2023-10-15 19:07:21
The action of the Palestinians, on Saturday, October 7, invading the areas occupied by Israel, precipitated a political crisis that became the center of the world class struggle. The issue is debated by activists and important sectors of the masses in all countries. It has a watershed effect, a crisis factor also in leftist organizations.
By: Eduardo de Almeida
It was the military expression of the brutal dissatisfaction of a people angry at the hunger and oppression resulting from the Israeli blockade of Gaza 16 years ago.
This action had a direct impact on Israel, the region and the world. In Israel, it strongly shook the self-confidence of the state and its population. It was a severe blow to the arrogance resulting from brutal military superiority. Even more so in the face of Netanyahu’s far-right government, which assured that under his leadership the Palestinians would be crushed.
In the world, it added a strong element of crisis to the world order, already shaken by the downward wave of the international economy since the 2008 recession, by the inter-imperialist conflict between the United States and China, by the war in Ukraine.
The crisis in the Middle East is at the beginning. It could worsen significantly if it evolves into a more than likely Israeli ground invasion of Gaza and/or a new Intifada.
Here we want to touch on some controversies that arose from there.
Is this a war of “democracy against barbarism”?
The State of Israel is the product of an imperialist initiative to establish a fortress, with nuclear weapons, in a region with the largest oil deposits in the world.
The UN resolution of 1948 to create a state for the Jews in the land of the Palestinians was violence by the imperialist countries, supported by the USSR led by Stalinism.
It has nothing to do with the Zionist propaganda of “a land without a people for a people without a land.” This was the password for decades of ethnic cleansing, with Nazi-fascist methods against the Palestinian people who inhabited that region.
“Similar attacks and massacres were carried out in many other villages. It is estimated that, in six months, around 500 of them were destroyed, 20,000 Palestinians were killed and 800,000 were expelled from their lands. This “ethnic cleansing” is the “birthmark” of the State of Israel. “(Nakba: young people do not forget her”, Soraya Misleh and Alejandro Iturbe)
Theodor Herzl, the creator of modern Zionism, in his book The Jewish State, from 1896, proposed two “options” of places to create the new State: Palestine and Argentina. A year later, an international Zionist congress decided on Palestine. Imagine the legitimate historical hatred of Argentines, if they were militarily expelled from their lands by an imperialist decision.
Israel has nothing to do with a “modern democracy” against Arab barbarism. Israeli “democracy” excludes Palestinians and only allows Israeli Jews to participate. It has the support of a state with nuclear weapons, stronger in military terms than many imperialist countries. There is a routine of brutal repression, political prisons, murders of men, women and children, operated by the State of Israel. There is nothing like it in the world today. It is not only about very violent repression, but about ethnic cleansing. That is, a historical phenomenon similar to what Nazism did against the Jews.
The true face of Israel simply does not appear in the daily routine of its brutal oppression of the Palestinian people due to the complicity of the major bourgeois media.
The first discussion to be made with all activists on the Palestinian question is the following: the brutal nature of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people is at the origin of this entire process.
Also read | It is not terrorism. It is resistance against a daily war promoted by Israel!
The controversy over violence
The audacity and political importance of Hamas’s action immediately shook much of the global left.
The bourgeois press widely used the deaths of civilians to present the Palestinians as “terrorists” and Israel’s reaction as “legitimate defense.”
A reformist sector, such as the leadership of the PT in Brazil and Boulos (PSOL), responded to this by criticizing the violence of Hamas’ actions and the deaths of civilians.
We fully understand how this can impact honest activists. But it is necessary to face the discussion from its origin and internal logic.
There is a war declared by the Israeli State against the Palestinians. Also reacting with war actions is an elementary right of any people.
The Israeli State has nothing “democratic” about its relationship with the Palestinians. The blockade of Gaza 16 years ago was imposed because Israeli “democrats” did not accept that Hamas won the elections in the region in 2007. Hamas, unlike the Palestinian Authority, did not submit to Israel and that is why Gaza became a kind of Warsaw ghetto, fenced, isolated and repressed for all these years.
We understand why people prefer peace. Under normal conditions, everyone likes peace. But when there is violence on the part of the oppressor, to criticize the violent reaction of the oppressed is to accept the status quo, the continuity of oppression. The lack of peace is a product of the war waged by Israel against the Palestinians since 1948. The deaths of Israeli civilians are the responsibility of the State of Israel.
Also read | The sword of the Zionist oppressor and the Palestinian neck
Is being in the fight with the Palestinians supporting Hamas?
In a war it is necessary to have a side. We are with the Palestinians. And that means unity of action, including military action with Hamas. Another thing, very different, is to support Hamas politically and programmatically.
We do not capitulate to the pacifist pressure of bourgeois democracy, but we also do not set aside our political independence from Hamas. We argue with his program, with his strategy.
Revolutionary processes can be imposed against very strong bourgeois states. Imperialism can be defeated. But the only way to do it is to put the masses into action. This is what can enhance armed struggle.
There are no conditions to defeat the Israeli armed forces and the North American imperialism that supports them without a mass revolutionary process.
The Intifada from 1987 to 1993 was a very strong uprising by Palestinian youth that put Israel on the defensive. This great mass action ended up being betrayed by the leaderships with the Oslo Accords. The second Intifada (2000-2005) also aroused the Palestinians, once again ending the Abbas-Sharon agreement.
The two Intifadas are necessary references for the current moment of the struggle. The resumption of the Arab Spring, with mobilizations against the region’s dictatorships, including the Islamic dictatorship of Iran, would be essential for the Palestinian struggle.
This is not the strategy of Hamas, which is committed to a strategic alliance with the Iranian, Turkish and Qatari regimes against the State of Israel, instead of relying on the exploited and oppressed classes of these countries and the entire region.
That is why we do not see that Hamas’ strategy is the revolutionary mobilization of the Palestinian masses and the entire region combined with armed struggle.
To be precise in this discussion, we also do not agree with the position defended by Gilberto Achcar in a recent article on the topic “On Hamas’s October Counteroffensive.” Achcar states: “Against an oppressor who is far superior in military means, the only truly efficient form of struggle for the Palestinian people is to choose the terrain on which they can circumvent this superiority. The peak of effectiveness of the Palestinian struggle was reached in 1988, during the First Intifada, in which the Palestinians deliberately avoided the use of violent means.
In our opinion, Achcar goes in the opposite direction, pointing out the importance of mass struggle, but without seeing the necessary combination with armed struggle. Really, there is no possibility of defeating Israel only with a fight between two armies, without resorting to the revolutionary mobilization of the masses. But the struggle of the masses will also have a necessary combination with the military struggle or it will be defeated. Even the heroic Palestinian youth of the Intifada will not be able to defeat the Israeli tanks with stones alone.
Hamas is an organization that defends a theocratic State like others that exist in the Middle East, including Iran, against which there are mass struggles of women and the people as a whole.
We respect those who believe in Islam and reject prejudiced positions against Islamists. But in our opinion, the destruction of the State of Israel cannot be based on the construction of a theocratic State, which would only divide the Palestinians.
We defend a secular, democratic and non-racist Palestine, in which people of all religions can live together in peace. Furthermore, we do not agree with the authoritarian characteristics of Hamas, which imposed a true dictatorship in Gaza.
Hamas is a bourgeois organization that does not defend a socialist strategy. This means that it leads to the formation of an Islamic bourgeoisie and does not consistently break with imperialist domination in the region.
Nothing we say prevents us from fighting alongside Hamas and the Palestinian masses against the State of Israel and imperialism. But for that, we maintain our political independence and our socialist and revolutionary program.
Translation: Natalia Estrada.
#controversies #surrounding #war #Palestine