The WSA Solidarity Committee strongly denounces the Israeli military's
merciless
assault on the Gaza Strip
,
beginning on Monday, May 10, which has killed at least 137 Palestinians,
including 36 children. This new shooting war—the fourth since 2008, and the
third overseen by the far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—began in
the context of a Palestinian uprising against the imminent colonial
displacement of several refugee families
from
the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
On Monday, Israeli police, who were engaged in brutalizing Muslim
worshippers observing Ramadan at the al-Aqsa mosque, defied Hamas'
ultimatum to withdraw their forces, leading to mass-rocket fire into
Israel. 8 Israelis
(Jewish
and Palestinian), including a child, plus an Indian care worker have died
in these barrages
.
The advanced “Iron Dome” system—funded and developed in no small part by
the US government and aerospace corporations—has intercepted most incoming
fire. In the Occupied West Bank this past week, the Israeli State has
killed at least a dozen Palestinian protesters.
Emboldened by his enabler, the U.S. government, Netanyahu has been
especially cruel during these latest escalations. Yesterday, May 15, Nakba
Day—which marks the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948, and the
start of a vast ethnic-cleansing campaign that formed the basis of the
Jewish State—an Israeli strike on a refugee camp in Gaza took the lives of
ten members of the al-Hadidi family
:
eight children, and two women. Faced with the deliberate targeting of their
homes, thousands have fled with their families to shelter in U.N. schools,
but many have nowhere to go. Unlike other victims of war throughout the
world, Palestinians in Gaza cannot flee the warzone. They lack the shelter
and warning systems that simultaneously protect Israelis. Many Palestinian
residents of Gaza, interviewed by Al Jazeera, have expressed the direness
of the situation. “'It has been absolutely ruthless,' [Abedrabbo al-Attar
said].”
In a brazen bombing Saturday afternoon, Israel demolished the very building
housing the offices of Al Jazeera, the Associated Press, and Middle East Eye
in
Gaza. Though the affected journalists appear to have escaped in time, this
attack is part and parcel of the Israeli State's “information war,” designed
to cover up its past, ongoing, and future atrocities in the besieged
enclave. Al Jazeera is now broadcasting from al-Shifa hospital, supposedly
the “safest place” in the territory.
Not only is violence flaring in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem,
but inter-communal violence has also broken out in Israel proper, otherwise
known as the “1948 territories,”between Jews and Palestinians. In Tel Aviv,
Haifa, and Lod (Lydda), marauding Jewish Israelis, enabled and protected by
the police, have terrorized
Palestinian
homes and workplaces during these Muslim holy days of Eid al-Fitr. Such
mobs have carried out lynchings and stabbings
and
fire-bombed Palestinian residences. Meanwhile, five synagogues in Lod/Lydda
have been burned. In response, the authorities have declared a state of
emergency
in
the city.
As the Libertarian Workers Group observed in 1982, Israel “is merely a unit
in the international pecking order of competing nations, with the
superpowers on top.” Its disregard for humanity, as evinced in Gaza, Sheikh
Jarrah, and the West Bank, is consistent with the history of
settler-colonialism
and the establishment of State bureaucracies across the globe. Now, in the
wake of the Trump regime and the parallel rise of the “Alt-Right,” and
considering the far right's contempt for “cultural Marxism,” anti-Semitism
is on the rise internationally. But the Jewish State does not solve for
this problem. Rather, through its egregious violations of international
humanitarian law, it provides ammunition to anti-Semitic opportunists
throughout the world. We must reject both the Israeli State's crimes, as
well as the supremacists who would utilize such atrocities for nefarious
purposes.
To construct freedom for all in Israel/Palestine, the first step is an
immediate and enduring ceasefire between Hamas and the Israel. This would
involve the Israeli military indefinitely ceasing all military operations
in and against the Gaza Strip, and Hamas and affiliated groups likewise
ending rocket fire into Israel. Moreover, Israel must suspend its campaign
to expel Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah and the rest of East Jerusalem to
make room for Jewish settlers, and Jewish Israeli lynch mobs must
forthright withdraw from the streets.
We support a vision of Jewish and Palestinian workers, peasants, and
oppressed people questioning and ultimately breaking with supremacist,
nationalist, and militaristic imaginaries and ideologies, and coming
together in joint
struggle to overcome
power, privilege, and hatred by building mutual aid, inter-communal
solidarity, and collective self-management.
Externally, we welcome U.S. workers supporting Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions against Israel, and publicly
protesting against the ongoing violence in Occupied Palestine.
WSA Solidarity Committee
Recommended readings:
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
, Ilan Pappe
• The Question of Palestine
, Edward Said
• My Home, My Prison ,
Raymonda Hawa Tawil
• Mornings in Jenin
, Susan
Abulhawa
• A Child in Palestine
, Naji al-Ali
• Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation
, EyalWeizman
• Palestine: A Socialist Introduction
, eds. Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean
• “We Want Freedom for All,”
Libertarian Workers Group