As more facts come out on Hamas’ gruesome torture of the hostages it kidnapped in its Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom and the murder by strangulation of the two Bibas children, more working people in Israel and around the world can see why the government of Benjamin Netanyahu looks to decisively defeat it. Hamas must be dismantled and its military capacity destroyed if Israel is to survive as a refuge for Jews.
Hamas — with the support of the reactionary regime in Tehran — has not moved one inch from its goals. “The recently ended war is a prelude to the liberation of Palestine and annihilation of Israel,” says Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya.
For more than 15 years Hamas imposed its dictatorial rule over the people of Gaza. It uses them as human shields, calling those who suffer “martyrs,” and brutalizes those who dare oppose its rule. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority is no better, handing out cash rewards to those who commit terrorism against Jews.
Working people in Gaza are looking to get Hamas’ boot off their necks. Blows dealt to Hamas by Israel help open more political space for them to organize.
Hamas’ biggest backer is Tehran, which is driving to get nuclear weapons so it’s able to target Israel and launch another Holocaust. That’s why Israel is right to target Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities.
This has nothing to do with targeting Iran’s people, who increasingly oppose the regime, protest its policies and are the best allies of toilers in Israel.
Israel, like every other capitalist country in the world, is class-divided. This puts obstacles in the way of uniting and mobilizing working people for the fight against Jew-hatred.
The defeat and dismantling of Hamas is crucial to removing a key obstacle to working-class solidarity and common struggle by Jews, Palestinians, and other working people in Israel, the Middle East and around the world.
It’s the global system of capitalist rule that is the source of Jew-hatred and pogroms in the imperialist epoch. When the capitalist class fears the working class is beginning to organize to put an end to their dog-eat-dog system of exploitation and oppression, it will turn to fascist gangs and Jew-hating violence to protect its rule. That is the lesson of history.
Jew-hatred is not eternal. It can be ended for all time by uprooting the class-divided society from which it emerges. Working people from Israel and Gaza to Iran, Europe and the U.S. have the same challenge — to build working-class parties that can unite and lead workers to take power, opening the door to socialist revolutions.