Tom Gibson, Bradford Socialist Party
We are nearly 11 months into an ongoing slaughter of over 40,000 Palestinians. The capitalist politicians’ responses to the horror we have seen on our screens has only exposed how rotten and hypocritical their capitalist system is.
As a student, I have seen first-hand how many young people are invested in the protests. Friends share news and images from the conflict on social media, bypassing the biased major capitalist news outlets that are increasingly discredited.
Prime minister Keir Starmer said he thought Israel had the right to starve Palestinians in Gaza, and ex-PM Rishi Sunak told Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu he “wanted Israel to win”, even after it became clear that Netanyahu’s goal was to inflict maximum destruction of Palestinian lives.
So-called ‘human rights’ are being ripped apart for everyone to see. Working-class and young people internationally are horrified and refuse to simply look away, many defying repression to protest.
It is the pressure of mass protests and working-class anger internationally, including across the Middle East, that has forced politicians such as Starmer to back a ceasefire, even if he has yet to actually try and genuinely push for one, and forced the Labour government to limit some arms exports to Israel, even if the vast majority are still in place.
Strikes of workers erupting in Israel, against the Netanyahu regime, is another example of how working-class struggle can have an impact.
I’m proud of how the Socialist Party has gone to the countless demonstrations all across Britain arguing for a democratic mass movement of Palestinians to fight for national self-determination and socialism, and for that struggle to link up with movements of workers across the region and internationally, including in Israel.
Only socialist change can bring about a future for the Palestinian masses, free from oppression and where the needs of all are met. The need to fight for an end to the horrors of capitalism internationally has never been clearer. Join us in the fight for a socialist future.
The Socialist Party is fighting for:
- End the siege – for the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from the occupied territories
- For a mass struggle of the Palestinians, under their own democratic control, to fight for liberation
- For the building of independent workers’ parties in Palestine and Israel and links between them
- For an independent, socialist Palestinian state, alongside a socialist Israel, with guaranteed rights for all minorities, as part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East
- No trust in the capitalist politicians, internationally or in Britain. Fight to build a workers’ party in Britain that fights for socialism and internationalism
