1 The attacks launched by Hamas and other resistance organisations on 7 October were a warning that there can be no peace in the Middle East until the Palestinian question is solved. But the reaction by the State of Israel and its Western allies, headed by the United States, is to launch a new imperialist war. Already the assault by the Israel Defence Forces on Gaza has caused thousands of civilian deaths and vast devastation and disruption of ordinary people’s lives.

2 Too many on the liberal and reformist left have been quick follow their governments in condemning Hamas and affirming Israel’s right to self-defence. The flood of media atrocity stories has obscured what actually happened on 7 October. But when oppressor and oppressed clash there can be no neutrality or equivalence. We support the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people and their right to wage armed struggle ...

Once again war is ripping apart the lives of millions. A capital city is under bombardment, dead bodies litter the streets while hospitals and markets burn. It has been left to ordinary people to organise medical supplies, find water and food and risk their lives under fire to keep basic infrastructure going.

Unlike in the war in Ukraine, the warring parties in Sudan are both from within the same country as the civilian population they are terrorising. One of them, the Rapid Support Force (RSF), is a brutal militia which grew out of the Janjaweed forces, the other the Sudanese Armed Forces. Their leaders have long been partners in crimes against the Sudanese people, from Darfur, to Port Sudan, to the streets of Khartoum. Now these thieves and murderers are fighting each other for a bigger share of the spoils of power.

Just as in Ukraine, the horrors of this ...

1. The war in Ukraine is a year old. We responded to the initial invasion with this assessment: ‘The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February was an act of imperialist aggression and a violation of the Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination. For Ukrainians it is a war of national self-defence. At the same time from the side of Western imperialist powers led by the United States and organised through NATO it is a proxy war against Russia. The war is both an imperialist invasion of a former colony and part of an inter-imperialist conflict between the US and Russia with their allies. We are against both imperial powers. We express our solidarity with the Ukrainian people, supporting their right to resist the invasion. While doing so, we also oppose NATO and its expansion to the East.’ https://internationalsocialists.org/announcements/ist-statement-on-the-war-in-ukraine

2. Developments over the past year have vindicated this analysis. ...

1. We declare our solidarity with all the victims of the terrible earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday 6 February. This is a huge human catastrophe. The death toll has already reached over 33,000, but insurance companies are assuming as many as 200,000 deaths. But this is not a ‘natural disaster’. Earthquakes are inevitable in regions such as this where they have been taking place since antiquity. The terrible death toll, however, is a consequence of human action and inaction, shaped by a capitalist system based on exploitation and driven by the competitive accumulation of capital.

2. Action – the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, based on the neoliberal Islamist AKP but now in coalition with the fascist MHP, has been in power in Turkey for more than 20 years. The economic growth of which Erdoğan boasts has been driven by a construction boom that has enriched ...