Gaza: the murderers are also in Washington and Paris

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Lutte Ouvrière workplace newsletter
April 8, 2024

The Israeli army has announced its withdrawal from the south of the Gaza Strip. But this is by no means a ceasefire. As Netanyahu and his generals explain, the army is moving on to a new phase: preparation for ground intervention in Rafah, a city on the border with Egypt, which is home to two million refugees. In other words, the Palestinians will not escape the hell they have been plunged in for the past six months any time soon!

In addition to the deadly and destructive bombardments, there is a humanitarian crisis and famine. Hospitals are already reporting children dying of malnutrition. Men and children gunned down in their search for food, families buried under the debris of what were claimed to be targeted bombings. Every day, we hear about some new atrocity – with no effect on Western leaders.

For them to express outrage, Westerners have to be killed, as was the case last week for seven humanitarian aid workers who were bringing in food. But who spoke out against the complete destruction of the Al Shifa hospital, for example, one of the oldest and most important hospitals in the Gaza Strip, which undoubtedly caused hundreds of civilian casualties?

In a recent phone call with Netanyahu, Biden reportedly threatened to withdraw US support for Israel if immediate, concrete steps were not taken to protect civilians. He also reportedly called for a ceasefire... just after approving the delivery of multi-billion-dollar fighter jets. How revoltingly hypocritical!

Taken to task by his own supporters in the United States, Biden would no doubt prefer more restraint from his ally. All the more so as the Israeli army has taken the liberty of bombing southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah, and even Syria, where it has just destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, at the risk of spreading the conflict even further.

But apart from theatrics, Biden is doing nothing to restrain Netanyahu's actions and stop the tragedy in Gaza, not even on a humanitarian level. We’re told the US is powerless because it can't reason with Netanyahu. What a sick joke!

Since when has the world's leading power held back from landing troops and supplies if it wanted to? How many regimes has it punished, isolated, marginalized and even overthrown?

All means of intervention are within the reach of US leaders. Especially when it comes to Israel, which could not exist without their financial and military support. The reality is that they don't want to force the hand of their Israeli ally, and they couldn't care less about the Palestinians, UN resolutions and the right of peoples to self-determination they so often invoke.

Macron doesn’t have as much weight as Biden, but he also let the Gaza massacre happen. And he keeps trying to silence those who speak out against the policies of the Israeli state, accusing them of anti-Semitism.

So the men, women and children who have died in Gaza - 33,000 at least - are not just Netanyahu's fault, but also that of his Western accomplices.

We shouldn't be surprised. For 75 years, the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank have been sacrificed for the interests of imperialism. Since the imperialist powers decided to use the Israeli state to consolidate their influence in the Middle East, a region rich in oil and crucial to international trade, they have covered up all its crimes. They have endorsed its policy of colonization and apartheid. And they have turned Palestinians into lifelong refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

And these are the leaders who rule the world! They’re the ones who claim to define right and wrong. They're the ones who claim to define international law and decide who's a terrorist and who's not. And they're the ones who'll talk about peace once the Palestinian cemeteries begin to overflow and Israel’s oppressive power reigns supreme.

No, the imperialist powers are no doves, no champions of peace, democracy and prosperity. Not in Gaza, not in Ukraine, not in Haiti or Taiwan. Rwanda is remembering a genocide that claimed 800,000 lives, with the active complicity of the French state, its staff, ministers and president!

Through their pillage, domination and sordid calculations, the masters of the world are participating in the spread of war. The only alternative to this march to war is that which the exploited around the world could represent by attacking their own rulers and the capitalist order they embody.

Nathalie Arthaud