Joint Declaration on the ongoing massacre in the Gaza Strip
PO (Argentina); SEP (Turkey); NAR (Greece); Fuerza 18 (Chile); Agrupación Vilcapaza and MST-P (Perú); Occhio di clase (Italy); Política Revolucionária and Tribuna Classista (Brasil); Okde spartakos (Greece); İnqilabin Sesi (Azerbaijan)
1 The ongoing massacre in the Gaza Strip carried out by the terrorist State of Israel is a qualitative leap in the policy of aggression and ethnic cleansing that it has been carrying out for years against the Palestinian people. As a result of the bombardment and ground invasion, more than 14,000 people have been killed, including thousands of children, according to health authorities in the coastal enclave. One million Palestinians have been forced to evacuate their homes, overcrowding in refugee camps in inhumane conditions. Cutting off power, and access to fuel, drinkable water and food constitutes a conscious policy of carrying out a war crime against the Palestinian people. The aid that has entered the area is almost nonexistent. Israel maintains daily attacks on targets such as mosques, hospitals and schools. The killing has not been limited to Gaza, there have already been over 200 killings in the West Bank carried out by Israeli official or unofficial forces. We are seeing nothing short of a genocide, which is being carried out while being permanently broadcasted in this era of immediate communication. Those of us who stand for ending this oppressive regime are called to act to the maximum of our capabilities to defeat this attempt.
2 The action of the organizations of the Palestine resistance on October 7th was a blow to the policy of the Zionist State of Israel and Western imperialism in the region. We revolutionary Marxists insist on the right of the oppressed to defend themselves. October 7th was the response to the growingly aggressive actions of Israel against the Palestinian population of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, which has put into a crisis the tailing of their leadership to the Oslo agreements and the unfeasible two-state solution. Our support for the Palestinian Resistance, a united front of struggle that includes both clerical and secular nationalist organizations as well as organizations that claim to be Marxist such as the PFLP, does not exclude us from emphatically pointing out that the victory of the Palestinian people depends on the transformation of the current conflict in a revolution that conquers a united, secular and socialist Palestine. Israel’s offensive is not limited to Gaza. The Arab population in Israel, 20% of the total, are legally considered to be “second rate citizens”, and are denied many civil rights, apart from being harassed constantly by the state. In the meantime, in the West Bank, Israel exercises complete control over the movements of Palestinians, as within a ghetto. The Israeli government has handed out, just this year, 27 thousand rifles to the “colonists”, a “civilian” population that receives state support to advance on Palestinian territories, acting as shock troops. Israel maintains over 5 thousand Palestinian political prisoners in subhuman conditions, apart from a de facto occupation of Syrian territory. It is a regime of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion of Palestinians, which acts as the foot soldier of imperialist interests in the region.
3 We categorically deny that the conflict in Palestine could be reduced to a racial or religious problem. The State of Israel was formed illegitimately in 1948, acting as an occupying force against the homes of historic Palestine. During the “Nakba”, the great catastrophe, Israel practiced ethnic cleansing, displacing a million Palestinians by force and murdering thousands. The theft of the land of the Palestinian people through the artificial planting of Israel as a colonial state on their territory has been an enterprise of Anglo-American imperialism, and it would not survive without the systematic deployment of resources and arms from these powers, in exchange for serving as a military and economic outpost in defense of their interests in this strategic region. A united, secular, socialist Palestine, in the context of a socialist federation of the Middle East, can overcome this conflict, integrating Arab and Jewish workers based on respecting the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their land and the expulsion of Zionist/imperialist forces. What will make this possible will be the rebellion of Middle Eastern workers and youth. The rebellion in Iran last year was the best example of this. The rebellion of Iraqi and Lebanese workers and youth who rose up in 2019-20 is another example. From North Africa to Turkey and Kurdistan, the revolutionary potential of workers has demonstrated itself many times. All these uprisings point to the only way of salvation for the oppressed and the workers. The material conditions for a regional wave of socialist revolution exist.
4 The conflict between Palestine and Israel threatens increasingly to become a regional conflict. Israel has bombed Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. The United States has carried out military actions in Syria and has moved two aircraft carriers with their attack groups of ships and airplanes, prepared to join Israel in a regional conflict, pretending to act as a deterrent against any joining in the fight. Turkey moved their fleet, while also maintaining its incursions in northern Syria.
5 Biden has spoken to the US Congress to ask for the vote on a packet of military aid, explaining that their campaign through the armies of Zelensky in Ukraine and Russia, and Netanyahu in the Middle East are keys to what he called a “new world order” that must replace the crisis of the international scene after the fall of the USSR. The strategic character of this action of imperialism, which also includes the increase of naval and military pressure on China, was pointed out by other major players in it. Zelensky has explicitly stated his position of constituting a NATO enclave in Eastern Europe under the concept of consolidating Ukraine as a “Great Israel”. The Ukrainian government has also defended Israel’s “right to defend itself” as it carries out the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. The reactionary character of the Russian invasion of Ukraine cannot be used to hide the unity of the intervention of the forces financed and led by NATO in both areas, a reality that has been made even clearer in the current situation.
6 Demonstrations are being held all over the world against the massacre. Despite several governments taking their alignment with Zionism as an opportunity to regiment and persecute expressions of the revolutionary left and have even forbidden the use of the Palestinian flag, it flies in marches, rallies, and even sporting events. We have started to see working class actions against weapons manufacturers, as in England,Italy, Catalonia or Belgium. Nonetheless, the movement can become even more massive. It is key to align unions with the Palestinian struggle, against the support of the Zionist-imperialist offensive that bourgeois governments support in varying degrees. We promote the broadest possible united front to take to the streets across the world against the massacre in Gaza. Governments aligned with the murderers must feel the ground shaking under their feet.
7 The wars in Ukraine and Palestine are just part of the growing militarism the world is going through. Ever graver capitalist crises are thrust on the masses under the form of exploitation, austerity policies, and the growing military impulse. These are the evidence of the unfeasibility of a social system that generates permanent rebellions and clashes but that can only be resolved through a revolutionary struggle that sweeps away the parasitical social class that is the bourgeoisie and installs the working class in power.
8 While we promote the broadest possible united front for the victory of the Palestinian resistance, we do not cease speaking out against the imperialist war in Ukraine and the reactionary governments of Zelensky and Putin that carry it out. The alignment of a large part of the left, the unions, and other organizations of struggle with one or another reactionary side in this conflict has constituted a leap in the adaptation and integration into the bourgeois state of those who call themselves revolutionary. To face the crises we are living through we need more than ever to recreate the bonds of revolutionary internationalism, class independence, and international solidarity. The enemy of the Russian and Ukrainian people is in their own countries, down with the governments responsible for war on both sides. We stand up to the struggle between workers created by the fratricidal war . We promote against it the international unity of the working class.
9 We reaffirm our demands: Down with the genocidal Zionist state of Israel, stop the crimes against the Palestinian population. For the right to return of the displaced Palestinian population. For a united, secular, and socialist Palestine, as part of a socialist federation of the people of the Middle East.
10 United front to stop the bombing and the Zionist invasion of Gaza. For the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Jerusalem. For an end to the blockade of Gaza and the tearing down of the apartheid walls. Freedom for the Palestinian prisoners. International solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and people.
Take to the streets in every city in defense of the Palestinian cause!
27/11/23