The genocide in Gaza has laid bare the barbarity of the Zionist settler-colonial state and the active role played by British imperialism in sustaining it. Britain does not simply ‘collude’ in the genocide of the Palestinians; it is a participant and an active imperialist aggressor.
British imperialism bears direct historical responsibility for the colonial project that created the conditions from which the Palestinian people’s struggle arose. And its fundamental position has not changed. Today, the same ruling class that arms, assists and provides political cover for genocide abroad is intensifying militarism, censorship and repression here at home.
Since October 2023, the British imperialist state has continued its oppression of the Palestinian people by proactively supporting genocide. It has placed extensive military, intelligence and logistical infrastructure at the service of the Zionist settler-colonial entity’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, through RAF surveillance operations, weapons production and export, covert military arrangements and special forces deployment.
Here are just seven illustrations of that complicity.
1. State Censorship: The government sent out a D-notice in October 2023 to suppress all reporting of SAS deployment to the region. The capitalist media, the ideological apparatus of the ruling class, willingly complied with this censorship.
2. Imperialist Surveillance Mechanism: The RAF conducted over 600 surveillance operations over Gaza from British colonial bases in Cyprus, gathering intelligence directly coordinated with Zionist military operations, bombing humanitarian workers and the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre. This constitutes direct material support for genocide.
3. State Privatisation of Imperialist War: The state contracted US military-industrial capital (Sierra Nevada Corporation) for additional covert surveillance operations, illustrating the coming together of state and monopoly capital in fighting imperialist war.
4. Secret Military Agreement & Production of Weapons: There exists a current, secret 2020 UK/Israel military agreement. British capital continues to manufacture essential F-35 components used in air bombing of Gaza, laying bare the role of the military industrial complex.
5. Bourgeois Democratic Façade: The bourgeois state has consistently hindered parliamentary enquiry, concealed evidence, and tampered with policy to keep under wraps its Cyprus operations and cooperation with the Zionist entity, revealing the class character of bourgeois ‘democracy’.
6. Legal System as Ruling Class Instrument: Legal resistance has been defeated, and the state has denied evidence. Officials have resigned on grounds of collusion in war crimes, and the British state provides diplomatic protection for Israeli apartheid at the UN, illustrating how bourgeois legality serves to advance imperialist interests.
7.Aaron Bushnell Statement: Hours before his fatal self-immolation, Aaron Bushnell told a friend he was aware of a secret: that US troops were engaged in combat within Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza, according to that friend.
This involvement represents a continuation of Britain’s historical colonial project in Palestine, now manifested through its subordinate role within US-led western imperialism and its strategic alliance with the Zionist entity.
But Gaza cannot be understood in isolation from developments here at home. Imperialist war abroad and repression at home are two aspects of the same deepening crisis. As the drive to war intensifies, so too does the need of our ruling class to silence opposition, criminalise resistance, divide workers and normalise the increasingly authoritarian measures required to prosecute imperialist war.
Fascism does not arrive independently of imperialism or class struggle. It arises from the needs of monopoly capital when its rule can no longer be maintained by the old methods alone. Fighting fascism therefore means more than opposing fascist organisations or racist manifestations on our streets. It means confronting the imperialist system that produces war, repression and fascism.
Exposing British complicity in Gaza is therefore part of the struggle we face here. We need an organised anti-imperialist, anti-war and anti-fascist movement capable of uniting working people against our own ruling class and its drive towards repression and war.
On 5 September, the British chapter of Anti-Fascist International will be launched as part of the effort to build precisely such a movement. The choice before us is not whether we oppose genocide abroad or fascism and militarism at home. They are the same struggle against the same imperialist system.
Join the launch in London this Saturday.
Anti-Fascist International Founding Conference.
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