The 22 November ceasefire in Gaza is a significant setback for the Zionist state and its imperialist supporters. Having declared its aim was to annihilate Hamas, the Zionist state has been forced into an agreement with the very ‘terrorists’ it sought to eradicate. An estimated 40,000 tons of bombs, and the slaughter of over 15,000 Palestinian people, has destroyed neither Hamas nor the Palestinian resistance. Instead, this genocidal campaign has mobilised worldwide support for the resistance and for the national rights of the Palestinians. In Britain, it has created a political crisis as the major political parties defended the Zionist onslaught while hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in support of Palestine.
In the context of occupation, the military action of the Palestinian resistance on 7 October was justified, while the Zionist state’s campaign to terrorise and uproot the people of Gaza is a crime against humanity. It has forced the displacement of 1.2 million Palestinians, ordering them to ‘evacuate’ northern Gaza and move south to areas which it then bombed. The Israeli military has also systematically targeted hospitals to destroy Gaza’s health infrastructure, a blatant war crime. This genocidal war against the Palestinian people is the terrible, logical outcome of the Zionist state’s existence as an outpost of western imperialism in the Middle East.
The US and British states have scrambled to defend their Zionist attack dog – they are complicit in its war crimes. In answer to the imperialists’ depravity, millions have protested across the world in solidarity with the Palestinians. 11 November alone saw over 500,000 marching in London; Muslim sections of the working class are heavily represented on these protests.The Labour Party’s unconditional support for the Zionist state’s actions has exposed it to the fury of these popular forces.
In Britain the widespread adoption of the call for ‘ceasefire now’ expresses the universal horror which people feel as they have witnessed the massacre unfold. But the parliamentary motions for a ceasefire advanced by the Labour left and SNP are a pro-imperialist posture: they have condemned the Palestinian resistance as terrorists and demanded unconditional ceasefire on both sides and the release of Israeli captives. They reject outright the right of the Palestinian people to determine their own path to liberation.
‘Left-wing’ Labour MPs have been platformed by the ‘official’ organisers of Palestine solidarity in Britain in a transparent bid to tie the movement to these parliamentary opportunists. Their hypocritical ceasefire demand was decisively defeated in the House of Commons on 15 November. Yet groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), the self-appointed leadership of the solidarity movement in Britain, continue to propagate the slogan. They are determined first to control and then to demobilise the movement that has begun to take shape.
FRFI’s position has always been firmly rooted in the oppressed sections of the working class, for it is they who bear the brunt of British state racism and oppression: whether it is police brutality, benefit cuts, or the demolition of social housing, they already understand who their enemy is. The brutal, genocidal racism of the Labour Party leadership, the cowardice of its left wing and its PSC allies, have allowed an anti-imperialist trend to emerge among these sections of the working class. This is apparent in the spontaneous protests that have taken place outside Labour MPs’ offices. Such spontaneous anger must be encouraged to develop into a conscious opposition to the British imperialist state and its defenders.
To seize the moment, we must move beyond calls for a ceasefire. Our demand must be the imposition of comprehensive sanctions on the openly genocidal Zionist state. Through its arms companies, banks and media institutions, British imperialism is utterly complicit in Zionist war crimes. We must now challenge those supposedly progressive MPs to support the complete isolation of Israel by cutting off trade, financial, military and diplomatic ties. To endorse this basic principled stance would certainly result in their suspension, but they must be confronted with the choice: parliament or Palestine?
RCG and FRFI supporters across Britain have thrown themselves into the struggle, declaring our unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. We defend the right of the Palestinians to fight by any means they see necessary for national liberation. We have no right to criticise the struggles of an oppressed people, only an obligation to fight for the removal of their oppression. At protests, meetings and marches we have raised the anti-imperialist banner and found many who are ready to join with us. As communists and socialists, our role is to defend, inspire, and organise with these most conscious sections of the working class. We call on all democratic, progressive and anti-racist individuals and organisations to join us in this struggle.
