Gaza Genocide Resumes as U.S. Wages War on Yemen

On March 17, the Gaza genocide resumed, first the blockade and then the bombing. It appears we are back where we were under Genocide Joe Biden. Up until then, Trump was better for the Palestinian people in one sense. After his election, negotiations paused the genocide. The pause began on January 19, the day before he became president.

Now the only difference is that, in theory, the Biden administration supported the so-called two-state solution that had been Washington’s official policy since 1993, with the Oslo Accords. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip would form a separate Palestinian state, while the rest of historic Palestine would belong to the Zionist entity, the Jewish State of Israel. Biden insisted that Gaza’s Hamas administration be replaced by the rule of the notorious collaborationist Palestinian Authority, under Mahmoud Abbas, who has acted as a Zionist agent. The Biden administration, like its predecessors, opposed anything like (bourgeois) democratic rule in Gaza.

Though he supported this approach in his first administration, Trump has now junked it. He’s made it clear that all Palestinians will have to leave Gaza, promising they will enjoy a wonderful life somewhere outside Palestine. In addition, the U.S. would own Gaza, transforming it into some kind of hotel casino resort, owned by U.S. capitalists that would include the Trump Organization itself.

The Decline of Imperialist Democracy

As explained last month, Donald Trump kept his promise to end the genocidal military assault by the Zionist entity against Gaza. I will not call this a war. He then unveiled his own plan for “post-war” Gaza. Trump plans the permanent removal of 100% of the Palestinians from Gaza.

Who will replace them? Trump indicates that the U.S. itself would own Gaza, not Israel. Trump did not explain what this ownership means. Does it mean that U.S. businesses (including Trump’s family businesses) would build hotels and casinos to take advantage of Gaza’s beautiful Mediterranean climate? Or would Gaza become some sort of U.S. territory? He also implied that U.S. forces would replace Israeli forces, though he later walked that back claiming U.S. forces wouldn’t be needed in a Palestinian-free Gaza. (1 )

Trump claimed Gaza Palestinians would be resettled at some beautiful place nearby, such as in Jordan or Egypt, though there were some stories it might be distant Indonesia. The governments of Jordan and Egypt expressed strong opposition to any forcible resettlement in their countries. His plan also raises questions about the future of West Bank Palestinians. Many of them, as in Gaza, are refugees from other parts of Palestine. Even before Israel began its genocide in October 2023, the Zionist entity was putting pressure on the West Bank — will the next step be to drive Palestinians out of there as well? Will the U.S. own the West Bank as well as Gaza?

Genocide Joe

On Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, five days before Donald Trump took office, an agreement was announced for a ceasefire to take effect the following Sunday, Jan. 19. President-elect Trump sent Steve Witoff, like Trump a New York City real estate magnate, to negotiate — or rather, lay down the law — to the Netanyahu regime.

When Israeli leaders protested that it was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, Witoff, who is Jewish, swept these pious objections aside. He said that the Netanyahu regime would have to agree to terms established the previous May.

None of the tricks that worked under Trump’s predecessor to stop a ceasefire worked this time. It was an offer the Zionist entity could not refuse.

Syria Falls to Pro-Imperialist Forces

On December 8, 2024, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s government collapsed before an offensive of U.S.-backed HTS rebels. The rebels call themselves Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham [HTS, in English: Organization for the Liberation of the Levant].

Assad was forced to flee the country after the Syrian Arab army put up little resistance to the pro-U.S.-NATO rebel offensive, ultimately finding refuge in Russia. HTS’s central leader is Ahmed al Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al Julani. HTS consider themselves Sunni Muslims strongly opposed to other Islamic sects, such as the Shia and Alawites, as well as to other religions, including Christians and Druze. According to the HTS, all these religions and sects worship the “one true God,” in the wrong way.

Previously, al Sharaa was a member of al-Qaeda, the group founded by Osama bin Laden — the same group credited with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon building on 9/11/2001. The attacks killed thousands of people in the United States and were the declared target of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” But times have changed, and today, HTS and al Sharaa are pictured by the imperialists and their media as moderates who can bring Western-style democracy and religious tolerance to the Syrian people.

When the media describes a group as moderate, it means they are doing what the U.S. imperialist world empire wants them to do. During the final days of the HTS advance to Damascus, the Israeli air force provided them with air support. U.S.-supplied Israeli forces bombed military bases and the headquarters of Syrian intelligence in the center of Damascus. The Israelis struck bases that housed Syrian troops and stockpiles of weapons that the Syrian army might have used to defend Damascus (this included the Mezzah Air Base).

Missiles, Minerals, and Money

There have been a series of dramatic developments over the last several weeks. The most dangerous being the collapse of Syria’s Baath Party government and its replacement by imperialist-backed rebels who emerged out of Al Qaeda and ISIS. This removes Syria from the axis of resistance that supported the Palestinian resistance.

We have also seen an imperialist-backed attempt to overthrow the government of the country of Georgia, and in Romania, a right-wing, anti-NATO candidate won. The U.S.-NATO-backed Romanian regime solved this problem by having the constitutional court throw out the election.

There has also been an attempted coup by South Korea’s president to restore the dictatorship that dominated the country before 1987.

Gang Warfare

For weeks following Israel’s murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, the world wondered if (and when) Iran would retaliate. Haniyeh was heavily involved in diplomatic activity to end Israel’s genocidal bombing in Gaza. He had been in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezehkian.

Iran was widely expected to react by launching a drone and missile counterattack on Israel as in April, but this time to causing greater damage. Much to the surprise of most observers, Iran took no military action. It seems that the Iranian leaders were engaged in intense diplomatic activity to arrange a ceasefire to end, or at least suspend, Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign on Gaza.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese political-religious resistance organization, was also negotiating for a ceasefire. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was one of the most popular and respected political leaders in Lebanon.

The Fate of Rafah

As I write these lines on Feb. 25, 2024, the immediate future of the genocide waged by Israel against the people of the Gaza Strip is coming down to the fate of the small southern city of Rafah. The vast majority of Gazans have been rendered homeless, as Israel’s bombing campaign has destroyed or made uninhabitable most of the housing stock of what was Gaza City as well as the rest of the strip.

Since October, Gaza’s people have been crowded into the city of Rafah along the border with Egypt. In the next few weeks, the question is whether Israel will destroy Rafah, killing or driving out its population, or will Israel be forced to accept a temporary ceasefire. Without a ceasefire, the effects of the bombing and other military actions, plus thirst, hunger, and disease, will kill Gazans or force them out of Palestine altogether. A ceasefire would buy time and pressure the U.S.-led imperialists to allow aid to reach the people so they can stay alive and keep fighting to stay and rebuild in the future. But this presents a danger to Israel.

The danger is when the war — if this kind of genocide can be called a war — ends in some kind of ceasefire — those who’ve survived it will still be in place, fighting and eventually liberating their entire homeland. This would be a defeat for Israel and its aim of transforming itself from the settler colony it is today into a real nation along the lines of Canada, Australia, or the United States. These nations began as settler colonies but became nations, in part, by crushing the native population.

How Vietnam Won, Part 1

On January 14, 2024, 400,000 pro-Palestinian anti-genocide demonstrators marched in Washington, D.C., to the White House (occupied by the Democrat President “Genocide Joseph Biden”). Tens of thousands more marched in support of Gaza in San Francisco, California, the following day.

The stakes could not be higher. Those of us living in the United States have a special responsibility to do all we can to force the government to halt its support to Israel. Though it is the Israeli government carrying out the genocide on the ground, it could not commit these nightmarish crimes without the financial, political, military, and moral support provided by the government headed by Genocide Joe.

The genocide — there is no other word for it — has continued without let-up in Gaza. Israel aims to kill people directly or through hunger and disease, then drive out the rest of the population as far away as possible from Palestine. The January 3 edition of the Middle East Monitor reports, “According to the Times of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is discreetly exploring the acceptance of thousands of migrants from Gaza, with the Democratic Republic of Congo being one of the countries under consideration. ‘Congo will be willing to take in migrants,’ said a senior source in the security cabinet, ‘and we’re in talks with others.’”

Can the Palestinians Win?

The year 2023 was dominated by Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza beginning in October. It was supposedly in response to the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood attack on Israel by Hamas [Islamic Resistance Organization] and other Palestinian resistance organizations on October 7, 2023. Many so-called liberals, progressives, socialists, and even some Marxists have attacked the alleged excesses Palestinian fighters committed, such as beheading Israeli babies, raping Israeli women, kidnapping children, etc. Many of these claims of excesses have since been discredited. These “progressives” claim they sympathize with the Palestine people in their struggle against Israeli apartheid. But they then lecture that the Palestinians must conduct their struggle without violence or harm to “innocent Israeli civilians.”

It’s now clear that many of the civilian deaths were the result of the Israeli army itself firing into areas that were allegedly occupied by Palestinian fighters and their Israeli captives. Our “liberal” friends insist there is still a residue of Palestinian excess. But how could it be otherwise, considering how Zionists have treated the Palestinian people for the last 75+ years? Before October 7, there was the day before. Yet the so-called friends of the Palestinians insist we in the West must equally condemn Palestinian excesses, real or alleged, and Israel’s crimes. They want to support only a “pure” national liberation struggle without any “excesses.” In other words, they do not support any national liberation struggles at all!

They argue that today’s Palestinian liberation movement is dominated not by secular democrats like the Palestinian Liberation Organization of the past that fought for a secular democratic state for all of Palestine’s residents. The PLO’s program included the separation of church and state with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews to practice their respective religions. This is what these “friends” support as an alternative to Zionist apartheid with Judaism as the state religion.

The Genocide Resumes

It was announced on December 1 that Israel’s genocidal bombing and ground attacks on Gaza had resumed. Contrary to media reports, this isn’t an Israeli-Hamas war, but rather it’s a genocidal attempt by Israel, backed by the Genocide Joe’s government, to drive Palestinians out of Gaza into the Sinai, killing as many as possible along the way.

This would reduce the Arab population by about 2.3 million, transforming the current Arab majority in historic Palestine in favor of an Israeli majority. It would prepare the way for finally driving out the Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank into Jordan — again killing as many as possible along the way. The Israeli leadership — not just Netanyahu — hopes that Israel will be consolidated as a nation-state much like the U.S., Australia, and Canada became nations after the genocide and apartheid of the native population. This has been the aim of the Zionist movement and its imperialist sponsors from the beginning of the modern Zionist movement.

Origins of the conflict

Let’s briefly review the process of how Israel was, in the words of Biden, “created.” Toward the end of the 19th century, capitalism was being transformed into monopoly capitalism based on free competition (not the perfect competition of neoclassical capitalist economists).