Standing in front of her family's burnt-out home in Altadena, a woman said, "now I think I know what it feels like to live in Gaza". She went on to speculate about the difference between these two catastrophes: in Gaza, an entirely "man"-made war and in California, a natural disaster aggravated by human acts.

    California's leaders did very little to prepare for the inevitable. They even made direct cuts to the fire service. During economic crises, public services are always first on the chopping board: in the US, just like in Britain. Politicians were loath to upset the super-wealthy who vote for them, in the richest state in the USA... which, if it was a country, would be the world's 6th largest economy.

    So all that wealth which could have been mobilised to implement preventive measures, was left in the owners' private piggy banks. Those responsible put cost and expediency (and corruption) before safety. There's a parallel with London's Grenfell Tower fire, even if the scale isn't anywhere near comparable.

    And let no-one ask either, whether the vast conurbations of San Francisco and LA, should exist where they are in the first place, given that the whole Californian West Coast is at risk of major earthquakes! Humankind has the knowledge to avoid such catastrophes. But this will never happen under a system based on capitalism's anarchy and "private profit before safety"!

Gaza turned into ashes and rubble

So what about ruined and burnt-out Gaza? At the time of writing a time-frame is being discussed for a cease-fire and captive exchange.

    Fifteen months since this one-sided war on the Palestinians escalated, dozens are still being killed every single day. Of course, there's no credible comparison between California's "most destructive" fire ever - with a death toll (not final) of just 24 - and the carnage in Gaza. The Gazan authorities report 46,600 deaths to date, although the Israeli regime claims this to be an exaggeration.

    Quite the contrary. The Lancet medical journal said the death toll by June 2024 was 41% more (over 64,000), explaining that officials in Gaza cannot identify many of the dead, due to the increasing attrition suffered by the population.

    Anyway, for the Israeli army, everyone is a "justified" target, men, women, children, doctors, nurses, aid workers and in particular, local journalists.

The blood on their hands

Israeli Cabinet Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir say they'll collapse the government if a cease-fire deal is reached. But that would cut the branch they sit on (and ring a political death knell for Netanyahu) so this is most likely an empty threat.

    However, it's precisely this "empty threat" which has prevented a ceasefire up to now. Biden, Starmer, Macron, Scholz, etc., went along with this. Biden could have stopped this war any time he chose. By not doing so, he has allowed the Israeli far-right to dictate an agenda which aims openly at the genocidal annihilation of Gaza's population, so that Israeli settlers can move in.

    Trump's threat that "all hell will break loose" if a hostage release isn't sealed before his inauguration, concentrated minds. Of course, hell already reigns in Gaza, so it's no doubt the hell at home that Biden fears.

    Unlike the Californian wildfires which can be quelled when the wind stops blowing, the quelling of the war in Gaza won't come out of a hostage deal. It depends on the future collective victory of the workers and poor of the whole region against the imperialists and their Israeli proxy, alongside the Palestinians, coming together to build a united socialist states of the peoples of the Middle East...