Build the student walkouts against Israeli state terror!
Join young socialists against war!
Thousands of young people have been part of the millions who have marched in recent weeks against the murderous siege of Gaza by the Israeli state.
We’re furious at the hypocrisy of the Tories, Starmer’s Labour Party and pro-capitalist governments around the world which claim to stand for peace and democracy, yet support the brutal onslaught of the Israeli state against innocent Palestinians because it suits their interests. This is on top of them turning a blind eye to the daily oppression and persecution the Palestinian masses have suffered for decades.
Now, students are taking the struggle back to their schools and colleges. Thousands have walked out of classes and marched to demand an end to the onslaught on Gaza. Students in Bristol and London marched to the offices of their local MPs to voice their anger at the Israeli state’s bombardment of Palestinians.
The fact that some Labour MPs, under mass pressure from their constituents, were forced to vote for a ceasefire in Parliament against Labour leader Keir Starmer’s orders shows that when they think their cushy parliamentary careers are on the line, they can be pushed back!
It also shows the role that students and young people can play in building the struggle for Palestinian liberation here in Britain. That’s why we need to build our movement, organising gate protests and marches locally to keep up the pressure on and expose all politicians who support war and cutbacks.
A key way to strengthen our movement would be the establishment of students unions at our schools and colleges. Such organisations could provide a democratic forum through which students could come together to discuss how to most effectively build the movement against the siege of Gaza, help mobilise and protect students from any attempts to restrict our right to protest, and to organise future campaigns against attacks to our futures and education here in Britain.
Alongside getting organised in our schools and colleges, students need a political fightback as well. As the vote in Parliament on the question of a ceasefire demonstrated, all the establishment parties back war and the capitalist system which demands it. We can’t put any trust in Starmer, or the other parties which represent capitalism, to stand up for the oppressed Palestinian masses or working class and young people here in Britain.
That’s why we need to challenge them at the next general election – part of the struggle to build a new mass political party that fights for socialist change and stands on the side of the oppressed masses in Palestine and the working class internationally.
The truth is that no capitalist governments or institutions can win liberation for the Palestinian masses or establish lasting peace in the region, because they all represent and defend the profit-before-all-else system of capitalism, which relies on division and oppression to maintain its rule.
But the global mass movement in support of the Palestinian masses points towards the force capable of ending this rotten capitalist system – the working class – and the need to establish a new socialist society based on the democratic public ownership of society’s wealth and resources, and solidarity and cooperation, not profit and war. Join the socialists to be part of that fight.
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students
Over ten thousand slaughtered at the hands of the Israeli state in Gaza. It’s no wonder that the demos across Britain and the world have been so big.
Young people have been spearheading the movement, motivated by anger at what the Israeli state is doing, but also anger at the hypocrisy of politicians, Tories and Labour.
Suella Braverman tried to stop us from protesting, she tried to brand the marches as ‘hate marches’, but now she is out of her job. The Tories are there for the taking. We don’t have to stop at getting Braverman out, we can get the whole lot out!
Thousands of students have already walked out of their classes to protest against the war on Gaza. We want to see more of that, and discussion about the ideas needed to end war and oppression.
We want to see protests outside of school gates, marches to local MPs’ offices or a lobby to demand they explain their position on the Israeli state’s onslaught in Gaza.
We should say to those politicians that if they are unprepared to stand against war and to fight for a decent future for young people, then we are going to organise to stand candidates against them.
We have to continue to build this movement against war and capitalism. Young people can be the fiercest fighters for that kind of movement and for a socialist future. Because we have only ever known capitalism as a system in crisis – with a lack of affordable housing, cost of living rising and our education system crumbling.
Black Lives Matter, the Sarah Everard protests, and now over Gaza – young people are fighting back against racism, sexism and war. We need to fight for an end to the system that produces and reproduces all these horrors.
That’s why Socialist Students is joining Young Socialists in campaigning to build a socialist youth movement against war – centred on schools, colleges and universities.
Socialist Students 
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