Immediate disengagement of Greece from Israel’s barbaric war, which is waged against the Palestinian people with the support of the US and the EU
1. The whole world is shocked by Israel’s brutal murderous attack on Gaza, which has already caused a terrible number of deaths and injuries, including thousands of children, as entire areas are being razed to the ground. This is a crime against humanity, a massacre that has nothing to do with Israel’s ‘self-defence’. Throughout time, it is the State of Israel, with its expansion and settlements, its walls and repression, its occupation and its apartheid regime within itself, that is on the offensive against the Palestinian people. The Palestinian militants who are resisting the occupation and the ethnic cleansing that Israel is attempting are not terrorists. For all the suffering that plagues the peoples of the region, the cause lies precisely in this role of the State of Israel and in the full support of the imperialist centres of the USA and the EU, which are complicit in the massacre!
2. The new dramatic phase of Israel’s total war against Gaza, the “biggest prison in the world” and against the Palestinians as a whole, is taking place in the midst of intense capitalist antagonisms and while the plans of the bourgeoisie and the imperialist centres in the region are being promoted. There has been a promotion of Israel’s cooperation with reactionary Arab regimes for energy routes and economic relations. In this context, it is sought to bury the Palestinians and their rights forever, to clear the field of the ever-annoying Palestinian resistance and the unfulfilled goals of the Middle East “hellhounds”. In these circumstances, the Zionist regime, facing a multifaceted crisis as it turns into a reactionary racist state, wants to push ahead with its plans to “cleanse” Gaza by crushing the resistance and expelling as many of its 2.3 million inhabitants as possible.
But against it, it finds the Palestinian resistance!
3. This development is linked to the general intensification of capitalist antagonisms and capitalist wars, which are breaking out from Ukraine to the Middle East and Africa. The US and the EU are supporting Israel in every way not only because the state which murders ruthlessly is the partner of the Euro-Atlantic imperialist bloc in the region, but also because they see an opportunity to limit or even decisively damage the interests and positions of their competitors, such as Iran (and its access to Syria and Lebanon), Russia, China, etc. This direction was made clear in Biden’s speech when he called for new exorbitant funds to counter Hamas, Russia, China, etc. It is precisely for this reason that there is a serious danger of the spread of the war conflict for the interests of capital and the imperialist centres.
4. The Greek government, with the consent of SYRIZA, PASOK, the fascist and neo-nazi parties, stands by Israel in its criminal policy. Mitsotakis’ visit to Israel and the meeting with the bloodthirsty right-wing extremist Netanyahu was a disgrace when a few kilometres to the south the Israeli army was killing women and children. The government went so far as to abstain on a UN resolution for a ceasefire and the opening of humanitarian corridors! The NATO bases at Souda, Elefsina and Anchialos are already in the service of Israel, as is Alexandroupolis for Ukraine. New Democracy makes it clear that it will give any other base requested! The frigate “Psara” is on a NATO mission, in cooperation with the huge American armada supporting Israel. Two other Greek frigates are patrolling the area. The involvement of the Greek state in Israel’s unjust war is constantly growing. Not only is it a challenge to the pro-peace sentiments of our people, who stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, but it is also extremely dangerous. Today the government is interested in how to erect walls to the refugees from Palestine.
Support for Israel is an expression of the Greek bourgeoisie’s choice to claim an expanded piece of the spoils of the economic resources and energy routes of the South Eastern Mediterranean through the EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zones) and other agreements, creating the aggressive Greece-Israel-Egypt-Cyprus axis and playing the role of the “good soldier” of the US/NATO and EU in the region. This policy has been served by all the governments of ND, PASOK and SYRIZA, with the SYRIZA-ANEL government laying the foundations of the axis with Israel. This policy, which exacerbates the unjust and dangerous bourgeois rivalry with Turkey on both sides, does not hesitate to support crimes as great as Israel’s. The Greek ruling class exploits the Greek-Turkish antagonism to justify its participation in the “western axis”, to present the US-NATO and the EU as a support for its aspirations, to present the Palestinian resistance as “allies of Turkey”, in order to stop the huge wave of solidarity within the Greek people.
This is why the struggle against Greek involvement and complicity in the massacre in Palestine, in favour of the struggle of the Palestinian people, is also a struggle against capitalist interests and antagonisms, against imperialist plans, in favour of friendship and cooperation between peoples, not armaments and wars for EEZ and energy sharing.
5. We stand with respect and pain towards the drama of the Palestinian people. We clench our fist and draw strength from the heroic and indomitable Palestinian resistance. We stand alongside especially to the class, anti-imperialist and left forces that are fighting the battle for the full liberation, national and social, of the workers and oppressed people of Palestine. We salute and we are inspired by the millions of demonstrators who took to the streets around the world in support of Palestine, despite the bans and the massive pro-Israel propaganda. The militant mobilizations of Jews in the US, Israel and elsewhere against the occupation and the apartheid regime underscore that the conflict is not religious or racial. Peoples are not opposed to Jews, Muslims, Christians, members of another ethnicity. These divisions are promoted by the capital to hide the real enemies of the peoples: Capitalism, racism, war, fascism. We reject the accusations of “anti-Semitism”. The movement is fighting against the barbaric policy of the State of Israel, which 80 years later is copying Nazi methods against the Jews and dreaming of a “final solution” against the Palestinians.
The struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom is non-negotiable. The Palestinians have the right to have their own state, on their historic lands, with the return of millions of refugees. Not a patronised state consisting of ghettos of settlements, as the Oslo Accords said. The denial of this right, as parts of the European left, including DIEM25-MERA25, are doing, constitutes an acceptance of the Israeli state’s fait accompli of occupation, decisively undermining the Palestinian struggle.
6. Today it is imperative to intensify the mobilizations to stop the crime in Gaza, to prevent any extension of the war, for freedom for the Palestinian people. With demonstrations, mobilizations in cities and neighborhoods, events in workplaces, universities, schools etc., with anti-war strike forms, to express not only solidarity with Palestine, but also the demand to block any participation of Greece in the crime.
– Immediate cessation of the murderous military operation and withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
– Freedom for Palestine, victory for the Palestinian resistance.
– Defeat to the war campaign of Israel and its US and EU allies.
– An independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, with Israeli settlements torn up and Palestinian refugees returned. The workers’ and communist movement aims for all the peoples of the region to live together, regardless of ethnic origin and religion, freely and democratically without discrimination, eliminating racism, religious fanaticism, intolerance, imperialism and capitalism.
– Immediate disengagement of Greece from the crime. Abolishment of the axis with Israel. Closure of the US bases, return of the frigates. Break-up of the diplomatic relations with Israel. Recognition of the state of Palestine.
– Greece out of NATO, abolition of US bases, no soldiers outside the borders.
– An open embrace, not walls for war refugees.
