By Ellie Costain
Over a year since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the death toll officially stands at a staggering 44,000 murdered. However, some experts have suggested that the true figure could be more than four times that if indirect deaths from starvation and disease are included. 70 per cent of those killed are women and children, and survivors have little access to food and clean water, with health care infrastructure all but destroyed. There can be no doubt that this devastation is designed to destroy any hope for Palestinian statehood.
This war is by no means contained to the Gaza strip – over 400 at the time of writing have been killed in the West Bank. But the whole region is at risk of deepening chaos as the Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon has killed thousands and displaced millions. While a ceasefire has now been declared, it has reportedly already been violated.
Imperialism
Prime Minister Netanyahu has used the reactionary attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens on 7 October 2023 as an excuse to strike the most decisive blow possible on the Israeli regime’s enemies in the region. Netanyahu’s main backer, United States imperialism, has continued to fund and arm the Israeli war machine. Starmer has lined up with Biden, refused to ban the transfer to Israel of key weaponry and participated directly in air strikes on Yemen.
When Iran retaliated with missiles launched at Israel it was also British and French fighter jets that shot them down. Western imperialism backs Israel to the hilt. Iran, on the other hand has forged deep military links with Putin, and is supplying drones for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. So it is clear that the fate of millions living in the Middle East is now tragically tied up in the global power struggle between the two imperialist power blocs.
The election of Trump as president of the USA represents an alarming development in the genocidal war. Grotesquely, Trump has been able to posture as an ‘antiwar’ candidate who boasts that he can bring an end to the Ukraine War, also claiming that he encouraged Netanyahu to “get it over with fast” as “the killing in Gaza has to stop”. Of course, this is posturing. His own record shows that he will be inflammatory in the region, as when in 2018 he moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, in a move which undermined legitimate Palestinian claims to national rights in the city. It will be up to the labour movement in the US to wage the real resistance to Trump, to end funding and arming the Israeli war machine.
War criminals
On 21 November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued three arrest warrants, with judges arguing that there were “reasonable grounds” that Nethanyahu, Israel’s former defence minister Gallant, and Mohammed Deif of Hamas, committed war crimes.
Many anti-war campaigners will have welcomed this decision. It is unprecedented for sitting pro-Western heads of government to be indicted in this way. However Netanyahu is unlikely to ever face justice via this route, and the French government has already declared that Netanyahu must have immunity from the ICC arrest warrant. The judgement will not bring the end of the war any closer.
However, it is working-class people around the world who have the power to disrupt the war machine, especially workers in key sectors like the arms industry and transport. The TUC in its annual conference in September took a clear position against arms sales to Israel and in the US, Spain and Italy strikes against the war have taken place. As the imperialists drive us towards war, with calls to spend 3% of GNP on ‘defence’ or for the reintroduction of conscription, we need to campaign for a mass international movement against war.
