As the world looks on in horror, the people of Gaza have now endured nearly two years of astonishing genocidal warfare. By conservative estimates, over 63,000 are dead. On August 22, UN experts declared that Gaza City and the surrounding area are officially experiencing a famine, a finding which is also certainly based on conservative estimates of malnutrition and the over 300 known deaths from starvation. Around 70% of all infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed, including 84% of healthcare facilities and 92% of housing. 

But all of this has not been enough for Israeli capitalism, which is beginning its push for the full occupation and destruction of Gaza City, the most populous part of the enclave. Eli Cohen of Israel’s security cabinet had the following to say about the operation: “Gaza City itself should be exactly like Rafah, which we turned into a city of ruins.” The war also provides cover for increased Israeli settler violence, which continues to wrack parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There, in accordance with the Israeli military, settlers are killing Palestinians and stealing their land, with the growing threat of annexation of the West Bank by the Israeli regime. 

Political Crisis for Netanyahu

This push by Israel should not be understood as a sign of stability or confidence from the Israeli regime, but quite the contrary. While still propped up by hundreds of billions in imperialist aid from the US and other powers, the IDF itself is showing signs of wear. The regime has continued its push to reverse the long-standing exemption from military service for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and has increased its recruitment of women into combat units, revealing weak morale and manpower. Many IDF reserve soldiers are refusing to return to Gaza. This is a dangerous situation for the regime, whose attempt to lean on national unity around the war is showing growing cracks.

The Netanyahu regime is in a profound political crisis, as a result of the war and the tensions that were brewing for years. There is currently a significant, open opposition to the Gaza war, although this opposition comes from many different political directions, highlighting the contradictory and confused cross-class mass movement to end the war. Some examples of this are enormously positive and inspirational, such as the public demonstrations, mainly by youth, of Israelis burning their IDF draft cards. 

Others are mixed: while hundreds of thousands have participated in two days of mass protests and strikes in August demanding an end to the war for the sake of bringing the surviving Israeli hostages home, many still believe that Hamas is the main threat to their safety and that its destruction is central to ending the conflict for good, even if many innocent Gazans die. The regime, including the main capitalist opposition parties, are cynically using the horror of October 7 to retain a level of support for the massacre, while hiding its reality from the majority of the population.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians alongside significant numbers of Jews, have also been protesting in Palestinian cities and towns within the Green Line, demanding to end the horror inflicted on the Gazan population. These protests face severe police repression under the direction of far-right Interior Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. There’s now more space than before to unite these different anti-war protest movements to point towards bringing down the Netanyahu government and ending the extermination and starvation on the basis of genuine solidarity.

Inter-Imperialist Conflict: The Masses Pay the Price

An important reason for the immense scale, duration, and terror of this conflict is the intensifying global inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China. In the war in Gaza as well as others throughout the Middle East, in Ukraine, Sudan, and other places, all of the bloodshed is befalling the global working class. Specifically, Israel and the US have their foot on the gas in Gaza in an existential effort to redraw the lines of power in the Middle East and weaken the loosely-held bloc of Iran, Russia, and most importantly China. This is especially important for them in light of the blows Western imperialism continues to suffer in the war in Ukraine. 

The global anti-war movement highlights the risks that US and Israeli capitalism are taking on, knowing that working people and youth around the world are watching in horror. Western imperialism has temporarily gained the upper hand in the Middle East; after Trump’s attacks on Iran and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have been severely weakened. 

But this situation is profoundly unstable, not least because the international working class, many of whom have already been driven into the streets in solidarity with Gaza, has the power to change the course of events.

The Historic Impact of the Global Struggle So Far

Millions of workers and young people have publicly demonstrated their solidarity with the people of Gaza over the past two years. Some of the most stunning examples of the willingness to fight this murderous war include the weeks-long encampments at universities across the US in 2024, the hundreds of thousands-strong March for Gaza in Bangladesh this spring, and the workplace actions blocking arms shipments bound for Israel in Western countries including France, Greece, and Italy. 

The global anti-war struggle has had a significant impact on shaping public opinion, putting wind in the sails of those struggling against the genocide on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories and within Israel, and has been decisive in the growing isolation of Israeli capitalism. It is precisely the danger this movement poses to ruling classes worldwide that has driven many regimes to repress it so harshly. 

This has been particularly true here in the US, where the working class has a unique power to disrupt the main funders of the Israeli war machine. But while there has been a massive change in public opinion against the slaughter in Gaza, as of yet, the struggle has not been able to put a significant block on Israel’s war machine. To fully harness this movement’s power, it must be built, or re-built, in the streets, on job sites, and campuses around the world, on the strongest possible political basis.

Student Protests Threaten Establishment

The campus protests took aim at US universities, especially the most elite and monied among them. The brutal repression this struggle was met with has included bans on student organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, attacks on international students like Mahmoud Khalil, educational censorship in the form of the dismantling of Middle Eastern Studies departments, expulsions, and other discipline for peaceful protesting. 

University administrations, backed by the ruling class, have brought down the hammer because the movement threatened to set a precedent for militant protests and alienate their relations with rich donors and the US and Israeli regimes. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the militant anti-Vietnam War and Black liberation movements in the 60’s and 70’s. Unfortunately this repression, often ordered by the liberal establishment in Democratic Party-controlled cities, has played a large role in keeping the struggle subdued since this peak in 2024.  

Members of Socialist Alternative supported the encampments on campuses around the country then, and we are still out on our campuses today, talking with students about how this struggle can be rebuilt and taken further.

Rebuild The Movement On Campuses!

To seriously fight against this bloody genocide, the movement must be rebuilt on campuses nationwide, with conscious efforts to get campus worker unions and our communities more broadly involved. The movement must appeal to and unite with the broader anti-Trump movement that is driving people into the streets against ICE raids and deportations, attacks on LGBTQ people, on democratic rights, and more. We need to connect the Trump regime’s backing of the war in Gaza to its war against working people in the US. 

At the same time, we should have zero illusions in the Democrats as an alternative. Historically, and today, the Democrats have stood by Israeli state reaction as they expanded their occupation and brutality against the Palestinians. Despite their statements, “progressive” Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and others, have not taken serious steps to fight their party’s and the Republicans’ support for the war.

A truly mass, fighting movement for Palestinian liberation should not stop at demands for an end to this war and occupation. Due to capitalism’s constant drive for expansion, profit, and exploitation, this system will continue to produce war after bloody war. The ultimate enemy of the global working class and the oppressed is the capitalist system as a whole.

No Confidence in Capitalist Institutions 

In that vein, our movement must be clear that the institutions of capitalism and imperialism cannot offer lasting solutions. The recent moves by Canada and several European states to hypothetically “recognize” a Palestinian state at some point in the future will not bring any real change for those suffering in the region. They are nothing more than an attempt to release steam from the anti-war outrage and to take the heat off their own governments.

The Israeli military has already been “convicted” of war crimes by various institutions many times, and Netanyahu and other officials currently have warrants out for their arrest by the International Criminal Court. Anyone who is watching the genocide unfold can see that these moves have made no fundamental difference. 

Nor do the capitalist classes of the Arab world offer a true path forward. Regimes like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are currently moving in the opposite direction and cozying up to Israel and the US. They are both beholden to Western imperialism and have their own bloody hands involved in regional wars and atrocities. While they pay lip service to the cause of Palestinian liberation when it suits them, what they’re concerned about the most is not the genocide in Gaza, but a genuine anti-imperialist struggle on their own soil which could also threaten their own rule. 

Iran’s “axis of resistance,” which includes Hezbollah and the Houthis, has completely failed in advancing Palestinian liberation. This alliance of forces, led by the reactionary Iranian regime with its own imperialist ambitions, has suffered huge blows at the hands of the Israeli war machine and resulted in massive destruction and civilian death in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran.

The same is true for the Palestinian factions—Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and others whose fundamental politics lead them to lean either on terrorist methods against civilians or collaboration with the Israeli occupation. Genuine fighters for Palestinian liberation should not lend support for reactionary groups and regimes that point towards desperate individual methods and away from mass struggle.

Escalate the International Working-Class Movement

The struggle of the international working class—especially workers in the Palestinian territories, Israel, and throughout the Middle East—is the only force that can stop the Israeli war machine. We need to escalate the global movement that challenges Israeli capitalism and the ruling classes around the world who support it. This includes protests and actions on campus, but most importantly it requires the participation of workers and the labor movement.

The US is the primary underwriter of Israel’s genocide and the labor movement here must lead the way in this fight. Actions like the UAW’s ceasefire resolution, the political strike by University of California workers in 2024, as well as tech workers organizing anti-war protests at Google and Microsoft, reflect that thousands of workers are willing to use the muscle of the organized working class to fight US imperialism. Undoubtedly thousands more could be convinced to do so amid a resurgence in the movement. This must be expanded based on the understanding that the same forces that support war abroad wage daily war on workers at home. The actions by European dockworkers, withholding their labor to block weapons shipments to Israel, should be an example for US workers as the genocidal war grinds on to a third year.

We Need A Working-Class Party To Fight Imperialism

We’ve seen enough from both the Democrats and the Republicans to know that it’s overdue for the working class to build its own anti-imperialist, mass political party. We can look to Britain to see that this is far from a daydream; widespread dissatisfaction with both establishment parties, including outrage over the Labour Party’s approach to the war, has led to the formation of a new left party with over half a million people signed on in support.

Notably, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, the leaders of this new party, have so far refused to back down on demands for an end to the war in Gaza and the occupation of the Palestinian territories. This should be a shining example for figures like Zohran Mamdani in New York. It would be a grave mistake for Zohran to let Palestinian liberation fall into the background of his campaign or potential mayorship, especially when young and Middle Eastern workers who have been radicalized around this issue contributed significantly to his momentum in the primary. Instead, now is the time to draw concrete connections between the demands he has rallied New Yorkers around and the fight against US imperialism.

Socialist Alternative will be there to fight for these ideas throughout the Zohran campaign, as we have through the recent surge in growth in Die Linke, the left party in Germany. When Die Linke’s leadership cancelled a planned national day of action in solidarity with Gaza earlier this summer, our sister organization, Sozialistische Alternative, called instead for actions in multiple cities, which was energetically taken up. 

Political organizations for working people must take a principled stance against imperialism rooted in solidarity with the international working class. Even in the face of capitulations by workers’ leadership, workers and youth who are drawn to these organizations will often be ready to push things further. Socialist Alternative and our international organization aim to be a part of this process, fighting to build mass organizations that actually represent the needs of the global working class.

In the Middle East and throughout the world, we must urgently escalate the struggle through mass protests and strike actions around bold demands. Ultimately, a truly anti-imperialist struggle has to be a revolutionary socialist struggle, fighting all forms of oppression, exploitation, and rule by the billionaire class in general.