to the Western imperialists – who the Australian ruling class are part of – in Palestine, Yemen, Iran and the broader Middle East will weaken the Australian capitalist rulers at home too and, thus, give the working class and all oppressed more possibilities to win struggles against this exploiting class.

Above: A B-2A bomber of the type used in U.S. bombing raids in Yemen. U.S. attacks on Yemen aim to crush Yemen’s actions in solidarity with the Palestinian people. They are also aimed at undermining one of the two remaining governments in the Middle East that are not politically subordinate to U.S. imperialism. The Australian imperialists have assisted the B-2 bombing attacks on Yemen by making Australia’s Northern Territory Tindal air base available for aircraft to provide air to air refueling of the B-2 bombers on route to Yemen from its base in the U.S. state of Missouri.
Below: People survey the rubble of a house hit by a March 16 U.S. attack on Saada, Yemen


Photo Above: The Aviationist
Photo Below: Naif Rahma/ REUTERS

It is important to understand why the Australian rulers are so avidly assisting U.S. intervention in the Middle East. The reason is not because they are servile to the U.S. rulers. As we are seeing with the very different stance taken by the Australian government and that of the Trump Administration over the Ukraine war, the Australian regime acts in the interests of Australia’s billionaires and other capitalist exploiters and not the American ones. Australia’s rulers want U.S. power to be defended and enhanced only because it is U.S. might that helps protect the Australian ruling class’ own imperialist plunder in what it claims as its “own backyard” – that is the southwest Pacific and southeast Asian region. So they naturally back the U.S. maintaining its hegemony over the strategic Middle East and inevitably back the U.S. rulers’ Zionist attack dogs. Like the other imperialists around the world, Australia’s ruling class is counting on the U.S. rulers to spearhead the Cold War campaign to destroy socialistic rule in China and, thus, wants the U.S. capitalist superpower to remain strong for this reason too. Therefore, when the Australian capitalist ruling class backs U.S. operations in the Middle East, they are ultimately doing so with the intention of advancing their own predatory imperialist interests.

The potential to mobilise resistance to Australian ruling class support for Israel’s genocidal onslaught and the broader Western hegemony over the Middle East is shown by the fact that hundreds of thousands of people, outraged at Western support for Israel’s genocidal crimes, have joined pro-Palestine marches in Australia over the last year and a half. But for this potential to be realised the political direction of this spirited movement must be properly oriented. To be sure, there have been strongly positive aspects to the political content of the protests. Aboriginal speakers in particular have rightly drawn the connection between Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the Australian rulers’ brutal subjugation of this country’s First Peoples. Some of the rally chants – like “Albanese You Can’t Hide – We Charge You with Genocide” – have powerfully exposed the Albanese Labor government’s complicity in Israel’s massacres of Palestinian people. However, there is another component of the movement pushing a, at bottom, very different slant. Promoted most openly by Greens politicians who address the pro-Palestine events, this stance appeals to the Australian government to “do a lot more” to support the Palestinians. Although accompanied by passionate – and in the case of speakers like federal Greens senator, Mehreen Faruqi, truly heartfelt – appeals for the government to put sanctions on Israel and condemnations of the Australian government “for doing very little” to solidarise with the Palestinian people, the effect of this “doing very little” apparent criticism of the government is to cover up the fact that the Australian regime is actually doing a lot – a lot, that is, to support Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the futile appeals that the Greens and those Far-Left groups that tail after them make for “Australia to put sanctions on Israel” – something that will never happen while Australia remains under capitalist rule and Israel remains a crucial attack dog for Australia’s U.S. senior partner – distracts from the urgent need for mass actions to oppose the ten different means by which the Australian regime is today actively supporting Israel’s terror. To see how urgent this task is we should point out this important fact: no other regime ruling over a country with Australia’s population size or smaller does as much to support Israeli terror and U.S. hegemony over the Middle East as the Australian regime does.

In part, the Greens minimisation of the Australian regime’s crimes, even while delivering it in the tone of an angry denunciation, stems from the fact that the Greens are a capitalists-including, capitalism-accepting party that, like the ALP and the conservatives, wants to protect the image of the capitalist Australian state. So, they feel more comfortable criticising the government “for doing very little” than skewering the large amount of genocide-supporting crimes that the regime is actually committing. There is another reason that the Greens do not want to focus too much on the actual ways that the Australian regime is supporting Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinian people and the U.S. domination of the Middle East that underpins it. The Greens actually back some of these Australian government policies themselves! For example, the Greens support Australian government sanctions on Iran and have often demanded that these sanctions be escalated. Indeed, when Israel bombed Iran a year ago, the Greens refused to stand in clear solidarity with Iran but instead despicably called on the government to “condemn all sides”. Moreover, in some other cases, the Greens, while not openly supporting particular Australian government measures backing U.S. and Israeli tyranny over the Middle East, nevertheless refuse to oppose those measures. For instance, the Greens have failed to oppose the Australian regime’s participation in the U.S. and British-led operation against Yemeni supporters of Palestine. The Greens also refuse to call for the lifting of the Australian regime’s listing of Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”, a ban which is very harmful because it impedes Arab and Muslim Australians and other residents of Australia from sending these anti-Israel groups badly needed funds to finance their resistance operations. Indeed, while Greens politicians are keen to appear intransigent supporters of the Palestinian people when speaking at pro-Palestine rallies, all the better to gain votes from amongst the large crowds of participants, their actual stance towards the Palestinian armed resistance is hardly supportive. Several Greens statements in parliament have despicably equated the war crimes of the coloniser state Israel with the resistance actions of the largest Palestinian armed group, Hamas. For example, last June, Greens Spokesperson for Peace and Foreign Affairs, Senator Jordon Steele-John stated: “Our nation must respond to the State of Israel’s crimes in the same way we have rightfully responded to those committed by Hamas.” He further added: “We must always remember that peace is the goal and a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis has been made so much harder to achieve through the actions of the State of Israel and Hamas.” Notably, the Greens have also been aggressively demanding that Palestinian resistance groups release the Israeli hostages that they are holding (some of whom are Israeli soldiers), a demand that has been used by the Israeli and U.S. regimes as a big part of their justification for attacking Gaza. To be sure, it would better if there were no such hostages, at least civilian ones (however the Greens ought to be more energetic in demanding that the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners being held hostage in Israeli jails in horrific conditions be released). However, in the context of bloodthirsty Netanyahu and his even more extreme coalition allies wanting the hostages released so that they can pummel Gaza still more ferociously, to publicly demand that Palestinian resistance groups release the Israeli hostages is to call for placing the people of Gaza under even greater danger of annihilation. 

A screenshot of a 13 June 2024 posting on the Greens website that asserts their stance on Palestine. Although the Greens verbally oppose Israel’s war on Gaza they disgustingly equate the actions of the biggest armed resistance group of the oppressed Palestinian people, Hamas with the genocidal crimes of the Israeli oppressor state. This equivocal position is the real stance of the Greens. However, when Greens politicians speak at large pro-Palestine rallies, they dishonestly make out that the Greens are unwavering supporters of the Palestinian people’s struggle – all the better to gain votes from the attendees.

We must wage a political struggle within the pro-Palestine movement to stop the Greens and other pro-capitalist tendencies from diverting and distracting the movement away from the key task of opposing each of the actions that the Australian ruling class takes to support the Zionist war machine and the U.S. hegemony over the Middle East that this terror machine rests on. There is another political problem that needs to be corrected in the pro-Palestine movement. Significant parts of the movement promote the notion – or otherwise mistakenly believe – that the only reason that the Australian government is supporting Israel is because it is a puppet of the U.S. and/or a puppet of Zionist lobbyists. This notion is, for starters, plain wrong. For although the U.S. rulers and the pro-Israel lobby exert a nefarious influence, what primarily drives Australian government policy on the Middle East (and everywhere else) is the strategic interests of this country’s own super-powerful, ultra-rich exploiting class. The biggest problem with this notion is that it implies that the task of the movement is merely to pull the Australian government away from the clutches of the U.S. rulers and the detestable pro-Zionist lobbyists so that the government can finally act on its own supposed, innate, caged-up, “human rights”-driven inclination to come to the defence of the besieged Palestinian people. Such a notion greatly prettifies the Australian rulers – the same ones that continue to brutally subjugate this country’s First Peoples – and undercuts the need to relentlessly oppose them. Moreover, when the Australian ruling class hear the pro-Palestine movement delivering such a message, while it will of course anger them greatly, it won’t overly terrify them. For they will actually be relieved that the movement is not opposing them as an implacable enemy and that hard-hitting chants like “Albanese You Can’t Hide – We Charge You with Genocide” do not express the overall line of the entire movement. And when we are not politically threatening to the imperialist ruling class they do not feel like they need to make any concessions to us.

As well as turning the pro-Palestine movement into one that truly seeks to damage the authority and political stability of Australia’s imperialist ruling class we, of course, need to build more forces for the movement. We also need to win those who join actions sporadically to participate a lot more consistently. The biggest obstacle to doing so are the widespread illusions that the Australian government’s policy on Palestine can be changed through changing the composition of parliament through elections. Such hopes have even been expressed by some speakers at the pro-Palestine protests. As the federal election nears, such vain hopes will intensify. As long as many of the people who are hostile to the imperialist West and Zionist terror cling on to hopes of change through the ballot box, they will feel that it is not too important for them to participate in the actions on the ground that they would otherwise be joining. However, the reality right now is that even if a few pro-Palestine candidates were to win some seats, the fact that both major parties so strongly back Israel’s war on Palestine – and even more overwhelmingly back the U.S. dominance over the Middle East that underpins Israel’s actions – means that supporters of Western/Israeli tyranny over the Middle East will have a parliamentary majority regardless of who has any parliamentary balance of power between the ALP and the Coalition. More fundamentally, as long as they remain in power, the rich Australian capitalist class, driven by its own imperialist needs and through both its control of the media, think tanks and other means of influencing mass sentiment, on the one hand, and its web of influence over state institutions on the other will compel any parliament to support U.S. domination of the Middle East and the Zionist marauding that flows from this. Even in the hypothetical case that anti-imperialists truly committed to the liberation of Palestine were allowed to be elected to a parliamentary majority, the propaganda machine of the capitalist class and the capitalist state’s enforcement organs would sabotage implementation of any anti-imperialist policies; and topple the government in a coup should it persist in trying to implement them. Therefore, the only effective means from here to resist Zionist tyranny and imperialist domination of the Middle East is to build mass actions, linked to the power of the workers movement (including through strikes, pickets, occupations and marches), in opposition to each of the means through which the Australian capitalist regime is backing U.S. and Israeli forces in the Middle East. We must put all our effort into building such actions and knocking down all the political obstacles standing in the way of such mobilisations.

This does not mean that how people vote is unimportant. If a party stands genuinely opposed to imperialism and the capitalist system that imperialism is an extension of then supporting that party can help galvanise mass opposition to – and thus actions against – Australian capitalist rule and its support for U.S. and Israeli tyranny in the Middle East. But where is there such a party running in the elections? We have seen so clearly through the Albanese government that the ALP leaders are enemies of the Palestinian people, supporters of the imperialist takeover of Syria and vicious attackers of militant unions like the CFMEU. The ALP supports pro-speculator, pro-rich investor housing policies that drive low-income renters into poverty, all while engaging in the racism-inciting scapegoating of migrants, refugees and international students for the unaffordable rents and dwelling prices. The right-wing Liberal/National Coalition is all of this but in an even more shameless and extreme manner. Most rabidly hostile to the Palestinian people, Aboriginal people, other people of colour and our workers unions are the far right parties like One Nation and greedy billionaire Clive Palmer’s, Donald Trump-loving, Trumpet of Patriots party.

In contrast, the Greens not only oppose Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, they also condemn racist attacks on Muslims in Australia. Moreover, the Greens do promise more low-rent public housing than Labor do and have opposed the extreme character of the attack on the CFMEU (even though the Greens joined the rest of the parliamentary parties in calling for what is necessarily union-weakening, state intervention in the CFMEU). Thus, with the ALP so blatantly knifing the back of its working class base (yet again!), many former Labor supporters from militant unionists, to low-income renters, to progressive-minded youth to opponents of Israel’s Gaza genocide are now intending to vote for the Greens. However, it is telling that while the Greens have said that they will demand support for a big increase in environmental spending as a condition for supporting an ALP minority government, they have not stated that they will only back a Labor minority government if it stops its support for Israel’s terror and the U.S. hegemony over the Middle East that underpins it. Instead, in preparation for joining a potential coalition – or de facto coalition – government with Labor, the Greens have disgustingly begun whitewashing the Albanese government’s support for Israel’s genocidal terror by saying that Labor has now “finally shifted towards the Greens position”. Really? If true, that says a lot about the Greens’ actual position (as opposed to what Greens politicians tell us when they speak at pro-Palestine rallies)! Indeed, the Greens’ acquiescence to a Labor minority government’s support for Israeli terror is par for the course for them. During Israel’s November 2012 war on Gaza, when the Australian regime was, as now, giving military support to Israeli terror, the Greens remained in a de facto coalition government with Labor.

Not only is the Greens’ support for Palestine partial as we have detailed above, on almost every single other major international issue they side with the imperialist Western powers. For example, the Greens fully backed the imperialist proxies that have now seized Syria. Indeed, of all the parliamentary parties in Australia, the Greens were the most rabid in backing these misogynist, anti-secular fanatics. They often attacked the Australian government for not being belligerent enough in supporting these pro-imperialist forces and Greens politicians even spoke at the rallies held in Australia in support of these “Rebels” before they seized power. Moreover, while the Greens nominally oppose U.S.-led military action against Iran, they support all of the Western imperialists’ political attacks on Iran used to build up towards such a military onslaught. Thus, the Greens not only push for ever more Australian sanctions on Iran but, in August 2023, Greens federal senator David Shoebridge even joined hardline anti-communist and fanatically pro-Israel Liberal politician James Paterson – the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs – in hysterically demanding that the Australian Federal Police arrest more sympathisers of the Iranian and Chinese governments living in Australia that make social media comments defending these governments against criticism from opponents.

It is on the most important issue facing the world that the Greens show most clearly their pro-imperialist character – the new Cold War drive of the capitalist powers to crush socialistic rule in China. Although China’s transition to socialism is unfinished and deformed by hostile pressure, the capitalist powers are feverishly working to crush socialistic rule in China because they worry that the existence of a workers state in a country with more than one in six of the world’s people and one which is so successfully improving the lives of her masses will eventually encourage demands for socialism in their own countries. Moreover, even right now, China’s mutually beneficial cooperation with the ex-colonial countries is impeding the imperialists’ ability to plunder and exploit these countries. The Greens are fully behind the rest of the ruling class’ campaign to undermine the Chinese workers state. To be sure, the Greens do oppose AUKUS. However, in their political stance, they are along with the Far Right groups, the most extreme opponents of Red China. They not only voted for the draconian 2018 “Foreign Interference” laws that are aimed against people in the Australian-Chinese community and beyond who express sympathy for socialistic China but also demand additional measures to suppress expressions of sympathy (or even neutrality!) towards Red China and to persecute those who voice them. It was Greens federal senator David Shoebridge – when he was a NSW MP – who successfully spearheaded a campaign to drive out the Chinese language-teaching Confucius Institutes from schools, on the grounds that they were sponsored by the Chinese government. Shrieking that the institute was a tool for Chinese “foreign interference”, Shoebridge even attacked the then NSW Liberal government from the far right, accusing them of being slow to crack down on the Institute. Meanwhile, the Greens support every single lying attack made by the imperialist ruling classes against China over “human rights” and every single Western-backed internal force within China (and their exile allies) that seeks to destroy the Chinese workers state. Indeed, Greens politicians have even joined their Far Right counterparts like Craig Kelly (see the latter part of the following article https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/put-the-banks-under-state-control/ for photos) in guest speaking at the events of the extreme right-wing, anti-communist Falun Dafa outfit – an American government-funded Chinese organisation that supports Donald Trump and Germany’s Nazi-inspired, Far Right and rails Nazi-style against “race mixing” and gays.

For all these reasons, no genuine anti-imperialist should support the Greens at the upcoming election. A vote for the Greens is a vote for the continued escalation of the capitalist powers’ political and propaganda campaign to crush socialistic rule in China and the intensified McCarthyist repression that accompanies it at home. A vote for the Greens is a vote for endorsing the avidly Greens-supported takeover of Syria by fanatically anti-secular imperialist proxies. Although the Greens do state opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza, by supporting the efforts of the imperialist Western powers that back Israel to expand their global power, the Greens end up actually doing a lot of harm to the cause of the Palestinian people. Most directly, the triumph of the pro-imperialist forces that the Greens fanatically backed in Syria has led to Palestinian resistance groups having their bases ejected from that country and a government that was hostile to neighbouring Israel being replaced by one that craves friendly ties with Israel and was brought to power with the Zionists’ direct assistance. And what of the Greens’ support for a similar pro-imperialist regime change in Iran (as opposed to the replacement of Iran’s male chauvinist, capitalist, but currently Western-conflicting, regime by an even more militantly anti-imperialist state under workers’ rule which is what we stand for)? If the Greens side wins in Iran like they did in Syria, what would that do to the supply of arms to Palestinian resistance groups and to Hezbollah and Houthi allies of the Palestinian resistance? And what if the side that the Greens are on triumphs in the new Cold War too and socialistic rule in China is overthrown? How much more unchallenged and powerful would be the imperialist Western powers then – the ones that arm, finance and assist the genocidal Israeli military!

Because the Greens embrace actual capitalist exploiters in their ranks, as well as many capitalism-accepting upper middle-class elements, the Greens are unable to deliver on their more progressive promises. For they are unable to withstand the pressure of the capitalist class that would oppose implementing such policies. Only the class struggle mobilisation of the working class against the capitalists could achieve this – and the Greens do not even pretend to be a party that stands for this. Thus, as the federal election approaches and the possibility of a post-election Labor-Greens-Teals joint government looms, the Greens are going out of their way to ensure that the majority of the capitalist class does not campaign against the Greens’ presence in a future ALP-led minority government. They are doing this by showing that the Greens would be “responsible” administrators of the capitalist order. This was shown most clearly by the Greens Defence spokesman’s announcement in late March of a Greens promise to fund a massive $4 billion program for the Australian military to gain new missiles and drones. The Greens program is for a powerful Australian capitalist state that is, however, more independent of its U.S. senior partner. That is a recipe for the continued imperialist plunder and bullying of the peoples of the southwest Pacific and surrounding areas by Australia’s capitalist bigwigs – something that the Greens do not even acknowledge exists let alone oppose. Moreover, those who are considering supporting the Greens should consider this: with the Greens already making announcements trying to outdo the Liberals and ALP in anti-China militarism, how much further would they go to prove to the mainstream of the capitalist class that they are a “safe pair of hands” should the Greens actually become partners in an ALP-led alliance government? We actually don’t need to speculate. In Germany, the German version of the Australian Greens have been in a governing alliance led by the ALP-like, Social Democratic Party, for the last three and a half years. This German government that the Greens have been a key part of is noted for its militarism, its massive arms build up and for being one of the Israeli military’s biggest supporters – indeed second only to the U.S. regime.

Many working class people of Arab, Muslim and other people of colour backgrounds in Western Sydney are distrustful of the Greens. This is because they are wary of the Greens’, at best, indifferent attitude to the armed Palestinian resistance and because they understand the Greens to be a party led by upper middle-class whites with little real understanding of what they are confronting. As a result, a couple of independent candidates with the backing of Muslim organisations are running in two formerly safe Labor seats in southwestern Sydney. The mainstream media have dubbed these candidates “Muslim independents”, a description which the candidates themselves do not embrace. These particular independents are promising a tougher stance against Israel’s war on Gaza and more resources for the forgotten migrant-based communities in southwest Sydney. However, like the Greens, these candidates do not even claim to stand for the class interests of the working class against the capitalist ruling class. Indeed, the independent candidate running in Blaxland, a well-regarded migrant from Egypt, Ahmed Ouf, is himself a small-scale capitalist who owns a couple of pharmacies using hired labour and – like the Liberal Party – openly espouses a pro-business program. Without pushing back against the capitalist exploiting class – and this requires mobilising working class people in conscious class-struggle action – any promises by these independents to address housing unaffordability, the high cost of living and unemployment in their suburbs cannot be fulfilled. Still less can they force the Australian regime to pull back from its support for Israel which is driven by the overall interests of the rich and powerful Australian capitalist class. Therefore, while it is understandable that working class people of Arab, Asian, African and Muslim backgrounds in southwest Sydney may want to vote for these independents to register their anger at the Australian government’s support for Israel and the Islamophobia and white supremacist attitudes of the ruling establishment, they should not. Any vote by southwest Sydney’s working class people for capitalist independents, or pro-capitalist ones that do not even claim to stand for the particular class interests of the working class, represents a rejection of the basic socialist understanding that the interests of the working class masses, on the one hand, and the struggle against imperialism, on the other, can only be advanced by the struggle of the working class and its allies against the ruling exploiting class. Therefore, those working class people who get sucked into voting for such candidates will in doing so diminish their own class consciousness, thus making themselves less able to be mobilised in the class struggle and anti-imperialist resistance that we so desperately need.

In summary, we call on all working class people, all partisans of the downtrodden and all opponents of imperialist tyranny over the Middle East – and the Zionist terror that accompanies it – to refuse to vote for any of the parties in parliament or for any capitalism-accepting independents (which is, unfortunately, all the “independents” that we know of). Please convince your friends, co-workers and family members to do the same. For the main point of voting this way is to reject illusions in positive change through parliament so that we can better build the alternative path that is really necessary: determined mass actions – including strikes, pickets, occupations and rallies – that unite the power of the working class with all the oppressed and all anti-imperialists to demand the closing of Pine Gap, the ending of all Australian regime support to the U.S. and Israeli militaries, the removal of all Australian troops from the imperialists’ anti-Yemen operation, the smashing of the Australian regime’s racist attacks on Aboriginal people, a massive increase in low-rent public housing (including through confiscating the vacant houses of the ultra-rich), the nationalisation of the electricity, oil, gas and renewables sectors to drive down power prices and the booting out of the union-busting government administrators from the militant CFMEU construction workers union. In the process of such mobilisations, we can build a workers party that will truly stand for the interests of the working class masses and Australia’s subjugated Aboriginal people, while defending scapegoated Asian, Arab, Muslim and African origin minorities and championing the cause of women’s emancipation. Such a workers party would be very different to the ALP. The ALP seeks to administer the capitalist system in a way that supposedly improves workers’ lives, while craving acceptance from the powerful capitalist exploiters that would allow it to administer their system by constantly accommodating their interests and supporting all their overseas imperialist ambitions. In complete contrast, the workers party that we want to build would fight uncompromisingly for everything that the masses need, would oppose Australian imperialist tyranny over the southwest Pacific and southeast Asian regions, would resist Australian imperialist support for both U.S. intervention and Zionist terror in the Middle East and would have as its ultimate goal the replacement of the capitalist state with a state under workers’ rule.

Already, many working class people turn up to the polling booths to have their name ticked off to avoid a fine and then consciously cast an Informal vote by either leaving the ballot sheet blank or avoiding numbering all the boxes in the House of Representatives ballot; or, better still, by writing a quick political critique or an incisive message for the scrutineers of the ruling class politicians to read. In the seat of Blaxland, at the polling booth in Auburn where the most votes were cast in that suburb, the Auburn West polling booth, nearly one in five voters who turned up to the booth cast such an Informal vote at the last federal elections. At the Auburn Central polling booth, the Informal vote was nearly one in six of those who turned up. These figures do not include the many other people who risked fines by avoiding turning up to the booths because they could not bring themselves to support any of the candidates. Of course, people do vote Informal for different reasons. However, the wild fluctuations in the level of Informal vote in particular polling booths from election to election proves that the Informal vote is mainly not caused by people who do not know how to cast a valid vote. Moreover, the much, much higher Informal vote in working class, heavily people of colour areas, as compared to in wealthy, overwhelmingly white, blue ribbon Liberal or Teal areas, suggests that most of the people voting Informal are pro-working class, anti-racist minded people, or ex-Labor voters, who would rightly never support the Liberals or the more extreme Far Right parties but cannot, or can no longer, bring themselves to support a Labor Party that repeatedly stabs working class people (and most people of colour) in the back. That such people take this stance is absolutely great! However, for such people, voting Informal must only be the first step that they must take. It is important that their healthy distrust of the system does not turn into cynicism or despair that things can never be changed. We need to convince those pro-working class, anti-racist minded people who vote Informal that they need to actively support anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist mass actions that can push the Australian exploiting class back and make a real difference to our lives, while simultaneously helping build the organisation needed to mobilise more and more powerful struggles. This is the purpose of Trotskyist Platform’s policy for these upcoming elections. We urge all our supporters, friends and readers who agree with this perspective to help us carry out this work. For every pro-working class, progressive minded person, who would rightly never ever vote for the Liberals or Far Right parties and who, at the upcoming election also refuses to vote for Labor or the Greens or capitalism-accepting Independents, not because they are despairing of change but because they know that the road to positive change is not through these pro-capitalist entities, the fight to mobilise the class struggle and anti-Australian-imperialist resistance that we need will be advanced by one notch. This will be the case no matter which pro-capitalist party or parties end up administering the next government. Let us advance this struggle by countless notches in the lead up to the coming elections! 

To have the powerful actions that we need, we not only need large numbers of working class people and our allies mobilised behind the correct program, we also need these masses mobilised in an organised way. It is in our trade unions that class conscious workers are already organised into mass organisations. Therefore, mobilising sections of the union movement is key to having powerful pro-working class and anti-imperialist actions. It is through our unions that we can most easily organise industrial action – the most powerful of mass actions. We need such industrial action not only to smash the attack on the CFMEU, to fight for real wage rises and to win the rights of permanency for all casual and gig workers but also to oppose Australian imperialism and it’s meddling in the Middle East. We need, for example, right now, those unions that have given their verbal solidarity to the embattled Palestinian people to now unleash political strikes to demand the closure of Pine Gap, the removal of Australian troops from the U.S./British operation against Yemeni supporters of Palestine and the halting of all refuelling or hosting of U.S. warplanes from Australian air bases. To mobilise such actions requires a struggle against the capitalist-accommodating program that currently dominates our unions. At the moment our unions are largely led by members of the ALP with some unions flirting with the Greens as well. Therefore, the struggle to win unionised workers to turn their backs on the ALP and Greens at these elections – as well as obviously to continue to reject the thoroughly reactionary Coalition and Far Right parties (which all class conscious workers would do in any case) – is crucial to the struggle to orient our unions onto a new path of militant struggle and intransigent opposition to the Australian capitalist class and all its imperialist interventions abroad. It is a crucial part of building the resistance that we need to the Australian regime’s participation in Israel’s terror and its broader support for Western imperialist interference in the Middle East.

Sydney, February 2025: Sydney rail workers march in a union rally against the NSW state Labor government’s refusal to concede to justified union demands for better pay, conditions and training for workers. Although union leaders failed to pull out rail workers in all out, unlimited strike action, the rolling industrial action of Sydney rail workers over the last few months has given a real taste of the power that workers have when acting collectively. We need union action that combines the fight for real wage rises, the rights of permanency for casual workers and a massive increase in low-rent public housing, with demands to close Pine Gap, remove Australian troops from the U.S./British operation against Yemeni supporters of Palestine and halt all refueling or hosting of U.S. warplanes from Australian air bases.
Photo: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

AUSTRALIA’S RULERS BACK ISRAEL’S TERROR AND VILIFY THOSE WHO OPPOSE IT. BUILD A WORKING CLASS INTIFADA AGAINST THIS CAPITALIST RULING CLASS!

Photo Above: On 4 February 2025 in Khan Younis, Gaza, fighters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hold a reception to honour prisoners freed as part of the ceasefire deal with Israel. Despite massive support from the U.S., Australian and other imperialist powers and despite slaughtering nearly 50,000 people – mostly women and children – the Netanyahu regime failed to achieve its war aims in Gaza. This was due to the heroism of Palestinian resistance fighters – not only from Hamas but from Islamic Jihad and secular leftist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Photo credit: r/MarxistCulture

AUSTRALIA’S RULERS BACK ISRAEL’S TERROR
AND VILIFY THOSE WHO OPPOSE IT

BUILD A WORKING CLASS INTIFADA
AGAINST THIS CAPITALIST RULING CLASS!

28 February 2025 – Despite massive support from the Western powers, the genocidal Israeli regime failed to achieve its Gaza war aims. This is due to the heroism of Palestinian resistance fighters and the extraordinary resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of unparalleled brutality. The continuing blows that the Gaza resistance and their Yemeni allies inflicted against the Israeli military and the dissension that this caused within Israeli society forced Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. However, other events have emboldened the Zionist regime. Through bombarding Lebanon – assisted by parts of Taiwan’s Western-puppet rulers who supplied Israel with the pagers used in the exploding devices attack against Hezbollah – the Israeli regime has weakened Hezbollah for the present, forcing the group to pull back from the northern front against the regime. Furthermore, right-wing ISIS-linked fanatics, massively armed by the U.S. and its Turkish, Israeli, Saudi and Qatari allies and assisted in their final offensive by direct U.S. military action, have taken over a Syria that had been ground into submission by years of U.S. and Australian sanctions. Although the ousted Syrian government’s support for Palestine was partial, it nevertheless enabled the flow of arms to Hezbollah and Hamas, provided bases for Palestinian resistance groups and shunned Israel. By contrast, the new regime has vowed not “to meddle in anything that will threaten Israel’s security” and ordered Palestinian resistance groups in Syria to close their bases and disband their military forces. No wonder Netanyahu hailed the regime change in Syria as “a historic day”. Thirdly, the new far-right U.S. regime is even more intent on backing Israel’s genocidal terror than its predecessors. The previous government headed by “Genocide Joe” Biden also supported Israel to the hilt. But it tried to limit the battering of its own image that this was causing. As a result, last May it paused shipping Israel the 2,000-pound bombs that inflicted such carnage in Gaza. Now, the Trump regime has resumed shipping these weapons. Moreover, regardless of whether Trump can actually drive out Palestinians from Gaza as he plans to, or is using the threat of this to weaken Palestine in negotiations, his Gaza plan imperils the Palestinian people.

Palestinian people are still in great danger. This is the case whether the Zionist regime unleashes a new assault on Gaza’s people, or instead focuses on intensifying its terror in the West Bank, while maintaining the caged, pre-October 2023 “status quo” in a now devastated Gaza. Since the Gaza ceasefire began, Israel has greatly escalated its attacks against West Bank Palestinians. Over the last two months, Zionist forces have killed at least 13 children there. Among those that the regime murdered was two year-old Leila al Khatib, who soldiers shot while she was in her own home in Jenin. Those who survive, the Israeli military forces to flee by bulldozing their homes and smashing connecting sewerage and water pipes. More than 40,000 people have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the West Bank since the ceasefire came into force – the highest number since Israel occupied the Palestinian Territory in 1967. The Left and workers movements must escalate struggles worldwide in support of the Palestinian people. Let us mobilise mass actions to demand: No new Israeli attack on Gaza! Down with Israel’s terror in the West Bank! Israeli troops and fascist settlers get out of the West Bank, all of Gaza and Syria’s Golan Heights! Israel out of Lebanon!

We have a special responsibility here. Next to the U.S., German and British regimes, no other regime gives as much support to Israel as the Australian one. It jointly operates with the U.S. the Pine Gap spy base near Alice Springs that transmits to Israel the location of targets to bomb. Australian troops in the Middle East directly participate in attacks on Yemeni supporters of Palestine. Australian bases are facilitating air-to-air refuelling of the U.S. bombers that attack the Houthis. We need powerful actions to demand: Close Pine Gap! No refuelling or hosting of U.S. warplanes from Australian bases! Australian troops get out of the Middle East! No military sales to Israel by Australian companies!

As part of this struggle, we must resist the ruling class’s attempts to silence pro-Palestinian voices by cynically branding them as “antisemitic”. On Monday, university bosses announced a new “definition” that will label as “antisemitic” any calls for eliminating Israel as an ethnic supremacist state. The next day, police hit nurse Sarah Abu Lebdeh with severe charges for merely reacting angrily to being contacted on social media by extreme Zionist provocateur, Max Veifer. Rightly furious at Israel’s genocidal terror and justly incensed at Veifer’s blatant justification of Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians – on the basis that the majority of Gaza’s people had voted for Hamas (!) – Abu Lebdeh and Blacktown Hospital co-worker Ahmad Rashad Nadir responded to Veifier’s baiting by making unfortunate, obviously false claims to him that they had refused to treat Israeli patients. Ruling class politicians and media seized on their retorts to hype them up and witch-hunt the nurses, causing their jobs to be suspended. Hospital and university administrations here – if they were actually controlled by the people and the workers at these institutions – would be speaking out against the killing and jailing of Palestinian doctors and nurses, and the destruction of hospitals and the entire university sector in Gaza by the genocidal Israeli state. We demand: Drop all charges against Sarah Abu Lebdeh! Reinstate her and her colleague! Junk the universities’ “antisemitic” definition that aims to silence pro-Palestine voices!

WHO IS THE MASTER? WHO IS THE DOG?

Some argue that Western powers support Israel because they are controlled by the Zionist lobby. However, this has it the wrong way around. In fact it is U.S. imperialism and its allies that are the masters – albeit ones that hold their nasty Zionist attack dogs on a long leash. Thus, Trump’s plan for the U.S. to annex Gaza in order to turn it into a resort run by American firms is a scheme to boost U.S. capitalist profits, with Zionist expansionist plans relegated to second place. U.S. rulers use Israel as an enforcer of their predatory goals in the Middle East. We saw his in Israel’s role in the West’s regime-change triumph in Syria, which Netanyahu proudly declared “is a direct result of the blows we have inflicted….” The U.S. imperialists are desperate to ensure that the Middle East is firmly in their grip. This is both to grab the region’s oil wealth and because of the region’s crucial location at the crossroads of the world. To do so, they must ensure that no government in the region pries out too much independence for itself, including through establishing strong mutually beneficial relations with socialistic China. With their Syria problem now “solved”, the U.S. is counting on their Zionist attack dogs to help maul the last remaining regime in the region not under their thumb – the Iranian one. As you can see, U.S. support for Israel has little to do with loyalty to Zionism, let alone concern for Jewish people. Indeed, the biggest player within the current U.S. administration and the world’s richest capitalist, Elon Musk, is at one and the same time a strong Israel supporter – who bans people from X if they call for “Palestine to be free from the river to the sea” – and a rabid antisemite. Musk promotes racist conspiracy theories against Jewish people nearly as much as he cheers white supremacist attacks on blacks, Muslims and other people of colour. Musk, Trump and Co. are not only prepared to facilitate the genocide of Palestinian people if it helps them enforce their class tyranny over the Middle East but to fight to the last drop of Jewish Israeli blood too.

Similarly, Australia’s ruling class only backs Israel because Israel helps enforce the power of the Zionists’ U.S. masters. Australia’s capitalist exploiting class needs this because it is the might of its U.S. godfather that protects its own mafia style plunder and tyranny over the resources and peoples of the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia. That is why the Australian rulers’ support for Israel is so intractable, because the interests of the Zionist lobby coincide with the predatory interests of Australia’s capitalist rulers. To force a change, we need to weaken the ruling class so decisively that they are unable to hold up their Israeli allies. But how do we do this? If we only appeal to the masses’ sense of conscience to stand with Palestine, this will never be enough, given the overwhelming pro-Israel propaganda that the masses are subjected to. However, just like in the U.S., working class people here have compelling reasons to struggle against their ruling class. Capitalist rule is driving millions of people in Australia into poverty through grossly unaffordable rents, prices that have risen faster than wages and the lack of secure, permanent jobs for young workers. The ruling class here subjects Aboriginal people to violent cop attacks and racist smear campaigns. Arab and Muslim communities are furious at the racist violence and abuse they face on the streets, attacks that are being incited by the ruling class and its media’s vilification of people with a pro-Palestine sentiment; and then further inflamed by their broader racist scapegoating of migrants and refugees. Ruling class narratives are also fuelling attacks against people of East Asian, South Asian, African and other people of colour heritage. We must build struggles that unite opposition to the Australian regime’s backing for Israeli terror with the fight against racist attacks on migrants and people of Muslim, Arab, Asian and African backgrounds, with solidarity with the Aboriginal people’s struggle for liberation, with standing shoulder to shoulder with the embattled CFMEU construction workers union and supporting union strikes to win real wage rises and permanency for casuals, and with mass action to win a massive increase in low-rent public housing.

The biggest obstacle to building these struggles are the masses’ illusions that change can be achieved through merely voting at elections to shuffle which party administers the capitalist order. Of course, no genuine Palestine supporter will vote for the Liberals or for the far-right parties. But some may vote Labor on the grounds that it is “a lesser evil”. To do so is to accept defeat and to support the continuing genocide of the Palestinian people! Many will refuse to. However, it would be a tragedy if that leads to Palestine supporters voting for the Greens. Yes, the Greens do verbally oppose the most extreme aspects of Israeli terror. But the Greens back the other agendas of the Western imperialist rulers that prop up Zionist rule. The Greens rabidly supported imperialism’s proxy-war to overthrow the previous Syrian government, enlist in the Cold War big lie campaigns against socialistic China and inflame the U.S.-led war drive against Iran – often demanding that the Western powers enact tougher sanctions against Iran. Furthermore, because the Greens embrace capitalist bigwigs and their system, when they have been part of governments, the Greens inevitably yield to pressure from the capitalists. During Israel’s November 2012 war on Gaza, when the Australian regime was, as now, giving military support to Israeli terror, the Greens remained in a de facto coalition government with Labor. For their part, the Greens German counterparts hold the ministry of foreign affairs in the German coalition government that has been Israel’s most fervent supporter in Europe. That is why we urge all Palestine supporters to convince their friends not to vote at the upcoming elections for any of the parties currently in parliament – whether directly or through preferences. The more people are convinced that nothing good can come from supporting these parties, the more willing people will be to join the strikes, occupations and other militant mass actions needed to oppose the genocide-supporting Australian ruling class. And the more open they will be to building the new workers party that is ultimately needed to organise mass resistance to capitalism and imperialism.

Let’s tirelessly oppose the Australian capitalist class that is a key prop for Zionist terror! Let’s stand against the Australian imperialists and their U.S. godfather in every battle they face around the world. Let’s support the resistance that is building in Syria against the new pro-imperialist regime there! Let’s stifle the U.S.-led war drive against Iran! Most importantly, let us resist the capitalist powers’ anti-communist Cold War and defend the greatest state threat to imperialism – socialistic rule in China. When we topple U.S. and Australian imperialism, the Zionist regime that relies on it will also collapse. Then Palestinians and Jews will live happily together in a secular, socialist Palestine – from the river to the sea!

U.S. and Australian Militaries:
Get Out of the Red Sea!

Photo Above: Houthi fighters on board a helicopter seize the Galaxy Leader, when the ship owned by Israeli capitalist billionaire, Abraham Ungar was passing through the Red Sea. It is in the service of Israel’s rich capitalist exploiting class, whom Ungar is part of, and their counterparts in the U.S. ruling class that the Netanyahu regime is waging its genocidal assault on the people of Gaza.
Photo credit: Houthi media centre

Support the Pro-Palestine
Actions of Houthi Rebels!

U.S. and Australian Militaries:
Get Out of the Red Sea!

Close the Pine Gap Spy Base that’s
Helping Direct Israel’s Genocidal Hellfire

10 January 2024: Israel’s rulers would not be able to massacre Gaza’s people without the support of the U.S. and Australian capitalist regimes. Even while pretending to care about “minimising Palestinian civilian deaths”, the U.S. is sending Israel huge new weapons caches. For its part, the Australian regime greatly assists Israel to direct its air and artillery strikes through helping operate the NT-based Pine Gap ground station for U.S. spy satellites. Most recently, the U.S. and its allies are insisting on “stopping the conflict from widening”. Their lying media make this seem like a “peace” initiative. But it is the very opposite! The Western powers want to protect the Israeli onslaught by preventing actions in support of the Palestinian people. The “widening of this conflict” through non-Palestinian forces supporting the Palestinian resistance is precisely what is needed! We say: Urge the intensification of attacks on the Israeli military by the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi pro-Palestine groups! Welcome socialistic North Korea’s supply of weapons to the resistance! Hail the acts in solidarity with Palestine by Houthi rebels!

Houthi attacks demanding an end to Israel’s onslaught have disrupted Israel’s trade. When the Israeli rulers are massacring Palestinian people, such economic sabotage is 100% justified. For although they hurt ordinary Israeli people, they also block supplies to the Israeli military and hit the profits of Israel’s capitalist class – the class behind the genocidal regime in Israel. It is possible that some Houthi actions have inadvertently targeted ships not travelling to or from Israel. And it is bad that the resistance acts do put at risk the lives of workers on ships. However, such unwanted consequences are what inevitably happens when brave but poorly-armed resistance forces take on a much more powerful oppressor. Moreover, by forcing several Western shipping firms to redirect shipping from the Red Sea to the much longer route around the tip of Africa, Houthi actions are causing Western company owners to lose big profits. When the regimes that serve these Western capitalists are participating in the Gaza genocide, such blows against Western capitalist profits are what is needed.

To crush Houthi resistance, the U.S. has sent military forces to the Red Sea. The ALP government is dispatching eleven soldiers to back this anti-Palestinian action. We must demand: U.S./Australian military, get out of the Red Sea! We call on all maritime workers unions to refuse to load or crew any ships that shipping lines schedule to traverse through the Red Sea. This is necessary both to support the pro-Palestinian Houthi acts and to protect workers aboard the ships.

The Norwegian-flagged tanker, Strinda. On 12 December 2023, Houthi fighters damaged the tanker with an anti-ship missile after the vessel rejected several warning calls from the rebels. No crew were injured but the ship suffered significant damage. The Strinda was passing through the Red Sea to unload its cargo and then pick up oil or chemicals from a Mediterranean port for scheduled delivery to the Israeli port of Ashdod on January 4. Four days after the attack on the Strinda, the Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line, owned by one of China’s socialistic state-owned enterprises, COSCO Shipping, announced that it “will stop cargo acceptance to and from Israel with immediate effect until further notice”. The Houthi actions have affected the import of some supplies for the Israeli military and by making Israel’s imports more expense and disrupting Israel’s trade have hurt the profits of Israel’s capitalist class – the class behind the country’s mass murdering regime.

What the Australian Government’s Refusal to
Send a Warship to the Red Sea Means and Doesn’t Mean

Although the ALP government is sending troops to the anti-Houthi operation, it declined Biden’s request to send a warship. Some have welcomed this as a sign of the government asserting “independence” from the U.S. and retreating from support for Israel. However, as it explained itself, the government only declined to send the warship because it wanted to concentrate its forces in this region – especially in the South and East China Seas. In plain speak, the Australian regime wants to focus on squeezing socialistic China. This is hardly a noble agenda! Nevertheless, it is good that the warship was not sent. That weakens the anti-Palestinian operation. But Albanese deserves no credit! The credit should go to Red China. For, inadvertently, socialistic China has drawn the fire of the Australian military and that has weakened the Red Sea operation. This is a symptom of a momentous change that is taking place in the world. That is that the rise of a socialistic power in China is challenging the global tyranny of the Western imperialists. Although China’s compromise-seeking rulers do not themselves want to overthrow imperialism and although China’s transition to socialism is wobbly, the successes of her system based on public ownership of key sectors and working-class state power inevitably threatens the hegemony of the Israel-supporting capitalist powers. And the imperialists know this! That is why all those on the side of the people oppressed by the Western capitalists – from the masses of the Global South to the Palestinian people to the working classes and subjugated First Peoples within the West – must unconditionally defend socialistic China. We must demand: U.S and Australian imperialists, stop your provocations against China and get out of the South and East China Seas! Down with the propaganda against China that is used to justify the war drive against her – from the slanders against her highly successful COVID response to the lie that she is persecuting Uyghurs.

Rafah, 14 December 2023: Palestinian children look through the rubble of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. On that day alone at least 111 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza. Israel would not be able to carry out this genocidal terror without the massive support it is getting from the U.S., Australian, British and other Western capitalist ruling classes.
Photo credit: Khaled Omar/Xinhua

For Class War against the Australian Capitalist Ruling Class
That is Participating in Israel’s Genocide!

The greatest force that can topple the imperialist “order” that is massacring Palestinians is the world’s working class. Here, the working class has the power to undermine the Australian regime’s participation in Israel’s massacre through waging class war against the ultra-rich capitalist class that is behind the regime. Mobilising such struggle is possible because the Israel-supporting capitalist class is driving many workers into poverty by slashing real wages, jacking up prices and putting up rents. The fact that many trade unionists and other wage workers have been energised by the huge pro-Palestinian marches – a movement that has brought together Palestinians and other Arabs with Aboriginal people, Asians, Africans, anti-Zionist Jews and anti-racist whites – provides an important platform for building the type of actions needed.

However, for our pro-Palestine movement to be able to push the Australian regime back, we must change its direction. To be sure, there have been terrific speeches at the events – especially by Aboriginal activists – that have indentified Australia’s capitalist rulers as an enemy that needs to be defeated. However, other speeches and slogans have instead sought to win over Australia’s ruling class. Although this latter agenda is still very critical of the rulers, it blames the regime’s stance on the particular stripe of the government or on the government’s lack of courage to resist the U.S. rulers and the pro-Israel lobby. Therefore, according to this latter political line, through either appealing to the humanity of the rulers and beseeching them to show greater resolve to resist harmful influences, or through threatening to change the stripe of the government, the Australian regime can be pulled over to a more humane stance. It is this latter political line that is overall dominant at the pro-Palestine protests. The problem with this agenda is that it is not based on reality. The truth is that Australia’s capitalist ruling class – and all the parties bidding to administer their system – is inherently loyal to Israel. Hence the capitalist rulers cannot be won over. Rather, they must be compelled to retreat. However, as long as the Palestine movement appeals to them as if they could be future, at least partial, allies, the ruling class will not feel threatened by the movement … and hence will not be forced to step back from their pro-Israel stance.

Let us examine some of the flaws in our movement that need correction. Some slogans have appealed to Albanese to “grow some balls” or “get a spine”. The message is that he should follow his own “conscience” rather than being pressured by Washington or the Israel lobby. However, although those pressures exist, the reason that Albanese supports Israel is because that is what is in the interests of Australia’s capitalist class. Australia’s capitalists back Israel because Israel is the USA’s enforcer in the oil-rich Middle East. And Australia’s capitalists need U.S. dominance to be protected because they need U.S. power to both underwrite their imperialist exploitation of PNG, East Timor and other South Pacific and Southeast Asian countries and to lead the charge against socialistic China. Although the ALP has a working class base, the Labor party’s program is to bow to the capitalists on key questions. When Albanese backs Israel’s tyranny, he is merely doing what he does on all other crucial issues – serve Australia’s capitalist exploiting class.

After Canberra voted at the UN for a “humanitarian ceasefire” four weeks ago, some hailed this as the government being dragged into finally taking a more humane stance. Especially pushing this narrative is Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi – who takes a more pro-Palestine position than the Greens’ overall line which is to (despicably) equally condemn Hamas and Israel. But the truth is that the government’s December UN vote does not represent any shift towards a more humane line. Not while the regime has not pulled back one bit from directing Israeli strikes on Gaza through the Pine Gap spy base! And not while Australian troops are taking part in the Red Sea operation! The government’s UN vote was rather an attempt to protect the regime’s “human rights credentials”. They worry too that an escalation of Israel’s massacre could further expose the true colours of Western capitalism and, moreover, provoke such resistance that it destabilises Zionist rule. As both their words supporting Israel’s agenda to drive out Hamas and their actions in Pine Gap and the Red Sea show, in as much as the Albanese government actually wants a ceasefire, they want it to be on Israel’s terms.

Some speakers at the Palestine rallies have vowed to oppose Labor at the next elections. We sure agree with that! At the last elections, unlike the rest of the Left, we in Trotskyist Platform opposed a vote for any of the parties currently in parliament – whether it be the Liberals or the ALP or Greens. But many now rejecting the ALP suggest supporting the Greens. But the Greens, who embrace capitalists amongst their ranks, are just as committed to upholding the rule of the capitalists – the class whose interests lie with supporting Israel. Thus, just like their German counterparts, if the Greens were actually in government they would likely also end up backing Israel. Moreover, when the Australian ruling class sees the Palestine movement today advocating support for the Greens, it reassures them that the movement will not resist their class rule. And that gives them confidence that they do not need to retreat from their support for Israel.

Pro-Greens influence is part of the reason why the Palestine movement has thus far not made opposing the Pine Gap base a central slogan of the protests. Subconsciously in part, leading activists know that highlighting how Australia’s rulers are actually participating in Israel’s genocidal war undercuts their current agenda of trying to win over through pressure sections of the ruling class. They would rather be appealing to the regime to “stand up for humanity” than condemn it as the enemy. However, as we have stressed, as long as Australia’s ruling class do not see the movement opposing them as their enemy, they will not be compelled to retreat. Moreover, if we are not taking a stand on Pine Gap and the Red Sea operation, we are failing to oppose the regime here’s main role in the war on Gaza. Therefore, we make the following appeal to our fellow pro-Palestinian activists: Come to the protests bearing signs demanding the closure of the U.S.-Australia Pine Gap spy base and the removal of all U.S. and Australian forces from the Red Sea! Convince others to also carry such signs! Advocate support for the rise of socialistic China that is threatening the Israel-supporting imperialist order! Expose the Australian government’s con job with its UN “humanitarian ceasefire” vote! Expose illusions in the Greens! Work hard to turn our pro-Palestine movement into a pro-working class movement of irreconcilable opposition to the Australian ruling class that is participating in Israel’s genocide! Support the downfall of murderous Zionism by relentlessly shaking the Western imperialist branches on which it is perched!

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.

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!

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.

Stand with the Palestinian People! Defend Their Resistance!

Above photo (Reuters): Israeli police attack brave Palestinian protesters and worshippers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque complex, Islam’s third-holiest site. These despicable Israeli attacks using rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades was the prelude to their launching of murderous air strikes against the people of Gaza.

Stand with the Palestinian People! Defend Their Resistance!

RESIST THE U.S. & AUSTRALIAN REGIMES
& THEIR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL’S TERROR!

Socialistic China: More Assertively Condemn Israel’s Brutal Violence!

13 May 2021: Israel’s military is slamming missiles into the already embattled population of Gaza. They have destroyed several civilian housing blocks. Already, in just a few days, Israeli forces have killed 83 people in Gaza – including 17 children. The workers movement around the world and all opponents of racism must stand with the Palestinian people against the Israeli terror machine. Israeli military, cops and right-wing colonising settlers get out of all of the West Bank and Gaza!

The immediate prelude to Israel’s latest air strikes was Israel’s push to evict Palestinian people from a Jerusalem neighbourhood to make way for Israeli settlements. When Palestinians protested they were met with brutal attacks by Israeli police and a fascist Israeli settler group. Israeli police then repeatedly unleashed rubber-coated steel bullets into Palestinians gathered in worship and protest at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites of Islam. These despicable assaults left hundreds injured. Many worshippers are now fighting for their lives. Palestinian people then retaliated. Palestinians are resisting not only in the Occupied Territories. Palestinians who live within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries have bravely defied police and far-right mob attacks to protest and raise Palestinian flags over buildings. Now the Israeli regime, headed by the corrupt butcher Netanyahu, is threatening Gaza with a full-scale assault like the genocidal attack of 2014.

Israel gets away with massacring Palestinian people because of the massive support it receives from the Western capitalist powers, especially the USA. New U.S. president Joe Biden is carrying on from where rabidly anti-Palestinian Donald Trump left off. Today, Biden defended Israel’s murderous attacks on Gaza, proclaiming his “unwavering support for Israel’s security.” To make Israel retreat, we must force the U.S. and the other imperialists, like the Australian regime, to back off from their support for Israel. Down with all U.S. and Australian military and economic support for Israel!

OPPOSE THE U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN REGIMES THAT
SUPPORT THE SUBJUGATION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

We need to stop Australia’s capitalist rulers from doing harm to the Palestinian cause. However, we should not be looking to them to make a positive intervention. They never will! The U.S. built up Israel to be a Cold War ally against the socialistic USSR in the Middle East and as an enforcer of U.S. domination of the region’s oil wealth. From invading Lebanon, to unleashing attacks on Syria, Iran and other neighbours, to assisting the CIA to overthrow “disobedient” governments, Israel sure has played that role! Today, as socialistic China’s mutually beneficial engagements with some Middle Eastern countries “threatens” to allow these countries to gain a degree of independence from the U.S., Washington needs Israel more than ever. Hence it is willing to allow its Israeli attack dogs to operate on a longer leash. Australia’s ruling class, whether served by Liberal or Labor governments, supports this, because they want to maintain U.S. domination of the world. It is U.S. might that underwrites the Australian imperialists’ exploitation of the South Pacific and beyond.

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Moreover, Australia’s rulers have a special affinity with their Israeli counterparts. For they have much in common. While Israel’s rulers benefit from being Washington’s deputy sheriff in the Middle East, Australia’s rulers enthusiastically play a similar bullying role in the South Pacific. Furthermore, while Israel was built on the murderous ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, White capitalist Australia was built through the even more genocidal dispossession of Aboriginal people. Today, the Australian regime continues to brutally oppress Aboriginal people. Closer to Palestine, the Australian regime has participated in both invasions of Iraq. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Australian troops have been committing such horrific acts of torture and murder of Afghan children, peasants and prisoners that it has shocked even soldiers from the U.S. military. Then when people try to flee the carnage resulting from such imperialist marauding, the Australian regime imprisons them for years in hell-hole refugee detention camps. Such a racist, imperialist regime can never be a friend of the Palestinian people! Moreover, even if the Australian regime and “like-minded” powers did intervene into Palestine under the guise of “bringing peace” they would do far more harm than good.

The biggest problem with appealing to Australia’s imperialist rulers to help the Palestinian people is that this undermines opposition to these imperialists. By depicting Australia’s racist rulers as a potential saviour of one people facing genocidal oppression, it undercuts Aboriginal people’s struggle against the barbaric oppression that they are copping from these very same rulers. Moreover, any allusion to a possible progressive role for the Australian regime makes the Palestinian solidarity movement dial back its opposition to this capitalist regime in the hope that it can be won over to their side. Such a half-opposing, half-appealing movement will not trouble the capitalist rulers. They will simply ignore it! What we need is a movement that will be irreconcilable in its opposition to Australia’s imperialist rulers. In other words, we need a movement that will scare the regime with the threat that if it continues to back Israel this will lead to greater and more militant social struggle against it. What can most frighten the Australian regime is if workers take industrial action against the capitalists whom this regime serves as part of demanding an end to support for Israel. Such action can be built because it is in the very interests of the working class to undermine the U.S. imperialist godfather – and hence America’s crucial Israeli ally – that protects the power of the capitalist class that exploits workers here.

STOP IMPERIALISTS DISTRACTING FROM ISRAEL’S REAL GENOCIDAL OPPRESSION
BY FALSELY ACCUSING CHINA OF “GENOCIDE”

In equal proportion that they hide and excuse Israel’s crimes, the U.S. and its Five Eyes partners have hysterically accused China of committing “genocide” against its Muslim Uyghur minority in China’s northwest. This claim is a complete lie! It is only backed by the same Western imperialist powers that are propping up Israel. Not one Muslim-majority country has endorsed this accusation. Instead, most Muslim-majority and Arab countries have positively praised China’s treatment of Uyghurs, including Palestine’s UN representatives. The small minority of anti-China Uyghurs that Washington is backing are led by filthy rich capitalists who want to overturn China’s socialistic system. They want to establish in China’s northwest a regime servile to Western imperialism like the UAE and Bahraini regimes that collaborate with Netanyahu. If we are to focus the world on the real genocidal subjugation of Palestinian people and the racist oppression of Aboriginal people and also Muslims, Asians and other people of colour in Australia, then we must completely rebuff the West’s lying accusations against China. There is another reason that we must reject these lies. The growing strength of Red China could allow some Middle Eastern countries that choose to befriend her greater room to support the Palestinian struggle. During the period of the existence of the USSR, that socialistic country similarly enabled countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq to have greater independence from the imperialists and that allowed them to provide some backing for Palestinian resistance. This was always inconsistent and very partial as these countries remained under capitalist rule. However, it allowed the Palestinian resistance to be in a much stronger position than it is in today. Similarly, a rising socialistic China will be good for the Palestinian people – just as it is a good thing for the working class and all others hurt by capitalist rule in Australia and worldwide. That is why all supporters of the Palestinian cause and all working class people must stand with socialistic China against the Cold War drive of the U.S. and Australian capitalist regimes.

Indeed, as the world’s only non-capitalist power, China’s rulers are one government that Palestine supporters should seriously appeal to. Unlike Washington and Canberra, Beijing has somewhat sided with the Palestinians. However, its support is way too mild. China’s rulers pursue a policy of “friendly coexistence” with imperialism in the hope that the capitalist powers will not undermine China. This is a failed policy – the imperialist powers are doing everything possible to crush socialistic China. We say to the Chinese people: the only way to protect your great achievements won through socialism is to wake up from the dream of “coexistence” with imperialism and to, instead, build solidarity with the toilers and oppressed also targeted by imperialism. This means, China must more aggressively support the Palestinian cause!

STOP ISRAEL’S TERROR THROUGH STRUGGLE
BOTH OUTSIDE AND WITHIN ITS BORDERS

Even when not unleashing bombs, Israel brutally subjugates the Palestinian people. It evicts ever more Palestinians from their homes and even destroys their water infrastructure. It consigns most Palestinians to a hellish life. But even for many working class Jewish people, Israel is not great. They face high unemployment and non-European Jews, especially from Africa, face racist discrimination. The growth of extreme right-wing groups incited by the regime’s ever more vicious oppression of Palestinian people threatens non-white Jews still further and endangers trade union activists and women’s rights activists too. In the end, the only people who clearly benefit from the Zionist project are the U.S., its allies and Israel’s capitalists who use racial supremacist notions to keep the masses that they exploit loyal to them.

Today, a small number of Israeli Jews courageously refuse to endorse the subjugation of Palestinian people. In the end they must prevail. For the fact that alongside the huge number of Palestinian people killed in the last few days, seven Israelis have also died proves that the Zionist project is not sustainable. Like a bullying resident who constantly impeaches on all their neighbours’ land but then finds out that being hated by all their neighbours is no fun at all, a chunk of the Jewish working class in Israel will eventually realise that living in a racialist state, built on ethnic cleansing Arabs from land in a region surrounded by 350 million Arabs, is a stupid idea. Yet the massive support that Israel receives from the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialist regimes presently allows the Israeli ruling class to dupe most of the masses that they exploit with the fallacies of Zionism. That is why it is so crucial that we resist the U.S. and Australian regimes that support Israel’s terror. Let us make the nest of Zionist expansionism fall by vigorously shaking the imperialist branches on which it is perched and which give it support! For workers industrial action to oppose U.S. and Australian backing for Israel! Encourage the brave Palestinian resistance and any brave acts of solidarity by pro-Palestinian, leftist Jews in Israel!

Israeli Terror Machine Supercharged by Trump’s Jerusalem Statement

Israeli Terror Machine Supercharged by Trump’s Jerusalem Statement

Oppose the U.S. and Australian Regimes that Support the Subjugation of Palestinian People

 

Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian youth during protests against Trump’s Jerusalem decision.

 

9 December 2017 – Israeli Air Force jets pounded Gaza overnight. They killed two Palestinian people and injured dozens of others. Several children were among those hurt. Hours earlier, Israeli troops shot dead two other people as they unleashed live fire ammunition on Palestinian protesters. The Israeli terror machine has been supercharged by Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Trump’s statement openly legitimized Israel’s seizure of East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank (and Gaza) in 1967. Within America, Trump has been busy inciting a wave of violent fascist and redneck attacks against Muslims, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, gays, Jews and Hispanics. That’s what his racist, ultra-right wing rants against Muslims, Mexicans and other oppressed minorities have served to do. Now this capitalist billionaire has charged up the Israeli terror machine to churn out yet more savage crimes against the oppressed Palestinian people.

Palestinian people have responded with typically brave resistance. There have also been large protests across the Arab world as well as in Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. Meanwhile, opponents of racist oppression have joined Palestinian and other Arab migrants in protests in Western cities too.

Fake Criticism of Trump’s Decision by Enemies of Palestinian Liberation

Netanyahu meets Turnbull in Australia
Netanyahu meets Turnbull in Australia

U.S.-allied governments in Australia, Britain, France and elsewhere have, rather cynically, made some criticisms of Trump’s decision.  But what the ruling class of Australia and co. really only object to is that Trump has so openly shown the Western imperial powers’ contempt for Palestinian people. Successive Australian governments – whether Liberal or ALP – have joined their Washington senior partner in steadfastly supporting Israel no matter how ghastly that regime’s crimes. They have proven their true stance on the Jerusalem issue by giving Israel the nod and the wink to implant hundreds of thousands of right-wing “settlers” in East Jerusalem and to divide up the West Bank with heavily fortified highways that Palestinians are not allowed to use.  Six weeks ago, prime minister Turnbull went to Israel to sign an agreement for still greater Australia-Israel defence co-operation. Today, all that he and other Western rulers have to worry about in Trump’s statement is that by being so brazen he will stir up Palestinian resistance, reduce Western influence in the region and trigger rebellions against Western-subordinated Arab governments.

Similarly, most capitalist governments in Arab countries have criticized Trump’s decision only in order to avoid ending up being targets of the anger of “their own” people. However, much of the masses of those countries can see right through this. They know that these governments have no intention of taking any real action in solidarity with Palestinian people. These governments are firmly tied to the imperialist bullies who they depend on not only for access to markets and technology but in order to help protect them from their own restive masses. The main, U.S.-backed Arab power, Saudi Arabia has been secretly co-operating on intelligence matters with Israel for years. Last month its aggressive, young leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dropped a bombshell. Acting for the Trump regime, he secretly sought to pressure Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas to accept an insulting “deal” which would see Palestinians get a “state” with only limited sovereignty, which would be geographically divided by the Israeli settlements in the West Bank – nearly all of which would remain – and where there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/world/middleeast/palestinian-saudi-peace-plan.html).

Yet, the PA leadership itself is under the grip of the Western imperialist powers. When Abbas met Trump in May, long after Trump had declared support to Israeli PM Netanyahu’s moves to further subjugate Palestinians, Abbas gushed to Trump that: “I believe we are capable under your leadership, courageous stewardship, and wisdom … to be true partners to bring about a historic peace treaty”! Today, Abbas is doing his best to hold back Palestinian resistance and restrict protest to formal statements of condemnation. However, the overwhelming calls from the Palestinian masses for a new Intifada may be too much for PA leaders to resist.

Cutting off Supply to the Israeli Killing Machine and Jamming It Up from Within

The bitter reality is that despite the courage of their resistance, the Palestinian people are heavily outgunned. They face an Israeli military that has been armed to the hilt by its imperialist backers. And they have been repeatedly stabbed in the back by the Arab capitalist governments that claim to support them. The force that can potentially decisively tip the balance in favour of the Palestinian people is the international workers movement – including the working class movements in the Arab countries. As a force that stands against its own exploitation, the working class naturally has an interest in supporting all those – like the Palestinian people – who are downtrodden by the same capitalist world order that oppresses them. The working class around the world must demand: No moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem! No theft of Jerusalem by the Zionist occupiers! All Israeli troops and settlers out of all of the West Bank and Gaza! Working class protest action must ramp up to industrial action targeting the imperialist ruling classes in the U.S., Britain, Australia and elsewhere that are fueling the Israeli terrorist machine.

2011 Israeli Leftists Protest
Over 300,000 in Israel back in 2011 protested against social inequality and high costs of living.

The working class within Israel itself could act to undermine the fanatical Zionist agenda. Although the Zionist ruling class claims to stand for all Jewish people, it like every other capitalist class exploits its own workers. To be sure, the massive subsidies that the U.S. and other Western governments have provided to Israel have allowed the Israeli working class to obtain a significantly higher standard of living than their neighbors. This is of course a conservatizing force and makes it harder to win significant sections of the Israeli working class to take the side of the Palestinian resistance. Yet the Jewish masses in Israel still suffer most of the hardships of capitalism. Israel has one of the highest levels of inequality. Even excluding the subjugated Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, Israel has more than 1.7 million people officially living in poverty (see: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/More-than-1-in-5-Israelis-live-in-poverty-highest-in-developed-world-475444). Three in every ten Israeli children live in poverty as do nearly half of all Ultra-Orthodox Jews – almost the same rate of poverty as Palestinian Arabs living in Israel’s pre-1967 borders.  Meanwhile, dark-skinned Jewish people suffer terrible racism. Resentment at all these forms of oppression can potentially be harnessed to break a section of the Jewish working class from loyalty to the Zionist capitalist order.

Orthodox Jews protest against conscription
Orthodox Jews protest against Israeli army conscription, in Jerusalem, on March 28, 2017

There is another reason why Israeli working class people’s interests lie with junking their current allegiance to the racist order. The Zionist rulers’ selling card has always been that they would provide security to the Jewish people. Israel was sold as a sanctuary where Jewish people would be free from ever again having to suffer the daily discrimination that they had endured in Western Europe, the pogroms that they faced in Tsarist Russia and the genocide meted out to their people by the Nazis. Yet the history of Israel has proven that building a state based on driving another people out of their land with Nazi-like terror – no matter how much religious quackery it is justified by – does not bring security at all. Instead the racial-supremacist Zionist project has brought great hostility towards the Jewish people of Israel from their neighbors.

The rise of the fascist-supported Trump has highlighted an additional aspect of this question. Trump is a fervent supporter of Israel but his hard right-wing agenda has simultaneously emboldened anti-Semitic, fascist forces within America and around the world. This was evident in the far right rallies in Charlottesville four months ago, which Trump legitimized. There, Nazi and KKK filth not only marched with slogans against blacks, Muslims and other people of color but also had anti-Semitic slogans like, “Jews will not replace us” and “Jews are Satan’s children.” In Australia too, decaying capitalism is spawning the growth of violent far-right outfits. A few of these fascist groups like the Party For Freedom are actually avowedly pro-Israel. Mind you, some of these fascists are pro-Israel only because they want to “purify” White Australia of Jews by having them go off to Israel – in the same way that Hitler’s Nazis collaborated with some Zionist leaders. Most Australian fascist groups, however, basing themselves on the vile tradition of Nazism, are openly and fanatically anti-Semitic. And although their main targets have been Muslims, Aboriginal people and Chinese people and other Asians, Jewish people and synagogues have been among the secondary targets of their violence. The American imperialist-dominated order that props up Israel, far from keeping the Jewish people secure, is actually creating the conditions for far-right terror attacks on Jewish people.
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The fact that a small number of Israeli citizens have bravely refused to serve in the military as a matter of conscience shows that some Israelis can see past the false promises of Zionism and the extreme racial supremacist propaganda that they are fed. When the Middle East region is radicalized by a revolutionary working class upsurge, it will be possible to break a section of the Jewish working class from Zionism and unite them with the brave Palestinian masses in a movement that can smash the genocidal, Israeli capitalist order from within. Together, they will establish a multi-ethnic workers state that will necessarily be secular and anti-racist and which will provide all Palestinian refugees the right of return to the pre-1948 lands that they resided on. A socialist Palestine will finally both free the Palestinian people from barbaric Zionist oppression and provide the Jewish people with the real security that they have longed for.

Palestinian people bravely protest against Trump’s Jerusalem decision in the face of brutal Israeli repression.

 

International Balance of Forces Shapes the Fate of Palestine

Trump’s kick in the guts of the Palestinian people has been made possible by prior aggressive imperialist intervention in the Middle East. The savage U.S., British and Australian war against the much hated ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria has given these imperialist powers a renewed military presence in the region, greater political influence and the allegiance of key local military forces. Further south, with the backing of these Western powers, the Saudi military – and its allies in the UAE, Egyptian and Sudanese regimes – have unleashed a brutal war against Houthi rebels in Yemen. This intervention has enhanced the power of the U.S.-Saudi-Israeli axis in the region. Meanwhile, Trump’s directing of this Axis towards war with Iran has drawn the two most reactionary local powers in the region – Saudi Arabia and Israel – closer together.

This Axis, alongside Britain, France, Australia, Turkey and Qatar have been waging a years-long war – via FSA and openly religious fundamentalist “Rebel” proxies – to impose regime change on Syria. As well as causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrian people, this proxy war has greatly weakened Syria. That has, in turn, hurt the Palestinian resistance. For, although the capitalist Syrian government’s support to the Palestinian cause has been inconsistent and limited, they did provide sanctuary and bases for key Palestinian resistance groups. Today, through the heroism of the Syrian masses and soldiers – and with the support of their external allies – the original crop of imperialist proxies have been close to defeated in Syria. Yet the U.S., Australian and other allied imperialists now have a new proxy force in the form of the Kurdish YPG. Allied with the PKK in Turkey, the YPG had been waging a just struggle for the national rights of the oppressed Kurdish people of Syria. However, they have now subordinated themselves to the most powerful force for social oppression in the world – the Western imperialists. They are set to be used as a force or bargaining chip to increase imperialist influence in Syria – and, thus, in the whole region.  It is an urgent task for all genuine supporters of Palestinian liberation to oppose all the Middle East interventions that boost the power of the Western imperialist and Israeli enemies of Palestinian liberation! Let’s fight for: All U.S./Australian/British/French forces to get out of all of the Middle East! Defend Syria against all the imperialist-allied “Rebels” – from the FSA to the religious fundamentalists to the YPG! Saudi, UAE, Egyptian and Sudanese forces get out of Yemen! U.S./Australia, Israel and Saudi Arabia: Hands Off Iran!

Although driven by its own capitalist agenda, Russia’s military might in Syria has been crucial to holding back the imperialist regime change drive there. Today, president Putin is using the increased stature this has brought Russia and the loss of U.S. prestige following Trump’s Jerusalem announcement to engage in energetic diplomatic interventions. Given the horror that the American-dominated order has brought to the people of the Middle East it is tempting to think that any other power trying to nudge them aside can hardly be any worse. However, it would be very naive for supporters of Palestinian liberation to put their faith in yet another capitalist power. The fact that Putin has called Netanyahu one of his favorite world leaders and is rapidly improving ties with crucial Israel ally, Saudi Arabia, should be reason enough to make us wary (http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/strange-love-affair-putin-and-netanyahu-1736252238).

In addition to the brave resistance of Palestinian activists and the Syrian people, there are, however, other genuine forces that are opposing – or can potentially oppose – the imperialist world order that has brought such suffering to the Palestinian people. Most crucial is the working class within the imperialist centers like the U.S. and Australia, whose interests lie with opposing the rulers that oversee their exploitation. Then there are the people of North Korea. Today, they are defending their socialistic system and desperately trying to avoid meeting the same fate as the people of Iraq and Libya by defiantly building a nuclear deterrence in the face of U.S. and Australian war threats. All opponents of this brutal imperialist world order must stand by the people of North Korea.

Similarly, we must defend the rise of socialistic China that is challenging the capitalist-imperialist dominated world order. To be sure, the compromising Chinese leadership pursues a selfish foreign policy of “non-interference” in the affairs of other countries. It also accommodates a degree of capitalism within China. Nevertheless, the workers state created by China’s 1949 anti-capitalist revolution remains in place and the backbone of China’s economy remains the public sector of socialistic state-owned enterprises. This has laid the basis for China’s stunning economic development and poverty alleviation successes. This strengthening of socialistic China is already providing a support point for ex-colonial countries to start to lift themselves up from under Western neocolonial subjugation. Meanwhile, regardless of the intentions of China’s leaders, the emergence of a large, successful socialistic society provides inspiration to rebel to those masses of the world still suffering under the capitalist order. The imperialist powers know this all too well. That is why, from sending menacing naval forces to the South China Sea, to threatening China’s socialistic neighbour and ally North Korea to backing pro-capitalist, “dissidents” within China, the imperialists are doing everything in their power to undermine socialistic rule in China. The Turnbull government’s scare-mongering about “Chinese interference” in Australian politics is meant to justify to the population this anti-China, anti-communist drive. So, too, the right wing’s successful Cold War style witch-hunt of, now former, ALP Senator Sam Dastyari for merely stating the patently obvious fact that the South China Sea is China’s internal matter (for more on this issue see: https://www.facebook.com/TrotskyistPlatform/posts/1515409871846563 ). However, if these efforts to destroy socialistic rule in China are beaten back, if capitalist forces within China are decisively defeated and if China more proudly advocates on the world stage its socialist course then the U.S.-dominated world order would really be threatened. And that can only be good news for the Palestinian people and all the downtrodden of the planet.

Unfortunately, many of the Australian left wing groups that state solidarity with the Palestinian cause (including the Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups), simultaneously join the imperialist crusade against China by supporting the various Western-backed “pro-democracy activists” seeking to overthrow socialistic rule there. Similarly bowing to imperialist propaganda campaigns, these groups also support the pro-imperialist “Rebels” in Syria. A small number of leftists, of which we in Trotskyist Platform are amongst, did have the fortitude to oppose the imperialist drive to impose regime change on Syria. However, many of those involved in the Hands Off Syria groups then became badly disoriented and lapsed into becoming apologists for Trump or worse.

Mobilise Working Class Opposition to the U.S. and Australian Capitalist Regimes That Support Israel

The Trump regime and the U.S. ruling class it serves is more rabidly supporting its deputy sheriffs in the Middle East – primarily, Israel and Saudi Arabia – because it needs them to be more aggressive. It needs more from its regional enforcers because the more that the capitalist economic system is mired in crisis, the more that it must make up for it by more ruthlessly plundering the resource-rich Middle East and seizing control of markets and sources of labour to exploit everywhere.

Similarly, Australian governments – whether Liberal or ALP or ALP/Greens – have always, ultimately, supported Israel’s subjugation of Palestinian people because that conforms to the interests of the Australian capitalist class whom these governments all serve. It is a mistake to think that you can lobby the Australian government to change its position on Palestine by appealing to it to take a more independent policy from the U.S.A. For the Australian government supports U.S. power only because that is what is in the interests of Australia’s capitalist rulers. In particular, the Australian rulers need U.S. power to guarantee Australian imperialist plunder of South Pacific countries from PNG to East Timor to Fiji; and to have the back of Australian corporations participating in the neo-colonial exploitation of workers in Indonesia, the Philippines and beyond. These imperialist looters of the South Pacific, genocidal oppressors of Aboriginal people and brutal imprisoners of refugees can never be friends of the Palestinian people – or any other oppressed people!

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia: Australian police pepper spray Aboriginal people protesting against the soft treatment that authorities gave to the racist, white man who killed 14 year-old Aboriginal boy, Elijah Doughty, in August 2016. The Australian racist rich people’s state that so brutally oppresses Aboriginal people, cruelly imprisons refugees and which enforces the looting of the South Pacific by Australian business owners can never be friends of the Palestinian people – or any other oppressed people!

 

However, while supporting the subjugation of Palestinian people is in the interests of Australia’s rich capitalist class, opposing U.S. and Israeli tyranny against the Palestinian people is very much in the interests of the working class and all oppressed of this country.  For one, it is in the interests of movements fighting for the downtrodden to stand by others facing oppression. Moreover, it is in our interests to weaken the ruling class that attacks our trade unions, consigns us to perpetual job insecurity, drives up our rents by selling off public housing, punishes us when we get retrenched from work,  murders Aboriginal people in state custody and vilifies Muslim, Chinese and other non-white ethnic communities.  So, while we cannot appeal to the Australian rulers to change their position on the Palestine issue we can through powerful action force it to back off from its support for Israel. To do this we must build actions that are strong enough to harm the interests of the Australian ruling class – in particular its economic interests. That means workers industrial action against the Australian capitalist rulers. Let’s build up towards such action! Let’s shake the imperialist branches that are holding up the Zionist’s nest!