Nine years since the massacre of Palestinian citizens of Israel by
the Police
A statement by the Internationalist Socialist
League
Today we commemorate nine
years since the murder of thirteen Palestinian citizens of Israel by the
Israeli oppression forces. This murder was but a link in a long chain of
massacres committed by the Zionist armed forces. They started even before the
establishment of the state of Israel, continued with dozens of massacres during
the establishment of the state of Israel (the most well known is the Dir Yassin Massacre), and after the establishment of the state
of Israel in Qibiya, Kafr Qasim, Land Day, refugee camps Sabra
and Shatila (by Israel's accomplices) and in Gaza
last January when the Israeli army has massacred 1400 Palestinians.
These massacres are not
coincidental but characteristic of the nature of the state of Israel as a
settler colonialist society, which expropriated the natives, robbed them of
their land and property, turning millions of them into refugees.
These massacres will continue and Israel's
wars against the peoples of the region will not stop as long as the state of
Israel – the front post of imperialism in this region – exists. Israel very
much resembles South Africa during Apartheid, former Rhodezia,
and Algeria under colonialist rule. However, it is worse than those countries
because other settler colonialist societies were exploiting the local
super-cheap labor, while the Zionists expelled the majority of the Palestinians
in 1947-8 in order to establish a Jewish majority state and they are willing to
preserve this majority at the cost of oppressed Palestinian lives and the blood
of other peoples in the region. Much like the Crusaders of old, the Zionists
find themselves knee-deep in blood.
Israel's rulers are
capable of committing their crimes because of the political, military,
diplomatic and financial support they get from other imperialist forces,
especially the U.S. and Europe.
The Palestinian people has the right to self-determination in all of its land
from the sea to the river, which includes the right of return to all of the
refugees and their descendants. With the return of the refugees the Palestinian
people will become the majority in occupied Palestine and the Jews will become
a minority. Thus, under the banner of Zionist democracy, the very principles of
democracy are being negated. Unlike them, our demand, among others, is the
establishment of a general assembly which will include all the residents of
Palestine, including the '67 occupied territories, the refugees and their
descendants.
The right of the settler
colonialists to self-determination cannot co-exist with the right of the
Palestinian people to self-determination. One must choose between siding with
the oppressors or the oppressed. The Internationalist Socialist League, which
is the nucleus of a revolutionary working class party in
Israel/Occupies Palestine, has chosen to side with the right of the oppressed
people to self-determination.
We are well aware to the significant
obstacles standing in the way of the victory of the Palestinian people.
Firstly, the state of Israel is very powerful militarily. It is armed with the
most advanced tools of massacre. Secondly, it is massively supported not only
by imperialists but also by Arab rulers who collaborate with the imperialists
so that they could maintain their position in the hierarchy of exploitation and
oppression.
Thirdly, the Palestinian people does not have the appropriate leadership capable of
defeating the Israeli war machine. The Palestinian Authority is collaborating
with Israel against the Palestinian masses. Hamas' leadership, despite its
militant rhetoric, has declared numerous times that it is willing to accept the
'67 borders of Israel and in fact has given up on the Palestinian right of
return. It is forced to fight Israel only because the Israeli rulers are trying
to eliminate it.
In order to save Israel,
the ruling classes of the imperialist states and their minions in the region,
both bourgeois and reformist leaderships, are advocating the establishment of a
Palestinian Bantustan mini-state alongside imperialist Israel.
In order to maintain the
Zionist Apartheid state, distract public opinion from the Gaza massacre and the
incapability of the Israeli war machine to defeat the Lebanese and Palestinian
resistance (in Gaza), the Israeli rulers, supported by other imperialists, are
planning to impose severe sanctions and military action against the 3rd
world country of Iran. A military action could lead to a devastating war in the
region, while the Israeli rulers are hiding safely in the underground bunkers
they dug for themselves, in which they trust to protect them from nuclear
fallout.
We are opposed to
sanctions against Iran. Everything should be done to stop this war. However,
should it break, the interests of the world working class would lie in the
military defeat of the imperialist side and the defense of non-imperialist
Iran. Every military defeat imperialism suffers is a boost to the power of the
world working class. We took this position also during the second War of
Lebanon, the Fatah Israeli-backed offensive against the elected Hamas
government, and during the recent Gaza massacre. Today we see that imperialist
Israel's failures are boosting the hostility of the working class throughout
the world towards the state of Israel.
However, one must
differentiate between siding with oppressed peoples during an imperialist war,
and supporting its bourgeois leadership that will sooner or later betray the
masses. We, as a nucleus of a revolutionary organization of the most conscious
working class, continue our opposition to the entire super-structure of the
Islamic Republic of Iran. This republic was established as a result of a
counter-revolution lead by the Mullahs supported by reformists like the Tudeh party, which abducted the workers' revolution of
1979. We support the masses who fight against this
regime, calling at the recent demonstration of September the 18th (Quds day) in Tehran: "Stop the killings in Iran and
Palestine, Iran has become Palestine." At the same time we do not support Mousavi and his reformist bourgeois partners who are a
non-divisible element of the Islamic republic. In order for the Iranian masses to
win the war planned for them by Israel, their working class must overthrow the
bourgeois state of Iran through a socialist revolution. In order to do that,
the working class must build its own revolutionary leadership.
The working class is a
massive force with a revolutionary interest even when it lacks a revolutionary
leadership. In Egypt the working class has shown a fraction of its strength
during the cotton industry strikes. Today in Iran the working class is
developing a political consciousness molded by the despotic rule of Ahmedinijad. Whenever the state's forces of oppression show
up to break their strikes they respond with the call: "Death to the
dictator!"
We have noticed that trade
unions from South Africa, through England and Greece, to Australia, are
calling, under rank-and-file pressure, to struggle against Israel. The Jewish
workers in Israel, however, support their state even though they are exploited
by it. This is because they are privileged in comparison to the workers of the
region and especially the Palestinians on whose land they had settled. Unlike
workers in other countries, there is no possibility that the Jewish working
class as a whole will develop a revolutionary proletarian consciousness through
economic struggles. However, we are hopeful that a portion of the Jewish
working class will understand that it should side with the Palestinian and the
regional working class, since Israel is nothing but a death-trap to the Jews.
We believe that the only
solution which will grant the Palestinians their right to self-determination, is a working class revolution in the entire
region which would establish a federation of workers' states including a
Palestinian workers' state from the river to the sea. The Jews residing in this
state will enjoy security, the right to advanced Hebrew culture and the freedom
from discrimination. They will not enjoy the right to self-determination which
they will use to establish a new imperialist state.
In order for the working
class to win it must establish revolutionary parties in every country,
organized in a world revolutionary party, i.e. the International. These parties
could only be established through the accumulated political experience of the
working class in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and its minions.
For
humanity to live imperialism must die!
Stop
the U.S./Israeli threats and provocations against Iran, now!
Re-create
the Fourth International – the world party of the socialist revolution!
Imperialists,
out of Iraq and Afghanistan!
For a Palestinian
workers' state from the river to the sea!
For a
socialist federation of the Middle East!
The
only solution is a working class revolution!