This week, a coalition of groups who've been speaking out and organizing against the U.S.-backed Israeli slaughter of the Palestinian people in Gaza, launched a campaign to “Reject AIPAC.” AIPAC, or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is a pro-Israel lobby group that funds candidates who support Israel, sometimes in direct opposition to candidates who are critical (even slightly critical) of Israel.
Over the last months, Israel has used American military equipment and funding to kill more than 30,000 Palestinians. Israel has used American political support to starve more than two million Palestinians in Gaza. And Israel is using American diplomatic cover to threaten the invasion of the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza where more than half the population in Gaza is now concentrated.
At such a time, this campaign to “Reject AIPAC” is a terrible and damaging dead end. This campaign would channel you back into the killing embrace of the political forces and the system responsible for the slaughter in Gaza. It would tame and confine your outrage to “improving” the Democratic Party, a party of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And it would act as a diversionary tactic to point you away from recognizing the real enemy, the system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism.
February 13, 2024: The sole survivor of a family of eight, including three children, stands on the debris of his home in Rafah, bombed by an Israeli airstrike supposedly meant to rescue Hamas-held Israeli hostages who were in another part of town. Photo: AP
What Really Drives the U.S.'s Unconditional Support for Israel?
The Reject AIPAC campaign states,
For decades, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been a hawkish, warmongering, and bullying force in U.S. politics. AIPAC advocates for a US foreign policy directly at odds with human rights and international humanitarian law, and has supported an unconditional flow of US military funding and weapons to the Israeli government that have been used to support human rights violations against Palestinians.
While there has been “an unconditional flow of U.S. military funding and weapons to the Israeli government that have been used to support human rights violations against Palestinians,” this is NOT caused by AIPAC. This has been a strategic choice by the ruling class of this country to maintain its domination of the strategic region of the Middle East, using Israel as its principal weapon. AIPAC is only a very secondary symptom of that root cause.
Since the 1960s, the U.S. has relied on a “special relationship” with Israel. The U.S. propped up the military and economic might of Israel with billions of dollars in economic support, military equipment and political cover. In exchange, Israel provided a military bastion for the U.S. in the resource-rich region, while playing a major role in the military training and execution of war crimes in other parts of the world that helped maintain the rule of U.S. imperialism (from Guatemala to South Africa). (To go deeper into the history, see revcom.us special issue “Bastion of Enlightenment…or Enforcer for Imperialism: The case of ISRAEL.”)
Much of this predated AIPAC which became a political force in the mid to late 1970s. AIPAC did not gain the power it has because it has particularly effective lobbyists and a big budget, or because of the poisonous idea that the “Jewish lobby” has some kind of hold on American politics. It is “effective” because its mission aligns with the interests of the U.S. empire.
Secondarily, it serves the ruling class of this system to have its support for Israel seen as a result of this “grassroots” lobbying movement, in part to legitimize that support.1 This is a sleight of hand or a trick, which the organizers of the Reject AIPAC campaign are reinforcing.
From @BobAvakianOfficial Revolution Number Seven:
“Why the U.S. is supporting Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian people”
What Really Is the Democratic Party?
In announcing this campaign, the pro-Palestinian Jewish organization If Not Now posted on Instagram that “AIPAC and its GOP megadonors have no place in our party, spending millions in Democratic primaries & lobbying against Palestinian lives.”
Really?! “Our party,” you say?
Was it “your party” when Democratic President Truman rushed to be the first world leader to officially recognize Israel as a “legitimate state” in 1948? This was in the midst of the Nakba (the "catastrophe" in Arabic), where 750,000 or more Palestinians were brutally forced from their land with more than 530 Palestinian villages destroyed.
Was it “your party” when the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson provided diplomatic cover to Israel in 1967 in their pre-emptive war against a number of Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan and Syria (the so-called Six Day War), which led to the expansion of Israel and mass Palestinian displacement?
Was it “your party” in 2010 when Obama supported Israel in enforcing a blockade that kept essential medical, construction, and food supplies from reaching Gaza just months after Israel waged an unrelenting assault resulting in the deaths of more than 1,000 people and the destruction of large parts of Gaza?2
Was it “your party” when the Democrats signed onto U.S. wars in the Middle East from the 1990s up through today?
Was it “your party” when Obama backed a war in Yemen which killed 150,000 people and led to death by starvation of tens of thousands of children?
And for that matter, was the Democratic Party “your party” when Truman sent more than 300,000 American soldiers to Korea to wage a war that killed more than two million North Korean civilians and killed or wounded well over a million soldiers on all sides?
Was it “your party” when they dropped nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or was it “your party” when they waged war in Vietnam, killing more than three million people and poisoning the earth for generations? Was it “your party” when they orchestrated coups and invasions from Iran to Haiti to El Salvador?
No! The Democratic Party is a ruling class party. A ruling class of a worldwide system of exploitation and oppression that rests on billions of people, including more than 150 million children, slaving in sweatshops, mines and farmlands serving the needs of American empire. Maintaining this empire requires hundreds of military bases, terror, torture and wars.
A question and challenge to If Not Now, Jewish Voice for Peace, and all the other groups that have signed onto this Reject AIPAC Campaign: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO CLAIM THIS AS “YOUR” PARTY?!?
Watch out! Many of you have done important work, but as the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has said: “If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.”
What Is Urgently Needed Now, and What Must Be Urgently Rejected
At a time when the actual nature of the Democratic Party as a party of vicious war crimes is being laid bare, while millions have come to see “Genocide Joe” as profoundly illegitimate, this campaign to Reject AIPAC is a way of “rescuing” the Democratic Party and letting the system that it is enforcing off the hook.
Do not allow yourself to be roped into this! The dead end of “Reject AIPAC” must itself be thoroughly and unambiguously rejected.
Two things are urgently needed right now.
The first: an escalation of the powerful protest movement—growing more determined, broader and uncompromising. Aimed at STOPPING business as usual in every corner of society to demand that the U.S.-backed Israeli genocidal slaughter of Palestinians stop NOW!!
The second: a much more scientific understanding of what we're up against and what it will take to defeat it. This is a system of capitalism-imperialism. This system cannot be reformed, it must be overthrown through an actual revolution.
A challenge to all those who want to see an end to the nightmare in Gaza, and want the Palestinian people to be free: listen to Bob Avakian's social media dispatches (go here) that dig seriously and scientifically into these questions: Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world? And what is a just solution to all this?
And if you can’t deny the essential truths that Bob Avakian is putting forward, dig deeper into what he is saying about the need for revolution and how that revolution is possible in this time. And be part of acting now on those truths.
REVOLUTION Number Seven
Follow, Listen and Share: @BobAvakianOfficial
From Bob Avakian Official
REVOLUTION 7: Why is the U.S. supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians?
This is Bob Avakian (BA), bringing out more of the truth about what is happening with Palestine: why the U.S. is supporting and aiding Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian people, how this shows once again the barbaric nature of this system of capitalism-imperialism, and the truth that only a real revolution can put an end to all these horrors constantly perpetrated by the rulers of this country and the system that they serve and enforce.
In the face of all the lies, it is crucial to keep coming back to this basic, essential reality: Here is the entire ruling class of the U.S., and all its major politicians, both Democrat and Republican, fully supporting an apartheid state, Israel, carrying out the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in front of the whole world.
And for those of you who think that politicians just act in their own narrow personal interests, think deeper—think about this: Biden has not only been a long-time fanatical backer of Israel, with its terrible crimes against humanity, but now Biden is fully supporting the genocide being carried out by Israel, even though this is likely to cost Biden the votes of large numbers of people who are righteously outraged by this genocide, and this could end up costing Biden the election. (And don’t be fooled by Biden putting on the act of telling Israel to be more careful in killing civilians—Biden has continued to send military aid to Israel, and to provide it with “political and diplomatic cover,” as the bodies of Palestinian civilians massacred by Israel pile up in the tens of thousands.)
Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world? Here is the answer to that crucial question:
This is not because of “the power of the Jewish lobby”—or because of some ignorant, ridiculous and outrageous notion that “Jews are controlling everything.” It is because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.
(That is from my statement Some Basic Truths About the U.S.-Supported Israeli War Against Palestine, which is posted at revcom.us.)
It’s the system! The system of capitalism-imperialism that Biden serves. The system he has to serve—the system that anybody and everybody has to serve if they want to hold office, and especially “high office,” like president, within this system. That is why Biden is doing what he’s doing—what all these politicians are doing—above and beyond their more narrow personal interests.
It’s the system! This system of capitalism-imperialism that embodies and enforces white supremacy, patriarchal male supremacy and other brutal oppression—this system resting on ruthless life-stealing exploitation of masses of people in this country and literally billions of people worldwide, including more than 150 million children—all enforced with massive violence and destruction, of people and the environment, posing a very real threat to the future and the existence of humanity.
This system that needs to be overthrown at the soonest possible time, through an actual revolution.
Next, I’m going to get directly into why this revolution is possible, in this time, and what we need to be doing, right now, so there will be a real possibility for this revolution to succeed.