Defend Palestine! Defend Iran!

US imperialism today is on the verge of doing to Iran what it did to Iraq, to Syria, to Libya, to Afghanistan. This US attack on Iran will give its Israeli attack dog a free hand to further the extermination of the Palestinians and to terrorise the entire region. And the US will gain more leverage to tighten its vice on China and the Global South.

This will bring increasing barbarity abroad back home with more repression, regimentation for war and economic devastation for the masses. To defend ourselves from being trampled by the rampaging US rulers, working people must join together to take a stand right now with Iran and with Palestine. Workers all around the world mobilise against Israel and the US! Defend Iran! Defend Palestine!

Donald Trump just said he’s for peace now, after bombing Iran. Appeals for peace don’t stop bombs. Just as moral outrage has not prevented nearly two years of genocide. Palestinians do not need more liberal tears. They don’t need more blind cheerleading. Palestinian people are being exterminated. Hamas had hoped to provoke real action from the Axis of Resistance and subsequent US pressure to restrain Israel. This has proved a cruel illusion, a disaster.

There is another course. A blow against the imperialist butchers by a united union movement can stay their hand and give workers and the oppressed worldwide time to regroup and strengthen their defences. But to mobilise this social power we need to ask why the union movement here has not tried to stop one single arms shipment to Israel, or carried out one real stopwork against the genocide.

We have had union leaders up here on Sundays speak the finest words of solidarity. Then they go back to their weekday job promoting the genocide-supporting Albanese government, and pushing “jobs for Aussies” nationalist poison to their members. The union leaderships’ support to the ALP tops who are committed to the US alliance is a millstone around the neck of the working class.

The “friends of Palestine” union leaders must be told: Enough words, choose a side! Being for Palestine means breaking with the leadership of the ALP and the union movement. Unity with these servants of the US’s Australian deputy sheriff means unity with murderers of Palestinian people. I say: Break the American connection! Chuck the US lackeys out of the labour movement!

Now many people today say “Stop this war.” This comes from many leftists. It comes from some imperialists. Well look, if you want to stop this war you need to defeat Israel and drive the imperialists out of the region. You need to unleash popular sentiments for democratic and social change behind working class leadership—against those Arab regimes that proved themselves to be imperialist pawns, not lifting a finger to support the Palestinians.

The Iranian rulers themselves have been more concerned to preserve their repressive theocratic regime than defending Gaza. The region needs an anti-imperialist united front of the masses—one that also seeks to win the Israeli working class to the cause of Palestinian liberation, to undermine the Zionist fortress from within. Nothing good will come from the liberal institutions: the UN; the EU; the ICC. They have shown themselves to be either complicit in Israel’s crimes or utterly impotent.

The Zionist outpost was set up by the imperialists to ensure their division of, and domination over, the Middle East. The strategy of looking to these very imperialists to “do the right thing” and cut ties with—or even sanction—their own outpost, I am sorry, is Fantasyland. These same imperialists, from the US to France to Australia, vilify, witchhunt and jail those standing up for Palestine. Only workers and oppressed peoples of the world can put a stop to the ever-growing spiral of barbarity.

This movement here must connect and fuse its struggles with those of the working class. A small start can be made by standing together in defence with all those victimised for their defence of Palestine, whoever and wherever they may be. The Partisan Defence Committee provided a tiny example of that with last Monday’s protest against draconian French state repression of pro-Palestinians.

But key is the fight to mobilise union power. Unions must take industrial action: in defence of partisans of Palestine; against arms to Israel; and against this US attack on Iran. I’m Neil. I’m with Spartacist. I encourage you to join with the Anti-Imperialist bloc in today’s march. Don’t let the US and Israel get away with it once again. Defend Palestine! Defend Iran!