The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka is holding a public meeting on Thursday at 3 p.m. at the Colombo Public Library Auditorium entitled “Ukraine war and how to stop it.”

The meeting has assumed an added urgency amid the Israeli Zionist regime’s mounting genocidal war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

We urge workers, youth and students to attend this event to oppose the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the imperialist-backed onslaught against the Palestinians. The meeting will discuss the necessity of building an international anti-war movement of the working class and youth to prevent the eruption of a catastrophic world war.

The IYSSE condemns the brutal war on Gaza after the mass Palestinian uprising against the decades-long Israeli occupation. We solidarise ourselves with the millions of people throughout the world who have joined protests to oppose the Israeli war and defend the Palestinians.

After continuous bombardment of Gaza over the past 10 days, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza as the Israeli army prepares to invade the small strip of land and commit savagery not heard of since the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

So far, at least 3,000 people, including children, elders and women, have been slaughtered by relentless Israeli bombardment. Thousands have been injured. More than two million people have been deprived of the essentials of life including water, food electricity and medicine as a result of the Israeli siege.

The main prop of the reactionary Zionist state, US imperialism, has fully backed the war, with Biden unequivocally declaring: “We stand with Israel. The Pentagon has sent two massive aircraft carriers and their strike groups to the region. The European imperialist powers have joined Washington in denouncing the “terrorism” of Hamas and is fully backing the murderous Israeli assault on Gaza.

The imperialist powers have carried out numerous war crimes and atrocities in this and previous centuries. The US and European powers backed the formation of the Zionist state 75 years ago through the occupation of Palestine and the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Past decades saw innumerable bombardments on these people killing and injuring thousands.

For the imperialist powers, “terrorism” means the resistance of Palestinian people to bloody oppression by Israel’s Zionist regime.

Imperialist lackeys, such as the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ranil Wickremesinghe in Sri Lanka, have lined up behind the Israeli onslaught.

We oppose the reactionary “two state solution”—that is, a Palestinian statelet alongside and dominated by Israel—and advance a unified socialist state of Jewish and Arab workers, as part of the broader struggle for socialism throughout the Middle East and internationally.

The WSWS International Editorial Board explained in its statement of October 12: “The Israeli onslaught on Gaza must be seen in the context of the escalating US-NATO war against Russia, the initial stage of world war. The imperialist redivision of the world will assume the form not just of conflicts between countries, but an ever more direct and violent war against masses of people. The ruling elites in all the capitalist countries, moreover, face an intersecting series of economic, social and political crises which they are seeking to divert through an explosion of military violence.”

Once again, facing an ever deepening world capitalist crisis, the imperialist powers have turned to plundering the planet, redividing it among themselves and threatening a catastrophic Third World War between nuclear-armed nations. At the center of this global capitalist crisis is US imperialism, which, in its historic decline, is resorting to military means to reassert its global dominance.

Washington along with its European allies deliberately provoked the war in Ukraine. The US aims to subjugate Russia and plunder its enormous natural resources. The Ukraine war has cost the lives of more than 200,000 soldiers and many more civilians, and devastated cities and villages. However, the US is relentlessly escalating the war regardless of how many more lives will be lost.

At the same time, the US is intensifying its preparations for war against China, strengthening its military alliances throughout the region and provocatively goading Beijing into a war over Taiwan.

The working class internationally is being forced to bear the burdens of war and the worsening global crisis of capitalism. In response, the class struggle is on the rise around the world and opposition among workers and youth is growing to the danger of world war. Millions of people have joined protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, defying government threats and ferocious denunciations by the ruling classes.

This growing opposition to war must be developed into a conscious global movement of workers and youth based on socialist internationalism. The only social force that can end the Ukraine and Gaza wars and halt the plunge towards a global nuclear catastrophe is the international working class. The IYSSE, alongside the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its sections—the Socialist Equality Parties—is fighting to build such an anti-war movement.

The IYSSE calls workers and youth, particularly in Sri Lanka and South Asia, to organise mass protests and strikes against the Israeli war in Gaza and US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine based on the following demands:

• Stop Israel’s imperialist-backed military onslaught on Gaza!
• For the unity of Jewish, Palestinian and Arab workers!
• Stop the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine!
• End all US and European support for the genocidal war in Gaza!

We urge workers and youth to attend our anti-war public meeting at Colombo Public Library Auditorium at 3 p.m. on October 19 to discuss how to take forward this political fight.