Text of Socialist Party leaflet
The images speak for themselves. Two years of Israel’s genocidal terror in Gaza has destroyed Palestinian society – the death toll from famine and the daily bombardment continues to mount.
Those who should stand in the dock for this holocaust are the Zionist regime itself, along with leaders of Western imperialism and capitalism, who have facilitated this crime every step of the way. Arms companies, big tech giants, governments and the media in Europe and North America have made this unspeakable atrocity possible.
Supporting genocide in Palestine means further repression of the Palestine solidarity at home. Just look at the banning of Palestine Action in Britain or the horrific assault on Kitty O’Brien in Berlin by the Gestapo-like German police.
Strike against the apartheid state
“If we lose contact with our boats, with our comrades – even for just 20 minutes – we will shut down all of Europe… 13,000-14,000 containers leave this region every year for Israel. Not a single nail will leave anymore.”
Italian dockworkers have given a guarantee that if any harm comes to the participants of the Global Samud Flotilla, they will take strike action. There is an urgent necessity for such a shutdown of the system of genocide; the horror confronting the people of Palestine cries out for it.
Workers globally must refuse to handle weaponry flowing to the Zionist State, along with goods and services exported and imported to and from it. Companies complicit in this genocide must be targeted with industrial action.
The recent ending of the Irish Central Bank sales of Israeli “war [genocide] bonds” shows that the solidarity movement can make a real difference. Workers’ strike action, linked with protests and direct action, can mount further pressure on all elements of the Irish capitalist establishment complicit in the genocide.
In every workplace and sector, workers should come together to discuss and organise how to take generalised and coordinated strike action to end all forms of complicity by the Irish state. This should receive the full backing of the trade unions, and a day should be nominated for a national shutdown.
“The Palestinian cause is… a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”
– Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian socialist, writer and revolutionary
All of us on this march want a free Palestine – an end to genocide, occupation, apartheid, settlements and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their historic homeland. This liberation will never happen as long as the Israeli Zionist State, one based on Jewish supremacy, remains in existence; it must be smashed.
The Palestinian masses, allied with the working class and oppressed in the region and internationally, are key to achieving this. But the question does not end there.
A struggle for Palestinian national liberation is bound with a need for more fundamental revolutionary change. The Israeli State is part of the system of capitalism and imperialism that dominates and exploits the peoples of the Middle East and beyond – a system built on racism, exploitation, poverty and oppression. Its whole rule must be torn down.
For Palestinian freedom and socialism
A democratic socialist Middle East would be one where the resources and wealth are seized from the profiteers and are publicly owned and democratically planned by and for the majority in society. Governments based on the rule of the working class and poor, working in solidarity and cooperation, can ensure justice for all and oppression for none. Palestinians and Israeli Jews could live in complete equality from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, including equal national rights for both peoples.
In the context of this genocide and the complicity of the system within it, there is an urgent necessity to build this revolutionary socialist alternative here in Ireland and globally. Join us today.
