The Communist Party of Ireland reaffirms our unwavering support for the steadfast people of Palestine as they confront the full force of US imperialism embodied in Donald Trump’s right-wing, ultra-nationalist administration. West Asia has become the frontline of the international anti-imperial struggle and there has been a seismic shift in the balance of forces in the region over the past 12 months. From the terrorist attacks against Lebanon to the regime change in Syria, there have been some gains for US imperialism through its proxy Israel, and the return of Trump to the White House will likely further isolate the Islamic Republic of Iran and embolden the Zionist regime.
The recent ceasefire in Gaza has, as a minimum, stopped the horrific genocidal military assault of the US-backed Zionist regime on a defenceless and confined population. The killing will not end with the ceasefire: the destruction left in its wake will lead to more deaths of innocent Palestinians from starvation, dehydration, exposure, and disease. The death toll in Gaza has been revised upward to take account of over 14,000 people who are unaccounted for and presumed dead. The Gaza Health Ministry now reports the death toll as 61,709 people, at least 70% of whom are children and women.
This genocide could not have been conducted without the full support – both in terms of military aid and diplomatic cover – provided primarily by the United States, along with the European Union and Britain. For Trump – or Biden – to hail the ceasefire as a triumph of US diplomacy, after providing every support short of ‘boots on the ground’, is beyond farce. In the EU, apart from some insipid rhetoric by a few member states, including Ireland, there have been no concrete measures to prevent and punish the crime of genocide or to end the illegal occupation of Palestine.
With the return of the “America First” policy of Trump, barely two weeks into his second term as president he has announced that the US will annex the Gaza strip and forcibly displace over two million Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan. Trump lays bare the neocolonial machinations of the US ruling class, declaring that Gaza will become “the Riviera of the Middle East” once the Indigenous population has been expelled in another Nakba. This idea is not a new departure for the US: it was floated in February 2024 by Trump’s son-in-law and former Senior Advisor, Jared Kushner, who spoke of displacing Palestinians into the Negev or Egypt to build Gaza’s “waterfront property”. The inalienable right of the Palestinians to self-determination is totally removed from the considerations of imperialist interests in the region. There also happen to be large natural gas reserves off the coast of Gaza, and although absent from the current discussion, is undoubtedly in the minds of the vulture capitalists.
Lenin wrote of the First World War that it was “imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital.” What the world is witnessing in the foreign policy of the US towards Palestine, and Gaza in particular, is reminiscent of Lenin’s analysis. The forced displacement of an entire Indigenous population to facilitate finance capital’s exploitation of land and resources in the region, along with bolstering US influence in West Asia through its proxy Israel and potentially Syria, would be a hammer blow for anti-imperialist struggles.
The United Nations – the Security Council in particular – has shown it is completely impotent against the forces of imperialism and neocolonialism. The façade of universal human rights and international humanitarian law has been exposed in the double-standards of the reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Zionist genocide in Gaza, or the worsening crises in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once again, Cuba has been placed on the arbitrary “State Sponsors of Terrorism List,” an extreme act of unprovoked state aggression against the Revolution.
We must not fall prey to despair and hopelessness. We must commit ourselves to the anti-imperial and anti-colonial struggles with more vigour than ever. We must demand an end to the blockade of Cuba. We must demand an end to the US military use of Shannon and the increasing attacks on Irish neutrality. We must demand the enactment of the Occupied Territories Bill and an end to the illegal transport of weapons through Irish sovereign airspace. And we must stand, shoulder to shoulder as comrades, against the might of imperialism.
To echo the call of Marx and Engels: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite!”
