Seamus Smyth, East Midlands Socialist Party regional organiser
In Gaza, families face relentless bombardment and deprivation. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed, thousands have been killed, and the population lives under a permanent shock. Following a shooting in Jerusalem on 8 September, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said: “The Palestinian Authority must disappear from the map”. A new offensive has already destroyed dozens more buildings in Gaza City and there is regular bombing of civilians in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Israel school students strike
The new school year in Israel began not with classrooms full, but with classrooms locked. At nearly 70 different high schools, thousands of students staged a one-day strike, refusing to carry on as though life were everyday, while hostages remain in Gaza. Gates were chained, lessons boycotted, and even in Tel Aviv, students blocked traffic on the Ayalon Highway. “Enough of this destructive government,” their banners read.
These young people took it upon themselves to act, but this is not the first time that young Israeli students and workers have taken action against Netanyahu’s rotten coalition government.
On the 17 August, hundreds of thousands joined a nationwide protest demanding the release of hostages and an end to the war.
The student walkout, as well as the massive protests that happened prior, point to a deeper truth: ordinary people – especially in Palestine – are the ones paying the price for a war driven by capitalist interests, but in Israel too, as the shooting in Jerusalem shows. The war isn’t making Israel any safer for ordinary people.
The Socialist Party argues that workers and youth, Israeli and Palestinian, have no interest in continuing this cycle of bloodshed. That requires building independent organisations of struggle that will fight for a socialist alternative: for democratic public ownership and control, and a future based on genuine equality for all.
