The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party—SGP) and its youth organisation, the IYSSE (International Youth and Students for Social Equality) support the strike on January 15 against the genocide in Gaza and will take part in the demonstration at 2 p.m. at Richardplatz in Berlin. The strike must be made the starting point of a broad and international mobilisation of the entire working class.

What is currently happening in Gaza is an outrageous crime—a genocide. In an area significantly smaller than Berlin and home to 2.3 million people, the Israeli army has been carrying out systematic bombing for three months. New atrocities and war crimes are being committed every day.

Hospitals and schools are being bombed and leveled to the ground, as are overcrowded refugee camps and UN-administered shelters and facilities. In the first three months of this war, more than 25,000 people, mostly women and children, have already been killed. According to the United Nations, 600,000 people are at risk of starvation.

Millions of people around the world are shocked and are calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the fighting. But the far-right Netanyahu regime is ignoring all appeals for peace and intensifying its terror against the Palestinian population on a daily basis.

The past few weeks have made two things very clear:

1.  The Netanyahu government could not carry out its war against the Palestinians without the active support of the US government and its NATO allies. Germany’s coalition government plays a key role in this as paymaster, arms supplier and war propagandist. The news media all promote the same line—they suppress information and spread the government’s lies.

2.  It is not possible to stop the genocide in Gaza by appealing to the government. The federal government and all the state governments are completely disinterested in the opinion of the population. They respond to pressure from below with police-state measures and intensified war propaganda. The federal coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens is banning peaceful demonstrations and putting entire neighbourhoods under siege.

That is why we—the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and the SGP—are addressing workers in the factories and offices directly. It is necessary to link the wage struggles and growing resistance to inflation, mass layoffs, plant closures and exploitation with the struggle against the genocide in Gaza.

We call on the train drivers, who are currently organising strikes and are confronted with the aggressive attacks of the Deutsche Bahn (DB) management and the German government, the owner of DB, to extend the strikes and include all railway employees and all transport workers. We urge them to halt all transport of weapons, ammunition and war equipment to Israel and also to Ukraine, where they are to be used for the NATO war against Russia. Unite with your colleagues at the ports and docks and call on them to do the same in order to actively combat the German government’s support for war and genocide.

The government’s claim that the killing, starving and expelling of Palestinian civilians is necessary to ensure Israel’s security is a lie through and through. In truth, German Chancellor Scholz (SPD) and President Biden, together with their NATO allies, regard the elimination of the Palestinians as a prerequisite for waging a much wider war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Syria and Iran.

Last weekend, Foreign Minister Baerbock (Greens) once again traveled to Israel and the Middle East to support the far-right Netanyahu government and forge a war alliance against Iran. While there, she announced a possible delivery of Eurofighter combat aircraft to Saudi Arabia. Chancellor Scholz and Economics Minister Habeck (Greens) immediately declared their approval.

It is important to understand the direct link between foreign and domestic policy. The cost of arms deliveries and the buildup of the military are being passed on to working people through massive social cuts and wage reductions.

The defence of the Palestinians and the fight against the genocide in Gaza are therefore not just a question of international solidarity in principle. The fact that the German government actively supports the unrestrained cruelty of genocide and has repeatedly spoken out against an immediate ceasefire means that it will act with similar brutality against the working class here too. It is driven by a historic crisis of the capitalist system that already led to world war twice in the last century as well as fascist dictatorship.

It is therefore important to participate in the strike and demonstration on January 15 and make it the starting point for a broad political mobilisation of workers and youth against the government. This requires a clear understanding of the situation and a clear political perspective.

The genocide in Gaza is not an isolated episode, but an expression of the historic crisis of capitalism. The extreme cruelty and brutality of the war, supported by the leading imperialist governments, can only be understood and explained in the context of the collapse of the imperialist world order arising from the insoluble contradiction between world economy and the outmoded nation-state system.

The idea that it is possible to overcome the dominance and hegemony of American imperialism by opposing it with a new, multipolar coalition of capitalist states is a dangerous illusion. It is not possible to divide global resources peacefully among the capitalist and imperialist states, all of which are massively arming themselves and pursuing their own war plans. The root of war lies in capitalism itself, and the struggle against it requires not the restructuring of the nation-state system, but its destruction.

January 15 is the anniversary of the assassination of the German revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. It is therefore appropriate to quote Luxemburg’s words on the eve of the First World War, when she wrote that the working class must “draw the conclusion that imperialism, war, the theft of countries, the plundering of nations, the violation of rights and the politics of violence can only be fought by fighting capitalism, by opposing the global political genocide with social revolution.”

Workers and young people are engaged in a political struggle and are confronted with revolutionary tasks. The trade unions and all parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament)—including the Left Party—stand on the side of the government and support its pro-war policy. It is necessary to build a new workers’ party that combines the struggle against genocide and war with the struggle against capitalism and exploitation and fights for the socialist reorganisation of society.

This is what the IYSSE and the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei stand for. We are building a new mass socialist party in the working class and call on all those who reject the government’s genocidal war policy to actively support our fight. Distribute this article! Mobilise workers and youth to demonstrate on January 15 against the genocide! If you are eligible to vote, support the SGP’s participation in the European elections!