Fight back against Israel’s invasion – victory to the Gaza resistance!

After bombing the city of Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas of the world, for one week the Israeli army went for a ground invasion, starting this Saturday. We call on all socialist and progressive forces to stand in solidarity with the resistance against this murderous and reactionary attack.

Israel’s ground invasion marks an escalation of the violence against the Palestinian people. After a one-sided ceasefire, during which no Israelis where killed by Palestinian forces at the same time as 24 Palestinians where killed by the IDF, and during which Israel continued to worsen conditions in Gaza through the tightening of the economic blockade, Israel had not managed to bring down the democratically elected Hamas-government. Showing no respect for the will of the Palestinian people whatsoever it has now turned Gaza into a nightmarish warzone in an attempt to physically crush the resistance to its occupation.

The result so far has been devastating. When producing this statement close to an official number of 600 Palestinians have been killed and close to 3 000 injured. The real numbers is probably much higher. The IDF has bombed everything – housing areas, mosques, radio stations, drugstores, university buildings and other civilian infrastructure. On Monday the 5th of January a rocket blasted a vegetable market killing 20 and injuring many more. Whole families are repeatedly being wiped out as the high tech-army of the IDF makes use of its American weapons against an almost unarmed population. Add to this Israel’s conscious hindering of food and medical supplies, the rocket strikes against ambulances and the cutting off of electricity and water – and you get the real character of what the head of the Czech government and current chairman of the EU, Mirek Topolanek, shamefully called a “defensive war” – a war directed against all the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

The hypocrisy of the democratic imperialist powers in the West has once again come into full light, as the one after the other refused to take a clear stance against Israel’s attacks. The US has consistently refused to call for a ceasefire and has given tacit support to Israel throughout. In Britain, the government has not adopted the same uncritical line as it held during the Lebanon war – where it shamefully refused to call for a ceasefire – and has insisted there is “no military solution”. Still nothing is being done in reality to prevent Israel from going on with its offensive. Foreign ministers of the European Union government called for an immediate ceasefire “from both sides” – without acknowledging the totally one-sided nature of the ensuing conflict. In fact, it has come to light that these attacks on Gaza were planned five months ago.

The tacit support of the US reflects the simple fact that Israel plays such an important role for American imperialism in the Middle East. It is funded to the tune of billions of dollars in military aid every year and in return it plays the role of America’s ‘watchdog’– a heavily armed, indeed a nuclear, power with military plans and missiles aimed at key targets in Iran, Iraq and Syria. Israel’s role as a guardian for imperialist interests is also the reason why the imperialist powers of the EU refuse to take action. Many of them feed from selling huge quantities of military equipment to Israel, and only recently did the EU struck a new trade agreement with Israel.

Anyone who thinks that Israeli would allow an independent, viable Palestinian state to exist peacefully on its borders should look at how it has treated the Gaza strip in the last eighteen months. Denied any controls of its borders, denied any territorial waters of its own, denied any access to goods or trade, Gaza has been treated by Israel not as an independent state but as an open-air prison. According to Oxfam this blockades have led to a 95% closure rate of the factories in the Gaza-Strip, left 80% of all families living under the poverty line and meant a massive decline in energy availability. At the moment hospitals are operating with emergency generators that are running out of fuel now.

Take action!
We must take action now. We call for demonstrations in solidarity with the people in Gaza and demand that the attacks cease immediately. The siege must be lifted now – Gaza should have control of its own oil, water and food supplies. We must continue to target Israeli embassies around the world with protests and direct action and boycott Israeli goods. Israel is a racist apartheid state just as South Africa used to be: and must be turned into an international pariah.

Though it should not come as a big surprise it is a shame that the reformist leaders of the different Labour movements do not make calls for direct action directed against the occupation and Israel’s war. All progressive forces, and in particular the working class, have an interest in the victory against this racist and murderous apartheid state. We continue to encourage all workers to raise calls on their leaders to act – but also to take action themselves, with or without, and when necessary against, these leaders.

Taking Gaza street by street, house by house, has not proved to be an easy mission for Israel and it is already clear that the Palestinian masses are prepared to fight. While, they can commit terrible massacres and inflict horrendous damage to infrastructure, Israel is ultimately fighting an un-winnable war.

We stand in complete solidarity with the armed resistance against the IDF. We welcome every dead IDF-soldier, every blown up Israeli tank or bulldozer, and every action that hurts the Israeli offensive. A victory for the Palestinian resistance is a victory for all the oppressed, not only in Gaza but all over the world. We have a lot to say about the islamist politics of Hamas – we think they represent a dead end for the Palestinian people – but in the here and now we stand completely by its side in solidarity as its militia bravely fights the IDF in the streets of Gaza. Hamas should encourage further organisation of all those Palestinians willing to fight into militias and self-defence units in order to achieve victory.

We also demand from the Arab regimes, which claim friendship with Palestine but ultimately serve the interests of the United States, to send arms and weapons to the resistance. But most important, we must encourage all workers and oppressed in the Middle East to take mass action in solidarity with Palestine and fight against every regime that refuse to take action against Israel. Also the antiwarmovement in Israel has to take action. It has to make the Israeli state responsible for all problems in the region and side with the Palestinian resistance. In addition to that we call on the Israeli working class movement to take strike action and organise boycotts against military material in order to weaken the murderous Israeli forces.

A nation that oppresses another can never be free. Every act of Israeli aggression will ultimately only strengthen the hand of those, whatever their politics, who are willing to fight the oppressor state. Israel will only have “its security” when its ceases to be Israel: when it ceases to uphold the forced exclusion of five million Palestinian refugees from their homeland, so that the Israelis jews can be a majority in a racist state.

• Victory to the Gaza resistance!
• For an immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli offensive!
• For a secular, socialist state of Palestine for people of all faiths and none!