By Press Release
9 November, 2023
STAND IN SOLIDARITY FOR FREE PALESTINE!
OPPOSE ZIONIST AGGRESSION & GENOCIDAL WAR!
UPHOLD THE RIGHT TO RESISTANCE OF THE PALESTINIANS!
A genocide is unfolding in Gaza, and it is hardly a surprise that the racist Zionist state of Israel executes the first genocide of the twenty twenty-first century. It is also to be remembered that this systematic decimation of Palestinians is politically, materially and immorally supported by its imperialist protector and benefactor in the U.S. and its allies. Well into its Fifth week, this genocide is savage beyond comprehension as Israel aims to commit all possible war crimes that have existed in its arsenal.
The latest massacre by the Israeli state
Over 10,000 civilians have been massacred, with almost half of them being children. White phosphorous-filled bombs charred thousands of bodies. Entire families, consisting of generations, have been wiped out, many of whom, after suffocating for days, were buried alive beneath rubble. Over 50,000 have been injured, and over a million have been displaced in less than a month. Gazan children, who constitute over 50 per cent of the Gazan population, have been massacred with ruthless precision. There is a simple rationale behind this. The Zionists hate nothing more than the next generation of Palestinians who will grow up to dream of a better life and a free Palestine. Israel turns humans into martyrs before they are old enough even to understand the word, and it has been done repeatedly in Gaza, much to the jubilation of the racist Islamophobic Western regimes as well as the authoritarian regimes all around the world. As we speak, over 5,200 pregnant women and over 30,000 babies under six months old have had to resort to drinking contaminated and salty water. Hospitals have no beds and no medical supplies; there is no fuel being allowed as Israel tries to send Gaza to the dark ages, destroying everything the people of Gaza have built since the last war.
Every ounce of the collective will of Palestinians (in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem) to fight for their lands and right to a liberated nation is ravaged and stretched to its limit by Israel’s brutalisation and destruction of Gaza’s people, their lands and the entire society. With the pretext of protecting itself from Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the axis of resistance, Israel has decimated the farms, hospitals, mosques, churches, schools and the entire infrastructure in the hope of eradicating not just the people but the idea of Gaza itself.
The 7th October : A War of Resistance, a Reaction to Zionist Occupation
The Zionists and their propaganda machine, with its global reach, would like us all to suffer from collective amnesia and convince us that this war started on October 7, 2023, the day when the resistance force, under the leadership of Hamas, broke through the Israeli defence. In the melee, scores of army personnel and civilians were killed, and more than 200 military and civilians were taken hostage. While mourning the deaths of innocent civilians in Israel on October 7th, we must always remember that the only political discourse that has remained for Palestinians in their quest for liberation is armed struggle. The great march of return that people of Gaza carried out in 2019 was an exemplary example of non-violent civil disobedience. Citizens of Gaza marched towards the fences opposing the existence of open air prison in which they were confined for decades. They were met with the violent repression in which hundreds of unarmed civilians were shot above waist by sniper fire.
In 2004, when two prominent leaders of Hamas called for a truce for a decade, both of them were murdered by IDF forces eliminating any possibility of a truce and subsequent dialogue. It should also always be remembered that as per the U.N. resolution’s most clear articulation, the people of a colonised country have an inalienable right to self determination by all means. Hence viewed in historic totality, the ultimate responsibility of the consequence of action of the resistance forces lies squarely with the Zionist colonisers who have subjugated the Palestinians to the most brutal collective punishment, economic liquidation while simultaneously grabbing their land.
In 1948, when the first mass expulsion of the Palestinians took place, the systematic occupying of the Palestinian homeland started. The genocidal onslaught on Gaza began decades ago. Since 2006, it has taken on more savage forms to punish the people of Gaza for asserting their rights and democratically electing Hamas’s political wing to power with a dream of rebuilding their society on their terms.
Ever since Ariel Sharon pulled Israeli troops out of Gaza in 2006, Israel has imposed the most inhuman system of repression on the entire Gazan population. It does so by denying Gaza’s right to their land, water, and resources and never allowing their economy to be built. Through the politics of de-development, where Gaza’s population was pauperised to the extent that over 70 per cent of the Gazans relied on international aid, Israel has tried to relinquish any hope in the life of Gazans (and, more generally, the entire Palestinian population, including those living in West Bank and East Jerusalem) during the last two decades. There is no hope of dignified employment, no real hope for a sustained education or enjoying the fruits of their agricultural labour.
This system of repression is interspersed with periodic carpet bombing of Gaza’s population, each more savage and brutal than the previous one. In 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead. It was (according to Amnesty International) “22 days of death and destruction” on the people of Gaza. One thousand four hundred civilians died, and thousands were injured. In 2014, Israel destroyed Gaza once again, this time under a different title: “Operation Protective Edge”. The current genocide, which makes these previous massacres pale in comparison, is the 9th act of collective mass terror that Israel has unleashed on the people of Gaza since 2004. The same propaganda game of lies and hate by Israel’s PR machine accompanies every genocide. They try every provocation to break a fragile truce with the resistance forces and civil society of Gaza. Then, any act of armed resistance borne out by the daily humiliation of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem is used as a pretext for butchering the civilian population.
Israeli aggression and genocide fall under war crimes and is punishable under the ICC. Bombing of children, civilians, unarmed combatants, hospitals and places of worship, and health centres intentionally to subdue the occupied nation, destruction of culture and enforced displacement of population, and forced settlements in occupied areas constitute grave war crimes which Israel has been committing, and particularly in this assault, as per the ICC investigator Bensouda who is prosecuting the war crimes against Israel on the petition of PLA.
Thus, it is evident that the ultimate goal of such wars is systematic ethnic cleansing. It is a dual cycle of extreme violence when the phantoms of inhuman segregation of Palestinians accompany silence from bombing and warplanes. Even daily per capita calories allowed in Gaza are restricted. Israel wants Palestinians to starve to death, and whoever remains, it wants to carpet bomb.
The surprise attack by the Palestine liberation forces facing Israel’s war of aggression and its inhuman repression should be seen as a natural response to this context. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated that the war did not happen in the air for no reason and blamed Benjamin Netanyahu as solely responsible for the attack and loss of lives. Even Israel’s opposition leaders blamed Netanyahu for escalating this war.
The role of the rest of the world, including India
Barring Lebanon, most of the Arab states have been watching impotently the resistance offered by the people of Palestine. With the normalisation of relationships with many countries in the Middle East, who have succumbed to the pressure from the US, Israel has tried to shatter the dreams of the Palestinians. This became explicit during the speech of Netanyahu at the UN when he showed the map of the Middle East, which excluded Palestine.
In this terrorist endeavour, the likes of which we have not seen since the Nazi’s atrocities in the second world war, the parasitical economy of Israel is maintained by the billions of dollars of annual spending by the U. S. Congress. Israel also has the unflinching support of the settler states of the past, whose “glory days as colonisers may have been sent to the dustbin of history” but whose pathological racism and Islamophobia runs through their veins. We see such an unhinged Islamophobia in all the leaders of the West, from Rishi Sunak of the U.K. to the leaders of the European former colonial states.
India, which had historically been one of the staunch supporters of the rights of the Palestinians, now maintains one of strongest economic, military and ideological ties with Israel as the formation of Hindu Rashtra via Nazification of the society has much in common with Nazification of Zionist Israel. According to an Al Jazeera report, BJP IT cell and other far-right social media influencers from India are at the forefront of the misinformation campaign against Palestinians. Diplomatically, India pretends to walk on a tightrope as it appears to be trying to balance between its support for Israel and its historical commitment to the Palestinian cause. On October 7th, Modi immediately tweeted condemning the action of the Palestinian resistance forces without ever mentioning the right of Palestinians to their state. As a lackey of U.S. Imperialism and firmly lined up in the axis of racist states, India abstained from voting on a United Nations General Assembly resolution that called for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce” between Israel and Hamas. In fact, India is the only country to abstain from voting; Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka have voted for the resolution.
Historically, Israel has violated twenty-eight resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (which are legally binding on member-nations U.N. Charter, Article 25 (1945). However, its backers, like the USA and its allies, ignore these transgressions. In the present crisis, while leaders and rulers in different countries have either maintained silence or openly supported the Zionists, the common people of different countries have put up a strong solidarity movement in support of the Palestinians, and support has poured in even from some unexpected officials.
At the forefront of global protest are transport workers and dock-workers from several countries, including Belgium and Barcelona in Spain, who have refused to handle the shipments carrying arms to Israel.
Students in Italy occupied Naples Orientale University on 6th November to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to cooperation between their university and all Israeli political, economic and military institutions.
In the US, thousands of people have joined protest marches, which include large participation of students and youths. A significant Jewish population of the USA, whose conscience could take no more of Zionist attacks, also took to the streets to voice their support for the Palestinians. Similar large-scale protests are taking place in Paris, Dusseldorf and Berlin in Germany, London, Bucharest in Romania, Milan, Italy and several other places in Europe. In India, too, we have seen people coming out in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
Stand in Solidarity with people’s right to self-determination
Palestinians are subjected to everyday humiliation and harassment at the hands of the Zionists and have to depend on aid for their living in the West Bank. Palestinians refuse to surrender or listen to the imperialist forces and their cronies into how they should articulate their demands for a state. They demand it on their terms and press for the sovereign right to their lands! Their courage and their martyrdom constitute a glorious chapter in human history about how to never surrender in the face of absolute evil.
So, the civil and democratic rights activists must uphold the act of resistance for freedom and should remember what American Civil Rights campaigner Malcolm X once said: “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom” – Malcolm X, an American civil rights campaigner.
CPDR-TN firmly believes in the inalienable rights to self-determination of the oppressed nationalities. Hence, CPDR-TN salutes the Palestinian struggle for liberation and their resolve to establish their rights over their land.
CPDR-TN demands :
- Immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli armed combatants.
- Providing food, medicines and other aid to the Palestinians in Gaza.
- Prosecute Israel for war crimes and its political head Netanyahu, be held responsible for the genocidal war.
- All Israeli settlements to be dismantled from the West Bank area where the settlers joined Israeli genocidal forces to combat the Palestinians.
- CPDR-TN calls upon all democratic-minded individuals and groups to join hands in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinians and urges them to resolve and carry on a democratic struggle against all sectarian and authoritarian forces.