by MHI
The opposite of war is not peace; it is social revolution. Marxist-Humanist Initiative aims to project this principle now that a ceasefire has been reached between Israel and Hamas, a ceasefire that is, in the words of Gazan journalist and activist Mahmoud Mushtaha, “only the prelude to the next war.” Sadly, Mushtaha’s worries have already been confirmed, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to end the ceasefire if Israeli hostages were not released by February 15.
In fact, Israel’s assault on the Palestinian people has not come to an end. Only two days after the ceasefire came into effect, Israel—with the aid of the Palestinian Authority—began what Basel Adra calls a “major military campaign in the northern West Bank” to “suppress armed resistance.” However, the result at the time of writing has been the death of “16 Palestinians in Jenin and three in Tulkarem” as well as “widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure in both cities” and the operation is “forcibly displacing thousands of Palestinians.”
Further, Donald Trump recently floated the despicably racist and inhumane idea of permanently displacing Gazans into neighboring countries so the United States could take control of the Gaza Strip and turn it into a “riviera of the Middle East.” While it is not clear whether the Trump administration will implement its vision for Gaza, it has emboldened Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz to instruct the military to draft a plan for emptying the strip.
MHI opposes and condemns the American-Israeli plan to permanently displace the Palestinian population in Gaza and Israel’s military campaign in the West Bank just as we oppose and condemn Israel’s recent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon.
Trampled road in Jenin from Israel’s military campaign in the West Bank. Credit: Standing Together.
Still, we also oppose and condemn Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli civilians and Hezbollah’s airstrikes in Israel, which, despite being described as solidaristic with the Palestinian national movement by some on the left, have disproportionately killed Palestinians. Moreover, we oppose and condemn all apologetics for the killing of non-combatants, be they Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese, or any other nationality.
We oppose and condemn Israel’s mass killings and displacement of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, its blocking of humanitarian aid in Gaza, and calls by Israeli politicians and military leaders to starve and exterminate Palestinians who refuse to leave northern Gaza.
We oppose and condemn Israel’s mass incarceration of Palestinians since the start of the war. Their water supply has been limited and they are deprived of clean clothes and medical care, resulting in the spread of infections. We oppose all other efforts of Israel to negate the right of Palestinians to national self-determination and engage in actions that threaten to destroy the Palestinian people.
Finally, we oppose and condemn the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) escalations, such as their September 30, 2024, missile attack, which, though deflected by the Israeli Defense Forces and the US military, killed a Palestinian worker in the West Bank.
The death of this worker illustrates clearly who truly pays the price of the escalations of Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRI—people in the region simply trying to survive. They had already suffered unthinkable atrocities; they continue to suffer them due to Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza and so-called “targeted attacks” on “Hezbollah outposts,” Hezbollah’s continued bombing of Israel until a ceasefire was reached with Hamas, and Iran’s missile attack.
MHI pleads with the international left to draw the lesson that the unimaginable horrors of the last few years have taught—that not only must the political forces in Israel opposed to Palestinian self-determination be overthrown and defeated, but also that Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRI, and its “Axis of Resistance” are not emancipatory forces in the region that deserve the support of socialist internationalists.
In our view, it is the responsibility of revolutionary socialists to uphold the principles of socialist internationalism and to ensure that these principles are decisive when considering what factions and tendencies we choose to support in each country. Yet because many self-avowed socialist internationalist figures and organizations appear to have forgotten or abandoned these principles, we explain and defend them below.
The Right of Nations to Self-Determination is a Universal, Inviolable Right
Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War, much of the socialist left has invoked the right to self-determination. Yet it has not invoked the right to self-determination as a universal and inviolable principle that applies to all nations. Instead, it has invoked it as a right that Palestinians have, but Jews do not. In other words, it has transformed national self-determination, from a universal right into an exclusive privilege.
However, it is exclusive national privileges that socialist internationalism opposes. In his 1914 pamphlet, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” Vladimir Lenin repeatedly emphasized the difference between the bourgeois and proletarian policies or orientations to national liberation struggles. In his words, the bourgeoisie “is out for … either privileges for its own nation or exceptional advantages to it; this is called being ‘practical.’”
In opposition to this, Lenin described the proletarian orientation as opposed to the “practicality” of the bourgeois policy, i.e., “opposed to all privileges, to all exclusiveness.” Instead of privileges and an exclusive right to self-determination, the proletarian orientation upholds the right to self-determination as universal and inviolable—so as to eliminate the privileges and advantages of certain nations over each other and to secure national peace, equal rights, and the best conditions for the class struggle.
According to Lenin, either the right to self-determination is upheld universally, to oppose “strivings for national exclusiveness” and to bring the international proletariat into closer unity, or it is upheld only conditionally, to grant certain states or nations privileges over others. The latter only exacerbates national conflict and prejudices, as is evidenced by the heightened anti-Palestinian racism in Israel and antisemitism in the Palestinian solidarity movement since October 7.
There are also socialists who claim that they support the right to national self-determination for Jews yet oppose the existence of an independent Jewish state. In other words, they simultaneously affirm and negate Jewish people’s right to self-determination. One way they get away with this is by refusing to define national self-determination.
Lenin ridiculed his fellow socialists and even fellow Bolsheviks for this exact tactic. In Lenin’s view, using the term “national self-determination” in an indefinite manner only played into the hands of imperialist rulers who advocated against the right of oppressed nations to secede. Unlike his comrades, Lenin was unequivocal in his definition of the right of nations to self-determination: “Self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state” (pg. 63). And again, “It would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as meaning anything but the right to existence as a separate state” (emphases added).
The implications are clear for those who want to see them. Lenin’s discussion implies that socialists need to support the right of both Jewish and Palestinian peoples to an independent state. Whether this state, or states, is unified or separate is a decision for Israeli and Palestinian peoples to make. Lenin’s discussion also implies that socialists need to oppose Israel’s aims and actions to undermine this right of Palestinians, and tendencies in the Palestinian national movement whose aims and actions undermine this right of the Jewish people, for example, Hamas’s refusal to recognize Jews as a national group.
Let us make one point clear because it seems to be a difficult one for some socialists to grasp: it is possible to affirm the right of Jews to an independent state—Israel—while opposing the Israeli government’s aim to negate, and methods of negating, the same right of Palestinians.
In other words, it is possible to affirm the right of both people to their own states while opposing Israel’s invasion and devastation of Gaza, its colonial expansion in the West Bank and elsewhere, and its apartheid laws and policies.
Finally, it is even possible to affirm the right of Jewish people to their own state while condemning the specific actions that the Jewish Agency and Haganah took to found that state during the Israeli War of Independence. In other words, it is possible to affirm the right of Jewish people to the State of Israel while condemning what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba: the violent mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians and annexation of the land they were living on.
To summarize, it is possible to affirm the right of Jewish people to an independent state while remaining completely opposed to the current imperialist, state-capitalist character of Israel.
There are “Two Worlds” in Each Country
MHI’s conception of the relationship between Israel and Palestine differs from much of the Marxist left because we believe that there are two worlds in each country—the world of rulers and the world of people who oppose those rulers. In other words, we believe that Netanyahu is not Israel, Hezbollah is not Lebanon, Hamas is not Palestine, and the IRI is not Iran.
This principle means that we, unlike much of the Marxist left, do not consider the struggle between Israel and Palestine to be a zero-sum game in which only one side can emerge victorious while the other is eliminated. Nor do we, like much of the Marxist left, resign ourselves to a kind of “pragmatism” that identifies Hamas, Hezbollah, or the IRI as the “lesser evils.” Instead, we continue to seek out “second” or “absolute” negativity, which Dunayevskaya interpreted as “the new passions and forces” for “reconstructing society on Humanist beginnings.”
Suppose we refuse to equate Israeli people with their government. What are the consequences? In this case, it becomes possible to notice that Jewish people are risking their lives to protect Palestinians and Bedouin shepherds in the West Bank from settler expropriations and pogroms. We can also see that Israeli war refuser networks are growing, and that the anti-fascist, anti-war, and even anti-occupation sentiment is growing within mass protests in Israel against Netanyahu’s government.
Further, when we refuse to equate Hamas with the Palestinian people, we can remember that just before October 7, Gazans filled the streets in the thousands to protest Hamas’s rule and that there are Palestinians who work closely with Israeli people to end the occupation and secure national peace and democratic rights for both people in each country. By supporting Hamas, on the contrary, we would dismiss or even help repress these forces in both countries.
People-to-People Solidarity
MHI is in solidarity with the people of different nations, not their governments. We are in solidarity with the people in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Israel who oppose their leadership and are fighting to end the war and settle the conflict in a manner that upholds the national and democratic rights of all peoples.
One argument we’ve heard against seeking out and supporting independent mass organizations and movements in these countries is that they are small or insignificant. To us, this is an implicit rejection of social revolution.
If we give up on the self-development of workers, women, youth, and other progressive forces in the region, we have three options: march alongside Israel; march alongside the “Axis of Resistance,” toward global confrontation; or sit helplessly on the sidelines. All three options lead to more bloodshed.
MHI refuses to abandon our conviction that social revolution is necessary and possible. Therefore, no matter how small an organization, tendency, or movement may be, if it is “an inherence of the future in the present,” we do not see it as insignificant. Instead, we see these organizations, tendencies, and movements as the only realistic alternative.
Be the first to comment