Expand the protests to win the working class and the trade unions for a total boycott of the Zionist Apartheid state! Victory to the Palestinian resistance!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 26 April 2024, www.thecommunists.net
1. A wave of university occupations in protest against Israel’s genocidal war is spreading around the world. Starting from the historic university in Columbia – which played already a key role in the mass protests against America’s Vietnam War in 1968 – protest camps have been created at more than 20 universities in the U.S, among which several are prestigious elite universities. In recent days, students in France, Britain and Australia have joined the movement. University authorities have called the police in order to suppress the protests but without any success. The Tunisian General Union of Students has called on Tunisian university students to likewise organise protests, vigils, and seminars “in support of the Palestinian liberation cause”, and for the establishment of a “national day of solidarity with Palestine in all universities”. It seems that we are – similar to the events in 1968 – at the beginning of a global mass movement of student protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people who are heroically resisting the Zionist aggression.
2. These student protests – which also call for an end of their universities’ collaboration with Israel – mark a new stage in the international pro-Palestine solidarity movement. Soon after the beginning of the war, we stated that this is a historic anti-imperialist mass movement which is of no less relevance than the movement against the Iraq War in 2003 or even that against the Vietnam War in 1968. In the first phase, this movement has been based, on one hand, on workers and popular masses in the Arab and Muslim countries as well as other countries of the Global South, and, on the other hand, on mostly migrant workers, but also some white workers and youth, in Western imperialist countries. The university protests represent a new stage and show that this mass movement is broadening its base and includes even sectors of middle-class youth.
3. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) enthusiastically welcomes this new movement! From the very beginning, we have pointed to the historic meaning of the 7 October and actively participated in the pro-Palestine movement since then. Currently our International Secretary, Michael Pröbsting, is facing a trial in Austria because of so-called “incitement to commit terrorist offenses and approval of terrorist offenses”.
4. We reiterate our position which we have advocated since the beginning of the war. We unconditionally support the heroic Palestinian resistance. Likewise, we fully side with other forces fighting the Israeli or the Western imperialists. In all these conflicts we advocate the military victory of the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian forces and the defeat of the Zionist and imperialist enemies. At the same time, we do not lend any political support to petty-bourgeois Islamist forces like Hamas. We call for the independent organisation of the working class and the oppressed in action committees and armed militias. It is crucial that the popular masses rise up in the Arab countries and bring down the corrupted capitalist regimes which often collaborate with imperialist powers or even with Israel. Workers and poor peasant governments in Arab countries would rally to aid the Palestinian brothers and sisters in order to bring down the Zionist settler state and to help creating a single democratic, secular and socialist Palestine from the River to the Sea with full cultural and religious rights for the Jewish minority.
5. In North America and Western Europe, we advocate mass protests as well as a workers and popular boycott against Israel. We demand an end of any political, financial and military support for Israel. Without the massive financial and military support by Western imperialist powers, Israel could no longer terrorise the Palestinian and other peoples in the Middle East.
6. It is crucial to win trade unions for such boycott actions. It is encouraging that some unions in the U.S. did already state their opposition against Israel’s genocidal war. However, this is not enough. Action must follow the words and the unions must stop weapons deliveries and any trade with the Zionist monster. Likewise, the unions must rally in solidarity with the students and join the pro-Palestine solidarity movement.
7. Furthermore, it is crucial to purge the labour movement from the evil supporters of Israel (e.g. Starmer in the British Labour Party or the Zionist social democrats and ex-Stalinists in Germany). There is no “right to genocide” and there is no right for supporters of such crime to stay in workers and popular mass organisations.
8. The most important task is to build a Revolutionary World Party which fights for such a program in all countries, and which helps to organise the workers and oppressed independent from all bourgeois-reformist as well as petty-bourgeois nationalist or Islamist forces. The RCIT calls revolutionaries to join forces in the struggle for liberation of the Palestinian and all other oppressed peoples!
International Bureau of the RCIT