Zionist Israel Slaughters 800 Palestinians with U.S. Agreement
Mobilize Against Israeli Genocide in Gaza!
End All U.S. Aid to Israel!
For a Democratic Secular Palestine with the Right to Return!
A Socialist Action Statement
(socialistaction.org 510-268-9429 • 415-401-7471 socialistaction@gmail.com)
Since it withdrew its occupation of Gaza, the Zionist rulers of Israel have maintained it as an open-air prison and most of the time as a shooting gallery. Now they have made it an extermination camp. As of January 8, 2009 the world has witnessed the premeditated slaughter of almost 800 Palestinians, with no end in sight. Another 2,200 have been wounded. The world witnesses this genocide in horror, and especially the Arab masses, who deeply solidarize with the Palestinians. Millions have taken to the streets in outraged protest in virtually every nation on earth.
The Palestinian people have been relegated to the status of vermin in their own land by the Zionist colonizers and their U.S. imperialist backers. In the Zionist treatment of the Palestinians the Arab masses recognize the contempt that the imperialists have for them, and the sight of it rubs salt in their wounds. They have suffered this bitterness and have harbored a justifiable hatred for their oppressors for decades without finding an effective outlet. Today their outrage can only become deeper; in time it will eventually overwhelm the neo-colonialist rulers of their own countries, who connive with the Zionists and the imperialists.
The hopelessness to which the Zionist colonization condemns the Palestinians mirrors the hopelessness of all the Arab and Muslim peoples and all Third-World peoples suffering under economic domination and exploitation. Egypt, by far the largest Arab state, in particular seethes with such frustration, both because of the collaboration of its brutal dictatorial rulers with imperialism and the failure of the promises that the road out of poverty would be opened by cooperation with world capitalism’s economic overlords in the so-called Infitah (open door policy), that paralleled the Camp David political capitulation to Israel.
Egypt, the only Arab state to border on Gaza, is openly collaborating with the ongoing Zionist massacre. The international press has reported that Egyptian border guards are firing on Palestinians trying to flee. That is a violation of a fundamental human right, the right of flight, the right of refugees to international protection. Paradoxically, the Zionists’ real objective is to drive out the Palestinians, but they want to crush them first. Palestinians will fight to stay in their country, to hold onto to their land, to resist the Zionist colonizers. But some may want to flee to save their lives or the lives of their children. If they want to, they have that right. Egypt could immediately end the Zionist economic siege of Gaza. It need only open the border. Egypt’s action goes beyond capitulation to Zionism; it is active collaboration with it. Israel’s present campaign is the greatest slaughter of Palestinians since the 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese fascists with the open complicity of the Israeli army. That is the measure of the challenge today. Can world public opinion allow such a massacre to go on in the full view of the world’s peoples? If it does, that will be a grave setback for the advance of civilization.
On November 4 the “truce” between the Hamas government and Israel expired, but not before Israeli bombs took the lives of dozens more Palestinians. The isolated shelling response of a handful of Palestinian militants, which killed few, if any, Israelis, was used by Israeli, the world’s fourth greatest military power, to launch the present genocidal bombing and invasion. Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared this will be “a war to the bitter end.”
Humanity is one. If one section of humanity is subjected to torture, all of humanity suffer, all humanity is endangered. It is time for all people of good will to rise to the defense of the beleaguered people of Gaza. They can force their governments to pressure Israel to end its siege, occupation and war. Israeli is and has always been a racist Zionist colonial settler state. It was established in 1948 with imperialist agreement by the physical removal of the Palestinian people from historic Palestine. Shortly after the original “partition,” which divided Palestine in roughly two parts, the imperialist-armed Zionist army organized a war to destroy hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages in order to occupy additional portions of Palestine. What remains today is less than 20 percent of the original homeland to millions, the majority of whom today live in exile and constitute the largest refugee population in the world.
Socialist Action has never recognized the legitimacy of the Zionist State of Israel just as we reject extending any legitimacy to nations conquered, occupied and governed by imperialist colonizers anywhere in the world, past and present. We unconditionally support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, that is, to a democratic secular Palestine to be constituted on the original Palestinian lands and with the right of all Palestinians to return. Socialist Action simultaneously struggles for a socialist federation of the Middle East and for a socialist Palestine, where Arabs, Muslims, Jews and all others can live at peace in an egalitarian society free from capitalist profit and exploitation We demand: • The immediate end to U.S. military, economic and political aid to Israel! • Immediate withdrawal all U.S. military installations and equipment from Israel! • The immediate severance of all relations with Israel!
Save the Date! Mass Antiwar Mobilization! All Out March 21 in San Francisco (Civic Center 11 am) and Washington, D.C.! Bring the Troops Home Now from Iraq and Afghanistan! No U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine! End All U.S. Aid to Israel! Money for Jobs, Health Care, Pensions and Education Not for Corporate Bailouts!