In this past week, Israel’s conscious policy of starving the population of Gaza, especially killing vulnerable children, escalated with more massacres of people waiting for food, more attacks on aid distribution, and continued choking off anything close to aid required simply to keep people from dying of hunger and disease. All with U.S. backing.

At the same time, Democratic U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a speech on the Senate floor that overwhelmingly upheld Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza and U.S. backing for that. Outrageous! But nothing new. What was remarkable, however, was Schumer’s insistence that Israel cannot “survive” as an essential enforcer of U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond without replacing its Prime Minister Netan-NAZI, aka Benjamin Netanyahu. In insisting Netan-NAZI step down, Schumer supposedly “broke the rules” of the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel, and stirred up a shitstorm.

In the two parts of this article that follow, we bring you up to date on what’s been going on in Gaza; and we dig to the bottom of Schumer’s speech—what rules it broke, and what rules it most definitely did NOT break.

These events are part of a world of rapidly intensifying horrors and crises. And a time of explosive conflicts between those who sit atop this world of exploitation and oppression. But they are also part of a situation where, as revolutionary leader and author of the new communism Bob Avakian (BA) has scientifically identified, REAL REVOLUTION in the U.S. is much more possible, IF that possibility is wrenched out of all this suffering and madness.

Part 1: Israel Escalates Mass-Murder-by-Starvation in Gaza

On Thursday, March 14, Israel did it again. Only two weeks after slaughtering more than 100 people seeking food aid near Gaza City on February 29, Israeli troops opened fire on people waiting for food in Gaza City itself, killing 21 Palestinians, and wounding 150 more. 

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces used helicopters, tanks, and drones to target thousands of people waiting on food trucks. The Israeli military did not deny that troops had fired on people, but replayed the same excuse they used on February 29, that people desperate for food “stampeded.” Earlier that day, at the same food distribution point, Israeli forces had shot dead at least six Palestinians. And yet, starvation is so extreme in northern Gaza that people risked death, and died, seeking food at the same location.

Israel Bombs UN Aid Warehouse

In addition to shooting down people waiting for food, Israel attacks UN aid distribution centers. The UN provides the exact location of these distribution centers to the Israeli military in the hopes that will prevent them from being bombed. But instead of that information being used to avoid bombing aid distribution centers, those GPS coordinates are used by Israel to identify targets to bomb. The UN has documented more than two dozen attacks on Gazans waiting for aid since January.

On March 12, Israel bombed an aid warehouse in Rafah, in the far south of Gaza where more than a million people displaced by Israeli attacks have fled. At least one UN relief staff member was killed and another 22 were injured.

The New York Times reported, “Photos and video taken by Reuters photographers at the scene showed blood splashed in several locations around the facility: smeared on a warehouse floor surrounded by stacks of aid, soaked into the side of a box of baby supplies and pooled on the ground outdoors. At the nearby Al-Najjar Hospital, where many of the injured were taken, U.N. workers grieved over the body of their dead colleague, who lay on a stretcher still wearing the [UN’s] signature blue jacket.” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths posted on social media: “How are we to maintain aid operations when our teams and supplies are constantly under threat?”

Mass Starvation as an Escalating Weapon of WAR CRIMES

Attacks on food distribution centers and starving people seeking food are a systematic policy of starving the people of Gaza. And that starvation continues to escalate at a horrific pace. On March 15, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that “Acute malnutrition has doubled in one month in the north of Gaza strip.... At least 23 children in northern Gaza have reportedly died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks, adding to the mounting toll of children killed [in Gaza]—about 13,450 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health."

UNICEF and other aid agencies in the north of Gaza found, in February, that more than four children out of every hundred in shelters and health centers suffer from severe wasting. This is the deadliest form of malnutrition. It is caused by a lack of nutritious food and repeated cases of diseases including diarrhea that compromise a child's immunity. These children will die unless they receive urgent therapeutic feeding and treatment. But because Israel has bombed, shot up, and shut down most of Gaza’s medical infrastructure, that treatment is not available. 

Israeli authorities also choke off lifesaving aid by imposing random, long, and sadistic inspection protocols and criteria that severely slow the entry of aid trucks. On March 11, Philippe Lazzarini, UN Commissioner-General of the UN relief agency UNRWA, posted on X (Twitter):

[A]n entire population depends on humanitarian assistance for survival. Very little comes in & restrictions increase. A truck loaded with aid has just been turned back because it had scissors used in children’s medical kits. Medical scissors are now added to a long list of banned items the Israeli Authorities classify as “for dual use” [meaning that in addition to an item’s normal use, Hamas can supposedly use it for military purposes]. The list includes basic and lifesaving items: from anesthetics, solar lights, oxygen cylinders and ventilators, to water cleaning tablets, cancer medicines and maternity kits. The clearance of humanitarian supplies + the delivery of basic & critical items need to be facilitated & accelerated. The lives of 2 million people depend on that, there is no time to waste.

Last month, Biden promised to set up a floating pier to deliver aid to Gaza by sea. While it is being built, the U.S. delivered a first shipment of aid by sea. That shipment delivered only as much aid as 10 trucks do. Under current, extreme, desperate conditions, even the 500 trucks of aid a day that went into Gaza before October 7 would not come close to meeting existing needs for food, shelter, and medicine. And as we exposed in previous coverage, whatever arrives by sea will have little meaningful impact. Israel bombs aid distribution centers, warehouses, transport routes, and shoots people attempting to collect food.

As yet another weapon of mass starvation, Israel enables genocidal “protesters” to block aid trucks lined up at the Kerem Shalom crossing, the only high-volume-capable route into Gaza.

The U.S. is backing the genocidal slaughter of young children by supplying Israel with billions of dollars of bombs, drones, tanks, missiles, and guns. But it also enables starvation as a weapon of war. The U.S. cut off funding to the UN agency that distributes aid in Gaza. Three times the U.S. has vetoed resolutions in the UN calling for a cease-fire that might have made it possible to distribute aid. The U.S. repeatedly tries to lend credibility to incredible excuses Israel makes for killing starving people getting food and bombing warehouses. And overall, the U.S. registers only the most meaningless, self-serving, ass-covering criticisms of Israel’s policy of turning Gaza into a death camp.

Last week, as U.S./Israeli death-by-starvation began to spread among children, we wrote:

Stop and feel the heartbreak, the pain that will never go away, the fury, of a parent, sibling, or loved one who must watch their child waste away and die for lack of fruit and milk. All the while, in this world of tremendous food resources, access to food, a basic element of human survival is strangled by a system of exploitation and oppression. And that same system maintains its rule by starving children as a weapon of war.

Speaking of that system of exploitation and oppression, Bob Avakian has said:

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.

The situation in Gaza drives home the urgent moral imperative of that statement.

Part II: Chuck Schumer Calls for Replacing Netan-NAZI… In Order to Maintain Israel as a Genocidal Enforcer for the U.S. Empire

On March 14, the same day Israel was starving children in Gaza to death, and shooting down desperate Palestinians attempting to collect food aid in Gaza City, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a speech on Israel that CNN reported as sending “shockwaves from Washington to Jerusalem.” The New York Times called it “A Watershed Moment for the Politics of Israel...” The speech called for an election in Israel to replace Netan-NAZI.

Schumer’s speech gave the most perfunctory—almost in passing—nod to the horrors being inflicted on the people in Gaza by Israel, with U.S. backing. On one level, this is all you need to know about how much the humanity and lives of the Palestinian people count in the calculations of a leading representative of this system of heartless exploitation and oppression.

But the speech, and Biden’s endorsement of it, did reflect intense and sharpening conflict between the Biden administration and Netan-NAZI. It also reflected corresponding conflict between different factions in the Israeli ruling class. Those conflicts are focused on whether Israel will “brand itself” as both Jewish and democratic, as it has attempted to do since it was founded. Or will it just give up the pretense [cover] of being anything but a Jewish-supremacist, racist state. 

Those conflicts are real, and intense. And the speech set off a storm of controversy among the rulers of Israel, and the U.S. But these conflicts are NOT over whether to maintain Israel as a nuclear-armed, genocidal, apartheid state enforcing the interests of the U.S. in the Middle East. They are conflicts over how to do that. 

 What Schumer Did Condemn, and Why

Much of Schumer’s speech was made up of the kinds of lies that justify both Israel’s violent founding on what had been overwhelmingly Palestinian land and its subsequent horrific oppression of the Palestinians for the past 75 years. For a thorough refutation of these lies go to Bob Avakian’s social media dispatches 4 through 7.

So, what then provoked the “shockwaves” and the “watershed moment” headlines? 

Schumer criticized Israel’s powerful finance minister Smotrich for openly calling “for the subjugation or forced displacement of all Palestinians in the West Bank.” He also hit him for opposing any “humanitarian assistance to Gaza, going so far as to stop agreed-upon shipments of flour.” And he called out Israel’s “National Security” chief Ben-Gvir for provoking outrage among Muslims by insulting one of that religion’s holy places, and arming “settlers” in the West Bank region of Palestine. (For more on these “settlers,” see Tens of Thousands of Israeli “Settlers” Are Genocidal Terrorists–But Biden Punished Only 4 of Them with “Sanctions”… Here’s Why.) Schumer said, “Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir may not say they want to kill all Palestinians outright, but they are clear in their desire to displace them from their homes and replace them with Israeli settlers.”

In calling for new elections in Israel,¹  Schumer said that Netanyahu “has all too frequently bowed to the demands of extremists like Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and the settlers in the West Bank.” And, Schumer continued, Netanyahu “has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah [isolated and hated].” (emphasis added) 

That was a whitewash of Israel’s crimes and Netan-NAZI’s role in them. Netan-NAZI is not “willing to tolerate” the death toll in Gaza. He is leading it. He has called for genocidal destruction of the lives, homes, and society of the Palestinian people in Gaza, repeatedly, and in the most explicit terms. On October 28 of last year, for example, he told people in Israel, “You must remember what Amalek did to you.” He was referring to a passage in the Bible that instructs Israelis to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings [breast-feeding babies].” 

Had Schumer acknowledged that, the question would pose itself: Why is the U.S. providing military equipment, funding and diplomatic support to Israel—including with vetoes of three UN cease-fire resolutions that Israel opposed!? 

Nevertheless, in calling for an end to the Netanyahu government, and new elections in Israel, Schumer set off a shitstorm. No leading representative of the U.S. government has ever done something like that in relation to Israel. Republi-fascists reacted in outrage. House Speaker, Christian fascist Mike Johnson blasted Schumer for criticizing Israel when “We need to be standing with Israel.” Israeli ruling class figures, including opponents of Netanyahu, condemned Schumer for interfering in Israel’s affairs, even as Schumer has led the charge in funding all the crimes Israel is committing against the Palestinians including the ones perpetrated by Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich. 

The “Two-State Solution” Is a Form of Genocidal Enslavement

So, what was Schumer’s agenda here? Schumer’s speech was intended in part to placate, and play for fools, people in this country who are horrified and outraged by Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza. He wanted to make it seem like the Biden administration (which approved Schumer’s speech publicly) was “hearing” protesters here and around the world, and finally “getting tough” with Israel. And he aimed to slap up another thin coat of whitewash in the arena of global public opinion over the reality that all Israel’s crimes are enabled by, armed by, funded by, and backed by the U.S.

But at the heart of the intent of, and controversy around, Schumer’s speech, he insisted that aiming for—or at least maintaining the pretense of aiming for—a “two-state solution,” is necessary for Israel to “survive.” Netan-NAZI, on the other hand, has rejected the “two-state solution,” at least for the foreseeable future. In other words, Netan-NAZI rejects any pretense of even the most token and phony Palestinian self-rule. The problem for the Democrats, in particular, is that they like to pose—both here and around the world—as the great “upholders” of democracy. While the phony two-state solution has been in reality a non-starter for more than 20 years, the outright rejection of it at this point by Israel would strip away any pretense of even trying for the most pitiful version of that so-called “democratic self-rule” by Palestinians. 

In fact, the “two-state solution” is not a solution to the oppression of the Palestinian people in any way. It refers to setting up a tiny so-called state for Palestinians, confined to small, disconnected regions, and defenseless against Israeli violence and dictates, or arbitrary orders. But it would provide for some extremely limited, small-scale self-rule within those bounds, and a pretense of respecting the existence of the Palestinian people. 

Netan-NAZI, and dominant forces in the Israeli government, find that unacceptable. For them, it implies too much recognition of any rights for Palestinians. They see the growing Palestinian population, now the majority of people inside areas under Israeli rule, as an existential threat. And they are convinced that threat can only be responded to with naked violence and terror, and that the Palestinian people must be entirely driven out of their homeland or utterly crushed.

Why Did Schumer Feel Driven to Also Oppose a Single State with Equality Between Jews and Palestinians?

In addition to insisting on at least promises of a “two-state solution,” Schumer felt it necessary to pose, and rule out of order, any idea that there could be a single state with formal equality for Palestinians and Jews. He claimed that “this hypothetical single state democracy could cost Israeli Jews their safety.” Translated: allowing Palestinians to even vote in an election that included everyone in territory ruled by Israel would be the end of a Jewish-supremacist state that would be a stable enforcer for U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond. 

It is worth noting that Schumer feels that he must spend a significant amount of time in his speech opposing this solution, which is evidently gaining ground among the justice-minded people that the Democrats are tasked with appealing to—and corralling. Because of this, we want to conclude with Bob Avakian’s answer to this same question and with the path forward that BA points to:

What is Israel supposed to do? Israel is “supposed” to stop brutally oppressing the Palestinian people. But Israel, as a racist, Jewish-supremacist (Zionist) state, cannot do that: it cannot do that, because murderous oppression of the Palestinian people has been built into the state of Israel from the very beginning, and Israel could not exist without brutally oppressing the Palestinian people.

And, since Israel cannot stop brutally oppressing the Palestinian people, Israel—as a racist, Zionist state—must cease to exist.

The real question is: what is the legitimate way to fight against the state of Israel, and what is a just solution to all this?

The answer is definitely not to “kill off all the Jews in Israel” or “drive them into the sea.” The answer is the abolition of the state of Israel, and in its place the creation of a revolutionary state in which the government and the laws do not promote any religion and do not favor one people over another, and instead there is equality between Jews and Palestinians.

The answer is also definitely not the “two-state solution” being promoted by the Biden administration. Such a “two-state solution” would really amount to nothing more than a powerful state of Israel continuing to occupy land stolen from the Palestinian people, while the so-called “Palestinian state” created with this “solution” would be a bitter joke—a puppet state—merely a patchwork of separated small territories, surrounded and dominated by Israel, with the Palestinian people still subjected to terrible oppression and deprivation.

The answer is that the fight against the state of Israel must be waged on a revolutionary basis, with the goal of putting an end to all oppressive relations and all inequality among people based on race and nationality, sex and gender, and all relations in which one part of society exploits others. And the urgent need is for a revolutionary force to emerge to lead the struggle on that basis.