Israel is using the war against Iran to deflect attention from its ongoing genocide in Gaza while simultaneously escalating it. On Tuesday, Gaza’s health authority reported numerous fatalities following an Israeli attack near a distribution centre for humanitarian aid. According to their statements, at least 45 people were killed while waiting for trucks carrying aid supplies. Hundreds more were reportedly injured.

Eyewitnesses who spoke to the German news agency dpa said many people were on foot or in vehicles heading toward a distribution point when they were struck by Israeli artillery fire in an area between the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.

Gaza has been under siege for over 100 days, and now the Israeli government has severed the last fibre-optic connection. “The lifelines to emergency services, humanitarian coordination, and essential information for civilians have all been cut,” a UN communiqué from New York stated.

The real-life consequences of this were made starkly clear in a harrowing speech in Frankfurt/Main on Saturday. Aladin Attala, a software developer from Marburg with Palestinian roots, spoke at a rally organized by the refugee support group Seebrücke (Sea Bridge) on June 14 at Hauptwache in Frankfurt city centre. 

“While the world looks to the events in Iran, Israel is using the silence to continue bombing Gaza undisturbed: an information blackout to commit war crimes in secret,” he said.

Attala described the impact of Israel’s latest move: “Israel has cut off communication: no internet, no phones. I haven’t been able to reach my own family, no sign of life, no message—only the hope that they are still alive.”

“The blockade continues, and so does the destruction,” he continued. He then described the horrific consequences this policy has had for his family and relatives—an ordeal he rightfully called “indescribable and unimaginable.” Yet, he said, “it is bitter reality.” In less than two years, he explained, he has lost more than 70 relatives. He then listed some of those who had been killed:

My father’s aunt, wheelchair-bound and over 94 years old, was killed along with her daughter.

My father’s cousin—killed with his entire family, all children and grandchildren.

My own cousin with his wife and children—only one child survived.

My cousin, her husband, her three children and stepchildren—all wiped out.

My mother’s aunt, her husband, six of their children, their partners and children—all wiped out.

Another cousin—killed with his two children; his pregnant wife survived.

My father’s 60-year-old uncle, with his three daughters, their partners, and all their children—only his wife survived because she had been hospitalized after a previous bombing.

My mother’s 86-year-old uncle, who used crutches, begged his family to leave him behind during their flight so he wouldn’t be a burden. He was executed with a targeted shot to the head.

My cousin—murdered while receiving medical treatment after an airstrike on a hospital.

My grandmother, with whom I lived for years and who is like a second mother to me—she died from a lack of medication.

This pain, this grief—every time someone in your family is killed. You can cry, you can mourn. But the feeling that the survivors are now slowly suffocating, slowly starving, slowly being broken—that feeling is cruel and haunts me day and night. It’s a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone in the world, not even those doing this to us.

Of his closest family members still in Gaza, Attala said: “My family is alive—but how! Without water, without bread, without medicine, without a roof over their heads, without school, without hospital, without hope.”

He then turned to the question of responsibility for this horrific inferno: “The land of ‘Never Again’ [Israel] now stands on trial in The Hague—not as a witness, but as the accused for supporting genocide.”

And Germany? Here, he said, reigns “a so-called policy of state that by definition places itself above morality, law and humanity to legitimize war crimes—war crimes against my own family.”

Attala’s speech was a powerful and justified indictment. He delivered it as part of the Seebrücke rally held under the slogan: “Open the borders—on land, on water, and in our minds,” protesting the brutal deportation policies of the federal coalition government of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD).

There were other reports at the event that touched on deep wounds. A student from Johanna-Tesch School spoke about the deportation of two classmates. Angat (12) and Gunit (12), along with the entire Kapoor family, were deported during the Easter holidays. As Afghan Sikhs, they were summarily deported to India—a country where they know no one. Since then, their classmates have been campaigning for their return through rallies, demonstrations and political lobbying at Frankfurt’s city hall.

However, the Seebrücke rally itself offered no real perspective to push back against these inhumane policies. It was a cry of outrage, a moral appeal that gave voice to widespread indignation—but offered no way forward. Rather, it had the character of yet another futile appeal to the politicians and ruling elites, from whom no one expects insight or compassion anymore.

In its call for the rally, Seebrücke had explicitly urged people to leave “party flags and organizational banners” at home. In doing so, Seebrücke deliberately avoids the class question at a time when—as the actions of the Trump administration show—oligarchs and the super-rich are increasingly seizing control of state power, while a record 120 million people around the world are now displaced.

But to overcome war, genocide, fascism and closed borders, neither fiery appeals nor the martyrdom of brave individuals is enough. What is needed is the unification of the working class on a socialist and international basis—and for that, a Marxist world party is required: the Fourth International.

Across the globe, millions of workers and young people have taken to the streets in protest against the war in Gaza. The central task now is to connect this growing mass movement with the escalating class struggles of the international working class—and to embed the resistance against imperialist war in the broader fight for a socialist world revolution.

That the conditions for this are ripe has been proven most recently by the millions who took to the streets across the United States on that very same day, June 14, 2025, under the slogan: “No Kings.”