Israel’s assault on Palestinians right now is the most extreme offensive Israel has launched in decades. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets around the world to protest Israel’s siege of Gaza. The widespread demonstrations across the Middle East have threatened instability and have played a role in Biden calling on Israel to slowdown the genocide.
“¡Del río al mar, Palestina será libre!” es más que un eslogan, es el llamamiento de un movimiento de liberación. La lucha palestina por la liberación es internacional y la lucha por el socialismo comienza cuando nos unimos para luchar contra el imperialismo, el colonialismo y el capitalismo. La antología Palestina: Una introducción socialista, publicada por Haymarket Books, nos ofrece una visión general de las posibilidades de un mundo mejor, empezando por la liberación palestina. Los editores Sumaya Awad y brian bean nos ofrecen un sucinto trasfondo histórico de la liberación palestina y un marco internacionalista del socialismo desde abajo a través del cual podemos contemplar esta lucha.
by Zack Frailey Escobar · Published October 19, 2023 · Last modified November 16, 2023
Since the events of October 7, when Operation Al-Aqsa Flood shattered the illusion of Zionist invincibility, the Western media has unleashed a deluge of bile against anyone who speaks out in defense of Palestinian or Arab lives. This has created an environment in which it is possible for Bernie Sanders, a Jewish man and a descendant of Holocaust victims, to be boycotted as an antisemite by the leader of the German (!) Social Democratic Party for having the audacity to condemn Israel and Hamas equally for targeting civilians.
The libels against Sanders and others serve a dual function. They attempt to define the parameters of the pro-Israel position as constituting only those who support the present invasion and indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. At the same time, they label as anti-Israel (or “pro-Hamas” or “antisemitic”) any view that calls for military restraint on the part of the Zionist occupiers.
“La violencia que ha dominado el ordenamiento del mundo colonial, que ha marcado sin cesar el ritmo de la destrucción de las formas sociales autóctonas y ha roto sin reservas los sistemas de referencia de la economía, las costumbres del vestir y la vida exterior, esa misma violencia será reivindicada y asumida por el autóctono en el momento en que, decidiendo encarnar la historia en su propia persona, irrumpa en los barrios prohibidos.” -Frantz Fanon, Desgraciados de la Tierra
Los socialistas siempre han considerado la creación del Estado de Israel como un proyecto de los países colonizadores occidentales. Los Estados capitalistas de Europa y Estados Unidos que apoyaron la creación de Israel lo hicieron por dos razones: para establecer un punto de apoyo político en una región rica en petróleo a la que querían tener acceso para construir su maquinaria capitalista, y para crear una tierra natal para los judíos que, para empezar, no querían realmente en sus propios países. Desde su creación en 1948, Israel ha servido como vigilante de Estados Unidos.
“The violence which has ruled over the ordering of the colonial world, which has ceaselessly drummed the rhythm for the destruction of native social forms and broken up without reserve the systems of reference of the economy, the customs of dress and external life, that same violence will be claimed and taken over by the native at the moment when, deciding to embody history in his own person, he surges into the forbidden quarters.” – Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth
by Puntorojo Editorial Collective
by Puntorojo Editorial Collective · Published October 11, 2023 · Last modified January 26, 2024
Socialists have always viewed the creation of the state of Israel as a project of Western colonizing countries. The capitalist states of Europe and the United States that supported the creation of Israel did so for two reasons: to establish a political foothold in a region rich with oil they wanted access to build their capitalist machinery, and to create a homeland for Jews they did not really want in their own countries to begin with. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, it has served as a watchdog for the United States.
It was Palestinians who paid the price for this colonizing project and imperial arrangement. Their indigenous homeland was taken from them. They were denied a state. They were forced to live under a United Nations partition they did not support. Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced during the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation; many thousands more were murdered.
by Zack Frailey Escobar · Published March 3, 2023 · Last modified April 11, 2023
On December 7th, Peru’s embattled head of state, the left-populist Pedro Castillo, declared a state of emergency and called for Congress to be dissolved and replaced with a newly elected constituent assembly, which would draft a new constitution. The same day, the Peruvian Congress voted to impeach Castillo. After the impeachment, Castillo was arrested on charges of sedition and treason and his vice president, Dina Boluarte, assumed office. The vast majority of Peruvians oppose the impeachment and arrest of Castillo and hundreds of thousands have gone on strike, protested, and set up blockades to resist the power grab of the Congress and Boluarte.
To date, the police and military have murdered at least 47 demonstrators. Boluarte and her new right wing allies want to hold new elections in the midst of rampant political repression under the guise of “restoring democracy”, but the protesters are demanding a new constitution will transform the state itself and deliver real democracy to Peru.
More than 76 people have died and hundreds have been arrested during two weeks of protests in Iran. Protests broke out on September 17, the day the funeral was held for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman killed while in the custody of the morality police (the baseeji). She was arrested on September 13 for not properly covering her hair as mandated by Iranian law.
Protests have spread to over 80 cities in Iran and across all 31 provinces, with students striking to join the protests and oil workers threatening to strike if the government doesn’t end its repression of the protests.
by Zack Frailey Escobar · Published June 30, 2022 · Last modified July 19, 2022
In a historic outcome, Gustavo Petro, a self-declared socialist and former guerrilla, has been elected president of Colombia. After decades of bloody repression against the left, Petro is considered to be Colombia’s “first leftist president.” While the mainstream press is rushing to stoke fears of Petro as a threat to democracy in Colombia, some on the Left are eager to hail the victory as a model for an electoral path to power for “left populism” and a vindication of the politics of “pink tide” social democracy.
