The attack on Rafah marks a new stage in Israel's genocidal process. 1.5 million Palestinians - men, women, children and the elderly - have been displaced since last October, tens of thousands have died, and starvation and disease kill every day. The far-right government in power in Israel has clearly set itself the goal of eradicating the Palestinian population of Gaza. This project is part of the wider Greater Israel project of the Israeli far right, which has a fascist , supremacist ideology, based on Zionism which denies any right to land and sovereignty for the Palestinian people, which denies deny their very existence as a people.
Historic solidarity is developing in the face of this horror. The university occupations have become the most visible expression of this movement, which from the start has mobilized massively among young people, notably racialized youth from the popular neighbourhoods and even a part of Jewish communities refusing to be assimilated to the racist and criminal policies of the Israeli extreme right. From a movement of human and humanitarian solidarity against the genocide, the destruction and the images of carnage, solidarity has become a political movement whose scope can now be compared to the movements against the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq. This movement is radicalizing, in the sense that it is revealing the complicity, even the active support, of the major imperialist powers in the genocide, and denouncing the mechanisms of oppression at work in capitalism. Israel is, in the Middle East, the armed wing of the United States, France, Britain, Germany and many others , and Netanyahu is the leading edge of the authoritarian, racist and bellicose policies advanced in particular by the extreme right in various countries of the world.
Fierce repression is being unleashed on the solidarity movement: in some countries, solidarity actions are banned outright; in others there are arrests, police violence, indictments, bans on conferences and even concerts! The aim is to silence solidarity, in a new McCarthyism, where the dominant classes and murderous states accuse the solidarity movement, a profoundly humanist and anti-racist movement, of apology for terrorism or anti-Semitism.
The Fourth International is putting all its forces into building a movement of solidarity with Palestine, with the resistance of the Palestinian people, against the ongoing genocide. This mobilization is a movement of the popular classes of the whole world, against racism, against imperialism, for justice. We want to force the major powers to stop supporting Israel politically, financially and militarily. The current movement has put Biden and Macron, two of the spearheads of this complicity, in great difficulty. Tomorrow, it will show the complicity of Arab governments with Israel: mobilisations are beginning to spring up there, despite the repression of demonstrations and meetings, as Arab regimes fear - and they are right to do so - that solidarity with Palestine will revive the Arab revolutions.
The movement we want to build must develop a balance of power, with mass demonstrations, youth strikes and massive action to boycott, divest and impose sanctions on Israel and the companies that collaborate with it.
Seventy-six years ago, the Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their land, led to the establishment of Israel as a settler colonial state. It marked the beginning of a colonialist, racist and imperialist offensive which continues and is strengthening today, under the impetus of extreme right-wing powers and the policies of the ruling classes. The Fourth International fights against imperialism, wherever it comes from, for the rights of Palestinians, an end to the occupation, the right of return for refugees, an end to Israeli colonialism and a democratic and secular state where all citizens enjoy the same rights.
May the mobilization continue for the victory of our anti-imperialist resistance!
Executive Bureau
15 May 2024