Text of the Socialist Party leaflet on Gaza.
Last week’s announcement of the ceasefire was met with jubilant celebrations by Palestinians in Gaza. These emotional scenes brought home a sense of relief at the prospect of reprieve from a 15-month genocide.
They also showed a potent display of defiance, the determination of Palestinian people to remain on their land in the face of such unimaginable horrors. The support and solidarity they received from millions of ordinary people across the globe were also critical to winning this ceasefire.
Daily, we are reminded of the full scale of the murderous rampage carried out by the Israeli State in Gaza. This was all done with the full backing of US imperialism and other Western states – the shameless hypocrisy of their liberal “rules-based order” has been exposed to people across the world. Biden has rightly earned his moniker of “Genocide Joe” having flatly refused to use his leverage over Netanyahu to end the genocide.
With the ceasefire in place, however, there is no let up in the brutality of the criminal Israeli regime. Its army, in coordination with Jewish settler pogromists, is brutally cracking down on Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, continuing their abductions, killing with impunity and burning down homes.
The Israeli government knows it has the backing of its kindred spirits in the new far-right Trump Presidency. Trump has lifted sanctions on Israeli settlers, and his new ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has argued that “there is no such thing as Palestinians”. His UN Ambassador, Elise Stefanik, has said that Israel has a “biblical right” to the West Bank.
With the ceasefire likely to be betrayed and the occupation and apartheid still in place, it means the struggle continues.
Irish government complicity—OTB ditched
Under pressure from the new Trump regime and corporate America, the new government plans to ditch the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB). The interests of big business will always take preference over Palestinians’ rights; they are fumbling in the greasy till while genocide is normalised. This decision is no surprise; just look at their terrible record:
- 1,260 applications to carry munitions on civil aircraft through Irish airspace were approved in 2024, much of it going to arm the genocide.
- Since October 2023, 29 licences worth €95 million for dual-use products have been approved for export to Israel.
It is action and pressure from below from the Palestine solidarity movement that has forced the government to join the ICJ case and recognise the Palestinian State. We need to make sure this action continues, alongside other actions that will strike more blows against the Israeli State.
Protests, civil disobedience, boycotts and workers’ strike action will be required to end the transport of weapons through Shannon Airport and Irish airspace and implement the OTB. Such action should target all companies and institutions complicit in the genocide.
For Palestinian freedom and socialism
We have all come to this demonstration because we want to see a free Palestine – an end to genocide, occupation, apartheid and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their historic homeland. This liberation will never happen as long as the Israeli Zionist State, one based on Jewish supremacy, remains in existence; it must be smashed.
The Palestinian masses, allied with the working class and oppressed in this region and internationally, are key to achieving this. But the question does not end there.
A struggle for Palestinian national liberation is bound with a need for more fundamental revolutionary change. This state is part of the system of capitalism and imperialism that dominates and exploits the peoples of the Middle East and beyond – a system built on racism, exploitation, poverty and oppression.
A democratic socialist Middle East would be one where the resources and wealth are seized from the profiteers and publicly owned and democratically planned by and for the majority in society. Governments based on the rule of the working class and poor, working in solidarity and cooperation, can ensure justice for all – and oppression for none. Both Palestinians and Israeli Jews could live in complete equality from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, including the equal right to national self-determination.
The scale of the Gaza genocide and the complicity of Western capitalist governments and corporations in it pose, along with the rise of the far-right and climate catastrophe, the urgent need for radical anti-capitalist and socialist change. Join the fight today!
