Deniz Adalı
June 2024 – Kaldıraç Issue 275
Socrates is sentenced to death and he faces death. Execution is not an ordinary punishment. His wife shouts: “Socrates, they will execute you for nothing.” Socrates replies, “Oh well, would I rather be executed as a criminal?“
This is the truth.
Workers and laborers, peoples are innocent and guiltless.
Workers and laborers, their revolutionary pioneers who fight for them, are innocent, no matter what crimes the system attributes to them. That is why they are being executed. The aim is to prevent the exploited from rising up. In order to keep the working class, which is the majority, under the control of a bunch of bourgeois, both methods of force (i.e. violence) and of confusing their minds in all kinds of ways (generating consent), using all kinds of prejudices and beliefs are put into play.
When revolutionaries die in the front line, the first thing that comes to the minds of those closest to them is “he/she was killed without a crime”. Because these “close ones” consider the rules of the order, the laws, not as something that protects the bourgeois, but as sacred matters that cannot be rebelled against. Therefore, they think in accordance with the general way of thinking of the system and since they know their revolutionary kin, they want to swear he/she was innocent.
No problem.
However, in no period of history have they ever been killed because they were guilty. On the contrary, they are declared guilty in order to be killed. And as they do not recognize the laws of the sovereign, they never feel guilty, etc. They don’t feel guilty because if rebellion against the sovereign is a crime, they do it knowingly, consciously, voluntarily. Because the sovereign has already committed the crime of exploitation of man by man, and they are rebelling against it.
Perhaps when it comes to the Palestinian issue or, more closely, the Kurdish issue, it is possible to see and understand who is guilty from this perspective. The guilty are the rulers of the system which is based on the exploitation of man by man. The guilty are the imperialist centers. The guilty ones are those who talk about “human rights” even though they do not recognize any human values.
The Palestinian genocide is in its 7th month. In front of the eyes of the whole world, an open genocide is being practiced against a people. The war against the Kurdish people, as a dirty war, from time to time reaches genocidal policies. And again, in front of the eyes of the whole world.
When Hamas launched an attack against Israel on October 6-7, our liberals immediately started naming it “Hamas-Israel war“. The fact that Hamas does not share the same ideology as you, the fact that Hamas does not have a solid background does not cancel its action against the ruler, against the oppressor.
Thus, at that time we said that, in fact, the Israeli genocide and the resistance in Palestine should be seen as part of the class struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie, as a form of class struggle in the ultimate outcome. And some of our friends found some exaggeration in this emphasis.
Today, in May 2024, news of Palestinian resistance is coming from all over the world. In the US, while students are demonstrating their support for the resistance, the state, with its attacks, is demonstrating how this is part of the class struggle.
And this is just the beginning.
Israel, followed by the US, England, with almost all of Europe in line behind them, and primarily Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and others alongside them. All together, they are waging an open genocidal war against the Palestinian people.
These are also the ones fighting against the Kurdish people.
Israel may be waging the war, but it is impossible to understand the situation without seeing the entire NATO, the entire West behind it. In the same way, opposing to the Kurdish freedom movement is the entire West and the entire NATO mechanism.
Of course, when we say the West, we are not talking about the peoples. When we say the West, we are talking about the rulers, the states, the monopolies, the looters, the imperialist masters.
For 7 months, Israel has been carrying out a genocide.
For 7 months, the Turkish state has not ceased either economic or military relations with Israel.
And today, shamelessly, the Palace Regime is claiming that, in fact, we are no longer doing a trade, we have stopped it. This is a lie.
First, military relations continue. Unless Kürecik is closed, the Turkish state cannot be considered to have taken a stand against Israel. If Turkey does not block its airspace to Israel, if it does not end their training here, it will have no stance against Israel.
Secondly, trade relations continue. The only change is the route. Does the Turkish state trade through Azerbaijan? Does the Palace Regime conduct trade through Jordan? The Palace Regime loves trade and continues it as it is. As in every other field, they are also collusive in this one.
This is Erdoğan’s style.
He criticizes the US. Fine, but he does whatever the US says.
He calls Israel a terrorist state, but he tries, finds and employs every commercial and military means to support Israel.
Take any issue, analyze it, don’t just depend on Erdoğan’s words (it is impossible to look at his words anyway. He has said the opposite of almost everything he has ever stated. Therefore, it is not possible to consider them), but also look at his behavior. You will see that Erdoğan is more loyal to NATO than to Islam, more loyal to the dollar than to the Creator, much more loyal to the US than to his country, and more loyal to Israel than to his family. Just look at his behavior towards anti-Israel actions and you will see.
Today, Israel is even more powerful in the Turkish state than it is in Israel. It is not possible to suggest that Israel is as comfortable in its own country.
The genocide against the Palestinian people is an open, blatant procedure. The concentration camps, the Nazi torture chambers are only manifested in a different form. “Kill the children“, shout the rulers of Israel. With their religious and fascist gangs, they declare that tomorrow a child will grow up to be a warrior. On the other hand, their masters, the USA, England, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, shamelessly talk about human rights.
And the entire West, including Turkey, is brutally attacking the protests against Israel and will continue to do so.
Israeli police are attacking the resistance and protests of the Israeli people with the same brutality. Hundreds of thousands of people in Israel are protesting against Israeli attacks. Israel does not hesitate to resemble the Nazi remnants, which it accuses of genocide.
This war, of course, is a civil war in Israel too, it will develop as such, it is developing as such, only it seems to take a longer road.
And of course, the resistance of the Palestinian people will develop further and evolve into a political struggle for socialism, shedding its religious cover.
And of course, even today, the Palestinian resistance is shaking the entire capitalist-imperialist world, the metropolises. Yes, it is not a very strong earthquake shaking. But it is effective enough to unmask all the imperialist masters.
The pro-Palestinian demonstrations all over the capitalist world will, of course, train the workers and laborers, students and women in those countries for an even more organized struggle.
This attack in Palestine, targeting children, women, men, the entire population, is a joint attack by NATO and Western imperialism, waged by Israel. And this war will emerge as a civil war within them.
Israel, which has slaughtered tens of thousands of men, thousands of women, thousands of children, is counting on the support of the entire West, especially the US and England. But Israel will become even more difficult to defend. The Netanyahu regime is clearly afraid of the Israeli people as well. And the youth of the world are filling the universities with outcries against this genocide. University students are clearly showing what honorable people should do. The student arrests that have started in the US are actually to prevent this.
There is no need to have a look at the students and declare “they are not guilty”. They cannot be guilty anyway. The criminals are the imperialist masters. The criminals are those who support this genocide against the Palestinian people despite UN resolutions. It is not enough to prosecute Netanyahu alone, the US and other Western and NATO powers must also be prosecuted.
As seen, the genocide against Palestine and the resistance to it reveals the existence of two classes and two fronts. If you have the habit of perceiving the sea only by looking at the surface, you cannot recognize the life that lies beneath. Undoubtedly, this is genocide. Undoubtedly, when wars are fought between two states, it is their war too. But deep down, there lies the struggle between classes.
The powers that watch the genocide in Palestine and support Israel leave no words to anyone when it comes to lecturing about “human rights”. As if it is their monopoly on what is called human rights. But we know that what they call “human rights” are, for sure, the interests of their imperialist domination and international monopolies.
Never on the face of the earth the imperialist West helps a people, a human community. It only puts on its mask with great lies in order to bring the people under its sovereignty. So far, the NATO mechanism has always been in action against the Kurdish people. This is not just the war of the Palace Regime.
Every war is a civil war at one level or another. And in every civil war, it is possible to find traces of inter-class warfare, either explicitly or deeply.
Therefore, it is necessary to wage a common war, an internationalist war all over the face of the earth, against imperialist domination, the capitalist system and exploitation. This is a must.
