GAZA, WESTERN CAPITALISM and THE EROSION OF DEMOCRACY
The tragedy of what is happening in Gaza, and indeed the West Bank, has served to highlight how the extreme right-wing nature of modern capitalism can quickly descend into authoritarianism. It has thus exposed the lie that we in the West live in a democracy. It is abundantly clear that the people of the world are overwhelmingly opposed to their governments’ continuing support for Israel as it prosecutes its genocidal war against Palestinians – and yet the world’s citizens are being ignored.
The Social Justice Party offers its wholehearted support for university students and youth across the world who are courageously protesting against commercial arrangements with Israel. In the United States, law enforcement agencies are on the one hand ignoring the violence being visited on the protesters by far-right thugs and then moving in themselves to brutalize and arrest these young protesters.
Exactly how the United States government can think their obvious hypocrisy goes unnoticed is amazing. When we see the violent suppression of peaceful protests in countries deemed to be ‘enemies’ of the West, we are reminded on a daily basis by the media about how lucky we are to live in a democracy! Yet we see this very same suppression by the US against its own citizens. What this clearly reveals is that in reality, we in the West have no greater freedom to protest than working class people in Russia, Iran or Saudi Arabia.
What of the politicians who are supposedly offering ‘choice’? The statements about unfolding events around these protests from Biden and Trump are virtually indistinguishable in the manner in which they condemn the protests. And here in the UK? Starmer and Sunak are in lock-step with not only their political support for Israel but their willingness to continue selling arms to them.
WHAT LIES BEHIND THIS UNWAVERING SUPPORT?
In the face of overwhelming evidence of unrelenting slaughter and breaches of international law, there can only be one explanation – and it has nothing to do with an honourable belief in delivering security for Jewish people following their long history of persecution. Anti-semitism is rightly denounced as evil. Using it as a weapon against people critical of Israel is not only dishonest, it is wrong and dangerous.
For countries like the US, the UK and organisations like the EU, their support lies in the fact that Israel is the Middle Eastern representative of Western capitalism. It is an essential cog in the capitalist machinery of geopolitical control for things like access to fossil fuels.
Contrary to capitalism’s claims of being the guardian of democracy, its bedrock is exploitation, supported by the establishment’s most effective lie – economic necessity! And it is the economic necessity of the market that underpins the West’s uncritical support for Israel.
THE NEED FOR A SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE
Across the western world we have seen how people have been left with a choice between one brand of capitalist and another similar brand. Until people have a genuine choice at the ballot box – a choice in this country that goes beyond the bland sameness of the Tories on the one hand and Labour on the other – we will be left with continuing exploitation both here and across the globe.
Here at the Social Justice Party we want to offer – clearly and unapologetically – the long overdue alternative that people are now demanding.
