With statements from Communist and workers' parties in Turkey, Swaziland, Iraq, Spain, the Netherlands, Chile, Mexico, Ireland, Sweden, Greece, the USA and elsewhere.
Palestinian solidarity march in New York City, Saturday October 8 -- image via Twitter
While the mainstream media in the west are promoting a propaganda line about the events unfolding in Palestine-Israel that is utterly one-sided and often completely lacking context, a number of left parties and organizations have issued statements that counter this.
Here we republish statements from Communist and workers' parties from around the world as well as selected statements and posts from other figures and groups.
In response to the ongoing violence of the last two days, both Cuba and the People's Republic of China have issued statements calling for a lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israel based on meaningful negotiations and an independent Palestinian state.
No to Imperialist Hypocrisy!: Statements on Palestine-Israel from the PSL, KKE & WFTU
While the mainstream media in the west are promoting a propaganda line about the events unfolding in Palestine-Israel that is utterly one-sided and often completely lacking context, a number of left parties and organizations have issued statements that counter this.
With statements from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Communist Party of Greece and the World Federation of Trade Unions.
The assault by the Palestinians on Israeli settlements this weekend has caught the Israeli security forces off guard and resulted in hundreds killed, many of them unarmed.
The loss of life is extremely sad but it is an unpleasant truth that the violence, while shocking, is a reaction to decades of savage colonial violence by the Israeli state which not only has suppressed Palestinian aspirations for statehood but has regularly terrorised Palestinians on a scale vastly greater than even the violence of the last two days, let alone their aggressive expansionist wars. Together with the slow motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians the cumulative effect of decades of colonial violence has de facto ruled out any possibility of a compromise.
In particular, the crushing suppression of life in Gaza and the wanton murdering of unarmed Palestinian protestors over the last three years has rendered a military action as their only option short of outright capitulation.
The only way out is for a peace that respects the native Palestinians’ right to a sovereign nation. Israel, of course, will only accede to this if forced, i.e., through sheer violence or the withdrawal of support from the West, principally the USA. The West is not yet ready or capable of taking that step and so Israel, safe in the knowledge that the it will be protected no matter what atrocities it carries out, will likely devastate the Palestinians on an even vaster scale than they were hit themselves, perhaps even encompassing mass ethnic cleansing.
It is no solution to revert to the status quo ante as that was simply a state of unending violence imposed on the native Palestinians by Israel. There won’t be peace without justice and nor should there be. And justice demands Palestinian nationhood.
The scenes of resistance coming out of occupied Palestine were only to be expected. Over 240 Palestinians have been murdered by apartheid Israel so far this year, 14 just in just the last month. Repression will always be met with resistance.
For far too long the so-called "free world", including the Irish government, have stood by and allowed the Zionist apartheid failed state of Israel to operate with impunity in its mass and violent repression of the Palestinian people. We are already hearing the mealy-mouthed words of condemnation of the Palestinian resistance. Those same voices have had little to say, and have done even less, regarding the murdering and injuring of hundreds of Palestinians this year.
The Irish state has failed to show any degree of political support for the Palestinian people. Rather, they have followed orders from Brussels and Washington, consistently appeasing and supporting Israel. This government, like many previous Irish Governments, is out of step with the people of Ireland regarding the question of Palestinian freedom. For example, our people have consistently supported the demands of BDS.
The world can no longer stand by and allow Israel to occupy more and more Palestinian lands, to ignore the violence inflected on the Palestinian people by the apartheid Israeli state.
Long live the heroic Palestinian people. Long live their steadfast resistance. Victory is certain.
"No one should act as if they have just discovered the violence in the region", says the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) in a statement about the ongoing war in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.
More specifically, the statement issued by the CC of the TKP reads:
"Following the operation launched against Israel from Gaza yesterday, there is no shortage of propaganda in favor of the Israeli government in the bourgeois media and anti-violence messages of hypocritical imperialist centers and statements of solidarity with Israel are coming one after another.
Stop pretending that this point came suddenly. No one should act as if they have just discovered the violence in the region.
The systematic cruelty and oppression suffered by Palestinians, whose lands are occupied by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers, has continued for decades. Throughout these decades, the Palestinian people have repeatedly faced forced displacement; Those who resisted this were subjected to all kinds of severe violence fueled by racism; Attempts were made to suffocate and destroy a people with land attacks and air attacks.
They failed.
CP of Mexico, On the situation in Palestine (excerpt, translated):
The Communist Party of Mexico reaffirms its solidarity with Palestine, its workers and its people who have been facing Israel's constant aggression for several decades.
Every people facing military intervention has the right to resist, to fight the occupier.
Every day the Palestinian people live between humiliation, repression, and death. It is stripped of its territories, and chained to limited mobility; subject to controls when going to and from work or other activities; in a permanent state of siege, under military surveillance and harassment; and with an economy and resources suffocated by Israeli control.
Of course they can and must rebel, rise up, not submit. And that's what happened a few days ago.
In response, Netanyahu's criminal government announces an all-out war. Bombing actions have begun, claiming civilian lives, many minors, as well as urban infrastructure. Tens of thousands of military personnel are already concentrated with the declared aim of occupying Palestinian population centres, particularly in Gaza. Air strikes are threatened to depopulate cities, terror is unleashed.
Calling resistance terrorism is a permanent strategy of imperialist forces, which seek to ideologically disarm the peoples. Like those positions that hold both sides responsible for an asymmetrical conflict due to the escalation of tension and violence, they are arguments that lack validity. The responsibility for this situation lies entirely with the State of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and the imperialist powers that back it.
The events in Palestine are a result of the oppression that the Palestinian population endures on a daily basis. An outburst of this sort does not come as a bolt from the blue; there is a prehistory to what is happening.
The daily terror inflicted by Israeli soldiers and settlers on the Palestinian population, the occupation and colonization carried out by Zionist Israel against the Palestinian people, and the daily killings and constant torture aimed at suppressing the entire Palestinian population must inevitably fuel resistance. This resistance needs more solidarity, it needs more support. The brutal occupation of Palestine must be broken for peace to be a possibility.
Swedish communists express their support for the Palestinian people's right to struggle against occupation and for a dignified life.
Strengthen the solidarity with the Palestinian people!
Communist Party of Sweden
The brutal Israeli aggression against Gaza is escalating in a hysterical reaction to the bold operation carried out this morning by the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist occupation forces. The toll of this aggression, at the time of preparing this statement, reached 198 martyrs and hundreds of wounded.
The escalation of Palestinian popular resistance came as a legitimate response to the heinous crimes that Netanyahu’s fascist government, the occupation forces and settler gangs continued to commit against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem. These included repeated raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque and attacks on Christian and Islamic sanctities, in which dozens of innocent civilians were killed, including women and children.
Today's developments confirm once again the established fact that there can be no security and stability in the Middle East region except by ending the hateful Israeli occupation, and the Palestinian people obtaining their full legitimate rights to self-determination, freedom, return and independence, and establishing their independent national state with Jerusalem as its capital.
These developments also reaffirm the blatant bias of the United States and its allies towards Israel, their unlimited support for it, and their obstruction of the implementation of UN resolutions, allowing it to continue its occupation and crimes against the Palestinian people. They expose the falsity of the shameful positions of the Arab regimes involved in the humiliating process of “normalization” with Israel, and constitute a strong blow to them.
The Iraqi Communist Party raises its voice in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their valiant popular resistance to the Zionist occupation. It calls on all Iraqi patriotic forces to express their solidarity with this heroic Palestinian struggle, and to provide further support for it. The Party also calls on the Iraqi government to take urgent action at the Arab and international levels, to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, protect them, stop the massacre that the Israeli occupation forces continue to commit against Gaza, and deter it from carrying out more crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Long live the struggle of the Palestinian people and victory to their courageous popular resistance.
The Political Bureau
Iraqi Communist Party
7 October 2023
PRO-PALESTINE activists branded Labour “cowards” today as they condemned Sir Keir Starmer’s “unconditional” support for Israel’s war with Hamas at a protest outside the party’s conference in Liverpool.
They blasted the Labour leader for saying there was “no justification” for the militant group’s surprise attack on Israel, which has killed hundreds on both sides after Israel responded with air strikes on Gaza.
The group from Palestine Action and Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism were supported by pedestrians and tooting motorists as they marched on the conference hall today morning from Liverpool’s Queen Victoria Monument.
At the site, they gagged their mouths in protest against Labour “censoring” the words “end apartheid” from the description of a fringe meeting about Palestine in the conference’s events guide and shouted: “Labour are cowards.”
The Communist Party of Chile and its Young Communists reiterate their strong condemnation of the systematic violations of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
In view of the dramatic events that took place on the seventh of October, which have so far cost the lives of more than 500 victims, we call on us to remember that the Palestinian people are the object of an occupation.
The government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible for the current situation by encouraging its radical management, including action by armed settlers and occupation forces.
We reaffirm our call to the international community to put an end to double talk and to recall that there is an occupying power and a people under occupation, led by the Israeli regime for 75 years, which has resulted in the forcible establishment of a racist system of ethnic cleansing and segregation against the Palestinian people through repression.
The subjugation under an occupation regime that does not respect United Nations resolutions and has turned Gaza into an open-air prison, militarily blockaded in which human rights are violated every day, is the root cause that incites the Palestinian people to rebel against the occupation forces.
The existence of more than five thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails – including children – living under persistent air attacks on the Gaza Strip, as well as the systematic expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, perpetrated under the insufficient reaction of condemnation of the international community, only provoke the intensification of this dramatic conflict.
We call on the international community, invoking our common responsibility for peace and the right of peoples to defend their self-determination and sovereignty, to condemn the acts that cause civilian victims and call to adhere to the precepts of International Law at all times.
The persistent blockade of a negotiated political solution by Israel and its allies violates international resolutions, contributes to this explosive situation and, in effect, has nullified the peace process and prevented the Palestinian people from establishing and living in peace in their own State, ending Israel's occupation.
There will be no solution without an end to the illegal and systematic Israeli occupation of Palestine.
For a free and peaceful Palestine.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHILE
Santiago, Chile, October 7, 2023
“The sole resolution to the conflict lies in the international community ensuring Israel’s
adherence to the UN resolutions regarding occupied territories.”
The Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the Union of Young Communists of Spain (UJCE) strongly reaffirm their support for the Palestinian people and their right to resist.
Recent events on October 7th serve as a stark reminder that Palestine has endured 75 years of harsh occupation by the Israeli regime, marked by ethnic cleansing and the imposition of an apartheid system.
It is a fundamental right and obligation for all oppressed populations to defend themselves, particularly when the occupying force consistently disregards United Nations resolutions. In the case of the Palestinian people, we cannot forget that Gaza represents the world’s largest open-air prison—a blockaded and heavily militarized enclave where the occupier daily violates the basic human rights of Palestinians.
The "state of Israel" systematically engages in acts of violence, with more than 5,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention—many of them enduring permanent administrative incarceration, including minors. Aerial assaults on the Gaza Strip persist, daily fatalities occur in the West Bank, and illegal Israeli settlements continue to expand in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—all this unfolding amid the passive acquiescence and complicity of the “international community.”
Certain entities cynically endeavor to “condemn” and “criminalize” the Palestinian people’s right to resist. These are the same parties that remain silent or extend support in the face of systematic human rights violations that Palestine has endured for 75 years.
Statements like those articulated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, or the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, conveniently omit historical context and constitute an affront to human rights and those who champion them.
As the President of Colombia, Petro, pointed out at the United Nations, it is perplexing how the international community approaches different international conflicts when confronted with similar scenarios of invasion and illegal occupation by a third party.
What holds true for Ukraine should also apply to Palestine.
The international community has forsaken the Palestinian people, who possess the right and responsibility to exercise their right to resistance. The only viable resolution lies in adhering to international law: ending the occupation and the blockade of Gaza, implementing UN Resolution 194/48—which calls for the return of refugees.
The sole resolution to the Palestine-Israel conflict necessitates the international community’s insistence on Israel’s compliance with the numerous resolutions concerning occupied territories, resolutions that have been systematically violated. This entails securing Palestine’s right to sovereignty and independence while promptly initiating a peace process that guarantees the cessation of occupation and respect for international law.
Our solidarity stands firmly with the Palestinian people.
Long live a free Palestine
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