January 13,Washington, DC—Marking 100 days after Israel’s fascist attack on working class in Gaza, at least tens of thousands rallied and marched here to condemn Israel’s genocidal attacks, calling for the liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Progressive Labor Party brought the message that the liberation of the working class, from Palestine to the U.S. and China, will come with communist revolution and global working-class unity. This message resonated with marchers, as they eagerly took  500 Challenge newspapers and hundred-plus communist leaflets from PL’ers, with some making donations to build the PLP.

The PLP rallied within the broader rally behind a banner calling for communist revolution. A leader of the local transit union declared that ATU Local 689, based on the initiative of PLPers in the union, voted overwhelmingly to demand a ceasefire in Palestine and an end to U.S. supply of weapons and money to Israel. But, he added, it was time for the labor movement to move beyond resolutions and take job actions and solidarity strikes to force the U.S. bosses to stop supporting Israel’s military devastation of Gaza, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

“Not another penny, not another dime, No more support for Israel’s crimes!”
Another PLP member, suspended from her job teaching middle school for Facebook posts opposing Israel’s murders of children, called on the crowd to never back down. She said that, when asked by “investigators” from the school board whether she was scared by the charges of antisemitism against her, she replied, “Scared of who? Look, I was in Charlottesville fighting real Nazis, you and the Zionists don’t scare me!” Dozens of contacts were made with marchers interested in the fight for communism, boding well for the long-term struggle.

A group of 150 trade unionists in D.C. rallied and marched to join the larger protest, a glimmer of what engaging the labor movement with communist leadership could mean to intensifying this struggle against genocide.

The rally in DC and other US cities was part of a global day of struggle, with millions worldwide marching to condemn Israel’s attacks, demanding an immediate ceasefire, and condemning the U.S. and Genocide Joe Biden for arming Israel to the teeth as part of its imperialist project. Many of these rallies globally were held at U.S. embassies and consulates, exposing the truth that the U.S. imperialists provide military and financial backing to  Israel to enable it to serve U.S. economic and political interests in the Middle East. Control over energy resources and trade routes are vital to U.S. imperialism.

Don’t be lulled into complacency by countries opposing Israel
South Africa made a powerful, chilling case against Israel at the United Nation’s International Court of Justice for murdering 23,000 Palestinians including thousands of children. Israel’s president Isaac Herzog arrogantly dismissed the charges as “preposterous” and a “blood libel”. The majority of the UN General Assembly has supported Palestine, but the U.S. has vetoed any Security Council resolution calling for a “ceasefire” or “cessation of hostilities”. The U.S. finally agreed to abstain on a meaningless resolution to improve humanitarian assistance in Gaza. But none of the countries that have lined up to support Palestine diplomatically or judicially will stop Israel. Only armed struggle can change the situation on the ground, which is exactly why the US imperialists have placed two aircraft carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and 12 battleships in the Red Sea area to intimidate and kill any armed resistance to Israel’s genocide.

A wider war looms
Inter-imperialist rivalry is intensifying globally. The genocide in Palestine is one particularly brutal instance of this. The U.S. side is weakening and shrinking, but it will not cede power, money, and influence without a fight. Already engaged in two wars (Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestine), depleted of much of its weaponry and with vastly understaffed armed forces, the U.S. imperialists are increasingly vulnerable as other imperialists sharpen their knives. The UN vote reflects the decline of US power. In the Middle East, several armed groups (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, Islamic groups in Iraq and Syria) have already engaged in a limited way militarily against the U.S. and Israel. Many at today’s rally understood the danger of a wider war, holding signs saying “Hands off Yemen”! Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road extends into the Middle East, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and the African continent, implicitly challenging U.S. hegemony.

For those seeking solutions to this sharpening conflict, rebuilding the communist movement on an internationalist and revolutionary basis is the first order of business. Intensifying the class struggle goes hand in hand with this approach. Let’s be clear-eyed about the devastation that imperialism is creating in Palestine and the rest of the world as well, and move urgently to boldly advance into the battle against racism and genocide and for communism!

After more than 100 days and 29,000 bombs, the genocidal Israeli “Defense” Forces have leveled the Gaza Strip to an uninhabitable concrete graveyard. This U.S.-backed military is killing more than 250 civilians in Gaza every day, a higher rate than in any other conflict in this century (Aljazeera, 1/11). The death toll now surpasses 24,000, including over 10,000 children—more than one percent of Gaza’s population.

Genocide is the physical destruction of a group of people and the communities that knit them together—the classrooms where their children learn to read, the bakeries that make their daily bread. The families in Gaza who fight for survival each day are surrounded by rubble. More than two thirds of homes, schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, and olive groves have been decimated by the nonstop Zionist bombardment. Drinkable water, electricity, fuel, and medicine are scarce commodities (Wall Street Journal, 12/30/23). Since October, Israel’s criminal invasion has caused nine terrifying communications blackouts (New York Times, 1/12). Nine of ten people in Gaza, nearly half of them children, go without food for whole days. The United Nations is predicting famine—widespread starvation—by February (aljazeera.com, 12/23/23).

Israel’s devastation of infrastructure is an act of ethnic cleansing—to push all or most Arab workers out of Gaza altogether. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be entirely different” (msn.com, 1/5). The Israeli rulers’ most powerful argument for “resettlement” is to make Gaza uninhabitable. It’s a vicious, racist strategy enabled by arms and political cover from baby-killer Joe Biden and the capitalist rulers who run him. The U.S. bosses, led by the likes of ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, are the world’s most deadly state terrorists. Their heinous attack on workers in Palestine makes our task of organizing for communist revolution even more urgent.

U.S. bosses kill to protect profits
The catastrophe in Gaza is part of a larger battle between the U.S., European, and Israeli bosses, on one side, and rival imperialists in China and Russia, which back regional power Iran, on the other. The three-month-old conflict in the oil-rich Middle East is steadily expanding. In response to Iran-backed Houthi attacks on ships in the commercially and strategically vital Red Sea, the U.S. Army and its allies have bombed more than 30 sites inside Yemen. On January 16, Iran jumped directly into the simmering fray with missile strikes on neighboring Pakistan and Iraq, ostensibly in response to terrorist attacks within its borders. Iran-backed militias have also repeatedly targeted U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. interests in the region are so crucial to the bosses that they’re clamping down on their liberal stooges with a blunt message:  No criticism of Israel will be tolerated. Claudine Gay was forced to resign as president of Harvard University after her weak support for genocide offended wealthy Zionist donors. Like “the good Germans” who looked the other way in the face of the Nazis’ rise in Germany in the 1930s, liberal misleaders have stayed largely silent on the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. From Democratic Party politicians to union bosses and clergy, the overwhelming majority have fallen in line in support of genocide, if only by their silence. They have exposed their true allegiance to U.S. capitalism and the war and fascism that the profit system demands.

Hamas nationalism is poison for workers in Palestine
In Gaza, workers and their families are heroically resisting death and destruction. Medical workers go days without sleep to tend to the sick and injured. Families share whatever shelter they have. Relatives and friends take in orphaned children. Adults go without food and water to keep their children alive as they dodge the latest 2,000-pound bomb from Israeli planes.

Their suffering has not gone unmarked by the international working class. Millions of workers and students around the world are demanding an immediate cease-fire. Aid workers are imploring the UN to remove Israeli blockades on humanitarian support (AP, 1/16). On January 13, in mass demonstrations around the world, workers marched under Palestinian flags for a “free Palestine.” Meanwhile, top political figures in Hamas, the de facto leaders of this national liberation movement, are mostly missing in action in Gaza. They are busy brokering weapons deals in Beirut or with their patrons in Iran as they maneuver for more power.

Workers must reject the misleadership of Hamas just as we reject the U.S. liberals who demand our silence on the crimes of Israel. The Hamas leadership calls for the creation of an Islamist-capitalist state. For all workers who deplore the atrocities of capitalism, the Hamas vision is just more of the same nightmare.

The history of Iran is a cautionary tale for the future of Gaza and the West Bank. For decades after World War II, the U.S backed the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Beginning in the late 1960’s, communists in the Tudeh Party and other leftist movements led resistance to the Shah and his ties to U.S. imperialism. At the same time, Islamists led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought for an Islamist-capitalist state. In 1979, the left joined forces with the Islamists to overthrow the Shah. But immediately upon securing control over Iran’s new government, Khomeini denounced the communists and soon banned the Tudeh Party and imprisoned over 10,000 members (https://merip.org/, March-April, 1982). In 1988, the Iranian ruling class executed tens of thousands of leftists (France 24, 10/8/21). Though left-wing forces in Iran were instrumental in defeating U.S. imperialism, their terrible error in backing “progressive” Islamist nationalists has left the workers there in capitalist misery to this day.

The only solution is communist revolution
The communist revolutions that put the working class in power in the Soviet Union and China should continue to inspire workers of the world today. At the same time, we must also learn from and overcome these revolutions’ mistakes, including the embrace of nationalism. [See Road to Revolution III at plp.org.]

Workers in South Africa, Vietnam, Congo, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and many more have fought courageously to oust imperialist colonial forces. But over and over again, we have seen wars for national liberation replace one set of capitalists with another. They ultimately benefit only the new set of bosses. Meanwhile, workers continue to suffer. The movement for communism—for a society run by and for the international working class—is set back.

The mass murder in Gaza is an attack on workers everywhere. To defend our class, we cannot be lulled into silence or make popular concessions to nationalism. When we say that the only solution is communist revolution, we know we have a long struggle ahead. We also know that nothing short of communist revolution will end imperialist war, racism, sexism, and exploitation. The historic victories in the Soviet Union and China are evidence that workers—ourselves, our coworkers, our families and friends—can change the world. Progressive Labor Party calls for unity with our class sisters and brothers to denounce the genocide in Gaza, to reject capitalist misleadership, and to fight on for communist revolution. Join us!

U.N. calls Palestinian conditions “horrific”
New York Times, 1/13–The twin specters of a widening regional war and intensified suffering of civilians loomed over the Middle East on Saturday as the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen threatened to respond to American airstrikes, and a senior U.N. official warned of a “horrific” humanitarian crisis in Gaza that he said was hurtling toward famine…In northern Gaza, corpses are left in the road and starving people stop aid trucks “in search of anything they can get to survive,” Martin Griffiths, the top U.N. aid official, told the United Nations Security Council on Friday. With the risk of famine in Gaza “growing by the day,” he repeated earlier criticisms of Israel, which he said was delaying or denying permission to humanitarian convoys bringing urgently needed aid to northern Gaza…Israeli attacks have killed at least 23,000 people in Gaza since, according to the Gaza health authorities. At least 1.9 million people, or 85 percent of the population, have been forced from their homes, Mr. Griffiths said.

Gaza war spreads into a wider conflict
Al Jazeera, 1/12–For months, top United States officials have repeatedly said that President Joe Biden does not want to see Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip escalate into a wider conflict in the Middle East…later, the US confirmed it had collaborated with the United Kingdom to launch “strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels'', in coordination with a handful of other countries…“It does run contrary to what the administration has been saying, but it was also inevitable, “Everybody watching this situation knew that it was a matter of time before the war in Gaza spilled out across the region…The Iran-aligned Houthis control large swaths of Yemen including the western coast overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which leads to the Red Sea. The group began firing missiles at Israel and attacking commercial ships shortly after the war on Gaza began in October.

Is inter imperialist struggle accelerating?
The Guardian, 1/13–The first of what may be many US-led air strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi Shia militants in Yemen… reflects…another unwelcome fact. The dominant power in the Middle East is no longer the US, western-aligned Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even Israel. It is the Houthis’ main ally, Iran…China has created spheres of geopolitical and economic influence to rival and, if possible, supplant those of the US… In 2021, the two countries [China and Iran] signed a 25-year strategic investment and energy pact. Under Chinese sponsorship, Iran has joined the Brics group and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation…Iran sells millions of barrels of discounted crude to China each month, transported there by “dark fleet” oil tankers…With Russia…Iran supplies armed drones that Moscow uses to kill Ukrainians. US intelligence reportedly believes Russia’s Wagner mercenary group plans to provide Hezbollah with a medium-range air defense system…Iran…may soon take delivery of advanced Russian Sukhoi SU-35 fighter-bombers…nuclear weapons-related enrichment programme is reportedly advancing rapidly…an Iranian bomb, may be closer than ever.

War in Asia would be much worse
Bloomberg, 1/8–War over Taiwan would have a cost in blood and treasure so vast that even those unhappiest with the status quo have reason not to risk it. Bloomberg Economics estimate the price tag at around $10 trillion, equal to about 10% of global GDP — dwarfing the blow from the war in Ukraine, Covid pandemic and Global Financial Crisis.

China’s rising economic and military heft, Taiwan’s burgeoning sense of national identity, and fractious relations between Beijing and Washington mean the conditions for a crisis are in place…Everyone from Wall Street investors to military planners and the swathe of businesses that rely on Taiwan’s semiconductors are already moving to hedge against the risk. National security experts in the Pentagon, think tanks in the US and Japan, and global consulting firms are gaming out scenarios from a Chinese maritime “quarantine” of Taiwan, to the seizure of Taiwan’s outlying islands, and a full-scale Chinese invasion.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which killed 1200 mostly civilians and took more than 200 hostages, workers around the world have been focused on the massive, Nazi-like ethnic cleansing being carried out in Gaza by the Israeli fascists and their U.S. imperialist partners. Millions have taken to the streets to oppose this racist genocide that threatens to become a much wider war. As of December 29, about 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, hundreds of thousands injured and more than 1.5 million have been displaced, mostly children.

Bosses kill workers exposing their genocide
Within this mass destruction of an unarmed civilian population, there is another target besides Hamas, a war against journalists and journalism. Of the 1,200 Palestinian journalists and media workers based in Gaza at the start of the war, 95 have been killed. Reporters Without Borders stated, “The Palestinian territory has been subjected to a veritable eradication of journalism.”

Most of the media workers were specifically targeted by the Israeli military. According to information collected by the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS), at least 84 of the 95 were killed in “surgical” or sniper Israeli attacks that targeted either their homes or the area where they were covering news stories. Some received direct and specific threats to their lives from the Israeli military before they were killed. Hundreds of family members have also been killed in targeted strikes on journalists’ homes.

On October 25, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh lost his wife, daughter, son, and grandson in an Israeli airstrike on the home where they were sheltering in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Al-Dahdouh remained in Gaza City to continue his coverage of Israeli atrocities, despite threats made against him.

On November 8, a Zionist group published a false report that photojournalist Yasser Qudih and three other photographers had prior knowledge of the October 7 attacks. Reuters published one of Qudih’s photos and categorically denied the false claims. Even though the group withdrew its false accusations, on November 13, four Israeli missiles targeted Qudih’s home in southern Gaza and killed eight of his family members.

On November 22, Al Jazeera reporter Anas Al-Sharif received multiple phone calls from Israeli military officers instructing him to stop reporting and leave northern Gaza and that he was under surveillance. On December 11, an Israeli airstrike targeted his family home in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, killing his 90-year-old father.

On December 6, 2023, Al Jazeera correspondent Momen Al-Sharafi lost 22 family members—including his parents, siblings, their spouses, and nieces and nephews—in an Israeli airstrike on the home in Jabalia refugee camp where they had sought refuge.

Israel has not permitted foreign journalists into Gaza. On December 19, the Foreign Press Association (“FPA”) in Jerusalem, representing about 370 journalists from 130 media outlets in more than 30 countries, filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court requesting immediate access to Gaza. Because foreign journalists have not been able to enter Gaza, Palestinian journalists are the world’s only media eyewitnesses to the war crimes being committed by Biden and Netanyahu.  

U.S. reporters against genocide fightback
This war is also being carried out, on a less violent but no less important level, within the U.S. Award-winning New York Times magazine writer Jazmine Hughes was forced to resign from the Times after signing a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Nine reporters for the Los Angeles Times were suspended for 30 days from the regular beats for also signing a ceasefire letter. This intimidation and retaliation are creating a chilling effect in newsrooms around the country, already battered by mass layoffs, where media workers are afraid to speak out.

Media workers in three major unions are working together to overcome this fear. Workers have attended marches and rallies against the war and are planning a three-union, “Know Your Rights” panel to encourage media workers to speak out. Also, a report is being produced that will document retaliation taken against media workers for opposing Israeli/U.S. genocide in Gaza.

Two of these unions, the NewsGuild-CWA (the largest U.S. union of staff journalists) and the National Writers Union (a union of freelance media workers and authors) contributed $10,000 each to the International Federation of Journalists’ Safety Fund to provide journalists in Gaza and the West Bank with helmets, flak jackets, battery charges and whatever else they need.

As we enter the New Year, the Dark Night of imperialism and growing wars is getting darker. The international working class is shackled by racism, nationalism, and religion without a mass communist movement to lead us. As the night gets darker, our light must burn brighter. Fighting back is winning. In the heat of class struggle our ideas can come to life and create the conditions for building a mass international Progressive Labor Party.