A crime of monumental dimensions, comparable to those committed by the Nazis, is now unfolding before the eyes of the world. The more than two million people in Gaza are threatened with genocide. The Israeli government is subjecting them to systematic starvation and dehydration in advance of an imminent ground invasion.

All over the world, masses of workers and youth are shocked and revolted by the horrors being unleashed on the Palestinian population, with over one million people protesting throughout the world this past week. With the fate of millions of Palestinians now hanging in the balance, it is urgent that this opposition be expanded through industrial action by the working class.

The Netanyahu regime intends to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth. The deadline the Israeli military gave Thursday for the evacuation of 1.1 million people in northern Gaza has expired. Hundreds of thousands of people are desperately seeking to escape south, while hundreds of thousands more remain in Gaza City.

What is taking place is a war crime, directed at the entire population of Gaza. Gaza has been subjected to a blockade on food, water and fuel that began on October 9, which itself is a war crime under international law. Phillippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, said that “the scale and speed of the unfolding humanitarian crisis is bone-chilling. Gaza is fast becoming a hell-hole and is on the brink of collapse.”

Lazzarini stated that there is a severe shortage of drinking water—the most basic requirement for survival—for 650,000 people. Without immediate access to fuel to produce safe drinking water, he said, “People will start dying of severe dehydration, among them young children, the elderly and women. Water is now the last remaining lifeline.”

The health system in Gaza is collapsing. On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a statement that it “strongly condemns Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2,000 inpatients in northern Gaza. The forced evacuation of patients and health workers will further worsen the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe.”

“The lives of many critically ill and fragile patients hang in the balance,” the WHO stated, including “those in intensive care or who rely on life support; patients undergoing hemodialysis; newborns in incubators; women with complications of pregnancy, and others all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death if they are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated.”

The WHO said that Israel's demand that hospitals in northern Gaza be evacuated was a “death sentence.”

The death toll from seven days of Israeli air strikes is officially at 2,215, including over 500 children, while over 8,700 people have been injured. The relentless bombardment is intended to prepare the way for a direct invasion. On Saturday, the Israeli military said that hundreds of thousands of troops on the border with Gaza were preparing for “a significant ground operation” and “an integrated and coordinated attack from the air, sea and land.”

The American and European governments are entirely and fully complicit in this unfolding genocide. All have issued statements fully backing Israel in its homicidal campaign.

Asked Friday if Israel is “retaliating in a fury,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken replied, “What Israel is doing is not retaliation. What Israel is doing is defending the lives of its people … I think any country faced with what Israel has suffered would likely do the same thing.” The previous day, asked if there were any “red lines” that Israel could not cross, Blinken simply replied, “We’re determined to support them.”

US State Department messages obtained by the Huffington Post instruct diplomats not to use terms such as “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end the violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm,” in press materials. In the early days of the Israeli onslaught, tweets from the State Department suggesting a ceasefire were deleted.

The Biden administration is encouraging and promoting genocide. In a signal of its direct military involvement in operations in Gaza, the Pentagon on Saturday ordered a second aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Despite the relentless, lying propaganda campaign of the mass media, the sympathy of the vast majority of the world’s population is with the Palestinians, who have been subject to decades of oppression and persecution.  

The strength of the working class in every country must be mobilized to stop the developing genocide against more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, and the complicity of imperialist government in the US, Canada, Australia and throughout Europe. Mass demonstrations and protests should be called in cities and on college campuses throughout the world. 

Workers should take industrial action to deprive Israel of all resources that can be utilized in its war. Dockworkers, airport and transit workers all over the world should refuse to handle any weapons directed toward Israel.

As part of this global movement to stop the assault on Gaza, workers must raise the following demands:

1) The US and European governments must be compelled to end their support for and complicity in the genocide of the Palestinians!

2) Food, water, electricity, medical care and all other necessities must be made available immediately!

3) The siege must be lifted!

4) All military attacks by the Israel Defense Forces must stop!

5) The IDF must be forced to demobilize at once and withdraw all its forces from the border with Gaza!