ON Thursday, the TUC’s non-existent Day of Action to support Palestine, 63 people were annihilated by Israel in northern Gaza and 22 in Central Beirut with 117 wounded.
Mandated by a unanimous vote at the TUC Congress last month, for a national Day of Action for a ceasefire in Gaza, the TUC decided to do nothing, organising nothing, and sabotaging the binding votes by its members. On that Thursday the body count of those Palestinians exterminated, just in Gaza, rose to over 42,176 mainly children and defenceless women.
The TUC said it was ‘too busy’ studying the Starmer government’s new employment Bill on workers’ rights, to carry out a Day of Action. The Bill has been described to be so full of holes as to be almost worthless.
In fact, Netanyahu’s genocidal regime feels itself free to carry out limitless and ever more barbarous atrocities with impunity, even attacking the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers’ compound in south Lebanon, injuring UN soldiers.
Outraged by this crime, Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, on Friday urged the international community to stop selling weapons to Israel as he condemned attacks by Israel’s armed forces against the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
The Israeli army fired at an observation post used by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Friday, the third day in a row peacekeepers have reported Israeli fire at their positions.
Spain stopped selling weapons to Israel in October 2023 and urged the rest of the world to do the same to prevent further escalation in the region, and has criticised Israel’s recent escalation by attacking Lebanon.
Spanish President Sánchez stated: ‘I think it is urgent given what is happening in the Middle East that the international community stops exporting weapons to the Israeli government.’
The aid agency Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for a UN inquiry into Israeli attacks on peacekeepers belonging to UNIFIL on Friday, after three separate attacks on UNIFIL personnel in south Lebanon.
On Friday morning, a UNIFIL outpost in south Lebanon came under fire. On Thursday, its headquarters had been repeatedly hit, injuring two peacekeepers after an Israeli tank fired at an observation post.
On Wednesday Israeli troops shot at a UNIFIL position where peacekeepers were sheltering, UNIFIL said.
UNIFIL added that its more than 10,400 peacekeepers would remain in south Lebanon until the situation becomes too dangerous.
Imperialism’s terrorist state, Israel, is running amok, without restraint – but all this blood-letting is of no concern to the TUC leaders.
They do not wish to challenge PM Sir Keir Starmer, who stated that the UK will continue supplying Israel with military equipment, and which at the same time is preparing draconian attacks on the UK working class at home with NHS privatisation, and even more benefit, education and social services cuts on the agenda in the budget later this month.
The TUC, over the past year of the Israeli war of extermination against Gaza and Hamas, has kept its silence in spite of the huge protest marches supporting Palestine in London and elsewhere in Britain, attended by hundreds of thousands of workers and youth.
A year on, bankrupt imperialism has been further undermined by unrepayable debt mountains and is desperate to keep hold of its oil reserves in the Middle East. It is now preparing to unleash its Israeli killing machine against Iran, which will have the most disastrous consequences of economic and social collapse for the whole world capitalist order.
The working class is not tolerating this war drive and is ready to take general strike action against Israel’s genocide, as seen in Spain’s general strike last Friday.
The leaders of the TUC have shamefully turned their backs on the Palestinian struggle and sided with the British ruling class and its pro-Zionist PM Starmer.
Workers must demand an immediate recall of the TUC Congress to drive out the present mis-leaders and replace them with new leaders who are not afraid to stand with the Palestinians against Zionism.
Such an emergency Congress will call an immediate indefinite general strike in support of Palestine, and spread it worldwide to not just bring down the Starmer government, but to end Israel’s genocidal war, by establishing the State of Palestine and establishing a workers government and a Socialist society at home.
This will immediately give full support to the Palestinian liberation movement by all means necessary. Join the WRP and Young Socialists today to organise this struggle for the victory of Socialist revolution and the establishment of the State of Palestine!
