REVOLUTION 67

A Chamber Full of Monsters Cheers on a Genocidal Maniac

BOB AVAKIAN—REVOLUTION

Number Sixty-Seven: A Chamber Full of Monsters Cheers on a Genocidal Maniac.

The U.S. Congress gives a hero’s welcome to Benjamin Netanyahu—better called Netan-Nazi—the head of the Israeli government as it carries out the most depraved slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including more than 15 thousand children, and enforces conditions giving rise to starvation and terrible disease among the population of more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

While thousands protested outside, Netanyahu recently addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, in a bloodthirsty speech full of blatant lies—a speech repeatedly punctuated by rousing standing ovations from the Congresspeople in attendance. They applauded Netanyahu when he lied about the obvious fact that the Israeli military is deliberately targeting civilians (leading politicians of Israel have declared that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza). They cheered Netanyahu when he brazenly denied the well-known, well-documented fact that Israel has repeatedly blocked shipments of aid to the desperate people of Gaza. And they gave him rousing applause when he crudely lied about and viciously slandered the masses of people in this country who—in the face of arrests and brutal attacks by police and Zionist/fascist goons, expulsions from colleges, and other vicious repression—have righteously protested this genocide, and the full backing of this genocide by the American government.

It is not possible here to answer all the lies that Netanyahu told in this speech—but at revcom.us and the YouTube RNL (Revolution, Nothing Less!) Show, there is ongoing, concrete and deep exposure and analysis of the massive war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel is committing in its war against the Palestinian people—and why Biden, and the whole U.S. government, has armed and continually aided Israel in carrying out this genocidal atrocity.

Which brings me back to what is even more striking, and even more important to understand, and understand really deeply, about this Netan-Nazi speech to the U.S. Congress. Here is this genocidal war criminal, Netanyahu, openly justifying and declaring his intention to continue this horrific slaughter of Palestinian people, including huge numbers of children—and what is the response to this by the ruling politicians of this country? Prolonged, rousing applause, with more standing ovations than I could count—full-throated support for this unspeakable genocide being led by Netanyahu! For anyone who was still clinging to the notion that it is “too extreme” to call the rulers of this country monstrous criminals, and the system that rules in this country—the system of capitalism-imperialism—a monstrous system built on the basis of unspeakable crimes, this spectacle with the U.S. Congress wildly applauding Netanyahu makes all this undeniably clear—provides more than enough evidence of the truth of this.

Yes, it is true that, a significant number of Democratic Party politicians, including Kamala Harris, did not attend this speech by Netanyahu. But most Democratic politicians did attend, and many of them took part in giving this rousing positive reception to Netanyahu. And the greater truth is that Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden and the Democratic Party as a whole, bears direct responsibility for the way the U.S. government has armed and fully backed Israel in carrying out the ongoing genocidal slaughter of the Palestinian people.

All the leading Democratic Party politicians, as well as those of the Republican Party, fully support the state of Israel. They do this while knowing that, from the very beginning, in establishing the state of Israel, in 1948, Israeli forces systematically destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages, murdering thousands, raping women in large numbers, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. And since then, Israel has repeatedly carried out murderous oppression of the Palestinian people, with repeated massacres involving the most depraved acts.

Why has the U.S. government backed Israel all this time, with all this atrocity? As I said in message number Seven:

This is not because of “the power of the Jewish lobby”—or because of some ignorant, ridiculous and outrageous notion that “Jews are controlling everything.” It is because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.

As I have also made clear (for example, in message number Four) this system of capitalism-imperialism that is the force behind the slaughter of people in Palestine is the same system that is causing so much misery for masses of people in this country. Ripping away basic rights, treating whole groups of people as “second class”and less than human, murdering and mass incarcerating masses of Black people and Latinos who are already forced to live in desperate conditions by this system.

It is the same system that rests on—and cannot do without—the life-stealing, soul-crushing exploitation of literally billions of people around the world, including hundreds of millions of women and more than 150 million children, forced to slave away in sweatshop factories, mines, and farms, creating wealth that goes to corporations and other big-scale capitalists in the U.S. and other wealthy countries.

We, the masses of people in this country, and in the world as a whole, can do much better than this—once this monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism is swept from power, through an actual emancipating revolution. This is the challenge, and this is the possibility before us, in these heavy and momentous times we are living in now.

In previous messages—especially numbers Eight through Eleven, and again in numbers Sixty-Three through Sixty-Six—I have spoken to why and how this is a rare time when this revolution could have a real chance to succeed.

And this rare time when it is possible to make a huge leap toward a world where all these horrors are no more—this precious possibility for an emancipating revolution—must not be wasted and thrown away, but must be seized by everyone who hungers for a radically different and much better world.