Support Gaza resistance!

Gaza is a strip of land, four-fifths the size of the New York borough of Queens, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, of whom 800,000 are children. By entering Gaza, Israel’s war machine, backed in full by U.S. imperialism, is writing a new chapter of war crimes in world history.

The workers’ movement of the entire world should leave no doubt that it stands on the side of the Palestinian resistance, and will give unconditional support to whatever the Palestinians need to do to defend the people of Gaza and their organizations, which includes Hamas. Every weapon in the hands of oppressed peoples fighting for self-determination is a legitimate weapon. Every weapon in the hands of the imperialist oppressors and their local agents—in this case the Israeli state—is illegitimate.

Defend Hamas! Defend Palestine!

The governments of the U.S. and the European Union and the corporate media have demonized Hamas, vilifying this group as “terrorist.” Not long ago the entire imperialist world used the same words against Fatah, which now leads the Palestinian government on the West Bank. And the Israelis and their backers did their utmost to crush Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat, whom they murdered. The truth is that imperialists and the Zionist state will vilify and attack Hamas or any other group that represents the Palestinian desire for liberation.

In 2006, the Palestinian people elected Hamas as their government by a landslide because this organization was leading the resistance to oppression and occupation. Refusing to recognize this legitimate choice, both Tel Aviv and Washington targeted Hamas—by waging a genocidal attack on all Palestinians. The Israelis put Gaza under siege, starving and freezing the people, cutting off food and medicine, fuel and power for the past 18 months.

Washington and Tel Aviv claim that Hamas broke the cease-fire. But there was never a real cease-fire, because the Israelis never lifted the blockade as they had agreed to do and left the people of Gaza hungry, cold and desperate. Meanwhile Israel kept provoking Hamas by going into Gaza and killing Hamas’ people—and anyone around them.

Fighting back, in this case launching rockets, is the legitimate self-defense of a blockaded nation.

U.S. role in Israeli war crimes

For anyone uncertain about the U.S. role in Israel’s crimes, world-class war criminal George W. Bush has clarified it. The lame-hawk president in his weekly radio talk gave a full go-ahead to the Israeli genocidal assault on the Palestinian people. And this diplomatic green light is backed up by the U.S.-made F-16 jets and “Apache” helicopters provided to the Israeli assassins who have already killed 500 Palestinian adults and children.

The Israeli leaders—Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni—are war criminals on a regional scale. Bush, on the other hand, is a global war criminal. Bush lied his way into the invasion of Iraq, helped destroy the New Orleans’ Black community, intensified raids and deportations of immigrant workers, even tried to privatize Social Security and invest it in thestock market, and in general robbed the workers to stuff the pockets of the rich.

After invading, destroying and failing to conquer Afghanistan; invading, destroying and failing to conquer Iraq; and aiding the Israelis to invade, wreak havoc and fail to conquer Lebanon, Bush and his Israeli junior partners are trying it again, killing more children and civilians in Gaza in the hope of reversing their losses.

Join the anti-war and workers’ struggles

How then to best take the side of the people of Gaza and their elected government? The world’s people are showing how. Within hours of the initial U.S.-Israeli bombing attack last Dec. 27—that’s U.S. planes, helicopters, bombs and rockets and Israeli pilots—people all over the world, including in the United States, began demonstrating in solidarity with the Palestinians. After the land invasion, hundreds of thousands came out again in hundreds of world capitals and smaller cities and towns.

Many of the initial protesters were Palestinian or other Arab and Muslim people who are now living in exile all over the globe. But where the workers’ and anti-war movements were strong, these forces also joined the Palestinians. This has begun to happen also in the United States, and everything must be done to increase this solidarity with Palestine.

This is not charity. It is not just out of sympathy with Gaza’s suffering people. It is mutual solidarity with the heroic Palestinian struggle against the common enemy. For the working class too—not only in the “global South” but also in Europe, Japan and the United States—has been under attack. Its jobs have disappeared, its wages diminished, and its social services cut. The workers have begun fighting defensive battles, and can identify with the defensive struggle of the Palestinians.

A political activist in Texas, recently thanked for her assistance at a series of protests by the Palestinian community, put it this way: “Yes, I’m in solidarity with Palestine, but I also don’t want my tax money used for bombs and war planes instead of education for my grandchildren. We have the same enemies.”

She got an answer: “You have a point. I’m Palestinian, but I’m also a Houstonian. My services, my children’s services are cut. I need to fight those local battles, too.”

A Hamas leader recently called for a “Third Intifada,” referring to the two heroic and determined mass uprisings of the entire Palestinian population, the first beginning in 1988 and the second in 2000, both of which lasted for years and which left as their legacy the pictures of Palestinian children throwing stones against the Israeli armored vehicles.

What then is the strongest way to express international solidarity? By joining the workers’ struggle right here to the defense of Palestine and bringing the spirit of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation—the Intifada—into the workers’ and anti-racist movement. This would be the best way to turn the taste for conquest into bitter ashes in the mouths of Bush, Cheney, Olmert, Barak and Livni.

Defend the Palestinians and their organizations! Globalize the Intifada! Solidarity forever!