One year of the genocide in Gaza: A historic crime of imperialism

Register to attend our next online campaign event, “The Gaza genocide, world war, and imperialist geopolitics,” which is taking place on Wednesday October 9, at 8pm Eastern.

Today, October 7, marks one year since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, one of the worst war crimes of the 21st century. This past year has seen a horrific escalation of violence, deliberately aimed at exterminating the Palestinian population and reshaping the entire Middle East region according to the geopolitical interests of Israel and American imperialism.

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More than 41,600 Palestinians have been killed since the onslaught began, according to local health officials. This includes over 11,300 children and nearly 6,300 women. The real death toll is far higher—now likely over 200,000, based on a July estimate from the medical journal The Lancet. 

Gaza, a densely populated urban area, has been reduced to ruins. More than 60 percent of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Over 227,000 housing units have been impacted, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Universities have been reduced to rubble, along with hospitals, schools, and cultural centers, as part of what can only be described as a calculated campaign of cultural destruction.

Ninety percent of the population has been displaced at least once over the past year, with many families forced to move repeatedly, crammed into shrinking pockets of land where they are cut off from basic necessities like clean water, electricity, and health care.

Who is responsible for this atrocity? Of course, the Israeli government, which seized on the Hamas attack of October 7 to implement long-standing plans. There are significant questions about what Israeli intelligence services knew in advance of the attack. The Washington Post recently described Israel’s pager operation, which allowed Mossad to infiltrate Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon, as “one of the most successful and inventive penetrations of an enemy by an intelligence service in recent history.” Given the sophistication of Israeli intelligence, it is difficult to believe that Mossad had no forewarning of Hamas’ plans.

Regardless, the scope of the genocide has made it clear that this was not a spontaneous reaction but the culmination of years of preparation. Netanyahu’s government saw an opportunity to advance its vision of Greater Israel, and it moved swiftly to exploit the situation.

However, while the Israeli government is responsible for carrying out this genocide, it is not acting alone. The massacre in Gaza is being directed by Washington and the imperialist powers. The United States has armed Israel with the weapons used to decimate Gaza. The bombs that have rained down on civilians have “Made in the USA” written all over them. President Biden has continually repeated hollow calls for Israel to “minimize civilian casualties,” even as he and Vice President Kamala Harris reaffirm Israel’s “right to defend itself” and pour more weaponry into its hands.

One year after the genocide began, it is clear that the slaughter in Gaza is not just a regional conflict but part of a broader imperialist strategy. The Biden-Harris administration and the American ruling class view the massacre in Gaza as a component of their global war drive, which includes the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the increasingly aggressive confrontation with China. 

The Democratic Party, which controls the White House and the Senate, bears direct responsibility for this bloodshed. Biden and Harris have spent the past year escalating their global military campaign while systematically suppressing any opposition to the genocide.

Trump and the Republicans, for their part, have called for even more brutal measures, including the destruction of entire cities in Gaza and all-out war on Iran. The entire political establishment, Democrats and Republicans alike, are united in their support for imperialism’s wars of conquest.

The violence is escalating beyond Gaza’s borders. The Israeli incursion into Lebanon and its threats of all-out war with Iran are setting the stage for a regional and global conflagration. The Middle East is becoming the epicenter of a broader world war that threatens to engulf humanity.

And war abroad involves an escalation of the attack on democratic rights at home. Governments around the world have criminalized protests against the war, using the slander of “antisemitism” to justify repressive measures. In the US, UK, France, and elsewhere, demonstrators have been arrested, laws have been passed restricting free speech, and efforts have been made to deport or imprison those who oppose the war. One particularly stark example is the case of Momodou Taal, a US-based international student threatened with deportation for his outspoken opposition to Israel’s genocide.

Over the past year, millions of people around the world have taken to the streets to protest the genocide in Gaza. In cities across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, the demonstrations have drawn millions of people demanding an end to the slaughter. Yet, despite the massive scale of these protests, the genocide continues unabated.

The problem is that the protests have not been directed against the real source of the genocide: imperialism and the capitalist system. The Democratic Party-aligned organizations that have dominated these demonstrations in the US have sought to limit opposition to appeals to the very government that is carrying out the massacre. 

The fight against the genocide must be developed as a class movement. The same capitalist system that is driving the escalation of war abroad is also waging war against the working class at home. As the ruling class funnels trillions of dollars into the war machine, American workers face mass layoffs, rising inflation, and a collapsing social safety net. The working class must oppose the war in Gaza not only as an atrocity but as part of the capitalist system’s global assault on workers everywhere.

The past month has seen a growing wave of class struggle in the United States, with strikes by Boeing workers, dockworkers, and other sections of the working class. These struggles are an expression of the same underlying forces driving imperialist war abroad: the relentless pursuit of profit by the ruling class. The escalation of war is inseparable from the assault on workers’ jobs, wages, and living standards at home.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for the building of a global movement of the working class to stop the genocide and end imperialist war. The international working class is the only social force capable of stopping the violence in Gaza and preventing the descent into a third world war. We urge workers and youth everywhere to join us in the fight for socialism and the building of a revolutionary leadership to end capitalism and its wars.

Register to attend our next online campaign event, “The Gaza genocide, world war, and imperialist geopolitics,” which is taking place on Wednesday October 9, at 8pm Eastern.