The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at Western Sydney University (WSU) in the working-class western suburbs of Australia’s largest city has launched a Special General Meeting (SGM) of students to discuss the way forward in the fight against the Gaza genocide and imperialist war.

We have successfully initiated this meeting after gaining nearly 300 signatures from WSU students to petition the Student Representative Council to call the SGM.

Details for the meeting are below:

WHEN: 1 p.m. Tuesday, 8 October
WHERE: PS-EA-G-19
Parramatta South campus

WSU students should register your attendance at this critical meeting today!

The meeting will also be accessible via video link, which will become available to students after registration.

The genocide in Gaza has raged for almost an entire year, with the official death toll over 40,000, but likely to be much higher. In July, the prestigious medical journal the Lancet estimated that the actual toll could be 186,000 or more. Now, the Zionist regime in Israel is expanding its assault into the West Bank and has launched its war against Lebanon, with hundreds killed and thousands injured in attacks this month.

Israel’s genocidal onslaught could not take place without the funding, arming, and political support of the United States and other imperialist powers, including Australia. The Albanese Labor government has been among the most vocal proponents of justifying the slaughter on the basis that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” It has also viciously attacked the free speech and democratic rights of anti-genocide and anti-war protests, labelling them antisemitic and supporters of “terrorism.”

Tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians have been murdered with the support of imperialist governments worldwide. These governments have also contributed to the destruction of all aspects of civilisation in Gaza, including a deliberate campaign of starvation and death via disease and lack of healthcare.

Workers and young people worldwide have voiced their anger and opposition in response to this barbarism. These are the largest and most sustained anti-war demonstrations since the Vietnam War. Protests have taken place in Sydney—as in other major cities around the country—every single weekend since the beginning of the genocide.

Yet the protest movement has failed to put an end to the genocide. This is because the perspective of the leaders of this movement is reduced to appeals to the very establishment parties who are responsible for the genocide in the first place.

Far from ending the genocide, Israel and its imperialist paymasters have continued the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and are now threatening to plunge the entire Middle East into an all-out war.

To forge a way forward, students need a new perspective: a revolutionary and socialist strategy to fight for the mobilisation of the international working class to overthrow capitalism—the cause of war and genocide.

At the Special General Meeting, the IYSSE will present a perspective to fight for an end to the genocide in Gaza, which is intimately linked to the eruption of imperialist violence globally, including the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and US-led preparations in this region for war against China which threaten nuclear world war.

These conflicts are three fronts in a global strategy by the imperialist powers to redivide the world in their interests. This underscores the necessity of building an anti-war movement based on anti-capitalism and for world socialism.

Our motion to the meeting will endorse the call of the Palestinian trade unions to block the shipment of goods to Israel. The fact that unions in Australia have failed to do so after 11 months is bound up with their role in suppressing the class struggle and in propping up the pro-war, big business Labor party under Albanese. Our motion urges workers to immediately take matters into their own hands and undertake independent action.

We say to students and youth: fight for this perspective among workers at the docks, factories, warehouses, hospitals, schools, transport, logistics and other workplaces.

You must turn to the building of a socialist movement of the working class internationally against the outmoded capitalist system, which offers only a future of barbarism and nuclear catastrophe.

Only this perspective can stop the brutality of genocide and imperialist war and establish a world based on the fulfillment of human needs and not a drive to profit at the expense of working and living conditions and millions, if not billions, of lives.

Join our campaign to build this crucial meeting during which there can be a democratic discussion about the way forward in a world descending into a global conflagration.

We need 100 students to reach a quorum.

Contact us to find out how you can get involved—whether through campaigning, leafleting, postering, sharing on social media, or contributing your ideas. We welcome your support in any form.

Get in touch with the IYSSE:

Email:  iysseaus@gmail.com
Facebook:  facebook.com/IYSSEaustralia
Twitter:  @IysseA
Instagram:  @iysse.aus