NEW YORK CITY, May 18—Rivalries between imperialist powers are ravaging the workers of the Middle East. The United States, Russia, China and their junior partners like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel care nothing for working class lives as they compete for power and oil profits.
Today about 1,000 Arab, anti-Zionist Jewish , and other anti-racists demonstrated with militant chants in Times Square and then marched to the Israeli Consulate to protest the barbaric slaughter of Gazan demonstrators over the past month. Two days earlier about 300 members of Jewish Voices for Peace and other anti-racists marched in the rain to the offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, who have said nothing to condemn the violence.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), have killed 111 protestors and wounded thousands of others with expanding bullets aimed to cripple, if not kill. These atrocities were committed with the full support of the U.S., in response to weekly mass protests involving thousands of Gazans, including entire families.
Gaza is uninhabitable
Gaza is small strip of land at the southwestern corner of Israel where thousands of Palestinians fled after being driven from their homes when Israel was founded in 1948. Initially under the control of Egypt, Gaza was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, along with the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Ever since, these territories have been brutally and illegally militarily occupied. For the last 11 years Gaza has been under siege, with very little food or other life necessities allowed in. Gaza is surrounded by a wall and is closely surveilled by Israel. In 2009 and 2014, Israel launched brutal military attacks on Gaza, killing over 3,500 and destroying multiple dwellings, schools, hospitals, power plants and water treatment facilities. Today Gaza has almost no drinkable water, sparse electricity, huge food shortages and very little employment. It is called the world’s largest open-air prison and the United Nations has declared that it is about to be totally uninhabitable.
Israel breeds anti-Arab racism
Jewish Israelis are bombarded with profound anti-Arab racism from the cradle in order to justify the ongoing occupation of Palestine. They are taught a totally distorted view of history, such as that Arab workers fled in 1948 out of anti-Semitism, as opposed to 750,000 being forcibly expelled and their homes and villages razed.
Today Jewish soldiers, or any Israeli, can steal from, injure or kill Palestinians with impunity, only rarely suffering mild consequences if an abuse gains international traction. Palestinians who rebel or protest in any way are painted as vicious terrorists, who have little regard for their own lives and are filled with hatred of Jewish workers. Even children who throw stones are arrested, tortured and sentenced to years in prison.
Israel is only able to exist because of the more than $3 billion in military aid it receives annually from the U.S. This support has enabled it to become a nuclear power and serve as U.S.’s and the West’s main protector of Middle Eastern oil. Israeli military terror also helps the U.S.  to limit the power of rivals like Iran and Russia. For this reason, even Arab powers like Saudi Arabia support Israel and ignore its abuse of Palestinians.
Workers need communist leadership
The Palestinians are also weakened by their own divided and traitorous leadership. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the West Bank, spends as much money on police to prevent opposition to Israel as it does on health and education combined. The PA cooperates with a small financial elite who control most of the economy and are in bed with Israeli capitalists. Gaza is run by Hamas, a fundamentalist organization, which also preserves most jobs and resources for its loyalists. Most Palestinians despise both these groups, but there is no strong alternative leadership at the moment. Israeli workers, though few recognize it, also play a high price for the occupation, with low wages, high unemployment, and scarce affordable housing, along with a racist moral atmosphere.
What is needed is a multiracial anti-capitalist consciousness and struggle in all of Palestine/Israel. Our comrades there raise this idea in the work they do in a multiracial union in Israel. In other countries we try to build communist consciousness in organizations of anti-occupation Jewish, Palestinians and other anti-racist fighters. Internationally there is a boycott of Israeli goods, academia, and cultural events. However, at this moment, it is wars for power and profit that are dominating the Middle East. The wars in Syria and Yemen, where the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel attack each other in increasingly vicious and dangerous conflicts foreshadow larger wars and even world war. An international communist, anti-imperialist movement is the only hope for our class, in Israel/Palestine or anywhere.