Sunday, March 17, 2024

Zionism During the Holocaust—The weaponization of memory in the service of state and nation

 


By Tony Greenstein

New Generation Publishing—2022


Reviewed by Steven Halpern


Zionism is the idea that Jewish people from all over the world need a homeland in the nation that was once called Palestine. That idea has been used to murder, steal land, and systematically discriminate against the Palestinian people who have lived on that land for centuries. 


Today the myths of Zionism are exploding in the unimaginable Israeli acts of genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip. So, in order to strip away all the mythology of Zionism, Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust goes back into the roots of how and why Zionism developed into a military force that is the fourth most powerful in the world.


The myths


For me, in order to put this book in perspective, we first need to think about some of the arguments Zionists have advanced over the years. We can begin with the idea that anti-Semitism has been around for quite a long time in nations all over the world. The Zionists argue that the German Nazi organized murder of about six million Jews is evidence that anti-Semitism is unique in the world.


They argue that after the Holocaust, no nation wanted to accept Jewish refugees. So according to their logic, that reality made the establishment of the state of Israel a necessity to combat anti-Semitism. 


They argue that during the establishment of the state of Israel there may have been some war crimes, but Jewish people needed to defend themselves, and the overall goals of the 1948 war to establish Israel were justified. Today they argue that the Israeli Defense Force is invading Gaza because Zionists feel this is necessary to defend the seven million Jewish citizens of Israel.


From their perspective, efforts to hide Jews from the Nazi Holocaust were isolated. The 1993 film Schindler’s List was portrayed as a relatively isolated event where a capitalist made a heroic effort to save the lives of thousands of Jews.  


The reality


Ok, those are the myths. There is a kernel of truth in the argument that anti-Semitism has been around for a long time. There were pogroms, or racist raids that murdered thousands of Jews in Czarist Russia. Anti-Semitism to one extent or another existed in many countries in the world.


Then there is the other side. Initially only a tiny minority of Jews supported Zionism. The Zionist idea that Jewish people could only thrive by living in Palestine was seen by many Jews as anti-Semitic. The pogroms against Jews supported the idea that Jews were an obstacle to non-Jews. The Jewish idea of leaving Europe and moving to Palestine was in fundamental agreement with the anti-Semites.


If the establishment of the state of Israel was about protecting Jews from anti-Semitism, we might ask the question: Why did the Zionists make a number of deals with the Nazis that facilitated the Holocaust? What are the facts?


The Transfer Agreement


When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the German economy was in dire straits. The world became aware that the Nazis routinely brutalized Jews in Germany. There had been successful boycotts spearheaded by Jews against the anti-Semitic practices of the Ford Motor Company and Czarist Russia. So, when the Nazis came to power, there was tremendous sentiment for an economic boycott of Germany. 


Because of the dire straits of the German economy, this boycott had the real potential to create an atmosphere hostile to the Nazis that could have removed them from power. The Zionists who represented a tiny percentage of Jews at that time, saw their opportunity to make a lot of money.


So, the Zionists arranged to have a meeting with a viciously anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, Hermann Goring. Goring understood that while he hated the Jews, the Zionists had something he wanted. So, they came together in what became known as the Transfer Agreement.


The Nazis would allow some Jews to emigrate to Palestine. The Nazis had already confiscated much of the wealth of those Jews. Goring agreed send some of that money to Palestine. In return, the Zionists would work to put an effective end to the boycott against Germany. 


As it turned out, the thousands of Jews that the Nazis allowed to emigrate to Palestine were the most affluent. They had the ability to leave Germany whenever they wanted. So, the Nazis got exactly what they wanted and the Zionists, in effect, got nothing.


Adolph Hitler wasn’t satisfied with the speed of the anti-boycott efforts. So, he said the world had twenty-four hours to effectively stop the boycott or he would unleash his storm troopers against the German Jewish community. 


So, in those twenty-four hours the effectiveness of the boycott was over. This was also because corporations in capitalist nations wanted to do business with fascist Germany. Most corporations were indifferent to the horrors inflicted on the Jews and were primarily concerned with their profits. 


Along those lines, there was the Zionist—Nazi organization called Judenrate. Wherever the Nazis took power they organized the Judenrate or Jewish police in the Jewish communities. The following passage is from a Nazi observer in Krakow in 1940 who,

  

“was struck by the contrast between poverty and filth in the Jewish quarter and the business-like luxury of the Jewish community headquarters, which was filled with beautiful charts, comfortable leather chairs, and heavy carpets.”


Rudolf Kraztner


The Nazi leader Aldolf Eichmann came to Hungary to facilitate the transport of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the collection camps to the concentration camps. The Nazis wanted to avoid the Jewish resistance they encountered with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So, Eichmann had a meeting with Jewish political officials in the Zionist Jewish Agency. This is what Eichmann had to say about that meeting.


“One man stood out among them. Dr. Rudolf Kraztner. . .an ice-cold lawyer and fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation—and even keep order in the collection camps—if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000 or 20,000 Jews. . .was not too high for me. . .there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders.” 


Kraztner and others were fully aware that the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were being deported would be sent to the extermination camps. Because of his deal with Eichmann, he kept that information from the Jewish community and encouraged them not to worry about their deportations. 


About 4,000 Hungarian Jews escaped to Romania and avoided the Holocaust. Had Kraztner informed Jews of the Holocaust, thousands more might have been saved. 


Kurt Becher, Dieter Wisliceny and Krumey were leading Nazis who organized for the execution of thousands of Jews in the concentration camps. Towards the end of the war, these Nazis understood that their cause was lost, so they began organizing efforts to save a few Jews.


As a result, Rudolf Kraztner defended Becher, Wislinceny, and Krumey when they were on trial in Nuremburg. They were found not guilty because of Kraztner’s testimony.


Then, Malkiel Gruenwald exposed information that Kraztner knowingly kept information about the extermination camps from the Jewish community. This facilitated their deportation to the concentration camps. Kraztner responded by suing Gruenwald for libel. The Israeli government supported the libel suit against Gruenwald.


At the 1955 trial, Gruenwald’s lawyer presented evidence confirming that Kraztner was a collaborator with the Nazis. The judge in the trial agreed and dismissed the charge of libel. 


Then, in 1957, members of the Israeli terrorist organization Lehi assassinated Rudolf Kraztner. 


The Israeli Supreme Court didn’t like the ruling confirming that Kraztner was a Nazi collaborator. That verdict compromised the core reasons why the state of Israel was established in 1948. So, in 1958 the Israeli Supreme Court reversed the decision by the lower court in the libel case against Malkiel Gruenwald.


Marek Edelman


We can contrast the Zionist defense of Rudolf Kraztner to their indifference and hostility to Marek Edelman.


Marek Edelman was a cardiologist and a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He managed to escape the Nazi defeat of the uprising and survived the war. Edelman eventually became critical of the Zionist repression of Palestinians. He remained in Poland and was honored by the Polish government at his funeral. No one from the Israeli embassy in Poland attended his funeral and Edelman was treated as a nonperson by the Israeli government.


Zionist indifference to the Holocaust


Why did the Nazis give support to the Judenrate? The Nazis made the extermination camps that murdered millions of Jews a top secret. However, there were prisoners who escaped those camps and the members of the Judenrate became aware of the mass murders. 


Yet, the Judenrate made decisions to keep this information from the Jewish community. They actually escorted Jews to the trains that would take them to the concentration camps. They oftentimes told the passengers of those trains that they would be welcomed by the Jewish community when they reached their destination, “with open arms.”


Had the Jews known of their eventual fate, thousands or possibly millions of Jews might have found refuge and escaped the mass murder. Two-thirds of the Jews who made up the Judenrate were Zionists. 


A central theme of Greenstein’s book was how the Zionists were indifferent to the Holocaust when it was happening. Their primary goal was the establishment of the state of Israel. While there were Zionists who fought against the Nazis, this wasn’t the policy of the leadership of the Zionist movement.


Why does Greenstein believe that it was indeed possible for many Jews to be rescued and avoid death in the concentration camps? Greenstein lists about 18 countries the Nazis occupied. In each of these countries there were organized efforts to find refuge for Jews and many others who were being victimized by the Nazis.


Many Jews refused to be boarded on the trains going to the camps. They oftentimes went to rural areas where farmers gave them refuge.


The Soviet Union and the church


The actions of the government of the Soviet Union during those years need a bit of background. The Russian Revolution was a watershed moment in human history. The Revolution put in power a government that did its best to serve the interests of the vast majority of the people who lived in Czarist Russia.


The combined effect of the First World War, the Civil War after the revolution, the disruption of the economy, and the effects of famine had a severe toll on the Soviet Union. As a result, Joseph Stalin became the central leader of the country and betrayed everything the Revolution tried to accomplish. Stalin actually organized to murder most of the central leaders of the Russian Revolution. 


With the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks outlawed anti-Semitism. When Stalin betrayed the revolution, anti-Semitic attitudes returned. When Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Nazis, he didn’t protest the vicious anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis.

Stalin’s primary international goal was to coexist with the imperial powers. This was to ensure that his personal dominance of the USSR would continue. Because of Stalin’s pact with the Nazis, he instructed the Communist Parties throughout the world to oppose war against Germany. 


Because of this pact, the USSR supported the Nazi invasion of Poland. The Nazis took control of half of Poland and the USSR took control of the other half. The Nazis also received political, economic, and military support from the USSR as a result of that pact. Stalin did nothing to protest the Nazi repression against the Jews who had been forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. 


Stalin was taken completely by surprise when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Millions of Russian people died unnecessarily because Stalin refused to prepare for the German invasion. 


Tony Greenstein estimates that between 1.5 and 2 million Jews escaped the concentration camps because they had refuge in the Soviet Union. In other words, had the Nazis defeated the USSR in the war, it is probable that many more than six million Jews would have been murdered in the Holocaust. 


The mass murder of Jews in the concentration camps coincided with the invasion of the Soviet Union called Operation Barbarossa. Initially the Nazis murdered 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war at Auschwitz. While the Soviet Union eventually defeated the Nazis, over twenty million people from the USSR died in the war. This was the overall context of the Nazi decision to change from merely brutalizing Jews to ordering their mass murder.  

     

We might also consider that while many Jews found refuge in the Soviet Union, the Christian Church also played a significant role in saving the lives of many Jews. This was in spite of the fact that the leadership of the Church barely protested against the Nazi organized brutality against the Jewish community. Rank and file Christians did the bulk of the work in hiding Jews from Nazi persecution.


So, while the Soviet Union and Christians saved the lives of many Jews, Zionist members of the Judenrate received rewards from the Nazis because they escorted Jews to the trains that took them to the concentration camps.


Zionists use the Holocaust to defend their brutalization of Jews and Palestinians


While the Zionist leadership did little or nothing to defend the millions of Jews the Nazis murdered, they made the Holocaust the primary reason for the establishment of the state of Israel. However, the Zionist drive to murder and steal the homes of Palestinians came into conflict with a bit of history. 


For the most part, anti-Semitism didn’t exist in Palestine before the drive to create the state of Israel. Palestinians happened to be among those who gave refuge to Jews who escaped Nazi persecution. With the terrorist raids by the Zionists around the year 1948 many of the Palestinians who gave refuge to Jews were thrown out of their homes.


Most of the Jews who came to Palestine spoke several languages that included Yiddish. Many Jews came from the Arabic speaking world and Arabic was their primary language.


Only about one percent of the Jews who initially came to Israel spoke Hebrew. The Zionist terrorist gangs of the Irgun, the Stern Gang, and the Hagenah worked to coerce Jews to stop speaking their native language and speak Hebrew. As a result, the Zionists effectively erased the entire history of the Yiddish language. 


Those gangs also repressed any Jews who protested against the Zionist terrorists who murdered Palestinians and forced them to leave their homes. Jews who came to Israel from the Arabic speaking countries were systematically discriminated against. Clearly, these were all anti-Semitic acts carried out by the Israeli government.


The Zionists also worked to discourage governments from around the world from accepting Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. The Zionist priority was to populate Israel with as many Jews as they could manage.


So, when we look at this history, I believe we gain a fresh perspective about the Israeli organized genocide that is unfolding in the Gaza Strip today. The Zionist Israeli government has always been a repressive political force.


There is a clear solution to the crisis in the Middle East. This is to give all the Palestinians living in the occupied territories equal rights to Israeli citizens. The core policy of the Zionists movement and the Israeli government has been to deny Palestinians equal rights.


The Zionists argue that anyone who protests against the Israeli organized genocide in Gaza are anti-Semitic. That argument can be effectively answered with the question; Why not give Palestinians the same rights as Israeli citizens?


Tony Greenstein has given us a thorough unvarnished history of Zionism that puts the current Israeli organized genocide into a clear perspective.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Women and the Liberation of Humanity

 


They played a crucial part in every

human advance in the history of the world.

Yet, the media routinely portrays them

as sexual objects, who need the protection of men.


They have given birth to every

human being in the history of the world,

Yet politicians argue that they should not

have the right to decide if and when to become mothers.


Their inner beauty has inspired

humanity all over the world.

Yet, advertisers invest billions of dollars

in an attempt to make women feel insecure about their appearance.


Yes, corporations are driven to take

trillions of dollars from women

who purchase jewelry, cosmetics, mascara,

and extravagantly expensive clothing.


For all their many contributions,

the emotional and physical abuse of women

is a continuing fact of life

in the world today.


So, while women only receive

70% of the wages of men,

the most affluent people living in the world,

have more money than they could use in 100 lifetimes.


Then, there are governments that argue

that we need to go to war

and destroy entire nations,

so they can pretend to defend democracy in the world.


Some of those who make these arguments

happen to be women.

Yes, there are affluent women in the government,

and on the boards of corporations.


So, now you might have an idea why there are many women

who don’t like this situation.

Now you might understand why   

there are women dedicated to changing this relationship.


There was Mother Jones

who organized the movement

to end child labor

for all time.


There was Ida Wells,

who organized to stop the murder

or lynching of people

who happened to have a dark skin color.


There was Celia Sanchez

who helped organize the Cuban Revolution,

so all the Cuban people will have their own government,

with the right to education and health care.


Yes, women represent a potentially

explosive force in the world today.

Sooner or later women will unleash that power,

and the world will learn the true beauty of half of the human race.


Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Why is the genocide unfolding against the Palestinian people?

 


By Steve Halpern


The scale of the atrocities committed by the Israeli so-called Defense Force since October 7 took me by surprise. Even people who have studied the Middle East for many years were taken aback by what has been happening. 


In the past the IDF launched raids murdering thousands of Palestinians and bombed entire neighborhoods. Today’s atrocities take this genocide to another unimaginably horrendous level.


First Israel informed the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in the north of the Gaza Strip to leave. Then they announced that all supplies of food, water, and fuel would end. Then there were the bombings of hospitals and the photos of babies taken off of incubators. Now the IDF is threatening to invade Rafa in the South where over one million Palestinian refugees moved to avoid the genocide. The IDF murdered 29,000 Palestinians and 70% of those are women and children. 


I live in the United States and am familiar with horrendous expressions of racism. I’m also aware of the vicious racist expressions in years of Jim Crow in this country and the racism in apartheid South Africa. 


When the Nazis held power in Germany, they worked to keep the holocaust a secret from most people in Germany. Because the Nazis controlled the press, their secretive methods were highly effective.


However, in Israel today a large majority of the population favors either a mass murder of Palestinians or a total removal of Palestinians from their homeland. This racist sentiment has been echoed by thousands in this country who argue for “No ceasefire.” The United States government has joined the chorus of genocide supporters by increasing aid to Israel to $14 billion. With all the vicious racism in the world, I haven’t seen this level of hatred in my lifetime. 


Millions of working people have been protesting these atrocities all over the world from Asia, to Africa, to Europe, to North and South America. The South African government charged Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice. However, with all these protests, the genocide continues. The question I want to explore is, How and why was this possible?


I agree with those who label Israel as a colonial-settler state. This means Israeli politics are similar to the repressive politics of the apartheid government in South Africa and the British policies in Ireland. While this is a compelling argument, I still question what was the driving force behind the vicious racism in those countries?


What is capitalism?


Supporters of the capitalist system look at the tremendous productive capacity of the system. Then there are those who argue that little, if anything, was gained by the revolution of the thirteen colonies that freed this part of the world from British colonialism. 


Clearly those who are critical of the revolution have evidence to support their argument. After the Revolution there was chattel slavery and genocide against Native Americans. Then veterans of the Revolution protested the conditions of starvation they faced in Shay’s Rebellion. The revolutionary government of the United States ordered the military to crush that rebellion. So, we can point to many atrocities by the government of this country after the revolution.


However, the settlers in the thirteen colonies could not have imagined the world we are living in today. In the 1700s most people who lived in this part of the world were farmers who lived off the land. They had no indoor plumbing or electricity. They relied on fire for their light and warmth.


Today, the large majority of the people in this country have access to indoor running water, electricity, cell phones, washing machines, dryers, and automobiles, as well as education and health care. These advances didn’t just come about because of inventions by smart people. There were smart people in the feudal epoch, but there was very little technological innovation in those years.


An absolute requirement of capitalism is economic growth. Without growth there are no profits, and the core value of the system is the drive to maximize profits. 


However, in order to have this tremendous growth, capitalists are routinely driven to cut their costs. This is the fundamental contradiction of the system. 


Because of this growth, capitalism spread its tentacles from Britain to every corner of the globe. As the system grew, capitalists began to understand that they needed stability in a profoundly unstable world. 


So, while the capitalists need workers for their profits, they only need to pay them the bare minimum so workers will return to their jobs every day. This conflict between the needs of the working class of the world and the drive to maximize profits is the source of the problem we face. 


The Frist and Second World Wars were about which capitalist power would control the world. About eighty million people died in those wars. 


Before the Second World War was over, the United States government invited representatives of 44 nations to a meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. There, representatives of the capitalists of this country informed the world that the United States would be the new super-power and the international currency would be the dollar.


Then the United States showed the world what would happen to nations that went against the dictates of the capitalist forces in this country. They firebombed Dresden, Germany as well as 67 of Japan’s largest cities. Then the U.S. Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the Second World War the United States went to war against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 


Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the central leader of the Russian Revolution. Lenin argued that “Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.” In other words, the political and economic dominance of the United States against the nations of the world wasn’t because of a mistake or a lack of sensitivity. No U.S. imperialist domination is the essence of what capitalism in this country is.


Lenin also argued against the idea that there is any kind of meaningful democracy where capitalism rules. He argued that the state was invented as a “special repressive force” to rob the working class of the wealth we produce. 


Reading these words, someone might ask a legitimate question. If capitalism is a repressive force, then why haven’t there been more anti-capitalist revolutions in the world?


Because capitalism continually grows, and the labor movement learned how to organize, the working class of many nations has experienced a dramatic improvement in the standard of living. Revolutions aren’t easy. For there to be a revolution, masses of people need to develop an iron will to do what is necessary to put in place a new government that has completely different priorities. 


So, now we can explore the history of the Middle East to begin to see why the unimaginable horror faced by the Palestinian people is unfolding today.


A short history of the Middle East


1979


We might consider what the Middle East looked like before the year 1979.


Israel was only one of the allies the United States had in the region. 


In 1953, the U.S. government organized to replace the elected President of Iran Mohammed Mosaddeq with the Shah of Iran. The Shah was a staunch ally of the United States and maintained his rule with vicious repression.


Then there was Saddam Hussein who was also an ally of the U.S. 


In Egypt Anwar El-Sadat was the President. Sadat signed an agreement with Israel known as the Camp David Accords. That agreement cemented Egyptian support for the state of Israel. After the assassination of Sadat, Hosni Mubarak took power and continued the Egyptian support of Israel. 


Then came the Iranian Revolution. We might consider, as I argued, that revolutions aren’t easy. Ruling powers have tremendous advantages. They control the armed forces, the courts, the news media, and the educational system. They also have enormous financial resources that can be used to compromise revolutionary movements. 


The Shah used his secret police known as the SAVAK to arrest, torture, or murder many who spoke critically of the government. One reason why religious clerics became leaders of the revolution was because the mosque was the only safe place where people could express themselves.


Faced with all those obstacles, masses of Iranian people risked their lives to do what was necessary to overthrow the rule of the Shah. People who demonstrated in the streets faced helicopters with soldiers who fired down on them with machine guns. 


After the Revolution, the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein felt threatened by the change in the political climate. He understood that the Iranian revolution could reverberate in Iraq and challenge his systematically repressive government. 


The United States government didn’t like the fact that their hand-picked ruler in Iran had been overthrown. So, the governments of Iraq and the United States joined together and went to war against Iran. Over one-million people died as a result of that war. However, the Iranian government remained in power.


Although the Iraqi war against Iran failed to overthrow the government, that war had a horrendous effect on Iran. After the Revolution there was a flowering of Iranian culture. There were several political currents that openly argued for their perspective. 


The war initiated by Iraq prompted the Iranian government to restrict all decent in an effort to defend the country. Today the religious clerics who rule Iran have carried out highly repressive measures against women and restrict all political decent. 


At this point Saddam Hussein was under tremendous pressure. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers died in the war and the nation was in deep debt because of the financial cost of the war. The war against Iran clearly was of no benefit to Iraq. Iraq had enormous loans that needed to be paid to Kuwait. Hussein responded to this crisis by invading Kuwait. 


Eventually the United States government didn’t like this change in the relationship of forces in the region. They went to war against Iraq and removed the government of Saddam Hussein from power. So, at this point the United States lost two of its allies in the region. These were the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. 


Then there were the uprisings known as the Arab Spring that erupted throughout the Arabic world. Those uprisings forced Hosni Mubarak out of power. 


With the removal of allies from the seats of power in the Middle East, the region became much more unstable. We see this when we look at the overall economy of the Arabic and Iranian world.


Most of the oil in the world comes from the Arabic and Iranian world. We all need transportation to travel to where we work. So, no corporation can generate profits without access to a continuous flow of oil.


The world is also becoming increasingly dependent on Asia for the commodities we use. The Suez Canal connects Asia to Europe which is one of the economic centers of the world. For these reasons the Middle East is central to international capitalist interests. 


Most of the 400 million people who live in Arabic and Iranian speaking countries do not benefit from this relationship. This contradiction is at the core of the problems of the Middle East.


So, in the 1980s and 1990s three organizations emerged that are in the news today. These are Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.


These are mass-based organizations but have limited governing power. These organizations came about in war zones. The people of Gaza have experienced war since 1948. The people of Lebanon were occupied by Israel for many years. The people of Yemen had been victims of vicious Saudi Arabian military attacks. 


These three organizations are religious in character. So now we can ask the question, why don’t these mass organizations have the power of a government in a sovereign nation?


Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis provided social services in areas where the government was ineffective. Clearly, Israel and the governments of the Middle East didn’t want these organizations to have the power of a government in a sovereign nation. That would only increase the pressure of the governments of the region to make meaningful change. 


So now we can begin to understand why the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu gave support to Hamas. Clearly Netanyahu didn’t want the Israeli military to be the police force of the Gaza Strip. That kind of occupation would only demoralize soldiers in the Israeli armed forces. 


So, Netanyahu relied on Hamas to police Gaza. However, Hamas also had to deal with the legitimate Palestinian demands for genuine liberation. This is a fundamental problem for Hamas. There is no way Hamas can police Gaza and promote genuine Palestinian liberation at the same time. In my opinion, this problem caused Hamas leaders to commit horrendous crimes on October 7. So, what would genuine liberation mean for Palestinian people?


In my opinion, the place to start in answering that question is with the contrast between the rights Palestinians have in the United States versus the lack of rights Palestinians have in the occupied territories. 


In the United States Palestinians have the right to own a home anywhere in this country. Zionist militias forced about 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948. Today Israeli settlers live in homes in the West Bank. This is an occupied territory, and those settlers live in illegal housing.


Palestinians living in this country have the right to right to travel everywhere. There are many restrictions on Palestinian travel. In the past, Palestinians might need to wait hours at Israeli check points in order to go to their jobs in Israel. Today, the Palestinian people are effectively in a lock down where they risk their lives in any attempt to travel.


In this country Palestinians have the right to vote in national elections. Only the Palestinians who live in Israel have that right. Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories aren’t allowed to vote in the Israeli elections. 


Imagine for a moment that you are a college graduate who lived in the Gaza Strip before October 7. In all probability you would not have access to a job. Without a job, supporting a family would be an impossibility. You would not have adequate access to food or clean water. You had friends, relatives, or neighbors who had been injured, or murdered by the Israeli Defense Force. Many of the people you know would have served time in Israeli prisons. Yet you have absolutely no control over the government that enforced these conditions.


Those people who support the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people routinely ignore these basic facts. Their priority is the destruction of Hamas. They ignore the routine policy of the Israeli government that denies Palestinians basic human rights. While I in no way support Hamas, the genocide carried out today by the IDF can only exacerbate the problems of the region.


Clearly today we need to demand Ceasefire Now. However, the only way for there to begin to be peace in the Middle East is when Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.


The response of the United States government


Immediately after the October 7 Hamas organized raid, President Biden went to Israel. He told Netanyahu that he has his back. He also ordered warships into the region. Then he advanced legislation to increase funding to Israel to $14 billion. He did all of this while 44 million people in the United States do not have enough food to eat. Nations all over the world have demanded that Israel ceasefire now. So, why would the U.S. government support the genocidal policies of the IDF?


As I’ve mentioned, for various reasons the Middle East is critical to capitalist interests. When we look at the history, the governments of this region have become more and more unstable. Since Israel is one of the only stable governments that supports U.S. capitalist interests. These are the reasons why the government in this country makes aid to Israel their top priority.


The October 7 raid is evidence that Israel is incapable of defending capitalist interests alone. Hezbollah threatens Israel from the north. The Houthis threaten access to the Suez Canal. The United States Navy has already engaged in bombing missions against the Houthis as well as Syria. Then there is the possibility of war with Iran, a nation of close to 90 million people.


The United States capitalist domination of the world has been in decline for about 50 years. That decline is unfolding at the same time as the Middle East is becoming more and more unstable.


After the end of Jim Crow discrimination in the United States the political economy of the world stabilized. After the end of apartheid in South Africa the capitalist system stabilized. However, the current genocide that is unfolding in the Middle East signals that the instability of that region will continue indefinitely


So, Israel and the United States are advancing genocidal polices in an attempt to bring back the days of relative stability in the Middle East. That is an impossible dream.  


Benjamin Netanyahu thinks he has a plan for the Gaza Strip after there is an end to the genocide. We might consider that the Israeli response to the October 7 Hamas organized raid reflected the culmination of 76 years of the Israeli government’s policies to deny Palestinians basic human rights. 


The international protests demanding ceasefire now have been impressive. This reflects the fact that working people on every continent are thinking about international solidarity. I’m 71 years old and don’t recall a time when there has been this kind of massive response all over the world. 


As Israeli acts of genocide intensify, the demonstrations protesting the genocide are not going away. It is difficult to imagine a President of the United States having a more horrific policy with respect to the Israeli genocide than Joe Biden. 


No matter who is the next president, that president will have to deal with massive demonstrations that will protest U.S. support for genocide. 


There will be more demonstrations demanding that Black people have the right to walk the streets without being stopped and frisked or murdered, or sent to prison by the police. 


There will be more demonstrations demanding that women have the absolute right to control if and when they become mothers. 


There will be more demonstrations demanding and end to the destruction of the environment. 


There will be more demonstrations demanding that 12 million immigrants living in this country have full citizenship rights.


In my opinion, all these demonstrations are demanding that human needs and human dignity are more important than the drive to maximize corporate profits.