Statement released Nov. 29 by John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director.
From Oct. 7 when Hamas launched its pogrom against Jews in Israel, the democratic imperialist government in Washington has moved to defend the U.S. rulers’ class interests against all others, with the backing of their Democratic and Republican parties. Dismantling Hamas’ murder machine to stop more massacres of Jews has no bearing on the course Washington pursues, nor does winning freedom for Israeli hostages, or relieving the conditions that Hamas’ pogrom is responsible for bringing down on Palestinians in Gaza.
The U.S. rulers use their military might to protect their own economic and political interests. They act to shore up their markets, profits and reach against all rivals and to impose the “stability” their class needs to try to maintain their dominant position worldwide.
They may shed crocodile tears for the victims of Hamas’ brutality. But they care no more about the lives and welfare of Jews today than they did before, during and in the aftermath of World War II, when they slammed shut U.S. borders to those targeted by the Nazis for annihilation, Hitler’s Final Solution. The U.S. imperialist rulers do not share the inescapable situation of Israeli capitalist rulers, much less Israeli working people, who must crush Hamas if their country is to continue to exist as a refuge for Jews.
London, Paris and the other democratic imperialist powers act for their capitalist rulers’ interests too, as do Beijing and Moscow. But they are much weaker than Washington. In the eyes of all these predators, the peoples of the region are bargaining chips. Workers cannot rely on these capitalist powers to protect Jews from the assaults of Tehran and Hamas, any more than to safeguard the interests of the working class.
Cease-fire = support for Hamas
Washington is part of a growing chorus pressing Israel to back off its efforts to eliminate Hamas as a military and terrorist threat to the Jewish people and accept a cease-fire, sure to be violated with new brutality. There was a cease-fire in place on Oct. 6 and many times earlier, each one shattered by bloody new anti-Jewish attacks. And as Hamas leaders have proudly proclaimed time and again in recent weeks, they’ll carry out new Oct. 7s over and over, until they kill or drive out all the Jews.
With intensified vigor, Washington is pushing to impose a “two-state solution” on Israel. But there is no possibility of any such thing. Hamas flatly rejects any “solution” that leaves Israel and the Jews intact. And no other Palestinian leadership stands up to them.
There is a daily barrage in the liberal media about deplorable conditions in Gaza, with no explanation that this is exactly what Hamas long planned and intended in carrying out the Oct. 7 bloodbath. This coverage is aimed at ramping up pressure on Israel to end its efforts to destroy Hamas and yield to the imperialist-dominated United Nations. U.N. bodies are among Hamas’ most prominent cheerleaders.
The obedient capitalist press corps regurgitates casualty figures issued by Hamas as if it’s impartial and truthful. They repeat Hamas’ lies it doesn’t conceal rockets near hospitals, or keep arms and run military operations centers there. They increasingly bury the facts about the full horror of what Hamas did Oct. 7 to complement their propaganda barrage.
What’s needed by working people in Israel and the region of all nationalities and beliefs is the truth about what has unfolded.
Only the defeat of Hamas can set back Jew-hating violence and create the conditions for common struggles by all working people against the exploiting classes and governments that rule over them. This can open the door to construct a leadership, a revolutionary working-class party, that can take political power and make a socialist revolution. This is the road to end Jew-hatred and capitalist oppression and exploitation.
Workers everywhere have a stake in getting out the truth. Under the banner of calling for “peace,” the U.S. imperialists advance a course that ensures more wars against Jews.
In the imperialist epoch, the Jewish question is both a permanent and decisive one. As the deepening crisis of capitalism leads to the ruin of large sections of the middle class, many — including many who call themselves socialist — blame the Jews. When the crisis and the level of working-class struggle reach the point where layers of the rulers fear losing power to the workers, growing sections of the capitalists finance and foster fascist thugs to smash the unions, inaugurate a new Holocaust and open the door to another imperialist world war. This is precisely what happened in Germany in the 1930s.
But this is not the era of fascism. What was opened by the October 1917 Russian Revolution under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, and then the Cuban socialist revolution in the 1960s under the leadership of Fidel Castro, is the era of building communist parties with working-class leaderships capable of organizing our class and its allies in their millions to defeat the capitalist rulers and rightist goons and take state power into our own hands.
Fighting Jew-hatred has special weight in forging such a party. It poses a key challenge for the unions. The defeat of Hamas and the defense of Israel’s right to exist is in the interests of all workers everywhere in the world.