A New Palestine

By Steven Halpern

This is a work of fiction as well as science fiction. I imagined a new nation of Palestine the day after the state of Israel is no more. There is a Liberation Army that came from the imaginary nation of La Lucha Continua (The struggle continues.) This army had the ability to totally disarm the Israeli Defense Force, as well as the armed forces of the United States. The Liberation Army also disarmed all the nuclear weapons of the world.

There is a new provisional government of the nation that will now be called Palestine. 100 of the leading members of the former Israeli government and military were arrested. The Provisional government released the 10,000 Palestinians who had been living in Israeli jails. 

The new government evicted all Israelis who live in the illegal settlements of the West Bank and Jerusalem. They have also evicted many residents of Israeli housing built before the year 1948. 

This story starts with a press conference that announces the establishment of the new Provisional Palestinian government. 

Mitchell Bernstein—A representative of the new Provisional Palestinian Government—"Today marks the first day in a new history of the Middle East. I want to thank all the representatives of the international news media for attending this conference. 

“The first question you might ask is: Why did the nation of La Lucha Continua organize to put in place a new provisional government in the nation that used to be called Israel?

“The Jewish people of Europe and the United States experienced a long history of vicious discrimination. The German Nazi government murdered about 40% of all Jews in the world. For the most part, that hostility towards the Jewish people was not the case in the nation called Palestine.

“So, many Jewish people gravitated to the idea of setting up a homeland in the nation that was then called Palestine. However, at that time, the large majority of land was the homeland the Palestinian people.

“This was the contradiction that started the problem we are rectifying today. The Jews who immigrated to Palestine called themselves Zionists. Instead of attempting to live with the Palestinians, they organized to remove them from their homeland.

“Terrorist organizations known as the Hagenah, the Stern Gang, and the Irgun murdered thousands of Palestinians and destroyed their homes. 700,000 Palestinians escaped this terror and the Israeli government never compensated them for their loss. Before 1948 about 80,000 Palestinians lived in the Gaza Strip. Because of the forced emigration from their homes, today about 2.3 million Palestinians live in Gaza.

“Then in 1967, Israel was not satisfied with the land they stole, so they occupied the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. They never gave the Palestinians who lived in these areas citizenship rights in Israel. To the contrary, the United Nations sent in relief agencies because the residents of the occupied territories had no nation they could call their own. 

“About 700,000 Israelis moved into the West Bank and Jerusalem. These Israelis had all kinds of rights that the government routinely denied Palestinians. Just to travel to their former homeland, Palestinians needed to wait at checkpoints while Israeli soldiers routinely humiliated them. 

“In the Gaza Strip, about 90% of the population lacked employment or clean water. The majority didn’t even have enough food to eat.

“Palestinians endured those conditions for almost twenty years. Then the inevitable explosion happened. The organization Hamas carried out a raid that murdered nearly 1,200 people. Close to 400 of those were soldiers in the Israeli military. 

“While we might see how this explosion was inevitable, those who carried out this raid committed horrendous crimes. The people of La Lucha Continua condemn those crimes in the strongest terms.

“The Israeli government responded by murdering over 24,000 people. They denied 2.3 million residents of Gaza food, water, health care, and shelter. The Israeli armed forces destroyed most of the homes in Gaza. The South African government documented all of this vicious destruction before the World Court of Justice.

“So, when we look at these facts, there is one inescapable conclusion. The state of Israel was never a legitimate homeland for the Jewish people. Israel never provided a safe haven for Jews. The routine actions of the Israeli government only made the Jewish and Palestinian people more vulnerable to violence.

“Now, you might ask another question. Why did the Liberation Army violate international law and overthrow the Israeli government?

“Over a period of 75 years Israel violated all kinds of international laws. They murdered, brutalized, and stole the homes of Palestinians. They illegally occupied the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Yet the governments of the world did nothing to enforce the international law.

“So, the government of La Lucha Continua decided to enforce the international law that no one else was enforcing. Now you might argue that two wrongs do not make one right.

“The world will see that by removing the Israeli government from power we will have an enduring peace in the Middle East. Jews and Palestinians will now have a nation where they will all be treated with dignity and not have to worry about their security. The world can then judge if our removal of the Israeli government was justified. 

“Now there is one more question that I will deal with. What will happen to the Jewish and Palestinian people?

“The Jewish citizens of the former state of Israel will need to apply to the Provisional Government in order to gain employment. We will have good jobs for anyone who accepts the new Palestinian government. 

“For those who do not choose not apply for work, they will be provided with top quality food, clothing, health care, housing, and education. We might consider that the former Israeli government routinely denied residents of Gaza all these things.

“The former Israeli residents of the occupied territories of the West Bank, and Jerusalem lived in illegally occupied territories. Those residents have been evicted from their illegal residences. The residents who lived in housing built before the year 1948 in the former nation of Israel have also been evicted from the homes they illegally occupied. 

“Since those former residents lived in illegal housing, they were only allowed to take with them the clothes they were wearing. If those former residents want their personal effects, they will need to ask, in writing, the Palestinians who are moving in for their things. So, those residents who have been evicted from their homes are making way for the Palestinians who are moving in. 

“Today the office buildings in Palestine no longer contribute to the functioning of the Palestinian economy. So those office buildings have been converted into apartments where the former residents of the occupied territories can live. 

“The Israeli armed forces destroyed about 85% of the homes in Gaza. So, the residents of Gaza will now have the right to move into the homes that had been illegally occupied.

“The Palestinians living in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip will now, for the first time, have their own government in a sovereign nation. That nation will be able to freely trade with the nations of the world. The Liberation Army’s top priority will be to rebuild the homes in Gaza that the Israeli armed forces destroyed. 

“We expect that these measures will create an environment where the Israeli hostages held by Hamas will be immediately released. Clearly those hostages could have been released long ago had the Israeli government been serious in their negotiations with Palestinians.

“Approximately 10,000 Palestinians who were held in the horrendous Israeli jails have all been released. The 100 top Israeli government and military officials were arrested. In the next few weeks, they will go on trial. Palestinians from Gaza will serve as their jurors. The former Israeli government and military officials will need to beg Palestinians for mercy, and I don’t envy them in that endeavor. 

“If those officials are convicted, they might serve time in prison for the rest of their lives. No one will receive the death sentence.”   

      

One year later

As time went on, the Liberation Army maintained control of the Provisional Government. Although there was growing acceptance of the transformation, the reality continued to be too volatile for them to leave. 

On the one hand, Palestinians needed to grieve for the thousands the Israeli armed forces murdered. They also needed to recover from the seventy-five years of Israeli organized genocide. This was a long and painful process. 

But there was another side to this story. The Palestinian people all over the world experienced a new sense of rebirth. Now they had their own nation where they are being treated with the human dignity they deserve. This new reality has made it a bit easier to deal with the horrendous loss and brutalization of their people.

Part of this process were the trials of the 100 government and military officials in the former state of Israel. Those former officials needed to face the genocidal practices they diligently organized. Their attempts to defend that horror by saying they were only fighting terrorism appeared to be criminally insane. The public opinion of the world began to see that these officials were some of the worst criminals humanity has ever seen. 

For the citizens of the former state of Israel, they had a different experience. In the past, they lived in an environment where the press, the government, and the military rationalized the genocide and mass murder of Palestinians. For the past year, they have experienced a completely different reality.

The current news media and educational system has presented the reality of the horrors Palestinians experienced over the past 75 years. Most of the former citizens of Israel dealt with this new reality with the five stages of grief. These are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

At first the former Israelis could not believe what happened. Then they began to realize that the only way to escape the new reality would be to leave the country. Most former Israelis elected to stay.

Then, when they realized that the new state of affairs would not change, they became angry and enraged. In the past, the Israeli government used the anger of the people as a justification to murder and brutalize Palestinians. Those days are now over. Eventually the former Israelis began to understand that the new Provisional Government would remain until there was an environment that would accept full equality of Jews and Palestinians.

Then the former Israelis attempted to bargain with the government in order to reestablish some of the apartheid-like measures they enforced in the past. They wanted to return to homes they occupied in the illegal settlements. 

While the new government supported their human rights, they did not allow the former residents of the illegally occupied territories to return to homes where they once lived. Palestinians now lived in those homes.

Then the former Israeli citizens experienced depression knowing that their former way of life was over. The government no longer viewed Palestinians as “animals” or less than human. Now the government viewed Palestinians with the human dignity they deserve.

After millions of the former Israelis experienced these emotions, they finally accepted the new government and applied for employment in the new nation. The former Israelis who began working at those jobs discovered that their worst nightmare of the past, became a pleasant experience.

The former Israelis began to see how a rational economy worked. They participated in the sustained effort of working to end poverty throughout the Middle East. The people of the region began to appreciate those efforts in spite of the horrors of the past.

Ava Cohen asks for her personal things

Ava Cohen was one of the Israeli residents who was evicted from the home she illegally occupied in the West Bank. Dalia Elamin is the Palestinian who lives in that home today.

Ava went through the five stages of grief that most of the former Israelis experienced. She now works as a nurse in a hospital and has made friends with her Palestinian coworkers, but she has a problem. 

Because she once occupied illegal housing, all her personal belongings now are the property of Dalia Elamin. In order to recover those things, that include photos of her family, she now needs to ask Elamin for permission to have those items returned.

So, Ava sent Dalia a letter where she apologized for the horrors the former Israeli government carried out against Palestinians. She asked that Dalia return her personal belongings.

Dalia Elamin read that letter and was touched by this initiative. However, Elamin didn’t feel that this letter was a sufficient apology for the horrors Palestinians experienced over a period of 75 years. So, she contacted the provisional government and said that if Ava Cohen wants her personal effects, she could meet with Elamin and ask for them in person.

The Provisional Government representative was impressed by this note and felt that the kind of meeting Dalia asked for might work to ease the tensions between Palestinians and the former Israelis. So, the government arranged a meeting and asked if Ava and Dalia would allow that meeting to be televised. They both agreed to this.

Ava Cohen and Dalia Elamin meet

Pepita Lopez was the Provisional Government representative who moderated this meeting. 

“My name is Pepita Lopez and I will be moderating this meeting. I want to thank both Ava Cohen and Dalia Elamin for agreeing to have this meeting and allowing it to be televised. As you both know, the Provisional Government has been working to establish a genuinely democratic Palestine that respects the human dignity of everyone who lives here. In doing this, we need to work out the feelings of hostility that people have had for one another in the past. Perhaps this meeting will help in advancing that process.

“So, Ava Cohen you sent a letter to Dalia asking for your personal effects. In that letter you apologized for the horrors Israel inflicted on Palestinians in the past. 

“Dalia Elamin you were touched by that letter but felt it was an inadequate letter of apology. Perhaps now you can explain why you feel that way.”

Elamin—"Thank you Pepita. In truth it is difficult for me to imagine the horrors my people experienced. However, in order to deal with those horrors, I believe they need to be faced.

“Back in 1948, Israeli terrorist gangs murdered, raped, and stole the land of the Palestinian people. The Israelis manufactured flame-throwers that burned Palestinian homes to the ground. Oftentimes Palestinians were living in the homes the terrorist burned down.

“Then, in 2023 the Zionists used phosphorous bombs that burned Palestinians to death. In all, they massacred over 24,000 human beings. The large majority were women and children.  They denied our people food, water, fuel, and health care. They held 10,000 Palestinians under horrendous conditions in prisons. They even tortured Palestinian children who were prisoners.

“I can appreciate why Ava Cohen wants her personal belongings. The mementos of our past are important. However, before the Liberation Army removed the Israeli government from power, my history was an unimaginable horror story. However, in order to apologize for what happened, I think we need to have an unvarnished view of what happened.”

Ava Cohen—“Dalia, thank you for meeting with me. Clearly, I would like to have my personal effects returned. Over the past year, I’ve discovered things about the Israeli government I once supported that I now find reprehensible. 

“In the past, everyone I knew thought about how Jewish people needed a homeland. This was because of the unimaginable horrors Jews experienced in the world. The German Nazis murdered about 40% of the Jews in the world. In Eastern Europe racist gangs raided Jewish communities and murdered thousands. That history convinced many Jewish people that we needed a homeland.

“I didn’t know of anyone in the Jewish community who argued for equal rights for Palestinians in the past. So, we felt that people like yourself Dalia were our enemies. Now we are both sitting here, and I see that you are not my enemy. You are someone who is considering returning my things that I value very much.” 

Elamin—"Ava, I see that you are making an effort to apologize for what happened in the past. My problem is that I don’t see that you fully understand the full extent of the destruction carried out by the government you supported.

“You talk about how the Jewish people needed a homeland because of the anti-Semitism and the holocaust. Don’t all people need a homeland? How did the desire for a homeland rationalize the genocide Israel carried out against Palestinians for 75 years? I think these are questions you need to consider.”

Cohen—"Dalia, as you might imagine this is difficult for me. Now I have a good job as a nurse. Every day there is fresh food and I have a nice place to live. I’ve also made friends with Palestinians. This reality, for me was unthinkable before the Provisional Government took power. This reality gradually has convinced me that the beliefs I once had that supported the Israeli government were nothing more than a collection of lies.

“Clearly, I would like my personal effects returned. However, I now see that what is more important is the future of the Palestinian nation we now live in. I also see how the place that I once called my home was nothing more than an illegal settlement. So, given the horrors that Palestinians endured for many years in the past, I understand why you might want to prevent me from having my personal things.”

Elamin—"Thank you Ava. Now I see how you are making a genuine attempt to apologize for the past. Clearly no apology can make up for the horrors Palestinians experienced for 75 years. But there is no way anyone can change the past. 

“So, these are your things. I hope they bring some joy to your life. I only ask that when you look at these things that you understand that it was a Palestinian woman who allowed you access to what you once considered to be your own.”  

There are no legitimate strategic goals in the genocide against Palestinians

 

By Steven Halpern

This past week, the South African government charged Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice. The facts presented by the lawyers representing South Africa made a meticulous case that underscore the charge of Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. Several nations voiced their support of this action by South Africa. 

These facts include the murder of over 23,000 Palestinians. The Israeli so-called Defense Force has denied 2.3 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip food, clean water, fuel, and health care. The IDF destroyed about 85 % of the buildings in the Gaza Strip. The South African lawyers also presented numerous recordings of Israeli government and military officials who argued for the mass murder of Palestinians.

Johnathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. This is what he has to say about the charge of genocide against the Israeli government in a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer (1-12-2023). “No. A thousand times no. Saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is like saying the Allies committed it in Dresden” (Germany in the Second World War). 

Zimmerman defends his argument saying that there were about 25,000 deaths in the Allied firebombing of Dresden. Zimmerman accepts the fact that Israeli government officials have made hurtful statements, as well as falsely charging all Palestinians with the October 7 attack. However, he argues that the destruction in Dresden and Gaza were “strategic” and should not be viewed as genocide. 

My dictionary definition of the word strategy is: “A plan of action designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” 

So, the question that I ask about Zimmerman’s argument is: What were the overall aims of the military destruction of both Dresden and Gaza?

The Israeli goal is occupation and not defense

Many critics of the movement demanding “Ceasefire Now” object to the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Today the Likud Party that rules Israel stated in its founding document that it supports the idea of Israeli control of all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. 

As a result of the 1967 war, Israel took control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. So, for about 57 years the residents of these occupied territories do not have their own government, and Israel denies them Israeli citizenship. 

As a result, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRA) sent aid to the occupied territories. In the recent genocide, the IDF has murdered UNRA workers. Since the United States government dominates UNRA and is an ardent supporter of Israel, President Biden has refused to use his power to stop this genocide. 

If the occupied territories were an independent nation, that nation would be in control of its economy, land, access to the sea, and trade with the world. Israel denies residents of the occupied territories these basic rights but insists that they have democratic values.

These were some of the conditions experienced by Palestinians living in Gaza before October 7. About 90% of the population did not have jobs or access to clean water. Food scarcity was a routine problem for about 60% of the population. Every few years, the Israeli Air Force carried out bombing campaigns that murdered or injured thousands of Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians served time in Israeli jails.

We can put this reality in the context of the actions of the Israeli government since 1948 when they organized to remove about 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland. When we look at this reality, the following conclusion becomes crystal clear. The strategic goal of Israel in the current genocide isn’t about the defense of Israel. This genocide is part of a 76-year campaign to deny Palestinians of basic human rights, or to remove them from their homeland altogether.   

What were the First and Second World Wars about?

Before the First World War, Britain was the world’s superpower, but was in a period of decline. The United States and Germany both were emerging as new rivals to British power. Turkey supported Germany and after the First World War Palestine became a British colony. 

In the year 1944 the United States government organized a meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Representatives of forty-four nations attended. 

At that meeting, the United States informed those gathered that the power brokers of this country would dominate the politics and economics of the world. The dollar would replace the pound sterling as the new international currency. British domination of the world was over, and the United States would be the new superpower.

Then the United States military demonstrated to the world what would happen to any nation that challenged its rule. The United States Air Force firebombed Dresden and large sections of 67 Japanese cities. Then, the Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The people of Korea and Vietnam resisted puppet regimes the United States government installed in their countries. The U.S. military responded by murdering millions of people in those nations. In the process, the Air Force carried out bombing campaigns that destroyed much of those nations. The U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay argued that he was prepared to “bomb Vietnam back into the stone age.”

When we look at this history, I believe that Zimmerman’s argument begins to come apart. The Allied firebombing of Dresden was not about freeing the world from German fascism. That firebombing as well as the massive bombing campaigns against Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were about making and maintaining the United States as the world’s superpower.

Yes, but wasn’t the United States better than Nazi Germany?

My father wanted to serve in the United States military during the Second World War. He couldn’t serve because of a medical condition. However, my father was an ardent defender of the U.S. military because he was Jewish, and he was understandably enraged by the Nazi holocaust. The six million Jews murdered by the Nazis reflected about one-third of the international Jewish population.

For Israel to commit that level of horror, they would need to murder about two million Palestinians. Hopefully, this will not happen, but we do not know of the eventual outcome of the current genocide. So, an argument can be made that the current genocide isn’t as horrendous as the holocaust organized by the Nazis.

My question is: Does that really matter?

In order to answer that question, we need to ask: Why are these genocides happening over and over again? 

For me, the answers to these questions begin with a basic understanding of the political economic system known as capitalism. For various reasons the capitalist system needs to continually grow. As a result, we see an ever-increasing ocean of commodities. Corporations pay about $200 billion every year in advertising so no opportunity will be missed in their drive to increase sales. This drive to routinely increase production demands that capitalists and their government representatives dominate the economies of the entire world.

However, this growth is paid for with the corporate drive to routinely cut costs. So, corporations cut costs with automation and by opening factories where workers have salaries of about two dollars per day. So, if this is the case, then how do capitalists maintain their power? Why haven’t there been more revolutions all over the world? 

Because capitalism dominates the world, there is a tremendous amount of surplus. So, in the United States there are about 34 million people who have about $1.2 million in assets. At the same time, there are about 44 million people who don’t have enough food to eat. Saying that, about 85% of the population has enough food. 

The population of Israel is just over nine million, with about two million Palestinians and immigrants. Then there are about five or six million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. So, the standard of living for Palestinians living in the occupied territories is vastly different from the standard of living of citizens of Israel. While all discrimination is reprehensible, the discrimination against Palestinians is significantly worse than the most horrendous forms of discrimination in the United States or the former apartheid state of South Africa. 

So, the driving force of discrimination in Israel and the rest of the world comes from the natural functioning of the capitalist system. As capitalism goes into its current state of decline, discrimination becomes more and more vicious. 

This not only explains why Israel is carrying out this genocide, it also explain why so many people from all over the world see the struggle of the Palestinians as a part of an international struggle for human rights and human dignity. 

Why do we see genocide erupting over and over again?

 

By Steven Halpern

Today the world is witnessing a genocide organized by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people. What is happening is unimaginable. The so-called Israeli Defense Force has murdered over 20,000 human beings. The large majority are women and children. The Israeli government has instituted a policy of denying the residents of the Gaza Strip adequate supplies of food, clean water, health care, and shelter. The United Nations reported that about half of the population of 2.3 million in Gaza are now starving. 

One of the weapons the IDF uses is white phosphorous bombs supplied by the United States government. These bombs burn their victims to death or cause lung damage due to of smoke inhalation. 

In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Elan Pappe reported that one of the first commodities manufactured by the state of Israel were flame throwers. The former Zionist forces called themselves the Hagenah. In 1948 the Hagenah used those flame throwers along with bull dowsers, and explosives to destroy Palestinian homes. Oftentimes there were people living in those homes while the Hagenah was destroying them. In all, the Hagenah forced about 700,000 Palestinians to leave their homes in 1948. That was how Israel became a nation.

As horrendous as these criminal acts are, there is a long history of firebombing used by the armed forces of the United States. Why has the United States government been so determined to use deliberate force to subjugate people all over the world? 

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin argued in his pamphlet State and Revolution that the state was invented for capitalism as a “special instrument of repression.” In another pamphlet by Lenin, he argued that “Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.”

Positive aspects of capitalism mask the horror story

Lenin also understood that while capitalism was a highly repressive system, it was also a significant advance over feudalism. Royal families ruled the feudal societies. Religious clerics anointed those rulers based on what they argued was the will of God.

In those years, most people were peasants who lived their entire lives on manors controlled by the lords. Then there were the craft guilds that were about small-scale production. The overwhelming majority of the population was illiterate. For the most part there were no educational or health care systems.

With capitalism, there were new priorities that centered on the continual drive for profits. Economic growth became an absolute necessity to insure relative stability. This begins to explain the profound change humanity experienced from the feudal epoch.

Today the commodities of food, clothing, cell phones, and automobiles are transported all over the world. With all their profound limitations, there are health care and educational systems. Perhaps billions of people work to provide these and other goods and services every day. All of this was unimaginable in the feudal epoch.

With all this growth, we need to ask a question. Where does the money come from to finance this growth? This is where we see the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist system. 

Capitalists are continually driven to cut their costs. At one time, the northeast of the United States was an industrial center of the world. From the 1940s to the early 1970s there was significant industrial growth in this country. Unions organized and forced employers to give up a part of their enormous profits. The civil rights and Black power movements also organized and Black people began to make significant gains.

Then, for various reasons, employers and banks decided to move factories to nations where wages might be $10 per day or less. Most replacement jobs in the United States had effectively lower wages and fewer benefits than the manufacturing jobs that left the country. 

We also see how employers routinely keep their expenses down by using discrimination. The average wages of Black people, Latinos, immigrants, Native Americans, and women are less than the average wages of white men. Protests against this discrimination have erupted throughout the history of this country. 

The long history of these protests is clear evidence of how the working class has a sense that we are the ones who create all wealth. This class consciousness did not exist in the feudal epoch. With this consciousness comes the will to demand a greater share of the profits. Ultimately workers begin to understand that since the working class produces all wealth, we need to have a government that makes a priority of human needs over profits.     

So, when we hear arguments that the United States is the greatest democracy the world has known, or that here there is liberty and justice for all, the reality tells another story. We might start this story with an order given by General George Washington in the year 1779.

The Sullivan Campaign

During the revolution of the thirteen colonies against British colonialism, most Native American nations supported the British. While the British didn’t have a very good record in support of Native American rights, most of the indigenous nations felt that they weren’t as horrendous as the revolutionaries. In other words, one of the reasons behind the revolution was to determine which people of European decent would control the land Native Americans lived on for thousands of years.

So, General George Washington gave the following orders to General John Sullivan in the war against the Iroquois.

“The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.”

So here Washington made his objectives clear. He wasn’t just about a military defeat of the Iroquois. Washington wanted a total destruction of their homeland. One method used to achieve this goal was to destroy Iroquois’ homes with fire.

The hot wars against Native Americans would continue for over 100 years and culminate in the massacre at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. 

Bretton Woods, New Hampshire

The First and Second World Wars cost the lives of about 80 million human beings. Today we can ask a question few people are interested in. Why didn’t the world use the enormous resources for those wars to eliminate poverty in the world? 

This wasn’t because politicians are stupid or insensitive. No, the answer has to do with Lenin’s statement that “Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.” The two world wars were about deciding what nation would replace Britain as the world’s superpower.

So, even before the Second World War was over, the United States invited representatives of 44 nations to a meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. There the United States made it clear that the power brokers in this country would head up the new superpower of the world.

Then, the United States gave the world an example of what might happen to nations that went against the demands of the new superpower. 

Flames Over Tokyo

In 1991 E. Bartlett Kerr wrote his book Flames Over Tokyo—The U.S. Army Air Forces’ Incendiary Campaign Against Japan 1944-1945. This book goes into the details of how the United States Air Force organized to burn large parts of 67 Japanese cities to the ground. Kerr showed how those 67 Japanese cities had similar populations as the 67 largest cities in the United States. The U.S. Air Force used phosphorous firebombs in this destruction. That six-month campaign took place before the Air Force dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The Air Force murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese by fire, smoke inhalation, or incineration by atomic bombs. Most of those deaths were of civilians. The commander of the Air Force bombing of Japan was Curtis LeMay. 

 The war against Korea

General LeMay was also the commander of the Air Force in the war against Korea. This is what he had to say about firebombing Korea. “We burned down every town in North and South Korea.”

The U.S. domination of the world declared at Bretton Woods didn’t last very long. In 1949 the Chinese people organized a revolution. This revolution protested over 100 years of humiliation by imperialist powers since the Opium Wars in the 1840s.

The United States government wanted to keep soldiers in Asia to battle against the Chinese revolutionary government. However, the soldiers in the military organized a Bring the troops home movement. They saw no reason to go to war against the Chinese. So, the U.S. government needed to bow to that demand.

Then, the U.S. government’s puppet Syngman Rhee became so unpopular in Korea that workers and farmers in the north and south organized to remove him from power.

Rhee had little support. The armed forces of the North had considerable experience in the war of independence against the Japanese. They clearly didn’t want Korea to be ruled by the U.S. puppet regime of Syngman Rhee. So, they invaded the south and met little resistance. 

The forces supporting Rhee only managed to hold on to a small part of the South of the nation known as Pusan. Then the United States organized a massive invasion of the country at Inchon. 

The revolutionary forces of China fought with the Koreans in their independence struggle against Japan. China joined in the war against the U.S. invasion and together with the armed forces in the Korea fought the United States to a stalemate. 

Vietnam

Curtis LeMay continued to be an Air Force General during the war against Vietnam. His remarks on that war followed his actions in the wars against Japan and Korea. This is what he had to say.

“My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they got to drawn in their horns and stop their aggression or we’re going to bomb them back into the stone age.”

Le May was well aware of the fact that Vietnam is located on the other side of the Pacific Ocean from the United States. While they posed no threat to this country, the U.S. government demanded their absolute obedience. He also was aware of President Eisenhower’s statement that Ho Chi Minh would have won an election in Vietnam by a margin of 90%. Yet LeMay also felt comfortable arguing that the Vietnamese communists were engaged in “aggression.” 

Le May wasn’t just talking about a massive bombing campaign. The U.S. Air Force used five million tons of bombs in Vietnam. This was twice the tonnage of bombs as they used in the Second World War. Of that amount, there were 400,000 tons of napalm and 19 million gallons of herbicide. The Air force dropped hundreds of thousands more bombs on Laos and Cambodia. 

President Johnson named his bombing campaign against Vietnam Rolling Thunder. President Nixon didn’t feel Johnson’s bombing campaign was sufficient, so he ordered the Air Force to carry out new bombings called Linebacker I and Linebacker II. 

However, the Vietnamese people resisted this unimaginable aggression. Aided with an international anti-war movement, the Vietnamese forced the U.S. armed forces to leave their country. 

The current genocide

On September 11, 2001, individual terrorists took control over passenger jet planes and crashed those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As a result, over 3,000 people lost their lives.

On that same day, the news media neglected to mention other events that had just as dire consequences. The United Nations estimates that every day, on average, 30,000 children die of preventable diseases. We might speculate that every day there might be 60,000 parents who mourn the deaths of all those children. These thousands of preventable deaths of children continue every day.

The United States government dealt with these events by going to war against Iraq and Afghanistan. They also continued their massive funding of the Israeli government that now is carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. 

Looking at this long history, I believe that Lenin understood what he was talking about when he argued that “Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.” The history of mass murder ordered or supported by the United States government wasn’t about stupidity, insensitivity, or denial of reality. No, those acts of genocide reflect the essence of who the power brokers in this country are.

The other side to this history has been the tenacious struggles aimed at resisting the horrors organized by the government and the capitalist forces they serve. When we look at the massive demonstrations now erupting in the streets demanding “Ceasefire Now,” we see how these struggles are continuing.

The current horror we see today in Gaza is also a reflection of how the international capitalist system is falling apart. As this crisis continues to unfold, workers living in the world will become more and more open to the idea of advancing a government that has completely different priorities. A government that makes human needs the priority over profits will ultimately be the only answer to the enormous problems we face today.