The Socialist Equality Party is holding a series of public meetings to answer the burning question: How to stop the genocide in Gaza. These meetings will be held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Newcastle. All meeting details are at the end of this article. Reserve your seat today!
Millions of workers and young people internationally are deeply shocked and appalled at the ongoing genocide in Gaza. For more than four months, protesters have voiced their anger at the Israeli regime’s slaughter of the Palestinian people and the active support for it by all imperialist governments, including the Australian Labor government of Anthony Albanese.
However, the response to these anti-war protests, the largest and most sustained since the Vietnam War, has been to intensify the bombardment. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been murdered, the majority of which are women and children, 60,000 injured and well over 2 million displaced.
It is undeniable that this constitutes imperialist mass murder. This week, the overcrowded city of Rafah was subjected to massive aerial strikes that killed more than 100 people. It took place with the approval and active support of US President Joe Biden.
Washington has armed and funded the Israeli assault, which could not last another week without American and allied assistance. Australian intelligence tracking in Pine Gap plays an active role in the targeting of bombing sites in addition to the government’s political and diplomatic role in whitewashing and legitimising Israeli war crimes.
The so-called “left” Albanese Labor government has spearheaded a campaign labelling any opponents of the Gaza genocide as antisemitic. It falsely equates the military state of Israel with all Jewish people. This lie has been used to viciously witch-hunt opponents of the onslaught.
The Gaza genocide is not an isolated development. It is the most barbaric expression of imperialist militarism and is another front in the first stages of a third global conflagration. This includes the US-led plans to extend the Middle Eastern war targeting particularly Iran, Washington’s proxy conflict against Russia in Ukraine, and advanced preparations against its main target—China.
The recklessness and seeming madness of such a perspective can lead only to nuclear war.
In the fight against the Gaza genocide, the issues of political program have come to the fore. Two perspectives are evident. The Greens and various fake-left tendencies insist that the task is to appeal to the Labor government to alter course and end its support for the genocide.
This means covering up the imperialist character of the government and its commitment to militarism. It means burying the fact that the genocide is a crime of capitalism while peddling the fraud that protests alone will bring politicians to their senses. The lesson of the last four months reveals the contrary.
The support of capitalist governments for this barbarism is not an error of judgement but a policy. That all these governments have adopted a program of genocide must be a warning to the working class and youth globally. If genocide is what is required to save capitalism, then that is what they choose. Their attitude to the Palestinians is not different to their attitude to the populations at home.
The alternative is that advanced by the Socialist Equality Party. The fight against genocide is a fight against capitalism—the system that creates this disaster. It can only be halted by uniting workers all over the world in an international anti-war movement aimed at establishing a global socialist society based on peace and social equality.
Such a perspective is both possible and necessary. The mass global opposition to the imperialist attack on Gaza and the reemergence of working-class struggle internationally demonstrates this. But the decisive issue is building a revolutionary leadership in the working class to take forward this struggle.
At the meetings, leading members of the SEP and the IYSSE will discuss this perspective and present the party’s socialist and internationalist program. Ample time will be provided for questions and discussion. Register today!
Meeting Details:
Sydney
Wednesday, March 6, 7:00 p.m. AEDT
Belmore Senior Citizens Centre,
38-40 Redman Pde, Belmore NSW
Reserve your seat here.
If you can’t attend in person the meeting will also be livestreamed via Zoom.
Melbourne
Saturday, March 9, 3:00 p.m. AEDT
Multi Purpose Room 1, Kathleen Syme Library,
251 Faraday St, Carlton, VIC
Reserve your seat here.
Brisbane
Sunday, March 10, 1:00 p.m. AEST
Kurilpa Hall Community Centre
174 Boundary St, West End, QLD
Reserve your seat here.
Newcastle
Friday, March 8, 7:00 p.m. AEDT
Joy Cummings Centre
63 Scott St, Newcastle, NSW
Reserve your seat here.