Text of the Socialist Party leaflet for national Palestine Solidarity Protest
“Block everything with Palestine in our hearts”
This is the inspiring slogan of yesterday’s general strike in Italy in solidarity with Palestine and with the Global Sumud Flotilla. This strike, this second of its kind in two weeks, saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets of major Italian cities, with key sectors of the Italian economy and society shut down.
Two years of genocide and holocaust in Gaza by the Zionist regime mean that there is an urgent necessity for such action here in Ireland and across Europe. In the immediate wake of the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla and the kidnapping of its courageous participants, millions took to the streets of Europe, engaging in mass direct action such as the blocking of trains.
Workers need to come together and organise in their workplaces and sectors to discuss how we can organise action and put pressure on the trade unions to organise industrial action. We need a general strike that will put pressure on the government to end US warplanes going to Shannon and to sanction the Zionist State.
The last two years of the Gaza holocaust have graphically exposed who is on the side of freedom and justice and who is not. Imperialist and capitalist governments in the West, the EU, arms companies and major multinationals have funded and armed this genocide.
Supporting genocide, occupation and apartheid in Palestine and the Middle East means clamping down on democratic rights abroad. This is best exemplified by the banning of Palestine Action in Britain, which has resulted in the arrest of hundreds protesting against this ban.
The Irish government is also complicit in this historic crime in Gaza. It continues to permit the transportation of weaponry via Shannon Airport and Irish airspace, and remains stalled on implementing the Occupied Territories Bill. In fact, they are determined to water it down as a result of pressure from the Trump administration.
For them, subservience to US big business will always trump the lives of the Palestinian people. In July, they were not even willing to grant visas for GAA Palestine, while they recently gave €10 million to the NFL to play in Dublin last week. This is an institution worth over $1 trillion and has strong ties with the US and Israeli military.
“The Palestinian cause is…a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”
Ghassan Kanafani—Palestinian socialist, writer and revolutionary
We have all come to this demonstration because we want to see a free Palestine – an end to genocide, occupation, apartheid and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their historic homeland. Seventy-seven years of Nakba must end.
This liberation will never happen as long as the Israeli Zionist State, one based on Jewish supremacy, remains in existence; it must be smashed.
For Palestinian freedom and socialism
A democratic socialist Middle East would be one where the resources and wealth are seized from the profiteers and 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 Israelis could live in complete equality from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, including equal national rights for both people.
The scale of the Gaza genocide and the complicity of Western capitalist governments and corporations pose, along with the rise of the far right and climate catastrophe, the urgent need for radical anti-capitalist and socialist change. Join the fight today!
