Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (jointly adopted by the International Bureau and the Sections in Russia and Occupied Palestine), 31 October 2023, www.thecommunists.net
1. Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people is provoking mass protests all over the world. Millions of people are demonstrating on the streets demanding an immediate end of the massacre. Even the UN General Assembly felt obliged to adopt a resolution – with an overwhelming majority – for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid for the people in Gaza.
2. In Russia, such protests against Israel’s war of terror are much more limited due to the authoritarian character of the capitalist-bonapartist Putin regime. Since 24 February 2022, when Russian imperialism invaded the Ukraine, it has become even more difficult since the regime has brutally suppressed all forms of public opposition against the war. Furthermore, while the Putin regime tries to utilise the Gaza War to take diplomatic initiatives in order to weaken its Western rivals (and even received a delegation of the Hamas leadership), domestic media don’t show any sympathy for the Palestinian people. This is equally true for the large majority of “left-wing” forces in Russia which have not only failed to defend the Ukraine against the Russian aggression, but which also fail to strongly advocate support for the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist Apartheid state.
3. In face of such conditions, several Anti-Israel riots took place last weekend in Northern Caucasus. According to Russian media report, hundreds of protesters clashed with the police and invaded the international airport of Makhachkala, the capital of the Republic of Dagestan, after it had become known that an airplane from Tel Aviv with Israeli passengers was arriving. They carried Palestinian flags and chanted slogans like “There is no place for child-killers in Dagestan.” Another poster had the Palestinian flag and the words “Palestine, the people of Chechnya and Dagestan are with you.” In the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt, protestors surrounded a hotel after rumors circulated that there would be Israelis. Separately, a Jewish cultural center under construction in the city of Nalchik, the capital of Russia’s Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, was set ablaze. Israel and the Western powers immediately denounced these protests as “anti-semitic” riots and Russian authorities have already arrested 60 people. Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin’s notorious puppet governor in Chechnya, has even threatened that in order to prevent pro-Palestinian protests in the future, law enforcement officers should shoot to kill demonstrators who don’t respond to warning shots. Succumbing to the pressure of bourgeois governments and media, many so-called leftists have adopted this narrative.
4. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) has always sided with the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people against the Israeli Apartheid state. Like in all previous Gaza Wars, we say “Support the Palestinian Resistance! Defeat Israel!” Hence, we advocate the military victory of the resistance led by Hamas without lending political support to the program or all tactics of its leadership. We combine such an approach with a socialist perspective of smashing the Zionist Apartheid state and its replacement by a single Palestinian state from the River to the Sea (with the right of return of all Palestinian refugees as well as full cultural and religious rights for the Jewish minority). Such a state would have a secular and democratic character and should be a workers and poor peasant republic as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. Based on such a revolutionary program, the sections of the RCIT actively participate in the current mass protests in various countries.
5. We strongly oppose the pro-Israeli propaganda to denounce the protests in Northern Caucasus as primarily “anti-semitic”. It is probably true that such reactionary prejudices played a certain role. However, this was not the dominant element. The protests were provoked by the Israeli massacre in Gaza and the slogans chanted were in relation to this genocide. They were mainly directed against symbols resp. citizens of Israel. If these protests were primarily “anti-semitic” – i.e. directed against Jews because of their religion or their ethnicity – why were they not directed against the long-standing Jewish minority living in the region and why now and not before?! It is well-known that the supporters of the Zionist state cynically camouflage their war of terror as a “struggle against a new Holocaust”. It is an outrageous hypocrisy to exploit one of the worst crimes in history to justify an ongoing genocide!
6. It is furthermore crucial to understand that these protests have taken place in a region where some of the most oppressed national minorities in Russia are living. Clearly, the oppressed Muslim masses in Chechnya, in Dagestan and other republics strongly identify with the Palestinian people. They do so not only because of religious ties but also because they themselves suffer from brutal occupation by Russian imperialism. When Chechnya tried to become independent after the collapse of the Stalinist USSR in 1991 (the “Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”), Russia waged two barbarous wars – in 1994-96 as well as in 1999-2009 – which resulted in the killing of about 1/5 of the Chechen population and the displacement of its majority.
7. The RCIT and its section in Russia reiterate our long-standing position of support for the national liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples in Northern Caucasus. We defend the right to separate and to constitute a separate state of all oppressed peoples. Likewise, we also reiterate our support for the just war of national defence of the Ukrainian people against the Russian occupation forces without lending political support to the reactionary Zelensky government.
8. It is utmost cynicism by Putinistas and “left-wing” media to equate the anti-Israel protests of the oppressed masses on Northern Caucasus with the notorious anti-semitic pogroms in Russia’s history conducted by the chauvinist Black Hundred gangs. The former is driven – irrespective of its elementary nature and the role of reactionary prejudice – by the solidarity of oppressed with other oppressed. In contrast, the later was driven by the desire of the worst scum of the ruling (Russian) nation to destroy the oppressed Jewish minority.
9. Refusing the slander of the Anti-Israel riots as primarily “anti-semitic” does not mean that the RCIT would endorse all actions or slogans. Fighting against real “anti-semitism” remains an important element of our struggle. There must be no harassment of people because they are Jews and there must be no attacks on religious institutions (e.g. synagogue) or symbols of the Jews. We call for the formation of workers and popular guards to protect such institutions. Likewise, socialists must undertake an awareness campaign explaining that the enemy are not the Jews but the Zionist state and that there exist many Jews who oppose the Israeli war of terror and who are therefore our allies in the struggle for justice. It is therefore also important to differentiate between Israeli citizens who support the war against Gaza and those who simply want to escape the war (as it might have been the case with some of the Israeli citizens in the flight from Tel Aviv which provoked the riot at the Makhachkala).
10. At the same, we support protests against institutions and symbols representing the Israeli Apartheid state. Likewise, we call for workers and popular boycott against the Zionist state like actions against trade or transport with Israel (like stopping flights to and from Israel). Such actions help to weaken the Zionist state and therefore aid the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people.
International Bureau of the RCIT
Socialist Tendency (RCIT Section in Russia)
Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine)