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.
