Iran rulers’ threats to Israel and Jews imperil all working people
ATLANTA — “Oct. 7 was a declaration of war against the existence of Israel, a refuge for 7 million Jews and home to 2 million Palestinians and Arabs,” Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate said at an Oct. 20 campaign meeting here.
“At that moment, the defense of Israel as a refuge for the Jews became the center of world politics,” she said. The massacre carried out by Hamas was orchestrated by the reactionary capitalist regime in Iran.
“They slaughtered 1,200 people, mostly Jewish civilians, and seized 251 hostages,” Fruit said. “Rape was organized against women and men, strategic, deliberate, celebrated and documented by the perpetrators.”
Fruit pointed to a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who worked with Tehran to organize the Oct. 7 pogrom. He said the death of Sinwar brings the end of the war closer, but it is not over and it continues to exact a heavy toll.
Fruit noted that the New York Times reported that when news of Sinwar’s death spread in Gaza, many people celebrated. The Times quoted one man who said the Hamas leader “started the war, scattered us and made us displaced, without water, food or money.”
Today a showdown is unfolding in the Middle East. Fruit pointed to the SWP’s continuity with V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who led the 1917 Russian Revolution, an important part of which was the fight against Jew-hatred and pogroms.
“The persecution of Jews goes back 2,000 years,” Fruit said. “But in today’s world, the fate of the Jews is tied to the struggle of the international working class. The dawn of imperialism opened the epoch of the fight for workers power.” But “the physical extermination of the Jews,” she said, “is the banner of reaction against proletarian revolution.” That underscores why fighting Jew-hatred is crucial for the working class.
The imperialist “democracies” care nothing for the Jews. Washington and London shuttered their doors to Jews before, during and after the Holocaust.
“This is why Israel had to be and why it has to be today,” she said. Israel is a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms, but not a solution. “Only the working classes of Israel, Palestine, Iran and the whole region can find solutions in their common class interests.”
Fruit spoke about Israel’s war against Hezbollah, Tehran’s most advanced armed proxy. Over the last year Hezbollah has launched almost 10,000 rockets, forcing the displacement of some 60,000 Israelis. After killing top Hezbollah leaders, Israel is now working to destroy the group’s 150,000 missiles and drive it away from the border.
“What Israel is doing to prevent the annihilation of the Jewish people deals heavy blows to the pogromists and Tehran, helping forestall the next world war,” Fruit said.
“The most important obstacle to the dangerous course of the regime in Tehran is Iran’s working class and oppressed nationalities. They have protested in massive numbers in cities, villages and rural areas in defiance of the regime. The class struggle in Iran, a country with a proud working-class revolutionary heritage, is central to helping to overcome the national divisions and uniting the toilers of the Middle East.”
During the discussion one person asked about Hamas’ use of the term “martyrs” to describe Palestinian deaths in the conflict. Hamas “thinks that Palestinian deaths will gain them sympathy from countries around the world,” Fruit said.
“Hamas has a Nazi-like program and history,” she said. “What Israel has done to weaken Hamas, what they are doing to defeat Hezbollah and stay the hand of Tehran is important for opening up space for working people in the region to organize and discuss how they can live together side by side.”
Power of working-class solidarity
Fruit described the resolve of dockworkers on the East and Gulf coasts and Machinists at Boeing in recent strikes and the solidarity they won.
“These workers understand that the union is their vehicle to defend themselves. They are learning that these economic struggles are political struggles too,” she said.
“Workers who have been on picket lines see each other in a new light. And they often say they’re fighting, not primarily for themselves, but for future generations of workers,” she added. They are “learning there are no individual solutions. This is the beginning of our consciousness as a class.”
As conditions of life for the working class deteriorate and the threat of new wars spread, millions are being drawn into politics, she said.
She pointed to the need for a party of labor, based on the unions, “completely independent of the bosses’ parties, to mobilize and unite all working people.”
“The presidential campaign of the Socialist Workers Party is the only voice representing the interests of our class, and I mean the working class worldwide. We face similar conditions, and the same challenge of developing a leadership that can lead the revolutionary fight for workers power.”