Workers and young people demonstrated on November 4 in Washington, D.C., against Israel's genocide in Gaza.
The World Socialist Web Site calls for the widest support for and participation in the protest demonstrations that have been called throughout the world for Thursday, November 9, in opposition to Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. Significantly, the organizers of “Shut It Down for Palestine,” including Workers in Palestine, the Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestinian Youth Movement, are urging workers to engage in walkouts and work stoppages.
There is overwhelming international working class opposition to the genocide, and support for industrial action to halt the supply of weapons and financial assistance to the Israeli military and state. This includes resolutions by the trade unions in Belgium and Spain to refuse to handle Israeli military cargo, as well as open letters and resolutions being circulated among workers themselves.
The scale of the protests that have erupted worldwide reflect the wave of working-class militancy that has been sweeping the globe, from the United States to Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The fight in Gaza is not simply what is being done by the criminals in the Israeli government; it’s a fight that has to be waged against the ruling classes of every country.
It is critical for workers and youth who are opposed to Israel’s actions to understand the fundamental issues behind the assault on Gaza, in order that this movement can be guided by a strategy to stop it.
The response of the Israeli military to the global protests, the largest anti-war demonstrations in a generation that have already involved tens of millions of people, has been to escalate its genocidal actions. The confirmed death toll in the Gaza Strip has now exceeded 10,000, nearly half of them children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have laid siege to Gaza City in preparation for a bloody ground invasion. Across Gaza, a massive humanitarian crisis is taking hold as the entire population has been virtually cut off from fuel, food and clean water for a month and as the IDF deliberately targets hospitals and other civilian buildings.
Within the Israeli regime, there is increasingly open talk about its plans for mass murder and ethnic cleansing, including a statement by far-right Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu that nuclear weapons are an option against Gaza, with the survivors dispersed “to Ireland or deserts,” and that the Palestinian people “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the Earth.”
But Israel is not an independent actor. It is functioning, as it has from its founding in 1948, as an instrument of world imperialism. The United States has made clear that it has no “red lines” for Israel, a phrase repeated Tuesday by National Security spokesman John Kirby. American imperialism is encircling the entire Middle East with dozens of warships and a surge in military personnel to back Israel’s actions.
The United States, together with the other powers in the US-NATO axis, see the assault on Gaza as merely one front in an emerging Third World War, which they are deliberately inciting.
The United States supports the genocide because it is bound up with its increasingly open preparations for war with Iran. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s provocative trip to Iraq last week, coupled with the deployment of an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine capable of destroying every major city in Iran, make clear that the Palestinian people are being sacrificed for Washington’s bid for unchallenged domination of the Middle East.