THERE has been no let-up in the murderous bombardment of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a tiny city on the border with Egypt that approximately 1.4 million Palestinians sought refuge in from the genocidal attacks by Israeli occupation forces.
By yesterday, the death toll in Gaza had risen to at least 34,904, including over 14,500 children, with at least 498 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank, including 124 children.
This week, the Israeli military commenced its programme of invasion and bombardment of Rafah as it seeks to either kill every Palestinian or drive them across the border into Egypt.
Every brutal weapon of war to exterminate or ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians is being used by the Zionist regime, including mass starvation.
The closure of the border crossings at Rafah, which represented the only way for the trickle of humanitarian aid, is ‘choking off the entry of life-saving aid to Gaza’, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In a pathetic attempt to hold back the massive outrage that is sweeping US universities with campus occupations and support for the Palestinian resistance spreading like wildfire across America, the UK and Europe, president Joe Biden announced a temporary hold up of delivering 3,500 bombs to Israel.
On Wednesday, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate subcommittee that this pause takes place ‘in the context of unfolding events in Rafah’. In an interview with CNN, Biden delivered what the media described as a ‘blunt warning’ to Israel that his administration will stop supplying bombs and artillery shells if Israel pushes ahead with its invasion of Rafah.
This announcement has been greeted in the bourgeois media as a sign of a break between Biden and the Israeli regime led by Benjamin Netanyahu, that the murderous assault on Rafah was some kind of ‘red line’ for US imperialism.
The reality, however, is entirely different – there is no ‘red line’ as far as the US and its imperialist allies are concerned when it comes to ‘ironclad’ support for the ‘right’ of Israel to slaughter Palestinians.
The bombs that Biden has said will be held up consist of 3,500 massive bombs that the Israeli military have been using indiscriminately in a genocidal campaign of carpet bombings throughout Gaza.
As Al Jazeera columnist Belen Fernandez pointed out yesterday, this pause ‘hardly constitutes a betrayal of the Israeli killing machine’.
It has no effect on $26 billion in aid to Israel (spent on buying weapons to kill Palestinians) approved in April and on top of the billions given annually by the US to keep the Israeli state from collapse.
Biden’s ‘pause’ is an expression of the fear gripping the US ruling class, a fear shared by all the imperialist nations, that millions of workers and youth are rising up against the complicity of their governments in genocide. Mere window dressing is an attempt to placate this mass movement that is increasingly being correctly seen by the ruling class as a threat to their governments, as workers and youth are breaking from the traditional parties of the bourgeois and demanding an end to genocide and imperialist war.
In this situation, the role of the leadership of the trade unions has become vital to propping up governments in the US and UK allowing them to carry on their support for Israel’s war on Palestine.
In Britain, the TUC have remained completely silent on the issue of the Tory support for Israel and the UK’s continued supply of military components and computer technology used by the Israeli military.
This silence and refusal to mobilise any trade union action in support of Palestine gives support to a Tory government that is the enemy of the Palestinian people and the working class at home.
The millions of workers who are calling for action must demand their unions instruct the TUC general council to convene an Emergency Congress to organise a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government.
A workers government will immediately end all support for the Zionist occupation regime. This will win the support of workers across the US and Europe to take the same action to bring down their own governments and go forward to workers governments and socialism. This is the only way forward!
