It’s in the interests of all workers and the oppressed in the U.S. and worldwide to see the fight to dismantle Hamas carried through to the end. Another Holocaust was the stated aim of Hamas when it carried out its Oct. 7 pogrom, backed by the counterrevolutionary regime in Iran. Hamas and the Iranian regime hold to that goal today.
This fight is a central class question for working people worldwide.
On one side stand the interests of the international working class and its allies among the oppressed of the region. That includes millions of Palestinians, Iranians, Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Baluchis, Afghanis, Druze, Turks and Iraqis, and the special national question of the Jews in the imperialist epoch.
Jew-hatred arises from the deepening crisis of capitalist power. When the capitalists fear their rule is threatened, they will unleash fascist goons to go after Jews, workers, their unions and organizations, and communists. Their “radical solution” will be, “It’s Jews, not capital, that are to blame!”
Israel has dealt Hamas, and Tehran and its proxies serious blows. Workers and the oppressed in the Middle East have taken advantage of that breathing space to organize resistance, from renewed strikes and protests by working people in Iran, to the Druze in Syria defending themselves from bloody assaults, to Palestinians in Gaza who have gone into the streets demanding Hamas get “Out! Out! Out!”
These actions point the way to deepening common struggles by the toilers against the capitalist rulers and their governments and expanding the political organization of the working class and oppressed — showing there is a road that leads toward the working class taking political power.
On the other side stand the imperialist powers, led by the capitalist rulers in Washington. They’re intensifying pressure on the Israeli government to back off from the battle to eradicate Hamas. Opposition to defeating Hamas is also organized inside the upper echelons of the Israeli military and security services, as well as the left of bourgeois political forces in Israel.
Opposition to a course that secures the defeat of Hamas is intensifying because of the key place of the Middle East, with its vast material resources, in the deepening rivalries between the world’s main capitalist powers. The U.S. rulers seek to defend their weakened domination of the imperialist world “order.” The fate of the Jews and of Israel is of concern to the U.S. rulers only in so far as they have to deal with Israel’s determination to prevent another Holocaust and its refusal to bow to the interests of U.S. imperialism.
Washington stepped in to bomb Iran with the aim of forcing an end to Israel’s assaults. The opposition of the toilers in Iran to the dictatorial regime in Tehran was deepening. Washington gave the Iranian regime some breathing space, which it used to unleash a wave of repression against working people there.
London and Paris, and the capitalist regimes in the Arab League, are intensifying their campaign of lies alleging Israeli-organized “starvation” and “genocide” of the Palestinians, and demanding the imposition of a “two-state solution.” But two states are impossible if one of them is determined to annihilate all Jews and the state of Israel. A state in the hands of Hamas will be a death sentence for millions of Jews.
Utilizing figures and doctored photographs provided by Hamas, the imperialist powers say Israel is responsible for mass starvation of children in Gaza. This is a modern-day version of what is known as the blood libel used for centuries by reactionaries to rationalize the indiscriminate slaughter of Jews — men, women, children and infants — claiming Jews kill children. Today’s lies about Israeli policies fuel increasingly deadly Jew-hating assaults in all the imperialist centers, including here in the U.S.
Israel is not starving Palestinians. The U.N. reported that only 300 of 2,600 trucks sent by Israel to Gaza reached their destination. The rest were looted by Hamas and other armed criminals.
In the imperialist epoch, there can be no permanent refuge for the Jews. That can only be achieved with the victory of proletarian revolutions in a growing number of countries worldwide.
As Israel fights to decisively defeat Hamas and prevent another Holocaust, it defends its existence as a refuge for the Jews today by incorporating the Palestinians in Gaza to free them from Hamas’ tyranny, to defend them against Hamas.
For decades Hamas has crushed all efforts of Palestinians to assert their interests. Getting Hamas’ rule off the backs of the Palestinians will remove a huge obstacle to common struggle by workers and farmers across the region. It will open the door to building alliances in class battles and to advancing the national aspirations of Palestinians and other oppressed nationalities, including the Jews.
The road of the class struggle is the road to developing the leadership working people need. Class-struggle experience is decisive to forging parties capable of leading millions of working people to replace capitalist rule with workers power. That’s true in Israel, across the Middle East, in the U.S., and as part of advancing socialist revolutions in a growing number of countries worldwide.
The defeat of Hamas is an essential next step in advancing that struggle.
