In today’s commentary I am going to discuss one very bad and dangerous direction that the mass protests in this country against Israel’s wholesale murderous bombing of the Palestinian people of Gaza has taken. This is a call to fold this righteous struggle into the 2024 elections by telling Biden that he’ll lose their support if he continues supporting Israel. 

Last weekend, on November 4, tens of thousands of people of all nationalities filled the streets of Washington, DC to protest Biden and Democrats’ full-bore support—military, political, and financial—of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. This struggle is awakening new generations and sections of people to lift their heads and see the actual nature of this country, and this line to pull people back into seeing the elections as opposed to their struggle will lead people not just into a dead end but into the killing embrace of the system that is threatening not just the people of Palestine, but of all of humanity. 

This is a moment where the future of all humanity lies in the balance from the very workings of the capitalist-imperialist system we live under. A moment that also holds the potential for revolution for a radically new and far better world aiming for the emancipation of humanity everywhere. I will get into this in a moment. 

But first, some background. 

Sometimes numbers are just numbers, other times they paint a picture, they indicate scale and scope, and they pose questions of: what’s behind the numbers? What caused these numbers? What is to be done about these numbers? This can be trivial, like my hometown basketball team, the New York Knicks who haven’t won a championship in half a century even while being a wealthy team in one of the largest sports markets. The sports analysts spend hours dissecting this. New Yorkers complaining about the hapless Knicks is a New York tradition by now. 

Sometimes numbers matter: The global rise in temperature threatening the future of humanity; the carnage in lives lost and the stalemate in the U.S./Russia proxy war in Ukraine, with neither side considering backing down, measured up against the number of nuclear weapons that Russia and the U.S. possess as the ultimate threat, which if used could be the end game for humanity. The climate numbers and the stalemate up against the potential use of nukes pose the question of why? And on this show, we have shown that the answer is CAPITALISM-IMPERIALISM—a system of ruthless competition among big powers over the exploitation and domination of the people of the world.

HERE ARE SOME OTHER NUMBERS, FROM THE LAST THREE WEEKS IN GAZA THAT TELL ANOTHER URGENT STORY OF THE HORROR THIS SYSTEM WE LIVE UNDER BRINGS… NOTE THAT THESE NUMBERS ARE MINIMUMS: 

Gaza:

• Killed: At least 10,569; Including at least: 4,324 children
• Injured: At least 26,475; Including at least: 8,663 children

Occupied West Bank:

• Killed: At least 164; Including 44 children
• Injured: More than 2,100

Israel:

• Killed: At least 1,405
• Injured: At least 5,600

Behind these numbers are a people, families, children—six killed per hour, by Israeli planes and missiles often guided by U.S. intelligence and paid for by the U.S. Their tears, their anguish, their lives count for nothing to the Israeli government, and their godfather in the mafia use of the word, the USA—the # 1 imperialist oppressor in the world. In fact, to the Israeli government the Palestinians are not even human. 

On October 10, Israel’s Defense Minister declared, “I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

It makes my blood boil that for all too many Israelis and people in this country, Palestinian children—infants, kids, teens—don’t even count… and yet are rightly outraged when it is an Israeli child or U.S. citizen who is harmed… these are the twisted values of capitalism-imperialism.

Often these days you hear people, especially students, talk about capitalism and see it as a problem. But: What is capitalism-imperialism? Bob Avakian defined imperialism decades ago, and what he said is in the handbook for revolution, BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian:

Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.

Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism. (BAsics 1:6)

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With this as foundation I want to briefly speak in this commentary to how this fight is impacting the political terrain—how it is shaping the thinking of large sections of people who are deeply concerned and outraged at the horror that is being carried out against the two-plus million Palestinians locked—yes, imprisoned—in the most densely packed area in the world, largely defenseless against relentless bombing and siege that has denied them the basics of life—food, water, medical care, fuel, electricity, and as a result medical care—with some surgeries performed in open air, and for many without anesthesia.

As I said at the top of this commentary, last weekend we saw one of the largest rallies against the genocidal assault on Gaza focusing on the role of Biden and the U.S.’s whole-hog support of Israel. From the rally stage came the line that people should withhold voting for Biden in the presidential election next year. This echoed a call from a few progressive Democratic congresspeople who are defying Biden—opposing U.S. support for Israel—who have been saying we will remember in 2024. And for this they have come under attack from all quarters of the ruling class. 

But this line will drain the life out of the outrage against the U.S.’s criminal role in supporting Israel by driving it into bullshit dead-end electoral strategy. And more, this will divert people from looking deeper into the system, from coming to see that what is driving the U.S. support for Israel is the capitalist-imperialist system and, through the work of revcom revolutionaries and this show, to begin to see that only a real emancipating revolution based on the new communism holds the prospect of a whole new, emancipating way we could be living, moving beyond all the horrors that plague humanity today. 

Listen to Nihad Awad, the head of CAIR—that’s the Council on American-Islamic Relations—speaking at the November 4th rally: 

Nihad Awad: No ceasefire, no votes. No ceasefire, no votes. No votes in Michigan. No votes in Arizona. No votes in Georgia. No votes in Nevada. No votes in Wisconsin. No votes in Pennsylvania. No votes in Ohio. No votes for you anywhere if you do not call for a ceasefire now. … We will make our voices heard more and more. In November, we remember. In November, we remember.

The only positive word he said a dozen times was the word NO!, but not as he meant it. Precisely the opposite is what is needed. No to bourgeois electoral bullshit and, Right-On to Revolution. 

The reality is every section of the ruling class, except for a small number of Congresspeople, fully support Israel. The fascist Republican Party of Trump and the Democratic Party, and yes, even Bernie Sanders. Why? First, some history: 

Israel is a country that, with the backing of major imperialist powers, was founded as a racist, Jewish supremacist state, 75 years ago, on the basis of horrific ethnic cleansing—with mass killing, rape, and destruction of whole villages of the Palestinians, driving masses of Palestinians off of their lands and incorporating that land into the expanding territory into what became the state of Israel (which had never existed before World War 2). And now Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. imperialists, is openly carrying out genocide against the Palestinians. (Bob Avakian, Some Basic Truths About the U.S.-Supported Israeli War Against Palestine)

Now if you’ve been paying attention to this struggle, you’ve heard that Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken utter words of concern for the Palestinians in Gaza. They’ve called for a pause in the slaughter to allow for some “humanitarian aid,” only for the pummeling to begin anew. It’s like the torture scenes in movies—the victim is knocked unconscious by the torturer, who then throws a bucket of water to revive the prisoner, only to start the torture anew. 

The way to understand these pious words of concern for Palestinian lives from the blood-soaked fangs of Biden and Blinken is that they got to do what the system that they preside over, the bloodthirsty system of capitalism-imperialism, requires them to do, but they don’t want to say that. Because to get over on the people here and around the world they need to pretend to be upholders of “freedom” and “human rights.” They may even believe that—that their murderous bombardment is—well, let’s put it like it is, the “cost of doing business.” 

They need and want you to believe that they do what they do for the noblest of reasons, concealing the actual reality that they are the vicious enforcers of an imperialist empire who are compelled to dominate people all over the world, including contending with other imperialist gangster rivals such as Russia and China. 

Once again, diverting the just outrage of the mass protests into electoral bullshit keeps the people who are raising their heads to resist the brutal bloody genocide being done in their name, from seeing and seeking the actual cause of Gaza atrocity in the capitalist-imperialist system, and the answer in an actual revolution led by the emancipating vision of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—a blueprint for a new society on the road to overcome all forms of exploitation and oppression. 

There’s an important article on our website, revcom.us, by Bob Avakian, titled very aptly: 

THE TRIALS OF FASCIST DONALD TRUMP,
AND THE CRIMINAL NATURE OF THIS WHOLE SYSTEM
Or: Don’t Be Played for Suckers by Trump’s Posturing, or the Democrats’ Posing as Defenders of Justice—We Need a Revolution and a Fundamentally Different and Far Better System 

In this article BA writes: 

Beneath the outward appearance of “respectability” (and even the aura of “solemn dignity”) that surrounds many of the “leaders” of this country, there is the reality of the truly perverse, demented mentality that someone is required to have—or is compelled to acquire—in order to serve as top functionaries of this system.

The bitter irony for those progressive people, including many from the Palestinian community who are appealing to Biden and the Democrats that “they won’t forget” what he’s doing, is that when it comes down to election time Biden (or maybe some other Democrat) will be facing Trump (or another fascist Republican) and then what you gonna do? Then, people will find themselves confronting the cynical line from the Democrats and their promoters that things will be even worse if Trump is elected, so do you really want to help Trump get elected by not voting for Biden? You are being played. Worse, by going for this tired-ass line you are actually playing with the lives and the future of Palestinians, and even more with the future of humanity, because the horror of what is going down in Gaza can be a wakeup call for people to get serious, see the nature of the beast of this system, and get organized for a real liberating revolution here and around the world. 

When the veil of the U.S. as a force for good is ripping apart—opening big holes in their disguise—this is time to shake and wake all those sections of the people, especially those most oppressed and the youth more broadly to see the nature of the beast that oppresses people here and around the world and get organized now for the one thing that could matter more than anything, a real revolution to liberate humanity. 

The entire ruling class is behind the U.S. and Israel. It’s time to get serious and get real and get into Bob Avakian and the revolution we urgently need. He has written that “everything that is happening with the developing situation involving Palestine and Israel, along with Biden’s push to heighten the danger of war with Russia and China, and how this further shines a light on the very nature of U.S. capitalist imperialism—highlights once more the crucial truth” of his statement: 

We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.