Support the Palestinian Resistance! For a Workers’ and Popular International Campaign to Boycott Israel! Down with the Regimes which Collaborate with Israel! For a Free, Red Palestine!
Joint Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT-Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), the Communist Left of Australia and the Editor of the Blog vansterparlan.v-blog.se (Sweden), 22.7.2014
1. Israel’s ground offensive marks another escalation in its terrorist campaign against the Palestinian people. Until now, at least 604 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been killed and more than 3,700 have been wounded. This is not a conflict between two religious or national groups. Rather, this is an arch-reactionary war of oppression on the side of the racist apartheid state of Israel and a just war of defense on behalf of the Palestinian people! Democrats and socialists can’t help but enthusiastically support the heroic Palestinian resistance and work for the defeat of Israel.
2. We welcome and participate actively in the global solidarity movement with Palestine. We salute the mass protests in Turkey which justifiably attacked the Israeli embassy. Similar heroic actions were undertaken by the Egyptian masses during the last Gaza war in November 2012. We condemn the French “Socialist” government, which is supported by the “Communist” Party, for outlawing the pro-Palestine mass demonstration on 19 July.
3. We call for the building of a mass international solidarity movement of the working class and the oppressed. We call on the mass organizations of workers’ and popular movements (trade unions, parties etc.) to join the international solidarity campaign for Palestine and to actively engage in boycott actions against all commercial activities with Israel! It should boycott all contacts with Zionist institutions while – at the same time –encouraging close collaboration with all progressive Israeli Jews who protest against the apartheid regime. Such a mass solidarity movement should mobilize to close down Israel’s embassies around the world. Equally such a solidarity movement must work towards ending the military and financial aid for Israel by the imperialist states.
4. We condemn the reactionary Palestinian Administration led by Mahmoud Abbas and the bourgeois-nationalist Fatah party. The Palestinian Administration collaborates with Israel and acts as its agent against the Palestinian people. While we support the just resistance struggle of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad against Israel and its collaborators, we reject their bourgeois Islamist agenda. We also criticize their military tactics which don’t focus on resistance to the Israeli army and armed settlers, but rather target unarmed civilians. The Palestinian workers and poor should be organized by a revolutionary workers’ party which unifies the fight for national liberation with the international struggle for socialist revolution.
5. In the Arab countries as well as in Turkey the mass international solidarity movement should condemn local regimes for their collaboration – open or hidden – with Israel. In particular, we condemn the mass destruction of the tunnels to Gaza by the military dictatorship of General al-Sisi which cut the life line for the people of Gaza. No less, we condemn the intensive economic ties of the Erdogan regime with Israel which have continued for many years. The solidarity movements must force these governments to cut all ties with Israel, close down the Israeli embassies and – in the case of Egypt – immediately open the border crossing in Rafah.
6. The international solidarity movement should combine the struggle against Zionism with the just ongoing popular resistance in Egypt and Syria against the dictatorships of al-Sisi and al-Assad. We condemn the collaboration of the “Communist” parties in both countries with these regimes.
7. We reject the reformist and pro-Zionist “two-state solution” which is promoted by the Fatah leadership as well as by numerous Stalinist, social democratic, and centrist forces both within Israel as well as around the world. Such a pseudo-solution would deny the Palestinians the right of return. Likewise, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be reduced to a Bantustan, a dependent de-facto colony of the much richer and more powerful Israel. Instead we struggle to achieve a single state in the whole of Palestine in which the Palestinians would naturally constitute the majority. All Jews will be welcomed to live in such a state as long as they accept the democratic rights of the Palestinian majority. In short, we fight to replace the State of Israel with a Democratic, Palestinian, Multinational and Socialist Workers and Fallahin Republic from the River to the Sea.
Let us unite under the banner “Defend Gaza! Defeat Israel’s War! For a Free, Red Palestine!”
Signatories:
Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Israel/Occupied Palestine, Brazil, USA and Austria): www.thecommunists.net/
Internationalist Socialist League (RCIT-Section in Israel / Occupied Palestine), http://www.the-isleague.com/
Communist Left of Australia: http://communistleftaustralia.yolasite.com/
Editor of the Blog vansterparlan.v-blog.se (Sweden): http://vansterparlan.v-blog.se