IWU-FI. 14 October 2023
Israel has unleashed a new genocidal attack on the Gaza Strip, in what it called Operation #Iron Swords. Warplanes and the Zionist army bombard the Gaza Strip. To date, more than 2,000 Palestinians are estimated dead, 6,500 wounded and more than 340,000 displaced from their homes. This number is growing due to the thousands displaced from northern Gaza. As the hours pass, these numbers will grow.
The magnitude of Israel’s brutal action can be verified because in one week it carried out more than 2,000 bombings with the unloading of nearly 6,000 bombs weighing 4,000 tons (AFP data, EFE AP and Clarín, Argentina).
Netanyahu promised to leave the Gaza Strip, a territory only 43 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide, “in ruins”, telling its captive population to “leave” even though they know they cannot.
The Israeli defence minister boasts: “We have decided to cut off the supply of water, electricity and fuel to Gaza”, in clear violation of international law of war, thus increasing the air, land and sea blockade of Gaza that has been in place since 2007, transforming it into “the world’s largest open-air prison”. 2,300,000 Palestinians live there in overcrowded conditions, surrounded for decades by the army of the Zionist state of Israel. So what is happening would be similar to saying that they would be bombing the concentration camp of Auschwitz or the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. A new racist extermination but now on the Palestinian people.
The scenes are chilling. Gazans, especially children, are being murdered by the barrage of missiles, bombs and sophisticated weapons by Israel Zionists led by the murderous Netanyahu and his so-called “government of national unity”. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) noted that Israeli aircraft attack ambulances and that a high percentage of patients in Gaza City “are children between 10 and 14 years old, this is because most of the wounded are women and children, as they are often in the houses that are bombed,” said Aymar Al Djaronucha, MSF coordinator (12 October 2023, Clarín, Argentina). Zionism’s targets are hospitals, popular neighbourhoods, universities, and power plants—a real humanitarian crisis. Even the UN Secretary-General has denounced the siege on Gaza and called for its lifting.
They have declared “total war” against Palestine, threatening a military invasion, calling up 350,000 reservists. The US imperialism and the European Union support Zionism, among other capitalist governments.
Joe Biden communicated with Netanyahu and confirmed that “Israel will have everything it needs to defend itself”. The US government announced sending ships, fighter planes and a nuclear aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to support Israel’s offensive against the Palestinian people.
Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and the Secretary General of NATO hypocritically said that Israel “has the right to defend itself.” They play Israel as a victim and justify its current genocidal attacks. The Zionist state was formed in 1948 by usurping the historic Palestinian land. Israel is not a “democracy” in the region, as they falsely claim, but has so far pursued a policy of colonisation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing through crimes against humanity.
It is the Palestinian people who have the “right to defend themselves” against these atrocities! This year so far, settlers and the Israeli army have killed 250 Palestinians, among them 44 children. The Zionist regime holds more than 4,500 Palestinian prisoners, many with sentences of 25 to 30 years. Since 1967, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians have passed through Zionist prisons.
Settlers armed and supported by security forces kill and attack Palestinian property, while ethnic cleansing continues unabated. They expel Palestinians and demolish their homes. Israeli settlers, backed by extreme right-wing and ultra-religious organisations, have repeatedly and forcibly entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. The mosque is the third holiest place in the world for Muslims.
This is the background of the Palestinian offensive from Gaza, led by Hamas on 7 October. It was nothing more than a desperate reaction to the weariness of a subjugated person. It was yet another expression of the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves against crime and genocide.
We deplore the death of Israeli civilians, women and children. But who is responsible for this war? It is not Hamas or the Palestinians. It is the Zionist and Apartheid state of Israel which, supported by the USA, oppresses the Palestinian people. This war did not begin on Saturday 7 October with the advance of the Palestinian resistance. It began 75 years ago with the occupation of land and homes by Zionism, supported by the USA. They are responsible for the war and the Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties.
The socialists of the IWU-FI unconditionally support the Palestinian resistance but do not give political support to Hamas and its government in Gaza. We denounce the permanent betrayal of the Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah-PLO, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, from the West Bank. But Hamas is now in the camp of those who confront Zionism. We have big differences because they are a Bourgeois-Islamic current. They support Iran and Qatar and want to replace Israel with a theocratic Palestinian state. We fight for the replacement of apartheid Israel with a single Palestinian state, secular, non-racist and democratic, in the historic territory of Palestine, where Arabs, Jews, Christians and other religions can live together.
Beyond these differences with Hamas, we are all part of the great Palestinian resistance movement. That is why we support it unconditionally and call for international solidarity with it.
Today, more than ever, to defeat Israel’s criminal offensive on Gaza and the Palestinian people, we must take to the streets all over the world to stop the bombing and the genocidal siege of the Gaza Strip. The ultimatum of the Israeli army to withdraw almost one million Palestinians from Northern Gaza, knowing that there are conditions for this, is another sign of its colonial and ethnic cleansing policy. For the Palestinian people, it is a new “Nakba” (catastrophe) as they called the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948 by the foundation of the Zionist state of Israel. Now, there is a serious threat of a new military invasion of Gaza.
In solidarity with the Palestinian people, there have been big mobilisations in Middle Eastern countries, especially in Lebanon. Thousands took to the streets in Tunisia. The same happened in the USA, England, Spain, Turkey, Latin America, and other parts of the world. In Paris, despite the reactionary and racist Macron-banned demos, several thousand demonstrators defied the ban and the repression to express their solidarity with Palestine. At marches in New York to support the Palestinian people, there was a surprising presence of young Jews with signs reading: “Jews against Apartheid”, “Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors against Israeli Apartheid”, “Not in our name”, and “No more weapons for Israel”.
We must redouble this path all over the world. And people must demand from their governments: Break all economic, political and military agreements with Israel. No more arms shipments to Israel and no more US financial and military aid to Israel. That the US fleet be withdrawn from the vicinity of Israel and the Middle East. That the people of the Arab countries, with their mobilisation, demand their governments to support the Palestinian resistance with all that it demands and, especially, from those who have recognised Israel (like Egypt, Morocco or the Arab Emirates), to break off relations now! All solidarity with the Palestinian people!
From the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI), we call for united mobilisations to stop Israel’s genocidal escalation.
Stop the criminal bombing of Gaza! Stop the genocidal encirclement!
Break off relations with Israel!
Release of Palestinian prisoners!
All support to the Palestinian resistance!
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
14 October 2023
