[Leaflet] Solidarity with Palestine! Stop the Bombing of Gaza! Mass Working-Class Action Needed to Liberate Palestine!

This is the text of a leaflet distributed by supporters of Socialist Revolution at Palestine solidarity demonstrations throughout the country. Download the PDF of the four-page foldable leaflet here.

Read our full statement on the fight for Palestinian liberation here.

The Israeli bombing of Gaza has already injured hundreds and killed at least 119 Palestinians, including many children. Six Israelis have been killed by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. The international media has once again presented the Israeli state’s bombings as a legitimate retaliation against Hamas’s decision to fire rockets into Israel. As usual, this is a completely one-sided view of the real causes for this escalation of the decades-long crisis.

We are seeing yet another intensification of violence against the Palestinian population by the Israeli state. This is the poisoned result of the attempt to impose an imperialist “peace” on the basis of suppressing the rights of the Palestinian majority. This policy was relentlessly pursued by Donald Trump, who recognized Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and signed the so-called “Abraham Accords.” Netanyahu gladly cashed the blank check provided by US imperialism. Meanwhile, Biden has justified the brutal bombing of Gaza, saying “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

In recent months, we have seen a rising wave of struggle among Palestinians against evictions, demolitions, land expropriations, and the daily anti-Palestinian provocations of the settlers and the Zionist extreme right wing. The mass movement of Palestinians living within the Green Line has been organized from below, through committees, and represents a rejection of the failed strategies of the so-called leadership of the Palestinian national movement, of both Fatah and Hamas.

In addition to the relentless bombing of Gaza, there are now gangs of reactionary Zionist settlers and far-right thugs attacking Palestinian neighborhoods within Israel itself, destroying homes, property, shops, beating up and killing innocent people just because they are Palestinian. This wave of racist terror can only be described as a pogrom. In many instances these gangs act with the support of the Israeli police and army.

Marxists are not neutral in this struggle. We stand with the oppressed Palestinian people against the brutal oppression of the Israeli state and its imperialist backers in Washington!

Many have appealed to “the international community” to address the crisis. They hope the UN, Human Rights NGOs, the US, or the EU might intervene to stop Israel. But this hope is an illusion. Israel is the most reliable partner of Western imperialism in the Middle East. The US and the EU have already shown they will not sacrifice this important alliance. The UN is nothing more than a window-dressing compromise between different imperialist powers, unable to do more than issue impotent warnings and mildly worded appeals to both sides.

Neither the collaboration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), nor Hamas’s rockets can advance the Palestinian cause for liberation. On the contrary, those rockets allowed the increasingly unpopular Netanyahu to rally large sectors of the Israeli population behind the Zionist state, and temporarily strengthened the position of his current government of crisis.They are used by Israel to portray itself as the victim to an international audience.

These rocket attacks also divert attention from the mass resistance being employed by the Palestinian youth in East Jerusalem—the only approach which, if generalized, can lead to real change. It was the mass protests of the Palestinians that forced the Israeli police to withdraw from the Damascus gate, and allow Palestinians to gather there again. It was the mass protests of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah that forced the Israeli authorities to postpone the eviction of Palestinians from their homes.

Already in Haifa and in other Israeli cities, Palestinians have organized popular committees of self-defense against the racist Zionist pogroms. This is the way forward! Mass protests and strikes must be organized in the Palestinian territories and towns in Israel itself. The Palestinian Authority has always tried to stop such movements, precisely because they undermine the authority of the so-called Palestinian “leadership.” They must therefore find their mainspring in grassroot structures on the ground.

The Israeli working class and youth must understand that the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians is not in their interest. It is a tool used by the Israeli ruling class to divide the workers and poor of the region to play them off against each other. The Israeli imperialists utilize Zionism and fear-mongering over the Palestinians to blur the divisions between Jewish workers and capitalists. They use this to push the lie that the Israeli workers and capitalists have fundamental interests in common—which is utterly false. Last year, we saw mass demonstrations in Israel against Netanhayu and his policies. Now, just as he was about to be ousted from government, he uses the so-called “Hamas threat” to cling to power.

There is no solution to this crisis within the narrow confines of Israel-Palestine. The only way forward for the mass of exploited and oppressed Palestinian and Jewish workers and youth is the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist Israeli state and the establishment of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East. This can only be won on the basis of proletarian internationalism and class unity throughout the region. The Israeli working class and youth must recognize the right of the Palestinian masses to national self-determination and support their current struggle against the occupation.

• Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle! Intifada until victory! Fight the occupation with mass protests and strikes!
• No solution is possible on the basis of imperialist “peace” plans. No trust in the capitalists or imperialists!
• Mobilize American workers and youth to stop the Gaza bombing and the suppression of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people! To fight the oppression of Palestine, fight US imperialism!
• For proletarian internationalism and working-class unity across the Middle East!