Build a socialist alternative to capitalism and war
Mark Best, Socialist Party national committee
“Gaza is burning”, the Israeli military is striking targets with an “iron fist”, says the Israeli defence minister. At the time of writing, the Israeli state has launched a ground offensive deep into Gaza City. One of the few places left where people had not yet been forced to evacuate at gunpoint, it has still been bombarded over the last nearly two years by the Israeli military.
Over the summer, desperate to continue the war, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his next bloody phase – the forced displacement of the population of Gaza City into camps in the south of the Gaza Strip.
This will have horrific consequences: the widespread famine will be made worse, more children and babies will die from preventable disease, and increased numbers of people will face the threat of Israeli snipers to queue for what aid is available. How many more thousands of people will die? How many more people will lose their homes? And how many more billions will be made by arms companies supplying machines of death as a result?
How to fight back
People all across the world will be seeing these scenes on their TV screens, alongside the escalations of reprisals in the West Bank and the Israeli state bombing the Qatari city of Doha, and feel horror and anger at the system which enables this to happen.
In Britain, Keir Starmer has rolled out the red carpet for the warmonger-in-chief Donald Trump. His government arrests pro-Palestinian protesters while maintaining arms export licences to the Israeli military. While supposedly making plans to ‘recognise’ a Palestinian state, Starmer has spent days cosying up to Trump, bending over backwards to keep him onside for the interests of British bosses.
The capitalist system, with its war, destruction and poverty, is sick to the core. People across the country will have protested against Trump and all he represents. But we need a real alternative – a party that represents the interests of the majority of us who potentially hold the real power in society, the working class. With a socialist programme that can unite workers to take power out of the hands of a tiny rich elite and democratically run society for us not them, a new workers’ party would be a powerful step forward in the fight to end war and capitalism across the world.
