Conflagration in Palestine and the Middle East

The fascist Netanyahu administration in Israel continues to bomb Gaza day and night after the Hamas’ attack on October 7. At least 3,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and thousands wounded by Israeli bombs. Among those killed are doctors and journalists. Ice cream trucks are used as morgues because the morgues are full, and the dead are buried in mass graves. The number of displaced Palestinians has exceeded 1 million. Electricity and water have been cut off by Israel, humanitarian aid such as medicine and food are not allowed to pass, and hospitals are bombed. On October 17, at least 500 people reportedly died in a hospital bombed by Israel. In Gaza, which Israel has turned into the world’s largest open-air prison, more than 2 million Palestinians are being dragged to death in front of the eyes of the whole world.

The Israeli rulers continue to kill civilians under the pretext that Hamas is hiding in houses, schools, hospitals and mosques in Gaza. They even go so far as to say that civilians are guilty for not resisting Hamas, for not preventing the attack and deserve to be slaughtered. “The war will spread, the coming days will be very difficult,” they say. Palestine, which has already been turned into a powder keg in the Middle East, which has been scorched by the flames of the imperialists’ war for hegemony for years, has now surrendered to the flames of this bloody imperialist war. If these flames spreading in the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific are not the imperialists’ Third World War, what is?

Who is responsible for the bloodshed?

It is clear that the issue is not only about Israel and Palestine. Israel is carrying out this massacre with the open support of the US and European countries. With great hypocrisy, the Western imperialists say “we condemn terrorist attacks against Israel”, while explaining Israel’s terror against Gaza as a “right of self-defence”. The US has sent its largest aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean, while Britain has announced that it will send surveillance planes and two royal navy ships. Germany has offered military support to Israel. Iran, on the other hand, says that “if Israel launches a ground operation, we will get involved in the war”. Russia and China are doing their best to undermine the so-called “normalization” process between Israel and the countries of the region, which is supported by the US. This makes it clear that the issue is not just the Hamas attack. The Palestinian people, who have been kept in an open-air prison for years, humiliated by violence and oppression, have been turned into the victims of the imperialist clash and the escalating war for hegemony. The US and the European Union are on one side of this conflict, and Russia, Iran and China on the other.

Let us remember that when Russia attacked Ukraine, the EU rulers, who seemed to care very much about the bombs dropped and the deaths of civilians, tried to foment hatred in society against the Russian people, pretending that they are anti-war. At that time, we said that all the imperialists, from the US to Europe and China, only cared about their own hegemony and interests, and that they wanted to inject the poison of nationalism into society with the pretence of being anti-war. The war in Ukraine is now in its second year and nothing has changed in the attitude of the rulers. Those who sent sophisticated weapons and killing machines to Ukraine talk about “peace”. Just like they did before! Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and now Palestine... The countries that are parties to the imperialist polarization do not care a bit about the deaths of millions of people. What they care is the power struggle they are waging. They do not even care about the children who face death before they know the world, the mothers whose babies are slaughtered in front of their eyes, the suffering peoples.

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Just like in the Russia-Ukraine war, the Western media is trying to play with the perceptions of the public and prevent them from seeing the truth through a complete blackout and manipulation. Once again, we see who the so-called independent and highly respected newspapers and TV channels serve. Israel dared to use even white phosphorus bombs in Gaza, which is considered a war crime. The BBC reporter who witnessed this was removed from the live broadcast while reporting what he saw. The Guardian, one of Britain's most established newspapers, fired its cartoonist who has been working there for 42 years just because he drew a cartoon criticizing Netanyahu. They are trying to create such a perception that those who oppose the war are accused of supporting Hamas! At a book fair in Germany, a Palestinian author was removed from the prize list and Palestinian publishers were prevented from participating in the fair. Protests against Israel were banned in many European countries, including the UK, Germany and France. Despite the ban, protesters took to the streets and were attacked by the police. There were detentions and even arrests.

Peace and freedom for the Middle East and Palestine will come through the struggle of the workers!

But despite all this befogging and repression, in dozens of countries from Greece to Germany, from France to Norway, from the USA to Morocco, hundreds of thousands of workers of different religions are protesting against the imperialist war, against the wanton slaughter of a people, and showing their solidarity with the Palestinian people. Families whose relatives have been kidnapped by Hamas are protesting against the Israeli Defense Ministry, saying that the Palestinian people are not responsible for what is happening and that the massacre of civilians must stop. An Israeli mother whose 18-year-old daughter was taken hostage by Hamas said: “She was in the army, she was in the army base. She is only 18 years old, she is a child. But she doesn’t want to fight. Nobody wants to fight. I believe they don’t want to fight in Gaza either, nobody wants to fight. Everyone just wants to live.” Jewish labourers, whose grandparents were murdered in death camps by Hitler’s fascism, oppose the murder of the Palestinian people in Gaza, which has become a death camp. Israeli police tortured Israelis in the streets protesting against what is being done to Palestine, but they could not drown out the voices calling out “Netanyahu the murderer”. In the US, Jewish workers are protesting and calling on the rulers: “Israeli Zionism does not represent us, stop slaughtering the Palestinian people.”

Isn’t it clear who really wants peace? On the one hand, the rulers who, with nauseating hypocrisy, claim to care about the lives of civilians but approve the massacre by calculating imperialist interests, and on the other hand, the working people who condemn war and massacre with all their heart, mind and conscience... Wherever they are in the world, whether they are Muslims, Jews, Christians or Buddhists, it is the workers and labourers who are killed, who suffer, who are displaced in the dirty wars of the rulers. The rulers of the capitalist system gain power and enrich themselves by stepping on our dead. There can be no peace, peace or freedom for us under capitalism. A war-free and free life where peoples live in brotherhood, where no one exploits anyone else, can only be created through the struggle of workers. Because capitalism can only be overthrown by the struggle of the working class, which has nothing to gain from it. Let us unite in the ranks of the working-class struggle to overthrow this order of oppression, which is the biggest obstacle to peace and freedom.