War for Peace is the Orwellian logic of genocide

‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”  1984

What happened in Israel three weeks ago on October 7th was an unmitigated atrocity.  It exposed the horror and brutality of the Islamist fanatics of Hamas against Israeli Jews and non-Jews alike.

Not just in slaughter, but in the most egregious and indiscriminate taking of hostages since the Islamic State’s enslavement of the Yazidis of Northern Iraq in 2014.

What has happened since is a continuing surreal nightmare taking horror to new heights.  If not a genocide in legal terms, a de-facto attempt at an annihilation of a society.

Total darkness, no water, food, medicine, power or shelter.  Just the choking smoke amongst the raging fires and roar of tanks and missiles.  The bombs that rain down sanctified as legitimate self defence by the West.

Yet still the press asks ‘is this the real invasion’ as if there is something else to see!  We have long been misdirected to see or not see things in the Middle East to suit the narrative of capitalism’s rival power blocs:

A peaceful liberal secular democracy, ‘like us’, instead of a rabidly right-wing theocratic entity armed to the teeth, dividing its own people. 

An insatiable refugee rabble clawing with ruthless violence at the face of civilisation rather than the wretched impoverished diaspora of three generations of State engineered trauma.

All the bluff, lies and delusions of the Ukraine war are exposed in the hypocrisy of the Gaza war.  The two-faced solution to who is being slaughtered, how and where, is the politics of capitalist barbarism.

The scale of this catastrophe dwarfs what has come before.  The displaced of this Nakba (‘Catastrophe’) is twice that of 1948.  Gaza deaths are already more than 2/3rds the recorded civilian deaths in the 20 months of war in Ukraine.  7,500 compared to 10,000 according to the figures of OHCHR, (the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) and the Gaza Health Ministry.

While Israel disputes these figures from a Hamas source, a wide range of international NGOs and the UN are saying that in general they have found their figures and those of the Gaza Ministry of Health tend to tally and are credible. 40% of these deaths are children.

The workers in the ‘open air Gaza prison’ are not Hamas, who number around 30.000 out of 2.6 million people.  The workers of Israel, Jews and Arabs, are not the Israeli State.  On the eve of invasion only 29% polled supported a land incursion!

Peace negotiator Gershon Baskin said in an interview on the hostage negotiations “A state’s primary function is to provide security to its citizens”.   A State’s primary definition is it’s ‘monopoly on the use of violence.’ 

Both have found themselves not satisfied with merely monopolising their violence within their own borders, and both have proved unwilling or unable to ‘protect’ our class whatever side of the divide.

The ruthless potential to unleash violence against us everywhere is another defining element of the Capitalist State, the local franchise of global superpower rivalry and conflict. 

Israel and Hamas are far from the only combatants.  Despite escalating, though restrained so far, assaults by Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran may not be ready yet to squander its deterrent force there against an Israeli attack on their nuclear program.

This assumes that Israel does not want to provoke the opportunity while it appears to have such unconditional Western support.  The US is already exchanging fire in Syria and Iraq.  Everywhere our class is in jeopardy with nothing to gain and everything to lose.

We are experiencing this conflict not just virtually, but within our own class here and now.  The tribal politics of division are being stirred to divert us from our own interests as workers and producers.

We do not want to fight and die in their wars for their profits and their power.  We do not want to pay for it through their imposed austerity and war profiteering. 

Their interests and ours are not the same. Their interest is imperialist war, ours is Class War, our only weapon against their brutal exploitation, division and slaughter! 

In Ukraine and Russia, in Gaza and Israel, in the US and Iran, our class has no nation!   On the home front and internationally:  No War But The Class War!

Article by Dreyfus