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What can communists do to free Palestine?

What can communists do to free Palestine?

Workers and youth in Britain are rightly outraged by the oppression of the Palestinian people, and by the complicity of ‘our’ ruling class in this repression. Through organisation, mobilisation, and mass action, we can offer genuine solidarity.

Living in Britain, it is easy to feel powerless about the occupation of Gaza and the daily terror inflicted on Palestinians. But we have more power than we realise, provided we get organised.

British imperialism and its political representatives explicitly support the Israeli state’s atrocities against Palestinians. The Tory and Labour parties have exactly the same position on this.

The UK government does billion-pound arms deals with the reactionary Israeli regime, providing weapons and resources that are used to murder Palestinians. Investment by British banks, multinationals, and universities all aids this destruction.

The establishment media in Britain – starting with the BBC – spread all manner of lies and distortions when it comes to the siege of Gaza and the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli state.

We can do something about all of this, if we organise, agitate, and mobilise.

In every school and university, mass meetings and rallies in solidarity with Palestine should be called and organised. In every workplace, we should start up discussions about these issues, including the complicity of the bosses.

We should focus around these demands:

  • Both the Tories and Starmer’s Labour should be denounced for supporting the Israeli regime’s oppression of the Palestinian people – including the British government’s ties with the Israeli state, such as its trade in weapons and arms.
  • UK universities should cut any links with the arms industry.
  • Schools, colleges, and universities should tell the truth about the history of the Israeli state and British imperialism, and their many crimes against the Palestinians.
  • The British media should be condemned for its lies about the Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

None of this will happen by appealing to the ruling class. The Tory government, Starmer and the Labour right wing, the bosses, the capitalist media, university vice-chancellors, and school headteachers will all try to defend the status quo.

Instead, workers and youth should trust in their own strength. If we want to see results, we must take matters into our own hands.

Trade unionists should pass motions in solidarity with Palestinian workers and youth – calling on the TUC to do the same, and opposing the stinking hypocrisy of Starmer’s Labour. And unions should help organise and attend local solidarity rallies, calling on their members to attend.

Workers can also mobilise and take militant action. Dockers can block arms shipments. Engineers can prevent the manufacture of weapons. Lorry drivers can stop weapons being transported. Media workers can prevent the publication of the capitalists’ lies.

Students should pass resolutions through student unions, and join forces with academic, administrative, and other staff on campus or in school. Coordinated action – such as walkouts, occupations, and strikes – should be organised to shut down universities and schools completely.

Accompanying this mass direct action should be teach-outs that cover the real history of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the role of British imperialism.

All of us can discuss the situation with workmates, classmates, friends, and family. We should collect quotes and interviews with those who are angry and enraged by the Israeli state’s violence against the Palestinian people. We can publish these in our own media. Send us reports, pictures, and videos to newsdesk@socialist.net

All of this will have a direct impact on the fight to end imperialism and free Palestine.

Above all, we need to overthrow ‘our own’ imperialist government in Britain, and the capitalist system it represents.

Bringing about a socialist revolution in Britain – putting a workers’ government in power, with a foreign policy based on socialist internationalism – is the best way we can offer real solidarity to Palestinian workers and youth.

For that, you need to help us build a genuine communist movement in Britain, by joining the International Marxist Tendency, and getting organised as a communist.

Model motion: No to occupation! No to imperialism! Solidarity with Palestinian workers and youth!

This trade union branch / trades council / student union notes:

  • A new conflict has flared up between Israel and the Palestinian people.
  • Thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed by the Israeli security forces in recent years, such as during ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008-09 and ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in 2014. Before the events on 7 October, 200 Palestinians have been killed this year alone.
  • Israel is actively supported by western governments, with billions in British military equipment being used by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The United States subsidises Israel’s military to the tune of 3.6 billion dollars per year.

This trade union branch / trades council / student union believes:

  • This latest conflict is a direct consequence of decades of violent oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state, with the support of western imperialism, beginning with the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba in 1948.
  • Recently, this oppression has been intensified by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which is the most reactionary in Israel’s history.
  • Imperialist diplomacy – such as the Oslo accords – has failed. Only a mass uprising on both sides of the green line and across the Middle East can free the Palestinian people, end the occupation, and ensure equal rights for all peoples.
  • It is the duty of the international movement of workers and youth to support this struggle.

This trade union branch / trades council / student union resolves:

  • To declare its solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people against occupation and for national self-determination.
  • To call on its members to mobilise and campaign – through mass direct action – against companies, banks, and institutions that aid the manufacture and delivery of arms to Israel.
  • To condemn the British government’s support for the Israeli state and the distortions of the mainstream media in Britain in its coverage of this conflict.
  • To organise and support local rallies in solidarity with Palestine.
  • To submit this motion to the national Trade Union Congress / the national union leadership / the National Union of Students [delete/edit as appropriate] and call on it to publicly support the Palestinian struggle and oppose British imperialism’s role in the oppression of the Palestinian people.

For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East! Intifada until victory!

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