In one of their most barbaric acts of fascist aggression in years, U.S.-made and supplied helicopter gunships piloted by the Israeli `Defense' Forces (IDF) began pummeling Gaza today. So far at least 229 Palestinians are reported dead and more than 700 wounded. Israeli military spokesmen Avi Benayahu says that the attacks, part of the IDF's `Operation Cast Lead,' are `only just [the] beginning.'

The most recent reported missile fire targeted a mosque, killing at least two.

While Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tried to `reassure' Palestinian civilians that only Hamas `terrorist installations' were being targeted, international human rights organizations have long pointed out that the IDF has made a policy of targetting civilians. Numbers don't lie: since the beginning of the Second Intifada eight years ago, more than 5,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's so-called `security' forces, the majority of them killed in Gaza--compared to 490 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians over the same time period. And, approximately 1,000 of those Palestinian dead are children.

Brutal death at the hands of Zionist aggressors is nothing new in Palestine, especially Gaza. Children may be targeted by IDF snipers and tanks (operated by both Israelis and mercenary Bedouin Arabs) on their way home from school. The elderly and infirm are sometimes bulldozed inside of their own houses by Israeli military driving equipment produced by Caterpillar in the U.S. Ambulances, hospitals, local and international media, human rights workers and others are targeted for assassination, abduction, torture and worse. Palestinian workers are cut off from their farm land, as well as such basic infrastructure as regular electricity and drinkable water.

Meanwhile, Palestinians, who are trapped (walled inside their own cities like the Nazi's Jewish ghettos of Poland), are mislead and sold out by their nationalist, religious, fake `leaders,' be it those in Fatah or Hamas. The key to victory against Israeli fascism is militant, anti-racist unity between the Israeli and Palestinian working class in a struggle against not only Zionism and religious/ethnic nationalism, but against the capitalist bosses on both sides of the Israel's grotesque Apartheid Wall.

Israeli working-class unity with Palestinians is not far-fetched. Many Israeli workers are enraged by the actions of `their' government against the workers of occupied Palestine. More than 550 members of the IDF have signed a statement condemning the occupation of Palestine and refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories and murder their class brothers and sisters. Many have already been sentenced to prison terms for this refusal. There is a concrete, material basis for the workers of this region to throw down their bosses' uniforms: not just military uniforms, but the fake uniforms of `Israeli' and `Palestinian.'

We in the international PLP are engaged in the world-wide class struggle for communism. Revolutionary internationalism--that is, smashing these racist and nationalist bosses and the borders they use to divide the international working class--is the cornerstone of communist revolution, workers' power. Only communism, and nothing less, will finally bring peace to workers of all `races' around the world by destroying the profit system that requires endless wars and imperialist and colinial oppression and exploitation.

Bourgeois pacifist resistance is not the solution for Israeli workers, just as nationalism (still capitalism!) and `political Islam' is no solution for Palestinian workers. Both must unite, rise up and smash these warmongers forever. A general strike forged by real working-class unity, within and across the bosses' phoney borders, could bring this murderous `conflict' to a grinding halt in minutes. And workers' revolution can put a stop to it forever.

Fight for Communism! Power to the workers! Join the international PLP!

The table below, provided by Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, includes comparative data on fatalities as recent as the end of this past November: