Outrage against Israel's actions has led to demonstrations of thousands across the world. From the USA to Venezuela, Indonesia and across the Middle East people are taking to the streets to protest against the brutal slaughter of the Palestinians. Read more...

The murderous bombardment of the Gaza strip continues into a fifth day, with a threat by an Israeli cabinet minister of “long weeks of action.” The death toll of Palestinians stands at over 370 killed Read more...

The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is central to the wider struggle against Imperialism across the Middle East. Read more...

Eight days after the end of the ceasefire, over 150 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip have been killed by rocket attacks from Israeli F16 aircraft. Read more...

Iraq and the US have negotiated a draft agreement setting out a timetable for US troop withdrawal. It states that combat troops must be removed from Iraqi cities by 2009 and from the rest of the country by 31 December 2011. Some are heralding the agreement as the beginning of Iraq's future as an independent state. But as the US struggles to maintain its economic and political influence in Iraq and steps up the pressure against the resistance in Afghanistan where there are 60,000 foreign troops  the need for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US and UK troops from the region is as urgent as ever. Read more...

تعرفت أولاً كصبيّ صغير إلى جورج حبش. ومع أنني أنا نفسي لست فلسطينيًا فقد نشأت – وبطريقة ملتوية – على اعتباره واحدًا من "قادتنا". فهنا لدينا شخص – عربي وطني علماني من خلفية مسيحية، رجل مثقف ومتعلم، ويعرّف نفسه ماركسيًا ونصيرًا للمضطهدين، معاديًا للصهيونية والإمبريالية Read more...

Review of Reading Lolita in Tehran Read more...

This article is also available in Arabic here

I first became aware of the Doctor as a small child. Although not Palestinian myself, I grew up regarding him, in a roundabout way, as one of "our" leaders. Here was someone  an Arab patriot and secularist from a Christian background, a highly-educated man, and a self-declared Marxist and supporter of the oppressed, an opponent of Zionism and Western imperialism, and a modernist opponent of the Arab regimes  to whom I could point without any embarrassment and say: "he is one of ours". Read more...

Whilst it was Hillary Clinton who set the war drums beating harder once again by saying that she would eliminate Iran in the case of a military attack on Israel, no sooner had she withdrawn from the r Read more...

Hands off the People of Iran (Hopi) describes itself as a campaign against an attack on Iran by the United States and in support of the struggles of Iranian workers, youth and women against Iran's rep Read more...

On one side stood Hezbollah, the Shia based resistance movement that ejected the Israeli occupation in 2000 and defeated Israel's invasion in 2006. On the other side in Lebanon's near-civil war stood Sunni Muslim and Druze militias backing leading pro-government billionaire Sa'ad Hariri, son of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, whose assassination forced the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon in 2005. Read more...

De hecho, el estado sionista parece no moderar su comportamiento. El Vice-Ministro de Defensa Matan Vilnai hasta ha amenazado a los vecinos de Gaza con una “shoah”, o sea un holocausto. Como para darles sustancia a sus palabras, Israel mató a 35 habitantes de Gaza el 1 de marzo, como parte de una campaña de 4 días que dejó muertos a más de 100 palestinos. Todo esto en una tierra con poco gas, comida o medicina que sufre bajo un estado de sitio que ya ha durado 11 meses. Read more...

The leaders of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) argue socialists should not fight for the withdrawal of US and UK troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. It claims that, were the occupation to end immediately, the Iraqi labour movement would be annihilated by reactionary Islamic forces. Read more...

Talks between former US President Jimmy Carter and the exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, which led to offers by the latter of a six - months truce. Meshaal indicated that Hamas would be willing to cease firing rocket at Israel from Gaza, and begin negotiations for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, without requiring a simultaneous Israeli ceasefire in the West Bank in return, insisting only on one in Gaza, and that Gaza's border with the outside world should be re-opened. Read more...

On May Day Taksim Square, Istanbul's largest and 20,000 police, many of them in full riot gear, occupied a major tourist and shopping centre. Read more...

Whilst the PLO has recently been usurped by Hamas as the vanguard organisation of Palestinian militants which holds the leadership of the national liberation struggle, the PLO historically was always the dominant party. This historical article from 1988 explains how the bourgeois nationalist politics of the PLO and Fateh were a dead end for the Palestinians, and led to their fall from grace in January 2006. Read more...

It has become customary to begin articles about Palestine by reeling off casualty figures, as if it was possible to give an exact measure of the suffering or the sheer barbarity, to which Palestinians have been subjected, in numbers. And in a sense, this ritual has become meaningless, not just because it invariably tells the same story of a largely unarmed and defenceless population facing the armed might of the world's fourth strongest army, but because, by the time the story has been told, the Israel Defence Forces murder machine has already claimed another victim, and so renders the story out of date. Read more...

Just weeks after the media retrospectives on the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, a new round of violence was unleashed on the country's long-suffering people, leaving at least 500 dead. While an Iranian-brokered ceasefire has brought some relief, Jeremy Dewar warns that this is the start of a battle to break up Iraq and hand its oil wealth over to the imperialist multinationals. Read more...

Communists stand in complete solidarity with all those fighting Israel's brutality against the Palestinians, including the defence of their right to use arms. While we recognise that Hamas' tactic of firing rockets at Israeli towns has been ineffective and counter-productive, this is in response to Israel's far greater firepower. Read more...

Once again the aggressive and expansionist Zionist state has launched bloody attacks on the besieged Palestinian population of Gaza. On March 3 Al Jazeera reported that Israeli incursions and air-launched missiles over the preceding five days left 'at least 116 Palestinians dead, including 22 children and 12 women'. Read more...

As an Israeli MP threatens a modern day 'holocaust' against the Palestinians in Gaza, the urgency of starting a new, third intifada that spreads across the region and beyond becomes even more pressing. This is a statement from the International Secretariat of the League. Read more...

Since the 2006 there has been a dramatic resurgence in the workers movement in Egypt, the largest Arab country in terms of population with a population of over 80 million people, and where 17 per cent of the workforce are industrial workers. President Hosni Mubarak has held Egypt in an iron grip since 1981, utilizing emergency laws for 25 years to ban opposition parties and independent unions. Egypt is a key US ally in the region receiving the second highest level of US subventions, Israel of course being number one. Since 1979 US economic aid to Egypt has totaled $30 billon and there has been a similar figure for military aid. In the first multi-candidate presidential elections in 2005, in which Mubarak still won with 88 per cent of the vote, there has been something of a relaxation of the dictatorship with various opposition forces emerging including  the long term opponent of the military regimes of Gamal Abdel Nasser 1956-70, Anwar Sadat 1970-1981 and Mubarak- the Muslim League. Read more...

The third week of January has witnessed heroic actions of self-liberation by the population of Gaza, repeatedly pulling down the metal and concrete barriers along the southern border with Egypt, breaking the starvation blockade imposed by the racist, apartheid state of Israel.

We recognise, too, the correct and militant leadership in this offered by Hamas, whatever political differences we may have with them on many other issues. The sight of these actions on television screens around the world lifted the hearts of countless people fighting oppression. We all send our warmest congratulations to our Palestinian sisters and brothers. We pledge ourselves to do our utmost to prevent the re-imposition of the siege under any form. Read more...

The US has stepped up its threats of a military strike on Iran. It is using Iran’s development of nuclear power and accusations that its Revolutionary Guards are aiding the Iraqi resistance as a pretext. Read more...

Earlier this month, Iranian women’s rights activist Delaram Ali was given a sentence (currently suspended) of a flogging and two and half years in prison. Her “crime” was participating in a demonstration calling for reform of Iran’s Islamic legal system, which discriminates against women. Read more...

Now into its 16th month, Israel’s blockade of Gaza has created a severe humanitarian crisis for the 1.5 million inhabitants. Food, medicines, and basic necessities are scarce. With 85 per cent of the population reliant on United Nations handouts, children are severely malnourished. Read more...

Unable to claim military victories following the “surge” of US troops, the occupation forces have nevertheless claimed improved security in Iraq. Economic life has picked up; fewer soldiers and civilians have died. Sectarian militias are less conspicuous and Iraqi refugees are returning from Syria. Read more...

Turkey is preparing for an assault on Kurdish rebels operating from Iraqi Kurdistan, writes Mark Booth Read more...

A US Senate resolution designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organisation” and imposing sanctions on companies that do business with it underlines the White House’s drive to a military strike on Iran. This measure will affect European companies doing business in Iran, and so puts pressure on France, Germany and Russia to choose sides in George W Bush’s latest adventure in the “War on Terror”. Read more...

The Western media portrays the struggle in Palestine as one between “extremists” and “moderates”, with the Palestinian factions’ willingness to live peacefully alongside Israel as the decisive factor. Read more...