The military actions by Hamas on October 7 and Israel’s vicious and genocidal, pounding response against the Palestinian people have shaken people across the world. There is a deep hungering to understand what is happening, why and what people can do to support the people in Gaza, to have impact and to take a stand against this ongoing, and now heightened, slaughter of the Palestinians by Israel. In less than a week, on Tuesday, October 10, and the Saturday following, Revolution Books (RB) in Harlem, New York City, called two events to get into this. At both events, there was a deep desire to come together with others to engage reality and put real questions on the table, struggle for clarity and gain a deeper understanding of reality.

Both events drew lively, engaged audiences of people—a mix of people who were new to RB and newly awakened by events in the world, people from the RB community, and activists in social justice movements including the Stop Mass Incarceration movement and people in the movement for revolution. The audience at both events included students from New York University (NYU) and Columbia. Some of the Columbia students who came on Tuesday were attracted by the controversy the Revolution Club was part of that same day—between the Zionists and supporters of the Palestinians. Some artists and musicians from other countries were there. A couple of Black professionals who had attended a recent RB fund raising salon were there. Others found out through RB emails or social media. One woman was there because she called RB to find out if there were any programs or discussions about the current situation planned. Most people at both events stayed to have extensive informal discussion.

Immediately, people wanted to get into it. The ethos in the room was greater than just the questions asked and the answers posed—also because of the role of playing a section from the Killing Gaza film, which really brought the living reality of the Palestinian people into the room. The questions were very thoughtful and heartfelt, on point, grappling with this reality. "Why would anyone support Israel doing this?" and "People I know aren’t even paying attention—why?” Younger people in particular expressed frustration about their peers’ “short attention span” and self-involvement, but also said they felt hesitant to “mess up the party” by challenging them. Alan posed the kind of very sharp struggle that is required to shake people out of their stupor, ignorance or support for these war crimes, and then said: “Yes, you might lose friends and/or alienate family but we have to have this sharp struggle with people, we do have to ‘mess the party up.’”

Alan dug into the real nature of the conflict—that Israel is a settler state, how the interests of the U.S. imperialists in particular have driven the actions of Israel from the very beginning of Israel as a state. He repeatedly brought out the particular role of Israel as a U.S. “attack dog,” as an outpost in the Middle East for U.S. imperialist interests. The continued support in political and military aid since Israel’s founding and the stepping up of that support in this moment, providing diplomatic cover and concrete support, for example bringing a U.S. warship into the area, have to be exposed and denounced. He said that we here in the “belly of the beast” have a very serious internationalist responsibility to call this out. He went into some examples of how Israel also supports imperialism in its own right, not only in relationship to the Palestinian people but also by upholding apartheid in South Africa, and supplying arms to a deadly repressive regime in Guatemala, just to name two.

Throughout the session both Alan and Raymond Lotta, who hosted the event, repeatedly came back to and wove into the discussion the reality of the need for a total revolution, based on the new communism developed by Bob Avakian. They brought home the impact such a revolution would have on the whole world, and on the Middle East, Israel and Palestine in particular—what it would mean to have this "boulder” of U.S. imperialism lifted off the backs of the people of the world.

On Saturday, Raymond Lotta led a more informal discussion, starting out with first part of Thursday’s The RNL Show, which featured discussion of different aspects of this war from Andy Zee followed by Lenny Wolff, and closed with a brief, sharp clip from Bob Avakian on the two opposed lessons the people draw from the historical experience of the Nazi murder of six million Jews—as concentrated in the slogan “Never Again.”

There were similar questions in the Saturday afternoon program to Tuesday night and a similar seriousness. I want to go into a few things that came up that I think were a bit different from Tuesday’s session and that have some importance, and then close with an incident that shows some of the ways that people begin to see larger connections.

A student raised that she didn’t know what to say to her friend who said she is anti-Semitic if she doesn’t support Israel. Raymond went into this in very simple historical terms. He drew a distinction between the political and ideological movement of Zionism—which bases itself on a claim that Palestine must be set aside as a special homeland for the Jewish people all over the world. He went into the dynamic that Bob Avakian has called the “two outmodeds,” and the related viewpoint that people must and can only choose between the political program and outlook of either the outmoded system of U.S. imperialism, with its parasitical “lifestyle” rooted in the extreme exploitation of the Third World, or the Islamic fundamentalist “jihadist” movement, with its enslavement of women and theocratic Dark Ages rule in general, with the U.S. as the force which has done far greater harm and poses far the greater danger. He contrasted these to the new communism as a framework for the emancipation of humanity. People welcomed the analysis of Hamas that Raymond made in this context, and how they could support revolution for the Palestinian people without defending the vicious revenge of the Hamas attacks on civilians in Israel.

Another person in the audience gave an example of a sharpening polarization and punitive actions being taken against people who stand with the Palestinian people. A teacher he knew from a major city in the U.S. rose to speak at a meeting of union peers. This teacher objected to a resolution submitted that called Hamas a terrorist organization. The teacher objected to the word “terrorist” and suggested that the killing of civilians by both Israel and Hamas needed to be addressed. The meeting got quite heated. People were shouting and yelling about how babies were being beheaded by Hamas. This teacher responded that this was not true. After the meeting, the teacher was called in by union officials and told that there was be an investigation into what was labeled as their anti-Semitic remarks. The teacher was suspended from their position and reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation. Raymond stressed the important need for organized defense of people who are under attack, including physical attacks. This defense urgently needs to be taken up, broadly uniting with others and doing this as part of preparing and organizing for revolution.

In the course of these remarks, a middle-aged Black man began to raise the conventional anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of international control by a Jewish cabal. He went on to say that what Israel wants is the land and the Palestinians should just let them have it, that the Palestinians can’t win anyway. Raymond took this on very sharply and pointedly and said “you are wrong.” He pointed out that Vietnam with their much more primitive weapons defeated U.S. imperialism. He went on, with historical perspective, to expose the role these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories play to deflect people’s anger from the actual source of oppression and exploitation—the capitalist system which must be overthrown—not any given ethnic group. This set different terms very quickly and seemed to impact this man’s thinking as well as provide guidance for the audience as to how to take this nonsense on.

Finally, there is an interesting and important synergy developing between students in particular being awakened by this jolt and thrust into action and a desire to take up the Raymond Lotta (RL) tour, The Communist Revolution So Badly Needed…vs. The Anti-Communist Brainwash You’re Getting. After the Tuesday night event, a Columbia grad student who had encountered us that day on campus was provoked by the RB event and was moved to write a letter to a prominent professor asking him to bring RL to campus to talk about the new communism. 

For most people in the room on both nights, this was their first introduction to Bob Avakian and the new communism, and being confronted with and challenged by the fact that humanity doesn’t actually have to live this way, that there is a way out with a revolution based on the new communism. The question of “who is Bob Avakian?” came up after the program. This moment creates both the opportunity to bring the Bob Avakian Interviews to people very broadly, and the urgent need to do so. 

As the crisis continues to unfold, there will be a need and hunger for more of these events in various forms, getting more deeply into the role of the U.S., exposing that the U.S. is not the “good guy” anywhere in the world and the importance of refusing allegiance to the U.S. and taking up allegiance to “a new socialist republic.” A key part of this is engaging the BA Interviews deeply, grappling with the way out of all of the horror of this capitalist-imperialist system through revolution. This moment underscores the unique and dynamic role RB does and can increasingly play as a place where people from all backgrounds, ages and experiences come together especially in this moment to dig into the questions being raised by this huge jolt in the way things normally are. We need to be grounding people in the ugly extensive history of how the U.S. has supported, armed, defended Israel at every important turn since its inception and how we in the U.S. have a very particular responsibility to build struggle to oppose U.S. imperialism and all it does in the world. RB is the place where this debate and ferment takes place and the wrangling over how only the all the way revolution based on the new communism of BA needs to be taken up and spread now, organizing people in the hundreds, thousands and eventually—but soon—millions into this movement to have a chance to actually win.