In October, soon after the Hamas attack and as Israel’s genocidal attack was becoming apparent, we issued a strong statement of support for Palestine and of denunciation of the impending “genocidal repression,” while also making a few political critiques of Hamas as a form of rightwing nationalism, here https://imhojournal.org/articles/the-middle-east-and-the-world-after-october-7-and-israels-war-on-palestine/

Last week, we issued a more comprehensive analysis of the genocide in both Gaza and Ukraine, making similar points, here in our broader semi-annual Convention Call https://imhojournal.org/articles/from-the-genocide-in-palestine-and-ukraine-to-the-fascist-threat-working-toward-a-revolutionary-marxist-humanist-organizational-response/

We also note that we changed our Constitution in 2020 to include stronger language in support of Palestine: “We continue to oppose Israel’s oppressive policies against the Palestinians and strongly support the right of Palestinians to an independent and territorially viable state. At the same time, we oppose all forms of anti-Semitism and support the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.”  Full text here: https://imhojournal.org/about/

These represent an evolution of our position, though based solidly in Raya Dunayevskaya’s Marxist-Humanism as reinterpreted for today and in light of her own evolution to where, near the end of her life, in 1982, she referred to Israel’s Lebanon invasion as “genocidal.” https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/news-and-letters/1980s/1982-10.pdf

Unfortunately, some who espouse the Dunayevskaya Marxist-Humanist tradition have failed woefully to meet the moment, clinging to a type of both-sidesism that bizarrely equates Hamas with the genocidal, nuclearly-armed, and U.S.-backed State of Israel.

One of these groups, News and Letters Committees, issued an attack on our position along these lines, almost immediately after we issued it back in October: https://newsandletters.org/israels-war-and-hamas-attack-stoke-retrogression/

A second group, the Marxist-Humanist Initiative, published a similar attack on our position, here https://marxisthumanistinitiative.org/international-news/imho-tail-ends-hamas-abandons-marxist-humanist-philosophy.html

We actually welcome these attacks, as they will clarify to the public and the current generation of revolutionaries that the International Marxist-Humanist Organization supports the Palestinian resistance and condemns the genocide unequivocally, while avoiding a type of both-sidesism that ends up relativizing Israel’s descent into another genocidal war and into a neofascist regime at home.