Statement of the Socialist Equality Party (US)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is addressing a joint session of Congress on July 24, at the invitation of the Democrats and Republicans. On the same day, tens of thousands will gather in Washington D.C. to express their outrage at the historic crime unfolding in real time.
For nine and a half months, Israel has rained down death and destruction on the Palestinian people in Gaza. As Netanyahu arrived in the United States on Monday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that the official death toll had surpassed 39,000, the majority women and children. Nearly 90,000 have been injured.
This is the official count, based on verified deaths from Israeli bombs. The real toll is far higher. Two weeks ago, The Lancet, one of the most respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, estimated that the number of people killed directly or indirectly could be 186,000 or more.
In its genocidal campaign, Israel has systematically destroyed residential buildings, schools, religious institutions, hospitals and the entire social infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. It has implemented a policy of genocide by starvation and disease by depriving Palestinians of food and medical supplies.
That Netanyahu and his ministers are war criminals is clear to the entire world. The genocide is the culmination of 75 years of oppression against the Palestinian people. The Israeli government seized on the events of October 7 to carry out its "final solution" to the "Palestinian problem."
Netanyahu visits Washington on the heels of a ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel's half-century-long occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal. The head of the Israeli state, along with his defense minister, faces allegations by the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of "war crimes and crimes against humanity," including "murder" and "extermination."
Guilty of war crimes on a monumental scale, Israel and its defenders resort to monumental lies. Against the millions who have protested these crimes, they level the charge of "antisemitism." What a fraud! Among those most active in the protests are Jewish people outraged that Israel, in carrying out a genocide, claims to act in their names.
Netanyahu and the Israeli regime are guilty of war crimes, for which they must be held accountable. But the invitation extended by the Democrats and Republicans in Congress for Netanyahu to speak at a joint session exposes the real relationship between US imperialism and Israel.
The Gaza genocide is made in Washington. Since last October, the American government has provided the Israeli military with 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, more than any other type of munition, as part of over $6.5 billion in weapons it has given to Israel since the start of the genocide.
Netanyahu is delivering his address under conditions of unprecedented political crisis in the United States. But whatever their conflicts and divisions, the ruling class is united in its support for Israel's genocide.
The Socialist Equality Party welcomes the protests against Netanyahu's appearance. Those joining the demonstrations on July 24 are motivated by outrage and anger over one of the greatest crimes of the modern period.
But anger and outrage are not enough. The fight against the genocide must be based on a strategic understanding of the social and political interests that are driving it.
Among the organizations holding rallies on July 24 is the ANSWER coalition, which has called a demonstration on the slogan of "Arrest Netanyahu!" But who is to do the arresting? Does anyone believe that the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, dripping in the blood of Palestinians, is supposed to hold its paid thug Netanyahu to account?
It is not a question of begging Congress and the American ruling class to change their policies. More than nine months of war have demonstrated that the representatives of the corporate and financial oligarchy are indifferent to such appeals.
The central task is the fusing of the fight against war with the growing social movement of the working class in the struggle for the socialist transformation of society. The fight against the genocide cannot be separated from the broader crisis of capitalism, the global descent into barbarism, dictatorship, fascism and war.
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