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
Aug 7, 2006
All those who defend Israeli policy without reservations, like Bush and the politicians of both parties in the Congress, hide behind the claim that Hezbollah and Hamas carry out terrorist actions, while Israel is a “democracy.”
It’s clear that the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas are no respecters of democracy. But the fact that Israel is a “democracy” in the sense that U.S. politicians give to this word–that is, a country where the bourgeoisie exercises power through parliamentary institutions–doesn’t prevent it from leading a criminal policy.
What Israel does to the Palestinians is typical of what “democracies” have long done to their colonies and the underdeveloped countries. The major wars fought by the U.S. just since World War II–against Korea, Viet Nam and now Iraq–show that the existence of a parliamentary regime, an elected congress and president, didn’t prevent the U.S. from waging war against an entire civilian population, nor from using the worst kind of violence against that population.
But the examples of these wars shows equally that no matter how powerful and numerically superior the army is which is involved in this type of repression, victory is not guaranteed. The hatred the repression sows can stir up among its victims the desire to continue fighting. The twentieth century knew numerous colonial wars, which didn’t prevent the colonial empires finally from collapsing.