This article is the editorial for Issue #4 of Communist Revolution. Subscribe here!
The NDP motion on arms exports to Israel is just the latest joke played by the Canadian political parties on the Palestinian people.
Yet the leaders of the Palestine movement continue to harbor illusions about the political class.
We have to tell it like it is: all parties have Palestinian blood on their hands.
Political theater
While the massacre in Gaza continued, the NDP was engaging in political theater in Parliament with its motion.
They boasted about the adoption of this non-binding motion, which promises an end to Canadian arms exports to Israel.
But as the Minister of Foreign Affairs explained, Canada had already stopped approving arms export permits before Jan. 7, and permits in force before Jan. 7 will remain in force despite the motion. So it changes literally nothing.
To get the Liberals to swallow the motion, the NDP largely watered it down, and agreed to include elements of Zionist rhetoric, such as Israel’s right to defend itself and the demand that Hamas surrender its weapons.
This motion is nothing but window dressing to hide the complicity of Canadian imperialists in the massacre of Palestinians—including the complicity of the NDP.
For it is this same NDP which, through its “confidence and support agreement”, keeps the genocidal Trudeau government in power—which itself provides political and military support to Netanyahu’s murderous regime.
Illusions
Despite this, the leadership of the Palestine solidarity movement continues to spread illusions about the NDP and the possibility of convincing the Liberals to take a stand against the massacre in Gaza.
Even the most left-wing group in the movement, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), continues to adopt an ambiguous stance towards the NDP and the Liberals.
For example, in response to the NDP motion, PYM wrote on Instagram that “The motion passed in the Canadian parliament brings us one step closer to an arms embargo on Israel.” This is not true. This motion has accomplished nothing at all, and to claim otherwise only sows illusions about the NDP and bourgeois political theater.
Friends tell the truth, and we must say: Jagmeet Singh and his party have proved again and again that they grovel before the imperialists.
This is the same party that expelled Ontario MPP Sarah Jama for supporting Palestine. It’s the same party that maintains ties with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), a Zionist lobbying group.
The truth is that whatever crocodile tears they shed, whatever empty declarations they make in favor of humanitarian aid, or even in favor of a ceasefire, all parties are complicit with Israeli imperialism. No amount of appeals to their humanity will be enough to get them to develop a conscience.
This includes reformist politicians like the NDP. No matter how “progressive” they may appear, in the final analysis they accept capitalism, and therefore accept the domination of the Canadian capitalist class and its imperialist interests. And the Canadian ruling class supports Israel as an imperialist bulwark in the Middle East, in league with the other Western powers.
Consequently, reformist opposition to the crimes of imperialism—Canadian, American, Israeli—is almost always a verbal and empty opposition.
Let’s face it: the movement for Palestine has been at an impasse for several months now. Despite a historic and inspiring mobilization of thousands of people in the streets, week after week, month after month, the movement is going nowhere. Contrary to the popular slogan that says that “Palestine is almost free”, this is not true. Palestine is far from free.
The first thing the movement has to do is shed any comfortable illusions in the capitalist system and its institutions. No one, absolutely no one, in the bourgeois political class—not the Liberals, not the NDP, not the UN, not the International Court of Justice, not any Arab regime—is going to come and save Palestine. They are all complicit.
The only people who can save Palestine are the masses in the Middle East and the working class in imperialist countries like Canada. But they can only do so by overthrowing their own ruling class.
Rather than celebrating the NDP’s cynical political maneuvers, the movement’s leadership should build on the current mobilization to launch a movement with the immediate goal of bringing down Genocide Justin’s weak minority government.
The political victory of bringing down one of the major imperialist governments for its support of genocide in Palestine would reverberate massively internationally, make the rest of the imperialist governments tremble, and set an example for the whole global movement for Palestine.
Ultimately, the complicity of all parties with the genocidal policies of imperialism points in one inescapable direction: workers need their own party.
Even if we manage to stop the genocide in Gaza, as long as this rotten capitalist system continues to exist it’s only a matter of time before an even worse horror presents itself.
We need a party to overthrow the bloody reign of the bourgeoisie. That’s why we need the Revolutionary Communist Party.
