The reactionary clerical regime in Iran had hoped the Oct. 7 anti-Jewish pogrom it organized with Hamas, along with Israel’s response to defend itself, would reverse moves by governments in Muslim-majority countries toward normalized relations with Israel. The opposite is happening today.
The governments of Saudi Arabia and Jordan joined U.S. forces in helping the Israeli military shoot down 99% of the 320 drones and missiles Tehran fired at Israel April 13. The first-ever direct assault by the Iranian rulers on Israel was a dangerous escalation of their decadeslong drive to destroy Israel and drive Jews from the region.
The Israeli government retaliated April 19, damaging an air-defense system protecting an Iranian nuclear site near Isfahan, showing its forces can strike anywhere in Iran as Tehran advances toward its goal of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Tehran’s direct assault on Israel has sparked increased opposition from working people in Iran to the regime and its military adventures abroad. The Union of Metalworkers and Mechanics noted April 15 that despite the “intensification of the warlike atmosphere,” retirees, teachers and others have continued to protest for higher income and better conditions.
Like many other governments in Muslim countries, despite their public criticism of Israel’s conduct of its war in Gaza, the Saudi and Jordanian rulers want to see Hamas, Tehran and its so-called axis of resistance defeated. They see Tehran’s course of extending its counterrevolutionary influence through the arming of proxy militias across the region as a threat to their own capitalist regimes and alliances.
Tehran now admits it financed, organized and helped plan the Oct. 7 pogrom. Hamas and Islamic Jihad death squads killed more than 1,200 people, wounded more than 5,000, took over 240 hostages and raped scores of women. It was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust by the Nazis.
Tehran has repeatedly denounced the Abraham Accords that established diplomatic relations with Israel by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and Kosovo in 2020 and 2021.
In March, in another slap in the face for Tehran, the government of Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world, confirmed its plans to establish diplomatic relations with Israel soon. The two countries already conduct millions of dollars in trade and tourism every year.
Israel prepares for Rafah offensive
Despite continuing pressure from the Joseph Biden administration in Washington for Israel to wind down the war in Gaza, the Israeli military is moving ahead with plans to attack the last remaining Hamas strongholds in Rafah, near the Egyptian border. Defeating Hamas and demolishing its command structure is key to preventing it from organizing future pogroms. The end of its dictatorial rule will open space for workers to begin organizing and acting in their own interests and to join together with fellow working people across the region, including in Israel.
More than 250,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinians in Rafah have already moved north in the last few weeks, in anticipation of a new Israeli offensive. According to Haaretz the Egyptian government is assisting in building a tent city just west of Khan Younis for those leaving Rafah, to help limit the number of civilian casualties.
Open Jew-hatred at universities
Over the last several weeks Hamas apologists among middle-class layers in the U.S. — at universities from Columbia to Yale and beyond — are more openly showing that their call for a cease-fire in Gaza has been a cover for their true goal, the destruction of Israel and the spread of Jew-hatred.
Supporters of a so-called Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University April 17 chanted, “Al-Qassam [one of Hamas’ military units] make us proud, kill another soldier now!” One prominent sign, with an arrow pointed at Jewish students who were counterprotesting, read “Al-Qassam brigades’ next target.”
At the request of the university president, New York City police shut down the encampment at Columbia April 18, arresting some 100 students. A number of them were suspended. By the next day the pro-Hamas forces had occupied another nearby lawn on the campus and had stepped up their antisemitic actions with officials doing nothing to protect Jewish students. Similar “occupations” have been set up at New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley and other campuses.
Eliana Goldin, a Jewish student at Columbia, was part of a group of students countering other Hamas supporters who were cheering on the encampment near the campus entrance. “We were verbally harassed, and some of my friends were physically assaulted,” she told the Jewish Insider April 21. “Public Safety and the NYPD did not help us. We were essentially stalked and followed as we tried to leave.
“They yelled at us to go back to Poland, that we have no culture and chanted, ‘Strike, strike Tel Aviv!’” Goldin said.
Instead of ensuring the safety of Jews on campus, the administration cancelled all in-person classes.
Many of Columbia’s faculty members — and not just in its Mideast studies department — are well-known for calling for the destruction of Israel. Professor Joseph Massad said that Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughter was “awesome” and a “stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.” A visiting professor, Mohamed Abdou — described on the university’s website as an expert in “critical race and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition and decolonization” — boasted, “Yes, I’m with Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.”
While such opinions get a hearing among privileged middle-class layers, they’re deeply abhorrent to the big majority of working people. These attitudes fit with the increasingly popular “cancel culture” and “woke” politics that have become common on college campuses.
Ariana Pinsker-Lehrer, a student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, told the Militant, “I can understand some people wanting to support a cease-fire. But how can you do that and support Hamas?” She pointed out that Hamas’ goal is not peace but the destruction of Israel. “They’re not interested in discussion or in the facts.”