Gaza: Warren and Sanders, defend their class interests

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

It is no mystery that the capitalist class, or the 1% as the ruling class has been referred to of late as suggestions that there are classes in the United States are not too popular, has two political parties.  The working class, another term avoided by the same 1%’s media, has no mass party at all.

While it cannot be denied that some Democratic Party politicians or sections of the party do differ with their Republican friends on some issues like the environment, same sex marriage, reproductive rights etc. there is no fundamental differences on the basics.  Both parties represent Wall Street and most importantly they defend the market and the economic system of production based on private ownership and that production therefore can only be set in to motion on the basis of personal gain or profit.

I always made the point at work or union events that these two parties are used to play the good cop bad cop role. One gives you a cigarette and the other beats you but they’re both after the same information.

I mentioned to a friend the other day that given the hawkish and rightward shift by one of the toughest nuts in the 1%’s political arsenal, Elizabeth Warren might emerge as a challenger to Hilary in the election.  The liberal wing of the Democratic Party might push her in that direction.

Warren’s recent defense of the Zionist’s bombing of hospitals and schools in Gaza leads me to think that she’s testing the waters, proving to the US ruling class and the Israeli lobby her credentials, that she can be trusted. 

Like those that blame the woman for wearing clothes that invite the rapist, Warren blames Gaza’s government, Hamas, for Israel’s bombing of schools and hospitals because, “….when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself,"

I wonder if Ms Warren has visited Gaza or has compared Hamas’ “military assets” to the Zionists regime’s military assets? You have to gasp at the use of such a term.  Perhaps Ms Warren thinks the Gazan government should put their piddly little rockets next to their air force bases on the edge of the strip? Or at their navel bases along the coast?

Warren is simply repeating what she knows is Israeli propaganda and she enters in to even a more putrid morass claiming that Civilian casualties are the "last thing Israel wants.".

The entire international community except Israel, it’s backers US imperialism, and a few other hangers on, has determined Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is illegal. Yet Ms Warren and her government use the veto power it has in the UN to prevent any action being taken against the Zionist regime. Israel puts neo fascist colonial settlers on to occupied Palestinian land, it steals land and bulldozes houses. Ensuring civilian casualties in one way or another is not the “last” thing on Israel’s to do list; it is the first.

"America has a very special relationship with Israel," says Warren, "Israel lives in a very dangerous part of the world, and a part of the world where there aren't many liberal democracies and democracies that are controlled by the rule of law. And we very much need an ally in that part of the world."

The important part of this statement is the last sentence. Israel is the only reliable ally US imperialism has in the area. It has a “special relationship” with other nasty regimes in the area too, the Saudi’s for instance, or the Bahraini royal family and the monarchical dictators that run Qatar. Warren’s political rival, Hilary Clinton, said of Hosni Mubarak, the US supported Egyptian dictator and torturer, that he was like a family member.

But the revolutionary potential of the Arab masses, their numbers and conditions, do not appeal to US imperialism. The possibility they can topple their regimes is too great. Most of the dictatorial regimes in the Arab world have been propped up, financed and supported by the US in one way or at one time or another.  US imperialism like the Zionists, welcome anti-Semitism, hatred of Israel, and a land with a small population surrounded by hostile forces, such a siege mentality makes for dependent proxies.  Israel has indeed become not England’s but the US’s “Loyal little Ulster in the Middle East.”

As the Huff Post article on this issue also pointed out, Bernie Sanders, another liberal in Congress who first ran as a socialist and who I contacted back then in an effort to have him come to the Bay Area for a union sponsored public meeting, has also come under attack for defending Israel.

Both Warren and Sanders, who considers himself a socialist, voted for the Senate resolution S 498 supporting Israeli war crimes. What sort of socialist does that?  The entire US Congress is war criminals. This is why the Zionist regime can introduce racist apartheid area laws, kill Palestinian children at will and bomb, what amounts to a heavily populated outdoor civilian prison; it has the power of the US behind it.

This is the treacherous role played by the liberals despite their often community friendly rhetoric and whining about inequality.  When it comes to a real struggle against the system and how society is run, they defend their class interests. This is why so many Americans have chosen not to vote.  We cannot look to the Democratic Party for a way out.  As my dad used to say, to do that is "A mug's game."

Only working class unity can solve the ongoing crises that intensify daily, both domestic and global.  We cannot resolve the war at home or end the wars abroad, wars in which only our children die and the children of foreign victims dies ten times over all to maintain the rule of the capitalist class and their system. We have to question the very nature of society itself. 

This doesn’t mean we don’t fight for reforms, fight to make life around us better, fairer, more humane because we learn lessons through struggle, we draw certain conclusions about the world around us.  But we also have to recognize by studying our own history, working class history as well as present events, that capitalism cannot be reformed, cannot be made nice. It is inherently a violent, racist, sexist and exploitative system.  The conditions for long-term reform have passed in the era of globalization.

We cannot limit our expectations to the possibility of higher wages or more benefits, the shift in the other direction has become the new normal. And we must not fall in to their propaganda that happiness means more consumption; the planet cannot and will not support that. We have to wage a war against the wages system, against wage slavery in all its forms.  We have to wage a struggle to control the labor process and all aspects of economic life. 

In order to wrest control of our economic and political life from the clutches of the bankers and owners of capital, we have to unite nationally and internationally as a class, as that class that earns its means of subsistence by selling our labor power in the marketplace of the world. Workers divided along race, sex and other lines cannot win.

Warren and Sanders’ support of Israel has nothing to do with a love of Jews. The ruling class in the US is composed of anti-Semites and always has been.  Their support for Israel is based solely on economic self-interest.

As workers, our non-support for Israel's actions, for Warren, Sanders and their party or political affiliation should be based on our economic self-interest. It is in US workers’ self interest to stand with the Palestinian people in their struggle against colonization and against occupation. We stand with Israeli workers who reject the Zionist racist philosophy and call for unity between all workers in the area against capital and its corrupt regimes.

We stand for a federation of democratic socialist states.