The scenes of destruction and mass death at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, in the wake of the pullback from the premises by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), are among the most horrific the world has witnessed since the barbarism of the Nazis in World War II.
Hundreds of bodies lie strewn through the rubble of what was once the largest place of healing in the Gaza Strip. Witnesses describe the “stench of decomposing bodies” and having to step over body parts to walk through the wreckage.
Israel is engaged in a war of extermination with no limits. This war depends on an endless flow of weapons and financial support from the United States, Britain, Canada and the European Union (with Germany in the lead), without which the genocide could not continue.
As these horrors were being carried out, the Biden reelection campaign held a fundraising event Thursday at Radio City Music Hall in New York, where three Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, joined forces in defense of the current US policy.
Hundreds of protesters were outside showing their support for the Palestinian people. Inside, several individuals were able to stand up to denounce the Israeli genocide and the Biden administration for supporting it.
The response of the three presidents was to reaffirm their solidarity with Netanyahu. Biden declared, “You can’t forget that Israel is in a position where its very existence is at stake.” This was said as the existence of the Palestinians is being wiped out through bombs and mass starvation.
Obama lectured the protesters on the need to “listen,” that is, to shut up and let experienced warmongers like himself and Biden make the decisions. The bulk of the audience, comprised of multi-millionaires paying huge sums for admission, applauded. The entertainers who participated in the program (Colbert, Queen Latifah, etc.) were fawning in their approval. All are covered in shame.
The Radio City Music Hall event raised a record $26 million, as the Democrats laughed and joked with bankers and billionaires. Trump and the Republicans aim to top that figure this week with an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, put on by hedge fund billionaire John Paulson. Both parties are political instruments of the super-rich, unshakably committed to the defense of the profit system at home and American imperialism abroad.
The homicidal sentiments enveloping the ruling class as a whole were given voice last week by Michigan Republican Congressman Tim Walberg, who called for a quick destruction of the enclave, on the model of “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” the Japanese cities annihilated by US nuclear bombs in August 1945.
Biden followed up the fundraiser in Manhattan Thursday with an Easter egg hunt for dozens of children on the White House lawn Monday, with Biden and Harris and their spouses. A good time was evidently had by all. It is not known how many Palestinian children were killed by US-supplied bombs during the hour-long event, but it is a certainty that no eggs of any kind were available for them, under conditions of mass starvation in Gaza.
Amidst the frivolity, a major escalation of the wider conflict in the Middle East was under way, with an Israeli air strike against the Iranian embassy in Damascus, the capital of Syria, on Monday. The massive blast killed at least six Iranians, including two top officials of the Quds force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The attack was doubly illegal, violating Syrian airspace and then striking an Iranian consular building, which is considered Iranian territory under international law.
Hundreds of millions around the world are revolted by the images streaming out of Gaza, despite the near-blackout imposed by the corporate-controlled media. They are shocked by the escalating military provocations of Israel and the US-NATO forces throughout the Middle East.
The line-up of Democratic presidents at the Radio City Music Hall shows why the mass protests have been entirely ineffective in changing government policy. All three presidents are identified with the development of the war policy of American imperialism over the past three decades. Clinton (1993-2001), oversaw a series of US military interventions in the former Yugoslavia, including full-scale air war against Serbia, and in Somalia, as well as bomb and missile attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan.
Obama (2009-2017) continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begun by Republican George W. Bush, while bombing Libya and supporting Islamic forces in that country and in Syria, plunging both countries into bloody civil wars. He extended the global pursuit of military confrontation with his “turn to Asia,” promising to shift the majority of US military forces to the Asia-Pacific theater to confront China.
Biden’s main focus since taking office has been to instigate and then escalate the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, to which the administration has devoted massive financial and military resources. This war, which threatens nuclear annihilation, is now combined with full-scale support for Israeli genocide in Gaza and a continuing war build-up in Asia, through anti-China alliances and an array of US bases.
All three Democratic administrations used vague—and quickly discarded—promises of social improvement at home to screen the growth of militarism. Clinton billed himself as the “man from Hope,” but joined with Republicans to “end welfare as we know it.” Obama, the candidate of “hope and change,” used his identity as the first African-American president as a cover for a massive bailout of Wall Street at the expense of the working class. Biden claimed to be fighting to preserve “the soul of America” against the danger of Trump but has continued Trump’s border crackdown and dismantled all protective measures against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Once again, in the 2024 elections, the trade unions and the pseudo-left groups are seeking to suppress any independent struggle by the working class and insist that it is necessary to support Biden and the Democrats in order to prevent the victory and reelection of ex-President Trump. Biden is supposedly the only hope for defending democracy in America, as if this 81-year-old doddering war criminal is all that stands in the way of fascist dictatorship.
Responding to the massacre at Al-Shifa Hospital and the assassination of Iranian officials, Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Joseph Kishore wrote in a statement:
The international working class has immense social power, and it is necessary for the working class to take action to stop the slaughter. In our election campaign for the Socialist Equality Party, @jerrywhiteSEP and I intend to campaign aggressively in the working class, in the factories and workplaces, to connect the developing struggles against exploitation and inequality to a fight against the genocide and the broader imperialist war of which it is a part.
The necessary response to the genocide in Gaza is the fight for socialism, to take power from the hands of the capitalist oligarchs and to reorganize the global economy on the basis of equality.
These are the issues posed to the working class, in the US and internationally, in the development of the fight against the horrors in Gaza.