Many workers are looking at the catastrophic events unfolding in the Middle East, wondering what they can do to halt the imperialist carnage. Organised and mobilised, the working class has the power to stop the warmongers. The following article was written by our comrades in Britain, offering a model motion to be passed in Trade Unions and giving an explanation of what workers can do to combat the imperialist war machine.

In France, as elsewhere, the extremely brutal response of the Israeli government to the Hamas attack on 7 October has aroused the indignation of millions of young people and workers. But in the name of "Israel's right to defend itself" and "the fight against terrorism and anti-Semitism", the Macron government decreed that this indignation was unacceptable and must be silenced, at all costs.

Israel’s decades of aggression against the Palestinian people reached a tipping point in the past week, sparking an almighty blowback. As could have been expected, this was met with brutal reprisals by Israel, which has been bombing Gaza savagely and indiscriminately for almost a week. As it prepares for a likely ground invasion of Gaza, Israel has ordered one million people to flee south—an impossible task, as there is nowhere in the world’s largest open-air prison to go.

“If we allow a big country to bully a smaller one, to simply invade it and take its territory, then it's going to be open season, not just in Europe but around the world.” In such terms did US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine back in August last year. Yet on Thursday – as nuclear-armed, Imperialist Israel continued reducing a tiny impoverished enclave to rubble – Blinken stood side-by-side with Netanyahu at a joint press conference and solemnly vowed: “You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as

Following Hamas’ surprise attack on 7 October, a bloody retribution has been unleashed by the Israeli state. In the West, capitalist politicians and the prostitute press declare unwavering support for Israel’s “right to defend itself”, and brand those showing solidarity with Palestine as “terrorist sympathisers”. This is being combined with legal repression of solidarity towards the Palestinian people, which must be boldly countered. We will not be silenced!

The main bourgeois media outlets in Switzerland – 20 Minuten, Tagesanzeiger, NZZ, Weltwoche– have launched a witch hunt against the communists. They are targeting us because we are organising in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The following short article by Karl Marx, published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1857, comments on the Indian Rebellion that broke out against the British East India Company the same year. In a few short lines, Marx skewers the hypocrisy of respectable English society reeling in horror at the violence of the rebels; the product of decades of oppression. His words bear great relevance today given events in Israel-Palestine.

The following statement by the International Marxist Tendency declares our solidarity with the Palestinian people. It answers the disgusting hypocrisy of western imperialism and its lackeys, who are rallying behind the reactionary Israeli state as it unleashes bloody vengeance on Gaza, following Hamas' surprise attack on 7 October. We moreover explain why freedom for Palestine can only be achieved through revolutionary means and the overthrow of capitalism in the whole region.

On Saturday 7 October, Hamas forces in Gaza launched an unexpected attack on Israel, triggering an immediate response from the Israeli Defence Force. Fundamentally, this is a conflict between unequal forces, as the Palestinian masses have for decades been the victims of a regime of terror promoted by the likes of Netanyahu and Israel’s imperialist backers in the west.

Hamas’s attack on Israel yesterday (Saturday 7 October) came as a shock, taking the Israeli Intelligence and military establishment by surprise, but it should not surprise us in the least. It is the direct consequence of the escalating violent suppression of the Palestinians promoted by Netanyahu, who is leading the most right-wing reactionary government in Israel’s history. 

Beginning after midnight on 3 July, a storm swept over the Jenin refugee camp in Palestine, lasting 48 hours. It left behind scenes that resembled hell on Earth. The storm was provoked by a raid of the Israeli army.

This weekend, protests will be taking place across the world to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba – the disaster faced by the Palestinian people as part of the creation of Israel. We say: Fight for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!

A sharp internecine struggle has erupted within the Israeli ruling class. Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu has only been back in office a couple of months, and he is determined to ram a raft of judicial reforms through Israel’s Knesset (parliament). In doing so, he has enraged the majority of the big capitalists, who have taken the unusual step of backing the mobilisation of enormous crowds on the streets. When the ruling class descends into open conflict like this, it carries, for them, the danger of dropping the façade that in ‘normal’ times conceals the real machinations of their rule. The present conflict is no exception.

After assassinating popular Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last week, the Israeli state would not even allow her body to reach its final resting place in peace. In a shocking act of sadism, Israeli police attacked Abu Akleh’s funeral procession on Friday, using batons and stun grenades against mourners escorting her coffin from a hospital in East Jerusalem to a cemetery in the nearby Old City.

Palestinian Al Jazeerareporter Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, was shot dead by the Israeli military early this morning, while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. This cold-blooded murder of a journalist – a war crime under the Geneva Convention – further exposes the brutality of the Israeli state, and lays bare the repulsive hypocrisy of its imperialist allies.