The U.S.-imposed ceasefire in Gaza and the Donald Trump administration’s so-called Board of Peace do nothing to advance the defense of Israel as a refuge for Jews or reduce the danger of a new Holocaust. Washington’s moves are aimed at advancing the interests of U.S. imperialism, which includes preventing Israel from dismantling Hamas. The Jew-hating outfit is rebuilding its tunnels, amassing weapons and boosting its dictatorial rule in Gaza.
The fight against Jew-hatred is not a Middle East question. Jew-hatred and pogroms are a permanent feature of the social convulsions and wars of the imperialist epoch. Their roots, like the causes of the last two world wars, cannot be eliminated under capitalist rule.
The ruling capitalist families everywhere are competing for natural resources, trade and labor. The source of their profits is their exploitation of working people, those who sell our labor power to the highest bidder, along with debt slaves, like small farmers. With no new markets to conquer, the imperialist rulers and other capitalist powers are driven to fight each other to redivide the world.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Washington’s assault on Venezuela’s sovereignty, and the race by capitalist governments to build ever-more terrifying weapons show that imperialism is dragging humanity toward a third world conflagration.
Thousands of Jews were slaughtered in pogroms in the czarist empire in Russia, before and during World War I. In 1929 forces allied to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, carried out pogroms in Palestine. In World War II these same forces allied with the Nazis in Germany, celebrating the Holocaust that eliminated 40% of the Jews in the world.
Israel’s existence became necessary in the wake of the Holocaust. The imperialist powers — from the U.S. to Europe, Australia and elsewhere — refused in the 1930s to let Jews in and closed their doors after the betrayal by Stalinist parties of revolutionary struggles in Germany, Spain and elsewhere in Europe. Jews had nowhere else to go.
Israel is a class-divided country. It is also the only country where Jews are offered an unconditional refuge and defends them arms in hand. But its existence does not prevent the rise of Jew-hating violence.
Jew-hatred is a product of capitalism in decline. Unable to achieve a comfortable and stable life in the dog-eat-dog capitalist world and fearful of being pushed down into the working class, middle-class layers turn to Jew-hatred, a vestige of precapitalist societies. They blame the Jews for the misery they face, instead of the real enemy — capitalism.
But the epoch of imperialist war is also the epoch of revolution. That is what the capitalist rulers fear more than anything else. If their rule is threatened, they will promote fascist bands of Jew-hating thugs, like they did in Germany in 1933, to crush the working class and prevent it from challenging their rule.
The only way to end Jew-hatred and pogroms is for the working class to overturn the rule of the capitalist class, in country after country, and begin to organize society — and the world — on the basis of solidarity.
To make socialist revolutions, workers need parties of our own that are forged in the course of working-class struggles and unite workers whatever their nationality or religion. That’s the road forward in the U.S., the Middle East and worldwide.
To be part of building that kind of organization, join the Socialist Workers Party.