Israeli state terror looms over the Middle East. The Israeli state’s calculated attack on Iran’s political and military leaders, and nuclear scientists and facilities, is accompanied by hundreds of civilian casualties and further escalation to come.
And while the eyes of the world are drawn, in fear, to the front with Iran, brutal genocidal slaughter continues against Palestinians. More people desperate for food are shot dead in cold blood.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government is coldly executing its dangerous escalation. It does so with the backing of US and Western imperialism.
Trump’s US administration signed off $12 billion of military assistance to Israel in March and is considering using its own more powerful weapons against Iran. Mealy-mouthed words of opposition from other Western capitalist leaders attempt to distort reality. Keir Starmer’s Labour government has continued to send arms to Israel.
Behind differences about how to avoid provoking mass struggles and economic shocks, Western capitalist leaders are united in their support for the Israeli capitalist state for their geopolitical and profit interests in the Middle East.
Ultimately, the primary concern of the capitalist leaders in Israel, Iran, the US, Britain and elsewhere, is what is in the interests of the capitalist bosses, not the safety and wellbeing of ordinary people. As well as inflicting massive death and destruction on Iran, Netanyahu’s offensive has done nothing to make ordinary Israelis safer. On the contrary, civilians have been killed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes and tensions are stoked for future conflicts. Starmer’s military spending increase too will only make the world a more dangerous place.
The capitalist system is in decline and crisis, with capitalist bosses and capitalist nation states competing for power and profit. The consequence is conflict and war.
It is also a system of exploitation and oppression. The consequence is class struggle.
In recent history, ordinary Israelis have taken part in huge protests, including general strike action against the Netanyahu regime, Iran’s theocratic regime has faced mass uprisings and strikes. The ruling capitalist classes’ attempts to use war nationalism to cut across workers’ struggle can have an effect, but only temporarily, and deepening the conditions that will provoke future eruptions.
For workers and young people in Britain, the task is to build mass struggle, including developing the huge anti-war protest movement, and taking steps towards a mass working-class political alternative to Starmer’s Labour.
To end poverty and war means fighting for socialist change internationally, to take the wealth and resources out of the hands of the super-rich capitalist bosses so it can be put to use as part of a democratic plan to meet the needs of all.
If you want to help us in that struggle, join the Socialist Party today.
