25-01-2024

« Si nous disons que les communistes en Palestine doivent lutter pour citer la résistance (au lieu de la distinguer d’elle, car elle est actuellement dirigée par le Hamas), alors nous pouvons aussi parler de ce que cela signifie. »

Il ne devrait y avoir aucune ambiguïté quant à l’attitude que les communistes adoptent à l’égard d’une organisation comme le Hamas. Vous trouverez ci-dessous une citation (traduite) de l'analyse de Kommunistische Organisation, Zur Strategie und Taktik des palästinensischen Befreiungskampfes (J'ai publié une traduction anglaise de cette analyse ici)  :

« ….Si nous disons que les communistes en Palestine doivent lutter pour citer la résistance (au lieu de la distinguer d’elle, car elle est actuellement dirigée par le Hamas), alors nous pouvons aussi parler de ce que cela signifie. Cela signifie ne pas se soumettre au Hamas et développer ses propres programmes, luttes et revendications. Cela signifie lutter pour des réformes économiques dans l’intérêt de la classe ouvrière, lutter pour les masses pauvres, propageant ainsi l’idée du socialisme et éclairant les masses. Dans ces combats, le Hamas est bien entendu un adversaire. Dans le cas d'actions militaires contre la puissance occupante, les communistes devraient cependant vérifier si l'action sert ou non à atteindre l'objectif de libération du peuple et décider sur cette base s'ils y participeront ou non. Bien sûr, des normes différentes s’appliquent aux communistes et aux forces bourgeoises, par exemple dans la mesure où il faut essayer d’éviter les pertes civiles. Cela découle non seulement de considérations morales, mais surtout du fait que la classe ouvrière israélienne n’est pas l’ennemie, mais qu’elle doit être gagnée en tant qu’alliée. Tout cela signifie également qu’une certaine coopération avec le Hamas est possible et recherchée dans certains cas – et en même temps le Hamas doit être dénoncé et exposé dans la mesure où ses actions nuisent à la résistance et à la lutte armée. Grâce à une telle relation avec les forces de résistance bourgeoises, non pas la révolution socialiste est sacrifiée au nom de la libération nationale, mais elle renforce au contraire les perspectives de la révolution socialiste précisément en concentrant toutes les forces sur la libération nationale. Une division de la résistance sur la base de différences idéologiques et malgré l’unité dans l’objectif stratégique de se débarrasser de l’oppression coloniale est du sectarisme et ne fait appel qu’à ceux qui feront tout pour promouvoir et approfondir de telles divisions.
La ligne stratégique de la lutte de libération nationale décrite ici n’est pas du tout nouvelle. C'est fondamentalement la ligne que les partis communistes ont toujours suivie dans les luttes de libération nationale, que ce soit en Chine, où le PC a coopéré dans certaines situations avec le Kuomintang nationaliste bourgeois et l'a combattu dans d'autres, qu'il s'agisse de la coopération de Che Guevara avec des pays non communistes. révolutionnaires communistes dans la lutte de libération cubaine, les mouvements de libération nationale au Vietnam ou dans les Balkans pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Si nécessaire, comme dans le cas de la Chine ou de la Grèce, la lutte contre les forces bourgeoises incluait également là et quand cela devenait nécessaire . Des erreurs tactiques ont certes été commises (parfois très graves), mais l’erreur n’a pas été de former des alliances avec des forces non communistes dans une lutte de libération nationale. En quoi le cas de la Palestine diffère-t-il de tous ces exemples ? Certains répondent que le Hamas est une organisation islamiste et fondamentaliste et que nous, en tant que communistes, défendrions la laïcité. Les deux ont raison et tous deux passent à côté du cœur du problème à ce stade. Le cœur d’un conflit ne réside pas dans sa superstructure idéologique, mais dans sa base matérielle. Cela n’a donc aucun sens d’assimiler le chauvinisme des groupes palestiniens au chauvinisme israélien. Résumé : les deux sont peut-être « les pires », mais le marxisme nous apprend à ne pas chercher l’essence du problème, ni dans les discours, les slogans et les idées, mais plutôt à prêter attention à l’idéologie exprimée. D’un côté, il y a un chauvinisme qui justifie le colonialisme israélien, le système d’apartheid qui en a résulté et en grande partie aussi le génocide, et de l’autre, il y a un chauvinisme qui est une fausse coquille idéologique d’une lutte contre l’oppression qui est intrinsèquement justifiée. .
La résistance à la colonisation est l’essence du nationalisme du Hamas, ou du moins la base matérielle de son succès. Et c'est une autre ironie tragique de l'histoire que la seule idéologie qui réussisse aujourd'hui sur le terrain à devenir le véhicule du désir de libération des masses palestiniennes, qui est islamiste, celle qu'Israël et la CIA (par exemple en Afghanistan) ont financée. et les a inventés pour combattre la résistance laïque ou le communisme.
Qu’il en soit ainsi ne devrait cependant pas trop nous surprendre s’il est vrai que la religion n’est rien d’autre que la « sainte apparence » du « Jammertale », comme Marx décrit les relations oppressives et hostiles des sociétés de classes1. L'Islam politique a donné aux opprimés de Palestine une idéologie qui semble non seulement compatible avec leur identité nationale et qui, bien que sous une forme idéaliste déformée, dénonce le « Jammertal » de la vie terrestre sous le capitalisme, mais aussi le martyre, qui, compte tenu de l'immense l’écart de pouvoir pour tant de fils et de filles du peuple palestinien, semble marquer la fin inévitable de leur lutte. Si les communistes croient dans cette situation historique concrète que l’ennemi est l’Islam politique, cela signifie qu’ils ont échangé des êtres et des apparences entre eux.
Une étrange floraison de cette déviation se produit également lorsque les communistes trouvent les pires condamnations pour le Hamas, mais que leur principal rival, le Fatah, se débrouille avec des chaussures de kidthane. La raison en est évidemment une approche idéaliste, qui ignore le rôle réel que jouent ces forces : à savoir, dans le cas du Fatah, le rôle d'administrateur d'un bantoustan2 pour les maîtres coloniaux et, surtout, d'exercice de fonctions répressives. pour Israël. Dans tout ce qui pose problème et critique à l’égard du Hamas, le Fatah constitue un problème bien plus important pour la lutte de libération palestinienne…. »

Cela dit, je voudrais maintenant présenter un article sur la propre déclaration du Hamas concernant les actions du 7 octobre. Je fais cela parce que SUR les évenements du 7 octobre, sont principalement publiées des analyses qui sont d'une manière ou d'une autre basées sur des déclarations du côté israélien. Il est important d’entendre également le point de vue du Hamas lui-même à ce sujet…. Bien qu’il ne s’agisse pas du rapport complet, il s’agit d’un article à ce sujet. Il est important de savoir que l’article est paru sur un site Internet affilié au Hezbollah. Il vous suffit de voir par vous-même quelle position vous prenez à ce sujet. Je reproduis simplement l'article sans commentaire ni analyse.

 
Le Hamas donne pour la 1ère fois sa version des faits du 7 octobre: Nous n’avons pas tué de civils – 23 janvier 2024

 

Dans un document de près de 20 pages, le premier du genre, le Hamas dit vouloir livrer « sa version des faits » après les attaques du 7 octobre contre les positions militaires et les colonies de l’enveloppe de Gaza.
Dans ce document publié le dimanche 21 janvier, intitulé « C’est notre version. Pourquoi Déluge d’al-Aqsa », le Hamas affirme que cette opération était « une étape nécessaire » et une « réponse normale » à « tous les complots israéliens contre le peuple palestinien ».
Le Hamas a expliqué que le Déluge d’Al-Aqsa était une étape nécessaire et une réponse naturelle pour affronter les plans élaborés visant à liquider la cause palestinienne, tout comme il l’était pour affronter les plans d’Israël sur le terrain, et trancher la question de la souveraineté sur la mosquée d’Al-Aqsa.
Et d’ajouter : le Déluge d’Al-Aqsa était nécessaire pour mettre fin au siège injuste contre la bande de Gaza et constituait une étape naturelle vers l’indépendance et la liberté comme les autres peuples du monde libre, ainsi que le droit à l’autodétermination, en plus de la création d’un État palestinien indépendant, avec Al-Quds comme capitale.
Le Déluge d’Al-Aqsa est également apparu comme une étape naturelle pour se débarrasser de l’occupation israélienne, qui a pratiquement « détruit la possibilité d’établir un État palestinien à travers la campagne acharnée visant à doubler la colonisation et la judaïsation en Cisjordanie ».

La bataille contre l’occupation date depuis plus d’un siècle
Dans le document, le mouvement de résistance palestinien revient sur l’histoire de la Palestine occupée, déclarant que « la bataille du peuple palestinien contre l’occupation n’a pas commencé le 7 octobre, jour du Déluge d’Al-Aqsa, mais plutôt depuis 105 ans ».
Dans ce contexte, le Hamas a souligné que « le peuple palestinien a vécu 30 ans sous le colonialisme britannique et 75 ans sous l’occupation israélienne, tandis que la bande de Gaza a subi un siège étouffant pendant plus de 17 ans, se transformant en la plus grande prison ouverte au monde, tout en s’étant exposé à 5 guerres dévastatrices lancées à chaque fois par ‘Israël’ ».
Le Hamas a rappelé que « le peuple palestinien souffre depuis des décennies de toutes les formes d’oppression, d’injustice, de confiscation des droits fondamentaux et de politique d’apartheid » .« Entre l’an 2000 et septembre 2023, l’occupation a tué 11.299 Palestiniens et en a blessé 156.768 autres, dont la majorité sont des civils ».
Face à tout cela, le mouvement s’interroge: « Notre peuple devait-il continuer à attendre et à parier sur les Nations Unies et leurs institutions impuissantes ? ».

L’attaque du 7 octobre a visé des sites militaires israéliens
Concernant les objectifs de la résistance le 7 octobre, le mouvement a affirmé que « l’opération Déluge d’Al-Aqsa a visé des sites militaires israéliens et cherché à capturer les soldats et combattants de l’occupation, afin de les échanger contre les prisonniers palestiniens ».
Et de poursuivre : « l’attaque s’est concentrée contre la division militaire israélienne de Gaza et sur les sites israéliens dans les colonies de l’enveloppe de Gaza, où il a été évité de cibler les civils, en particulier les femmes, les enfants et les personnes âgées, car cela est contraire à la religion sur laquelle les fils du Hamas sont élevés.
« Notre résistance est disciplinée par les instructions de notre religion islamique, et que son aile militaire cible les soldats d’occupation et ceux qui portent des armes contre notre peuple », notant que « nous avons traité de manière positive le dossier des civils qui ont été capturés dans la bande de Gaza et nous avons cherché dès le premier jour à les libérer le plus rapidement possible. »

Les mensonges israéliens sur les décaptions et les violations
À cet égard, le mouvement a souligné que ce que « ce que l’occupation propage comme quoi les Qassam ont pris pour cible des civils israéliens lors de l’attaque du 7 octobre est une pure calomnie et un mensonge, car nos combattants n’ont pas ciblé de civils, mais beaucoup d’entre eux ont été tués par la police et les forces armées israéliennes en raison de leur confusion ».
« Ce sont également les raids israéliens qui ont causé la mort d’un grand nombre d’Israéliens capturés le 7 octobre », poursuit le Hamas, « tandis que de nombreux colons armés ont affronté la résistance le 7 octobre et que ceux qui ont été tués ont été enregistrés par l’occupation comme des civils ».
Alors que l’occupation a délibérément encouragé le mensonge selon lequel les Brigades Al-Qassam auraient décapité 40 enfants, le Hamas a souligné que cette allégation s’est avérée fausse, selon les aveux israéliens.
Il en est de même pour les prétentions qui se sont avérées fausses selon lesquelles « des combattants de la résistance auraient violé des femmes israéliennes ».
Quant à la bande de Gaza, où des Israéliens ont également été tués par les tirs de leur armée, les opérations de bombardement et de destruction ont démontré l’indifférence de l’occupation à l’égard de la vie de ses prisonniers.
À la lumière de ces faits présentés par le Hamas, il a souligné que « des enquêtes équitables confirmeront notre version et dévoileront les mensonges des allégations de l’occupation ».

L’origine de la crise est l’existence de l’occupation…
Le Hamas a en outre appelé les grands puissances, en particulier « les États-Unis, l’Allemagne, le Canada et la Grande-Bretagne, à exprimer leur soutien à l’enquête sur les crimes commis en Palestine », et la Cour pénale internationale à « intervenir de toute urgence en Palestine occupée, afin d’enquêter sur tous les crimes et les violations ».
« Les peuples de la région et du monde se rendent compte de l’étendue des mensonges et de la tromperie des gouvernements soutenant l’agression, et de leurs efforts déployés afin de justifier leur parti pris en faveur de l’occupation… ces pays ne veulent pas reconnaître que la racine du problème et l’origine de la crise sont l’existence de l’occupation et la confiscation des droits de notre peuple de vivre librement ».
Le Hamas a appelé à « infliger une peine légale contre l’occupation israélienne pour son occupation, ainsi que pour toutes les souffrances, victimes et pertes qui en ont résulté », et à « soutenir la résistance contre l’occupation israélienne par tous les moyens disponibles, car c’est un droit légitime ».
Il s’est également adressé aux pays du monde libre, en particulier aux pays du Sud, les appelant à « prendre une position sérieuse contre les deux poids, deux mesures des forces qui soutiennent l’occupation », soulignant que les grandes puissances doivent « cesser de couvrir (les crimes) de l’entité sioniste ».
Le Hamas a lancé un appel en faveur de l’arrêt immédiat de l’agression israélienne contre Gaza, de mettre fin aux crimes, au génocide commis par l’occupation et au siège et de déployer des efforts sérieux pour forcer l’occupation à se retirer de la bande de Gaza.
Et d’insister qu’il faut: « s’opposer aux tentatives de déplacement des Palestiniens et d’empêcher qu’une nouvelle catastrophe ne s’abatte sur eux, afin qu’il n’y ait pas de déportation vers le Sinaï, la Jordanie ou vers n’importe quel autre endroit ».
Le Hamas a enfin appelé au « rejet de tout projet international et israélien qui cherche à déterminer du sort de la bande de Gaza, d’une manière qui soit conforme aux normes de l’occupation et garantisse sa poursuite », soulignant que « le peuple palestinien a la capacité et la compétence pour décider lui-même de son sort. Personne n’a le droit de lui imposer sa tutelle ».

1 Karl Marx: On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction, MEW 1, S. 379.

2 C’est-à-dire une « réserve » dans laquelle les maîtres coloniaux continuent de permettre aux colonisés de vivre dans la misère.


20-01-2024

Vertaling in het Engels/ Traduit en Anglais: “Zur Strategie und Taktik des palästinensischen Befreiungskampfes” (K.O.)

Vertaling in het Engels/ Traduit en Anglais: “Zur Strategie und Taktik des palästinensischen Befreiungskampfes” 

On the strategy and tactics of the Palestinian liberation struggle – 24. December 2023
Statement of the Central Leadership of the Communist Organization from 24. December  


Table of contents
1 introduction
2 Imperialism and National Liberation
2.1 Rights and left-wing variations on the question of national exemption
2.2 Where do we do it in Palestine?
3 On the strategic orientation of the national liberation struggle
3.1 The Role of the Working class in Israel
3.2 Single or two-state solution?
3.3 The relationship to bourgeois forces in resistance
4 The international context
5 Conclusion

1 introduction
The genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza, the deliberate slaughter of a people and the almost complete destruction of a megacity, the complicity of all Western imperialists in this crime, have once again put the question of the liberation of Palestine on the agenda with brutal urgency. This raises questions about the character of the Palestinian liberation struggle and what the right strategy and tactics of this struggle can be. In the communist movement there are very different assessments to many of these questions. Forces (in Germany and international) that are close to us and our analyses have also come to other positions in terms of the assessment of the Palestinian liberation struggle and the role of the Communists in it. We in turn assess that some of these conclusions can go in the wrong direction and, in general, weaken the internationalist position in the communist world movement as well as the support of the Palestinian people in particular. The confrontation with these misorientations – which concern, for example, the fundamental assessment of the war, the strategic goals of the liberation struggle and the relationship with bourgeois forces such as Hamas – is the reason and goal of this text. We hope to be able to contribute to a factual discussion on these issues and to correct some mistakes.

 2 Imperialism and National Liberation
The question of national liberation for the Communists has always been inseparably linked to the analysis of the relations of oppression in imperialism and the strategy of socialist revolution.
For example, the Communist International, in its 1929 program, very clearly states: “The international proletarian revolution represents a combination of processes which vary in time and character; purely proletarian revolutions; revolutions of a bourgeois-democratic type which grow into proletarian revolutions; wars for national liberation; colonial revolutions. The world dictatorship of the proletariat comes only as the final result of the revolutionary process”; “national wars and colonial rebellions which, although not in themselves revolutionary proletarian socialist movements, are nevertheless, objectively, in so far as they they and the domination of imperialism, constituent parts of the world proletarian revolution” 1. The developments of the world communist movement in recent years show that it is particularly important to develop a correct understanding of national liberation – after all, this term, which historically had some meaning for the strategy of the communist movement, is often used today in a falsifying and misleading way.

Today, more than ever imperialism is a global system, into which all countries are integrated in a specific manner and conditionally by their respective historical development. In most countries, monopoly capitalism has emerged as the economic nature of imperialism. Colonialism, which continued to hold huge parts of the planet after the Second World War, belongs largely to history, since almost all former colonies have successfully liberated themselves, partly in the sharpest warlike confrontation with the colonial powers, sometimes in consultation with them.

The struggle for national liberation took on different forms in the last and former centuries – as a struggle against multinational “prisons of nations” such as the Russian tsarist empire, the Ottoman Empire or Austria-Hungary, at the end of which the creation of new bourgeois nation-states (Poland, Serbia, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, etc.) or, in the case of Russia, the unification in a socialist republic.which had a bourgeois or in a few cases also a socialist character. The task of national liberation, which consisted in emancipation of racist, oppressive and exploitative conditions, were subjected among the whole nations, has since been essentially completed.

2.1 Rights and left-wing variations on the question of national exemption
The idea that the aim of national liberation is not only a political independence, but also a kind of “economic sovereignty”, is a dead end, also spread in the communist movement. For, of course, it is true that the economic life of a nation integrated into the capitalist world market is always subject to external dependencies. Under capitalist conditions, however, these dependencies can only be weakened in one way, namely through the rise within the imperialist hierarchy, by strengthening one's own bourgeoisie in relation to others. Such an understanding of “national liberation” means simply subordinating the interests of the working class to the demands of capital accumulation. This has nothing to do with national liberation in the true sense, it is simply the politics in the interest of the bourgeoisie, which the governments of all bourgeois states pursue.

It is therefore of great importance to distinguish the situation in a colony from other relations of dependence. We can then speak of a colonial system if, firstly, there are no state structures of its own in a country (or in the case of a semi-colony only in a limited form), but only an administrative and repressive apparatus imposed by a foreign power imposed on it and dependent on it; and secondly, if the inhabitants of this country do not enjoy the same civil rights as the inhabitants of the colonial power. For this reason, for example, the Basque country is not a colony, because Basques have no other citizenship than the other citizens of the Spanish state. Palestine, on the other hand, is a colony because the Palestinians not only do not have their own state, but are also subject to a strict apartheid regime that denies them essential rights.

Settler colonialism is a special form of colonialism: not only another land or area is taken into possession, but also systematically set up a “men’s people” with the aim of living there permanently and building a society. The local population is generally seen as a problem that stands in the way of the country's unlimited appropriation by the colonial rulers. Settler colonial systems were historically founded, for example, in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Algeria and South Africa, they led either to the repression or to the extensive destruction of the local population.

Does the essentially perfect decolonization of the world now mean that there are no national liberation struggles today or that the working class has nothing to gain in such struggles? In the communist world movement, however, even in Germany, some comrades seem to be this view. The assessments of the Palestinian liberation struggle differ widely in the Marxist-Leninist movement. A number of parties and organizations, which are close to us in terms of content and with which we have sometimes close relations, recognise abstractly that a national liberation struggle is necessary in Palestine, but shrink from supporting it in concrete terms. This also applies to varying degrees to some revolutionary forces in Germany, which represent a kind of equidistance, i.e. a position of equal distancing, from Israel and Hamas.

This position is particularly problematic because it is often represented by communists who have a fundamentally correct analysis of imperialism, but then tend to use it as an abstract template, which is equally applied to each concrete case, without concretely analyzing the development. It is so problematic because the opportunists have repeatedly raised this accusation against the representatives of a Leninist analysis of imperialism: Our view of imperialism as a world system is a “one size fits all” logic, which effectively equates all countries with each other and no longer leaves any space to the consideration of the huge differences that exist concretely between the different countries. At this point we have to say quite clearly: If it were indeed the case that we would ignore the real differences between countries – differences in economic or military power, cultural influence, mechanisms of dependence such as the Franc CFA in West Africa or even the ongoing (and in turn very different) occupations of Palestine, Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, etc. – then that would be worthy precise.
But that is not the case. The realization that the decolonization of the world is largely closed cannot block the view that Palestine continues to be subject to a settler colonial regime and barbaric national oppression. The fact that we have to reject the national liberation struggle as part of the revolutionary strategy as interests today as interests for the vast majority of countries does not change the fact that it is anything but obsolete in Palestine, but is an urgent task to be solved, which we as a communist world movement do not ignore.

In the last two years, we have strongly argued as KO for the fact that the war in Ukraine is to be understood in its essence as a clash between two imperialist blocs, as a war for the redivision of the world. Such a war, which is waged for the spheres of influence, the market shares, raw materials and transport routes of the capitalists, cannot be in the interest of the broad mass of the people, the working class. It follows from this necessary for the Communists that neither side should be supported in such a war – which does not necessarily mean that we have to treat both sides exactly the same in our agitation and propaganda. But the position of social-chauvinism, which shows its ground with the ruling class of one side or another and is prepared to send our class siblings to their deaths for the profits of the capitalists, must be fought, pushed back their influence back to the communist movement and eliminated.

Does the war in Palestine have the same character as that in Ukraine? Is it necessary here, too, to assess and condemn the actions of both sides in equal terms? Unfortunately, there is this position within the “our camp” of the communist movement, i.e. among the groups, organizations and parties in Germany and internationally, which basically adopt a Marxist-Leninist position, which, for example, assess the war in Ukraine from an internationalist perspective and reject the false conceptions of imperialism, which reduce imperialism to a handful of Western states. We want to argue here against this position, which the analysis of the Ukraine war mechanically transfers to the context of Palestine. For this question is about this question: therefore with what attitude the communists in Palestine and Israel must be approached by the question of the national liberation of the Palestinian people; but also for us to justify the Marxist-Leninist analysis of imperialism and our conception of a revolutionary strategy against a left deviation, which ultimately hurts the communist movement. For if the antirevisionist part of the communist movement fails to correctly embed the question of national liberation where it still arises in the revolutionary strategy, the right opportunism inevitably benefits from this. A de facto distancing from the Palestinian liberation struggle leads to the Islamic and bourgeois-nationalist forces in Palestine and to strengthen the forces in the communist world movement that want to wage “national liberation struggles” everywhere in the world, even if this has nothing to do with the actual conditions and struggles on the ground.

The view that the “near-host conflict” will also be “not resolved by us in Germany” and it is therefore not important that communists in Germany position themselves to do so is to be vehemently rejected. The working class is international, like the communist movement. The colonization of Palestine and the suppression of the Palestinian people are objectively a problem of the worldwide working class, including that in Israel, and not just one of the Palestinians. To deny that the occupation of Palestine is a problem for the working class of the whole world ultimately means denying that there are common interests of the working class of the world and thus a rejection of proletarian internationalism in general. There is no basis for “closing out” the working class of certain countries from the commonality of class interest. To do this means to weaken the fighting power of the class, because it is precisely rooted in its unity across all borders.
Participation in the colonial oppression of Palestine is also of decisive importance for German imperialism and contributes to the stabilisation of its rule: Firstly, by allowing the ruling class of Germany to present its support to Israel as a lesson from the Holocaust and as a reparation for the Nazi crimes. This deliberately creates the impression that the rulers had learned something from the past, even though after 1945 the decision was deliberately made not to touch the capitalist property relations that fascism had produced. Secondly, under the ideological covering of the “processing of the debt” by German companies, lucrative businesses are being done with Israel, including arms sales. Third, Israel plays the role for the US and the EU to impose the interests of the European and US bourgeoisies against rival powers such as Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah as the spearhead of the “West” in the region. Fourth, the German state uses the issue to criminalize and suppress communists and, in general, anyone who takes a stand against occupation and colonialism with the help of a grotesquely distorted concept of anti-Semitism. So we in Germany are not avoiding dealing with the Palestinian liberation struggle.
It is therefore first important to hold that a national and anti-colonial liberation struggle is taking place in Palestine, which is to be supported by the communists of the whole world. The support of this struggle is, in a sense, a test at which proletarian internationalism is proving itself in practice – and this is true precisely where – as in Germany – solidarity with the Palestinian people is subjected to a true storm of right-wing agitation by government, media and bourgeois parties.

 2.2 Where do we do it in Palestine?
The different conclusions regarding the character of the war in Palestine can also partly arise from the fact that there is no uniform understanding of how the conditions in Palestine are to be characterised in the communist movement. So let's begin with this clarity:
Israel is not an “ordinary” nation-state, such as Germany or Italy. It is also not the same as multiethnic bourgeois states where forms of national discrimination continue, such as Turkey or Spain. Israel is the state implementation of the idea of Zionism, which can be summarized as follows: according to Zionism, the Jews are not only a religious community, but a nation; the Jews can only live in freedom if they create their own Jewish state, which offers a “shelter” for potentially all Jews of the world. The alleged necessity of this state is based on the persecutions and discrimination to which Jews have been subjected for centuries, and, of course, since the Holocaust to the monstrous crimes of fascism, especially the German one.

The special thing about Zionism, which makes it particularly reactionary, is not alone that many of its leading representatives have expressed racist against other ethnic groups, especially the Palestinians, from the outset, because there were such formations in other nationalist movements as well. Zionism is particularly reactionary because of the constellation in which it is effective: Jewish people live scattered all over the world and there was during the emergence phase of the Zionist ideology at the end of the 19th century. No country that was not already occupied by other peoples in the century. Zionism did not simply propagate, however, that there must be places where members of Judaism must be able to live in peace – of course such a goal would have been right and worthy of support and has always been shared by the communists. Zionism was and is of the opinion that such a country must be either pure or at least primarily Jewishly settled and that the state to be created must be a state of the Jews. The fact that the Zionists wanted to establish their state in the then British colony of Palestine alone had religious reasons – because ancient Israel was to be created again as the home of the Jews and all Jews allegedly had a “birthright” to live in this country, quite contrary to the local population of Palestine, which was not granted such a right, due to the religious evaluation of the country. The secular currents of Zionism also ultimately made religion their frame of reference – and had to do so also, since Judaism is in reality a religious group and not a nation2. From the point of view of British imperialism, which at the time controlled Palestine as a “mandate area,” it was also about tangible interests: a Zionist state, which would become the “natural enemy” of the surrounding Arab countries by releasing the Arab population, promised to become a very useful ally for the assertion of British interests throughout the region. Zionism therefore wanted to create a state for the Jews, but this is in a country where the Jews had been only a relatively small minority for centuries. According to a 1921 report by the British government on its former mandatory territory of Palestine, for example: “The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews”3. The entire population of Palestine is indicated in the report as “barely 700,000 people”, so that according to this source, the Jewish population amounted to 11% after decades of Jewish immigration to Palestine. According to the demographic data of the Jewish Virtual Library, 1882 24,000 Jews lived in Palestine, which accounted for 8% of the population, in 1922 60,000 (11% of the population) and in 1947 630,000 (32%)4. Also the ones in the 20th Thus, the century (even before the fascist seizure of power in Germany) massively swelling rivers of Jewish immigrants to Palestine could not create a Jewish majority in Palestine. This goal was no different from being achieved by the expulsion of the Palestinians, i.e. an ethnic cleansing of the country5. And so it happened: during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947 and 1948, which took place before, during and after the Israeli state was founded, about 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly driven out of their country and thousands were murdered in various massacres6. The Nakba was not, as often claimed, a reaction to the war of the Arab states against Israel, but the implementation of plans that Zionist groups in Palestine had been pursuing for a long time and had tried to realize long before through terrorist attacks against Palestinian civilians.

In addition to the expulsion and murder of the Palestinians, which is still ongoing and is being implemented in the form of the destruction of Palestinian houses and agriculture, as well as settlement construction continued among all Israeli governments, a strict apartheid system has also been built up and further tightened for decades. The “National State Law” adopted in 2018, the constitutional rank and an immutability status (Art. 11), Israel calls the “national state of the Jewish people”, so explicitly not as the state of all its citizens (Art. 1). It also writes the annexation of East Jerusalem (“The capital of Israel is the whole and united Jerusalem,” Art. 3) and the Zionist settlement construction, i.e. the continued expulsion of the Palestinians (“The State of Israel sees the further development of the Jewish settlement a national value. He is committed to encouraging and promoting the establishment and consolidation of Jewish settlement,” Art. 7)7.. Thus, the system of apartheid and expulsion system, which systematically denies the Palestinians the rights to which the citizens of Israel are entitled (and also the Arab citizens of Israel systematically discriminated against, is fixed in the Israeli Constitution.

The obvious goal of settlement construction in the West Bank is to ultimately incorporate this area into the Zionist state project and to make a two-state solution impossible (see below). The state of Israel has not defined its borders to this day, so an end to the excessive territorial claims of Israel is therefore not in sight. The genocidal war that Israel unleashed in Gaza in October is also only a consequence of the Zionist project of the continuous land seizure, which the Palestinian people see as a “feather body” on their own country and ultimately sees a solution to this “problem” to the end only in the expulsion or physical destruction of this people, as numerous leading politicians of Israel have made clear. The President of Israel, Yitzhak Herzog, for example: “It is an entire people who are responsible. This rhetoric about civilians who are not supposedly involved is absolutely untrue (...) and we will fight until we break its backbone.” Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israeli army, said: "We are throwing hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza. The focus is on destruction, not on accuracy”8. Amichai Elijahu, fascist minister of cultural heritage, spoke in a radio interview about the “possibility of throwing a nuclear bomb at the Gaza Strip, which Netanyahu criticized9. But Prime Minister Netanyahu himself addressed the Israelis: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, our Holy Bible says.” In Jewish tradition, Amalek is a people who, in biblical times, were considered the arch-enemy of the Jewish people. In the Hebrew Bible (Tanach), the destroying of their men and women, their children, infants and their cattle is called about10 – and this is precisely what Netanyahu wants to all seem to allude to this consequence. A number of other quotes by leading Israeli politicians, which undoubtedly prove the regime's genocidal intention, could be cited here.

It is crucial to understand that ethnic cleansing and apartheid, ultimately also the open genocide that we now see in Gaza, are already based on the fundamental disposition of settler colonialism. The indigenous population of North America was systematically captured, dehumanised and eventually murdered by the white settlers, as well as the Aborigines in Australia or the Herero and Nama in Namibia. An ideology that, like Zionism since its beginnings, has understood the claimed land as a “land without a people”, i.e. the local population simply does not allow the local population to be regarded as “people” and not as human beings, carries the seeds of apartheid and genocide.

The struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people is therefore not simply a struggle between different interests or ideologies, and certainly not a “religious conflict”. It is, relatively regardless of the forces playing a leading role in this struggle, a struggle for survival, a struggle against the gradual, now accelerated expulsion and destruction, and apartheid, which the Palestinian people oppresses and incapacitates. The struggle of the Palestinian people against colonization, apartheid and against their own expulsions or Extinction is an objective necessity – so objectively necessary as the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie repeatedly sets off. Unlike in other cases of national oppression (for example, the Kurds, at least in western Turkey), the Palestinians do not have the opportunity to escape the atrocities of the rulers by assimilation into the state nation. Zionism is consequently a political blood-and-soil ideology that leaves the Palestinians only the choice between resistance or doom. Under these conditions, each people would choose the resistance and rightly so.

3 On the strategic orientation of the national liberation struggle
Without a victory of the Palestinian liberation movement, neither the world-historical struggle of the peoples against the barbaric system of colonialism nor the victory over apartheid in South Africa and the USA is complete. We must therefore clearly emphasize that the Palestinian liberation struggle is a just struggle and it is objectively in the interest of the working class throughout the world to support it.
However, this does not yet answer the question of which goals it has to be guided and on which forces one can rely on in what form as an ally. Let us begin with the question of the goals of the liberation struggle.

The goal of the class struggle of the working class is socialism, i.e. the overcoming of the capitalist class society, the political seizure of power by the working class, and the socialization of the means of production with central planning of the entire production. In the communist movement, views have long been spread that socialism should not be the immediate goal of the class struggle, but can only be achieved through an intermediate stage, which is entitled to achieve depending on the country “antimonopolistic democracy” or “national liberation”, “economic sovereignty”, in the Maoist variant also called “new-democratic revolution” and conceived differently. Such stage strategies always imply that for some reason the socialization of the means of production is not yet possible and therefore a development stage is necessary, in which the rule of the bourgeoisie or part of it continues to exist, possibly in the “alliance” with the working class and other strata and classes. Now, however, the interests of the working class and the bourgeoisie are diametrically opposed to each other. There can be no common rule of the working class and capitalists, and certainly not a bourgeois state, which acts in the interest of the working class and somehow prepares the transition to socialism. The essence of the rule of the bourgeoisie is to organize the accumulation of capital, i.e., the exploitation of labour power. The essence of the working class's rule is to wrest and socialize the means of production from the bourgeoisie. There can be no compromise or means between these two Poles. This realization is one of the fundamental of Marxism and applies to all bourgeois states.

But what is the case in Palestine, when the task of national liberation has not yet been completed? One often comes across the view that in Palestine the liberation from colonial oppression must first be fought for and then the struggle for socialism could be waged. This view must be countered: in Palestine, too, capitalist relations prevail, and there are also class differences in Palestine. It is true that the bourgeoisie in Palestine is also prevented from developing their development by the Israeli occupation and repeated wars. But the Palestinian bourgeoisie, like any other, is also striving to consolidate its rule over the broad working masses.

Sometimes the existence of a Palestinian bourgeoisie is even questioned. And indeed, the Palestinian economy is very small-scale, so it consists mostly of petty-bourgeois and small-scale economic units. But the lawful development of capitalism to monopoly capitalism has not passed away, either. In addition to the influence of foreign monopolies, which, of course, also sell their products in the Palestinian territories, there is also a handful of larger Palestinian companies, who occupy a monopoly position within the small Palestinian market. For example, there are the telecommunications company Paltel with an asset of the equivalent of 740 million. USD and 2630 employees11, the leading financial institution Palestine's Bank of Palestine (approx. 6.5 billion USD and 1800 employees, as of 2022)12 and the investment company PADICO (85 million). USD and 4300 employees, as of 2021)13. The Palestinian capitalists are in a contradictory relationship with the liberation struggle: on the one hand, they have an interest in a Palestinian state, because the lack of sovereignty of the PA (e.g. no tax collection of their own taxes and thus complete financial dependence on Israel), their limited control of infrastructure, and the constant instability and repeated wars represent major obstacles to Palestinian capital accumulation. On the other hand, however, the armed resistance to the occupation is also a threat to their profits, especially major operations, which can lead to massive Israeli attacks and further restrictions on economic space. Politically, this ambivalence is expressed in the fact that the bourgeois leadership of the Palestinians is divided into the collaborationist wing (Fatah) and the wing that organizes the armed resistance (Hamas, PIJ).
What would a Palestine look like, which would be freed from occupation under the leadership of the bourgeoisie?
Let us take a look at the neighbouring Arab countries for comparison: the fact that the colonial rule was shaken off in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, was a historical step forward. But the masses continue to live in misery in these countries, continuing to be controlled by corrupt and repressive governments serving the exploiting classes. It is precisely the independent strategies and interests of the bourgeoisies in these countries that strive for their own accumulation of capital and condemn the working class for a life of deprivation and misery. The fact that national liberation in these countries led to new bourgeois states was not inevitable, but was due to the lack of strength and partly the strategic mistakes of the communists – especially the inability to link national liberation with the socialist revolution in the strategy.

The national liberation struggle is a struggle where, as in Palestine, it still has an objective basis in which the Communists can and must demonstrate their role as the most consistent pioneers for the working class and the popular masses. In Palestine, the people suffer from national oppression by the Zionist state, which arbitrarily arrests and beaten them for their nationality, drives them off their land, harassed at checkpoints, destroys their homes, murdered their families, and under their oppression as a working class and by far the poorest part of society, which has long lived in the naked misery in the Gaza Strip, with barely used drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking drinking, lacking drinking and catastrophic housing conditions. National and class suppression are closely related: there is also an Israeli working class, but the situation of the Palestinians is on average far worse. They are not only oppressed by Israel in a racist way, but also kept in poverty and squeezed out as cheap labour for the Israeli capitalists. A liberation which abolishes the apartheid system and the everyday state terror would undoubtedly be a progress and per se, and yet it would be only half a liberation for the vast majority of the Palestinian people (which, however, at least) if their exploiters were only changed nationality or the bourgeoisie, which also exists in Palestine, would now become the new ruling class.

The struggle of the Communists should therefore oppose the settler colonial apartheid state as a particularly reactionary, despicable form of capitalist oppression, but should not lose sight of the capitalist basis of this oppression and not seek a capitalist, but a socialist Palestine. There is no factual reason why national liberation should be understood as an intermediate stage, rather than as an elementary strategic goal of the socialist strategy. This does not mean, of course, that in case of doubt, national liberation under bourgeois conditions would not also be welcomed and supported, in order to subsequently take up the struggle against the new bourgeois state. But doing this is something other than if the communists plan in their own strategy the necessity of national liberation as a separate step, which must absolutely come before the socialist revolution. Such a view leads to the fact that the communist party no longer sets itself the task of using the national liberation struggle to gather forces for the socialist revolution, with the aim of moving the new power, which is created as a result of this struggle, the conditions established as directly as possible to socialism.

The organic combination of the two strategic goals – liberation from colonialism and liberation from the rule of the bourgeoisie – does not only mean the combination of abstract slogans and goals that lie in the distant future. Above all, it also means that in the everyday struggle of the Palestinian people, which is by no means only directed against the military occupation, but also includes economic struggles, the communists must learn and dominate all fields and forms of this struggle and struggle for a vanguard role in all these areas. This means that in Palestine, too, the organization of the working class must be promoted to the solution of all its problems, that is, in the factories and the neighborhoods, against the Zionist occupation, but also against the Palestinian Authority, free education and health care, freedom of organisation, housing, etc. Since the occupation causes or exacerbates the vast majority of these problems, the struggle is always against the occupying power.

3.1 The Role of the Working class in Israel
Sometimes we hear the argument that the working class or the people of Israel is so closely linked to settler colonialism and benefits so much from it that it is impossible to win it over to support the Palestinian liberation struggle. On the surface, there seems to be some reason for this assessment: probably there are only a few countries in which such a large part of the population openly and without shame openly holds fascist positions and in which the chauvinist, racist incitement of the population is generally so advanced. In Israel, there is a trend on social media that influencers are making fun of dying civilians in Gaza. There are videos of celebrating Israelis who cheer the death of Palestinian children, suspended banners in Tel Aviv, which explicitly demand genocide, and an Israeli government that openly and repeatedly expresses its genoziidal intention without having to fear any outcry from Israeli society. For the chauvinist involvement of the Israeli working class, there is of course also a material basis: they live on land that was once violently robbed of the Palestinians. Some of them live in settlements in the West Bank, where life is significantly cheaper than in Israel itself due to state subsidies.
But can we stop at this? Can we stamp all or almost all Israelis as fascists who are enemies of the international working class? Of course not. Above all, this view is very superficial. It starts from a state of consciousness that is a snapshot instead of determining the objective class interests of the Israeli working class and deriving strategic orientations from them.
After all, the criterion for the development of strategy is never the current balance of forces or the state of consciousness of the working class, but the legal development of social relations and the objective interests of the classes that live in these conditions. So what is the objective interest of the Israeli working class?

Israel is a colonial state and an apartheid state, but it is also a capitalist class society. The Israeli working class enjoys massive prerogatives against the Palestinians, but it is at the same time, and this is its most essential quality, an exploited class that, like the workers of the whole world, must sell its labor power every day in order to increase the profits of the capitalists. Israeli society is characterized by extreme social inequality, similar to the USA. The poorer half of the population, which includes Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, earn an average of below 1000 US dollars per month, according to purchasing power, while there are over 157,000 million beers in the country14. In the supposed “shelter for Jewish life”, as Zionist propagandists call the State of Israel, millions of Jews also live in unworthy and poor conditions. This applies, for example, to many Jews from Arab countries who have been brought into the country under false promises and live in poverty in Israel and are subjected to many racial discrimination. In any case, there is no doubt – capitalism has nothing to offer the Israeli working class either, it too needs socialism. But does it also have an objective interest in the Palestinian liberation struggle? Objectively, the Israeli working class even has this interest to a special degree. Because it pays with the land profits and privileges it has received from the colonial system, with the strengthening of the class rule of its exploiters. This exploiter, the class enemy of the working class of Israel, is the Israeli bourgeoisie, which rules with a terrorist state apparatus armed to the teeth and which makes the Israeli people die in this war in its various forms (in war, as a result of attacks by the Palestinian groups, etc.). The 7th too October 2023 has shown that nowhere is life more uncertain for Jews, nowhere is the likelihood of a violent death for Jews higher than in the alleged “shelter” of Israel, which ultimately uses its population as a cannon fodder for its permanent colonial wars.

The Israeli bourgeoisie uses the state of war caused and constantly kept alive to fousing a chauvinist climate that first directs itself against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, then against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, then against the Ethiopian and Arab Jews, etc., until the entire working class has been fragmented and incited against each other. Not only the division into Jews and Palestinians is relevant, but that of the Jews among themselves in Central and Eastern European (Ashkkenazisim), oriental (Mizrachim), southern European (Sephardim), Ethiopian, etc., as well as those of the Palestinians in the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. The Palestinians are, of course, main victims of this effective strategy of domination, but the Jewish working class also has an interest in overcoming the division and fragmentation of the class and fighting for the common class interest. For this reason, for the Israeli working class, “the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian feelings, but the first condition for its own social emancipation”. Did we say Ireland? Sorry, we wanted to say Palestine. But it is not us who speak here, but Karl Marx in his letter to Meyer and Vogt from 1870 on the tasks of the International in the Irish question15. Therefore, if it was in the vital interest of the British working class to free itself from the chauvinism that justified the oppression of the Irish people, it is in the interest of the Israeli working class to fight and overcome the oppression of the Palestinian people – only then can it free itself. For this reason, the Israeli working class is not only an enemy, but objectively an ally not the Palestinian liberation struggle. Winning the Israeli working class for this alliance is first and foremost the task of the Communists in Israel. Conversely, it is also of decisive importance for the strategy of the Palestinian liberation struggle to win at least a larger part of the Israeli working class. For as long as the Israeli people are almost united behind the terrorist occupation regime (even if many close their eyes to their crimes rather than to advocate explicitly), a victory is hardly possible. If the struggle is waged purely militarily, without a political alliance strategy, the Palestinians will probably always be defeated.
 

3.2 Single or two-state solution?
When we speak of the national liberation of Palestine, what do we mean by that? The discussion about the exact form of the national liberation of Palestine, whether a one- or two-state solution should be sought, is important, but it is not the most important discussion. First of all, it is decisive to reach agreement in the communist movement that the Palestinian liberation struggle is to be supported; that it is to be supported even if we do not agree on decisive points with the forces that play a leading role in it; that criticism of bourgeois forces in the Palestinian liberation struggle is right and legitimate, but the condemnation of these forces.Liberation from capitalism is and the communists must strive for a leading role in it, by consistently supporting the liberation struggle than bourgeois forces can.

The goal of this struggle must ultimately be to abolish any national oppression and, as a consequence, the overcoming of the division between the Israeli and Palestinian working class. This is only possible through the complete equality and equality of the two peoples, a comprehensive compensation for the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, a right of return or at least an equal compensation for all Palestinian refugees and, ultimately, a punishment of the responsible politicians and military in Israel for their crimes. But how is it possible to get there?


Most communist parties still advocate the demand for a two-state solution within the 1967 borders, i.e. before the Six-Day War (in which Israel, among others militarily conquered the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) and with East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. This would certainly be such a plan if it were to result in a truly independent Palestinian state and not progress for the Palestinian people in a renewed puppet government of Israel on the territory of the Palestinians. An end to the hunger blockade of Gaza by the Israeli army, an end to Israeli settlement construction, an end to Israeli settlement construction, the continuous territorial expansion of Zionism and the expulsion of Palestinians, an end to the military checkpoints in the West Bank and the apartheid street system that prohibits the Palestinians from using the majority of their own streets and above all an end to the Palestinians. If such an option had the chance to become a reality, it would certainly be supported.

But, firstly, it would not be the final answer to the Palestinian people's national question: it does not answer what should happen to the millions of Palestinian refugees who have been living in refugee camps in Palestine and its neighbouring countries for decades. Should they all find space in the densely populated West Bank and refrain from returning to their homes and houses or compensation for the stolen and destroyed houses? Nor does it regulate the question of reconstruction if large parts of the Palestinian territory, especially Gaza, have been made uninhabitable by Israel's wars and blockade. Second, the question arises as to the feasibility of this solution: about 10% of the population of Israel, 700,000 people, live as a settler in the West Bank. On the one hand, it is perfectly clear that without an evacuation of all settlers and the transfer of the settlements to the Palestinian state, a two-state solution is impossible. Without the end of the settlements, there would be no coherent Palestinian territory, but a patchwork that is interrupted every few kilometres by the Israeli military. And that is precisely the main reason why the State of Israel has promoted settlement construction among all its governments: to make a two-state solution impossible. On the other hand, the question arises as to which Israeli government should be prepared to withdraw 700,000 settlers from the West Bank. Since the majority of these settlers are right-wing extremist fanatics who are organized and armed in paramilitary formations and are convinced that by the land they are carried out to do God's work, such a decision would hardly be conceivable without an internal Israeli civil war.

It is clear that no Zionist government, nor any, which follows a “liberal” variant of Zionism, would take such a measure. A two-state solution would therefore only be possible if this is either imposed on the Zionists, in other words, a decisive military defeat of Israel, or if political forces came to power in Israel, who would be prepared not only to break with the aim of continuous territorial expansion, but also to use considerable coercion against the right-wing part of their own society, and if it is in the form that the supply and military protection of the settlements. The first option seems not only little realistic – none of the surrounding Arab states seems to be interested in a major military conflict with Israel – it also seems very questionable whether communists would be able to strive for such a war, which would mainly be conducted between bourgeois states, which would possibly escalate into a great war in the region and where hundreds of thous thous thous thous people could potentially live.

So there is probably little other way than to make Zionism political and bring forces to power that are willing to do everything necessary to ensure a lasting just peace. In order for such awareness to be able to gain a foothold in the population, the price of the continued occupation and colonization must be driven up by decisive resistance – the resistance of the Palestinians in its various forms, the solidarity of the workers' and anti-war movements around the world, but ultimately also the support motivated by their own interests. Only when the Zionist regime suffers a mixture of political and military defeats will it stimulate a rethinking in the settler colonial society of Israel. For conversely, it becomes apparent that in times when the resistance was so weak that the illusion of a healing world with well-maintained parks, clean playgrounds and successful start-up companies could be maintained in Israel, there was also no reason for those Israelis who are not convinced racists to think about the occupation and the conditions on the other side of the fence – and the fascization of Israeli society has been continuing for continued for many years. So, without an organized, effective and victimistic Palestinian resistance struggle will not precede.
But if the end of Zionism is the prerequisite for any reasonably peaceful coexistence of Jews and Palestinians in Palestine anyway, then the question arises: As soon as this, seemingly infinitely far-off, but nevertheless inevitable condition is once fulfilled, would it not be the right thing to strive for a common state of all people living in Palestine from the outset?

Such a one-state solution would mean that the Zionist project would have ended once and for all, that there would be no more “Jewish state,” but a state in which Jewish Israelis and Palestinians would live side by side and each other completely on an equal footing, in which the bloody past would be worked up and the decades of injustice against the Palestinians would be made good for decades. It would certainly only be conceivable as a result of a longer process in which the basis would have to be laid not only for peace, but also for coexistence. Of course, the Israelis would have to prove above all that they want peace and that there will be no return to chauvinism and racism. The right scaremongering that in a common state now the Jews were those who would be expelled and disenfranchised has little basis. Something similar was also claimed at the end of apartheid in South Africa, and there, too, there were no pogroms against the whites, although they represented a much smaller minority than the Jews in Palestine. As a result of a real peace process, there would simply be no reason for this, and there are historically numerous examples of peaceful coexistence between Jewish and Arab-Muslim populations – in Palestine itself, among others.

However, the one-state solution is also the right goal because it would tackle the problem – namely the existence of a state that would fundamentally regard Palestine as its potential territory (and parts of its neighbouring countries) and would tackle the Palestinians as a foreign body in that country. It would also enable the right of return of displaced persons to be realized and to implement a peaceful coexistence of both peoples instead of a mere neighbourhood. A form of the two-state solution could, of course, represent a first step, which can later develop into a kind of confederation and then a common state.
 

3.3 The relationship to bourgeois forces in resistance
A core question of the differences in the communist movement over the Palestinian liberation struggle is what relationship communists should enter into with the bourgeois forces of the Palestinian resistance. On the one hand, the position is that communists must actively distance themselves from forces that represent a reactionary ideology. Others are of the opinion that a distinction between different forces of Palestinian resistance and criticism of the Islamic groups is dividing the resistance and derived from the only relevant goal, namely the struggle against Zionism.
The fact that we cannot share the second position is already evident from our strategic orientation. The combination of the national liberation struggle with the revolutionary struggle for socialism, the rejection of a stage strategy for Palestine, of course, mean that bourgeois groups such as Hamas or the PIJ are competitors within the liberation movement, whose influence the Communists must fight and push back. For a socialist revolution, such forces will not only not be won, but they will probably one day act as their mortal enemies and try everything to prevent them.

Secondly, the separation of the national question from the class question, as they pursue the bourgeois forces of resistance, means a weakening of the national liberation struggle. Only the Communists are able to consistently combine the daily struggle of the masses for bread, dwelling and decent living conditions with the struggle against the occupation and apartheid; only they can therefore really tap into all energies, all the reserves of struggle of the people and mobilize for the struggle for liberation.

Thirdly, only a strategy aimed at organizing the class struggle also offers the perspective of appealing to the class interests of the proletariat on the other side of the border. In this respect, the dominance of Hamas in the Palestinian liberation movement is actually even favourable from the Zionist point of view, at least compared to a scenario where revolutionary forces would actually lead the liberation movement.

For the communists, however, the predominance of Islamic-conservative forces in the liberation movement is a problem for the reasons mentioned. Their influence must be pushed back and the communists must also (and above all) take the lead in this struggle.
But how is it possible to get to this point? For this we should first become aware of how Hamas managed to become the almost undisputed leadership of the Palestinian resistance. The causes for this are different: on the one hand, the failure, indeed the betrayal of the secular forces in the form of the PLO, who have signed the so-called “Peace Agreement” of Oslo. In Oslo, the PLO recognized Israel, but without getting a clear guarantee of a Palestinian state. On the contrary, the occupation of the West Bank was established by dividing the country into three zones, the majority of which were placed either under Israeli control or under the joint administration of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The newly founded PA was therefore anything but a step towards the liberation of Palestine – on the contrary, it is an instrument of Israel to maintain the occupation of the West Bank and to suppress the Palestinian resistance with a kind of Palestinian auxiliary police. The Oslo Treaty was thus a unilateral capitulation to Israel in the eyes of many Palestinians. However, Hamas managed to distinguish itself as a force of consistent resistance that rejected Oslo and submission to Israel. She benefited from the fact that the Israeli state had not bothered or promoted it for years to weaken the main enemy of Israel, the PLO, by the rise of an internal Palestinian competition16. The fact that Hamas has a continuing influence on the Palestinian masses in Gaza is certainly less at its programmatic goal of establishing an Islamic state than its actual leadership in armed resistance. In order to dispute this leadership to Hamas, there is no other way for the Communists than to stand in the front row of the resistance against the occupation. This way therefore does not work through a critique from outside, but only through the struggle within the resistance movement, whereby care must be taken to ensure that the objective competition of different forces within the resistance movement does not weaken the resistance as a whole and thus only benefits the occupiers. If this were the case, it would discredit the program of the Communists in the eyes of the people.

This is the decisive point where part of the communist movement in Germany and the world has derailed. From different directions we hear arguments such as that Hamas is reactionary; that one has learned from Iran's experience; that an alliance with the Islamists only leads to the fact that the Communists are massacred in the end; that Hamas wants to create either a feudal state or a regime modelled on the IS or the Taliban, or even wipe out the Jews in Israel.

We do not want to deal with all these claims too much detail. The problem with Hamas is not that it is “feudal” – because there cannot be a return to feudalism – but that it is bourgeois, that it wants to create a capitalist state and not a working-class state. The equation of Hamas with the IS is simply a repetition of Israeli war propaganda, which is specifically trying to convey this very picture. It does not have much to do with reality, because not only do the methods differ considerably, but also ideologically, Hamas has more in common with the AKP and Erdogan than with the IS. While ISIS systematically murdered “infidels” and publicly celebrated its acts of violence, religious minorities live relatively unaffected among Hamas. And where Hamas is taking repressive action against competing political forces, this is in any case no comparison with the open state terror to which all Palestinian resistance groups on the part of Israel are subjected. The accusation of “eliminal anti-Semitism” is often heard, especially in Germany, and also goes by completely by the matter that is to be described. What drives Hamas is not the desire to destroy as many Jews as possible, but the struggle against Zionism and its state. From the logic of this struggle it follows that Hamas fighters also kill Israeli civilians in some cases – but not per se, because they are Jews, but because they are citizens of the state with whom Hamas is at war. On the other hand, the 2017 Hamas charter (unlike the outdated charter of 1988) is trying to distinguish the struggle against Zionism from that against Judaism and explicitly rejects anti-Semitism17. There is no plausible argument to dismiss these formulations as pure duplicity. In the past, Hamas even signalled clearly that it would accept the State of Israel if Israel were willing to make concessions to the Palestinians. According to the leader of the Hamas armed wing, Khaled Meshal, 2007: “As a Palestinian, I am talking today about a Palestinian and Arab call for a state within the 1967 borders. It is true that there will actually be an entity or a state called Israel on the rest of the Palestinian country. This is a reality, but I will not deal with this by recognizing or rejecting it.”18 Ahmed Yusuf, adviser to political leader Ismail Haniya, has also expressed similar.
The actions of Hamas – its repeated offers for a ceasefire with Israel over the years, which, according to free hostages, do not want to subordinate the “anti-Semitic extermination madness”, which it wants to place under the prevailing propaganda, but also German leftists, who are obviously under the influence of this propaganda.

In Germany, but not only there, there is a very problematic fixation on Hamas as an enemy even in the communist spectrum. It is problematic not because Hamas actually deserves our sympathy, but because it completely distorts the essence of the matter. What is happening in Palestine is not a war between two sides, both of which are to be rejected, it is certainly not a “religious conflict” between Jews and Muslims, but a colonial war about land, an ethnic cleansing of the country and a genocide. In a genocide, however, there are no “two sides”, but there are perpetrators and victims. If communists accept the condition dictated by the ruling class that the condemnation of Hamas as a “anti-Semitic” presupposition is every discussion and cautious criticism of Israel’s policies, then the capitalists are given an instrument of domination to be done to them. If it is accepted that the root of the problem is not the colonial relationship of domination, but the alleged anti-Semitism of the Palestinians, then it will be impossible to come closer to a solution to the conflict.

But the problem does not begin only where communists sit up for the propaganda of the class enemy and repeat them. On the contrary, we fundamentally recognise problematic views of the strategy of the national liberation struggle. The comrades who recognize the “distancing” of Hamas as a prerequisite for every statement do not ultimately understand what a national and anti-colonial liberation struggle is. They do not understand that the sentence “the main enemy stands in its own country” applies to all capitalist states, but not to a really colonized people; that Israel, or the Israeli monopoly bourgeoisie, is the main enemy of the Palestinian working class and the Palestinian people, and that in the struggle against this astronomically superior opponent, all forces of the liberation movement are forced to fought their weak forces., but it must suggest that it be done more consistently. Regardless of how we assess the PFLP and DFLP, i.e. the two Palestinian liberation organizations with socialist claims – under these conditions, even a consistent communist force is forced to cooperate selectively with other organisations of the resistance.

If we say that the Communists in Palestine must struggle to cite the resistance (instead of distinguishing it from it, because it is currently being led by Hamas), then we can also talk about what that means. It means not subordinating to Hamas and developing its own programmatics, struggles and demands. It means fighting for economic reforms in the interest of the working class for economic reforms, to fight for the impoverished masses, thereby spreading the idea of socialism and enlightening the masses. In these fighting, Hamas is, of course, an opponent. In the case of military actions against the occupying power, the Communists, however, would have to check whether the action serves or not to achieve the goal of liberating the people and decide on this basis whether or not to participate in them. Of course, different standards apply to communists than to bourgeois forces, for example insofar as civilian casualties should be tried to avoid. This follows not only from moral considerations, but above all from the fact that the Israeli working class is not the enemy, but is to be won as an ally. All this also means that some cooperation with Hamas is possible and aimed at in certain cases – and at the same time Hamas should be denounced and exposed to the extent that its actions are damaging the resistance and the armed struggle. Through such a relationship with the bourgeois forces of resistance, not the socialist revolution is sacrificed in the name of national liberation, but on the contrary strengthens the prospects for the socialist revolution precisely by focusing all forces on national liberation. A division of resistance on the basis of ideological differences and despite the unity in the strategic goal of shake off colonial oppression is sectarianism and uses only those who will do everything to promote and deepen such divisions.

The strategic line of the national liberation struggle outlined here is not new at all. It is basically the line that communist parties have always pursued in national liberation struggles, be it in China, where the CP has cooperated in certain situations with the bourgeois-nationalist Kuomintang and fought it in others, whether it is Che Guevara's cooperation with non-communist revolutionaries in the Cuban liberation struggle, the national liberation movements in Vietnam or in the Balkans in the Second World War.If necessary, as in the case of China or Greece, the struggle against the bourgeois forces also included where and when it became necessary. Tactical mistakes were certainly made (sometimes very serious), but the mistake was not to form alliances with non-communist forces in a national liberation struggle.

How does the case of Palestine differ from all these examples? Some respond that Hamas is an Islamist, fundamentalist organization, and that we, as communists, would defend secularism. Both are correct and both misses the core of the matter at this point. The core of a conflict lies not in its ideological superstructure, but in the material basis. It therefore makes no sense to equate the chauvinism of Palestinian groups with Israeli chauvinism. Abstract, both may be “worst,” but Marxism teaches us not to seek the essence of the matter, not in speeches, slogans and ideas, but rather to pay attention to what ideology is expressed. On the one hand, there is a chauvinism, which justifies Israeli colonialism, the resulting apartheid system and largely also the genocide, and on the other hand, there is a chauvinism that is a false ideological shell of a struggle against oppression that is inherently justified.

The resistance to colonization is the essence of Hamas' nationalism, or at least the material basis of its success. And it is another tragic irony of history that the only ideology that is now successful on the ground to become the vehicle of the desire to liberate the Palestinian masses, which is Islamist, the one that Israel and the CIA (e.g. in Afghanistan) have financed and invented them to fight the secular resistance or communism.
That this is so, however, should not surprise us too much if it is true that religion is nothing but the “saint appearance” of the “Jammertale”, as Marx describes the oppressive and hostile relations of class societies19. Political Islam has given the oppressed in Palestine an ideology that seems not only compatible with its national identity and, although in an idealistically distorted form, denounces the “Jammertal” of earthly life under capitalism, but also martyrdom, which, in view of the immense power gap for so many sons and daughters of the Palestinian people, seems to make the inevitable end of their struggle. If communists believe in this concrete historical situation that the enemy is political Islam, it means that they have exchanged beings and appearances of the matter with each other.

A strange flowering of this deviation is also when communists find the worst condemnations for Hamas, but their main rivals, Fatah, handle with kidthane shoes. The reason for this is obviously an idealistic approach, which ignores the role of these forces actually play: namely, in the case of Fatah, the role of acting as administrators of a Bantustan20 for the colonial masters and, not least, carrying out repressive functions for Israel. In everything that is problematic and critical of Hamas, Fatah is a much bigger problem for the Palestinian liberation struggle.

4 The international context
The Marxist method of approaching conflicts includes that every conflict is to be regarded as part of a larger, worldwide overall context, that the interaction with the contradictions of imperialism on the world level is always to be considered. This also applies, of course, to the war in Palestine. Above was stated that the war is a colonial war from the Israeli side on the one hand, and on the other hand a war of national liberation from the Palestinian side. It is therefore not essentially a conflict between the imperialists about the redivision of the world.
Of course, this does not mean that other imperialist interests than the Israeli ones would not play a role in it. Let us first consider the interests of the largest imperialist centers: there are first to be mentioned the interests of the USA, for which the region of the “Middle East” (West Asia) still has a special geostrategic significance due to its oil reserves, but also the activities of the opposing powers Russia and Iran, and which therefore remain Israel's most important support and in fact a necessary condition for the condition for the continued the Zionist colonial project. In second respect, however, there are also the interests of the largest capitalist powers in the EU, which also have partly close economic relations with Israel, supply it with weapons systems and for whom Israel also has the character of an outpost in this region – which is also strategically crucial for the EU.

The attitude of Russia is more complicated: on the one hand, the Russian bourgeoisie has maintained close relations with Israel for a long time, and Israel, conversely, has not supported the sanctions against Russia after the start of the Russian invasion. On the other hand, Moscow is also allied with Iran and Syria, two arch-enemies of Israel, and struggles for influence in the Arab world.
Turkey had historically good relations with Israel, which were still enough until the first years of the reign of Recep Tayyip Erddoans. Approximately since 2008-2010, specifically triggered by the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008/2009 ("Operation Cast Lead") and the attack on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara 2010, which was on shipments with relief supplies on the way to Gaza, has been repositioned Turkey. The real background is Turkey's reorientation under the ACP towards closer relations with non-NATO states and the Arab world, which has taken place since that time. This serves the effort to play a more independent role as a regional great power independently of NATO and to present itself as representation of interests of all Muslims. The Turkish government is also helping the AKP's ideological proximity to Hamas, which is described by Turkey as a legitimate resistance movement and is politically supported. But Erdo's repeated criticism of Israeli crimes should not deceive anyone: obviously, the Turkish state, who pursues his own war policy in his own south-east, in northern Syria, Armenia/Azerbaijan and against Greece, is not about saving innocent lives, but rather about moving its own interests with the issue of Palestine.

Since 1992, China has had diplomatic relations with Israel, which have continued to develop ever since then. The Chinese bourgeoisie's main interests are based on the profit interests: between 2015 and 2018, Israel was the largest recipient of Chinese capital exports in the region. Since the announcement of the “Belt and Road Initiative”, many billions of dollars have been invested in Israeli infrastructure projects (although Israel has not even signed the BRI as an ally of the US). Second, China is investing heavily in the Israeli high-tech sector, such as electronic equipment, medical instruments and telecommunications. The fact that the Chinese government is at least criticizing Israel's genocidal war in words (and certainly distinguishes itself from countries such as the USA or Germany) does not abort the thriving business21 This position of China, which has been described as “pro-Palestinian neutrality,” meaning non-interference with cautious pro-Palestinian rhetoric, serves both the interest in continued business with Israel and the orientation towards close relations with Iran and some Arab countries.
Why do we go into so much attention to China when the Western states are much more behind Israel? The reason is that recently some communists have put forward the thesis that the war in Palestine is ultimately an expression of the global conflict between the US/NATO alliance on the one hand and the bloc around Russia and China on the other.

In a particularly extreme form, for example, this thesis is represented by the Russian-perfect organization “Politsturm” writes: “On both sides, reactionary forces are involved in the conflict, which the working citizens of Israel and Palestine play against each other and pursue the goal of establishing their own dominance in the region. Behind each of the rival parties are imperialist powers with interests in this region. Israel is supported by American and European capital; it is a pillar of NATO in the region. Hamas and Palestine are supported by Iranian, Turkish and Chinese capital, which wants to strengthen its own position by weakening Israel. The Russian Federation is also interested in weakening the positions of Israel and Western capital.” This is why “none of the two sides can be supported by the workers and communists.”22. The devastating conclusion is therefore that the Palestinian liberation struggle is not our business or it is at most abstract in the sense of general declarations.

Now it is one thing to state that the main imperialist conflicts are also reflected in every single conflict. A completely different one is to claim that these global lines of conflict would be the nature of a local war or conflict (as is undoubtedly the case in Ukraine or Taiwan, for example), or even to degrade the warring parties to mere puppets of the great imperialist centers. Such an interpretation is simply absurd: Israel is not a puppet of the USA, but an independent capitalist state with its own bourgeoisie, despite strict relations of dependence. And the Palestinian resistance groups are certainly not puppets of China or Russia in their conflict with NATO and the USA, especially since it is not at all the case that China, Russia and the US would clearly stand on opposite sides in relation to Palestine.

The Palestinian resistance – not only the Islamic, but also sometimes secular forces – is primarily supported by Iran, Qatar and partly also Turkey. Of course, none of these states acts out of altruistic motives or for sympathy with the Palestinians. As all three of these states oppress their own working class, it is known.
Can a struggle supported by capitalist countries nevertheless be a just struggle that benefits the cause of socialism? If that were not possible, then the matter would be done: there will always be some capitalist country (actually less) that will support the Palestinian cause and the bourgeois forces that lead them out of their own interests. On the other hand, this is the case with any national liberation movement, in which it is a matter of course for bourgeois leadership to seek allies and even potential future economic partners. Even a communist leadership of the liberation struggle could hardly renounce the support of bourgeois states if it were offered to it – but it would be much less likely that it would happen at all. If it were wrong in any case to accept the help of capitalists, then we would also have to condemn the Bolsheviks for the fact that Lenin had put himself on the train to Petrograd with German support in 1917. With such an approach, we could then be proud of our Immaculate moral and political purity, but in reality we would refrain from changing the world.

If a national liberation struggle is a just cause, then it can and must also intervene in international politics and try to exploit inter-imperialist contradictions, and this even before the takeover of power. The problem is rather to understand the limits within which this can happen. Because, of course, the dependence of resistance on support from Iran or Qatar is also a problem, albeit an inevitable one. Of course, we are striving for a viable and ultimately socialist Palestine, which does not depend on the dripping of other states. But even a Palestinian state dependent on other countries would be a historic advance for the Palestinians – just as decolonization in Africa was progress, despite the continuing dependencies of the countries there. The Palestinian people have been fighting for their independence for 75 years. It not only devalues the sacrificing Palestinian liberation struggle, but also does not correspond to reality when its victims are made into mere chess pieces in the plans of other powers.

In this particular case, was it the case in which Hamas acted on behalf of or as an objective agent of foreign powers?
We do not consider such a claim to be proven and wrong. Neither the USA nor the Federal Republic, which would certainly have a great interest, to present the attack as an action staged by Iran, have made such claims, but had to admit that there is no evidence for this. And the facts also speak against it: if Iran were the secret mastermind of the action, would it not be likely that Hezbollah would have attacked from the north at the same time and in coordination with Hamas from Lebanon? So far, however, Hezbollah has interfered almost only rhetorically (and through a few rather symbolic missile shots). Ansarollah in Yemen, also supported by Iran, has also imposed a blockade on Israeli ships, but this also does not prove an action that was prepared jointly from the outset.

The tactical problem of Hamas and other armed groups is precisely that they have hardly any internationally powerful allies. Their problem in recent years has been that some elements of the international situation have shifted to their disadvantage, with particular calling for the rapprochement of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to Israel. And it was precisely Hamas' important motive for Operation Al-Aqsa flood. Paola Caridi, an international expert on Hamas, writes: “The second message (of Hamas) is aimed at the countries in the region that are among the actors who are trying to restore the balance. This includes Iran. In fact, no one in the region has forgotten the resumption of relations between the two great enemies, Iran and Saudi Arabia, which was approved by China a few months ago. And Hamas may have felt crushed by a regional policy that could be inclined to sacrifice the Gaza Strip.”23
In other words, the operation was not expressions of the present pattern of the worldwide division between the imperialist powers, but had the goal of breaking these patterns and changing the international balance of forces to the disadvantage of Israel. As a result of the Israeli genocide, Saudi Arabia has actually put its rapprochement with Israel on hold.

We do not want to make an evaluation of this action from a tactical point of view for the liberation struggle, to what extent it has used it or not, here. In principle, however, we must say that in the interests of the Palestinian people and their liberation struggle is not to be further isolated and to stifle them in the plans of others (such as Abraham Accords24). The bourgeoisies of almost all Arab countries have long since betrayed the Palestinian liberation struggle, but they are faced with the problem that the popular masses in all Arab countries (and also in the Muslim world in all Arab countries (and also in the Muslim world) have strongly sympathetic to the struggle of the Palestinians – and this offers a starting point for the Palestinian national liberation movement to thwart the plans of the Arab bourgeoisies. By turning to the capitalist states of the region and trying to influence its foreign policy in the Palestinian interest, the Palestinian movement is striving to become not a pawn, but a subject of international politics. We as Communists cannot condemn this aspiration. To condemn it, thereby sabotageing the national liberation struggle, while we ourselves live in a country whose national question was resolved long ago would indeed be an expression of a chauvinist attitude.
It is clear that such calculations are always also a dangerous game where the entry of other actors could turn the local conflict into a regional conflict and even lead to a world war. But we as Communists cannot appeal to the Palestinians, the most brutally oppressed people of the whole region, to stop their liberation struggle. Because there was and is no peace for them. Each ceasefire is at most a respite and actually not even that, since the settlement construction, the expulsion, the raids and the targeted assassinations of Israel continue. The demand for the Palestinians to stop the armed struggle is not only chauvinist and politically wrong, it is also completely unrealistic, precisely because the Palestinians only have the choice to fight or go under.

5 Conclusion
What is the crucial conclusion of all this?
First of all, the Palestinians' struggle for liberation is legitimate. Point. Secondly, the working class of the whole world, and consequently, of course, the Communists of all countries have not only the interest, but also the obligation to support this struggle – not only abstractly support it, but also concretely by defending the Palestinians' right to this struggle and to attack the complicity of the bourgeoisies of most countries with Israel. Thirdly, the fundamental relationship of the communists to this struggle does not depend on whether they are currently exercising the leadership of bourgeois or proletarian forces. Fourthly, the position of the Communists to this liberation struggle cannot be the same as that of the bourgeois forces. They must understand this liberation struggle as an integral part of the struggle for the liberation of the working class, which connect national with the social question and national liberation with socialism.

Zionism and the mendacious accusation of anti-Semitism, which is raised against anyone who criticizes Israel, are, above all in Germany, a powerful weapon of the capitalists and reaction (including the “left party”) against the working class, an instrument for abolishing democratic rights and slandering, intimidating, suppressing and prohibiting revolutionaries. Zionism and the instrumentalization of the reproach of anti-Semitism belong together – without that it would be impossible for Zionism to generate the extent of international support that has kept it alive. Those who abuse the accusation of anti-Semitism in Germany are members of the same ruling class, who not only incited during the Nazi regime, but had long been the masses against the Jews, accused the pogroms of the pogroms and used anti-Semitism as a weapon against the supposedly “Jewish” Marxism. As repulsive as it is, it remains a fact: the denunciation of the greatest crime of the last century, in which the entire imperialist bourgeoisie is complicit (because they committed similar crimes in their own colonies, because it supported Hitler’s rise as an anti-communist function, because it has always and constantly fueled anti-Semitism, etc.), has become the instrument of the Western imperialist bourgeoisie to justify one of the greatest crimes of this century. The rulers first commit this crime against the Palestinians, whose oppression and murder is justified by them; but they also commit it to the Jews – to the murdered Jews, whose souvenirs they defile and on the living Jews, whose security they endanger by equating Judaism with Zionism, i.e. with oppression and racism, and thus continuing to fuel anti-Semitism in society. For the Jews around the world and their justified need for a life in safety and without discrimination, the constant equations of Judaism with the crimes of Israel are a major problem. By linking the Jews to the state of Israel, even though there are millions of Jews who are not Israelis and often no Zionists, the ruling propaganda in Germany and elsewhere associate with the fact that the rejection of Israel and its policy can actually turn against Judaism.

The struggle for the unity of the working class in our country, against the division by racism in all its forms (whether anti-Palestinian or anti-Jewish), against the war policy of the rulers, therefore obliges us to put solidarity with the Palestinian people on the political agenda in our own interest, without fear of defamation by the ruling propaganda or the repression of the state.

1Programme of the Communist,/ongress/index.htm

2 A nation is not Judaism because it lacks almost all the characteristics of a nation: a common language, a common historical settlement space, etc. Modern Hebrew was therefore reintroduced in Israel as an updated form of ancient Hebrew, which until then was only used as a liturgy language. Until then, the Jews spoke different specifically Jewish languages (Jiddish, Ladino) or the languages of their home countries.

3Mandate for Palestine – Interim report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations/Balfour Declaration (30 July 1921), online: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-204267/, retrieved 5.12.2023

4 Jewish Virtual Library, online: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present?utm-content-cmp-true , access 5.12.2023.

5 See. Ilan Pappé 2007: The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, London.

6Ibid.

7 Basic Law: Israel – Nation-State of the Jewish People, online: https://www.swp-berlin.org/publications/products/sonstiges/2018A50-Ahang-IsraelNational State Law.pdf, retrieved 19.12.2023.

8 Norman Paech: "Swords of iron" – a genocide in Gaza, online: https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p-106148, retrieved 5.12.2023.

9 Tagesschau: Israel's ultra rights in the war, 21.11.2023, online: https://www.tagesschau.de/outland/right-extreme war-nahost-isra-gaza-hamas-100.html, retrieved 5.12.2023.

10 New York Times: “Erase Gaza”: Was Unleashes Incendiary Rhetoric in Israel, 15.11.2023, online: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-rhetoric.html, retrieved 5.12.2023.

11 https://www.investing.com/equities/pal-telecommms-company-profile , retrieved online 7.12.2023.

12 https://bankofpalestine.com/en/investor-relations/factsheet/facts, retrieved online 7.12.2023.

13 https://www.padico.com/en/padico-holdings-profits-12-8-million-for-the-first-half-of-2021 ; https://www.padico.com/en/home/ , retrieved online 7.12.2023.

14 Adva Center 2021: Social Report 2021 – Corona: Epidemic of Inequality, https://adva.org/en/socialreport2021/, retrieved 5.12.2023.

15 Karl Marx: An Siegfried Meyer and August Vogt, 9. April 1870, online: https://www.marxists.org/German/archiv//marx-engels/1870/04/marx-an-meyer-vogt-9.4.70.html, retrieved 5.12.2023.

16 Ishaan Tharoor 2014: How Israel helped create Hamas, The Washington Post, 30.7.2014, online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-reate-hamas/, access 5.12.2023.

17 Charters of Hamas, in: Contemporary Review of the Middle East 4(4), p. 393-418.

18 Conal Urquhart 2007: Hamas official accepts Israel but stops short of recognition, The Guardian, 11 January 2007, online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/11/israel, retrieved 19.12.2023.

19 Karl Marx: On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction, MEW 1, S. 379.

20 I.e., a “reserve” in which the colonial masters continue to allow the colonized an existence in misery.

21 Bai Peng: How China-Israel Economic Ties Factor Into Beijing’s Approach to the Gaza War, The Diplomat, 24.10.2023, online: https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/how-china-israel-economic-ties-factor-into-beijings-approach-to-the-gaza-war/ , retrieved 5.12.2023.

22 Politsturm 2023: The War in the Middle East, online: https://us.politsturm.com/the-war-in-the-middle-east , retrieved 19.12.2023.

23 Paola Caridi: Attacco di Hamas a Israele: Ã solo l’inizio di qualcosa di inedito che va al di lÃ3 della dimensione interna israeliana e palestinese, 8.10.2023, online: https://www.valigiablu.it/attacco-hamas-israele-palestina-conflitto/, retrieved 6.12.20.23.

24 A treaty on the normalisation of relations between Israel on the one hand and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.