20th March 2025
Israeli action in Gaza continues to hit civilian targets
While the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) resumes its genocidal bombing campaign against the people of Gaza, the leaders of European nations gather to work out how they can protect the right wing nationalist government of Volodymyr Zelensky from the Russian ‘threat’ in Ukraine.
Israel has treated international law with impunity for decades while the West has not just turned a blind eye to the treatment of Palestinians but has armed Israel to the teeth in the process. The United States has by far been the biggest arms supplier to Israel but Britain has provided more than its fair share of weapons used to keep the Palestinian population under the jackboot of the IDF.
As the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) indicate,
“By the end of 2023, the USA had delivered 39 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Israel. Israel has a further 36 on order. Israel has been using the F-35s extensively to bomb Gaza, operating them at a far higher rate than normal. This has depended on a constant supply of spare parts from the US and other countries producing components, including the UK.”
Working out direct British involvement can be complex as CAAT point out that licences for components go via the US for use in weapons manufactured by them. While the government has instituted a partial suspension of export licences “it left in place licences for equipment such as components for trainer aircraft and naval vessels, as well as for components going to Israel’s arms industry to be included in equipment for onward export.” (https://caat.org.uk/data/countries/israel/)
By comparison to the actions of the IDF, the Russian action in Ukraine has not involved the subjection of an entire population, is not aimed at eradicating a nation, or displacing its population from their land. On the contrary, the action of Ukrainian forces against the largely Russian speaking population of the Donbas region, which resulted in 14,000 civilian deaths between 2014 and 2022, precipitated the Russian action but has gone largely unreported by the Western media.
This version of events, does not fit the NATO narrative of an expansionist Russia looking to swallow up the neighbouring states, in advance of an onward march towards Western Europe. NATO bosses would have us believe that the only possible defence against such an eventuality is to spend more on weapons to guard against the so called Russian threat. The British government is committed to increasing spend on the military to 2.5% of GDP with a rise to 3% being mooted. Calls have come from the US for NATO nations to be committing to 5% of GDP spend on the military.
It is hard to see this as anything other than a drive to war and certainly a drive towards greater profits for arms manufacturers who must be rubbing their hands with glee.
The right wing Polish government are asking for nuclear weapons to be stationed in Poland, minutes away from a strike on Moscow, to ‘defend’ against Russian invasion. This in spite of the fact that as a member of NATO any attack on Poland would, under article five of the NATO Treaty, bring the whole of NATO to its defence. Nuclear weapons in Poland will not add to that capability.
In spite of the Western commitment not to move NATO one inch eastwards the incorporation of Eastern Europe nations into NATO has effectively completed the encirclement of Russia over the past thirty years, with Ukraine being virtually the last piece in that jigsaw.
The ‘Russian threat’ bogie is a repackaging of the old Soviet threat myth from the days of the Cold War, when the NATO bloc had to have an ‘enemy’ to defend against, in order to justify its proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons.
If history is played out first time as tragedy and second as farce then the so called Coalition of the Willing, convened by British Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, should be in the running for a comedy award. Having been cut loose by the US, in relation to the strategy of defending Ukraine at any price, European leaders are scrambling around like latter day Keystone Cops wondering which way to turn.
However, it will be no joke should they make good on their threat to increase spending on weapons, which will only impoverish the European working class further and rob them of much needed social provision in the form of homes, schools, medical provision and transport infrastructure. It will be less than amusing for working class families if their sons and daughters are sent to the frontline in ‘defence’ of Ukraine and find themselves embroiled in an unwinnable conflict.
The grandstanding of Starmer and Macron, the main drivers of the wilting European coalition, needs to be exposed and the priorities for a just settlement in Palestine and an end to war in Ukraine emphasised, as the key foreign policy objectives.
The drive to sustain the war in Ukraine, while ignoring Israeli genocide in Gaza, is a double threat to world peace. Mass action on both fronts must continue while being linked to the struggle for jobs, health and homes, all of which will be threatened by the drive to war.
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