Gaza – Internationalist Perspective

May 4, 2026May 4, 2026

Sí, es una guerra

A monochromatic cubist painting depicting the chaos of war, featuring a screaming horse, a bull, a woman grieving over a dead child, and a figure trapped in flames. — Pablo Picasso, *Guernica*, 1

Apenas tres semanas después de iniciar el conflicto de Gaza, el presidente brasileño Lula declaró: “No es una guerra, es un genocidio.” “Acaben con el genocidio. No es una guerra”, dijo Francesca Albanese a un comité de la ONU en noviembre de 2024. “No hay guerra. Es un error llamarlo guerra”, dijo el historiador del genocidio Omer Bartov en abril de 2025. Más de dos años después de la devastación de Gaza, el estribillo se ha convertido en una fórmula. Es repetido por generales y presidentes, por juristas e historiadores, por trabajadores humanitarios que están sobre los cuerpos de sus colegas, por columnistas y manifestantes callejeros. Este estribillo pretende registrar la magnitud de la matanza y la asimetría de la fuerza, y rechazar el lenguaje desinfectante de la autodefensa y la necesidad militar. Pero el estribillo es incorrecto. Gaza es una guerra. Ver eso claramente forma parte de ver el mundo que lo produce, y solo desde ahí puede comenzar una lucha real contra ese mundo.

La fórmula de “no es guerra” es un recurso ante los tribunales, sanciones, intervención humanitaria — al orden internacional, como si en algún lugar de este hubieran Estados dispuestos y capaces de detener esto.

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April 25, 2026April 30, 2026

Yes, It’s War

Barely three weeks into the Gaza conflict, Brazil’s president Lula declared “It’s not a war, it’s a genocide.” “End the genocide. It’s not a war,” Francesca Albanese told a UN committee in November 2024. “There is no war. It’s a misnomer to call it a war,” said the genocide historian Omer Bartov in April 2025. More than two years into the devastation of Gaza, the refrain has become a formula. It is repeated by generals and presidents, by jurists and historians, by aid workers standing over the bodies of their colleagues, by columnists and street marchers. This refrain is meant to register the scale of the slaughter and the asymmetry of force, and to refuse the sanitizing language of self-defense and military necessity. But the refrain is wrong. Gaza is a war. Seeing that clearly is part of seeing the world that produces it, and only from there can any real struggle against that world begin.

The “not a war” formula is an appeal to courts, sanctions, humanitarian intervention — to the international order, as if somewhere in it there were states willing and able to stop this. But the states with the power to act are the states facilitating the war: their diplomats publicly urge restraint in Gaza while their defense ministries renew Israel’s weapons contracts.

January 23, 2025January 24, 2025

Wars In the Middle East (3)

As we write this, the guns are silent in Gaza. The rain of bombs, continuing until almost the last minute before the cease-fire came into effect, has finally stopped. But rather than an end of the war, this is most likely a pause. How long will it last ? Only 42 days, if no agreement is reached between Israel and Hamas about a second exchange of prisoners/hostages. And even if the IDF doesn’t resume its mass slaughter then, the chances that the region will remain a hotbed of small scale and large scale inter-imperialist conflict are very high. And even if against all odds a lasting “peace’ would come to Gaza, it would remain hell on earth. The death and destruction accomplished in the last 15 months guarantee that. It will be a place of pain and hunger, of disease and despair. And, even more than before, it will be a prison. With prison guards to manage it and to maintain “order”.

The prison guards are back. Who else is going to impose “order” but Hamas? They were the ruling proto-state apparatus before in the strip and there’s no other. And for Israel the come back of Hamas may be the perfect excuse to resume its genocidal campaign.

November 28, 2023November 28, 2023

Les bellicistes de gauche et de droite

Le monde regarde avec horreur l’une des armées les plus avancées de la planète détruire une zone urbaine enclavée, pour l’essentiel sans défense, comme on tire sur des poissons dans un tonneau^¹. Il n’est pas étonnant que l’indignation soit générale et que le monde entier réclame l’arrêt de cette folie. Mais plutôt que d’arrêter la guerre, de nombreux gauchistes veulent la poursuivre, au côté du Hamas. Et ils veulent que nous ignorions les violences commises par leur camp contre des innocents parce qu’elles ont été commises pour une bonne cause. Etait-ce le cas ?

Les apologistes du Hamas affirment que son armée est composée de combattants de la liberté autochtones, s’élevant contre une puissance coloniale, et que l’histoire des guerres coloniales montre que ces conflits sont inévitablement brutaux, faisant de nombreuses victimes innocentes des deux côtés. Il appartient aux “combattants de la liberté” de décider de la manière dont ils mènent leur lutte, affirment-ils, et ceux qui soutiennent la libération du “peuple palestinien” ne devraient pas remettre en question leurs méthodes. Surtout pas s’ils sont blancs et vivent dans des pays qui eurent eux-mêmes des colonies. La honte du comportement passé ou présent de “leurs” pays doit faire taire toute pensée critique sur les tactiques et les objectifs de la lutte “anticoloniale”.

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November 19, 2023December 3, 2023

WARMONGERS LEFT AND RIGHT

The world watches in horror as one of the most advanced armies on earth is destroying a mostly defenseless enclosed urban zone, like shooting fish in a barrel. No wonder there is widespread outrage and a worldwide demand to stop this madness. But rather than to stop the war, many leftists want to continue it, on the side of Hamas. And they want us to ignore the violence against innocents committed by their side because it was done for a good cause. Was it?

The apologists of Hamas claim that its army are indigenous freedom fighters rising up against a colonial power and that the history of colonial wars shows that these conflicts are inevitably brutal, with many innocent victims on both sides. It is up to the ‘freedom fighters” to decide how they wage their struggle, they claim, and those who support the liberation of “the Palestinian people” should not question their methods. Especially not if they are white and living in countries which had colonies themselves. Shame about the past or present behavior of “their” countries should silence any critical thought on the tactics and goals of the “anti-colonial” struggle. They are not well placed “to hand out moral lessons to the resistance.”

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October 22, 2023October 24, 2023

CAPITALISM’S DEATH WORLD

On the very first day of Hamas’ sadistic rampage, the Israeli authorities took to the microphones to declare to the world that this was Israel’s 9/11. And indeed, there are some striking similarities. Between the tactics and goals of Al Qaeda and Hamas, as well as between the imperialist opportunities their actions created for the US and Israel.

Both Al Qaeda and Hamas attacked civilians indiscriminately. Both are guided by an Islamist ideology¹, based on myths of a glorious past and an even better future in heaven, feeding on the anger and resentment that poverty, repression, and discrimination amply produce. What do they want? A real state, a vast territory under their control, ruled not by “the people” but by themselves, a state that imprisons and tortures anyone who dares to disagree (as Hamas does in Gaza), claiming their authority cannot be challenged because it is sanctified by religious dogma. They have utter contempt for human life, including sometimes their own. They are a clear expression of the death culture that capitalism in this epoch produces. They are racist, not in the strict sense of classifying people on the basis of skin color, but in the broader meaning of dehumanizing people on the basis of their “otherness”, the conditions under which they are born, like their ethnicity or culture.

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