By David Rowlands – 04-04-2024
All views contained within are my own.
Above: Southern Israel.
Above: Southern Gaza.
The October 7, 2023 pogrom, which resulted in the deaths of 1200 mostly Israeli Jews, but which also included a large number of Arabs and guest workers from Africa and Asia, and which badly injured 5,000 more and left 120,000 people homeless, and which resulted in the kidnapping of 240 innocents, including infants, many of whom have died in captivity, and which employed rape, sexual mutilation and torture as a means to humiliate and terrorize; and the subsequent happenings since that day, serves as a text-book example of how the big-business media decides the narrative, or at the very least, attempts to do so, and how this narrative changes with time, in an ongoing effort to suit the shifting needs of the capitalist class in any given country.
All that stands in the way, at this point of time, along with a number of vanguard workers, some of whom are known, some of whom have yet to emerge, is the Militant newspaper, the organ of the Socialist Workers Party, which reports the news in a truthful manner, and which bases its political conclusions on the interests of the working masses. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, the Militant is the only socialist paper in the world that unequivocally fights the rise in antisemitic activity, calls for the defeat of Hamas and supports the right of Israel to exist as a refuge for the Jewish people.
Below: Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate, speaks to press at Miami Holocaust Memorial protest Oct. 10 against Hamas pogrom in Israel three days earlier. She said, “Fight to end Jew-hatred will take working-class struggle for power, socialist revolution.”
Not everyone knows, although millions suspect, that the mainstream media — at the service of the ruling rich — is manipulative and dishonest and not to be trusted. They’re downright lying sons of bitches, is what they are, which is why the narrative they paint concerning politicians, election results, vaccines, unemployment figures, judges, or the media itself, is widely discounted.
For instance, as I write these words information has surfaced regarding the strike on the van carrying the seven aid workers from the food charity, World Central Kitchen. There is an unusual amount of “outrage” and gnashing of teeth over this, even though the strike was accidental, the kind that happens every single day during every single war where armaments drop willy-nilly from the skies, like swarms of bees leaving a hive.
One day, the steel that is used to manufacture the fighter jets, missiles and bombs, mined from the ground and forged in the steel mills by women and men of our class, will be used to make things we actually need, but that day waits for the coming storm.
However, they aren’t really “outraged”, are they? After all, these are the people who are responsible for the deaths of 1.2 million Iraqis during the two Gulf Wars and its aftermath, through punishing sanctions and bombardment of all kinds.
Above: Mosul, Iraq after the defeat of ISIS.
And the Israeli government has accepted responsibility, apologized and has said they will compensate the families, which I understand does not bring the Good Samaritans back to life but its more than you can say for Hamas-ISIS. I would string my boxers up my ass and out my mouth if any of these psychos ever said they were sorry for anything.
The fact of the matter is, the fault for the bloodshed, death, disease and destruction inside Gaza, including the death of these aid workers lies at the feet of Hamas and nowhere else. They broke the truce that was in place until the morning of 10-07 by committing the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and anyone who thinks of themselves as being a part of the workers movement who does not support the right of Israel to defend its citizens by smashing Hamas, is a scab.
Above: May the memory of the Good Samaritans be a blessing.
At the same time, Tel Aviv and Washington have been engaging in what appears to be amiable chats as they approach agreement on how Israel should proceed with the task of taking out the remaining Hamas brigades in Rafah, a task that is necessary in order to win the war. But for the Biden administration, appearances must be maintained, especially with those who comprise the antisemitic, left wing of his party.
And to accomplish this fuckery they employ a full-time army of Talking Heads and wealthy hangers-on, whose job it is to try to sound smart by yammering nonstop about the latest “most important election of our lifetime”, how the economy is dropping sugar plums on the heads of the working-class, or about the situation inside Rafah, as if any of them have any real-life experience about anything they pontificate about.
But the act is wearing thin, and a growing number of workers, I suspect, through bitter experience and union with their fellows, are beginning to think socially and act politically.
I suppose I can’t blame them. After all, it wouldn’t help their position or contribute to their longevity as a class to feature a waitress from Detroit, a truck driver from Little Rock or a single mom from Reno instead of the smug meritocrats.
Above: Exhibit Number One. The insufferable Rachel Maddow, who always brings to mind the pithy line from Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.“
(As a quick aside, I’m told that Rachel Maddow has published a book called Prequel, in time for the upcoming election, the one featuring The Donald and Sleepy Joe. The premise of the book is that Trump is the new Hitler, while his supporters and those that plan to vote for him are the new brown-shirts).
Yawn.
These parlor tricks encompass the larger narratives and the smaller events that are more specific in nature. On one hand you have the increasingly hostile noise directed at Israel as they continue to prosecute a defensive war against Hamas, and on the other hand you have events like the recent operation carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) at the Shifa hospital, which the jihadists re-occupied over the last couple of months, setting up operations in the burn unit, the ER and the maternity ward, which lead to the subsequent counter-attack by the IDF.
And then there’s the famine. You know, the one that’s been “immanent” since October 8, but has yet to materialize. Let’s be clear, my friends, there is no famine in Gaza. There is much hardship and sorrow and loss of life, for both the Gazans and the people of Israel, but there is no famine in Gaza.
See the article below where the “genocidal” Israeli defense minister representing the “genocidal” Israeli regime, discusses the soon to be completed sea corridor to Gaza, facilitated by Israel, Egypt, Qatar and Washington, that will dramatically increase humanitarian aid to Gaza. And now that Hamas is nearing the end of its putrid existence, much of this aid will actually reach the people instead of being stolen by the jihadist psychopaths.
So no, Israel is not involved in a genocide, but given the option to do so, the Hamas tunnel rats, as they themselves have declared, would do exactly that.
Above: The Shifa hospital prior to the war. The Muslim countries built this oasis of healing for the people of Gaza and the Hamas death cult destroyed it.
In the beginning there was widespread support for Israel and its citizens inside Washington, and a recognition that the Jewish State has the right not only to exist but defend itself from the kind of butchery Hamas unleashed last October. However, the support they are willing to offer in public has begun to wane.
Thus, in the immediate aftermath of the pogrom we heard not infrequently, calls for Hamas to release the hostages and surrender. Slowly this gave way to a backpedaling on what, for most working people is a fairly obvious conclusion as to how to end the bloodshed, to the most recent spectacle at the United Nations, where the United States refused to veto a resolution calling for a “ceasefire”.
What changed? Well, one thing that changed was the pro-Hamas, “ceasefire” demonstrations that began to spread in size and number within the western countries, including the United States, taking place in an election year, to boot. Plus, there was the noise around the Democratic Party primaries where left-wing voters threatened a boycott of sorts. It was a futile exercise, but it garnered a lot of news, and in a close election, this was enough to spook the Democrats and this Democratic administration.
Still, within the United States, a country where the Democratic Party is dominate and the liberal-Woke-antisemitic wing of the party is strong, it’s hard to gauge if this shift has to do with the broader, strategic needs of the rulers or if this has more to do with the upcoming election in November.
In this clown car, the party’s “left” wing supplies the gas, and is made up of the same people who have organized the antisemitic, pro-Hamas “from the river to the sea” demonstrations, and who’ve harassed and bullied Jewish college students and Jewish owned businesses at every opportunity. These activities are a chilling echo of the Nazi thugs in Germany during the 1930’s, all proportion guarded. It will, however, get worse, bigger and much more violent as the moral, political, social and economic crisis of the profit system continues to deepen.
The Woke liberals have turned the campuses into antisemitic, anti-free speech blackholes and are in the vanguard of attacks on the rights of women, with their metaphysical notions of transgenderism, the Bill of Rights and scientific thinking.
Above: A broadside listing the locations of Jewish businesses and organizations, brought to you by the Students for Justice in Palestine, a rightist organization functioning today on many college campuses.
It’s hard to imagine that the US rulers would want to see Hamas regroup and begin the cycle anew, so I’m going to go with door Number Two, that the main source of this somewhat abrupt change of heart centers around the upcoming elections. You must remember that these people have no principles, and no morals. After all, this was the political party the threw Japanese Americans into holding camps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and who stole their belongings, their homes, farms and their bank accounts.
It’s also a fact that Israel has taken pains to minimize the civilian casualties, perhaps the hardest thing for the anti-Israel crowd, which these days contains a high ratio of Jew haters, to admit.
In the 1970’s, when I was coming of age as a socialist militant, this ratio was not the same, although I now believe that the analysis of Israel that me and my comrades cut our teeth on was distorted, i.e., that of Israel as a colonial-settler-state populated by colonizers. What they were, in fact, were refugees, who after the Holocaust were able to carve out a very small sliver of a much larger landmass to which they are indigenous, as refuge for the Jewish people worldwide.
Below: A Newsweek article on the pains Israel has taken to minimize civilian casualties.
And finally, there are times when the revolutionary vanguard, represented in the United States by the Socialist Workers Party, supports one capitalist country over another in a shooting war, and this is one of those times.
Israel versus Hamas, Ukraine versus Russia, China versus Japan during the second imperialist war, Argentina versus the United Kingdom during the Malvinas war, Iran over Iraq in 1980, and Angola versus South Africa in the last days of apartheid, all of which were principled stances which served the interests of the toiling majority around the world but conveyed no support to this or that bourgeoise government.
Above: Ukranian workers and farmers in uniform defend their country against Putin’s invasion.
For the Defeat of Hamas!
Rebuild Gaza after the war!
Advance the fight against Jew hate! A life and death question for the working-class!
For the union of Arab and Jewish workers! Workers of the World, Unite!
The Union Of Workers 