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The following is based on a statement sent to Consulate Generals of Israel Los Angeles and San Francisco on May 22 by Norton Sandler, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of California, and Laura Garza, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, in response to the murders of two Jews in Washington, D.C. It has been updated to include a response to the firebomb attacks and attempted murder of Jews in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1.
The Socialist Workers Party condemns in the strongest terms the May 21 assassination of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, staffers at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the June 1 immolation and attempted murder of Jews in Boulder, Colorado, who were attending a walk to demand the immediate release by Hamas of the remaining hostages held since Oct. 7, 2023.
In Boulder, the attacker yelled “Free Palestine.” In Washington, D.C., the killer chanted, as he was being arrested, “Free, free Palestine,” and “There’s only one solution — intifada revolution.”
Milgrim and Lischinsky were attending an event at the Jewish Museum. They, like those at the Boulder event, were targeted for one and only one reason, because the attackers assumed they were Jewish. One of the Boulder victims was 88 and a Holocaust survivor. The scourge of Jew-hatred, endemic to capitalism, has been on the rise since the Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom organized by Hamas in collaboration with the Iranian regime. Their goal was to murder Jews. Their stated objective remains: to wipe out Jews in another Holocaust and destroy the state of Israel.
Jew-hatred is not a Middle East question; it’s a life and death question for working people in the United States and worldwide, as was driven home with the recent attacks. Jew-hatred is used to try to divert working people and others from seeing the real source of the social and economic crisis we face: the dog-eat-dog system of capitalist rule.
Within moments of the Oct. 7 brutal murders, rapes, and kidnappings of Jews, pro-Hamas mobs on campus and elsewhere began praising these heinous acts. Some organizations that claim to be “anti-imperialist” or socialist have called the Oct. 7 pogrom a justifiable act of liberation or resistance for Palestinians. Stalinist groups like Unity of Fields and Workers World Party openly praise the killings in Washington, and urge others to do likewise.
These outfits are encouraged by lies peddled by Hamas, and pro-Hamas United Nations-related organizations. They ignore the Nazi roots of Hamas and statements by Hamas leaders praising the deaths of Palestinians as martyrs even as Hamas imbeds its fighters in crowds, hospitals, and schools to maximize civilians deaths.
Imperialist governments around the world, led by the United States, pursue their own interests in the region and act as if Jews are expendable.
The Socialist Workers Party staunchly defends Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews. Since our 1938 founding we have opposed all forms of Jew-hatred. We build on the traditions of our movement and the example set by V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky who fought against pogroms in Russia before and after the Russian Revolution.
There are now mounting protests in Gaza against Hamas. The best interests of workers in Israel, Palestinians, and toilers in the surrounding region is for the rapid and decisive defeat of Hamas, and for targeted strikes by Israel on Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity. A defeat of Hamas can open the door to working people in the region acting in their own interest and building revolutionary parties that cut across the divisions fostered by the capitalist governments. In doing so, they would deal an important blow to the imperialist rulers’ march towards fascism and World War III.