the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 27, 2023
This article is translated from the November 23 issue, #2886 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Will the four-day truce between Israel and Hamas on November 22 mark a turning point in the Gaza war? Even if it is prolonged, it will not erase the massacre and enormous destruction wrought by more than seven weeks of bombardment.
Schools were bombed, and babies died in bombed-out hospitals for lack of evacuation…. Even the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced the "horrific events beyond comprehension" that continued to take place in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, November 15, Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, was stormed by the Israeli army. On Saturday the 18th, 2,300 patients, caregivers, and displaced persons were still in the hospital, according to the UN, dying within its walls for lack of drinking water, food, care, or electricity to run incubators or breathing apparatuses. Images showed civilians being shot down like a game by the Israeli army as they tried to flee the fighting. The argument that Hamas uses the sick as human shields and hospitals as headquarters is war propaganda: true or false, the dead are Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli army.
After methodically wiping out Gaza City in the north of the territory, killing more than 14,000 people, almost all civilians, the Israeli army remains ready to unleash the same deluge of fire on Gaza’s southern part. Leaflets dropped in the town of Khan Younis called on the population to evacuate. But where to?
Two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have already had to flee to this area, where they are now stranded. Deprived of water, food, and healthcare, they survive in schools, hospitals, or streets.
By allowing Israel to do this, Western leaders are complicit in the mass slaughter in Gaza. As for their statements, even when they show a hint of indignation at the murder of babies, they are the stuff of hypocrisy. From Biden to Macron to the U.N., they have all supported and continue to support "Israel’s right to defend itself." Today, this right includes a policy of terror against the Palestinian population. Beyond that, it also targets all the peoples of the region, showing them what might await them if they were to challenge the tutelage of imperialism.