An attack on a school sheltering some of Gaza’s displaced millions in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza claimed 15 children among at least 22 dead, with entire families obliterated. A food distribution centre in Jabalia, northern Gaza, murdered at least 10 and injured a minimum of 30 Palestinians. In Gaza City, at least eight were killed and many others wounded in an air strike on the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood.

And a fresh attack on the al-Aqsa hospital in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah led to a fire sweeping through tents housing patients and displaced Palestinians. The footage of their immolation is horrifying.

These dead and maimed are among more than 42 thousand fatalities and nearly one hundred thousand wounded since the Israeli aggression began, and those will likely prove to be conservative estimates.

The barbaric character of the conduct of the Israeli armed forces is only reinforced by footage taken by IDF personnel themselves, showing them boasting of their murders, looting and ransacking Palestinian properties and glorying in the destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and cultural centres.

The war of Israeli aggression only spreads wider, engulfing Lebanon, the steadfast people of Yemen, Syria, Iran and, of course, the West Bank, where a campaign of ethnic cleansing proceeds unimpeded. It even threatens UN peacekeeping forces since the Israeli government’s contempt of the UN and international legality grows ever more brazen.

The Starmer government is up to its neck in this genocidal rampage. Britain is bombing Yemen, running spy flights over Gaza to the benefit of the Israeli army and permitting the use of RAF bases in Cyprus. Occasional slaps on the wrist notwithstanding, the diplomatic and political support and supply of arms for the genocide is unwavering.

Against this, the mighty movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people and against wider imperialist war remains undiminished one year on. Its unity and militancy in opposition to the Starmer government is the best response we can make to the catastrophe in the Middle East.

Some may think that this is the right moment to deliberate on the conservative positions held on some social questions by, and the democratic shortcomings of, those opposing Israeli aggression.

It is not. Those are questions properly addressed by the peoples concerned in the context of their own struggle. We are neither Palestinian nor Lebanese, but instead campaigning in one of the world centres of imperialism.

Others suggest that events in Gaza are nothing to do with the British labour movement, which should focus instead on bread-and-butter issues. Such an attitude betrays internationalism and shrinks the working class from the vanguard of human liberation to another interest group.

The obligation of the movement in Britain is not to impose “solutions” regardless of the wishes of the people resisting genocide, it is to fight against the policies of our own government first of all. That means ending all military, munitions, diplomatic and political support for Israel and imposing a stringent regime of sanctions on a state rapidly shedding its legitimacy.

More broadly, the events of the last year show that there can be neither peace nor justice in the Middle East while it remains largely under imperialist hegemony. Our obligation is to unite with all those challenging that hegemony and resist any controversies that would disrupt that unity. (Morning Star — IPA Service)