On October 8, 2023, the Israeli war machine, armed and financed by Washington, launched the first genocide in history to be broadcast live before the eyes of the world. As we enter October 2025, the second year of this open genocide, neighborhoods in Gaza continue to be leveled, hospitals bombed, and children condemned to death and starvation manufactured by human hands. All of this unfolds in full view of the international community, yet the Israeli army continues its massacre without restraint. Every crime of the killers is captured on video; every atrocity is documented; countless human rights organizations and genocide scholars have affirmed that these actions must be named for what they are: genocide. And yet the perpetrators continue to act with total impunity.
How is this possible? Can it be explained solely by the support Israel receives, first and foremost from the United States, and secondarily from the European powers? That is part of the explanation, but only part. Such an analysis would be the result of looking at the picture from a single angle. While we must ask who openly or covertly supports Israel, we must also ask who refuses to support Palestine, who abandons it to stand alone. And here it is worth recalling that today Palestine faces the US–Israeli imperialist axis without the counterweight that once existed in the Soviet Union.
Until the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, an act proclaimed from above without the people’s consent, the USSR, for all its contradictions and hesitations, provided Palestine with diplomatic backing, military training, arms, and above all political legitimacy as a national liberation movement. In short, it acted in a manner consistent with the spirit of proletarian internationalism. The collapse of the USSR was not simply the loss of a single ally for the Palestinian liberation struggle. It was the collapse of an entire global alignment that had restrained Israeli aggression, mobilized the socialist bloc and the Non-Aligned Movement, and blocked imperialist vetoes at the United Nations.
The Emergence and Development of Soviet–PLO Relations
When the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964, Moscow was initially distanced from the movement. At that time, the Soviet leadership still regarded the Palestinian question as essentially a refugee problem. It spoke of the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs,” but avoided recognizing the Palestinians as a nation in their own right.[1] The 1948 Nakba was interpreted primarily as a provocation engineered by Britain and the United States, and Palestinian displacement was treated as a humanitarian issue, not as part of the global anti-imperialist struggle.[2]
Thus, the first approaches of PLO Chairman Ahmad Shukeiri to Moscow were rejected, which drove him to turn toward China for support. Mao regarded the Palestinian cause as a blow that could be struck against imperialism in the Middle East, and therefore did not hesitate to provide arms to the Palestinian guerrillas.[3] At that time, Soviet contacts were confined to Palestinian student, labor, and women’s unions, which were technically part of the PLO but treated as separate entities.[4]
The turning point in Soviet–Palestinian relations came with the 1967 Six-Day War and Yasser Arafat’s secret visit to Moscow in July 1968. By the end of 1969, Alexander Shelepin publicly declared the Palestinian struggle to be a “just anti-imperialist war of national liberation.”[5] This was the first time Moscow recognized Palestinians not merely as “refugees” but as a people in their own right. In 1970, another delegation headed by Arafat traveled to Moscow, but even then the relationship had not yet acquired an official character. The invitation had come from the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee, not from the CPSU or the Soviet government itself.[6] Promises of arms were made, but these deliveries were generally indirect, routed through Syria.[7]
By 1974, however, Soviet policy had reached its most radical stage regarding Palestine: the USSR gave official recognition to the Palestinian state, allowed the opening of an official PLO office in Moscow, and declared the PLO to be the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”[8]
In this way, the USSR provided Palestine with support on three decisive fronts. First was the diplomatic shield: Soviet vetoes at the United Nations and bloc solidarity served to legitimize the PLO internationally. Second was material aid: education, arms, and logistical support flowed through Soviet and allied channels, strengthening Palestine’s military capacity. And third was the ideological framework: Palestine was now defined as part of the global anti-imperialist front, stretching from Vietnam to Angola.[9]
Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination
The radical steps taken by the USSR in 1974 in support of Palestine marked one of the lowest points in its relations with Israel. Yet the decisive step by which the USSR condemned Israel and, more importantly, its founding state doctrine, Zionism, before the eyes of the world came in 1975, at the United Nations.
For the Soviet Union, Zionist Israel was nothing more than an outpost created to serve US imperial ambitions in the Middle East. From its very foundation, the Israeli state functioned as a center of nationalist and anticommunist ideological influence, both within Israel and among Jewish communities across the world. The main target of Zionism was the Arab national liberation movement; its anti-imperialist, democratic character; and its alliance with the socialist community of states. Israel’s aggressive policies, supported above all by the United States and other imperialist powers, repeatedly plunged the Arab region into military conflict and war.
Zionism, adopted as the official state doctrine of Israel, was understood by the USSR and its allies (and remains true to this day) as the chauvinist ideology of the Jewish bourgeoisie—a segment of international monopoly capital—expressed through a vast organizational apparatus and racist, expansionist political practice. Raised to the level of a political program by the Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl, Zionism constructed the idea of the “Jewish community” through a reactionary conception that ignored the class question. Its aim was to divert the Jewish proletariat away from revolutionary class struggle. The so-called “solution to the Jewish Question,” as programmatically formulated at the First Zionist Congress in Basel in August 1897, was envisioned as the creation of a Jewish nation-state on the Arab territory of Palestine. In this way, Zionism from the very beginning subordinated itself to the political, economic, and strategic interests of world imperialism.
The collaboration between Zionists and British imperialism culminated on November 2, 1917, in the Balfour Declaration, named after the British foreign secretary of the time. This declaration legitimized the immigration of Jewish settlers, organized with the backing of Jewish big-capitalist circles, notably the Rothschilds, and promised British support for the creation of a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine. At the Zionist Conference of May 1942, held in New York, the decision was made to establish a Zionist state and raise a Zionist army on the territory of Palestine. From that point, Zionism was fully integrated into the plans of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East.
Thus, the doctrine of the Israeli state, Zionism, analyzed by the USSR in its origins and development, was officially declared by the United Nations General Assembly on November 10, 1975, to be exactly what it was and always had been: “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”[10] Known formally as UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, the vote saw seventy-two countries, including the USSR, the socialist bloc, Cuba, China, Yugoslavia, and North Korea, along with the majority of so-called “Third World countries”, vote in favor. Meanwhile, thirty-five states led by the United States, Britain, France, and West Germany voted against, and thirty-two abstained.
But on December 16, 1991, Resolution 3379 was revoked. What had changed? Had Zionism been misunderstood, as we might conclude from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s 2004 speech?[11] Certainly not. Zionism was not misunderstood. It remained the same chauvinist, racist ideology. What had changed were the times, the conjuncture.
In the 1970s, anticapitalist, antiwar, and antiracist movements had the wind at their backs. The radical protests of 1968 were still fresh in the global consciousness. The Vietnam War, so despised and so widely protested, had just ended in April 1975, with the flight of the last American troops from Saigon and the victory of communist forces. The Fourth Arab–Israeli War, too, another bloody conflict that claimed tens of thousands of lives, had recently ended. National liberation movements such as the PLO were gaining strength and popularity worldwide.
In short, the 1970s were a period when oppressed peoples were not only demanding and fighting for freedom and independence but also winning the sympathy and solidarity of peoples around the world. It was for this reason that seventy-two countries, including all the states building socialism, cast their votes for the resolution recognizing Zionism as a form of racism. They approached reality from the standpoint of what the world’s peoples demanded: a firm stance against war and against racism. Resolution 3379 was indeed a victory over war and racism, specifically over Israel’s wars and Zionist racism. With this resolution, Israel’s actions lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Of course, Zionist ideology could not be destroyed by a declaration alone—and it was not. But it was nevertheless a beginning. For Israel, it marked a profound loss of credibility.
But on December 16, 1991, just ten days before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, the resolution adopted in 1975 was revoked, on the basis of a motion personally submitted by then-US President George H. W. Bush.[12] Among the socialist countries that had previously voted in favor, Cuba opposed its repeal. Vietnam and North Korea likewise registered their opposition. But the USSR, already breathing its last, along with the remaining socialist countries, either voted in favor of Bush’s motion or abstained.
What had happened? Once again, the times had changed. Marx and Marxism had already (and once again) been declared “dead”; communism had supposedly been “defeated” by capitalism; it was “farewell” to the proletariat. The United States, now basking in the laurels it claimed to have “won” from the Cold War, appeared unrivaled. It was the moment for the U.S. to fashion the world in its own image. The antiwar, antiracist, and anticapitalist movements that had marked the 1970s had either faded or been drowned out by the triumphalist shrieks of the capitalist class.
The Palestinian Liberation Struggle Without the Soviets
With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the entire framework of Soviet–PLO relations collapsed. Yeltsin’s capitalist Russia oriented itself toward the West in all areas, including the Middle East. In this new conjuncture, the Palestinians lost their diplomatic shield. Without a Soviet veto, they were compelled to participate in the 1991 Madrid Conference under U.S. sponsorship, subsumed within the Jordanian delegation. The 1993 Oslo Accords were signed entirely under U.S. hegemony.
At the same time, Soviet pipelines of arms and military training dried up. The PLO’s military capacity withered, and its leadership was forced to shift from armed struggle to U.S.-mediated negotiations, bound hand and foot by dependency. Without the USSR, the imperialist narrative successfully reduced Palestine to a mere “territorial dispute” to be “resolved” through bilateral talks, stripping it of its anti-colonial and anti-imperialist meaning.
The collapse of the USSR had a demoralizing and devastating effect on national liberation movements worldwide. As Frederic Jameson observed at the time, “the great revolutionary traditions of Marxism and communism suddenly seemed unavailable.”[13] One of the most far-reaching consequences of this vacuum, felt acutely to this very day, was the rise of Islamic religious fundamentalism, which emerged as the main opponent of Israel’s imperialist policies in the region. Movements such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad filled the void, but without the backing of a superpower, they faced siege and isolation.
As Palestine suffered these and many other losses, Israel rose to a position of near-total impunity. Washington’s monopoly on the veto in the UN Security Council ensured that any resolution against Israel was strangled at birth. Where once Soviet vetoes shielded Palestine, US vetoes now protected Israel from even symbolic criticism. Without Soviet support, Arab governments rushed toward normalization. The 1994 Jordan–Israel peace treaty, the 2020 Abraham Accords, and the de facto cooperation of the Gulf monarchies all testified to how swiftly the region’s regimes aligned themselves under U.S. hegemony.
With the dissolution of the USSR, capitalist Russia pursued a strategy of integration into the US-led imperialist system, radically transforming its policy toward the Middle East. The diplomatic, military, and ideological support once extended to the Palestinian cause during the Soviet period was replaced after 1991 with normalization and rapprochement with Israel.[14] Diplomatic relations were reestablished in 1991 and completed with the opening of embassies in 1992.[15] The “Soviet shield” that had once protected Palestine was now replaced by a Moscow friendly to Tel Aviv.
Throughout the 1990s, Russia deepened its cooperation with Israel in the fields of technology, agriculture, medicine, and particularly in military modernization.[16] This process contributed indirectly to Israel’s war-making capacity, thereby weakening the Palestinian resistance. The bourgeois politicians and leaders in Moscow increasingly defined the Palestinian question not as an independent struggle for national liberation but as merely “a component of the peace process.” This, of course, amounted to submission to the framework imposed by the United States.[17]
This strategic reorientation, an outcome of the counterrevolution that dismantled the USSR and the socialist bloc, not only deprived Palestine of diplomatic support but also undermined its legitimacy before world public opinion. Thus, the possibility of a strong, deterrent counter-voice from Moscow in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza has vanished. The most recent example came only days ago, when Russia signaled its approval of the so-called “Gaza Plan” drafted by Trump and Netanyahu, a plan that seeks to impose the “surrender” of Palestinian resistance.[18]
The Palestinian people, in the post-Soviet era, have thus been forced to pay the price not only of Washington’s unrelenting hostility but also of Moscow’s political defection to the opposing camp—Moscow, which once stood by their side.
A brief glance at the history of resistance movements shows that history speaks plainly: liberation struggles cannot survive without allies capable of confronting imperialism on its own level. We have an example of this in the author’s own country of Turkey. Without the material support of the newly born Soviet Union following the Great October Socialist Revolution, Mustafa Kemal’s pragmatic and feeble anti-imperialism would have stood little chance of defeating the imperialist powers. Similarly, Soviet support, though often cautious, sometimes driven by ulterior motives, and at times disappointing, nonetheless gave Palestine diplomatic space, military capacity, and ideological legitimacy.
Today, in the absence of such support, Palestine is engaged in a desperate struggle for survival against the most militarized settler-colonial state on earth, a war machine financed by the world’s foremost imperial power. The genocide unfolding in Gaza demonstrates that without an anti-imperialist counterweight, genocide is not only possible but can be broadcast openly, live to the world. Rebuilding such a counterweight, a bloc committed not to managing oppression but to abolishing it, cannot be dismissed as “nostalgia.” It is, rather, one of the preconditions of survival.
Notes
[1] Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization (New York: Praeger, 1980), 6.
[2] Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 5–6.
[3] “Weapons and Ideology: Files Reveal How China Armed and Trained the Palestinians,” Haaretz, August 4, 2019.
[4] Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 7.
[5] Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 10–11.
[6] Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 11–12.
[7] Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 9.
[8] Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 14.
[9] Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, 14–15.
[10] United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 3379 (XXX), “Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” November 10, 1975.
[11] Kofi Annan, “L’antisémitisme a été le signe avant-coureur de la discrimination,” Chronique de l’ONU, 2004.
[12] George H. W. Bush, “Address to the 46th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City,” September 23, 1991.
[13] Fredric Jameson, “Five Theses on Actually Existing Marxism,” Monthly Review 47, no. 11 (April 1996).
[14] Ruyard Kazan, “The Israeli–Soviet/Russian Relations,” Lebanese Army National Defense Magazine 48 (2004): 145–47.
[15] Kazan, “The Israeli–Soviet/Russian Relations,” 146.
[16] Kazan, “The Israeli–Soviet/Russian Relations,” 147–48.
[17] Kazan, “The Israeli–Soviet/Russian Relations,” 149.
[18] “Trump’s 20-Point Gaza Plan in Full,” BBC News, October 3, 2025; “Kremlin Says It ‘Supports and Welcomes’ Trump’s Gaza Plan,” Moscow Times, September 30, 2025.