AFTER 21 days of political paralysis, the US House of Representatives finally elected Mike Johnson, a fervent Donald Trump supporter, as its Speaker.
Johnson’s first act as Speaker was to propose a resolution declaring full ‘solidarity’ with Israel and easing the way for president Joe Biden to achieve his demand for $100 billion for wars in Ukraine and Israel and preparations for a massive war throughout the Middle East.
Having sorted out the political in-fighting amongst right wing Republicans in the House, Biden is now set to ‘sort out’ Gaza and the Palestinians, assured of the support of Trump and the Republicans.
Immediately this support was assured, the green light was given to Israel to begin its promised invasion of Gaza by sending tanks into northern Gaza overnight on Thursday, in a ‘targeted raid’ in preparation for what the Israeli government has called ‘the next stages of combat’ – a ground force invasion to accompany the relentless bombings and missile attacks that have killed over 7,000 Palestinian men, women and children so far.
While the US government has been in a state of limbo for the past three weeks, this hasn’t stopped Biden from organising the full military and political support for a war to the finish by the Zionist regime against Gaza, and to prepare for a wider war against Iran.
Two US aircraft carriers have been sent to the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel, while the Pentagon is reported to have selected 2,000 American troops to help Israel in its invasion of Gaza.
Along with the military build-up, the US has been engaged in attempting to ‘influence’ Middle East governments to ‘tone down’ their opposition to the genocidal attacks on Gaza.
According to a report on the US news website AXIOS, American secretary of state Anthony Blinken, at a recent private meeting in Qatar, told the Qatari government to ‘turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement’.
Al Jazeera is a respected news channel based in Qatar that Israel has accused of being ‘a propaganda mouthpiece’ for Hamas that the Israeli government has vowed to shut down.
The action to ‘shut down’ any reporting of its brutal campaign to annihilate Palestinians in Gaza was demonstrated this week with the killing in an Israeli air raid of the wife, son, daughter and grandson of Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Arabic bureau chief in Gaza.
The family had fled to south Gaza after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu lied and promised ‘safety’ from bombardment in that area.
Instead, the south has had its hospitals, mosques and homes targeted in an orgy of destruction by the Israeli forces.
The Israelis do target reporters on the ground who bravely expose their war crimes against humanity to the world.
A total of 24 journalists including 20 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) which also reported that it was still investigating the disappearance and arrest of a number of others.
However, all the attempts to silence the truth of Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians have failed dismally.
Millions of workers and young people in the UK, US and across the world have demonstrated in support of Palestine, calling for the victory of the Palestinian people over the racist Zionist regime and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
Last Saturday, 400,000 marched in London while similar marches took place across Europe and America.
These demonstrations are a positive demonstration that workers and youth stand with Palestine!!!
However, the time has come to go much further and to demand that the powerful UK trade unions don’t stand idly by and watch the Palestinians being slaughtered but take a massive class action.
On Saturday, the focus of the mass demo must be to force the TUC to act by immediately calling a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism. A workers government will break up the US, UK and Israeli alliance and instead, will see to it that Palestine is free. The time has come to smash capitalism and imperialism and replace both with the victory of the worldwide socialist revolution!
