A genuine mass movement is developing in response to the war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people. Spontaneous protests erupted on Friday in the West Bank, Turkey, Jordan, Tunisia and other countries. In New York City, hundreds of members of Jewish Voice for Peace shut down Grand Central Station. This follows protests involving millions over the past week, and demonstrations are being held throughout the world this weekend.
This movement must be developed and expanded. The World Socialist Web Site, which is published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, calls for strikes and other protest actions by the working class in every country. We urge the organization of mass demonstrations in every city and emergency solidarity protests by college and high school students.
We call for the development of protests and demonstrations within Israel itself. Its soldiers, many of whom are reservists, should defy—as is required under international law—the criminal orders of the Netanyahu regime and the military general staff.
There is no time to lose. Action to stop the war must not be subordinated to the political maneuvers of capitalist governments, whose verbal protests against Israeli atrocities are aimed at deflecting and maintaining control over the emerging mass movement. Opposition to Israel’s crimes must be rooted in the international working class, using the powerful weapon of a general political strike in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
An emergency situation exists in Gaza:
On Friday, all communications were cut off by Israel, amidst the heaviest aerial bombardment since the assault began three weeks ago. The aim is to clearly prevent information from escaping showing the mass murder of Palestinians, with reports of tank incursions and the possible beginning of a ground invasion.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has demanded the evacuation of the last remaining hospital in northern Gaza, the Al-Shifa, on which as many as 60,000 desperate refugees depend. On Friday, the IDF issued a lying statement claiming that the hospital is being used by Hamas, a transparent attempt to justify bombing the facility, as it targeted the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, killing 500 on October 17.
The more than one million people who lived in northern Gaza are being forced to evacuate or be killed, and an estimated 1.4 million people are now internally displaced. Israel has also bombed targets in southern Gaza, including the border crossing with Egypt at Rafah. More than 100 Palestinians have also been killed in raids on the West Bank.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation, dehydration and disease. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres acknowledged the scale of the catastrophe in a statement Friday, warning that the “humanitarian system in Gaza is facing a total collapse with unimaginable consequences for more than 2 million civilians.”
The United States and its axis of NATO powers—including Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Canada—are full partners and accomplices in this genocide.
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden attempted to minimize the scale of the atrocity, claiming that he had “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
Biden is lying. He knows the staggering death toll, even before Palestinian authorities released in response to his claim the names of 7,000 individuals killed so far. For American imperialism, the slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children and women, is simply, as Biden himself put it, “the price of waging war.”
Source: Wsws.org
Add Comment