A call to the workers and masses in the Middle East and to the masses in the imperialist centres- Help stop the genocide against the Palestinians
We salute the youth on the campuses and high schools in the USA and those across the globe that have taken up the cause of the fight against the imperialist-directed genocide against Palestinians. We need to unite the actions of the masses in the imperialist centres with the masses in the Middle East.
Updated on 8 May 2024, the second day of the US-backed Israeli invasion of the Rafah region of Gaza, which currently hosts 1.5 million displaced Palestinians. Israel has closed all food and medical supplies and threatens to impose a border control of the US military. So it is clear that Israel is acting out the wishes and aims of US imperialism. By fake tears and empty words the regimes in the region claim to support Palestinians but their actions show them to be tools of imperialism.
The case of the Jordanian monarchy
The Jordanian monarchy has been professing to be critical of Israel, yet it imports weapons from them and also received $3.2 Bn in weapons from the USA since 2000. These weapons are to protect US interests and Israel. That is clear. Rafah is burning and Palestinians are being killed like flies. Starvation was always the means of imperialism to force their plans onto the masses. They don’t care about the lives of anyone including any Israeli. Israelis are used as expendable cannon fodder.
Annual trade between Israel and Jordan is $500 million. Jordan also hosts US military bases. If it was so committed to the Palestinian cause why did the regime not close the US and Israeli embassies and expel all the US troops? Why did they continue to trade with Israel? While Gaza was blockaded and now starved, trade with Israel continued as normal and their land was used as a means to bypass the solidarity actions of the Yemeni masses. Jordan was used a conduit for trade for Israel while Gaza was kept in starvation. They even let their airspace be used to defend the Israeli military. To the monarchy it is more important to feed the Zionist masses than do anything to actually assist the Palestinians. Their stunt of dropping a couple of food parcels is fully coordinated with the forces of genocide.
The Jordanian regime is a puppet of US imperialism. The masses in Jordan need to set up shura/workers’ councils and a new interim government to replace the monarchy.
The case of the Erdogan regime in Turkey
The 2022 trade between Israel and Turkey amounted to a massive $10 bn. There is also a huge tourism trade of $128 million per annum, showing that the middle and upper class from Turkey love to go to Israel. This means that they parasite on the oppression of Palestinians. Turkey exports raw materials such as raw iron bars to Israel. No doubt some of the Israeli prisons are built with these bars. Ironically Turkey’s major import from Israel is $1.03 Bn annually of refined petroleum. They should have imported it from the Arab states but no, they prefer to import from Israel which has no petroleum at all. So, Israel imports crude oil from Azerbaijan via Turkey and then exports it to back to Turkey, making a huge profit off the masses in Turkey and the masses who produce the oil. Turkey also receives more arms from the US than Israel does. So, the Turkish regime is not only a slave to imperialism but a slave to the Israeli capitalist class too. Interesting that both Egypt and Turkey are major suppliers of toilet paper to Israel- this demonstrates their slave role of cleaning the backsides of the Zionist capitalist class.
Turkey also hosts a huge number of US military bases, showing that the regime is totally under the control of US imperialism. The so-called claim that Turkey has cut trade with Israel is a publicity stunt. It needs to be independently verified. The public claims of Erdogan cannot be trusted. Despite his public statements he is a loyal friend to the Zionists. Now that Rafah is invaded, has he sent even a paper jet against Israel? Just empty words.
In practice, the Turkish regime is an ally of the Zionist state despite the huge opposition by the masses. The rhetoric by the Turkish regime is just to fool the masses while keeping them under control in a semi-police state. The Turkish regime play an important role in dividing the masses in the region, suppressing the Kurds and isolating the Syrian revolution after 2011, often aiding the implosion from within the ranks of the Syrian masses.
In January 2024, as a reward for maintaining links with Israel and keeping trade going with it, US imperialism sold $23 billion in weapons to Turkey, old F-16 planes and contracts for maintaining them.
The masses need to form workers’ councils across Turkey, uniting irrespective of nationality. It is time to remove the Erdogan regime and replace it with a direct democracy that will in practice cut all ties with Israel and US imperialism, shutting all their military bases there. This is the most practical aid that the masses in Turkey can give.
Erdogan dishes out billions of dollars to US imperialism while the regime cannot even maintain proper safety standards in buildings in an earthquake-prone region. At the very moment of the Rafah invasion US imperialism is still sending more weapons to Israel. It made a show of stopping some weapons while sending more of others. Yet the Erdogan regime still allows the US regime that is directing the genocide, to continue to operate from Turkish soil. The Erdogan regime must go.
The case of the Sisi regime in Egypt
The annual trade between Egypt and Israel is $1.5Bn with Egypt importing $1.24 bn in gas from Israel annually. From 1980 to 2010 Egypt bought $33.3 bn of weapons from the US. After Mubarak was deposed and US imperialism imposed to coup against Morsi, installing General Sisi, Egypt once again bought weapons from the US, spending over $ 8 bn up to 2017. Purchases of weapons have continued to this day from the US. Yet Sisi ridicules the Egyptian masses, saying they are not even a country. Yet, while the masses are starving and little development takes place, every year, the Egyptian regime spends at least $1bn on weapon purchases from the US and hosts hundreds of US soldiers. From 2007 up to now Egypt has maintained the siege on Gaza, allowing themselves to be dictated by US imperialism and its Zionist allies. During the current genocide, Egypt has not only kept the Palestinians in starvation, they are charging extortionate prices for anyone who wants to leave. The Egyptian regime is making a profit out of the genocide against Palestinians. They have even cleared some land which the Zionist might even use to slaughter the Palestinians in the open air. The seriously injured patients struggle to be allowed to leave to get adequate medical treatment, especially now that all the hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed by imperialism.
There is no democracy in Egypt. Sisi has become another Mubarak, just another repressive agent of US imperialism. They could easily have sent trucks and aid directly into Gaza through the Rafah border but they choose not to, despite their obligation to do everything to prevent genocide. Now they are set to allow the US military to take control over the Rafah border. The Sisi regime is a partner in the genocide, despite their so-called mediation efforts. All they are doing is carrying out the instructions of US imperialism. All the weapons they bought is being used to isolate the Palestinians and support the genocide against them.
It is time to take to Tahrir square again. It is time for workers’ councils/ shura to be set up in Egypt, setting up an interim government that will end the rule of Sisi and open the gates to Gaza. Expel the US troops and cut all ties with the Zionist regime. Sisi must fall.
US imperialism and its control in the Middle East
Besides Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Jordan there are a number of regimes in the Middle East that receive weapons from the US. By far the biggest is Saudi Arabia that has received over $105 bn in weapons from US imperialism since 1970. This is more than Israel. The other major recipients of weapons from the US, including hosting military bases or a military presence are UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia. There are daily flights from Qatar to Israel of Boeing cargo planes that have enabled the widespread bombing and destruction of Gaza. The Saudi regime used their planes to help Israel and the US and UK to refuel their planes in the defence of Israel. The weapons purchases from US imperialism by Saudi Arabia and the other regimes has everything to do with the suppression of the masses and the defence of the genocidal Zionist army. This is why imperialism wants ‘normalisation’ with Saudi Arabia and other regimes; to them, genocide against the masses is what is normal. The masses of Syria faced a brutal extirpation from 2011. Imperialism used Russia and Iran and Hezbollah to suppress the Syrian masses from the outside. The Syrian masses were imploded from within by Turkey. The terrible mass slaughter of the masses in Syria was the opening moves by imperialism that has led them to try to exterminate the Palestinians. However the Palestinian cause is much more widely known and over many years the campaign is deep rooted. The resistance in Palestine has now opened up steps towards the start of a new revolutionary period that shakes all major imperialist centres and most importantly in the heart of US imperialism. The US empire will be shaken to the core if the protests can be extended into the US working class and rank and file soldiers and the masses elsewhere. It is the unity of the masses in the imperialist centres with the masses in the colonies and semi-colonies that will be decisive. The fake divide of ‘global south’ from the ‘global north’ was nothing but a means to divide the masses in the colonies from the masses in the imperialist centres. Forgotten was the revolutionary lessons of the 1974 Portugal revolutionary uprising which directly led to the independence of Angola and Mozambique. If the US empire implodes it will free the masses in the world from its chains.
The way forward
We should learn to take a position on the political structures by their actions not by their glowing words. Are they taking practical steps to end the genocide against Palestinians? Yes or no. We should also be mindful that imperialism is behind the genocide in Sudan and the DRC too. The UN has never stopped any genocide; they have always enabled them.
It is important to remember that imperialism set up Israel as large military base to police and control the masses in the Middle East. Imperialism also controls a number of regimes in the region through which they exercise further control.
The Zionist regime can only be defeated through a combination of local and international struggles which challenges the political power in the Middle East as well as in the imperialist centres.
The case of Aaron Bushnell and now Larry Hebert (a serving airman who was on a hunger strike since 1st April 2024 outside the White House) show that there is a split in the armed forces of imperialism. This is very significant as already there is a strong sense of rebellion in their armed forces against the military industrial complex that controls their Congress and Senate. This is shown by the thousands of soldiers who belong to Veterans for Peace. This is also demonstrated by the start of military veterans starting to join the protests on the universities. The mass walkout from high schools that is also starting, means that the working class youth are now starting to take to the campaign against US imperialism. It is instructive that Germany and the UK continues to send weapons to Israel and helps with spy planes even during the invasion of Rafah. We salute the expansion of the youth revolt to the campuses across the UK. We encourage the high schools to also get involved. In 1980 in Cape Town, South Africa, students at 81 high schools and a university took over their premises and campuses for 3 months and ran alternative education programs, including plays, discussions, debates, movies. The 1980 moment of South Africa has now reached the US and is spreading.
Meanwhile the Refuser movement , comprising youth who refuse to sign up in the IDF, have come to the conclusion that one of the central problems in Israel is the army itself. We agree. We encourage the soldiers and pilots to refuse to be complicit in genocide. Unity of the masses in the region irrespective of religious belief is key. Take a leaf from the US student and youth protests where a strong core of the protest is made up of Jewish students.
While we rise against our own regimes we should always reach out to and encourage a united front of anti-genocide organizations in all the imperialist centres too. Imperialist globalization brings with it the possibility of international working class revolt and revolutionary uprisings. While the imperialists have their think tanks and their billions of dollars, the world working class needs its own party, an international one to place Socialism on the agenda.
Free Palestine from the river to the sea. Down with US imperialism.
13.4.2024 amended 29.4.2024 amended 8 May 2024
Issued by Workers International Vanguard League
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