by Michael Karadjis

Israel’s current genocide-operation against the Palestinian population of Gaza (and potentially the West Bank if it can get away with it) recall the horrors of the neighbouring Assad dictatorship’s decade-long war of extermination against the rebellious Syrian people, where some 470,000 had been killed already by January 2016 (a figure which does not account for the last 7 years of killing!), Vladimir Putin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia’s monstrous bombing of Yemen and a number of similar conflicts.

One can have a greater interest or connection to one or another, or a view that one may have more global significance than another, but none of that should cloud our responsibility to condemn all such wars replete with massive crimes against humanity, and to resolutely take the side of the populations doing what they can to resist these oppressors.

A typical Gazan ‘landscape’ today (or during any of Israel’s other half dozen or so monstrous ‘mowing the lawn’ operations in Gaza over the last 20 years) looks identical to a typical Syrian ‘landscape’ in Homs, Aleppo, Damascus suburbs and elsewhere in towns and cities throughout the country bombed into a moonscape by the Assad regime. As Daanish Faruqi writes in al-Jazeera, Israel is using the same tactics in Gaza as al-Assad employed in Syria, and indeed the same “anti-terrorist” propaganda arsenal.

Here are some examples. Which is Gaza and which is Syria?

_{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Damage_in_Gaza_Strip_during_the_October_2023_-_32.jpg Wafa (Q2915969)}

Despite the common humanity of the victims and the common malevolence of the exterminators, the fact that two of the extermination wars noted above are or were backed by the United States while the other two are/were backed by (or carried out by) Russia has often led to the phenomenon of ‘campism’.   

‘Campism’ sees the world divided into ‘camps’ of capitalist and imperialist powers and chooses which ‘camp’ they consider preferable. In doing so, ‘campists’ aim all their fire at the oppression and crimes carried out by the side they condemn, and actively engage in vile apologetics for the side they support. Internationalism by contrast always resolutely takes the side of the oppressed whenever they are in conflict with their oppressors no matter which ‘camp’ they allegedly belong to. Campism is not only morally and politically bankrupt, but as will be explained below, also based on a myth – because these alleged ‘camps’ do not actually exist, rather, global capitalism is one camp with a myriad over overlapping and contradictory rivalries which render campism meaningless even on its own terms.

One kind of ‘campist’ is the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ campist. They have decided that US imperialism is the only or worst imperialism, and therefore, while they rightly condemn crimes against humanity carried out by the US or its allies (or what are deemed its allies) – Israel’s long-term genocidal campaign to erase the Palestinian people, the Saudi bombing of Yemen, the US invasion of Iraq and previous US wars and invasions throughout the world, US support to bloody juntas and so on – they tend to hold the complete opposite opinions when other imperialist countries (eg Russia), or states deemed, rightly or wrongly (usually wrongly), to be ‘anti-imperialist’, for example Milosevic’s Serbia in the 1990s or Assad’s Syria in the 2010s, fall out of US favour, becoming spokespeople for their genocidal crimes.

While all campaigns against war and oppression are necessarily united front campaigns – ie, campaigns where we march together with people we may disagree with on other issues – it is obviously disconcerting to be marching condemning Israel’s crimes against humanity and then noticing the participation of those you know have spent the last decade shilling for or denying the similar crimes against humanity of the Assad regime. Even if you do not think it is a big deal, consider how a Syrian refugee in the march feels watching this spectacle.

Many of the names of prominent shills are well-known, yet most marching for Palestine will know nothing of this history as they share their writings or soundbites on this issue: examples include British charlatan George Galloway, Max Blumenthal and the ‘Grayzone’ collective, Roger Waters, Caitlin Johnstone and countless others. Regarding the latter two, no-one should expect consistent analysis from a rock star or someone whose main ‘background’ appears to be astrology, but some like Blumenthal have done much serious work on the Palestine issue (and indeed Blumenthal was previously in the anti-Assad camp on Syria until the famous Moscow dinner he shared with Trump’s first National Security Advisor Michael Flynn).

The opposite campist is the liberal campist, and here we are not concerned with obvious right-wing liberals that are part of the western imperialist ruling class, but rather leftist and progressive liberals. They are rightly very concerned about crimes against humanity when carried out by a Putin, a Milosevic, an Assad, but get all bogged down when the crimes are being carried out by western imperialist states and their allies. This has blown up now with Israel’s horrifically genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza – some progressive minded people who have been working to provide a left-wing understanding of support to Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s horrific invasion have either critically taken Israel’s side or, more commonly, taken a ‘plague on both your houses’ view. And mainstream Ukrainian society, starting with president Zelensky, has swung strongly behind Israel.

However, this phenomenon is much less the case with the anti-Assad revolution in Syria, and its leftist supporters, who tend to equate the crimes against humanity of Assad and Israel. In the later part of this essay, some analysis on the stark contrast between the Syrian and Ukrainian cases will be offered, as well as the third, somewhat different again, case of the women-led Iranian uprising against the murderous mullah regime in that country.

But first we will begin with the most positive case of solidarity between the oppressed, rather than the absurdity and perfidity of both wings of campism: the solidarity with Palestine being expressed all over revolutionary Syria in opposition-controlled regions and among anti-Assad protestors in regime-controlled regions. 

The Syrian revolution in solidarity with Palestine!

“Bashar and Netanyahu, the butchers of our time” reads the banner in this protest in Sweida, is one of the common themes of the demonstrations in revolutionary Syria in support of the people of Gaza. “Netanyahu is bombing hospitals and children following the school of Bashar” – another slogan raised in Sweida as shown below:

More protests shown in this video in Karama Square in Sweida in solidarity with Gaza.

The significance of Sweida is that it has been the epicentre of the new upsurge of the Syrian revolution over the last few months, which has spread around the country. In particular, Sweida is home to the Druze religious minority, belying the Assad regime’s propaganda that it is the protector of “minorities” against “Sunni Islamic terrorism” as the regime attempts to define the opposition.

Solidarity in Sweida with Gaza has not prevented the people from continuing their uprising against the regime as we see in the image below and in this Video.

Meanwhile in neighbouring Daraa province, a key centre of the 2011 revolution until Assad’s reconquest (backed by the Netanyahu-Trump-Putin alliance) in 2018, which has also erupted in solidarity with Sweida, we likewise see solidarity with Gaza, as with these protests by Palestinians in Daraa camp:

Demonstrations in support of Gaza have spread throughout revolutionary Syria. For example, here in Idlib in the opposition-held northwest, protesting the Israeli hospital bombing in Gaza, raising Palestinian flags, as can be seen in this video; and in this demonstration of solidarity with Gaza from doctors of Idlib University Hospital, which was shelled by Assad some weeks earlier; or like these Idlib demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza:

And here; and in this video here, following Israel’s hospital massacre; or check out this massive TV screen in the heart of Idlib city in support of Gaza.

And then there’s the demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza throughout the rebel-controlled northwest, in towns throughout Idlib and Aleppo provinces, such as in the town of Atmeh in rural Idlib province, with Syrian revolution and Palestine flags, burning Israeli flags:

And in the town of Darkoush in Idlib:

Protest in the town of Ariha in Idlib:

Angry demonstration in Atareb in western Aleppo province, in the very heart of the revolution in the north, condemning Israel’s terror attack on the hospital.

And in another iconic revolutionary centre, the city of Marea in northern Aleppo province:

And Azaz in northern Aleppo:

And in this video from al-Bab in northern Aleppo, video:

And more from al-Bab, another video.

And solidarity with Gaza also over in the east of the country, in Raqqa, the first full city taken by the Syrian rebels back in 2013 (before ISIS/Daesh seized it from them, and later the US and Kurdish-led SDF crushed ISIS). 

This is only a sample of the pro-Palestine upsurge in anti-Assad Syria. Anyone who followed the Syrian revolutionary process knows the names of these towns and cities well; all well-known centres of the revolution.

This is not new. Syrian revolutionaries have identified with Palestine since the outset.  The similarity between Assadist and Israeli genocidal bombings that leave entire cities a smoked ruins is too obvious. Here for example are some examples of protests against Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s “capital” in December 2017,  demonstrations condemning this move and in solidarity with the Palestinians broke out all over opposition-controlled Syria, from Daraa through East Ghouta and south Damascus to Homs and Idlib and northern Aleppo. Here protesters in camps for displaced Syrians in northern Idlib hold signs stating “Sanaa, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus are occupied by Iran, Jerusalem occupied by Israel”; and here Syrians and Palestinians are demonstrating in besieged southern Damascus against the Jerusalem decision, chanting “Oh shame, oh shame, We won’t sacrifice the Golan” and “We’ll sacrifice our blood & soul for Aqsa.”

_{Syrians and Palestinians are demonstrating in besieged southern Damascus against Trump’s Jerusalem decision}.

And here are the Palestinian and the Syrian revolution flags painted on a wall in Kuftkharim in Idlib during May 2018, to show solidarity with Gaza during Israeli attacks at the time; the phrase “From Syria to Gaza, we share the same wound” is written on it.

_{Idlib: “From Syria to Gaza, we share the same wound”. Photo by Abu al-Bara al-Shami.}

And here is a mural in the town of Kafr Nabl, one of the key centres of the revolution in Idlib province, from back in 2015, with the Palestinian and Syrian revolution flags:

Clearly, these are not the kinds of people Israel was ever going to form an alliance with.

Declarations in support of Gaza by Syrian revolutionaries and the White Helmets

Back to the present, on November 11, 2023, 130 prominent pro-revolution Syrians released a statement in support of the Palestinian people that reflects these widely-held views in revolutionary Syria:

“We, Syrians united in the revolutionary struggle against the Assad regime and its imperialist sponsors, stand firmly and unequivocally with the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and across historic Palestine, in their fight for liberation from Israeli colonisation, occupation and apartheid.”

The statement included a little historical review:

“Whilst the Syrian people have always stood with the Palestinian cause, the Assad regime has used it as a rhetorical tool which, far from liberating Palestine, has instead led to increased oppression within Syria’s borders.

“During the 1967 war, as defence minister, Hafez al-Assad ordered the Syrian army to retreat from the Golan Heights before any Israeli troops had arrived. The Syrian Golan has been subject to brutal Israeli occupation and colonisation, severed from the Syrian homeland and intentionally marginalised by the Assad regime and wider region. The Golan Heights remain confined by Israeli colonisation, the genocidal Assad regime and geo-political schemes.

 “When the Lebanese civil war erupted, Hafez al-Assad loudly declared Syria’s support for the Palestinian-Muslim-Leftist alliance against the pro-Israel Falangists. But when the Falangists appeared at risk of defeat in 1976, Assad ordered the Syrian army to intervene against the pro-Palestinian alliance. The Assad regime slaughtered up to 1500 Palestinian civilians in camps in Lebanon, most notably at Tel Za’atar.”

The statement noted that “when our revolution erupted, Syrians and Palestinians in Syria stood shoulder to shoulder. We worked together to supply food and medicine to besieged communities, to organise strikes and marches, and to build democratic alternatives to the murderous regime.” As a result of this cooperation, “the Assad regime attacked Palestinian camps as fiercely as it assaulted Syrian cities,” giving examples of the the Palestinian camp in Daraa and the Raml camp in Lattakia, alongside the devastating Assadist siege and destruction of the Palestinian Yarmouk camp. The statement cites the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) which has documented 4,048 Palestinians killed in Syria since 2011. “Of these, 614 died under torture in regime prisons and 205 died due to the siege on Yarmouk camp. Others were killed by regime bombing or execution by regime loyalists.”

The statement stresses the interconnectedness of our struggles, noting that Syrian solidarity with Palestine “comes from the shared experience of resistance to tyranny, a desire for freedom and self-determination, and the trauma of war.”

On October 19, the Syrian volunteer first-responder organisation, the White Helmets, released a statement “strongly condemn(ing) the egregious act committed by the Israeli occupation forces in bombing the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip. This attack resulted in a horrifying massacre, claiming the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Such actions blatantly violate international law, international humanitarian law, and the most fundamental human principles.”

The statement also condemned “the deliberate targeting of civilian and medical facilities, along with first responders, medical personnel, rescue teams, and civil defence units” and “the policy of collectively punishing the people in the Gaza Strip, including their ongoing siege and the denial of basic necessities like water, food, medicine, healthcare, and fuel,” which “poses an imminent humanitarian catastrophe,” and “urgently call(s) upon all nations across the globe especially those actively involved in addressing this situation to intervene immediately to halt these violations and the collective punishment of the population.”

It should be noted that these heroes, who rescued thousands of people from the rubble following Assad’s and Putin’s bombing, losing hundreds of their own members in the process, were continually subject to the most despicable and baseless slanders by members of the Assadist “left” and far-right, including some of those now marching for Palestine. The slanders claimed they were either “CIA” or “al-Qaida.” The White Helmets clearly have more honour in their fingernails than all of these liars put together.

Assad “responds to Israel” … by bombing Idlib

What does the Assad regime, which tries, awkwardly, to posture as pro-Palestine, do in the face of all this? You probably guessed, it has used the cover of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza to step up its slaughter of the Syrian people. Obviously not to the extent of the years 2011-2019, when it bombed most towns and cities in Syria to Gaza-like ruins, because, after all, by 2019 it had completed most of its reconquest.

Nevertheless, we are seeing some of the heaviest bombing in several years, since Assad secured his throne. As the Syrian poster Rami Safadi put it, “Assad’s idea of fighting back at Israel is to bomb Syrian civilians in Idlib who he calls “Israeli agents,” as in this video:

According to an early November report, regime and Russian bombing had killed 66 civilians, including 23 children and 13 women, and left more than 270 people injured, with 79 children and 47 women among the casualties, during October, while 120,000 people had been newly displaced. The shelling “targeted dozens of public facilities and civilian homes in more than 70 cities and towns in northwestern Syria. This included the direct targeting of over 13 schools, more than seven medical facilities, five mosques, five camps, five popular markets, and four centers for the White Helmets. In addition to these, a center for women’s and family health, a power station, three water stations, and threee poultry farms were also affected by the shelling.”

Well-known Syrian revolutionary Rami Jarrah expresses his great pride in his people:

“Even with all the bombs raining down on the people of Idlib by Assad & Russia’s forces, even with all the silence, thousands of Syrians come out in solidarity with the people of Gaza. You who are safe, what is your excuse?

“It must be mentioned that the Syrians here in solidarity with the people of Gaza, are astonishingly rallying on the same side as the murderers who are bombing Idlib. I’m proud because it takes a lot of integrity to put your own cause at risk, only to support someone else’s.”

Of course, “the murderers bombing Idlib,” meaning the Assad regime, are hardly “on the same side” as Idlib, despite rhetoric. The Assad regime, after all, has killed more Palestinians than any other Arab regime, and until the current Gaza genocide, probably more in absolute numbers than Israel; while keeping the ‘border’ with Israeli-occupied Golan so quiet that it has been consistently praised by Israeli leaders. Even now, the contrast between the clashes on the Israel-Lebanon border and the quiet on the Golan ‘border’ is stark.

Nevertheless, the Iranian and pro-Iranian Hezbollah forces backing Assad have made more consistent pro-Palestine rhetoric than Assad has, without his murderous anti-Palestinian record, and hence do give the impression of being “on the same side.” As Jarrah says, this is consistent solidarity shining through from Syrian revolutionaries, despite other enemies of humanity appearing to be on the same side.

The bonds between the Syrian people and Palestine

But what are the bonds between the Palestinian and Syrian revolutions that bind to such an extent that anti-Assad Syria is “rallying on the same side as the murderers who are bombing Idlib” as Jarrah puts it, “on the same side” as Assadists and Khameinists loudly proclaiming their alleged solidarity with Palestine and even their laughable “resistance” credentials?

The first point to make is that Syria was a popular revolution, not simply a government with a problem with Israel, or in Ukraine’s case, a government with a problem with Russia. Revolutions by definition throw millions of people into active politics, in a way that leads to organic solidarity with other oppressed people. Their solidarity with Palestine, and their refusal to ever call for Israel’s “help” against Assad, was entirely natural. So was Israel’s refusal to ever offer help, and the great many statements by Israeli leaders and think-tanks that they preferred Assad remain in power compared to the victory of the revolution.

There are a number of points that can be made here regarding the long-term background:

• The Assad regime has always been anti-Palestinian, from the invasion of Lebanon in 1976 to back the right-wing Phalange, leading to Syrian regime facilitation of the huge massacre of Palestinians at Tel al-Zaatar, to the regime’s intervention into the PLO in the early 1980s in an attempt to seize control of the organisation, leading to the joint Syrian-Israeli siege of the PLO in Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon in 1983, and then Syrian regime facilitation of the one-year long war on the Palestinian camps south of Beirut by the Syrian proxy Amal militia in 1985-86.

• The Assad regime’s “resistance” credentials are entirely bogus, even if measured by the already bogus standards of the Iranian theocracy’s alleged “resistance.” In 1971 the Assad regime joined Egypt and Jordan in recognising UN resolution 242, which while calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied by Israel in 1967, made no mention of Palestinian self-determination, treating the Palestinians as a mere refugee problem (and for that reason was rejected by the PLO). The problem however was that once Israel had withdrawn from the Sinai and returned it to Egypt in exchange for the treacherous peace of Camp David in 1978, Israel now felt no pressure to also withdraw from the Golan – on the contrary, in the face of all Assad’s services, Israel annexed the Golan in 1981. With this slap in the face, the regime was forced into a “resistance” persona against its will.

• The Golan is a Syrian issue, not an Assadist issue. One reason (among many) that Israel never offered support to the anti-Assad uprising was that there was never any political force within the Syrian revolution willing to trade the Golan; on the contrary, they made continual statements on Syria’s right to use all legitimate means to regain the Golan. Israeli leaders, for their part, have continually thanked the Assad regime for keeping the ‘border’ with the occupied Golan quiet for decades after 1973.

• Following the move by the consistently counterrevolutionary United Arab Emirates (UAE) to restore relations with both the Assad regime and Israel concurrently (followed in both cases by Bahrain, while Israel’s long-term ally, the Egyptian dictatorship, had already become pro-Assad following al-Sisi’s bloody coup in 2013, and the Jordanian monarchy was on the same dual wavelength), the obvious question arose of Syria joining these allies in the counterrevolutionary bloc. Assad’s response was that it would be entirely possible if Israel returned the Golan, with no mention of “resistance” or Palestine at all: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, it is possible when Israel is ready, but it is not and it was never ready…  Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.” Indeed, the Assad regime was involved in US-sponsored ‘land for peace’ negotiations with Israeli leaders in 1999-2000 and again in 2010-11 over the Golan.
• Israel actively facilitated Assad’s reconquest of the south in 2018, alongside US president Trump and in direct coordination with Russian president Putin.

Regarding the period since the 2011, much has been written about the solidarity between Palestinian refugees in Syria and ordinary Syrians engaged in struggle for dignity and human rights and meeting horrific repression from the regime; the facts of the matter were that they were neighbours, friends, family, and so solidarity was organic. This led quite naturally to the regime treating Palestinian camps like Yarmouk in the same way it treated neighbouring centres of resistance throughout south and east Damascus. The Action Group for Palestinians in Syria has documented some 4000 deaths of Palestinians at the hands of the Assad regime.

What else do they have in common?

• The Palestinian Nakbah has now been joined by a Syrian version; the millions of Palestinian refugees spread around Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, elsewhere in the region and the world now match the millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, northwest and northeast Syria, and elsewhere in the region and the world. In fact, the Assad regime only controls some 40 percent of Syrians – of a pre-war population of 23 million, 6.6 million are refugees; while an equivalent number are internally displaced, including nearly 3 million among a population of 5 million in opposition-controlled northwest Syria and 700,000 among a population of 3 million in SDF-controlled northwest Syria.

• The Assad regime has passed laws (eg Law No. 10, 2018) to legally steal the property of refugees so that if they do return they will have nothing, while making return almost impossible anyway; this is equivalent to Israel stealing the property of Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1948. Some regime leaders openly declare that Syria is better of having been cleansed of these millions, including a leading general who declared Syria would be better off with just 10 million supposedly “loyal” citizens rather than 30 million “vandals.”

• The scale and nature of the genocidal bombing; it is hardly surprising that Israel and Syria have been the numbers one and two in the world for attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities.

Campism past and present

One may think it is straightforward that a leftist, a socialist, an anti-capitalist, would always be on the side of the people, of the oppressed, against the oppressors, the exploiters, the tyrants. Unfortunately, this is not so; since the end of the Cold War, an important wing of the western left began taking the side of tyrants, oppressors, regimes which carry out ethnic cleansing, regimes which represent ultra-wealthy capitalist plutocracies, even rising imperialist powers, as long as they had some kind of perceived conflict with US imperialism. While the internationalist left sees the two sides as oppressed versus oppressors, working people versus capitalist oligarchies, those fighting for liberation versus imperialist, sub-imperialist or neo-colonial oppressors, this campist left see the two ‘camps’ as those allied with US imperialism and everyone allegedly against US imperialism, even if often only rhetorically so, even rival imperialisms.

While in some ways this is a continuation of Cold War campism, in other respects it is worse. During the Cold War, many western socialists identified with the repressive regimes in the USSR, China and elsewhere who claimed to be ‘socialist’ and were ruled by parties called ‘Communist’. Many others, including the political tendency I was part of, rejected any identification of the ideals socialism with such vile anti-socialist dictatorships. However, one could argue there were ‘aspects of socialism’ – the nationalised economies did on the whole mean these societies had less socio-economic inequality, the irrationality of unemployment, endemic to capitalism, was largely absent, health and education were officially free and so on. This certainly did not justify the repressive rule of an unelected clique, let alone the times when it resulted in crimes against humanity. But for hundreds of millions suffering extreme poverty and exploitation in the capitalist ‘Third World’ brutally exploited by western imperialism, it often looked better; and even for those western leftists suffering from delusions, we should remember they lived before the age of the Internet; many honestly believed that the bad stories were just western propaganda, especially a layer of older socialist workers who grew up during the Great Depression and the subsequent role of the USSR in defeating Nazi Germany.

Regardless of how we judge all this, these factors became irrelevant following the collapse of bureaucratic state ‘socialism’ in the early 1990s. None of the regimes that modern-day campists have gone apologist for have even the slightest relation to socialism in theory or in practice; most in fact have a close relationship to fascism ideologically, and internally their repressive regimes defend new ruling classes which are every bit as vile, as exploitative, as any other, in some cases arguably more so. And their crimes against humanity are taking place in the world of the Internet where illusions in tyranny have essentially become irrelevant to common sense. To be feigning support with Palestine and other forms of resistance of to US-backed regimes while finding every excuse in the world for a genocidal tyrant like Assad or for Putin’s monstrous invasion and destruction of Ukraine means not only to abandon all principles, but also to do damage to the Palestinian cause.

Liberal campism and the Ukraine case

But this now brings us back to the liberal form of campism. It should go without saying that opposition to “anti-imperialist” campism must be just as resolutely opposed to any tendencies to abandon internationalism by becoming ‘reverse campists’, and to effectively turn themselves into a left shadow of western liberal imperialism.

When Israel launched its horrific Gaza operation following Hamas’ gruesome attack on October 7, Ukrainian president Zelensky went well beyond merely condemning the atrocities, responding with an absolutely effusive declaration of support for Israel, identifying Ukraine and Israel because “the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine” – as if the Israeli occupation of Palestine and all the decades of terror that have gone with it did not exist. Electronic billboards in Kyiv were lit with the Israeli flag. He even offered to visit Israel to declare support from there (which Israel turned down with a curt “not the right time”).

Zelensky claimed the world must unite “whenever someone takes women hostage and condemns the children of another nation.” However, he has had no words since then for the slaughter of 10,000 Palestinian children of the 23,000 killed as of December 9 in Gaza; according to the Save the Children charity, the number of children killed in Gaza in the first three weeks of Israel’s massacre surpassed the number of children killed in all global conflicts since 2019. While the greatest numbers of children were killed in Syria – the horrific figure of 30,000 over a decade – these figures for Gaza are for the last two months.

As for Zelensky’s care for women, the UN claims that two thirds of all those killed in Gaza have been women and children, and that “every day, 180 women are giving birth without water, painkillers, anaesthesia for Caesarean sections, electricity for incubators or medical supplies, … Mothers, meanwhile, mix baby formula with contaminated water — when they find it — and go without food so that their children can live another day.” 

All this was despite Ukraine’s actually very correct voting record on Palestine since 2015, which has continued since the onset of the Russian invasion, (a stance which Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine called “abnormal”), and has also continued in UN votes since October 7; and also despite Israel’s 18-month resistance to US demands to aid Ukraine’s defence against Russia – which Israel had many years of very close relations with until the current Gaza conflict.

But the issue is not Zelensky – we defend the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression regardless of their political representatives, just as we defend the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation and dispossession regardless of the Fatah and Hamas misleaders. Zelensky was elected by the Ukrainian people and is their legitimate leader, but politically he is a representative of a neoliberal wing (and not a “fascist” wing as often claimed by campist leftists) of Ukrainian capitalism.

The problem was however that a significant number of pro-Ukraine progressives swung behind Zelensky and likewise claimed Israel and Ukraine were similar because both were “attacked.” But this was not just about following Zelensky – this was the result of illusions that had been built up over a period of time among many left progressives and liberals who had correctly condemned the crimes of Assad, of Putin, of the Iranian mullahs, perhaps earlier of Serbian nationalism. Some had begun to see the world through the prism that now Russian and Chinese imperialism were the big bad guys, who supported fellow authoritarian rulers everywhere (as if authoritarianism were an export) and violated international law; and conversely, that while US imperialism had a violent ‘past’ and was ‘inconsistent’, it now mostly supported ‘democracies’ since the end of the Cold War; and while its illegal invasion of Iraq was widely condemned, the US defeat there had led to its global weakening; so therefore the worst enemy was now the other ‘camp’.

This campism tended to accept US president Biden’s claim regarding Ukraine that the US is leading a global struggle for ‘democracy’ against ‘authoritarianism’. It is not, indeed it is not even ‘liberal’ imperialism given the number of reactionary autocracies or apartheid regimes US imperialism supports – fewer than during the Cold War when the US supported virtually every non-Communist dictatorship on Earth, but still a substantial number. Or to accepting the US claim that it is defending an imaginary ‘rules-based international order’ which countries like Russia or China want to violate – this is absurd as anyone knows who is only slightly familiar with issues such as unconditional US support for every Israeli violation of international law for decades, let alone its own constant violations and those of other allies.

It is impressive for example that while the US (like Russia, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other such paragons of ‘legality’) has refused to sign the Rome Statute which would make its illegal actions liable in the International Criminal Court (ICC), it has also used intense pressure to force governments which have signed it – eg, the government of Bosnia – to make an exception of US troops on its territory as part of the post-Bosnian war international peace-keeping force. “Rules-based order”? The US has never heard of one.

Israel’s monstrous war on Palestine since October 2023 should have given a rude shock to such illusions, but in some cases the opposite occurred. Initially, some who leaned towards Israel (not only Ukraine supporters) may have just been responding the Hamas massacre on October 7, but in most cases the fully genocidal nature of Israel’s “response” brought people back to balance. In some cases, liberal campists justify their stand because they rightly abhor some of Israel’s alleged enemies, such as Iran – a position morally as bankrupt as the opposing set of campists who support Palestine while shilling for the repression unleashed by that Iranian regime.

Why the difference between the Syrian and Ukrainian cases?

It is important to stress that this issue is not about “all Ukrainians,” of course, and we should acknowledge the brave stance of so many Ukrainian leftists who have insisted on solidarity with Palestine and on recognising the commonality of the struggles for justice and self-determination in Ukraine and Palestine. But while the similar declarations by Syrian activists coincide with the mood in revolutionary Syria, Ukrainian declarations seem to be largely at odds with mainstream Ukrainian society.

The first point to make is that while in Syria we are talking about a revolutionary upsurge from below, with all the organic solidarity that is endemic to it, in Ukraine’s case we are simply talking about a liberal capitalist government, thrust against its will into having to defend its territory from its rapacious neighbour. While that does not make their struggle any less just, it means the element of natural solidarity in a revolution tends to be eclipsed by more pragmatic concerns.

And the second point flows from this pragmatism; most people, whatever country they live in, are mainly motivated by wanting to stay alive, and hence to give support to whoever is giving support to them, whatever their reasons. And for Ukraine, this contrasts sharply with the case of the Syrian rebels. Since the horrific Russian invasion, it has been western countries, led by the US and the EU, who have provided billions in essential military and economic support, enabling Ukraine to defend itself; it is entirely “rational” therefore to identify with these powers.

While left analysts may well find this tasteless given our knowledge of what the US does elsewhere, and may even find it naïve given the possibility that Ukraine may be sold out by these very powers, it would be the height of the arrogance of comfort to “condemn” this rationality from afar. It does not necessarily mean that average Ukrainians have no sympathy for the plight of Palestine or no criticisms of Israeli conduct, but that on the whole they will tend to interpret this through a particular western-centric lens. It is not the fault of ordinary Ukrainians being bombed by Russia’s invading military that they are dependent on western support; no-one but Putin is responsible for any growth in support for the US or NATO among Ukrainians or other East Europeans.

While Israel’s pronounced lack of support to Ukraine may appear to make Ukrainian support for Israel seem irrational, it is the greater ideological orientation of the Ukrainian leadership of seeing itself as part of “the West” that leads to this support for Israel, which is also seen as part of “the West,” which is after all aggressively supporting Israel. Identifying with the western project called Israel is seen as a means of ensuring ongoing western and US support to Ukraine – something by no means certain.

In addition, while Israel has refused to arm Ukraine or sanction Russia, the Ukrainian government has an interest in pushing Israel into a more pro-Ukrainian position. This is above all because Ukraine desperately needs Israel’s ‘iron dome’ ant-missile technology, for protection against Russian missiles. Israel has banned other countries from sharing Israeli iron dome technology with Ukraine, but Ukraine obviously wants Israel to change this policy. It sees an opening now, when Putin, despite his long-term alliance with Israel and especially with Netanyahu, has since October 7 seen an opening to “play politics” by showcasing Russia as having a more “balanced” view of the Mideast crisis in comparison to the total US support to Israel. While Putin’s target is the US rather than Israel as such, the result has been to damage Russia’s relationship with Israel that Putin has cultivated over so many years.

There is simply no comparison with the situation in Syria. While the Assad regime had often posed as anti-West (mainly due to the Israeli occupation of the Golan) and, two years into the Syrian uprising the US did begin supplying a small trickle of light arms to select groups of Syrian rebels, the differences with Ukraine were stark. The clearest example is that, while Ukraine has been supplied with thousands of anti-aircraft missiles from the first months of war, including even “risky” shoulder-held manpads, which have enabled it to clear the skies of Russian warplanes, and later even modern anti-missile systems, in the case of Syria the US placed CIA agents on the Turkish and Jordanian borders from 2012 onwards to prevent regional states from sending anti-aircraft weapons to the Syrian rebels. This is in a war that had overwhelmingly become a murderous air war launched by the Assad regime against its rebellious populations. This prohibition on anti-aircraft weaponry continued throughout the entire war, and is arguably one of the most decisive causes of Assad’s victory.

Even the light arms the US did eventually allow to get to the rebels were, quite deliberately, far too few to change the balance in their conflict with Assad, and were therefore aimed primarily at co-optation; they eventually came with a price, namely that the US demanded the rebels it armed only use the arms to fight ISIS as part of the US “war on terror” in Syria, and quit the fight against the Assad regime. Of course the Syrian rebels were happy to fight ISIS, which they had already been doing on a large scale with no US support, but they refused to drop the fight against the regime, which was not only the main enemy, but which they also saw as the cause of the rise of ISIS as a symptom of the murderous Assadist reality.

Furthermore, even if all this meant that a little aid came the rebels way via the US, the strongly pro-Assad position of Israel, as has been well-documented above (and below), meant there was simply never going to be any convincing ‘pro-West’ orientation within the Syrian rebellion, other than routine appeals, which mostly fell on deaf ears, to alleged western support to democracy and the like.

The main states supporting the Syrian rebels therefore were regional states, in particularly Qatar and Turkey, and for a time Saudi Arabia. Qatar and Turkey throughout this period were also among the strongest supporters of the Palestinian struggle, even if their aims were also a kind of co-optation, as both saw Syria and Palestine as two legs of their regional Muslim Brotherhood-based moderate Islamist strategy (they also supported for example the post-revolution Morsi government in Egypt, until overthrown by the military dictatorship of al-Sisi, who was backed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel and the Assad regime).

As such, the Syrian revolution, whatever guarded vocal western sympathy it may have attracted, was always connected to regional realities, especially given is place within the region-wide upsurge of the Arab Spring.

The case of Iran: ‘Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I’ll give my life for Iran’?

To these contrasting Syrian and Ukrainian cases, we may add the case of the magnificent Iranian ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ (Jin Jiyan Azadî) uprising against the clerical dictatorship which has rocked Iran over the last year since the regime murder of Mahsa Amini, who regime thugs was not wearing her veil properly. On November 14, 250 Jin Jiyan Azadi activists released a statement in solidarity with the Palestinian people resisting Zionist slaughter. This is despite the fact that the regime killing them loudly proclaims its anti-Zionist credentials.

Likewise, from her prison cell, Iranian dissident and Nobel Prize winner, Narges Mohammadi, called for a ceasefire on November 2, denouncing “attacks on innocent people, hostage taking, killing of women, children & non-combatants ,targeting of hospitals, missile strikes on residential areas.”

However, the view of ordinary Iranians and the majority of the protest movement is less clear. On the one hand, like Syrians they are tied into the region in a way that Ukrainians are not; and like Syrians, they have been engaged in revolutionary activity which often opens people to solidarity with other struggling peoples. On the other hand they do not have the immediate connection to Palestine that Syrian people do and hence their main connection is via the discourse of the hated regime. In addition, the Iranian regime has made loud and aggressive-sounding “destroy Israel” noise central to its dominant “revolutionary” discourse for decades (a stand possible due to significant geographic distance from Israel) in a way that poses ‘Iran versus Israel’ as the dominant regional paradigm in popular understanding – despite them never having fought a war – which contrasts sharply with the more demonstratively bogus “anti-Zionism” of the Assad regime.

This has led to a significant degree of cynicism about the regime’s position and often therefore to a reaction against it among ordinary Iranians opposed to the regime. Pro-regime journalist Nasser Imani recently acknowledged that many Iranians “stand against whatever the Islamic Republic favors, and support whatever the Islamic Republic opposes.” We should be cautious in assuming that such stands are necessarily anti-Palestinian rather than simply anti-regime. However, it must be stressed that there is an additional problem in the Iranian case: attempting to ride on the back of the popular upsurge in Iran are a gaggle of supporters of the reactionary Iranian monarchy which was overthrown in 1979, and these pro-Shah forces are explicitly pro-Israel, aiming to revive the Israel-Iran alliance against the Arab world the dominated the decades of 1953-1979. Most of the Iranian protest movement reject any alignment with these monarchist forces, but they may exert a certain insidious influence.

“Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon: I’ll give my life for Iran” was a slogan raised in some earlier episodes of anti-regime uprising in Iran. While this sounds anti-internationalist, and no doubt for many the cynicism of the regime has led to such rejection of solidarity, for others it may more simply indicate rejection of the regime’s use of alleged solidarity with the struggles of those far away to justify its own repression at home. Notably, the regime has used the fog of its supposed Gaza solidarity to execute 176 prisoners in just the two months following October 7. In late November, this included “a Jin Jîyan Azadî protester, a Kurdish political prisoner, a political prisoner from the 1980s and another protester arrested during the mass protests of 2019.”

It is also important to point out that the slogan was first raised not during the current Gaza genocide nor even during the Mahsa Amini uprising since 2022, but during the mass uprising of 2017-18 (Iran has experienced continual periods of civil uprising since the 2009 ‘Green Revolution’). And at that time, the full slogan was “not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran” and “leave Syria, think about us.” This is very important because in calling on the regime to “leave Syria” they were raising an internationalist slogan, as the Iranian regime was directly playing a murderous counterrevolutionary role in aiding the Assad regime’s mass butchery in Syria, so akin to Israel’s Gaza operations. It could not be difficult for Iranian people to associate the regime’s monstrous actual role in Syria with its other symbolic “causes.”

This monstrous regime is no ally. Indeed, Iran has made very clear in any case that it will not come to the aid of Gaza, preferring to ideologically capitalise through the small-scale actions of Lebanese or Yemeni proxies or allies, knowing that any Israeli revenge will fall on them rather than Iran. More generally, the regime has gone out of its way to emphasise it does not want “escalation,” that it had no connection to Hamas’ actions on October 7, that it views attacking civilians negatively (quite a sensational claim for a regime that slaughters its own civilians, and Syrian civilians in huge numbers), and so on – all quite sensible things to say actually, but which also call into question what decades of “resistance” rhetoric were about if the Gaza genocide changes nothing; yet at the same time the regime manages to combine this with occasional bouts of sensationally hollow rhetoric, like its recent “threat” to block the Mediterranean Sea! But if a bloody dictatorship mainly uses someone else’s struggle and suffering to cover up its own killing at home, it is not an ally that the oppressed should ever expect anything of (and if, in an alternative reality, such an oppressive regime did enter the conflict, who would that help?). 

As such, the cynicism of many Iranians towards the regime’s discourse cannot necessarily be dismissed as anti-Palestinian – but in any case, statements such as the one above are important in helping orient the Iranian anti-dictatorship movement. 

Notably, despite Iranian rhetoric, Palestinians’ positive views on Iran remained stuck at around 30 percent in October 2023, no higher than in 2022, in contrast to 63 percent who viewed Iran either somewhat or very negatively, and then rose only to 35 percent by late November in the midst of Israel’s genocidal war.

The absurdity of campism: ‘Camps’ do not exist

A final note: even on its own premises, campism has no logic; as noted above, the alleged ‘camps’ do not exist, and therefore campism is nonsense as well as politically bankrupt. Some rulers who eventually fell out with US imperialism for tactical reasons, such as Milosevic, Assad and Putin, were at other times on excellent terms with it, and extensively collaborated; this even continued at a certain level when relations had soured; and too many states simply cannot be classified as being on any one ‘side’, even assuming these ‘sides’, meaning major powers, are always in conflict, itself a huge fallacy. Let’s consider some examples:

• US ally Israel’s extensive collaboration with Russia in Syria, and more than decade-long Putin-Netanyahu love-fest in particular; Russia, in control of Syria’s air defence system, explicitly allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets for years. Yet Russia and Iran were considered to be in the same ‘camp’ backing Assad.
• Israel’s continually stated preference for Assad to remain in power, something it had in common with its Iranian enemy
• Israel’s past alliance with Serbian chauvinist leader Slobodan Milosevic and Serbian nationalism, when the US verbally opposed Milosevic; Israel was one of the few countries that kept the Bosnian Serb reactionaries armed
• the strong support for the reactionary Russian-backed Assad regime from pro-US reactionary Arab regimes such as Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, who, incidentally, along with Jordan, welcomed the onset of Russian bombing of Syria to save Assad, as did Israel, of course
• the close collaboration of the UAE with Russia and the Wagner paramilitary in a series of imperialist ventures in Africa
• the fact that it is the exact same group of reactionary Arab states – UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Sudan, Jordan – which have been leading Arab rapprochement with both Israel and the Assad regime in the same period
• the close Saudi-Russian relationship in OPEC, which has continually resulted in production cuts, keeping prices high, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite continual US pressure on the Saudis to do the opposite
• the burgeoning Gulf state-China relationship, symbolised by the lavish welcome to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Riyadh followed some months later by China’s sponsorship of the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement
• the fact that China’s Monroe Doctrine-style aggression in the South China Sea has as its main victim Vietnam, the very country that fought US imperialism to a standstill
• the alliance of far-right rulers of sub-imperialist states India and Brazil, Modi and Bolsonaro, with both Russian and US imperialism, and in particular with both Trump and Putin; and the similar position of Hungary’s far-right Orban regime, Putin’s best friend in NATO, which, as an unwavering Israel ally as well, was also one of only four European countries and of 14 countries globally to vote No to the October 27 UN ceasefire vote.

The list is endless; it could make up an entire article, or even book; campism is as false in its own logic as it is morally and politically repugnant. But we will just end this with a note about Palestinian views. Surveys have shown that majorities in countries all over the world sympathise with Ukraine rather than Russia, including in countries throughout the Global South where many of the reactionary elites adopted a pro-Russian or ‘neutralist’ position due to their sub-imperial positioning. I have dealt with this here. Yet Palestinians might be one nation where we could expect the pervasive hypocrisy of western governments to be so overwhelming that a majority may adopt a pro-Russian position simply out of somewhat justified spite. It would be even more understandable given Zelensky’s pro-Israeli statements. Yet in a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in April 2022, the greatest number of Palestinians – 40.2 percent – believed that “Russia is waging an unjust war against its neighbour” (compared to the lower, but still understandably high, figure of 32.3 percent of Palestinians who believed Russia had a right to invade). This demonstrates the humanity of Palestine’s anti-colonial struggle is able to shine through and identify with another victim of colonial dispossession and extermination, despite the pervasive western hypocrisy. Western leftists need to remember that Palestinians are people, not just their ‘project’; they are just as capable as other people of weighing complex issues.