U.S.-Israeli Massacre Kills 60 Palestinians and Wounds Over 2,700
Everyone Must Stand Up and Protest Against These Crimes Against Humanity!

May 14, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Updated May 15, 2018

Israel carried out a horrific, bloodthirsty massacre on Monday, May 14, murdering at least 60 Palestinians—including an 8-month-old baby killed by tear gas—and wounding more than 2,700 at the border with Gaza. More Palestinian protesters were killed on this single day by the Israeli troops than in the seven previous weeks of protests at the Israel-Gaza border.

Israel's bloodthirsty massacre on May 14 killed at least 60 Palestinians, and wounded more than 2,700 at the border with Gaza. Here, Palestinian protesters carry an injured man shot by Israeli troops.  (Photo: AP)

Who are these people who are being so viciously mowed down by killers armed with deadly weapons? These are human beings who have been locked down, for decades, in the open-air prison known as the Gaza Strip—caged in and even taunted by a wealthy, powerful state that is literally sitting on land that was unjustly stolen from them when that state was founded through a war of ethnic cleansing. People who are denied the ability to travel outside this prison to see relatives, pursue their studies and careers, participate in academic exchange programs. Humans who are under a sadistic blockade that is choking the life out of them. This means food shortages that hit especially the children hardest… electricity for only three hours a day… lack of drugs and medical resources that turn routine problems into life-threatening dangers… and much more. Well over two million people confined under these hellish conditions to just about 145 square miles.

These are the people who, for the last seven weeks, have been carrying out a courageous “Great March of Return”—going right up to the heavily militarized “border” (in reality, prison barbed wire) and demanding the right of return to the land stolen from Palestinians upon Israel’s establishment and an end to the life-crushing blockade. These are the people who were so ruthlessly murdered and seriously injured by the Israeli military—one of the most deadly high-tech armies in the world, thanks to billions in American aid—committing what one Amnesty International official said were “willful killings constituting war crimes.”

These Palestinians facing genocidal assaults are among the billions of victims worldwide of the system of capitalism-imperialism, and of U.S. imperialism in particular. Their lives—and now their deaths—cry out against that system, and underscore the need to overthrow that system.

We can see in these protests in Gaza the heroism of people willing to sacrifice their lives for justice—this is something that all oppressed people are capable of in certain conditions. But when oppressed people do rise up, they must not be left without a leadership that has a correct understanding of the enemy, a goal and vision that will TRULY eliminate the problem, and an organization that can be the backbone of the actual revolution that is so badly needed, to emancipate all of humanity. People who grasp that need to support these struggles and to get with the movement for revolution and get into Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution and, beyond that, the architect of a whole new communism.

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May 14 is the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba—the “catastrophe” when 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their towns and villages by Zionist terror. In defiance of Israel’s reactionary violence, tens of thousands of Palestinians approached the border fence in protest. Journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who was at the biggest protest site near Gaza City, described what he witnessed:

“There are thousands of people converging on the site—men, women and children. And it’s a really surreal scene. There are people gathering, mostly young men and boys, up near the border, where there is barbed wire, three sets of barbed wire. And you can see, just a couple of hundred yards away, Israeli soldiers, you know, under these canopies, on mounds of sand, sometimes in jeeps, and they are picking people off with—snipers are literally picking people off. I’ve seen people who weren’t even close to the fence being shot. Most of the people are being shot in the lower extremities, in their legs. I saw one person shot in the throat…

“And what most people are doing, it’s just the very act of walking to the border. Some people go and place the Palestinian flag on the barbed wire. Some people do go and cut the wire and try and cross, saying that they are implementing the right of return themselves. But it’s also a way—you know, we have to remember that people are trapped in Gaza. There’s really no way out. Many people have never left the Strip, because all border crossings are closed to them, and they’re not allowed to leave. And so this is a way of pushing their bodies up against their confinement.” (Democracy Now!, May 14)

All this bloodshed is openly supported by the rulers of the United States, who refused to even invoke some empty hypocritical words about urging “restraint” on Israel. The Trump/Pence White House blamed the protesters themselves for the massacre, pointing the finger at the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas. The current dominant political leadership in Gaza and in the West Bank do not represent the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people and a liberating way forward (for analysis of Hamas and the overall political dynamics in the Middle East, see previous coverage at revcom.us, including here). But the reality is that the wave of Palestinian protests is an expression of yearnings of many among the masses of Palestinian people for real emancipation and an end to the horrors that have been inflicted upon them over and over again for the last seven decades. What Israel and its U.S. backers are trying to do is to violently extinguish these hopes for liberation.

This is made very clear by the deliberate choice of the gangsters now at the helm of U.S. imperialism, the Trump/Pence fascist regime, to have the celebration of the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 14. This embassy move is a blatant, genocidal “fuck you” to the Palestinian people who have long and rightfully claimed Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. It is an open declaration that the U.S. is more blatantly abandoning any pretense it is a “neutral broker” and is more openly backing Israel in further stepping up the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. It is a move central to the agenda of the lunatic, end-times Armageddon-driven Christian fascists at the core of the Trump/Pence regime (see sidebar). At the same time, this embassy move—and what it means—is being hailed generally within the U.S. ruling class, including top Democratic leaders who crow that they are even more ardent supporters of Israel. The embassy move and Israel’s massacre today were concentrated expressions of the willingness and determination of the U.S. imperialists to carry out crimes on a massive scale, including perhaps war with Iran, to try and maintain their suffocating grip on the Middle East.

On May 14, as the Israeli troops were cold-bloodedly mass murdering Palestinians and maiming thousands of others, the U.S. godfathers and their Israeli assassins held their embassy opening ceremony just 50 miles away—complete with a video message from Trump declaring “The United States will always be a great friend of Israel” and two of the top Christian fascist evangelical figures flying in from the U.S. to give blessings. Behind all the pomp and smiles was the reality: these are blood-soaked ghouls and imperialist gangsters celebrating the hideous crimes they’ve committed—and renewing their pact to commit even greater crimes against humanity.

The whole made-in-hell-three-way marriage of Christian fascists, rabid Zionists, and “America First” global bullying is a product of and serves an empire built on slavery, genocide, vicious global exploitation and mass murder, torture, and countless unjust wars. This whole imperialist system needs to be overthrown through an actual revolution at the earliest possible time. If you are outraged by what is happening in Palestine—and the many other crimes of this system—you need to support and work toward that revolution. In particular, join with the Revolution Club in spreading the word of this revolution everywhere and in fighting the power and transforming the people FOR this revolution. And right now, as a crucial part of not only making that revolution but of uniting millions of people right now to defeat an attempt to plunge humanity into the even worse hell of American fascism, everyone urgently needs to join with Refuse Fascism to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime through massive nonviolent action.

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