The accelerated course of the Israeli rulers is headed toward a war. But campaigning in solidarity with the Palestinians by calling on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories can make the rulers in both Tel Aviv and Washington pay the highest political price possible for the aggression and contribute to the necessary process of forging a revolutionary leadership.

The calls by big-business politicians and commentators for a war against the Palestinians followed by the building of a wall around Palestinian cities show the hatred of the imperialist rulers for the Palestinian resistance. It has been some years since such warmongering columns have openly been run in major newspapers in the United States. They stand as a warning of the plans Tel Aviv has on the drawing board. The conditions already imposed on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are an initial indication of the terrible toll such an outcome would have on the Palestinian people.

Many bourgeois pundits and some government officials have begun to portray Israel as a bastion of freedom and democracy in the Middle East standing against the backward nationalism of an irrational Palestinian-Arab Islamic people. This is nothing but a crude attempt to dehumanize the Palestinians and numb workers, farmers, and other defenders of democratic rights to the reality of Tel Aviv's repression and war preparations.

The nationalism pushed by Israeli officials is the nationalism of an imperialist state. It has no progressive content and is simply used to justify any means employed to defend the interests and prerogatives of the capitalist class that rules Israel. Palestinian nationalism, on the other hand, is one of an oppressed and dispossessed people fighting for their right to self-determination.

Following Washington's war against Iraq in 1990-91, Washington and other imperialist powers hoped that they could impose a "settlement" on the Palestinian people. They hoped the Palestine Liberation Organization under the leadership of Yasir Arafat would play a key role in controlling the Palestinian population if offered some concessions. The 1993 accords, signed between Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn under Clinton's gaze, and numerous other talks under the aegis of the Clinton administration, proved a cruel illusion to the Palestinian people. The patches of territory ceded to the nominal control of the Palestinians in the West Bank, and the prison the Gaza Strip has been turned into, has never come close to resembling the homeland they have fought for generations to achieve.

The conflict between the Palestinian people and the capitalist state of Israel is irreconcilable. The violent dispossession of the Palestinians is built into the very foundations of the colonial-settler state. And the Palestinian people have refused to get on their knees or be dispersed as a people, and they continue to demand their rights. The battle for a democratic, secular Palestine is one that advances the interests of workers and farmers in the region as a whole. It is the only road open for working people who are Jewish within Israel to break out of the deadly logic of war and repression the capitalist rulers have led them into.

Within this growing conflict, many working people will want to learn the truth about these questions. Reading, studying, and helping to distribute the many titles produced by Pathfinder Press on this and related subjects is an important part of campaigning against the accelerating Israeli war drive. Along with protest actions, picket lines, public forums, and speak-outs, they can be used to help counter the growing war propaganda and point to the common interests of workers and farmers in championing the cause of the Palestinian people.
 
 
Related articles:
Palestinians: Israel out of occupied territories!
Youth bring solidarity to Sahrawi struggle
The Comintern and the fight for free Palestine, 1920
6,700 youth at Algiers festival discuss fight against imperialism
'By fighting today, you sow seeds of future'
 
 
 
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