At the center of the debates swirling around the annual United Nations General Assembly are competing attempts by all the imperialist powers and other ruling classes to end or obstruct Israel’s defensive war against Hamas. Each power hopes to get a piece of the exploitation of the natural resources and labor of the Middle East.
From France to the United Kingdom, from Canada and Australia to the United States, the imperialist rulers are trying to force Israel to accept a ceasefire that would leave Hamas, which is backed by the regime in Tehran, intact to prepare more pogroms.
Hamas massacred 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and raped and mutilated women Oct. 7, 2023, the worst anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust. It still holds 20 hostages believed to be alive and the bodies of others.
On the eve of the U.N. meetings, Hamas released a video of its death squads publicly executing three men in Gaza City accused of being Israeli collaborators. Almost simultaneously it released a video of Alon Ohel, who it took hostage at the Oct. 7 Nova music festival. He has been held in horrendous conditions for more than 700 days. The video’s release “constitutes psychological terror,” his parents say.
On Sept. 24, the Israel Defense Forces released a video that shows Hamas combatants firing on Israeli troops from positions in Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. For Hamas, civilians are human shields and potential “martyrs” for its ruthless war against Israel.
Hamas’ brutality underscores what its leaders have said repeatedly — their goal is to kill or drive out all the Jews and destroy Israel.
Despite this, the governments of the imperialist rulers of Australia, Canada, France, Portugal and the U.K. have announced they recognize a Palestinian state as part of a “two-state solution.”
“Why are all these countries recognizing Palestine now?” boasted Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad on Aug. 2. Because of the “powerful blow that was delivered to Israel on Oct. 7.”
In his statement, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer claimed, “Hamas can have no future, no role in government, no role in security” in Gaza. But the only force capable of ensuring that is Israel, which now controls at least 75% of Gaza and is advancing its offensive against the Jew-hating group.
Starmer charges Israel’s anti-Hamas offensive is “utterly intolerable.” As if Israel’s war is equivalent to the murders carried out by Hamas’ death squads. And Starmer repeats the lies promoted by Hamas supporters that Israel is causing a famine in Gaza.
“This move does not advance peace,” Emily Damari, a dual British-Israeli citizen who survived 471 days in Hamas captivity, said in an online statement. “By legitimising a state entity while Hamas still controls Gaza and continues its campaign of terror you are not promoting a solution; you are prolonging the conflict.”
White House ‘plan’ for Gaza
President Donald Trump rejected the call for recognition of a Palestinian state, saying it would be a “reward” for Hamas’ atrocities. That’s because he has his own plan for imposing stability on the region to advance U.S. imperialist interests. In fact, the pressure on Israel to end the war before it is won is greatest from the U.S. ruling class.
“We have to stop the war in Gaza immediately,” Trump told the U.N. General Assembly Sept. 23.
Later that evening Trump met with representatives from the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Jordan. He opened the meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by his side. The Turkish government broke almost all commercial relations with Israel after Oct. 7 and has been one of its most vociferous opponents.
When the United Nations came into existence on Oct. 24, 1945, just two months after the end of World War II, Washington saw it as a tool for U.S. imperialism, to advance the world supremacy it had won in the war.
But in the face of accelerating imperialist rivalries today and the growing domination of the U.N. by “woke” meritocratic layers, the U.N. has become less useful to the U.S. rulers. In Gaza and beyond, its agencies have become enablers and apologists for Hamas.
A 72-page report by the U.N. Human Rights Council released Sept. 16 charged Israel with “genocide” in Gaza. It ignores all the facts — Hamas’ goal of annihilating Israel; its arming and funding by Tehran; the years of preparation for a new Holocaust, including the massive tunnel system; its use of civilians as human shields.
Instead, the report says that Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7 “were brutal war crimes but they did not pose an existential threat to the State of Israel.” But the Nazi-like group has made clear many times over that its goals are an “existential threat” to the Jewish people and to any Arab or immigrant worker who works with Jews.
The report regurgitates Hamas’ justification for the pogrom. It claims you have to “take account of the fact” that Israel is “unlawfully occupying and settling Palestinian territory,” reinforcing Hamas leader Hamad’s statement after the pogrom that “everything we do is justified.”
Palestinian Authority to Gaza?
One common feature of all the imperialist schemes for a postwar Gaza — including some pushed by Trump — is to put the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in charge. The Palestinian Authority, which administers large parts of the West Bank, is painted as corrupt and incompetent, but “better” than Hamas.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is angling to get his hands on what could be millions of dollars of aid to rebuild Gaza. He tries to present himself as a trustworthy alternative to Hamas who recognizes Israel’s existence and is a friend of the Jews.
But for decades the Palestinian Authority has fomented the same Jew-hatred that is at the heart of Hamas’ existence.
Textbooks in the West Bank, just like in Gaza, indoctrinate children to glorify terrorist attacks on Jews. In a speech in 2023, Abbas repeated myths about “Jewish capitalists,” saying that Hitler and “Europe hated the Jews,” not because they were Jews, but because of their “social role.” He said this “had to do with usury, money and so on.”
Gazan: Hamas ‘ignited this war’
Working people in Gaza continue to find ways to express their opposition to continued rule by Hamas. “Wherever they go, destruction and ruin follow,” a woman in Gaza says in one recent video posted online. “What happened on Oct. 7 does not represent us.”
“We must not forget that Hamas is the one who ignited this war,” another Gazan posted to his Facebook account. “Not only that, Hamas also rejected the conditions that could have stopped this madness.
“If it had accepted the handover of the hostages from the beginning, it would have been possible to spare the people of Gaza these massacres, and we would not have reached here.”
Defeating Hamas would prevent a new Holocaust in the Middle East and remove the biggest obstacle to working people — Jewish, Arab, Druze, Christian, immigrant and more — finding ways to come together and defend their own class interests.