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(The following article is from the February 1-14, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Darrell Rankin, Leader, Communist Party of Canada - Manitoba

The government of Israel's media blackout could not stop the world from seeing that it was massacring a largely defenceless population which offered no serious military resistance. Israel carried out the massacre brazenly, before the eyes of all who watched the news. Planned for many months, the carnage inflicted by Israel on the people of Gaza is one of its most horrible aggressions.

     Its purpose was to block humanity's aim to bring peaceful solutions to the area, a purpose made clear by the support Israel received from other imperialist governments. The one-sided statements and military trade from Harper, Bush and other imperialist leaders make it clear they support the agony Israel has imposed for many decades on the Palestinian people, in and out of exile. It is the future they offer to any people that resists their hegemony.

     The call for criminal prosecution of Israel's war leaders is loud, ranging from the 118 countries that comprise the Non-Aligned Movement to prominent jurists - hundreds of them. Israel bombed schools, hospitals, food depots, United Nations sanctuaries. It used phosphorus shells, DIME weapons and much of its modern military arsenal.

     Almost a year ago, Israel's deputy defence minister threatened a "shoah" in Gaza, a Hebrew word meaning calamity and often used to describe the Nazi holocaust. He warned the Palestinians "will bring upon themselves this destruction," as if the Israeli war machine had no choice.

     The minister dishonestly portrayed this supreme crime as legitimate, but the horrible truth is that Israel's leaders are making far more serious threats to the Palestinian people and neighbours such as Iran. In the short span of three weeks Israel's leaders killed or injured 6,780 people; the overwhelming majority civilian and about one-third children. The heavily televised terror of Israel's massacre wounded every feeling person on earth who support justice, Palestinian or not.

     Israel made no attempt to hide the massacre. It used the most monstrous and twisted lies, half truths that only the most hardened murderer could use. For example, was Israel's real aim to stop the comparatively puny rockets launched by Hamas - the occupied territories' elected government? No, the Israeli government planned the attack more than a year in advance.

     Even if we consider the rockets, Hamas used them to retaliate in a relatively modest way against deadly Israeli air attacks. Israel made these air attacks four months into a ceasefire which was honoured by Hamas even as Israel killed hundreds of people through its Draconian blockade of food and humanitarian aid - an act of war according to any jurist or human being. In Gaza half a million people are completely dependent on food aid and over half of all households eat less than one meal a day.

     Nothing can be explained if all one sees is rockets and Israel's accusation that Hamas is a terrorist group. The real starting point is Israel's illegal sixty-year occupation of Palestinian territories and the brutal repression it has inflicted all that time on the national liberation movement of the Palestinian people.

     The "war on terror" must end. Countries like Canada, the United States and Israel use this war to impose state-military terror on people who are struggling for their rights. It is the dishonest rationale for imperialism's wars of domination and plunder.

     Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has cast criminal shame on Canada by aiding and abetting Israel's massacre. The two ministers of Manitoba's NDP government who attended Winnipeg's January 8 pro-war rally are no different than Harper.

     The Canadians, including many trade union leaders, the peace movement and left groups, who acted and spoke in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza brought honour and truth to our country.

     The most important historical lesson about the massacre in Gaza is the sharp contrast between what imperialist countries like Canada, the United States and Israel offer humanity compared to the resounding chorus from the non-imperialist world, the world dominated by imperialism's giant corporations - the chorus for the national liberation of the Palestinian people, for an end to war, and for solving humanity's great problems.

     Will Israel use nuclear weapons in its next massacre? Or will world protests, combined with the resistance of the Palestinian people and Israeli peace activists, create the political and military isolation of Israel needed to liberate the Palestinian people and to achieve the balanced, verifiable disarmament that would allow all nations in the region to live in peace? War will not solve a single problem of humanity, but imperialist countries are using war to prolong their unsustainable hegemony over humanity.

     For decades the Palestinian Liberation Organization was labelled a terrorist group, allowing Israel to assassinate, torture and imprison its members. Israel must not continue to use the same excuse it used with the PLO to block talks with the Hamas government. Without justification, Israel is dividing those with whom it will talk from those who it will massacre. Divide and rule.

     It is time for Israel to end the aggression, talk to the elected government of the occupied territories and respect the full national rights of the Palestinian people in line with United Nations resolutions!