RCG statement

As Gaza withstands the sheer savagery of Zionist genocidal warfare, the imperialist British state is backing Israel to the hilt, and is criminalising expressions of support for Palestinian resistance. The Conservative government and the Labour Party are equally racist and complicit. The choice has never been starker: resistance or collusion. We stand with the Palestinian resistance and oppose British complicity in Israel’s crimes. We recognise that the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people against the settler-colonial state of Israel is crucial for working class and oppressed people all over the world.

Bombs manufactured in Britain are dropped on Gaza’s homes, schools, refuges, bakeries, hospitals, ambulances and queues of the injured; British banks finance an unending tsunami of war crimes. By 7 November, well over 10,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza by the Zionist state since the resistance actions of 7 October, including 4,800 children, with more than 25,000 injured; more than 2,000 more are entombed beneath the rubble. Over 150 had been murdered in the West Bank and at least 65 killed in southern Lebanon. On 5 November now-suspended Israeli junior minister Amihai Eliyahu suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

British state repression

In Britain, the state has unleashed a racist campaign against the right to support Palestinian self-determination, to prevent the emergence of an anti-imperialist trend in the solidarity movement. Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed on 10 October that waving the Palestinian flag or chanting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ may be illegal, later calling solidarity protests ‘hate marches.’ More than 100 pro-Palestine protesters have been arrested, including:

• On 13 October in Manchester, a young man for waving a Palestinian flag against a racist, Zionist vigil led by Labour mayor Andy Burnham.
• On 29 October in London, two women for ‘racial hatred,’ after police reviewed footage of chants on a protest march.
• On 4 November, a Zionist nark with the X (Twitter) handle @hurryupharry published footage of an FRFI supporter in London making a speech in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. Marking a dangerous precedent, the Metropolitan Police arrested the comrade, and publicly announced they had done so in reply to the Zionist’s video. An 80-year-old Jewish woman was arrested for wearing a placard comparing the Zionists to the Nazis. FRFI supporters picketed Islington police station until both were released.

The organisers of the 11 November planned Palestine march in London have come under increasing pressure as the Met publicly called on them ‘to urgently reconsider. It is not appropriate to hold any protests in London this weekend’.

As with the Elbit 8 and other Palestine Action protesters on trial for taking direct action against Israeli arms companies, the fight to drop all charges must be part of building a movement of principled solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. The British state is targeting those who express an anti-imperialist standpoint, especially working class, black and Arab sections of the movement. Zionist-police collaboration is blatant and utilises the same social media platforms working to silence Palestinians.

The British state could not sustain its stance without the collusion of the Labour Party and its affiliates. To leader Keir Starmer, Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ is ‘unconditional’. A supposed Labour rebellion over Gaza has proved a mirage. Though a few councillors have resigned and a Shadow Minister has left the Cabinet, not a single MP has even threatened to leave the party over its open support for genocide. The Labour left combines unhesitating condemnation of the Palestinian resistance, whom they label ‘terrorists’ in agreement with the British and Israeli state, with calls for an unconditional ceasefire and release of Israeli prisoners in total disregard for the Palestinians’ right to determine their own strategy for liberation.

Having positioned itself at the head of a protest movement, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has joined in the British state’s repression campaign. After its Manchester branch on 7 October posted a social media statement praising the actions of the Palestinian resistance for ‘showing the Zionist regime and the entire world that the Palestinians will not stand passively’, the PSC suspended four officers of the branch, calling the post ‘unacceptable’. Such capitulations give the green light to the police, endanger us all, and must be condemned.

Solidarity with Palestinian resistance

The Palestinian masses, a displaced, brutalised but unbowed people, stand between imperialism and the spoils of the Middle East. Israel, imperialism’s attack dog, is flattening Gaza because it is the most committed, conscious centre of popular resistance. A leaked document published by Mondoweiss on 28 October exposed plans for a ‘significant change in the civilian reality’, with options including ‘importing Palestinian Authority governance’ from its Ramallah fiefdom, and the ‘evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai’. Though the Egyptian junta opposes the latter, the imperialists gave these plans tacit approval, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken lobbying the imperialist stooge Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas on 5 November. The idea of ‘post-Hamas’ Gaza is given respectability in racist Guardian opinion columns. The rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination are anathema to this imperialist media circus.

Western imperialism is scanning the horizon beyond Palestine, to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and, ultimately, Iran. Many Palestinians had wanted the Lebanese resistance to declare full-scale war on the Zionists and responded impatiently to the speech of Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on 3 November, in which he stopped short of declaring war but warned ‘all scenarios remain open’. Despite the death and destruction it wreaks, the Israeli mission in Gaza has failed to overcome Bureij and Gaza City and will continue to flounder in the face of a guerrilla resistance on multiple fronts.

Our solidarity with the Palestinian people needs us to directly challenge British collaboration by building a movement against the imperialist government and the so-called opposition. Those backing the Zionist slaughter hold the reins of the British state – the same state that attacks migrants, black and Asian people, that criminalises environmental activists and that plunges the working class deeper into poverty. Palestinians are in the front line of challenging racism, imperialism and oppression. Their struggle is our struggle.

Join with us to organise and fight back.