Israel and the War Against the Working Class of the World

Drawing by Kathe Kollwitz

By Steven Halpern

Recently, demonstrations erupted around the world protesting the criminal bombing by the Israeli government on the Palestinian people. While the Israeli government argues that they are defending the security of the citizens of that nation, the reality tells us a completely different story. 

When we look at this history, we see that the overall purpose of those wars was to seize more and more land where the Palestinian people live. When we look at the maps of where Palestinians lived before 1948, and where they live today, we see clear evidence to support this argument. In 1948, Palestinians lived in over 90% percent of the land that now is the nation of Israel and the occupied territories. Today, Palestinians are second class citizens in Israel and are restricted to tiny settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

However, when we look at the reality of the world, we see similar events unfolding. In a demonstration in Chicago, one supporter of the Palestinians argued that the Black community of Chicago is also an occupied territory. James Baldwin once argued that while the armed forces of this country occupied Vietnam, there was also an occupation of the Back community here. In fact, while the government waged war against Vietnam, they also sent the National Guard into Black communities where they murdered scores of residents.

A recent report on the news program Democracy Now played a tape recording of President Biden in his younger years. Biden argued that if Israel didn’t exist, this country would have had to “invent” a nation just like it. This argument makes it clear that the U.S. government support of Israel isn’t about making concessions to the Israeli lobby.

The facts are that the nation of Israel is located in the middle of the region that supplies oil to the entire world. Without a continuous flow of oil, I don’t believe there is a single corporation in the world that would be able to profit. Understanding this reality, we can see why about half of all U.S. aid to the world goes to the nation of Israel. Without that aid, it is questionable if the Israeli government would be able to sustain their economy that is centered on the military.

From what I understand, the per capita income of Israeli citizens is about $40,000, while the per capita income of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is about $3,000. In the United States, there is a progressive demand for a $15 per hour minimum wage. However, today the majority of the world’s population lives on $10 per day or less. Here, we see how governments of the world use extremely repressive measures to maintain the poverty of the world.   

So, when we look at this overall reality, we need to ask the question: What are the forces that drive governments around the world to pursue policies that can only be called brutally repressive? The answer to that question begins with an explanation of the reality of the political economic system known as capitalism. We can begin to see how capitalism works by looking at the routine and flagrant discrimination in the United States.

Discrimination and the drive to maximize profits

Capitalism is a political economic system that allows a tiny minority of the population to live in opulence, while hundreds of millions in the world do not have enough food to eat. So, we can ask the question: Why would the majority of the population accept this apparent insanity?

Part of the answer to this question has to do with the fact that people who have power work diligently to keep working people divided. We are divided with respect to race, sex, nationality, employment, and immigration status. Seeing all these divisions, we can speculate that if we all believed that our primary obstacle is the corporate drive to maximize profits, out struggles would be much easier.

So, while the government claims that this is a nation with “liberty and justice for all,” the history tells another story. This is a history of Native American genocide, chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, discrimination against women, mass incarceration, as well as vicious repression of immigrants.

In the city of Philadelphia, there are relatively affluent neighborhoods in the downtown area. Then, there are extremely less affluent areas consisting of African American and Latino neighborhoods in the north and west of the city. This overall reality has made Philadelphia the poorest of the large cities in this country. Yet, just outside the city, there is the township of Gladwyne, that is among the most affluent in the nation.    

The government invented rationalizations to justify these criminal policies, as well as this gross disparity in the standard of living. However, all those policies had one fundamental goal. They were all about creating an atmosphere where huge corporations were able to gouge out super-profits.

The demonstrations that erupted last summer around the world protesting murders by the police made a clear point. There is mass sentiment opposed to ruthless repression by the police. However, when we look at the repression in this country, we also see the bombing of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli armed forces. 

We also see the mass murder by the police in the nation of Brazil. Several years ago, in Nigeria, the military conducted a raid into the encampment where the musician Fela Kuti lived. In that raid the military murdered Kuti’s mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Fela Kuti’s alleged crime was that he wrote a song where he labelled the military forces in Nigeria “zombies.” 

So, we see how the extremely low wages of the world are maintained by governments that routinely use brutal methods in an attempt to stifle decent. However, we also see how at a certain point people rise up and demand fundamental change. This happened when an international movement mobilized to force the former apartheid government of South Africa to step aside. 

 How and why will things change?

Around the world, people are asking the question: What will it take to create a movement that will allow for the liberation of the Palestinian people?

I believe that part of the answer to that question is to recognize that the overwhelming majority of the world’s population consists of the working class, as well as farmers. We all would like to have lifetime rights to a decent place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, health care, and education. However, in order to move to a place where we all demand these things, I believe we need to recognize that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Young people are beginning to see that we need to become active in opposition to both Israeli genocide and police brutality. Ultimately, we need a political party that advances the interests of workers throughout the world. The recent mass demonstrations indicate that there is considerable sentiment for this kind of political party.

So, while the Democratic and Republican Parties argue for war, poverty, destruction of the environment, mass incarceration, and the drive to maximize corporate profits, we can have a completely different message.

We are the working class of the world. We live in every nation of the world. When the Israeli government bombs Palestinians in their homeland, they are bombing our sisters and brothers. When capitalist governments deport millions of immigrants, they are deporting our sisters and brothers. When the U.S. government sends millions into the concentration camps of this country, those are our sisters and brothers. Our lives are more important than their profits. When we have political party that has this perspective, then there will be a real potential to create an environment where the seemingly impossible becomes a reality.