NEW YORK — Two major recent events around the world are shaping the consciousness of millions of working people in the U.S., Peter Thierjung of the Socialist Workers Party told participants in a Militant Labor Forum here Nov. 18.
The first is “the determination of the Ukrainian people to stand up to the brutal invasion and war by the Putin regime of Russia,” he said. “The second is the fight by the Jews of Israel against Hamas who, with the aid of the government in Iran and Hezbollah, killed over 1,200 Jews and seized 240 hostages Oct. 7 with the overall aim of annihilating Jews and eradicating Israel. Both the Ukrainian people and the Jews are fighting for their survival.”
The Socialist Workers Party has been at the forefront of both battles from the beginning, Thierjung said, by telling the truth, promoting solidarity through talks like this at Militant Labor Forums around the country, circulating the Militant, SWP candidates for public office speaking out and the SWP joining in protests defending Ukraine and against Jew-hatred.
Hamas’ Jew-hatred and political roots go back to Arab leaders like Haj Amin el-Husseini, known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who collaborated directly with Hitler during the Second World War and after to extend the “final solution” to the Middle East.
Thierjung quoted Hamas leaders who say the Oct. 7 pogrom against Jews was justified and they intend to organize more of them. “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all borders,” Hamas spokesman Taher El-Nounou told the New York Times Nov. 9.
Key question for the working class
Jew-hatred is not just a Mideast question, Thierjung explained. Today it has exploded across the U.S. in pro-Hamas protests organized by middle-class leftists and liberals here who call for a cease-fire, which they know would help Hamas reorganize and rearm to launch new assaults on the Jews. In New York, these groups have publicized the names and addresses of businesses owned by Jews or do business with Israel to target them for attack.
These “shut ‘em down” actions are a danger to working people. “We need the opposite. The more open discussion and debate, the better, to clarify the stakes for working people involved in the issues that Oct. 7 exposed and its aftermath.”
“In working-class neighborhoods and on the job,” Thierjung said, “supporters of the SWP have found a hearing for our working-class views and the political course we promote.”
In concluding the program, Thierjung pointed to the ongoing discussion needed about the fight against Jew-hatred as the war continues.
“This is not a Hamas vs. Israel issue,” Thierjung said. “We are living though a world capitalist crisis in the imperialist epoch. There will be more and wider wars. Reaction and Jew-hatred are tied in with this world.”
Thierjung said ultimately these biggest questions that confront humanity will be decided on U.S. soil by working people making a socialist revolution. “The Socialist Workers Party is a working-class party that aims to educate and mobilize the working class to take the power. Only through a socialist revolution by the working class and its allies can we end capitalism’s dog-eat-dog competition, exploitation, wars of domination, class-based societies, Jew-hatred, racism and sexism.”
“That’s how a world based on solidarity can begin to be built — a socialist world.”