November 6, 2023 editorial of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) in France, translated from French.
The Israeli army is now in the very heart of Gaza City, striking on the ground as indiscriminately as it did from the air. Half of all homes have been razed to the ground. More than 10,000 people have already been killed, including 4,200 children. After the hospitals, a convoy of ambulances evacuating wounded people to Egypt were targeted, as well as Red Cross trucks delivering humanitarian aid. And when the population escapes bombings, it is the lack of water that threatens their lives. Seven UN special reporters are now concerned about the risk of genocide.
Cynicism at its worst: of the 18,500 Gazan workers employed in Israel, 4,000 found themselves trapped there after October 7, held prisoner, beaten and humiliated before being sent back under the bombs. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers, armed by the state and protected by the army, have stepped up their efforts to drive out the Palestinian population, destroying homes and killing or torturing those who resist. And, without being really contradicted by any major power, Netanyahu announces his intention to totally control the Gaza Strip after his war.
Imperialism complicit in this crime against humanity
This carnage is taking place with the blessing of the great powers, led by the United States and France, for whom the State of Israel is a guardian of their order in the Middle East. French President Macron and Biden also have blood on their hands! The bombing of the French Institute in Gaza, proof that the strikes are aimed at the total destruction of Gaza, met with only polite “incomprehension” on the part of the French government.
On the other hand, Macron and Darmanin (French Minister of the Interior) are trying to exploit the conflict to further their racist policies. Anti-Semitic statements and attacks are systematically reported in the media. They are obviously odious and must be denounced, but the government’s indignation is selective: racist anti-Arab attacks and statements have also multiplied, including in the media. As usual, it is the population of Arab origin that is stigmatized, accused of being anti-Semitic, despite the fact that the French extreme right has always made Jew-hatred its business and that Macron himself, in 2018, paid tribute to Pétain (leader of the French government in World War II who collaborated with the Nazis).
And now, under the pretext of denouncing anti-Semitism, the presidents of the French Assembly and Senate, the right and the extreme right — Le Pen’s long-standing racist and anti-Semitic party — are calling for demonstrations in support of Netanyahu’s war on the same day as the demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinians. And part of the left is collaborating in this operation. The Socialist Party (PS) has reservations about the far-right RN’s presence, but will be there to support the unity behind Macron, and, by the way, be accomplices of this genocidal logic.
A duty of international solidarity that we must amplify in France!
On Saturday November 4, solidarity with the Palestinian people reached a new level in France, with several tens of thousands of demonstrators in Paris and some forty other cities, after three weeks of mobilization, despite bans and the government’s attempt to equate solidarity with the Palestinian people with apology for terrorism or anti-Semitism.
Demonstrations multiplied in London, New York, New Zealand, Turkey and Indonesia, expressing indignation and rage at the massacres. In the United States, protests were particularly massive against Biden’s support for Netanyahu.
The people of Palestine, oppressed for 75 years, locked up in ghettos of misery, bombed, need international solidarity to put pressure on Netanyahu and on our own governments that support him. The struggle of the Palestinian people for emancipation and freedom is inseparable from the struggle against all oppression, relations of domination and exploitation, which must be overthrown there as everywhere. Workers and young people, we need to build the movement that will enable us to roll back Netanyahu and the warlike, anti-social policies of the governments that support him, including Macron’s!
In the coming days, let’s get together in our workplaces and places of study, let our anger be heard, let’s organize ourselves into collectives to express our solidarity as workers! Stop the massacre in Gaza!
