By David Thomas
In recent weeks, media coverage of the ongoing genocidal campaign by the Israeli state in Gaza has all but disappeared. Meanwhile, the Trump administration rounds up and deports international students from the United States who took part in last year’s protests.
Palestinian-born Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE agents, followed by the arrest of others, including Turkish-born Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk. Her ‘crime’ was writing an article in a student newspaper that criticised the Israeli government.
This comes in response to the mass global opposition to this genocidal war, and amid an escalation of the onslaught by Israel. Despite a hostage deal being in place, the Netanyahu regime has violated the ceasefire agreement and continued its mass slaughter in Gaza.
The crimes are increasingly brazen, with IDF soldiers deliberately targeting journalists and aid workers. Last month, reports were released of Israeli soldiers murdering aid workers in front of their ambulance, which was denied by the IDF until body camera footage was released to the press.
This goes on with continued silence from the leadership of the capitalist powers and the active involvement of the US government in the ongoing genocidal war.
In the face of the cruelty of the Israeli state and the authoritarianism of Western governments, it is important that protests be renewed, escalated and become more ambitious.
Protests should take up the call of the Palestinian trade unions and engage in workplace disruptions of industries and businesses such as the arms and shipping trades, which are directly facilitating the killing. We have seen glimpses of this in the action of Greek dockworkers to prevent arms shipments from Greek ports to Israel.
Ultimately, the way to end this genocidal war, and defend the right to self-determination for the people of Palestinian, will be a class-based strategy to fight imperialism, that directly hits the capitalist war machine where it hurts the most.
