Stop the invasion of Rafah!

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is reaching another turning point. 

As if in competition for war criminal of the decade, Benyamin Netanyahu has doubled down on his threat to invade Rafah, at Gaza’s southern end. That’s after driving most of the 2.3 million Palestinians out of the north and middle of the Strip by bombing and killing 30,000 people, mainly civilians — including 12,500 children — and wounding over 70,000 more people. The Israeli assault on Rafah began Feb. 11 and massacred 100 civilians, most of them children, the first day.  

No one expects the Israeli regime or its U.S. accomplices to act mercifully to prevent what many people have described as a looming humanitarian catastrophe.

That means it’s up to the massive worldwide movement in solidarity with Palestine to redouble its efforts to isolate Israel and its imperialist backers.

That the Israeli prime minister has outlived his shelf life has long been obvious. Netanyahu told George Stephanopolous and his viewers Feb. 10 that if Israel agrees to a ceasefire, it loses the war. What Netanyahu omitted is that if the war ends, it also means he will lose the next election and would face prison on corruption charges.

Netanyahu’s personal political predicament coincides with the genocidal push of the entire Zionist project. To achieve a victory — expulsion or elimination of the Palestinian population — no crime is too heinous, be it starving a million civilians or wrecking every home, hospital, school, university and mosque in Gaza. 

Yet Netanyahu sounds desperate. Despite Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza’s people, it has failed to dismantle the Palestinian resistance. Hamas and the other liberation organizations are still fighting. 

The Palestinian people have endured horrific concentrated bombing, witnessed by the world. Now the Israeli Occupation Force demands the Palestinians move away from the south of Gaza, where the Israeli assault had driven them. The Feb. 11 New York Times reports that many Palestinians are refusing to make what would be a third or fourth move since October 2023. 

Netanyahu’s Washington cronies, who have aided his war crimes and given support to all his lies, are now trying to fake some distance from him. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken declare that they have demanded of Netanyahu that Israel protect civilian lives should the IOF invade Rafah. 

While he talks of mercy, Biden demands more billions of dollars from Congress for weapons for Israel — along with Ukraine and Taiwan. Biden and Blinken just want to avoid blame for Israel’s war crimes in its region.

But Israel is the U.S. ally, its tool to maintain imperialist control of the region. Netanyahu and Co. are carrying out genocide. Biden and Co. are arming it. 

The International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide. A U.S. federal court ruled that Biden, Blinken and their cronies are plausibly complicit. 

The court rulings legitimize the popular struggle against Israel’s genocidal acts. That means the movement in the U.S. that demands an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza has the legal and moral authority to obstruct Israel’s further attack on Palestinians in Gaza. It has the right to boycott, divest, sanction and throw shoes in the gears of the war machine sending arms to Israel.

Authorities who try to repress this movement’s activities or slander it as anti-Jewish, be they elected officials or university administrators, are themselves complicit in genocide.  

The urgent demand worldwide is: Stop the invasion of Rafah! 

The urgent demand within the U.S. is: No U.S. aid to Israel!