26 July 2014

This leaflet was distributed at demonstrations in support of Gaza in Dublin and Belfast. 

The blood lust of the Israeli government and their U.S. backers is only matched by their arrogance. Publicly Israeli government ministers accuse Palestinians of a new crime of "self genocide," Netanyahu, in unconscious mimicry of Nazi propaganda towards the Jews, accuses his victims of arranging "photogenic" corpses of women and children. In the background Obama, the killer drone king of planet earth, justifies Israeli atrocities on the grounds that no country should have to bear missiles being fired into its territory!

The Israeli claim that this struggle is around the issue of rockets from Gaza. But they have already made their rounds of Palestine, using the search for three settlers, whom they knew to be already dead, to launch deadly repression, first on Palestinians living inside Israel and then on the West Bank.

In contrast to their public hand-washing and rejection of responsibility for the carnage, privately their language is that of the most depraved racism. The massacre in Gaza is "mowing the lawn" - when enough bodies have been piled up they can leave the Palestinians to rot in their prison for another few years.

The Israelis have a political aim. They have closed down the sham peace process and the Palestinians have responded by moves towards a unity government. They want to crush Hamas in the expectation that they can persuade a corrupt Palestinian authority to accept the few bantustans they are willing to leave in an ever expanding Israel.

The Israelis act as they do because they have impunity. America endorses absolutely their right to massacre Palestinians. Their loyal partners in the Egyptian regime block the "back door" to Gaza. The EU stands behind America. Ireland, to its sham, abstained on a UN resolution calling for an investigation of human rights abuses.

Many non-government parties have fallen in behind their governments or are making only the most hesitant of criticisms. The Irish trade union movement will not go beyond humanitarian concern. 

That means that a heavy responsibility falls on the solidarity movement. Outside of the heroic actions of those in Gaza and those who risk their lives in the West bank and Israel, it falls to the international protest movement, to the youth movement across the globe, to force a retreat on Israel and on the imperialist powers.

Despite the bloodbath the people of Gaza refuse to surrender. The cycle of massacre followed by slow strangulation must end. As with the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, they are at the point where life and death are equally terrible.

We too must change. Cycles of protest followed by collecting for bandages and foodstuffs must end. Sole reliance on the rather weak tactic of boycott and disinvestment must end. Above all the absence of a policy - of firm proposals on a solution to the crisis - this must end.

Right now any action that demonstrates solidarity and attempts to weaken Israel, the US and their supporters (including the Irish government) is welcome. However we should urgently organise conferences at a local, national and international level to hammer out the basis for an ongoing united campaign.

We in Socialist Democracy have no wish to short-cut discussion and we will support any genuine solidarity movement.

We do wish to say however, that the willingness to remain agnostic on a solution or to support a "two-state" solution has been a fatal weakness of the solidarity movement. 

In our view the "two-state" solution is a weapon of war. It forces opponents to recognize the illegitimate Israeli state and then to negotiate about a second state which gets smaller and smaller until it disappears when Israel and the US pull the plug.

In our view only one state is possible. That is a democratic, secular and socialist state in Palestine where Jews and Arab can live as equals.

The current colonial, settler and apartheid state is unviable and unsustainable. From the very beginning it has been based on massacre, ethnic cleansing and land grabbing.  It is the source of endless misery and must be dismantled.