The U.S. government is ratcheting up pressure on Israel to wind down its war against Tehran-backed Hamas in Gaza, a war aimed at defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews and preventing the reactionary Islamist outfit from carrying out more massacres of Jews — as it has promised to do.
Washington demands fewer Israeli airstrikes and ground assaults, leading to a cease-fire. During a Dec. 18 visit to Israel, Secretary of Defense Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin euphemistically called this “transitioning to the next phase of operations.”
Austin’s trip took place amid increased attacks on Israel by Tehran’s Jew-hating, so-called axis of resistance. This includes clashes with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, missiles fired at the Golan Heights by Tehran-funded militias in Syria, and drone attacks on Israeli ports and ships in the Red Sea by Houthi militias in Yemen.
Meanwhile, imperialist governments in Canada, France and the U.K.; bourgeois pacifists; and supporters of Hamas around the world are all calling on Israel to shut down efforts to render Hamas incapable of more assaults and agree to a permanent cease-fire. Hamas says it will never recognize the right of Israel to exist. Its goal is to kill or force out the Jews. It says it hopes to carry out more and bigger massacres. The government and people of Israel — where nearly half the world’s Jews live — have no choice but to fight.
The Hamas death squads slaughtered over 1,200 men, women and children — mostly civilians — wounded thousands more and took 240 hostages Oct. 7, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Nazi Holocaust. As part of their planned assault, Hamas thugs tortured, raped and mutilated many of their victims.
While most of those killed were Jews, the thugs also murdered dozens of Thai migrant farmworkers and Arab citizens of Israel, for the “crime” of working with Jews.
Like Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, this marked a watershed in world politics. And it poses a challenge to all those who say they speak for the working class.
Liberal media’s biased coverage
The liberal news media foments anti-Israel sentiment by blaming the growing suffering of people in Gaza on Israel, not Hamas, and minimizing the horror of the Oct. 7 massacre and Hamas’ brutal hostage taking.
But they never ask anyone they interview in Gaza if they know that the purpose of the Israeli offensive is to prevent Hamas from killing Jews. Nor do they ask Gazans what they think of Hamas placing its deadly arsenal, tunnels and command posts underneath and inside hospitals, schools, mosques and residential buildings as part of its strategy of using civilians as human shields.
They certainly don’t ask about Hamas’ brutal dictatorship since taking over Gaza in 2006 and its arrest, torture and assassination of political opponents, crushing of union struggles and oppression of women.
Israeli officials report that on Dec. 15 Israeli soldiers mistakenly killed three hostages in Gaza who walked toward them, waving a white flag, asking for help in Hebrew. The incident took place near where nine soldiers had been killed by Hamas earlier in the week.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi went to Gaza and told the soldiers that this was a breach of IDF protocols. “Even those who fought and now put down their weapons and raise their hands — we capture them, we don’t shoot them,” Halevi said. “This is a strength, not a weakness.”
Tehran, Hamas target West Bank
Tehran and Hamas have been sending weapons and prodding their proxies in the Israel-controlled Palestinian West Bank to carry out terror attacks.
This presents a big challenge for the capitalist government of Israel. Since Oct. 7 Israeli soldiers have detained 2,400 Palestinians in the West Bank, at least 1,200 affiliated with Hamas, and killed more than 200 people the army says were armed.
Haaretz reported Dec. 19 that the IDF had suspended operation of its Desert Frontier unit after reports that its soldiers had grossly abused Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and had been aiding rightist forces among Israeli settlers who are trying to force Palestinians out of their farms and homes.
Abuse of Palestinian civilians and denial of their rights helps Hamas to falsely portray itself as defending Palestinians from Israeli occupation.
Despite Washington’s claim of solidarity with Israel’s fight to crush Hamas, U.S. imperialism’s goal — like its rivals in Berlin, London and Paris — is not to protect Jews or defend Israel, but to defend its own economic, political and military interests.
Defense Secretary Austin’s trip to Israel Dec. 18 was aimed at prodding the government to tamp down its war. While saying the White House agrees with Israeli officials that Hezbollah needs to move its forces away from the border with Israel, Austin emphasized that the U.S. government wants to avoid a wider war. Up to 100,000 people in northern Israel have left their homes since Oct. 7, fearing Hezbollah attacks.
The Wall Street Journal described Washington’s stepped-up pressure on Israel as “a full-court press in the region for the Israelis to begin to wrap up the conflict.”
Making sure the message is clear, the Joseph Biden administration delayed the transfer of 27,000 U.S.-made rifles to Israel, saying it fears they will end up in the hands of West Bank settlers.
Tehran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen have attacked or seized commercial ships 12 times in the last month. As a result, Maersk and other shipping and oil companies are directing ships on longer and less profitable routes. Some 12% of the world’s oil and 8% of liquefied natural gas passes through the affected sea routes.
Rise in Jew-hatred before Oct. 7
The vast majority of working people in the U.S. are repelled by Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, but Jew-hating forces have been emboldened by it. Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions across the U.S. received bomb threats by email the weekend of Dec. 16, the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported.
An article in the Los Angeles Times Dec. 14 noted that the rise in antisemitism is “deeply unsettling American Jews, many of whom had viewed it as a relic of past generations, destined to fade away.” The article added that “the upsurge began before the war in Gaza and has now accelerated.”
In the imperialist epoch, Jew-hatred is a crucial tool for the rulers whenever the crisis of their capitalist system leads the working class to challenge for political power. They turn to fascist forces and assaults on Jews to try to crush the unions. On hundreds of college campuses today Jew-hatred is promoted under the cover of “Anti-Zionism.” Jonathan Isla Rampagoa, a student at Hunter College in New York City, told New Yorker magazine that those who were killed Oct. 7 are “deemed innocent” but “innocence is only so limited when you are occupying land.”
Actions organized by the middle-class left have featured speakers who called Hamas’ massacre of Jews “wonderful news” and a “jailbreak” for Palestinians in Gaza. These forces are likely to find themselves in fascist gangs in the future. A significant part of Hitler’s Nazi party was recruited from the left.
The Guardian newspaper reported that in France in the six weeks following Oct. 7 there were 1,500 incidents of antisemitic acts ranging from the desecration of cemeteries to vandalism against Jewish property, threats and a handful of assaults.