Bulletin No 51 octobre 2024 In the French political landscape, the true supporters of the Palestinian people can be counted on the fingers of one hand. If, on the right, it would seem that there are hardly any Gaullists left, apart from Dominique de Villepin, on the left, the pro-Zionist current, in the tradition of the PS since Epinay and which follows that of the SFIO,
is still as strong, and the ecologists have nothing to envy, almost aligning themselves with their German cousins, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs who affirms that " the Gazans have lost their status as civilians ."
In this article, we will look at other "left" parties, and see what we can find in place of the French Communist Party which, when it was still somewhat communist, defended the Palestinian anti-colonialist cause.
We will therefore examine in broad outline the press releases published by LFI and the current PCF (through the voice of its national secretary) on October 7, 2024, one year after the attack on the Palestinian Resistance.
From the outset, both texts are imbued with the official discourse of Zionist propaganda. For LFI: " On October 7, 2023, the Hamas attack on Israeli soil resulted in war crimes during which 1,200 people, including more than 800 defenseless civilians, were killed and hostages kidnapped. " and, further on, the press release speaks of a " terrorist act ". The PCF, unsurprisingly, goes even further: " A year ago to the day, the first pogrom in the history of this 21st century led to the death of 1,200 men, women and children, injuring and mutilating more than 7,500 people. Among these victims were 42 French people. This mass massacre targeted Israelis because they were Israelis, Jews because they were Jews. I want, through this message, on behalf of the French communists, to pay tribute to all the victims. I also want to express the solidarity of the French communists with the families of those who, on October 7, were captured and taken hostage by Hamas. The French Communist Party continues to demand their immediate and unconditional release, as do hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are courageously demonstrating for a ceasefire and the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu. Those responsible for this terrorist act must answer for their crimes before international justice. ", It is first a question of pointing out the essential: the common points, war crimes for one or massacre for the other, terrorist act for both, and attack by Hamas, thus obscuring the participation in the fight of other Palestinian Resistance organizations. Neither press release mentions the fact that October 7 is in no way a beginning, but an episode in a struggle that has been going on since 1948. Where the PCF stands out is that it takes up the entire discourse of the Zionists by speaking of a pogrom and the idea that Jews were targeted as Jews, which amounts to completely obscuring the colonial conflict and adopting Netanyahu's reading.
Even if the LFI press release does not go that far, it contains almost the same ingredients and, above all, hides the same things. None of the doubts expressed by many journalists, notably by Haaretz, concerning the events of October 7, 2023 are mentioned. Nothing about the Hannibal procedure, nothing about the lies of Zionist propaganda concerning decapitated babies or rapes. No explanation either about why the kibbutzim were targeted! Not a word about the fact that instead of these installations, there were, in 1948, sixteen Palestinian towns or villages that were razed and their occupants driven to Gaza or killed. Nothing either about the blockade of Gaza since 2006, about the humiliating checkpoints, about the recurring bombings in 2006, 2012 and 2014 in particular, about the open-air concentration camp. Reading these two communiqués, it all began on October 7, a beginning without cause, incomprehensible other than by the desire to kill. Finally, the use of the word "hostage" and not "prisoners" also prevents any understanding. But why did the Palestinian Resistance capture Israelis? The question will not be asked.
Then, even though they were obliged to do so, the two communiqués condemn the violence perpetrated in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
For the PCF, the so-called crimes of October 7 " in no way justify the acceleration of colonization in the West Bank and the summary executions in the Palestinian territories and refugee camps. They in no way justify the blind bombings in Lebanon. " (Note that the blind bombings seem to only be taking place in Lebanon). Later, the statement denounces: " The war crimes and crimes against humanity committed at this very moment by the leaders of the State of Israel. "
On this subject, LFI shows more knowledge of reality and more empathy for the victims of Gaza: " 41,909 people have officially been killed in Gaza and tens of thousands of additional victims are buried under the rubble or bear injuries that jeopardize their survival. The conditions inflicted on Gaza, almost completely razed and whose population is besieged, starving, massively forcibly displaced, deprived of basic care ." The official number of deaths in Gaza is cited by LFI, as is that of the deaths of October 7, 2023, but the PCF, for its part, says nothing about it.
What also characterizes the common analysis of the two parties is that the massacre in Gaza is a "response" of the Zionists to the attack of the Palestinian Resistance, here again, we are in the direct line of Zionist propaganda. For LFI: " In response to this terrorist act, the far-right government of Netanyahu launched a total war on the Palestinian people. "; and for the PCF, the preceding passage " they do not justify it in any way " implicitly indicates that it is a response. But neither organization considers the fact that the attack of October 7 would itself be a response... And, above all, neither tells us that Netanyahu's goal is not to respond, or even to take revenge, but to " finish the work that Ben Gurion left unfinished in 1948. "
The genocidal aspect does not cross Fabien Roussel's mind, who does not use this word. As for LFI, they hide behind the International Court of Justice to evoke the adjective, but do not affirm that, from their own point of view, we are dealing with a genocide: " The conditions inflicted on Gaza [...] are such that in January 2024 the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body of the UN, denounced a genocidal attitude. "
The conclusions, besides, of course, the call for a ceasefire, for a just and lasting peace, are different, but both out of touch. The PCF hits us with its leitmotif of the so-called two-state solution: " For the recognition of the State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, on the 1967 borders. For a two-state solution for two peoples living in peace, security and democracy, as equals, on the same land. " This indicates, besides its unreal side, that the PCF definitely does not understand anything about the colonial question in Palestine, because finally, how could the two peoples live in security and as equals on the same land as long as the colonial state, the apartheid state exists? While the goal of the Zionists, of all Zionists, not just Netanyahu, is to drive out or kill the Palestinians from their land! While there can be no peace as long as the Zionist state exists! Otherwise the colonial peace of Oslo, where one people oppresses another. That one cannot put a sign of equality between a colonized people and a colonial State, and that, in this colonial State which carries out a substitution colonization, most citizens are accomplices of colonization, of oppression and do not aspire to peace, but to victory, or at least, to revenge.
As for LFI, their press release seems to try to reason with Netanyahu: " Terror has never liberated a people, nor brought back the dead. Trampling on all the rules of international law and the law of war is a dead end. Endless war offers no lasting political solution capable of guaranteeing the rights and security of the Palestinian, Israeli, and now Lebanese peoples. " As if the Zionists were concerned about the rights and security of the Palestinians or even the Lebanese!!! What a misunderstanding of the situation! The war is not endless, Netanyahu's project is clear, to enlarge Israel, to colonize and colonize again, in Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon and the Golan. Trying to address him is as illusory as constantly referring to international law, which is only the law of dominant imperialism.
We wrote several months ago that LFI was in the middle of the ford, between the position of shared wrongs and the anti-colonial defense of the Palestinian Resistance. It seems today that, despite their undeniable denunciation of the massacre in Gaza, they have joined the bank and the camp of shared wrongs, since at least the speech of MP Nathalie Oziol on behalf of the group, after the requests for arrest warrants by the ICC prosecutor against two colonial oppressors and three Palestinian Resistance fighters, saying that these requests corresponded to the position of LFI; this text only confirms the return to the base camp.
The PCF's position is even worse, it seems to slide from shared wrongs to a frankly pro-Zionist position, taking up the instrumentalization of anti-Semitism (killed as Jews) and allowing itself to judge the armed Palestinian Resistance fighters, who came out of the cage on October 7, 2023 and pulled the Palestinian question out from under the carpet in these terms: " They disfigure the just struggle of the Palestinian people so that their right to national existence and peace with the Israeli people be recognized. " By what right does Fabien Roussel allow himself to judge the choices of combat decided by an anti-colonial resistance? By the right of the so-called Enlightenment, by the right of Voltaire the slave trader? By the right of Western imperialist supremacism?
Neither text speaks of colonialism, a colonial state, or a colonized people! Let us remind the leaders of the French "left" of this quote from Frantz Fanon in " The Wretched of the Earth ": " For the colonized, life can only emerge from the decomposing corpse of the colonist ." Wouldn't that explain October 7 better than the nonsense about anti-Semitism?
Finally, again in " The Wretched of the Earth ", we find this: " The violence with which the supremacy of white values was affirmed, the aggressiveness that permeated the victorious confrontation of these values with the ways of life or thoughts of the colonized mean that, by a just return of things, the colonized sneer when these values are evoked in front of him. " We quote Fanon, although we do not believe in " white " values, but in values of Western capitalism. That said, for the rest, we share his point of view. It is not by evoking a mythical international law and an equally mythical international justice that we will help the Palestinians to free themselves from oppression. It is first by understanding the colonial situation and denouncing it, that is to say by denouncing Zionism. Then, by admitting that each time the Palestinians have made concessions (Oslo is the best example), the Zionists have oppressed them even more, and that today, they can only count on two things: the international solidarity of workers and peoples, and their own resistance, with or without weapons. This is what the " left " which expresses a real but still somewhat theoretical sympathy and not excluded from lessons given for the fate of the Palestinians will have to learn if it wants to keep or obtain dignity.
Unambiguously, the Revolutionary Communist Party, in its fight against capitalism and imperialism, supports the Palestinian cause and supports the Palestinian Resistance, in the forms it chooses.