Gaza is another massacre of Capitalism
For almost two years, Gaza has been suffering a complete massacre at the hands of the State of Israel, which is using all its instruments of extermination against the Palestinian civilian population. The Strip has become a wasteland where more than 65,000 people have died, including almost 20,000 children, out of a population of 2 million. For nearly two years, the population has been forced to relocate constantly under bombardment, in a tiny territory where no civilian space is respected, and in a state of permanent malnutrition and water shortage.
Several teaching unions in the Community of Madrid have called for a two-hour strike under the slogan ‘Education against barbarism’. As internationalist revolutionaries and as educational workers, we believe that this may be a good time to discuss together the reasons for this brutal human catastrophe and provide some perspective on the outrage we feel in front of it. Here are some of our reflections.
Gaza is another massacre of capitalism. Capitalist logic and imperialist competition are at the root of this and other massacres. We do not need to go back to the Second World War. Just more recently, it is enough to think of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, Rwanda in 1994, Bosnia in 1995, Darfur since 2003, the Rohingya in Myanmar, Tigray in Ethiopia, or currently the Masalit, a non-Arab population in Sudan. Capitalist competition between states —whether established or aspiring— and nationalism are the driving forces behind these ruthless massacres. The oppressed peoples of the past become the butchers of the future thanks to the sacred patriotic unity within their borders and the dehumanisation of the national enemy outside them. That is why, with Zionism as its ideology, Israel is the bourgeois and nationalist response to the extermination of the Jewish population in World War II, just as the Hutu massacre of the Tutsis in Rwanda was.
All forms of nationalism set the stage for future massacres. A hypothetical Palestinian state would not escape this sort of capitalist logic. This is the terrain on which Palestinian nationalism operates, whether under the Islamist umbrella of reactionary organisations such as Hamas or under the ‘secular’ —but equally reactionary— umbrella of the various branches of the PLO, from Fatah to the PFLP and the DFLP. Funded by Qatar, on the 7th of October, Hamas placed the Palestinian population as cannon fodder, aware of the policy of extermination that the State of Israel would respond with. This year, it has applied relentless repression against the Gazan proletariat, which has protested against it on several occasions, as it had done before the 7th of October due to the situation of misery in which they lived. At the same time, Fatah is nothing more than a bourgeois organisation that manages the misery of the Palestinian proletariat in the West Bank, and the PFLP has some of the region’s great butchers as allies, from Assad’s Syria to the current Iran of the Ayatollahs.
For we cannot understand what is happening in Palestine solely through the terrible images coming out of Gaza. The world is accelerating. Capitalism is ruthlessly heading towards a trend of generalised imperialist war. Political, economic and military blocs are preparing for this imperialist war. There is no future for us as workers or as humanity under the protection of any of the bourgeois states in conflict, let alone the nationalisms that fuel it. Of course, we cannot place any hope in the European states or the United States, but neither can we place any hope in the Arab states, which historically have exploited the Palestinian population as much or more than the rest, let alone Iran and its international allies from Russia to China. Capitalism is preparing for a new conflagration while at the same time it reproduces wars and catastrophes everywhere.
As proletarians, we can only embrace internationalist solidarity, outside and against all nations, defending revolutionary defeatism against all bourgeoisies. Yes, solidarity among workers around the world, including in Israel and Palestine. We must support their unity and solidarity against the national bourgeoisies and vindicate the reactions that exist in this direction, such as the demonstrations by Gazan workers against Hamas or the protests in Israel, which are being tried to be hidden because they represent a way out of so much horror. For example, the actions of the Refusenik, who refuse to do military service; the more than 100,000 Israeli reservists —over 50%— who have refused to report for duty or the million people who took part in the strike and protests on 17th of August. Obviously, all this is not enough, but it shows what the way out is.
Unity among proletarians all over the world!
Only solidarity among workers can break the war apparatus and the ongoing bourgeois massacre!
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Balance y Avante
Grupo Barbaria