ON October 7, Hamas changed the world with its Operation Al-Aqsa Storm when it successfully stormed the ‘impregnable’, heavily defended Israeli border with Gaza, and took hundreds of Israeli troops and settlers prisoners of war.
The response of the imperialist powers, led by the USA, has been immediate and desperate – they have given the Israeli Zionists permission to slaughter the Palestinian masses and to bomb and burn their homes and hospitals, killing tens of thousands of men, women, children, and the elderly. They have underlined how important the oil rich region is for maintaining US and UK capitalism and imperialism, and have spelt out and shown that they will kill hundreds of thousands to keep access to it.
The imperialists depend on the Israeli gangster ruling class to police the oil rich Middle East. This is why they have been given the go-ahead for the murder of men, women and children and the very elderly in Gaza and throughout Palestine.
In fact the Zionists have broadened out the struggle, and encouraged the invasion of towns and cities in the occupied territories in an attempt to terrorise the Palestinian population and drive them into the south of Gaza or far beyond it.
When the masses tried to flee to their hospitals on the grounds that they would be safe there, they found that the imperialists have no problem with murdering men women and children either in their beds or in their hospitals.
However, the myth of Israeli invincibility that was being peddled by Israeli propagandists has been smashed.
The Israeli military and their political masters are now trying to undo the damage that was done with the breach of their border, by a ferocious campaign against the masses of Gaza and the Occupied Territories. This has seen Gaza’s men, women and children targeted, with their homes destroyed, their hospitals blown apart, their access to basic food supplies cut, with many very young people sent to an early grave.
Tel Aviv has now blocked water, food, and electricity being sent to Gaza, plunging the besieged territory into a humanitarian crisis.
The Health Ministry in Gaza has stated that nearly 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s ongoing aggression on the besieged Strip. US President Joe Biden ‘shamelessly’ questioned the casualty figure.
Meanwhile, the Western powers have not only welcomed the Israeli intervention, they are giving it their full support, since they cannot exist without open access to the oil riches of the Middle East.
In fact the developing Arab revolution is something of a death sentence for capitalism and imperialism, since they cannot survive without access to the oil riches of the Middle East.
The reaction of the UK ruling class has been to support Israel 100%.
Not only that, but Tory MPs are now so scared that they are advocating making pro-Palestinian demonstrations illegal! The Tories have even fallen out with their police forces, that are understandably wary of confronting hundreds of thousands of protesters.
A section of the Tory MPs are still demanding that pro-Arab or pro-Palestinian marches and demonstrations must be banned.
They are saying that since unchecked access to the oil wealth of the Middle East is vital for British imperialism to survive, any alliance between the people of the Middle East and the UK’s workers is a threat to capitalism itself.
The British ruling class is already on the verge of bankruptcy, and is already bringing in draconian anti-union laws. So it is finding itself fighting a war on two fronts, against the Arab peoples and the working class at home.
It cannot afford strikes and it cannot do without Middle East oil! This is why groups of Tory MPs are for taking the gloves off straight away and banning trade union marches on the grounds that the sooner the great war against the trade unions is started the more chance there will be of success.
What the UK working class requires in this situation is the building up rapidly of a revolutionary leadership that will mobilise the trade unions for a general strike to bring down the ruling class and bring in a workers government and socialism, not just in a single country but in all of the major capitalist states.
This is why the TUC Special Congress on December 9th is so vitally important, since the TUC is posed with calling a general strike to bring down the Tories to defend trade union rights, and with the organisation of a workers government and a socialist revolution.
British workers have no quarrel with the workers of the world. In fact we are allies, and workers’ leaders from abroad should be invited to attend the Special TUC Congress.
The growing terminal crisis of world capitalism demands a revolutionary response to smash it and to go forward to planned socialist economies. This is the way forward. We urge workers world-wide to establish sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International to organise the victory of the world socialist revolution!
