Gaza genocide escalates, Ukraine peace talks, and comrades arrested in Pakistan

For a year and a half, the western imperialists have not only been defending Israel's right to massacre, starve and ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza – they have been selling them the weapons to do it. Now, all of a sudden, they’re criticising the “intolerable” suffering that Israel is causing. Does this mean that the imperialists have gained a conscience?

Certainly not. At a time when Netanyahu is escalating the genocide and explicitly declaring that Israel plans to conquer the territory and expel the Palestinians, what these blood-soaked hypocrites fear are the revolutionary implications of being associated with yet more horror. The consequences in the Middle East and beyond of Netanyahu’s policy – of recklessly dragging out the war to cling on to power – are forcing even Trump to look for other points of support in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Trump and Putin have continued to haggle over the fate of Ukraine. In the western media, Putin has been depicted as a stubborn obstacle to peace. In reality, it is Zelensky and the Europeans who have resisted the negotiation of an end to the war, for they refuse to concede what is becoming apparent to all: that Ukraine has lost.

Finally, in Pakistan-occupied Gigit Baltistan, leaders of the Awami Action Committee – including several members of the Pakistani section of the Revolutionary Communist International – have been scandalously arrested. In response to this brazen attack, which is an attempt to behead a growing mass movement against the Pakistani regime, the Revolutionary Communist International have launched an international campaign demanding that these political prisoners be set free.

To explain where these events are leading the world, Jorge Martín and Hamid Alizadeh from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International met for another episode of Against the Stream, the weekly current affairs podcast of the RCI.

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0:00 Intro

1:43 Shooting of Israeli embassy staff

16:15 Rift between the West and Israel

35:46 Kneecap member charged with terrorism

42:04 Ukraine peace negotiations

1:10:27 Comrades arrested in Pakistan