by Bob Avakian
October 20, 2023
First, Some Basic Truth About Palestine and Israel
Israel, backed by “western” imperialists—and above all, the U.S.—is the dominant and oppressive force in its relation with the Palestinian people. Israel was founded, 75 years ago, on the basis of massive terror against masses of Palestinian people, and has carried out repeated atrocities against the Palestinian people ever since. This is a matter of historical fact.
Hamas is not revolutionary and its goals are not emancipating—it is not a force for liberation, but is itself an oppressive force. The atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians flow out of the reactionary nature, objectives and methods of Hamas as religious (Islamic) fundamentalist fanatics. These atrocities should be condemned. But this is not some kind of “new Holocaust” involving genocide against Jewish people—and it is nowhere close to the horrific suffering that Israel has imposed for generations on the Palestinian people. Already now, the number of Palestinian civilians, including children, that Israel has killed since this Hamas attack is far greater than Israeli civilians killed in that attack—and that is on top of the thousands more that Israel has slaughtered just since 2008.
This is not the 1930s and World War 2, when the Nazis, as the ruling power in Germany, carried out horrific atrocities against and mass murder of millions of Jews. The situation today is not one where Palestinians are herding helpless Jews into concentration camps and subjecting them to genocide. The actual situation is the opposite of that.
Israel is a nuclear-armed military power, heavily supplied and supported by the dominant imperialist power in the world, the U.S. Israel has, for generations, imposed apartheid oppression on the Palestinians, denying them basic rights. And, especially with regard to the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, Israel has denied them even the means to live beyond the most minimal and desperate existence.
To once again emphasize some basic and crucial facts: Israel is a country that, with the backing of major imperialist powers, was founded as a racist, Jewish supremacist state, 75 years ago, on the basis of horrific ethnic cleansing—with mass killing, rape, and destruction of whole villages of the Palestinians, driving masses of Palestinians off of their lands and incorporating that land into the expanding territory into what became the state of Israel (which had never existed before World War 2). And now Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. imperialists, is openly carrying out genocide against the Palestinians.
This is the truth. It describes the essential reality of this situation and its history. This truth is not “anti-Semitic”—it is just the truth.
Another Important Truth
Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world? This is not because of “the power of the Jewish lobby”—or because of some ignorant, ridiculous and outrageous notion that “Jews are controlling everything.” It is because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.
This—maintaining and enforcing the murderously oppressive domination of U.S. imperialism—is the same motivation for why Biden is pushing to further escalate the proxy war the U.S. is waging against Russia in Ukraine, as well as further preparation for war with China, even at the cost of risking the very existence of humanity.
All this is basic truth about essential reality. And it sharply highlights once more the profound importance of my statement that We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.
More Important Facts, and the Twisted Logic of Zionist Supporters of Israel
To get clear on a very important fact: Zionism is not the same thing as Judaism.
Judaism is a religion, a culture and a people sharing that culture.
Zionism is a racist, Jewish-supremacist political doctrine and ideology. Zionism is the ideological basis on which the state of Israel was founded, and which it continues to perpetuate as the rationalization for its existence, and its oppression and destruction of the Palestinian people.
And here is the twisted “logic” of Zionist supporters of Israel whose position amounts to this:
“I can’t understand it. When we Jews were the victims of genocide, decent people everywhere condemned those committing that genocide. But now, when we are committing genocide against the Palestinians, decent people are condemning us. I just can’t understand it. It must be anti-Semitism.”
No—it is not anti-Semitism—it is consistent and righteous opposition to atrocity, whoever is committing that atrocity.
Bob Avakian is a revolutionary leader who has brought forward the new communism, a whole new framework for human emancipation. He has developed a strategic approach to making a real revolution to overthrow the system of capitalism-imperialism. He has authored the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, a concrete blueprint and sweeping vision for a whole new way to live and a fundamentally different system.