Since March 2, the State of Israel has been carrying out devastating attacks against Lebanon, particularly against the southern region and southern Beirut. There are already more than 3,100 dead, over a million displaced, and many areas in ruins. How far will Israel go?

The Zionist “National Security” Minister Ben-Gvir has already visited other activists kidnapped from flotillas last year; this is not the first time, and he always displays a sadistic pleasure in humiliating them. Some dare to shout “Free Palestine,” which costs them further physical and psychological abuse. That is what was seen just now against an Irish woman, whom Ben-Gvir himself shoved to force her to kneel. The scenes are truly bizarre: 428 people forced to kneel, with their heads on the ground and plastic zip ties tightened around their hands. As part of the torture, they were forced to listen to the Zionist anthem. “Welcome to Israel!” Ben-Gvir sneered. He was mimicking another minister, Transport Minister Miri Regev, who also posted a video on her social media with the image of the hostages from the flotilla in the background. The attempt to reverse the diplomatic crisis and global condemnation—with several countries such as France, Italy, Canada, and the Netherlands announcing they would recall Israeli ambassadors, a gesture of reprimand and a sign of diplomatic discontent—was to present Ben-Gvir as an “extremist,” an exception. Nothing could be further from the truth.

After ten days of being held captive and subjected to torture and abuse at the hands of the genocidal state of Israel, the coordinators of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), Thiago Ávila and Saif Abukeshek, were finally released this week and were able to return to Brazil and Spain, respectively. The crowd that greeted them highlighted the strength of the international mobilization and the relief felt, in Thiago’s words upon his arrival, at the “rectification of a violation.”

How can we defend unconditional support for the Palestinian liberation struggle—including the right to resistance—within the space of bourgeois democracy, especially when the government seeks precisely to suppress that support? The answer lies neither in adapting to the rules of the game nor in an abstract rejection of the legal arena. It is possible—and necessary—to use the very contradictions of bourgeois democracy against it. How can revolutionaries and those in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle use the formal freedoms of bourgeois democracy—freedom of speech, assembly, and the press; due process of law—to defend the right to self-determination, which includes, as the UN itself recognizes, “the struggle by all available means, including armed struggle”? This is the central contradiction we face. On the one hand, liberal democracies have been passing laws that equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, criminalizing BDS, banning slogans like “from the river to the sea,” and persecuting activists. On the other hand, we know that abandoning the legal arena means abandoning the working class and the youth to repression without defense.

A journal for militants and activists who are aware that “without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement.” The theory Lenin was referring to in this famous phrase was Marxism, and the meaning of that statement is that socialist consciousness—that is, ultimately, the consciousness of the need to smash the bourgeois state in order to establish, through revolutionary means, workers’ power over the whole of society (the dictatorship of the proletariat), does not spring up spontaneously among workers; it is not merely a reflection of their material condition or of the class struggle itself that they are inevitably compelled to wage in a class-divided society. That consciousness must be “brought in from outside” the daily confrontation between the classes, and this is what justifies the need to build a revolutionary vanguard party that brings together the most advanced sector of workers and youth emerging from those very struggles.

The national battle over “AI” is sparking a discussion on public ownership, a discussion that reveals the weakness of Democratic reformers and Republican leaders alike regarding the real needs of U.S. working people in the fight against the tech oiligarchs. On June 3, an hour-long meeting was held between Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to discuss the “idea” of transferring a portion of the company to public ownership. The only solution to society’s problems is 100% public ownership under the democratic control of working people. The capitalist class has no interest in “sharing” power with the people whom they intend to exploit or over the destiny of a planet they intend to exploit.

May 20th marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Akın Reçber; the Fourth Red Rose (Turkish: Dördüncü Kızıl Gülü) of May Day 1996, who died on May 20, 1996 as a result of the brutal torture he endured in police custody. Despite the brutal torture, Akın Reçber resisted to the end, and for thirty years his courage and determination have continued to live on in our struggle.