Bulletin No39 Octobre 2023 A deleterious climate
The Palestinian question, which many of the “Great people of this world” wanted to sweep under the carpet and had quite succeeded, has come to us in a brutal way since October 7.
The attitude of those in power, of the media , of most politicians, in France and in what is commonly called the “Western camp” can be summed up as “Silence in the ranks!” Let Israel continue and amplify the massacre of the Palestinians! ". It is repression against all those who defend the Palestinian cause or only try to contextualize the events: banning of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, deprogramming of events of all kinds, shameful assimilation of the assassination of a professor in Arras and the Palestinian cause and arbitrary arrest with a view to expulsion of Mariam Abudaqa, activist of the PFLP and the cause of women.
In this climate of imposed single words, of all-out censorship, we are not only called upon to condemn the action of October 7 and to label its perpetrators as terrorists, but also to renounce supporting the just liberation struggle of the Palestinian people.
Our press release and the concept of terrorist
The statement issued by the Communist Revolutionary Party regarding the events in Palestine begins with these words: "The military action of the Palestinian Resistance is presented by our media and most of our politicians, as usual, not as a right legitimate in the fight against oppression, but as a “terrorist” action. Condemnations are pouring out and the flood of comments as usual presents the Palestinians as the aggressors and the Israeli army as retaliating. And no one asks the essential question: “ Why did we get to this point?” » And “ Who is responsible?” » ».
Unlike most analysts and politicians, we do not take the event of Saturday October 7 as a fact in itself, but as an episode in a war that has lasted for 75 years, in a context where the choice of the Israeli fascist government is the pure and simple annexation of all of Palestine, dotted with a few ghettos.
Still contrary to the injunctions of all vehicles of the dominant ideology, the words "terrorists" or "terrorism" do not appear there. If we refuse to qualify this or that organization or this or that act as "terrorist", it is because we reject this word. We reject it both because it is a screen preventing us from understanding what is happening and for its history.
In history, the word "terrorists" appears for the first time in 1938, in the mouths and writings of the Nazis. He then designated the communists and trade unionists in exile in France whom a group of Nazi leaders, led by Otto Abetz, had come to list from the German embassy, in the wake of a visit by Ribbentrop to the President of the Council, the radical philo-Nazi Chautemps.
Then the Resistance fighters from France, Yugoslavia, Greece and Czechoslovakia were described as “terrorists” by the Germans; later the militants of the FLN and the Algerian war of liberation by the Bourgeois State of France; Closer to home, the ANC (African National Congress) in South Africa and SWAPO (South West African People's Organization) in Namibia were also "terrorists" for the racist apartheid powers.
It is a word whose current role is to hide the issues of national liberation, and especially class. An activist from the French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP) said: “ My father was a Resistance fighter, if he had lost, he would be a terrorist ”. In reality, the terrorists are the armed resistance, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (see what happens to Mariam Abu Dakka [1] ).
Calling the various fascist Islamist movements the same name is just a diversion. The concept of terrorist is a concept of the dominant ideology which aims to discredit armed resistance and to mix people who have nothing in common. Islamist fascists are Islamist fascists, not terrorists. Note also that, for this category, Islamist fascists, the concept of "terrorists" is variable, because these militias were created and financed by the USA (and its allies) and some still are. In Afghanistan, between 1979 and 1989, when they were used to fight the socialist regime and the USSR, they were “freedom fighters”. In Syria, between 2011 and 2019, when France and the USA arm them and use them against the Arab nationalist regime, for the minister at the time, Fabius, they are doing a good job, and for others, on the left, they are "Syrian revolutionaries".
The concept allows mush to be spread in the heads. Thus, the mayor of Lavaur, in Tarn, declared that Mariam Abou Dakka, arrested Monday morning in Marseille by the French Bourgeois State, is " an Islamist ", even though she is in the PFLP, a Marxist, and therefore secular, organization. If we ban this concept, it is because it is an obstacle to the perception of the class struggle.
Let's talk a little about Hamas
The Communist Revolutionary Party has no sympathy for this organization. Hamas is the child of the cursed couple of the fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood and Shin Beth, the Israeli secret services. During the war in Syria, hand in hand with the State of Israel, they supported all the fascist Islamist militias against the Arab nationalist regime, which makes it a little ridiculous to see behind the operation of Saturday October 7 the “ hand of Iran ”.
In Gaza, there is not only Hamas, even if it is in the majority. The Marxist organizations, PFLP and FDLP, as well as Fatah are also present. The strategy of the dominant ideology is to only talk about Hamas to discredit, and to disconnect what is happening from the war that has been taking place for 75 years on Palestinian soil.
It is made into an apocalyptic monster, void of meaning, driven by chronic and unhealthy anti-Semitism, which would terrorize the entire population of the Gaza Strip. This spinal image is contradicted by all those who have been to Gaza and describe the society there as very diverse and often critical of the two governments (that of Hamas and that of the Palestinian Authority in West Bank). The mere fact that Mariam Abou Dakka, a tireless fighter for the cause of women, lives in Khan Younes, in the Gaza Strip, is enough to invalidate this description.
The crimes of Jewish settlers against the villagers of Deir Yassine (1948), Qibya (1953), and even against the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila, in 1982, through the instrumentalization of the Lebanese Christian fascist militia of the Phalangists were not nothing to envy of those of Hamas this October 7.
The Hamas militants are, without a doubt, reactionaries, financed by Qatar. However, they are, objectively, part of the Palestinian Resistance, we can always deny it, but the facts are stubborn. To say this is not to show sympathy for Hamas, but to be as close as possible to the reality and feelings of the Palestinians. They fight for the liberation of Palestine, and contrary to popular belief, are for the creation of a true Palestinian state. On the other hand, they do not recognize the State of Israel. But this was also the case of most socialist countries, when they existed, of progressive countries in Africa and this is still the case, inevitably, of those who speak out for a single secular state, like the PFLP.
Shedding light on the reality of what happened in 1948
The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, now exiled in Great Britain, anti-Zionist and former member of the Israeli Communist Party, worked in the 1990s on the events of 1947 and 1948 which preceded the creation of the State of Israel, the Nakba (the catastrophe).
“ At the end of 1947, Palestine had nearly 2 million inhabitants: a third Jews, two thirds Arabs. United Nations Resolution 181 decides its partition into two states: one must be almost exclusively populated by Arabs; in the other, Jews would be a slight majority. A year later, it is a state with a very large Jewish majority, Israel, which occupies 78% of Palestine. More than 500 villages were razed, many towns almost entirely lost their Arab population. And 800,000 Palestinian Arabs from the territories that are now part of Israel populate refugee camps outside its borders ,” he writes.
Using archival documents, personal diaries and direct testimonies, he reconstructs in detail what really happened at the end of 1947 and in 1948, town by town, village by village. A deliberate, systematic enterprise of expulsion and destruction then appears: an “ ethnic cleansing ” of Palestine. In a few months, strengthened by their military superiority, their secret agreement with the king of Jordan, the complicit passivity of the British soldiers and the incompetence of the UN, the leaders of the Zionist movement organized the "transfer" , through violence and intimidation, of a rather peaceful Arab population, defenseless, abandoned by everyone.
The Oslo Accords and their consequences
Oslo, in 1993, was to pave the way for the creation of a Palestinian state within five years (i.e. in 1998), in return for the renunciation by the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) of guerrilla warfare. anti-Israeli. This major concession, unparalleled in the annals of struggle of national liberation movements, proved counterproductive and Oslo a great fool's bargain.
From Rabbi, a supporter of a rump sub-state, subordinate to the colonial state, to Sharon who wanted to send all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to the West Bank or Gaza, behind a wall, we quickly understood that a true Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital would never see the light of day.
Since Netanyahu has led the government, this has the merit of being clear. He completely buried the two-state solution, with the consent of the USA and its lackeys. The road map of Netanyahu and his accomplices is the occupation of everything that constitutes the mythical “ Greater Israel ”, by creating a few Palestinian ghettos surrounded by settlements, such as in Hebron or Jenin, as is already happening. in Gaza: the bantustans of the Apartheid State.
In a 2021 interview, unaware that the cameras were rolling, he bragged about defeating the Oslo Accords through false statements and ambiguities. He said: “ I will interpret the agreements in such a way that it will be possible to end this runaway over the 1967 armistice lines. How did we do it? No one had precisely defined what military zones were. Military zones, I said, are security zones; so, for my part, the Jordan Valley is a military zone. » Note also that since the 2006 blockade, the Gaza Strip has been governed according to Israeli military law.
As for Yasser Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, discredited by the heavy supervision of the powerful occupier over the Palestinian Authority, and the galloping corruption of its leaders, he is kept on the waterline by the United States with a view to serve as a security guard for the Israelis in the repression of Palestinian demonstrations against the occupier. In defiance of the basic rules of democracy, the octogenarian bureaucrat is kept in power without any popular inauguration.
At the same time, the West Bank has been transformed into a vast open-air prison camp crisscrossed by more than 700 military roadblocks, and Gaza, an island of poverty, subject to the double blockade of Israel and Egypt, where more than two million Palestinians, making the enclave an explosive human dump.
A summary in a few figures
By the own admission of the Israeli journalist, Ronen Bergman, author of the work “ Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations [2] ”, 2,700 targeted assassinations have been orchestrated by Israel since the year 2000; i.e. an average of 40 operations per year. The Israelis will only have adopted the methods in force in Palestine by the British, in particular General Orde Wingate, who had created in the 1930s the " Special Night Squads ", the " Special Night Squadrons " composed of Jewish fighters responsible for raids against Arab villages by eliminating the leaders.
237 Palestinians have been killed by settlers or the army in the West Bank since the start of the year.
Since the start of the bombardment of Gaza, 6,000 bombs have fallen and there have been more than 2,400 Palestinian deaths, including 720 children.
The current fascist government
With the complicity of the United States and European countries, the extreme right-wing of Israeli society propelled, in 2022, after four electoral consultations, a xenophobic, fascist coalition, lastingly perverting a country that its many Western sympathizers describe as " "the only democracy in the Middle East ", which suggests that Jewish fundamentalism would be more soluble in " democracy " than Muslim fundamentalism. Note that Likud, which leads this coalition, has never recognized the existence of a Palestinian state.
The current Israeli government is moving even faster towards a resolution of the conflict through the outright annexation of the territories where the Palestinians live. What has been increasing in the West Bank since they came to power are the murders of Palestinians, not by the army, but by the settlers, with total impunity. Killing a Palestinian is not a crime in Israel.
They are considered in the same way as the Slavs by the Nazis, as " untermenschen " (subhumans). Trade Minister Bezalel Smotrich tells anyone who will listen that the Palestinian people no longer exist. The Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, compares the Gazans to “ human animals ”, without any international disapproval, even at a minimum, for both.
For an Israeli leader to call Hamas fighters “ animals ” is not surprising. It is part of the usual polemical rhetoric of Israeli leaders, their contempt for the Palestinians and above all their desire to deny Palestinian identity.
The Israeli bestiary is in fact rich in designating Arabs “from “ four-legged animals ” to “ cockroaches ”, without this debauchery of xenophobia arousing the slightest protest in Western chancelleries, without the Palestinians being identified for them. -themselves, for what they are, Palestinians, the original inhabitants of Palestine, when they are not qualified as " terrorists ", they are in turn, Israeli Arabs or inhabitants of the territories or, depending on their community affiliation or ethnic (Druze, Bedouin) never Palestinian Arab or simply Palestinian.
The state of mind of the Palestinian population since October 7
The attack by Gazan fighters on October 7 aroused among many Palestinians a feeling of pride, and in any case approval. Questioned by “ La Marseillaise ”, Leila Shahid, former leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority said: “ There is no longer any credibility in the discourse of peace ” and again: “ 99% of the Palestinian population is with what just happened in Gaza, because they have the feeling that Israel only understands the language of force and that the world only understands the language of force, since the world has done nothing to support the Palestinians. ".
The massive infiltration of Hamas fighters (the first incursion of such magnitude on Israeli territory since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948) rehabilitated Hamas in the eyes of the vast majority of the Arab population after its anti -Syrian during and after the so-called “ Arab Spring ” sequence . It also shattered the myths on which Israel thrived: namely one of the most efficient intelligence services in the world and one of the most efficient armies in the world. And the massive Israeli reprisals carried out indiscriminately with the use of white phosphorus, internationally prohibited, the myth of " purity of arms " and that of a " moral " army.
So, a good part of the Palestinians say that the only solution left to them is armed revolt.
What prospects?
The "military solution" however seems very illusory, even if we understand the feelings of the Palestinians after 75 years of humiliation, bullying, murders and, in Gaza, the Nakba which is starting again. Neighboring Arab states will not lift a finger to help the Palestinians.
The only solution is Peace. However, it is not a question of being naive, just peace, with a Palestinian state having East Jerusalem as its capital, is not for tomorrow. The Palestinians are right not to believe in the “ peace talk ”. Since 1993 this “ Peace ” has been achieved at their expense, without their rights ever being recognized. For the Communist Revolutionary Party, the calls from good souls for the intervention of France (while Macron has still not condemned the massacre in Gaza) or to the UN, which is in the hands of the USA and has been leaving for years the deterioration of the condition of the Palestinians is in vain.
Apartheid South Africa fell thanks to the international mobilization of people and the economic sanctions and political isolation which led part of the white bourgeoisie to realism. The same will be true for the Zionist colonizing state.
The Communist Revolutionary Party calls for the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel and economic sanctions, and we know that it is only through struggle that we will obtain this result, we can clearly see to what extent our government fears the rallies and demonstrations in defense of Palestine. The same goes for our other demands: a state for the Palestinians and the right of return for all refugees, descendants of those expelled by the Zionists.
Let's also stop the nonsense about " the two-state solution ", such an outcome has been buried for 10 years by Netanyahu, and is now made impossible. What remains, to use the words of Moustapha Barghouti³ in “ Rester sur la montagne ”, is the construction of “ a single State, where all citizens would be equal: one head, one vote ”. A return to the sources, to the demands which were those of all Palestinian organizations.
[1]https://www.sitecommunistes.org/index.php/monde/proche-et-moyen-orient/2480-expulsion-de-mariem-abou-dakka-militante-palestinienne-communique-du-parti-revolutionnaire -communists
[2] "Rise and Kill First. The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations"; Ronen Bergman is a journalist at the New York Times after having been at Yediot Aharonot, the largest Israeli daily. He is a specialist in security issues.