Harpal Brar | Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
The entire settler-colonial project is on the rocks, and with it the Anglo-American imperialist domination of the middle east.
The zionist murder machine continues its daily slaughter of unarmed Palestinian men, women and children, taking a toll of hundreds each day. At the time of writing (22 January), 30,000 Gazans have been murdered, the overwhelming majority of them being women and children, whereas 70,000 have been badly wounded.
This horrendous toll does not take into account those who are missing or under the vast areas of rubble that are the result of indiscriminate zionist bombing raids. Eighty percent of northern Gaza’s homes have been destroyed.
The zionist state has blocked almost all electricity, water, food supplies and medicines from reaching the imprisoned Gazans. As a result, according to United Nations agencies, at least a quarter of the territory’s population is at risk of famine. In addition to large-scale deaths through bombing, people have begun to die of starvation and disease consequent upon the destruction of infrastructure such as sewage facilities, water purification plants, non-availability of electricity for running medical equipment.
Gaza’s sole power station has been offline since 11 October. For lack of security, the World Food Programme, on which a large section of the population is reliant, has been forced to stop distributing food to northern Gaza. Most of the imperialist countries have stopped funding the relief agency Unwra on the basis of an accusation, so far unproved, that a dozen of its employees (out of a total of 13,000!) were involved in the 7 October assault by the resistance on southern Israel, leaving a gap of $450bn in the agency’s funding, further endangering the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
This collective punishment, which is a war crime under international law, is calculated to cause the disappearance of Palestine and the destruction of the Palestinian people. This plan is a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It has been implemented ever since the creation of the zionist state which was accompanied by the expulsion of 750,000 people from their homes and land, people who constituted three-quarters of the Palestinian population at the time.
Since the events of 7 October, the zionists have accelerated that programme through the mass slaughter of Gaza’s citizenry and the wholesale destruction of its material wealth and means of life. Cultural centres; universities and schools; places of religious worship; and hospitals―have been reduced to rubble without a murmur from Israel’s imperialist backers―the self-proclaimed guardians of democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law and suchlike hypocritical cant.
At the beginning of its bombing of northern Gaza, the Israeli government told the residents there to move to the safety of southern Gaza while continuing to slaughter those on the move. Having run out of targets in the north, the IDF started bombing the south. Now it has started bombing the southernmost Rafah area and there is nowhere for the Gazans go except live in hastily erected tents―without food, water, electricity or medicines, while still subject to terror bombing.
Let alone anyone else, the oil-rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have failed to come forward to fill Unwra’s funding gap, which for them would be no more than small change. While paying lip service to the cause of Palestinian self-determination, most Arab states would rather the Palestine disappeared from the face of the middle east so that they could ‘normalise’ their relations with Israel.
But 7 October has upset their plans, as it has those of Israel and its imperialist patrons. There is a deluge of pent-up rage on the Arab street which the ruling circles in these countries will ignore at their peril.
The role of Yemen
While most of the Arab governments in the middle east have shamefully failed, quite against the wishes of their own people, to come to the aid of the besieged and brutally bombed people of Gaza, who have been suffering slaughter by the fascist zionist murder gangs euphemistically called the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) for nearly five months, the one government that has rendered the most selfless service and unstinting help to them is the government of Yemen.
In response to the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, the Yemeni government, contemptuously referred to in the imperialist media as the ‘Houthis’, have brought the Red Sea to a near standstill. Anglo-American imperialism has been waging war against the Yemeni people for a long time.
But from 2015 until very recently the imperialist role was somewhat hidden as it waged the war using Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as proxies, supplying them with weaponry and intelligence. The brave Yemeni people fought back against these proxies, taking the war to their territories and disrupting their oil production, forcing them to discontinue their unjust aggression against the people of Yemen.
The Yemenis were targeting vessels owned by Israel or those engaged in supplying materials to it. They seized the Galaxy Leader, partly owned by an Israeli. No longer able to stand on the sidelines, the USA and Britain started bombing targets in Yemen on 11 January this year―all in the name of ‘freedom of navigation’, and attempting to assemble a ‘coalition of the willing’ to fight against the Yemenis.
Not many countries came forward to volunteer for this dangerous enterprise―not even the Saudis or the UAE, whose eight years of brutal proxy war taught them not to mess with the Yemeni people.
In the most devastating attack so far, the Yemeni resistance on 18 February forced the crew of a commercial ship to abandon it. This strike on the Rubymar, carrying a cargo from the UAE to Bulgaria, served to underline the Yemeni ability to target vessels navigating in the Red Sea despite US and British attacks on missile launching sites of the resistance.
The vessel, which a resistance spokesperson described as being British, is now at risk of sinking. This is the first reported direct hit for the resistance since it sparked a fire on 26 January on the Marlin Luanda, a fuel tanker operating on behalf of Trafigura commodity trader.
The arrivals of container ships at the entrance to the Red Sea have fallen more than 90 percent since early December 2023 according to data from London-based Clarkson, while non-containerised bulk carrier arrivals have fallen by only 50 percent―these carrying bulk commodities in large holds.
Referring to the Rubymar strike, and emphasising the discriminate and humane stance of the Yemeni resistance, spokesperson Yahya Sare‘e said: “During the operation we made sure that the ship’s crew exited safely.”
The Rubymar was flying the flag of Belize but has an address in the British port of Southampton; it is a Lebanon-operated vessel but it is registered in Britain.
The actions of the resistance in the Red Sea have pushed up shipping costs and lengthened delivery times as the ships of the targeted countries, avoiding navigation through the Red Sea, are forced to take the longer route through the Cape of Good Hope.
Referring to a resistance strike from the nearby Red Sea port of Hodeidah, Mr Sare‘e added: “The Yemeni air defences were able to shoot down an American plane with a suitable missile while it was carrying out hostile missions against our country.” He identified the downed aircraft as an MQ9, an unmanned aircraft known as a Reaper drone. What has further alarmed the American defence establishment is that the Yemenis have been deploying unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs) in a series of attacks.
Israel losing the battle for public opinion
The imperialist states, especially the US and Britain, are complicit in Israel’s genocidal war, which they are not only supporting but facilitating with arms and ammunition as well as diplomatic cover. The USA cannot even bring itself to call for a ceasefire and has vetoed several resolutions at the UN security council that did call for a ceasefire.
Every week, planeloads of lethal weaponry from the USA land in Israel to help facilitate the zionist genocide that is underway in Gaza. There is overwhelming support for Israel’s crimes in the US Congress―70 out of 100 senators voted for Biden’s $95bn security bill, which included $14bn in ‘aid’ for Israel.
There is an increasing disconnect between the ruling class and the masses of people in these countries, where Israel has lost the battle for public opinion. While public opinion is on the move, the ruling circles cling to their unsustainable stance.
According to an AP-NORC poll in January, 50 percent of US adults, including a majority of Democrats and a majority of Independents, believe that Israel has “gone too far”. Arab-Americans, traditionally Democratic party supporters in key swing states such as Michigan, could well desert this disgusting outfit in protest. Young people’s sympathies are tilting in favour of Palestine.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including large numbers of jews, have staged demonstrations in the USA against Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people and US backing for it.
One cannot but have the greatest regard and admiration for the courageous stand taken by eminent people of jewish descent such as Max Blumenthal, Arron Matté, Dr Gabor Matté, Dr Norman Finkelstein, Katie Halper and several others in the USA and Canada who, in the face of attacks by imperialist stooges, have stood up in defence of the Palestinian people’s right to resist, and who have mercilessly exposed zionist crimes.
Likewise, one must bow one’s head to Israelis such as Professors Avi Shloam, Ilan Pappe and Gideon Levy of the Ha‘aretz newspaper, who show exemplary courage in their exposure of zionism and support for the Palestinian people alike.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been regularly marching in Britain to show their anger at the slaughter in Gaza and the British government’s support for it. Defying threats from the authorities, they have been defiantly waving Palestinian flags and shouting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’―a slogan that the authorities have unsuccessfully tried to ban.
Vain attempts at repression
Unable to win the argument, those in power are increasingly resorting to repression, with the police selectively arresting peaceful protesters under anti-terrorism and other such legislation. Among those targeted have been members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)―CPGB-ML―who have been arrested, handcuffed and detained in isolation while their homes were raided and searched aggressively in the middle of the night.
All this is because, on the one hand, the CPGB-ML has been a consistent supporter of the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and of their right to resist the zionist occupation of their country and, on the other hand, it has over the years exposed the fascist essence of Zionism, as, for instance, through its booklet Zionism―a Racist, Antisemitic and Reactionary Tool of Imperialism.
This is happening because the CPGB-ML’s message is beginning to resonate with a wider section of the population. It is an attempt by the authorities to suppress it, but this attempt is destined to fail. Like all reactionaries, the authorities are lifting a rock only to drop it on their own feet.
The Palestinian people have the right to resist by any means, including by armed resistance―a right which is recognised under international law. As an occupying power, Israel has no right of self-defence.
Contrary to the assertions of the despicable bourgeois political representatives and their media organs, it is the Israeli state and its armed forces who are guilty of terrorism; it is they who are guilty of subjecting the people of Palestine to the kind of holocaust to which the Hitlerites subjected the jews, and many other people, during the second world war.
This is a truth recognised by the majority of humanity. For telling this truth our comrades are being persecuted. But in the end, the truth shall be victorious. Imperialist governments will be no more successful in suppressing this truth than the Catholic Church of yore was successful in attempting to suppress Galileo’s teaching that the earth moves round the sun.
The significance of 7 October
The resistance operation launched on 7 October has changed not just the shape of middle east politics but also the shape of discourse in the imperialist countries. No longer is Israel regarded as invincible. The events of 7 October revealed it to be very vulnerable indeed, which has enraged the zionist rulers to the point of madness.
Israel is far from achieving its declared twin goals―namely, to destroy the Palestinian resistance and to secure the return of the Israelis detained by the Palestinian liberation fighters. Notwithstanding the relentless bombing and destruction of human life and property, the resistance continues to fight with courage and determination.
On 23 January alone, in the most difficult circumstances, the resistance eliminated 24 occupation soldiers at the al-Maghazi refugee camp. Where there is oppression there is bound to be resistance. There is one way to bring an end to the resistance and that way is to end the occupation.
These events have alarmed Israel’s imperialist backers. In Britain, the House of Commons was reduced to a pitiable shambles on Wednesday 22 February over the question of an SNP resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Labour party is falling apart over the question of Palestine, with threats of rebellion by an increasing number of its parliamentarians and local councillors―all of whom had before 7 October been cowed into submission by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, with the full support of the ruling class and its organs of propaganda, which have been another casualty of 7 October.
An increasing number of people are deserting these purveyors of lies and deception, instead getting their information from social media platforms.
Brutality in the West Bank
While the world’s attention has been focussed on Gaza, the zionist occupation has continued its brutality in the West Bank. In 2023, one of the bloodiest of years, zionist forces killed 487 Palestinians there. Since 22 October: an airstrike has destroyed al-Ansar mosque; fighter jets and drones have destroyed buildings in refugee camps across the West Bank, with 84 children killed between 7 October and 12 January; drone strikes turned streets to rubble in Tukrem and Balata refugee camps on 17 January, killing ten people.
Between 7 October and 12 January there were 381 settler attacks on Palestinians, and 600 Palestinians have been displaced from their West Bank homes. This was facilitated by Itmar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, who has made it easier for settlers to acquire guns.
Role of the Palestinian Authority
Within the Palestinian camp, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has become an extension of the zionist occupation to control the Palestinian people. Its ‘president’, Mahmoud Abbas, is no more than a quisling serving Israel. On 1 January, PA forces murdered resistance fighter Ahmed Obeidi while imprisoning other resistance fighters and confiscating their weapons.
On 10 January, US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s visit to the area met with massive protests outside the Ramallah headquarters of the PA, which were violently suppressed by the PA forces. The Palestine Centre for Policy and Survey Research found that support for Abbas’s party Fatah was down to 14 percent, and that 90 percent of West Bank Palestinians want Abbas to resign.
Sixty percent across Palestine and 70 percent in the West Bank were in favour of armed struggle as the route to liberation.
Craven role of bourgeois journalists and politicians
Whenever bourgeois journalists interview a Palestinian or a supporter of the Palestinian cause, the first question they ask is: Do you condemn the 7 October assault on southern Israel by Hamas (the imperialist expression for the resistance, which actually is composed of many shades of political orientation but united in their resistance to Israeli occupation and their determination to free Palestine from zionists)?
But this cowardly and corrupt coterie, their wallets stuffed with crumbs coming from the table of imperialist gangsters, never ask zionist spokespersons, or those representing their imperialist masters: Do you condemn the murder of thousands of defenceless Palestinians in Gaza?
Do you condemn the denial of food, water, electricity and medicines to the imprisoned Gazans? Do you condemn the destruction of hospitals, universities, schools and churches by the Israeli air force? Do you condemn the destruction of most of the residential property in Gaza?
Any bourgeois journalist who asked such uncomfortable questions would be labelled an antisemite and immediately dismissed from their lucrative employment and probably prosecuted for a hate crime if not for violating the anti-terror legislation. It is therefore not surprising that these pampered purveyors of deceit and lies, knowing on which side their bread is buttered, maintain a deadly silence.
They don‘t even have the courage to defend Julian Assange, a fellow journalist, who has been hounded and incarcerated for a decade for exposing the crimes committed by Anglo-American imperialism and its vassals in their neverending wars against people everywhere, especially in the middle east, whose governments come into imperialist crosshairs through pursuing an independent course in the conduct of their foreign policy or in the management of their economy.
What is true of bourgeois journalists applies just as much to the equally corrupt and cowardly bourgeois politicians and their governments, which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels correctly characterised as the committees for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie.
The right to resist occupation by any means
Those who feign outrage at the alleged ‘atrocities’ of the resistance on 7 October ought to be reminded of the atrocities committed by zionism over a period of more than seven decades against the people of Palestine.
How would any other people react in similar circumstances? Are we to condemn the French resistance for armed struggle against the Nazi occupiers? Are we to condemn the Warsaw ghetto rising?
During their first war of independence, when the Indian people rose up against their brutal British colonisers, the Indian revolutionaries were accused of committing atrocities against the British, and the British press went lurid with jingoistic fury. But Marx and Engels were on the side of the Indian revolutionaries, reminding the British public of the crimes committed by the British rulers of India over a long period against the Indian people.
Writing in the New York Daily Tribune of 16 September 1857, Marx said: “However infamous the conduct of sepoys, it is only a reflex in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of its settled rule.
“To characterise that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed an organic institution of its financial policy,” adding that “here is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument is forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.” (The Indian Revolt)
Three weeks earlier, in his article Investigation of tortures in India, detailing the extortion and violence practised by the British rulers on the Indian people, he wrote:
“We have here given but a brief and mildly-coloured chapter from the real history of British rule in India. In view of such facts, dispassionate and thoughtful men may perhaps be led to ask whether a people are not justified in attempting to expel the foreign conquerors who have so abused their subjects. And if the English could do these things in cold blood, is it surprising that the insurgent hindus should be guilty, in the fury of revolt and conflict, of the crimes and cruelties alleged against them?” (Our emphasis)
The above penetrating observations of Marx are relevant to the conflict in Palestine. The instruments of retribution, as revealed by 7 October, were forged by the offending zionists and their imperialist backers, not by the offended Palestinians. If the zionists could do in cold blood what they have been doing for 75 years against the Palestinian people, is it surprising that the Palestinian resistance “should be guilty, in the fury of revolt and conflict, of the crimes and cruelties alleged” against it?
Dropping a rock
There is an old saying: Man proposes and God disposes. Imperialism has grand schemes for world domination. The zionists have plans for ethnically cleansing historic Palestine. These plans are in ruins and are being disposed of by modern-day gods―that is, by the anti-imperialist resistance in several parts of the globe.
The imperialist proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is collapsing with each passing day, just as Israel’s grip on Palestine is confronted with a mortal threat.
Imperialism’s attempt to effect regime change in Russia and to dismember it through a combination of economic sanctions and war is facing a devastatingly humiliating defeat. Likewise, Israel’s army, notwithstanding its fascistic brutality, is making no progress against the Palestinian resistance.
The Israeli economy is suffering badly as the call-up of 300,000 has left it short of people to run businesses and other establishments. It has been forced to evacuate 42 communities along its northern border because of the low intensity armed conflict between Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement, and the IDF.
Several thousand Israelis have also fled the southern border with Gaza. All those evacuated from the north and south of Israel have to be accommodated and fed, putting Israeli resources under severe stress. Thousands of Israelis with dual nationality have fled Israel since the beginning of the conflict.
Israel and its patrons are facing an acute dilemma, to get out of which they may well double down and extend the war. That very dangerous option would only hasten their doom.
The two-state solution
Imperialism, while paying lip-service to a two-state solution for ending the conflict in Palestine, has done nothing to implement it. The results of 7 October have forced the USA and its allies to once again return to it, but this ‘solution’ is long dead, for two reasons.
First, the presence of 700,000 settlers, with their special roads on which Palestinians are not allowed to drive, the confiscation of water resources by the settlers, the apartheid wall and hundreds of checkpoints, have reduced the West Bank to dozens of unconnected Bantustans. Gaza has been under siege for nearly two decades, and is now reduced to rubble. East Jerusalem has slowly been taken over by the zionists.
Second, as if the above were not enough to put an end to the fairy tale of the two-state formula for an independent Palestinian state alongside a separate jewish state, the Israeli parliament and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet have declared that they will never accept or allow the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Thus the Palestinian people have no option but to struggle for the dismantling of the monstrosity called Israel and in its place to create a secular state where muslims, christians and jews can live with equal rights, without any having special rights or privileges.
Until that comes about there will be no end to this conflict.
Growing resistance
Not only in Palestine but also in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, not to speak of Yemen, the resistance is attacking US bases and the USA is bombing again on the pretext that three of its soldiers were killed by resistance attacks.
The lives of certain US citizens are more important to US imperialism than others―such as Rachel Corrie, a US citizen deliberately murdered by an Israeli soldier who crushed her to death by driving a bulldozer over her as she heroically stood in the way of the demolition of Palestinian homes.
Or Shireen Abu Akleh, shot dead in cold blood by an IDF soldier who could clearly see the Press badge on her jacket as she reported on the siege of the Jenin refugee camp.
Or Gonzalo Lira (another American citizen) murdered by the SBU (Ukraine’s secret service). Not a word on Mr Lira’s death has appeared in the imperialist press and electronic media, which have devoted thousands of hours of broadcasting time and tons of paper to the death in prison of Alexei Navalny, who has been portrayed as the most important Russian freedom fighter whose death has been pinned on Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The fact that Navalny commanded no support among the Russian people is of little concern to the bribed imperialist political and media establishment. Anyone who wants to know more about this supposed ‘fighter against corruption’ should read Scott Ritter’s recent article about his true role.
This is how the self-appointed guardians of truth and freedom safeguard their much-vaunted values.
Death to zionism!
Death to imperialism!
Victory to the resistance!
