On Monday night, the Israel Defense Forces killed seven international aid workers at the World Central Kitchen in the Gaza Strip in three consecutive airstrikes on convoys. The aid workers were nationals of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, and Palestine.
The attack used precision airborne munitions aimed directly at the roof of the vehicle, which displayed a large logo that clearly identified the vehicle's occupants as humanitarian workers.
Spokespeople for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden absurdly claimed that the three airstrikes were the result of a “mistake” and “misperception.” These claims, which resonated in the media, fell apart in the face of mounting evidence that the strikes were carefully targeted.
Jose Andres, a restaurateur and founder of World Central Kitchen, said in an interview with Reuters that his workers were targeted “systematically, car by car.” Mr. Andres rejected the U.S. and Israeli claims that the attack was unintentional, saying a “categorical no.”
As UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese explained, the purpose of the attack was “to ensure that donor countries withdraw and Gaza's civilian population continues to starve in peace.”
In a statement, Médecins Sans Frontières said: “The reporting of this unfortunate incident is unacceptable. …What happened in the World Central Kitchen and in the MSF convoys and shelters is a huge loss for humanitarian workers, medical workers, journalists and UN staff. We do not accept this because it is part of the same pattern of deliberate attacks on people, schools, and families.”
These attacks are just the latest in a series of Israeli killings of aid workers, with nearly 200 killed to date. Additionally, Israel has systematically attacked hungry people trying to receive food at food distribution centers in a series of “flour massacres.”
After a six-month blockade by Israel, all residents of the Gaza Strip are facing starvation, with the United Nations and World Bank warning that famine is imminent. Dozens of children have already died from malnutrition, and humanitarian groups have warned that starvation deaths will soon exceed those from bombings.
The Biden administration's response to the killings of aid workers has been to defend Israel, deny that the killings violated international law, and reject any international investigation into the massacre.
Asked Wednesday if there had been a “change in the President's policy toward Israel and Gaza as a result of yesterday's attacks,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre asserted that “nothing has changed.” .
White House National Security Press Secretary John Kirby said in a statement on the same day: “We are committed to the continued support of the United States in Israel's fight to eliminate the Hamas threat.'' It's not a pain,” he insisted. ”
On Thursday, Biden spoke for 30 minutes with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and focused on addressing the diplomatic fallout from the massacre. A public readout of the call stated that Biden would “announce and implement a series of concrete, specific, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.” “We have made the necessity clear.''
These statements were immediately heralded by the US media as significant policy changes. But in a subsequent press conference, White House officials reiterated that nothing had changed. John Kirby said Biden “made clear to the prime minister that America's support for Israel's ability to protect it from a wide variety of threats, not just Hamas, remains steadfast.” Asked if the call was an “ultimatum”, Karine Jean-Pierre said “no”.
In other words, Biden's “demand” is to hold military leaders and civilian policymakers responsible for funding, arming, and defending Israel's genocide in Gaza and for killing aid workers accountable. The purpose was to cover up the US policy of not inflicting any harm on the United States. .
The U.S. support for Netanyahu's regime's criminal actions comes as a result of the Gaza massacre, a coordinated U.S.-Israeli military campaign across the Middle East aimed at dismantling any resistance to imperialist rule in the region. This is because it is part of the
Since October 7, the United States has provided more than 100 separate arms shipments to Israel, all of which are below the threshold required for congressional authorization and approval. Last week, the United States sent 1,800 new 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in response to Israel's massacre of more than 400 people at Al Shifa Hospital. On Monday, the day Israel massacred aid workers at World Central Kitchen, the Biden administration approved the transfer of thousands more bombs.
The Gaza massacre, now six months old, marks a major milestone in the criminalization of imperialist foreign policy, with systematic mass murder, starvation, and genocide becoming the norm.
In the same week that Israel killed World Central Kitchen aid workers, a group of Israeli and Palestinian journalists revealed that the artificial intelligence system used by the Israel Defense Forces to select targets for bombings, which resulted in fatalities, was The existence of “Lavender” was revealed. Thousands since October 7th.
The system has been used to mark thousands of Gazans as targets for extrajudicial killings. It detects that the targeted victims are home with their families and orders the Israeli Air Force to bomb them, their families, and bystanders in the process. Each attack is allowed to kill up to 20 bystanders for each targeted individual, and in some cases up to 100 bystanders for selected targets.
For half a century, actions by the state of Israel have been used by Washington as a precedent for U.S. policy. The most important example is the doctrine of “targeted killing,” or state-organized assassination, developed by Israel before the United States adopted it, including against its own citizens.
What Israel is doing to Gaza residents today, its imperialist supporters will soon do. The Zionist regime's actions in the current genocide, along with mass starvation of rebellious urban populations, will be used to set a precedent for the use of high-tech weapons, including artificial intelligence, in large-scale war crimes.
The outbreak of war, genocide, and political repression are not abnormal. As Lenin pointed out, imperialism is not just a policy, but rather a specific historical stage of capitalist development. Therefore, opposition to imperialism is a revolutionary issue, the aim is not to put pressure on the government, but to replace capitalism with socialism.
All efforts to challenge the Gaza massacre at the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and capitalist governments have failed. It is not about calling for a change of direction from the capitalist governments responsible for these crimes, but rather by turning to the working class and linking the struggle against war to the struggle of workers around the world against inequality and exploitation. It is to integrate it with the developing struggle.
