2-pronged Israeli Genocide and our 2-pronged Responsibility -- Genocide Blog 65
04.03.2025
Now is the time to watch Israel closely, and for us to prepare to act so as to prevent the next ever-more violent stage of the Israeli genocide against the whole of the Palestinian people.
Israel lost the war against Hamas. It has accomplished nothing but the slaughter of innocents.
Humiliated this way, Israel has announced that it will now cut off all food, water, medicines from the two million Palestinians living in Gaza. It intends to starve the families there to death.
Simultaneously Israel is driving the three million Palestinians living in the West Bank from their homes by means of bulldozers and explosions, kidnappings and assassinations.
Israel intends to do all this in front of our eyes. It will do so If we do not act to stop it.
The Trump administration has just this week sent $4 billion of emergency arms to Israel. This includes 2,000-pound bombs. That indicates that Trump will support the genocide, unless we all manage to stop him, just as Biden did.
Meanwhile, on another front there are developments. Egypt has gathered military hardware and some 50,000 infantry troops on its border with Israel. Israeli Chief of Staff has expressed his concern at the strength of the Egyptian army, and its recent repositioning of troops that Israel claims may be in breach of the 1979 peace accord between Egypt and Israel. So Egypt may be preparing for war, as well obviously as countering the Israeli-Trump plan to drive the Palestinians out into Egypt’s Sinai desert. This was Israel’s original plan in October 2023.
Today the Arab heads of state meet to plan a common action on Palestine, including proposals for how to proceed with the reconstruction of Gaza, while offering temporary housing for Palestinians in Gaza. All a bit little a bit late, but nevertheless very important. Later today we will know.
But Israel is indicating that it will worsen its genocide. Can it be worse? Yes. And it is at a time when the world’s media and the eyes of the imperialist leaders of the West are glued to the beginning of the collapse of Zelensky, the Western pawn in Ukraine. This collapse means that the utilization of Ukraine as a “proxy” for war on Russia has finally caused a rupture in the Western alliance as a whole. The whole of the NATO military alliance is on the verge of collapse. There is clearly a split in the USA between its permanent or “deep” state and the Trump administration. French and British leaders are still backing the collapsing Zelensky, and the three of them (Starmer, Macron and Zelensky) think they can take on Trump at this moment. In general the European leaders run around like chickens without heads, scampering in completely different directions.
So, this blog today is at a time when Western imperialism is possibly imploding. The US empire is wobbling, as we have pointed out a few times already on our website. In this moment, people, if not governments all over the world – including now even Europeans and Americans – welcome the possible end of the USA’s war against Russia, using Zelensky’s Ukraine as a Western proxy. The real nature of the war, clear to all the peoples of the former colonies – including those from all over Asia, Latin America and Africa – has now been exposed by Trump to the people of the West. But, not before the people of Ukraine have paid the highest of prices, in lives and in having fled their country. Trump and Putin seek a proper peace agreement, they both say, not a mere ceasefire that gels into a frozen conflict. Macron, Starmer and then Zelensky, by contrast, went one-by-one to see Trump to plead to continue the war. These three want war to continue – it is not clear why exactly. They were, and still are, in cahoots to try to get Trump to offer fall-back military support for continued war should Europe and Ukraine go on losing. So, it is true that geo-politics is at a crossroads. We have to understand all that is going on between the USA, on one side, and the UK-France-Ukraine, on the other – and juggle with issues like is the “City of London” meaning the big merchant banks and investors supporting Starmer? Is the USA’s permanent state (the Pentagon, the CIA, the military-industrial complex) supporting the City of London? Is France at a loose end what with its troops and being kicked out of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, and looking for a place to put boots on the ground? Is Europe going like NATO to risk falling apart when other heads of state refuse to follow Starmer and Macron in their belligerent enterprise in Ukraine?
But, while trying to understand all this, we must also keep focused on the genocide. We must stop Israel. It had lost to Hamas, so had to sign an agreement it does not intend to keep. Hamas wants a proper peace agreement, Israel agrees only to ceasing fire in order to re-start its demolition again later, even while continuing in the West Bank. One thing Israel will do, even as it over-reaches into not just Lebanon but also Syria, is to try to the force the USA into war with Iran.
And this just as Egypt mobilizes its troops on its border. Just as Turkey and Israel threaten to come to blows in Syria. All this makes for a powder keg.
And the suffering of the people of Palestine goes on and on. Beyond belief. We have seen the long table for Iftar in Rafah, amongst the ruins. And then heard Netanyahu threatening genocide by thirst and starvation. It must stop. We just have to put a stop to it.
We must stop the genocide, and do it now.
The Israeli state must not only hold a ceasefire but withdraw altogether from all the occupied territories now judged by the ICJ to be “unlawfully” occupied, allow all the refugees to come back home, and Israel and the USA and other suppliers of arms can contribute to the fund for Palestinians to rebuild Gaza and demolished parts of the West Bank. We need to support the unified Palestinian leadership that was put together by China, and which unites all the liberation movements and parties and organizations. We need proper peace. Neither genocide nor expanding war. Times are grave.
Our 2-Pronged Responsibility
In order to support Palestinians, we must show our support by any actions we can muster. SOMALP has organized and coordinated fantastic joint statements, joint demonstrations and other joint actions. We must do more now. And we must unite this move with the united effort to close down the USA-UK military base on Diego Garcia as part of a world-wide movement to close down all military bases.
Under Trump, with the USA’s withdrawal from Europe now closer, dozens of US bases may soon be closed down altogether. Trump is now talking about halving, repeat “halving” military expenditure by means of mutual agreement. He is even talking about denuclearization of all the armed forces, again by mutual agreement. This kind of opportunity must be seized, the moment is for action at grassroots level all over the world, and coordinated as best we can. Let us get all military bases closed down, starting with foreign ones. Let us get military expenditure halved, before getting it cut even more. And let us dismantle nuclear arms altogether, not just as specified in the Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear Arms Free Africa.
So, we must soon hold a joint demonstration on both these points: an end to Israeli genocide, occupation and Apartheid, and the closing down of all the military bases that year-in year-out prepare for both war and possible genocide. May the land for which we are responsible never again be used for war, genocide, illegal rendering, holding prisoners beyond any social control or torturing detainees beyond any social control.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT
