January 26, 2024, International Secretariat, CNT
The class unions, anarcho-syndicalist workers’ organizations are witnesses of tragic events for the Palestinian people, who after suffering decades of occupation, apartheid and injustice perpetrated by the Israeli Zionist governments and their army, have suffered since October 7, 2024, war crimes, indiscriminate bombings against the civilian population, hospitals, schools… cuts in electricity, water, fuel, medicines, food, blockade of humanitarian aid,…, Even as they obey and move south, they have been bombed.
At its root, there is the historical context of this conflict with the formation of the state of Israel and its constant expansive dynamic, occupying territories where Palestinians, Bedouins or Druze were living. This dynamic turns its own inhabitants into refugees. To achieve this, the State of Israel violates the human and social rights of these people and has not hesitated to employ military, police, discriminatory, economic, etc. To such an extent that the United Nations already identifies what is happening there as genocidei. For years, Amnesty International has described the state’s policy towards these people as appartheid.
To such an extent is the consensus on this issue that the State of Israel, which frequently boycotts international tribunals or UN investigations when trying to whitewash its image, has received arguments before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from South African lawyersii who claimed that the current war in Gaza is part of decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
The fact that this hearing lasted two days means that it is considered a landmark case, one of the most important to be heard in an international court.
South Africa was asking for binding injunctionss to force Israel to halt its military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 26.000 Palestinians. It has failed to achieve a ceasefire. Israel blames Hamas for the 1,200 Israeli casualties, but Hamas is not the Palestinian people, nor does its persecution justify genocide. Recent history has heard this ethically unacceptable argument many times.
Let it be precisely South Africa who presents evidence that Israel committed genocide intentionally, has an additional moral burden:South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel’s strategy in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history during the white apartheid regime, which restricted the majority of the black population to specific areas until its end in 1994iii.
Of course, Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu defended his army’s actions, contradicting reality, he said: “Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population, and we are doing so in full compliance with international law”. On the one hand, he thinks we’re stupid and we don’t see what’s going on, and on the other hand, this process will take years and there probably won’t be anyone left alive to tell about it.
The word terrorism doesn’t mean anything to us. Hamas is a reactionary and fundamentalist organization, and the military action of October 7, with the barbaric extermination of hundreds of civilians, is worthy of its nature. However, we are well aware that the responsibility for the continuing tension in those territories lies with the fascist, racist and fanatical policies of the Israeli Government, which practices an apartheid regime on a daily basis.Every day the Palestinian population is subjected to arbitrary actions, violence, land expropriation, harassment all over the world.
The intended consequence of this situation is the progressive strengthening of political and religious fanaticism, such as Hamas or other similar organizations, bearers of an obscurantist culture that we combat. It is well known that the State of Israel has encouraged the growth of Hamas precisely in order to have an excellent pretext for its bloody policy of colonial expansion.
For this reason the criminal hypocrisy of our institutions and the parties that compose them is absolutely intolerable: States use the word terrorism, as appropriate, to justify open or underground wars against options they do not share, as is currently happening with environmental activism.
It is necessary to mention the hypocritical complicity of that servile and uncritical press, which loses all credibility and dignity if it denies the total asymmetry of this conflict and does not say that it was born of the political choices of the current Israeli government. We salute the courage of the press workers who try to do their jobs and die or are deported at the hands of the army, to prevent them from testifying.
For all these reasons, there is only one position, the only possible human position:
– Anarcho-syndicalism, which rejects armies and states, denounces a method of ethnic cleansing, an uninterrupted anti-Palestinian apartheid, recognized and repudiated by broad Jewish sectors and academics, by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the latest reports of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
– End apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. Without justice there can be no peace.
– We call for a ceasefire, the restoration of basic services and humanitarian aid.
– We call on trade unions and social organizations to listen to the arguments of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns as a means to promote positive changes in the region.
– We demand that governments around the world stop their military collaboration with this massacre, but we do not believe the solution is another state.
– The struggle of the working class in Palestine requires global solidarity, let us adopt a position of active solidarity, against apartheid, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations and war crimes that are being committed with impunity.
– For our part, we will support unitary mobilizations in every area of the world.
i 19_1_24: Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, considered the violent bombardment by the occupying entity of the Gaza Strip, which led to the razing of neighborhoods and the killing of thousands of Palestinians, a violation of international law. He said in Madrid, that “Israel has done a number of things that are largely illegal: International humanitarian law must be respected to protect non-combatants, civilians, prisoners of war, the sick and the wounded. This means distinguishing between combatants and civilians and ensuring that military strikes are proportionate to avoid excessive harm to civilians.” (…) In the first two weeks, six thousand bombs were used per week, each weighing two thousand pounds (about a ton), in a very short time, in crowded areas. (…) Most hospitals have been rendered useless. A large number of them, the main hospitals, have been closed, bombed or taken over by the (occupier) army. Now people are dying not only because of the bombs but because there is not enough health infrastructure to treat their wounds.(…) The number of children whose limbs are amputated every day, one or two limbs, is shocking. During the first two months of this (war), 1,000 children had their limbs amputated without anesthesia. It’s horrible. (…) Nothing justifies what Israel is doing, Albanese said.
Special rapporteurs are not employees of the United Nations, but independent experts appointed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
ii “Genocides are never declared in advance, but this court has the benefit of the last 13 weeks of evidence that incontrovertibly shows a pattern of conduct and related intent that it justifies as a plausible claim of genocidal acts,” South African lawyer Adila Hassim told the judges in the packed courtroom of the Peace Palace in The Hague. Holland.
iii “The scale of the destruction in Gaza, the attacks on family homes and civilians, the fact that the war is against children, make it clear that the genocidal intent is understood and has been put into practice. The articulated intention is the destruction of Palestinian life”, said lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi. “What state would admit a genocidal intent? However, the distinguishing feature of this case has not been silence as such, but the reiteration and repetition of genocidal discourse in all spheres of the State of Israel,” he said.
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