FIGHT FOR OUR FUTURES NOT THEIR WARS
Mark Best, Socialist Party national committee
Nearly three years after the start of the Israeli state’s genocidal war on Gaza, the satellite images on Google Maps have been updated. They reveal the extent of ongoing devastation and deprivation imposed on Palestinians whose homes are in the strip.
Rows and rows of buildings reduced to dust. Homes, workplaces, places of leisure, completely flattened. In their place, tent cities, now the home of 2.1 million people. Two thirds of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed.
The images are shocking and emphasise, despite over a year of supposed ceasefire, the ongoing humanitarian crisis, with disease, hunger and dispossession commonplace. And despite the slight changes of emphasis amongst the bosses’ politicians, real action to end this situation from governments across Europe isn’t there. (see pages 8-9)
The before-and-after photos show destruction on a par with the aftermath of a nuclear blast, created by the bombardment of tens of thousands of missiles. The Israeli state’s genocidal slaughter, with capitalist elites internationally complicit, has exposed to millions that this capitalist system is one capable of untold destruction and suffering as a result of their wars of plunder.
Fear of mass working-class opposition and a threat to their rule weighs heavy in the calculations of the capitalist classes in their descent into deeper and broader conflicts and wars.
Their actions have already provoked mass movements. In Britain, huge protests against the war toppled Tory home secretaries, contributed to the end of a Tory government and sowed the seeds for Keir Starmer’s resignation.
Now as politicians beat the drums of war, and want us to pay for increased spending on the military with more cuts and hits to our living standards, we should continue that struggle. They are worried about the impact our actions can have – that’s what’s behind every attempted attack on our democratic rights.
We can take inspiration from the young people fighting back across Europe; from school students in France, housing protesters in Spain, to the school strikers against conscription in Germany (see pages 2-3).
The capitalist system offers a world filled with wars making all of us less safe, and attacks on our living standards to maximise the profits of an uber-wealthy elite.
That’s why we’re organising for the international youth walkout on 20 November. To fight for our futures, not their wars. The way to provide us all with a world in which we can thrive, instead of struggling to get by, is to take the wealth and power out of the hands of the thieving few, and democratically utilise the world’s resources to provide us all with a home, a decent job and end climate chaos.
