300 Days Of Genocide: What We’ve Learned

Apartheid Israel has inflicted 300 days of horror and bloodshed on the Palestinian people. The respected Lancet journal says that 186,000 have been killed by the Apartheid regime yet RTE still reports the genocide as a “conflict”.

Whenever bullets fly, ruling class masks are taken off and we get to see their world as it really is. We need to remember these lessons. What have we learned so far from 300 days of slaughter?

The EU elite are monstrous supporters of Israeli Apartheid.

Behind their liberal masks ruling class politicians like Ursula von der Leyen are hardline supporters of Israel. In the first few days of the slaughter she visited Israel and offered her full backing. 

She compared Israel to Ukraine, painting the Apartheid regime as victims: 

“All these conflicts have one thing in common: they are about the struggle between those who seek peace, balance, freedom and cooperation — and those who do not want any of this because they profit from the chaos and disorder.”

In June this year she was re-elected to a second term.

The real face of the EU elites should come as no surprise to workers here in Ireland where they forced us to pay for the debts of French and German bankers with a decade of back breaking austerity and the devastation of our communities.

From Galway to Gaza the EU treats ordinary people as pawns in their great games of finance and war. But they’re not the only monsters with a liberal mask. 

The Democrats are warmongering hypocrites.

The genocide has also ripped the mask from Joe Biden and his successor Kamala Harris. Biden comes out in the media and mildly condemns this or that Israeli action as going too far but behind the scenes the US backs the Apartheid regime to the hilt. 

This week Biden reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its “proxy terrorist groups” Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Tens of thousands of Palestinians lay dead and he’s worried about the integrity of the Apartheid state.

Israel has long been a watchtower in the Middle East, heavily armed by imperialism to keep the region under the bootheel of US corporations. The British Empire set it up as a “loyal little Ulster” in the region - but now it serves the interests of the US military industrial machine.

But the war has exposed our establishment here at home too.

The government point blank refused to expel the Israeli ambassador. The hypocrisy evident in the different treatments handed out to Russia versus Israel is shocking. Our mass movement on the streets has forced the Irish government to appease the movement with occasional and mild criticism of Israel.

But actions speak louder than words - and by their actions the Irish government show they are firmly committed to backing the EU and US war machines and their proxy Israel. Sure aren’t they trying to destroy Irish neutrality and move us into the NATO camp?

We’ve also learned that Sinn Féin are nervous allies of the movement against Empire.

They were reluctant to call for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and changed their line only after it became obvious that the call was popular in the growing mass movement on the streets. This is an important lesson for working class activists. 

Sinn Féin hesitated to back the boycott of water bills, they’re reluctant to upset the apple cart too much and once in government they’ll need immense pressure put on them from the streets to prevent them surrendering to the immense pressure that will be put on them by the rich. 

The most important lesson the war has taught us is that protests alone can’t overthrow Imperialism.

Imperialism is a global system of corporate dominance and control. Massive companies control states and militaries act in their interests. To overthrow such a system requires the working class of each capitalist nation to kick out their rulers and break the chains they’ve imposed on the Middle East.

Here in Ireland you cannot overthrow our small corner of the Western imperialist world, the Irish government, without connecting to the broad mass of working class people and mobilising them on their day to day interests. 

Even outside of war and genocide 19,000 children starve every single day because of global capitalist inequality. Moral outrage against such a system will only get us so far. We need to find a force capable of overthrowing it and ask ourselves how we connect with that force.

Only the workers of the world have that power. The power to shut down the global economy. The power to strike and challenge for political power. 

Socialists have long understood that and sought to connect with that worker power. Palestine movement activists need to see the connection between the massacres abroad and the capitalist inequality at home and vow to fight both.

That’s the only path to freedom.