Dear Editor,
More than 100 years ago, Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish/ German freedom fighter, made the remarks that we will have “Socialism or Barbarism.” In 1918, in a speech months before she was murdered, she returned to the topic of the necessity for a new, more humane system, and this is what she said “…Socialism is necessary…because if the proletariat fails to fulfill its duties as a class, if it fails to realise socialism, we shall crash down together to a common doom.”
She was, no doubt, influenced by the terrible destruction she experienced during the First World War. Since then, we have witnessed many more massive destructions by imperialist wars, the largest being some sixty million lives lost during World War Two.
History and time have proved her right, and today the situation continues to deteriorate. We are all witnessing the total destruction of a people in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army, the fourth largest army in the world, with very modern equipment, has unleashed a genocidal attack against the civilian Palestinian people. At the time of writing, more than 40,500 Palestinians have been confirmed dead due to direct military actions, and there are some one hundred thousand severely injured, almost all of whom have lost one or more of their limbs. These figures are changing upwards on a daily basis.
What is most distressing is the fact that it is civilian homes that are targeted; hospitals, schools, places of worship are all being systematically destroyed. It appears that the intention is not just to kill babies, children, women of childbearing age and young men, but to destroy their culture, their way of life.
The figures of the dead are really very conservative. A study published by a reputable Medical Journal, “Lauret”, put the figures of the dead at one hundred and eighty-six thousand (186,000) persons. They said that even that figure is a conservative estimate.
The Journal arrived at those figures by estimating the number of those who have been buried under millions of tons of rubble and those who have been vapourised by the sheer heat of the thousands of tons of bombs that were dropped on the narrow strip, averaging twenty-one miles long and four miles wide.
Rosa Luxemburg no doubt concluded that, by 1918, Capitalism had already outlived its usefulness, and its continuation was posing a real danger to humanity as a whole.
They added to the figure of the known dead those who have died from their wounds because they became infected, and those who had been cut off from medicine to treat other types of diseases e.g. diabetes, cancer, blood pressure, etc. Included as well are those who have died from diseases such as polio, dysentery and by starvation.
This is fascism in plain sight. The Israeli regime can easily be compared to the Nazi regime in Germany, and Netanyahu behaves as Hitler did. The fact that we are spiralling down to barbarism is seen from the impunity with which they are allowed to conduct this ethnic cleansing.
This fascist regime is being supplied with the most sophisticated weapons from the leading imperialist states, particularly the United States. Indeed, at the beginning of the massacre, in October 2023, the United States and many European countries opposed a ceasefire. They wanted Israel to destroy the leading Palestinian resistance organisation Hamas. This organisation has emerged as the most robust resisters of the Israeli colonial occupation of their lands. The NATO states encouraged Israel to do the ‘job’ as quickly as possible.
But that is not all. The US and its allies are supporting the Israelis to ignore the decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). They use their tremendous power at the United Nations to protect the fascist regime.
At the same time, they have moved troops and other military equipment, both land and sea, to allow the regime to continue the slaughter of a helpless, exhausted and starving population. Their presence in the region is to discourage anyone from going to the assistance of the Palestinian people.
The US is clearly not an honest broker, even though they hypocritically speak of peace agreements while continuing the supply of weapons to Netanyahu’s regime.
Their main aim is to protect Israel despite the barbarism which they are displaying, the greed for the raw materials from the region knows no bound.
The US has managed to push out from the area all other states that can bring some sanity, and can really act as honest brokers.
The attack of the NATO states is making the United Nations and all its arms impotent.
Indeed, the United States has even joined Netanyahu in starving Palestinians, as they have suspended all funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is the main relief organisation helping the dire situation in the Gaza and West Bank.
Our world has now become a very dangerous place. The law of the jungle is replacing international law and international institutions, which are deliberately being subverted and ignored. Morality has taken wings in international relations, and the poor and oppressed must continue to be exploited for the benefit of a few in the developed imperialist states.
The descent towards barbarism is accelerating.
Donald Ramotar,
Former President of Guyana
