On Wednesday, the recently elected president of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, finally announced that he has assembled a ruling coalition cabinet between his Likud party and the fascist Otzma Yehudit party and the extreme right-wing racist Religious Zionism parties.
Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir has been installed as the new national security minister.
Ben-Gvir is an open fascist racist, who in the past has been charged over hate speeches and inciting violence against Palestinians. Until 2020 he kept a picture in his living room of the American-born Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein, infamous for a terrorist massacre of 29 Palestinian men women and boys while they worshipped at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron.
Now this racist, who glorifies killing Arabs, has been given control over the police and the Border Police unit that the Israeli state uses to subjugate by violence Palestinians in the West Bank, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Ben-Gvir is an acknowledged disciple of the late US/Israeli fascist Meir Kahane whose party, Kache, was banned both in the US and Israel as a ‘terrorist’ organisation.
Now Ben-Gvir has been handed carte blanche by Netanyahu to carry out his desire to drive Palestinians from their homeland through a reign of terror and murder.
He has already proposed relaxing regulations to allow Israeli soldiers the legal right to shoot anyone holding a rock and deporting ‘disloyal’ Arabs – this is supposedly a moderation of his views as he previously advocated deporting every Arab.
Of course, Israeli police and troops have always been immune from prosecution for murdering Palestinians.
Now they will not have to provide any fig leaves about ‘accidental shootings’, or any of the other litany of lies used to excuse the murderous onslaught by the racist apartheid Zionist state to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland with a campaign of mass terror.
Since the start of 2022, Israeli troops have killed over 220 Palestinians, including more than 50 children in the occupied West Bank and east al-Quds as well as the besieged Gaza Strip. 19 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since November 22, the UN reports.
According to the United Nations, the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank this year make it the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2005.
The latest to join this number of deaths is a 23-year-old Palestinian soccer player, shot in the back this week by Israeli occupation forces protecting an illegal invasion by Zionist settlers in the West Bank, an area supposedly under the Palestinian Authority’s jurisdiction.
Five other Palestinians were wounded after being hit with live rounds during the provocative storming of a religious site, Joseph’s Tomb, by the settlers.
Netanyahu, who still faces multiple charges of corruption in Israel, has created an openly racist war cabinet supported by the most violent fascists elements that have dropped any pretence that the Zionist state is anything other than a racist apartheid regime determined to kill or drive every Palestinian from their land.
The British working class, in particular, owe an enormous debt to the Palestinian people. It was the British government, that in 1917 signed the Balfour Declaration which handed over Palestine to the Zionists. For years, the British trade unions have passed resolutions, motions and marched in solidarity with the struggle of Palestinians for their rights.
Over a year ago, leading trade unionists pledged they would campaign for a general strike in Britain against the murderous slaughter of Palestinians by the Zionist state. Now the time has come to put all these fine words and motions into practice.
The trade unions must impose a complete boycott of Israel and act to prevent weapons used to murder Palestinian men women and children being exported to the apartheid state.
Above all, the long standing pledge of a general strike in support of Palestinian rights must be carried out by the TUC today, at a time when the working class is demanding mass strike action to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government.
