YESTERDAY at least 27 Palestinians were killed and dozens more injured when Israeli occupation troops opened fire on crowds attempting to get food at a ‘distribution centre’ run by US/Israeli ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF) outside Rafah in southern Gaza.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa: ‘Israeli artillery and aircraft fired shells and gunfire at displaced people as they waited for aid’.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres renewed his call for an independent investigation into the mass shootings of starving Palestinians desperately seeking aid at these centres that have been happening every day since GHF started its operations on May 27.
According to the Gaza Government Media Office, at least 102 Palestinians have been killed and over 400 wounded over the past eight days in similar attacks by Israeli military forces at GHF-run aid centres.
A statement released by them said: ‘The so-called “aid distribution centres”, situated in exposed and perilous red zones controlled by the occupying forces, have become bloodbaths. Starving civilians are lured there due to crippling famine and tight siege. They are then deliberately and coldly shot, a scene that exposes the true malice of the operation and its real objectives.’
The statement concluded: ‘The continuation of these crimes, amid the shameful international silence, is a stain on humanity and proves the occupation continues to perpetrate the most heinous forms of genocide under the world’s gaze, without deterrence or accountability.’
The shameful international silence by leaders of the world imperialist powers, led by the US and followed by its faithful ally in the UK, is a necessary cover for the complete complicity and encouragement given to Zionist genocide by these governments.
On Monday, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), accurately called these GHF centres a ‘death trap’ for Palestinians. That is precisely what they were created for by Israel and the US.
GHF is partnered with a private US security firm Safe Reach Solutions which is headed by a former CIA veteran Philip Reilly. GHF is funded by a $100m donation which it claims came from an unnamed western European government prompting a number of Israeli politicians to claim funding comes from the Israeli government.
Regardless of whether the funding comes from the US or Israel itself, the fact remains that GHF and the mercenary ‘contractors’ used to police Palestinians at its death trap distribution centres are part of the scheme by the imperialist powers to drive Palestinians, through starvation, into a tiny enclave in southern Gaza.
In a statement, Hamas said the goal was not to provide relief, and that: ‘Targeting the hungry while they are searching for sustenance reveals the nature of this fascist enemy, which uses hunger and bombing as weapons of killing and displacement, as part of a systematic plan to empty Gaza of its population.’
This systematic plan to drive Palestinians from Gaza through genocide and starvation has the full support and backing from the imperialist powers.
The genocidal war against Palestinians is an imperialist war to reassert its domination over the masses in the vital Middle East region – a war that couldn’t last one day without all the weapons supplied by the US, German and UK governments to the Zionist regime.
While governments and trade union leaders keep silent, the millions of workers and youth who overwhelmingly support the Palestinians must now intervene and put an end to this imperialist-backed Israeli genocide.
Trade unions must be forced to call general strikes throughout the US, UK and Europe to bring down their capitalist governments and go forward to workers’ governments and socialism.
Workers governments will end all support for Zionist genocide, recognise the independent state of Palestine and provide all the weapons and support required for victory over the Israeli state.
The only way to put an end to the barbarism of imperialism is for the working class to take power and advance humanity to a socialist society.
Build up the WRP and Young Socialists in Britain and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to provide the leadership required for the victory of the world socialist revolution.
