The class struggle in Israel becomes sharper on a daily basis; people are talking with fear of austerity policies whilst many believe that a serious wave of inflation is about to arrive.

The high costs of living, the price risings of basic consumer goods, the stagnation in the wages system and the fear of international recession – all of these factors, along others, have been causing people to create and find new ways in order to defend and expand their rights.

Of course, neither the Social democrats nor the Stalinists can or want to serve as leadership who'll be able to bring about true, genuine change in the Israeli politics. The Meretz party elected Haim Oron MK, a veteran Leftist with good connections with Israeli capitalists and Rightist politicans, to be its next chairperson. Oron played prominent role in the process of selling the lands of the Kibbutzim to Israeli capitalists.

Lately, under heavy pressure of the workers, the National Labor Federation reached an agreement with the apparel company Begir under which the firm would compensate 296 recently-laid off workers of the Polgat textile factory, a subsidiary of Begir. Under the agreement, Begir will be required to pay an initial round of compensation to workers when the Polgat factory near Kiryat Gat is demolished. The company will also be required to place US $ 600,000 into a trust fund to be used to pay the second installment of compensation.

More recently, The Histadrut Labor Federation and the Coffee Bean chain of coffee shops signed a collective labor agreement, the first of its kind between the union and a restaurant. It ended a long work dispute between employees in Coffee Bean's 14 establishments and management.

Under the terms of the agreement, 10 percent of the coffee chain's annual profits will be granted to its 300 employees; an employee who works for at least a year will receive benefits of between half a salary and a full salary; each employee will receive lunch for the symbolic price of NIS 5; the management is committed to abide by the law and pay transportation fares for employees, or organize transportation during the hours transportation is unavailable.

The agreement was reached after more than a year of struggle within the chain, led by a young comrade of the Communist Youth League in Israel, supported by the Histadrut and other organizations, political ones along NGOs.

Those two examples are nothing but a clear proof that capitalism in Israel, like in any other country, has been facing a severe crisis. But the more interesting fact is that Israeli workers are actually defending themselves. Many workers who had nothing with active politics, or saw the situation as helpless, decided to organize themselves and use their power in order to defend their rights. In the last months, the idea of power to the workers and by the workers was adopted by massive sections of the organized and the unorganized workers in Israel. Many started to help the thousands of refugees who escaped by feet from Sudan and Eritrea to Israel. They're aided not only by the municipality of Tel Aviv city but by many volunteers who saw an urgent need to provide food and basic medications to the survivors who managed to flee from the bloodbath which occurs in their countries.

The decision of Israel's government to evacuate them has been causing a mass protest and frustration amongst many activists and unionists. Many start to feel the sense of international solidarity, the urgency of collaboration of workers in order to improve and save human lives. The ground for socialist agitation has never been more paved and prepared than today. For many Israelis, the only way out of the crisis is a socialist alternative that considers the interests of the poor, of the impoverished masses.

In front of the bloodshed planned by the reactionary governments in Tel Aviv, Gaza, Damascus, Beirut, Washington, London, Paris and Teheran, only the workers can and should play a constitutive role in building a different future with no national wars, with no bloodshed and atrocities committed by one nation against the other. Socialism as political alternative, saved from the nails of Stalinism and reformism, marks the unblemished banner of its only defender, Leon Trotsky, and explains how and under which conditions workers and youth of all countries and nations can be really free.