With an urgent appeal from the Palestinian People's Party and statements from parties and organizations around the world including in Israel, Canada, the USA, Germany, Austria, India, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Venezuela, Greece and elsewhere.
Palestinian Solidarity rally in Qatar -- image via Reddit
In the days since we published Solidarity with the Palestinian People: Red Review Special Edition there have been a number of new statements in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle as the situation in Gaza worsens with relentless Israeli attacks.
These statements help counter the prevailing western propaganda narratives and we are republishing a number of them here.
The Communist Party of Israel:
The crimes of the fascist right-wing Israeli government, aimed at sustaining the occupation, are leading to a regional war. This escalation must be stopped.
In these challenging times, we repeat our unequivocal condemnation of any attack on innocent civilians and call upon all sides to remove civilians from the cycle of violence. We send our condolences to the families of victims of the occupation – Arabs and Jews alike.
The Communist Party of Israel holds Israel’s right-wing fascist government responsible for the intensely dangerous escalation in recent hours, which took the lives of many innocent civilians.
In the past week, settlers backed by the government razed havoc in the occupied territories, desecrating Al-Aqsa and pogroming in the streets of Huwara. Since this morning, we have seen a severe escalation of hostilities that risk turning into a regional war. The threat of such a war was persistently fed by the actions of this right-wing government from its first day.
Today's events indicate the dangerous direction that Netanyahu and his partners in the government are leading the entire region toward. We emphasize that it is impossible to “manage” the conflict or resolve it militarily. There is only one solution – striving to end the occupation and recognizing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their justified demands. Ending the occupation and instating a just peace is the clear interest of both peoples.
The CPI warns that the Netanyahu government is using events to launch a vengeful attack on the Gaza Strip and call upon the international community and neighboring states to intervene immediately to silence the roaring drums of war and initiate a political solution.
The CPI is concerned about possible retaliation actions against Palestinian citizens in Israel, especially those who live in the joint cities and in the unrecognized villages in Al-Naqab/Negev. The latter had already paid a high price for the neglect with which the state treats them. In this reality, the sane forces in Israel, Jews and Arabs alike, must raise a clear voice against any attempt to incite violence against groups or to take the law into their own hands. We must advance joint activities that strive for a normative life without occupation, discrimination, or ethnic superiority. We should strive for peace, equality, and true democracy for all.
Urgent Appeal
To the Left and progressive parties and forces, solidarity movements, and the free people of the world
Palestinian People's Party: Stop the Israeli Occupation's Terrorism and Brutal Aggression against the Palestinian People
In this Urgent Appeal, the Palestinian People’s Party is calling on all the Left and progressive parties and forces, solidarity movements, friends of our people, and the free people of the world, to make timely response and advocate the governments of your countries and their decision-makers, and all international bodies, through demonstrations, protest sit-ins and all possible means, for:
Urgent intervention to stop the war and bloody aggression waged by the Israeli occupation state with all its army and military machinery since last Saturday against our besieged Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli warplanes, battleships and artillery continue their widespread and intense indiscriminate bombardment of residential neighbourhoods and all civilian facilities, including hospitals and health centres, food supplies, places of worship and education, and the medical, service and media teams. It has so far resulted in the killing of more than a thousand Palestinian civilians, and the wounding of more than five thousand others with various injuries, including hundreds in critical conditions. Most of these victims are children, women and elderlies. Entire families have been wiped out. Widespread destruction and devastation have affected a huge number of buildings, facilities and civilian infrastructure, including many suburbs and neighbourhoods that were levelled to the ground. More than 250 thousand people have been displaced as a result of this continuing aggression which is implementing scorched earth policy, genocide and forced displacement of the population. This is in addition to the crime of tightening the siege on more than two million and two hundred thousand people living in the Gaza Strip, cutting off their supplies of water, electricity, fuel, food, medicines, and medical supplies.
While issuing this Urgent Appeal, the Palestinian People’s Party calls upon you and urges you to expose this open and systematic war against our people in all the occupied Palestinian territories - the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem - which Israel is carrying out as an occupying power, with open and explicit incitement and support from the United States. The latter has devoted its military and intelligence capabilities, and its various media means, to mislead the world public opinion about the reality of what is happening in Palestine and the Middle East, and to cover up the war crimes committed by Israel and its terrorist and racist practices against our Palestinian people. We call upon you to act urgently to curb all of Israel’s policies and practices and oblige it to adhere to international laws and conventions to protect human rights, and to implement the UN resolutions.
Palestinian People's Party
12/10/2023
The CPUSA expresses its growing alarm and concern at the horrific violence in Palestine and Israel over the weekend.
We join with the Communist Party of Israel, the Democratic Front for Equality and Peace (Hadash), our fraternal parties in Palestine and other democratic and progressive forces around the world in placing full responsibility on Israel’s government for this weekend’s rapid escalation of military confrontation between Hamas and Israeli forces.
The U.S. government is the main contributor to Israel’s military budget to the tune of $3.3 billion this year alone and also bears responsibility for the escalation. Adding to the danger and the region’s instability, the U.S. continues to broker unprincipled alliances and economic agreements between Israel’s reactionary anti-democratic apartheid-like state on one side, and the right-wing Arab monarchies on the other. The repressive political regimes of these two sets of states mirror one another. Their machinations undercut the Palestinian struggle for human rights and political sovereignty while bolstering U.S. political, economic and military supremacy in the region.
In a joint statement, the CP of Israel and Hadash cite provocations – not reported in mainstream US news sites – during the week leading up to the Hamas attack on Israeli territory.
Since Hamas’s unconscionable attack on Israeli civilians, the Israeli military has killed more than fourteen hundred people in Gaza and cut off food, water, and electricity to more than two million people. As of this writing, in a massive ethnic cleansing, Israel is forcibly displacing more than a million people as it prepares a ground invasion. All of this violates international law, which the Israeli government has done with impunity for decades and with the material and political support of the U.S.
Those killed in Gaza include at least nine Palestinian journalists. Some fifty media offices in Gaza have been destroyed. The National Writers Union—in solidarity with the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate and the International Federation of Journalists—condemns the actions of the Israeli military and its specific assault on the press, which has further undermined the already tenuous transmission of news from the Gaza Strip to the rest of the world.
NWU calls on Western media outlets, especially those based in North America, to cover this war in a factual, unbiased way, and with proper historical context. Too much of the mainstream press has leaned on unconfirmed information and the representations of Israeli military and government officials, to the exclusion of other sources. We know from past experience, including the mistakes of the post-9/11 period, the role that the media can play in manufacturing consent for unjust war.
NWU cautions all journalistic organizations not to repeat those mistakes. We condemn the silencing of and retaliation against Muslim and Arab media workers and those who express critical and dissenting views. No one should feel compelled to justify crimes of war.
On the recent developments in Palestine, the PCTE wants to express its total solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people, who has suffered the occupation of their territory for decades.
We denounce that the current situation is a result of the terrorist policy the State of Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people, with constant land occupations, bombardments to the Palestinian territories, and the preservation of an Apartheid system towards the Palestinian population. All of it is supported and legitimized by their allies, mainly the European Union and the United States.
We denounce the hypocritical stance of the Spanish Government. While it labels the Palestinian resistance as “terrorist”, it is looking away when the State of Israel commits day after day war crimes against the Palestinian people.
We support the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation by all the means at their reach, and we reject the whitewashing campaign presenting the State of Israel as a victim of this situation.
We call to the mobilization to demand:
The end of the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel.
The immediate release of all the Palestinian prisoners and the other political prisoners in Israeli prisons.
The creation of a unified, independent Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem as its capital, the 1967 borders, and the people as the owner of their own land.
The right of all the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, based on the relevant UN resolutions.
The immediate recognition of the Palestinian State
In connection with the escalated events in Palestine and Israel, the Communist Party of Denmark expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people. A people who are oppressed by Israeli imperialism and must live with violence, terror, and war, caused by the Israeli state. Squeezed into ghetto and apartheid-like areas, the Palestinian people have been stripped of their homes and power over their own lives.
That the majority of those in power worldwide are lining up to condemn the Palestinians seems to be the height of hypocrisy and double standards. Where is the condemnation of Israel's systematic persecution and oppression of the Palestinians, whose land is occupied by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers. This has been going on for decades and the Palestinians fighting back is an inevitable consequence. It is forced by the oppression the Palestinian people are subjected to on a daily basis.
The daily terror perpetrated by Israeli soldiers and settlers, the occupation and colonization carried out by Zionist Israel, aims to oppress the entire Palestinian people. This naturally results in resistance from the Palestinians.
The Palestinian people deserve permanent peace. But this cannot happen until the brutal occupation of Palestine is stopped. Only there, peace is a possibility.
The Communist Party of Denmark expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to fight against the occupation and for a dignified life in peace.
Strengthen solidarity with the Palestinian people!
The Communist Party of Canada calls for an immediate ceasefire to the new war unfolding in the Middle East for which the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu bears full responsibility, and for which the people of Gaza and Israel are paying with their lives.
The Israeli government, and its Zionist, expansionist aims has rejected a peaceful and democratic solution which would include the immediate creation of a Palestinian state comprised of the land occupied by Israel since 1967, including the West Bank and Gaza, with the capital in East Jerusalem, and including the right of return of Palestinians in exile, as set out in numerous UN resolutions, including resolution 242.
Instead Israel has forced Palestinians to live in the walled enclave of Gaza, has seized Palestinian land, and Palestinians have been expelled from their homes by police, military and settler mobs. Palestinians have been routinely killed by police and military, incarcerated and tortured, by the authority of consecutive Israeli governments and with the complete support of the US, Canada, and the European Union. These Israeli policies constitute a form of apartheid against the Palestinian people.
With no sign of any political solution that would save the Palestinian people from the genocidal policies of the Israeli government, Hamas has responded with a military action against Israel with the aim of creating a new and more favourable balance of political forces. This is an uprising of a people resisting obliteration.
The UN and the world’s people must urgently demand an immediate ceasefire, a permanent halt to Israel’s apartheid policies, and negotiations leading to the immediate implementation of UN resolution 242 and related resolutions, and the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Communist Party of Canada stands with the Palestinian people who are resisting Zionist expansionism supported by US, Canadian and European imperialism. Israeli civilians, including those who have been killed in this conflict, are being made to pay the costs of the crimes of Zionism, and must also demand an end to this genocide as a first step on the road to peace.
Shamefully, the Canadian government and all parties in Parliament have restated their longstanding policy of full support for the Israeli Zionist government, while falsely accusing people who express solidarity with Palestine of anti-semitism – just weeks after the Canadian Parliament gave two unanimous standing ovations to a fascist veteran of World War II.
We call on the Canadian government to recognize and condemn the genocide underway by the Israeli government, and to demand implementation of the UN resolutions now. This is the road to peace and the survival of the Palestinian people.
Further, we call on all progressive and peace-loving people and organizations in Canada to speak out now against the war and Zionist expansionism which is its cause.
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada
Canadian peace and solidarity groups Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) have both issued urgent appeals for the Trudeau government to demand an end to Israeli attacks on Gaza warning of possible genocide.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREECE: The frigate "Psara" must return to Greece - No involvement of our country in the NATO-USA-Israel massacre in Gaza
The Press Office of the CC of the KKE issued the following statement on the deployment of the Greek frigate "Psara" in the Southeastern Mediterranean:
"The dispatch of the Greek frigate "Psara" —with a crew and security team of more than 200 people in total— to the South-Eastern Mediterranean, to join a NATO force operating in the region, is a very dangerous development, at a time when the conflict in the Middle East is a breath away from further escalation and a generalized military engagement.
The government's pretexts of a "planned exercise" are of no value when the aggressive nature of such missions is a given and when yet another massacre of the Palestinian people is being committed by the State of Israel, with the active support of the US-NATO.
Besides, the government's own leaks, which try to portray the frigate's mission as unrelated to what is happening in the region, state that "no request has been made by NATO" to escort a US aircraft carrier sailing to Israel, suggesting that if it is made, they will accept it.
A few days after the government was celebrating the launching of the first "Belhara" frigate, the true intentions behind such armaments, which are paid dearly by the Greek people ostensibly for the "defence of the country", are clearly shown.
At the same time, there are relentless questions that demand an answer as to whether and how the bases, especially that of Souda, that all Greek governments have granted to the US-NATO forces are being used for the slaughter of the Palestinian people.
We demand:
- The immediate return of the frigate "Psara" to Greece;
- No involvement of our country in the NATO-US-Israel massacre in Gaza;
- Immediate implementation of the unanimous decision of the Greek Parliament in 2015 to recognize the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders.
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) expresses its unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and its right to self-determination in the face of the systematic policy of extermination of the Zionist Israeli regime and the advance of the criminal occupation of its territories.
We reject attempts to label the legitimate right of defense of the Palestinian people as terrorist acts. This narrative only seeks to justify the continuation of the massacre against the Palestinian people and the occupation of their territories by the Israeli regime.
The only party responsible for the escalation of the conflict is the Zionist regime of Israel that - with total impunity - violates the human rights of the Palestinian people; continues with the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands, consolidating the illegal occupation, and keeps thousands of Palestinians in deplorable conditions in prison.
The so-called international community, if it really wants peace in the Middle East, must put pressure on the Israeli regime to cease the occupation, respect the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and immediately release all Palestinian political prisoners.
The PCV stands with the Palestinian people and with the various forms of struggle of their resistance!
Down with the Zionist occupation!
Long live Free Palestine!
Declaration of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Austria (PdA), Vienna, 11 October 2023
In the view of the renewed armed fighting in the Middle East, much is being said in the media about the terrorism of Hamas. Bourgeois politicians are overflowing in their calls for peace and their condemnations of Palestinian aggression.
The truth is that the attack from Gaza against Israel is not out of the blue, but a reaction to decades of Israeli occupation and oppression. The Palestinian people's resistance - including armed resistance - for their liberation is fundamentally legitimate. However, we strongly note that civilians cannot and must not be legitimate targets of military resistance.
There are currently 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Of these prisoners, 33 are women and 170 are children. Many of them without having seen a trial or a lawyer. From the beginning of 2023 until the end of August 2023, the Israeli military killed more than 200 Palestinians. Among the dead are children and young people, such as 20-year-old Mahmoud Abu Sa'an or three-year-old Muhammad Haitham al Tamimi.In addition, there are permanent raids by the Israeli military in the West Bank, the closure of the Gaza Strip, which has been struggling for years with huge supply problems due to the Israeli blockade, illegal settlement construction by Israelis in the West Bank under the protection of the Israeli military and racist harassment and exclusion of Palestinians living in the occupied territories or Israel. Most recently, at the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli head of government Netanyahu showed a map on which Palestine simply did not exist and Israel was expanded accordingly.
The violence against and death of civilians is to be deplored and condemned. However, the violence does not originate in the Palestinian resistance, but is a reaction to the permanent and systematic violence of the Israeli occupation and oppression against the Palestinian people.
Lasting peace in Palestine and Israel is only possible if the Israeli occupation, settlement and expulsion policy is ended. The Party of Labour of Austria demands:
- End the Israeli settlement policy! No to expulsions and annexations!
- Withdrawal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem!
- Withdrawal of the Israeli army from all occupied territories! End the siege and blockade of Gaza!
- Self-determination for the Palestinian people in their own state within the 1967 borders!
- Recognition of the Palestinian refugees' right of return!
- Full civil rights for the Arab population of Israel! An end to repression and discrimination!
- An end to Israeli attacks on Syrian and Lebanese territory!
As we have been explaining for some time now, we have entered a new historical era characterised by the transition to multipolarity, which will push the nations still oppressed by colonialism one after the other to rise up for their independence.
In this particular case, Palestine has so far suffered 75 years of brutal occupation by the Israeli regime, which violates human rights and practices forms of ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination. In the last week alone, the Zionists have killed three Palestinian boys, ravaged holy places and invaded villages with violence against Arab civilians.
We must be aware that a true and lasting peace will only be possible on the basis of the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to build their own state in historic Palestine: this is a struggle for national liberation with which the Communist Party of Switzerland sympathises.
Continuing to support the positions of the Zionist occupier, on the other hand, means fanning the flames, as is, by the way, indicated by the anti-Arab war state declared by the regime in Tel Aviv (supported by the USA and the EU), which has always advocated extending the conflict to Iran as well.
Even more so in such a scenario, the Swiss Confederation should therefore hold fast to its neutrality and avoid an uncritical siding with the US and Israel, and on the contrary offer its good offices to mediate so that the Zionist entity respects UN resolutions, renounces its blockade of Gaza and withdraws from the occupied territories.
Statement of the German Communist Party on the Escalation of Violence between Israel and Palestine
Since October 7, Palestinian armed forces from the Gaza Strip have been attacking Israel. Apparently completely unexpected by the Israeli army, they shelled army positions and Israeli settlements in occupied territory. Rockets hit Israeli towns. In addition, the Palestinians broke the blockade of the Gaza Strip and destroyed Israeli tanks. Civilian casualties occurred in the border area, prisoners were taken and people were abducted.
This offensive is a direct result of decades of aggressive oppression by Israel. This colonial and apartheid policy is characterized by the occupation of Palestinian territory in violation of international law, the destruction of Palestinian villages, and the imprisonment and killing of Palestinians, including many children. All of this has been condemned many times by the UN Security Council. Binding action, however, was prevented by the United States.
Before the Palestinian attack, more than 200 Palestinians were killed this year alone, and more than 1,000 are in administrative detention, meaning they are locked up without trial or access to persecution records. In recent weeks, there has been an increase in attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians. In addition, the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem was attacked.
The Israeli government has since declared a state of war. The Gaza Strip is sealed off and cut off from electricity as well as from all supplies of goods. Over 1,000 tons of bombs have been dropped by the Israeli army in initial waves of attacks on the extremely densely populated area. There are already several hundred dead on both sides.
The Western states, including the German government, immediately sided with the Israeli colonial power. In a joint statement, the governing parties and the CDU speak of "heinous crimes" and "terror justified by nothing" on the part of the Palestinians. The terror of the Israeli occupying power against Palestinians, on the other hand, has generally been condoned in the past.
At the same time, there is a crackdown on Palestinians and their supporters in the FRG. Aid to Palestinian areas is to be "put to the test." Anyone who contradicts the official narrative is silenced with accusations of anti-semitism. For example, Bayrischer Rundfunk and Arte announced that they would no longer commission freelance journalist Malcolm Ohanwe because he had asked critical questions about the cause of the escalation of violence. The CDU is already calling for the deportation of supporters of the Palestinians.
We maintain: The responsibility for the escalation, for the deaths on both sides, lies with the right-wing extremist Israeli government and its apartheid, colonial and occupation policies. The imperialist supporters of this policy, including the German government, are partly responsible. The struggle of the Palestinian people joins the anti-colonial struggles that have increased in the face of changing global balance of power.
This war and this bloodshed can only come to an end if the rights of the Palestinians to their land and to a state are enforced. A political solution is necessary and possible when the Israeli occupation policy comes to an end.
The DKP stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their decades-long struggle.
We declare our solidarity with the peace forces in Israel, especially the CP of Israel, who have the courage to clearly state in this situation that the "criminal occupation policy" of the Israeli government bears full responsibility for the escalation of the situation.
We fully agree with our comrades of the CP of Israel who declare that “today’s events show in what dangerous direction the Netanyahu government and the settlers are leading the entire region, and emphasize once again that there is no way to manage the conflict or resolve it militarily – there is only one solution: strive to end the occupation and recognize the legitimate demands and rights of the Palestinian people. The end of the occupation and the establishment of a just peace are a distinct and common interest of the two peoples in this country”.
Essen, October 9, 2023