By IWU-FI
The big offensive of the Palestinian resistance shocked the world on 7 Saturday, led by the Hamas movement, which launched thousands of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
In this surprise attack, the Palestinian resistance penetrated by land with militiamen at 25 different points on the southern border with Israel. The Palestinian resistance took hostage over 100 civilians and military personnel. We believe that 200 people were killed and thousands wounded in Israel. Images showed Palestinian militiamen burning an Israeli tank and sequestering its occupants, and driving through the Gaza Strip with military vehicles captured from the Israeli army, surrounded by popular uproar. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
Israel, especially the far-right Netanyahu government, suffered one of the most humiliating attacks in their history. It hits the Zionist invading apparatus that boasts of its weapons and technology. All its intelligence and security services failed. From Iron Dome and David’s Slingshot to the Arrow. Israel’s air defence systems are so sophisticated and successful that Finland and Germany have just bought them.
This can only be explained for two reasons: 1) the acute political crisis that the invader has been suffering since Netanyahu wanted to implement a judicial reform that was rejected by weekly mass mobilisations of the Israeli population itself, and which has divided even the security and military forces, and 2) by the extraordinary and unwavering strength and massiveness of the Palestinian resistance, which has been fighting against the apartheid state for 75 years.
This unexpected offensive from the Gaza Strip is nothing but the logical reaction to the weariness of the Palestinian people who have been suffering daily from the assassination of young and old people, children, and women in Gaza, the West Bank and all the territories occupied by Israeli Zionism since before 1948. They are fed up with the theft of their land, the burning of olive trees, the destruction of their homes, the burning of vehicles, and all kinds of harassment and humiliation at the checkpoints set up by Israel at the borders with Gaza and the occupied territories. The Gaza Strip is an “open-air prison” under a criminal blockade by Israel, where most of the population lives below poverty levels.
So far, in 2023, 250 Palestinians have been killed, 44 of them children, 38 in the West Bank and 6 in Gaza. The last two years have seen record numbers of Palestinians killed by Israeli military forces.
In the West Bank, armed settlers supported by the security forces (and encouraged by Netanyahu’s far-right government) kill and attack Palestinian property daily, while ethnic cleansing continues unabated, with the expulsion of Palestinians whose homes are demolished.
In the last few days, the attacks by settlers and the Zionist army have intensified. Dozens of settlers, backed by far-right-wing and ultra-religious organisations, have forced their way into the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem over the past five days. The mosque is the third holiest place in the world for Muslims.
Today’s attack is nothing more than the expression of the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves against the crime and genocide that the genocidal-Zionist state of Israel has committed for decades.
Faced with this, a holy alliance of US imperialism, the European Union, different bourgeois governments of the world and the big media has been formed, branding the Palestinian militias as terrorists. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called the action “senseless” and “terrorism” while saying the racist and genocidal entity of Israel “had the right to defend itself”. Biden contacted Netanyahu and told him “Israel would have everything it needs to defend itself”. Even the fake “leftist” Lula has come out shamefully, to denounce the actions of the Palestinians as “terrorism” and to defend Israel.
Israel is the terrorist, the apartheid state, the invading and racist Zionism, which has been oppressing and ethnically cleansing Palestinians for over seven decades. The actions of the Palestinian resistance are not terrorism, but the legitimate defence of their land, their lives and their dignity.
Now Netanyahu, supported by American and European imperialism, comes out to proclaim a new criminal war, openly bombing the population of the Gaza Strip and threatening a new land invasion.
The International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI) gives its unrestricted solidarity to the Palestinian people who courageously defend their lands and rights against the Zionist occupier.
The IWU-FI reaffirms that the only possible solution to the situation in the region is to fight for the end of the Zionist and genocidal state of Israel and for a single secular, democratic and non-racist state in the whole historical territory of Palestine, where all communities can live together a life of respect for all beliefs, starting from the return of the land and houses stolen from the Palestinians.
We call on the people of the world to mobilise and show their support for the Palestinians, as is already happening in Turkey and other countries. We call on the popular trade union, and democratic, and left organisations to show their active solidarity with the Palestinian people, supporting their current resistance and repudiating the criminal bombings perpetrated by the Zionist state of Israel.
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
7 October 2023