A step in the right direction

US imperialism, after five long months of genocide, finally bowed to world public opinion this week by refusing to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. But the Americans soon made it clear that they weren’t going to do anything about it,
If the Americans were truly concerned about the plight of the Palestinians they could have cut off all military supplies to Israel to force the Zionists to open up their check-points to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, accept a permanent ceasefire and to withdraw all Israeli troops from the Palestinian Arab enclave. Instead they’ve rushed to tell the world that the UN resolution was “non-binding” to assure the Israelis that the flow of American arms to Israel will not be suspended. 
This clearly wasn’t enough for the rabid Zionist leaders enraged at the further isolation of Israel on the world stage. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the resolution as betrayal. He cancelled an Israeli delegation to Washington. “Israel will not cease fire,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said. “We will destroy Hamas and continue to fight until the last of the hostages return home” while another minister said that “the Security Council decision proves that the United Nations is antisemitic, and its secretary general is antisemitic and encourages Hamas”.
Without sanctions the American abstention is in itself a meaningless gesture – a sop to the Palestinian solidarity movement that is sweeping across the United States and the rest of the world. Nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. Equally significant is the fact that  the Sunak government broke ranks with Washington on this issue – joining France, Russia and People’s China in supporting  the modest call on the Security Council for  “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire”.
The Israelis thought that they could crush the Palestinians and drive them out of Gaza to clear the land for more Zionist settlers. They never imagined a war like this that has closed their Red Sea port of Eilat and forced over half a million Israelis to flee the country. They never expected such fierce resistance. Not just in Gaza. In the West Bank many Palestinians have joined the partisans to defend themselves against marauding settler gunmen. In the north Israeli incursions are paid back in kind by the Lebanese resistance on a daily basis. 
Now the anti-war movement is growing even in Israel. Former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz says Netanyahu is leading Israel “from bad to worse”. A junior minister has resigned in the first public crack in Netanyahu’s emergency grand coalition while demands grow for Netanyahu to step down and call fresh elections.
While the Palestinians and Yemenis take on the Zionists head-on the millions on the Arab street and the millions upon millions throughout the world who have taken to the streets in support of their just struggle must step up the campaign to stop the Israeli slaughter and force the Zionists to recognise the just demands of the Palestinian Arabs. 

Interesting Times

Soaring energy prices; fears of a new winter lockdown as the new Omicron Covid variant spreads through Britain and almost daily reports in the mainstream media of the hypocrisy and sleaze that surrounds the Johnson administration. It’s not surprising that the Tory vote crashed at the Old Bexley & Sidcup by-election last week.
    Though the Tories held this true blue bastion in the commuter belt of south-east London the Conservative majority was slashed from almost 19,000 to just 4,478 votes. Reform UK, the successor to Nigel Farage’s old UKIP party bagged 6.6 per cent of the poll and there was even a 7.4 per cent swing to Labour – though some say this was largely due to the fact that Sir Keir Starmer had not shown his face during the campaign.
    Now we’re told of a Christmas party at Downing Street last year, despite gatherings being forbidden under Covid rules at the time and that while Afghan servants of British imperialism were left stranded at Kabul airport when the Taliban took over Boris Johnson personally intervened to ensure that dogs and cats of a British-run animal rescue charity were safely evacuated out of the country.
    All of this is coming from sections of the bourgeois media that, until recently, were praising Johnson to the hilt. And what this shows is while Johnson may well have a plan to deal with another Covid upsurge others clearly have an alternative “Plan B” to push him aside before the next election.
    It’s not just the Tories Remainers – though they’ve clearly got a lot of old scores to settle with Johnson – its the others in the corridors of power who increasingly see Johnson as anh electoral embarrassment as well as a barrier to restoring the “special relationship” with US imperialism.
    Labour should be having a field day over this crisis of confidence within the ranks of the ruling class but all Starmer seems interested is in hounding out what’s left of the Corbynistas inside the Labour Party he claims to lead.
    Anger at his incompetent and useless leadership has now spread throughout the labour movement as a whole. Sharon Graham, the new leader of Unite, has already told Starmer & Co that they can expect no more than the affiliation fees from her union in the future and the demand to cut financial support to Labour is growing in other unions as well.

Grovelling to the White House

In the past crawling to the Americans was almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who would drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. But Johnson has taken it to a new level in a bid to restore his government’s credibility in the White House.
    Last week British envoys joined the Americans in a diplomatic offensive in Kiev to try and push their Nato allies into supporting more sanctions against Russia to prop up the Ukrainian puppet regime. Now they’ve joined hands with the Americans and Israel to support the continued Zionist occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, which were captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
    The resolution reaffirmed that settlement construction and any other Israeli activities constitute a change in the demographic nature of the occupied Syrian Golan. It called on Israel to resume peace talks and withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan in accordance with the border lines of 4th June1967.
    At the UN General Assembly members overwhelmingly affirmed Syria’s sovereignty at a session last week in vote carried by 94 with 69 abstentions
    Israel was supported by just seven other states : the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and three tiny Pacific island states – the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau – that are little more than American protectorates.

Blowing one’s own trumpet

Donald Trump provoked laughter at the United Nations this week when he claimed that his administration had “accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country”. His rambling address to the General Assembly sought to justify his “America First” policies that threaten to plunge the world into a destructive trade war while justifying US imperialism’s support for America’s lackeys across the globe.

 Trump is by no means the worst post-war US president. He has still to plunge America into another disastrous war like his predecessors did in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Libya and Iraq. To be fair, Trump did not initiate the US intervention in Syria. That was down to Obama and the Democrats. And the maverick Republican leader did move to ease tension on the Korean peninsula with a historic summit with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore last summer.

But the new American war-lord has achieved little else over the past two years of his watch. He told the assembled leaders and diplomats at the UN that America’s “new approach is also yielding great strides and very historic change” in the Middle East. What that really means is encouraging the Saudi Arabians and the other feudal Arabs to step up their brutal intervention in Yemen and confront Iran,

At the same time the Trump administration continues to pursue its “deal of the century” on Palestine which gives Israel everything it wants. All the Palestinians are offered in some paltry blood-money which will come from Saudi coffers and from the money the Americans have saved by stopping their contributions to the UN’s Palestinian refugee relief fund. Needless to say this absurd plan, that has no takers apart from America’s Israeli and Saudi pawns, is going nowhere.

Trump, of course, is largely the prisoner of those who propelled him into the White House in the first place. He clearly does represent bourgeois American circles who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe and north-east Asia so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south America. But they are not the dominant force within the US ruling class and they may not even be in control of the party Trump currently heads.

The dominant force within the US ruling class still dreams of the “new world order” that the Americans proclaimed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. While their public face may have been that of the late Senator John McCain, the “deep state” that represents the most reactionary and aggressive sections of the American ruling class cuts across all parties in the United States.

  They are bitterly opposed to “America First”, They are doing their best to sabotage the current rapprochement between north and south Korea and undermine any hope of a future understanding with Russia. Shamefully, the May government is collaborating in their campaign of anti-Russian provocations that are designed to prevent Trump from reaching any meaningful agreement with the Kremlin.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are now taking the first tentative steps towards developing an independent foreign policy for Labour in government with renewed calls for global peace and justice for the Palestinians.

We are suffering unemployment and economic stagnation. We want major cuts in military expenditure including the scrapping of Trident and the withdrawal of all British troops from the Middle East, Afghanistan and northern Ireland. The money saved should be the switched to peaceful and civil purposes and creating jobs. These are the demands that must be taken up throughout the peace and labour movement today.