A lull in Lebanon

Everyone will welcome the ceasefire in Lebanon – not least the people of the south who have bourne the brunt of the Israeli incursion that has cost countless lives of innocent Lebanese civilians and wreaked havoc on the villages and towns of the borderland. How long it will last is, of course, another matter.
The fact that the temporary truce was imposed by the United States shows who ultimately calls the shots in Tel Aviv. And the fact that Donald Trump had to do it to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table shows that the Americans have lost the initiative in this war that they started.
Trump gave them his best shots starting with a treacherous surprise attack followed by the assassination of the Islamic Republic’s leaders in a terror bombing “shock and awe” campaign that the Americans and their lackeys thought would force the Iranians to beg for mercy in a matter of days. But the Iranians gave as good as they got laying waste to America’s ring of bases across the Middle East and giving the Israelis a taste of their own medicine with wave after wave of missile attacks that has left much of Tel Aviv in ruins.
Trump open talked of regime change à la Libya and Iraq. Netanyahu bragged about a future “Greater Israel” that the Zionists believe will stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates. Both conjured up armies of traitors and quislings that they imagined would take to the streets of Tehran to do their bidding and welcome the imperialists with open arms.
But none of this happened. The Iranians stood firm and so did their Arab allies in Yemen, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon – the axis of resistance that refuses to submit to the Americans, the Israelis or and their feudal Arab lackeys.
The Iranians throttled the Big Oil corporations when they closed the Persian Gulf. They watched US imperialism’s allies wash their hands on the American-Israeli offensive in Iran. They ignored Trump’s empty threats of annihilation and they’ve laid down their own terms for ending the conflict – terms that China, Russia and most of the Global South have endorsed as the basis for ending the conflict.
But in Europe the leading members of the European Union have openly refused to join in Trump’s crusade. In Britain the Starmer government sits on the fence, distancing itself from Washington over Iran while still supplying arms to the Zionist entity and allowing the American air-force to use some of the RAF’s bases in operations against the Islamic Republic.
These are volatile times.The old order is being challenged – and not just in the Middle East.
On the street the masses have broken the bourgeois consensus that rarely goes beyond endless “debates” on immigration and the European Union, mealy-mouthed reforms and Atlanticism. The issues of war and peace, imperialism or socialism are, once again, back on the agenda...

One step forward…

 While victory celebrations in Tehran may be premature the sombre faces in the corridors of power in Washington and Tel Aviv tell another story – one of hubris, humiliation and defeat.
Last week Donald Trump ranted and raged against the Iranians. They were going to be wiped out if they didn’t end their blockade of the Persian Gulf and hand over their nuclear plants and oil industry to the Americans. A few days later he’s agreeing to a Pakistani-brokered cease-fire that pivots on the Islamic Republic’s ten point terms for ending the war.
In Washington the blame game has begun. Trump’s friends say their leader was misled by the Zionists and the fools that surround him in the White House. They’re  already pointing the finger at Pete Hegseth, his useless minister of war, and the Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu. Other insiders, mindful of their political futures in the post-Trump world, are telling tales to the mainstream media of a senile old man in the White House whose delusions of grandeur have plunged the capitalist world into a crisis not seen since the height of the Cold War.
No-one can believe a word the US president says. Donald Trump is an incorrigible liar. His agreements are not worth the paper they’re written on. Nevertheless Trump’s minions, led by Vice-President JD Vance, are now in Pakistan for talks with the Iranians. 
The ceasefire, a two-week truce to pave the way for negotiations, is on a knife-edge. The Israelis, who were not party to the secret American parleys with Pakistan, are out to sabotage the peace talks. They’ve stepped up their offensive in southern Lebanon claiming they’re not bound by the terms of the truce the Americans signed up for. The Lebanese resistance and their north Yemeni allies have hit back with a volleys of missiles and drones. 
In Israel they’ve been taught no end of a lesson – getting a taste of their own medicine that has left their capital in ruins and forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis to flee to safety in  Europe and the United States. And needless to say the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to imperialist shipping. 
On the diplomatic front the European powers are rapidly distancing themselves from the United States. France joins Russia and China in blocking an American manoeuvre on the UN Security Council designed to endorse “international” action against Iran in the Persian Gulf while Starmer poses as non-interventionist to curry favour with his old friends in Brussels.
American and Israeli air-power has failed to crush Iran. The Islamic Republic, on the other hand, has destroyed all the American bases on the Arabian peninsula. US troops have been forced to flee to hotels. Others have been evacuated back to the United States.  America’s much-vaunted nuclear aircraft-carriers retreat under fire. Their commando raids are beaten back. The myth of American invincibility has been shattered. The dream of a “new world order” is over.

Stop the drift to war

It didn’t take long for Starmer to switch from blocking the Americans from using  British bases to attack Iran to permitting it and now actively collaborating with US imperialism and Zionist Israel in their onslaught against the Islamic Republic. He can count on the Faragists and Tories to back him while Tony Blair, who can barely show his face in public in Britain these days, thinks we should have gone in with Trump from the start.

This shouldn’t surprise us. Farage thinks he’s Trump’s mouth-piece in Britain while crawling to the Americans is almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. 
But on the street millions upon millions have seen through the lies of the bourgeois media. They want no part in Trump’s crusade. This is the message that must be heard throughout the labour movement as well. Stop the bombing! End the War!

Every cloud...

This week we saw a minor victory for free speech when the High Court ruled in favour of the Guardian journalist Owen Jones in the Raffi Berg libel case. Jones, best known for his book Chavs –The Demonising of the Working Class back in 2011, launched his career as a man of the left but soon gravitated to the centre to join the prominenti of the mainstream media. He did, however, attract the ire of the Zionists when he accused a BBC journalist of pro-Israeli bias in December 2024
.
Jones' article cited BBC journalists who accused BBC news online editor Raffi Berg of fostering a culture of 'systematic Israeli propaganda'.  But the court rejected Berg's lawyers' core argument that Jones' reporting presented him as "a rogue journalist and editor who deliberately disregards and breaches the duties of accuracy and impartiality".
Jones' piece in Drop Site News quoted BBC staffers saying Berg "reshapes everything from headlines, to story text, to images" and "repeatedly seeks to foreground the Israeli military perspective while stripping away Palestinian humanity". Jones said that "facts unfavourable to Israel have been stripped out of Berg’s reports" and that he played a "crucial role" in "conduct that imperils the integrity of the BBC".
Berg instructed Mark Lewis of Patron Law, previously a director of UK Lawyers for Israel, as his solicitor. His legal team says that Owen’s piece strikes "at the claimant’s professional reputation as a journalist and editor" and has led to "an onslaught of hatred, intimidation and threats", including death threats. 
Nevertheless the judges ruled that the article by Jones expressed an opinion, and indicated the basis for that opinion through examples of Berg's journalism and editorial role. The ruling is central to determining whether the case is to be pursued.
Berg will now need to show that Jones did not genuinely hold the opinion he expressed in his reporting, or demonstrate that the opinion is not one an honest person could hold on the basis of any fact that existed at the time of its publication. It will be interesting to see if Berg decides to take this any further...

Take action for Palestine!

 As Palestinians starve under the Zionist thumb Israeli troops move into Gaza city leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. While People’s China and the Russian Federation have long taken the principled stand with the Global South in support of the Palestinian Arab freedom fighters America’s feudal Arab lackeys wring their hands but do little or nothing to stop the genocide on their door-step.
All over the world millions upon millions of people are demanding an end to the slaughter forcing even the venal Western politicians to at least pay lip-service to human rights in Palestine. But that’s as far as it goes for the likes of Starmer, Macron and Merz.
They try to stifle the solidarity movement by intimidating and jailing those who protest against Zionist terror. They’ll all crawl to Washington to bleat on about Ukraine but none of them are prepared to stand up to Trump or make the decisive break with Zionism and Israel that is needed to halt the violence which threatens to plunge the entire Middle East into chaos and bloodshed.
The Palestinians have called on people around the world to launch divestment campaigns as an effective way of showing solidarity with their struggle for freedom. The call for sanctions against Israel becomes louder and louder each day.
Israel's genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs and displaced over 90 per cent of the entire population. But Israel’s actions can only be sustained through imperialism. And the leader of the pack is the United States.
The Zionist entity is a total dependency of the United States. The United States holds 99 per cent of the cards in Tel Aviv. Despite all the talk of “Zionist lobbies” and the “Jewish vote” only the Americans count in Tel Aviv. The Israelis are American puppets that, until recently, enabled the Americans to pose as friends of the feudal Arab kings who allow the Big Oil corporations to plunder their oil in return for a juicy cut and American protection.
Likewise the Zionist leaders who strut the world posing as independent politicians are just alibis for American aggression in the Middle East. US imperialism provides the military and economic support that keeps Israel going. The country is an American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led to the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from their homes. The war continues to this day. The Palestinians fight on and they will continue the struggle until their legitimate rights are restored.
UN resolutions have provided the basis for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. First of all Israel must totally withdraw from all the occupied territories seized in 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. The Palestinians must be allowed to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian refugees whose homes are now in Israel must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. And all states in the region should have internationally agreed and recognised frontiers guaranteed by the Great Powers.

The struggle of the people against imperialism must be strengthened!

 Joint Statement of Communist and Workers’ Parties

The Communist and Workers’ Parties signing this Joint Statement strongly condemn the US attack on Iran, which escalates the military offensive already launched by Israel.
After Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, the USA and its allies are now shedding the blood of yet another country in the Middle East. This imperialist aggression is plunging people into war across a wider region and threatening to destroy humanity as a whole.
The Communist and Workers’ Parties are demanding an immediate end to the escalation of the war against Iran by the USA, NATO and Israel. We also call on people to strengthen their struggle against war, foreign military bases, troop deployments abroad, military equipment and nuclear weapons.
Solidarity with the people of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and all other peoples in the region must be strengthened.
 
SolidNet Parties

• Communist Party of Albania
• Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
• Communist Party of Armenia
• Communist Party of Australia
• Party of Labour of Austria
• Democratic Progressive Tribune, Bahrain
• Communist Party of Bangladesh
• Brazilian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Britain
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Communist Party of Canada
• Communist Party of Chile
• Colombian Communist Party
• Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
• Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia
• Communist Party of Denmark
• Communist Party of El Salvador
• German Communist Party
• Communist Party of Greece
• Communist Party of India
• Iraqi Communist Party
• Tudeh Party of Iran
• Communist Party of Ireland
• Workers Party of Ireland
• Communist Party of Israel
• Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
• Communist Party of Mexico
• New Communist Party of the Netherlands
• Communist Party of Norway
• Communist Party of Pakistan
• Palestinian Communist Party
• Palestinian Peoples Party
• Paraguayan Communist Party
• Peruvian Communist Party
• Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930]
• Communist Party of Poland
• Romanian Socialist Party
• Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• Communists of Serbia
• South African Communist Party
• Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
• Communist Party of Sri Lanka
• Communist Party of Sweden
• Syrian Communist Party
• Swiss Communist Party
• Communist Party of Turkey
• Communist Party of Ukraine
• Union of Communists of Ukraine
• Communist Party USA
• Communist Party of Venezuela

Other Parties

• Argentinian Communist Party
• Revolutionary Brazilian Communist Party 
• Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism (Finland)
• Communist Revolutionary Party of France 
• Communist Party (Germany)
• Communist Front (Italy)
• Communist Workers' Platform USA

Israel lights the fuse

The Israeli attack on Iran is the opening shot of a war that could plunge the whole of the region into flames. The Israelis originally said their objective was to destroy Iran’s atomic energy industry, which they claim is a cover for efforts to produce nuclear weapons. Now they’re calling on the Iranian people to overthrow their government.
These have always been the objectives of Benjamin Netanyahu and the rabid Zionist leaders of the parties in his coalition government. More to the point they are also the objectives of American imperialism that has long worked for regime change in the Islamic Republic. 
Netanyahu’s coalition is deeply divided over moves to end Orthodox Jews exemption from conscription. Some of the Ultra-Orthodox parties have threatened to resign over the issue which would bring down the government and lead to fresh elections – elections Netanyahu would almost certainly lose.
Israel is in a quagmire of its own making fighting a war in Gaza it cannot win amidst rising inflation and economic stagnation. Many Israelis think Netanyahu is indifferent to the fate of the remaining Israelis held by the Palestinian resistance. Public opinion polls show a growing number of Israelis support the anti-war movement while calls for army reservists to refuse service have also been increasing.  So while doing the Americans bidding war with Iran provides a new prop to hold Netanyahu’s coalition together.
Though there is a growing peace movement in Israel the Netanyahu government thinks it can do whatever it likes regardless of the consequences because it believes that the Arabs and the Iranians are weak and that the United States will always be there to lend a hand when the going gets tough.
What they didn’t take into account was the Iranians’ ability to withstand their first wave of attacks. Nor did they foresee the devastating missile response which has shattered the myth of the so-called “Iron Dome” defence and left parts of Tel Aviv in ruins. Neither did Trump.
The ludicrous dreams of the US president of winning a Nobel Peace Prize have died in the dust of the streets of Gaza and the rubble in Tel Aviv. The Iranians say that as the Americans are the main supporter of Israel, the United States "will also be responsible for the dangerous effects and consequences" of Israel's attacks. Even some of Trump’s closest supporters have broken ranks with him over Iran including Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchorman, who says his former icon was  “complicit” in Israel’s attacks on Iran. Carlson says “Washington knew these attacks would happen. They aided Israel in carrying them out. Politicians purporting to be America First can’t now credibly turn around and say they had nothing to do with it”.  Or as Mollie Hemingway, another Republican pundit, put it: if Trump gave Israel the “green light” to target Iran, it “would be seen as an unforgivable betrayal by millions of American voters”.
 Israel has not been able to kill or drive out the defiant Arab population of the Gaza Strip. Gaza is not going to become a Trump-style American leisure resort. The Palestinians fight on. And so do the Iranians.

A new lease of life for Labour?

Labour’s victory in the south Lanarkshire by-election this week has surprised the bookies, dented the prestige of the SNP and boosted the standing of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. But while the nationalists were expected to hold their Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse seat the political pundits always said it would be a close run thing.
And so it was with Labour’s Davy Russell beating the nationalists by a margin of 602 votes. The Faragists came a close third while the Scottish Tories were well behind with the also-rans.
Labour’s U-turn over pensioners’ winter-fuel payments and the expansion of the free school meals scheme clearly helped sway voters – as did the decision to keep Sir Keir Starmer well away from the constituency during the campaign. 
But though Labour and the nationalists were neck and neck in Hamilton the SNP still retain a clear lead in the national polls. Professor John Curtice says “the recent message from opinion polls are the SNP is running at just over 30 per cent, Labour is around 20 per cent, so it seems a reasonable expectation that such a result would not mean Anas Sarwar is Scotland’s next First Minister”.

No arms for Israel!

Too much even for Britain or France to stomach – the latest American veto at the United Nations shows the true colours of the Trump administration as the instigator of the Zionist massacres in the Gaza Strip. But while the Starmer government likes to pose as “even-handed” or even sympathetic to the legitimate demands of the Palestinians it continues to supplies arms and intelligence to the Zionist entity. 
Now a new Opinium poll reveals huge British public support for arms embargo on Israel by the UK government alongside other sanctions. The British public support a full arms embargo on Israel by more than 4 to 1, including 72 per cent of those who voted Labour in 2024. 54 per cent of the British public support Israel being expelled from the United Nations, with only 16 per cent being opposed. And 50 per cent of respondents supported the idea that supermarkets should no longer stock any goods produced in Israel, in line with the Co-op’s recent decision to boycott Israeli goods at its AGM.
Now we’ve go to turn these polls into reality. Get the message across at the monthly mass protests in London and the weekly demonstrations throughout the country.  From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!

Pastures new?

It didn’t take long for differences between Donald Trump and Elon Musk to degenerate into smears and common abuse. Musk is peddling all sorts of unsavoury stories about his former ally while Trump leaves it to his acolytes to call for Musk’s deportation as an “illegal immigrant”. 
The South African-born oligarch became an American citizen in 2002. He is still, apparently,  a Canadian citizen. But as he is unlikely to be welcomed back in either of his past homelands he should seriously consider the offer of a new safe haven in the Russian Federation.
Communist MP Dmitri Novikov, the first deputy chairman of the Committee on International Affairs in the Russian parliament, told the Moscow media that he could always seek political asylum in the Russian Federation. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek Novikov added that while he didn’t think Musk would need it “Russia, of course, could provide it”.
Indeed. Musk should take it while the going’s good given the irascible and unpredictable nature of the The Donald these days...

When the shooting stops…

Hezbollah has forced Israel to cease-fire – but not on Zionist terms. The Lebanese resistance movement has achieved a strategic success by thwarting the Zionist plans to drive the resistance and the UN peace-keeping force out of southern Lebanon and replace it with an Israeli occupied “buffer zone” to pave the way for annexation.
Many towns in Lebanon are now in ruins. The Israelis pounded Beirut and the other towns and cities of the Lebanon for over a year forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to abandon their homes in waves of terror bombing designed to break the morale of the Arab resistance. But they failed. They themselves paid a heavy price for their aggression. Some 300,000 Israelis fled to safety out of the range of the drones and missiles of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance.  Over a hundred Zionist settlements in northern Israel were evacuated. The “Generals’ Plan” for Gaza has been put on hold. The dream of a “Greater Israel” died in the fields of southern Lebanon,
After the imperialist inspired "Arab Spring" swept across the Arab world, destabilising them one by one and paving the way for normalisation with Israel came the imperialist attempt to “regime change” Syria. Terror gangs armed and funded by the Americans and their NATO allies fermented sectarian violence and civil war in an attempt to overthrow the Baathist-led government in Damascus. The Western media went into top gear to justify imperialist intervention  spreading lies throughout Europe and the United States while the Arab world became a battleground for one of the most ruthless propaganda wars in modern history. This was the first conflict to weaponise social media, exploiting it to deepen the divide between the Shia and Sunni Muslim communities and to fracture the unity between the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. 
Syria, the lifeline of the resistance’s weapons pipeline, was targeted for destruction. But the Syrians closed ranks around their popular front government to beat back the sectarian militias and with the help of Russian peace-keepers drove the terror gangs and their Western military advisors out of most of the country. But the fabricated narrative of "Hezbollah’s crimes in Syria", heavily propagated by the feudal Arab media, continues to serve as a tool to attack Hezbollah and the entire Axis of Resistance to this day.
Though the guns fall silent in Lebanon the Yemeni blockade continues and the Palestinians fight on. They have no other choice, The Israelis are continuing to pursue their genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that has now become a wilderness of rubble and ruins. The Zionists still dream of driving all the Palestinian Arabs out to seize their land and make room for more Zionist settlement.
Nevertheless the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon could pave the way for a similar agreement in Gaza. But only if there’s mass pressure in the Western world to force the imperialist leaders to recognise the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs. Over the past 14 months millions in Britain have rallied to demand justice for the Palestinians. It’s already having an effect on the people in the corridors of power. We must keep up the momentum for as long as it takes. If Starmer will not speak up for the people living through a genocide in Gaza and under siege in the West Bank, then we absolutely must continue to raise our voices for them.

What choice do we have?

Starmer squirms while Gaza burns. He warns MPs that the Middle East is “close to the brink” and in “very real danger of a regional war”  but refuses to rule out British military involvement if Israel attacks Iran. He declines to say whether MPs would get a vote first on any military action. Why is that?
The obvious answer is that Starmer is waiting to see what the United States wants and at the moment the White House is keeping its cards close to its chest. At the moment we can only second guess what the Americans will do though Biden’s 30 minute telephone call to Netanyahu doesn’t bode well for the future of Lebanon. What is however certainly clear is that whatever Biden wants Starmer will do.
This is what the “special relationship” is all about – doing the bidding of the Americans and those sections of the British ruling class who believe that their global interests are best served through the might of US imperialism. Crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to right-wing Labour leaders who never seriously challenged imperialism when the British empire spanned the globe,
Starmer & Co stand for little apart from personal ambition and slavish support for American imperialism and what they believe to be the dominant section of the British ruling class. Sadly they face no serious challenge, at the moment, from within the labour movement. Labour’s army of local government jobsworths and the legion of trade union bureaucrats that run the big unions and the TUC have been easily bought off by the very modest package of reforms promised by the new government. Like Starmer and the ageing Blairites now back at the helm of the Labour Party the grandees think they can safely ignore the mass movement on the street in support of the Palestinians.
We must prove them wrong. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through the heart of London last weekend demanding justice for the Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands more are taking part in anti-war protests throughout the country. As Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now heads the Independent group in Parliament said “without further de-escalation, unimaginable horror is on the horizon. But as we stand on the brink of a major regional war, do not forget those who lie dead in its wake. Do not forget what has been taken from us, forever. Do not forget the people of Gaza, where genocide continues unabated.
“We continue to march because we refuse to let the memory of Palestinians die. We continue to call for an end to all arms sales to Israel. We continue to speak up for the only path to a just and lasting peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine. After a year of genocide, we might ask ourselves why we bother to carry on when our demands have largely fallen on deaf ears. As long as there are Palestinians who dream of freedom, what choice do we have?”.

We stand against the widening of war in the Middle East!

 Joint Statement of Communist and Workers Parties

We, the undersigned communist and workers parties campaigning for peace and progress in the Middle East, hereby express our most profound concerns over the unprecedented escalation of the situation in the region with the Israeli multi-dimensional attacks on Lebanon and full-scale invasion of the country. This has predictably resulted in the retaliatory missile strikes by Iran on Israeli targets, following on from Israeli attacks on Lebanon and other provocative infringements on Iranian sovereignty.
We believe that if the current trend of developments continues, the region will be plunged into a cycle of conflict that could very easily lead to a globalised war.  This would endanger the security of all states and peoples in our region.
In Israel, the Netanyahu government, which has flagrantly violated international law in its perpetration of a genocidal war in Gaza for the past 12 months, assassination of political leadersin Tehran and Beirut,and now in its invasion of Lebanon and blatant recourse to terror tactics to eliminate its foes there, is seeking a direct military conflict with Iran in order to expand the war across the Middle East, in collusion with the US and UK governments, to aggressively implement schemes fundamentally aimed at the re-drawing of the political map of the Middle East and imposition of their imperialist hegemony.
The state of Israel conducts itself as the wild arsonist in the Middle East, while Western powers continue to cover, support, and arm it to the teeth, since it constitutes their long and steely arm in the region.This despite Israel's repeated brazen thumbing its nose to the international community, under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), as well as the rule of international law.
We recognise the definitive peaceful and political resolution of the Palestinian issue as being central to the current situation in the Middle East.  We therefore call for an immediate full ceasefire and end to the genocidal war in Gaza andthe West Bank and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from those territories; the release of all Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli gaols and detention centres; the release of all remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza; as well immediate concrete and legally enshrined steps towards the recognition and implementation of a fully sovereign Palestinian state within the borders as they stood on 4 June 1967 as per the relevant UN resolutions.  In accordance with international law, the illegal occupation of Palestine must be brought to an end.
We furthermore call for the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli military forces from the sovereign territory of Lebanonand reaffirm our solidarity with the struggle of the Lebanese and Palestinian people and support for their fundamental and inalienable right under international law to resist foreign invasion and occupation. We also call for an endto the bombardment and military targeting of sites in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and further afield.
Pursuant to this, we call for an end to all exports of military armaments, ammunition, as well as technical assistanceto Israel in order to force a reversal from its dangerous military adventure in Palestine, Lebanon, and other countries in the Middle East.
We call for the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding theIsraeli genocidal war in Gaza to be upheld and implemented without delay or obstruction.
We call for the UN's appeals to all sides to be heeded in order so as to earnestly row back from and avert the nightmarish scenario of a generalised war, which edges over closer and would spell disaster for all peoples of the region.
 
SolidNet Parties signing the Joint Statement
 

• Communist Party of Armenia
• Communist Party of Australia
• Communist Party of Austria
• Party of Labour Austria
• Communist Party of Bangladesh
• Communist Party of Brazil
• Communist Party of Britain
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Communist Party of Canada
• AKEL of Cyprus
• Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
• Communist Party of Denmark
• Communist Party of Finland
• French Communist Party
• German Communist Party
• Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
• Hungarian Workers Party
• Communist Party of India
• Communist Party of India [Marxist]
• Tudeh Party of Iran
• Communist Party of Iraq
• Kurdistan Communist Party -Iraq
• Workers Party of Ireland
• Communist Party of Israel
• Italian Communist Party
• Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan
• Communist Party of Luxembourg
• Communist Party of Malta
• Communist Party of Mexico
• New Communist Party of the Netherlands
• Communist Party of Norway
• Communist Party of Pakistan
• Palestinian Peoples Party
• Portuguese Communist Party
• Communist Party of the Russian Federation
• Russian Communists Workers Party
• Communists of Serbia 
• Communist Party of Spain
• Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
• Communists of Catalonia
• Communist Party of Sri Lanka
• Sudanese Communist Party
• Communist Party of Sweden
• Syrian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Turkey
• Communist Party of Ukraine
• Communist Party of Uruguay
• Communist Party USA
• Communist Party of Venezuela  

Other Parties

• Communist Front of Italy
• Communist Workers' Platform USA
• Party of Communists USA

Stop Israel now!

The Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – it’s all part of the spiralling violence, that’s clearly been incited by the imperialists, that threatens to plunge the entire Middle East into a sea of blood. British jets shamefully joined the Americans in trying to shield Israel from the wrath of Iran last week while doing nothing to halt the Israeli terror campaign that’s been unleashed against Arab civilian targets in Palestine and Lebanon. The imperialists do nothing because they want to maintain their grip of the oil fields of Arabia. For decades the Big Oil corporations have been protected by Western forces, the Arab auxiliaries provided the oil princes and, of course, the Israelis. While the Zionists and the feudal Arab princes get a cut for doing the Americans’ bidding all the Palestinians get is death and destruction. 
The imperialists and Zionists use terror in the mistaken belief that this will force the Palestinians to beg for peace. But it doesn’t work. The Palestinian Arabs have remained steadfast since 1948 to keep up the fight for their legitimate right for independence and self-determination while Israel’s got a bloody nose every time it’s sent troops into Lebanon in the past. It will be no different this time round.
The imperialist camp calls for “restraint”. Biden and Starmer lead the pack in calls for peace and talk of the imaginary “two-state” solution that they routinely churn out to divert attention away from the demand for justice from the Palestinians and the rest of the world.
These people shed crocodile tears over the fate of the Israeli hostages and brand critics “anti-semites” if they dare to challenge Zionist lies in the bourgeois media. They bleat on about “human rights” when they represent some of the worst human rights abusers in the world, such as Israel, Ukraine and, of course, the USA itself.
In their words they pose as saints. But they must be judged by their deeds. They brought death and destruction to Libya and Iraq. They incited civil strife in Syria. Now they are arming Israel to the teeth while condoning hideous Israeli atrocities against defenceless civilians and threatening to directly intervene to protect Israel if the going ever gets tough for the Zionist state. This has to be stopped.
The British labour movement cannot directly influence American public opinion but it can, and must, put pressure on our Labour government to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East.
"We need a full arms embargo on Israel and economic sanctions, now. Our common humanity demands nothing less" says Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now heads the Independent bloc in Parliament. That’s the least we can do, and we need to do it now!

Brighton rocks...

...and no more when the TUC is in town. These days the TUC’s annual conference is little more than a talking shop for the union establishments and Brighton was no exception. Every year the assorted full-time officers get together for this annual jamboree to formulate policies that reflect the views of the senior full-timers and the lay officers that lead the factions that run our unions today. In the coming months motions which reflect the views of the bureaucrats will doubtless end up as material for mediocre TUC campaigns and lobbies  – those that genuinely reflect the demands of the street on pay, terms and conditions and social justice will be sidelined or ignored.
Though some motions challenged the bourgeois consensus the bureaucracy ensured that nothing was done to embarrass Sir Keir Starmer who turned up to tell delegates that what he called “Changed Labour” would need to make “tough choices” and provide no “special favours” to unions.
Conference as a whole did however take up the fight against racism calling on the movement to do all it can to mobilise on the streets against the far right and delegates unanimously
passed an emergency motion on the danger of a wider war in the Middle East and in support of a national day of action for Palestine on 10th October.
Though the days when the TUC was called the “general staff of labour” are long gone it still pompously calls itself the “voice of Britain at work”. In reality it is, of course, the ‘voice of the union bureaucracy at work’ so we shouldn’t be surprised when, at the end of the day, nothing is done...

No arms for Israel!

While the Zionists may talk about teaching Hezbollah a lesson with their pager bomb terror campaign the only thing they have actually taught the Lebanese resistance is to never again compromise their security with electronic equipment made in the American empire. Meanwhile Britain continues to aid and abet the Israeli war-criminals by supplying sophisticated arms to the Zionist state.
The Western powers, who routinely brand all resistance to imperialism as “terrorism”, say little about Israel’s current wave of terror in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and rarely go beyond their hypocritical calls for restraint “on all sides” that are actually calls for a complete Arab surrender to Zionist demands. 
A few weeks ago the Starmer government suspended 30 out of the current 350 UK arms export licences to Israel. But this token gesture, given to try and stave off the mounting pressure to halt all British arms exports to Israel, is nowhere near enough. Or as CND’s Kate Hudson put it: “Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians and is using both conventional and hybrid warfare to kill and injure people in Lebanon. The Middle East stands on the edge of a wider regional war and the British government is more than happy to cheer it on. This has to stop”.

Bye Bye Biden

Joe Biden was clearly looking for a glorious send off at the Democratic Party’s national convention this week – Kissinger-style shuttle diplomacy to end the Gaza war and a Ukrainian push into southern Russia to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant and force Putin to beg for peace. Such is the stuff of dreams.

He shuffled off to his long-overdue retirement without either. Kursk didn’t fall and the Ukrainians are now being pushed back by the Russians and all the American talk of Israel’s acceptance of a  “bridging proposal” to end the genocide in Gaza was, within days, shown to be just...talk. 
One wonders who actually advises the “leader of the free world” these days. The Ukrainian sortie into Kursk province clearly underestimated Russia’s defence capability while Washington’s latest diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, led by the hapless Anthony Blinken, were doomed from the start because they talked of a deal the current Israeli government doesn’t want while asking the Palestinians to lay down their arms while offering next to nothing in return. 
The Americans could, of course, easily end the fighting in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Israel and Ukraine are essentially American protectorates. These puppet regimes cannot survive without American economic and military support. The fanatical Zionists in Tel Aviv and the fascist Ukrainian nationalists in Kiev genuinely hate Arabs and Russians but they get away with it because they are ultimately only doing the bidding of American imperialism. They turn their back on genuine peace proposals that would end the conflicts because that’s what their masters in Washington want. When they are no longer of any further use they’ll be dumped – like the imperialist stooges who ran like hares when the Americans cut their losses in Afghanistan in 2021.

War Crimes UK

There’s no doubt that the Israelis are breaking international law. A UN Commission has found that Israeli forces have committed crimes against humanity, including the killing of defenceless civilians  and the forcible transfer and torture of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. The Zionist state remains under investigation for genocide at the International Court of Justice. And last month, the same court ruled that Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestine is unlawful.  
If Israeli leaders are found guilty of war crimes – and the International Criminal Court has already applied for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu – then British ministers and senior civil servants could be held liable too.  
The Global Justice Now campaign has published legal advice which shows that the UK may be liable for crimes committed by Israel during the onslaught on Gaza and through Israel’s illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The advice, written by leading barrister Sam Fowles, says that the UK’s trade relations with Israel and provision of intelligence and diplomatic support could also make UK officials liable for Israel’s breaches of international humanitarian law. 
 Last week a British diplomat resigned over the British government’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel. Mark Smith accused Israel of waging “war crimes in plain sight” against the Palestinians after he resigned from the Foreign Office over British arms sales to the country.
He said he had flagged his concerns about the sales at “every level” of the ministry, up to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, but the response was “not satisfactory”. Smith took the principled stand over Palestine. We must redouble our efforts in support of Palestine. The struggle must continue until Palestine is free!

No end in sight...

The Middle East is now on the brink of all-out war following this week’s targetted killings of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance leaders in back-to-back Israeli air strikes in Beirut and Tehran. Some say this is what the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants to stave off the Gaza cease-fire he fears would split his coalition and force him to call fresh elections he almost certainly lose. Bowing out while facing bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges is not how Netanyahu wants to be remembered. He wants to end his days covered in Zionist glory as the man who built “Greater Israel” and brought the Palestinians to their knees. But he’s failed, so far, on all counts.
Israel has failed to drive the Palestinians into Egypt to clear the decks for the Zionist settlement of the Gaza Strip. Israel has failed to stop the confrontation with the Lebanese resistance on its northern border. The Yemenis are maintaining their naval blockade that has closed down Eilat, Israel’s port on the Red Sea. The Palestinians still hold scores of Israeli prisoners and Hamas and the other Palestinian resistance movements fight on using tunnel networks under the Strip that the Israelis have failed to uncover.
It hasn’t been for the want of trying. The genocidal Israeli campaign in Gaza has brought death and destruction to the Palestinian enclave on an industrial scale. Some 39,000 Palestinian Arabs have been killed and over 90,000 more wounded in the round of fighting that began in October 2023. Most of them were defenceless civilians.
But behind Israel stands American imperialism. Despite all the talk of “Zionist lobbies” or the “Jewish vote” only the Americans count in Tel Aviv. The Israelis are American puppets that, until recently, enabled the Americans to pose as friends of the feudal Arab kings who allow the Big Oil corporations to plunder their oil in return for a juicy cut and American protection.
Likewise the Zionist leaders who strut the world posing as independent politicians are just alibis for American aggression in the Middle East. US imperialism provides the military and economic support that keeps Israel going. The country is a virtual American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants.
The war goes on in Gaza because that’s what American imperialism wants. They want the fighting to continue until Hamas is crushed – because Hamas stands in their way, because the Palestinian resistance sabotaged the American plan for NATO expansion in the Middle East when it launched its raid into Israel last October.
But what the Americans want and what they get is another matter altogether. They failed in Iraq. They failed in Afghanistan. They failed in Syria and they will fail in the Middle East.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led to the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from their homes. The war that began in 1948 continues to this day. The Palestinians fight on and they will continue the struggle until their legitimate rights are restored.
UN resolutions have provided the basis for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. First of all Israel must totally withdraw from all the occupied territories seized in 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. The Palestinians must be allowed to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian refugees whose homes are now in Israel must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. And all states in the region, including Israel, should have internationally agreed and recognised frontiers guaranteed by all the Great Powers.

No arms for Israel!

Lord Cameron has come back from Israel empty-handed. The Foreign Minister went there to urge restraint on the Netanyahu government following the Iranian missile and drone attacks that were, themselves, a reprisal for the Zionist bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed eleven military advisors including two of their top generals. Though the RAF, together with the French and American air force, did most of the work in fending off the Iranian drones, Cameron got nothing in return from Netanyahu apart from demands for more Western sanctions against the Islamic Republic and unconditional NATO support for whatever revenge the rabid Zionist leader is seeking.
Though not surprising in itself – the only people Netanyahu needs to heed are the Americans – it might, nevertheless, be a step too far for the Israeli leader because Cameron was clearly speaking for Joe Biden himself when he landed in Tel Aviv this week.
Biden, or rather the shadowy cabal that pull the strings behind him, must have sanctioned the Damascus attack that started this new round of fighting. Despite subsequent White House denials it’s difficult to see why Netanyahu would have opted for such a dangerous escalation without getting the green light from his masters in Washington. Some believe the Israeli leader wants to prolong the war in Gaza to scupper American plans for a new NATO bloc in the region that would include the oil-rich Saudis – and thus considerably reduce the role of the Zionist state in the region. Others that he simply wants the war to continue to remain in office and stave off the corruption charges he will face once his immunity from prosecution is lifted. Maybe he simply miscalculated the response in Tehran and Washington.
The Zionists don’t care what the Iranians think but they are certainly concerned at what is going on in Washington. Biden, who barely knows what day it is, is just a pawn of the “deep state” – that cabal of the most venal and aggressive elements within the American ruling class is clearly divided about what to do next.
We see this openly discussed in their media. Some still believe in backing Israel to the hilt to creat the “Greater Middle East” that would break up the existing Arab states into smaller, sectarian puppet governments whose rulers would depend on American and Israeli guns for protection. Others say this is simply beyond the reach of imperialism these days and that the only way forward is to cut a deal with the feudal Arab oil princes to buy off opposition on the Arab street and impose a sophisticated surrender peace that would give the semblance of a two-state solution while reinforcing American hegemony over the entire region.
The alternative is an escalating conflict that has already drastically reduced Western traffic through the Suez Canal amid fears of another all-out Middle East war that could disrupt or even cut the oil supplies from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf that the Western world depends on.
British workers have no say in what goes on in the United States but they do have a voice in the unions and on the street. Tell the Labour and union leaders that claim to represent us that British arms to Israel must be halted. We want an end to the war in Gaza and want justice for the Palestinian Arabs. And we want it now!

Take on the Zionists!

The Americans, like the Israelis, want to crush Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance that they believe is the major obstacle to the imposition of a surrender peace that would allow the Israelis to annex the parts of the West Bank they call “Greater Israel” while the Palestinians would get a next to nothing – a powerless “independent” statelet run by quislings that the feudal Arab oil princes need to justify their collaboration with imperialism on the Arab street. Even this “two-state” solution is too much for the Netanyahu government and its Zionist settlers’ bloc. The only thing they want to give the Palestinians is a one-way ticket off the land they want to colonise.
Biden, Sunak and the rest of the imperialist pack can ignore and even justify the massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. But the murder of seven Western aid workers this week is a different matter. Three of the innocent victims were British, another was American.
This time round the shock and horror on the street can’t be simply dismissed as pro-Arab propaganda or outright “anti-Semitism”. Nothing the Israelis do with their weasel words about a “tragic accident” and an offer to pay blood money to the families of these hapless victims of Zionist terror can whitewash their latest atrocity in Gaza.
Some say Biden has told the Israelis that he wants an end to the fighting by the end of the week. That may be wishful thinking. Biden and the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class that he represents have given unconditional moral and material support to Israel – support that has enabled the Zionist war-machine to slaughter over 33,000 Palestinian Arabs.
There are, of course, divisions within America’s ruling circles and the British Establishment over the current imperialist stand on Palestine. Arming Israel to the teeth to perpetuate the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights clearly no longer works. The Houthi Yemeni government’s blockade that has closed the Suez Canal to Israeli and Anglo-American shipping is bad news for imperialism. Anger on the Arab street that turns on the oil princes would be a nightmare.
Meanwhile the mass monthly protests that have rocked London for months on end have mobilised public opinion in support of the Palestinians and encouraged others to publicly speak out against Israeli aggression.
Over 600 prominent lawyers, including former Supreme Court justices, have signed a letter warning that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel while a former Conservative minister has publicly accused two Tory peers of working for “the interests of another country”.
Sir Alan Duncan, who served as a Foreign Office minister under Theresa May, says the Conservative Friends of Israel group was “doing the bidding of Netanyahu” and called for two of its prominent members, Lord Polak and Lord Pickles, to be removed from the House of Lords. He also accused several ministers and former ministers of not supporting international law by failing to condemn illegal settlements, including deputy premier Oliver Dowden, Michael Gove, and former home secretaries Suella Braverman and Priti Patel.
Alan Duncan has broken the bourgeois consensus in Sunak’s ranks. Now someone needs to do the same in Starmer’s….

Keep up the fight for Palestinian rights!

Though the prisoner exchange between Hamas and the Israelis may bring about a temporary halt in the fighting there can be no let up in the campaign for a permanent cease-fire and an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip. 
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) quite  rightly says that “while a temporary truce is welcome it is not a solution. We won’t stray from our demands. We demand a permanent ceasefire and an end to the siege of Gaza and to Israeli apartheid”.
. Next week’s national demonstrations in London, Cardiff and Glasgow must go ahead and the campaign must continue to mobilise mass pressure throughout the labour and peace movement not only to end the fighting but to restore the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs.
Truces and armistices may have brought about temporary pauses in the Arab-Israeli war that began with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. But they never led to a permanent end to the conflict let alone the “comprehensive, just and lasting peace” that the imperialist leaders pretend to support while ensuring that it can never be achieved.
The first war led to the expulsion of around a million Palestinian Arabs from their homes by the Zionist regime. Those refugees and their descendants have never given up their right to return to their land. And this is the heart of the crisis in the Middle East that has led to five full‑scale wars and continuing simmering conflicts.
The Zionists still dream of dominating the Middle East and colonising Palestine. But their petty ambitions are not the driving force of American imperialism.
Israel is an American protectorate – economically and politically entirely dependent on US imperialism. Israeli governments exist simply to serve the needs of American imperialism in the region. And those needs are to weaken and divide the Arabs to ensure that the big oil corporations can continue their exploitation and plunder of Arab oil until it eventually runs out.
We are, once again hearing the Americans talk about a “two-state” solution. This was, indeed, the basis for the partition of the British colony in 1948 which gave the Palestinian Arabs 44 per cent of their land with Jerusalem under an international administration. It is also the basis of the current UN proposals that simply call for Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories they seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to allow the Palestinian Arabs to establish their own independent state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.
But what the Americans are talking about doesn’t even go that far. Their “two-state” solution would see the Israelis retaining all their West Bank settlements in exchange for  worthless desert in Israel that would be attached to the Gaza Strip and what’s left of the Arab West Bank for the establishment of a powerless “state” whose independence would barely stretch beyond that of an Indian “reservation” in the United States. It’s all there in Donald Trump’s worthless “Abraham Accords” that were supposed to bring peace to the Middle East but in the end were only accepted by Israel and the craven oil-princes of Bahrain and the Emirates. 
American imperialism believed it called all the shots. They thought  all resistance can be crushed by brute force. They hoped to find enough willing Arab tools to do their bidding and sign a surrender peace. The Palestinians have, once again, proved them wrong.

DFLP: Israeli war-crimes in the Gaza Strip

by Fouad Baker

Commander Abu Khaled of the DFLP

The barbaric Israeli aggression supported by the West, especially the United States, which has been continuing since the 8th October, was not the first. Rather, it was preceded by many wars on the Gaza Strip, resulting in thousands of martyrs in addition to the systematic destruction of homes and infrastructure.

Aggression, massacres and war-crimes are an inherent feature of the Zionist entity. The Gaza Strip is an area with the highest population density – 2.2 million people live in the 365 km enclave. Over the last 17 years, from the start of the brutal siege that began in 2006, on Israel has launched 12 incursions into the Strip, including six destructive invasions. Over 4,300 Palestinians were martyred in these wars and over 19,500 wounded while the number of Israeli deaths did not exceed 136 dead and about 4,000 wounded.

2006: 277 Palestinians were killed and 1,167 wounded in Israeli raids that continued for three months.

2008:125 Palestinians were killed and large numbers of wounded over the course

of five days of bombing.

2008 – 2009: 1,430 Palestinians were martyred, including about 400 children and 240 women, 5,400 wounded, in addition to the complete or partial destruction of more than 10,000 homes. In the Battle of the Shale Stones about 180 Palestinians were martyred, including 42 children and 11 women, and about 1,300 others were injured. In the battle of the Eastern Storm 2,322 Palestinians were killed and 11,000 wounded. In the Battle of the Cry of Dawn 34 Palestinians were killed, and more than 100 others were injured and some 250 Palestinians were killed and over 5,000 wounded in the Battle of Saif al Quds (the Sword of Jerusalem).

The Gaza Strip is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories and it is not possible to create any kind of geographical or political separation between them. These territories are a single and unified territorial unit. Any dealing with them in a partial manner is an attempt to divide the Palestinian land  and divide the Palestinian people. We will fight to defend the unity of the land, the people, and the cause.

What must be emphasised repeatedly is that what happened on 7th October is an extension of what was happening before that date in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the city of Jerusalem in terms of criminal practices against the Palestinian people. Therefore, the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood must be seen in the context of responding to the massacres and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip. 

It was a response to the daily killings, arrests, theft of land for the purposes of

settlement, demolition of homes, the burning of entire towns and the storming and destruction of cities and refugee camps by the Israeli aggressors. 

  Therefore, we say that there is no solution to our national issue without recognising that the basic issue is the occupation and settlement of our land.

Israeli aggression is not against any Palestinian faction or party, but rather against all the Palestinian people and all their parties and political and social components.

It is a systematic aggression, a genocide, against an entire people – women and children, the sick and the elderly –  everything that lives and moves in the Gaza Strip.

It’s not just in Gaza. It’s all over Palestine. This year over 500 Palestinians have been killed on the West Bank –   200 martyrs since 7th October. This, the bloodiest year for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Jerusalem, confirms that the main problem is the physical presence of the Israeli occupation army and the Israeli settlers.

The United Nations and its resolutions consider the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem to be Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. International law allows persecuted peoples to resist invaders. The Palestinian people have the right and even the duty to resist the Zionist occupier, and the legal, political, moral and humanitarian duty of the international community is to support the people’s resistance.

The Palestinians struggles to liberate their land and enable them to freely exercise

their national rights free from occupation, subjugation and colonialism.

The Israeli occupation and the Israeli settlements are the main root of the problem, and any solution that does not take into account the national rights of the Palestinian people will perpetuate the conflicts in Palestine and the region.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) calls on all parties of the world and its political and popular institutions to condemn the war of extermination pursued by the Israeli enemy against the Palestinian people, to take punitive and deterrent measures against Israeli war criminals, and to exert pressure on Western governments that support the aggression to stop their partnership in killing and crimes against civilians of the Palestinian people and to work from In order to stop the series of crimes against humanity.

A call to all free people in the world

communist & workers' parties joint statement

Amidst the continuous and severe Zionist airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, targeting residential, civil, and healthcare facilities, particularly escalating attacks on hospitals and their surroundings, notably the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, one of Gaza's largest hospitals, which has ceased operations due to the lack of fuel, supplies, and necessary medical drugs for treating the injured and ill. According to the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, there have been over 100 corpses for days in the hospital's yard, starting to decompose, unable to be buried due to continuous gunfire targeting anyone moving inside or outside the hospital. Continuous fatalities of infants and critical cases persist due to the halt of medical equipment, including incubators, ventilators, and other vital devices, with similar conditions prevailing in other hospitals across the Gaza Strip. 

Given these dire and dangerous circumstances and due to the stubborn refusal of the fascist occupation to heed international appeals from organizations like the Red Cross, the United Nations, and others to allow the necessary medical supplies into hospitals, the Palestinian Communist Party calls upon all freedom-loving individuals worldwide and all Communist and Workers' Parties globally to rally and demonstrate outside the embassies of the fascist occupying state, and the embassies of the United States of America. This is to pressure their governments to sever ties with this fascist occupation and form a global alliance to halt aggression, lift the siege on Gaza, and allow all humanitarian and medical aid without conditions.
 
We call upon all parties to sign this appeal
 

• Communist Party of Albania  
• New Communist Party of Britain
• Colombian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Chile
• Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
• Communist Party of Denmark
• Communist Party of Greece
• Communist Party of Kenya
• Kuwaiti Progressive Movement
• Lebanese Communist Party
• Communist Party of Pakistan
• Palestinian Communist Party
• Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930]
• Romanian Socialist Party
• Communist Party of the Russian Federation
• Communists of Serbia
• New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
• Communist Party of Sri Lanka
• Communist Party of Swaziland
• Syrian Communist Party [Unified]
• Communist Party of Turkey

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

A memorandum addressed to friendly parties about the war of annihilation practised by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian territories

Dear comrades, militant greetings,

 Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has witnessed a severe and illegal siege in which the occupation imposes complete control over land, sea and air crossings, causing a severe humanitarian crisis. The occupied Palestinian territories are witnessing an unprecedented escalation of the occupation’s crimes, which included repeated incursions into Jerusalem, the Palestinian West Bank, and Palestinian Islamic and Christian holy sites, which led to cold-blooded killings of civilians, arbitrary arrests of children and women, home demolitions and confiscation of land, in addition to increasing the pace of settlement and continuing the siege of the Gaza Strip.
Now the residents of the Gaza Strip, inhabited by more than two million Palestinians who suffer from deteriorating living conditions, are being exposed, as a result of an ongoing Israeli siege, to a horrific crime that amounts to war crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, in which entire residential neighbourhoods containing thousands of homes and residential towers were demolished, and massacres of murder were committed.
Hundreds of Palestinian families, and about half of Gaza's population was displaced from their homes.
While the Israeli occupation forces had killed thousands of citizens in Gaza during five multiple and successive wars on the Strip (2008-2014-2018-2021-2022).
So far, they have killed more than 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including about 500 children and nine thousand wounded.
It continues to bomb civilians, public and private property, and infrastructure, as well as cutting off supplies of water, electricity, food, and other basic facilities to the Strip. 
The Israeli occupation in the West Bank killed more than 54 Palestinians in one week and wounded more than 1,100.
Today, the Israeli entity has revealed an old-new plan aimed at displacing our people in the Gaza Strip towards Egypt in a transfer process and a major crime that brings to mind the Nakba of 1948, but our people will remain committed to their land and resist the occupation by all means and forms, and if anyone is to leave the land of Palestine, it is the Zionist occupation.
The Israeli occupation and some Western countries, led by the United States of America, are carrying out a systematic and widespread media campaign to deceive world public opinion and falsify the facts about what “Israel” is carrying out in terms of a war of genocide against Palestinian civilians. 
They portray the Israeli entity as a victim and being subjected to killing at a time when their deceptive methods have been exposed by publishing pictures of wounded children from Gaza as Israeli children, to make it clear that they do not have any evidence that the Palestinian resistance killed Israeli children.
The Al-Aqsa Flood operation came in response and in defense of the rights and dignity of our people, who are suffering from the longest occupation in history, and who are exposed every day to terrorism, murder, and arrest at the hands of war criminals in the Israeli enemy entity. 
The Al-Aqsa Flood battle confirmed the fragility of the occupation forces, which have lost their prestige before the entire world.
Our people demand that all free and honorable people in the world intervene immediately and seriously to stop the Zionist crimes against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and the occupied Palestinian territories. 
We also call for exerting maximum pressure on the occupying entity to lift the siege on the Gaza Strip, release prisoners, stop settlement activity, and stop the war of extermination and mass massacres that occupation forces are practising.
We demand that full protection be guaranteed to the Palestinian people in accordance with international law and the Geneva Conventions. 
We also call on international courts, especially the International Criminal Court, to open an investigation into the crimes committed by the occupation authorities.
We call for exposing the Israeli propaganda that receives support in Western media circles, and we call for the refutation of the deceptive narratives of the Zionist media and some journalists and media professionals in many Western countries who promote the false Zionist narrative of the truth.
Our steadfast people on the land of Palestine today face a war of extermination carried out by the Israeli occupation forces, supported by the United States of America, which has become a partner and party leading this aggression, which is also blatantly supported by some Western countries that seek to protect the Zionist entity and its continued occupation of our land and our country.
Our heroic people, the people of the free and the martyrs, will not kneel or retreat, and will continue the struggle and resistance until their full inalienable national rights are restored and their independent state is built on the land of Palestine.
Stopping the Zionist aggression, the war of extermination and population displacement is the duty of all honourable and free people in the world. We are confident that you will support our people and our just cause.

with our deepest regards

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
15th October 2023