Stop the US-backed Israeli attack on Rafah!

THE World Socialist Website condemns the escalating Israeli attack on Rafah, which began this week, and calls for the mobilization of opposition across the world in the face of the latest stage of the genocide in Gaza.

For several days, Israel has been carrying out incessant bombardments on the city which have killed dozens of people, accompanied by ground attacks in eastern Rafah and at the Rafah crossing towards Egypt.

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separation wall between Egypt and Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramez Habboub)

On Monday, Israel ordered more than 100,000 hungry and desperate people to evacuate eastern Rafah, without offering them safe passage or a place to go. All this prepares for a massive and bloody attack.

More than a million people are crammed into an area with a population density four times that of Chicago, in a series of sprawling tent cities with no source of running water or electricity. The city is home to more than 600,000 children, most of whom have already been displaced several times and all of whom have been deprived of clean water and food for six months.

For six days, no food, water or medicine has been allowed into Gaza, most of which is currently suffering from “widespread famine”. Gaza is home to 80 percent of the world’s hungriest people, according to humanitarian agencies.

The Israeli assault on Rafah completely exposes the Biden administration’s efforts to publicly distance itself from the Gaza genocide. Last week, the White House temporarily suspended a bomb delivery to Israel, while US President Joe Biden said: “They are not going to get our support if, in fact, they are heading towards these centers of population. »

The purpose of these remarks was to provide professional White House apologists in the media and the American political establishment with an opportunity to do the dirty work of presenting to Washington the sponsors of the Gaza genocide as models of morality seeking to “restrain” Netanyahu. government.

“U.S. military appeals to Israel: Do more to protect Gaza residents in war zone,” headlines the newspaper. New York Times. THE Times said the U.S. military, which has killed more than a million people in its Middle East wars over the past quarter century, is a model for protecting human lives in war.

The assault on Rafah is financed, armed and politically directed by US imperialism. Over the past six months, the White House has sent more than a hundred arms shipments to Israel. In addition to the three billion dollars the United States sends each year, Biden last month signed an additional $14.3 billion spending package to finance and weaponize the genocide.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who champions U.S. imperialism and the Democratic Party, called Biden’s “conditionality on U.S. military aid” a “change historic” and “just” and “responsible” action that makes “our values clear”.

What a despicable fraud! The temporarily held bombs represent only a tiny fraction of the munitions already dropped on Gaza, equivalent to more than three Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs.

As White House spokesman John Kirby made clear on Friday, “arms shipments continue to Israel. They still receive the vast majority of everything they need to defend themselves. »

Kirby added: “We will continue to be committed to spending every penny of the additional request we received from Congress to provide them with the capabilities they need…there is no arms shipment cut here.” »

Ocasio-Cortez is right about one thing. Biden’s sponsorship of the Gaza genocide makes clear the “values” of US imperialism. These are the “values” of the massacre of women and children, covered with absurd lies and moralizing platitudes. These “values” are defended by the entire American political establishment, from the fascist-led Republican Party to the pseudo-left genocide apologists within the DSA.

Every statement by the Biden administration on genocide has the character of self-accusation. In December, Biden said the Netanyahu government was carrying out “indiscriminate bombing” and seeking “revenge… against all Palestinians.”

The White House then sent billions of dollars in bombs to the government which was carrying out these “indiscriminate bombings” targeting “all Palestinians.” In addition to several weapons shipments, Biden signed a bill providing $14.3 billion worth of weapons, which U.S. officials have pledged to spend “every dollar of.”

Then, this week, Biden admitted, “civilians were killed in Gaza because of these bombs” that the United States sent to Israel.

Finally, on Friday, a State Department report found it “reasonable to assess” that U.S. weapons were being used in a manner “inconsistent” with international law, but that arms deliveries would continue. Nevertheless.

All these declarations have the same content: even if the representatives of American imperialism admit to having financed and armed what constitute, at the very least, massive violations of international law, they proclaim themselves the global arbiters of peace and justice and clearly state that they will continue to do exactly what they have been doing.

The Gaza genocide had a considerable impact on the social consciousness of workers and young people around the world. He denounced the ruling class of the world’s “democracies”, namely the United States and its NATO allies, as a bunch of mass murderers and imperialist thugs, who see the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans as a small price to pay for their ambitions for world domination and restoration of colonial rule.

The escalation of the genocide in Gaza must give rise to protests, demonstrations and strikes by workers and young people around the world. It is particularly important for workers to understand that the genocide is part of an expanding global war, which is at the same time a war of the ruling elite against the national working class.

Opposition to the genocide in Gaza must be linked to the struggle of the working class against capitalist exploitation and transformed into a political movement against the imperialist war and against the entire capitalist system.