Defense of Israel’s right to exist as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms is not a religious question. It is a class and a national question, intertwined with the fight against national oppression across the globe.
Israel’s right to exist is rooted in the fight against Jew-hatred, which is a tool of the capitalist rulers in the imperialist epoch, and the devastating impact of Hitler’s Nazi regime’s drive to eliminate all the Jews in the world.
The Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom, carried out by Hamas — financed, trained, and armed by the reactionary regime in Tehran — was confirmation that there could be another Holocaust. Never again! is not just a slogan. It’s a necessary fight today.
The Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia showed the way forward, placing opposition to Jew-hatred and pogroms as central to the fight to end capitalist exploitation. But the Stalinist counterrevolution against V.I. Lenin’s course that was consolidated from 1927 to 1928 reversed that class-struggle perspective.
In the 1930s and ’40s the Stalinized communist parties blocked workers from taking advantage of openings to take power in Spain, Greece, France, Italy and other countries. In Germany they let the Nazis walk into power without a fight. The result was World War II, a war to redivide the world among the imperialist powers. And the “Final Solution”: 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis — 40% of the world’s Jews — while the imperialist powers from Washington and Ottawa to London and Canberra shut their doors to the Jews, sending them back to their deaths.
Where else were the Jews to go? The existence of Israel as a capitalist, class-divided country became inevitable. And after the Oct. 7 pogrom and Hamas’ vows to do it “again and again,” what choice did Israel have but to launch a defensive war to put an end to Hamas and the threat of nuclear attack by Tehran?
Israel has made significant advances since then. It decimated the capacities of Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. It set back the Iranian rulers’ capacity for producing nuclear weapons. But the battle to stop another Holocaust is not settled.
For Jews around the world, Israel is the only country that provides an unconditional refuge, arms in hand. But Israel is class-divided and its capitalist rulers’ defense of the profit system and reliance on U.S. imperialism weakens the battle for Israel’s existence. Moreover, the fight to defend Israel is integral to the working-class struggle to replace capitalist rule with a government of our own.
Washington’s aim has never been to defend Jews in Israel or anywhere. Nor do the U.S. rulers care about the Palestinians. Their only interest is in furthering U.S. imperialism’s plunder of the resources of the Middle East and its exploitation of working people there. That’s why workers should call for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, bases and warships in the region.
Washington will never forget the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew its ally, the shah, and weakened U.S. imperialism. The working people of Iran, who have carried out protests against Tehran’s expansionist moves, are the biggest obstacle to the reactionary Iranian regime and to U.S. imperialist interests in the region. And they are the most important ally of working people in Israel.
The U.S. rulers themselves will use Jew-hatred and turn to fascist gangs in times of intensified crisis to try to prevent the development of revolutionary working-class vanguards and parties.
Workers worldwide need to stand with Israel in its battle to defeat Nazi-like Hamas. But we should give no political support to any of Israel’s capitalist parties or its government.
What the working class in Israel, Iran and throughout the Middle East needs is the same thing the Socialist Workers Party is doing here, building revolutionary working-class parties that unite workers, whatever their religious belief or nationality, on a line of march toward taking political power into our own hands and joining the worldwide fight for socialism.
That is the only road to ending Jew-hatred forever.