Leaflet distributed by the CWO during the recent protests about the situation in Palestine.

The war in Gaza is a product of imperialism – just like the wars in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the other fifty or more conflicts that are raging around the planet. Imperialism is the child of capitalism and the steady stream of barbaric atrocities we are seeing every day represent the true face of the system today. All the talk of “human rights”, “democracy”, the “rulesbased international order”, and so on, cannot conceal this.

Both Israel and Hamas are pawns on the imperialist chessboard. Israel came into being as a result of the victory of Allied imperialism in the Second World War and was initially supported by both the USSR and USA. With the outbreak of the Cold War it became the massively financed and armed outpost of Western imperialism in the Middle East. But US domination of the region and the oil trade is now threatened by the rival imperialisms of both Russia and China. Hamas has been funded by Qatar to the tune of $30 million a month (with Israel’s backing, as it hoped to play off the Palestinian factions against each other and undermine the prospect of a two state solution). Hamas has also been armed by Iran, which has entered into a de facto alliance of convenience with Russia and China against the US.

The Gaza war, like that in Ukraine, is being fought under the banners of nationalism. The truth is there is no such thing as a single Palestinian nation or a single Israeli nation. All nations are divided into classes and talk of the Palestinian or Israeli nation really means the states of the Palestinian or Israeli capitalist class. The working class has no interest in supporting its exploiters in either state, as the past bitter class struggles in both Palestine and Israel demonstrate.

Nationalism is the lie used to convince workers to die for their exploiters and forget their class interests. The various faces of leftism and even sections of anarchism urge us to support one side or the other in the name of “anti-imperialism” or the “lesser evil.” But the Gaza war, the Ukraine war, and all the others, are inter-imperialist wars; there is no anti-imperialist side in these wars. What these wars represent are steps towards a global war where the major imperialist powers will mobilise workers to fight it out.

The only real anti-imperialist struggle is the fight against capitalism itself, and the only way to oppose imperialist wars is on the basis of class struggle.

It was the revolutions in Russia and Germany that brought the First World War to an end. Despite the obstacles, class unity and class struggle of all sectors of the working class – regardless of national origin, regardless of which side of the wars they find themselves on – is the only route out of the plunge into barbarism which our rulers are preparing for us and which we will, and are already, paying for in sweat and blood.

The CWO is supporting internationalists forming local “No War but the Class War” groups to intervene in the class struggle, exposing the link between attacks on our living standards and the drive to war. Join us. We say: No War but the Class War!